Day had long dawned, as we have said, ere Langford woke; and even then
he woke not of himself, nor till the servant, Halliday, had twice
called him by name, standing close by his bedside, and looking upon him
with an expression of much interest, indeed, but with a face from which
all colour was banished, apparently by fear and agitation.
"Master Langford!" he said; "Master Langford! No guilty man ever slept
so sound as that. Poo, nonsense! Captain Langford, I say!"
Langford woke, and looked up, demanding what was the matter.
"Why, sir," replied the servant, "here is good old Gregory Myrtle, the
landlord of the Talbot, wants to speak with you immediately. I met him
as I was going up to the village, coming down here as fast as he could
roll."
"Then you have not got the packet I sent for?" said Langford, coolly.
"He has got it, sir, safe," replied Halliday; "but he would not give it
up, for he was coming on to you himself."
"He should have given it, as he was directed," said Langford. "Tell him
to wait; I will see him when I am dressed."
"But he says, sir, that he must see you directly; that his business is
of the greatest importance; that there is not a moment to lose."
"Oh, then, send him up," said Langford, "if the matter be so pressing
as that."
Halliday instantly disappeared, as if he thought that too much time had
been wasted already; and while Langford proceeded to rise, good Gregory
Myrtle was heard creaking and panting up the stairs, as fast as his
vast rotundity would let him. His face, too, was pale, if pale it ever
could be called; and he was evidently in a great state of agitation,
though the jolly habitual laugh still remained, and was heard before he
was well within the door of Langford's room.
"Haw, haw, haw!" he cried, as he laid down the expected packet before
Langford. "Lord a' mercy, Master Harry, this is a terrible business,"
he continued. "Well, I never did think--however, it's all nonsense, I
know," and he again burst into a loud laugh, ending abruptly in the
midst, and staring in Langford's face, as if for a reply.
"Well, good Gregory," replied Langford, who, in the meantime, had
broken open the seals of the packet, and seen that various bills of
exchange which it contained, together with other equivalents for money,
were all right--"well, good Master Myrtle, what is it that is very
terrible? What is it you did never think? What is it that is all
nonsense? I am in the dark, Master Myrtle."
"Gad's my life, sir, they won't let you be in the dark long," cried the
landlord of the Talbot; "and I came down to enlighten you first, that
you might not be taken by surprise."
"As to what?" said Langford, somewhat impatiently.
"Lord, sir! I thought that Halliday must have told you something, at
least," replied Gregory Myrtle, "or that his face must if not his
tongue, for it's all black and white, like the broadside of the 'Hue
and Cry.' But the matter is this," he added, after pausing a moment to
laugh at his own joke: "it seems that poor Lord Harold, who was a good
youth in his way, though he was somewhat sharp upon poachers and
deer-stealers, and the like, was murdered last night upon the moor."
"Good God!" cried Langford, clasping his hands. "Good God!"
"It's but too true, sir," continued Myrtle, throwing as much solemnity
as he could into his jocund countenance, "it's but too true; and
there's poor Lord Danemore, his father, distracted. And for the matter
of that, I think Sir Thomas Waller and Sir Matthew Scrope are as much
distracted too; for after having been with my lord since five o'clock
this morning, they come down to my house, and begin examining witnesses
and taking evidence, and sending here and there, and the end of it
all is--for I heard them consulting over it through a chink in the
door--they judge that you are the person who murdered him, only because
that mad fellow, silly John Graves, came running down to the village
last night for help, swearing he had seen you and Lord Harold with your
swords drawn upon each other. So, while they were busy swearing in
constables, and all that, I thought it but friendly-like to come down
here and tell you, in case you might think it right to get upon your
horse's back, and gallop away till the business is over."
"Swearing in constables!" said Langford, without seeming to take notice
of the worthy host's suggestion. "Why, they don't suppose my name is
'Legion,' do they? One constable, I should suppose, would be quite as
useful as twenty."
"Ay, Master Harry," replied Gregory Myrtle; "but they vow that you are
connected with the gentlemen of the road, who have been sporting round
here lately, and they are afraid of a rescue."
"Indeed!" said Langford; "the sapient men! However, Master Myrtle, ring
that little bell at the top of the stairs."
The silver hand-bell to which he pointed was immediately rung, and
Halliday, who had remained halfway down the stairs, was in the room in
a moment. No sooner did he appear, than Gregory Myrtle, who put his own
construction upon Langford's coolness, exclaimed, "Quick, Master
Halliday, quick! Saddle the Captain's horse for him!"
"No, no, Halliday," said Langford. "You are making a mistake, my good
Master Myrtle. Take this packet, Halliday, and give it into Mistress
Alice's own hands as soon as ever you can. I am going out with Master
Myrtle here upon this business, which I see you have heard of. What may
be the result of these foolish people's silly suspicions, I cannot
tell; but do what you can, Halliday, to keep the matter from the ears
of Sir Walter and Mistress Alice as long as you can. Warn the other
servants too; for there is no use of adding fresh vexation to that
which your master and mistress are already suffering. You must all know
very well that I have nothing to do with this business, and can make
that clear very soon. Say, therefore, that I have gone out for a few
hours, but left that packet for Mistress Alice, with my best wishes.
Now, good Gregory Myrtle, go back to your inn, and tell Sir Thomas
Waller and Sir Matthew Scrope that I will be with them in five minutes,
as soon as I have dressed myself."
Our host of the Talbot pursued the direction he had received, rolled
down the stairs, and laboured along the road towards the village, with
his surprise and admiration both excited by the extraordinary coolness
and self-possession displayed by Langford under such circumstances. By
the time he had reached the middle of the bridge, he perceived a great
number of people issuing from the door of his own house; and, ere he
was halfway up the street of the little town, he encountered ten or
twelve constables and special constables, headed by the two magistrates
in person. No sooner did he approach than the stentorian voice of Sir
Thomas Waller--all unlike the dulcet notes of Sacharissa's lover--was
heard to exclaim, "Take him into custody, Jonathan Brown!"
"Where hast thou been, Gregory Myrtle, Gregory Myrtle?" exclaimed, in
softer tones, almost in the same moment, the voice of Sir Matthew
Scrope.
"You have been aiding and abetting felony!" cried Sir Thomas.
"You have been warning the guilty to escape!" said Sir Matthew.
"You have been helping the lion to fly from his pursuers!" said Sir
Thomas.
"You have been proditoriously giving information of our secret
councils!" said Sir Matthew.
"It is being an accessary after the fact!" said his companion.
"It is misprision of treason!" said the other.
"It is levying war against the king!" shouted Sir Thomas.
"It is a gaol delivery!" cried the head constable, determined not to be
outdone by his betters.
"Haw, haw, haw.'" exclaimed Gregory Myrtle, laying his two hands upon
his fat stomach, "What is the matter with your worships?"'
"Hast thou not gone down on purpose," said Sir Matthew Scrope, "to warn
Harry Langford, alias Captain Langford, alias Master Harry, to evade
and escape the pursuit of justice, by flying out of the back door while
we are approaching the front? Hast thou not done this, Gregory Myrtle?
and woe be unto thee if he have so escaped! Take him into custody, I
say!"
"Well, your worships," said Myrtle, beginning to look a little rueful
under the hands of the constables. "I have been down to Master Harry, I
own it; but I went upon other business that I had to do with him. Does
not everybody know that I had a packet down for him by a special
messenger yesterday night, with orders to deliver it into his own
hands? and if I did talk with him this morning of what was going on,
did he not send his compliments to your worships, and bid me say that
he would be up with you in five minutes, as soon as he had got his
clothes on!"
"Poo, nonsense, man!" exclaimed Sir Thomas Waller, growing red in the
face. "Do you think we are fools, to be taken in with such a story as
that? Are you fool enough yourself to think that he will come."
"I say, as sure as I am a living man, he will come!" said Gregory
Myrtle. "Ay, more, my masters," he continued, after giving a glance
towards the Manor House, "I say, there he is coming."
All eyes were instantly turned in the direction in which his own had
been bent the moment before, and the figure of a man, which seemed to
have just issued out of the gates of the park, was seen walking with a
slow calm step along the road towards the village. The magistrates, the
constables, and the multitudinous crowd which followed them, all stood
in silence and what we may call _thunderstruckness_, so little credence
had they given to the assurances of Gregory Myrtle; for let it be
remembered, that the first effect produced by an accusation against any
one, upon vulgar minds, is to lead them at once to condemn him. I am
afraid there is something in the human heart that loves the act of
condemnation--an act which either gratifies malignity or vanity.
However that may be, the party assembled in the streets of the little
town could not believe their eyes, and, indeed, would not believe their
eyes long after the form of Henry Langford, a form with which many of
them were perfectly acquainted, had become distinctly visible,
approaching with slow calm steps towards the spot where they were
gathered together. The matter, however, could no longer be doubted; and
the magistrates stood still, not knowing very well how to act in such
unusual circumstances.
Henry Langford, in the mean time, approached without the slightest
appearance of hesitation or dismay at the sight of the formidable
phalanx which they presented. Walking up to the magistrates with the
calm and graceful dignity which characterised all his actions, he bowed
slightly, saying, "I am told, gentlemen, that a most distressing
occurence has taken place, and that you imagine there is some cause for
supposing that I am implicated in this matter. Now, with your leave,
gentlemen, we will go to the inn, as this is no place for discussing
such subjects, and we will there investigate the matter accurately.
Doubtless, you have had good reason for attributing to me the
commission of a crime; but some person or another must have gone out of
the way, to insinuate or to urge such a charge against me; and who it
is that has been kind enough and liberal enough to do so, I shall make
it my business to discover, in order to punish him as he deserves."
Langford concluded somewhat sternly; and the magistrates, entirely
taken by surprise, looked rather foolish, and began to imagine that
they might have been too hasty in their conclusions. There was a tone
and an air, too, in the person whom they had suspected, which forbade
all high words or violent measures. He spoke to them as certainly their
equal, if not their superior, and there was so much of the
consciousness of innocence in his whole demeanour that it was very
difficult to conceive their suspicions were justified.
Not knowing well what to reply, they followed his suggestion in
silence, the one walking on one side of him, and the other on the
other. By the time they reached the Talbot, however, they began to
recover from the effect of his presence, and Sir Thomas Waller, with
what he conceived to be wise foresight and presence of mind, gave the
chief constable a hint in a whisper to guard the doors well, and to
take care that the prisoner did not escape. They did not, however,
venture to treat him as a prisoner in any other respect; and walking up
into the room where they had held their investigation, he sat down with
them at the table, and begged in a grave but not sarcastic tone, that
they would have the goodness to let him know on what grounds they for a
moment conceived that he had had any share in the unfortunate death of
Lord Harold.
The magistrates looked to their clerk, who had remained behind, putting
the evidence in order while they had proceeded with the constables for
the purpose of arresting Langford. The clerk who, upon the whole,
seemed a sensible little man, proceeded, as it was very common in those
days, to take the whole business into his hands, and recapitulated
coolly, but civilly, to Langford the heads of all the evidence that had
been taken.
Langford now discovered that the charge against him was much more
serious than he had at first imagined. He found that, in the first
place, several persons had deposed that silly John Graves, whose
adherence to truth was well known, had come down to the town in great
agitation, begging for help to stop Lord Harold and Master Harry
Langford from killing each other. It was proved, also, by the horse
boys from the Manor House, that Lord Harold, after having been in the
park with Master Langford, had returned for his horse about the same
time that the other had returned; that the young nobleman had ridden
away very slowly, and that Langford, after proceeding part of the way
towards the village, had suddenly come back, mounted his horse, and
ridden away very rapidly; that he had been absent till between ten and
eleven o'clock at night, and that big horse was evidently fatigued, and
had been hard ridden. Several people, too, had seen him pass at
different times, and on several parts of the road leading to the moor;
and, in short, there was quite sufficient evidence to prove that a
quarrel had taken place between Lord Harold and himself; that they had
both gone towards the same spot at the same time, and that he had been
absent a sufficient number of hours to commit the deed with which he
was charged, and to return.
As the evidence was recapitulated, the worthy magistrates gained
greater and greater confidence every moment; and at length Sir Matthew
Scope exclaimed, "If this is not sufficient to justify us in committing
the prisoner, I do not know what is."
"Not, perhaps, in committing him, your worship," said the clerk, whose
philology was choice without being very accurate; "but certainly in
remanding him."
"Why, I did not exactly mean to say committing," rejoined the
subservient magistrate; "remanding was the word I meant to use; but
where can we remand him to? If we remand him to the county jail,
Justice Holdhim will take the matter out of our hands, and we shall
lose all credit with the good Earl for arresting the murderer of his
son."
"Would it not be as well," said the clerk, "to take him up at once to
the castle? It is not improbable that the noble Earl might like to
examine him himself; and you can keep him confined there till you have
obtained further evidence to justify his committal."
"A very good thought, a very good thought!" cried Sir Thomas Waller,
rubbing his hands. "He shall be placed in my carriage with a constable
on each side, and we will follow in yours, Sir Matthew, with the other
constables on horseback."
Langford had listened in silence to the conversation between the
magistrates and their clerk, and though he evidently began to perceive
that the affair would be more serious and disagreeable than he had
anticipated, he could not refrain from smiling at the arrangement of
the stately procession that was to carry him to Danemore Castle. He
resolved, however, to make one effort to prevent the execution of a
purpose which would, of course, on many accounts, be disagreeable to
him; and he therefore interposed, as the clerk was about to leave the
room, saying, "You are rather too hasty, gentlemen, in your
conclusions, and I think you had better be warned, before you commit an
act which you may be made to repent of----"
"Do you mean to threaten us, sir?" exclaimed Sir Thomas Waller. "Take
those words down, clerk! Take those words down!"
"I mean to threaten you with nothing," replied Langford, "but the legal
punishment to which bad or ignorant magistrates may be subjected for
the use, or rather misuse, of their authority. You will remark--and I
beg that the clerk may take these words down--that one half of the
matter urged against me rests upon the reported words of a madman, who
has not been brought forward even himself."
"You would not have us take the deposition of an innocent, a born
natural!" demanded Sir Matthew Scope.
"His evidence is either worth something or worth nothing," replied
Langford. "You rest mainly upon his testimony reported by others, which
is, of course, worth nothing; and yet you will not take his testimony
from his own mouth, when I inform you, that if it were so taken, he
would prove that, though Lord Harold chose to quarrel with me, which I
do not deny, that I positively refused to draw my sword upon him, even
when he drew his upon me."
"That might be," said the clerk, "to take more sure vengeance in a
private way. Their worships have on the contrary to remark, that you
have not in any way attempted to account for the space of time you were
absent from the Manor House last night. Neither have you stated where
you were, or what was your occupation; and, without meaning to say
anything uncivil, sir, let me say, that there have been a great many
nights, while you remained at the inn, which might require accounting
for also. Their worships have not judged harshly of you, nor even given
attention to suspicious circumstances, till they found that the whole
of your conduct was suspicious." This was spoken while standing beside
the chair of Sir Matthew Scrope; and, after whispering a few words in
his ear, the clerk left the room.
Langford remained, with his eyes gloomily bent upon the table, without
speaking to either of his companions, busy with varied thoughts and
feelings, which began to come upon him, thick and many--to weigh him
down, and to oppress him. During the early part of the disagreeable
business in which he had been engaged, he had thought solely of his own
innocence, and of the absurdity, as it seemed to him, of the charge
against him; but as the matter went on, other considerations forced
themselves upon his attention. He was conscious he could give no
account of where he had been on the preceding night, when the murder
was committed; and yet he felt that he was called upon strongly to do
so, not for the purpose of freeing himself from suspicion, but with a
view to bring the real murderer to justice. Yet how could he reveal any
part of what he knew, without bringing down destruction on the head of
Franklin Gray, who had no share in the deed; who, at the very time it
was committed, was engaged in serving him, even at the risk of life; to
whom he was bound by so many ties of gratitude, and whose good
qualities, though they did certainly not serve to counterbalance his
crimes, yet rendered him a very different object in the eyes of
Langford from such men as Wiley and Hardcastle? At all events, he felt
that it was not for him to bring a man to the scaffold who had saved
his life on more than one occasion, and who had shown himself always
willing to peril his own in order to procure a comparatively trifling
benefit to him.
Mingled with all these feelings, was deep and bitter sorrow for Lord
Harold; and thus many conflicting emotions, all more or less painful,
together with the most painful of all, the knowledge that he could not
do his duty with that straightforward candour and decision which in all
other situations of life he had been accustomed to show, kept him in
stern and somewhat gloomy silence.
The magistrates, in the meanwhile, conversed apart in a low voice, Sir
Thomas Waller delighted with the plan they were about to pursue, and
anticipating great credit with Lord Danemore for the arrest of his
son's murderer; while Sir Matthew Scrope, who seemed to stand in
considerable awe of the old nobleman, declared, that he never half
liked to come across the Earl, who was so fierce, and fiery, and
imperious. In about a quarter of an hour the clerk returned, and
announced that all was ready, and Langford, surrounded by a complete
mob of constables, was placed in the rumbling carriage of Sir Thomas
Waller, and borne away towards Danemore Castle.
The two magistrates followed in the carriage of Sir Matthew, and the
train of constables, mounted on all sorts of beasts, came after
swelling the procession; while good Gregory Myrtle stood at his door
declaring, that he never saw such a piece of folly in his life: and the
poor chambermaid, dissolved in tears, wiped her eyes and vowed it was
impossible so handsome a young man could murder any body.