The Disappointment.—The Last Resource.—A Strange Meeting.—The
Confession.
The clocks were striking ten as Jacob Gray came within sight of
Learmont’s house, and then so strongly did all his former fears
regarding the possible results of his interview with the squire came
across him, that it was many minutes before he could summon courage to
ascend the steps of the mansion. There was, however, no other course;
and, although his fears were of a nature rather to be increased than
diminished, by the feverish nature of his reflection, he reluctantly at
length slunk up the steps and knocked at the door, for at that hour it
was always closed.
The few moments of suspense till the door was opened were agonising to
Jacob Gray in the extreme, and all his former faintness, and some of
exhaustion came over him as the ponderous portal opened, and a servant
stood in the gap and demanded his business.
“You know me?” said Gray.
The man looked at him doubtingly, for what with his wounds, and the
pain, misery, and anxiety, he had gone through, he was sufficiently
altered to make his recognition doubtful for a moment, even to those
who had seen him often. A second look, however, let the servant know
that he had seen him before as one of his master’s very mysterious
visitors, and he replied—
“Yes, sir, I do know you.”
“Tell your master I am here.”
“He is not within.”
“Not within,”
“No, sir. We do not expect him home to-night; he has gone to a party at
the Earl of Harrowdon’s, in the Palace-yard.”
Gray stood for a moment leaning for support against the door-post—then
by a strong effort he spoke—
“Thank you—I—I will call to-morrow,” and he descended the steps
stupified and bewildered by the cross accidents that seemed to conspire
against him.
He heard the door closed behind him, and he walked on mechanically for
about a hundred yards, when he sat down upon the step of a door, and
leaning his face upon his hands, he nearly gave himself up to despair.
“What could he do?—What resource was open to him?—Where could he go for
food and shelter? A starving fugitive!—With a price set upon his
capture. Could there be yet a degree of horror, and misery beyond what
he now endured?”
“Yes—yes,” he suddenly said, “I—I can beg. Till to-morrow I can beg a
few pence to save me from absolute starvation; but, yet that is a
fearful risk, for by so doing I shall challenge the attention of the
passers by, instead of evading it. I cannot starve; though I must
beg—if it be but a few pence to keep me alive until the morning.”
Jacob Gray’s appearance was certainly very much in favour of any tale
of distress he might relate for the purpose of moving the charitable to
pity and benevolence. A more miserable and woebegone wretch could
scarcely have been found within the bills of mortality.
The first person upon whom Jacob Gray made an attempt in the begging
way was a man who was slowly sauntering past, enveloped in a rich and
handsome coat, but the moment he heard Gray say,—
“I am starving,” he drew his cloak closer around him, as if by so doing
he shut out his appeal to humanity, and hurried on at a rapid pace.
Gray had not been begging long enough to have learnt humility, and the
bitter curses he muttered after the man with the cloak would have made
his hair stand on end, had he have heard them.
As he was then upon the point of rising from the step, and crawling to
some more public thoroughfare, in which he might have a more extended
sphere of operation, a strange wild noise smote his ears, and he drew
back into the shadow of the doorway with a feeling of alarm.
The sound seemed to approach from the further end of the street, and
now he could distinguish a voice addressing some one in imploring
tones, which were replied to by a harsh voice. The words spoken Gray
could not distinguish, but a strange presentiment came over him that he
was somehow connected with the persons approaching, or the subject
matter of their discourse.
Back—back—he shrunk into the doorway, until he was completely hidden in
the shadow of the house.
The disputants rapidly approached, and then he could hear the rougher
voice exclaim,—
“There is no harm meant you. You are a foolish woman. I tell you, over
and over again, that you are wanted for your own good.”
“Murderer, away, away!” cried a voice that struck to the heart of Jacob
Gray, for he knew it to be the woman he had seen at the public-house by
Vauxhall, when he ran so narrow a chance of capture by Sir Francis
Hartleton.
“Will you come quietly?” cried the man.
“No—no—not with you,” cried Maud, “not with you. Look at your hands,
man, are they not dyed deeply with blood? Ha! Ha! Ha! You shrink now.
No—no—Maud will not go with you; but I will tell you a secret.
Listen—do you know Andrew Britton, the savage smith?”
“No, nor don’t want,” said the man. “Come now, listen to reason, Sir
Francis Hartleton wants to see you particularly.”
“Aye, aye!” said Maud, “that’s a fine device. Tell me where the child
is, will you?”
“Come now,—it ain’t far,” said the man. “Here have I been hunting all
over London for you nearly a day and half now, and when I find you, you
won’t come. I tell you Sir Francis means to do something for you.”
“Can he restore the dead?”
“Not exactly.”
“Ah! Ah! Ah! He can—he can. So now I know you are no messenger of his.
You come from Andrew Britton,—why? To kill me; but it is of no use—of
no use, I tell you. You, and he, and everybody know well that he is to
die before I do.”
Maud now laid hold of the rails of the house and resolutely refused to
move. The man spoke in a perplexed tone as he said,—
“Come—come now, don’t be foolish. I must get some help to take you,
whether you like it or not, if you won’t come now quietly.”
“Beware,” said Maud.
The man gave a start, as the poor creature showed him the glittering
blade of a knife she had concealed in her bosom. There was a pause of a
few minutes, and then Gray heard the man say,—
“Very well. Just as you like, I always look after number one first, and
I’ll be hanged if I have anything more to do with you.”
Maud laughed hysterically as she sat down upon the step, and still kept
a clutch upon the iron rail.
“Foiled! Foiled!” she exclaimed. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Tell him it is in vain.
He may hunt me, but it is written in the book of the Eternal, that
Britton, the savage smith of Learmont, is to die before I. Go—go. Ha!
Ha! Ha! You will never wash the blood stains out. Never—never—never!”
The man made no answer, but walked away at a very rapid pace, no doubt
for the purpose of procuring some assistance; for he was an officer who
had been ordered by Sir Francis Hartleton to seek for the poor deserted
creature, and bring her to him, when he would take measures for placing
her in some asylum where she would be free from any violence on the
part of Andrew Britton, should he accidentally meet with her.
Maud continued to mutter in a low tone after the man had left, but Gray
could not closely distinguish what she said, and he remained for some
time perfectly quiet, resolving in his mind what he should do. As he
communed with himself the deadly spirit of revenge against all whom he
imagined to be in any way accessary to producing his present destitute
state came over him, and he ground his teeth as he muttered,—
“I could kill them all. I could exult in their agonies. I will, I must
have revenge. This hag was the cursed cause of all the horrors I have
been compelled to wade through, and shall I now suffer her to escape,
now that she is in my power?”
He cast a rapid glance up and down the street as he added,—
“And no one by. Oh? That I had some weapon that silently and surely
would do its work, and leave her here a corpse. She shall be one
offered on the altar of my revenge! I must, I will work the destruction
of them all, and she will be the—the first.”
A deathly languor came over Jacob Gray even as he spoke, and he groaned
audibly.
Maud started at the sound, and turning she fixed her eyes upon his
dusky form as it lay hid in the shadow of the doorway, from which, for
more than a minute his extreme weakness would not permit him to move.
“What man are you?” cried Maud. “You groan—wherefore? Have you lost all
you loved?”
“I have,” said Gray, with a groan, as he thought of his money.
Maud crept up the steps till she came close to him, and then laying her
shrivelled hand upon his arm, she said,—
“I know you now—I know you.”
“Know me?” faltered Gray, making an effort to pass her on the steps.
“Yes. Where, and how, and when we meet I shall soon think, but I know
you.”
Gray felt a little alarmed at this speech, and he replied,—
“You are mistaken, I am poor and destitute. We have never meet before.”
“Poor and destitute? Hast ever felt the pang of hunger as I have?”
“I feel them now.”
Maud opened a wallet she had with her, and took some broken victuals
from it, which she laid before Gray, saying,—
“Eat—eat—and I will think the while where I have met you.”
He needed no second invitation, but devoured the not very tempting
viands before him, with an eagerness that could leave no doubt of the
truth of his statement concerning his hunger.
Maud passed her hands several times across her brow as she said,—
“I know you, yet I know you not. Did you ever hear of a murder?”
“No,” said Gray.
“Done with such a thing as this?”
She half produced the knife as she spoke, and Gray immediately said
with eagerness,—
“Give me that!”
Maud drew back, and fixed her wild eye upon him as she said,—
“Are you a man of blood? Let me see your hands. Are they stained with
innocent gore, or free from the damning pollution that begrimes the
fool, and drags it shrieking to despair. Answer me man. Saw ye ever the
Old Smithy?”
“Give me the knife and I will tell you.”
“Yes, the knife! He is eager for the knife, who knows its use. Answer
me: saw ye the fire—yes, the fire—when was it? Yesternight?”
“What fire?”
“In a house where dwelt an angel, I knew ’twas that—Yes! Ha! Ha! Ha!
And there was a body too that would not burn. There it lay black and
cold, untouched amidst the charred fragments of the house. I—I have
been there to look for the angel, but she has flown up to her native
skies, with not a downy feather of her radiant wings touched by the
gross element.”
“You, you have been to the house?” stammered Gray.
“I have! You knew it? It lies near sweet green fields, and the merry
birds mock you as you go it. Listen, and I will tell you what I did.
The early dawn was brightening, and old and young with jests and
laughter, and mingling voices, went to see the ruins of the ancient
house.”
“And you went?”
“I did. Then some bright spades and hatchets, and they dug for the body
of a murdered man. Pile after pile of the blackened rubbish was
removed, and then one said,—‘he must be burnt to a cinder,’ but I knew
he would be found, no murdered body was ever yet all burnt. The
murderer himself has often tried thus to dissipate in the ashes of his
victim, all traces of his awful crime, but Heaven will not have it so.”
Gray clutched to the railings for support as he said,—
“Nonsense—I—I know better.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed Maud. “I cannot see well the working of your
face, but your voice belies your words. The man was found.”
“Well, well. It is nothing to me.”
“They said he had been shot,” continued Maud, “and that he must have
died in lingering agony. I saw them bring him forth—not a thread of his
garments—not a hair of his head—was touched by those flames that had
destroyed all else.”
“Well—well,” said Gray, “I don’t want to hear more. Will you give me
the knife?”
Maud had kept her hand upon the handle of the weapon, and Gray had
found no opportunity of taking her by surprise, or he would have made
an endeavour to destroy the poor creature, upon whose head the
chastening hand of Providence had fallen so heavily. A direct attack
upon her he dared not make, for first of all he could not trust his
present weak state to the chances of a struggle even with her, and
secondly, such was not Jacob Gray’s way of doing things.
“Will you give me the knife?” he repeated.
“No!” said Maud. “I’m keeping it for Andrew Britton.”
“Indeed?”
“I am—I am.”
“If I thought you would use it on Andrew Britton,” muttered Gray, “I
would not take it from you for a hundred pounds.”
“Listen—listen, I have not told you all,” said Maud.
“All what?”
“About the fire. You shall hear—all who went there from many motives,
left the smoking mass before the sun was at its topmost height in
Heaven—but I stayed.”
“Why did you stay?”
“I thought the angel might come to me, but she did not. I prayed for
her to come near again, and show me her pale and beautiful face, but
she did not. I wept, but she came not, and then I thought I might find
something that should ever remind me of her. And I did—I did.”
“You did?“
“Aye.”
“What—what—found you? Tell me, woman.”
“Twas very strange that I should find them there,” said Maud
thoughtfully.
“Find what?”
“Where the murdered man had lain there was no trace of fire. The flames
had burned round, but touched him not, there I found them.”
“Woman, tell me what you found, or—”
“Or what?” cried. Maud, her eyes flashing upon the cowardly Gray, who
immediately shrunk back, saying,—
“Nothing—I—want nothing. Only I am anxious to know what you found.”
“You are? Well, well, I found some of these. Here is one.”
As she spoke, she took from her breast a small torn scrap of paper and
gazed at it attentively.
In an instant Gray surmised the truth. In his attempt to get rid of his
written confession while standing on the ladder, previous to the murder
of Elias, he had dropped many pieces, and then in the exciting scenes
that followed utterly forgotten them. Once indeed, while in the tree on
Hampstead Heath, he remembered the circumstance, but then he
immediately assumed that they had been burnt along with the house.
He now trembled in every limb, as the thought came over him, that
possibly the poor mad creature might have collected sufficient of the
torn pieces to give Sir Francis Hartleton a tangible idea of the whole;
and although he felt that, next thing to his life, was the repossession
of those torn scraps, he was so overcome by the circumstance of their
thus coming to light, that for a few moments he thought he should have
fainted.
Maud, meanwhile spread out the small crumpled pieces of paper in her
hand, and commenced reading in a low muttering voice, “Andrew
Britton”—“the temptation”—“a double murder”—“shrieking”—“the
child”—“guilt—”
“Ha! Ha! Brave words, brave words!” she cried. “Murder and guilt, and
Andrew Britton’s name of course; where there is murder and guilt, there
must be Andrew Britton.”
Gray slowly prepared himself for action. He cast a wary eye around him,
but no one was visible. Then he drew himself up to make a rush upon
Maud, when he heard a voice some distance from the street say loudly,—
“Faster, I say, faster. Who’d be a king if he couldn’t be carried as
quick as he likes? On, I say, or I’ll be the death of some of you.”
“Andrew Britton!” shrieked Maud, and she bounded from the step and ran
down the street with amazing fleetness.
Jacob Gray sunk back against the door with a deep groan.