"You will find it in the weekly paper, my dear," returned Mr. Carruthers, stretching his hand out towards the daily journal. "Meantime let's see yesterday's proceedings."
Hope had arisen in Clare's heart. Might not all her fear be unfounded, all her sufferings vain? What if the coat had not been purchased by Paul Ward at all? She tried to remember exactly what he had said in the few jesting words that had passed on the subject. Had he said he had bought it at Amherst, or only that it had been made at Amherst? By an intense effort, so distracting and painful that it made her head ache with a sharp pain, she endeavoured to force her memory to reproduce what had passed, but in vain; she remembered only the circumstance, the fatal identification of the coat. "Artists and writers," her uncle had said, in his disdainful classification, occasionally made certain odd arrangements concerning their garments unknown to the upper classes, to whom tailors and valets appertain of right; and Paul Ward was both a writer and an artist. Might he not have bought the coat from an acquaintance? Men of his class, she knew, often had queer acquaintances. The possession was one of the drawbacks of the otherwise glorious career of art and literature--people who might require to sell their coats, and be equal to doing it.
Yes there was a hope, a possibility that it might be so, and the girl seized on it with avidity. But, in a moment, the terrible recollection struck her that she was considering the matter at the wrong end. Who had bought the coat made by Evans of Amherst, and what had been its intermediate history, were things of no import. The question was, in whose possession was it when the unknown man was murdered. Had Paul Ward dined with him at the Strand Tavern? Was Paul Ward the man whom the waiter could undertake to identify, in London? If so--and the terrible pang of the conviction that so, indeed, it was, returned to her with redoubled force from the momentary relief of the doubt--the danger was in London, not there at Amherst; from the waiter, not from Evans. Distracted between the horror, overwhelming to the innocent mind of the young girl, to whom sin and crime had been hitherto dim and distant phantoms, of such guilt attaching itself to the image which she had set up for the romantic worship of her girlish heart, and the urgent terrified desire which she felt that, however guilty, he might escape--nay, the more firmly she felt convinced that he must be guilty, the more ardently she desired it,--Clare Carruthers's gentle breast was rent with such unendurable torture as hardly any after happiness could compensate for or efface. All this time Mr. Carruthers was reading the newspaper, and at length he laid it down, and was about to address Clare, when the footman entered the room, and informed him that Mr. Evans, the tailor, from Amherst, wished to be permitted to speak to him as soon as convenient. With much more alacrity than he usually displayed, Mr. Carruthers desired that Evans should be shown into the library, and declared his intention of going to speak to him immediately.
"I have no doubt, Clare, that he has come about this business," said Mr. Carruthers, when the servant had left the room. With this consolatory assurance he left her to herself. She snatched up the newspaper, and read a brief account of the proceedings of the previous day--the close of the inquest, and some indignant remarks upon the impunity with which so atrocious a crime had, to all appearance, been committed; which wound up with a supposition that this murder was destined to be included in the number of those mysteries whose impenetrability strengthened the hand of the assassin, and made our police system the standing jest of continental nations. How ardently she hoped, how nearly she dared to pray, that it might indeed be so!
She lingered in the breakfast-room, waiting for her uncle's return. The restlessness, the uncertainty of misery, were upon her; she dreaded the sight of every one, and yet she feared solitude, because of the thoughts, the convictions, the terrors, which peopled it. Three letters lay on the table still unopened; and when Clare looked at them, she found they were addressed to Mrs. Carruthers, and that two of the three were from America. The postmark on each was New York, and on one were stamped the words, "Too late."
"She is too ill to read any letters now, or even to be told there are any," thought Clare. "I had better put them away, or ask my uncle to do so."
She was looking at the third letter, which was from George Dallas; but she had never seen his writing, to her knowledge; and the two words, which he had written on the slip of paper she had seen, being a Christian and surname, afforded her no opportunity of recognizing it as that of Paul Ward; when Mr. Carruthers returned, looking very pompous and fussy.
"I shall communicate with the Home Office immediately," he began. "This is very important. Evans has been here to tell me he has read all the proceedings at the inquest, and the waiter's description of the suspected individual tallies precisely with his own recollection of the purchaser of the coat."
"But, uncle," said Clare, with quick intelligence, "you told me the man's evidence and Evans's description were as vague as possible. Indeed, I was quite struck by what you said: 'A description that describes nothing' were your words. And don't you remember telling me how frequently you had observed in your magisterial capacity that these people never could be depended on to give an accurate account of an impression or a circumstance? And how you have told me that it was one of the chief distinctions between the educated and uneducated mind, that only the former could comprehend the real value and meaning of evidence? Depend on it, Evans has no new ground for his conviction. He has been reading the papers, and thinking over the importance of being mixed up in the matter, until he has persuaded himself into this notion. Don't you recollect that is just what you said you were sure he would do?"
Mr. Carruthers did not remember anything of the kind, nor did Clare. But the girl was progressing rapidly in the lessons which strong emotion teaches, and which add years of experience to hours of life. Instinctively she took advantage of the weakness of her uncle's character, which she comprehended without acknowledging. Mr. Carruthers had no objection to the imputation of superior sagacity conveyed in Clare's remark, and accepted the suggestion graciously; he was particularly pleased to learn that he had drawn that acute distinction between the educated and uneducated mind. It was like him, he thought: he was not a man on whom experience was wasted.