Rough Mischance. An explanation

Front matter

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Prologue

---.-.- -J I. TWO STRINGS TO HER BOW - - - "13 II. THE HOUSE OF MRS. JONES - - - - 26 III. TELEPATHY? ------ 45 IV. THE HIDDEN DEATH - - - - "59 V. THE NEWSPAPER FIEND - - - - 76 VI. THE INQUEST - 88 VII. THE UNBIDDEN GUEST ----- lol VIII. A PERFECT TREASURE 113 IX. THE WITCHING HOUR 1 25 X. THE ARREST 1 38 XI. A SCRAP OF PAPER - - - - - 151 XII. LLAN-Y-GLAS ------- 166 XIII. THE TRIAL - ... ig^ XIV. THE MISSING WITNESS ----vi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE xv. sarah's flight - - 223 XVI. UNMASKED - - 240 XVII. ENGAGED 256 XVIII. MY AUNT'S CAT ------ 269 XIX. CONCLUSION - - -

PROLOGUE.

. The publication of the following facts is necessary to unravel the very mysterious circumstances attending the death of a member of the University of Oxford during the early part of the year 1887. For reasons which are fully set out in the narrative, the real explanation of what took place was never given in the newspapers, and now for the first time it is put forward to satisfy the public curiosity, and to set at rest the widespread feeling of alarm and uncertainty which followed as a necessary consequence on the death of my friend, Cecil Heather. The outline of the story, up to a certain point, will be within the memory of all who read the papers during the first half of the Jubilee year of her Majesty Queen Victoria ; they will remember that period of time for several things, but chiefly for the Jubilee celebrations, the extraordinarily hot weather, and the death of the gentleman whose name I have men tioned.

Even at this distance of time many are on the look-out for an elucidation of the mystery which above all made that year remarkable, although they may not now be able any longer to remember why the favourite did not win the Derby or the Boat-race. The Lipski affair was, after all, only a bubble, and was pricked by the Home Secretary's firmness, which forced a confession at the eleventh hour from the lips of the guilty man ; the Hoxton murder will soon be forgotten ; and though we may ' remember Mitchels town,J and smile at the recollection of the Cass case, not one man in a dozen can tell you what the Trafalgar Square riots were all about. Lord Iddesleigh and Lord Lyons, Richard Jefferies and Jenny Lind, died that year, the famous and the great ; but their departure hardly stamped itself upon the time, whereas the very name of the Banbury Road murder, as it was called, still reminds us that there was something uncanny about the early part of 1887 — something that separates it at once in the mind from its immediate neighbours.

We regard it, therefore, as a public duty to make the truth known, and the principal surviving actors in the drama have only waited until such a time has elapsed as seems sufficient to prevent it from occa sioning unnecessary pain to anyone, to cause the fol lowing account to be compiled. I have followed my instructions as carefully as possible ; when news-

PROLOGUE.

9 paper cuttings or original documents have been avail able, and conduce to the simplicity of the story, I have introduced them ; elaborate descriptions and studies of character would plainly be out of place, and have been ruthlessly cut down in the honest endeavour to obtain just that conciseness which best fits the subject in hand. ' Diligence and accuracy are the only merits which a historical writer may ascribe to himself,' wrote Gibbon, ' if any merit can be assumed from the performance of an indispensable duty ;' so I only claim to have observed Dr. Johnson's rule, that every sentence which seems fine to the writer should be omitted. What is intended is to show by a brief outline of events how unlikely it was that Mr. Heather, of all people, should have ever been involved in a mystery of this kind, and how this unlikelihood naturally first created, and then increased, the obscurity which soon involved the whole business ; how the very cause of his death was at first overlooked by skilful and con scientious doctors, and then brought to light by an agency which, so far as the public are at present aware, was never accounted for; and, finally, how the ingenuity of the detectives was completely baffled until an accident provided the key, and the episode came to an unforeseen conclusion without any further particulars being published about it.

It is plain that, to carry out this object, it would not be necessary to employ the pen of a literary artist ; the less embellishment and the less ornate style, the better ; so a humble penman was selected who knew much of what had transpired, but was not, I hope, too intimately connected with the various occurrences to be an unprejudiced historian. There must, of course, be some to whom the subject is new, and it is for their sakes especially that the whole is thrown into complete narrative form without any knowledge in the reader being assumed. Just as a good lecturer addresses himself to the least en lightened of his audience, so a good storyteller writes for those of his probable readers whose knowledge is the most elementary ; the sense of superiority left for the rest amply compensates them for any tediousness of repetition.

Dean Heather is no longer Rector of Nettleby, but no preferment can compensate him for having been one of the chief sufferers by the events here recorded ; only the prosperity and happiness of his remaining children can soften his grief for the loss of his first born. The writer is more fortunate, for the elements of his present professional success and personal con tent seem to be derived, in part at any rate, from the trials of the past ; he who remembers seeing the man Summers in the dock cannot prosecute a trembling prisoner with undue severity, and in defending clients already doomed by popular prejudice, he is fortified by the same recollection. The possession of his wife reminds him also that sympathy is a good

PROLOGUE.

11 foundation for love to build on, and through her mysterious power he seems to clasp hands with his lost friend across the unforgotten grave. I offer no explanation of the apparently super natural appearance of her brother to Evelyn Heather ; parallel cases could be cited, like that of Lord Erskine and the butler, which is perhaps the most familiar, but no common solution of such occurrences seems possible in the present state of our knowledge. The case can only be recorded amongst the facts from which some day, as science marches forward, a theory may be successfully evolved ; and when we consider the immense advances of the last few years, and observe that the goal of yesterday is our starting point of to-day, we cannot say that even in our own time no magician shall arise to make in this, too, the rough places smooth and the hard things plain.

With the steam-engine, the submarine cable, the electric light, and the phonograph as familiar as household words, we can believe that we are but on the threshold of new and still greater discoveries. Until they are made we must be content to suspend our judgment, and to confess that there may be affinities between human souls that transcend it ; there are doubtless more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Those who wish to laugh at a girl's improbable story must not attempt, for reasons that will shortly become obvious, to get the writer to join them. For the rest, let me say that in the following pages there lurks no hidden purpose ; no covert attack upon the amenities of provincial journalism or the conduct of coroners' inquisitions is intended. The comments made are only those which naturally arose as, line by line, the secret history of what seemed at first too plain for discussion, and then too complicated for solution, was gradually unfolded.

The description of the trial is mainly put together from newspaper accounts, and is, of course, supplemented by my observations as an eye-witness. I may add that it has been revised by an experienced criminal lawyer, so that the details may not offend those learned in that science by more than the usual technical in accuracies. Lastly, if anything I have said about any person now living can give offence, I apologise in advance. I have purposely avoided making more than the most simple attempt to sketch the character of any of the people concerned, with perhaps one exception ; his eye will not be likely to fall upon these pages, and if it does I do not greatly care, and he will not com plain. For the rest, with three exceptions, all are still living, and would naturally resent a too faithful picture of their personalities.

They must remember that for the moment they are public property ; when once the story is told, it will quickly become ancient history, and they will be allowed to retire again into the privacy of domestic life.

Chapter I. Two Strings To Her Bow

' Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed ; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.' — -Jane Eyre. To make my story intelligible without afterwards going back upon the due order of events, I must first describe an apparently trifling incident which happened before the thread of my own existence was woven into the web. There is something thin and unsatisfactory, to one whose work does not lie in the fields of fiction, in trying to describe even an interesting episode at second-hand ; and in presenting scenes which are founded on what lawyers call mere ' in formation and belief,' I feel that I am drawing upon the reader's indulgence ; but here, where it is necessary for the elucidation of dark things, it must be done, for I know that in reading what follows anyone would be misled in judging of the bearing of subsidiary in cidents upon the main issue, unless it was at least indicated why a certain maidservant left the village of Nettleby for the city of Oxford, and how she first came in contact with the characters whose after-lives she was so materially to influence.

It was summer time, and Evelyn Heather had left the flowery plains of childhood and illusion for the every day world of work at the Rectory ; her eldest brother was gaining fame at Oxford, but her duties at home were not less important than his, and as studiously performed. She had the house to supervise, her servants to manage, and two younger boys to teach in French and music, besides visiting the workhouse and all who were drifting thither ; there were also the usual social duties to discharge towards her father's friends and acquaintances, for the Rector, though a charming man to meet, was not often met, and neglected his neighbours for the society of books, valuing a dead Syriac pundit above a living English squire. It may be concluded that Evelyn had her hands full. Servants are always a difficulty, which, I think, is a very mild way of putting it, and they are never so hard to deal with as when they are governed by one of their own age who is unmarried ; they think they have a soft thing, and, judging by results, they are generally right.

The parlour-maid at this time, whose duty it was also to be valet to the two little boys, was a girl named Sarah, who had been born in the village, to which she had returned after serv ing her apprenticeship in the neighbouring town of Caisthorpe, and incidentally learning to make most attractive caps and aprons. She was possessed to the full of the doubtful advantage of beauty, and, as sometimes happens in this topsy-turvy world, the coveted gift of Venus was only destined to produce strife amongst men. Of a good height and lissom figure, with great black eyes that burnt like jewels of price beneath their abundant eyelashes, Sarah was a girl who, without regularity or refinement of feature to satisfy a dispassionate critic, was made to attract attention everywhere. Attention begets attentions, and in that class of life intentions follow as the night the day : the shadows of ' followers ' fell across the kitchen doorway at the Rectory, and some of the complica tions of domestic management began to gather in the parlour.

The young mistress soon discovered that the squire's butler was a frequent visitor on Sundays, and that on fine Saturday evenings the peccant parlourmaid not less constantly conversed or walked with quite a different person — a black-browed stranger from Caisthorpe, who was unknown in the village, but was said to bear the appropriate lover-like name of Hart. Never having had an admirer of this per sistent type — for curates in country districts of course do not count — and being therefore without experience of such vanities, Evelyn felt the difficulty of offering counsel or warning to a girl pf nearly her own age, who had at least two of these flattering encumbrances but she gradually became convinced that it was her duty to advise Sarah about her apparent giddiness of conduct. She made up her mind on the subject one Wednesday evening after supper, and, ever ready to put her ideas into practice, rang the dining-room bell to interview the maid before her courage could cool in a shower of timidity's procrastinating second thoughts.

It was the cook who answered her summons, and the red-armed one explained that Sarah had stepped out for a moment and would return directly ; she smiled the smile of self-consciousness, born of incipient jealousy, and retired to her own dominions. Evelyn went to the window and looked out ; the garden was wrapped in the deep peace of a summer night, and her annoyance at the servant's breach of rules in being out without leave on a Wednesday was exaggerated by the contrast, and by a sentiment of something very like envy. What a lovely night it would have been to take a ramble with Cecil, not to say with some interesting friend of his ! A stroll round the garden would be delightful. What could Sarah be doing, and with which of her admirers in the middle of the week ? The crescent moon glim mered alluringly through the tree-tops, and without any particular object, the Rector's daughter wrapped a thick shawl round her neck and stepped through the French window.

How silent it was ! She could almost hear the faintly bronzed clouds racing towards the Queen of the Night, as if obeying some im perious command ; under foot, the mossy grass bent in silent submissiveness, and the shadows of the giant beeches fell upon the lawn with an inky blackness. On one side the Rectory garden slopes upward to a high bank, below which runs the Church Lane, a narrow and darksome thoroughfare, well suited to innocent passages of rustic love. Having slowly skirted the lower part of the demesne, Evelyn returned towards the house along this bank, and glanced in passing into the alley below her. The fisherman knows well the catch at the heart that stops his breath when, in walking by some quiet stream, with thoughts far away, he suddenly sees in the pellucid deeps the outline of a monster trout > it was with a somewhat similar sensation that the girl paused among the trees, for there in the angle of the wall, only a few feet away, stood a couple in that close attitude of rapt attention to each other — the world forgetting — which dispenses with words, and is but the prelude to kisses.

Ashamed of spying, but not without a sense of irritation at what she considered a breach of decorum, the mistress turned quietly from the sight of her maid's indiscretion to re-enter the house, when all of a sudden she felt paralysed by the terror of a man's arms round her, and barely escaped sharing the experiences of the giddy one below by receiving the forcible impression of a man's kiss. Some incoherent words of passion quickly assured her that her assailant was not drunk, nor committing an intentional outrage, and as in struggling to free herself she tore away the protecting shawl, and gave expression to her anger and distress in a sharp cry, she became aware that she was not more amazed than her assailant. It was the amorous butler. Without a word of apology, but with one exclama tion which, though never repeated by his hearer, was, I have reason to believe, highly expressive, he fled away into the darkness vvith the speed of one chased by the devil.

Evelyn had scarcely time to recover her self-possession, and to reflect that the wicked flee whom no man pursueth, when she perceived that her cry had interrupted the pair in the lane, and Sarah was in full flight for home ; with flushed face and angry heart she hastily followed, and in a few minutes her father was made acquainted with her adventure. After that, of course, Sarah had to go. It was not that she had a lover, nor even that she encouraged two ; but it seemed excessive that she should attract both to such an indelicate extent that while one was embracing her in the Church Lane the other should go through the same performance with her counter feit presentment in the garden, especially when the latter was blind enough to mistake mistress for abigail. So Sarah was ' given notice,' and when her month — a most trying period for all concerned — was up, she did not go off, as might have been expected, with one of the men, but took another situation she had heard of in Oxford through a friend who was a cook there.

Souvent femme varie was the only rule this giddy young person observed, and she was too conscious of her own beauty to care to be consistent in anything else. Having flirted outrageously with two men, and decided in favour of the rougher, she seemed, when discovered, as it were, in the act, to repent of her loss of freedom, for she repulsed them both and decided to defer matrimony — at any rate until a more tempting offer was made to her. She would not marry Charles because she preferred Hart ; but Hart's position in life was not good enough to make an immediate marriage promise a very brilliant future, and so she thought it best to make a fresh start altogether, as far as possible from Nettleby. Few ladies of twenty -one would have had the courage to run away in this decisive fashion ; but young women learn to take care of themselves in service, and ladies are not exposed to the comments of their ' followers ' in quite the same outspoken way.

Mr. Rawson's butler never betrayed by so much as the quiver of an eyelid that he had been guilty of that night attack. So serenely unconscious, indeed, was he, that when on their first meeting he had to usher Miss Heather into the drawing-room of Nettleby Grange, she could hardly convince herself that the occurrence was not a figment of fancy ; no one seemed less capable of an amiable indiscretion of any kind than the decorous Charles. Evelyn forbore to tell her Oxford brother the details of the incident which had caused a change in the Rectory household. In the first place, she was engaged in discussing more important things with him ; and, secondly, she felt that if she gave him the details it would be awkward for him to go to the Grange when he came home. He might laugh at the humorous side of the situation, or he might be furious with the butler ; either way, it was better not to trouble him with it, so, contrary to all precedent, she simply wrote that a new Sarah had come whose name was Emma, and Cecil did not think the in cident worth referring to in his reply.

When he next returned to Lincolnshire, the novelty of the change had worn off, and he had no reason to suspect the most respectable-looking young butler in the world of having had the audacity to try and kiss his sister. At length, in the summer of 1886, the attention of the family at the Rectory, and their immediate friends, was turned with more than usual interest towards the distant University, for Cecil was ' in for his Schools.' The long June days of paper-writing were followed by weeks of waiting until the season of viva voce came round, and Mr. Heather and his daughter took the opportunity to pay a visit to Oxford. It was not a fashionable time for such an expedition, but that was one of its advantages from many points of view, and it need only be said that the relatives of poor scholars do not often dance at Commemoration balls, to show that such gaieties were never contemplated for Evelyn Heather, whose annual expenditure on dress would not have sufficed to fit out a gay dancer for a couple of evenings in the Corn Exchange.

There were no ' summer rides by marsh and wold,' but there was the river ; nay, are there not three rivers in that ' land of waters green and clear '? And there were the colleges, which are so apt to be over looked by visitors whose minds are taken up with frocks and flowers, dances and picnics. There were rambles through echoing quadrangles and deserted gardens ; strolls through Christ Church meadows and Addison's Walk ; a visit to Wadham, where in an earlier age than this the King was lodged ; and to Merton, where at that time the Queen was entertained, with the ladies of her Court ; and to many another rendered attractive by its external beauty or historic association. Lastly, there were the magnificent ' New Schools ' in which Cecil had to face the triumvirate of in quisitors for that crowded hour of glorious life, which left him in the state of hopeless uncertainty usual on such occasions, but with the pleasing sensation that even if he was relegated to the Third or ' genius ' class, or, still more awful thought, to the ducal Fourth, the ordeal was over for ever.

That day the Heathers met a young gentleman of Trinity called Essingham, who persuaded them to take a boat and explore the windings of the Cher well. He happened to be doing a quiet week's reading in Oxford, and was only too glad to meet a friend's ' people ' for a little diversion. When asked what he was doing in Oxford, he said, ' It's my last Long, don't you see ' — as if that explained everything. They rowed amongst the green willows in serene content, and afterwards had tea at Marston Ferry in a bowery little arbour belonging to a French emigre', who was at that time, and for years after wards, too great a foreigner and too good a patriot to spell his name correctly on an English sign board. It was a lovely afternoon, and Cecil and his father felt a great peace sink into their souls as they floated amongst the water-lilies.

The last examination was over, and the mental relaxation was delightful to both. Evelyn and her new acquaintance talked and laughed together without reserve, the latter blessing the industrious impulse that had led him back to work at the deadest season of the year, when even the assizes and the Scouts' Regatta are over. The next day was spent in a similar wa)', and on the third, when Essingham saw the Heather family off on their return journey to Lincolnshire, Oxford became a desert. There was not long to wait for the result of the examination. Who can forget the moment when he first heard the news of his place in the Class List ? Can anything in after-life equal in bitterness the moment when you read in the jumble of names that you have failed of your reward, and that Jenkins, that much overrated student, not to say ignoble smug, will go down to posterity for ever as a First Class man ?

Can anything surpass in pervading bliss the hour of triumph which follows the reading and re-reading of the names above and below your own (in alphabetical order, of course) in the coveted division ? I think not, even though you may be as well acquainted as I am with Charles Ravenshoe's views on the subject, so freely expressed to his friend Marston. Afterwards, in the world, 'she' may of course reject you with scorn or a mild regret, and you will think life is over; but you know all the time that there are other girls, and many opportunities 'in the hidden years.' You may become a Member of Parliament, and be carried round a town on the shoulders of your enthusiastic followers, but not, unless you are singularly fortunate, at the early age of three-and-twenty, and at that game one failure may be the prelude to many successes.

It is not so with 'Greats'; jacta est alea ; it is to-day or never that you climb Olympus. Cecil brought the Daily News into his father's study on August I, but there was no need for the proud old man to read it, even if his eyes had not been too dim, for there was the devoted sister standing by his side, her lips parted, and her bright eyes suffused with happy tears, as she whispered softly, 'Oh, dad, he's got it !' Congratulations came from all sides — dons, rela tions, and many friends, wrote to say flattering things. ' They seem to think,' said Cecil, as he sat down to answer a batch of them, ' that I need never do another stroke of work. I don't know which of the Offices of State I shall choose, but I suppose it is only a question of dropping the handkerchief.' This is what he wrote to one of his friends : ' My dear Ess, 'Yours to hand with thanks, and a continua tion of such favours is respectfully solicited.