Kitabı oku: «Tinman», sayfa 5

CHAPTER V
Alas! for Poor Prince Charlie!

In a great crisis of one's life perhaps the things that strike one most are those most commonplace. I remember on that summer evening, when I came out into the streets, that I was able to think first of the extreme beauty of the night, and of how quaint and wonderful the old buildings looked in the softened light of the dying day. I saw a pair of lovers strolling on before me, looking into each other's eyes; I remember thinking then, with a little strange feeling of pride, that I had killed a man that Love and Truth might live. I had come out into Holborn, and was making my way towards my rooms, when my guardian, who had hovered a little behind me, and had followed me wonderingly, touched me on the arm. I had forgotten all about him until that moment.

"Better come home with me," he whispered; "they'll look for you at your place first."

"It won't make much difference," I said; "they'll have to find me some time." Nevertheless I went home with him, walking the short distance to his place in Bloomsbury.

He watched me as we went along, and I saw that he watched me with an increasing sense of wonder. I was something detached – apart from all the world – something he had not looked upon before. He was afraid of me, and yet attracted to me in a fearful way; he spoke to me, when he spoke at all, with a strange deference. I wondered about it, as I might have wondered about anything that was happening to some other person, until at last it struck me, and that with no sense of fear, that he looked upon me as one already dead. And so we came to the house in which he lived, and went up in silence to his rooms.

He turned up the light in that room in which we had played cards, and motioned to a chair; but I did not sit down. Now that I could see his face distinctly, I read again in it that look of fierce and eager excitement that I had seen before; I understood, too, that I was nothing to him, and only what I had done made me important in his eyes. I had something to say to him, and I said it quickly.

"He told me that he had not yet had the money to redeem my I.O.U.'s," I said. "I suppose the cheque was delayed?"

"It wasn't sent," he said in reply. "I never meant to send it."

I turned on him fiercely, and spluttered out his own words: "Never meant to send it? What do you mean?"

"You don't want to murder me," he muttered, putting the table between us, and grinning weakly. "I tell you I never meant to send it – I never had the money to pay it."

I sat down and looked at him; the horror of the other business was falling away from me in the contemplation of this treachery. "I want you to explain," I said patiently.

"You young fool!" he exclaimed with sudden violence, as he saw how tame and quiet I was, "don't you understand that I meant this to happen from the first? Don't you understand what every one is going to say when they find him, and when they find what is in his pockets? You owed him money; you had been gambling with him, and had nothing to pay him with. You quarrelled with him at Hammerstone Market; you were heard to threaten to kill him. You follow him to his rooms; he demands the money; there is a quarrel, and the stronger and the younger man wins. Oh, you fool!"

"Why have you done it?" I asked him, still very quietly.

He paced about the room for a minute or two, and then came back to me. I knew that there was time enough, and so I waited; I did not see daylight yet.

"I have been in Hockley's clutches for years," said Jervis Fanshawe, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone; "he has bled me steadily for a long time past. I began gambling with him, and I lost; tried to retrieve my losses, and lost more. Every penny I ever had has gone to him – and other money besides."

"What other money? Mine?"

He nodded slowly. "Every bit of it, and more besides that. I'm deeply involved with the firm; that was my chief reason for trying to get hold of that girl, for with her I could have stopped all tongues wagging, and could have paid Hockley off. It was when I saw you, hot-headed and hot-blooded, and only too eager to quarrel with the man, that the idea came into my mind that I might use you. That – and the story I heard."

I remembered in a flash the story the doctor had told at that dinner party at the house of old Patton; of the man who worked on the jealous feelings of another that he might kill a third man. But my mind moved slowly, and even yet I did not even quite see what this man had done.

"I can tell you this now, because you're a dead man to all intents and purposes," said Jervis Fanshawe, leaning across the table and looking hard at me. "I always hated you – hated you, I think, for your youth and your strength, and that fair boyish face of yours that gave you a chance with women I never had. You've served my purpose, and in a way I never expected."

"Then, when they bring me to justice – when they try me for what I have done," I said slowly and patiently, "that is the story you will tell them?"

"Undoubtedly," he replied. "And you cannot contradict it."

"I would not contradict it if I could prove the truth to every one," I assured him earnestly. "And I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

He stared at me in amazement. "Are you mad?" he gasped.

I shook my head, and smiled. "No, I'm not mad," I replied. "Only this gives me the chance I never hoped to get – the chance to keep her name out of it. I was afraid you might drag that in, tell of the quarrel between Hockley and myself, and have sharp lawyers turning and twisting that lie this way and that. Tell your tale, by all means; I shall keep silent. Now give me something to eat; I'm faint and worn out."

I do not think he had understood me before; I caught him more than once stopping, as he moved about the room, to look back at me, and to ponder over me and to shake his head. I was indifferent to everything; I only thought how wonderfully it had all come about, that Barbara's name would never be mentioned; I had not hoped to kill the lie so completely as this. I ate the food he gave me, and presently lay down on the hard horsehair sofa in his sitting-room, and was fast asleep in a minute. I only woke once during the night, and then I found him bending over me with a flaring candle held above his head; there was still that wondering awestruck look in his face.

I went out long before he was awake in the morning; I had not yet decided what I should do. That it would be done for me pretty quickly I already realized; for it was not likely, after his declaration of the previous night, that Jervis Fanshawe would long leave me at liberty. So I took what was to prove my last walk through London, for that time at least; and presently saw what I had expected to see. Flaring lines on newspaper placards told me and all the world of London what had happened, and the lines were strengthened as hour after hour went by. In face of them I had a curious satisfaction in my present liberty, a curious wonder at the power that was mine. I could have gone up to any respectable citizen jogging along his respectable way, and have told him the truth calmly; I could have shouted it in the streets, and then have run, with a hundred at my heels. I was a pariah, walking the streets of a great city with men hunting for me; I had nothing in common with respectability or decency.

I remember that I tried experiments that day; touched the very fringe of what was waiting for me, in a sense, to try how near I could go to the actual danger without grasping it. I sat in a crowded restaurant at lunch time, and heard men talk of what had happened, giving details of how the man had been struck down, and offering suggestions as to the motive. I that was already dead could listen to them with equanimity; could wonder a little what would have happened had I suddenly declared how much deeper my knowledge of the business was than theirs.

One man was quite blatant about it; he had already formed his own idea of the matter, and had summed it up. There was a woman in it, of course; everything pointed to the fact that a woman had struck the fatal blow. In the first place there was no evidence of any struggle; and mark you, gentlemen, a woman bent on such a business as that would creep upon the poor devil unawares, and strike him down before he had a chance to defend himself. It being pointed out to this clever person that a poker had been found clasped tight in the hand of the murdered man, he was ready in a moment with a smiling explanation of that. The woman had put it there, the better to make out her defence if necessary. He was quite surprised that no one had thought of that.

So I went out into the streets again, to find again what I had expected. The placards bore an additional line – "A Clue." Clearly Mr. Jervis Fanshawe had already been at work.

There was no thought in my mind of escape; I do not think that idea ever occurred to me. Once or twice, perhaps, a hot and pitiful feeling swept across me at the thought that I must pay for what I had done with my life – and I so young! But even then I thought of myself as of some one impersonal and having nothing to do with me. That was the strangest feeling of all: to tread these streets, amid these hurrying crowds, and to feel so bitterly sorry for poor Charlie Avaline, whose life was ending. But of myself I did not think.

It was growing dark as I turned into the little narrow street out of Holborn in which my rooms were situated. Against the railings of a house opposite to that in which I lived a man lounged; as I came into the street he was making a business of lighting a pipe. Twenty yards away, on the opposite side of the road, a policeman was standing; I saw that here was the end of things. As I turned into the street a wretched, forlorn old woman, with a box of matches in her hands, shambled past me, mumbling something pitifully; I stopped her, and gave her all the money I had in my pocket – all I had in the world. I left her looking blankly at the coins, and feeling about her deplorable clothes for some place in which to hide them; then I walked straight up to the house, and climbed the stairs; and knew, while I climbed, that the man who had made a pretence of lighting a pipe climbed steadily behind me.

I was so young, and life even then was so sweet, that for a minute after I had gained my room, and while yet freedom was left to me, I made shift to clasp my hands and murmur a prayer for strength. I heard the Law, in the shape of the man with the pipe, on the landing outside, and for the first time I was afraid; the passion and the fierceness of the thing had gone from me. I dropped my head upon my hands, and whispered what was in my heart —

"Let me be strong and brave; let me never speak her name. Let me die silent – oh, God! – let me die silent!"

There was a sharp knock at the door; I pulled myself together, and went to open it. The man was inside in a moment and had closed it, but not before I had had time to look past him, and to see the grim figure of the policeman standing outside. I think at first the man who had come in, and who now announced himself, was a little astonished at my youthful appearance; he asked if my name was Charles Avaline. Even as I answered him, I felt myself vaguely wondering what he was like in private life, and if he had a son, perhaps, of about my age; for he was a pleasant-looking man of about fifty.

"My name is Charles Avaline," I said steadily.

"I have a warrant for your arrest, Mr Avaline," he said, "and I charge you with the murder of Gavin Hockley last night in his rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields." Then, as I was about to speak eagerly, he interrupted me in a fashion I shall always remember, because it was so kindly – almost paternal, in fact. Yes, I felt sure he must have a boy of about my age.

"Now, my dear boy, don't say anything," he urged. "You know what it means; I shall only have to use it in evidence against you. I see you're a gentleman – I might have known that by the first look at you – and I know you're coming, like a gentleman, quietly. You can leave it to me; I'll see that everything is as comfortable and as sparing to your feelings as can be, consistent with my duty."

"I will give you no trouble," I said. Then, before he could stop me, I added quickly: "And I did kill the man."

He shook his head despondently. "I wish you hadn't said that, but I'm bound to repeat it," he said. "I always like a man to have a fair chance if I can. Now, sir, if you're ready we can start."

I looked round the studio in which I had been for so short a time; I thought of all the dreams I had dreamed there, of all that I was to have done to make a great name in the world. I felt that the man was watching too, and yet he had in his eyes something of that wondering perplexed look that I had seen in the eyes of my guardian. I walked out on to the staircase, where the policeman was still standing, and the man I had left in the room extinguished the light and followed me. He motioned to the constable to go ahead of us; when we got into the street a cab was just drawing up. I got in, and the man followed; the constable swung himself up to the box beside the driver, and we set off.

I do not think I was surprised to find my guardian hovering about in the hall of the police station; the only point that was remarkable was that he was nervous and anxious, and I was not. I think, in view of what I had to face, and of the desperate strait I was in, I looked upon him then as something so much smaller and meaner and more commonplace than myself. Not that I would have you believe that I regarded myself in any heroic light, but rather that I had done with this troublesome business of life, had fought my fight, and was going out into the shadows. And yet was so sorry, so desperately sorry for poor Charlie Avaline!

"My dear boy!" he began, as I walked into the place; but I checked him with a laugh as I thrust him aside.

"You've managed it more promptly than I should have thought possible," I said. "You'd much better go home."

I pass over all that happened before my trial. If I seem to touch upon it at all, or to endeavour to make you understand what were my thoughts at that time, it is only because of the old human instinct that every man and every woman has to justify what he or she has done. And at that time I suppose my chief thought, naturally enough, was of what the end would be for poor Charlie Avaline; of what people would say to him and about him; of how much he could bear, and whether, in the stress of the time that was coming, he could keep silent. But on that latter point I felt pretty certain, and was not afraid.

So the day came when I stepped up through the floor, as it seemed, and came out into a railed-in space, and faced my judge. I seemed to hear about me a rustling and a murmur that died down at once. I saw near to me the man who held my life in his hand, in the sense that he was so hopelessly to defend me; I caught sight of my guardian, seated near to me, with lips twitching, and with his white fingers coiling over each other ceaselessly. And then in the silence a voice asking me how I pleaded.

"Guilty!"

There was a great excitement then, with my counsel excitedly whispering to me, and people murmuring in court; it seemed that I had outraged all the legal technicalities. Why could they not be done with it at once, and take my word for what had happened? I did not want to be set up there, to be stared at and pointed at; I had done with the world, and they had but to pass sentence upon me. I was tired of the sorry game; I wanted to go down the steps again quickly, and be lost to the world.

But it seemed that there was much to be done. My plea was amended; legally, it appeared, I was not guilty after all until I had been tried. And in that mock fashion (for so it seemed to me) I was tried on that dreadful charge, and all the sorry story was gone into again.

The court was packed; I remember noticing that there were many women present. I looked at the jury; and in that curious fashion in which small things appeal to us in great crises, I noticed one man with a bald head and a mild and innocent-looking face; I thought he seemed a little sorry for me, and I wondered about him, and longed to tell him that it did not matter, and that he need not be afraid of my feelings when he came to give his verdict. I felt quite anxious about that little innocent-looking juryman; I would have been so glad to comfort him.

It seemed that they had a great many people there I had forgotten. There was the landlord of the hotel at Hammerstone Market, and a waiter and a chambermaid; they had come to give evidence to the effect that they had heard me threaten to kill this man, and that they had broken in upon our struggles. The chambermaid was a young and pretty girl, who wept as she gave her evidence, and persisted in referring to me as "the young gentleman," despite their protestations that I should be dubbed "the prisoner." Then they all seemed to fade into the background, and my guardian stood to give evidence against me.

An unwilling witness this, my lord; a man dragged here by the stern arm of a subpoena to give evidence against this young man, whose friend and guardian he has been; you must not be surprised, my lord, if he should break down! He has tried hard to shield the prisoner already; such knowledge of the crime as he possessed has only been dragged out of him with great difficulty. Bear with him gently, my lord, and gentlemen of the jury, for his position is truly a pitiful one!

Mr. Jervis Fanshawe answered the first question in so low a tone that it was difficult to hear him. He had loved this boy, it appeared, as he might have loved a son of his own; he had watched his growing up, and had provided him with everything that was necessary for his proper education and for his placing out in the world. But he had noticed from the first a tendency on the part of this misguided boy to leave the beaten safe paths, and to take his own way in the world. The modest fortune entrusted to that guardian's care for the boy had long been exhausted, and Mr. Fanshawe had only too willingly paid certain expenses out of his own pocket.

I looked at him keenly then, and he lowered his eyes; but as he shook his head despondently at the same time, it was naturally concluded that he had long since come to the belief that there was not much to be done for me.

He was asked to come to the events of that night at the inn at Hammerstone Market, and he did so with reluctance. There had been bad blood between these young men, and he had endeavoured to put things right between them. He had given a modest supper, and had hoped that they would shake hands afterwards and be friends. Unfortunately, however, they had started again that business of card-playing that had been the original cause of the trouble between us.

"I take it, Mr. Fanshawe, that you were aware that this I.O.U. – I refer to the first one – had been given by your ward to the dead man."

"I saw it written," was the answer.

"And the second one was given on the night before the murder?"

"Under similar circumstances – yes," replied Fanshawe.

It further came out, under skilful examination, that this worthy Mr. Jervis Fanshawe had actually got the prisoner away to London, and had refused to reveal the whereabouts of Gavin Hockley; had only yielded, in fact, under the belief that the two young men were to make up their differences. I watched him closely during this time, but he avoided my eyes as much as possible, and gave his evidence in short jerky sentences; I believe it was felt that he was labouring under strong emotion.

My counsel had before him a task that was hopeless enough. I would tell him nothing save that I had killed the man; I was deaf to all his pleadings. He could only do what was in his power to upset the evidence that had been given; he started on a track with my guardian that amazed and frightened me.

"You went down to Hammerstone Market, Mr. Fanshawe, with your ward, to attend a wedding?" he began. "Can you tell us if the prisoner had any interest in any way in that wedding?"

"He knew the parties, as I did," replied my guardian.

"There was no possibility of any quarrel having arisen out of any jealous motive?"

I held my breath, and wondered what the man would say. He glanced at me for a moment; I do not exaggerate when I say that he cowered beneath the look I gave him.

"I do not understand the question," he said. "The people were intimately known to me, but were mere acquaintances of the prisoner."

There came the speech of the prosecuting counsel. This young man, of good education and good prospects, had gambled recklessly with another man, and had found himself in an impossible position. He might have gone, gentlemen of the jury, with confidence to this guardian, who was his best and his dearest friend, and have appealed to him to liquidate his debt; instead of that it was evident that he had determined to try conclusions with the man who held these incriminating scraps of paper. What passed behind the closed doors of the unfortunate man's rooms it was impossible to say; they could only conjecture. It must, however, be suggested that the prisoner, terrified at the thought of the position in which he had placed himself, had gone late at night to the rooms of the man to whom he owed this considerable sum of money; they might imagine him pleading with that man, then threatening and demanding, then endeavouring to obtain by force that which he could obtain in no other way. It might be urged that these papers had been found upon the dead man, but surely that could easily be accounted for. Even the most callous could scarcely stoop to search the blood-stained thing that lay in that quiet room at night.

My counsel did the best for me that he could; he threw himself, alike with me, upon the mercy of the court. I had refused to say anything; he confessed that he was utterly in the dark as to my motive. But he could plead my youth, and the fact that Gavin Hockley was a bigger and apparently a stronger man, with a reputation that was not too clean. Was it not possible that these two hot-headed men – the prisoner a mere boy – had got into some quarrel, and had attacked each other without thought; had not a weapon been found in the hand of the dead man? This could be no question of murder; there was nothing deliberate about it at all.

I remember that the judge summed up dead against me. He disagreed with the suggestion that the act was not premeditated; there were the various attempts I had made to get the address of my victim; the determination I had shown; my threats to kill the man, if I could only stand face to face with him. The duty of the jury was clear; unless they had any reasonable doubt there was but one verdict they could return. It was all short and sharp and direct to the point; the jury went out of court, and I remember that the little innocent-faced one looked back at me pityingly as he went. I almost called out to him not to mind.

It did not take them long to consider their verdict; I was hurried back into court within a few minutes. The usual formal questions were asked; and for a moment my heart beat a little quicker as I heard the verdict given. It was the one I had already given myself.

"Guilty!"

For a moment there was a sort of mild tumult in court; people whispering and jostling about, and here and there a voice raised – either in protest, or in condemnation of me; I do not know which. Then silence; and another figure on the bench, a little behind the judge, adjusting a black square of cloth upon his wig. I remember thinking, in an absurd way, that he had not put it on quite straight.

The judge had already lifted his hand impressively, and had spoken my name, when the voice of a woman rang out clearly in the gallery above me. It was as though some tender-hearted creature there could not bear that this thing should be done.

"Oh, God! – no – no – no!"

She was silenced at once, and the solemn voice that had begun to address me went on with what it had to say. It had been, it seemed, a revolting crime – born of a man's evil passions; it must meet the penalty set out in the law. The recommendation of the jury to mercy on account of my youth should be forwarded to a proper quarter; but the duty of the judge now was clear. I listened patiently until the last words came to me across the hushed court —

"And may God have mercy on your soul!"

I stood still for a moment, and looked about me over that sea of faces, all turned, without exception, in my direction. The little juryman was dabbing at his eyes, without any attempt at concealment; my guardian was watching me, with nervous fingers plucking at his lips. Then it all faded, like a dream that was ended, and I went swiftly down out of the world.