IN THE NIGHT-WATCHES.
Before Miss Moffat had nearly reached Maryville, Susan met her.
“It went out of my head, Miss,” she began, “to tell you they had the
fever at the farm. You have been there most like.”
“Yes; and seen the lad who appears to be dying.”
“What will we do now,” asked Susan in an access of despair, “the
children have come home?”
“Well, what of that?”
“What of that!” repeated the woman, scornfully, “like as not you’ll have
brought the fever home in your clothes with you.”
Grace stopped. It was a serious loss to her as a woman that she had
never been with illness, and knew little or nothing about it, and now
unwittingly she had run the risk of doing a very terrible
wrong,—bringing infection into another person’s house, amongst another
person’s children.
“Oh! I am so sorry,” she exclaimed, unheeding the contemptuous
inflection of Susan’s voice; “what can we do; what ought I to do?”
“You had better take off your outside things, and give them to me to
hang up in the air,” was the reply uttered in a mollified tone. “I will
bring down your wrapper; and then if you throw your other clothes into
water, maybe no harm will come of it. But don’t go talking to the
mistress till you’ve changed.”
“I will not,” promised Miss Moffat, and she tried to keep her word, for
when Mrs. Brady called to her querulously, Grace answered,—
“Wait for a few minutes, I will be with you directly.”
“I want you now.”
“I cannot come. I have been to the Castle Farm, and Reuben is ill with
fever; and I must get rid of all possible chance of carrying infection
before I see any one.”
“I do not care about infection,” answered Nettie.
“Well, if you do not I do,” retorted Grace, and she essayed to bolt her
door; but as is not uncommon, even now in Ireland, all means of secure
fastening were either broken or inoperative. “Dear Nettie,” she went on,
“do not come near me; for the sake of the children, if not for your own,
keep away.”
But Mrs. Brady resolutely had her will.
“Who did you see at the Castle Farm?” she asked.
“Mrs. Scott and Reuben. Nettie do be persuaded, and go away. If you or
any of the children caught this fever, I should never forgive myself.”
“We will not catch fever any one of us,” answered Mrs. Brady. “I want to
hear about the Scotts. What does Mrs. Scott say? You know what I mean.”
“About Amos?” Grace suggested; “what can she say. Do not let us talk of
it, Nettie.”
“I must talk of it. Are you not going to see him, Grace?”
“Yes; but I did not intend to tell you.”
“Why not? I want you to go. I want to hear every word he speaks to you.”
“Nettie, you are ill,” said Miss Moffat, noticing the flush on her
friend’s thin cheeks, the brightness of her eyes, and the parched
dryness of her lips; “is there nothing you could fancy, dear; nothing I
could get that might tempt you to eat?”
Mrs. Brady shook her head; then said with a faint smile,—
“I will try to eat something if you promise to tell me word for word all
Amos says to you.”
“How can I do so, you being what you are?” Grace replied.
“I am the most miserable wretch on earth,” Nettie exclaimed. “My heart
is breaking, Grace, and you will not do the simplest thing to try and
ease it.”
“Nettie dear, how can you ask me?” pleaded Miss Moffat. “I do not love
you less because I refuse to betray any confidence the unhappy man may
put in me.”
“Do you think I want him hung?” inquired Nettie. “Do you think I should
not be glad to hear he had got off safe? I tell you, if laying down my
own life could procure his acquittal, I would cheerfully do it.”
“You certainly must be insane,” said Grace, with the quiet force of
conviction; “however, to humour you I promise this, that I will repeat
as much as I can of our conversation, although I should have thought
this the very last subject on which you would have wished to hear me
speak.”
“Should you?” exclaimed Nettie. “Well, that only shows how mistaken even
clever people may be sometimes. Hush! Here comes that woman!” and Mrs.
Brady slipped back into her own room, closing the door softly behind
her.
Faithful to her promise Nettie did try to swallow something, but the
attempt proved almost a total failure.
“It chokes me, dear,” she said almost humbly to her friend. “I wish—I
wish I could have something to quiet me a little. Don’t you think,” she
added wistfully, “that old Dr. Girvan, who has seen so many people in
trouble, might think of something that would do me good?”
“He shall try,” answered Grace; and she sent a messenger for him.
“When the old man arrived he shook his head, called Nettie ‘poor girl’;
felt her pulse, said the shock had been too much for her; advised that
she should leave Maryville as soon as possible; expressed his intention
of sending her a soothing mixture, and went away believing he understood
Mrs. Brady’s case.
“Ah!” said Nettie after he had gone, “if these doctors when they listen
to our hearts’ throbbing could only tell what is really passing in them,
how we should dread their coming!”
“Dear, do try to keep yourself quiet,” expostulated Grace, and Nettie
obediently kept silence.
Another restless night, as Grace heard; so restless that Grace rose and
taking the child Nettie had insisted on having to sleep with her away,
put the little creature into her own bed, and kept watch by Mrs. Brady
till the next morning.
“Grace,” said the widow turning her face towards her friend, and
stroking the hand that held hers so tenderly, “you are too good to me by
far; but some day I do not think you will be sorry to remember all you
have done for me.”
“Darling, I am only too thankful to be able to do anything,” was the
reply, and Grace pillowed the once beautiful face upon her arm; and
whilst Nettie slept fitfully, looked at the lines trouble had graven on
the forehead she could remember, as if it were only a day previously,
white and smooth and unmarked by even a trace of care.
Without much trouble Amos Scott’s solicitor had been able to obtain
permission for Miss Moffat to see her old friend. In Kilcurragh it was
talked of as a nine days’ wonder that a young lady of fortune and
position should so far demean herself as to pay a visit to a common
murderer; for according to general procedure the public had already
tried and condemned the suspected man.
If people were not very much concerned about Mr. Brady’s death, they
were at least very greatly infuriated against Amos Scott.
“No man’s life,” they said, “would be safe if the farmer was allowed to
get off,—if those who considered themselves injured were suffered to
take the law into their own hands and revenge themselves as they
pleased.” With much more to the same effect, which Miss Moffat did not
hear, and which would not have greatly affected her had she heard.
Never before had Grace felt so much shocked at the change a short time
is capable of effecting as when she beheld Amos Scott.
He was worn almost to skin and bone; and there was a sad, weary,
despairing look in his face that might well touch the heart of a woman
who had known him in his prime of health and hope and prosperity.
There was a gentleness in his manner she had never perceived before. It
seemed almost as though he had already passed through the gates of death
and dropped the rude garments that concealed his finer and higher nature
at the portals.
“Miss Grace; Miss Grace, why did you ever come to a place like this,”
were his first words. “If the master had been alive he would not have
suffered it.”
“Very probably not,” she answered. “He would have come for me in that
case; now I am alone, I have no one.”
“Why did you demean yourself for the likes of me?” he asked.
“I am not demeaning myself,” she replied, “and I came to see you
because, guilty or innocent, I cannot forget the past.”
“I am not guilty, Miss Grace.”
“On your solemn word, Amos.”
“If I was standing before my Maker, face to face, as I believe I soon
shall,” he said rising, and lifting his hand reverently above his head,
“I am not guilty in deed of the black villain’s death. I do not go so
far as to say,” he went on, dropping his hand and resuming his seat,
like one too weak to remain long standing, “I never wished him dead. I
have often; and even now I can hardly feel sorry that he has been struck
down. I have been a murderer in my heart, Miss Grace; I don’t deny it.
Many and many a night when I have been tramping home through the wet and
the mud—empty of food and sick with sorrow,—I have thought if I could
just hear he had taken the fever, or broken his neck, or been upset and
drowned, I could have made myself content to leave the old place—and
Ireland,—and go away to the country I said I never could thole to be
banished to. But now,” he added after an expressive pause, “I shall
never have the chance; I shall never go anywhere but from here to the
Court, and from the Court back here; and from here to—”
He covered his face. A man may be brave enough, and yet weak as a child
when he tries to speak of an ordeal such as this.
For a minute Grace did not speak; she could not for the tears she was
trying to restrain. Then she said, “Amos!” and he lifted his head.
“Yes, Miss Grace.”
“Before God you are innocent?”
“I have said so once, Miss; there is no need in my saying so twice; for
if you don’t believe me at my first telling, you won’t believe me at my
second.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said gently, “I did believe you the first time.
I ought not to have tried to make assurance doubly sure. More than that,
before I ever came here I felt you were innocent, and if it is possible
for me to save you, I will do it.”
“Miss Grace,” he answered, “you mean kindly, but you may be doing me a
deadly hurt. I have been facing certain death since I came here, and its
bitterness is almost past. If you drag me back, even for a bit, I must
go through it all again.”
It was a homely way of expressing the cruelty of raising false hopes;
but Grace understood his meaning perfectly.
“I am rich,” she faltered, feeling the error she had committed.
“Money won’t do it,” he answered.
“I have many friends possessed of influence.”
“Influence can’t save me. There is only one thing could help me, Miss
Grace; and I need not trouble you with talking about that, because I
know no more than the child still unborn who killed the man. I have sat
here and gone over, and over, and over the story, and can make neither
head nor tail of it. All I am sure of is, I had no act or part in the
murder; and how my stick came to be where they say it was found is
beyond me, for I lost it the night before; and I never was near the
divisional road at all.”
“What does Mr. D’Almarez say?” asked Miss Moffat.
“He says nothing, except ‘tell me the truth,’ as if a man in my strait
would be likely to tell his attorney a lie.”
“And what does he think about your having lost your stick?”
“He just thinks I never lost it, because when he asked me about the
places I had been the day before, I couldn’t mind. I have been that
perplexed, Miss, since Lady Jane died, my memory won’t serve me as it
used.”
“But surely, Amos, with trying, you might recollect.”
“I have minded a good many. I was at Rosemont to try to get speech of
Mr. Robert; and at the office; and at the Glendare Arms, where a
stranger man, seeing I was in trouble, treated me to a glass, bad luck
to it! for I had not broken my fast, and the liquor got into my head;
and I said things about Brady they’re going to bring up again me at the
trial; and then I stopped at a heap of places besides, but I can’t mind
just where, except that at the last I called at Hanlon’s surgery for
some stuff for the lad. I didn’t forget that, because he went on at me
for having had too much, and made me mad because he wouldn’t believe me
I had only had one glass to overcome me—me—who could once have taken off
half-a-dozen without winking.”
“And on the day of the ——, on the day when Mr. Brady was killed?” Grace
persisted.
“Well, Miss, I was that beat from the day before, I did not stir out
till evening; and I would not have gone then, but the wife she would
have me go to Kingslough and tell the doctor the boy was worse. So I
went there and he was out, and I left my message; and in the ordinary
way I should have come straight home, but I thought I would go round by
Mark Lennon’s, and tell his daughter we had a letter from him she’s
promised to; but before I got there I turned that bad and weak, I
thought to make my home as fast as I could, and so came across the
fields and the Red Stream; and they make that a charge against me too,
Miss Grace, because, as you know, the colour of the clay there is the
same as the colour of the clay in the water alongside the divisional
where Brady was found.”
In spirit, Grace groaned. She believed the man was speaking truly, but
what jury on earth would believe it also! There was not a point in his
favour. Every statement he made told against him. He could not say where
he lost his stick. He could not say where he had been to lose it. He
could not account for his time after he left Kingslough on the night of
the murder. As to the place where he got the mud found on his clothes,
there was only his own word, and of what value is the word of an accused
man. Even his own wife imagined him guilty. No one in the world, save
Grace Moffat, imagined it within the bounds of possibility that, though
circumstantial and internal evidence were all against him, he might yet
be innocent; and it was just on the board that had she lived in Ireland
for the previous twelve months, and seen his animus to Mr. Brady growing
day by day, she might have believed him guilty too.
“All I can say,” she remarked, as she rose to leave, “is this; you shall
have the best counsel money can procure.”
“Thank you kindly, Miss,” he answered, “but, as I said before, money
can’t do it, and man can’t do it, let him be the best ever stepped in
shoe leather; and if God does not do it, and in these later days, as our
minister used to say, he has not seen fit to work visible miracles, I
must suffer, Miss Grace; that is all. I have made my mind up to that now
_he_ is dead, as I never could to giving up the farm while he was
living.”
“Amos,” said Miss Moffat, “do not let what your minister said impress
you too much. God does still work miracles, or what seem miracles to us;
and if he sees fit he will clear you from this.”
“And if He does not see fit, Miss Grace, I must just thole what He
sends; that is all. You can say that to the wife if you have a chance.
Do you happen to know, Miss, how it is with Reuben?”
For a moment Grace faltered; then she said,—
“Whatever else you are spared to see in this world I am afraid—” she
paused, and he calmly finished the sentence.
“I won’t see him. Well then, Miss, it may be we shall meet all the
sooner, Reuben and me, when he will know that wrongfully
blood-guiltiness was laid to my charge.”
Mr. D’Almarez made no secret of his chagrin at the result of this
interview, and it taxed his politeness sorely to listen to Miss Moffat’s
account of it with even ordinary patience.
He had hoped that to her Scott would speak openly. He had expected to
obtain some information which might bring the crime under the head of
accident rather than design, and enable him to fight for a verdict of
manslaughter instead of murder. It was known to every one in the county
that Mr. Brady had not treated the man well; and if Scott could only be
got to state what actually passed on the last occasion he and his enemy
ever met, the lawyer felt something might be done, supposing the blow
had been struck without premeditation, and that high and passionate
words had preceded it.
If a jury could be argued or coaxed into believing Scott did not leave
his home with the deliberate intention of murdering Mr. Brady, the man’s
chance was by no means hopeless; and there was this in his favour, that
the owner of Maryville had actually on the day of the murder started to
go to Dublin, although for some unexplained reason he failed to continue
his journey, so that it was unlikely Scott could have expected to meet
him near the Castle Farm.
On the other hand, it was against the accused that he knew Mr. Brady
intended to eject him from the house—that he had publicly stated, “Brady
should never come into it alive,” and that he expressed his intention of
sticking to the old place even if it was pulled down about his ears.
Still, considering what Mr. Brady had been, and the amount of fancied or
real injury he inflicted on Amos, considering that the one man had
always been a dishonest reprobate, and the other a hardworking decent,
well-conducted fellow, who never cheated a neighbour of a halfpenny;
that he had a son down in fever, and children clamouring for bread; that
he might well be nearly distraught with want of food, and mental
anguish; considering what a picture a clever barrister might fill in
from these outlines, Mr. D’Almarez did not despair of doing something
for Scott, if only he could be induced to confess. And now it seemed he
did not intend to confess; and the lawyer, chafing with irritation, had
to sit and listen to a woman’s maunderings about innocence and Scott’s
religious utterances and other matters of the same kind, all of which
Mr. D’Almarez mentally summed up in one word, “Rubbish!”
“It is all very well, Miss Moffat” he said, when she finished, “for
Scott to talk goody twaddle—excuse the expression—to a lady or a parson;
but that sort of thing will not go down with a judge or a jury. He
mistakes his position; the period has not yet arrived for that kind of
conversation. Time enough for religious exercises when he has done with
lawyers and been turned over to the chaplain. You must pardon my plain
speaking. The only hope there is of saving Scott lies with himself, and
if he will persist in trying to hoodwink me and playing at this foolish
game of hide-and-seek with his own attorney, I am afraid there is not a
chance of saving him.”
“But, Mr. D’Almarez,” pleaded Grace, “suppose the man has nothing to
tell, suppose he is not guilty, suppose he has really tried to make his
peace with God, expecting nothing from man, and that every word he said
to me to-day were true, the natural expression of a broken and a
contrite heart, in which not a hope, so far as this world is concerned,
still lingers?”
The lawyer smiled. It was very right and proper, of course, for a lady
to talk in this strain, but it was a style of conversation for which he
himself did not much care, and very possibly had Miss Moffat been older
and uglier and poorer, he might not have listened to it even with the
amount of politeness he evinced.
“I cannot suppose an impossibility,” he answered. “Your own kindness of
disposition and Scott’s solemn assertions have, you must allow me to
say, blinded your judgment. If you exercise it you will understand that
it is a simple impossibility for Scott to be innocent. He may be
innocent of intentional murder, and that is the only point we can try to
make in his favour, but his hands are not clean in the matter as he
tries to make us believe.
“Remember the hatred he entertained for Mr. Brady, recollect all he had
suffered through him, recall the expressions he was habitually in the
practice of using concerning him, the threats he uttered not farther
back than the day before the murder, and then pass on to the murder
itself. Mr. Brady is found dead in a lonely road leading straight to the
Castle Farm. He has been killed by a blow, and that blow it is not
disputed must have been dealt by a stick, and that stick one belonging
to Scott, which is found at a little distance as if flung away in a
panic. According to Scott’s own account he was not in the divisional
road at all that night, and yet it was the most direct route back from
Mr. Hanlon’s, where he admits he called. He says he started to go round
by Lennon’s, but he never went there. He says he lost his stick on the
previous day, but he does not know where or how, and he cannot even
remember the places at which he stopped, or whether he missed his stick
before his return home, or whether he ever missed it till it was found
after the murder.
“Further, admitting he did lose it, there is no particular reason why he
should not have found it again. Nor does the evidence against him stop
even at this point. It is certain his clothes were wet, and stained with
clay of a reddish colour. The banks and bed of the stream running beside
the divisional road are, as you know, of that description. Depend upon
it, Miss Moffat, Scott is throwing away his best chance by persisting in
silence. Nothing in my opinion really can serve him except opening his
mouth.”
“I admit the truth and reason of all you say,” she replied, “but faith
is sometimes stronger than reason, and I have faith Scott is not
guilty.”
“Unfortunately a jury have to decide on facts, not faith,” said Mr.
D’Almarez rising to take his leave. “Of course, I shall do all in my
power for him, and if he is found guilty, we must try to prevent his
being hung; but I really think if he would only have placed full
confidence in me, we might have got him off with only a sentence of
manslaughter. Perhaps he may still think better of it.”
“No,” Grace answered, “I do not think he will—I hope he cannot. If after
what he said to me to-day he were to confess that he did cause Mr.
Brady’s death, I should never be able to believe any one again.”
“Ah! Miss Moffat, you do not know how great the temptation is to tell a
falsehood if one is afraid of telling the truth. I do not quarrel with
his statements on the ground of morality, but only on that of common
sense; but then that is lawyer’s way of looking at such things. It is
not to be expected that a lady should take the same view. I trust it may
all turn out better than I anticipate.”
Miss Moffat drove back to Maryville in a very sad and perplexed state of
mind; she had seen none of her friends at Kilcurragh, except that one at
whose house her interview with Mr. D’Almarez took place, and she had no
desire to see them. Amos Scott’s position would, she knew, be the
prominent topic of interest, and she did not possess sufficient moral
courage to desire to combat popular opinion single-handed.
The more she thought about the matter the more conclusive seemed the
lawyer’s statements.
Notwithstanding her own determined advocacy, she felt that away from
Amos her belief in his innocency was not strong enough to enable her to
discard the extremely ugly doubts raised in her mind by Mr. D’Almarez’s
statement of the case.
Scott might believe that his sole chance of escape lay in reiteration of
his innocence, and if this were so, Miss Moffat felt she could forgive
his falsehood. What she could not forgive, however, was his religious
hypocrisy supposing his statement untrue, and with feminine impetuosity
she rushed to this conclusion—
“If Amos be guilty he is the worst man in the world.”
As there had been nothing in the conversation of a confidential nature,
Grace repeated it to Mrs. Brady, merely omitting Scott’s remarks about
the dead man.
In silence Nettie listened to the end, then she asked,—
“Are you sure he said he could not remember where he left that stick?”
“Yes; he cannot even recollect where he went the day he lost it.”
“That seems strange, does not it?”
“I think not, if you consider what he has gone through. He looks starved
and ill, and bewildered. Oh! Nettie, the Scotts must have suffered
terribly.”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Brady absently, as she sat looking out of the
window with sad, weary, wistful eyes; and finding she showed no desire
to continue the subject, her friend let it drop. Suddenly, however,
Nettie rose, threw her clasped hands above her head, and, with a sigh
which was almost a groan, hurriedly left the room.
Miss Moffat had become too much accustomed to these demonstrations of
restlessness or grief, or whatever else the cause might be, to attach
much importance to them, but still she thought it better to follow
Nettie whom she found in her own room sobbing as if her heart would
break.
Grace softly closed the door, and left her.
“Let her cry, poor thing,” she thought. “It will do her good. After all,
no matter what he may have been, he was her husband.”
For the first time since her return to Ireland Grace that night slept
soundly; slept a sleep unbroken by dreams; undisturbed by the
perplexities that troubled her waking moments.
How long she had been in bed she could not tell, but at length from this
depth of unconsciousness she was slowly aroused by little fingers that
spread themselves over her face and hair, by a childish voice crying,—
“Oh! lady, please waken, please, please do.”
Thus entreated, the “lady,” for by this name Nettie’s more especial
favourite had elected to call Miss Moffat, struggled back to a due
remembrance of where she was.
“What is it?” she asked between sleeping and waking.
“Mam-ma, oh! Mam-ma she frightens Minnie,” explained the little one.
With an effort Grace roused herself fully.
“Minnie darling, is that you?” she asked, taking the child in her arms.
“What has frightened you?”
“Mam-ma,” repeated the shrill treble. “She talks so funnily—”
In an instant Grace had on her slippers and dressing-gown.
“I will go to your mam-ma, dear,” she said; “but you must be very good
and stay quietly here and go to sleep.”
Then she laid the little creature’s head on her own pillow, folded the
sheet under her chin, gave her a parting kiss, and went into the next
room closing the door behind her.
Dawn was just breaking, and without striking a light, Grace walked over
to where Mrs. Brady lay, moaning and tossing, muttering words too
indistinct to catch.
“Nettie,” and her friend shook her vigorously; “Nettie,”—but no sign of
recognition came. “Nettie dear, do speak to me,”—not a word of reply was
uttered.
For a moment Miss Moffat stood helpless, then she went to that part of
the house where she supposed Susan slept.
“I am so sorry to disturb you,” she said, after awaking the woman, with
that courtesy which was a part of her nature when addressing those below
her in rank, “but I fear Mrs. Brady is very ill. Do you think you could
go to the house of one of the men and send him for Dr. Girvan?”
“What is the matter with her?” asked the woman brusquely.
“I cannot tell; she is moaning and restless and does not seem to know me
in the least.”
“It’s the fever, God help us,” said Susan. “I’ll waste no time, but go
for the doctor myself.”
“What! in the middle of the night?” exclaimed Grace.
“Ay, just as soon as if it was in the middle of the day,” she answered,
and proved as good as her word.
It was a long walk and a lonely to Kingslough, but Susan accomplished
it, and brought back Doctor Girvan by the time the sun was rising.
Miss Moffat went down to speak to him, and asked Susan to stay with her
mistress for a few minutes while she did so. Then the doctor said he
would see the patient; and as Grace walked up and down the once
neglected garden trifling away the time, he went into Mrs. Brady’s room,
the servant crossing him on the threshold.
He remained there a quarter of an hour or more, and when she met him
Miss Moffat saw he looked ill at ease.
“Do you think there is anything serious the matter with her?” she asked
anxiously.
“I cannot tell—yet,” he replied. “You have been with her all night?” he
said interrogatively.
“Yes, since I first knew she was ill.”
“No one must go into the room but yourself and me.”
“Why not?”
“You will know time enough. Amos Scott never murdered her husband at
all.”
“Then who did?”
“If you listen she will tell you.”
And Doctor Girvan, looking grey and old and haggard in the morning
light, drove away so utterly amazed and horror-stricken at Mrs. Brady’s
ravings that he forgot, if the fever were infectious, Miss Moffat stood
a very fair chance of catching it herself.