The tidings of what had taken place first reached Lady Laura Kennedy from her brother on his return to Portman Square after the scene in the police court. The object of his visit to Finn’s lodgings has been explained, but the nature of Lady Laura’s vehemence in urging upon her brother the performance of a very disagreeable task has not been sufficiently described. No brother would willingly go on such a mission from a married sister to a man who had been publicly named as that sister’s lover — and no brother could be less likely to do so than Lord Chiltern. But Lady Laura had been very stout in her arguments, and very strong-willed in her purpose. The income arising from this money — which had been absolutely her own — would again be exclusively her own should the claim to it on behalf of her husband’s estate be abandoned. Surely she might do what she liked with her own. If her brother would not assist her in making this arrangement, it must be done by other means. She was quite willing that it should appear to come to Mr Finn from her father and not from herself. Did her brother think any ill of her? Did he believe in the calumnies of the newspapers? Did he or his wife for a moment conceive that she had a lover? When he looked at her, worn out, withered, an old woman before her time, was it possible that he should so believe? She herself asked him these questions. Lord Chiltern of course declared that he had no suspicion of the kind, “No — indeed,” said Lady Laura. “I defy anyone to suspect me who knows me. And if so, why am not I as much entitled to help a friend as you might be? You need not even mention my name.” He endeavoured to make her understand that her name would be mentioned, and others would believe and would say evil things. “They cannot say worse than they have said,” she continued. “And yet what harm have they done to me — or you?” Then he demanded why she desired to go so far out of her way with the view of spending her money upon one who was in no way connected with her. “Because I like him better than anyone else,” she answered, boldly. “There is very little left for which I care at all — but I do care for his prosperity. He was once in love with me and told me so — but I had chosen to give my hand to Mr Kennedy. He is not in love with me now — nor I with him; but I choose to regard him as my friend.” He assured her over and over again that Phineas Finn would certainly refuse to touch her money — but this she declined to believe. At any rate the trial might be made. He would not refuse money left to him by will, and why should he not now enjoy that which was intended for him? Then she explained how certain it was that he must speedily vanish out of the world altogether, unless some assurance of an income were made to him. So Lord Chiltern went on his mission, hardly meaning to make the offer, and confident that it would be refused if made. We know the nature of the new trouble in which he found Phineas Finn enveloped. It was such that Lord Chiltern did not open his mouth about money, and now, having witnessed the scene at the police-office, he had come back to tell his tale to his sister. She was sitting with his wife when he entered the room.
“Have you heard anything?” he asked at once.
“Heard what?” said his wife.
“Then you have not heard it. A man has been murdered.”
“What man?” said Lady Laura, jumping suddenly from her seat. “Not Robert!” Lord Chiltern shook his head. “You do not mean that Mr Finn has been — killed!” Again he shook his head; and then she sat down as though the asking of the two questions had exhausted her.
“Speak, Oswald,” said his wife. “Why do you not tell us? Is it one whom we knew?”
“I think that Laura used to know him. Mr Bonteen was murdered last night in the streets.”
“Mr Bonteen! The man who was Mr Finn’s enemy,” said Lady Chiltern.
“Mr Bonteen!” said Lady Laura, as though the murder of twenty Mr Bonteens were nothing to her.
“Yes — the man whom you talk of as Finn’s enemy. It would be better if there were no such talk.”
“And who killed him?” said Lady Laura, again getting up and coming close to her brother.
“Who was it, Oswald?” asked his wife; and she also was now too deeply interested to keep her seat.
“They have arrested two men, said Lord Chiltern — that Jew who married Lady Eustace, and — “ But there he paused. He had determined beforehand that he would tell his sister the double arrest that the doubt this implied might lessen the weight of the blow; but now he found it almost impossible to mention the name.
“Who is the other, Oswald?” said his wife.
“Not Phineas,” screamed Lady Laura.
“Yes, indeed; they have arrested him, and I have just come from the court.” He had no time to go on, for his sister was crouching prostrate on the floor before him. She had not fainted. Women do not faint under such shocks. But in her agony she had crouched down rather than fallen, as though it were vain to attempt to stand upright with so crushing a weight of sorrow on her back. She uttered one loud shriek, and then covering her face with her hands burst out into a wail of sobs. Lady Chiltern and her brother both tried to raise her, but she would not be lifted. “Why will you not hear me through, Laura?” said he.
“You do not think he did it?” said his wife.
“I’m sure he did not,” replied Lord Chiltern.
The poor woman, half-lying, half-seated, on the floor, still hiding her face with her hands, still bursting with half suppressed sobs, heard and understood both the question and the answer. But the fact was not altered to her — nor the condition of the man she loved. She had not yet begun to think whether it were possible that he should have been guilty of such a crime. She had heard none of the circumstances, and knew nothing of the manner of the man’s death. It might be that Phineas had killed the man, bringing himself within the reach of the law, and that yet he should have done nothing to merit her reproaches — hardly even her reprobation! Hitherto she felt only the sorrow, the annihilation of the blow — but not the shame with which it would overwhelm the man for whom she so much coveted the good opinion of the world.
“You hear what he says, Laura.”
“They are determined to destroy him,” she sobbed out, through her tears.
“They are not determined to destroy him at all,” said Lord Chiltern. “It will have to go by evidence. You had better sit up and let me tell you all. I will tell you nothing till you are seated again. You disgrace yourself by sprawling there.”
“Do not be hard to her, Oswald.”
“I am disgraced,” said Lady Laura, slowly rising and placing herself again on the sofa. “If there is anything more to tell, you can tell it. I do not care what happens to me now, or who knows it. They cannot make my life worse than it is.”
Then he told all the story — of the quarrel, and the position of the streets, of the coat, and the bludgeon, and the three blows, each on the head, by which the man had been killed. And he told them also how the Jew was said never to have been out of his bed, and how the Jew’s coat was not the coat Lord Fawn had seen, and how no stain of blood had been found about the raiment of either of the men. “It was the Jew who did it, Oswald, surely,” said Lady Chiltern.
“It was not Phineas Finn who did it,” he replied.
“And they will let him go again?”
“They will let him go when they find out the truth, I suppose. But those fellows blunder so, I would never trust them. He will get some sharp lawyer to look into it; and then perhaps everything will come out. I shall go and see him tomorrow. But there is nothing further to be done.”
“And I must see him,” said Lady Laura slowly.
Lady Chiltern looked at her husband, and his face became redder than usual with an angry flush. When his sister had pressed him to take her message about the money, he had assured her that he suspected her of no evil. Nor had he ever thought evil of her. Since her marriage with Mr Kennedy, he had seen but little of her or of her ways of life. When she had separated herself from her husband he had approved of the separation, and had even offered to assist her should she be in difficulty. While she had been living a sad lonely life at Dresden, he had simply pitied her, declaring to himself and his wife that her lot in life had been very hard. When these calumnies about her and Phineas Finn had reached his ears — or his eyes — as such calumnies always will reach the ears and eyes of those whom they are most capable of hurting, he had simply felt a desire to crush some Quintus Slide, or the like, into powder for the offence. He had received Phineas in his own house with all his old friendship. He had even this morning been with the accused man as almost his closest friend. But, nevertheless, there was creeping into his heart a sense of the shame with which he would be afflicted, should the world really be taught to believe that the man had been his sister’s lover. Lady Laura’s distress on the present occasion was such as a wife might show, or a girl weeping for her lover, or a mother for her son, or a sister for a brother; but was extravagant and exaggerated in regard to such friendship as might be presumed to exist between the wife of Mr Robert Kennedy and the member for Tankerville. He could see that his wife felt this as he did, and he thought it necessary to say something at once, that might force his sister to moderate at any rate her language, if not her feelings. Two expressions of face were natural to him; one eloquent of good humour, in which the reader of countenances would find some promise of coming frolic — and the other, replete with anger, sometimes to the extent almost of savagery. All those who were dependent on him were wont to watch his face with care and sometimes with fear. When he was angry it would almost seem that he was about to use personal violence on the object of his wrath. At the present moment he was rather grieved than enraged; but there came over his face that look of wrath with which all who knew him were so well acquainted. “You cannot see him,” he said.
“Why not I, as well as you?”
“If you do not understand, I cannot tell you. But you must not see him — and you shall not.”
“Who will hinder me?”
“If you put me to it, I will see that you are hindered. What is the man to you that you should run the risk of evil tongues, for the sake of visiting him in gaol? You cannot save his life — though it may be that you might endanger it.”
“Oswald,” she said very slowly, “I do not know that I am in anyway under your charge, or bound to submit to your orders.”
“You are my sister.”
“And I have loved you as a sister. How should it be possible that my seeing him should endanger his life?”
“It will make people think that the things are true which have been said.”
“And will they hang him because I love him? I do love him. Violet knows how well I have always loved him.” Lord Chiltern turned his angry face upon his wife. Lady Chiltern put her arm round her sister-in-law’s waist, and whispered some words into her ear. “What is that to me?” continued the half-frantic woman. “I do love him. I have always loved him. I shall love him to the end. He is all my life to me.”
“Shame should prevent your telling it,” said Lord Chiltern.
“I feel no shame. There is no disgrace in love. I did disgrace myself when I gave the hand for which he asked to another man, because — because — “ But she was too noble to tell her brother even then that at the moment of her life to which she was alluding she had married the rich man, rejecting the poor man’s hand, because she had given up all her fortune to the payment of her brother’s debts. And he, though he had well known what he had owed to her, and had never been easy till he had paid the debt, remembered nothing of all this now. No lending and paying back of money could alter the nature either of his feelings or his duty in such an emergency as this. “And, mind you,” she continued, turning to her sister-in-law, “there is no place for the shame of which he is thinking,” and she pointed her finger out at her brother. “I love him — as a mother might love her child, I fancy; but he has no love for me; none — none. When I am with him, I am only a trouble to him. He comes to me, because he is good; but he would sooner be with you. He did love me once — but then I could not afford to be so loved.’.
“You can do no good by seeing him,” said her brother.
“But I will see him. You need not scowl at me as though you wished to strike me. I have gone through that which makes me different from other women, and I care not what they say of me. Violet understands it all — but you understand nothing.”
“Be calm, Laura,” said her sister-in-law, “and Oswald will do all that can be done.”
“But they will hang him.”
“Nonsense!” said her brother. “He has not been as yet committed for his trial. Heaven knows how much has to be done. It is as likely as not that in three days’ time he will be out at large, and all the world will be running after him just because he has been in Newgate.”
“But who will look after him?”
“He has plenty of friends. I will see that he is not left without everything that he wants.”
“But he will want money.”
“He has plenty of money for that. Do you take it quietly, and not make a fool of yourself. If the worst comes to the worst — ”
“Oh, heavens!”
“Listen to me, if you can listen. Should the worst come to the worst, which I believe to be altogether impossible — mind, I think it next to impossible, for I have never for a moment believed him to be guilty — we will — visit him — together. Goodbye now. I am going to see that friend of his, Mr Low.” So saying Lord Chiltern went, leaving the two women together.
“Why should he be so savage with me?” said Lady Laura.
“He does not mean to be savage.”
“Does he speak to you like that? What right has he to tell me of shame? Has my life been so bad, and his so good? Do you think it shameful that I should love this man?” She sat looking into her friend’s face, but her friend for a while hesitated to answer. “You shall tell me, Violet. We have known each other so well that I can bear to be told by you. Do not you love him?”
“I love him! — certainly not.”
“But you did.”
“Not as you mean. Who can define love, and say what it is? There are so many kinds of love. We say that we love the Queen.”
“Psha!”
“And we are to love all our neighbours. But as men and women talk of love, I never at any moment of my life loved any man but my husband. Mr Finn was a great favourite with me — always.”
“Indeed he was.”
“As any other man might be — or any woman. He is so still, and with all my heart I hope that this may be untrue.”
“It is false as the Devil. It must be false. Can you think of the man — his sweetness, the gentle nature of him, his open, free speech, and courage, and believe that he would go behind his enemy and knock his brains out in the dark? I can conceive it of myself, that I should do it, much easier than of him.”
“Oswald says it is false.”
“But he says it as partly believing that it is true. If it be true I will hang myself. There will be nothing left among men or women fit to live for. You think it shameful that I should love him.”
“I have not said so.”
“But you do.”
“I think there is cause for shame in your confessing it.”
“I do confess it.”
“You ask me, and press me, and because we have loved one another so well I must answer you. If a woman, a married woman — be oppressed by such a feeling, she should lay it down at the bottom of her heart, out of sight, never mentioning it, even to herself.”
“You talk of the heart as though we could control it.”
“The heart will follow the thoughts, and they may be controlled. I am not passionate, perhaps, as you are, and I think I can control my heart. But my fortune has been kind to me, and I have never been tempted. Laura, do not think I am preaching to you.”
“Oh no — but your husband; think of him, and think of mine! You have babies.”
“May God make me thankful. I have every good thing on earth that God can give.”
“And what have I? To see that man prosper in life, who they tell me is a murderer; that man who is now in a felon’s gaol — whom they will hang for ought we know — to see him go forward and justify my thoughts of him! that yesterday was all I had. Today I have nothing — except the shame with which you and Oswald say that I have covered myself.”
“Laura, I have never said so.”
“I saw it in your eye when he accused me. And I know that it is shameful. I do know that I am covered with shame. But I can bear my own disgrace better than his danger.” After a long pause — a silence of probably some fifteen minutes — she spoke again. “If Robert should die — what would happen then?”
“It would be — a release, I suppose,” said Lady Chiltern in a voice so low, that it was almost a whisper.
“A release indeed — and I would become that man’s wife the next day, at the foot of the gallows — if he would have me. But he would not have me.”
Mr Kennedy had fired a pistol at Phineas Finn in Macpherson’s Hotel with the manifest intention of blowing out the brains of his presumed enemy, and no public notice had been taken of the occurrence. Phineas himself had been only too willing to pass the thing by as a trifling accident, if he might be allowed to do so, and the Macphersons had been by far too true to their great friend to think of giving him in charge to the police. The affair had been talked about, and had come to the knowledge of reporters and editors. Most of the newspapers had contained paragraphs giving various accounts of the matter; and one or two had followed the example of the People’s Banner in demanding that the police should investigate the matter. But the matter had not been investigated. The police were supposed to know nothing about it — as how should they, no one having seen or heard the shot but they who were determined to be silent? Mr Quintus Slide had been indignant all in vain, so far as Mr Kennedy and his offence had been concerned. As soon as the pistol had been fired and Phineas had escaped from the room, the unfortunate man had sunk back in his chair, conscious of what he had done, knowing that he had made himself subject to the law, and expecting every minute that constables would enter the room to seize him. He had seen his enemy’s hat lying on the floor, and, when nobody would come to fetch it, had thrown it down the stairs. After that he had sat waiting for the police, with the pistol, still loaded in every barrel but one, lying by his side — hardly repenting the attempt, but trembling for the result — till Macpherson, the landlord, who had been brought home from chapel, knocked at his door. There was very little said between them; and no positive allusion was made to the shot that had been fired; but Macpherson succeeded in getting the pistol into his possession — as to which the unfortunate man put no impediment in his way, and he managed to have it understood that Mr Kennedy’s cousin should be summoned on the following morning. “Is anybody else coming?” Robert Kennedy asked, when the landlord was about to leave the room. “Naebody as I ken o’, yet, laird,” said Macpherson, “but likes they will.” Nobody, however, did come, and the “laird” had spent the evening by himself in very wretched solitude.
On the following day the cousin had come, and to him the whole story was told. After that, no difficulty was found in taking the miserable man back to Loughlinter, and there he had been for the last two months in the custody of his more wretched mother and of his cousin. No legal steps had been taken to deprive him of the management either of himself or of his property — so that he was in truth his own master. And he exercised his mastery in acts of petty tyranny about his domain, becoming more and more close-fisted in regard to money, and desirous, as it appeared, of starving all living things about the place — cattle, sheep, and horses, so that the value of their food might be saved. But every member of the establishment knew that the laird was “nae just himself”, and consequently his orders were not obeyed. And the laird knew the same of himself, and, though he would give the orders not only resolutely, but with imperious threats of penalties to follow disobedience, still he did not seem to expect compliance. While he was in this state, letters addressed to him came for a while into his own hands, and thus more than one reached him from Lord Brentford’s lawyer, demanding that restitution should be made of the interest arising from Lady Laura’s fortune. Then he would fly out into bitter wrath, calling his wife foul names, and swearing that she should never have a farthing of his money to spend upon her paramour. Of course it was his money, and his only. All the world knew that. Had she not left his roof, breaking her marriage vows, throwing aside every duty, and bringing him down to his present state of abject misery? Her own fortune! If she wanted the interest of her wretched money, let her come to Loughlinter and receive it there. In spite of all her wickedness, her cruelty, her misconduct, which had brought him — as he now said — to the verge of the grave, he would still give her shelter and room for repentance. He recognised his vows, though she did not. She should still be his wife, though she had utterly disgraced both herself and him. She should still be his wife, though she had so lived as to make it impossible that there should be any happiness in their household.
It was thus he spoke when first one and then another letter came from the Earl’s lawyer, pointing out to him the injustice to which Lady Laura was subjected by the loss of her fortune. No doubt these letters would not have been written in the line assumed had not Mr Kennedy proved himself to be unfit to have the custody of his wife by attempting to shoot the man whom he accused of being his wife’s lover. An act had been done, said the lawyer, which made it quite out of the question that Lady Laura should return to her husband. To this, when speaking of the matter to those around him — which he did with an energy which seemed to be foreign to his character — Mr Kennedy made no direct allusion; but he swore most positively that not a shilling should be given up. The fear of policemen coming down to Loughlinter to take account of that angry shot had passed away; and, though he knew, with an uncertain knowledge, that he was not in all respects obeyed as he used to be — that his orders were disobeyed by stewards and servants, in spite of his threats of dismissal — he still felt that he was sufficiently his own master to defy the Earl’s attorney and to maintain his claim upon his wife’s person. Let her return to him first of all!
But after a while the cousin interfered still further; and Robert Kennedy, who so short a time since had been a member of the Government, graced by permission to sit in the Cabinet, was not allowed to open his own post-bag. He had written a letter to one person, and then again to another, which had induced those who received them to return answers to the cousin. To Lord Brentford’s lawyer he had used a few very strong words. Mr Forster had replied to the cousin, stating how grieved Lord Brentford would be, how much grieved would be Lady Laura, to find themselves driven to take steps in reference to what they conceived to be the unfortunate condition of Mr Robert Kennedy; but that such steps must be taken unless some arrangement could be made which should be at any rate reasonable. Then Mr Kennedy’s post-bag was taken from him; the letters which he wrote were not sent — and he took to his bed. It was during this condition of affairs that the cousin took upon himself to intimate to Mr Forster that the managers of Mr Kennedy’s estate were by no means anxious of embarrassing their charge by so trumpery an additional matter as the income derived from Lady Laura’s forty thousand pounds.
But things were in a terrible confusion at Loughlinter, Rents were paid as heretofore on receipts given by Robert Kennedy’s agent; but the agent could only pay the money to Robert Kennedy’s credit at his bank. Robert Kennedy’s cheques would, no doubt, have drawn the money out again — but it was almost impossible to induce Robert Kennedy to sign a cheque. Even in bed he inquired daily about his money, and knew accurately the sum lying at his banker’s; but he could be persuaded to disgorge nothing. He postponed from day to day the signing of certain cheques that were brought to him, and alleged very freely that an attempt was being made to rob him. During all his life he had been very generous in subscribing to public charities; but now he stopped all his subscriptions. The cousin had to provide even for the payment of wages, and things went very badly at Loughlinter. Then there arose the question whether legal steps should be taken for placing the management of the estate in other hands, on the ground of the owner’s insanity. But the wretched old mother begged that this might not be done — and Dr Macnuthrie, from Callender, was of opinion that no steps should be taken at present. Mr Kennedy was very ill — very ill indeed; would take no nourishment, and seemed to be sinking under the pressure of his misfortunes. Any steps such as those suggested would probably send their friend out of the world at once.
In fact Robert Kennedy was dying — and in the first week of May, when the beauty of the spring was beginning to show itself on the braes of Loughlinter, he did die. The old woman, his mother, was seated by his bedside, and into her ears he murmured his last wailing complaint. “If she had the fear of God before her eyes, she would come back to me.” “Let us pray that He may soften her heart,” said the old lady. “Eh, nothing can soften the heart Satan has hardened, till it be hard as the nether millstone.” And in that faith he died believing, as he had ever believed, that the spirit of evil was stronger than the spirit of good.
For some time past there had been perturbation in the mind of that cousin, and of all other Kennedys of that ilk, as to the nature of the will of the head of the family. It was feared lest he should have been generous to the wife who was believed by them all to have been so wicked and treacherous to her husband — and so it was found to be when the will was read. During the last few months no one near him had dared to speak to him of his will, for it had been known that his condition of mind rendered him unfit to alter it; nor had he ever alluded to it himself. As a matter of course there had been a settlement, and it was supposed that Lady Laura’s own money would revert to her; but when it was found that in addition to this the Loughlinter estate became hers for life, in the event of Mr Kennedy dying without a child, there was great consternation among the Kennedys generally. There were but two or three of them concerned, and for those there was money enough; but it seemed to them now that the bad wife, who had utterly refused to acclimatise herself to the soil to which she had been transplanted, was to be rewarded for her wicked stubborness. Lady Laura would become mistress of her own fortune and of all Loughlinter, and would be once more a free woman, with all the power that wealth and fashion can give. Alas, alas! it was too late now for the taking of any steps to sever her from her rich inheritance! “And the false harlot will come and play havoc here, in my son’s mansion,” said the old woman with extremest bitterness.
The tidings were conveyed to Lady Laura through her lawyer, but did not reach her in full till some eight or ten days after the news of her husband’s death. The telegram announcing that event had come to her at her father’s house in Portman Square, on the day after that on which Phineas had been arrested, and the Earl had of course known that his great longing for the recovery of his wife’s fortune had been now realised. To him there was no sorrow in the news. He had only known Robert Kennedy as one who had been thoroughly disagreeable to himself, and who had persecuted his daughter throughout their married life. There had come no happiness — not even prosperity — through the marriage. His daughter had been forced to leave the man’s house — and had been forced also to leave her money behind her. Then she had been driven abroad, fearing persecution, and had only dared to return when the man’s madness became so notorious as to annul his power of annoying her. Now by his death, a portion of the injury which he had inflicted on the great family of Standish would be remedied. The money would come back — together with the stipulated jointure — and there could no longer be any question of return. The news delighted the old Lord — and he was almost angry with his daughter because she also would not confess her delight.
“Oh, Papa, he was my husband.”
“Yes, yes, no doubt. I was always against it, you will remember.”
“Pray do not talk in that way now, Papa. I know that I was not to him what I should have been.”
“You used to say it was all his fault.”
“We will not talk of it now Papa. He is gone, and I remember his past goodness to me.”
She clothed herself in the deepest of mourning, and made herself a thing of sorrow by the sacrificial uncouthness of her garments. And she tried to think of him — to think of him, and not to think of Phineas Finn. She remembered with real sorrow the words she had spoken to her sister-in-law, in which she had declared, while still the wife of another man, that she would willingly marry Phineas at the foot even of the gallows if she were free. She was free now; but she did not repeat her assertion. It was impossible not to think of Phineas in his present strait, but she abstained from speaking of him as far as she could, and for the present never alluded to her former purpose of visiting him in his prison.
From day to day, for the first few days of her widowhood, she heard what was going on. The evidence against him became stronger and stronger, whereas the other man, Yosef Mealyus, had been already liberated. There were still many who felt sure that Mealyus had been the murderer, among whom were all those who had been ranked among the staunch friends of our hero. The Chilterns so believed, and Lady Laura; the Duchess so believed, and Madame Goesler. Mr Low felt sure of it, and Mr Monk and Lord Cantrip; and nobody was more sure than Mrs Bunce. There were many who professed that they doubted; men such as Barrington Erle, Laurence Fitzgibbon, the two Dukes — though the younger Duke never expressed such doubt at home — and Mr Gresham himself. Indeed, the feeling of Parliament in general was one of great doubt. Mr Daubeny never expressed an opinion one way or the other, feeling that the fate of two second-class Liberals could not be matter of concern to him — but Sir Orlando Drought, and Mr Roby, and Mr Boffin, were as eager as though they had not been Conservatives, and were full of doubt. Surely, if Phineas Finn were not the murderer, he had been more ill-used by Fate than had been any man since Fate first began to be unjust. But there was also a very strong party by whom no doubt whatever was entertained as to his guilt — at the head of which, as in duty bound, was the poor widow, Mrs Bonteen. She had no doubt as to the hand by which her husband had fallen, and clamoured loudly for the vengeance of the law. All the world, she said, knew how bitter against her husband had been this wretch, whose villainy had been exposed by her dear, gracious lord; and now the evidence against him was, to her thinking, complete. She was supported strongly by Lady Eustace, who, much as she wished not to be the wife of the Bohemian Jew, thought even that preferable to being known as the widow of a murderer who had been hung. Mr Ratler, with one or two others in the House, was certain of Finn’s guilt. The People’s Banner, though it prefaced each one of its daily paragraphs on the subject with a statement as to the manifest duty of an influential newspaper to abstain from the expression of any opinion on such a subject till the question had been decided by a jury, nevertheless from day to day recapitulated the evidence against the Member for Tankerville, and showed how strong were the motives which had existed for such a deed. But, among those who were sure of Finn’s guilt, there was no one more sure than Lord Fawn, who had seen the coat and the height of the man — and the step. He declared among his intimate friends that of course he could not swear to the person. He could not venture, when upon his oath, to give an opinion. But the man who had passed him at so quick a pace had been half a foot higher than Mealyus — of that there could be no doubt. Nor could there be any doubt as to the grey coat. Of course there might be other men with grey coats besides Mr Phineas Finn — and other men half a foot taller than Yosef Mealyus. And there might be other men with that peculiarly energetic step. And the man who hurried by him might not have been the man who murdered Mr Bonteen. Of all that Lord Fawn could say nothing. But what he did say — of that he was sure. And all those who knew him were well aware that in his own mind he was convinced of the guilt of Phineas Finn. And there was another man equally convinced. Mr Maule, Senior, remembered well the manner in which Madame Goesler spoke of Phineas Finn in reference to the murder, and was quite sure that Phineas was the murderer.
For a couple of days Lord Chiltern was constantly with the poor prisoner, but after that he was obliged to return to Harrington Hall. This he did a day after the news arrived of the death of his brother-in-law. Both he and Lady Chiltern had promised to return home, having left Adelaide Palliser alone in the house, and already they had overstayed their time. “Of course I will remain with you,” Lady Chiltern had said to her sister-in-law; but the widow had preferred to be left alone. For these first few days — when she must make pretence of sorrow because her husband had died; and had such real cause for sorrow in the miserable condition of the man she loved — she preferred to be alone. Who could sympathise with her now, or with whom could she speak of her grief? Her father was talking to her always of her money — but from him she could endure it. She was used to him, and could remember when he spoke to her of her forty thousand pounds, and of her twelve hundred a year of jointure, that it had not always been with him like that. As yet nothing had been heard of the will, and the Earl did not in the least anticipate any further accession of wealth from the estate of the man whom they had all hated. But his daughter would now be a rich woman; and was yet young, and there might still be splendour. “I suppose you won’t care to buy land,” he said.
“Oh, Papa, do not talk of buying anything yet.”
“But, my dear Laura, you must put your money into something. You can get very nearly 5 per cent from Indian Stock.”
“Not yet, Papa,” she said. But he proceeded to explain to her how very important an affair money is, and that persons who have got money cannot be excused for not considering what they had better do with it. No doubt she could get 4 per cent on her money by buying up certain existing mortgages on the Saulsby property — which would no doubt be very convenient if, hereafter, the money should go to her brother’s child. “Not yet, Papa,” she said again, having, however, already made up her mind that her money should have a different destination.
She could not interest her father at all in the fate of Phineas Finn. When the story of the murder had first been told to him, he had been amazed — and, no doubt, somewhat gratified, as we all are, at tragic occurrences which do not concern ourselves. But he could not be made to tremble for the fate of Phineas Finn. And yet he had known the man during the last few years most intimately, and had had much in common with him. He had trusted Phineas in respect to his son, and had trusted him also in respect to his daughter. Phineas had been his guest at Dresden; and, on his return to London, had been the first friend he had seen, with the exception of his lawyer. And yet he could hardly be induced to express the slightest interest as to the fate of this friend who was to be tried for murder. “Oh — he’s committed, is he? I think I remember that Protheroe once told me that, in thirty-nine cases out of forty, men committed for serious offences have been guilty of them.” The Protheroe here spoken of as an authority in criminal matters was at present Lord Weazeling, the Lord Chancellor.
“But Mr Finn has not been guilty, Papa.”
“There is always the one chance out of forty. But, as I was saying, if you like to take up the Saulsby mortgages, Mr Forster can’t be told too soon.”
“Papa, I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Lady Laura. And then she rose and walked out of the room.
At the end of ten days from the death of Mr Kennedy, there came the tidings of the will. Lady Laura had written to Mrs Kennedy a letter which had taken her much time in composition, expressing her deep sorrow, and condoling with the old woman. And the old woman had answered. “Madam, I am too old now to express either grief or anger. My dear son’s death, caused by domestic wrong, has robbed me of any remaining comfort which the undeserved sorrows of his latter years had not already dispelled. Your obedient servant, Sarah Kennedy.” From which it may be inferred that she had also taken considerable trouble in the composition of her letter. Other communications between Loughlinter and Portman Square there were none, but there came through the lawyers a statement of Mr Kennedy’s will, as far as the interests of Lady Laura were concerned. This reached Mr Forster first, and he brought it personally to Portman Square. He asked for Lady Laura, and saw her alone. “He has bequeathed to you the use of Loughlinter for your life, Lady Laura.”
“To me!”
“Yes, Lady Laura. The will is dated in the first year of his marriage, and has not been altered since.”
“What can I do with Loughlinter? I will give it back to them.” Then Mr Forster explained that the legacy referred not only to the house and immediate grounds — but to the whole estate known as the domain of Loughlinter. There could be no reason why she should give it up, but very many why she should not do so. Circumstanced as Mr Kennedy had been, with no one nearer to him than a first cousin, with a property purchased with money saved by his father — a property to which no cousin could by inheritance have any claim — he could not have done better with it than to leave it to his widow in fault of any issue of his own. Then the lawyer explained that were she to give it up, the world would of course say that she had done so from a feeling of her own unworthiness. “Why should I feel myself to be unworthy?” she asked. The lawyer smiled, and told her that of course she would retain Loughlinter.
Then, at her request, he was taken to the Earl’s room and there repeated the good news. Lady Laura preferred not to hear her father’s first exultations. But while this was being done she also exulted. Might it not still be possible that there should be before her a happy evening to her days; and that she might stand once more beside the falls of Linter, contented, hopeful, nay, almost glorious, with her hand in his to whom she had once refused her own on that very spot?
Though Mr Robert Kennedy was lying dead at Loughlinter, and though Phineas Finn, a member of Parliament, was in prison, accused of murdering another member of Parliament, still the world went on with its old ways, down in the neighbourhood of Harrington Hall and Spoon Hall as at other places. The hunting with the Brake hounds was now over for the season — had indeed been brought to an auspicious end three weeks since — and such gentlemen as Thomas Spooner had time on their hands to look about their other concerns. When a man hunts five days a week, regardless of distances, and devotes a due proportion of his energies to the necessary circumstances of hunting, the preservation of foxes, the maintenance of good humour with the farmers, the proper compensation for poultry really killed by four-legged favourites, the growth and arrangement of coverts, the lying-in of vixens, and the subsequent guardianship of nurseries, the persecution of enemies, and the warm protection of friends — when he follows the sport, accomplishing all the concomitant duties of a true sportsman, he has not much time left for anything. Such a one as Mr Spooner of Spoon Hall finds that his off day is occupied from breakfast to dinner with grooms, keepers, old women with turkeys’ heads, and gentlemen in velveteens with information about wires and unknown earths. His letters fall naturally to the Sunday afternoon, and are hardly written before sleep overpowers him. Many a large fortune has been made with less of true devotion to the work than is given to hunting by so genuine a sportsman as Mr Spooner.
Our friend had some inkling of this himself, and felt that many of the less important affairs of his life were neglected because he was so true to the one great object of his existence. He had wisely endeavoured to prevent wrack and ruin among the affairs of Spoon Hall — and had thoroughly succeeded by joining his cousin Ned with himself in the administration of his estate — but there were things which Ned with all his zeal and all his cleverness could not do for him. He was conscious that had he been as remiss in the matter of hunting, as that hard-riding but otherwise idle young scamp, Gerard Maule, he might have succeeded much better than he had hitherto done with Adelaide Palliser. “Hanging about and philandering, that’s what they want,” he said to his cousin Ned.
“I suppose it is,” said Ned. “I was fond of a girl once myself, and I hung about a good deal. But we hadn’t sixpence between us.”
“That was Polly Maxwell. I remember. You behaved very badly then.”
“Very badly, Tom; about as bad as a man could behave — and she was as bad. I loved her with all my heart, and I told her so. And she told me the same. There never was anything worse. We had just nothing between us, and nobody to give us anything.”
“It doesn’t pay; does it, Ned, that kind of thing?”
“It doesn’t pay at all. I wouldn’t give her up — nor she me. She was about as pretty a girl as I remember to have seen.”
“I suppose you were a decent-looking fellow in those days yourself. They say so, but I never quite believed it.”
“There wasn’t much in that,” said Ned. “Girls don’t want a man to be good-looking, but that he should speak up and not be afraid of them. There were lots of fellows came after her. You remember Blinks, of the Carabineers. He was full of money, and he asked her three times. She is an old maid to this day, and is living as companion to some crusty crochetty countess.”
“I think you did behave badly, Ned. Why didn’t you set her free?”
“Of course, I behaved badly. And why didn’t she set me free, if you come to that? I might have found a female Blinks of my own — only for her. I wonder whether it will come against us when we die, and whether we shall be brought up together to receive punishment.”
“Not if you repent, I suppose,” said Tom Spooner, very seriously.
“I sometimes ask myself whether she has repented. I made her swear that she’d never give me up. She might have broken her word a score of times, and I wish she had.”
“I think she was a fool, Ned.”
“Of course she was a fool. She knows that now, I dare say. And perhaps she has repented. Do you mean to try it again with that girl at Harrington Hall?”
Mr Thomas Spooner did mean to try it again with the girl at Harrington Hall. He had never quite trusted the note which he had got from his friend Chiltern, and had made up his mind that, to say the least of it, there had been very little friendship shown in the letter. Had Chiltern meant to have stood to him “like a brick,” as he ought to have stood by his right hand man in the Brake country, at any rate a fair chance might have been given him. “Where the devil would he be in such a country as this without me,” — Tom had said to his cousin — “not knowing a soul, and with all the shooting men against him? I might have had the hounds myself — and might have ’em now if I cared to take them. It’s not standing by a fellow as he ought to do. He writes to me, by George, just as he might do to some fellow who never had a fox about his place.”
“I suppose he didn’t put the two things together,” said Ned Spooner.
“I hate a fellow that can’t put two things together. If I stand to you you’ve a right to stand to me. That’s what you mean by putting two things together. I mean to have another shy at her. She has quarrelled with that fellow Maule altogether. I’ve learned that from the gardener’s girl at Harrington.”
Yes — he would make another attempt. All history, all romance, all poetry and all prose, taught him that perseverance in love was generally crowned with success — that true love rarely was crowned with success except by perseverance. Such a simple little tale of boy’s passion as that told him by his cousin had no attraction for him. A wife would hardly be worth having, and worth keeping, so won. And all proverbs were on his side. “None but the brave deserve the fair,” said his cousin. “I shall stick to it,” said Tom Spooner. ” Labor omnia vincit,” said his cousin. But what should be his next step? Gerard Maule had been sent away with a flea in his ear — so, at least, Mr Spooner asserted, and expressed an undoubting opinion that this imperative dismissal had come from the fact that Gerard Maule, when “put through his facings” about income was not able to “show the money’. “She’s not one of your Polly Maxwells, Ned.” Ned said that he supposed she was not one of that sort. “Heaven knows I couldn’t show the money,” said Ned, “but that didn’t make her any wiser.” Then Tom gave it as his opinion that Miss Palliser was one of those young women who won’t go anywhere without having everything about them. “She could have her own carriage with me, and her own horses, and her own maid, and everything.”
“Her own way into the bargain,” said Ned. Whereupon Tom Spooner winked, and suggested that that might be as things turned out after the marriage. He was quite willing to run his chance for that.
But how was he to get at her to prosecute his suit? As to writing to her direct — he didn’t much believe in that. “It looks as though one were afraid of her, you know — which I ain’t the least. I stood up to her before, and I wasn’t a bit more nervous than I am at this moment. Were you nervous in that affair with Miss Maxwell?”
“Ah — it’s a long time ago. There wasn’t much nervousness there.”
“A sort of milkmaid affair?”
“Just that.”
“That is different, you know. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll just drive slap over to Harrington and chance it. I’ll take the two bays in the phaeton. Who’s afraid?”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Ned.
“Old Chiltern is such a d — cantankerous fellow, and perhaps Lady C. may say that I oughtn’t to have taken advantage of her absence. But, what’s the odds? If she takes me there’ll be an end of it. If she don’t, they can’t eat me.”
“The only thing is whether they’ll let you in.”
“I’ll try at any rate,” said Tom, “and you shall go over with me. You won’t mind trotting about the grounds while I’m carrying on the war inside? I’ll take the two bays, and Dick Farren behind, and I don’t think there’s a prettier got-up trap in the county. We’ll go tomorrow.”
And on the morrow they did start, having heard on that very morning of the arrest of Phineas Finn. “By George, don’t it feel odd,” said Tom just as they started — “a fellow that we used to know down here, having him out hunting and all that, and now he’s — a murderer! Isn’t it a coincidence?”
“It startles one,” said Ned.
“That’s what I mean. It’s such a strange thing that it should be the man we know ourselves. These things always are happening to me. Do you remember when poor Fred Fellows got his bad fall and died the next year? You weren’t here then.”
“I’ve heard you speak of it.”
“I was in the very same field, and should have been the man to pick him up, only the hounds had just turned to the left. It’s very odd that these coincidences always are happening to some men and never do happen to others. It makes one feel that he’s marked out, you know.”
“I hope you’ll be marked out by victory today.”
“Well — yes. That’s more important just now than Mr Bonteen’s murder. Do you know, I wish you’d drive. These horses are pulling, and I don’t want to be all in a flurry when I get to Harrington.” Now it was a fact very well known to all concerned with Spoon Hall, that there was nothing as to which the Squire was so jealous as the driving of his own horses. He would never trust the reins to a friend, and even Ned had hardly ever been allowed the honour of the whip when sitting with his cousin. “I’m apt to get red in the face when I’m overheated,” said Tom as he made himself comfortable and easy in the left hand seat.
There were not many more words spoken during the journey. The lover was probably justified in feeling some trepidation. He had been quite correct in suggesting that the matter between him and Miss Palliser bore no resemblance at all to that old affair between his cousin Ned and Polly Maxwell. There had been as little trepidation as money in that case — simply love and kisses, parting, despair, and a broken heart. Here things were more august. There was plenty of money, and, let affairs go as they might, there would be no broken heart. But that perseverance in love of which Mr Spooner intended to make himself so bright an example does require some courage. The Adelaide Pallisers of the world have a way of making themselves uncommonly unpleasant to a man when they refuse him for the third or fourth time. They allow themselves sometimes to express a contempt which is almost akin to disgust, and to speak to a lover as though he were no better than a footman. And then the lover is bound to bear it all, and when he has borne it, finds it so very difficult to get out of the room. Mr Spooner had some idea of all this as his cousin drove him up to the door, at what he then thought a very fast pace. “D— it all,” he said, “you needn’t have brought them up so confoundedly hot.” But it was not of the horses that he was really thinking, but of the colour of his own nose. There was something working within him which had flurried him, in spite of the tranquillity of his idle seat.
Not the less did he spring out of the phaeton with a quite youthful jump. It was well that everyone about Harrington Hall should know how alert he was on his legs; a little weather-beaten about the face he might be; but he could get in and out of his saddle as quickly as Gerard Maule even yet; and for a short distance would run Gerard Maule for a ten-pound note. He dashed briskly up to the door, and rang the bell as though he feared neither Adelaide nor Lord Chiltern any more than he did his own servants at Spoon Hall. “Was Miss Palliser at home?” The maid-servant who opened the door told him that Miss Palliser was at home, with a celerity which he certainly had not expected. The male members of the establishment were probably disporting themselves in the absence of their master and mistress, and Adelaide Palliser was thus left to the insufficient guardianship of young women who were altogether without discretion. “Yes, sir; Miss Palliser is at home.” So said the indiscreet female, and Mr Spooner was for the moment confounded by his own success. He had hardly told himself what reception he had expected, or whether, in the event of the servant informing him at the front door that the young lady was not at home he would make any further immediate effort to prolong the siege so as to force an entry; but now, when he had carried the very fortress by surprise, his heart almost misgave him. He certainly had not thought, when he descended from his chariot like a young Bacchus in quest of his Ariadne, that he should so soon be enabled to repeat the tale of his love. But there he was, confronted with Ariadne before he had had a moment to shake his godlike locks or arrange the divinity of his thoughts. “Mr Spooner,” said the maid, opening the door.
“Oh dear!” exclaimed Ariadne, feeling the vainness of her wish to fly from the god. “You know, Mary, that Lady Chiltern is up in London.”
“But he didn’t ask for Lady Chiltern, Miss.” Then there was a pause, during which the maid-servant managed to shut the door and to escape.
“Lord Chiltern is up in London,” said Miss Palliser, rising from her chair, “and Lady Chiltern is with him. They will be at home, I think, tomorrow, but I am not quite sure.” She looked at him rather as Diana might have looked at poor Orion than as any Ariadne at any Bacchus; and for a moment Mr Spooner felt that the pale chillness of the moon was entering in upon his very heart and freezing the blood in his veins.
“Miss Palliser — “ he began.
“But Adelaide was for the moment an unmitigated Diana. Mr Spooner,” she said, “I cannot for an instant suppose that you wish to say anything to me.”
“But I do,” said he, laying his hand upon his heart.
“Then I must declare that — that — that you ought not to. And I hope you won’t. Lady Chiltern is not in the house, and I think that — that you ought to go away. I do, indeed.”
But Mr Spooner, though the interview had been commenced with unexpected and almost painful suddenness, was too much a man to be driven off by the first angry word. He remembered that this Diana was but mortal; and he remembered, too, that though he had entered in upon her privacy he had done so in a manner recognised by the world as lawful. There was no reason why he should allow himself to be congealed — or even banished out of the grotto of the nymph — without speaking a word on his own behalf. Were he to fly now, he must fly for ever; whereas, if he fought now — fought well, even though not successfully at the moment — he might fight again. While Miss Palliser was scowling at him he resolved upon fighting. “Miss Palliser,” he said, “I did not come to see Lady Chiltern; I came to see you. And now that I have been happy enough to find you I hope you will listen to me for a minute. I shan’t do you any harm.”
“I’m not afraid of any harm, but I cannot think that you have anything to say that can do anybody any good.” She sat down, however, and so far yielded. “Of course I cannot make you go away, Mr Spooner; but I should have thought, when I asked you — ”
Mr Spooner also seated himself, and uttered a sigh. Making love to a sweet, soft, blushing, willing, though silent girl is a pleasant employment; but the task of declaring love to a stony-hearted, obdurate, ill-conditioned Diana is very disagreeable for any gentleman. And it is the more so when the gentleman really loves — or thinks that he loves — his Diana. Mr Spooner did believe himself to be verily in love. Having sighed, he began: “Miss Palliser, this opportunity of declaring to you the state of my heart is too valuable to allow me to give it up without — without using it.”
“It can’t be of any use.”
“Oh, Miss Palliser — if you knew my feelings!”
“But I know my own.”
“They may change, Miss Palliser.”
“No, they can’t.”
“Don’t say that, Miss Palliser.”
“But I do say it. I say it over and over again. I don’t know what any gentleman can gain by persecuting a lady. You oughtn’t to have been shown up here at all.”
Mr Spooner knew well that women have been won even at the tenth time of asking, and this with him was only the third. “I think if you knew my heart — “ he commenced.
“I don’t want to know your heart.”
“You might listen to a man, at any rate.”
“I don’t want to listen. It can’t do any good. I only want you to leave me alone, and go away.”
“I don’t know what you take me for,” said Mr Spooner, beginning to wax angry.
“I haven’t taken you for anything at all. This is very disagreeable and very foolish. A lady has a right to know her own mind, and she has a right not to be persecuted.” She would have referred to Lord Chiltern’s letter had not all the hopes of her heart been so terribly crushed since that letter had been written. In it he had openly declared that she was already engaged to be married to Mr Maule, thinking that he would thus put an end to Mr Spooner’s little adventure. But since the writing of Lord Chiltern’s letter that unfortunate reference had been made to Boulogne, and every particle of her happiness had been destroyed. She was a miserable, blighted young woman, who had quarrelled irretrievably with her lover, feeling greatly angry with herself because she had made the quarrel, and yet conscious that her own self-respect had demanded the quarrel. She was full of regret, declaring to herself from morning to night that, in spite of all his manifest wickedness in having talked of Boulogne, she never could care at all for any other man. And now there was this aggravation to her misery — this horrid suitor, who disgraced her by making those around her suppose it to be possible that she should ever accept him; who had probably heard of her quarrel, and had been mean enough to suppose that therefore there might be a chance for himself! She did despise him, and wanted him to understand that she despised him.
“I believe I am in a condition to offer my hand and fortune to any young lady without impropriety,” said Mr Spooner.
“I don’t know anything about your condition.”
“But I will tell you everything.”
“I don’t want to know anything about it.”
“I have an estate of — ”
“I don’t want to know about your estate. I won’t hear about your estate. It can be nothing to me.”
“It is generally considered to be a matter of some importance.”
“It is of no importance to me, at all, Mr Spooner; and I won’t hear anything about it. If all the parish belonged to you, it would not make any difference.”
“All the parish does belong to me, and nearly all the next,” replied Mr Spooner, with great dignity.
“Then you’d better find some lady who would like to have two parishes. They haven’t any weight with me at all.” At that moment she told herself how much she would prefer even Bou — logne, to Mr Spooner’s two parishes.
“What is it that you find so wrong about me?” asked the unhappy suitor.
Adelaide looked at him, and longed to tell him that his nose was red. And, though she would not quite do that, she could not bring herself to spare him. What right had he to come to her — a nasty, red-nosed old man, who knew nothing about anything but foxes and horses — to her, who had never given him the encouragement of a single smile? She could not allude to his nose, but in regard to his other defects she would not spare him. “Our tastes are not the same, Mr Spooner.”
“You are very fond of hunting.”
“And our ages are not the same.”
“I always thought that there should be a difference of age,” said Mr Spooner, becoming very red.
“And — and — and — it’s altogether quite preposterous. I don’t believe that you can really think it yourself.”
“But I do.”
“Then you must unthink it. And, indeed, Mr Spooner, since you drive me to say so — I consider it to be very unmanly of you, after what Lord Chiltern told you in his letter.”
“But I believe that is all over.”
Then her anger flashed up very high. “And if you do believe it, what a mean man you must be to come to me when you must know how miserable I am, and to think that I should be driven to accept you after losing him! You never could have been anything to me. If you wanted to get married at all, you should have done it before I was born.” This was hard upon the man, as at that time he could not have been much more than twenty. “But you don’t know anything of the difference in people if you think that any girl would look at you, after having been — loved by Mr Maule. Now, as you do not seem inclined to go away, I shall leave you.” So saying, she walked off with stately step, out of the room, leaving the door open behind her to facilitate her escape.
She had certainly been very rude to him, and had treated him very badly. Of that he was sure. He had conferred upon her what is commonly called the highest compliment which a gentleman can pay to a lady, and she had insulted him — had doubly insulted him. She had referred to his age, greatly exaggerating his misfortune in that respect; and she had compared him to that poor beggar Maule in language most offensive. When she left him, he put his hand beneath his waistcoat, and turned with an air almost majestic towards the window. But in an instant he remembered that there was nobody there to see how he bore his punishment, and he sank down into human nature. “Damnation!” he said, as he put his hands into his trousers pockets.
Slowly he made his way down into the hall, and slowly he opened for himself the front door, and escaped from the house on to the gravel drive. There he found his cousin Ned still seated in the phaeton, and slowly driving round the circle in front of the hall door. The squire succeeded in gaining such command over his own gait and countenance that his cousin divined nothing of the truth as he clambered up into his seat. But he soon showed his temper. “What the devil have you got the reins in this way for?”
“The reins are all right,” said Ned.
“No they ain’t — they’re all wrong.” And then he drove down the avenue to Spoon Hall as quickly as he could make the horses trot.
“Did you see her?” said Ned, as soon as they were beyond the gates.
“See your grandmother.”
“Do you mean to say that I’m not to ask?”
“There’s nothing I hate so much as a fellow that’s always asking questions,” said Tom Spooner. “There are some men so d — d thick-headed that they never know when they ought to hold their tongue.”
For a minute or two Ned bore the reproof in silence, and then he spoke. “If you are unhappy, Tom, I can bear a good deal; but don’t overdo it — unless you want me to leave you.”
“She’s the d — t vixen that ever had a tongue in her head,” said Tom Spooner, lifting his whip and striking the poor off-horse in his agony. Then Ned forgave him.
Phineas Finn, when he had been thrice remanded before the Bow Street magistrate, and four times examined, was at last committed to be tried for the murder of Mr Bonteen. This took place on Wednesday, 19th May, a fortnight after the murder. But during those fourteen days little was learned, or even surmised, by the police, in addition to the circumstances which had transpired at once. Indeed the delay, slight as it was, had arisen from a desire to find evidence that might affect Mr Emilius, rather than with a view to strengthen that which did affect Phineas Finn. But no circumstance could be found tending in anyway to add to the suspicion to which the converted Jew was made subject by his own character, and by the supposition that he would have been glad to get rid of Mr Bonteen. He did not even attempt to run away — for which attempt certain pseudo-facilities were put in his way by police ingenuity. But Mr Emilius stood his ground and courted inquiry. Mr Bonteen had been to him, he said, a very bitter, unjust, and cruel enemy. Mr Bonteen had endeavoured to rob him of his dearest wife — had charged him with bigamy — had got up false evidence in the hope of ruining him. He had undoubtedly hated Mr Bonteen, and might probably have said so. But, as it happened, through God’s mercy, he was enabled to prove that he could not possibly have been at the scene of the murder when the murder was committed. During that hour of the night he had been in his own bed; and, had he been out, could not have re-entered the house without calling up the inmates. But, independently of his alibi, Mealyus was able to rely on the absolute absence of any evidence against him. No grey coat could be traced to his hands, even for an hour. His height was very much less than that attributed by Lord Fawn to the man whom he had seen hurrying to the spot. No weapon was found in his possession by which the deed could have been done. Inquiry was made as to the purchase of life-preservers, and the reverend gentleman was taken to half a dozen shops at which such instruments had lately been sold. But there had been a run upon life preservers, in consequence of recommendations as to their use given by certain newspapers — and it was found as impossible to trace one particular purchase as it would be that of a loaf of bread. At none of the half-dozen shops to which he was taken was Mr Emilius remembered; and then all further inquiry in that direction was abandoned, and Mr Emilius was set at liberty. “I forgive my persecutors from the bottom of my heart,” he said — “but God will requite it to them.”
In the meantime Phineas was taken to Newgate, and was there confined, almost with the glory and attendance of a State prisoner. This was no common murder, and no common murderer. Nor were they who interested themselves in the matter the ordinary rag, tag, and bobtail of the people — the mere wives and children, or perhaps fathers and mothers, or brothers and sisters of the slayer or the slain. Dukes and Earls, Duchesses and Countesses, Members of the Cabinet, great statesmen, Judges, Bishops, and Queen’s Counsellors, beautiful women, and women of highest fashion, seemed for a while to think of but little else than the fate of Mr Bonteen and the fate of Phineas Finn. People became intimately acquainted with each other through similar sympathies in this matter, who had never before spoken to or seen each other. On the day after the full committal of the man, Mr Low received a most courteous letter from the Duchess of Omnium, begging him to call in Carlton Terrace if his engagements would permit him to do so. The Duchess had heard that Mr Low was devoting all his energies to the protection of Phineas Finn; and, as a certain friend of hers — a lady — was doing the same, she was anxious to bring them together. Indeed, she herself was equally prepared to devote her energies for the present to the same object. She had declared to all her friends — especially to her husband and to the Duke of St Bungay — her absolute conviction of the innocence of the accused man, and had called upon them to defend him. “My dear,” said the elder Duke, “I do not think that in my time any innocent man has ever lost his life upon the scaffold.”
“Is that a reason why our friend should be the first instance?” said the Duchess.
“He must be tried according to the laws of his country,” said the younger Duke.
“Plantagenet, you always speak as if everything were perfect, whereas you know very well that everything is imperfect. If that man is — is hung, I— ”
“Glencora,” said her husband, “do not connect yourself with the fate of a stranger from any misdirected enthusiasm.”
“I do connect myself. If that man be hung — I shall go into mourning for him. You had better look to it.”
Mr Low obeyed the summons, and called on the Duchess. But, in truth, the invitation had been planned by Madame Goesler, who was present when the lawyer, about five o’clock in the afternoon, was shown into the presence of the Duchess. Tea was immediately ordered, and Mr Low was almost embraced. He was introduced to Madame Goesler, of whom he did not before remember that he had heard the name, and was at once given to understand that the fate of Phineas was now in question. “We know so well,” said the Duchess, “how true you are to him.”
“He is an old friend of mine,” said the lawyer, “and I cannot believe him to have been guilty of a murder.”
“Guilty! — he is no more guilty than I am. We are as sure of that as we are of the sun. We know that he is innocent — do we not, Madame Goesler? And we, too, are very dear friends of his — that is, I am.”
“And so am I,” said Madame Goesler, in a voice very low and sweet, but yet so energetic as to make Mr Low almost rivet his attention upon her.
“You must understand, Mr Low, that Mr Finn is a man horribly hated by certain enemies. That wretched Mr Bonteen hated his very name. But there are other people who think very differently of him. He must be saved.”
“Indeed I hope he may,” said Mr Low.
“We wanted to see you for ever so many reasons. Of course you understand that — that any sum of money can be spent that the case may want.”
“Nothing will be spared on that account certainly,” said the lawyer.
“But money will do a great many things. We would send all round the world if we could get evidence against that other man — Lady Eustace’s husband, you know.”
“Can any good be done by sending all round the world?”
“He went back to his own home not long ago — in Poland, I think,” said Madame Goesler. “Perhaps he got the instrument there, and brought it with him.” Mr Low shook his head. “Of course we are very ignorant — but it would be a pity that everything should not be tried.”
“He might have got in and out of the window, you know,” said the Duchess. Still Mr Low shook his head. “I believe things can always be found out, if only you take trouble enough. And trouble means money — does it not? We wouldn’t mind how many thousand pounds it cost; would we, Marie?”
“I fear that the spending of thousands can do no good,” said Mr Low.
“But something must be done. You don’t mean to say that Mr Finn is to be hung because Lord Fawn says that he saw a man running along the street in a grey coat.”
“Certainly not.”
“There is nothing else against him — nobody else saw him.”
“If there be nothing else against him he will be acquitted.”
“You think then”, said Madame Goesler, “that there will be no use in tracing what the man Mealyus did when he was out of England. He might have bought a grey coat then, and have hidden it till this night, and then have thrown it away.” Mr Low listened to her with close attention, but again shook his head. “If it could be shown that the man had a grey coat at that time it would certainly weaken the effect of Mr Finn’s grey coat.”
“And if he bought a bludgeon there, it would weaken the effect of Mr Finn’s bludgeon. And if he bought rope to make a ladder it would show that he had got out. It was a dark night, you know, and nobody would have seen it. We have been talking it all over, Mr Low, and we really think you ought to send somebody.”
“I will mention what you say to the gentlemen who are employed on Mr Finn’s defence.”
“But will not you be employed?” Then Mr Low explained that the gentlemen to whom he referred were the attorneys who would get up the case on their friend’s behalf, and that as he himself practised in the Courts of Equity only, he could not defend Mr Finn on his trial.
“He must have the very best men,” said the Duchess.
“He must have good men, certainly.”
“And a great many. Couldn’t we get Sir Gregory Grogram?” Mr Low shook his head. “I know very well that if you get men who are really — really swells, for that is what it is, Mr Low — and pay them well enough, and so make it really an important thing, they can browbeat any judge and hoodwink any jury. I dare say it is very dreadful to say so, Mr Low; but, nevertheless, I believe it, and as this man is certainly innocent it ought to be done. I dare say it’s very shocking, but I do think that twenty thousand pounds spent among the lawyers would get him off.”
“I hope we can get him off without expending twenty thousand pounds, Duchess.”
“But you can have the money and welcome — cannot he, Madame Goesler?”
“He could have double that, if double were necessary.”
“I would fill the court with lawyers for him,” continued the Duchess. “I would cross-examine the witnesses off their legs. I would rake up every wicked thing that horrid Jew has done since he was born. I would make witnesses speak. I would give a carriage and pair of horses to everyone of the jurors, wives, if that would do any good. You may shake your head, Mr Low; but I would. And I’d carry Lord Fawn off to the Antipodes, too — and I shouldn’t care if you left him there. I know that this man is innocent, and I’d do anything to save him. A woman, I know, can’t do much — but she has this privilege, that she can speak out what men only think. I’d give them two carriages and two pairs of horses a-piece if I could do it that way.”
Mr Low, did his best to explain to the Duchess that the desired object could hardly be effected after the fashion she proposed, and he endeavoured to persuade her that justice was sure to be done in an English court of law. “Then why are people so very anxious to get this lawyer or that to bamboozle the witnesses?” said the Duchess. Mr Low declared it to be his opinion that the poorest man in England was not more likely to be hung for a murder he had not committed than the richest. “Then why would you, if you were accused, have ever so many lawyers to defend you?” Mr Low went on to explain. “The more money you spend,” said the Duchess, “the more fuss you make. And the longer a trial is about and the greater the interest, the more chance a man has to escape. If a man is tried for three days you always think he’ll get off, but if it lasts ten minutes he is sure to be convicted and hung. I’d have Mr Finn’s trial made so long that they never could convict him. I’d tire out all the judges and juries in London. If you get lawyers enough they may speak for ever.” Mr Low endeavoured to explain that this might prejudice the prisoner. “And I’d examine every member of the House of Commons, and all the Cabinet, and all their wives. I’d ask them all what Mr Bonteen had been saying. I’d do it in such a way as a trial was never done before — and I’d take care that they should know what was coming.”
“And if he were convicted afterwards?”
“I’d buy up the Home Secretary. It’s very horrid to say so, of course, Mr Low; and I dare say there is nothing wrong ever done in Chancery. But I know what Cabinet Ministers are. If they could get a majority by granting a pardon they’d do it quick enough.”
“You are speaking of a Liberal Government, of course, Duchess.”
“There isn’t twopence to choose between them in that respect. Just at this moment I believe Mr Finn is the most popular member of the House of Commons; and I’d bring all that to bear. You can’t but know that if everything of that kind is done it will have an effect. I believe you could make him so popular that the people would pull down the prison rather than have him hung — so that a jury would not dare to say he was guilty.”
“Would that be justice, ladies?” asked the just man.
“It would be success, Mr Low — which is a great deal the better thing of the two.”
“If Mr Finn were found guilty, I could not in my heart believe that that would be justice,” said Madame Goesler.
Mr Low did his best to make them understand that the plan of pulling down Newgate by the instrumentality of Phineas Finn’s popularity, or of buying up the Home Secretary by threats of Parliamentary defection, would hardly answer their purpose. He would, he assured them, suggest to the attorneys employed the idea of searching for evidence against the man Mealyus in his own country, and would certainly take care that nothing was omitted from want of means. “You had better let us put a cheque in your hands,” said the Duchess. But to this he would not assent. He did admit that it would be well to leave no stone unturned, and that the turning of such stones must cost money — but the money, he said, would be forthcoming. “He’s not a rich man himself,” said the Duchess. Mr Low assured her that if money were really wanting he would ask for it, “And now”, said the Duchess, “there is one other thing that we want. Can we see him?”
“You, yourself?”
“Yes — I myself, and Madame Goesler. You look as if it would be very wicked.” Mr Low thought that it would be wicked — that the Duke would not like it; and that such a visit would occasion ill-natured remarks. “People do visit him, I suppose. He’s not locked up like a criminal.”
“I visit him,” said Mr Low, “and one or two other friends have done so. Lord Chiltern has been with him, and Mr Erle.”
“Has no lady seen him?” asked the Duchess.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Then it’s time some lady should do so. I suppose we could be admitted. If we were his sisters they’d let us in.”
“You must excuse me, Duchess, but — ”
“Of course I will excuse you. But what?”
“You are not his sisters.”
“If I were engaged to him, to be his wife? — “ said Madame Goesler, standing up. “I am not so. There is nothing of that kind. You must not misunderstand me. But if I were?”
“On that plea I presume you could be admitted.”
“Why not as a friend? Lord Chiltern is admitted as his friend.”
“Because of the prudery of a prison,” said the Duchess, “All things are wrong to the lookers after wickedness, my dear. If it would comfort him to see us, why should he not have that comfort?”
“Would you have gone to him in his own lodgings?” asked Mr Low.
“I would — if he’d been ill,” said Madame Goesler.
“Madam,” said Mr Low, speaking with a gravity which for a moment had its effect even upon the Duchess of Omnium, “I think, at any rate, that if you visit Mr Finn in prison, you should do so through the instrumentality of his Grace, your husband.”
“Of course you suspect me of all manner of evil.”
“I suspect nothing — but I am sure that it should be so.”
“It shall be so,” said the Duchess. “Thank you, sir. We are much obliged to you for your wise counsel.”
“I am obliged to you,” said Madame Goesler, “because I know that you have his safety at heart.”
“And so am I,” said the Duchess, relenting, and giving him her hand. “We are really ever so much obliged to you. You don’t quite understand about the Duke; and how should you? I never do anything without telling him, but he hasn’t time to attend to things.”
“I hope I have not offended you.”
“Oh dear, no, You can’t offend me unless you mean it. Goodbye — and remember to have a great many lawyers, and all with new wigs; and let them all get in a great rage that anybody should suppose it possible that Mr Finn is a murderer. I’m sure I am. Goodbye, Mr Low.”
“You’ll never be able to get to him,” said the Duchess, as soon as they were alone.
“I suppose not.”
“And what good could you do? Of course I’d go with you if we could get in — but what would be the use?”
“To let him know that people do not think him guilty.”
“Mr Low will tell him that. I suppose, too, we can write to him. Would you mind writing?”
“I would rather go.”
“You might as well tell the truth when you are about it. You are breaking your heart for him.”
“If he were to be condemned, and — executed, I should break my heart. I could never appear bright before the world again.”
“That is just what I told Plantagenet. I said I would go into mourning.”
“And I should really mourn. And yet were he free tomorrow he would be no more to me than any other friend.”
“Do you mean you would not marry him?”
“No — I would not. Nor would he ask me. I will tell you what will be his lot in life — if he escapes from the present danger.”
“Of course he will escape. They don’t really hang innocent men.”
“Then he will become the husband of Lady Laura Kennedy.”
“Poor fellow! If I believed that, I should think it cruel to help him escape from Newgate.”
Phineas Finn himself, during the fortnight in which he was carried backwards and forwards between his prison and the Bow Street Police office, was able to maintain some outward show of manly dignity — as though he felt that the terrible accusation and great material inconvenience to which he was subjected were only, and could only be, temporary in their nature, and that the truth would soon prevail. During this period he had friends constantly with him — either Mr Low, or Lord Chiltern, or Barrington Erle, or his landlord, Mr Bunce, who, in these days, was very true to him. And he was very frequently visited by the attorney, Mr Wickerby, who had been expressly recommended to him for this occasion. If anybody could be counted upon to see him through his difficulty it was Wickerby. But the company of Mr Wickerby was not pleasant to him, because, as far as he could judge, Mr Wickerby did not believe in his innocence. Mr Wickerby was willing to do his best for him; was, so to speak, moving heaven and earth on his behalf; was fully conscious that this case was a great affair, and in no respect similar to those which were constantly placed in his hands; but there never fell from him a sympathetic expression of assurance of his client’s absolute freedom from all taint of guilt in the matter. From day to day, and ten times a day, Phineas would express his indignant surprise that anyone should think it possible that he had done this deed, but to all these expressions Mr Wickerby would make no answer whatever. At last Phineas asked him the direct question. “I never suspect anybody of anything,” said Mr Wickerby. “Do you believe in my innocence?” demanded Phineas. “Everybody is entitled to be believed innocent till he has been proved to be guilty,” said Mr Wickerby. Then Phineas appealed to his friend Mr Low, asking whether he might not be allowed to employ some lawyer whose feelings would be more in unison with his own. But Mr Low adjured him to make no change. Mr Wickerby understood the work and was a most zealous man. His client was entitled to his services, but to nothing more than his services. And so Mr Wickerby carried on the work, fully believing that Phineas Finn had in truth murdered Mr Bonteen.
But the prisoner was not without sympathy and confidence. Mr Low, Lord Chiltern, and Lady Chiltern, who, on one occasion, came to visit him with her husband, entertained no doubts prejudicial to his honour. They told him perhaps almost more than was quite true of the feelings of the world in his favour. He heard of the friendship and faith of the Duchess of Omnium, of Madame Goesler, and of Lady Laura Kennedy — hearing also that Lady Laura was now a widow. And then at length his two sisters came over to him from Ireland, and wept and sobbed, and fell into hysterics in his presence. They were sure that he was innocent, as was everyone, they said, throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. And Mrs Bunce, who came to see Phineas in his prison, swore that she would tear the judge from his bench if he did not at once pronounce a verdict in favour of her darling without waiting for any nonsense of a jury. And Bunce, her husband, having convinced himself that his lodger had not committed the murder, was zealous in another way, taking delight in the case, and proving that no jury could find a verdict of guilty.
During that week Phineas, buoyed up by the sympathy of his friends, and in some measure supported by the excitement of the occasion, carried himself well, and bore bravely the terrible misfortune to which he had been subjected by untoward circumstances. But when the magistrate fully committed him, giving the first public decision on the matter from the bench, declaring to the world at large that on the evidence as given, prima facie, he, Phineas Finn, must be regarded as the murderer of Mr Bonteen, our hero’s courage almost gave way. If such was now the judicial opinion of the magistrate, how could he expect a different verdict from a jury in two months’ time, when he would be tried before a final court? As far as he could understand, nothing more could be learned on the matter. All the facts were known that could be known — as far as he, or rather his friends on his behalf, were able to search for facts. It seemed to him that there was no tittle whatever of evidence against him. He had walked straight home from his club with the life-preserver in his pocket, and had never turned to the right or to the left. Till he found himself committed, he would not believe that any serious and prolonged impediment could be thrown in the way of his liberty. He would not believe that a man altogether innocent could be in danger of the gallows on a false accusation. It had seemed to him that the police had kept their hold on him with a rabid ferocity, straining every point with the view of showing that it was possible that he should have been the murderer. Every policeman who had been near him, carrying him backward and forward from his prison, or giving evidence as to the circumstances of the locality and of his walk home on that fatal night, had seemed to him to be an enemy. But he had looked for impartiality from the magistrate — and now the magistrate had failed him. He had seen in court the faces of men well known to him — men known in the world — with whom he had been on pleasant terms in Parliament, who had sat upon the bench while he was standing as a culprit between two constables; and they who had been his familiar friends had appeared at once to have been removed from him by some unmeasurable distance. But all that he had, as it were, discounted, believing that a few hours — at the very longest a few days — would remove the distance; but now he was sent back to his prison, there to await his trial for the murder.
And it seemed to him that his committal startled no one but himself. Could it be that even his dearest friends thought it possible that he had been guilty? When that day came, and he was taken back to Newgate on his last journey there from Bow Street, Lord Chiltern had returned for a while to Harrington Hall, having promised that he would be back in London as soon as his business would permit; but Mr Low came to him almost immediately to his prison room. “This is a pleasant state of things,” said Phineas, with a forced laugh. But as he laughed he also sobbed, with a low, irrepressible, convulsive movement in his throat.
“Phineas, the time has come in which you must show yourself to be a man.”
“A man! Oh, yes, I can be a man. A murderer you mean. I shall have to be — hung, I suppose.”
“May God, in His mercy, forbid.”
“No — not in His mercy; in His justice. There can be no need for mercy here — not even from Heaven. When they take my life may He forgive my sins through the merits of my Saviour. But for this there can be no mercy. Why do you not speak? Do you mean to say that I am guilty?”
“I am sure that you are innocent.”
“And yet, look here. What more can be done to prove it than has been done? That blundering fool will swear my life away.” Then he threw himself on his bed, and gave way to his sobs.
That evening he was alone — as, indeed, most of his evenings had been spent, and the minutes were minutes of agony to him. The external circumstances of his position were as comfortable as circumstances would allow. He had a room to himself looking out through heavy iron bars into one of the courts of the prison. The chamber was carpeted, and was furnished with bed and chairs and two tables. Books were allowed him as he pleased, and pen and ink. It was May, and no fire was necessary. At certain periods of the day he could walk alone in the court below — the restriction on such liberty being that at other certain hours the place was wanted for other prisoners. As far as he knew no friend who called was denied to him, though he was by no means certain that his privilege in that respect would not be curtailed now that he had been committed for trial. His food had been plentiful and well cooked, and even luxuries, such as fish and wine and fruit, had been supplied to him. That the fruit had come from the hot-houses of the Duchess of Omnium, and the wine from Mr Low’s cellar, and the fish and lamb and spring vegetables, the cream and coffee and fresh butter from the unrestricted orders of another friend, that Lord Chiltern had sent him champagne and cigars, and that Lady Chiltern had given directions about the books and stationery, he did not know. But as far as he could be consoled by such comforts, there had been the consolation. If lamb and salad could make him happy he might have enjoyed his sojourn in Newgate. Now, this evening, he was past all enjoyment. It was impossible that he should read. How could a man fix his attention on any book, with a charge of murder against himself affirmed by the deliberate decision of a judge? And he knew himself to be as innocent as the magistrate himself. Every now and then he would rise from his bed, and almost rush across the room as though he would dash his head against the wall. Murder! They really believed that he had deliberately murdered the man — he, Phineas Finn, who had served his country with repute, who had sat in Parliament, who had prided himself on living with the best of his fellow-creatures, who had been the friend of Mr Monk and of Lord Cantrip, the trusted intimate of such women as Lady Laura and Lady Chiltern, who had never put his hand to a mean action, or allowed his tongue to speak a mean word! He laughed in his wrath, and then almost howled in his agony. He thought of the young loving wife who had lived with him little more than for one fleeting year, and wondered whether she was looking down upon him from Heaven, and how her spirit would bear this accusation against the man upon whose bosom she had slept, and in whose arms she had gone to her long rest. “They can’t believe it,” he said aloud. “It is impossible. Why should I have murdered him?” And then he remembered an example in Latin from some rule of grammar, and repeated it to himself over and over again. — “No one at an instant — of a sudden — becomes utterly base.” It seemed to him that there was such a want of knowledge of human nature in the supposition that it was possible that he should have committed such a crime. And yet — there he was, committed to take his trial for the murder of Mr Bonteen.
The days were long, and it was daylight till nearly nine. Indeed the twilight lingered, even through those iron bars, till after nine. He had once asked for candles, but had been told that they could not be allowed him without an attendant in the room — and he had dispensed with them. He had been treated doubtless with great respect, but nevertheless he had been treated as a prisoner. They hardly denied him anything that he asked, but when he asked for that which they did not choose to grant they would annex conditions which induced him to withdraw his request. He understood their ways now, and did not rebel against them.
On a sudden he heard the key in the door, and the man who attended him entered the room with a candle in his hand. A lady had come to call, and the governor had given permission for her entrance. He would return for the light — and for the lady, in half an hour. He had said all this before Phineas could see who the lady was. And when he did see the form of her who followed the gaoler, and who stood with hesitating steps behind him in the doorway, he knew her by her sombre solemn raiment, and not by her countenance. She was dressed from head to foot in the deepest weeds of widowhood, and a heavy veil fell from her bonnet over her face. “Lady Laura, is it you?” said Phineas, putting out his hand. Of course it was Lady Laura. While the Duchess of Omnium and Madame Goesler were talking about such a visit, allowing themselves to be deterred by the wisdom of Mr Low, she had made her way through bolts and bars, and was now with him in his prison.
“Oh, Phineas!” She slowly raised her veil, and stood gazing at him. “Of all my troubles this — to see you here — is the heaviest.”
“And of all my consolations to see you here is the greatest.” He should not have so spoken. Could he have thought of things as they were, and have restrained himself, he should not have uttered words to her which were pleasant but not true. There came a gleam of sunshine across her face as she listened to him, and then she threw herself into his arms, and wept upon his shoulder. “I did not expect that you would have found me,” he said.
She took the chair opposite to that on which he usually sat, and then began her tale. Her cousin, Barrington Erle, had brought her there, and was below, waiting for her in the Governor’s house. He had procured an order for her admission that evening, direct from Sir Harry Coldfoot, the Home Secretary — which, however, as she admitted, had been given under the idea that she and Erle were to see him together. “But I would not let him come with me,” she said. “I could not have spoken to you, had he been here — could I?”
“It would not have been the same, Lady Laura.” He had thought much of his mode of addressing her on occasions before this, at Dresden and at Portman Square, and had determined that he would always give her her title. Once or twice he had lacked the courage to be so hard to her. Now as she heard the name the gleam of sunshine passed from her altogether. “We hardly expected that we should ever meet in such a place as this?” he said.
“I cannot understand it. They cannot really think you killed him.” He smiled, and shook his head. Then she spoke of her own condition. “You have heard what has happened? You know that I am — a widow?”
“Yes — I had heard,” And then he smiled again. “You will have understood why I could not come to you — as I should have done but for this little accident.”
“He died on the day that they arrested you. Was it not strange that such a double blow should fall together? Oswald, no doubt, told you all.”
“He told me of your husband’s death.”
“But not of his will? Perhaps he has not seen you since he heard it.” Lord Chiltern had heard of the will before his last visit to Phineas in Newgate, but had not chosen then to speak of his sister’s wealth.
“I have heard nothing of Mr Kennedy’s will.”
“It was made immediately after our marriage — and he never changed it, though he had so much cause of anger against me.
“He has not injured you, then — as regards money.”
“Injured me! No, indeed. I am a rich woman — very rich. All Loughlinter is my own — for life. But of what use can it be to me?” He in his present state could tell her of no uses for such a property. “I suppose, Phineas, it cannot be that you are really in danger?”
“In the greatest danger, I fancy.”
“Do you mean that they will say — you are guilty?”
“The magistrates have said so already.”
“But surely that is nothing. If I thought so, I should die. If I believed it, they should never take me out of the prison while you are here. Barrington says that it cannot be. Oswald and Violet are sure that such a thing can never happen. It was that Jew who did it.”
“I cannot say who did it. I did not.”
“You! Oh, Phineas! The world must be mad when any can believe it!”
“But they do believe it?” This, he said, meaning to ask a question as to that outside world.
“We do not. Barrington says — ”
“What does Barrington say?”
“That there are some who do — just a few, who were Mr Bonteen’s special friends.”
“The police believe it. That is what I cannot understand — men who ought to be keen-eyed and quick-witted. That magistrate believes it. I saw men in the Court who used to know me well, and I could see that they believed it. Mr Monk was here yesterday.”
“Does he believe it?”
“I asked him, and he told me — no. But I did not quite trust him as he told me. There are two or three who believe me innocent.”
“Who are they?”
“Low, and Chiltern, and his wife — and that man Bunce, and his wife. If I escape from this — if they do not hang me — I will remember them. And there are two other women who know me well enough not to think me a murderer.”
“Who are they, Phineas?”
“Madame Goesler, and the Duchess of Omnium.”
“Have they been here?” she asked, with jealous eagerness.
“Oh, no. But I hear that it is so — and I know it. One learns to feel even from hearsay what is in the minds of people.”
“And what do I believe, Phineas? Can you read my thoughts?”
“I know them of old, without reading them now.” Then he put forth his hand and took hers. “Had I murdered him in real truth, you would not have believed it.”
“Because I love you, Phineas.”
Then the key was again heard in the door, and Barrington Erle appeared with the gaolers. The time was up, he said, and he had come to redeem his promise. He spoke cordially to his old friend, and grasped the prisoner’s hand cordially — but not the less did be believe that there was blood on it, and Phineas knew that such was his belief. It appeared on his arrival that Lady Laura had not at all accomplished the chief object of her visit. She had brought with her various cheques, all drawn by Barrington Erle on his banker — amounting altogether to many hundreds of pounds — which it was intended that Phineas should use from time to time for the necessities of his trial. Barrington Erle explained that the money was in fact to be a loan from Lady Laura’s father, and was simply passed through his banker’s account. But Phineas knew that the loan must come from Lady Laura, and he positively refused to touch it. His friend, Mr Low, was managing all that for him, and he would not embarrass the matter by a fresh account. He was very obstinate, and at last the cheques were taken away in Barrington Erle’s pocket.
“Goodnight, old fellow,” said Erle, affectionately. “I’ll see you again before long. May God send you through it all.”
“Goodnight, Barrington. It was kind of you to come to me.” Then Lady Laura, watching to see whether her cousin would leave her alone for a moment with the object of her idolatry, paused before she gave him her hand. “Goodnight, Lady Laura,” he said.
“Goodnight!” Barrington Erle was now just outside the door.
“I shall not forget your coming here to me.”
“How should we, either of us, forget it?”
“Come, Laura,” said Barrington Erle, “we had better make an end of it.”
“But if I should never see him again!”
“Of course you will see him again.”
“When! and where! Oh, God — if they should murder him!” Then she threw herself into his arms, and covered him with kisses, though her cousin had returned into the room and stood over her as she embraced him.
“Laura,” said he, “you are doing him an injury. How should he support himself if you behave like this! Come away.”
“Oh, my God, if they should kill him!” she exclaimed. But she allowed her cousin to take her in his arms, and Phineas Finn was left alone without having spoken another word to either of them.
On the day after the committal a lady, who had got out of a cab at the corner of Northumberland Street, in the Marylebone Road, walked up that very uninviting street, and knocked at a door just opposite to the deadest part of the dead wall of the Marylebone Workhouse. Here lived Mrs and Miss Meager — and also on occasions Mr Meager, who, however, was simply a trouble and annoyance in the world, going about to race-courses, and occasionally, perhaps, to worse places, and being of no slightest use to the two poor hard-worked women — mother and daughter — who endeavoured to get their living by letting lodgings. The task was difficult, for it is not everybody who likes to look out upon the dead wall of a workhouse, and they who do are disposed to think that their willingness that way should be considered in the rent. But Mr Emilius, when the cruelty of his wife’s friends deprived him of the short-lived luxury of his mansion in Lowndes Square, had found in Northumberland Street a congenial retreat, and had for a while trusted to Mrs and Miss Meager for all his domestic comforts. Mr Emilius was always a favourite with new friends, and had not as yet had his Northumberland Street gloss rubbed altogether off him when Mr Bonteen was murdered. As it happened, on that night, or rather early in the day, for Meager had returned to the bosom of his family after a somewhat prolonged absence in the provinces, and therefore the date had become specially remarkable in the Meager family from the double event — Mr Meager had declared that unless his wife could supply him with a five-pound note he must cut his throat instantly. His wife and daughter had regretted the necessity, but had declared the alternative to be out of the question. Whereupon Mr Meager had endeavoured to force the lock of an old bureau with a carving-knife, and there had been some slight personal encounter — after which he had had some gin and had gone to bed. Mrs Meager remembered the day very well indeed, and Miss Meager, when the police came the next morning, had accounted for her black eye by a tragical account of a fall she had had against the bed-post in the dark. Up to that period Mr Emilius had been everything that was sweet and good — an excellent, eloquent clergyman, who was being ill-treated by his wife’s wealthy relations, who was soft in his manners and civil in his words, and never gave more trouble than was necessary. The period, too, would have been one of comparative prosperity to the Meager ladies — but for that inopportune return of the head of the family — as two other lodgers had been inclined to look out upon the dead wall, or else into the cheerful back-yard; which circumstance came to have some bearing upon our story, as Mrs Meager had been driven by the press of her increased household to let that good-natured Mr Emilius know that if “he didn’t mind it” the latch-key might be an accommodation on occasions. To give him his due, indeed, he had, when first taking the rooms, offered to give up the key when not intending to be out at night.
After the murder Mr Emilius had been arrested, and had been kept in durance for a week. Miss Meager had been sure that he was innocent; Mrs Meager had trusted the policemen, who evidently thought that the clergyman was guilty. Of the policemen who were concerned on the occasion, it may be said in a general way that they believed that both the gentlemen had committed the murder — so anxious were they not to be foiled in the attempts at discovery which their duty called upon them to make. Mr Meager had left the house on the morning of the arrest, having arranged that little matter of the five-pound note by a compromise. When the policeman came for Mr Emilius, Mr Meager was gone. For a day or two the lodger’s rooms were kept vacant for the clergyman till Mrs Meager became quite convinced that he had committed the murder, and then all his things were packed up and placed in the passage. When he was liberated he returned to the house, and expressed unbounded anger at what had been done. He took his two boxes away in a cab, and was seen no more by the ladies of Northumberland Street.
But a further gleam of prosperity fell upon them in consequence of the tragedy which had been so interesting to them. Hitherto the inquiries made at their house had had reference solely to the habits and doings of their lodger during the last few days; but now there came to them a visitor who made a more extended investigation; and this was one of their own sex. It was Madame Goesler who got out of the cab at the workhouse corner, and walked from thence to Mrs Meager’s house. This was her third appearance in Northumberland Street, and at each coming she had spoken kind words, and had left behind her liberal recompense for the trouble which she gave. She had no scruples as to paying for the evidence which she desired to obtain — no fear of any questions which might afterwards be asked in cross-examination. She dealt out sovereigns — womanfully, and had had Mrs and Miss Meager at her feet. Before the second visit was completed they were both certain that the Bohemian converted Jew had murdered Mr Bonteen, and were quite willing to assist in hanging him.
“Yes, Ma’am,” said Mrs Meager, “he did take the key with him. Amelia remembers we were a key short at the time he was away.” The absence here alluded to was that occasioned by the journey which Mr Emilius took to Prague, when he heard that evidence of his former marriage was being sought against him in his own country.
“That he did”, said Amelia, “because we were put out ever so. And he had no business, for he was not paying for the room.”
“You have only one key.”
“There is three, Ma’am. The front attic has one regular because he’s on a daily paper, and of course he doesn’t get to bed till morning. Meager always takes another, and we can’t get it from him ever so.”
“And Mr Emilius took the other away with him?” asked Madame Coesler.
“That he did, Ma’am. When he came back he said it had been in a drawer — but it wasn’t in the drawer. We always knows what’s in the drawers.”
“The drawer wasn’t left locked, then?”
“Yes, it was, Ma’am, and he took that key — unbeknownst to us,” said Mrs Meager. “But there is other keys that open the drawers. We are obliged in our line to know about the lodgers, Ma’am.”
This was certainly no time for Madame Goesler to express disapprobation of the practices which were thus divulged. She smiled, and nodded her head, and was quite sympathetic with Mrs Meager. She had learned that Mr Emilius had taken the latch-key with him to Bohemia, and was convinced that a dozen other latch-keys might have been made after the pattern without any apparent detection by the London police. “And now about the coat, Mrs Meager.”
“Well, Ma’am?”
“Mr Meager has not been here since?”
“No, Ma’am. Mr Meager, Ma’am, isn’t what he ought to be. I never do own it up, only when I’m driven. He hasn’t been home.”
“I suppose he still has the coat.”
“Well, Ma’am, no. We sent a young man after him, as you said, and the young man found him at the Newmarket Spring.”
“Some water cure?” asked Madame Goesler.
“No, Ma’am. It ain’t a water cure, but the races. He hadn’t got the coat. He does always manage a tidy great coat when November is coming on, because it covers everything, and is respectable, but he mostly parts with it in April. He gets short, and then he — just pawns it.”
“But he had it the night of the murder?”
“Yes, Ma’am, he had. Amelia and I remembered it especial. When we went to bed, which we did soon after ten, it was left in this room, lying there on the sofa.” They were now sitting in the little back parlour, in which Mrs and Miss Meager were accustomed to live.
“And it was there in the morning?”
“Father had it on when he went out,” said Amelia.
“If we paid him he would get it out of the pawnshop, and bring it to us, would he not?” asked the lady.
To this Mrs Meager suggested that it was quite on the cards that Mr Meager might have been able to do better with his coat by selling it, and if so, it certainly would have been sold, as no prudent idea of redeeming his garment for the next winter’s wear would ever enter his mind. And Mrs Meager seemed to think that such a sale would not have taken place between her husband and any old friend. “He wouldn’t know where he sold it,” said Mrs Meager.
“Anyways he’d tell us so,” said Amelia.
“But if we paid him to be more accurate?” said Madame Goesler.
“They is so afraid of being took up themselves,” said Mrs Meager. There was, however, ample evidence that Mr Meager had possessed a grey great coat, which during the night of the murder had been left in the little sitting-room, and which they had supposed to have lain there all night. To this coat Mr Emilius might have had easy access. “But then it was a big man that was seen, and Emilius isn’t no ways a big man. Meager’s coat would be too long for him, ever so much.”
“Nevertheless we must try and get the coat,” said Madame Goesler. “I’ll speak to a friend about it. I suppose we can find your husband when we want him?”
“I don’t know, Ma’am. We never can find him; but then we never do want him — not now. The police know him at the races, no doubt. You won’t go and get him into trouble, Ma’am, worse than he is? He’s always been in trouble, but I wouldn’t like to be means of making it worse on him than it is.”
Madame Goesler, as she again paid the woman for her services, assured her that she would do no injury to Mr Meager. All that she wanted of Mr Meager was his grey coat, and that not with any view that could be detrimental either to his honour or to his safety, and she was willing to pay any reasonable price — or almost any unreasonable price — for the coat. But the coat must be made to be forthcoming if it were still in existence, and had not been as yet torn to pieces by the shoddy makers.
“It ain’t near come to that yet,” said Amelia. “I don’t know that I ever see father more respectable — that is, in the way of a great coat.”
When Madame Goesler revealed her plans and ideas to Mr Wickerby, the attorney, who had been employed to bring Phineas Finn through his troubles, that gentleman evidently did not think much of the unprofessional assistance which the lady proposed to give him. “I’m afraid it is far-fetched, Ma’am — if you understand what I mean,” said Mr Wickerby. Madame Goesler declared that she understood very well what Mr Wickerby meant, but that she could hardly agree with him. “According to that the gentleman must have plotted the murder more than a month before he committed it,” said Mr Wickerby.
“And why not?”
“Murder plots are generally the work of a few hours at the longest, Madame Goesler. Anger, combined with an indifference to self-sacrifice, does not endure the wear of many days. And the object here was insufficient. I don’t think we can ask to have the trial put off in order to find out whether a false key may have been made in Prague.”
“And you will not look for the coat?”
“We can look for it, and probably get it, if the woman has not lied to you; but I don’t think it will do us any good. The woman probably is lying. You have been paying her very liberally, so that she has been making an excellent livelihood out of the murder. No jury would believe her. And a grey coat is a very common thing. After all, it would prove nothing. It would only let the jury know that Mr Meager had a grey coat as well as Mr Finn. That Mr Finn wore a grey coat on that night is a fact which we can’t upset. If you got hold of Meager’s coat you wouldn’t be a bit nearer to proof that Emilius had worn it.”
“There would be the fact that he might have worn it.”
“Madame Goesler, indeed it would not help our client. You see what are the difficulties in our way. Mr Finn was on the spot at the moment, or so near it as to make it certainly possible that he might have been there. There is no such evidence as to Emilius, even if he could be shown to have had a latch-key. The man was killed by such an instrument as Mr Finn had about him. There is no evidence that Mr Emilius had such an instrument in his hand. A tall man in a grey coat was seen hurrying to the spot at the exact hour. Mr Finn is a tall man and wore a grey coat at the time. Emilius is not a tall man, and, even though Meager had a grey coat, there is no evidence to show that Emilius ever wore it. Mr Finn had quarelled violently with Mr Bonteen within the hour. It does not appear that Emilius ever quarelled with Mr Bonteen, though Mr Bonteen had exerted himself in opposition to Emilius.”
“Is there to be no defence, then?”
“Certainly there will be a defence, and such a defence as I think will prevent any jury from being unanimous in convicting my client. Though there is a great deal of evidence against him, it is all — what we call circumstantial.”
“I understand, Mr Wickerby.”
“Nobody saw him commit the murder.”
“Indeed no,” said Madame Goesler.
“Although there is personal similarity, there is no personal identity. There is no positive proof of anything illegal on his part, or of anything that would have been suspicious had no murder been committed — such as the purchase of poison, or carrying of a revolver. The life-preserver, had no such instrument been unfortunately used, might have been regarded as a thing of custom.”
“But I am sure that that Bohemian did murder Mr Bonteen, said Madame Goesler, with enthusiasm.
“Madame,” said Mr Wickerby, holding up both his hands, “I can only wish that you could be upon the jury.”
“And you won’t try to show that the other man might have done it?”
“I think not. Next to an alibi that breaks down — you know what an alibi is, Madame Goesler?”
“Yes, Mr Wickerby; I know what an alibi is.”
“Next to an alibi that breaks down, an unsuccessful attempt to affix the fault on another party is the most fatal blow which a prisoner’s counsel can inflict upon him. It is always taken by the jury as so much evidence against him. We must depend altogether on a different line of defence.”
“What line, Mr Wickerby?”
“Juries are always unwilling to hang,” — Madame Goesler shuddered as the horrid word was broadly pronounced — “and are apt to think that simply circumstantial evidence cannot be suffered to demand so disagreeable a duty. They are peculiarly averse to hanging a gentleman, and will hardly be induced to hang a member of Parliament. Then Mr Finn is very good-looking, and has been popular — which is all in his favour. And we shall have such evidence on the score of character as was never before brought into one of our courts. We shall have half the Cabinet. There will be two dukes.” Madame Goesler, as she listened to the admiring enthusiasm of the attorney while he went on with his list, acknowledged to herself that her dear friend, the Duchess, had not been idle. “There will be three Secretaries of State. The Secretary of State for the Home Department himself will be examined. I am not quite sure that we mayn’t get the Lord Chancellor. There will be Mr Monk — about the most popular man in England — who will speak of the prisoner as his particular friend. I don’t think any jury would hang a particular friend of Mr Monk’s. And there will be ever so many ladies. That has never been done before, but we mean to try it.” Madame Goesler had heard all this, and had herself assisted in the work. “I rather think we shall get four or five leading members of the Opposition, for they all disliked Mr Bonteen. If we could manage Mr Daubeny and Mr Gresham, I think we might reckon ourselves quite safe. I forgot to say that the Bishop of Barchester has promised.”
“All that won’t prove his innocence, Mr Wickerby.” Mr Wickerby shrugged his shoulders. “If he be acquitted after that fashion men then will say — that he was guilty.”
“We must think of his life first, Madame Goesler,” said the attorney.
Madame Goesler when she left the attorney’s room was very ill-satisfied with him. She desired some adherent to her cause who would with affectionate zeal resolve upon washing Phineas Finn white as snow in reference to the charge now made against him. But no man would so resolve who did not believe in his innocence — as Madame Goesler believed herself. She herself knew that her own belief was romantic and unpractical. Nevertheless, the conviction of the guilt of that other man, towards which she still thought that much could be done if that coat were found and the making of a secret key were proved, was so strong upon her that she would not allow herself to drop it. It would not be sufficient for her that Phineas Finn should be acquitted. She desired that the real murderer should be hung for the murder, so that all the world might be sure — as she was sure — that her hero had been wrongfully accused.
“Do you mean that you are going to start yourself?” the Duchess said to her that same afternoon.
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you must be very far gone in love, indeed.”
“You would do as much, Duchess, if you were free as I am. It isn’t a matter of love at all. It’s womanly enthusiasm for the cause one has taken up.”
“I’m quite as enthusiastic — only I shouldn’t like to go to Prague in June.”
“I’d go to Siberia in January if I could find out that that horrid man really committed the murder.”
“Who are going with you?”
“We shall be quite a company. We have got a detective policeman, and an interpreter who understands Czech and German to go about with the policeman, and a lawyer’s clerk, and there will be my own maid.”
“Everybody will know all about it before you get there.”
“We are not to go quite together. The policeman and the interpreter are to form one party, and I and my maid another. The poor clerk is to be alone. If they get the coat, of course you’ll telegraph to me.”
“Who is to have the coat?”
“I suppose they’ll take it to Mr Wickerby. He says he doesn’t want it — that it would do no good. But I think that if we could show that the man might very easily have been out of the house — that he had certainly provided himself with means of getting out of the house secretly — the coat would be of service. I am going at any rate; and shall be in Paris tomorrow morning.”
“I think it very grand of you, my dear; and for your sake I hope he may live to be Prime Minister. Perhaps, after all, he may give Plantagenet his ““Garter’’.”
When the old Duke died, a Garter became vacant, and had of course fallen to the gift of Mr Gresham. The Duchess had expected that it would be continued in the family, as had been the Lieutenancy of Barsetshire, which also had been held by the old Duke. But the Garter had been given to Lord Cantrip, and the Duchess was sore. With all her radical propensities and inclination to laugh at dukes and marquises, she thought very much of garters and lieutenancies — but her husband would not think of them at all, and hence there were words between them. The Duchess had declared that the Duke should insist on having the Garter. “These are things that men do not ask for,” the Duke had said.
“Don’t tell me, Plantagenet, about not asking. Everybody asks for everything nowadays.”
“Your everybody is not correct, Glencora. I never yet asked for anything — and never shall. No honour has any value in my eyes unless it comes unasked.” Thereupon it was that the Duchess now suggested that Phineas Finn, when Prime Minister, might perhaps bestow a Garter upon her husband.
And so Madame Goesler started for Prague with the determination of being back, if possible, before the trial began. It was to be commenced at the Old Bailey towards the end of June, and people already began to foretell that it would extend over a very long period. The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature. Now it was already perceived that no trial of modern days had ever been so interesting as would be this trial. It was already known that the Attorney-General, Sir Gregory Grogram, was to lead the case for the prosecution, and that the Solicitor-General, Sir Simon Slope, was to act with him. It had been thought to be due to the memory and character of Mr Bonteen, who when he was murdered had held the office of President of the Board of Trade, and who had very nearly been Chancellor of the Exchequer, that so unusual a task should be imposed on these two high legal officers of the Government. No doubt there would be a crowd of juniors with them, but it was understood that Sir Gregory Grogram would himself take the burden of the task upon his own shoulders. It was declared everywhere that Sir Gregory did believe Phineas Finn to be guilty, but it was also declared that Sir Simon Slope was convinced he was innocent. The defence was to be entrusted to the well-practised but now aged hands of that most experienced practitioner Mr Chaffanbrass, than whom no barrister living or dead ever rescued more culprits from the fangs of the law. With Mr Chaffanbrass, who quite late in life had consented to take a silk gown, was to be associated Mr Sergeant Birdbolt — who was said to be employed in order that the case might be in safe hands should the strength of Mr Chaffanbrass fail him at the last moment; and Mr Snow, who was supposed to handle a witness more judiciously than any of the rising men, and that subtle, courageous, eloquent, and painstaking youth, Mr Golightly, who now, with no more than ten or fifteen years’ practice, was already known to be earning his bread and supporting a wife and family.
But the glory of this trial would not depend chiefly on the array of counsel, nor on the fact that the Lord Chief justice himself would be the judge, so much as on the social position of the murdered man and of the murderer. Noble lords and great statesmen would throng the bench of the court to see Phineas Finn tried, and all the world who could find an entrance would do the same to see the great statesmen and the noble lords. The importance of such an affair increases like a snowball as it is rolled on. Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more. The under-sheriffs of the City, praiseworthy gentlemen not hitherto widely known to fame, became suddenly conspicuous and popular, as being the dispensers of admissions to seats in the court. It had been already admitted by judges and counsel that sundry other cases must be postponed, because it was known that the Bonteen murder would occupy at last a week. It was supposed that Mr Chaffanbrass would consume a whole day at the beginning of the trial in getting a jury to his mind — a matter on which he was known to be very particular — and another whole day at the end of the trial in submitting to the jury the particulars of all the great cases on record in which circumstantial evidence was known to have led to improper verdicts. It was therefore understood that the last week in June would be devoted to the trial, to the exclusion of all other matters of interest. When Mr Gresham, hard pressed by Mr Turnbull for a convenient day, offered that gentleman Thursday, the 24th of June, for suggesting to the House a little proposition of his own with reference to the English Church establishment, Mr Turnbull openly repudiated the offer, because on that day the trial of Phineas Finn would be commenced. “I hope”, said Mr Gresham, “that the work of the country will not be impeded by that unfortunate affair.” “I am afraid”, said Mr Turnbull, “that the right honourable gentleman will find that the member for Tankerville will on that day monopolise the attention of this House.” The remark was thought to have been made in very bad taste, but nobody doubted its truth. Perhaps the interest was enhanced among politicians by the existence very generally of an opinion that though Phineas Finn had murdered Mr Bonteen, he would certainly be acquitted. Nothing could then prevent the acquitted murderer from resuming his seat in the House, and gentlemen were already beginning to ask themselves after what fashion it would become them to treat him. Would the Speaker catch his eye when he rose to speak? Would he still be “Phineas” to the very large number of men with whom his general popularity had made him intimate? Would he be cold-shouldered at the clubs, and treated as one whose hands were red with blood? or would he become more popular than ever, and receive an ovation after his acquittal?
In the meantime Madame Goesler started on her journey for Prague.
It was necessary that the country should be governed, even though Mr Bonteen had been murdered — and in order that it should be duly governed it was necessary that Mr Bonteen’s late place at the Board of Trade should be filled. There was some hesitation as to the filling it, and when the arrangement was completed people were very much surprised indeed. Mr Bonteen had been appointed chiefly because it was thought that he might in that office act as a quasi House of Commons deputy to the Duke of Omnium in carrying out his great scheme of a five-farthinged penny and a ten-pennied shilling. The Duke, in spite of his wealth and rank and honour, was determined to go on with his great task. Life would be nothing to him now unless he could at least hope to arrange the five farthings. When his wife had bullied him about the Garter he had declared to her, and with perfect truth, that he had never asked for anything. He had gone on to say that he never would ask for anything; and he certainly did not think that he was betraying himself with reference to that assurance when he suggested to Mr Gresham that he would himself take the place left vacant by Mr Bonteen — of course retaining his seat in the Cabinet.
“I should hardly have ventured to suggest such an arrangement to Your Grace,” said the Prime Minister.
“Feeling that it might be so, I thought that I would venture to ask,” said the Duke. “I am sure you know that I am the last man to interfere as to place or the disposition of power.”
“Quite the last man,” said Mr Gresham.
“But it has always been held that the Board of Trade is not incompatible with the Peerage.”
“Oh dear, yes.”
“And I can feel myself nearer to this affair of mine there than I can elsewhere.”
Mr Gresham of course had no objection to urge. This great nobleman, who was now asking for Mr Bonteen’s shoes, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and would have remained Chancellor of the Exchequer had not the mantle of his nobility fallen upon him. At the present moment he held an office in which peers are often temporarily shelved, or put away, perhaps, out of harm’s way for the time, so that they may be brought down and used when wanted, without having received crack or detriment from that independent action into which a politician is likely to fall when his party is “in” but he is still “out’. He was Lord Privy Seal — a Lordship of State which does carry with it a status and a seat in the Cabinet, but does not necessarily entail any work. But the present Lord, who cared nothing for status, and who was much more intent on his work than he was even on his seat in the Cabinet, was possessed by what many of his brother politicians regarded as a morbid dislike to pretences. He had not been happy during his few weeks of the Privy Seal, and had almost envied Mr Bonteen the realities of the Board of Trade. “I think upon the whole it will be best to make the change,” he said to Mr Gresham. And Mr Gresham was delighted.
But there were one or two men of mark — one or two who were older than Mr Gresham probably, and less perfect in their Liberal sympathies — who thought that the Duke of Omnium was derogating from his proper position in the step which he was now taking. Chief among these was his friend the Duke of St Bungay, who alone perhaps could venture to argue the matter with him. “I almost wish that you had spoken to me first,” said the elder Duke.
“I feared that I should find you so strongly opposed to my resolution.”
“If it was a resolution.”
“I think it was,” said the younger. “It was a great misfortune to me that I should have been obliged to leave the House of Commons.”
“You should not feel it so.”
“My whole life was there,” said he who, as Plantagenet Palliser, had been so good a commoner.
“But your whole life should certainly not be there now — nor your whole heart. On you the circumstances of your birth have imposed duties quite as high, and I will say quite as useful, as any which a career in the House of Commons can put within the reach of a man.”
“Do you think so, Duke?”
“Certainly I do. I do think that the England which we know could not be the England that she is but for the maintenance of a high-minded, proud, and self-denying nobility. And though with us there is no line dividing our very broad aristocracy into two parts, a higher and a lower, or a greater and a smaller, or a richer and a poorer, nevertheless we all feel that the success of our order depends chiefly on the conduct of those whose rank is the highest and whose means are the greatest. To some few, among whom you are conspicuously one, wealth has been given so great and rank so high that much of the welfare of your country depends on the manner in which you bear yourself as the Duke of Omnium.”
“I would not wish to think so.”
“Your uncle so thought. And, though he was a man very different from you, not inured to work in his early life, with fewer attainments, probably a slower intellect, and whose general conduct was inferior to your own — I speak freely because the subject is important — he was a man who understood his position and the requirements of his order very thoroughly. A retinue almost Royal, together with an expenditure which Royalty could not rival, secured for him the respect of the nation.”
“Your life has not been as was his, and you have won a higher respect.”
“I think not. The greater part of my life was spent in the House of Commons, and my fortune was never much more than the tenth of his. But I wish to make no such comparison.”
“I must make it, if I am to judge which I would follow.”
“Pray understand me, my friend,” said the old man, energetically. “I am not advising you to abandon public life in order that you may live in repose as a great nobleman. It would not be in your nature to do so, nor could the country afford to lose your services. But you need not therefore take your place in the arena of politics as though you were still Plantagenet Palliser, with no other duties than those of a politician — as you might so well have done had your uncle’s titles and wealth descended to a son.”
“I wish they had,” said the regretful Duke.
“It cannot be so. Your brother perhaps wishes that he were a Duke, but it has been arranged otherwise. It is vain to repine. Your wife is unhappy because your uncle’s Garter was not at once given to you.”
“Glencora is like other women — of course.”
“I share her feelings. Had Mr Gresham consulted me, I should not have scrupled to tell him that it would have been for the welfare of his party that the Duke of Omnium should be graced with any and every honour in his power to bestow. Lord Cantrip is my friend, almost as warmly as are you; but the country would not have missed the ribbon from the breast of Lord Cantrip. Had you been more the Duke, and less the slave of your country, it would have been sent to you. Do I make you angry by speaking so?”
“Not in the least. I have but one ambition.”
“And that is —?”
“To be the serviceable slave of my country.”
“A master is more serviceable than a slave,” said the old man.
“No; no; I deny it. I can admit much from you, but I cannot admit that. The politician who becomes the master of his country sinks from the statesman to the tyrant.”
“We misunderstand each other, my friend. Pitt, and Peel, and Palmerston, were not tyrants, though each assumed and held for himself to the last the mastery of which I speak. Smaller men who have been slaves, have been as patriotic as they, but less useful. I regret that you should follow Mr Bonteen in his office.”
“Because he was Mr Bonteen.”
“All the circumstances of the transfer of office occasioned by your uncle’s death seem to me to make it undesirable. I would not have you make yourself too common. This very murder adds to the feeling. Because Mr Bonteen has been lost to us, the Minister has recourse to you.”
“It was my own suggestion.”
“But who knows that it was so? You, and I, and Mr Gresham — and perhaps one or two others.”
“It is too late now, Duke; and, to tell the truth of myself, not even you can make me other than I am. My uncle’s life to me was always a problem which I could not understand. Were I to attempt to walk in his ways I should fail utterly, and become absurd. I do not feel the disgrace of following Mr Bonteen.”
“I trust you may at least be less unfortunate.”
“Well — yes. I need not expect to be murdered in the streets because I am going to the Board of Trade. I shall have made no enemy by my political success.”
“You think that — Mr Finn — did do that deed?” asked the elder Duke.
“I hardly know what I think. My wife is sure that he is innocent.”
“The Duchess is enthusiastic always.”
“Many others think the same. Lord and Lady Chiltern are sure of that.”
“They were always his best friends.”
“I am told that many of the lawyers are sure that it will be impossible to convict him. If he be acquitted I shall strive to think him innocent. He will come back to the House, of course.”
“I should think he would apply for the Hundreds,” said the Duke of St Bungay.
“I do not see why he should. I would not in his place. If he be innocent, why should he admit himself unfit for a seat in Parliament? I tell you what he might do — resign, and then throw himself again upon his constituency.” The other Duke shook his head, thereby declaring his opinion that Phineas Finn was in truth the man who had murdered Mr Bonteen.
When it was publicly known that the Duke of Omnium had stepped into Mr Bonteen’s shoes, the general opinion certainly coincided with that given by the Duke of St Bungay. It was not only that the late Chancellor of the Exchequer should not have consented to fill so low an office, or that the Duke of Omnium should have better known his own place, or that he should not have succeeded a man so insignificant as Mr Bonteen. These things, no doubt, were said — but more was said also. It was thought that he should not have gone to an office which had been rendered vacant by the murder of a man who had been placed there merely to assist himself. If the present arrangement was good, why should it not have been made independently of Mr Bonteen? Questions were asked about it in both Houses, and the transfer no doubt did have the effect of lowering the man in the estimation of the political world. He himself felt that he did not stand so high with his colleagues as when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer; not even so high as when he held the Privy Seal. In the printed lists of those who attended the Cabinets his name generally was placed last, and an opponent on one occasion thought, or pretended to think, that he was no more than Postmaster-General. He determined to bear all this without wincing — but he did wince. He would not own to himself that he had been wrong, but he was sore — as a man is sore who doubts about his own conduct; and he was not the less so because he strove to bear his wife’s sarcasms without showing that they pained him.
“They say that poor Lord Fawn is losing his mind,” she said to him.
“Lord Fawn! I haven’t heard anything about it.”
“He was engaged to Lady Eustace once, you remember. They say that he’ll be made to declare why he didn’t marry her if this bigamy case goes on. And then it’s so unfortunate that he should have seen the man in the grey coat; I hope he won’t have to resign.”
“I hope not, indeed.”
“Because, of course, you’d have to take his place as Under-Secretary.” This was very awkward — but the husband only smiled, and expressed a hope that if he did so he might himself be equal to his new duties. “By the bye, Plantagenet, what do you mean to do about the jewels?”
“I haven’t thought about them. Madame Goesler had better take them.”
“But she won’t.”
“I suppose they had better be sold.”
“By auction?”
“That would be the proper way.”
“I shouldn’t like that at all. Couldn’t we buy them ourselves, and let the money stand till she choose to take it? It’s an affair of trade, I suppose, and you’re at the head of all that now.” Then again she asked him some question about the Home Secretary, with reference to Phineas Finn; and when he told her that it would be highly improper for him to speak to that officer on such a subject, she pretended to suppose that the impropriety would consist in the interference of a man holding so low a position as he was. “Of course it is not the same now,” she said, “as it used to be when you were at the Exchequer.” All which he took without uttering a word of anger, or showing a sign of annoyance. “You only get two thousand a year, do you, at the Board of Trade, Plantagenet?”
“Upon my word, I forget. I think it’s two thousand five hundred.”
“How nice! It was five at the Exchequer, wasn’t it?”
“Yes; five thousand at the Exchequer.”
“When you’re a Lord of the Treasury it will only be one — will it?”
“What a goose you are, Glencora. If it suited me to be a Lord of the Treasury, what difference would the salary make?”
“Not the least — nor yet the rank, or the influence, or the prestige, or the general fitness of things. You are above all such sublunary ideas. You would clean Mr Gresham’s shoes for him, if — the service of your country required it.” These last words she added in a tone of voice very similar to that which her husband himself used on occasions.
“I would even allow you to clean them — if the service of the country required it,” said the Duke.
But, though he was magnanimous, he was not happy, and perhaps the intense anxiety which his wife displayed as to the fate of Phineas Finn added to his discomfort. The Duchess, as the Duke of St Bungay had said, was enthusiastic, and he never for a moment dreamed of teaching her to change her nature; but it would have been as well if her enthusiasm at the present moment could have been brought to display itself on some other subject. He had been brought to feel that Phineas Finn had been treated badly when the good things of Government were being given away, and that this had been caused by the jealous prejudices of the man who had been since murdered. But an expectant Under-Secretary of State, let him have been ever so cruelly left out in the cold, should not murder the man by whom he has been ill-treated. Looking at all the evidence as best he could, and listening to the opinions of others, the Duke did think that Phineas had been guilty. The murder had clearly been committed by a personal enemy, not by a robber. Two men were known to have entertained feelings of enmity against Mr Bonteen; as to one of whom he was assured that it was impossible that he should have been on the spot. As to the other it seemed equally manifest that he must have been there. If it were so, it would have been much better that his wife should not display her interest publicly in the murderer’s favour. But the Duchess, wherever she went, spoke of the trial as a persecution; and seemed to think that the prisoner should already be treated as a hero and a martyr. “Glencora,” he said to her, “I wish that you could drop the subject of this trial till it be over.”
“But I can’t”
“Surely you can avoid speaking of it.”
“No more than you can avoid your decimals. Out of the full heart the mouth speaks, and my heart is very full. What harm do I do?”
“You set people talking of you.”
“They have been doing that ever since we were married; but I do not know that they have made out much against me. We must go after our nature, Plantagenet. Your nature is decimals. I run after units.” He did not deem it wise to say anything further — knowing that to this evil also of Phineas Finn the gods would at last vouchsafe an ending.
At the time of the murder, Lady Eustace, whom we must regard as the wife of Mr Emilius till it be proved that he had another wife when he married her, was living as the guest of Mr Bonteen. Mr Bonteen had pledged himself to prove the bigamy, and Mrs Bonteen had opened her house and her heart to the injured lady. Lizzie Eustace, as she had always been called, was clever, rich, and pretty, and knew well how to ingratiate herself with the friend of the hour. She was a greedy, grasping little woman, but, when she had before her a sufficient object, she could appear to pour all that she had into her friend’s lap with all the prodigality of a child. Perhaps Mrs Bonteen had liked to have things poured into her lap. Perhaps Mr Bonteen had enjoyed the confidential tears of a pretty woman. It may be that the wrongs of a woman doomed to live with Mr Emilius as his wife had touched their hearts. Be that as it might, they had become the acknowledged friends and supporters of Lady Eustace, and she was living with them in their little house in St James’s Place on that fatal night.
Lizzie behaved herself very well when the terrible tidings were brought home. Mr Bonteen was so often late at the House or at his club that his wife rarely sat up for him; and when the servants were disturbed between six and seven o’clock in the morning, no surprise had as yet been felt at his absence. The sergeant of police who had brought the news sent for the maid of the unfortunate lady, and the maid, in her panic, told her story to Lady Eustace before daring to communicate it to her mistress. Lizzie Eustace, who in former days had known something of policemen, saw the man, and learned from him all that there was to learn. Then, while the sergeant remained on the landing place, outside, to support her, if necessary, with the maid by her side to help her, kneeling by the bed, she told the wretched woman what had happened. We need not witness the paroxysms of the widow’s misery, but we may understand that Lizzie Eustace was from that moment more strongly fixed than ever in her friendship with Mrs Bonteen.
When the first three or four days of agony and despair had passed by, and the mind of the bereaved woman was able to turn itself from the loss to the cause of the loss, Mrs Bonteen became fixed in her certainty that Phineas Finn had murdered her husband, and seemed to think that it was the first and paramount duty of the present Government to have the murderer hung — almost without a trial. When she found that, at the best, the execution of the man she so vehemently hated could not take place for two months after the doing of the deed, even if then, she became almost frantic in her anger. Surely they would not let him escape! What more proof could be needed? Had not the miscreant quarrelled with her husband, and behaved abominably to him but a few minutes before the murder? Had he not been on the spot with the murderous instrument in his pocket? Had he not been seen by Lord Fawn hastening on the steps of her dear and doomed husband? Mrs Bonteen, as she sat enveloped in her new weeds, thirsting for blood, could not understand that further evidence should be needed, or that a rational doubt should remain in the mind of anyone who knew the circumstances. It was to her as though she had seen the dastard blow struck, and with such conviction as this on her mind did she insist on talking of the coming trial to her inmate, Lady Eustace. But Lizzie had her own opinion, though she was forced to leave it unexpressed in the presence of Mrs Bonteen. She knew the man who claimed her as his wife, and did not think that Phineas Finn was guilty of the murder. Her Emilius — her Yosef Mealyus, as she had delighted to call him, since she had separated herself from him — was, as she thought, the very man to commit a murder. He was by no means degraded in her opinion by the feeling. To commit great crimes is the line of life that comes naturally to some men, and was, as she thought, a line less objectionable than that which confines itself to small crimes. She almost felt that the audacity of her husband in doing such a deed redeemed her from some of the ignominy to which she had subjected herself by her marriage with a runaway who had another wife living. There was a dash of adventure about it which was almost gratifying. But these feelings she was obliged, at any rate for the present, to keep to herself. Not only must she acknowledge the undoubted guilt of Phineas Finn for the sake of her friend, Mrs Bonteen; but she must consider carefully whether she would gain or lose more by having a murderer for her husband. She did not relish the idea of being made a widow by the gallows. She was still urgent as to the charge of bigamy, and should she succeed in proving that the man had never been her husband, then she did not care how soon they might hang him. But for the present it was better for all reasons that she should cling to the Phineas Finn theory — feeling certain that it was the bold hand of her own Emilius who had struck the blow.
She was by no means free from the solicitations of her husband, who knew well where she was, and who still adhered to his purpose of reclaiming his wife and his wife’s property. When he was released by the magistrate’s order, and had recovered his goods from Mr Meager’s house, and was once more established in lodgings, humbler, indeed, than those in Northumberland Street, he wrote the following letter to her who had been for one blessed year the partner of his joys, and his bosom’s mistress:
3, Jellybag Street, Edgware Road 26th May, 18 — DEAREST WIFE—
You will have heard to what additional sorrow and disgrace I have been subjected through the malice of my enemies. But all in vain! Though princes and potentates have been arrayed against me [the princes and potentates had no doubt been Lord Chiltern and Mr Low] innocence has prevailed, and I have come out from the ordeal white as bleached linen or unsullied snow. The murderer is in the hands of justice, and though he be the friend of kings and princes [Mr Emlius had probably heard that the Prince had been at the club with Phineas] yet shall justice be done upon him, and the truth of the Lord shall be made to prevail. Mr Bonteen has been very hostile to me, believing evil things of me, and instigating you, my beloved, to believe evil of me. Nevertheless, I grieve for his death. I lament bitterly that he should have been cut off in his sins, and hurried before the judgment seat of the great Judge without an hour given to him for repentance. Let us pray that the mercy of the Lord may be extended even to him. I beg that you will express my deepest commiseration to his widow, and assure her that she has my prayers.
And now, my dearest wife, let me approach my own affairs. As I have come out unscorched from the last fiery furnace which has been heated for me by my enemies seven times hot, so shall I escape from that other fire with which the poor man who has gone from us endeavoured to envelop me. If they have made you believe that I have any wife but yourself they have made you believe a falsehood. You, and you only, have my hand. You, and you only, have my heart. I know well what attempts are being made to suborn false evidence in my old country, and how the follies of my youth are being pressed against me — how anxious are proud Englishmen that the poor Bohemian should be robbed of the beauty and wit and wealth which he had won for himself. But the Lord fights on my side, and I shall certainly prevail.
If you will come back to me all shall be forgiven. My heart is as it ever was. Come, and let us leave this cold and ungenial country and go to the sunny south; to the islands of the blest [Mr Emilius during his married life had not quite fathomed the depths of his wife’s character, though, no doubt, he had caught some points of it with sufficient accuracy] where we may forget these blood-stained sorrows, and mutually forgive each other. What happiness, what joys can you expect in your present mode of life? Even your income — which in truth is my income — you cannot obtain, because the tenants will not dare to pay it in opposition to my legal claims. But of what use is gold? What can purple do for us, and fine linen, and rich jewels, without love and a contented heart? Come, dearest, once more to your own one, who will never remember aught of the sad rupture which enemies have made, and we will hurry to the setting sun, and recline on mossy banks, and give up our souls to Elysium. [As Lizzie read this she uttered an exclamation of disgust. Did the man after all know so little of her as to suppose that she, with all her experiences, did not know how to keep her own life and her own pocket separate from her romance? She despised him for this, almost as much as she respected him for the murder.]
If you will only say that you will see me, I will be at your feet in a moment. Till the solemnity with which the late tragical event must have filled you shall have left you leisure to think of all this, I will not force myself into your presence, or seek to secure by law rights which will be much dearer to me if they are accorded by your own sweet goodwill. And in the meantime, I will agree that the income shall be drawn, provided that it be equally divided between us. I have been sorely straitened in my circumstances by these last events. My congregation is of course dispersed. Though my innocence has been triumphantly displayed, my name has been tarnished. It is with difficulty that I find a spot where to lay my weary head. I am ahungered and athirst — and my very garments are parting from me in my need. Can it be that you willingly doom me to such misery because of my love for you? Had I been less true to you, it might have been otherwise.
Let me have an answer at once, and I will instantly take steps about the money if you will agree.
Your truly most loving husband JOSEPH EMILIUS To Lady Eustace, wife of the Rev. Joseph Emilius.
When Lizzie had read the letter twice through she resolved that she would show it to her friend. “I know it will reopen the floodgates of your grief,” she said; “but unless you see it, how can I ask from you the advice which is so necessary to me?” But Mrs Bonteen was a woman sincere at any rate in this — that the loss of her husband had been to her so crushing a calamity that there could be no reopening of the floodgates. The grief that cannot bear allusion to its causes has generally something of affectation in its composition. The floodgates with this widowed one had never yet been for a moment closed. It was not that her tears were ever flowing, but that her heart had never yet for a moment ceased to feel that its misery was incapable of alleviation. No utterances concerning her husband could make her more wretched than she was. She took the letter and read it through. “I dare say he is a bad man,” said Mrs Bonteen.
“Indeed he is,” said the bad man’s wife.
“But he was not guilty of this crime.”
“Oh, no — I am sure of that,” said Lady Eustace, feeling certain at the same time that Mr Bonteen had fallen by her husband’s hands.
“And therefore I am glad they have given him up. There can be no doubt now about it.”
“Everybody knows who did it now,” said Lady Eustace.
“Infamous ruffian! My poor dear lost one always knew what he was. Oh that such a creature should have been allowed to come among us.”
“Of course he’ll be hung, Mrs Bonteen.”
“Hung! I should think so! What other end would be fit for him? Oh, yes; they must hang him. But it makes one think that the world is too hard a place to live in, when such a one such as he can cause so great a ruin.”
“It has been very terrible.”
“Think what the country has lost! They tell me that the Duke of Omnium is to take my husband’s place; but the Duke cannot do what he did. Everyone knows that for real work there was no one like him. Nothing was more certain than that he would have been Prime Minister — oh, very soon. They ought to pinch him to death with red-hot tweezers.”
But Lady Eustace was anxious at the present moment to talk about her own troubles. “Of course, Mr Emilius did not commit the murder.”
“Phineas Finn committed it,” said the half-maddened woman, rising from her chair. “And Phineas Finn shall hang by his neck till he is dead.”
“But Emilius has certainly got another wife in Prague.”
“I suppose you know. He said it was so, and he was always right.”
“I am sure of it — just as you are sure of this horrid Mr Finn.”
“The two things can’t be named together, Lady Eustace.”
“Certainly not. I wouldn’t think of being so unfeeling. But he has written me this letter, and what must I do? It is very dreadful about the money, you know.”
“He cannot touch your money. My dear one always said that he could not touch it.”
“But he prevents me from touching it. What they give me only comes by a sort of favour from the lawyer. I almost wish that I had compromised.”
“You would be rid of him that way.”
“No — not quite rid of him. You see I never had to take that horrid name because of the title. I suppose I’d better send the letter to the lawyer.”
“Send it to the lawyer, of course. That is what he would have done. They tell me that the trial is to be on the 24th of June. Why should they postpone it so long? They know all about it. They always postpone everything. If he had lived, there would be an end of that before long.”
Lady Eustace was tired of the virtues of her friend’s martyred lord, and was very anxious to talk of her own affairs. She was still holding her husband’s letter open in her hand, and was thinking how she could force her friend’s dead lion to give place for a while to her own live dog, when a servant announced that Mr Camperdown, the attorney, was below. In former days there had been an old Mr Camperdown, who was vehemently hostile to poor Lizzie Eustace; but now, in her new troubles, the firm that had ever been true to her first husband had taken up her case for the sake of the family and her property — and for the sake of the heir, Lizzie Eustace’s little boy; and Mr Camperdown’s firm had, next to Mr Bonteen, been the depository of her trust. He had sent clerks out to Prague — one who had returned ill — as some had said poisoned, though the poison had probably been nothing more than the diet natural to Bohemians. And then another had been sent. This, of course, had all been previous to Madame Goesler’s self-imposed mission — which, though it was occasioned altogether by the suspected wickednesses of Mr Emilius, had no special reference to his matrimonial escapades. And now Mr Camperdown was down stairs. “Shall I go down to him, dear Mrs Bonteen?”
“He may come here if you please.”
“Perhaps I had better go down. He will disturb you.”
“My darling lost one always thought that there should be two present to hear such matters. He said it was safer.” Mr Camperdown, junior, was therefore shown upstairs to Mrs Bonteen’s drawing-room.
“We have found it all out, Lady Eustace,” said Mr Camperdown.
“Found out what?”
“We’ve got Madame Mealyus over here.”
“No!” said Mrs Bonteen, with her hands raised. Lady Eustace sat silent, with her mouth open.
“Yes, indeed — and photographs of the registry of the marriage from the books of the synagogue at Cracow. His signature was Yosef Mealyus, and his handwriting isn’t a bit altered. I think we could have proved it without the lady; but of course it was better to bring her if possible.”
“Where is she?” asked Lizzie, thinking that she would like to see her own predecessor.
“We have her safe, Lady Eustace. She’s not in custody; but as she can’t speak a word of English or French, she finds it more comfortable to be kept in private. We’re afraid it will cost a little money.”
“Will she swear that she is his wife?” asked Mrs Bonteen.
“Oh, yes; there’ll be no difficulty about that. But her swearing alone mightn’t be enough.”
“Surely that settles it all,” said Lady Eustace.
“For the money that we shall have to pay,” said Mr Camperdown, “we might probably have got a dozen Bohemian ladies to come and swear that they were married to Yosef Mealyus at Cracow. The difficulty has been to bring over documentary evidence which will satisfy a jury that this is the woman she says she is. But I think we’ve got it.”
“And I shall be free!” said Lady Eustace, clasping her hands together.
“It will cost a good deal, I fear,” said Mr Camperdown.
“But I shall be free! Oh, Mr Camperdown, there is not a woman in all the world who cares so little for money as I do. But I shall be free from the power of that horrid man who has entangled me in the meshes of his sinful life.” Mr Camperdown told her that he thought that she would be free, and went on to say that Yosef Mcalyus had already been arrested, and was again in prison. The unfortunate man had not therefore long enjoyed that humbler apartment which he had found for himself in Jellybag Street.
When Mr Camperdown went, Mrs Bonteen followed him out to the top of the stairs. “You have heard about the trial, Mr Camperdown?” He said that he knew that it was to take place at the Central Criminal Court in June. “Yes; I don’t know why they have put it off so long. People know that he did it — eh?” Mr Camperdown, with funereal sadness, declared that he had never looked into the matter. “I cannot understand that everybody should not know it,” said Mrs Bonteen.
There was a scene in the private room of Mr Wickerby, the attorney in Hatton Garden, which was very distressing indeed to the feelings of Lord Fawn, and which induced his lordship to think that he was being treated without that respect which was due to him as a peer and a member of the Government. There were present at this scene Mr Chaffanbrass, the old barrister, Mr Wickerby himself, Mr Wickerby’s confidential clerk, Lord Fawn, Lord Fawn’s solicitor, that same Mr Camperdown whom we saw in the last chapter calling upon Lady Eustace — and a policeman. Lord Fawn had been invited to attend, with many protestations of regret as to the trouble thus imposed upon him, because the very important nature of the evidence about to be given by him at the forthcoming trial seemed to render it expedient that some questions should be asked. This was on Tuesday, the 22nd June, and the trial was to be commenced on the following Thursday. And there was present in the room, very conspicuously, an old heavy grey great coat, as to which Mr Wickerby had instructed Mr Chaffanbrass that evidence was forthcoming, if needed, to prove that that coat was lying on the night of the murder in a downstairs room in the house in which Yosef Mealyus was then lodging. The reader will remember the history of the coat. Instigated by Madame Goesler, who was still absent from England, Mr Wickerby had traced the coat, and had purchased the coat, and was in a position to prove that this very coat was the coat which Mr Meager had brought home with him to Northumberland Street on that day. But Mr Wickerby was of opinion that the coat had better not be used. “It does not go far enough,” said Mr Wickerby. “It don’t go very far, certainly,” said Mr Chaffanbrass. “And if you try to show that another man has done it, and he hasn’t,” said Mr Wickerby, “it always tells against you with a jury.” To this Mr Chaffanbrass made no reply, preferring to form his own opinion, and to keep it to himself when formed. But in obedience to his instructions, Lord Fawn was asked to attend at Mr Wickerby’s chambers, in the cause of truth, and the coat was brought out on the occasion. “Was that the sort of coat the man wore, my lord?” said Mr Chaffanbrass as Mr Wickerby held up the coat to view. Lord Fawn walked round and round the coat, and looked at it very carefully before he would vouchsafe a reply. “You see it is a grey coat,” said Mr Chaffanbrass, not speaking at all in the tone which Mr Wickerby’s note had induced Lord Fawn to expect.
“It is grey,” said Lord Fawn.
“Perhaps it’s not the same shade of grey, Lord Fawn. You see, my lord, we are most anxious not to impute guilt where guilt doesn’t lie. You are a witness for the Crown, and, of course, you will tell the Crown lawyers all that passes here. Were it possible, we would make this little preliminary inquiry in their presence — but we can hardly do that. Mr Finn’s coat was a very much smaller coat.”
“I should think it was,” said his lordship, who did not like being questioned about coats.
“You don’t think the coat the man wore when you saw him was a big coat like that? You think he wore a little coat?
“He wore a grey coat,” said Lord Fawn.
“This is grey — a coat shouldn’t be greyer than that.”
“I don’t think Lord Fawn should be asked any more questions on the matter till he gives his evidence in court,” said Mr Camperdown.
“A man’s life depends on it, Mr Camperdown,” said the barrister. “It isn’t a matter of cross-examination. If I bring that coat into court I must make a charge against another man by the very act of doing so. And I will not do so unless I believe that other man to be guilty. It’s an inquiry I can’t postpone till we are before the jury. It isn’t that I want to trump up a case against another man for the sake of extricating my client on a false issue. Lord Fawn doesn’t want to hang Mr Finn if Mr Finn be not guilty.”
“God forbid!” said his lordship.
“Mr Finn couldn’t have worn that coat, or a coat at all like it.”
“What is it you do want to learn, Mr Chaffanbrass?” asked Mr Camperdown.
“Just put on the coat, Mr Scruby.” Then at the order of the barrister, Mr Scruby, the attorney’s clerk, did put on Mr Meager’s old great coat, and walked about the room in it. “Walk quick,” said Mr Chaffanbrass — and the clerk did “walk quick.” He was a stout, thick-set little man, nearly half a foot shorter than Phineas Finn. “Is that at all like the figure?” asked Mr Chaffanbrass.
“I think it is like the figure,” said Lord Fawn.
“And like the coat?”
“It’s the same colour as the coat.”
“You wouldn’t swear it was not the coat?”
“I am not on my oath at all, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“No, my lord — but to me your word is as good as your oath. If you think it possible that was the coat — ”
“I don’t think anything about it at all. When Mr Scruby hurries down the room in that way he looks as the man looked when he was hurrying under the lamp-post. I am not disposed to say any more at present.”
“It’s a matter of regret to me that Lord Fawn should have come here at all,” said Mr Camperdown, who had been summoned to meet his client at the chambers, but had come with him.
“I suppose his lordship wishes us to know all that he knew, seeing that it’s a question of hanging the right man or the wrong one. I never heard such trash in my life. Take it off, Mr Scruby, and let the policeman keep it. I understand Lord Fawn to say that the man’s figure was about the same as yours. My client, I believe, stands about twelve inches taller. Thank you, my lord — we shall get at the truth at last, I don’t doubt.” It was afterwards said that Mr Chaffanbrass’s conduct had been very improper in enticing Lord Fawn to Mr Wickerby’s chambers; but Mr Chaffanbrass never cared what anyone said. “I don’t know that we can make much of it,” he said, when he and Mr Wickerby were alone, “but it may be as well to bring it into court. It would prove nothing against the Jew even if that fellow”, — he meant Lord Fawn — “could be made to swear that the coat worn was exactly similar to this. I am thinking now about the height.”
“I don’t doubt but you’ll get him off.”
“Well — I may do so. They ought not to hang any man on such evidence as there is against him, even though there were no moral doubt of his guilt. There is nothing really to connect Mr Phineas Finn with the murder — nothing tangible. But there is no saying nowadays what a jury will do. Juries depend a great deal more on the judge than they used to do. If I were on trial for my life, I don’t think I’d have counsel at all.”
“No one could defend you as well as yourself, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“I didn’t mean that. No — I shouldn’t defend myself. I should say to the judge, ““My lord, I don’t doubt the jury will do just as you tell them, and you’ll form your own opinion quite independent of the arguments’’.”
“You’d be hung, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“No; I don’t know that I should,” said Mr Chaffanbrass, slowly. “I don’t think I could affront a judge of the present day into hanging me. They’ve too much of what I call thick-skinned honesty for that. It’s the temper of the time to resent nothing — to be mealy-mouthed and mealy-hearted. Jurymen are afraid of having their own opinion, and almost always shirk a verdict when they can.”
“But we do get verdicts.”
“Yes; the judge gives them. And they are mealy-mouthed verdicts, tending to equalise crime and innocence, and to make men think that after all it may be a question whether fraud is violence, which, after all, is manly, and to feel that we cannot afford to hate dishonesty. It was a bad day for the commercial world, Mr Wickerby, when forgery ceased to be capital.”
“It was a horrid thing to hang a man for writing another man’s name to a receipt for thirty shillings.”
“We didn’t do it, but the fact that the law held certain frauds to be hanging matters operated on the minds of men in regard to all fraud. What with the joint-stock working of companies, and the confusion between directors who know nothing and managers who know everything, and the dislike of juries to tread upon people’s corns, you can’t punish dishonest trading. Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from dishonest stony-hearted Rome. With such a motto as that to guide us no man dare trust his brother. Caveat lex — and let the man who cheats cheat at his peril.”
“You’d give the law a great deal to do.”
“Much less than at present. What does your Caveat emptor come to? That every seller tries to pick the eyes out of the head of the purchaser. Sooner or later the law must interfere, and Caveat emptor falls to the ground. I bought a horse the other day; my daughter wanted something to look pretty, and like an old ass as I am I gave a hundred and fifty pounds for the brute. When he came home he wasn’t worth a feed of corn.”
“You had a warranty, I suppose?”
“No, indeed! Did you ever hear of such an old fool?”
“I should have thought any dealer would have taken him back for the sake of his character.”
“Any dealer would; but — I bought him of a gentleman.”
“Mr Chaffanbrass!”
“I ought to have known better, oughtn’t I? Caveat emptor .”
“It was just giving away your money, you know.”
“A great deal worse than that. I could have given the — gentleman — a hundred and fifty pounds, and not have minded it much. I ought to have had the horse killed, and gone to a dealer for another. Instead of that — I went to an attorney.”
“Oh, Mr Chaffanbrass — the idea of your going to an attorney.”
“I did then. I never had so much honest truth told me in my life.”
“By an attorney!”
“He said that he did think I’d been born long enough to have known better than that! I pleaded on my own behalf that the gentleman said the horse was all right. ““Gentleman!’” exclaimed my friend. ““You go to a gentleman for a horse; you buy a horse from a gentleman without a warranty; and then you come to me! Didn’t you ever hear of Caveat emptor, Mr Chaffanbrass? What can I do for you?’” That’s what my friend, the attorney, said to me.”
“And what came of it, Mr Chaffanbrass? Arbitration, I should say?”
“Just that — with the horse eating his head off every meal at ever so much per week — till at last I fairly gave in from sheer vexation. So the — gentleman — got my money, and I added something to my stock of experience. Of course, that’s only my story, and it may be that the gentleman could tell it another way. But I say that if my story be right the doctrine of Caveat emptor does not encourage trade. I don’t know how we got to all this from Mr Finn. I’m to see him tomorrow.”
“Yes — he is very anxious to speak to you.”
“What’s the use of it, Wickerby? I hate seeing a client. — What comes of it?”
“Of course he wants to tell his own story.”
“But I don’t want to hear his own story. What good will his own story do me? He’ll tell me either one of two things. He’ll swear he didn’t murder the man — ”
“That’s what he’ll say.”
“Which can have no effect upon me one way or the other; or else he’ll say that he did — which would cripple me altogether.”
“He won’t say that, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“There’s no knowing what they’ll say. A man will go on swearing by his God that he is innocent, till at last, in a moment of emotion, he breaks down, and out comes the truth. In such a case as this I do not in the least want to know the truth about the murder.”
“That is what the public wants to know.”
“Because the public is ignorant. The public should not wish to know anything of the kind. What we should all wish to get at is the truth of the evidence about the murder. The man is to be hung not because he committed the murder — as to which no positive knowledge is attainable; but because he has been proved to have committed the murder — as to which proof, though it be enough for hanging, there must always be attached some shadow of doubt. We were delighted to hang Palmer — but we don’t know that he killed Cook. A learned man who knew more about it than we can know seemed to think that he didn’t. Now the last man to give us any useful insight into the evidence is the prisoner himself. In nineteen cases out of twenty a man tried for murder in this country committed the murder for which he is tried.”
“There really seems to be a doubt in this case.”
“I dare say. If there be only nineteen guilty out of twenty, there must be one innocent; and why not Mr Phineas Finn? But, if it be so, he, burning with the sense of injustice, thinks that everybody should see it as he sees it. He is to be tried, because, on investigation, everybody sees it just in a different light. In such case he is unfortunate, but he can’t assist me in liberating him from his misfortune. He sees what is patent and clear to him — that he walked home on that night without meddling with anyone. But I can’t see that, or make others see it, because he sees it.”
“His manner of telling you may do something.”
“If it do, Mr Wickerby, it is because I am unfit for my business. If he have the gift of protesting well, I am to think him innocent; and, therefore, to think him guilty, if he be unprovided with such eloquence! I will neither believe or disbelieve anything that a client says to me — unless he confess his guilt, in which case my services can be but of little avail. Of course I shall see him, as he asks it. We had better meet there — say at half-past ten.” Whereupon Mr Wickerby wrote to the governor of the prison begging that Phineas Finn might be informed of the visit.
Phineas had now been in gaol between six and seven weeks, and the very fact of his incarceration had nearly broken his spirits. Two of his sisters, who had come from Ireland to be near him, saw him every day, and his two friends, Mr Low and Lord Chiltern, were very frequently with him; Lady Laura Kennedy had not come to him again; but he heard from her frequently through Barrington Erle. Lord Chiltern rarely spoke of his sister — alluding to her merely in connection with her father and her late husband. Presents still came to him from various quarters — as to which he hardly knew whence they came. But the Duchess and Lady Chiltern and Lady Laura all catered for him — while Mrs Bunce looked after his wardrobe, and saw that he was not cut down to prison allowance of clean shirts and socks. But the only friend whom he recognised as such was the friend who would freely declare a conviction of his innocence. They allowed him books and pens and paper, and even cards, if he chose to play at Patience with them or build castles. The paper and pens he could use because he could write about himself. From day to day he composed a diary in which he was never tired of expatiating on the terrible injustice of his position. But he could not read. He found it to be impossible to fix his attention on matters outside himself. He assured himself from hour to hour that it was not death he feared — not even death from the hangman’s hand. It was the condemnation of those who had known him that was so terrible to him; the feeling that they with whom he had aspired to work and live, the leading men and women of his day, ministers of the Government and their wives, statesmen and their daughters, Peers and members of the House in which he himself had sat — that these should think that, after all, he had been a base adventurer unworthy of their society! That was the sorrow that broke him down, and drew him to confess that his whole life had been a failure.
Mr Low had advised him not to see Mr Chaffambrass — but he had persisted in declaring that there were instructions which no one but himself could give to the counsellor whose duty it would be to defend him at the trial. Mr Chaffanbrass came at the hour fixed, and with him came Mr Wickerby. The old barrister bowed courteously as he entered the prison room, and the attorney introduced the two gentlemen with more than all the courtesy of the outer world. “I am sorry to see you here, Mr Finn,” said the barrister.
“It’s a bad lodging, Mr Chaffanbrass, but the term will soon be over. I am thinking a good deal more of my next abode.”
“It has to be thought of, certainly,” said the barrister. “Let us hope that it may be all that you would wish it to be. My services shall not be wanting to make it so.”
“We are doing all we can, Mr Finn,” said Mr Wickerby.
“Mr Chaffanbrass,” said Phineas, “there is one special thing that I want you to do.” The old man, having his own idea as to what was coming, laid one of his hands over the other, bowed his head, and looked meek. “I want you to make men believe that I am innocent of this crime.”
This was better than Mr Chaffanbrass expected. “I trust that we may succeed in making twelve men believe it,” said he.
“Comparatively I do not care a straw for the twelve men. It is not to them especially that I am anxious that you should address yourself — “
“But that will be my bounden duty, Mr Finn.”
“I can well believe, sir, that though I have myself been bred a lawyer, I may not altogether understand the nature of an advocate’s duty to his client. But I would wish something more to be done than what you intimate.”
“The duty of an advocate defending a prisoner is to get a verdict of acquittal if he can, and to use his own discretion in making the attempt.”
“But I want something more to be attempted, even if in the struggle something less be achieved. I have known men to be so acquitted that every man in court believed them to be guilty.”
“No doubt — and such men have probably owed much to their advocates.”
“It is not such a debt that I wish to owe. I know my own innocence.”
“Mr Chaffanbrass takes that for granted,” said Mr Wickerby.
“To me it is a matter of astonishment that any human being should believe me to have committed this murder. I am lost in surprise when I remember that I am here simply because I walked home from my club with a loaded stick in my pocket. The magistrate, I suppose, thought me guilty.”
“He did not think about it, Mr Finn. He went by the evidence — the quarrel, your position in the streets at the time, the colour of the coat you wore and that of the coat worn by the man whom Lord Fawn saw in the street; the doctor’s evidence as to the blows by which the man was killed; and the nature of the weapon which you carried. He put these things together, and they were enough to entitle the public to demand that a jury should decide. He didn’t say you were guilty. He only said that the circumstances were sufficient to justify a trial.”
“If he thought me innocent he would not have sent me here.”
“Yes, he would — if the evidence required that he should do so.”
“We will not argue about that, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“Certainly not, Mr Finn.”
“Here I am, and tomorrow I shall be tried for my life. My life will be nothing to me unless it can be made clear to all the world that I am innocent. I would be sooner hung for this, with the certainty at my heart that all England on the next day would ring with the assurance of my innocence, than be acquitted and afterwards be looked upon as a murderer.” Phineas, when he was thus speaking, had stepped out into the middle of the room, and stood with his head thrown back, and his right hand forward. Mr Chaffanbrass, who was himself an ugly, dirty old man, who had always piqued himself on being indifferent to appearance, found himself struck by the beauty and grace of the man whom he now saw for the first time. And he was struck, too, by his client’s eloquence, though he had expressly declared to the attorney that it was his duty to be superior to any such influence. “Oh, Mr Chaffanbrass, for the love of Heaven, let there be no quibbling.”
“We never quibble, I hope, Mr Finn.”
“No subterfuges, no escaping by a side wind, no advantage taken of little forms, no objection taken to this and that as though delay would avail us anything.”
“Character will go a great way, we hope.”
“It should go for nothing. Though no one would speak a word for me, still am I innocent. Of course the truth will be known some day.”
“I’m not so sure of that, Mr Finn.”
“It will certainly be known some day. That it should not be known as yet is my misfortune. But in defending me I would have you hurl defiance at my accusers. I had the stick in my pocket — having heretofore been concerned with ruffians in the street. I did quarrel with the man, having been insulted by him at the club. The coat which I wore was such as they say. But does that make a murderer of me?”
“Somebody did the deed, and that somebody could probably say all that you say.”
“No, sir — he, when he is known, will be found to have been skulking in the streets; he will have thrown away his weapon; he will have been secret in his movements; he will have hidden his face, and have been a murderer in more than the deed. When they came to me in the morning did it seem to them that I was a murderer? Has my life been like that? They who have really known me cannot believe that I have been guilty. They who have not known me, and do believe, will live to learn their error.”
He then sat down and listened patiently while the old lawyer described to him the nature of the case — wherein lay his danger, and wherein what hope there was of safety. There was no evidence against him other than circumstantial evidence, and both judges and jury were wont to be unwilling to accept such, when uncorroborated, as sufficient in cases of life and death. Unfortunately, in this case the circumstantial evidence was very strong against him. But, on the other hand, his character, as to which men of great mark would speak with enthusiasm, would be made to stand very high. “I would not have it made to stand higher than it is,” said Phineas. As to the opinion of the world afterwards, Mr Chaffanbrass went on to say, of that he must take his chance. But surely he himself might fight better for it living than any friend could do for him after his death. “You must believe me in this, Mr Finn, that a verdict of acquittal from the jury is the one object that we must have before us.”
“The one object that I shall have before me is the verdict of the public,” said Phineas. “I am treated with so much injustice in being thought a murderer that they can hardly add anything to it by hanging me.
When Mr Chaffanbrass left the prison he walked back with Mr Wickerby to the attorney’s chambers in Hatton Garden, and he lingered for awhile on the Viaduct expressing his opinion of his client. “He’s not a bad fellow, Wickerby.”
“A very good sort of fellow, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“I never did — and I never will — express an opinion of my own as to the guilt or innocence of a client till after the trial is over. But I have sometimes felt as though I would give the blood out of my veins to save a man. I never felt in that way more strongly than I do now.”
“It’ll make me very unhappy, I know, if it goes against him,” said Mr Wickerby.
“People think that the special branch of the profession into which I have chanced to fall is a very low one — and I do not know whether, if the world were before me again, I would allow myself to drift into an exclusive practice in criminal courts.”
“Yours has been a very useful life, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“But I often feel”, continued the barrister, paying no attention to the attorney’s last remark, “that my work touches the heart more nearly than does that of gentlemen who have to deal with matters of property and of high social claims. People think I am savage — savage to witnesses.”
“You can frighten a witness, Mr Chaffanbrass.”
“It’s just the trick of the trade that you learn, as a girl learns the notes of her piano. There’s nothing in it. You forget it all the next hour. But when a man has been hung whom you have striven to save, you do remember that. Good-morning, Mr Wickerby. I’ll be there a little before ten. Perhaps you may have to speak to me.”