THE ACCUSATION.
Rupert pulled himself together and looked at Sir Reginald. "I have
nothing to say, sir."
"Nothing to say!" Clenching his fists Dale strode towards his son as if
intending to strike him.
With a gesture Sir Reginald stopped the old man and waved him back.
"Gently, gently! You must keep calm, Mr. Dale. I am sure, on
consideration, your son will see the advisability of making a clean
breast of this affair."
Old John Dale controlled himself and stood quite still, folding his arms
across his chest. Until now he had scarcely taken his eyes off his
son's face. He was afraid to look any longer lest instead of the boy he
had loved and for whom he had worked and made so many sacrifices--he saw
a thief, a criminal.
There followed a silence. To each man present it seemed interminably
long, but neither father nor son dared break it. They were standing
almost opposite one another. The younger man held himself very erect,
his head thrown back; he was looking straight at Sir Reginald Crichton,
resentment in his eyes. Sir Reginald, seated at his bureau, was
obviously embarrassed and ill at ease. Judging from appearances their
positions should have been reversed.
"Come, won't you speak?" the latter said in a more kindly voice. "For
your father's sake, Mr. Rupert, and your sister's--as well as for your
own."
"I have told you I have nothing more to say. I know nothing about it."
Sir Reginald raised his eyebrows, and picking up a pencil commenced to
tap it thoughtfully on the edge of the bureau.
There was another long silence. Twice Dale tried to speak and failed.
His great frame was shaken. He took a couple of steps towards his son
and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"I know you didn't do it, my boy," he said in a voice that was no longer
under control. "Maybe, you're ashamed of yourself for having lost it;
or, more like, you had it stolen, and perhaps you have a feeling you
might be able to point out the thief, only you don't like to speak for
fear of making a mistake.... Unjust accusation...." His voice
faltered. "I know you're innocent, Rupert, thank God, I know that."
Rupert turned his head and looked at his father for one moment. For the
first time in his life he saw tears in the old man's eyes. He turned
his back on him as the blood rushed to his face. It was almost more
than he could bear.
Of course, he was innocent, and it was impossible to conceive anyone,
least of all his father, believing him guilty of such a mean and
dastardly trick. A crime worse than theft or robbery.
He experienced a revulsion of feeling. He knew if he had spoken out at
once and confessed exactly what had happened the morning he had received
the cheque, both Sir Reginald and his father would have believed him.
But, in spite of the brave words old Dale had just spoken, and in spite
of Sir Reginald's patience, Rupert knew that already they mistrusted
him. At the back of the heart of one was suspicion amounting perhaps to
certainty. At the back of the heart of the other was fear.
"Do you believe I altered the amount on the cheque?" he asked Sir
Reginald.
"I have asked you what you know about it. Until you give me a direct
reply I must naturally suspend judgment. I should certainly find it
very hard to believe you guilty of such a crime."
"It was I who sent for you," Dale whispered, "directly Sir Reginald told
me what had happened and showed me the cheque."
Rupert looked from one man to the other. There was fear in his heart,
too. A nameless fear. He had only to say outright what he knew about
the matter, tell them exactly what had occurred the day he received his
father's letter containing the cheque, and they would believe him.
They would believe him, but their suspicions would naturally be shifted
to another quarter. He would have to confess that he had been in debt,
that he had gone to the races, that he had won a large sum of money,
exactly five hundred pounds--exactly the amount to which the cheque he
had just seen had been altered.
Sir Reginald was still drumming with the end of his pencil on the edge
of the bureau. "I'm sure you'll answer me a few questions, Mr. Rupert.
They'll be brief and to the point, and I hope your answers will be the
same."
Rupert nodded. "I've already told you I've nothing to say. If you
believe me to be innocent why do you want to question me?"
Sir Reginald shrugged his shoulders. Drawing forward a sheet of paper
he picked up a pen and dipped it in the ink.
"On what date did you receive this cheque?"
Rupert told him. He answered sharply in a high-pitched tone of voice.
He felt he was on the defensive, and he resented the feeling.
"I presume you looked at it?" Rupert nodded. "You saw the amount for
which it was drawn? What was the amount?"
"Five pounds."
"What did you do with it?"
"I can't remember. I think I left it on the table with my father's
letter."
"What were your movements that morning?"
"I don't see what these questions have got to do with----"
Again he felt his father's hand on his shoulder gripping it tightly.
"Answer Sir Reginald, my boy, no matter what he asks you. You can have
nothing to hide from him. Tell him frankly everything you did that day,
no matter what it was.... We are men, we were young once; we shall
understand."
Rupert stared across the dimly-lit room. The curtains had not been
drawn across the windows, and outside he could see a cluster of
fir-trees silhouetted against the sky, a glimpse of the white road
bounded on either side by stone walls, and, beyond, the line of
moorlands. The twilight had almost gone, and the stars were shining in
the sky. He was conscious of a great silence surrounding the house, the
silence which always brooded over the hills.
Not so many hours ago the roar of London had echoed in his ears, and he
had sat in the windows of the lodging-house in Westminster and watched
the river of life rushing torrent-like at his feet. Like a swimmer
eager to test his strength, he had flung himself into it and been swept
away.
"We are waiting," Sir Reginald Crichton said.
"I don't know that I did anything in particular," Rupert replied. "I
was awaiting the result of my examination. I was out most of the day:
it was when I came back that I missed the cheque."
"I suppose you had plenty of money to pay the bill at your lodgings and
fare down here, or you would have cashed it immediately?" Sir Reginald
suggested.
"In the last letter you wrote me, Rupert, you told me you were rather
hard up. That's why I sent you the whole of Sir Reginald's cheque,
though I was rather pressed for money myself."
Dale spoke under his breath, almost in a whisper. He knew he was not
helping his son by what he said, but the truth was dearer to him than
anything else. And only by truth could his son be cleared and the
mystery surrounding the cheque solved.
"I had been lucky," Rupert stammered. "I had made a little bit--at
racing."
Sir Reginald dropped his pen and moved his chair back. "Oh, so you go
in for racing! Forgive me for being interfering, but I shouldn't have
thought you could have afforded that. You must be aware that some time
ago your father was forced to mortgage most of the land surrounding his
farm, and that I am the mortgagee?"
"I told you I had been lucky."
"And that's the reason you treated the cheque your father sent you so
carelessly--for, you knew in sending it that he and your sister were
depriving themselves of many of the necessities of life."
Rupert lost his temper. Sir Reginald was making him feel a cur, making
suggestions which he had no right to make; poisoning his father's mind
against him.
"If you want to know everything, it was the day the cheque arrived that
I made a bit," he blurted out. "I'd got a few pounds in my pocket,
money I'd borrowed from my friend Despard. He's staying with us now.
If you want corroborative evidence. I went down to the races and backed
the winner. I suppose in the excitement of the moment I must have
pulled the cheque out of my pocket and lost it on the racecourse."
Sir Reginald sighed. It might have been a sigh of satisfaction or of
doubt. "Why couldn't you have told us this before? If, as seems very
probable, you lost it at the races, it is easy to conceive that some one
picked it up, saw his opportunity, and very cleverly altering the
figures took it to the bank next morning." He rose to his feet. "Of
course, I shall have to go up to London and put it into the hands of the
police. I'm afraid I shall need your help. They are sure to want from
you the time you travelled to the racecourse and back, the enclosure you
patronised, and so forth. I can rely on your giving me all the help in
your power, I am sure."
"I have told you I know nothing," Rupert cried, turning on his heel. "I
can only tell the police the same thing." He picked up his hat. "Have
you finished your examination?"
Sir Reginald bowed. "I'm sorry if it has been unpleasant. But I could
not help myself. And it would hardly have been fair to you or your
father if I had made enquiries behind your back."
Rupert nodded, and crossing the room unsteadily opened the door. "Are
you coming, father?" he asked the old man, without looking at him.
"You can go on, Rupert, I'll follow presently," Dale replied.
Once outside Rupert walked quickly down the drive, past the dark, great
clump of fir-trees and along the rough granite-made road until he turned
into the main Princetown road and reached Post Bridge. A little way up
the hill the lights of the inn twinkled through the darkness. The
waters of the East Dart purled beneath him. As they rushed over the
rocks the foam glittered in the starshine. A bat swept past his face,
its wings humming faintly. He leant his arms on the stone parapet of
the bridge and gazed down into the crooning waters.
He was innocent, but he knew that up at Post Bridge Hall there was one
man who believed him guilty of a despicable crime, and that one man his
own father, who, not knowing what to believe, doubted him. His own
father, himself the soul of honour, as proud of his good name as was
perhaps the greatest man in the land.
His father, a man of the soil, whose greatest ambition had been to turn
his son into a man of the world, a gentleman, to give him a profession,
a start in life, an independence. For that he had made many and great
sacrifices, even to the mortgaging of the land he owned and which his
forefathers had loved and cultivated. And his only other child being a
daughter he had expected her to make many, and perhaps as great,
sacrifices also.
Was this to be the end? Rupert asked himself. The family name and
honour dragged through the mire, their affairs the gossip of the
newspapers of the Devon towns and villages, to find himself accused and
perhaps forced to defend himself.
Of course, he could prove his innocence--he heard himself laugh. For a
moment it all seemed so absurd. He felt he had been behaving like a
coward and a fool in not frankly confessing that he had gone the way of
nearly all young men in London, got into debt, gambled, fallen in love,
and saved himself by one of those strange tricks of fortune which happen
once and again in a lifetime. He drew himself up and looked at the sky
blazing with stars now, the million eyes of the night.
He had held his peace because he loved. Because if he spoke he would
have to drag the name of the woman he loved into the affair. She would
be sent for, questioned, and bullied; the police would examine her.
They would find out that she had gone to the races with him and put the
sum of exactly five pounds on Ambuscade at a hundred to one, winning the
fatal amount for which the cheque had been altered--five hundred pounds.
Fortune had smiled on him, but it had kissed the one cheek only to smite
the other. Of course, Ruby knew nothing about the missing cheque, and
could not help him in any way. It would be contemptible to drag her
name into it.
Even if it came to a question--his honour or hers. And his honour meant
his father's and sister's.
Presently he heard footsteps approaching, and he moved farther along the
bridge down the side of the hill to the water's edge. Every one for
miles around knew him, and it was not the moment he wanted to be
recognised or asked futile questions about his life in London--how he
had enjoyed himself, or whether he had passed his examination.
The people crossed the bridge, walking very slowly. Now and then their
voices rose above the sound of the river. He looked over his shoulder;
a man and a woman, and as they passed he recognised his sister Marjorie
and young Lieutenant James Crichton, Sir Reginald's only son, who was
spending his leave at home. They were walking close together, arm in
arm, and in Crichton's right hand his sister's left hand was firmly
clasped.
He saw their faces for a moment in the starlight, and in that moment he
knew they were lovers. He waited until they were out of sight, then he
hurried back to the farm.
Sir Reginald Crichton's son was in love with his sister Marjorie. Here
was a fresh complication which at first seemed to add to the tragedy
which threatened him. "Jim" and he had been old friends as boys.
Crichton was his senior, and when he left Woolwich and was eventually
attached to the Royal Flying Corps, they lost sight of one another.
Presently, Rupert's discovery suggested a loophole of escape--if matters
turned out badly for him. If Jim Crichton and Marjorie were engaged to
be married Sir Reginald might be persuaded not to push enquiries
concerning the altered cheque too far!
There was something not quite pleasant in the thought, and he dismissed
it. But before he had reached his home it had returned again. He
entered the parlour; the lamp was burning on the table, the peat fire
glowed in the grate.
Despard sat in the arm-chair before it, his feet stretched on to the
mantelshelf, a pipe between his lips. An old-fashioned photograph album
was on his knees. Rupert walked to his side and bent over his
shoulders.
"What on earth are you looking at?" he asked with exaggerated
carelessness.
Despard pointed to an amateur photograph of Marjorie. She was seated on
a stool in one of the fields milking a cow.
"Rather good, isn't it?" Rupert said. "The local parson took it last
year."
Despard nodded. "It would make a very fine picture. It's the sort of
thing which, if properly done, would create a sensation in our Academy."
He knocked his pipe out into the grate. "Do you know your sister's a
jolly sight too pretty and too intelligent to be shut up in a wild,
God-forsaken place like this? It's criminal, old man. When you go back
to London, you ought to take her with you; give her a chance of mixing
with decent people and seeing life, eh?"
"She's happy enough here," Rupert said uneasily.
Despard smiled and closed the book. "She would be happier in London.
See if you really can't take her back with you, Rupert.... Perhaps I'd
better confess at once that I've fallen in love with her! It's sudden,
I know, and, of course, I shouldn't dream of breathing a word to her
yet. But--one good turn deserves another, and if you get a chance put in
a word for me, will you?"