The confession of Oscar Coldstream received in London, and published in all the papers, did indeed excite a great deal of interest in England. It was the subject of articles in religious periodicals, was commented on from pulpits, and was looked upon as an unprecedented instance of the power of conscience.4 Nowhere was greater excitement caused than in a small sitting-room in a second-class lodging-house in Dover, where two elderly ladies were sitting together, one engaged in knitting. Miss Deborah was reading aloud to Miss Betsy a newspaper lent to them by a neighbour, for the sisters did not indulge in the luxury of taking one in for themselves. Suddenly Deborah stopped short, and her mittened hands shook so violently that she almost dropped the newspaper.
“What is the matter, Deborah?” asked her sister in alarm. “You look as if you had seen a ghost!”
“Oh, it is all out—the murder is out! The wretched man has confessed that it was he who threw poor young Manly down the cliff on that terrible, terrible day!”
Betsy was usually slow and sedate, but she now almost snatched the paper from Deborah’s hand, that her eyes might confirm the witness of her ears. She read the paragraph headed A Murderer’s Confession with tears running down her cheeks.
To explain the cause of such strong emotion, we must recur to what had happened more than a year before.
The reader may have inferred from silence on the subject that there had been no witnesses of Walter’s fatal fall. Such, however, had not been the case. It is true that Manly had purposely chosen for his difficult and dangerous ascent a time when Dover was attracted by the “new and astounding exhibition” of a conjurer who was going his rounds. Walter felt that the presence of spectators would affect his chance of winning his foolish bet—a shout of encouragement or a cry of alarm from below might make him lose his foothold. But not every one cared for the conjurer’s exhibition, and the Misses Demster could not easily spare their shillings to see it, so they took an evening stroll on the beach instead. They were the daughters of a deceased clergyman; highly respectable ladies with moderate means, who tried to eke out a slender patrimony by letting out furnished lodgings in the season, and occupying them themselves when visitors were few. The Misses Demster were specimens of a pretty numerous class of reduced gentlewomen, whom poverty does not rob of a claim to respect. Both were of kindly nature and pious character, and they were strongly attached to each other. Miss Deborah looked on her elder sister as a model of perfection. Deborah could not claim such merit for herself; she had the care of the housekeeping, and housekeeping on slender means is often a trial to temper. The good lady knew that she was often angry with the butcher, and impatient with Lizzie, the dull-witted maid-of-all-work. Miss Betsy, who was not exposed to such daily temptation, and who was brought little in contact with any one but a sister who deemed her an oracle of wisdom and a model of virtue, was rather disposed to accept Deborah’s opinion as a correct one. Miss Betsy never put the thought into words, was scarcely sensible that she harboured it, but her real estimate of herself was not much unlike that of the Pharisee in the parable: “Lord, I thank Thee that we are not as other women are. We, on our narrow means, never run into debt, but give to charities a tithe of all we possess. We go to church daily, fair weather or foul, and teach in a Sunday school. We pay wages and bills with regularity; we harm no one, and are useful to many.” Miss Demster set up her own standard of perfection, and was honestly convinced that she had nearly if not quite attained thereto. She taught Sunday scholars that our duty is to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves; but it never occurred to Betsy to test her own character by a standard so high, so divine.
The two ladies were taking their walk beneath the cliffs on that evening when Manly was attempting his perilous feat. Deborah saw him climbing, and tightly grasped the arm of her sister.
“O Betsy! Betsy! look! look! that must be that hare-brained Walter Manly, who won the steeple-chase, attempting to climb to the top! Oh, mercy! I cannot bear to see him; he will fall, and be dashed to pieces!”
Miss Demster, with equal interest, watched the young man’s ascent.
“He’ll never do it,” exclaimed Deborah. “See what a place he has reached; he will never get up that. What fools these boys are to risk precious life for nothing!”
“He’s a wonderful climber!” cried Betsy, as she breathlessly watched efforts which seemed to her almost superhuman.
“He’s nearly at the top now; he’s stopping to take breath; he dare not look down or he’s lost!” exclaimed Deborah in nervous excitement. “There—there—he has one hand on the top of the cliff!”
“Now the other; he will swing himself up!” cried Betsy. But even as the words were on her lips her look of interest changed to one of intense horror, and the next moment poor Walter fell, turning over head foremost in the terrible fall. The once fine powerful climber lay a corpse with a broken neck at the foot of the cliff.
The two ladies hastened to the spot, overwhelmed with horror and distress.
“Dead, quite dead!” exclaimed Deborah in much sorrow. “We cannot carry the poor corpse ourselves; we must hasten off for assistance.”
“Stop! stop!” gasped Miss Demster, shaking as if in a violent fit of ague. “You saw it as well as I. He did not slip; he was flung down. Oh, mercy! he was murdered! I saw the wretch who did the deed.”
“I saw some one too,” cried Deborah.
“I shall never forget the murderer’s face—the handsomest face that ever I saw in my life, but fierce as a demon’s. I could swear to it in a court of justice,” said Betsy.
“Oh, don’t talk of swearing or of courts of justice,” exclaimed the younger sister nervously; “it would be too dreadful to think of.”
“Of course there will be an inquest,” said Miss Demster. “We shall be called as witnesses.”
“I would not go for the world!” cried Deborah. “Besides, if we took an oath to tell all the truth, we should have to speak of the murder.”
Betsy’s thin lips turned white as she faltered out, “We might get a man hanged!”
“Oh, horrible! horrible!” exclaimed poor Deborah; “I would almost rather be hanged myself.”
“We had better hurry away then, and leave some one else to find the body—some one who would not be mixed up in a murder case, as we should be certain to be.” Seizing her sister by the arm, Miss Demster almost dragged her away from the spot.
But the ladies had n............