RONALD COMES OF AGE.
'Strange,' Ronald Le Breton thought to himself, as he walked
along the Embankment between Westminster and Waterloo, some weeks
later--the day of Herr Max's trial,--'I had a sort of impulse
to come down here alone this afternoon: I felt as if there was an
unseen Hand somehow impelling me. Depend upon it, one doesn't have
instincts of that sort utterly for nothing. The Finger that guides
us guides us always aright for its own wise and unfathomable
purposes. What a blessing and a comfort it is to feel that one's
steps are continually directed from above, and that even an
afternoon stroll through the great dreary town is appointed to us
for some fit and sufficient reason! Look at that poor girl over
there now, at the edge of the Embankment! I wonder what on earth
she can have come here for. Why...how pale and excited she looks.
What's she going so near the edge for? Gracious heavens! it can't
be...yes...it is... no, no, but still it must be...that's what the
Finger was guiding me here for this afternoon. There's no denying
it. The poor creature's tempted to destroy herself. My instinct
tells me so at once, and it never tells me wrong. Oh, Inscrutable
Wisdom, help me, help me: give me light to act rightly! I must go
up this very moment and speak to her!'
The girl was walking moodily along the edge of the bank, and looking
in a dreamy fashion over the parapet into the sullen fast-flowing
brown water below. An eye less keen than Ronald's might have seen
in a moment, from her harassed weary face and her quick glance
to right and left after the disappearing policeman, that she was
turning over in her own mind something more desperate than any
common everyday venture. Ronald stepped up to her hastily, and,
firm in his conviction that the Finger was guiding him aright,
spoke out at once with boldness on the mere strength of his rapid
instinctive conjecture.
'Stop, stop,' he said, laying his hand gently on her shoulder: 'not
for a moment, I beg of you, not for a moment. Not till you've at
least told me what is your trouble.'
Selah turned round sharply and looked up in his face with a vague
feeling of indefinable wonder. 'What do you mean?' she asked, in
a husky voice. 'Don't do what? How do you know I was going to do
anything?'
'You were going to throw yourself into the river,'Ronald answered
confidently; 'or at least you were debating about it in your own
soul. I know you were, because a sure Guide tells me so.'
Selah's lip curled a little at the sound of that familiar language.
'And suppose I was,' she replied, defiantly, in her reckless
fashion; 'suppose I was: what's that to you or anybody, I should
like to know? Are you your brother's keeper, as your own Bible puts
it? Well, yes, then, perhaps I WAS going to drown myself: and if I
choose, as soon as your back's turned, I shall go and do it still;
so there; and that's all I have to say about it.'
Ronald turned his face towards her with an expression of the
intensest interest, but before he could put in a single word, Selah
interrupted him.
'I know what you're going to say,' she went on, looking up at him
rebelliously. 'I know what you're going to say every bit as well
as if you'd said it. You're one of these city missionary sort of
people, you are; and you're going to tell me it's awfully wicked
of me to try and destroy myself, and ain't I afraid of a terrible
hereafter! Ugh! I hate and detest all that mummery.'
Ronald looked down upon her in return with a sort of silent
wondering pity. 'Awfully wicked,' he said slowly, 'awfully wicked!
How meaningless! How incomprehensible! Awfully wicked to be
friendless, or poor, or wretched, or unhappy! Awfully wicked to be
driven by despair, or by heartlessness, to such a pitch of misery
or frenzy that you want to fling yourself wildly into the river,
only to be out of it all, anywhere, in a minute! Why you poor,
unhappy girl, how on earth can you possibly help it?'
There was something in the tone of his earnest voice that melted
for a moment even Selah Briggs's pride and vehemence. It was very
impertinent of him to try and interfere with her purely personal
business, no doubt, but he seemed to do so in a genuinely
kindly rather than in a fussy interfering spirit. At any rate he
didn't begin by talking to her that horrid cant about the attempt
to commit suicide being so extremely wicked! If he had done that,
Selah would have felt it was not only an unwarrantable intrusion
upon her liberty of action, but a grotesque insult to her natural
intelligence as well.
'I've a right to drown myself if I choose,' she faltered out,
leaning faintly as she spoke against the parapet, 'and nobody else
has any possible right to hinder or prevent me. If you people make
laws against my rights in that matter, I shall set your laws aside
whenever and wherever it happens to suit my personal convenience.'
'Exactly so,' Ronald answered, in the same tone of gentle and
acquiescent persuasion. 'I quite agree with you. It's as clear
as daylight that every individual human being has a perfect right
to put an end to his own life whenever it becomes irksome or
unpleasant to him; and nobody else has any right whatever to interfere
with him. The prohibitions that law puts upon our freedom in that
respect are only of a piece with the other absurd restrictions of
our existing unchristian legislation--as opposed to the spirit of
the Word as the old rule that made us bury a suicide at four cross
roads with a hideously barbarous and brutal ceremonial. They're
all mere temporary survivals from a primitive paganism: the truth
shall make us free. But though we mayn't rightly interfere, we may
surely inquire in a brotherly spirit of interest, whether it isn't
possible for us to make life less irksome for those who, unhappily,
want to get rid of it. After all, the causes of our discontent are
often quite removable. Tell me, at least, what yours are, and let
me see whether I'm able to do anything towards removing them.'
Selah hung back a little sullenly. This was a wonderful mixture of
tongues that the strange young man was talking in! When he spoke
about the right and wrong of suicide, ethically considered, it
might have been Herbert Walters himself who was addressing her:
when he glided off sideways to the truth and the Word, it might
have been her Primitive Methodist friends at Hastings, in full
meeting assembled. And, by the way, he reminded her strangely,
somehow, of Herbert Walters! What manner of man could he be, she
wondered, and what strange sort of new Gospel was this that he was
preaching to her?
'How do I know who you are?' she asked him, carelessly. 'How do
I know what you want to know my story for? Perhaps you're only
trying to get something out of me.'
'Trust me,' Ronald said simply. 'By faith we live, you know. Only
trust me.'
Selah answered nothing.
'Come over here to the bench by the garden,' Ronald went on earnestly.
'We can talk there more at our leisure. I don't like to see you
leaning so close to the parapet. It's a temptation; I know it's a
temptation.'
Selah looked at him again inquiringly. She had never before met
anybody so curious, she fancied. 'Aren't you afraid of being seen
sitting with me like this,' she said, 'on the Embankment benches?
Some of your fine friends might come by and wonder who on earth you
had got here with you.' And, indeed, Selah's dress had grown very
shabby and poor-looking during a long and often fruitless search
for casual work or employment in London.
But Ronald only surveyed her gently from head to foot with a quiet
smile, and answered softly, 'Oh, no; there's no reason on earth why
we shouldn't sit down and talk together; and even if there were,
my friends all know me far too well by this time to be surprised
at anything I may do, when the Hand guides me. If you will only sit
down and tell me your story, I should like to see whether I could
possibly do anything to help you.'
Selah let him lead her in his gentle half-womanly fashion to the
bench, and sat down beside him mechanically. Still, she made no
attempt to begin her pitiful story. Ronald suspected for a second
some special cause for her embarrassment, and ventured to suggest
a possible way out of it. 'Perhaps,' he said timidly, 'you would
rather speak to some older and more fatherly man about it, or to
some kind lady. If so, I have many good friends in London who would
listen to you with as much interest and attention as I should.'
The old spirit flared up in Selah for a second, as she answered
quickly, 'No, no, sir, it's nothing of that sort. I can tell YOU
as well as I can tell anybody. If I've been unfortunate, it's been
through no fault of my own, thank goodness, but only through the
hard-heartedness and unkindness of other people. I'd rather speak
to you than to anyone else, because I feel somehow--why, I don't
know--as if you had something or other really good in you.'
'I beg your pardon,' Ronald said hastily, 'for even suggesting it
but you see, I often have to meet a great many people who've been
unhappy through a great many different causes, and that leads one
occasionally for a time into mistaken inferences. Let me hear all
your history, please, and I firmly believe, through the aid that
never forsakes us, I shall be able to do something or other to help
you in your difficulties.'
Thus adjured, Selah began and told her whole unhappy history
through, without pause or break, into Ronald's quietly sympathetic
ear. She told him quite frankly and fully how she had picked up
the acquaintance of a young Mr. Walters from Oxford at Hastings:
how this Mr. Walters had led her to believe he would marry her:
how she had left her home hurriedly, under the belief that he would
be induced to keep his promise: how he had thrown her over to her
own devices: and how she had ever since been trying to pick up a
precarious livelihood for herself in stray ways as a sempstress,
work for which she wag naturally very ill-fitted, and for which
she had no introductions. She slurred over nothing on either side
of the story; and especially she did not forget to describe the
full measure of her troubles and trials from her Methodist friends
at Hastings. Ronald shook his head sympathetically at this stage
of the story. 'Ah, I know, I know,' he muttered, half under his
breath; 'nasty pious people! Very well meaning, very devout, very
earnest, one may be sure of it--but oh! what terrible soul-killing
people to live among! I can understand all about it, for I've met
them often--Sabbath-keeping folks; preaching and praying folks;
worrying, bothering, fussy-religious folks: formalists, Pharisees,
mint-anise and-cummin Christians: awfully anxious about your soul,
and so forth, and doing their very best to make you as miserable
all the time as a slave at the torture! I don't wonder you ran away
from them.'
'And I wasn't really going to drown myself, you know, when you
spoke to me.' Selah said, quite apologetically. 'I was only just
looking over into the beautiful brown water, and thinking how
delicious it would be to fling oneself in there, and be carried
off down to the sea, and rolled about for ever into pebbles on
the shingle, and there would be an end of one altogether--oh, how
lovely!'
'Very natural,' Ronald answered calmly. 'Very natural. Of course
it would. I've often thought the same thing myself. Still, one
oughtn't, if possible, to give way to these impulses: one ought to
do all that's in one's power to prevent such a miserable termination
to one's divinely allotted existence. After all, it is His will,
you see, that we should be happy.'
When Selah had quite finished all her story, Ronald began drawing
circles in the road with the end of his stick, and perpending
within himself what had better be done about it, now that all was
told him. 'No work,' he said, half to himself; 'no money; no food.
Why, why, I suppose you must be hungry.'
Selah nodded assent.
'Will you allow me to offer you a little lunch?' he asked, hesitatingly,
with something of Herbert's stately politeness. Even in this last
extremity, Ronald felt instinctively what was due to Selah Briggs's
natural sentiments of pride and delicacy. He must speak to her
deferentially as if she were a lady, not give her alms as if she
were a beggar.
Then for the first time that day Selah burst suddenly into tears.
'Oh, sir,' she said, sobbing, 'you are very kind to me.'
Ronald waited a moment or two till her eyes were dry, and then took
her across the gardens and into Gatti's. Any other man might have
chosen some other place of entertainment under the circumstances,
but Ronald, in his perfect simplicity of heart, looked only for
the first shop where he could get Selah the food she needed. He
ordered something hot hastily, and, when it came, though he had had
his own lunch already, he played a little with a knife and fork
himself for show's sake, in order not to seem as if he were merely
looking on while Selah was eating. These little touches of feeling
were not lost upon Selah: she noticed them at once, and recognised
in what Ernest would have called her aboriginal unregenerate
vocabulary that she was dealing with a true gentleman.
'Walters,' Ronald said, pausing a second with a bit of chop poised
lightly on the end of his fork; 'let me see--Walters. I don't know
any man of that name, myself, but I've had two brothers at Oxford,
and perhaps one of them could tell me who he is. Walters--Walters.
You said your own name was Miss Briggs, I think, didn't you? My
name's Ronald Le Breton.'
'How curious,' Selah said, colouring up. 'I'm sure I remember Mr.
Walters talking more than once to me about his brother Ronald.'
'Indeed,' Ronald answered, without even a passing tinge of suspicion.
That any man should give a false name to other people with intent
to deceive was a thing that would never have entered into his simple
head--far less that his own brother Herbert should be guilty of
such a piece of disgraceful meanness.
'I think,' Ronald went on, as soon as Selah had finished her lunch,
'you'd better come with me back to my mother's house for the present.
I suppose, now you've talked it over a little, you won't think of
throwing yourself into the river any more for to-day. You'll postpone
your intention for the present, won't you? Adjourn it sine die till
we can see what can be done for you.'
Selah smiled faintly. Even with the slight fresh spring of hope
that this chance rencontre had roused anew within her, it seemed
rather absurd and childish of her to have meditated suicide only
an hour ago. Besides, she had eaten and drunk since then, and the
profoundest philosophers have always frankly admitted that the
pessimistic side of human nature is greatly mitigated after a good
dinner.
Ronald called a hansom, and drove up rapidly to Epsilon Terrace.
When he got there, he took Selah into the little back breakfast
room, regardless of the proprieties, and began once more to consider
the prospects of the future.
'Is Lady Le Breton in?' he asked the servant: and Selah noticed
with surprise and wonder that this strange young man's mother was
actually 'a lady of title,' as she called it to herself in her
curious ordinary language.
'No, sir,' the girl answered; 'she have been gone out about an
hour.'
'Then I must leave you here while I go out and get you lodgings for
the present,' Ronald said, quietly; 'you won't object to my doing
that, of course: you can easily pay me back from your salary as
soon as we succeed in finding you some suitable occupation. Let
me see, where can I put you for the next fortnight? Naturally you
wouldn't like to live with religious people, would you?'
'I hate them,' Selah answered vigorously.
'Of course, of course,' Ronald went on, as if to himself. 'Perfectly
natural. She hates them! So should I if I'd been bothered and worried
out of my life by them in the way she has. I hate them myself--that
kind: or, rather, it's wrong to say that of them, poor creatures,
for they mean well, they really mean well at bottom, in their
blundering, formal, pettifogging way. They think they can take the
kingdom of Heaven, not by storm, but by petty compliances, like
servile servants who have to deal with a capricious, exacting
master. Poor souls, they know no better. They measure the universe
by the reflection in their muddy mill-pond. Nasty pious people is
what I always call them; nasty pious people: little narrow souls,
trying hard to be Christians after their lights, and only attaining,
after all, to a sort of second-hand diluted Judaism, a religion
of cup-washing, and phylacteries, and new moons, and sabbaths, and
daily sacrifices. However, that's neither here nor there. I won't
hand you over, Miss Briggs, to any of those poor benighted people.
No, nor to any religious people at all. It wouldn't suit you: you
want to be well out of it. I know the very place for you. There
are the Baumanns: they'd be glad to let a room: Baumann's a German
refugee, and a friend of Ernest's: a good man, but a secularist.
THEY wouldn't bother you with any religion: poor things, they
haven't got any. Mrs. Baumann's an excellent woman--educated, too;
no objection at all in any way to the Baumanns. They're people I
like and respect immensely--every good quality they have; and I'm
often grieved to think such excellent people should be deprived of
the comfort and pleasure of believing. But, then, so's my dear brother
Ernest; and you know, they're none the worse for it, apparently,
any of them: indeed, I don't know that there's anybody with whom
I can talk more sympathetically on spiritual matters than dear
Ernest. Depend upon it, most of the most spiritually-minded people
nowadays are outside all the churches altogether.'
Selah listened in blank amazement to this singular avowal of
heterodox opinion from an obviously religious person. What Ronald
Le Breton could be she couldn't imagine; and she thought with
an inward smile of the very different way in which her friends at
Hastings would have discussed the spiritual character of a wicked
secularist.
Just at that moment a latch-key turned lightly in the street door,
and two sets of footsteps came down the passage to Lady Le Breton's
little back breakfast-room. One set turned up the staircase, the
other halted for a second at the breakfast-room doorway. Then the
door opened gently, and Herbert Le Breton and Selah Briggs stood
face to face again in blank astonishment.
There was a moment's pause, as Selah rose with burning cheeks from
the chair where she was sitting; and neither spoke a word as they
looked with eyes of mutual suspicion and dislike into each other's
faces. At last Herbert Le Breton turned with some acerbity to his
brother Ronald, and asked in a voice of affected contempt, 'Who is
this woman?'
'This LADY'S name is Miss Briggs,' Ronald answered, pointedly, but,
of course, quite innocently.
'I needn't ask you who this man is,' Selah said, with bitter
emphasis. 'It's Herbert Walters.'
A horrible light burst in upon Ronald instantaneously as she uttered
the name; but he could not believe it; he would not believe it: it
was too terrible, too incredible. 'No, no,' he said falteringly,
turning to Selah; 'you must be mistaken. This is not Mr. Walters.
This is my brother, Herbert Le Breton.'
Selah gazed into Herbert's slinking eyes with a concentrated
expression of scorn and disgust. 'Then he gave me a false name,'
she said, slowly, fronting him like a tigress. 'He gave me a false
name, it seems, from the very beginning. All through, the false
wretch, all through, he actually meant to deceive me. He laid his
vile scheme for it beforehand. I never wish to see you again,
you miserable cur, Herbert Le Breton, if that's your real name at
last. I never wish to see you again: but I'm glad I've done it now
by accident, if it were only to inflict upon you the humiliation
of knowing that I have measured the utmost depth of your infamy!
You mean, common, false scoundrel, I have measured to the bottom
the depth of your infamy!'
'Oh, don't,' Ronald said imploringly, laying his hand upon her arm.
'He deserves it, no doubt; but don't glory over his humiliation.'
He had no need to ask whether she spoke the truth; his brother's
livid and scarlet face was evidence enough against him.
Herbert, however, answered nothing. He merely turned angrily
to Ronald. 'I won't bandy words,' he said constrainedly in his
coldest tone, 'with this infamous woman whom you have brought here
on purpose to insult me; but I must request you to ask her to leave
the house immediately. Your mother's home is no place to which to
bring people of such a character.'
As he spoke, the door opened again, and Lady Le Breton, attracted
by the sound of angry voices, entered unexpectedly. 'What does all
this riot mean, Herbert?' she asked, imperiously. 'Who on earth
is this young woman that Ronald has brought into my own house,
actually without my permission?'
Herbert whispered a few words quietly into her ear, and then left
the room hurriedly with a stiff and formal bow to his brother
Ronald. Lady Le Breton turned round to the culprit severely.
'Disgraceful, Ronald!' she cried in her sternest and most angry
voice; 'perfectly disgraceful! You aid and abet this wretched
creature--whose object is only to extort money by false pretences
out of your brother Herbert--you aid and abet her in her abominable
stratagems, and you even venture to introduce her clandestinely
into my own breakfast-room. I wonder you're not ashamed of yourself.
What on earth can you mean by such extraordinary, such unChristian
conduct? Go to your own room this moment, sir, and ask this young
woman to leave the house immediately.'
'I shall go without being asked,' Selah said, proudly, her big eyes
flashing defiance haughtily into Lady Le Breton's. 'I don't know
who you all may be, or what this gentleman who brought me here may
have to do with you: but if you are in any way connected with that
wretch Herbert Le Breton, who called himself Herbert Walters for
the sake of deceiving me, I don't want to have anything further to
say to any of the whole pack of you. Please stand out of my way,'
she went on to Ronald, 'and I shall have done with you all together
this very instant. I wish to God I had never seen a single one of
you.'
'No, no, not just yet, please,' Ronald put in hastily. 'You mustn't
go just yet, I implore you, I beg of you, till I have explained to
my mother, before you, how this all happened; and then, when you
go, I shall go with you. Though I have the misfortune to be the
brother of the man who gave you a false name in order to deceive
you, I trust you will still allow me to help you as far as I am
able, and to take you to my German friends of whom I spoke to you.'
'Ronald,' Lady Le Breton cried, in her most commanding tone, 'you
must have taken leave of your senses. How dare you keep this person
a moment longer in my house against my wish, when even she herself
is anxious to quit it? Let her go at once, let her go at once,
sir.'
'No, mother,' Ronald answered firmly. 'We are commanded in the Word
to obey our parents in all things, "in the Lord." I think you've
forgotten that proviso, mother, "in the Lord." Now, mother, I will
tell you all about it.' And then, in a rapid sketch, Ronald, with
his back planted solidly against the door, told his mother briefly
all he knew about Selah Briggs, how he had found her, how he had
brought her home not knowing who she was, and how she had recognised
Herbert as her unfaithful lover. Lady Le Breton, when she saw
that escape was practically impossible, flung herself back in an
easy-chair, where she swayed herself backward and forward gently
all the while, without once lifting her eyes towards Ronald, and
sighed impatiently from time to time audibly, as if the story merely
bored her. As for poor Selah, she stood upright in front of Ronald
without a word, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and
waiting eagerly for the story to be finished.
When Ronald had said his say, Lady Le Breton looked up at last and
said simply, with a pretended yawn, 'Now, Ronald, will you go to
your own room?'
'I will not,' Ronald answered, in a soft whisper. 'I will go with
this lady to the rooms of which I have spoken to her.'
'Then,' Lady Le Breton said coldly, 'you shall not return here.
It seems I'm to lose all my children, one after another, by their
extraordinary rebelliousness!'
'By your own act--yes,' Ronald answered, very calmly. 'You
forgot that last Thursday was my birthday, I daresay, mother; but
I didn't forget it; it was; and I came of age then. I'm my own
master now. I've stopped here as long as I could, mother, because
of the commandment: but I can't stop here any longer. I shall go
to Ernest's for to-night as soon as I've got rooms for this lady.'
'Good evening,' Lady Le Breton said, bowing frigidly, without
another word.
'Good evening, mother,' Ronald replied, in his natural voice. 'Miss
Briggs, will you come with me? I'm very sorry that this unhappy
scene should have been inflicted upon you against my will; but I
hope and pray that you won't have lost all confidence in my wish
to help you, in spite of these unfortunate accidents.'
Selah followed him blindly, in a dazzled fashion, out on to the
flagstones of Epsilon Terrace.
'Dear me, dear me,' moaned Lady Le Breton, sinking back vacantly
once more, with an air of resignation after her efforts, into the
easy-chair: 'was there ever a mother so plagued and burdened with
unnatural and undutiful sons as I am? If it weren't for dear Herbert,
I'm sure I don't know what I should ever do between them. Ronald,
too, who always pretended to be so very, very religious! To think
that he should go and uphold the word of a miserable, abandoned,
improper adventuress against his own brother Herbert! Atrocious,
perfectly atrocious! Where on earth he can have picked up such a
woman I'm positively at a loss to imagine. But it's exactly like
his poor dear father: I remember once when we were stationed at
Moozuffernugger, in the North-West Provinces, with the 14th Bengal,
poor Owen absolutely insisted on taking up the case of some Eurasian
woman, who pretended she'd been badly treated by young Walker of
our regiment! I call it quite improper--almost unseemly--to meddle
in the affairs of such people. I daresay Herbert has had something
or other to say to this horrid girl; young men will be young men,
and in the army we know how to make allowances for that sort of
thing: but that Ronald should positively think of bringing such a
person into my breakfast-room is not to be heard of. Ronald's a pure
Le Breton--that's undeniable, thank goodness; not a single one of
the good Whitaker points to be found in all his nature. However,
poor dear Sir Owen, in spite of all his nonsense, was at least
an officer and a gentleman; whereas the nonsense these boys have
picked up at Oxford and among their German refugee people is both
irreligious, and, I may even say, indecent, or, to put it in the
mildest way, indecorous. I wish with all my heart I'd never sent
them to Oxford. I've always thought that if only Ernest had gone
in for a direct commission, he'd soon have got all that absurd
revolutionary rubbish knocked out of him in a mess-room! But it's
a great comfort to me to think I have one real blessing in dear
Herbert, who's just such a son as any mother might well be thoroughly
proud of in every way!'
While Lady Le Breton was thus communing with herself in the
breakfast-room, and while Herbert was trying to patch up a hollow
truce with his own much-bruised self-respect in his own bedroom,
Ronald was taking poor dazed and wearied Selah round to the refuge
of the Baumanns' hospitable roof. As soon as that matter was
temporarily arranged to the mutual satisfaction of all the parties
concerned, Ronald walked over alone to Ernest's little lodgings at
Holloway. He would sleep there that night, and send round a letter
to Amelia, the housemaid, in the morning, asking her to pack up his
things and forward them at once to Mrs. Halliss's. For himself,
he did not propose, unless circumstances compelled it, again to
enter his mother's rooms, except by her own express invitation.
After all, he thought, even his little income, if clubbed with Edie
and Ernest's, would probably help them all to live now in tolerable
comfort.
So he told Edie all his story, and Edie listened to it with an
approving smile. 'I think, dear Ronald,' she said, taking his hand
in hers, 'you did quite right--quite as Ernest himself would have
done under the circumstances.'
'Where's Ernest?' asked Ronald, half smiling at that naive wifely
standard of right conduct.
'Gone with Mr. Berkeley to the trial,' Edie answered.
'The trial! What trial?'
'Oh, don't you know? Herr Max's. They're trying him to-day for
littering a seditious libel and inciting to murder the chief of
the Third Section at St. Petersburg.'
'But he said nothing at all,' Ronald cried in astonishment. 'I read
the article myself. He said nothing that any Englishman mightn't
have said under the same circumstances. Why, I could have written
the libel, as they call it, myself, even, and I'm not much of a
politician either! They can't ever be trying him in a country like
England for anything so ridiculously little as that!'
'But they are,' Edie answered quietly; 'and dear Ernest's dreadfully
afraid the verdict will go against him.'
'Nonsense,' Ronald answered with natural confidence. 'No English
jury would ever convict a man for speaking up like that against
an odious and abominable tyranny.'
Very late in the afternoon, Ernest and Berkeley returned to the
lodgings. Ernest's face was white with excitement, and his lips
were trembling violently with suppressed emotion. His eyes were red
and swollen. Edie hardly needed to ask in a breathless whisper of
Arthur Berkeley, 'What verdict?'
'Guilty,' Arthur Berkeley answered with a look of unfeigned horror
and indignation. He had learnt by this time quite to take the
communistic view of such questions.
'Guilty,' Ronald cried, jumping up from his chair in astonishment.
'Impossible! And what sentence?'
'Twelve months' hard labour,' Berkeley answered, slowly and
remorsefully.
'An atrocious sentence!' Ronald exclaimed, turning red with excitement.
'An abominable sentence! A most malignant and vindictive sentence!
Who was the judge, Arthur?'
'Bassenthwaite,' Berkeley replied half under his breath.
'And may the Lord have mercy upon his soul!' said Ronald solemnly,
But Ernest never said a single word. He only sat down and ate his
supper in silence, like one stunned and dazzled. He didn't even
notice Ronald's coming. And Edie knew by his quick breath and his
face alternately flushed and pallid that there would be another
crisis in his gathering complaint before the next morning.