A Dark Night's Work Part 18

"Oh, yes! he's in his dressing-room this half-hour. My lady is coming down directly. It is just breakfast-time."

"Can't you put it off and come again, a little later?" said he, turning once more to Ellinor--white Ellinor! trembling Ellinor!

"No! please let me come in. I will wait. I am sure Judge Corbet will see me, if you will tell him I am here. Miss Wilkins. He will know the name."

"Well, then; will you wait here till I have got breakfast in?" said the man, letting her into the hall, and pointing to the bench there, he took her, from her dress, to be a lady's-maid or governess, or at most a tradesman's daughter; and, besides, he was behindhand with all his preparations. She came in and sat down.

"You will tell him I am here," she said faintly.

"Oh, yes, never fear: I'll send up word, though I don't believe he'll come to you before breakfast."

He told a page, who ran upstairs, and, knocking at the judge's door, said that a Miss Jenkins wanted to speak to him.

"Who?" asked the judge from the inside.

"Miss Jenkins. She said you would know the name, sir."

"Not I. Tell her to wait."

So Ellinor waited. Presently down the stairs, with slow deliberate dignity, came the handsome Lady Corbet, in her rustling silks and ample petticoats, carrying her fine boy, and followed by her majestic nurse.

She was ill-pleased that any one should come and take up her husband's time when he was at home, and supposed to be enjoying domestic leisure; and her imperious, inconsiderate nature did not prompt her to any civility towards the gentle creature sitting down, weary and heart-sick, in her house. On the contrary, she looked her over as she slowly descended, till Ellinor shrank abashed from the steady gaze of the large black eyes. Then she, her baby and nurse, disappeared into the large dining-room, into which all the preparations for breakfast had been carried.

The next person to come down would be the judge. Ellinor instinctively put down her veil. She heard his quick decided step; she had known it well of old.

He gave one of his sharp, shrewd glances at the person sitting in the hall and waiting to speak to him, and his practised eye recognised the lady at once, in spite of her travel-worn dress.

"Will you just come into this room?" said he, opening the door of his study, to the front of the house: the dining-room was to the back; they communicated by folding-doors.

The astute lawyer placed himself with his back to the window; it was the natural position of the master of the apartment; but it also gave him the advantage of seeing his companion's face in full light. Ellinor lifted her veil; it had only been a dislike to a recognition in the hall which had made her put it down.

Judge Corbet's countenance changed more than hers; she had been prepared for the interview; he was not. But he usually had the full command of the expression on his face.

"Ellinor! Miss Wilkins! is it you?" And he went forwards, holding out his hand with cordial greeting, under which the embarra.s.sment, if he felt any, was carefully concealed. She could not speak all at once in the way she wished.

"That stupid Henry told me 'Jenkins!' I beg your pardon. How could they put you down to sit in the hall? You must come in and have some breakfast with us; Lady Corbet will be delighted, I'm sure." His sense of the awkwardness of the meeting with the woman who was once to have been his wife, and of the probable introduction which was to follow to the woman who was his actual wife grew upon him, and made him speak a little hurriedly. Ellinor's next words were a wonderful relief; and her soft gentle way of speaking was like the touch of a cooling balsam.

"Thank you, you must excuse me. I am come strictly on business, otherwise I should never have thought of calling on you at such an hour.

It is about poor Dixon."

"Ah! I thought as much!" said the judge, handing her a chair, and sitting down himself. He tried to compose his mind to business, but in spite of his strength of character, and his present efforts, the remembrance of old times would come back at the sound of her voice. He wondered if he was as much changed in appearance as she struck him as being in that first look of recognition; after that first glance he rather avoided meeting her eyes.

"I knew how much you would feel it. Some one at h.e.l.lingford told me you were abroad, in Rome, I think. But you must not distress yourself unnecessarily; the sentence is sure to be commuted to transportation, or something equivalent. I was talking to the Home Secretary about it only last night. Lapse of time and subsequent good character quite preclude any idea of capital punishment." All the time that he said this he had other thoughts at the back of his mind--some curiosity, a little regret, a touch of remorse, a wonder how the meeting (which, of course, would have to be some time) between Lady Corbet and Ellinor would go off; but he spoke clearly enough on the subject in hand, and no outward mark of distraction from it appeared.

Ellinor answered:

"I came to tell you, what I suppose may be told to any judge, in confidence and full reliance on his secrecy, that Abraham Dixon was not the murderer." She stopped short, and choked a little.

The judge looked sharply at her.

"Then you know who was?" said he.

"Yes," she replied, with a low, steady voice, looking him full in the face, with sad, solemn eyes.

The truth flashed into his mind. He shaded his face, and did not speak for a minute or two. Then he said, not looking up, a little hoa.r.s.ely, "This, then, was the shame you told me of long ago?"

"Yes," said she.

Both sat quite still; quite silent for some time. Through the silence a sharp, clear voice was heard speaking through the folding-doors.

"Take the kedgeree down, and tell the cook to keep it hot for the judge.

It is so tiresome people coming on business here, as if the judge had not his proper hours for being at chambers."

He got up hastily, and went into the dining-room; but he had audibly some difficulty in curbing his wife's irritation.

When he came back, Ellinor said:

"I am afraid I ought not to have come here now."

"Oh! it's all nonsense!" said he, in a tone of annoyance. "You've done quite right." He seated himself where he had been before; and again half covered his face with his hand.

"And Dixon knew of this. I believe I must put the fact plainly--to you--your father was the guilty person? he murdered Dunster?"

"Yes. If you call it murder. It was done by a blow, in the heat of pa.s.sion. No one can ever tell how Dunster always irritated papa," said Ellinor, in a stupid, heavy way; and then she sighed.

"How do you know this?" There was a kind of tender reluctance in the judge's voice, as he put all these questions. Ellinor had made up her mind beforehand that something like them must be asked, and must also be answered; but she spoke like a sleep-walker.

"I came into papa's room just after he had struck Mr. Dunster the blow.

He was lying insensible, as we thought--dead, as he really was."

"What was Dixon's part in it? He must have known a good deal about it.

And the horse-lancet that was found with his name upon it?"

"Papa went to wake Dixon, and he brought his fleam--I suppose to try and bleed him. I have said enough, have I not? I seem so confused. But I will answer any question to make it appear that Dixon is innocent."

The judge had been noting all down. He sat still now without replying to her. Then he wrote rapidly, referring to his previous paper, from time to time. In five minutes or so he read the facts which Ellinor had stated, as he now arranged them, in a legal and connected form. He just asked her one or two trivial questions as he did so. Then he read it over to her, and asked her to sign it. She took up the pen, and held it, hesitating.

"This will never be made public?" said she.

"No; I shall take care that no one but the Home Secretary sees it."

"Thank you. I could not help it, now it has come to this."

"There are not many men like Dixon," said the judge, almost to himself, as he sealed the paper in an envelope.

"No," said Ellinor; "I never knew any one so faithful."

And just at the same moment the reflection on a less faithful person that these words might seem to imply struck both of them, and each instinctively glanced at the other.

"Ellinor!" said the judge, after a moment's pause, "we are friends, I hope?"