“It is very simple, Miss Folliard; just to know whether you have any objection to appearing as an evidence against—he—hem—against Mr. Reilly.”
“Oh, then your business and time with me will be very brief, Mr. Doldrum. It is my intention to see justice done, and for that purpose I shall attend the trial, and if I find that my evidence will be necessary, I assure you I shall give it. But, Mr. Doldrum, one word with you before you go.”
“A hundred—a thousand, my dear lady.”
“It is this: I beg as a personal favor that you will use your great influence with my father to prevent him from talking to me on this subject until the day of trial comes. By being kind enough to do this you will save me from much anxiety and annoyance.”
“I pledge you my honor, madam, that your wishes shall be complied with to the letter, as far, at least, as any influence of mine can accomplish them.”
“Thank you, sir; I wish you a good-morning.”
“Good-morning, madam; it shall not be my fault if you are harassed upon this most painful subject; and I pledge you my reputation that I never contributed to hang a man in my life with more regret than I experience in this unfortunate case.”
It is quite a common thing to find vanity and stupidity united in the same individual, as they were in Mr. Doldrum. He was Mr. Folliard's country attorney, and, in consequence of his strong Protestant politics, was engaged as the law agent of his property; and for the same reason—that is, because he was a violent, he was considered a very able man.
There is a class of men in the world who, when they once engage in a pursuit or an act of any importance, will persist in working it out, rather than be supposed, by relinquishing it, when they discover themselves wrong, to cast an imputation on their own judgments. To such a class belonged Mr. Folliard, who never, in point of fact, acted upon any fixed or distinct principle whatsoever; yet if he once took a matter into his head, under the influence of caprice or impulse, no man could evince more obstinacy or perseverance, apart from all its justice or moral associations, so long, at least, as that caprice or impulse lasted. The reader may have perceived from his dialogue with Helen, on the morning appointed for her marriage with Whitecraft, that the worthy baronet, had he made appearance, stood a strong chance of being sent about his business as rank a bachelor as he had come. And yet, because he was cunning enough to make the hot-brained and credulous old man believe that Reilly was at the bottom of the plan for his destruction, and Hastings only the passive agent in his hands; we say, because he succeeded in making this impression, which he knew to be deliberately false, upon his plastic nature, he, Folliard, worked himself up into a vindictive bitterness peculiar to little minds, as well as a fixed determination that Reilly should die; not by any means so much because he took away his daughter as that his death might be marked in this conflict of parties as a set-off against that of Whitecraft.
In the meantime he and Helen entertained each a different apprehension; he dreaded that she might exercise her influence over him for the purpose of softening him against Reilly, whom, if he had suffered himself to analyze his own heart, he would have found there in the shape of something very like a favorite. Helen, on the contrary, knew that she was expected to attend the trial, in order to give evidence against her lover; and she lived for a few days after his committal under the constant dread that her father would persecute her with endless arguments to induce her attendance at the assizes. Such, besides, was her love of truth and candor, and her hatred of dissimulation in every shape, that, if either her father or the attorney had asked her, in explicit terms, what the tendency of her evidence was to be, she would at once have satisfied them that it should be in favor of her lover. In the meantime she felt that, as they did not press her on this point, it would have been madness to volunteer a disclosure of a matter so important to the vindication of Reilly's conduct. To this we may add her intimate knowledge of her father's whimsical character and unsteadiness of purpose. She was not ignorant that, even if he were absolutely aware that the tenor of her evidence was to go against Reilly, his mind might change so decidedly as to call upon her to give evidence in his defence. Under these circumstances she acted with singular prudence, in never alluding to a topic of such difficulty, and which involved a contingency that might affect her lover in a double sense.