The Vicar's statement that there was a certain section of the good people of Ashdown who, notwithstanding the result of the trial, still regarded John Brancker with the eye of suspicion, was a great shock to the latter; and yet, human nature being what it is, it could hardly have been otherwise. From the day of John's committal to prison on the capital charge, the question of his guilt or innocence had been a burning subject of discussion--not merely among the frequenters of bar-parlors and tap-rooms, but at dinner-parties and tea-gatherings--through the gradually ascending scale of social life till the highest rank of county society were reached, where it was kept in reserve by judicious hostesses as a topic which could always be depended on to give a fillip to the conversation whenever it seemed in danger of languishing. Like all burning questions, it was not discussed without acrimony and vehemence. Those who avowed themselves firm believers in the prisoner's innocence were confronted by others who were just as positive with regard to his guilt, although these latter were probably far from wishing to see their belief worked out to its logical conclusion. Then, again, there was another class; that which is never satisfied unless it can back up its opinion with a wager. Thus it naturally came to pass that when the trial resulted in John's acquittal, all those who had professed themselves believers in his guilt, as well as that other section who were out of pocket through having wagered the wrong way, felt themselves more or less aggrieved, a feeling which was further intensified by the undisguised elation of those who had pinned their faith to the opposite view. Therefore it was that sundry people were even now going about hinting darkly at a miscarriage of justice, and averring that till certain points of evidence should be disproved, or explained away, no person of intelligence could fail to still have strong grounds for doubting the late prisoner's innocence.
When John Brancker took his first walk into the town after Mr. Edislow's call upon him, he looked at the world from a new point of view. All at once he had become sensitive and suspicious. He felt himself to be a marked man. It seemed to him that numbers of those who passed him in the street looked askance at him, or, worse still, purposely averted their faces from him; and as he walked along his heart was a prey to a dumb, bitter anger which was compelled to feed on itself for lack of a definite object against which it could turn. If you have reason to believe that half-a-dozen people have done you an injustice, you can either meet them one by one and strive to prove to them where they are in the wrong, or otherwise you can afford to treat their opinion of you with indifference or contempt; but what are you to say or do if the assurance festers in your heart that some hundreds of your fellow-townsmen regard you with an eye of suspicion and distrust? In such a case you are helpless; there is nothing you can either say or do; you can only writhe in silence, trusting that for you, as for so many others, the whirligig of Time will some day bring in his revenges.
That John, in the soreness of his heart, exaggerated the case as against himself, there can be little doubt. It was a part of his nature, perhaps a weakness of it, to be morbidly sensitive to the opinion of others. It seemed essential to the simple content which had hitherto been his portion through life, that he should stand well in the eyes of his fellows. He had been buoyed up during his imprisonment by the consciousness of his innocence, and by the certainty, which rarely deserted him, that the trial would result in his acquittal. It had so resulted, yet now that he was a free man again, a sheaf of poisoned arrows were being aimed at him in the dark from which he was powerless to protect himself. He put forth his hands to grasp his enemy, and encountered empty space. After that first day he took nearly all his walks among the fields and country lanes, and rarely went into the town till after dusk. His sister was not long in perceiving that something was the matter, and had little difficulty in worming out of him the cause of his unwonted depression of spirits; for John was one of those men to whom it is a relief to unburthen themselves to someone, and who find it next to impossible to live without the sympathy of those with whom their affections are bound up. What had affected him with a sort of bitter sadness filled Miss Brancker with a fine flame of indignation, which aroused whatever combative instinct there was within her--but to no purpose, for of all futile occupations, that of fighting against shadows is perhaps the most unsatisfactory.
"We must just try and live it down," said John, with a patient sigh.
"Yes, and you eating your heart out meanwhile!" answered Miss Brancker, with an indignant flutter of her cap-strings.
"I really think that Hermia ought to be told," said John to his sister a few days later. "My intention all along has been not to tell her till her twenty-first birthday, but that will not be here for several months, and in view of all that has happened of late, and, more especially, of the dark cloud which during the past few days has settled on my life----"
"Of which I am quite sure Hermy knows nothing," interposed Miss Brancker.
"But of which she is sure to hear sooner or later--in consideration of all these things, I have decided that I should not be justified in keeping the secret from her any longer."
"She will be greatly shocked."
"At first, I do not doubt; but at her age she will soon recover. After all, the story I have to tell is like a tale in two volumes, of which one volume is all I can offer her. Where the other is, and whether she will ever find it, is more than either you or I can say."
John fixed on the following evening for his revelation, as the three were seated alone in the little parlor after tea. There was a keen frost outside, but the lamplighted interior had all that cosy cheerfulness which we associate in our thoughts with mid-winter weather. John sat on one side of the fireplace, more engaged with his own musings than with the newspaper in his hand, which he used occasionally by way of a fire-screen. A little way apart sat Hermia, between whom and Miss Brancker was a small oval work-table. The spinster was busy with her crewels, while the girl was engaged in mending some delicate old lace belonging to her aunt. Now and again Aunt Charlotte would glance up from her work to Hermia's sunny face, who, all unconscious of the scrutiny and wrapped up in some pleasant daydream, would let her needle come to a pause every few minutes as if to count her heart-beats, a slow, faint smile curving her lips the while, and the luminous depths of her dark-blue eyes becoming more luminous stil............