The packet found by Mr. Danvers was the same which, it may be
remembered, was lifted from a table in Willoughby's apartment by
Geoffery, while Alfred, to meet whose eye it had been thus conspicuously
placed by his poor brother, was too much absorbed in grief to notice
what was passing.
The peculiar circumstances attendant on the death-scene, and the certain
knowledge thus obtained, that poison had been taken, and would,
therefore, on opening the body be found, suggested to Geoffery's evil
mind the first faint glimpses of the diabolical scheme which so many
after circumstances so unexpectedly favoured. Had there been a fire in
his apartment that night, he would for security have certainly burnt the
packet; but it fortunately happened that there was not, and so agitated
and occupied was his mind in the contemplation of the very possibility
of compassing at once the hideous crime and enormous gain, which he was
balancing one against the other, that the idea of destroying the
dangerous document by means of his candle never once occurred to him.
Accordingly, when he had sufficiently considered its contents, he placed
it in his pocket-book. After this, he more than once took it out, with
the intention of consigning it to the flames, but when in the very act
his hand was stayed by more than one consideration. In the first place,
there was a kind of bequest to himself; and if the accusations against
Alfred came to nothing, he should want the sum very much; then he
sometimes felt a dread, that by a bare possibility, he might
himself,--as having a remote contingent interest in the death of
Willoughby, and having arrived too that very night at Arden,--be accused
of being an accomplice of Alfred's; and in either case this packet laid
down in some of the apartments, would be picked up, and being supposed
to have hitherto merely lain unnoticed, both clear himself of all
suspicion and secure his bequest; for though this bequest was not left
in a binding form, he had no doubt that Alfred would religiously make it
good. No place, however, seemed safe enough for keeping this important
document but about his own person, and accordingly he so disposed of it;
which serves to account for its being found in the manner described.
The packet itself presented a melancholy picture of poor Willoughby's
disordered state of mind, brought down somewhat in the form of a
journal, and with a kind of method mingled with its wildness to the very
evening of his death. In proof of the strange blending of rational
considerations, there was a sort of distribution of his personal
property; for besides the bequest to Geoffery, already alluded to, there
were kind gifts to his sisters, his mother, his aunt Dorothea, and to
several old servants and pensioners.
Alfred, however, was his main object; the tenor of the whole letter
breathed the most devoted tenderness towards him, mingled with a
madman's notion, that he was about to perform an heroic act, in removing
the obstacles to his happiness. It entreated Alfred not to grieve for
him--he was only flying a misery he could not endure; seeking a resting
place he longed to find. Why should not all those who remained behind be
happy--quite happy, and never think of him who could so well be
spared--who never should have been born--who seemed to have been called
into existence but to stand in the way of others, and be himself
wretched!
"Yet I know that you will grieve for me, Alfred," it continued, "and the
thought of how much you will grieve sometimes makes me shrink from
seeking the rest I long for. But it will be for a time only, and then
you too will be happy. Yes, you must be happy, Alfred!"
Caroline's letter was inclosed in the packet, and some comments made, in
a strain of forced, unnatural calmness, on Lady Palliser's cruel policy.
While the whole, which seemed to have been written at many different
periods, concluded with a sort of separate part, dated the day of the
evening of his death; detailing minutely how he had at length possessed
himself of some arsenic, and declaring his intention of that very
evening putting an end to the harrassing struggles of his mind, which he
here describe wildly, as pursuing him every where--goading him
on--hunting him down--making rest or peace on earth impossible.
"Forgive me, then, dear Alfred," he concluded; "forgive my quitting you
thus; for I am weary, and long to sleep, though it were in the grave!
Except that short moment when I closed my eyes on your kind bosom, I
have not slept I know not when."
This, the dying memorial of poor Willoughby, was but a melancholy
vehicle for joyful intelligence to Lady Arden. In her mind, however, at
such a moment, there was room but for one idea--Alfred was safe! Even
her pride in him, which had mingled with despair, was forgotten in
tenderness.
She left all the care of his public justification, with the necessary
forms for his restoration to his right, in the hands of Mr. Danvers and
Lord Darlingford; and though, as a precaution lest Alfred should lose
one moment of the relief of mind such intelligence was calculated to
bestow, she had dispatched, at the first instant, an express, bearing in
her own writing the three words, "You are justified." Nevertheless she
had followed her own messenger with so much expedition, that she
overtook him at the gates of Geneva, awaiting their being opened; and
thus became, as we have seen, the first to announce to her exiled son
the happy change which had taken place in his circumstances.
While her ladyship was thus occupied, the townspeople of Arden,
impatient to display the returning tide of their affection and respect
towards their young landlord, were illuminating every pane of glass they
possessed, and lighting bonfires on every rising ground in the
neighbourhood, in honour of his acquittal; while at the same time their
indignation against Geoffery knew no bounds. His motive in suppressing
and concealing Alfred's letter spoke for itself; and so strong was the
general feeling of abhorrence which it excited, that the night after he
was buried, his body was disinterred by the mob, and placed on a gibbet
on the road-side, between Arden and Arden Park. His coadjutor, too, Mr.
Fips, was blamed even more than he deserved, if that indeed were
possible: that is to say, he was universally believed to have been a
party to the suppression of Willoughby's packet; a belief engendered,
and, in a great measure justified, by his being Geoffery's right-hand
man on all occasions, and still more by the active part he had taken
previously to and on the trial, as well as by his own general villany of
character.
Accordingly, during the illuminations for Alfred's acquittal, the mob
began by smashing every window in Fips's house; and hatred of Gripe, as
he was called, being a common cause, those who had commenced the attack
were soon joined by so many who had a personal feeling of revenge,
founded on a lively remembrance of ruin entailed on themselves and their
families by his means, that before morning they literally left not one
stone, or rather one brick, upon another of Fips's dwelling; while
himself and his daughter narrowly escaped with their lives, without
being able to carry with them a single paper, or a vestige of property
of any kind. What was of value found plenty of customers, who thought it
no robbery to take back a little of their own; and as to the parchments,
&c., a sagacious ringleader proposed that they should all be emptied out
at the foot of the market cross; that so, when there was light in the
morning, every one might come and choose his own. Thus did many a man
get back his documents without being compelled to pay the unjust and
enormous bill for which they were held as security; whilst every thing
in the shape of bill, book, or account standing against any individual,
was carefully consigned to the flames. All the town, in short, felt it
more or less a blessing that the hornet's nest had been destroyed. As to
the authorities, they had themselves, some of them, felt the gripe of
Mr. Fips in their day: after, therefore, every step _they_ judged proper
was duly taken to discover who had been the perpetrators of the late
riots, it was decided, at a public meeting held for the purpose--"That
the very _unjustifiable_ outrages which had been committed on the night
of the -- of ----, 18--, could not be _brought home to any particular
individuals_."