Pacing his carpet, in the worst state of perturbation possible, was the Rev. Mr. Ollivera. He had so paced it all the morning. Neglecting his ordinary duties, staying indoors when he ought to have been out, unable to eat or to rest, he and his mind were alike in a state of most distressing indecision. The whole of the night had he tossed and turned, and rose up again and again to walk his room, struggling with his conscience. For years past, he had, so to say, lived on the anticipation of this hour: when the memory of his dear brother should be cleared of its foul stain, and the true criminal brought to light. And, now that it had come, he was hesitating whether or not to take advantage of it: whether to let the stain remain, and the criminal escape.
Torn to pieces with doubt and pain, was he. Unable to see where his duty lay, more than once, with lifted hands and eyes and heart, a cry to Heaven to direct him broke from his lips. Passages of Scripture, bearing both ways, crowded on his mind, to puzzle him the more; but there was one great lesson he could not ignore--the loving, merciful teaching of Jesus Christ.
About one o\'clock, when the remembrance of the miserable grave, and of him who had been so miserably put into it, lay very strong upon him, Alletha Rye came into the room with some white cravats of the parson\'s in her hand. She was neat and nice as usual, wearing a soft merino gown with white worked cuffs and collars, her fair hair smooth and abundant.
"I have done the best I could with them, sir: cut off the edges and hemmed them afresh," she said. "After that, I passed the iron over them, and they look just as if fresh got up.
"Thank you," murmured Mr. Ollivera, the colour flushing his face, and speaking in a confused kind of manner, like a man overtaken in a crime.
"Great heaven, can I go on with it?" he exclaimed, as she went out, leaving the neckerchiefs on the table. "Is it possible to believe that she did it?--with her calm good face, with her clear honest eye?" he continued in an agony of distress. "Oh, for guidance! that I may be shown what my course ought to be!" As a personal matter, to give Alletha Rye into custody would cause him grievous pain. She had lived under the same roof with him, showing him voluntarily a hundred little courtesies and kindnesses. These white cravats of his, just put to rights, had been undertaken in pure good will.
How very much of our terrible seasons of distress might be spared to us, if we could but see a little further than the present moment; than the atmosphere immediately around. Henry William Ollivera might have been saved his: had he but known that while he was doubting, another was acting. Mr. Greatorex had taken it into his own hands, and the house\'s trouble was, even then, at the very door. In after life, Henry Ollivera never ceased to be thankful that it was not himself who brought it.
A commotion below. Mr. Roland Yorke had entered, and was calling out to the house to bring his dinner. It was taken to him in the shape of some slices of roast mutton and potatoes. When Mrs. Jones had a joint herself, Roland was served from it. That she was no gainer by the bargain, Mrs. Jones was conscious of; the small sum she allowed herself in repayment out of the weekly sovereign, debarred it: but Roland was favoured for the sake of old times.
Close almost upon that, there came a rather quiet double knock at the street door, which Miss Rye went to answer. Roland thought he recognised a voice, and ran out, his mouth full of mutton.
"Why, it\'s never you, old Butterby! What brings you in London again?"
Whatever brought Mr. Butterby to London, something curious appeared to have brought him to Mrs. Jones\'s. A policeman had followed him in, and was shutting the street door, with a manner quite at home. There escaped a faint cry from Alletha, and her face turned white as ashes. Roland stared from one to the other.
"What on earth\'s the matter?" demanded he.
"I\'d like to speak to you in private for a minute, Miss Rye," said Mr. Butterby, in a low civil tone. "Tompkins, you wait there."
She went higher up the passage and looked round something liked a stag at bay. There was no unoccupied room to take him to. Mr. Brown\'s frugal dinner tray (luncheon, as he called it) was in his, awaiting his entrance. That the terrible man of law with his officer had come to arrest him Alletha never doubted. A hundred wild ideas of telegraphing him some impossible warning, not to enter, went teeming through her brain. Tompkins stood on the entrance mat; Roland Yorke, with his accustomed curiosity, put his back against his parlour door-post to watch proceedings.
"Miss Rye, I\'d not have done this of my own accord, leastways not so soon, but it has been forced upon me," whispered Mr. Butterby. "I\'ve got to ask you to go with me."
"To ask me?" she tremblingly said, while he was showing her a paper: probably the warrant.
"Are you so much surprised: after that there avowal you made to me last night? If I\'d gone and told a police officer that I had killed somebody, it would not astonish me to be took."
Her face fell. The pallor of her cheeks was coloured by a faint crimson; her eyes flashed with a condemning light.
"I told you in confidence, as one friend might speak to another, in defence of him who was not there to defend himself," she panted. "How could I suppose you would hasten treacherously to use it against me?"
"Ah," said Mr. Butterby, "in things of that sort us law defenders is just the wrong sort to make confidants of. But now, look here, Miss Rye, I didn\'t go and abuse that confidence, and though it is me that has put the wheels of the law in motion, it is done in obedience to orders, which I had no power to stop. I\'m sorry to have to do it: and I\'ve come down with the warrant myself out of respect to you, that things might be accomplished as genteel as might be."
"Now then, Alletha! Do you know that your dinner\'s getting cold? What on earth are you stopping there for? Who is it?"
The interruption was from Mrs. Jones, called out through the nearly closed door of her parlour. Alletha, making no response, looked fit to die.
"Have you come to arrest me?" she whispered.
"Well, it\'s about it, Miss Rye. Apprehend, that is. We\'ll get a cab and you\'ll go in it with my friend there, all snug and quiet. I\'m vexed that young Yorke should just be at home. Tried to get here half an hour earlier, but--"
Mrs. Jones\'s door was pulled open with a jerk. To describe the aggravated astonishment on her face when she saw the state of affairs, would be a work of skill. Alletha with a countenance of ghastly fear; Mr. Butterby whispering to her; the policeman on the door mat; Roland Yorke looking leisurely on.
"Well, I\'m sure!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones. "What may be the meaning of this?"
There could be no evasion now. Had Alletha in her secret heart hoped to keep it from her tart, condemning, and strong-minded sister, the possibility was over. She went down the few steps that led to the room, and entered it; Mr. Butterby close behind her. The latter was shutting the door, when Roland Yorke walked in, taking French leave.
Which of the two stared the most, Mrs. Jones or Roland, and which of the two felt inclined to abuse Mr. Butterby the most, when his errand became known, remains a question to this day. Roland\'s championship was hot.
"You know you always do take the wrong people, Butterby!"
"Now, young Mr. Yorke, just you concern yourself with your own business, and leave other folk\'s alone," was the detective\'s answering reprimand. "I don\'t see what call you have to be in this here room at all."
In all the phases of the affair, with its attendant conjectures and suspicions, from the first moment that she saw John Ollivera lying dead in her house, the possibility of Alletha\'s being cognisant of its cause, much less connected with it, had never once entered the head of Mrs. Jones. She stared from one to the other in simple wonder.
"What is it you charge my sister with, Butterby?--the death of Counsellor Ollivera?"
"Well, yes; that\'s it," he answered.
"And how dare you do it?"
"Now, look you here, Mrs. Jones," said Butterby, in a tone of reason, putting his hand calmly on her wrist, "I\'ve told Miss Rye, and I tell you, that these proceedings are instituted by the law, not by me; if I had not come to carry them out, another would, who might have done it in a rougher manner. A woman of your sense ought to see the matter in its right light. I don\'t say she\'s guilty, and I hope she\'ll be able to prove that she\'s not; but I can tell you this much, Mrs. Jones, there\'s them that have had their suspicions turned upon her from the first."
Being a woman of sense, as Mr. Butterby delicately insinuated, Mrs. Jones began to feel a trifle staggered. Not at his words: they had little power over her mind, but at Alletha\'s appearance. Leaning against the wall there, white, faint, silent, she looked like one guilty, rather than innocent. And it suddenly struck Mrs. Jones that she did not attempt a syllable in her own defence.
"Why don\'t you speak out, girl?" she demanded, in her tartest tone. "You can, I suppose?"
But the commotion had begun to cause attent............