Witness for the Defence — chaps. 19-21
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?"
