Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 100

"Delves! Does _he_ know it?"

"He does. And the man is keeping the secret out of consideration for us.

Delves is good-hearted at bottom. Not but that I spoke a friendly word for him when he was made sergeant. It all tells."

"And Mr. Ashley?" she asked.

"There is no doubt that Ashley has some suspicion: the very fact of his not making a stir in it proves that he has. It would not please him that a relative--as Cyril is--should stand his trial for felony."

"How harshly you put it!" exclaimed Mrs. Dare, bursting into tears.

"Felony."

"Nay; what else can I call it?"

A pause ensued. Mr. Dare resumed his restless pacing. Mrs. Dare sat with her handkerchief to her face. Presently she looked up.

"They said it was Halliburton's cloak that the person wore who went to change the cheque."

"It was not Halliburton's. It was Herbert's turned inside out. Herbert knew nothing about it, for I questioned him. He had gone out that night, leaving his cloak hanging in his closet. I asked him how it happened that his cloak, on the inside, should resemble Halliburton's, and he said it was a coincidence. I don't believe him. I entertain little doubt that it was so contrived with a view to enacting some mischief. In fact, what with one revelation and another, I live, as I say, in constant dread of new troubles turning up."

Bitter, most bitter were these revelations to Mrs. Dare; bitter had they been to her husband. Too swiftly were the fruits of their children's rearing coming home to them, bringing their recompense. "There must be a fatality upon the boys!" he reiterated. Possibly. But had neither parents nor children done aught to invoke it?

"Since these evils have come upon our house--the fate of Anthony, the uncertainty overhanging Herbert, the certain guilt of Cyril," resumed Mr. Dare: "I have asked myself whether the money we inherited from old Mr. Cooper may not have wrought ill for us, instead of good."

"Have wrought ill?"

"Ay! Brought with it a curse, instead of a blessing."

She made no remark.

"He warned us that if we took Edgar Halliburton's share it would not bring us good. Do you remember how eagerly he spoke it? We did take it,"

Mr. Dare added, dropping his voice to the lowest whisper. "And I believe it has just acted as a curse upon us."

"You are fanciful!" she cried, her hands shivering, as she raised her handkerchief to her pale face.

"No; there's no fancy in it. We should have done well to attend to the warning of the dying. Heaven is my witness that at the time, such a thought as that of appropriating it ourselves never crossed my mind. We launched out into expense, and the other share became a necessity to us.

It is that expense which has ruined our children."

"How can you say it?" she rejoined, lifting her hands in a pa.s.sionate sort of manner.

"It has been nothing else. Had they been reared more plainly, they would not have acquired those extravagant notions which have proved their bane. Without that inheritance and the style of living we allowed it to entail upon us, the boys must have understood that they would have to earn money before they spent it, and they would have put their shoulders to the wheel. Julia," he continued, halting by her, and stretching forth his troubled face until it nearly touched hers, "it might have been well now, well with them and with us, had our children been obliged to battle with the poverty to which we condemned the Halliburtons."

CHAPTER VIII.

AN UGLY VISION.

Mr. Dare had not taken upon himself the legal conduct of his son Herbert's case. It had been intrusted to the care of a solicitor in Helstonleigh, Mr. Winthorne. This gentleman, more forcibly than any one else, urged upon Herbert Dare the necessity of declaring--if he could declare--where he had been on the night of the murder. He clearly foresaw that, if his client persisted in his present silence, there was no chance of any result but the worst.

He could obtain no response. Deaf to him, as he had been to others, Herbert Dare would disclose nothing. In vain Mr. Winthorne pointed to consequences; first, by delicate hints; next, by hints not delicate; then, by speaking out broadly and fully. It is not pleasant to tell your client, in so many words, that he will be hanged and nothing can save him, unless he compels you to it. Herbert Dare so compelled Mr.

Winthorne. All in vain. Mr. Winthorne found he might just as well talk to the walls of the cell. Herbert Dare declared, in the most positive manner, that he had been out the whole of the time stated; from half-past eight o'clock, until nearly two; and from this declaration he never swerved.

Mr. Winthorne was perplexed. The prisoner's a.s.sertions were so uniformly earnest, bearing so apparently the stamp of truth, that he could not disbelieve him; or rather, sometimes he believed and sometimes he doubted. It is true that Herbert's declarations did wear an air of entire truth; but Mr. Winthorne had been engaged for criminal offenders before, and knew what the a.s.sertions of a great many of them were worth.

Down deep in his heart he reasoned very much after the manner of Sergeant Delves: "If he had been absent, he'd confess it to save his neck." He said so to Herbert.

Herbert took the matter, on the whole, coolly; he had done so from the beginning. He did not believe that his neck was really in jeopardy.

"They'll never find me guilty," was his belief. He could not avoid standing his trial: that was a calamity from which there was no escape: but he steadily refused to look at its results in a sombre light.

"_Can_ you tell me where you were?" Mr. Winthorne one morning impulsively asked him, when June was drawing to its close.

"I could if I liked," replied Herbert Dare. "I suppose you mean by that, to throw discredit on what I say, Winthorne; but you are wrong. I could point out to you and to all Helstonleigh where I was that night; but I will not do so. I have my reasons, and I will not."

"Then you will fall," said the lawyer. "The very fact of there being no other quarter than yourself on which to cast a shadow of suspicion, will tell against you. You have been bred to the law, and must see these things as plainly as I can put them to you."

"There's the point that puzzles me--who it can have been that did the injury. I'd give half my remaining life to know."

Mr. Winthorne thought that the whole of it, to judge by present appearances, might not be an inconveniently prolonged period; but he did not say so. "What is your objection to speak?" he asked.

"You have put the same question about fifty times, Winthorne, and you'll never get any different answer from the one you have had already--that I don't choose to state it."

"I suppose you were not committing murder in another quarter of the town, were you?"

"I suppose I was not," equably returned Herbert.

"Then, failing that crime, there's no other in the decalogue that I'd not confess to, to save my life. Whether I was robbing a bank, or setting a church on fire, I'd tell it out rather than be hanged by the neck until I was dead."

"Ah, but I was not doing either," said Herbert.

"Then there's the less reason for your persisting in the observance of so much mystery."

"My doing so is my own business," returned Herbert.

"No, it is not your own business," objected Mr. Winthorne. "You a.s.sert that you are innocent of the crime with which you are charged----"

"I a.s.sert nothing but the truth," interrupted Herbert.

"Good. Then, if you are innocent, and if you can prove your innocence, it is your duty to your family to do it. A man's duties in this life are not owing to himself alone: above all, a son's. He owes allegiance to his father and mother; his consideration for them should be above his consideration for himself. If you can prove your innocence it will be an unpardonable sin not to do it; a sin inflicted on your family."

"I can't help it," replied Herbert in his obstinacy. "I have my reasons for not speaking, and I shall not speak."

"You will surely suffer the penalty," said Mr. Winthorne.

"Then I must suffer it," returned the prisoner.

But it is one thing to talk, and another to act. Many a brave spirit, ready and willing to undergo hanging in theory, would find his heart fail and his bravery altogether die out, were he really required to reduce it to practice.

Herbert Dare was only human. After July had come in and the time for the opening of the a.s.sizes might be counted by hours, then his courage began to flinch. He spent a night in tossing from side to side on his pallet (a wide difference between that and his comfortable bed at home), during which a certain ugly apparatus, to be erected for his especial use within the walls of the prison some fine Sat.u.r.day morning, on which he might figure by no means gracefully, had mentally disturbed his rest.