Volume Three—Chapter Fifteen.
Father and Son.
James Bell, dragoon, otherwise Fred Denville, the disgraced prodigal of the Master of the Ceremonies’ home, had a couple of shillings in his pocket as he strode towards the prison; and as he was on his way, low-spirited and despondent at the troubles of his house, a great thirst came upon him, and he felt that he could never go through the scene he had to encounter without a stimulant in some form.
Then he thought of what a curse drink was to him, and how he could not take one glass without wanting another, and many others, and with this thought he manfully passed the first public-house.
But, as he passed, the door was swung open, and the hot, spiritous odour of strong drinks floated out and half maddened him.
“Just one glass would tighten me up,” he muttered, “and I could go through with it better.”
He thought of his last interview with his father, their struggle, and how he had nearly struck him, and he shrank from what was to come.
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I must have a drop. It will steady a fellow’s nerves. Good God! how horrible to go and see that old man charged with murder.”
He had thought a great deal about it before, but now the whole affair struck him as if in a new light, and the examinations, the trial, and the following of that trial came upon him with a terrible force that frightened him. It had never seemed so horrible before, and he burst out in a cold perspiration as in imagination he saw the white bared head of the old man, with wild eyes and ghastly face—saw him in the grey of some chilly morning, pinioned and with the white-robed priest by his side, walking towards—
It was too horrible! A curious feeling of blind terror made him shiver and hurry on, as something seemed to whisper in his ear, “He did murder that wretched old woman, and he must suffer for his crime.”
“Curse me, I must have some brandy, or I shall never be able to face him,” he gasped, as he strode on, no longer the stern, upright, well-built cavalry soldier, but a bent, trembling man, at whom more than one passer-by looked askance. He even reeled, and albeit perfectly sober, he evoked comments upon “these drunken soldiers” in the streets.
“It is too horrible,” he said again. “I never saw it like this before;” and, hurrying on with unsteady step, he was making straight for a public-house he knew, when, on turning a corner, he suddenly encountered Major Rockley.
The meeting was so sudden that he had passed him before he remembered his duty to salute his superior; but the encounter brought with it a flood of recollections of the night of Mrs Pontardent’s party, and the remembrance of his helplessness, and of the pangs he had suffered as he awoke to the fact, as he believed, that the sister he almost worshipped was in the power of a relentless scoundrel. This cleared the mental fumes that were obscuring his intellect, and, drawing himself up, he strode on straight past the public-house door and on to the prison gates.
“It’s time I acted like a man,” he said to himself, “and not like a cowardly brute.”
He was provided with a pass, and, in ignorance of the fact that Rockley had turned and was watching him, following him, and standing at a distance till he saw him enter the gates, he rang, presented his paper, and was ushered along the blank stone passages of the prison till he reached the cell door.
“One minute,” whispered Fred, wiping the drops from his forehead, as a sudden trembling fit came over him. Then, mastering it, and drawing himself up, he breathed heavily and nodded to the gaoler.
“I’m ready,” he said hoarsely: “open.”
The next minute he was standing in the whitewashed cell with the door closed behind him, locked in with the prisoner and half choked with emotion, gazing down at the bent grey head.
For the Master of Ceremonies was seated upon a low stool, his arms resting upon his knees, and his hands clasped between them, probably asleep. He had not heard the opening and closing of the door, and if not asleep, was so deaf to all but his own misery that Fred Denville felt that he must go and touch him before he would move.
The young man’s breast swelled, and there was a catching in his breath as he looked down upon the crushed, despondent figure, and thought of the change that had taken place. The light from the barred window streamed down upon him alone, leaving the rest of the cell in shadow; and as Fred Denville gazed, he saw again the overdressed leader of the fashionable visitors mincing along the Parade, cane in one hand, snuff-box in the other, and the box changed to the hand holding the cane while a few specks of snuff were brushed from the lace of his shirt-front.
Then he looked back farther, and seemed to see the tall, important, aristocratic-looking gentleman, to whom people of quality talked, and of whom he always stood in such awe; and now, with this came the recollection of his boyish wonder how it was that his father should be so grand a man abroad while everything was so pinched and miserable at home.
Back flitted his thoughts as he stood there, looking down at the motionless figure, to the encounter when he had been surprised by his father with Claire. The terrible rage; the fit; the horrible hatred and dislike the old man had shown, and the unforgiving rancour he had displayed.
Fred Denville sighed as it all came back, but he felt no resentment now, for his breast was full of memories of acts of kindness that had been shown him as a boy, before he grew wild and resisted the paternal hand, preferring the reckless soldier’s life to the irksome poverty and pretence of the place-seeker’s home and its pinching and shams.
“Poor old dad!” he said to himself, as the tears stood in his eyes; “he is brought very low. Misery makes friends. God help him now!”
The stalwart dragoon, moved by his emotion, took a couple of quick steps forward and went down upon one knee by the old man’s side, took his hands gently in both of his own, and held them in a firm, strong clasp, as he uttered the one word—
“Father!”
The touch and the voice seemed to galvanise the prisoner, who started upright, gazing wildly at his son, and then shrank back against the wall with his hands outstretched to keep him off.
There was a terrible silence for a space, during which Fred Denville remained upon his knee, then slowly joining his hands as he looked pleadingly in his father’s face, he said slowly:
“Yes, I know I have been a bad son; I have disgraced you. But, father, can you not forgive me now?”
The old man did not speak, but shrank against the wall, looking upon him with loathing.
“Father,” said Fred again, “you are in such trouble. It is so dreadful. I could not stay away. Let us be friends once more, and let me help you. I will try so hard. I am your son.”
Again there was that terrible silence, during which the old man seemed to be gathering force, and the look of horror and loathing intensified as he glared at the man humbling himself there upon his knee.
“Do you not hear me?” cried Fred, piteously. “Father: I am your son.”
“No!” exclaimed Denville, in a low, hoarse whisper that was terrible in its intensity. “No: you are no son of mine. Hypocrite, villain—how dare you come here to insult me in my misery?”
“Insult you, father!” said Fred softly. “No, no, you do not know me. You do not understand what brings me here.”
“Not know?—not understand?” panted Denville, still in the same hoarse whisper, as if he dreaded to be heard. “I tell you I know all—I saw all. It was what I might have expected from your career.”
“Father!”
“Silence, dog! Oh, that I had strength! I feel that as I gave you the life you dishonour, I should be doing a duty to take you by the throat, and crush it out from such a wretch.”
“He’s mad,” thought the young man as he gazed on the wild distorted face.
“You thought that you were unseen—that your crime was known but to yourself; but such things cannot be hidden, such horrors are certain to be known. And now, wretch, hypocrite, coward, you have brought me to this, and you come with your pitiful canting words to ask me for pardon—me, the miserable old man whom you have dragged down even to this—a felon’s cell from which I must go to the scaffold.”
“No—no, father,” panted Fred. “Don’t—for God’s sake, don’t talk like this. I’ve been a great blackguard—a bad son; but surely you might forgive me—your own flesh and blood, when I come to you on my knees, in sorrow and repentance, to ask forgiveness, and to say let me try and help you in your distress. Come, father—my dear old father—give me your hand once more. Let the past be dead, for Claire’s sake, I ask you. I am her brother—your boy.”
“Silence! Wretch!” cried the old man. “Leave this place. Let me at least die in peace, and not be defiled by the presence of such a loathsome, cowardly thing as you.”
“And you,” said Fred softly, as he held out his hands; “you, I can remember it well, used to hold these hands together, father, and teach me to say, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’ Father, have I sinned so deeply as all this?”
“Sinned!” cried the old man starting forward, and catching his son by the throat. “Sinned? Blasphemer! coward! hypocrite! You dare to say this to me! Go, before I try to strangle you, for I cannot contain myself when you are here.”
“Father!” cried Fred, kneeling unresisting as the old man clasped him tightly by the throat, “are you mad?”
“Would to God I were before I had lived to see this day,” cried Denville, still in the same hoarse whisper. “But go—I have done ill enough in my wretched life without adding murder to the wrong. Go, and coward that you are, escape to some far-off land where your crime is not known, and there try and repent, if you can. No, there can be no repentance for the coward who destroys one wretched, helpless life, and then to save his own worthless body—he can have no soul—sends his poor, worn-out, broken father to the scaffold.”
Fred did not move, but gazed pityingly in his father’s face.
“You cannot be a man,” continued Denville, “a man as other men. You do not speak—you do not speak. Fool! Murderer! Do you think that your crime was not known?”
Fred still remained silent, gazing in the convulsed face, with the veins in the temples throbbing, the eyes glaring wildly, and the grey hairs seeming to rise and move.
“Speak, since you have forced it upon me, though I would have gone to the scaffold without a word, praying that my sacrifice might expiate my own child’s crime. Speak, I say: do you still think it was not known?”
Fred Denville remained upon his knees, but neither spoke nor resisted.
“I tell you that when I awoke to the horrors of that night, I said to myself, ‘He is my own son—my own flesh and blood—I cannot speak. I will not speak. I will bear it.’ And I have borne it—in silence. Wretch that you are—listen. I have, to screen you, borne all with my lips sealed, and let that sweet, pure-hearted girl shrink from me, believing—God help me!—that mine was the hand that crushed out yon poor old creature’s life.”
“Father, you are raving,” cried Fred hoarsely.
“Raving! It is true. Claire, my own darling, has gone, too, with sealed lips, loathing me, and only out of pity and belief in her duty as a child borne with my presence—poor sweet suffering saint—believing me a murderer, and I dare not tell her I was innocent, and that it was the brother she loved, who had come in the night, serpent-like, to the room he knew so well, to murder, and to steal those wretched bits of glittering glass.”
“My dear father!”
“Silence, wretch!” cried Denville. “I tell you, knowing all, I said that I could not speak, for I was only a broken old man, and that my son might repent; that I could not condemn him and be his judge. And, my God! it has come to this! I have borne all. I have suffered maddening agony as I have seen the loathing in my poor child’s eyes. I have borne all uncomplaining, and when, as I dreaded, the exposure came, I unmurmuringly suffered myself to be taken, and I will go to the scaffold and die, a victim—an innocent victim for you, so that you may live; but let me die in peace. Free me from your presence, and I will wait till, in a better world, my darling can come and say, ‘Forgive me, father; I was blind.’”
“Heaven help me! What shall I say?” muttered Fred. “Poor old fellow! It has turned his brain.”
The old man was in the act of throwing him off and shrinking from him when Fred caught his hands.
“My dear old father,” he said tenderly, “neither Claire nor I believe that you could commit this terrible crime. You must be cleared from all suspicion, and—come—come—let us be friends. You will forgive me, father—all the past?”
“Forgive you? No, I cannot. It is impossible. I have tried. Sitting here alone in this awful silence, with the shadow of the gallows falling across me, I have tried, but it is impossible. I will suffer for your crime. I have told you that I will, but upon one condition, that you never go near Claire again. She thinks me guilty, but she has fought hard and striven to forgive me. Do not pollute her with your presence, but go far away from here. Go at once, lest in the weakness of my nature I should be tempted to try and save myself from death by confessing all.”
“Heaven help me!” said Fred again; “he is mad.”
He had spoken aloud, shaping his thoughts unconsciously, and the old man took up his words.
“God help me! I wish I were,” he said pitifully, “for the mad must be free from the agony which I have to bear.”
Fred rose to his feet and looked at the old man aghast. Then, as if for the first time, he seemed to realise that his father was not wandering in his mind, and clasping the thin arms tightly, he pressed him back into a sitting position upon the bed, bending over him, and, in his great strength, holding him helplessly there, as he said quickly, and with a fierce ring in his voice:
“Why, father, do you know what you are saying? You do not think I killed Lady Teigne?”
“Hypocrite!” cried the old man fiercely.
“Speak out, man!” cried Fred, as fiercely now. “What do you mean? How dare you charge me with such a crime!”
“Hypocrite!” panted the old man again. “You cannot shield yourself now. It is a punishment for my weakness that day—that night. I would not have done it,” he cried wildly, “but I was at my last gasp for money. Everything was against me. I had not a shilling, and there all that day the devil was dancing the jewels of that miserable old woman before my eyes.”
“Father!” cried Fred, “for God’s sake, don’t tell me you killed her—for God’s sake don’t. No, no; it is not true.”
“Silence! hypocrite! murderer!” cried the old man. “Listen. I tell you that all that day the devil was dancing those diamonds before my eyes. I saw them in the glittering waters of the sea. I turned to Claire, and her eyes shone like diamonds. The night came, and the sky was all studded with gems, and they were sparkling and reflected in the water. Diamonds—always diamonds; and above stairs, in that room, a casket with necklet and bracelets, all diamonds, and the devil always whispering in my ear that I had but to get two or three taken out and replaced with paste, while I pledged the real stones for a few months, and redeemed them as soon as I could turn myself round. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you,” said Fred, with a strange look of horror intensifying in his face.
“I fought against the temptation. I struggled with it, as I said that I had always been a weak, foolish fashion-seeker, but an honest gentleman. I swore that I would not defile myself by such a crime; but there were my bills; there was the demand for money for a score of pressing necessities, and the fiend whispered to me that it would not be a crime, only taking them from that miserable old worldly creature as a loan.”
“Go on,” said Fred hoarsely; “go on.” And he stared with horror in the old man’s upturned face.
“Then the night came, and my children went to their beds innocent of the agony I suffered, for there was the temptation stronger than before. I went to my room, and looked out. The sea and sky were all diamonds; and I tore back the blind, and I said that I must have two or three of the wretched stones—that I would have them—borrow them for a time, and be free.”
“Oh, father, father!” groaned Fred; and Denville went on excitedly.
“I said I would have them, and I waited till it would be safe to go. I knew that the old woman would have taken her sleeping-draught, and that it would be easy enough to go in and get her keys—I knew where she kept them—take out the diamond cross, get the stones changed, and replace it before she would miss it the next afternoon.”
Fred groaned, and the old man went on, clutching him now by the arm as he spoke, gazing fiercely in his eyes the while.
“I waited till all were sleeping, and the time seemed to have come, and then, like a thief, I stole out of my room and along the passage, till I was outside the door where the old woman—poor old wreck of a woman—lay. It was only to borrow those diamonds for a time, and I meant to replace them, though I knew that I was little better than a thief—a cold-blooded, treacherous thief—to deal thus with the woman who trusted to my honour for her safety. But I was so sorely pressed for money, I said to myself; and keeping my creditors quiet meant placing Morton and Claire both well in life, and then my troubles would cease. Do you hear me?”
“Yes—I hear,” groaned Fred.
“I stood there on the mat outside her door thinking that, and that it would be for Claire’s sake; and as I thought that, I saw her sweet, pure face before me, as it were, her eyes looking into mine; and I said: ‘How can I ever look into those eyes openly again?’ I felt that I was still a gentleman, but that in a few minutes I should be a despicable thief. Then I raised my hand to open the door, always unfastened so that Claire might go in and out, but it dropped to my side, and I sank upon my knees and prayed for strength to resist temptation, and the strength I asked was given.”
The old man paused, for there was a step outside in the stone passage, and it seemed that the gaoler was coming there; but he passed on, and Denville gripped his son’s arm more tightly.
“I don’t know how long I knelt there, but I was rising with the temptation crushed, and as I rose I was going back to my room.”
“Hah!” ejaculated Fred excitedly, and he breathed more freely.
“Back to my room, boy, when I seemed to be roused from the stupor brought on by my agony of mind, for there was a sound in the countess’s chamber. I listened, and there it was again. It was a confused sound, as if she were moving in her bed, and I thought she must be ill, and want Claire. I was about to go and rouse her, when there were other sounds; there was a loud crash, and I stood as if turned to ice.”
“You heard sounds!” gasped Fred; and he looked horror-stricken and shrinking as his father seemed to grow in strength.
“Yes,” whispered the old man fiercely, as he seemed to fix Fred Denville with his eye; “I heard sounds that froze me with horror, as I felt that my temptation had been in the shape of a warning of evil, and that another was at work in the poor old woman’s room. For a few minutes I could not stir. Then, mastering my horror and fear, and calling myself coward, I hurried into the room, to find myself face to face with him who had entered before. I saw all at a glance, as a hoarse groan came from the bed—the curtain torn aside, and the murderer by the dressing-table, with the jewel-casket in his hand.”
“You saw all this?” cried Fred, white as ashes now. “Father, you saw this?”
“Everything, as I dashed—old weak man as I was—at the wretch who had done this thing. It was only a momentary struggle, and I was thrown down, and saw him dart to the folding-doors and pass through. I staggered after him in time to hear him overturn a pot or two in the verandah, as he swung himself over and slid down the pillar. Then I was alone panting there in that chamber of death; for as I took the candle from the little stand, and drew aside the curtain, it was to gaze down upon the starting eyes of the strangled woman—dead in my house, under the protection of my roof; and, with the horrible thought upon me that only a brief while back I was nearly entering that chamber to play the part of thief, I gave no alarm, but shrank towards the door, and stole out trembling, bathed with sweat, to get back to my room, and try to think out what I should do.”
Fred Denville groaned, and the old man’s breath went and came with the sound of one who has been hunted till he stands at bay.
“I had not been there a minute before I heard steps; a light shone beneath my door, and I sat trembling, utterly prostrated, for I knew that it was Claire who had been alarmed. I wanted to go out and stop her, to set her on her guard; but I sat there as if suffering from nightmare, unable to move, even when she came at last and summoned me; and, like one in a dream, I listened to what she had to say, and followed her to the murdered woman’s room. I could not stay her; I could do nothing. I dared not give the alarm; I dared not speak, but went with her, and saw all again in a dazed, confused way, till I noticed something on the floor, which I snatched up and hid from Claire; and then the confusion was gone—driven away by the agony I felt. My God, what agony, as I read in Claire’s eyes that she believed I had done that deed!”
“She believed this of you?”
“Yes; and believes it still,” groaned the prisoner.
“But—but,” cried Fred excitedly, “what was it you snatched from the floor?”
“A knife; a knife I knew. One that I had seen before.”
“But the murderer—you saw him?”
“Plainly as I see you.”
“But you did not summon help.”
“I could not.”
“I knew you were innocent,” cried Fred excitedly. “I swore you were.”
“I am,” said the old man coldly.
“Should you know the wretch again?” panted Fred.
“Yes; too well.”
“But you did not say this at the inquest.”
“My lips were closed.”
“But, father, you do not—”
“Silence, hypocrite! Enough of this. I could not speak. I dare not tell the world the murderer was my own son.”
Fred Denville drew himself erect. His father rose from the bed, and the two men stood gazing for some minutes in each other’s eyes without a word.
It was the Master of the Ceremonies who broke the spell.
“Now,” he said, “I have spoken. It is enough. Your secret is safe with me. Go. Repent, but do not ask me to forgive you. Ask that of Heaven. I am old and broken, and can die.”
“But, father!” groaned Fred wildly, “it was not I.”
“It was my eldest son. I saw him as he struggled with me—in his uniform, and I picked up afterwards from the floor his knife—his pocket-knife that had been used to wrench open the casket of jewels. The knife with ‘RM’ on the handle. It was given to my son by the fisherman, Miggles.”
“Yes, Dick gave me that knife years ago,” said Fred, speaking like one who has received a tremendous blow. “I have not seen it since that night.”
“No,” said the old man bitterly; “it lies far out beyond the end of the pier, buried deep in sand by now.”
Fred Denville stood holding his hands pressed to his head, staring straight before him at the whitewashed wall, while neither spoke.
The silence was broken by the rattling of bolts and the turning of a key, when the gaoler threw open the door, and, without a word, the dragoon walked, or rather reeled, from the cell, as if he had taken strong drink till his senses were nearly gone.