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 not gone far before they both stopped as by a common impulse. “are we doing right?” came almost simultaneously from the lips of both.
“suppose that through us a murderer escape?” said miss demster. “if he commit another murder, shall we be quite clear of the guilt of the crime?”
“or the murder may be discovered, but not the right person, and an innocent man be hanged.” deborah’s terrible suggestion made both the ladies shudder.
“i tell you what we’ll do,” said miss demster, after some minutes of painful reflection: “we’ll hurry home and say nothing about the matter, unless some innocent poor man be seized, and then we’ll come forward and declare all that we saw, and give evidence that it was a gentleman—i mean, one who looked like a gentleman—who committed the murder.”
this was a compromise with conscience, and any compromise with conscience is a dangerous thing. however, for the time it half quieted the minds of the two poor ladies.
they hurried home, hardly heeding the furious blast which suddenly rose, and which, had they been at the top of the cliffs, would almost have blown them off their feet. miss demster opened the door of her house with a trembling hand. there was a kind of hope in her mind that once within the quiet little dwelling trouble, like the stormy wind, could be shut out; but memory and consciousness of having evaded a duty could not be excluded. hard did the sisters try to persuade themselves that they had only done what was natural and right. betsy thought of the history of achan, and recalled other instances in scripture of sin being brought to light. deborah remembered stories of murder having been found out when there had seemed to be no clue by which to discover who had committed the crime.
a neighbour dropped in just when the ladies were attempting to eat their frugal supper, for which all appetite was gone. the storm by this time had lulled.
“o miss demster, miss deborah, have you heard the shocking, shocking news?” cried the visitor, throwing herself down on a seat. “poor young manly has been found, with his neck and ever so many other bones broken, at the bottom of a cliff!”
“indeed!” exclaimed the sisters, their consciences pricking them sorely for expressing such hypocritical surprise.
“he had evidently fallen when attempting an impossible feat. you were intending to take a walk in that direction, i know. did you hear nothing, see nothing, of this dreadful accident?”
miss demster actually knocked over the tea-tray, smashed her cherished china, and sent the boiling contents of the pot over the carpet and her visitor’s feet. it was her desperate resource for avoiding giving a reply.
the doctoring of the scalded feet, the picking up of the broken fragments of china, did divert attention from the subject of poor walter. betsy made many excuses for awkwardness—she who was never awkward; deborah ran for cotton-wool to put over the scald; the visitor presently departed limping (her house was but two doors off), and the demsters had kept their terrible secret.
“deborah, we can’t stand this kind of thing!” exclaimed betsy, as soon as the outer door was shut. “manly’s fall will be the talk of all dover, and i can’t break cups and saucers every time that an uncomfortable question is asked. we’ll be off to london by the stagecoach to-morrow.”
and off the demsters did go, though at great inconvenience. they could ill afford the serious expense, and a journey in february gave severe colds to both the sisters. they did not return till the nine days’ wonder was over; and a coroner’s inquest having been held on the body of walter, a verdict had been given—“accidental death by a fall from a cliff.”
it is a true saying that a little sin troubles more than a great deal of sorrow, and its truth was proved by the amiable ladies in paradise square. the quiet, even tenor of their lives was destroyed; they felt almost like hypocrites when they taught sunday scholars to be straightforward and truthful; they took no pleasure in going to church; they were half afraid to partake of holy communion.
“and yet what would every one say if we turned away?” cried betsy.
“oh, how wretched we should feel!” sighed deborah. “oh that we had had the courage to do what was right! and yet i am afraid, should all happen over again, that i should never dare to give evidence that might cause a man to be hanged.”
a thorn in the flesh often brings a man nearer to god; a thorn in the conscience severs from communion with god. the former may be endured with patience; the latter must be drawn out, or the wound rankles and festers.
the reader will now understand the emotion with which the misses demster read of oscar coldstream’s confession.
“that poor sinner has some good in him,” observed the elder—“he has had the courage to speak the whole truth. perhaps he acted under great provocation, and repented of the deed as soon as it was done.”
“he has done all he can to redeem the past,” said deborah, wiping her eyes. “i wonder what will be done with the poor gentleman. they will hardly hang him for telling the truth.”
“you see that a commission is coming to dover to inquire into the matter,” observed miss demster, pointing to the end of the paragraph. “deborah, deborah, ought we not even now to make clean breasts, and confess all that we know?”
“that was just what i was thinking,” replied poor deborah. “we have had no peace since we hid that dreadful matter, and now our speaking out will not cause any one to be hanged.”
“that mr. coldstream—whatever else he may be—is a brave and conscientious man,” observed betsy. “i think—though it would be an effort, a horrible effort—that we ought to give evidence now.”
and the poor ladies did appear in court, their heads bowed down with shame, and veils over their faces. they received meekly and with much self-abasement the reproof of the eminent lawyer appointed to examine into the case.
“ladies, you may hitherto have suppressed facts, and tried to defeat justice, from motives of humanity,” said he; “but know that he who conceals another’s crime becomes an accessory after the deed; he who shields a murderer from justice may be regarded as being, in some measure, a partaker in his guilt.”
it was a consolation to the poor misses demster that oscar coldstream was not to be hanged after all. his crime had been unpremeditated and voluntarily confessed; he was therefore recommended to mercy. instructions were forwarded to the indian government that the murderer of walter manly should be transported to the nearest penal settlement, to remain there for the term of his natural life.
