THE TRAGEDY DEEPENS
It was a terrible and dismaying blow that had fallen so tragically
upon the hopes of triumph and vindication. Herriard on his way to
the Countess Alexia with the news--which had been sent to him at
once--called at Gastineau’s, being anxious to gather every grain of
hope there might be of making the best of this bitter disappointment.
“I have not come to worry you any more about Campion,” was Herriard’s
greeting, with a short bitter laugh of discomfiture. “The poor fellow
will never give evidence now. He is dead.”
Gastineau gave him a sharp glance of surprised enquiry. He was lying
back in a state of greater listlessness than Herriard ever remembered
to have seen in him since the first effects of the accident.
“Dead? How?”
Herriard told him. “It happened in Piccadilly, by the Green Park;
within sight of Vaux House. And it is a bad blow for us, with all
deference to your views.”
“I fear I must continue in disagreement with you,” Gastineau returned,
with a confident smile. “I am of opinion that the cabman who knocked
down the late Mr. Campion has unwittingly done your side a substantial
service.”
Herriard took an impatient turn across the room. “Gastineau, you carry
your opinion, your scepticism, too far. Surely between us you need not
make such a point of maintaining it so obstinately.”
He spoke with a certain amount of heat, with the sense of
disappointment stinging him doubly, in his heart and head.
As Gastineau’s eyes followed his impatient movement they seemed to
laugh subtly. “If,” he said, “you will give the situation a moment’s
calm thought, my dear Geof, you will see what I mean by suggesting that
by this man’s death your client is no worse off, but, on the contrary,
has gained an advantage.”
“It would take a more penetrating intellect than mine to see that,”
Herriard returned, with ill-humoured sarcasm.
“At least let me try to put it to you,” Gastineau rejoined, with a
smile at the other’s temper. “Now, take the position dispassionately.
First of all, what are you going for? To clear Countess Alexia’s
reputation of the slander that has touched it. That, I grant you, with
this man Campion’s evidence you would have done triumphantly--if it had
withstood all the hot attacks which would have been made upon it. The
evidence he would have given, had he lived, is now common knowledge;
his narrative, his uncontradicted narrative, has been published by
enterprising journalists; everybody knows it. So you stand in the
position to-day of having got your examination-in-chief before the
public without any chance of cross-examination by the other side. Is
not that a score? You have succeeded in getting the world’s sympathy
for your interesting client, and it will be augmented rather than
diminished by this unlooked-for incident, which will assuredly be
regarded as a cruel blow.”
“As it is,” Herriard murmured; beginning, however, to see the cloud’s
bright side.
“Of course,” Gastineau agreed; “but it won’t hurt you. It is far, far
better for you than one shaky answer in the witness-box. Yes; to sum
up, you have the _status quo ante_, with the sympathy transferred to
your side, the dead man’s uncontradicted, and, now, uncontradictable,
evidence on record in the public mind. And you must remember that, in a
case of this sort, it is the public, not the jury, which gives the real
verdict. Yes, my dear Geof, you are to be congratulated, or, at least,
the Countess is. Come! confess you see it.”
“Oh, yes,” Herriard answered, recovering somewhat from the blankness
of his discomfiture; “I admit we are in a far better position now than
before Campion turned up. Still, I cannot agree that we gain by his
death. I am absolutely convinced that his evidence would have remained
unshaken before Macvee’s big guns; and I cannot understand why you
have all along taken such a prejudiced view of the poor man and the
genuineness of his testimony.”
“It is scarcely worth while discussing it now,” Gastineau replied, with
a half yawn. “I am quite ready to admit that I may have been utterly
wrong. Had it not been for the seriousness of the issue I could be
sorry that the question of the stability of his evidence can never now
be settled. As it is we may consign the question to the limbo of the
great undecided, and rest content with the gain it has brought us. I
suppose the poor fellow was dead when picked up?”
“No,” Herriard answered; “he lived for ten minutes, and was able to
give an account of the accident. It appears he was running after a cab,
in which he had recognized again the man we are in search of, the
man who is supposed to have killed Martindale. In his excitement poor
Campion failed to notice a hansom which swung out of Berkeley Street,
and ran him down.”
“H’m! I quite agree with you, it is a pity,” Gastineau observed, in
an indifferently sceptical tone; “a pity that the all-important Mr.
Campion has come to so unromantic an end. It would have been highly
interesting to have seen what sort of a figure he would have cut in the
witness-box, with Joshua Standish Macvee for a _vis-à-vis_.”
“I can imagine but one result,” Herriard replied, with a dry reserve.
“Well, I am going on to Green Street to do what I can to lighten this
blow. Your view of the matter will at least help me to do that.”
“Yes,” Gastineau agreed; “I think you may venture to congratulate
Countess Alexia. The reckless cabby did your client no bad turn.”
“Perhaps not,” Herriard returned; “but we did not want to win like
that.”
“Better like that than not at all,” Gastineau rejoined. “You now have
the Countess practically cleared so far as the world is concerned. The
passing of Campion rehabilitates her by providing a very plausible, if,
to legal minds, somewhat unconvincing, solution of the mystery.”
The pointed significance in his tone was not to be ignored. Herriard
started up, impelled by the shock of a conviction then first realized.
“Gastineau,” he exclaimed, in a tone of protest, almost of indignation,
“you are not going to tell me you think the Countess guilty?”
The other smiled meaningly. “My dear Geof, I am not blind to
possibilities and probabilities, if you are; but then, perhaps, I have
not the same reason.”
It was the first time that Herriard had known his friend to sneer at
him, and the tone of the last words stung him uncomfortably. In that
instant he realized how the fissure between them was extending; and
the situation which seemed so swiftly developing was made none the
less unhappy by its incomprehensibility, by its being devoid of an
adequate cause. A difference of opinion. Was that to dissolve the close
partnership, that alliance of theirs against the world? It seemed
pitifully absurd. Herriard had vowed that no act of his should help
to widen the breach. It was curious how this case had come between
them; there seemed such animus behind Gastineau’s arguments, and as
Herriard’s feeling was all the other way, it became increasingly
difficult for him to keep to his resolve. “My dear fellow, it is
preposterous,” was all he could trust himself to say. “I can hardly
think you mean it seriously.”
“I merely say that I see nothing inherently improbable in the
suggestion,” Gastineau replied, in his keen argumentative manner. “In
fact, from the circumstantial evidence we have, the probabilities
are, _pace_ the late Mr. Campion, all the other way. I will simply
put one point to you. Why and how should another man, the person whom
Campion declared he saw, stab Martindale to death with an ornament from
Countess Alexia’s hair? Why should he want to do it at all? and, if
so, why and how with that particular weapon? At least it points to the
Countess being an accessory before the fact. Now I really should like
to hear a good rebutting argument against that.”
Herriard had turned away from him, and was leaning with his arms on
the mantelpiece. “The argument is,” he replied, in a voice low from
restraint, “that the Countess lost the ornament. And my unshakable
belief is that she had nothing to do with Martindale’s death either as
principal or accessory.”
“Your argument is nebulously vague and just conceivable, but at the
same time wildly improbable,” Gastineau returned, in his quiet, cutting
tone. “But that you seem not a little _épris_ with your fair client I
should not think you in earnest in putting it forward.”
Herriard raised his head and turned to the couch. “Gastineau, if you
really think the Countess guilty, for Heaven’s sake, let the case never
be mentioned between us again. We don’t want to quarrel; it would ill
become me to be at issue with you to whom I owe so much, but it is
certain that if we pursue this subject we shall quarrel, since my whole
sense revolts from your theory. So let it be taboo.”
Gastineau laughed, and his laugh was as a sneer at the other’s heated
earnestness.
“We never should have come near to joining issue had you not let your
heart run away with your head. A lawyer ceases to be a lawyer when
he allows feelings and prejudices to interfere with his judgment. So
far as our profession goes a man must be all head, a legal thinking
machine, if you like. It is not perhaps an ideal equipment, but it is
the only workable one.”
“I dare say,” Herriard replied, in a tone of doubtful conviction.
“Happily, or unhappily, very few of us can quite succeed in stifling
our private judgment of those with whom we have to deal.”
“True. And the man who succeeds best in that makes the best lawyer,
other things being equal,” Gastineau returned dogmatically. “Now we
won’t quarrel, Geof, over the last word of this burning subject, but I
must give it you in the form of a word of warning. Let me as an older
man of the world than yourself, and as one who has nothing more to gain
or lose in this world, put you on your guard against the state into
which you are drifting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I refer to the Countess Alexia. That is all, and I will say no more,
except that if you let yourself go too far in that direction you will
bitterly repent it.”
Herriard repressed the words that sprang to his lips. “Very well,
Gastineau,” he responded simply; “I take your warning in the spirit in
which it is given.”
An inscrutable smile flitted across Gastineau’s face, as he nodded in
response to the other’s words.
And so they parted.
* * * * *
Herriard went towards Green Street in a perplexed and uneasy state of
mind. There could be only one explanation of Gastineau’s warning, and
it was that he believed Countess Alexia guilty. But that was utterly
preposterous. Herriard comforted himself with the thought that his
friend knew little of the Countess, having only met her casually in
society years before. His was a hard, judicial brain; he would believe
anything of anybody if the legal probabilities pointed to such a
conclusion; the human element in the case, if not entirely ignored,
would be reduced to an equation and governed by the law of mathematical
chances. But, logic or no logic, the idea that the Countess might be
guilty was monstrous. Knowing her as he did, Herriard was sure that she
had not even the most venial and innocent connection with Martindale’s
death. Nor, putting bias away, could he find the slightest ground for
discrediting Campion’s testimony. Well, thank Heaven, the case would
soon be brought, as he fully anticipated, to a happy conclusion, and
his relations with the Countess need never again form the subject of
argument.
“I have brought you bad news,” he said to her when they met.
Alexia’s face paled for an instant, as her eyes questioned him
apprehensively. He told her what had happened, and the pros and cons of
its probable effect upon the case.
“I am inclined to think we are not so very much worse off,” he said,
“by the poor fellow’s death, shocking as it is, and greatly as we must
regret it. You must not take it so much to heart, Countess,” he added,
for he could see how dismayed and anxious the news had made her.
“Oh, but I fear, I fear,” she returned, in a low voice.
“Indeed you need not fear,” he urged encouragingly.
“When I think what is at stake how can I help it?”
He leaned forward. “Countess, you have no cause for fear,” he said
half-interrogatively. The words were spoken more to give Gastineau’s
suggestion the lie than to satisfy any doubt in his own mind. Next
moment he hated himself for the inflexion that made them seem a
question. With the swift intuition of a clever woman she divined
the subtle equivocalness of the speech. Perhaps she felt it was not
altogether uncalled-for, that it was reasonable. She looked at him
steadily, frankly, and her look sealed his self-condemnation.
“I have only one cause for fear,” she said, “a miscarriage of justice,
the possible success of a vile slander.”
“I am sure of that, Countess,” he replied, with a warmth bred of
repentance. “And I should think none the less of you if your fear
extended farther. But I have no dread at all of the issue of this case,
and wish I could infect you with my certainty.”
“I think you have,” she responded, with an effort at conviction. “But
in this world things go curiously wrong sometimes, and, while there is
suspense, there must, to a woman, at least, be fear.”
“I hate the thought of your fear,” he said in a lower voice; “it seems
to increase my responsibility.”
Alexia smiled. “No, no, my friend,” she protested, “you must not think
that. You, at least, cannot fail; your victory is already gained.”
“Not yet,” he replied deprecatingly; “still, I am confident that it
will be.”
A sudden thought came to him; the conviction that if he were to put his
fate to the touch it should be now; that to wait would be the timid,
unchivalrous trick of an opportunist, and as he realized that the
moment had come he stood dismayed. He glanced at the Countess, with a
strange diffidence, for in his dealings with men and women confidence
had become almost as second nature. The constrained silence that had
come upon them seemed to prick him on; each second it lasted made the
urgency cumulative. And yet words failed him. What could he say to
her? How could he say it? His eyes rested on the graceful lines of her
figure, the exquisite colouring and contour of her head. She was not a
girl, but a woman of matured sensibilities for sympathy and love; the
one woman he had met whom he longed to ask to share his life, the one
woman in whose company he would be more content to face trouble than
to pass a cloudless existence with any other. Yet how could he but
hesitate? She was above him in rank; there was something royal in the
very turn of her head, in the subtle splendour that seemed to exhale
from her presence. True he was somebody now in the world; he had made
his name both at the Bar and in the House. Then, with the encouraging
thought, the spectre of his deceit rose up and stood between him and
his love, till he wished she were guilty that they might meet on more
equal terms. Still, that present one was the moment to be seized.
That thought was insistent; it was under the shadow of this sharp
disappointment that he must risk the question.
As he stood hesitating and tongue-tied, Alexia looked up, as it were
with a glance of enquiry as to the reason of the silence. It was a
provocative lifting of the deep grey eyes, and it drew him into speech
as though moved by an enchanter’s touch outside the pale of calculation.
“Countess,” he said, “I wish I might, without offence, ask for the
crown of my victory.”
She seemed to shrink a little from him, as she replied in a low voice,
yet steadily, “The victory is not yet won; the crown is of doubtful
glory.”
His tongue was loosened now. “Never to me,” he declared with passion.
“Countess, it is all that I covet in this world; it can never be
anything less to me than pure gold. Ah, if I might ever hope to wear
it!”
But she made no responsive sign. “It is not time to speak of that,” she
said, in a voice in which the feeling was so repressed that it seemed
cold.
“If,” he rejoined, in a like tone, “it may ever be, surely this is the
time.”
Again she looked at him; there was gratitude and, he thought, something
yet more to be desired in her eyes. “No, my friend,” she said, with
gentle denial; “not now.”
“Alexia,” he pleaded, laying his hand on her arm, “let me tell you how
I love you.”
But again she shook her head, and moved away from the tentative caress.
“No,” she replied; “you must not speak a word of that to me.”
“Not yet?”
She hesitated a moment or two, and in the pause his hopes swiftly grew.
Then, almost in a whisper, the words came repeated, “Not yet.”
As he realized what those words meant, joy thrilled him beyond all
power of the restraint he owed her. “Alexia, my love!” The cry burst
out from the rapture of his good fortune. But she turned quickly to
him, putting out her hands protestingly.
“No, no, please; not that,” she said, and in the entreaty there was a
touch of command. “I know that you, of all men, will respect my wish.”
“It is hard,” he returned submissively, “but I must. If you knew how
hard, dear Countess, you would forgive me.”
“I have nothing to forgive,” she replied simply; and for a while no
more was spoken between them.
Then their talk reverted to the burning subject of the trial, till
presently Count Prosper came in.
He had heard at his club the news of Campion’s death, and the friends
he was with had tried to lessen the shock it gave him.
“You have an excellent man in Herriard,” Sir Perrott Aspall had
remarked encouragingly.
“Couldn’t have a better,” Baron de Daun had agreed. “Quite the best man
at the Bar for that sort of case, since Paul Gastineau.”
“By the way,” another man of the group broke in, “talking of Gastineau,
an extraordinary thing happened to me the other evening. As I was
walking across the Green Park a man passed me whom I could have sworn
was Paul Gastineau.”
“What, _the_ Paul Gastineau?” Sir Perrott asked, with a smile of
toleration for another man’s stupidity.
“_The_ Paul Gastineau,” the other maintained. “The K.C. Member for
Starbury. I knew him well.”
“But,” Sir Perrott objected, with all the superiority which disbelief
in the obviously impossible confers, “Paul Gastineau, the K.C., and all
that, was killed some years ago in a railway accident in Spain.”
“Yes,” retorted the other; “that is just what made my seeing him in the
Green Park so extraordinary.”