CHAPTER LXII.
Jacob Grey in the Hampstead Fields.—The Placard.—The Reward.
The birds were singing merrily, and skimming over Jacob Gary’s head long before he awoke from the effects of the drugged wine that had been administered to him by the considerate friends he had met with. The morning sun was shining upon his pale, haggard face, lighting even it up with some appearance of less ghastliness, and yet there he lay motionless, as if dead. It is a favourite theory of dreams with some philosophers, that such visions of the fancy never occur but at the moment or two before awakening, or at the moment of losing consciousness by going to sleep, or in other words that we dream only when not fully slumbering.
It would appear that this was the case with Jacob Gray; for, as the birds sung above him, and the sun gleamed upon him, while a crow would occasionally flap his face as it flew over him, his perception appeared half to return, and his face became bedewed with a heavy perspiration, as some fearful images of his past life came across his mental vision.
His thoughts were evidently wandering back to the fearful night of the fire at the Old Smithy, and his busy fancy was enacting over again that dreadful drama of blood.
He tossed his arms wildly to and fro, and groaned and uttered the half-stifled screams which came from a disturbed stupor, in the agony of his mind.
“Save—save her,” he said. “The child of the dead! I cannot do the deed. Help, oh, help me, my heart is burning—charring in my breast.”
He then, in his intense mental suffering, bit his under lip till the blood trickled on to his breast, and with the actual pain he awoke, crying—
“Spare me—spare me! Oh, do not scorch my eye-balls so—my brain is on fire! Oh, God, have mercy—mercy—mercy.”
He opened his eyes, and the full glare of the sunlight fell upon them, blinding him for the moment. Then he opened them again, and glanced around him in speechless wonder as to where he was.
His first impression was that he was dead, and in some other world. Then he clasped his hands over his face and then tried to think. But a confusion and want of images in his brain quite rendered such an effort vain, and at length he became only alive to so horrible a sensation of thirst that he shrieked aloud,—
“Water—water—water!”
He rose to his knees, and glaring around him with his parched tongue hanging from his mouth, he saw a shining sheet of limpid water at some distance before him. Then, still gasping the word “water” he attempted to rise, but so confused was his head from the effects of the opiate that had been so unstintingly administered to him, that, after tottering a step or two, he sank to the earth again. His awful thirst was however, unbearable, and with a dizzy brow and aching eyes, he crawled on his hands and knees towards the pond.
He was long in reaching it, for he deviated from the strait track largely; but when he did, oh, what an exquisite pleasure it was to lie by the brink and dash his head in, drinking up huge quantities and causing the cold stream to bubble in his mouth and ears.
Not till his breath was exhausted did Jacob Gray raise his head from the pond, and then, when he did so, recollection returned to him up to the point when he had sat down to supper with his two suspicious friends in the court. With a cry that had something unearthly in it, he hurriedly thrust his hands into all his pockets, then with a wild shriek, he grovelled on the ground, dashing his head upon it, and clutching the grass with his hands as he cried,—
“Gone—gone—all gone—that I have toiled for—beggared, ruined, gone.”
Then he lay on his back, panting, as he looked into the clear, quiet pool before him, refecting, as it did, the face of Heaven in its glassy surface, the thought came over him of plunging in, and at once ending a life of never-ending misery.
“Is it easy to drown?” he asked himself; “or are there unknown hours of maddening torture, after we think, by the cessation of all movement, life is gone?”
He crawled towards the bank of the stream, and leaning over it, he gazed long and earnestly into its clear blue depths, it seemed miles down in the immensity of space, for now the ripples he had created had all subsided, and there was scarcely the slightest trembling of the reflected visage of the sky in the glassy stream.
Then with a shudder he withdrew, slowly.
“I dare not—I dare not,” he moaned. “It is for those of more unstained souls than mine to take the awful leap from here to eternity, and hope to be forgiven—not for me—not for me—I dare not. Yet where is now my philosophy? There is no eternity—no, no—we are all here but to play our parts in a great drama. What have I to fear? Nothing—nothing. I—I—believe in nothing.”
Oh how the abject terror depicted in his countenance belied his words. He was striving to cheat himself by the lying effusions of his own tongue, while his heart was a haven of despair.
Suddenly his attention was arrested by a man singing, as he ascended to the high ground, upon which Jacob Gray was lying. The strain was a merry one, and jarred strangely upon the half-maddened ears of Gray, who had just sufficient prudence left him to feel the necessity, in his present position, of not giving any clue to suspicion, for he felt that, in his weak and abject condition, a child might have arrested him.
He accordingly rested his head upon his arm, in as unconcerned an attitude as he could assume, and awaited the coming of the man who was now within a few paces of him. He was coarsely and roughly attired, and evidently belonged to a very low grade of society. He did not notice Jacob Gray till he apparently came full upon him, then he cried,—
“Hilloa, friend, you rise betimes. I call it over work getting up so early.”
“Yes,” said Gray, “I—I am up soon. I like the cool air of the morning.”
The man looked very earnestly at him, and Gray’s heart sunk within him at the thought that he was about to be recognised and taken. He made one effort to save himself by quietly adding,—
“It’s nothing to me to be in the fields early or late. I am well armed.”
The man stepped back a pace at this intimation, and Gray saw that whether or not the man had any criminal designs against his liberty, he had succeeded in awakening his fears.
“No offence, sir,” he said—“no offence, I hope—I’m a poor fellow, come upon business from Westminister.”
“Oh! From Westminister,” said Gray. Then he paused, and fixed an eager searching glance upon the man, who added,—
“Have you heard of the murder last night, sir, of Mr. Vaughan?”
“No,” said Gray, “I have not been in London for some time, although I have very nearly wandered out of my track.”
A clock at this moment chimed some quarters, and the man said,—
“The clock of the old church at Hampstead sounds clearly across the fields.”
“At Hampstead,” muttered Gray, gazing earnestly around him, for he was as ignorant as possible of the locality in which he rightly surmised he had been left by those who had eased him of all his wealth.
“Yes, there’s the church peeping among the tree, sir,” added the man.
“I know it well,” said Gray, “my family all lie buried in its humble graveyard.”
“Oh, indeed, sir,” said the man, and then he went with a slow step towards a tree, and taking a little tin can and a brush from his pocket, he began lathering it with paste.
Gray watched his proceedings with intense curiosity, for he could not surmise what he could possibly be about to do. All wonder and conjecture were, however, speedily set at rest, for the man took a large printed bill from his hat, and the first word that struck Jacob Gray was the awful and ominous one of “Murder” in large letters on the top.
The man pasted the bill on to the trunk of the tree carefully and evenly, and then he paused for a moment, and in a low, mumbling voice, read it.
Jacob Gray was in such a position that he could not see the smaller print of the bill with sufficient distinctness to read it. The one word at the top—murder, only came out strongly and clearly to his eyes. That the placard concerned him, he never for a moment doubted, and now his agony became intense, at the thought that the man was most probably then engaged in mentally concerning his Gray’s, personal appearance, with a description of him in the bill.
His anxiety while the man was reading became so intense, that he could neither speak nor move, and it was not until the man turned to him, and said,—
“A horrid murder, sir, it seems,” that he found breath to answer him, in a confused manner.
“Yes—yes,” he said, “a very horrid murder. Have you caught the murderer?”
“No, sir—but there’s a hundred pounds reward offered for him, and bills are being stuck all over London, and within ten miles, with a description of him.”
“Indeed,” said Gray, a violent trembling coming over him. “I am glad I am so well armed, that I hold several men’s lives in my power; so, you see, should I meet him, I am safe from him.”
The man again went back a few paces upon hearing this declaration, and said with an appearance of fright,—
“Certainly, sir—oh—of course, good morning, sir.”
“Good morning,” said Gray.
In a moment the man turned, and walk downed the hill at a pace which Jacob Gray could see he was momentarily increasing, as he placed a greater distance between them.
“He suspects me! He suspects me!” gasped Gray. “He has only gone to get assistance to capture me. Whither can I now fly? I can purchase no more safety, for I am penniless. Die I dare not—must I be taken—oh, horror—horror! The scaffold dances before my eyes, and I seem even now to hear the shouts of the multitude as I am dragged out to die.”
He shook for several moments fearfully, then with blanched lips and tottering limbs, he rose and approached the tree on which was posted the placard. For a minute or more, the letter seemed to dance before his bewildered gaze, and he could read nothing but the one word “Murder,” which appeared as it were to stand out from the paper with a supernatural distinctness.
Gradually, however, this nervous delusion vanished, and the letters arranged themselves like living things in their proper places. Jacob Gray then read the bill, which offered a reward of one hundred pounds to any one who would apprehend and lodge in any gaol the perpetrator of the murder. The placard then went on to give but an imperfect description of Gray’s person, and concluded by the name of one of the magistrates of the metropolis.
There were two things that surprised Gray in this placard. One was, that his name was not mentioned, and the other was, that no reference was made to any other real or supposed crime than the murder of the man Vaughan, in the court leading from the Strand.
Through Ada, who had so fearlessly denounced him, he had made sure that his name would become public, and that his other crime of recent date, namely, the murder of the officer Elias, in the house at Battersea, would have become known, and form as direct and distinct a charge against him as that of Vaughan, which was the least criminal act of the two. Moreover, Sir Francis Hartleton’s name did not appear to the document, which was as great a surprise to Gray as anything, for he conjectured that to him, Ada would make her first appeal for protection.
Altogether the bill tormented and puzzled Jacob Gray, and he continued gazing at it, until again the letters danced before his fevered brain, and calm reflection became lost in a whirl of contending fears.