第173章

Mr. Carlyle grasped his hand. "Doctor, I /wish/ you could save him!" he passionately uttered.

"Ah, Carlyle! If we humble mites of human doctors could but keep those whom it is the Great Physician's pleasure to take, how we should be run after! There's hidden mercy, remember, in the darkest cloud.

Farewell my friend."

Mr. Carlyle returned to the room. He approached Lady Isabel, looking down upon her as she sat; not that he could see much of her face.

"These are grievous tidings. But you were more prepared for them, I fancy, than I was."

She started suddenly up, approached the window, and looked out, as if she saw somebody passing whom she would gaze at. All of emotion was stirred up within her--her temples throbbed, her throat beat, her breath became hysterical. Could she bear thus to hold confidential converse with him over the state of their child? She pulled off her gloves for coolness to her burning hands, she wiped the moisture from her pale forehead, she struggled manfully for calmness. What excuse could she offer to Mr. Carlyle?

"I had begun to like the boy so very much, sir," she said, half turning round. "And the doctor's fiat, too plainly pronounced has given me pain; pain to agitation."

Again Mr. Carlyle approached her, following close up to where she stood. "You are very kind, thus to feel an interest in my child."

She did not answer.

"Here, papa, papa! I want you," cried William, breaking into the room.

"Let me walk home with you? Are you going to walk?"

How could he find it in his heart to deny anything to the child then?

"Very well," he said. "Stay here till I come for you."

"We are going home with papa," proclaimed William to Madame Vine.

Madame Vine did not relish the news. But there was no help for it. In a very short time Mr. Carlyle appeared, and they set off; he holding William's hand; madame walking on the other side of the child.

"Where's William Vane, papa?" asked the boy.

"He has gone on with Lord Mount Severn."

Scarcely had the words been spoken, when some one came bolting out of the post-office, and met them face to face; almost ran against them in fact, creating some hindrance. The man looked confused, and slunk off into the gutter. And you will not wonder that he did, when you hear that it was Francis Levison. William, child like, turned his head to gaze at the intruder.

"I would not be an ugly bad man like him for the world," quoth he, as he turned his back again. "Would you, papa?"

Mr. Carlyle did not answer, and Isabel cast an involuntary glance upon him from her white face. His was impassive, save that a cast of ineffable scorn marred the delicate beauty of his lips. If humiliation for the past had never wrung Lady Isabel's heart before, it would have wrung it then.

At Mr. Justice Hare's gate they encountered that gentleman, who appeared to be standing there to give himself an airing. William caught sight of Mrs. Hare seated on the garden bench, outside the window, and ran to kiss her. All the children loved Mrs. Hare. The justice was looking--not pale; that would not be a term half strong enough: but yellow. The curls of his best wig were limp, and all his pomposity appeared to have gone out of him.

"I say, Carlyle, what on earth's this?" cried he, in a tone that, for him, was wonderfully subdued and meek. "I was not on the bench this afternoon, but Pinner has been telling me--of an application that was made to them in private. It's not true, you know; it can't be; it's too far-fetched a tale. What do you know about it?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Carlyle. "I do not know what you are talking of. I have been privy to no application."

"It seems they want to make out now that Dick never murdered Hallijohn," proceeded the justice, in a half whisper, glancing round as if to be sure that there were no eaves-droppers amidst the trees.

"Oh," said Mr. Carlyle.

"But that Levison did. /Levison/!"

Mr. Carlyle made no reply, save by a gesture; his face more impassive than before. Not so another face beside him, a fair face; that turned white again with emotion as she listened.

"But it can't be, you know. It can't, I say."

"So far as Richard's innocence goes, of that I have long been convinced," spoke Mr. Carlyle.

"And that Levison's guilty?" returned the justice, opening his eyes in puzzled wonderment.

"I have no opinion upon that point," was the cold rejoinder.

"It's impossible, I say. Dick can't be innocent. You may as well tell me that the world's turned upside down."

"It is, sometimes, I think. That Richard was not the guilty man will be proved yet, justice, in the broad face of day."

"If--if--that other did do it, I should think you'd take the warrant out of the hands of the police and capture him yourself."

"I would not touch him with a pair of tongs," spoke Mr. Carlyle, his lips curling again. "If the man goes to his punishment, he goes; but I do not help him on his road thither."

"/Can/ Dick be innocent?" mused the justice, returning to the thought which so troubled his mind. "Then why has he kept away? Why did he not come back and say so?"

"That you might deliver him up, justice. You know you took an oath to do it."

The justice looked green, and remarkably humble.

"Oh, but Carlyle," impulsively spoke he, the thought occurring to him, "what an awful revenge this would have been for you on--somebody--had she lived. How her false step would have come home to her now!"

"False steps come home to most people," responded Mr. Carlyle, as he took William by the hand, who then ran up. And, lifting his hat to Mrs. Hare in the distance, he walked on.

She, Lady Isabel, walked on, too, by the side of the child, as before, walked on with a shivering frame, and a heart sick unto death. The justice looked after her, his mind unoccupied. He was in a maze of bewilderment. Richard innocent! Richard, whom he had striven to pursue to a shameful end! And that other the guilty one! The world /was/ turning upside down.