Granville helped him on his arm into the judge’s room amid profound silence. All the court was deeply stirred. A few personal friends hurried after him eagerly. Among them were the Warings, and Mrs. Clifford, and Elma.
The judge staggered to a seat, and held Granville’s hand long and silently in his. Then his eye caught Elma’s. He turned to her gratefully. “Thank you, young lady,” he said, in a very thick voice. “You were extremely good. I forget your name. But you helped me greatly.”
There was such a pathetic ring in those significant words, “I forget your name,” that every eye about stood dimmed with moisture. Remorse had clearly blotted out all else now from Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve’s powerful brain save the solitary memory of his great wrong-doing.
“Something’s upon his mind still,” Elma cried, looking hard at him. “He’s dying! he’s dying! But he wants to say something else before he dies, I’m certain. ... Mr. Kelmscott, it’s to you. Oh, Cyril, stand back! Mother, leave them alone! I’m sure from his eye he wants to say something to Mr. Kelmscott.”
They all fell back reverently. They stood in the presence of death and of a mighty sorrow. Sir Gilbert still held Granville’s hand fast bound in his own. “It’ll kill her,” he muttered. “It’ll kill her! I’m sure it’ll kill her! She’ll never get over the thought that her father was—was the cause of Montague Nevitt’s death. And you’ll never care to marry a girl of whom people will say, either justly or unjustly, ‘She’s a murderers daughter’.... And that will kill her, too. For, Kelmscott, she loved you!”
Granville held the dying man’s hand still more gently than ever. “Sir Gilbert,” he said, leaning over him with very tender eyes, “no event on earth could ever possibly alter Gwendoline’s love for me, or my love for Gwendoline. I know you can’t live. This shock has been too much for you. But if it will make you die any the happier now to know that Gwendoline and I will still be one, I give you my sacred promise at this solemn moment, that as soon as she likes I will marry Gwendoline.” He paused for a second. “I don’t understand all this story just yet,” he went on. “But of one thing I’m certain. The sympathy of every soul in court to-day went with you as you spoke out the truth so manfully. The sympathy of all England will go with you to-morrow when they come to learn of it.... Sir Gilbert, till this morning I never admired you, much as I love Gwendoline. As you made that confession just now in court, I declare, I admired you. With all the greater confidence now will I marry your daughter.”
They carried him to the judge’s lodgings in the town, and laid him there peaceably for the doctors to tend him. For a fortnight the shadow of Gildersleeve still lingered on, growing feebler and feebler in intellect every day. But the end was certain. It was softening of the brain, and it proceeded rapidly. The horror of that unspeakable trial had wholly unnerved him. The great, strong man cried and sobbed like a baby. Lady Gildersleeve and Gwendoline were with him all through. He seldom spoke. When he did, it was generally to murmur those fixed words of exculpation, in a tremulous undertone, “It was my hands that did it—these great, clumsy hands of mine—not I—not I. I never, never meant it. It was an accident. An accident. Justifiable homicide.... What I really regret is for that poor fellow Waring.”
And at the end of a fortnight he died, once smiling, with Gwendoline’s hand locked tight in his own, and Granville Kelmscott kneeling in tears by his bedside.
The Kelmscott property was settled by arrangement. It never came into court. With the aid of the family lawyers the three half-brothers divided it amicably. Guy wouldn’t hear of Granville’s giving up his claim to the house and park at Tilgate. Granville was to the manner born, he said, and brought up to expect it; while Cyril and he, mere waifs and strays in the world, would be much better off, even so, with their third of the property each, than they ever before in their lives could have counted upon. ............