AT ALDER COTTAGE.
Tom Bristow seldom let a day pass over without seeing Lionel Dering.
Sometimes he accompanied Mr. Hoskyns to the prison, sometimes he went
alone. The lawyer and he held many long consultations together as to
the probable result of the trial. They could not conceal from
themselves that there was grave cause for apprehension. The weight of
circumstantial evidence that would be brought to bear against Lionel
was almost overwhelming; while, on the other hand, not a single tittle
of evidence was forthcoming which tended to implicate any other person.
Notwithstanding all this, Tom was as morally convinced of his friend’s
innocence as he was of his own existence. Mr. Hoskyns, in his way, was
equally positive. He felt sure that Lionel had not knowingly committed
the crime, but he thought it possible that he might have done it in a
fit of mental aberration, without retaining the least recollection of
it afterwards. In the annals of criminal jurisprudence such cases are
by no means unknown. And this was the supposition on which the eminent
counsel whom he had retained for the trial seemed inclined to base his
argument for the defence. Hoskyns had engaged a detective from Scotland
Yard, and had left no stone unturned in his efforts to lift at least
some portion of the dreadful weight of evidence from off his client’s
shoulders, but up to the present time all such efforts had been utterly
in vain. That there might possibly be some foul conspiracy on foot to
get rid of Lionel was an idea that for a little while found a lodging
in the lawyer’s mind. But in all the wide world, as far as he knew,
there was only one person who would be benefited by the death of Lionel
Dering. That person was Kester St. George, and of evidence implicating
him in the murder there was absolutely none. It was currently reported
that he was lying seriously ill in London, which accounted for his not
having been seen in Duxley since the day of the inquest.
The shock of his friend Osmond’s dreadful death, taken in conjunction
with the terrible accusation against his cousin, and the fact that he
himself had been called upon to give evidence at the inquest, was
considered by the gossips of the little town amply sufficient to
account for Mr. St. George’s illness. It was to be hoped that his
health would be restored before the day appointed for his cousin’s
trial, he being one of the chief witnesses who would be called on that
important occasion.
Tom Bristow was obliged to confess himself beaten, as Mr. Hoskyns had
been beaten before him. There was a mystery about the case which he was
totally unable to fathom. His conviction of his friend’s innocence
never wavered for a single moment, and yet when he asked himself: How
came the jet stud into Osmond’s hand? How came the stains on Dering’s
shirt? he felt himself utterly unable to suggest any answer that would
satisfy his own reason, or that would be likely to satisfy the reason
of a judge and jury. It was very easy to say that Dering must be the
victim of some foul conspiracy, but unless some proof, however faint,
could be advanced of the existence of some such plot, his assertion
would go for nothing, or merely be set down as the unwarranted
utterance of a too partial friend.
Tom had not been half an hour in Lionel’s company before he knew all
about his friend’s marriage, and next day he called on Edith with a
note of introduction from her husband. Edith had heard so much, at
different times, about Bristow, that she welcomed him with unfeigned
gladness, and he, on his side, was deeply impressed with the sweet
earnestness and womanly tenderness of her disposition. He was not long
in perceiving that Edith altogether failed to realize the full measure
of her husband’s danger. She talked as if his acquittal were a matter
that admitted of no dispute; and on one occasion, Tom found her busy
sketching out the plan of a Continental tour for Lionel and herself on
which they were to start the day after the trial should be over. It
made Tom’s heart ache to see how sanguine she was; but, as yet, the
necessity for undeceiving her had not arisen.
Mrs. Garside and Edith were living in quiet lodgings in a quiet part of
the town. They had brought one servant with them—Martha Vince by name,
from whom they had few or no secrets. Martha had been Edith’s nurse,
and had lived with her ever since, and hoped to stay with her till she
died. To the world at large she seemed nothing more than a shrewd,
hard-working, money-saving woman; but Edith knew well the faithful and
affectionate heart that beat behind the plain exterior of Martha Vince.
The life led by the two ladies was necessarily a very lonely one, and
they had no wish that it should be otherwise. They never went out,
except to the prison, or to take a walk for health’s sake through the
quiet fields at the back of the town. They were always closely veiled
when they went abroad, and to the people of Duxley their features were
absolutely unknown. Mr. Hoskyns and Tom were their only visitors—their
only friends in those dark hours of adversity.
“I am going to make a very singular request to-day,” said Tom one
afternoon, when he called to see the ladies as usual. “It is to ask you
to give up these very comfortable rooms and transfer yourselves and
baggage to Alder Cottage, a pleasant little furnished house, not more
than half a mile from here, which just now happens to be to let.”
“But my dear Mr. Bristow—” began Mrs. Garside.
“One moment, my dear Mrs. Garside,” interrupted Tom. “I have another
request to make: that you will not at present ask me my reasons for
counselling this removal. You shall have them in a week or ten days
without asking. Can you trust me till then?”
“Implicitly,” answered Edith, with fervour. “When may we go and view
our new home?”
“Now—to-morrow—any time. Only take the cottage, and don’t be more than
a week before you are installed there.”
They were installed there in less than a week, despite Mrs. Garside’s
mild protestations that she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand
why that strange Mr. Bristow should want them to give up their
comfortable apartments for a dull old house that looked for all the
world as if it were haunted, and was built in such an out-of-the way
place that to live there was really very little better than being
buried alive. But Edith’s faith in Tom was not to be shaken. She felt
sure that he would not have asked them to take up their quarters in
Alder Cottage without having good reasons for proposing such a removal.
What those reasons were she was naturally somewhat anxious to know, but
she hid her impatience from Tom, and waited with smiling resignation
till it should please him to tell her the secret which she felt sure
was lying perdu in his brain. That there was a secret she could not
doubt, because Tom had stipulated that she should not even hint to
Lionel that the change of residence had been instigated by him.
Tom was not at all like his usual self about this time. He was restless
and uneasy, and seemed to have lost all relish for the ordinary
avocations of his everyday life. There were days when he seemed as if
he would give anything to get away from the company of his own
thoughts, when he would hunt up some acquaintances of former years,
whom he would invite to his rooms, and keep there with pressing
hospitality till far into the small hours of morning. At other times he
would lie on the sofa for hours together, brooding in darkness and
solitude; and his landlady, going in about midnight with a light, would
find him lying there, broad awake, with a look in his eyes which told
her that his thoughts were far away.
Strange to say, the person whom Tom Bristow most frequently invited to
his rooms was Jabez Creede, Mr. Hoskyns’ dissipated clerk. As already
stated, Tom had known Creede when he himself was a youth in the same
office, but the two men were so dissimilar in every respect that that
of itself did not seem sufficient to account for the intimacy which now
existed between them—an intimacy which was evidently of Tom’s own
seeking.
Creede, whose life seemed to be one chronic round of debt and
dissipation, would have been friendly with anybody who would have used
him as Tom used him—who would have played cribbage with him so badly
that he, Creede, always rose from the table a winner; and who would
have treated him to unlimited supplies of tobacco, and innumerable
glasses of Irish whiskey, hot and strong.
Tom would never allow Creede to leave his rooms till he was
intoxicated, not that the latter ever seemed particularly anxious to go
before that happy consummation was arrived at. But Tom was so
abstemious a mortal himself that the fact of his encouraging Creede to
drink to excess was somewhat singular. “What a beast the fellow is!” he
muttered, as he watched Creede go staggering down the street after one
of their evenings together. “But he will answer my purpose better than
any one else I could have chosen.”
During the three weeks preceding Lionel’s trial, Tom went to London
about half-a-dozen times. He used to go up in the morning and come back
in the evening. One morning he called at Alder Cottage on his way to
the railway station. “I’m going up to town to-day,” he said, “and while
there I mean to buy and send you a certain article of furniture.”
“Very thoughtful on your part, Mr. Bristow,” said Edith with a smile.
“But would you mind telling me what the article in question is?”
“It is a mahogany wardrobe, and it has been made to fit into the recess
in your dressing-room.”
“But I am not in want of a wardrobe, whether made of mahogany or any
other wood,” said Edith, with a puzzled look.
“That doesn’t matter in the least. I shall buy it and send it all the
same. The fact is I ordered it when I was in London a fortnight ago. I
got Martha Vince to give me the measurement of the recess in which I
want it to be fixed.”
Edith was mystified, but she had such implicit faith in Tom that she
never demurred at anything he either said or did.
Two days later the wardrobe arrived. Tom in person had superintended
its removal from the truck to the van at the railway station, and he
was at Alder Cottage to receive it. The porters, by Tom’s instructions,
carried it as far as the landing upstairs, and there left it.
“It now remains to be unpacked,” said Tom, “and then Martha and I, with
Mrs. Dering’s permission, will try to fix it in the corner it is
intended to occupy.”
“But why not have kept the railway men to unpack and fix it?” asked
Mrs. Garside.
“Because there is a little secret connected with this wardrobe,”
answered Tom, “of which we four alone must possess the key.”
“I like secrets,” said Mrs. Garside. “It is so delightful to know
something that nobody else knows.”
So the wardrobe was unpacked, and proved to be a very handsome and
substantial piece of furniture indeed. It tested their united strength
to move it into the position it was to occupy, but when once there they
found that it fitted the recess exactly.
“Now for the secret!” said Mrs. Garside, as she sat down panting on a
chair.
“Suppose we adjourn downstairs,” said Tom. “I have much to say to you.”
His tone was very grave. The colour faded out of Edith’s cheeks as he
spoke. Her sensitive heart took alarm in a moment.
As soon as Mrs. Garside, Edith, and Tom had entered the parlour, Martha
Vince discreetly shut the door upon them, and went back to her work in
the kitchen.
“First of all,” began Tom, “I must ask whether your servant, Martha
Vince, has your entire confidence.”
“My full and entire confidence,” answered Edith, without a minute’s
hesitation. “There is no more faithful creature breathing.”
“My own idea of her exactly,” said Tom.
“Such being the case, it would be as well that she should hear what I
have to say to you.”
So the bell was rung, and Martha was summoned to join the consultation
in the parlour.
“Some of my proceedings must have appeared very strange to you, Mrs.
Dering,” said Tom, addressing himself to Edith. “If, at times, I have
seemed over-intrusive, I must claim your forgiveness on the score of my
thorough disinterestedness. In all that I have done, I have been
actuated by one motive only: that motive was the welfare of my dear
friend, Lionel Dering.”
“I believe you, from my heart,” said Edith, earnestly. “But indeed, no
such apology was needed—no apology at all.”
Mrs. Garside coughed a dubious little cough. Really, that strange Mr.
Bristow was more strange than usual this afternoon.
“In all the affairs of this life,” went on Tom, “it is best never to
expect too much: it is good to be prepared to face the worst.”
“Ah!” said Edith, with a quivering, long-drawn sigh, “now I begin to
understand you.”
“The day fixed for Dering’s trial is at hand: the weight of evidence
against him is terribly strong: no human being can say what the result
may be.” He spoke very slowly and very gravely, and the faces of his
listeners blanched as they heard him.
“And I—heaven help me!” faltered Edith, “was foolish enough to think
that, because he is innocent, he could not fail to be acquitted!”
“Of his innocence we are all perfectly satisfied. But the jury will
also have to be satisfied of it. And therein lies the difficulty.
Unless some strong evidence in his favour be forthcoming at the trial,
it is just possible—mind, I only say just possible—that—that—in short,
that it may go somewhat hard with him.”
“My darling child, this is indeed a dreadful revelation!” sobbed Mrs.
Garside.
But Edith neither sobbed nor spoke. She sat perfectly still, with
white, drawn face, and with staring, horror-full eyes, that, gazing
through the wide-open window, far away into the peaceful evening sky,
seemed to see there some terrible vision of doom, unseen of all the
others.
“Oh dear! dear!” cried Mrs. Garside, “what a pity it is that you would
insist on getting married!”
The words roused Edith from her waking trance. “I thank heaven doubly
now that I was enabled to become the wife of Lionel Dering! If—if I
must indeed lose him, he will still be mine beyond the grave. Our
parting will not be for long. We shall——” She could say no more. She
rose hastily, and went to the window, and stood there till her
composure had in some measure come back to her.
“You have something more to tell me, Mr. Bristow,” she said, as she
went back to her chair after a little while.
“How sorry I am to have distressed you so much!” said Tom, with real
feeling.
“Do not speak of that now, please. You have told me the truth, and I am
grateful to you for it. I have been living too long in a fool’s
paradise.”
“But you must not give way to despair. Dering’s case is by no means a
hopeless one, and I should not have said what I have said to you this
afternoon, had I not been compelled to do so by another and a most
important reason.”
Edith looked at him rather wearily, as if anything that he might now
say could have only the faintest possible interest for her.
“As I said before,” resumed Tom, “it is always wise to prepare for the
worst, although that worst may possibly never come. And this was the
object I had in view, firstly, when I induced you to leave your
lodgings in Duxley and come to live in this lonely little house; and,
secondly, when I had that piece of furniture made for you which we have
just unpacked upstairs.”
Edith’s attention was keen enough now. “You speak in parables!” she
said with pitiful eagerness.
“In one moment I will enlighten you,” said Tom. He leaned forward and
spoke slowly and impressively, so that every word might be heard by his
three auditors. “If I find that the result of the trial is likely to be
adverse to Lionel Daring, it is my fixed intention to assist him to
escape from prison, and to hide him from pursuit in this very house!”
Mrs. Garside and Martha sat staring at Tom when he had done speaking as
though they believed him to be mad. Edith’s heart gave a great sob in
which hope, and joy, and fear were commingled.
“The first thing was to get you out of lodgings,” resumed Tom. “While
you were there, it would have been impossible for you to hide anybody.
Fortunately, this house was to let. It is secluded, and not overlooked
from the windows of any other house, and consequently admirably adapted
for the purpose I have in view. But in the house itself it was
necessary to find some special hiding-place—some nook that would be
safe from the prying eyes of the most acute and experienced police
officer. Many were the hours I spent in cogitating over one scheme
after another. The result was that I could think of no safer place in
which to hide an escaped prisoner than my mahogany wardrobe.”
“Hide him in a wardrobe!” exclaimed Mrs. Garside, in dismay. “Why, that
would be one of the first places a police officer would look into.”
“Precisely so,” said Tom. “He might look into it a dozen times if he
liked, and still he should not see all that it held. But we will go
upstairs again, and the mystery shall be elucidated.”
So they went upstairs again to Edith’s dressing-room, and Tom flung
wide open the doors of the wardrobe. The ladies had seen similar
articles of furniture scores of times before, and this one seemed in
nowise different from any other. There was a shelf near the top; and
below the shelf were the usual pegs on which to hang articles of
clothing: and that was all. Disappointment was plainly visible on every
face.
Tom smiled, and gave one of the brass pegs a downward pull. As he did
so, they could hear the click of a little bolt as it shot back into its
socket. Then the back of the wardrobe, from the shelf downwards,
yielding to Tom’s hand, opened slowly outwards on hidden hinges,
disclosing, as it did so, a space sufficiently large for a man to stand
upright in between itself—when shut—and the real back.
In order to illustrate thoroughly the use to which it was intended to
put it, Tom stepped into the recess, and pulling the false back towards
him, shut himself in. Seeing the wardrobe thus, no one would ever have
suspected that anything was hidden in it. By pulling a ring, the person
inside could open the door of his temporary prison, so that any one
could step in and out at will, and almost as easily as if were simply
going out of one room into another. Tom then explained the mechanism of
the wardrobe, so that there could be no possible mistake should the
necessity for using it ever arise. The recess in which the wardrobe
stood was a very deep one, and this it was which had first given him
the idea of utilizing it in the way described.
“This is the place in which I intend to hide Lionel Dering,” said Tom,
as he shut the wardrobe doors, “should his innocence not be proved at
his trial, and should I succeed in effecting his escape from Duxley
gaol.”
“But about his escape,” said Mrs. Garside. “May I ask——” and then she
stopped.
“Don’t ask me anything at present, my dear madam,” said Tom. “My scheme
is hardly clear to my own mind as yet.” Then, turning to Edith, he
added, “But for all that, I hope that a day or two more will see it
thoroughly perfected. Time enough then to trouble you with whatever
other details it may be necessary for you to know.”
“Some people say that the grand old days when Friendship was something
more than an empty name are dead and gone for ever. I will never
believe them when they tell me so in time to come.”
So spoke Edith to Tom as they stood together for a moment at the door
ere the latter took his leave.
“Dering saved my life,” answered Tom, simply. “But for his brave heart,
and his strong arm, the hand you now clasp in yours, and the body to
which it belongs, would be mouldering at the bottom of the sea, or else
have been buried by strangers in some nameless grave. Can such a
service be readily forgotten?”
As Tom was walking through the town towards his lodgings he overtook
Hoskyns. They walked down the street together, talking about the trial,
which was fixed for the following Monday. Mr. Baldry, the wine and
spirit merchant, was standing at the door of his counting-house as they
approached. Judging from the appearance of Mr. Baldry’s face, most
people would have concluded that he was rather too fond of his own
stock in trade, and most people would have been right in their
supposition. Hoskyns stopped to speak to him, and proffered his
snuff-box as usual. Tom nodded to him.
“You can send me another dozen of that claret—the same as the last,”
said Hoskyns. “That is if you, have any of it left in stock.”
“I’ll make an effort to find enough for an old friend,” said Baldry,
facetiously. “By-the-by,” he added, “since how long a time is it that
you have taken to rambling by moonlight along lonely country roads
after ten o’clock at night?”
“I have not the remotest idea, Baldry, what you are talking about,”
said Hoskyns, little stiffly.
“Oh, come now, among old friends that won’t do, you know. Whether
you’re in love or not is best known to yourself: But it certainly did
strike me as something out of the common way to see you walking all
alone, between ten and eleven last night, under the lime trees on the
Thornfield road.”
“You speak in riddles,” said Hoskyns. “I have not set foot on the
Thornfield road for months.”
Baldry stared at the lawyer, then rubbed his eyes, and then stared
again. “Draw it mild, old friend,” he said quietly. “Don’t think for
one moment that I want to pry into your private affairs, but I
certainly thought there was no harm in my mentioning where I met you
last night, especially as you seemed to make no secret of it yourself.”
“I tell you again that I don’t understand what you are driving at,”
said Hoskyns, testily. “I tell you again that I have not set foot on
the Thornfield road for months.”
“Look here,” said Baldry, and an angry flush overspread his face,
making it redder than before, “do you mean to stand there and tell me
in cold blood that you didn’t stop me on the Thornfield road last
night, as I was driving home between ten and eleven? That you didn’t
shout out to me, ‘Hullo, Baldry, is that you, old boy?’ That I didn’t
stop the mare for five minutes, while we talked about the weather and
such like? That you didn’t offer me your box, and that I didn’t take
out of it a pinch of that identical snuff which nobody but you in all
Duxley makes use of? Do you mean to stand there and tell me all that?”
“Baldry,” said Hoskyns, “for you to make such a statement as that is to
prove that last night you must have been either crazy or drunk. Last
night I never left the house after eight o’clock: as my servant could
certify on oath. And as for the Thornfield road, I tell you once more
that I have not set foot on it since last Christmas.”
“Ned,” shouted Baldry to some one inside, “come you here a minute.”
The summons was responded to by a yellow-haired youth of sixteen.
“At what hour did I reach home last night?” asked Baldry.
“The clock had just struck eleven as you drove into the yard,” answered
Ned.
“Did I tell you, or did I not, that I had stopped and spoken to some
one a few minutes previously?”
“You said that you had just parted from Lawyer Hoskyns. That you had
had five minutes’ talk with him, and a pinch out of his box,” answered
the lad without a moment’s hesitation.
“There! what did I tell you?” said Baldry, triumphantly.
“Baldry, I give you my word of honour,” said Hoskyns, “that I was not
out of the house after eight o’clock, and that I never met you
yesterday at all—indeed, I’ve not seen you to speak to you for nearly a
week.”
“Evidently a case of mistaken identity,” said Tom.
“Mistaken identity be hanged!” said the irate wine merchant. “How about
the snuff-box? Could I be mistaken in that? Not likely. No—no. I
respect old friends, but I’ll take the evidence of my own senses in
preference to any man’s word, however long I’ve known him.” And with
these words, Baldry retired into the recesses of his counting-house,
and shut the door behind him with a bang.
Hoskyns and Tom resumed their walk down the street.
“An extraordinary circumstance, very,” said the lawyer. “I am quite at
a loss how to explain it.”
“Baldry was always noted as being fond of his own spirits, wasn’t he?”
asked Tom.
“He was indeed, poor man: and I am afraid the habit clings to him
still. He must have been in liquor last evening. That is the only way
in which I can account for his hallucination.”
END OF VOL. I.
BILLING, PRINTER, GUILDFORD, SURREY