 CHAPTER 8 Humphrey Vargas had been six weeks in prison, and now the Assizes were on at Highclair, and the self-accused murderer was to be judged. The county police had not been idle during the interval. They had hunted up witnesses, and traced out various details in the history of Walter Blake's death, which tended to confirm the prisoner's statement, and to establish the fact of his guilt. Among the lower classes there had been some sympathy for the self-accused, after the Highclair magistrates had heard his confession and committed him for trial. The murder was brutal, and Mr. Blake of Tangley Manor had been one of the most popular men in the county. Among the gentry, therefore, the general feeling was that hanging would be only too light a punishment for the murderer. But the working classes dwelt on the fact of the man's surrender of himself after twenty years, his age and infirmities, his dire poverty, the manifold temptations to which a starving wretch is liable. Radical orators in roadside beer-shops improved the occasion by denouncing the luxury and self-indulgence of the rich. Why there wasn't a horse in Squire Blake's stable as wasn't better fed and better cared for than this poor critter, said one of these village hamdons, lashing himself into a fury. Horses, indeed. I should like to know what working man's home can compare with a loose box in Huntingstable. What working man's child has as comfortable quarters as a foxhound pup! Ah! cried the orator, thumping the table. The rich man may lay field to field and add house to house, but at the battle of Armageddon. And here another thump on the table made the crockery mugs rattle and close the speech in sublime obscurity. The day had come at last when Humphry Vargas was to stand in the dock, and the little county town of Highclair was in a state of unusual excitement. It was a queer little old-fashioned town, a century behind the times in almost everything. A picturesque little town, with a fine old Norman gateway at each end, narrow streets in which the greater part of the houses had been standing since the days of the Tudors. Streets in which the levels had undergone all manner of changes, so that while in one street the houses were elevated ten or fifteen feet above the carriageway, and were approached by a raised causeway. In other thoroughfares the basement floors were sunk several feet below the level of the pavement, and one descended into the house as into a vault. Dale sure could boast of larger towns and better towns than Highclair. There was Blackford, the great Iron Town, and there was Avonmore, an elegant modern settlement where the wealthy Blackfordians retired from the smoke of foundries and the labour of money-making, to clear air and conifershaded gardens, and the relaxation of money-spending. There was Doldrum, the busy manufacturing town, famous for glasscloths, round towels, and lawn-mowing machines, where there were two fine churches, and a population of sixty thousand which subsisted chiefly on pork pies. But superior in size and prosperity as these might be, Highclair had merits of its own, and ranked above them. Everything about it belonged to the Middle Ages. The church, the old gateways, the neighbouring castle, the grammar school, the town hall, the picturesque old one-arch bridge that spanned the narrow river, the verdant water meadows, and the willow-shaded streams that surrounded the town, all belonged to the England which is fast passing away, and people with a taste for the picturesque loved the stagnation of Highclair better than the commercial prosperity of dingy Blackford and poor Keating Doldrum, or the wealth and fashion of elegant Avonmore. The jail where Humphry Vargas had been in close keeping ever since that October night was a building hardly worthy of the dignity of Highclair. There was a portion of it that was over immemorial antiquity, and which archaeological societies visited and discoursed learnedly about, and there was a portion, which was comparatively modern, having been built in the time of Queen Anne. Despite the present rage for all the architecture of that Augustine era, it must be confessed that the modern side of Highclair jail was about as insignificant and paltry a piece of construction, as ever was devised by a local architect for the disfigurement of his native town. It was a square block, having for its façade a flat wall level with the street, and pierced with numerous narrow windows. An enthusiast might have pardoned the ugliness of the edifice in as much as it was built of a dingy red brick, scantily relieved by stone tablets above the windows. But despite this unquestionable merit, Highclair jail was about the ugliest thing in the town, and even the native mind took no pride or pleasure in it. The ancient portion of the prison was at the back of this modern erection, and was altogether curious and picturesque. It had once been an arsenal, and the massive walls were pierced with narrow loophole windows, which admitted only a glimmering light into the low cells. It was built on the rocky bank of a deep, narrow river, which rushed impetuously six feet below the foundations of the prison. Seen from the low ground on the other side of the stream, the building looked more like a medieval stronghold than a nineteenth-century prison. Within, there was a quadrangle in which the prisoners took their daily walks, and where executions, happily rare in Highclair, were decently performed. The morning was grey and drizzly, and the old town looked as dull and grey as the weather, despite the unwonted excitement of a trial for murder. The court was to open at eleven, and at ten o'clock Morton Blake rode into the town and put his horse up at the peacock, the old coaching-in, where a range of empty stables testified to a departed prosperity, but which still boasted an assembly-room, a professed cork, gave decent dinners, accommodated the sprinkling of hunting men, who preferred a quiet life and plenty of space for their horses to the liveliness and fashion of Avonmore, and was honourably known as the best hotel in Highclair. Morton gave his horse to the Ostler, and walked away through the drizzling rain, without entering the inn. He looked pale and care-worn. The last six weeks had been full of excitement and anxiety for him. He had been in constant communication with the county police, had followed all their movements with feverish intensity of feeling, and had even employed a London detective on his own account, known to the local police. The result of this double investigation had been curiously disappointing. The county police had made numerous discoveries and were convinced of the prisoner's guilt. The London detective, recommended as a man of exceptional intelligence and capacity, had done nothing safe to throw cold water upon the entire business and to express his doubt of the prisoner's guilt. Disgusted at so barren a result, Morton had dismissed the man in a huff, and pinned his faith on local talent. And now the day had come upon which Humphry Vargas was to be tried for his life by a jury of his own countrymen. Morton Blake walked past the Assize Court where the trial was to be held, past the prison which lay nearer the gate of the town, under the old archway, with its heraldic griffons on each side of the gate, to the stone bridge which spanned the narrow river that went brawling and gurgling over its rocky bed to find a lower level, and to spread and widen as its ease in the water meadows below. From this bridge Morton could see the back of the jail, and he stood for some time leaning against the parapet and gazing at the old building, speculating as to which of yonder loopholes lighted Humphry Vargas's cell. He knew that the prisoner was lodged in that part of the building, though he had paid no visit of mercy or curiosity to his cell, his feelings were too intense to admit of his having any intercourse with the criminal. He went back to the town, and entered the court by a side door, which admitted him into one of the official rooms. He was known to all the local functionaries, and was provided with a seat on the bench, from which he could survey the whole of the proceedings. The courthouse was filling fast, for this trial of Humphry Vargas was an event which had been awaited with interest and curiosity by every one in the neighbourhood of Osforp. Gentry and commonality were alike concerned in seeing the issue of today's trial. Morton had scarcely taken his seat, when Mrs. Aspinall of the towers was ushered to a place near him, and came rustling to her seat, exhaling odours of S. Bouquet, and exclaiming at the stuffiness of the atmosphere. Lord Blatch-Martin and his son Lord Bevel followed almost immediately, saluting Morton with friendly nods as they took their places, and seizing an early opportunity to shake hands with him and murmur something vaguely sympathetic. The body of the old hall was full of people, a crowd which overflowed at the doorway and oozed down the stone steps into the lobbies. Everybody wanted to see the prisoner, to hear what course the trial would take. Would the man plead guilty, and the whole thing be over in a quarter of an hour? Or would the evidence be sifted, and witnesses interrogated in the usual way? Popular feeling was in favour of a long and careful trial, and there was considerable relief of mind when someone who was supposed to be an authority asserted that the high sheriff of the county had provided the prisoner with counsel, and that he had been instructed to plead not guilty in order that he might have a fair trial. There's Morton Blake, said a big jovial-looking man with a bald head and large sandy whiskers, who had come late yet had contrived to edge himself into one of the best places in the body of the hall, on a raised bench just behind the table at which the counsel sat. Looks pale and drawn, doesn't he? Takes this business very seriously to heart, and there's Mother Aspin all, grinning at the high sheriff with those false teeth of hers, and posing herself like a fashionable beauty in a photograph. And there's Sir Everett Courtney just come in, shaking hands with Morton, and looking like a man whose thoughts are a thousand miles away. And there's old Blatch-Martin, regular old Roura, and his son Betel, fine upstanding young fellow, the best breadman in these parts. Thus Shafto Jeb, the surgeon of Highclair, who knew everybody present and was as good as a chorus. He was a hunting man, and although his professional dealings had to do with the ills of humanity, his inclinations pointed to the stable, and he was more horsey in his phraseology than the average veterinary surgeon. He's a handsome young man, certainly, answered the gentleman to whom these remarks had been addressed, Mr. York, a mild young curate of the advanced Anglican school, who had charge of the rural parish of Osthorpe, while his fettered spirit panted for the freedom of Brighton or Maid of Ale. But I think Sir Everett Courtney is even more aristocratic looking, what I should call the true patrician type. Ah! Too fine drawn for my taste, replied Jeb. I don't care for your bookish men. I like a fellow who can go across country. Bevel is one of the finest riders in Daleshire. Sir Everett used to hunt once. Used he not? Oh! Twenty years ago. Yes. He was out on the day of Blake's murder. A very poor run, I remember, though some of us took some ticklish vences. It was early in the season, and the hedges were all blind. You remember the day? Better than I remember the day before yesterday. I was a gay young bachelor, and could afford to keep four horses, where I now keep two, and hadn't to work half so hard as I do now. Ah! Those were glorious days. Who not very complimentary to Mrs. Jeb? Simpered Mr. Mork, the curate. Mrs. Jeb is a good soul. No man ever had a better wife. But a man can only be young once, Mork, and however well things may go with him in after life, he will always look back to the days of his youth with a sigh. I suppose there is no question as to this man's guilt, speculated Mr. Mork, who was more interested in the proceedings of the court than in Shafto Jeb's opinions. I'll tell you what I think about it when the trial's over, answered Jeb warily. If I were to go into the witness-box, I might be able to put some points in a new light. But I'm not a witness, and I don't want to be one. Oh! What could you tell, a security eagly? Do you really know anything? I might illucidate a point, said Jeb, but let it pass. Here comes the prisoner. Looks a poor, dough-hearted animal, doesn't he? How savagely Morton black eyes him. That young man is awfully vindictive. Every eye was now directed to the man in the dock. A haggard, broken-down creature, with bent shoulders, hollow cheeks, long, lean arms, and grizzled, unkempt hair. A man who looked as if he had been acquainted with starvation and houselessness for the greater part of his life. He looked round the court with a scared, half-dazzled expression, as of one suddenly brought from darkness into light. And then seeing every eye gazing at him, eager, curious, and unpitying, he gave a shudder, and sank, cowering down into a heap in the chair that had been provided for him. Then the jury was sworn, and the prisoner was arraigned. In answer to the usual interrogation, he pleaded not guilty. And then the counsel for the crown, Mr. Canning Russell QC, briefly stated the facts for the prosecution. How at seven o'clock on the evening of the 20th of October, twenty years ago, Mr. Blake of Tangley Manor had been found by some labourers going home from their work, lying dead in a ditch in Osthorpe Lane, his skull fractured by some blunt instrument. How at the coroner's inquest, the medical evidence had shown that the fracture of the skull was the cause of death, and that the murderer must have dragged his victim's dead body into the ditch. How the watch, chain, and seals, known to have been worn by Mr. Blake on this day, had been discovered three months afterwards at a pawnbroker's in the market town of Great Barford in the next county. And how the pawnbroker who took them in pledge had been able, even after the lapse of twenty years, to select Humphrey Vargas out of six men being exercised in the yard of the prison. How it would be proved to the satisfaction of the jury that the shape of the prisoner's feet, notably the position of the left foot, which turned inward when he walked, had been found to correspond exactly with the drawings taken of footmarks in the path beside the ditch, and in the field beyond it, immediately after the murder. How a tramp who had been hot-picking in Kent with Vargas a fortnight prior to the murder, and had known him to be penniless at that time, had met him a week after the murder in Blackford, and had been treated by him at a public-house there, and had reason to know that he was then flush of money. The council for the prosecution then went on to say how the police had traced the career of Humphrey Vargas since that time, in jail and out of jail, an altogether disreputable and criminal existence. Indeed, looking at the mode and manner of the man's life, his associates and surroundings, the wonder in most people's minds would be not that he had committed one murder, but that he had not committed many. The first witness-called was one whose appearance in the box created considerable excitement in the court, an excitement which was subdued but universal. There was a hush, a breathlessness, a sudden concentration of every one's attention, as Sir Everett Courtney stepped into the witness-box and was sworn. A remarkably handsome man, murmured Mrs. Aspinall, adjusting her binoculars on her aristocratic nose, and very young for his age, remarkably well preserved. Mrs. Aspinall, who had evaded the approach of grey hairs by dying her tresses a warm, tawny tinge, which she called Titian Red, and had coated her wrinkles with a wash of bismuth, might have said with much more truth that Sir Everett looked young because he was not preserved at all, having done nothing to disguise the progress of years, and looking handsomer with his silvered hair and beard than any man ever looked with dyed hair or a wig. Sir Everett, being interrogated, told in fewest words how Humphry Vargas had come to him on the evening of October the 20th, and had voluntarily made the statement, which he, Sir Everett, had written down, and which the prisoner had afterwards signed in the presence of John Jackson the Constable. Mr. Tomplin, counsel for the prisoner, asked the witness if Vargas had been drinking when he made this statement. Sir Everett, no, the man was, to all appearance, perfectly sober. Mr. Tomplin, and there was nothing wild or excited about his manner? Sir Everett, I should describe his manner as dogged rather than excited. I was at first inclined to poo-poo his statement, believing the whole thing to be a trumped-up business, and that he would recant next day. I afterwards warned him that it was a very serious matter, and that he was putting a rope round his neck. He was a miserable, half-starved looking creature, and I thought that he'd been driven by desperation to give himself in charge for an imaginary offence. Mr. Tomplin, did he impress you as a man who was mentally weak? Sir Everett, no, he spoke rationally enough, and he resolutely adhered to his first statement. Mr. Tomplin, you were a friend of the murdered man, I believe. Sir Everett, yes, we were friends of long-standing. Mr. Tomplin, and you rode by his side part of the way home from the hunt. Sir Everett, no, I was not among the gentlemen who rode homewards with him as far as the crossroads after the kill. I went home earlier, and by a different way. Mr. Tomplin, when and where did you last see him? Sir Everett, on Guiltspur Common, after a sharp run of twenty minutes or so, when the hounds were at fault, and we waited about a little. Mr. Tomplin, did you speak to him? Sir Everett, yes, we talked together for a few minutes. Mr. Tomplin, was he in his usual health and spirits? Sir Everett looked at the judge with a broad expression, as who should say that this kind of interrogation might go on all day to know apparent end or aim. Mr. Tomplin was a youngish man, five and thirty at most, who had only lately begun to get briefs, and whose enthusiasm required to be kept in check. Really now, said the judge, I cannot quite see the drift of these questions. You cannot surely mean to suggest that Mr. Blake committed suicide, that a gentleman split his own skull with a cudgel, and then laid himself down in a ditch after picking his own pockets. No, my lord, but I wished to show that Mr. Blake may have had an enemy, that this murder, which startled all the country round, and which for twenty years has been a mystery, may have been prompted by stronger and more subtle passions than the sordid craving for gain. I should like the jury to hear something of Mr. Blake's circumstances and surroundings before his death. Sir Everett with a contemptuous smile. Mr. Blake was in his usual health. He appeared to be in particularly good spirits. He conversed freely with his friends. Mr. Tomplin, did you, who were his intimate friend, know of any domestic or social trouble in which he was involved at this time? Sir Everett, I should say that his domestic surroundings were rather enviable than otherwise. He had been some years a widower, he had three children to whom he was strongly attached, and his house was kept for him by his maiden sister, one of the most amiable women in Dalesha. Mr. Tomplin, yet there might have been secret trouble. I am obliged to touch upon a most delicate subject, and I wish to approach it with all possible respect. Is it not a fact, Sir Everett, that Mr. Blake was one of Lady Courtney's most ardent admirers? Sir Everett, when Lady Courtney was Miss Alice Rothney, she had numerous admirers. I believe Mr. Blake was among them. Mr. Tomplin, but he conquered his passion when she married you. Do I understand that there was never any uncomfortable feeling between you and Mr. Blake after your marriage? Sir Everett, Mr. Blake and I were on friendly terms till the day of his death. I have told you that already. I shall be glad, Sir, if you can keep my dead wife's name out of this inquiry, it can have no possible bearing on the case. The judge here intervened, and ruled that the line which the cross-examination was taking was irrelevant, and must be pursued no further. Humphrey Vargas's deposition was now read, amidst breathless concerns, and then John Dyke, a bricklayer's labourer, was sworn. Mr. Canning Russell, you were one of the men who found Mr. Blake's body. Will you tell the jury exactly what happened to you? John Dyke Me and my mate Joe Daffles was going home after our day's work at Farmer Twycross's at Ars Thop. We'd been working a bit late, for we was putting up a new brew-house, and Mr. Twycross was in a fanting to get it up in time for his October brewing, and he'd made it agreeable to us to work an hour or two over time. So as you see, it were after dark when we was going home by our Thorpe Lane. There was a moon-up, a newest sort of moon that didn't give much light, but just enough for us to see objects in the road, and we was jogging along like a bit slow, being as we was tired, when my mate sees something in the ditch, just at the very identical moment as my eye were caught by a smashed hat lying in a puddle on the other side of the road, close to Blatch Mardin Cops. What's this here in the ditch, says he, scared like, is it a dog or a man? And he plunges in without more ado, and me after him, and between us drags out something smothered with mud and weeds. It was a man, sure enough. We thought at first as it might be somebody that had been overcome with liquor, and had fallen asleep on the bank, and rolled into the ditch, promiscuous like. But when we got him out into the road, we could see his red coat and brass buttons, and his top boots, and we knowed it was a gent as had been hunting, which a few yards further on we find his whip lying alongside the footpath. Well, we make pretty sure as how he'd gone at the hedge, and his horse had throwed him, and just landed him clean in the ditch. Anyway, he was dead, that was clear enough. So my mate ran back to us, thought, to get help, while I sat down beside the body. He comes back in less than an hour with the constable and another man, and a lantern, and a shutter to carry the body on. And no sooner does the constable hold the lantern alongside the dead man's face than he sings out, It's squire-blake of tangly manner, here's a dreadful piece of business, throwed from his arse, and killed on the spot. For at first you see, he thought exactly like us. Well we up with the body, and laid it on the shutter, and carried it home to tangly manner, where we was handsomely recompensed for our trouble. Mr. Russell. Your mate is dead, I understand? John Dyke. Oh yes, sir, poor old Joe Tung died seven years ago last Christmas. There never was such a marth at as sciatics as Joe were before he were Tung. Mr. Russell, that will do. The next witness was Dr. Brudinal of Highclear, a formal old gentleman of a fast-expiring species, the ancient family practitioner. He gave his evidence in a lofty and grandiose manner, and used as many scientific and technical words as he could possibly employ, in order to inform the jury that Mr. Blake had died from the effects of wounds inflicted on the head by a blunt instrument, most probably a stake or a cudgel. There had been three wounds, all of a severe character, and sufficient to account for death. There was no doubt in Dr. Brudinal's mind that the deceased expired almost immediately from the effects of one or all of those wounds, and that he was a dead man when he fell all was thrown into the ditch. In cross-examination Mr. Tomplin asked whether such wounds might not have been caused accidentally by a fall, if Mr. Blake had tried to jump the hedge into the road, and had been flung violently out of his saddle. Dr. Brudinal, I have no hesitation in saying that it would be impossible for three such wounds to be inflicted accidentally, nor have I any hesitation in saying that no hunting man would take such a jump as you suggest in cold blood riding home after a day's sport. No judicious rider would take it at any time as there is a drop of five feet into a hard road. Mr. Tomplin, you told us just now that in your opinion, the wounds were inflicted by a cudgel or a stake. Now, would not a wound inflicted by a stake be of a very different character from that caused by a cudgel? Dr. Brudinal, there would be a difference, and certainly, Mr. Tomplin, a marked difference, would there not? Dr. Brudinal, the wound inflicted by a stake would be jagged. The flesh would be much abraded, supposing the edge of the stake to be sharp and pointed. The blow from a cudgel would cause a contused wound. Mr. Tomplin, now, Dr. Brudinal, were not these wounds obviously caused by a stake? Dr. Brudinal, that was my impression at the time, an impression which was in some manner borne out by the subsequent discovery of a hole in a bank about a quarter of a mile from the scene of the murder, from which a stake had evidently been recently pulled up, apparently with violence or haste. Mr. Tomplin, was the spot in question nearer Osthorpe than the scene of the murder? Dr. Brudinal, nearer the High Clear Road. The Council for the Defence scored a point by Dr. Brudinal's evidence. Humphrey Vargas had described himself as striking Mr. Blake with a cudgel. This suggestion of a stake torn from a hedge near the scene of the murder introduced a new element of doubt into the case. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Just As I Am This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Just As I Am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Chapter 9 Guilty The next witness was a man who had known Humphrey Vargas when he lived at Osthorpe, and who identified him as an agricultural labourer who had worked at one time for Mr. Blake and had occupied a cottage on his estate. This man described how Vargas had offended Mr. Blake by poaching on the tangly preserves and how he and his wife had been turned out of their home neck and crop a day or two before the birth of his last child. The wife died within a week of her confinement and Vargas had attributed her death to the agitation and discomfort caused by their sudden shift of quarters from a decent weathertight cottage to a wretched hovel in one of the lanes near Osthorpe. He had expressed himself strongly about Mr. Blake's conduct and had shown himself vindictive. Soon after his wife's death he left Osthorpe, abandoning his young family to the care of the parish. The wife had been a steady, hard-working woman, but Vargas had been scampishly disposed at his best, not an habitual drunkard, but going on the drink at odd times and inclined to be idle. Of this witness Mr. Tomplin declined to ask any questions. Then came the evidence of the great barford pawnbroker at whose shop Vargas had pledged Mr. Blake's watch and chain and who had been able to pick him out from among six men and identify him without a minute's hesitation. This witness was searchingly interrogated by Mr. Tomplin, who did all he could to shake his testimony and to make him appear a twaddling gold fool, but without success. After this followed the evidence of the late police constable of Osthorpe, a toothless old man who had been superannuated twelve years ago, but whose memory seemed unimpaired by time. He described how he had assisted tracing of footprints in the muddy road hardened by a knight's frost, which footprints had been since found to correspond with the form and size of the prisoner's feet with singular distinctness. Here again the counsel for the defence tried the forensic art of ridicule, but with no more effect than in the case of the pawnbroker, save so far as the illiciting of some idle laughter from the groundlings. The next and last witness was the tramp William Scaffers, otherwise charity-bill, who deposed to being in Vargas's company in the Hopfields, near Cobham in Kent, and parting with him on the road to Daleshire. He described how they had afterwards met by accident in Blackford, and how Vargas had then been flush of coin. He'd done a job somewhere in the country as had put a few pounds in his pocket, he says. Pursued Mr. Scaffers, who discoursed as freely and as pleasantly in the witness-box as if he had been sitting by a tap-room fire, his easy attitude as he lulled with folded arms upon the front of the box was calculated to assure the jury of his perfect candour and friendliness. He kept a bit of straw at one corner of his mouth, which he chewed occasionally as if for refreshment, and he occasionally spat in a gentlemanly manner upon the floor of the box. He stood, Sam, for a pot of Pongello, continued Mr. Scaffers, and naturally we got talking. He told me he meant to go across the airing pond and try his luck in Merricky as soon as the winter was over. I asked him if he'd got enough money to pay his passage, and he says he has, and I says that must have been a profitable job as he'd done in Daleshire, and he says it were a bit of luck and no mistake, and he only wished he could be as lucky every month in the year and then he wouldn't quarrel with fortune nor with nobody. Mr. Tomplin in cross-examination bore rather hardly upon the witness, but was able neither to shake Mr. Scaffers' testimony nor to disturb his equanimity. He was quite agreeable to answer any number of questions that might be put to him and seemed to look upon the whole business as a pleasant chat which gave free scope to his conversational powers. He explained the meaning of various slang words which had given colour and vividness to his phraseology. He told the jury that Pongello was a familiar name for half and half and further explained that half and half was a mixture of ale and porter. Nothing could be more affable than his manner to the council a safe perhaps, those nods and winks with which he sought to establish an understanding between himself and the jury. May I inquire how much of your life has been spent out of jail during the last twenty years? asked Mr. Tomplin. That's a point of etiquette for his honour to decide, answered the imperturbable Scaffers. I should call it a unwarratable invasion of a gentleman's private life. That will do, sir. I think you have wasted the time of this court quite long enough, said Mr. Tomplin shortly. I leave it to the jury's own powers to discover which of us two has been frittering away their valuable time since eleven o'clock this morning, answered Scaffers. This closed the case for the prosecution. Mr. Tomplin then began his defence. He started by admitting that he had a difficult task before him. Here was a man who stood before them self-accused of a terrible crime, whose own lips had given the chief evidence against him. A man who had of his own free will surrendered his liberty and invited the last punishment which the law could inflict. Yet in the face of this confession he should ask the jury to consider the case before them with minds unprejudiced by the prisoner's own statement, and to examine that statement as if it had been the evidence of an independent witness. He asked them to consider that there was actually nothing in all they had heard today to connect the prisoner with the murder of Walter Blake, though there was certainly some grounds for believing that he had become possessed of the murdered man's watch and chain and had converted them for his own benefit. You have been told by Dr. Brudnel, pursued Mr. Tomplin, that in his opinion both at the time of the inquest and at the present time the wounds from which Mr. Blake died were inflicted by a sharp-edged, jagged piece of wood, such as a hedge-stake, and knocked by the smooth knob of a kudgel. I ask you, gentlemen, to consider this point in the evidence, and I ask you still more closely to consider the palpable improbabilities in the tale told by the prisoner. You were asked to believe that he, a half-starved tramp, soar and weary, was able to stop Mr. Blake, a powerful man mounted on a powerful horse, that he was able to drag him off his horse and so belabor him with the kudgel that he died. Does it not seem more reasonable to suppose, gentlemen, that the murderer of Mr. Blake was a man of his own age, of powerful frame like his own, mounted as well as he was mounted, able to attack him on equal terms? Not a poor, crawling hound whom the squire of Tangly could have swept out of his path as he would have spurned any four-footed kerr that yelped and snapped at his horse's legs. Gentlemen, you have to look deeper than this starving wayfarer's hunger for the motive of this crime. You have to look for a great wrong and a desperate revenge. You have to look for one of those terrible domestic mysteries which underlie the smooth surface of society. You have to scrutinise the garbled page before you and to read between the lines. And now, gentlemen, as for the motive of this confession, the motive which can impel a man at large, unsuspected, free to breathe the air of heaven, to give up his liberty and imperil his life, I think you will find it easier to discover a motive or motives strong enough to induce an innocent man to accuse himself of a crime which he has not committed than to reconcile the improbabilities in the prisoner's account of a supposed murder. We all know of that thirst for notoriety which exists in some uneducated minds, a morbid desire to astonish, to be talked about and pointed at and thought famous, were it after the vilest fashion. Such a desire may have influenced the prisoner when he leapt in a moment from the dull obscurity of want and houselessness to the distinction of a supposed murderer, a man to be interviewed by newspaper correspondence and to have his portrait in the penned Red Fools. Gentlemen, we make too much of our criminals. There is a victoria cross for crime as there is for valour. A man springs into fame as surely by the commission of a monstrous crime as a general by winning a great battle. We have made a step towards civilisation by doing away with public hangings, but we shall make a longer step into the light when we cease to gloat over the details of a crime and to award the glory of a waxwork apotheosis to the thief and to the assassin. The thirst for notoriety, gentlemen, is one obvious motive for such a confession. Add to this the desperation of a wretch whose only freedom was the liberty to starve by the wayside or to rot in a ditch. Perhaps had the workhouse been more accessible, Humphry Vargas would not have thrown himself into jail, but who would hesitate as a mere question of personal comfort between the casual ward and the convict prison. Homeless, in rags, starving, Vargas saw but one certain refuge open to him, and that refuge was a jail. He had tasted its comforts before as a common felon. He pined for the more indulgent treatment given to a murderer. He reckoned on the chances against the extreme penalty of the law. He argued with himself that an old man moved by remorse, penitent, abject, confessing to a crime committed twenty years ago, would be sure of lenient treatment. Mercy would intervene to modify the severity of the sentence. He risked the hazard of the die, and stands before you to-day, bearing on his countenance the stamp of his character. A product of our nineteenth-century civilisation. Untaught, unfed, unclothed, uncared for. A creature whose final hope on earth is the decent shelter of a jail. Mr. Canning Russell replied with sober brevity to the arguments for the defence. He said that a man who accused himself of a murder was, unless mad or drunk at the time of his confession, supposed to know his own mind. This man had been neither drunk nor mad. He had given a consecutive narrative, a narrative sustained by the evidence, medical and otherwise. Mr. Russell alluded with some contempt to the nice distinction between a wound from a stake and one caused by a bludgeon or cudgel. Gentlemen, he exclaimed, I do not believe the whole College of Surgeons would be able to tell one from the other. He dwelt on the identification of the prisoner by the pawnbroker to whom he had pledged Mr. Blake's watch and chain. This was conclusive evidence as to the robbery, and was it not too much for any reasonable mind to suppose that the robbery and the murder were two distinct crimes committed by two distinct criminals, each acting independently of the other? Surely the man who disposed of Mr. Blake's property must be the man who murdered him for the sake of that property. He had to remind the jury what very small gains had been the motive of murder in many cases that must have come within their knowledge. As to the argument that a tram on foot was no match for Mr. Blake on horseback, it had to be considered that the tramp was a man who led a rough out-of-door life and belonged already in a measure to the criminal classes, a man whose fuse and sinews were practised in deeds of violence, and further, that a gentleman walking his horse home from the hunt after a long day's hard riding could hardly be in the full possession of his normal strength, but was in all likelihood exhausted and weary. Mr. Russell concluded, after briefly glancing at some further points in the defence, and then the judge summed up, briefly, severely, taking care to remind the jury that the fact of a crime having been committed twenty years ago was no extenuating circumstance, that the prisoner's remorse could in no wise lessen the enormity of his guilt, that if it seemed to them that he had done this deed of which he stood accused out of his own mouth, he must pay the penalty of his crime. His case had been carefully heard, he had been ably and exhaustively defended. They were not to be carried away by oratory. They were not even to be influenced by natural pity for a wretch so abject. Their duty was to arrive at their verdict upon the evidence they had heard, looking at plain facts in the sober light of common sense. The jury retired, and in less than twenty minutes returned to the box, and after the usual formalities the jury returned the verdict guilty. Then came the solemn closing act of the day. The judge put on the black cap and addressed the prisoner. Coldly, gravely, he reminded the shivering wretch of the magnitude of his crime, and told him what his fate was to be. There had been no recommendation to mercy from the jury. There was no hint of a possible commutation of the sentence from the judge. The short winter day had worn to its close before this climax was reached. Wax candles had been lighted here and there, and the yellow flames were reflected on the black oak panelling as in turbid water. The faces in the crowded court had all the same one strained look in the dim and unequal light. There were strange effects of light and shade, as in a picture by Rembrandt. The figures of the officials moving to and fro in the dusk had a goblin look. The judge projected a monstrous shadow of his wig and gown upon the ceiling. The dark crimson draperies looked black as if the court had been draped for a funeral. Mrs. Aspinall shook out the sable tails on the edge of her mantle and gave a shuddering sigh. I had no idea the trial of a poor common creature could be made so interesting! She said to Sir Everard Courtney, who sat near her, how wonderfully clever those counsel are, and how warmly they enter into it, just as if they really cared what became of the poor creature, don't you know? But I'm rather glad it's all over, as I ordered my carriage for four o'clock, and those poor chestnuts of mine must have been shivering for the last three quarters of an hour. Would it be too much for me to ask you to see me through the crowd? I shall be delighted, said Sir Everard. Your pretty little daughter ought to have been here to-day, observed the frivolous matron. She has lost a treat. I should be very sorry for my daughter to see such a painful scene. But really now it was all so quietly done, and those barristers are such gentlemanly creatures. There was nothing to offend the most sensitive mind. Perhaps not. But I'm glad Dulcy was out of it, replied Sir Everard gravely. May I offer you my arm? He led the lady to her carriage, which was waiting in front of the Assize Court. Shall I drive you home? asked Mrs. Aspinol, when she was seated in her snug broom. It won't be far out of my way to go through Osthorpe. You are very good, but I have my horse here, and I must ride home as fast as I can to dress for the Sheriff's dinner. You're going to dine with Sir Nathaniel? Yes, and I am to meet the judge and the leading counsel. Oh, and you will have the delightful opportunity of talking over the trial. I quite envy you. Shall you ride home by Osthorpe Lane, past the scene of the murder? Naturally, since that is the shortest way and the best road. Have you not a vague fear of seeing Walter Blake's ghost as you pass the spot tonight? I have passed the spot any time for the last twenty years and have seen no ghost. But this evening, when your mind is full of the poor man, might not imagination conjure up his image? I leave the enjoyment of a vivid imagination to your more impressionable sex, Mrs. Aspinol. Mine is not lively enough to shape poor Blake's ghost out of the mists of evening. Shadows tonight have struck more terror to the soul of Richard than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers, quoted Mrs. Aspinol laughingly. Are you made of sterner stuff than crook-back dick? But you have not his guilty conscience, and that makes all the difference. When are you going to bring Delcy to dine with me? Whenever you like to ask us. But that is always. You have a standing invitation to drive over and dine at the towers in a friendly, impromptu way, and you never come. You are asked to formal dinners, and you have always some excuse for refusing. You are a positive hermit. I own to a love of my own fireside, but I like pleasant society also. May I bring Delcy to-morrow, if you are going to be at home? Oh, I shall be charmed. The usual quarter to eight, I suppose. Oh, yes, good night. I am so glad. They shook hands, and the broom drove off, leaving Sir Everard standing in front of the Assize court, the observed of the little crowd, waiting to see the notabilities come out. He walked briskly off to the peacock to get his horse, and found Morton Blake in the stable-yard on the same errand. Well, Morton, are you satisfied now? He asked. Yes, I suppose I am satisfied. And yet I have a curious feeling of incompleteness in the whole thing, as if there was something yet wanting, as if we had reached only a preliminary stage in the discovery of the truth. Can there be anything behind, do you think, Sir Everard? Had this man an accomplice? Was he the tool of a greater villain? My dear Morton, the whole story seems obvious and commonplace to the last degree, a starving wretch by the wayside, brutalised by ignorance and want, ready to commit any crime in order to prolong his worthless life. My mind has been troubled by the counsel's suggestions of a deeper motive, a mystery underlying the apparently commonplace story. My dear fellow, the counsel was paid to talk. He had to set up some kind of defence to suggest a doubt when there was no room for doubt. Having no case, and being a man of small experience, he indulged his oratorical powers at the expense of common sense. Shall we ride home together? If you please. Their horses had been brought out by this time. They mounted and rode under the old archway, beneath which so many a stagecoach had rattled and rumbled in the days before railways. They rode slowly through the narrow town, to the wide high road, bordered on each side by grassy strips of wasteland, from which Osthor Plain diverged. They rode at a sharp trot after they left the town, and only pulled up their horses as they approached Blatchmarden Cops near the scene of the murder. My dear Morton, it grieves me to see you so depressed," said Sir Averard as they walked gently past the little wood. All has been done that can be done. Justice is satisfied. Why should the loss and sorrow of twenty years ago, the grief of your childhood, be suffered to cloud your manhood with gloom? It is hardly fair to my poor little Dulcy that you should abandon your mind to one all-absorbing idea. She has had very little happiness from your society since her last sad birthday. Oh, yes, I know I'm wrong," answered the younger man. I have brooded too much upon the past. But now, as you say, justice will be done. I ought to be satisfied. I fancy that no son, whose father, a loving and beloved father, died as mine died, could ever completely put aside his grief for that boss. But I will not yield in an unmanly way to that morbid feeling. My father is avenged. That ought to be enough for me. I hope you understand that, through all the trouble and excitement of the last six weeks, my love for Dulcy has not been a jot the less real and true because I have kept myself aloof from her. I would not cloud her fair young life with my sorrow, and I could not take life lightly or pleasantly during that period of suspense. Tonight I will put all trouble out of my mind, and will make myself happy in my darling society. This was said with a manly frankness of which Sir Everett could but approve. They had passed the scene of the murder while Morton was speaking, and his companion saw the young man shrinking glands at the weedy ditch, the steep bank, and the pollard oak of it, whose bare branches stood sharply out against the grey evening sky, a perpetual sign to mark the fatal spot. What a happy evening that was for gentle Dulcy. She was near the gate waiting for her father's coming as the two men rode into the avenue, a graceful little figure in a furred jacket with the pale gold of her hair just visible under a coquettish little fur hat. Morton alighted quickly, and was by her side before she had recovered from her surprise at seeing him. I thought you were never coming here any more, she said, it being something less than a week since his last visit. I did not care to come off and while I had trouble on my mind, Dulcy, but now it's all over. I am your slave again. Is the poor man going to be hanged? asked Dulcy. Yes. Oh, I am—she was going to say sorry, but checked herself, warned by Morton's angry glance, and slipped her hand lightly under his arm as they walked side by side to the house. I am glad your suspense and trouble are over, she concluded. We have only half an hour to spend with you, Dulcy, said Sir Everett, I have to dress for the Sheriff's dinner, and I dare say Morton is anxious to get home and tell his people the result of the trial. I am never anxious to leave Dulcy, answered Morton, but I have no doubt my women kind are impatient for tidings. I shall just have time to give you some tea, said Dulcy. Oh, poor things, how tired and worn out you must be! Did you get any luncheon? Oh, there was an interval for luncheon, but neither Morton nor I ate any. Then you shall have some sandwiches. Our cook has a particular talent for sandwiches. She's almost as good as a German. I suppose you know that the Germans have a hundred and fifty different kinds of sandwiches, Morton. I blushed to say that I was unaware of their profound art in that line. Oh, there are a great people, the greatest Egyptologist, fiddle-players, and cooks in the world. Provided always that you like German cookery, said Morton. Dulcy was in high spirits, delighted at getting her lover back again, forgetting for once in her life to be sorry for a woe that came within her ken. She gave Scroop her orders about the tea. It was to be something sumptuous in the way of afternoon teas. There were to be sandwiches and cakes and some of those gigantic Australian grapes, which were just now in their highest beauty. There was a noble fire of logs in Dulcy's room, a blaze that lit up the pots and pans and dark oak walls and Japanese cabinets and high art piano. The double octagon table was drawn near the half. The tea tray was there already, an old silver circular tray on a fringed crimson and white damas cloth. Everything that wasn't Japanese was early English, or at least as early as Queen Anne's time. Never did a room look prettier or more comfortable on a cold winter's evening. Morton went to his favourite chair in the corner screened by the projecting chimney piece and seated himself with an air of unqualified enjoyment. He forgot everything except that he was with Dulcy. Sir Everard sank into his deep armchair without a word. He left the young people to be happy after their departure, but with Dulcy her father was always foremost. How tired you look, dearest, she said, leaning over him and taking his hand. And how feverish your hand is! Such a long day, and the ride home in the cold have been too much for you. Yes, dear, I am rather tired. The atmosphere of the court was horrible, enough to cloud any man's brain. No wonder there is a good deal of nonsense talked in law courts occasionally. The council are half asphyxiated. Don't look so anxious, Dulcy. I'm only tired. There's nothing else amiss with me. You'd better not go to dinner, father. My love, the dinner will do me good. I want the reaction of lively society after the gloom of today. Do you mean that the judge in the council will be lively, papa, the judge after having condemned a man to be hanged? Do you think they ought to be in mourning for him, Dulcy, or that the judge should wear the black cap at dinner? No, papa, but I cannot imagine any judge with proper feeling going into society and making merry after having doomed a man to death. Poor Dulcy, the judges are made of harder stuff than little girls like you. They go into society and eat and drink and talk wisely or wittily as the case may be. And I believe the hanging judges are generally the greatest bon vivant. Dulcy sighed and began to pour out the tea. Morton, who in her smiles had forgotten all his troubles, did ample justice to the German sandwiches and hot-house grapes and drank numerous cups of tea or perhaps as the pretty Japanese cups were very small and shallow, it may be said that he drank one dish of tea in several instalments. Sir Everard would eat nothing. He lay back in his chair, silent, prostrate after the excitement of the day. End of chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Just As I Am This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Just As I Am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon Chapter 10 The Superior Woman The Honourable Mrs. Aspinall was a lady who had made the journey of life with a fixed determination of always taking the lead of her fellow travellers. She had occupied the box seat on the coach, as it were, and had required an extra amount of attention from coachmen and guard. She had such a boundless faith in her own superiority that she had finally succeeded in making other people believe it, too. This man will do great things, said Mirabeau of Robespierre, because he believes in himself. Mrs. Aspinall's high estimation of her own merits had enabled her to reach the top of that particular tree on which she desired to perch, and once having gained her place, she knew how to keep it. She was not the wealthiest or the most aristocratic woman in the county. She was neither the handsomest nor the cleverest. But by adopting a leading tone, by talking of herself always as if she were first and foremost, by the calm arrogance with which she put down other people and asserted her own opinions, she had contrived to achieve social leadership. She had invested herself with the regal mantle and put on the crown, but nobody had the courage or perhaps the inclination to pluck them off. Of the lady's hereditary claim to distinction, society knew very little. The Honourable Thomas Aspinall, as a younger son of Lord Riverdale, was a sprig of nobility. But his wife, Sir Bernard Burke, described briefly as calphernia, younger daughter of Patrick O' Ryan Esquire, Holly Hill, County Cork. This might mean anything or nothing, said society, slavishly submitting to pretensions for which it could discover no adequate basis. The Honourable Thomas had gone to his place in the family vault fifteen years ago, and Mrs Aspinall had enjoyed all the privileges of unfettered widowhood ever since. She had no children to occupy her time and make her acquainted with care, to sponge upon her limited income and remind people of her age by their ridiculously rapid growth. She was free to live her own life, and her life was essentially selfish. She had not been unflattered by matrimonial offers during her long widowhood, but among her various suitors there had been no one able to give her a better position than she enjoyed as a widow, and the deaf adder was never more indifferent to the voice of the charmer than was Mrs Aspinall to the pleading of a lover who had no substantial advantages to sustain his suit. Her income was not large, but it just sufficed with careful management for the lady's personal wants and enabled her to head all those subscription lists which have a local importance and are seen by everybody. She had the use for her life of Aspinall Towers, a roomy old house in a park of considerable extent, but sparsely timbered. The late Lord Riverdale having considerably denuded his various seats and manners of such useless excrescences as oaks, elms and beaches. The house was big and draughty and cold. It had been last furnished early in the reign of George III, and the chairs and tables were all of that angular and spindle-legged character which is now accepted as your only beauty in Cabinet Maker's work. Mrs Aspinall declared that everything had been made by the renowned Chippendale, and she rejoiced inwardly at a revolution in taste which enabled her to be in the height of the fashion without putting her hand in her pocket to buy anything new. Even the faded colouring of her curtains and chair covers, a kind of pallid mouldiness which pervaded everything in the house, was artistic, and Mrs Aspinall had the satisfaction of saving money while she sneered at the glowing crimson and peacock greens to be found in the mansions of the newly rich. On the morning after the trial, Mrs Aspinall began to busy herself at an early hour with her preparations for that friendly little dinner which the Everard Courtney had promised to eat with her. Although essentially selfish and self-indulgent, she was not lazy. No idle person could have acquired the position she had taken upon herself or maintained it upon her narrow means. She liked work. She had a tremendous stock of energy which had to be got rid of somehow. She found as much enjoyment in an active life, a perpetual moving to and fro, managing, calling, letter-writing, as women of lymphatic temper find in lolling in a soft nest beside the fire, reading a novel. Today she had much to do in a few hours. She wanted this dinner of tonight to be as pleasant as it was possible for a dinner to be. She had been trying her hardest, and she was a woman of exceptional persistency, to get Sir Everard and his daughter to the towers in a friendly, familiar way, and here to four she had failed. Sir Everard had dined six years ago at one of her grand dinners. Delcey had gone to one of her lawn-parties under Miss Blake's wing, and chiefly to please Morton. But here it had ended. In vain had Mrs Aspinall plied the baronet and his daughter with every variety of invitation. Sir Everard pleaded that he rarely went anywhere, and had lost all relish for society. Delcey urged in excuse for frequent refusals that she did not care to go out without her father. But now, in a yielding moment, Sir Everard had promised to come, and Calfernia determined that having once given way he should give way again, until he became as wax in her hands. A man like that would be worth listening to, the widow told herself, remembering those ineligible suitors whom she had dismissed so coolly. I must have someone to meet them, Parker. She said to a gentile drudge who combined the offices of still-room maid, needle-woman, and ladies-maid under the lady-like appellation of companion. Just fourteen years ago this long-suffering Parker, then hovering between girlhood and womanhood, and with a fresh-coloured pleasing appearance, had advertised her willingness to be generally useful in the character of companion to a lady of position, and her further willingness to accept a small salary, her chief object being to secure a comfortable home. Miss Parker was the eldest daughter of a struggling parson, and it had of late been made clear to her that her presence in the family circle was regarded rather as a burden than as a blessing. Mrs. Aspinall answered the advertisement and invited the young lady, whose paternal home was only ten miles on the other side of Blackford, to come to the towers for a preliminary interview. There was not a word about railway expenses, but Miss Parker was deeply moved by the address of Aspinall Towers and the gorgeous blending of gold and colour in the lady's monogram. Louise's greatest weakness was a worship of rank and style, a craving for the society of fashionable people, and the name of Mrs. Aspinall was delightfully familiar to her in the local newspapers as one of the leaders of county fashion. She paid for her second-class return ticket willingly, although the purse from which the money came was but scantily furnished, and she made her difficult journey across country to Highclear when supply, at the fearful expenditure of half a guinea, carried her to Aspinall Towers. It was a bleak, blowy October day, and though Louise was awed by the grim grey towers with their narrow windows and meticulated parapets flanking a long grey house and by the extent of the park through which she approached this stony mansion, she could but feel that the place altogether looked shivery and that for everyday comfort the cosy little village vicarage with its holly-hedged garden and single paddock was a better place to live in. But Louise a-panted for style, and here was a style far beyond anything to which her aspiring mind had soared. Those towers, this park, thrilled her. It is positively ducal, she exclaimed to herself and raptured at the thought that it might be her lot to inhabit that medieval mansion. A crimson footman handed her over to a butler in irreproachable black, and by that functionry she was conducted to Mrs. Aspinall's morning room. A spacious apartment with pale, salmon-coloured walls and a white and salmon cornice of elaborate design, a room which would have looked warmer and more comfortable with a little more furniture in it, the intensely chippendale chairs and tables had a pinched and shrunken appearance on this chilly morning. Mrs. Aspinall received a stranger with a kind of offhand friendliness which struck Louise as the essence of good-breeding. Come and sit by the fire, she said, and put your feet on the fender. You look blue with cold. Louise had been taught to consider it a social crime to put her foot on a fender. The home-fenders had been sacred. But at Mrs. Aspinall's request she timidly rested the soul of her stout country-made boot on the edge of the brass fender. While that lady seated opposite, perched her gold-rimmed binoculars on the bridge of her nose and scrutinised Miss Porca from head to foot. Now, my dear, what can you do? asked Mrs. Aspinall in a business-like tone when she had finished her survey. Are you accomplished, play, sing, speak French, Italian, German, paint, flowers, and landscapes? Oh dear no, madam! exclaimed Louise, reddening and looking frightened. If I were able to do all that, I should have gone out as a finishing governess and should have hoped to earn a hundred guineas a year. I see. You have no accomplishments, and because you can do nothing, you think yourself the proper person to go out as a companion to a lady of position. Louise's blood seemed to freeze in her veins. Had she paid seven and eleven pence for her railway ticket, she waited ever so long at those shelterless cross-country junctions and finally expended ten shillings on a flyman who made it a favour to convey her to her destination in order to be lectured by the honourable Mrs. Aspinall and sent home with a sense of her own incapacity. I hope, if she faltered, that although I am not universally accomplished, I have the power to make myself useful and agreeable in a lady's household. Mrs. and I were educated at home, and my father, a country vicar, could not afford as the advantage of governess or masters. We learnt all that my mother could teach us. It is only lately that I thought of taking a situation, but I certainly fancied myself qualified for the post I seek. I can play a little and sing a little and know a little French. I'm a good hand at all kinds of plain and fancy needlework. Can you turn a gown and make a bonnet? asked Mrs. Aspinall. I always make and remake my own gowns and sometimes make my own bonnets. I'm glad of that. I might now and then want you to be useful in that way. I have my own maid, of course, but as she has to assist in the housework I may want a little extra help now and then. I couldn't wear anything made by a country dressmaker and when I don't care to order a gown straight from worth I like to get one thrown together at home. I should be always delighted to be useful, replied Miss Porca, not foreseeing to what she was pledging herself. So you say in your advertisement, but it's just as well to have these matters clearly understood. Do you like reading aloud? I am used to it. Oh, that's better, as I shan't be afraid of tiring you when I want the times and posts read to me of an evening. Your fond of flowers, I suppose? Passionately. Oh, then it will be an amusement to keep my jardinaires and window-boxes in order and to potter about with your garden-scissors and the watering-can in the conservatories. This sounded home-like and pleasant, almost like being treated as a daughter of the house. That kind of work would delight me, said Miss Porca. I thought so, and then I should want you to give your attention to table decoration, the arrangement of a dessert, for instance. Butlers are so narrow-minded and clumsy, you and I could hit upon new ideas and infuse a little poetry into the business. I should be charmed to assist. With regard to your meals, pursued Mrs. Aspinall, now contemplating the vicar's daughter dreamily as she lay back in her chair. I think it would be as well for you to dine when I take my luncheon and take your tea and supper in a snug little sitting-room of your own, which I should contrive to spare you, as I know you would appreciate the privilege of a private sitting-room. This would leave the evening free to both of us. If I wanted you to come and read or play to me or chat with me, you could come. If I didn't, you could amuse yourself in your own way. Write letters or novels. Most young ladies write novels, and it must be very amusing for them, and not too expensive. Now the duty is taken off paper, so long as they don't publish them. All this was said with an agreeable familiarity that enchanted Miss Porca. And now there's the question of salary. If I were inclined to make bargains, I should say that a young lady who is absolutely inexperienced ought not to expect any salary for the first two or three years of her engagement. But as I like to be good-natured to young people, I'll waive the question of inexperience and you shall start with a small salary. Now, what is your idea of a small salary? I have thought that thirty pounds a year, faulted Louisa. Thirty pounds? screamed Mrs. Aspinon. My poor child, are you aware that in great Britain and Ireland alone there are ever so many millions surplus women? Do you know that feminine labour is a drug in the market? That if I were to advertise for a companion, I should be inundated with applications from young ladies wanting to come to me for nothing. Pray, my dear, be reasonable. Twenty pounds a year, with the moderate use of my laundry, no frilled petticoats or white muslin gowns, is the very utmost I could afford to give you. Louisa hesitated and looked dubiously round at the Chippendale furniture, the hot-house flowers in old Satsuma jars, the black and gold Japanese screen, the salmon-coloured walls. It was all very elegant, refined, aristocratic, but twenty pounds a year was a poor pittance, and that restriction about frilled petticoats and muslin gowns was galling. Then she comforted herself with the thought that she had only one frilled petticoat in her wardrobe, and then she reflected how nice it would be to live with such a friendly, easy-tempered person as Mrs. Aspinore, and to see those meticulated battlements every time she looked out of the window and to walk in that extensive park. She felt that it would be something to pass all at once into an aristocratic atmosphere to be waited upon by a footman in crimson plush instead of the red-elbowed housemaid at home. Well, my dear, said Mrs. Aspinore, breaking sharply on the girl's reverie, will it do for you? Oh, yes, if you please, madam. I think if you feel that I can please you, I should like to come. Of course you can please me. That is a matter within your own volition. If you are accommodating and industrious, a very early riser by the by that is indispensable and sweet-tempered and quiet in all your ways, I am sure we shall get on. You may come to me early next week. I know all about your people, so there need be no worry about references. And now you shall have some tea and bread and butter before you go back to the station. So Louisa sat with her feet on the fender and was regaled with strong tea and delicious homemade bread and butter and unconsciously sold herself into bondage. She had now been with Mrs. Aspinore fourteen years and yet she was not altogether unhappy. Mrs. Aspinore, though freely spoken of in the servants' hall as a tartar, had never been positively unkind to Louisa Porca. There was no motive for unkindness where the slave was so willing or so submissive. Just as I am by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. CHAPTER XI. A FRIENDLY DINNER We must have someone to meet them, repeated Mrs. Aspinore. Morton Blake must come, of course, as he is engaged to Miss Courtney. Write him a little note, Porca, like a good soul, and say that he is to be here at a quarter to eight to meet his sweetheart, while I write to Lady Frances Grange. You'd better ring the bell first or run down to the hall, that would be quicker, and tell John to order the groom to get ready to carry some letters immediately. Miss Porca ran to execute this errand. She was always running up and down stairs to save the servant's time or trouble, and was as lean and active as a middle-aged mercury. Dearest fan, wrote Mrs. Aspinore, who had long ago assumed an affectionate authority over Lord Blatch-Martin's motherless daughter, as if she had been a godmother, or as if the girl had been committed to her care by a dying mother. I want you and your brother to come and make yourselves eminently agreeable this evening. Sir Everett Courtney and his daughter, and I hope his daughter's lover, are to dine here on Famille. Oh, come, dear, and look your brightest and prettiest, and sing your delicious French ballads, and be the life of the evening. I know there is a meet-on today, and I dare say you and Lord Bevel will be over half the county between this and dusk, but I will take no excuse for your non-appearance here at a quarter to eight. The groom went off with the letters on one of Mrs. Aspinore's grey cobs, and the lady and her companion began their preparations for the evening. Mrs. Aspinore was an early bird, and had dispatched her invitations before nine o'clock, knowing that Lady Frances and her brother would leave Blachmarden before ten. Now, poor Co-My dear, you must exercise all your taste and make my rooms lovely, said the lady. The dinner table must be artistic and novel, let there be a lowish mass of scarlet geraniums and white chrysanthemums in the middle, and a feathery fringe of ferns for a border. Then we will use the old Charles II engraved glass, which Mr. Aspinore's mother left to me. Poor dear soul, it wasn't much, but it was kindly meant. The old Leeds dessert set will do. It has a homely look, yet is exquisitely artistic. Run down and set about your preparations, my dear, and send me up jolfish. Jolfish was cook and housekeeper, so-called for dignity, since Mrs. Aspinore was far too keen a manager to let her housekeeping be done by any one but herself. Jolfish was obese and slow, but a good cook and passing honest. She had never wronged her mistress by so much as a basin of dripping, and it was well for jolfish that she had not. Now my dear jolfish, said Mrs. Aspinore ever so sweetly, for the cook had her little tempers and did not like dinner parties that came upon her unawares or unbeknownst, as she called it. I want you to send me up the prettiest little dinner you ever served in your life. When might it be, mum, next week? Of no jolfish this evening. Hello, mum, what can I do for this evening? You ain't got no company this evening, have you, mum? I've got my dinner all laid out in my mind, a filleted soul, and a dish of cutlets with champignons, and one of them Grouse Lord Blatch-Martin sent you. Oh, that would have done charmingly, jolfish, if I had been alone. But I want a nice little dinner for six. And then Mrs. Aspinore, who was a genius at the composition of a Bill of Fair, lightly sketched the ground-plan of a little dinner which would have satisfied the ideas of a clubhouse chef or a professional diner out. Jolfish was as objective as she dared be, prophesied that there wouldn't be such a thing as turbot to be heard of at Highclair, that the price of fowls would be ruinous, or that the birds would be old and tough, that it was a fortnight too early for a turkey-pout and ridiculous to expect oysters. Her mistress overruled every objection and dismissed Jolfish with a smile. I shall want a deal of wine for all them gravies and the soup," said Mrs. Jolfish, lingering on the threshold. Browse shall give you a bottle of sherry and a tumbler of port, and be sure your clear soup tastes of something more than wine and water. The cook hoped she had made clear soup before in her life, but as she expressed that aspiration in a murmur, Mrs. Aspenall affected not to hear it. Browse appeared an hour later, bearing two notes on a parcel-guilt salver, one from Morton Blake, delighted, et cetera, the other from Lady Frances. Oh yes, you most intifatigable woman will come since you make a point of it, but don't be angry if we both begin to look sleepy before the evening is half over, for we expect a big day with the south daleshers. Yours always, F.G. Mrs. Aspenall spent her morning cosily by the fire in her salmon-coloured sitting-room, writing letters, regulating her accounts, and reading the last fashionable autobiography. She was a woman who diligently improved her mind with new books. She read memoirs, travels, reviews, political essays on occasion, and even a little science. Her opinions and ideas were as new and fashionable as her gowns and bonnets, and she passed for a woman of some culture. But if you had asked her about de Quincey or lamb, Labrouillère, Pascal Montaigne, she would have rewarded you with a blank stare. She thought Byron and a femoral versifier who had achieved a brief notoriety by the audacity of his opinions and the looseness of his morals. Miss Porca appeared at luncheon after a morning's elegant drudgery. She had decorated drawing-room, ante-room, and dinner-table with every available flower, and had vanquished the surly old head-gardener in more than one battle. She had washed the chars the second glass and the lead's dessert-dishes, both too sacred to be trusted to mean at hands. She had given out table linen and preserved fruits and Parisian sweet-meats. She had brought forth cruel work-cushions and ante-michesses, which were too fresh and elegant for daily wear. And now she sat down to the luncheon, which was always her dinner, looking worn and tired, and inwardly wishing she were in the humblest lodging of her own, rather than amidst the splendours of Aspenall Towers. I should ask you to dine with us this evening, my dear," said Mrs. Aspenall, amiably. Only we shall be six, and that is such a nice number for the oval table in the dining-room. If the table were only round, the odd number would make no difference. Dear Mrs. Aspenall, it doesn't matter. Louisa answered with a feeble smile, although she would have liked to dine with Lady Frances Grange, for that young lady had been cordial and pleasant to her on the rare occasions when they had met. But she was too familiar with what she called Mrs. Aspenall's ways, not to know that this talk about the table was only an excuse. If there had been five, she would not have been asked to be the sixth. If there had been nine, she would not have been wanted to be the tenth. Her only chance of a place at the banquet was when a party of fifteen or sixteen had unluckily dwindled to thirteen. And then Mrs. Aspenall insisted on having porker, lest any superstitious guest should feel uncomfortable. Oh, you must come and take your tea with us, of course, said her patroness. I shall be very pleased. Lady Frances is so pretty. Pretty? An olive-skinned thing and thin as a whipping-post. Delcibella Courtney is pretty, if you like. That is real beauty. Lady Frances has such a distinguished air. Naturally, blue blood will show itself somehow, answered Mrs. Aspenall, in a tone which implied that her blood was of the deepest indigo. She spent the afternoon in making a round of visits. Royalty of her kind required to be maintained by frequent progresses among her people. She never suffered herself to be forgotten. She was indefatigable in making calls, and she had a bimonthly afternoon, the first and third Saturday in the month, to which she insisted upon people coming. There were only tea and cakes and gossip and occasionally a little feeble music, but Mrs. Aspenall's pale ambassettis were generally crowded. At half past seven, Mrs. Aspenall was in her drawing-room, looking her handsomest. She was a fine-looking woman of what is generally considered the aristocratic type, nose, arched and knobby, nostrils large, eyes a cold gray, eyebrows a work of art, hair the Titian red, fluffy in texture, covering her high, narrow forehead with stray locks and tendrils, which effectually veiled the wrinkles of seven and forty, teeth good and real, lips thin and a trifle acid in expression, but of a vivid rose which would have been exceptional in a girl of seventeen and was startling in a waning beauty. Tonight Mrs. Aspenall wore a myrtle green velvet gown, with no adornment saved drooping ruffles of old meshlin lace and an antique Venetian chattelain of dull gold. She walked slowly up and down the long drawing-room, musing upon her expected guests, or rather upon one of them, for it was of one only whom she thought. Why should he not marry? She asked herself, his daughter will be married before long, and then he will find that house of his horribly dull. He will either marry or go after the continent and wander half over Europe as he did after his wife's death. It would be far more sensible to marry, if he made a wise choice, and I think he is too clever a man to choose some frivolous girl who would think she did him a favour by accepting him and would compensate herself by making his life miserable. The drawing-room at Aspenall Manor was spacious and lofty, but it had none of that cheery homeliness which made the Tangli Manor drawing-room so pleasant. It was a pallid, cold-looking apartment, the walls white and gold, with large oval mirrors at intervals, and old crystal girandoles. The draperies and chair and sofa coverings were of amber satin, which time had robbed of its original brightness and warmth of tone. The Orbuson carpet was of faded drab blue and cream and gold, all blending into one pale subdued tint. The long straight windows with their long straight curtains accentuated the loftiness of the room. There were broad amber settees against the walls, spindle-legged chairs of the genuine Louis Sear's period in gold and amber, two or three spindle-legged tables, round and oval, decorated with masks, goats' heads and festoons, a pair of Bueux jardinaires filled with ferns and flowers, and all the rest of the room was empty space. It was a room especially adapted for stately receptions and large assemblies, and it was well for Mrs Aspenall that she had a snug and cosy retreat from all this barren grandeur in the small ante-room through which her saloon was approached. Here, within walls whose tawny leather covering gave a look of warmth, there were low modern chairs of the puff species, gypsy tables, books, newspapers and all the comforts of everyday life. Sir Everard Courtney, Miss Courtney and Miss DeBlake announced Browse the butler. Mrs Aspenall received Sir Everard and his daughter with enthusiasm. It was so good, so kind, so nice of Dulcy and her father to come in this truly friendly way. To Morton she gave two fingers and a smiling nod. He was nothing to her. She had no daughters to marry and a rich young parvenu more or less in the world could make no difference to her. But she had her views about Sir Everard, had cherished those views for a long time and had striven in vain for the opportunity of carrying them to a successful issue. Now that Dulcy was going to be married it seemed to her that the opportunity had come. She was glad when after a little trivial talk about the weather, Dulcy and Morton strayed through the curtained archway into the ante-room with that curious knack of getting away from other people peculiar to engaged lovers. Mrs Aspenall and Sir Everard were in front of the fireplace, she standing in her favourite attitude with her foot on the low brass fender and the edge of her velvet gown drawn up a little to show the rich lace upon her petticoat. She had a long, narrow foot and a high instep, unmistakable mark of that blue blood on which she prided herself. When is it to be, Sir Everard? She asked, looking down at her green satin slipper. When is what to be? Dulcy's marriage. Sir Everard gave a little start as if it were a most unexpected question. Her marriage? Oh, not for a long time, I hope. She and Morton are engaged, but there's been no talk of fixing the time for their wedding. She is so young. Twenty? said Mrs Aspenall with an insinuating ear. I was married at seventeen. She emphasised this with a sigh as if that early marriage had not been altogether happy, as if there were still an empty chamber in her heart waiting for an eligible tenant. A great deal too soon, said Sir Everard with a provokingly matter of fact tone. It was my father's doing. I had no voice in the matter. I hope Dulcy will be in no hurry, said Sir Everard, not showing the faintest retrospective interest in Mrs Aspenall's marriage. I shall be wretched without her. Oh, you will miss her very much, no doubt, but it is a loss you must have anticipated. And altogether charming as she is, at her age Dulcy can be no companion for you. Not a companion for me? cried Sir Everard. She is my second self, my source of perpetual delight. She understands my every thought and feeling, she appreciates my favourite books as thoroughly as the subtlest of professional critics could do. She cheers me when I'm dull, she soothes me when I'm weary. Where should I find such another companion? No, Mrs Aspenall, I am too old to make new friendships. When Dulcy leaves me my life will be desolate. Mrs Aspenall's thin lips tightened a little and her calculating grey eyes assumed a troubled look, but only for a few moments, and then she was able to smile her sweetest smile at the affectionate father. Nothing in nature can be more beautiful than such an attachment, she said. But for your own sake, Sir Everard, I trust that new friendships, new ties, there can be none, new ties, impossible. I have but a remnant of life to live, and that must be spent with no better companions than my books. A remnant of life? You are so young! Fifty next January, Mrs Aspenall, and I feel as if I had lived a century, and what I did not come here to be gloomy, Dulcy and I will not be entirely parted even when she is Mrs Blake. I shall see her often, in years to come her children will console me for the loss of their mother. I must submit to the common fate. Lord Bevel, Lady Frances Grange, announced Browse. Their entrance made an agreeable diversion. Lady Frances, called by her intimates Lady Fanny and even Fan, was one of the liveliest young women in the county, a magnificent horsewoman, a charming singer, and with about as much education outside those two accomplishments as the average ballet girl. She, like Dulcy, was motherless and had been allowed to have her own way ever since she could remember, and had governed her good old governess and reigned supreme in a slip-shod household. But she had not made such good use of her liberty as Dulcy had done. She was not given to books save of the lightest and most amusing order. She had just learnt enough English to write a decent letter and enough French to sing a ballad in that language and to understand and pronounce those phrases which crop up in British conversation. Beyond this her governess had been a failure. But despite these shortcomings Frances Grange was so winning and so sweet that no one would have wished her other than she was. She was just pretty enough to be intensely fascinating. She had small, delicately cut features, a brunette complexion, dark brown hair, worn short and curly like a boy's so that there were no plaques or tails to tumble over her shoulders or be blown across her eyes in a hunting field. She had a slim and graceful figure and though tall among women was a featherweight on a powerful hunter. She dressed simply and well without extravagance, talked as much slang as an Oxford undergraduate and set the strict middle-aged section of society at defiance. Her chief friend was her brother who resembled her mentally and morally, but not physically, since he was a tawny, whiskered young athlete of the true Saxon type, broad-nosed, blue-eyed and ruddy cheeked. He adored Fanny and Fanny believed in him and they were all together a model brother and sister. The evening was as pleasant as Mrs. Aspenall could have desired. Yet things did not take the exact turn she had intended. Lady Francis contrived to absorb a good deal of Sir Everard's attention with her lively sallies and rattling description of the day's sport. Dulcy and Morton were happy in their quiet way, sitting together in corners, but were intruded upon more than they cared about by Lord Bevel, who insisted upon talking to Dulcy and was inclined to ignore Mr. Blake's peculiar privileges as an accepted suitor. Mrs. Aspenall felt when all was over that her evening had been a success, but she made up her mind never again to invite Lady Francis to meet Sir Everard Courtney.