Volume Three—Chapter Twenty.
Under Pressure.
“Father, I am nearly mad with grief and horror. I come to you for help—for comfort. What shall I do?” cried Claire, sinking upon her knees before him on her next visit to the prison.
“What comfort can I give you, child?”
“Oh, father, dear father, were not our sufferings enough that this other trouble should come upon us? Fred—”
“Yes, tell me of him,” cried the old man excitedly. “Is he very bad?”
“Dangerously wounded, father. And this story of his! They believe it, father; what shall I do?”
“Do, my child?”
“They will take him and punish him for the crime. I fear they will, for he persists that it was he.”
“And you would save him and let me die,” said the old man bitterly.
“No, no. Don’t, pray don’t, speak like that, father. Think of what I must feel. I’d lay down my life to save you both, but it seems so horrible that my brother should die for that of which he is innocent.”
The old man wrested himself from her grasp, and paced the cell like some caged wild creature, seeking to be free.
“I cannot bear it,” he exclaimed. “Heaven help me for a wretched weak man. Why has this complication come to tempt me? Claire, I would have died—without a murmur, without a word, but this dangling before me the means of escape is too much. Yesterday, I did not fear death. To-day, I am a coward. I see before me the hideous beam, the noosed rope, the executioner, and the hooting crowd, hungry to see me strangled to death, and I fear it, I tell you, for the hope of life has begun to burn strongly again now that Fred has spoken as he has.”
“Father!”
“Yes; you shrink from me, but you do not know. Claire, I speak to you as I could speak to none else, for you have known so much from the beginning. You know how I have suffered.”
“Yes, yes,” she said mournfully.
“You know how I have shrunk and writhed in spirit to see you loathe me as you have, and look upon me as something unutterably base and vile. Have I not suffered a very martyrdom?”
“Yes, father, yes,” sighed Claire.
“And heaven knows I would not have spoken. I would have gone boldly to the scaffold, and died, a sacrifice for another’s crime. But now that he has confessed—now that he denounces himself, and I see life before me once again, the desire to live comes so strongly to this poor weak creature that my lips seem to be unsealed, and I must—I must have your love, Claire, as of old.”
“Father!” cried Claire with a horrified look, as if she doubted his reason.
“Yes, you are startled; you wonder at me, but, Claire, my child, had I gone to the gallows it would have been as a martyr, as a father dying for his son’s crime. Claire, my child, I am an innocent man.”
“Father!”
“Yes,” he cried, “innocent. You never had cause to shrink from me; and while a thousand times you wrung my heart, I said to myself, ‘You must bear it. You cannot retain her love and win your safety by accusing your son.’”
“Father, you rave,” cried Claire. “This hope of escape has made you grasp at poor Fred’s weak self-accusation. You would save yourself at the expense of the life of your own child.”
“Did I accuse him of the murder, Claire?”
“No, not till now; and oh, father, it is monstrous.”
“Did he not accuse himself, stung by conscience after seeing me here?”
“It is not true. He could not have done such a thing.”
“Indeed!” said Denville bitterly; “and yet I saw him leave the bedside, and stand with the jewel-casket in his hand. I say so to you, for I cannot bear it, child. Let them kill me if they will. Let them save my son; but let me, my child, let me go to my grave with the knowledge that you believe me true and innocent, and that I bore all that my son might live.”
“Then you will not denounce him?”
“I? To save myself! No, though I would live. You do not believe me innocent, my child. You think me a murderer.”
“Father, I believe you were beside yourself with your troubles, and that you were going to take those jewels when you were interrupted, and, in a fit of madness, did this deed to save yourself and children from disgrace.”
“Claire, Claire,” groaned the old man, “if you—if you only could have believed in me, I could have borne all, but you turn from me. Will you not believe in me? Have you not realised my self-sacrifice?”
“Oh, father, what can I say—what can I do?” cried Claire. “Do you not see my position? Can I think of my poor brother now as the guilty man?”
“No,” he said, taking her in his arms, and trying to soothe her in her agonised grief; “it is too much to ask you, my child. It is too much for such a one as you to be called upon to even think of. I will not press you, Claire; neither will I ask you to forgive me. I could not do that now. Only try to think of me as innocent. I ask you once more, my darling; I ask you once more.”
Claire threw her arms round his neck and drew his head down to her bosom.
“I am your child,” she whispered softly. “Father dear, good-bye—good-bye.”
“So soon?” muttered Denville. “Yes; good-bye—good-bye.”
He held her hand till she was half through the door; and then, as it was closed, he tottered back to his seat, and once more sank down to bury his face within his hands.