Long before Mr. Carruthers, impelled by the irresistible force of routine, which not all the concern, and even alarm, occasioned him by Mrs. Carruthers's condition could subdue, had issued forth upon his daily tour of inspection, Clare's letters had been safely posted by her own hand at the village. She had slept but little on the night which had fallen on her first experience of fear and grief; and waking at dawn, oppressed by a heavy sense of some dimly-understood calamity, she had recalled it all in a moment; and having hurriedly dressed herself, she went down to the breakfast-room, and let herself out through the window, accompanied by her dog, whose joyous gambols in the bright morning air she did not notice. That morning air struck chill to the weary limbs and aching head of the sad, bewildered girl as she pursued her rapid way through the shrubbery, brushing the dew from the branches of the trees as she passed hurriedly along heart-sick, and yet wandering and confused in her thoughts.
Her walk was quite solitary and uninterrupted. She slid the letters into a convenient slit of a window-shutter of the general-shop, to which the dignity and emoluments of a post-office were attached; glanced up and down the little street, listened to certain desultory sounds which spoke of the commencement of activity in adjacent stable-yards, and to the barking with which some vagabond dogs of her acquaintance greeted her and C?sar; satisfied herself that she was unobserved, and then retraced her steps as rapidly as possible. The large white-faced clock over the stables at Poynings--an unimpeachable instrument, never known to gain or lose within the memory of man--was striking six as Clare Carruthers carefully replaced the bolt of the breakfast-room window, and crept upstairs again, with a faint flutter of satisfaction that her errand had been safely accomplished contending with the dreariness and dread which filled her heart. She put away her hat and cloak, changed her dress, which was wet with the dew, and sat down by the door of the room to listen for the first stir of life in the house.
Soon she heard her uncle's step, lighter, less creaky than usual, and went out to meet him. He did not show any surprise on seeing her so early, and the expression of his face told her in a moment that he had no good news of the invalid to communicate.
"Brookes says she has had a very bad night," he said gravely. "I am going to send for Munns at once, and to telegraph to London for more advice." Then he went on in a state of subdued creak; and Clare, in increased bewilderment and misery, went to Mrs. Carruthers's room, where she found the reign of dangerous illness seriously inaugurated.
Doctor Munns came, and early in the afternoon a grave and polite gentleman arrived from London, who was very affable, but rather reserved, and who was also guilty of the unaccountable bad taste of suggesting a shock in connection with Mrs. Carruthers's illness. He also was emphatically corrected by Mr. Carruthers, but not with the same harshness which had marked that gentleman's reception of Dr. Munns's suggestion. The grave gentleman from London made but little addition to Dr. Munns's treatment, declined to commit himself to any decided opinion on the case, and went away, leaving Mr. Carruthers with a sensation of helplessness and vague injury, to say nothing of downright misery and alarm, to which the Grand Lama was entirely unaccustomed.
Before the London physician made his appearance Clare and her uncle had met at breakfast, and she had learned all there was to be known on the subject which had taken entire and terrible possession of her mind: It seemed to Clare now that she had no power of thinking of anything else, that it was quite impossible that only yesterday morning she was a careless unconscious girl musing over a romantic incident in her life, speculating vaguely upon the possibility of any result accruing from it in the future, and feeling as far removed from the crimes and dangers of life as if they had no existence. Now she took her place opposite her uncle with a face whose pallor and expression of deep-seated trouble even that unobservant and self-engrossed potentate could not fail to notice. He did observe the alteration in Clare's looks, and was not altogether displeased by it. It argued deep solicitude for Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings--an extremely proper sentiment; so Mr. Carruthers consoled his niece after his stately fashion, acknowledging, at the same time, the unaccountable vagaries of fever, and assuring Clare that there was nothing infectious in the case--a subject on which it had never occurred to the girl to feel any uneasiness. Not so with Mr. Carruthers, who had a very great dread of illness of every kind, and a superstitious reverence for the medical art. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the post, and Mr. Carruthers's attention was again drawn to the subject of the murder and the possibility of promoting his own importance in connection with it. Clare's pale face turned paler as her uncle took up the first letter of the number presented to him by Thomas (footman), that official looking peculiarly intelligent on the occasion; for the letter bore the magic inscription, "On Her Majesty's Service," and the seal of the Home Office.
Mr. Carruthers took some time to read the letter, even with the aid of the gold eye-glasses. It came from Mr. Dalrymple, who wrote an abnormally bad hand even for a government official--a circumstance which Mr. Carruthers mentally combined with the beard, of which he retained an indignant remembrance as a sign of the degeneracy of the age. The irrepressible pompousness of the man showed itself even in this crisis of affairs, as he perused the document, and laid it down upon the table under the hand armed with the eye-glasses.
Clare waited breathless.
"Hem! my dear," he began; "this letter is connected with the matter I mentioned to you yesterday. You remember, I daresay, about the murder, and the inquiry I was requested by the government to make at Amherst."
O yes, Clare remembered; she had been very much interested. Had anything since transpired?
"Nothing of any moment. This letter is from Mr. Dalrymple--the gentleman who came here, as I told you, from Lord Wolstenholme."
Clare, still breathless, bowed. There was no use in trying to accelerate Mr. Carruthers's speech. He was not to be hurried.
"He writes to me that the Home Secretary regrets very much the failure of our inquiries at Amherst, in eliciting any information concerning the only person on whom suspicion has as yet alighted. He informs me that, as I expected, and as I explained to you yesterday"--Mr. Carruthers paused condescendingly for Clare's silent gesture of assent--"the jury at the coroner's inquest (it closed yesterday) have returned an open verdict--wilful murder against some person or persons unknown; and the police have been instructed to use all possible vigilance to bring the criminal to light."
"Have they learned anything further about the dead man?" asked Clare, with a timid look (half of anxiety, half of avoidance) towards the newspaper, which Mr. Carruthers had not yet opened, and which no member of the family would have ventured to touch unsanctioned by the previous perusal of its august head.
"About the murdered man?--no, I believe not. Mr. Dalrymple further informs me that the fur-lined coat, and all the other less remarkable articles of clothing found on the body, are placed in the hands of the police, in hope of future identification. There is nothing more to be done, then, that I can see. Can you suggest anything, Clare!" Mr. Carruthers asked the question in a tone almost of banter, as though there were something ridiculous in his expecting a suggestion from such a quarter, but with very little real anxiety nevertheless.
"I--I really do not know, uncle," returned Clare; "I cannot tell. You are quite sure Evans told you all he knew?"
"Everything," replied Mr. Carruthers. "The clue furnished by the coat was very slight, but it was the only one. I am convinced, myself, that the man who wore the coat, and was last seen in company with the murdered man, was the man who committed the murder." Clare shivered. "But," continued Mr. Carruthers in an argumentative tone, "the thing to establish is the identity of the man who wore the coat with the man who bought it six weeks ago."
A bright flush rose on Clare's cheeks--a flush of surprise, of hope. "Is there any doubt about that, uncle?" she asked. "The waiter described the man, didn't he? Besides, no one would part with an overcoat in six weeks."
"That is by no means certain," said Mr. Carruthers with an air of profound wisdom. "Artists and writers, and foreigners, and generally people of the vagabond kind, sell and barter their clothes very frequently. The young man whom Evans describes might have been any one, from his purposeless indistinguishable description; the waiter's memory is clearer, as is natural, being newer."
"And what is the description he gives?" asked Clare faintly.
"You will find it in the weekly paper, my dear," returned Mr. Carruthers, stretching his hand out towards the daily journal. "Meantime let's see yesterday's proceedings."
Hope had arisen in Clare's heart. Might not all her fear be unfounded, all her sufferings vain? What if the coat had not been purchased by Paul Ward at all? She tried to remember exactly what he had said in the few jesting words that had passed on the subject. Had he said he had bought it at Amherst, or only that it had been made at Amherst? By an intense effort, so distracting and painful that it made her head ache with a sharp pain, she endeavoured to force her memory to reproduce what had passed, but in vain; she remembered only the circumstance, the fatal identification of the coat. "Artists and writers," her uncle had said, in his disdainful classification, occasionally made certain odd arrangements concerning their garments unknown to the upper classes, to whom tailors and valets appertain of right; and Paul Ward was both a writer and an artist. Might he not have bought the coat from an acquaintance? Men of his class, she knew, often had queer acquaintances. The possession was one of the drawbacks of the otherwise glorious career of art and literature--people who might require to sell their coats, and be equal to doing it.
Yes there was a hope, a possibility that it might be so, and the girl seized on it with avidity. But, in a moment, the terrible recollection struck her that she was considering the matter at the wrong end. Who had bought the coat made by Evans of Amherst, and what had been its intermediate history, were things of no import. The question was, in whose possession was it when the unknown man was murdered. Had Paul Ward dined with him at the Strand Tavern? Was Paul Ward the man whom the waiter could undertake to identify, in London? If so--and the terrible pang of the conviction that so, indeed, it was, returned to her with redoubled force from the momentary relief of the doubt--the danger was in London, not there at Amherst; from the waiter, not from Evans. Distracted between the horror, overwhelming to the innocent mind of the young girl, to whom sin and crime had been hitherto dim and distant phantoms, of such guilt attaching itself to the image which she had set up for the romantic worship of her girlish heart, and the urgent terrified desire which she felt that, however guilty, he might escape--nay, the more firmly she felt convinced that he must be guilty, the more ardently she desired it,--Clare Carruthers's gentle breast was rent with such unendurable torture as hardly any after happiness could compensate for or efface. All this time Mr. Carruthers was reading the newspaper, and at length he laid it down, and was about to address Clare, when the footman entered the room, and informed him that Mr. Evans, the tailor, from Amherst, wished to be permitted to speak to him as soon as convenient. With much more alacrity than he usually displayed, Mr. Carruthers desired that Evans should be shown into the library, and declared his intention of going to speak to him immediately.
"I have no doubt, Clare, that he has come about this business," said Mr. Carruthers, when the servant had left the room. With this consolatory assurance he left her to herself. She snatched up the newspaper, and read a brief account of the proceedings of the previous day--the close of the inquest, and some indignant remarks upon the impunity with which so atrocious a crime had, to all appearance, been committed; which wound up with a supposition that this murder was destined to be included in the number of those mysteries whose impenetrability strengthened the hand of the assassin, and made our police system the standing jest of continental nations. How ardently she hoped, how nearly she dared to pray, that it might indeed be so!
She lingered in the breakfast-room, waiting for her uncle's return. The restlessness, the uncertainty of misery, were upon her; she dreaded the sight of every one, and yet she feared solitude, because of the thoughts, the convictions, the terrors, which peopled it. Three letters lay on the table still unopened; and when Clare looked at them, she found they were addressed to Mrs. Carruthers, and that two of the three were from America. The postmark on each was New York, and on one were stamped the words, "Too late."
"She is too ill to read any letters now, or even to be told there are any," thought Clare. "I had better put them away, or ask my uncle to do so."
She was looking at the third letter, which was from George Dallas; but she had never seen his writing, to her knowledge; and the two words, which he had written on the slip of paper she had seen, being a Christian and surname, afforded her no opportunity of recognizing it as that of Paul Ward; when Mr. Carruthers returned, looking very pompous and fussy.
"I shall communicate with ............