Volume Two—Chapter Nineteen.
The Verdict.
“How is she now, dear Mrs Luttrell—how is she now?” Miss Heathery looked up from out of the handkerchief in which her face was being constantly buried, and it would have been hard to say which was the redder, eyes or nose.
Poor Mrs Luttrell, who had come trembling down from the bed-room, caught at her friend’s arm, and seemed to stay herself by it, as she said piteously:
“I can’t bear it, my dear; I can’t bear it. I was obliged to come down for a few minutes.”
“My poor dear,” whispered little Miss Heathery, who, excluded from the bed-room, passed her time in hot water that she shed, and that she used to make the universal panacea for woe—a cup of tea—one she administered to all in turn.
“You seem so overcome, you poor dear,” she whispered; and, helping Mrs Luttrell to the couch, she poured out a cup of tea for her with kindliest intent, but the trembling mother waved it aside.
“She begged me so, my dear, I was obliged to come out of the room. The doctor says it would be madness; and it is all Thisbe and he can do to keep her lying down. What am I to say to you for giving you all this trouble?”
The tears were running fast down Miss Heathery’s yellow cheeks, as she took Mrs Luttrell’s grey head to her bony breast.
“Don’t! don’t! don’t!” she sobbed. “What have I ever done that you should only think me a fine-weather friend? If I could only tell you how glad I am to be able to help dear Millicent, but I can’t.”
“Heaven bless you!” whispered Mrs Luttrell, clinging to her—glad to cling to some one in her distress; “you have been a good friend indeed!”
Just then the stairs creaked slightly, and Thisbe, looking very hard and grim, came into the room.
“How is she, Thisbe?” cried Miss Heathery in a quick whisper.
Thisbe shook her head.
“Seems to be dozing a little now, miss; but she keeps asking for the news.”
“Poor dear! poor dear!” sobbed Miss Heathery, with more tears running slowly down her face, to such an extent that if there had been any one to notice, he or she would have wondered where they all came from, and have then set it down to the tea.
“Sit down, Thisbe,” sighed Mrs Luttrell, “you must be worn out.”
“Poor soul! yes,” said Miss Heathery, and pouring out a fresh cup, she took it to where Thisbe—who had not been to bed for a week, watching, as she had been, by Millicent’s couch—was sitting on the edge of a chair.
“There, drink that, Thisbe,” said Miss Heathery. “You’re a good, good soul!”
As she bent forward and kissed the hard-looking woman’s face, Thisbe stared half wonderingly at her, and took the cup. Then her hard face began to work, she tried to sip a little tea, choked, set down the cup, and hurried sobbing from the room.
For Millicent Hallam, strong in her determination to help her husband, had had to lean on Thisbe’s arm as they returned from Sir Gordon’s house that day. When she reached Miss Heathery’s house she was compelled to lie down on the couch. An hour later she began to talk wildly, and when her father was hastily summoned she was in a high state of fever.
This, with intervals of delirium and calmness, had gone on ever since, up to the day of Robert Hallam’s trial.
On the previous night, as Millicent lay holding her child to her breast—the little thing having been brought at her wish, to bound to the bedside and bury her flushed, half-frightened face in her mother’s bosom—a soft tap had come to the door below.
Millicent’s hearing, during the intervals of the fever and delirium, was preternaturally keen, and she turned to her mother.
“It is Mr Bayle!” she said, in a hoarse whisper. “I know now. I understand all. It is to-morrow. I want to know. Ask him.”
“Ask him what, my darling? But pray be calm. Remember what your father said.”
“Yes, yes, I remember; but ask him. No; of course he must be there. Tell Christie Bayle to come to me directly it is over—and bring my husband. Directly, mind. You will tell him?”
“Yes, yes, my darling,” said Mrs Luttrell, with her face working as she moved towards the door.
“Stop, mother!” cried Millicent. “Hush! lie still, Julie; mamma is not cross with you. Mother, tell Christie Bayle to bring me the news of the trial the moment it is over. I can trust him. He will,” she said to herself with a smile, as her mother left the room, and delivered the message to him who was below.
He left soon after, sick at heart, to join Sir Gordon, and together they took their places in the coach, the only words that passed being:
“How is she, Bayle?”
“In the Great Physician’s hands,” was the reply. “Man’s skill is nothing here.”
And she of whom they spoke lay listening to the cheery notes of the guard’s horn, the trampling of the horses, and the rattle of the wheels, as the coach rolled away, with James Thickens outside, thinking of the horrors of passing the night in a strange bed, in a strange town, and wishing the troubles of this case of Hallam’s at an end.
The next morning Millicent Hallam insisted upon rising and dressing, to go over to Lindum and be present at the trial.
All opposition only irritated her, and at last Thisbe was summoned to the room.
“I shall be just outside,” whispered the doctor. “It is better than fighting against her.”
In less than five minutes he was once more by his child’s side, trying to bring her back from the fainting fit in which she had fallen back upon the bed, for she had learned her weakness, and her utter impotence to take such a journey upon an errand like that.
And then the weary day had crept on, with the delirium sometimes seizing upon the tottering brain, and then a time of comparative coolness supervening.
Dr Luttrell looked serious, and told himself that he was in doubt.
“The bad news will kill her,” he said to himself, as he went outside to walk up and down Miss Heathery’s garden, which was fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide, “but very secluded,” as its owner often said.
There, with bare head and wrinkled brow, the doctor walked up and down, stopping, from habit, now and then to pinch off a dead leaf, or give a twist to one of the scarlet runners that had slipped from its string.
The night at last; and the doctor was sitting by the bedside, having sent Mrs Luttrell down, and then Thisbe, both utterly worn out and unhinged.
Millicent was, as Thisbe had said, dozing; but the fever was high, and Dr Luttrell shook his grey head.
“Who’d have thought, my poor flower,” he said, “that your young life would be blighted like this!”
He could hardly bear his suffering, and, rising from his chair, he stole softly into the back room, where Julia was sleeping calmly, the terrible trouble affecting her young heart only for the minute, and then passing away.
The old man bent down and kissed the sleeping face, and, as her custom was, Julia’s little arms went softly up and clasped the neck of him who pressed her soft cheek, and fell away again, heavy with sleep.
“He will come and tell me the truth.”
The words fell clearly on the doctor’s ear as he was re-entering the sick-room, but Millicent lay apparently sound asleep in the little white dimity-hung bed of Miss Heathery’s best room, while the soft murmur of voices came from below.
Millicent’s words were those of truth, for the moment the trial was over Christie Bayle had rushed out, and sprung into the post-chaise he had had in waiting, and for which changes of horses were harnessed at the three towns they would have to pass through to reach King’s Castor, over thirty miles away, and as fast as horses urged by man could go over the rough cross-road, that post-chaise was being hurried along.
The night was settling down dark as the first pair of steaming horses were taken out, and a couple of country candles were lit in the battered lamps. Then on and on, uphill slowly, down the far slope at a good gallop, with the chaise dancing and swaying about on its C-springs, and time after time the whole affair nearly being thrown over upon its side.
“It’s too dark to go so fast, sir,” remonstrated the wheeler postboy, as Bayle leaned his head out of the window to urge him on.
“Ten shillings a-piece, man. It’s for life or death,” cried Bayle; and the whips cracked, and the horses plunged into their collars, as the hedges on either side seemed to fly by like a couple of blurred lines.
“I must get up now, father,” said Millicent suddenly.
“My child, no, it is impossible. You remember this morning?”
“My dressing-gown,” she said in a low, decided voice. “Thisbe will carry me down.”
“No, no,” said Dr Luttrell decidedly. “You must obey me, child.”
“Dear father,” she whispered, “if I lie here in the agony of suspense I shall die. I must go down.”
“But why, my child?”
“Why,” she said. “Do you think I could bear any one else to hear his news but me?”
It was in vain to object, and in the belief that he was doing more wisely by giving way, Dr Luttrell summoned Thisbe, and, with Mrs Luttrell’s help, the suffering woman was partially dressed and borne down to the sitting-room. She bore the change wonderfully, and lay there very still and patient, waiting for the next two hours. The fever had greatly abated, and she listened, her eyes half-closed, as if in the full confidence that the news for which she hungered would not be long.
Thisbe and Miss Heathery had stolen out into the kitchen to sit and talk in whispers as, one by one, the last sounds in the town died out. The shutters here and there had long been rattled up. The letter-carriers from the villages round had all come in, and only a footfall now and then broke the silence of the little town.
Ten o’clock had struck, and Doctor and Mrs Luttrell exchanged glances, the former encouraging his wife with a nod, for Millicent seemed to be asleep. A quarter-past ten was chimed by the rickety clock in the old stone tower, and the only place now where there was any sign of business was up at the “George,” where lamps burned inside and out, and the ostlers brought out two pairs of well-clothed horses ready for the coach that would soon be through. By-and-by there was the rattle of wheels and the cheery notes of a horn, but they did not wake Millicent, who still seemed to sleep, while there was a little noise of trampling hoofs, the banging of coach doors, a few shouts, a cheery “All right!” and then the horses went off at a trot, the wheels rattled, and the lamps of the mail shone through the drawn-down blind. Then the sounds died away; all was still, and the clock chimed half-past. As the last tones throbbed and hummed in the still night air, Millicent suddenly stirred, sat up quickly, and pressed back her hair from her face.
“Help me! The chair!” she said hoarsely.
“Yes,” said the doctor, in answer to Mrs Luttrell’s look; and with very little aid Millicent left the couch, gathered her dressing-gown round her, and sat back listening.
“He will soon be here,” she said softly, and she bowed her head upon her breast.
She was right, for the horses were tearing over the ground in the last mile of the last stage, with Christie Bayle almost as breathless, as he sat back pale with excitement, and trembling for the news he had to impart. At the end of the trial and in his desire to keep his word, all had seemed strange and confused. He could feel nothing but that he had to get back to King’s Castor and tell her all. It was her command. But now that he was rapidly nearing home, the horror of his position began to weigh him down, and he felt ready to shrink from his duty, but all the time there was a sensation as if something was urging him on, fast as the horses seemed to fly.
The miles had seemed leagues before. This last seemed not a quarter its length; for there was the mill, there Thickens’s cottage, there the great draper’s, the market-place, the “George,” before which the horses were checked covered with foam.
With the feeling still upon him that he could not bear this news, and that it should have been brought by Sir Gordon, who had refused to come, he ran across to Miss Heathery’s house, and when he reached the door, it was opened. He stepped in and it was closed by Mrs Luttrell, who was trembling like a leaf.
“Come here! quick!”
Bayle knew and yet did not recognise the voice, it was so changed; but, as in a dream, he went past the little candlestick on the passage bracket, and in at the open parlour-door, where the light of the shaded globe lamp fell upon Millicent’s pale face.
“Father! mother!” she said quickly. “Leave us. I must hear the news alone!”
The doctor’s eyes sought Bayle’s, but his face was contracted as he stood there, hat and cloak in hand, pale as if from a sick-bed and his eyes closed.
Then he and Millicent were alone, and, as if stung by some agonising mental pang, he said wildly:
“No, no! Your father—mother! Let me tell them.” Millicent rose slowly, and laid her hand upon his arm.
“You bear me news of my husband,” she said, in an unnaturally calm voice. “I know: it is the worst!” He made no reply, but looked at her beseechingly. “I can bear it now,” she said, shivering like one whom pain had ended by numbing against further agony. “I see it is the worst; he is condemned!” There was a faint smile upon her lips as he caught her hands in his.
“You forced me to this,” he said hoarsely, “and you will hate me more for giving you this pain.”
“No,” she said, speaking in the same unnaturally calm, strained manner. “No: for I have misjudged you, Christie Bayle. Boy and man, you were always true to me. And—and—he is condemned?”
His eyes alone spoke, and then she tottered as if she would have fallen, but he caught her, and placed her in a chair.
“Yes: I know—I knew it must be,” she said with her eyes half-closed. “Every one will know now!”
“Let me call your father in?” he whispered.
“No: not yet. I have something to say,” she murmured almost in a whisper. “If—I die—my little child—Christie Bayle? She—she loves you!”
Millicent Hallam’s eyes filled up the gaps in her feeble speech, and Christie Bayle read her wish as if it had been sounded trumpet-tongued in his ears.
“Yes; I understand. I will,” he said in a voice that was more convincing than if he had spoken on oath.
By that time the news which the postboys had caught as it ran from lip to lip, before Christie Bayle could force his way through the crowd at Lindum assize court, was flashing, as such news can flash through a little inquisitive town like Castor, and, almost at the same moment as Christie Bayle made his promise, old Gemp stumbled into Gorringe’s shop to point at him and pant out:
“Transportation for life!”