CHAPTER LXVII.
The Disappointment.—The Last Resource.—A Strange Meeting.—The Confession.
The clocks were striking ten as Jacob Gray came within sight of Learmont’s house, and then so strongly did all his former fears regarding the possible results of his interview with the squire came across him, that it was many minutes before he could summon courage to ascend the steps of the mansion. There was, however, no other course; and, although his fears were of a nature rather to be increased than diminished, by the feverish nature of his reflection, he reluctantly at length slunk up the steps and knocked at the door, for at that hour it was always closed.
The few moments of suspense till the door was opened were agonising to Jacob Gray in the extreme, and all his former faintness, and some of exhaustion came over him as the ponderous portal opened, and a servant stood in the gap and demanded his business.
“You know me?” said Gray.
The man looked at him doubtingly, for what with his wounds, and the pain, misery, and anxiety, he had gone through, he was sufficiently altered to make his recognition doubtful for a moment, even to those who had seen him often. A second look, however, let the servant know that he had seen him before as one of his master’s very mysterious visitors, and he replied—
“Yes, sir, I do know you.”
“Tell your master I am here.”
“He is not within.”
“Not within,”
“No, sir. We do not expect him home to-night; he has gone to a party at the Earl of Harrowdon’s, in the Palace-yard.”
Gray stood for a moment leaning for support against the door-post—then by a strong effort he spoke—
“Thank you—I—I will call to-morrow,” and he descended the steps stupified and bewildered by the cross accidents that seemed to conspire against him.
He heard the door closed behind him, and he walked on mechanically for about a hundred yards, when he sat down upon the step of a door, and leaning his face upon his hands, he nearly gave himself up to despair.
“What could he do?—What resource was open to him?—Where could he go for food and shelter? A starving fugitive!—With a price set upon his capture. Could there be yet a degree of horror, and misery beyond what he now endured?”
“Yes—yes,” he suddenly said, “I—I can beg. Till to-morrow I can beg a few pence to save me from absolute starvation; but, yet that is a fearful risk, for by so doing I shall challenge the attention of the passers by, instead of evading it. I cannot starve; though I must beg—if it be but a few pence to keep me alive until the morning.”
Jacob Gray’s appearance was certainly very much in favour of any tale of distress he might relate for the purpose of moving the charitable to pity and benevolence. A more miserable and woebegone wretch could scarcely have been found within the bills of mortality.
The first person upon whom Jacob Gray made an attempt in the begging way was a man who was slowly sauntering past, enveloped in a rich and handsome coat, but the moment he heard Gray say,—
“I am starving,” he drew his cloak closer around him, as if by so doing he shut out his appeal to humanity, and hurried on at a rapid pace.
Gray had not been begging long enough to have learnt humility, and the bitter curses he muttered after the man with the cloak would have made his hair stand on end, had he have heard them.
As he was then upon the point of rising from the step, and crawling to some more public thoroughfare, in which he might have a more extended sphere of operation, a strange wild noise smote his ears, and he drew back into the shadow of the doorway with a feeling of alarm.
The sound seemed to approach from the further end of the street, and now he could distinguish a voice addressing some one in imploring tones, which were replied to by a harsh voice. The words spoken Gray could not distinguish, but a strange presentiment came over him that he was somehow connected with the persons approaching, or the subject matter of their discourse.
Back—back—he shrunk into the doorway, until he was completely hidden in the shadow of the house.
The disputants rapidly approached, and then he could hear the rougher voice exclaim,—
“There is no harm meant you. You are a foolish woman. I tell you, over and over again, that you are wanted for your own good.”
“Murderer, away, away!” cried a voice that struck to the heart of Jacob Gray, for he knew it to be the woman he had seen at the public-house by Vauxhall, when he ran so narrow a chance of capture by Sir Francis Hartleton.
“Will you come quietly?” cried the man.
“No—no—not with you,” cried Maud, “not with you. Look at your hands, man, are they not dyed deeply with blood? Ha! Ha! Ha! You shrink now. No—no—Maud will not go with you; but I will tell you a secret. Listen—do you know Andrew Britton, the savage smith?”
“No, nor don’t want,” said the man. “Come now, listen to reason, Sir Francis Hartleton wants to see you particularly.”
“Aye, aye!” said Maud, “that’s a fine device. Tell me where the child is, will you?”
“Come now,—it ain’t far,” said the man. “Here have I been hunting all over London for you nearly a day and half now, and when I find you, you won’t come. I tell you Sir Francis means to do something for you.”
“Can he restore the dead?”
“Not exactly.”
“Ah! Ah! Ah! He can—he can. So now I know you are no messenger of his. You come from Andrew Britton,—why? To kill me; but it is of no use—of no use, I tell you. You, and he, and everybody know well that he is to die before I do.”
Maud now laid hold of the rails of the house and resolutely refused to move. The man spoke in a perplexed tone as he said,—
“Come—come now, don’t be foolish. I must get some help to take you, whether you like it or not, if you won’t come now quietly.”
“Beware,” said Maud.
The man gave a start, as the poor creature showed him the glittering blade of a knife she had concealed in her bosom. There was a pause of a few minutes, and then Gray heard the man say,—
“Very well. Just as you like, I always look after number one first, and I’ll be hanged if I have anything more to do with you.”
Maud laughed hysterically as she sat down upon the step, and still kept a clutch upon the iron rail.
“Foiled! Foiled!” she exclaimed. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Tell him it is in vain. He may hunt me, but it is written in the book of the Eternal, that Britton, the savage smith of Learmont, is to die before I. Go—go. Ha! Ha! Ha! You will never wash the blood stains out. Never—never—never!”
The man made no answer, but walked away at a very rapid pace, no doubt for the purpose of procuring some assistance; for he was an officer who had been ordered by Sir Francis Hartleton to seek for the poor deserted creature, and bring her to him, when he would take measures for placing her in some asylum where she would be free from any violence on the part of Andrew Britton, should he accidentally meet with her.
Maud continued to mutter in a low tone after the man had left, but Gray could not closely distinguish what she said, and he remained for some time perfectly quiet, resolving in his mind what he should do. As he communed with himself the deadly spirit of revenge against all whom he imagined to be in any way accessary to producing his present destitute state came over him, and he ground his teeth as he muttered,—
“I could kill them all. I could exult in their agonies. I will, I must have revenge. This hag was the cursed cause of all the horrors I have been compelled to wade through, and shall I now suffer her to escape, now that she is in my power?”
He cast a rapid glance up and down the street as he added,—
“And no one by. Oh? That I had some weapon that silently and surely would do its work, and leave her here a corpse. She shall be one offered on the altar of my revenge! I must, I will work the destruction of them all, and she will be the—the first.”
A deathly languor came over Jacob Gray even as he spoke, and he groaned audibly.
Maud started at the sound, and turning she fixed her eyes upon his dusky form as it lay hid in the shadow of the doorway, from which, for more than a minute his extreme weakness would not permit him to move.
“What man are you?” cried Maud. “You groan—wherefore? Have you lost all you loved?”
“I have,” said Gray, with a groan, as he thought of his money.
Maud crept up the steps till she came close to him, and then laying her shrivelled hand upon his arm, she said,—
“I know you now—I know you.”
“Know me?” faltered Gray, making an effort to pass her on the steps.
“Yes. Where, and how, and when we meet I shall soon think, but I know you.”
Gray felt a little alarmed at this speech, and he replied,—
“You are mistaken, I am poor and destitute. We have never meet before.”
“Poor and destitute? Hast ever felt the pang of hunger as I have?”
“I feel them now.”
Maud opened a wallet she had with her, and took some broken victuals from it, which she laid before Gray, saying,—
“Eat—eat—and I will think the while where I have met you.”
He needed no second invitation, but devoured the not very tempting viands before him, with an eagerness that could leave no doubt of the truth of his statement concerning his hunger.
Maud passed her hands several times across her brow as she said,—
“I know you, yet I know you not. Did you ever hear of a murder?”
“No,” said Gray.
“Done with such a thing as this?”
She half produced the knife as she spoke, and Gray immediately said with eagerness,—
“Give me that!”
Maud drew back, and fixed her wild eye upon him as she said,—
“Are you a man of blood? Let me see your hands. Are they stained with innocent gore, or free from the damning pollution that begrimes the fool, and drags it shrieking to despair. Answer me man. Saw ye ever the Old Smithy?”
“Give me the knife and I will tell you.”
“Yes, the knife! He is eager for the knife, who knows its use. Answer me: saw ye the fire—yes, the fire—when was it? Yesternight?”
“What fire?”
“In a house where dwelt an angel, I knew ’twas that—Yes! Ha! Ha! Ha! And there was a body too that would not burn. There it lay black and cold, untouched amidst the charred fragments of the house. I—I have been there to look for the angel, but she has flown up to her native skies, with not a downy feather of her radiant wings touched by the gross element.”
“You, you have been to the house?” stammered Gray.
“I have! You knew it? It lies near sweet green fields, and the merry birds mock you as you go it. Listen, and I will tell you what I did. The early dawn was brightening, and old and young with jests and laughter, and mingling voices, went to see the ruins of the ancient house.”
“And you went?”
“I did. Then some bright spades and hatchets, and they dug for the body of a murdered man. Pile after pile of the blackened rubbish was removed, and then one said,—‘he must be burnt to a cinder,’ but I knew he would be found, no murdered body was ever yet all burnt. The murderer himself has often tried thus to dissipate in the ashes of his victim, all traces of his awful crime, but Heaven will not have it so.”
Gray clutched to the railings for support as he said,—
“Nonsense—I—I know better.”
“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed Maud. “I cannot see well the working of your face, but your voice belies your words. The man was found.”
“Well, well. It is nothing to me.”
“They said he had been shot,” continued Maud, “and that he must have died in lingering agony. I saw them bring him forth—not a thread of his garments—not a hair of his head—was touched by those flames that had destroyed all else.”
“Well—well,” said Gray, “I don’t want to hear more. Will you give me the knife?”
Maud had kept her hand upon the handle of the weapon, and Gray had found no opportunity of taking her by surprise, or he would have made an endeavour to destroy the poor creature, upon whose head the chastening hand of Providence had fallen so heavily. A direct attack upon her he dared not make, for first of all he could not trust his present weak state to the chances of a struggle even with her, and secondly, such was not Jacob Gray’s way of doing things.
“Will you give me the knife?” he repeated.
“No!” said Maud. “I’m keeping it for Andrew Britton.”
“Indeed?”
“I am—I am.”
“If I thought you would use it on Andrew Britton,” muttered Gray, “I would not take it from you for a hundred pounds.”
“Listen—listen, I have not told you all,” said Maud.
“All what?”
“About the fire. You shall hear—all who went there from many motives, left the smoking mass before the sun was at its topmost height in Heaven—but I stayed.”
“Why did you stay?”
“I thought the angel might come to me, but she did not. I prayed for her to come near again, and show me her pale and beautiful face, but she did not. I wept, but she came not, and then I thought I might find something that should ever remind me of her. And I did—I did.”
“You did?“
“Aye.”
“What—what—found you? Tell me, woman.”
“Twas very strange that I should find them there,” said Maud thoughtfully.
“Find what?”
“Where the murdered man had lain there was no trace of fire. The flames had burned round, but touched him not, there I found them.”
“Woman, tell me what you found, or—”
“Or what?” cried. Maud, her eyes flashing upon the cowardly Gray, who immediately shrunk back, saying,—
“Nothing—I—want nothing. Only I am anxious to know what you found.”
“You are? Well, well, I found some of these. Here is one.”
As she spoke, she took from her breast a small torn scrap of paper and gazed at it attentively.
In an instant Gray surmised the truth. In his attempt to get rid of his written confession while standing on the ladder, previous to the murder of Elias, he had dropped many pieces, and then in the exciting scenes that followed utterly forgotten them. Once indeed, while in the tree on Hampstead Heath, he remembered the circumstance, but then he immediately assumed that they had been burnt along with the house.
He now trembled in every limb, as the thought came over him, that possibly the poor mad creature might have collected sufficient of the torn pieces to give Sir Francis Hartleton a tangible idea of the whole; and although he felt that, next thing to his life, was the repossession of those torn scraps, he was so overcome by the circumstance of their thus coming to light, that for a few moments he thought he should have fainted.
Maud, meanwhile spread out the small crumpled pieces of paper in her hand, and commenced reading in a low muttering voice, “Andrew Britton”—“the temptation”—“a double murder”—“shrieking”—“the child”—“guilt—”
“Ha! Ha! Brave words, brave words!” she cried. “Murder and guilt, and Andrew Britton’s name of course; where there is murder and guilt, there must be Andrew Britton.”
Gray slowly prepared himself for action. He cast a wary eye around him, but no one was visible. Then he drew himself up to make a rush upon Maud, when he heard a voice some distance from the street say loudly,—
“Faster, I say, faster. Who’d be a king if he couldn’t be carried as quick as he likes? On, I say, or I’ll be the death of some of you.”
“Andrew Britton!” shrieked Maud, and she bounded from the step and ran down the street with amazing fleetness.
Jacob Gray sunk back against the door with a deep groan.