CHAPTER IV
THE MOONLIGHT INTERVIEW
Cold and still looked the old house in the moonbeams. Never was the moon brighter; it lighted the far-stretching garden, it illuminated even the weathercock aloft, it shone upon the portico, and upon one who appeared in it. Stealing to the portico from the house had come Barbara Hare, her eyes strained in dread affright on the grove of trees at the foot of the garden. What was it that had stepped out of that grove of trees, and mysteriously beckoned to her as she stood at the window, turning her heart to sickness as she gazed? Was it a human being, one to bring more evil to the house, where so much evil had already fallen? Was it a supernatural visitant, or was it but a delusion of her own eyesight? Not the latter, certainly, for the figure was now emerging again, motioning to her as before; and with a white face and shaking limbs, Barbara clutched her shawl around her and went down that path in the moonlight. The beckoning form retreated within the dark recess as she neared it, and Barbara halted.
“Who and what are you?” she asked, under her breath. “What do you want?”
“Barbara,” was the whispered, eager answer, “don’t you recognize me?”
Too surely she did—the voice at any rate—and a cry escaped her, telling more of sorrow than of joy, though betraying both. She penetrated the trees, and burst into tears as one in the dress of a farm laborer caught her in his arms. In spite of his smock-frock and his straw-wisped hat, and his false whiskers, black as Erebus, she knew him for her brother.
“Oh, Richard! Where have you come from? What brings you here?”
“Did you know me, Barbara?” was his rejoinder.
“How was it likely—in this disguise? A thought crossed my mind that it might be some one from you, and even that made me sick with terror. How could you run such a risk as to come here?” she added, wringing her hands. “If you are discovered, it is certain death; death—upon—you know!”
“Upon the gibbet,” returned Richard Hare. “I do know it, Barbara.”
“Then why risk it? Should mamma see you it will kill her outright.”
“I can’t live on as I am living,” he answered, gloomily. “I have been working in London ever since—”
“In London!” interrupted Barbara.
“In London, and have never stirred out of it. But it is hard work for me, and now I have an opportunity of doing better, if I can get a little money. Perhaps my mother can let me have it; it is what I have come to ask for.”
“How are you working? What at?”
“In a stable-yard.”
“A stable-yard!” she uttered, in a deeply shocked tone. “Richard!”
“Did you expect it would be as a merchant, or a banker, or perhaps as secretary to one of her majesty’s ministers—or that I was a gentleman at large, living on my fortune?” retorted Richard Hare, in a tone of chafed anguish, painful to hear. “I get twelve shillings a week, and that has to find me in everything!”
“Poor Richard, poor Richard!” she wailed, caressing his hand and weeping over it. “Oh, what a miserable night’s work that was! Our only comfort is, Richard, that you must have committed the deed in madness.”
“I did not commit it at all,” he replied.
“What!” she exclaimed.
“Barbara, I swear that I am innocent; I swear I was not present when the man was murdered; I swear that from my own positive knowledge, my eyesight, I know no more who did it than you. The guessing at it is enough for me; and my guess is as sure and true a one as that the moon is in the heavens.”
Barbara shivered as she drew close to him. It was a shivering subject. “You surely do not mean to throw the guilt on Bethel?”
“Bethel!” lightly returned Richard Hare. “He had nothing to do with it. He was after his gins and his snares, that night, though, poacher as he is!”
“Bethel is no poacher, Richard.”
“Is he not?” rejoined Richard Hare, significantly. “The truth as to what he is may come out, some time. Not that I wish it to come out; the man has done no harm to me, and he may go on poaching with impunity till doomsday for all I care. He and Locksley—”
“Richard,” interrupted his sister, in a hushed voice, “mamma entertains one fixed idea, which she cannot put from her. She is certain that Bethel had something to do with the murder.”
“Then she is wrong. Why should she think so?”
“How the conviction arose at first, I cannot tell you; I do not think she knows herself. But you remember how weak and fanciful she is, and since that dreadful night she is always having what she calls ‘dreams’—meaning that she dreams of the murder. In all these dreams Bethel is prominent; and she says she feels an absolute certainty that he was, in some way or other, mixed up in it.”
“Barbara, he was no more mixed up in it than you.”
“And—you say that you were not?”
“I was not even at the cottage at the time; I swear it to you. The man who did the deed was Thorn.”
“Thorn!” echoed Barbara, lifting her head. “Who is Thorn?”
“I don’t know who. I wish I did; I wish I could unearth him. He was a friend of Afy’s.”
Barbara threw back her neck with a haughty gesture. “Richard!”
“What?”
“You forget yourself when you mention that name to me.”
“Well,” returned Richard. “It was not to discuss these things that I put myself in jeopardy; and to assert my innocence can do no good; it cannot set aside the coroner’s verdict of ‘Wilful murder against Richard Hare, the younger.’ Is my father as bitter against me as ever?”
“Quite. He never mentions your name, or suffers it to be mentioned; he gave his orders to the servants that it never was to be spoken in the house again. Eliza could not, or would not remember, and she persisted in calling your room ‘Mr. Richard’s.’ I think the woman did it heedlessly, not maliciously, to provoke papa; she was a good servant, and had been with us three years you know. The first time she transgressed, papa warned her; the second, he thundered at her as I believe nobody else in the world can thunder; and the third he turned her from the doors, never allowing her to get her bonnet; one of the others carrying her bonnet and shawl to the gate, and her boxes were sent away the same day. Papa took an oath—did you hear of it?”
“What oath? He takes many.”
“This was a solemn one, Richard. After the delivery of the verdict, he took an oath in the justice-room, in the presence of his brother magistrates, that if he could find you he would deliver you up to justice, and that he would do it, though you might not turn up for ten years to come. You know his disposition, Richard, and therefore may be sure he will keep it. Indeed, it is most dangerous for you to be here.”
“I know that he never treated me as he ought,” cried Richard, bitterly. “If my health was delicate, causing my poor mother to indulge me, ought that to have been a reason for his ridiculing me on every possible occasion, public and private? Had my home been made happier I should not have sought the society I did elsewhere. Barbara, I must be allowed an interview with my mother.”
Barbara Hare reflected before she spoke. “I do not see how it can be managed.”
“Why can’t she come out to me as you have done? Is she up, or in bed?”
“It is impossible to think of it to-night,” returned Barbara in an alarmed tone. “Papa may be in at any moment; he is spending the evening at Beauchamp’s.”
“It is hard to have been separated from her for eighteen months, and to go back without seeing her,” returned Richard. “And about the money? It is a hundred pounds that I want.”
“You must be here again to-morrow night, Richard; the money, no doubt, can be yours, but I am not so sure about your seeing mamma. I am terrified for your safety. But, if it is as you say, that you are innocent,” she added, after a pause, “could it not be proved?”
“Who is to prove it? The evidence is strong against me; and Thorn, did I mention him, would be as a myth to other people; nobody knew anything of him.”
“Is he a myth?” said Barbara, in a low voice.
“Are you and I myths?” retorted Richard. “So, even you doubt me?”
“Richard,” she suddenly exclaimed, “why not tell the whole circumstances to Archibald Carlyle? If any one can help you, or take measures to establish your innocence, he can. And you know that he is true as steel.”
“There’s no other man living should be trusted with the secret that I am here, except Carlyle. Where is it they suppose that I am, Barbara?”
“Some think that you are dead; some that you are in Australia; the very uncertainty has nearly killed mamma. A report arose that you had been seen at Liverpool, in an Australian-bound ship, but we could not trace it to any foundation.”
“It had none. I dodged my way to London, and there I have been.”
“Working in a stable-yard?”
“I could not do better. I was not brought up to anything, and I did understand horses. Besides, a man that the police-runners were after could be more safe in obscurity, considering that he was a gentleman, than—”
Barbara turned suddenly, and placed her hand upon her brother’s mouth. “Be silent for your life,” she whispered, “here’s papa.”
Voices were heard approaching the gate—those of Justice Hare and Squire Pinner. The latter walked on; the former came in. The brother and sister cowered together, scarcely daring to breathe; you might have heard Barbara’s heart beating. Mr. Hare closed the gate and walked on up the path.
“I must go, Richard,” said Barbara, hastily; “I dare not stay another minute. Be here again to-morrow night, and meanwhile I will see what can be done.”
She was speeding away, but Richard held her back. “You did not seem to believe my assertion of innocence. Barbara, we are here alone in the still night, with God above us; as truly as that you and I must sometime meet Him face to face, I told you the truth. It was Thorn murdered Hallijohn, and I had nothing whatever to do with it.”
Barbara broke out of the trees and flew along, but Mr. Hare was already in, locking and barring the door. “Let me in, papa,” she called out.
The justice opened the door again, and thrusting forth his flaxen wig, his aquiline nose, and his amazed eyes, gazed at Barbara.
“Halloo! What brings you out at this time of night, young lady?”
“I went down to the gate to look for you,” she panted, “and had—had—strolled over to the side path. Did you not see me?”
Barbara was truthful by nature and habit; but in such a cause, how could she avoid dissimulation?
“Thank you, papa,” she said, as she went in.
“You ought to have been in bed an hour ago,” angrily responded Mr. Justice Hare.
CHAPTER V
MR. CARLYLE’S OFFICE
In the centre of West Lynne stood two houses adjoining each other, one large, the other much smaller. The large one was the Carlyle residence, and the small one was devoted to the Carlyle offices. The name of Carlyle bore a lofty standing in the county; Carlyle and Davidson were known as first-class practitioners; no pettifogging lawyers were they. It was Carlyle & Davidson in the days gone by; now it was Archibald Carlyle. The old firm were brothers-in-law—the first Mrs. Carlyle having been Mr. Davidson’s sister. She had died and left one child. The second Mrs. Carlyle died when her son was born—Archibald; and his half-sister reared him, loved him and ruled him. She bore for him all the authority of a mother; the boy had known no other, and, when a little child he had called her Mamma Corny. Mamma Corny had done her duty by him, that was undoubted; but Mamma Corny had never relaxed her rule; with an iron hand she liked to rule him now, in great things as in small, just as she had done in the days of his babyhood. And Archibald generally submitted, for the force of habit is strong. She was a woman of strong sense, but, in some things, weak of judgment; and the ruling passions of her life were love of Archibald and love of saving money. Mr. Davidson had died earlier than Mr. Carlyle, and his fortune—he had never married—was left equally divided between Cornelia and Archibald. Archibald was no blood relation to him, but he loved the open-hearted boy better than his niece Cornelia. Of Mr. Carlyle’s property, a small portion only was bequeathed to his daughter, the rest to his son; and in this, perhaps there was justice, since the 20,000 pounds brought to Mr. Carlyle by his second wife had been chiefly instrumental in the accumulation of his large fortune.
Miss Carlyle, or, as she was called in town, Miss Corny, had never married; it was pretty certain she never would; people thought that her intense love of her young brother kept her single, for it was not likely that the daughter of the rich Mr. Carlyle had wanted for offers. Other maidens confess to soft and tender impressions. Not so Miss Carlyle. All who had approached her with the lovelorn tale, she sent quickly to the right-about.
Mr. Carlyle was seated in his own private room in his office the morning after his return from town. His confidential clerk and manager stood near him. It was Mr. Dill, a little, meek-looking man with a bald head. He was on the rolls, had been admitted years and years ago, but he had never set up for himself; perhaps he deemed the post of head manager in the office of Carlyle & Davidson, with its substantial salary, sufficient for his ambition; and manager he had been to them when the present Mr. Carlyle was in long petticoats. He was a single man, and occupied handsome apartments near.
Between the room of Mr. Carlyle and that of the clerks, was a small square space or hall, having ingress also from the house passage; another room opened from it, a narrow one, which was Mr. Dill’s own peculiar sanctum. Here he saw clients when Mr. Carlyle was out or engaged, and here he issued private orders. A little window, not larger than a pane of glass, looked out from the clerk’s office; they called it old Dill’s peep-hole and wished it anywhere else, for his spectacles might be discerned at it more frequently than was agreeable. The old gentleman had a desk, also, in their office, and there he frequently sat. He was sitting there, in state, this same morning, keeping a sharp lookout around him, when the door timidly opened, and the pretty face of Barbara Hare appeared at it, rosy with blushes.
“Can I see Mr. Carlyle?”
Mr. Dill rose from his seat and shook hands with her. She drew him into the passage and he closed the door. Perhaps he felt surprised, for it was not the custom for ladies, young and single, to come there after Mr. Carlyle.
“Presently, Miss Barbara. He is engaged just now. The justices are with him.”
“The justices!” uttered Barbara, in alarm; “and papa one? Whatever shall I do? He must not see me. I would not have him see me here for the world.”
An ominous sound of talking; the justices were evidently coming forth. Mr. Dill laid hold of Barbara, whisked her through the clerks’ room, not daring to take her the other way, lest he should encounter them, and shut her in his own. “What the plague brought papa here at this moment?” thought Barbara, whose face was crimson.
A few minutes and Mr. Dill opened the door again. “They are gone now, and the coast’s clear, Miss Barbara.”
“I don’t know what opinion you must form of me, Mr. Dill,” she whispered, “but I will tell you, in confidence, that I am here on some private business for mamma, who was not well enough to come herself. It is a little private matter that she does not wish papa to know of.”
“Child,” answered the manager, “a lawyer receives visits from many people; and it is not the place of those about him to ‘think.’”
He opened the door as he spoke, ushered her into the presence of Mr. Carlyle, and left her. The latter rose in astonishment.
“You must regard me as a client, and pardon my intrusion,” said Barbara, with a forced laugh, to hide her agitation. “I am here on the part of mamma—and I nearly met papa in your passage, which terrified me out of my senses. Mr. Dill shut me into his room.”
Mr. Carlyle motioned to Barbara to seat herself, then resumed his own seat, beside his table. Barbara could not help noticing how different his manners were in his office from his evening manners when he was “off duty.” Here he was the staid, calm man of business.
“I have a strange thing to tell you,” she began, in a whisper, “but—it is impossible that any one can hear us,” she broke off, with a look of dread. “It would be—it might be—death!”
“It is quite impossible,” calmly replied Mr. Carlyle. “The doors are double doors; did you notice that they were?”
Nevertheless, she left her chair and stood close to Mr. Carlyle, resting her hand upon the table. He rose, of course.
“Richard is here!”
“Richard!” repeated Mr. Carlyle. “At West Lynne!”
“He appeared at the house last night in disguise, and made signs to me from the grove of trees. You may imagine my alarm. He has been in London all this while, half starving, working—I feel ashamed to mention it to you—in a stable-yard. And, oh, Archibald! He says he is innocent.”
Mr. Carlyle made no reply to this. He probably had no faith in the assertion. “Sit down, Barbara,” he said drawing her chair closer.
Barbara sat down again, but her manner was hurried and nervous. “Is it quite sure that no stranger will be coming in? It would look so peculiar to see me here; but mamma was too unwell to come herself—or rather, she feared papa’s questioning, if he found out that she came.”
“Be at ease,” replied Mr. Carlyle; “this room is sacred from the intrusion of strangers. What of Richard?”
“He says that he was not in the cottage at the time the murder was committed; that the person who really did it was a man of the name of Thorn.”
“What Thorn?” asked Mr. Carlyle, suppressing all signs of incredulity.
“I don’t know; a friend of Afy’s, he said. Archibald, he swore to it in the most solemn manner; and I believe, as truly as that I am now repeating it to you, that he was speaking the truth. I want you to see Richard, if possible; he is coming to the same place to-night. If he can tell his own tale to you, perhaps you may find out a way by which his innocence may be made manifest. You are so clever, you can do anything.”
Mr. Carlyle smiled. “Not quite anything, Barbara. Was this the purport of Richard’s visit—to say this?”
“Oh, no! He thinks it is of no use to say it, for nobody would believe him against the evidence. He came to ask for a hundred pounds; he says he has an opportunity of doing better, if he can have that sum. Mamma has sent me to you; she has not the money by her, and she dare not ask papa for it, as it is for Richard. She bade me say that if you will kindly oblige her with the money to-day, she will arrange with you about the repayment.”
“Do you want it now?” asked Mr. Carlyle. “If so, I must send to the bank. Dill never keeps much money in the house when I’m away.”
“Not until evening. Can you manage to see Richard?”
“It is hazardous,” mused Mr. Carlyle; “for him, I mean. Still, if he is to be in the grove to-night, I may as well be there also. What disguise is he in?”
“A farm laborer’s, the best he could adopt about here, with large black whiskers. He is stopping about three miles off, he said, in some obscure hiding-place. And now,” continued Barbara, “I want you to advise me; had I better inform mamma that Richard is here, or not?”
Mr. Carlyle did not understand, and said so.
“I declare I am bewildered,” she exclaimed. “I should have premised that I have not yet told mamma it is Richard himself who is here, but that he has sent a messenger to beg for this money. Would it be advisable to acquaint her?”
“Why should you not? I think you ought to do so.”
“Then I will; I was fearing the hazard for she is sure to insist upon seeing him. Richard also wishes for an interview.”
“It is only natural. Mrs. Hare must be thankful to hear so far, that he is safe.”
“I never saw anything like it,” returned Barbara; “the change is akin to magic; she says it has put life into her anew. And now for the last thing; how can we secure papa’s absence from home to-night? It must be accomplished in some way. You know his temper: were I or mamma to suggest to him, to go and see some friend, or to go to the club, he would immediately stop at home. Can you devise any plan? You see I appeal to you in all my troubles,” she added, “like I and Anne used to do when we were children.”
It may be questioned if Mr. Carlyle heard the last remark. He had dropped his eyelids in thought. “Have you told me all?” he asked presently, lifting them.
“I think so.”
“Then I will consider it over, and—”
“I shall not like to come here again,” interrupted Barbara. “It—it might excite suspicions; some one might see me, too, and mention it to papa. Neither ought you to send to our house.”
“Well—contrive to be in the street at four this afternoon. Stay, that’s your dinner hour; be walking up the street at three, three precisely; I will meet you.”
He rose, shook hands, and escorted Barbara through the small hall, along the passage to the house door; a courtesy probably not yet shown to any client by Mr. Carlyle. The house door closed upon her, and Barbara had taken one step from it, when something large loomed down upon her, like a ship in full sail.
She must have been the tallest lady in the world—out of a caravan. A fine woman in her day, but angular and bony now. Still, in spite of the angles and the bones, there was majesty in the appearance of Miss Carlyle.
“Why—what on earth!” began she, “have you been with Archibald for?”
Barbara Hare, wishing Miss Carlyle over in Asia, stammered out the excuse she had given Mr. Dill.
“Your mamma sent you on business! I never heard of such a thing. Twice I have been to see Archibald, and twice did Dill answer that he was engaged and must not be interrupted. I shall make old Dill explain his meaning for observing a mystery over it to me.”
“There is no mystery,” answered Barbara, feeling quite sick lest Miss Carlyle should proclaim there was, before the clerks, or her father. “Mamma wanted Mr. Carlyle’s opinion upon a little private business, and not feeling well enough to come herself, she sent me.”
Miss Carlyle did not believe a word. “What business?” asked she unceremoniously.
“It is nothing that could interest you. A trifling matter, relating to a little money. It’s nothing, indeed.”
“Then, if it’s nothing, why were you closeted so long with Archibald?”
“He was asking the particulars,” replied Barbara, recovering her equanimity.
Miss Carlyle sniffed, as she invariably did, when dissenting from a problem. She was sure there was some mystery astir. She turned and walked down the street with Barbara, but she was none the more likely to get anything out of her.
Mr. Carlyle returned to his room, deliberated a few moments, and then rang his bell. A clerk answered it.
“Go to the Buck’s Head. If Mr. Hare and the other magistrates are there, ask them to step over to me.”
The young man did as he was bid, and came back with the noted justices at his heels. They obeyed the summons with alacrity, for they believed they had got themselves into a judicial scrape, and that Mr. Carlyle alone could get them out of it.
“I will not request you to sit down,” began Mr. Carlyle, “for it is barely a moment I shall detain you. The more I think about this man’s having been put in prison, the less I like it; and I have been considering that you had better all five, come and smoke your pipes at my house this evening, when we shall have time to discuss what must be done. Come at seven, not later, and you will find my father’s old jar replenished with the best broadcut, and half a dozen churchwarden pipes. Shall it be so?”
The whole five accepted the invitation eagerly. And they were filing out when Mr. Carlyle laid his finger on the arm of Justice Hare.
“You will be sure to come, Hare,” he whispered. “We could not get on without you; all heads,” with a slight inclination towards those going out, “are not gifted with the clear good sense of yours.”
“Sure and certain,” responded the gratified justice; “fire and water shouldn’t keep me away.”
Soon after Mr. Carlyle was left alone another clerk entered.
“Miss Carlyle is asking to see you, sir, and Colonel Bethel’s come again.”
“Send in Miss Carlyle first,” was the answer. “What is it, Cornelia?”
“Ah! You may well ask what? Saying this morning that you could not dine at six, as usual, and then marching off, and never fixing the hour. How can I give my orders?”
“I thought business would have called me out, but I am not going now. We will dine a little earlier, though, Cornelia, say a quarter before six. I have invited—”
“What’s up, Archibald?” interrupted Miss Carlyle.
“Up! Nothing that I know of. I am very busy, Cornelia, and Colonel Bethel is waiting; I will talk to you at dinner-time. I have invited a party for to-night.”
“A party!” echoed Miss Carlyle.
“Four or five of the justices are coming in to smoke their pipes. You must put out your father’s leaden tobacco-box, and—”
“They shan’t come!” screamed Miss Carlyle. “Do you think I’ll be poisoned with tobacco smoke from a dozen pipes?”
“You need not sit in the room.”
“Nor they either. Clean curtains are just put up throughout the house, and I’ll have no horrid pipes to blacken them.”
“I’ll buy you some new curtains, Cornelia, if their pipes spoil these,” he quietly replied. “And now, Cornelia, I really must beg you to leave me.”
“When I have come to the bottom of this affair with Barbara Hare,” resolutely returned Miss Corny, dropping the point of the contest as to the pipes. “You are very clever, Archie, but you can’t do me. I asked Barbara what she came here for; business for mamma, touching money matters, was her reply. I ask you: to hear your opinion about the scrape the bench have got into, is yours. Now, it’s neither one nor the other; and I tell you, Archibald, I’ll hear what it is. I should like to know what you and Barbara do with a secret between you.”
Mr. Carlyle knew her and her resolute expression well, and he took his course, to tell her the truth. She was, to borrow the words Barbara had used to her brother with regard to him, true as steel. Confide to Miss Carlyle a secret, and she was trustworthy and impervious as he could be; but let her come to suspect that there was a secret which was being kept from her, and she would set to work like a ferret, and never stop until it was unearthed.
Mr. Carlyle bent forward and spoke in a whisper. “I will tell you, if you wish, Cornelia, but it is not a pleasant thing to hear. Richard Hare has returned.”
Miss Carlyle looked perfectly aghast. “Richard Hare! Is he mad?”
“It is not a very sane proceeding. He wants money from his mother, and Mrs. Hare sent Barbara to ask me to manage it for her. No wonder poor Barbara was flurried and nervous, for there’s danger on all sides.”
“Is he at their house?”
“How could he be there and his father in it? He is in hiding two or three miles off, disguised as a laborer, and will be at the grove to-night to receive this money. I have invited the justices to get Mr. Hare safe away from his own house. If he saw Richard, he would undoubtedly give him up to justice, and—putting graver considerations aside—that would be pleasant for neither you nor for me. To have a connection gibbeted for a willful murder would be an ugly blot on the Carlyle escutcheon, Cornelia.”
Miss Carlyle sat in silence revolving the news, a contraction on her ample brow.
“And now you know all, Cornelia, and I do beg you to leave me, for I am overwhelmed with work to-day.”