A Changed Heart Part 70

"Liar!" he half screamed, glaring with tigerish eyes as he heard Mr.

Barrett, "it is false! You never performed it--I never saw you before!"

"You have forgotten me, I dare say," said Mr. Barrett, politely, "but I had the pleasure of marrying you to this lady, nevertheless. It is easily proved, and I am prepared to prove it on any occasion."

"You may as well take it easy, Cavendish," said Val. "Cherrie is your wife fast enough! Don't cry, Cherrie, it's all right now, and you're Mrs. Cavendish as sure as Church and State can make you."

"It's a most extraordinary story," said Squire Tod, "and I hardly know what to say to you, Blake. How came you to let him get engaged to Miss Henderson, knowing this?"

"Oh," said Val, carelessly, "Miss Henderson never cared a snap about him; and then Paul Wyndham came along and cut him out, just as I was getting ready to tell the story. I meant to make him find Cherrie before he left Speckport, and publish the marriage; only Providence let me find her out myself, to clear the innocent, and bring this man's guilt home.

I had to keep Cherrie in the dark, as I never would have got that confession out of her."

"Well," said Mr. Darcy, rising, "it is growing dark, and I think there is no more to be done this evening. Burke, call a cab. Captain Cavendish, you will have to exchange the mess-room for the town-jail to-night."

Captain Cavendish said nothing. His fury had turned to black, bitter sullenness, and his handsome face was disturbed by a savage scowl.

"You, gentlemen, and you, Mrs. Cavendish," said Mr. Darcy, bowing to Cherrie, and smiling slightly, "will hold yourselves in readiness to give evidence at the trial. I think we will have no difficulty in bringing out a clear case of willful murder."

An awful picture came before the mind of the scowling and sullen captain. A gaping crowd in the raw dawn of a cheerless morning, a horrible gallows, the dangling rope, the hangman's hand adjusting it round his neck, the drop, a convulsed figure quivering in the air in ghastly agony, and then----Great beads of cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and his livid face was contracted by a spasm of mortal agony.

Then he saw the two clergymen, Mr. Blake, and Cherrie standing up to go.

"I think I'll take you home, Cherrie," said Val, "I'll get another cab for you! Won't they open their eyes when they see you, though?"

Mr. Blake and Cherrie departed, followed by the two clergymen; and no one spoke to the ghastly-looking man, sitting, guarded by the constable, staring at the floor, with that black, desperate scowl, that so changed his face that his nearest friend would hardly have known it. Cherrie trembled and shrank away as she pa.s.sed him, and did not breathe freely until she was safely seated in the cab beside Val, and rattling away through the streets on her way home.

Home! how poor Cherrie's heart longed for the peace of that little cottage where those who loved her, and had mourned her, dwelt. She was crying quietly, as she sat silently away in a corner, thinking what a long, and wretched, and forlorn, and dreary year the last had been, and what a foolish girl she had been, and how much she owed to Val Blake.

Mr. Blake did not disturb her reflections; he was thinking of wronged Charley Marsh, exiled from home, branded as a felon.

The cab, for which Mr. Darcy had sent one of the constables, drew up at the office door, as Mr. Blake's drove away; and the prisoner, between the two officials, with Mr. Darcy following close behind, came down-stairs.

Captain Cavendish had gone down-stairs very quietly between his two guards, neither speaking nor offering the slightest resistance; but his eyes were furtively taking in everything, and the captive's instinct of flight was strong upon him. One of the constables went forward to open the cab-door, the other had but a slight grasp of his arm. The murky darkness, the empty street, favored him.

With the rapidity of lightning, he wheeled round, struck the constable a blinding blow in the face with his fist, that forced him to release his hold, and, like a flash, he sped off, turned sharp round a corner, and was gone! The whole thing had been the work of two seconds. Before any one among them could quite comprehend he had really gone, he was entirely out of sight.

The next instant, the still street was in an uproar, the two constables and Mr. Darcy, shouting for a.s.sistance as they went, started in pursuit.

The corner round which Captain Cavendish had cut, and which they now took, led to a dirty waterside street, branching off into numerous wharves, crowded with hogsheads, bales, barrels, and piles of lumber, affording a secure and handy hiding-place for any runaway. It was like looking for a needle in a hay-stack even in daylight; and now, in the thick fog and darkness, it was the wildest of wildgoose-chases. They ran from one wharf to another, collecting a crowd about them wherever they went; and all the time, he for whom they were searching was quietly watching them in a black and filthy alley, that cut like a dirty vein of black mud from that waterside street to the one above.

Drawing his hat far down over his eyes, Captain Cavendish started up the alley, and found himself again in the street he had left. The cab still stood before the office door of Mr. Darcy; he gave it one derisive glance as he strode rapidly along, and struck into another by-street. If he could only make good his escape; if he could baffle them yet! Hope sent his heart in mad plunges against his side--if he could only escape!

Suddenly, a thought flashed upon him--the cars. There had been a picnic that day, and an excursion-train, he knew, left at half-past seven to fetch the picnickers home. If he could only get to the depot in time, he might stay in hiding about the country until the first hue and cry was over, then, in disguise, make his way to S----, and take the steamer for Quebec. He had a large sum of money about him; he might do it--he might escape yet.

He pulled out his watch as he almost ran along, twenty-five minutes past seven; only five minutes, and a long way off still. He fled through the dark streets like a madman, but no one knew him, and reached the depot at last, panting and breathless. A crowd lingered on the platform, a bell was clanging, and the train was in motion. Desperation goaded him on; he made a furious leap on board, and--there was a wild cry of horror from the bystanders, an awful shriek of "O my G.o.d!" from a falling man, and then all was uproar, and confusion, and horror, and dismay. Whether in his blind haste he had missed his footing, whether the darkness of the night deceived him, whether the train was moving faster than he had supposed, no one ever knew; but he was down, and ground under the remorseless wheels of the terrible Juggernaut.

The train was stopped, and everybody flocked around in consternation.

Two of the brakemen lifted up something--something that had once been a man, but which was crushed out of all semblance of humanity now. No one there recognized him; they had only heard that one agonized cry wrung from the unbelieving soul in that horrible moment--giving the lie to his whole past life--but they had heard or knew nothing more. Some one brought a door; and they laid the b.l.o.o.d.y and mangled ma.s.s upon it, and now raised it reverentially on their shoulders, and carried it slowly to the nearest house. A cloth was thrown over the white, staring face, the only part of him, it seemed, not mangled into jelly; and so they carried him away from the spot, a dreadful sight, which those who saw never forgot.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

THE VESPER HYMN.

He was not dead. He was not even insensible. While they carried him carefully through the chill, black night, and when they carried him into the nearest house, and laid him tenderly on a bed, the large, dark eyes were wide open and fixed, but neither in death nor unconsciousness. It was a hotel they had carried him to; and one of the pretty chambermaids, who owned a sentimentally-tender heart, and read a great many novels, cried as she looked at him.

"Poor fellow!" she said, to another pretty chambermaid; "it's such a pity, ain't it--and he so handsome?"

"Who is he, I wonder?" the other chambermaid wanted to know; but no one could tell her.

"He looks like an officer," some one remarked; "I think I've seen him in the town before, and I'm pretty sure he's one of the officers."

"The doctor will know, maybe," suggested the land-lord. "Poor fellow!

I'm afraid it's all up with him. I don't think he can speak."

He had never spoken but that once, when the soul of the infidel, in that supreme moment of mortal agony, in spite of the infidel creed of his life, had uttered that awful invocation--"O my G.o.d!" But the power of speech was not gone, nor of hearing; he retained all his senses, and, strangely enough, did not seem to suffer much. He lay quiescent, his dark eyes wide open, and staring vacantly straight ahead, his dark hair, dabbled with blood, falling loose on the pillow and around his bloodless face. They had drawn a white spread over him; and he had a strangely corpse-like look, with his white set face, and marble-like rigidity. But life burned yet in the strained, wide-open eyes.

The doctor came--it was Dr. Leach; and he knew him immediately, and told the gaping and curious bystanders who he was. He was very much shocked, and more shocked still when the white spread was drawn away, and the terrible truth revealed. The eyes of the wounded man followed him as he made his examination, but with no eagerness or hopefulness--only with a dull and awful sort of apathy.

"Do you know me, Captain Cavendish?" Dr. Leach asked, tenderly touching the heavy, dark hair falling over his face.

"Yes. How long----?"

He did not finish the sentence, not because he was unable to do it, but that he evidently thought he had finished it, and his eyes never once left the physician's face.

Dr. Leach looked very sadly down in the dark, inquiring eyes.

"My poor fellow!" he said, "it is hard, I know, and for one so young and so far from all your friends. It is hard to die like this; but it is Heaven's will, and we must submit."

"How long?" repeated the sufferer, as if he had not heard him, and with that steady, inquiring gaze.

"You mean, how long can you last? I am afraid--I am afraid, my poor boy, but a short time; not over three hours at the most."

The dark, searching eyes turned slowly away from his face, and fixed themselves on vacancy as before; but he showed no signs of any emotion whatever. Physical and mental sense of suffering and fearing seemed alike to have forsaken him in this last dreadful hour. He had been a bad man; the life that lay behind him was a shameful record. He had been a gamester, a swindler, a libertine, a robber, and a murderer; and now he was dying in his sins, in a dull stupor, without remorse for the past or fear of the awful future. Dr. Leach stooped over him again, wondering at his unnatural apathy.

"Would you like a clergyman, my poor boy?" he said.

"No!"

"Is there any one you would like to see? Your time is very short, remember."

Captain Cavendish turned to him with something like human interest in his glance, for the first time.

"I should like to see Val Blake," he said, "and Mr. Darcy."

"I'll send for them," said the doctor, going out, and dispatching a couple of messengers in hot haste. "He wants to make his will, I suppose," Dr. Leach thought, as he returned to the bedroom. "Poor fellow; and Val Blake was his friend!"

Dr. Leach had requested one of the messengers to go for the army-surgeon before he came back. He knew the case was utterly hopeless, but still it was better to have the surgeon there. He found his patient lying as he had left him, staring blankly at a lamp flaring on a table under the window, while the slow minutes trailed away, and his short span of life wore away. His last night on earth! Did he think of it as he lay there, never taking his eyes from the lamp-flame, even when the doctor came to his bedside again and held something to his lips.