Chapter X

Day had long dawned, as we have said, ere Langford woke; and even then he woke not of himself, nor till the servant, Halliday, had twice called him by name, standing close by his bedside, and looking upon him with an expression of much interest, indeed, but with a face from which all colour was banished, apparently by fear and agitation.

"Master Langford!" he said; "Master Langford! No guilty man ever slept so sound as that. Poo, nonsense! Captain Langford, I say!"

Langford woke, and looked up, demanding what was the matter.

"Why, sir," replied the servant, "here is good old Gregory Myrtle, the landlord of the Talbot, wants to speak with you immediately. I met him as I was going up to the village, coming down here as fast as he could roll."

"Then you have not got the packet I sent for?" said Langford, coolly.

"He has got it, sir, safe," replied Halliday; "but he would not give it up, for he was coming on to you himself."

"He should have given it, as he was directed," said Langford. "Tell him to wait; I will see him when I am dressed."

"But he says, sir, that he must see you directly; that his business is of the greatest importance; that there is not a moment to lose."

"Oh, then, send him up," said Langford, "if the matter be so pressing as that."

Halliday instantly disappeared, as if he thought that too much time had been wasted already; and while Langford proceeded to rise, good Gregory Myrtle was heard creaking and panting up the stairs, as fast as his vast rotundity would let him. His face, too, was pale, if pale it ever could be called; and he was evidently in a great state of agitation, though the jolly habitual laugh still remained, and was heard before he was well within the door of Langford's room.

"Haw, haw, haw!" he cried, as he laid down the expected packet before Langford. "Lord a' mercy, Master Harry, this is a terrible business," he continued. "Well, I never did think--however, it's all nonsense, I know," and he again burst into a loud laugh, ending abruptly in the midst, and staring in Langford's face, as if for a reply.

"Well, good Gregory," replied Langford, who, in the meantime, had broken open the seals of the packet, and seen that various bills of exchange which it contained, together with other equivalents for money, were all right--"well, good Master Myrtle, what is it that is very terrible? What is it you did never think? What is it that is all nonsense? I am in the dark, Master Myrtle."

"Gad's my life, sir, they won't let you be in the dark long," cried the landlord of the Talbot; "and I came down to enlighten you first, that you might not be taken by surprise."

"As to what?" said Langford, somewhat impatiently.

"Lord, sir! I thought that Halliday must have told you something, at least," replied Gregory Myrtle, "or that his face must if not his tongue, for it's all black and white, like the broadside of the 'Hue and Cry.' But the matter is this," he added, after pausing a moment to laugh at his own joke: "it seems that poor Lord Harold, who was a good youth in his way, though he was somewhat sharp upon poachers and deer-stealers, and the like, was murdered last night upon the moor."

"Good God!" cried Langford, clasping his hands. "Good God!"

"It's but too true, sir," continued Myrtle, throwing as much solemnity as he could into his jocund countenance, "it's but too true; and there's poor Lord Danemore, his father, distracted. And for the matter of that, I think Sir Thomas Waller and Sir Matthew Scrope are as much distracted too; for after having been with my lord since five o'clock this morning, they come down to my house, and begin examining witnesses and taking evidence, and sending here and there, and the end of it all is--for I heard them consulting over it through a chink in the door--they judge that you are the person who murdered him, only because that mad fellow, silly John Graves, came running down to the village last night for help, swearing he had seen you and Lord Harold with your swords drawn upon each other. So, while they were busy swearing in constables, and all that, I thought it but friendly-like to come down here and tell you, in case you might think it right to get upon your horse's back, and gallop away till the business is over."

"Swearing in constables!" said Langford, without seeming to take notice of the worthy host's suggestion. "Why, they don't suppose my name is 'Legion,' do they? One constable, I should suppose, would be quite as useful as twenty."

"Ay, Master Harry," replied Gregory Myrtle; "but they vow that you are connected with the gentlemen of the road, who have been sporting round here lately, and they are afraid of a rescue."

"Indeed!" said Langford; "the sapient men! However, Master Myrtle, ring that little bell at the top of the stairs."

The silver hand-bell to which he pointed was immediately rung, and Halliday, who had remained halfway down the stairs, was in the room in a moment. No sooner did he appear, than Gregory Myrtle, who put his own construction upon Langford's coolness, exclaimed, "Quick, Master Halliday, quick! Saddle the Captain's horse for him!"

"No, no, Halliday," said Langford. "You are making a mistake, my good Master Myrtle. Take this packet, Halliday, and give it into Mistress Alice's own hands as soon as ever you can. I am going out with Master Myrtle here upon this business, which I see you have heard of. What may be the result of these foolish people's silly suspicions, I cannot tell; but do what you can, Halliday, to keep the matter from the ears of Sir Walter and Mistress Alice as long as you can. Warn the other servants too; for there is no use of adding fresh vexation to that which your master and mistress are already suffering. You must all know very well that I have nothing to do with this business, and can make that clear very soon. Say, therefore, that I have gone out for a few hours, but left that packet for Mistress Alice, with my best wishes. Now, good Gregory Myrtle, go back to your inn, and tell Sir Thomas Waller and Sir Matthew Scrope that I will be with them in five minutes, as soon as I have dressed myself."

Our host of the Talbot pursued the direction he had received, rolled down the stairs, and laboured along the road towards the village, with his surprise and admiration both excited by the extraordinary coolness and self-possession displayed by Langford under such circumstances. By the time he had reached the middle of the bridge, he perceived a great number of people issuing from the door of his own house; and, ere he was halfway up the street of the little town, he encountered ten or twelve constables and special constables, headed by the two magistrates in person. No sooner did he approach than the stentorian voice of Sir Thomas Waller--all unlike the dulcet notes of Sacharissa's lover--was heard to exclaim, "Take him into custody, Jonathan Brown!"

"Where hast thou been, Gregory Myrtle, Gregory Myrtle?" exclaimed, in softer tones, almost in the same moment, the voice of Sir Matthew Scrope.

"You have been aiding and abetting felony!" cried Sir Thomas.

"You have been warning the guilty to escape!" said Sir Matthew.

"You have been helping the lion to fly from his pursuers!" said Sir Thomas.

"You have been proditoriously giving information of our secret councils!" said Sir Matthew.

"It is being an accessary after the fact!" said his companion.

"It is misprision of treason!" said the other.

"It is levying war against the king!" shouted Sir Thomas.

"It is a gaol delivery!" cried the head constable, determined not to be outdone by his betters.

"Haw, haw, haw.'" exclaimed Gregory Myrtle, laying his two hands upon his fat stomach, "What is the matter with your worships?"'

"Hast thou not gone down on purpose," said Sir Matthew Scrope, "to warn Harry Langford, alias Captain Langford, alias Master Harry, to evade and escape the pursuit of justice, by flying out of the back door while we are approaching the front? Hast thou not done this, Gregory Myrtle? and woe be unto thee if he have so escaped! Take him into custody, I say!"

"Well, your worships," said Myrtle, beginning to look a little rueful under the hands of the constables. "I have been down to Master Harry, I own it; but I went upon other business that I had to do with him. Does not everybody know that I had a packet down for him by a special messenger yesterday night, with orders to deliver it into his own hands? and if I did talk with him this morning of what was going on, did he not send his compliments to your worships, and bid me say that he would be up with you in five minutes, as soon as he had got his clothes on!"

"Poo, nonsense, man!" exclaimed Sir Thomas Waller, growing red in the face. "Do you think we are fools, to be taken in with such a story as that? Are you fool enough yourself to think that he will come."

"I say, as sure as I am a living man, he will come!" said Gregory Myrtle. "Ay, more, my masters," he continued, after giving a glance towards the Manor House, "I say, there he is coming."

All eyes were instantly turned in the direction in which his own had been bent the moment before, and the figure of a man, which seemed to have just issued out of the gates of the park, was seen walking with a slow calm step along the road towards the village. The magistrates, the constables, and the multitudinous crowd which followed them, all stood in silence and what we may call _thunderstruckness_, so little credence had they given to the assurances of Gregory Myrtle; for let it be remembered, that the first effect produced by an accusation against any one, upon vulgar minds, is to lead them at once to condemn him. I am afraid there is something in the human heart that loves the act of condemnation--an act which either gratifies malignity or vanity.

However that may be, the party assembled in the streets of the little town could not believe their eyes, and, indeed, would not believe their eyes long after the form of Henry Langford, a form with which many of them were perfectly acquainted, had become distinctly visible, approaching with slow calm steps towards the spot where they were gathered together. The matter, however, could no longer be doubted; and the magistrates stood still, not knowing very well how to act in such unusual circumstances.

Henry Langford, in the mean time, approached without the slightest appearance of hesitation or dismay at the sight of the formidable phalanx which they presented. Walking up to the magistrates with the calm and graceful dignity which characterised all his actions, he bowed slightly, saying, "I am told, gentlemen, that a most distressing occurence has taken place, and that you imagine there is some cause for supposing that I am implicated in this matter. Now, with your leave, gentlemen, we will go to the inn, as this is no place for discussing such subjects, and we will there investigate the matter accurately. Doubtless, you have had good reason for attributing to me the commission of a crime; but some person or another must have gone out of the way, to insinuate or to urge such a charge against me; and who it is that has been kind enough and liberal enough to do so, I shall make it my business to discover, in order to punish him as he deserves."

Langford concluded somewhat sternly; and the magistrates, entirely taken by surprise, looked rather foolish, and began to imagine that they might have been too hasty in their conclusions. There was a tone and an air, too, in the person whom they had suspected, which forbade all high words or violent measures. He spoke to them as certainly their equal, if not their superior, and there was so much of the consciousness of innocence in his whole demeanour that it was very difficult to conceive their suspicions were justified.

Not knowing well what to reply, they followed his suggestion in silence, the one walking on one side of him, and the other on the other. By the time they reached the Talbot, however, they began to recover from the effect of his presence, and Sir Thomas Waller, with what he conceived to be wise foresight and presence of mind, gave the chief constable a hint in a whisper to guard the doors well, and to take care that the prisoner did not escape. They did not, however, venture to treat him as a prisoner in any other respect; and walking up into the room where they had held their investigation, he sat down with them at the table, and begged in a grave but not sarcastic tone, that they would have the goodness to let him know on what grounds they for a moment conceived that he had had any share in the unfortunate death of Lord Harold.

The magistrates looked to their clerk, who had remained behind, putting the evidence in order while they had proceeded with the constables for the purpose of arresting Langford. The clerk who, upon the whole, seemed a sensible little man, proceeded, as it was very common in those days, to take the whole business into his hands, and recapitulated coolly, but civilly, to Langford the heads of all the evidence that had been taken.

Langford now discovered that the charge against him was much more serious than he had at first imagined. He found that, in the first place, several persons had deposed that silly John Graves, whose adherence to truth was well known, had come down to the town in great agitation, begging for help to stop Lord Harold and Master Harry Langford from killing each other. It was proved, also, by the horse boys from the Manor House, that Lord Harold, after having been in the park with Master Langford, had returned for his horse about the same time that the other had returned; that the young nobleman had ridden away very slowly, and that Langford, after proceeding part of the way towards the village, had suddenly come back, mounted his horse, and ridden away very rapidly; that he had been absent till between ten and eleven o'clock at night, and that big horse was evidently fatigued, and had been hard ridden. Several people, too, had seen him pass at different times, and on several parts of the road leading to the moor; and, in short, there was quite sufficient evidence to prove that a quarrel had taken place between Lord Harold and himself; that they had both gone towards the same spot at the same time, and that he had been absent a sufficient number of hours to commit the deed with which he was charged, and to return.

As the evidence was recapitulated, the worthy magistrates gained greater and greater confidence every moment; and at length Sir Matthew Scope exclaimed, "If this is not sufficient to justify us in committing the prisoner, I do not know what is."

"Not, perhaps, in committing him, your worship," said the clerk, whose philology was choice without being very accurate; "but certainly in remanding him."

"Why, I did not exactly mean to say committing," rejoined the subservient magistrate; "remanding was the word I meant to use; but where can we remand him to? If we remand him to the county jail, Justice Holdhim will take the matter out of our hands, and we shall lose all credit with the good Earl for arresting the murderer of his son."

"Would it not be as well," said the clerk, "to take him up at once to the castle? It is not improbable that the noble Earl might like to examine him himself; and you can keep him confined there till you have obtained further evidence to justify his committal."

"A very good thought, a very good thought!" cried Sir Thomas Waller, rubbing his hands. "He shall be placed in my carriage with a constable on each side, and we will follow in yours, Sir Matthew, with the other constables on horseback."

Langford had listened in silence to the conversation between the magistrates and their clerk, and though he evidently began to perceive that the affair would be more serious and disagreeable than he had anticipated, he could not refrain from smiling at the arrangement of the stately procession that was to carry him to Danemore Castle. He resolved, however, to make one effort to prevent the execution of a purpose which would, of course, on many accounts, be disagreeable to him; and he therefore interposed, as the clerk was about to leave the room, saying, "You are rather too hasty, gentlemen, in your conclusions, and I think you had better be warned, before you commit an act which you may be made to repent of----"

"Do you mean to threaten us, sir?" exclaimed Sir Thomas Waller. "Take those words down, clerk! Take those words down!"

"I mean to threaten you with nothing," replied Langford, "but the legal punishment to which bad or ignorant magistrates may be subjected for the use, or rather misuse, of their authority. You will remark--and I beg that the clerk may take these words down--that one half of the matter urged against me rests upon the reported words of a madman, who has not been brought forward even himself."

"You would not have us take the deposition of an innocent, a born natural!" demanded Sir Matthew Scope.

"His evidence is either worth something or worth nothing," replied Langford. "You rest mainly upon his testimony reported by others, which is, of course, worth nothing; and yet you will not take his testimony from his own mouth, when I inform you, that if it were so taken, he would prove that, though Lord Harold chose to quarrel with me, which I do not deny, that I positively refused to draw my sword upon him, even when he drew his upon me."

"That might be," said the clerk, "to take more sure vengeance in a private way. Their worships have on the contrary to remark, that you have not in any way attempted to account for the space of time you were absent from the Manor House last night. Neither have you stated where you were, or what was your occupation; and, without meaning to say anything uncivil, sir, let me say, that there have been a great many nights, while you remained at the inn, which might require accounting for also. Their worships have not judged harshly of you, nor even given attention to suspicious circumstances, till they found that the whole of your conduct was suspicious." This was spoken while standing beside the chair of Sir Matthew Scrope; and, after whispering a few words in his ear, the clerk left the room.

Langford remained, with his eyes gloomily bent upon the table, without speaking to either of his companions, busy with varied thoughts and feelings, which began to come upon him, thick and many--to weigh him down, and to oppress him. During the early part of the disagreeable business in which he had been engaged, he had thought solely of his own innocence, and of the absurdity, as it seemed to him, of the charge against him; but as the matter went on, other considerations forced themselves upon his attention. He was conscious he could give no account of where he had been on the preceding night, when the murder was committed; and yet he felt that he was called upon strongly to do so, not for the purpose of freeing himself from suspicion, but with a view to bring the real murderer to justice. Yet how could he reveal any part of what he knew, without bringing down destruction on the head of Franklin Gray, who had no share in the deed; who, at the very time it was committed, was engaged in serving him, even at the risk of life; to whom he was bound by so many ties of gratitude, and whose good qualities, though they did certainly not serve to counterbalance his crimes, yet rendered him a very different object in the eyes of Langford from such men as Wiley and Hardcastle? At all events, he felt that it was not for him to bring a man to the scaffold who had saved his life on more than one occasion, and who had shown himself always willing to peril his own in order to procure a comparatively trifling benefit to him.

Mingled with all these feelings, was deep and bitter sorrow for Lord Harold; and thus many conflicting emotions, all more or less painful, together with the most painful of all, the knowledge that he could not do his duty with that straightforward candour and decision which in all other situations of life he had been accustomed to show, kept him in stern and somewhat gloomy silence.

The magistrates, in the meanwhile, conversed apart in a low voice, Sir Thomas Waller delighted with the plan they were about to pursue, and anticipating great credit with Lord Danemore for the arrest of his son's murderer; while Sir Matthew Scrope, who seemed to stand in considerable awe of the old nobleman, declared, that he never half liked to come across the Earl, who was so fierce, and fiery, and imperious. In about a quarter of an hour the clerk returned, and announced that all was ready, and Langford, surrounded by a complete mob of constables, was placed in the rumbling carriage of Sir Thomas Waller, and borne away towards Danemore Castle.

The two magistrates followed in the carriage of Sir Matthew, and the train of constables, mounted on all sorts of beasts, came after swelling the procession; while good Gregory Myrtle stood at his door declaring, that he never saw such a piece of folly in his life: and the poor chambermaid, dissolved in tears, wiped her eyes and vowed it was impossible so handsome a young man could murder any body.