Chapter XII: An Open Verdict

The claims of the business had kept Judith Haggard away from the prayer-meeting at Little Bethel. She now came out to the door, surprised and alarmed by the appearance of the eager assembly at her brother’s heels--still more alarmed by Naomi’s pallid face, as the girl led her father into the dimly-lighted passage.

‘Why, what in mercy’s name is the matter, girl?’ cried Judith; ‘has your father had a stroke that you hold him like that, as if he couldn’t stand without your help--and what brings all the town after him?’

Joshua’s fixed eyes and rigid countenance--awfully calm, with a blankness of expression which was like death itself--might have justified the idea that he had lately been struck down by some mortal illness, and was but just emerged from a state of helpless unconsciousness.

‘No, Judith,’ he answered, with something of his old firmness; ‘the visitation is not such as you think, and yet the hand of God is heavy upon me. A calamity has befallen me which you could never have foreseen, bringing shame upon my name and race, making all the days that I have lived here in honour of no avail. Arnold Pentreath has found his brother’s body, and accuses me of being his murderer.’

‘You!’ shrieked Judith, ‘you a murderer!--you murder the young Squire, when you were all but drowned in the work of saving his worthless life! If Arnold Pentreath can bring that charge against you, he is a worse man than I should have thought him, knowing the badness of his blood as I do, and expecting as little as I do from any of his worthless race.’

‘He has so accused me.’

‘But why? On what grounds? Why suppose that his brother was murdered?’

‘His body has been found--in the old shaft.’

‘His body has been found--but that doesn’t prove that he was murdered. He may have fallen into the shaft.’

‘Spare us your arguments to-night,’ said Joshua, with a weary air. ‘We shall know more to-morrow. I am tired and sick at heart, and want rest. I am in God’s hands, and He will deal with me as seemeth best to Him. Yes, in the hands of God--not in the hands of men.’

He left them without another word, and went slowly up-stairs to his own room. The crowd had withdrawn quietly by this time, some hastening back to the spot where they had left Arnold and his ghastly burden--others dropping in at the First and Last to discuss the event that had convulsed their peaceful settlement. All were of one mind about Joshua Haggard, and agreed that the accusation brought against him was as wild and foolish as it was infamous.

‘I allus said it ’ud be so,’ growled old Jabez Long, the fisherman, from his favourite seat in the chimney-corner, where he hung over the smouldering logs even at midsummer. ‘I allus said harm ’ud come of pullin’ yon puir chap out o’ the say. There’s never no good comes o’ savin’ a drownding man. Chuck un back into the water. That’s wisdom--t’other’s foolishness. Why, ye see this yere chap can’t bide quiet in his grave till he’s done Joshua Haggard a hinjury. He rises up agen his deliverer like the onclane sperits that come out o’ the tombs.’

* * * * *

There was an inquest held next day in the long low-ceiled justice-room at the First and Last. The body of Oswald Pentreath lay at the Grange, and there awaited the visitation of coroner and jury. It lay in the long white drawing-room--that stately saloon which in its air of disuse and solitude had always something of the look of death. Here to-day lay the master of the house--in the dress he had worn when he left it--a ghastly form, only recognisable by the garments that clothed it, and the colour of the soft golden-brown hair. A pocket-book stuffed with banknotes and the old Squire’s watch and seals had been found upon the body, a proof that the assassin’s motive had not been plunder.

Brief was the visitation of the jury to that awful chamber. They had heard the evidence of Arnold Pentreath and the farm-labourers who had assisted in the finding of the body. The search had been long and careful. Guided by the statements of Farmer Westall’s cowboy, Arnold had gone straight to the old shaft. He had first searched the ground near the pit, and a few yards from the engine-house, under a furze-bush, he had found one of his brother’s pistols discharged. The second pistol had been nowhere forthcoming. Then by means of ropes and ladders, and with due precautions against the effect of noxious gases in the disused mine, Arnold and two of the men had gone down the shaft. Their quest was soon ended. Oswald Pentreath lay at the bottom of the shaft with a bullet through his heart. To bring the body out of the mine was a labour of no small difficulty; but time, the men’s sturdy willingness to help, and Arnold’s inexhaustible energy, conquered all obstacles, and by the time the earliest star was shining in the calm evening sky, Captain Pentreath was alone in the engine-house, keeping guard over his unburied dead, while the men went to the farmhouse to fetch a litter on which to carry the corpse to the Grange.

That dismal walk through wood and lane had taken a long time. The church-clock was striking ten as the procession entered the straggling village street. The windows of Little Bethel shone dimly, and Joshua’s voice was raised in vehement exhortation.

It was the sound of that voice--the impulse of a moment--which led Arnold to enter the chapel, and denounce the man of whose guilt he had no shadow of doubt.

Old Nicholas, the butler, had been one of the witnesses called to identify the body of his late master. He remembered the clothes Oswald Pentreath wore that last day--and he had helped him to put on that coat--and he could swear to the pistol that had been found under the furze-bush. He insisted upon telling the whole story of his master’s departure, and his own fears and wonderment when the trunks were brought back from Exeter. The Combhaven coroner was a patient gentleman, accustomed to a long-tongued race, and listened quietly to the butler’s statement. Here was a mystery to be unravelled, and there was no knowing whence the first gleam of light might come.

But when Arnold’s evidence took the form of an accusation against Joshua Haggard, the coroner stopped him peremptorily.

‘I cannot listen to any such speculation, Mr. Pentreath, to the discredit of a man in Mr. Haggard’s position.’

‘They are no speculations,’ answered Arnold hotly. ‘They are convictions. Hear what the next witness has to say, and then you will see what reason I have for accusing Joshua Haggard of my brother’s murder--though you can never know all the ground I have for certainty--the looks, the words by which that assassin has betrayed his guilt. Why, I ought to have known it the first time he talked to me of my brother! It was clear enough, if I had had eyes to see, or a mind to understand.’

The coroner protested against the irrelevance of such assertions; and then Timothy the cowboy was called, and told over again the story of that August afternoon on which he had seen Joshua Haggard go up to Matcherly Common.

That picture of the man standing by the door of the engine-house as if watching for some one impressed and puzzled the jury, but it could not shake them in their conviction that Joshua Haggard was a good man--a man who had taught and reproved them for many years, and who had always dealt honourably with them in temporal matters--a man whose weights were true as the sundial on the church-tower, and whose goods were of the best quality. That such a man could commit a base and cowardly crime savoured of impossibility. Witchcraft alone could account for such a monstrous thing.

‘He couldn’t ha’ done it unless he wur bewitched,’ said one of the deliberants when the jury took counsel together.

‘Who knows if that young wife of his didn’t bewitch him,’ argued another. ‘There’s many ’as marked a change in him from the time she came among us. His thoughts seemed to be roving like, half his time, and he stared at you, skeared like, if you spoke to him sudden, and he got careless about his business. You never found him behind his counter.’

‘Joshua Haggard is not the man to hurt a wurrum,’ said a third juryman. ‘He used to come and sit beside my puir old missus when she was down with her last illness, and read to her by the hour together, and she looked up to him as if he’d been a saint. I’ll agree to no verdick that throws any blame on Muster Haggard.’

‘Who wants to bring a verdick agen Muster Haggard? But we mun come to some sort o’ verdick, maunt we?’

‘Make it accidental death, can’t ’ee?’

‘But he couldn’t a got throwd down the shaft by accident.’

‘He might have fell in, mightn’t he?’

‘Ah, but who was it shot him?’

‘He might ha’ shot hisself fust, and just had strength enough left to throw hisself down th’ old shaft.’

The discussion waxed warm after this, but the jurymen were finally agreed that Oswald Pentreath had been murdered by some person or persons unknown.

Arnold went to the coroner directly the inquest was over, and asked for a warrant to arrest Joshua Haggard.

‘My dear sir, it is quite out of the question. There is no evidence upon which I can issue a warrant.’

‘Not the fact that the man was seen there, hiding in the engine-house, waiting for my unhappy brother. Is that no evidence?’ cried Arnold indignantly.

‘There is no evidence that he was hiding--there is no evidence that he was waiting for your brother. The mere fact of his being seen at that place a short time before the firing of the shots amounts to nothing, even if we could be sure those shots the cowboy heard were the shots that killed your poor brother. Joshua Haggard is a mystic, a fanatic, a man who spends half his life wandering in solitary places. I have often met him on the hills and commons. There is nothing strange in the fact of his being seen up yonder that day. Then again, there is an absence of all motive.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Arnold eagerly. ‘There was a motive, and a strong one; but there are reasons why I could not speak of this motive just now in open court. It involves error--though not actual guilt--on my brother’s part.’

He told the coroner the story of Oswald’s attachment to Mrs. Haggard, and the meeting between them that afternoon.

‘We have no evidence that Mr. Haggard knew of that meeting,’ said Mr. Penruddock, who was much disinclined to make himself odious to all chapel-going people by an unwise arrest of Joshua Haggard.

‘We have the evidence of his presence at that spot--at that hour.’

Arnold argued the matter, but in vain, and left Mr. Penruddock, of Wrinkles Close, with the idea that a rustic coroner was the most inept and useless of officials.

Once more Naomi heard the old church-bell tolling dismally in the afternoon sunlight. Again she saw the funeral train wind slowly round the curve of the hill, the same wind-tossed plumes--for even in this June weather the breeze blew fresh from the western sea--the same solemn figures and black horses and poor pomps and vanities of earthly pride; and this time she turned from the shrouded window with the heart-sickness of despair, and cast herself upon the ground, and tried to shut out the light of day, and prayed for death as the one issue and release from her miseries.

They were carrying him to his father’s grave--her murdered lover--slain by her father’s cruel hand, and slain at her prompting. Had she never put that fatal letter in her father’s hand, this thing would never have been. Oswald would have gone his way in peace to a new world and repentance, perchance, and quiet days, and Joshua Haggard would have known nothing of that stolen farewell.

‘Half the guilt is mine,’ she cried; ‘let me bear all the punishment! God be merciful to my misguided father, maddened by jealousy and wounded love! O God, charge not against him his sin that day!’

She had not been alone with her father since that night in the chapel. They had sat at the same board, and she had looked in his face, which told no story of fear or agitation. He had gone about his business with quiet regularity; taught in his school, visited his sick, read and exhorted as of old--yes, even while the inquest was being held at the First and Last, and all his flock were in a state of wildest emotion on their pastor’s behalf. There had been a crowd of Joshua’s people about the door of the justice-room, a crowd that gave vent to its indignation in a half-smothered way as Arnold Pentreath went in and out of the court. The feeling that their pastor was being persecuted for his faith was strong among them. This accusation of Arnold’s was too wild to be believed even by the accuser. It was a lying invention of Satan, designed to put this faithful flock to shame. This feeling pervaded the village, and wherever the minister went he received some new proof of his popularity. Women ran out of their cottage-doors as he passed by, and clasped him by the hand, and offered him their sympathy in this great trial. He shrank somewhat from these demonstrations of feeling. ‘Let me bear my own burden,’ he said. ‘It is not too heavy for me.’

And then when he was alone he clasped his hands in prayer and cried, ‘O Lord, reward these people for their affection and their trustfulness, for I can only bring shame upon them. I have built up a temple to Thine honour, and pulled it down, and abased and ruined Thy holy place with mine own hands. I have given Thee half my heart, and sold the other half to the devil. Let these people whom I have loved and taught suffer no loss because of my iniquity. Let their faith endure steadfast to the end, though my life prove a lie.’

Never had there been such a funeral as that of the young Squire of Pentreath Grange. The old churchyard was filled with all the inhabitants of Combhaven, and a crowd of strangers from outlying hamlets among the hills and tiny fishing villages along the rocky coast. This God’s acre lay on the side of a hill, and was a place of ups and downs, beautified by many a fuchsia-shaded tomb, and by myrtles that had grown into trees--a sheltered and pleasant spot, hidden from the sight of the sea, but not so remote that the murmur of the waves might not serve as a lullaby for quiet sleepers under the ferny turf.

Arnold Pentreath stood by the open vault, pale and haggard, and with a countenance which grief had made rigid as marble. He was quite alone in his place by the coffin--chief and only mourner. There was some sympathy felt with him, yet less than would have been given but for that accusation brought against Joshua Haggard. This the Little Bethelites could not pardon. False and monstrous as the charge was, it had inflicted disgrace upon their sect. It was a fact that would be remembered and recorded against them in days to come--a dark tradition to be magnified and distorted by their enemies.

That last ceremonial completed--and O, how brief and hasty a business it seems to the mourner who feels that this is the last!--the coffin placed in its stony niche, for worms to invade and toads to squat upon, and damp and mildew to disfigure--a place of decay and loathsomeness for evermore--Arnold walked slowly away from the churchyard, sick at heart, loathing the faces of his fellow-men. He would not go back to the lych-gate where the coach was waiting for him--would not be shut up again in the Barnstaple undertaker’s musty chariot, to hide his grief behind a cambric handkerchief, and so be conveyed slowly along the straggling village street, the principal feature and object of interest for the assembled multitude. He left the churchyard by another gate that led up to the hills--the wild lonely hills, where he could hug his sorrow, and be alone with his baffled vengeance and his passionate grief.

That was the sting--to know his brother’s murderer, to have no shadow of doubt as to the assassin, and to be powerless to strike. Conscience had its scorpions, no doubt, and Heaven held in reserve its lash for the hypocrite and murderer; but this was not enough for the brother who had loved his brother. Human nature in its weakness and narrowness of vision yearned for personal vengeance. Arnold wanted to bring this man to the gallows--to be the instrument of his direct and immediate punishment. Nothing less could satisfy his wounded love. His brother’s ashes cried to him for vengeance.

One consideration only came between him and this hunger for swift revenge. He remembered that appealing look of Naomi’s. His Naomi--his most noble among women--the woman he had hoped to win in days to come--the woman he had pictured in the fair future sitting at his board, ruling his household, making life sweet and honourable for him.

Could he ever hope to win her now? In his own mind he dissociated her altogether from her father’s guilt. She was no less pure in his eyes because her father’s hands were stained with blood. He was, even in his direst anger, willing to believe that Joshua’s crime had been an act of jealous madness, and not the deliberate guilt of a criminal nature.

He could understand now why Naomi had forbidden him to hope, while her looks and tones told him he was dear to her. She had known or suspected her father’s guilt. This would account for that deep melancholy which no hopeful utterances of his could dispel.

And if he brought Joshua Haggard to the gallows? What then? Was it not to destroy utterly the woman he so reverenced, the woman he fondly loved? Could Naomi survive so deep a shame, so deadly an agony; or, surviving it, could she have any feeling but hatred for the man who had brought shame and suffering upon her? He remembered that agonised appeal in the chapel,

‘Arnold, what are you doing?’

And he had answered her coldly; though that answer meant the destruction of those new hopes which had been so dear to him. He knew her well enough to be very sure that she would cling to her father till death; stand beside him on the gallows, were it possible, and be true to him after death. To hunt Joshua to his doom as he meant to hunt him must be to lose Naomi for ever.

‘Be it so,’ he cried. ‘What is my happiness, or her peace, that I should put it in the balance with my brother’s blood? I have one duty to perform; clear--direct--inexorable. Let me do that, and then go back to the old rough life at sea, and forget that I ever dreamt of being happy on shore.’