Part 19 (2/2)
f.a.gan now persuaded my father to lie down and try to obtain some sleep, promising to awake him the moment that Crowther arrived.
CHAPTER XIV. A CONFERENCE
Scarcely had my father laid himself down on the bed, when he fell off into a heavy sleep. Fatigue, exhaustion, and loss of blood all combined to overcome him, and he lay motionless in the same att.i.tude he at first a.s.sumed.
f.a.gan came repeatedly to the bedside, and, opening the curtains slightly, gazed on the cold, impa.s.sive features with a strange intensity. One might have supposed that the almost deathlike calm of the sleeper's face would have defied every thought or effort of speculation; but there he sat, watching it as though, by dint of patience and study, he might at length attain to reading what was pa.s.sing within that brain.
At the slightest sound that issued from the lips, too, he would bend down to try and catch its meaning. Perhaps, at moments like these, a trace of impatience might be detected in his manner; but, for the most part, his hard, stern features showed no sign of emotion, and it was in all his accustomed self-possession that he descended to the small and secluded chamber where Crowther sat awaiting him.
”Still asleep, f.a.gan?” asked the lawyer, looking hastily up from the papers and doc.u.ments he had been perusing.
”He is asleep, and like enough to continue so,” replied the other, slowly, while he sank down into an arm-chair, and gave himself up to deep reflection.
”I have been thinking a good deal over what you have told me,”
said Crowther, ”and I own I see the very gravest objections to his surrendering himself.”
”My own opinion!” rejoined f.a.gan, curtly.
”Even if it were an ordinary duel, with all the accustomed formalities of time, place, and witnesses, the temper of the public mind is just now in a critical state on these topics; MacNamara's death and that unfortunate affair at Kells have made a deep impression. I'd not trust too much to such dispositions. Besides, the chances are they would not admit him to bail, so that he 'd have to pa.s.s three, nearly four, months in Newgate before he could be brought to trial.”
”He'd not live through the imprisonment. It would break his heart, if it did not kill him otherwise.”
”By no means unlikely.”
”I know him well, and I am convinced he 'd not survive it. Why, the very thought of the accusation, the bare idea that he could be arraigned as a criminal, so overcame him here this morning that he staggered back and sunk into that chair, half fainting.”
”He thinks that he was not known at that hotel where he stopped?”
”He is quite confident of that; the manner of the waiters towards him convinces him that he was not recognized.”
”Nor has he spoken with any one since his arrival, except yourself?”
”Not one, save the hackney carman, who evidently did not know him.”
”He left home, you say, without a servant?”
”Yes! he merely said that he was going over for a day or two, to the mines, and would be back by the end of the week. But, latterly, he has often absented himself in this fas.h.i.+on; and, having spoken of visiting one place, has changed his mind and gone to another, in an opposite direction.”
”Who has seen him since he arrived here?”
”No one but myself and Raper.”
”Ah! Raper has seen him?”
”That matters but little. Joe has forgotten all about it already, or, if he has not, I have but to say that it was a mistake, for him to fancy that it was so. You shall see, if you like, that he will not even hesitate the moment I tell him the thing is so.”
”It only remains, then, to determine where he should go,--I mean Carew; for although any locality would serve in one respect, we must bethink ourselves of every issue to this affair: and, should there be any suspicion attaching to him, he ought to be out of danger,--the danger of arrest. Where do his princ.i.p.al estates lie?”
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