THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND.

Evening Star, Issue 7177, 2 April 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND.

[By MaxwkUj Gray.] 4?i Rights Reserved. CHAPTER XV. Cyril’s direst anticipations had not reached capital conviction, though he had feared manslaughter, and even Sir Lionel Swayneatone had his doubts as to the justice of the graver charge. Oldport public opinion, which was naturally stirred to its depths, was divided between the two. Of the accused’s innocence it had not the slightest suspicion. The little town was Liberal, not to say Radical, in its politics, and disposed to think the worst of a gentleman in his dealings with those beneath him. Few people had a good word for a medical man of good birth, who was said to have taken advantage of both rank and profession to work such cruel harm as that imputed to Everard. The medical profession, strangely enough, had never been popular, skill in the healing art being usually attributed by the unlearned to the favor of the Evil One t a clever physician is prized and feared, but rarely loved. Even among the cultured there still lingers a faint repulsion for the man who is the only welcome guest in the day of sickness and peril, and society is only just beginning to honor the cultivated intellect and recognise the social value of the doctor.

The case of William Palmer, the notorious j poisoner, was then fresh in people’s minds, and the ease and impunity with which a skilful physician can become a murderer had awakened something of the old superstitious horror of the doctor’s occult knowledge in the public imagination. Browne-Stockham and his colleague, a retired merchant of limited intellect and still more limited knowledge, and whose birth and Hberal politics prejudiced him against Everard as a scion of a good old Tory family, were both strongly prepossessed against the innocence of a doctor who had manifested such unaccountable eagerness to get a footing in a humble family under pretence of exercising his skill. Dr Eastbrook had been ready and willing to attend Mrs Lee as usual in the preceding spring, as his evidence stated; Dr Everard had asked leave to attend with him, because it was an unusual and very interesting case, a thing neither magistrates nor coroner’s jury could understand. Dr Eastbrook, an older man, and too busy to be very eager about unusual cases, was not sorry to have Everard’s help, since the ease required more frequent visits than he could conveniently give, and finally he gave up the case to him altogether. This the public mind could conceive; but Everard’s gnat eagerness and assiduous watching of the sick woman needed some motive to account for it. What motive could there be save that sinister one of seeing Alma constantly and alone ? Thus many prejudices fathered together to precipitate Evorard’s oom, and although the prejudice of class was not so strong against him before the Judge and jury at the assizes, yet there his profession exposed him to as great disfavor. Everard once discussed with Cyril the Bubjeot of the doctor’s small popularity as compared with the clergyman’s, and Cyril accounted for it partly by the usefulness of the surgeon. “Clergymen,” he observed, in one of those bursts of ingenuous satire that delighted Everard, “ are of no use save at two or three august moments of life—when a man dies, gets married, or is born—therefore they inspire popular reverence as belonging to the ornamental and superfluous portion of existence—its fringes, so to speak. Doctors, on the contrary, cannot be dispensed with; their services are needed and obtained on the most homely occasions, and men never reverence the indispensable. Bread and cheese is taken as a matter of course, but the champagne of festivals is thought much of.” Cyril often affected a cynicism which amused Everard the more from its contrast with his supposed character. It was difficult to move through the dense crowd which gathered round the Oldport Town Hall when Everard issued from it at the conclusion of the magistrates’ inquiry, and public opinion expressed itself in hisses and groans as the vehicle in which he was being conveyed moved slowly, and not without some effort on the part of the guard of police, through the square. Not every day was there such an exciting event as an examination for murder in the town hall, nor was it often that a culprit of such high social standing appeared in the well-known dock. The little town wore quite a festal air. Street-musicians and barrows laden with nuts, oranges, and ginger-beer drove a thriving trade; and there was not a bar at public-house or hotel in the place which did not receive an access of custom during the inquiry. Nothing else was talked of, and the experiences of ages has shown that when mankind talk they must drink something more inspiriting than water; also that when they drink that something they invariably talk in proportion to its inspiriting qualities. Tea-tables are supposed to be the great centres of gossip, and their female devotees its high priestesses. This is a popular fallacy. The ladies bear their part valiantly, but they cannot match the men. From the West End club down to the humblest publichouse, male coteries are the great sources of social information, which arrives in a weakened second-hand form at the female tea-board, where, indeed, it is frequently robbed for obvious reasons of its most racy characteristics.

On the evening after the termination of the great murder case, the pleasant bowwindowed room behind the bar at Barton’s Hotel, which, as everybody knows, is opposite the town hall, was occupied not only by its nightly frequenters, but also by many less familiar guests, who dropped in ostensibly for a cigar and brandy or pale ale for the good of the house, but really to hear the news, or rather to enjoy the curious pleasure experienced by human bipeds in retelling ana rehearing from many different lips what they know perfectly already like the readers who enjoy the whole of “ The Ring and the Book.” Amongst these grave citizens was Mr Warner, the owner of the large linen-draper’s shop, which makes the High street so resplendent with plate-glass and fashionable fabrics.

“If ever I saw guilty written on a man’s face,” he observed thoughtfully, “it was stamped upon Everard’s. “ I never saw a fellow with such a brazen look,” returned young Cooper, of the great auctioneering firm. “ Eastbrook says he is awfully clever.” “Those fellows generally are,” added Strutt, the principal tailor, removing his cigar from his lips and looking lovingly at it. “ How I pity those poor Maitlands !” “Nice fellow, young Maitland! I’ve known him from a boy,” said Warner. “ They always deal with us. Ho was in my shop on the very day of the murder,” “Ah ! and he was in mine on that same day,”added Strutt. “Taking manners he has. Till he went to Cambridge, every thread he wore came from us. I know him well.”

“ Looks ill; trouble, perhaps,” chimed in young Mr West, cashier at the county bank. “ I hear that this Everard was bred up with him.”

“Hewas,” returned Warner; “butthis young Maitland’s manner is up to everything. The young scamp ! he came into our establishment on New Year’s Eve. Marches up to me with his hand held out, looking as if he'd come from London on purpose to see me. ' How are you, Warner ? A happy New Year!’ and so on. ‘How well you are looking !’ Inquires for every creature in my house. Presently asks if 1 can cash a cheque for him—cheque of Sir Lionel Swaynestone’s, ten guineas, as good paper as the Bank of England’s, of course. He wanted all gold, which we couldn’t quite do, and had to send a young man to Cave’s for some of it, ‘ This cheque is for charities in our East End parish, which is frightfully poor,’ said he, and so on, and so on. ‘And if you should happen by nilstake to slip in an additional guinea, Warner,’ says his worship, ‘l’ll promise you to overlook it for once.’ Well, there was something in the lad’s way that got the better of me, and I was weak enough to slip in the extra coin, though we make a point of keeping to local chanties; and, upon my Bonl, Ifeitaß if, I had received the favor, not he. Those are the manners to make one’s way in the world with.” ’ ** And those are the people who deserve

D 6 get on,” interposed the auctioneer; “ not your surly, defiant fellows, like this Everard. By George 1 to see him look at the witnesses. I fancy he’d like to have the physicking of some of them!” “That’s queer about the cheque,” said Strutt, the tailor. “ Why, he got us to cash him a cheque that same day, and would have it gold, too ! Our cheque was by the Vicar of Oldport—five guineas,” “ What I the same day ?” asked another citizen, who had been “What did he want with fifteen guineas in gold in his pocket ?” “ Well,” replied StrUtt, “ho said he couldn’t near paper; it never seemed real to him. And ho got over me with his extra coins just as he did over Warner. We showed him some new patent braces. ‘ Dear me, Strutt!’ says he, *is it possible that you don’t know that the younger clergy expect to have these things found them?' looking as grave as a judge. ‘ Found them, really, Mr Maitland ?’ says I. ‘To be sure 1 braces and smoking-caps, worked by devout females.’ Not much to say, but the quaintness of the manner tickled me, and one of our young hien laughed out. Maitland never smiled, but asked for some handkerchiefs. ‘ The faithful don’t supply handkerchiefs, unluckily,’ says he.” “ He didn’t look much like joking in the box, poor chap !” said Cooper, reflectively. “Wonder what he wanted with all that gold ?” “People are fond of gold, particularly ladies and clergymen,” observed young West, who was still more surprised than the tradesmen at Cyril’s passion for specie. He stroked his moustache thoughtfully, and wished that professional etiquette did not forbid him to relate his anecdote, which he thought might throw some light on the bag of coin found in the wood. Cyril had visited the bank on that same day, and drawn thirty pounds on his own account. West asked him the usual question “ Notes or gold ?” expecting to be asked for perhaps five pounds gold, and the rest paper, and looked a little surprised at the ready answer “Gold.” Cyril laughed. “ You think it odd to carry so much gold about, Mr West ?” he asked. “It is unusual, certainly, Mr Maitland, and, if it were known, would bo dangerous.” “Oh, no ohe suspects a starveling curate of being overburdened with coin ! A handful of sovereigns loose about me is a whim of mine. It makes me fancy myself a rich man; there is an Arabian Nights’ flavor about it. What a Dives you must feel when iron shovel up the sovereigns in that knowing ittle shovel of yours !” Mr West replied that he could more readily realise the sensations of Lazarus, and asked his customer if he did not frequently lose money, when he saw him carelessly drop the three little piles of gold into his waistcoat pockets. “ I might if I stood on my head,” returned Cyril, “ and that is not probable. If you should hear of a mild curate being murdered and robbed in the course of the next few days, you will be able to bear witness against the assassin. Nice weather for the season, isn’t it? Good morning.” “Fifteen and thirty make forty-five,” mused young West, “and two fellows would have at least five pounds gold more about them in the common course of things. Yet, to hear Maitland talk, you would think he never moved without his pockets full of specie. A whim of his ! Clergy can lie as well as others. ”

“I tell you what,” he added aloud, “I expect young Maitland could open people’s eyes about this murder, if he cared to. Those fifteen sovereigns went into that bag, I’ll lay any money.” “ Not it,” returned Cooper. _ “ A fellow wouldn’t ask a parson to help him in such a scrape, chum or no chum.” “ He’d ask the devil himself,” interposed young Durant, who was articled to his uncle, Everard’s solicitor. “In that case, he would turn to a lawyer,” retorted Cooper, slily. “Well,” pursued West, “did you ever see a fellow stutter over his evidence like that? And Maitland so ready with his tongue. He was afraid of incriminating his friend, poor chap!” “ I was sorry for Miss Maitland,” said Warner. “To see her tremble ! Somebody said she was engaged to Everard.” “ No engagement, my uncle says,” replieel Durant. “A pretty girl, like her brother, but older, I suppose.” “ Why, they are twins! Everybody knows the Malbourne twins,” said Mr Warner. “ An escape for her, if she cared for this doctor fellow. Nice girl; our people always like to serve her. Do you think they’ll hang him, Strutt ?” “ I tell you what,” broke in Burton, the landlord : “ it’s no hanging business. Ten to one, Lee attacked him. In any case, there was a stiff struggle. Look at the torn coat and the black eye.” “ If you try to murder me with a pint pot, Burton, and I round upon you, and hit out straight till I’m down, it’s none the less murder,” said another customer. “ This will be manslaughter at Belminster,” said the landlord, oracularly. “Who’ll bet upon it? “I'll take any odds.”

Even more surprised than Mr West was Lilian, when, on her parting with Cyril on his return to his duties, he asked her to lend him a couple of sovereigns. “ Why, you extravagant boy! Have you spent all those we gave you for your parish ?” she asked. Cyril shrugged his shoulders. “ You know the fellow of old, Lill, and_ how he scatters his coins. Only three guineas, all told, you know.” “ Oh, Cyll! And Sir Lionel’s ten ? ’ “On paper. You can’t pay your railway fare with a cheque. Oh yes, scold away. I ought to have brought more money with me, I dare say. I never carry coin about, dear; too sure to lose it. But, wonder of wonders, I do chance to have a five pound note. There! ” Cyril had repaired to the Rectory for the first time since New Year’s Eve to bid his mother good-bye. He could not bear to be there after what had occurred, he said, and he especially shrank, though he did not say so, from meeting Lilian. “ Poor, dear fellow! sensitive as he is, no wonder he cannot bear to be here,” commented Mr Maitland. “Itis a sore trial for us all,” ho sighed, as Lilian turned her head away. For he know now of Lilian’s love; she had told him all in the terrible quarter of an hour in his study on New Year’s Day, when he broke the horror of Everard’s arrest to her, and she reproached him passionately for his disbelief in the innocence of the accused. But Cyril was obliged to conquer his repugnance, and bid his invalid mother farewell, and the rush of emotion which overcame him in stepping over the threshold, so lately desecrated by Everard’s arrest, was thought only natural and creditable to him. Lilian met him there, and drew him aside to her room, where Everard’s gift of Guercino’s Guardian Anccl looked with his rapt, earnest gaze far away over the sorrowful earth to the distant heaven of joy and purity. “ Oh, Cyril!” cried Lilian, “ why did you not come before ? I have wanted you so. They are all against him. Every one believes him guilty but me. Tell me, dear—oh, tell me that one at least is true to him ! You are his friend ; you cannot think him guilty.” Cyril paused, his own emotion smothered, as it were, by this outburst of Lilian’s, an outburst so foreign to her usual calm selfcontrol and restrained strength; then he opened his arras in a rush of the old, lifelong affection, and clasped Lilian to his heart. “I do believe in him, he said ; he is as innocent as an unborn babe. I know it I know it!” ~. . „ “ Dear Cyril, I knew you would be true, replied Lilian. “ What shall we do, Cyril ? Oh ! what shall we do ?” “What, indeed?” returned Cyril, overcome by the unaccustomed passion of Lilian, whose tears mingled with his own, as the twins cried in each other’s arms, just as they had done in the old days of childhood.

“Keep up your heart, Lill,” said Cyril, caressingly, when they had recovered themselves a little. “ After all, what is it ? An idiotic mistake, a foolish mare’s nest, invented by these stupid rustics. A little inquiry will set all right,” “ But this verdict—oh, Cyll I" exclaimed

Lilian, letting her head drop once more on her brother’s shoulder and weeping afresh. “What is the verdict?” asked Cyril, rather tremulously, as he stroked the rich waves of Lilian’s hair, and rejoiced that she could not see his face. “ Surely not ?” “ Murder,” replied Lilian, in low, shuddering tones. Cyril uttered an exclamation. Was it an oath ? Lilian did not eVen pause to commend it to the recording angel’s lenience. Blue fire shot from his eyes, and he ground his teeth.

“ Asses !” he exclaimed at last. “ Never mind the coroner and his stupid verdict, darling,” he added soothingly. “Coroners happily do not administer justice. Avery little evidence will set things straight. Henry was not in the wood. They cannot prove him to have beeu in two places at once. Widow Dove being out that night wbs unlucky,” “Everything Seems unlucky,” sighed Lilian. “The stars in their courses fight against him, Cyril.” Lilian raised her head and looked sorrowfully and appealingly, as it seemed, into her brother’s eyes; and a rush of deep affection, springing from the purest sources in his nature, clouded the young man’s glance, and he clasped her once more Srotectiugly to his breast, feeling, as in the ays of his spotless boyhood, that no human being could ever be so close and dear to him as this twin-sister, whose being was so closely and mysteriously interwoven with his own. All affections and ties that had since arisen seemed as nothing in comparison with this one strong bond of primal instinctive love ; even the bond of marriage seemed but a secondary thing by the side of it. The twins had drifted apart of late years. They had thought that the old childish union must naturally grow weaker with the increasing complex claims of mature life; but now they realised that it had only sunk out of sight for a time, like an underground stream, to break forth again with renewed power. Lilian’s weakness and momentary self-abandonment called out all that was manliest and best in Cyril. Hers, he knew, was the deeper, stronger nature. He leant habitually on her, and now he was touched to find her leaning on him ; and the tears they shed together renewed and reconsecrated the strong kinship between them, like some holy chrism. He felt a happier and better man than he had been for many weary months after that mingling of tears, and the thought flashed through him, with a mingling of pain and sweetness, that they were too closely united not to stand or fall together; either lie must drag Lilian down, or she must raise him up. Lilian would surely, he thought, as he gazed into her clear, deep beautiful eyes, bs in some way his salvation. In the meantime, he soothed and comforted her. “You see, Lill,” he said, “somebody killed poor Lee, probably by accident. And if things came to the worst with Everard, that somebody would certainly come forward and clear him.”

This seemed curious reasoning, and yet it comforted Lilian strangely. “My great hope is in Alma,” she said. “I am sure she can throw light upon the affair.” A hot flame shot over Cyril’s face, and he turned his gaze from his sister’s and looked out of the window. “No doubt,” he replied. “ And then,” continued Lilian, lifting her head with a proud, indignant flush, “ this hideous aspersion must vanish.” “ Good heavens ! Lilian, do you mean that they ” “You have not followed the evidence, Cyril?” asked Lilian. “Get the ‘Advertiser,’ and you will see. Yes, they dare—they actually dare,” she continued, drawing herself up, and walking up and down with gestures of indignant disdain, while her eyes shot forth such a stream of light as Cyril’s were wont to do, “to charge him with Alma’s ruin!”

The twins had been looking more alike than ever during their impassioned interview, till Lilian, in her fiery indignation, seemed like an intensified Cyril; but now the softness and calm strength, which seemed to have passed from the sister to the brother, suddenly left the latter, and his face changed and hardened, but he said nothing. “ My hope is that Alma may not die,” continued Lilian, not observing him in the intensity of her passion. “Die!” interrupted Cyril, in a deep, strange voice, while his breath came gaspingly. “Is there danger ?” “ Yes; but God is good. He will not let her die till she has proved Henry’s innocence.”

Cyril was trembling with a terrible hope, and yet a dread of what he dared not even in thought acknowledge. He could not speak for some moments, but looked out into the chill garden, smothering this fierce emotion, and striving to stifle a wish that formed itself in spite of his better nature. At last he turned to Lilian, whose unexhausted passion continued to pour itself out in the same strain, with the radiant smile whose magnetism so few could resist, “ What idiots we are, Lill,” he said, “ wasting our fears upon this phantom ! Old Hal will be here laughing at the absurd mistake in a week. There needs no interposition of Providence to arrange that simple matter. And, if it were not so,” he added, his brow darkening, “ he must be free—at any cost—at any cost,” he repeated, below his breath.

“ At any cost,” he repeated, as he drove his father into Oldport; and he turned and looked upon the grey head by his side with a strange mixture of tenderness and dismay. Mr Maitland was conversing cheerily as they drove along, with a view to keeping up Cyril’s spirits, and carefully avoiding the subject which was uppermost in everybody’s mind. “ So Marion declines to come to us,” he said at last. “Yes,” replied Cyril, in the plaintive tone with which he usually discussed small annoyances: “ She says that her place is at Woodlands under present circumstances,” “ Poor dear! She is a brave girl. Perhaps she is right. While George and his wife are there she will be cared for. Yes, she is right. Yet for Lilian’s sake—well Why, Cyril lad,” he added, as Cyril lifted his hat for a moment to cool his hot forehead, just as they were passing the Temple and the fatal wood above it, “ that is a nasty bruise on your head ! How did you get it ?” “That?” replied Cyril, replacing his hat with a smile, and gently flicking the pony into a better pace. “ Oh, I did that ages ago ! I ran against a door in the dark. Here are the Swaynestones. How well Ethel sits her horse ! Maude is inclined to be heavy.” “ Those poor Maitlands!” Maude Swaynestone was saying to her sister. “ How glad Cyril must be to get back to his parish !” “ How he must hate papa!” returned Ethel, hotly, “ or despise him for arresting an innocent man on such flimsy grounds !” “ My dear Ethel, your weakness for Dr Everard carries you over the bounds of reason.” When Cyril reached the railway station he obtained every local paper published, and forgot to pay for them in his eagerness till gently reminded. “ Just in time, sir,” the stallkeeper said, as he handed him his change. “We have no copies of the ‘ Advertiser ’ left. All the papers printed double editions, too. The Everards and Maitlands are so well known in these parts.” “ Are they ?” replied Cyril, turning away with a flash of blue fire from his eyes. “ Well, I am Mowed!” cried the stallkeeper’s boy-assistant, doubled up with laughing. “ If that ain’t young Maitland hisself !” Cyril’s hand shook as he opened the sheets and ran his eye down the columns till he saw, in large capitals: “The SWaynestone Murder. Adjourned Inquest. Verdict.” He held the paper so as to shield his face from the gaze of his fellow-travellers, and read with growing horror, until cold drops stood on his forehead, and his lips grew dry and hard. “ I never dreamed of this," he muttered. “ Heaven is my witness, I never dreamed of it!” Life seemed to him one hopeless tangle of error and misery, against which he was powerless to strive. Labyrinth after labyrinth seemed to draw him within their interminable folds, till bis brain was dazed and his heart sick. Nowhere could he catch the clue to any straight course; by no means could he unwind the deadly coil that Fate had wound so closely and thickly round

him; as he thought, forgetting his own share in the work. What was the good, he wondered, of being born into a world so complex, so bewildering, so full of complicated motive and baffled purpose, so beset by the Devil and all his works ? _ He felt as weak as any weaned child, as terrified as a boy in the dark, in the presence of the gigantic evils striding upon him.; his will seemed to melt like wax within him. Then he remembered Lilian in her unwonted passion, and the memory was like the balm of morning breezes through the open window of a sick-room, and he made a stand against the mental and moral swoon which threatened him. Yes, in Lilian, liis better self, the saving clause of his being spoke, and he murmured to himself once more “ At any cost.” Some fresh travellers got in at Belminster, and Cyril entered into conversation with them, which became animated as they touched upon congenial topics. “ What a brilliant lad !” one of them observed to his companion, as they drove away from Waterloo; “one of the halfdozen who can talk. ” “It will bo all right,” Cyril thought to himself, as he sped eastward in his hansom through the crowded streets; “ something will turn up—some happy chance.” (To be continued.)