THE SHADOW LIGHTENED.
Long before Mr. Carruthers, impelled by the irresistible force of
routine, which not all the concern, and even alarm, occasioned him by
Mrs. Carruthers's condition could subdue, had issued forth upon his
daily tour of inspection, Clare's letters had been safely posted by
her own hand at the village. She had slept but little on the night
which had fallen on her first experience of fear and grief; and waking
at dawn, oppressed by a heavy sense of some dimly-understood calamity,
she had recalled it all in a moment; and having hurriedly dressed
herself, she went down to the breakfast-room, and let herself out
through the window, accompanied by her dog, whose joyous gambols in
the bright morning air she did not notice. That morning air struck
chill to the weary limbs and aching head of the sad, bewildered girl
as she pursued her rapid way through the shrubbery, brushing the
dew from the branches of the trees as she passed hurriedly along
heart-sick, and yet wandering and confused in her thoughts.
Her walk was quite solitary and uninterrupted. She slid the letters
into a convenient slit of a window-shutter of the general-shop, to
which the dignity and emoluments of a post-office were attached;
glanced up and down the little street, listened to certain desultory
sounds which spoke of the commencement of activity in adjacent
stable-yards, and to the barking with which some vagabond dogs of her
acquaintance greeted her and Cæsar; satisfied herself that she was
unobserved, and then retraced her steps as rapidly as possible. The
large white-faced clock over the stables at Poynings--an unimpeachable
instrument, never known to gain or lose within the memory of man--was
striking six as Clare Carruthers carefully replaced the bolt of the
breakfast-room window, and crept upstairs again, with a faint flutter
of satisfaction that her errand had been safely accomplished
contending with the dreariness and dread which filled her heart. She
put away her hat and cloak, changed her dress, which was wet with the
dew, and sat down by the door of the room to listen for the first stir
of life in the house.
Soon she heard her uncle's step, lighter, less creaky than usual, and
went out to meet him. He did not show any surprise on seeing her so
early, and the expression of his face told her in a moment that he had
no good news of the invalid to communicate.
"Brookes says she has had a very bad night," he said gravely. "I am
going to send for Munns at once, and to telegraph to London for more
advice." Then he went on in a state of subdued creak; and Clare, in
increased bewilderment and misery, went to Mrs. Carruthers's room,
where she found the reign of dangerous illness seriously inaugurated.
Doctor Munns came, and early in the afternoon a grave and polite
gentleman arrived from London, who was very affable, but rather
reserved, and who was also guilty of the unaccountable bad taste of
suggesting a shock in connection with Mrs. Carruthers's illness. He
also was emphatically corrected by Mr. Carruthers, but not with the
same harshness which had marked that gentleman's reception of Dr.
Munns's suggestion. The grave gentleman from London made but little
addition to Dr. Munns's treatment, declined to commit himself to any
decided opinion on the case, and went away, leaving Mr. Carruthers
with a sensation of helplessness and vague injury, to say nothing of
downright misery and alarm, to which the Grand Lama was entirely
unaccustomed.
Before the London physician made his appearance Clare and her uncle
had met at breakfast, and she had learned all there was to be known on
the subject which had taken entire and terrible possession of her
mind: It seemed to Clare now that she had no power of thinking of
anything else, that it was quite impossible that only yesterday
morning she was a careless unconscious girl musing over a romantic
incident in her life, speculating vaguely upon the possibility of any
result accruing from it in the future, and feeling as far removed from
the crimes and dangers of life as if they had no existence. Now she
took her place opposite her uncle with a face whose pallor and
expression of deep-seated trouble even that unobservant and
self-engrossed potentate could not fail to notice. He did observe the
alteration in Clare's looks, and was not altogether displeased by it.
It argued deep solicitude for Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings--an
extremely proper sentiment; so Mr. Carruthers consoled his niece after
his stately fashion, acknowledging, at the same time, the
unaccountable vagaries of fever, and assuring Clare that there was
nothing infectious in the case--a subject on which it had never
occurred to the girl to feel any uneasiness. Not so with Mr.
Carruthers, who had a very great dread of illness of every kind, and a
superstitious reverence for the medical art. The conversation was
interrupted by the arrival of the post, and Mr. Carruthers's attention
was again drawn to the subject of the murder and the possibility of
promoting his own importance in connection with it. Clare's pale face
turned paler as her uncle took up the first letter of the number
presented to him by Thomas (footman), that official looking peculiarly
intelligent on the occasion; for the letter bore the magic
inscription, "On Her Majesty's Service," and the seal of the Home
Office.
Mr. Carruthers took some time to read the letter, even with the aid of
the gold eye-glasses. It came from Mr. Dalrymple, who wrote an
abnormally bad hand even for a government official--a circumstance
which Mr. Carruthers mentally combined with the beard, of which he
retained an indignant remembrance as a sign of the degeneracy of the
age. The irrepressible pompousness of the man showed itself even in
this crisis of affairs, as he perused the document, and laid it down
upon the table under the hand armed with the eye-glasses.
Clare waited breathless.
"Hem! my dear," he began; "this letter is connected with the matter I
mentioned to you yesterday. You remember, I daresay, about the murder,
and the inquiry I was requested by the government to make at Amherst."
O yes, Clare remembered; she had been very much interested. Had
anything since transpired?
"Nothing of any moment. This letter is from Mr. Dalrymple--the
gentleman who came here, as I told you, from Lord Wolstenholme."
Clare, still breathless, bowed. There was no use in trying to
accelerate Mr. Carruthers's speech. He was not to be hurried.
"He writes to me that the Home Secretary regrets very much the failure
of our inquiries at Amherst, in eliciting any information concerning
the only person on whom suspicion has as yet alighted. He informs me
that, as I expected, and as I explained to you yesterday"--Mr.
Carruthers paused condescendingly for Clare's silent gesture of
assent--"the jury at the coroner's inquest (it closed yesterday) have
returned an open verdict--wilful murder against some person or persons
unknown; and the police have been instructed to use all possible
vigilance to bring the criminal to light."
"Have they learned anything further about the dead man?" asked Clare,
with a timid look (half of anxiety, half of avoidance) towards the
newspaper, which Mr. Carruthers had not yet opened, and which no
member of the family would have ventured to touch unsanctioned by the
previous perusal of its august head.
"About the murdered man?--no, I believe not. Mr. Dalrymple further
informs me that the fur-lined coat, and all the other less remarkable
articles of clothing found on the body, are placed in the hands of the
police, in hope of future identification. There is nothing more to be
done, then, that I can see. Can you suggest anything, Clare!" Mr.
Carruthers asked the question in a tone almost of banter, as though
there were something ridiculous in his expecting a suggestion from
such a quarter, but with very little real anxiety nevertheless.
"I--I really do not know, uncle," returned Clare; "I cannot tell. You
are quite sure Evans told you all he knew?"
"Everything," replied Mr. Carruthers. "The clue furnished by the coat
was very slight, but it was the only one. I am convinced, myself, that
the man who wore the coat, and was last seen in company with the
murdered man, was the man who committed the murder." Clare shivered.
"But," continued Mr. Carruthers in an argumentative tone, "the thing
to establish is the identity of the man who wore the coat with the man
who bought it six weeks ago."
A bright flush rose on Clare's cheeks--a flush of surprise, of hope.
"Is there any doubt about that, uncle?" she asked. "The waiter
described the man, didn't he? Besides, no one would part with an
overcoat in six weeks."
"_That_ is by no means certain," said Mr. Carruthers with an air of
profound wisdom. "Artists and writers, and foreigners, and generally
people of the vagabond kind, sell and barter their clothes very
frequently. The young man whom Evans describes might have been any
one, from his purposeless indistinguishable description; the waiter's
memory is clearer, as is natural, being newer."
"And what is the description he gives?" asked Clare faintly.
"You will find it in the weekly paper, my dear," returned Mr.
Carruthers, stretching his hand out towards the daily journal.
"Meantime let's see yesterday's proceedings."
Hope had arisen in Clare's heart. Might not all her fear be unfounded,
all her sufferings vain? What if the coat had not been purchased by
Paul Ward at all? She tried to remember exactly what he had said in
the few jesting words that had passed on the subject. Had he said he
had bought it at Amherst, or only that it had been made at Amherst? By
an intense effort, so distracting and painful that it made her head
ache with a sharp pain, she endeavoured to force her memory to
reproduce what had passed, but in vain; she remembered only the
circumstance, the fatal identification of the coat. "Artists and
writers," her uncle had said, in his disdainful classification,
occasionally made certain odd arrangements concerning their garments
unknown to the upper classes, to whom tailors and valets appertain of
right; and Paul Ward was both a writer and an artist. Might he not
have bought the coat from an acquaintance? Men of his class, she knew,
often had queer acquaintances. The possession was one of the drawbacks
of the otherwise glorious career of art and literature--people who
might require to sell their coats, and be equal to doing it.
Yes there was a hope, a possibility that it might be so, and the girl
seized on it with avidity. But, in a moment, the terrible recollection
struck her that she was considering the matter at the wrong end. Who
had bought the coat made by Evans of Amherst, and what had been its
intermediate history, were things of no import. The question was, in
whose possession was it when the unknown man was murdered. Had Paul
Ward dined with him at the Strand Tavern? Was Paul Ward the man whom
the waiter could undertake to identify, in London? If so--and the
terrible pang of the conviction that so, indeed, it was, returned to
her with redoubled force from the momentary relief of the doubt--the
danger was in London, not there at Amherst; from the waiter, not from
Evans. Distracted between the horror, overwhelming to the innocent
mind of the young girl, to whom sin and crime had been hitherto dim
and distant phantoms, of such guilt attaching itself to the image
which she had set up for the romantic worship of her girlish heart,
and the urgent terrified desire which she felt that, however guilty,
he might escape--nay, the more firmly she felt convinced that he
_must_ be guilty, the more ardently she desired it,--Clare
Carruthers's gentle breast was rent with such unendurable torture as
hardly any after happiness could compensate for or efface. All this
time Mr. Carruthers was reading the newspaper, and at length he laid
it down, and was about to address Clare, when the footman entered the
room, and informed him that Mr. Evans, the tailor, from Amherst,
wished to be permitted to speak to him as soon as convenient. With
much more alacrity than he usually displayed, Mr. Carruthers desired
that Evans should be shown into the library, and declared his
intention of going to speak to him immediately.
"I have no doubt, Clare, that he has come about this business," said
Mr. Carruthers, when the servant had left the room. With this
consolatory assurance he left her to herself. She snatched up the
newspaper, and read a brief account of the proceedings of the previous
day--the close of the inquest, and some indignant remarks upon the
impunity with which so atrocious a crime had, to all appearance, been
committed; which wound up with a supposition that this murder was
destined to be included in the number of those mysteries whose
impenetrability strengthened the hand of the assassin, and made our
police system the standing jest of continental nations. How ardently
she hoped, how nearly she dared to pray, that it might indeed be so!
She lingered in the breakfast-room, waiting for her uncle's return.
The restlessness, the uncertainty of misery, were upon her; she
dreaded the sight of every one, and yet she feared solitude, because
of the thoughts, the convictions, the terrors, which peopled it. Three
letters lay on the table still unopened; and when Clare looked at
them, she found they were addressed to Mrs. Carruthers, and that two
of the three were from America. The postmark on each was New York, and
on one were stamped the words, "Too late."
"She is too ill to read any letters now, or even to be told there are
any," thought Clare. "I had better put them away, or ask my uncle to
do so."
She was looking at the third letter, which was from George Dallas; but
she had never seen his writing, to her knowledge; and the two words,
which he had written on the slip of paper she had seen, being a
Christian and surname, afforded her no opportunity of recognizing it
as that of Paul Ward; when Mr. Carruthers returned, looking very
pompous and fussy.
"I shall communicate with the Home Office immediately," he began.
"This is very important. Evans has been here to tell me he has read
all the proceedings at the inquest, and the waiter's description of
the suspected individual tallies precisely with his own recollection
of the purchaser of the coat."
"But, uncle," said Clare, with quick intelligence, "you told me the
man's evidence and Evans's description were as vague as possible.
Indeed, I was quite struck by what you said: 'A description that
describes nothing' were your words. And don't you remember telling me
how frequently you had observed in your magisterial capacity that
these people never could be depended on to give an accurate account of
an impression or a circumstance? And how you have told me that it was
one of the chief distinctions between the educated and uneducated
mind, that only the former could comprehend the real value and meaning
of evidence? Depend on it, Evans has no new ground for his conviction.
He has been reading the papers, and thinking over the importance of
being mixed up in the matter, until he has persuaded himself into this
notion. Don't you recollect that is just what you said you were sure
he would do?"
Mr. Carruthers did not remember anything of the kind, nor did Clare.
But the girl was progressing rapidly in the lessons which strong
emotion teaches, and which add years of experience to hours of life.
Instinctively she took advantage of the weakness of her uncle's
character, which she comprehended without acknowledging. Mr.
Carruthers had no objection to the imputation of superior sagacity
conveyed in Clare's remark, and accepted the suggestion graciously; he
was particularly pleased to learn that he had drawn that acute
distinction between the educated and uneducated mind. It was like him,
he thought: he was not a man on whom experience was wasted.
"Yes, yes, I remember, of course, my dear," replied Mr. Carruthers,
graciously; "but then, you see, however little I may think of Evans's
notions on the subject, I am bound to communicate with the Home
Office. If Mrs. Carruthers's illness did not render my absence
improper and impossible, I should go to London myself, and lay the
matter before Lord Wolstenholme; but, as I cannot do that, I must
write at once." Mr. Carruthers, in his secret soul, regarded the
obligation with no little dread, and would have been grateful for a
suggestion which he would not have condescended to ask for.
"Then I will leave you, uncle," said Clare, making a strong effort to
speak as cheerfully as possible, "to your task of telling the big wigs
that there is nothing more to be done or known down here. You might
make them laugh, if such solemn, grand people ever laugh, by telling
them how the rural mind believes two vaguenesses to make a certainty,
and make them grateful that Evans came to you, and not to them, with
his mare's nest of corroborative evidence."
Clare's fair face was sharpened with anxiety as she spoke, despite the
brightness of her tone, and she had narrowly watched the effect of her
words. Her uncle felt that they conveyed precisely the hint he
required, and was proportionally relieved.
"Of course, of course," he answered, in his grandest manner; and Clare
moved towards the door, when, remembering the letters, she said:
"There are some letters for Mrs. Carruthers, uncle. I fancy she is too
ill to see them. Two are from America; will you take them?"
"I take them, Clare, why?" asked her uncle, in a tone of dignified
surprise.
"Only because, being foreign letters, I thought they might require
attention--that's all," said Clare, feeling herself rebuked for a
vulgarity. "They come from New York."
"Probably from Mr. Felton," said Mr. Carruthers, pointing the gold
eye-glasses at the letters in Clare's hand with dignified coldness,
but making no attempt to look at them nearer. "You had better lay them
aside, or give them to Brookes or Dixon. I never meddle with Mrs.
Carruthers's family correspondence."
Clare made her escape with the letters, feeling as if her ears had,
morally speaking, been boxed; and diverted, for a little, by the
sensation from the devouring anxiety she had felt that Mr. Carruthers
should communicate in the tone which she had tried to insinuate with
the dignitaries of the Home Office.
The door of Mrs. Carruthers's room was open, and the curtain partly
withdrawn, when Clare reached it. She called softly to Dixon, but
received no reply. Then she went in, and found the housekeeper again
in attendance upon the patient. To her inquiries she received from
Mrs. Brookes very discouraging replies, and the old woman stated her
conviction strongly that it was going to be a very bad business, and
that Clare had much better go to the Sycamores.
"You can't do any good here, Miss Carruthers," said the old woman; and
Clare thought she had never heard her speak so sternly and harshly. "I
don't know that any one can do any good; but you can't anyhow, and the
fever may be catching."
Clare's eyes filled with tears, not only because she loved Mrs.
Carruthers, not only because another trouble was added to the crushing
misery that had fallen upon her, but also because it hurt her gentle
nature keenly to feel herself of no account.
"No," she said, in a low voice, "I know I am of no use, Mrs. Brookes.
I am not her child. If I were, I should not be expected to leave her.
And," she added bitterly, for the first time treading on the forbidden
ground, "more than that, if it were not for me, her son might be with
her now, perhaps."
"Hush, hush, pray," whispered Mrs. Brookes, with a frightened glance
at the bed; "don't say that word! She may hear and understand more
than we think."
Clare looked at her in bewilderment, but obeyed her, and asked no
questions.
"These came just now," she said, "my uncle desired me to give them to
you."
She put the letters into the old woman's hand, and crossed the room,
leaving it by the opposite door, which communicated with Mrs.
Carruthers's dressing-room. As she passed through the inner apartment,
which opened on the corridor, she observed that the portrait of George
Dallas, which had hung upon the wall as long as she remembered the
room, was no longer there.
The hidden anguish in her own heart, the secret which was crushing her
own young spirit, made the girl quick to see and interpret any sign of
similar sorrow and mystery.
"Mrs. Brookes has taken away her son's picture," Clare thought, us she
slowly descended the stairs, "and she dreads his name being mentioned
in her presence. Dr. Munns asked if she had had a shock, and seemed to
impute her illness to something of the kind. There is something wrong
with George Dallas, and the two know it."
When Miss Carruthers left her, Mrs. Brookes broke the seal of one of
the letters without a moment's hesitation, and read its contents,
standing shielded from any possible observation by the invalid by the
curtains of the bed. The letter contained only a few lines:
"_I am going away, out of England, for a little while, my dearest
mother_," George Dallas wrote. "_It is necessary for the transaction
of my business; but I did not know it would be so when I last
communicated with you. Write to me at the subjoined address: your
letter mil be forwarded_." The address given was Routh's, at South
Molton-street.
The old woman sighed heavily as she read the letter, and then resumed
her attendance on her patient.
The day waned, the London physician came and went. The household at
Poynings learned little of their mistress's state. There was little to
be learned. That night a letter was written to George Dallas, by Mrs.
Brookes, which was a harder task to the poor old woman than she had
ever been called upon to fulfil. With infinite labour, she wrote as
follows:
"My Dear Master George,--Your letter has come, so I know you are not
in England, and I am not sure but that some one else may see this.
Your mother is very ill, in consequence of what she has seen in the
papers. I do not believe it is as bad as it seems, though how bad that
is, thank God, no one but your mother and I know, or can ever know, I
hope and trust. Think of all the strongest and most imploring things I
could say to you, my own dear boy, if it was safe to say anything, and
if you can put us out of suspense, by writing, not to her, not on any
account to her, but to me, do so. But if you can't, George--and think
what I feel in saying that _if_--keep away, don't let her hear of you,
don't let her think of you in danger. Anyhow, God save, and help, and
forgive you.
"Your affectionate old Nurse,
"ELLEN."
The days went on, as time travels in sickness and in health, and there
was little change in Mrs. Carruthers, and little hope at Poynings. The
fever had been pronounced not infectious, and Clare had not been
banished to the Sycamores. No fresh alarm had arisen to agitate her,
no news of the suspected man had been obtained. The matter had
apparently been consigned to oblivion. With the subsidence of her
first terror and agitation, a deeper horror and dread had grown upon
Clare. Supposing, as it seemed, that he was safe now, Paul Ward was
still a guilty wretch, a creature to be shunned by the pure, even in
thought. And the more she felt this, and thought of it, the more
frankly Clare confessed to her own heart that she had loved him, that
she had set him up, with so little knowledge of him after their chance
meeting, as an idol in the shrine of her girlish fancy--an idol
defaced and overthrown now, a shrine for ever denied and desecrated.
She was glad to think she had warned him; she wondered how much that
warning had contributed to his security. She strove hard to banish the
remembrance of him in all but its true aspect of abhorrence, but she
did not always succeed; and, in the innocent girl's dreams, the smile,
the voice, the frank kindly words would often come again, and make her
waking to the jarring gladness of the morning terrible. A shadow fell
upon her beauty, the gleeful tone died out of her voice; the change of
an indelible sorrow passed upon the girl, but passed unnoticed by
herself or any other.
The days went on, as time travels in sorrow and in joy; and at length
a change came in Mrs. Carruthers, and there was hope at Poynings. Not
hope, indeed, that she could ever be again as she had been, beautiful
and stately in her serene and honoured matronhood, in her bright
intelligence and dignity. That was not to be. She recovered; that is,
she did not die, but she died to much of the past. She was an old
woman from thenceforth, and all her beauty, save the immortal beauty
of form, had left her very quiet, very patient and gentle, but of
feeble nerves, and with little memory for the past, and little
attention or interest in the present; she was the merest wreck of what
she had been. Her faithful old servant was not so much distressed by
the change as were her husband and Clare. She had her own reasons for
thinking it better that it should be so. For many days after
convalescence had been declared, she had watched and waited, sick with
apprehension for some sign of recollection on the part of the patient,
but none came, and the old woman, while she grieved with exceeding
bitterness over the wreck of all she so dearly loved, thanked God in
her heart that even thus relief had come. None had come otherwise.
George Dallas had made no sign.
So the time went on, and summer was in its full pomp and pride when
preparations were being made on a scale suitable to the travelling
arrangements of magnates of the importance of Mr. Carruthers of
Poynings for a continental tour, recommended by the physicians in
attendance as a means for the complete restoration of Mrs. Carruthers.
The time named for the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers had nearly
arrived, and it had just been arranged that Clare should remain at the
Sycamores during their absence, when Mr. Carruthers startled Mrs.
Brookes considerably by asking her if she could inform him where a
communication might be expected to find Mr. George Dallas? It would
have been impossible for human ingenuity to have devised a question
more unexpected by its recipient, and Mrs. Brookes was genuinely
incapable of answering it for a moment, and showed her fear and
surprise so plainly, that Mr. Carruthers, much softened by recent
events, condescended to explain why he had asked it.
"I do not consider it proper that the young man should be left in
ignorance of his mother's state of health and her absence from.
England," he said, with less stateliness than usual; "and though I do
not inquire into the manner and frequency of his communications with
Mrs. Carruthers, I believe I am correct in supposing he has not
written to her lately."
"Not lately, sir," replied Mrs. Brookes.
The result of this colloquy was that Mrs. Brookes gave Mr. Carruthers
Routh's address at South Molton-street, and that Mr. Carruthers
addressed a short epistle to George Dallas, in which he curtly
informed his stepson that his mother, having just recovered from a
dangerous illness which had enfeebled her mind considerably, was about
to travel on the Continent for an indefinite period, during which, if
he (Mr. Carruthers) should see any cause for so doing, he would
communicate further with Mr. George Dallas. This letter was posted on
the day which witnessed the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers "and
suite" (as the County Chronicle was careful to notice) from Poynings;
and Mr. Carruthers felt much conscious self-approval for having
written it, and especially for having timed the writing of it so well.
"Sooner, he might have made an excuse of it for coming here," thought
the astute gentleman; "and it would have been heartless not to have
written at all."
For once in his life Mr. Carruthers of Poynings had written a letter
of importance.