Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 107

"I have sent for a fly."

The fly came. Anna was placed in it by Mr. Winthorne; Hester Dell followed; and Samuel Lynn came forward and stumbled into it. It is the proper word. He appeared to have no power left in his limbs.

"Thou wilt not be harsh with her, Samuel," whispered an influential Friend, who had a benevolent countenance. "Some of us will confer with thee to-morrow; but, meanwhile, do not be harsh with her. Thou wilt call to mind that she is thy child, and motherless."

Samuel Lynn made no reply. He did not appear to hear. He sat opposite his daughter, his eyes never lifted, and his face a.s.suming a leaden hue.

Hester suddenly leaned from the door, and beckoned to William Halliburton.

"Will thee please be so obliging as go up with us in the fly?" she said in his ear. "I do not like his look."

William stepped in, and the fly drove away with closed blinds, to the intense chagrin of the curious mob. Before it was out of the town, William and Hester, with a simultaneous movement, supported the Quaker.

Anna screamed. "What is it?" she uttered, terrified at the sight of his drawn, distorted face.

"It is thy work," said Hester, less placidly than she would have spoken in a calmer moment. "If thee hast saved the life of thy friend, Herbert Dare, thee hast probably destroyed that of thy father."

They were close to the residence of Mr. Parry, and William ordered the fly to stop. The surgeon was at home, and took William's place in it.

Samuel Lynn had been struck down with paralysis.

William was at the house before they were, preparing Patience. Patience was so far restored to health herself as to be able to walk about a little; she was very lame still.

They carried Mr. Lynn to his room. Anna in her deep humiliation and shame--having to give evidence, and such evidence, in the face of that open court, had been nothing less to her--flew to her own chamber, and flung herself, dressed as she was, on the carpet, in desperate abandonment. William saw her there as he pa.s.sed it from her father's room. There was no one to attend to her, for they were occupied with Mr.

Lynn. It was no moment for ceremony, and William entered and attempted to raise her.

"Let me be, William; let me be! I only want to die."

"Anna, child, this will not mend the past. Do not give way like this."

But she resolutely turned from him, sobbing more wildly. "Only to die!

only to die!"

William went for his mother, and gave her the outline of the tale, asking her to go to the house of distress and see what could be done.

Jane, in utter astonishment, sought further explanation. She could not understand him in the least.

"I a.s.sure you, I understand it nearly as little," replied William. "Anna was locked out through some mistake of Hester's, it appears, and Herbert Dare stayed with her. That it will be the means of acquitting him, there is no doubt; but Helstonleigh is making its comments very freely."

Jane went in, her senses bewildered. She found Patience in a state not to be described; she found Anna where William had left her, reiterating the same cry, "Oh, that I were dead! that I were dead!"

Meanwhile, the trial at the Guildhall was drawing to its close, and the judge proceeded to sum up. Not with the frantic bursts of oratory indulged in by those eloquent gentlemen, the counsel, but in a tone of dispa.s.sionate reasoning. He placed the facts concisely before the jury, not speaking in favour of the prisoner, but candidly avowing that he did not see how they could get over the evidence of the prisoner's two witnesses, the young Quaker lady and her maid. If that was to be believed--and for himself he fully believed it--then the prisoner could not have been guilty of the murder, and was clearly ent.i.tled to an acquittal. It was six o'clock when the jury retired to deliberate.

The judge, the bar, the spectators, sat on, or stood, with what patience they might, in the crowded and heated court. On the fiat of those twelve men hung the life of the prisoner: whether he was to be discharged an innocent man, or hanged as a guilty one. Reposing in the pocket of Sir William Leader was a certain little cap, black in colour, innocuous in itself, but of awful significance when brought forth by the hand of the presiding judge. Was it destined to be brought forth that night?

The jury were coming in at last. Only an hour had they remained in deliberation, for seven o'clock was booming out over the town. It had seemed to the impatient spectators more than two hours. What must it have seemed to the prisoner? They ranged themselves in their box, and the crier proclaimed silence.

"Have you agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen of the jury?"

"We have."

"How say you, gentlemen, guilty or not guilty?"

The foreman advanced an imperceptible step and looked at the judge, speaking deliberately:

"My lord, we find the prisoner NOT GUILTY."

CHAPTER XII.

A COUCH OF PAIN.

"William, I have had my death-blow! I have had my death-blow!"

The speaker was Henry Ashley. Four days had elapsed since the trial of Herbert Dare, and William Halliburton saw him now for the first time after that event. What with mind and body, Henry was in a grievous state of pain: all William's compa.s.sion was called forth, as he leaned over his couch.

It has been hinted that Helstonleigh, in its charity, took up the very worst view of the case that could be taken up, with regard to Anna Lynn.

Had she gone about with a blazing torch and set all the houses on fire, their inhabitants could not have mounted themselves on higher stilts.

Somehow, _everybody_ took it up. It was like those apparently well-authenticated political reports that arrive now and then by telegram, driving the Stock Exchange, or the Paris Bourse, into a state of mad credulity. No one _thought_ to doubt it; people caught up the notion from one another as they catch a fever. If even Samuel Lynn had looked upon it in the worst light, bringing to him paralysis, little chance was there that others might gaze through a brighter gla.s.s. It had half killed Henry Ashley: and the words were not, in point of fact, so wild as they sounded. "I have had my death-blow! I have had my death-blow!"

"No, you have not," was William's answer. "It is a blow--I know it--but not one that you cannot outlive."

"Why did you not come to me? Four whole days, and you have never been near the house!"

"Because I feared that you would be throwing yourself into the state of agitation that you are now doing," replied William, candidly. "Mr.

Ashley said to me on the Wednesday, 'Henry has one of his bad attacks again.' I knew it to be more of mind than body this time, and I thought it well that you should be left in quiet. There's no one you can talk about it to, except me."

"Your staying away has not served your purpose, then. My father came to me with the details, thinking to divert me for a moment from my physical pain; never supposing that each word was a dagger plunged into my very being. My mother came, with this sc.r.a.p of news, or the other sc.r.a.p. Mary came, wondering and eager, asking information at second-hand: mamma was mysterious over it, and would not tell her. Mary cannot credit ill of Anna: she has as great a trust in her still as I had. As I had! Oh, William! she was my object in life. She was all my future--my world--my heaven!"

"Now you know you will suffer for this excitement," cried William, almost as he would have said it to a wayward child.

He might as well have talked to the wind. Henry neither heard nor heeded him. He continued, his manner as full of agitation as his mind.

"I am not as other men. You can go forth, all of you, into the world, to your pleasures, your amus.e.m.e.nts. I am confined here. But what mattered it? Did I envy you? No. While I had her to think of, I was happier than you."

"Had this not happened, you might have been crossed in some other way, and so it would have come to the same thing."

"And now it is over," reiterated Henry, paying no attention to the remark. "It is over, and gone; and I--I wish, William, I had gone with it."

"I wish you would be reasonable."

"Don't preach. You active men, with your innumerable objects and interests in life, cannot know what it is for one like me, shut out from the world, to _love_. I tell you, William, it was literally my life; the core of my life; my all. I am not sure but that I have been mad ever since."

"I am not sure but that you are mad now," returned William, believing that to humour him might be the worst plan he could adopt.

"I dare say I am," was the unsatisfactory answer. "Four days, and I have had to bury it all within me! I could not wail it out to my own pillow at night; for they concluded it was one of my bad attacks, and old nurse was posted in the bed in the next room with the door open. There's no one I can rave to but you, and you must let me do it, unless you would have me go quite mad, I hope I shan't be here long to be a trouble to any of you."

William did not know what to say. He believed there was nothing for it at present but to let him "rave himself out." "But I wish," he said, aloud, continuing the bent of his own thoughts, "that you would be a little rational over it."

"Stop a bit. Did you ever experience a blow such as this?"