"OUT ON BAIL."
Miss Brookewas electrified. Such a thing had never occurred to her as possible. After years of separation, of dispute, of ill-feeling on either side, here was Lady Alice appearing in her husband's house, and expressing a desire to remain in it. She came to Woburn Place on the evening after her interview with Caspar, and at once made known her wishes to Doctor Sophy.
It was a curious interview. Miss Brooke sat bolt upright on a sofa, with an air of repressed indignation which was exceedingly striking: Lady Alice, half enveloped in soft black furs, was leaning back in the lowest and most luxurious chair the room afforded, with rather more the air of thegrande damethan she actually wished to convey. In reality her heart was very soft, and there was moisture in her eyes; but it was difficult for her to shake off an appearance of cold indifference to all the world when Miss Sophia Brooke, M. D., was in her society. She had never understood Doctor Sophy, and Miss Brooke had always detested her.
"Am I to understand, Lady Alice," said the spinster, in her stiffest voice, "that my brother wishes you to take up your abode in this house during his absence?"
"Yes, I think so," said Lady Alice, equably. "He has wished me to take up my abode here for some time past."
"Indeed?"
The note of incredulity in her voice angered Caspar's wife.
"I think you hardly understand," she said with some quiet dignity, "that I have been to see Mr. Brooke this afternoon. Strange circumstances demand new treatment, Miss Brooke. I consulted with my husband as to what we had better do, and he agreed with me that it would be better for Lesley if I came here—at any rate for the present."
"Better for Lesley!" Miss Brooke was evidently offended. "I do not think that you need put yourself to any inconvenience—even for Lesley's sake. I will take care of her."
"But I happen to be her mother," said Lady Alice, with a touch of amusement. It struck her as odd that Miss Brooke only amused her now, and did not make her angry at all. "And we have the world to think of, besides."
"I scarcely thought you troubled yourself very much about what the world said," remarked Aunt Sophy, severely. "It has said a good deal during the last ten or twelve years."
"At least it shall not say," responded Lady Alice, "that I believe my husband guilty of murder. I have come back to preventthat."
Miss Brooke looked at her doubtfully. She was not a person of very quick perceptions.
"You mean," she said at last, "that you have come back—because——"
"Becausehe was accused of murder," said Lady Alice, clearly, "and I choose to show the world that I do not believe it."
And Lesley, entering from the library, heard the words, and stood transfixed for a moment with pure delight. Then she sprang forward, fell on her knees before her mother, and embraced her with such fervor that Miss Brooke put up her eye-glasses and gazed in surprise.
"Mother! my own dearest mother! You do believe in him, then! and you have come to show us that you do! Oh! how delighted he will be when he knows!"
A little color showed itself in Lady Alice's delicate face. "He does know," she whispered, almost with the coyness of a girl.
"And hewasdelighted, was he not? It would be such a comfort to him—just now when he wants every kind of comfort. Oh, mamma, it is so good of you, and I am so glad. Aunty Sophy, aren't you glad, too?"
Lady Alice tried to stifle this naïve utterance, but it would not be repressed, and Aunt Sophy had to rise to the occasion as best she could, with rather a grim face, she rose from her seat upon the sofa and advanced towards her brother's wife, holding out a very reluctant hand.
"I appreciate your motives, Lady Alice, and I see that your conduct may be of service to my brother." Then sherelapsed into a more colloquial tone. "But how on earth you mean to live in this part of London, I'm sure I can't imagine. No doubt it seems rather smoky and grimy to you after Mayfair and Belgravia."
"London is generally a little smoky," said Lady Alice, smiling in spite of herself. "Thank you, Sophy: I thought you would do me justice."
And the hands of the two women met in a friendlier grasp than ever in the days of yore.
"I must see about your room," said Miss Brooke, practically. It was her way of holding out the olive branch. "You would like to be near Lesley, I suppose. We shall try to make you comfortable, but, of course, you won't expect the luxuries of your own home here."
"I shall be very comfortable, I am sure," said Lady Alice.
"What, does she mean by talking in that tone?" cried Lesley, hotly when Doctor Sophy had left the room. "It was almost insulting!"
"No, my darling, no. It is only a memory of old times when I was—exacting and dissatisfied. Yes, I see that I must have seemed so, then. I had not had much experience in those days; and then your father was not a man of substance as he seems to be now," said Lady Alice, inspecting the room, with a half-smile. The smile died quickly away, however, and was succeeded by a sad look, and a sigh. "Ah, poor Caspar!"
"He will be home in a day or two. Everybody says so."
"I trust so, dearest. And I will stay with—you till he comes home."
"Oh, but now that you have come, mamma you will never be allowed to go away again."
"I never said that, Lesley. I have come to maintain a principle, that is all. A wife ought to show that she trusts her husband, if he is falsely accused."
And then Lady Alice lowered her eyes and changed the subject, for it suddenly occurred to her that she had not been very ready, in her younger years, to give the trust that now seemed to be her husband's due.
But she settled down quite naturally in her husband's home during the next few days. Lesley, remembering the discomfort of her own first few weeks, expected her to saythat the house was hideous and the neighborhood detestable. But Lady Alice said nothing of the kind. She thought it a fine old house—well-built and roomy—far preferable, she said, to the places she had often occupied in the West End. With different furniture and a little good taste it might be made absolutely charming. And when she got as far as "absolutely charming," uttered with her chin pillowed on one hand, and her eyes roving meditatively over the drawing-room mantelpiece, Lesley smiled to herself, and gave up all fear that she would ever go away again. Lady Alice had evidently come to the conclusion that it was her duty to see that Caspar's house was thoroughly redecorated from top to bottom.
But she did not come to this conclusion all at once. There were days when the minds of mother and daughter were too full of sorrow and anxiety to occupy themselves with upholstery and bric-a-brac. And the day of the adjourned inquest, when Caspar Brooke was allowed to go to his own house on bail, was one of the worst of all.
He came home quietly that afternoon in company with Maurice Kenyon, greeted his family affectionately but with something of a melancholy air, then went at once to his study, where he shut himself up and began to write and read letters. The cloud was hanging over him still. He knew well enough that if he had been a poor man, of no account in the world, he would at that moment have been occupying a prison cell instead of his own comfortable study. For presumption was strong against him; and it had taken a great deal of influence and extraordinarily high bail to secure his release. At present he stood committed to take his trial for manslaughter within a very short space of time. And nobody had succeeded, or seemed likely to succeed, in throwing any doubt on the testimony of Mary Trent. He was certainly in a very awkward position: it might be a very terrible position by-and-bye.
He was aroused from the reverie into which he had fallen by the entry of a servant with a note. He opened it, read the contents slowly, and then put it into the fire. He stood frowning a little as he watched it burn.
After a few moments of this hesitation he rang the bell, told Sarah that he was going out, and left the house. The three women in the drawing-room upstairs, already nervous and overstrained from long suspense, all started when thereverberation of that closing door made itself heard. Lesley felt her mother's hand close on hers with a quick, convulsive pressure. She looked up.
"He has gone out!" Lady Alice murmured, so that Lesley alone could hear. "He does not come—tous!"
Lesley did not know what to say. She was surprised to find that her mother expected him to come. But then she was only Caspar Brooke's daughter and not his wife.
Lady Alice lay back in her chair, closed her eyes and waited. She had once been a jealous woman: there were the seeds of jealousy in her still. She sat and wondered whether Caspar had gone for sympathy and comfort to any other woman. And after wondering this for half an hour it suddenly occurred to her mind with the vividness of a lightning flash that if thingswereso—if her husbandhadfound sympathy elsewhere—it was her own fault. She had no right to accuse him, or to blame him, when she had left him for a dozen years.
"I have no right to blame him, perhaps, but I have still a right to know," she said to herself. And then, disengaging her hand from Lesley's clinging fingers, she rose and went downstairs—down to the study which she had so seldom visited. She seated herself in Caspar's arm-chair, and prepared to wait there for his return. Surely he would not be long!—and then she would speak to him, and things should be made clear.
Caspar's note had been written by Mrs. Romaine. It was quite formal, and merely contained a request that he would call on her at his earliest convenience. And he complied at once, as she had surmised that he would do. Her confidential maid opened the door to him, and conducted him to the drawing-room. It was dusk, and the blinds were drawn down. Oliver Trent's funeral had taken place the day before.
Mr. Brooke did not sit down. He knew that the interview which was about to take place was likely to be a painful one, but he could not guess in the least what kind of turn it would take. Did Rosalind believe in his guilt? Did she know what manner of man her brother Oliver had been? Was she going to reproach or to condole? She had done a strange thing in asking him to the house at all, and at another time he might have thought it wiser not to accede to her request; but he was in the mood in whichthe most extraordinary incidents seem possible, and scarcely anything could have seemed to him too bizarre to happen. He felt curiously impatient of the ordinary conventionalities of civilized life. Since this miraculous thing had come to pass—that he, Caspar Brooke, a respectable, sane, healthy-minded man of middle-age, could be accused of killing a miserable young scamp like Oliver Trent in a moment of passion—the world had certainly seemed somewhat crazy and out of joint. It was not worth while to stand very much on ceremony at such a conjuncture; and if Rosalind Romaine wanted to talk to him about her dead brother, he was willing to go and hear her talk. And yet as he stood in her dainty little drawing-room, it came over him very strongly that he ought not to be there.
He was still musing when the door opened, and Rosalind stole into the room. He did not hear her until she was close upon him, and then he turned with a sudden start. She looked different—she was changed. Her face was very pale: her eyelids were reddened: she was dressed in the deepest black, and over her head she had flung a black lace veil, which gave her—perhaps unintentionally—a tragic look. She held the folds together with her right hand, and spoke to him quietly.
"It was kind of you to come," she said.
"You summoned me. I should not have come without that," he answered, quickly.
"No, I suppose not. And of course—in the ordinary course of things—I ought not to have summoned you. The world would say that I was wrong. But we have been old friends for many years now, have we not?"
"I always thought so," he answered, gravely. "But now—I fear——"
"You mean"—with a strange vibration in her voice— "you mean that we must never be friends again—because—because of Oliver——"
"This accusation must naturally tend to separate the families," he said, in a very calm, grave voice. "Even when it is disproved, we shall not find it easy to resume old relations. I am very sorry for it, Rosalind, just as I need not tell you how sorry I am for the cause——"
She interrupted him hurriedly. "Yes, yes, I know all that; but you speak ofdisprovingthe charge. Can you do that?"
He was silent for a moment. "I shall do my best," he said at length, with some emotion in his voice.
"And if it is not disproved—what then?" she asked. "Suppose they call itmurder?"
Caspar drew himself up: a certain displeasure began to mark itself upon his features.
"Need you ask me?"
"Yes, I need. I want you to consider the answer that you would give. I have a reason."
Her eager eyes, hot and burning in a face that was strangely white, pled for her. Caspar relented a little, but bent his brows as he replied—
"The extreme penalty of the law, I suppose. It is absurd—but, of course, it is possible. It is not a case in which I should expect penal servitude for life to be substituted, supposing that I were found guilty. But I fail to see your motive for asking what must be to me a rather painful question."
"Oh, you are strong! You can bear it!" she said, dropping her face upon her hands. Caspar gazed at her in amazement. He began to wonder whether she were going out of her mind. But before he could find any word of calming or consoling tendency, she flung down her hands and spoke again. "I want you to fix your mind on it for a moment, even although it hurts you," she said. "You are a strong man—you do not shrink from a thing because, it is a little painful. Think what it would mean for yourself, and not for yourself only; for your friends, for those who love you! A perpetual disgrace—a misery!"
"You seem anxious to assume that I shall be convicted," he said, still with displeasure.
"I tell you I am doing so on purpose. I want you to think of it. You know—you know as well as I do—that the chances are against you!"
"And if they are?"
"If they are—why do you incur such a risk!"
"Mrs. Romaine," said Caspar, gently, but with a steady coldness of tone, of which she did not at first feel the import, "I think you hardly know the force of what you are saying. I do not incur any risk unnecessarily or wantonly: I only wish the truth to be made known. What can I do more—or less?"
"You could go away," she said, almost in a whisper.
If the room had been lighter, she might, perhaps, have seen the frown that was gathering on his brow, the wrath that darkened his eyes as he spoke: but his face was in shadow, and for a moment anger made him speechless. She went on eagerly, breathlessly, without waiting for a reply.
"You might get off quite easily to—to Spain, perhaps, or some place where there was no extradition treaty. You are out on bail, I know; but your friends could not complain. Surely it is a natural enough thing for a man, situated as you are, to wish to escape: nobody would blame you in the long run—they would only say that you were wise. And if you stay, everything is against you. You had so much better take your present chance!"
Caspar muttered something inarticulate, then seemed to choke back further utterance, and kept silence for a minute. When he spoke it was in a curiously tranquil tone.
"You do not seem to have heard of the quality that men call their honor?"
"Oh, honor! I have heard enough about honor," she answered with a nervous, rasping laugh. "And you—youto talk about honor—after—afterwhat you have done!"
Caspar Brooke fell back a step or two and surveyed her curiously."Good God!" The exclamation broke from him, as if against his will. "You speak as though you thought I was guilty—as though I had—murderedOliver!"
And she, looking at him as intently as he looked at her, said only, in the simplest possible way—
"And did you not?"
LOVE OR TRUST.
Casparturned away. For a moment he felt mortally sick, as if from a pang of acute physical pain. Distrust from an old friend is always a hard thing to bear. And so, for a moment or two, he did not speak.
"I was not surprised," said Mrs. Romaine, quickly. "I had been looking for something of the kind. I won't say that you were not justified—in a certain sense. Oliver acted abominably, I know. He told me what he was going to do beforehand."
"Told you what he was going to do?"
"Yes—to make Lesley fall in love with him. He did not mean to marry her. He meant to gain her affections and then to—to—leave her, to break her heart. I suppose that is what you found out. I do not wonder that you were surprised."
"No doubt you have good authority for what you are saying," said Mr. Brooke, very coldly, "but your account does not tally with what I have gathered from other sources."
"From Lesley herself?"
Caspar bowed his head. He was conscious of a violent dislike to bringing Lesley's name into the discussion. Mrs. Romaine went on rapidly.
"As to Lesley, of course I cannot say. I don't know whether he failed or succeeded. Oliver very seldom failed with women when he tried. But, of course, he was going to marry Ethel; and that meant that if hehadsucceeded Lesley had been thrown over. It is not like me to put things so baldly, is it? I see that I disgust you. But I do not know that I need apologize. You are man of the world enough to understand that at certain crises we are obliged to speak our minds, to face the truth boldly and see what it means. Is it not so?"
"It may be so, but I am not aware that the present crisis demands such plain speaking."
"Then you must be blind," said his hearer, with a burst of indignation, "blind—blind—blind! Or mad? is that it? What sort of crisis do you expect? What can be worse than the present state of things? Are not your life and her character at stake? Why do you not take your present opportunity and save her and yourself? Look the matter in the face and decide?"
"I would rather not discuss it," said Caspar. "The course you indicate is not one that could be taken by any honorable man. It is—it is—absurd." The last word was evidently the substitute for a much stronger one in his mind. "I see no use in talking about the matter. We are only giving ourselves useless pain."
There was a short silence. Mrs. Romaine drew her veil more tightly round her face, and seemed to deliberate. Caspar threw a longing glance—which she intercepted—towards the door.
"Men are such cowards," she said at last, in a low and bitter tone. "I have provedthatin every way: I ought to be prepared for cowardice—even from you. They want to slip out of every unpleasant position, and leave some woman to bear the brunt of it. You, for instance, want to go now, this minute, because I have said one or two things that pain you. You don't care enough for what I think to make you wish to alter my opinion—to fight it out and conquer me; you only want to get away and leave me to 'cool down,' as you would call it. You are mistaken. I am not speaking from any momentary irritation: what I say to you to-day is the result of long thought, long consideration, long patience. It would be better for you to have the courage and the manliness to listen to me."
"You talk in a very extraordinary way, Rosalind,", said Caspar. "I do not understand it, and I fail to see its justice towards me. I have never refused to listen to you, have I? As for cowardice—it seemed to me that you were trying to persuade me to do a very cowardly thing just now; but perhaps I was mistaken. I will hear all that you have to say: if I was anxious to go, it was only that I might save you from tiring or hurting yourself."
"It matters so much whether I am tired or hurt, does it not?" she said, with the faintest possible flicker of a smile on her white lips. "That is what you all think of—whether one suffers—suffers physically. It is my soul that is hurt,my heart that is tired—but you don't concern yourself with that sort of thing."
"I assure you that I am very sorry——," he began, and then he stopped short. She had made it very difficult for him to say anything so commonplace, and yet so true.
"If you are sorry," she said, in a softer tone, "and if you want to make me happier—save yourself."
"No," said Caspar, roughly—almost violently—"by Heaven, I won't do that."
"You don't wish to save yourself?"
"Not at that price—the price of my honor."
"Listen to me," she said, drawing nearer to him and speaking very softly. "I have made it my business during the last day or two—when I gathered that you would be let out on bail—to collect all the information that might be useful to you. You could get away to-morrow or next day by a vessel that leaves Southampton at the time I have marked on this paper. It is not an ordinary steamer—not a passenger-ship at all—and no one will know that you are on board. It would take you to Oporto. You would be safe enough in the interior—a friend of mine who went there once told me that there were charming palaces and half-ruined castles to let, where one could live as in paradise, amidst the loveliest gardens, full of fountains and birds and flowers."
Her voice took on a caressing tone, as if she were dreaming of perfect happiness. "How like a woman," thought Caspar to himself, "to think only of the material side of life?" Then he corrected himself: "Like some women: not like all, thank-God!"
"So you would condemn me to exile and loneliness as well as to dishonor?" he said. It was as much as he could do not to laugh outright at the chimerical idea.
"It is no exile to a cosmopolitan like yourself to live out of England," she answered, scornfully. "As to dishonor—what will you not have to suffer if you stay in England? Where is your reputation now? And as to loneliness—don't you know—do you not see—that youneed not go—alone?"
She put her left hand gently on his arm, and for a moment there was silence in the room. Her heart beat so loudly that she was afraid of his hearing it. But she need not have feared; his mind was far too much occupied withmore important matters to be able to take cognizance of such a detail as the state of Mrs. Romaine's pulse.
His first impulse was one of intense indignation and anger. His second was one of pity. These feelings alternated in him when at last he forced himself to speak. Which of the two predominated he hardly knew. Perhaps pity: because it drove him, almost as a matter of self-respect, to make a pretence of not knowing what she meant.
"Anything is exile to a man who leaves his home," he said sternly. "To a man who leaves his wife and daughter—do you understand? As for the dishonor of such a course, it seems as if you could not comprehend that: my feelings on the subject are evidently beyond your ken. But you can understand this—first, that I should go nowhere into no exile, into no new home, without my wife; and, secondly, thatshe, at least, trusts me—she knows that I have not your brother's blood upon my hands."
Rosalind's fingers had slipped from his arm when he began to speak: she knew that if she had not removed them then they would have been shaken off. He could see them amongst the folds of black lace at her breast—clutching, tearing, as if she had not room to breathe.
"Your wife!" she said, with a gasp. "I did not know.... She has been beforehand with me, then! And it is she—she—that you will take—to Spain?"
"There is no question of Spain. I mean to stay here in England and fight the matter out. My wife would be the first person to tell me so. I cannot imagine her speaking to me again if I were coward enough to run away."
"She would not do for you what I have done!" cried the unhappy woman, now, as it seemed, beside herself. "If she believes you innocent, so much the easier for her! But I—I—believe you guilty—yes, Caspar Brooke, I believe that you killed my brother—and I do not care! I loved him, yes; but I love you—you—a thousand times more!"
"You do not know what you are saying. You are mad. Be silent, Rosalind," said Caspar Brooke, in a deep tone of anger. But she raved on.
"Have I not been silent for years? And who is as faithful to you as I have been? It is easy to love a manwho is innocent; but not a man who is guilty! Guilty or not—I do not care. It is you that I care for—and you may have as many sins as you please upon your soul—but they are nothing to me. I am past anything now but speaking the truth. Have you no pity for a woman to whom you are dearer than her own soul?"
She would have thrown herself at his feet, if he had not prevented her. He was touched a little by her suffering, but he was also immeasurably angered and disgusted. An exhibition of uncontrolled feeling was not the way to charm him. His one desire now became the desire to escape.
"I should have no pity," he said, gravely, "for my own selfishness and cowardice, if I took advantage of this moment of weakness on your part. Itisweakness, I hope—I will not call it by any other name. You will recover from it when the stress of this painful time is over, and you will be glad to forget it as I shall do. Believe me, I will not think of it again. It shall be in my mind as though you had not said it; and, though it will be impossible for us to continue on our former terms of friendship, I shall always wish for your welfare, and hope that time will bring you happiness and peace."
She made no answer. She lay where he had placed her, her head buried amongst the cushions, crushed to the very earth. She would not look at him, would not make semblance to have heard. And he, without hesitation, went deliberately to the door and let himself out. He gained the street without being intercepted, and drew a long breath of relief when he felt the soft night air playing on his heated brow. The moralist would have said that he came off victor; but he had a sense, as he went out along the pavement, of being only a defeated and degraded man. There was not even the excitement of gratified vanity, for an offered love which did not include perfect trust in his honor was an insult in itself. And Caspar Brooke's integrity of soul was dear to him.
It was perhaps impossible for him—a mere man—to estimate the extent of suffering to which his scorn had subjected the woman that he left behind. Rosalind remained as he had seen her, crouching on the ground, with her head on the sofa cushions, for full two hours or more. When she rose she went to her own room and lay upon herbed, refusing for many hours either to eat or to speak. She did not sleep: she lay broad awake all night, recalling every tone of Caspar's voice, and every passing expression of his face. She was bitterly humiliated and ashamed. But she was not ashamed in the sense of shame for wrong-doing: she was only ashamed because he had rebuffed her. She was sick with mortification. She had offered him everything in her power—peace, safety, love: she had offered himherselfeven, and been rejected with scorn. Nothing crushes a woman like this humiliation. And in some women's natures such an experience will produce dire results; for loss of self-respect is resented as the worst injury that man can inflict, and is followed by deadly hatred to the man who has inflicted it. It may be argued by the more logical male that the woman has brought it all upon herself; but no affronted, humiliated, shame-stricken woman will ever allow this to be the fact. The sacrifice she conceives to have been all her own; but the pain has come fromhim.
This was the way in which Rosalind looked at the matter. And mistaken as she was in her view of the moralities and proprieties of the situation, she suffered an amount of pain which may well arouse in us more pity than Caspar Brooke felt for her. The burning, stinging sense of shame seemed to make her whole soul an open wound. It was intolerable. The only way out of it, she said to herself at first, is to die. There was an old song that rang in her ears continually, as if somebody were repeating it over and over again. She could not remember it all—only a line here and there. "When lovely woman stoops to folly," it began, what art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not dienow-a-days, either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them. And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, too. "Revenge" was too high-flown a word; but if she could see him heartbroken, ruined, disgraced, she would be—not satisfied, but she would feel her pain allayed.
Caspar Brooke walked for an hour before he was calm enough to remember that he ought to go home. When thisidea once occurred to him, he felt a pang of shame for his own forgetfulness. What would Alice think of him? And this was the first day that she had been with him in his house for so many years. He must go home and make his apologies. Not that she would expect very much attention from him. Had she not said that she was only trying to do her duty? Probably she disliked him still.
He let himself in with his latch-key, and walked straight into the study. A shaded lamp had been lighted, and but faintly illuminated the corners of the room. But there was light enough for him to see that Lady Alice was sitting in his chair. He came up to the table, and looked at her without speaking. There was a strange tumult of feeling in his heart. He wished that he could tell her how gratified he was by her trust in him, how much he prized the very things that had once irritated him against her—her reserve, her fine perception, her excellent fastidiousness of taste, even that little air of coldness that became her so well. To come into her presence was like entering a fragrant English garden, after stifling for an hour in a conservatory where the air was heavy with the perfume of stephanotis.
She rose, as he continued silent, and stood on the rug, almost face to face with him. She did not find it easy to speak, and there was something in his air which frightened her a little. She made a trivial remark at last, but with great difficulty.
"You have been away a long time," she said.
She was not prepared for the answer. He put out his hand and drew her close to him. "You were away a great deal longer," he said, looking down at her fair, serious face. She could not reply. "Twelve years, is it not?" he went on. "That's a long time out of one's life, Alice. I feel myself an old man now."
"No, no, Caspar!" she said, tremulously.
"What was it all about, Alice? You know I never really understood it. Can't you make me understand? Was it that I was simply unbearable? too disagreeable to be put up with any longer."
"No, it was not that. I will speak the truth now, Caspar. I was jealous—I thought you cared for Rosalind Romaine."
"But you know now—surely—that that was not true?"
"Could you swear it?" she asked, suddenly and sharply, with a quick look into his face.
For a moment he was annoyed. Then his brow cleared, and he answered, very gravely—
"I can and will, if you like. But I thought—having trusted me so far—that you could trust me without an oath. Alice, I never loved any woman but one: and that one was yourself. Have you been as true to me as I have been to you?"
"I don't think I ever knew that I loved you until now," said Alice, laying her head with a deep sigh upon her husband's breast.
"Love is not enough, though it is a great deal: do you trust me?"
"Implicitly—now that I have looked at you again."
Caspar gave a little laugh.
"Then I must never let you go away from me, or you will begin to disbelieve in me," he said.
TWELVE SILVER SPOONS.
Lady Alicewas not long in finding out that Maurice Kenyon, her husband's chief friend, was the man of whom Lesley had spoken in her letters, and also the doctor who had interested her at the hospital. She did not speak to Lesley about him: she took a little time to accustom herself to her husband's circle before she made any remarks upon its members. But she was shrewd enough to see very quickly that Mr. Kenyon took even more interest in her daughter than in her husband, and from Lesley's shy looks she fancied that the interest was reciprocated. She had a twinge of regret for her favorite, Harry Duchesne, and then consoled herself by saying that after all Lesley was too young to know her own mind, and that probably she would change before she was twenty-one.
She did not come particularly into contact with Maurice, however, until the Sunday after she had taken up her abode in Woburn Place. And then she saw a good deal of him. For Lesley went to sit with Ethel as was her wont, and Maurice came to dine at Mr. Brooke's. After the early dinner, Lady Alice noticed that there was some parleying between the guest and his host.
"I am going," said Maurice in an urgent undertone. To which Caspar returned a cheerful answer.
"All right, old man; but I am going too." And then Mr. Kenyon knitted his brows and looked vexed.
Caspar at once noted his wife's glance of inquiry. "Has Lesley told you nothing about our Sunday meetings at the Club? We generally betake ourselves to North London on a Sunday afternoon. Mr. Kenyon thinks I had better stay with you, and—I don't."
From Maurice's uncomfortable looks, Lady Alice gathered that there was something doubtful in the proceeding. "Will you let me go with you?" she said, by way of experiment.
There was an exchange of astonished and rather embarrassed looks all round. Caspar elevated his eyebrows and clutched his beard: Miss Brooke made a curious sound, something like a snort; and Maurice flushed a deep and dusky red; indications which all annoyed Lady Alice, although she did not quite know what they signified. She rose from her chair and took the matter into her own hands; but all without the slightest change in the manner of graceful indifference which had grown natural to her of late years.
"That is the place where Lesley used to go," she said. "She tells me she sings to the people sometimes. I cannot sing, but I can play the piano a little, if that is any good. Sophy is going, is she not? And I should like to go too."
"There is no reason why you should not," said Mr. Brooke rather abruptly. But the gleam in his eye told of pleasure. "There are some very rough characters at the club sometimes, you know. And perhaps the reception they give me to-day will not be of the pleasantest."
Lady Alice looked at her husband with a mixture of wonder and admiration. The calm way in which he sometimes alluded to his present circumstances, without a trace of bitterness or fretfulness, amazed her. In old days she would have put it down to "good breeding—good manners," some superficial veneer of good society of which she thoroughly approved; but she had seen too much of the seamy side of "good society" now to be able to accept this explanation of his calmness. It was not want of sensitiveness, she was sure of that: he was by no means obtuse: it was simply that his large, strong nature rose above the pettiness of resentment and complaint. The suspicion under which he labored was a grave thing—a trouble, a blow; but it had not made him sour, nor borne him to the earth with a conviction of the injustice of mankind.
His wife looked and marveled, but recollected herself in time to say after only a minute's hesitation:
"I know a little more about rough characters than I once did. We saw a good many at the East End hospital, did we not, Mr. Kenyon?"
It was the first time that she had shown that she remembered Maurice's face. Caspar pricked up his ears.
"Youat a hospital, Alice? Why, what were you doing there?"
"Visiting some of the patients," she answered, with a little blush.
"Visits which were much appreciated," put in Maurice, "although we found that Lady Alice was too generous."
"Until I was warned by one of the patients that the others abused my kindness and traded on it," said Lady Alice, laughing rather nervously, "and then I drew in a little."
"What patient was that?"
"The name I think was Smith—the man who lost his memory in that curious way."
"Ah yes, I remember." And then Maurice knitted his brows and became very thoughtful: he looked as if a thoroughly new idea had been suggested to him.
Miss Brooke remarked that it was almost time to set out if they were to go to the club that afternoon, and Lady Alice went to her room for her cloak. She was before the looking-glass, apparently studying the reflection of her own face, when a knock at the door, to which she absently said "Come in," was followed by Caspar's entrance. She, thinking that it was her maid, did not look round, and he came behind her without being perceived. The first token of his presence was received by her when his arm was slipped round her waist, and his voice said caressingly and almost playfully in her ear, "I don't know that I want my dainty piece of china carried down into the slums."
"Am I nothing more to you than that?" said Lady Alice reproachfully.
He made no answer, but as he looked at the fair face in the glass, and as their eyes met, she thought that she read a reply in his glance.
"I have been nothing more—I know," she said, with sudden humbleness, "but if it is not too late—if I can make up now for the time I have lost——"
The tears trembled in her eyes, but he kissed them away with new tenderness, saying in a soothing tone—
"We will see, my dear, we will see. I was only in jest."
And she felt that he was thinking not only of the lost years, but of the possible gulf before him—that horror of darkness and disgrace which they might yet have to face.
She went downstairs to the cab that was waiting, with a new and subduing sensation very present to her mind: asense of something missed out of her own life, a sense of having failed in the duty that had once been given her to do. Hitherto she had been buoyed up by a certain confidence in her own conscientiousness and power of judgment, as most rather narrow-minded women are; but it now occurred to her that she might have been wrong—not only in a few details, as she had consented to admit—but wrong from beginning to end. She had marred not only her own life but the lives of her husband and her child.
This consciousness kept her very quiet during the drive to Macclesfield Buildings. But nobody spoke much, except Doctor Sophy, who made interjectional remarks, half lost in the rattling of the cab, by way of trying to keep up everybody's spirits. Caspar sitting opposite his wife, with his arms folded and his long legs carefully tucked out of the way, had an unusually serious and even anxious expression. Indeed it struck Lady Alice for the first time that he was looking haggard and ill. The burden was weighing upon him even more than he knew. Maurice, too, seemed absorbed in thought, so that the drive was not a particularly lively one.
They got out at the block of buildings which had once struck Lesley as so particularly ugly. Perhaps their ugliness did not impress Lady Alice so much. At any rate she made no remark upon it. Her fingers were lightly pressed upon Caspar's arm: her thoughts were occupied by him.
At the door of the block in which the club-rooms were situated, a little group of men were standing in somewhat aimless fashion, smoking and talking among themselves. Caspar recognized several of the club members in this group. "Ah," he said quietly to his wife, "they thought that I should not come." She made no answer: as a matter of fact she began to feel a trifle frightened. These rough-looking men, with their pipes, who nudged each other and laughed as she passed, were of a kind unknown to her. But Caspar walked through them easily, nodding here and there, with a cheery "Good-afternoon."
Lady Alice did not know it, but the room presented an unusual sight to her husband's eyes that afternoon. The fire was burning, and the gas was lighted, for the day was cold and damp: the comfortable red-seated chairs were as inviting as ever, and the magazines and newspapers lay inrows upon the scarlet table-cloth. There were flowers in the vases, and a piece of music on the open piano. Lady Alice exclaimed in her pleasure, "How pretty it is! how cosy!" and wondered at the gloom that sat upon her husband's brow.
The room was cosy and pretty enough—but it was empty.
Caspar looked round mutely, then glanced at his companions. Miss Brooke paused in the act of taking off one woollen glove, and opened her mouth and forgot to shut it again. Maurice stood frowning, twitching his brows and biting his lips in the effort to subdue a torrent of rage that was surging up in his heart. He would have sworn, he said afterwards, if Lady Alice had not been there—he did not mind Doctor Sophy so much. All that he did now, however, was to mutter "Ungrateful rascals," and make as if he would turn to flee.
But he was stopped by Caspar's clutch at his arm. Maurice saw that his purpose—that of haranguing the men outside—had been divined and arrested. He turned to his friend and saw for the first time on Caspar's face that the shaft had gone home. He had shown scarcely any sign of suffering before.
"I don't deserve this from them," said Brooke quietly, and Maurice could tell that he had gone rather white about the lips. Then in a still lower voice, "Don't let her know. You were right, Maurice; I had better not have come."
"I'll just go and look outside: I won't speak to them, don't be afraid—you talk to Lady Alice," said Maurice breaking from him. But when he got into the dark little entry, he did not look outside for anything or anybody: he only relieved himself by exclaiming. "Oh, d—n the fools!" and shaking his first in a very reprehensible way at some imaginary crowd of auditors. For Maurice was half an Irishman, and his blood was up, and on his friend's behalf he was, as he would just then have expressed it, "in a devil of a rage." While he was executing a sort of mad war-dance on the jute mat in the passage, relieving his mind by some wild gesticulation and still wilder objurgation of the world, Mr. Brooke had turned back to his wife with a pleasant word and smile.
"I must show you the photographs," he said. "We are very proud of them. There will be plenty of time, for the members seem to be a little late in getting together to-day. Possibly they thought I was not coming."
"It is scarcely time yet," said Miss Brooke heroically. She knew it was ten minutes past, but she was quite prepared to sacrifice truth for the maintenance of her brother's dignity.
"That's a good one of the Parthenon," said Caspar negligently, putting his hand within his wife's arm, and leading her from one picture to another. "The Coliseum you see: not quite so clear as it might be. These frames were made by one of the men in the buildings—given as a present to the club. Not bad taste, are they? And this statuette——".
He broke off suddenly. He had been going on hurriedly and feverishly, filling up the time as best he might, trying to forget the embarrassing situation into which he had brought his wife and himself, when the sound of heavy footsteps fell upon his ear. A sound of shuffling, the creak of men's boots, a little gruff whispering in the doorway—what was it all about? Were the men whom he had helped and guided going to turn against him openly—to give him in his wife's presence some other insult beside the tacit insult of their absence? He turned round sharply, with the feeling that if he was brought to bay the men would have a bad time of it. He certainly looked a formidable antagonist. The hair had fallen over his forehead, his brows were knotted, his eyes gleamed rather fiercely beneath them, his under lip was thrust out aggressively. "As fierce as a lion," said one of the observers, afterwards. But even while his eyes darted flame and fury at the men who had deserted them, his body kept its half-protecting, half-deferential pose with respect to Lady Alice; and the hand that held her arm was studiously gentle in its touch.
Lady Alice turned round, amazed. There was a little crowd in the passage: the room was already half full. Men and women too were there, and more crowded in from behind. There must have been nearly fifty, when all were seen, and there were more men than women. But they did not sit down: they stood, they leaned against the walls; one or two mounted on the benches at the back and stood where they could get a good view of the proceedings. Caspar's scowl remained fixed, but it was a scowl of astonishment. He looked round for Maurice, whom he presently saw beckoning to him to take his usual place near the piano. He said a word to his wife, and brought her roundwith him towards his sister and his friend. The men still stood, and crowded a little nearer to him as he reached his place. There was very little talking in the room, and the men's faces looked somewhat solemn: it was evidently a serious occasion.
"Is this—this—what usually goes on?" queried the puzzled Lady Alice.
"This? Oh no!" said Maurice, to whom she had addressed herself, with a sudden happy laugh, and a perfectly beaming face. "Thisis—a demonstration. Here, Caspar, old man, you've got to stand here.Now, Gregson."
Lady Alice accepted the chair offered to her, and Miss Brooke another. Caspar began to look utterly perplexed, but a little relieved also, for his eye, in straying over the crowd, had recognized two or three faces as those of intimate friends who seemed to be mingling with the men, and he felt sure that they had no inimical purpose towards him. All that he could do was to look down and grasp his beard, as usual, while Jim Gregson, the man who had once spoken to Lesley so warmly of her father, being pushed forward by the crowd as their spokesman, addressed himself to Caspar.
"Mr. Brooke—Sir: We have made bold to change the order of the proceedings for this 'ere afternoon. Instead of beginning with the music, we just want to say a few words; and that's why we've come in all at once, so as to show that we are all of one mind. We think, sir, that this is a very suitable opportunity for presenting you with a mark of our—our gratitude and esteem. We have always found you a true friend to us, and an upright man that would never allow the weak to be trampled on, nor the poor to be oppressed, and we wish to show that whatever the newspapers may say, sir, we have got heads on our shoulders and know a good man when we see him." This sentence was uttered with great emphasis, to an accompaniment of "Hear, hear," from the audience, and considerable stamping of feet, umbrellas and sticks. "What we wish to say, sir," and Mr. Gregson became more and more embarrassed as he came to this point, "is that we respect you as a man and as a gentleman, and that we take this opportunity of asking you to accept this small tribute of our feelings towards you, and we wish to say that there's not a member of the club as has not contributed his mite towards it, as well as manypoor neighbors in the Buildings. It's a small thing to give, but that you will excuse on account of the shortness of the notice, so to speak: the suggestion having been made amongst ourselves and by ourselves only three days ago. We beg you'll accept it as a token of respect, sir, from the whole of the Macclesfield Buildings Working Men's Club, of which you was the founder, and which we hope you'll continue for many long years to be the presidentof." And with a resounding emphasis on the preposition, Mr. Gregson finished his speech. A tremendous salvo of applause followed his last word, and before it had died away a woman was hastily dragged to the front, with a child—a blue-eyed fairy of two or three years old—in her arms. The child held a brown paper parcel, and presented it with baby solemnity to Mr. Brooke, who kissed her as he took it from her hands. And then, under cover of more deafening applause, Mr. Brooke turned hurriedly to Maurice and said, in a very unheroic manner—
"I say, I can't stand much more of this. I shall make a fool of myself directly."
"Do: they'll like it, the beggars!" returned Maurice in high glee.
But he had more sympathy in his eyes than his words expressed, and the grip that he gave his friend's hand set the audience once more applauding enthusiastically. An audience of Londoners with whom a speaker is in touch, is one of the most sympathetic and enthusiastic in the world.
While they applauded, the parcel was opened. It contained a morocco case, lined with dark blue satin and velvet—an unromantic and prosaic expression of as truly high and noble feeling as ever found a vent in more poetic ways—and on the velvet cushion lay—twelve silver spoons!
There was an odd little touch of bathos about it, and an outsider might perhaps have smiled at the way in which the British workman and his wife had chosen to manifest their faith in the man who had been in their eyes wrongfully accused; but nobody present in the little assembly saw the humorous side of it at all, not even a young gentleman who was hastily making a sketch of it for theGraphic, for he blew his nose as vigorously as anybody else. And there was a good display of handkerchiefs and some rather troublesome coughing and choking in the course of the afternoon, which showed that the donors ofthe spoons did not look on the gift exactly in the light of a joke.
Mr. Brooke was a practised speaker; and when he opened his lips to reply, his sister dried her eyes and put down her handkerchief with a gratified smile as much as to say, "Now we shall have a treat." And she settled herself so that she could watch the effect of the speech on Lady Alice, who had forgotten to wipe her tears away, and sat with eyelashes wet and cheeks slightly flushed, looking astoundingly young and pretty in the excitement of the moment. But Miss Brooke was doomed to be disappointed. Caspar began once, twice, thrice—and broke down irrevocably. The only intelligible words he got out were, "My dear friends, I can't tell you how I thank you." And that was quite true: he couldn't.
But there was all the more applause, and all the more kindly feeling for that failure of his to make a speech; and then one or two other men spoke of the good that Mr. Brooke had done in that neighborhood, and of the help that he had given them all in founding the club, and of the brave and encouraging words that he had spoken to them, and so on; and the young artist for theGraphicsketched away faster and faster, and said to himself, "My eye, there'll be a precious row if they try to hang him after this, whatever he's done." But the sensation of the afternoon was yet to come.
"I can only say once more, my friends," said Caspar, as the hour wore away, "that I thank you for this expression of your confidence in me, and that I have never had a prouder moment in my life than this, in which you tell me of your own accord that you believe in my innocence of the crime attributed to me. Of that, however, I will not speak. I wish only, before we separate, to introduce you to my wife, who has never been here before, and whom I am sure you will welcome for my sake."
There was a moment of astonishment. Every one knew something of the story of Caspar's married life, and was taken aback by the appearance of his wife. But when Maurice Kenyon led the way by clapping his hands vigorously, someone took up the word, and cried, "Three cheers for Mrs. Brooke." And Lady Alice started at the new title, and thought that it sounded much better than the one by which she was usually known.
"Shall I say any more?" said Caspar, smiling as he stooped down to her. But suddenly she rose to her feet and put her hand within his arm. "No," she said, "I am going to do it myself."
The storm of clapping was renewed and died away when it was perceived that Lady Alice was about to speak. She was a little flushed, but perfectly self-possessed, and her clear silvery voice could be heard in every corner of the room.
"I wish to thank you, too," she said, "for your kindness to my husband and myself. I hope I shall know more of his work here by and by, and in the meantime I can only tell you that you are right to trust him and believe in him—asItrust him and believe in him with all my heart and soul!"
She turned to him a little as she spoke, her eyes shining, her face transfigured—the faith in her making itself manifest in feature and in gesture alike. There was not applause so much as a murmur of assent when she had done; and Caspar, laying hold of her hand, looked down at her with a new warmth of tenderness, and said half wonderingly,
"Why, Alice!"
"Do you think I could let them go without telling them what you are to me?" she said, with a kind of passion in her voice which reminded him of Lesley. But there was no time to say more, for every person in the room presented himself or herself to shake hands with Caspar and his wife, and to admire the spoons, which had been purchased only the night before.
"Very glad to see you amongst us, Mrs. Brooke, mum; and hope you'll come again," was heard so often that Lady Alice was quite amazed by the warmth of the greeting. "And the young lady too—where's she? she ought to have been here as well," said one woman; to which Maurice Kenyon responded in a pleased growl—
"Yes, confound your blundering, so she ought; and so she would have been, if you hadn't nearly made such a blessed mull of the whole affair."
He did not think that anybody heard him, and was rather taken aback when Lady Alice smiled at him over her shoulder. "What do you mean, Mr. Kenyon?" she said.
Maurice was on his good behavior immediately. "Oh, nothing, Lady Alice; only that Miss Brooke might have been here if we had only had a hint beforehand, and it is a pity she should have missed it."
"A great pity," said Lesley's mother; and she looked quite complacently at the twelve silver spoons, which she was guarding so jealously, as if she feared they would be taken away from her.
Outside the doors, when the assembly had reluctantly dispersed, after an improvised collation, given by Caspar, of hot drinks and plum cake, a little crowd of men and boys cheered the departing hero of the day so valiantly that Lady Alice was almost glad to find herself once more driving through the dusky London streets with her husband at her side. Miss Brooke and Maurice had elected to walk home.
"There's one thing," said Caspar, rather later in the day, as a history of these experiences was unfolded to Lesley; "we quite, forgot to tell the good folks your mother's name and title. She was applauded to the echo as 'Mrs. Brooke.'"
"Oh, you must never tell them," said Lady Alice, hastily. "I do not want to be anything else, please—now."
"I wish they had let one know beforehand," said Maurice, "they kept it a dead secret—even from me."
"All the greater surprise for us," said Mr. Brooke. Then he looked at Maurice for a moment, and smiled. But it was long before they mentioned to each other what both had thought and felt in that heart-breaking minute of suspense when they believed that Caspar was deserted in the hour of need.
"Well," said Caspar Brooke, at length, "whatever may happen now"—and he made a pause which was fraught with graver meaning than he would have cared to put into words—"I can feel at any rate that 'I have had my say.' And you, Alice—well, my dear, you will always have those silver spoons to look at! So we have not done badly after all."
Like Sir Thomas More, he would have joked when going to the scaffold; but jokes under such circumstances have rather a ghastly sound in the ears of his family.
CAIN.
Maurice Kenyontook an early opportunity of asking Lady Alice whether she would recognize the man Smith if she saw him again.
"I think so. Why do you ask? You know I talked to him a good deal."
"I have been very blind," said Maurice seriously. "I never thought until to-day of associating him in my mind with someone else—someone whom I have seen twice during the past week. May I speak freely to you? You know I am as anxious as anyone can possibly be that this mystery should be cleared up. I wish to speak of Francis Trent, the brother of Oliver Trent, and the husband of the woman who makes this accusation against Mr. Brooke."
Lady Alice recoiled. "You cannot mean that John Smith had anything to do with him?"
"I have a strong belief that John Smith and Francis Trent are one and the same. To my shame be it spoken, I did not recognize him either on Wednesday or Friday when I paid him a visit. Ethel wished me to go when she heard that he was ill." He said this in a deprecating tone.
"I quite understand. You saw this man—Francis Trent—then?"
"Yes, and could not imagine where I had seen him before. I think it is the man I used to see in hospital. Lady Alice—if you saw him yourself——"
"I, Mr. Kenyon? What! see the man and woman who accuse my husband of murder?"—There was genuine horror in her tone. "How could I speak to them?"
"It is just a chance," said Maurice, in a low voice. "If he knew thatyouwere the wife of the man who was accused—perhaps something would come of it."
"What do you mean?"
"Lady Alice, pray do not build too much on what I am going to say. If Francis Trent and John Smith be the same, then my knowledge of John Smith's previous condition leads me to think it quite possible that it was Francis Trent who, in a fit of frenzy, committed the murder of which your husband is suspected."
Lady Alice looked at him in silence. "I don't see exactly," she said, "that I should be of much use."
"Nor I—exactly," said Maurice. "But I see a vague chance; and I ask you—for your husband's sake—to try it."
"Ah, you know I cannot refuse that," she said quickly. And then she arranged with him where they should meet on the following afternoon in order to drive to the lodgings now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Francis Trent. Whether this proceeding might not be stigmatized as "tampering with witnesses," Maurice and Lady Alice neither knew nor cared. If Maurice had a doubt, he stifled it by telling himself that they were not going to visit the "witness," Mary Trent, but the sick man, John Smith, in whom Lady Alice had been interested at the hospital. It was only as a precaution that he took with him young Mr. Grierson, junior partner of the firm of solicitors to whom Caspar's defence was entrusted. Young Grierson was a friend as well as a lawyer, and it was always as well to have a friend at hand. But really he hardly knew for what result he hoped.
The rooms in which Maurice himself, at Ethel's instance, had located Mr. and Mrs. Francis Trent were in Bernard Street. They were plain but apparently clean and comfortable. Maurice said a word to the servant, and unceremoniously put her aside, and walked straight into the room where he knew that Francis Trent was lying.
A thin, spare woman, with a deadly pale face and black sunken eyes, rose from a seat beside the bed as they entered. Lady Alice knew, as if by instinct, that this was Mary Trent. She averted her eyes from the woman who had falsely accused her husband: she could not bear to look at her. But Mary Trent scarcely took her eyes off Lady Alice's face.
"Will you look here, Lady Alice, if you please?" said Maurice in his most professional tone. She turned towards the bed, and saw—yes, it was the face of the man whom she had known in the hospital: thinner, yellower, morehaggard than ever, but still the face of the patient who used to watch her as if her presence were a means of healing in itself.
"Yes," she said slowly, "that is—John Smith."
"His real name is Francis Trent," said Maurice. "Do you know this lady, Francis?"
The sick man nodded. There was a curiously vacant look upon his face, brightened only at times by gleams of vivid consciousness.
"Yes, yes, I know her. The lady that came to see me in hospital," he murmured feebly.
"Do you know who she is?"
"Why do you trouble him, sir?" said Mrs. Trent. "You see how ill he is, wouldn't it be better for him to be left in peace?"
She spoke with sedulous calmness; but there was a jar in her voice which did not sound quite natural. Maurice simply repeated his question, and Francis Trent shook his head.
"She is the wife of Caspar Brooke, the man who, yousay, killed your brother Oliver."
The sick man's eyes dilated, and fixed themselves uneasily on his wife. "I did not say it," he answered, almost in a whisper. "Mary said it—not I."
"But you heard something, did you not?" said Maurice remorselessly.
"How should he hear anything," said Mary Trent, "and he asleep in his bed at the time? Or if not asleep, too ill and weak to notice anything. It's a shame to question him like that; and not legal, neither. You'll please to leave us to ourselves, sir; we ain't a show. We can but say what we saw and heard, whatever the consequences may be, but we need not be tortured for all that."
"That's enough, Mary," said the man speaking from the bed in a much more natural manner and in a stronger voice than he had yet used. "You're overdoing it—you always do. It's no good. This is the last stroke, and I give up. It has gone against the grain with me to get anybody into trouble," he said, looking attentively at Lady Alice, "and now that I know who this lady is, I don't feel inclined to keep up the farce any longer. I am much too ill to live to be hanged—Mr. Kenyon can tell you so at any minute—and I may as well give you the satisfaction ofknowing that Caspar Brooke had nothing at all to do with Oliver's death: I was his murderer, and no one else: I swear it, so help me God!"
Lady Alice turned very faint. Someone put her in a chair and fanned her, and when she came to herself she heard Francis Trent's wife speaking.
"He's mad, I tell you. It's no good paying any attention to what he says, gentlemen. I saw him myself in his bed at the time, and——"
"Now, Mary, my dear good soul," said Francis with the old easy superiority which he had always assumed to her, "will you just hold your tongue, and let me tell my own tale? You have done your best for me, but you know I always told you I was not to be trusted to lie about it if anybody appealed to me to evidence. I really have not the strength to keep it up. I want at least to die like a gentleman."
"I am not at all sure that you are going to die," said Maurice quietly, with his finger on the sick man's pulse. Francis had put off the vacant expression, and his eyes had lighted up. He was evidently quite himself again.
"No?" he said easily. "Well, I would rather die, if it's all the same to you; because I fancy I shall have to be put under restraint if I do live. I don't always know what I am doing in the least. I know now, though. You can bear me out, doctor, isn't my brain in a very queer state?"
"I fear it is," said Maurice.
"Just so. I am subject to fits of rage in which I don't know what I am doing. And on that night when Oliver came to see me, after Brooke had gone away, I got into one of these frenzies and followed him downstairs, picking up Brooke's stick on the way and beating poor Oliver about the head with it.... You know well enough how he was found. I only came to myself when it was done. And then, my wife—with all a woman's ingenuity—bundled me into bed, swore that I had never left it, and that Caspar Brooke had done it. It was a lie—she told me so afterwards. Eh, Mary?—Forgive me, old girl: I've got you into trouble now; but that is better than letting an innocent man swing for what I have done, especially when that man is the husband of one who was so kind to me——"
"And the father of Lesley Brooke," said Maurice, looking steadfastly at Mary Trent.
A shudder ran through the woman's frame. Then she covered her face with her hands and flung herself down at her husband's side.
"Oh Francis, my dear, my dear!" she said. "I did it for you."
And then for an instant there was silence in the room, save for her heavy sobs. Francis lay still but patted her with his thin fingers, and looked at Caspar Brooke's wife with his large, unnaturally bright, dark eyes.
"She is a good soul in spite of it all," he said, addressing himself to Lady Alice. "And she did it out of love for me. You would have done as much for your husband, perhaps, if you loved him—but I have heard, that you don't."
"Oh, but you are wrong," said Lady Alice. "I love him with all my heart, and I thank you deeply—deeply—for saving him."
"That ought to be some payment," said Francis Trent, with his wan, wild smile. "And I don't suppose they'll be very hard on me, as I did not know what I was doing. You'll speak a word to that effect, won't you, doctor?"
"I will indeed. But it would have been better for you as well as for others if truth had been told from the beginning," said Kenyon.
"It can't be helped now. Is there anything else I can do? You must have my statement taken down. And Mary, my girl, you'll have to make your confession too."
"Oh, Francis, Francis!" she moaned. "Not against you, my dear—not against you!"
"Yes, against me," said Francis steadily. "And let us finish with the formalities as quickly as may be, doctor, as long as my head's clear. I killed my brother Oliver—that you must make known as soon as you can. Not for malice, poor chap, nor yet for money—though he had cheated me many a time—but because I was mad—mad. And I am mad now—mad though you do not know it—stark, staring mad!"
And his dark eyes glared at them so strangely that Lady Alice cried out and had to be led into another room, for it was the light of madness indeed that shone from beneath his sunken brows.
It was while she sat alone for a minute or two while the gentlemen were talking in another room, that Mary Trentcame creeping to her, with folded hands and furtive mien.
"Oh, my lady, my lady, forgive me," she said, sobbing fretfully as she spoke. "I thought but of my own—I did not think of you. Nor of Miss Lesley, though I did love her—yes, I did, and tried my best to save her from that wicked man. Mr. Brooke will tell you what I mean, ma'am. And tell him, if you will be so good, that I was frightened into taking back the stories I had told him about Oliver—but they wereall true. Everyone of 'em was true. And that I beg he'll forgive me; for a better and a kinder gentleman I never see, nor one that loved poor people more. And Miss Lesley was just like him—but it was my husband, and I thought he'd be hanged for it, and what could I do?"
And then, while Lady Alice still hesitated between pity and a feeling of revolt at pity for a woman who had sworn falsely against her dearly beloved husband, Caspar Brooke, a cry was heard from the bedroom, and Mary turned and fled back to the scene of her duties—sad and painful duties indeed, sometimes, when the madman became violent, and likely enough to be very speedily terminated by death.
"What can I say to you?" said Lady Alice to Maurice Kenyon, a day or two later. "It was your acuteness that brought the matter to light. Now that that poor wretched man is hopelessly insane, we might never have learnt the truth. Is there any way in which I can thank you? any way in which I can give you a reward?"
She looked steadily into his face, and saw that he changed color.
"There is only one way, Lady Alice," he stammered.
"You are not to call me Lady Alice: I like 'Mrs. Brooke' much better. Well?"
"I love your daughter," said Maurice bluntly, "and I believe she would love me if you would let her."
"Lether?" said Mrs. Brooke, with a smile.
"She made you some promises before she came to London——"