Chapter 7

WEBSTER'S CHILDHOOD.

Knowing what he did of Neil Webster. Mr. Cass quite prepared to see him faint upon hearing the terrible truth. But to his unconcealed astonishment the young man, beyond losing his colour, remained unmoved.

"I should like to hear the whole story, please," he said, quietly.

Mr. Cass was almost frightened by his calmness. "A glass of wine----"

"No. I want nothing. You have told me the worst. What remains to be said can affect me but little. The whole story, please, from the beginning. When I am in possession of the facts I may be able to see some way of saving my mother from her unjust fate."

"Her unjust fate!" repeated Mr. Cass, with a flush. "Why, man alive, she had all the justice the English law could give."

"Did she admit her guilt?

"She neither admitted nor denied it. Not a word would she say, good or bad, for or against. Throughout the trial she maintained an absolute silence, and went to prison uncomplainingly."

"To my mind that looks likes innocence."

The merchant moved restlessly in his chair. "Do not force me to say unpleasant things," he remarked, irritably.

"I want you to say exactly what you feel," retorted Neil. "I am here to hear the truth, however disagreeable. It is only by knowing all that I can help my mother. If you will not tell me, then I must see the lawyers who were concerned in the case. I don't think they will mind giving me pain. But if you are the friend I take you to be, you will speak out."

His self-possession was so much at variance with his usual demeanour that Mr. Cass stared.

"If you will have it, then," he said roughly, "I believe your mother was guilty. Had there been the slightest chance of proving her innocence, she would have done so for your sake."

"Ah! my poor mother!" Nell's face grew soft and tender, and a look of deep affection came into his eyes. "My mother--how she loved me!"

"Can you remember her love?" asked Mr. Cass, doubtfully.

"Now I can." He raised his hand to his forehead. "It all comes back to me--all. That dream has given me the key to the past, and the memories of my childhood rush back upon me. I know how I hated my father"--his face grew dark--"and I know, also, how badly he treated my mother. If she killed him, she did right."

Mr. Cass shuddered. "I quite believe all that," he said, drily. "You were born hating your father, and your mother taught you to look upon him as your worst enemy. That you should deem her action in killing him a right one is exactly what you would believe, having regard to your childish feelings towards him. Indeed, I believe that had you grown up while your father was still in existence you would have killed him yourself."

"Very probably," remarked Neil, just as drily. "Indeed. I did try!"

"What? I don't understand!"

"I daresay not, seeing my mother kept silence from the time of her arrest. But I remember that on the night my father was murdered at the Turnpike House I flew at him with a knife. I forgot all that took place after that, except that I was in the room and saw his dead body lying under the open window--the open window," he repeated, quietly, and with significance. "Do not forget that, Mr. Cass."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that someone else might have killed him. The window was open. Why should it have been open unless the true murderer had gained entrance by it, and had fled through it when his deed was accomplished? I do not believe that my mother is guilty, in spite of her silence. She has some reason for holding her tongue."

"I can't think what the reason can be," replied Mr. Cass, wearily, leaning his head on his hands. "For love of you she would have chosen to remain free; yet when a word--according to you--might have saved her, she held her tongue and risked the gallows."

For the first time Neil Webster shuddered. "How was it she escaped that?" he asked, in a low voice.

"The case was so extraordinary that a petition to the Home Secretary was got up, and he commuted the sentence to one of imprisonment for life. Yet I must tell you the general opinion was that she was guilty. She was pitied for all that when the story of her husband's brutality came out in the evidence."

"And my father?" said Neil, impatiently raising his head. "Tell me more."

Mr. Cass hesitated a moment.

"Jenner deserved his fate. He treated his wife abominably; she had been left to starve. After having been put to many shifts----"

Webster raised his hand with a cry of pain. "I remember; don't!" he said. "My poor mother! I can recall in some degree--that is, so far as a child could have understood--our terrible life in London. Then we came down here."

"Yes, I did what I could for your mother, for I had always respected her very much. But she was a difficult person to manage; and she refused my help on the ground that it was charity."

"So it was," Neil said between his teeth. "And I have lived on your charity ever since!"

"My dear lad"--Mr. Cass laid his hand on the young man's arm--"don't be so thin-skinned. Whatever I have done, you have more than repaid me by your success. And if you feel that you cannot bring yourself to accept the money I have spent upon your education, why, then, pay me a sum to be agreed upon between us. Surely that will set your mind at rest."

Neil shook his head. "The obligation remains the same," he said, gloomily. "I shall ever remain grateful to you, and I will repay the money. I know that whosoever else may be a scoundrel--and the world is full of them--you, at least, are a good man."

Mr. Cass winced as Neil held out his hand. But the feeling passed away in a moment, and he did not refuse the proffer of friendship.

"The best of us are bad," he said, with a sigh, "but I do my best to behave as a man should. However," he added, glancing at the clock, "it is growing late. Will you hear the rest of this story to-morrow morning?"

"No," and Neil settled himself resolutely in his chair. "Now that I have heard so much I want to know all. My mother lived in the Turnpike House, did she not?"

"Yes; it was a tumble-down old place, and belonged to Heron's father."

"To Heron's father?" Neil made a wry face, for he did not like the idea.

"She paid no rent for it," continued Mr. Cass, taking no notice of the interruption. "Heron refused to accept any. Then she did sewing for several people in the village. My sister, Mrs. Marshall, who was then unmarried, gave her work, and sometimes food--when she would accept it, which was not often. In this way, then, she lived, and found all her joy in you!"

"I have a faint memory of that terrible life," said Neil, musingly. "My poor mother, with her bright hair and blue eyes, always so kind and tender to me. Then that night--ah! how it all comes back to me! The dream--the dream!" and in his agitation he rose to his feet. "It was a shadow of the past--that dream. I was playing with a toy horse by the fire; my mother was sewing. Then he came--my father. I remember running at him with a knife, and afterwards--nothing."

"Is that the very last of your memories?" asked Mr. Cass, watching him keenly, and with an uneasiness he found it hard to disguise.

Neil Webster sat down and passed his hand again across his eyes with a weary gesture. "Yes--no--that is, I remember the dead body with the blood--and afterwards the cold--the mist--the--the----" He made a gesture as though brushing away the past. "I remember nothing more!"

"The cold and the mist are easily explained," Mr. Cass said after a pause. "Your mother, after the murder, took you in her arms and fled from the scene of her crime."

"Don t say that!" cried the young man. "Give her the benefit of the doubt."

Mr. Cass smiled sadly. "Unfortunately, there was no doubt, my dear boy. Your father was killed with a buck-handled knife which had been used to cut bread, and----"

"The knife--the knife!" muttered Neil, straining his memory. "Yes, it was with a buck-handled knife I ran at him!"

"The knife was your mother's, and was found beside the body of the dead man. Undoubtedly your father came back after his release from prison, and insulted the woman he had ruined----"

"I can't bear it--not a word more of that. Only the fact."

"Well, there must have been a quarrel, and your mother--goaded beyond herself, no doubt--struck at your father with the knife which was lying on the table."

"How do you know that?"

"Because the table was spread for supper, and the knife was of the kind that is used to cut bread."

"I remember something about eating," muttered Neil. "Go, on, please."

"The murder was discovered next morning by a woman who had gone to the Turnpike House to get Mrs. Jenner was doing for her. She gave the alarm, and suspicion fell at once upon your mother. The police were informed, and search was made. Your mother was found five miles away, under a hedge, insensible, with you in her arms. She had succumbed to cold and but she still lived."

"Would she had died altogether!" said Neil, sadly.

"You were in a high fever, raving mad."

"What did I rave about?"

"About the dead man and the blood; and you frequently cried out to your mother to kill him. That had something to do with bring the crime home to her."

"Cruel--cruel, to take a child's ravings as evidence!"

"That was not done," said Mr. Cass sharply. "The law treated the prisoner"--Neil winced--"perfectly fairly. But the suspicion was instilled into the hearts of those who had heard your words."

"She didn't deny the charge?"

"She denied nothing--hardly opened her mouth, in fact. I got a lawyer to her--I saw her myself and implored her to speak but she obstinately refused. All she asked was, that I should take charge of you, which I promised I would do."

Neil looked up sharply, and asked the pointed question "Why?"

"I don't think you should ask me that," Mr. Cass said, somewhat pained. "Have I not proved myself a friend to you? Was it not natural that I should feel sympathy for a girl who had been a member of my household. Your mother, remember, had been governess to my eldest daughter? And your father had been in my employment. Why should you suspect me of any motive save that of sorrow for the ruin of a woman--whom I had liked as a bright girl--and pity for a helpless child?"

"Forgive me if I am wrong." Neil shook hands with much penitence. "But I am suspicious now of all the world. Heaven help me! Go on."

"There is very little more to tell. I took charge of you as I had promised, and I placed you with Mrs. Jent, who is an old servant of mine. You were seriously ill, and were not expected to live. Seeing that your mother was in gaol and your father dead by her hand, I used to think sometimes that it would have been better for you to have died."

"I'm glad I did not," cried Neil with vehemence. "I have lived to vindicate my mother's innocence."

"You are not likely to where others have failed," Mr. Cass said, sadly. "However, although I thought it would better for yourself and for all concerned that you should not recover, I did not feel justified in letting you slip through my fingers. I got the best doctors to see you, and they managed to pull you round after months of suspense. But the memory of your childhood, up to the time of your illness, was gone from you for ever. It was just as well, seeing how terrible that childhood had been. I made no attempt to revive your dormant memory, and I warned Mrs. Jent not to say anything either. We supplied you with a fictitious past."

"I know," said Neil, with a faint smile. "The American parents! I believed in them until I went to New York. Then I made enquiries; but as I could find no trace of them, and could hear nothing about them, I began to doubt their existence. If it had not been for my relating that dream, you would not have informed me of the truth."

"No," Mr. Cass said, honestly. "I would not, seeing what pain it must have inflicted upon you. I should have simply requested you to forget Ruth, and go away; the rest I would have spared you."

"I thank you for your forbearance," Neil said, politely, but coldly. "But Providence knew that I had a duty to perform, and so gave me back the past. Oh, it was no miracle!" he went on, with a shrug. "I am not a believer in the supernatural, as you know. I can see how it all came about. Can't you?"

"No; I confess that I am amazed that the dream should have been so accurate, or, indeed, that it should have come to you at all."

"Dreams, I have heard, are only the impressions of our waking hours in more confused forms," said Webster, quietly. "And as I had received no injury to the brain itself, my memory was only dormant, not destroyed. It was awakened by the sight of the face in that photograph."

"Ah! so it was," Mr. Cass said. "And the sight recalled your instinctive hatred for the man. That was why you fainted."

"Exactly; and no doubt, all that night, my brain was busily running back through the years. Then I found the Turnpike House."

"What took you there?"

Neil shrugged his shoulders. "It might have been accident; but I do not think it was. My own belief is that the awakening of memory drew me there, and when I got into that room all came back to me in my sleep. However, I know the truth now, so nothing else matters. Henceforth I devote myself to proving the innocence of my mother."

"You will never do that," Mr. Cass said, decisively.

"You think so because you believe her guilty."

"I believe her wrongs drove her mad, and that it was in a fit of madness she killed her husband. Yes."

"Well, I don't agree with you," Neil said. "The first thing I intend to do is to see her. Where is she?"

Cass wrote down the information on a slip of paper, and threw it across the table to the young man. "But I think you are starting on a wild-goose chase," he said. "Take my advice, and leave the matter alone. You are Neil Webster, the violinist. You have no connection with crime!"

"No, I am Gilbert Jenner, the son of a murdered man and of a woman wrongfully accused. I loved your daughter, Mr. Cass--I love her still--but I give her up. I will not see her again. To-morrow morning I leave this house for ever!"

"No," said his host, with decision. "If you intend to make an attempt to prove your mother's innocence, I have a right to help you, and to know your plans. So be it. Do your appointed work." He offered his hand. "As to Ruth----"

Neil interrupted him. "She is a dream of the past. My new life has nothing to do with love--but with revenge."