JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION.
"Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which, all confused, I could not know,
Whether I suffered or I did,
For all seemed guilt, remorse, or woe."
COLERIDGE.
I left Mary, on that same Thursday night which left its burden of
woe at Mr. Carson's threshold, haunted with depressing thoughts. All
through the night she tossed restlessly about, trying to get quit of
the ideas that harassed her, and longing for the light when she could
rise, and find some employment. But just as dawn began to appear, she
became more quiet, and fell into a sound heavy sleep, which lasted
till she was sure it was late in the morning by the full light that
shone in.
She dressed hastily, and heard the neighbouring church-clock strike
eight. It was far too late to do as she had planned (after inquiring
how Alice was, to return and tell Margaret), and she accordingly went
in to inform the latter of her change of purpose, and the cause of
it; but on entering the house she found Job sitting alone, looking
sad enough. She told him what she came for.
"Margaret, wench! why she's been gone to Wilson's these two hours.
Ay! sure, you did say last night you would go; but she could na rest
in her bed, so was off betimes this morning."
Mary could do nothing but feel guilty of her long morning nap, and
hasten to follow Margaret's steps; for late as it was, she felt she
could not settle well to her work, unless she learnt how kind good
Alice Wilson was going on.
So, eating her crust-of-bread breakfast, she passed rapidly along the
streets. She remembered afterwards the little groups of people she
had seen, eagerly hearing, and imparting news; but at the time her
only care was to hasten on her way, in dread of a reprimand from Miss
Simmonds.
She went into the house at Jane Wilson's, her heart at the instant
giving a strange knock, and sending the rosy flush into her face,
at the thought that Jem might possibly be inside the door. But I do
assure you, she had not thought of it before. Impatient and loving as
she was, her solicitude about Alice on that hurried morning had not
been mingled with any thought of him.
Her heart need not have leaped, her colour need not have rushed so
painfully to her cheeks, for he was not there. There was the round
table, with a cup and saucer, which had evidently been used, and
there was Jane Wilson sitting on the other side, crying quietly,
while she ate her breakfast with a sort of unconscious appetite. And
there was Mrs. Davenport washing away at a night-cap or so, which, by
their simple, old-world make, Mary knew at a glance were Alice's. But
nothing--no one else.
Alice was much the same, or rather better of the two, they told her;
at any rate she could speak, though it was sad rambling talk. Would
Mary like to see her?
Of course she would. Many are interested by seeing their friends
under the new aspect of illness; and among the poor there is no
wholesome fear of injury or excitement to restrain this wish.
So Mary went up-stairs, accompanied by Mrs. Davenport, wringing the
suds off her hands, and speaking in a loud whisper far more audible
than her usual voice.
"I mun be hastening home, but I'll come again to-night, time enough
to iron her cap; 'twould be a sin and a shame if we let her go dirty
now she's ill, when she's been so rare and clean all her life-long.
But she's sadly forsaken, poor thing! She'll not know you, Mary; she
knows none on us."
The room up-stairs held two beds, one superior in the grandeur of
four posts and checked curtains to the other, which had been occupied
by the twins in their brief life-time. The smaller had been Alice's
bed since she had lived there; but with the natural reverence to one
"stricken of God and afflicted," she had been installed since her
paralytic stroke the evening before in the larger and grander bed,
while Jane Wilson had taken her short broken rest on the little
pallet.
Margaret came forwards to meet her friend, whom she half expected,
and whose step she knew. Mrs. Davenport returned to her washing.
The two girls did not speak; the presence of Alice awed them into
silence. There she lay with the rosy colour, absent from her face
since the days of childhood, flushed once more into it by her
sickness nigh unto death. She lay on the affected side, and with
her other arm she was constantly sawing the air, not exactly in a
restless manner, but in a monotonous, incessant way, very trying to
a watcher. She was talking away, too, almost as constantly, in a low,
indistinct tone. But her face, her profiled countenance, looked calm
and smiling, even interested by the ideas that were passing through
her clouded mind.
"Listen!" said Margaret, as she stooped her head down to catch the
muttered words more distinctly.
"What will mother say? The bees are turning homeward for th' last
time, and we've a terrible long bit to go yet. See! here's a linnet's
nest in this gorse-bush. Th' hen-bird is on it. Look at her bright
eyes, she won't stir! Ay! we mun hurry home. Won't mother be pleased
with the bonny lot of heather we've got! Make haste, Sally, may be we
shall have cockles for supper. I saw th' cockle-man's donkey turn up
our way fra' Arnside."
Margaret touched Mary's hand, and the pressure in return told her
that they understood each other; that they knew how in this illness
to the old, world-weary woman, God had sent her a veiled blessing:
she was once more in the scenes of her childhood, unchanged and
bright as in those long departed days; once more with the sister of
her youth, the playmate of fifty years ago, who had for nearly as
many years slept in a grassy grave in the little church-yard beyond
Burton.
Alice's face changed; she looked sorrowful, almost penitent.
"Oh, Sally! I wish we'd told her. She thinks we were in church
all morning, and we've gone on deceiving her. If we'd told her at
first how it was--how sweet th' hawthorn smelt through the open
church-door, and how we were on th' last bench in the aisle, and
how it were the first butterfly we'd seen this spring, and how it
flew into th' very church itself; oh! mother is so gentle, I wish
we'd told her. I'll go to her next time she comes in sight, and say,
'Mother, we were naughty last Sabbath.'"
She stopped, and a few tears came stealing down the old withered
cheek, at the thought of the temptation and deceit of her childhood.
Surely, many sins could not have darkened that innocent child-like
spirit since. Mary found a red-spotted pocket-handkerchief, and put
it into the hand which sought about for something to wipe away the
trickling tears. She took it with a gentle murmur.
"Thank you, mother."
Mary pulled Margaret away from the bed.
"Don't you think she's happy, Margaret?"
"Ay! that I do, bless her. She feels no pain, and knows nought of her
present state. Oh! that I could see, Mary! I try and be patient with
her afore me, but I'd give aught I have to see her, and see what she
wants. I am so useless! I mean to stay here as long as Jane Wilson is
alone; and I would fain be here all to-night, but--"
"I'll come," said Mary, decidedly.
"Mrs. Davenport said she'd come again, but she's hard-worked all
day--"
"I'll come," repeated Mary.
"Do!" said Margaret, "and I'll be here till you come. May be, Jem and
you could take th' night between you, and Jane Wilson might get a bit
of sound sleep in his bed; for she were up and down the better part
of last night, and just when she were in a sound sleep this morning,
between two and three, Jem came home, and th' sound o' his voice
roused her in a minute."
"Where had he been till that time o' night?" asked Mary.
"Nay! it were none of my business; and, indeed, I never saw him
till he came in here to see Alice. He were in again this morning,
and seemed sadly downcast. But you'll, may be, manage to comfort
him to-night, Mary," said Margaret, smiling, while a ray of hope
glimmered in Mary's heart, and she almost felt glad, for an instant,
of the occasion which would at last bring them together. Oh! happy
night! when would it come? Many hours had yet to pass.
Then she saw Alice, and repented, with a bitter self-reproach. But
she could not help having gladness in the depths of her heart, blame
herself as she would. So she tried not to think, as she hurried along
to Miss Simmonds', with a dancing step of lightness.
She was late--that she knew she should be. Miss Simmonds was vexed
and cross. That also she had anticipated, but she had intended to
smooth her raven down by extraordinary diligence and attention. But
there was something about the girls she did not understand--had not
anticipated. They stopped talking when she came in; or rather, I
should say, stopped listening, for Sally Leadbitter was the talker to
whom they were hearkening with intense attention. At first they eyed
Mary, as if she had acquired some new interest to them, since the day
before. Then they began to whisper; and, absorbed as Mary had been in
her own thoughts, she could not help becoming aware that it was of
her they spoke.
At last Sally Leadbitter asked Mary if she had heard the news?
"No! What news?" answered she.
The girls looked at each other with gloomy mystery. Sally went on.
"Have you not heard that young Mr. Carson was murdered last night?"
Mary's lips could not utter a negative, but no one who looked at her
pale and terror-stricken face could have doubted that she had not
heard before of the fearful occurrence.
Oh, it is terrible, that sudden information, that one you have known
has met with a bloody death! You seem to shrink from the world where
such deeds can be committed, and to grow sick with the idea of the
violent and wicked men of earth. Much as Mary had learned to dread
him lately, now he was dead (and dead in such a manner) her feeling
was that of oppressive sorrow for him.
The room went round and round, and she felt as though she should
faint; but Miss Simmonds came in, bringing a waft of fresher air as
she opened the door, to refresh the body, and the certainty of a
scolding for inattention to brace the sinking mind. She, too, was
full of the morning's news.
"Have you heard any more of this horrid affair, Miss Barton?" asked
she, as she settled to her work.
Mary tried to speak; at first she could not, and when she succeeded
in uttering a sentence, it seemed as though it were not her own voice
that spoke.
"No, ma'am, I never heard of it till this minute."
"Dear! that's strange, for every one is up about it. I hope the
murderer will be found out, that I do. Such a handsome young man to
be killed as he was. I hope the wretch that did it may be hanged as
high as Haman."
One of the girls reminded them that the assizes came on next week.
"Ay," replied Miss Simmonds, "and the milk-man told me they will
catch the wretch, and have him tried and hung in less than a week.
Serve him right, whoever he is. Such a handsome young man as he was."
Then each began to communicate to Miss Simmonds the various reports
they had heard.
Suddenly she burst out--
"Miss Barton! as I live, dropping tears on that new silk gown of
Mrs. Hawkes'! Don't you know they will stain, and make it shabby for
ever? Crying like a baby, because a handsome young man meets with
an untimely end. For shame of yourself, miss. Mind your character
and your work if you please. Or, if you must cry" (seeing her
scolding rather increased the flow of Mary's tears, than otherwise),
"take this print to cry over. That won't be marked like this
beautiful silk," rubbing it, as if she loved it, with a clean
pocket-handkerchief, in order to soften the edges of the hard round
drops.
Mary took the print, and naturally enough, having had leave given her
to cry over it, rather checked the inclination to weep.
Every body was full of the one subject. The girl sent out to match
silk, came back with the account gathered at the shop, of the
coroner's inquest then sitting; the ladies who called to speak about
gowns first began about the murder, and mingled details of that, with
directions for their dresses. Mary felt as though the haunting horror
were a nightmare, a fearful dream, from which awakening would relieve
her. The picture of the murdered body, far more ghastly than the
reality, seemed to swim in the air before her eyes. Sally Leadbitter
looked and spoke of her, almost accusingly, and made no secret now of
Mary's conduct, more blameable to her fellow-workwomen for its latter
changeableness, than for its former giddy flirting.
"Poor young gentleman," said one, as Sally recounted Mary's last
interview with Mr. Carson.
"What a shame!" exclaimed another, looking indignantly at Mary.
"That's what I call regular jilting," said a third. "And he lying
cold and bloody in his coffin now!"
Mary was more thankful than she could express, when Miss Simmonds
returned, to put a stop to Sally's communications, and to check the
remarks of the girls.
She longed for the peace of Alice's sick room. No more thinking with
infinite delight of her anticipated meeting with Jem, she felt too
much shocked for that now; but longing for peace and kindness, for
the images of rest and beauty, and sinless times long ago, which the
poor old woman's rambling presented, she wished to be as near death
as Alice; and to have struggled through this world, whose sufferings
she had early learnt, and whose crimes now seemed pressing close upon
her. Old texts from the Bible that her mother used to read (or rather
spell out) aloud, in the days of childhood, came up to her memory.
"Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
"The tears shall be wiped away from all eyes," &c. And it was to that
world Alice was hastening! Oh! that she were Alice!
I must return to the Wilsons' house, which was far from being the
abode of peace that Mary was picturing it to herself. You remember
the reward Mr. Carson offered for the apprehension of the murderer of
his son? It was in itself a temptation, and to aid its efficacy came
the natural sympathy for the aged parents mourning for their child,
for the young man cut off in the flower of his days; and besides
this, there is always a pleasure in unravelling a mystery, in
catching at the gossamer clue which will guide to certainty. This
feeling, I am sure, gives much impetus to the police. Their senses
are ever and always on the qui-vive, and they enjoy the collecting
and collating evidence, and the life of adventure they experience: a
continual unwinding of Jack Sheppard romances, always interesting to
the vulgar and uneducated mind, to which the outward signs and tokens
of crime are ever exciting.
There was no lack of clue or evidence at the coroner's inquest that
morning. The shot, the finding of the body, the subsequent discovery
of the gun, were rapidly deposed to; and then the policeman who had
interrupted the quarrel between Jem Wilson and the murdered young
man was brought forward, and gave his evidence, clear, simple, and
straightforward. The coroner had no hesitation, the jury had none,
but the verdict was cautiously worded. "Wilful murder against some
person unknown."
This very cautiousness, when he deemed the thing so sure as to
require no caution, irritated Mr. Carson. It did not soothe him that
the superintendent called the verdict a mere form,--exhibited a
warrant empowering him to seize the body of Jem Wilson, committed on
suspicion,--declared his intention of employing a well-known officer
in the Detective Service to ascertain the ownership of the gun, and
to collect other evidence, especially as regarded the young woman,
about whom the policeman deposed that the quarrel had taken place:
Mr. Carson was still excited and irritable; restless in body and
mind. He made every preparation for the accusation of Jem the
following morning before the magistrates: he engaged attorneys
skilled in criminal practice to watch the case and prepare briefs;
he wrote to celebrated barristers coming the Northern Circuit, to
bespeak their services. A speedy conviction, a speedy execution,
seemed to be the only things that would satisfy his craving thirst
for blood. He would have fain been policeman, magistrate, accusing
speaker, all; but most of all, the judge, rising with full sentence
of death on his lips.
That afternoon, as Jane Wilson had begun to feel the effect of
a night's disturbed rest, evinced in frequent droppings off to
sleep while she sat by her sister-in-law's bed-side, lulled by the
incessant crooning of the invalid's feeble voice, she was startled by
a man speaking in the house-place below, who, wearied of knocking at
the door, without obtaining any answer, had entered and was calling
lustily for
"Missis! missis!"
When Mrs. Wilson caught a glimpse of the intruder through the
stair-rails, she at once saw he was a stranger, a working-man, it
might be a fellow-labourer with her son, for his dress was grimy
enough for the supposition. He held a gun in his hand.
"May I make bold to ask if this gun belongs to your son?"
She first looked at the man, and then, weary and half asleep,
not seeing any reason for refusing to answer the inquiry, she
moved forward to examine it, talking while she looked for certain
old-fashioned ornaments on the stock. "It looks like his; ay, it's
his, sure enough. I could speak to it anywhere by these marks. You
see it were his grandfather's, as were gamekeeper to some one up
in th' north; and they don't make guns so smart now-a-days. But,
how comed you by it? He sets great store on it. Is he bound for th'
shooting gallery? He is not, for sure, now his aunt is so ill, and me
left all alone;" and the immediate cause for her anxiety being thus
recalled to her mind, she entered on a long story of Alice's illness,
interspersed with recollections of her husband's and her children's
deaths.
The disguised policeman listened for a minute or two, to glean any
further information he could; and then, saying he was in a hurry, he
turned to go away. She followed him to the door, still telling him
her troubles, and was never struck, until it was too late to ask the
reason, with the unaccountableness of his conduct, in carrying the
gun away with him. Then, as she heavily climbed the stairs, she put
away the wonder and the thought about his conduct, by determining
to believe he was some workman with whom her son had made some
arrangement about shooting at the gallery; or mending the old weapon;
or something or other. She had enough to fret her, without moidering
herself about old guns. Jem had given it him to bring to her; so it
was safe enough; or, if it was not, why she should be glad never to
set eyes on it again, for she could not abide fire-arms, they were so
apt to shoot people.
So, comforting herself for her want of thought in not making further
inquiry, she fell off into another doze, feverish, dream-haunted, and
unrefreshing.
Meanwhile, the policeman walked off with his prize, with an odd
mixture of feelings; a little contempt, a little disappointment, and
a good deal of pity. The contempt and the disappointment were caused
by the widow's easy admission of the gun being her son's property,
and her manner of identifying it by the ornaments. He liked an
attempt to baffle him; he was accustomed to it; it gave some exercise
to his wits and his shrewdness. There would be no fun in fox-hunting,
if Reynard yielded himself up without any effort to escape. Then,
again, his mother's milk was yet in him, policeman, officer of the
Detective Service though he was; and he felt sorry for the old woman,
whose "softness" had given such material assistance in identifying
her son as the murderer. However, he conveyed the gun, and the
intelligence he had gained, to the superintendent; and the result
was, that, in a short time afterwards, three policemen went to the
works at which Jem was foreman, and announced their errand to the
astonished overseer, who directed them to the part of the foundry
where Jem was then superintending a casting.
Dark, black were the walls, the ground, the faces around them, as
they crossed the yard. But, in the furnace-house a deep and lurid
red glared over all; the furnace roared with mighty flame. The men,
like demons, in their fire-and-soot colouring, stood swart around,
awaiting the moment when the tons of solid iron should have melted
down into fiery liquid, fit to be poured, with still, heavy sound,
into the delicate moulding of fine black sand, prepared to receive
it. The heat was intense, and the red glare grew every instant more
fierce; the policemen stood awed with the novel sight. Then, black
figures, holding strange-shaped bucket shovels, came athwart the
deep-red furnace light, and clear and brilliant flowed forth the iron
into the appropriate mould. The buzz of voices rose again; there was
time to speak, and gasp, and wipe the brows; and then, one by one,
the men dispersed to some other branch of their employment.
No. B. 72 pointed out Jem as the man he had seen engaged in a
scuffle with Mr. Carson, and then the other two stepped forward and
arrested him, stating of what he was accused, and the grounds of the
accusation. He offered no resistance, though he seemed surprised; but
calling a fellow-workman to him, he briefly requested him to tell his
mother he had got into trouble, and could not return home at present.
He did not wish her to hear more at first.
So Mrs. Wilson's sleep was next interrupted in almost an exactly
similar way to the last, like a recurring nightmare.
"Missis! missis!" some one called out from below.
Again it was a workman, but this time a blacker-looking one than
before.
"What don ye want?" said she, peevishly.
"Only nothing but--" stammered the man, a kind-hearted matter-of-fact
person, with no invention, but a great deal of sympathy.
"Well! speak out, can't ye, and ha' done with it?"
"Jem's in trouble," said he, repeating Jem's very words, as he could
think of no others.
"Trouble!" said the mother, in a high-pitched voice of distress.
"Trouble! God help me, trouble will never end, I think. What d'ye
mean by trouble? Speak out, man, can't ye? Is he ill? My boy! tell
me, is he ill?" in a hurried voice of terror.
"Na, na, that's not it. He's well enough. All he bade me say was,
'Tell mother I'm in trouble, and can't come home to-night.'"
"Not come home to-night! And what am I to do with Alice? I can't go
on, wearing my life out wi' watching. He might come and help me."
"I tell you he can't," said the man.
"Can't; and he is well, you say? Stuff! It's just that he's getten
like other young men, and wants to go a-larking. But I'll give it him
when he comes back."
The man turned to go; he durst not trust himself to speak in Jem's
justification. But she would not let him off.
She stood between him and the door, as she said, "Yo shall not go,
till yo've told me what he's after. I can see plain enough you know,
and I'll know too, before I've done."
"You'll know soon enough, missis!"
"I'll know now, I tell ye. What's up that he can't come home and help
me nurse? Me, as never got a wink o' sleep last night wi' watching."
"Well, if you will have it out," said the poor badgered man, "the
police have got hold on him."
"On my Jem!" said the enraged mother. "You're a downright liar, and
that's what you are. My Jem, as never did harm to any one in his
life. You're a liar, that's what you are."
"He's done harm enough now," said the man, angry in his turn, "for
there's good evidence he murdered young Carson, as was shot last
night."
She staggered forward to strike the man for telling the terrible
truth; but the weakness of old age, of motherly agony, overcame her,
and she sank down on a chair, and covered her face. He could not
leave her.
When next she spoke, it was in an imploring, feeble, child-like
voice.
"Oh, master, say you're only joking. I ax your pardon if I have vexed
ye, but please say you're only joking. You don't know what Jem is to
me."
She looked humbly, anxiously up at him.
"I wish I were only joking, missis; but it's true as I say. They've
taken him up on charge o' murder. It were his gun as were found
near th' place; and one o' the police heard him quarrelling with Mr.
Carson a few days back, about a girl."
"About a girl!" broke in the mother, once more indignant, though
too feeble to show it as before. "My Jem was as steady as--" she
hesitated for a comparison wherewith to finish, and then repeated,
"as steady as Lucifer, and he were an angel, you know. My Jem was not
one to quarrel about a girl."
"Ay, but it was that, though. They'd got her name quite pat. The man
had heard all they said. Mary Barton was her name, whoever she may
be."
"Mary Barton! the dirty hussey! to bring my Jem into trouble of this
kind. I'll give it her well when I see her: that I will. Oh! my poor
Jem!" rocking herself to and fro. "And what about the gun? What did
ye say about that?"
"His gun were found on th' spot where the murder were done."
"That's a lie for one, then. A man has got the gun now, safe and
sound; I saw it not an hour ago."
The man shook his head.
"Yes, he has indeed. A friend o' Jem's, as he'd lent it to."
"Did you know the chap?" asked the man, who was really anxious for
Jem's exculpation, and caught a gleam of hope from her last speech.
"No! I can't say as I did. But he were put on as a workman."
"It's may be only one of them policemen, disguised."
"Nay; they'd never go for to do that, and trick me into telling on my
own son. It would be like seething a kid in its mother's milk; and
that th' Bible forbids."
"I don't know," replied the man.
Soon afterwards he went away, feeling unable to comfort, yet
distressed at the sight of sorrow; she would fain have detained him,
but go he would. And she was alone.
She never for an instant believed Jem guilty; she would have doubted
if the sun were fire, first: but sorrow, desolation, and, at times,
anger took possession of her mind. She told the unconscious Alice,
hoping to rouse her to sympathy; and then was disappointed, because,
still smiling and calm, she murmured of her mother, and the happy
days of infancy.