BY MRS. LOVETT CAMERON.
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--Nevermore!
She was free--free to go where she pleased--to do as she liked. The
hideous nightmare of the trial was over; a jury of her countrymen had
brought in a verdict of “Justifiable homicide.” The laws of her country
had given her back her liberty, and Fenella was a free woman.
Perhaps the jury had not been altogether unimpressed by the pale
loveliness of the unhappy girl who had stood before them as “prisoner
in the dock” during those two terrible days; perhaps the sight of
the small pale face, of the piteous brown eyes, of the childish rosy
lips that quivered a little, yet that never swerved in that one
statement that they repeated through all the weary examination and
cross-examination, may have influenced those rough men, who held her
life in their hands, more than they had any idea of.
“I confess it. I killed him; he attempted my life; and I killed him in
self-defense.”
“When you say your life, you mean probably more, do you not?” inquired
the barrister who was examining her; and she answered him simply, “I
do--I mean that which to a woman is dearer than life itself;” and at
the words a sort of shiver of suppressed excitement ran through that
packed and crowded court--a shiver that made as though one heart-throb
of sympathy and of admiration. But more than all else did Fenella owe
her salvation to the man who stood up for a whole hour to defend her.
Clitheroe Jacynth, it was said afterward, made his professional
reputation over the defense of Lady Francis Onslow. He had been known
to be clever, he had been reckoned among the rising men of his day, but
never until now had the world quite realized the power that was in him.
He had all the eloquence, the fire, the passionate pleading of a man
whose whole soul was in the cause that he advocated, and his arguments
carried all before them by the sheer force of will and talent. No one
who saw the dark, passionate face--the eyes that shone with righteous
wrath--who listened to the strong, sinuous words that seemed to burn
into the hearts of his hearers as they fell, like living fire, from his
lips, ever forgot Jacynth as he was that day. And when, at the last, he
looked round the court, and, after a moment of silence, more eloquent
than words, began with a deep and low-voiced impressiveness; “I see
around me here a crowd of men--fathers, husbands, and brothers--men
who have women they love at home, and whose honor lies in the hands
of those women. Which of us, my brothers--my fellow-men,” he cried
suddenly, aloud, stretching forth his right arm in a passionate appeal
to those before him, “which of us all, did those women whom we love
stand where my unfortunate client stood upon that fatal night, alone in
the darkness, with no arm to defend her, no ear to hear her cry, with
nothing but a certain and a shameful dishonor before her--which of us,
I say, would not desire that the women we love and hold sacred, you and
I, and every true man in all England, should do as this woman did; and
save her honor at all costs?”
There was a murmur of applause that ran round the court as he sat down.
Then the judge summed up strongly in her favor. There had been no
evidence to contradict the prisoner’s own statement. No eye save her
own had been in that chamber of death in the darkness of the night.
Something, indeed, had been said about signs of more force having been
used than it was in the power of a woman’s frail hands to employ, but
there had been no evidence in support of that theory; not a vestige
of any other presence in the prisoner’s chamber, save that of her
would-be destroyer, had come to light; and the jury must bear in mind
that a desperate woman is often given an almost miraculous strength
in such moments of horror and of fear, and that if the blow with the
silver dagger had been, as it appeared, struck first, the victim would
necessarily have become much weakened, and was probably in a partial
state of collapse.
There was much more of it, but it was all in her favor, and almost
before the jury retired it was felt that their decision was a foregone
conclusion. No one could righteously condemn a woman to death for
murder who had taken a man’s life under such circumstances as these. So
the horror of it all came to an end, and Lady Francis Onslow was told
that she was free; that she could go where she pleased, and do as she
liked.
One thing there was, however, that not all the judges and the juries in
the land could do for her; they could not wash the stain of blood from
her hands.
It was when Clitheroe Jacynth came that night to visit her at her
hotel in Dover Street (she had left for London immediately after the
trial), that this terrible fact first came home to her in all its
dreadful reality. As he entered the room, she ran gladly to meet him,
impulsively reaching out both her small hands to him.
“It is to you I owe my life!” she cried; “it is you who have saved me.
How can I ever repay you, or ever thank you enough?”
But Jacynth stood with a grave, sad face, and downcast eyes, and arms
folded together across his breast, and took no notice whatever of those
little white hands stretched out to him.
A dull sense of dismay crept over her; something--she hardly knew why
or wherefore--struck a cold chill to her heart, and her hands sank
nervelessly down again to her side.
“Won’t you shake hands with me, Mr. Jacynth?--you, who have just saved
my life?”
“If I have saved you, it is because it was my duty, and because--
because--alas, I love you, Fenella! and I shall love you to my dying
day! That is why, if I can serve you, I will do so, if I can be of use
to you. You can command me now, and always, but I cannot take your
hand, for there is blood on it!” and he averted his face gloomily.
There was a moment of terrible silence between them. In the old days
Fenella would have flamed out at him--would have heaped abuse and rage
and anger upon his head; but now she said not one single word--not
one. The events of the last month had broken her down, and crushed her
to the earth, and her tongue was tied. She could not deny the charge,
nor tell the truth. She had taken this blood-guiltiness upon her soul
to save him she loved--and to the end she must bear it--to the end!
Only, she had not realized before how dreadful it would be to bear.
That Jacynth, who had worshiped the very ground she stood upon, should
refuse to touch her hand, was very terrible to her.
She sat down. There was a moment of intense silence, then dully,
spiritlessly, she asked:
“Why have you come here, then?”
“To see you--to help and advise you, if you will take my help, and to
tell you about Ronny.”
“Ah, Ronny!” she cried, looking at him with a sudden eagerness, while a
pink flush flooded her pale cheeks. “Where is Ronny? I must have him.
Will you bring him to me now--at once--this very night?”
“My dear Lady Francis, I want you to be very reasonable and sensible,
and to listen to me.”
“I never was reasonable and sensible in my life,” she began--with a
little pout and a shrug of her shoulders that reminded him almost too
painfully of her own wayward self--“but I will listen if you like,” she
added humbly.
“I want you to let Ronny be where he is--for the present at least.
He is with my sister Helen, and with Grandison her boy, his old
playfellow. I think it would be good for them both to be left together.
My nephew has an excellent tutor, and Ronny can share his lessons. My
sister has taken them both down to the country, to her home in Sussex.
She was very hard to you, Fenella, but she is not really a bad-hearted
woman, and she was very, very sorry for poor little Ronny when--when
it all happened--and when--you were taken from him. Let Ronny be where
he is.”
“But I want him, I want him!” she cried. “He is all I have on
earth--why should I be parted from him?”
“For his own good, Fenella!”
“It is best for a child to be with his mother.”
He looked at her fixedly, but very sadly and seriously.
“Do you think so,” he asked slowly--“in this case?”
Then she understood. Understood, that because of the brand of Cain upon
her brow, the world would not think it good for her boy to be brought
up by his own mother!
Her cup of woe was indeed full. She bowed her head--the bright brown
head that he would have died to serve--upon her hands, and wept aloud.
“Don’t,” he said, a little unsteadily; “don’t give way; be brave, as
you always have been, my dear. Live down this story--this stain upon
your life; go to other countries, where no one will know you; make new
friends, who will have heard nothing. The world is before you; leave
England, and do not come back to your boy till time has covered up with
its kindly mantle this wretched episode of your life. Ronny shall be
well cared for. I will look after him, and write to you constantly
about him. Only--for his own sake--separate yourself entirely from him,
until he is old enough to know and to choose.”
He waited for a moment, looking at her yearningly and anxiously, but
the bowed head never stirred. Then, in the silence and gloom of the
bare and half-lit room, he turned, and left her alone in her sorrow and
her desolation.
Thirty-six hours later Fenella stood by herself upon the deck of a
Channel steamer, watching the white cliffs of England as they receded
further and further into the distance. She was quite alone in the
world--she had not even taken a maid with her. She had made up her mind
that she would break every connection of her former life, and start
entirely anew. There should not be even a servant about her to remind
her of her past. It was for this reason that she had decided to go
to the Channel Islands--for a time at least, until she could settle
her further plans. Guernsey was a quiet and comparatively secluded
place, and she was not likely to meet any of her former friends and
acquaintances there, and it would be easy to go on to France from
there, should she feel inclined to do so.
Jacynth entirely approved of her idea, and went down himself with her
to Weymouth to see her off. To be with her in so close a friendship,
and yet to be unable even to take her hand as a friend should do, was
inexpressibly painful to him, yet he did not shrink from sacrificing
his own feelings in order to serve her, whom, in spite of everything,
he still loved and admired more than any woman on earth.
“I have treated you very badly,” she said to him once on the train; “I
led you on and flirted with you, and made you fall in love with me, and
all for nothing but the pleasure of making an empty conquest! I played
with your heart as I have done with that of dozens of others; but I
think you will allow that I have been punished for it!”
He could not answer her. The punishment her own folly had brought upon
her was indeed terrible. And yet he did not know one-half of the burden
she had to bear; nor did he guess at her hopeless and helpless love
for the husband for whose crime she was suffering, that seemed to have
sprung up into new life in her heart during these last three weeks of
peril and of well-nigh despair.
Where was he for whom she had suffered so much, for whose sin her own
life had been in jeopardy? This was the question she asked of herself,
wildly and despairingly, as she leant over the bulwarks of the steamer,
and watched the green waves, as they hurried by and dashed themselves
into foam against the side of the vessel.
Who that had known the wild, reckless girl of old, the Lady Francis
who had flirted, and laughed, and danced; who had shocked her
acquaintances, and terrified her best friends, by her mad and foolish
frolics--who would have recognized Lady Francis Onslow in the sad-eyed
“Mrs. Orme,” in her dark and Quakerlike simplicity of dress, who stood
mournfully alone upon the steamer, and looked her last upon her native
shores.
It is a week later. A little furnished house, standing in a garden that
runs down to the edge of the cliff, about a mile out of St. Peter’s
Port, has been taken by a quiet but very lovely little lady, who
apparently is a widow, and who has given her name to the house agent as
“Mrs. Orme.”
She has engaged a couple of maids, and filled her tiny house with the
flowers for which Guernsey is famous, and that are so cheap that not to
have flowers in every corner is not to have the very breath of life.
The window of her little sitting room looks over the blue sea that is
bluer than any other sea in English waters. Out there is the low land
of Herm, and all the little rocky islands glittering and shining like
jewels set in the blue, and far away the long straight line of Sark,
with her steep cliffs and jagged rocks filling in the picture on the
horizon; while, in the foreground, there are countless little sails of
snowy whiteness that move to and fro upon the crisp and azure waters.
“Mrs. Orme” sits watching it all from her garden lawn. It amuses her
vaguely and quietly, but she has nothing to do, and it is very dull and
quiet at Prospect Cottage. It gives her quite a little excitement when
a beautiful schooner yacht turns into the bay, with all her sails set,
and makes as straight as wind and tide can take her for the entrance of
the harbor.
Fenella thought she would run down to the quay to see her come in. She
was glad of an excuse to go into the town, so she started off quite in
good spirits, having attired herself quickly in a smart little sailor
hat and a trim serge jacket.
“I can call at the post-office, and see if there are any letters from
Jacynth or Ronny,” she thought; and so she started off, little knowing
that she was starting to meet a new complication in her fate.
The beautiful yacht came in, nearer and nearer to port--her sails came
down with a ringing noise, and from the shore one could hear the cries
and the songs of the sailors upon the deck. Fenella stood among the
crowd upon the quay watching her.
“What yacht is that?” she asked of a respectable-looking individual, in
the blue serge garments of a seafaring man, who stood next to her.
“She’s the _Seamew_, a hundred-and-twenty-ton schooner,” replied the
man.
“And to whom does she belong?”
“To Lord Castleton.”
Fenella started. “To Lord Castleton!” she repeated blankly.
“Ay, ay! but he aint aboard her now; he have lent her, I hear, to a
friend who has had her for the last six weeks. She started from this
very port, did the _Seamew_, six weeks ago, bound for Madeira and the
Canary Islands, where she have been cruising about ever since, and now
she have come home again to the very day, as she was expected to do.”
“You are quite _sure_ Lord Castleton is not on her?” inquired Fenella,
earnestly.
“Sartin sure, Miss”--they always called her “Miss,” she was so young
and girlish!--“his lordship was off to the south of France the werry
day she started, and that’s how he came to lend his schooner to his
friend.”
Fenella breathed anew. “And the friend’s name?” she inquired, after a
minute; but her acquaintance had already moved away from her side, and
was talking to some cronies of his own further on.
The yacht had settled down to her moorings in the dock. The crowd began
to disperse--there seemed nothing more to wait for, and Fenella, with
the rest, moved away.
She had an errand or two to do in the town before going home, and so
she clambered up the steep, irregular, picturesque little street, and
went about her small shoppings. Just as she was about to turn into a
baker’s shop, half-way up the hill, a man’s tall slender figure, in
a blue serge suit and peaked cloth cap, suddenly darkened the narrow
doorway.
“Frank!” she gasped, falling back a step.
“My God--_Fenella_!” he said; and for a moment they stood there--pale,
speechless, petrified, gazing with horror and despair into each other’s
faces.