Marcella was lying on the sofa in the Mellor drawing-room. The February
evening had just been shut out, but she had told William not to bring
the lamps till they were rung for. Even the fire-light seemed more than
she could bear. She was utterly exhausted both in body and mind; yet, as
she lay there with shut eyes, and hands clasped under her cheek, a start
went through her at every sound in the house, which showed that she was
not resting, but listening. She had spent the morning in the Hurds'
cottage, sitting by Mrs. Hurd and nursing the little boy. Minta Hurd,
always delicate and consumptive, was now generally too ill from shock
and misery to be anywhere but in her bed, and Willie was growing
steadily weaker, though the child's spirit was such that he would insist
on dressing, on hearing and knowing everything about his father, and on
moving about the house as usual. Yet every movement of his wasted bones
cost him the effort of a hero, and the dumb signs in him of longing for
his father increased the general impression as of some patient creature
driven by Nature to monstrous and disproportionate extremity.
The plight of this handful of human beings worked in Marcella like some
fevering torture. She was wholly out of gear physically and morally.
Another practically sleepless night, peopled with images of horror, had
decreased her stock of sane self-control, already lessened by long
conflict of feeling and the pressure of self-contempt. Now, as she lay
listening for Aldous Raeburn's ring and step, she hardly knew whether to
be angry with him for coming so late, or miserable that he should come
at all. That there was a long score to settle between herself and him
she knew well. Shame for an experience which seemed to her maiden sense
indelible--both a weakness and a treachery--lay like a dull weight on
heart and conscience. But she would not realise it, she would not act
upon it. She shook the moral debate from her impatiently. Aldous should
have his due all in good time--should have ample opportunity of deciding
whether he would, after all, marry such a girl as she. Meanwhile his
attitude with regard to the murder exasperated her. Yet, in some strange
way it relieved her to be angry and sore with him--to have a grievance
she could avow, and on which she made it a merit to dwell. His gentle,
yet firm difference of opinion with her on the subject struck her as
something new in him. It gave her a kind of fierce pleasure to fight it.
He seemed somehow to be providing her with excuses--to be coming down to
her level--to be equalling wrong with wrong.
The door handle turned. At last! She sprang up. But it was only William
coming in with the evening post. Mrs. Boyce followed him. She took a
quiet look at her daughter, and asked if her headache was better, and
then sat down near her to some needlework. During these two days she
had been unusually kind to Marcella. She had none of the little feminine
arts of consolation. She was incapable of fussing, and she never
caressed. But from the moment that Marcella had come home from the
village that morning, a pale, hollow-eyed wreck, the mother had asserted
her authority. She would not hear of the girl's crossing the threshold
again; she had put her on the sofa and dosed her with sal-volatile. And
Marcella was too exhausted to rebel. She had only stipulated that a note
should be sent to Aldous, asking him to come on to Mellor with the news
as soon as the verdict of the coroner's jury should be given. The jury
had been sitting all day, and the verdict was expected in the evening.
Marcella turned over her letters till she came to one from a London firm
which contained a number of cloth patterns. As she touched it she threw
it aside with a sudden gesture of impatience, and sat upright.
"Mamma! I have something to say to you."
"Yes, my dear."
"Mamma, the wedding must be put off!--it _must_!--for some weeks. I have
been thinking about it while I have been lying here. How _can_ I?--you
can see for yourself. That miserable woman depends on me altogether. How
can I spend my time on clothing and dressmakers? I feel as if I could
think of nothing else--nothing else in the world--but her and her
children." She spoke with difficulty, her voice high and strained. "The
assizes may be held that very week--who knows?--the very day we are
married."
She stopped, looking at her mother almost threateningly. Mrs. Boyce
showed no sign of surprise. She put her work down.
"I had imagined you might say something of the kind," she said after a
pause. "I don't know that, from your point of view, it is unreasonable.
But, of course, you must understand that very few people will see it
from your point of view. Aldous Raeburn may--you must know best. But his
people certainly won't; and your father will think it--"
"Madness," she was going to say, but with her usual instinct for the
moderate fastidious word she corrected it to "foolish."
Marcella's tired eyes were all wilfulness and defiance.
"I can't help it. I couldn't do it. I will tell Aldous at once. It must
be put off for a month. And even that," she added with a shudder, "will
be bad enough."
Mrs. Boyce could not help an unperceived shrug of the shoulders, and a
movement of pity towards the future husband. Then she said drily,--
"You must always consider whether it is just to Mr. Raeburn to let a
matter of this kind interfere so considerably with his wishes and his
plans. He must, I suppose, be in London for Parliament within six
weeks."
Marcella did not answer. She sat with her hands round her knees lost in
perplexities. The wedding, as originally fixed, was now three weeks and
three days off. After it, she and Aldous were to have spent a short
fortnight's honeymoon at a famous house in the north, lent them for the
occasion by a Duke who was a cousin of Aldous's on the mother's side,
and had more houses than he knew what to do with. Then they were to go
immediately up to London for the opening of Parliament. The furnishing
of the Mayfair house was being pressed on. In her new-born impatience
with such things, Marcella had hardly of late concerned herself with it
at all, and Miss Raeburn, scandalised, yet not unwilling, had been doing
the whole of it, subject to conscientious worryings of the bride,
whenever she could be got hold of, on the subject of papers and
curtains.
As they sat silent, the unspoken idea in the mother's mind was--"Eight
weeks more will carry us past the execution." Mrs. Boyce had already
possessed herself very clearly of the facts of the case, and it was her
perception that Marcella was throwing herself headlong into a hopeless
struggle--together with something else--a confession perhaps of a touch
of greatness in the girl's temper, passionate and violent as it was,
that had led to this unwonted softness of manner, this absence of
sarcasm.
Very much the same thought--only treated as a nameless horror not to be
recognised or admitted--was in Marcella's mind also, joined however with
another, unsuspected even by Mrs. Boyce's acuteness. "Very likely--when
I tell him--he will not want to marry me at all--and of course I shall
tell him."
But not yet--certainly not yet. She had the instinctive sense that
during the next few weeks she should want all her dignity with Aldous,
that she could not afford to put herself at a disadvantage with him. To
be troubled about her own sins at such a moment would be like the
meanness of the lazy and canting Christian, who whines about saving his
soul while he ought to be rather occupied with feeding the bodies of his
wife and children.
A ring at the front door. Marcella rose, leaning one hand on the end of
the sofa--a long slim figure in her black dress--haggard and pathetic.
When Aldous entered, her face was one question. He went up to her and
took her hand.
"In the case of Westall the verdict is one of 'Wilful Murder' against
Hurd. In that of poor Charlie Dynes the court is adjourned. Enough
evidence has been taken to justify burial. But there is news to-night
that one of the Widrington gang has turned informer, and the police say
they will have their hands on them all within the next two or three
days."
Marcella withdrew herself from him and fell back into the corner of the
sofa. Shading her eyes with her hand she tried to be very composed and
business-like.
"Was Hurd himself examined?"
"Yes, under the new Act. He gave the account which he gave to you and to
his wife. But the Court--"
"Did not believe it?"
"No. The evidence of motive was too strong. It was clear from his own
account that he was out for poaching purposes, that he was leading the
Oxford gang, and that he had a gun while Westall was unarmed. He
admitted too that Westall called on him to give up the bag of pheasants
he held, and the gun. He refused. Then he says Westall came at him, and
he fired. Dick Patton and one or two others gave evidence as to the
language he has habitually used about Westall for months past."
"Cowards--curs!" cried Marcella, clenching both her hands, a kind of sob
in her throat.
Aldous, already white and careworn, showed, Mrs. Boyce thought, a ray of
indignation for an instant. Then he resumed steadily--
"And Brown, our steward, gave evidence as to his employment since
October. The coroner summed up carefully, and I think fairly, and the
verdict was given about half-past six."
"They took him back to prison?"
"Of course. He comes before the magistrates on Thursday."
"And you will be one!"
The girl's tone was indescribable.
Aldous started. Mrs. Boyce reddened with anger, and checking her
instinct to intervene began to put away her working materials that she
might leave them together. While she was still busy Aldous said:
"You forget; no magistrate ever tries a case in which he is personally
concerned. I shall take no part in the trial. My grandfather, of course,
must prosecute."
"But it will be a bench of landlords," cried Marcella; "of men with whom
a poacher is already condemned."
"You are unjust to us, I think," said Aldous, slowly, after a pause,
during which Mrs. Boyce left the room--"to some of us, at any rate.
Besides, as of course you know, the case will be simply sent on for
trial at the assizes. By the way "--his tone changed--"I hear to-night
that Harry Wharton undertakes the defence."
"Yes," said Marcella, defiantly. "Is there anything to say against it?
You wouldn't wish Hurd not to be defended, I suppose?"
"Marcella!"
Even her bitter mood was pierced by the tone. She had never wounded him
so deeply yet, and for a moment he felt the situation intolerable; the
surging grievance and reproach, with which his heart was really full,
all but found vent in an outburst which would have wholly swept away his
ordinary measure and self-control. But then, as he looked at her, it
struck his lover's sense painfully how pale and miserable she was. He
could not scold! But it came home to him strongly that for her own sake
and his it would be better there should be explanations. After all
things had been going untowardly for many weeks. His nature moved slowly
and with much self-doubt, but it was plain to him now that he must make
a stand.
After his cry, her first instinct was to apologise. Then the words stuck
in her throat. To her, as to him, they seemed to be close on a trial of
strength. If she could not influence him in this matter--so obvious, as
it seemed to her, and so near to her heart--what was to become of that
lead of hers in their married life, on which she had been reckoning from
the beginning? All that was worst in her and all that was best rose to
the struggle.
But, as he did not speak, she looked up at last.
"I was waiting," he said in a low voice.
"What for?"
"Waiting till you should tell me you did not mean what you said."
She saw that he was painfully moved; she also saw that he was
introducing something into their relation, an element of proud
self-assertion, which she had never felt in it before. Her own vanity
instantly rebelled.
"I ought not to have said exactly what I did," she said, almost stifled
by her own excitement, and making great efforts not to play the mere
wilful child; "that I admit. But it has been clear to me from the
beginning that--that"--her words hurried, she took up a book and
restlessly lifted it and let it fall--"you have never looked at this
thing justly. You have looked at the crime as any one must who is a
landowner; you have never allowed for the provocation; you have not let
yourself feel pity--"
He made an exclamation.
"Do you know where I was before I went into the inquest?"
"No," she said defiantly, determined not to be impressed, feeling a
childish irritation at the interruption.
"I was with Mrs. Westall. Harden and I went in to see her. She is a
hard, silent woman. She is clearly not popular in the village, and no
one comes in to her. Her"--he hesitated--"her baby is expected before
long. She is in such a state of shock and excitement that Clarke thinks
it quite possible she may go out of her mind. I saw her sitting by the
fire, quite silent, not crying, but with a wild eye that means mischief.
We have sent in a nurse to help Mrs. Jellison watch her. She seems to
care nothing about her boy. Everything that that woman most desired in
life has been struck from her at a blow. Why? That a man who was in no
stress of poverty, who had friends and employment, should indulge
himself in acts which he knew to be against the law, and had promised
you and his wife to forego, and should at the same time satisfy a wild
beast's hatred against the man, who was simply defending his master's
property. Have _you_ no pity for Mrs. Westall or her child?"
He spoke as calmly as he could, making his appeal to reason and moral
sense; but, in reality, every word was charged with electric feeling.
"I _am_ sorry for her!" cried Marcella, passionately. "But, after all,
how can one feel for the oppressor, or those connected with him, as one
does for the victim?" He shook his head, protesting against the word,
but she rushed on. "You do know--for I told you yesterday--how under the
shelter of this _hateful_ game system Westall made Kurd's life a burden
to him when he was a young man--how he had begun to bully him again this
past year. We had the same sort of dispute the other day about that
murder in Ireland. You were shocked that I would not condemn the
Moonlighters who had shot their landlord from behind a hedge, as you
did. You said the man had tried to do his duty, and that the murder was
brutal and unprovoked. But I thought of the _system_--of the _memories_
in the minds of the murderers. There _were_ excuses--he suffered for his
father--I am not going to judge that as I judge other murders. So, when
a Czar of Russia is blown up, do you expect one to think only of his
wife and children? No! I will think of the tyranny and the revolt; I
will pray, yes, _pray_ that I might have courage to do as they did! You
may think me wild and mad. I dare say. I am made so. I shall always feel
so!"
She flung out her words at him, every limb quivering under the emotion
of them. His cool, penetrating eye, this manner she had never yet known
in him, exasperated her.
"Where was the tyranny in this case?" he asked her quietly. "I agree
with you that there are murders and murders. But I thought your point
was that here was neither murder nor attack, but only an act of
self-defence. That is Hurd's plea."
She hesitated and stumbled. "I know," she said, "I know. I believe it.
But, even if the attack had been on Hurd's part, I should still find
excuses, because of the system, and because of Westall's hatefulness."
He shook his head again.
"Because a man is harsh and masterful, and uses stinging language, is he
to be shot down like a dog?"
There was a silence. Marcella was lashing herself up by thoughts of the
deformed man in his cell, looking forward after the wretched,
unsatisfied life, which was all society had allowed him, to the violent
death by which society would get rid of him--of the wife yearning her
heart away--of the boy, whom other human beings, under the name of law,
were about to separate from his father for ever. At last she broke out
thickly and indistinctly:
"The terrible thing is that I cannot count upon you--that now I cannot
make you feel as I do--feel with me. And by-and-by, when I shall want
your help desperately, when your help might be everything--I suppose it
will be no good to ask it."
He started, and bending forward he possessed himself of both her
hands--her hot trembling hands--and kissed them with a passionate
tenderness.
"What help will you ask of me that I cannot give? That would be hard to
bear!"
Still held by him, she answered his question by another:
"Give me your idea of what will happen. Tell me how you think it will
end."
"I shall only distress you, dear," he said sadly.
"No; tell me. You think him guilty. You believe he will be convicted."
"Unless some wholly fresh evidence is forthcoming," he said reluctantly,
"I can see no other issue."
"Very well; then he will be sentenced to death. But, after sentence--I
know--that man from Widrington, that solicitor told me--if--if strong
influence is brought to bear--if anybody whose word counts--if Lord
Maxwell and you, were to join the movement to save him--There is sure to
be a movement--the Radicals will take it up. Will you do it--will you
promise me now--for my sake?"
He was silent.
She looked at him, all her heart burning in her eyes, conscious of her
woman's power too, and pressing it.
"If that man is hung," she said pleadingly, "it will leave a mark on my
life nothing will ever smooth out. I shall feel myself somehow
responsible. I shall say to myself, if I had not been thinking about my
own selfish affairs--about getting married--about the straw-plaiting--I
might have seen what was going on. I might have saved these people, who
have been my friends--my _real_ friends--from this horror."
She drew her hands away and fell back on the sofa, pressing her
handkerchief to her eyes. "If you had seen her this morning!" she said
in a strangled voice. "She was saying, 'Oh, miss, if they do find him
guilty, they can't hang him--not my poor deformed Jim, that never had a
chance of being like the others. Oh, we'll beg so hard. I know there's
many people will speak for him. He was mad, miss, when he did it. He'd
never been himself, not since last winter, when we all sat and starved,
and he was driven out of his senses by thinking of me and the children.
You'll get Mr. Raeburn to speak--won't you, miss?--and Lord Maxwell? It
was their game. I know it was their game. But they'll forgive him.
They're such great people, and so rich--and we--we've always had such a
struggle. Oh, the bad times we've had, and no one know! They'll try and
get him off, miss? Oh, I'll go and _beg_ of them.'"
She stopped, unable to trust her voice any further. He stooped over her
and kissed her brow. There was a certain solemnity in the moment for
both of them. The pity of human fate overshadowed them. At last he said
firmly, yet with great feeling:
"I will not prejudge anything, that I promise you. I will keep my mind
open to the last. But--I should like to say--it would not be any easier
to me to throw myself into an agitation for reprieve because this man
was tempted to crime by _my_ property--on _my_ land. I should think it
right to look at it altogether from the public point of view. The
satisfaction of my own private compunctions--of my own private
feelings--is not what I ought to regard. My own share in the
circumstances, in the conditions which made such an act possible does
indeed concern me deeply. You cannot imagine but that the moral problem
of it has possessed me ever since this dreadful thing happened. It
troubled me much before. Now, it has become an oppression--a torture. I
have never seen my grandfather so moved, so distressed, in all my
remembrance of him. Yet he is a man of the old school, with the old
standards. As for me, if ever I come to the estate I will change the
whole system, I will run no risks of such human wreck and ruin as
this--"
His voice faltered.
"But," he resumed, speaking steadily again, "I ought to warn you that
such considerations as these will not affect my judgment of this
particular case. In the first place, I have no quarrel with capital
punishment as such. I do not believe we could rightly give it up. Your
attitude properly means that wherever we can legitimately feel pity for
a murderer, we should let him escape his penalty. I, on the other hand,
believe that if the murderer saw things as they truly are, he would
himself _claim_ his own death, as his best chance, his only chance--in
this mysterious universe!--of self-recovery. Then it comes to this--was
the act murder? The English law of murder is not perfect, but it appears
to me to be substantially just, and guided by it--"
"You talk as if there were no such things as mercy and pity in the
world," she interrupted wildly; "as if law were not made and
administered by men of just the same stuff and fabric as the
lawbreaker!"
He looked troubled.
"Ah, but _law_ is something beyond laws or those who administer them,"
he said in a lower tone; "and the law--the _obligation-sense_--of our
own race and time, however imperfect it may be, is sacred, not because
it has been imposed upon us from without, but because it has grown up to
what it is, out of our own best life--ours, yet not ours--the best proof
we have, when we look back at it in the large, when we feel its work in
ourselves of some diviner power than our own will--our best clue to what
that power may be!"
He spoke at first, looking away--wrestling out his thought, as it were,
by himself--then turning back to her, his eyes emphasised the appeal
implied, though not expressed, in what he said--intense appeal to her
for sympathy, forbearance, mutual respect, through all acuteness of
difference. His look both promised and implored.
He bad spoken to her but very rarely or indirectly as yet of his own
religious or philosophical beliefs. She was in a stage when such things
interested her but little, and reticence in personal matters was so much
the law of his life that even to her expansion was difficult. So
that--inevitably--she was arrested, for the moment, as any quick
perception must be, by the things that unveil character.
Then an upheaval of indignant feeling swept the impression away. All
that he said might be ideally, profoundly true--_but_--the red blood of
the common life was lacking in every word of it! He ought to be
incapable of saying it _now_. Her passionate question was, how could he
_argue_--how could he hold and mark the ethical balance--when a _woman_
was suffering, when _children_ were to be left fatherless? Besides--the
ethical balance itself--does it not alter according to the hands that
hold it--poacher or landlord, rich or poor?
But she was too exhausted to carry on the contest in words. Both felt it
would have to be renewed. But she said to herself secretly that Mr.
Wharton, when he got to work, would alter the whole aspect of affairs.
And she knew well that her vantage-ground as towards Aldous was strong.
Then at last he was free to turn his whole attention for a little to her
and her physical state, which made him miserable. He had never imagined
that any one, vigorous and healthy as she was, could look so worn out in
so short a time. She let him talk to her--lament, entreat, advise--and
at last she took advantage of his anxiety and her admissions to come to
the point, to plead that the marriage should be put off.
She used the same arguments that she had done to her mother.
"How can I bear to be thinking of these things?"--she pointed a shaking
finger at the dress patterns lying scattered on the table--"with this
agony, this death, under my eyes?"
It was a great blow to him, and the practical inconveniences involved
were great. But the fibre of him--of which she had just felt the
toughness--was delicate and sensitive as her own, and after a very short
recoil he met her with great chivalry and sweetness, agreeing that
everything should be put off for six weeks, till Easter in fact. She
would have been very grateful to him but that something--some secret
thought--checked the words she tried to say.
"I must go home then," he said, rising and trying to smile. "I shall
have to make things straight with Aunt Neta, and set a great many
arrangements in train. Now, you will _try_ to think of something else?
Let me leave you with a book that I can imagine you will read."
She let herself be tended and thought for. At the last, just as he was
going, he said:
"Have you seen Mr. Wharton at all since this happened?"
His manner was just as usual. She felt that her eye was guilty, but the
darkness of the firelit room shielded her.
"I have not seen him since we met him in the drive. I saw the solicitor
who is working up the case for him yesterday. He came over to see Mrs.
Hurd and me. I had not thought of asking him, but we agreed that, if he
would undertake it, it would be the best chance."
"It _is_ probably the best chance," said Aldous, thoughtfully. "I
believe Wharton has not done much at the Bar since he was called, but
that, no doubt, is because he has had so much on his hands in the way of
journalism and politics. His ability is enough for anything, and he will
throw himself into this. I do not think Hurd could do better."
She did not answer. She felt that he was magnanimous, but felt it
coldly, without emotion.
He came and stooped over her.
"Good-night--good-night--tired child--dear heart! When I saw you in that
cottage this morning I thought of the words, 'Give, and it shall be
given unto you.' All that my life can do to pour good measure, pressed
down, running over, into yours, I vowed you then!"
When the door closed upon him, Marcella, stretched in the darkness, shed
the bitterest tears that had ever yet been hers--tears which transformed
her youth--which baptised her, as it were, into the fulness of our
tragic life.
She was still weeping when she heard the door softly opened. She sprang
up and dried her eyes, but the little figure that glided in was not one
to shrink from. Mary Harden came and sat down beside her.
"I knew you would be miserable. Let me come and cry too. I have been my
round--have seen them all--and I came to bring you news."
"How has she taken--the verdict?" asked Marcella, struggling with her
sobs, and succeeding at last in composing herself.
"She was prepared for it. Charlie told her when he saw her after you
left this afternoon that she must expect it."
There was a pause.
"I shall soon hear, I suppose," said Marcella, in a hardening voice, her
hands round her knees, "what Mr. Wharton is doing for the defence. He
will appear before the magistrates, I suppose."
"Yes; but Charlie thinks the defence will be mainly reserved. Only a
little more than a fortnight to the assizes! The time is so short. But
now this man has turned informer, they say the case is quite
straightforward. With all the other evidence the police have there will
be no difficulty in trying them all. Marcella!"
"Yes."
Had there been light enough to show it, Mary's face would have revealed
her timidity.
"Marcella, Charlie asked me to give you a message. He begs you not
to--not to make Mrs. Hurd hope too much. He himself believes there is no
hope, and it is not kind."
"Are you and he like all the rest," cried Marcella, her passion breaking
out again, "only eager to have blood for blood?"
Mary waited an instant.
"It has almost broken Charlie's heart," she said at last; "but he thinks
it was murder, and that Hurd will pay the penalty; nay, more "--she
spoke with a kind of religious awe in her gentle voice--"that he ought
to be glad to pay it. He believes it to be God's will, and I have heard
him say that he would even have executions in public again--under
stricter regulations of course--that we may not escape, as we always do
if we can--from all sight and thought of God's justice and God's
punishments."
Marcella shuddered and rose. She almost threw Mary's hand away from her.
"Tell your brother from me, Mary," she said, "that his God is to _me_
just a constable in the service of the English game-laws! If He _is_
such a one, I at least will fling my Everlasting No at him while I
live."
And she swept from the room, leaving Mary aghast.
* * * * *
Meanwhile there was consternation and wrath at Maxwell Court, where
Aldous, on his return from Mellor, had first of all given his great-aunt
the news of the coroner's verdict, and had then gone on to break to her
the putting-off of the marriage. His championship of Marcella in the
matter, and his disavowal of all grievance were so quiet and decided,
that Miss Raeburn had been only able to allow herself a very modified
strain of comment and remonstrance, so long as he was still there to
listen. But she was all the more outspoken when he was gone, and Lady
Winterbourne was sitting with her. Lady Winterbourne, who was at home
alone, while her husband was with a married daughter on the Riviera, had
come over to dine _tête-à-tête_ with her friend, finding it impossible
to remain solitary while so much was happening.
"Well, my dear," said Miss Raeburn, shortly, as her guest entered the
room, "I may as well tell you at once that Aldous's marriage is put
off."
"Put off!" exclaimed Lady Winterbourne, bewildered. "Why it was only
Thursday that I was discussing it all with Marcella, and she told me
everything was settled."
"Thursday!--I dare say!" said Miss Raeburn, stitching away with fiery
energy, "but since then a poacher has murdered one of our gamekeepers,
which makes all the difference."
"What _do_ you mean, Agneta?"
"What I say, my dear. The poacher was Marcella's friend, and she cannot
now distract her mind from him sufficiently to marry Aldous, though
every plan he has in the world will be upset by her proceedings. And as
for his election, you may depend upon it she will never ask or know
whether he gets in next Monday or no. That goes without saying. She is
meanwhile absorbed with the poacher's defence, _Mr. Wharton_, of course,
conducting it. This is your modern young woman, my dear--typical, I
should think."
Miss Raeburn turned her buttonhole in fine style, and at lightning
speed, to show the coolness of her mind, then with a rattling of all her
lockets, looked up and waited for Lady Winterbourne's reflections.
"She has often talked to me of these people--the Hurds," said Lady
Winterbourne, slowly. "She has always made special friends with them.
Don't you remember she told us about them that day she first came back
to lunch?"
"Of course I remember! That day she lectured Maxwell, at first sight,
on his duties. She began well. As for these people," said Miss Raeburn,
more slowly, "one is, of course, sorry for the wife and children, though
I am a good deal sorrier for Mrs. Westall, and poor, poor Mrs. Dynes.
The whole affair has so upset Maxwell and me, we have hardly been able
to eat or sleep since. I thought it made Maxwell look dreadfully old
this morning, and with all that he has got before him too! I shall
insist on sending for Clarke to-morrow morning if he does not have a
better night. And now this postponement will be one more trouble--all
the engagements to alter, and the invitations. _Really_! that girl."
And Miss Raeburn broke off short, feeling simply that the words which
were allowed to a well-bred person were wholly inadequate to her state
of mind.
"But if she feels it--as you or I might feel such a thing about some one
we knew or cared for, Agneta?"
"How can she feel it like that?" cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated. "How
can she know any one of--of that class well enough? It is not seemly, I
tell you, Adelaide, and I don't believe it is sincere. It's just done to
make herself conspicuous, and show her power over Aldous. For other
reasons too, if the truth were known!"
Miss Raeburn turned over the shirt she was making for some charitable
society and drew out some tacking threads with a loud noise which
relieved her. Lady Winterbourne's old and delicate cheek had flushed.
"I'm sure it's sincere," she said with emphasis. "Do you mean to say,
Agneta, that one can't sympathise, in such an awful thing, with people
of another class, as one would with one's own flesh and blood?"
Miss Raeburn winced. She felt for a moment the pressure of a democratic
world--a hated, formidable world--through her friend's question. Then
she stood to her guns.
"I dare say you'll think it sounds bad," she said stoutly; "but in my
young days it would have been thought a piece of posing--of
sentimentalism--something indecorous and unfitting--if a girl had put
herself in such a position. Marcella _ought_ to be absorbed in her
marriage; that is the natural thing. How Mrs. Boyce can allow her to mix
herself with such things as this murder--to _live_ in that cottage, as I
hear she has been doing, passes my comprehension."
"You mean," said Lady Winterbourne, dreamily, "that if one had been very
fond of one's maid, and she died, one wouldn't put on mourning for her.
Marcella would."
"I dare say," said Miss Raeburn, snappishly. "She is capable of anything
far-fetched and theatrical."
The door opened and Hallin came in. He had been suffering of late, and
much confined to the house. But the news of the murder had made a deep
and painful impression upon him, and he had been eagerly acquainting
himself with the facts. Miss Raeburn, whose kindness ran with unceasing
flow along the channels she allowed it, was greatly attached to him in
spite of his views, and she now threw herself upon him for sympathy in
the matter of the wedding. In any grievance that concerned Aldous she
counted upon him, and her shrewd eyes had plainly perceived that he had
made no great friendship with Marcella.
"I am very sorry for Aldous," he said at once; "but I understand _her_
perfectly. So does Aldous."
Miss Raeburn was angrily silent. But when Lord Maxwell, who had been
talking with Aldous, came in, he proved, to her final discomfiture, to
be very much of the same opinion.
"My dear," he said wearily as he dropped into his chair, his old face
grey and pinched, "this thing is too terrible--the number of widows and
orphans that night's work will make before the end breaks my heart to
think of. It will be a relief not to have to consider festivities while
these men are actually before the courts. What I am anxious about is
that Marcella should not make herself ill with excitement. The man she
is interested in will be hung, must be hung; and with her somewhat
volatile, impulsive nature--"
He spoke with old-fashioned discretion and measure. Then quickly he
pulled himself up, and, with some trivial question or other, offered his
arm to Lady Winterbourne, for Aldous had just come in, and dinner was
ready.