Eyre's Acquittal ... New edition

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i JARRObDS' 3/6 SERIES OF Popular Novels, Bv WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS. (Crown Zvo, Cloth.) Uniform with "Eyre's Acquittal." i. LOUIS DRAVCOTT. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd Edition. 3. GEOFFREY STIRLING. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 5th Edition. 3. BONNIE KATE. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd Edition. 4. A NEW OTHELLO. By Hon. Iza Duffus Hardy, and Ed. 5. THE MAID OF LONDON BRIDGE. By Somerville GlBNEV. 6. EVELINE WELLWOOD. By Major Norris Paul. 7. OLD LATTIMER'S LEGACY. By J. S. Fletcher. 8. THAT LITTLE GIRL. By Curtis Yorke. 4th Edition. 9. DUDLEY. By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 10. THE WILD RUTHVENS. By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 11. THE BROWN PORTMANTEAU, and other Stories. By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 12. HUSH ! By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 13. ONCE ! By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 14. A ROMANCE OF MODERN LONDON.

By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 15. HIS HEART TO WIN. By Curtis Yorke. and Edition. 16. DARRELL CHEVASNEY. By Curtis Yorke. 17. BETWEEN THE SILENCES, and other Stories. By Curtis Yorke. 18. THE PEYTON ROMANCE. By Mrs. Leith Adams, and Edition. [Shortly. 19. THE GOLDEN MILESTONE. By Scott Graham. [Shortly. 20. A RECORD OF DISCORDS. By Curtis Yorkr. [Shortly. 2.. "CHERBY RIPE!" By Helen Mathers. 22. HESTER : STORY OF A SIN, By Helen Mathers. 23. EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. (Sequel.) By Helen Mathers. 24. JOCK O1 HAZELGREEN. By Helen Mathers. 25. MY LADY GREENSLEEVES. By Helen Mathers. 26. FOUND OUT. By Helen Mathers. [Shortly -.7. PHŒBE DEACON. By W. Lionel Green. [Shortly. 28. GILDAS HAVEN. Mrs. Haycraft. [Shortly. OTHERS IH PREPARATION. LONDON: IARROLD &■> SONS, 10 and li, IVanukk Lane. idqittl to "Heater: Storg as a j?irt" BY HELEN MATHERS AUTHOR or "comin' thro' THE RYE," "CHERRY RIPE," "HESTER: STORY OF A SIN," "JOCK O' HAZELGREEN," "FOUND OUT," ETC., ETC. NEW EDITION LONDON JARROLD & SONS, io & u, WARWICK LANE, E.C. [All Rights Reserved]

Book I. Chapter

I. ' But think na ye my heart was sair, When I laid the mool on his yellow hair ; O ! think na ye my heart was wae When I turned about, away to gae V The remote village of Lovel was one afternoon electrified by news of the deatli of its Squire, and the intimation that his body might be expected to arrive before night, under the care of his friend, Lord Lovel. In less than an hour, Mr. Eyre's grave was being dug beside that of the woman whose lover and husband he had been, and of whose murder he was secretly believed to be guilty ; though, if he had killed her, it had been for love — because, though he could endure to see her die, he could not brook the sight of himself degraded in her eyes, or, as others said, know himself supplanted in her love by his friend. He had never been accused of the crime, nor even for some time suspected of it, and this was partly due to the fact that at his instigation a woman named Hester Clarke (formerly his mistress) had been tried for the murder, and, by circumstantial evidence, so nearly convicted, that her acquittal was indignantly declared by the judge to be a gross miscarriage of justice.

But some extraordinary disclosures made by Mr. Eyre in the course of the trial had, in the eyes of many of those present, reversed the position of accuser and accused : while the ruthless lifting by his own hand of the curtain that had screened his inner life appalled the gazers, who in one scathing flash of light saw him stripped naked of his worldly robes, and as the man that God and his own heart had long known him. He stood before them a man who for years had been at the mercy of a secret sin, himself the fatal moving power out of whicli had sprung three successive tragedies of unspeakable pathos and horror, upon which he gazed impassive and unsubdued — less repentant of his misdeeds than callously bold in vaunting them — tearing in shreds the honourable life he had worn in those years when he had ' Built God a church, and laughed His Word to scorn' and by his inhumanity rather than his sins cutting him self off from all sympathy with his kind.

As betrayer and deserter of the woman Clarke in her youth, and remorseless bringer to justice of her only friend and servant for the murder of his unacknowledged child, though of such murder she was practically inno cent, and privately exerting his great influence to hang her ; as the man who first robbed his best friend of his sweetheart, then filched his good name and wore it before the world ; as the assassin who attempted Hester Clarke's life because he lived in hourly dread lest she should tell Mrs. Eyre the truth ; as the accuser of that £ YRE'S A CQ UITTAL. 1 1 unhappy woman of his wife's murder, and as a magistrate committing her to gaol while yet his child's corpse lay warm upon her knee — thus, bit by bit, his character during the trial painted itself to the terrified beholders' gaze, till all felt themselves in the presence of a man whose hand would not shrink from any deed to which his iron will impelled him.

From that day the secret conviction grew and strength ened that Mr. Eyre had himself been the murderer of the wife he had so passionately loved, the most popular reason assigned being a violent jealousy of his friend Lord Lovel, culminating in a fit of madness in which he slew her. But those who were best acquainted with Mr. Eyre's haughty and inflexible character said that he never needed to know jealousy, and felt none ; but that, the complications of his position with regard to Hester Clarke becoming unbearable, rather than see his wife endure those miseries that the knowledge of his sin must cost her, he had cut the knot of his difficulties and her life with a single blow, and so secured ignorance to her for ever. Others denied the murder to have been one of either jealousy or pride, declaring it to be one of simple greed, committed for the sake of the magnificent diamonds Mrs. Eyre had worn that night, and which were found missing when she was discovered stabbed to the heart, but breathing yet, in her chair.

Strong suspicion had at the time attached itself to the gardener, who was seized on a ladder, placed against her window, within a few moments of the deed, and whose infatuation for Mr. Eyre's French nurse was said to be powerful enough to precipitate him into crime for her sake. ' Give me diamonds like Madame's, and I will marry you,' she had said to him not half an hour before the murder; and the diamonds had disappeared, and the gardener been caught almost red-handed, yet Mr. Eyre had refused for one moment to believe in the man's guilt, all his energies being bent to the conviction of the woman Clarke ; and before setting out on that lengthened journey, which extended to three years, he had the man and maid married in his presence, and left them established in sole charge of the Red Hall, with certain funds to be disposed of according to his directions.

And, however keenly watched by the village, the oddly -matched pair had given rise to no suspicion, and gradually people ceased to believe in their guilt. Of Mr. Eyre nothing was known. He and Lord Lovel had set out for abroad within a few days of each other, and were conjectured to be together ; but as both pre served an unbroken silence, sending home neither word nor sign of their existence, the first positive news of them that reached the village was contained in the telegram that announced the speedy arrival of living and dead. But those who gathered round to see the digging of Mr. Eyre's grave whispered that the real secret of Mrs. Eyre's death would never be known now, since the key to it was for ever locked within the cold heart of the man whom she alone had so passionately loved, while all other men and women feared him.

Chapter II

' Nae living man I'll love again, Since that my lovely knight is slain ; Wi' ae lock o' hia yellow hair, I'll chain my heart for evermair.' ' Seems like yesterday I were digging her grave,' said the sexton, jerking his head towards the narrow green mound where Madcap Eyre lay with her child on her breast, ' and I'd sooner ha' dug his the first. ... I misdoubt me if the daisies and crokuses '11 ever spring as free above his, as they do out o' her pretty head — God bless her !' ' If he'd bin a poor man he'd he at the cross-roads with a stake through his heart,' said Nancy of the Mill, who stood with arms akimbo. ' Lord ! to think that she died as happy, like a baby in its mother's arms — 'tis said she felt so safe-like, she didn't even kiss him before she went . . .

And he'll never get near enough for her to kiss him now — God A'mighty 'ud never stand it.' ' I niver thowt he'd a died till he'd swung somebody or 'nother for her,' said the blacksmith ; ' to see his grave a-digging seems like a story broke off short-like in its middle — t'other world gets the end o't, and neither they nor us is a bit the wiser.' ' Love begins all things, and death ends 'em,' said the E YRE'S A CQ UITTA L. 14 gravedigger sententiously ; ' half the sin in the world's born of the taste o' a cherry lip, and a gentle eye'll sink many a soul as has kept the commandments from his youth up — 'twas a most powerful true love as turned th' Squire from a honest man to a black-hearted sinner.' ' He give his sowl for her,' said a sad-faced woman who stood by, ' and he couldn't do more for her if 'twas ever so — he knew that if ever she corned to know about Hester Clarke and the drownded child, 'twould kill her . . . 'Tis said that just before she died she said 'twas the happiest moment of her life, and niver knowed she'd been murdered — she went so quick after she'd come out of the chloroform.' ' There's a man for you !' cried Nancy, lifting up her hands ; ' if so be as he did stab her through jealousy, to bide beside her all through that night, holding the handkerchief to her mouth, and not letting her come to herself one blessed minnit, and the doctor saying, sez he, " If she dies, 'tis murder;" and the Squire looks up and sez, " What then ?" 0 Lord, what a man !' ' It minds me of Otheller,' said a village pedagogue, whose rusty coat-tails swept his heels ; ' he killed his wife for jealousy ; but there was no knife or chloroform there, only pillows.' ' The master had no call to be jealous,' said Sally Genge, who had just joined the group ; ' she never loved but him, and he knowed it.' ' Then what ailed her to go running away from him with the young lord ?' said the old man acidly ; ' didn't the whole county ring with it, and wasn't the Squire a changed man from that day ?' ' A mother bird don't run away when she flies straight home to see her little uns has taken no harm while she's away,' cried Sally indignantly ; ' she jest took an innercent morning ride, and the young lord overtook her, and we all come out to our doors to see 'em go by, he leading the ass so careful, and lookin' so sorrowful, as if he know'd the ride was beyond her strength, and she so pale and sweet, a-wishing of us all good-morrow . . . there never was two innercenter young souls, or two as loved each other so purely.' ' And what a pair they made,' said the gravedigger, resting on his spade ; ' so lightsome, spirity, and beauti ful !

She'd walk beside master, but dance alongside of t'other — seems like as if they two ought to be lying here side by side ... he left his heart wi' her the day we laid the mool above her.' ' She were well loved,' said the sexton's wife softly ; ' and for her sake the two men loved one another. 'Twas grand to see 'em standing shoulder to shoulder at th' 'sizes — 'twas the only speck o' vartue in master's character when he up an' said 'twas he, an' not the young lord, as had brought Hester Clarke to shame— seemin' as if he didn't vally the wurld's opinion a groat, so long as she never heard the whisper o't.' ' He was ever of a murderish sort of mind,' said the pedagogue, shaking his head, ' as was clearly shown when he shot at Hester and killed a rook. 'Twas greatly in my mind, when he set out so quick after Lord Lovel, that re renge was at the bottom ; for, though a man may kill his wife for love, he mostly kills her lover for hate.' ' Very bookish talk !' said the sexton disparagingly ; ' some more leavings of Otheller, I s'pose ; but them as sits down to write books is mostly pore creatures, and nat'rally the folks they set struttin' on the page is like theirselves . . . they ain't true to human natur'; an' if you ticket a man wi' a deadly sin, an' expect him to act accordin', ten to one but he'll bust out with a bit o' vartue as'll make you feel as if you'd never knowed its right colour before . . . an' if the master slew her as he lov'd best of all upon earth, 'tis ten to one 'twas for some reason as never entered into your Otheller's or any of them dummies' heads.' ' Dummies !' ejaculated the pedagogue, furious at this insult to the creatures of his own discovery — ergo his own; but a push from one of the crowd, nearly precipitating him into the open grave, compelled him to take an awkward leap backwards, in the course of which his head met a tombstone, that made him think of Othello with disgust for a week.

The cause of the catastrophe was Job, who came to the very edge, and looked down with bitter hatred at the yawning chasm. 'Dig it deep,' he said; 'he's been the curse of the place this many a year, and there's no knowing where his sins may sprout up again ; but please God we've done with bastards and murders now. A bad man !' cried Job, striking his foot against the crumbling earth ; ' he spoilt my little Master Frank's life, and made him carry on his shoulders a sin that wasn't his'n; and he spoke up the truth too late, for she never knowed it . . . there's nought but hemlock'll grow here, though them two sweet souls laid alongside might save him . . . but, thank God, he's dead, and my little Master Frank's above ground !' His old voice ceased in a triumphant quaver as he turned from the grave to the dwindling group of vil lagers, for the short November afternoon was closing in, and a chilly mist rising in spectral shapes about the nearer tombstones, and gathering more closely about the little group, formed a wall that shut out all objects beyond. ' Ay !' said the sexton, looking down ; ' but I'd rather to-day was to-morrer, and we'd got him here.

Th' Squire were never warsted in anything yet, an' it seems s'prisin' that he should be throwed in Ms first wrastle so to speak, wi' death. . . I mostly gets a blink o' the dead face in its coffin whiles I'm diggin' its grave, but somehow I can't see the master's.' ' You shall within the hour,' said Job briskly ; ' and now, I must be hastenin' back, or the body '11 be there afore me ; and my little Master Frank'll be expecting ' What was it that froze the words on his lips ? Whose was this tall shape that loomed gigantic through the mist, and from which, after one shuddering glance, all fell away, clutching at each other like drowning creatures in a sinking ship ? Job, standing erect, the vigour of youth rekindled in his veins, withered and grew old, as, with a lightning conviction of the truth, he stammered, ' My master — where is my master ?' Mr. Eyre looked down at the half-veiled chasm at liis feet. ' His grave is already dug,' he said, ' and you have received my message.

He lies at the house yonder.' 'His grave?' repeated Job slowly and stupidly; 'his grave . . . but he's ahve — the message was from him . . . 'twas your body he was bringing . . . his dinner's preparing, and his chair's set. . . . My little Frank,' he sobbed, ' my dear, dear httle Master Frank ' — they seized Mr. Eyre's arm and shook him like a reed ; ' did you kill him as you killed your wife ?' he shrieked. ' He was killed in battle on October 25,' said Mr. Eyre, and his voice, hollow and worn, might have been a ghost's. ' He had been an hour dead when I found him. I laid him in his coffin and brought him straight Q EYRE'S ACQUITTAL. home. The message must have blundered on its way.' But Job did not hear ... by the side of that empty grave his faithful old heart broke, and, palsied and tottering, he had crept away home to where, for the last time, his httle Master Frank was waiting to receive him.

Chapter III

' Sune as he yielded up his breath I bare his corpse away, Wi' tears that trickled for his death I washed his comelie clay ; And siker in a grave sae deep I laid the dear-luv'd boy ; And now for ever I maun weep My winsome Gilderoy.' ' And so you dug my grave with a will, my friend,' said Mr. Eyre, looking keenly at the gravedigger, ' and I've disappointed you ; but it shan't be love's labour lost. Lord Lovel loved my wife, and she him, and there's room for me on the other side. She should sleep sound between two such friends. And they shall have no monument, and no stained glass yonder, but only the flowers they both loved, with the sun shining through them ; and there'll be no briar to grow out of either breast, but only a rose ; and when my work's done, I'll lay my years down beside them — just twice theirs — all told.

And so you thought I killed my wife?' he added, turning abruptly to the terrified villagers, who began to smart under a more wholesome fear of him in the flesh than in the spirit. ' Nay, sir,' said the sexton's wife, curtseying ; ' 'tis not for poor folks like we to judge our master; th' old 2—2 man did but prate out what he's caught up from his betters.' ' Good God !' cried Mr. Eyre, like a man violently awakened from a dream, 'is it possible?' then stooped and plucked a daisy from her grave. ' Poor, poor Madcap !' he said, so low that none might hear him ; ' and is that all my love hath brought thee ?' Then, shrouding himself in his black cloak, the mist swallowed him up from the frightened gazers' eyes, and he was gone. ' 'Tis well that Frank lies yonder, not I,' he said aloud, as he crossed the churchyard, ' since that's the popular idea.

I'll live to disprove it, if only for her sake — as if the sweet soul could have loved her murderer ! And though I've thought of most things, I never thought of that, though clearly some fool did — most likely Busby — and set the country farmyard in a cackle, because its chief goose had laid another egg. But she can't hear them, and she's happy ; and Frank's found her by now ; aud he loves her too well to tell her the secret he wouldn't tell me. What was it ?' he cried aloud, and standing still in the darkness. ' Three years I've lost in hunting for it, and meanwhile the woman's escaped me. But I'll find her yet.' As he climbed the familiar hill to his home, he thought of how often those two bright young creatures, now sound in deatli below, had trod it beside him ; and once he drew back, as though physically unable to face the empty house, across whose threshold his Madcap would never dance to meet him any more.

He entered the courtyard, and mechanically turned to that wing of the house in which her chamber lay ; and, from the force of habit, looked up as if he would have distinguished her window through thc darkness. But what was this ? A clear light burned within, and as he paused below, his foot struck against a ladder placed against the wall. ' Good God I' he thought ; ' has it stood here ever since that night?' And then he remembered that this was the very day and month of the year upon which she had been murdered. He had thought it unnatural that Hester should climb the ladder unless with sinister intent ; yet he found his foot on the first rung before he was aware ; and as he rose, step by step, put himself in her place, and in the lighted room above seemed to see Madcap, asleep and unconscious of her doom.

As his head and shoulders rose above the sill, filling the window from lintel to lintel, he saw that it was un shuttered and ajar, while through the clouded pane before him he once more beheld the diamonds that he had last seen on his wife's neck when he left her in the drawing room below with Lord Lovel. ' I'd rather have the right to wear these openly, than own the finest farm in Canada,' said a woman whose petticoat of linsey-woolsey, drab stays, and coarse white bodice, contrasted as curiously with the jewels she wore, as did her personal beauty with the sordid plainness of the man who stood at some little distance from her, his features expressing a stupid admiration that struggled with an almost abject terror. ' You're just doited to deck yersel' wi' 'em,' he said sullenly. ' M'appen but they'll hang the two on us yet.' ' There's only we two in the house,' she said ; ' the child's asleep, and every door locked, and master's body's at the Towers by now.

There's none likely to come mgh us to-night. Sit down, you fool,' she added, as she turned herself this way and that before the mirror, ' unless you fear to soil the chairs. Did ever you see fireflies give out such a shine as yon ?' ' Sit me down — here ?' he said, looking not at his soiled fustian, but at the middle of the room, his eyes fixed as if he saw there some fearsome sight ; ' seems like as I see her now as I seed her that night sittin' in her white gownd, and the red blood gurglin' out ' — as though in voluntarily, his earth-stained hand lifted itself, and pointed to where his eyes dwelt. ' I were mad to let mysel' be dragged here this night ; and that poor soul, innocent of all save peeping, and a'most hanged for our sin — I'd ha' confessed all, afore I saw her swinging. An' all for nought but to see you wi' a halter of diamonds round your weazle ' ' 'Tis handsomer than many a lady's,' said the woman ; adding half aloud, ' Why should I go with the poor fool at all ?

In Paris I might wear 'em, and ' ' I see no murder there,' Mr. Eyre had once exclaimed, gazing at his gardener's features; but as Josephine's half dropped words reached the man's ears and he strode for ward, his master knew that his study had been superficial, and that beneath yon boorish exterior might lurk unsuspected possibilities of crime. ' So you'd like to give me the go-by,' said Digges, with a bitter curse, as he crushed the woman's white arm in his coarse hand ; ' jest you try it,' and he breathed hard and thick. ' If so be as I've sold my sowl for you, I'll git my penny's worth ; an' where I go, you'll foller. I allus knew you was a bad lot, but your first fancy man'll be the last ; for I'll kill the pair o' ye, an' you'll git a taste o' that hell as your covetin' the diamonds pitched me into.

I've half the mind to tear 'em off yer body this night, an' 'fess to the truth ' The woman laughed as she put her free arm about his neck and kissed him ; her beauty held him in bondage yet. In the lower ranks of life it is seldom that a man E YRE'S A CQ UITTA L. 23 ill-uses his handsome mate so long as she is true to him ; when she is faithless he usually kills her, and Josephine had not tempted her clown so far yet. ' Didn't I promise to love you if you could give me diamonds like Madame's ?' she said, sickening at the con trast of their two faces in the glass ; ' and I've worn them once. To-night we'll unpick them from their set tings, and hide them for the last time.' ' We maun bide afore we makes a move,' said Digges, who had relapsed into his usual stolid self ; ' m'appen the neebours '11 keep their eyes open yet awhile.' ' They've given over suspecting long ago,' said Josephine, who had during her three years' marriage lost every trace of the French idiom in speaking, and acquired the Eng lish. ' Folks that dress themselves in woollen must be virtuous ; and poverty's a grand cloak under which to hide one's sins.' She was flaunting backwards and forwards before the mirror now, and beyond her lay the pure, simple back ground of Madcap's chamber, arranged just as she had left it when she had ignorantly started on her last long journey, without farewell kiss or word to the husband and children she so passionately loved.

There stood her white bed, and beside it the table that held her Bible, Prayer-book, and portrait of her husband alone, and her two boys together ; near them lay the broken toy that Dody had dropped when he had paid her his last visit, and wept at leaving her, not knowing how soon he would share with her that sleep which knows no waking. . . . Yonder, too, was the cabinet, of which one un locked drawer held a secret that defied Mr. Eyre, while by its side the easy-chair stood, in which Madcap had been ' twinn'd of her sweet life ' unknowing. . . On the borders of the half-light Digges hovered, fearful to remain, as to depart, alone, his round eyes resting on anything rather than his wife. All at once the blackness of the window attracted Josephine's attention ; it would make a longer looking-glass than the one in which she gazed, and she approached it, seeing but night beyond, for Mr. Eyre covered his face with his mantle as she ad vanced, so that she saw the jewels flashing like sun-rays upon an inky pool.

But as she looked, some horrible lightning impression of gazing at dark against dark seized her ; involuntarily she pressed nearer, and as the heavy mantle slipped, and Mr. Eyre's eyes met hers through the glass, his features menacing and stern, pale and haggard as a man new risen from the tomb, icy terror congealed the very blood in her veins, and slew in her the power to cry out — to stir. Ignorant and superstitious, she never doubted that this was her dead master in his cereclothes, come to con front her with the witnesses to her crime upon her body . . . and reason tottered, but was not overthrown, till, dashing the casement wide, he stretched his arm and seized her . . . then her wits fled, and even as Mr. Eyre knew it, and saw the chamber-door open, and Digges gone, he knew that once more the secret of Madcap's death had escaped him.

Chapter IV

' Alas f who did medicine thee to that sweet sleep f Me. Eyee cursed himself for a melodramatic fool as he let the woman go, and hastened to regain earth, knowing that there were but two exits from the Red Hall, by one or other of which Digges was certain to effect his escape. But the pitch-darkness aided the fugitive, and Mr. Eyre felt so certain of his having got off that he wasted no time in searching the house, but descended to the village, where he had the curious misfortune to be mistaken at every other step for his own ghost. The story of his appearance in the churchyard was not yet fully circulated through the place, and many believed his body to be then reposing at the Towers, so that some hindrance to the search for Digges was unavoidable. ' Save your cackles,' he said at last, sternly, ' and search for this man throughout every yard of the village — a hundred pounds to him who seizes and brings him to me alive ; but let no one enter the Red Hall,' he added, as he mounted the horse that he had himself hastily saddled, and set out at full gallop for Marmiton.