CHAPTER XXIII.

There was a momentary rustling, as if every person present had moved slightly, and then a deep hush. The silence seemed to last a long time; but, in fact, only a second or two elapsed before Powell, drawing up his tall, lean figure to its utmost height, and pointing with outstretched hand full at Algernon, exclaimed with a kind of cry, "There is her murderer! Woe to the cruel, woe to the unrighteous man! Ye have ploughed wickedness; ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies!"

There arose a murmur, a movement, a confused sound of ejaculations. Algernon started up, and some one laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. "Ask what he means," said Algernon; but his voice was so weak and faint that the words were not heard beyond the few persons who immediately surrounded him. He could scarcely grow paler than he had been from the beginning of the inquest, but a ghastly ashen-grey hue showed itself round his mouth. His lips were quite colourless. Terror, agonising terror, was in his heart. What did this preacher know? What had he seen? Had Castalia spoken and accused him before her death?

Anguish for anguish; perhaps he suffered at that moment as much as his victim had suffered when she felt the hand she loved send her to her death.

The movement and the murmur in the crowd were over in an instant. The coroner sternly commanded order. There was silence again, and the very air seemed charged with a horrible apprehension, which weighed upon every one as a coming thunderstorm oppresses the cowering birds.

"You must speak clearly and plainly, Mr. Powell," said the coroner in a severe tone. "State what grounds you have for this very extraordinary accusation. The evidence laid before us to-day goes to show that Mr. Errington did not see his wife since parting from her on the Monday night to go to London, until he was called on to identify her dead body at Duckwell Farm."

"He spoke with her in the meadow by the river's brink. She appealed to him; she implored him; she knelt to him. I saw her gestures. Then he hurled her down the steep bank into the water and fled away, leaving her to perish!"

A most profound sensation was caused by these words throughout the whole assembly. The jury looked at each other like men suddenly aroused from sleep. They seemed not only startled but scared. Indeed, a singular expression of disquietude appeared on every face—almost as if each individual in the crowd had felt himself accused. Before any further questions could be put to Powell, there was a stir and a commotion at the lower end of the room and a murmur of voices. Algernon Errington had swooned dead away. He must have fallen to the ground had he not been caught in the arms of his next neighbour, who happened to be Mr. Ravell, the draper. Some one in the crowd handed a smelling-bottle to be held under his nose, and they cleared a little space around him to give him air, by the directions of Mr. Smith, the surgeon, who was at hand. It was proposed to carry him away out of the heat and the throng; but in less than a couple of minutes he revived, and immediately on recovering consciousness he desired to remain where he was. The terror of listening to what Powell said was not so appalling to his imagination as the terror of fancying what he might be saying when he (Algernon) should not be there to hear it.

Order being restored, the preacher's examination was continued. On being asked where he had been when the circumstances alleged to have taken place happened, he replied that he had been at some distance up the river, in the midst of a thick coppice which grew low down on the bank there. He had been near enough to see, although not to hear, the interview between young Errington and his wife. And to the questions what had brought him to that remote spot at such an hour, and why he did not make his presence known at once on seeing the deceased lady fall into the water, he answered, waving his hands to and fro, "I was prostrate on the earth—not praying, I may not pray, but suffering under the wrath of the powers of the air. The voices were very terrible on that day. They had aroused me from my bed. They had hunted me forth in the early morning. I had wandered for a long time—for hours, after your reckoning, but for years according to the time of the spirits."

"Mr. Powell," said Dr. Evans, sternly, "this will not do. You must speak less wildly. Remember what a tremendous responsibility rests on you after making such an allegation as you have made! Answer the questions put to you clearly and seriously."

But it was in vain that David Powell was catechised and cross-examined in the endeavour to draw from him any more definite account of the events of that last morning of Castalia's life. He reiterated, indeed, his statement that Algernon had wilfully and forcibly thrust his wife down the bank into the river, and had then fled away at his utmost speed. And he added that he (Powell) had not thought of pursuing or calling to the murderer, being absorbed in his attempts to rescue the drowning woman. He persisted, too, in declaring that Castalia had been willing, nay, wishful, to die. She had not struggled. She had not cried out. She had not tried to reach his outstretched hand. She had closed her eyes, and given herself up to the power of the death-cold waters. So far he was coherent and consistent; but when he endeavoured to describe how or why he had found himself on that spot at that hour, he wandered off into the wildest statements, and grew ever more and more excited. His face flushed. His eyes blazed. His voice rose almost to a scream. He broke into a torrent of words, standing up in face of the crowd and emphasising his discourse with strange violent gestures. "I will declare the truth," he exclaimed. "I will cry aloud, and spare not. Now, therefore, be content; look upon me, for it is evident unto you if I lie!" Then with a sudden change of tone, sinking his voice to a hoarse, hollow monotone, and gazing straight before him with wide, horror-stricken eyes, he added, "Let me speak, let me confess the truth, before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death. A land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness."

A shudder ran through the audience. The preacher seemed to hold them in a spell. No voice was raised to interrupt him. Many persons turned pale as they listened. But on one face in the crowd the colour faintly dawned again. In one breast the preacher's voice giving utterance to the awful and glowing imagery of the Hebrew of old time, awoke something like a sensation of relief and comfort. Algernon Errington felt the life-blood pulsing warmly again in his veins. This Methodist man was mad—clearly mad! What was his testimony worth?

Powell went on, speaking still more brokenly and incoherently. "I am a castaway," he said. "I declare it before you all. Some of you have listened to my ministrations in other days. I spoke then of assurance—of Christian perfection. Those words were vain. There are but the elect and the reprobate, and unto the number of those latter am I doomed. I have long known it and struggled against the knowledge, but I declare it to ye now as a testimony. How shall a man be just with God? This is one thing, therefore I said it. He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked."

The coroner recovered his presence of mind. In truth he had been so absorbed in studying David Powell with the professional interest of a doctor and a psychologist, that he had suffered him to ramble on thus far unchecked. But now he broke in upon him abruptly. "We cannot listen to this sort of thing, Mr. Powell," he said. "All this has no bearing on the present inquiry." Then he said a few words as to the desirability of an adjournment. Mr. Errington might wish to call some other witnesses. Powell had acknowledged that he had been too far distant to hear a word of the conversation he alleged to have taken place between the husband and wife. It was possible, therefore, that he had been too distant to see the two persons with sufficient distinctness to swear to their identity. Some more particular testimony might be obtained as to the precise hour at which the deceased lady had been last seen alive, and as to what her husband had been doing at that time. Upon this, Algernon Errington arose in his place and said in a clear, though slightly tremulous voice, "For myself, I desire no adjournment. But I should like to put a few questions to this witness."

There was a sudden hush of profound attention. David Powell still stood up in face of the assembly. He was rocking himself to and fro in a singular, restless way, and muttering under his breath very rapidly. It was observable, too, that his eyes seemed continually attracted to one point in the room just behind Algernon Errington. Every now and then he passed his hands over his eyes, as if to obliterate, or shut out, some painful sight, but he did not turn his head away; and the next instant after making that gesture, he would stare at the same point again, with an expression of intense horror. Algernon waited for an instant before speaking. Then he said in such a tone as one uses to attract the attention of a very young child, "Mr. Powell, will you try to listen to me?"

The preacher immediately looked full at him, but without replying. Algernon did not meet his eye, but turned his face aside towards the coroner and the jury. He looked at them with an appealing glance, and a slight movement of his head in the direction of Powell. Then he resumed:

"The accusation you have brought against me is so overwhelming, so amazing, that it is not very wonderful if I feel almost stunned and dizzy. How such a notion ever entered your brain Heaven only knows! I deny it completely, unequivocally, solemnly. To me it seems that such a denial must be unnecessary. The thing is so monstrous! But will you try to answer one or two questions with some calmness? How long had you been in the copse before you saw my wife walking by the river-side?"

Powell shook his head restlessly, and passed his hand over his forehead with the action of brushing something off. "I was called out before the dawn," he said. "The voices bade me go forth. They sounded like brazen bells in the silence, beating and quivering here," and he pressed his fingers on his temples.

"You hear voices which are unheard by other people, then?"

"Often. Every day. Every hour."

"Tell me—do you not sometimes see forms that other persons cannot see?"

Powell started, trembled violently, and looked at Algernon with an expression of bewildered terror. But it was at the same time manifest that some gleam of reason was struggling against the delusions in his mind. He felt and perceived dimly, as one perceives external circumstances through sleep, that a trap was being laid for him. The pathetic questioning look in his eyes, as he vainly tried to recover the government of his mind, was intensely painful. For a second or two, he remained silent with parted lips and clenched hands, like a man making a violent and supreme effort. It seemed as if in another instant he might succeed in gaining sufficient mastery over himself to reply collectedly. But Algernon did not give time for such a chance to happen. He repeated his question more eagerly and loudly, looking at the preacher almost threateningly as he spoke.

"Tell me, Mr. Powell, and remember what a responsibility you have assumed before God and man in making this accusation—tell me truly whether you do not see visions—figures of men and women, that other people cannot see? Don't forms appear before your eyes and vanish again as suddenly? Have you not told your landlady, Mrs. Thimbleby, as much on many occasions? How can you dare to assert with confidence, that from the distance you say you were at, you could distinguish my face and that of my wife? All your description of her violent gestures, and kneeling on the ground, and clasping her hands—does not that seem more like the delusions of fancy than the information of your sober senses?"

Algernon spoke with indignant heat and rapidity—a calculated heat, a purposed rapidity meant to have a confusing effect on the preacher, and which had that effect; but which also excited a sympathetic indignation in many of the auditors. Powell looked wildly around him, and clasped his hands above his head.

"You must put one question at a time, Mr. Errington," said Dr. Evans.

"Then I put this question: David Powell, do you, or do you not, see visions and faces and figures that the rest of the world is as unconscious of as of the voices that called you out on to Whit Meadow that morning that my poor wife was drowned?"

Powell, with his eyes still fixed on the same point that he had been gazing on so long, suddenly cried out with a loud voice, "As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment, and the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit! God forbid that I should justify you! Till I die I will not remove my integrity from me. It is there—there behind his shoulder. It has been holding me with the power of its eyes. Oh, how dreadful are those eyes, and that ashen-grey face! Look, behold! the Lord has brought a witness from the grave to testify to the truth. See, behold! Can you not see her? Look where she stands in her cold wet garments, with the water dripping from her hair! She points at him—oh God most terrible!—the drowned woman points her cold finger at her murderer!" He stretched out his arms towards Algernon, and then with one bound leaped shrieking into the midst of the crowd.

A dozen hands were put forth to hold him. He struggled with the tremendous strength of insanity; but was at length forcibly carried out of the room a raving maniac.

After that there were not many words of an official nature spoken in the room. The inquest was adjourned to the following day, and the assembly dispersed to carry the account of the strange scene that had happened all over Whitford and its neighbourhood.