Tales of the Wonder Club Volume II Part 34

When she recovered herself somewhat, she said, "Molly, depend upon it, that De Chevron is at the bottom of this."

Now, although I knew De Chevron to be a hardened villain and capable of any atrocity, I did not see myself how he could possibly be connected with the murder, he being absent from the village at the time. Neither did I for a moment believe John Archer capable of the crime. The evidence against him was singularly unfortunate, it is true; but no one who knew the man as intimately as we did could really have believed him guilty. It was clear that someone must have committed the murder. Who, then, was likely to have done so?

De Chevron was a villain, we knew, but that was no proof that he was the murderer. However, I excused this seeming unreasonableness in my friend, considering the state of her mind at the time, and merely suggested:

"But he is in London, my dear."

"I tell you he is mixed up in the affair," persisted Claribel. "I was warned of this in my dream."

"I fear that would have little weight in a court of justice," I replied.

"De Chevron is the murderer, and no one else," she persisted, doggedly.

"But, my dear Claribel," said I, soothingly, "allowing that he is a wicked, heartless villain, just think for a moment how you would support your accusation in a court of law. A pedlar is found murdered in a ditch, and a gentleman of De Chevron's condition now in London, where he has been for the last week, is accused of the murder. Consider the absurdity of the idea."

"How do you know he has been in London all the time?" asked my friend.

"Well, I grant you, I did not see him go," said I; "but when a man gives out that he is going away from a place, and has not been seen by anyone since, especially when it is in a little village like this, where everybody knows everybody else's business, the probability is that he has left."

"Do not be too sure," said Claribel. "We must examine into the affair."

"Oh, that is easily done," said I; "but even should he not have departed, if he should have changed his mind and remained here, what does that prove? Besides, what motive could a gentleman have in taking the life of a poor, unknown, itinerant pedlar?"

"To lay the blame on John Archer, his rival, and get him into trouble,"

was my friend's reply. "Do you not think him capable?"

"I think him capable of anything that's bad," said I; "but that's not the point. You must, first of all, have reason enough on your side to prove that he did, which you have not. Look, now, at the evidence against young Archer. A young man returns home to his family after midnight, his clothes disordered and bloodstained, his gun discharged, and the b.u.t.t end of it clotted with blood. When questioned, he is unable to give any satisfactory account of himself. Says he remembers nothing but having accepted one gla.s.s of wine from a pedlar. He relates that he woke up towards midnight and discovered that he had been sleeping for hours in the open air, near to the spot where the body of the pedlar is found on the day following.

"His friends do not believe him guilty because, forsooth, he has earned a reputation for truthfulness, steadiness, and sobriety; yet might not the opposite party contend that it was not impossible that he might, once in his life, have broken through his custom of rigid abstinence, and in a moment of intoxication, picking a quarrel with the pedlar, first discharged his gun at him--for, remember that the bullet extracted from the pedlar's shoulder has been recognised as Archer's bullet--and afterwards, finding his adversary not mortally wounded, had hastened his death by knocking out his brains with the b.u.t.t end of his rifle. That he had afterwards himself fallen into a drunken sleep and entirely forgotten the events of the preceding evening is not at all impossible.

This would be the more charitable way of looking at the affair; but, alas, there is another circ.u.mstance that puts it in a more serious light, and that is the hiding of the body. The body has been discovered in a ditch, carefully concealed from view by weeds and brambles. This argues reason. Is it probable that a man who commits homicide in a drunken brawl, being so drunk at the time as to fall down on the damp ground and sleep there the whole night through, that he should have been sufficiently master of himself to drag off the body of his victim and successfully conceal it from view in an overgrown ditch?"

"I cannot and will not believe him so base as to be guilty of wilful murder, neither will I believe that he committed homicide in a fit of intoxication. If he took the pedlar's life at all--I say _if_ he did--why, then I lean towards the belief that he did it whilst under some evil spell of Richard de Chevron's. What do you believe, Molly?"

"No matter, dear, what I believe," said I; "I am a woman, like yourself, and too likely to be influenced by my feelings. I do not wish to believe him guilty, and should be very much surprised and horror-struck if he really were so, after the good opinion we all have had of him. But all that goes for nothing. I merely tell you how the world will judge him."

Poor Claribel could not help seeing that it was likely to go hard with John.

"Oh! if they should condemn him unjustly and execute him!" she cried, in agony.

Poor child! It was all I could do to comfort her. I told her the law was not rash in condemning anyone to death; that inquiries would be made, that the real perpetrator of the deed could not fail to be discovered, sooner or later, when he would suffer the penalty of the law, and the innocent man be acquitted. I had attempted to excite hopes in her that I myself dared hardly entertain, and that she, poor child, I could see, looked upon as poor consolation.

We both retired to rest that night with heavy hearts, but the next morning Claribel woke up with a smile on her face, although she looked very pale and worn.

"Molly, dear, I saw him last night," she said.

"Did you, really? What, John Archer?" I asked, for I no longer now doubted her word when she spoke in this manner.

"Yes," she replied, "and I promised to call again to give him consolation."

"How did you manage to speak to him?" I asked.

"By signs only; but he understood me."

"Was he asleep?" I asked.

"No; he was tossing restlessly on his pallet."

"Then he could not possibly imagine he had been dreaming."

"I think not, as this is the second time I have appeared to him in the spirit."

"I remember you told me once before that you had seen him, and he himself confirmed it, although I know that you never left the house that day. But, tell me, did no one see you enter?"

"What matter if they did? Bolts and bars are no obstacles to a spirit."

"And you pa.s.sed through prison walls and bolted doors without opposition?"

"I did, and I promised that I should be with him again in his cell as the clock struck two, so that he might be quite sure that he had not been dreaming."

"You will keep your appointment, of course?" I said.

"If I do not, I do not know who it will be that will prevent me."

Here our conversation ceased, and we pa.s.sed our time as usual until it drew towards two o'clock in the afternoon, when my friend suddenly stopped in the middle of talking and said,

"Do not disturb me, Molly dear, or allow anyone else to. I am going to John."

Then throwing herself back in an arm-chair, she appeared almost immediately in a sound sleep, resembling a swoon. I then observed, as it were, two outlines to her form, for a cloudy substance like a halo began to envelop her, which, widening as it rose upwards, from the body began to solidify or partially so, and to a.s.sume the exact form and features of Claribel. Having separated itself from her person, it pa.s.sed rapidly before my face like a gust of wind, causing my hair to stir and crackle as if singed with a candle,[20] and pa.s.sing head foremost through the window with inconceivable velocity was instantly lost to my view.

An indescribable feeling of horror pa.s.sed over me at being left thus alone with what appeared to be the corpse of my friend. The next moment my father entered the room, and fearing lest he should wake my friend in the middle of her trance by his talking, I ran to the door and begged he would not enter, as Claribel felt rather poorly and he might awake her, so he prudently retired to another room, when I gently turned the key of the door and kept watch close to the clay of my friend until the spirit should return to re-animate it.

Let us now take a peep at John in prison. Poor fellow! He had not slept a wink all night. He rose worn and languid. Disdaining his frugal breakfast of bread and water, with arms folded, eyes fixed and head sunk upon his breast, he paced dejectedly up and down the narrow limits of his cell.

"Is this John Archer?" he soliloquised. "Is this the man once surrounded by friends, the hope and pride of his parents, the favoured servant of Lord Edgedown, honoured and respected by all, now handcuffed and led off to prison on a charge of murder to await an ignominious trial, and probably be condemned to hang by the neck till he is dead in the presence of a jeering rabble? It cannot be. I must be transformed. I must be dreaming. This is not John Archer. Is John Archer a murderer?

Can I really have committed a murder in a state of delirium which has obliterated all recollection of the crime committed? It must be so. How else could I have slept all night on the bare ground and on awaking find my gun discharged, my clothes bloodstained, and even the b.u.t.t end of my rifle besmeared with blood?

"How is all this to be accounted for? I must have committed murder. Who will believe me if I a.s.sert my innocence, or how will the law be brought to look upon the crime as committed during temporary insanity? No; I shall be found guilty, condemned, and executed. I do believe that the vision of last night that appeared to me bearing the form and features of Claribel was my guardian angel come to apprise me of my doom.

"Oh, Claribel, Claribel! must we then for ever be parted? But what was that vision? Claribel in the flesh? For so it appeared; for sure it was no dream, yet how could that be? Could she herself have broken through bolts and bars or obtained a pa.s.s to speak to me alone? Impossible! Was it, perchance, some fiend having taken upon himself the likeness of those divine features in order so to mock me? Or was it merely an hallucination of my distempered brain? Whatever it was, I would that it were here again so that I might feast my eyes once more upon its lovely features ere I die."

He paused suddenly, for now, whether it were some trick of the senses, some hallucination conjured up by his over-excited brain, in the opposite corner of his cell something like a bluish vapour appeared, which seemed to grow denser, to solidify until it grew into the semblance of a human form, bearing the features of--whom?

"Claribel!" gasped out the prisoner, hardly above his breath, for his voice died within him and he remained awe-stricken. "What! Do I rave?

Oh, beauteous image! Claribel! Claribel! Tell me, oh, my guardian angel, hast thou come to announce my doom, to solace my last moments? Oh, if it be thou indeed, Claribel, in the flesh and no delusion of my senses, come to me, let me feel the pressure of thy hand."

At this moment he sprang forward and attempted to seize the hand of the figure, which he had no sooner touched than it melted in his grasp, causing him to feel such a supernatural terror that he staggered backwards and gave an involuntary shriek.

The figure put its finger to its lip, the forefinger of the very hand that had vanished into thin air at the material touch of John Archer, but which had immediately resumed its previously defined form upon the withdrawing of Archer's hand.