Meanwhile the verdict at the inquest had gone forth and done its work; and Hugh Atherton was fully committed for trial next sessions at the Old Bailey. These were to take place early in November, and the thought of how terribly short a time was left till then filled us with a fearful, heart-sickening dread lest all, upon which hung the issues of life or death, could not be accomplished in so little space. True that a respite [{739}] might be asked, and the trial postponed until the following sessions; but upon what plea could the request be preferred? Some evidence not yet forthcoming. What evidence could we hope for? upon what future revelation could we rely? At present there was nothing, absolutely nothing, but our vague conjectures, our blind belief in the acuteness of the police officers whom we were employing.
And Ada Leslie, what of her? Every day, and twice a day, I went to Hyde-Park Gardens, sometimes with Merrivale, sometimes alone, repeating every detail, every minute particular, every circumstance, and going though everything with her said or done by each one concerned. It seemed to be her only comfort and support, after that better and higher consolation promised to the weary and heavy-laden, and which both she and Hugh knew well how to seek.
"Tell me all," she would say--"the good and bad. I can bear it better if I know nothing is kept back. To deceive me would be no real kindness; and who has a better right to know everything than I, who am part of himself? We shall be man and wife soon, in the sight of God and the world, and then nothing can separate us in other men's minds: but till then I am truly and faithfully one with him; and what touches him touches me, only infinitely more because it is for him. Don't you know what the idyl says about the fame and shame being mine equally if his? But better and holier words still have been spoken, and I say them often to myself now when I think of the time which is coming: 'They two shall be one flesh.'"
Strangely enough, though fully conscious of Atherton's danger, of the awful position in which he stood, she never seemed to take count for one instant that the simple plea of innocence on his part, and the belief of it on ours, would not weigh one feather's weight in the heavy balance of evidence against him.
Since my encounter with Mrs. Leslie, that lady and I had been cold and distant, conversing the least possible within our power, and avoiding one another by mutual consent. But one thing I noted, that come when I would, early or late, with news or without, alone or accompanied by Merrivale, whose visits seemed a great comfort to Ada, Lister Wilmot was certain to have forestalled me, and given in his version, either personally or by letter, of whatever had happened. And I found the effect of this was, that Mrs. Leslie was speaking of Hugh as guilty, though "poor Lister still persists in trying to think him innocent;" and was publishing about wherever she could that I had volunteered to give evidence against him. Ada took a different view of Wilmot's conduct.
"I think, guardian, that Lister is almost mad," she said one day. "He talks quite wildly sometimes to me. We never thought he had a very clear head; and now he seems to be so incoherent and contradictory in all he says, and this confuses mamma, and makes her get wrong notions about it all. But he is so kind and good to me now. Once I thought he didn't like me; but he is quite changed now."
On the Saturday she was allowed to see Hugh, now lodged in Newgate Prison. She went with Wilmot and her mother; but she saw him alone, with only the warder present. Contrary to my expectations, she was calmer and happier, if one can use such a word, knowing all the anguish of the heart, than before. They had mutually strengthened and comforted each other. She repeated to me a great deal of what passed when I saw her in the evening; but she never said one word of what had passed about myself; she never brought me any message; and when I asked her if Hugh had expressed a wish to see me, she only replied, "No, he thinks it is best not--at least at present." The same reply came through [{740}] Merrivale, who seemed puzzled by it; the same through Lister Wilmot, who was offensively regretful for me. I could not bear it, and I gave utterance to the pent-up feeling which raged within me. I told him that none of his meddling was needed between myself and Hugh Atherton, and I hinted that the rôle he had taken upon himself to play now would before many days were over be changed in a very unpleasant manner. A covert sneer curled his thin lips, and there was an evil light in his eyes, as he replied that he was not afraid of any plot that might be hatched against him, and he could make excuses for my excited feelings "As to myself," he concluded, "I am prepared for everything. "
Tuesday, the day appointed for the burial of Gilbert Thorneley, at last arrived; and those invited to attend assembled for the time in Wimpole street to pay their tribute of homage to the man who had swept his master's office in his youth, and died worth more than a million of money in the Funds. They flocked thither at the bid of his nephew and reported heir; his comrades on 'change, his compeers in wealth, his fellow-citizens; those men who had passed through the same evolutions of barter and exchange, of tare and tret, of selling out and buying in, of all that busy tumult of money-making in which the dead man lying in his silver-plated coffin upstairs, and covered by the handsome velvet pall, had borne his share even to the fullest. For Wilmot had given orders for the funeral to be conducted on a scale befitting the magnificence of the fortune which his uncle left behind him; and the management of the affair had been placed in the hands of an undertaker whose reputation for conducting people to their grave with every mournful splendor of state and style was irreproachable. But amid those funeral plumes, those heavy trappings, those sombre mantles, those long hat-bands new and scarfs of richest silk, there was no eye wet with sorrow, no brow shadowed by regret, no heart that was heavier for the loss of the one going to his grave. It was a funeral without a mourner. On Lister Wilmot's face was the half-concealed triumph and elation, under an affected grief too evidently put on for the dullest man to believe in; and the only one who would have mourned, nay who did mourn, for the murdered man, lay in his cell within the walls of Newgate, stigmatized with the brand of wilful murder of him. So the gloomy pageant set out with its hearse-and-four, its dozen mourning-coaches, its string of private carriages belonging to the rich men invited there that day. So we went to Kensal Green and laid Gilbert Thorneley in the new vault prepared for him, lonely and alone--"dust to dust, ashes to ashes"--until the resurrection.
When the last solemn words had been read over the open grave and the earth thrown with hollow sound upon the coffin, we turned to depart. A greater portion of the large assembly dispersed in their carriages on their various ways, and a few were asked to return to Wimpole street and be present at the reading of the will. Whether bidden or not, I had a reason for being there likewise, and had made up my mind what to do; but to my surprise Mr. Walker came up as we were leaving the cemetery, and invited me in Wilmot's name to go back with them.
In the dining room where the inquest had been held we gathered once again--some dozen of Thorneley's oldest acquaintances, the two doctors, the rector of the parish with his three curates, myself, the housekeeper, and the other servants of the dead man's household. The guests grouped themselves in different knots round the room, talking and gossiping together on the money market, the state of the country, of trade, of politics, of I know not what, but mostly of the past and future concerning the house in which we were assembled, of [{741}] the murdered and the supposed murderer, whilst we waited for Lister Wilmot and his two lawyers. The servants placed themselves in a row near the door, the housekeeper somewhat apart behind the rest, as if shrinking from notice. Very striking she looked in her deep mourning, gown, fitting with perfect exactitude, her light hair streaked here and there with silver threads braided beneath a close tulle-cap, very pale very self-possessed, but with that dangerous look in the cold blue eyes and peculiar motion of the eyelids which Merrivale had described as "a scintillating light and a shivering."