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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12535-0.txt b/12535-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..28c96b7 --- /dev/null +++ b/12535-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9038 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12535 *** + + THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE + + BY A.E.W. MASON + + 1914 + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + + I. HENRY THRESK + + II. ON BIGNOR HILL + + III. IN BOMBAY + + IV. JANE REPTON + + V. THE QUEST + + VI. IN THE TENT AT CHITIPUR + + VII. THE PHOTOGRAPH + + VIII. AND THE RIFLE + + IX. AN EPISODE IN BALLANTYNE'S LIFE + + X. NEWS FROM CHITIPUR + + XI. THRESK INTERVENES + + XII. THRESK GIVES EVIDENCE + + XIII. LITTLE BEEDING AGAIN + + XIV. THE HAZLEWOODS + + XV. THE GREAT CRUSADE + + XVI. CONSEQUENCES + + XVII. TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD + + XVIII. MR. HAZLEWOOD SEEKS ADVICE + + XIX. PETTIFER'S PLAN + + XX. ON THE DOWNS + + XXI. THE LETTER IS WRITTEN + + XXII. A WAY OUT OF THE TRAP + + XXIII. METHODS FROM FRANCE + + XXIV. THE WITNESS + + XXV. IN THE LIBRARY + + XXVI. TWO STRANGERS + + XXVII. THE VERDICT + + + + +THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +HENRY THRESK + + +The beginning of all this difficult business was a little speech which +Mrs. Thresk fell into a habit of making to her son. She spoke it the +first time on the spur of the moment without thought or intention. But +she saw that it hurt. So she used it again--to keep Henry in his +proper place. + +"You have no right to talk, Henry," she would say in the hard practical +voice which so completed her self-sufficiency. "You are not earning your +living. You are still dependent upon us;" and she would add with a note +of triumph: "Remember, if anything were to happen to your dear father you +would have to shift for yourself, for everything has been left to me." + +Mrs. Thresk meant no harm. She was utterly without imagination and had no +special delicacy of taste to supply its place--that was all. People and +words--she was at pains to interpret neither the one nor the other and +she used both at random. She no more contemplated anything happening to +her husband, to quote her phrase, than she understood the effect her +barbarous little speech would have on a rather reserved schoolboy. + +Nor did Henry himself help to enlighten her. He was shrewd enough to +recognise the futility of any attempt. No! He just looked at her +curiously and held his tongue. But the words were not forgotten. They +roused in him a sense of injustice. For in the ordinary well-to-do +circle, in which the Thresks lived, boys were expected to be an expense +to their parents; and after all, as he argued, he had not asked to be +born. And so after much brooding, there sprang up in him an antagonism to +his family and a fierce determination to owe to it as little as he could. + +There was a full share of vanity no doubt in the boy's resolve, but the +antagonism had struck roots deeper than his vanity; and at an age when +other lads were vaguely dreaming themselves into Admirals and +Field-Marshals and Prime-Ministers Henry Thresk, content with lower +ground, was mapping out the stages of a good but perfectly feasible +career. When he reached the age of thirty he must be beginning to make +money; at thirty-five he must be on the way to distinction--his name must +be known beyond the immediate circle of his profession; at forty-five he +must be holding public office. Nor was his profession in any doubt. There +was but one which offered these rewards to a man starting in life without +money to put down--the Bar. + +So to the Bar in due time Henry Thresk was called; and when something +did happen to his father he was trained for the battle. A bank failed and +the failure ruined and killed old Mr. Thresk. From the ruins just enough +was scraped to keep his widow, and one or two offers of employment were +made to Henry Thresk. + +But he was tenacious as he was secret. He refused them, and with the +help of pupils, journalism and an occasional spell as an election +agent, he managed to keep his head above water until briefs began +slowly to come in. + +So far then Mrs. Thresk's stinging speeches seemed to have been +justified. But at the age of twenty-eight he took a holiday. He went down +for a month into Sussex, and there the ordered scheme of his life was +threatened. It stood the attack; and again it is possible to plead in its +favour with a good show of argument. But the attack, nevertheless, brings +into light another point of view. + +Prudence, for instance, the disputant might urge, is all very well in the +ordinary run of life, but when the great moments come conduct wants +another inspiration. Such an one would consider that holiday with a +thought to spare for Stella Derrick, who during its passage saw much of +Henry Thresk. The actual hour when the test came happened on one of the +last days of August. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ON BIGNOR HILL + + +They were riding along the top of the South Downs between Singleton and +Arundel, and when they came to where the old Roman road from Chichester +climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and halted. She +was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides Henry Thresk, +who on this morning rode at her side. She was delicately yet healthfully +fashioned, with blue eyes under broad brows, raven hair and a face pale +and crystal-clear. But her lips were red and the colour came easily into +her cheeks. + +She pointed downwards to the track slanting across the turf from the brow +of the hill. + +"That's Stane Street. I promised to show it you." + +"Yes," answered Thresk, taking his eyes slowly from her face. It was a +morning rich with sunlight, noisy with blackbirds, and she seemed to him +a necessary part of it. She was alive with it and gave rather than took +of its gold. For not even that finely chiselled nose of hers could impart +to her anything of the look of a statue. + +"Yes. They went straight, didn't they, those old centurions?" he said. + +He moved his horse and stood in the middle of the track looking across a +valley of forest and meadow to Halnaker Down, six miles away in the +southwest. Straight in the line of his eyes over a shoulder of the down +rose a tall fine spire--the spire of Chichester Cathedral, and farther on +he could see the water in Bosham Creek like a silver mirror, and the +Channel rippling silver beyond. He turned round. Beneath him lay the blue +dark weald of Sussex, and through it he imagined the hidden line of the +road driving straight as a ruler to London. + +"No going about!" he said. "If a hill was in the way the road climbed +over it; if a marsh it was built through it." + +They rode on slowly along the great whaleback of grass, winding in and +out amongst brambles and patches of yellow-flaming gorse. The day was +still even at this height; and when, far away, a field of long grass +under a stray wind bent from edge to edge with the swift motion of +running water, it took them both by surprise. And they met no one. They +seemed to ride in the morning of a new clean world. They rose higher on +to Duncton Down, and then the girl spoke. + +"So this is your last day here." + +He gazed about him out towards the sea, eastwards down the slope to the +dark trees of Arundel, backwards over the weald to the high ridge of +Blackdown. + +"I shall look back upon it." + +"Yes," she said. "It's a day to look back upon." + +She ran over in her mind the days of this last month since he had come to +the inn at Great Beeding and friends of her family had written to her +parents of his coming. "It's the most perfect of all your days here. I am +glad. I want you to carry back with you good memories of our Sussex." + +"I shall do that," said he, "but for another reason." + +Stella pushed on a foot or two ahead of him. + +"Well," she said, "no doubt the Temple will be stuffy." + +"Nor was I thinking of the Temple." + +"No?" + +"No." + +She rode on a little way whilst he followed. A great bee buzzed past +their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse beside them +a thrush shot into the air a quiverful of clear melody. + +Stella spoke again, not looking at her companion, and in a low voice and +bravely with a sweet confusion of her blood. + +"I am very glad to hear you say that, for I was afraid that I had let you +see more than I should have cared for you to see--unless you had been +anxious to see it too." + +She waited for an answer, still keeping her distance just a foot or two +ahead, and the answer did not come. A vague terror began to possess her +that things which could never possibly be were actually happening to +her. She spoke again with a tremor in her voice and all the confidence +gone out of it. Almost it appealed that she should not be put to shame +before herself. + +"It would have been a little humiliating to remember, if that had +been true." + +Then upon the ground she saw the shadow of Thresk's horse creep up until +the two rode side by side. She looked at him quickly with a doubtful +wavering smile and looked down again. What did all the trouble in his +face portend? Her heart thumped and she heard him say: + +"Stella, I have something very difficult to say to you." + +He laid a hand gently upon her arm, but she wrenched herself free. Shame +was upon her--shame unendurable. She tingled with it from head to foot. +She turned to him suddenly a face grown crimson and eyes which brimmed +with tears. + +"Oh," she cried aloud, "that I should have been such a fool!" and she +swayed forward in her saddle. But before he could reach out an arm to +hold her she was upright again, and with a cut of her whip she was off +at a gallop. + +"Stella," he cried, but she only used her whip the more. She galloped +madly and blindly over the grass, not knowing whither, not caring, +loathing herself. Thresk galloped after her, but her horse, maddened by +her whip and the thud of the hoofs behind, held its advantage. He settled +down to the pursuit with a jumble of thoughts in his brain. + +"If to-day were only ten years on ... As it is it would be madness ... +madness and squalor and the end of everything ... Between us we +haven't a couple of pennies to rub together ... How she rides! ... She +was never meant for Brixton ... No, nor I ... Why didn't I hold my +tongue? ... Oh what a fool, what a fool! Thank Heaven the horses come +out of a livery stable ... They can't go on for ever and--oh, my God! +there are rabbit-holes on the Downs." And his voice rose to a shout: +"Stella! Stella!" + +But she never looked over her shoulder. She fled the more desperately, +shamed through and through! Along the high ridge, between the bushes and +the beech-trees, their shadows flitted over the turf, to a jingle of bits +and the thunder of hoofs. Duncton Beacon rose far behind them; they had +crossed the road and Charlton forest was slipping past like dark water +before the mad race came to an end. Stella became aware that escape was +impossible. Her horse was spent, she herself reeling. She let her reins +drop loose and the gallop changed to a trot, the trot to a walk. She +noticed with gratitude that Thresk was giving her time. He too had fallen +to a walk behind her, and quite slowly he came to her side. She turned +to him at once. + +"This is good country for a gallop, isn't it?" + +"Rabbit-holes though," said he. "You were lucky." + +He answered absently. There was something which had got to be said now. +He could not let this girl to whom he owed--well, the only holiday that +he had ever taken, go home shamed by a mistake, which after all she had +not made. He was very near indeed to saying yet more. The inclination was +strong in him, but not so strong as the methods of his life. Marriage +now--that meant to his view the closing of all the avenues of +advancement, and a life for both below both their needs. + +"Stella, just listen to me. I want you to know that had things been +different I should have rejoiced beyond words." + +"Oh, don't!" she cried. + +"I must," he answered and she was silent. "I want you to know," he +repeated, stammering and stumbling, afraid lest each word meant to heal +should only pierce the deeper. "Before I came here there was no one. +Since I came here there has been--you. Oh, my dear, I would have been +very glad. But I am obscure--without means. There are years in front of +me before I shall be anything else. I couldn't ask you to share them--or +I should have done so before now." + +In her mind ran the thought: what queer unimportant things men think +about! The early years! Wouldn't their difficulties, their sorrows be the +real savour of life and make it worth remembrance, worth treasuring? But +men had the right of speech. Not again would she forget that. She bowed +her head and he blundered on. + +"For you there'll be a better destiny. There's that great house in the +Park with its burnt walls. I should like to see that rebuilt and you in +your right place, its mistress." And his words ceased as Stella abruptly +turned to him. She was breathing quickly and she looked at him with a +wonder in her trouble. + +"And it hurts you to say this!" she said. "Yes, it actually hurts you." + +"What else could I say?" + +Her face softened as she looked and heard. It was not that he was cold of +blood or did not care. There was more than discomfort in his voice, there +was a very real distress. And in his eyes his heart ached for her to see. +Something of her pride was restored to her. She fell at once to his tune, +but she was conscious that both of them talked treacheries. + +"Yes, you are right. It wouldn't have been possible. You have your name +and your fortune to make. I too--I shall marry, I suppose, some one"--and +she suddenly smiled rather bitterly--"who will give me a Rolls-Royce +motor-car." And so they rode on very reasonably. + +Noon had passed. A hush had fallen upon that high world of grass and +sunlight. The birds were still. They talked of this and that, the +latest crisis in Europe and the growth of Socialism, all very wisely +and with great indifference like well-bred people at a dinner-party. +Not thus had Stella thought to ride home when the message had come that +morning that the horses would be at her door before ten. She had ridden +out clothed on with dreams of gold. She rode back with her dreams in +tatters and a sort of incredulity that to her too, as to other girls, +all this pain had come. + +They came to a bridle-path which led downwards through a thicket of trees +to the weald and so descended upon Great Beeding. They rode through the +little town, past the inn where Thresk was staying and the iron gates of +a Park where, amidst elm-trees, the blackened ruins of a great house +gaped to the sky. + +"Some day you will live there again," said Thresk, and Stella's lips +twitched with a smile of humour. + +"I shall be very glad after to-day to leave the house I am living in," +she said quietly, and the words struck him dumb. He had subtlety enough +to understand her. The rooms would mock her with memories of vain dreams. +Yet he kept silence. It was too late in any case to take back what he had +said; and even if she would listen to him marriage wouldn't be fair. He +would be hampered, and that, just at this time in his life, would mean +failure--failure for her no less than for him. They must be +prudent--prudent and methodical, and so the great prizes would be theirs. + +A mile beyond, a mile of yellow lanes between high hedges, they came to +the village of Little Beeding, one big house and a few thatched cottages +clustered amongst roses and great trees on the bank of a small river. +Thither old Mr. Derrick and his wife and his daughter had gone after the +fire at Hinksey Park had completed the ruin which disastrous speculations +had begun; and at the gate of one of the cottages the riders stopped and +dismounted. + +"I shall not see you again after to-day," said Stella. "Will you come in +for a moment?" + +Thresk gave the horses to a passing labourer to hold and opened the gate. + +"I shall be disturbing your people at their luncheon," he said. + +"I don't want you to go in to them," said the girl. "I will say goodbye +to them for you." + +Thresk followed her up the garden-path, wondering what it was that she +had still to say to him. She led him into a small room at the back of the +house, looking out upon the lawn. Then she stood in front of him. + +"Will you kiss me once, please," she said simply, and she stood with her +arms hanging at her side, whilst he kissed her on the lips. + +"Thank you," she said. "Now will you go?" + +He left her standing in the little room and led the horses back to the +inn. That afternoon he took the train to London. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN BOMBAY + + +It was not until a day late in January eight years afterwards that Thresk +saw the face of Stella Derrick again; and then it was only in a portrait. +He came upon it too in a most unlikely place. About five o'clock +upon that afternoon he drove out of the town of Bombay up to one of the +great houses on Malabar Hill and asked for Mrs. Carruthers. He was shown +into a drawing-room which looked over Back Bay to the great buildings of +the city, and in a moment Mrs. Carruthers came to him with her hands +outstretched. + +"So you've won. My husband telephoned to me. We do thank you! Victory +means so much to us." + +The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had +inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers, +Bombay merchants, had found themselves involved in a partnership +suit due to one or two careless phrases in a solicitor's letter. The case +had been the great case of the year in Bombay. The issue had been +doubtful, the stake enormous and Thresk, who three years before had taken +silk, had been fetched by young Carruthers from England to fight it. + +"Yes, we've won," he said. "Judgment was given in our favor this +afternoon." + +"You are dining with us to-night, aren't you." + +"Thank you, yes," said Thresk. "At half-past eight." + +"Yes." + +Mrs. Carruthers gave him some tea and chattered pleasantly while he drank +it. She was fair-haired and pretty, a lady of enthusiasms and uplifted +hands, quite without observation or knowledge, yet with power to +astonish. For every now and then some little shrewd wise saying would +gleam out of the placid flow of her trivialities and make whoever heard +it wonder for a moment whether it was her own or whether she had heard it +from another. But it was her own. For she gave no special importance to +it as she would have done had it been a remark she had thought worth +remembering. She just uttered it and slipped on, noticing no difference +in value between what she now said and what she had said a second ago. To +her the whole world was a marvel and all things in it equally amazing. +Besides she had no memory. + +"I suppose that now you are free," she said, "you will go up into the +central Provinces and see something of India." + +"But I am not free," replied Thresk. "I must get immediately back to +England." + +"So soon!" exclaimed Mrs. Carruthers. "Now isn't that a pity! You ought +to see the Taj--oh, you really ought!--by moonlight or in the morning. I +don't know which is best, and the Ridge too!--the Ridge at Delhi. You +really mustn't leave India without seeing the Ridge. Can't things wait in +London?" + +"Yes, things can, but people won't," answered Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers +was genuinely distressed that he should depart from India without a +single journey in a train. + +"I can't help it," he said, smiling back into her mournful eyes. "Apart +from my work, Parliament meets early in February." + +"Oh, to be sure, you are in Parliament," she exclaimed. "I had +forgotten." She shook her fair head in wonder at the industry of +her visitor. "I can't think how you manage it all. Oh, you must +need a holiday." + +Thresk laughed. + +"I am thirty-six, so I have a year or two still in front of me before I +have the right to break down. I'll save up my holidays for my old age." + +"But you are not married," cried Mrs. Carruthers. "You can't do that. You +can't grow comfortably old unless you're married. You will want to work +then to get through the time. You had better take your holidays now." + +"Very well. I shall have twelve days upon the steamer. When does it go?" +asked Thresk as he rose from his chair. + +"On Friday, and this is Monday," said Mrs. Carruthers. "You certainly +haven't much time to go anywhere, have you?" + +"No," replied Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers saw his face quicken suddenly +to surprise. He actually caught his breath; he stared, no longer aware of +her presence in the room. He was looking over her head towards the grand +piano which stood behind her chair; and she began to run over in her mind +the various ornaments which encumbered it. A piece of Indian drapery +covered the top and on the drapery stood a little group of Dresden China +figures, a crystal cigarette-box, some knick-knacks and half-a-dozen +photographs in silver frames. It must be one of those photographs, she +decided, which had caught his eye, which had done more than catch his +eye. For she was looking up at Thresk's face all this while, and the +surprise had gone from it. It seemed to her that he was moved. + +"You have the portrait of a friend of mine there," he said, and he +crossed the room to the piano. + +Mrs. Carruthers turned round. + +"Oh, Stella Ballantyne!" she cried. "Do you know her, Mr. Thresk?" + +"Ballantyne?" said Thresk. For a moment or two he was silent. Then he +asked: "She is married then?" + +"Yes, didn't you know? She has been married for a long time." + +"It's a long time since I have heard of her," said Thresk. He looked +again at the photograph. + +"When was this taken?" + +"A few months ago. She sent it to me in October. She is beautiful, don't +you think?" + +"Yes." + +But it was not the beauty of the girl who had ridden along the South +Downs with him eight years ago. There was more of character in the face +now, less, much less, of youth and none of the old gaiety. The open +frankness had gone. The big dark eyes which looked out straight at +Thresk as he stood before them had, even in that likeness, something of +aloofness and reserve. And underneath, in a contrast which seemed to him +startling, there was her name signed in the firm running hand in which +she had written the few notes which passed between them during that +month in Sussex. Thresk looked back again at the photograph and then +resumed his seat. + +"Tell me about her, Mrs. Carruthers," he said. "You hear from her often?" + +"Oh no! Stella doesn't write many letters, and I don't know her +very well." + +"But you have her photograph," said Thresk, "and signed by her." + +"Oh yes. She stayed with me last Christmas, and I simply made her get her +portrait taken. Just think! She hadn't been taken for years. Can you +understand it? She declared she was bored with it. Isn't that curious? +However, I persuaded her and she gave me one. But I had to force her to +write on it." + +"Then she was in Bombay last winter?" said Thresk slowly. + +"Yes." And then Mrs. Carruthers had an idea. + +"Oh," she exclaimed, "if you are really interested in Stella I'll put +Mrs. Repton next to you to-night." + +"Thank you very much," said Thresk. "But who is Mrs. Repton?" + +Mrs. Carruthers sat forward in her chair. + +"Well, she's Stella's great friend--very likely her only real friend in +India. Stella's so reserved. I simply adore her, but she quite prettily +and politely keeps me always at arm's length. If she has ever opened out +to anybody it's to Jane Repton. You see Charlie Repton was Collector at +Agra before he came into the Bombay Presidency, and so they went up to +Mussoorie for the hot weather. The Ballantynes happened actually to have +the very next bungalow--now wasn't that strange?--so naturally they +became acquainted. I mean the Ballantynes and the Reptons did..." + +"But one moment, Mrs. Carruthers," said Thresk, breaking in upon the +torrent of words. "Am I right in guessing that Mrs. Ballantyne lives +in India?" + +"But of course!" cried Mrs. Carruthers. + +"She is actually in India now?" + +"To be sure she is!" + +Thresk was quite taken aback by the news. + +"I had no idea of it," he said slowly, and Mrs. Carruthers replied +sweetly: + +"But lots of people live in India, Mr. Thresk. Didn't you know that? We +are not the uttermost ends of the earth." + +Thresk set to work to make his peace. He had not heard of Mrs. Ballantyne +for so long. It seemed strange to him to find himself suddenly near to +her now--that is if he was near. He just avoided that other exasperating +trick of treating India as if it was a provincial town and all its +inhabitants neighbours. But he only just avoided it. Mrs. Carruthers, +however, was easily appeased. + +"Yes," she said. "Stella has lived in India for the best part of eight +years. She came out with some friends in the winter, made Captain +Ballantyne's acquaintance and married him almost at once--in January, I +think it was. Of course I only know from what I've been told. I was a +schoolgirl in England at the time." + +"Of course," Thresk agreed. He was conscious of a sharp little stab of +resentment. So very quickly Stella had forgotten that morning on the +Downs! It must have been in the autumn of that same year that she had +gone out to India, and by February she was married. The resentment was +quite unjustified, as no one knew better than himself. But he was a man; +and men cannot easily endure so swift an obliteration of their images +from the thoughts and the hearts of the ladies who have admitted that +they loved them. None the less he pressed for details. Who was +Ballantyne? What was his position? After all he was obviously not the +millionaire to whom in a more generous moment he had given Stella. He +caught himself on a descent to the meanness of rejoicing upon that. +Meanwhile Mrs. Carruthers rippled on. + +"Captain Ballantyne? Oh, he's a most remarkable man! Older than +Stella, certainly, but a man of great knowledge and insight. People +think most highly of him. Languages come as easily to him as +crochet-work to a woman." + +This paragon had been Resident in the Principality of Bakuta to the north +of Bombay when Stella had first arrived. But he had been moved now to +Chitipur in Rajputana. It was supposed that he was writing in his leisure +moments a work which would be the very last word upon the native +Principalities of Central India. Oh, Stella was to be congratulated! And +Mrs. Carruthers, in her fine mansion on Malabar Hill, breathed a sigh of +envy at the position of the wife of a high official of the British _Raj_. + +Thresk looked over again to the portrait on the piano. + +"I am very glad," he said cordially as once more he rose. + +"But you shall sit next to Mrs. Repton to-night," said Mrs. Carruthers. +"And she will tell you more." + +"Thank you," answered Thresk. "I only wished to know that things are +going well with Mrs. Ballantyne--that was all." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JANE REPTON + + +Mrs. Carruthers kept her promise. She went in herself with Henry Thresk, +as she had always meant to do, but she placed Mrs. Repton upon his left +just round the bend of the table. Thresk stole a glance at her now and +then as he listened to the rippling laughter of his hostess during the +first courses. She was a tall woman and rather stout, with a pleasant +face and a direct gaze. Thresk gave her the age of thirty-five and put +her down as a cheery soul. Whether she was more he had to wait to learn +with what patience he could. He was free to turn to her at last and he +began without any preliminaries. + +"You know a friend of mine," he said. + +"I do?" + +"Yes." + +"Who is it?" + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +He noticed at once a change in Mrs. Repton. The frankness disappeared +from her face; her eyes grew wary. + +"I see," she said slowly. "I was wondering why I was placed next to you, +for you are the lion of the evening and there are people here of more +importance than myself. I knew it wasn't for my _beaux yeux_." + +She turned again to Thresk. + +"So you know my Stella?" + +"Yes. I knew her in England before she came out here and married. I have +not, of course, seen her since. I want you to tell me about her." + +Mrs. Repton looked him over with a careful scrutiny. + +"Mrs. Carruthers has no doubt told you that she married very well." + +"Yes; and that Ballantyne is a remarkable man," said Thresk. + +Mrs. Repton nodded. + +"Very well then?" she said, and her voice was a challenge. + +"I am not contented," Thresk replied. Mrs. Repton turned her eyes to her +plate and said demurely: + +"There might be more than one reason for that." + +Thresk abandoned all attempt to fence with her. Mrs. Repton was not of +those women who would lightly give their women-friends away. Her phrase +"my Stella" had, besides, revealed a world of love and championship. +Thresk warmed to her because of it. He threw reticence to the winds. + +"I am going to give you the real reason, Mrs. Repton. I saw her +photograph this afternoon on Mrs. Carruthers' piano, and it left me +wondering whether happiness could set so much character in a +woman's face." + +Mrs. Repton shrugged her shoulders. + +"Some of us age quickly here." + +"Age was not the new thing which I read in that photograph." + +Mrs. Repton did not answer. Only her eyes sounded him. She seemed to be +judging the stuff of which he was made. + +"And if I doubted her happiness this afternoon I must doubt it still more +now," he continued. + +"Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Repton. + +"Because of your reticence, Mrs. Repton," he answered. "For you have been +reticent. You have been on guard. I like you for it," he added with a +smile of genuine friendliness. "May I say that? But from the first moment +when I mentioned Stella Ballantyne's name you shouldered your musket." + +Mrs. Repton neither denied nor accepted his statement. She kept looking +at him and away from him as though she were still not sure of him, and at +times she drew in her breath sharply, as though she had already taken +upon herself some great responsibility and now regretted it. In the end +she turned to him abruptly. + +"I am puzzled," she cried. "I think it's strange that since you are +Stella's friend I knew nothing of that friendship--nothing whatever." + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is years since we met, as I told you. She has new interests." + +"They have not destroyed the old ones. We remember home things out here, +all of us. Stella like the rest. Why, I thought that I knew her whole +life in England, and here's a definite part of it--perhaps a very +important part--of which I am utterly ignorant. She has spoken of many +friends to me; of you never. I am wondering why." + +She spoke obviously without any wish to hurt. Yet the words did hurt. She +saw Thresk redden as she uttered them, and a swift wild hope flamed like +a rose in her heart: if this man with the brains and the money and the +perseverance sitting at her side should turn out to be the Perseus for +her beautiful chained Andromeda, far away there in the state of Chitipur! +The lines of a poem came into her thoughts. + +"I know; the world proscribes not love, +Allows my finger to caress +Your lips' contour and downiness +Provided it supplies the glove." + +Suppose that here at her side was the man who would dispense with the +glove! She looked again at Thresk. The lean strong face suggested that he +might, if he wanted hard enough. All her life had been passed in the +support of authority and law. Authority--that was her husband's +profession. But just for this hour, as she thought of Stella Ballantyne, +lawlessness shone out to her desirable as a star. + +"No, she has never once mentioned your name, Mr. Thresk." + +Again Thresk was conscious of the little pulse of resentment beating at +his heart. + +"She has no doubt forgotten me." + +Mrs. Repton shook her head. + +"That's one explanation. There might be another." + +"What is it?" + +"That she remembers you too much." + +Mrs. Repton was a little startled by her own audacity, but it provoked +nothing but an incredulous laugh from her companion. + +"I am afraid that's not very likely," he said. There was no hint of +elation in his voice nor any annoyance. If he felt either, why, he was on +guard no less than she. Mrs. Repton was inclined to throw up her hands in +despair. She was baffled and she was little likely, as she knew, to get +any light. + +"If you take the man you know best of all," she used to say, "you still +know nothing at all of what he's like when he's alone with a woman, +especially if it's a woman for whom he cares--unless the woman talks." + +Very often the woman does talk and the most intimate and private facts +come in a little while to be shouted from the housetops. But Stella +Ballantyne did not talk. She had talked once, and once only, under a +great stress to Jane Repton; but even then Thresk had nothing to do with +her story at all. + +Thresk turned quickly towards her. + +"In a moment Mrs. Carruthers will get up. Her eyes are collecting +the women and the women are collecting their shoes. What have you +to tell me?" + +Mrs. Repton wanted to speak. Thresk gave her confidence. He seemed to be +a man without many illusions, he was no romantic sentimentalist. She went +back to the poem of which the lines had been chasing one another through +her head all through this dinner, as a sort of accompaniment to their +conversation. Had he found it out? she asked herself-- + +"The world and what it fears." + +Thus she hung hesitating while Mrs. Carruthers gathered in her hands her +gloves and her fan. There was a woman at the other end of the table +however who would not stop talking. She was in the midst of some story +and heeded not the signals of her hostess. Jane Repton wished she would +go on talking for the rest of the evening, and recognised that the wish +was a waste of time and grew flurried. She had to make up her mind to say +something which should be true or to lie. Yet she was too staunch to +betray the confidence of her friend unless the betrayal meant her +friend's salvation. But just as the woman at the end of the table ceased +to talk an inspiration came to her. She would say nothing to Thresk, but +if he had eyes to see she would place him where the view was good. + +"I have this to say," she answered in a low quick voice. "Go yourself to +Chitipur. You sail on Friday, I think? And to-day is Monday. You can make +the journey there and back quite easily in the time." + +"I can?" asked Thresk. + +"Yes. Travel by the night-mail up to Ajmere tomorrow night. You will be +in Chitipur on Wednesday afternoon. That gives you twenty-four hours +there, and you can still catch the steamer here on Friday." + +"You advise that?" + +"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Repton. + +Mrs. Carruthers rose from the table and Jane Repton had no further word +with Thresk that night. In the drawing-room Mrs. Carruthers led him from +woman to woman, allowing him ten minutes for each one. + +"He might be Royalty or her pet Pekingese," cried Mrs. Repton in +exasperation. For now that her blood had cooled she was not so sure that +her advice had been good. The habit of respect for authority resumed its +ancient place in her. She might be planting that night the seed of a very +evil flower. "Respectability" had seemed to her a magnificent poem as she +sat at the dinner-table. Here in the drawing-room she began to think that +it was not for every-day use. She wished a word now with Thresk, so that +she might make light of the advice which she had given. "I had no +business to interfere," she kept repeating to herself whilst she talked +with her host. "People get what they want if they want it enough, but +they can't control the price they have to pay. Therefore it was no +business of mine to interfere." + +But Thresk took his leave and gave her no chance for a private word. She +drove homewards a few minutes later with her husband; and as they +descended the hill to the shore of Back Bay he said: + +"I had a moment's conversation with Thresk after you had left the +dining-room, and what do you think?" + +"Tell me!" + +"He asked me for a letter of introduction to Ballantyne at Chitipur." + +"But he knows Stella!" exclaimed Jane Repton. + +"Does he? He didn't tell me that! He simply said that he had time to see +Chitipur before he sailed and asked for a line to the Resident." + +"And you promised to give him one?" + +"Of course. I am to send it to the Taj Mahal hotel to-morrow morning." + +Mrs. Repton was a little startled. She did not understand at all why +Thresk asked for the letter and, not understanding, was the more alarmed. +The request seemed to imply not merely that he had decided to make the +journey but that during the hour or so since they had sat at the +dinner-table he had formed some definite and serious plan. + +"Did you tell him anything?" she asked rather timidly. + +"Not a word," replied Repton. + +"Not even about--what happened in the hills at Mussoorie?" + +"Of course not." + +"No, of course not," Jane Repton agreed. + +She leaned back against the cushions of the victoria. A clear dark sky of +stars wonderfully bright stretched above her head. After the hot day a +cool wind blew pleasantly on the hill, and between the trees of the +gardens she could see the lights of the city and of a ship here and there +in the Bay at their feet. + +"But it's not very likely that Thresk will find them at Chitipur," said +Repton. "They will probably be in camp." + +Mrs. Repton sat forward. + +"Yes, that's true. This is the time they go on their tour of inspection. +He will miss them." And at once disappointment laid hold of her. Mrs. +Repton was not in the mood for logic that evening. She had been afraid a +moment since that the train she had laid would bring about a +conflagration. Now that she knew it would not even catch fire she passed +at once to a passionate regret. Thresk had inspired her with a great +confidence. He was the man, she believed, for her Stella. But he was +going up to Chitipur! Anything might happen! She leaned back again in the +carriage and cried defiantly to the stars. + +"I am glad that he's going. I am very glad." And in spite of her +conscience her heart leaped joyously in her bosom. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE QUEST + + +The next night Henry Thresk left Bombay and on the Wednesday afternoon he +was travelling in a little white narrow-gauge train across a flat yellow +desert which baked and sparkled in the sun. Here and there a patch of +green and a few huts marked a railway station and at each gaily-robed +natives sprung apparently from nowhere and going no-whither thronged the +platform and climbed into the carriages. Thresk looked impatiently +through the clouded windows, wondering what he should find in Chitipur if +ever he got there. The capital of that state lies aloof from the trunk +roads and is reached by a branch railway sixty miles long, which is the +private possession of the Maharajah and takes four hours to traverse. For +in Chitipur the ancient ways are devoutly followed. Modern ideas of speed +and progress may whirl up the big central railroad from Bombay to Ajmere. +But they stop at the junction. They do not travel along the Maharajah's +private lines to Chitipur, where he, directly descended from an important +and most authentic goddess, dispenses life and justice to his subjects +without even the assistance of the Press. There is little criticism in +the city and less work. A patriarchal calm sleeps in all its streets. In +Chitipur it is always Sunday afternoon. Even down by the lake, where the +huge white many-storeyed palace contemplates its dark-latticed windows +and high balconies mirrored in still water unimaginably blue nothing +which could be described as energy is visible. You may see an elephant +kneeling placidly in the lake while an attendant polishes up his trunk +and his forehead with a brickbat. But the elephant will be too +well-mannered to trumpet his enjoyment. Or you may notice a fisherman +drowsing in a boat heavy enough to cope with the surf of the Atlantic. +But the fisherman will not notice you--not even though you call to him +with dulcet promises of rupees. You will, if you wait long enough, see a +woman coming down the steps with a pitcher balanced on her head; and +indeed perhaps two women. But when your eyes have dwelt upon these +wonders you will have seen what there is of movement and life about the +shores of those sleeping waters. It was in accordance with the fitness of +things that the city and its lake should be three miles from the railway +station and quite invisible to the traveller. The hotel however and the +Residency were near to the station, and it was the Residency which had +brought Thresk out of the crowds and tumult of Bombay. He put up at the +hotel and enclosing Repton's introduction in a covering letter sent it by +his bearer down the road. Then he waited; and no answer came. + +Finally he asked if his bearer had returned. Quite half an hour he was +told, and the man was sent for. + +"Well? You delivered my letter?" said Thresk. + +"Yes, Sahib." + +"And there was no answer?" + +"No. No answer, Sahib," replied the man cheerfully. + +"Very well." + +He waited yet another hour, and since still no acknowledgment had come he +strolled along the road himself. He came to a large white house. A +flagpost tapered from its roof but no flag blew out its folds. There was +a garden about the house, the trim well-ordered garden of the English +folk with a lawn and banks of flowers, and a gardener with a hose was +busy watering it. Thresk stopped before the hedge. The windows were all +shuttered, the big door closed: there was nowhere any sign of the +inhabitants. + +Thresk turned and walked back to the hotel. He found the bearer laying +out a change of clothes for him upon his bed. + +"His Excellency is away," he said. + +"Yes, Sahib," replied the bearer promptly. "His Excellency gone on +inspection tour." + +"Then why in heaven's name didn't you tell me?" cried Thresk. + +The bearer's face lost all its cheerfulness in a second and became a +mask. He was a Madrassee and black as coal. To Thresk it seemed that the +man had suddenly withdrawn himself altogether and left merely an image +with living eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that change in his +servant. It came at the first note of reproach in his voice and with such +completeness that it gave him the shock of a conjurer's trick. One moment +the bearer was before him, the next he had disappeared. + +"What did you do with the letter?" Thresk asked and was careful that +there should be no exasperation in his voice. + +The bearer came to life again, his white teeth gleamed in smiles. + +"I leave the letter. I give it to the gardener. All letters are sent to +his Excellency." + +"When?" + +"Perhaps this week, perhaps next." + +"I see," said Thresk. He stood for a moment or two with his eyes upon the +window. Then he moved abruptly. + +"We go back to Bombay to-morrow afternoon." + +"The Sahib will see Chitipur to-morrow. There are beautiful palaces on +the lake." + +Thresk laughed, but the laugh was short and bitter. + +"Oh yes, we'll do the whole thing in style to-morrow." + +He had the tone of a man who has caught himself out in some childish act +of folly. He seemed at once angry and ashamed. + +None the less he was the next morning the complete tourist doing India +at express speed during a cold weather. He visited the Museum, he walked +through the Elephant Gate into the bazaar, he was rowed over the lake to +the island palaces; he admired their marble steps and columns and floors +and was confounded by their tinkling blue glass chandeliers. He did the +correct thing all through that morning and early in the afternoon climbed +into the little train which was to carry him back to Jarwhal Junction and +the night mail to Bombay. + +"You will have five hours to wait at the junction, Mr. Thresk," said the +manager of the hotel, who had come to see him off. "I have put up some +dinner for you and there is a dâk-bungalow where you can eat it." + +"Thank you," said Thresk, and the train moved off. The sun had set before +he reached the junction. When he stepped out on to the platform twilight +had come--the swift twilight of the East. Before he had reached the +dâk-bungalow the twilight had changed to the splendour of an Indian +night. The bungalow was empty of visitors. Thresk's bearer lit a fire and +prepared dinner while Thresk wandered outside the door and smoked. He +looked across a plain to a long high ridge, where once a city had +struggled. Its deserted towers and crumbling walls still crowned the +height and made a habitation for beasts and birds. But they were quite +hidden now and the sharp line of the ridge was softened. Halfway between +the old city and the bungalow a cluster of bright lights shone upon the +plain and the red tongues of a fire flickered in the open. Thresk was in +no hurry to go back to the bungalow. The first chill of the darkness had +gone. The night was cool but not cold; a moon had risen, and that dusty +plain had become a place of glamour. From somewhere far away came the +sound of a single drum. Thresk garnered up in his thoughts the beauty of +that night. It was to be his last night in India. By this time to-morrow +Bombay would have sunk below the rim of the sea. He thought of it with +regret. He had come up into Rajputana on a definite quest and on the +advice of a woman whose judgment he was inclined to trust. And his quest +had failed. He was to see for himself. He would see nothing. And still +far away the beating of that drum went on--monotonous, mournful, +significant--the real call of the East made audible. Thresk leaned +forward on his seat, listening, treasuring the sound. He rose reluctantly +when his bearer came to tell him that dinner was ready. Thresk took a +look round. He pointed to the cluster of lights on the plain. + +"Is that a village?" he asked. + +"No, Sahib," replied the bearer. "That's his Excellency's camp." + +"What!" cried Thresk, swinging round upon his heel. + +His bearer smiled cheerfully. + +"Yes. His Excellency to whom I carried the Sahib's letter. That's his +camp for to-night. The keeper of the bungalow told me so. His Excellency +camped here yesterday and goes on to-morrow." + +"And you never told me!" exclaimed Thresk, and he checked himself. He +stood wondering what he should do, when there came suddenly out of the +darkness a queer soft scuffling sound, the like of which he had never +heard. He heard a heavy breathing and a bubbling noise and then into +the fan of light which spread from the window of the bungalow a man in +a scarlet livery rode on a camel. The camel knelt; its rider +dismounted, and as he dismounted he talked to Thresk's bearer. +Something passed from hand to hand and the bearer came back to Thresk +with a letter in his hand. + +"A chit from his Excellency." + +Thresk tore open the envelope and found within it an invitation to +dinner, signed "Stephen Ballantyne." + +"Your letter has reached me this moment," the note ran. "It came by your +train. I am glad not to have missed you altogether and I hope that you +will come to-night. The camel will bring you to the camp and take you +back in plenty of time for the mail." + +After all then the quest had not failed. After all he was to see for +himself--what a man could see within two hours, of the inner life of a +married couple. Not very much certainly, but a hint perhaps, some token +which would reveal to him what it was that had written so much +character into Stella Ballantyne's face and driven Jane Repton into +warnings and reserve. + +"I will go at once," said Thresk and his bearer translated the words to +the camel-driver. + +But even so Thresk stayed to look again at the letter. Its handwriting at +the first glance, when the unexpected words were dancing before his eyes, +had arrested his attention; it was so small, so delicately clear. +Thresk's experience had made him quick to notice details and slow to +infer from them. Yet this handwriting set him wondering. It might have +been the work of some fastidious woman or of some leisured scholar; so +much pride of penmanship was there. It certainly agreed with no picture +of Stephen Ballantyne which his imagination had drawn. + +He mounted the camel behind the driver, and for the next few minutes all +his questions and perplexities vanished from his mind. He simply clung to +the waist of the driver. For the camel bumped down into steep ditches and +scuffled up out of them, climbed over mounds and slid down the further +side of them, and all the while Thresk had the sensation of being poised +uncertainly in the air as high as a church-steeple. Suddenly however the +lights of the camp grew large and the camel padded silently in between +the tents. It was halted some twenty yards from a great marquee. Another +servant robed in white with a scarlet sash about his waist received +Thresk from the camel-driver. + +He spoke a few words in Hindustani, but Thresk shook his head. Then the +man moved towards the marquee and Thresk followed him. He was conscious +of a curious excitement, and only when he caught his breath was he aware +that his heart was beating fast. As they neared the tent he heard voices +within. They grew louder as he reached it--one was a man's, loud, +wrathful, the other was a woman's. It was not raised but it had a ring in +it of defiance. The words Thresk could not hear, but he knew the woman's +voice. The servant raised the flap of the tent. + +"Huzoor, the Sahib is here," he said, and at once both the voices were +stilled. As Thresk stood in the doorway both the man and the woman +turned. The man, with a little confusion in his manner, came quickly +towards him. Over his shoulder Thresk saw Stella Ballantyne staring at +him, as if he had risen from the grave. Then, as he took Ballantyne's +extended hand, Stella swiftly raised her hand to her throat with a +curious gesture and turned away. It seemed as if now that she was sure +that Thresk stood there before her, a living presence, she had something +to hide from him. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN THE TENT AT CHITIPTUR + + +The marquee was large and high. It had a thick lining of a dull red +colour and a carpet covered the floor; cushioned basket chairs and a few +small tables stood here and there; against one wall rose an open +escritoire with a box of cheroots upon it; the two passages to the +sleeping-tents and the kitchen were hidden by grass-screens and between +them stood a great Chesterfield sofa. It was, in a word, the tent of +people who were accustomed to make their home in it for weeks at a time. +Even the latest books were to be seen. But it was dark. + +A single lamp swinging above the round dinner-table from the cross-pole +of the roof burnt in the very centre of the tent; and that was all. The +corners were shadowy; the lining merely absorbed the rays and gave none +back. The round pool of light which spread out beneath the lamp was +behind Ballantyne when he turned to the doorway, so Thresk for a moment +was only aware of him as a big heavily-built man in a smoking-jacket and +a starched white shirt; and it was to that starched white shirt that he +spoke, making his apologies. He was glad too to delay for a second or +two the moment when he must speak to Stella. In her presence this eight +long years of effort and work had become a very little space. + +"I had to come as I was, Captain Ballantyne," he said, "for I have only +with me what I want for the night in the train." + +"Of course. That's all right," Ballantyne replied with a great +cordiality. He turned towards Stella. "Mr. Thresk, this is my wife." + +Now she had to turn. She held out her right hand but she still covered +her throat with her left. She gave no sign of recognition and she did not +look at her visitor. + +"How do you do, Mr. Thresk?" she said, and went on quickly, allowing him +no time for a reply. "We are in camp, you see. You must just take us as +we are. Stephen did not tell me till a minute ago that he expected a +visitor. You have not too much time. I will see that dinner is served at +once." She went quickly to one of the grass-screens and lifting it +vanished from his view. It seemed to Thresk that she had just seized upon +an excuse to get away. Why? he asked himself. She was nervous and +distressed, and in her distress she had accepted without surprise +Thresk's introduction to her as a stranger. To that relationship then he +and she were bound for the rest of his stay in the Resident's camp. + +Mrs. Repton had been wrong when she had attributed Thresk's request for +a formal introduction to Ballantyne to a plan already matured in his +mind. He had no plan, although he formed one before that dinner was at an +end. He had asked for the letter because he wished faithfully to follow +her advice and see for himself. If he called upon Stella he would find +her alone; the mere sending in of his name would put her on her guard; he +would see nothing. She would take care of that. He had no wish to make +Ballantyne's acquaintance as Mrs. Ballantyne's friend. He could claim +that friendship afterwards. Now however Stella herself in her confusion +had made the claim impossible. She had fled--there was no other word +which could truthfully describe her swift movement to the screen. + +Ballantyne however had clearly not been surprised by it. + +"It was a piece of luck for me that I camped here yesterday and +telegraphed for my letters," he said. "You mentioned in your note that +you had only twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur, didn't you? So I was +sure that you would be upon this train." + +He spoke with a slow precision in a voice which he was careful--or so it +struck Thresk--to keep suave and low; and as he spoke he moved towards +the dinner-table and came within the round pool of light. Thresk had a +clear view of him. He was a man of a gross and powerful face, with a +blue heavy chin and thick eyelids over bloodshot eyes. + +"Will you have a cocktail?" he asked, and he called aloud, going to the +second passage from the tent: "Quai hai! Baram Singh, cocktails!" + +The servant who had met Thresk at the door came in upon the instant with +a couple of cocktails on a tray. + +"Ah, you have them," he said. "Good!" + +But he refused the glass when the tray was held out to him, refused it +after a long look and with a certain violence. + +"For me? Certainly not! Never in this world." He looked up at Thresk +with a laugh. "Cocktails are all very well for you, Mr. Thresk, who are +here during a cold weather, but we who make our homes here--we have to +be careful." + +"Yes, so I suppose," said Thresk. But just behind Ballantyne, on a +sideboard against the wall of the tent opposite to that wall where the +writing-table stood, he noticed a syphon of soda, a decanter of whisky +and a long glass which was not quite empty. He looked at Ballantyne +curiously and as he looked he saw him start and stare with wide-opened +eyes into the dim corners of the tent. Ballantyne had forgotten Thresk's +presence. He stood there, his body rigid, his mouth half-open and fear +looking out from his eyes and every line in his face--stark paralysing +fear. Then he saw Thresk staring at him, but he was too sunk in terror +to resent the stare. + +"Did you hear anything?" he said in a whisper. + +"No." + +"I did," and he leaned his head on one side. For a moment the two men +stood holding their breath; and then Thresk did hear something. It was +the rustle of a dress in the corridor beyond the mat-screen. + +"It's Mrs. Ballantyne," he said, and she lifted the screen and came in. + +Thresk just noticed a sharp movement of revulsion in Ballantyne, but he +paid no heed to him. His eyes were riveted on Stella Ballantyne. She was +wearing about her throat now a turquoise necklace. It was a heavy +necklace of Indian make, rather barbaric and not at all beautiful, but it +had many rows of stones and it hid her throat--just as surely as her hand +had hidden it when she first saw Thresk. It was to hide her throat that +she had fled. He saw Ballantyne go up to his wife, he heard his voice and +noticed that her face grew grave and hard. + +"So you have come to your senses," he said in a low tone. Stella passed +him and did not answer. It was, then, upon the question of that necklace +that their voices had been raised when he reached the camp. He had heard +Ballantyne's, loud and dominant, the voice of a bully. He had been +ordering her to cover her throat. Stella, on the other hand, had been +quiet but defiant. She had refused. Now she had changed her mind. + +Baram Singh brought in the soup-tureen a second afterwards and Ballantyne +raised his hands in a simulation of the profoundest astonishment. + +"Why, dinner's actually punctual! What a miracle! Upon my word, Stella, I +shan't know what to expect next if you spoil me in this way." + +"It's usually punctual, Stephen," Stella replied with a smile of anxiety +and appeal. + +"Is it, my dear? I hadn't noticed it. Let us sit down at once." + +Upon this tone of banter the dinner began; and no doubt in another man's +mouth it might have sounded good-humoured enough. There was certainly no +word as yet which, it could be definitely said, was meant to wound, but +underneath the raillery Thresk was conscious of a rasp, a bitterness just +held in check through the presence of a stranger. Not that Thresk was +spared his share of it. At the very outset he, the guest whom it was such +a rare piece of good fortune for Ballantyne to meet, came in for a taste +of the whip. + +"So you could actually give four-and-twenty hours to Chitipur, Mr. +Thresk. That was most kind and considerate of you. Chitipur is grateful. +Let us drink to it! By the way what will you drink? Our cellar is rather +limited in camp. There's some claret and some whisky-and-soda." + +"Whisky-and-soda for me, please," said Thresk. + +"And for me too. You take claret, don't you, Stella dear?" and he +lingered upon the "dear" as though he anticipated getting a great deal of +amusement out of her later on. And so she understood him, for there came +a look of trouble into her face and she made a little gesture of +helplessness. Thresk watched and said nothing. + +"The decanter's in front of you, Stella," continued Ballantyne. He turned +his attention to his own tumbler, into which Baram Singh had already +poured the whisky; and at once he exclaimed indignantly: + +"There's much too much here for me! Good heavens, what next!" and in +Hindustani he ordered Baram Singh to add to the soda-water. Then he +turned again to Thresk. "But I've no doubt you exhausted Chitipur in your +twenty-four hours, didn't you? Of course you are going to write a book." + +"Write a book!" cried Thresk. He was surprised into a laugh. "Not I." + +Ballantyne leaned forward with a most serious and puzzled face. + +"You're not writing a book about India? God bless my soul! D'you hear +that, Stella? He's actually twenty-four hours in Chitipur and he's not +going to write a book about it." + +"Six weeks from door to door: or how I made an ass of myself in India," +said Thresk. "No thank you!" + +Ballantyne laughed, took a gulp of his whisky-and-soda and put the glass +down again with a wry face. + +"This is too strong for me," he said, and he rose from his chair and +crossed over to the tantalus upon the sideboard. He gave a cautious look +towards the table, but Thresk had bent forward towards Stella. She was +saying in a low voice: + +"You don't mind a little chaff, do you?" and with an appeal so wistful +that it touched Thresk to the heart. + +"Of course not," he answered, and he looked up towards Ballantyne. Stella +noticed a change come over his face. It was not surprise so much which +showed there as interest and a confirmation of some suspicion which he +already had. He saw that Ballantyne was secretly pouring into his glass +not soda-water at all but whisky from the tantalus. He came back with the +tumbler charged to the brim and drank deeply from it with relish. + +"That's better," he said, and with a grin he turned his attention to his +wife, fixing her with his eyes, gloating over her like some great snake +over a bird trembling on the floor of its cage. The courses followed one +upon the other and while he ate he baited her for his amusement. She took +refuge in silence but he forced her to talk and then shivered with +ridicule everything she said. Stella was cowed by him. If she answered it +was probably some small commonplace which with an exaggerated politeness +he would nag at her to repeat. In the end, with her cheeks on fire, she +would repeat it and bend her head under the brutal sarcasm with which it +was torn to rags. Once or twice Thresk was on the point of springing up +in her defence, but she looked at him with so much terror in her eyes +that he did not interfere. He sat and watched and meanwhile his plan +began to take shape in his mind. + +There came an interval of silence during which Ballantyne leaned back in +his chair in a sort of stupor; and in the midst of that silence Stella +suddenly exclaimed with a world of longing in her voice: + +"And you'll be in England in thirteen days! To think of it!" She glanced +round the tent. It seemed incredible that any one could be so fortunate. + +"You go straight from Jarwhal Junction here at our tent door to Bombay. +To-morrow you go on board your ship and in twelve days afterwards you'll +be in England." + +Thresk leaned forward across the table. + +"When did you go home last?" he asked. + +"I have never been home since I married." + +"Never!" exclaimed Thresk. + +Stella shook her head. + +"Never." + +She was looking down at the tablecloth while she spoke, but as she +finished she raised her head. + +"Yes, I have been eight years in India," she added, and Thresk saw the +tears suddenly glisten in her eyes. He had come up to Chitipur +reproaching himself for that morning on the South Downs, a morning so +distant, so aloof from all the surroundings in which he found himself +that it seemed to belong to an earlier life. But his reproaches became +doubly poignant now. She had been eight years in India, tied to this +brute! But Stella Ballantyne mastered herself with a laugh. + +"However I am not alone in that," she said lightly. "And how's London?" + +It was unfortunate that just at this moment Captain Ballantyne woke up. + +"Eh what!" he exclaimed in a mock surprise. "You were talking, Stella, +were you? It must have been something extraordinarily interesting that +you were saying. Do let me hear it." + +At once Stella shrank. Her spirit was so cowed that she almost had the +look of a stupid person; she became stupid in sheer terror of her +husband's railleries. + +"It wasn't of any importance." + +"Oh, my dear," said Ballantyne with a sneer, "you do yourself an +injustice," and then his voice grew harsh, his face brutal. "What was +it?" he demanded. + +Stella looked this way and that, like an animal in a trap. Then she +caught sight of Thresk's face over against her. Her eyes appealed to him +for silence; she turned quickly to her husband. + +"I only said how's London?" + +A smile spread over Ballantyne's face. + +"Now did you say that? How's London! Now why did you ask how London was? +How should London be? What sort of an answer did you expect?" + +"I didn't expect any answer," replied Stella. "Of course the question +sounds stupid if you drag it out and worry it." + +Ballantyne snorted contemptuously. + +"How's London? Try again, Stella!" + +Thresk had come to the limit of his patience. In spite of Stella's appeal +he interrupted and interrupted sharply. + +"It doesn't seem to me an unnatural question for any woman to ask who has +not seen London for eight years. After all, say what you like, for women +India means exile--real exile." + +Ballantyne turned upon his visitor with some rejoinder on his tongue. +But he thought better of it. He looked away and contented himself +with a laugh. + +"Yes," said Stella, "we need next-door neighbours." + +The restraint which Ballantyne showed towards Thresk only served to +inflame him against his wife. + +"So that you may pull their gowns to pieces and unpick their characters," +he said. "Never mind, Stella! The time'll come when we shall settle down +to domestic bliss at Camberley on twopence-halfpenny a year. That'll be +jolly, won't it? Long walks over the heather and quiet evenings--alone +with me. You must look forward to that, my dear." His voice rose to a +veritable menace as he sketched the future which awaited them and then +sank again. + +"How's London!" he growled, harping scornfully on the unfortunate phrase. +Ballantyne had had luck that night. He had chanced upon two of the +banalities of ordinary talk which give an easy occasion for the bully. +Thresk's twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur provided the best opening. +Only Thresk was a guest--not that that in Ballantyne's present mood would +have mattered a great deal, but he was a guest whom Ballantyne had it in +his mind to use. All the more keenly therefore he pounced upon Stella. +But in pouncing he gave Thresk a glimpse into the real man that he was, a +glimpse which the barrister was quick to appreciate. + +"How's London? A lot of London we shall be able to afford! God! what a +life there's in store for us! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, dinner, +breakfast, lunch--all among the next-door neighbours." And upon that he +flung himself back in his chair and reached out his arms. + +"Give me Rajputana!" he cried, and even through the thickness of his +utterance his sincerity rang clear as a bell. "You can stretch yourself +here. The cities! Live in the cities and you can only wear yourself out +hankering to do what you like. Here you can do it. Do you see that, Mr. +Thresk? You can do it." And he thumped the table with his hand. + +"I like getting away into camp for two months, three months at a +time--on the plain, in the jungle, alone. That's the point--alone. You've +got it all then. You're a king without a Press. No one to spy on you--no +one to carry tales--no next-door neighbours. How's London?" and with a +sneer he turned back to his wife. "Oh, I know it doesn't suit Stella. +Stella's so sociable. Stella wants parties. Stella likes frocks. Stella +loves to hang herself about with beads, don't you, my darling?" + +But Ballantyne had overtried her to-night. Her face suddenly flushed and +with a swift and violent gesture she tore at the necklace round her +throat. The clasp broke, the beads fell with a clatter upon her plate, +leaving her throat bare. For a moment Ballantyne stared at her, unable to +believe his eyes. So many times he had made her the butt of his savage +humour and she had offered no reply. Now she actually dared him! + +"Why did you do that?" he asked, pushing his face close to hers. But he +could not stare her down. She looked him in the face steadily. Even her +lips did not tremble. + +"You told me to wear them. I wore them. You jeer at me for wearing them. +I take them off." + +And as she sat there with her head erect Thresk knew why he had bidden +her to wear them. There were bruises upon her throat--upon each side of +her throat--the sort of bruises which would be made by the grip of a +man's fingers. "Good God!" he cried, and before he could speak another +word Stella's moment of defiance passed. She suddenly covered her face +with her hands and burst into tears. + +Ballantyne pushed back his chair sulkily. Thresk sprang to his feet. But +Stella held him off with a gesture of her hand. + +"It's nothing," she said between her sobs. "I am foolish. These last few +days have been hot, haven't they?" She smiled wanly, checking her tears. +"There's no reason at all," and she got up from her chair. "I think I'll +leave you for a little while. My head aches and--and--I've no doubt I +have got a red nose now." + +She took a step or two towards the passage into her private tent +but stopped. + +"I _can_ leave you to get along together alone, can't I?" she said with +her eyes on Thresk. "You know what women are, don't you? Stephen will +tell you interesting things about Rajputana if you can get him to talk. +I shall see you before you go," and she lifted the screen and went out +of the room. In the darkness of the passage she stood silent for a +moment to steady herself and while she stood there, in spite of her +efforts, her tears burst forth again uncontrollably. She clasped her +hands tightly over her mouth so that the sound of her sobbing might not +reach to the table in the centre of the big marquee; and with her lips +whispering in all sincerity the vain wish that she were dead she +stumbled along the corridor. + +But the sound had reached into the big marquee and coming after the +silence it wrung Thresk's heart. He knew this of her at all events--that +she did not easily cry. Ballantyne touched him on the arm. + +"You blame me for this." + +"I don't know that I do," answered Thresk slowly. He was wondering how +much share in the blame he had himself, he who had ridden with her on the +Downs eight years ago and had let her speak and had not answered. He sat +in this tent to-night with shame burning at his heart. "It wasn't as if I +had no confidence in myself," he argued, unable quite to cast back to the +Thresk of those early days. "I had--heaps of it." + +Ballantyne lifted himself out of his chair and lurched over to the +sideboard. Thresk, watching him, fell to wondering why in the world +Stella had married him or he her. He knew that a blind man may see such +mysteries on any day and that a wise one will not try to explain them. +Still he wondered. Had the man's reputation dazzled her?--for undoubtedly +he had one; or was it that intellect which suffered an eclipse when +Ballantyne went into camp with nobody to carry tales? + +He was still pondering on that problem when Ballantyne swung back to the +table and set himself to prove, drunk though he was, that his reputation +was not ill-founded. + +"I am afraid Stella's not very well," he said, sitting heavily down. +"But she asked me to tell you things, didn't she? Well, her wishes are my +law. So here goes." + +His manner altogether changed now that they were alone. He became +confidential, intimate, friendly. He was drunk. He was a coarse +heavy-featured man with bloodshot eyes; he interrupted his conversation +with uneasy glances into the corners of the tent, such glances as Thresk +had noticed when he was alone with him before they sat down to dinner; +but he managed none the less to talk of Rajputana with a knowledge which +amazed Thresk now and would have enthralled him at another time. A +visitor may see the surface of Rajputana much as Thresk had done, may +admire its marble palaces, its blue lakes and the great yellow stretches +of its desert, but to know anything of the life underneath in that +strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years +fly the British flag over the Agencies. Nevertheless Ballantyne +knew--very little as he acknowledged but more than his fellows. And +groping drunkenly in his mind he drew out now this queer intrigue, now +that fateful piece of history, now the story of some savage punishment +wreaked behind the latticed windows, and laid them one after another +before Thresk's eyes--his peace-offerings. And Thresk listened. But +before his eyes stood the picture of Stella Ballantyne standing alone in +the dark corridor beyond the grass-screen whispering with wild lips her +wish that she was dead; and in his ears was the sound of her sobbing. +Here, it seemed, was another story to add to the annals of Rajputana. + +Then Ballantyne tapped him on the arm. + +"You're not listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good +things--things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them--the +swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?" +And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his host's guess. + +"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I am not master of myself," Ballantyne +continued. His voice sank and his eyes narrowed to two little bright +slits. "I am afraid. Yes, that's the explanation. I am so afraid that +when I am not alone I seek relief any way, any how. I can't help it." And +even as he spoke his eyes opened wide and he sat staring intently at a +dim corner of the tent, moving his head with little jerks from one side +to the other that he might see the better. + +"There's no one over there, eh?" he asked. + +"No one." + +Ballantyne nodded as he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. + +"They make these tents too large," he said in a whisper. "One great blot +of light in the middle and all around in the corners--shadows. We sit +here in the blot of light--a fair mark. But what's going on in the +shadows, Mr.--What's your name? Eh? What's going on in the shadows?" + +Thresk had no doubt that Ballantyne's fear was genuine. He was not +putting forward merely an excuse for the scene which his guest had +witnessed and might spread abroad on his return to Bombay. No, he was +really terrified. He interspersed his words with sudden unexpected +silences, during which he sat all ears and his face strained to listen, +as though he expected to surprise some stealthy movement. But Thresk +accounted for it by that decanter on the sideboard, in which the level of +the whisky had been so noticeably lowered that evening. He was wrong +however, for Ballantyne sprang to his feet. + +"You are going away to-night. You can do me a service." + +"Can I?" asked Thresk. + +He understood at last why Ballantyne had been at such pains to interest +and amuse him. + +"Yes. And in return," cried Ballantyne, "I'll give you another glimpse +into the India you don't know." + +He walked up to the door of the tent and drew it aside. "Look!" + +Thresk, leaning forward in his chair, looked out through the opening. He +saw the moonlit plain in a soft haze, in the middle of it the green lamp +of a railway signal and beyond the distant ridge, on which straggled the +ruins of old Chitipur. + +"Look!" cried Ballantyne. "There's tourist India all in one: a desert, a +railway and a deserted city, hovels and temples, deep sacred pools and +forgotten palaces--the whole bag of tricks crumbling slowly to ruin +through centuries on the top of a hill. That's what the good people come +out for to see in the cold weather--Jarwhal Junction and old Chitipur." + +He dropped the curtain contemptuously and it swung back, shutting out the +desert. He took a step or two back into the tent and flung out his arms +wide on each side of him. + +"But bless your soul," he cried vigorously, "here's the real India." + +Thresk looked about the tent and understood. + +"I see," he answered--"a place very badly lit, a great blot of light in +the centre and all around it dark corners and grim shadows." + +Ballantyne nodded his head with a grim smile upon his lips. + +"Oh, you have learnt that! Well, you shall do me a service and in return +you shall look into the shadows. But we will have the table cleared +first." And he called aloud for Baram Singh. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE PHOTOGRAPH + + +While Baram Singh was clearing the table Ballantyne lifted the box of +cheroots from the top of the bureau and held it out to Thresk. + +"Will you smoke?" + +Thresk, however, though he smoked had not during his stay in India +acquired the taste for the cheroot; and it interested him in later times +to reflect how largely he owed his entanglement in the tragic events +which were to follow to that accidental distaste. For conscious of it he +had brought his pipe with him, and he now fetched it out of his pocket. + +"This, if I may," he said. + +"Of course." + +Thresk filled his pipe and lighted it, Ballantyne for his part lit a +cheroot and replaced the box upon the top, close to a heavy +riding-crop with a bone handle, which Thresk happened now to notice +for the first time. + +"Be quick!" he cried impatiently to Baram Singh, and seated himself in +the swing-chair in front of the bureau, turning it so as not to have his +back to Thresk at the table. Baram Singh hurriedly finished his work and +left the marquee by the passage leading to the kitchen. Ballantyne waited +with his eyes upon that passage until the grass-mat screen had ceased to +move. Then taking a bunch of keys from his pocket he stooped under the +open writing-flap of the bureau and unlocked the lowest of the three +drawers. From this drawer he lifted a scarlet despatch-box, and was just +going to bring it to the table when Baram Singh silently appeared once +more. At once Ballantyne dropped the box on the floor, covering it as +well as he could with his legs. + +"What the devil do you want?" he cried, speaking of course in Hindustani, +and with a violence which seemed to be half made up of anger and half of +fear. Baram Singh replied that he had brought an ash-tray for the Sahib, +and he placed it on the round table by Thresk's side. + +"Well, get out and don't come back until you are called," cried +Ballantyne roughly, and in evident relief as Baram Singh once more +retired he took a long draught from a fresh tumbler of whisky-and-soda +which stood on the flap of the bureau beside him. He then stooped once +more to lift the red despatch-box from the floor, but to Thresk's +amazement in the very act of stooping he stopped. He remained with his +hands open to seize the box and his body bent over his knees, quite +motionless. His mouth was open, his eyes staring, and upon his face such +a look of sheer terror was stamped as Thresk could never find words to +describe. For the first moment he imagined that the man had had a stroke. +His habits, his heavy build all pointed that way. The act of stooping +would quite naturally be the breaking pressure upon that overcharged +brain. But before Thresk had risen to make sure Ballantyne moved an arm. +He moved it upwards without changing his attitude in any other way, or +even the direction of his eyes, and he groped along the flap of the +bureau very cautiously and secretly and up again to the top ledge. All +the while his eyes were staring intently, but with the intentness of +extreme fear, not at the despatch-box but at the space of carpet--a +couple of feet at the most--between the despatch-box and the tent-wall. +His fingers felt along the ledge of the bureau and closed with a silent +grip upon the handle of the riding-crop. Thresk jumped to the natural +conclusion: a snake had crept in under the tent-wall and Ballantyne dared +not move lest the snake should strike. Neither did he dare to move +himself. Ballantyne was clearly within reach of its fangs. But he looked +and--there was nothing. The light was not good certainly, and down by the +tent-wall there close to the floor it was shadowy and dim. But Thresk's +eyes were keen. The space between the despatch-box and the wall was +empty. Nothing crawled there, nothing was coiled. + +Thresk looked at Ballantyne with amazement; and as he looked Ballantyne +sprang from his chair with a scream of terror--the scream of a +panic-stricken child. He sprang with an agility which Thresk would never +have believed possible in a man of so gross a build. He leapt into the +air and with his crop he struck savagely once, twice and thrice at the +floor between the wall and the box. Then he turned to Thresk with every +muscle working in his face. + +"Did you see?" he cried. "Did you see?" + +"What? There was nothing to see!" + +"Nothing!" screamed Ballantyne. He picked up the box and placed it on the +table, thrusting it under Thresk's hand. "Hold that! Don't let go! Stay +here and don't let go," he said, and running up the tent raised his voice +to a shout. + +"Baram Singh!" and lifting the tent-door he called to others of his +servants by name. Without waiting for them he ran out himself and in a +second Thresk heard him cursing thickly and calling in panic-stricken +tones just close to that point of the wall against which the bureau +stood. The camp woke to clamour. + +Thresk stood by the table gripping the handle of the despatch-box as he +had been bidden to do. The tent-door was left open. He could see lights +flashing, he heard Ballantyne shouting orders, and his voice dwindled and +grew loud as he moved from spot to spot in the encampment. And in the +midst of the noise the white frightened face of Stella Ballantyne +appeared at the opening of her corridor. + +"What has happened?" she asked in a whisper. "Oh, I was afraid that +you and he had quarrelled," and she stood with her hand pressed over +her heart. + +"No, no indeed," Thresk replied, and Captain Ballantyne stumbled back +into the tent. His face was livid, and yet the sweat stood upon his +forehead. Stella Ballantyne drew back, but Ballantyne saw her as she +moved and drove her to her own quarters. + +"I have a private message for Mr. Thresk's ears," he said, and when she +had gone he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. + +"Now you must help me," he said in a low voice. But his voice shook and +his eyes strayed again to the ground by the wall of the tent. + +"It was just there the arm came through," he said. "Yes, just there," and +he pointed a trembling finger. + +"Arm?" cried Thresk. "What are you talking about?" + +Ballantyne looked away from the wall to Thresk, his eyes incredulous. + +"But you saw!" he insisted, leaning forward over the table. + +"What?" + +"An arm, a hand thrust in under the tent there, along the ground reaching +out for my box." + +"No. There was nothing to see." + +"A lean brown arm, I tell you, a hand thin and delicate as a woman's." + +"No. You are dreaming," exclaimed Thresk; but dreaming was a euphemism +for the word he meant. + +"Dreaming!" repeated Ballantyne with a harsh laugh. "Good God! I wish I +was. Come. Sit down here! We have not too much time." He seated himself +opposite to Thresk and drew the despatch-box towards him. He had regained +enough mastery over himself now to be able to speak in a level voice. No +doubt too his fright had sobered him. But it had him still in its grip, +for when he opened the despatch-box his hand so shook that he could +hardly insert the key in the lock. It was done at last however, and +feeling beneath the loose papers on the surface he drew out from the very +bottom a large sealed envelope. He examined the seals to make sure they +had not been tampered with. Then he tore open the envelope and took out a +photograph, somewhat larger than cabinet size. + +"You have heard of Bahadur Salak?" he said. + +Thresk started. + +"The affair at Umballa, the riots at Benares, the murder in Madras?" + +"Exactly." + +Ballantyne pushed the photograph into Thresk's hand. + +"That's the fellow--the middle one of the group." + +Thresk held up the photograph to the light. It represented a group of +nine Hindus seated upon chairs in a garden and arranged in a row facing +the camera. Thresk looked at, the central figure with a keen and +professional interest. Salak was a notorious figure in the Indian +politics of the day--the politics of the subterranean kind. For some +years he had preached and practised sedition with so much subtlety and +skill that though all men were aware that his hand worked the strings of +disorder there was never any convicting evidence against him. In all the +three cases which Thresk had quoted and in many others less well-known +those responsible for order were sure that he had devised the crime, +chosen the moment for its commission and given the order. But up till a +month ago he had slipped through the meshes. A month ago, however, he had +made his mistake. + +"Yes. It's a clever face," said Thresk. + +Ballantyne nodded his head. + +"He's a Mahratta Brahmin from Poona. They are the fellows for brains, and +Salak's about the cleverest of them." + +Thresk looked again at the photograph. + +"I see the picture was taken at Poona." + +"Yes, and isn't it an extraordinary thing!" cried Ballantyne, his face +flashing suddenly into interest and enjoyment. The enthusiasm of the +administrator in his work got the better of his fear now, just as a +little earlier it had got the better of his drunkenness. Thresk was +looking now into the face of a quite different man, the man of the +intimate knowledge and the high ability for whom fine rewards were +prophesied in Bombay. "The very cleverest of them can't resist the +temptation of being photographed in group. Crime after crime has been +brought home to the Indian criminal both here and in London because they +will sit in garden-chairs and let a man take their portraits. Nothing +will stop them. They won't learn. They are like the ladies of the light +opera stage. Well, let 'em go on I say. Here's an instance." + +"Is it?" asked Thresk. "Surely that photograph was taken a long +time ago." + +"Nine years. But he was at the same game. You have got the proof in your +hands. There's a group of nine men--Salak and his eight friends. Well, +of his eight friends every man jack is now doing time for burglary, in +some cases with violence--that second ruffian, for instance, he's in for +life--in some cases without, but in each case the crime was burglary. +And why? Because Salak in the centre there set them on to it. Because +Salak nine years ago wasn't the big swell he is now. Because Salak +wanted money to start his intrigues. That's the way he got +it--burglaries all round Bombay." + +"I see," said Thresk. "Salak's in prison now?" + +"He's in prison in Calcutta, yes. But he's awaiting his trial. He's not +convicted yet." + +"Exactly," Thresk answered. "This photograph is a valuable thing to have +just now." + +Ballantyne threw up his arms in despair at the obtuseness of his +companion. + +"Valuable!" he cried in derision. "Valuable!" and he leaned forward on +his elbows and began to talk to Thresk with an ironic gentleness as if he +were a child. + +"You don't quite understand me, do you? But a little effort and all will +be plain." + +He got no farther however upon this line of attack, for Thresk +interrupted him sharply. + +"Here! Say what you have got to say if you want me to help you. Oh, you +needn't scowl! You are not going to bait me for your amusement. I am not +your wife." And Ballantyne after a vain effort to stare Thresk down +changed to a more cordial tone. + +"Well, you say it's a valuable thing to have just now. I say it's an +infernally dangerous thing. On the one side there's Salak the great +national leader, Salak the deliverer, Salak professing from his prison in +Calcutta that he has never used any but the most legitimate +constitutional means to forward his propaganda. And here on the other is +Salak in his garden-chair amongst the burglars. Not a good thing to +possess--this photograph, Mr. Thresk. Especially because it's the only +one in existence and the negative has been destroyed. So Salak's friends +are naturally anxious to get it back." + +"Do they know you have it?" Thresk asked. + +"Of course they do. You had proof that they knew five minutes ago when +that brown arm wriggled in under the tent-wall." + +Ballantyne's fear returned upon him as he spoke. He sat shivering; his +eyes wandered furtively from corner to corner of the great tent and came +always back as though drawn by a serpent to the floor by the wall of the +tent. Thresk shrugged his shoulders. To dispute with Ballantyne once more +upon his delusion would be the merest waste of time. He took up the +photograph again. + +"How do you come to possess it?" he asked. If he was to serve his host in +the way he suspected he would be asked to, he must know its history. + +"I was agent in a state not far from Poona before I came here." + +Thresk agreed. + +"I know. Bakuta." + +"Oh?" said Ballantyne with a sharp look. "How did you know that?" + +He was always in alarm lest somewhere in the world gossip was whispering +his secret. + +"A Mrs. Carruthers at Bombay." + +"Did she tell you anything else?" + +"Yes. She told me that you were a great man." + +Ballantyne grinned suddenly. + +"Isn't she a fool?" Then the grin left his face. "But how did you come to +discuss me with her at all?" + +That was a question which Thresk had not the slightest intention to +answer. He evaded it altogether. + +"Wasn't it natural since I was going to Chitipur?" he asked, and +Ballantyne was appeased. + +"Well, the Rajah of Bakutu had that photograph and he gave it to me when +I left the State. He came down to the station to see me off. He was too +near Poona to be comfortable with that in his pocket. He gave it to me on +the platform in full view, the damned coward. He wanted to show that he +had given it to me. He said that I should be safe with it in Chitipur." + +"Chitipur's a long way from Poona," Thresk agreed. + +"But don't you see, this trial that's coming along in Calcutta makes all +the difference. It's known I have got it. It's not safe here now and no +more am I so long as I've got it." + +One question had been puzzling Thresk ever since he had seen the look of +terror reappear in Ballantyne's face. It was clear that he lived in a +very real fear. He believed that he was watched, and he believed that he +was in danger; and very probably he actually was. There had, to be sure, +been no attempt that night to rob him of it as he imagined. But none the +less Salak and his friends could not like the prospect of the production +of that photograph in Calcutta, and would hardly be scrupulous what means +they took to prevent it. Then why had not Ballantyne destroyed it? +Thresk asked the question and was fairly startled by the answer. For it +presented to him in the most unexpected manner another and a new side of +the strange and complex character of Stephen Ballantyne. + +"Yes, why don't I destroy it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that," +and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of +muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his +forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this +moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast +it upon the table as he had done many a time before and cried in a voice +of violence: + +"No, I can't. That's to own these fellows my masters and I won't. By God +I won't! I may be every kind of brute, but I have been bred up in this +service. For twenty years I have lived in it and by it. And the service +is too strong for me. No, I can't destroy that photograph. There's the +truth. I should hate myself to my dying day if I did." + +He rose abruptly as if half ashamed of his outburst and crossing to his +bureau lighted another cheroot. + +"Then what do you want me to do with it?" asked Thresk. + +"I want you to take it away." + +Ballantyne was taking a casuistical way of satisfying his conscience, and +he was aware of it. He would not destroy the portrait--no! But he +wouldn't keep it either. "You are going straight back to England," he +said. "Take it with you. When you get home you can hand it to one of the +big-wigs at the India Office, and he'll put it in a pigeon-hole, and some +day an old charwoman cleaning the office will find it, and she'll take it +home to her grandchildren to play with and one of them'll drop it on the +fire, and there'll be an end of it." + +"Yes," replied Thresk slowly. "But if I do that, it won't be useful at +Calcutta, will it?" + +"Oh," said Ballantyne with a sneer. "You've got a conscience too, eh? +Well, I'll tell you. I don't think that photograph will be needed at +Calcutta." + +"Are you sure of that?" + +"Yes. Salak's friends don't know it, but I do." + +Thresk sat still in doubt. Was Ballantyne speaking the truth or did he +speak in fear? He was still standing by the bureau looking down upon +Thresk and behind him, so that Thresk had not the expression of his face +to help him to decide. But he did not turn in his chair to look. For as +he sat there it dawned upon him that the photograph was the very thing +which he himself needed. The scheme which had been growing in his mind +all through this evening, which had begun to grow from the very moment +when he had entered the tent, was now complete in every detail except +one. He wanted an excuse, a good excuse which should explain why he +missed his boat, and here it was on the table in front of him. Almost he +had refused it! Now it seemed to him a Godsend. + +"I'll take it," he cried, and Baram Singh silently appeared at the outer +doorway of the tent. + +"Huzoor," he said. "Railgharri hai." + +Ballantyne turned to Thresk. + +"Your train is signalled," and as Thresk started up he reassured him. +"There's no hurry. I have sent word that it is not to start without you." +And while Baram Singh still stood waiting for orders in the doorway of +the tent Ballantyne walked round the table, took up the portrait very +deliberately and handed it to Thresk. + +"Thank you," he said. "Button it in your coat pocket." + +He waited while Thresk obeyed. + +"Thus," said Thresk with a laugh, "did the Rajah of Bakutu," and +Ballantyne replied with a grin. + +"Thank you for mentioning that name." He turned to Baram Singh. "The +camel, quick!" + +Baram Singh went out to the enclosure within the little village of tents +and Thresk asked curiously: + +"Do you distrust him?" + +Ballantyne looked steadily at his visitor and said: + +"I don't answer such questions. But I'll tell you something. If that man +were dying he would ask for leave. And if he would ask for leave because +he would not die with my scarlet livery on his back. Are you answered?" + +"Yes," said Thresk. + +"Very well." And with a brisk change of tone Ballantyne added: "I'll see +that your camel is ready." He called aloud to his wife: "Stella! Stella! +Mr. Thresk is going," and he went out through the doorway into the +moonlight. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AND THE RIFLE + + +Thresk, alone in the tent, looked impatiently towards the grass-screen. +He wanted half-a-dozen words with Stella alone. Here was the opportunity, +the unhoped-for opportunity, and it was slipping away. Through the open +doorway of the tent he saw Ballantyne standing by a big fire and men +moving quickly in obedience to his voice. Then he heard the rustle of a +dress in the corridor, and she was in the room. He moved quickly towards +her, but she held up her hand and stopped him. + +"Oh, why did you come?" she said, and the pallor of her face reproached +him no less than the regret in her voice. + +"I heard of you in Bombay," he replied. "I am glad that I did come." + +"And I am sorry." + +"Why?" + +She looked about the tent as though he might find his answer there. +Thresk did not move. He stood near to her, watching her face intently +with his jaw rather set. + +"Oh, I didn't say that to wound you," said Stella, and she sat down on +one of the cushioned basket-chairs. "You mustn't think I wasn't glad to +see you. I was--at the first moment I was very glad;" and she saw his +face lighten as she spoke. "I couldn't help it. All the years rolled +away. I remembered the Sussex Downs and--and--days when we rode there +high up above the weald. Do you remember?" + +"Yes." + +"How long was that ago?" + +"Eight years." + +Stella laughed wistfully. + +"To me it seems a century." She was silent for a moment, and though he +spoke to her urgently she did not answer. She was carried back to the +high broad hills of grass with the curious clumps of big beech-trees upon +their crests. + +"Do you remember Halnaker Gallop?" she asked with a laugh. "We found it +when the chains weren't up and had the whole two miles free. Was there +ever such grass?" + +She was looking straight at the bureau, but she was seeing that green +lane of shaven turf in the haze of an August morning. She saw it rise and +dip in the open between long brown grass. There was a tree on the +left-hand side just where the ride dipped for the first time. Then it ran +straight to the big beech-trees and passed between them, a wide glade of +sunlight, and curved out at the upper end by the road and dipped down +again to the two lodges. + +"And the ridge at the back of Charlton forest, all the weald to Leith +Hill in view?" She rose suddenly from her chair. "Oh, I am sorry that +you came." + +"And I am glad," repeated Thresk. + +The stubbornness with which he repeated his words arrested her. She +looked at him--was it with distrust, he asked himself? He could not be +sure. But certainly there was a little hard note in her voice which had +not been there before, when in her turn she asked: + +"Why?" + +"Because I shouldn't have known," he said in a quick whisper. "I should +have gone back. I should have left you here. I shouldn't have known." + +Stella recoiled. + +"There is nothing to know," she said sharply, and Thresk pointed at +her throat. + +"Nothing?" + +Stella Ballantyne raised her hand to cover the blue marks. + +"I--I fell and hurt myself," she stammered. + +"It was he--Ballantyne." + +"No," she cried and she drew herself erect. But Thresk would not accept +the denial. + +"He ill-treats you," he insisted. "He drinks and ill-treats you." + +Stella shook her head. + +"You asked questions in Bombay where we are known. You were not told +that," she said confidently. There was only one person in Bombay who +knew the truth and Jane Repton, she was very sure, would never have +betrayed her. + +"That's true," Thresk conceded. "But why? Because it's only here in camp +that he lets himself go. He told us as much to-night. You were here at +the table. You heard. He let his secret slip: no one to carry tales, no +one to spy. In the towns he sets a guard upon himself. Yes, but he looks +forward to the months of camp when there are no next-door neighbours." + +"No, that's not true," she protested and cast about for explanations. +"He--he has had a long day and to-night he was tired--and when you are +tired--Oh, as a rule he's different." And to her relief she heard +Ballantyne's voice outside the tent. + +"Thresk! Thresk!" + +She came forward and held out her hand. + +"There! Your camel's ready," she said. "You must go! Goodbye," and as he +took it the old friendliness transfigured her face. "You are a great man +now. I read of you. You always meant to be, didn't you? Hard work?" + +"Very," said Thresk. "Four o'clock in the morning till midnight;" and she +suddenly caught him by the arm. + +"But it's worth it." She let him go and clasped her hands together. "Oh, +you have got everything!" she cried in envy. + +"No," he answered. But she would not listen. + +"Everything you asked for," she said and she added hurriedly, "Do you +still collect miniatures? No time for that now I suppose." Once more +Ballantyne's voice called to them from the camp-fire. + +"You must go." + +Thresk looked through the opening of the tent. Ballantyne had turned and +was coming back towards them. + +"I'll write to you from Bombay," he said, and utter disbelief showed in +her face and sounded in her laugh. + +"That letter will never reach me," she said lightly, and she went up to +the door of the tent. Thresk had a moment whilst her back was turned and +he used it. He took his pipe out of his pocket and placed it silently and +quickly on the table. He wanted a word with her when Ballantyne was out +of the way and she was not upon her guard to fence him off. The pipe +might be his friend and give it him. He went up to Stella at the +tent-door and Ballantyne, who was half-way between the camp-fire and the +tent, stopped when he caught sight of him. + +"That's right," he said. "You ought to be going;" and he turned again +towards the camel. Thus for another moment they were alone together, but +it was Stella who seized it. + +"There go!" she said. "You must go," and in the same breath she added: + +"Married yet?" + +"No," answered Thresk. + +"Still too busy getting on?" + +"That's not the reason"--and he lowered his voice to a whisper--"Stella." + +Again she laughed in frank and utter disbelief. + +"Nor is Stella. That's mere politeness and good manners. We must show the +dear creatures the great part they play in our lives." And upon that all +her fortitude suddenly deserted her. She had played her part so far, she +could play it no longer. An extraordinary change came over her face. The +smiles, the laughter slipped from it like a loosened mask. Thresk saw +such an agony of weariness and hopeless longing in her eyes as he had +never seen even with his experience in the Courts of Law. She drew back +into the shadow of the tent. + +"In thirteen days you'll be steaming up the Channel," she whispered, and +with a sob she covered her face with her hands. Thresk saw the tears +trickle between her fingers. + +Ballantyne at the fire was looking back towards the tent. Thresk hurried +out to him. The camel was crouching close to the fire saddled and ready. + +"You have time," said Ballantyne. "The train's not in yet," and Thresk +walked to the side of the camel, where a couple of steps had been placed +for him to mount. He had a foot on the step when he suddenly clapped his +hand to his pocket. + +"I've left my pipe," he cried, "and I've a night's journey in front of +me. I won't be a second." + +He ran back with all his speed to the tent. The hangings at the door were +closed. He tore them aside and rushed in. + +"Stella!" he said in a whisper, and then he stopped in amazement. He had +left her on the very extremity of distress. He found her, though to be +sure the stains of her tears were still visible upon her face, busy with +one of the evening preparations natural in a camp-life--quietly, +energetically busy. She looked up once when he raised the hanging over +the door, but she dropped her eyes the next instant to her work. + +She was standing by the table with a small rook-rifle in her hands. The +breech was open. She looked down the barrel, holding up the weapon so +that the light might shine into the breech. + +"Yes?" she said, and with so much indifference that she did not lift her +eyes from her work. "I thought you had gone." + +"I left my pipe behind me," said Thresk. + +"There it is, on the table." + +"Thank you." + +He put it in his pocket. Of the two he was disconcerted and at a loss, +she was entirely at her ease. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AN EPISODE IN BALLANTYNE'S LIFE + + +The Reptons lived upon the Khamballa Hill and the bow-window of their +drawing-room looked down upon the Arabian Sea and southwards along the +coast towards Malabar Point. In this embrasure Mrs. Repton sat through +a morning, denying herself to her friends. A book lay open on her lap +but her eyes were upon the sea. A few minutes after the clock upon her +mantelpiece had struck twelve she saw that for which she watched: the +bowsprit and the black bows of a big ship pushing out from under the +hill and the water boiling under its stem. The whole ship came into +view with its awnings and its saffron funnels and headed to the +north-west for Aden. + +Jane Repton rose up from her chair and watched it go. In the sunlight its +black hull was so sharply outlined on the sea, its lines and spars were +so trim that it looked a miniature ship which she could reach out her +hand and snatch. But her eyes grew dim as she watched, so that it became +shapeless and blurred, and long before the liner was out of sight it was +quite lost to her. + +"I am foolish," she said as she turned away, and she bit her +handkerchief hard. This was midday of the Friday and ever since that +dinner-party at the Carruthers' on the Monday night she had been +alternating between wild hopes and arguments of prudence. But until this +moment of disappointment she had not realised how completely the hopes +had gained the upper hand with her and how extravagantly she had built +upon Thresk's urgent questioning of her at the dinner-table. + +"Very likely he never found the Ballantynes at all," she argued. But he +might have sent her word. All that morning she had been expecting a +telephone message or a telegram or a note scribbled on board the steamer +and sent up the Khamballa Hill by a messenger. But not a token had come +from him and now of the boat which was carrying him to England there was +nothing left but the stain of its smoke upon the sky. + +Mrs. Repton put her handkerchief in her pocket and was going about the +business of her house when the butler opened the door. + +"I am not in--" Mrs. Repton began and cut short the sentence with a cry +of welcome and surprise, for close upon the heels of the servant Thresk +was standing. + +"You!" she cried. "Oh!" + +She felt her legs weakening under her and she sat down abruptly on a +chair. + +"Thank Heaven it was there," she said. "I should have sat on the +floor if it hadn't been." She dismissed the butler and held out her +hand to Thresk. "Oh, my friend," she said, "there's your steamer on +its way to Aden." + +Her voice rang with enthusiasm and admiration. Thresk only nodded his +head gloomily. + +"I have missed it," he replied. "It's very unfortunate. I have clients +waiting for me in London." + +"You missed it on purpose," she declared and Thresk's face relaxed into a +smile. He turned away from the window to her. He seemed suddenly to wear +the look of a boy. + +"I have the best of excuses," he replied, "the perfect excuse." But even +he could not foresee how completely that excuse was to serve him. + +"Sit down," said Jane Repton, "and tell me. You went to Chitipur, I know. +From your presence here I know too that you found--them--there." + +"No," said Thresk, "I didn't." He sat down and looked straight into Jane +Repton's eyes. "I had a stroke of luck. I found them--in camp." + +Jane Repton understood all that the last two words implied. + +"I should have wished that," she answered, "if I had dared to think it +possible. You talked with Stella?" + +"Hardly a word alone. But I saw." + +"What did you see?" + +"I am here to tell you." And he told her the story of his night at the +camp so far as it concerned Stella Ballantyne, and indeed not quite all +of that. For instance he omitted altogether to relate how he had left his +pipe behind in the tent and had returned for it. That seemed to him +unimportant. Nor did he tell her of his conversation with Ballantyne +about the photograph. "He was in a panic. He had delusions," he said and +left the matter there. Thresk had the lawyer's mind or rather the mind of +a lawyer in big practice. He had the instinct for the essential fact and +the knowledge that it was most lucid when presented in a naked +simplicity. He was at pains to set before Jane Repton what he had seen of +the life which Stella lived with Stephen Ballantyne and nothing else. + +"Now," he said when he had finished, "you sent me to Chitipur. I must +know why." + +And when she hesitated he overbore her. + +"You can be guilty of no disloyalty to your friend," he insisted, "by +being frank with me. After all I have given guarantees. I went to +Chitipur upon your word. I have missed my boat. You bade me go to +Chitipur. That told me too little or too much. I say too little. I have +got to know all now." And he rose up and stood before her. "What do you +know about Stephen Ballantyne?" + +"I'll tell you," said Jane Repton. She looked at the clock. "You had +better stay and lunch with us if you will. We shall be alone. I'll tell +you afterwards. Meanwhile--" and in her turn she stood up. The sense of +responsibility was heavy upon her. + +She had sent this man upon his errand of knowledge. He had done, in +consequence of it, a stronger, a wilder thing than she had thought, than +she had hoped for. She had a panicky feeling that she had set great +forces at work. + +"Meanwhile--" asked Thresk; and she drew a breath of relief. The +steadiness of his eyes and voice comforted her. His quiet insistence gave +her courage. None of her troubles and doubts had any place apparently in +his mind. A nervous horse in the hands of a real horseman--thus she +thought of herself in Thresk's presence. + +"Meanwhile I'll give you one reason why I wanted you to go. My husband's +time in India is up. We are leaving for England altogether in a month's +time. We shall not come back at all. And when we have gone Stella will be +left without one intimate friend in the whole country." + +"Yes," said Thresk. "That wouldn't do, would it?" and they went in to +their luncheon. + +All through that meal, before the servants, they talked what is written +in the newspapers. And of the two she who had fears and hesitations was +still the most impatient to get it done. She had her curiosity and it +was beginning to consume her. What had Thresk known of Stella and she of +him before she had come out to India and become Stella Ballantyne? Had +they been in love? If not why had Thresk gone to Chitipur? Why had he +missed his boat and left all his clients over there in England in the +lurch? If so, why hadn't they married--the idiots? Oh, how she wanted to +know all the answers to all these questions! And what he proposed to do +now! And she would know nothing unless she was frank herself. She had +read his ultimatum in his face. + +"We'll have coffee in my sitting-room. You can smoke there," she said and +led the way to it. "A cheroot?" + +Thresk smiled with amusement. But the amusement annoyed her for she did +not understand it. + +"I have got a Havana cigar here," he said. "May I?" + +"Of course." + +He lit it and listened. But it was not long before it went out and he did +not stir to light it again. The incident of which Mrs. Repton had been +the witness, and which she related now, invested Ballantyne with horror. +Thresk had left the camp at Chitipur with an angry contempt for him. The +contempt passed out of his feelings altogether as he sat in Mrs. Repton's +drawing-room. + +"I am not telling you what Stella has confided to me," said Mrs. Repton. +"Stella's loyal even when there's no cause for loyalty; and if loyalty +didn't keep her mouth closed, self-respect would. I tell you what I saw. +We were at Agra at the time. My husband was Collector there. There was +a Durbar held there and the Rajah of Chitipur came to it with his +elephants and his soldiers, and naturally Captain Ballantyne and his wife +came too. They stayed with us. You are to understand that I knew +nothing--absolutely nothing--up to that time. I hadn't a suspicion--until +the afternoon of the finals in the Polo Tournament. Stella and I went +together alone and we came home about six. Stella went upstairs and I--I +walked into the library." + +She had found Ballantyne sitting in a high arm-chair, his eyes glittering +under his black thick eyebrows and his face livid. He looked at her as +she entered, but he neither moved nor spoke, and she thought that he was +ill. But the decanter of whisky stood empty on a little table at his side +and she noticed it. + +"We have some people coming to dinner to-night, Captain Ballantyne," she +said. "We shall dine at eight, so there's an hour and a half still." + +She went over to a book-case and took out a book. When she turned back +into the room a change had taken place in her visitor. Life had flickered +into his face. His eyes were wary and cunning. + +"And why do you tell me that?" he asked in a voice which was thick and +formidable. She had a notion that he did not know who she was and then +suddenly she became afraid. She had discovered a secret--his secret. For +once in the towns he had let himself go. She had a hope now that he could +not move and that he knew it; he sat as still as his arm-chair. + +"I had forgotten to tell you," she replied. "I thought you might like to +know beforehand." + +"Why should I like to know beforehand?" + +She had his secret, he plied her with questions to know if she had it. +She must hide her knowledge. Every instinct warned her to hide it. + +"The people who are coming are strangers to India," she said, "but I have +told them of you and they will come expectant." + +"You are very kind." + +She had spoken lightly and with a laugh. Ballantyne replied without irony +or amusement and with his eyes fixed upon her face. Mrs. Repton could not +account for the panic which seized hold upon her. She had dined in +Captain Ballantyne's company before often enough; he had now been for +three days in her house; she had recognised his ability and had neither +particularly liked nor disliked him. Her main impression had been that he +was not good enough for Stella, and it was an impression purely feminine +and instinctive. Now suddenly he had imposed himself upon her as a +creature dangerous, beastlike. She wanted to get out of the room but she +dared not, for she was sure that her careful steps would, despite +herself, change into a run. She sat down, meaning to read for a few +moments, compose herself and then go. But no sooner had she taken her +seat than her terror increased tenfold, for Ballantyne rose swiftly from +his chair and walking in a circle round the room with an extraordinarily +light and noiseless step disappeared behind her. Then he sat down. Mrs. +Repton heard the slight grating of the legs of a chair upon the floor. It +was a chair at a writing-table close by the window and exactly at her +back. He could see every movement which she made, and she could see +nothing, not so much as the tip of one of his fingers. And of his fingers +she was now afraid. He was watching her from his point of vantage; she +seemed to feel his eyes burning upon the nape of her neck. And he said +nothing; and he did not stir. It was broad daylight, she assured herself. +She had but to cross the room to the bell beside the fireplace. Nay, she +had only to scream--and she was very near to screaming--to bring the +servants to her rescue. But she dared not do it. Before she was half-way +to the bell, before the cry was out of her mouth she would feel his +fingers close about her throat. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Repton had begun to tell her story with reluctance, dreading lest +Thresk should attribute it to a woman's nerves and laugh. But he did not. +He listened gravely, seriously; and, as she continued, that nightmare of +an evening so lived again in her recollections that she could not but +make it vivid in her words. + +"I had more than a mere sense of danger," she said. "I felt besides a +sort of hideous discomfort, almost physical discomfort, which made me +believe that there was something evil in that room beyond the power of +language to describe." + +She felt her self-control leaving her. If she stayed she must betray her +alarm. Even now she had swallowed again and again, and she wondered that +he had not detected the working of her throat. She summoned what was left +of her courage and tossing her book aside rose slowly and deliberately. + +"I think I shall copy Stella's example and lie down for an hour," she +said without turning her head towards Ballantyne, and even while she +spoke she knew that she had made a mistake in mentioning Stella. He would +follow her to discover whether she went to Stella's room and told what +she had seen to her. But he did not move. She reached the door, turned +the handle, went out and closed the door behind her. + +For a moment then her strength failed her; she leaned against the wall by +the side of the door, her heart racing. But the fear that he would follow +urged her on. She crossed the hall and stopped deliberately before a +cabinet of china at the foot of the stairs, which stood against the wall +in which the library door was placed. While she stood there she saw the +door open very slowly and Ballantyne's livid face appear at the opening. +She turned towards the stairs and mounted them without looking back. +Halfway up a turn hid the hall from her, and the moment after she had +passed the turn she heard him crossing the hall after her, again with a +lightness of step which seemed to be uncanny and inhuman in so heavy and +gross a creature. + +"I was appalled," she said to Thresk frankly. "He had the step of an +animal. I felt that some great baboon was tracking me stealthily." + +Mrs. Repton came to Stella Ballantyne's door and was careful not to stop. +She reached her own room, and once in shot the bolt; and in a moment or +two she heard him breathing just outside the panels. + +"And to think that Stella is alone with him in the jungle months at a +time!" she cried, actually wringing her hands. "That thought was in my +mind all the time--a horror of a thought. Oh, I could understand now the +loss of her spirits, her colour, her youth." + +Pictures of lonely camps and empty rest-houses, far removed from any +habitation in the silence of Indian nights, rose before her eyes. She +imagined Stella propped up on her elbow in bed, wide-eyed with terror, +listening and listening to the light footsteps of the drunken brute +beyond the partition-wall, shivering when they approached, dropping back +with the dew of her sweat upon her forehead when they retired; and +these pictures she translated in words for Thresk in her house on the +Khamballa Hill. + +Thresk was moved and showed that he was moved. He rose and walked to the +window, turning his back to her. + +"Why did she marry him?" he exclaimed. "She was poor, but she had a +little money. Why did she marry him?" and he turned back to Mrs. Repton +for an answer. + +She gave him one quick look and said: + +"That is one of the things she has never told me and I didn't meet her +until after she had married him." + +"And why doesn't she leave him?" + +Mrs. Repton held up her hands. + +"Oh, the easy questions, Mr. Thresk! How many women endure the thing that +is because it is? Even to leave your husband you want a trifle of spirit. +And what if your spirit's broken? What if you are cowed? What if you live +in terror day and night?" + +"Yes. I am a fool," said Thresk, and he sat down again. "There are two +more questions I want to ask. Did you ever talk to Stella"--the Christian +name slipped naturally from him and only Jane Repton of the two remarked +that he had used it--"of that incident in the library at Agra?" + +"Yes." + +"And did she in consequence of what you told her give you any account of +her life with her husband?" + +Mrs. Repton hesitated not because she was any longer in doubt as to +whether she would speak the whole truth or not--she had committed herself +already too far--but because the form of the question nettled her. It was +a little too forensic for her taste. She was anxious to know the man; she +could dispense with the barrister altogether. + +"Yes, she did," she replied, "and don't cross-examine me, please." + +"I beg your pardon," said Thresk with a laugh which made him human on +the instant. + +"Well, it's true," said Jane Repton in a rush. "She told me the +truth--what you know and more. He stripped when he was drunk, stripped +to the skin. Think of it! Stella told me that and broke down. Oh, if you +had seen her! For Stella to give way--that alone must alarm her friends. +Oh, but the look of her! She sat by my side on the sofa, wringing her +hands, with the tears pouring down her face ..." Thresk rose quickly +from his chair. + +"Thank you," he said, cutting her short. He wanted to hear no more. He +held out his hand to her with a certain abruptness. + +Mrs. Repton rose too. + +"What are you going to do?" she asked breathlessly. "I must know I have a +right to, I think. I have told you so much. I was in great doubt whether +I should tell you anything. But--" Her voice broke and she ended her +plea lamely enough: "I am very fond of Stella." + +"I know that," said Thresk, and his voice was grateful and his face +most friendly. + +"Well, what are you going to do?" + +"I am going to write to her to ask her to join me in Bombay," he replied. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +NEWS FROM CHITIPUR + + +A long silence followed upon his words. Jane Repton turned to the +mantelshelf and moved an ornament here and another one there. She had +contemplated this very consequence of Thresk's journey to Chitipur. She +had actually worked for it herself. She was frank enough to acknowledge +that. None the less his announcement, quietly as he had made it, was a +shock to her. She did not, however, go back upon her work; and when she +spoke it was rather to make sure that he was not going to act upon an +unconsidered impulse. + +"It will damage your career," she said. "Of course you have +thought of that." + +"It will alter it," he answered, "if she comes to me. I shall go out of +Parliament, of course." + +"And your practice?" + +"That will suffer too for a while no doubt. But even if I lost it +altogether I should not be a poor man." + +"You have saved money?" + +"No. There has not been much time for that, but for a good many years now +I have collected silver and miniatures. I know something about them and +the collection is of value." + +"I see." + +Mrs. Repton looked at him now. Oh, yes, he had thought his proposal out +during the night journey to Bombay--not a doubt of it. + +"Stella, too, will suffer," she said. + +"Worse than she does now?" asked Thresk. + +"No. But her position will be difficult for awhile at least," and she +came towards Thresk and pleaded. + +"You will be thoughtful of her, for her? Oh, if you should play her +false--how I should hate you!" and her eyes flashed fire at him. + +"I don't think that you need fear that." + +But he was too calm for her, too quiet. She was in the mood to want +heroics. She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind. +And Thresk stood before her without one. She searched his face with +doubtful eyes. Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it. + +"She will need--love," said Mrs. Repton. "There--that's the word. Can you +give it her?" + +"If she comes to me--yes. I have wanted her for eight years," and then +suddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion. A spasm +of pain convulsed his face. He sat down and beat with his fist upon the +table. "It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave her +there--miles away from any friend. I would have torn her from him by +force if there had been a single hope that way. But his levies would have +barred the road. No, this was the only chance: to come away to Bombay, +to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slip +out and travel here she will find me waiting." + +Mrs. Repton was satisfied. But while he had been speaking a new fear had +entered into her. + +"There's something I should have thought of," she exclaimed. + +"Yes?" + +"Captain Ballantyne is not generous. He is just the sort of man not to +divorce his wife." + +Thresk raised his head. Clearly that possibility had no more occurred to +him than it had to Jane Repton. He thought it over now. + +"Just the sort of man," he agreed. "But we must take that risk--if +she comes." + +"The letter's not yet written," Mrs. Repton suggested. + +"But it will be," he replied, and then he stood and confronted her. "Do +you wish me not to write it?" + +She avoided his eyes, she looked upon the floor, she began more than one +sentence of evasion; but in the end she took both his hands in hers and +said stoutly: + +"No, I don't! Write! Write!" + +"Thank you!" + +He went to the door, and when he had reached it she called to him in a +low voice. + +"Mr. Thresk, what did you mean when you repeated and repeated if +she comes?" + +Thresk came slowly back into the room. + +"I meant that eight years ago I gave her a very good reason why she +should put no faith in me." + +He told her that quite frankly and simply, but he told her no more than +that, and she let him go. He went back to the great hotel on the Apollo +Bund and sent off a number of cablegrams to London saying that he had +missed his steamer and that the work waiting for him must go to other +hands. The letter to Stella Ballantyne he kept to the last. It could not +reach her immediately in any case since she was in camp. For all he knew +it might be weeks before she read it; and he had need to go warily in the +writing of it. Certain words she had used to him were an encouragement; +but there were others which made him doubt whether she would have any +faith in him. Every now and then there had been a savour of bitterness. +Once she had been shamed because of him, on Bignor Hill where Stane +Street runs to Chichester, and a second time in front of him in the tent +at Chitipur. No, it was not an easy letter which he had to write, and he +took the night and the greater part of the next day to decide upon its +wording. It could not in any case go until the night-mail. He had +finished it and directed it by six o'clock in the evening and he went +down with the letter in his hand into the big lounge to post it in the +box there. But it never was posted. + +Close to the foot of the staircase stood a tape machine, and as Thresk +descended he heard the clicking of the instrument and saw the usual small +group of visitors about it. They were mostly Americans, and they were +reading out to one another the latest prices of the stock-markets. Some +of the chatter reached to Thresk's inattentive ears, and when he was only +two steps from the floor one carelessly-spoken phrase interjected between +the values of two securities brought him to a stop. The speaker was a +young man with a squarish face and thick hair parted accurately in the +middle. He was dressed in a thin grey suit and he was passing the tape +between his fingers as it ran out. The picture of him was impressed +during that instant upon Thresk's mind, so that he could never afterwards +forget it. + +"Copper's up one point," he was saying, "that's fine. Who's Captain +Ballantyne, I wonder? United Steel has dropped seven-eighths. Well, that +doesn't affect me," and so he ran on. + +Thresk heard no more of what he said. He stood wondering what news could +have come up on the tape of Captain Ballantyne who was out in camp in the +state of Chitipur, or if there was another Captain Ballantyne. He joined +the little group in front of the machine, and picking up the ribbon from +the floor ran his eyes backwards along it until he came to "United +Steel." The sentence in front of that ran as follows: + +"Captain Ballantyne was found dead early yesterday morning outside his +tent close to Jarwhal Junction." + +Thresk read the sentence twice and then walked away. The news might be +false, of course, but if it were true here was a revolution in his life. +There was no need for this letter which he held in his hand. The way was +smoothed out for Stella, for him. Not for a moment could he pretend to do +anything but welcome the news, to wish with all his heart that it was +true. And it seemed probable news. There was the matter of that +photograph. Thresk had carried it out to the Governor's house on Malabar +Point on the very morning of his arrival in Bombay. He had driven on to +Mrs. Repton's house after he had left it there. But he had taken it away +from Chitipur at too late a day to save Ballantyne. Ballantyne had, after +all, had good cause to be afraid while he possessed it, and the news had +not yet got to Salak's friends that it had left his possession. Thus he +made out the history of Captain Ballantyne's death. + +The tape machine, however, might have ticked out a mere rumour with no +truth in it at all. He went to the office and obtained a copy of _The +Advocate of India_,--the evening newspaper of the city. He looked at the +stop-press telegrams. There was no mention of Ballantyne's death. Nor on +glancing down the columns could he find in any paragraph a statement that +any mishap had befallen him. But on the other hand he read that he +himself, Henry Thresk, having brought his case to a successful +conclusion, had left India yesterday by the mail-steamer Madras, bound +for Marseilles. He threw down the paper and went to the telephone-box. If +the news were true the one person likely to know of it was Mrs. Repton. +Thresk rang up the house on the Khamballa Hill and asked to speak to her. +An answer was returned to him at once that Mrs. Repton had given orders +that she was not to be disturbed. Thresk however insisted: + +"Will you please give my name to her--Henry Thresk," and he waited with +his ear to the receiver for a century. At last a voice spoke to him, but +it was again the voice of the servant. + +"The Memsahib very sorry, sir, but cannot speak to any one just now;" and +he heard the jar of the instrument as the receiver at the other end was +sharply hung up and the connection broken. + +Thresk came out from the telephone-box with a face puzzled and very +grave. Mrs. Repton refused to speak to him! + +It was a fact, an inexplicable fact, and it alarmed him. It was +impossible to believe that mere reflection during the last twenty-four +hours had brought about so complete a revolution in her feelings. He to +whom she had passionately cried "Write! Write!" only yesterday could +hardly be barred out from mere speech with her to-day for any fault of +his. He had done nothing, had seen no one. Thresk was certain now that +the news upon the tape was true. But it could not be all the truth. There +was something behind it--something rather grim and terrible. + +Thresk walked to the door of the hotel and called up a motor-car. "Tell +him to drive to the Khamballa Hill," he said to the porter. "I'll let him +know when to stop." + +The porter translated the order and Thresk stopped him at Mrs. +Repton's door. + +"The Memsahib does not receive any one to-day," said the butler. + +"I know," replied Thresk. He scribbled on a card and sent it in. There +was a long delay. Thresk stood in the hall looking out through the open +door. Night had come. There were lights upon the roadway, lights a long +way below at the water's edge on Breach Candy, and there was a light +twinkling far out on the Arabian Sea. But in the house behind him all was +dark. He had come to an abode of desolation and mourning; and his heart +sank and he was attacked with forebodings. At last in the passage behind +him there was a shuffling of feet and a gleam of white. The Memsahib +would receive him. + +Thresk was shown into the drawing-room. That room too was unlit. But the +blinds had not been lowered and light from a street lamp outside turned +the darkness into twilight. No one came forward to greet him, but the +room was not empty. He saw Repton and his wife huddled close together on +a sofa in a recess by the fireplace. + +"I thought that I had better come up from Bombay," said Thresk, as he +stood in the middle of the room. No answer was returned to him for a few +moments and then it was Repton himself who spoke. + +"Yes, yes," he said, and he got up from the sofa. "I think we had better +have some light," he added in a strange indifferent voice. He turned the +light on in the central chandelier, leaving the corners of the room in +shadow, like--the parallel forced its way into Thresk's mind--like the +tent in Chitipur. Then very methodically he pulled down the blinds. He +did not look at Thresk and Jane Repton on the couch never stirred. +Thresk's forebodings became a dreadful certainty. Some evil thing had +happened. He might have been in a house of death. He knew that he was +not wanted there, that husband and wife wished to be alone and silently +resented his presence. But he could not go without more knowledge than he +had. + +"A message came up on the tape half an hour ago," he said in a low voice. +"It reported that Ballantyne was dead." + +"Yes," replied Repton. He was leaning forward over a table and looking up +to the chandelier as if he fancied that its light burnt more dimly than +was usual. + +"That's true," and he spoke in the same strange mechanical voice he had +used before. + +"That he was found dead outside his tent," Thresk added. + +"It's quite true," Repton agreed. "We are very sorry." + +"Sorry!" + +The exclamation burst from Thresk's lips. + +"Yes." + +Repton moved away from the chandelier. He had not looked at Thresk once +since he had entered the room; nor did he look towards his wife. His face +was very pale and he was busy now setting a chair in place, moving a +photograph, doing any one of the little unnecessary things people +restlessly do when there is an importunate visitor in the room who will +not go. + +"You see, there's terribly bad news," he added. + +"What news?" + +"He was shot, you know. That wasn't in the telegram on the tape, of +course. Yes, he was shot--on the same night you dined there--after you +had gone." + +"Shot!" + +Thresk's voice dropped to a whisper. + +"Yes," and the dull quiet voice went on, speaking apparently of some +trivial affair in which none of them could have any interest. "He was +shot by a bullet from a little rook-rifle which belonged to Stella, and +which she was in the habit of using." + +Thresk's heart stood still. A picture flashed before his eyes. He +saw the inside of that dimly lit tent with its red lining and Stella +standing by the table. He could hear her voice: "This is my little +rook-rifle. I was seeing that it was clean for to-morrow." She had spoken +so carelessly, so indifferently that it wasn't conceivable that what was +in all their minds could be true. Yet she had spoken, after all, no more +indifferently than Repton was speaking now; and he was in a great stress +of grief. Then Thresk's mind leaped to the weak point in all this chain +of presumption. + +"But Ballantyne was found outside the tent," he cried with a little note +of triumph. But it had no echo in Repton's reply. + +"I know. That makes everything so much worse." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Ballantyne was found in the morning outside the tent stone-cold. But +no one had heard the shot, and there were sentries on the edge of the +encampment. He had been dragged outside after he was dead or when he +was dying." + +A low cry broke from Thresk. The weak point became of a sudden the most +deadly, the most terrible element in the whole case. He could hear the +prosecuting counsel making play with it. He stood for a moment lost in +horror. Repton had no further word to say to him. Mrs. Repton had never +once spoken. They wanted him away, out of the room, out of the house. +Some insight let him into the meaning of her silence. In the presence of +this tragedy remorse had gripped her. She was looking upon herself as one +who had plotted harm for Stella. She would never forgive Thresk for his +share in the plot. + +Thresk went out of the room without a word more to either Repton or his +wife. Whatever he did now he must do by himself. He would not be admitted +into that house again. He closed the door of the room behind him, and +hardly had he closed it when he heard the snap of a switch and the line +of light under the door vanished. Once more there was darkness in the +drawing-room. Repton no doubt had returned to his wife's side and they +were huddled again side by side on the sofa. Thresk walked down the hill +with a horrible feeling of isolation and loneliness. But he shook it off +as he neared the lights of Bombay. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THRESK INTERVENES + + +Thresk reached his hotel with some words ringing in his head which Jane +Repton had spoken to him at Mrs. Carruthers' dinner-party: + +"You can get any single thing in life you want if you want it enough, but +you cannot control the price you will have to pay for it. That you will +only learn afterwards and gradually." + +He had got what he had wanted--the career of distinction, and he wondered +whether he was to begin now to learn its price. + +He mounted to his sitting-room on the second floor, avoiding the lounge +and the lift and using a small side staircase instead of the great +central one. He had passed no one on the way. In his room he looked upon +the mantelshelf and on the table. No visitor had called on him that day; +no letter awaited him. For the first time since he had landed in India a +day had passed without some resident leaving on him a card or a note of +invitation. The newspapers gave him the reason. He was supposed to have +left on the _Madras_ for England. To make sure he rang for his waiter; no +message of any kind had come. + +"Shall I ask at the office?" the waiter asked. + +"By no means," answered Thresk, and he added: "I will have dinner served +up here to-night." + +There was just a possibility, he thought, that he might after all escape +this particular payment. He took from his pocket his unposted letter to +Stella Ballantyne. There was no longer any use for it and even its +existence was now dangerous to Stella. For let it be discovered, however +she might plead that she knew nothing of its contents, a motive for the +death of Ballantyne might be inferred from it. It would be a false +motive, but just the sort of motive which the man in the street would +immediately accept. Thresk burnt the letter carefully in a plate and +pounded up each black flake of paper until nothing was left but ashes. +Then for the moment his work was done. He had only to wait and he did not +wait long. On the very next morning his newspaper informed him that +Inspector Coulson of the Bombay Police had left for Chitipur. + +The Inspector was a young man devoted to his work, but he travelled now +upon a duty which he would gladly have handed to any other of his +colleagues. He had met Stella Ballantyne in Bombay upon one of her rare +visits to Jane Repton. He had sat at the same dinner-table with her, and +he did not find it pleasant to reflect on the tragic destiny which she +must now fulfil. For the facts were fatal. + +At daybreak on the morning of the Friday a sentry on the outer edge of +the camp at Jarwhal Junction had noticed something black lying upon the +ground in the open just outside the door of the Agent's big marquee. He +ran across the ground and discovered Captain Ballantyne sprawling, face +downwards, in the smoking-suit which he had worn at dinner the night +before. The sentry shook him gently by the shoulder, but the limpness of +the body frightened him. Then he noticed that there was blood upon the +ground, and calling loudly for help he ran to the guard-room tent. He +returned with others of the native levies and they lifted Ballantyne up. +He was dead and the body was cold. The levies carried him into the tent +and opened his shirt. He had been shot through the heart. They then +roused Mrs. Ballantyne's ayah and bade her wake her mistress. The ayah +went into Mrs. Ballantyne's room and found her mistress sound asleep. She +waked her up and told her what had happened. Stella Ballantyne said not a +word. She got out of bed, and flinging on some clothes went into the +outer tent, where the servants were standing about the body. Stella +Ballantyne went quite close to it and looked down upon the dead man's +face for a long time. She was pale, but there was no shrinking in her +attitude--no apprehension in her eyes. + +"He has been killed," she said at length; "telegrams must be sent at +once: to Ajmere for a doctor, to Bombay, and to His Highness the +Maharajah." + +Baram Singh salaamed. + +"It is as your Excellency wills," he said. + +"I will write them," said Stella quietly. And she sat down at her own +writing-table there and then. + +The doctor from Ajmere arrived during the day, made an examination and +telegraphed a report to the Chief Commissioner at Ajmere. That report +contained the three significant points which Repton had enumerated to +Thresk, but with some still more significant details. The bullet which +pierced Captain Ballantyne's heart had been fired from Mrs. Ballantyne's +small rook-rifle, and the exploded cartridge was still in the breech. The +rifle was standing up against Mrs. Ballantyne's writing-table in a corner +of the tent, when the doctor from Ajmere discovered it. In the second +place, although Ballantyne was found in the open, there was a patch of +blood upon the carpet within the tent and a trail of blood from that spot +to the door. There could be no doubt that Ballantyne was killed inside. +There was the third point to establish that theory. Neither the sentry on +guard nor any one of the servants sleeping in the adjacent tents had +heard the crack of the rifle. It would not be loud in any case, but if +the weapon had been fired in the open it would have been sufficiently +sharp and clear to attract the attention of the men on guard. The heavy +double lining of the tent however was thick enough so to muffle and +deaden the sound that it would pass unnoticed. + +The report was considered at Ajmere and forwarded. It now brought +Inspector Coluson of the Police up the railway from Bombay. He found Mrs. +Ballantyne waiting for him at the Residency of Chitipur. + +"I must tell you who I am," he said awkwardly. + +"There is no need to," she answered, "I know." + +He then cautioned her in the usual way, and producing his pocket-book +asked her whether she wished to throw any light upon her husband's death. + +"No," she said. "I have nothing to say. I was asleep and in bed when my +ayah came into my room with the news of his death." + +"Yes," said the Inspector uncomfortably. That detail, next to the +dragging of the body out of the tent, seemed to him the grimmest part of +the whole tragedy. + +He shut up his book. + +"I am afraid it is all very unsatisfactory," he said. "I think we must go +back to Bombay." + +"It is as your Excellency wills," said Stella in Hindustani, and the +Inspector was startled by the bad taste of the joke. He had not the +knowledge of her life with Ballantyne, which alone would have given him +the key to understand her. But he was not a fool, and a second glance at +her showed to him that she was not speaking in joke at all. He had an +impression that she was so tired that she did not at the moment care what +happened to her at all. The fatigue would wear off, no doubt, when she +realised that she must fight for her life, but now she stood in front of +him indifferent and docile--much as one of the native levies was wont to +stand before her husband. The words which the levies used and the +language in which they spoke them rose naturally to her lips, as the only +words and language suitable to the occasion. + +"You see, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said gently, "there is no reason to +suspect a single one of your servants or of your escort." + +"And there is reason to suspect me," she added, looking at him quietly +and steadily. + +The Inspector for his part looked away. He was a young man--no more than +a year or two older than Stella Ballantyne herself. They both came from +the same kind of stock. Her people and his people might have been friends +in some pleasant country village in one of the English counties. She was +pretty, too, disconcertingly pretty, in spite of the dark circles under +her eyes and the pallor of her face. There was a delicacy in her looks +and in her dress which appealed to him for tenderness. The appeal was all +the stronger because it was only in that way and unconsciously that she +appealed. In her voice, in her bearing, in her eyes there was no request, +no prayer. + +"I have been to the Palace," he said, "I have had an audience with the +Maharajah." + +"Of course," she answered. "I shall put no difficulties in your way." + +He was standing in her own drawing-room, noticing with what skill +comfort had been combined with daintiness, and how she had followed the +usual instinct of her kind in trying to create here in this room a piece +of England. Through the window he looked out upon a lawn which was being +watered by a garden-sprinkler, and where a gardener was at work attending +to a bed of bright flowers. There, too, she had been making the usual +pathetic attempt to convert a half-acre of this country of yellow desert +into a green garden of England. Coulson had not a shadow of doubt in his +mind Stella Ballantyne would exchange this room with its restful colours +and its outlook on a green lawn for--at the best--many years of solitary +imprisonment in Poona Gaol. He shut up his book with a snap. + +"Will you be ready to go in an hour?" he asked roughly. + +"Yes," said she. + +"If I leave you unwatched during that hour you will promise to me that +you will be ready to go in an hour?" + +Stella Ballantyne nodded her head. + +"I shall not kill myself now," she said, and he looked at her quickly, +but she did not trouble to explain her words. She merely added: "I may +take some clothes, I suppose?" + +"Whatever you need," said the Inspector. And he took her down to Bombay. + +She was formally charged next morning before the stipendiary for the +murder of her husband and remanded for a week. + +She was remanded at eleven o'clock in the morning, and five minutes later +the news was ticked off on the tape at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Within +another five minutes the news was brought upstairs to Thresk. He had been +fortunate. He was in a huge hotel, where people flit through its rooms +for a day and are gone the next, and no one is concerned with the doings +of his neighbour, a place of arrival and departure like the platform of a +great railway station. There was no place in all Bombay where Thresk +could so easily pass unnoticed. And he had passed unnoticed. A single +inquiry at the office, it is true, would have revealed his presence, but +no one had inquired, since by this time he should be nearing Aden. He had +kept to his rooms during the day and had only taken the air after it was +dark. This was in the early stages of wireless telegraphy, and the +_Madras_ had no installation. It might be that inquiries would be made +for him at Aden. He could only wait with Jane Repton's words ringing in +his ears: "You cannot control the price you will have to pay." + +Stella Ballantyne was brought up again in a week's time and the case then +proceeded from day to day. The character of Ballantyne was revealed, his +brutalities, his cunning. Detail by detail he was built up into a gross +sinister figure secret and violent which lived again in that crowded +court and turned the eyes of the spectators with a shiver of discomfort +upon the young and quiet woman in the dock. And in that character the +prosecution found the motive of the crime. Sympathy at times ran high for +Stella Ballantyne, but there were always the two grim details to keep it +in check: she had been found asleep by her ayah, quietly restfully asleep +within a few hours of Ballantyne's death; and she had, according to the +theory of the Crown, found in some violence of passion the strength to +drag the dying man from the tent and to leave him to gasp out his life +under the stars. + +Thresk watched the case from his rooms at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Every fact +which was calculated to arouse sympathy for her was also helping to +condemn her. No one doubted that she had shot Stephen Ballantyne. He +deserved shooting--very well. But that did not give her the right to be +his executioner. What was her defence to be? A sudden intolerable +provocation? How would that square with the dragging of his body across +the carpet to the door? There was the fatal insuperable act. + +Thresk read again and again the reports of the proceedings for a hint as +to the line of the defence. He got it the day when Repton appeared in the +witness-box on a subpoena from the Crown to bear testimony to the +violence of Stephen Ballantyne. He had seen Stella with her wrist +bruised so that in public she could not remove her gloves. + +"What kind of bruises?" asked the counsel. + +"Such bruises as might be made by some one twisting her arms," he +answered, and then Mr. Travers, a young barrister who was enjoying his +first leap into the public eye, rose to cross-examine. + +Thresk read through that cross-examination and rose to his feet. "You +cannot control the price you will have to pay," he said to himself. That +day, when Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor returned to his office after the +rising of the Court, he found Thresk waiting for him. + +"I wish to give evidence for Mrs. Ballantyne," said Thresk--"evidence +which will acquit her." + +He spoke with so much certainty that the solicitor was fairly startled. + +"And with evidence so positive in your possession it is only this +afternoon that you come here with it! Why?" + +Thresk was prepared for the question. + +"I have a great deal of work waiting for me in London," he returned. "I +hoped that it might not be necessary for me to appear at all. Now I see +that it is." + +The solicitor looked straight at Thresk. + +"I knew from Mrs. Repton that you dined with the Ballantynes that night, +but she was sure that you knew nothing of the affair. You had left the +tent before it happened." + +"That is true," answered Thresk. + +"Yet you have evidence which will acquit Mrs. Ballantyne?" + +"I think so." + +"How is it, then," the lawyer asked, "that we have heard nothing of this +evidence at all from Mrs. Ballantyne herself?" + +"Because she knows nothing of it," replied Thresk. + +The lawyer pointed to a chair. The two men sat down together in the +office and it was long before they parted. + +Within an hour of Thresk's return from the solicitor's office an +Inspector of Police waited on him at his hotel and was instantly shown +up. + +"We did not know until to-day," he said, "that you were still in Bombay, +Mr. Thresk. We believed you to be on the Madras, which reached Marseilles +early this morning." + +"I missed it," replied Thresk. "Had you wanted me you could have inquired +at Port Said five days ago." + +"Five days ago we had no information." + +The native servants of Ballantyne had from the first shrouded themselves +in ignorance. They would answer what questions were put to them; they +would not go one inch beyond. The crime was an affair of the Sahibs and +the less they had to do with it the better, until at all events they were +sure which way the wind was setting from Government House. Of their own +initiative they knew nothing. It was thus only by the discovery of +Thresk's letter to Captain Ballantyne, which was found crumpled up in a +waste-paper basket, that his presence that night in the tent was +suspected. + +"It is strange," the Inspector grumbled, "that you did not come to us of +your own accord when you had missed your boat and tell us what you knew." + +"I don't think it is strange at all," answered Thresk, "for I am a +witness for the defence. I shall give my evidence when the case for the +defence opens." + +The Inspector was disconcerted and went away. Thresk's policy had so far +succeeded. But he had taken a great risk and now that it was past he +realised with an intense relief how serious the risk had been. If the +Inspector had called upon him before he had made known his presence to +Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor and offered his evidence, his position would +have been difficult. He would have had to discover some other good +reason why he had lain quietly at his hotel during these last days. But +fortune had favoured him. He had to thank, above all, the secrecy of the +native servants. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THRESK GIVES EVIDENCE + + +Thresk's fears were justified. Sympathy for Stella Ballantyne had +already begun to wane. The fact that Ballantyne had been found outside +the door of the tent was already assuming a sinister importance. Mrs. +Ballantyne's counsel slid discreetly over that awkward incident. Very +fortunately, as it was now to prove, he did not cross-examine the doctor +from Ajmere at all. But there are always the few who oppose the general +opinion--the men and women who are in the minority because it is the +minority; those whom the hysterical glorification made of Stella +Ballantyne had offended; the austere, the pedantic, the just, the +jealous, all were quick to seize upon this disconcerting fact: Stella +Ballantyne had dragged her dying husband from the tent. It was either +sheer callousness or blind fury--you might take your choice. In either +case it dulled the glow of martyrdom which for a week or two had been so +radiant upon Stella Ballantyne's forehead; and the few who argued thus +attracted adherents daily. And with the sympathy for Stella Ballantyne +interest in the case began to wane too. + +The magisterial inquiry threatened to become tedious. The pictures of +the witnesses and the principals occupied less and less space in the +newspapers. In another week the case would be coldly left with a shrug of +the shoulders to the Law Courts. But unexpectedly curiosity was stirred +again, for the day after Thresk had called upon the lawyer, when the case +for the Crown was at an end, Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, Mr. Travers, +asked permission to recall Baram Singh. Permission was granted, and Baram +Singh once more took his place in the witness-box. + +Mr. Travers leant against the desk behind him and put his questions with +the most significant slowness. + +"I wish to ask you, Baram Singh," he said, "about the dinner-table on the +Thursday night. You laid it?" + +"Yes," replied Baram Singh. + +"For how many?" + +"For three." + +There was a movement through the whole court. + +"Yes," said Mr. Travers, "Captain Ballantyne had a visitor that night." + +Baram Singh agreed. + +"Look round the court and tell the magistrate if you can see here the man +who dined with Captain Ballantyne and his wife that night." + +For a moment the court was filled with the noise of murmuring. The usher +cried "Silence!" and the murmuring ceased. A hush of expectation filled +that crowded room as Baram Singh's eyes travelled slowly round the +walls. He dropped them to the well of the court, and even his +unexpressive face flashed with a look of recognition. + +"There," he cried, "there!" and he pointed to a man who was sitting just +underneath the counsel's bench. + +Mr. Travers leant forward and in a quiet but particularly clear +voice said: + +"Will you kindly stand up, Mr. Thresk?" + +Thresk stood up. To many of those present--the idlers, the people of +fashion, the seekers after a thrill of excitement who fill the public +galleries and law-courts--his long conduct of the great Carruthers trial +had made him a familiar figure. To the others his name, at all events, +was known, and as he stood up on the floor of the court a swift and +regular movement like a ripple of water passed through the throng. They +leant forward to get a clearer view of him and for a moment there was a +hiss of excited whispering. + +"That is the man who dined with Captain and Mrs. Ballantyne on the night +when Captain Ballantyne was killed?" said Mr. Travers. + +"Yes," replied Baram Singh. + +No one understood what was coming. People began to ask themselves whether +Thresk was concerned in the murder. Word had been published that he had +already left for England. How was it he was here now? Mr. Travers, for +his part, was enjoying to the full the suspense which his question had +aroused. Not by any intonation did he allow a hint to escape him whether +he looked upon Thresk as an enemy or friend. + +"You may sit down, sir, now," he said, and Thresk resumed his seat. + +"Will you tell us what you know of Mr. Thresk's visit to the Captain?" +Travers resumed, and Baram Singh told how a camel had been sent to the +dâk-house by the station of Jarwhal Junction. + +"Yes," said Mr. Travers, "and he dined in the tent. How long did he +stay?" + +"He left the camp at eleven o'clock on the camel to catch the night train +to Bombay. The Captain-sahib saw him off from the edge of the camp." + +"Ah," said Mr. Travers, "Captain Ballantyne saw him off?" + +"Yes--from the edge of the camp." + +"And then went back to the tent?" + +"Yes." + +"Now I want to take you to another point. You waited at dinner?" + +"Yes." + +"And towards the close of dinner Mrs. Ballantyne left the room?" + +"Yes." + +"She did not come back again?" + +"No." + +"No. The two men were then left alone?" + +"Yes." + +"After dinner was the table cleared?" + +"Yes," said Baram Singh, "the Captain-sahib called to me to clear the +table quickly." + +"Yes," said Travers. "Now, will you tell me what the Captain-sahib was +doing while you were clearing the table?" + +Baram Singh reflected. + +"First of all the Captain-sahib offered a box of cheroots to his visitor, +and his visitor refused and took a pipe from his pocket. The +Captain-sahib then lit a cheroot for himself and replaced the box on the +top of the bureau." + +"And after that?" asked Travers. + +"After that," said Baram Singh, "he stooped down, unlocked the bottom +drawer of his bureau and then turned sharply to me and told me to hurry +and get out." + +"And that order you obeyed?" + +"Yes." + +"Now, Baram Singh, did you enter the room again?" + +Baram Singh explained that after he had gone out with the table-cloth he +returned in a few moments with an ash-tray, which he placed beside the +visitor-sahib. + +"Yes," said Travers. "Had Captain Ballantyne altered his position?" + +Baram Singh then related that Captain Ballantyne was still sitting in +his chair by the bureau, but that the drawer of the bureau was now open, +and that on the ground close to Captain Ballantyne's feet there was a red +despatch-box. + +"The Captain-sahib," he continued, "turned to me with great anger, and +drove me again out of the room." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Travers, and he sat down. + +The prosecuting counsel rose at once. + +"Now, Baram Singh," he said with severity, "why did you not mention when +you were first put in the witness-box that this gentleman was present in +the camp that night?" + +"I was not asked." + +"No, that is quite true," he continued, "you were not asked specifically, +but you were asked to tell all that you knew." + +"I did not interfere," replied Baram Singh. "I answered what questions +were asked. Besides, when the sahib left the camp the Captain-sahib +was alive." + +At this moment Mr. Travers leaned across to the prosecuting counsel and +said: "It will all be made clear when Mr. Thresk goes into the box." + +And once more, as Mr. Travers spoke these words, a rustle of expectancy +ran round the court. + +Travers opened the case for the defence on the following morning. He had +been originally instructed, he declared, to reserve the defence for the +actual trial before the jury, but upon his own urgent advice that plan +was not to be followed. The case which he had to put before the +stipendiary must so infallibly prove that Mrs. Ballantyne was free from +all complicity in this crime that he felt he would not be doing his duty +to her unless he made it public at the first opportunity. That unhappy +lady had already, as every one who had paid even the most careless +attention to the facts that had been presented by the prosecution must +know, suffered so much distress and sorrow in the course of her married +life that he felt it would not be fair to add to it the strain and +suspense which even the most innocent must suffer when sent for trial +upon such a serious charge. He at once proposed to call Mr. Thresk, and +Thresk rose and went into the witness-box. + +Thresk told the story of that dinner-party word for word as it had +occurred, laying some emphasis on the terror which from time to time had +taken possession of Stephen Ballantyne, down to the moment when Baram +Singh had brought the ash-tray and left the two men together, Thresk +sitting by the table in the middle of the room and Ballantyne at his +bureau with the despatch-box on the floor at his feet. + +"Then I noticed an extraordinary look of fear disfigure his face," he +continued, "and following the direction of his eyes I saw a lean brown +arm with a thin hand as delicate as a woman's wriggle forward from +beneath the wall of the tent towards the despatch-box." + +"You saw that quite clearly?" asked Mr. Travers. + +"The tent was not very brightly lit," Thresk explained. "At the first +glance I saw something moving. I was inclined to believe it a snake and +to account in that way for Captain Ballantyne's fear and the sudden +rigidity of his attitude. But I looked again and I was then quite sure +that it was an arm and hand." + +The evidence roused those present to such a tension of excitement and to +so loud a burst of murmuring that it was quite a minute before order was +restored and Thresk took up his tale again. He described Ballantyne's +search for the thief. + +"And what were you doing," Mr. Travers asked, "whilst the search was +being made?" + +"I stood by the table holding the despatch-box firmly in my hands as +Ballantyne had urgently asked me to do." + +"Quite so," said Mr. Travers; and the attention of the court was now +directed to that despatch-box and the portrait of Bahadur Salak which it +contained. The history of the photograph, its importance at this moment +when Salak's trial impended, and Ballantyne's conviction of the extreme +danger which its possessor ran--a conviction established by the bold +attempt to steal it made under their very eyes--was laid before the +stipendiary. He sent the case to trial as he was bound to do, but the +verdict in most people's eyes was a foregone conclusion. Thresk had +supplied a story which accounted for the crime, and cross-examination +could not shake him. It was easy to believe that at the very moment when +Thresk was saying goodbye to Captain Ballantyne by the fire on the edge +of the camp the thief slipped into the marquee, and when discovered by +Ballantyne either on his return or later shot him with Mrs. Ballantyne's +rifle. It was clear that no conviction could be obtained while this story +held the field and in due course Mrs. Ballantyne was acquitted. Of +Thresk's return to the tent just before leaving the camp nothing was +said. Thresk himself did not mention it and the counsel for the Crown had +no hint which could help him to elicit it. + +Thus the case ended. The popular heroine of a criminal trial loses, as +all observers will have noticed, her crown of romance the moment she is +set free; and that good fortune awaited Stella Ballantyne. Thresk called +the next day upon Jane Repton and was coldly told that Stella had already +gone from Bombay. He betook himself to her solicitor, who was cordial but +uncommunicative. The Reptons, it appeared, were responsible to him for +the conduct of the case. He had not any knowledge of Stella Ballantyne's +destination, and he pointed to a stack of telegrams and letters as +confirmation of his words. + +"They will all go up to Khamballa Hill," he said. "I have no +other address." + +The next day, however, a little note of gratitude came to Thresk through +the post. It was unsigned and without any address. But it was in Stella +Ballantyne's handwriting and the post-mark was Kurrachee. That she did +not wish to see him he could quite understand; Kurrachee was a port from +which ships sailed to many destinations; he could hardly set out in a +blind search for her across the world. So here, it seemed, was that +chapter closed. He took the next steamer westwards from Bombay, landed at +Brindisi and went back to his work in the Law Courts and in Parliament. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LITTLE BEEDING AGAIN + + +But though she disappeared Stella Ballantyne was not in flight from men +and women. She avoided them because they did not for the moment count in +her thoughts, except as possible hindrances. She was not so much running +away as running to the place of her desires. She yielded to an impulse +with which they had nothing whatever to do, an impulse so overmastering +that even to the Reptons her precipitancy wore a look of ingratitude. She +drove home with Jane Repton as soon as she was released, to the house on +Khamballa Hill, and while she was still in the carriage she said: + +"I must go away to-morrow morning." + +She was sitting forward with a tense and eager look upon her face and her +hands clenched tightly in her lap. + +"There is no need for that. Make your home with us, Stella, for a little +while and hold your head high." + +Jane Repton had talked over this proposal with her husband. Both of +them recognised that the acceptance of it would entail on them some +little sacrifice. Prejudice would be difficult. But they had thrust +these considerations aside in the loyalty of their friendship and Jane +Repton was a little hurt that Stella waved away their invitation +without ceremony. + +"I can't. I can't," she said irritably. "Don't try to stop me." + +Her nerves were quite on edge and she spoke with a greater violence than +she knew. Jane Repton tried to persuade her. + +"Wouldn't it be wiser for you to face things here, even though it means +some effort and pain?" + +"I don't know," answered Stella, still in the quick peremptory tone of +one who will not be argued with. "I don't care either. I have nothing to +do with wisdom just now. I don't want people at all. I want--oh, how I +want--" She stopped and then she added vaguely: "Something else," and her +voice trailed away into silence. She sat without a word, all tingling +impatience, during the rest of that drive and continued so to sit after +the carriage had stopped. When Jane Repton descended, and she woke up +with a start and looked at the house, it was as though she brought her +eyes down from heaven to earth. Once within the house she went straight +up to Repton. He had left his wife behind with Stella at the Law Courts +and had come home in advance of them. He had not spoken a word to Stella +that day, and he had not the time now, for she began immediately in an +eager voice and a look of fever in her eyes: + +"You won't try to stop me, will you? I must go away to-morrow." + +Repton used more tact now than his wife had done. He took the troubled +and excited woman's hand and answered her very gently: + +"Of course, Stella. You shall go when you like." + +"Oh, thank you," she cried, and was freed to remember the debt which she +owed to these good friends of hers. "You must think me a brute, Jane! I +haven't said a word to you about all your kindness. But--oh, you'll +think me ridiculous, when you know"--and she began to laugh and to sob +in one breath. Stella Ballantyne had remained so sunk in apathy through +all that long trial that her friends were relieved at her outburst of +tears. Jane Repton led her upstairs and put her to bed just as if she +had been a child. + +"There! You can get up for dinner if you like, Stella, or stay where you +are. And if you'll tell us what you want to do we'll make the +arrangements for you and not ask you a question." + +Jane Repton kissed her and left her alone; and it was while Stella was +sleeping upstairs that Henry Thresk called at the house and was told that +there was no news for him. + +"No doubt she will write to you, Mr. Thresk, if she wishes you to know +what she is doing. But I should not count upon it if I were you," said +Jane Repton, in a sweet voice and with eyes like pebbles. "She did not +mention you, I am sorry to say, when the trial was over." + +She could not forgive him because of her own share in what she now called +his "treachery" towards Stella. She had no more of the logician in her +composition than Thresk had of the hero. He had committed under a great +stress of emotion and sympathy what the whole experience and method of +his life told him was one of the worst of crimes. And now that its object +was achieved, and Stella Ballantyne free, he was in the mood to see only +the harm which he had done to the majesty of the law; he was uneasy; he +was not troubled by the thought that discovery would absolutely ruin him. +That indeed did not enter into his thoughts. But he could not but make a +picture of himself in the robe of a King's Counsel, claiming sternly the +anger of the Law against some other man who should have done just what he +had done, no more and no less. And so when Mrs. Repton's door was finally +closed upon him, and no message was given to him from the woman he had +saved, he was at once human and unheroic enough to visit a little of his +resentment upon her. He had not spoken to her at all since the night at +Chitipur; he had no knowledge of the stupor and the prostration into +which, after her years of misery, she had fallen; he had no insight into +the one compelling passion which now had her, body and soul, in its grip. +He turned away from the door and went back to the Taj Mahal. A steamer +would be starting for Port Said in two days and by that steamer he would +travel. That Stella was in the house on the Khamballa Hill he did not +doubt, but since she had no word or thought to spare for him he could not +but turn his back and go. + +Stella herself got up to dinner, and after it was over she told her +friends of the longing which filled her soul. + +"All through the trial," she said shyly, with the shrinking of those who +reveal a very secret fancy and are afraid that it will be ridiculed, "in +the heat of the court, in the close captivity of my cell, I was conscious +of just one real unconquerable passion--to feel the wind blowing against +my face upon the Sussex Downs. Can you understand that? Just to see the +broad green hills with the white chalk hollows in their sides and the +forests marching down to the valleys like the Roman soldiers from +Chichester--oh! I was mad for the look and the smell and the sounds of +them! It was all that I thought about. I used to close my eyes in the +dock and I was away in a second riding through Charlton Forest or over +Farm Hill, or looking down to Slindon from Gumber Corner, and over its +woods to the sea. And now that I am free"--she clasped her hands and her +face grew radiant--"oh, I don't want to see people." She reached out a +hand to each of her friends. "I don't call you people, you know. But even +you--you'll understand and forgive and not be hurt--I don't want to see +for a little while." + +The beaten look of her took the sting of ingratitude out of her words. +She stood between them, her delicate face worn thin, her eyes unnaturally +big; she had the strange transparent beauty of people who have been lying +for months in a mortal sickness. Jane Repton's eyes filled with tears and +her hand sought for her handkerchief. + +"Let's see what can be done," said Repton. "There's a mail-steamer of +course, but you won't want to travel by that." + +"No." + +Repton worked out the sailings from Bombay and the other ports on the +western coast of India while Stella leaned over his shoulder. + +"Look!" he said. "This is the best way. There's a steamer going to +Kurrachee to-morrow, and when you reach Kurrachee you'll just have time +to catch a German Lloyd boat which calls at Southampton. You won't be +home in thirteen days to be sure, but on the other hand you won't be +pestered by curious people." + +"Yes, yes," cried Stella eagerly. "I can go to-morrow." + +"Very well." + +Repton looked at the clock. It was still no more than half-past ten. He +saw with what a fever of impatience Stella was consumed. + +"I believe I could lay my hand on the local manager of the line to-night +and fix your journey up for you." + +"You could?" cried Stella. He might have been offering her a crown, so +brightly her thanks shone in her eyes. + +"I think so." + +He got up from the table and stood looking at her, and then away from her +with his lips pursed in doubt. + +"Yes?" said she. + +"I was thinking. Will you travel under another name? I don't suggest it +really, only it might save you--annoyance." + +Repton's hesitation was misplaced, for Stella Ballantyne's pride was +quite beaten to the ground. + +"Yes," she said at once. "I should wish to do that"; and both he and his +wife understood from that ready answer more completely than they ever had +before how near Stella had come to the big blank wall at the end of life. +For seven years she had held her head high, never so much as whispering a +reproach against her husband, keeping with a perpetual guard the secret +of her misery. Pride had been her mainspring; now even that was broken. +Repton went out of the house and returned at midnight. + +"It's all settled," he said. "You will have a cabin on deck in both +steamers. I gave your name in confidence to the manager here and he will +take care that everything possible is done for you. There will be very +few passengers on the German boat. The season is too early for either the +tourists or the people on leave." + +Thus Stella Ballantyne crept away from Bombay and in five weeks' time +she landed at Southampton. There she resumed her name. She travelled into +Sussex and stayed for a few nights at the inn whither Henry Thresk had +come years before on his momentous holiday. She had a little money--the +trifling income which her parents had left to her upon their death--and +she began to look about for a house. By a piece of good fortune she +discovered that the cottage in which she had lived at Little Beeding +would be empty in a few months. She took it and before the summer was out +she was once more established there. It was on an afternoon of August +when Stella made her home in it again. She passed along the yellow lane +driven deep between high banks of earth where the roots of great +elm-trees cropped out. Every step was familiar to her. The lane with many +twists under overarching branches ran down a steep hill and came out into +the open by the big house with its pillared portico and its light grey +stone and its wonderful garden of lawn and flowers and cedars. A tiny +church with a narrow graveyard and strange carefully-trimmed square +bushes of yew stood next to the house, and beyond the church the lane +dipped to the river and the cottage. + +Stella went from room to room. She had furnished the cottage simply and +daintily; the walls were bright, her servant-girl had gathered flowers +and set them about. Outside the window the sunlight shone on a green +garden. She was alone. It was the home-coming she had wished for. + +For three or four months she was left alone; and then one afternoon as +she came into the cottage after a walk she found a little white card upon +the table. It bore the name of Mr. Hazlewood. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE HAZLEWOODS + + +In the quiet country town obvious changes had taken place during the +eight years of Stella's absence. They were not changes of importance, +however, and one sentence can symbolize them all--there was now tarmac +upon its roads. But in the cluster of houses a mile away at the end of +the deep lane the case was different. Mr. Harold Hazlewood had come to +Little Beeding. He now lived in the big house to which the village owed +its name and indeed its existence. He lived--and spread consternation +amongst the gentry for miles round. + +"Lord, how I wish poor Arthur hadn't died!" old John Chubble used to +cry. He had hunted the West Sussex hounds for thirty years and the very +name of Little Beeding turned his red face purple. "There was a man. But +this fellow! And to think he's got that beautiful house! Do you know +there's hardly a pheasant on the place. And I've hashed them down out of +the sky in the old days there by the dozen. Well, he's got a son in the +Coldstream, Dick Hazlewood, who's not so bad. But Harold! Oh, pass me +the port!" + +Harold indeed had inherited Little Beeding by an accident during the +first summer after Stella had gone out to India. Arthur Hazlewood, the +owner and Harold's nephew, had been lost with his yacht in a gale of wind +off the coast of Portugal. Arthur was a bachelor and thus Harold +Hazlewood came quite unexpectedly into the position of a country squire +when he was already well on in middle age. He was a widower and a man of +a noticeable aspect. At the first glance you knew that he was not as +other men; at the second you suspected that he took a pride in his +dissimilarity. He was long, rather shambling in his gait, with a mild +blue eye and fair thin hair now growing grey. But length was the chief +impression left by his physical appearance. His legs, his arms, his face, +even his hair, unless his son in the Coldstream happened to be at home at +the time, were long. + +"Is your father mad?" Mr. Chubble once asked of Dick Hazlewood. The two +men had met in the broad street of Great Beeding at midday, and the elder +one, bubbling with indignation, had planted himself in front of Dick. + +"Mad?" Dick repeated reflectively. "No, I shouldn't go as far as that. Oh +no! What has he done now?" + +"He has paid out of his own pocket the fines of all the people in Great +Beeding who have just been convicted for not having their babies +vaccinated." + +Dick Hazlewood stared in surprise at his companion's indignant face. + +"But of course he'd do that, Mr. Chubble," he answered cheerfully. "He's +anti-everything--everything, I mean, which experience has established or +prudence could suggest." + +"In addition he wants to sell the navy for old iron and abolish +the army." + +"Yes," said Dick, nodding his head amicably. "He's like that. He +thinks that without an army and a navy we should be less aggressive. I +can't deny it." + +"I should think not indeed," cried Mr. Chubble. "Are you walking home?" + +"Yes." + +"Let us walk together." Mr. Chubble took Dick Hazlewood by the arm and as +they went filled the lane with his plaints. + +"I should think you can't deny it. Why, he has actually written a +pamphlet to enforce his views upon the subject." + +"You should bless your stars, Mr. Chubble, that there is only one. He +suffers from pamphlets. He writes 'em and prints 'em and every member of +Parliament gets one of 'em for nothing. Pamphlets do for him what the +gout does for other old gentlemen--they carry off from his system a great +number of disquieting ailments. He's at prison reform now," said Dick +with a smile of thorough enjoyment. "Have you heard him on it?" + +"No, and I don't want to," Mr. Chubble exploded. + +He struck viciously at an overhanging bough, as though it was the head +of Harold Hazlewood, and went on with the catalogue of crimes. "He made a +speech last week in the town-hall," and he jerked his thumb backwards +towards the town they had left. "Intolerable I call it. He actually +denounced his own countrymen as a race of oppressors." + +"He would," answered Dick calmly. "What did I say to you a minute ago? +He's advanced, you know." + +"Advanced!" sneered Mr. Chubble, and then Dick Hazlewood stopped and +contemplated his companion with a thoughtful eye. + +"I really don't think you understand my father, Mr. Chubble," said Dick +with a gentle remonstrance in his voice which Mr. Chubble was at a loss +whether to take seriously or no. + +"Can you give me the key to him?" he cried. + +"I can." + +"Then out with it, my lad." + +Mr. Chubble disposed himself to listen but with so bristling an +expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. Dick, +however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an +obtuse class of scholars. + +"My father was born predestined to believe that all the people whom he +knows are invariably wrong, and all the people he doesn't know are +invariably right. And when I feel inclined to deplore his abuse of his +own country I console myself with the reflection that he would be the +staunchest friend of England that England ever had--if only he had been +born in Germany." + +Mr. Chubble grunted and turned the speech suspiciously over in his mind. +Was Dick poking fun at him or at his father? + +"That's bookish," he said. + +"I am afraid it is," Dick Hazlewood agreed humbly. "The fact is I am now +an Instructor at the Staff College and much is expected of me." + +They had reached the gate of Little Beeding House. It was summer time. +A yellow drive of gravel ran straight between long broad flower-beds +to the door. + +"Won't you come in and see my father?" Dick asked innocently. +"He's at home." + +"No, my lad, no." Mr. Chubble hastened to add: "I haven't the time. But I +am very glad to have met you. You are here for long?" + +"No. Only just for luncheon," said Dick, and he walked along the drive +into the house. He was met in the hall by Hubbard the butler, an old +colourless man of genteel movements which seemed slow and were +astonishingly quick. He spoke in gentle purring tones and was the very +butler for Mr. Harold Hazlewood. + +"Your father has been asking for you, sir," said Hubbard. "He seems a +little anxious. He is in the big room." + +"Very well," said Dick, and he crossed the hall and the drawing-room, +wondering what new plan for the regeneration of the world was being +hatched in his father's sedulous brains. He had received a telegram at +Camberley the day before urgently calling upon him to arrive at Little +Beeding in time for luncheon. He went into the library as it was called, +but in reality it was the room used by everybody except upon ceremonial +occasions. It was a big room; half of it held a billiard table, the other +half had writing-tables, lounges, comfortable chairs and a table for +bridge. The carpet was laid over a parquet floor so that young people, +when they stayed there, rolled it up and danced. There were windows upon +two sides of the room. Here a row of them looked down the slope of the +lawn to the cedar-trees and the river, the other, a great bay which +opened to the ground, gave a view of a corner of the high churchyard wall +and of a meadow and a thatched cottage beyond. In this bay Mr. Hazlewood +was standing when Dick entered the room. + +"I got your telegram, father, and here I am." + +Mr. Hazlewood turned back from the window with a smile upon his face. + +"It is good of you, Richard. I wanted you to-day." + +A very genuine affection existed between these two, dissimilar as they +were in physique and mind. Dick Hazlewood was at this time thirty-four +years old, an officer of hard work and distinction, one of the younger +men to whom the generals look to provide the brains in the next great +war. He had the religion of his type. To keep physically fit for the +hardest campaigning and mentally fit for the highest problems of modern +strategy and to boast about neither the one qualification nor the +other--these were the articles of his creed. In appearance he was a +little younger than his years, lithe, long in the leg, with a thin brown +face and grey eyes which twinkled with humour. Harold Hazlewood was +intensely proud of him, though he professed to detest his profession. And +no doubt he found at times that the mere healthful, well-groomed look of +his son was irritatingly conventional. What was quite wholesome could +never be quite right in the older man's philosophy. To Dick, on the other +hand, his father was an intense enjoyment. Here was a lovable innocent +with the most delightful illusion that he understood the world. Dick +would draw out his father by the hour, but, as he put it, he wouldn't let +the old boy down. He stopped his chaff before it could begin to hurt. + +"Well, I am here," he said. "What scrape have you got into now?" + +"I am in no scrape, Richard. I don't get into scrapes," replied his +father. He shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. "I was wondering, +Richard--you have been away all this last year, haven't you?--I was +wondering whether you could give me any of your summer." + +Dick looked at his father. What in the world was the old boy up to now? +he asked himself. + +"Of course I can. I shall get my leave in a day or two. I thought of +playing some polo here and there. There are a few matches arranged. Then +no doubt--" He broke off. "But look here, sir! You didn't send me an +urgent telegram merely to ask me that." + +"No, Richard, no." Everybody else called his son Dick, but Harold +Hazlewood never. He was Richard. From Richard you might expect much, the +awakening of a higher nature, a devotion to the regeneration of the +world, humanitarianism, even the cult of all the "antis." From Dick you +could expect nothing but health and cleanliness and robustious +conventionality. Therefore Richard Captain Hazlewood of the Coldstream +and the Staff Corps remained. "No, there was something else." + +Mr. Hazlewood took his son by the arm and led him into the bay window. He +pointed across the field to the thatched cottage. + +"You know who lives there?" + +"No." + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +Dick put his head on one side and whistled softly. He knew the general +tenor of that _cause celebre_. + +Mr. Hazlewood raised remonstrating hands. + +"There! You are like the rest, Richard. You take the worst view. Here is +a good woman maligned and slandered. There is nothing against her. She +was acquitted in open trial by a jury of responsible citizens under a +judge of the Highest Court in India. Yet she is left alone--like a leper. +She is the victim of gossip and _such_ gossip. Richard," said the old man +solemnly, "for uncharitableness, ill-nature and stupid malice the gossip +of a Sussex village leaves the most deplorable efforts of Voltaire and +Swift entirely behind." + +"Father, you _are_ going it," said Dick with a chuckle. "Do you mean to +give me a step-mother?" + +"I do not, Richard. Such a monstrous idea never entered my thoughts. But, +my boy, I have called upon her." + +"Oh, you have!" + +"Yes. I have seen her too. I left a card. She left one upon me. I called +again. I was fortunate." + +"She was in?" + +"She gave me tea, Richard." + +Richard cocked his head on one side. + +"What's she like, father? Topping?" + +"Richard, she gave me tea," said the old man, dwelling insistently upon +his repetition. + +"So you said, sir, and it was most kind of her to be sure. But that fact +won't help me to form even the vaguest picture of her looks." + +"But it will, Richard," Mr. Hazlewood protested with a nervousness which +set Dick wondering again. "She gave me tea. Therefore, don't you see, I +must return the hospitality, which I do with the utmost eagerness. +Richard, I look to you to help me. We must champion that slandered lady. +You will see her for yourself. She is coming here to luncheon." + +The truth was out at last. Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily +have guessed it. This was just the quixotic line his father could have +been foreseen to take. + +"Well, we must just keep our eyes open and see that she doesn't slip +anything into the decanters while our heads are turned," said Dick with a +chuckle. Old Mr. Hazlewood laid a hand upon his son's shoulder. + +"That's the sort of thing they say. Only you don't mean it, Richard, and +they do," he remarked with a mild and reproachful shake of the head. "Ah, +some day, my boy, your better nature will awaken." + +Dick expressed no anxiety for the quick advent of that day. + +"How many are there of us to be at luncheon?" asked Dick. + +"Only the two of us." + +"I see. We are to keep the danger in the family. Very wise, sir, +upon my word." + +"Richard, you pervert my meaning," said Mr. Hazlewood. "The +neighbourhood has not been kind to Mrs. Ballantyne. She has been made to +suffer. The Vicar's wife, for instance--a most uncharitable person. And +my sister, your Aunt Margaret, too, in Great Beeding--she is what you +would call--" + +"Hot stuff," murmured Dick. + +"Quite so," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look +of keen interest upon his face. "I am not familiar with the phrase, +Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and +inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up +in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into +very few words." + +"That is indeed true, sir," replied Dick with an admirable gravity, "and +if I might be allowed to suggest it, a pamphlet upon that interesting +subject would be less dangerous work than coquetting with the latest +edition of the Marquise de Brinvilliers." + +The word pamphlet was a bugle-call to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Ah! Speaking of pamphlets, my boy," he began, and walked over to a desk +which was littered with papers. + +"We have not the time, sir," Dick interrupted from the bay of the window. +A woman had come out from the cottage. She unlatched a little gate in her +garden which opened on to the meadow. She crossed it. Yet another gate +gave her entrance to the garden of Little Beeding. In a moment Hubbard +announced: + +"Mrs. Ballantyne"; and Stella came into the room and stood near to the +door with a certain constraint in her attitude and a timid watchfulness +in her big eyes. She had the look of a deer. It seemed to Dick that at +one abrupt movement she would turn and run. + +Mr. Hazlewood pressed forward to greet her and she smiled with a warmth +of gratitude. Dick, watching her from the bay window, was surprised by +the delicacy of her face, by a look of fragility. She was dressed very +simply in a coat and short skirt of white, her shoes and her gloves were +of white suede, her hat was small. + +"And this is my son Richard," said Mr. Hazlewood; and Dick came forward +out of the bay. Stella Ballantyne bowed to him but said no word. She +was taking no risks even at the hands of the son of her friend. If +advances of friendliness were to be made they must be made by him, not +her. There was just one awkward moment of hesitation. Then Dick +Hazlewood held out his hand. + +"I am very glad to meet you, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said cordially, and he +saw the blood rush into her face and the fear die out in her eyes. + +The neighbourhood, to quote Mr. Hazlewood, had not been kind to Stella +Ballantyne. She had stood in the dock and the fact tarnished her. +Moreover here and there letters had come from India. The verdict was +inevitable, but--but--there was a doubt about its justice. The full +penalty--no. No one desired or would have thought it right, but something +betwixt and between in the proper spirit of British compromise would not +have been amiss. Thus gossip ran. More-over Stella Ballantyne was too +good-looking, and she wore her neat and simple clothes too well. To some +of the women it was an added offence when they considered what she might +be wearing if only the verdict had been different. Thus for a year Stella +had been left to her own company except for a couple of visits which the +Reptons had paid to her. At the first she had welcomed the silence, the +peace of her loneliness. It was a balm to her. She recovered like a +flower in the night. But she was young--she was twenty-eight this +year--and as her limbs ceased to be things of lead and became once more +aglow with life there came to her a need of companionship. She tried to +tramp the need away on the turf of her well-loved downs, but she failed. +A friend to share with her the joy of these summer days! Her blood +clamoured for one. But she was an outcast. Friends did not come her way. +Therefore she had gratefully received old Mr. Hazlewood in her house, and +had accepted, though with some fear, his proposal that she should lunch +at the big house and make the acquaintance of his son. + +She was nervous at the beginning of that meal, but both father and son +were at the pains to put her at her ease; and soon she was talking +naturally, with a colour in her cheeks, and now and then a note of +laughter in her voice. Dick worked for the recurrence of that laughter. +He liked the clear sound of it and the melting of all her face into +sweetness and tender humour which came with it. And for another thing he +had a thought, and a true one, that it was very long since she had known +the pleasure of good laughter. + +They took their coffee out on the lawn under the shade of a huge +cedar-tree. The river ran at their feet and a Canadian canoe and a +rowing-boat were tethered close by in a little dock. The house, a place +of grey stone with grey weathered and lichen-coloured slates, raised its +great oblong chimneys into a pellucid air. The sunlight flashed upon its +rows of tall windows--they were all flat to the house, except the one +great bay on the ground floor in the library--and birds called from all +the trees. The time slipped away. Dick Hazlewood found himself talking of +his work, a practice into which he seldom fell, and was surprised that +she could talk of it with him. He realised with a start how it was that +she knew. But she talked naturally and openly, as though he must know her +history. Once even some jargon of the Staff College slipped from her. +"You were doing let us pretend at Box Hill last week, weren't you?" she +said, and when he started at the phrase she imagined that he started at +the extent of her information. "It was in the papers," she said. "I read +every word of them," and then for a second her face clouded, and she +added: "I have time, you see." + +She looked at her watch and sprang to her feet. + +"I must go," she said. "I didn't know it was so late. I have enjoyed +myself very much." She did not hesitate now to offer her hand. "Goodbye." + +Dick Hazlewood went with her as far as the gate and came back to +his father. + +"You were asking me," he said carelessly, "if I could give you some part +of the summer. I don't see why I shouldn't come here in a day or two. The +polo matches aren't so important." + +The old man's eyes brightened. + +"I shall be delighted, Richard, if you will." He looked at his son with +something really ecstatic in his expression. At last then his better +nature was awakening. "I really believe--" he exclaimed and Dick cut +him short. + +"Yes, it may be that, sir. On the other hand it may not. What is quite +clear is that I must catch my train. So if I might order the car?" + +"Of course, of course." + +He came out with his son into the porch of the house. + +"We have done a fine thing to-day, Richard," he said with enthusiasm and +a nod towards the cottage beyond the meadow. + +"We have indeed, sir," returned Dick cheerily. "Did you ever see such a +pair of ankles?" + +"She lost the tragic look this afternoon, Richard. We must be her +champions." + +"We will put in the summer that way, father," said Dick, and waving his +hand was driven off to the station. + +Mr. Hazlewood walked back to the library. But "walked" is a poor word. He +seemed to float on air. A great opportunity had come to him. He had +enlisted the services of his son. He saw Dick and himself as Toreadors +waving red flags in the face of a bull labelled Conventionality. He went +back to the pamphlet on which he was engaged with renewed ardour and +laboured diligently far into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE GREAT CRUSADE + + +"I was in Great Beeding this morning," said Dick, as he sat at luncheon +with his father, "and the blinds were up in Aunt Margaret's house." + +"They have returned from their holiday then," his father observed with a +tremor in his voice. He looked afraid. Then he looked annoyed. + +"Pettifer will break down if he doesn't take care," he exclaimed +petulantly. "No man with any sense would work as hard as he does. He +ought to have taken two months this year at the least." + +"We should still have to meet Aunt Margaret at the end of them," said +Dick calmly. He had no belief in Mr. Hazlewood's distress at the overwork +of Pettifer. + +A month had passed since the inauguration of the great Crusade, and +though talk was rife everywhere and indignation in many places loud, a +certain amount of success had been won. But all this while Mrs. Pettifer +had been away. Now she had returned. Mr. Hazlewood stood in some awe of +his sister. She was not ill-natured, but she knew her mind and expressed +it forcibly and without delay. She was of a practical limited nature; she +saw very clearly what she saw, but she walked in blinkers, and had +neither comprehension of nor sympathy with those of a wider vision. She +was at this time a woman of forty, comfortable to look upon and the wife +of Mr. Robert Pettifer, the head of the well-known firm of solicitors, +Pettifer, Gryll and Musgrave. Mrs. Pettifer had very little patience to +spare for the idiosyncrasies of her brother, though she owed him a good +deal more than patience. For at the time, some twenty years before, when +she had married Robert Pettifer, then merely a junior partner of the +firm, Harold Hazlewood had alone stood by her. To the rest of the family +she was throwing herself away; to her brother Harold she was doing a fine +thing, not because it was a fine thing but because it was an exceptional +thing. Robert Pettifer however had prospered, and though he had reached +an age when he might have claimed his leisure the nine o'clock train +still took him daily to London. + +"Aunt Margaret isn't after all so violent," said Dick, for whom she kept +a very soft place in her heart. But Harold shook his head. + +"Your aunt, Richard, has all the primeval ferocity of the average woman." +And then the fires of the enthusiast were set alight in his blue eyes. +"I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll send her my new pamphlet, Richard. It +may have a humanising influence upon her. I have some advance copies. +I'll send her one this afternoon." + +Dick's eyes twinkled. + +"I should if I were you, though to be sure, sir, we have tried that plan +before without any prodigious effect." + +"True, Richard, true, but I have never before risen to such heights as +these." Mr. Hazlewood threw down his napkin and paced the room. "Richard, +I am not inclined to boast. I am a humble man." + +"It is only humility, sir, which achieves great work," said Dick, as he +went contentedly on with his luncheon. + +"But the very title of this pamphlet seems to me calculated to interest +the careless and attract the thoughtful. It is called _The Prison Walls +must Cast no Shadow_." + +With an arm outstretched he seemed to deliver the words of the title +one by one from the palm of his hand. Then he stood smiling, +confident, awaiting applause. Dick's face, which had shown the highest +expectancy, slowly fell in a profound disappointment. He laid down his +knife and fork. + +"Oh, come, father. All walls cast shadows. It entirely depends upon the +altitude of the sun." + +Mr. Hazlewood returned to his seat and spoke gently. + +"The phrase, my boy, is a metaphor. I develop in this pamphlet my belief +that a convict, once he has expiated his offence, should upon his release +be restored to the precise position in society which he held before with +all its privileges unimpaired." + +Dick chuckled in the most unregenerate delight. + +"You are going it, father," he said, and disappointment came to Mr. +Hazlewood. + +"Richard," he remonstrated mildly, "I hoped that I should have had your +approval. It seemed to me that a change was taking place in you, that the +player of polo, the wild hunter of an inoffensive little white ball, was +developing into the humanitarian." + +"Well, sir," rejoined Dick, "I won't deny that of late I have been +beginning to think that there is a good deal in your theories. But you +mustn't try me too high at the beginning, you know. I am only in my +novitiate. However, please send it to Aunt Margaret, and--oh, how I would +like to hear her remarks upon it!" + +An idea occurred to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Richard, why shouldn't you take it over yourself this afternoon?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"Impossible, father, I have something to do." He looked out of the window +down to the river running dark in the shade of trees. "But I'll go +to-morrow morning," he added. + +And the next morning he walked over early to Great Beeding. His aunt +would have received the pamphlet by the first post and he wished to seize +the first fine careless rapture of her comments. But he found her in a +mood of distress rather than of wordy impatience. + +The Pettifers lived in a big house of the Georgian period at the bottom +of an irregular square in the middle of the little town. Mrs. Pettifer +was sitting in a room facing the garden at the back with the pamphlet on +a little table beside her. She sprang up as Dick was shown into the room, +and before he could utter a word of greeting she cried: + +"Dick, you are the one person I wanted to see." + +"Oh?" + +"Yes. Sit down." + +Dick obeyed. + +"Dick, I believe you are the only person in the world who has any control +over your father." + +"Yes. Even in my pinafores I learnt the great lesson that to control +one's parents is the first duty of the modern child." + +"Don't be silly," his aunt rejoined sharply. Then she looked him over. +"Yes, you must have some control over him, for he lets you remain in the +army, though an army is one of his abominations." + +"Theoretically it's a great grief to him," replied Dick. "But you see I +have done fairly well, so actually he's ready to burst with pride. Every +sentimental philosopher sooner or later breaks his head against his own +theories." + +Mrs. Pettifer nodded her head in commendation. + +"That's an improvement on your last remark, Dick. It's true. And your +father's going to break his head very badly unless you stop him." + +"How?" + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +All the flippancy died out of Dick Hazlewood's face. He became at once +grave, wary. + +"I have been hearing about him," continued Mrs. Pettifer. "He has made +friends with her--a woman who has stood in the dock on a capital charge." + +"And has been acquitted," Dick Hazlewood added quietly and Mrs. Pettifer +blazed up. + +"She wouldn't have been acquitted if I had been on the jury. A +parcel of silly men who are taken in by a pretty face!" she cried, +and Dick broke in: + +"Aunt Margaret, I am sorry to interrupt you. But I want you to understand +that I am with my father heart and soul in this." + +He spoke very slowly and deliberately and Mrs. Pettifer was +utterly dismayed. + +"You!" she cried. She grew pale, and alarm so changed her face it was as +if a tragic mask had been slipped over it. "Oh, Dick, not you!" + +"Yes, I. I think it is cruelly hard," he continued with his eyes +relentlessly fixed upon Mrs. Pettifer's face, "that a woman like Mrs. +Ballantyne, who has endured all the horrors of a trial, the publicity, +the suspense, the dread risk that justice might miscarry, should have +afterwards to suffer the treatment of a leper." + +There was for the moment no room for any anger now in Mrs. Pettifer's +thoughts. Consternation possessed her. She weighed every quiet firm word +that fell from Dick, she appreciated the feeling which gave them wings, +she searched his face, his eyes. Dick had none of his father's +flightiness. He was level-headed, shrewd and with the conventions of his +times and his profession. If Dick spoke like this, with so much certitude +and so much sympathy, why then--She shrank from the conclusion with a +sinking heart. She became very quiet. + +"Oh, she shouldn't have come to Little Beeding," she said in a low voice, +staring now upon the ground. It was to herself she spoke, but Dick +answered her, and his voice rose to a challenge. + +"Why shouldn't she? Here she was born, here she was known. What else +should she do but come back to Little Beeding and hold her head high? I +respect her pride for doing it." + +Here were reasons no doubt why Stella should come back; but they did not +include the reason why she had. Dick Hazlewood was well aware of it. He +had learnt it only the afternoon before when he was with her on the +river. But he thought it a reason too delicate, of too fine a gossamer to +be offered to the prosaic mind of his Aunt Margaret. With what ridicule +and disbelief she would rend it into tatters! Reasons so exquisite were +not for her. She could never understand them. + +Mrs. Pettifer abandoned her remonstrances and was for dropping the +subject altogether. But Dick was obstinate. + +"You don't know Mrs. Ballantyne, Aunt Margaret. You are unjust to her +because you don't know her. I want you to," he said boldly. + +"What!" cried Mrs. Pettifer. "You actually--Oh!" Indignation robbed her +of words. She gasped. + +"Yes, I do," continued Dick calmly. "I want you to come one night and +dine at Little Beeding. We'll persuade Mrs. Ballantyne to come too." + +It was a bold move, and even in his eyes it had its risks for Stella. To +bring Mrs. Pettifer and her together was, so it seemed to him, to mix +earth with delicate flame. But he had great faith in Stella Ballantyne. +Let them but meet and the earth might melt--who could tell? At the worst +his aunt would bristle, and there were his father and himself to see that +the bristles did not prick. + +"Yes, come and dine." + +Mrs. Pettifer had got over her amazement at her nephew's audacity. +Curiosity had taken its place--curiosity and fear. She must see this +woman for herself. + +"Yes," she answered after a pause. "I will come. I'll bring Robert too." + +"Good. We'll fix up a date and write to you. Goodbye." + +Dick went back to Little Beeding and asked for his father. The old +gentleman added to his other foibles that of a collector. It was the +only taste he had which was really productive, for he owned a collection +of miniatures, gathered together throughout his life, which would have +realised a fortune if it had been sold at Christie's. He kept it arranged +in cabinets in the library and Dick found him bending over one of the +drawers and rearranging his treasures. + +"I have seen Aunt Margaret," he said. "She will meet Stella here +at dinner." + +"That will be splendid," cried the old man with enthusiasm. + +"Perhaps," replied his son; and the next morning the Pettifers received +their invitation. + +Mrs. Pettifer accepted it at once. She had not been idle since Dick had +left her. Before he had come she had merely looked upon the crusade as +one of Harold Hazlewood's stupendous follies. But after he had gone she +was genuinely horrified. She saw Dick speaking with the set dogged look +and the hard eyes which once or twice she had seen before. He had always +got his way, she remembered, on those occasions. She drove round to her +friends and made inquiries. At each house her terrors were confirmed. It +was Dick now who led the crusade. He had given up his polo, he was +spending all his leave at Little Beeding and most of it with Stella +Ballantyne. He lent her a horse and rode with her in the morning, he +rowed her on the river in the afternoon. He bullied his friends to call +on her. He brandished his friendship with her like a flag. Love me, love +my Stella was his new motto. Mrs. Pettifer drove home with every fear +exaggerated. Dick's career would be ruined altogether--even if nothing +worse were to happen. To any view that Stella Ballantyne might hold she +hardly gave a thought. She was sure of what it would be. Stella +Ballantyne would jump at her nephew. He had good looks, social position, +money and a high reputation. It was the last quality which would give him +a unique value in Stella Ballantyne's eyes. He was not one of the +chinless who haunt the stage doors; nor again one of that more subtly +decadent class which seeks to attract sensation by linking itself to +notoriety. No. From Stella's point of view Dick Hazlewood must be the +ideal husband. + +Mrs. Pettifer waited for her husband's return that evening with unusual +impatience, but she was wise enough to hold her tongue until dinner was +over and he with a cigar between his lips and a glass of old brandy on +the table-cloth in front of him, disposed to amiability and concession. + +Then, however, she related her troubles. + +"You see it must be stopped, Robert." + +Robert Pettifer was a lean wiry man of fifty-five whose brown dried face +seemed by a sort of climatic change to have taken on the colour of the +binding of his law-books. He, too, was a little troubled by the story, +but he was of a fair and cautious mind. + +"Stopped?" he said. "How? We can't arrest Mrs. Ballantyne again." + +"No," replied Mrs. Pettifer. "Robert, you must do something." + +Robert Pettifer jumped in his chair. + +"I, Margaret! Lord love you, no! I decline to mix myself up in the matter +at all. Dick's a grown man and Mrs. Ballantyne has been acquitted." + +Margaret Pettifer knew her husband. + +"Is that your last word?" she asked ruefully. + +"Absolutely." + +"It isn't mine, Robert." + +Robert Pettifer chuckled and laid a hand upon his wife's. + +"I know that, Margaret." + +"We are going to dine next Friday night at Little Beeding to meet Stella +Ballantyne." + +Mr. Pettifer was startled but he held his tongue. + +"The invitation came this morning after you had left for London," +she added. + +"And you accepted it at once?" + +"Yes." + +Pettifer was certain that she had before she opened her mouth to +answer him. + +"I shall dine at Little Beeding on Friday," he said, "because Harold +always gives me an admirable glass of vintage port"; and with that he +dismissed the subject. Mrs. Pettifer was content to let it smoulder in +his mind. She was not quite sure that he was as disturbed as she wished +him to be, but that he was proud of Dick she knew, and if by any chance +uneasiness grew strong in him, why, sooner or later he would let fall +some little sentence; and that little sentence would probably be useful. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +CONSEQUENCES + + +The dinner-party at Little Beeding was a small affair. There were but ten +altogether who sat down at Mr. Hazlewood's dinner-table and with the +exception of the Pettifers all, owing to Dick Hazlewood's insistence, +were declared partisans of Stella Ballantyne. None the less Stella came +to it with hesitation. It was the first time that she had dined abroad +since she had left India, now the best part of eighteen months ago, and +she went forth to it as to an ordeal. For though friends of hers would be +present to enhearten her she was to meet the Pettifers. The redoubtable +Aunt Margaret had spoilt her sleep for a week. It was for the Pettifers +she dressed, careful to choose neither white nor black, lest they should +find something symbolic in the colour of her gown and make of it an +offence. She put on a frock of pale blue satin trimmed with some white +lace which had belonged to her mother, and she wore not so much as a thin +gold chain about her neck. But she did not need jewels that night. The +months of quiet had restored her to her beauty, the excitement of this +evening had given life and colour to her face, the queer little droop at +the corners of her lips which had betrayed so much misery and bitterness +of spirit had vanished altogether. Yet when she was quite dressed and +her mirror bade her take courage she sat down and wrote a note of apology +pleading a sudden indisposition. But she did not send it. Even in the +writing her cowardice came home to her and she tore it up before she had +signed her name. The wheels of the cab which was to take her to the big +house rattled down the lane under her windows, and slipping her cloak +over her shoulders she ran downstairs. + +The party began with a little constraint. Mr. Hazlewood received his +guests in his drawing-room and it had the chill and the ceremony of a +room which is seldom used. But the constraint wore off at the table. Most +of those present were striving to set Stella Ballantyne at her ease, and +she was at a comfortable distance from Mrs. Pettifer, with Mr. Hazlewood +at her side. She was conscious that she was kept under observation and +from time to time the knowledge made her uncomfortable. + +"I am being watched," she said to her host. + +"You mustn't mind," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and the smile came back to her +lips as she glanced round the table. + +"Oh, I don't, I don't," she said in a low voice, "for I have +friends here." + +"And friends who will not fail you, Stella," said the old man. "To-night +begins the great change. You'll see." + +Robert Pettifer puzzled her indeed more than his wife. She was plain to +read. She was frigidly polite, her enemy. Once or twice, however, Stella +turned her head to find Robert Pettifer's eyes resting upon her with a +quiet scrutiny which betrayed nothing of his thoughts. As a matter of +fact he liked her manner. She was neither defiant nor servile, neither +loud nor over-silent. She had been through fire; that was evident. But it +was evident only because of a queer haunting look which came and went in +her dark eyes. The fire had not withered her. Indeed Pettifer was +surprised. He had not formulated his expectations at all, but he had not +expected what he saw. The clear eyes and the fresh delicate colour, her +firm white shoulders and her depth of bosom, forced him to think of her +as wholesome. He began to turn over in his mind his recollections of her +case, recollections which he had been studious not to revive. + +Halfway through the dinner Stella lost her uneasiness. The lights, the +ripple of talk, the company of men and women, the bright dresses had +their effect on her. It was as though after a deep plunge into dark +waters she had come to the surface and flung out her arms to the sun. She +ceased to notice the scrutiny of the Pettifers. She looked across the +table to Dick and their eyes met; and such a look of tenderness +transfigured her face as made Mrs. Pettifer turn pale. + +"That woman's in love," she said to herself and she was horrified. It +wasn't Dick's social position then or the shelter of his character that +Stella Ballantyne coveted. She was in love. Mrs. Pettifer was honest +enough to acknowledge it. But she knew now that the danger which she had +feared was infinitely less than the danger which actually was. + +"I must have it out with Harold to-night," she said, and later on, when +the men came from the dining-room, she looked out for her husband. But at +first she did not see him. She was in the drawing-room and the wide +double doors which led to the big library stood open. It was through +those doors that the men had come. Some of the party were gathered there. +She could hear the click of the billiard balls and the voices of women +mingling with those of the men. She went through the doors and saw her +husband standing by Harold Hazlewood's desk, and engrossed apparently in +some little paper-covered book which he held in his hand. She crossed to +him at once. + +"Robert," she said, "don't be in a hurry to go to-night. I must have a +word with Harold." + +"All right," said Pettifer, but he said it in so absent a voice that his +wife doubted whether he had understood her words. She was about to repeat +them when Harold Hazlewood himself approached. + +"You are looking at my new pamphlet, Pettifer, _The Prison Walls must +Cast no Shadow_. I am hoping that it will have a great influence." + +"No," replied Pettifer. "I wasn't. I was looking at this," and he held +up the little book. + +"Oh, that?" said Hazlewood, turning away with disappointment. + +"Yes, that," said Pettifer with a strange and thoughtful look at his +brother-in-law. "And I am not sure," he added slowly, "that in a short +time you will not find it the more important publication of the two." + +He laid the book down and in his turn he moved away towards the +billiard-table. Margaret Pettifer remained. She had been struck by the +curious deliberate words her husband had used. Was this the hint for +which she was looking out? She took up the little book. It was a copy of +_Notes and Queries_. She opened it. + +It was a small periodical magazine made up of printed questions which +contributors sent in search of information and answers to those questions +from the pens of other contributors. Mrs. Pettifer glanced through the +leaves, hoping to light upon the page which her husband had been +studying. But he had closed the book when he laid it down and she found +nothing to justify his remark. Yet he had not spoken without intention. +Of that she was convinced, and her conviction was strengthened the next +moment, for as she turned again towards the drawing-room Robert Pettifer +looked once sharply towards her and as sharply away. Mrs. Pettifer +understood that glance. He was wondering whether she had noticed what in +that magazine had interested him. But she did not pursue him with +questions. She merely made up her mind to examine the copy of _Notes and +Queries_ at a time when she could bring more leisure to the task. + +She waited impatiently for the party to break up but eleven o'clock had +struck before any one proposed to go. Then all took their leave at once. +Robert Pettifer and his wife went out into the hall with the rest, lest +others seeing them remain should stay behind too; and whilst they stood a +little apart from the general bustle of departure Margaret Pettifer saw +Stella Ballantyne come lightly down the stairs, and a savage fury +suddenly whirled in her head and turned her dizzy. She thought of all the +trouble and harm this young woman was bringing into their ordered family +and she would not have it that she was innocent. She saw Stella with her +cloak open upon her shoulders radiant and glistening and slender against +the dark panels of the staircase, youth in her face, enjoyment sparkling +in her eyes, and her fingers itched to strip her of her bright frock, her +gloves, her slim satin slippers, the delicate white lace which nestled +against her bosom. She clothed her in the heavy shapeless garments, the +coarse shoes and stockings of the convict; she saw her working +desperately against time upon an ignoble task with black and broken +finger-nails. If longing could have worked the miracle, thus at this hour +would Stella Ballantyne have sat and worked, all the colour of her faded +to a hideous drab, all the grace of her withered. Mrs. Pettifer turned +away with so abrupt a movement and so disordered a face that Robert asked +her if she was ill. + +"No, it's nothing," she said and against her will her eyes were drawn +back to the staircase. But Stella Ballantyne had disappeared and Margaret +Pettifer drew her breath in relief. She felt that there had been danger +in her moment of passion, danger and shame; and already enough of those +two evils waited about them. + +Stella, meanwhile, with a glance towards Dick Hazlewood, had slipped back +into the big room. Then she waited for a moment until the door opened and +Dick came in. + +"I had not said good-night to you," she exclaimed, coming towards him and +giving him her hands, "and I wanted to say it to you here, when we were +alone. For I must thank you for to-night, you and your father. Oh, I have +no words." + +The tears were very near to her eyes and they were audible in her low +voice. Dick Hazlewood was quick to answer her. + +"Good! For there's need of none. Will you ride to-morrow?" + +Stella took her hands from his and moved across the room towards the +great bay window with its glass doors. + +"I should love to," she said. + +"Eight. Is that too early after to-night?" + +"No, that's the good time," she returned with a smile. "We have the day +at its best and the world to ourselves." + +"I'll bring the same horse round. He knows you now, doesn't he?" + +"Thank you," said Stella. She unlatched the glass door and opened it. +"You'll lock it after me, won't you?" + +"No," said Dick. "I'll see you to your door." + +But Stella refused his company. She stood in the doorway. + +"There's no need! See what a night it is!" and the beauty of it crept +into her soul and stilled her voice. The moon rode in a blue sky, a disc +of glowing white, the great cedar-trees flung their shadows wide over the +bright lawns and not a branch stirred. + +"Listen," said Stella in a whisper and the river rippling against its +banks with now a deep sob and now a fairy's laugh sang to them in notes +most musical and clear. That liquid melody and the flutter of a bird's +wings in the bough of a tree were the only sounds. They stood side by +side, she looking out over the garden to the dim and pearly hills, he +gazing at her uplifted face and the pure column of her throat. They +stood in a most dangerous silence. The air came cool and fresh to their +nostrils. Stella drew it in with a smile. + +"Good-night!" She laid her hand for a second on his arm. "Don't +come with me!" + +"Why not?" + +And the answer came in a clear whisper: + +"I am afraid." + +Stella seemed to feel the man at her side suddenly grow very still. +"It's only a step," she went on quickly and she passed out of the window +on to the pathway. Dick Hazlewood followed but she turned to him and +raised her hand. + +"Don't," she pleaded; the voice was troubled but her eyes were steady. +"If you come with me I shall tell you." + +"What?" he interrupted, and the quickness of the interruption broke the +spell which the night had laid upon her. + +"I shall tell you again how much I thank you," she said lightly. "I shall +cross the meadow by the garden gate. That brings me to my door." + +She gathered her skirt in her hand and crossed the pathway to the edge of +the grass. + +"You can't do that," exclaimed Dick and he was at her side. He stooped +and felt the turf. "Even the lawn's drenched. Crossing the meadow you'll +be ankle-deep in dew. You must promise never to go home across the +meadow when you dine with us." + +He spoke, chiding her as if she had been a mutinous child, and with so +much anxiety that she laughed. + +"You see, you have become rather precious to me," he added. + +Though the month was July she that night was all April, half tears, half +laughter. The smile passed from her lips and she raised her hands to her +face with the swiftness of one who has been struck. + +"What's the matter?" he asked, and she drew her hand away. + +"Don't you understand?" she asked, and answered the question herself. +"No, why should you?" She turned to him suddenly, her bosom heaving, her +hands clenched. "Do you know what place I fill here, in my own county? +Years ago, when I was a child, there was supposed to be a pig-faced woman +in Great Beeding. She lived in a small yellow cottage in the Square. It +was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the town. Sometimes +they were shown her shadow after dusk between the lamp and the blind. +Sometimes you might have even caught a glimpse of her slinking late at +night along the dark alleys. Well, the pig-faced woman has gone and I +have taken her place." + +"No," cried Dick. "That's not true." + +"It is," she answered passionately. "I am the curiosity. I am the freak. +The townspeople take a pride in me, yes, just the same pride they took in +her, and I find that pride more difficult to bear than all the aversion +of the Pettifers. I too slink out early in the morning or late after +night has fallen. And you"--the passion of bitterness died out of her +voice, her hands opened and hung at her sides, a smile of tenderness +shone on her face--"you come with me. You ride with me early. With you I +learn to take no heed. You welcome me to your house. You speak to me as +you spoke just now." Her voice broke and a cry of gladness escaped from +her which went to Dick Hazlewood's heart. "Oh, you shall see me to my +door. I'll not cross the meadow. I'll go round by the road." She stopped +and drew a breath. + +"I'll tell you something." + +"What?" + +"It's rather good to be looked after. I know. It has never happened to me +before. Yes, it's very good," and she drew out the words with a low laugh +of happiness. + +"Stella!" he said, and at the mention of her name she caught her hands up +to her heart. "Oh, thank you!" + +The hall-door was closed and all but one car had driven away when they +turned the corner of the house and came out in the broad drive. They +walked in the moonlight with a perfume of flowers in the air and the big +yellow cups of the evening primroses gleaming on either side. They walked +slowly. Stella knew that she should quicken her feet but she could not +bring herself to do more than know it. She sought to take into her heart +every tiniest detail of that walk so that in memory she might, years +after, walk it again and so never be quite alone. They passed out through +the great iron gates and turned into the lane. Here great elms overhung +and now they walked in darkness, and now again were bathed in light. A +twig snapped beneath her foot; even so small a thing she would remember. + +"We must hurry," she said. + +"We are doing all that we can," replied Dick. "It's a long +way--this walk." + +"You feel it so?" said Stella, tempting him--oh, unwisely! But the spell +of the hour and the place was upon her. + +"Yes," he answered her. "It's a long way in a man's life," and he drew +close to her side. + +"No!" she cried with a sudden violence. But she was awake too late. "No, +Dick, no," she repeated, but his arms were about her. + +"Stella, I want you. Oh, life's dull for a man without a woman; I can +tell you," he exclaimed passionately. + +"There are others--plenty," she said, and tried to thrust him away. + +"Not for me," he rejoined, and he would not let her go. Her struggles +ceased, she buried her face in his coat, her hands caught his shoulders, +she stood trembling and shivering against him. + +"Stella," he whispered. "Stella!" + +He raised her face and bent to it. Then he straightened himself. + +"Not here!" he said. + +They were standing in the darkness of a tree. He put his arms about her +waist and lifted her into an open space where the moonlight shone bright +and clear and there were no shadows. + +"Here," he said, and he kissed her on the lips. She thrust her head back, +her face uplifted to the skies, her eyes closed. + +"Oh, Dick," she murmured, "I meant that this should never be. Even +now--you shall forget it." + +"No--I couldn't." + +"So one says. But--oh, it would be your ruin." She started away from him. + +"Listen!" + +"Yes," he answered. + +She stood confronting him desperately a yard or so away, her bosom +heaving, her face wet with her tears. Dick Hazlewood did not stir. +Stella's lips moved as though she were speaking but no words were +audible, and it seemed that her strength left her. She came suddenly +forward, groping with her hands like a blind person. + +"Oh, my dear," she said as he caught them. They went on again together. +She spoke of his father, of the talk of the countryside. But he had an +argument for each of hers. + +"Be brave for just a little, Stella. Once we are married there will be no +trouble," and with his arms about her she was eager to believe. + +Stella Ballantyne sat late that night in the armchair in her bedroom, her +eyes fixed upon the empty grate, in a turmoil of emotion. She grew cold +and shivered. A loud noise of birds suddenly burst through the open +window. She went to it. The morning had come. She looked across the +meadow to the silent house of Little Beeding in the grey broadening +light. All the blinds were down. Were they all asleep or did one watch +like her? She came back to the fireplace. In the grate some torn +fragments of a letter caught her eyes. She stooped and picked them up. +They were fragments of the letter of regret which she had written earlier +that evening. + +"I should have sent it," she whispered. "I should not have gone. I should +have sent the letter." + +But the regret was vain. She had gone. Her maid found her in the morning +lying upon her bed in a deep sleep and still wearing the dress in which +she had gone out. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD + + +When Dick and Stella walked along the drive to the lane Harold Hazlewood, +who was radiant at the success of his dinner-party, turned to Robert +Pettifer in the hall. + +"Have a whisky-and-soda, Robert, before you go," he said. He led the way +back into the library. Behind him walked the Pettifers, Robert +ill-at-ease and wishing himself a hundred miles away, Margaret Pettifer +boiling for battle. Hazlewood himself dropped into an arm-chair. + +"I am very glad that you came to-night, Margaret," he said boldly. "You +have seen for yourself." + +"Yes, I have," she replied. "Harold, there have been moments this evening +when I could have screamed." + +Robert Pettifer hurriedly turned towards the table in the far corner +of the room where the tray with the decanters and the syphons had +been placed. + +"Margaret, I pass my life in a scream at the injustice of the world," +said Harold Hazlewood, and Robert Pettifer chuckled as he cut off the end +of a cigar. "It is strange that an act of reparation should move you in +the same way." + +"Reparation!" cried Margaret Pettifer indignantly. Then she noticed that +the window was open. She looked around the room. She drew up a chair in +front of her brother. + +"Harold, if you have no consideration for us, none for your own +position, none for the neighbourhood, if you will at all costs force +this woman upon us, don't you think that you might still spare a thought +for your son?" + +Robert Pettifer had kept his eyes open that evening as well as his wife. +He took a step down into the room. He was anxious to take no part in the +dispute; he desired to be just; he was favourably inclined towards Stella +Ballantyne; looking at her he had been even a little moved. But Dick was +the first consideration. He had no children of his own, he cared for Dick +as he would have cared for his son, and when he went up each morning by +the train to his office in London there lay at the back of his mind the +thought that one day the fortune he was amassing would add a splendour to +Dick's career. Harold Hazlewood alone of the three seemed to have his +eyes sealed. + +"Why, what on earth do you mean, Margaret?" + +Margaret Pettifer sat down in her chair. + +"Where was Dick yesterday afternoon?" + +"Margaret, I don't know." + +"I do. I saw him. He was with Stella Ballantyne on the river--in the +dusk--in a Canadian canoe." She uttered each fresh detail in a more +indignant tone, as though it aggravated the crime. Yet even so she had +not done. There was, it seemed, a culminating offence. "She was wearing a +white lace frock with a big hat." + +"Well," said Mr. Hazlewood mildly, "I don't think I have anything against +big hats." + +"She was trailing her hand in the water--that he might notice its +slenderness of course. Outrageous I call it!" + +Mr. Hazlewood nodded his head at his indignant sister. + +"I know that frame of mind very well, Margaret," he remarked. "She cannot +do right. If she had been wearing a small hat she would have been +Frenchified." + +But Mrs. Pettifer was not in a mood for argument. + +"Can't you see what it all means?" she cried in exasperation. + +"I can. I do," Mr. Hazlewood retorted and he smiled proudly upon his +sister. "The boy's better nature is awakening." + +Margaret Pettifer lifted up her hands. + +"The boy!" she exclaimed. "He's thirty-four if he's a day." + +She leaned forward in her chair and pointing up to the bay asked: "Why is +that window open, Harold?" + +Harold Hazlewood showed his first sign of discomfort. He shifted in +his chair. + +"It's a hot night, Margaret." + +"That is not the reason," Mrs. Pettifer retorted implacably. +"Where is Dick?" + +"I expect that he is seeing Mrs. Ballantyne home." + +"Exactly," said Mrs. Pettifer with a world of significance in her voice. +Mr. Hazlewood sat up and looked at his sister. + +"Margaret, you want to make me uncomfortable," he exclaimed pettishly. +"But you shan't. No, my dear, you shan't." He let himself sink back again +and joining the tips of his fingers contemplated the ceiling. But +Margaret was in the mind to try. She shot out her words at him like so +many explosive bullets. + +"Being friends is one thing, Harold. Marrying is another." + +"Very true, Margaret, very true." + +"They are in love with one another." + +"Rubbish, Margaret, rubbish." + +"I watched them at the dinner-table and afterwards. They are man and +woman, Harold. That's what you don't understand. They are not +illustrations of your theories. Ask Robert." + +"No," exclaimed Robert Pettifer. He hurriedly lit a cigar. "Any inference +I should make must be purely hypothetical." + +"Yes, we'll ask Robert. Come, Pettifer!" cried Mr. Hazlewood. "Let us +have your opinion." + +Robert Pettifer came reluctantly down from his corner. + +"Well, if you insist, I think they were very friendly." + +"Ah!" cried Hazlewood in triumph. "Being friends is one thing, Margaret. +Marrying is another." + +Mrs. Pettifer shook her head over her brother with a most +aggravating pity. + +"Dick said a shrewd thing the other day to me, Harold." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked doubtfully at his sister. + +"I am sure of it," he answered, but he was careful not to ask for any +repetition of the shrewd remark. Margaret, however, was not in the mind +to let him off. + +"He said that sentimental philosophers sooner or later break their heads +against their own theories. Mark those words, Harold! I hope they won't +come true of you. I hope so very much indeed." + +But it was abundantly clear that she had not a shadow of doubt that they +would come true. Mr. Hazlewood was stung by the slighting phrase. + +"I am not a sentimental philosopher," he said hotly. "Sentiment I +altogether abhor. I hold strong views, I admit." + +"You do indeed," his sister interrupted with an ironical laugh. "Oh, I +have read your pamphlet, Harold. The prison walls must cast no shadow and +convicts, once they are released, have as much right to sit down at our +dinner-tables as they had before. Well, you carry your principles into +practice, that I will say. We had an illustration to-night." + +"You are unjust, Margaret," and Mr. Hazlewood rose from his chair with +some dignity. "You speak of Mrs. Ballantyne, not for the first time, as +if she had been tried and condemned. In fact she was tried and +acquitted," and in his turn he appealed to Pettifer. + +"Ask Robert!" he said. + +But Pettifer was slow to answer, and when he did it was without +assurance. + +"Ye-es," he replied with something of a drawl. "Undoubtedly Mrs. +Ballantyne was tried and acquitted"; and he left the impression on the +two who heard him that with acquittal quite the last word had not been +said. Mrs. Pettifer looked at him eagerly. She drew clear at once of +the dispute. She left the questions now to Harold Hazlewood, and +Pettifer had spoken with so much hesitation that Harold Hazlewood could +not but ask them. + +"You are making reservations, Robert?" + +Pettifer shrugged his shoulders. + +"I think we have a right to know them," Hazlewood insisted. "You are a +solicitor with a great business and consequently a wide experience." + +"Not of criminal cases, Hazlewood. I bring no more authority to judge +them than any other man." + +"Still you have formed an opinion. Please let me have it," and Mr. +Hazlewood sat down again and crossed his knees. But a little impatience +was now audible in his voice. + +"An opinion is too strong a word," replied Pettifer guardedly. "The +trial took place nearly eighteen months ago. I read the accounts of it +certainly day by day as I travelled in the train to London. But they were +summaries." + +"Full summaries, Robert," said Hazlewood. + +"No doubt. The trial made a great deal of noise in the world. But they +were not full enough for me. Even if my memory of those newspaper reports +were clear I should still hesitate to sit in judgment. But my memory +isn't clear. Let us see what I do remember." + +Pettifer took a chair and sat for a few moments with his forehead +wrinkled in a frown. Was he really trying to remember? His wife asked +herself that question as she watched him. Or had he something to tell +them which he meant to let fall in his own cautiously careless way? Mrs. +Pettifer listened alertly. + +"The--well--let us call it the catastrophe--took place in a tent in some +state of Rajputana." + +"Yes," said Mr. Hazlewood. + +"It took place at night. Mrs. Ballantyne was asleep in her bed. The man +Ballantyne was found outside the tent in the doorway." + +"Yes." + +Pettifer paused. "So many law cases have engaged my attention since," +he said in apology for his hesitation. He seemed quite at a loss. Then +he went on: + +"Wait a moment! A man had been dining with them at night--oh yes, I +begin to remember." + +Harold Hazlewood made a tiny movement and would have spoken, but Margaret +held out a hand towards him swiftly. + +"Yes, a man called Thresk," said Pettifer, and again he was silent. + +"Well," asked Hazlewood. + +"Well--that's all I remember," replied Pettifer briskly. He rose and put +his chair back. "Except--" he added slowly. + +"Yes?" + +"Except that there was left upon my mind when the verdict was published a +vague feeling of doubt." + +"There!" cried Mrs. Pettifer triumphantly. "You hear him, Harold." + +But Hazelwood paid no attention to her. He was gazing at his +brother-in-law with a good deal of uneasiness. + +"Why?" he asked. "Why were you in doubt, Robert?" + +But Pettifer had said all that he had any mind to say. + +"Oh, I can't remember why," he exclaimed. "I am very likely quite wrong. +Come, Margaret, it's time that we were getting home." + +He crossed over to Hazlewood and held out his hand. Hazlewood, however, +did not rise. + +"I don't think that's quite fair of you, Robert," he said. "You don't +disturb my confidence, of course--I have gone into the case +thoroughly--but I think you ought to give me a chance of satisfying you +that your doubts have no justification." + +"No really," exclaimed Pettifer. "I absolutely refuse to mix myself up in +the affair at all." A step sounded upon the gravel path outside the +window. Pettifer raised a warning finger. "It's midnight, Margaret," he +said. "We must go"; and as he spoke Dick Hazlewood walked in through the +open window. + +He smiled at the group of his relations with a grim amusement. They +certainly wore a guilty look. He was surprised to remark some +embarrassment even upon his father's face. + +"You will see your aunt off, Richard," said Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Of course." + +The Pettifers and Dick went out into the hall, leaving the old man in his +chair, a little absent, perhaps a little troubled. + +"Aunt Margaret, you have been upsetting my father," said Dick. + +"Nonsense, Dick," she replied, and her face flushed. She stepped into the +carriage quickly to avoid questions, and as she stepped in Dick noticed +that she was carrying a little paper-covered book. Pettifer followed. +"Good-night, Dick," he said, and he shook hands with his nephew very +warmly. In spite of his cordiality, however, Dick's face grew hard as he +watched the carriage drive away. Stella was right. The Pettifers were the +enemy. Well, he had always known there would be a fight, and now the +sooner it came the better. He went back to the library and as he opened +the door he heard his father's voice. The old man was sitting sunk in his +chair and repeating to himself: + +"I won't believe it. I won't believe it." + +He stopped at once when Dick came in. Dick looked at him with concern. + +"You are tired, father," he said. + +"Yes, I think I am a little. I'll go to bed." + +Hazlewood watched Dick walk over to the corner table where the candles +stood beside the tray, and his face cleared. For the first time in his +life the tidy well-groomed conventional look of his son was a real +pleasure to him. Richard was of those to whom the good-will of the world +meant much. He would never throw it lightly away. Hazlewood got up and +took one of the candles from his son. He patted him on the shoulder. He +became quite at ease as he looked into his face. + +"Good-night, my boy," he said. + +"Good-night, sir," replied Dick cheerfully. "There's nothing like acting +up to one's theories, is there?" + +"Nothing," said the old man heartily. "Look at my life!" + +"Yes," replied Dick. "And now look at mine. I am going to marry Stella +Ballantyne." + +For a moment Mr. Hazlewood stood perfectly still. Then he murmured +lamely: + +"Oh, are you? Are you, Richard?" and he shuffled quickly out of the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +MR. HAZLEWOOD SEEKS ADVICE + + +As Dick was getting out of bed at half-past seven a troubled little note +was brought to him written hurriedly and almost incoherent. + +"Dick, I can't ride with you this morning. I am too tired ... and I don't +think we should meet again. You must forget last night. I shall be very +proud always to remember it, but I won't ruin you, Dick. You mustn't +think I shall suffer so very much ..." Dick read it all through with a +smile of tenderness upon his face. He wrote a line in reply. "I will come +and see you at eleven, Stella. Meanwhile sleep, my dear," and sent it +across to the cottage. Then he rolled back into bed again and took his +own advice. It was late when he came down into the dining-room and he +took his breakfast alone. + +"Where's my father?" he asked of Hubbard the butler. + +"Mr. Hazlewood breakfasted half an hour ago, sir. He's at work now." + +"Capital," said Dick. "Give me some sausages. Hubbard, what would you say +if I told you that I was going to be married?" + +Hubbard placed a plate in front of him. + +"I should keep my head, sir," he answered in his gentle voice. "Will you +take tea?" + +"Thank you." + +Dick looked out of the window. It was a morning of clear skies and +sunlight, a very proper morning for this the first of all the remarkable +days which one after the other were going especially to belong to him. He +was of the gods now. The world was his property, or rather he held it in +trust for Stella. It was behaving well; Dick Hazlewood was contented. He +ate a large breakfast and strolling into the library lit his pipe. There +was his father bending over his papers at his writing-table before the +window, busy as a bee no doubt at some new enthusiasm which was destined +to infuriate his neighbours. Let him go on! Dick smiled benignly at the +old man's back. Then he frowned. It was curious that his father had not +wished him a good-morning, curious and unusual. + +"I hope, sir, that you slept well," he said. + +"I did not, Richard," and still the back was turned to him. "I lay awake +considering with some care what you told me last night about--about +Stella Ballantyne." + +Of late she had been simply Stella to Harold Hazlewood. The addition of +Ballantyne was significant. It replaced friendliness with formality. + +"Yes, we agreed to champion her cause, didn't we?" said Dick cheerily. +"You took one good step forward last night, I took another." + +"You took a long stride, Richard, and I think you might have consulted +me first." + +Dick walked over to the table at which his father sat. + +"Do you know, that's just what Stella said," he remarked, and he seemed +to find the suggestion rather unintelligible. Mr. Hazlewood snatched at +any support which was offered to him. + +"Ah!" he exclaimed, and for the first time that morning he looked his son +in the face. "There now, Richard, you see!" + +"Yes," Richard returned imperturbably. "But I was able to remove all +her fears. I was able to tell her that you would welcome our marriage +with all your heart, for you would look upon it as a triumph for your +principles and a sure sign that my better nature was at last +thoroughly awake." + +Dick walked away from the table. The old man's face lengthened. If he was +a philosopher at all, he was a philosopher in a piteous position, for he +was having his theories tested upon himself, he was to be the experiment +by which they should be proved or disproved. + +"No doubt," he said in a lamentable voice. "Quite so, Richard. Yes," and +he caught at vague hopes of delay. "There's no hurry of course. For one +thing I don't want to lose you... And then you have your career to think +of, haven't you?" Mr. Hazlewood found himself here upon ground more solid +and leaned his weight on it. "Yes, there's your career." + +Dick returned to his father, amazement upon his face. He spoke as one who +cannot believe the evidence of his ears. + +"But it's in the army, father! Do you realise what you are saying? You +want me to think of my career in the British Army?" + +Consistency however had no charms for Mr. Hazlewood at this moment. + +"Exactly," he cried. "We don't want to prejudice that--do we? No, no, +Richard! Oh, I hear the finest things about you. And they push the young +men along nowadays. You don't have to wait for grey hairs before you're +made a General, Richard, so we must keep an eye on our prospects, eh? And +for that reason it would be advisable perhaps"--and the old man's eyes +fell from Dick's face to his papers--"yes, it would certainly be +advisable to let your engagement remain for a while just a private matter +between the three of us." + +He took up his pen as though the matter was decided and discussion at an +end. But Dick did not move from his side. He was the stronger of the two +and in a little while the old man's eyes wandered up to his face again. +There was a look there which Margaret Pettifer had seen a week ago. Dick +spoke and the voice he used was strange and formidable to his father. + +"There must be no secrecy, father. I remember what you said: for +uncharitable slander an English village is impossible to beat. Our secret +would be known within a week and by attempting to keep it we invite +suspicion. Nothing could be more damaging to Stella than secrecy. +Consequently nothing could be more damaging to me. I don't deny that +things are going to be a little difficult. But of this I am sure"--and +his voice, though it still was quiet, rang deep with confidence--"our one +chance is to hold our heads high. No secrecy, father! My hope is to make +a life which has been very troubled know some comfort and a little +happiness." + +Mr. Hazlewood had no more to say. He must renounce his gods or hold his +tongue. And renounce his gods--no, that he could not do. He heard in +imagination the whole neighbourhood laughing--he saw it a sea of laughter +overwhelming him. He shivered as he thought of it. He, Harold Hazlewood, +the man emancipated from the fictions of society, caught like a silly +struggling fish in the net of his own theories! No, that must never be. +He flung himself at his work. He was revising the catalogue of his +miniatures and in a minute he began to fumble and search about his +over-loaded desk. + +"Everybody is trying to thwart me this morning," he cried angrily. + +"What's the matter, father?" asked Dick, laying down the _Times_. +"Can I help?" + +"I wrote a question to _Notes and Queries_ about the Marie Antoinette +miniature which I bought at Lord Mirliton's sale and there was an answer +in the last number, a very complete answer. But I can't find it. I can't +find it anywhere"; and he tossed his papers about as though he were +punishing them. + +Dick helped in the search, but beyond a stray copy or two of _The Prison +Walls must Cast no Shadow_, there was no publication to be found at all. + +"Wait a bit, father," said Dick suddenly. "What is _Notes and Queries_ +like? The only notes and queries I read are contained in a pink paper. +They are very amusing but they do not deal with miniatures." + +Mr. Hazlewood described the appearance of the little magazine. + +"Well, that's very extraordinary," said Dick, "for Aunt Margaret took it +away last night." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked at his son in blank astonishment. + +"Are you sure, Richard?" + +"I saw it in her hand as she stepped into her carriage." + +Mr. Hazlewood banged his fist upon the table. + +"It's extremely annoying of Margaret," he exclaimed. "She takes no +interest in such matters. She is not, if I may use the word, a virtuoso. +She did it solely to annoy me." + +"Well, I wonder," said Dick. He looked at his watch. It was eleven +o'clock. He went out into the hall, picked up a straw hat and walked +across the meadow to the thatched cottage on the river-bank. But while he +went he was still wondering why in the world Margaret had taken away that +harmless little magazine from his father's writing-table. "Pettifer's at +the bottom of it," he concluded. "There's a foxy fellow for you. I'll +keep my eye on Uncle Robert." He was near to the cottage. Only a rail +separated its garden from the meadow. Beyond the garden a window stood +open and within the room he saw the flutter of a lilac dress. + +From the window of the library Mr. Hazlewood watched his son open the +garden gate. Then he unlocked a drawer of his writing-table and took out +a large sealed envelope. He broke the seal and drew from the envelope a +sheaf of press cuttings. They were the verbatim reports of Stella +Ballantyne's trial, which had been printed day by day in the _Times of +India_. He had sent for them months ago when he had blithely taken upon +himself the defence of Stella Ballantyne. He had read them with a growing +ardour. So harshly had she lived; so shadowless was her innocence. He +turned to them now in a different spirit. Pettifer had been left by the +English summaries of the trial with a vague feeling of doubt. Mr. +Hazlewood respected Robert Pettifer. The lawyer was cautious, deliberate, +unemotional--qualities with which Hazlewood had instinctively little +sympathy. But on the other hand he was not bound hand and foot in +prejudice. He could be liberal in his judgments. He had a mind clear +enough to divide what reason had to say and the presumptions of +convention. Suppose that Pettifer was after all right! The old man's +heart sank within him. Then indeed this marriage must be prevented--and +the truth must be made known--yes, widely known. He himself had been +deceived--like many another man before him. It was not ridiculous to have +been deceived. He remained at all events consistent to his principles. +There was his pamphlet to be sure, _The Prison Walls must Cast no +Shadow_ that gave him an uncomfortable twinge. But he reassured himself. + +"There I argue that, once the offence has been expiated, all the +privileges should be restored. But if Pettifer is right there has been no +expiation." + +That saving clause let him out. He did not thus phrase the position even +to himself. He clothed it in other and high-sounding words. It was after +all a sort of convention to accept acquittal as the proof of innocence. +But at the back of his mind from first to last there was an immense fear +of the figure which he himself would cut if he refused his consent to +the marriage on any ground except that of Stella Ballantyne's guilt. For +Stella herself, the woman, he had no kindness to spare that morning. +Yesterday he had overflowed with it. For yesterday she had been one more +proof to the world how high he soared above it. + +"Since Pettifer's in doubt," he said to himself, "there must be some +flaw in this trial which I overlooked in the heat of my sympathy"; and +to discover that flaw he read again every printed detail of it from the +morning when Stella first appeared before the stipendiary magistrate to +that other morning a month later when the verdict was given. And he +found no flaw. Stella's acquittal was inevitable on the evidence. There +was much to show what provocation she had suffered, but there was no +proof that she had yielded to it. On the contrary she had endured so +long, the presumption must be that she would go on enduring to the end. +And there was other evidence--positive evidence given by Thresk which +could not be gainsaid. + +Mr. Hazlewood replaced his cuttings in the drawer; and he was utterly +discontented. He had hoped for another result. There was only one point +which puzzled him and that had nothing really to do with the trial, but +it puzzled him so much that it slipped out at luncheon. + +"Richard," he said, "I cannot understand why the name of Thresk is so +familiar to me." + +Dick glanced quickly at his father. + +"You have been reading over again the accounts of the trial." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked confused. + +"And a very natural proceeding, Richard," he declared. "But while reading +over the trial I found the name Thresk familiar to me in another +connection, but I cannot remember what the connection is." + +Dick could not help him, nor was he at that time concerned by the failure +of his father's memory. He was engaged in realising that here was another +enemy for Stella. Knowing his father, he was not greatly surprised, but +he thought it prudent to attack without delay. + +"Stella will be coming over to tea this afternoon," he said. + +"Will she, Richard?" the father replied, twisting uncomfortably in his +chair. "Very well--of course." + +"Hubbard knows of my engagement, by the way," Dick continued implacably. + +"Hubbard! God bless my soul!" cried the old man. "It'll be all over the +village already." + +"I shouldn't wonder," replied Dick cheerfully. "I told him before I saw +you this morning, whilst I was having breakfast." + +Mr. Hazlewood remained silent for a while. Then he burst out petulantly: + +"Richard, there's something I must speak to you seriously about: the +lateness of your hours in the morning. I have noticed it with great +regret. It is not considerate to the servants and it cannot be healthy +for you. Such indolence too must be enervating to your mind." + +Dick forbore to remind his father that he was usually out of the house +before seven. + +"Father," he said, at once a very model of humility, "I will endeavour +to reform." + +Mr. Hazlewood concealed his embarrassment at teatime under a show of +over-work. He had a great deal to do--just a moment for a cup of tea--no +more. There was to be a meeting of the County Council the next morning +when a most important question of small holdings was to come up for +discussion. Mr. Hazlewood held the strongest views. He was engaged in +shaping them in the smallest possible number of words. To be brief, to be +vivid--there was the whole art of public speaking. Mr. Hazlewood +chattered feverishly for five minutes; he had come in chattering, he went +out chattering. + +"That's all right, Stella, you see," said Dick cheerfully when they +were left alone. Stella nodded her head. Mr. Hazlewood had not said one +word in recognition of her engagement but she had made her little fight +that morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent +three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night +should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the +meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a +few tags and phrases. + +"Oh, I wish you hadn't come!" she had repeated and repeated and all the +while her blood was leaping in her body for joy that he had. She had +promised in the end to stand firm, to stand by his side and brave--what, +after all, but the clamour of a week? So he put it and so she was eager +to believe. + +Mr. Hazelwood, busy though he made himself out to be, found time that +evening to drive in his motor-car into Great Beeding, and when the London +train pulled up at the station he was on the platform. He looked +anxiously at the passengers who descended until he saw Robert Pettifer. +He went up to him at once. + +"What in the world are you doing here?" asked the lawyer. + +"I came on purpose to catch you, Robert. I want to speak to you in +private. My car is here. If you will get into it with me we can drive +slowly towards your house." + +Pettifer's face changed, but he could not refuse. Hazlewood was agitated +and nervous; of his ordinary complacency there was no longer a trace. +Pettifer got into the car and as it moved away from the station he asked: + +"Now what's the matter?" + +"I have been thinking over what you said last night, Robert. You had a +vague feeling of doubt. Well, I have the verbatim reports of the trial in +Bombay here in this envelope and I want you to read them carefully +through and give me your opinion." He held out the envelope as he spoke, +but Pettifer thrust his hands into his pockets. + +"I won't touch it," he declared. "I refuse to mix myself up in the affair +at all. I said more than I meant to last night." + +"But you did say it, Robert." + +"Then I withdraw it now." + +"But you can't, Robert. You must go further. Something has happened +to-day, something very serious." + +"Oh?" said Pettifer. + +"Yes," replied Mr. Hazlewood. "Margaret really has more insight than I +credited her with. They propose to get married." + +Pettifer sat upright in the car. + +"You mean Dick and Stella Ballantyne?" + +"Yes." + +And for a little while there was silence in the car. Then Mr. Hazlewood +continued to bleat. + +"I never suspected anything of the kind. It places me, Robert, in a very +difficult position." + +"I can quite see that," answered Pettifer with a grim smile. "It's really +the only consoling element in the whole business. You can't refuse your +consent without looking a fool and you can't give it while you are in any +doubt as to Mrs. Ballantyne's innocence." + +Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, quite prepared to accept that definition +of his position. + +"You don't exhaust the possibilities, Robert," he said. "I can quite +well refuse my consent and publicly refuse it if there are reasonable +grounds for believing that there was in that trial a grave miscarriage +of justice." + +Mr. Pettifer looked sharply at his companion. The voice no less than the +words fixed his attention. This was not the Mr. Hazlewood of yesterday. +The champion had dwindled into a figure of meanness. Harold Hazlewood +would be glad to discover those reasonable grounds; and he would be very +much obliged if Robert Pettifer would take upon himself the +responsibility of discovering them. + +"Yes, I see," said Pettifer slowly. He was half inclined to leave Harold +Hazlewood to find his way out of his trouble by himself. It was all his +making after all. But other and wider considerations began to press upon +Pettifer. He forced himself to omit altogether the subject of Hazlewood's +vanities and entanglements. + +"Very well. Give the cuttings to me! I will read them through and I will +let you know my opinion. Their intention to marry may alter +everything--my point of view as much as yours." + +Mr. Pettifer took the envelope in his hand and got out of the car as +soon as Hazlewood had stopped it. + +"You have raised no objections to the engagement?" he asked. + +"A word to Richard this morning. Of not much effect I am afraid." + +Mr. Pettifer nodded. + +"Right. I should say nothing to anybody. You can't take a decided line +against it at present and to snarl would be the worst policy imaginable. +To-day's Thursday. We'll meet on Saturday. Good-night," and Robert +Pettifer walked away to his own house. + +He walked slowly, wondering at the eternal mystery by which this +particular man and that individual woman select each other out of the +throng. He owed the greater part of his fortune to the mystery like many +another lawyer. But to-night he would willingly have yielded a good +portion of it up if that process of selection could be ordered in a more +reasonable way. Love? The attraction of Sex? Yes, no doubt. But why these +two specimens of Sex? Why Dick and Stella Ballantyne? + +When he reached his house his wife hurried forward to meet him. Already +she had the news. There was an excitement in her face not to be +misunderstood. The futile time-honoured phrase of triumph so ready on the +lips of those who have prophesied evil was trembling upon hers. + +"Don't say it, Margaret," said Pettifer very seriously. "We have come to +a pass where light words will lead us astray. Hazlewood has been with me. +I have the reports of the trial here." + +Margaret Pettifer put a check upon her tongue and they dined together +almost in complete silence. Pettifer was methodically getting his own +point of view quite clearly established in his mind, so that whatever he +did or advised he might be certain not to swerve from it afterwards. He +weighed his inclinations and his hopes, and when the servants had left +the dining-room and he had lit his cigar he put his case before his wife. + +"Listen, Margaret! You know your brother. He is always in extremes. He +swings from one to the other. He is terrified now lest this marriage +should take place." + +"No wonder," interposed Mrs. Pettifer. + +Pettifer made no comment upon the remark. + +"Therefore," he continued, "he is anxious that I should discover in these +reports some solid reason for believing that the verdict which acquitted +Stella Ballantyne was a grave miscarriage of justice. For any such reason +must have weight." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Pettifer. + +"And will justify him--this is his chief consideration--in withholding +publicly his consent." + +"I see." + +Only a week ago Dick himself had observed that sentimental +philosophers had a knack of breaking their heads against their own +theories. The words had been justified sooner than she had expected. +Mrs. Pettifer was not surprised at Harold Hazlewood's swift change any +more than her husband had been. Harold, to her thinking, was a +sentimentalist and sentimentality was like a fir-tree--a thing of no +deep roots and easily torn up. + +"But I do not take that view, Margaret," continued her husband, and she +looked at him with consternation. Was he now to turn champion, he who +only yesterday had doubted? "And I want you to consider whether you can +agree with me. There is to begin with the woman herself, Stella +Ballantyne. I saw her for the first time yesterday, and to be quite +honest I liked her, Margaret. Yes. It seemed to me that there was nothing +whatever of the adventuress about her. And I was impressed--I will go +further, I was moved--dry-as-dust old lawyer as I am, by something--How +shall I express it without being ridiculous?" He paused and searched in +his vocabulary and gave up the search. "No, the epithet which occurred to +me yesterday at the dinner-table and immediately, still seems to me the +only true one--I was moved by something in this woman of tragic +experiences which was strangely virginal." + +One quick movement was made by Margaret Pettifer. The truth of her +husband's description was a revelation, so exact it was. Therein lay +Stella Ballantyne's charm, and her power to create champions and friends. +Her history was known to you, the miseries of her marriage, the suspicion +of crime. You expected a woman of adventures and lo! there stood before +you one with "something virginal" in her appearance and her manner, which +made its soft and irresistible appeal. + +"I recognise that feeling of mine," Pettifer resumed, "and I try to put +it aside. And putting it aside I ask myself and you, Margaret, this: +Here's a woman who has been through a pretty bad time, who has been +unhappy, who has stood in the dock, who has been acquitted. Is it quite +fair that when at last she has floated into a haven of peace two private +people like Hazlewood and myself should take it upon ourselves to review +the verdict and perhaps reverse it?" + +"But there's Dick, Robert," cried Mrs. Pettifer. "There's Dick. Surely +he's our first thought." + +"Yes, there's Dick," Mr. Pettifer repeated. "And Dick's my second point. +You are all worrying about Dick from the social point of view--the +external point of view. Well, we have got to take that into our +consideration. But we are bound to look at him, the man, as well. Don't +forget that, Margaret! Well, I find the two points of view identical. But +our neighbours won't. Will you?" + +Mrs. Pettifer was baffled. + +"I don't understand," she said. + +"I'll explain. From the social standpoint what's really important as +regards Dick? That he should go out to dinner? No. That he should have +children? Yes!" + +And here Mrs. Pettifer interposed again. + +"But they must be the right children," she exclaimed. "Better that he +should have none than that he should have children--" + +"With an hereditary taint," Pettifer agreed. "Admitted, Margaret. If we +come to the conclusion that Stella Ballantyne did what she was accused of +doing we, in spite of all the verdicts in the world, are bound to resist +this marriage. I grant it. Because of that conviction I dismiss the plea +that we are unfair to the woman in reviewing the trial. There are wider, +greater considerations." + +These were the first words of comfort which Mrs. Pettifer had heard since +her husband began to expound. She received them with enthusiasm. + +"I am so glad to hear that." + +"Yes, Margaret," Pettifer retorted drily. "But please ask yourself +this question: (it is where, to my thinking, the social and the +personal elements join) if this marriage is broken off, is Dick likely +to marry at all?" + +"Why not?" asked Margaret. + +"He is thirty-four. He has had, no doubt, many opportunities of +marriage. He must have had. He is good-looking, well off and a good +fellow. This is the first time he has wanted to marry. If he is +disappointed here will he try again?" + +Mrs. Pettifer laughed, moved by the remarkable depreciation of her own +sex which women of her type so often have. It was for man to throw the +handkerchief. Not a doubt but there would be a rush to pick it up! + +"Widowers who have been devoted to their wives marry again," she argued. + +"A point for me, Margaret!" returned Pettifer. "Widowers--yes. They miss +so much--the habit of a house with a woman its mistress, the +companionship, the order, oh, a thousand small but important things. But +a man who has remained a bachelor until he's thirty-four--that's a +different case. If he sets his heart at that age, seriously, for the +first time on a woman and does not get her, that's the kind of man who, +my experience suggests to me--I put it plainly, Margaret--will take one +or more mistresses to himself but no wife." + +Mrs. Pettifer deferred to the worldly knowledge of her husband but she +clung to her one clear argument. + +"Nothing could be worse," she said frankly, "than that he should marry a +guilty woman." + +"Granted, Margaret," replied Mr. Pettifer imperturbably. "Only suppose +that she's not guilty. There are you and I, rich people, and no one to +leave our money to--no one to carry on your name--no one we care a rap +about to benefit by my work and your brother's fortune--no one of the +family to hand over Little Beeding to." + +Both of them were silent after he had spoken. He had touched upon their +one great sorrow. Margaret herself had her roots deep in the soil of +Little Beeding. It was hateful to her that the treasured house should +ever pass to strangers, as it would do if this the last branch of the +family failed. + +"But Stella Ballantyne was married for seven years," she said at last, +"and there were no children." + +"No, that's true," replied Pettifer. "But it does not follow that with a +second marriage there will be none. It's a chance, I know, but--" and +he got up from his chair. "I do honestly believe that it's the only +chance you and I will have, Margaret, of dying with the knowledge that +our lives have not been altogether vain. We've lighted our little torch. +Yes, and it burns merrily enough, but what's the use unless at the +appointed mile-stone there's another of us to take it and carry it on?" + +He stood looking down at his wife with a wistful and serious look +upon his face. + +"Dick's past the age of calf-love. We can't expect him to tumble from one +passion to another; and he's not easily moved. Therefore I hope very +sincerely that these reports which I am now going to read will enable me +to go boldly to Harold Hazlewood and say: 'Stella Ballantyne is as +guiltless of this crime as you or I.'" + +Mr. Pettifer took up the big envelope which he had placed on the table +beside him and carried it away to his study. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PETTIFER'S PLAN + + +On the Saturday morning Mr. Hazlewood drove over early to Great Beeding. +His impatience had so grown during the last few days that his very sleep +was broken at night and in the daytime he could not keep still. The news +of Dick's engagement to Stella Ballantyne was now known throughout the +countryside and the blame for it was laid upon Harold Hazlewood's +shoulders. For blame was the general note, blame and chagrin. A few bold +and kindly spirits went at once to see Stella; a good many more seriously +and at great length debated over their tea-tables whether they should +call after the marriage. But on the whole the verdict was an indignant +No. Disgrace was being brought upon the neighbourhood. Little Beeding +would be impossible. Dick Hazlewood only laughed at the constraint of his +acquaintances, and when three of them crossed the road hurriedly in Great +Beeding to avoid Stella and himself he said good-humouredly: + +"They are like an ill-trained company of bad soldiers. Let one of them +break from the ranks and they'll all stream away so as not to be left +behind. You'll see, Stella. One of them will come and the rest will +tumble over one another to get into your drawing-room." + +How much he believed of what he said Stella did not inquire. She had a +gift of silence. She just walked a little nearer to him and smiled, lest +any should think she had noticed the slight. The one man, in a word, who +showed signs of wear and tear was Mr. Hazlewood himself. So keen was his +distress that he had no fear of his sister's sarcasms. + +"I--think of it!" he exclaimed in a piteous bewilderment, "actually I +have become sensitive to public opinion," and Mrs. Pettifer forbore from +the comments which she very much longed to make. She was in the study +when Harold Hazlewood was shown in, and Pettifer had bidden her to stay. + +"Margaret knows that I have been reading these reports," he said. "Sit +down, Hazlewood, and I'll tell you what I think." + +Mr. Hazlewood took a seat facing the garden with its old red brick wall, +on which a purple clematis was growing. + +"You have formed an opinion then, Robert?" + +"One." + +"What is it?" he asked eagerly. + +Robert Pettifer clapped the palm of his hand down upon the cuttings from +the newspapers which lay before him on his desk. + +"This--no other verdict could possibly have been given by the jury. On +the evidence produced at the trial in Bombay Mrs. Ballantyne was properly +and inevitably acquitted." + +"Robert!" exclaimed his wife. She too had been hoping for the contrary +opinion. As for Hazlewood himself the sunlight seemed to die off that +garden. He drew his hand across his forehead. He half rose to go when +again Robert Pettifer spoke. + +"And yet," he said slowly, "I am not satisfied." + +Harold Hazlewood sat down again. Mrs. Pettifer drew a breath of relief. + +"The chief witness for the defence, the witness whose evidence made the +acquittal certain, was a man I know--a barrister called Thresk." + +"Yes," interrupted Hazlewood. "I have been puzzled about that man ever +since you mentioned him before. His name I am somehow familiar with." + +"I'll explain that to you in a minute," said Pettifer, and his wife +leaned forward suddenly in her chair. She did not interrupt but she sat +with a look of keen expectancy upon her face. She did not know whither +Pettifer was leading them but she was now sure that it was to some +carefully pondered goal. + +"I have more than once briefed Thresk myself. He's a man of the highest +reputation at the Bar, straightforward, honest; he enjoys a great +practice, he is in Parliament with a great future in Parliament. In a +word he is a man with everything to lose if he lied as a witness in a +trial. And yet--I am not satisfied." + +Mr. Pettifer's voice sank to a low murmur. He sat at his desk staring out +in front of him through the window. + +"Why?" asked Hazlewood. But Pettifer did not answer him. He seemed not to +hear the question. He went on in the low quiet voice he had used before, +rather like one talking to himself than to a companion. + +"I should very much like to put a question or two to Mr. Thresk." + +"Then why don't you?" exclaimed Mrs. Pettifer. "You know him." + +"Yes." Mr. Hazlewood eagerly seconded his sister. "Since you know him you +are the very man." + +Pettifer shook his head. + +"It would be an impertinence. For although I look upon Dick as a son I am +not his father. You are, Hazlewood, you are. He wouldn't answer me." + +"Would he answer me?" asked Hazlewood. "I don't know him at all. I can't +go to him and ask if he told the truth." + +"No, no, you can't do that," Pettifer answered, "nor do I mean you to. I +want to put my questions myself in my own way and I thought that you +might get him down to Little Beeding." + +"But I have no excuse," cried Hazlewood, and Mrs. Pettifer at last +understood the plan which was in her husband's mind, which had +been growing to completion since the night when he had dined at +Little Beeding. + +"Yes, you have an excuse," she cried, and Pettifer explained what it was. + +"You collect miniatures. Some time ago you bought one of Marie Antoinette +at Lord Mirliton's sale. You asked a question as to its authenticity in +_Notes and Queries_. It was answered--" + +Mr. Hazlewood broke in excitedly: + +"By a man called Thresk. That is why the name was familiar to me. But I +could not remember." He turned upon his sister. "It is your fault, +Margaret. You took my copy of _Notes and Queries_ away with you. Dick +noticed it and told me." + +"Dick!" Pettifer exclaimed in alarm. But the alarm passed. "He cannot +have guessed why." + +Mrs. Pettifer was clear upon the point. + +"No. I took the magazine because of a remark which Robert made to you. +Dick did not hear it. No, he cannot have guessed why." + +"For it's important he should have no suspicion whatever of what I +propose that you should do, Hazlewood," Pettifer said gravely. "I propose +that we should take a lesson from the legal processes of another country. +It may work, it may not, but to my mind it is our only chance." + +"Let me hear!" said Hazlewood. + +"Thresk is an authority on old silver and miniatures. He has a valuable +collection himself. His advice is sought by people in the trade. You know +what collectors are. Get him down to see your collection. It wouldn't be +the first time that you have invited a stranger to pass a night in your +house for that purpose, would it?" + +"No." + +"And the invitation has often been accepted?" + +"Well--sometimes." + +"We must hope that it will be this time. Get Thresk down to Little +Beeding upon that excuse. Then confront him unexpectedly with Mrs. +Ballantyne. And let me be there." + +Such was the plan which Pettifer suggested. A period of silence followed +upon his words. Even Mr. Hazlewood, in the extremity of his distress, +recoiled from it. + +"It would look like a trap." + +Mr. Pettifer thumped his table impatiently. + +"Let's be frank, for Heaven's sake. It wouldn't merely look like a trap, +it would be one. It wouldn't be at all a pretty thing to do, but there's +this marriage!" + +"No, I couldn't do it," said Hazlewood. + +"Very well. There's no more to be said." + +Pettifer himself had no liking for the plan. It had been his intention +originally to let Hazlewood know that if he wished to get into +communication with Thresk there was a means by which he could do it. But +the fact of Dick's engagement had carried him still further, and now +that he had read the evidence of the trial carefully there was a real +anxiety in his mind. Pettifer sealed up the cuttings in a fresh envelope +and gave them to Hazlewood and went out with him to the door. + +"Of course," said the old man, "if your legal experience, Robert, leads +you to think that we should be justified--" + +"But it doesn't," Pettifer was quick to interpose. He recognised his +brother-in-law's intention to throw the discredit of the trick upon his +shoulders but he would have none of it. "No, Hazlewood," he said +cheerfully: "it's not a plan which a high-class lawyer would be likely to +commend to a client." + +"Then I am afraid that I couldn't do it." + +"All right," said Pettifer with his hand upon the latch of the front +door. "Thresk's chambers are in King's Bench Walk." He added the number. + +"I simply couldn't think of it," Hazlewood repeated as he crossed the +pavement to his car. + +"Perhaps not," said Pettifer. "You have the envelope? Yes. Choose an +evening towards the end of the week, a Friday will be your best chance of +getting him." + +"I will do nothing of the kind, Pettifer." + +"And let me know when he is coming. Goodbye." + +The car carried Mr. Hazlewood away still protesting that he really +couldn't think of it for an instant. But he thought a good deal of it +during the next week and his temper did not improve. "Pettifer has rubbed +off the finer edges of his nature," he said to himself. "It is a pity--a +great pity. But thirty years of life in a lawyer's office must no doubt +have that effect. I regret very much that Pettifer should have imagined +that I would condescend to such a scheme." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +ON THE DOWNS + + +They went up by the steep chalk road which skirts the park wall to the +top of the conical hill above the race-course. An escarpment of grass +banks guards a hollow like a shallow crater on the very summit. They rode +round it upon the rim, now facing the black slope of Charlton Forest +across the valley to the north, now looking out over the plain and +Chichester. Thirty miles away above the sea the chalk cliffs of the Isle +of Wight gleamed under their thatch of dark turf. It was not yet nine in +the morning. Later the day would climb dustily to noon; now it had the +wonder and the stillness of great beginnings. A faint haze like a veil at +the edges of the sky and a freshness of the air made the world magical to +these two who rode high above weald and sea. Stella looked downwards to +the silver flash of the broad water west of Chichester spire. + +"That way they came, perhaps on a day like this," she said slowly, "those +old centurions." + +"Your thoughts go back," said Dick Hazlewood with a laugh. + +"Not so far as you think," cried Stella, and suddenly her cheeks +took fire and a smile dimpled them. "Oh, I dare to think of many +things to-day." + +She rode down the steep grass slope towards the race-course with Dick at +her side. It was the first morning they had ridden together since the +night of the dinner-party at Little Beeding. Mr. Hazlewood was at this +moment ordering his car so that he might drive in to the town and learn +what Pettifer had discovered in the cuttings from the newspapers. But +they were quite unaware of the plot which was being hatched against them. +They went forward under the high beech-trees watching for the great roots +which stretched across their path, and talking little. An open way +between wooden posts led them now on to turf and gave them the freedom of +the downs. They saw no one. With the larks and the field-fares they had +the world to themselves; and in the shade beneath the hedges the dew +still sparkled on the grass. They left the long arm of Halnaker Down upon +their right, its old mill standing up on the edge like some lighthouse on +a bluff of the sea, and crossing the high road from Up-Waltham rode along +a narrow glade amongst beeches and nut-trees and small oaks and bushes of +wild roses. Open spaces came again; below them were the woods and the +green country of Slindon and the deep grass of Dale Park. And so they +drew near to Gumber Corner where Stane Street climbs over Bignor Hill. +Here Dick Hazlewood halted. + +"I suppose we turn." + +"Not to-day," said Stella, and Dick turned to her with surprise. Always +before they had stopped at this point and always by Stella's wish. Either +she was tired or was needed at home or had letters to write--always +there had been some excuse and no reason. Dick Hazlewood had come to +believe that she would not pass this point, that the down land beyond was +a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground on which she would not trespass. He had +wondered why, but his instinct had warned him from questions. He had +always turned at this spot immediately, as if he believed the excuse +which she had ready. + +Stella noticed the surprise upon his face; and the blushes rose again in +her cheeks. + +"You knew that I would not go beyond," she said. + +"Yes." + +"But you did not know why?" There was a note of urgency in her voice. + +"I guessed," he said. "I mean I played with guesses--oh not seriously," +and he laughed. "There runs Stane Street from Chichester to London and +through London to the great North Wall. Up that road the Romans marched +and back by that road they returned to their galleys in the water there +by Chichester. I pictured you living in those days, a Boadicea of the +Weald who had set her heart, against her will, on some dashing captain +of old Rome camped here on the top of Bignor Hill. You crept from your +own people at night to meet him in the lane at the bottom. Then came +week after week when the street rang with the tramp of soldiers +returning from London and Lichfield and the North to embark in their +boats for Gaul and Rome." + +"They took my captain with them?" cried Stella, laughing with him at +the conceit. + +"Yes, so my fable ran. He pined for the circus and the theatre and the +painted ladies, so he went willingly." + +"The brute," cried Stella. "And so I broke my heart over a decadent +philanderer in a suit of bright brass clothes and remember it thirteen +hundred years afterwards in another life! Thank you, Captain Hazlewood!" + +"No, you don't actually remember it, Stella, but you have a feeling that +round about Stane Street you once suffered great humiliation and +unhappiness." And suddenly Stella rode swiftly past him, but in a moment +she waited for him and showed him a face of smiles. + +"You see I have crossed Stane Street to-day, Dick," she said. "We'll ride +on to Arundel." + +"Yes," answered Dick, "my story won't do," and he remembered a sentence +of hers spoken an hour and a half ago: "My thoughts do not go back as far +as you think." + +At all events she was emancipated to-day, for they rode on until at the +end of a long gentle slope the great arch of the gate into Arundel Park +gleamed white in a line of tall dark trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE LETTER IS WRITTEN + + +But Stella's confidence did not live long. Mr. Hazlewood was a child at +deceptions; and day by day his anxieties increased. His friends argued +with him--his folly and weakness were the themes--and he must needs repel +the argument though his thoughts echoed every word they used. Never was a +man brought to such a piteous depth of misery by the practice of his own +theories. He sat by the hour at his desk, burying his face amongst his +papers if Dick came into the room, with a great show of occupation. He +could hardly bear to contemplate the marriage of his son, yet day and +night he must think of it and search for expedients which might put an +end to the trouble and let him walk free again with his head raised high. +But there were only the two expedients. He must speak out his fears that +justice had miscarried, and that device his vanity forbade; or he must +adopt Pettifer's suggestion, and from that he shrank almost as much. He +began to resent the presence of Stella Ballantyne and he showed it. +Sometimes a friendliness, so excessive that it was almost hysterical, +betrayed him; more usually a discomfort and constraint. He avoided her +if by any means he could; if he could not quite avoid her an excuse of +business was always on his lips. + +"Your father hates me, Dick," she said. "He was my friend until I touched +his own life. Then I was in the black books in a second." + +Dick would not hear of it. + +"You were never in the black books at all, Stella," he said, comforting +her as well as he could. "We knew that there would be a little struggle, +didn't we? But the worst of that's over. You make friends daily." + +"Not with your father, Dick. I go back with him. Ever since that +night--it's three weeks ago now--when you took me home from Little +Beeding." + +"No," cried Dick, but Stella nodded her head gloomily. + +"Mr. Pettifer dined here that night. He's an enemy of mine." + +"Stella," young Hazlewood remonstrated, "you see enemies everywhere," and +upon that Stella broke out with a quivering troubled face. + +"Is it wonderful? Oh, Dick, I couldn't lose you! A month ago--before that +night--yes. Nothing had been said. But now! I couldn't, I couldn't! I +have often thought it would be better for me to go right away and never +see you again. And--and I have tried to tell you something, Dick, ever so +many times." + +"Yes?" said Dick. He slipped his arm through hers and held her close to +him, as though to give her courage and security. "Yes, Stella?" and he +stood very still. + +"I mean," she said, looking down upon the ground, "that I have tried to +tell you that I wouldn't suffer so very much if we did part, but I never +could do it. My lips shook so, I never could speak the words." Then her +voice ran up into a laugh. "To think of your living in a house with +somebody else! Oh no!" + +"You need have no fear of that, Stella." + +They were in the garden of Little Beeding and they walked across the +meadow towards her cottage, talking very earnestly. Mr. Hazlewood was +watching them secretly from the window of the library. He saw that Dick +was pleading and she hanging in doubt; and a great wave of anger surged +over him that Dick should have to plead to her at all, he who was giving +everything--even his own future. + +"King's Bench Walk," he muttered to himself, taking from the drawer of +his writing-table a slip of paper on which he had written the address +lest he should forget it. "Yes, that's the address," and he looked at it +for a long time very doubtfully. Suppose that his suspicions were +correct! His heart sank at the supposition. Surely he would be justified +in setting any trap. But he shut the drawer violently and turned away +from his writing-table. Even his pamphlets had become trivial in his +eyes. He was brought face to face with real passions and real facts, he +had been fetched out from his cloister and was blinking miserably in a +full measure of daylight. How long could he endure it, he wondered? + +The question was settled for him that very evening. He and his son were +taking their coffee on a paved terrace by the lawn after dinner. It was a +dark quiet night, with a clear sky of golden stars. Across the meadow the +lights shone in the windows of Stella's cottage. + +"Father," said Dick, after they had sat in a constrained silence for a +little while, "why don't you like Stella any longer?" + +The old man blustered in reply: + +"A lawyer's question, Richard. I object to it very strongly. You assume +that I have ceased to like her." + +"It's extremely evident," said Dick drily. "Stella has noticed it." + +"And complained to you of course," cried Mr. Hazlewood resentfully. + +"Stella doesn't complain," and then Dick leaned over and spoke in the +full quiet voice which his father had grown to dread. There rang in it so +much of true feeling and resolution. + +"There can be no backing down now. We are both agreed upon that, aren't +we? Imagine for an instant that I were first to blazon my trust in a +woman whom others suspected by becoming engaged to her and then +endorsed their suspicions by breaking off the engagement! Suppose that +I were to do that!" + +Mr. Hazlewood allowed his longings to lead him astray. For a +moment he hoped. + +"Well?" he asked eagerly. + +"You wouldn't think very much of me, would you? Not you nor any man. A +cur--that would be the word, the only word, wouldn't it?" + +But Mr. Hazlewood refused to answer that question. He looked behind him +to make sure that none of the servants were within hearing. Then he +lowered his voice to a whisper. + +"What if Stella has deceived you, Dick?" + +It was too dark for him to see the smile upon his son's face, but he +heard the reply, and the confidence of it stung him to exasperation. + +"She hasn't done that," said Dick. "If you are sure of nothing else, +sir, you may be quite certain of what I am telling you now. She hasn't +done that." + +He remained silent for a few moments waiting for any rejoinder, and +getting none he continued: + +"There's something else I wanted to speak to you about." + +"Yes?" + +"The date of our marriage." + +The old man moved sharply in his chair. + +"There's no hurry, Richard. You must find out how it will affect your +career. You have been so long at Little Beeding where we hear very +little from the outer world. You must consult your Colonel." + +Dick Hazlewood would not listen to the argument. + +"My marriage is my affair, sir, not my Colonel's. I cannot take advice, +for we both of us know what it would be. And we both of us value it at +its proper price, don't we?" + +Mr. Hazlewood could not reply. How often had he inveighed against +the opinions of the sleek worldly people who would add up advantages +in a column and leave out of their consideration the merits of the +higher life. + +"It would not be fair to Stella were we to ask her to wait," Dick +resumed. "Any delay--think what will be made of it! A month or six weeks +from now, that gives us time enough." + +The old man rose abruptly from his chair with a vague word that he would +think of it and went into the house. He saw again the lovers as he had +seen them this afternoon walking side by side slowly towards Stella +Ballantyne's cottage; and the picture even in the retrospect was +intolerable. The marriage must not take place--yet it was so near. A +month or six weeks! Mr. Hazlewood took up his pen and wrote the letter to +Henry Thresk at last, as Robert Pettifer had always been sure that he +would do. It was the simplest kind of letter and took but a minute in the +writing. It mentioned only his miniatures and invited Henry Thresk to +Little Beeding to see them, as more than one stranger had been asked +before. The answers which Thresk had given to the questions in _Notes and +Queries_ were pleaded as an introduction and Thresk was invited to choose +his own day and remain at Little Beeding for the night. The reply came by +return of post. Thresk would come to Little Beeding on the Friday +afternoon of the next week. He was in town, for Parliament was sitting +late that year. He would reach Little Beeding soon after five so that he +might have an opportunity of seeing the miniatures by daylight. Mr. +Hazlewood hurried over with the news to Robert Pettifer. His spirits had +risen at a bound. Already he saw the neighbourhood freed from the +disturbing presence of Stella Ballantyne and himself cheerfully resuming +his multifarious occupations. + +Robert Pettifer, however, spoke in quite another strain. + +"I am not so sure as you, Hazlewood. The points which trouble me are very +possibly capable of quite simple explanations. I hope for my part that +they will be so explained." + +"You hope it?" cried Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Yes. I want Dick to marry," said Robert Pettifer. + +Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, to be discouraged. He drove back to his +house counting the days which must pass before Thresk's arrival and +wondering how he should manage to conceal his elation from the keen +eyes of his son. But he found that there was no need for him to +trouble himself on that point, for this very morning at luncheon Dick +said to him: + +"I think that I'll run up to town this afternoon, father. I might be +there for a day or two." + +Mr. Hazlewood was delighted. No other proposal could have fitted in so +well with his scheme. The mere fact that Dick was away would start people +at the pleasant business of conjecturing mishaps and quarrels. Perhaps +indeed the lovers _had_ quarrelled. Perhaps Richard had taken his advice +and was off to consult his superiors. Mr. Hazlewood scanned his son's +face eagerly but learnt nothing from it; and he was too wary to ask any +questions. + +"By all means, Richard," he said carelessly, "go to London! You will be +back by next Friday, I suppose." + +"Oh yes, before that. I shall stay at my own rooms, so if you want me you +can send me a telegram." + +Dick Hazlewood had a small flat of his own in some Mansions at +Westminster which had seen very little of him that summer. + +"Thank you, Richard," said the old man. "But I shall get on very well, +and a few days change will no doubt do you good." + +Dick grinned at his father and went off that afternoon without a word of +farewell to Stella Ballantyne. Mr. Hazlewood stood in the hall and saw +him go with a great relief at his heart. Everything at last seemed to be +working out to advantage. He could not but remember how so very few +weeks ago he had been urgent that Richard should spend his summer at +Little Beeding and lend a hand in the noble work of defending Stella +Ballantyne against ignorance and unreason. But the twinge only lasted a +moment. He had made a mistake, as all men occasionally do--yes, even +sagacious and thoughtful people like himself. And the mistake was already +being repaired. He looked across the meadow that night at the lighted +blinds of Stella's windows and anticipated an evening when those windows +would be dark and the cottage without an inhabitant. + +"Very soon," he murmured to himself, "very soon." He had not one single +throb of pity for her now, not a single speculation whither she would go +or what she would make of her life. His own defence of her had now become +a fault of hers. He wished her no harm, he argued, but in a week's time +there must be no light shining behind those blinds. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +A WAY OUT OF THE TRAP + + +Mr. Hazlewood was very glad that Richard was away in London during this +week. Excitement kept him feverish and the fever grew as the number of +days before Thresk was to come diminished. He would never have been able +to keep his secret had every meal placed him under his son's eyes. He was +free too from Stella herself. He met her but once on the Monday and then +it was in the deep lane leading towards the town. It was about five +o'clock in the evening and she was driving homewards in an open fly. Mr. +Hazlewood stopped it and went to the side. + +"Richard is away, Stella, until Wednesday, as no doubt you knew," he +said. "But I want you to come over to tea when he comes back. Will Friday +suit you?" + +She had looked a little frightened when Mr. Hazlewood had called to the +driver and stopped the carriage; but at his words the blood rushed into +her cheeks and her eyes shone and she pushed out her hand impulsively. + +"Oh, thank you," she cried. "Of course I will come." + +Not for a long time had he spoken to her with so kind a voice and a face +so unclouded. She rejoiced at the change in him and showed him such +gratitude as is given only to those who render great service, so intense +was her longing not to estrange Dick from his father. + +But she had become a shrewd observer under the stress of her evil +destiny; and the moment of rejoicing once past she began to wonder what +had brought about the change. She judged Mr. Hazlewood to be one of those +weak and effervescing characters who can grow more obstinate in +resentment than any others if their pride and self-esteem receive an +injury. She had followed of late the windings of his thoughts. She put +the result frankly to herself. + +"He hates me. He holds me in horror." + +Why then the sudden change? She was in the mood to start at shadows and +when a little note was brought over to her on the Friday morning in Mr. +Hazlewood's handwriting reminding her of her engagement she was filled +with a vague apprehension. The note was kindly in its terms yet to her it +had a menacing and sinister look. Had some stroke been planned against +her? Was it to be delivered this afternoon? + +Dick came at half-past four from a village cricket match to fetch her. + +"You are ready, Stella? Right! For we can't spare very much time. I have +a surprise for you." + +Stella asked him what it was and he answered: + +"There's a house for sale in Great Beeding. I think that you +would like it." + +Stella's face softened with a smile. + +"Anywhere, Dick," she said, "anywhere on earth." + +"But here best of all," he answered. "Not to run away--that's our policy. +We'll make our home in our own south country. I arranged to take you over +the house between half-past five and six this evening." + +They walked across to Little Beeding and were made welcome by Mr. +Hazlewood. He came out to meet them in the garden and nervousness made +him kittenish and arch. + +"How are you, Stella?" he inquired. "But there's no need to ask. You look +charming and upon my word you grow younger every day. What a pretty hat! +Yes, yes! Will you make tea while I telephone to the Pettifers? They seem +to be late." + +He skipped off with an alacrity which was rather ridiculous. But Stella +watched him go without any amusement. + +"I am taken again into favour," she said doubtfully. + +"That shouldn't distress you, Stella," replied Dick. + +"Yet it does, for I ask myself why. And I don't understand this +tea-party. Mr. Hazlewood was so urgent that I should not forget it. +Perhaps, however, I am inventing trouble." + +She shook herself free from her apprehensions and followed Dick into the +drawing-room, where the kettle was boiling and the tea-service spread +out. Stella went to the table and opened the little mahogany caddy. + +"How many are coming, Dick?" she asked. + +"The Pettifers." + +"My enemies," said Stella, laughing lightly. + +"And you and my father and myself." + +"Five altogether," said Stella. She began to measure out the tea into the +tea-pot but stopped suddenly in the middle of her work. + +"But there are six cups," she said. She counted them again to make sure, +and at once her fears were reawakened. She turned to Dick, her face quite +pale and her big eyes dark with forebodings. So little now was needed to +disquiet her. "Who is the sixth?" + +Dick came closer to her and put his arm about her waist. + +"I don't know," he said gently; "but what can it matter to us, Stella? +Think, my dear!" + +"No, of course," she replied, "it can't make any difference," and she +dipped her teaspoon once more into the caddy. "But it's a little +curious, isn't it?--that your father didn't mention to you that there +was another guest?" + +"Oh, wait a moment," said Dick. "He did tell me there would be some +visitor here to-day but I forgot all about it. He told me at luncheon. +There's a man from London coming down to have a look at his miniatures." + +"His miniatures?" Stella was pouring the hot water into the tea-pot. She +replaced the kettle on its stand and shut the tea-caddy. "And Mr. +Hazlewood didn't tell you the man's name," she said. + +"I didn't ask him," answered Dick. "He often has collectors down." + +"I see." Her head was bent over the tea-table; she was busy with her brew +of tea. "And I was specially asked to come this afternoon. I had a note +this morning to remind me." She looked at the clock. "Dick, if we are to +see that house this afternoon you had better change now before the +visitors come." + +"That's true. I will." + +Dick started towards the door, and he heard Stella come swiftly after +him. He turned. There was so much trouble in her face. He caught her +in his arms. + +"Dick," she whispered, "look at me. Kiss me! Yes, I am sure of you," and +she clung to him. Dick Hazlewood laughed. + +"I think we ought to be fairly happy in that house," and she let him +go with a smile, repeating her own words, "Anywhere, Dick, anywhere +on earth." + +She waited, watching him tenderly until the door was closed. Then she +covered her face with her hands and a sob burst from her lips. But the +next moment she tore her hands away and looked wildly about the room. She +ran to the writing-table and scribbled a note; she thrust it into an +envelope and gummed the flap securely down. Then she rang the bell and +waited impatiently with a leaping heart until Hubbard came to the door. + +"Did you ring, madam?" he asked. + +"Yes. Has Mr. Thresk arrived yet?" + +She tried to control her face, to speak in a careless and indifferent +voice, but she was giddy and the room whirled before her eyes. + +"Yes, madam," the butler answered; and it seemed to Stella Ballantyne +that once more she stood in the dock and heard the verdict spoken. Only +this time it had gone against her. That queer old shuffling butler became +a figure of doom, his thin and piping voice uttered her condemnation. For +here without her knowledge was Henry Thresk and she was bidden to meet +him with the Pettifers for witnesses. But it was Henry Thresk who had +saved her before. She clung to that fact now. + +"Mr. Thresk arrived a few minutes ago." + +Just before old Hazlewood had come forward out of the house to welcome +her! No wonder he was in such high spirits! Very likely all that great +show of kindliness and welcome was made only to keep her in the garden +for a few necessary moments. + +"Where is Mr. Thresk now?" she asked. + +"In his room, madam." + +"You are quite sure?" + +"Quite." + +"Will you take this note to him, Hubbard?" and she held it out to +the butler. + +"Certainly, madam." + +"Will you take it at once? Give it into his hands, please." + +Hubbard took the note and went out of the room. Never had he seemed to +her so dilatory and slow. She stared at the door as though her sight +could pierce the panels. She imagined him climbing the stairs with feet +which loitered more at each fresh step. Some one would surely stop him +and ask for whom the letter was intended. She went to the door which led +into the hall, opened it and listened. No one was descending the +staircase and she heard no voices. Then above her Hubbard knocked upon a +door, a latch clicked as the door was opened, a hollow jarring sound +followed as the door was sharply closed. Stella went back into the room. +The letter had been delivered; at this moment Henry Thresk was reading +it; and with a sinking heart she began to speculate in what spirit he +would receive its message. Henry Thresk! The unhappy woman bestirred +herself to remember him. He had grown dim to her of late. How much did +she know of him? she asked herself. Once years ago there had been a month +during which she had met him daily. She had given her heart to him, yet +she had learned little or nothing of the man within the man's frame. She +had not even made his acquaintance. That had been proved to her one +memorable morning upon the top of Bignor Hill, when humiliation had so +deeply seared her soul that only during this last month had it been +healed. In the great extremities of her life Henry Thresk had decided, +not she, and he was a stranger to her. She beat her poor wings in vain +against that ironic fact. Never had he done what she had expected. On +Bignor Hill, in the Law Court at Bombay, he had equally surprised her. +Now once more he held her destinies in his hand. What would he decide? +What had he decided? + +"Yes, he will have decided now," said Stella to herself; and a certain +calm fell upon her troubled soul. Whatever was to be was now determined. +She went back to the tea-table and waited. + +Henry Thresk had not much of the romantic in his character. He was a busy +man making the best and the most of the rewards which the years brought +to him, and slamming the door each day upon the day which had gone +before. He made his life in the intellectual exercise of his profession +and his membership of the House of Commons. Upon the deeps of the +emotions he had closed a lid. Yet he had set out with a vague reluctance +to Little Beeding; and once his motor-car had passed Hindhead and dipped +to the weald of Sussex the reluctance had grown to a definite regret that +he should once more have come into this country. His recollections were +of a dim far-off time, so dim that he could hardly believe that he had +any very close relation with the young struggling man who had spent his +first real holiday there. But the young man had been himself and he had +missed his opportunity high up on the downs by Arundel. Words which Jane +Repton had spoken to him in Bombay came back to him on this summer +afternoon like a refrain to the steady hum of his car. "You can get what +you want, so long as you want it enough, but you cannot control the price +you will have to pay." + +He had reached Little Beeding only a few moments before Dick and Stella +had crossed into the garden. He had been led by Hubbard into the library, +where Mr. Hazlewood was sitting. From the windows he had even seen the +thatched cottage where Stella Ballantyne dwelt and its tiny garden bright +with flowers. + +"It is most kind of you to come," Mr. Hazlewood had said. "Ever since we +had our little correspondence I have been anxious to take your opinion on +my collection. Though how in the world you manage to find time to have an +opinion at all upon the subject is most perplexing. I never open the +_Times_ but I see your name figuring in some important case." + +"And I, Mr. Hazlewood," Thresk replied with a smile, "never open my mail +without receiving a pamphlet from you. I am not the only active man in +the world." + +Even at that moment Mr. Hazlewood flushed with pleasure at the flattery. + +"Little reflections," he cried with a modest deprecation, "worked out +more or less to completeness--may I say that?--in the quiet of a rural +life, sparks from the tiny flame of my midnight oil." He picked up one +pamphlet from a stack by his writing-table. "You might perhaps care to +look at _The Prison Walls_." + +Thresk drew back. + +"I have got mine, Mr. Hazlewood," he said firmly. "Every man in England +should have one. No man in England has a right to two." + +Mr. Hazlewood fairly twittered with satisfaction. Here was a notable man +from the outside world of affairs who knew his work and held it in +esteem. Obviously then he was right to take these few disagreeable +twists and turns which would ensure to him a mind free to pursue his +labours. He looked down at the pamphlet however, and his satisfaction +was a trifle impaired. + +"I am not sure that this is quite my best work," he said timidly--"a +little hazardous perhaps." + +"Would you say that?" asked Thresk. + +"Yes, indeed I should." Mr. Hazlewood had the air of one making a +considerable concession. "The very title is inaccurate. _The Prison Walls +must Cast no Shadow_." He repeated the sentence with a certain unction. +"The rhythm is perhaps not amiss but the metaphor is untrue. My son +pointed it out to me. As he says, all walls cast shadows." + +"Yes," said Thresk. "The trouble is to know where and on whom the shadow +is going to fall." + +Mr. Hazlewood was startled by the careless words. He came to earth +heavily. All was not as yet quite ready for the little trick which had +been devised. The Pettifers had not arrived. + +"Perhaps you would like to see your room, Mr. Thresk," he said. "Your bag +has been taken up, no doubt. We will look at my miniatures after tea." + +"I shall be delighted," said Thresk as he followed Hazlewood to the door. +"But you must not expect too much knowledge from me." + +"Oh!" cried his host with a laugh. "Pettifer tells me that you are a +great authority." + +"Then Pettifer's wrong," said Thresk and so stopped. "Pettifer? Pettifer? +Isn't he a solicitor?" + +"Yes, he told me that he knew you. He married my sister. They are both +coming to tea." + +With that he led Thresk to his room and left him there. The room was over +the porch of the house and looked down the short level drive to the iron +gates and the lane. It was all familiar ground to Thresk or rather to +that other man with whom Thresk's only connection was a dull throb at his +heart, a queer uneasiness and discomfort. He leaned out of the window. He +could hear the river singing between the grass banks at the bottom of the +garden behind him. He would hear it through the night. Then came a +knocking upon his door, and he did not notice it at once. It was repeated +and he turned and said: + +"Come in!" + +Hubbard advanced with a note upon a salver. + +"Mrs. Ballantyne asked me to give you this at once, sir." + +Thresk stared at the butler. The name was so apposite to his thoughts +that he could not believe it had been uttered. But the salver was held +out to him and the handwriting upon the envelope removed his doubts. He +took it up, said "Thank you" in an absent voice and waited until the door +was closed again and he was alone. The last time he had seen that writing +was eighteen months ago. A little note of thanks, blurred with tears and +scribbled hastily and marked with no address, had been handed to him in +Bombay. Stella Ballantyne had disappeared then. She was here now at +Little Beeding and his relationship with the young struggling barrister +of ten years back suddenly became actual and near. He tore open the +envelope and read. + +"Be prepared to see me. Be prepared to hear news of me. I will have a +talk with you afterwards if you like. This is a trap. Be kind." + +He stood for a while with the letter in his hand, speculating upon its +meaning, until the wheels of a car grated on the gravel beneath his +window. The Pettifers had come. But Thresk was in no hurry to descend. He +read the note through many times before he hid it away in his letter-case +and went down the stairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +METHODS FROM FRANCE + + +Meanwhile Stella Ballantyne waited below. She heard Mr. Hazlewood in the +hall greeting the Pettifers with the false joviality which sat so ill +upon him; she imagined the shy nods and glances which told them that the +trap was properly set. Mr. Hazlewood led them into the room. + +"Is tea ready, Stella? We won't wait for Dick," he said, and Stella took +her place at the table. She had her back to the door by which Thresk +would enter. She had not a doubt that thus her chair had been +deliberately placed. He would be in the room and near to the table before +he saw her. He would not have a moment to prepare himself against the +surprise of her presence. Stella listened for the sound of his footsteps +in the hall; she could not think of a single topic to talk about except +the presence of that extra sixth cup; and that she must not mention if +the tables were really to be turned upon her antagonists. Surprise must +be visible upon her side when Thresk did come in. But she was not alone +in finding conversation difficult. Embarrassment and expectancy weighed +down the whole party, so that they began suddenly to speak at once and +simultaneously to stop. Robert Pettifer however asked if Dick was playing +cricket, and so gave Harold Hazlewood an opportunity. + +"No, the match was over early," said the old man, and he settled +himself in his arm-chair. "I have given some study to the subject of +cricket," he said. + +"You?" asked Stella with a smile of surprise. Was he merely playing for +time, she wondered? But he had the air of contentment with which he +usually embarked upon his disquisitions. + +"Yes. I do not consider our national pastime beneath a philosopher's +attention. I have formed two theories about the game." + +"I am sure you have," Robert Pettifer interposed. + +"And I have invented two improvements, though I admit at once that they +will have to wait until a more enlightened age than ours adopts them. In +the first place"--and Mr. Hazlewood flourished a forefinger in the +air--"the game ought to be played with a soft ball. There is at present a +suggestion of violence about it which the use of a soft ball would +entirely remove." + +"Entirely," Mr. Pettifer agreed and his wife exclaimed impatiently: + +"Rubbish, Harold, rubbish!" + +Stella broke nervously into the conversation. + +"Violence? Why even women play cricket, Mr. Hazlewood." + +"I cannot, Stella," he returned, "accept the view that whatever women do +must necessarily be right. There are instances to the contrary." + +"Yes. I come across a few of them in my office," Robert Pettifer said +grimly; and once more embarrassment threatened to descend upon the party. +But Mr. Hazlewood was off upon a favourite theme. His eyes glistened and +the object of the gathering vanished for the moment from his thoughts. + +"And in the second place," he resumed, "the losers should be accounted to +have won the game." + +"Yes, that must be right," said Pettifer. "Upon my word you are in form, +Hazlewood." + +"But why?" asked Mrs. Pettifer. + +Harold Hazlewood smiled upon her as upon a child and explained: + +"Because by adopting that system you would do something to eradicate the +spirit of rivalry, the desire to win, the ambition to beat somebody else +which is at the bottom of half our national troubles." + +"And all our national success," said Pettifer. + +Hazlewood patted his brother-in-law upon the shoulder. He looked at him +indulgently. "You are a Tory, Robert," he said, and implied that argument +with such an one was mere futility. + +He had still his hand upon Pettifer's shoulder when the door opened. +Stella saw by the change in his face that it was Thresk who was entering. +But she did not move. + +"Ah," said Mr. Hazlewood. "Come over here and take a cup of tea." + +Thresk came forward to the table. He seemed altogether unconscious that +the eyes of the two men were upon him. + +"Thank you. I should like one," he said, and at the sound of his voice +Stella Ballantyne turned around in her chair. + +"You!" she cried and the cry was pitched in a tone of pleasure and +welcome. + +"Of course you know Mrs. Ballantyne," said Hazlewood. He saw Stella rise +from her chair and hold out her hand to Thresk with the colour aflame in +her cheeks. + +"You are surprised to see me again," she said. + +Thresk took her hand cordially. "I am delighted to see you again," +he replied. + +"And I to see you," said Stella, "for I have never yet had a chance of +thanking you"; and she spoke with so much frankness that even Pettifer +was shaken in his suspicions. She turned upon Mr. Hazlewood with a +mimicry of indignation. "Do you know, Mr. Hazlewood, that you have done a +very cruel thing?" + +Mr. Hazlewood was utterly discomfited by the failure of his plot, and +when Stella attacked him so directly he had not a doubt but that she had +divined his treachery. + +"I?" he gasped. "Cruel? How?" + +"In not telling me beforehand that I was to meet so good a friend of +mine." Her face relaxed to a smile as she added: "I would have put on my +best frock in his honour." + +Undoubtedly Stella carried off the honour of that encounter. She had at +once driven the battle with spirit onto Hazlewood's own ground and left +him worsted and confused. But the end was not yet. Mr. Hazlewood waited +for his son Richard, and when Richard appeared he exclaimed: + +"Ah, here's my son. Let me present him to you, Mr. Thresk. And there's +the family." + +He leaned back, with a smile in his eyes, watching Henry Thresk. Robert +Pettifer watched too. + +"The family?" Thresk asked. "Is Mrs. Ballantyne a relation then?" + +"She is going to be," said Dick. + +"Yes," Mr. Hazlewood explained, still beaming and still watchful. +"Richard and Stella are going to be married." + +A pause followed which was just perceptible before Thresk spoke again. +But he had his face under control. He took the stroke without flinching. +He turned to Dick with a smile. + +"Some men have all the luck," he said, and Dick, who had been looking at +him in bewilderment, cried: + +"Mr. Thresk? Not the Mr. Thresk to whom I owe so much?" + +"The very man," said Thresk, and Dick held out his hand to him gravely. + +"Thank you," he said. "When I think of the horrible net of doubt and +assumption in which Stella was coiled, I tell you I feel cold down my +spine even now. If you hadn't come forward with your facts--" + +"Yes," Thresk interposed. "If I hadn't come forward with my facts. But I +couldn't well keep them to myself, could I?" A few more words were said +and then Dick rose from his chair. + +"Time's up, Stella," and he explained to Henry Thresk: "We have to look +over a house this afternoon." + +"A house? Yes, I see," said Thresk, but he spoke slowly and there was +just audible a little inflection of doubt in his voice. Stella was +listening for it; she heard it when her two antagonists noticed nothing. + +"But, Dick," she said quickly, "we can put the inspection off." + +"Not on my account," Thresk returned. "There's no need for that." He was +not looking at Stella whilst he spoke and she longed to see his face. She +must know exactly how she stood with him, what he thought of her. She +turned impulsively to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"I haven't been asked, but may I come to dinner? You see I owe a good +deal to Mr. Thresk." + +Mr. Hazlewood was for the moment at a loss. He had not lost hope that +between now and dinner-time explanations would be given which would +banish Stella Ballantyne altogether from Little Beeding. But he had no +excuse ready and he stammered out: + +"Of course, my dear. Didn't I ask you? I must have forgotten. I certainly +expect you to dine with us to-night. Margaret will no doubt be here." + +Margaret Pettifer had taken little part in the conversation about the +tea-table. She sat in frigid hostility, speaking only when politeness +commanded. She accepted her brother's invitation with a monosyllable. + +"Thank you," said Stella, and she faced Henry Thresk, looking him +straight in the eyes but not daring to lay any special stress upon the +words: "Then I shall see you to-night." + +Thresk read in her face a prayer that he should hold his hand until she +had a chance to speak with him. She turned away and went from the room +with Dick Hazlewood. + +The old man rose as soon as the door was closed. + +"Now we might have a look at the miniatures, Mr. Thresk. You will excuse +us, Margaret, won't you?" + +"Of course," she answered upon a nod from her husband. The two men passed +through the doors into the great library whilst Thresk took a more +ceremonious leave of Mrs. Pettifer; and as Hazlewood opened the drawers +of his cabinets Robert Pettifer said in a whisper: + +"That was a pretty good failure, I must say. And it was my idea too." + +"Yes," replied Hazlewood in a voice as low. "What do you think?" + +"That they share no secret." + +"You are satisfied then?" + +"I didn't say that"; and Thresk himself appeared in the doorway and went +across to the writing-table upon which Hazlewood had just laid a drawer +in which miniatures were ranged. + +"I haven't met you," said Pettifer, "since you led for us in the great +Birmingham will-suit." + +"No," answered Thresk as he took his seat at the table. "It wasn't quite +such a tough fight as I expected. You see there wasn't one really +reliable witness for the defence." + +"No," said Pettifer grimly. "If there had been we should have been +beaten." + +Mr. Hazlewood began to point out this and that miniature of his +collection, bending over Thresk as he did so. It seemed that the two +collectors were quite lost in their common hobby until Robert Pettifer +gave the signal. + +Then Mr. Hazlewood began: + +"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Thresk, for reasons quite outside these +miniatures of mine." + +He spoke with a noticeable awkwardness, yet Henry Thresk disregarded it +altogether. + +"Oh?" he said carelessly. + +"Yes. Being Richard's father I am naturally concerned in everything +which affects him nearly--the trial of Stella Ballantyne for instance." + +Thresk bent his head down over the tray. + +"Quite so," he said. He pointed to a miniature. "I saw that at Christie's +and coveted it myself." + +"Did you?" Mr. Hazlewood asked and he almost offered it as a bribe. "Now +you gave evidence, Mr. Thresk." + +Thresk never lifted his head. + +"You have no doubt read the evidence I gave," he said, peering from this +delicate jewel of the painter's art to that. + +"To be sure." + +"And since your son is engaged to Mrs. Ballantyne, I suppose that you +were satisfied with it"--and he paused to give a trifle of significance +to his next words--"as the jury was." + +"Yes, of course," Mr. Hazlewood stammered, "but a witness, I think, only +answers the questions put to him." + +"That is so," said Thresk, "if he is a wise witness." He took one of the +miniatures out of the drawer and held it to the light. But Mr. Hazlewood +was not to be deterred. + +"And subsequent reflection," he continued obstinately, "might suggest +that all the questions which could throw light upon the trial had not +been put." + +Thresk replaced the miniature in the drawer in front of him and leaned +back in his chair. He looked now straight at Mr. Hazlewood. + +"It was not, I take it, in order to put those questions to me that you +were kind enough, Mr. Hazlewood, to ask me to give my opinion on your +miniatures. For that would have been setting a trap for me, wouldn't it?" + +Hazlewood stared at Thresk with the bland innocence of a child. "Oh no, +no," he declared, and then an insinuating smile beamed upon his long +thin face. "Only since you _are_ here and since so much is at stake for +me--my son's happiness--I hoped that you might perhaps give us an answer +or two which would disperse the doubts of some suspicious people." + +"Who are they?" asked Thresk. + +"Neighbours of ours," replied Hazlewood, and thereupon Robert Pettifer +stepped forward. He had remained aloof and silent until this moment. Now +he spoke shortly, but he spoke to the point: + +"I for one." + +Thresk turned with a smile upon Pettifer. + +"I thought so. I recognised Mr. Pettifer's hand in all this. But he ought +to know that the sudden confrontation of a suspected person with +unexpected witnesses takes place, in those countries where the method is +practised, before the trial; not, as you so ingeniously arranged it this +afternoon, two years after the verdict has been given." + +Robert Pettifer turned red. Then he looked whimsically across the table +at his brother-in-law. + +"We had better make a clean breast of it, Hazlewood." + +"I think so," said Thresk gently. + +Pettifer came a step nearer. "We are in the wrong," he said bluntly. "But +we have an excuse. Our trouble is very great. Here's my brother-in-law to +begin with, whose whole creed of life has been to deride the authority of +conventional man--to tilt against established opinion. Mrs. Ballantyne +comes back from her trial in Bombay to make her home again at Little +Beeding. Hazlewood champions her--not for her sake, but for the sake of +his theories. It pleases his vanity. Now he can prove that he is not as +others are." + +Mr. Hazlewood did not relish this merciless analysis of his character. He +twisted in his chair, he uttered a murmur of protest. But Robert Pettifer +waved him down and continued: + +"So he brings her to his house. He canvasses for her. He throws his son +in her way. She has beauty--she has something more than beauty--she +stands apart as a woman who has walked through fire. She has suffered +very much. Look at it how one will, she has suffered beyond her deserts. +She has pretty deferential ways which make their inevitable appeal to +women as to men. In a word, Hazlewood sets the ball rolling and it gets +beyond his reach." + +Thresk nodded. + +"Yes, I understand that." + +"Finally, Hazlewood's son falls in love with her--not a boy mind, but a +man claiming a man's right to marry where he loves. And at once in +Hazlewood conventional man awakes." + +"Dear me, no," interposed Harold Hazlewood. + +"But I say yes," Pettifer continued imperturbably. "Conventional man +awakes in him and cries loudly against the marriage. Then there's myself. +I am fond of Dick. I have no child. He will be my heir and I am not poor. +He is doing well in his profession. To be an Instructor of the Staff +Corps at his age means hard work, keenness, ability. I look forward to a +great career. I am very fond of him. And--understand me, Mr. Thresk"--he +checked his speech and weighed his words very carefully--"I wouldn't say +that he shouldn't marry Stella Ballantyne just because Stella Ballantyne +has lain under a grave charge of which she has been acquitted. No, I may +be as formal as my brother-in-law thinks, but I hold a wider faith than +that. But I am not satisfied. That is the truth, Mr. Thresk. I am not +sure of what happened in that tent in far-away Chitipur after you had +ridden away to catch the night mail to Bombay." + +Robert Pettifer had made his confession simply and with some dignity. +Thresk looked at him for a few moments. Was he wondering whether he +could answer the questions? Was he hesitating through anger at the +trick which had been played upon him? Pettifer could not tell. He waited +in suspense. Thresk pushed his chair back suddenly and came forward from +behind the table. + +"Ask your questions," he said. + +"You consent to answer them?" Mr. Hazlewood cried joyously, and Thresk +replied with coldness: + +"I must. For if I don't consent your suspicions at once are double what +they were. But I am not pleased." + +"Oh, we practised a little diplomacy," said Hazlewood, making light of +his offence. + +"Diplomacy!" For the first time a gleam of anger shone in Thresk's eyes. +"You have got me to your house by a trick. You have abused your position +as my host. And but that I should injure a woman whom life has done +nothing but injure I should go out of your door this instant." + +He turned his back upon Harold Hazlewood and sat down in a chair opposite +to Robert Pettifer. A little round table separated them. Pettifer, seated +upon a couch, took from his pocket the envelope with the press-cuttings +and spread them on the table in front of him. Thresk lolled back in his +chair. It was plain that he was in no terror of Pettifer's examination. + +"I am at your service," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WITNESS + + +The afternoon sunlight poured into the room golden and clear. Outside the +open windows the garden was noisy with birds and the river babbled +between its banks. Henry Thresk shut his ears against the music. For all +his appearance of ease he dreaded the encounter which was now begun. +Pettifer he knew to be a shrewd man. He watched him methodically +arranging his press-cuttings in front of him. Pettifer might well find +some weak point in his story which he himself had not discovered; and +whatever course he was minded afterwards to take, here and now he was +determined once more to fight Stella's battle. + +"I need not go back on the facts of the trial," said Pettifer. "They are +fresh enough in your memory, no doubt. Your theory as I understand it ran +as follows: While you were mounting your camel on the edge of the camp to +return to the station and Ballantyne was at your side, the thief whose +arm you had both seen under the tent wall, not knowing that now you had +the photograph of Bahadur Salak which he wished to steal, slipped into +the tent unperceived, took up the rook-rifle--" + +"Which was standing by Mrs. Ballantyne's writing-table," Thresk +interposed. + +"Loaded it,--" + +"The cartridges were lying open in a drawer." + +"And shot Ballantyne on his return." + +"Yes," Thresk agreed. "In addition you must remember that when Captain +Ballantyne was found an hour or so later Mrs. Ballantyne was in bed +and asleep." + +"Quite so," said Pettifer. "In brief, Mr. Thresk, you supplied a +reasonable motive for the crime and some evidence of a criminal. And I +admit that on your testimony the jury returned the only verdict which it +was possible to give." + +"What troubles you then?" Henry Thresk asked, and Pettifer replied drily: + +"Various points. Here's one--a minor one. If Captain Ballantyne was shot +by a thief detected in the act of thieving why should that thief risk +capture and death by dragging Captain Ballantyne's body out into the +open? It seems to me the last thing which he would naturally do." + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. + +"I can't explain that. It is perhaps possible that not finding the +photograph he fell into a blind rage and satisfied it by violence towards +the dead man." + +"Dead or dying," Mr. Pettifer corrected. "There seems to have been some +little doubt upon that point. But your theory's a little weak, isn't it? +To get away unseen would be that thief's first preoccupation, surely?" + +"Reasoning as you and I are doing here quietly, at our ease, in this +room, no doubt you are right, Mr. Pettifer. But criminals are caught +because they don't reason quietly when they have just committed a crime. +The behaviour of a man whose mind is influenced by that condition cannot +be explained always by any laws of psychology. He may be in a wild panic. +He may act as madmen act, or like a child in a rage. And if my +explanation is weak it's no weaker than the only other hypothesis: that +Mrs. Ballantyne herself dragged him into the open." + +Mr. Pettifer shook his head. + +"I am not so sure. I can conceive a condition of horror in the wife, +horror at what she had done, which would make that act not merely +possible but almost inevitable. I make no claims to being an imaginative +man, Mr. Thresk, but I try to put myself into the position of the wife"; +and he described with a vividness for which Thresk was not prepared the +scene as he saw it. + +"She goes to bed, she undresses and goes to bed--she must do that if +she is to escape--she puts out her light, she lies in the dark awake, +and under the same roof, close to her, in the dark too, is lying the man +she has killed. Just a short passage separates her from him. There are +no doors--mind that, Mr. Thresk--no doors to lock and bolt, merely a +grass screen which you could lift with your forefinger. Wouldn't any and +every one of the little cracks and sounds and breathings, of which the +quietest and stillest night is full, sound to her like the approach of +the dead man? The faintest breath of air would seem a draught made by +the swinging of the grass-curtain as it was stealthily lifted--lifted by +the dead man. No, Mr. Thresk. The wife is just the one person I could +imagine who would do that needless barbarous violence of dragging the +body into the open--and she would do it, not out of cruelty, but because +she must or go mad." + +Thresk listened without a movement until Robert Pettifer had finished. +Then he said: + +"You know Mrs. Ballantyne. Has she the strength which she must have had +to drag a heavy man across the carpet of a tent and fling him outside?" + +"Not now, not before. But just at the moment? You argued, Mr. Thresk, +that it is impossible to foresee what people will do under the immediate +knowledge that they have committed a capital crime. I agree. But I go a +little further. I say that they will also exhibit a physical strength +with which it would be otherwise impossible to credit them. Fear lends +it to them." + +"Yes," Thresk interrupted quickly, "but don't you see, Mr. Pettifer, that +you are implying the existence of an emotion in Mrs. Ballantyne which the +facts prove her to have been without--fear, panic? She was found quietly +asleep in her bed by the ayah when she came to call her in the morning. +There's no doubt of that. The ayah was never for a moment shaken upon +that point. The pyschology of crime is a curious and surprising study, +Mr. Pettifer, but I know of no case where terror has acted as a +sleeping-draught." + +Mr. Pettifer smiled and turned altogether away from the question. + +"It is, as I said, a minor point, and perhaps one from which any +sort of inference would be unsafe. It interested me. I lay no great +stress upon it." + +He dismissed the point carelessly, to the momentary amusement of Henry +Thresk. The art of slipping away from defeat had been practised with +greater skill. Thresk lost some part of his apprehension but none of his +watchfulness. + +"Now, however, we come to something very different," said Pettifer, +hitching himself a little closer to his table and fixing his eyes upon +Thresk. "The case for the prosecution ran like this: Stephen Ballantyne +was, though a man of great ability, a secret drunkard who humiliated his +wife in public and beat her in private. She went in terror of him. She +bore on more than one occasion the marks of his violence; and upon that +night in Chitipur, perhaps in a panic and very likely under extreme +provocation, she snatched up her rook-rifle and put an end to the whole +bad business." + +"Yes," Thresk agreed, "that was the case for the Crown." + +"Yes, and throughout the sitting at the Stipendiary's inquiry before you +came upon the scene that theory was clearly developed." + +"Yes." + +Thresk's confidence vanished as quickly as it had come. He realised +whither Pettifer's questions were leading. There was a definitely weak +link in his story and Pettifer had noticed it and was testing it. + +"Now," the solicitor continued--"and this is the important point--what +was the answer to that charge foreshadowed by the defence during those +days before you appeared?" + +Thresk answered the question quickly, if answer it could be called. + +"The defence had not formulated any answer. I came forward before the +case for the Crown finished." + +"Quite so. But Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel did cross-examine the witnesses +for the prosecution--we must not forget that, Mr. Thresk--and from the +cross-examination it is quite clear what answer he was going to make. He +was going--not to deny that Mrs. Ballantyne shot her husband--but to +plead that she shot him in self-defence." + +"Oh?" said Thresk, "and where do you find that?" + +He had no doubt himself in what portion of the report of the trial a +proof of Pettifer's statement was to be discovered, but he made a +creditable show of surprise that any one should hold that opinion at all. + +Pettifer selected a column of newspaper from his cuttings. + +"Listen," he said. "Mr. Repton, a friend of Mrs. Ballantyne, was called +upon a subpoena by the Crown and he testified that while he was a +Collector at Agra he went up with his wife from the plains to the +hill-station of Moussourie during a hot weather. The Ballantynes went up +at the same time and occupied a bungalow next to Repton's. One night +Repton's house was broken into. He went across to Ballantyne the next +morning and advised him in the presence of his wife to sleep with a +revolver under his pillow." + +"Yes, I remember that," said Thresk. He had indeed cause to remember it +very well, for it was just this evidence given by Repton with its clear +implication of the line which the defence meant to take that had sent him +in a hurry to Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor. Pettifer continued by reading +Repton's words slowly and with emphasis. + +"'Mrs. Ballantyne then turned very pale, and running after me down the +garden like a distracted woman cried: "Why did you tell him to do that? +It will some night mean my death."' This statement, Mr. Thresk, was +elicited in cross-examination by Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, and it could +only mean that he intended to set up a plea of self-defence. I find it a +little difficult to reconcile that intention with the story you +subsequently told." + +Henry Thresk for his part knew that it was not merely difficult, it was, +in fact, impossible. Mr. Pettifer had read the evidence with an accurate +discrimination. The plea of self-defence was here foreshadowed and it was +just the certainty that the defence was going to rely upon it for a +verdict which had brought Henry Thresk himself into the witness-box at +Bombay. Given all that was known of Stephen Ballantyne and of the life he +had led his unhappy wife, the defence would have been a good one, but for +a single fact--the discovery of Ballantyne's body outside the tent. No +plea of self-defence could safely be left to cover that. Thresk himself +wondered at it. It struck at public sympathy, it seemed the act of a +person insensate and vindictive. Therefore he had come forward with his +story. But Mr. Pettifer was not to know it. + +"There are three things for you to remember," said Thresk. "In the first +place it is too early to assume that self-defence was going to be the +plea. Assumptions in a case of this kind are very dangerous, Mr. +Pettifer. They may lead to an irreparable injustice. We must keep to the +fact that no plea of self-defence was ever formulated. In the second +place Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down to Bombay in a state of complete +collapse. Her married life had been a torture to her. She broke down at +the end of it. She was indifferent to anything that might happen." + +Pettifer nodded. "Yes, I can understand that." + +"It followed that her advisers had to act upon their own initiative." + +"And the third point?" Pettifer asked. + +"Well, it's not so much a point as an opinion of mine. But I hold it +strongly. Her counsel mishandled the case." + +Pettifer pursed up his lips and grunted. He tapped a finger once or twice +on the table in front of him. He looked towards Thresk as if all was not +quite said. Harold Hazlewood, to whom the position of a neglected +listener was rare and unpalatable, saw an opportunity for intervention. + +"The three points are perhaps not very conclusive," he said. + +Thresk turned towards him coldly: + +"I promised to answer such questions as Mr. Pettifer put to me. I am +doing that. I did not undertake to discuss the value of my answers +afterwards." + +"No, no, quite so," murmured Mr. Hazlewood. "We are very grateful, I am +sure," and he left once more the argument to Pettifer. + +"Then I come to the next question, Mr. Thresk. At some moment in this +inquiry you of your own account put yourself into communication with Mrs. +Ballantyne's advisers and volunteered your evidence?" + +"Yes." + +"Isn't it strange that the defence did not at the very outset get into +communication with you?" + +"No," replied Thresk. Here he was at his ease. He had laid his plans well +in Bombay. Mr. Pettifer might go on asking questions until midnight upon +this point. Thresk could meet him. "It was not at all strange. It was not +known that I could throw any light upon the affair at all. All that +passed between Ballantyne and myself passed when we were alone; and +Ballantyne was now dead." + +"Yes, but you had dined with the Ballantynes on that night. Surely it's +strange that since you were in Bombay Mrs. Ballantyne's advisers did not +seek you out." + +"Yes, yes," added Mr. Hazlewood, "very strange indeed, Mr. +Thresk--since you were in Bombay"; and he looked up at the ceiling and +joined the tips of his fingers, his whole attitude a confident +question: "Answer that if you can." + +Thresk turned patiently round. + +"Hasn't it occurred to you, Mr. Hazlewood, that it is still more strange +that the prosecution did not at once approach me?" + +"Yes," said Pettifer suddenly. "That question too has troubled me"; and +Thresk turned back again. + +"You see," he explained, "I was not known to be in Bombay at all. On the +contrary I was supposed to be somewhere in the Red Sea or the +Mediterranean on my way back to England." + +Mr. Pettifer looked up in surprise. The statement was news to him and if +true provided a natural explanation of some of his chief perplexities. +"Let me understand that!" and there was a change in his voice which +Thresk was quick to detect. There was less hostility. + +"Certainly," Thresk answered. "I left the tent just before eleven to +catch the Bombay mail. I was returning direct to England. The reason +why Ballantyne asked me to take the photograph of Bahadur Salak was +that since I was going on board straight from the train it could be no +danger to me." + +"Then why didn't you go straight on board?" asked Pettifer. + +"I'll tell you," Thresk replied. "I thought the matter over on the +journey down to Bombay, and I came to the conclusion that since the +photograph might be wanted at Salak's trial I had better take it to the +Governor's house at Bombay. But Government House is out at Malabar Point, +four miles from the quays. I took the photograph out myself and so I +missed the boat. But there was an announcement in the papers that I had +sailed, and in fact the consul at Marseilles came on board at that port +to inquire for me on instructions from the Indian Government." + +Mr. Pettifer leaned back. + +"Yes, I see," he said thoughtfully. "That makes a difference--a big +difference." Then he sat upright again and said sharply: + +"You were in Bombay then when Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down from +Chitipur?" + +"Yes." + +"And when the case for the Crown was started?" + +"Yes." + +"And when the Crown's witnesses were cross-examined?" + +"Yes." + +"Why did you wait then all that time before you came forward?" Pettifer +put the question with an air of triumph. "Why, Mr. Thresk, did you wait +till the very moment when Mrs. Ballantyne was going to be definitely +committed to a particular line of defence before you announced that you +could clear up the mystery? Doesn't it rather look as if you had remained +hidden on the chance of the prosecution breaking down, and had only come +forward when you realised that to-morrow self-defence would be pleaded, +the firing of that rook-rifle admitted and a terrible risk of a verdict +of guilty run?" + +Thresk agreed without a moment's hesitation. + +"But that's the truth, Mr. Pettifer," he said, and Mr. Pettifer +sprang up. + +"What?" + +"Consider my position"--Thresk drew up his chair close to the table--"a +barrister who was beginning to have one of the large practices, the +Courts opening in London, briefs awaiting me, cases on which I had +already advised coming on. I had already lost a fortnight. That was bad +enough, but if I came forward with my story I must wait in Bombay not +merely for a fortnight but until the whole trial was completed, as in the +end I had to do. Of course I hoped that the prosecution would break down. +Of course I didn't intervene until it was absolutely necessary in the +interests of justice that I should." + +He spoke so calmly, there was so much reason in what he said, that +Pettifer could not but be convinced. + +"I see," he said. "I see. Yes. That's not to be disputed." He remained +silent for a few moments. Then he shuffled his papers together and +replaced them in the envelope. It seemed that his examination was over. +Thresk rose from his chair. + +"You have no more questions to ask me?" he inquired. + +"One more." + +Pettifer came round the table and stood in front of Henry Thresk. + +"Did you know Mrs. Ballantyne before you went to Chitipur?" + +"Yes," Thresk replied. + +"Had you seen her lately?" + +"No." + +"When had you last seen her?" + +"Eight years before, in this neighbourhood. I spent a holiday close +by. Her father and mother were then alive. I had not seen her since. I +did not even know that she was in India and married until I was told so +in Bombay." + +Thresk was prepared for that question. He had the truth ready and he +spoke it frankly. Mr. Pettifer turned away to Hazlewood, who was watching +him expectantly. + +"We have nothing more to do, Hazlewood, but to thank Mr. Thresk for +answering our questions and to apologise to him for having put them." + +Mr. Hazlewood was utterly disconcerted. After all, then, the marriage +must take place; the plot had ignominiously failed, the great questions +which were to banish Stella Ballantyne from Little Beeding had been put +and answered. He sat like a man stricken by calamity. He stammered out +reluctantly a few words to which Thresk paid little heed. + +"You are satisfied then?" he asked of Pettifer; and Pettifer showed him +unexpectedly a cordial and good-humoured face. + +"Yes. Let me say to you, Mr. Thresk, that ever since I began to study +this case I have wished less and less to bear hardly upon Mrs. +Ballantyne. As I read those columns of evidence the heavy figure of +Stephen Ballantyne took life again, but a very sinister life; and when I +look at Stella and think of what she went through during the years of +her married life while we were comfortably here at home I cannot but feel +a shiver of discomfort. Yes, I am satisfied and I am glad that I am +satisfied"; and with a smile which suddenly illumined his dry parched +face he held out his hand to Henry Thresk. + +It was perhaps as well that the questions were over, for even while +Pettifer was speaking Stella's voice was heard in the hall. Pettifer had +just time to thrust away the envelope with the cuttings into a drawer +before she came into the room with Dick. She had been forced to leave the +three men together, but she had dreaded it. During that one hour of +absence she had lived through a lifetime of terror and anxiety. What +would Thresk tell them? What was he now telling them? She was like one +waiting downstairs while a surgical operation is being performed in the +theatre above. She had hurried Dick back to Little Deeding, and when she +came into the room her eyes roamed round in suspense from Thresk to +Hazlewood, from Hazlewood to Pettifer. She saw the tray of miniatures +upon the table. + +"You admire the collection?" she said to Thresk. + +"Very much," he answered, and Pettifer took her by the arm and in a voice +of kindness which she had never heard him use before he said: + +"Now tell me about your house. That's much more interesting." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +IN THE LIBRARY + + +Henry Thresk took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him +poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but +his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about +Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the +table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused +her a couple of hours before. She had come dressed in a slim gown of +shimmering blue with her small head erect, a smile upon her lips and a +bright colour in her cheeks. Thresk hardly knew her, he had to tell +himself again and again that this was the Stella Ballantyne whom he had +known here and in India. She was not the girl who had ridden with him +upon the downs and made one month of his life very memorable and one day +a shameful recollection. Nor was she the stricken creature of the tent in +Chitipur. She was a woman sure of her resources, radiant in her beauty, +confident that what she wore was her colour and gave her her value. Yet +her trouble was greater than Thresk's, and many a time during the course +of that dinner, when she felt his eyes resting upon her, her heart sank +in fear. She sought his company after dinner, but she had no chance of a +private word with him. Old Mr. Hazlewood took care of that. One moment +Stella must sing; at another she must play a rubber of bridge. He at all +events had not laid aside his enmity and suspected some understanding +between her and his guest. At eleven Mrs. Pettifer took her leave. She +came across the room to Henry Thresk. + +"Are you staying over to-morrow?" she asked, and Thresk with a +laugh answered: + +"I wish that I could. But I have to catch an early train to London. +Even to-night my day's work's not over. I must sit up for an hour or +two over a brief." + +Stella rose at the same time as Mrs. Pettifer. + +"I was hoping that you would be able to come across and see my +little cottage to-morrow morning," she said. Thresk hesitated as he +took her hand. + +"I should very much like to see it," he said. He was in a very great +difficulty, and was not sure that a letter was not the better if the more +cowardly way out of it. "If I could find the time." + +"Try," said she. She could say no more for Mr. Hazlewood was at her elbow +and Dick was waiting to take her home. + +It was a dark clear night; a sky of stars overarched the earth, but +there was no moon, and though lights shone brightly even at a great +distance there was no glimmer from the road beneath their feet. Dick +held her close in his arms at the door of her cottage. She was very +still and passive. + +"You are tired?" he asked. + +"I think so." + +"Well, to-night has seen the last of our troubles, Stella." + +She did not answer him at once. Her hands clung about his shoulders and +with her face smothered in his coat she whispered: + +"Dick, I couldn't go on without you now. I couldn't. I wouldn't." + +There was a note of passionate despair in her voice which made her words +suddenly terrible to him. He took her and held her a little away from +him, peering into her face. + +"What are you saying, Stella?" he asked sternly. "You know that nothing +can come between us. You break my heart when you talk like that." He drew +her again into his arms. "Is your maid waiting up for you?" + +"No." + +"Call her then, while I wait here. Let me see the light in her room. I +want her to sleep with you to-night." + +"There's no need, Dick," she answered. "I am unstrung to-night. I said +more than I meant. I swear to you there's no need." + +He raised her head and kissed her on the lips. + +"I trust you, Stella," he said gently; and she answered him in a low +trembling voice of so much tenderness and love that he was reassured. +"Oh, you may, my dear, you may." + +She went up to her room and turned on the light, and sat down in her +chair just as she had done after her first dinner at Little Beeding. She +had foreseen then all the troubles which had since beset her, but she had +seemed to have passed through them--until this afternoon. Over there in +the library of the big house was Henry Thresk--the stranger. Very likely +he was at this moment writing to her. If he had only consented to come +over in the morning and give her the chance of pleading with him! She +went to the window and, drawing up the blind, leaned her head out and +looked across the meadow. In the library one of the long windows stood +open and the curtain was not drawn. The room was full of light. Henry +Thresk was there. He had befriended her this afternoon as he had +befriended her at Bombay, for the second time he had won the victory for +her; but the very next moment he had warned her that the end was not yet. +He would send her a letter, she had not a doubt of it. She had not a +doubt either of the message which the letter would bring. + +A sound rose to her ears from the gravel path below her window--the sound +of a slight involuntary movement. Stella drew sharply back. Then she +leaned out again and called softly: + +"Dick." + +He was standing a little to the left of the window out of reach of the +light which streamed out upon the darkness from the room behind her. He +moved forward now. + +"Oh, Dick, why are you waiting?" + +"I wanted to be sure that all was right, Stella." + +"I gave you my word, Dick," she whispered and she wished him +good-night again and waited till the sound of his footsteps had +altogether died away. He went back to the house and found Thresk still +at work in the library. + +"I don't want to interrupt you," he said, "but I must thank you again. I +can't tell you what I owe you. She's pretty wonderful, isn't she? I feel +coarse beside her, I tell you. I couldn't talk like this to any one else, +but you're so sympathetic." + +Henry Thresk had responded with nothing more than a grunt. He sat +slashing at his brief with a blue pencil, all the while that Dick +Hazlewood was speaking, and wishing that he would go to bed. Dick however +was unabashed. + +"Did you ever see a woman look so well in a blue frock? Or in a black one +either? There's a sort of painted thing she wears sometimes too. Well, +perhaps I had better go to bed." + +"I think it would be wise," said Thresk. + +Young Hazlewood went over to the table in the corner and lit his candle. + +"You'll shut that window before you go to bed, won't you?" + +"Yes." + +Hazlewood filled for himself a glass of barley-water and drank it, +contemplating Henry Thresk over the rim. Then he went back to him, +carrying his candle in his hand. + +"Why don't you get married, Mr. Thresk?" he asked. "You ought to, you +know. Men run to seed so if they don't." + +"Thank you," said Thresk. + +The tone was not cordial, but mere words were an invitation to Dick +Hazlewood at this moment. He sat down and placed his lighted candle on +the table between Thresk and himself. + +"I am thirty-four years old," he said, and Thresk interposed without +glancing up from his foolscap: + +"From your style of conversation I find that very difficult to believe, +Captain Hazlewood." + +"I have wasted thirty-four complete years of twelve months each," +continued the ecstatic Captain, who appeared to think that on the very +day of his birth he would have recognised his soul's mate. "Just jogging +along with the world, a miracle about one and not half an eye to perceive +it. You know." + +"No, I don't," Thresk observed. He lifted the candle and held it out to +Dick. Dick got up and took it. + +"Thank you," he said. "That was very kind of you. I told you--didn't +I?--how sympathetic I thought you." + +Thresk was not proof against his companion's pertinacity. He broke into a +laugh. "Are you going to bed?" he pleaded, and Dick Hazlewood replied, +"Yes I am." Suddenly his tone changed. + +"Stella had a very good friend in you, Mr. Thresk. I am sure she still +has one," and without waiting for any answer he went upstairs. His +bedroom was near to the front in the side of the house. It commanded a +view of the meadow and the cottage and he rejoiced to see that all +Stella's windows were dark. The library was out of sight round the corner +at the back, but a glare of light from the open door spread out over the +lawn. Hazlewood looked at his watch. It was just midnight. He went to bed +and slept. + +In the library Thresk strove to concentrate his thoughts upon his brief. +But he could not, and he threw it aside at last. There was a letter to be +written, and until it was written and done with his thoughts would not be +free. He went over to the writing-table and wrote it. But it took a long +while in the composition and the clock upon the top of the stable was +striking one when at last he had finished and sealed it up. + +"I'll post it in the morning at the station," he resolved, and he went +to the window to close it. But as he touched it a slight figure wrapped +in a dark cloak came out of the darkness at the side and stepped past him +into the room. He swung round and saw Stella Ballantyne. + +"You!" he exclaimed. "You must be mad." + +"I had to come," she said, standing well away from the window in the +centre of the room as though she thought he would drive her out. "I heard +you say you would be sitting late here." + +"How long have you been waiting out there?" + +"A little while...I don't know...Not very long. I wasn't sure that you +were alone." + +Thresk closed the window and drew the curtain across it. Then he crossed +the room and locked the doors leading into the dining-room and hall. + +"There was no need for you to come," he said in a low voice. "I have +written to you." + +"Yes." She nodded her head. "That's why I had to come. This afternoon you +spoke of leaving your pipe behind. I understood," and as he drew the +letter from his pocket she recoiled from it. "No, it has never been +written. I came in time to prevent its being written. You only had an +idea of writing. Say that! You are my friend." She took the letter from +him now and tore it across and again across. "See! It has never been +written at all." + +But Thresk only shook his head. "I am very sorry. I see to-night the +stricken woman of the tent in Chitipur. I am very sorry," and Stella +caught at the commiseration in his voice. She dropped the cloak from her +shoulders; she was dressed as she had been at the dinner some hours +before, but all her radiance had gone, her cheeks trembled, her eyes +pleaded desperately. + +"Sorry! I knew you would be. You are not hard. You couldn't be. You must +come close day by day in your life to so much that is pitiful. One can +talk to you and you'll understand. This is my first chance, the first +real chance I have ever had, Henry, the very first." + +Thresk looked backwards over the years of Stella Ballantyne's unhappy +life. It came upon him with a shock that what she said was the bare +truth; and remorse followed hard upon the heels of the shock. This was +her first real chance and he himself was to blame that it had come no +earlier. The first chance of a life worth the living--it had been in his +hands to give her and he had refused to give it years ago on Bignor Hill. + +"It's quite true," he admitted. "But I don't ask you to give it up, +Stella." She looked at him eagerly. "No! You would have understood that +if you had read my letter instead of tearing it up. I only ask you to +tell your lover the truth." + +"He knows it," she said sullenly. + +"No!" + +"He does! He does!" she protested, her voice rising to a low cry. + +"Hush! You'll be heard," said Thresk, and she listened for a moment +anxiously. But there was no sound of any one stirring in the house. + +"We are safe here," she said. "No one sleeps above us. Henry, he knows +the truth." + +"Would you be here now if he did?" + +"I came because this afternoon you seemed to be threatening me. I didn't +understand. I couldn't sleep. I saw the light in this room. I came to ask +you what you meant--that's all." + +"I'll tell you what I meant," said Thresk, and Stella with her eyes +fixed upon him sank down upon a chair. "I left my pipe behind me in the +tent on the night I dined with you. Your lover, Stella, doesn't know +that. I came back to fetch it. He doesn't know that. You were standing +by the table--" and Stella Ballantyne broke in upon him to silence the +words upon his lips. + +"There was no reason why he should know," she exclaimed. "It had nothing +to do with what happened. We know what happened. There was a thief"--and +Thresk turned to her then with such a look of sheer amazement upon his +face that she faltered and her voice died to a murmur of words--"a lean +brown arm--a hand delicate as a woman's." + +"There was no thief," he said quietly. "There was a man delirious with +drink who imagined one. There was you with the bruises on your throat and +the unutterable misery in your eyes and a little rifle in your hands. +There was no one else." + +She ceased to argue; she sat looking straight in front of her with a +stubborn face and a resolution to cling at all costs to her chance of +happiness. + +"Come, Stella," Thresk pleaded. "I don't say tell every one. I do say +tell him. For unless you do I must." + +Stella stared at him. + +"You?" she said. "You would tell him that you came back into the tent +and saw me?" + +"Oh, much more--that I lied at the trial, that the story which secured +your acquittal was false, that I made it up to save you. That I told it +again this afternoon to give you a chance of slipping out from an +impossible position." + +She looked at Thresk for a moment in terror. Then her expression changed. +A wave of relief swept over her; she laughed in Thresk's face. + +"You are trying to frighten me," she said. "Only I know you. Do you +realise what it would mean to you if it were ever really known that you +had lied at the trial?" + +"Yes." + +"Your ruin. Your absolute ruin." + +"Worse than that." + +"Prison!" + +"Perhaps. Yes." + +Stella laughed again. + +"And you would run the risk of the truth becoming known by telling it to +so much as one person. No, no! Another, perhaps--not you! You have had +one dream all your life--to rise out of obscurity, to get on in the +world, to hold the high positions. Everything and every one has been +sacrificed to its fulfilment. Oh, who should know better than I?" and she +struck her hands together sharply as she uttered that bitter cry. "You +have lain down late and risen early, and you have got on. Well, are you +the man to throw away all this work and success now that they touch +fulfilment? You are in the chariot. Will you step down and run tied to +the wheels? Will you stand up and say, 'There was a trial. I perjured +myself'? No. Another, perhaps. Not you, Henry." + +Thresk had no answer to that indictment. All of it was true except +its inference, and it was no news to him. He made no effort to +defend himself. + +"You are not very generous, Stella," he replied gently. "For if I lied, I +saved you by the lie." + +Stella was softened by the words. Her voice lost its hardness, she +reached out her hand in an apology and laid it on his arm. + +"Oh, I know. I sent you a little word of thanks when you gave me my +freedom. But it won't be of much value to me if I lose--what I am +fighting for now." + +"So you use every weapon?" + +"Yes." + +"But this one breaks in your hand," he said firmly. "The thing you think +it incredible that I should do I shall do none the less." + +Stella looked at him in despair. She could no longer doubt that he really +meant his words. He was really resolved to make this sacrifice of himself +and her. And why? Why should he interfere? + +"You save me one day to destroy me the next," she said. + +"No," he replied. "I don't think I shall do that, Stella," and he +explained to her what drove him on. "I had no idea why Hazlewood asked me +here. Had I suspected it I say frankly that I should have refused to +come. But I am here. The trouble's once more at my door but in a new +shape. There's this man, young Hazlewood. I can't forget him. You will be +marrying him by the help of a lie I told." + +"He loves me," she cried. + +"Then he can bear the truth," answered Thresk. He pulled up a chair +opposite to that in which Stella sat. "I want you to understand me, if +you will. I don't want you to think me harsh or cruel. I told a lie upon +my oath in the witness-box. I violated my traditions, I struck at my +belief in the value of my own profession, and such beliefs mean a good +deal to any man." Stella stirred impatiently. What words were these? +Traditions! The value of a profession! + +"I am not laying stress upon them, Stella, but they count," Thresk +continued. "And I am telling you that they count because I am going to +add that I should tell that lie again to-morrow, were the trial to-morrow +and you a prisoner. I should tell it again to save you again. Yes, to +save you. But when you go and--let me put it very plainly--use that lie +to your advantage, why then I am bound to cry 'stop.' Don't you see that? +You are using the lie to marry a man and keep him in ignorance of the +truth. You can't do that, Stella! You would be miserable yourself if you +did all your life. You would never feel safe for a moment. You would be +haunted by a fear that some day he would learn the truth and not from +you. Oh, I am sure of it." He caught her hands and pressed them +earnestly. "Tell him, Stella, tell him!" + +Stella Ballantyne rose to her feet with a strange look upon her face. Her +eyes half closed as though to shut out a vision of past horrors. She +turned to Thresk with a white face and her hands tightly clenched. + +"You don't know what happened on that night, after you rode away to catch +your train?" + +"No." + +"I think you ought to know--before you sit in judgment"; and so at last +in that quiet library under the Sussex Downs the tragic story of that +night was told. For Thresk as he listened and watched, its terrors lived +again in the eyes and the hushed voice of Stella Ballantyne, the dark +walls seemed to fall back and dissolve. The moonlit plain of far-away +Chitipur stretched away in front of him to the dim hill where the old +silent palaces crumbled; and midway between them and the green +signal-lights of the railway the encampment blazed like the clustered +lights of a small town. But Thresk learnt more than the facts. The +springs of conduct were disclosed to him; the woman revealed herself, +dark places were made light; and he bowed himself beneath a new burden +of remorse. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +TWO STRANGERS + + +"You came back to the tent," she began, "and ever since then you have +misunderstood what you saw. For this is the truth: I was going to +kill myself." + +Thresk was startled as he had not expected to be; and a great wave of +relief swept over him and uplifted his soul. Here was the simplest +explanation, yet it had never occurred to him. Always he had been +besieged by the vision of Stella standing quietly by the table, +deliberately preparing her rifle for use, always he had linked up that +vision with the death of Stephen Ballantyne in a dreadful connection. He +did not doubt that she spoke the truth now. Looking at her and noticing +the anguish of her face, he could not doubt it. So definite a +premeditation as he had imagined there had not been, and relief carried +him to pity. + +"So it had come to that?" he said. + +"Yes," replied Stella. "And you had your share in bringing it to +that--you who sit in judgment." + +"I!" Thresk exclaimed. + +"Yes, you who sit in judgment. I am not alone. No, I am not alone. A +crime was committed? Then you must shoulder your portion of the blame." + +Thresk asked himself in vain what was his share. He had done a cowardly +thing years ago a few miles from this spot. He had never ceased to +reproach himself for the cowardice. But that it had lived and worked like +some secret malady until in the end it had made him an all-unconscious +accomplice in that midnight tragedy, a sharer in its guilt, if guilt +there were--here again was news for him. But the knowledge which her +first words had given to him, that all these years he had never got the +truth of her, kept him humble now. He ceased to be judge. He became pupil +and as pupil he answered her. + +"I am ready to shoulder it." + +He was seated on a cushioned bench which stood behind the writing-table +and Stella sat down at his side. + +"When we parted--that morning--it was in the drawing-room over there in +my cottage. We parted, you to your work of getting on, Henry, I to think +of you getting on without me at your side. There was a letter lying on +the table, a letter from India. Jane Repton had written it and she asked +me to go out to her for the cold weather. I went. I was a young girl, +lonely and very unhappy, and as young girls often do who are lonely and +very unhappy I drifted into marriage." + +"I see," said Thresk in a hushed voice. The terrible conviction grew upon +him now, lurid as the breaking of a day of storm, that the cowardice he +had shown on Bignor Hill ruined her altogether and hurt him not at all. +"Yes, I see. There my share begins." + +"Oh no. Not yet," she answered. "Then I spoke when I should have kept +silence. I let my heart go out when I should have guarded it. No, I +cannot blame you." + +"You have the right none the less." + +But Stella would not excuse herself now and to him by any subtlety +or artifice. + +"No: I married. That was my affair. I was +beaten--despised--ridiculed--terrified by a husband who drank secretly +and kept all his drunkenness for me. That, too, was my affair. But I +might have gone on. For seven years it had lasted. I was settling into a +dull habit of misery. I might have gone on being bullied and tortured had +not one little thing happened to push me over the precipice." + +"And what was that?" asked Thresk. + +"Your visit to me at Chitipur," she replied, and the words took his +breath away. Why, he had travelled to Chitipur merely to save her. He +leaned forward eagerly but she anticipated him. She smiled at him with an +indulgent forgiveness. "Oh, why did you come? But I know." + +"Do you?" Thresk asked. Here at all events she was wrong. + +"Yes. You came because of that one weak soft spot of sentimentalism there +is in all of you, the strongest, the hardest. You are strong for years. +You live alone for years. Then comes the sentimental moment and it's we +who suffer, not you." + +And deep in Thresk's mind was the terror of the mistakes people make in +ignorance of each other, and of the mortal hurt the mistakes inflict. He +had misread Stella. Here was she misreading him and misreading him in +some strange way to her peril and ruin. + +"You are sure of that?" he asked. She had no doubt--no more doubt than he +had had of the reason why she stood preparing her rifle. + +"Quite," she answered. "You had heard of me in Bombay and it came over +you that you would like to see how the woman you had loved looked after +all these years: whether she retained her pretty way, whether she missed +you--ah, above all, whether she missed you. You wanted to fan up into a +mild harmless flame the ashes of an old romance, warm your hands at it +for half an hour, recapture a savour of dim and pleasant memories and +then go back to your own place and your own work, untouched and unhurt." + +Thresk laughed aloud with bitterness at the mistake she had made. Yet he +could not blame her. There was a certain shrewd insight which though it +had led her astray in this case might well have been true in any other +case, might well have been true of him. He remembered her disbelief in +all that he had said to her in that tent at Chitipur; and he was appalled +by the irony of things and the blind and feeble helplessness of men to +combat it. + +"So that's why I came to Chitipur?" he cried. + +"Yes," Stella answered without a second of hesitation. "But I couldn't be +left untouched and unhurt. You came and all that I had lost came with +you, came in a vivid rush of bright intolerable memories." She clasped +her hands over her eyes and Thresk lived over again that evening in the +tent upon the desert, but with a new understanding. His mind was +illumined. He saw the world as a prison in which each living being is +shut off from his neighbour by the impenetrable wall of an inability to +understand. + +"Memories of summers here," she resumed, "of women friends, of dainty and +comfortable things, and days of great happiness when it was good--oh so +very good!--to be alive and young. And you were going back to it all, +straight by the night-mail to Bombay, straight from the station on board +your ship. Oh, how it hurt to hear you speak of it, with a casual +pleasant word about exile and next-door neighbours!" She clasped her +hands together in front of her, her fingers worked and twisted. "No, I +couldn't endure it," she whispered. "The blows, the ridicule, the +contempt, I determined, should come to an end that night, and when you +saw me with the rifle in my hand I was going to end it." + +"Yes?" + +"And then the stupidest thing happened. I couldn't find the little box +of cartridges." + +Stella described to him how she had run hither and thither about the +tent, opening drawers, looking into bags and growing more nervous and +more flurried with every second that passed. She had so little time. +Ballantyne was not going as far as the station with Thresk. He merely +intended to see his visitor off beyond the edge of the camp. And it must +all be over and done with before he came back. She heard Ballantyne call +to Thresk to sit firm while the camel rose; and still she had not found +them. She heard Thresk's voice saying good-night. + +"The last words, Henry, I wanted to hear in the world. I thought that I +would wait for them and the moment they had died away--then. But I hadn't +found the cartridges and so the search began again." + +Thresk, watching her as she lived through again those desperate minutes, +was carried back to Chitipur and seemed to be looking into that tent. He +had a dreadful picture before his eyes of a hunted woman rushing wildly +from table to table, with a white, quivering face and lips which babbled +incoherently and feverish hands which darted out nervously, over-setting +books and ornaments--in a vain search for a box of cartridges wherewith +to kill herself. She found them at last behind the whisky bottle, and +clutched at them with a great sigh of relief. She carried them over to +the table on which she had laid her rifle, and as she pushed one into +the breech, Stephen Ballantyne stood in the doorway of the tent. + +"He swore at me," Stella continued. "I had taken the necklace off. I had +shown you the bruises on my throat. He cursed me for it, and he asked me +roughly why I didn't shoot myself and rid him of a fool. I stood without +answering him. That always maddened him. I didn't do it on purpose. I had +become dull and slow. I just stood and looked at him stupidly, and in a +fury he ran at me with his fist raised. I recoiled, he frightened me, and +then before he reached me--yes." Her voice died away in a whisper. Thresk +did not interrupt. There was more for her to tell and one dreadful +incident to explain. Stella went on in a moment, looking straight in +front of her and with all the passion of fear gone from her voice. + +"I remember that he stood and stared at me foolishly for a little while. +I had time to believe that nothing had happened, and to be glad that +nothing had happened and to be terrified of what he would do to me. And +then he fell and lay quite still." + +It seemed that she had no more to say, that she meant to leave +unexplained the inexplicable thing; and even Thresk put it out of +his thoughts. + +"It was an accident then," he cried. "After all, Stella, it was an +accident." + +But Stella sat mutely at his side. Some struggle was taking place in her +and was reflected in her countenance. Thresk's eager joy was damped. + +"No, my friend," she said at length, slowly and very deliberately. "It +was not an accident." + +"But you fired in fear." Thresk caught now at that alternative. "You shot +in self-defence. Stella, I blundered at Bombay." He moved away from her +in his agitation. "I am sorry. Oh, I am very sorry. I should never have +come forward at all. I should have lain quiet and let your counsel +develop his case, as he was doing, on the line of self-defence. You would +have been acquitted--and rightly acquitted. You would have had the +sympathy of every one. But I didn't know your story. I was afraid that +the discovery of Ballantyne outside the tent would ruin you. I knew that +my story could not fail to save you. So I told it. But I was wrong, +Stella. I blundered. I did you a great harm." + +He was standing before her now and so poignant an anguish rang in his +voice that Stella was moved by it to discard her plans. Thus she had +meant to tell the story if ever she was driven to it. Thus she had told +it. But now she put out a timid hand and took him by the arm. + +"I said I would tell you the truth. But I have not told it all. It's so +hard not to keep one little last thing back. Listen to me"; and with a +bowed head and her hand still clinging desperately to his arm she made +the final revelation. + +"It's true I was crazy with fear. But there was just one little moment +when I knew what I was going to do, when it came upon me that the way I +had chosen before was the wrong one, and this new way the right one. No, +no," she cried as Thresk moved. "Even that's not all. That moment--you +could hardly measure it in time, yet to me it was distinct enough and is +marked distinctly in my memories, for during it _he_ drew back." + +"What?" cried Thresk. "Don't say it, Stella!" + +"Yes," she answered. "During it he drew back, knowing what I was going to +do just as I suddenly knew it. It was a moment when he seemed to me to +bleat--yes, that's the word--to bleat for mercy." + +She had told the truth now and she dropped her hand from his sleeve. + +"And you? What did you do?" asked Thresk. + +"I? Oh, I went mad, I think. When I saw him lying there I lost my head. +The tent was flecked with great spots of fire which whirled in front of +my eyes and hurt. A strength far greater than mine possessed me. I was +crazy. I dragged him out of the tent for no reason--that's the truth--for +no reason at all. Can you believe that?" + +"Yes," replied Thresk readily enough. "I can well believe that." + +"Then something broke," she resumed. "I felt weak and numbed. I dragged +myself to my room. I went to bed. Does that sound very horrible to you? +I had one clear thought only. It was over. It was all over. I slept." +She leaned back in her chair, her hands dropped to her side, her eyes +closed. "Yes I did actually sleep." + +A clock ticking upon the mantelshelf seemed to grow louder and louder in +the silence of the library. The sound of it forced itself upon Thresk. It +roused Stella. She opened her eyes. In front of her Thresk was standing, +his face grave and very pitiful. + +"Now answer me truly," said Stella, and leaning forward she fixed her +eyes upon him. "If you still loved me, would you, knowing this story, +refuse to marry me?" + +Thresk looked back across the years of her unhappy life and saw her as +the sport of a malicious destiny. + +"No," he said, "I should not." + +"Then why shouldn't Dick marry me?" + +"Because he doesn't know this story." + +Stella nodded her head. + +"Yes. There's the flaw in my appeal to you, I know. You are quite right. +I should have told him. I should tell him now," and suddenly she dropped +on her knees before Thresk, the tears burst from her eyes, and in a voice +broken with passion she cried: + +"But I daren't--not yet. I have tried to--oh, more than once. Believe +that, Henry! You must believe it! But I couldn't. I hadn't the courage. +You will give me a little time, won't you? Oh, not long. I will tell him +of my own free will--very soon, Henry. But not now--not now." + +The sound of her sobbing and the sight of her distress wrung Thresk's +heart. He lifted her from the ground and held her. + +"There's another way, Stella," he said gently. + +"Oh, I know," she answered. She was thinking of the little bottle with +the tablets of veronal which stood by her bed, not for the first time +that night. She did not stop to consider whether Thresk, too, had that +way in his mind. It came to her so naturally; it was so easy, so simple a +way. She never thought that she misunderstood. She had come to the end of +the struggle; the battle had gone against her; she recognised it; and +now, without complaint, she bowed her head for the final blow. The +inherited habit of submission taught her that the moment had come for +compliance and gave her the dignity of patience. "Yes, I suppose that I +must take that way," she said, and she walked towards the chair over +which she had thrown her wrap. "Good-night, Henry." + +But before she had thrown the cloak about her shoulders Thresk stood +between her and the window. He took the cloak from her hands. + +"There have been too many mistakes, Stella, between you and me. There +must be no more. Here are we--until to-night strangers, and because we +were strangers, and never knew it, spoiling each other's lives." + +Stella looked at him in bewilderment. She had taught Thresk that night +unimagined truths about herself. She was now to learn something of the +inner secret man which the outward trappings of success concealed. He led +her to a sofa and placed her at his side. + +"You have said a good many hard things to me, Stella," he said with a +smile--"most of them true, but some untrue. And the untrue things you +wouldn't have said if you had ever chanced to ask yourself one question: +why I really missed my steamer at Bombay." + +Stella Ballantyne was startled. She made a guess but faltered in the +utterance of it, so ill it fitted with her estimate of him. + +"You missed it on purpose?" + +"Yes. I didn't come to Chitipur on any sentimental journey"; and he told +how he had seen her portrait in Jane Repton's drawing-room and learnt of +the misery of her marriage. + +"I came to fetch you away." + +And again Stella stared at him. + +"You? You pitied me so much? Oh, Henry!" + +"No. I wanted you so much. It's quite true that I sacrificed everything +for success. I don't deny that it is well worth having. But Jane Repton +said something to me in Bombay so true--you can get whatever you want if +you want it enough, but you cannot control the price you will have to +pay. I know, my dear, that I paid too big a price. I trampled down +something better worth having." + +Stella rose suddenly to her feet. + +"Oh, if I had known that on the night in Chitipur! What a difference it +would have made!" She turned swiftly to him. "Couldn't you have told me?" + +"I hadn't a chance. I hadn't five minutes with you alone. And you +wouldn't have believed me if I had had the chance. I left my pipe behind +me in order to come back and tell you. I had only the time then to tell +you that I would write." + +"Yes, yes," she answered, and again the cry burst from her: "What a +difference it would have made! Merely to have known that you really +wanted me!" + +She would never have taken that rifle from the corner and searched for +the cartridges, that she might kill herself! Whether she had consented or +not to go away and ruin Thresk's future she would have had a little faith +wherewith to go on and face the world. If she had only known! But up on +the top of Bignor Hill a blow had been struck under which her faith had +reeled and it had never had a chance of recovery. She laughed harshly. +The heart of her tragedy was now revealed to her. She saw herself the +sport of gods who sat about like cruel louts torturing a helpless animal +and laughing stupidly at its sufferings. She turned again to Thresk and +held out her hand. + +"Thank you. You would have ruined yourself for me." + +"Ruin's a large word," he answered, and still holding her hand he drew +her down again. She yielded reluctantly. She might misread his character, +but when the feelings and emotions were aroused she had the unerring +insight of her sex. She was warned by it now. She looked at Thresk with +startled eyes. + +"Why have you told me all this?" she asked in suspense, ready for flight. + +"I want to prepare you. There's a way out of the trouble--the honest way +for both of us: to make a clean breast of it together and together take +what follows." + +She was on her feet and away from him in a second. + +"No, no," she cried in alarm, and Thresk mistook the cause of the alarm. + +"You can't be tried again, Stella. That's over. You have been acquitted." + +She temporised. + +"But you?" + +"I?" and he shrugged his shoulders. "I take the consequences. I doubt if +they would be so very heavy. There would be some sympathy. And +afterwards--it would be as though you had slipped down from Chitipur to +Bombay and joined me as I had planned. We can make the best of our lives +together." + +There was so much sincerity in his manner, so much simplicity she could +not doubt him; and the immensity of the sacrifice he was prepared to make +overwhelmed her. It was not merely scandal and the Divorce Court which he +was ready to brave now. He had gone beyond the plan contemplated at +Bombay. He was willing to go hand in hand with her into the outer +darkness, laying down all that he had laboured for unsparingly. + +"You would do that for me?" she said. "Oh, you put me to shame!" and she +covered her face with her hands. + +"You give up your struggle for a footing in the world--that's what you +want, isn't it?" He pleaded, and she drew her hands away from her face. +He believed that? He imagined that she was fighting just for a name, a +position in the world? She stared at him in amazement, and forced herself +to understand. Since he himself had cared for her enough to remain +unmarried, since the knowledge of the mistake which he had made had grown +more bitter with each year, he had fallen easily into that other error +that she had never ceased to care too. + +"We'll make something of our lives, never fear," he was saying. "But to +marry this man for his position, and he not knowing--oh, my dear, I know +how you are driven--but it won't do! It won't do!" + +She stood in silence for a little while. One by one he had torn her +defences down. She could hardly bear the gentleness upon his face and +she turned away from him and sat down upon a chair a little way off. + +"Stand there, Henry," she said. A strange composure had succeeded her +agitation. "I must tell you something more which I had meant to hide +from you--the last thing which I have kept back. It will hurt you, I +am afraid." + +There came a change upon Thresk's face. He was steeling himself to +meet a blow. + +"Go on." + +"It isn't because of his position that I cling to Dick. I want him to +keep that--yes--for his sake. I don't want him to lose more by marrying +me than he needs must"; and comprehension burst upon Henry Thresk. + +"You care for him then! You really care for him?" + +"So much," she answered, "that if I lost him now I should lose all the +world. You and I can't go back to where we stood nine years ago. You had +your chance then, Henry, if you had wished to take it. But you didn't +wish it, and that sort of chance doesn't often come again. Others like +it--yes. But not quite the same one. I am sorry. But you must believe me. +If I lost Dick I should lose all the world." + +So far she had spoken very deliberately, but now her voice faltered. + +"That is my one poor excuse." + +The unexpected word roused Thresk to inquiry. + +"Excuse?" he asked, and with her eyes fixed in fear upon him she +continued: + +"Yes. I meant Dick to marry me publicly. But I saw that his father shrank +from the marriage. I grew afraid. I told Dick of my fears. He banished +them. I let him banish them." + +"What do you mean?" Thresk asked. + +"We were married privately in London five days ago." + +Thresk uttered a low cry and in a moment Stella was at his side, all her +composure gone. + +"Oh, I know that it was wrong. But I was being hunted. They were all like +a pack of wolves after me. Mr. Hazlewood had joined them. I was driven +into a corner. I loved Dick. They meant to tear him from me without any +pity. I clung. Yes, I clung." + +But Thresk thrust her aside. + +"You tricked him," he cried. + +"I didn't dare to tell him," Stella pleaded, wringing her hands. "I +didn't dare to lose him." + +"You tricked him," Thresk repeated; and at the note of anger in his voice +Stella found herself again. + +"You accuse and condemn me?" she asked quietly. + +"Yes. A thousand times, yes," he exclaimed hotly, and she answered with +another question winged on a note of irony: + +"Because I tricked him? Or because I--married him?" + +Thresk was silenced. He recognised the truth implied in the distinction, +he turned to her with a smile. + +"Yes," he answered. "You are right, Stella. It's because you +married him." + +He stood for a moment in thought. Then with a gesture of helplessness he +picked up her cloak. She watched his action and as he came towards her +she cried: + +"But I'll tell him now, Henry." In a way she owed it to this man who +cared for her so much, who was so prepared for sacrifice, if sacrifice +could help. That morning on the downs was swept from her memory now. +"Yes, I'll tell him now," she said eagerly. Since Henry Thresk set +such store upon that confession, why so very likely would Dick, her +husband, too. + +But Thresk shook his head. + +"What's the use now? You give him no chance. You can't set him free"; and +Stella was as one turned to stone. All argument seemed sooner or later to +turn to that one dread alternative which had already twice that night +forced itself on her acceptance. + +"Yes, I can, Henry, and I will, I promise you, if he wishes to be free. I +can do it quite easily, quite naturally. Any woman could. So many of us +take things to make us sleep." + +There was no boastfulness in her voice or manner, but rather a despairing +recognition of facts. + +"Good God, you mustn't think of it!" said Thresk eagerly. "That's too +big a price to pay." + +Stella shook her head wistfully. + +"You hear it said, Henry," she answered with an indescribable +wistfulness, "that women will do anything to keep the men they love. +They'll do a great deal--I am an example--but not always everything. +Sometimes love runs just a little stronger. And then it craves that the +loved one shall get all he wants to have. If Dick wants his freedom I +too, then, shall want him to have it." + +And while Thresk stood with no words to answer her there came a knocking +upon the door. It was gentle, almost furtive, but it startled them both +like a clap of thunder. For a moment they stood rigid. Then Thresk +silently handed Stella her cloak and pointed towards the window. He +began to speak aloud. A word or two revealed his plan to Stella +Ballantyne. He was rehearsing a speech which he was to make in the +Courts before a jury. But the handle of the door rattled and now old Mr. +Hazlewood's voice was heard. + +"Thresk! Are you there?" + +Once more Thresk pointed to the window. But Stella did not move. + +"Let him in," she said quietly, and with a glance at her he +unlocked the door. + +Mr. Hazlewood stood outside. He had not gone to bed that night. He had +taken off his coat and now wore a smoking-jacket. + +"I knew that I should not sleep to-night, so I sat up," he began, "and I +thought that I heard voices here." + +Over Thresk's shoulder he saw Stella Ballantyne standing erect in the +middle of the room, her shining gown the one bright patch of colour. "You +here?" he cried to her, and Thresk made way for him to enter. He advanced +to her with a look of triumph in his eyes. + +"You here--at this house--with Thresk? You were persuading him to +continue to hold his tongue." + +Stella met his gaze steadily. + +"No," she replied. "He was persuading me to the truth, and he has +succeeded." + +Mr. Hazlewood smiled and nodded. There was no magnanimity in his triumph. +A schoolboy would have shown more chivalry to the opponent who was down. + +"You confess then? Good! Richard must be told." + +"Yes," answered Stella. "I claim the right to tell him." + +But Mr. Hazlewood scoffed at the proposal. + +"Oh dear no!" he cried. "I refuse the claim. I shall go straight to +Richard now." + +He had actually taken a couple of steps towards the door before Stella's +voice rang out suddenly loud and imperative. + +"Take care, Mr. Hazlewood. After you have told him he will come to me. +Take care!" + +Hazlewood stopped. Certainly that was true. + +"I'll tell Dick to-morrow, here, in your presence," she said. "And if he +wishes it I'll set him free and never trouble either of you again." + +Hazlewood looked at Thresk and was persuaded to consent. Reflection +showed him that it was the better plan. He himself would be present when +Stella spoke. He would see that the truth was told without embroidery. + +"Very well, to-morrow," he said. + +Stella flung the cloak over her shoulders and went up to the window. +Thresk opened it for her. + +"I'll see you to your door," he said. + +The moon had risen now. It hung low with the branches of a tree like a +lattice across its face; and on the garden and the meadow lay that +unearthly light which falls when a moonlit night begins to drown in the +onrush of the dawn. + +"No," she said. "I would rather go alone. But do something for me, will +you? Stay to-morrow. Be here when I tell him." She choked down a sob. +"Oh, I shall want a friend and you are so kind." + +"So kind!" he repeated with a note of bitterness. Could there be praise +from a woman's lips more deadly? You are kind; you are put in your place +in the ruck of men; you are extinguished. + +"Oh yes, I'll stay." + +She stood for a moment on the stone flags outside the window. + +"Will he forgive?" she asked. "You would. And he is not so very young, is +he? It's the young who don't forgive. Good-night." + +She went along the path and across the meadow. Thresk watched her go and +saw the light spring up in her room. Then he closed the window and drew +the curtain. Mr. Hazlewood had gone. Thresk wondered what the morrow +would bring. After all, Stella was right. Youth was a graceful thing of +high-sounding words and impetuous thoughts, but like many other graceful +things it could be hard and cruel. Its generosity did not come from any +wide outlook on a world where there is a good deal to be said for +everything. It was rather a matter of physical health than judgment. Yes, +he was glad Dick Hazlewood was half his way through the thirties. For +himself--well, he knew his business. It was to be kind. He turned off the +lights and went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE VERDICT + + +"Six, seven, eight," said Mr. Hazlewood, counting the letters which he +had already written since breakfast and placing them on the salver which +Hubbard was holding out to him. He was a very different man this morning +from the Mr. Hazlewood of yesterday. He shone, complacent and serene. He +leaned back in his chair and gazed mildly at the butler. "There must be +an answer to the problem which I put to you, Hubbard." + +Hubbard wrinkled his brows in thought and succeeded only in looking a +hundred and ten years old. He had the melancholy look of a moulting bird. +He shook his head and drooped. + +"No doubt, sir," he said. + +"But as far as you are concerned," Mr. Hazlewood continued briskly, "you +can throw no light upon it?" + +"Not a glimmer, sir." + +Mr. Hazlewood was disappointed and with him disappointment was petulance. + +"That is unlike you, Hubbard," he said, "for sometimes after I have been +deliberating for days over some curious and perplexing conundrum, you +have solved it the moment it has been put to you." + +Hubbard drooped still lower. He began the droop as a bow of +acknowledgment but forgot to raise his head again. + +"It is very good of you, sir," he said. He seemed oppressed by the +goodness of Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Yet you are not clever, Hubbard! Not at all clever." + +"No, sir. I know my place," returned the butler, and Mr. Hazlewood +continued with a little envy. + +"You must have some wonderful gift of insight which guides you straight +to the inner meaning of things." + +"It's just common-sense, sir," said Hubbard. + +"But I haven't got it," cried Mr. Hazlewood. "How's that?" + +"You don't need it, sir. You are a gentleman," Hubbard replied, and +carried the letters to the door. There, however, he stopped. "I beg your +pardon, sir," he said, "but a new parcel of _The Prison Walls_ has +arrived this morning. Shall I unpack it?" + +Mr. Hazlewood frowned and scratched his ear. + +"Well--er--no, Hubbard--no," he said with a trifle of discomfort. "I am +not sure indeed that _The Prison Walls_ is not almost one of my mistakes. +We all make mistakes, Hubbard. I think you shall burn that parcel, +Hubbard--somewhere where it won't be noticed." + +"Certainly, sir," said Hubbard. "I'll burn it under the shadow of the +south wall." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked up with a start. Was it possible that Hubbard was +poking fun at him? The mere notion was incredible and indeed Hubbard +shuffled with so much meekness from the room that Mr. Hazlewood dismissed +it. He went across the hall to the dining-room, where he found Henry +Thresk trifling with his breakfast. No embarrassment weighed upon Mr. +Hazlewood this morning. He effervesced with good-humour. + +"I do not blame you, Mr. Thresk," he said, "for the side you took +yesterday afternoon. You were a stranger to us in this house. I +understand your position." + +"I am not quite so sure, Mr. Hazlewood," said Thresk drily, "that I +understand yours. For my part I have not closed my eyes all night. You, +on the other hand, seem to have slept well." + +"I did indeed," said Hazlewood. "I was relieved from a strain of +suspense under which I have been labouring for a month past. To have +refused my consent to Richard's marriage with Stella Ballantyne on no +other grounds than that social prejudice forbade it would have seemed +a complete, a stupendous reversal of my whole theory and conduct of +life. I should have become an object of ridicule. People would have +laughed at the philosopher of Little Beeding. I have heard their +laughter all this month. Now, however, once the truth is known no one +will be able to say--" + +Henry Thresk looked up from his plate aghast. + +"Do you mean to say, Mr. Hazlewood, that after Mrs. Ballantyne has told +her story you mean to make that story public?" + +Mr. Hazlewood stared in amazement at Henry Thresk. + +"But of course," he said. + +"Oh, you can't be thinking of it!" + +"But I am. I must do it. There is so much at stake," replied Hazlewood. + +"What?" + +"The whole consistency of my life. I must make it clear that I am not +acting upon prejudice or suspicion or fear of what the world will say or +for any of the conventional reasons which might guide other men." + +To Thresk this point of view was horrible; and there was no arguing +against it. It was inspired by the dreadful vanity of a narrow, shallow +nature, and Thresk's experience had never shown him anything more +difficult to combat and overcome. + +"So for the sake of your reputation for consistency you will make a very +unhappy woman bear shame and obloquy which she might easily be spared? +You could find a thousand excuses for breaking off the marriage." + +"You put the case very harshly, Mr. Thresk," said Hazlewood. "But +you have not considered my position," and he went indignantly back +to the library. + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. After all if Dick Hazlewood turned his +back upon Stella she would not hear the abuse or suffer the shame. That +she would take the dark journey as she declared he could not doubt. And +no one could prevent her--not even he himself, though his heart might +break at her taking it. All depended upon Dick. + +He appeared a few minutes afterwards fresh from his ride, glowing with +good-humour and contentment. But the sight of Thresk surprised him. + +"Hulloa," he cried. "Good-morning. I thought you were going to catch the +eight forty-five." + +"I felt lazy," answered Thresk. "I sent off some telegrams to put off my +engagements." + +"Good," said Dick, and he sat down at the breakfast-table. As he poured +out a cup of tea, Thresk said: + +"I think I heard you were over thirty." + +"Yes." + +"Thirty's a good age," said Thresk. + +"It looks back on youth," answered Dick. + +"That's just what I mean," remarked Thresk. "Do you mind a cigarette?" + +"Not at all." + +Thresk smoked and while he smoked he talked, not carelessly yet careful +not to emphasize his case. "Youth is a graceful thing of high-sounding +words and impetuous thoughts, but like many other graceful things it can +be very hard and very cruel." + +Dick Hazlewood looked closely and quickly at his companion. But he +answered casually: + +"It is supposed to be generous." + +"And it is--to itself," replied Thresk. "Generous when its sympathies are +enlisted, generous so long as all goes well with it: generous because it +is confident of triumph. But its generosity is not a matter of judgment. +It does not come from any wide outlook upon a world where there is a good +deal to be said for everything. It is a matter of physical health." + +"Yes?" said Dick. + +"And once affronted, once hurt, youth finds it difficult to forgive." + +So far both men had been debating on an abstract topic without any +immediate application to themselves. But now Dick leaned across the table +with a smile upon his face which Thresk did not understand. + +"And why do you say this to me this morning, Mr. Thresk?" he asked +pointedly. + +"Yes, it's rather an impertinence, isn't it?" Thresk agreed. "But I was +looking into a case late last night in which irrevocable and terrible +things are going to happen if there is not forgiveness." + +Dick took his cigarette-case from his pocket. + +"I see," he remarked, and struck a match. Both men rose from the table +and at the door Dick turned. + +"Your case, of course, has not yet come on," he said. + +"No," answered Thresk, "but it will very soon." + +They went into the library, and Mr. Hazlewood greeted his son with a +vivacity which for weeks had been absent from his demeanour. + +"Did you ride this morning?" he asked. + +"Yes, but Stella didn't. She sent word over that she was tired. I must go +across and see how she is." + +Mr. Hazlewood interposed quickly: + +"There is no need of that, my boy; she is coming here this morning." + +"Oh!" + +Dick looked at his father in astonishment. + +"She said no word of it to me last night--and I saw her home. I suppose +she sent word over about that too?" + +He looked from one to the other of his companions, but neither answered +him. Some uneasiness indeed was apparent in them both. + +"Oho!" he said with a smile. "Stella's coming over and I know +nothing of it. Mr. Thresk's lazy, so remains at Little Beeding and +delivers a lecture to me over breakfast. And you, father, seem in +remarkable spirits." + +Mr. Hazlewood seized upon the opportunity to interrupt his son's +reflections. + +"I am, my boy," he cried. "I walked in the fields this morning +and--" But he got no further with his explanations, for the sound of Mrs. +Pettifer's voice rang high in the hall and she burst into the room. + +"Harold, I have only a moment. Good morning, Mr. Thresk," she cried in a +breath. "I have something to say to you." + +Thresk was disturbed. Suppose that Stella came while Mrs. Pettifer was +here! She must not speak in Mrs. Pettifer's presence. Somehow Mrs. +Pettifer must be dismissed. No such anxiety, however, harassed Mr. +Hazlewood. + +"Say it, Margaret," he said, smiling benignantly upon her. "You cannot +annoy me this morning. I am myself again," and Dick's eyes turned sharply +upon him. "All my old powers of observation have returned, my old +interest in the great dark riddle of human life has re-awakened. The +brain, the sedulous, active brain, resumes its work to-day asking +questions, probing problems. I rose early, Margaret," he flourished his +hands like one making a speech, "and walking in the fields amongst the +cows a most curious speculation forced itself upon my mind. How is it, I +asked myself--" + +It seemed that Mr. Hazlewood was destined never to complete a sentence +that morning, for Margaret Pettifer at this point banged her umbrella +upon the floor. + +"Stop talking, Harold, and listen to me! I have been speaking with Robert +and we withdraw all opposition to Dick's marriage." + +Mr. Hazlewood was dumfoundered. + +"You, Margaret--you of all people!" he stammered. + +"Yes," she replied decisively. "Robert likes her and Robert is a good +judge of a woman. That's one thing. Then I believe Dick is going to take +St. Quentins; isn't that so, Dick?" + +"Yes," answered Dick. "That's the house we looked over yesterday." + +"Well, it's not a couple of a hundred yards from us, and it would not be +comfortable for any of us if Dick and Dick's wife were strangers. So I +give in. There, Dick!" She went across the room and held out her hand to +him. "I am going to call on Stella this afternoon." + +Dick flushed with pleasure. + +"That's splendid, Aunt Margaret. I knew you were all right, you know. You +put on a few frills at first, of course, but you are forgiven." + +Mr. Hazlewood made so complete a picture of dismay that Dick could not +but pity him. He went across to his father. + +"Now, sir," he said, "let us hear this problem." + +The old man was not proof against the invitation. + +"You shall, Richard," he exclaimed. "You are the very man to hear it. +Your aunt, Richard, is of too practical a mind for such speculations. +It's a most curious problem. Hubbard quite failed to throw any light upon +it. I myself am, I confess, bewildered. And I wonder if a fresh young +mind can help us to a solution." He patted his son on the shoulder and +then took him by the arm. + +"The fresh young mind will have a go, father," said Dick. "Fire away." + +"I was walking in the fields, my boy." + +"Yes, sir, among the cows." + +"Exactly, you put your finger on the very point. How is it, I asked +myself--" + +"That's quite your old style, father." + +"Now isn't it, Richard, isn't it?" Mr. Hazlewood dropped Dick's arm. He +warmed to his theme. He caught fire. He assumed the attitude of the +orator. "How is it that with the advancement of science and the progress +of civilization a cow gives no more milk to-day than she did at the +beginning of the Christian era?" + +With outspread arms he asked for an answer and the answer came. + +"A fresh young mind can solve that problem in two shakes. It is because +the laws of nature forbid. That's your trouble, father. That's the +great drawback to sentimental enthusiasm. It's always up against the +laws of nature." + +"Dick," said Mrs. Pettifer, "by some extraordinary miracle you are gifted +with common-sense. I am off." She went away in a hurricane as she had +come, and it was time that she did go, for even while she was closing the +door Stella Ballantyne came out from her cottage to cross the meadow. +Dick was the first to hear the gate click as she unlatched it and passed +into the garden. He took a step towards the window, but his father +interposed and for once with a real authority. + +"No, Richard," he said. "Wait with us here. Mrs. Ballantyne has something +to tell us." + +"I thought so," said Dick quietly, and he came back to the other two men. +"Let me understand." His face was grave but without anger or any +confusion. "Stella returned here last night after I had taken her home?" + +"Yes," said Thresk. + +"To see you?" + +"Yes." + +"And my father came down and found you together?" + +"Yes." + +"I heard voices," Mr. Hazlewood hurriedly interposed, "and so naturally I +came down." + +Dick turned to his father. + +"That's all right, father. I didn't think you were listening at the +keyhole. I am not blaming anybody. I want to know exactly where we +are--that's all." + +Stella found the little group awaiting her, and standing up before them +she told her story as she had told it last night to Thresk. She omitted +nothing nor did she falter. She had trembled and cried for a great part +of the night over the ordeal which lay before her, but now that she had +come to it she was brave. Her composure indeed astonished Thresk and +filled him with compassion. He knew that the very roots of her heart were +bleeding. Only once or twice did she give any sign of what these few +minutes were costing her. Her eyes strayed towards Dick Hazlewood's face +in spite of herself, but she turned them away again with a wrench of her +head and closed her eyelids lest she should hesitate and fail. All +listened to her in silence, and it was strange to Thresk that the one man +who seemed least concerned of the three was Dick Hazlewood himself. He +watched Stella all the while she was speaking, but his face was a mask, +not a gesture or movement gave a clue to his thoughts. When Stella had +finished he asked composedly: + +"Why didn't you tell me all this at the beginning, Stella?" + +And now she turned to him in a burst of passion and remorse. + +"Oh, Dick, I tried to tell you. I made up my mind so often that I would, +but I never had the courage. I am terribly to blame. I hid it all from +you--yes. But oh! you meant so much to me--you yourself, Dick. It wasn't +your position. It wasn't what you brought with you, other people's +friendship, other people's esteem. It was just you--you--you! I longed +for you to want me, as I wanted you." Then she recovered herself and +stopped. She was doing the very thing she had resolved not to do. She was +pleading, she was making excuses. She drew herself up and with a dignity +which was quite pitiful she now pleaded against herself. + +"But I don't ask for your pity. You mustn't be merciful. I don't _want_ +mercy, Dick. That's of no use to me. I want to know what you think--just +what you really and truthfully think--that's all. I can stand alone--if I +must. Oh yes, I can stand alone." And as Thresk stirred and moved, +knowing well in what way she meant to stand alone, Stella turned her eyes +full upon him in warning, nay, in menace. "I can stand alone quite +easily, Dick. You mustn't think that I should suffer so very much. I +shouldn't! I shouldn't--" + +In spite of her control a sob broke from her throat and her bosom heaved; +and then Dick Hazlewood went quietly to her side and took her hand. + +"I didn't interrupt you, Stella. I wanted you to tell everything now, +once for all, so that no one of us three need ever mention a word of +it again." + +Stella looked at Dick Hazlewood in wonder, and then a light broke over +her face like the morning. His arm slipped about her waist and she leaned +against him suddenly weak, almost to swooning. Mr. Hazlewood started up +from his chair in consternation. + +"But you heard her, Richard!" + +"Yes, father, I heard her," he answered. "But you see Stella is my wife." + +"Your--" Mr. Hazlewood's lips refused to speak the word. He fell back +again in his chair and dropped his face in his hands. "Oh, no!" + +"It's true," said Dick. "I have rooms in London, you know. I went to +London last week. Stella came up on Monday. It was my doing, my wish. +Stella is my wife." + +Mr. Hazlewood groaned aloud. + +"But she has tricked you, Richard," and Stella agreed. + +"Yes, I tricked you, Dick. I did," she said miserably, and she drew +herself from his arm. But he caught her hand. + +"No, you didn't." He led her over to his father. "That's where you both +make your mistake. Stella tried to tell me something on the very night +when we walked back from this house to her cottage and I asked her to +marry me. She has tried again often during the last weeks. I knew very +well what it was--before you turned against her, before I married her. +She didn't trick me." + +Mr. Hazlewood turned in despair to Henry Thresk. + +"What do you say?" he asked. + +"That I am very glad you asked me here to give my advice on your +collection," Thresk answered. "I was inclined yesterday to take a +different view of your invitation. But I did what perhaps I may suggest +that you should do: I accepted the situation." + +He went across to Stella and took her hands. + +"Oh, thank you," she cried, "thank you." + +"And now"--Thresk turned to Dick--"if I might look at a _Bradshaw_ I +could find out the next train to London." + +"Certainly," said Dick, and he went over to the writing-table. Stella and +Henry Thresk were left alone for a moment. + +"We shall see you again," she said. "Please!" + +Thresk laughed. + +"No doubt. I am not going out into the night. You know my address. If you +don't ask Mr. Hazlewood. It's in King's Bench Walk, isn't it?" And he +took the time-table from Dick Hazlewood's hand. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Witness For The Defence, by A.E.W. Mason + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12535 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2692a3d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #12535 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12535) diff --git a/old/12535-8.txt b/old/12535-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a4b60b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12535-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9460 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Witness For The Defence, by A.E.W. Mason + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Witness For The Defence + +Author: A.E.W. Mason + +Release Date: June 6, 2004 [EBook #12535] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE + + BY A.E.W. MASON + + 1914 + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + + I. HENRY THRESK + + II. ON BIGNOR HILL + + III. IN BOMBAY + + IV. JANE REPTON + + V. THE QUEST + + VI. IN THE TENT AT CHITIPUR + + VII. THE PHOTOGRAPH + + VIII. AND THE RIFLE + + IX. AN EPISODE IN BALLANTYNE'S LIFE + + X. NEWS FROM CHITIPUR + + XI. THRESK INTERVENES + + XII. THRESK GIVES EVIDENCE + + XIII. LITTLE BEEDING AGAIN + + XIV. THE HAZLEWOODS + + XV. THE GREAT CRUSADE + + XVI. CONSEQUENCES + + XVII. TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD + + XVIII. MR. HAZLEWOOD SEEKS ADVICE + + XIX. PETTIFER'S PLAN + + XX. ON THE DOWNS + + XXI. THE LETTER IS WRITTEN + + XXII. A WAY OUT OF THE TRAP + + XXIII. METHODS FROM FRANCE + + XXIV. THE WITNESS + + XXV. IN THE LIBRARY + + XXVI. TWO STRANGERS + + XXVII. THE VERDICT + + + + +THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +HENRY THRESK + + +The beginning of all this difficult business was a little speech which +Mrs. Thresk fell into a habit of making to her son. She spoke it the +first time on the spur of the moment without thought or intention. But +she saw that it hurt. So she used it again--to keep Henry in his +proper place. + +"You have no right to talk, Henry," she would say in the hard practical +voice which so completed her self-sufficiency. "You are not earning your +living. You are still dependent upon us;" and she would add with a note +of triumph: "Remember, if anything were to happen to your dear father you +would have to shift for yourself, for everything has been left to me." + +Mrs. Thresk meant no harm. She was utterly without imagination and had no +special delicacy of taste to supply its place--that was all. People and +words--she was at pains to interpret neither the one nor the other and +she used both at random. She no more contemplated anything happening to +her husband, to quote her phrase, than she understood the effect her +barbarous little speech would have on a rather reserved schoolboy. + +Nor did Henry himself help to enlighten her. He was shrewd enough to +recognise the futility of any attempt. No! He just looked at her +curiously and held his tongue. But the words were not forgotten. They +roused in him a sense of injustice. For in the ordinary well-to-do +circle, in which the Thresks lived, boys were expected to be an expense +to their parents; and after all, as he argued, he had not asked to be +born. And so after much brooding, there sprang up in him an antagonism to +his family and a fierce determination to owe to it as little as he could. + +There was a full share of vanity no doubt in the boy's resolve, but the +antagonism had struck roots deeper than his vanity; and at an age when +other lads were vaguely dreaming themselves into Admirals and +Field-Marshals and Prime-Ministers Henry Thresk, content with lower +ground, was mapping out the stages of a good but perfectly feasible +career. When he reached the age of thirty he must be beginning to make +money; at thirty-five he must be on the way to distinction--his name must +be known beyond the immediate circle of his profession; at forty-five he +must be holding public office. Nor was his profession in any doubt. There +was but one which offered these rewards to a man starting in life without +money to put down--the Bar. + +So to the Bar in due time Henry Thresk was called; and when something +did happen to his father he was trained for the battle. A bank failed and +the failure ruined and killed old Mr. Thresk. From the ruins just enough +was scraped to keep his widow, and one or two offers of employment were +made to Henry Thresk. + +But he was tenacious as he was secret. He refused them, and with the +help of pupils, journalism and an occasional spell as an election +agent, he managed to keep his head above water until briefs began +slowly to come in. + +So far then Mrs. Thresk's stinging speeches seemed to have been +justified. But at the age of twenty-eight he took a holiday. He went down +for a month into Sussex, and there the ordered scheme of his life was +threatened. It stood the attack; and again it is possible to plead in its +favour with a good show of argument. But the attack, nevertheless, brings +into light another point of view. + +Prudence, for instance, the disputant might urge, is all very well in the +ordinary run of life, but when the great moments come conduct wants +another inspiration. Such an one would consider that holiday with a +thought to spare for Stella Derrick, who during its passage saw much of +Henry Thresk. The actual hour when the test came happened on one of the +last days of August. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ON BIGNOR HILL + + +They were riding along the top of the South Downs between Singleton and +Arundel, and when they came to where the old Roman road from Chichester +climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and halted. She +was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides Henry Thresk, +who on this morning rode at her side. She was delicately yet healthfully +fashioned, with blue eyes under broad brows, raven hair and a face pale +and crystal-clear. But her lips were red and the colour came easily into +her cheeks. + +She pointed downwards to the track slanting across the turf from the brow +of the hill. + +"That's Stane Street. I promised to show it you." + +"Yes," answered Thresk, taking his eyes slowly from her face. It was a +morning rich with sunlight, noisy with blackbirds, and she seemed to him +a necessary part of it. She was alive with it and gave rather than took +of its gold. For not even that finely chiselled nose of hers could impart +to her anything of the look of a statue. + +"Yes. They went straight, didn't they, those old centurions?" he said. + +He moved his horse and stood in the middle of the track looking across a +valley of forest and meadow to Halnaker Down, six miles away in the +southwest. Straight in the line of his eyes over a shoulder of the down +rose a tall fine spire--the spire of Chichester Cathedral, and farther on +he could see the water in Bosham Creek like a silver mirror, and the +Channel rippling silver beyond. He turned round. Beneath him lay the blue +dark weald of Sussex, and through it he imagined the hidden line of the +road driving straight as a ruler to London. + +"No going about!" he said. "If a hill was in the way the road climbed +over it; if a marsh it was built through it." + +They rode on slowly along the great whaleback of grass, winding in and +out amongst brambles and patches of yellow-flaming gorse. The day was +still even at this height; and when, far away, a field of long grass +under a stray wind bent from edge to edge with the swift motion of +running water, it took them both by surprise. And they met no one. They +seemed to ride in the morning of a new clean world. They rose higher on +to Duncton Down, and then the girl spoke. + +"So this is your last day here." + +He gazed about him out towards the sea, eastwards down the slope to the +dark trees of Arundel, backwards over the weald to the high ridge of +Blackdown. + +"I shall look back upon it." + +"Yes," she said. "It's a day to look back upon." + +She ran over in her mind the days of this last month since he had come to +the inn at Great Beeding and friends of her family had written to her +parents of his coming. "It's the most perfect of all your days here. I am +glad. I want you to carry back with you good memories of our Sussex." + +"I shall do that," said he, "but for another reason." + +Stella pushed on a foot or two ahead of him. + +"Well," she said, "no doubt the Temple will be stuffy." + +"Nor was I thinking of the Temple." + +"No?" + +"No." + +She rode on a little way whilst he followed. A great bee buzzed past +their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse beside them +a thrush shot into the air a quiverful of clear melody. + +Stella spoke again, not looking at her companion, and in a low voice and +bravely with a sweet confusion of her blood. + +"I am very glad to hear you say that, for I was afraid that I had let you +see more than I should have cared for you to see--unless you had been +anxious to see it too." + +She waited for an answer, still keeping her distance just a foot or two +ahead, and the answer did not come. A vague terror began to possess her +that things which could never possibly be were actually happening to +her. She spoke again with a tremor in her voice and all the confidence +gone out of it. Almost it appealed that she should not be put to shame +before herself. + +"It would have been a little humiliating to remember, if that had +been true." + +Then upon the ground she saw the shadow of Thresk's horse creep up until +the two rode side by side. She looked at him quickly with a doubtful +wavering smile and looked down again. What did all the trouble in his +face portend? Her heart thumped and she heard him say: + +"Stella, I have something very difficult to say to you." + +He laid a hand gently upon her arm, but she wrenched herself free. Shame +was upon her--shame unendurable. She tingled with it from head to foot. +She turned to him suddenly a face grown crimson and eyes which brimmed +with tears. + +"Oh," she cried aloud, "that I should have been such a fool!" and she +swayed forward in her saddle. But before he could reach out an arm to +hold her she was upright again, and with a cut of her whip she was off +at a gallop. + +"Stella," he cried, but she only used her whip the more. She galloped +madly and blindly over the grass, not knowing whither, not caring, +loathing herself. Thresk galloped after her, but her horse, maddened by +her whip and the thud of the hoofs behind, held its advantage. He settled +down to the pursuit with a jumble of thoughts in his brain. + +"If to-day were only ten years on ... As it is it would be madness ... +madness and squalor and the end of everything ... Between us we +haven't a couple of pennies to rub together ... How she rides! ... She +was never meant for Brixton ... No, nor I ... Why didn't I hold my +tongue? ... Oh what a fool, what a fool! Thank Heaven the horses come +out of a livery stable ... They can't go on for ever and--oh, my God! +there are rabbit-holes on the Downs." And his voice rose to a shout: +"Stella! Stella!" + +But she never looked over her shoulder. She fled the more desperately, +shamed through and through! Along the high ridge, between the bushes and +the beech-trees, their shadows flitted over the turf, to a jingle of bits +and the thunder of hoofs. Duncton Beacon rose far behind them; they had +crossed the road and Charlton forest was slipping past like dark water +before the mad race came to an end. Stella became aware that escape was +impossible. Her horse was spent, she herself reeling. She let her reins +drop loose and the gallop changed to a trot, the trot to a walk. She +noticed with gratitude that Thresk was giving her time. He too had fallen +to a walk behind her, and quite slowly he came to her side. She turned +to him at once. + +"This is good country for a gallop, isn't it?" + +"Rabbit-holes though," said he. "You were lucky." + +He answered absently. There was something which had got to be said now. +He could not let this girl to whom he owed--well, the only holiday that +he had ever taken, go home shamed by a mistake, which after all she had +not made. He was very near indeed to saying yet more. The inclination was +strong in him, but not so strong as the methods of his life. Marriage +now--that meant to his view the closing of all the avenues of +advancement, and a life for both below both their needs. + +"Stella, just listen to me. I want you to know that had things been +different I should have rejoiced beyond words." + +"Oh, don't!" she cried. + +"I must," he answered and she was silent. "I want you to know," he +repeated, stammering and stumbling, afraid lest each word meant to heal +should only pierce the deeper. "Before I came here there was no one. +Since I came here there has been--you. Oh, my dear, I would have been +very glad. But I am obscure--without means. There are years in front of +me before I shall be anything else. I couldn't ask you to share them--or +I should have done so before now." + +In her mind ran the thought: what queer unimportant things men think +about! The early years! Wouldn't their difficulties, their sorrows be the +real savour of life and make it worth remembrance, worth treasuring? But +men had the right of speech. Not again would she forget that. She bowed +her head and he blundered on. + +"For you there'll be a better destiny. There's that great house in the +Park with its burnt walls. I should like to see that rebuilt and you in +your right place, its mistress." And his words ceased as Stella abruptly +turned to him. She was breathing quickly and she looked at him with a +wonder in her trouble. + +"And it hurts you to say this!" she said. "Yes, it actually hurts you." + +"What else could I say?" + +Her face softened as she looked and heard. It was not that he was cold of +blood or did not care. There was more than discomfort in his voice, there +was a very real distress. And in his eyes his heart ached for her to see. +Something of her pride was restored to her. She fell at once to his tune, +but she was conscious that both of them talked treacheries. + +"Yes, you are right. It wouldn't have been possible. You have your name +and your fortune to make. I too--I shall marry, I suppose, some one"--and +she suddenly smiled rather bitterly--"who will give me a Rolls-Royce +motor-car." And so they rode on very reasonably. + +Noon had passed. A hush had fallen upon that high world of grass and +sunlight. The birds were still. They talked of this and that, the +latest crisis in Europe and the growth of Socialism, all very wisely +and with great indifference like well-bred people at a dinner-party. +Not thus had Stella thought to ride home when the message had come that +morning that the horses would be at her door before ten. She had ridden +out clothed on with dreams of gold. She rode back with her dreams in +tatters and a sort of incredulity that to her too, as to other girls, +all this pain had come. + +They came to a bridle-path which led downwards through a thicket of trees +to the weald and so descended upon Great Beeding. They rode through the +little town, past the inn where Thresk was staying and the iron gates of +a Park where, amidst elm-trees, the blackened ruins of a great house +gaped to the sky. + +"Some day you will live there again," said Thresk, and Stella's lips +twitched with a smile of humour. + +"I shall be very glad after to-day to leave the house I am living in," +she said quietly, and the words struck him dumb. He had subtlety enough +to understand her. The rooms would mock her with memories of vain dreams. +Yet he kept silence. It was too late in any case to take back what he had +said; and even if she would listen to him marriage wouldn't be fair. He +would be hampered, and that, just at this time in his life, would mean +failure--failure for her no less than for him. They must be +prudent--prudent and methodical, and so the great prizes would be theirs. + +A mile beyond, a mile of yellow lanes between high hedges, they came to +the village of Little Beeding, one big house and a few thatched cottages +clustered amongst roses and great trees on the bank of a small river. +Thither old Mr. Derrick and his wife and his daughter had gone after the +fire at Hinksey Park had completed the ruin which disastrous speculations +had begun; and at the gate of one of the cottages the riders stopped and +dismounted. + +"I shall not see you again after to-day," said Stella. "Will you come in +for a moment?" + +Thresk gave the horses to a passing labourer to hold and opened the gate. + +"I shall be disturbing your people at their luncheon," he said. + +"I don't want you to go in to them," said the girl. "I will say goodbye +to them for you." + +Thresk followed her up the garden-path, wondering what it was that she +had still to say to him. She led him into a small room at the back of the +house, looking out upon the lawn. Then she stood in front of him. + +"Will you kiss me once, please," she said simply, and she stood with her +arms hanging at her side, whilst he kissed her on the lips. + +"Thank you," she said. "Now will you go?" + +He left her standing in the little room and led the horses back to the +inn. That afternoon he took the train to London. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN BOMBAY + + +It was not until a day late in January eight years afterwards that Thresk +saw the face of Stella Derrick again; and then it was only in a portrait. +He came upon it too in a most unlikely place. About five o'clock +upon that afternoon he drove out of the town of Bombay up to one of the +great houses on Malabar Hill and asked for Mrs. Carruthers. He was shown +into a drawing-room which looked over Back Bay to the great buildings of +the city, and in a moment Mrs. Carruthers came to him with her hands +outstretched. + +"So you've won. My husband telephoned to me. We do thank you! Victory +means so much to us." + +The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had +inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers, +Bombay merchants, had found themselves involved in a partnership +suit due to one or two careless phrases in a solicitor's letter. The case +had been the great case of the year in Bombay. The issue had been +doubtful, the stake enormous and Thresk, who three years before had taken +silk, had been fetched by young Carruthers from England to fight it. + +"Yes, we've won," he said. "Judgment was given in our favor this +afternoon." + +"You are dining with us to-night, aren't you." + +"Thank you, yes," said Thresk. "At half-past eight." + +"Yes." + +Mrs. Carruthers gave him some tea and chattered pleasantly while he drank +it. She was fair-haired and pretty, a lady of enthusiasms and uplifted +hands, quite without observation or knowledge, yet with power to +astonish. For every now and then some little shrewd wise saying would +gleam out of the placid flow of her trivialities and make whoever heard +it wonder for a moment whether it was her own or whether she had heard it +from another. But it was her own. For she gave no special importance to +it as she would have done had it been a remark she had thought worth +remembering. She just uttered it and slipped on, noticing no difference +in value between what she now said and what she had said a second ago. To +her the whole world was a marvel and all things in it equally amazing. +Besides she had no memory. + +"I suppose that now you are free," she said, "you will go up into the +central Provinces and see something of India." + +"But I am not free," replied Thresk. "I must get immediately back to +England." + +"So soon!" exclaimed Mrs. Carruthers. "Now isn't that a pity! You ought +to see the Taj--oh, you really ought!--by moonlight or in the morning. I +don't know which is best, and the Ridge too!--the Ridge at Delhi. You +really mustn't leave India without seeing the Ridge. Can't things wait in +London?" + +"Yes, things can, but people won't," answered Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers +was genuinely distressed that he should depart from India without a +single journey in a train. + +"I can't help it," he said, smiling back into her mournful eyes. "Apart +from my work, Parliament meets early in February." + +"Oh, to be sure, you are in Parliament," she exclaimed. "I had +forgotten." She shook her fair head in wonder at the industry of +her visitor. "I can't think how you manage it all. Oh, you must +need a holiday." + +Thresk laughed. + +"I am thirty-six, so I have a year or two still in front of me before I +have the right to break down. I'll save up my holidays for my old age." + +"But you are not married," cried Mrs. Carruthers. "You can't do that. You +can't grow comfortably old unless you're married. You will want to work +then to get through the time. You had better take your holidays now." + +"Very well. I shall have twelve days upon the steamer. When does it go?" +asked Thresk as he rose from his chair. + +"On Friday, and this is Monday," said Mrs. Carruthers. "You certainly +haven't much time to go anywhere, have you?" + +"No," replied Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers saw his face quicken suddenly +to surprise. He actually caught his breath; he stared, no longer aware of +her presence in the room. He was looking over her head towards the grand +piano which stood behind her chair; and she began to run over in her mind +the various ornaments which encumbered it. A piece of Indian drapery +covered the top and on the drapery stood a little group of Dresden China +figures, a crystal cigarette-box, some knick-knacks and half-a-dozen +photographs in silver frames. It must be one of those photographs, she +decided, which had caught his eye, which had done more than catch his +eye. For she was looking up at Thresk's face all this while, and the +surprise had gone from it. It seemed to her that he was moved. + +"You have the portrait of a friend of mine there," he said, and he +crossed the room to the piano. + +Mrs. Carruthers turned round. + +"Oh, Stella Ballantyne!" she cried. "Do you know her, Mr. Thresk?" + +"Ballantyne?" said Thresk. For a moment or two he was silent. Then he +asked: "She is married then?" + +"Yes, didn't you know? She has been married for a long time." + +"It's a long time since I have heard of her," said Thresk. He looked +again at the photograph. + +"When was this taken?" + +"A few months ago. She sent it to me in October. She is beautiful, don't +you think?" + +"Yes." + +But it was not the beauty of the girl who had ridden along the South +Downs with him eight years ago. There was more of character in the face +now, less, much less, of youth and none of the old gaiety. The open +frankness had gone. The big dark eyes which looked out straight at +Thresk as he stood before them had, even in that likeness, something of +aloofness and reserve. And underneath, in a contrast which seemed to him +startling, there was her name signed in the firm running hand in which +she had written the few notes which passed between them during that +month in Sussex. Thresk looked back again at the photograph and then +resumed his seat. + +"Tell me about her, Mrs. Carruthers," he said. "You hear from her often?" + +"Oh no! Stella doesn't write many letters, and I don't know her +very well." + +"But you have her photograph," said Thresk, "and signed by her." + +"Oh yes. She stayed with me last Christmas, and I simply made her get her +portrait taken. Just think! She hadn't been taken for years. Can you +understand it? She declared she was bored with it. Isn't that curious? +However, I persuaded her and she gave me one. But I had to force her to +write on it." + +"Then she was in Bombay last winter?" said Thresk slowly. + +"Yes." And then Mrs. Carruthers had an idea. + +"Oh," she exclaimed, "if you are really interested in Stella I'll put +Mrs. Repton next to you to-night." + +"Thank you very much," said Thresk. "But who is Mrs. Repton?" + +Mrs. Carruthers sat forward in her chair. + +"Well, she's Stella's great friend--very likely her only real friend in +India. Stella's so reserved. I simply adore her, but she quite prettily +and politely keeps me always at arm's length. If she has ever opened out +to anybody it's to Jane Repton. You see Charlie Repton was Collector at +Agra before he came into the Bombay Presidency, and so they went up to +Mussoorie for the hot weather. The Ballantynes happened actually to have +the very next bungalow--now wasn't that strange?--so naturally they +became acquainted. I mean the Ballantynes and the Reptons did..." + +"But one moment, Mrs. Carruthers," said Thresk, breaking in upon the +torrent of words. "Am I right in guessing that Mrs. Ballantyne lives +in India?" + +"But of course!" cried Mrs. Carruthers. + +"She is actually in India now?" + +"To be sure she is!" + +Thresk was quite taken aback by the news. + +"I had no idea of it," he said slowly, and Mrs. Carruthers replied +sweetly: + +"But lots of people live in India, Mr. Thresk. Didn't you know that? We +are not the uttermost ends of the earth." + +Thresk set to work to make his peace. He had not heard of Mrs. Ballantyne +for so long. It seemed strange to him to find himself suddenly near to +her now--that is if he was near. He just avoided that other exasperating +trick of treating India as if it was a provincial town and all its +inhabitants neighbours. But he only just avoided it. Mrs. Carruthers, +however, was easily appeased. + +"Yes," she said. "Stella has lived in India for the best part of eight +years. She came out with some friends in the winter, made Captain +Ballantyne's acquaintance and married him almost at once--in January, I +think it was. Of course I only know from what I've been told. I was a +schoolgirl in England at the time." + +"Of course," Thresk agreed. He was conscious of a sharp little stab of +resentment. So very quickly Stella had forgotten that morning on the +Downs! It must have been in the autumn of that same year that she had +gone out to India, and by February she was married. The resentment was +quite unjustified, as no one knew better than himself. But he was a man; +and men cannot easily endure so swift an obliteration of their images +from the thoughts and the hearts of the ladies who have admitted that +they loved them. None the less he pressed for details. Who was +Ballantyne? What was his position? After all he was obviously not the +millionaire to whom in a more generous moment he had given Stella. He +caught himself on a descent to the meanness of rejoicing upon that. +Meanwhile Mrs. Carruthers rippled on. + +"Captain Ballantyne? Oh, he's a most remarkable man! Older than +Stella, certainly, but a man of great knowledge and insight. People +think most highly of him. Languages come as easily to him as +crochet-work to a woman." + +This paragon had been Resident in the Principality of Bakuta to the north +of Bombay when Stella had first arrived. But he had been moved now to +Chitipur in Rajputana. It was supposed that he was writing in his leisure +moments a work which would be the very last word upon the native +Principalities of Central India. Oh, Stella was to be congratulated! And +Mrs. Carruthers, in her fine mansion on Malabar Hill, breathed a sigh of +envy at the position of the wife of a high official of the British _Raj_. + +Thresk looked over again to the portrait on the piano. + +"I am very glad," he said cordially as once more he rose. + +"But you shall sit next to Mrs. Repton to-night," said Mrs. Carruthers. +"And she will tell you more." + +"Thank you," answered Thresk. "I only wished to know that things are +going well with Mrs. Ballantyne--that was all." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JANE REPTON + + +Mrs. Carruthers kept her promise. She went in herself with Henry Thresk, +as she had always meant to do, but she placed Mrs. Repton upon his left +just round the bend of the table. Thresk stole a glance at her now and +then as he listened to the rippling laughter of his hostess during the +first courses. She was a tall woman and rather stout, with a pleasant +face and a direct gaze. Thresk gave her the age of thirty-five and put +her down as a cheery soul. Whether she was more he had to wait to learn +with what patience he could. He was free to turn to her at last and he +began without any preliminaries. + +"You know a friend of mine," he said. + +"I do?" + +"Yes." + +"Who is it?" + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +He noticed at once a change in Mrs. Repton. The frankness disappeared +from her face; her eyes grew wary. + +"I see," she said slowly. "I was wondering why I was placed next to you, +for you are the lion of the evening and there are people here of more +importance than myself. I knew it wasn't for my _beaux yeux_." + +She turned again to Thresk. + +"So you know my Stella?" + +"Yes. I knew her in England before she came out here and married. I have +not, of course, seen her since. I want you to tell me about her." + +Mrs. Repton looked him over with a careful scrutiny. + +"Mrs. Carruthers has no doubt told you that she married very well." + +"Yes; and that Ballantyne is a remarkable man," said Thresk. + +Mrs. Repton nodded. + +"Very well then?" she said, and her voice was a challenge. + +"I am not contented," Thresk replied. Mrs. Repton turned her eyes to her +plate and said demurely: + +"There might be more than one reason for that." + +Thresk abandoned all attempt to fence with her. Mrs. Repton was not of +those women who would lightly give their women-friends away. Her phrase +"my Stella" had, besides, revealed a world of love and championship. +Thresk warmed to her because of it. He threw reticence to the winds. + +"I am going to give you the real reason, Mrs. Repton. I saw her +photograph this afternoon on Mrs. Carruthers' piano, and it left me +wondering whether happiness could set so much character in a +woman's face." + +Mrs. Repton shrugged her shoulders. + +"Some of us age quickly here." + +"Age was not the new thing which I read in that photograph." + +Mrs. Repton did not answer. Only her eyes sounded him. She seemed to be +judging the stuff of which he was made. + +"And if I doubted her happiness this afternoon I must doubt it still more +now," he continued. + +"Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Repton. + +"Because of your reticence, Mrs. Repton," he answered. "For you have been +reticent. You have been on guard. I like you for it," he added with a +smile of genuine friendliness. "May I say that? But from the first moment +when I mentioned Stella Ballantyne's name you shouldered your musket." + +Mrs. Repton neither denied nor accepted his statement. She kept looking +at him and away from him as though she were still not sure of him, and at +times she drew in her breath sharply, as though she had already taken +upon herself some great responsibility and now regretted it. In the end +she turned to him abruptly. + +"I am puzzled," she cried. "I think it's strange that since you are +Stella's friend I knew nothing of that friendship--nothing whatever." + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is years since we met, as I told you. She has new interests." + +"They have not destroyed the old ones. We remember home things out here, +all of us. Stella like the rest. Why, I thought that I knew her whole +life in England, and here's a definite part of it--perhaps a very +important part--of which I am utterly ignorant. She has spoken of many +friends to me; of you never. I am wondering why." + +She spoke obviously without any wish to hurt. Yet the words did hurt. She +saw Thresk redden as she uttered them, and a swift wild hope flamed like +a rose in her heart: if this man with the brains and the money and the +perseverance sitting at her side should turn out to be the Perseus for +her beautiful chained Andromeda, far away there in the state of Chitipur! +The lines of a poem came into her thoughts. + +"I know; the world proscribes not love, +Allows my finger to caress +Your lips' contour and downiness +Provided it supplies the glove." + +Suppose that here at her side was the man who would dispense with the +glove! She looked again at Thresk. The lean strong face suggested that he +might, if he wanted hard enough. All her life had been passed in the +support of authority and law. Authority--that was her husband's +profession. But just for this hour, as she thought of Stella Ballantyne, +lawlessness shone out to her desirable as a star. + +"No, she has never once mentioned your name, Mr. Thresk." + +Again Thresk was conscious of the little pulse of resentment beating at +his heart. + +"She has no doubt forgotten me." + +Mrs. Repton shook her head. + +"That's one explanation. There might be another." + +"What is it?" + +"That she remembers you too much." + +Mrs. Repton was a little startled by her own audacity, but it provoked +nothing but an incredulous laugh from her companion. + +"I am afraid that's not very likely," he said. There was no hint of +elation in his voice nor any annoyance. If he felt either, why, he was on +guard no less than she. Mrs. Repton was inclined to throw up her hands in +despair. She was baffled and she was little likely, as she knew, to get +any light. + +"If you take the man you know best of all," she used to say, "you still +know nothing at all of what he's like when he's alone with a woman, +especially if it's a woman for whom he cares--unless the woman talks." + +Very often the woman does talk and the most intimate and private facts +come in a little while to be shouted from the housetops. But Stella +Ballantyne did not talk. She had talked once, and once only, under a +great stress to Jane Repton; but even then Thresk had nothing to do with +her story at all. + +Thresk turned quickly towards her. + +"In a moment Mrs. Carruthers will get up. Her eyes are collecting +the women and the women are collecting their shoes. What have you +to tell me?" + +Mrs. Repton wanted to speak. Thresk gave her confidence. He seemed to be +a man without many illusions, he was no romantic sentimentalist. She went +back to the poem of which the lines had been chasing one another through +her head all through this dinner, as a sort of accompaniment to their +conversation. Had he found it out? she asked herself-- + +"The world and what it fears." + +Thus she hung hesitating while Mrs. Carruthers gathered in her hands her +gloves and her fan. There was a woman at the other end of the table +however who would not stop talking. She was in the midst of some story +and heeded not the signals of her hostess. Jane Repton wished she would +go on talking for the rest of the evening, and recognised that the wish +was a waste of time and grew flurried. She had to make up her mind to say +something which should be true or to lie. Yet she was too staunch to +betray the confidence of her friend unless the betrayal meant her +friend's salvation. But just as the woman at the end of the table ceased +to talk an inspiration came to her. She would say nothing to Thresk, but +if he had eyes to see she would place him where the view was good. + +"I have this to say," she answered in a low quick voice. "Go yourself to +Chitipur. You sail on Friday, I think? And to-day is Monday. You can make +the journey there and back quite easily in the time." + +"I can?" asked Thresk. + +"Yes. Travel by the night-mail up to Ajmere tomorrow night. You will be +in Chitipur on Wednesday afternoon. That gives you twenty-four hours +there, and you can still catch the steamer here on Friday." + +"You advise that?" + +"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Repton. + +Mrs. Carruthers rose from the table and Jane Repton had no further word +with Thresk that night. In the drawing-room Mrs. Carruthers led him from +woman to woman, allowing him ten minutes for each one. + +"He might be Royalty or her pet Pekingese," cried Mrs. Repton in +exasperation. For now that her blood had cooled she was not so sure that +her advice had been good. The habit of respect for authority resumed its +ancient place in her. She might be planting that night the seed of a very +evil flower. "Respectability" had seemed to her a magnificent poem as she +sat at the dinner-table. Here in the drawing-room she began to think that +it was not for every-day use. She wished a word now with Thresk, so that +she might make light of the advice which she had given. "I had no +business to interfere," she kept repeating to herself whilst she talked +with her host. "People get what they want if they want it enough, but +they can't control the price they have to pay. Therefore it was no +business of mine to interfere." + +But Thresk took his leave and gave her no chance for a private word. She +drove homewards a few minutes later with her husband; and as they +descended the hill to the shore of Back Bay he said: + +"I had a moment's conversation with Thresk after you had left the +dining-room, and what do you think?" + +"Tell me!" + +"He asked me for a letter of introduction to Ballantyne at Chitipur." + +"But he knows Stella!" exclaimed Jane Repton. + +"Does he? He didn't tell me that! He simply said that he had time to see +Chitipur before he sailed and asked for a line to the Resident." + +"And you promised to give him one?" + +"Of course. I am to send it to the Taj Mahal hotel to-morrow morning." + +Mrs. Repton was a little startled. She did not understand at all why +Thresk asked for the letter and, not understanding, was the more alarmed. +The request seemed to imply not merely that he had decided to make the +journey but that during the hour or so since they had sat at the +dinner-table he had formed some definite and serious plan. + +"Did you tell him anything?" she asked rather timidly. + +"Not a word," replied Repton. + +"Not even about--what happened in the hills at Mussoorie?" + +"Of course not." + +"No, of course not," Jane Repton agreed. + +She leaned back against the cushions of the victoria. A clear dark sky of +stars wonderfully bright stretched above her head. After the hot day a +cool wind blew pleasantly on the hill, and between the trees of the +gardens she could see the lights of the city and of a ship here and there +in the Bay at their feet. + +"But it's not very likely that Thresk will find them at Chitipur," said +Repton. "They will probably be in camp." + +Mrs. Repton sat forward. + +"Yes, that's true. This is the time they go on their tour of inspection. +He will miss them." And at once disappointment laid hold of her. Mrs. +Repton was not in the mood for logic that evening. She had been afraid a +moment since that the train she had laid would bring about a +conflagration. Now that she knew it would not even catch fire she passed +at once to a passionate regret. Thresk had inspired her with a great +confidence. He was the man, she believed, for her Stella. But he was +going up to Chitipur! Anything might happen! She leaned back again in the +carriage and cried defiantly to the stars. + +"I am glad that he's going. I am very glad." And in spite of her +conscience her heart leaped joyously in her bosom. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE QUEST + + +The next night Henry Thresk left Bombay and on the Wednesday afternoon he +was travelling in a little white narrow-gauge train across a flat yellow +desert which baked and sparkled in the sun. Here and there a patch of +green and a few huts marked a railway station and at each gaily-robed +natives sprung apparently from nowhere and going no-whither thronged the +platform and climbed into the carriages. Thresk looked impatiently +through the clouded windows, wondering what he should find in Chitipur if +ever he got there. The capital of that state lies aloof from the trunk +roads and is reached by a branch railway sixty miles long, which is the +private possession of the Maharajah and takes four hours to traverse. For +in Chitipur the ancient ways are devoutly followed. Modern ideas of speed +and progress may whirl up the big central railroad from Bombay to Ajmere. +But they stop at the junction. They do not travel along the Maharajah's +private lines to Chitipur, where he, directly descended from an important +and most authentic goddess, dispenses life and justice to his subjects +without even the assistance of the Press. There is little criticism in +the city and less work. A patriarchal calm sleeps in all its streets. In +Chitipur it is always Sunday afternoon. Even down by the lake, where the +huge white many-storeyed palace contemplates its dark-latticed windows +and high balconies mirrored in still water unimaginably blue nothing +which could be described as energy is visible. You may see an elephant +kneeling placidly in the lake while an attendant polishes up his trunk +and his forehead with a brickbat. But the elephant will be too +well-mannered to trumpet his enjoyment. Or you may notice a fisherman +drowsing in a boat heavy enough to cope with the surf of the Atlantic. +But the fisherman will not notice you--not even though you call to him +with dulcet promises of rupees. You will, if you wait long enough, see a +woman coming down the steps with a pitcher balanced on her head; and +indeed perhaps two women. But when your eyes have dwelt upon these +wonders you will have seen what there is of movement and life about the +shores of those sleeping waters. It was in accordance with the fitness of +things that the city and its lake should be three miles from the railway +station and quite invisible to the traveller. The hotel however and the +Residency were near to the station, and it was the Residency which had +brought Thresk out of the crowds and tumult of Bombay. He put up at the +hotel and enclosing Repton's introduction in a covering letter sent it by +his bearer down the road. Then he waited; and no answer came. + +Finally he asked if his bearer had returned. Quite half an hour he was +told, and the man was sent for. + +"Well? You delivered my letter?" said Thresk. + +"Yes, Sahib." + +"And there was no answer?" + +"No. No answer, Sahib," replied the man cheerfully. + +"Very well." + +He waited yet another hour, and since still no acknowledgment had come he +strolled along the road himself. He came to a large white house. A +flagpost tapered from its roof but no flag blew out its folds. There was +a garden about the house, the trim well-ordered garden of the English +folk with a lawn and banks of flowers, and a gardener with a hose was +busy watering it. Thresk stopped before the hedge. The windows were all +shuttered, the big door closed: there was nowhere any sign of the +inhabitants. + +Thresk turned and walked back to the hotel. He found the bearer laying +out a change of clothes for him upon his bed. + +"His Excellency is away," he said. + +"Yes, Sahib," replied the bearer promptly. "His Excellency gone on +inspection tour." + +"Then why in heaven's name didn't you tell me?" cried Thresk. + +The bearer's face lost all its cheerfulness in a second and became a +mask. He was a Madrassee and black as coal. To Thresk it seemed that the +man had suddenly withdrawn himself altogether and left merely an image +with living eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that change in his +servant. It came at the first note of reproach in his voice and with such +completeness that it gave him the shock of a conjurer's trick. One moment +the bearer was before him, the next he had disappeared. + +"What did you do with the letter?" Thresk asked and was careful that +there should be no exasperation in his voice. + +The bearer came to life again, his white teeth gleamed in smiles. + +"I leave the letter. I give it to the gardener. All letters are sent to +his Excellency." + +"When?" + +"Perhaps this week, perhaps next." + +"I see," said Thresk. He stood for a moment or two with his eyes upon the +window. Then he moved abruptly. + +"We go back to Bombay to-morrow afternoon." + +"The Sahib will see Chitipur to-morrow. There are beautiful palaces on +the lake." + +Thresk laughed, but the laugh was short and bitter. + +"Oh yes, we'll do the whole thing in style to-morrow." + +He had the tone of a man who has caught himself out in some childish act +of folly. He seemed at once angry and ashamed. + +None the less he was the next morning the complete tourist doing India +at express speed during a cold weather. He visited the Museum, he walked +through the Elephant Gate into the bazaar, he was rowed over the lake to +the island palaces; he admired their marble steps and columns and floors +and was confounded by their tinkling blue glass chandeliers. He did the +correct thing all through that morning and early in the afternoon climbed +into the little train which was to carry him back to Jarwhal Junction and +the night mail to Bombay. + +"You will have five hours to wait at the junction, Mr. Thresk," said the +manager of the hotel, who had come to see him off. "I have put up some +dinner for you and there is a dâk-bungalow where you can eat it." + +"Thank you," said Thresk, and the train moved off. The sun had set before +he reached the junction. When he stepped out on to the platform twilight +had come--the swift twilight of the East. Before he had reached the +dâk-bungalow the twilight had changed to the splendour of an Indian +night. The bungalow was empty of visitors. Thresk's bearer lit a fire and +prepared dinner while Thresk wandered outside the door and smoked. He +looked across a plain to a long high ridge, where once a city had +struggled. Its deserted towers and crumbling walls still crowned the +height and made a habitation for beasts and birds. But they were quite +hidden now and the sharp line of the ridge was softened. Halfway between +the old city and the bungalow a cluster of bright lights shone upon the +plain and the red tongues of a fire flickered in the open. Thresk was in +no hurry to go back to the bungalow. The first chill of the darkness had +gone. The night was cool but not cold; a moon had risen, and that dusty +plain had become a place of glamour. From somewhere far away came the +sound of a single drum. Thresk garnered up in his thoughts the beauty of +that night. It was to be his last night in India. By this time to-morrow +Bombay would have sunk below the rim of the sea. He thought of it with +regret. He had come up into Rajputana on a definite quest and on the +advice of a woman whose judgment he was inclined to trust. And his quest +had failed. He was to see for himself. He would see nothing. And still +far away the beating of that drum went on--monotonous, mournful, +significant--the real call of the East made audible. Thresk leaned +forward on his seat, listening, treasuring the sound. He rose reluctantly +when his bearer came to tell him that dinner was ready. Thresk took a +look round. He pointed to the cluster of lights on the plain. + +"Is that a village?" he asked. + +"No, Sahib," replied the bearer. "That's his Excellency's camp." + +"What!" cried Thresk, swinging round upon his heel. + +His bearer smiled cheerfully. + +"Yes. His Excellency to whom I carried the Sahib's letter. That's his +camp for to-night. The keeper of the bungalow told me so. His Excellency +camped here yesterday and goes on to-morrow." + +"And you never told me!" exclaimed Thresk, and he checked himself. He +stood wondering what he should do, when there came suddenly out of the +darkness a queer soft scuffling sound, the like of which he had never +heard. He heard a heavy breathing and a bubbling noise and then into +the fan of light which spread from the window of the bungalow a man in +a scarlet livery rode on a camel. The camel knelt; its rider +dismounted, and as he dismounted he talked to Thresk's bearer. +Something passed from hand to hand and the bearer came back to Thresk +with a letter in his hand. + +"A chit from his Excellency." + +Thresk tore open the envelope and found within it an invitation to +dinner, signed "Stephen Ballantyne." + +"Your letter has reached me this moment," the note ran. "It came by your +train. I am glad not to have missed you altogether and I hope that you +will come to-night. The camel will bring you to the camp and take you +back in plenty of time for the mail." + +After all then the quest had not failed. After all he was to see for +himself--what a man could see within two hours, of the inner life of a +married couple. Not very much certainly, but a hint perhaps, some token +which would reveal to him what it was that had written so much +character into Stella Ballantyne's face and driven Jane Repton into +warnings and reserve. + +"I will go at once," said Thresk and his bearer translated the words to +the camel-driver. + +But even so Thresk stayed to look again at the letter. Its handwriting at +the first glance, when the unexpected words were dancing before his eyes, +had arrested his attention; it was so small, so delicately clear. +Thresk's experience had made him quick to notice details and slow to +infer from them. Yet this handwriting set him wondering. It might have +been the work of some fastidious woman or of some leisured scholar; so +much pride of penmanship was there. It certainly agreed with no picture +of Stephen Ballantyne which his imagination had drawn. + +He mounted the camel behind the driver, and for the next few minutes all +his questions and perplexities vanished from his mind. He simply clung to +the waist of the driver. For the camel bumped down into steep ditches and +scuffled up out of them, climbed over mounds and slid down the further +side of them, and all the while Thresk had the sensation of being poised +uncertainly in the air as high as a church-steeple. Suddenly however the +lights of the camp grew large and the camel padded silently in between +the tents. It was halted some twenty yards from a great marquee. Another +servant robed in white with a scarlet sash about his waist received +Thresk from the camel-driver. + +He spoke a few words in Hindustani, but Thresk shook his head. Then the +man moved towards the marquee and Thresk followed him. He was conscious +of a curious excitement, and only when he caught his breath was he aware +that his heart was beating fast. As they neared the tent he heard voices +within. They grew louder as he reached it--one was a man's, loud, +wrathful, the other was a woman's. It was not raised but it had a ring in +it of defiance. The words Thresk could not hear, but he knew the woman's +voice. The servant raised the flap of the tent. + +"Huzoor, the Sahib is here," he said, and at once both the voices were +stilled. As Thresk stood in the doorway both the man and the woman +turned. The man, with a little confusion in his manner, came quickly +towards him. Over his shoulder Thresk saw Stella Ballantyne staring at +him, as if he had risen from the grave. Then, as he took Ballantyne's +extended hand, Stella swiftly raised her hand to her throat with a +curious gesture and turned away. It seemed as if now that she was sure +that Thresk stood there before her, a living presence, she had something +to hide from him. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN THE TENT AT CHITIPTUR + + +The marquee was large and high. It had a thick lining of a dull red +colour and a carpet covered the floor; cushioned basket chairs and a few +small tables stood here and there; against one wall rose an open +escritoire with a box of cheroots upon it; the two passages to the +sleeping-tents and the kitchen were hidden by grass-screens and between +them stood a great Chesterfield sofa. It was, in a word, the tent of +people who were accustomed to make their home in it for weeks at a time. +Even the latest books were to be seen. But it was dark. + +A single lamp swinging above the round dinner-table from the cross-pole +of the roof burnt in the very centre of the tent; and that was all. The +corners were shadowy; the lining merely absorbed the rays and gave none +back. The round pool of light which spread out beneath the lamp was +behind Ballantyne when he turned to the doorway, so Thresk for a moment +was only aware of him as a big heavily-built man in a smoking-jacket and +a starched white shirt; and it was to that starched white shirt that he +spoke, making his apologies. He was glad too to delay for a second or +two the moment when he must speak to Stella. In her presence this eight +long years of effort and work had become a very little space. + +"I had to come as I was, Captain Ballantyne," he said, "for I have only +with me what I want for the night in the train." + +"Of course. That's all right," Ballantyne replied with a great +cordiality. He turned towards Stella. "Mr. Thresk, this is my wife." + +Now she had to turn. She held out her right hand but she still covered +her throat with her left. She gave no sign of recognition and she did not +look at her visitor. + +"How do you do, Mr. Thresk?" she said, and went on quickly, allowing him +no time for a reply. "We are in camp, you see. You must just take us as +we are. Stephen did not tell me till a minute ago that he expected a +visitor. You have not too much time. I will see that dinner is served at +once." She went quickly to one of the grass-screens and lifting it +vanished from his view. It seemed to Thresk that she had just seized upon +an excuse to get away. Why? he asked himself. She was nervous and +distressed, and in her distress she had accepted without surprise +Thresk's introduction to her as a stranger. To that relationship then he +and she were bound for the rest of his stay in the Resident's camp. + +Mrs. Repton had been wrong when she had attributed Thresk's request for +a formal introduction to Ballantyne to a plan already matured in his +mind. He had no plan, although he formed one before that dinner was at an +end. He had asked for the letter because he wished faithfully to follow +her advice and see for himself. If he called upon Stella he would find +her alone; the mere sending in of his name would put her on her guard; he +would see nothing. She would take care of that. He had no wish to make +Ballantyne's acquaintance as Mrs. Ballantyne's friend. He could claim +that friendship afterwards. Now however Stella herself in her confusion +had made the claim impossible. She had fled--there was no other word +which could truthfully describe her swift movement to the screen. + +Ballantyne however had clearly not been surprised by it. + +"It was a piece of luck for me that I camped here yesterday and +telegraphed for my letters," he said. "You mentioned in your note that +you had only twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur, didn't you? So I was +sure that you would be upon this train." + +He spoke with a slow precision in a voice which he was careful--or so it +struck Thresk--to keep suave and low; and as he spoke he moved towards +the dinner-table and came within the round pool of light. Thresk had a +clear view of him. He was a man of a gross and powerful face, with a +blue heavy chin and thick eyelids over bloodshot eyes. + +"Will you have a cocktail?" he asked, and he called aloud, going to the +second passage from the tent: "Quai hai! Baram Singh, cocktails!" + +The servant who had met Thresk at the door came in upon the instant with +a couple of cocktails on a tray. + +"Ah, you have them," he said. "Good!" + +But he refused the glass when the tray was held out to him, refused it +after a long look and with a certain violence. + +"For me? Certainly not! Never in this world." He looked up at Thresk +with a laugh. "Cocktails are all very well for you, Mr. Thresk, who are +here during a cold weather, but we who make our homes here--we have to +be careful." + +"Yes, so I suppose," said Thresk. But just behind Ballantyne, on a +sideboard against the wall of the tent opposite to that wall where the +writing-table stood, he noticed a syphon of soda, a decanter of whisky +and a long glass which was not quite empty. He looked at Ballantyne +curiously and as he looked he saw him start and stare with wide-opened +eyes into the dim corners of the tent. Ballantyne had forgotten Thresk's +presence. He stood there, his body rigid, his mouth half-open and fear +looking out from his eyes and every line in his face--stark paralysing +fear. Then he saw Thresk staring at him, but he was too sunk in terror +to resent the stare. + +"Did you hear anything?" he said in a whisper. + +"No." + +"I did," and he leaned his head on one side. For a moment the two men +stood holding their breath; and then Thresk did hear something. It was +the rustle of a dress in the corridor beyond the mat-screen. + +"It's Mrs. Ballantyne," he said, and she lifted the screen and came in. + +Thresk just noticed a sharp movement of revulsion in Ballantyne, but he +paid no heed to him. His eyes were riveted on Stella Ballantyne. She was +wearing about her throat now a turquoise necklace. It was a heavy +necklace of Indian make, rather barbaric and not at all beautiful, but it +had many rows of stones and it hid her throat--just as surely as her hand +had hidden it when she first saw Thresk. It was to hide her throat that +she had fled. He saw Ballantyne go up to his wife, he heard his voice and +noticed that her face grew grave and hard. + +"So you have come to your senses," he said in a low tone. Stella passed +him and did not answer. It was, then, upon the question of that necklace +that their voices had been raised when he reached the camp. He had heard +Ballantyne's, loud and dominant, the voice of a bully. He had been +ordering her to cover her throat. Stella, on the other hand, had been +quiet but defiant. She had refused. Now she had changed her mind. + +Baram Singh brought in the soup-tureen a second afterwards and Ballantyne +raised his hands in a simulation of the profoundest astonishment. + +"Why, dinner's actually punctual! What a miracle! Upon my word, Stella, I +shan't know what to expect next if you spoil me in this way." + +"It's usually punctual, Stephen," Stella replied with a smile of anxiety +and appeal. + +"Is it, my dear? I hadn't noticed it. Let us sit down at once." + +Upon this tone of banter the dinner began; and no doubt in another man's +mouth it might have sounded good-humoured enough. There was certainly no +word as yet which, it could be definitely said, was meant to wound, but +underneath the raillery Thresk was conscious of a rasp, a bitterness just +held in check through the presence of a stranger. Not that Thresk was +spared his share of it. At the very outset he, the guest whom it was such +a rare piece of good fortune for Ballantyne to meet, came in for a taste +of the whip. + +"So you could actually give four-and-twenty hours to Chitipur, Mr. +Thresk. That was most kind and considerate of you. Chitipur is grateful. +Let us drink to it! By the way what will you drink? Our cellar is rather +limited in camp. There's some claret and some whisky-and-soda." + +"Whisky-and-soda for me, please," said Thresk. + +"And for me too. You take claret, don't you, Stella dear?" and he +lingered upon the "dear" as though he anticipated getting a great deal of +amusement out of her later on. And so she understood him, for there came +a look of trouble into her face and she made a little gesture of +helplessness. Thresk watched and said nothing. + +"The decanter's in front of you, Stella," continued Ballantyne. He turned +his attention to his own tumbler, into which Baram Singh had already +poured the whisky; and at once he exclaimed indignantly: + +"There's much too much here for me! Good heavens, what next!" and in +Hindustani he ordered Baram Singh to add to the soda-water. Then he +turned again to Thresk. "But I've no doubt you exhausted Chitipur in your +twenty-four hours, didn't you? Of course you are going to write a book." + +"Write a book!" cried Thresk. He was surprised into a laugh. "Not I." + +Ballantyne leaned forward with a most serious and puzzled face. + +"You're not writing a book about India? God bless my soul! D'you hear +that, Stella? He's actually twenty-four hours in Chitipur and he's not +going to write a book about it." + +"Six weeks from door to door: or how I made an ass of myself in India," +said Thresk. "No thank you!" + +Ballantyne laughed, took a gulp of his whisky-and-soda and put the glass +down again with a wry face. + +"This is too strong for me," he said, and he rose from his chair and +crossed over to the tantalus upon the sideboard. He gave a cautious look +towards the table, but Thresk had bent forward towards Stella. She was +saying in a low voice: + +"You don't mind a little chaff, do you?" and with an appeal so wistful +that it touched Thresk to the heart. + +"Of course not," he answered, and he looked up towards Ballantyne. Stella +noticed a change come over his face. It was not surprise so much which +showed there as interest and a confirmation of some suspicion which he +already had. He saw that Ballantyne was secretly pouring into his glass +not soda-water at all but whisky from the tantalus. He came back with the +tumbler charged to the brim and drank deeply from it with relish. + +"That's better," he said, and with a grin he turned his attention to his +wife, fixing her with his eyes, gloating over her like some great snake +over a bird trembling on the floor of its cage. The courses followed one +upon the other and while he ate he baited her for his amusement. She took +refuge in silence but he forced her to talk and then shivered with +ridicule everything she said. Stella was cowed by him. If she answered it +was probably some small commonplace which with an exaggerated politeness +he would nag at her to repeat. In the end, with her cheeks on fire, she +would repeat it and bend her head under the brutal sarcasm with which it +was torn to rags. Once or twice Thresk was on the point of springing up +in her defence, but she looked at him with so much terror in her eyes +that he did not interfere. He sat and watched and meanwhile his plan +began to take shape in his mind. + +There came an interval of silence during which Ballantyne leaned back in +his chair in a sort of stupor; and in the midst of that silence Stella +suddenly exclaimed with a world of longing in her voice: + +"And you'll be in England in thirteen days! To think of it!" She glanced +round the tent. It seemed incredible that any one could be so fortunate. + +"You go straight from Jarwhal Junction here at our tent door to Bombay. +To-morrow you go on board your ship and in twelve days afterwards you'll +be in England." + +Thresk leaned forward across the table. + +"When did you go home last?" he asked. + +"I have never been home since I married." + +"Never!" exclaimed Thresk. + +Stella shook her head. + +"Never." + +She was looking down at the tablecloth while she spoke, but as she +finished she raised her head. + +"Yes, I have been eight years in India," she added, and Thresk saw the +tears suddenly glisten in her eyes. He had come up to Chitipur +reproaching himself for that morning on the South Downs, a morning so +distant, so aloof from all the surroundings in which he found himself +that it seemed to belong to an earlier life. But his reproaches became +doubly poignant now. She had been eight years in India, tied to this +brute! But Stella Ballantyne mastered herself with a laugh. + +"However I am not alone in that," she said lightly. "And how's London?" + +It was unfortunate that just at this moment Captain Ballantyne woke up. + +"Eh what!" he exclaimed in a mock surprise. "You were talking, Stella, +were you? It must have been something extraordinarily interesting that +you were saying. Do let me hear it." + +At once Stella shrank. Her spirit was so cowed that she almost had the +look of a stupid person; she became stupid in sheer terror of her +husband's railleries. + +"It wasn't of any importance." + +"Oh, my dear," said Ballantyne with a sneer, "you do yourself an +injustice," and then his voice grew harsh, his face brutal. "What was +it?" he demanded. + +Stella looked this way and that, like an animal in a trap. Then she +caught sight of Thresk's face over against her. Her eyes appealed to him +for silence; she turned quickly to her husband. + +"I only said how's London?" + +A smile spread over Ballantyne's face. + +"Now did you say that? How's London! Now why did you ask how London was? +How should London be? What sort of an answer did you expect?" + +"I didn't expect any answer," replied Stella. "Of course the question +sounds stupid if you drag it out and worry it." + +Ballantyne snorted contemptuously. + +"How's London? Try again, Stella!" + +Thresk had come to the limit of his patience. In spite of Stella's appeal +he interrupted and interrupted sharply. + +"It doesn't seem to me an unnatural question for any woman to ask who has +not seen London for eight years. After all, say what you like, for women +India means exile--real exile." + +Ballantyne turned upon his visitor with some rejoinder on his tongue. +But he thought better of it. He looked away and contented himself +with a laugh. + +"Yes," said Stella, "we need next-door neighbours." + +The restraint which Ballantyne showed towards Thresk only served to +inflame him against his wife. + +"So that you may pull their gowns to pieces and unpick their characters," +he said. "Never mind, Stella! The time'll come when we shall settle down +to domestic bliss at Camberley on twopence-halfpenny a year. That'll be +jolly, won't it? Long walks over the heather and quiet evenings--alone +with me. You must look forward to that, my dear." His voice rose to a +veritable menace as he sketched the future which awaited them and then +sank again. + +"How's London!" he growled, harping scornfully on the unfortunate phrase. +Ballantyne had had luck that night. He had chanced upon two of the +banalities of ordinary talk which give an easy occasion for the bully. +Thresk's twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur provided the best opening. +Only Thresk was a guest--not that that in Ballantyne's present mood would +have mattered a great deal, but he was a guest whom Ballantyne had it in +his mind to use. All the more keenly therefore he pounced upon Stella. +But in pouncing he gave Thresk a glimpse into the real man that he was, a +glimpse which the barrister was quick to appreciate. + +"How's London? A lot of London we shall be able to afford! God! what a +life there's in store for us! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, dinner, +breakfast, lunch--all among the next-door neighbours." And upon that he +flung himself back in his chair and reached out his arms. + +"Give me Rajputana!" he cried, and even through the thickness of his +utterance his sincerity rang clear as a bell. "You can stretch yourself +here. The cities! Live in the cities and you can only wear yourself out +hankering to do what you like. Here you can do it. Do you see that, Mr. +Thresk? You can do it." And he thumped the table with his hand. + +"I like getting away into camp for two months, three months at a +time--on the plain, in the jungle, alone. That's the point--alone. You've +got it all then. You're a king without a Press. No one to spy on you--no +one to carry tales--no next-door neighbours. How's London?" and with a +sneer he turned back to his wife. "Oh, I know it doesn't suit Stella. +Stella's so sociable. Stella wants parties. Stella likes frocks. Stella +loves to hang herself about with beads, don't you, my darling?" + +But Ballantyne had overtried her to-night. Her face suddenly flushed and +with a swift and violent gesture she tore at the necklace round her +throat. The clasp broke, the beads fell with a clatter upon her plate, +leaving her throat bare. For a moment Ballantyne stared at her, unable to +believe his eyes. So many times he had made her the butt of his savage +humour and she had offered no reply. Now she actually dared him! + +"Why did you do that?" he asked, pushing his face close to hers. But he +could not stare her down. She looked him in the face steadily. Even her +lips did not tremble. + +"You told me to wear them. I wore them. You jeer at me for wearing them. +I take them off." + +And as she sat there with her head erect Thresk knew why he had bidden +her to wear them. There were bruises upon her throat--upon each side of +her throat--the sort of bruises which would be made by the grip of a +man's fingers. "Good God!" he cried, and before he could speak another +word Stella's moment of defiance passed. She suddenly covered her face +with her hands and burst into tears. + +Ballantyne pushed back his chair sulkily. Thresk sprang to his feet. But +Stella held him off with a gesture of her hand. + +"It's nothing," she said between her sobs. "I am foolish. These last few +days have been hot, haven't they?" She smiled wanly, checking her tears. +"There's no reason at all," and she got up from her chair. "I think I'll +leave you for a little while. My head aches and--and--I've no doubt I +have got a red nose now." + +She took a step or two towards the passage into her private tent +but stopped. + +"I _can_ leave you to get along together alone, can't I?" she said with +her eyes on Thresk. "You know what women are, don't you? Stephen will +tell you interesting things about Rajputana if you can get him to talk. +I shall see you before you go," and she lifted the screen and went out +of the room. In the darkness of the passage she stood silent for a +moment to steady herself and while she stood there, in spite of her +efforts, her tears burst forth again uncontrollably. She clasped her +hands tightly over her mouth so that the sound of her sobbing might not +reach to the table in the centre of the big marquee; and with her lips +whispering in all sincerity the vain wish that she were dead she +stumbled along the corridor. + +But the sound had reached into the big marquee and coming after the +silence it wrung Thresk's heart. He knew this of her at all events--that +she did not easily cry. Ballantyne touched him on the arm. + +"You blame me for this." + +"I don't know that I do," answered Thresk slowly. He was wondering how +much share in the blame he had himself, he who had ridden with her on the +Downs eight years ago and had let her speak and had not answered. He sat +in this tent to-night with shame burning at his heart. "It wasn't as if I +had no confidence in myself," he argued, unable quite to cast back to the +Thresk of those early days. "I had--heaps of it." + +Ballantyne lifted himself out of his chair and lurched over to the +sideboard. Thresk, watching him, fell to wondering why in the world +Stella had married him or he her. He knew that a blind man may see such +mysteries on any day and that a wise one will not try to explain them. +Still he wondered. Had the man's reputation dazzled her?--for undoubtedly +he had one; or was it that intellect which suffered an eclipse when +Ballantyne went into camp with nobody to carry tales? + +He was still pondering on that problem when Ballantyne swung back to the +table and set himself to prove, drunk though he was, that his reputation +was not ill-founded. + +"I am afraid Stella's not very well," he said, sitting heavily down. +"But she asked me to tell you things, didn't she? Well, her wishes are my +law. So here goes." + +His manner altogether changed now that they were alone. He became +confidential, intimate, friendly. He was drunk. He was a coarse +heavy-featured man with bloodshot eyes; he interrupted his conversation +with uneasy glances into the corners of the tent, such glances as Thresk +had noticed when he was alone with him before they sat down to dinner; +but he managed none the less to talk of Rajputana with a knowledge which +amazed Thresk now and would have enthralled him at another time. A +visitor may see the surface of Rajputana much as Thresk had done, may +admire its marble palaces, its blue lakes and the great yellow stretches +of its desert, but to know anything of the life underneath in that +strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years +fly the British flag over the Agencies. Nevertheless Ballantyne +knew--very little as he acknowledged but more than his fellows. And +groping drunkenly in his mind he drew out now this queer intrigue, now +that fateful piece of history, now the story of some savage punishment +wreaked behind the latticed windows, and laid them one after another +before Thresk's eyes--his peace-offerings. And Thresk listened. But +before his eyes stood the picture of Stella Ballantyne standing alone in +the dark corridor beyond the grass-screen whispering with wild lips her +wish that she was dead; and in his ears was the sound of her sobbing. +Here, it seemed, was another story to add to the annals of Rajputana. + +Then Ballantyne tapped him on the arm. + +"You're not listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good +things--things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them--the +swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?" +And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his host's guess. + +"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I am not master of myself," Ballantyne +continued. His voice sank and his eyes narrowed to two little bright +slits. "I am afraid. Yes, that's the explanation. I am so afraid that +when I am not alone I seek relief any way, any how. I can't help it." And +even as he spoke his eyes opened wide and he sat staring intently at a +dim corner of the tent, moving his head with little jerks from one side +to the other that he might see the better. + +"There's no one over there, eh?" he asked. + +"No one." + +Ballantyne nodded as he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. + +"They make these tents too large," he said in a whisper. "One great blot +of light in the middle and all around in the corners--shadows. We sit +here in the blot of light--a fair mark. But what's going on in the +shadows, Mr.--What's your name? Eh? What's going on in the shadows?" + +Thresk had no doubt that Ballantyne's fear was genuine. He was not +putting forward merely an excuse for the scene which his guest had +witnessed and might spread abroad on his return to Bombay. No, he was +really terrified. He interspersed his words with sudden unexpected +silences, during which he sat all ears and his face strained to listen, +as though he expected to surprise some stealthy movement. But Thresk +accounted for it by that decanter on the sideboard, in which the level of +the whisky had been so noticeably lowered that evening. He was wrong +however, for Ballantyne sprang to his feet. + +"You are going away to-night. You can do me a service." + +"Can I?" asked Thresk. + +He understood at last why Ballantyne had been at such pains to interest +and amuse him. + +"Yes. And in return," cried Ballantyne, "I'll give you another glimpse +into the India you don't know." + +He walked up to the door of the tent and drew it aside. "Look!" + +Thresk, leaning forward in his chair, looked out through the opening. He +saw the moonlit plain in a soft haze, in the middle of it the green lamp +of a railway signal and beyond the distant ridge, on which straggled the +ruins of old Chitipur. + +"Look!" cried Ballantyne. "There's tourist India all in one: a desert, a +railway and a deserted city, hovels and temples, deep sacred pools and +forgotten palaces--the whole bag of tricks crumbling slowly to ruin +through centuries on the top of a hill. That's what the good people come +out for to see in the cold weather--Jarwhal Junction and old Chitipur." + +He dropped the curtain contemptuously and it swung back, shutting out the +desert. He took a step or two back into the tent and flung out his arms +wide on each side of him. + +"But bless your soul," he cried vigorously, "here's the real India." + +Thresk looked about the tent and understood. + +"I see," he answered--"a place very badly lit, a great blot of light in +the centre and all around it dark corners and grim shadows." + +Ballantyne nodded his head with a grim smile upon his lips. + +"Oh, you have learnt that! Well, you shall do me a service and in return +you shall look into the shadows. But we will have the table cleared +first." And he called aloud for Baram Singh. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE PHOTOGRAPH + + +While Baram Singh was clearing the table Ballantyne lifted the box of +cheroots from the top of the bureau and held it out to Thresk. + +"Will you smoke?" + +Thresk, however, though he smoked had not during his stay in India +acquired the taste for the cheroot; and it interested him in later times +to reflect how largely he owed his entanglement in the tragic events +which were to follow to that accidental distaste. For conscious of it he +had brought his pipe with him, and he now fetched it out of his pocket. + +"This, if I may," he said. + +"Of course." + +Thresk filled his pipe and lighted it, Ballantyne for his part lit a +cheroot and replaced the box upon the top, close to a heavy +riding-crop with a bone handle, which Thresk happened now to notice +for the first time. + +"Be quick!" he cried impatiently to Baram Singh, and seated himself in +the swing-chair in front of the bureau, turning it so as not to have his +back to Thresk at the table. Baram Singh hurriedly finished his work and +left the marquee by the passage leading to the kitchen. Ballantyne waited +with his eyes upon that passage until the grass-mat screen had ceased to +move. Then taking a bunch of keys from his pocket he stooped under the +open writing-flap of the bureau and unlocked the lowest of the three +drawers. From this drawer he lifted a scarlet despatch-box, and was just +going to bring it to the table when Baram Singh silently appeared once +more. At once Ballantyne dropped the box on the floor, covering it as +well as he could with his legs. + +"What the devil do you want?" he cried, speaking of course in Hindustani, +and with a violence which seemed to be half made up of anger and half of +fear. Baram Singh replied that he had brought an ash-tray for the Sahib, +and he placed it on the round table by Thresk's side. + +"Well, get out and don't come back until you are called," cried +Ballantyne roughly, and in evident relief as Baram Singh once more +retired he took a long draught from a fresh tumbler of whisky-and-soda +which stood on the flap of the bureau beside him. He then stooped once +more to lift the red despatch-box from the floor, but to Thresk's +amazement in the very act of stooping he stopped. He remained with his +hands open to seize the box and his body bent over his knees, quite +motionless. His mouth was open, his eyes staring, and upon his face such +a look of sheer terror was stamped as Thresk could never find words to +describe. For the first moment he imagined that the man had had a stroke. +His habits, his heavy build all pointed that way. The act of stooping +would quite naturally be the breaking pressure upon that overcharged +brain. But before Thresk had risen to make sure Ballantyne moved an arm. +He moved it upwards without changing his attitude in any other way, or +even the direction of his eyes, and he groped along the flap of the +bureau very cautiously and secretly and up again to the top ledge. All +the while his eyes were staring intently, but with the intentness of +extreme fear, not at the despatch-box but at the space of carpet--a +couple of feet at the most--between the despatch-box and the tent-wall. +His fingers felt along the ledge of the bureau and closed with a silent +grip upon the handle of the riding-crop. Thresk jumped to the natural +conclusion: a snake had crept in under the tent-wall and Ballantyne dared +not move lest the snake should strike. Neither did he dare to move +himself. Ballantyne was clearly within reach of its fangs. But he looked +and--there was nothing. The light was not good certainly, and down by the +tent-wall there close to the floor it was shadowy and dim. But Thresk's +eyes were keen. The space between the despatch-box and the wall was +empty. Nothing crawled there, nothing was coiled. + +Thresk looked at Ballantyne with amazement; and as he looked Ballantyne +sprang from his chair with a scream of terror--the scream of a +panic-stricken child. He sprang with an agility which Thresk would never +have believed possible in a man of so gross a build. He leapt into the +air and with his crop he struck savagely once, twice and thrice at the +floor between the wall and the box. Then he turned to Thresk with every +muscle working in his face. + +"Did you see?" he cried. "Did you see?" + +"What? There was nothing to see!" + +"Nothing!" screamed Ballantyne. He picked up the box and placed it on the +table, thrusting it under Thresk's hand. "Hold that! Don't let go! Stay +here and don't let go," he said, and running up the tent raised his voice +to a shout. + +"Baram Singh!" and lifting the tent-door he called to others of his +servants by name. Without waiting for them he ran out himself and in a +second Thresk heard him cursing thickly and calling in panic-stricken +tones just close to that point of the wall against which the bureau +stood. The camp woke to clamour. + +Thresk stood by the table gripping the handle of the despatch-box as he +had been bidden to do. The tent-door was left open. He could see lights +flashing, he heard Ballantyne shouting orders, and his voice dwindled and +grew loud as he moved from spot to spot in the encampment. And in the +midst of the noise the white frightened face of Stella Ballantyne +appeared at the opening of her corridor. + +"What has happened?" she asked in a whisper. "Oh, I was afraid that +you and he had quarrelled," and she stood with her hand pressed over +her heart. + +"No, no indeed," Thresk replied, and Captain Ballantyne stumbled back +into the tent. His face was livid, and yet the sweat stood upon his +forehead. Stella Ballantyne drew back, but Ballantyne saw her as she +moved and drove her to her own quarters. + +"I have a private message for Mr. Thresk's ears," he said, and when she +had gone he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. + +"Now you must help me," he said in a low voice. But his voice shook and +his eyes strayed again to the ground by the wall of the tent. + +"It was just there the arm came through," he said. "Yes, just there," and +he pointed a trembling finger. + +"Arm?" cried Thresk. "What are you talking about?" + +Ballantyne looked away from the wall to Thresk, his eyes incredulous. + +"But you saw!" he insisted, leaning forward over the table. + +"What?" + +"An arm, a hand thrust in under the tent there, along the ground reaching +out for my box." + +"No. There was nothing to see." + +"A lean brown arm, I tell you, a hand thin and delicate as a woman's." + +"No. You are dreaming," exclaimed Thresk; but dreaming was a euphemism +for the word he meant. + +"Dreaming!" repeated Ballantyne with a harsh laugh. "Good God! I wish I +was. Come. Sit down here! We have not too much time." He seated himself +opposite to Thresk and drew the despatch-box towards him. He had regained +enough mastery over himself now to be able to speak in a level voice. No +doubt too his fright had sobered him. But it had him still in its grip, +for when he opened the despatch-box his hand so shook that he could +hardly insert the key in the lock. It was done at last however, and +feeling beneath the loose papers on the surface he drew out from the very +bottom a large sealed envelope. He examined the seals to make sure they +had not been tampered with. Then he tore open the envelope and took out a +photograph, somewhat larger than cabinet size. + +"You have heard of Bahadur Salak?" he said. + +Thresk started. + +"The affair at Umballa, the riots at Benares, the murder in Madras?" + +"Exactly." + +Ballantyne pushed the photograph into Thresk's hand. + +"That's the fellow--the middle one of the group." + +Thresk held up the photograph to the light. It represented a group of +nine Hindus seated upon chairs in a garden and arranged in a row facing +the camera. Thresk looked at, the central figure with a keen and +professional interest. Salak was a notorious figure in the Indian +politics of the day--the politics of the subterranean kind. For some +years he had preached and practised sedition with so much subtlety and +skill that though all men were aware that his hand worked the strings of +disorder there was never any convicting evidence against him. In all the +three cases which Thresk had quoted and in many others less well-known +those responsible for order were sure that he had devised the crime, +chosen the moment for its commission and given the order. But up till a +month ago he had slipped through the meshes. A month ago, however, he had +made his mistake. + +"Yes. It's a clever face," said Thresk. + +Ballantyne nodded his head. + +"He's a Mahratta Brahmin from Poona. They are the fellows for brains, and +Salak's about the cleverest of them." + +Thresk looked again at the photograph. + +"I see the picture was taken at Poona." + +"Yes, and isn't it an extraordinary thing!" cried Ballantyne, his face +flashing suddenly into interest and enjoyment. The enthusiasm of the +administrator in his work got the better of his fear now, just as a +little earlier it had got the better of his drunkenness. Thresk was +looking now into the face of a quite different man, the man of the +intimate knowledge and the high ability for whom fine rewards were +prophesied in Bombay. "The very cleverest of them can't resist the +temptation of being photographed in group. Crime after crime has been +brought home to the Indian criminal both here and in London because they +will sit in garden-chairs and let a man take their portraits. Nothing +will stop them. They won't learn. They are like the ladies of the light +opera stage. Well, let 'em go on I say. Here's an instance." + +"Is it?" asked Thresk. "Surely that photograph was taken a long +time ago." + +"Nine years. But he was at the same game. You have got the proof in your +hands. There's a group of nine men--Salak and his eight friends. Well, +of his eight friends every man jack is now doing time for burglary, in +some cases with violence--that second ruffian, for instance, he's in for +life--in some cases without, but in each case the crime was burglary. +And why? Because Salak in the centre there set them on to it. Because +Salak nine years ago wasn't the big swell he is now. Because Salak +wanted money to start his intrigues. That's the way he got +it--burglaries all round Bombay." + +"I see," said Thresk. "Salak's in prison now?" + +"He's in prison in Calcutta, yes. But he's awaiting his trial. He's not +convicted yet." + +"Exactly," Thresk answered. "This photograph is a valuable thing to have +just now." + +Ballantyne threw up his arms in despair at the obtuseness of his +companion. + +"Valuable!" he cried in derision. "Valuable!" and he leaned forward on +his elbows and began to talk to Thresk with an ironic gentleness as if he +were a child. + +"You don't quite understand me, do you? But a little effort and all will +be plain." + +He got no farther however upon this line of attack, for Thresk +interrupted him sharply. + +"Here! Say what you have got to say if you want me to help you. Oh, you +needn't scowl! You are not going to bait me for your amusement. I am not +your wife." And Ballantyne after a vain effort to stare Thresk down +changed to a more cordial tone. + +"Well, you say it's a valuable thing to have just now. I say it's an +infernally dangerous thing. On the one side there's Salak the great +national leader, Salak the deliverer, Salak professing from his prison in +Calcutta that he has never used any but the most legitimate +constitutional means to forward his propaganda. And here on the other is +Salak in his garden-chair amongst the burglars. Not a good thing to +possess--this photograph, Mr. Thresk. Especially because it's the only +one in existence and the negative has been destroyed. So Salak's friends +are naturally anxious to get it back." + +"Do they know you have it?" Thresk asked. + +"Of course they do. You had proof that they knew five minutes ago when +that brown arm wriggled in under the tent-wall." + +Ballantyne's fear returned upon him as he spoke. He sat shivering; his +eyes wandered furtively from corner to corner of the great tent and came +always back as though drawn by a serpent to the floor by the wall of the +tent. Thresk shrugged his shoulders. To dispute with Ballantyne once more +upon his delusion would be the merest waste of time. He took up the +photograph again. + +"How do you come to possess it?" he asked. If he was to serve his host in +the way he suspected he would be asked to, he must know its history. + +"I was agent in a state not far from Poona before I came here." + +Thresk agreed. + +"I know. Bakuta." + +"Oh?" said Ballantyne with a sharp look. "How did you know that?" + +He was always in alarm lest somewhere in the world gossip was whispering +his secret. + +"A Mrs. Carruthers at Bombay." + +"Did she tell you anything else?" + +"Yes. She told me that you were a great man." + +Ballantyne grinned suddenly. + +"Isn't she a fool?" Then the grin left his face. "But how did you come to +discuss me with her at all?" + +That was a question which Thresk had not the slightest intention to +answer. He evaded it altogether. + +"Wasn't it natural since I was going to Chitipur?" he asked, and +Ballantyne was appeased. + +"Well, the Rajah of Bakutu had that photograph and he gave it to me when +I left the State. He came down to the station to see me off. He was too +near Poona to be comfortable with that in his pocket. He gave it to me on +the platform in full view, the damned coward. He wanted to show that he +had given it to me. He said that I should be safe with it in Chitipur." + +"Chitipur's a long way from Poona," Thresk agreed. + +"But don't you see, this trial that's coming along in Calcutta makes all +the difference. It's known I have got it. It's not safe here now and no +more am I so long as I've got it." + +One question had been puzzling Thresk ever since he had seen the look of +terror reappear in Ballantyne's face. It was clear that he lived in a +very real fear. He believed that he was watched, and he believed that he +was in danger; and very probably he actually was. There had, to be sure, +been no attempt that night to rob him of it as he imagined. But none the +less Salak and his friends could not like the prospect of the production +of that photograph in Calcutta, and would hardly be scrupulous what means +they took to prevent it. Then why had not Ballantyne destroyed it? +Thresk asked the question and was fairly startled by the answer. For it +presented to him in the most unexpected manner another and a new side of +the strange and complex character of Stephen Ballantyne. + +"Yes, why don't I destroy it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that," +and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of +muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his +forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this +moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast +it upon the table as he had done many a time before and cried in a voice +of violence: + +"No, I can't. That's to own these fellows my masters and I won't. By God +I won't! I may be every kind of brute, but I have been bred up in this +service. For twenty years I have lived in it and by it. And the service +is too strong for me. No, I can't destroy that photograph. There's the +truth. I should hate myself to my dying day if I did." + +He rose abruptly as if half ashamed of his outburst and crossing to his +bureau lighted another cheroot. + +"Then what do you want me to do with it?" asked Thresk. + +"I want you to take it away." + +Ballantyne was taking a casuistical way of satisfying his conscience, and +he was aware of it. He would not destroy the portrait--no! But he +wouldn't keep it either. "You are going straight back to England," he +said. "Take it with you. When you get home you can hand it to one of the +big-wigs at the India Office, and he'll put it in a pigeon-hole, and some +day an old charwoman cleaning the office will find it, and she'll take it +home to her grandchildren to play with and one of them'll drop it on the +fire, and there'll be an end of it." + +"Yes," replied Thresk slowly. "But if I do that, it won't be useful at +Calcutta, will it?" + +"Oh," said Ballantyne with a sneer. "You've got a conscience too, eh? +Well, I'll tell you. I don't think that photograph will be needed at +Calcutta." + +"Are you sure of that?" + +"Yes. Salak's friends don't know it, but I do." + +Thresk sat still in doubt. Was Ballantyne speaking the truth or did he +speak in fear? He was still standing by the bureau looking down upon +Thresk and behind him, so that Thresk had not the expression of his face +to help him to decide. But he did not turn in his chair to look. For as +he sat there it dawned upon him that the photograph was the very thing +which he himself needed. The scheme which had been growing in his mind +all through this evening, which had begun to grow from the very moment +when he had entered the tent, was now complete in every detail except +one. He wanted an excuse, a good excuse which should explain why he +missed his boat, and here it was on the table in front of him. Almost he +had refused it! Now it seemed to him a Godsend. + +"I'll take it," he cried, and Baram Singh silently appeared at the outer +doorway of the tent. + +"Huzoor," he said. "Railgharri hai." + +Ballantyne turned to Thresk. + +"Your train is signalled," and as Thresk started up he reassured him. +"There's no hurry. I have sent word that it is not to start without you." +And while Baram Singh still stood waiting for orders in the doorway of +the tent Ballantyne walked round the table, took up the portrait very +deliberately and handed it to Thresk. + +"Thank you," he said. "Button it in your coat pocket." + +He waited while Thresk obeyed. + +"Thus," said Thresk with a laugh, "did the Rajah of Bakutu," and +Ballantyne replied with a grin. + +"Thank you for mentioning that name." He turned to Baram Singh. "The +camel, quick!" + +Baram Singh went out to the enclosure within the little village of tents +and Thresk asked curiously: + +"Do you distrust him?" + +Ballantyne looked steadily at his visitor and said: + +"I don't answer such questions. But I'll tell you something. If that man +were dying he would ask for leave. And if he would ask for leave because +he would not die with my scarlet livery on his back. Are you answered?" + +"Yes," said Thresk. + +"Very well." And with a brisk change of tone Ballantyne added: "I'll see +that your camel is ready." He called aloud to his wife: "Stella! Stella! +Mr. Thresk is going," and he went out through the doorway into the +moonlight. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AND THE RIFLE + + +Thresk, alone in the tent, looked impatiently towards the grass-screen. +He wanted half-a-dozen words with Stella alone. Here was the opportunity, +the unhoped-for opportunity, and it was slipping away. Through the open +doorway of the tent he saw Ballantyne standing by a big fire and men +moving quickly in obedience to his voice. Then he heard the rustle of a +dress in the corridor, and she was in the room. He moved quickly towards +her, but she held up her hand and stopped him. + +"Oh, why did you come?" she said, and the pallor of her face reproached +him no less than the regret in her voice. + +"I heard of you in Bombay," he replied. "I am glad that I did come." + +"And I am sorry." + +"Why?" + +She looked about the tent as though he might find his answer there. +Thresk did not move. He stood near to her, watching her face intently +with his jaw rather set. + +"Oh, I didn't say that to wound you," said Stella, and she sat down on +one of the cushioned basket-chairs. "You mustn't think I wasn't glad to +see you. I was--at the first moment I was very glad;" and she saw his +face lighten as she spoke. "I couldn't help it. All the years rolled +away. I remembered the Sussex Downs and--and--days when we rode there +high up above the weald. Do you remember?" + +"Yes." + +"How long was that ago?" + +"Eight years." + +Stella laughed wistfully. + +"To me it seems a century." She was silent for a moment, and though he +spoke to her urgently she did not answer. She was carried back to the +high broad hills of grass with the curious clumps of big beech-trees upon +their crests. + +"Do you remember Halnaker Gallop?" she asked with a laugh. "We found it +when the chains weren't up and had the whole two miles free. Was there +ever such grass?" + +She was looking straight at the bureau, but she was seeing that green +lane of shaven turf in the haze of an August morning. She saw it rise and +dip in the open between long brown grass. There was a tree on the +left-hand side just where the ride dipped for the first time. Then it ran +straight to the big beech-trees and passed between them, a wide glade of +sunlight, and curved out at the upper end by the road and dipped down +again to the two lodges. + +"And the ridge at the back of Charlton forest, all the weald to Leith +Hill in view?" She rose suddenly from her chair. "Oh, I am sorry that +you came." + +"And I am glad," repeated Thresk. + +The stubbornness with which he repeated his words arrested her. She +looked at him--was it with distrust, he asked himself? He could not be +sure. But certainly there was a little hard note in her voice which had +not been there before, when in her turn she asked: + +"Why?" + +"Because I shouldn't have known," he said in a quick whisper. "I should +have gone back. I should have left you here. I shouldn't have known." + +Stella recoiled. + +"There is nothing to know," she said sharply, and Thresk pointed at +her throat. + +"Nothing?" + +Stella Ballantyne raised her hand to cover the blue marks. + +"I--I fell and hurt myself," she stammered. + +"It was he--Ballantyne." + +"No," she cried and she drew herself erect. But Thresk would not accept +the denial. + +"He ill-treats you," he insisted. "He drinks and ill-treats you." + +Stella shook her head. + +"You asked questions in Bombay where we are known. You were not told +that," she said confidently. There was only one person in Bombay who +knew the truth and Jane Repton, she was very sure, would never have +betrayed her. + +"That's true," Thresk conceded. "But why? Because it's only here in camp +that he lets himself go. He told us as much to-night. You were here at +the table. You heard. He let his secret slip: no one to carry tales, no +one to spy. In the towns he sets a guard upon himself. Yes, but he looks +forward to the months of camp when there are no next-door neighbours." + +"No, that's not true," she protested and cast about for explanations. +"He--he has had a long day and to-night he was tired--and when you are +tired--Oh, as a rule he's different." And to her relief she heard +Ballantyne's voice outside the tent. + +"Thresk! Thresk!" + +She came forward and held out her hand. + +"There! Your camel's ready," she said. "You must go! Goodbye," and as he +took it the old friendliness transfigured her face. "You are a great man +now. I read of you. You always meant to be, didn't you? Hard work?" + +"Very," said Thresk. "Four o'clock in the morning till midnight;" and she +suddenly caught him by the arm. + +"But it's worth it." She let him go and clasped her hands together. "Oh, +you have got everything!" she cried in envy. + +"No," he answered. But she would not listen. + +"Everything you asked for," she said and she added hurriedly, "Do you +still collect miniatures? No time for that now I suppose." Once more +Ballantyne's voice called to them from the camp-fire. + +"You must go." + +Thresk looked through the opening of the tent. Ballantyne had turned and +was coming back towards them. + +"I'll write to you from Bombay," he said, and utter disbelief showed in +her face and sounded in her laugh. + +"That letter will never reach me," she said lightly, and she went up to +the door of the tent. Thresk had a moment whilst her back was turned and +he used it. He took his pipe out of his pocket and placed it silently and +quickly on the table. He wanted a word with her when Ballantyne was out +of the way and she was not upon her guard to fence him off. The pipe +might be his friend and give it him. He went up to Stella at the +tent-door and Ballantyne, who was half-way between the camp-fire and the +tent, stopped when he caught sight of him. + +"That's right," he said. "You ought to be going;" and he turned again +towards the camel. Thus for another moment they were alone together, but +it was Stella who seized it. + +"There go!" she said. "You must go," and in the same breath she added: + +"Married yet?" + +"No," answered Thresk. + +"Still too busy getting on?" + +"That's not the reason"--and he lowered his voice to a whisper--"Stella." + +Again she laughed in frank and utter disbelief. + +"Nor is Stella. That's mere politeness and good manners. We must show the +dear creatures the great part they play in our lives." And upon that all +her fortitude suddenly deserted her. She had played her part so far, she +could play it no longer. An extraordinary change came over her face. The +smiles, the laughter slipped from it like a loosened mask. Thresk saw +such an agony of weariness and hopeless longing in her eyes as he had +never seen even with his experience in the Courts of Law. She drew back +into the shadow of the tent. + +"In thirteen days you'll be steaming up the Channel," she whispered, and +with a sob she covered her face with her hands. Thresk saw the tears +trickle between her fingers. + +Ballantyne at the fire was looking back towards the tent. Thresk hurried +out to him. The camel was crouching close to the fire saddled and ready. + +"You have time," said Ballantyne. "The train's not in yet," and Thresk +walked to the side of the camel, where a couple of steps had been placed +for him to mount. He had a foot on the step when he suddenly clapped his +hand to his pocket. + +"I've left my pipe," he cried, "and I've a night's journey in front of +me. I won't be a second." + +He ran back with all his speed to the tent. The hangings at the door were +closed. He tore them aside and rushed in. + +"Stella!" he said in a whisper, and then he stopped in amazement. He had +left her on the very extremity of distress. He found her, though to be +sure the stains of her tears were still visible upon her face, busy with +one of the evening preparations natural in a camp-life--quietly, +energetically busy. She looked up once when he raised the hanging over +the door, but she dropped her eyes the next instant to her work. + +She was standing by the table with a small rook-rifle in her hands. The +breech was open. She looked down the barrel, holding up the weapon so +that the light might shine into the breech. + +"Yes?" she said, and with so much indifference that she did not lift her +eyes from her work. "I thought you had gone." + +"I left my pipe behind me," said Thresk. + +"There it is, on the table." + +"Thank you." + +He put it in his pocket. Of the two he was disconcerted and at a loss, +she was entirely at her ease. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AN EPISODE IN BALLANTYNE'S LIFE + + +The Reptons lived upon the Khamballa Hill and the bow-window of their +drawing-room looked down upon the Arabian Sea and southwards along the +coast towards Malabar Point. In this embrasure Mrs. Repton sat through +a morning, denying herself to her friends. A book lay open on her lap +but her eyes were upon the sea. A few minutes after the clock upon her +mantelpiece had struck twelve she saw that for which she watched: the +bowsprit and the black bows of a big ship pushing out from under the +hill and the water boiling under its stem. The whole ship came into +view with its awnings and its saffron funnels and headed to the +north-west for Aden. + +Jane Repton rose up from her chair and watched it go. In the sunlight its +black hull was so sharply outlined on the sea, its lines and spars were +so trim that it looked a miniature ship which she could reach out her +hand and snatch. But her eyes grew dim as she watched, so that it became +shapeless and blurred, and long before the liner was out of sight it was +quite lost to her. + +"I am foolish," she said as she turned away, and she bit her +handkerchief hard. This was midday of the Friday and ever since that +dinner-party at the Carruthers' on the Monday night she had been +alternating between wild hopes and arguments of prudence. But until this +moment of disappointment she had not realised how completely the hopes +had gained the upper hand with her and how extravagantly she had built +upon Thresk's urgent questioning of her at the dinner-table. + +"Very likely he never found the Ballantynes at all," she argued. But he +might have sent her word. All that morning she had been expecting a +telephone message or a telegram or a note scribbled on board the steamer +and sent up the Khamballa Hill by a messenger. But not a token had come +from him and now of the boat which was carrying him to England there was +nothing left but the stain of its smoke upon the sky. + +Mrs. Repton put her handkerchief in her pocket and was going about the +business of her house when the butler opened the door. + +"I am not in--" Mrs. Repton began and cut short the sentence with a cry +of welcome and surprise, for close upon the heels of the servant Thresk +was standing. + +"You!" she cried. "Oh!" + +She felt her legs weakening under her and she sat down abruptly on a +chair. + +"Thank Heaven it was there," she said. "I should have sat on the +floor if it hadn't been." She dismissed the butler and held out her +hand to Thresk. "Oh, my friend," she said, "there's your steamer on +its way to Aden." + +Her voice rang with enthusiasm and admiration. Thresk only nodded his +head gloomily. + +"I have missed it," he replied. "It's very unfortunate. I have clients +waiting for me in London." + +"You missed it on purpose," she declared and Thresk's face relaxed into a +smile. He turned away from the window to her. He seemed suddenly to wear +the look of a boy. + +"I have the best of excuses," he replied, "the perfect excuse." But even +he could not foresee how completely that excuse was to serve him. + +"Sit down," said Jane Repton, "and tell me. You went to Chitipur, I know. +From your presence here I know too that you found--them--there." + +"No," said Thresk, "I didn't." He sat down and looked straight into Jane +Repton's eyes. "I had a stroke of luck. I found them--in camp." + +Jane Repton understood all that the last two words implied. + +"I should have wished that," she answered, "if I had dared to think it +possible. You talked with Stella?" + +"Hardly a word alone. But I saw." + +"What did you see?" + +"I am here to tell you." And he told her the story of his night at the +camp so far as it concerned Stella Ballantyne, and indeed not quite all +of that. For instance he omitted altogether to relate how he had left his +pipe behind in the tent and had returned for it. That seemed to him +unimportant. Nor did he tell her of his conversation with Ballantyne +about the photograph. "He was in a panic. He had delusions," he said and +left the matter there. Thresk had the lawyer's mind or rather the mind of +a lawyer in big practice. He had the instinct for the essential fact and +the knowledge that it was most lucid when presented in a naked +simplicity. He was at pains to set before Jane Repton what he had seen of +the life which Stella lived with Stephen Ballantyne and nothing else. + +"Now," he said when he had finished, "you sent me to Chitipur. I must +know why." + +And when she hesitated he overbore her. + +"You can be guilty of no disloyalty to your friend," he insisted, "by +being frank with me. After all I have given guarantees. I went to +Chitipur upon your word. I have missed my boat. You bade me go to +Chitipur. That told me too little or too much. I say too little. I have +got to know all now." And he rose up and stood before her. "What do you +know about Stephen Ballantyne?" + +"I'll tell you," said Jane Repton. She looked at the clock. "You had +better stay and lunch with us if you will. We shall be alone. I'll tell +you afterwards. Meanwhile--" and in her turn she stood up. The sense of +responsibility was heavy upon her. + +She had sent this man upon his errand of knowledge. He had done, in +consequence of it, a stronger, a wilder thing than she had thought, than +she had hoped for. She had a panicky feeling that she had set great +forces at work. + +"Meanwhile--" asked Thresk; and she drew a breath of relief. The +steadiness of his eyes and voice comforted her. His quiet insistence gave +her courage. None of her troubles and doubts had any place apparently in +his mind. A nervous horse in the hands of a real horseman--thus she +thought of herself in Thresk's presence. + +"Meanwhile I'll give you one reason why I wanted you to go. My husband's +time in India is up. We are leaving for England altogether in a month's +time. We shall not come back at all. And when we have gone Stella will be +left without one intimate friend in the whole country." + +"Yes," said Thresk. "That wouldn't do, would it?" and they went in to +their luncheon. + +All through that meal, before the servants, they talked what is written +in the newspapers. And of the two she who had fears and hesitations was +still the most impatient to get it done. She had her curiosity and it +was beginning to consume her. What had Thresk known of Stella and she of +him before she had come out to India and become Stella Ballantyne? Had +they been in love? If not why had Thresk gone to Chitipur? Why had he +missed his boat and left all his clients over there in England in the +lurch? If so, why hadn't they married--the idiots? Oh, how she wanted to +know all the answers to all these questions! And what he proposed to do +now! And she would know nothing unless she was frank herself. She had +read his ultimatum in his face. + +"We'll have coffee in my sitting-room. You can smoke there," she said and +led the way to it. "A cheroot?" + +Thresk smiled with amusement. But the amusement annoyed her for she did +not understand it. + +"I have got a Havana cigar here," he said. "May I?" + +"Of course." + +He lit it and listened. But it was not long before it went out and he did +not stir to light it again. The incident of which Mrs. Repton had been +the witness, and which she related now, invested Ballantyne with horror. +Thresk had left the camp at Chitipur with an angry contempt for him. The +contempt passed out of his feelings altogether as he sat in Mrs. Repton's +drawing-room. + +"I am not telling you what Stella has confided to me," said Mrs. Repton. +"Stella's loyal even when there's no cause for loyalty; and if loyalty +didn't keep her mouth closed, self-respect would. I tell you what I saw. +We were at Agra at the time. My husband was Collector there. There was +a Durbar held there and the Rajah of Chitipur came to it with his +elephants and his soldiers, and naturally Captain Ballantyne and his wife +came too. They stayed with us. You are to understand that I knew +nothing--absolutely nothing--up to that time. I hadn't a suspicion--until +the afternoon of the finals in the Polo Tournament. Stella and I went +together alone and we came home about six. Stella went upstairs and I--I +walked into the library." + +She had found Ballantyne sitting in a high arm-chair, his eyes glittering +under his black thick eyebrows and his face livid. He looked at her as +she entered, but he neither moved nor spoke, and she thought that he was +ill. But the decanter of whisky stood empty on a little table at his side +and she noticed it. + +"We have some people coming to dinner to-night, Captain Ballantyne," she +said. "We shall dine at eight, so there's an hour and a half still." + +She went over to a book-case and took out a book. When she turned back +into the room a change had taken place in her visitor. Life had flickered +into his face. His eyes were wary and cunning. + +"And why do you tell me that?" he asked in a voice which was thick and +formidable. She had a notion that he did not know who she was and then +suddenly she became afraid. She had discovered a secret--his secret. For +once in the towns he had let himself go. She had a hope now that he could +not move and that he knew it; he sat as still as his arm-chair. + +"I had forgotten to tell you," she replied. "I thought you might like to +know beforehand." + +"Why should I like to know beforehand?" + +She had his secret, he plied her with questions to know if she had it. +She must hide her knowledge. Every instinct warned her to hide it. + +"The people who are coming are strangers to India," she said, "but I have +told them of you and they will come expectant." + +"You are very kind." + +She had spoken lightly and with a laugh. Ballantyne replied without irony +or amusement and with his eyes fixed upon her face. Mrs. Repton could not +account for the panic which seized hold upon her. She had dined in +Captain Ballantyne's company before often enough; he had now been for +three days in her house; she had recognised his ability and had neither +particularly liked nor disliked him. Her main impression had been that he +was not good enough for Stella, and it was an impression purely feminine +and instinctive. Now suddenly he had imposed himself upon her as a +creature dangerous, beastlike. She wanted to get out of the room but she +dared not, for she was sure that her careful steps would, despite +herself, change into a run. She sat down, meaning to read for a few +moments, compose herself and then go. But no sooner had she taken her +seat than her terror increased tenfold, for Ballantyne rose swiftly from +his chair and walking in a circle round the room with an extraordinarily +light and noiseless step disappeared behind her. Then he sat down. Mrs. +Repton heard the slight grating of the legs of a chair upon the floor. It +was a chair at a writing-table close by the window and exactly at her +back. He could see every movement which she made, and she could see +nothing, not so much as the tip of one of his fingers. And of his fingers +she was now afraid. He was watching her from his point of vantage; she +seemed to feel his eyes burning upon the nape of her neck. And he said +nothing; and he did not stir. It was broad daylight, she assured herself. +She had but to cross the room to the bell beside the fireplace. Nay, she +had only to scream--and she was very near to screaming--to bring the +servants to her rescue. But she dared not do it. Before she was half-way +to the bell, before the cry was out of her mouth she would feel his +fingers close about her throat. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Repton had begun to tell her story with reluctance, dreading lest +Thresk should attribute it to a woman's nerves and laugh. But he did not. +He listened gravely, seriously; and, as she continued, that nightmare of +an evening so lived again in her recollections that she could not but +make it vivid in her words. + +"I had more than a mere sense of danger," she said. "I felt besides a +sort of hideous discomfort, almost physical discomfort, which made me +believe that there was something evil in that room beyond the power of +language to describe." + +She felt her self-control leaving her. If she stayed she must betray her +alarm. Even now she had swallowed again and again, and she wondered that +he had not detected the working of her throat. She summoned what was left +of her courage and tossing her book aside rose slowly and deliberately. + +"I think I shall copy Stella's example and lie down for an hour," she +said without turning her head towards Ballantyne, and even while she +spoke she knew that she had made a mistake in mentioning Stella. He would +follow her to discover whether she went to Stella's room and told what +she had seen to her. But he did not move. She reached the door, turned +the handle, went out and closed the door behind her. + +For a moment then her strength failed her; she leaned against the wall by +the side of the door, her heart racing. But the fear that he would follow +urged her on. She crossed the hall and stopped deliberately before a +cabinet of china at the foot of the stairs, which stood against the wall +in which the library door was placed. While she stood there she saw the +door open very slowly and Ballantyne's livid face appear at the opening. +She turned towards the stairs and mounted them without looking back. +Halfway up a turn hid the hall from her, and the moment after she had +passed the turn she heard him crossing the hall after her, again with a +lightness of step which seemed to be uncanny and inhuman in so heavy and +gross a creature. + +"I was appalled," she said to Thresk frankly. "He had the step of an +animal. I felt that some great baboon was tracking me stealthily." + +Mrs. Repton came to Stella Ballantyne's door and was careful not to stop. +She reached her own room, and once in shot the bolt; and in a moment or +two she heard him breathing just outside the panels. + +"And to think that Stella is alone with him in the jungle months at a +time!" she cried, actually wringing her hands. "That thought was in my +mind all the time--a horror of a thought. Oh, I could understand now the +loss of her spirits, her colour, her youth." + +Pictures of lonely camps and empty rest-houses, far removed from any +habitation in the silence of Indian nights, rose before her eyes. She +imagined Stella propped up on her elbow in bed, wide-eyed with terror, +listening and listening to the light footsteps of the drunken brute +beyond the partition-wall, shivering when they approached, dropping back +with the dew of her sweat upon her forehead when they retired; and +these pictures she translated in words for Thresk in her house on the +Khamballa Hill. + +Thresk was moved and showed that he was moved. He rose and walked to the +window, turning his back to her. + +"Why did she marry him?" he exclaimed. "She was poor, but she had a +little money. Why did she marry him?" and he turned back to Mrs. Repton +for an answer. + +She gave him one quick look and said: + +"That is one of the things she has never told me and I didn't meet her +until after she had married him." + +"And why doesn't she leave him?" + +Mrs. Repton held up her hands. + +"Oh, the easy questions, Mr. Thresk! How many women endure the thing that +is because it is? Even to leave your husband you want a trifle of spirit. +And what if your spirit's broken? What if you are cowed? What if you live +in terror day and night?" + +"Yes. I am a fool," said Thresk, and he sat down again. "There are two +more questions I want to ask. Did you ever talk to Stella"--the Christian +name slipped naturally from him and only Jane Repton of the two remarked +that he had used it--"of that incident in the library at Agra?" + +"Yes." + +"And did she in consequence of what you told her give you any account of +her life with her husband?" + +Mrs. Repton hesitated not because she was any longer in doubt as to +whether she would speak the whole truth or not--she had committed herself +already too far--but because the form of the question nettled her. It was +a little too forensic for her taste. She was anxious to know the man; she +could dispense with the barrister altogether. + +"Yes, she did," she replied, "and don't cross-examine me, please." + +"I beg your pardon," said Thresk with a laugh which made him human on +the instant. + +"Well, it's true," said Jane Repton in a rush. "She told me the +truth--what you know and more. He stripped when he was drunk, stripped +to the skin. Think of it! Stella told me that and broke down. Oh, if you +had seen her! For Stella to give way--that alone must alarm her friends. +Oh, but the look of her! She sat by my side on the sofa, wringing her +hands, with the tears pouring down her face ..." Thresk rose quickly +from his chair. + +"Thank you," he said, cutting her short. He wanted to hear no more. He +held out his hand to her with a certain abruptness. + +Mrs. Repton rose too. + +"What are you going to do?" she asked breathlessly. "I must know I have a +right to, I think. I have told you so much. I was in great doubt whether +I should tell you anything. But--" Her voice broke and she ended her +plea lamely enough: "I am very fond of Stella." + +"I know that," said Thresk, and his voice was grateful and his face +most friendly. + +"Well, what are you going to do?" + +"I am going to write to her to ask her to join me in Bombay," he replied. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +NEWS FROM CHITIPUR + + +A long silence followed upon his words. Jane Repton turned to the +mantelshelf and moved an ornament here and another one there. She had +contemplated this very consequence of Thresk's journey to Chitipur. She +had actually worked for it herself. She was frank enough to acknowledge +that. None the less his announcement, quietly as he had made it, was a +shock to her. She did not, however, go back upon her work; and when she +spoke it was rather to make sure that he was not going to act upon an +unconsidered impulse. + +"It will damage your career," she said. "Of course you have +thought of that." + +"It will alter it," he answered, "if she comes to me. I shall go out of +Parliament, of course." + +"And your practice?" + +"That will suffer too for a while no doubt. But even if I lost it +altogether I should not be a poor man." + +"You have saved money?" + +"No. There has not been much time for that, but for a good many years now +I have collected silver and miniatures. I know something about them and +the collection is of value." + +"I see." + +Mrs. Repton looked at him now. Oh, yes, he had thought his proposal out +during the night journey to Bombay--not a doubt of it. + +"Stella, too, will suffer," she said. + +"Worse than she does now?" asked Thresk. + +"No. But her position will be difficult for awhile at least," and she +came towards Thresk and pleaded. + +"You will be thoughtful of her, for her? Oh, if you should play her +false--how I should hate you!" and her eyes flashed fire at him. + +"I don't think that you need fear that." + +But he was too calm for her, too quiet. She was in the mood to want +heroics. She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind. +And Thresk stood before her without one. She searched his face with +doubtful eyes. Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it. + +"She will need--love," said Mrs. Repton. "There--that's the word. Can you +give it her?" + +"If she comes to me--yes. I have wanted her for eight years," and then +suddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion. A spasm +of pain convulsed his face. He sat down and beat with his fist upon the +table. "It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave her +there--miles away from any friend. I would have torn her from him by +force if there had been a single hope that way. But his levies would have +barred the road. No, this was the only chance: to come away to Bombay, +to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slip +out and travel here she will find me waiting." + +Mrs. Repton was satisfied. But while he had been speaking a new fear had +entered into her. + +"There's something I should have thought of," she exclaimed. + +"Yes?" + +"Captain Ballantyne is not generous. He is just the sort of man not to +divorce his wife." + +Thresk raised his head. Clearly that possibility had no more occurred to +him than it had to Jane Repton. He thought it over now. + +"Just the sort of man," he agreed. "But we must take that risk--if +she comes." + +"The letter's not yet written," Mrs. Repton suggested. + +"But it will be," he replied, and then he stood and confronted her. "Do +you wish me not to write it?" + +She avoided his eyes, she looked upon the floor, she began more than one +sentence of evasion; but in the end she took both his hands in hers and +said stoutly: + +"No, I don't! Write! Write!" + +"Thank you!" + +He went to the door, and when he had reached it she called to him in a +low voice. + +"Mr. Thresk, what did you mean when you repeated and repeated if +she comes?" + +Thresk came slowly back into the room. + +"I meant that eight years ago I gave her a very good reason why she +should put no faith in me." + +He told her that quite frankly and simply, but he told her no more than +that, and she let him go. He went back to the great hotel on the Apollo +Bund and sent off a number of cablegrams to London saying that he had +missed his steamer and that the work waiting for him must go to other +hands. The letter to Stella Ballantyne he kept to the last. It could not +reach her immediately in any case since she was in camp. For all he knew +it might be weeks before she read it; and he had need to go warily in the +writing of it. Certain words she had used to him were an encouragement; +but there were others which made him doubt whether she would have any +faith in him. Every now and then there had been a savour of bitterness. +Once she had been shamed because of him, on Bignor Hill where Stane +Street runs to Chichester, and a second time in front of him in the tent +at Chitipur. No, it was not an easy letter which he had to write, and he +took the night and the greater part of the next day to decide upon its +wording. It could not in any case go until the night-mail. He had +finished it and directed it by six o'clock in the evening and he went +down with the letter in his hand into the big lounge to post it in the +box there. But it never was posted. + +Close to the foot of the staircase stood a tape machine, and as Thresk +descended he heard the clicking of the instrument and saw the usual small +group of visitors about it. They were mostly Americans, and they were +reading out to one another the latest prices of the stock-markets. Some +of the chatter reached to Thresk's inattentive ears, and when he was only +two steps from the floor one carelessly-spoken phrase interjected between +the values of two securities brought him to a stop. The speaker was a +young man with a squarish face and thick hair parted accurately in the +middle. He was dressed in a thin grey suit and he was passing the tape +between his fingers as it ran out. The picture of him was impressed +during that instant upon Thresk's mind, so that he could never afterwards +forget it. + +"Copper's up one point," he was saying, "that's fine. Who's Captain +Ballantyne, I wonder? United Steel has dropped seven-eighths. Well, that +doesn't affect me," and so he ran on. + +Thresk heard no more of what he said. He stood wondering what news could +have come up on the tape of Captain Ballantyne who was out in camp in the +state of Chitipur, or if there was another Captain Ballantyne. He joined +the little group in front of the machine, and picking up the ribbon from +the floor ran his eyes backwards along it until he came to "United +Steel." The sentence in front of that ran as follows: + +"Captain Ballantyne was found dead early yesterday morning outside his +tent close to Jarwhal Junction." + +Thresk read the sentence twice and then walked away. The news might be +false, of course, but if it were true here was a revolution in his life. +There was no need for this letter which he held in his hand. The way was +smoothed out for Stella, for him. Not for a moment could he pretend to do +anything but welcome the news, to wish with all his heart that it was +true. And it seemed probable news. There was the matter of that +photograph. Thresk had carried it out to the Governor's house on Malabar +Point on the very morning of his arrival in Bombay. He had driven on to +Mrs. Repton's house after he had left it there. But he had taken it away +from Chitipur at too late a day to save Ballantyne. Ballantyne had, after +all, had good cause to be afraid while he possessed it, and the news had +not yet got to Salak's friends that it had left his possession. Thus he +made out the history of Captain Ballantyne's death. + +The tape machine, however, might have ticked out a mere rumour with no +truth in it at all. He went to the office and obtained a copy of _The +Advocate of India_,--the evening newspaper of the city. He looked at the +stop-press telegrams. There was no mention of Ballantyne's death. Nor on +glancing down the columns could he find in any paragraph a statement that +any mishap had befallen him. But on the other hand he read that he +himself, Henry Thresk, having brought his case to a successful +conclusion, had left India yesterday by the mail-steamer Madras, bound +for Marseilles. He threw down the paper and went to the telephone-box. If +the news were true the one person likely to know of it was Mrs. Repton. +Thresk rang up the house on the Khamballa Hill and asked to speak to her. +An answer was returned to him at once that Mrs. Repton had given orders +that she was not to be disturbed. Thresk however insisted: + +"Will you please give my name to her--Henry Thresk," and he waited with +his ear to the receiver for a century. At last a voice spoke to him, but +it was again the voice of the servant. + +"The Memsahib very sorry, sir, but cannot speak to any one just now;" and +he heard the jar of the instrument as the receiver at the other end was +sharply hung up and the connection broken. + +Thresk came out from the telephone-box with a face puzzled and very +grave. Mrs. Repton refused to speak to him! + +It was a fact, an inexplicable fact, and it alarmed him. It was +impossible to believe that mere reflection during the last twenty-four +hours had brought about so complete a revolution in her feelings. He to +whom she had passionately cried "Write! Write!" only yesterday could +hardly be barred out from mere speech with her to-day for any fault of +his. He had done nothing, had seen no one. Thresk was certain now that +the news upon the tape was true. But it could not be all the truth. There +was something behind it--something rather grim and terrible. + +Thresk walked to the door of the hotel and called up a motor-car. "Tell +him to drive to the Khamballa Hill," he said to the porter. "I'll let him +know when to stop." + +The porter translated the order and Thresk stopped him at Mrs. +Repton's door. + +"The Memsahib does not receive any one to-day," said the butler. + +"I know," replied Thresk. He scribbled on a card and sent it in. There +was a long delay. Thresk stood in the hall looking out through the open +door. Night had come. There were lights upon the roadway, lights a long +way below at the water's edge on Breach Candy, and there was a light +twinkling far out on the Arabian Sea. But in the house behind him all was +dark. He had come to an abode of desolation and mourning; and his heart +sank and he was attacked with forebodings. At last in the passage behind +him there was a shuffling of feet and a gleam of white. The Memsahib +would receive him. + +Thresk was shown into the drawing-room. That room too was unlit. But the +blinds had not been lowered and light from a street lamp outside turned +the darkness into twilight. No one came forward to greet him, but the +room was not empty. He saw Repton and his wife huddled close together on +a sofa in a recess by the fireplace. + +"I thought that I had better come up from Bombay," said Thresk, as he +stood in the middle of the room. No answer was returned to him for a few +moments and then it was Repton himself who spoke. + +"Yes, yes," he said, and he got up from the sofa. "I think we had better +have some light," he added in a strange indifferent voice. He turned the +light on in the central chandelier, leaving the corners of the room in +shadow, like--the parallel forced its way into Thresk's mind--like the +tent in Chitipur. Then very methodically he pulled down the blinds. He +did not look at Thresk and Jane Repton on the couch never stirred. +Thresk's forebodings became a dreadful certainty. Some evil thing had +happened. He might have been in a house of death. He knew that he was +not wanted there, that husband and wife wished to be alone and silently +resented his presence. But he could not go without more knowledge than he +had. + +"A message came up on the tape half an hour ago," he said in a low voice. +"It reported that Ballantyne was dead." + +"Yes," replied Repton. He was leaning forward over a table and looking up +to the chandelier as if he fancied that its light burnt more dimly than +was usual. + +"That's true," and he spoke in the same strange mechanical voice he had +used before. + +"That he was found dead outside his tent," Thresk added. + +"It's quite true," Repton agreed. "We are very sorry." + +"Sorry!" + +The exclamation burst from Thresk's lips. + +"Yes." + +Repton moved away from the chandelier. He had not looked at Thresk once +since he had entered the room; nor did he look towards his wife. His face +was very pale and he was busy now setting a chair in place, moving a +photograph, doing any one of the little unnecessary things people +restlessly do when there is an importunate visitor in the room who will +not go. + +"You see, there's terribly bad news," he added. + +"What news?" + +"He was shot, you know. That wasn't in the telegram on the tape, of +course. Yes, he was shot--on the same night you dined there--after you +had gone." + +"Shot!" + +Thresk's voice dropped to a whisper. + +"Yes," and the dull quiet voice went on, speaking apparently of some +trivial affair in which none of them could have any interest. "He was +shot by a bullet from a little rook-rifle which belonged to Stella, and +which she was in the habit of using." + +Thresk's heart stood still. A picture flashed before his eyes. He +saw the inside of that dimly lit tent with its red lining and Stella +standing by the table. He could hear her voice: "This is my little +rook-rifle. I was seeing that it was clean for to-morrow." She had spoken +so carelessly, so indifferently that it wasn't conceivable that what was +in all their minds could be true. Yet she had spoken, after all, no more +indifferently than Repton was speaking now; and he was in a great stress +of grief. Then Thresk's mind leaped to the weak point in all this chain +of presumption. + +"But Ballantyne was found outside the tent," he cried with a little note +of triumph. But it had no echo in Repton's reply. + +"I know. That makes everything so much worse." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Ballantyne was found in the morning outside the tent stone-cold. But +no one had heard the shot, and there were sentries on the edge of the +encampment. He had been dragged outside after he was dead or when he +was dying." + +A low cry broke from Thresk. The weak point became of a sudden the most +deadly, the most terrible element in the whole case. He could hear the +prosecuting counsel making play with it. He stood for a moment lost in +horror. Repton had no further word to say to him. Mrs. Repton had never +once spoken. They wanted him away, out of the room, out of the house. +Some insight let him into the meaning of her silence. In the presence of +this tragedy remorse had gripped her. She was looking upon herself as one +who had plotted harm for Stella. She would never forgive Thresk for his +share in the plot. + +Thresk went out of the room without a word more to either Repton or his +wife. Whatever he did now he must do by himself. He would not be admitted +into that house again. He closed the door of the room behind him, and +hardly had he closed it when he heard the snap of a switch and the line +of light under the door vanished. Once more there was darkness in the +drawing-room. Repton no doubt had returned to his wife's side and they +were huddled again side by side on the sofa. Thresk walked down the hill +with a horrible feeling of isolation and loneliness. But he shook it off +as he neared the lights of Bombay. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THRESK INTERVENES + + +Thresk reached his hotel with some words ringing in his head which Jane +Repton had spoken to him at Mrs. Carruthers' dinner-party: + +"You can get any single thing in life you want if you want it enough, but +you cannot control the price you will have to pay for it. That you will +only learn afterwards and gradually." + +He had got what he had wanted--the career of distinction, and he wondered +whether he was to begin now to learn its price. + +He mounted to his sitting-room on the second floor, avoiding the lounge +and the lift and using a small side staircase instead of the great +central one. He had passed no one on the way. In his room he looked upon +the mantelshelf and on the table. No visitor had called on him that day; +no letter awaited him. For the first time since he had landed in India a +day had passed without some resident leaving on him a card or a note of +invitation. The newspapers gave him the reason. He was supposed to have +left on the _Madras_ for England. To make sure he rang for his waiter; no +message of any kind had come. + +"Shall I ask at the office?" the waiter asked. + +"By no means," answered Thresk, and he added: "I will have dinner served +up here to-night." + +There was just a possibility, he thought, that he might after all escape +this particular payment. He took from his pocket his unposted letter to +Stella Ballantyne. There was no longer any use for it and even its +existence was now dangerous to Stella. For let it be discovered, however +she might plead that she knew nothing of its contents, a motive for the +death of Ballantyne might be inferred from it. It would be a false +motive, but just the sort of motive which the man in the street would +immediately accept. Thresk burnt the letter carefully in a plate and +pounded up each black flake of paper until nothing was left but ashes. +Then for the moment his work was done. He had only to wait and he did not +wait long. On the very next morning his newspaper informed him that +Inspector Coulson of the Bombay Police had left for Chitipur. + +The Inspector was a young man devoted to his work, but he travelled now +upon a duty which he would gladly have handed to any other of his +colleagues. He had met Stella Ballantyne in Bombay upon one of her rare +visits to Jane Repton. He had sat at the same dinner-table with her, and +he did not find it pleasant to reflect on the tragic destiny which she +must now fulfil. For the facts were fatal. + +At daybreak on the morning of the Friday a sentry on the outer edge of +the camp at Jarwhal Junction had noticed something black lying upon the +ground in the open just outside the door of the Agent's big marquee. He +ran across the ground and discovered Captain Ballantyne sprawling, face +downwards, in the smoking-suit which he had worn at dinner the night +before. The sentry shook him gently by the shoulder, but the limpness of +the body frightened him. Then he noticed that there was blood upon the +ground, and calling loudly for help he ran to the guard-room tent. He +returned with others of the native levies and they lifted Ballantyne up. +He was dead and the body was cold. The levies carried him into the tent +and opened his shirt. He had been shot through the heart. They then +roused Mrs. Ballantyne's ayah and bade her wake her mistress. The ayah +went into Mrs. Ballantyne's room and found her mistress sound asleep. She +waked her up and told her what had happened. Stella Ballantyne said not a +word. She got out of bed, and flinging on some clothes went into the +outer tent, where the servants were standing about the body. Stella +Ballantyne went quite close to it and looked down upon the dead man's +face for a long time. She was pale, but there was no shrinking in her +attitude--no apprehension in her eyes. + +"He has been killed," she said at length; "telegrams must be sent at +once: to Ajmere for a doctor, to Bombay, and to His Highness the +Maharajah." + +Baram Singh salaamed. + +"It is as your Excellency wills," he said. + +"I will write them," said Stella quietly. And she sat down at her own +writing-table there and then. + +The doctor from Ajmere arrived during the day, made an examination and +telegraphed a report to the Chief Commissioner at Ajmere. That report +contained the three significant points which Repton had enumerated to +Thresk, but with some still more significant details. The bullet which +pierced Captain Ballantyne's heart had been fired from Mrs. Ballantyne's +small rook-rifle, and the exploded cartridge was still in the breech. The +rifle was standing up against Mrs. Ballantyne's writing-table in a corner +of the tent, when the doctor from Ajmere discovered it. In the second +place, although Ballantyne was found in the open, there was a patch of +blood upon the carpet within the tent and a trail of blood from that spot +to the door. There could be no doubt that Ballantyne was killed inside. +There was the third point to establish that theory. Neither the sentry on +guard nor any one of the servants sleeping in the adjacent tents had +heard the crack of the rifle. It would not be loud in any case, but if +the weapon had been fired in the open it would have been sufficiently +sharp and clear to attract the attention of the men on guard. The heavy +double lining of the tent however was thick enough so to muffle and +deaden the sound that it would pass unnoticed. + +The report was considered at Ajmere and forwarded. It now brought +Inspector Coluson of the Police up the railway from Bombay. He found Mrs. +Ballantyne waiting for him at the Residency of Chitipur. + +"I must tell you who I am," he said awkwardly. + +"There is no need to," she answered, "I know." + +He then cautioned her in the usual way, and producing his pocket-book +asked her whether she wished to throw any light upon her husband's death. + +"No," she said. "I have nothing to say. I was asleep and in bed when my +ayah came into my room with the news of his death." + +"Yes," said the Inspector uncomfortably. That detail, next to the +dragging of the body out of the tent, seemed to him the grimmest part of +the whole tragedy. + +He shut up his book. + +"I am afraid it is all very unsatisfactory," he said. "I think we must go +back to Bombay." + +"It is as your Excellency wills," said Stella in Hindustani, and the +Inspector was startled by the bad taste of the joke. He had not the +knowledge of her life with Ballantyne, which alone would have given him +the key to understand her. But he was not a fool, and a second glance at +her showed to him that she was not speaking in joke at all. He had an +impression that she was so tired that she did not at the moment care what +happened to her at all. The fatigue would wear off, no doubt, when she +realised that she must fight for her life, but now she stood in front of +him indifferent and docile--much as one of the native levies was wont to +stand before her husband. The words which the levies used and the +language in which they spoke them rose naturally to her lips, as the only +words and language suitable to the occasion. + +"You see, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said gently, "there is no reason to +suspect a single one of your servants or of your escort." + +"And there is reason to suspect me," she added, looking at him quietly +and steadily. + +The Inspector for his part looked away. He was a young man--no more than +a year or two older than Stella Ballantyne herself. They both came from +the same kind of stock. Her people and his people might have been friends +in some pleasant country village in one of the English counties. She was +pretty, too, disconcertingly pretty, in spite of the dark circles under +her eyes and the pallor of her face. There was a delicacy in her looks +and in her dress which appealed to him for tenderness. The appeal was all +the stronger because it was only in that way and unconsciously that she +appealed. In her voice, in her bearing, in her eyes there was no request, +no prayer. + +"I have been to the Palace," he said, "I have had an audience with the +Maharajah." + +"Of course," she answered. "I shall put no difficulties in your way." + +He was standing in her own drawing-room, noticing with what skill +comfort had been combined with daintiness, and how she had followed the +usual instinct of her kind in trying to create here in this room a piece +of England. Through the window he looked out upon a lawn which was being +watered by a garden-sprinkler, and where a gardener was at work attending +to a bed of bright flowers. There, too, she had been making the usual +pathetic attempt to convert a half-acre of this country of yellow desert +into a green garden of England. Coulson had not a shadow of doubt in his +mind Stella Ballantyne would exchange this room with its restful colours +and its outlook on a green lawn for--at the best--many years of solitary +imprisonment in Poona Gaol. He shut up his book with a snap. + +"Will you be ready to go in an hour?" he asked roughly. + +"Yes," said she. + +"If I leave you unwatched during that hour you will promise to me that +you will be ready to go in an hour?" + +Stella Ballantyne nodded her head. + +"I shall not kill myself now," she said, and he looked at her quickly, +but she did not trouble to explain her words. She merely added: "I may +take some clothes, I suppose?" + +"Whatever you need," said the Inspector. And he took her down to Bombay. + +She was formally charged next morning before the stipendiary for the +murder of her husband and remanded for a week. + +She was remanded at eleven o'clock in the morning, and five minutes later +the news was ticked off on the tape at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Within +another five minutes the news was brought upstairs to Thresk. He had been +fortunate. He was in a huge hotel, where people flit through its rooms +for a day and are gone the next, and no one is concerned with the doings +of his neighbour, a place of arrival and departure like the platform of a +great railway station. There was no place in all Bombay where Thresk +could so easily pass unnoticed. And he had passed unnoticed. A single +inquiry at the office, it is true, would have revealed his presence, but +no one had inquired, since by this time he should be nearing Aden. He had +kept to his rooms during the day and had only taken the air after it was +dark. This was in the early stages of wireless telegraphy, and the +_Madras_ had no installation. It might be that inquiries would be made +for him at Aden. He could only wait with Jane Repton's words ringing in +his ears: "You cannot control the price you will have to pay." + +Stella Ballantyne was brought up again in a week's time and the case then +proceeded from day to day. The character of Ballantyne was revealed, his +brutalities, his cunning. Detail by detail he was built up into a gross +sinister figure secret and violent which lived again in that crowded +court and turned the eyes of the spectators with a shiver of discomfort +upon the young and quiet woman in the dock. And in that character the +prosecution found the motive of the crime. Sympathy at times ran high for +Stella Ballantyne, but there were always the two grim details to keep it +in check: she had been found asleep by her ayah, quietly restfully asleep +within a few hours of Ballantyne's death; and she had, according to the +theory of the Crown, found in some violence of passion the strength to +drag the dying man from the tent and to leave him to gasp out his life +under the stars. + +Thresk watched the case from his rooms at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Every fact +which was calculated to arouse sympathy for her was also helping to +condemn her. No one doubted that she had shot Stephen Ballantyne. He +deserved shooting--very well. But that did not give her the right to be +his executioner. What was her defence to be? A sudden intolerable +provocation? How would that square with the dragging of his body across +the carpet to the door? There was the fatal insuperable act. + +Thresk read again and again the reports of the proceedings for a hint as +to the line of the defence. He got it the day when Repton appeared in the +witness-box on a subpoena from the Crown to bear testimony to the +violence of Stephen Ballantyne. He had seen Stella with her wrist +bruised so that in public she could not remove her gloves. + +"What kind of bruises?" asked the counsel. + +"Such bruises as might be made by some one twisting her arms," he +answered, and then Mr. Travers, a young barrister who was enjoying his +first leap into the public eye, rose to cross-examine. + +Thresk read through that cross-examination and rose to his feet. "You +cannot control the price you will have to pay," he said to himself. That +day, when Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor returned to his office after the +rising of the Court, he found Thresk waiting for him. + +"I wish to give evidence for Mrs. Ballantyne," said Thresk--"evidence +which will acquit her." + +He spoke with so much certainty that the solicitor was fairly startled. + +"And with evidence so positive in your possession it is only this +afternoon that you come here with it! Why?" + +Thresk was prepared for the question. + +"I have a great deal of work waiting for me in London," he returned. "I +hoped that it might not be necessary for me to appear at all. Now I see +that it is." + +The solicitor looked straight at Thresk. + +"I knew from Mrs. Repton that you dined with the Ballantynes that night, +but she was sure that you knew nothing of the affair. You had left the +tent before it happened." + +"That is true," answered Thresk. + +"Yet you have evidence which will acquit Mrs. Ballantyne?" + +"I think so." + +"How is it, then," the lawyer asked, "that we have heard nothing of this +evidence at all from Mrs. Ballantyne herself?" + +"Because she knows nothing of it," replied Thresk. + +The lawyer pointed to a chair. The two men sat down together in the +office and it was long before they parted. + +Within an hour of Thresk's return from the solicitor's office an +Inspector of Police waited on him at his hotel and was instantly shown +up. + +"We did not know until to-day," he said, "that you were still in Bombay, +Mr. Thresk. We believed you to be on the Madras, which reached Marseilles +early this morning." + +"I missed it," replied Thresk. "Had you wanted me you could have inquired +at Port Said five days ago." + +"Five days ago we had no information." + +The native servants of Ballantyne had from the first shrouded themselves +in ignorance. They would answer what questions were put to them; they +would not go one inch beyond. The crime was an affair of the Sahibs and +the less they had to do with it the better, until at all events they were +sure which way the wind was setting from Government House. Of their own +initiative they knew nothing. It was thus only by the discovery of +Thresk's letter to Captain Ballantyne, which was found crumpled up in a +waste-paper basket, that his presence that night in the tent was +suspected. + +"It is strange," the Inspector grumbled, "that you did not come to us of +your own accord when you had missed your boat and tell us what you knew." + +"I don't think it is strange at all," answered Thresk, "for I am a +witness for the defence. I shall give my evidence when the case for the +defence opens." + +The Inspector was disconcerted and went away. Thresk's policy had so far +succeeded. But he had taken a great risk and now that it was past he +realised with an intense relief how serious the risk had been. If the +Inspector had called upon him before he had made known his presence to +Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor and offered his evidence, his position would +have been difficult. He would have had to discover some other good +reason why he had lain quietly at his hotel during these last days. But +fortune had favoured him. He had to thank, above all, the secrecy of the +native servants. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THRESK GIVES EVIDENCE + + +Thresk's fears were justified. Sympathy for Stella Ballantyne had +already begun to wane. The fact that Ballantyne had been found outside +the door of the tent was already assuming a sinister importance. Mrs. +Ballantyne's counsel slid discreetly over that awkward incident. Very +fortunately, as it was now to prove, he did not cross-examine the doctor +from Ajmere at all. But there are always the few who oppose the general +opinion--the men and women who are in the minority because it is the +minority; those whom the hysterical glorification made of Stella +Ballantyne had offended; the austere, the pedantic, the just, the +jealous, all were quick to seize upon this disconcerting fact: Stella +Ballantyne had dragged her dying husband from the tent. It was either +sheer callousness or blind fury--you might take your choice. In either +case it dulled the glow of martyrdom which for a week or two had been so +radiant upon Stella Ballantyne's forehead; and the few who argued thus +attracted adherents daily. And with the sympathy for Stella Ballantyne +interest in the case began to wane too. + +The magisterial inquiry threatened to become tedious. The pictures of +the witnesses and the principals occupied less and less space in the +newspapers. In another week the case would be coldly left with a shrug of +the shoulders to the Law Courts. But unexpectedly curiosity was stirred +again, for the day after Thresk had called upon the lawyer, when the case +for the Crown was at an end, Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, Mr. Travers, +asked permission to recall Baram Singh. Permission was granted, and Baram +Singh once more took his place in the witness-box. + +Mr. Travers leant against the desk behind him and put his questions with +the most significant slowness. + +"I wish to ask you, Baram Singh," he said, "about the dinner-table on the +Thursday night. You laid it?" + +"Yes," replied Baram Singh. + +"For how many?" + +"For three." + +There was a movement through the whole court. + +"Yes," said Mr. Travers, "Captain Ballantyne had a visitor that night." + +Baram Singh agreed. + +"Look round the court and tell the magistrate if you can see here the man +who dined with Captain Ballantyne and his wife that night." + +For a moment the court was filled with the noise of murmuring. The usher +cried "Silence!" and the murmuring ceased. A hush of expectation filled +that crowded room as Baram Singh's eyes travelled slowly round the +walls. He dropped them to the well of the court, and even his +unexpressive face flashed with a look of recognition. + +"There," he cried, "there!" and he pointed to a man who was sitting just +underneath the counsel's bench. + +Mr. Travers leant forward and in a quiet but particularly clear +voice said: + +"Will you kindly stand up, Mr. Thresk?" + +Thresk stood up. To many of those present--the idlers, the people of +fashion, the seekers after a thrill of excitement who fill the public +galleries and law-courts--his long conduct of the great Carruthers trial +had made him a familiar figure. To the others his name, at all events, +was known, and as he stood up on the floor of the court a swift and +regular movement like a ripple of water passed through the throng. They +leant forward to get a clearer view of him and for a moment there was a +hiss of excited whispering. + +"That is the man who dined with Captain and Mrs. Ballantyne on the night +when Captain Ballantyne was killed?" said Mr. Travers. + +"Yes," replied Baram Singh. + +No one understood what was coming. People began to ask themselves whether +Thresk was concerned in the murder. Word had been published that he had +already left for England. How was it he was here now? Mr. Travers, for +his part, was enjoying to the full the suspense which his question had +aroused. Not by any intonation did he allow a hint to escape him whether +he looked upon Thresk as an enemy or friend. + +"You may sit down, sir, now," he said, and Thresk resumed his seat. + +"Will you tell us what you know of Mr. Thresk's visit to the Captain?" +Travers resumed, and Baram Singh told how a camel had been sent to the +dâk-house by the station of Jarwhal Junction. + +"Yes," said Mr. Travers, "and he dined in the tent. How long did he +stay?" + +"He left the camp at eleven o'clock on the camel to catch the night train +to Bombay. The Captain-sahib saw him off from the edge of the camp." + +"Ah," said Mr. Travers, "Captain Ballantyne saw him off?" + +"Yes--from the edge of the camp." + +"And then went back to the tent?" + +"Yes." + +"Now I want to take you to another point. You waited at dinner?" + +"Yes." + +"And towards the close of dinner Mrs. Ballantyne left the room?" + +"Yes." + +"She did not come back again?" + +"No." + +"No. The two men were then left alone?" + +"Yes." + +"After dinner was the table cleared?" + +"Yes," said Baram Singh, "the Captain-sahib called to me to clear the +table quickly." + +"Yes," said Travers. "Now, will you tell me what the Captain-sahib was +doing while you were clearing the table?" + +Baram Singh reflected. + +"First of all the Captain-sahib offered a box of cheroots to his visitor, +and his visitor refused and took a pipe from his pocket. The +Captain-sahib then lit a cheroot for himself and replaced the box on the +top of the bureau." + +"And after that?" asked Travers. + +"After that," said Baram Singh, "he stooped down, unlocked the bottom +drawer of his bureau and then turned sharply to me and told me to hurry +and get out." + +"And that order you obeyed?" + +"Yes." + +"Now, Baram Singh, did you enter the room again?" + +Baram Singh explained that after he had gone out with the table-cloth he +returned in a few moments with an ash-tray, which he placed beside the +visitor-sahib. + +"Yes," said Travers. "Had Captain Ballantyne altered his position?" + +Baram Singh then related that Captain Ballantyne was still sitting in +his chair by the bureau, but that the drawer of the bureau was now open, +and that on the ground close to Captain Ballantyne's feet there was a red +despatch-box. + +"The Captain-sahib," he continued, "turned to me with great anger, and +drove me again out of the room." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Travers, and he sat down. + +The prosecuting counsel rose at once. + +"Now, Baram Singh," he said with severity, "why did you not mention when +you were first put in the witness-box that this gentleman was present in +the camp that night?" + +"I was not asked." + +"No, that is quite true," he continued, "you were not asked specifically, +but you were asked to tell all that you knew." + +"I did not interfere," replied Baram Singh. "I answered what questions +were asked. Besides, when the sahib left the camp the Captain-sahib +was alive." + +At this moment Mr. Travers leaned across to the prosecuting counsel and +said: "It will all be made clear when Mr. Thresk goes into the box." + +And once more, as Mr. Travers spoke these words, a rustle of expectancy +ran round the court. + +Travers opened the case for the defence on the following morning. He had +been originally instructed, he declared, to reserve the defence for the +actual trial before the jury, but upon his own urgent advice that plan +was not to be followed. The case which he had to put before the +stipendiary must so infallibly prove that Mrs. Ballantyne was free from +all complicity in this crime that he felt he would not be doing his duty +to her unless he made it public at the first opportunity. That unhappy +lady had already, as every one who had paid even the most careless +attention to the facts that had been presented by the prosecution must +know, suffered so much distress and sorrow in the course of her married +life that he felt it would not be fair to add to it the strain and +suspense which even the most innocent must suffer when sent for trial +upon such a serious charge. He at once proposed to call Mr. Thresk, and +Thresk rose and went into the witness-box. + +Thresk told the story of that dinner-party word for word as it had +occurred, laying some emphasis on the terror which from time to time had +taken possession of Stephen Ballantyne, down to the moment when Baram +Singh had brought the ash-tray and left the two men together, Thresk +sitting by the table in the middle of the room and Ballantyne at his +bureau with the despatch-box on the floor at his feet. + +"Then I noticed an extraordinary look of fear disfigure his face," he +continued, "and following the direction of his eyes I saw a lean brown +arm with a thin hand as delicate as a woman's wriggle forward from +beneath the wall of the tent towards the despatch-box." + +"You saw that quite clearly?" asked Mr. Travers. + +"The tent was not very brightly lit," Thresk explained. "At the first +glance I saw something moving. I was inclined to believe it a snake and +to account in that way for Captain Ballantyne's fear and the sudden +rigidity of his attitude. But I looked again and I was then quite sure +that it was an arm and hand." + +The evidence roused those present to such a tension of excitement and to +so loud a burst of murmuring that it was quite a minute before order was +restored and Thresk took up his tale again. He described Ballantyne's +search for the thief. + +"And what were you doing," Mr. Travers asked, "whilst the search was +being made?" + +"I stood by the table holding the despatch-box firmly in my hands as +Ballantyne had urgently asked me to do." + +"Quite so," said Mr. Travers; and the attention of the court was now +directed to that despatch-box and the portrait of Bahadur Salak which it +contained. The history of the photograph, its importance at this moment +when Salak's trial impended, and Ballantyne's conviction of the extreme +danger which its possessor ran--a conviction established by the bold +attempt to steal it made under their very eyes--was laid before the +stipendiary. He sent the case to trial as he was bound to do, but the +verdict in most people's eyes was a foregone conclusion. Thresk had +supplied a story which accounted for the crime, and cross-examination +could not shake him. It was easy to believe that at the very moment when +Thresk was saying goodbye to Captain Ballantyne by the fire on the edge +of the camp the thief slipped into the marquee, and when discovered by +Ballantyne either on his return or later shot him with Mrs. Ballantyne's +rifle. It was clear that no conviction could be obtained while this story +held the field and in due course Mrs. Ballantyne was acquitted. Of +Thresk's return to the tent just before leaving the camp nothing was +said. Thresk himself did not mention it and the counsel for the Crown had +no hint which could help him to elicit it. + +Thus the case ended. The popular heroine of a criminal trial loses, as +all observers will have noticed, her crown of romance the moment she is +set free; and that good fortune awaited Stella Ballantyne. Thresk called +the next day upon Jane Repton and was coldly told that Stella had already +gone from Bombay. He betook himself to her solicitor, who was cordial but +uncommunicative. The Reptons, it appeared, were responsible to him for +the conduct of the case. He had not any knowledge of Stella Ballantyne's +destination, and he pointed to a stack of telegrams and letters as +confirmation of his words. + +"They will all go up to Khamballa Hill," he said. "I have no +other address." + +The next day, however, a little note of gratitude came to Thresk through +the post. It was unsigned and without any address. But it was in Stella +Ballantyne's handwriting and the post-mark was Kurrachee. That she did +not wish to see him he could quite understand; Kurrachee was a port from +which ships sailed to many destinations; he could hardly set out in a +blind search for her across the world. So here, it seemed, was that +chapter closed. He took the next steamer westwards from Bombay, landed at +Brindisi and went back to his work in the Law Courts and in Parliament. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LITTLE BEEDING AGAIN + + +But though she disappeared Stella Ballantyne was not in flight from men +and women. She avoided them because they did not for the moment count in +her thoughts, except as possible hindrances. She was not so much running +away as running to the place of her desires. She yielded to an impulse +with which they had nothing whatever to do, an impulse so overmastering +that even to the Reptons her precipitancy wore a look of ingratitude. She +drove home with Jane Repton as soon as she was released, to the house on +Khamballa Hill, and while she was still in the carriage she said: + +"I must go away to-morrow morning." + +She was sitting forward with a tense and eager look upon her face and her +hands clenched tightly in her lap. + +"There is no need for that. Make your home with us, Stella, for a little +while and hold your head high." + +Jane Repton had talked over this proposal with her husband. Both of +them recognised that the acceptance of it would entail on them some +little sacrifice. Prejudice would be difficult. But they had thrust +these considerations aside in the loyalty of their friendship and Jane +Repton was a little hurt that Stella waved away their invitation +without ceremony. + +"I can't. I can't," she said irritably. "Don't try to stop me." + +Her nerves were quite on edge and she spoke with a greater violence than +she knew. Jane Repton tried to persuade her. + +"Wouldn't it be wiser for you to face things here, even though it means +some effort and pain?" + +"I don't know," answered Stella, still in the quick peremptory tone of +one who will not be argued with. "I don't care either. I have nothing to +do with wisdom just now. I don't want people at all. I want--oh, how I +want--" She stopped and then she added vaguely: "Something else," and her +voice trailed away into silence. She sat without a word, all tingling +impatience, during the rest of that drive and continued so to sit after +the carriage had stopped. When Jane Repton descended, and she woke up +with a start and looked at the house, it was as though she brought her +eyes down from heaven to earth. Once within the house she went straight +up to Repton. He had left his wife behind with Stella at the Law Courts +and had come home in advance of them. He had not spoken a word to Stella +that day, and he had not the time now, for she began immediately in an +eager voice and a look of fever in her eyes: + +"You won't try to stop me, will you? I must go away to-morrow." + +Repton used more tact now than his wife had done. He took the troubled +and excited woman's hand and answered her very gently: + +"Of course, Stella. You shall go when you like." + +"Oh, thank you," she cried, and was freed to remember the debt which she +owed to these good friends of hers. "You must think me a brute, Jane! I +haven't said a word to you about all your kindness. But--oh, you'll +think me ridiculous, when you know"--and she began to laugh and to sob +in one breath. Stella Ballantyne had remained so sunk in apathy through +all that long trial that her friends were relieved at her outburst of +tears. Jane Repton led her upstairs and put her to bed just as if she +had been a child. + +"There! You can get up for dinner if you like, Stella, or stay where you +are. And if you'll tell us what you want to do we'll make the +arrangements for you and not ask you a question." + +Jane Repton kissed her and left her alone; and it was while Stella was +sleeping upstairs that Henry Thresk called at the house and was told that +there was no news for him. + +"No doubt she will write to you, Mr. Thresk, if she wishes you to know +what she is doing. But I should not count upon it if I were you," said +Jane Repton, in a sweet voice and with eyes like pebbles. "She did not +mention you, I am sorry to say, when the trial was over." + +She could not forgive him because of her own share in what she now called +his "treachery" towards Stella. She had no more of the logician in her +composition than Thresk had of the hero. He had committed under a great +stress of emotion and sympathy what the whole experience and method of +his life told him was one of the worst of crimes. And now that its object +was achieved, and Stella Ballantyne free, he was in the mood to see only +the harm which he had done to the majesty of the law; he was uneasy; he +was not troubled by the thought that discovery would absolutely ruin him. +That indeed did not enter into his thoughts. But he could not but make a +picture of himself in the robe of a King's Counsel, claiming sternly the +anger of the Law against some other man who should have done just what he +had done, no more and no less. And so when Mrs. Repton's door was finally +closed upon him, and no message was given to him from the woman he had +saved, he was at once human and unheroic enough to visit a little of his +resentment upon her. He had not spoken to her at all since the night at +Chitipur; he had no knowledge of the stupor and the prostration into +which, after her years of misery, she had fallen; he had no insight into +the one compelling passion which now had her, body and soul, in its grip. +He turned away from the door and went back to the Taj Mahal. A steamer +would be starting for Port Said in two days and by that steamer he would +travel. That Stella was in the house on the Khamballa Hill he did not +doubt, but since she had no word or thought to spare for him he could not +but turn his back and go. + +Stella herself got up to dinner, and after it was over she told her +friends of the longing which filled her soul. + +"All through the trial," she said shyly, with the shrinking of those who +reveal a very secret fancy and are afraid that it will be ridiculed, "in +the heat of the court, in the close captivity of my cell, I was conscious +of just one real unconquerable passion--to feel the wind blowing against +my face upon the Sussex Downs. Can you understand that? Just to see the +broad green hills with the white chalk hollows in their sides and the +forests marching down to the valleys like the Roman soldiers from +Chichester--oh! I was mad for the look and the smell and the sounds of +them! It was all that I thought about. I used to close my eyes in the +dock and I was away in a second riding through Charlton Forest or over +Farm Hill, or looking down to Slindon from Gumber Corner, and over its +woods to the sea. And now that I am free"--she clasped her hands and her +face grew radiant--"oh, I don't want to see people." She reached out a +hand to each of her friends. "I don't call you people, you know. But even +you--you'll understand and forgive and not be hurt--I don't want to see +for a little while." + +The beaten look of her took the sting of ingratitude out of her words. +She stood between them, her delicate face worn thin, her eyes unnaturally +big; she had the strange transparent beauty of people who have been lying +for months in a mortal sickness. Jane Repton's eyes filled with tears and +her hand sought for her handkerchief. + +"Let's see what can be done," said Repton. "There's a mail-steamer of +course, but you won't want to travel by that." + +"No." + +Repton worked out the sailings from Bombay and the other ports on the +western coast of India while Stella leaned over his shoulder. + +"Look!" he said. "This is the best way. There's a steamer going to +Kurrachee to-morrow, and when you reach Kurrachee you'll just have time +to catch a German Lloyd boat which calls at Southampton. You won't be +home in thirteen days to be sure, but on the other hand you won't be +pestered by curious people." + +"Yes, yes," cried Stella eagerly. "I can go to-morrow." + +"Very well." + +Repton looked at the clock. It was still no more than half-past ten. He +saw with what a fever of impatience Stella was consumed. + +"I believe I could lay my hand on the local manager of the line to-night +and fix your journey up for you." + +"You could?" cried Stella. He might have been offering her a crown, so +brightly her thanks shone in her eyes. + +"I think so." + +He got up from the table and stood looking at her, and then away from her +with his lips pursed in doubt. + +"Yes?" said she. + +"I was thinking. Will you travel under another name? I don't suggest it +really, only it might save you--annoyance." + +Repton's hesitation was misplaced, for Stella Ballantyne's pride was +quite beaten to the ground. + +"Yes," she said at once. "I should wish to do that"; and both he and his +wife understood from that ready answer more completely than they ever had +before how near Stella had come to the big blank wall at the end of life. +For seven years she had held her head high, never so much as whispering a +reproach against her husband, keeping with a perpetual guard the secret +of her misery. Pride had been her mainspring; now even that was broken. +Repton went out of the house and returned at midnight. + +"It's all settled," he said. "You will have a cabin on deck in both +steamers. I gave your name in confidence to the manager here and he will +take care that everything possible is done for you. There will be very +few passengers on the German boat. The season is too early for either the +tourists or the people on leave." + +Thus Stella Ballantyne crept away from Bombay and in five weeks' time +she landed at Southampton. There she resumed her name. She travelled into +Sussex and stayed for a few nights at the inn whither Henry Thresk had +come years before on his momentous holiday. She had a little money--the +trifling income which her parents had left to her upon their death--and +she began to look about for a house. By a piece of good fortune she +discovered that the cottage in which she had lived at Little Beeding +would be empty in a few months. She took it and before the summer was out +she was once more established there. It was on an afternoon of August +when Stella made her home in it again. She passed along the yellow lane +driven deep between high banks of earth where the roots of great +elm-trees cropped out. Every step was familiar to her. The lane with many +twists under overarching branches ran down a steep hill and came out into +the open by the big house with its pillared portico and its light grey +stone and its wonderful garden of lawn and flowers and cedars. A tiny +church with a narrow graveyard and strange carefully-trimmed square +bushes of yew stood next to the house, and beyond the church the lane +dipped to the river and the cottage. + +Stella went from room to room. She had furnished the cottage simply and +daintily; the walls were bright, her servant-girl had gathered flowers +and set them about. Outside the window the sunlight shone on a green +garden. She was alone. It was the home-coming she had wished for. + +For three or four months she was left alone; and then one afternoon as +she came into the cottage after a walk she found a little white card upon +the table. It bore the name of Mr. Hazlewood. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE HAZLEWOODS + + +In the quiet country town obvious changes had taken place during the +eight years of Stella's absence. They were not changes of importance, +however, and one sentence can symbolize them all--there was now tarmac +upon its roads. But in the cluster of houses a mile away at the end of +the deep lane the case was different. Mr. Harold Hazlewood had come to +Little Beeding. He now lived in the big house to which the village owed +its name and indeed its existence. He lived--and spread consternation +amongst the gentry for miles round. + +"Lord, how I wish poor Arthur hadn't died!" old John Chubble used to +cry. He had hunted the West Sussex hounds for thirty years and the very +name of Little Beeding turned his red face purple. "There was a man. But +this fellow! And to think he's got that beautiful house! Do you know +there's hardly a pheasant on the place. And I've hashed them down out of +the sky in the old days there by the dozen. Well, he's got a son in the +Coldstream, Dick Hazlewood, who's not so bad. But Harold! Oh, pass me +the port!" + +Harold indeed had inherited Little Beeding by an accident during the +first summer after Stella had gone out to India. Arthur Hazlewood, the +owner and Harold's nephew, had been lost with his yacht in a gale of wind +off the coast of Portugal. Arthur was a bachelor and thus Harold +Hazlewood came quite unexpectedly into the position of a country squire +when he was already well on in middle age. He was a widower and a man of +a noticeable aspect. At the first glance you knew that he was not as +other men; at the second you suspected that he took a pride in his +dissimilarity. He was long, rather shambling in his gait, with a mild +blue eye and fair thin hair now growing grey. But length was the chief +impression left by his physical appearance. His legs, his arms, his face, +even his hair, unless his son in the Coldstream happened to be at home at +the time, were long. + +"Is your father mad?" Mr. Chubble once asked of Dick Hazlewood. The two +men had met in the broad street of Great Beeding at midday, and the elder +one, bubbling with indignation, had planted himself in front of Dick. + +"Mad?" Dick repeated reflectively. "No, I shouldn't go as far as that. Oh +no! What has he done now?" + +"He has paid out of his own pocket the fines of all the people in Great +Beeding who have just been convicted for not having their babies +vaccinated." + +Dick Hazlewood stared in surprise at his companion's indignant face. + +"But of course he'd do that, Mr. Chubble," he answered cheerfully. "He's +anti-everything--everything, I mean, which experience has established or +prudence could suggest." + +"In addition he wants to sell the navy for old iron and abolish +the army." + +"Yes," said Dick, nodding his head amicably. "He's like that. He +thinks that without an army and a navy we should be less aggressive. I +can't deny it." + +"I should think not indeed," cried Mr. Chubble. "Are you walking home?" + +"Yes." + +"Let us walk together." Mr. Chubble took Dick Hazlewood by the arm and as +they went filled the lane with his plaints. + +"I should think you can't deny it. Why, he has actually written a +pamphlet to enforce his views upon the subject." + +"You should bless your stars, Mr. Chubble, that there is only one. He +suffers from pamphlets. He writes 'em and prints 'em and every member of +Parliament gets one of 'em for nothing. Pamphlets do for him what the +gout does for other old gentlemen--they carry off from his system a great +number of disquieting ailments. He's at prison reform now," said Dick +with a smile of thorough enjoyment. "Have you heard him on it?" + +"No, and I don't want to," Mr. Chubble exploded. + +He struck viciously at an overhanging bough, as though it was the head +of Harold Hazlewood, and went on with the catalogue of crimes. "He made a +speech last week in the town-hall," and he jerked his thumb backwards +towards the town they had left. "Intolerable I call it. He actually +denounced his own countrymen as a race of oppressors." + +"He would," answered Dick calmly. "What did I say to you a minute ago? +He's advanced, you know." + +"Advanced!" sneered Mr. Chubble, and then Dick Hazlewood stopped and +contemplated his companion with a thoughtful eye. + +"I really don't think you understand my father, Mr. Chubble," said Dick +with a gentle remonstrance in his voice which Mr. Chubble was at a loss +whether to take seriously or no. + +"Can you give me the key to him?" he cried. + +"I can." + +"Then out with it, my lad." + +Mr. Chubble disposed himself to listen but with so bristling an +expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. Dick, +however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an +obtuse class of scholars. + +"My father was born predestined to believe that all the people whom he +knows are invariably wrong, and all the people he doesn't know are +invariably right. And when I feel inclined to deplore his abuse of his +own country I console myself with the reflection that he would be the +staunchest friend of England that England ever had--if only he had been +born in Germany." + +Mr. Chubble grunted and turned the speech suspiciously over in his mind. +Was Dick poking fun at him or at his father? + +"That's bookish," he said. + +"I am afraid it is," Dick Hazlewood agreed humbly. "The fact is I am now +an Instructor at the Staff College and much is expected of me." + +They had reached the gate of Little Beeding House. It was summer time. +A yellow drive of gravel ran straight between long broad flower-beds +to the door. + +"Won't you come in and see my father?" Dick asked innocently. +"He's at home." + +"No, my lad, no." Mr. Chubble hastened to add: "I haven't the time. But I +am very glad to have met you. You are here for long?" + +"No. Only just for luncheon," said Dick, and he walked along the drive +into the house. He was met in the hall by Hubbard the butler, an old +colourless man of genteel movements which seemed slow and were +astonishingly quick. He spoke in gentle purring tones and was the very +butler for Mr. Harold Hazlewood. + +"Your father has been asking for you, sir," said Hubbard. "He seems a +little anxious. He is in the big room." + +"Very well," said Dick, and he crossed the hall and the drawing-room, +wondering what new plan for the regeneration of the world was being +hatched in his father's sedulous brains. He had received a telegram at +Camberley the day before urgently calling upon him to arrive at Little +Beeding in time for luncheon. He went into the library as it was called, +but in reality it was the room used by everybody except upon ceremonial +occasions. It was a big room; half of it held a billiard table, the other +half had writing-tables, lounges, comfortable chairs and a table for +bridge. The carpet was laid over a parquet floor so that young people, +when they stayed there, rolled it up and danced. There were windows upon +two sides of the room. Here a row of them looked down the slope of the +lawn to the cedar-trees and the river, the other, a great bay which +opened to the ground, gave a view of a corner of the high churchyard wall +and of a meadow and a thatched cottage beyond. In this bay Mr. Hazlewood +was standing when Dick entered the room. + +"I got your telegram, father, and here I am." + +Mr. Hazlewood turned back from the window with a smile upon his face. + +"It is good of you, Richard. I wanted you to-day." + +A very genuine affection existed between these two, dissimilar as they +were in physique and mind. Dick Hazlewood was at this time thirty-four +years old, an officer of hard work and distinction, one of the younger +men to whom the generals look to provide the brains in the next great +war. He had the religion of his type. To keep physically fit for the +hardest campaigning and mentally fit for the highest problems of modern +strategy and to boast about neither the one qualification nor the +other--these were the articles of his creed. In appearance he was a +little younger than his years, lithe, long in the leg, with a thin brown +face and grey eyes which twinkled with humour. Harold Hazlewood was +intensely proud of him, though he professed to detest his profession. And +no doubt he found at times that the mere healthful, well-groomed look of +his son was irritatingly conventional. What was quite wholesome could +never be quite right in the older man's philosophy. To Dick, on the other +hand, his father was an intense enjoyment. Here was a lovable innocent +with the most delightful illusion that he understood the world. Dick +would draw out his father by the hour, but, as he put it, he wouldn't let +the old boy down. He stopped his chaff before it could begin to hurt. + +"Well, I am here," he said. "What scrape have you got into now?" + +"I am in no scrape, Richard. I don't get into scrapes," replied his +father. He shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. "I was wondering, +Richard--you have been away all this last year, haven't you?--I was +wondering whether you could give me any of your summer." + +Dick looked at his father. What in the world was the old boy up to now? +he asked himself. + +"Of course I can. I shall get my leave in a day or two. I thought of +playing some polo here and there. There are a few matches arranged. Then +no doubt--" He broke off. "But look here, sir! You didn't send me an +urgent telegram merely to ask me that." + +"No, Richard, no." Everybody else called his son Dick, but Harold +Hazlewood never. He was Richard. From Richard you might expect much, the +awakening of a higher nature, a devotion to the regeneration of the +world, humanitarianism, even the cult of all the "antis." From Dick you +could expect nothing but health and cleanliness and robustious +conventionality. Therefore Richard Captain Hazlewood of the Coldstream +and the Staff Corps remained. "No, there was something else." + +Mr. Hazlewood took his son by the arm and led him into the bay window. He +pointed across the field to the thatched cottage. + +"You know who lives there?" + +"No." + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +Dick put his head on one side and whistled softly. He knew the general +tenor of that _cause celebre_. + +Mr. Hazlewood raised remonstrating hands. + +"There! You are like the rest, Richard. You take the worst view. Here is +a good woman maligned and slandered. There is nothing against her. She +was acquitted in open trial by a jury of responsible citizens under a +judge of the Highest Court in India. Yet she is left alone--like a leper. +She is the victim of gossip and _such_ gossip. Richard," said the old man +solemnly, "for uncharitableness, ill-nature and stupid malice the gossip +of a Sussex village leaves the most deplorable efforts of Voltaire and +Swift entirely behind." + +"Father, you _are_ going it," said Dick with a chuckle. "Do you mean to +give me a step-mother?" + +"I do not, Richard. Such a monstrous idea never entered my thoughts. But, +my boy, I have called upon her." + +"Oh, you have!" + +"Yes. I have seen her too. I left a card. She left one upon me. I called +again. I was fortunate." + +"She was in?" + +"She gave me tea, Richard." + +Richard cocked his head on one side. + +"What's she like, father? Topping?" + +"Richard, she gave me tea," said the old man, dwelling insistently upon +his repetition. + +"So you said, sir, and it was most kind of her to be sure. But that fact +won't help me to form even the vaguest picture of her looks." + +"But it will, Richard," Mr. Hazlewood protested with a nervousness which +set Dick wondering again. "She gave me tea. Therefore, don't you see, I +must return the hospitality, which I do with the utmost eagerness. +Richard, I look to you to help me. We must champion that slandered lady. +You will see her for yourself. She is coming here to luncheon." + +The truth was out at last. Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily +have guessed it. This was just the quixotic line his father could have +been foreseen to take. + +"Well, we must just keep our eyes open and see that she doesn't slip +anything into the decanters while our heads are turned," said Dick with a +chuckle. Old Mr. Hazlewood laid a hand upon his son's shoulder. + +"That's the sort of thing they say. Only you don't mean it, Richard, and +they do," he remarked with a mild and reproachful shake of the head. "Ah, +some day, my boy, your better nature will awaken." + +Dick expressed no anxiety for the quick advent of that day. + +"How many are there of us to be at luncheon?" asked Dick. + +"Only the two of us." + +"I see. We are to keep the danger in the family. Very wise, sir, +upon my word." + +"Richard, you pervert my meaning," said Mr. Hazlewood. "The +neighbourhood has not been kind to Mrs. Ballantyne. She has been made to +suffer. The Vicar's wife, for instance--a most uncharitable person. And +my sister, your Aunt Margaret, too, in Great Beeding--she is what you +would call--" + +"Hot stuff," murmured Dick. + +"Quite so," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look +of keen interest upon his face. "I am not familiar with the phrase, +Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and +inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up +in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into +very few words." + +"That is indeed true, sir," replied Dick with an admirable gravity, "and +if I might be allowed to suggest it, a pamphlet upon that interesting +subject would be less dangerous work than coquetting with the latest +edition of the Marquise de Brinvilliers." + +The word pamphlet was a bugle-call to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Ah! Speaking of pamphlets, my boy," he began, and walked over to a desk +which was littered with papers. + +"We have not the time, sir," Dick interrupted from the bay of the window. +A woman had come out from the cottage. She unlatched a little gate in her +garden which opened on to the meadow. She crossed it. Yet another gate +gave her entrance to the garden of Little Beeding. In a moment Hubbard +announced: + +"Mrs. Ballantyne"; and Stella came into the room and stood near to the +door with a certain constraint in her attitude and a timid watchfulness +in her big eyes. She had the look of a deer. It seemed to Dick that at +one abrupt movement she would turn and run. + +Mr. Hazlewood pressed forward to greet her and she smiled with a warmth +of gratitude. Dick, watching her from the bay window, was surprised by +the delicacy of her face, by a look of fragility. She was dressed very +simply in a coat and short skirt of white, her shoes and her gloves were +of white suede, her hat was small. + +"And this is my son Richard," said Mr. Hazlewood; and Dick came forward +out of the bay. Stella Ballantyne bowed to him but said no word. She +was taking no risks even at the hands of the son of her friend. If +advances of friendliness were to be made they must be made by him, not +her. There was just one awkward moment of hesitation. Then Dick +Hazlewood held out his hand. + +"I am very glad to meet you, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said cordially, and he +saw the blood rush into her face and the fear die out in her eyes. + +The neighbourhood, to quote Mr. Hazlewood, had not been kind to Stella +Ballantyne. She had stood in the dock and the fact tarnished her. +Moreover here and there letters had come from India. The verdict was +inevitable, but--but--there was a doubt about its justice. The full +penalty--no. No one desired or would have thought it right, but something +betwixt and between in the proper spirit of British compromise would not +have been amiss. Thus gossip ran. More-over Stella Ballantyne was too +good-looking, and she wore her neat and simple clothes too well. To some +of the women it was an added offence when they considered what she might +be wearing if only the verdict had been different. Thus for a year Stella +had been left to her own company except for a couple of visits which the +Reptons had paid to her. At the first she had welcomed the silence, the +peace of her loneliness. It was a balm to her. She recovered like a +flower in the night. But she was young--she was twenty-eight this +year--and as her limbs ceased to be things of lead and became once more +aglow with life there came to her a need of companionship. She tried to +tramp the need away on the turf of her well-loved downs, but she failed. +A friend to share with her the joy of these summer days! Her blood +clamoured for one. But she was an outcast. Friends did not come her way. +Therefore she had gratefully received old Mr. Hazlewood in her house, and +had accepted, though with some fear, his proposal that she should lunch +at the big house and make the acquaintance of his son. + +She was nervous at the beginning of that meal, but both father and son +were at the pains to put her at her ease; and soon she was talking +naturally, with a colour in her cheeks, and now and then a note of +laughter in her voice. Dick worked for the recurrence of that laughter. +He liked the clear sound of it and the melting of all her face into +sweetness and tender humour which came with it. And for another thing he +had a thought, and a true one, that it was very long since she had known +the pleasure of good laughter. + +They took their coffee out on the lawn under the shade of a huge +cedar-tree. The river ran at their feet and a Canadian canoe and a +rowing-boat were tethered close by in a little dock. The house, a place +of grey stone with grey weathered and lichen-coloured slates, raised its +great oblong chimneys into a pellucid air. The sunlight flashed upon its +rows of tall windows--they were all flat to the house, except the one +great bay on the ground floor in the library--and birds called from all +the trees. The time slipped away. Dick Hazlewood found himself talking of +his work, a practice into which he seldom fell, and was surprised that +she could talk of it with him. He realised with a start how it was that +she knew. But she talked naturally and openly, as though he must know her +history. Once even some jargon of the Staff College slipped from her. +"You were doing let us pretend at Box Hill last week, weren't you?" she +said, and when he started at the phrase she imagined that he started at +the extent of her information. "It was in the papers," she said. "I read +every word of them," and then for a second her face clouded, and she +added: "I have time, you see." + +She looked at her watch and sprang to her feet. + +"I must go," she said. "I didn't know it was so late. I have enjoyed +myself very much." She did not hesitate now to offer her hand. "Goodbye." + +Dick Hazlewood went with her as far as the gate and came back to +his father. + +"You were asking me," he said carelessly, "if I could give you some part +of the summer. I don't see why I shouldn't come here in a day or two. The +polo matches aren't so important." + +The old man's eyes brightened. + +"I shall be delighted, Richard, if you will." He looked at his son with +something really ecstatic in his expression. At last then his better +nature was awakening. "I really believe--" he exclaimed and Dick cut +him short. + +"Yes, it may be that, sir. On the other hand it may not. What is quite +clear is that I must catch my train. So if I might order the car?" + +"Of course, of course." + +He came out with his son into the porch of the house. + +"We have done a fine thing to-day, Richard," he said with enthusiasm and +a nod towards the cottage beyond the meadow. + +"We have indeed, sir," returned Dick cheerily. "Did you ever see such a +pair of ankles?" + +"She lost the tragic look this afternoon, Richard. We must be her +champions." + +"We will put in the summer that way, father," said Dick, and waving his +hand was driven off to the station. + +Mr. Hazlewood walked back to the library. But "walked" is a poor word. He +seemed to float on air. A great opportunity had come to him. He had +enlisted the services of his son. He saw Dick and himself as Toreadors +waving red flags in the face of a bull labelled Conventionality. He went +back to the pamphlet on which he was engaged with renewed ardour and +laboured diligently far into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE GREAT CRUSADE + + +"I was in Great Beeding this morning," said Dick, as he sat at luncheon +with his father, "and the blinds were up in Aunt Margaret's house." + +"They have returned from their holiday then," his father observed with a +tremor in his voice. He looked afraid. Then he looked annoyed. + +"Pettifer will break down if he doesn't take care," he exclaimed +petulantly. "No man with any sense would work as hard as he does. He +ought to have taken two months this year at the least." + +"We should still have to meet Aunt Margaret at the end of them," said +Dick calmly. He had no belief in Mr. Hazlewood's distress at the overwork +of Pettifer. + +A month had passed since the inauguration of the great Crusade, and +though talk was rife everywhere and indignation in many places loud, a +certain amount of success had been won. But all this while Mrs. Pettifer +had been away. Now she had returned. Mr. Hazlewood stood in some awe of +his sister. She was not ill-natured, but she knew her mind and expressed +it forcibly and without delay. She was of a practical limited nature; she +saw very clearly what she saw, but she walked in blinkers, and had +neither comprehension of nor sympathy with those of a wider vision. She +was at this time a woman of forty, comfortable to look upon and the wife +of Mr. Robert Pettifer, the head of the well-known firm of solicitors, +Pettifer, Gryll and Musgrave. Mrs. Pettifer had very little patience to +spare for the idiosyncrasies of her brother, though she owed him a good +deal more than patience. For at the time, some twenty years before, when +she had married Robert Pettifer, then merely a junior partner of the +firm, Harold Hazlewood had alone stood by her. To the rest of the family +she was throwing herself away; to her brother Harold she was doing a fine +thing, not because it was a fine thing but because it was an exceptional +thing. Robert Pettifer however had prospered, and though he had reached +an age when he might have claimed his leisure the nine o'clock train +still took him daily to London. + +"Aunt Margaret isn't after all so violent," said Dick, for whom she kept +a very soft place in her heart. But Harold shook his head. + +"Your aunt, Richard, has all the primeval ferocity of the average woman." +And then the fires of the enthusiast were set alight in his blue eyes. +"I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll send her my new pamphlet, Richard. It +may have a humanising influence upon her. I have some advance copies. +I'll send her one this afternoon." + +Dick's eyes twinkled. + +"I should if I were you, though to be sure, sir, we have tried that plan +before without any prodigious effect." + +"True, Richard, true, but I have never before risen to such heights as +these." Mr. Hazlewood threw down his napkin and paced the room. "Richard, +I am not inclined to boast. I am a humble man." + +"It is only humility, sir, which achieves great work," said Dick, as he +went contentedly on with his luncheon. + +"But the very title of this pamphlet seems to me calculated to interest +the careless and attract the thoughtful. It is called _The Prison Walls +must Cast no Shadow_." + +With an arm outstretched he seemed to deliver the words of the title +one by one from the palm of his hand. Then he stood smiling, +confident, awaiting applause. Dick's face, which had shown the highest +expectancy, slowly fell in a profound disappointment. He laid down his +knife and fork. + +"Oh, come, father. All walls cast shadows. It entirely depends upon the +altitude of the sun." + +Mr. Hazlewood returned to his seat and spoke gently. + +"The phrase, my boy, is a metaphor. I develop in this pamphlet my belief +that a convict, once he has expiated his offence, should upon his release +be restored to the precise position in society which he held before with +all its privileges unimpaired." + +Dick chuckled in the most unregenerate delight. + +"You are going it, father," he said, and disappointment came to Mr. +Hazlewood. + +"Richard," he remonstrated mildly, "I hoped that I should have had your +approval. It seemed to me that a change was taking place in you, that the +player of polo, the wild hunter of an inoffensive little white ball, was +developing into the humanitarian." + +"Well, sir," rejoined Dick, "I won't deny that of late I have been +beginning to think that there is a good deal in your theories. But you +mustn't try me too high at the beginning, you know. I am only in my +novitiate. However, please send it to Aunt Margaret, and--oh, how I would +like to hear her remarks upon it!" + +An idea occurred to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Richard, why shouldn't you take it over yourself this afternoon?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"Impossible, father, I have something to do." He looked out of the window +down to the river running dark in the shade of trees. "But I'll go +to-morrow morning," he added. + +And the next morning he walked over early to Great Beeding. His aunt +would have received the pamphlet by the first post and he wished to seize +the first fine careless rapture of her comments. But he found her in a +mood of distress rather than of wordy impatience. + +The Pettifers lived in a big house of the Georgian period at the bottom +of an irregular square in the middle of the little town. Mrs. Pettifer +was sitting in a room facing the garden at the back with the pamphlet on +a little table beside her. She sprang up as Dick was shown into the room, +and before he could utter a word of greeting she cried: + +"Dick, you are the one person I wanted to see." + +"Oh?" + +"Yes. Sit down." + +Dick obeyed. + +"Dick, I believe you are the only person in the world who has any control +over your father." + +"Yes. Even in my pinafores I learnt the great lesson that to control +one's parents is the first duty of the modern child." + +"Don't be silly," his aunt rejoined sharply. Then she looked him over. +"Yes, you must have some control over him, for he lets you remain in the +army, though an army is one of his abominations." + +"Theoretically it's a great grief to him," replied Dick. "But you see I +have done fairly well, so actually he's ready to burst with pride. Every +sentimental philosopher sooner or later breaks his head against his own +theories." + +Mrs. Pettifer nodded her head in commendation. + +"That's an improvement on your last remark, Dick. It's true. And your +father's going to break his head very badly unless you stop him." + +"How?" + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +All the flippancy died out of Dick Hazlewood's face. He became at once +grave, wary. + +"I have been hearing about him," continued Mrs. Pettifer. "He has made +friends with her--a woman who has stood in the dock on a capital charge." + +"And has been acquitted," Dick Hazlewood added quietly and Mrs. Pettifer +blazed up. + +"She wouldn't have been acquitted if I had been on the jury. A +parcel of silly men who are taken in by a pretty face!" she cried, +and Dick broke in: + +"Aunt Margaret, I am sorry to interrupt you. But I want you to understand +that I am with my father heart and soul in this." + +He spoke very slowly and deliberately and Mrs. Pettifer was +utterly dismayed. + +"You!" she cried. She grew pale, and alarm so changed her face it was as +if a tragic mask had been slipped over it. "Oh, Dick, not you!" + +"Yes, I. I think it is cruelly hard," he continued with his eyes +relentlessly fixed upon Mrs. Pettifer's face, "that a woman like Mrs. +Ballantyne, who has endured all the horrors of a trial, the publicity, +the suspense, the dread risk that justice might miscarry, should have +afterwards to suffer the treatment of a leper." + +There was for the moment no room for any anger now in Mrs. Pettifer's +thoughts. Consternation possessed her. She weighed every quiet firm word +that fell from Dick, she appreciated the feeling which gave them wings, +she searched his face, his eyes. Dick had none of his father's +flightiness. He was level-headed, shrewd and with the conventions of his +times and his profession. If Dick spoke like this, with so much certitude +and so much sympathy, why then--She shrank from the conclusion with a +sinking heart. She became very quiet. + +"Oh, she shouldn't have come to Little Beeding," she said in a low voice, +staring now upon the ground. It was to herself she spoke, but Dick +answered her, and his voice rose to a challenge. + +"Why shouldn't she? Here she was born, here she was known. What else +should she do but come back to Little Beeding and hold her head high? I +respect her pride for doing it." + +Here were reasons no doubt why Stella should come back; but they did not +include the reason why she had. Dick Hazlewood was well aware of it. He +had learnt it only the afternoon before when he was with her on the +river. But he thought it a reason too delicate, of too fine a gossamer to +be offered to the prosaic mind of his Aunt Margaret. With what ridicule +and disbelief she would rend it into tatters! Reasons so exquisite were +not for her. She could never understand them. + +Mrs. Pettifer abandoned her remonstrances and was for dropping the +subject altogether. But Dick was obstinate. + +"You don't know Mrs. Ballantyne, Aunt Margaret. You are unjust to her +because you don't know her. I want you to," he said boldly. + +"What!" cried Mrs. Pettifer. "You actually--Oh!" Indignation robbed her +of words. She gasped. + +"Yes, I do," continued Dick calmly. "I want you to come one night and +dine at Little Beeding. We'll persuade Mrs. Ballantyne to come too." + +It was a bold move, and even in his eyes it had its risks for Stella. To +bring Mrs. Pettifer and her together was, so it seemed to him, to mix +earth with delicate flame. But he had great faith in Stella Ballantyne. +Let them but meet and the earth might melt--who could tell? At the worst +his aunt would bristle, and there were his father and himself to see that +the bristles did not prick. + +"Yes, come and dine." + +Mrs. Pettifer had got over her amazement at her nephew's audacity. +Curiosity had taken its place--curiosity and fear. She must see this +woman for herself. + +"Yes," she answered after a pause. "I will come. I'll bring Robert too." + +"Good. We'll fix up a date and write to you. Goodbye." + +Dick went back to Little Beeding and asked for his father. The old +gentleman added to his other foibles that of a collector. It was the +only taste he had which was really productive, for he owned a collection +of miniatures, gathered together throughout his life, which would have +realised a fortune if it had been sold at Christie's. He kept it arranged +in cabinets in the library and Dick found him bending over one of the +drawers and rearranging his treasures. + +"I have seen Aunt Margaret," he said. "She will meet Stella here +at dinner." + +"That will be splendid," cried the old man with enthusiasm. + +"Perhaps," replied his son; and the next morning the Pettifers received +their invitation. + +Mrs. Pettifer accepted it at once. She had not been idle since Dick had +left her. Before he had come she had merely looked upon the crusade as +one of Harold Hazlewood's stupendous follies. But after he had gone she +was genuinely horrified. She saw Dick speaking with the set dogged look +and the hard eyes which once or twice she had seen before. He had always +got his way, she remembered, on those occasions. She drove round to her +friends and made inquiries. At each house her terrors were confirmed. It +was Dick now who led the crusade. He had given up his polo, he was +spending all his leave at Little Beeding and most of it with Stella +Ballantyne. He lent her a horse and rode with her in the morning, he +rowed her on the river in the afternoon. He bullied his friends to call +on her. He brandished his friendship with her like a flag. Love me, love +my Stella was his new motto. Mrs. Pettifer drove home with every fear +exaggerated. Dick's career would be ruined altogether--even if nothing +worse were to happen. To any view that Stella Ballantyne might hold she +hardly gave a thought. She was sure of what it would be. Stella +Ballantyne would jump at her nephew. He had good looks, social position, +money and a high reputation. It was the last quality which would give him +a unique value in Stella Ballantyne's eyes. He was not one of the +chinless who haunt the stage doors; nor again one of that more subtly +decadent class which seeks to attract sensation by linking itself to +notoriety. No. From Stella's point of view Dick Hazlewood must be the +ideal husband. + +Mrs. Pettifer waited for her husband's return that evening with unusual +impatience, but she was wise enough to hold her tongue until dinner was +over and he with a cigar between his lips and a glass of old brandy on +the table-cloth in front of him, disposed to amiability and concession. + +Then, however, she related her troubles. + +"You see it must be stopped, Robert." + +Robert Pettifer was a lean wiry man of fifty-five whose brown dried face +seemed by a sort of climatic change to have taken on the colour of the +binding of his law-books. He, too, was a little troubled by the story, +but he was of a fair and cautious mind. + +"Stopped?" he said. "How? We can't arrest Mrs. Ballantyne again." + +"No," replied Mrs. Pettifer. "Robert, you must do something." + +Robert Pettifer jumped in his chair. + +"I, Margaret! Lord love you, no! I decline to mix myself up in the matter +at all. Dick's a grown man and Mrs. Ballantyne has been acquitted." + +Margaret Pettifer knew her husband. + +"Is that your last word?" she asked ruefully. + +"Absolutely." + +"It isn't mine, Robert." + +Robert Pettifer chuckled and laid a hand upon his wife's. + +"I know that, Margaret." + +"We are going to dine next Friday night at Little Beeding to meet Stella +Ballantyne." + +Mr. Pettifer was startled but he held his tongue. + +"The invitation came this morning after you had left for London," +she added. + +"And you accepted it at once?" + +"Yes." + +Pettifer was certain that she had before she opened her mouth to +answer him. + +"I shall dine at Little Beeding on Friday," he said, "because Harold +always gives me an admirable glass of vintage port"; and with that he +dismissed the subject. Mrs. Pettifer was content to let it smoulder in +his mind. She was not quite sure that he was as disturbed as she wished +him to be, but that he was proud of Dick she knew, and if by any chance +uneasiness grew strong in him, why, sooner or later he would let fall +some little sentence; and that little sentence would probably be useful. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +CONSEQUENCES + + +The dinner-party at Little Beeding was a small affair. There were but ten +altogether who sat down at Mr. Hazlewood's dinner-table and with the +exception of the Pettifers all, owing to Dick Hazlewood's insistence, +were declared partisans of Stella Ballantyne. None the less Stella came +to it with hesitation. It was the first time that she had dined abroad +since she had left India, now the best part of eighteen months ago, and +she went forth to it as to an ordeal. For though friends of hers would be +present to enhearten her she was to meet the Pettifers. The redoubtable +Aunt Margaret had spoilt her sleep for a week. It was for the Pettifers +she dressed, careful to choose neither white nor black, lest they should +find something symbolic in the colour of her gown and make of it an +offence. She put on a frock of pale blue satin trimmed with some white +lace which had belonged to her mother, and she wore not so much as a thin +gold chain about her neck. But she did not need jewels that night. The +months of quiet had restored her to her beauty, the excitement of this +evening had given life and colour to her face, the queer little droop at +the corners of her lips which had betrayed so much misery and bitterness +of spirit had vanished altogether. Yet when she was quite dressed and +her mirror bade her take courage she sat down and wrote a note of apology +pleading a sudden indisposition. But she did not send it. Even in the +writing her cowardice came home to her and she tore it up before she had +signed her name. The wheels of the cab which was to take her to the big +house rattled down the lane under her windows, and slipping her cloak +over her shoulders she ran downstairs. + +The party began with a little constraint. Mr. Hazlewood received his +guests in his drawing-room and it had the chill and the ceremony of a +room which is seldom used. But the constraint wore off at the table. Most +of those present were striving to set Stella Ballantyne at her ease, and +she was at a comfortable distance from Mrs. Pettifer, with Mr. Hazlewood +at her side. She was conscious that she was kept under observation and +from time to time the knowledge made her uncomfortable. + +"I am being watched," she said to her host. + +"You mustn't mind," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and the smile came back to her +lips as she glanced round the table. + +"Oh, I don't, I don't," she said in a low voice, "for I have +friends here." + +"And friends who will not fail you, Stella," said the old man. "To-night +begins the great change. You'll see." + +Robert Pettifer puzzled her indeed more than his wife. She was plain to +read. She was frigidly polite, her enemy. Once or twice, however, Stella +turned her head to find Robert Pettifer's eyes resting upon her with a +quiet scrutiny which betrayed nothing of his thoughts. As a matter of +fact he liked her manner. She was neither defiant nor servile, neither +loud nor over-silent. She had been through fire; that was evident. But it +was evident only because of a queer haunting look which came and went in +her dark eyes. The fire had not withered her. Indeed Pettifer was +surprised. He had not formulated his expectations at all, but he had not +expected what he saw. The clear eyes and the fresh delicate colour, her +firm white shoulders and her depth of bosom, forced him to think of her +as wholesome. He began to turn over in his mind his recollections of her +case, recollections which he had been studious not to revive. + +Halfway through the dinner Stella lost her uneasiness. The lights, the +ripple of talk, the company of men and women, the bright dresses had +their effect on her. It was as though after a deep plunge into dark +waters she had come to the surface and flung out her arms to the sun. She +ceased to notice the scrutiny of the Pettifers. She looked across the +table to Dick and their eyes met; and such a look of tenderness +transfigured her face as made Mrs. Pettifer turn pale. + +"That woman's in love," she said to herself and she was horrified. It +wasn't Dick's social position then or the shelter of his character that +Stella Ballantyne coveted. She was in love. Mrs. Pettifer was honest +enough to acknowledge it. But she knew now that the danger which she had +feared was infinitely less than the danger which actually was. + +"I must have it out with Harold to-night," she said, and later on, when +the men came from the dining-room, she looked out for her husband. But at +first she did not see him. She was in the drawing-room and the wide +double doors which led to the big library stood open. It was through +those doors that the men had come. Some of the party were gathered there. +She could hear the click of the billiard balls and the voices of women +mingling with those of the men. She went through the doors and saw her +husband standing by Harold Hazlewood's desk, and engrossed apparently in +some little paper-covered book which he held in his hand. She crossed to +him at once. + +"Robert," she said, "don't be in a hurry to go to-night. I must have a +word with Harold." + +"All right," said Pettifer, but he said it in so absent a voice that his +wife doubted whether he had understood her words. She was about to repeat +them when Harold Hazlewood himself approached. + +"You are looking at my new pamphlet, Pettifer, _The Prison Walls must +Cast no Shadow_. I am hoping that it will have a great influence." + +"No," replied Pettifer. "I wasn't. I was looking at this," and he held +up the little book. + +"Oh, that?" said Hazlewood, turning away with disappointment. + +"Yes, that," said Pettifer with a strange and thoughtful look at his +brother-in-law. "And I am not sure," he added slowly, "that in a short +time you will not find it the more important publication of the two." + +He laid the book down and in his turn he moved away towards the +billiard-table. Margaret Pettifer remained. She had been struck by the +curious deliberate words her husband had used. Was this the hint for +which she was looking out? She took up the little book. It was a copy of +_Notes and Queries_. She opened it. + +It was a small periodical magazine made up of printed questions which +contributors sent in search of information and answers to those questions +from the pens of other contributors. Mrs. Pettifer glanced through the +leaves, hoping to light upon the page which her husband had been +studying. But he had closed the book when he laid it down and she found +nothing to justify his remark. Yet he had not spoken without intention. +Of that she was convinced, and her conviction was strengthened the next +moment, for as she turned again towards the drawing-room Robert Pettifer +looked once sharply towards her and as sharply away. Mrs. Pettifer +understood that glance. He was wondering whether she had noticed what in +that magazine had interested him. But she did not pursue him with +questions. She merely made up her mind to examine the copy of _Notes and +Queries_ at a time when she could bring more leisure to the task. + +She waited impatiently for the party to break up but eleven o'clock had +struck before any one proposed to go. Then all took their leave at once. +Robert Pettifer and his wife went out into the hall with the rest, lest +others seeing them remain should stay behind too; and whilst they stood a +little apart from the general bustle of departure Margaret Pettifer saw +Stella Ballantyne come lightly down the stairs, and a savage fury +suddenly whirled in her head and turned her dizzy. She thought of all the +trouble and harm this young woman was bringing into their ordered family +and she would not have it that she was innocent. She saw Stella with her +cloak open upon her shoulders radiant and glistening and slender against +the dark panels of the staircase, youth in her face, enjoyment sparkling +in her eyes, and her fingers itched to strip her of her bright frock, her +gloves, her slim satin slippers, the delicate white lace which nestled +against her bosom. She clothed her in the heavy shapeless garments, the +coarse shoes and stockings of the convict; she saw her working +desperately against time upon an ignoble task with black and broken +finger-nails. If longing could have worked the miracle, thus at this hour +would Stella Ballantyne have sat and worked, all the colour of her faded +to a hideous drab, all the grace of her withered. Mrs. Pettifer turned +away with so abrupt a movement and so disordered a face that Robert asked +her if she was ill. + +"No, it's nothing," she said and against her will her eyes were drawn +back to the staircase. But Stella Ballantyne had disappeared and Margaret +Pettifer drew her breath in relief. She felt that there had been danger +in her moment of passion, danger and shame; and already enough of those +two evils waited about them. + +Stella, meanwhile, with a glance towards Dick Hazlewood, had slipped back +into the big room. Then she waited for a moment until the door opened and +Dick came in. + +"I had not said good-night to you," she exclaimed, coming towards him and +giving him her hands, "and I wanted to say it to you here, when we were +alone. For I must thank you for to-night, you and your father. Oh, I have +no words." + +The tears were very near to her eyes and they were audible in her low +voice. Dick Hazlewood was quick to answer her. + +"Good! For there's need of none. Will you ride to-morrow?" + +Stella took her hands from his and moved across the room towards the +great bay window with its glass doors. + +"I should love to," she said. + +"Eight. Is that too early after to-night?" + +"No, that's the good time," she returned with a smile. "We have the day +at its best and the world to ourselves." + +"I'll bring the same horse round. He knows you now, doesn't he?" + +"Thank you," said Stella. She unlatched the glass door and opened it. +"You'll lock it after me, won't you?" + +"No," said Dick. "I'll see you to your door." + +But Stella refused his company. She stood in the doorway. + +"There's no need! See what a night it is!" and the beauty of it crept +into her soul and stilled her voice. The moon rode in a blue sky, a disc +of glowing white, the great cedar-trees flung their shadows wide over the +bright lawns and not a branch stirred. + +"Listen," said Stella in a whisper and the river rippling against its +banks with now a deep sob and now a fairy's laugh sang to them in notes +most musical and clear. That liquid melody and the flutter of a bird's +wings in the bough of a tree were the only sounds. They stood side by +side, she looking out over the garden to the dim and pearly hills, he +gazing at her uplifted face and the pure column of her throat. They +stood in a most dangerous silence. The air came cool and fresh to their +nostrils. Stella drew it in with a smile. + +"Good-night!" She laid her hand for a second on his arm. "Don't +come with me!" + +"Why not?" + +And the answer came in a clear whisper: + +"I am afraid." + +Stella seemed to feel the man at her side suddenly grow very still. +"It's only a step," she went on quickly and she passed out of the window +on to the pathway. Dick Hazlewood followed but she turned to him and +raised her hand. + +"Don't," she pleaded; the voice was troubled but her eyes were steady. +"If you come with me I shall tell you." + +"What?" he interrupted, and the quickness of the interruption broke the +spell which the night had laid upon her. + +"I shall tell you again how much I thank you," she said lightly. "I shall +cross the meadow by the garden gate. That brings me to my door." + +She gathered her skirt in her hand and crossed the pathway to the edge of +the grass. + +"You can't do that," exclaimed Dick and he was at her side. He stooped +and felt the turf. "Even the lawn's drenched. Crossing the meadow you'll +be ankle-deep in dew. You must promise never to go home across the +meadow when you dine with us." + +He spoke, chiding her as if she had been a mutinous child, and with so +much anxiety that she laughed. + +"You see, you have become rather precious to me," he added. + +Though the month was July she that night was all April, half tears, half +laughter. The smile passed from her lips and she raised her hands to her +face with the swiftness of one who has been struck. + +"What's the matter?" he asked, and she drew her hand away. + +"Don't you understand?" she asked, and answered the question herself. +"No, why should you?" She turned to him suddenly, her bosom heaving, her +hands clenched. "Do you know what place I fill here, in my own county? +Years ago, when I was a child, there was supposed to be a pig-faced woman +in Great Beeding. She lived in a small yellow cottage in the Square. It +was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the town. Sometimes +they were shown her shadow after dusk between the lamp and the blind. +Sometimes you might have even caught a glimpse of her slinking late at +night along the dark alleys. Well, the pig-faced woman has gone and I +have taken her place." + +"No," cried Dick. "That's not true." + +"It is," she answered passionately. "I am the curiosity. I am the freak. +The townspeople take a pride in me, yes, just the same pride they took in +her, and I find that pride more difficult to bear than all the aversion +of the Pettifers. I too slink out early in the morning or late after +night has fallen. And you"--the passion of bitterness died out of her +voice, her hands opened and hung at her sides, a smile of tenderness +shone on her face--"you come with me. You ride with me early. With you I +learn to take no heed. You welcome me to your house. You speak to me as +you spoke just now." Her voice broke and a cry of gladness escaped from +her which went to Dick Hazlewood's heart. "Oh, you shall see me to my +door. I'll not cross the meadow. I'll go round by the road." She stopped +and drew a breath. + +"I'll tell you something." + +"What?" + +"It's rather good to be looked after. I know. It has never happened to me +before. Yes, it's very good," and she drew out the words with a low laugh +of happiness. + +"Stella!" he said, and at the mention of her name she caught her hands up +to her heart. "Oh, thank you!" + +The hall-door was closed and all but one car had driven away when they +turned the corner of the house and came out in the broad drive. They +walked in the moonlight with a perfume of flowers in the air and the big +yellow cups of the evening primroses gleaming on either side. They walked +slowly. Stella knew that she should quicken her feet but she could not +bring herself to do more than know it. She sought to take into her heart +every tiniest detail of that walk so that in memory she might, years +after, walk it again and so never be quite alone. They passed out through +the great iron gates and turned into the lane. Here great elms overhung +and now they walked in darkness, and now again were bathed in light. A +twig snapped beneath her foot; even so small a thing she would remember. + +"We must hurry," she said. + +"We are doing all that we can," replied Dick. "It's a long +way--this walk." + +"You feel it so?" said Stella, tempting him--oh, unwisely! But the spell +of the hour and the place was upon her. + +"Yes," he answered her. "It's a long way in a man's life," and he drew +close to her side. + +"No!" she cried with a sudden violence. But she was awake too late. "No, +Dick, no," she repeated, but his arms were about her. + +"Stella, I want you. Oh, life's dull for a man without a woman; I can +tell you," he exclaimed passionately. + +"There are others--plenty," she said, and tried to thrust him away. + +"Not for me," he rejoined, and he would not let her go. Her struggles +ceased, she buried her face in his coat, her hands caught his shoulders, +she stood trembling and shivering against him. + +"Stella," he whispered. "Stella!" + +He raised her face and bent to it. Then he straightened himself. + +"Not here!" he said. + +They were standing in the darkness of a tree. He put his arms about her +waist and lifted her into an open space where the moonlight shone bright +and clear and there were no shadows. + +"Here," he said, and he kissed her on the lips. She thrust her head back, +her face uplifted to the skies, her eyes closed. + +"Oh, Dick," she murmured, "I meant that this should never be. Even +now--you shall forget it." + +"No--I couldn't." + +"So one says. But--oh, it would be your ruin." She started away from him. + +"Listen!" + +"Yes," he answered. + +She stood confronting him desperately a yard or so away, her bosom +heaving, her face wet with her tears. Dick Hazlewood did not stir. +Stella's lips moved as though she were speaking but no words were +audible, and it seemed that her strength left her. She came suddenly +forward, groping with her hands like a blind person. + +"Oh, my dear," she said as he caught them. They went on again together. +She spoke of his father, of the talk of the countryside. But he had an +argument for each of hers. + +"Be brave for just a little, Stella. Once we are married there will be no +trouble," and with his arms about her she was eager to believe. + +Stella Ballantyne sat late that night in the armchair in her bedroom, her +eyes fixed upon the empty grate, in a turmoil of emotion. She grew cold +and shivered. A loud noise of birds suddenly burst through the open +window. She went to it. The morning had come. She looked across the +meadow to the silent house of Little Beeding in the grey broadening +light. All the blinds were down. Were they all asleep or did one watch +like her? She came back to the fireplace. In the grate some torn +fragments of a letter caught her eyes. She stooped and picked them up. +They were fragments of the letter of regret which she had written earlier +that evening. + +"I should have sent it," she whispered. "I should not have gone. I should +have sent the letter." + +But the regret was vain. She had gone. Her maid found her in the morning +lying upon her bed in a deep sleep and still wearing the dress in which +she had gone out. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD + + +When Dick and Stella walked along the drive to the lane Harold Hazlewood, +who was radiant at the success of his dinner-party, turned to Robert +Pettifer in the hall. + +"Have a whisky-and-soda, Robert, before you go," he said. He led the way +back into the library. Behind him walked the Pettifers, Robert +ill-at-ease and wishing himself a hundred miles away, Margaret Pettifer +boiling for battle. Hazlewood himself dropped into an arm-chair. + +"I am very glad that you came to-night, Margaret," he said boldly. "You +have seen for yourself." + +"Yes, I have," she replied. "Harold, there have been moments this evening +when I could have screamed." + +Robert Pettifer hurriedly turned towards the table in the far corner +of the room where the tray with the decanters and the syphons had +been placed. + +"Margaret, I pass my life in a scream at the injustice of the world," +said Harold Hazlewood, and Robert Pettifer chuckled as he cut off the end +of a cigar. "It is strange that an act of reparation should move you in +the same way." + +"Reparation!" cried Margaret Pettifer indignantly. Then she noticed that +the window was open. She looked around the room. She drew up a chair in +front of her brother. + +"Harold, if you have no consideration for us, none for your own +position, none for the neighbourhood, if you will at all costs force +this woman upon us, don't you think that you might still spare a thought +for your son?" + +Robert Pettifer had kept his eyes open that evening as well as his wife. +He took a step down into the room. He was anxious to take no part in the +dispute; he desired to be just; he was favourably inclined towards Stella +Ballantyne; looking at her he had been even a little moved. But Dick was +the first consideration. He had no children of his own, he cared for Dick +as he would have cared for his son, and when he went up each morning by +the train to his office in London there lay at the back of his mind the +thought that one day the fortune he was amassing would add a splendour to +Dick's career. Harold Hazlewood alone of the three seemed to have his +eyes sealed. + +"Why, what on earth do you mean, Margaret?" + +Margaret Pettifer sat down in her chair. + +"Where was Dick yesterday afternoon?" + +"Margaret, I don't know." + +"I do. I saw him. He was with Stella Ballantyne on the river--in the +dusk--in a Canadian canoe." She uttered each fresh detail in a more +indignant tone, as though it aggravated the crime. Yet even so she had +not done. There was, it seemed, a culminating offence. "She was wearing a +white lace frock with a big hat." + +"Well," said Mr. Hazlewood mildly, "I don't think I have anything against +big hats." + +"She was trailing her hand in the water--that he might notice its +slenderness of course. Outrageous I call it!" + +Mr. Hazlewood nodded his head at his indignant sister. + +"I know that frame of mind very well, Margaret," he remarked. "She cannot +do right. If she had been wearing a small hat she would have been +Frenchified." + +But Mrs. Pettifer was not in a mood for argument. + +"Can't you see what it all means?" she cried in exasperation. + +"I can. I do," Mr. Hazlewood retorted and he smiled proudly upon his +sister. "The boy's better nature is awakening." + +Margaret Pettifer lifted up her hands. + +"The boy!" she exclaimed. "He's thirty-four if he's a day." + +She leaned forward in her chair and pointing up to the bay asked: "Why is +that window open, Harold?" + +Harold Hazlewood showed his first sign of discomfort. He shifted in +his chair. + +"It's a hot night, Margaret." + +"That is not the reason," Mrs. Pettifer retorted implacably. +"Where is Dick?" + +"I expect that he is seeing Mrs. Ballantyne home." + +"Exactly," said Mrs. Pettifer with a world of significance in her voice. +Mr. Hazlewood sat up and looked at his sister. + +"Margaret, you want to make me uncomfortable," he exclaimed pettishly. +"But you shan't. No, my dear, you shan't." He let himself sink back again +and joining the tips of his fingers contemplated the ceiling. But +Margaret was in the mind to try. She shot out her words at him like so +many explosive bullets. + +"Being friends is one thing, Harold. Marrying is another." + +"Very true, Margaret, very true." + +"They are in love with one another." + +"Rubbish, Margaret, rubbish." + +"I watched them at the dinner-table and afterwards. They are man and +woman, Harold. That's what you don't understand. They are not +illustrations of your theories. Ask Robert." + +"No," exclaimed Robert Pettifer. He hurriedly lit a cigar. "Any inference +I should make must be purely hypothetical." + +"Yes, we'll ask Robert. Come, Pettifer!" cried Mr. Hazlewood. "Let us +have your opinion." + +Robert Pettifer came reluctantly down from his corner. + +"Well, if you insist, I think they were very friendly." + +"Ah!" cried Hazlewood in triumph. "Being friends is one thing, Margaret. +Marrying is another." + +Mrs. Pettifer shook her head over her brother with a most +aggravating pity. + +"Dick said a shrewd thing the other day to me, Harold." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked doubtfully at his sister. + +"I am sure of it," he answered, but he was careful not to ask for any +repetition of the shrewd remark. Margaret, however, was not in the mind +to let him off. + +"He said that sentimental philosophers sooner or later break their heads +against their own theories. Mark those words, Harold! I hope they won't +come true of you. I hope so very much indeed." + +But it was abundantly clear that she had not a shadow of doubt that they +would come true. Mr. Hazlewood was stung by the slighting phrase. + +"I am not a sentimental philosopher," he said hotly. "Sentiment I +altogether abhor. I hold strong views, I admit." + +"You do indeed," his sister interrupted with an ironical laugh. "Oh, I +have read your pamphlet, Harold. The prison walls must cast no shadow and +convicts, once they are released, have as much right to sit down at our +dinner-tables as they had before. Well, you carry your principles into +practice, that I will say. We had an illustration to-night." + +"You are unjust, Margaret," and Mr. Hazlewood rose from his chair with +some dignity. "You speak of Mrs. Ballantyne, not for the first time, as +if she had been tried and condemned. In fact she was tried and +acquitted," and in his turn he appealed to Pettifer. + +"Ask Robert!" he said. + +But Pettifer was slow to answer, and when he did it was without +assurance. + +"Ye-es," he replied with something of a drawl. "Undoubtedly Mrs. +Ballantyne was tried and acquitted"; and he left the impression on the +two who heard him that with acquittal quite the last word had not been +said. Mrs. Pettifer looked at him eagerly. She drew clear at once of +the dispute. She left the questions now to Harold Hazlewood, and +Pettifer had spoken with so much hesitation that Harold Hazlewood could +not but ask them. + +"You are making reservations, Robert?" + +Pettifer shrugged his shoulders. + +"I think we have a right to know them," Hazlewood insisted. "You are a +solicitor with a great business and consequently a wide experience." + +"Not of criminal cases, Hazlewood. I bring no more authority to judge +them than any other man." + +"Still you have formed an opinion. Please let me have it," and Mr. +Hazlewood sat down again and crossed his knees. But a little impatience +was now audible in his voice. + +"An opinion is too strong a word," replied Pettifer guardedly. "The +trial took place nearly eighteen months ago. I read the accounts of it +certainly day by day as I travelled in the train to London. But they were +summaries." + +"Full summaries, Robert," said Hazlewood. + +"No doubt. The trial made a great deal of noise in the world. But they +were not full enough for me. Even if my memory of those newspaper reports +were clear I should still hesitate to sit in judgment. But my memory +isn't clear. Let us see what I do remember." + +Pettifer took a chair and sat for a few moments with his forehead +wrinkled in a frown. Was he really trying to remember? His wife asked +herself that question as she watched him. Or had he something to tell +them which he meant to let fall in his own cautiously careless way? Mrs. +Pettifer listened alertly. + +"The--well--let us call it the catastrophe--took place in a tent in some +state of Rajputana." + +"Yes," said Mr. Hazlewood. + +"It took place at night. Mrs. Ballantyne was asleep in her bed. The man +Ballantyne was found outside the tent in the doorway." + +"Yes." + +Pettifer paused. "So many law cases have engaged my attention since," +he said in apology for his hesitation. He seemed quite at a loss. Then +he went on: + +"Wait a moment! A man had been dining with them at night--oh yes, I +begin to remember." + +Harold Hazlewood made a tiny movement and would have spoken, but Margaret +held out a hand towards him swiftly. + +"Yes, a man called Thresk," said Pettifer, and again he was silent. + +"Well," asked Hazlewood. + +"Well--that's all I remember," replied Pettifer briskly. He rose and put +his chair back. "Except--" he added slowly. + +"Yes?" + +"Except that there was left upon my mind when the verdict was published a +vague feeling of doubt." + +"There!" cried Mrs. Pettifer triumphantly. "You hear him, Harold." + +But Hazelwood paid no attention to her. He was gazing at his +brother-in-law with a good deal of uneasiness. + +"Why?" he asked. "Why were you in doubt, Robert?" + +But Pettifer had said all that he had any mind to say. + +"Oh, I can't remember why," he exclaimed. "I am very likely quite wrong. +Come, Margaret, it's time that we were getting home." + +He crossed over to Hazlewood and held out his hand. Hazlewood, however, +did not rise. + +"I don't think that's quite fair of you, Robert," he said. "You don't +disturb my confidence, of course--I have gone into the case +thoroughly--but I think you ought to give me a chance of satisfying you +that your doubts have no justification." + +"No really," exclaimed Pettifer. "I absolutely refuse to mix myself up in +the affair at all." A step sounded upon the gravel path outside the +window. Pettifer raised a warning finger. "It's midnight, Margaret," he +said. "We must go"; and as he spoke Dick Hazlewood walked in through the +open window. + +He smiled at the group of his relations with a grim amusement. They +certainly wore a guilty look. He was surprised to remark some +embarrassment even upon his father's face. + +"You will see your aunt off, Richard," said Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Of course." + +The Pettifers and Dick went out into the hall, leaving the old man in his +chair, a little absent, perhaps a little troubled. + +"Aunt Margaret, you have been upsetting my father," said Dick. + +"Nonsense, Dick," she replied, and her face flushed. She stepped into the +carriage quickly to avoid questions, and as she stepped in Dick noticed +that she was carrying a little paper-covered book. Pettifer followed. +"Good-night, Dick," he said, and he shook hands with his nephew very +warmly. In spite of his cordiality, however, Dick's face grew hard as he +watched the carriage drive away. Stella was right. The Pettifers were the +enemy. Well, he had always known there would be a fight, and now the +sooner it came the better. He went back to the library and as he opened +the door he heard his father's voice. The old man was sitting sunk in his +chair and repeating to himself: + +"I won't believe it. I won't believe it." + +He stopped at once when Dick came in. Dick looked at him with concern. + +"You are tired, father," he said. + +"Yes, I think I am a little. I'll go to bed." + +Hazlewood watched Dick walk over to the corner table where the candles +stood beside the tray, and his face cleared. For the first time in his +life the tidy well-groomed conventional look of his son was a real +pleasure to him. Richard was of those to whom the good-will of the world +meant much. He would never throw it lightly away. Hazlewood got up and +took one of the candles from his son. He patted him on the shoulder. He +became quite at ease as he looked into his face. + +"Good-night, my boy," he said. + +"Good-night, sir," replied Dick cheerfully. "There's nothing like acting +up to one's theories, is there?" + +"Nothing," said the old man heartily. "Look at my life!" + +"Yes," replied Dick. "And now look at mine. I am going to marry Stella +Ballantyne." + +For a moment Mr. Hazlewood stood perfectly still. Then he murmured +lamely: + +"Oh, are you? Are you, Richard?" and he shuffled quickly out of the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +MR. HAZLEWOOD SEEKS ADVICE + + +As Dick was getting out of bed at half-past seven a troubled little note +was brought to him written hurriedly and almost incoherent. + +"Dick, I can't ride with you this morning. I am too tired ... and I don't +think we should meet again. You must forget last night. I shall be very +proud always to remember it, but I won't ruin you, Dick. You mustn't +think I shall suffer so very much ..." Dick read it all through with a +smile of tenderness upon his face. He wrote a line in reply. "I will come +and see you at eleven, Stella. Meanwhile sleep, my dear," and sent it +across to the cottage. Then he rolled back into bed again and took his +own advice. It was late when he came down into the dining-room and he +took his breakfast alone. + +"Where's my father?" he asked of Hubbard the butler. + +"Mr. Hazlewood breakfasted half an hour ago, sir. He's at work now." + +"Capital," said Dick. "Give me some sausages. Hubbard, what would you say +if I told you that I was going to be married?" + +Hubbard placed a plate in front of him. + +"I should keep my head, sir," he answered in his gentle voice. "Will you +take tea?" + +"Thank you." + +Dick looked out of the window. It was a morning of clear skies and +sunlight, a very proper morning for this the first of all the remarkable +days which one after the other were going especially to belong to him. He +was of the gods now. The world was his property, or rather he held it in +trust for Stella. It was behaving well; Dick Hazlewood was contented. He +ate a large breakfast and strolling into the library lit his pipe. There +was his father bending over his papers at his writing-table before the +window, busy as a bee no doubt at some new enthusiasm which was destined +to infuriate his neighbours. Let him go on! Dick smiled benignly at the +old man's back. Then he frowned. It was curious that his father had not +wished him a good-morning, curious and unusual. + +"I hope, sir, that you slept well," he said. + +"I did not, Richard," and still the back was turned to him. "I lay awake +considering with some care what you told me last night about--about +Stella Ballantyne." + +Of late she had been simply Stella to Harold Hazlewood. The addition of +Ballantyne was significant. It replaced friendliness with formality. + +"Yes, we agreed to champion her cause, didn't we?" said Dick cheerily. +"You took one good step forward last night, I took another." + +"You took a long stride, Richard, and I think you might have consulted +me first." + +Dick walked over to the table at which his father sat. + +"Do you know, that's just what Stella said," he remarked, and he seemed +to find the suggestion rather unintelligible. Mr. Hazlewood snatched at +any support which was offered to him. + +"Ah!" he exclaimed, and for the first time that morning he looked his son +in the face. "There now, Richard, you see!" + +"Yes," Richard returned imperturbably. "But I was able to remove all +her fears. I was able to tell her that you would welcome our marriage +with all your heart, for you would look upon it as a triumph for your +principles and a sure sign that my better nature was at last +thoroughly awake." + +Dick walked away from the table. The old man's face lengthened. If he was +a philosopher at all, he was a philosopher in a piteous position, for he +was having his theories tested upon himself, he was to be the experiment +by which they should be proved or disproved. + +"No doubt," he said in a lamentable voice. "Quite so, Richard. Yes," and +he caught at vague hopes of delay. "There's no hurry of course. For one +thing I don't want to lose you... And then you have your career to think +of, haven't you?" Mr. Hazlewood found himself here upon ground more solid +and leaned his weight on it. "Yes, there's your career." + +Dick returned to his father, amazement upon his face. He spoke as one who +cannot believe the evidence of his ears. + +"But it's in the army, father! Do you realise what you are saying? You +want me to think of my career in the British Army?" + +Consistency however had no charms for Mr. Hazlewood at this moment. + +"Exactly," he cried. "We don't want to prejudice that--do we? No, no, +Richard! Oh, I hear the finest things about you. And they push the young +men along nowadays. You don't have to wait for grey hairs before you're +made a General, Richard, so we must keep an eye on our prospects, eh? And +for that reason it would be advisable perhaps"--and the old man's eyes +fell from Dick's face to his papers--"yes, it would certainly be +advisable to let your engagement remain for a while just a private matter +between the three of us." + +He took up his pen as though the matter was decided and discussion at an +end. But Dick did not move from his side. He was the stronger of the two +and in a little while the old man's eyes wandered up to his face again. +There was a look there which Margaret Pettifer had seen a week ago. Dick +spoke and the voice he used was strange and formidable to his father. + +"There must be no secrecy, father. I remember what you said: for +uncharitable slander an English village is impossible to beat. Our secret +would be known within a week and by attempting to keep it we invite +suspicion. Nothing could be more damaging to Stella than secrecy. +Consequently nothing could be more damaging to me. I don't deny that +things are going to be a little difficult. But of this I am sure"--and +his voice, though it still was quiet, rang deep with confidence--"our one +chance is to hold our heads high. No secrecy, father! My hope is to make +a life which has been very troubled know some comfort and a little +happiness." + +Mr. Hazlewood had no more to say. He must renounce his gods or hold his +tongue. And renounce his gods--no, that he could not do. He heard in +imagination the whole neighbourhood laughing--he saw it a sea of laughter +overwhelming him. He shivered as he thought of it. He, Harold Hazlewood, +the man emancipated from the fictions of society, caught like a silly +struggling fish in the net of his own theories! No, that must never be. +He flung himself at his work. He was revising the catalogue of his +miniatures and in a minute he began to fumble and search about his +over-loaded desk. + +"Everybody is trying to thwart me this morning," he cried angrily. + +"What's the matter, father?" asked Dick, laying down the _Times_. +"Can I help?" + +"I wrote a question to _Notes and Queries_ about the Marie Antoinette +miniature which I bought at Lord Mirliton's sale and there was an answer +in the last number, a very complete answer. But I can't find it. I can't +find it anywhere"; and he tossed his papers about as though he were +punishing them. + +Dick helped in the search, but beyond a stray copy or two of _The Prison +Walls must Cast no Shadow_, there was no publication to be found at all. + +"Wait a bit, father," said Dick suddenly. "What is _Notes and Queries_ +like? The only notes and queries I read are contained in a pink paper. +They are very amusing but they do not deal with miniatures." + +Mr. Hazlewood described the appearance of the little magazine. + +"Well, that's very extraordinary," said Dick, "for Aunt Margaret took it +away last night." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked at his son in blank astonishment. + +"Are you sure, Richard?" + +"I saw it in her hand as she stepped into her carriage." + +Mr. Hazlewood banged his fist upon the table. + +"It's extremely annoying of Margaret," he exclaimed. "She takes no +interest in such matters. She is not, if I may use the word, a virtuoso. +She did it solely to annoy me." + +"Well, I wonder," said Dick. He looked at his watch. It was eleven +o'clock. He went out into the hall, picked up a straw hat and walked +across the meadow to the thatched cottage on the river-bank. But while he +went he was still wondering why in the world Margaret had taken away that +harmless little magazine from his father's writing-table. "Pettifer's at +the bottom of it," he concluded. "There's a foxy fellow for you. I'll +keep my eye on Uncle Robert." He was near to the cottage. Only a rail +separated its garden from the meadow. Beyond the garden a window stood +open and within the room he saw the flutter of a lilac dress. + +From the window of the library Mr. Hazlewood watched his son open the +garden gate. Then he unlocked a drawer of his writing-table and took out +a large sealed envelope. He broke the seal and drew from the envelope a +sheaf of press cuttings. They were the verbatim reports of Stella +Ballantyne's trial, which had been printed day by day in the _Times of +India_. He had sent for them months ago when he had blithely taken upon +himself the defence of Stella Ballantyne. He had read them with a growing +ardour. So harshly had she lived; so shadowless was her innocence. He +turned to them now in a different spirit. Pettifer had been left by the +English summaries of the trial with a vague feeling of doubt. Mr. +Hazlewood respected Robert Pettifer. The lawyer was cautious, deliberate, +unemotional--qualities with which Hazlewood had instinctively little +sympathy. But on the other hand he was not bound hand and foot in +prejudice. He could be liberal in his judgments. He had a mind clear +enough to divide what reason had to say and the presumptions of +convention. Suppose that Pettifer was after all right! The old man's +heart sank within him. Then indeed this marriage must be prevented--and +the truth must be made known--yes, widely known. He himself had been +deceived--like many another man before him. It was not ridiculous to have +been deceived. He remained at all events consistent to his principles. +There was his pamphlet to be sure, _The Prison Walls must Cast no +Shadow_ that gave him an uncomfortable twinge. But he reassured himself. + +"There I argue that, once the offence has been expiated, all the +privileges should be restored. But if Pettifer is right there has been no +expiation." + +That saving clause let him out. He did not thus phrase the position even +to himself. He clothed it in other and high-sounding words. It was after +all a sort of convention to accept acquittal as the proof of innocence. +But at the back of his mind from first to last there was an immense fear +of the figure which he himself would cut if he refused his consent to +the marriage on any ground except that of Stella Ballantyne's guilt. For +Stella herself, the woman, he had no kindness to spare that morning. +Yesterday he had overflowed with it. For yesterday she had been one more +proof to the world how high he soared above it. + +"Since Pettifer's in doubt," he said to himself, "there must be some +flaw in this trial which I overlooked in the heat of my sympathy"; and +to discover that flaw he read again every printed detail of it from the +morning when Stella first appeared before the stipendiary magistrate to +that other morning a month later when the verdict was given. And he +found no flaw. Stella's acquittal was inevitable on the evidence. There +was much to show what provocation she had suffered, but there was no +proof that she had yielded to it. On the contrary she had endured so +long, the presumption must be that she would go on enduring to the end. +And there was other evidence--positive evidence given by Thresk which +could not be gainsaid. + +Mr. Hazlewood replaced his cuttings in the drawer; and he was utterly +discontented. He had hoped for another result. There was only one point +which puzzled him and that had nothing really to do with the trial, but +it puzzled him so much that it slipped out at luncheon. + +"Richard," he said, "I cannot understand why the name of Thresk is so +familiar to me." + +Dick glanced quickly at his father. + +"You have been reading over again the accounts of the trial." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked confused. + +"And a very natural proceeding, Richard," he declared. "But while reading +over the trial I found the name Thresk familiar to me in another +connection, but I cannot remember what the connection is." + +Dick could not help him, nor was he at that time concerned by the failure +of his father's memory. He was engaged in realising that here was another +enemy for Stella. Knowing his father, he was not greatly surprised, but +he thought it prudent to attack without delay. + +"Stella will be coming over to tea this afternoon," he said. + +"Will she, Richard?" the father replied, twisting uncomfortably in his +chair. "Very well--of course." + +"Hubbard knows of my engagement, by the way," Dick continued implacably. + +"Hubbard! God bless my soul!" cried the old man. "It'll be all over the +village already." + +"I shouldn't wonder," replied Dick cheerfully. "I told him before I saw +you this morning, whilst I was having breakfast." + +Mr. Hazlewood remained silent for a while. Then he burst out petulantly: + +"Richard, there's something I must speak to you seriously about: the +lateness of your hours in the morning. I have noticed it with great +regret. It is not considerate to the servants and it cannot be healthy +for you. Such indolence too must be enervating to your mind." + +Dick forbore to remind his father that he was usually out of the house +before seven. + +"Father," he said, at once a very model of humility, "I will endeavour +to reform." + +Mr. Hazlewood concealed his embarrassment at teatime under a show of +over-work. He had a great deal to do--just a moment for a cup of tea--no +more. There was to be a meeting of the County Council the next morning +when a most important question of small holdings was to come up for +discussion. Mr. Hazlewood held the strongest views. He was engaged in +shaping them in the smallest possible number of words. To be brief, to be +vivid--there was the whole art of public speaking. Mr. Hazlewood +chattered feverishly for five minutes; he had come in chattering, he went +out chattering. + +"That's all right, Stella, you see," said Dick cheerfully when they +were left alone. Stella nodded her head. Mr. Hazlewood had not said one +word in recognition of her engagement but she had made her little fight +that morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent +three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night +should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the +meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a +few tags and phrases. + +"Oh, I wish you hadn't come!" she had repeated and repeated and all the +while her blood was leaping in her body for joy that he had. She had +promised in the end to stand firm, to stand by his side and brave--what, +after all, but the clamour of a week? So he put it and so she was eager +to believe. + +Mr. Hazelwood, busy though he made himself out to be, found time that +evening to drive in his motor-car into Great Beeding, and when the London +train pulled up at the station he was on the platform. He looked +anxiously at the passengers who descended until he saw Robert Pettifer. +He went up to him at once. + +"What in the world are you doing here?" asked the lawyer. + +"I came on purpose to catch you, Robert. I want to speak to you in +private. My car is here. If you will get into it with me we can drive +slowly towards your house." + +Pettifer's face changed, but he could not refuse. Hazlewood was agitated +and nervous; of his ordinary complacency there was no longer a trace. +Pettifer got into the car and as it moved away from the station he asked: + +"Now what's the matter?" + +"I have been thinking over what you said last night, Robert. You had a +vague feeling of doubt. Well, I have the verbatim reports of the trial in +Bombay here in this envelope and I want you to read them carefully +through and give me your opinion." He held out the envelope as he spoke, +but Pettifer thrust his hands into his pockets. + +"I won't touch it," he declared. "I refuse to mix myself up in the affair +at all. I said more than I meant to last night." + +"But you did say it, Robert." + +"Then I withdraw it now." + +"But you can't, Robert. You must go further. Something has happened +to-day, something very serious." + +"Oh?" said Pettifer. + +"Yes," replied Mr. Hazlewood. "Margaret really has more insight than I +credited her with. They propose to get married." + +Pettifer sat upright in the car. + +"You mean Dick and Stella Ballantyne?" + +"Yes." + +And for a little while there was silence in the car. Then Mr. Hazlewood +continued to bleat. + +"I never suspected anything of the kind. It places me, Robert, in a very +difficult position." + +"I can quite see that," answered Pettifer with a grim smile. "It's really +the only consoling element in the whole business. You can't refuse your +consent without looking a fool and you can't give it while you are in any +doubt as to Mrs. Ballantyne's innocence." + +Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, quite prepared to accept that definition +of his position. + +"You don't exhaust the possibilities, Robert," he said. "I can quite +well refuse my consent and publicly refuse it if there are reasonable +grounds for believing that there was in that trial a grave miscarriage +of justice." + +Mr. Pettifer looked sharply at his companion. The voice no less than the +words fixed his attention. This was not the Mr. Hazlewood of yesterday. +The champion had dwindled into a figure of meanness. Harold Hazlewood +would be glad to discover those reasonable grounds; and he would be very +much obliged if Robert Pettifer would take upon himself the +responsibility of discovering them. + +"Yes, I see," said Pettifer slowly. He was half inclined to leave Harold +Hazlewood to find his way out of his trouble by himself. It was all his +making after all. But other and wider considerations began to press upon +Pettifer. He forced himself to omit altogether the subject of Hazlewood's +vanities and entanglements. + +"Very well. Give the cuttings to me! I will read them through and I will +let you know my opinion. Their intention to marry may alter +everything--my point of view as much as yours." + +Mr. Pettifer took the envelope in his hand and got out of the car as +soon as Hazlewood had stopped it. + +"You have raised no objections to the engagement?" he asked. + +"A word to Richard this morning. Of not much effect I am afraid." + +Mr. Pettifer nodded. + +"Right. I should say nothing to anybody. You can't take a decided line +against it at present and to snarl would be the worst policy imaginable. +To-day's Thursday. We'll meet on Saturday. Good-night," and Robert +Pettifer walked away to his own house. + +He walked slowly, wondering at the eternal mystery by which this +particular man and that individual woman select each other out of the +throng. He owed the greater part of his fortune to the mystery like many +another lawyer. But to-night he would willingly have yielded a good +portion of it up if that process of selection could be ordered in a more +reasonable way. Love? The attraction of Sex? Yes, no doubt. But why these +two specimens of Sex? Why Dick and Stella Ballantyne? + +When he reached his house his wife hurried forward to meet him. Already +she had the news. There was an excitement in her face not to be +misunderstood. The futile time-honoured phrase of triumph so ready on the +lips of those who have prophesied evil was trembling upon hers. + +"Don't say it, Margaret," said Pettifer very seriously. "We have come to +a pass where light words will lead us astray. Hazlewood has been with me. +I have the reports of the trial here." + +Margaret Pettifer put a check upon her tongue and they dined together +almost in complete silence. Pettifer was methodically getting his own +point of view quite clearly established in his mind, so that whatever he +did or advised he might be certain not to swerve from it afterwards. He +weighed his inclinations and his hopes, and when the servants had left +the dining-room and he had lit his cigar he put his case before his wife. + +"Listen, Margaret! You know your brother. He is always in extremes. He +swings from one to the other. He is terrified now lest this marriage +should take place." + +"No wonder," interposed Mrs. Pettifer. + +Pettifer made no comment upon the remark. + +"Therefore," he continued, "he is anxious that I should discover in these +reports some solid reason for believing that the verdict which acquitted +Stella Ballantyne was a grave miscarriage of justice. For any such reason +must have weight." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Pettifer. + +"And will justify him--this is his chief consideration--in withholding +publicly his consent." + +"I see." + +Only a week ago Dick himself had observed that sentimental +philosophers had a knack of breaking their heads against their own +theories. The words had been justified sooner than she had expected. +Mrs. Pettifer was not surprised at Harold Hazlewood's swift change any +more than her husband had been. Harold, to her thinking, was a +sentimentalist and sentimentality was like a fir-tree--a thing of no +deep roots and easily torn up. + +"But I do not take that view, Margaret," continued her husband, and she +looked at him with consternation. Was he now to turn champion, he who +only yesterday had doubted? "And I want you to consider whether you can +agree with me. There is to begin with the woman herself, Stella +Ballantyne. I saw her for the first time yesterday, and to be quite +honest I liked her, Margaret. Yes. It seemed to me that there was nothing +whatever of the adventuress about her. And I was impressed--I will go +further, I was moved--dry-as-dust old lawyer as I am, by something--How +shall I express it without being ridiculous?" He paused and searched in +his vocabulary and gave up the search. "No, the epithet which occurred to +me yesterday at the dinner-table and immediately, still seems to me the +only true one--I was moved by something in this woman of tragic +experiences which was strangely virginal." + +One quick movement was made by Margaret Pettifer. The truth of her +husband's description was a revelation, so exact it was. Therein lay +Stella Ballantyne's charm, and her power to create champions and friends. +Her history was known to you, the miseries of her marriage, the suspicion +of crime. You expected a woman of adventures and lo! there stood before +you one with "something virginal" in her appearance and her manner, which +made its soft and irresistible appeal. + +"I recognise that feeling of mine," Pettifer resumed, "and I try to put +it aside. And putting it aside I ask myself and you, Margaret, this: +Here's a woman who has been through a pretty bad time, who has been +unhappy, who has stood in the dock, who has been acquitted. Is it quite +fair that when at last she has floated into a haven of peace two private +people like Hazlewood and myself should take it upon ourselves to review +the verdict and perhaps reverse it?" + +"But there's Dick, Robert," cried Mrs. Pettifer. "There's Dick. Surely +he's our first thought." + +"Yes, there's Dick," Mr. Pettifer repeated. "And Dick's my second point. +You are all worrying about Dick from the social point of view--the +external point of view. Well, we have got to take that into our +consideration. But we are bound to look at him, the man, as well. Don't +forget that, Margaret! Well, I find the two points of view identical. But +our neighbours won't. Will you?" + +Mrs. Pettifer was baffled. + +"I don't understand," she said. + +"I'll explain. From the social standpoint what's really important as +regards Dick? That he should go out to dinner? No. That he should have +children? Yes!" + +And here Mrs. Pettifer interposed again. + +"But they must be the right children," she exclaimed. "Better that he +should have none than that he should have children--" + +"With an hereditary taint," Pettifer agreed. "Admitted, Margaret. If we +come to the conclusion that Stella Ballantyne did what she was accused of +doing we, in spite of all the verdicts in the world, are bound to resist +this marriage. I grant it. Because of that conviction I dismiss the plea +that we are unfair to the woman in reviewing the trial. There are wider, +greater considerations." + +These were the first words of comfort which Mrs. Pettifer had heard since +her husband began to expound. She received them with enthusiasm. + +"I am so glad to hear that." + +"Yes, Margaret," Pettifer retorted drily. "But please ask yourself +this question: (it is where, to my thinking, the social and the +personal elements join) if this marriage is broken off, is Dick likely +to marry at all?" + +"Why not?" asked Margaret. + +"He is thirty-four. He has had, no doubt, many opportunities of +marriage. He must have had. He is good-looking, well off and a good +fellow. This is the first time he has wanted to marry. If he is +disappointed here will he try again?" + +Mrs. Pettifer laughed, moved by the remarkable depreciation of her own +sex which women of her type so often have. It was for man to throw the +handkerchief. Not a doubt but there would be a rush to pick it up! + +"Widowers who have been devoted to their wives marry again," she argued. + +"A point for me, Margaret!" returned Pettifer. "Widowers--yes. They miss +so much--the habit of a house with a woman its mistress, the +companionship, the order, oh, a thousand small but important things. But +a man who has remained a bachelor until he's thirty-four--that's a +different case. If he sets his heart at that age, seriously, for the +first time on a woman and does not get her, that's the kind of man who, +my experience suggests to me--I put it plainly, Margaret--will take one +or more mistresses to himself but no wife." + +Mrs. Pettifer deferred to the worldly knowledge of her husband but she +clung to her one clear argument. + +"Nothing could be worse," she said frankly, "than that he should marry a +guilty woman." + +"Granted, Margaret," replied Mr. Pettifer imperturbably. "Only suppose +that she's not guilty. There are you and I, rich people, and no one to +leave our money to--no one to carry on your name--no one we care a rap +about to benefit by my work and your brother's fortune--no one of the +family to hand over Little Beeding to." + +Both of them were silent after he had spoken. He had touched upon their +one great sorrow. Margaret herself had her roots deep in the soil of +Little Beeding. It was hateful to her that the treasured house should +ever pass to strangers, as it would do if this the last branch of the +family failed. + +"But Stella Ballantyne was married for seven years," she said at last, +"and there were no children." + +"No, that's true," replied Pettifer. "But it does not follow that with a +second marriage there will be none. It's a chance, I know, but--" and +he got up from his chair. "I do honestly believe that it's the only +chance you and I will have, Margaret, of dying with the knowledge that +our lives have not been altogether vain. We've lighted our little torch. +Yes, and it burns merrily enough, but what's the use unless at the +appointed mile-stone there's another of us to take it and carry it on?" + +He stood looking down at his wife with a wistful and serious look +upon his face. + +"Dick's past the age of calf-love. We can't expect him to tumble from one +passion to another; and he's not easily moved. Therefore I hope very +sincerely that these reports which I am now going to read will enable me +to go boldly to Harold Hazlewood and say: 'Stella Ballantyne is as +guiltless of this crime as you or I.'" + +Mr. Pettifer took up the big envelope which he had placed on the table +beside him and carried it away to his study. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PETTIFER'S PLAN + + +On the Saturday morning Mr. Hazlewood drove over early to Great Beeding. +His impatience had so grown during the last few days that his very sleep +was broken at night and in the daytime he could not keep still. The news +of Dick's engagement to Stella Ballantyne was now known throughout the +countryside and the blame for it was laid upon Harold Hazlewood's +shoulders. For blame was the general note, blame and chagrin. A few bold +and kindly spirits went at once to see Stella; a good many more seriously +and at great length debated over their tea-tables whether they should +call after the marriage. But on the whole the verdict was an indignant +No. Disgrace was being brought upon the neighbourhood. Little Beeding +would be impossible. Dick Hazlewood only laughed at the constraint of his +acquaintances, and when three of them crossed the road hurriedly in Great +Beeding to avoid Stella and himself he said good-humouredly: + +"They are like an ill-trained company of bad soldiers. Let one of them +break from the ranks and they'll all stream away so as not to be left +behind. You'll see, Stella. One of them will come and the rest will +tumble over one another to get into your drawing-room." + +How much he believed of what he said Stella did not inquire. She had a +gift of silence. She just walked a little nearer to him and smiled, lest +any should think she had noticed the slight. The one man, in a word, who +showed signs of wear and tear was Mr. Hazlewood himself. So keen was his +distress that he had no fear of his sister's sarcasms. + +"I--think of it!" he exclaimed in a piteous bewilderment, "actually I +have become sensitive to public opinion," and Mrs. Pettifer forbore from +the comments which she very much longed to make. She was in the study +when Harold Hazlewood was shown in, and Pettifer had bidden her to stay. + +"Margaret knows that I have been reading these reports," he said. "Sit +down, Hazlewood, and I'll tell you what I think." + +Mr. Hazlewood took a seat facing the garden with its old red brick wall, +on which a purple clematis was growing. + +"You have formed an opinion then, Robert?" + +"One." + +"What is it?" he asked eagerly. + +Robert Pettifer clapped the palm of his hand down upon the cuttings from +the newspapers which lay before him on his desk. + +"This--no other verdict could possibly have been given by the jury. On +the evidence produced at the trial in Bombay Mrs. Ballantyne was properly +and inevitably acquitted." + +"Robert!" exclaimed his wife. She too had been hoping for the contrary +opinion. As for Hazlewood himself the sunlight seemed to die off that +garden. He drew his hand across his forehead. He half rose to go when +again Robert Pettifer spoke. + +"And yet," he said slowly, "I am not satisfied." + +Harold Hazlewood sat down again. Mrs. Pettifer drew a breath of relief. + +"The chief witness for the defence, the witness whose evidence made the +acquittal certain, was a man I know--a barrister called Thresk." + +"Yes," interrupted Hazlewood. "I have been puzzled about that man ever +since you mentioned him before. His name I am somehow familiar with." + +"I'll explain that to you in a minute," said Pettifer, and his wife +leaned forward suddenly in her chair. She did not interrupt but she sat +with a look of keen expectancy upon her face. She did not know whither +Pettifer was leading them but she was now sure that it was to some +carefully pondered goal. + +"I have more than once briefed Thresk myself. He's a man of the highest +reputation at the Bar, straightforward, honest; he enjoys a great +practice, he is in Parliament with a great future in Parliament. In a +word he is a man with everything to lose if he lied as a witness in a +trial. And yet--I am not satisfied." + +Mr. Pettifer's voice sank to a low murmur. He sat at his desk staring out +in front of him through the window. + +"Why?" asked Hazlewood. But Pettifer did not answer him. He seemed not to +hear the question. He went on in the low quiet voice he had used before, +rather like one talking to himself than to a companion. + +"I should very much like to put a question or two to Mr. Thresk." + +"Then why don't you?" exclaimed Mrs. Pettifer. "You know him." + +"Yes." Mr. Hazlewood eagerly seconded his sister. "Since you know him you +are the very man." + +Pettifer shook his head. + +"It would be an impertinence. For although I look upon Dick as a son I am +not his father. You are, Hazlewood, you are. He wouldn't answer me." + +"Would he answer me?" asked Hazlewood. "I don't know him at all. I can't +go to him and ask if he told the truth." + +"No, no, you can't do that," Pettifer answered, "nor do I mean you to. I +want to put my questions myself in my own way and I thought that you +might get him down to Little Beeding." + +"But I have no excuse," cried Hazlewood, and Mrs. Pettifer at last +understood the plan which was in her husband's mind, which had +been growing to completion since the night when he had dined at +Little Beeding. + +"Yes, you have an excuse," she cried, and Pettifer explained what it was. + +"You collect miniatures. Some time ago you bought one of Marie Antoinette +at Lord Mirliton's sale. You asked a question as to its authenticity in +_Notes and Queries_. It was answered--" + +Mr. Hazlewood broke in excitedly: + +"By a man called Thresk. That is why the name was familiar to me. But I +could not remember." He turned upon his sister. "It is your fault, +Margaret. You took my copy of _Notes and Queries_ away with you. Dick +noticed it and told me." + +"Dick!" Pettifer exclaimed in alarm. But the alarm passed. "He cannot +have guessed why." + +Mrs. Pettifer was clear upon the point. + +"No. I took the magazine because of a remark which Robert made to you. +Dick did not hear it. No, he cannot have guessed why." + +"For it's important he should have no suspicion whatever of what I +propose that you should do, Hazlewood," Pettifer said gravely. "I propose +that we should take a lesson from the legal processes of another country. +It may work, it may not, but to my mind it is our only chance." + +"Let me hear!" said Hazlewood. + +"Thresk is an authority on old silver and miniatures. He has a valuable +collection himself. His advice is sought by people in the trade. You know +what collectors are. Get him down to see your collection. It wouldn't be +the first time that you have invited a stranger to pass a night in your +house for that purpose, would it?" + +"No." + +"And the invitation has often been accepted?" + +"Well--sometimes." + +"We must hope that it will be this time. Get Thresk down to Little +Beeding upon that excuse. Then confront him unexpectedly with Mrs. +Ballantyne. And let me be there." + +Such was the plan which Pettifer suggested. A period of silence followed +upon his words. Even Mr. Hazlewood, in the extremity of his distress, +recoiled from it. + +"It would look like a trap." + +Mr. Pettifer thumped his table impatiently. + +"Let's be frank, for Heaven's sake. It wouldn't merely look like a trap, +it would be one. It wouldn't be at all a pretty thing to do, but there's +this marriage!" + +"No, I couldn't do it," said Hazlewood. + +"Very well. There's no more to be said." + +Pettifer himself had no liking for the plan. It had been his intention +originally to let Hazlewood know that if he wished to get into +communication with Thresk there was a means by which he could do it. But +the fact of Dick's engagement had carried him still further, and now +that he had read the evidence of the trial carefully there was a real +anxiety in his mind. Pettifer sealed up the cuttings in a fresh envelope +and gave them to Hazlewood and went out with him to the door. + +"Of course," said the old man, "if your legal experience, Robert, leads +you to think that we should be justified--" + +"But it doesn't," Pettifer was quick to interpose. He recognised his +brother-in-law's intention to throw the discredit of the trick upon his +shoulders but he would have none of it. "No, Hazlewood," he said +cheerfully: "it's not a plan which a high-class lawyer would be likely to +commend to a client." + +"Then I am afraid that I couldn't do it." + +"All right," said Pettifer with his hand upon the latch of the front +door. "Thresk's chambers are in King's Bench Walk." He added the number. + +"I simply couldn't think of it," Hazlewood repeated as he crossed the +pavement to his car. + +"Perhaps not," said Pettifer. "You have the envelope? Yes. Choose an +evening towards the end of the week, a Friday will be your best chance of +getting him." + +"I will do nothing of the kind, Pettifer." + +"And let me know when he is coming. Goodbye." + +The car carried Mr. Hazlewood away still protesting that he really +couldn't think of it for an instant. But he thought a good deal of it +during the next week and his temper did not improve. "Pettifer has rubbed +off the finer edges of his nature," he said to himself. "It is a pity--a +great pity. But thirty years of life in a lawyer's office must no doubt +have that effect. I regret very much that Pettifer should have imagined +that I would condescend to such a scheme." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +ON THE DOWNS + + +They went up by the steep chalk road which skirts the park wall to the +top of the conical hill above the race-course. An escarpment of grass +banks guards a hollow like a shallow crater on the very summit. They rode +round it upon the rim, now facing the black slope of Charlton Forest +across the valley to the north, now looking out over the plain and +Chichester. Thirty miles away above the sea the chalk cliffs of the Isle +of Wight gleamed under their thatch of dark turf. It was not yet nine in +the morning. Later the day would climb dustily to noon; now it had the +wonder and the stillness of great beginnings. A faint haze like a veil at +the edges of the sky and a freshness of the air made the world magical to +these two who rode high above weald and sea. Stella looked downwards to +the silver flash of the broad water west of Chichester spire. + +"That way they came, perhaps on a day like this," she said slowly, "those +old centurions." + +"Your thoughts go back," said Dick Hazlewood with a laugh. + +"Not so far as you think," cried Stella, and suddenly her cheeks +took fire and a smile dimpled them. "Oh, I dare to think of many +things to-day." + +She rode down the steep grass slope towards the race-course with Dick at +her side. It was the first morning they had ridden together since the +night of the dinner-party at Little Beeding. Mr. Hazlewood was at this +moment ordering his car so that he might drive in to the town and learn +what Pettifer had discovered in the cuttings from the newspapers. But +they were quite unaware of the plot which was being hatched against them. +They went forward under the high beech-trees watching for the great roots +which stretched across their path, and talking little. An open way +between wooden posts led them now on to turf and gave them the freedom of +the downs. They saw no one. With the larks and the field-fares they had +the world to themselves; and in the shade beneath the hedges the dew +still sparkled on the grass. They left the long arm of Halnaker Down upon +their right, its old mill standing up on the edge like some lighthouse on +a bluff of the sea, and crossing the high road from Up-Waltham rode along +a narrow glade amongst beeches and nut-trees and small oaks and bushes of +wild roses. Open spaces came again; below them were the woods and the +green country of Slindon and the deep grass of Dale Park. And so they +drew near to Gumber Corner where Stane Street climbs over Bignor Hill. +Here Dick Hazlewood halted. + +"I suppose we turn." + +"Not to-day," said Stella, and Dick turned to her with surprise. Always +before they had stopped at this point and always by Stella's wish. Either +she was tired or was needed at home or had letters to write--always +there had been some excuse and no reason. Dick Hazlewood had come to +believe that she would not pass this point, that the down land beyond was +a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground on which she would not trespass. He had +wondered why, but his instinct had warned him from questions. He had +always turned at this spot immediately, as if he believed the excuse +which she had ready. + +Stella noticed the surprise upon his face; and the blushes rose again in +her cheeks. + +"You knew that I would not go beyond," she said. + +"Yes." + +"But you did not know why?" There was a note of urgency in her voice. + +"I guessed," he said. "I mean I played with guesses--oh not seriously," +and he laughed. "There runs Stane Street from Chichester to London and +through London to the great North Wall. Up that road the Romans marched +and back by that road they returned to their galleys in the water there +by Chichester. I pictured you living in those days, a Boadicea of the +Weald who had set her heart, against her will, on some dashing captain +of old Rome camped here on the top of Bignor Hill. You crept from your +own people at night to meet him in the lane at the bottom. Then came +week after week when the street rang with the tramp of soldiers +returning from London and Lichfield and the North to embark in their +boats for Gaul and Rome." + +"They took my captain with them?" cried Stella, laughing with him at +the conceit. + +"Yes, so my fable ran. He pined for the circus and the theatre and the +painted ladies, so he went willingly." + +"The brute," cried Stella. "And so I broke my heart over a decadent +philanderer in a suit of bright brass clothes and remember it thirteen +hundred years afterwards in another life! Thank you, Captain Hazlewood!" + +"No, you don't actually remember it, Stella, but you have a feeling that +round about Stane Street you once suffered great humiliation and +unhappiness." And suddenly Stella rode swiftly past him, but in a moment +she waited for him and showed him a face of smiles. + +"You see I have crossed Stane Street to-day, Dick," she said. "We'll ride +on to Arundel." + +"Yes," answered Dick, "my story won't do," and he remembered a sentence +of hers spoken an hour and a half ago: "My thoughts do not go back as far +as you think." + +At all events she was emancipated to-day, for they rode on until at the +end of a long gentle slope the great arch of the gate into Arundel Park +gleamed white in a line of tall dark trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE LETTER IS WRITTEN + + +But Stella's confidence did not live long. Mr. Hazlewood was a child at +deceptions; and day by day his anxieties increased. His friends argued +with him--his folly and weakness were the themes--and he must needs repel +the argument though his thoughts echoed every word they used. Never was a +man brought to such a piteous depth of misery by the practice of his own +theories. He sat by the hour at his desk, burying his face amongst his +papers if Dick came into the room, with a great show of occupation. He +could hardly bear to contemplate the marriage of his son, yet day and +night he must think of it and search for expedients which might put an +end to the trouble and let him walk free again with his head raised high. +But there were only the two expedients. He must speak out his fears that +justice had miscarried, and that device his vanity forbade; or he must +adopt Pettifer's suggestion, and from that he shrank almost as much. He +began to resent the presence of Stella Ballantyne and he showed it. +Sometimes a friendliness, so excessive that it was almost hysterical, +betrayed him; more usually a discomfort and constraint. He avoided her +if by any means he could; if he could not quite avoid her an excuse of +business was always on his lips. + +"Your father hates me, Dick," she said. "He was my friend until I touched +his own life. Then I was in the black books in a second." + +Dick would not hear of it. + +"You were never in the black books at all, Stella," he said, comforting +her as well as he could. "We knew that there would be a little struggle, +didn't we? But the worst of that's over. You make friends daily." + +"Not with your father, Dick. I go back with him. Ever since that +night--it's three weeks ago now--when you took me home from Little +Beeding." + +"No," cried Dick, but Stella nodded her head gloomily. + +"Mr. Pettifer dined here that night. He's an enemy of mine." + +"Stella," young Hazlewood remonstrated, "you see enemies everywhere," and +upon that Stella broke out with a quivering troubled face. + +"Is it wonderful? Oh, Dick, I couldn't lose you! A month ago--before that +night--yes. Nothing had been said. But now! I couldn't, I couldn't! I +have often thought it would be better for me to go right away and never +see you again. And--and I have tried to tell you something, Dick, ever so +many times." + +"Yes?" said Dick. He slipped his arm through hers and held her close to +him, as though to give her courage and security. "Yes, Stella?" and he +stood very still. + +"I mean," she said, looking down upon the ground, "that I have tried to +tell you that I wouldn't suffer so very much if we did part, but I never +could do it. My lips shook so, I never could speak the words." Then her +voice ran up into a laugh. "To think of your living in a house with +somebody else! Oh no!" + +"You need have no fear of that, Stella." + +They were in the garden of Little Beeding and they walked across the +meadow towards her cottage, talking very earnestly. Mr. Hazlewood was +watching them secretly from the window of the library. He saw that Dick +was pleading and she hanging in doubt; and a great wave of anger surged +over him that Dick should have to plead to her at all, he who was giving +everything--even his own future. + +"King's Bench Walk," he muttered to himself, taking from the drawer of +his writing-table a slip of paper on which he had written the address +lest he should forget it. "Yes, that's the address," and he looked at it +for a long time very doubtfully. Suppose that his suspicions were +correct! His heart sank at the supposition. Surely he would be justified +in setting any trap. But he shut the drawer violently and turned away +from his writing-table. Even his pamphlets had become trivial in his +eyes. He was brought face to face with real passions and real facts, he +had been fetched out from his cloister and was blinking miserably in a +full measure of daylight. How long could he endure it, he wondered? + +The question was settled for him that very evening. He and his son were +taking their coffee on a paved terrace by the lawn after dinner. It was a +dark quiet night, with a clear sky of golden stars. Across the meadow the +lights shone in the windows of Stella's cottage. + +"Father," said Dick, after they had sat in a constrained silence for a +little while, "why don't you like Stella any longer?" + +The old man blustered in reply: + +"A lawyer's question, Richard. I object to it very strongly. You assume +that I have ceased to like her." + +"It's extremely evident," said Dick drily. "Stella has noticed it." + +"And complained to you of course," cried Mr. Hazlewood resentfully. + +"Stella doesn't complain," and then Dick leaned over and spoke in the +full quiet voice which his father had grown to dread. There rang in it so +much of true feeling and resolution. + +"There can be no backing down now. We are both agreed upon that, aren't +we? Imagine for an instant that I were first to blazon my trust in a +woman whom others suspected by becoming engaged to her and then +endorsed their suspicions by breaking off the engagement! Suppose that +I were to do that!" + +Mr. Hazlewood allowed his longings to lead him astray. For a +moment he hoped. + +"Well?" he asked eagerly. + +"You wouldn't think very much of me, would you? Not you nor any man. A +cur--that would be the word, the only word, wouldn't it?" + +But Mr. Hazlewood refused to answer that question. He looked behind him +to make sure that none of the servants were within hearing. Then he +lowered his voice to a whisper. + +"What if Stella has deceived you, Dick?" + +It was too dark for him to see the smile upon his son's face, but he +heard the reply, and the confidence of it stung him to exasperation. + +"She hasn't done that," said Dick. "If you are sure of nothing else, +sir, you may be quite certain of what I am telling you now. She hasn't +done that." + +He remained silent for a few moments waiting for any rejoinder, and +getting none he continued: + +"There's something else I wanted to speak to you about." + +"Yes?" + +"The date of our marriage." + +The old man moved sharply in his chair. + +"There's no hurry, Richard. You must find out how it will affect your +career. You have been so long at Little Beeding where we hear very +little from the outer world. You must consult your Colonel." + +Dick Hazlewood would not listen to the argument. + +"My marriage is my affair, sir, not my Colonel's. I cannot take advice, +for we both of us know what it would be. And we both of us value it at +its proper price, don't we?" + +Mr. Hazlewood could not reply. How often had he inveighed against +the opinions of the sleek worldly people who would add up advantages +in a column and leave out of their consideration the merits of the +higher life. + +"It would not be fair to Stella were we to ask her to wait," Dick +resumed. "Any delay--think what will be made of it! A month or six weeks +from now, that gives us time enough." + +The old man rose abruptly from his chair with a vague word that he would +think of it and went into the house. He saw again the lovers as he had +seen them this afternoon walking side by side slowly towards Stella +Ballantyne's cottage; and the picture even in the retrospect was +intolerable. The marriage must not take place--yet it was so near. A +month or six weeks! Mr. Hazlewood took up his pen and wrote the letter to +Henry Thresk at last, as Robert Pettifer had always been sure that he +would do. It was the simplest kind of letter and took but a minute in the +writing. It mentioned only his miniatures and invited Henry Thresk to +Little Beeding to see them, as more than one stranger had been asked +before. The answers which Thresk had given to the questions in _Notes and +Queries_ were pleaded as an introduction and Thresk was invited to choose +his own day and remain at Little Beeding for the night. The reply came by +return of post. Thresk would come to Little Beeding on the Friday +afternoon of the next week. He was in town, for Parliament was sitting +late that year. He would reach Little Beeding soon after five so that he +might have an opportunity of seeing the miniatures by daylight. Mr. +Hazlewood hurried over with the news to Robert Pettifer. His spirits had +risen at a bound. Already he saw the neighbourhood freed from the +disturbing presence of Stella Ballantyne and himself cheerfully resuming +his multifarious occupations. + +Robert Pettifer, however, spoke in quite another strain. + +"I am not so sure as you, Hazlewood. The points which trouble me are very +possibly capable of quite simple explanations. I hope for my part that +they will be so explained." + +"You hope it?" cried Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Yes. I want Dick to marry," said Robert Pettifer. + +Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, to be discouraged. He drove back to his +house counting the days which must pass before Thresk's arrival and +wondering how he should manage to conceal his elation from the keen +eyes of his son. But he found that there was no need for him to +trouble himself on that point, for this very morning at luncheon Dick +said to him: + +"I think that I'll run up to town this afternoon, father. I might be +there for a day or two." + +Mr. Hazlewood was delighted. No other proposal could have fitted in so +well with his scheme. The mere fact that Dick was away would start people +at the pleasant business of conjecturing mishaps and quarrels. Perhaps +indeed the lovers _had_ quarrelled. Perhaps Richard had taken his advice +and was off to consult his superiors. Mr. Hazlewood scanned his son's +face eagerly but learnt nothing from it; and he was too wary to ask any +questions. + +"By all means, Richard," he said carelessly, "go to London! You will be +back by next Friday, I suppose." + +"Oh yes, before that. I shall stay at my own rooms, so if you want me you +can send me a telegram." + +Dick Hazlewood had a small flat of his own in some Mansions at +Westminster which had seen very little of him that summer. + +"Thank you, Richard," said the old man. "But I shall get on very well, +and a few days change will no doubt do you good." + +Dick grinned at his father and went off that afternoon without a word of +farewell to Stella Ballantyne. Mr. Hazlewood stood in the hall and saw +him go with a great relief at his heart. Everything at last seemed to be +working out to advantage. He could not but remember how so very few +weeks ago he had been urgent that Richard should spend his summer at +Little Beeding and lend a hand in the noble work of defending Stella +Ballantyne against ignorance and unreason. But the twinge only lasted a +moment. He had made a mistake, as all men occasionally do--yes, even +sagacious and thoughtful people like himself. And the mistake was already +being repaired. He looked across the meadow that night at the lighted +blinds of Stella's windows and anticipated an evening when those windows +would be dark and the cottage without an inhabitant. + +"Very soon," he murmured to himself, "very soon." He had not one single +throb of pity for her now, not a single speculation whither she would go +or what she would make of her life. His own defence of her had now become +a fault of hers. He wished her no harm, he argued, but in a week's time +there must be no light shining behind those blinds. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +A WAY OUT OF THE TRAP + + +Mr. Hazlewood was very glad that Richard was away in London during this +week. Excitement kept him feverish and the fever grew as the number of +days before Thresk was to come diminished. He would never have been able +to keep his secret had every meal placed him under his son's eyes. He was +free too from Stella herself. He met her but once on the Monday and then +it was in the deep lane leading towards the town. It was about five +o'clock in the evening and she was driving homewards in an open fly. Mr. +Hazlewood stopped it and went to the side. + +"Richard is away, Stella, until Wednesday, as no doubt you knew," he +said. "But I want you to come over to tea when he comes back. Will Friday +suit you?" + +She had looked a little frightened when Mr. Hazlewood had called to the +driver and stopped the carriage; but at his words the blood rushed into +her cheeks and her eyes shone and she pushed out her hand impulsively. + +"Oh, thank you," she cried. "Of course I will come." + +Not for a long time had he spoken to her with so kind a voice and a face +so unclouded. She rejoiced at the change in him and showed him such +gratitude as is given only to those who render great service, so intense +was her longing not to estrange Dick from his father. + +But she had become a shrewd observer under the stress of her evil +destiny; and the moment of rejoicing once past she began to wonder what +had brought about the change. She judged Mr. Hazlewood to be one of those +weak and effervescing characters who can grow more obstinate in +resentment than any others if their pride and self-esteem receive an +injury. She had followed of late the windings of his thoughts. She put +the result frankly to herself. + +"He hates me. He holds me in horror." + +Why then the sudden change? She was in the mood to start at shadows and +when a little note was brought over to her on the Friday morning in Mr. +Hazlewood's handwriting reminding her of her engagement she was filled +with a vague apprehension. The note was kindly in its terms yet to her it +had a menacing and sinister look. Had some stroke been planned against +her? Was it to be delivered this afternoon? + +Dick came at half-past four from a village cricket match to fetch her. + +"You are ready, Stella? Right! For we can't spare very much time. I have +a surprise for you." + +Stella asked him what it was and he answered: + +"There's a house for sale in Great Beeding. I think that you +would like it." + +Stella's face softened with a smile. + +"Anywhere, Dick," she said, "anywhere on earth." + +"But here best of all," he answered. "Not to run away--that's our policy. +We'll make our home in our own south country. I arranged to take you over +the house between half-past five and six this evening." + +They walked across to Little Beeding and were made welcome by Mr. +Hazlewood. He came out to meet them in the garden and nervousness made +him kittenish and arch. + +"How are you, Stella?" he inquired. "But there's no need to ask. You look +charming and upon my word you grow younger every day. What a pretty hat! +Yes, yes! Will you make tea while I telephone to the Pettifers? They seem +to be late." + +He skipped off with an alacrity which was rather ridiculous. But Stella +watched him go without any amusement. + +"I am taken again into favour," she said doubtfully. + +"That shouldn't distress you, Stella," replied Dick. + +"Yet it does, for I ask myself why. And I don't understand this +tea-party. Mr. Hazlewood was so urgent that I should not forget it. +Perhaps, however, I am inventing trouble." + +She shook herself free from her apprehensions and followed Dick into the +drawing-room, where the kettle was boiling and the tea-service spread +out. Stella went to the table and opened the little mahogany caddy. + +"How many are coming, Dick?" she asked. + +"The Pettifers." + +"My enemies," said Stella, laughing lightly. + +"And you and my father and myself." + +"Five altogether," said Stella. She began to measure out the tea into the +tea-pot but stopped suddenly in the middle of her work. + +"But there are six cups," she said. She counted them again to make sure, +and at once her fears were reawakened. She turned to Dick, her face quite +pale and her big eyes dark with forebodings. So little now was needed to +disquiet her. "Who is the sixth?" + +Dick came closer to her and put his arm about her waist. + +"I don't know," he said gently; "but what can it matter to us, Stella? +Think, my dear!" + +"No, of course," she replied, "it can't make any difference," and she +dipped her teaspoon once more into the caddy. "But it's a little +curious, isn't it?--that your father didn't mention to you that there +was another guest?" + +"Oh, wait a moment," said Dick. "He did tell me there would be some +visitor here to-day but I forgot all about it. He told me at luncheon. +There's a man from London coming down to have a look at his miniatures." + +"His miniatures?" Stella was pouring the hot water into the tea-pot. She +replaced the kettle on its stand and shut the tea-caddy. "And Mr. +Hazlewood didn't tell you the man's name," she said. + +"I didn't ask him," answered Dick. "He often has collectors down." + +"I see." Her head was bent over the tea-table; she was busy with her brew +of tea. "And I was specially asked to come this afternoon. I had a note +this morning to remind me." She looked at the clock. "Dick, if we are to +see that house this afternoon you had better change now before the +visitors come." + +"That's true. I will." + +Dick started towards the door, and he heard Stella come swiftly after +him. He turned. There was so much trouble in her face. He caught her +in his arms. + +"Dick," she whispered, "look at me. Kiss me! Yes, I am sure of you," and +she clung to him. Dick Hazlewood laughed. + +"I think we ought to be fairly happy in that house," and she let him +go with a smile, repeating her own words, "Anywhere, Dick, anywhere +on earth." + +She waited, watching him tenderly until the door was closed. Then she +covered her face with her hands and a sob burst from her lips. But the +next moment she tore her hands away and looked wildly about the room. She +ran to the writing-table and scribbled a note; she thrust it into an +envelope and gummed the flap securely down. Then she rang the bell and +waited impatiently with a leaping heart until Hubbard came to the door. + +"Did you ring, madam?" he asked. + +"Yes. Has Mr. Thresk arrived yet?" + +She tried to control her face, to speak in a careless and indifferent +voice, but she was giddy and the room whirled before her eyes. + +"Yes, madam," the butler answered; and it seemed to Stella Ballantyne +that once more she stood in the dock and heard the verdict spoken. Only +this time it had gone against her. That queer old shuffling butler became +a figure of doom, his thin and piping voice uttered her condemnation. For +here without her knowledge was Henry Thresk and she was bidden to meet +him with the Pettifers for witnesses. But it was Henry Thresk who had +saved her before. She clung to that fact now. + +"Mr. Thresk arrived a few minutes ago." + +Just before old Hazlewood had come forward out of the house to welcome +her! No wonder he was in such high spirits! Very likely all that great +show of kindliness and welcome was made only to keep her in the garden +for a few necessary moments. + +"Where is Mr. Thresk now?" she asked. + +"In his room, madam." + +"You are quite sure?" + +"Quite." + +"Will you take this note to him, Hubbard?" and she held it out to +the butler. + +"Certainly, madam." + +"Will you take it at once? Give it into his hands, please." + +Hubbard took the note and went out of the room. Never had he seemed to +her so dilatory and slow. She stared at the door as though her sight +could pierce the panels. She imagined him climbing the stairs with feet +which loitered more at each fresh step. Some one would surely stop him +and ask for whom the letter was intended. She went to the door which led +into the hall, opened it and listened. No one was descending the +staircase and she heard no voices. Then above her Hubbard knocked upon a +door, a latch clicked as the door was opened, a hollow jarring sound +followed as the door was sharply closed. Stella went back into the room. +The letter had been delivered; at this moment Henry Thresk was reading +it; and with a sinking heart she began to speculate in what spirit he +would receive its message. Henry Thresk! The unhappy woman bestirred +herself to remember him. He had grown dim to her of late. How much did +she know of him? she asked herself. Once years ago there had been a month +during which she had met him daily. She had given her heart to him, yet +she had learned little or nothing of the man within the man's frame. She +had not even made his acquaintance. That had been proved to her one +memorable morning upon the top of Bignor Hill, when humiliation had so +deeply seared her soul that only during this last month had it been +healed. In the great extremities of her life Henry Thresk had decided, +not she, and he was a stranger to her. She beat her poor wings in vain +against that ironic fact. Never had he done what she had expected. On +Bignor Hill, in the Law Court at Bombay, he had equally surprised her. +Now once more he held her destinies in his hand. What would he decide? +What had he decided? + +"Yes, he will have decided now," said Stella to herself; and a certain +calm fell upon her troubled soul. Whatever was to be was now determined. +She went back to the tea-table and waited. + +Henry Thresk had not much of the romantic in his character. He was a busy +man making the best and the most of the rewards which the years brought +to him, and slamming the door each day upon the day which had gone +before. He made his life in the intellectual exercise of his profession +and his membership of the House of Commons. Upon the deeps of the +emotions he had closed a lid. Yet he had set out with a vague reluctance +to Little Beeding; and once his motor-car had passed Hindhead and dipped +to the weald of Sussex the reluctance had grown to a definite regret that +he should once more have come into this country. His recollections were +of a dim far-off time, so dim that he could hardly believe that he had +any very close relation with the young struggling man who had spent his +first real holiday there. But the young man had been himself and he had +missed his opportunity high up on the downs by Arundel. Words which Jane +Repton had spoken to him in Bombay came back to him on this summer +afternoon like a refrain to the steady hum of his car. "You can get what +you want, so long as you want it enough, but you cannot control the price +you will have to pay." + +He had reached Little Beeding only a few moments before Dick and Stella +had crossed into the garden. He had been led by Hubbard into the library, +where Mr. Hazlewood was sitting. From the windows he had even seen the +thatched cottage where Stella Ballantyne dwelt and its tiny garden bright +with flowers. + +"It is most kind of you to come," Mr. Hazlewood had said. "Ever since we +had our little correspondence I have been anxious to take your opinion on +my collection. Though how in the world you manage to find time to have an +opinion at all upon the subject is most perplexing. I never open the +_Times_ but I see your name figuring in some important case." + +"And I, Mr. Hazlewood," Thresk replied with a smile, "never open my mail +without receiving a pamphlet from you. I am not the only active man in +the world." + +Even at that moment Mr. Hazlewood flushed with pleasure at the flattery. + +"Little reflections," he cried with a modest deprecation, "worked out +more or less to completeness--may I say that?--in the quiet of a rural +life, sparks from the tiny flame of my midnight oil." He picked up one +pamphlet from a stack by his writing-table. "You might perhaps care to +look at _The Prison Walls_." + +Thresk drew back. + +"I have got mine, Mr. Hazlewood," he said firmly. "Every man in England +should have one. No man in England has a right to two." + +Mr. Hazlewood fairly twittered with satisfaction. Here was a notable man +from the outside world of affairs who knew his work and held it in +esteem. Obviously then he was right to take these few disagreeable +twists and turns which would ensure to him a mind free to pursue his +labours. He looked down at the pamphlet however, and his satisfaction +was a trifle impaired. + +"I am not sure that this is quite my best work," he said timidly--"a +little hazardous perhaps." + +"Would you say that?" asked Thresk. + +"Yes, indeed I should." Mr. Hazlewood had the air of one making a +considerable concession. "The very title is inaccurate. _The Prison Walls +must Cast no Shadow_." He repeated the sentence with a certain unction. +"The rhythm is perhaps not amiss but the metaphor is untrue. My son +pointed it out to me. As he says, all walls cast shadows." + +"Yes," said Thresk. "The trouble is to know where and on whom the shadow +is going to fall." + +Mr. Hazlewood was startled by the careless words. He came to earth +heavily. All was not as yet quite ready for the little trick which had +been devised. The Pettifers had not arrived. + +"Perhaps you would like to see your room, Mr. Thresk," he said. "Your bag +has been taken up, no doubt. We will look at my miniatures after tea." + +"I shall be delighted," said Thresk as he followed Hazlewood to the door. +"But you must not expect too much knowledge from me." + +"Oh!" cried his host with a laugh. "Pettifer tells me that you are a +great authority." + +"Then Pettifer's wrong," said Thresk and so stopped. "Pettifer? Pettifer? +Isn't he a solicitor?" + +"Yes, he told me that he knew you. He married my sister. They are both +coming to tea." + +With that he led Thresk to his room and left him there. The room was over +the porch of the house and looked down the short level drive to the iron +gates and the lane. It was all familiar ground to Thresk or rather to +that other man with whom Thresk's only connection was a dull throb at his +heart, a queer uneasiness and discomfort. He leaned out of the window. He +could hear the river singing between the grass banks at the bottom of the +garden behind him. He would hear it through the night. Then came a +knocking upon his door, and he did not notice it at once. It was repeated +and he turned and said: + +"Come in!" + +Hubbard advanced with a note upon a salver. + +"Mrs. Ballantyne asked me to give you this at once, sir." + +Thresk stared at the butler. The name was so apposite to his thoughts +that he could not believe it had been uttered. But the salver was held +out to him and the handwriting upon the envelope removed his doubts. He +took it up, said "Thank you" in an absent voice and waited until the door +was closed again and he was alone. The last time he had seen that writing +was eighteen months ago. A little note of thanks, blurred with tears and +scribbled hastily and marked with no address, had been handed to him in +Bombay. Stella Ballantyne had disappeared then. She was here now at +Little Beeding and his relationship with the young struggling barrister +of ten years back suddenly became actual and near. He tore open the +envelope and read. + +"Be prepared to see me. Be prepared to hear news of me. I will have a +talk with you afterwards if you like. This is a trap. Be kind." + +He stood for a while with the letter in his hand, speculating upon its +meaning, until the wheels of a car grated on the gravel beneath his +window. The Pettifers had come. But Thresk was in no hurry to descend. He +read the note through many times before he hid it away in his letter-case +and went down the stairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +METHODS FROM FRANCE + + +Meanwhile Stella Ballantyne waited below. She heard Mr. Hazlewood in the +hall greeting the Pettifers with the false joviality which sat so ill +upon him; she imagined the shy nods and glances which told them that the +trap was properly set. Mr. Hazlewood led them into the room. + +"Is tea ready, Stella? We won't wait for Dick," he said, and Stella took +her place at the table. She had her back to the door by which Thresk +would enter. She had not a doubt that thus her chair had been +deliberately placed. He would be in the room and near to the table before +he saw her. He would not have a moment to prepare himself against the +surprise of her presence. Stella listened for the sound of his footsteps +in the hall; she could not think of a single topic to talk about except +the presence of that extra sixth cup; and that she must not mention if +the tables were really to be turned upon her antagonists. Surprise must +be visible upon her side when Thresk did come in. But she was not alone +in finding conversation difficult. Embarrassment and expectancy weighed +down the whole party, so that they began suddenly to speak at once and +simultaneously to stop. Robert Pettifer however asked if Dick was playing +cricket, and so gave Harold Hazlewood an opportunity. + +"No, the match was over early," said the old man, and he settled +himself in his arm-chair. "I have given some study to the subject of +cricket," he said. + +"You?" asked Stella with a smile of surprise. Was he merely playing for +time, she wondered? But he had the air of contentment with which he +usually embarked upon his disquisitions. + +"Yes. I do not consider our national pastime beneath a philosopher's +attention. I have formed two theories about the game." + +"I am sure you have," Robert Pettifer interposed. + +"And I have invented two improvements, though I admit at once that they +will have to wait until a more enlightened age than ours adopts them. In +the first place"--and Mr. Hazlewood flourished a forefinger in the +air--"the game ought to be played with a soft ball. There is at present a +suggestion of violence about it which the use of a soft ball would +entirely remove." + +"Entirely," Mr. Pettifer agreed and his wife exclaimed impatiently: + +"Rubbish, Harold, rubbish!" + +Stella broke nervously into the conversation. + +"Violence? Why even women play cricket, Mr. Hazlewood." + +"I cannot, Stella," he returned, "accept the view that whatever women do +must necessarily be right. There are instances to the contrary." + +"Yes. I come across a few of them in my office," Robert Pettifer said +grimly; and once more embarrassment threatened to descend upon the party. +But Mr. Hazlewood was off upon a favourite theme. His eyes glistened and +the object of the gathering vanished for the moment from his thoughts. + +"And in the second place," he resumed, "the losers should be accounted to +have won the game." + +"Yes, that must be right," said Pettifer. "Upon my word you are in form, +Hazlewood." + +"But why?" asked Mrs. Pettifer. + +Harold Hazlewood smiled upon her as upon a child and explained: + +"Because by adopting that system you would do something to eradicate the +spirit of rivalry, the desire to win, the ambition to beat somebody else +which is at the bottom of half our national troubles." + +"And all our national success," said Pettifer. + +Hazlewood patted his brother-in-law upon the shoulder. He looked at him +indulgently. "You are a Tory, Robert," he said, and implied that argument +with such an one was mere futility. + +He had still his hand upon Pettifer's shoulder when the door opened. +Stella saw by the change in his face that it was Thresk who was entering. +But she did not move. + +"Ah," said Mr. Hazlewood. "Come over here and take a cup of tea." + +Thresk came forward to the table. He seemed altogether unconscious that +the eyes of the two men were upon him. + +"Thank you. I should like one," he said, and at the sound of his voice +Stella Ballantyne turned around in her chair. + +"You!" she cried and the cry was pitched in a tone of pleasure and +welcome. + +"Of course you know Mrs. Ballantyne," said Hazlewood. He saw Stella rise +from her chair and hold out her hand to Thresk with the colour aflame in +her cheeks. + +"You are surprised to see me again," she said. + +Thresk took her hand cordially. "I am delighted to see you again," +he replied. + +"And I to see you," said Stella, "for I have never yet had a chance of +thanking you"; and she spoke with so much frankness that even Pettifer +was shaken in his suspicions. She turned upon Mr. Hazlewood with a +mimicry of indignation. "Do you know, Mr. Hazlewood, that you have done a +very cruel thing?" + +Mr. Hazlewood was utterly discomfited by the failure of his plot, and +when Stella attacked him so directly he had not a doubt but that she had +divined his treachery. + +"I?" he gasped. "Cruel? How?" + +"In not telling me beforehand that I was to meet so good a friend of +mine." Her face relaxed to a smile as she added: "I would have put on my +best frock in his honour." + +Undoubtedly Stella carried off the honour of that encounter. She had at +once driven the battle with spirit onto Hazlewood's own ground and left +him worsted and confused. But the end was not yet. Mr. Hazlewood waited +for his son Richard, and when Richard appeared he exclaimed: + +"Ah, here's my son. Let me present him to you, Mr. Thresk. And there's +the family." + +He leaned back, with a smile in his eyes, watching Henry Thresk. Robert +Pettifer watched too. + +"The family?" Thresk asked. "Is Mrs. Ballantyne a relation then?" + +"She is going to be," said Dick. + +"Yes," Mr. Hazlewood explained, still beaming and still watchful. +"Richard and Stella are going to be married." + +A pause followed which was just perceptible before Thresk spoke again. +But he had his face under control. He took the stroke without flinching. +He turned to Dick with a smile. + +"Some men have all the luck," he said, and Dick, who had been looking at +him in bewilderment, cried: + +"Mr. Thresk? Not the Mr. Thresk to whom I owe so much?" + +"The very man," said Thresk, and Dick held out his hand to him gravely. + +"Thank you," he said. "When I think of the horrible net of doubt and +assumption in which Stella was coiled, I tell you I feel cold down my +spine even now. If you hadn't come forward with your facts--" + +"Yes," Thresk interposed. "If I hadn't come forward with my facts. But I +couldn't well keep them to myself, could I?" A few more words were said +and then Dick rose from his chair. + +"Time's up, Stella," and he explained to Henry Thresk: "We have to look +over a house this afternoon." + +"A house? Yes, I see," said Thresk, but he spoke slowly and there was +just audible a little inflection of doubt in his voice. Stella was +listening for it; she heard it when her two antagonists noticed nothing. + +"But, Dick," she said quickly, "we can put the inspection off." + +"Not on my account," Thresk returned. "There's no need for that." He was +not looking at Stella whilst he spoke and she longed to see his face. She +must know exactly how she stood with him, what he thought of her. She +turned impulsively to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"I haven't been asked, but may I come to dinner? You see I owe a good +deal to Mr. Thresk." + +Mr. Hazlewood was for the moment at a loss. He had not lost hope that +between now and dinner-time explanations would be given which would +banish Stella Ballantyne altogether from Little Beeding. But he had no +excuse ready and he stammered out: + +"Of course, my dear. Didn't I ask you? I must have forgotten. I certainly +expect you to dine with us to-night. Margaret will no doubt be here." + +Margaret Pettifer had taken little part in the conversation about the +tea-table. She sat in frigid hostility, speaking only when politeness +commanded. She accepted her brother's invitation with a monosyllable. + +"Thank you," said Stella, and she faced Henry Thresk, looking him +straight in the eyes but not daring to lay any special stress upon the +words: "Then I shall see you to-night." + +Thresk read in her face a prayer that he should hold his hand until she +had a chance to speak with him. She turned away and went from the room +with Dick Hazlewood. + +The old man rose as soon as the door was closed. + +"Now we might have a look at the miniatures, Mr. Thresk. You will excuse +us, Margaret, won't you?" + +"Of course," she answered upon a nod from her husband. The two men passed +through the doors into the great library whilst Thresk took a more +ceremonious leave of Mrs. Pettifer; and as Hazlewood opened the drawers +of his cabinets Robert Pettifer said in a whisper: + +"That was a pretty good failure, I must say. And it was my idea too." + +"Yes," replied Hazlewood in a voice as low. "What do you think?" + +"That they share no secret." + +"You are satisfied then?" + +"I didn't say that"; and Thresk himself appeared in the doorway and went +across to the writing-table upon which Hazlewood had just laid a drawer +in which miniatures were ranged. + +"I haven't met you," said Pettifer, "since you led for us in the great +Birmingham will-suit." + +"No," answered Thresk as he took his seat at the table. "It wasn't quite +such a tough fight as I expected. You see there wasn't one really +reliable witness for the defence." + +"No," said Pettifer grimly. "If there had been we should have been +beaten." + +Mr. Hazlewood began to point out this and that miniature of his +collection, bending over Thresk as he did so. It seemed that the two +collectors were quite lost in their common hobby until Robert Pettifer +gave the signal. + +Then Mr. Hazlewood began: + +"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Thresk, for reasons quite outside these +miniatures of mine." + +He spoke with a noticeable awkwardness, yet Henry Thresk disregarded it +altogether. + +"Oh?" he said carelessly. + +"Yes. Being Richard's father I am naturally concerned in everything +which affects him nearly--the trial of Stella Ballantyne for instance." + +Thresk bent his head down over the tray. + +"Quite so," he said. He pointed to a miniature. "I saw that at Christie's +and coveted it myself." + +"Did you?" Mr. Hazlewood asked and he almost offered it as a bribe. "Now +you gave evidence, Mr. Thresk." + +Thresk never lifted his head. + +"You have no doubt read the evidence I gave," he said, peering from this +delicate jewel of the painter's art to that. + +"To be sure." + +"And since your son is engaged to Mrs. Ballantyne, I suppose that you +were satisfied with it"--and he paused to give a trifle of significance +to his next words--"as the jury was." + +"Yes, of course," Mr. Hazlewood stammered, "but a witness, I think, only +answers the questions put to him." + +"That is so," said Thresk, "if he is a wise witness." He took one of the +miniatures out of the drawer and held it to the light. But Mr. Hazlewood +was not to be deterred. + +"And subsequent reflection," he continued obstinately, "might suggest +that all the questions which could throw light upon the trial had not +been put." + +Thresk replaced the miniature in the drawer in front of him and leaned +back in his chair. He looked now straight at Mr. Hazlewood. + +"It was not, I take it, in order to put those questions to me that you +were kind enough, Mr. Hazlewood, to ask me to give my opinion on your +miniatures. For that would have been setting a trap for me, wouldn't it?" + +Hazlewood stared at Thresk with the bland innocence of a child. "Oh no, +no," he declared, and then an insinuating smile beamed upon his long +thin face. "Only since you _are_ here and since so much is at stake for +me--my son's happiness--I hoped that you might perhaps give us an answer +or two which would disperse the doubts of some suspicious people." + +"Who are they?" asked Thresk. + +"Neighbours of ours," replied Hazlewood, and thereupon Robert Pettifer +stepped forward. He had remained aloof and silent until this moment. Now +he spoke shortly, but he spoke to the point: + +"I for one." + +Thresk turned with a smile upon Pettifer. + +"I thought so. I recognised Mr. Pettifer's hand in all this. But he ought +to know that the sudden confrontation of a suspected person with +unexpected witnesses takes place, in those countries where the method is +practised, before the trial; not, as you so ingeniously arranged it this +afternoon, two years after the verdict has been given." + +Robert Pettifer turned red. Then he looked whimsically across the table +at his brother-in-law. + +"We had better make a clean breast of it, Hazlewood." + +"I think so," said Thresk gently. + +Pettifer came a step nearer. "We are in the wrong," he said bluntly. "But +we have an excuse. Our trouble is very great. Here's my brother-in-law to +begin with, whose whole creed of life has been to deride the authority of +conventional man--to tilt against established opinion. Mrs. Ballantyne +comes back from her trial in Bombay to make her home again at Little +Beeding. Hazlewood champions her--not for her sake, but for the sake of +his theories. It pleases his vanity. Now he can prove that he is not as +others are." + +Mr. Hazlewood did not relish this merciless analysis of his character. He +twisted in his chair, he uttered a murmur of protest. But Robert Pettifer +waved him down and continued: + +"So he brings her to his house. He canvasses for her. He throws his son +in her way. She has beauty--she has something more than beauty--she +stands apart as a woman who has walked through fire. She has suffered +very much. Look at it how one will, she has suffered beyond her deserts. +She has pretty deferential ways which make their inevitable appeal to +women as to men. In a word, Hazlewood sets the ball rolling and it gets +beyond his reach." + +Thresk nodded. + +"Yes, I understand that." + +"Finally, Hazlewood's son falls in love with her--not a boy mind, but a +man claiming a man's right to marry where he loves. And at once in +Hazlewood conventional man awakes." + +"Dear me, no," interposed Harold Hazlewood. + +"But I say yes," Pettifer continued imperturbably. "Conventional man +awakes in him and cries loudly against the marriage. Then there's myself. +I am fond of Dick. I have no child. He will be my heir and I am not poor. +He is doing well in his profession. To be an Instructor of the Staff +Corps at his age means hard work, keenness, ability. I look forward to a +great career. I am very fond of him. And--understand me, Mr. Thresk"--he +checked his speech and weighed his words very carefully--"I wouldn't say +that he shouldn't marry Stella Ballantyne just because Stella Ballantyne +has lain under a grave charge of which she has been acquitted. No, I may +be as formal as my brother-in-law thinks, but I hold a wider faith than +that. But I am not satisfied. That is the truth, Mr. Thresk. I am not +sure of what happened in that tent in far-away Chitipur after you had +ridden away to catch the night mail to Bombay." + +Robert Pettifer had made his confession simply and with some dignity. +Thresk looked at him for a few moments. Was he wondering whether he +could answer the questions? Was he hesitating through anger at the +trick which had been played upon him? Pettifer could not tell. He waited +in suspense. Thresk pushed his chair back suddenly and came forward from +behind the table. + +"Ask your questions," he said. + +"You consent to answer them?" Mr. Hazlewood cried joyously, and Thresk +replied with coldness: + +"I must. For if I don't consent your suspicions at once are double what +they were. But I am not pleased." + +"Oh, we practised a little diplomacy," said Hazlewood, making light of +his offence. + +"Diplomacy!" For the first time a gleam of anger shone in Thresk's eyes. +"You have got me to your house by a trick. You have abused your position +as my host. And but that I should injure a woman whom life has done +nothing but injure I should go out of your door this instant." + +He turned his back upon Harold Hazlewood and sat down in a chair opposite +to Robert Pettifer. A little round table separated them. Pettifer, seated +upon a couch, took from his pocket the envelope with the press-cuttings +and spread them on the table in front of him. Thresk lolled back in his +chair. It was plain that he was in no terror of Pettifer's examination. + +"I am at your service," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WITNESS + + +The afternoon sunlight poured into the room golden and clear. Outside the +open windows the garden was noisy with birds and the river babbled +between its banks. Henry Thresk shut his ears against the music. For all +his appearance of ease he dreaded the encounter which was now begun. +Pettifer he knew to be a shrewd man. He watched him methodically +arranging his press-cuttings in front of him. Pettifer might well find +some weak point in his story which he himself had not discovered; and +whatever course he was minded afterwards to take, here and now he was +determined once more to fight Stella's battle. + +"I need not go back on the facts of the trial," said Pettifer. "They are +fresh enough in your memory, no doubt. Your theory as I understand it ran +as follows: While you were mounting your camel on the edge of the camp to +return to the station and Ballantyne was at your side, the thief whose +arm you had both seen under the tent wall, not knowing that now you had +the photograph of Bahadur Salak which he wished to steal, slipped into +the tent unperceived, took up the rook-rifle--" + +"Which was standing by Mrs. Ballantyne's writing-table," Thresk +interposed. + +"Loaded it,--" + +"The cartridges were lying open in a drawer." + +"And shot Ballantyne on his return." + +"Yes," Thresk agreed. "In addition you must remember that when Captain +Ballantyne was found an hour or so later Mrs. Ballantyne was in bed +and asleep." + +"Quite so," said Pettifer. "In brief, Mr. Thresk, you supplied a +reasonable motive for the crime and some evidence of a criminal. And I +admit that on your testimony the jury returned the only verdict which it +was possible to give." + +"What troubles you then?" Henry Thresk asked, and Pettifer replied drily: + +"Various points. Here's one--a minor one. If Captain Ballantyne was shot +by a thief detected in the act of thieving why should that thief risk +capture and death by dragging Captain Ballantyne's body out into the +open? It seems to me the last thing which he would naturally do." + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. + +"I can't explain that. It is perhaps possible that not finding the +photograph he fell into a blind rage and satisfied it by violence towards +the dead man." + +"Dead or dying," Mr. Pettifer corrected. "There seems to have been some +little doubt upon that point. But your theory's a little weak, isn't it? +To get away unseen would be that thief's first preoccupation, surely?" + +"Reasoning as you and I are doing here quietly, at our ease, in this +room, no doubt you are right, Mr. Pettifer. But criminals are caught +because they don't reason quietly when they have just committed a crime. +The behaviour of a man whose mind is influenced by that condition cannot +be explained always by any laws of psychology. He may be in a wild panic. +He may act as madmen act, or like a child in a rage. And if my +explanation is weak it's no weaker than the only other hypothesis: that +Mrs. Ballantyne herself dragged him into the open." + +Mr. Pettifer shook his head. + +"I am not so sure. I can conceive a condition of horror in the wife, +horror at what she had done, which would make that act not merely +possible but almost inevitable. I make no claims to being an imaginative +man, Mr. Thresk, but I try to put myself into the position of the wife"; +and he described with a vividness for which Thresk was not prepared the +scene as he saw it. + +"She goes to bed, she undresses and goes to bed--she must do that if +she is to escape--she puts out her light, she lies in the dark awake, +and under the same roof, close to her, in the dark too, is lying the man +she has killed. Just a short passage separates her from him. There are +no doors--mind that, Mr. Thresk--no doors to lock and bolt, merely a +grass screen which you could lift with your forefinger. Wouldn't any and +every one of the little cracks and sounds and breathings, of which the +quietest and stillest night is full, sound to her like the approach of +the dead man? The faintest breath of air would seem a draught made by +the swinging of the grass-curtain as it was stealthily lifted--lifted by +the dead man. No, Mr. Thresk. The wife is just the one person I could +imagine who would do that needless barbarous violence of dragging the +body into the open--and she would do it, not out of cruelty, but because +she must or go mad." + +Thresk listened without a movement until Robert Pettifer had finished. +Then he said: + +"You know Mrs. Ballantyne. Has she the strength which she must have had +to drag a heavy man across the carpet of a tent and fling him outside?" + +"Not now, not before. But just at the moment? You argued, Mr. Thresk, +that it is impossible to foresee what people will do under the immediate +knowledge that they have committed a capital crime. I agree. But I go a +little further. I say that they will also exhibit a physical strength +with which it would be otherwise impossible to credit them. Fear lends +it to them." + +"Yes," Thresk interrupted quickly, "but don't you see, Mr. Pettifer, that +you are implying the existence of an emotion in Mrs. Ballantyne which the +facts prove her to have been without--fear, panic? She was found quietly +asleep in her bed by the ayah when she came to call her in the morning. +There's no doubt of that. The ayah was never for a moment shaken upon +that point. The pyschology of crime is a curious and surprising study, +Mr. Pettifer, but I know of no case where terror has acted as a +sleeping-draught." + +Mr. Pettifer smiled and turned altogether away from the question. + +"It is, as I said, a minor point, and perhaps one from which any +sort of inference would be unsafe. It interested me. I lay no great +stress upon it." + +He dismissed the point carelessly, to the momentary amusement of Henry +Thresk. The art of slipping away from defeat had been practised with +greater skill. Thresk lost some part of his apprehension but none of his +watchfulness. + +"Now, however, we come to something very different," said Pettifer, +hitching himself a little closer to his table and fixing his eyes upon +Thresk. "The case for the prosecution ran like this: Stephen Ballantyne +was, though a man of great ability, a secret drunkard who humiliated his +wife in public and beat her in private. She went in terror of him. She +bore on more than one occasion the marks of his violence; and upon that +night in Chitipur, perhaps in a panic and very likely under extreme +provocation, she snatched up her rook-rifle and put an end to the whole +bad business." + +"Yes," Thresk agreed, "that was the case for the Crown." + +"Yes, and throughout the sitting at the Stipendiary's inquiry before you +came upon the scene that theory was clearly developed." + +"Yes." + +Thresk's confidence vanished as quickly as it had come. He realised +whither Pettifer's questions were leading. There was a definitely weak +link in his story and Pettifer had noticed it and was testing it. + +"Now," the solicitor continued--"and this is the important point--what +was the answer to that charge foreshadowed by the defence during those +days before you appeared?" + +Thresk answered the question quickly, if answer it could be called. + +"The defence had not formulated any answer. I came forward before the +case for the Crown finished." + +"Quite so. But Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel did cross-examine the witnesses +for the prosecution--we must not forget that, Mr. Thresk--and from the +cross-examination it is quite clear what answer he was going to make. He +was going--not to deny that Mrs. Ballantyne shot her husband--but to +plead that she shot him in self-defence." + +"Oh?" said Thresk, "and where do you find that?" + +He had no doubt himself in what portion of the report of the trial a +proof of Pettifer's statement was to be discovered, but he made a +creditable show of surprise that any one should hold that opinion at all. + +Pettifer selected a column of newspaper from his cuttings. + +"Listen," he said. "Mr. Repton, a friend of Mrs. Ballantyne, was called +upon a subpoena by the Crown and he testified that while he was a +Collector at Agra he went up with his wife from the plains to the +hill-station of Moussourie during a hot weather. The Ballantynes went up +at the same time and occupied a bungalow next to Repton's. One night +Repton's house was broken into. He went across to Ballantyne the next +morning and advised him in the presence of his wife to sleep with a +revolver under his pillow." + +"Yes, I remember that," said Thresk. He had indeed cause to remember it +very well, for it was just this evidence given by Repton with its clear +implication of the line which the defence meant to take that had sent him +in a hurry to Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor. Pettifer continued by reading +Repton's words slowly and with emphasis. + +"'Mrs. Ballantyne then turned very pale, and running after me down the +garden like a distracted woman cried: "Why did you tell him to do that? +It will some night mean my death."' This statement, Mr. Thresk, was +elicited in cross-examination by Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, and it could +only mean that he intended to set up a plea of self-defence. I find it a +little difficult to reconcile that intention with the story you +subsequently told." + +Henry Thresk for his part knew that it was not merely difficult, it was, +in fact, impossible. Mr. Pettifer had read the evidence with an accurate +discrimination. The plea of self-defence was here foreshadowed and it was +just the certainty that the defence was going to rely upon it for a +verdict which had brought Henry Thresk himself into the witness-box at +Bombay. Given all that was known of Stephen Ballantyne and of the life he +had led his unhappy wife, the defence would have been a good one, but for +a single fact--the discovery of Ballantyne's body outside the tent. No +plea of self-defence could safely be left to cover that. Thresk himself +wondered at it. It struck at public sympathy, it seemed the act of a +person insensate and vindictive. Therefore he had come forward with his +story. But Mr. Pettifer was not to know it. + +"There are three things for you to remember," said Thresk. "In the first +place it is too early to assume that self-defence was going to be the +plea. Assumptions in a case of this kind are very dangerous, Mr. +Pettifer. They may lead to an irreparable injustice. We must keep to the +fact that no plea of self-defence was ever formulated. In the second +place Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down to Bombay in a state of complete +collapse. Her married life had been a torture to her. She broke down at +the end of it. She was indifferent to anything that might happen." + +Pettifer nodded. "Yes, I can understand that." + +"It followed that her advisers had to act upon their own initiative." + +"And the third point?" Pettifer asked. + +"Well, it's not so much a point as an opinion of mine. But I hold it +strongly. Her counsel mishandled the case." + +Pettifer pursed up his lips and grunted. He tapped a finger once or twice +on the table in front of him. He looked towards Thresk as if all was not +quite said. Harold Hazlewood, to whom the position of a neglected +listener was rare and unpalatable, saw an opportunity for intervention. + +"The three points are perhaps not very conclusive," he said. + +Thresk turned towards him coldly: + +"I promised to answer such questions as Mr. Pettifer put to me. I am +doing that. I did not undertake to discuss the value of my answers +afterwards." + +"No, no, quite so," murmured Mr. Hazlewood. "We are very grateful, I am +sure," and he left once more the argument to Pettifer. + +"Then I come to the next question, Mr. Thresk. At some moment in this +inquiry you of your own account put yourself into communication with Mrs. +Ballantyne's advisers and volunteered your evidence?" + +"Yes." + +"Isn't it strange that the defence did not at the very outset get into +communication with you?" + +"No," replied Thresk. Here he was at his ease. He had laid his plans well +in Bombay. Mr. Pettifer might go on asking questions until midnight upon +this point. Thresk could meet him. "It was not at all strange. It was not +known that I could throw any light upon the affair at all. All that +passed between Ballantyne and myself passed when we were alone; and +Ballantyne was now dead." + +"Yes, but you had dined with the Ballantynes on that night. Surely it's +strange that since you were in Bombay Mrs. Ballantyne's advisers did not +seek you out." + +"Yes, yes," added Mr. Hazlewood, "very strange indeed, Mr. +Thresk--since you were in Bombay"; and he looked up at the ceiling and +joined the tips of his fingers, his whole attitude a confident +question: "Answer that if you can." + +Thresk turned patiently round. + +"Hasn't it occurred to you, Mr. Hazlewood, that it is still more strange +that the prosecution did not at once approach me?" + +"Yes," said Pettifer suddenly. "That question too has troubled me"; and +Thresk turned back again. + +"You see," he explained, "I was not known to be in Bombay at all. On the +contrary I was supposed to be somewhere in the Red Sea or the +Mediterranean on my way back to England." + +Mr. Pettifer looked up in surprise. The statement was news to him and if +true provided a natural explanation of some of his chief perplexities. +"Let me understand that!" and there was a change in his voice which +Thresk was quick to detect. There was less hostility. + +"Certainly," Thresk answered. "I left the tent just before eleven to +catch the Bombay mail. I was returning direct to England. The reason +why Ballantyne asked me to take the photograph of Bahadur Salak was +that since I was going on board straight from the train it could be no +danger to me." + +"Then why didn't you go straight on board?" asked Pettifer. + +"I'll tell you," Thresk replied. "I thought the matter over on the +journey down to Bombay, and I came to the conclusion that since the +photograph might be wanted at Salak's trial I had better take it to the +Governor's house at Bombay. But Government House is out at Malabar Point, +four miles from the quays. I took the photograph out myself and so I +missed the boat. But there was an announcement in the papers that I had +sailed, and in fact the consul at Marseilles came on board at that port +to inquire for me on instructions from the Indian Government." + +Mr. Pettifer leaned back. + +"Yes, I see," he said thoughtfully. "That makes a difference--a big +difference." Then he sat upright again and said sharply: + +"You were in Bombay then when Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down from +Chitipur?" + +"Yes." + +"And when the case for the Crown was started?" + +"Yes." + +"And when the Crown's witnesses were cross-examined?" + +"Yes." + +"Why did you wait then all that time before you came forward?" Pettifer +put the question with an air of triumph. "Why, Mr. Thresk, did you wait +till the very moment when Mrs. Ballantyne was going to be definitely +committed to a particular line of defence before you announced that you +could clear up the mystery? Doesn't it rather look as if you had remained +hidden on the chance of the prosecution breaking down, and had only come +forward when you realised that to-morrow self-defence would be pleaded, +the firing of that rook-rifle admitted and a terrible risk of a verdict +of guilty run?" + +Thresk agreed without a moment's hesitation. + +"But that's the truth, Mr. Pettifer," he said, and Mr. Pettifer +sprang up. + +"What?" + +"Consider my position"--Thresk drew up his chair close to the table--"a +barrister who was beginning to have one of the large practices, the +Courts opening in London, briefs awaiting me, cases on which I had +already advised coming on. I had already lost a fortnight. That was bad +enough, but if I came forward with my story I must wait in Bombay not +merely for a fortnight but until the whole trial was completed, as in the +end I had to do. Of course I hoped that the prosecution would break down. +Of course I didn't intervene until it was absolutely necessary in the +interests of justice that I should." + +He spoke so calmly, there was so much reason in what he said, that +Pettifer could not but be convinced. + +"I see," he said. "I see. Yes. That's not to be disputed." He remained +silent for a few moments. Then he shuffled his papers together and +replaced them in the envelope. It seemed that his examination was over. +Thresk rose from his chair. + +"You have no more questions to ask me?" he inquired. + +"One more." + +Pettifer came round the table and stood in front of Henry Thresk. + +"Did you know Mrs. Ballantyne before you went to Chitipur?" + +"Yes," Thresk replied. + +"Had you seen her lately?" + +"No." + +"When had you last seen her?" + +"Eight years before, in this neighbourhood. I spent a holiday close +by. Her father and mother were then alive. I had not seen her since. I +did not even know that she was in India and married until I was told so +in Bombay." + +Thresk was prepared for that question. He had the truth ready and he +spoke it frankly. Mr. Pettifer turned away to Hazlewood, who was watching +him expectantly. + +"We have nothing more to do, Hazlewood, but to thank Mr. Thresk for +answering our questions and to apologise to him for having put them." + +Mr. Hazlewood was utterly disconcerted. After all, then, the marriage +must take place; the plot had ignominiously failed, the great questions +which were to banish Stella Ballantyne from Little Beeding had been put +and answered. He sat like a man stricken by calamity. He stammered out +reluctantly a few words to which Thresk paid little heed. + +"You are satisfied then?" he asked of Pettifer; and Pettifer showed him +unexpectedly a cordial and good-humoured face. + +"Yes. Let me say to you, Mr. Thresk, that ever since I began to study +this case I have wished less and less to bear hardly upon Mrs. +Ballantyne. As I read those columns of evidence the heavy figure of +Stephen Ballantyne took life again, but a very sinister life; and when I +look at Stella and think of what she went through during the years of +her married life while we were comfortably here at home I cannot but feel +a shiver of discomfort. Yes, I am satisfied and I am glad that I am +satisfied"; and with a smile which suddenly illumined his dry parched +face he held out his hand to Henry Thresk. + +It was perhaps as well that the questions were over, for even while +Pettifer was speaking Stella's voice was heard in the hall. Pettifer had +just time to thrust away the envelope with the cuttings into a drawer +before she came into the room with Dick. She had been forced to leave the +three men together, but she had dreaded it. During that one hour of +absence she had lived through a lifetime of terror and anxiety. What +would Thresk tell them? What was he now telling them? She was like one +waiting downstairs while a surgical operation is being performed in the +theatre above. She had hurried Dick back to Little Deeding, and when she +came into the room her eyes roamed round in suspense from Thresk to +Hazlewood, from Hazlewood to Pettifer. She saw the tray of miniatures +upon the table. + +"You admire the collection?" she said to Thresk. + +"Very much," he answered, and Pettifer took her by the arm and in a voice +of kindness which she had never heard him use before he said: + +"Now tell me about your house. That's much more interesting." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +IN THE LIBRARY + + +Henry Thresk took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him +poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but +his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about +Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the +table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused +her a couple of hours before. She had come dressed in a slim gown of +shimmering blue with her small head erect, a smile upon her lips and a +bright colour in her cheeks. Thresk hardly knew her, he had to tell +himself again and again that this was the Stella Ballantyne whom he had +known here and in India. She was not the girl who had ridden with him +upon the downs and made one month of his life very memorable and one day +a shameful recollection. Nor was she the stricken creature of the tent in +Chitipur. She was a woman sure of her resources, radiant in her beauty, +confident that what she wore was her colour and gave her her value. Yet +her trouble was greater than Thresk's, and many a time during the course +of that dinner, when she felt his eyes resting upon her, her heart sank +in fear. She sought his company after dinner, but she had no chance of a +private word with him. Old Mr. Hazlewood took care of that. One moment +Stella must sing; at another she must play a rubber of bridge. He at all +events had not laid aside his enmity and suspected some understanding +between her and his guest. At eleven Mrs. Pettifer took her leave. She +came across the room to Henry Thresk. + +"Are you staying over to-morrow?" she asked, and Thresk with a +laugh answered: + +"I wish that I could. But I have to catch an early train to London. +Even to-night my day's work's not over. I must sit up for an hour or +two over a brief." + +Stella rose at the same time as Mrs. Pettifer. + +"I was hoping that you would be able to come across and see my +little cottage to-morrow morning," she said. Thresk hesitated as he +took her hand. + +"I should very much like to see it," he said. He was in a very great +difficulty, and was not sure that a letter was not the better if the more +cowardly way out of it. "If I could find the time." + +"Try," said she. She could say no more for Mr. Hazlewood was at her elbow +and Dick was waiting to take her home. + +It was a dark clear night; a sky of stars overarched the earth, but +there was no moon, and though lights shone brightly even at a great +distance there was no glimmer from the road beneath their feet. Dick +held her close in his arms at the door of her cottage. She was very +still and passive. + +"You are tired?" he asked. + +"I think so." + +"Well, to-night has seen the last of our troubles, Stella." + +She did not answer him at once. Her hands clung about his shoulders and +with her face smothered in his coat she whispered: + +"Dick, I couldn't go on without you now. I couldn't. I wouldn't." + +There was a note of passionate despair in her voice which made her words +suddenly terrible to him. He took her and held her a little away from +him, peering into her face. + +"What are you saying, Stella?" he asked sternly. "You know that nothing +can come between us. You break my heart when you talk like that." He drew +her again into his arms. "Is your maid waiting up for you?" + +"No." + +"Call her then, while I wait here. Let me see the light in her room. I +want her to sleep with you to-night." + +"There's no need, Dick," she answered. "I am unstrung to-night. I said +more than I meant. I swear to you there's no need." + +He raised her head and kissed her on the lips. + +"I trust you, Stella," he said gently; and she answered him in a low +trembling voice of so much tenderness and love that he was reassured. +"Oh, you may, my dear, you may." + +She went up to her room and turned on the light, and sat down in her +chair just as she had done after her first dinner at Little Beeding. She +had foreseen then all the troubles which had since beset her, but she had +seemed to have passed through them--until this afternoon. Over there in +the library of the big house was Henry Thresk--the stranger. Very likely +he was at this moment writing to her. If he had only consented to come +over in the morning and give her the chance of pleading with him! She +went to the window and, drawing up the blind, leaned her head out and +looked across the meadow. In the library one of the long windows stood +open and the curtain was not drawn. The room was full of light. Henry +Thresk was there. He had befriended her this afternoon as he had +befriended her at Bombay, for the second time he had won the victory for +her; but the very next moment he had warned her that the end was not yet. +He would send her a letter, she had not a doubt of it. She had not a +doubt either of the message which the letter would bring. + +A sound rose to her ears from the gravel path below her window--the sound +of a slight involuntary movement. Stella drew sharply back. Then she +leaned out again and called softly: + +"Dick." + +He was standing a little to the left of the window out of reach of the +light which streamed out upon the darkness from the room behind her. He +moved forward now. + +"Oh, Dick, why are you waiting?" + +"I wanted to be sure that all was right, Stella." + +"I gave you my word, Dick," she whispered and she wished him +good-night again and waited till the sound of his footsteps had +altogether died away. He went back to the house and found Thresk still +at work in the library. + +"I don't want to interrupt you," he said, "but I must thank you again. I +can't tell you what I owe you. She's pretty wonderful, isn't she? I feel +coarse beside her, I tell you. I couldn't talk like this to any one else, +but you're so sympathetic." + +Henry Thresk had responded with nothing more than a grunt. He sat +slashing at his brief with a blue pencil, all the while that Dick +Hazlewood was speaking, and wishing that he would go to bed. Dick however +was unabashed. + +"Did you ever see a woman look so well in a blue frock? Or in a black one +either? There's a sort of painted thing she wears sometimes too. Well, +perhaps I had better go to bed." + +"I think it would be wise," said Thresk. + +Young Hazlewood went over to the table in the corner and lit his candle. + +"You'll shut that window before you go to bed, won't you?" + +"Yes." + +Hazlewood filled for himself a glass of barley-water and drank it, +contemplating Henry Thresk over the rim. Then he went back to him, +carrying his candle in his hand. + +"Why don't you get married, Mr. Thresk?" he asked. "You ought to, you +know. Men run to seed so if they don't." + +"Thank you," said Thresk. + +The tone was not cordial, but mere words were an invitation to Dick +Hazlewood at this moment. He sat down and placed his lighted candle on +the table between Thresk and himself. + +"I am thirty-four years old," he said, and Thresk interposed without +glancing up from his foolscap: + +"From your style of conversation I find that very difficult to believe, +Captain Hazlewood." + +"I have wasted thirty-four complete years of twelve months each," +continued the ecstatic Captain, who appeared to think that on the very +day of his birth he would have recognised his soul's mate. "Just jogging +along with the world, a miracle about one and not half an eye to perceive +it. You know." + +"No, I don't," Thresk observed. He lifted the candle and held it out to +Dick. Dick got up and took it. + +"Thank you," he said. "That was very kind of you. I told you--didn't +I?--how sympathetic I thought you." + +Thresk was not proof against his companion's pertinacity. He broke into a +laugh. "Are you going to bed?" he pleaded, and Dick Hazlewood replied, +"Yes I am." Suddenly his tone changed. + +"Stella had a very good friend in you, Mr. Thresk. I am sure she still +has one," and without waiting for any answer he went upstairs. His +bedroom was near to the front in the side of the house. It commanded a +view of the meadow and the cottage and he rejoiced to see that all +Stella's windows were dark. The library was out of sight round the corner +at the back, but a glare of light from the open door spread out over the +lawn. Hazlewood looked at his watch. It was just midnight. He went to bed +and slept. + +In the library Thresk strove to concentrate his thoughts upon his brief. +But he could not, and he threw it aside at last. There was a letter to be +written, and until it was written and done with his thoughts would not be +free. He went over to the writing-table and wrote it. But it took a long +while in the composition and the clock upon the top of the stable was +striking one when at last he had finished and sealed it up. + +"I'll post it in the morning at the station," he resolved, and he went +to the window to close it. But as he touched it a slight figure wrapped +in a dark cloak came out of the darkness at the side and stepped past him +into the room. He swung round and saw Stella Ballantyne. + +"You!" he exclaimed. "You must be mad." + +"I had to come," she said, standing well away from the window in the +centre of the room as though she thought he would drive her out. "I heard +you say you would be sitting late here." + +"How long have you been waiting out there?" + +"A little while...I don't know...Not very long. I wasn't sure that you +were alone." + +Thresk closed the window and drew the curtain across it. Then he crossed +the room and locked the doors leading into the dining-room and hall. + +"There was no need for you to come," he said in a low voice. "I have +written to you." + +"Yes." She nodded her head. "That's why I had to come. This afternoon you +spoke of leaving your pipe behind. I understood," and as he drew the +letter from his pocket she recoiled from it. "No, it has never been +written. I came in time to prevent its being written. You only had an +idea of writing. Say that! You are my friend." She took the letter from +him now and tore it across and again across. "See! It has never been +written at all." + +But Thresk only shook his head. "I am very sorry. I see to-night the +stricken woman of the tent in Chitipur. I am very sorry," and Stella +caught at the commiseration in his voice. She dropped the cloak from her +shoulders; she was dressed as she had been at the dinner some hours +before, but all her radiance had gone, her cheeks trembled, her eyes +pleaded desperately. + +"Sorry! I knew you would be. You are not hard. You couldn't be. You must +come close day by day in your life to so much that is pitiful. One can +talk to you and you'll understand. This is my first chance, the first +real chance I have ever had, Henry, the very first." + +Thresk looked backwards over the years of Stella Ballantyne's unhappy +life. It came upon him with a shock that what she said was the bare +truth; and remorse followed hard upon the heels of the shock. This was +her first real chance and he himself was to blame that it had come no +earlier. The first chance of a life worth the living--it had been in his +hands to give her and he had refused to give it years ago on Bignor Hill. + +"It's quite true," he admitted. "But I don't ask you to give it up, +Stella." She looked at him eagerly. "No! You would have understood that +if you had read my letter instead of tearing it up. I only ask you to +tell your lover the truth." + +"He knows it," she said sullenly. + +"No!" + +"He does! He does!" she protested, her voice rising to a low cry. + +"Hush! You'll be heard," said Thresk, and she listened for a moment +anxiously. But there was no sound of any one stirring in the house. + +"We are safe here," she said. "No one sleeps above us. Henry, he knows +the truth." + +"Would you be here now if he did?" + +"I came because this afternoon you seemed to be threatening me. I didn't +understand. I couldn't sleep. I saw the light in this room. I came to ask +you what you meant--that's all." + +"I'll tell you what I meant," said Thresk, and Stella with her eyes +fixed upon him sank down upon a chair. "I left my pipe behind me in the +tent on the night I dined with you. Your lover, Stella, doesn't know +that. I came back to fetch it. He doesn't know that. You were standing +by the table--" and Stella Ballantyne broke in upon him to silence the +words upon his lips. + +"There was no reason why he should know," she exclaimed. "It had nothing +to do with what happened. We know what happened. There was a thief"--and +Thresk turned to her then with such a look of sheer amazement upon his +face that she faltered and her voice died to a murmur of words--"a lean +brown arm--a hand delicate as a woman's." + +"There was no thief," he said quietly. "There was a man delirious with +drink who imagined one. There was you with the bruises on your throat and +the unutterable misery in your eyes and a little rifle in your hands. +There was no one else." + +She ceased to argue; she sat looking straight in front of her with a +stubborn face and a resolution to cling at all costs to her chance of +happiness. + +"Come, Stella," Thresk pleaded. "I don't say tell every one. I do say +tell him. For unless you do I must." + +Stella stared at him. + +"You?" she said. "You would tell him that you came back into the tent +and saw me?" + +"Oh, much more--that I lied at the trial, that the story which secured +your acquittal was false, that I made it up to save you. That I told it +again this afternoon to give you a chance of slipping out from an +impossible position." + +She looked at Thresk for a moment in terror. Then her expression changed. +A wave of relief swept over her; she laughed in Thresk's face. + +"You are trying to frighten me," she said. "Only I know you. Do you +realise what it would mean to you if it were ever really known that you +had lied at the trial?" + +"Yes." + +"Your ruin. Your absolute ruin." + +"Worse than that." + +"Prison!" + +"Perhaps. Yes." + +Stella laughed again. + +"And you would run the risk of the truth becoming known by telling it to +so much as one person. No, no! Another, perhaps--not you! You have had +one dream all your life--to rise out of obscurity, to get on in the +world, to hold the high positions. Everything and every one has been +sacrificed to its fulfilment. Oh, who should know better than I?" and she +struck her hands together sharply as she uttered that bitter cry. "You +have lain down late and risen early, and you have got on. Well, are you +the man to throw away all this work and success now that they touch +fulfilment? You are in the chariot. Will you step down and run tied to +the wheels? Will you stand up and say, 'There was a trial. I perjured +myself'? No. Another, perhaps. Not you, Henry." + +Thresk had no answer to that indictment. All of it was true except +its inference, and it was no news to him. He made no effort to +defend himself. + +"You are not very generous, Stella," he replied gently. "For if I lied, I +saved you by the lie." + +Stella was softened by the words. Her voice lost its hardness, she +reached out her hand in an apology and laid it on his arm. + +"Oh, I know. I sent you a little word of thanks when you gave me my +freedom. But it won't be of much value to me if I lose--what I am +fighting for now." + +"So you use every weapon?" + +"Yes." + +"But this one breaks in your hand," he said firmly. "The thing you think +it incredible that I should do I shall do none the less." + +Stella looked at him in despair. She could no longer doubt that he really +meant his words. He was really resolved to make this sacrifice of himself +and her. And why? Why should he interfere? + +"You save me one day to destroy me the next," she said. + +"No," he replied. "I don't think I shall do that, Stella," and he +explained to her what drove him on. "I had no idea why Hazlewood asked me +here. Had I suspected it I say frankly that I should have refused to +come. But I am here. The trouble's once more at my door but in a new +shape. There's this man, young Hazlewood. I can't forget him. You will be +marrying him by the help of a lie I told." + +"He loves me," she cried. + +"Then he can bear the truth," answered Thresk. He pulled up a chair +opposite to that in which Stella sat. "I want you to understand me, if +you will. I don't want you to think me harsh or cruel. I told a lie upon +my oath in the witness-box. I violated my traditions, I struck at my +belief in the value of my own profession, and such beliefs mean a good +deal to any man." Stella stirred impatiently. What words were these? +Traditions! The value of a profession! + +"I am not laying stress upon them, Stella, but they count," Thresk +continued. "And I am telling you that they count because I am going to +add that I should tell that lie again to-morrow, were the trial to-morrow +and you a prisoner. I should tell it again to save you again. Yes, to +save you. But when you go and--let me put it very plainly--use that lie +to your advantage, why then I am bound to cry 'stop.' Don't you see that? +You are using the lie to marry a man and keep him in ignorance of the +truth. You can't do that, Stella! You would be miserable yourself if you +did all your life. You would never feel safe for a moment. You would be +haunted by a fear that some day he would learn the truth and not from +you. Oh, I am sure of it." He caught her hands and pressed them +earnestly. "Tell him, Stella, tell him!" + +Stella Ballantyne rose to her feet with a strange look upon her face. Her +eyes half closed as though to shut out a vision of past horrors. She +turned to Thresk with a white face and her hands tightly clenched. + +"You don't know what happened on that night, after you rode away to catch +your train?" + +"No." + +"I think you ought to know--before you sit in judgment"; and so at last +in that quiet library under the Sussex Downs the tragic story of that +night was told. For Thresk as he listened and watched, its terrors lived +again in the eyes and the hushed voice of Stella Ballantyne, the dark +walls seemed to fall back and dissolve. The moonlit plain of far-away +Chitipur stretched away in front of him to the dim hill where the old +silent palaces crumbled; and midway between them and the green +signal-lights of the railway the encampment blazed like the clustered +lights of a small town. But Thresk learnt more than the facts. The +springs of conduct were disclosed to him; the woman revealed herself, +dark places were made light; and he bowed himself beneath a new burden +of remorse. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +TWO STRANGERS + + +"You came back to the tent," she began, "and ever since then you have +misunderstood what you saw. For this is the truth: I was going to +kill myself." + +Thresk was startled as he had not expected to be; and a great wave of +relief swept over him and uplifted his soul. Here was the simplest +explanation, yet it had never occurred to him. Always he had been +besieged by the vision of Stella standing quietly by the table, +deliberately preparing her rifle for use, always he had linked up that +vision with the death of Stephen Ballantyne in a dreadful connection. He +did not doubt that she spoke the truth now. Looking at her and noticing +the anguish of her face, he could not doubt it. So definite a +premeditation as he had imagined there had not been, and relief carried +him to pity. + +"So it had come to that?" he said. + +"Yes," replied Stella. "And you had your share in bringing it to +that--you who sit in judgment." + +"I!" Thresk exclaimed. + +"Yes, you who sit in judgment. I am not alone. No, I am not alone. A +crime was committed? Then you must shoulder your portion of the blame." + +Thresk asked himself in vain what was his share. He had done a cowardly +thing years ago a few miles from this spot. He had never ceased to +reproach himself for the cowardice. But that it had lived and worked like +some secret malady until in the end it had made him an all-unconscious +accomplice in that midnight tragedy, a sharer in its guilt, if guilt +there were--here again was news for him. But the knowledge which her +first words had given to him, that all these years he had never got the +truth of her, kept him humble now. He ceased to be judge. He became pupil +and as pupil he answered her. + +"I am ready to shoulder it." + +He was seated on a cushioned bench which stood behind the writing-table +and Stella sat down at his side. + +"When we parted--that morning--it was in the drawing-room over there in +my cottage. We parted, you to your work of getting on, Henry, I to think +of you getting on without me at your side. There was a letter lying on +the table, a letter from India. Jane Repton had written it and she asked +me to go out to her for the cold weather. I went. I was a young girl, +lonely and very unhappy, and as young girls often do who are lonely and +very unhappy I drifted into marriage." + +"I see," said Thresk in a hushed voice. The terrible conviction grew upon +him now, lurid as the breaking of a day of storm, that the cowardice he +had shown on Bignor Hill ruined her altogether and hurt him not at all. +"Yes, I see. There my share begins." + +"Oh no. Not yet," she answered. "Then I spoke when I should have kept +silence. I let my heart go out when I should have guarded it. No, I +cannot blame you." + +"You have the right none the less." + +But Stella would not excuse herself now and to him by any subtlety +or artifice. + +"No: I married. That was my affair. I was +beaten--despised--ridiculed--terrified by a husband who drank secretly +and kept all his drunkenness for me. That, too, was my affair. But I +might have gone on. For seven years it had lasted. I was settling into a +dull habit of misery. I might have gone on being bullied and tortured had +not one little thing happened to push me over the precipice." + +"And what was that?" asked Thresk. + +"Your visit to me at Chitipur," she replied, and the words took his +breath away. Why, he had travelled to Chitipur merely to save her. He +leaned forward eagerly but she anticipated him. She smiled at him with an +indulgent forgiveness. "Oh, why did you come? But I know." + +"Do you?" Thresk asked. Here at all events she was wrong. + +"Yes. You came because of that one weak soft spot of sentimentalism there +is in all of you, the strongest, the hardest. You are strong for years. +You live alone for years. Then comes the sentimental moment and it's we +who suffer, not you." + +And deep in Thresk's mind was the terror of the mistakes people make in +ignorance of each other, and of the mortal hurt the mistakes inflict. He +had misread Stella. Here was she misreading him and misreading him in +some strange way to her peril and ruin. + +"You are sure of that?" he asked. She had no doubt--no more doubt than he +had had of the reason why she stood preparing her rifle. + +"Quite," she answered. "You had heard of me in Bombay and it came over +you that you would like to see how the woman you had loved looked after +all these years: whether she retained her pretty way, whether she missed +you--ah, above all, whether she missed you. You wanted to fan up into a +mild harmless flame the ashes of an old romance, warm your hands at it +for half an hour, recapture a savour of dim and pleasant memories and +then go back to your own place and your own work, untouched and unhurt." + +Thresk laughed aloud with bitterness at the mistake she had made. Yet he +could not blame her. There was a certain shrewd insight which though it +had led her astray in this case might well have been true in any other +case, might well have been true of him. He remembered her disbelief in +all that he had said to her in that tent at Chitipur; and he was appalled +by the irony of things and the blind and feeble helplessness of men to +combat it. + +"So that's why I came to Chitipur?" he cried. + +"Yes," Stella answered without a second of hesitation. "But I couldn't be +left untouched and unhurt. You came and all that I had lost came with +you, came in a vivid rush of bright intolerable memories." She clasped +her hands over her eyes and Thresk lived over again that evening in the +tent upon the desert, but with a new understanding. His mind was +illumined. He saw the world as a prison in which each living being is +shut off from his neighbour by the impenetrable wall of an inability to +understand. + +"Memories of summers here," she resumed, "of women friends, of dainty and +comfortable things, and days of great happiness when it was good--oh so +very good!--to be alive and young. And you were going back to it all, +straight by the night-mail to Bombay, straight from the station on board +your ship. Oh, how it hurt to hear you speak of it, with a casual +pleasant word about exile and next-door neighbours!" She clasped her +hands together in front of her, her fingers worked and twisted. "No, I +couldn't endure it," she whispered. "The blows, the ridicule, the +contempt, I determined, should come to an end that night, and when you +saw me with the rifle in my hand I was going to end it." + +"Yes?" + +"And then the stupidest thing happened. I couldn't find the little box +of cartridges." + +Stella described to him how she had run hither and thither about the +tent, opening drawers, looking into bags and growing more nervous and +more flurried with every second that passed. She had so little time. +Ballantyne was not going as far as the station with Thresk. He merely +intended to see his visitor off beyond the edge of the camp. And it must +all be over and done with before he came back. She heard Ballantyne call +to Thresk to sit firm while the camel rose; and still she had not found +them. She heard Thresk's voice saying good-night. + +"The last words, Henry, I wanted to hear in the world. I thought that I +would wait for them and the moment they had died away--then. But I hadn't +found the cartridges and so the search began again." + +Thresk, watching her as she lived through again those desperate minutes, +was carried back to Chitipur and seemed to be looking into that tent. He +had a dreadful picture before his eyes of a hunted woman rushing wildly +from table to table, with a white, quivering face and lips which babbled +incoherently and feverish hands which darted out nervously, over-setting +books and ornaments--in a vain search for a box of cartridges wherewith +to kill herself. She found them at last behind the whisky bottle, and +clutched at them with a great sigh of relief. She carried them over to +the table on which she had laid her rifle, and as she pushed one into +the breech, Stephen Ballantyne stood in the doorway of the tent. + +"He swore at me," Stella continued. "I had taken the necklace off. I had +shown you the bruises on my throat. He cursed me for it, and he asked me +roughly why I didn't shoot myself and rid him of a fool. I stood without +answering him. That always maddened him. I didn't do it on purpose. I had +become dull and slow. I just stood and looked at him stupidly, and in a +fury he ran at me with his fist raised. I recoiled, he frightened me, and +then before he reached me--yes." Her voice died away in a whisper. Thresk +did not interrupt. There was more for her to tell and one dreadful +incident to explain. Stella went on in a moment, looking straight in +front of her and with all the passion of fear gone from her voice. + +"I remember that he stood and stared at me foolishly for a little while. +I had time to believe that nothing had happened, and to be glad that +nothing had happened and to be terrified of what he would do to me. And +then he fell and lay quite still." + +It seemed that she had no more to say, that she meant to leave +unexplained the inexplicable thing; and even Thresk put it out of +his thoughts. + +"It was an accident then," he cried. "After all, Stella, it was an +accident." + +But Stella sat mutely at his side. Some struggle was taking place in her +and was reflected in her countenance. Thresk's eager joy was damped. + +"No, my friend," she said at length, slowly and very deliberately. "It +was not an accident." + +"But you fired in fear." Thresk caught now at that alternative. "You shot +in self-defence. Stella, I blundered at Bombay." He moved away from her +in his agitation. "I am sorry. Oh, I am very sorry. I should never have +come forward at all. I should have lain quiet and let your counsel +develop his case, as he was doing, on the line of self-defence. You would +have been acquitted--and rightly acquitted. You would have had the +sympathy of every one. But I didn't know your story. I was afraid that +the discovery of Ballantyne outside the tent would ruin you. I knew that +my story could not fail to save you. So I told it. But I was wrong, +Stella. I blundered. I did you a great harm." + +He was standing before her now and so poignant an anguish rang in his +voice that Stella was moved by it to discard her plans. Thus she had +meant to tell the story if ever she was driven to it. Thus she had told +it. But now she put out a timid hand and took him by the arm. + +"I said I would tell you the truth. But I have not told it all. It's so +hard not to keep one little last thing back. Listen to me"; and with a +bowed head and her hand still clinging desperately to his arm she made +the final revelation. + +"It's true I was crazy with fear. But there was just one little moment +when I knew what I was going to do, when it came upon me that the way I +had chosen before was the wrong one, and this new way the right one. No, +no," she cried as Thresk moved. "Even that's not all. That moment--you +could hardly measure it in time, yet to me it was distinct enough and is +marked distinctly in my memories, for during it _he_ drew back." + +"What?" cried Thresk. "Don't say it, Stella!" + +"Yes," she answered. "During it he drew back, knowing what I was going to +do just as I suddenly knew it. It was a moment when he seemed to me to +bleat--yes, that's the word--to bleat for mercy." + +She had told the truth now and she dropped her hand from his sleeve. + +"And you? What did you do?" asked Thresk. + +"I? Oh, I went mad, I think. When I saw him lying there I lost my head. +The tent was flecked with great spots of fire which whirled in front of +my eyes and hurt. A strength far greater than mine possessed me. I was +crazy. I dragged him out of the tent for no reason--that's the truth--for +no reason at all. Can you believe that?" + +"Yes," replied Thresk readily enough. "I can well believe that." + +"Then something broke," she resumed. "I felt weak and numbed. I dragged +myself to my room. I went to bed. Does that sound very horrible to you? +I had one clear thought only. It was over. It was all over. I slept." +She leaned back in her chair, her hands dropped to her side, her eyes +closed. "Yes I did actually sleep." + +A clock ticking upon the mantelshelf seemed to grow louder and louder in +the silence of the library. The sound of it forced itself upon Thresk. It +roused Stella. She opened her eyes. In front of her Thresk was standing, +his face grave and very pitiful. + +"Now answer me truly," said Stella, and leaning forward she fixed her +eyes upon him. "If you still loved me, would you, knowing this story, +refuse to marry me?" + +Thresk looked back across the years of her unhappy life and saw her as +the sport of a malicious destiny. + +"No," he said, "I should not." + +"Then why shouldn't Dick marry me?" + +"Because he doesn't know this story." + +Stella nodded her head. + +"Yes. There's the flaw in my appeal to you, I know. You are quite right. +I should have told him. I should tell him now," and suddenly she dropped +on her knees before Thresk, the tears burst from her eyes, and in a voice +broken with passion she cried: + +"But I daren't--not yet. I have tried to--oh, more than once. Believe +that, Henry! You must believe it! But I couldn't. I hadn't the courage. +You will give me a little time, won't you? Oh, not long. I will tell him +of my own free will--very soon, Henry. But not now--not now." + +The sound of her sobbing and the sight of her distress wrung Thresk's +heart. He lifted her from the ground and held her. + +"There's another way, Stella," he said gently. + +"Oh, I know," she answered. She was thinking of the little bottle with +the tablets of veronal which stood by her bed, not for the first time +that night. She did not stop to consider whether Thresk, too, had that +way in his mind. It came to her so naturally; it was so easy, so simple a +way. She never thought that she misunderstood. She had come to the end of +the struggle; the battle had gone against her; she recognised it; and +now, without complaint, she bowed her head for the final blow. The +inherited habit of submission taught her that the moment had come for +compliance and gave her the dignity of patience. "Yes, I suppose that I +must take that way," she said, and she walked towards the chair over +which she had thrown her wrap. "Good-night, Henry." + +But before she had thrown the cloak about her shoulders Thresk stood +between her and the window. He took the cloak from her hands. + +"There have been too many mistakes, Stella, between you and me. There +must be no more. Here are we--until to-night strangers, and because we +were strangers, and never knew it, spoiling each other's lives." + +Stella looked at him in bewilderment. She had taught Thresk that night +unimagined truths about herself. She was now to learn something of the +inner secret man which the outward trappings of success concealed. He led +her to a sofa and placed her at his side. + +"You have said a good many hard things to me, Stella," he said with a +smile--"most of them true, but some untrue. And the untrue things you +wouldn't have said if you had ever chanced to ask yourself one question: +why I really missed my steamer at Bombay." + +Stella Ballantyne was startled. She made a guess but faltered in the +utterance of it, so ill it fitted with her estimate of him. + +"You missed it on purpose?" + +"Yes. I didn't come to Chitipur on any sentimental journey"; and he told +how he had seen her portrait in Jane Repton's drawing-room and learnt of +the misery of her marriage. + +"I came to fetch you away." + +And again Stella stared at him. + +"You? You pitied me so much? Oh, Henry!" + +"No. I wanted you so much. It's quite true that I sacrificed everything +for success. I don't deny that it is well worth having. But Jane Repton +said something to me in Bombay so true--you can get whatever you want if +you want it enough, but you cannot control the price you will have to +pay. I know, my dear, that I paid too big a price. I trampled down +something better worth having." + +Stella rose suddenly to her feet. + +"Oh, if I had known that on the night in Chitipur! What a difference it +would have made!" She turned swiftly to him. "Couldn't you have told me?" + +"I hadn't a chance. I hadn't five minutes with you alone. And you +wouldn't have believed me if I had had the chance. I left my pipe behind +me in order to come back and tell you. I had only the time then to tell +you that I would write." + +"Yes, yes," she answered, and again the cry burst from her: "What a +difference it would have made! Merely to have known that you really +wanted me!" + +She would never have taken that rifle from the corner and searched for +the cartridges, that she might kill herself! Whether she had consented or +not to go away and ruin Thresk's future she would have had a little faith +wherewith to go on and face the world. If she had only known! But up on +the top of Bignor Hill a blow had been struck under which her faith had +reeled and it had never had a chance of recovery. She laughed harshly. +The heart of her tragedy was now revealed to her. She saw herself the +sport of gods who sat about like cruel louts torturing a helpless animal +and laughing stupidly at its sufferings. She turned again to Thresk and +held out her hand. + +"Thank you. You would have ruined yourself for me." + +"Ruin's a large word," he answered, and still holding her hand he drew +her down again. She yielded reluctantly. She might misread his character, +but when the feelings and emotions were aroused she had the unerring +insight of her sex. She was warned by it now. She looked at Thresk with +startled eyes. + +"Why have you told me all this?" she asked in suspense, ready for flight. + +"I want to prepare you. There's a way out of the trouble--the honest way +for both of us: to make a clean breast of it together and together take +what follows." + +She was on her feet and away from him in a second. + +"No, no," she cried in alarm, and Thresk mistook the cause of the alarm. + +"You can't be tried again, Stella. That's over. You have been acquitted." + +She temporised. + +"But you?" + +"I?" and he shrugged his shoulders. "I take the consequences. I doubt if +they would be so very heavy. There would be some sympathy. And +afterwards--it would be as though you had slipped down from Chitipur to +Bombay and joined me as I had planned. We can make the best of our lives +together." + +There was so much sincerity in his manner, so much simplicity she could +not doubt him; and the immensity of the sacrifice he was prepared to make +overwhelmed her. It was not merely scandal and the Divorce Court which he +was ready to brave now. He had gone beyond the plan contemplated at +Bombay. He was willing to go hand in hand with her into the outer +darkness, laying down all that he had laboured for unsparingly. + +"You would do that for me?" she said. "Oh, you put me to shame!" and she +covered her face with her hands. + +"You give up your struggle for a footing in the world--that's what you +want, isn't it?" He pleaded, and she drew her hands away from her face. +He believed that? He imagined that she was fighting just for a name, a +position in the world? She stared at him in amazement, and forced herself +to understand. Since he himself had cared for her enough to remain +unmarried, since the knowledge of the mistake which he had made had grown +more bitter with each year, he had fallen easily into that other error +that she had never ceased to care too. + +"We'll make something of our lives, never fear," he was saying. "But to +marry this man for his position, and he not knowing--oh, my dear, I know +how you are driven--but it won't do! It won't do!" + +She stood in silence for a little while. One by one he had torn her +defences down. She could hardly bear the gentleness upon his face and +she turned away from him and sat down upon a chair a little way off. + +"Stand there, Henry," she said. A strange composure had succeeded her +agitation. "I must tell you something more which I had meant to hide +from you--the last thing which I have kept back. It will hurt you, I +am afraid." + +There came a change upon Thresk's face. He was steeling himself to +meet a blow. + +"Go on." + +"It isn't because of his position that I cling to Dick. I want him to +keep that--yes--for his sake. I don't want him to lose more by marrying +me than he needs must"; and comprehension burst upon Henry Thresk. + +"You care for him then! You really care for him?" + +"So much," she answered, "that if I lost him now I should lose all the +world. You and I can't go back to where we stood nine years ago. You had +your chance then, Henry, if you had wished to take it. But you didn't +wish it, and that sort of chance doesn't often come again. Others like +it--yes. But not quite the same one. I am sorry. But you must believe me. +If I lost Dick I should lose all the world." + +So far she had spoken very deliberately, but now her voice faltered. + +"That is my one poor excuse." + +The unexpected word roused Thresk to inquiry. + +"Excuse?" he asked, and with her eyes fixed in fear upon him she +continued: + +"Yes. I meant Dick to marry me publicly. But I saw that his father shrank +from the marriage. I grew afraid. I told Dick of my fears. He banished +them. I let him banish them." + +"What do you mean?" Thresk asked. + +"We were married privately in London five days ago." + +Thresk uttered a low cry and in a moment Stella was at his side, all her +composure gone. + +"Oh, I know that it was wrong. But I was being hunted. They were all like +a pack of wolves after me. Mr. Hazlewood had joined them. I was driven +into a corner. I loved Dick. They meant to tear him from me without any +pity. I clung. Yes, I clung." + +But Thresk thrust her aside. + +"You tricked him," he cried. + +"I didn't dare to tell him," Stella pleaded, wringing her hands. "I +didn't dare to lose him." + +"You tricked him," Thresk repeated; and at the note of anger in his voice +Stella found herself again. + +"You accuse and condemn me?" she asked quietly. + +"Yes. A thousand times, yes," he exclaimed hotly, and she answered with +another question winged on a note of irony: + +"Because I tricked him? Or because I--married him?" + +Thresk was silenced. He recognised the truth implied in the distinction, +he turned to her with a smile. + +"Yes," he answered. "You are right, Stella. It's because you +married him." + +He stood for a moment in thought. Then with a gesture of helplessness he +picked up her cloak. She watched his action and as he came towards her +she cried: + +"But I'll tell him now, Henry." In a way she owed it to this man who +cared for her so much, who was so prepared for sacrifice, if sacrifice +could help. That morning on the downs was swept from her memory now. +"Yes, I'll tell him now," she said eagerly. Since Henry Thresk set +such store upon that confession, why so very likely would Dick, her +husband, too. + +But Thresk shook his head. + +"What's the use now? You give him no chance. You can't set him free"; and +Stella was as one turned to stone. All argument seemed sooner or later to +turn to that one dread alternative which had already twice that night +forced itself on her acceptance. + +"Yes, I can, Henry, and I will, I promise you, if he wishes to be free. I +can do it quite easily, quite naturally. Any woman could. So many of us +take things to make us sleep." + +There was no boastfulness in her voice or manner, but rather a despairing +recognition of facts. + +"Good God, you mustn't think of it!" said Thresk eagerly. "That's too +big a price to pay." + +Stella shook her head wistfully. + +"You hear it said, Henry," she answered with an indescribable +wistfulness, "that women will do anything to keep the men they love. +They'll do a great deal--I am an example--but not always everything. +Sometimes love runs just a little stronger. And then it craves that the +loved one shall get all he wants to have. If Dick wants his freedom I +too, then, shall want him to have it." + +And while Thresk stood with no words to answer her there came a knocking +upon the door. It was gentle, almost furtive, but it startled them both +like a clap of thunder. For a moment they stood rigid. Then Thresk +silently handed Stella her cloak and pointed towards the window. He +began to speak aloud. A word or two revealed his plan to Stella +Ballantyne. He was rehearsing a speech which he was to make in the +Courts before a jury. But the handle of the door rattled and now old Mr. +Hazlewood's voice was heard. + +"Thresk! Are you there?" + +Once more Thresk pointed to the window. But Stella did not move. + +"Let him in," she said quietly, and with a glance at her he +unlocked the door. + +Mr. Hazlewood stood outside. He had not gone to bed that night. He had +taken off his coat and now wore a smoking-jacket. + +"I knew that I should not sleep to-night, so I sat up," he began, "and I +thought that I heard voices here." + +Over Thresk's shoulder he saw Stella Ballantyne standing erect in the +middle of the room, her shining gown the one bright patch of colour. "You +here?" he cried to her, and Thresk made way for him to enter. He advanced +to her with a look of triumph in his eyes. + +"You here--at this house--with Thresk? You were persuading him to +continue to hold his tongue." + +Stella met his gaze steadily. + +"No," she replied. "He was persuading me to the truth, and he has +succeeded." + +Mr. Hazlewood smiled and nodded. There was no magnanimity in his triumph. +A schoolboy would have shown more chivalry to the opponent who was down. + +"You confess then? Good! Richard must be told." + +"Yes," answered Stella. "I claim the right to tell him." + +But Mr. Hazlewood scoffed at the proposal. + +"Oh dear no!" he cried. "I refuse the claim. I shall go straight to +Richard now." + +He had actually taken a couple of steps towards the door before Stella's +voice rang out suddenly loud and imperative. + +"Take care, Mr. Hazlewood. After you have told him he will come to me. +Take care!" + +Hazlewood stopped. Certainly that was true. + +"I'll tell Dick to-morrow, here, in your presence," she said. "And if he +wishes it I'll set him free and never trouble either of you again." + +Hazlewood looked at Thresk and was persuaded to consent. Reflection +showed him that it was the better plan. He himself would be present when +Stella spoke. He would see that the truth was told without embroidery. + +"Very well, to-morrow," he said. + +Stella flung the cloak over her shoulders and went up to the window. +Thresk opened it for her. + +"I'll see you to your door," he said. + +The moon had risen now. It hung low with the branches of a tree like a +lattice across its face; and on the garden and the meadow lay that +unearthly light which falls when a moonlit night begins to drown in the +onrush of the dawn. + +"No," she said. "I would rather go alone. But do something for me, will +you? Stay to-morrow. Be here when I tell him." She choked down a sob. +"Oh, I shall want a friend and you are so kind." + +"So kind!" he repeated with a note of bitterness. Could there be praise +from a woman's lips more deadly? You are kind; you are put in your place +in the ruck of men; you are extinguished. + +"Oh yes, I'll stay." + +She stood for a moment on the stone flags outside the window. + +"Will he forgive?" she asked. "You would. And he is not so very young, is +he? It's the young who don't forgive. Good-night." + +She went along the path and across the meadow. Thresk watched her go and +saw the light spring up in her room. Then he closed the window and drew +the curtain. Mr. Hazlewood had gone. Thresk wondered what the morrow +would bring. After all, Stella was right. Youth was a graceful thing of +high-sounding words and impetuous thoughts, but like many other graceful +things it could be hard and cruel. Its generosity did not come from any +wide outlook on a world where there is a good deal to be said for +everything. It was rather a matter of physical health than judgment. Yes, +he was glad Dick Hazlewood was half his way through the thirties. For +himself--well, he knew his business. It was to be kind. He turned off the +lights and went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE VERDICT + + +"Six, seven, eight," said Mr. Hazlewood, counting the letters which he +had already written since breakfast and placing them on the salver which +Hubbard was holding out to him. He was a very different man this morning +from the Mr. Hazlewood of yesterday. He shone, complacent and serene. He +leaned back in his chair and gazed mildly at the butler. "There must be +an answer to the problem which I put to you, Hubbard." + +Hubbard wrinkled his brows in thought and succeeded only in looking a +hundred and ten years old. He had the melancholy look of a moulting bird. +He shook his head and drooped. + +"No doubt, sir," he said. + +"But as far as you are concerned," Mr. Hazlewood continued briskly, "you +can throw no light upon it?" + +"Not a glimmer, sir." + +Mr. Hazlewood was disappointed and with him disappointment was petulance. + +"That is unlike you, Hubbard," he said, "for sometimes after I have been +deliberating for days over some curious and perplexing conundrum, you +have solved it the moment it has been put to you." + +Hubbard drooped still lower. He began the droop as a bow of +acknowledgment but forgot to raise his head again. + +"It is very good of you, sir," he said. He seemed oppressed by the +goodness of Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Yet you are not clever, Hubbard! Not at all clever." + +"No, sir. I know my place," returned the butler, and Mr. Hazlewood +continued with a little envy. + +"You must have some wonderful gift of insight which guides you straight +to the inner meaning of things." + +"It's just common-sense, sir," said Hubbard. + +"But I haven't got it," cried Mr. Hazlewood. "How's that?" + +"You don't need it, sir. You are a gentleman," Hubbard replied, and +carried the letters to the door. There, however, he stopped. "I beg your +pardon, sir," he said, "but a new parcel of _The Prison Walls_ has +arrived this morning. Shall I unpack it?" + +Mr. Hazlewood frowned and scratched his ear. + +"Well--er--no, Hubbard--no," he said with a trifle of discomfort. "I am +not sure indeed that _The Prison Walls_ is not almost one of my mistakes. +We all make mistakes, Hubbard. I think you shall burn that parcel, +Hubbard--somewhere where it won't be noticed." + +"Certainly, sir," said Hubbard. "I'll burn it under the shadow of the +south wall." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked up with a start. Was it possible that Hubbard was +poking fun at him? The mere notion was incredible and indeed Hubbard +shuffled with so much meekness from the room that Mr. Hazlewood dismissed +it. He went across the hall to the dining-room, where he found Henry +Thresk trifling with his breakfast. No embarrassment weighed upon Mr. +Hazlewood this morning. He effervesced with good-humour. + +"I do not blame you, Mr. Thresk," he said, "for the side you took +yesterday afternoon. You were a stranger to us in this house. I +understand your position." + +"I am not quite so sure, Mr. Hazlewood," said Thresk drily, "that I +understand yours. For my part I have not closed my eyes all night. You, +on the other hand, seem to have slept well." + +"I did indeed," said Hazlewood. "I was relieved from a strain of +suspense under which I have been labouring for a month past. To have +refused my consent to Richard's marriage with Stella Ballantyne on no +other grounds than that social prejudice forbade it would have seemed +a complete, a stupendous reversal of my whole theory and conduct of +life. I should have become an object of ridicule. People would have +laughed at the philosopher of Little Beeding. I have heard their +laughter all this month. Now, however, once the truth is known no one +will be able to say--" + +Henry Thresk looked up from his plate aghast. + +"Do you mean to say, Mr. Hazlewood, that after Mrs. Ballantyne has told +her story you mean to make that story public?" + +Mr. Hazlewood stared in amazement at Henry Thresk. + +"But of course," he said. + +"Oh, you can't be thinking of it!" + +"But I am. I must do it. There is so much at stake," replied Hazlewood. + +"What?" + +"The whole consistency of my life. I must make it clear that I am not +acting upon prejudice or suspicion or fear of what the world will say or +for any of the conventional reasons which might guide other men." + +To Thresk this point of view was horrible; and there was no arguing +against it. It was inspired by the dreadful vanity of a narrow, shallow +nature, and Thresk's experience had never shown him anything more +difficult to combat and overcome. + +"So for the sake of your reputation for consistency you will make a very +unhappy woman bear shame and obloquy which she might easily be spared? +You could find a thousand excuses for breaking off the marriage." + +"You put the case very harshly, Mr. Thresk," said Hazlewood. "But +you have not considered my position," and he went indignantly back +to the library. + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. After all if Dick Hazlewood turned his +back upon Stella she would not hear the abuse or suffer the shame. That +she would take the dark journey as she declared he could not doubt. And +no one could prevent her--not even he himself, though his heart might +break at her taking it. All depended upon Dick. + +He appeared a few minutes afterwards fresh from his ride, glowing with +good-humour and contentment. But the sight of Thresk surprised him. + +"Hulloa," he cried. "Good-morning. I thought you were going to catch the +eight forty-five." + +"I felt lazy," answered Thresk. "I sent off some telegrams to put off my +engagements." + +"Good," said Dick, and he sat down at the breakfast-table. As he poured +out a cup of tea, Thresk said: + +"I think I heard you were over thirty." + +"Yes." + +"Thirty's a good age," said Thresk. + +"It looks back on youth," answered Dick. + +"That's just what I mean," remarked Thresk. "Do you mind a cigarette?" + +"Not at all." + +Thresk smoked and while he smoked he talked, not carelessly yet careful +not to emphasize his case. "Youth is a graceful thing of high-sounding +words and impetuous thoughts, but like many other graceful things it can +be very hard and very cruel." + +Dick Hazlewood looked closely and quickly at his companion. But he +answered casually: + +"It is supposed to be generous." + +"And it is--to itself," replied Thresk. "Generous when its sympathies are +enlisted, generous so long as all goes well with it: generous because it +is confident of triumph. But its generosity is not a matter of judgment. +It does not come from any wide outlook upon a world where there is a good +deal to be said for everything. It is a matter of physical health." + +"Yes?" said Dick. + +"And once affronted, once hurt, youth finds it difficult to forgive." + +So far both men had been debating on an abstract topic without any +immediate application to themselves. But now Dick leaned across the table +with a smile upon his face which Thresk did not understand. + +"And why do you say this to me this morning, Mr. Thresk?" he asked +pointedly. + +"Yes, it's rather an impertinence, isn't it?" Thresk agreed. "But I was +looking into a case late last night in which irrevocable and terrible +things are going to happen if there is not forgiveness." + +Dick took his cigarette-case from his pocket. + +"I see," he remarked, and struck a match. Both men rose from the table +and at the door Dick turned. + +"Your case, of course, has not yet come on," he said. + +"No," answered Thresk, "but it will very soon." + +They went into the library, and Mr. Hazlewood greeted his son with a +vivacity which for weeks had been absent from his demeanour. + +"Did you ride this morning?" he asked. + +"Yes, but Stella didn't. She sent word over that she was tired. I must go +across and see how she is." + +Mr. Hazlewood interposed quickly: + +"There is no need of that, my boy; she is coming here this morning." + +"Oh!" + +Dick looked at his father in astonishment. + +"She said no word of it to me last night--and I saw her home. I suppose +she sent word over about that too?" + +He looked from one to the other of his companions, but neither answered +him. Some uneasiness indeed was apparent in them both. + +"Oho!" he said with a smile. "Stella's coming over and I know +nothing of it. Mr. Thresk's lazy, so remains at Little Beeding and +delivers a lecture to me over breakfast. And you, father, seem in +remarkable spirits." + +Mr. Hazlewood seized upon the opportunity to interrupt his son's +reflections. + +"I am, my boy," he cried. "I walked in the fields this morning +and--" But he got no further with his explanations, for the sound of Mrs. +Pettifer's voice rang high in the hall and she burst into the room. + +"Harold, I have only a moment. Good morning, Mr. Thresk," she cried in a +breath. "I have something to say to you." + +Thresk was disturbed. Suppose that Stella came while Mrs. Pettifer was +here! She must not speak in Mrs. Pettifer's presence. Somehow Mrs. +Pettifer must be dismissed. No such anxiety, however, harassed Mr. +Hazlewood. + +"Say it, Margaret," he said, smiling benignantly upon her. "You cannot +annoy me this morning. I am myself again," and Dick's eyes turned sharply +upon him. "All my old powers of observation have returned, my old +interest in the great dark riddle of human life has re-awakened. The +brain, the sedulous, active brain, resumes its work to-day asking +questions, probing problems. I rose early, Margaret," he flourished his +hands like one making a speech, "and walking in the fields amongst the +cows a most curious speculation forced itself upon my mind. How is it, I +asked myself--" + +It seemed that Mr. Hazlewood was destined never to complete a sentence +that morning, for Margaret Pettifer at this point banged her umbrella +upon the floor. + +"Stop talking, Harold, and listen to me! I have been speaking with Robert +and we withdraw all opposition to Dick's marriage." + +Mr. Hazlewood was dumfoundered. + +"You, Margaret--you of all people!" he stammered. + +"Yes," she replied decisively. "Robert likes her and Robert is a good +judge of a woman. That's one thing. Then I believe Dick is going to take +St. Quentins; isn't that so, Dick?" + +"Yes," answered Dick. "That's the house we looked over yesterday." + +"Well, it's not a couple of a hundred yards from us, and it would not be +comfortable for any of us if Dick and Dick's wife were strangers. So I +give in. There, Dick!" She went across the room and held out her hand to +him. "I am going to call on Stella this afternoon." + +Dick flushed with pleasure. + +"That's splendid, Aunt Margaret. I knew you were all right, you know. You +put on a few frills at first, of course, but you are forgiven." + +Mr. Hazlewood made so complete a picture of dismay that Dick could not +but pity him. He went across to his father. + +"Now, sir," he said, "let us hear this problem." + +The old man was not proof against the invitation. + +"You shall, Richard," he exclaimed. "You are the very man to hear it. +Your aunt, Richard, is of too practical a mind for such speculations. +It's a most curious problem. Hubbard quite failed to throw any light upon +it. I myself am, I confess, bewildered. And I wonder if a fresh young +mind can help us to a solution." He patted his son on the shoulder and +then took him by the arm. + +"The fresh young mind will have a go, father," said Dick. "Fire away." + +"I was walking in the fields, my boy." + +"Yes, sir, among the cows." + +"Exactly, you put your finger on the very point. How is it, I asked +myself--" + +"That's quite your old style, father." + +"Now isn't it, Richard, isn't it?" Mr. Hazlewood dropped Dick's arm. He +warmed to his theme. He caught fire. He assumed the attitude of the +orator. "How is it that with the advancement of science and the progress +of civilization a cow gives no more milk to-day than she did at the +beginning of the Christian era?" + +With outspread arms he asked for an answer and the answer came. + +"A fresh young mind can solve that problem in two shakes. It is because +the laws of nature forbid. That's your trouble, father. That's the +great drawback to sentimental enthusiasm. It's always up against the +laws of nature." + +"Dick," said Mrs. Pettifer, "by some extraordinary miracle you are gifted +with common-sense. I am off." She went away in a hurricane as she had +come, and it was time that she did go, for even while she was closing the +door Stella Ballantyne came out from her cottage to cross the meadow. +Dick was the first to hear the gate click as she unlatched it and passed +into the garden. He took a step towards the window, but his father +interposed and for once with a real authority. + +"No, Richard," he said. "Wait with us here. Mrs. Ballantyne has something +to tell us." + +"I thought so," said Dick quietly, and he came back to the other two men. +"Let me understand." His face was grave but without anger or any +confusion. "Stella returned here last night after I had taken her home?" + +"Yes," said Thresk. + +"To see you?" + +"Yes." + +"And my father came down and found you together?" + +"Yes." + +"I heard voices," Mr. Hazlewood hurriedly interposed, "and so naturally I +came down." + +Dick turned to his father. + +"That's all right, father. I didn't think you were listening at the +keyhole. I am not blaming anybody. I want to know exactly where we +are--that's all." + +Stella found the little group awaiting her, and standing up before them +she told her story as she had told it last night to Thresk. She omitted +nothing nor did she falter. She had trembled and cried for a great part +of the night over the ordeal which lay before her, but now that she had +come to it she was brave. Her composure indeed astonished Thresk and +filled him with compassion. He knew that the very roots of her heart were +bleeding. Only once or twice did she give any sign of what these few +minutes were costing her. Her eyes strayed towards Dick Hazlewood's face +in spite of herself, but she turned them away again with a wrench of her +head and closed her eyelids lest she should hesitate and fail. All +listened to her in silence, and it was strange to Thresk that the one man +who seemed least concerned of the three was Dick Hazlewood himself. He +watched Stella all the while she was speaking, but his face was a mask, +not a gesture or movement gave a clue to his thoughts. When Stella had +finished he asked composedly: + +"Why didn't you tell me all this at the beginning, Stella?" + +And now she turned to him in a burst of passion and remorse. + +"Oh, Dick, I tried to tell you. I made up my mind so often that I would, +but I never had the courage. I am terribly to blame. I hid it all from +you--yes. But oh! you meant so much to me--you yourself, Dick. It wasn't +your position. It wasn't what you brought with you, other people's +friendship, other people's esteem. It was just you--you--you! I longed +for you to want me, as I wanted you." Then she recovered herself and +stopped. She was doing the very thing she had resolved not to do. She was +pleading, she was making excuses. She drew herself up and with a dignity +which was quite pitiful she now pleaded against herself. + +"But I don't ask for your pity. You mustn't be merciful. I don't _want_ +mercy, Dick. That's of no use to me. I want to know what you think--just +what you really and truthfully think--that's all. I can stand alone--if I +must. Oh yes, I can stand alone." And as Thresk stirred and moved, +knowing well in what way she meant to stand alone, Stella turned her eyes +full upon him in warning, nay, in menace. "I can stand alone quite +easily, Dick. You mustn't think that I should suffer so very much. I +shouldn't! I shouldn't--" + +In spite of her control a sob broke from her throat and her bosom heaved; +and then Dick Hazlewood went quietly to her side and took her hand. + +"I didn't interrupt you, Stella. I wanted you to tell everything now, +once for all, so that no one of us three need ever mention a word of +it again." + +Stella looked at Dick Hazlewood in wonder, and then a light broke over +her face like the morning. His arm slipped about her waist and she leaned +against him suddenly weak, almost to swooning. Mr. Hazlewood started up +from his chair in consternation. + +"But you heard her, Richard!" + +"Yes, father, I heard her," he answered. "But you see Stella is my wife." + +"Your--" Mr. Hazlewood's lips refused to speak the word. He fell back +again in his chair and dropped his face in his hands. "Oh, no!" + +"It's true," said Dick. "I have rooms in London, you know. I went to +London last week. Stella came up on Monday. It was my doing, my wish. +Stella is my wife." + +Mr. Hazlewood groaned aloud. + +"But she has tricked you, Richard," and Stella agreed. + +"Yes, I tricked you, Dick. I did," she said miserably, and she drew +herself from his arm. But he caught her hand. + +"No, you didn't." He led her over to his father. "That's where you both +make your mistake. Stella tried to tell me something on the very night +when we walked back from this house to her cottage and I asked her to +marry me. She has tried again often during the last weeks. I knew very +well what it was--before you turned against her, before I married her. +She didn't trick me." + +Mr. Hazlewood turned in despair to Henry Thresk. + +"What do you say?" he asked. + +"That I am very glad you asked me here to give my advice on your +collection," Thresk answered. "I was inclined yesterday to take a +different view of your invitation. But I did what perhaps I may suggest +that you should do: I accepted the situation." + +He went across to Stella and took her hands. + +"Oh, thank you," she cried, "thank you." + +"And now"--Thresk turned to Dick--"if I might look at a _Bradshaw_ I +could find out the next train to London." + +"Certainly," said Dick, and he went over to the writing-table. Stella and +Henry Thresk were left alone for a moment. + +"We shall see you again," she said. "Please!" + +Thresk laughed. + +"No doubt. I am not going out into the night. You know my address. If you +don't ask Mr. Hazlewood. It's in King's Bench Walk, isn't it?" And he +took the time-table from Dick Hazlewood's hand. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Witness For The Defence, by A.E.W. Mason + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE *** + +***** This file should be named 12535-8.txt or 12535-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/3/12535/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/12535-8.zip b/old/12535-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..69f910e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12535-8.zip diff --git a/old/12535.txt b/old/12535.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c387696 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12535.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9460 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Witness For The Defence, by A.E.W. Mason + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Witness For The Defence + +Author: A.E.W. Mason + +Release Date: June 6, 2004 [EBook #12535] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE + + BY A.E.W. MASON + + 1914 + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + + I. HENRY THRESK + + II. ON BIGNOR HILL + + III. IN BOMBAY + + IV. JANE REPTON + + V. THE QUEST + + VI. IN THE TENT AT CHITIPUR + + VII. THE PHOTOGRAPH + + VIII. AND THE RIFLE + + IX. AN EPISODE IN BALLANTYNE'S LIFE + + X. NEWS FROM CHITIPUR + + XI. THRESK INTERVENES + + XII. THRESK GIVES EVIDENCE + + XIII. LITTLE BEEDING AGAIN + + XIV. THE HAZLEWOODS + + XV. THE GREAT CRUSADE + + XVI. CONSEQUENCES + + XVII. TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD + + XVIII. MR. HAZLEWOOD SEEKS ADVICE + + XIX. PETTIFER'S PLAN + + XX. ON THE DOWNS + + XXI. THE LETTER IS WRITTEN + + XXII. A WAY OUT OF THE TRAP + + XXIII. METHODS FROM FRANCE + + XXIV. THE WITNESS + + XXV. IN THE LIBRARY + + XXVI. TWO STRANGERS + + XXVII. THE VERDICT + + + + +THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE + + + + +CHAPTER I + +HENRY THRESK + + +The beginning of all this difficult business was a little speech which +Mrs. Thresk fell into a habit of making to her son. She spoke it the +first time on the spur of the moment without thought or intention. But +she saw that it hurt. So she used it again--to keep Henry in his +proper place. + +"You have no right to talk, Henry," she would say in the hard practical +voice which so completed her self-sufficiency. "You are not earning your +living. You are still dependent upon us;" and she would add with a note +of triumph: "Remember, if anything were to happen to your dear father you +would have to shift for yourself, for everything has been left to me." + +Mrs. Thresk meant no harm. She was utterly without imagination and had no +special delicacy of taste to supply its place--that was all. People and +words--she was at pains to interpret neither the one nor the other and +she used both at random. She no more contemplated anything happening to +her husband, to quote her phrase, than she understood the effect her +barbarous little speech would have on a rather reserved schoolboy. + +Nor did Henry himself help to enlighten her. He was shrewd enough to +recognise the futility of any attempt. No! He just looked at her +curiously and held his tongue. But the words were not forgotten. They +roused in him a sense of injustice. For in the ordinary well-to-do +circle, in which the Thresks lived, boys were expected to be an expense +to their parents; and after all, as he argued, he had not asked to be +born. And so after much brooding, there sprang up in him an antagonism to +his family and a fierce determination to owe to it as little as he could. + +There was a full share of vanity no doubt in the boy's resolve, but the +antagonism had struck roots deeper than his vanity; and at an age when +other lads were vaguely dreaming themselves into Admirals and +Field-Marshals and Prime-Ministers Henry Thresk, content with lower +ground, was mapping out the stages of a good but perfectly feasible +career. When he reached the age of thirty he must be beginning to make +money; at thirty-five he must be on the way to distinction--his name must +be known beyond the immediate circle of his profession; at forty-five he +must be holding public office. Nor was his profession in any doubt. There +was but one which offered these rewards to a man starting in life without +money to put down--the Bar. + +So to the Bar in due time Henry Thresk was called; and when something +did happen to his father he was trained for the battle. A bank failed and +the failure ruined and killed old Mr. Thresk. From the ruins just enough +was scraped to keep his widow, and one or two offers of employment were +made to Henry Thresk. + +But he was tenacious as he was secret. He refused them, and with the +help of pupils, journalism and an occasional spell as an election +agent, he managed to keep his head above water until briefs began +slowly to come in. + +So far then Mrs. Thresk's stinging speeches seemed to have been +justified. But at the age of twenty-eight he took a holiday. He went down +for a month into Sussex, and there the ordered scheme of his life was +threatened. It stood the attack; and again it is possible to plead in its +favour with a good show of argument. But the attack, nevertheless, brings +into light another point of view. + +Prudence, for instance, the disputant might urge, is all very well in the +ordinary run of life, but when the great moments come conduct wants +another inspiration. Such an one would consider that holiday with a +thought to spare for Stella Derrick, who during its passage saw much of +Henry Thresk. The actual hour when the test came happened on one of the +last days of August. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +ON BIGNOR HILL + + +They were riding along the top of the South Downs between Singleton and +Arundel, and when they came to where the old Roman road from Chichester +climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and halted. She +was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides Henry Thresk, +who on this morning rode at her side. She was delicately yet healthfully +fashioned, with blue eyes under broad brows, raven hair and a face pale +and crystal-clear. But her lips were red and the colour came easily into +her cheeks. + +She pointed downwards to the track slanting across the turf from the brow +of the hill. + +"That's Stane Street. I promised to show it you." + +"Yes," answered Thresk, taking his eyes slowly from her face. It was a +morning rich with sunlight, noisy with blackbirds, and she seemed to him +a necessary part of it. She was alive with it and gave rather than took +of its gold. For not even that finely chiselled nose of hers could impart +to her anything of the look of a statue. + +"Yes. They went straight, didn't they, those old centurions?" he said. + +He moved his horse and stood in the middle of the track looking across a +valley of forest and meadow to Halnaker Down, six miles away in the +southwest. Straight in the line of his eyes over a shoulder of the down +rose a tall fine spire--the spire of Chichester Cathedral, and farther on +he could see the water in Bosham Creek like a silver mirror, and the +Channel rippling silver beyond. He turned round. Beneath him lay the blue +dark weald of Sussex, and through it he imagined the hidden line of the +road driving straight as a ruler to London. + +"No going about!" he said. "If a hill was in the way the road climbed +over it; if a marsh it was built through it." + +They rode on slowly along the great whaleback of grass, winding in and +out amongst brambles and patches of yellow-flaming gorse. The day was +still even at this height; and when, far away, a field of long grass +under a stray wind bent from edge to edge with the swift motion of +running water, it took them both by surprise. And they met no one. They +seemed to ride in the morning of a new clean world. They rose higher on +to Duncton Down, and then the girl spoke. + +"So this is your last day here." + +He gazed about him out towards the sea, eastwards down the slope to the +dark trees of Arundel, backwards over the weald to the high ridge of +Blackdown. + +"I shall look back upon it." + +"Yes," she said. "It's a day to look back upon." + +She ran over in her mind the days of this last month since he had come to +the inn at Great Beeding and friends of her family had written to her +parents of his coming. "It's the most perfect of all your days here. I am +glad. I want you to carry back with you good memories of our Sussex." + +"I shall do that," said he, "but for another reason." + +Stella pushed on a foot or two ahead of him. + +"Well," she said, "no doubt the Temple will be stuffy." + +"Nor was I thinking of the Temple." + +"No?" + +"No." + +She rode on a little way whilst he followed. A great bee buzzed past +their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse beside them +a thrush shot into the air a quiverful of clear melody. + +Stella spoke again, not looking at her companion, and in a low voice and +bravely with a sweet confusion of her blood. + +"I am very glad to hear you say that, for I was afraid that I had let you +see more than I should have cared for you to see--unless you had been +anxious to see it too." + +She waited for an answer, still keeping her distance just a foot or two +ahead, and the answer did not come. A vague terror began to possess her +that things which could never possibly be were actually happening to +her. She spoke again with a tremor in her voice and all the confidence +gone out of it. Almost it appealed that she should not be put to shame +before herself. + +"It would have been a little humiliating to remember, if that had +been true." + +Then upon the ground she saw the shadow of Thresk's horse creep up until +the two rode side by side. She looked at him quickly with a doubtful +wavering smile and looked down again. What did all the trouble in his +face portend? Her heart thumped and she heard him say: + +"Stella, I have something very difficult to say to you." + +He laid a hand gently upon her arm, but she wrenched herself free. Shame +was upon her--shame unendurable. She tingled with it from head to foot. +She turned to him suddenly a face grown crimson and eyes which brimmed +with tears. + +"Oh," she cried aloud, "that I should have been such a fool!" and she +swayed forward in her saddle. But before he could reach out an arm to +hold her she was upright again, and with a cut of her whip she was off +at a gallop. + +"Stella," he cried, but she only used her whip the more. She galloped +madly and blindly over the grass, not knowing whither, not caring, +loathing herself. Thresk galloped after her, but her horse, maddened by +her whip and the thud of the hoofs behind, held its advantage. He settled +down to the pursuit with a jumble of thoughts in his brain. + +"If to-day were only ten years on ... As it is it would be madness ... +madness and squalor and the end of everything ... Between us we +haven't a couple of pennies to rub together ... How she rides! ... She +was never meant for Brixton ... No, nor I ... Why didn't I hold my +tongue? ... Oh what a fool, what a fool! Thank Heaven the horses come +out of a livery stable ... They can't go on for ever and--oh, my God! +there are rabbit-holes on the Downs." And his voice rose to a shout: +"Stella! Stella!" + +But she never looked over her shoulder. She fled the more desperately, +shamed through and through! Along the high ridge, between the bushes and +the beech-trees, their shadows flitted over the turf, to a jingle of bits +and the thunder of hoofs. Duncton Beacon rose far behind them; they had +crossed the road and Charlton forest was slipping past like dark water +before the mad race came to an end. Stella became aware that escape was +impossible. Her horse was spent, she herself reeling. She let her reins +drop loose and the gallop changed to a trot, the trot to a walk. She +noticed with gratitude that Thresk was giving her time. He too had fallen +to a walk behind her, and quite slowly he came to her side. She turned +to him at once. + +"This is good country for a gallop, isn't it?" + +"Rabbit-holes though," said he. "You were lucky." + +He answered absently. There was something which had got to be said now. +He could not let this girl to whom he owed--well, the only holiday that +he had ever taken, go home shamed by a mistake, which after all she had +not made. He was very near indeed to saying yet more. The inclination was +strong in him, but not so strong as the methods of his life. Marriage +now--that meant to his view the closing of all the avenues of +advancement, and a life for both below both their needs. + +"Stella, just listen to me. I want you to know that had things been +different I should have rejoiced beyond words." + +"Oh, don't!" she cried. + +"I must," he answered and she was silent. "I want you to know," he +repeated, stammering and stumbling, afraid lest each word meant to heal +should only pierce the deeper. "Before I came here there was no one. +Since I came here there has been--you. Oh, my dear, I would have been +very glad. But I am obscure--without means. There are years in front of +me before I shall be anything else. I couldn't ask you to share them--or +I should have done so before now." + +In her mind ran the thought: what queer unimportant things men think +about! The early years! Wouldn't their difficulties, their sorrows be the +real savour of life and make it worth remembrance, worth treasuring? But +men had the right of speech. Not again would she forget that. She bowed +her head and he blundered on. + +"For you there'll be a better destiny. There's that great house in the +Park with its burnt walls. I should like to see that rebuilt and you in +your right place, its mistress." And his words ceased as Stella abruptly +turned to him. She was breathing quickly and she looked at him with a +wonder in her trouble. + +"And it hurts you to say this!" she said. "Yes, it actually hurts you." + +"What else could I say?" + +Her face softened as she looked and heard. It was not that he was cold of +blood or did not care. There was more than discomfort in his voice, there +was a very real distress. And in his eyes his heart ached for her to see. +Something of her pride was restored to her. She fell at once to his tune, +but she was conscious that both of them talked treacheries. + +"Yes, you are right. It wouldn't have been possible. You have your name +and your fortune to make. I too--I shall marry, I suppose, some one"--and +she suddenly smiled rather bitterly--"who will give me a Rolls-Royce +motor-car." And so they rode on very reasonably. + +Noon had passed. A hush had fallen upon that high world of grass and +sunlight. The birds were still. They talked of this and that, the +latest crisis in Europe and the growth of Socialism, all very wisely +and with great indifference like well-bred people at a dinner-party. +Not thus had Stella thought to ride home when the message had come that +morning that the horses would be at her door before ten. She had ridden +out clothed on with dreams of gold. She rode back with her dreams in +tatters and a sort of incredulity that to her too, as to other girls, +all this pain had come. + +They came to a bridle-path which led downwards through a thicket of trees +to the weald and so descended upon Great Beeding. They rode through the +little town, past the inn where Thresk was staying and the iron gates of +a Park where, amidst elm-trees, the blackened ruins of a great house +gaped to the sky. + +"Some day you will live there again," said Thresk, and Stella's lips +twitched with a smile of humour. + +"I shall be very glad after to-day to leave the house I am living in," +she said quietly, and the words struck him dumb. He had subtlety enough +to understand her. The rooms would mock her with memories of vain dreams. +Yet he kept silence. It was too late in any case to take back what he had +said; and even if she would listen to him marriage wouldn't be fair. He +would be hampered, and that, just at this time in his life, would mean +failure--failure for her no less than for him. They must be +prudent--prudent and methodical, and so the great prizes would be theirs. + +A mile beyond, a mile of yellow lanes between high hedges, they came to +the village of Little Beeding, one big house and a few thatched cottages +clustered amongst roses and great trees on the bank of a small river. +Thither old Mr. Derrick and his wife and his daughter had gone after the +fire at Hinksey Park had completed the ruin which disastrous speculations +had begun; and at the gate of one of the cottages the riders stopped and +dismounted. + +"I shall not see you again after to-day," said Stella. "Will you come in +for a moment?" + +Thresk gave the horses to a passing labourer to hold and opened the gate. + +"I shall be disturbing your people at their luncheon," he said. + +"I don't want you to go in to them," said the girl. "I will say goodbye +to them for you." + +Thresk followed her up the garden-path, wondering what it was that she +had still to say to him. She led him into a small room at the back of the +house, looking out upon the lawn. Then she stood in front of him. + +"Will you kiss me once, please," she said simply, and she stood with her +arms hanging at her side, whilst he kissed her on the lips. + +"Thank you," she said. "Now will you go?" + +He left her standing in the little room and led the horses back to the +inn. That afternoon he took the train to London. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN BOMBAY + + +It was not until a day late in January eight years afterwards that Thresk +saw the face of Stella Derrick again; and then it was only in a portrait. +He came upon it too in a most unlikely place. About five o'clock +upon that afternoon he drove out of the town of Bombay up to one of the +great houses on Malabar Hill and asked for Mrs. Carruthers. He was shown +into a drawing-room which looked over Back Bay to the great buildings of +the city, and in a moment Mrs. Carruthers came to him with her hands +outstretched. + +"So you've won. My husband telephoned to me. We do thank you! Victory +means so much to us." + +The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had +inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers, +Bombay merchants, had found themselves involved in a partnership +suit due to one or two careless phrases in a solicitor's letter. The case +had been the great case of the year in Bombay. The issue had been +doubtful, the stake enormous and Thresk, who three years before had taken +silk, had been fetched by young Carruthers from England to fight it. + +"Yes, we've won," he said. "Judgment was given in our favor this +afternoon." + +"You are dining with us to-night, aren't you." + +"Thank you, yes," said Thresk. "At half-past eight." + +"Yes." + +Mrs. Carruthers gave him some tea and chattered pleasantly while he drank +it. She was fair-haired and pretty, a lady of enthusiasms and uplifted +hands, quite without observation or knowledge, yet with power to +astonish. For every now and then some little shrewd wise saying would +gleam out of the placid flow of her trivialities and make whoever heard +it wonder for a moment whether it was her own or whether she had heard it +from another. But it was her own. For she gave no special importance to +it as she would have done had it been a remark she had thought worth +remembering. She just uttered it and slipped on, noticing no difference +in value between what she now said and what she had said a second ago. To +her the whole world was a marvel and all things in it equally amazing. +Besides she had no memory. + +"I suppose that now you are free," she said, "you will go up into the +central Provinces and see something of India." + +"But I am not free," replied Thresk. "I must get immediately back to +England." + +"So soon!" exclaimed Mrs. Carruthers. "Now isn't that a pity! You ought +to see the Taj--oh, you really ought!--by moonlight or in the morning. I +don't know which is best, and the Ridge too!--the Ridge at Delhi. You +really mustn't leave India without seeing the Ridge. Can't things wait in +London?" + +"Yes, things can, but people won't," answered Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers +was genuinely distressed that he should depart from India without a +single journey in a train. + +"I can't help it," he said, smiling back into her mournful eyes. "Apart +from my work, Parliament meets early in February." + +"Oh, to be sure, you are in Parliament," she exclaimed. "I had +forgotten." She shook her fair head in wonder at the industry of +her visitor. "I can't think how you manage it all. Oh, you must +need a holiday." + +Thresk laughed. + +"I am thirty-six, so I have a year or two still in front of me before I +have the right to break down. I'll save up my holidays for my old age." + +"But you are not married," cried Mrs. Carruthers. "You can't do that. You +can't grow comfortably old unless you're married. You will want to work +then to get through the time. You had better take your holidays now." + +"Very well. I shall have twelve days upon the steamer. When does it go?" +asked Thresk as he rose from his chair. + +"On Friday, and this is Monday," said Mrs. Carruthers. "You certainly +haven't much time to go anywhere, have you?" + +"No," replied Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers saw his face quicken suddenly +to surprise. He actually caught his breath; he stared, no longer aware of +her presence in the room. He was looking over her head towards the grand +piano which stood behind her chair; and she began to run over in her mind +the various ornaments which encumbered it. A piece of Indian drapery +covered the top and on the drapery stood a little group of Dresden China +figures, a crystal cigarette-box, some knick-knacks and half-a-dozen +photographs in silver frames. It must be one of those photographs, she +decided, which had caught his eye, which had done more than catch his +eye. For she was looking up at Thresk's face all this while, and the +surprise had gone from it. It seemed to her that he was moved. + +"You have the portrait of a friend of mine there," he said, and he +crossed the room to the piano. + +Mrs. Carruthers turned round. + +"Oh, Stella Ballantyne!" she cried. "Do you know her, Mr. Thresk?" + +"Ballantyne?" said Thresk. For a moment or two he was silent. Then he +asked: "She is married then?" + +"Yes, didn't you know? She has been married for a long time." + +"It's a long time since I have heard of her," said Thresk. He looked +again at the photograph. + +"When was this taken?" + +"A few months ago. She sent it to me in October. She is beautiful, don't +you think?" + +"Yes." + +But it was not the beauty of the girl who had ridden along the South +Downs with him eight years ago. There was more of character in the face +now, less, much less, of youth and none of the old gaiety. The open +frankness had gone. The big dark eyes which looked out straight at +Thresk as he stood before them had, even in that likeness, something of +aloofness and reserve. And underneath, in a contrast which seemed to him +startling, there was her name signed in the firm running hand in which +she had written the few notes which passed between them during that +month in Sussex. Thresk looked back again at the photograph and then +resumed his seat. + +"Tell me about her, Mrs. Carruthers," he said. "You hear from her often?" + +"Oh no! Stella doesn't write many letters, and I don't know her +very well." + +"But you have her photograph," said Thresk, "and signed by her." + +"Oh yes. She stayed with me last Christmas, and I simply made her get her +portrait taken. Just think! She hadn't been taken for years. Can you +understand it? She declared she was bored with it. Isn't that curious? +However, I persuaded her and she gave me one. But I had to force her to +write on it." + +"Then she was in Bombay last winter?" said Thresk slowly. + +"Yes." And then Mrs. Carruthers had an idea. + +"Oh," she exclaimed, "if you are really interested in Stella I'll put +Mrs. Repton next to you to-night." + +"Thank you very much," said Thresk. "But who is Mrs. Repton?" + +Mrs. Carruthers sat forward in her chair. + +"Well, she's Stella's great friend--very likely her only real friend in +India. Stella's so reserved. I simply adore her, but she quite prettily +and politely keeps me always at arm's length. If she has ever opened out +to anybody it's to Jane Repton. You see Charlie Repton was Collector at +Agra before he came into the Bombay Presidency, and so they went up to +Mussoorie for the hot weather. The Ballantynes happened actually to have +the very next bungalow--now wasn't that strange?--so naturally they +became acquainted. I mean the Ballantynes and the Reptons did..." + +"But one moment, Mrs. Carruthers," said Thresk, breaking in upon the +torrent of words. "Am I right in guessing that Mrs. Ballantyne lives +in India?" + +"But of course!" cried Mrs. Carruthers. + +"She is actually in India now?" + +"To be sure she is!" + +Thresk was quite taken aback by the news. + +"I had no idea of it," he said slowly, and Mrs. Carruthers replied +sweetly: + +"But lots of people live in India, Mr. Thresk. Didn't you know that? We +are not the uttermost ends of the earth." + +Thresk set to work to make his peace. He had not heard of Mrs. Ballantyne +for so long. It seemed strange to him to find himself suddenly near to +her now--that is if he was near. He just avoided that other exasperating +trick of treating India as if it was a provincial town and all its +inhabitants neighbours. But he only just avoided it. Mrs. Carruthers, +however, was easily appeased. + +"Yes," she said. "Stella has lived in India for the best part of eight +years. She came out with some friends in the winter, made Captain +Ballantyne's acquaintance and married him almost at once--in January, I +think it was. Of course I only know from what I've been told. I was a +schoolgirl in England at the time." + +"Of course," Thresk agreed. He was conscious of a sharp little stab of +resentment. So very quickly Stella had forgotten that morning on the +Downs! It must have been in the autumn of that same year that she had +gone out to India, and by February she was married. The resentment was +quite unjustified, as no one knew better than himself. But he was a man; +and men cannot easily endure so swift an obliteration of their images +from the thoughts and the hearts of the ladies who have admitted that +they loved them. None the less he pressed for details. Who was +Ballantyne? What was his position? After all he was obviously not the +millionaire to whom in a more generous moment he had given Stella. He +caught himself on a descent to the meanness of rejoicing upon that. +Meanwhile Mrs. Carruthers rippled on. + +"Captain Ballantyne? Oh, he's a most remarkable man! Older than +Stella, certainly, but a man of great knowledge and insight. People +think most highly of him. Languages come as easily to him as +crochet-work to a woman." + +This paragon had been Resident in the Principality of Bakuta to the north +of Bombay when Stella had first arrived. But he had been moved now to +Chitipur in Rajputana. It was supposed that he was writing in his leisure +moments a work which would be the very last word upon the native +Principalities of Central India. Oh, Stella was to be congratulated! And +Mrs. Carruthers, in her fine mansion on Malabar Hill, breathed a sigh of +envy at the position of the wife of a high official of the British _Raj_. + +Thresk looked over again to the portrait on the piano. + +"I am very glad," he said cordially as once more he rose. + +"But you shall sit next to Mrs. Repton to-night," said Mrs. Carruthers. +"And she will tell you more." + +"Thank you," answered Thresk. "I only wished to know that things are +going well with Mrs. Ballantyne--that was all." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +JANE REPTON + + +Mrs. Carruthers kept her promise. She went in herself with Henry Thresk, +as she had always meant to do, but she placed Mrs. Repton upon his left +just round the bend of the table. Thresk stole a glance at her now and +then as he listened to the rippling laughter of his hostess during the +first courses. She was a tall woman and rather stout, with a pleasant +face and a direct gaze. Thresk gave her the age of thirty-five and put +her down as a cheery soul. Whether she was more he had to wait to learn +with what patience he could. He was free to turn to her at last and he +began without any preliminaries. + +"You know a friend of mine," he said. + +"I do?" + +"Yes." + +"Who is it?" + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +He noticed at once a change in Mrs. Repton. The frankness disappeared +from her face; her eyes grew wary. + +"I see," she said slowly. "I was wondering why I was placed next to you, +for you are the lion of the evening and there are people here of more +importance than myself. I knew it wasn't for my _beaux yeux_." + +She turned again to Thresk. + +"So you know my Stella?" + +"Yes. I knew her in England before she came out here and married. I have +not, of course, seen her since. I want you to tell me about her." + +Mrs. Repton looked him over with a careful scrutiny. + +"Mrs. Carruthers has no doubt told you that she married very well." + +"Yes; and that Ballantyne is a remarkable man," said Thresk. + +Mrs. Repton nodded. + +"Very well then?" she said, and her voice was a challenge. + +"I am not contented," Thresk replied. Mrs. Repton turned her eyes to her +plate and said demurely: + +"There might be more than one reason for that." + +Thresk abandoned all attempt to fence with her. Mrs. Repton was not of +those women who would lightly give their women-friends away. Her phrase +"my Stella" had, besides, revealed a world of love and championship. +Thresk warmed to her because of it. He threw reticence to the winds. + +"I am going to give you the real reason, Mrs. Repton. I saw her +photograph this afternoon on Mrs. Carruthers' piano, and it left me +wondering whether happiness could set so much character in a +woman's face." + +Mrs. Repton shrugged her shoulders. + +"Some of us age quickly here." + +"Age was not the new thing which I read in that photograph." + +Mrs. Repton did not answer. Only her eyes sounded him. She seemed to be +judging the stuff of which he was made. + +"And if I doubted her happiness this afternoon I must doubt it still more +now," he continued. + +"Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Repton. + +"Because of your reticence, Mrs. Repton," he answered. "For you have been +reticent. You have been on guard. I like you for it," he added with a +smile of genuine friendliness. "May I say that? But from the first moment +when I mentioned Stella Ballantyne's name you shouldered your musket." + +Mrs. Repton neither denied nor accepted his statement. She kept looking +at him and away from him as though she were still not sure of him, and at +times she drew in her breath sharply, as though she had already taken +upon herself some great responsibility and now regretted it. In the end +she turned to him abruptly. + +"I am puzzled," she cried. "I think it's strange that since you are +Stella's friend I knew nothing of that friendship--nothing whatever." + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is years since we met, as I told you. She has new interests." + +"They have not destroyed the old ones. We remember home things out here, +all of us. Stella like the rest. Why, I thought that I knew her whole +life in England, and here's a definite part of it--perhaps a very +important part--of which I am utterly ignorant. She has spoken of many +friends to me; of you never. I am wondering why." + +She spoke obviously without any wish to hurt. Yet the words did hurt. She +saw Thresk redden as she uttered them, and a swift wild hope flamed like +a rose in her heart: if this man with the brains and the money and the +perseverance sitting at her side should turn out to be the Perseus for +her beautiful chained Andromeda, far away there in the state of Chitipur! +The lines of a poem came into her thoughts. + +"I know; the world proscribes not love, +Allows my finger to caress +Your lips' contour and downiness +Provided it supplies the glove." + +Suppose that here at her side was the man who would dispense with the +glove! She looked again at Thresk. The lean strong face suggested that he +might, if he wanted hard enough. All her life had been passed in the +support of authority and law. Authority--that was her husband's +profession. But just for this hour, as she thought of Stella Ballantyne, +lawlessness shone out to her desirable as a star. + +"No, she has never once mentioned your name, Mr. Thresk." + +Again Thresk was conscious of the little pulse of resentment beating at +his heart. + +"She has no doubt forgotten me." + +Mrs. Repton shook her head. + +"That's one explanation. There might be another." + +"What is it?" + +"That she remembers you too much." + +Mrs. Repton was a little startled by her own audacity, but it provoked +nothing but an incredulous laugh from her companion. + +"I am afraid that's not very likely," he said. There was no hint of +elation in his voice nor any annoyance. If he felt either, why, he was on +guard no less than she. Mrs. Repton was inclined to throw up her hands in +despair. She was baffled and she was little likely, as she knew, to get +any light. + +"If you take the man you know best of all," she used to say, "you still +know nothing at all of what he's like when he's alone with a woman, +especially if it's a woman for whom he cares--unless the woman talks." + +Very often the woman does talk and the most intimate and private facts +come in a little while to be shouted from the housetops. But Stella +Ballantyne did not talk. She had talked once, and once only, under a +great stress to Jane Repton; but even then Thresk had nothing to do with +her story at all. + +Thresk turned quickly towards her. + +"In a moment Mrs. Carruthers will get up. Her eyes are collecting +the women and the women are collecting their shoes. What have you +to tell me?" + +Mrs. Repton wanted to speak. Thresk gave her confidence. He seemed to be +a man without many illusions, he was no romantic sentimentalist. She went +back to the poem of which the lines had been chasing one another through +her head all through this dinner, as a sort of accompaniment to their +conversation. Had he found it out? she asked herself-- + +"The world and what it fears." + +Thus she hung hesitating while Mrs. Carruthers gathered in her hands her +gloves and her fan. There was a woman at the other end of the table +however who would not stop talking. She was in the midst of some story +and heeded not the signals of her hostess. Jane Repton wished she would +go on talking for the rest of the evening, and recognised that the wish +was a waste of time and grew flurried. She had to make up her mind to say +something which should be true or to lie. Yet she was too staunch to +betray the confidence of her friend unless the betrayal meant her +friend's salvation. But just as the woman at the end of the table ceased +to talk an inspiration came to her. She would say nothing to Thresk, but +if he had eyes to see she would place him where the view was good. + +"I have this to say," she answered in a low quick voice. "Go yourself to +Chitipur. You sail on Friday, I think? And to-day is Monday. You can make +the journey there and back quite easily in the time." + +"I can?" asked Thresk. + +"Yes. Travel by the night-mail up to Ajmere tomorrow night. You will be +in Chitipur on Wednesday afternoon. That gives you twenty-four hours +there, and you can still catch the steamer here on Friday." + +"You advise that?" + +"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Repton. + +Mrs. Carruthers rose from the table and Jane Repton had no further word +with Thresk that night. In the drawing-room Mrs. Carruthers led him from +woman to woman, allowing him ten minutes for each one. + +"He might be Royalty or her pet Pekingese," cried Mrs. Repton in +exasperation. For now that her blood had cooled she was not so sure that +her advice had been good. The habit of respect for authority resumed its +ancient place in her. She might be planting that night the seed of a very +evil flower. "Respectability" had seemed to her a magnificent poem as she +sat at the dinner-table. Here in the drawing-room she began to think that +it was not for every-day use. She wished a word now with Thresk, so that +she might make light of the advice which she had given. "I had no +business to interfere," she kept repeating to herself whilst she talked +with her host. "People get what they want if they want it enough, but +they can't control the price they have to pay. Therefore it was no +business of mine to interfere." + +But Thresk took his leave and gave her no chance for a private word. She +drove homewards a few minutes later with her husband; and as they +descended the hill to the shore of Back Bay he said: + +"I had a moment's conversation with Thresk after you had left the +dining-room, and what do you think?" + +"Tell me!" + +"He asked me for a letter of introduction to Ballantyne at Chitipur." + +"But he knows Stella!" exclaimed Jane Repton. + +"Does he? He didn't tell me that! He simply said that he had time to see +Chitipur before he sailed and asked for a line to the Resident." + +"And you promised to give him one?" + +"Of course. I am to send it to the Taj Mahal hotel to-morrow morning." + +Mrs. Repton was a little startled. She did not understand at all why +Thresk asked for the letter and, not understanding, was the more alarmed. +The request seemed to imply not merely that he had decided to make the +journey but that during the hour or so since they had sat at the +dinner-table he had formed some definite and serious plan. + +"Did you tell him anything?" she asked rather timidly. + +"Not a word," replied Repton. + +"Not even about--what happened in the hills at Mussoorie?" + +"Of course not." + +"No, of course not," Jane Repton agreed. + +She leaned back against the cushions of the victoria. A clear dark sky of +stars wonderfully bright stretched above her head. After the hot day a +cool wind blew pleasantly on the hill, and between the trees of the +gardens she could see the lights of the city and of a ship here and there +in the Bay at their feet. + +"But it's not very likely that Thresk will find them at Chitipur," said +Repton. "They will probably be in camp." + +Mrs. Repton sat forward. + +"Yes, that's true. This is the time they go on their tour of inspection. +He will miss them." And at once disappointment laid hold of her. Mrs. +Repton was not in the mood for logic that evening. She had been afraid a +moment since that the train she had laid would bring about a +conflagration. Now that she knew it would not even catch fire she passed +at once to a passionate regret. Thresk had inspired her with a great +confidence. He was the man, she believed, for her Stella. But he was +going up to Chitipur! Anything might happen! She leaned back again in the +carriage and cried defiantly to the stars. + +"I am glad that he's going. I am very glad." And in spite of her +conscience her heart leaped joyously in her bosom. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE QUEST + + +The next night Henry Thresk left Bombay and on the Wednesday afternoon he +was travelling in a little white narrow-gauge train across a flat yellow +desert which baked and sparkled in the sun. Here and there a patch of +green and a few huts marked a railway station and at each gaily-robed +natives sprung apparently from nowhere and going no-whither thronged the +platform and climbed into the carriages. Thresk looked impatiently +through the clouded windows, wondering what he should find in Chitipur if +ever he got there. The capital of that state lies aloof from the trunk +roads and is reached by a branch railway sixty miles long, which is the +private possession of the Maharajah and takes four hours to traverse. For +in Chitipur the ancient ways are devoutly followed. Modern ideas of speed +and progress may whirl up the big central railroad from Bombay to Ajmere. +But they stop at the junction. They do not travel along the Maharajah's +private lines to Chitipur, where he, directly descended from an important +and most authentic goddess, dispenses life and justice to his subjects +without even the assistance of the Press. There is little criticism in +the city and less work. A patriarchal calm sleeps in all its streets. In +Chitipur it is always Sunday afternoon. Even down by the lake, where the +huge white many-storeyed palace contemplates its dark-latticed windows +and high balconies mirrored in still water unimaginably blue nothing +which could be described as energy is visible. You may see an elephant +kneeling placidly in the lake while an attendant polishes up his trunk +and his forehead with a brickbat. But the elephant will be too +well-mannered to trumpet his enjoyment. Or you may notice a fisherman +drowsing in a boat heavy enough to cope with the surf of the Atlantic. +But the fisherman will not notice you--not even though you call to him +with dulcet promises of rupees. You will, if you wait long enough, see a +woman coming down the steps with a pitcher balanced on her head; and +indeed perhaps two women. But when your eyes have dwelt upon these +wonders you will have seen what there is of movement and life about the +shores of those sleeping waters. It was in accordance with the fitness of +things that the city and its lake should be three miles from the railway +station and quite invisible to the traveller. The hotel however and the +Residency were near to the station, and it was the Residency which had +brought Thresk out of the crowds and tumult of Bombay. He put up at the +hotel and enclosing Repton's introduction in a covering letter sent it by +his bearer down the road. Then he waited; and no answer came. + +Finally he asked if his bearer had returned. Quite half an hour he was +told, and the man was sent for. + +"Well? You delivered my letter?" said Thresk. + +"Yes, Sahib." + +"And there was no answer?" + +"No. No answer, Sahib," replied the man cheerfully. + +"Very well." + +He waited yet another hour, and since still no acknowledgment had come he +strolled along the road himself. He came to a large white house. A +flagpost tapered from its roof but no flag blew out its folds. There was +a garden about the house, the trim well-ordered garden of the English +folk with a lawn and banks of flowers, and a gardener with a hose was +busy watering it. Thresk stopped before the hedge. The windows were all +shuttered, the big door closed: there was nowhere any sign of the +inhabitants. + +Thresk turned and walked back to the hotel. He found the bearer laying +out a change of clothes for him upon his bed. + +"His Excellency is away," he said. + +"Yes, Sahib," replied the bearer promptly. "His Excellency gone on +inspection tour." + +"Then why in heaven's name didn't you tell me?" cried Thresk. + +The bearer's face lost all its cheerfulness in a second and became a +mask. He was a Madrassee and black as coal. To Thresk it seemed that the +man had suddenly withdrawn himself altogether and left merely an image +with living eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. He knew that change in his +servant. It came at the first note of reproach in his voice and with such +completeness that it gave him the shock of a conjurer's trick. One moment +the bearer was before him, the next he had disappeared. + +"What did you do with the letter?" Thresk asked and was careful that +there should be no exasperation in his voice. + +The bearer came to life again, his white teeth gleamed in smiles. + +"I leave the letter. I give it to the gardener. All letters are sent to +his Excellency." + +"When?" + +"Perhaps this week, perhaps next." + +"I see," said Thresk. He stood for a moment or two with his eyes upon the +window. Then he moved abruptly. + +"We go back to Bombay to-morrow afternoon." + +"The Sahib will see Chitipur to-morrow. There are beautiful palaces on +the lake." + +Thresk laughed, but the laugh was short and bitter. + +"Oh yes, we'll do the whole thing in style to-morrow." + +He had the tone of a man who has caught himself out in some childish act +of folly. He seemed at once angry and ashamed. + +None the less he was the next morning the complete tourist doing India +at express speed during a cold weather. He visited the Museum, he walked +through the Elephant Gate into the bazaar, he was rowed over the lake to +the island palaces; he admired their marble steps and columns and floors +and was confounded by their tinkling blue glass chandeliers. He did the +correct thing all through that morning and early in the afternoon climbed +into the little train which was to carry him back to Jarwhal Junction and +the night mail to Bombay. + +"You will have five hours to wait at the junction, Mr. Thresk," said the +manager of the hotel, who had come to see him off. "I have put up some +dinner for you and there is a dak-bungalow where you can eat it." + +"Thank you," said Thresk, and the train moved off. The sun had set before +he reached the junction. When he stepped out on to the platform twilight +had come--the swift twilight of the East. Before he had reached the +dak-bungalow the twilight had changed to the splendour of an Indian +night. The bungalow was empty of visitors. Thresk's bearer lit a fire and +prepared dinner while Thresk wandered outside the door and smoked. He +looked across a plain to a long high ridge, where once a city had +struggled. Its deserted towers and crumbling walls still crowned the +height and made a habitation for beasts and birds. But they were quite +hidden now and the sharp line of the ridge was softened. Halfway between +the old city and the bungalow a cluster of bright lights shone upon the +plain and the red tongues of a fire flickered in the open. Thresk was in +no hurry to go back to the bungalow. The first chill of the darkness had +gone. The night was cool but not cold; a moon had risen, and that dusty +plain had become a place of glamour. From somewhere far away came the +sound of a single drum. Thresk garnered up in his thoughts the beauty of +that night. It was to be his last night in India. By this time to-morrow +Bombay would have sunk below the rim of the sea. He thought of it with +regret. He had come up into Rajputana on a definite quest and on the +advice of a woman whose judgment he was inclined to trust. And his quest +had failed. He was to see for himself. He would see nothing. And still +far away the beating of that drum went on--monotonous, mournful, +significant--the real call of the East made audible. Thresk leaned +forward on his seat, listening, treasuring the sound. He rose reluctantly +when his bearer came to tell him that dinner was ready. Thresk took a +look round. He pointed to the cluster of lights on the plain. + +"Is that a village?" he asked. + +"No, Sahib," replied the bearer. "That's his Excellency's camp." + +"What!" cried Thresk, swinging round upon his heel. + +His bearer smiled cheerfully. + +"Yes. His Excellency to whom I carried the Sahib's letter. That's his +camp for to-night. The keeper of the bungalow told me so. His Excellency +camped here yesterday and goes on to-morrow." + +"And you never told me!" exclaimed Thresk, and he checked himself. He +stood wondering what he should do, when there came suddenly out of the +darkness a queer soft scuffling sound, the like of which he had never +heard. He heard a heavy breathing and a bubbling noise and then into +the fan of light which spread from the window of the bungalow a man in +a scarlet livery rode on a camel. The camel knelt; its rider +dismounted, and as he dismounted he talked to Thresk's bearer. +Something passed from hand to hand and the bearer came back to Thresk +with a letter in his hand. + +"A chit from his Excellency." + +Thresk tore open the envelope and found within it an invitation to +dinner, signed "Stephen Ballantyne." + +"Your letter has reached me this moment," the note ran. "It came by your +train. I am glad not to have missed you altogether and I hope that you +will come to-night. The camel will bring you to the camp and take you +back in plenty of time for the mail." + +After all then the quest had not failed. After all he was to see for +himself--what a man could see within two hours, of the inner life of a +married couple. Not very much certainly, but a hint perhaps, some token +which would reveal to him what it was that had written so much +character into Stella Ballantyne's face and driven Jane Repton into +warnings and reserve. + +"I will go at once," said Thresk and his bearer translated the words to +the camel-driver. + +But even so Thresk stayed to look again at the letter. Its handwriting at +the first glance, when the unexpected words were dancing before his eyes, +had arrested his attention; it was so small, so delicately clear. +Thresk's experience had made him quick to notice details and slow to +infer from them. Yet this handwriting set him wondering. It might have +been the work of some fastidious woman or of some leisured scholar; so +much pride of penmanship was there. It certainly agreed with no picture +of Stephen Ballantyne which his imagination had drawn. + +He mounted the camel behind the driver, and for the next few minutes all +his questions and perplexities vanished from his mind. He simply clung to +the waist of the driver. For the camel bumped down into steep ditches and +scuffled up out of them, climbed over mounds and slid down the further +side of them, and all the while Thresk had the sensation of being poised +uncertainly in the air as high as a church-steeple. Suddenly however the +lights of the camp grew large and the camel padded silently in between +the tents. It was halted some twenty yards from a great marquee. Another +servant robed in white with a scarlet sash about his waist received +Thresk from the camel-driver. + +He spoke a few words in Hindustani, but Thresk shook his head. Then the +man moved towards the marquee and Thresk followed him. He was conscious +of a curious excitement, and only when he caught his breath was he aware +that his heart was beating fast. As they neared the tent he heard voices +within. They grew louder as he reached it--one was a man's, loud, +wrathful, the other was a woman's. It was not raised but it had a ring in +it of defiance. The words Thresk could not hear, but he knew the woman's +voice. The servant raised the flap of the tent. + +"Huzoor, the Sahib is here," he said, and at once both the voices were +stilled. As Thresk stood in the doorway both the man and the woman +turned. The man, with a little confusion in his manner, came quickly +towards him. Over his shoulder Thresk saw Stella Ballantyne staring at +him, as if he had risen from the grave. Then, as he took Ballantyne's +extended hand, Stella swiftly raised her hand to her throat with a +curious gesture and turned away. It seemed as if now that she was sure +that Thresk stood there before her, a living presence, she had something +to hide from him. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN THE TENT AT CHITIPTUR + + +The marquee was large and high. It had a thick lining of a dull red +colour and a carpet covered the floor; cushioned basket chairs and a few +small tables stood here and there; against one wall rose an open +escritoire with a box of cheroots upon it; the two passages to the +sleeping-tents and the kitchen were hidden by grass-screens and between +them stood a great Chesterfield sofa. It was, in a word, the tent of +people who were accustomed to make their home in it for weeks at a time. +Even the latest books were to be seen. But it was dark. + +A single lamp swinging above the round dinner-table from the cross-pole +of the roof burnt in the very centre of the tent; and that was all. The +corners were shadowy; the lining merely absorbed the rays and gave none +back. The round pool of light which spread out beneath the lamp was +behind Ballantyne when he turned to the doorway, so Thresk for a moment +was only aware of him as a big heavily-built man in a smoking-jacket and +a starched white shirt; and it was to that starched white shirt that he +spoke, making his apologies. He was glad too to delay for a second or +two the moment when he must speak to Stella. In her presence this eight +long years of effort and work had become a very little space. + +"I had to come as I was, Captain Ballantyne," he said, "for I have only +with me what I want for the night in the train." + +"Of course. That's all right," Ballantyne replied with a great +cordiality. He turned towards Stella. "Mr. Thresk, this is my wife." + +Now she had to turn. She held out her right hand but she still covered +her throat with her left. She gave no sign of recognition and she did not +look at her visitor. + +"How do you do, Mr. Thresk?" she said, and went on quickly, allowing him +no time for a reply. "We are in camp, you see. You must just take us as +we are. Stephen did not tell me till a minute ago that he expected a +visitor. You have not too much time. I will see that dinner is served at +once." She went quickly to one of the grass-screens and lifting it +vanished from his view. It seemed to Thresk that she had just seized upon +an excuse to get away. Why? he asked himself. She was nervous and +distressed, and in her distress she had accepted without surprise +Thresk's introduction to her as a stranger. To that relationship then he +and she were bound for the rest of his stay in the Resident's camp. + +Mrs. Repton had been wrong when she had attributed Thresk's request for +a formal introduction to Ballantyne to a plan already matured in his +mind. He had no plan, although he formed one before that dinner was at an +end. He had asked for the letter because he wished faithfully to follow +her advice and see for himself. If he called upon Stella he would find +her alone; the mere sending in of his name would put her on her guard; he +would see nothing. She would take care of that. He had no wish to make +Ballantyne's acquaintance as Mrs. Ballantyne's friend. He could claim +that friendship afterwards. Now however Stella herself in her confusion +had made the claim impossible. She had fled--there was no other word +which could truthfully describe her swift movement to the screen. + +Ballantyne however had clearly not been surprised by it. + +"It was a piece of luck for me that I camped here yesterday and +telegraphed for my letters," he said. "You mentioned in your note that +you had only twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur, didn't you? So I was +sure that you would be upon this train." + +He spoke with a slow precision in a voice which he was careful--or so it +struck Thresk--to keep suave and low; and as he spoke he moved towards +the dinner-table and came within the round pool of light. Thresk had a +clear view of him. He was a man of a gross and powerful face, with a +blue heavy chin and thick eyelids over bloodshot eyes. + +"Will you have a cocktail?" he asked, and he called aloud, going to the +second passage from the tent: "Quai hai! Baram Singh, cocktails!" + +The servant who had met Thresk at the door came in upon the instant with +a couple of cocktails on a tray. + +"Ah, you have them," he said. "Good!" + +But he refused the glass when the tray was held out to him, refused it +after a long look and with a certain violence. + +"For me? Certainly not! Never in this world." He looked up at Thresk +with a laugh. "Cocktails are all very well for you, Mr. Thresk, who are +here during a cold weather, but we who make our homes here--we have to +be careful." + +"Yes, so I suppose," said Thresk. But just behind Ballantyne, on a +sideboard against the wall of the tent opposite to that wall where the +writing-table stood, he noticed a syphon of soda, a decanter of whisky +and a long glass which was not quite empty. He looked at Ballantyne +curiously and as he looked he saw him start and stare with wide-opened +eyes into the dim corners of the tent. Ballantyne had forgotten Thresk's +presence. He stood there, his body rigid, his mouth half-open and fear +looking out from his eyes and every line in his face--stark paralysing +fear. Then he saw Thresk staring at him, but he was too sunk in terror +to resent the stare. + +"Did you hear anything?" he said in a whisper. + +"No." + +"I did," and he leaned his head on one side. For a moment the two men +stood holding their breath; and then Thresk did hear something. It was +the rustle of a dress in the corridor beyond the mat-screen. + +"It's Mrs. Ballantyne," he said, and she lifted the screen and came in. + +Thresk just noticed a sharp movement of revulsion in Ballantyne, but he +paid no heed to him. His eyes were riveted on Stella Ballantyne. She was +wearing about her throat now a turquoise necklace. It was a heavy +necklace of Indian make, rather barbaric and not at all beautiful, but it +had many rows of stones and it hid her throat--just as surely as her hand +had hidden it when she first saw Thresk. It was to hide her throat that +she had fled. He saw Ballantyne go up to his wife, he heard his voice and +noticed that her face grew grave and hard. + +"So you have come to your senses," he said in a low tone. Stella passed +him and did not answer. It was, then, upon the question of that necklace +that their voices had been raised when he reached the camp. He had heard +Ballantyne's, loud and dominant, the voice of a bully. He had been +ordering her to cover her throat. Stella, on the other hand, had been +quiet but defiant. She had refused. Now she had changed her mind. + +Baram Singh brought in the soup-tureen a second afterwards and Ballantyne +raised his hands in a simulation of the profoundest astonishment. + +"Why, dinner's actually punctual! What a miracle! Upon my word, Stella, I +shan't know what to expect next if you spoil me in this way." + +"It's usually punctual, Stephen," Stella replied with a smile of anxiety +and appeal. + +"Is it, my dear? I hadn't noticed it. Let us sit down at once." + +Upon this tone of banter the dinner began; and no doubt in another man's +mouth it might have sounded good-humoured enough. There was certainly no +word as yet which, it could be definitely said, was meant to wound, but +underneath the raillery Thresk was conscious of a rasp, a bitterness just +held in check through the presence of a stranger. Not that Thresk was +spared his share of it. At the very outset he, the guest whom it was such +a rare piece of good fortune for Ballantyne to meet, came in for a taste +of the whip. + +"So you could actually give four-and-twenty hours to Chitipur, Mr. +Thresk. That was most kind and considerate of you. Chitipur is grateful. +Let us drink to it! By the way what will you drink? Our cellar is rather +limited in camp. There's some claret and some whisky-and-soda." + +"Whisky-and-soda for me, please," said Thresk. + +"And for me too. You take claret, don't you, Stella dear?" and he +lingered upon the "dear" as though he anticipated getting a great deal of +amusement out of her later on. And so she understood him, for there came +a look of trouble into her face and she made a little gesture of +helplessness. Thresk watched and said nothing. + +"The decanter's in front of you, Stella," continued Ballantyne. He turned +his attention to his own tumbler, into which Baram Singh had already +poured the whisky; and at once he exclaimed indignantly: + +"There's much too much here for me! Good heavens, what next!" and in +Hindustani he ordered Baram Singh to add to the soda-water. Then he +turned again to Thresk. "But I've no doubt you exhausted Chitipur in your +twenty-four hours, didn't you? Of course you are going to write a book." + +"Write a book!" cried Thresk. He was surprised into a laugh. "Not I." + +Ballantyne leaned forward with a most serious and puzzled face. + +"You're not writing a book about India? God bless my soul! D'you hear +that, Stella? He's actually twenty-four hours in Chitipur and he's not +going to write a book about it." + +"Six weeks from door to door: or how I made an ass of myself in India," +said Thresk. "No thank you!" + +Ballantyne laughed, took a gulp of his whisky-and-soda and put the glass +down again with a wry face. + +"This is too strong for me," he said, and he rose from his chair and +crossed over to the tantalus upon the sideboard. He gave a cautious look +towards the table, but Thresk had bent forward towards Stella. She was +saying in a low voice: + +"You don't mind a little chaff, do you?" and with an appeal so wistful +that it touched Thresk to the heart. + +"Of course not," he answered, and he looked up towards Ballantyne. Stella +noticed a change come over his face. It was not surprise so much which +showed there as interest and a confirmation of some suspicion which he +already had. He saw that Ballantyne was secretly pouring into his glass +not soda-water at all but whisky from the tantalus. He came back with the +tumbler charged to the brim and drank deeply from it with relish. + +"That's better," he said, and with a grin he turned his attention to his +wife, fixing her with his eyes, gloating over her like some great snake +over a bird trembling on the floor of its cage. The courses followed one +upon the other and while he ate he baited her for his amusement. She took +refuge in silence but he forced her to talk and then shivered with +ridicule everything she said. Stella was cowed by him. If she answered it +was probably some small commonplace which with an exaggerated politeness +he would nag at her to repeat. In the end, with her cheeks on fire, she +would repeat it and bend her head under the brutal sarcasm with which it +was torn to rags. Once or twice Thresk was on the point of springing up +in her defence, but she looked at him with so much terror in her eyes +that he did not interfere. He sat and watched and meanwhile his plan +began to take shape in his mind. + +There came an interval of silence during which Ballantyne leaned back in +his chair in a sort of stupor; and in the midst of that silence Stella +suddenly exclaimed with a world of longing in her voice: + +"And you'll be in England in thirteen days! To think of it!" She glanced +round the tent. It seemed incredible that any one could be so fortunate. + +"You go straight from Jarwhal Junction here at our tent door to Bombay. +To-morrow you go on board your ship and in twelve days afterwards you'll +be in England." + +Thresk leaned forward across the table. + +"When did you go home last?" he asked. + +"I have never been home since I married." + +"Never!" exclaimed Thresk. + +Stella shook her head. + +"Never." + +She was looking down at the tablecloth while she spoke, but as she +finished she raised her head. + +"Yes, I have been eight years in India," she added, and Thresk saw the +tears suddenly glisten in her eyes. He had come up to Chitipur +reproaching himself for that morning on the South Downs, a morning so +distant, so aloof from all the surroundings in which he found himself +that it seemed to belong to an earlier life. But his reproaches became +doubly poignant now. She had been eight years in India, tied to this +brute! But Stella Ballantyne mastered herself with a laugh. + +"However I am not alone in that," she said lightly. "And how's London?" + +It was unfortunate that just at this moment Captain Ballantyne woke up. + +"Eh what!" he exclaimed in a mock surprise. "You were talking, Stella, +were you? It must have been something extraordinarily interesting that +you were saying. Do let me hear it." + +At once Stella shrank. Her spirit was so cowed that she almost had the +look of a stupid person; she became stupid in sheer terror of her +husband's railleries. + +"It wasn't of any importance." + +"Oh, my dear," said Ballantyne with a sneer, "you do yourself an +injustice," and then his voice grew harsh, his face brutal. "What was +it?" he demanded. + +Stella looked this way and that, like an animal in a trap. Then she +caught sight of Thresk's face over against her. Her eyes appealed to him +for silence; she turned quickly to her husband. + +"I only said how's London?" + +A smile spread over Ballantyne's face. + +"Now did you say that? How's London! Now why did you ask how London was? +How should London be? What sort of an answer did you expect?" + +"I didn't expect any answer," replied Stella. "Of course the question +sounds stupid if you drag it out and worry it." + +Ballantyne snorted contemptuously. + +"How's London? Try again, Stella!" + +Thresk had come to the limit of his patience. In spite of Stella's appeal +he interrupted and interrupted sharply. + +"It doesn't seem to me an unnatural question for any woman to ask who has +not seen London for eight years. After all, say what you like, for women +India means exile--real exile." + +Ballantyne turned upon his visitor with some rejoinder on his tongue. +But he thought better of it. He looked away and contented himself +with a laugh. + +"Yes," said Stella, "we need next-door neighbours." + +The restraint which Ballantyne showed towards Thresk only served to +inflame him against his wife. + +"So that you may pull their gowns to pieces and unpick their characters," +he said. "Never mind, Stella! The time'll come when we shall settle down +to domestic bliss at Camberley on twopence-halfpenny a year. That'll be +jolly, won't it? Long walks over the heather and quiet evenings--alone +with me. You must look forward to that, my dear." His voice rose to a +veritable menace as he sketched the future which awaited them and then +sank again. + +"How's London!" he growled, harping scornfully on the unfortunate phrase. +Ballantyne had had luck that night. He had chanced upon two of the +banalities of ordinary talk which give an easy occasion for the bully. +Thresk's twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur provided the best opening. +Only Thresk was a guest--not that that in Ballantyne's present mood would +have mattered a great deal, but he was a guest whom Ballantyne had it in +his mind to use. All the more keenly therefore he pounced upon Stella. +But in pouncing he gave Thresk a glimpse into the real man that he was, a +glimpse which the barrister was quick to appreciate. + +"How's London? A lot of London we shall be able to afford! God! what a +life there's in store for us! Breakfast, lunch and dinner, dinner, +breakfast, lunch--all among the next-door neighbours." And upon that he +flung himself back in his chair and reached out his arms. + +"Give me Rajputana!" he cried, and even through the thickness of his +utterance his sincerity rang clear as a bell. "You can stretch yourself +here. The cities! Live in the cities and you can only wear yourself out +hankering to do what you like. Here you can do it. Do you see that, Mr. +Thresk? You can do it." And he thumped the table with his hand. + +"I like getting away into camp for two months, three months at a +time--on the plain, in the jungle, alone. That's the point--alone. You've +got it all then. You're a king without a Press. No one to spy on you--no +one to carry tales--no next-door neighbours. How's London?" and with a +sneer he turned back to his wife. "Oh, I know it doesn't suit Stella. +Stella's so sociable. Stella wants parties. Stella likes frocks. Stella +loves to hang herself about with beads, don't you, my darling?" + +But Ballantyne had overtried her to-night. Her face suddenly flushed and +with a swift and violent gesture she tore at the necklace round her +throat. The clasp broke, the beads fell with a clatter upon her plate, +leaving her throat bare. For a moment Ballantyne stared at her, unable to +believe his eyes. So many times he had made her the butt of his savage +humour and she had offered no reply. Now she actually dared him! + +"Why did you do that?" he asked, pushing his face close to hers. But he +could not stare her down. She looked him in the face steadily. Even her +lips did not tremble. + +"You told me to wear them. I wore them. You jeer at me for wearing them. +I take them off." + +And as she sat there with her head erect Thresk knew why he had bidden +her to wear them. There were bruises upon her throat--upon each side of +her throat--the sort of bruises which would be made by the grip of a +man's fingers. "Good God!" he cried, and before he could speak another +word Stella's moment of defiance passed. She suddenly covered her face +with her hands and burst into tears. + +Ballantyne pushed back his chair sulkily. Thresk sprang to his feet. But +Stella held him off with a gesture of her hand. + +"It's nothing," she said between her sobs. "I am foolish. These last few +days have been hot, haven't they?" She smiled wanly, checking her tears. +"There's no reason at all," and she got up from her chair. "I think I'll +leave you for a little while. My head aches and--and--I've no doubt I +have got a red nose now." + +She took a step or two towards the passage into her private tent +but stopped. + +"I _can_ leave you to get along together alone, can't I?" she said with +her eyes on Thresk. "You know what women are, don't you? Stephen will +tell you interesting things about Rajputana if you can get him to talk. +I shall see you before you go," and she lifted the screen and went out +of the room. In the darkness of the passage she stood silent for a +moment to steady herself and while she stood there, in spite of her +efforts, her tears burst forth again uncontrollably. She clasped her +hands tightly over her mouth so that the sound of her sobbing might not +reach to the table in the centre of the big marquee; and with her lips +whispering in all sincerity the vain wish that she were dead she +stumbled along the corridor. + +But the sound had reached into the big marquee and coming after the +silence it wrung Thresk's heart. He knew this of her at all events--that +she did not easily cry. Ballantyne touched him on the arm. + +"You blame me for this." + +"I don't know that I do," answered Thresk slowly. He was wondering how +much share in the blame he had himself, he who had ridden with her on the +Downs eight years ago and had let her speak and had not answered. He sat +in this tent to-night with shame burning at his heart. "It wasn't as if I +had no confidence in myself," he argued, unable quite to cast back to the +Thresk of those early days. "I had--heaps of it." + +Ballantyne lifted himself out of his chair and lurched over to the +sideboard. Thresk, watching him, fell to wondering why in the world +Stella had married him or he her. He knew that a blind man may see such +mysteries on any day and that a wise one will not try to explain them. +Still he wondered. Had the man's reputation dazzled her?--for undoubtedly +he had one; or was it that intellect which suffered an eclipse when +Ballantyne went into camp with nobody to carry tales? + +He was still pondering on that problem when Ballantyne swung back to the +table and set himself to prove, drunk though he was, that his reputation +was not ill-founded. + +"I am afraid Stella's not very well," he said, sitting heavily down. +"But she asked me to tell you things, didn't she? Well, her wishes are my +law. So here goes." + +His manner altogether changed now that they were alone. He became +confidential, intimate, friendly. He was drunk. He was a coarse +heavy-featured man with bloodshot eyes; he interrupted his conversation +with uneasy glances into the corners of the tent, such glances as Thresk +had noticed when he was alone with him before they sat down to dinner; +but he managed none the less to talk of Rajputana with a knowledge which +amazed Thresk now and would have enthralled him at another time. A +visitor may see the surface of Rajputana much as Thresk had done, may +admire its marble palaces, its blue lakes and the great yellow stretches +of its desert, but to know anything of the life underneath in that +strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years +fly the British flag over the Agencies. Nevertheless Ballantyne +knew--very little as he acknowledged but more than his fellows. And +groping drunkenly in his mind he drew out now this queer intrigue, now +that fateful piece of history, now the story of some savage punishment +wreaked behind the latticed windows, and laid them one after another +before Thresk's eyes--his peace-offerings. And Thresk listened. But +before his eyes stood the picture of Stella Ballantyne standing alone in +the dark corridor beyond the grass-screen whispering with wild lips her +wish that she was dead; and in his ears was the sound of her sobbing. +Here, it seemed, was another story to add to the annals of Rajputana. + +Then Ballantyne tapped him on the arm. + +"You're not listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good +things--things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them--the +swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?" +And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his host's guess. + +"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I am not master of myself," Ballantyne +continued. His voice sank and his eyes narrowed to two little bright +slits. "I am afraid. Yes, that's the explanation. I am so afraid that +when I am not alone I seek relief any way, any how. I can't help it." And +even as he spoke his eyes opened wide and he sat staring intently at a +dim corner of the tent, moving his head with little jerks from one side +to the other that he might see the better. + +"There's no one over there, eh?" he asked. + +"No one." + +Ballantyne nodded as he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. + +"They make these tents too large," he said in a whisper. "One great blot +of light in the middle and all around in the corners--shadows. We sit +here in the blot of light--a fair mark. But what's going on in the +shadows, Mr.--What's your name? Eh? What's going on in the shadows?" + +Thresk had no doubt that Ballantyne's fear was genuine. He was not +putting forward merely an excuse for the scene which his guest had +witnessed and might spread abroad on his return to Bombay. No, he was +really terrified. He interspersed his words with sudden unexpected +silences, during which he sat all ears and his face strained to listen, +as though he expected to surprise some stealthy movement. But Thresk +accounted for it by that decanter on the sideboard, in which the level of +the whisky had been so noticeably lowered that evening. He was wrong +however, for Ballantyne sprang to his feet. + +"You are going away to-night. You can do me a service." + +"Can I?" asked Thresk. + +He understood at last why Ballantyne had been at such pains to interest +and amuse him. + +"Yes. And in return," cried Ballantyne, "I'll give you another glimpse +into the India you don't know." + +He walked up to the door of the tent and drew it aside. "Look!" + +Thresk, leaning forward in his chair, looked out through the opening. He +saw the moonlit plain in a soft haze, in the middle of it the green lamp +of a railway signal and beyond the distant ridge, on which straggled the +ruins of old Chitipur. + +"Look!" cried Ballantyne. "There's tourist India all in one: a desert, a +railway and a deserted city, hovels and temples, deep sacred pools and +forgotten palaces--the whole bag of tricks crumbling slowly to ruin +through centuries on the top of a hill. That's what the good people come +out for to see in the cold weather--Jarwhal Junction and old Chitipur." + +He dropped the curtain contemptuously and it swung back, shutting out the +desert. He took a step or two back into the tent and flung out his arms +wide on each side of him. + +"But bless your soul," he cried vigorously, "here's the real India." + +Thresk looked about the tent and understood. + +"I see," he answered--"a place very badly lit, a great blot of light in +the centre and all around it dark corners and grim shadows." + +Ballantyne nodded his head with a grim smile upon his lips. + +"Oh, you have learnt that! Well, you shall do me a service and in return +you shall look into the shadows. But we will have the table cleared +first." And he called aloud for Baram Singh. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE PHOTOGRAPH + + +While Baram Singh was clearing the table Ballantyne lifted the box of +cheroots from the top of the bureau and held it out to Thresk. + +"Will you smoke?" + +Thresk, however, though he smoked had not during his stay in India +acquired the taste for the cheroot; and it interested him in later times +to reflect how largely he owed his entanglement in the tragic events +which were to follow to that accidental distaste. For conscious of it he +had brought his pipe with him, and he now fetched it out of his pocket. + +"This, if I may," he said. + +"Of course." + +Thresk filled his pipe and lighted it, Ballantyne for his part lit a +cheroot and replaced the box upon the top, close to a heavy +riding-crop with a bone handle, which Thresk happened now to notice +for the first time. + +"Be quick!" he cried impatiently to Baram Singh, and seated himself in +the swing-chair in front of the bureau, turning it so as not to have his +back to Thresk at the table. Baram Singh hurriedly finished his work and +left the marquee by the passage leading to the kitchen. Ballantyne waited +with his eyes upon that passage until the grass-mat screen had ceased to +move. Then taking a bunch of keys from his pocket he stooped under the +open writing-flap of the bureau and unlocked the lowest of the three +drawers. From this drawer he lifted a scarlet despatch-box, and was just +going to bring it to the table when Baram Singh silently appeared once +more. At once Ballantyne dropped the box on the floor, covering it as +well as he could with his legs. + +"What the devil do you want?" he cried, speaking of course in Hindustani, +and with a violence which seemed to be half made up of anger and half of +fear. Baram Singh replied that he had brought an ash-tray for the Sahib, +and he placed it on the round table by Thresk's side. + +"Well, get out and don't come back until you are called," cried +Ballantyne roughly, and in evident relief as Baram Singh once more +retired he took a long draught from a fresh tumbler of whisky-and-soda +which stood on the flap of the bureau beside him. He then stooped once +more to lift the red despatch-box from the floor, but to Thresk's +amazement in the very act of stooping he stopped. He remained with his +hands open to seize the box and his body bent over his knees, quite +motionless. His mouth was open, his eyes staring, and upon his face such +a look of sheer terror was stamped as Thresk could never find words to +describe. For the first moment he imagined that the man had had a stroke. +His habits, his heavy build all pointed that way. The act of stooping +would quite naturally be the breaking pressure upon that overcharged +brain. But before Thresk had risen to make sure Ballantyne moved an arm. +He moved it upwards without changing his attitude in any other way, or +even the direction of his eyes, and he groped along the flap of the +bureau very cautiously and secretly and up again to the top ledge. All +the while his eyes were staring intently, but with the intentness of +extreme fear, not at the despatch-box but at the space of carpet--a +couple of feet at the most--between the despatch-box and the tent-wall. +His fingers felt along the ledge of the bureau and closed with a silent +grip upon the handle of the riding-crop. Thresk jumped to the natural +conclusion: a snake had crept in under the tent-wall and Ballantyne dared +not move lest the snake should strike. Neither did he dare to move +himself. Ballantyne was clearly within reach of its fangs. But he looked +and--there was nothing. The light was not good certainly, and down by the +tent-wall there close to the floor it was shadowy and dim. But Thresk's +eyes were keen. The space between the despatch-box and the wall was +empty. Nothing crawled there, nothing was coiled. + +Thresk looked at Ballantyne with amazement; and as he looked Ballantyne +sprang from his chair with a scream of terror--the scream of a +panic-stricken child. He sprang with an agility which Thresk would never +have believed possible in a man of so gross a build. He leapt into the +air and with his crop he struck savagely once, twice and thrice at the +floor between the wall and the box. Then he turned to Thresk with every +muscle working in his face. + +"Did you see?" he cried. "Did you see?" + +"What? There was nothing to see!" + +"Nothing!" screamed Ballantyne. He picked up the box and placed it on the +table, thrusting it under Thresk's hand. "Hold that! Don't let go! Stay +here and don't let go," he said, and running up the tent raised his voice +to a shout. + +"Baram Singh!" and lifting the tent-door he called to others of his +servants by name. Without waiting for them he ran out himself and in a +second Thresk heard him cursing thickly and calling in panic-stricken +tones just close to that point of the wall against which the bureau +stood. The camp woke to clamour. + +Thresk stood by the table gripping the handle of the despatch-box as he +had been bidden to do. The tent-door was left open. He could see lights +flashing, he heard Ballantyne shouting orders, and his voice dwindled and +grew loud as he moved from spot to spot in the encampment. And in the +midst of the noise the white frightened face of Stella Ballantyne +appeared at the opening of her corridor. + +"What has happened?" she asked in a whisper. "Oh, I was afraid that +you and he had quarrelled," and she stood with her hand pressed over +her heart. + +"No, no indeed," Thresk replied, and Captain Ballantyne stumbled back +into the tent. His face was livid, and yet the sweat stood upon his +forehead. Stella Ballantyne drew back, but Ballantyne saw her as she +moved and drove her to her own quarters. + +"I have a private message for Mr. Thresk's ears," he said, and when she +had gone he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. + +"Now you must help me," he said in a low voice. But his voice shook and +his eyes strayed again to the ground by the wall of the tent. + +"It was just there the arm came through," he said. "Yes, just there," and +he pointed a trembling finger. + +"Arm?" cried Thresk. "What are you talking about?" + +Ballantyne looked away from the wall to Thresk, his eyes incredulous. + +"But you saw!" he insisted, leaning forward over the table. + +"What?" + +"An arm, a hand thrust in under the tent there, along the ground reaching +out for my box." + +"No. There was nothing to see." + +"A lean brown arm, I tell you, a hand thin and delicate as a woman's." + +"No. You are dreaming," exclaimed Thresk; but dreaming was a euphemism +for the word he meant. + +"Dreaming!" repeated Ballantyne with a harsh laugh. "Good God! I wish I +was. Come. Sit down here! We have not too much time." He seated himself +opposite to Thresk and drew the despatch-box towards him. He had regained +enough mastery over himself now to be able to speak in a level voice. No +doubt too his fright had sobered him. But it had him still in its grip, +for when he opened the despatch-box his hand so shook that he could +hardly insert the key in the lock. It was done at last however, and +feeling beneath the loose papers on the surface he drew out from the very +bottom a large sealed envelope. He examined the seals to make sure they +had not been tampered with. Then he tore open the envelope and took out a +photograph, somewhat larger than cabinet size. + +"You have heard of Bahadur Salak?" he said. + +Thresk started. + +"The affair at Umballa, the riots at Benares, the murder in Madras?" + +"Exactly." + +Ballantyne pushed the photograph into Thresk's hand. + +"That's the fellow--the middle one of the group." + +Thresk held up the photograph to the light. It represented a group of +nine Hindus seated upon chairs in a garden and arranged in a row facing +the camera. Thresk looked at, the central figure with a keen and +professional interest. Salak was a notorious figure in the Indian +politics of the day--the politics of the subterranean kind. For some +years he had preached and practised sedition with so much subtlety and +skill that though all men were aware that his hand worked the strings of +disorder there was never any convicting evidence against him. In all the +three cases which Thresk had quoted and in many others less well-known +those responsible for order were sure that he had devised the crime, +chosen the moment for its commission and given the order. But up till a +month ago he had slipped through the meshes. A month ago, however, he had +made his mistake. + +"Yes. It's a clever face," said Thresk. + +Ballantyne nodded his head. + +"He's a Mahratta Brahmin from Poona. They are the fellows for brains, and +Salak's about the cleverest of them." + +Thresk looked again at the photograph. + +"I see the picture was taken at Poona." + +"Yes, and isn't it an extraordinary thing!" cried Ballantyne, his face +flashing suddenly into interest and enjoyment. The enthusiasm of the +administrator in his work got the better of his fear now, just as a +little earlier it had got the better of his drunkenness. Thresk was +looking now into the face of a quite different man, the man of the +intimate knowledge and the high ability for whom fine rewards were +prophesied in Bombay. "The very cleverest of them can't resist the +temptation of being photographed in group. Crime after crime has been +brought home to the Indian criminal both here and in London because they +will sit in garden-chairs and let a man take their portraits. Nothing +will stop them. They won't learn. They are like the ladies of the light +opera stage. Well, let 'em go on I say. Here's an instance." + +"Is it?" asked Thresk. "Surely that photograph was taken a long +time ago." + +"Nine years. But he was at the same game. You have got the proof in your +hands. There's a group of nine men--Salak and his eight friends. Well, +of his eight friends every man jack is now doing time for burglary, in +some cases with violence--that second ruffian, for instance, he's in for +life--in some cases without, but in each case the crime was burglary. +And why? Because Salak in the centre there set them on to it. Because +Salak nine years ago wasn't the big swell he is now. Because Salak +wanted money to start his intrigues. That's the way he got +it--burglaries all round Bombay." + +"I see," said Thresk. "Salak's in prison now?" + +"He's in prison in Calcutta, yes. But he's awaiting his trial. He's not +convicted yet." + +"Exactly," Thresk answered. "This photograph is a valuable thing to have +just now." + +Ballantyne threw up his arms in despair at the obtuseness of his +companion. + +"Valuable!" he cried in derision. "Valuable!" and he leaned forward on +his elbows and began to talk to Thresk with an ironic gentleness as if he +were a child. + +"You don't quite understand me, do you? But a little effort and all will +be plain." + +He got no farther however upon this line of attack, for Thresk +interrupted him sharply. + +"Here! Say what you have got to say if you want me to help you. Oh, you +needn't scowl! You are not going to bait me for your amusement. I am not +your wife." And Ballantyne after a vain effort to stare Thresk down +changed to a more cordial tone. + +"Well, you say it's a valuable thing to have just now. I say it's an +infernally dangerous thing. On the one side there's Salak the great +national leader, Salak the deliverer, Salak professing from his prison in +Calcutta that he has never used any but the most legitimate +constitutional means to forward his propaganda. And here on the other is +Salak in his garden-chair amongst the burglars. Not a good thing to +possess--this photograph, Mr. Thresk. Especially because it's the only +one in existence and the negative has been destroyed. So Salak's friends +are naturally anxious to get it back." + +"Do they know you have it?" Thresk asked. + +"Of course they do. You had proof that they knew five minutes ago when +that brown arm wriggled in under the tent-wall." + +Ballantyne's fear returned upon him as he spoke. He sat shivering; his +eyes wandered furtively from corner to corner of the great tent and came +always back as though drawn by a serpent to the floor by the wall of the +tent. Thresk shrugged his shoulders. To dispute with Ballantyne once more +upon his delusion would be the merest waste of time. He took up the +photograph again. + +"How do you come to possess it?" he asked. If he was to serve his host in +the way he suspected he would be asked to, he must know its history. + +"I was agent in a state not far from Poona before I came here." + +Thresk agreed. + +"I know. Bakuta." + +"Oh?" said Ballantyne with a sharp look. "How did you know that?" + +He was always in alarm lest somewhere in the world gossip was whispering +his secret. + +"A Mrs. Carruthers at Bombay." + +"Did she tell you anything else?" + +"Yes. She told me that you were a great man." + +Ballantyne grinned suddenly. + +"Isn't she a fool?" Then the grin left his face. "But how did you come to +discuss me with her at all?" + +That was a question which Thresk had not the slightest intention to +answer. He evaded it altogether. + +"Wasn't it natural since I was going to Chitipur?" he asked, and +Ballantyne was appeased. + +"Well, the Rajah of Bakutu had that photograph and he gave it to me when +I left the State. He came down to the station to see me off. He was too +near Poona to be comfortable with that in his pocket. He gave it to me on +the platform in full view, the damned coward. He wanted to show that he +had given it to me. He said that I should be safe with it in Chitipur." + +"Chitipur's a long way from Poona," Thresk agreed. + +"But don't you see, this trial that's coming along in Calcutta makes all +the difference. It's known I have got it. It's not safe here now and no +more am I so long as I've got it." + +One question had been puzzling Thresk ever since he had seen the look of +terror reappear in Ballantyne's face. It was clear that he lived in a +very real fear. He believed that he was watched, and he believed that he +was in danger; and very probably he actually was. There had, to be sure, +been no attempt that night to rob him of it as he imagined. But none the +less Salak and his friends could not like the prospect of the production +of that photograph in Calcutta, and would hardly be scrupulous what means +they took to prevent it. Then why had not Ballantyne destroyed it? +Thresk asked the question and was fairly startled by the answer. For it +presented to him in the most unexpected manner another and a new side of +the strange and complex character of Stephen Ballantyne. + +"Yes, why don't I destroy it?" Ballantyne repeated. "I ask myself that," +and he took the photograph out of Thresk's hands and sat in a sort of +muse, staring at it. Then he turned it over and took the edge between his +forefinger and his thumb, hesitating whether he would not even at this +moment tear it into strips and have done with it. But in the end he cast +it upon the table as he had done many a time before and cried in a voice +of violence: + +"No, I can't. That's to own these fellows my masters and I won't. By God +I won't! I may be every kind of brute, but I have been bred up in this +service. For twenty years I have lived in it and by it. And the service +is too strong for me. No, I can't destroy that photograph. There's the +truth. I should hate myself to my dying day if I did." + +He rose abruptly as if half ashamed of his outburst and crossing to his +bureau lighted another cheroot. + +"Then what do you want me to do with it?" asked Thresk. + +"I want you to take it away." + +Ballantyne was taking a casuistical way of satisfying his conscience, and +he was aware of it. He would not destroy the portrait--no! But he +wouldn't keep it either. "You are going straight back to England," he +said. "Take it with you. When you get home you can hand it to one of the +big-wigs at the India Office, and he'll put it in a pigeon-hole, and some +day an old charwoman cleaning the office will find it, and she'll take it +home to her grandchildren to play with and one of them'll drop it on the +fire, and there'll be an end of it." + +"Yes," replied Thresk slowly. "But if I do that, it won't be useful at +Calcutta, will it?" + +"Oh," said Ballantyne with a sneer. "You've got a conscience too, eh? +Well, I'll tell you. I don't think that photograph will be needed at +Calcutta." + +"Are you sure of that?" + +"Yes. Salak's friends don't know it, but I do." + +Thresk sat still in doubt. Was Ballantyne speaking the truth or did he +speak in fear? He was still standing by the bureau looking down upon +Thresk and behind him, so that Thresk had not the expression of his face +to help him to decide. But he did not turn in his chair to look. For as +he sat there it dawned upon him that the photograph was the very thing +which he himself needed. The scheme which had been growing in his mind +all through this evening, which had begun to grow from the very moment +when he had entered the tent, was now complete in every detail except +one. He wanted an excuse, a good excuse which should explain why he +missed his boat, and here it was on the table in front of him. Almost he +had refused it! Now it seemed to him a Godsend. + +"I'll take it," he cried, and Baram Singh silently appeared at the outer +doorway of the tent. + +"Huzoor," he said. "Railgharri hai." + +Ballantyne turned to Thresk. + +"Your train is signalled," and as Thresk started up he reassured him. +"There's no hurry. I have sent word that it is not to start without you." +And while Baram Singh still stood waiting for orders in the doorway of +the tent Ballantyne walked round the table, took up the portrait very +deliberately and handed it to Thresk. + +"Thank you," he said. "Button it in your coat pocket." + +He waited while Thresk obeyed. + +"Thus," said Thresk with a laugh, "did the Rajah of Bakutu," and +Ballantyne replied with a grin. + +"Thank you for mentioning that name." He turned to Baram Singh. "The +camel, quick!" + +Baram Singh went out to the enclosure within the little village of tents +and Thresk asked curiously: + +"Do you distrust him?" + +Ballantyne looked steadily at his visitor and said: + +"I don't answer such questions. But I'll tell you something. If that man +were dying he would ask for leave. And if he would ask for leave because +he would not die with my scarlet livery on his back. Are you answered?" + +"Yes," said Thresk. + +"Very well." And with a brisk change of tone Ballantyne added: "I'll see +that your camel is ready." He called aloud to his wife: "Stella! Stella! +Mr. Thresk is going," and he went out through the doorway into the +moonlight. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +AND THE RIFLE + + +Thresk, alone in the tent, looked impatiently towards the grass-screen. +He wanted half-a-dozen words with Stella alone. Here was the opportunity, +the unhoped-for opportunity, and it was slipping away. Through the open +doorway of the tent he saw Ballantyne standing by a big fire and men +moving quickly in obedience to his voice. Then he heard the rustle of a +dress in the corridor, and she was in the room. He moved quickly towards +her, but she held up her hand and stopped him. + +"Oh, why did you come?" she said, and the pallor of her face reproached +him no less than the regret in her voice. + +"I heard of you in Bombay," he replied. "I am glad that I did come." + +"And I am sorry." + +"Why?" + +She looked about the tent as though he might find his answer there. +Thresk did not move. He stood near to her, watching her face intently +with his jaw rather set. + +"Oh, I didn't say that to wound you," said Stella, and she sat down on +one of the cushioned basket-chairs. "You mustn't think I wasn't glad to +see you. I was--at the first moment I was very glad;" and she saw his +face lighten as she spoke. "I couldn't help it. All the years rolled +away. I remembered the Sussex Downs and--and--days when we rode there +high up above the weald. Do you remember?" + +"Yes." + +"How long was that ago?" + +"Eight years." + +Stella laughed wistfully. + +"To me it seems a century." She was silent for a moment, and though he +spoke to her urgently she did not answer. She was carried back to the +high broad hills of grass with the curious clumps of big beech-trees upon +their crests. + +"Do you remember Halnaker Gallop?" she asked with a laugh. "We found it +when the chains weren't up and had the whole two miles free. Was there +ever such grass?" + +She was looking straight at the bureau, but she was seeing that green +lane of shaven turf in the haze of an August morning. She saw it rise and +dip in the open between long brown grass. There was a tree on the +left-hand side just where the ride dipped for the first time. Then it ran +straight to the big beech-trees and passed between them, a wide glade of +sunlight, and curved out at the upper end by the road and dipped down +again to the two lodges. + +"And the ridge at the back of Charlton forest, all the weald to Leith +Hill in view?" She rose suddenly from her chair. "Oh, I am sorry that +you came." + +"And I am glad," repeated Thresk. + +The stubbornness with which he repeated his words arrested her. She +looked at him--was it with distrust, he asked himself? He could not be +sure. But certainly there was a little hard note in her voice which had +not been there before, when in her turn she asked: + +"Why?" + +"Because I shouldn't have known," he said in a quick whisper. "I should +have gone back. I should have left you here. I shouldn't have known." + +Stella recoiled. + +"There is nothing to know," she said sharply, and Thresk pointed at +her throat. + +"Nothing?" + +Stella Ballantyne raised her hand to cover the blue marks. + +"I--I fell and hurt myself," she stammered. + +"It was he--Ballantyne." + +"No," she cried and she drew herself erect. But Thresk would not accept +the denial. + +"He ill-treats you," he insisted. "He drinks and ill-treats you." + +Stella shook her head. + +"You asked questions in Bombay where we are known. You were not told +that," she said confidently. There was only one person in Bombay who +knew the truth and Jane Repton, she was very sure, would never have +betrayed her. + +"That's true," Thresk conceded. "But why? Because it's only here in camp +that he lets himself go. He told us as much to-night. You were here at +the table. You heard. He let his secret slip: no one to carry tales, no +one to spy. In the towns he sets a guard upon himself. Yes, but he looks +forward to the months of camp when there are no next-door neighbours." + +"No, that's not true," she protested and cast about for explanations. +"He--he has had a long day and to-night he was tired--and when you are +tired--Oh, as a rule he's different." And to her relief she heard +Ballantyne's voice outside the tent. + +"Thresk! Thresk!" + +She came forward and held out her hand. + +"There! Your camel's ready," she said. "You must go! Goodbye," and as he +took it the old friendliness transfigured her face. "You are a great man +now. I read of you. You always meant to be, didn't you? Hard work?" + +"Very," said Thresk. "Four o'clock in the morning till midnight;" and she +suddenly caught him by the arm. + +"But it's worth it." She let him go and clasped her hands together. "Oh, +you have got everything!" she cried in envy. + +"No," he answered. But she would not listen. + +"Everything you asked for," she said and she added hurriedly, "Do you +still collect miniatures? No time for that now I suppose." Once more +Ballantyne's voice called to them from the camp-fire. + +"You must go." + +Thresk looked through the opening of the tent. Ballantyne had turned and +was coming back towards them. + +"I'll write to you from Bombay," he said, and utter disbelief showed in +her face and sounded in her laugh. + +"That letter will never reach me," she said lightly, and she went up to +the door of the tent. Thresk had a moment whilst her back was turned and +he used it. He took his pipe out of his pocket and placed it silently and +quickly on the table. He wanted a word with her when Ballantyne was out +of the way and she was not upon her guard to fence him off. The pipe +might be his friend and give it him. He went up to Stella at the +tent-door and Ballantyne, who was half-way between the camp-fire and the +tent, stopped when he caught sight of him. + +"That's right," he said. "You ought to be going;" and he turned again +towards the camel. Thus for another moment they were alone together, but +it was Stella who seized it. + +"There go!" she said. "You must go," and in the same breath she added: + +"Married yet?" + +"No," answered Thresk. + +"Still too busy getting on?" + +"That's not the reason"--and he lowered his voice to a whisper--"Stella." + +Again she laughed in frank and utter disbelief. + +"Nor is Stella. That's mere politeness and good manners. We must show the +dear creatures the great part they play in our lives." And upon that all +her fortitude suddenly deserted her. She had played her part so far, she +could play it no longer. An extraordinary change came over her face. The +smiles, the laughter slipped from it like a loosened mask. Thresk saw +such an agony of weariness and hopeless longing in her eyes as he had +never seen even with his experience in the Courts of Law. She drew back +into the shadow of the tent. + +"In thirteen days you'll be steaming up the Channel," she whispered, and +with a sob she covered her face with her hands. Thresk saw the tears +trickle between her fingers. + +Ballantyne at the fire was looking back towards the tent. Thresk hurried +out to him. The camel was crouching close to the fire saddled and ready. + +"You have time," said Ballantyne. "The train's not in yet," and Thresk +walked to the side of the camel, where a couple of steps had been placed +for him to mount. He had a foot on the step when he suddenly clapped his +hand to his pocket. + +"I've left my pipe," he cried, "and I've a night's journey in front of +me. I won't be a second." + +He ran back with all his speed to the tent. The hangings at the door were +closed. He tore them aside and rushed in. + +"Stella!" he said in a whisper, and then he stopped in amazement. He had +left her on the very extremity of distress. He found her, though to be +sure the stains of her tears were still visible upon her face, busy with +one of the evening preparations natural in a camp-life--quietly, +energetically busy. She looked up once when he raised the hanging over +the door, but she dropped her eyes the next instant to her work. + +She was standing by the table with a small rook-rifle in her hands. The +breech was open. She looked down the barrel, holding up the weapon so +that the light might shine into the breech. + +"Yes?" she said, and with so much indifference that she did not lift her +eyes from her work. "I thought you had gone." + +"I left my pipe behind me," said Thresk. + +"There it is, on the table." + +"Thank you." + +He put it in his pocket. Of the two he was disconcerted and at a loss, +she was entirely at her ease. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AN EPISODE IN BALLANTYNE'S LIFE + + +The Reptons lived upon the Khamballa Hill and the bow-window of their +drawing-room looked down upon the Arabian Sea and southwards along the +coast towards Malabar Point. In this embrasure Mrs. Repton sat through +a morning, denying herself to her friends. A book lay open on her lap +but her eyes were upon the sea. A few minutes after the clock upon her +mantelpiece had struck twelve she saw that for which she watched: the +bowsprit and the black bows of a big ship pushing out from under the +hill and the water boiling under its stem. The whole ship came into +view with its awnings and its saffron funnels and headed to the +north-west for Aden. + +Jane Repton rose up from her chair and watched it go. In the sunlight its +black hull was so sharply outlined on the sea, its lines and spars were +so trim that it looked a miniature ship which she could reach out her +hand and snatch. But her eyes grew dim as she watched, so that it became +shapeless and blurred, and long before the liner was out of sight it was +quite lost to her. + +"I am foolish," she said as she turned away, and she bit her +handkerchief hard. This was midday of the Friday and ever since that +dinner-party at the Carruthers' on the Monday night she had been +alternating between wild hopes and arguments of prudence. But until this +moment of disappointment she had not realised how completely the hopes +had gained the upper hand with her and how extravagantly she had built +upon Thresk's urgent questioning of her at the dinner-table. + +"Very likely he never found the Ballantynes at all," she argued. But he +might have sent her word. All that morning she had been expecting a +telephone message or a telegram or a note scribbled on board the steamer +and sent up the Khamballa Hill by a messenger. But not a token had come +from him and now of the boat which was carrying him to England there was +nothing left but the stain of its smoke upon the sky. + +Mrs. Repton put her handkerchief in her pocket and was going about the +business of her house when the butler opened the door. + +"I am not in--" Mrs. Repton began and cut short the sentence with a cry +of welcome and surprise, for close upon the heels of the servant Thresk +was standing. + +"You!" she cried. "Oh!" + +She felt her legs weakening under her and she sat down abruptly on a +chair. + +"Thank Heaven it was there," she said. "I should have sat on the +floor if it hadn't been." She dismissed the butler and held out her +hand to Thresk. "Oh, my friend," she said, "there's your steamer on +its way to Aden." + +Her voice rang with enthusiasm and admiration. Thresk only nodded his +head gloomily. + +"I have missed it," he replied. "It's very unfortunate. I have clients +waiting for me in London." + +"You missed it on purpose," she declared and Thresk's face relaxed into a +smile. He turned away from the window to her. He seemed suddenly to wear +the look of a boy. + +"I have the best of excuses," he replied, "the perfect excuse." But even +he could not foresee how completely that excuse was to serve him. + +"Sit down," said Jane Repton, "and tell me. You went to Chitipur, I know. +From your presence here I know too that you found--them--there." + +"No," said Thresk, "I didn't." He sat down and looked straight into Jane +Repton's eyes. "I had a stroke of luck. I found them--in camp." + +Jane Repton understood all that the last two words implied. + +"I should have wished that," she answered, "if I had dared to think it +possible. You talked with Stella?" + +"Hardly a word alone. But I saw." + +"What did you see?" + +"I am here to tell you." And he told her the story of his night at the +camp so far as it concerned Stella Ballantyne, and indeed not quite all +of that. For instance he omitted altogether to relate how he had left his +pipe behind in the tent and had returned for it. That seemed to him +unimportant. Nor did he tell her of his conversation with Ballantyne +about the photograph. "He was in a panic. He had delusions," he said and +left the matter there. Thresk had the lawyer's mind or rather the mind of +a lawyer in big practice. He had the instinct for the essential fact and +the knowledge that it was most lucid when presented in a naked +simplicity. He was at pains to set before Jane Repton what he had seen of +the life which Stella lived with Stephen Ballantyne and nothing else. + +"Now," he said when he had finished, "you sent me to Chitipur. I must +know why." + +And when she hesitated he overbore her. + +"You can be guilty of no disloyalty to your friend," he insisted, "by +being frank with me. After all I have given guarantees. I went to +Chitipur upon your word. I have missed my boat. You bade me go to +Chitipur. That told me too little or too much. I say too little. I have +got to know all now." And he rose up and stood before her. "What do you +know about Stephen Ballantyne?" + +"I'll tell you," said Jane Repton. She looked at the clock. "You had +better stay and lunch with us if you will. We shall be alone. I'll tell +you afterwards. Meanwhile--" and in her turn she stood up. The sense of +responsibility was heavy upon her. + +She had sent this man upon his errand of knowledge. He had done, in +consequence of it, a stronger, a wilder thing than she had thought, than +she had hoped for. She had a panicky feeling that she had set great +forces at work. + +"Meanwhile--" asked Thresk; and she drew a breath of relief. The +steadiness of his eyes and voice comforted her. His quiet insistence gave +her courage. None of her troubles and doubts had any place apparently in +his mind. A nervous horse in the hands of a real horseman--thus she +thought of herself in Thresk's presence. + +"Meanwhile I'll give you one reason why I wanted you to go. My husband's +time in India is up. We are leaving for England altogether in a month's +time. We shall not come back at all. And when we have gone Stella will be +left without one intimate friend in the whole country." + +"Yes," said Thresk. "That wouldn't do, would it?" and they went in to +their luncheon. + +All through that meal, before the servants, they talked what is written +in the newspapers. And of the two she who had fears and hesitations was +still the most impatient to get it done. She had her curiosity and it +was beginning to consume her. What had Thresk known of Stella and she of +him before she had come out to India and become Stella Ballantyne? Had +they been in love? If not why had Thresk gone to Chitipur? Why had he +missed his boat and left all his clients over there in England in the +lurch? If so, why hadn't they married--the idiots? Oh, how she wanted to +know all the answers to all these questions! And what he proposed to do +now! And she would know nothing unless she was frank herself. She had +read his ultimatum in his face. + +"We'll have coffee in my sitting-room. You can smoke there," she said and +led the way to it. "A cheroot?" + +Thresk smiled with amusement. But the amusement annoyed her for she did +not understand it. + +"I have got a Havana cigar here," he said. "May I?" + +"Of course." + +He lit it and listened. But it was not long before it went out and he did +not stir to light it again. The incident of which Mrs. Repton had been +the witness, and which she related now, invested Ballantyne with horror. +Thresk had left the camp at Chitipur with an angry contempt for him. The +contempt passed out of his feelings altogether as he sat in Mrs. Repton's +drawing-room. + +"I am not telling you what Stella has confided to me," said Mrs. Repton. +"Stella's loyal even when there's no cause for loyalty; and if loyalty +didn't keep her mouth closed, self-respect would. I tell you what I saw. +We were at Agra at the time. My husband was Collector there. There was +a Durbar held there and the Rajah of Chitipur came to it with his +elephants and his soldiers, and naturally Captain Ballantyne and his wife +came too. They stayed with us. You are to understand that I knew +nothing--absolutely nothing--up to that time. I hadn't a suspicion--until +the afternoon of the finals in the Polo Tournament. Stella and I went +together alone and we came home about six. Stella went upstairs and I--I +walked into the library." + +She had found Ballantyne sitting in a high arm-chair, his eyes glittering +under his black thick eyebrows and his face livid. He looked at her as +she entered, but he neither moved nor spoke, and she thought that he was +ill. But the decanter of whisky stood empty on a little table at his side +and she noticed it. + +"We have some people coming to dinner to-night, Captain Ballantyne," she +said. "We shall dine at eight, so there's an hour and a half still." + +She went over to a book-case and took out a book. When she turned back +into the room a change had taken place in her visitor. Life had flickered +into his face. His eyes were wary and cunning. + +"And why do you tell me that?" he asked in a voice which was thick and +formidable. She had a notion that he did not know who she was and then +suddenly she became afraid. She had discovered a secret--his secret. For +once in the towns he had let himself go. She had a hope now that he could +not move and that he knew it; he sat as still as his arm-chair. + +"I had forgotten to tell you," she replied. "I thought you might like to +know beforehand." + +"Why should I like to know beforehand?" + +She had his secret, he plied her with questions to know if she had it. +She must hide her knowledge. Every instinct warned her to hide it. + +"The people who are coming are strangers to India," she said, "but I have +told them of you and they will come expectant." + +"You are very kind." + +She had spoken lightly and with a laugh. Ballantyne replied without irony +or amusement and with his eyes fixed upon her face. Mrs. Repton could not +account for the panic which seized hold upon her. She had dined in +Captain Ballantyne's company before often enough; he had now been for +three days in her house; she had recognised his ability and had neither +particularly liked nor disliked him. Her main impression had been that he +was not good enough for Stella, and it was an impression purely feminine +and instinctive. Now suddenly he had imposed himself upon her as a +creature dangerous, beastlike. She wanted to get out of the room but she +dared not, for she was sure that her careful steps would, despite +herself, change into a run. She sat down, meaning to read for a few +moments, compose herself and then go. But no sooner had she taken her +seat than her terror increased tenfold, for Ballantyne rose swiftly from +his chair and walking in a circle round the room with an extraordinarily +light and noiseless step disappeared behind her. Then he sat down. Mrs. +Repton heard the slight grating of the legs of a chair upon the floor. It +was a chair at a writing-table close by the window and exactly at her +back. He could see every movement which she made, and she could see +nothing, not so much as the tip of one of his fingers. And of his fingers +she was now afraid. He was watching her from his point of vantage; she +seemed to feel his eyes burning upon the nape of her neck. And he said +nothing; and he did not stir. It was broad daylight, she assured herself. +She had but to cross the room to the bell beside the fireplace. Nay, she +had only to scream--and she was very near to screaming--to bring the +servants to her rescue. But she dared not do it. Before she was half-way +to the bell, before the cry was out of her mouth she would feel his +fingers close about her throat. + + * * * * * + +Mrs. Repton had begun to tell her story with reluctance, dreading lest +Thresk should attribute it to a woman's nerves and laugh. But he did not. +He listened gravely, seriously; and, as she continued, that nightmare of +an evening so lived again in her recollections that she could not but +make it vivid in her words. + +"I had more than a mere sense of danger," she said. "I felt besides a +sort of hideous discomfort, almost physical discomfort, which made me +believe that there was something evil in that room beyond the power of +language to describe." + +She felt her self-control leaving her. If she stayed she must betray her +alarm. Even now she had swallowed again and again, and she wondered that +he had not detected the working of her throat. She summoned what was left +of her courage and tossing her book aside rose slowly and deliberately. + +"I think I shall copy Stella's example and lie down for an hour," she +said without turning her head towards Ballantyne, and even while she +spoke she knew that she had made a mistake in mentioning Stella. He would +follow her to discover whether she went to Stella's room and told what +she had seen to her. But he did not move. She reached the door, turned +the handle, went out and closed the door behind her. + +For a moment then her strength failed her; she leaned against the wall by +the side of the door, her heart racing. But the fear that he would follow +urged her on. She crossed the hall and stopped deliberately before a +cabinet of china at the foot of the stairs, which stood against the wall +in which the library door was placed. While she stood there she saw the +door open very slowly and Ballantyne's livid face appear at the opening. +She turned towards the stairs and mounted them without looking back. +Halfway up a turn hid the hall from her, and the moment after she had +passed the turn she heard him crossing the hall after her, again with a +lightness of step which seemed to be uncanny and inhuman in so heavy and +gross a creature. + +"I was appalled," she said to Thresk frankly. "He had the step of an +animal. I felt that some great baboon was tracking me stealthily." + +Mrs. Repton came to Stella Ballantyne's door and was careful not to stop. +She reached her own room, and once in shot the bolt; and in a moment or +two she heard him breathing just outside the panels. + +"And to think that Stella is alone with him in the jungle months at a +time!" she cried, actually wringing her hands. "That thought was in my +mind all the time--a horror of a thought. Oh, I could understand now the +loss of her spirits, her colour, her youth." + +Pictures of lonely camps and empty rest-houses, far removed from any +habitation in the silence of Indian nights, rose before her eyes. She +imagined Stella propped up on her elbow in bed, wide-eyed with terror, +listening and listening to the light footsteps of the drunken brute +beyond the partition-wall, shivering when they approached, dropping back +with the dew of her sweat upon her forehead when they retired; and +these pictures she translated in words for Thresk in her house on the +Khamballa Hill. + +Thresk was moved and showed that he was moved. He rose and walked to the +window, turning his back to her. + +"Why did she marry him?" he exclaimed. "She was poor, but she had a +little money. Why did she marry him?" and he turned back to Mrs. Repton +for an answer. + +She gave him one quick look and said: + +"That is one of the things she has never told me and I didn't meet her +until after she had married him." + +"And why doesn't she leave him?" + +Mrs. Repton held up her hands. + +"Oh, the easy questions, Mr. Thresk! How many women endure the thing that +is because it is? Even to leave your husband you want a trifle of spirit. +And what if your spirit's broken? What if you are cowed? What if you live +in terror day and night?" + +"Yes. I am a fool," said Thresk, and he sat down again. "There are two +more questions I want to ask. Did you ever talk to Stella"--the Christian +name slipped naturally from him and only Jane Repton of the two remarked +that he had used it--"of that incident in the library at Agra?" + +"Yes." + +"And did she in consequence of what you told her give you any account of +her life with her husband?" + +Mrs. Repton hesitated not because she was any longer in doubt as to +whether she would speak the whole truth or not--she had committed herself +already too far--but because the form of the question nettled her. It was +a little too forensic for her taste. She was anxious to know the man; she +could dispense with the barrister altogether. + +"Yes, she did," she replied, "and don't cross-examine me, please." + +"I beg your pardon," said Thresk with a laugh which made him human on +the instant. + +"Well, it's true," said Jane Repton in a rush. "She told me the +truth--what you know and more. He stripped when he was drunk, stripped +to the skin. Think of it! Stella told me that and broke down. Oh, if you +had seen her! For Stella to give way--that alone must alarm her friends. +Oh, but the look of her! She sat by my side on the sofa, wringing her +hands, with the tears pouring down her face ..." Thresk rose quickly +from his chair. + +"Thank you," he said, cutting her short. He wanted to hear no more. He +held out his hand to her with a certain abruptness. + +Mrs. Repton rose too. + +"What are you going to do?" she asked breathlessly. "I must know I have a +right to, I think. I have told you so much. I was in great doubt whether +I should tell you anything. But--" Her voice broke and she ended her +plea lamely enough: "I am very fond of Stella." + +"I know that," said Thresk, and his voice was grateful and his face +most friendly. + +"Well, what are you going to do?" + +"I am going to write to her to ask her to join me in Bombay," he replied. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +NEWS FROM CHITIPUR + + +A long silence followed upon his words. Jane Repton turned to the +mantelshelf and moved an ornament here and another one there. She had +contemplated this very consequence of Thresk's journey to Chitipur. She +had actually worked for it herself. She was frank enough to acknowledge +that. None the less his announcement, quietly as he had made it, was a +shock to her. She did not, however, go back upon her work; and when she +spoke it was rather to make sure that he was not going to act upon an +unconsidered impulse. + +"It will damage your career," she said. "Of course you have +thought of that." + +"It will alter it," he answered, "if she comes to me. I shall go out of +Parliament, of course." + +"And your practice?" + +"That will suffer too for a while no doubt. But even if I lost it +altogether I should not be a poor man." + +"You have saved money?" + +"No. There has not been much time for that, but for a good many years now +I have collected silver and miniatures. I know something about them and +the collection is of value." + +"I see." + +Mrs. Repton looked at him now. Oh, yes, he had thought his proposal out +during the night journey to Bombay--not a doubt of it. + +"Stella, too, will suffer," she said. + +"Worse than she does now?" asked Thresk. + +"No. But her position will be difficult for awhile at least," and she +came towards Thresk and pleaded. + +"You will be thoughtful of her, for her? Oh, if you should play her +false--how I should hate you!" and her eyes flashed fire at him. + +"I don't think that you need fear that." + +But he was too calm for her, too quiet. She was in the mood to want +heroics. She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind. +And Thresk stood before her without one. She searched his face with +doubtful eyes. Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it. + +"She will need--love," said Mrs. Repton. "There--that's the word. Can you +give it her?" + +"If she comes to me--yes. I have wanted her for eight years," and then +suddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion. A spasm +of pain convulsed his face. He sat down and beat with his fist upon the +table. "It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave her +there--miles away from any friend. I would have torn her from him by +force if there had been a single hope that way. But his levies would have +barred the road. No, this was the only chance: to come away to Bombay, +to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slip +out and travel here she will find me waiting." + +Mrs. Repton was satisfied. But while he had been speaking a new fear had +entered into her. + +"There's something I should have thought of," she exclaimed. + +"Yes?" + +"Captain Ballantyne is not generous. He is just the sort of man not to +divorce his wife." + +Thresk raised his head. Clearly that possibility had no more occurred to +him than it had to Jane Repton. He thought it over now. + +"Just the sort of man," he agreed. "But we must take that risk--if +she comes." + +"The letter's not yet written," Mrs. Repton suggested. + +"But it will be," he replied, and then he stood and confronted her. "Do +you wish me not to write it?" + +She avoided his eyes, she looked upon the floor, she began more than one +sentence of evasion; but in the end she took both his hands in hers and +said stoutly: + +"No, I don't! Write! Write!" + +"Thank you!" + +He went to the door, and when he had reached it she called to him in a +low voice. + +"Mr. Thresk, what did you mean when you repeated and repeated if +she comes?" + +Thresk came slowly back into the room. + +"I meant that eight years ago I gave her a very good reason why she +should put no faith in me." + +He told her that quite frankly and simply, but he told her no more than +that, and she let him go. He went back to the great hotel on the Apollo +Bund and sent off a number of cablegrams to London saying that he had +missed his steamer and that the work waiting for him must go to other +hands. The letter to Stella Ballantyne he kept to the last. It could not +reach her immediately in any case since she was in camp. For all he knew +it might be weeks before she read it; and he had need to go warily in the +writing of it. Certain words she had used to him were an encouragement; +but there were others which made him doubt whether she would have any +faith in him. Every now and then there had been a savour of bitterness. +Once she had been shamed because of him, on Bignor Hill where Stane +Street runs to Chichester, and a second time in front of him in the tent +at Chitipur. No, it was not an easy letter which he had to write, and he +took the night and the greater part of the next day to decide upon its +wording. It could not in any case go until the night-mail. He had +finished it and directed it by six o'clock in the evening and he went +down with the letter in his hand into the big lounge to post it in the +box there. But it never was posted. + +Close to the foot of the staircase stood a tape machine, and as Thresk +descended he heard the clicking of the instrument and saw the usual small +group of visitors about it. They were mostly Americans, and they were +reading out to one another the latest prices of the stock-markets. Some +of the chatter reached to Thresk's inattentive ears, and when he was only +two steps from the floor one carelessly-spoken phrase interjected between +the values of two securities brought him to a stop. The speaker was a +young man with a squarish face and thick hair parted accurately in the +middle. He was dressed in a thin grey suit and he was passing the tape +between his fingers as it ran out. The picture of him was impressed +during that instant upon Thresk's mind, so that he could never afterwards +forget it. + +"Copper's up one point," he was saying, "that's fine. Who's Captain +Ballantyne, I wonder? United Steel has dropped seven-eighths. Well, that +doesn't affect me," and so he ran on. + +Thresk heard no more of what he said. He stood wondering what news could +have come up on the tape of Captain Ballantyne who was out in camp in the +state of Chitipur, or if there was another Captain Ballantyne. He joined +the little group in front of the machine, and picking up the ribbon from +the floor ran his eyes backwards along it until he came to "United +Steel." The sentence in front of that ran as follows: + +"Captain Ballantyne was found dead early yesterday morning outside his +tent close to Jarwhal Junction." + +Thresk read the sentence twice and then walked away. The news might be +false, of course, but if it were true here was a revolution in his life. +There was no need for this letter which he held in his hand. The way was +smoothed out for Stella, for him. Not for a moment could he pretend to do +anything but welcome the news, to wish with all his heart that it was +true. And it seemed probable news. There was the matter of that +photograph. Thresk had carried it out to the Governor's house on Malabar +Point on the very morning of his arrival in Bombay. He had driven on to +Mrs. Repton's house after he had left it there. But he had taken it away +from Chitipur at too late a day to save Ballantyne. Ballantyne had, after +all, had good cause to be afraid while he possessed it, and the news had +not yet got to Salak's friends that it had left his possession. Thus he +made out the history of Captain Ballantyne's death. + +The tape machine, however, might have ticked out a mere rumour with no +truth in it at all. He went to the office and obtained a copy of _The +Advocate of India_,--the evening newspaper of the city. He looked at the +stop-press telegrams. There was no mention of Ballantyne's death. Nor on +glancing down the columns could he find in any paragraph a statement that +any mishap had befallen him. But on the other hand he read that he +himself, Henry Thresk, having brought his case to a successful +conclusion, had left India yesterday by the mail-steamer Madras, bound +for Marseilles. He threw down the paper and went to the telephone-box. If +the news were true the one person likely to know of it was Mrs. Repton. +Thresk rang up the house on the Khamballa Hill and asked to speak to her. +An answer was returned to him at once that Mrs. Repton had given orders +that she was not to be disturbed. Thresk however insisted: + +"Will you please give my name to her--Henry Thresk," and he waited with +his ear to the receiver for a century. At last a voice spoke to him, but +it was again the voice of the servant. + +"The Memsahib very sorry, sir, but cannot speak to any one just now;" and +he heard the jar of the instrument as the receiver at the other end was +sharply hung up and the connection broken. + +Thresk came out from the telephone-box with a face puzzled and very +grave. Mrs. Repton refused to speak to him! + +It was a fact, an inexplicable fact, and it alarmed him. It was +impossible to believe that mere reflection during the last twenty-four +hours had brought about so complete a revolution in her feelings. He to +whom she had passionately cried "Write! Write!" only yesterday could +hardly be barred out from mere speech with her to-day for any fault of +his. He had done nothing, had seen no one. Thresk was certain now that +the news upon the tape was true. But it could not be all the truth. There +was something behind it--something rather grim and terrible. + +Thresk walked to the door of the hotel and called up a motor-car. "Tell +him to drive to the Khamballa Hill," he said to the porter. "I'll let him +know when to stop." + +The porter translated the order and Thresk stopped him at Mrs. +Repton's door. + +"The Memsahib does not receive any one to-day," said the butler. + +"I know," replied Thresk. He scribbled on a card and sent it in. There +was a long delay. Thresk stood in the hall looking out through the open +door. Night had come. There were lights upon the roadway, lights a long +way below at the water's edge on Breach Candy, and there was a light +twinkling far out on the Arabian Sea. But in the house behind him all was +dark. He had come to an abode of desolation and mourning; and his heart +sank and he was attacked with forebodings. At last in the passage behind +him there was a shuffling of feet and a gleam of white. The Memsahib +would receive him. + +Thresk was shown into the drawing-room. That room too was unlit. But the +blinds had not been lowered and light from a street lamp outside turned +the darkness into twilight. No one came forward to greet him, but the +room was not empty. He saw Repton and his wife huddled close together on +a sofa in a recess by the fireplace. + +"I thought that I had better come up from Bombay," said Thresk, as he +stood in the middle of the room. No answer was returned to him for a few +moments and then it was Repton himself who spoke. + +"Yes, yes," he said, and he got up from the sofa. "I think we had better +have some light," he added in a strange indifferent voice. He turned the +light on in the central chandelier, leaving the corners of the room in +shadow, like--the parallel forced its way into Thresk's mind--like the +tent in Chitipur. Then very methodically he pulled down the blinds. He +did not look at Thresk and Jane Repton on the couch never stirred. +Thresk's forebodings became a dreadful certainty. Some evil thing had +happened. He might have been in a house of death. He knew that he was +not wanted there, that husband and wife wished to be alone and silently +resented his presence. But he could not go without more knowledge than he +had. + +"A message came up on the tape half an hour ago," he said in a low voice. +"It reported that Ballantyne was dead." + +"Yes," replied Repton. He was leaning forward over a table and looking up +to the chandelier as if he fancied that its light burnt more dimly than +was usual. + +"That's true," and he spoke in the same strange mechanical voice he had +used before. + +"That he was found dead outside his tent," Thresk added. + +"It's quite true," Repton agreed. "We are very sorry." + +"Sorry!" + +The exclamation burst from Thresk's lips. + +"Yes." + +Repton moved away from the chandelier. He had not looked at Thresk once +since he had entered the room; nor did he look towards his wife. His face +was very pale and he was busy now setting a chair in place, moving a +photograph, doing any one of the little unnecessary things people +restlessly do when there is an importunate visitor in the room who will +not go. + +"You see, there's terribly bad news," he added. + +"What news?" + +"He was shot, you know. That wasn't in the telegram on the tape, of +course. Yes, he was shot--on the same night you dined there--after you +had gone." + +"Shot!" + +Thresk's voice dropped to a whisper. + +"Yes," and the dull quiet voice went on, speaking apparently of some +trivial affair in which none of them could have any interest. "He was +shot by a bullet from a little rook-rifle which belonged to Stella, and +which she was in the habit of using." + +Thresk's heart stood still. A picture flashed before his eyes. He +saw the inside of that dimly lit tent with its red lining and Stella +standing by the table. He could hear her voice: "This is my little +rook-rifle. I was seeing that it was clean for to-morrow." She had spoken +so carelessly, so indifferently that it wasn't conceivable that what was +in all their minds could be true. Yet she had spoken, after all, no more +indifferently than Repton was speaking now; and he was in a great stress +of grief. Then Thresk's mind leaped to the weak point in all this chain +of presumption. + +"But Ballantyne was found outside the tent," he cried with a little note +of triumph. But it had no echo in Repton's reply. + +"I know. That makes everything so much worse." + +"What do you mean?" + +"Ballantyne was found in the morning outside the tent stone-cold. But +no one had heard the shot, and there were sentries on the edge of the +encampment. He had been dragged outside after he was dead or when he +was dying." + +A low cry broke from Thresk. The weak point became of a sudden the most +deadly, the most terrible element in the whole case. He could hear the +prosecuting counsel making play with it. He stood for a moment lost in +horror. Repton had no further word to say to him. Mrs. Repton had never +once spoken. They wanted him away, out of the room, out of the house. +Some insight let him into the meaning of her silence. In the presence of +this tragedy remorse had gripped her. She was looking upon herself as one +who had plotted harm for Stella. She would never forgive Thresk for his +share in the plot. + +Thresk went out of the room without a word more to either Repton or his +wife. Whatever he did now he must do by himself. He would not be admitted +into that house again. He closed the door of the room behind him, and +hardly had he closed it when he heard the snap of a switch and the line +of light under the door vanished. Once more there was darkness in the +drawing-room. Repton no doubt had returned to his wife's side and they +were huddled again side by side on the sofa. Thresk walked down the hill +with a horrible feeling of isolation and loneliness. But he shook it off +as he neared the lights of Bombay. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THRESK INTERVENES + + +Thresk reached his hotel with some words ringing in his head which Jane +Repton had spoken to him at Mrs. Carruthers' dinner-party: + +"You can get any single thing in life you want if you want it enough, but +you cannot control the price you will have to pay for it. That you will +only learn afterwards and gradually." + +He had got what he had wanted--the career of distinction, and he wondered +whether he was to begin now to learn its price. + +He mounted to his sitting-room on the second floor, avoiding the lounge +and the lift and using a small side staircase instead of the great +central one. He had passed no one on the way. In his room he looked upon +the mantelshelf and on the table. No visitor had called on him that day; +no letter awaited him. For the first time since he had landed in India a +day had passed without some resident leaving on him a card or a note of +invitation. The newspapers gave him the reason. He was supposed to have +left on the _Madras_ for England. To make sure he rang for his waiter; no +message of any kind had come. + +"Shall I ask at the office?" the waiter asked. + +"By no means," answered Thresk, and he added: "I will have dinner served +up here to-night." + +There was just a possibility, he thought, that he might after all escape +this particular payment. He took from his pocket his unposted letter to +Stella Ballantyne. There was no longer any use for it and even its +existence was now dangerous to Stella. For let it be discovered, however +she might plead that she knew nothing of its contents, a motive for the +death of Ballantyne might be inferred from it. It would be a false +motive, but just the sort of motive which the man in the street would +immediately accept. Thresk burnt the letter carefully in a plate and +pounded up each black flake of paper until nothing was left but ashes. +Then for the moment his work was done. He had only to wait and he did not +wait long. On the very next morning his newspaper informed him that +Inspector Coulson of the Bombay Police had left for Chitipur. + +The Inspector was a young man devoted to his work, but he travelled now +upon a duty which he would gladly have handed to any other of his +colleagues. He had met Stella Ballantyne in Bombay upon one of her rare +visits to Jane Repton. He had sat at the same dinner-table with her, and +he did not find it pleasant to reflect on the tragic destiny which she +must now fulfil. For the facts were fatal. + +At daybreak on the morning of the Friday a sentry on the outer edge of +the camp at Jarwhal Junction had noticed something black lying upon the +ground in the open just outside the door of the Agent's big marquee. He +ran across the ground and discovered Captain Ballantyne sprawling, face +downwards, in the smoking-suit which he had worn at dinner the night +before. The sentry shook him gently by the shoulder, but the limpness of +the body frightened him. Then he noticed that there was blood upon the +ground, and calling loudly for help he ran to the guard-room tent. He +returned with others of the native levies and they lifted Ballantyne up. +He was dead and the body was cold. The levies carried him into the tent +and opened his shirt. He had been shot through the heart. They then +roused Mrs. Ballantyne's ayah and bade her wake her mistress. The ayah +went into Mrs. Ballantyne's room and found her mistress sound asleep. She +waked her up and told her what had happened. Stella Ballantyne said not a +word. She got out of bed, and flinging on some clothes went into the +outer tent, where the servants were standing about the body. Stella +Ballantyne went quite close to it and looked down upon the dead man's +face for a long time. She was pale, but there was no shrinking in her +attitude--no apprehension in her eyes. + +"He has been killed," she said at length; "telegrams must be sent at +once: to Ajmere for a doctor, to Bombay, and to His Highness the +Maharajah." + +Baram Singh salaamed. + +"It is as your Excellency wills," he said. + +"I will write them," said Stella quietly. And she sat down at her own +writing-table there and then. + +The doctor from Ajmere arrived during the day, made an examination and +telegraphed a report to the Chief Commissioner at Ajmere. That report +contained the three significant points which Repton had enumerated to +Thresk, but with some still more significant details. The bullet which +pierced Captain Ballantyne's heart had been fired from Mrs. Ballantyne's +small rook-rifle, and the exploded cartridge was still in the breech. The +rifle was standing up against Mrs. Ballantyne's writing-table in a corner +of the tent, when the doctor from Ajmere discovered it. In the second +place, although Ballantyne was found in the open, there was a patch of +blood upon the carpet within the tent and a trail of blood from that spot +to the door. There could be no doubt that Ballantyne was killed inside. +There was the third point to establish that theory. Neither the sentry on +guard nor any one of the servants sleeping in the adjacent tents had +heard the crack of the rifle. It would not be loud in any case, but if +the weapon had been fired in the open it would have been sufficiently +sharp and clear to attract the attention of the men on guard. The heavy +double lining of the tent however was thick enough so to muffle and +deaden the sound that it would pass unnoticed. + +The report was considered at Ajmere and forwarded. It now brought +Inspector Coluson of the Police up the railway from Bombay. He found Mrs. +Ballantyne waiting for him at the Residency of Chitipur. + +"I must tell you who I am," he said awkwardly. + +"There is no need to," she answered, "I know." + +He then cautioned her in the usual way, and producing his pocket-book +asked her whether she wished to throw any light upon her husband's death. + +"No," she said. "I have nothing to say. I was asleep and in bed when my +ayah came into my room with the news of his death." + +"Yes," said the Inspector uncomfortably. That detail, next to the +dragging of the body out of the tent, seemed to him the grimmest part of +the whole tragedy. + +He shut up his book. + +"I am afraid it is all very unsatisfactory," he said. "I think we must go +back to Bombay." + +"It is as your Excellency wills," said Stella in Hindustani, and the +Inspector was startled by the bad taste of the joke. He had not the +knowledge of her life with Ballantyne, which alone would have given him +the key to understand her. But he was not a fool, and a second glance at +her showed to him that she was not speaking in joke at all. He had an +impression that she was so tired that she did not at the moment care what +happened to her at all. The fatigue would wear off, no doubt, when she +realised that she must fight for her life, but now she stood in front of +him indifferent and docile--much as one of the native levies was wont to +stand before her husband. The words which the levies used and the +language in which they spoke them rose naturally to her lips, as the only +words and language suitable to the occasion. + +"You see, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said gently, "there is no reason to +suspect a single one of your servants or of your escort." + +"And there is reason to suspect me," she added, looking at him quietly +and steadily. + +The Inspector for his part looked away. He was a young man--no more than +a year or two older than Stella Ballantyne herself. They both came from +the same kind of stock. Her people and his people might have been friends +in some pleasant country village in one of the English counties. She was +pretty, too, disconcertingly pretty, in spite of the dark circles under +her eyes and the pallor of her face. There was a delicacy in her looks +and in her dress which appealed to him for tenderness. The appeal was all +the stronger because it was only in that way and unconsciously that she +appealed. In her voice, in her bearing, in her eyes there was no request, +no prayer. + +"I have been to the Palace," he said, "I have had an audience with the +Maharajah." + +"Of course," she answered. "I shall put no difficulties in your way." + +He was standing in her own drawing-room, noticing with what skill +comfort had been combined with daintiness, and how she had followed the +usual instinct of her kind in trying to create here in this room a piece +of England. Through the window he looked out upon a lawn which was being +watered by a garden-sprinkler, and where a gardener was at work attending +to a bed of bright flowers. There, too, she had been making the usual +pathetic attempt to convert a half-acre of this country of yellow desert +into a green garden of England. Coulson had not a shadow of doubt in his +mind Stella Ballantyne would exchange this room with its restful colours +and its outlook on a green lawn for--at the best--many years of solitary +imprisonment in Poona Gaol. He shut up his book with a snap. + +"Will you be ready to go in an hour?" he asked roughly. + +"Yes," said she. + +"If I leave you unwatched during that hour you will promise to me that +you will be ready to go in an hour?" + +Stella Ballantyne nodded her head. + +"I shall not kill myself now," she said, and he looked at her quickly, +but she did not trouble to explain her words. She merely added: "I may +take some clothes, I suppose?" + +"Whatever you need," said the Inspector. And he took her down to Bombay. + +She was formally charged next morning before the stipendiary for the +murder of her husband and remanded for a week. + +She was remanded at eleven o'clock in the morning, and five minutes later +the news was ticked off on the tape at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Within +another five minutes the news was brought upstairs to Thresk. He had been +fortunate. He was in a huge hotel, where people flit through its rooms +for a day and are gone the next, and no one is concerned with the doings +of his neighbour, a place of arrival and departure like the platform of a +great railway station. There was no place in all Bombay where Thresk +could so easily pass unnoticed. And he had passed unnoticed. A single +inquiry at the office, it is true, would have revealed his presence, but +no one had inquired, since by this time he should be nearing Aden. He had +kept to his rooms during the day and had only taken the air after it was +dark. This was in the early stages of wireless telegraphy, and the +_Madras_ had no installation. It might be that inquiries would be made +for him at Aden. He could only wait with Jane Repton's words ringing in +his ears: "You cannot control the price you will have to pay." + +Stella Ballantyne was brought up again in a week's time and the case then +proceeded from day to day. The character of Ballantyne was revealed, his +brutalities, his cunning. Detail by detail he was built up into a gross +sinister figure secret and violent which lived again in that crowded +court and turned the eyes of the spectators with a shiver of discomfort +upon the young and quiet woman in the dock. And in that character the +prosecution found the motive of the crime. Sympathy at times ran high for +Stella Ballantyne, but there were always the two grim details to keep it +in check: she had been found asleep by her ayah, quietly restfully asleep +within a few hours of Ballantyne's death; and she had, according to the +theory of the Crown, found in some violence of passion the strength to +drag the dying man from the tent and to leave him to gasp out his life +under the stars. + +Thresk watched the case from his rooms at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Every fact +which was calculated to arouse sympathy for her was also helping to +condemn her. No one doubted that she had shot Stephen Ballantyne. He +deserved shooting--very well. But that did not give her the right to be +his executioner. What was her defence to be? A sudden intolerable +provocation? How would that square with the dragging of his body across +the carpet to the door? There was the fatal insuperable act. + +Thresk read again and again the reports of the proceedings for a hint as +to the line of the defence. He got it the day when Repton appeared in the +witness-box on a subpoena from the Crown to bear testimony to the +violence of Stephen Ballantyne. He had seen Stella with her wrist +bruised so that in public she could not remove her gloves. + +"What kind of bruises?" asked the counsel. + +"Such bruises as might be made by some one twisting her arms," he +answered, and then Mr. Travers, a young barrister who was enjoying his +first leap into the public eye, rose to cross-examine. + +Thresk read through that cross-examination and rose to his feet. "You +cannot control the price you will have to pay," he said to himself. That +day, when Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor returned to his office after the +rising of the Court, he found Thresk waiting for him. + +"I wish to give evidence for Mrs. Ballantyne," said Thresk--"evidence +which will acquit her." + +He spoke with so much certainty that the solicitor was fairly startled. + +"And with evidence so positive in your possession it is only this +afternoon that you come here with it! Why?" + +Thresk was prepared for the question. + +"I have a great deal of work waiting for me in London," he returned. "I +hoped that it might not be necessary for me to appear at all. Now I see +that it is." + +The solicitor looked straight at Thresk. + +"I knew from Mrs. Repton that you dined with the Ballantynes that night, +but she was sure that you knew nothing of the affair. You had left the +tent before it happened." + +"That is true," answered Thresk. + +"Yet you have evidence which will acquit Mrs. Ballantyne?" + +"I think so." + +"How is it, then," the lawyer asked, "that we have heard nothing of this +evidence at all from Mrs. Ballantyne herself?" + +"Because she knows nothing of it," replied Thresk. + +The lawyer pointed to a chair. The two men sat down together in the +office and it was long before they parted. + +Within an hour of Thresk's return from the solicitor's office an +Inspector of Police waited on him at his hotel and was instantly shown +up. + +"We did not know until to-day," he said, "that you were still in Bombay, +Mr. Thresk. We believed you to be on the Madras, which reached Marseilles +early this morning." + +"I missed it," replied Thresk. "Had you wanted me you could have inquired +at Port Said five days ago." + +"Five days ago we had no information." + +The native servants of Ballantyne had from the first shrouded themselves +in ignorance. They would answer what questions were put to them; they +would not go one inch beyond. The crime was an affair of the Sahibs and +the less they had to do with it the better, until at all events they were +sure which way the wind was setting from Government House. Of their own +initiative they knew nothing. It was thus only by the discovery of +Thresk's letter to Captain Ballantyne, which was found crumpled up in a +waste-paper basket, that his presence that night in the tent was +suspected. + +"It is strange," the Inspector grumbled, "that you did not come to us of +your own accord when you had missed your boat and tell us what you knew." + +"I don't think it is strange at all," answered Thresk, "for I am a +witness for the defence. I shall give my evidence when the case for the +defence opens." + +The Inspector was disconcerted and went away. Thresk's policy had so far +succeeded. But he had taken a great risk and now that it was past he +realised with an intense relief how serious the risk had been. If the +Inspector had called upon him before he had made known his presence to +Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor and offered his evidence, his position would +have been difficult. He would have had to discover some other good +reason why he had lain quietly at his hotel during these last days. But +fortune had favoured him. He had to thank, above all, the secrecy of the +native servants. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THRESK GIVES EVIDENCE + + +Thresk's fears were justified. Sympathy for Stella Ballantyne had +already begun to wane. The fact that Ballantyne had been found outside +the door of the tent was already assuming a sinister importance. Mrs. +Ballantyne's counsel slid discreetly over that awkward incident. Very +fortunately, as it was now to prove, he did not cross-examine the doctor +from Ajmere at all. But there are always the few who oppose the general +opinion--the men and women who are in the minority because it is the +minority; those whom the hysterical glorification made of Stella +Ballantyne had offended; the austere, the pedantic, the just, the +jealous, all were quick to seize upon this disconcerting fact: Stella +Ballantyne had dragged her dying husband from the tent. It was either +sheer callousness or blind fury--you might take your choice. In either +case it dulled the glow of martyrdom which for a week or two had been so +radiant upon Stella Ballantyne's forehead; and the few who argued thus +attracted adherents daily. And with the sympathy for Stella Ballantyne +interest in the case began to wane too. + +The magisterial inquiry threatened to become tedious. The pictures of +the witnesses and the principals occupied less and less space in the +newspapers. In another week the case would be coldly left with a shrug of +the shoulders to the Law Courts. But unexpectedly curiosity was stirred +again, for the day after Thresk had called upon the lawyer, when the case +for the Crown was at an end, Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, Mr. Travers, +asked permission to recall Baram Singh. Permission was granted, and Baram +Singh once more took his place in the witness-box. + +Mr. Travers leant against the desk behind him and put his questions with +the most significant slowness. + +"I wish to ask you, Baram Singh," he said, "about the dinner-table on the +Thursday night. You laid it?" + +"Yes," replied Baram Singh. + +"For how many?" + +"For three." + +There was a movement through the whole court. + +"Yes," said Mr. Travers, "Captain Ballantyne had a visitor that night." + +Baram Singh agreed. + +"Look round the court and tell the magistrate if you can see here the man +who dined with Captain Ballantyne and his wife that night." + +For a moment the court was filled with the noise of murmuring. The usher +cried "Silence!" and the murmuring ceased. A hush of expectation filled +that crowded room as Baram Singh's eyes travelled slowly round the +walls. He dropped them to the well of the court, and even his +unexpressive face flashed with a look of recognition. + +"There," he cried, "there!" and he pointed to a man who was sitting just +underneath the counsel's bench. + +Mr. Travers leant forward and in a quiet but particularly clear +voice said: + +"Will you kindly stand up, Mr. Thresk?" + +Thresk stood up. To many of those present--the idlers, the people of +fashion, the seekers after a thrill of excitement who fill the public +galleries and law-courts--his long conduct of the great Carruthers trial +had made him a familiar figure. To the others his name, at all events, +was known, and as he stood up on the floor of the court a swift and +regular movement like a ripple of water passed through the throng. They +leant forward to get a clearer view of him and for a moment there was a +hiss of excited whispering. + +"That is the man who dined with Captain and Mrs. Ballantyne on the night +when Captain Ballantyne was killed?" said Mr. Travers. + +"Yes," replied Baram Singh. + +No one understood what was coming. People began to ask themselves whether +Thresk was concerned in the murder. Word had been published that he had +already left for England. How was it he was here now? Mr. Travers, for +his part, was enjoying to the full the suspense which his question had +aroused. Not by any intonation did he allow a hint to escape him whether +he looked upon Thresk as an enemy or friend. + +"You may sit down, sir, now," he said, and Thresk resumed his seat. + +"Will you tell us what you know of Mr. Thresk's visit to the Captain?" +Travers resumed, and Baram Singh told how a camel had been sent to the +dak-house by the station of Jarwhal Junction. + +"Yes," said Mr. Travers, "and he dined in the tent. How long did he +stay?" + +"He left the camp at eleven o'clock on the camel to catch the night train +to Bombay. The Captain-sahib saw him off from the edge of the camp." + +"Ah," said Mr. Travers, "Captain Ballantyne saw him off?" + +"Yes--from the edge of the camp." + +"And then went back to the tent?" + +"Yes." + +"Now I want to take you to another point. You waited at dinner?" + +"Yes." + +"And towards the close of dinner Mrs. Ballantyne left the room?" + +"Yes." + +"She did not come back again?" + +"No." + +"No. The two men were then left alone?" + +"Yes." + +"After dinner was the table cleared?" + +"Yes," said Baram Singh, "the Captain-sahib called to me to clear the +table quickly." + +"Yes," said Travers. "Now, will you tell me what the Captain-sahib was +doing while you were clearing the table?" + +Baram Singh reflected. + +"First of all the Captain-sahib offered a box of cheroots to his visitor, +and his visitor refused and took a pipe from his pocket. The +Captain-sahib then lit a cheroot for himself and replaced the box on the +top of the bureau." + +"And after that?" asked Travers. + +"After that," said Baram Singh, "he stooped down, unlocked the bottom +drawer of his bureau and then turned sharply to me and told me to hurry +and get out." + +"And that order you obeyed?" + +"Yes." + +"Now, Baram Singh, did you enter the room again?" + +Baram Singh explained that after he had gone out with the table-cloth he +returned in a few moments with an ash-tray, which he placed beside the +visitor-sahib. + +"Yes," said Travers. "Had Captain Ballantyne altered his position?" + +Baram Singh then related that Captain Ballantyne was still sitting in +his chair by the bureau, but that the drawer of the bureau was now open, +and that on the ground close to Captain Ballantyne's feet there was a red +despatch-box. + +"The Captain-sahib," he continued, "turned to me with great anger, and +drove me again out of the room." + +"Thank you," said Mr. Travers, and he sat down. + +The prosecuting counsel rose at once. + +"Now, Baram Singh," he said with severity, "why did you not mention when +you were first put in the witness-box that this gentleman was present in +the camp that night?" + +"I was not asked." + +"No, that is quite true," he continued, "you were not asked specifically, +but you were asked to tell all that you knew." + +"I did not interfere," replied Baram Singh. "I answered what questions +were asked. Besides, when the sahib left the camp the Captain-sahib +was alive." + +At this moment Mr. Travers leaned across to the prosecuting counsel and +said: "It will all be made clear when Mr. Thresk goes into the box." + +And once more, as Mr. Travers spoke these words, a rustle of expectancy +ran round the court. + +Travers opened the case for the defence on the following morning. He had +been originally instructed, he declared, to reserve the defence for the +actual trial before the jury, but upon his own urgent advice that plan +was not to be followed. The case which he had to put before the +stipendiary must so infallibly prove that Mrs. Ballantyne was free from +all complicity in this crime that he felt he would not be doing his duty +to her unless he made it public at the first opportunity. That unhappy +lady had already, as every one who had paid even the most careless +attention to the facts that had been presented by the prosecution must +know, suffered so much distress and sorrow in the course of her married +life that he felt it would not be fair to add to it the strain and +suspense which even the most innocent must suffer when sent for trial +upon such a serious charge. He at once proposed to call Mr. Thresk, and +Thresk rose and went into the witness-box. + +Thresk told the story of that dinner-party word for word as it had +occurred, laying some emphasis on the terror which from time to time had +taken possession of Stephen Ballantyne, down to the moment when Baram +Singh had brought the ash-tray and left the two men together, Thresk +sitting by the table in the middle of the room and Ballantyne at his +bureau with the despatch-box on the floor at his feet. + +"Then I noticed an extraordinary look of fear disfigure his face," he +continued, "and following the direction of his eyes I saw a lean brown +arm with a thin hand as delicate as a woman's wriggle forward from +beneath the wall of the tent towards the despatch-box." + +"You saw that quite clearly?" asked Mr. Travers. + +"The tent was not very brightly lit," Thresk explained. "At the first +glance I saw something moving. I was inclined to believe it a snake and +to account in that way for Captain Ballantyne's fear and the sudden +rigidity of his attitude. But I looked again and I was then quite sure +that it was an arm and hand." + +The evidence roused those present to such a tension of excitement and to +so loud a burst of murmuring that it was quite a minute before order was +restored and Thresk took up his tale again. He described Ballantyne's +search for the thief. + +"And what were you doing," Mr. Travers asked, "whilst the search was +being made?" + +"I stood by the table holding the despatch-box firmly in my hands as +Ballantyne had urgently asked me to do." + +"Quite so," said Mr. Travers; and the attention of the court was now +directed to that despatch-box and the portrait of Bahadur Salak which it +contained. The history of the photograph, its importance at this moment +when Salak's trial impended, and Ballantyne's conviction of the extreme +danger which its possessor ran--a conviction established by the bold +attempt to steal it made under their very eyes--was laid before the +stipendiary. He sent the case to trial as he was bound to do, but the +verdict in most people's eyes was a foregone conclusion. Thresk had +supplied a story which accounted for the crime, and cross-examination +could not shake him. It was easy to believe that at the very moment when +Thresk was saying goodbye to Captain Ballantyne by the fire on the edge +of the camp the thief slipped into the marquee, and when discovered by +Ballantyne either on his return or later shot him with Mrs. Ballantyne's +rifle. It was clear that no conviction could be obtained while this story +held the field and in due course Mrs. Ballantyne was acquitted. Of +Thresk's return to the tent just before leaving the camp nothing was +said. Thresk himself did not mention it and the counsel for the Crown had +no hint which could help him to elicit it. + +Thus the case ended. The popular heroine of a criminal trial loses, as +all observers will have noticed, her crown of romance the moment she is +set free; and that good fortune awaited Stella Ballantyne. Thresk called +the next day upon Jane Repton and was coldly told that Stella had already +gone from Bombay. He betook himself to her solicitor, who was cordial but +uncommunicative. The Reptons, it appeared, were responsible to him for +the conduct of the case. He had not any knowledge of Stella Ballantyne's +destination, and he pointed to a stack of telegrams and letters as +confirmation of his words. + +"They will all go up to Khamballa Hill," he said. "I have no +other address." + +The next day, however, a little note of gratitude came to Thresk through +the post. It was unsigned and without any address. But it was in Stella +Ballantyne's handwriting and the post-mark was Kurrachee. That she did +not wish to see him he could quite understand; Kurrachee was a port from +which ships sailed to many destinations; he could hardly set out in a +blind search for her across the world. So here, it seemed, was that +chapter closed. He took the next steamer westwards from Bombay, landed at +Brindisi and went back to his work in the Law Courts and in Parliament. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +LITTLE BEEDING AGAIN + + +But though she disappeared Stella Ballantyne was not in flight from men +and women. She avoided them because they did not for the moment count in +her thoughts, except as possible hindrances. She was not so much running +away as running to the place of her desires. She yielded to an impulse +with which they had nothing whatever to do, an impulse so overmastering +that even to the Reptons her precipitancy wore a look of ingratitude. She +drove home with Jane Repton as soon as she was released, to the house on +Khamballa Hill, and while she was still in the carriage she said: + +"I must go away to-morrow morning." + +She was sitting forward with a tense and eager look upon her face and her +hands clenched tightly in her lap. + +"There is no need for that. Make your home with us, Stella, for a little +while and hold your head high." + +Jane Repton had talked over this proposal with her husband. Both of +them recognised that the acceptance of it would entail on them some +little sacrifice. Prejudice would be difficult. But they had thrust +these considerations aside in the loyalty of their friendship and Jane +Repton was a little hurt that Stella waved away their invitation +without ceremony. + +"I can't. I can't," she said irritably. "Don't try to stop me." + +Her nerves were quite on edge and she spoke with a greater violence than +she knew. Jane Repton tried to persuade her. + +"Wouldn't it be wiser for you to face things here, even though it means +some effort and pain?" + +"I don't know," answered Stella, still in the quick peremptory tone of +one who will not be argued with. "I don't care either. I have nothing to +do with wisdom just now. I don't want people at all. I want--oh, how I +want--" She stopped and then she added vaguely: "Something else," and her +voice trailed away into silence. She sat without a word, all tingling +impatience, during the rest of that drive and continued so to sit after +the carriage had stopped. When Jane Repton descended, and she woke up +with a start and looked at the house, it was as though she brought her +eyes down from heaven to earth. Once within the house she went straight +up to Repton. He had left his wife behind with Stella at the Law Courts +and had come home in advance of them. He had not spoken a word to Stella +that day, and he had not the time now, for she began immediately in an +eager voice and a look of fever in her eyes: + +"You won't try to stop me, will you? I must go away to-morrow." + +Repton used more tact now than his wife had done. He took the troubled +and excited woman's hand and answered her very gently: + +"Of course, Stella. You shall go when you like." + +"Oh, thank you," she cried, and was freed to remember the debt which she +owed to these good friends of hers. "You must think me a brute, Jane! I +haven't said a word to you about all your kindness. But--oh, you'll +think me ridiculous, when you know"--and she began to laugh and to sob +in one breath. Stella Ballantyne had remained so sunk in apathy through +all that long trial that her friends were relieved at her outburst of +tears. Jane Repton led her upstairs and put her to bed just as if she +had been a child. + +"There! You can get up for dinner if you like, Stella, or stay where you +are. And if you'll tell us what you want to do we'll make the +arrangements for you and not ask you a question." + +Jane Repton kissed her and left her alone; and it was while Stella was +sleeping upstairs that Henry Thresk called at the house and was told that +there was no news for him. + +"No doubt she will write to you, Mr. Thresk, if she wishes you to know +what she is doing. But I should not count upon it if I were you," said +Jane Repton, in a sweet voice and with eyes like pebbles. "She did not +mention you, I am sorry to say, when the trial was over." + +She could not forgive him because of her own share in what she now called +his "treachery" towards Stella. She had no more of the logician in her +composition than Thresk had of the hero. He had committed under a great +stress of emotion and sympathy what the whole experience and method of +his life told him was one of the worst of crimes. And now that its object +was achieved, and Stella Ballantyne free, he was in the mood to see only +the harm which he had done to the majesty of the law; he was uneasy; he +was not troubled by the thought that discovery would absolutely ruin him. +That indeed did not enter into his thoughts. But he could not but make a +picture of himself in the robe of a King's Counsel, claiming sternly the +anger of the Law against some other man who should have done just what he +had done, no more and no less. And so when Mrs. Repton's door was finally +closed upon him, and no message was given to him from the woman he had +saved, he was at once human and unheroic enough to visit a little of his +resentment upon her. He had not spoken to her at all since the night at +Chitipur; he had no knowledge of the stupor and the prostration into +which, after her years of misery, she had fallen; he had no insight into +the one compelling passion which now had her, body and soul, in its grip. +He turned away from the door and went back to the Taj Mahal. A steamer +would be starting for Port Said in two days and by that steamer he would +travel. That Stella was in the house on the Khamballa Hill he did not +doubt, but since she had no word or thought to spare for him he could not +but turn his back and go. + +Stella herself got up to dinner, and after it was over she told her +friends of the longing which filled her soul. + +"All through the trial," she said shyly, with the shrinking of those who +reveal a very secret fancy and are afraid that it will be ridiculed, "in +the heat of the court, in the close captivity of my cell, I was conscious +of just one real unconquerable passion--to feel the wind blowing against +my face upon the Sussex Downs. Can you understand that? Just to see the +broad green hills with the white chalk hollows in their sides and the +forests marching down to the valleys like the Roman soldiers from +Chichester--oh! I was mad for the look and the smell and the sounds of +them! It was all that I thought about. I used to close my eyes in the +dock and I was away in a second riding through Charlton Forest or over +Farm Hill, or looking down to Slindon from Gumber Corner, and over its +woods to the sea. And now that I am free"--she clasped her hands and her +face grew radiant--"oh, I don't want to see people." She reached out a +hand to each of her friends. "I don't call you people, you know. But even +you--you'll understand and forgive and not be hurt--I don't want to see +for a little while." + +The beaten look of her took the sting of ingratitude out of her words. +She stood between them, her delicate face worn thin, her eyes unnaturally +big; she had the strange transparent beauty of people who have been lying +for months in a mortal sickness. Jane Repton's eyes filled with tears and +her hand sought for her handkerchief. + +"Let's see what can be done," said Repton. "There's a mail-steamer of +course, but you won't want to travel by that." + +"No." + +Repton worked out the sailings from Bombay and the other ports on the +western coast of India while Stella leaned over his shoulder. + +"Look!" he said. "This is the best way. There's a steamer going to +Kurrachee to-morrow, and when you reach Kurrachee you'll just have time +to catch a German Lloyd boat which calls at Southampton. You won't be +home in thirteen days to be sure, but on the other hand you won't be +pestered by curious people." + +"Yes, yes," cried Stella eagerly. "I can go to-morrow." + +"Very well." + +Repton looked at the clock. It was still no more than half-past ten. He +saw with what a fever of impatience Stella was consumed. + +"I believe I could lay my hand on the local manager of the line to-night +and fix your journey up for you." + +"You could?" cried Stella. He might have been offering her a crown, so +brightly her thanks shone in her eyes. + +"I think so." + +He got up from the table and stood looking at her, and then away from her +with his lips pursed in doubt. + +"Yes?" said she. + +"I was thinking. Will you travel under another name? I don't suggest it +really, only it might save you--annoyance." + +Repton's hesitation was misplaced, for Stella Ballantyne's pride was +quite beaten to the ground. + +"Yes," she said at once. "I should wish to do that"; and both he and his +wife understood from that ready answer more completely than they ever had +before how near Stella had come to the big blank wall at the end of life. +For seven years she had held her head high, never so much as whispering a +reproach against her husband, keeping with a perpetual guard the secret +of her misery. Pride had been her mainspring; now even that was broken. +Repton went out of the house and returned at midnight. + +"It's all settled," he said. "You will have a cabin on deck in both +steamers. I gave your name in confidence to the manager here and he will +take care that everything possible is done for you. There will be very +few passengers on the German boat. The season is too early for either the +tourists or the people on leave." + +Thus Stella Ballantyne crept away from Bombay and in five weeks' time +she landed at Southampton. There she resumed her name. She travelled into +Sussex and stayed for a few nights at the inn whither Henry Thresk had +come years before on his momentous holiday. She had a little money--the +trifling income which her parents had left to her upon their death--and +she began to look about for a house. By a piece of good fortune she +discovered that the cottage in which she had lived at Little Beeding +would be empty in a few months. She took it and before the summer was out +she was once more established there. It was on an afternoon of August +when Stella made her home in it again. She passed along the yellow lane +driven deep between high banks of earth where the roots of great +elm-trees cropped out. Every step was familiar to her. The lane with many +twists under overarching branches ran down a steep hill and came out into +the open by the big house with its pillared portico and its light grey +stone and its wonderful garden of lawn and flowers and cedars. A tiny +church with a narrow graveyard and strange carefully-trimmed square +bushes of yew stood next to the house, and beyond the church the lane +dipped to the river and the cottage. + +Stella went from room to room. She had furnished the cottage simply and +daintily; the walls were bright, her servant-girl had gathered flowers +and set them about. Outside the window the sunlight shone on a green +garden. She was alone. It was the home-coming she had wished for. + +For three or four months she was left alone; and then one afternoon as +she came into the cottage after a walk she found a little white card upon +the table. It bore the name of Mr. Hazlewood. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE HAZLEWOODS + + +In the quiet country town obvious changes had taken place during the +eight years of Stella's absence. They were not changes of importance, +however, and one sentence can symbolize them all--there was now tarmac +upon its roads. But in the cluster of houses a mile away at the end of +the deep lane the case was different. Mr. Harold Hazlewood had come to +Little Beeding. He now lived in the big house to which the village owed +its name and indeed its existence. He lived--and spread consternation +amongst the gentry for miles round. + +"Lord, how I wish poor Arthur hadn't died!" old John Chubble used to +cry. He had hunted the West Sussex hounds for thirty years and the very +name of Little Beeding turned his red face purple. "There was a man. But +this fellow! And to think he's got that beautiful house! Do you know +there's hardly a pheasant on the place. And I've hashed them down out of +the sky in the old days there by the dozen. Well, he's got a son in the +Coldstream, Dick Hazlewood, who's not so bad. But Harold! Oh, pass me +the port!" + +Harold indeed had inherited Little Beeding by an accident during the +first summer after Stella had gone out to India. Arthur Hazlewood, the +owner and Harold's nephew, had been lost with his yacht in a gale of wind +off the coast of Portugal. Arthur was a bachelor and thus Harold +Hazlewood came quite unexpectedly into the position of a country squire +when he was already well on in middle age. He was a widower and a man of +a noticeable aspect. At the first glance you knew that he was not as +other men; at the second you suspected that he took a pride in his +dissimilarity. He was long, rather shambling in his gait, with a mild +blue eye and fair thin hair now growing grey. But length was the chief +impression left by his physical appearance. His legs, his arms, his face, +even his hair, unless his son in the Coldstream happened to be at home at +the time, were long. + +"Is your father mad?" Mr. Chubble once asked of Dick Hazlewood. The two +men had met in the broad street of Great Beeding at midday, and the elder +one, bubbling with indignation, had planted himself in front of Dick. + +"Mad?" Dick repeated reflectively. "No, I shouldn't go as far as that. Oh +no! What has he done now?" + +"He has paid out of his own pocket the fines of all the people in Great +Beeding who have just been convicted for not having their babies +vaccinated." + +Dick Hazlewood stared in surprise at his companion's indignant face. + +"But of course he'd do that, Mr. Chubble," he answered cheerfully. "He's +anti-everything--everything, I mean, which experience has established or +prudence could suggest." + +"In addition he wants to sell the navy for old iron and abolish +the army." + +"Yes," said Dick, nodding his head amicably. "He's like that. He +thinks that without an army and a navy we should be less aggressive. I +can't deny it." + +"I should think not indeed," cried Mr. Chubble. "Are you walking home?" + +"Yes." + +"Let us walk together." Mr. Chubble took Dick Hazlewood by the arm and as +they went filled the lane with his plaints. + +"I should think you can't deny it. Why, he has actually written a +pamphlet to enforce his views upon the subject." + +"You should bless your stars, Mr. Chubble, that there is only one. He +suffers from pamphlets. He writes 'em and prints 'em and every member of +Parliament gets one of 'em for nothing. Pamphlets do for him what the +gout does for other old gentlemen--they carry off from his system a great +number of disquieting ailments. He's at prison reform now," said Dick +with a smile of thorough enjoyment. "Have you heard him on it?" + +"No, and I don't want to," Mr. Chubble exploded. + +He struck viciously at an overhanging bough, as though it was the head +of Harold Hazlewood, and went on with the catalogue of crimes. "He made a +speech last week in the town-hall," and he jerked his thumb backwards +towards the town they had left. "Intolerable I call it. He actually +denounced his own countrymen as a race of oppressors." + +"He would," answered Dick calmly. "What did I say to you a minute ago? +He's advanced, you know." + +"Advanced!" sneered Mr. Chubble, and then Dick Hazlewood stopped and +contemplated his companion with a thoughtful eye. + +"I really don't think you understand my father, Mr. Chubble," said Dick +with a gentle remonstrance in his voice which Mr. Chubble was at a loss +whether to take seriously or no. + +"Can you give me the key to him?" he cried. + +"I can." + +"Then out with it, my lad." + +Mr. Chubble disposed himself to listen but with so bristling an +expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. Dick, +however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an +obtuse class of scholars. + +"My father was born predestined to believe that all the people whom he +knows are invariably wrong, and all the people he doesn't know are +invariably right. And when I feel inclined to deplore his abuse of his +own country I console myself with the reflection that he would be the +staunchest friend of England that England ever had--if only he had been +born in Germany." + +Mr. Chubble grunted and turned the speech suspiciously over in his mind. +Was Dick poking fun at him or at his father? + +"That's bookish," he said. + +"I am afraid it is," Dick Hazlewood agreed humbly. "The fact is I am now +an Instructor at the Staff College and much is expected of me." + +They had reached the gate of Little Beeding House. It was summer time. +A yellow drive of gravel ran straight between long broad flower-beds +to the door. + +"Won't you come in and see my father?" Dick asked innocently. +"He's at home." + +"No, my lad, no." Mr. Chubble hastened to add: "I haven't the time. But I +am very glad to have met you. You are here for long?" + +"No. Only just for luncheon," said Dick, and he walked along the drive +into the house. He was met in the hall by Hubbard the butler, an old +colourless man of genteel movements which seemed slow and were +astonishingly quick. He spoke in gentle purring tones and was the very +butler for Mr. Harold Hazlewood. + +"Your father has been asking for you, sir," said Hubbard. "He seems a +little anxious. He is in the big room." + +"Very well," said Dick, and he crossed the hall and the drawing-room, +wondering what new plan for the regeneration of the world was being +hatched in his father's sedulous brains. He had received a telegram at +Camberley the day before urgently calling upon him to arrive at Little +Beeding in time for luncheon. He went into the library as it was called, +but in reality it was the room used by everybody except upon ceremonial +occasions. It was a big room; half of it held a billiard table, the other +half had writing-tables, lounges, comfortable chairs and a table for +bridge. The carpet was laid over a parquet floor so that young people, +when they stayed there, rolled it up and danced. There were windows upon +two sides of the room. Here a row of them looked down the slope of the +lawn to the cedar-trees and the river, the other, a great bay which +opened to the ground, gave a view of a corner of the high churchyard wall +and of a meadow and a thatched cottage beyond. In this bay Mr. Hazlewood +was standing when Dick entered the room. + +"I got your telegram, father, and here I am." + +Mr. Hazlewood turned back from the window with a smile upon his face. + +"It is good of you, Richard. I wanted you to-day." + +A very genuine affection existed between these two, dissimilar as they +were in physique and mind. Dick Hazlewood was at this time thirty-four +years old, an officer of hard work and distinction, one of the younger +men to whom the generals look to provide the brains in the next great +war. He had the religion of his type. To keep physically fit for the +hardest campaigning and mentally fit for the highest problems of modern +strategy and to boast about neither the one qualification nor the +other--these were the articles of his creed. In appearance he was a +little younger than his years, lithe, long in the leg, with a thin brown +face and grey eyes which twinkled with humour. Harold Hazlewood was +intensely proud of him, though he professed to detest his profession. And +no doubt he found at times that the mere healthful, well-groomed look of +his son was irritatingly conventional. What was quite wholesome could +never be quite right in the older man's philosophy. To Dick, on the other +hand, his father was an intense enjoyment. Here was a lovable innocent +with the most delightful illusion that he understood the world. Dick +would draw out his father by the hour, but, as he put it, he wouldn't let +the old boy down. He stopped his chaff before it could begin to hurt. + +"Well, I am here," he said. "What scrape have you got into now?" + +"I am in no scrape, Richard. I don't get into scrapes," replied his +father. He shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. "I was wondering, +Richard--you have been away all this last year, haven't you?--I was +wondering whether you could give me any of your summer." + +Dick looked at his father. What in the world was the old boy up to now? +he asked himself. + +"Of course I can. I shall get my leave in a day or two. I thought of +playing some polo here and there. There are a few matches arranged. Then +no doubt--" He broke off. "But look here, sir! You didn't send me an +urgent telegram merely to ask me that." + +"No, Richard, no." Everybody else called his son Dick, but Harold +Hazlewood never. He was Richard. From Richard you might expect much, the +awakening of a higher nature, a devotion to the regeneration of the +world, humanitarianism, even the cult of all the "antis." From Dick you +could expect nothing but health and cleanliness and robustious +conventionality. Therefore Richard Captain Hazlewood of the Coldstream +and the Staff Corps remained. "No, there was something else." + +Mr. Hazlewood took his son by the arm and led him into the bay window. He +pointed across the field to the thatched cottage. + +"You know who lives there?" + +"No." + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +Dick put his head on one side and whistled softly. He knew the general +tenor of that _cause celebre_. + +Mr. Hazlewood raised remonstrating hands. + +"There! You are like the rest, Richard. You take the worst view. Here is +a good woman maligned and slandered. There is nothing against her. She +was acquitted in open trial by a jury of responsible citizens under a +judge of the Highest Court in India. Yet she is left alone--like a leper. +She is the victim of gossip and _such_ gossip. Richard," said the old man +solemnly, "for uncharitableness, ill-nature and stupid malice the gossip +of a Sussex village leaves the most deplorable efforts of Voltaire and +Swift entirely behind." + +"Father, you _are_ going it," said Dick with a chuckle. "Do you mean to +give me a step-mother?" + +"I do not, Richard. Such a monstrous idea never entered my thoughts. But, +my boy, I have called upon her." + +"Oh, you have!" + +"Yes. I have seen her too. I left a card. She left one upon me. I called +again. I was fortunate." + +"She was in?" + +"She gave me tea, Richard." + +Richard cocked his head on one side. + +"What's she like, father? Topping?" + +"Richard, she gave me tea," said the old man, dwelling insistently upon +his repetition. + +"So you said, sir, and it was most kind of her to be sure. But that fact +won't help me to form even the vaguest picture of her looks." + +"But it will, Richard," Mr. Hazlewood protested with a nervousness which +set Dick wondering again. "She gave me tea. Therefore, don't you see, I +must return the hospitality, which I do with the utmost eagerness. +Richard, I look to you to help me. We must champion that slandered lady. +You will see her for yourself. She is coming here to luncheon." + +The truth was out at last. Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily +have guessed it. This was just the quixotic line his father could have +been foreseen to take. + +"Well, we must just keep our eyes open and see that she doesn't slip +anything into the decanters while our heads are turned," said Dick with a +chuckle. Old Mr. Hazlewood laid a hand upon his son's shoulder. + +"That's the sort of thing they say. Only you don't mean it, Richard, and +they do," he remarked with a mild and reproachful shake of the head. "Ah, +some day, my boy, your better nature will awaken." + +Dick expressed no anxiety for the quick advent of that day. + +"How many are there of us to be at luncheon?" asked Dick. + +"Only the two of us." + +"I see. We are to keep the danger in the family. Very wise, sir, +upon my word." + +"Richard, you pervert my meaning," said Mr. Hazlewood. "The +neighbourhood has not been kind to Mrs. Ballantyne. She has been made to +suffer. The Vicar's wife, for instance--a most uncharitable person. And +my sister, your Aunt Margaret, too, in Great Beeding--she is what you +would call--" + +"Hot stuff," murmured Dick. + +"Quite so," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look +of keen interest upon his face. "I am not familiar with the phrase, +Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and +inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up +in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into +very few words." + +"That is indeed true, sir," replied Dick with an admirable gravity, "and +if I might be allowed to suggest it, a pamphlet upon that interesting +subject would be less dangerous work than coquetting with the latest +edition of the Marquise de Brinvilliers." + +The word pamphlet was a bugle-call to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Ah! Speaking of pamphlets, my boy," he began, and walked over to a desk +which was littered with papers. + +"We have not the time, sir," Dick interrupted from the bay of the window. +A woman had come out from the cottage. She unlatched a little gate in her +garden which opened on to the meadow. She crossed it. Yet another gate +gave her entrance to the garden of Little Beeding. In a moment Hubbard +announced: + +"Mrs. Ballantyne"; and Stella came into the room and stood near to the +door with a certain constraint in her attitude and a timid watchfulness +in her big eyes. She had the look of a deer. It seemed to Dick that at +one abrupt movement she would turn and run. + +Mr. Hazlewood pressed forward to greet her and she smiled with a warmth +of gratitude. Dick, watching her from the bay window, was surprised by +the delicacy of her face, by a look of fragility. She was dressed very +simply in a coat and short skirt of white, her shoes and her gloves were +of white suede, her hat was small. + +"And this is my son Richard," said Mr. Hazlewood; and Dick came forward +out of the bay. Stella Ballantyne bowed to him but said no word. She +was taking no risks even at the hands of the son of her friend. If +advances of friendliness were to be made they must be made by him, not +her. There was just one awkward moment of hesitation. Then Dick +Hazlewood held out his hand. + +"I am very glad to meet you, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said cordially, and he +saw the blood rush into her face and the fear die out in her eyes. + +The neighbourhood, to quote Mr. Hazlewood, had not been kind to Stella +Ballantyne. She had stood in the dock and the fact tarnished her. +Moreover here and there letters had come from India. The verdict was +inevitable, but--but--there was a doubt about its justice. The full +penalty--no. No one desired or would have thought it right, but something +betwixt and between in the proper spirit of British compromise would not +have been amiss. Thus gossip ran. More-over Stella Ballantyne was too +good-looking, and she wore her neat and simple clothes too well. To some +of the women it was an added offence when they considered what she might +be wearing if only the verdict had been different. Thus for a year Stella +had been left to her own company except for a couple of visits which the +Reptons had paid to her. At the first she had welcomed the silence, the +peace of her loneliness. It was a balm to her. She recovered like a +flower in the night. But she was young--she was twenty-eight this +year--and as her limbs ceased to be things of lead and became once more +aglow with life there came to her a need of companionship. She tried to +tramp the need away on the turf of her well-loved downs, but she failed. +A friend to share with her the joy of these summer days! Her blood +clamoured for one. But she was an outcast. Friends did not come her way. +Therefore she had gratefully received old Mr. Hazlewood in her house, and +had accepted, though with some fear, his proposal that she should lunch +at the big house and make the acquaintance of his son. + +She was nervous at the beginning of that meal, but both father and son +were at the pains to put her at her ease; and soon she was talking +naturally, with a colour in her cheeks, and now and then a note of +laughter in her voice. Dick worked for the recurrence of that laughter. +He liked the clear sound of it and the melting of all her face into +sweetness and tender humour which came with it. And for another thing he +had a thought, and a true one, that it was very long since she had known +the pleasure of good laughter. + +They took their coffee out on the lawn under the shade of a huge +cedar-tree. The river ran at their feet and a Canadian canoe and a +rowing-boat were tethered close by in a little dock. The house, a place +of grey stone with grey weathered and lichen-coloured slates, raised its +great oblong chimneys into a pellucid air. The sunlight flashed upon its +rows of tall windows--they were all flat to the house, except the one +great bay on the ground floor in the library--and birds called from all +the trees. The time slipped away. Dick Hazlewood found himself talking of +his work, a practice into which he seldom fell, and was surprised that +she could talk of it with him. He realised with a start how it was that +she knew. But she talked naturally and openly, as though he must know her +history. Once even some jargon of the Staff College slipped from her. +"You were doing let us pretend at Box Hill last week, weren't you?" she +said, and when he started at the phrase she imagined that he started at +the extent of her information. "It was in the papers," she said. "I read +every word of them," and then for a second her face clouded, and she +added: "I have time, you see." + +She looked at her watch and sprang to her feet. + +"I must go," she said. "I didn't know it was so late. I have enjoyed +myself very much." She did not hesitate now to offer her hand. "Goodbye." + +Dick Hazlewood went with her as far as the gate and came back to +his father. + +"You were asking me," he said carelessly, "if I could give you some part +of the summer. I don't see why I shouldn't come here in a day or two. The +polo matches aren't so important." + +The old man's eyes brightened. + +"I shall be delighted, Richard, if you will." He looked at his son with +something really ecstatic in his expression. At last then his better +nature was awakening. "I really believe--" he exclaimed and Dick cut +him short. + +"Yes, it may be that, sir. On the other hand it may not. What is quite +clear is that I must catch my train. So if I might order the car?" + +"Of course, of course." + +He came out with his son into the porch of the house. + +"We have done a fine thing to-day, Richard," he said with enthusiasm and +a nod towards the cottage beyond the meadow. + +"We have indeed, sir," returned Dick cheerily. "Did you ever see such a +pair of ankles?" + +"She lost the tragic look this afternoon, Richard. We must be her +champions." + +"We will put in the summer that way, father," said Dick, and waving his +hand was driven off to the station. + +Mr. Hazlewood walked back to the library. But "walked" is a poor word. He +seemed to float on air. A great opportunity had come to him. He had +enlisted the services of his son. He saw Dick and himself as Toreadors +waving red flags in the face of a bull labelled Conventionality. He went +back to the pamphlet on which he was engaged with renewed ardour and +laboured diligently far into the night. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE GREAT CRUSADE + + +"I was in Great Beeding this morning," said Dick, as he sat at luncheon +with his father, "and the blinds were up in Aunt Margaret's house." + +"They have returned from their holiday then," his father observed with a +tremor in his voice. He looked afraid. Then he looked annoyed. + +"Pettifer will break down if he doesn't take care," he exclaimed +petulantly. "No man with any sense would work as hard as he does. He +ought to have taken two months this year at the least." + +"We should still have to meet Aunt Margaret at the end of them," said +Dick calmly. He had no belief in Mr. Hazlewood's distress at the overwork +of Pettifer. + +A month had passed since the inauguration of the great Crusade, and +though talk was rife everywhere and indignation in many places loud, a +certain amount of success had been won. But all this while Mrs. Pettifer +had been away. Now she had returned. Mr. Hazlewood stood in some awe of +his sister. She was not ill-natured, but she knew her mind and expressed +it forcibly and without delay. She was of a practical limited nature; she +saw very clearly what she saw, but she walked in blinkers, and had +neither comprehension of nor sympathy with those of a wider vision. She +was at this time a woman of forty, comfortable to look upon and the wife +of Mr. Robert Pettifer, the head of the well-known firm of solicitors, +Pettifer, Gryll and Musgrave. Mrs. Pettifer had very little patience to +spare for the idiosyncrasies of her brother, though she owed him a good +deal more than patience. For at the time, some twenty years before, when +she had married Robert Pettifer, then merely a junior partner of the +firm, Harold Hazlewood had alone stood by her. To the rest of the family +she was throwing herself away; to her brother Harold she was doing a fine +thing, not because it was a fine thing but because it was an exceptional +thing. Robert Pettifer however had prospered, and though he had reached +an age when he might have claimed his leisure the nine o'clock train +still took him daily to London. + +"Aunt Margaret isn't after all so violent," said Dick, for whom she kept +a very soft place in her heart. But Harold shook his head. + +"Your aunt, Richard, has all the primeval ferocity of the average woman." +And then the fires of the enthusiast were set alight in his blue eyes. +"I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll send her my new pamphlet, Richard. It +may have a humanising influence upon her. I have some advance copies. +I'll send her one this afternoon." + +Dick's eyes twinkled. + +"I should if I were you, though to be sure, sir, we have tried that plan +before without any prodigious effect." + +"True, Richard, true, but I have never before risen to such heights as +these." Mr. Hazlewood threw down his napkin and paced the room. "Richard, +I am not inclined to boast. I am a humble man." + +"It is only humility, sir, which achieves great work," said Dick, as he +went contentedly on with his luncheon. + +"But the very title of this pamphlet seems to me calculated to interest +the careless and attract the thoughtful. It is called _The Prison Walls +must Cast no Shadow_." + +With an arm outstretched he seemed to deliver the words of the title +one by one from the palm of his hand. Then he stood smiling, +confident, awaiting applause. Dick's face, which had shown the highest +expectancy, slowly fell in a profound disappointment. He laid down his +knife and fork. + +"Oh, come, father. All walls cast shadows. It entirely depends upon the +altitude of the sun." + +Mr. Hazlewood returned to his seat and spoke gently. + +"The phrase, my boy, is a metaphor. I develop in this pamphlet my belief +that a convict, once he has expiated his offence, should upon his release +be restored to the precise position in society which he held before with +all its privileges unimpaired." + +Dick chuckled in the most unregenerate delight. + +"You are going it, father," he said, and disappointment came to Mr. +Hazlewood. + +"Richard," he remonstrated mildly, "I hoped that I should have had your +approval. It seemed to me that a change was taking place in you, that the +player of polo, the wild hunter of an inoffensive little white ball, was +developing into the humanitarian." + +"Well, sir," rejoined Dick, "I won't deny that of late I have been +beginning to think that there is a good deal in your theories. But you +mustn't try me too high at the beginning, you know. I am only in my +novitiate. However, please send it to Aunt Margaret, and--oh, how I would +like to hear her remarks upon it!" + +An idea occurred to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Richard, why shouldn't you take it over yourself this afternoon?" + +Dick shook his head. + +"Impossible, father, I have something to do." He looked out of the window +down to the river running dark in the shade of trees. "But I'll go +to-morrow morning," he added. + +And the next morning he walked over early to Great Beeding. His aunt +would have received the pamphlet by the first post and he wished to seize +the first fine careless rapture of her comments. But he found her in a +mood of distress rather than of wordy impatience. + +The Pettifers lived in a big house of the Georgian period at the bottom +of an irregular square in the middle of the little town. Mrs. Pettifer +was sitting in a room facing the garden at the back with the pamphlet on +a little table beside her. She sprang up as Dick was shown into the room, +and before he could utter a word of greeting she cried: + +"Dick, you are the one person I wanted to see." + +"Oh?" + +"Yes. Sit down." + +Dick obeyed. + +"Dick, I believe you are the only person in the world who has any control +over your father." + +"Yes. Even in my pinafores I learnt the great lesson that to control +one's parents is the first duty of the modern child." + +"Don't be silly," his aunt rejoined sharply. Then she looked him over. +"Yes, you must have some control over him, for he lets you remain in the +army, though an army is one of his abominations." + +"Theoretically it's a great grief to him," replied Dick. "But you see I +have done fairly well, so actually he's ready to burst with pride. Every +sentimental philosopher sooner or later breaks his head against his own +theories." + +Mrs. Pettifer nodded her head in commendation. + +"That's an improvement on your last remark, Dick. It's true. And your +father's going to break his head very badly unless you stop him." + +"How?" + +"Mrs. Ballantyne." + +All the flippancy died out of Dick Hazlewood's face. He became at once +grave, wary. + +"I have been hearing about him," continued Mrs. Pettifer. "He has made +friends with her--a woman who has stood in the dock on a capital charge." + +"And has been acquitted," Dick Hazlewood added quietly and Mrs. Pettifer +blazed up. + +"She wouldn't have been acquitted if I had been on the jury. A +parcel of silly men who are taken in by a pretty face!" she cried, +and Dick broke in: + +"Aunt Margaret, I am sorry to interrupt you. But I want you to understand +that I am with my father heart and soul in this." + +He spoke very slowly and deliberately and Mrs. Pettifer was +utterly dismayed. + +"You!" she cried. She grew pale, and alarm so changed her face it was as +if a tragic mask had been slipped over it. "Oh, Dick, not you!" + +"Yes, I. I think it is cruelly hard," he continued with his eyes +relentlessly fixed upon Mrs. Pettifer's face, "that a woman like Mrs. +Ballantyne, who has endured all the horrors of a trial, the publicity, +the suspense, the dread risk that justice might miscarry, should have +afterwards to suffer the treatment of a leper." + +There was for the moment no room for any anger now in Mrs. Pettifer's +thoughts. Consternation possessed her. She weighed every quiet firm word +that fell from Dick, she appreciated the feeling which gave them wings, +she searched his face, his eyes. Dick had none of his father's +flightiness. He was level-headed, shrewd and with the conventions of his +times and his profession. If Dick spoke like this, with so much certitude +and so much sympathy, why then--She shrank from the conclusion with a +sinking heart. She became very quiet. + +"Oh, she shouldn't have come to Little Beeding," she said in a low voice, +staring now upon the ground. It was to herself she spoke, but Dick +answered her, and his voice rose to a challenge. + +"Why shouldn't she? Here she was born, here she was known. What else +should she do but come back to Little Beeding and hold her head high? I +respect her pride for doing it." + +Here were reasons no doubt why Stella should come back; but they did not +include the reason why she had. Dick Hazlewood was well aware of it. He +had learnt it only the afternoon before when he was with her on the +river. But he thought it a reason too delicate, of too fine a gossamer to +be offered to the prosaic mind of his Aunt Margaret. With what ridicule +and disbelief she would rend it into tatters! Reasons so exquisite were +not for her. She could never understand them. + +Mrs. Pettifer abandoned her remonstrances and was for dropping the +subject altogether. But Dick was obstinate. + +"You don't know Mrs. Ballantyne, Aunt Margaret. You are unjust to her +because you don't know her. I want you to," he said boldly. + +"What!" cried Mrs. Pettifer. "You actually--Oh!" Indignation robbed her +of words. She gasped. + +"Yes, I do," continued Dick calmly. "I want you to come one night and +dine at Little Beeding. We'll persuade Mrs. Ballantyne to come too." + +It was a bold move, and even in his eyes it had its risks for Stella. To +bring Mrs. Pettifer and her together was, so it seemed to him, to mix +earth with delicate flame. But he had great faith in Stella Ballantyne. +Let them but meet and the earth might melt--who could tell? At the worst +his aunt would bristle, and there were his father and himself to see that +the bristles did not prick. + +"Yes, come and dine." + +Mrs. Pettifer had got over her amazement at her nephew's audacity. +Curiosity had taken its place--curiosity and fear. She must see this +woman for herself. + +"Yes," she answered after a pause. "I will come. I'll bring Robert too." + +"Good. We'll fix up a date and write to you. Goodbye." + +Dick went back to Little Beeding and asked for his father. The old +gentleman added to his other foibles that of a collector. It was the +only taste he had which was really productive, for he owned a collection +of miniatures, gathered together throughout his life, which would have +realised a fortune if it had been sold at Christie's. He kept it arranged +in cabinets in the library and Dick found him bending over one of the +drawers and rearranging his treasures. + +"I have seen Aunt Margaret," he said. "She will meet Stella here +at dinner." + +"That will be splendid," cried the old man with enthusiasm. + +"Perhaps," replied his son; and the next morning the Pettifers received +their invitation. + +Mrs. Pettifer accepted it at once. She had not been idle since Dick had +left her. Before he had come she had merely looked upon the crusade as +one of Harold Hazlewood's stupendous follies. But after he had gone she +was genuinely horrified. She saw Dick speaking with the set dogged look +and the hard eyes which once or twice she had seen before. He had always +got his way, she remembered, on those occasions. She drove round to her +friends and made inquiries. At each house her terrors were confirmed. It +was Dick now who led the crusade. He had given up his polo, he was +spending all his leave at Little Beeding and most of it with Stella +Ballantyne. He lent her a horse and rode with her in the morning, he +rowed her on the river in the afternoon. He bullied his friends to call +on her. He brandished his friendship with her like a flag. Love me, love +my Stella was his new motto. Mrs. Pettifer drove home with every fear +exaggerated. Dick's career would be ruined altogether--even if nothing +worse were to happen. To any view that Stella Ballantyne might hold she +hardly gave a thought. She was sure of what it would be. Stella +Ballantyne would jump at her nephew. He had good looks, social position, +money and a high reputation. It was the last quality which would give him +a unique value in Stella Ballantyne's eyes. He was not one of the +chinless who haunt the stage doors; nor again one of that more subtly +decadent class which seeks to attract sensation by linking itself to +notoriety. No. From Stella's point of view Dick Hazlewood must be the +ideal husband. + +Mrs. Pettifer waited for her husband's return that evening with unusual +impatience, but she was wise enough to hold her tongue until dinner was +over and he with a cigar between his lips and a glass of old brandy on +the table-cloth in front of him, disposed to amiability and concession. + +Then, however, she related her troubles. + +"You see it must be stopped, Robert." + +Robert Pettifer was a lean wiry man of fifty-five whose brown dried face +seemed by a sort of climatic change to have taken on the colour of the +binding of his law-books. He, too, was a little troubled by the story, +but he was of a fair and cautious mind. + +"Stopped?" he said. "How? We can't arrest Mrs. Ballantyne again." + +"No," replied Mrs. Pettifer. "Robert, you must do something." + +Robert Pettifer jumped in his chair. + +"I, Margaret! Lord love you, no! I decline to mix myself up in the matter +at all. Dick's a grown man and Mrs. Ballantyne has been acquitted." + +Margaret Pettifer knew her husband. + +"Is that your last word?" she asked ruefully. + +"Absolutely." + +"It isn't mine, Robert." + +Robert Pettifer chuckled and laid a hand upon his wife's. + +"I know that, Margaret." + +"We are going to dine next Friday night at Little Beeding to meet Stella +Ballantyne." + +Mr. Pettifer was startled but he held his tongue. + +"The invitation came this morning after you had left for London," +she added. + +"And you accepted it at once?" + +"Yes." + +Pettifer was certain that she had before she opened her mouth to +answer him. + +"I shall dine at Little Beeding on Friday," he said, "because Harold +always gives me an admirable glass of vintage port"; and with that he +dismissed the subject. Mrs. Pettifer was content to let it smoulder in +his mind. She was not quite sure that he was as disturbed as she wished +him to be, but that he was proud of Dick she knew, and if by any chance +uneasiness grew strong in him, why, sooner or later he would let fall +some little sentence; and that little sentence would probably be useful. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +CONSEQUENCES + + +The dinner-party at Little Beeding was a small affair. There were but ten +altogether who sat down at Mr. Hazlewood's dinner-table and with the +exception of the Pettifers all, owing to Dick Hazlewood's insistence, +were declared partisans of Stella Ballantyne. None the less Stella came +to it with hesitation. It was the first time that she had dined abroad +since she had left India, now the best part of eighteen months ago, and +she went forth to it as to an ordeal. For though friends of hers would be +present to enhearten her she was to meet the Pettifers. The redoubtable +Aunt Margaret had spoilt her sleep for a week. It was for the Pettifers +she dressed, careful to choose neither white nor black, lest they should +find something symbolic in the colour of her gown and make of it an +offence. She put on a frock of pale blue satin trimmed with some white +lace which had belonged to her mother, and she wore not so much as a thin +gold chain about her neck. But she did not need jewels that night. The +months of quiet had restored her to her beauty, the excitement of this +evening had given life and colour to her face, the queer little droop at +the corners of her lips which had betrayed so much misery and bitterness +of spirit had vanished altogether. Yet when she was quite dressed and +her mirror bade her take courage she sat down and wrote a note of apology +pleading a sudden indisposition. But she did not send it. Even in the +writing her cowardice came home to her and she tore it up before she had +signed her name. The wheels of the cab which was to take her to the big +house rattled down the lane under her windows, and slipping her cloak +over her shoulders she ran downstairs. + +The party began with a little constraint. Mr. Hazlewood received his +guests in his drawing-room and it had the chill and the ceremony of a +room which is seldom used. But the constraint wore off at the table. Most +of those present were striving to set Stella Ballantyne at her ease, and +she was at a comfortable distance from Mrs. Pettifer, with Mr. Hazlewood +at her side. She was conscious that she was kept under observation and +from time to time the knowledge made her uncomfortable. + +"I am being watched," she said to her host. + +"You mustn't mind," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and the smile came back to her +lips as she glanced round the table. + +"Oh, I don't, I don't," she said in a low voice, "for I have +friends here." + +"And friends who will not fail you, Stella," said the old man. "To-night +begins the great change. You'll see." + +Robert Pettifer puzzled her indeed more than his wife. She was plain to +read. She was frigidly polite, her enemy. Once or twice, however, Stella +turned her head to find Robert Pettifer's eyes resting upon her with a +quiet scrutiny which betrayed nothing of his thoughts. As a matter of +fact he liked her manner. She was neither defiant nor servile, neither +loud nor over-silent. She had been through fire; that was evident. But it +was evident only because of a queer haunting look which came and went in +her dark eyes. The fire had not withered her. Indeed Pettifer was +surprised. He had not formulated his expectations at all, but he had not +expected what he saw. The clear eyes and the fresh delicate colour, her +firm white shoulders and her depth of bosom, forced him to think of her +as wholesome. He began to turn over in his mind his recollections of her +case, recollections which he had been studious not to revive. + +Halfway through the dinner Stella lost her uneasiness. The lights, the +ripple of talk, the company of men and women, the bright dresses had +their effect on her. It was as though after a deep plunge into dark +waters she had come to the surface and flung out her arms to the sun. She +ceased to notice the scrutiny of the Pettifers. She looked across the +table to Dick and their eyes met; and such a look of tenderness +transfigured her face as made Mrs. Pettifer turn pale. + +"That woman's in love," she said to herself and she was horrified. It +wasn't Dick's social position then or the shelter of his character that +Stella Ballantyne coveted. She was in love. Mrs. Pettifer was honest +enough to acknowledge it. But she knew now that the danger which she had +feared was infinitely less than the danger which actually was. + +"I must have it out with Harold to-night," she said, and later on, when +the men came from the dining-room, she looked out for her husband. But at +first she did not see him. She was in the drawing-room and the wide +double doors which led to the big library stood open. It was through +those doors that the men had come. Some of the party were gathered there. +She could hear the click of the billiard balls and the voices of women +mingling with those of the men. She went through the doors and saw her +husband standing by Harold Hazlewood's desk, and engrossed apparently in +some little paper-covered book which he held in his hand. She crossed to +him at once. + +"Robert," she said, "don't be in a hurry to go to-night. I must have a +word with Harold." + +"All right," said Pettifer, but he said it in so absent a voice that his +wife doubted whether he had understood her words. She was about to repeat +them when Harold Hazlewood himself approached. + +"You are looking at my new pamphlet, Pettifer, _The Prison Walls must +Cast no Shadow_. I am hoping that it will have a great influence." + +"No," replied Pettifer. "I wasn't. I was looking at this," and he held +up the little book. + +"Oh, that?" said Hazlewood, turning away with disappointment. + +"Yes, that," said Pettifer with a strange and thoughtful look at his +brother-in-law. "And I am not sure," he added slowly, "that in a short +time you will not find it the more important publication of the two." + +He laid the book down and in his turn he moved away towards the +billiard-table. Margaret Pettifer remained. She had been struck by the +curious deliberate words her husband had used. Was this the hint for +which she was looking out? She took up the little book. It was a copy of +_Notes and Queries_. She opened it. + +It was a small periodical magazine made up of printed questions which +contributors sent in search of information and answers to those questions +from the pens of other contributors. Mrs. Pettifer glanced through the +leaves, hoping to light upon the page which her husband had been +studying. But he had closed the book when he laid it down and she found +nothing to justify his remark. Yet he had not spoken without intention. +Of that she was convinced, and her conviction was strengthened the next +moment, for as she turned again towards the drawing-room Robert Pettifer +looked once sharply towards her and as sharply away. Mrs. Pettifer +understood that glance. He was wondering whether she had noticed what in +that magazine had interested him. But she did not pursue him with +questions. She merely made up her mind to examine the copy of _Notes and +Queries_ at a time when she could bring more leisure to the task. + +She waited impatiently for the party to break up but eleven o'clock had +struck before any one proposed to go. Then all took their leave at once. +Robert Pettifer and his wife went out into the hall with the rest, lest +others seeing them remain should stay behind too; and whilst they stood a +little apart from the general bustle of departure Margaret Pettifer saw +Stella Ballantyne come lightly down the stairs, and a savage fury +suddenly whirled in her head and turned her dizzy. She thought of all the +trouble and harm this young woman was bringing into their ordered family +and she would not have it that she was innocent. She saw Stella with her +cloak open upon her shoulders radiant and glistening and slender against +the dark panels of the staircase, youth in her face, enjoyment sparkling +in her eyes, and her fingers itched to strip her of her bright frock, her +gloves, her slim satin slippers, the delicate white lace which nestled +against her bosom. She clothed her in the heavy shapeless garments, the +coarse shoes and stockings of the convict; she saw her working +desperately against time upon an ignoble task with black and broken +finger-nails. If longing could have worked the miracle, thus at this hour +would Stella Ballantyne have sat and worked, all the colour of her faded +to a hideous drab, all the grace of her withered. Mrs. Pettifer turned +away with so abrupt a movement and so disordered a face that Robert asked +her if she was ill. + +"No, it's nothing," she said and against her will her eyes were drawn +back to the staircase. But Stella Ballantyne had disappeared and Margaret +Pettifer drew her breath in relief. She felt that there had been danger +in her moment of passion, danger and shame; and already enough of those +two evils waited about them. + +Stella, meanwhile, with a glance towards Dick Hazlewood, had slipped back +into the big room. Then she waited for a moment until the door opened and +Dick came in. + +"I had not said good-night to you," she exclaimed, coming towards him and +giving him her hands, "and I wanted to say it to you here, when we were +alone. For I must thank you for to-night, you and your father. Oh, I have +no words." + +The tears were very near to her eyes and they were audible in her low +voice. Dick Hazlewood was quick to answer her. + +"Good! For there's need of none. Will you ride to-morrow?" + +Stella took her hands from his and moved across the room towards the +great bay window with its glass doors. + +"I should love to," she said. + +"Eight. Is that too early after to-night?" + +"No, that's the good time," she returned with a smile. "We have the day +at its best and the world to ourselves." + +"I'll bring the same horse round. He knows you now, doesn't he?" + +"Thank you," said Stella. She unlatched the glass door and opened it. +"You'll lock it after me, won't you?" + +"No," said Dick. "I'll see you to your door." + +But Stella refused his company. She stood in the doorway. + +"There's no need! See what a night it is!" and the beauty of it crept +into her soul and stilled her voice. The moon rode in a blue sky, a disc +of glowing white, the great cedar-trees flung their shadows wide over the +bright lawns and not a branch stirred. + +"Listen," said Stella in a whisper and the river rippling against its +banks with now a deep sob and now a fairy's laugh sang to them in notes +most musical and clear. That liquid melody and the flutter of a bird's +wings in the bough of a tree were the only sounds. They stood side by +side, she looking out over the garden to the dim and pearly hills, he +gazing at her uplifted face and the pure column of her throat. They +stood in a most dangerous silence. The air came cool and fresh to their +nostrils. Stella drew it in with a smile. + +"Good-night!" She laid her hand for a second on his arm. "Don't +come with me!" + +"Why not?" + +And the answer came in a clear whisper: + +"I am afraid." + +Stella seemed to feel the man at her side suddenly grow very still. +"It's only a step," she went on quickly and she passed out of the window +on to the pathway. Dick Hazlewood followed but she turned to him and +raised her hand. + +"Don't," she pleaded; the voice was troubled but her eyes were steady. +"If you come with me I shall tell you." + +"What?" he interrupted, and the quickness of the interruption broke the +spell which the night had laid upon her. + +"I shall tell you again how much I thank you," she said lightly. "I shall +cross the meadow by the garden gate. That brings me to my door." + +She gathered her skirt in her hand and crossed the pathway to the edge of +the grass. + +"You can't do that," exclaimed Dick and he was at her side. He stooped +and felt the turf. "Even the lawn's drenched. Crossing the meadow you'll +be ankle-deep in dew. You must promise never to go home across the +meadow when you dine with us." + +He spoke, chiding her as if she had been a mutinous child, and with so +much anxiety that she laughed. + +"You see, you have become rather precious to me," he added. + +Though the month was July she that night was all April, half tears, half +laughter. The smile passed from her lips and she raised her hands to her +face with the swiftness of one who has been struck. + +"What's the matter?" he asked, and she drew her hand away. + +"Don't you understand?" she asked, and answered the question herself. +"No, why should you?" She turned to him suddenly, her bosom heaving, her +hands clenched. "Do you know what place I fill here, in my own county? +Years ago, when I was a child, there was supposed to be a pig-faced woman +in Great Beeding. She lived in a small yellow cottage in the Square. It +was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the town. Sometimes +they were shown her shadow after dusk between the lamp and the blind. +Sometimes you might have even caught a glimpse of her slinking late at +night along the dark alleys. Well, the pig-faced woman has gone and I +have taken her place." + +"No," cried Dick. "That's not true." + +"It is," she answered passionately. "I am the curiosity. I am the freak. +The townspeople take a pride in me, yes, just the same pride they took in +her, and I find that pride more difficult to bear than all the aversion +of the Pettifers. I too slink out early in the morning or late after +night has fallen. And you"--the passion of bitterness died out of her +voice, her hands opened and hung at her sides, a smile of tenderness +shone on her face--"you come with me. You ride with me early. With you I +learn to take no heed. You welcome me to your house. You speak to me as +you spoke just now." Her voice broke and a cry of gladness escaped from +her which went to Dick Hazlewood's heart. "Oh, you shall see me to my +door. I'll not cross the meadow. I'll go round by the road." She stopped +and drew a breath. + +"I'll tell you something." + +"What?" + +"It's rather good to be looked after. I know. It has never happened to me +before. Yes, it's very good," and she drew out the words with a low laugh +of happiness. + +"Stella!" he said, and at the mention of her name she caught her hands up +to her heart. "Oh, thank you!" + +The hall-door was closed and all but one car had driven away when they +turned the corner of the house and came out in the broad drive. They +walked in the moonlight with a perfume of flowers in the air and the big +yellow cups of the evening primroses gleaming on either side. They walked +slowly. Stella knew that she should quicken her feet but she could not +bring herself to do more than know it. She sought to take into her heart +every tiniest detail of that walk so that in memory she might, years +after, walk it again and so never be quite alone. They passed out through +the great iron gates and turned into the lane. Here great elms overhung +and now they walked in darkness, and now again were bathed in light. A +twig snapped beneath her foot; even so small a thing she would remember. + +"We must hurry," she said. + +"We are doing all that we can," replied Dick. "It's a long +way--this walk." + +"You feel it so?" said Stella, tempting him--oh, unwisely! But the spell +of the hour and the place was upon her. + +"Yes," he answered her. "It's a long way in a man's life," and he drew +close to her side. + +"No!" she cried with a sudden violence. But she was awake too late. "No, +Dick, no," she repeated, but his arms were about her. + +"Stella, I want you. Oh, life's dull for a man without a woman; I can +tell you," he exclaimed passionately. + +"There are others--plenty," she said, and tried to thrust him away. + +"Not for me," he rejoined, and he would not let her go. Her struggles +ceased, she buried her face in his coat, her hands caught his shoulders, +she stood trembling and shivering against him. + +"Stella," he whispered. "Stella!" + +He raised her face and bent to it. Then he straightened himself. + +"Not here!" he said. + +They were standing in the darkness of a tree. He put his arms about her +waist and lifted her into an open space where the moonlight shone bright +and clear and there were no shadows. + +"Here," he said, and he kissed her on the lips. She thrust her head back, +her face uplifted to the skies, her eyes closed. + +"Oh, Dick," she murmured, "I meant that this should never be. Even +now--you shall forget it." + +"No--I couldn't." + +"So one says. But--oh, it would be your ruin." She started away from him. + +"Listen!" + +"Yes," he answered. + +She stood confronting him desperately a yard or so away, her bosom +heaving, her face wet with her tears. Dick Hazlewood did not stir. +Stella's lips moved as though she were speaking but no words were +audible, and it seemed that her strength left her. She came suddenly +forward, groping with her hands like a blind person. + +"Oh, my dear," she said as he caught them. They went on again together. +She spoke of his father, of the talk of the countryside. But he had an +argument for each of hers. + +"Be brave for just a little, Stella. Once we are married there will be no +trouble," and with his arms about her she was eager to believe. + +Stella Ballantyne sat late that night in the armchair in her bedroom, her +eyes fixed upon the empty grate, in a turmoil of emotion. She grew cold +and shivered. A loud noise of birds suddenly burst through the open +window. She went to it. The morning had come. She looked across the +meadow to the silent house of Little Beeding in the grey broadening +light. All the blinds were down. Were they all asleep or did one watch +like her? She came back to the fireplace. In the grate some torn +fragments of a letter caught her eyes. She stooped and picked them up. +They were fragments of the letter of regret which she had written earlier +that evening. + +"I should have sent it," she whispered. "I should not have gone. I should +have sent the letter." + +But the regret was vain. She had gone. Her maid found her in the morning +lying upon her bed in a deep sleep and still wearing the dress in which +she had gone out. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD + + +When Dick and Stella walked along the drive to the lane Harold Hazlewood, +who was radiant at the success of his dinner-party, turned to Robert +Pettifer in the hall. + +"Have a whisky-and-soda, Robert, before you go," he said. He led the way +back into the library. Behind him walked the Pettifers, Robert +ill-at-ease and wishing himself a hundred miles away, Margaret Pettifer +boiling for battle. Hazlewood himself dropped into an arm-chair. + +"I am very glad that you came to-night, Margaret," he said boldly. "You +have seen for yourself." + +"Yes, I have," she replied. "Harold, there have been moments this evening +when I could have screamed." + +Robert Pettifer hurriedly turned towards the table in the far corner +of the room where the tray with the decanters and the syphons had +been placed. + +"Margaret, I pass my life in a scream at the injustice of the world," +said Harold Hazlewood, and Robert Pettifer chuckled as he cut off the end +of a cigar. "It is strange that an act of reparation should move you in +the same way." + +"Reparation!" cried Margaret Pettifer indignantly. Then she noticed that +the window was open. She looked around the room. She drew up a chair in +front of her brother. + +"Harold, if you have no consideration for us, none for your own +position, none for the neighbourhood, if you will at all costs force +this woman upon us, don't you think that you might still spare a thought +for your son?" + +Robert Pettifer had kept his eyes open that evening as well as his wife. +He took a step down into the room. He was anxious to take no part in the +dispute; he desired to be just; he was favourably inclined towards Stella +Ballantyne; looking at her he had been even a little moved. But Dick was +the first consideration. He had no children of his own, he cared for Dick +as he would have cared for his son, and when he went up each morning by +the train to his office in London there lay at the back of his mind the +thought that one day the fortune he was amassing would add a splendour to +Dick's career. Harold Hazlewood alone of the three seemed to have his +eyes sealed. + +"Why, what on earth do you mean, Margaret?" + +Margaret Pettifer sat down in her chair. + +"Where was Dick yesterday afternoon?" + +"Margaret, I don't know." + +"I do. I saw him. He was with Stella Ballantyne on the river--in the +dusk--in a Canadian canoe." She uttered each fresh detail in a more +indignant tone, as though it aggravated the crime. Yet even so she had +not done. There was, it seemed, a culminating offence. "She was wearing a +white lace frock with a big hat." + +"Well," said Mr. Hazlewood mildly, "I don't think I have anything against +big hats." + +"She was trailing her hand in the water--that he might notice its +slenderness of course. Outrageous I call it!" + +Mr. Hazlewood nodded his head at his indignant sister. + +"I know that frame of mind very well, Margaret," he remarked. "She cannot +do right. If she had been wearing a small hat she would have been +Frenchified." + +But Mrs. Pettifer was not in a mood for argument. + +"Can't you see what it all means?" she cried in exasperation. + +"I can. I do," Mr. Hazlewood retorted and he smiled proudly upon his +sister. "The boy's better nature is awakening." + +Margaret Pettifer lifted up her hands. + +"The boy!" she exclaimed. "He's thirty-four if he's a day." + +She leaned forward in her chair and pointing up to the bay asked: "Why is +that window open, Harold?" + +Harold Hazlewood showed his first sign of discomfort. He shifted in +his chair. + +"It's a hot night, Margaret." + +"That is not the reason," Mrs. Pettifer retorted implacably. +"Where is Dick?" + +"I expect that he is seeing Mrs. Ballantyne home." + +"Exactly," said Mrs. Pettifer with a world of significance in her voice. +Mr. Hazlewood sat up and looked at his sister. + +"Margaret, you want to make me uncomfortable," he exclaimed pettishly. +"But you shan't. No, my dear, you shan't." He let himself sink back again +and joining the tips of his fingers contemplated the ceiling. But +Margaret was in the mind to try. She shot out her words at him like so +many explosive bullets. + +"Being friends is one thing, Harold. Marrying is another." + +"Very true, Margaret, very true." + +"They are in love with one another." + +"Rubbish, Margaret, rubbish." + +"I watched them at the dinner-table and afterwards. They are man and +woman, Harold. That's what you don't understand. They are not +illustrations of your theories. Ask Robert." + +"No," exclaimed Robert Pettifer. He hurriedly lit a cigar. "Any inference +I should make must be purely hypothetical." + +"Yes, we'll ask Robert. Come, Pettifer!" cried Mr. Hazlewood. "Let us +have your opinion." + +Robert Pettifer came reluctantly down from his corner. + +"Well, if you insist, I think they were very friendly." + +"Ah!" cried Hazlewood in triumph. "Being friends is one thing, Margaret. +Marrying is another." + +Mrs. Pettifer shook her head over her brother with a most +aggravating pity. + +"Dick said a shrewd thing the other day to me, Harold." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked doubtfully at his sister. + +"I am sure of it," he answered, but he was careful not to ask for any +repetition of the shrewd remark. Margaret, however, was not in the mind +to let him off. + +"He said that sentimental philosophers sooner or later break their heads +against their own theories. Mark those words, Harold! I hope they won't +come true of you. I hope so very much indeed." + +But it was abundantly clear that she had not a shadow of doubt that they +would come true. Mr. Hazlewood was stung by the slighting phrase. + +"I am not a sentimental philosopher," he said hotly. "Sentiment I +altogether abhor. I hold strong views, I admit." + +"You do indeed," his sister interrupted with an ironical laugh. "Oh, I +have read your pamphlet, Harold. The prison walls must cast no shadow and +convicts, once they are released, have as much right to sit down at our +dinner-tables as they had before. Well, you carry your principles into +practice, that I will say. We had an illustration to-night." + +"You are unjust, Margaret," and Mr. Hazlewood rose from his chair with +some dignity. "You speak of Mrs. Ballantyne, not for the first time, as +if she had been tried and condemned. In fact she was tried and +acquitted," and in his turn he appealed to Pettifer. + +"Ask Robert!" he said. + +But Pettifer was slow to answer, and when he did it was without +assurance. + +"Ye-es," he replied with something of a drawl. "Undoubtedly Mrs. +Ballantyne was tried and acquitted"; and he left the impression on the +two who heard him that with acquittal quite the last word had not been +said. Mrs. Pettifer looked at him eagerly. She drew clear at once of +the dispute. She left the questions now to Harold Hazlewood, and +Pettifer had spoken with so much hesitation that Harold Hazlewood could +not but ask them. + +"You are making reservations, Robert?" + +Pettifer shrugged his shoulders. + +"I think we have a right to know them," Hazlewood insisted. "You are a +solicitor with a great business and consequently a wide experience." + +"Not of criminal cases, Hazlewood. I bring no more authority to judge +them than any other man." + +"Still you have formed an opinion. Please let me have it," and Mr. +Hazlewood sat down again and crossed his knees. But a little impatience +was now audible in his voice. + +"An opinion is too strong a word," replied Pettifer guardedly. "The +trial took place nearly eighteen months ago. I read the accounts of it +certainly day by day as I travelled in the train to London. But they were +summaries." + +"Full summaries, Robert," said Hazlewood. + +"No doubt. The trial made a great deal of noise in the world. But they +were not full enough for me. Even if my memory of those newspaper reports +were clear I should still hesitate to sit in judgment. But my memory +isn't clear. Let us see what I do remember." + +Pettifer took a chair and sat for a few moments with his forehead +wrinkled in a frown. Was he really trying to remember? His wife asked +herself that question as she watched him. Or had he something to tell +them which he meant to let fall in his own cautiously careless way? Mrs. +Pettifer listened alertly. + +"The--well--let us call it the catastrophe--took place in a tent in some +state of Rajputana." + +"Yes," said Mr. Hazlewood. + +"It took place at night. Mrs. Ballantyne was asleep in her bed. The man +Ballantyne was found outside the tent in the doorway." + +"Yes." + +Pettifer paused. "So many law cases have engaged my attention since," +he said in apology for his hesitation. He seemed quite at a loss. Then +he went on: + +"Wait a moment! A man had been dining with them at night--oh yes, I +begin to remember." + +Harold Hazlewood made a tiny movement and would have spoken, but Margaret +held out a hand towards him swiftly. + +"Yes, a man called Thresk," said Pettifer, and again he was silent. + +"Well," asked Hazlewood. + +"Well--that's all I remember," replied Pettifer briskly. He rose and put +his chair back. "Except--" he added slowly. + +"Yes?" + +"Except that there was left upon my mind when the verdict was published a +vague feeling of doubt." + +"There!" cried Mrs. Pettifer triumphantly. "You hear him, Harold." + +But Hazelwood paid no attention to her. He was gazing at his +brother-in-law with a good deal of uneasiness. + +"Why?" he asked. "Why were you in doubt, Robert?" + +But Pettifer had said all that he had any mind to say. + +"Oh, I can't remember why," he exclaimed. "I am very likely quite wrong. +Come, Margaret, it's time that we were getting home." + +He crossed over to Hazlewood and held out his hand. Hazlewood, however, +did not rise. + +"I don't think that's quite fair of you, Robert," he said. "You don't +disturb my confidence, of course--I have gone into the case +thoroughly--but I think you ought to give me a chance of satisfying you +that your doubts have no justification." + +"No really," exclaimed Pettifer. "I absolutely refuse to mix myself up in +the affair at all." A step sounded upon the gravel path outside the +window. Pettifer raised a warning finger. "It's midnight, Margaret," he +said. "We must go"; and as he spoke Dick Hazlewood walked in through the +open window. + +He smiled at the group of his relations with a grim amusement. They +certainly wore a guilty look. He was surprised to remark some +embarrassment even upon his father's face. + +"You will see your aunt off, Richard," said Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Of course." + +The Pettifers and Dick went out into the hall, leaving the old man in his +chair, a little absent, perhaps a little troubled. + +"Aunt Margaret, you have been upsetting my father," said Dick. + +"Nonsense, Dick," she replied, and her face flushed. She stepped into the +carriage quickly to avoid questions, and as she stepped in Dick noticed +that she was carrying a little paper-covered book. Pettifer followed. +"Good-night, Dick," he said, and he shook hands with his nephew very +warmly. In spite of his cordiality, however, Dick's face grew hard as he +watched the carriage drive away. Stella was right. The Pettifers were the +enemy. Well, he had always known there would be a fight, and now the +sooner it came the better. He went back to the library and as he opened +the door he heard his father's voice. The old man was sitting sunk in his +chair and repeating to himself: + +"I won't believe it. I won't believe it." + +He stopped at once when Dick came in. Dick looked at him with concern. + +"You are tired, father," he said. + +"Yes, I think I am a little. I'll go to bed." + +Hazlewood watched Dick walk over to the corner table where the candles +stood beside the tray, and his face cleared. For the first time in his +life the tidy well-groomed conventional look of his son was a real +pleasure to him. Richard was of those to whom the good-will of the world +meant much. He would never throw it lightly away. Hazlewood got up and +took one of the candles from his son. He patted him on the shoulder. He +became quite at ease as he looked into his face. + +"Good-night, my boy," he said. + +"Good-night, sir," replied Dick cheerfully. "There's nothing like acting +up to one's theories, is there?" + +"Nothing," said the old man heartily. "Look at my life!" + +"Yes," replied Dick. "And now look at mine. I am going to marry Stella +Ballantyne." + +For a moment Mr. Hazlewood stood perfectly still. Then he murmured +lamely: + +"Oh, are you? Are you, Richard?" and he shuffled quickly out of the room. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +MR. HAZLEWOOD SEEKS ADVICE + + +As Dick was getting out of bed at half-past seven a troubled little note +was brought to him written hurriedly and almost incoherent. + +"Dick, I can't ride with you this morning. I am too tired ... and I don't +think we should meet again. You must forget last night. I shall be very +proud always to remember it, but I won't ruin you, Dick. You mustn't +think I shall suffer so very much ..." Dick read it all through with a +smile of tenderness upon his face. He wrote a line in reply. "I will come +and see you at eleven, Stella. Meanwhile sleep, my dear," and sent it +across to the cottage. Then he rolled back into bed again and took his +own advice. It was late when he came down into the dining-room and he +took his breakfast alone. + +"Where's my father?" he asked of Hubbard the butler. + +"Mr. Hazlewood breakfasted half an hour ago, sir. He's at work now." + +"Capital," said Dick. "Give me some sausages. Hubbard, what would you say +if I told you that I was going to be married?" + +Hubbard placed a plate in front of him. + +"I should keep my head, sir," he answered in his gentle voice. "Will you +take tea?" + +"Thank you." + +Dick looked out of the window. It was a morning of clear skies and +sunlight, a very proper morning for this the first of all the remarkable +days which one after the other were going especially to belong to him. He +was of the gods now. The world was his property, or rather he held it in +trust for Stella. It was behaving well; Dick Hazlewood was contented. He +ate a large breakfast and strolling into the library lit his pipe. There +was his father bending over his papers at his writing-table before the +window, busy as a bee no doubt at some new enthusiasm which was destined +to infuriate his neighbours. Let him go on! Dick smiled benignly at the +old man's back. Then he frowned. It was curious that his father had not +wished him a good-morning, curious and unusual. + +"I hope, sir, that you slept well," he said. + +"I did not, Richard," and still the back was turned to him. "I lay awake +considering with some care what you told me last night about--about +Stella Ballantyne." + +Of late she had been simply Stella to Harold Hazlewood. The addition of +Ballantyne was significant. It replaced friendliness with formality. + +"Yes, we agreed to champion her cause, didn't we?" said Dick cheerily. +"You took one good step forward last night, I took another." + +"You took a long stride, Richard, and I think you might have consulted +me first." + +Dick walked over to the table at which his father sat. + +"Do you know, that's just what Stella said," he remarked, and he seemed +to find the suggestion rather unintelligible. Mr. Hazlewood snatched at +any support which was offered to him. + +"Ah!" he exclaimed, and for the first time that morning he looked his son +in the face. "There now, Richard, you see!" + +"Yes," Richard returned imperturbably. "But I was able to remove all +her fears. I was able to tell her that you would welcome our marriage +with all your heart, for you would look upon it as a triumph for your +principles and a sure sign that my better nature was at last +thoroughly awake." + +Dick walked away from the table. The old man's face lengthened. If he was +a philosopher at all, he was a philosopher in a piteous position, for he +was having his theories tested upon himself, he was to be the experiment +by which they should be proved or disproved. + +"No doubt," he said in a lamentable voice. "Quite so, Richard. Yes," and +he caught at vague hopes of delay. "There's no hurry of course. For one +thing I don't want to lose you... And then you have your career to think +of, haven't you?" Mr. Hazlewood found himself here upon ground more solid +and leaned his weight on it. "Yes, there's your career." + +Dick returned to his father, amazement upon his face. He spoke as one who +cannot believe the evidence of his ears. + +"But it's in the army, father! Do you realise what you are saying? You +want me to think of my career in the British Army?" + +Consistency however had no charms for Mr. Hazlewood at this moment. + +"Exactly," he cried. "We don't want to prejudice that--do we? No, no, +Richard! Oh, I hear the finest things about you. And they push the young +men along nowadays. You don't have to wait for grey hairs before you're +made a General, Richard, so we must keep an eye on our prospects, eh? And +for that reason it would be advisable perhaps"--and the old man's eyes +fell from Dick's face to his papers--"yes, it would certainly be +advisable to let your engagement remain for a while just a private matter +between the three of us." + +He took up his pen as though the matter was decided and discussion at an +end. But Dick did not move from his side. He was the stronger of the two +and in a little while the old man's eyes wandered up to his face again. +There was a look there which Margaret Pettifer had seen a week ago. Dick +spoke and the voice he used was strange and formidable to his father. + +"There must be no secrecy, father. I remember what you said: for +uncharitable slander an English village is impossible to beat. Our secret +would be known within a week and by attempting to keep it we invite +suspicion. Nothing could be more damaging to Stella than secrecy. +Consequently nothing could be more damaging to me. I don't deny that +things are going to be a little difficult. But of this I am sure"--and +his voice, though it still was quiet, rang deep with confidence--"our one +chance is to hold our heads high. No secrecy, father! My hope is to make +a life which has been very troubled know some comfort and a little +happiness." + +Mr. Hazlewood had no more to say. He must renounce his gods or hold his +tongue. And renounce his gods--no, that he could not do. He heard in +imagination the whole neighbourhood laughing--he saw it a sea of laughter +overwhelming him. He shivered as he thought of it. He, Harold Hazlewood, +the man emancipated from the fictions of society, caught like a silly +struggling fish in the net of his own theories! No, that must never be. +He flung himself at his work. He was revising the catalogue of his +miniatures and in a minute he began to fumble and search about his +over-loaded desk. + +"Everybody is trying to thwart me this morning," he cried angrily. + +"What's the matter, father?" asked Dick, laying down the _Times_. +"Can I help?" + +"I wrote a question to _Notes and Queries_ about the Marie Antoinette +miniature which I bought at Lord Mirliton's sale and there was an answer +in the last number, a very complete answer. But I can't find it. I can't +find it anywhere"; and he tossed his papers about as though he were +punishing them. + +Dick helped in the search, but beyond a stray copy or two of _The Prison +Walls must Cast no Shadow_, there was no publication to be found at all. + +"Wait a bit, father," said Dick suddenly. "What is _Notes and Queries_ +like? The only notes and queries I read are contained in a pink paper. +They are very amusing but they do not deal with miniatures." + +Mr. Hazlewood described the appearance of the little magazine. + +"Well, that's very extraordinary," said Dick, "for Aunt Margaret took it +away last night." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked at his son in blank astonishment. + +"Are you sure, Richard?" + +"I saw it in her hand as she stepped into her carriage." + +Mr. Hazlewood banged his fist upon the table. + +"It's extremely annoying of Margaret," he exclaimed. "She takes no +interest in such matters. She is not, if I may use the word, a virtuoso. +She did it solely to annoy me." + +"Well, I wonder," said Dick. He looked at his watch. It was eleven +o'clock. He went out into the hall, picked up a straw hat and walked +across the meadow to the thatched cottage on the river-bank. But while he +went he was still wondering why in the world Margaret had taken away that +harmless little magazine from his father's writing-table. "Pettifer's at +the bottom of it," he concluded. "There's a foxy fellow for you. I'll +keep my eye on Uncle Robert." He was near to the cottage. Only a rail +separated its garden from the meadow. Beyond the garden a window stood +open and within the room he saw the flutter of a lilac dress. + +From the window of the library Mr. Hazlewood watched his son open the +garden gate. Then he unlocked a drawer of his writing-table and took out +a large sealed envelope. He broke the seal and drew from the envelope a +sheaf of press cuttings. They were the verbatim reports of Stella +Ballantyne's trial, which had been printed day by day in the _Times of +India_. He had sent for them months ago when he had blithely taken upon +himself the defence of Stella Ballantyne. He had read them with a growing +ardour. So harshly had she lived; so shadowless was her innocence. He +turned to them now in a different spirit. Pettifer had been left by the +English summaries of the trial with a vague feeling of doubt. Mr. +Hazlewood respected Robert Pettifer. The lawyer was cautious, deliberate, +unemotional--qualities with which Hazlewood had instinctively little +sympathy. But on the other hand he was not bound hand and foot in +prejudice. He could be liberal in his judgments. He had a mind clear +enough to divide what reason had to say and the presumptions of +convention. Suppose that Pettifer was after all right! The old man's +heart sank within him. Then indeed this marriage must be prevented--and +the truth must be made known--yes, widely known. He himself had been +deceived--like many another man before him. It was not ridiculous to have +been deceived. He remained at all events consistent to his principles. +There was his pamphlet to be sure, _The Prison Walls must Cast no +Shadow_ that gave him an uncomfortable twinge. But he reassured himself. + +"There I argue that, once the offence has been expiated, all the +privileges should be restored. But if Pettifer is right there has been no +expiation." + +That saving clause let him out. He did not thus phrase the position even +to himself. He clothed it in other and high-sounding words. It was after +all a sort of convention to accept acquittal as the proof of innocence. +But at the back of his mind from first to last there was an immense fear +of the figure which he himself would cut if he refused his consent to +the marriage on any ground except that of Stella Ballantyne's guilt. For +Stella herself, the woman, he had no kindness to spare that morning. +Yesterday he had overflowed with it. For yesterday she had been one more +proof to the world how high he soared above it. + +"Since Pettifer's in doubt," he said to himself, "there must be some +flaw in this trial which I overlooked in the heat of my sympathy"; and +to discover that flaw he read again every printed detail of it from the +morning when Stella first appeared before the stipendiary magistrate to +that other morning a month later when the verdict was given. And he +found no flaw. Stella's acquittal was inevitable on the evidence. There +was much to show what provocation she had suffered, but there was no +proof that she had yielded to it. On the contrary she had endured so +long, the presumption must be that she would go on enduring to the end. +And there was other evidence--positive evidence given by Thresk which +could not be gainsaid. + +Mr. Hazlewood replaced his cuttings in the drawer; and he was utterly +discontented. He had hoped for another result. There was only one point +which puzzled him and that had nothing really to do with the trial, but +it puzzled him so much that it slipped out at luncheon. + +"Richard," he said, "I cannot understand why the name of Thresk is so +familiar to me." + +Dick glanced quickly at his father. + +"You have been reading over again the accounts of the trial." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked confused. + +"And a very natural proceeding, Richard," he declared. "But while reading +over the trial I found the name Thresk familiar to me in another +connection, but I cannot remember what the connection is." + +Dick could not help him, nor was he at that time concerned by the failure +of his father's memory. He was engaged in realising that here was another +enemy for Stella. Knowing his father, he was not greatly surprised, but +he thought it prudent to attack without delay. + +"Stella will be coming over to tea this afternoon," he said. + +"Will she, Richard?" the father replied, twisting uncomfortably in his +chair. "Very well--of course." + +"Hubbard knows of my engagement, by the way," Dick continued implacably. + +"Hubbard! God bless my soul!" cried the old man. "It'll be all over the +village already." + +"I shouldn't wonder," replied Dick cheerfully. "I told him before I saw +you this morning, whilst I was having breakfast." + +Mr. Hazlewood remained silent for a while. Then he burst out petulantly: + +"Richard, there's something I must speak to you seriously about: the +lateness of your hours in the morning. I have noticed it with great +regret. It is not considerate to the servants and it cannot be healthy +for you. Such indolence too must be enervating to your mind." + +Dick forbore to remind his father that he was usually out of the house +before seven. + +"Father," he said, at once a very model of humility, "I will endeavour +to reform." + +Mr. Hazlewood concealed his embarrassment at teatime under a show of +over-work. He had a great deal to do--just a moment for a cup of tea--no +more. There was to be a meeting of the County Council the next morning +when a most important question of small holdings was to come up for +discussion. Mr. Hazlewood held the strongest views. He was engaged in +shaping them in the smallest possible number of words. To be brief, to be +vivid--there was the whole art of public speaking. Mr. Hazlewood +chattered feverishly for five minutes; he had come in chattering, he went +out chattering. + +"That's all right, Stella, you see," said Dick cheerfully when they +were left alone. Stella nodded her head. Mr. Hazlewood had not said one +word in recognition of her engagement but she had made her little fight +that morning. She had yielded and she could not renew it. She had spent +three miserable hours framing reasonable arguments why last night +should be forgotten. But the sight of her lover coming across the +meadow had set her heart so leaping that she could only stammer out a +few tags and phrases. + +"Oh, I wish you hadn't come!" she had repeated and repeated and all the +while her blood was leaping in her body for joy that he had. She had +promised in the end to stand firm, to stand by his side and brave--what, +after all, but the clamour of a week? So he put it and so she was eager +to believe. + +Mr. Hazelwood, busy though he made himself out to be, found time that +evening to drive in his motor-car into Great Beeding, and when the London +train pulled up at the station he was on the platform. He looked +anxiously at the passengers who descended until he saw Robert Pettifer. +He went up to him at once. + +"What in the world are you doing here?" asked the lawyer. + +"I came on purpose to catch you, Robert. I want to speak to you in +private. My car is here. If you will get into it with me we can drive +slowly towards your house." + +Pettifer's face changed, but he could not refuse. Hazlewood was agitated +and nervous; of his ordinary complacency there was no longer a trace. +Pettifer got into the car and as it moved away from the station he asked: + +"Now what's the matter?" + +"I have been thinking over what you said last night, Robert. You had a +vague feeling of doubt. Well, I have the verbatim reports of the trial in +Bombay here in this envelope and I want you to read them carefully +through and give me your opinion." He held out the envelope as he spoke, +but Pettifer thrust his hands into his pockets. + +"I won't touch it," he declared. "I refuse to mix myself up in the affair +at all. I said more than I meant to last night." + +"But you did say it, Robert." + +"Then I withdraw it now." + +"But you can't, Robert. You must go further. Something has happened +to-day, something very serious." + +"Oh?" said Pettifer. + +"Yes," replied Mr. Hazlewood. "Margaret really has more insight than I +credited her with. They propose to get married." + +Pettifer sat upright in the car. + +"You mean Dick and Stella Ballantyne?" + +"Yes." + +And for a little while there was silence in the car. Then Mr. Hazlewood +continued to bleat. + +"I never suspected anything of the kind. It places me, Robert, in a very +difficult position." + +"I can quite see that," answered Pettifer with a grim smile. "It's really +the only consoling element in the whole business. You can't refuse your +consent without looking a fool and you can't give it while you are in any +doubt as to Mrs. Ballantyne's innocence." + +Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, quite prepared to accept that definition +of his position. + +"You don't exhaust the possibilities, Robert," he said. "I can quite +well refuse my consent and publicly refuse it if there are reasonable +grounds for believing that there was in that trial a grave miscarriage +of justice." + +Mr. Pettifer looked sharply at his companion. The voice no less than the +words fixed his attention. This was not the Mr. Hazlewood of yesterday. +The champion had dwindled into a figure of meanness. Harold Hazlewood +would be glad to discover those reasonable grounds; and he would be very +much obliged if Robert Pettifer would take upon himself the +responsibility of discovering them. + +"Yes, I see," said Pettifer slowly. He was half inclined to leave Harold +Hazlewood to find his way out of his trouble by himself. It was all his +making after all. But other and wider considerations began to press upon +Pettifer. He forced himself to omit altogether the subject of Hazlewood's +vanities and entanglements. + +"Very well. Give the cuttings to me! I will read them through and I will +let you know my opinion. Their intention to marry may alter +everything--my point of view as much as yours." + +Mr. Pettifer took the envelope in his hand and got out of the car as +soon as Hazlewood had stopped it. + +"You have raised no objections to the engagement?" he asked. + +"A word to Richard this morning. Of not much effect I am afraid." + +Mr. Pettifer nodded. + +"Right. I should say nothing to anybody. You can't take a decided line +against it at present and to snarl would be the worst policy imaginable. +To-day's Thursday. We'll meet on Saturday. Good-night," and Robert +Pettifer walked away to his own house. + +He walked slowly, wondering at the eternal mystery by which this +particular man and that individual woman select each other out of the +throng. He owed the greater part of his fortune to the mystery like many +another lawyer. But to-night he would willingly have yielded a good +portion of it up if that process of selection could be ordered in a more +reasonable way. Love? The attraction of Sex? Yes, no doubt. But why these +two specimens of Sex? Why Dick and Stella Ballantyne? + +When he reached his house his wife hurried forward to meet him. Already +she had the news. There was an excitement in her face not to be +misunderstood. The futile time-honoured phrase of triumph so ready on the +lips of those who have prophesied evil was trembling upon hers. + +"Don't say it, Margaret," said Pettifer very seriously. "We have come to +a pass where light words will lead us astray. Hazlewood has been with me. +I have the reports of the trial here." + +Margaret Pettifer put a check upon her tongue and they dined together +almost in complete silence. Pettifer was methodically getting his own +point of view quite clearly established in his mind, so that whatever he +did or advised he might be certain not to swerve from it afterwards. He +weighed his inclinations and his hopes, and when the servants had left +the dining-room and he had lit his cigar he put his case before his wife. + +"Listen, Margaret! You know your brother. He is always in extremes. He +swings from one to the other. He is terrified now lest this marriage +should take place." + +"No wonder," interposed Mrs. Pettifer. + +Pettifer made no comment upon the remark. + +"Therefore," he continued, "he is anxious that I should discover in these +reports some solid reason for believing that the verdict which acquitted +Stella Ballantyne was a grave miscarriage of justice. For any such reason +must have weight." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Pettifer. + +"And will justify him--this is his chief consideration--in withholding +publicly his consent." + +"I see." + +Only a week ago Dick himself had observed that sentimental +philosophers had a knack of breaking their heads against their own +theories. The words had been justified sooner than she had expected. +Mrs. Pettifer was not surprised at Harold Hazlewood's swift change any +more than her husband had been. Harold, to her thinking, was a +sentimentalist and sentimentality was like a fir-tree--a thing of no +deep roots and easily torn up. + +"But I do not take that view, Margaret," continued her husband, and she +looked at him with consternation. Was he now to turn champion, he who +only yesterday had doubted? "And I want you to consider whether you can +agree with me. There is to begin with the woman herself, Stella +Ballantyne. I saw her for the first time yesterday, and to be quite +honest I liked her, Margaret. Yes. It seemed to me that there was nothing +whatever of the adventuress about her. And I was impressed--I will go +further, I was moved--dry-as-dust old lawyer as I am, by something--How +shall I express it without being ridiculous?" He paused and searched in +his vocabulary and gave up the search. "No, the epithet which occurred to +me yesterday at the dinner-table and immediately, still seems to me the +only true one--I was moved by something in this woman of tragic +experiences which was strangely virginal." + +One quick movement was made by Margaret Pettifer. The truth of her +husband's description was a revelation, so exact it was. Therein lay +Stella Ballantyne's charm, and her power to create champions and friends. +Her history was known to you, the miseries of her marriage, the suspicion +of crime. You expected a woman of adventures and lo! there stood before +you one with "something virginal" in her appearance and her manner, which +made its soft and irresistible appeal. + +"I recognise that feeling of mine," Pettifer resumed, "and I try to put +it aside. And putting it aside I ask myself and you, Margaret, this: +Here's a woman who has been through a pretty bad time, who has been +unhappy, who has stood in the dock, who has been acquitted. Is it quite +fair that when at last she has floated into a haven of peace two private +people like Hazlewood and myself should take it upon ourselves to review +the verdict and perhaps reverse it?" + +"But there's Dick, Robert," cried Mrs. Pettifer. "There's Dick. Surely +he's our first thought." + +"Yes, there's Dick," Mr. Pettifer repeated. "And Dick's my second point. +You are all worrying about Dick from the social point of view--the +external point of view. Well, we have got to take that into our +consideration. But we are bound to look at him, the man, as well. Don't +forget that, Margaret! Well, I find the two points of view identical. But +our neighbours won't. Will you?" + +Mrs. Pettifer was baffled. + +"I don't understand," she said. + +"I'll explain. From the social standpoint what's really important as +regards Dick? That he should go out to dinner? No. That he should have +children? Yes!" + +And here Mrs. Pettifer interposed again. + +"But they must be the right children," she exclaimed. "Better that he +should have none than that he should have children--" + +"With an hereditary taint," Pettifer agreed. "Admitted, Margaret. If we +come to the conclusion that Stella Ballantyne did what she was accused of +doing we, in spite of all the verdicts in the world, are bound to resist +this marriage. I grant it. Because of that conviction I dismiss the plea +that we are unfair to the woman in reviewing the trial. There are wider, +greater considerations." + +These were the first words of comfort which Mrs. Pettifer had heard since +her husband began to expound. She received them with enthusiasm. + +"I am so glad to hear that." + +"Yes, Margaret," Pettifer retorted drily. "But please ask yourself +this question: (it is where, to my thinking, the social and the +personal elements join) if this marriage is broken off, is Dick likely +to marry at all?" + +"Why not?" asked Margaret. + +"He is thirty-four. He has had, no doubt, many opportunities of +marriage. He must have had. He is good-looking, well off and a good +fellow. This is the first time he has wanted to marry. If he is +disappointed here will he try again?" + +Mrs. Pettifer laughed, moved by the remarkable depreciation of her own +sex which women of her type so often have. It was for man to throw the +handkerchief. Not a doubt but there would be a rush to pick it up! + +"Widowers who have been devoted to their wives marry again," she argued. + +"A point for me, Margaret!" returned Pettifer. "Widowers--yes. They miss +so much--the habit of a house with a woman its mistress, the +companionship, the order, oh, a thousand small but important things. But +a man who has remained a bachelor until he's thirty-four--that's a +different case. If he sets his heart at that age, seriously, for the +first time on a woman and does not get her, that's the kind of man who, +my experience suggests to me--I put it plainly, Margaret--will take one +or more mistresses to himself but no wife." + +Mrs. Pettifer deferred to the worldly knowledge of her husband but she +clung to her one clear argument. + +"Nothing could be worse," she said frankly, "than that he should marry a +guilty woman." + +"Granted, Margaret," replied Mr. Pettifer imperturbably. "Only suppose +that she's not guilty. There are you and I, rich people, and no one to +leave our money to--no one to carry on your name--no one we care a rap +about to benefit by my work and your brother's fortune--no one of the +family to hand over Little Beeding to." + +Both of them were silent after he had spoken. He had touched upon their +one great sorrow. Margaret herself had her roots deep in the soil of +Little Beeding. It was hateful to her that the treasured house should +ever pass to strangers, as it would do if this the last branch of the +family failed. + +"But Stella Ballantyne was married for seven years," she said at last, +"and there were no children." + +"No, that's true," replied Pettifer. "But it does not follow that with a +second marriage there will be none. It's a chance, I know, but--" and +he got up from his chair. "I do honestly believe that it's the only +chance you and I will have, Margaret, of dying with the knowledge that +our lives have not been altogether vain. We've lighted our little torch. +Yes, and it burns merrily enough, but what's the use unless at the +appointed mile-stone there's another of us to take it and carry it on?" + +He stood looking down at his wife with a wistful and serious look +upon his face. + +"Dick's past the age of calf-love. We can't expect him to tumble from one +passion to another; and he's not easily moved. Therefore I hope very +sincerely that these reports which I am now going to read will enable me +to go boldly to Harold Hazlewood and say: 'Stella Ballantyne is as +guiltless of this crime as you or I.'" + +Mr. Pettifer took up the big envelope which he had placed on the table +beside him and carried it away to his study. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +PETTIFER'S PLAN + + +On the Saturday morning Mr. Hazlewood drove over early to Great Beeding. +His impatience had so grown during the last few days that his very sleep +was broken at night and in the daytime he could not keep still. The news +of Dick's engagement to Stella Ballantyne was now known throughout the +countryside and the blame for it was laid upon Harold Hazlewood's +shoulders. For blame was the general note, blame and chagrin. A few bold +and kindly spirits went at once to see Stella; a good many more seriously +and at great length debated over their tea-tables whether they should +call after the marriage. But on the whole the verdict was an indignant +No. Disgrace was being brought upon the neighbourhood. Little Beeding +would be impossible. Dick Hazlewood only laughed at the constraint of his +acquaintances, and when three of them crossed the road hurriedly in Great +Beeding to avoid Stella and himself he said good-humouredly: + +"They are like an ill-trained company of bad soldiers. Let one of them +break from the ranks and they'll all stream away so as not to be left +behind. You'll see, Stella. One of them will come and the rest will +tumble over one another to get into your drawing-room." + +How much he believed of what he said Stella did not inquire. She had a +gift of silence. She just walked a little nearer to him and smiled, lest +any should think she had noticed the slight. The one man, in a word, who +showed signs of wear and tear was Mr. Hazlewood himself. So keen was his +distress that he had no fear of his sister's sarcasms. + +"I--think of it!" he exclaimed in a piteous bewilderment, "actually I +have become sensitive to public opinion," and Mrs. Pettifer forbore from +the comments which she very much longed to make. She was in the study +when Harold Hazlewood was shown in, and Pettifer had bidden her to stay. + +"Margaret knows that I have been reading these reports," he said. "Sit +down, Hazlewood, and I'll tell you what I think." + +Mr. Hazlewood took a seat facing the garden with its old red brick wall, +on which a purple clematis was growing. + +"You have formed an opinion then, Robert?" + +"One." + +"What is it?" he asked eagerly. + +Robert Pettifer clapped the palm of his hand down upon the cuttings from +the newspapers which lay before him on his desk. + +"This--no other verdict could possibly have been given by the jury. On +the evidence produced at the trial in Bombay Mrs. Ballantyne was properly +and inevitably acquitted." + +"Robert!" exclaimed his wife. She too had been hoping for the contrary +opinion. As for Hazlewood himself the sunlight seemed to die off that +garden. He drew his hand across his forehead. He half rose to go when +again Robert Pettifer spoke. + +"And yet," he said slowly, "I am not satisfied." + +Harold Hazlewood sat down again. Mrs. Pettifer drew a breath of relief. + +"The chief witness for the defence, the witness whose evidence made the +acquittal certain, was a man I know--a barrister called Thresk." + +"Yes," interrupted Hazlewood. "I have been puzzled about that man ever +since you mentioned him before. His name I am somehow familiar with." + +"I'll explain that to you in a minute," said Pettifer, and his wife +leaned forward suddenly in her chair. She did not interrupt but she sat +with a look of keen expectancy upon her face. She did not know whither +Pettifer was leading them but she was now sure that it was to some +carefully pondered goal. + +"I have more than once briefed Thresk myself. He's a man of the highest +reputation at the Bar, straightforward, honest; he enjoys a great +practice, he is in Parliament with a great future in Parliament. In a +word he is a man with everything to lose if he lied as a witness in a +trial. And yet--I am not satisfied." + +Mr. Pettifer's voice sank to a low murmur. He sat at his desk staring out +in front of him through the window. + +"Why?" asked Hazlewood. But Pettifer did not answer him. He seemed not to +hear the question. He went on in the low quiet voice he had used before, +rather like one talking to himself than to a companion. + +"I should very much like to put a question or two to Mr. Thresk." + +"Then why don't you?" exclaimed Mrs. Pettifer. "You know him." + +"Yes." Mr. Hazlewood eagerly seconded his sister. "Since you know him you +are the very man." + +Pettifer shook his head. + +"It would be an impertinence. For although I look upon Dick as a son I am +not his father. You are, Hazlewood, you are. He wouldn't answer me." + +"Would he answer me?" asked Hazlewood. "I don't know him at all. I can't +go to him and ask if he told the truth." + +"No, no, you can't do that," Pettifer answered, "nor do I mean you to. I +want to put my questions myself in my own way and I thought that you +might get him down to Little Beeding." + +"But I have no excuse," cried Hazlewood, and Mrs. Pettifer at last +understood the plan which was in her husband's mind, which had +been growing to completion since the night when he had dined at +Little Beeding. + +"Yes, you have an excuse," she cried, and Pettifer explained what it was. + +"You collect miniatures. Some time ago you bought one of Marie Antoinette +at Lord Mirliton's sale. You asked a question as to its authenticity in +_Notes and Queries_. It was answered--" + +Mr. Hazlewood broke in excitedly: + +"By a man called Thresk. That is why the name was familiar to me. But I +could not remember." He turned upon his sister. "It is your fault, +Margaret. You took my copy of _Notes and Queries_ away with you. Dick +noticed it and told me." + +"Dick!" Pettifer exclaimed in alarm. But the alarm passed. "He cannot +have guessed why." + +Mrs. Pettifer was clear upon the point. + +"No. I took the magazine because of a remark which Robert made to you. +Dick did not hear it. No, he cannot have guessed why." + +"For it's important he should have no suspicion whatever of what I +propose that you should do, Hazlewood," Pettifer said gravely. "I propose +that we should take a lesson from the legal processes of another country. +It may work, it may not, but to my mind it is our only chance." + +"Let me hear!" said Hazlewood. + +"Thresk is an authority on old silver and miniatures. He has a valuable +collection himself. His advice is sought by people in the trade. You know +what collectors are. Get him down to see your collection. It wouldn't be +the first time that you have invited a stranger to pass a night in your +house for that purpose, would it?" + +"No." + +"And the invitation has often been accepted?" + +"Well--sometimes." + +"We must hope that it will be this time. Get Thresk down to Little +Beeding upon that excuse. Then confront him unexpectedly with Mrs. +Ballantyne. And let me be there." + +Such was the plan which Pettifer suggested. A period of silence followed +upon his words. Even Mr. Hazlewood, in the extremity of his distress, +recoiled from it. + +"It would look like a trap." + +Mr. Pettifer thumped his table impatiently. + +"Let's be frank, for Heaven's sake. It wouldn't merely look like a trap, +it would be one. It wouldn't be at all a pretty thing to do, but there's +this marriage!" + +"No, I couldn't do it," said Hazlewood. + +"Very well. There's no more to be said." + +Pettifer himself had no liking for the plan. It had been his intention +originally to let Hazlewood know that if he wished to get into +communication with Thresk there was a means by which he could do it. But +the fact of Dick's engagement had carried him still further, and now +that he had read the evidence of the trial carefully there was a real +anxiety in his mind. Pettifer sealed up the cuttings in a fresh envelope +and gave them to Hazlewood and went out with him to the door. + +"Of course," said the old man, "if your legal experience, Robert, leads +you to think that we should be justified--" + +"But it doesn't," Pettifer was quick to interpose. He recognised his +brother-in-law's intention to throw the discredit of the trick upon his +shoulders but he would have none of it. "No, Hazlewood," he said +cheerfully: "it's not a plan which a high-class lawyer would be likely to +commend to a client." + +"Then I am afraid that I couldn't do it." + +"All right," said Pettifer with his hand upon the latch of the front +door. "Thresk's chambers are in King's Bench Walk." He added the number. + +"I simply couldn't think of it," Hazlewood repeated as he crossed the +pavement to his car. + +"Perhaps not," said Pettifer. "You have the envelope? Yes. Choose an +evening towards the end of the week, a Friday will be your best chance of +getting him." + +"I will do nothing of the kind, Pettifer." + +"And let me know when he is coming. Goodbye." + +The car carried Mr. Hazlewood away still protesting that he really +couldn't think of it for an instant. But he thought a good deal of it +during the next week and his temper did not improve. "Pettifer has rubbed +off the finer edges of his nature," he said to himself. "It is a pity--a +great pity. But thirty years of life in a lawyer's office must no doubt +have that effect. I regret very much that Pettifer should have imagined +that I would condescend to such a scheme." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +ON THE DOWNS + + +They went up by the steep chalk road which skirts the park wall to the +top of the conical hill above the race-course. An escarpment of grass +banks guards a hollow like a shallow crater on the very summit. They rode +round it upon the rim, now facing the black slope of Charlton Forest +across the valley to the north, now looking out over the plain and +Chichester. Thirty miles away above the sea the chalk cliffs of the Isle +of Wight gleamed under their thatch of dark turf. It was not yet nine in +the morning. Later the day would climb dustily to noon; now it had the +wonder and the stillness of great beginnings. A faint haze like a veil at +the edges of the sky and a freshness of the air made the world magical to +these two who rode high above weald and sea. Stella looked downwards to +the silver flash of the broad water west of Chichester spire. + +"That way they came, perhaps on a day like this," she said slowly, "those +old centurions." + +"Your thoughts go back," said Dick Hazlewood with a laugh. + +"Not so far as you think," cried Stella, and suddenly her cheeks +took fire and a smile dimpled them. "Oh, I dare to think of many +things to-day." + +She rode down the steep grass slope towards the race-course with Dick at +her side. It was the first morning they had ridden together since the +night of the dinner-party at Little Beeding. Mr. Hazlewood was at this +moment ordering his car so that he might drive in to the town and learn +what Pettifer had discovered in the cuttings from the newspapers. But +they were quite unaware of the plot which was being hatched against them. +They went forward under the high beech-trees watching for the great roots +which stretched across their path, and talking little. An open way +between wooden posts led them now on to turf and gave them the freedom of +the downs. They saw no one. With the larks and the field-fares they had +the world to themselves; and in the shade beneath the hedges the dew +still sparkled on the grass. They left the long arm of Halnaker Down upon +their right, its old mill standing up on the edge like some lighthouse on +a bluff of the sea, and crossing the high road from Up-Waltham rode along +a narrow glade amongst beeches and nut-trees and small oaks and bushes of +wild roses. Open spaces came again; below them were the woods and the +green country of Slindon and the deep grass of Dale Park. And so they +drew near to Gumber Corner where Stane Street climbs over Bignor Hill. +Here Dick Hazlewood halted. + +"I suppose we turn." + +"Not to-day," said Stella, and Dick turned to her with surprise. Always +before they had stopped at this point and always by Stella's wish. Either +she was tired or was needed at home or had letters to write--always +there had been some excuse and no reason. Dick Hazlewood had come to +believe that she would not pass this point, that the down land beyond was +a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground on which she would not trespass. He had +wondered why, but his instinct had warned him from questions. He had +always turned at this spot immediately, as if he believed the excuse +which she had ready. + +Stella noticed the surprise upon his face; and the blushes rose again in +her cheeks. + +"You knew that I would not go beyond," she said. + +"Yes." + +"But you did not know why?" There was a note of urgency in her voice. + +"I guessed," he said. "I mean I played with guesses--oh not seriously," +and he laughed. "There runs Stane Street from Chichester to London and +through London to the great North Wall. Up that road the Romans marched +and back by that road they returned to their galleys in the water there +by Chichester. I pictured you living in those days, a Boadicea of the +Weald who had set her heart, against her will, on some dashing captain +of old Rome camped here on the top of Bignor Hill. You crept from your +own people at night to meet him in the lane at the bottom. Then came +week after week when the street rang with the tramp of soldiers +returning from London and Lichfield and the North to embark in their +boats for Gaul and Rome." + +"They took my captain with them?" cried Stella, laughing with him at +the conceit. + +"Yes, so my fable ran. He pined for the circus and the theatre and the +painted ladies, so he went willingly." + +"The brute," cried Stella. "And so I broke my heart over a decadent +philanderer in a suit of bright brass clothes and remember it thirteen +hundred years afterwards in another life! Thank you, Captain Hazlewood!" + +"No, you don't actually remember it, Stella, but you have a feeling that +round about Stane Street you once suffered great humiliation and +unhappiness." And suddenly Stella rode swiftly past him, but in a moment +she waited for him and showed him a face of smiles. + +"You see I have crossed Stane Street to-day, Dick," she said. "We'll ride +on to Arundel." + +"Yes," answered Dick, "my story won't do," and he remembered a sentence +of hers spoken an hour and a half ago: "My thoughts do not go back as far +as you think." + +At all events she was emancipated to-day, for they rode on until at the +end of a long gentle slope the great arch of the gate into Arundel Park +gleamed white in a line of tall dark trees. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE LETTER IS WRITTEN + + +But Stella's confidence did not live long. Mr. Hazlewood was a child at +deceptions; and day by day his anxieties increased. His friends argued +with him--his folly and weakness were the themes--and he must needs repel +the argument though his thoughts echoed every word they used. Never was a +man brought to such a piteous depth of misery by the practice of his own +theories. He sat by the hour at his desk, burying his face amongst his +papers if Dick came into the room, with a great show of occupation. He +could hardly bear to contemplate the marriage of his son, yet day and +night he must think of it and search for expedients which might put an +end to the trouble and let him walk free again with his head raised high. +But there were only the two expedients. He must speak out his fears that +justice had miscarried, and that device his vanity forbade; or he must +adopt Pettifer's suggestion, and from that he shrank almost as much. He +began to resent the presence of Stella Ballantyne and he showed it. +Sometimes a friendliness, so excessive that it was almost hysterical, +betrayed him; more usually a discomfort and constraint. He avoided her +if by any means he could; if he could not quite avoid her an excuse of +business was always on his lips. + +"Your father hates me, Dick," she said. "He was my friend until I touched +his own life. Then I was in the black books in a second." + +Dick would not hear of it. + +"You were never in the black books at all, Stella," he said, comforting +her as well as he could. "We knew that there would be a little struggle, +didn't we? But the worst of that's over. You make friends daily." + +"Not with your father, Dick. I go back with him. Ever since that +night--it's three weeks ago now--when you took me home from Little +Beeding." + +"No," cried Dick, but Stella nodded her head gloomily. + +"Mr. Pettifer dined here that night. He's an enemy of mine." + +"Stella," young Hazlewood remonstrated, "you see enemies everywhere," and +upon that Stella broke out with a quivering troubled face. + +"Is it wonderful? Oh, Dick, I couldn't lose you! A month ago--before that +night--yes. Nothing had been said. But now! I couldn't, I couldn't! I +have often thought it would be better for me to go right away and never +see you again. And--and I have tried to tell you something, Dick, ever so +many times." + +"Yes?" said Dick. He slipped his arm through hers and held her close to +him, as though to give her courage and security. "Yes, Stella?" and he +stood very still. + +"I mean," she said, looking down upon the ground, "that I have tried to +tell you that I wouldn't suffer so very much if we did part, but I never +could do it. My lips shook so, I never could speak the words." Then her +voice ran up into a laugh. "To think of your living in a house with +somebody else! Oh no!" + +"You need have no fear of that, Stella." + +They were in the garden of Little Beeding and they walked across the +meadow towards her cottage, talking very earnestly. Mr. Hazlewood was +watching them secretly from the window of the library. He saw that Dick +was pleading and she hanging in doubt; and a great wave of anger surged +over him that Dick should have to plead to her at all, he who was giving +everything--even his own future. + +"King's Bench Walk," he muttered to himself, taking from the drawer of +his writing-table a slip of paper on which he had written the address +lest he should forget it. "Yes, that's the address," and he looked at it +for a long time very doubtfully. Suppose that his suspicions were +correct! His heart sank at the supposition. Surely he would be justified +in setting any trap. But he shut the drawer violently and turned away +from his writing-table. Even his pamphlets had become trivial in his +eyes. He was brought face to face with real passions and real facts, he +had been fetched out from his cloister and was blinking miserably in a +full measure of daylight. How long could he endure it, he wondered? + +The question was settled for him that very evening. He and his son were +taking their coffee on a paved terrace by the lawn after dinner. It was a +dark quiet night, with a clear sky of golden stars. Across the meadow the +lights shone in the windows of Stella's cottage. + +"Father," said Dick, after they had sat in a constrained silence for a +little while, "why don't you like Stella any longer?" + +The old man blustered in reply: + +"A lawyer's question, Richard. I object to it very strongly. You assume +that I have ceased to like her." + +"It's extremely evident," said Dick drily. "Stella has noticed it." + +"And complained to you of course," cried Mr. Hazlewood resentfully. + +"Stella doesn't complain," and then Dick leaned over and spoke in the +full quiet voice which his father had grown to dread. There rang in it so +much of true feeling and resolution. + +"There can be no backing down now. We are both agreed upon that, aren't +we? Imagine for an instant that I were first to blazon my trust in a +woman whom others suspected by becoming engaged to her and then +endorsed their suspicions by breaking off the engagement! Suppose that +I were to do that!" + +Mr. Hazlewood allowed his longings to lead him astray. For a +moment he hoped. + +"Well?" he asked eagerly. + +"You wouldn't think very much of me, would you? Not you nor any man. A +cur--that would be the word, the only word, wouldn't it?" + +But Mr. Hazlewood refused to answer that question. He looked behind him +to make sure that none of the servants were within hearing. Then he +lowered his voice to a whisper. + +"What if Stella has deceived you, Dick?" + +It was too dark for him to see the smile upon his son's face, but he +heard the reply, and the confidence of it stung him to exasperation. + +"She hasn't done that," said Dick. "If you are sure of nothing else, +sir, you may be quite certain of what I am telling you now. She hasn't +done that." + +He remained silent for a few moments waiting for any rejoinder, and +getting none he continued: + +"There's something else I wanted to speak to you about." + +"Yes?" + +"The date of our marriage." + +The old man moved sharply in his chair. + +"There's no hurry, Richard. You must find out how it will affect your +career. You have been so long at Little Beeding where we hear very +little from the outer world. You must consult your Colonel." + +Dick Hazlewood would not listen to the argument. + +"My marriage is my affair, sir, not my Colonel's. I cannot take advice, +for we both of us know what it would be. And we both of us value it at +its proper price, don't we?" + +Mr. Hazlewood could not reply. How often had he inveighed against +the opinions of the sleek worldly people who would add up advantages +in a column and leave out of their consideration the merits of the +higher life. + +"It would not be fair to Stella were we to ask her to wait," Dick +resumed. "Any delay--think what will be made of it! A month or six weeks +from now, that gives us time enough." + +The old man rose abruptly from his chair with a vague word that he would +think of it and went into the house. He saw again the lovers as he had +seen them this afternoon walking side by side slowly towards Stella +Ballantyne's cottage; and the picture even in the retrospect was +intolerable. The marriage must not take place--yet it was so near. A +month or six weeks! Mr. Hazlewood took up his pen and wrote the letter to +Henry Thresk at last, as Robert Pettifer had always been sure that he +would do. It was the simplest kind of letter and took but a minute in the +writing. It mentioned only his miniatures and invited Henry Thresk to +Little Beeding to see them, as more than one stranger had been asked +before. The answers which Thresk had given to the questions in _Notes and +Queries_ were pleaded as an introduction and Thresk was invited to choose +his own day and remain at Little Beeding for the night. The reply came by +return of post. Thresk would come to Little Beeding on the Friday +afternoon of the next week. He was in town, for Parliament was sitting +late that year. He would reach Little Beeding soon after five so that he +might have an opportunity of seeing the miniatures by daylight. Mr. +Hazlewood hurried over with the news to Robert Pettifer. His spirits had +risen at a bound. Already he saw the neighbourhood freed from the +disturbing presence of Stella Ballantyne and himself cheerfully resuming +his multifarious occupations. + +Robert Pettifer, however, spoke in quite another strain. + +"I am not so sure as you, Hazlewood. The points which trouble me are very +possibly capable of quite simple explanations. I hope for my part that +they will be so explained." + +"You hope it?" cried Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Yes. I want Dick to marry," said Robert Pettifer. + +Mr. Hazlewood was not, however, to be discouraged. He drove back to his +house counting the days which must pass before Thresk's arrival and +wondering how he should manage to conceal his elation from the keen +eyes of his son. But he found that there was no need for him to +trouble himself on that point, for this very morning at luncheon Dick +said to him: + +"I think that I'll run up to town this afternoon, father. I might be +there for a day or two." + +Mr. Hazlewood was delighted. No other proposal could have fitted in so +well with his scheme. The mere fact that Dick was away would start people +at the pleasant business of conjecturing mishaps and quarrels. Perhaps +indeed the lovers _had_ quarrelled. Perhaps Richard had taken his advice +and was off to consult his superiors. Mr. Hazlewood scanned his son's +face eagerly but learnt nothing from it; and he was too wary to ask any +questions. + +"By all means, Richard," he said carelessly, "go to London! You will be +back by next Friday, I suppose." + +"Oh yes, before that. I shall stay at my own rooms, so if you want me you +can send me a telegram." + +Dick Hazlewood had a small flat of his own in some Mansions at +Westminster which had seen very little of him that summer. + +"Thank you, Richard," said the old man. "But I shall get on very well, +and a few days change will no doubt do you good." + +Dick grinned at his father and went off that afternoon without a word of +farewell to Stella Ballantyne. Mr. Hazlewood stood in the hall and saw +him go with a great relief at his heart. Everything at last seemed to be +working out to advantage. He could not but remember how so very few +weeks ago he had been urgent that Richard should spend his summer at +Little Beeding and lend a hand in the noble work of defending Stella +Ballantyne against ignorance and unreason. But the twinge only lasted a +moment. He had made a mistake, as all men occasionally do--yes, even +sagacious and thoughtful people like himself. And the mistake was already +being repaired. He looked across the meadow that night at the lighted +blinds of Stella's windows and anticipated an evening when those windows +would be dark and the cottage without an inhabitant. + +"Very soon," he murmured to himself, "very soon." He had not one single +throb of pity for her now, not a single speculation whither she would go +or what she would make of her life. His own defence of her had now become +a fault of hers. He wished her no harm, he argued, but in a week's time +there must be no light shining behind those blinds. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +A WAY OUT OF THE TRAP + + +Mr. Hazlewood was very glad that Richard was away in London during this +week. Excitement kept him feverish and the fever grew as the number of +days before Thresk was to come diminished. He would never have been able +to keep his secret had every meal placed him under his son's eyes. He was +free too from Stella herself. He met her but once on the Monday and then +it was in the deep lane leading towards the town. It was about five +o'clock in the evening and she was driving homewards in an open fly. Mr. +Hazlewood stopped it and went to the side. + +"Richard is away, Stella, until Wednesday, as no doubt you knew," he +said. "But I want you to come over to tea when he comes back. Will Friday +suit you?" + +She had looked a little frightened when Mr. Hazlewood had called to the +driver and stopped the carriage; but at his words the blood rushed into +her cheeks and her eyes shone and she pushed out her hand impulsively. + +"Oh, thank you," she cried. "Of course I will come." + +Not for a long time had he spoken to her with so kind a voice and a face +so unclouded. She rejoiced at the change in him and showed him such +gratitude as is given only to those who render great service, so intense +was her longing not to estrange Dick from his father. + +But she had become a shrewd observer under the stress of her evil +destiny; and the moment of rejoicing once past she began to wonder what +had brought about the change. She judged Mr. Hazlewood to be one of those +weak and effervescing characters who can grow more obstinate in +resentment than any others if their pride and self-esteem receive an +injury. She had followed of late the windings of his thoughts. She put +the result frankly to herself. + +"He hates me. He holds me in horror." + +Why then the sudden change? She was in the mood to start at shadows and +when a little note was brought over to her on the Friday morning in Mr. +Hazlewood's handwriting reminding her of her engagement she was filled +with a vague apprehension. The note was kindly in its terms yet to her it +had a menacing and sinister look. Had some stroke been planned against +her? Was it to be delivered this afternoon? + +Dick came at half-past four from a village cricket match to fetch her. + +"You are ready, Stella? Right! For we can't spare very much time. I have +a surprise for you." + +Stella asked him what it was and he answered: + +"There's a house for sale in Great Beeding. I think that you +would like it." + +Stella's face softened with a smile. + +"Anywhere, Dick," she said, "anywhere on earth." + +"But here best of all," he answered. "Not to run away--that's our policy. +We'll make our home in our own south country. I arranged to take you over +the house between half-past five and six this evening." + +They walked across to Little Beeding and were made welcome by Mr. +Hazlewood. He came out to meet them in the garden and nervousness made +him kittenish and arch. + +"How are you, Stella?" he inquired. "But there's no need to ask. You look +charming and upon my word you grow younger every day. What a pretty hat! +Yes, yes! Will you make tea while I telephone to the Pettifers? They seem +to be late." + +He skipped off with an alacrity which was rather ridiculous. But Stella +watched him go without any amusement. + +"I am taken again into favour," she said doubtfully. + +"That shouldn't distress you, Stella," replied Dick. + +"Yet it does, for I ask myself why. And I don't understand this +tea-party. Mr. Hazlewood was so urgent that I should not forget it. +Perhaps, however, I am inventing trouble." + +She shook herself free from her apprehensions and followed Dick into the +drawing-room, where the kettle was boiling and the tea-service spread +out. Stella went to the table and opened the little mahogany caddy. + +"How many are coming, Dick?" she asked. + +"The Pettifers." + +"My enemies," said Stella, laughing lightly. + +"And you and my father and myself." + +"Five altogether," said Stella. She began to measure out the tea into the +tea-pot but stopped suddenly in the middle of her work. + +"But there are six cups," she said. She counted them again to make sure, +and at once her fears were reawakened. She turned to Dick, her face quite +pale and her big eyes dark with forebodings. So little now was needed to +disquiet her. "Who is the sixth?" + +Dick came closer to her and put his arm about her waist. + +"I don't know," he said gently; "but what can it matter to us, Stella? +Think, my dear!" + +"No, of course," she replied, "it can't make any difference," and she +dipped her teaspoon once more into the caddy. "But it's a little +curious, isn't it?--that your father didn't mention to you that there +was another guest?" + +"Oh, wait a moment," said Dick. "He did tell me there would be some +visitor here to-day but I forgot all about it. He told me at luncheon. +There's a man from London coming down to have a look at his miniatures." + +"His miniatures?" Stella was pouring the hot water into the tea-pot. She +replaced the kettle on its stand and shut the tea-caddy. "And Mr. +Hazlewood didn't tell you the man's name," she said. + +"I didn't ask him," answered Dick. "He often has collectors down." + +"I see." Her head was bent over the tea-table; she was busy with her brew +of tea. "And I was specially asked to come this afternoon. I had a note +this morning to remind me." She looked at the clock. "Dick, if we are to +see that house this afternoon you had better change now before the +visitors come." + +"That's true. I will." + +Dick started towards the door, and he heard Stella come swiftly after +him. He turned. There was so much trouble in her face. He caught her +in his arms. + +"Dick," she whispered, "look at me. Kiss me! Yes, I am sure of you," and +she clung to him. Dick Hazlewood laughed. + +"I think we ought to be fairly happy in that house," and she let him +go with a smile, repeating her own words, "Anywhere, Dick, anywhere +on earth." + +She waited, watching him tenderly until the door was closed. Then she +covered her face with her hands and a sob burst from her lips. But the +next moment she tore her hands away and looked wildly about the room. She +ran to the writing-table and scribbled a note; she thrust it into an +envelope and gummed the flap securely down. Then she rang the bell and +waited impatiently with a leaping heart until Hubbard came to the door. + +"Did you ring, madam?" he asked. + +"Yes. Has Mr. Thresk arrived yet?" + +She tried to control her face, to speak in a careless and indifferent +voice, but she was giddy and the room whirled before her eyes. + +"Yes, madam," the butler answered; and it seemed to Stella Ballantyne +that once more she stood in the dock and heard the verdict spoken. Only +this time it had gone against her. That queer old shuffling butler became +a figure of doom, his thin and piping voice uttered her condemnation. For +here without her knowledge was Henry Thresk and she was bidden to meet +him with the Pettifers for witnesses. But it was Henry Thresk who had +saved her before. She clung to that fact now. + +"Mr. Thresk arrived a few minutes ago." + +Just before old Hazlewood had come forward out of the house to welcome +her! No wonder he was in such high spirits! Very likely all that great +show of kindliness and welcome was made only to keep her in the garden +for a few necessary moments. + +"Where is Mr. Thresk now?" she asked. + +"In his room, madam." + +"You are quite sure?" + +"Quite." + +"Will you take this note to him, Hubbard?" and she held it out to +the butler. + +"Certainly, madam." + +"Will you take it at once? Give it into his hands, please." + +Hubbard took the note and went out of the room. Never had he seemed to +her so dilatory and slow. She stared at the door as though her sight +could pierce the panels. She imagined him climbing the stairs with feet +which loitered more at each fresh step. Some one would surely stop him +and ask for whom the letter was intended. She went to the door which led +into the hall, opened it and listened. No one was descending the +staircase and she heard no voices. Then above her Hubbard knocked upon a +door, a latch clicked as the door was opened, a hollow jarring sound +followed as the door was sharply closed. Stella went back into the room. +The letter had been delivered; at this moment Henry Thresk was reading +it; and with a sinking heart she began to speculate in what spirit he +would receive its message. Henry Thresk! The unhappy woman bestirred +herself to remember him. He had grown dim to her of late. How much did +she know of him? she asked herself. Once years ago there had been a month +during which she had met him daily. She had given her heart to him, yet +she had learned little or nothing of the man within the man's frame. She +had not even made his acquaintance. That had been proved to her one +memorable morning upon the top of Bignor Hill, when humiliation had so +deeply seared her soul that only during this last month had it been +healed. In the great extremities of her life Henry Thresk had decided, +not she, and he was a stranger to her. She beat her poor wings in vain +against that ironic fact. Never had he done what she had expected. On +Bignor Hill, in the Law Court at Bombay, he had equally surprised her. +Now once more he held her destinies in his hand. What would he decide? +What had he decided? + +"Yes, he will have decided now," said Stella to herself; and a certain +calm fell upon her troubled soul. Whatever was to be was now determined. +She went back to the tea-table and waited. + +Henry Thresk had not much of the romantic in his character. He was a busy +man making the best and the most of the rewards which the years brought +to him, and slamming the door each day upon the day which had gone +before. He made his life in the intellectual exercise of his profession +and his membership of the House of Commons. Upon the deeps of the +emotions he had closed a lid. Yet he had set out with a vague reluctance +to Little Beeding; and once his motor-car had passed Hindhead and dipped +to the weald of Sussex the reluctance had grown to a definite regret that +he should once more have come into this country. His recollections were +of a dim far-off time, so dim that he could hardly believe that he had +any very close relation with the young struggling man who had spent his +first real holiday there. But the young man had been himself and he had +missed his opportunity high up on the downs by Arundel. Words which Jane +Repton had spoken to him in Bombay came back to him on this summer +afternoon like a refrain to the steady hum of his car. "You can get what +you want, so long as you want it enough, but you cannot control the price +you will have to pay." + +He had reached Little Beeding only a few moments before Dick and Stella +had crossed into the garden. He had been led by Hubbard into the library, +where Mr. Hazlewood was sitting. From the windows he had even seen the +thatched cottage where Stella Ballantyne dwelt and its tiny garden bright +with flowers. + +"It is most kind of you to come," Mr. Hazlewood had said. "Ever since we +had our little correspondence I have been anxious to take your opinion on +my collection. Though how in the world you manage to find time to have an +opinion at all upon the subject is most perplexing. I never open the +_Times_ but I see your name figuring in some important case." + +"And I, Mr. Hazlewood," Thresk replied with a smile, "never open my mail +without receiving a pamphlet from you. I am not the only active man in +the world." + +Even at that moment Mr. Hazlewood flushed with pleasure at the flattery. + +"Little reflections," he cried with a modest deprecation, "worked out +more or less to completeness--may I say that?--in the quiet of a rural +life, sparks from the tiny flame of my midnight oil." He picked up one +pamphlet from a stack by his writing-table. "You might perhaps care to +look at _The Prison Walls_." + +Thresk drew back. + +"I have got mine, Mr. Hazlewood," he said firmly. "Every man in England +should have one. No man in England has a right to two." + +Mr. Hazlewood fairly twittered with satisfaction. Here was a notable man +from the outside world of affairs who knew his work and held it in +esteem. Obviously then he was right to take these few disagreeable +twists and turns which would ensure to him a mind free to pursue his +labours. He looked down at the pamphlet however, and his satisfaction +was a trifle impaired. + +"I am not sure that this is quite my best work," he said timidly--"a +little hazardous perhaps." + +"Would you say that?" asked Thresk. + +"Yes, indeed I should." Mr. Hazlewood had the air of one making a +considerable concession. "The very title is inaccurate. _The Prison Walls +must Cast no Shadow_." He repeated the sentence with a certain unction. +"The rhythm is perhaps not amiss but the metaphor is untrue. My son +pointed it out to me. As he says, all walls cast shadows." + +"Yes," said Thresk. "The trouble is to know where and on whom the shadow +is going to fall." + +Mr. Hazlewood was startled by the careless words. He came to earth +heavily. All was not as yet quite ready for the little trick which had +been devised. The Pettifers had not arrived. + +"Perhaps you would like to see your room, Mr. Thresk," he said. "Your bag +has been taken up, no doubt. We will look at my miniatures after tea." + +"I shall be delighted," said Thresk as he followed Hazlewood to the door. +"But you must not expect too much knowledge from me." + +"Oh!" cried his host with a laugh. "Pettifer tells me that you are a +great authority." + +"Then Pettifer's wrong," said Thresk and so stopped. "Pettifer? Pettifer? +Isn't he a solicitor?" + +"Yes, he told me that he knew you. He married my sister. They are both +coming to tea." + +With that he led Thresk to his room and left him there. The room was over +the porch of the house and looked down the short level drive to the iron +gates and the lane. It was all familiar ground to Thresk or rather to +that other man with whom Thresk's only connection was a dull throb at his +heart, a queer uneasiness and discomfort. He leaned out of the window. He +could hear the river singing between the grass banks at the bottom of the +garden behind him. He would hear it through the night. Then came a +knocking upon his door, and he did not notice it at once. It was repeated +and he turned and said: + +"Come in!" + +Hubbard advanced with a note upon a salver. + +"Mrs. Ballantyne asked me to give you this at once, sir." + +Thresk stared at the butler. The name was so apposite to his thoughts +that he could not believe it had been uttered. But the salver was held +out to him and the handwriting upon the envelope removed his doubts. He +took it up, said "Thank you" in an absent voice and waited until the door +was closed again and he was alone. The last time he had seen that writing +was eighteen months ago. A little note of thanks, blurred with tears and +scribbled hastily and marked with no address, had been handed to him in +Bombay. Stella Ballantyne had disappeared then. She was here now at +Little Beeding and his relationship with the young struggling barrister +of ten years back suddenly became actual and near. He tore open the +envelope and read. + +"Be prepared to see me. Be prepared to hear news of me. I will have a +talk with you afterwards if you like. This is a trap. Be kind." + +He stood for a while with the letter in his hand, speculating upon its +meaning, until the wheels of a car grated on the gravel beneath his +window. The Pettifers had come. But Thresk was in no hurry to descend. He +read the note through many times before he hid it away in his letter-case +and went down the stairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +METHODS FROM FRANCE + + +Meanwhile Stella Ballantyne waited below. She heard Mr. Hazlewood in the +hall greeting the Pettifers with the false joviality which sat so ill +upon him; she imagined the shy nods and glances which told them that the +trap was properly set. Mr. Hazlewood led them into the room. + +"Is tea ready, Stella? We won't wait for Dick," he said, and Stella took +her place at the table. She had her back to the door by which Thresk +would enter. She had not a doubt that thus her chair had been +deliberately placed. He would be in the room and near to the table before +he saw her. He would not have a moment to prepare himself against the +surprise of her presence. Stella listened for the sound of his footsteps +in the hall; she could not think of a single topic to talk about except +the presence of that extra sixth cup; and that she must not mention if +the tables were really to be turned upon her antagonists. Surprise must +be visible upon her side when Thresk did come in. But she was not alone +in finding conversation difficult. Embarrassment and expectancy weighed +down the whole party, so that they began suddenly to speak at once and +simultaneously to stop. Robert Pettifer however asked if Dick was playing +cricket, and so gave Harold Hazlewood an opportunity. + +"No, the match was over early," said the old man, and he settled +himself in his arm-chair. "I have given some study to the subject of +cricket," he said. + +"You?" asked Stella with a smile of surprise. Was he merely playing for +time, she wondered? But he had the air of contentment with which he +usually embarked upon his disquisitions. + +"Yes. I do not consider our national pastime beneath a philosopher's +attention. I have formed two theories about the game." + +"I am sure you have," Robert Pettifer interposed. + +"And I have invented two improvements, though I admit at once that they +will have to wait until a more enlightened age than ours adopts them. In +the first place"--and Mr. Hazlewood flourished a forefinger in the +air--"the game ought to be played with a soft ball. There is at present a +suggestion of violence about it which the use of a soft ball would +entirely remove." + +"Entirely," Mr. Pettifer agreed and his wife exclaimed impatiently: + +"Rubbish, Harold, rubbish!" + +Stella broke nervously into the conversation. + +"Violence? Why even women play cricket, Mr. Hazlewood." + +"I cannot, Stella," he returned, "accept the view that whatever women do +must necessarily be right. There are instances to the contrary." + +"Yes. I come across a few of them in my office," Robert Pettifer said +grimly; and once more embarrassment threatened to descend upon the party. +But Mr. Hazlewood was off upon a favourite theme. His eyes glistened and +the object of the gathering vanished for the moment from his thoughts. + +"And in the second place," he resumed, "the losers should be accounted to +have won the game." + +"Yes, that must be right," said Pettifer. "Upon my word you are in form, +Hazlewood." + +"But why?" asked Mrs. Pettifer. + +Harold Hazlewood smiled upon her as upon a child and explained: + +"Because by adopting that system you would do something to eradicate the +spirit of rivalry, the desire to win, the ambition to beat somebody else +which is at the bottom of half our national troubles." + +"And all our national success," said Pettifer. + +Hazlewood patted his brother-in-law upon the shoulder. He looked at him +indulgently. "You are a Tory, Robert," he said, and implied that argument +with such an one was mere futility. + +He had still his hand upon Pettifer's shoulder when the door opened. +Stella saw by the change in his face that it was Thresk who was entering. +But she did not move. + +"Ah," said Mr. Hazlewood. "Come over here and take a cup of tea." + +Thresk came forward to the table. He seemed altogether unconscious that +the eyes of the two men were upon him. + +"Thank you. I should like one," he said, and at the sound of his voice +Stella Ballantyne turned around in her chair. + +"You!" she cried and the cry was pitched in a tone of pleasure and +welcome. + +"Of course you know Mrs. Ballantyne," said Hazlewood. He saw Stella rise +from her chair and hold out her hand to Thresk with the colour aflame in +her cheeks. + +"You are surprised to see me again," she said. + +Thresk took her hand cordially. "I am delighted to see you again," +he replied. + +"And I to see you," said Stella, "for I have never yet had a chance of +thanking you"; and she spoke with so much frankness that even Pettifer +was shaken in his suspicions. She turned upon Mr. Hazlewood with a +mimicry of indignation. "Do you know, Mr. Hazlewood, that you have done a +very cruel thing?" + +Mr. Hazlewood was utterly discomfited by the failure of his plot, and +when Stella attacked him so directly he had not a doubt but that she had +divined his treachery. + +"I?" he gasped. "Cruel? How?" + +"In not telling me beforehand that I was to meet so good a friend of +mine." Her face relaxed to a smile as she added: "I would have put on my +best frock in his honour." + +Undoubtedly Stella carried off the honour of that encounter. She had at +once driven the battle with spirit onto Hazlewood's own ground and left +him worsted and confused. But the end was not yet. Mr. Hazlewood waited +for his son Richard, and when Richard appeared he exclaimed: + +"Ah, here's my son. Let me present him to you, Mr. Thresk. And there's +the family." + +He leaned back, with a smile in his eyes, watching Henry Thresk. Robert +Pettifer watched too. + +"The family?" Thresk asked. "Is Mrs. Ballantyne a relation then?" + +"She is going to be," said Dick. + +"Yes," Mr. Hazlewood explained, still beaming and still watchful. +"Richard and Stella are going to be married." + +A pause followed which was just perceptible before Thresk spoke again. +But he had his face under control. He took the stroke without flinching. +He turned to Dick with a smile. + +"Some men have all the luck," he said, and Dick, who had been looking at +him in bewilderment, cried: + +"Mr. Thresk? Not the Mr. Thresk to whom I owe so much?" + +"The very man," said Thresk, and Dick held out his hand to him gravely. + +"Thank you," he said. "When I think of the horrible net of doubt and +assumption in which Stella was coiled, I tell you I feel cold down my +spine even now. If you hadn't come forward with your facts--" + +"Yes," Thresk interposed. "If I hadn't come forward with my facts. But I +couldn't well keep them to myself, could I?" A few more words were said +and then Dick rose from his chair. + +"Time's up, Stella," and he explained to Henry Thresk: "We have to look +over a house this afternoon." + +"A house? Yes, I see," said Thresk, but he spoke slowly and there was +just audible a little inflection of doubt in his voice. Stella was +listening for it; she heard it when her two antagonists noticed nothing. + +"But, Dick," she said quickly, "we can put the inspection off." + +"Not on my account," Thresk returned. "There's no need for that." He was +not looking at Stella whilst he spoke and she longed to see his face. She +must know exactly how she stood with him, what he thought of her. She +turned impulsively to Mr. Hazlewood. + +"I haven't been asked, but may I come to dinner? You see I owe a good +deal to Mr. Thresk." + +Mr. Hazlewood was for the moment at a loss. He had not lost hope that +between now and dinner-time explanations would be given which would +banish Stella Ballantyne altogether from Little Beeding. But he had no +excuse ready and he stammered out: + +"Of course, my dear. Didn't I ask you? I must have forgotten. I certainly +expect you to dine with us to-night. Margaret will no doubt be here." + +Margaret Pettifer had taken little part in the conversation about the +tea-table. She sat in frigid hostility, speaking only when politeness +commanded. She accepted her brother's invitation with a monosyllable. + +"Thank you," said Stella, and she faced Henry Thresk, looking him +straight in the eyes but not daring to lay any special stress upon the +words: "Then I shall see you to-night." + +Thresk read in her face a prayer that he should hold his hand until she +had a chance to speak with him. She turned away and went from the room +with Dick Hazlewood. + +The old man rose as soon as the door was closed. + +"Now we might have a look at the miniatures, Mr. Thresk. You will excuse +us, Margaret, won't you?" + +"Of course," she answered upon a nod from her husband. The two men passed +through the doors into the great library whilst Thresk took a more +ceremonious leave of Mrs. Pettifer; and as Hazlewood opened the drawers +of his cabinets Robert Pettifer said in a whisper: + +"That was a pretty good failure, I must say. And it was my idea too." + +"Yes," replied Hazlewood in a voice as low. "What do you think?" + +"That they share no secret." + +"You are satisfied then?" + +"I didn't say that"; and Thresk himself appeared in the doorway and went +across to the writing-table upon which Hazlewood had just laid a drawer +in which miniatures were ranged. + +"I haven't met you," said Pettifer, "since you led for us in the great +Birmingham will-suit." + +"No," answered Thresk as he took his seat at the table. "It wasn't quite +such a tough fight as I expected. You see there wasn't one really +reliable witness for the defence." + +"No," said Pettifer grimly. "If there had been we should have been +beaten." + +Mr. Hazlewood began to point out this and that miniature of his +collection, bending over Thresk as he did so. It seemed that the two +collectors were quite lost in their common hobby until Robert Pettifer +gave the signal. + +Then Mr. Hazlewood began: + +"I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Thresk, for reasons quite outside these +miniatures of mine." + +He spoke with a noticeable awkwardness, yet Henry Thresk disregarded it +altogether. + +"Oh?" he said carelessly. + +"Yes. Being Richard's father I am naturally concerned in everything +which affects him nearly--the trial of Stella Ballantyne for instance." + +Thresk bent his head down over the tray. + +"Quite so," he said. He pointed to a miniature. "I saw that at Christie's +and coveted it myself." + +"Did you?" Mr. Hazlewood asked and he almost offered it as a bribe. "Now +you gave evidence, Mr. Thresk." + +Thresk never lifted his head. + +"You have no doubt read the evidence I gave," he said, peering from this +delicate jewel of the painter's art to that. + +"To be sure." + +"And since your son is engaged to Mrs. Ballantyne, I suppose that you +were satisfied with it"--and he paused to give a trifle of significance +to his next words--"as the jury was." + +"Yes, of course," Mr. Hazlewood stammered, "but a witness, I think, only +answers the questions put to him." + +"That is so," said Thresk, "if he is a wise witness." He took one of the +miniatures out of the drawer and held it to the light. But Mr. Hazlewood +was not to be deterred. + +"And subsequent reflection," he continued obstinately, "might suggest +that all the questions which could throw light upon the trial had not +been put." + +Thresk replaced the miniature in the drawer in front of him and leaned +back in his chair. He looked now straight at Mr. Hazlewood. + +"It was not, I take it, in order to put those questions to me that you +were kind enough, Mr. Hazlewood, to ask me to give my opinion on your +miniatures. For that would have been setting a trap for me, wouldn't it?" + +Hazlewood stared at Thresk with the bland innocence of a child. "Oh no, +no," he declared, and then an insinuating smile beamed upon his long +thin face. "Only since you _are_ here and since so much is at stake for +me--my son's happiness--I hoped that you might perhaps give us an answer +or two which would disperse the doubts of some suspicious people." + +"Who are they?" asked Thresk. + +"Neighbours of ours," replied Hazlewood, and thereupon Robert Pettifer +stepped forward. He had remained aloof and silent until this moment. Now +he spoke shortly, but he spoke to the point: + +"I for one." + +Thresk turned with a smile upon Pettifer. + +"I thought so. I recognised Mr. Pettifer's hand in all this. But he ought +to know that the sudden confrontation of a suspected person with +unexpected witnesses takes place, in those countries where the method is +practised, before the trial; not, as you so ingeniously arranged it this +afternoon, two years after the verdict has been given." + +Robert Pettifer turned red. Then he looked whimsically across the table +at his brother-in-law. + +"We had better make a clean breast of it, Hazlewood." + +"I think so," said Thresk gently. + +Pettifer came a step nearer. "We are in the wrong," he said bluntly. "But +we have an excuse. Our trouble is very great. Here's my brother-in-law to +begin with, whose whole creed of life has been to deride the authority of +conventional man--to tilt against established opinion. Mrs. Ballantyne +comes back from her trial in Bombay to make her home again at Little +Beeding. Hazlewood champions her--not for her sake, but for the sake of +his theories. It pleases his vanity. Now he can prove that he is not as +others are." + +Mr. Hazlewood did not relish this merciless analysis of his character. He +twisted in his chair, he uttered a murmur of protest. But Robert Pettifer +waved him down and continued: + +"So he brings her to his house. He canvasses for her. He throws his son +in her way. She has beauty--she has something more than beauty--she +stands apart as a woman who has walked through fire. She has suffered +very much. Look at it how one will, she has suffered beyond her deserts. +She has pretty deferential ways which make their inevitable appeal to +women as to men. In a word, Hazlewood sets the ball rolling and it gets +beyond his reach." + +Thresk nodded. + +"Yes, I understand that." + +"Finally, Hazlewood's son falls in love with her--not a boy mind, but a +man claiming a man's right to marry where he loves. And at once in +Hazlewood conventional man awakes." + +"Dear me, no," interposed Harold Hazlewood. + +"But I say yes," Pettifer continued imperturbably. "Conventional man +awakes in him and cries loudly against the marriage. Then there's myself. +I am fond of Dick. I have no child. He will be my heir and I am not poor. +He is doing well in his profession. To be an Instructor of the Staff +Corps at his age means hard work, keenness, ability. I look forward to a +great career. I am very fond of him. And--understand me, Mr. Thresk"--he +checked his speech and weighed his words very carefully--"I wouldn't say +that he shouldn't marry Stella Ballantyne just because Stella Ballantyne +has lain under a grave charge of which she has been acquitted. No, I may +be as formal as my brother-in-law thinks, but I hold a wider faith than +that. But I am not satisfied. That is the truth, Mr. Thresk. I am not +sure of what happened in that tent in far-away Chitipur after you had +ridden away to catch the night mail to Bombay." + +Robert Pettifer had made his confession simply and with some dignity. +Thresk looked at him for a few moments. Was he wondering whether he +could answer the questions? Was he hesitating through anger at the +trick which had been played upon him? Pettifer could not tell. He waited +in suspense. Thresk pushed his chair back suddenly and came forward from +behind the table. + +"Ask your questions," he said. + +"You consent to answer them?" Mr. Hazlewood cried joyously, and Thresk +replied with coldness: + +"I must. For if I don't consent your suspicions at once are double what +they were. But I am not pleased." + +"Oh, we practised a little diplomacy," said Hazlewood, making light of +his offence. + +"Diplomacy!" For the first time a gleam of anger shone in Thresk's eyes. +"You have got me to your house by a trick. You have abused your position +as my host. And but that I should injure a woman whom life has done +nothing but injure I should go out of your door this instant." + +He turned his back upon Harold Hazlewood and sat down in a chair opposite +to Robert Pettifer. A little round table separated them. Pettifer, seated +upon a couch, took from his pocket the envelope with the press-cuttings +and spread them on the table in front of him. Thresk lolled back in his +chair. It was plain that he was in no terror of Pettifer's examination. + +"I am at your service," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE WITNESS + + +The afternoon sunlight poured into the room golden and clear. Outside the +open windows the garden was noisy with birds and the river babbled +between its banks. Henry Thresk shut his ears against the music. For all +his appearance of ease he dreaded the encounter which was now begun. +Pettifer he knew to be a shrewd man. He watched him methodically +arranging his press-cuttings in front of him. Pettifer might well find +some weak point in his story which he himself had not discovered; and +whatever course he was minded afterwards to take, here and now he was +determined once more to fight Stella's battle. + +"I need not go back on the facts of the trial," said Pettifer. "They are +fresh enough in your memory, no doubt. Your theory as I understand it ran +as follows: While you were mounting your camel on the edge of the camp to +return to the station and Ballantyne was at your side, the thief whose +arm you had both seen under the tent wall, not knowing that now you had +the photograph of Bahadur Salak which he wished to steal, slipped into +the tent unperceived, took up the rook-rifle--" + +"Which was standing by Mrs. Ballantyne's writing-table," Thresk +interposed. + +"Loaded it,--" + +"The cartridges were lying open in a drawer." + +"And shot Ballantyne on his return." + +"Yes," Thresk agreed. "In addition you must remember that when Captain +Ballantyne was found an hour or so later Mrs. Ballantyne was in bed +and asleep." + +"Quite so," said Pettifer. "In brief, Mr. Thresk, you supplied a +reasonable motive for the crime and some evidence of a criminal. And I +admit that on your testimony the jury returned the only verdict which it +was possible to give." + +"What troubles you then?" Henry Thresk asked, and Pettifer replied drily: + +"Various points. Here's one--a minor one. If Captain Ballantyne was shot +by a thief detected in the act of thieving why should that thief risk +capture and death by dragging Captain Ballantyne's body out into the +open? It seems to me the last thing which he would naturally do." + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. + +"I can't explain that. It is perhaps possible that not finding the +photograph he fell into a blind rage and satisfied it by violence towards +the dead man." + +"Dead or dying," Mr. Pettifer corrected. "There seems to have been some +little doubt upon that point. But your theory's a little weak, isn't it? +To get away unseen would be that thief's first preoccupation, surely?" + +"Reasoning as you and I are doing here quietly, at our ease, in this +room, no doubt you are right, Mr. Pettifer. But criminals are caught +because they don't reason quietly when they have just committed a crime. +The behaviour of a man whose mind is influenced by that condition cannot +be explained always by any laws of psychology. He may be in a wild panic. +He may act as madmen act, or like a child in a rage. And if my +explanation is weak it's no weaker than the only other hypothesis: that +Mrs. Ballantyne herself dragged him into the open." + +Mr. Pettifer shook his head. + +"I am not so sure. I can conceive a condition of horror in the wife, +horror at what she had done, which would make that act not merely +possible but almost inevitable. I make no claims to being an imaginative +man, Mr. Thresk, but I try to put myself into the position of the wife"; +and he described with a vividness for which Thresk was not prepared the +scene as he saw it. + +"She goes to bed, she undresses and goes to bed--she must do that if +she is to escape--she puts out her light, she lies in the dark awake, +and under the same roof, close to her, in the dark too, is lying the man +she has killed. Just a short passage separates her from him. There are +no doors--mind that, Mr. Thresk--no doors to lock and bolt, merely a +grass screen which you could lift with your forefinger. Wouldn't any and +every one of the little cracks and sounds and breathings, of which the +quietest and stillest night is full, sound to her like the approach of +the dead man? The faintest breath of air would seem a draught made by +the swinging of the grass-curtain as it was stealthily lifted--lifted by +the dead man. No, Mr. Thresk. The wife is just the one person I could +imagine who would do that needless barbarous violence of dragging the +body into the open--and she would do it, not out of cruelty, but because +she must or go mad." + +Thresk listened without a movement until Robert Pettifer had finished. +Then he said: + +"You know Mrs. Ballantyne. Has she the strength which she must have had +to drag a heavy man across the carpet of a tent and fling him outside?" + +"Not now, not before. But just at the moment? You argued, Mr. Thresk, +that it is impossible to foresee what people will do under the immediate +knowledge that they have committed a capital crime. I agree. But I go a +little further. I say that they will also exhibit a physical strength +with which it would be otherwise impossible to credit them. Fear lends +it to them." + +"Yes," Thresk interrupted quickly, "but don't you see, Mr. Pettifer, that +you are implying the existence of an emotion in Mrs. Ballantyne which the +facts prove her to have been without--fear, panic? She was found quietly +asleep in her bed by the ayah when she came to call her in the morning. +There's no doubt of that. The ayah was never for a moment shaken upon +that point. The pyschology of crime is a curious and surprising study, +Mr. Pettifer, but I know of no case where terror has acted as a +sleeping-draught." + +Mr. Pettifer smiled and turned altogether away from the question. + +"It is, as I said, a minor point, and perhaps one from which any +sort of inference would be unsafe. It interested me. I lay no great +stress upon it." + +He dismissed the point carelessly, to the momentary amusement of Henry +Thresk. The art of slipping away from defeat had been practised with +greater skill. Thresk lost some part of his apprehension but none of his +watchfulness. + +"Now, however, we come to something very different," said Pettifer, +hitching himself a little closer to his table and fixing his eyes upon +Thresk. "The case for the prosecution ran like this: Stephen Ballantyne +was, though a man of great ability, a secret drunkard who humiliated his +wife in public and beat her in private. She went in terror of him. She +bore on more than one occasion the marks of his violence; and upon that +night in Chitipur, perhaps in a panic and very likely under extreme +provocation, she snatched up her rook-rifle and put an end to the whole +bad business." + +"Yes," Thresk agreed, "that was the case for the Crown." + +"Yes, and throughout the sitting at the Stipendiary's inquiry before you +came upon the scene that theory was clearly developed." + +"Yes." + +Thresk's confidence vanished as quickly as it had come. He realised +whither Pettifer's questions were leading. There was a definitely weak +link in his story and Pettifer had noticed it and was testing it. + +"Now," the solicitor continued--"and this is the important point--what +was the answer to that charge foreshadowed by the defence during those +days before you appeared?" + +Thresk answered the question quickly, if answer it could be called. + +"The defence had not formulated any answer. I came forward before the +case for the Crown finished." + +"Quite so. But Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel did cross-examine the witnesses +for the prosecution--we must not forget that, Mr. Thresk--and from the +cross-examination it is quite clear what answer he was going to make. He +was going--not to deny that Mrs. Ballantyne shot her husband--but to +plead that she shot him in self-defence." + +"Oh?" said Thresk, "and where do you find that?" + +He had no doubt himself in what portion of the report of the trial a +proof of Pettifer's statement was to be discovered, but he made a +creditable show of surprise that any one should hold that opinion at all. + +Pettifer selected a column of newspaper from his cuttings. + +"Listen," he said. "Mr. Repton, a friend of Mrs. Ballantyne, was called +upon a subpoena by the Crown and he testified that while he was a +Collector at Agra he went up with his wife from the plains to the +hill-station of Moussourie during a hot weather. The Ballantynes went up +at the same time and occupied a bungalow next to Repton's. One night +Repton's house was broken into. He went across to Ballantyne the next +morning and advised him in the presence of his wife to sleep with a +revolver under his pillow." + +"Yes, I remember that," said Thresk. He had indeed cause to remember it +very well, for it was just this evidence given by Repton with its clear +implication of the line which the defence meant to take that had sent him +in a hurry to Mrs. Ballantyne's solicitor. Pettifer continued by reading +Repton's words slowly and with emphasis. + +"'Mrs. Ballantyne then turned very pale, and running after me down the +garden like a distracted woman cried: "Why did you tell him to do that? +It will some night mean my death."' This statement, Mr. Thresk, was +elicited in cross-examination by Mrs. Ballantyne's counsel, and it could +only mean that he intended to set up a plea of self-defence. I find it a +little difficult to reconcile that intention with the story you +subsequently told." + +Henry Thresk for his part knew that it was not merely difficult, it was, +in fact, impossible. Mr. Pettifer had read the evidence with an accurate +discrimination. The plea of self-defence was here foreshadowed and it was +just the certainty that the defence was going to rely upon it for a +verdict which had brought Henry Thresk himself into the witness-box at +Bombay. Given all that was known of Stephen Ballantyne and of the life he +had led his unhappy wife, the defence would have been a good one, but for +a single fact--the discovery of Ballantyne's body outside the tent. No +plea of self-defence could safely be left to cover that. Thresk himself +wondered at it. It struck at public sympathy, it seemed the act of a +person insensate and vindictive. Therefore he had come forward with his +story. But Mr. Pettifer was not to know it. + +"There are three things for you to remember," said Thresk. "In the first +place it is too early to assume that self-defence was going to be the +plea. Assumptions in a case of this kind are very dangerous, Mr. +Pettifer. They may lead to an irreparable injustice. We must keep to the +fact that no plea of self-defence was ever formulated. In the second +place Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down to Bombay in a state of complete +collapse. Her married life had been a torture to her. She broke down at +the end of it. She was indifferent to anything that might happen." + +Pettifer nodded. "Yes, I can understand that." + +"It followed that her advisers had to act upon their own initiative." + +"And the third point?" Pettifer asked. + +"Well, it's not so much a point as an opinion of mine. But I hold it +strongly. Her counsel mishandled the case." + +Pettifer pursed up his lips and grunted. He tapped a finger once or twice +on the table in front of him. He looked towards Thresk as if all was not +quite said. Harold Hazlewood, to whom the position of a neglected +listener was rare and unpalatable, saw an opportunity for intervention. + +"The three points are perhaps not very conclusive," he said. + +Thresk turned towards him coldly: + +"I promised to answer such questions as Mr. Pettifer put to me. I am +doing that. I did not undertake to discuss the value of my answers +afterwards." + +"No, no, quite so," murmured Mr. Hazlewood. "We are very grateful, I am +sure," and he left once more the argument to Pettifer. + +"Then I come to the next question, Mr. Thresk. At some moment in this +inquiry you of your own account put yourself into communication with Mrs. +Ballantyne's advisers and volunteered your evidence?" + +"Yes." + +"Isn't it strange that the defence did not at the very outset get into +communication with you?" + +"No," replied Thresk. Here he was at his ease. He had laid his plans well +in Bombay. Mr. Pettifer might go on asking questions until midnight upon +this point. Thresk could meet him. "It was not at all strange. It was not +known that I could throw any light upon the affair at all. All that +passed between Ballantyne and myself passed when we were alone; and +Ballantyne was now dead." + +"Yes, but you had dined with the Ballantynes on that night. Surely it's +strange that since you were in Bombay Mrs. Ballantyne's advisers did not +seek you out." + +"Yes, yes," added Mr. Hazlewood, "very strange indeed, Mr. +Thresk--since you were in Bombay"; and he looked up at the ceiling and +joined the tips of his fingers, his whole attitude a confident +question: "Answer that if you can." + +Thresk turned patiently round. + +"Hasn't it occurred to you, Mr. Hazlewood, that it is still more strange +that the prosecution did not at once approach me?" + +"Yes," said Pettifer suddenly. "That question too has troubled me"; and +Thresk turned back again. + +"You see," he explained, "I was not known to be in Bombay at all. On the +contrary I was supposed to be somewhere in the Red Sea or the +Mediterranean on my way back to England." + +Mr. Pettifer looked up in surprise. The statement was news to him and if +true provided a natural explanation of some of his chief perplexities. +"Let me understand that!" and there was a change in his voice which +Thresk was quick to detect. There was less hostility. + +"Certainly," Thresk answered. "I left the tent just before eleven to +catch the Bombay mail. I was returning direct to England. The reason +why Ballantyne asked me to take the photograph of Bahadur Salak was +that since I was going on board straight from the train it could be no +danger to me." + +"Then why didn't you go straight on board?" asked Pettifer. + +"I'll tell you," Thresk replied. "I thought the matter over on the +journey down to Bombay, and I came to the conclusion that since the +photograph might be wanted at Salak's trial I had better take it to the +Governor's house at Bombay. But Government House is out at Malabar Point, +four miles from the quays. I took the photograph out myself and so I +missed the boat. But there was an announcement in the papers that I had +sailed, and in fact the consul at Marseilles came on board at that port +to inquire for me on instructions from the Indian Government." + +Mr. Pettifer leaned back. + +"Yes, I see," he said thoughtfully. "That makes a difference--a big +difference." Then he sat upright again and said sharply: + +"You were in Bombay then when Mrs. Ballantyne was brought down from +Chitipur?" + +"Yes." + +"And when the case for the Crown was started?" + +"Yes." + +"And when the Crown's witnesses were cross-examined?" + +"Yes." + +"Why did you wait then all that time before you came forward?" Pettifer +put the question with an air of triumph. "Why, Mr. Thresk, did you wait +till the very moment when Mrs. Ballantyne was going to be definitely +committed to a particular line of defence before you announced that you +could clear up the mystery? Doesn't it rather look as if you had remained +hidden on the chance of the prosecution breaking down, and had only come +forward when you realised that to-morrow self-defence would be pleaded, +the firing of that rook-rifle admitted and a terrible risk of a verdict +of guilty run?" + +Thresk agreed without a moment's hesitation. + +"But that's the truth, Mr. Pettifer," he said, and Mr. Pettifer +sprang up. + +"What?" + +"Consider my position"--Thresk drew up his chair close to the table--"a +barrister who was beginning to have one of the large practices, the +Courts opening in London, briefs awaiting me, cases on which I had +already advised coming on. I had already lost a fortnight. That was bad +enough, but if I came forward with my story I must wait in Bombay not +merely for a fortnight but until the whole trial was completed, as in the +end I had to do. Of course I hoped that the prosecution would break down. +Of course I didn't intervene until it was absolutely necessary in the +interests of justice that I should." + +He spoke so calmly, there was so much reason in what he said, that +Pettifer could not but be convinced. + +"I see," he said. "I see. Yes. That's not to be disputed." He remained +silent for a few moments. Then he shuffled his papers together and +replaced them in the envelope. It seemed that his examination was over. +Thresk rose from his chair. + +"You have no more questions to ask me?" he inquired. + +"One more." + +Pettifer came round the table and stood in front of Henry Thresk. + +"Did you know Mrs. Ballantyne before you went to Chitipur?" + +"Yes," Thresk replied. + +"Had you seen her lately?" + +"No." + +"When had you last seen her?" + +"Eight years before, in this neighbourhood. I spent a holiday close +by. Her father and mother were then alive. I had not seen her since. I +did not even know that she was in India and married until I was told so +in Bombay." + +Thresk was prepared for that question. He had the truth ready and he +spoke it frankly. Mr. Pettifer turned away to Hazlewood, who was watching +him expectantly. + +"We have nothing more to do, Hazlewood, but to thank Mr. Thresk for +answering our questions and to apologise to him for having put them." + +Mr. Hazlewood was utterly disconcerted. After all, then, the marriage +must take place; the plot had ignominiously failed, the great questions +which were to banish Stella Ballantyne from Little Beeding had been put +and answered. He sat like a man stricken by calamity. He stammered out +reluctantly a few words to which Thresk paid little heed. + +"You are satisfied then?" he asked of Pettifer; and Pettifer showed him +unexpectedly a cordial and good-humoured face. + +"Yes. Let me say to you, Mr. Thresk, that ever since I began to study +this case I have wished less and less to bear hardly upon Mrs. +Ballantyne. As I read those columns of evidence the heavy figure of +Stephen Ballantyne took life again, but a very sinister life; and when I +look at Stella and think of what she went through during the years of +her married life while we were comfortably here at home I cannot but feel +a shiver of discomfort. Yes, I am satisfied and I am glad that I am +satisfied"; and with a smile which suddenly illumined his dry parched +face he held out his hand to Henry Thresk. + +It was perhaps as well that the questions were over, for even while +Pettifer was speaking Stella's voice was heard in the hall. Pettifer had +just time to thrust away the envelope with the cuttings into a drawer +before she came into the room with Dick. She had been forced to leave the +three men together, but she had dreaded it. During that one hour of +absence she had lived through a lifetime of terror and anxiety. What +would Thresk tell them? What was he now telling them? She was like one +waiting downstairs while a surgical operation is being performed in the +theatre above. She had hurried Dick back to Little Deeding, and when she +came into the room her eyes roamed round in suspense from Thresk to +Hazlewood, from Hazlewood to Pettifer. She saw the tray of miniatures +upon the table. + +"You admire the collection?" she said to Thresk. + +"Very much," he answered, and Pettifer took her by the arm and in a voice +of kindness which she had never heard him use before he said: + +"Now tell me about your house. That's much more interesting." + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +IN THE LIBRARY + + +Henry Thresk took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him +poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but +his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about +Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the +table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused +her a couple of hours before. She had come dressed in a slim gown of +shimmering blue with her small head erect, a smile upon her lips and a +bright colour in her cheeks. Thresk hardly knew her, he had to tell +himself again and again that this was the Stella Ballantyne whom he had +known here and in India. She was not the girl who had ridden with him +upon the downs and made one month of his life very memorable and one day +a shameful recollection. Nor was she the stricken creature of the tent in +Chitipur. She was a woman sure of her resources, radiant in her beauty, +confident that what she wore was her colour and gave her her value. Yet +her trouble was greater than Thresk's, and many a time during the course +of that dinner, when she felt his eyes resting upon her, her heart sank +in fear. She sought his company after dinner, but she had no chance of a +private word with him. Old Mr. Hazlewood took care of that. One moment +Stella must sing; at another she must play a rubber of bridge. He at all +events had not laid aside his enmity and suspected some understanding +between her and his guest. At eleven Mrs. Pettifer took her leave. She +came across the room to Henry Thresk. + +"Are you staying over to-morrow?" she asked, and Thresk with a +laugh answered: + +"I wish that I could. But I have to catch an early train to London. +Even to-night my day's work's not over. I must sit up for an hour or +two over a brief." + +Stella rose at the same time as Mrs. Pettifer. + +"I was hoping that you would be able to come across and see my +little cottage to-morrow morning," she said. Thresk hesitated as he +took her hand. + +"I should very much like to see it," he said. He was in a very great +difficulty, and was not sure that a letter was not the better if the more +cowardly way out of it. "If I could find the time." + +"Try," said she. She could say no more for Mr. Hazlewood was at her elbow +and Dick was waiting to take her home. + +It was a dark clear night; a sky of stars overarched the earth, but +there was no moon, and though lights shone brightly even at a great +distance there was no glimmer from the road beneath their feet. Dick +held her close in his arms at the door of her cottage. She was very +still and passive. + +"You are tired?" he asked. + +"I think so." + +"Well, to-night has seen the last of our troubles, Stella." + +She did not answer him at once. Her hands clung about his shoulders and +with her face smothered in his coat she whispered: + +"Dick, I couldn't go on without you now. I couldn't. I wouldn't." + +There was a note of passionate despair in her voice which made her words +suddenly terrible to him. He took her and held her a little away from +him, peering into her face. + +"What are you saying, Stella?" he asked sternly. "You know that nothing +can come between us. You break my heart when you talk like that." He drew +her again into his arms. "Is your maid waiting up for you?" + +"No." + +"Call her then, while I wait here. Let me see the light in her room. I +want her to sleep with you to-night." + +"There's no need, Dick," she answered. "I am unstrung to-night. I said +more than I meant. I swear to you there's no need." + +He raised her head and kissed her on the lips. + +"I trust you, Stella," he said gently; and she answered him in a low +trembling voice of so much tenderness and love that he was reassured. +"Oh, you may, my dear, you may." + +She went up to her room and turned on the light, and sat down in her +chair just as she had done after her first dinner at Little Beeding. She +had foreseen then all the troubles which had since beset her, but she had +seemed to have passed through them--until this afternoon. Over there in +the library of the big house was Henry Thresk--the stranger. Very likely +he was at this moment writing to her. If he had only consented to come +over in the morning and give her the chance of pleading with him! She +went to the window and, drawing up the blind, leaned her head out and +looked across the meadow. In the library one of the long windows stood +open and the curtain was not drawn. The room was full of light. Henry +Thresk was there. He had befriended her this afternoon as he had +befriended her at Bombay, for the second time he had won the victory for +her; but the very next moment he had warned her that the end was not yet. +He would send her a letter, she had not a doubt of it. She had not a +doubt either of the message which the letter would bring. + +A sound rose to her ears from the gravel path below her window--the sound +of a slight involuntary movement. Stella drew sharply back. Then she +leaned out again and called softly: + +"Dick." + +He was standing a little to the left of the window out of reach of the +light which streamed out upon the darkness from the room behind her. He +moved forward now. + +"Oh, Dick, why are you waiting?" + +"I wanted to be sure that all was right, Stella." + +"I gave you my word, Dick," she whispered and she wished him +good-night again and waited till the sound of his footsteps had +altogether died away. He went back to the house and found Thresk still +at work in the library. + +"I don't want to interrupt you," he said, "but I must thank you again. I +can't tell you what I owe you. She's pretty wonderful, isn't she? I feel +coarse beside her, I tell you. I couldn't talk like this to any one else, +but you're so sympathetic." + +Henry Thresk had responded with nothing more than a grunt. He sat +slashing at his brief with a blue pencil, all the while that Dick +Hazlewood was speaking, and wishing that he would go to bed. Dick however +was unabashed. + +"Did you ever see a woman look so well in a blue frock? Or in a black one +either? There's a sort of painted thing she wears sometimes too. Well, +perhaps I had better go to bed." + +"I think it would be wise," said Thresk. + +Young Hazlewood went over to the table in the corner and lit his candle. + +"You'll shut that window before you go to bed, won't you?" + +"Yes." + +Hazlewood filled for himself a glass of barley-water and drank it, +contemplating Henry Thresk over the rim. Then he went back to him, +carrying his candle in his hand. + +"Why don't you get married, Mr. Thresk?" he asked. "You ought to, you +know. Men run to seed so if they don't." + +"Thank you," said Thresk. + +The tone was not cordial, but mere words were an invitation to Dick +Hazlewood at this moment. He sat down and placed his lighted candle on +the table between Thresk and himself. + +"I am thirty-four years old," he said, and Thresk interposed without +glancing up from his foolscap: + +"From your style of conversation I find that very difficult to believe, +Captain Hazlewood." + +"I have wasted thirty-four complete years of twelve months each," +continued the ecstatic Captain, who appeared to think that on the very +day of his birth he would have recognised his soul's mate. "Just jogging +along with the world, a miracle about one and not half an eye to perceive +it. You know." + +"No, I don't," Thresk observed. He lifted the candle and held it out to +Dick. Dick got up and took it. + +"Thank you," he said. "That was very kind of you. I told you--didn't +I?--how sympathetic I thought you." + +Thresk was not proof against his companion's pertinacity. He broke into a +laugh. "Are you going to bed?" he pleaded, and Dick Hazlewood replied, +"Yes I am." Suddenly his tone changed. + +"Stella had a very good friend in you, Mr. Thresk. I am sure she still +has one," and without waiting for any answer he went upstairs. His +bedroom was near to the front in the side of the house. It commanded a +view of the meadow and the cottage and he rejoiced to see that all +Stella's windows were dark. The library was out of sight round the corner +at the back, but a glare of light from the open door spread out over the +lawn. Hazlewood looked at his watch. It was just midnight. He went to bed +and slept. + +In the library Thresk strove to concentrate his thoughts upon his brief. +But he could not, and he threw it aside at last. There was a letter to be +written, and until it was written and done with his thoughts would not be +free. He went over to the writing-table and wrote it. But it took a long +while in the composition and the clock upon the top of the stable was +striking one when at last he had finished and sealed it up. + +"I'll post it in the morning at the station," he resolved, and he went +to the window to close it. But as he touched it a slight figure wrapped +in a dark cloak came out of the darkness at the side and stepped past him +into the room. He swung round and saw Stella Ballantyne. + +"You!" he exclaimed. "You must be mad." + +"I had to come," she said, standing well away from the window in the +centre of the room as though she thought he would drive her out. "I heard +you say you would be sitting late here." + +"How long have you been waiting out there?" + +"A little while...I don't know...Not very long. I wasn't sure that you +were alone." + +Thresk closed the window and drew the curtain across it. Then he crossed +the room and locked the doors leading into the dining-room and hall. + +"There was no need for you to come," he said in a low voice. "I have +written to you." + +"Yes." She nodded her head. "That's why I had to come. This afternoon you +spoke of leaving your pipe behind. I understood," and as he drew the +letter from his pocket she recoiled from it. "No, it has never been +written. I came in time to prevent its being written. You only had an +idea of writing. Say that! You are my friend." She took the letter from +him now and tore it across and again across. "See! It has never been +written at all." + +But Thresk only shook his head. "I am very sorry. I see to-night the +stricken woman of the tent in Chitipur. I am very sorry," and Stella +caught at the commiseration in his voice. She dropped the cloak from her +shoulders; she was dressed as she had been at the dinner some hours +before, but all her radiance had gone, her cheeks trembled, her eyes +pleaded desperately. + +"Sorry! I knew you would be. You are not hard. You couldn't be. You must +come close day by day in your life to so much that is pitiful. One can +talk to you and you'll understand. This is my first chance, the first +real chance I have ever had, Henry, the very first." + +Thresk looked backwards over the years of Stella Ballantyne's unhappy +life. It came upon him with a shock that what she said was the bare +truth; and remorse followed hard upon the heels of the shock. This was +her first real chance and he himself was to blame that it had come no +earlier. The first chance of a life worth the living--it had been in his +hands to give her and he had refused to give it years ago on Bignor Hill. + +"It's quite true," he admitted. "But I don't ask you to give it up, +Stella." She looked at him eagerly. "No! You would have understood that +if you had read my letter instead of tearing it up. I only ask you to +tell your lover the truth." + +"He knows it," she said sullenly. + +"No!" + +"He does! He does!" she protested, her voice rising to a low cry. + +"Hush! You'll be heard," said Thresk, and she listened for a moment +anxiously. But there was no sound of any one stirring in the house. + +"We are safe here," she said. "No one sleeps above us. Henry, he knows +the truth." + +"Would you be here now if he did?" + +"I came because this afternoon you seemed to be threatening me. I didn't +understand. I couldn't sleep. I saw the light in this room. I came to ask +you what you meant--that's all." + +"I'll tell you what I meant," said Thresk, and Stella with her eyes +fixed upon him sank down upon a chair. "I left my pipe behind me in the +tent on the night I dined with you. Your lover, Stella, doesn't know +that. I came back to fetch it. He doesn't know that. You were standing +by the table--" and Stella Ballantyne broke in upon him to silence the +words upon his lips. + +"There was no reason why he should know," she exclaimed. "It had nothing +to do with what happened. We know what happened. There was a thief"--and +Thresk turned to her then with such a look of sheer amazement upon his +face that she faltered and her voice died to a murmur of words--"a lean +brown arm--a hand delicate as a woman's." + +"There was no thief," he said quietly. "There was a man delirious with +drink who imagined one. There was you with the bruises on your throat and +the unutterable misery in your eyes and a little rifle in your hands. +There was no one else." + +She ceased to argue; she sat looking straight in front of her with a +stubborn face and a resolution to cling at all costs to her chance of +happiness. + +"Come, Stella," Thresk pleaded. "I don't say tell every one. I do say +tell him. For unless you do I must." + +Stella stared at him. + +"You?" she said. "You would tell him that you came back into the tent +and saw me?" + +"Oh, much more--that I lied at the trial, that the story which secured +your acquittal was false, that I made it up to save you. That I told it +again this afternoon to give you a chance of slipping out from an +impossible position." + +She looked at Thresk for a moment in terror. Then her expression changed. +A wave of relief swept over her; she laughed in Thresk's face. + +"You are trying to frighten me," she said. "Only I know you. Do you +realise what it would mean to you if it were ever really known that you +had lied at the trial?" + +"Yes." + +"Your ruin. Your absolute ruin." + +"Worse than that." + +"Prison!" + +"Perhaps. Yes." + +Stella laughed again. + +"And you would run the risk of the truth becoming known by telling it to +so much as one person. No, no! Another, perhaps--not you! You have had +one dream all your life--to rise out of obscurity, to get on in the +world, to hold the high positions. Everything and every one has been +sacrificed to its fulfilment. Oh, who should know better than I?" and she +struck her hands together sharply as she uttered that bitter cry. "You +have lain down late and risen early, and you have got on. Well, are you +the man to throw away all this work and success now that they touch +fulfilment? You are in the chariot. Will you step down and run tied to +the wheels? Will you stand up and say, 'There was a trial. I perjured +myself'? No. Another, perhaps. Not you, Henry." + +Thresk had no answer to that indictment. All of it was true except +its inference, and it was no news to him. He made no effort to +defend himself. + +"You are not very generous, Stella," he replied gently. "For if I lied, I +saved you by the lie." + +Stella was softened by the words. Her voice lost its hardness, she +reached out her hand in an apology and laid it on his arm. + +"Oh, I know. I sent you a little word of thanks when you gave me my +freedom. But it won't be of much value to me if I lose--what I am +fighting for now." + +"So you use every weapon?" + +"Yes." + +"But this one breaks in your hand," he said firmly. "The thing you think +it incredible that I should do I shall do none the less." + +Stella looked at him in despair. She could no longer doubt that he really +meant his words. He was really resolved to make this sacrifice of himself +and her. And why? Why should he interfere? + +"You save me one day to destroy me the next," she said. + +"No," he replied. "I don't think I shall do that, Stella," and he +explained to her what drove him on. "I had no idea why Hazlewood asked me +here. Had I suspected it I say frankly that I should have refused to +come. But I am here. The trouble's once more at my door but in a new +shape. There's this man, young Hazlewood. I can't forget him. You will be +marrying him by the help of a lie I told." + +"He loves me," she cried. + +"Then he can bear the truth," answered Thresk. He pulled up a chair +opposite to that in which Stella sat. "I want you to understand me, if +you will. I don't want you to think me harsh or cruel. I told a lie upon +my oath in the witness-box. I violated my traditions, I struck at my +belief in the value of my own profession, and such beliefs mean a good +deal to any man." Stella stirred impatiently. What words were these? +Traditions! The value of a profession! + +"I am not laying stress upon them, Stella, but they count," Thresk +continued. "And I am telling you that they count because I am going to +add that I should tell that lie again to-morrow, were the trial to-morrow +and you a prisoner. I should tell it again to save you again. Yes, to +save you. But when you go and--let me put it very plainly--use that lie +to your advantage, why then I am bound to cry 'stop.' Don't you see that? +You are using the lie to marry a man and keep him in ignorance of the +truth. You can't do that, Stella! You would be miserable yourself if you +did all your life. You would never feel safe for a moment. You would be +haunted by a fear that some day he would learn the truth and not from +you. Oh, I am sure of it." He caught her hands and pressed them +earnestly. "Tell him, Stella, tell him!" + +Stella Ballantyne rose to her feet with a strange look upon her face. Her +eyes half closed as though to shut out a vision of past horrors. She +turned to Thresk with a white face and her hands tightly clenched. + +"You don't know what happened on that night, after you rode away to catch +your train?" + +"No." + +"I think you ought to know--before you sit in judgment"; and so at last +in that quiet library under the Sussex Downs the tragic story of that +night was told. For Thresk as he listened and watched, its terrors lived +again in the eyes and the hushed voice of Stella Ballantyne, the dark +walls seemed to fall back and dissolve. The moonlit plain of far-away +Chitipur stretched away in front of him to the dim hill where the old +silent palaces crumbled; and midway between them and the green +signal-lights of the railway the encampment blazed like the clustered +lights of a small town. But Thresk learnt more than the facts. The +springs of conduct were disclosed to him; the woman revealed herself, +dark places were made light; and he bowed himself beneath a new burden +of remorse. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +TWO STRANGERS + + +"You came back to the tent," she began, "and ever since then you have +misunderstood what you saw. For this is the truth: I was going to +kill myself." + +Thresk was startled as he had not expected to be; and a great wave of +relief swept over him and uplifted his soul. Here was the simplest +explanation, yet it had never occurred to him. Always he had been +besieged by the vision of Stella standing quietly by the table, +deliberately preparing her rifle for use, always he had linked up that +vision with the death of Stephen Ballantyne in a dreadful connection. He +did not doubt that she spoke the truth now. Looking at her and noticing +the anguish of her face, he could not doubt it. So definite a +premeditation as he had imagined there had not been, and relief carried +him to pity. + +"So it had come to that?" he said. + +"Yes," replied Stella. "And you had your share in bringing it to +that--you who sit in judgment." + +"I!" Thresk exclaimed. + +"Yes, you who sit in judgment. I am not alone. No, I am not alone. A +crime was committed? Then you must shoulder your portion of the blame." + +Thresk asked himself in vain what was his share. He had done a cowardly +thing years ago a few miles from this spot. He had never ceased to +reproach himself for the cowardice. But that it had lived and worked like +some secret malady until in the end it had made him an all-unconscious +accomplice in that midnight tragedy, a sharer in its guilt, if guilt +there were--here again was news for him. But the knowledge which her +first words had given to him, that all these years he had never got the +truth of her, kept him humble now. He ceased to be judge. He became pupil +and as pupil he answered her. + +"I am ready to shoulder it." + +He was seated on a cushioned bench which stood behind the writing-table +and Stella sat down at his side. + +"When we parted--that morning--it was in the drawing-room over there in +my cottage. We parted, you to your work of getting on, Henry, I to think +of you getting on without me at your side. There was a letter lying on +the table, a letter from India. Jane Repton had written it and she asked +me to go out to her for the cold weather. I went. I was a young girl, +lonely and very unhappy, and as young girls often do who are lonely and +very unhappy I drifted into marriage." + +"I see," said Thresk in a hushed voice. The terrible conviction grew upon +him now, lurid as the breaking of a day of storm, that the cowardice he +had shown on Bignor Hill ruined her altogether and hurt him not at all. +"Yes, I see. There my share begins." + +"Oh no. Not yet," she answered. "Then I spoke when I should have kept +silence. I let my heart go out when I should have guarded it. No, I +cannot blame you." + +"You have the right none the less." + +But Stella would not excuse herself now and to him by any subtlety +or artifice. + +"No: I married. That was my affair. I was +beaten--despised--ridiculed--terrified by a husband who drank secretly +and kept all his drunkenness for me. That, too, was my affair. But I +might have gone on. For seven years it had lasted. I was settling into a +dull habit of misery. I might have gone on being bullied and tortured had +not one little thing happened to push me over the precipice." + +"And what was that?" asked Thresk. + +"Your visit to me at Chitipur," she replied, and the words took his +breath away. Why, he had travelled to Chitipur merely to save her. He +leaned forward eagerly but she anticipated him. She smiled at him with an +indulgent forgiveness. "Oh, why did you come? But I know." + +"Do you?" Thresk asked. Here at all events she was wrong. + +"Yes. You came because of that one weak soft spot of sentimentalism there +is in all of you, the strongest, the hardest. You are strong for years. +You live alone for years. Then comes the sentimental moment and it's we +who suffer, not you." + +And deep in Thresk's mind was the terror of the mistakes people make in +ignorance of each other, and of the mortal hurt the mistakes inflict. He +had misread Stella. Here was she misreading him and misreading him in +some strange way to her peril and ruin. + +"You are sure of that?" he asked. She had no doubt--no more doubt than he +had had of the reason why she stood preparing her rifle. + +"Quite," she answered. "You had heard of me in Bombay and it came over +you that you would like to see how the woman you had loved looked after +all these years: whether she retained her pretty way, whether she missed +you--ah, above all, whether she missed you. You wanted to fan up into a +mild harmless flame the ashes of an old romance, warm your hands at it +for half an hour, recapture a savour of dim and pleasant memories and +then go back to your own place and your own work, untouched and unhurt." + +Thresk laughed aloud with bitterness at the mistake she had made. Yet he +could not blame her. There was a certain shrewd insight which though it +had led her astray in this case might well have been true in any other +case, might well have been true of him. He remembered her disbelief in +all that he had said to her in that tent at Chitipur; and he was appalled +by the irony of things and the blind and feeble helplessness of men to +combat it. + +"So that's why I came to Chitipur?" he cried. + +"Yes," Stella answered without a second of hesitation. "But I couldn't be +left untouched and unhurt. You came and all that I had lost came with +you, came in a vivid rush of bright intolerable memories." She clasped +her hands over her eyes and Thresk lived over again that evening in the +tent upon the desert, but with a new understanding. His mind was +illumined. He saw the world as a prison in which each living being is +shut off from his neighbour by the impenetrable wall of an inability to +understand. + +"Memories of summers here," she resumed, "of women friends, of dainty and +comfortable things, and days of great happiness when it was good--oh so +very good!--to be alive and young. And you were going back to it all, +straight by the night-mail to Bombay, straight from the station on board +your ship. Oh, how it hurt to hear you speak of it, with a casual +pleasant word about exile and next-door neighbours!" She clasped her +hands together in front of her, her fingers worked and twisted. "No, I +couldn't endure it," she whispered. "The blows, the ridicule, the +contempt, I determined, should come to an end that night, and when you +saw me with the rifle in my hand I was going to end it." + +"Yes?" + +"And then the stupidest thing happened. I couldn't find the little box +of cartridges." + +Stella described to him how she had run hither and thither about the +tent, opening drawers, looking into bags and growing more nervous and +more flurried with every second that passed. She had so little time. +Ballantyne was not going as far as the station with Thresk. He merely +intended to see his visitor off beyond the edge of the camp. And it must +all be over and done with before he came back. She heard Ballantyne call +to Thresk to sit firm while the camel rose; and still she had not found +them. She heard Thresk's voice saying good-night. + +"The last words, Henry, I wanted to hear in the world. I thought that I +would wait for them and the moment they had died away--then. But I hadn't +found the cartridges and so the search began again." + +Thresk, watching her as she lived through again those desperate minutes, +was carried back to Chitipur and seemed to be looking into that tent. He +had a dreadful picture before his eyes of a hunted woman rushing wildly +from table to table, with a white, quivering face and lips which babbled +incoherently and feverish hands which darted out nervously, over-setting +books and ornaments--in a vain search for a box of cartridges wherewith +to kill herself. She found them at last behind the whisky bottle, and +clutched at them with a great sigh of relief. She carried them over to +the table on which she had laid her rifle, and as she pushed one into +the breech, Stephen Ballantyne stood in the doorway of the tent. + +"He swore at me," Stella continued. "I had taken the necklace off. I had +shown you the bruises on my throat. He cursed me for it, and he asked me +roughly why I didn't shoot myself and rid him of a fool. I stood without +answering him. That always maddened him. I didn't do it on purpose. I had +become dull and slow. I just stood and looked at him stupidly, and in a +fury he ran at me with his fist raised. I recoiled, he frightened me, and +then before he reached me--yes." Her voice died away in a whisper. Thresk +did not interrupt. There was more for her to tell and one dreadful +incident to explain. Stella went on in a moment, looking straight in +front of her and with all the passion of fear gone from her voice. + +"I remember that he stood and stared at me foolishly for a little while. +I had time to believe that nothing had happened, and to be glad that +nothing had happened and to be terrified of what he would do to me. And +then he fell and lay quite still." + +It seemed that she had no more to say, that she meant to leave +unexplained the inexplicable thing; and even Thresk put it out of +his thoughts. + +"It was an accident then," he cried. "After all, Stella, it was an +accident." + +But Stella sat mutely at his side. Some struggle was taking place in her +and was reflected in her countenance. Thresk's eager joy was damped. + +"No, my friend," she said at length, slowly and very deliberately. "It +was not an accident." + +"But you fired in fear." Thresk caught now at that alternative. "You shot +in self-defence. Stella, I blundered at Bombay." He moved away from her +in his agitation. "I am sorry. Oh, I am very sorry. I should never have +come forward at all. I should have lain quiet and let your counsel +develop his case, as he was doing, on the line of self-defence. You would +have been acquitted--and rightly acquitted. You would have had the +sympathy of every one. But I didn't know your story. I was afraid that +the discovery of Ballantyne outside the tent would ruin you. I knew that +my story could not fail to save you. So I told it. But I was wrong, +Stella. I blundered. I did you a great harm." + +He was standing before her now and so poignant an anguish rang in his +voice that Stella was moved by it to discard her plans. Thus she had +meant to tell the story if ever she was driven to it. Thus she had told +it. But now she put out a timid hand and took him by the arm. + +"I said I would tell you the truth. But I have not told it all. It's so +hard not to keep one little last thing back. Listen to me"; and with a +bowed head and her hand still clinging desperately to his arm she made +the final revelation. + +"It's true I was crazy with fear. But there was just one little moment +when I knew what I was going to do, when it came upon me that the way I +had chosen before was the wrong one, and this new way the right one. No, +no," she cried as Thresk moved. "Even that's not all. That moment--you +could hardly measure it in time, yet to me it was distinct enough and is +marked distinctly in my memories, for during it _he_ drew back." + +"What?" cried Thresk. "Don't say it, Stella!" + +"Yes," she answered. "During it he drew back, knowing what I was going to +do just as I suddenly knew it. It was a moment when he seemed to me to +bleat--yes, that's the word--to bleat for mercy." + +She had told the truth now and she dropped her hand from his sleeve. + +"And you? What did you do?" asked Thresk. + +"I? Oh, I went mad, I think. When I saw him lying there I lost my head. +The tent was flecked with great spots of fire which whirled in front of +my eyes and hurt. A strength far greater than mine possessed me. I was +crazy. I dragged him out of the tent for no reason--that's the truth--for +no reason at all. Can you believe that?" + +"Yes," replied Thresk readily enough. "I can well believe that." + +"Then something broke," she resumed. "I felt weak and numbed. I dragged +myself to my room. I went to bed. Does that sound very horrible to you? +I had one clear thought only. It was over. It was all over. I slept." +She leaned back in her chair, her hands dropped to her side, her eyes +closed. "Yes I did actually sleep." + +A clock ticking upon the mantelshelf seemed to grow louder and louder in +the silence of the library. The sound of it forced itself upon Thresk. It +roused Stella. She opened her eyes. In front of her Thresk was standing, +his face grave and very pitiful. + +"Now answer me truly," said Stella, and leaning forward she fixed her +eyes upon him. "If you still loved me, would you, knowing this story, +refuse to marry me?" + +Thresk looked back across the years of her unhappy life and saw her as +the sport of a malicious destiny. + +"No," he said, "I should not." + +"Then why shouldn't Dick marry me?" + +"Because he doesn't know this story." + +Stella nodded her head. + +"Yes. There's the flaw in my appeal to you, I know. You are quite right. +I should have told him. I should tell him now," and suddenly she dropped +on her knees before Thresk, the tears burst from her eyes, and in a voice +broken with passion she cried: + +"But I daren't--not yet. I have tried to--oh, more than once. Believe +that, Henry! You must believe it! But I couldn't. I hadn't the courage. +You will give me a little time, won't you? Oh, not long. I will tell him +of my own free will--very soon, Henry. But not now--not now." + +The sound of her sobbing and the sight of her distress wrung Thresk's +heart. He lifted her from the ground and held her. + +"There's another way, Stella," he said gently. + +"Oh, I know," she answered. She was thinking of the little bottle with +the tablets of veronal which stood by her bed, not for the first time +that night. She did not stop to consider whether Thresk, too, had that +way in his mind. It came to her so naturally; it was so easy, so simple a +way. She never thought that she misunderstood. She had come to the end of +the struggle; the battle had gone against her; she recognised it; and +now, without complaint, she bowed her head for the final blow. The +inherited habit of submission taught her that the moment had come for +compliance and gave her the dignity of patience. "Yes, I suppose that I +must take that way," she said, and she walked towards the chair over +which she had thrown her wrap. "Good-night, Henry." + +But before she had thrown the cloak about her shoulders Thresk stood +between her and the window. He took the cloak from her hands. + +"There have been too many mistakes, Stella, between you and me. There +must be no more. Here are we--until to-night strangers, and because we +were strangers, and never knew it, spoiling each other's lives." + +Stella looked at him in bewilderment. She had taught Thresk that night +unimagined truths about herself. She was now to learn something of the +inner secret man which the outward trappings of success concealed. He led +her to a sofa and placed her at his side. + +"You have said a good many hard things to me, Stella," he said with a +smile--"most of them true, but some untrue. And the untrue things you +wouldn't have said if you had ever chanced to ask yourself one question: +why I really missed my steamer at Bombay." + +Stella Ballantyne was startled. She made a guess but faltered in the +utterance of it, so ill it fitted with her estimate of him. + +"You missed it on purpose?" + +"Yes. I didn't come to Chitipur on any sentimental journey"; and he told +how he had seen her portrait in Jane Repton's drawing-room and learnt of +the misery of her marriage. + +"I came to fetch you away." + +And again Stella stared at him. + +"You? You pitied me so much? Oh, Henry!" + +"No. I wanted you so much. It's quite true that I sacrificed everything +for success. I don't deny that it is well worth having. But Jane Repton +said something to me in Bombay so true--you can get whatever you want if +you want it enough, but you cannot control the price you will have to +pay. I know, my dear, that I paid too big a price. I trampled down +something better worth having." + +Stella rose suddenly to her feet. + +"Oh, if I had known that on the night in Chitipur! What a difference it +would have made!" She turned swiftly to him. "Couldn't you have told me?" + +"I hadn't a chance. I hadn't five minutes with you alone. And you +wouldn't have believed me if I had had the chance. I left my pipe behind +me in order to come back and tell you. I had only the time then to tell +you that I would write." + +"Yes, yes," she answered, and again the cry burst from her: "What a +difference it would have made! Merely to have known that you really +wanted me!" + +She would never have taken that rifle from the corner and searched for +the cartridges, that she might kill herself! Whether she had consented or +not to go away and ruin Thresk's future she would have had a little faith +wherewith to go on and face the world. If she had only known! But up on +the top of Bignor Hill a blow had been struck under which her faith had +reeled and it had never had a chance of recovery. She laughed harshly. +The heart of her tragedy was now revealed to her. She saw herself the +sport of gods who sat about like cruel louts torturing a helpless animal +and laughing stupidly at its sufferings. She turned again to Thresk and +held out her hand. + +"Thank you. You would have ruined yourself for me." + +"Ruin's a large word," he answered, and still holding her hand he drew +her down again. She yielded reluctantly. She might misread his character, +but when the feelings and emotions were aroused she had the unerring +insight of her sex. She was warned by it now. She looked at Thresk with +startled eyes. + +"Why have you told me all this?" she asked in suspense, ready for flight. + +"I want to prepare you. There's a way out of the trouble--the honest way +for both of us: to make a clean breast of it together and together take +what follows." + +She was on her feet and away from him in a second. + +"No, no," she cried in alarm, and Thresk mistook the cause of the alarm. + +"You can't be tried again, Stella. That's over. You have been acquitted." + +She temporised. + +"But you?" + +"I?" and he shrugged his shoulders. "I take the consequences. I doubt if +they would be so very heavy. There would be some sympathy. And +afterwards--it would be as though you had slipped down from Chitipur to +Bombay and joined me as I had planned. We can make the best of our lives +together." + +There was so much sincerity in his manner, so much simplicity she could +not doubt him; and the immensity of the sacrifice he was prepared to make +overwhelmed her. It was not merely scandal and the Divorce Court which he +was ready to brave now. He had gone beyond the plan contemplated at +Bombay. He was willing to go hand in hand with her into the outer +darkness, laying down all that he had laboured for unsparingly. + +"You would do that for me?" she said. "Oh, you put me to shame!" and she +covered her face with her hands. + +"You give up your struggle for a footing in the world--that's what you +want, isn't it?" He pleaded, and she drew her hands away from her face. +He believed that? He imagined that she was fighting just for a name, a +position in the world? She stared at him in amazement, and forced herself +to understand. Since he himself had cared for her enough to remain +unmarried, since the knowledge of the mistake which he had made had grown +more bitter with each year, he had fallen easily into that other error +that she had never ceased to care too. + +"We'll make something of our lives, never fear," he was saying. "But to +marry this man for his position, and he not knowing--oh, my dear, I know +how you are driven--but it won't do! It won't do!" + +She stood in silence for a little while. One by one he had torn her +defences down. She could hardly bear the gentleness upon his face and +she turned away from him and sat down upon a chair a little way off. + +"Stand there, Henry," she said. A strange composure had succeeded her +agitation. "I must tell you something more which I had meant to hide +from you--the last thing which I have kept back. It will hurt you, I +am afraid." + +There came a change upon Thresk's face. He was steeling himself to +meet a blow. + +"Go on." + +"It isn't because of his position that I cling to Dick. I want him to +keep that--yes--for his sake. I don't want him to lose more by marrying +me than he needs must"; and comprehension burst upon Henry Thresk. + +"You care for him then! You really care for him?" + +"So much," she answered, "that if I lost him now I should lose all the +world. You and I can't go back to where we stood nine years ago. You had +your chance then, Henry, if you had wished to take it. But you didn't +wish it, and that sort of chance doesn't often come again. Others like +it--yes. But not quite the same one. I am sorry. But you must believe me. +If I lost Dick I should lose all the world." + +So far she had spoken very deliberately, but now her voice faltered. + +"That is my one poor excuse." + +The unexpected word roused Thresk to inquiry. + +"Excuse?" he asked, and with her eyes fixed in fear upon him she +continued: + +"Yes. I meant Dick to marry me publicly. But I saw that his father shrank +from the marriage. I grew afraid. I told Dick of my fears. He banished +them. I let him banish them." + +"What do you mean?" Thresk asked. + +"We were married privately in London five days ago." + +Thresk uttered a low cry and in a moment Stella was at his side, all her +composure gone. + +"Oh, I know that it was wrong. But I was being hunted. They were all like +a pack of wolves after me. Mr. Hazlewood had joined them. I was driven +into a corner. I loved Dick. They meant to tear him from me without any +pity. I clung. Yes, I clung." + +But Thresk thrust her aside. + +"You tricked him," he cried. + +"I didn't dare to tell him," Stella pleaded, wringing her hands. "I +didn't dare to lose him." + +"You tricked him," Thresk repeated; and at the note of anger in his voice +Stella found herself again. + +"You accuse and condemn me?" she asked quietly. + +"Yes. A thousand times, yes," he exclaimed hotly, and she answered with +another question winged on a note of irony: + +"Because I tricked him? Or because I--married him?" + +Thresk was silenced. He recognised the truth implied in the distinction, +he turned to her with a smile. + +"Yes," he answered. "You are right, Stella. It's because you +married him." + +He stood for a moment in thought. Then with a gesture of helplessness he +picked up her cloak. She watched his action and as he came towards her +she cried: + +"But I'll tell him now, Henry." In a way she owed it to this man who +cared for her so much, who was so prepared for sacrifice, if sacrifice +could help. That morning on the downs was swept from her memory now. +"Yes, I'll tell him now," she said eagerly. Since Henry Thresk set +such store upon that confession, why so very likely would Dick, her +husband, too. + +But Thresk shook his head. + +"What's the use now? You give him no chance. You can't set him free"; and +Stella was as one turned to stone. All argument seemed sooner or later to +turn to that one dread alternative which had already twice that night +forced itself on her acceptance. + +"Yes, I can, Henry, and I will, I promise you, if he wishes to be free. I +can do it quite easily, quite naturally. Any woman could. So many of us +take things to make us sleep." + +There was no boastfulness in her voice or manner, but rather a despairing +recognition of facts. + +"Good God, you mustn't think of it!" said Thresk eagerly. "That's too +big a price to pay." + +Stella shook her head wistfully. + +"You hear it said, Henry," she answered with an indescribable +wistfulness, "that women will do anything to keep the men they love. +They'll do a great deal--I am an example--but not always everything. +Sometimes love runs just a little stronger. And then it craves that the +loved one shall get all he wants to have. If Dick wants his freedom I +too, then, shall want him to have it." + +And while Thresk stood with no words to answer her there came a knocking +upon the door. It was gentle, almost furtive, but it startled them both +like a clap of thunder. For a moment they stood rigid. Then Thresk +silently handed Stella her cloak and pointed towards the window. He +began to speak aloud. A word or two revealed his plan to Stella +Ballantyne. He was rehearsing a speech which he was to make in the +Courts before a jury. But the handle of the door rattled and now old Mr. +Hazlewood's voice was heard. + +"Thresk! Are you there?" + +Once more Thresk pointed to the window. But Stella did not move. + +"Let him in," she said quietly, and with a glance at her he +unlocked the door. + +Mr. Hazlewood stood outside. He had not gone to bed that night. He had +taken off his coat and now wore a smoking-jacket. + +"I knew that I should not sleep to-night, so I sat up," he began, "and I +thought that I heard voices here." + +Over Thresk's shoulder he saw Stella Ballantyne standing erect in the +middle of the room, her shining gown the one bright patch of colour. "You +here?" he cried to her, and Thresk made way for him to enter. He advanced +to her with a look of triumph in his eyes. + +"You here--at this house--with Thresk? You were persuading him to +continue to hold his tongue." + +Stella met his gaze steadily. + +"No," she replied. "He was persuading me to the truth, and he has +succeeded." + +Mr. Hazlewood smiled and nodded. There was no magnanimity in his triumph. +A schoolboy would have shown more chivalry to the opponent who was down. + +"You confess then? Good! Richard must be told." + +"Yes," answered Stella. "I claim the right to tell him." + +But Mr. Hazlewood scoffed at the proposal. + +"Oh dear no!" he cried. "I refuse the claim. I shall go straight to +Richard now." + +He had actually taken a couple of steps towards the door before Stella's +voice rang out suddenly loud and imperative. + +"Take care, Mr. Hazlewood. After you have told him he will come to me. +Take care!" + +Hazlewood stopped. Certainly that was true. + +"I'll tell Dick to-morrow, here, in your presence," she said. "And if he +wishes it I'll set him free and never trouble either of you again." + +Hazlewood looked at Thresk and was persuaded to consent. Reflection +showed him that it was the better plan. He himself would be present when +Stella spoke. He would see that the truth was told without embroidery. + +"Very well, to-morrow," he said. + +Stella flung the cloak over her shoulders and went up to the window. +Thresk opened it for her. + +"I'll see you to your door," he said. + +The moon had risen now. It hung low with the branches of a tree like a +lattice across its face; and on the garden and the meadow lay that +unearthly light which falls when a moonlit night begins to drown in the +onrush of the dawn. + +"No," she said. "I would rather go alone. But do something for me, will +you? Stay to-morrow. Be here when I tell him." She choked down a sob. +"Oh, I shall want a friend and you are so kind." + +"So kind!" he repeated with a note of bitterness. Could there be praise +from a woman's lips more deadly? You are kind; you are put in your place +in the ruck of men; you are extinguished. + +"Oh yes, I'll stay." + +She stood for a moment on the stone flags outside the window. + +"Will he forgive?" she asked. "You would. And he is not so very young, is +he? It's the young who don't forgive. Good-night." + +She went along the path and across the meadow. Thresk watched her go and +saw the light spring up in her room. Then he closed the window and drew +the curtain. Mr. Hazlewood had gone. Thresk wondered what the morrow +would bring. After all, Stella was right. Youth was a graceful thing of +high-sounding words and impetuous thoughts, but like many other graceful +things it could be hard and cruel. Its generosity did not come from any +wide outlook on a world where there is a good deal to be said for +everything. It was rather a matter of physical health than judgment. Yes, +he was glad Dick Hazlewood was half his way through the thirties. For +himself--well, he knew his business. It was to be kind. He turned off the +lights and went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE VERDICT + + +"Six, seven, eight," said Mr. Hazlewood, counting the letters which he +had already written since breakfast and placing them on the salver which +Hubbard was holding out to him. He was a very different man this morning +from the Mr. Hazlewood of yesterday. He shone, complacent and serene. He +leaned back in his chair and gazed mildly at the butler. "There must be +an answer to the problem which I put to you, Hubbard." + +Hubbard wrinkled his brows in thought and succeeded only in looking a +hundred and ten years old. He had the melancholy look of a moulting bird. +He shook his head and drooped. + +"No doubt, sir," he said. + +"But as far as you are concerned," Mr. Hazlewood continued briskly, "you +can throw no light upon it?" + +"Not a glimmer, sir." + +Mr. Hazlewood was disappointed and with him disappointment was petulance. + +"That is unlike you, Hubbard," he said, "for sometimes after I have been +deliberating for days over some curious and perplexing conundrum, you +have solved it the moment it has been put to you." + +Hubbard drooped still lower. He began the droop as a bow of +acknowledgment but forgot to raise his head again. + +"It is very good of you, sir," he said. He seemed oppressed by the +goodness of Mr. Hazlewood. + +"Yet you are not clever, Hubbard! Not at all clever." + +"No, sir. I know my place," returned the butler, and Mr. Hazlewood +continued with a little envy. + +"You must have some wonderful gift of insight which guides you straight +to the inner meaning of things." + +"It's just common-sense, sir," said Hubbard. + +"But I haven't got it," cried Mr. Hazlewood. "How's that?" + +"You don't need it, sir. You are a gentleman," Hubbard replied, and +carried the letters to the door. There, however, he stopped. "I beg your +pardon, sir," he said, "but a new parcel of _The Prison Walls_ has +arrived this morning. Shall I unpack it?" + +Mr. Hazlewood frowned and scratched his ear. + +"Well--er--no, Hubbard--no," he said with a trifle of discomfort. "I am +not sure indeed that _The Prison Walls_ is not almost one of my mistakes. +We all make mistakes, Hubbard. I think you shall burn that parcel, +Hubbard--somewhere where it won't be noticed." + +"Certainly, sir," said Hubbard. "I'll burn it under the shadow of the +south wall." + +Mr. Hazlewood looked up with a start. Was it possible that Hubbard was +poking fun at him? The mere notion was incredible and indeed Hubbard +shuffled with so much meekness from the room that Mr. Hazlewood dismissed +it. He went across the hall to the dining-room, where he found Henry +Thresk trifling with his breakfast. No embarrassment weighed upon Mr. +Hazlewood this morning. He effervesced with good-humour. + +"I do not blame you, Mr. Thresk," he said, "for the side you took +yesterday afternoon. You were a stranger to us in this house. I +understand your position." + +"I am not quite so sure, Mr. Hazlewood," said Thresk drily, "that I +understand yours. For my part I have not closed my eyes all night. You, +on the other hand, seem to have slept well." + +"I did indeed," said Hazlewood. "I was relieved from a strain of +suspense under which I have been labouring for a month past. To have +refused my consent to Richard's marriage with Stella Ballantyne on no +other grounds than that social prejudice forbade it would have seemed +a complete, a stupendous reversal of my whole theory and conduct of +life. I should have become an object of ridicule. People would have +laughed at the philosopher of Little Beeding. I have heard their +laughter all this month. Now, however, once the truth is known no one +will be able to say--" + +Henry Thresk looked up from his plate aghast. + +"Do you mean to say, Mr. Hazlewood, that after Mrs. Ballantyne has told +her story you mean to make that story public?" + +Mr. Hazlewood stared in amazement at Henry Thresk. + +"But of course," he said. + +"Oh, you can't be thinking of it!" + +"But I am. I must do it. There is so much at stake," replied Hazlewood. + +"What?" + +"The whole consistency of my life. I must make it clear that I am not +acting upon prejudice or suspicion or fear of what the world will say or +for any of the conventional reasons which might guide other men." + +To Thresk this point of view was horrible; and there was no arguing +against it. It was inspired by the dreadful vanity of a narrow, shallow +nature, and Thresk's experience had never shown him anything more +difficult to combat and overcome. + +"So for the sake of your reputation for consistency you will make a very +unhappy woman bear shame and obloquy which she might easily be spared? +You could find a thousand excuses for breaking off the marriage." + +"You put the case very harshly, Mr. Thresk," said Hazlewood. "But +you have not considered my position," and he went indignantly back +to the library. + +Thresk shrugged his shoulders. After all if Dick Hazlewood turned his +back upon Stella she would not hear the abuse or suffer the shame. That +she would take the dark journey as she declared he could not doubt. And +no one could prevent her--not even he himself, though his heart might +break at her taking it. All depended upon Dick. + +He appeared a few minutes afterwards fresh from his ride, glowing with +good-humour and contentment. But the sight of Thresk surprised him. + +"Hulloa," he cried. "Good-morning. I thought you were going to catch the +eight forty-five." + +"I felt lazy," answered Thresk. "I sent off some telegrams to put off my +engagements." + +"Good," said Dick, and he sat down at the breakfast-table. As he poured +out a cup of tea, Thresk said: + +"I think I heard you were over thirty." + +"Yes." + +"Thirty's a good age," said Thresk. + +"It looks back on youth," answered Dick. + +"That's just what I mean," remarked Thresk. "Do you mind a cigarette?" + +"Not at all." + +Thresk smoked and while he smoked he talked, not carelessly yet careful +not to emphasize his case. "Youth is a graceful thing of high-sounding +words and impetuous thoughts, but like many other graceful things it can +be very hard and very cruel." + +Dick Hazlewood looked closely and quickly at his companion. But he +answered casually: + +"It is supposed to be generous." + +"And it is--to itself," replied Thresk. "Generous when its sympathies are +enlisted, generous so long as all goes well with it: generous because it +is confident of triumph. But its generosity is not a matter of judgment. +It does not come from any wide outlook upon a world where there is a good +deal to be said for everything. It is a matter of physical health." + +"Yes?" said Dick. + +"And once affronted, once hurt, youth finds it difficult to forgive." + +So far both men had been debating on an abstract topic without any +immediate application to themselves. But now Dick leaned across the table +with a smile upon his face which Thresk did not understand. + +"And why do you say this to me this morning, Mr. Thresk?" he asked +pointedly. + +"Yes, it's rather an impertinence, isn't it?" Thresk agreed. "But I was +looking into a case late last night in which irrevocable and terrible +things are going to happen if there is not forgiveness." + +Dick took his cigarette-case from his pocket. + +"I see," he remarked, and struck a match. Both men rose from the table +and at the door Dick turned. + +"Your case, of course, has not yet come on," he said. + +"No," answered Thresk, "but it will very soon." + +They went into the library, and Mr. Hazlewood greeted his son with a +vivacity which for weeks had been absent from his demeanour. + +"Did you ride this morning?" he asked. + +"Yes, but Stella didn't. She sent word over that she was tired. I must go +across and see how she is." + +Mr. Hazlewood interposed quickly: + +"There is no need of that, my boy; she is coming here this morning." + +"Oh!" + +Dick looked at his father in astonishment. + +"She said no word of it to me last night--and I saw her home. I suppose +she sent word over about that too?" + +He looked from one to the other of his companions, but neither answered +him. Some uneasiness indeed was apparent in them both. + +"Oho!" he said with a smile. "Stella's coming over and I know +nothing of it. Mr. Thresk's lazy, so remains at Little Beeding and +delivers a lecture to me over breakfast. And you, father, seem in +remarkable spirits." + +Mr. Hazlewood seized upon the opportunity to interrupt his son's +reflections. + +"I am, my boy," he cried. "I walked in the fields this morning +and--" But he got no further with his explanations, for the sound of Mrs. +Pettifer's voice rang high in the hall and she burst into the room. + +"Harold, I have only a moment. Good morning, Mr. Thresk," she cried in a +breath. "I have something to say to you." + +Thresk was disturbed. Suppose that Stella came while Mrs. Pettifer was +here! She must not speak in Mrs. Pettifer's presence. Somehow Mrs. +Pettifer must be dismissed. No such anxiety, however, harassed Mr. +Hazlewood. + +"Say it, Margaret," he said, smiling benignantly upon her. "You cannot +annoy me this morning. I am myself again," and Dick's eyes turned sharply +upon him. "All my old powers of observation have returned, my old +interest in the great dark riddle of human life has re-awakened. The +brain, the sedulous, active brain, resumes its work to-day asking +questions, probing problems. I rose early, Margaret," he flourished his +hands like one making a speech, "and walking in the fields amongst the +cows a most curious speculation forced itself upon my mind. How is it, I +asked myself--" + +It seemed that Mr. Hazlewood was destined never to complete a sentence +that morning, for Margaret Pettifer at this point banged her umbrella +upon the floor. + +"Stop talking, Harold, and listen to me! I have been speaking with Robert +and we withdraw all opposition to Dick's marriage." + +Mr. Hazlewood was dumfoundered. + +"You, Margaret--you of all people!" he stammered. + +"Yes," she replied decisively. "Robert likes her and Robert is a good +judge of a woman. That's one thing. Then I believe Dick is going to take +St. Quentins; isn't that so, Dick?" + +"Yes," answered Dick. "That's the house we looked over yesterday." + +"Well, it's not a couple of a hundred yards from us, and it would not be +comfortable for any of us if Dick and Dick's wife were strangers. So I +give in. There, Dick!" She went across the room and held out her hand to +him. "I am going to call on Stella this afternoon." + +Dick flushed with pleasure. + +"That's splendid, Aunt Margaret. I knew you were all right, you know. You +put on a few frills at first, of course, but you are forgiven." + +Mr. Hazlewood made so complete a picture of dismay that Dick could not +but pity him. He went across to his father. + +"Now, sir," he said, "let us hear this problem." + +The old man was not proof against the invitation. + +"You shall, Richard," he exclaimed. "You are the very man to hear it. +Your aunt, Richard, is of too practical a mind for such speculations. +It's a most curious problem. Hubbard quite failed to throw any light upon +it. I myself am, I confess, bewildered. And I wonder if a fresh young +mind can help us to a solution." He patted his son on the shoulder and +then took him by the arm. + +"The fresh young mind will have a go, father," said Dick. "Fire away." + +"I was walking in the fields, my boy." + +"Yes, sir, among the cows." + +"Exactly, you put your finger on the very point. How is it, I asked +myself--" + +"That's quite your old style, father." + +"Now isn't it, Richard, isn't it?" Mr. Hazlewood dropped Dick's arm. He +warmed to his theme. He caught fire. He assumed the attitude of the +orator. "How is it that with the advancement of science and the progress +of civilization a cow gives no more milk to-day than she did at the +beginning of the Christian era?" + +With outspread arms he asked for an answer and the answer came. + +"A fresh young mind can solve that problem in two shakes. It is because +the laws of nature forbid. That's your trouble, father. That's the +great drawback to sentimental enthusiasm. It's always up against the +laws of nature." + +"Dick," said Mrs. Pettifer, "by some extraordinary miracle you are gifted +with common-sense. I am off." She went away in a hurricane as she had +come, and it was time that she did go, for even while she was closing the +door Stella Ballantyne came out from her cottage to cross the meadow. +Dick was the first to hear the gate click as she unlatched it and passed +into the garden. He took a step towards the window, but his father +interposed and for once with a real authority. + +"No, Richard," he said. "Wait with us here. Mrs. Ballantyne has something +to tell us." + +"I thought so," said Dick quietly, and he came back to the other two men. +"Let me understand." His face was grave but without anger or any +confusion. "Stella returned here last night after I had taken her home?" + +"Yes," said Thresk. + +"To see you?" + +"Yes." + +"And my father came down and found you together?" + +"Yes." + +"I heard voices," Mr. Hazlewood hurriedly interposed, "and so naturally I +came down." + +Dick turned to his father. + +"That's all right, father. I didn't think you were listening at the +keyhole. I am not blaming anybody. I want to know exactly where we +are--that's all." + +Stella found the little group awaiting her, and standing up before them +she told her story as she had told it last night to Thresk. She omitted +nothing nor did she falter. She had trembled and cried for a great part +of the night over the ordeal which lay before her, but now that she had +come to it she was brave. Her composure indeed astonished Thresk and +filled him with compassion. He knew that the very roots of her heart were +bleeding. Only once or twice did she give any sign of what these few +minutes were costing her. Her eyes strayed towards Dick Hazlewood's face +in spite of herself, but she turned them away again with a wrench of her +head and closed her eyelids lest she should hesitate and fail. All +listened to her in silence, and it was strange to Thresk that the one man +who seemed least concerned of the three was Dick Hazlewood himself. He +watched Stella all the while she was speaking, but his face was a mask, +not a gesture or movement gave a clue to his thoughts. When Stella had +finished he asked composedly: + +"Why didn't you tell me all this at the beginning, Stella?" + +And now she turned to him in a burst of passion and remorse. + +"Oh, Dick, I tried to tell you. I made up my mind so often that I would, +but I never had the courage. I am terribly to blame. I hid it all from +you--yes. But oh! you meant so much to me--you yourself, Dick. It wasn't +your position. It wasn't what you brought with you, other people's +friendship, other people's esteem. It was just you--you--you! I longed +for you to want me, as I wanted you." Then she recovered herself and +stopped. She was doing the very thing she had resolved not to do. She was +pleading, she was making excuses. She drew herself up and with a dignity +which was quite pitiful she now pleaded against herself. + +"But I don't ask for your pity. You mustn't be merciful. I don't _want_ +mercy, Dick. That's of no use to me. I want to know what you think--just +what you really and truthfully think--that's all. I can stand alone--if I +must. Oh yes, I can stand alone." And as Thresk stirred and moved, +knowing well in what way she meant to stand alone, Stella turned her eyes +full upon him in warning, nay, in menace. "I can stand alone quite +easily, Dick. You mustn't think that I should suffer so very much. I +shouldn't! I shouldn't--" + +In spite of her control a sob broke from her throat and her bosom heaved; +and then Dick Hazlewood went quietly to her side and took her hand. + +"I didn't interrupt you, Stella. I wanted you to tell everything now, +once for all, so that no one of us three need ever mention a word of +it again." + +Stella looked at Dick Hazlewood in wonder, and then a light broke over +her face like the morning. His arm slipped about her waist and she leaned +against him suddenly weak, almost to swooning. Mr. Hazlewood started up +from his chair in consternation. + +"But you heard her, Richard!" + +"Yes, father, I heard her," he answered. "But you see Stella is my wife." + +"Your--" Mr. Hazlewood's lips refused to speak the word. He fell back +again in his chair and dropped his face in his hands. "Oh, no!" + +"It's true," said Dick. "I have rooms in London, you know. I went to +London last week. Stella came up on Monday. It was my doing, my wish. +Stella is my wife." + +Mr. Hazlewood groaned aloud. + +"But she has tricked you, Richard," and Stella agreed. + +"Yes, I tricked you, Dick. I did," she said miserably, and she drew +herself from his arm. But he caught her hand. + +"No, you didn't." He led her over to his father. "That's where you both +make your mistake. Stella tried to tell me something on the very night +when we walked back from this house to her cottage and I asked her to +marry me. She has tried again often during the last weeks. I knew very +well what it was--before you turned against her, before I married her. +She didn't trick me." + +Mr. Hazlewood turned in despair to Henry Thresk. + +"What do you say?" he asked. + +"That I am very glad you asked me here to give my advice on your +collection," Thresk answered. "I was inclined yesterday to take a +different view of your invitation. But I did what perhaps I may suggest +that you should do: I accepted the situation." + +He went across to Stella and took her hands. + +"Oh, thank you," she cried, "thank you." + +"And now"--Thresk turned to Dick--"if I might look at a _Bradshaw_ I +could find out the next train to London." + +"Certainly," said Dick, and he went over to the writing-table. Stella and +Henry Thresk were left alone for a moment. + +"We shall see you again," she said. "Please!" + +Thresk laughed. + +"No doubt. I am not going out into the night. You know my address. If you +don't ask Mr. Hazlewood. It's in King's Bench Walk, isn't it?" And he +took the time-table from Dick Hazlewood's hand. + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Witness For The Defence, by A.E.W. Mason + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE *** + +***** This file should be named 12535.txt or 12535.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/3/12535/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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