Chapter XII: ‘’tis Held That Sorrow Makes Us Wise.’

Throughout the tedious journey by the night mail Alexis supports and comforts Sibyl by his presence. All bitterness of feeling has passed out of his mind. He sees his wife the victim of a false accusation, and he is ready to pity and defend her.

‘You do not believe these men, Alex?’ she repeats many times during that summer night as she clings closer to her husband with a shiver as of cold, though the midsummer air is mild and balmy. ‘You do not believe this horrible accusation, dear?’

‘Not a word, not a breath,’ he answers, cheerily. ‘These mistakes are common enough, love. It will be easily set right. You have only to keep up your courage and trust in Providence and me.’

‘Oh, Alex, how good you are! and how little I deserve your goodness!’ she answers, with a stifled sob.

Mr. Judbury, though hardened by much travelling on the stormy path of official life, shows some delicacy of feeling. He sends his follower to a second-class carriage, and takes his seat as far from Mr. and Mrs. Secretan as the limits of a first-class compartment will allow. Nay, he is benevolent enough to refresh himself with occasional comfortable naps, but is always wakeful and alert when speed slackens and the train stops. He apparently considers that an attempt to escape from the train at full speed is an evil not to be apprehended.

So the soft summer morning dawns gradually, mysteriously, with a slow lightening of the landscape and a faint breath of chiller air creeping among the woods and across the hill-tops, and Aurora sees Mr. Judbury reposing luxuriously in his padded corner with a red silk handkerchief draped picturesquely about his bald head, and his manly chest in a manner doubled up into his shepherd’s plaid waistcoat. The new-born day sheds but a sickly light upon Sibyl’s worn face, as it leans against her husband’s shoulder, and Alexis, scrutinizing it in that clear light, sees how marked and deep is the change that has been wrought there. Care has engraven lines that happiness can never erase. This pallid countenance, with sunken eyes, ringed with purple shadow, is but the ghost of the fair face that shone upon him in Mrs. Hazleton’s drawing-room. Deepest pity moves him as he gazes on that altered beauty, lovely still, for the lines have the perfection of the sculptor’s marble--a beauty that neither age nor death, sickness nor care can deface,--but the glow and brightness of colouring are gone. Sibyl is no longer a beauty for the vulgar eye to admire, no longer the handsomest woman in Redcastle.

That melancholy journey comes to an end at last. They arrive at Krampston in the early morning, and after waiting nearly an hour in a labyrinthine terminus get a train to convey them to Redcastle, which provincial shrine of the genius of quietude they reach at an hour which Mr. Judbury picturesquely describes as breakfast-time. From the Redcastle station, naturally half a mile out of the town, they drive to Redcastle Jail, a clean and modern building, of Gothic architecture, occupying an important site on the high road above Bar, an edifice which is described in local handbooks as an ornament to the town. Sibyl has ridden and driven past its mediæval gateway many a time, and has glanced at the lancet windows with a ladylike indifference to the life going on behind them. It seems a curious thing--a severance from all the outer world and the common round of life--to be driven under that stony arch, and along that smooth gravel drive, and to hear the iron gate close behind her with a clang that sounds like the snap of the shears of Atropos.

They all go into a stone-flagged hall together, a hall in which cleanliness and order reign supreme, and in which the ticking of a large clock overpowers all the sound of humanity. Here there is a brief consultation held between Mr. Judbury and an official, and, after a little humming and hawing, Sibyl is conducted to a small plainly furnished room, which is hardly to be called a cell. There is a bedchamber adjoining, and both rooms are guarded with substantial doors, ponderously locked and bolted, but the place is not so bad as the dungeon she has pictured to herself with a shudder during that long journey. She has fancied herself crouching in a stone cell, with a little straw in a corner, and a large iron ring against the wall, to which she would perchance be chained, while between massive iron bars, high up in the wall, crept a faint gleam of light. This is the only kind of dungeon with which painters and poets have made her familiar.

Alexis has not been allowed to accompany his wife to the room allotted to her, but on his explaining the case to the warder he is treated with considerable civility, and taken straight to the governor of the prison, a young man who has lately exchanged a military career for the guardianship of criminals. From this gentleman Alexis receives every assurance of sympathy, and to this gentleman, Captain Heathcote, he gives a brief history of his married life, telling nothing that can throw discredit upon Sibyl, but alleging her attachment to her uncle Stephen Trenchard, as the reason of their separation and her concealment of her marriage.

‘It happened, unfortunately, that the Secretans and Trenchards were, like the Montagues and Capulets, foes to the death,’ he tells Captain Heathcote. ‘There was an old feud between my poor father and Stephen Trenchard, the circumstances of which I need not enter into. I believe my father was the injured person in that quarrel; my wife naturally believed her uncle in the right. We were quietly married, in London, and my wife kept her marriage a secret from her family. When Mr. Trenchard came home from India he asked her to go and live with him. My circumstances at that time were at very low water, and I had no home to give my wife. So she came to Redcastle, resumed her maiden name, and lived under her uncle’s roof, until his attempt to force her into a marriage with an East Indian _protégé_ of his compelled her to leave his house.’

Captain Heathcote listens, and is thoughtful. The story sounds credible enough, and is in some measure confirmed by the copy of the marriage register, which Alexis shows the captain. Captain Heathcote, upon whose military status Redcastle society looks kindly, though inclined to be somewhat supercilious about his official position, has met Sibyl at Colonel Stormont’s, and it goes hard with him to imagine that she can have been capable of this hideous crime which is imputed to her. Yet it must be confessed that there was never a more awkward combination of circumstances. Her secret flight--coincident with her uncle’s death; her possession of the poison--or the same kind of poison--by which he died; the finding of the empty bottle in her work-basket; and now this revealment of her marriage, so long concealed from those among whom she has lived--her nearest friends and kindred--these things suggest a capacity for deceit--a disposition in which duplicity is second nature. These considerations make Captain Heathcote grave and thoughtful, but he is not the less courteous and obliging.

‘You may be assured I shall do all in my power to lessen the painfulness of Miss--I beg your pardon--Mrs. Secretan’s position. We are never very severe in our treatment of persons who are here only under suspicion; and until Mrs. Secretan is committed for trial--which I trust she will not be--we shall contrive to relax our rules as much as possible in her favour. Burton tells me he has given her comfortable rooms.’

‘You are very good. Please God she will not be long under this horrible suspicion. I imagine that directly the matter is investigated her innocence must appear; but in the meanwhile I am most grateful for your kindness. My wife is looking very ill. I think she really requires medical attendance. Her uncle is a medical man in this town, perhaps it would be as well for him to see her, if it might be allowed.’

‘Certainly. Dr. Faunthorpe is not our official surgeon, but he might see Mrs. Secretan.’

‘Thanks. And may I be allowed to see her?’

‘As often as you like; but not alone. I shall be obliged to place a female warder in Mrs. Secretan’s room.’

‘I am not likely to have anything to say which the warder may not hear; and I shall be glad to know that my wife is not alone. She is in a very low state of health, and will be all the better for companionship, however humble.’

‘You would like to see her, perhaps, before you leave?’

‘Very much.’

‘Then we’ll go to her.’

Captain Heathcote leads the way to a clean and airy corridor, beckons to a warder to unlock a door, and admits Alexis into the prisoner’s room.

Sibyl is sitting listlessly by the open window--a closely barred window looking into the stone quadrangle where the prisoners are solemnly tramping, single file, in a circle, for their regulation hour of air and exercise. A respectable young woman, in a white muslin cap, has just brought a cup of tea and a plate of bread and butter for the new arrival. There is no question of jail fare yet awhile. Mrs. Secretan could have ortolans or _pâtés de foie gras_, if she liked to import those delicacies from the outside world.

‘My dear Sibyl, Captain Heathcote has been kind enough to promise that you shall have all possible indulgence, so you must try to keep up your spirits.’

‘Yes, Alexis,’ she answers, quietly, ‘I have very little cause for unhappiness when you are so kind to me. How do you do, Captain Heathcote?’ she says, turning to the governor with a faint smile. ‘It seems strange for us to meet like this, does it not? I feel as if I had come to your house as an uninvited guest.’

‘I shall do all in my power to make your visit agreeable, and shall be unhospitable enough to wish that it may be brief,’ answers the captain.

‘I am very anxious to know all about my uncle’s death,’ says Sibyl. ‘It was a great shock to me to hear that he was dead. Dr. Mitsand told me that he was in no danger the very day before I left Redcastle. Can it be true that he died from poison?’

‘Unhappily there is no room to doubt that,’ answers Captain Heathcote, gravely; ‘but do not let us talk about this sad business, Mrs. Secretan. Your husband will do all that can be done to protect your interests--to clear your name. Be assured of that, and give your mind as much repose as you can. The inquest will be reopened to-morrow, and you will have to appear.’

‘As a criminal--in the dock?’ asks Sibyl, with a shudder.

‘There is no dock in the coroner’s court.’

‘My dearest, what does it matter?’ says Alexis, soothingly. ‘To-morrow’s examination will doubtless clear you of this shameful charge. Be patient and trust in God. I am going to call upon your uncle, Dr. Faunthorpe. I thought perhaps you would like him to come and see you.’

‘Yes, I should like to see him very much, if he does not believe that I am----I can’t say the dreadful words, Alex. But no, I am sure uncle Robert does not believe in this accusation. Dear soul, he never thought evil of any one.’

‘You shall see him, dear, and he shall prescribe for you, unless there is any other medical man whose advice you would rather have.’

‘I do not think medicine can do me much good, Alex; but I shall consult any one you wish. But I want to see uncle Robert--to ask him about uncle Stephen’s death,--he must know everything; and about the will.’

‘Ah, by the way,’ exclaims Alexis, ‘there was a will, I suppose. And pray who is the gainer of Mr. Trenchard’s wealth?’

Captain Heathcote looks at the inquirer with a grave smile.

‘Have you heard nothing? Don’t you know the particulars?’ he asks.

‘We know nothing except that Mr. Trenchard is dead, and is supposed to have been poisoned. Has his will been read yet?’

‘His will--or rather, a final statement of his circumstances, briefly set forth in a paper to be read after his death, was made known to two or three people yesterday. As generally happens in Redcastle, what was known to three people in the morning had become town talk in the evening. Mr. Trenchard has not left sixpence to any one.’

Sibyl’s eyes open to their widest. Faintly, dimly during that wearisome night journey she had seen herself cleared from the monstrous charge of murder and possessed of Stephen Trenchard’s fortune. His sudden death would have prevented his disinheriting her. Death overtook him before he could have known of her flight.

‘Do you mean to say that he has left all his money to hospitals?’ exclaimed Alexis.

‘I mean to say that he has left no money whatever--or hardly enough for the payment of five shillings in the pound upon his debts. We are very wise in Redcastle, but with all our wisdom are apt to take outward show for reality. Mr. Trenchard has contrived to impose upon us all. He has been living upon a few thousands taken out of a business on the verge of insolvency, and upon his credit in Redcastle, which was large. Rather hard upon Mrs. Secretan, whom everybody supposed to be his heiress.’

‘The policy of his old age is of a piece with the treachery of his youth,’ replies Alexis, quietly. ‘My wife can afford to do without his money.’

Sibyl sits silent, in utter bewilderment. What phantom has she followed in these years that are gone? To what false idol has she sacrificed love and truth, and duty to husband and child, all fair things that are honourable in woman? Bad enough to have worshipped a golden calf; but to find the calf of basest metal is indeed the lowest depth of humiliation and disgrace.

‘Alexis,’ she says at last, looking piteously at her husband, ‘there never was any one so foolish, so deluded, as I have been. How you must despise me!’

‘No, my dear, I am only sorry for you and our mistaken lives, the lost years that can never come back to us.’