CHAPTERXXXII.BEFORE THE TRIAL.
‘Well, old fellow, how are you getting on?’
Alec turned on the rough bed which served him for a couch in the daytime, and saw Hubert Blake.
‘Not getting on at a particularly fast pace just at present,’ said Alec, as he got up and shook hands with his friend.
‘You’re keeping up your spirits, I hope?’
‘I do my best.’
‘How do you amuse yourself?’
‘I got the doctor to lend me an old Tod-hunter. I find nothing like algebra for making the time pass—that is, if you try to find out something of it for yourself.’
‘What have you got here?’ asked Blake, who had strolled up to a corner where a card was hanging.
‘Only an almanac.’
‘And you’re ticking off the days, I see. Are you counting up to the——?’
‘The day of my trial—yes,’ said Alec, looking as if he wished that his friend had not been so observant.
‘Are you so anxious for it to come off?’ asked Blake, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
‘Yes. Naturally I want to know the worst.’
‘I was talking with your lawyer friend yesterday. He seems certain that you will be acquitted.’
‘An acquittal would not set things right.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t you see that whether I am convicted or not is a thing that affects only my libertyand my personal comfort? If I am acquitted it will probably be by some of those legal arguments which Mr. Corker used before the magistrate. They may be sound or unsound; it doesn’t matter one straw. How far does an acquittal of that kind go to clear one’s character?’
Blake murmured something vague and deprecatory.
‘Or it may be that the jury may “give me the benefit of the doubt.” Willthatset me right with the world? No, Blake. My life is ended, almost before it has begun.’
‘Don’t say that, Lindsay. At the worst you can emigrate,and——’
‘And hide myself. Yes, to be sure. I could do that.’
‘I’ll tell you what I wish you would do for me,’ said Alec, after a pause. ‘Get my father to go back to Scotland. He cannot possibly do me any good. He——’ Alec stoppedand bit his lip. He was ashamed to say that his father believed him guilty.
‘It is natural for him to wish to be here,’ began Blake.
‘He comes here and preaches at me,’ said Alec. ‘I dare say he means very well; but I reallycannotstand it. I think it is taking a mean advantage of circumstances, for I can’t run away, and I can’t very well tell him to leave me alone.’
‘Can’t you listen in patience?’
‘You see, I’ve got the chaplain on to me too.’
‘I used to think you were rather fond of religious discussions,’ said Blake maliciously.
Alec laughed. It was a hard joyless sound, not pleasant to hear.
‘The worst of it is, my two spiritual guides give contrary directions,’ he said. ‘But you have absolutely no conception how unpleasant it is to sit here and be preached at. Of thetwo I think I like the chaplain best. Professional training always tells,and——’
‘Alec,’ interrupted Blake, who wanted to change the subject, ‘canyou imagine how that word “hundred” slipped out of that will?’
‘It never was there,’ said Alec.
Blake shook his head.
‘Or it would be there now.’
‘You see the whole thing was left to me,’ Alec went on. ‘No one so much as touched it, except myselfand——’
Suddenly he remembered something—the little incident of Laura’s curiosity. He paused rather awkwardly, considering whether it could possibly affect the matter, and decided that it was absolutely of no importance. He opened his lips to mention the circumstance as an excuse for his sudden silence, when he remembered that it was not very creditable to Laura, and besides, that he had promised her hewould never speak of what she had done. He stopped again, when on the point of speaking, and looking up, he caught a surprised and troubled expression in his friend’s face. Meeting Alec’s gaze, Blake dropped his eyes. He saw that something was being concealed from him, and he had imagined that he had known every incident connected with the making of the will.
‘Blake is beginning to doubt me,’ said Alec to himself. ‘Soon I shall have no one left.’ When he next spoke, his voice, in spite of himself, was hard and repelling. He was too proud to give an explanation of his reticence; and Blake, on his side, was afraid to ask for any. When he left the prison he had not come to believe in his friends guilt; but his faith was shaken.
‘I won’t say I distrust him; and yet—it is very queer.’ That was the tenor of his thoughts. He felt profoundly sorry for Mr.Lindsay, and tried to persuade him to return to Scotland before the trial. But this would not have suited the old man’s ideas of his duty as a father. He would stay by his son, guilty though he were, to the end.
Alec, of course, had his despairing moods, moods in which there seemed no brightness for him, nor any possibility of comfort, in heaven or on earth; and as the imprisonment began to tell more and more upon his health these periods became more frequent and more prolonged. It was not surprising, indeed, that sometimes a deep melancholy seized him, as it were in a grasp of iron.
He was sitting in his cell one day, holding a book before him, but reading nothing, while his mind was lost in aimless, gloomy wanderings, when he heard the familiar sound of the unlocking of his door.
‘Oh, can’t they leave me alone even one day!’ he groaned to himself.
A tall figure in an immense cloak entered.
‘Cameron!’
The two men stood grasping each other’s hands in silence. Alec’s mobile lips were working strangely. As for Cameron, a great beard effectually concealed the expression of his mouth, but his eyes were moist.
Then he broke into a laugh, and withdrawing his hand gave Alec a shove which sent him staggering backwards.
‘What on earth made ye get into such a pickle?’
‘That’s just what I want to know.’
‘Come now, tell me all about it,’ said Cameron, seating himself on the bed.
‘If you don’t mind, old fellow, I’d rather not,’ said Alec. ‘You see, I’ve had to go over these wretched details so often; and I can hardly help thinking of them night and day, so it is a relief to speak of somethingelse. Tell me about yourself. What are you doing now?’
‘I’m assistant to Dr. Farquharson. But I don’t care for the work. I can scarcely prevent myself from pitching some of the patients out of the windows of their own bedrooms. They have nothing in the world the matter with them but over-feeding and too much coddling. Occasionally I give them the nastiest drugs I can think of, by way of relieving my feelings, especially castor oil.’
‘You brute!’
‘I am only fit for surgery. I hate the pill-and-powder business.’
‘How did you come to be in London?’ asked Alec suddenly.
‘I wanted to see what the London hospitals are like.’
‘Duncan, ye’re leein’,’ said Alec gravely.
‘Maybe I am; an’ maybe I’m no. That’s neither here nor there.’
‘You saw something about—about it in the papers, didn’t you?’
‘Lees an’ trash.’
‘Well, I’m not so sure about that;’ and Alec, having thus reached the subject, told the whole story of the will. ‘And now, doesn’t it look very like as if I had struck that word “hundred” out of the draft?’
For answer Cameron gave a comical look, and slowly shook his head.
‘Ye haven’t brains enough, laddie, to be a thief.’
Alec looked anxiously at his friend, with searching eyes. Cameron bore the look unmoved. Yet Alec was not satisfied.
‘Do you think itpossiblethat I made a blunder like that unintentionally?’ A wild thought came into the lad’s head, and he uttered what was in his mind. ‘What if I were to tell you that I did it on purpose?’ he asked.
It seemed almost as if he were bent ondestroying the faith of the only man who still believed in him.
‘Do you mean wilfully, after time for reflection, taking a day or two over it?’
Alec nodded.
‘I should certify that you were insane.’
‘God bless you, Cameron!’
‘Man, you’re half cracked already, to talk in that way. Your uncle was a donnart auld eediot. That’s undeniable. And if ye confessed to me that being suddenly aware of the injustice he meant to do you (as I look on it), you had thrown his will on the fire, I might have thought that possible enough. But if you were to tell me that you sat down in cold blood, and thought out this plan for yourself, and determined to carry it out, and did carry it out, I wouldnotbelieve you. I should say ye were mad first.’
‘Cameron, my father——’ began Alec after a pause.
‘No?’
The word was accompanied by a raising of the eyebrows, and followed by slow shakes of the head, which indicated that in his opinion some people were hopelessly stupid.
‘He’ll be very sorry, and ashamed of his want of trust in you, Alec; don’t forget that,’ said Cameron.
‘My innocence may never be known. My character is gone already,’ said the prisoner, glad to tell what was in his heart to a sympathetic ear.
‘That’s not certain,’ said Cameron quickly, as he grasped his friend by the shoulder, and scanned his face narrowly. ‘And if it were, why, better men than you have had to thole[1]the same thing.’
‘That’s true. I shouldn’t make so much of it. But, you see, I have so little here to occupy my thoughts.’
‘I’ll come and see you again, if they’ll let me. But I don’t think they will. It was a fashious[2]job to get in. But I’ll be in court. You may depend on that.’
‘No, no, Duncan. You must go back to your work.’
‘I haven’t left the sick folk as sheep without a shepherd, which they would be if they were left entirely to old Farquharson. So I chose a sub-deputy-assistant before I came away. A fourth-year’s student just scraped through. An Englishman, and I think the most ignorant man I ever came across, but popular with the women. Yes, yes, man, in a minute,’ he said impatiently to the turnkey, who opened the door to say that the allotted time had expired. ‘That minds me I would practise my art on you, Alec, my lad, if time permitted.Fiat experimentum, ye ken.’
‘There’s nothing the matter with me,’ said Alec.
‘I don’t like that cough. And you’re very thin. I must see the pill-man of this institution mysel’. I suppose they keep an animal of that kind on the premises?’
‘I don’t know, I’m sure. I suppose so. Good-bye, old fellow. You’ve done me a world of good.’
‘After all this rumpus and palaverin’s by,’ said Duncan, ‘I’ll carry ye offvi et armisto the island of Scalpa, and fatten you up there for a month; or, better still, send you for a voyage to Australia—Coming! I tell ye,ye——’
The rest of the speech was lost in the dark recesses of the Gaelic language, as Dr. Cameron strode after the bulky form of the turnkey.
One good result of this visit was that Alec was removed next day to the hospital ward of the prison.
FOOTNOTES:[1]To bear.[2]Troublesome.
[1]To bear.
[2]Troublesome.