Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 99

"He deserves to lie in prison, does Monsieur Herbert!"

"Why do you say that, mademoiselle?" asked Minny resentfully.

"Because he is a fool," politely returned mademoiselle. "He say, does he not, that he was not home at the time. It is well; but why does he not say where he was? I think he is a fool, me."

"You may as well say outright, mademoiselle, that you think him guilty!"

retorted Minny.

"But I not think him guilty," dissented mademoiselle. "I have said from the first that he was not guilty. I think he is not one capable of doing such an injury, to his brother or to any one else. I used to be great friends with Monsieur Herbert once, when I gave him those Italian lessons, and I never saw to make me believe his disposition was a cruel."

In point of fact, the governess, more explicitly than any one else in the house, had unceasingly declared her belief in Herbert's innocence.

Truly and sincerely she did not believe him capable of so grievous a crime. He was not of a cruel or revengeful disposition: certainly not one to lie in wait, and attack another savagely and secretly. She had never believed that he was, and would not believe it now. Neither had his family. Sergeant Delves' opinion was, that whoever had attacked Anthony _had_ lain in wait for him in the dining room, and had sprung upon him as he entered. It is possible, however, that the same point staggered mademoiselle that staggered the rest--Herbert Dare's refusal to state where he was at the time. Believing, as she did, that he could account for it if he chose, she deemed herself perfectly justified in applying to him the complimentary epithet you have just heard. She expressed true sympathy and regret at the untimely fate of Anthony, lamenting him much and genuinely.

Upon Cyril and George the punishment also fell. With one brother not cold in his grave, and the other thrown into gaol to await his trial for murder, they could not, for shame, pursue their amus.e.m.e.nts as formerly; and amus.e.m.e.nts to Cyril and George Dare had become a necessity of daily life. Their friends and companions were growing shy of them--or they fancied it. Conscience is all too suggestive. They fancied people shunned them when they walked along the street: Cyril, even, as he stood in Samuel Lynn's room at the manufactory, thought the men, as they pa.s.sed in and out, looked askance at him. Very likely it was only imagination. George Dare had set his heart upon a commission; one of the members for the city had made a half-promise to Mr. Dare that he would "see what could be done at the Horse Guards." Failing available interest in that quarter, George was in hope that his father would screw out money to purchase one. But, until Herbert was proved innocent (if that time should ever arrive), the question of his entering the army must remain in abeyance. This state of things altogether did not give pleasure to Cyril and George Dare. But there was no remedy for it, and they had to content themselves with sundry private explosions of temper, by way of relief to their minds.

Yes, the evil fell upon all; upon the parents and upon the children. Of course, the latter suffered nothing in comparison with Mr. and Mrs.

Dare. Unhappy days, restless nights, were their portion now: the world seemed to be growing too miserable to live in.

"There must be a fatality upon the boys!" Mr. Dare exclaimed one day, in the bitterness of his spirit, as he paced the room with restless steps, his wife sitting moodily, her elbow on the centre-table, her cheek pressed upon her hand. "Unless there had been a fatality upon them, they never could have turned out as they have."

Mrs. Dare resented the speech. In her unhappy frame of mind, which told terribly upon her temper, it seemed a sort of relief to resent everything. If Mr. Dare spoke against their sons, she stood up for them.

"Turned out!" she repeated angrily.

"Let us say, as things have turned out, then, if you will. They appear to be turning out pretty badly, as it seems to me. The boys have had every indulgence in life: they have enjoyed a luxurious home; they have ruined me to supply their extravagances----"

"Ruined you!" again resented Mrs. Dare.

"Ay; ruined. It has all but come to it. And yet, what good has the indulgence or have the advantages brought them? Far better--I begin to see it now--that they had been reared to self-denial; made to work for their daily bread."

"How can you give utterance to such things!" rejoined Mrs. Dare, in a chafed tone.

Mr. Dare stopped in his restless pacing, and confronted his wife. "Are we happy in our sons? Speak the truth."

"How could any one be happy, overwhelmed with a misfortune such as this?"

"Put that aside: what are they without it? Rebellious to us; badly conducted in the sight of the world."

"Who says they are badly conducted?" asked Mrs. Dare, an undercurrent of consciousness whispering that she need not have made the objection.

"They may be a little wild; but it is a common failing with those of their age and condition. Their faults are only faults of youth and of uncurbed spirits."

"I wish, then, their spirits had been curbed," was Mr. Dare's reply. "It is useless now to reproach each other," he continued, resuming his walk; "but there must have been something radically wrong in their bringing-up. Anthony, gone: Herbert, perhaps, to follow him by almost a worse death, certainly a more disgraceful one: Cyril----" Mr. Dare stopped abruptly in his catalogue, and went on more generally. "There is no comfort in them for us: there never will be any."

"What can you bring against Cyril?" sharply asked Mrs. Dare. It may be, that these complaints of her husband fretted her temper; chafed, perhaps, her conscience. Certain it was, they rendered her irritable; and Mr. Dare had latterly indulged in them frequently. "If Cyril is a little wild, it is a gentlemanly failing. There's nothing else to urge against him."

"Is theft gentlemanly?"

"Theft!" repeated Mrs. Dare.

"Theft. I have concealed many things from you, Julia, wis.h.i.+ng to spare your feelings. But it may be as well now that you should know a little more of what your sons really are. Cyril might have stood where Herbert will stand--at the criminal bar; though for a crime of lesser degree.

For all I can tell, he may stand at it still."

Mrs. Dare looked scared. "What has he done?" she asked, her tone growing timid.

"I say that I have kept these things from you. I wish I could have kept them from you always; but it seems to me that exposure is arising in many ways, and it is better that you should be prepared for it, if it must come. I awake now in the morning to apprehension; I am alarmed throughout the day at my own shadow, dreading what unknown fate may not be falling upon them. Herbert in peril of the hangman: Cyril in peril of a forced voyage to the penal settlements."

A sensation of utter fear stole over Mrs. Dare. For the moment, she could not speak. But she rallied her powers to defend Cyril.

"I think Cyril is hardly used, what with one thing and another. He was to have gone on that French journey, and at the last moment was pushed out of it for Halliburton. I felt more vexed at it, almost, than Cyril himself, and I spoke a word of my mind to Mrs. Ashley."

"You did?"

"Yes. I did not speak of it in the light of disappointment to Cyril; the actual fact of not taking the journey; so much as of the vexation he experienced at being supplanted by one whom he--whom we all--consider inferior to himself, William Halliburton. I let Mrs. Ashley know that we regarded it as a most unmerited and uncalled-for slight; and I took care to drop a hint that we believed Halliburton to have been guilty in that cheque affair."

Mr. Dare paused. "What did Mrs. Ashley say?" he presently asked.

"She said very little. I never saw her so frigid. She intimated that Mr.

Ashley was a competent judge of his own business----"

"I mean as to the cheque?" interrupted Mr. Dare.

"She was more frigid over that than over the other. She preferred not to discuss it, she answered; who might have stolen it; or who not."

"I can set you right on both points," said Mr. Dare. "Cyril came to me, complaining of being superseded in this French journey, and I complied with his request, that I should go and remonstrate with Mr.

Ashley--being a simpleton for my pains. Mr. Ashley informed me that he never had entertained the slightest intention of despatching Cyril, and why Cyril should have taken up the notion, he could not tell. Mr. Ashley went on to say that he did not consider Cyril sufficiently steady to be intrusted abroad alone----"

"Steady!" echoed Mrs. Dare. "What has steadiness to do with executing business? And, as to being alone, Quaker Lynn went over also."

"But at the outset, which was the time I spoke to him, Mr. Ashley's intention was to dispatch only one--Halliburton. He said that Cyril's want of steadiness would always have been a bar to his thinking of him.

Shall I go on and enlighten you on the other point--the cheque?" Mr.

Dare added, after a pause.

"Y--es," she answered, a nervous dread causing her to speak with hesitation. Had she a foreshadowing of what was coming?

"It was Cyril who took it," said Mr. Dare, dropping his voice to a whisper.

"Cyril!" she gasped.

"Our son, Cyril. No other."

Mrs. Dare took her hand from her cheek, and leaned back in the chair.

She was very pale.

"He was traced to White's shop, where he changed the cheque for gold. He had put on Herbert's cloak, the plaid lining outside. When he began to fear detection, he ripped the lining out, and left the cloak in the state it is; now in the possession of the police. Some of the jags and cuts have been sewn up, I suppose by one of the servants: I made no close inquiries. That cloak," he added, with a pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ver, "might tell queer tales of our sons, if it were able to speak."

"How did you know it was Cyril?" breathed Mrs. Dare.

"From Delves."