frown--and I slank away, annihilated.
'You can go,' my persecutor said. 'I think we have got--well, everything
we wanted from you. You promised to marry him, if all went ill! That is
a delicate feminine way of putting it. Women like these equivocations.
They relieve one from the onus of speaking frankly.'
I stood down from the box, feeling, for the first time in my life,
conscious of having scored an ignominious failure.
Our counsel did not care to re-examine me; I recognised that it would be
useless. The hateful Q.C. had put all my history in such an odious light
that explanation could only make matters worse--it must savour of
apology. The jury could never understand my point of view. It could
never be made to see that there are adventuresses and adventuresses.
Then came the final speeches on either side. Harold's advocate said the
best he could in favour of the will our party propounded; but his best
was bad; and what galled me most was this-- I could see he himself did
not believe in its genuineness. His speech amounted to little more than
a perfunctory attempt to put the most favourable face on a probable
forgery.
As for the cross-eyed Q.C., he rose to reply with humorous confidence.
Swaying his big body to and fro, he crumpled our will and our case in
his fat fingers like so much flimsy tissue-paper. Mr. Ashurst had made a
disposition of his property twenty years ago--the right disposition, the
natural disposition; he had left the bulk of it as childless English
gentlemen have ever been wont to leave their wealth--to the eldest son
of the eldest son of his family. The Honourable Marmaduke Courtney
Ashurst, the testator, was the scion of a great house, which recent
agricultural changes, he regretted to say, had relatively impoverished;
he had come to the succour of that great house, as such a scion should,
with his property acquired by honest industry elsewhere. It was fitting
and reasonable that Mr. Ashurst should wish to see the Kynaston peerage
regain, in the person of the amiable and accomplished young nobleman
whom he had the honour to represent, some portion of its ancient dignity
and splendour.
But jealousy and greed intervened. (Here he frowned at Harold.) Mr.
Harold Tillington, the son of one of Mr. Ashurst's married sisters, cast
longing eyes, as he had tried to suggest to them, on his cousin Lord
Southminster's natural heritage. The result, he feared, was an unnatural
intrigue. Mr. Harold Tillington formed the acquaintance of a young
lady--should we say young lady?--(he withered me with his glance)--well,
yes, a lady, indeed, by birth and education, but an adventuress by
choice--a lady who, brought up in a respectable, though not (he must
admit) a distinguished sphere, had lowered herself by accepting the
position of a lady's maid, and had trafficked in patent American cycles
on the public high-roads of Germany and Switzerland. This clever and
designing woman (he would grant her ability--he would grant her good
looks) had fascinated Mr. Tillington--that was the theory he ventured to
lay before the jury to-day; and the jury would see for themselves that
whatever else the young lady might be, she had distinctly a certain
outer gift of fascination. It was for them to decide whether Miss Lois
Cayley had or had not suggested to Mr. Harold Tillington the design of
substituting a forged will for Mr. Marmaduke Ashurst's undeniable
testament. He would point out to them her singular connection with the
missing man Higginson, whom the young lady herself described as a rogue,
and from whom she had done her very best to dissociate herself in this
court--but ineffectually. Wherever Miss Cayley went, the man Higginson
went independently. Such frequent recurrences, such apt juxtapositions
could hardly be set down to mere accidental coincidence.
He went on to insinuate that Higginson and I had concocted the disputed
will between us; that we had passed it on to our fellow-conspirator,
Harold; and that Harold had forged his uncle's signature to it, and had
appended those of the two supposed witnesses. But who, now, were these
witnesses? One, Franz Markheim, was dead or missing; dead men tell no
tales: the other was obviously suggested by Higginson. It was his own
sister. Perhaps he forged her name to the document. Doubtless he thought
that family feeling would induce her, when it came to the pinch, to
accept and endorse her brother's lie; nay, he might even have been
foolish enough to suppose that this cock-and-bull will would not be
disputed. If so, he and his master had reckoned without Lord
Southminster, a gentleman who concealed beneath the careless exterior of
a man of fashion the solid intelligence of a man of affairs, and the
hard head of a man not to be lightly cheated in matters of business.
The alleged will had thus not a leg to stand upon. It was 'typewritten'
(save the mark!) 'from dictation' at Florence, by whom? By the lady who
had most to gain from its success--the lady who was to be transformed
from a shady adventuress, tossed about between Irish doctors and Hindu
Maharajahs, into the lawful wife of a wealthy diplomatist of noble
family, on one condition only--if this pretended will could be
satisfactorily established. The signatures were forgeries, as shown by
the expert evidence, and also by the oath of the one surviving witness.
The will left all the estate--practically--to Mr. Harold Tillington, and
five hundred pounds to whom?--why, to the accomplice Higginson. The
minor bequests the Q.C. regarded as ingenious inventions, pure play of
fancy, 'intended to give artistic verisimilitude,' as Pooh-Bah says in
the opera, 'to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.' The fads,
it was true, were known fads of Mr. Ashurst's: but what sort of fads?
Bimetallism? Anglo-Israel? No, braces and shoe-horns--clearly the kind
that would best be known to a courier like Higginson, the sole begetter,
he believed, of this nefarious conspiracy.
The cross-eyed Q.C., lifting his fat right hand in solemn adjuration,
called upon the jury confidently to set aside this ridiculous
fabrication, and declare for a will of undoubted genuineness, a will
drawn up in London by a firm of eminent solicitors, and preserved ever
since by the testator's bankers. It would then be for his lordship to
decide whether in the public interest he should recommend the Crown to
prosecute on a charge of forgery the clumsy fabricator of this
preposterous document.
The judge summed up--strongly in favour of Lord Southminster's will. If
the jury believed the experts and Miss Higginson, one verdict alone was
possible. The jury retired for three minutes only. It was a foregone
conclusion. They found for Lord Southminster. The judge, looking grave,
concurred in their finding. A most proper verdict. And he considered it
would be the duty of the Public Prosecutor to pursue Mr. Harold
Tillington on the charge of forgery.
[Illustration: I REELED WHERE I SAT.]
I reeled where I sat. Then I looked round for Harold.
He had slipped from the court, unseen, during counsel's address, some
minutes earlier!
That distressed me more than anything else on that dreadful day. I
wished he had stood up in his place like a man to face this vile and
cruel conspiracy.
I walked out slowly, supported by Lady Georgina, who was as white as a
ghost herself, but very straight and scornful. 'I always knew
Southminster was a fool,' she said aloud; 'I always knew he was a sneak;
but I did not know till now he was also a particularly bad type of
criminal.'
On the steps of the court, the pea-green young man met us. His air was
jaunty. 'Well, I was right, yah see,' he said, smiling and withdrawing
his cigarette. 'You backed the wrong fellah! I told you I'd win. I won't
say moah now; this is not the time or place to recur to that subject;
but, by-and-by, you'll come round; you'll think bettah of it still;
you'll back the winnah!'
I wished I were a man, that I might have the pleasure of kicking him.
We drove back to my hotel and waited for Harold. To my horror and alarm,
he never came near us. I might almost have doubted him--if he had not
been Harold.
I waited and waited. He did not come at all. He sent no word, no
message. And all that evening we heard the newsboys shouting at the top
of their voice in the street, 'Extra Speshul! the Ashurst Will Kise;
Sensational Developments' 'Mysterious Disappearance of Mr. 'Arold
Tillington.'
XI
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ORIENTAL ATTENDANT
I did not sleep that night. Next morning, I rose very early from a
restless bed with a dry, hot mouth, and a general feeling that the solid
earth had failed beneath me.
Still no news from Harold! It was cruel, I thought. My faith almost
flagged. He was a man and should be brave. How could he run away and
hide himself at such a time? Even if I set my own anxiety aside, just
think to what serious misapprehension it laid him open!
I sent out for the morning papers. They were full of Harold. Rumours,
rumours, rumours! Mr. Tillington had deliberately chosen to put himself
in the wrong by disappearing mysteriously at the last moment. He had
only himself to blame if the worst interpretation were put upon his
action. But the police were on his track; Scotland Yard had 'a clue': it
was confidently expected an arrest would be made before evening at
latest. As to details, authorities differed. The officials of the Great
Western Railway at Paddington were convinced that Mr. Tillington had
started, alone and undisguised, by the night express for Exeter. The
South-Eastern inspectors at Charing Cross, on the other hand, were
equally certain that he had slipped away with a false beard, in company
with his 'accomplice' Higginson, by the 8.15 P.M. to Paris. Everybody
took it for granted, however, that he had left London.
Conjecture played with various ultimate destinations--Spain, Morocco,
Sicily, the Argentine. In Italy, said the _Chronicle_, he might lurk for
a while--he spoke Italian fluently, and could manage to put up at tiny
_osterie_ in out-of-the-way places seldom visited by Englishmen. He
might try Albania, said the _Morning Post_, airing its exclusive
'society' information: he had often hunted there, and might in turn be
hunted. He would probably attempt to slink away to some remote spot in
the Carpathians or the Balkans, said the _Daily News_, quite proud of
its geography. Still, wherever he went, leaden-footed justice in this
age, said the _Times_, must surely overtake him. The day of universal
extradition had dawned; we had no more Alsatias: even the Argentine
itself gives up its rogues--at last; not an asylum for crime remains in
Europe, not a refuge in Asia, Africa, America, Australia, or the Pacific
Islands.
I noted with a shudder of horror that all the papers alike took his
guilt as certain. In spite of a few decent pretences at not prejudging
an untried cause, they treated him already as the detected criminal, the
fugitive from justice. I sat in my little sitting-room at the hotel in
Jermyn Street, a limp rag, looking idly out of the window with swimming
eyes, and waiting for Lady Georgina. It was early, too early, but--oh,
why didn't she come! Unless _somebody_ soon sympathised with me, my
heart would break under this load of loneliness!
Presently, as I looked out on the sloppy morning street, I was vaguely
aware through the mist that floated before my dry eyes (for tears were
denied me) of a very grand carriage driving up to the doorway--the porch
with the four wooden Ionic pillars. I took no heed of it. I was too
heart-sick for observation. My life was wrecked, and Harold's with it.
Yet, dimly through the mist, I became conscious after a while that the
carriage was that of an Indian prince; I could see the black faces, the
white turbans, the gold brocades of the attendants in the dickey. Then
it came home to me with a pang that this was the Maharajah.
It was kindly meant; yet after all that had been insinuated in court the
day before, I was by no means over-pleased that his dusky Highness
should come to call upon me. Walls have eyes and ears. Reporters were
hanging about all over London, eager to distinguish themselves by
successful eavesdropping. They would note, with brisk innuendoes after
their kind, how 'the Maharajah of Moozuffernuggar called early in the
day on Miss Lois Cayley, with whom he remained for at least half an hour
in close consultation.' I had half a mind to send down a message that I
could not see him. My face still burned with the undeserved shame of the
cross-eyed Q.C.'s unspeakable suggestions.
Before I could make my mind up, however, I saw to my surprise that the
Maharajah did not propose to come in himself. He leaned back in his
place with his lordly Eastern air, and waited, looking down on the
gapers in the street, while one of the two gorgeous attendants in the
dickey descended obsequiously to receive his orders. The man was dressed
as usual in rich Oriental stuffs, and wore his full white turban swathed
in folds round his head. I could not see his features. He bent forward
respectfully with Oriental suppleness to take his Highness's orders.
Then, receiving a card and bowing low, he entered the porch with the
wooden Ionic pillars, and disappeared within, while the Maharajah folded
his hands and seemed to resign himself to a temporary Nirvana.
[Illustration: THE MESSENGER ENTERED.]
A minute later, a knock sounded on my door. 'Come in!' I said, faintly;
and the messenger entered.
I turned and faced him. The blood rushed to my cheek. 'Harold!' I cried,
darting forward. My joy overcame me. He folded me in his arms. I allowed
him, unreproved. For the first time he kissed me. I did not shrink from
it.
Then I stood away a little and gazed at him. Even at that crucial moment
of doubt and fear, I could not help noticing how admirably he made up
as a handsome young Rajput. Three years earlier, at Schlangenbad, I
remembered he had struck me as strangely Oriental-looking: he had the
features of a high-born Indian gentleman, without the complexion. His
large, poetical eyes, his regular, oval face, his even teeth, his mouth
and moustache, all vaguely recalled the highest type of the Eastern
temperament. Now, he had blackened his face and hands with some
permanent stain--Indian ink, I learned later--and the resemblance to a
Rajput chief was positively startling. In his gold brocade and ample
white turban, no passer-by, I felt sure, would ever have dreamt of
doubting him.
'Then you knew me at once?' he said, holding my face between his hands.
'That's bad, darling! I flattered myself I had transformed my face into
the complete Indian.'
'Love has sharp eyes,' I answered. 'It can see through brick walls. But
the disguise is perfect. No one else would detect you.'
'Love is blind, I thought.'
'Not where it ought to see. There, it pierces everything. I knew you
instantly, Harold. But all London, I am sure, would pass you by,
unknown. You are absolute Orient.'
'That's well; for all London is looking for me,' he answered, bitterly.
'The streets bristle with detectives. Southminster's knaveries have won
the day. So I have tried this disguise. Otherwise, I should have been
arrested the moment the jury brought in their verdict.'
'And why were you not?' I asked, drawing back. 'Oh, Harold, I trust
you; but why did you disappear and make all the world believe you
admitted yourself guilty?'
He opened his arms. 'Can't you guess?' he cried, holding them out to
me.
I nestled in them once more; but I answered through my tears--I had
found tears now--'No Harold; it baffles me.'
'You remember what you promised me?' he murmured, leaning over me and
clasping me. 'If ever I were poor, friendless, hunted--you would marry
me. Now the opportunity has come when we can both prove ourselves.
To-day, except you and dear Georgey, I haven't a friend in the world.
Everyone else has turned against me. Southminster holds the field. I am
a suspected forger; in a very few days I shall doubtless be a convicted
felon. Unjustly, as you know; yet still--we must face it--a convicted
felon. So I have come to claim you. I have come to ask you now, in this
moment of despair, will you keep your promise?'
I lifted my face to his. He bent over it trembling. I whispered the
words in his ear. 'Yes, Harold, I will keep it. I have always loved you.
And now I will marry you.'
'I knew you would!' he cried, and pressed me to his bosom.
We sat for some minutes, holding each other's hands, and saying nothing;
we were too full of thought for words. Then suddenly, Harold roused
himself. 'We must make haste, darling,' he cried. 'We are keeping Partab
outside, and every minute is precious, every minute's delay dangerous.
We ought to go down at once. Partab's carriage is waiting at the door
for us.'
'Go down?' I exclaimed, clinging to him. 'How? Why? I don't understand.
What is your programme?'
'Ah, I forgot I hadn't explained to you! Listen here, dearest--quick; I
can waste no words over it. I said just now I had no friends in the
world but you and Georgey. That's not true, for dear old Partab has
stuck to me nobly. When all my English friends fell away, the Rajput
was true to me. He arranged all this; it was his own idea; he foresaw
what was coming. He urged me yesterday, just before the verdict (when he
saw my acquaintances beginning to look askance), to slip quietly out of
court, and make my way by unobtrusive roads to his house in Curzon
Street. There, he darkened my face like his, and converted me to
Hinduism. I don't suppose the disguise will serve me for more than a day
or two; but it will last long enough for us to get safely away to
Scotland.'
'Scotland?' I murmured. 'Then you mean to try a Scotch marriage?'
'It is the only thing possible. We must be married to-day, and in
England, of course, we cannot do it. We would have to be called in
church, or else to procure a license, either of which would involve
disclosure of my identity. Besides, even the license would keep us
waiting about for a day or two. In Scotland, on the other hand, we can
be married at once. Partab's carriage is below, to take you to King's
Cross. He is staunch as steel, dear fellow. Do you consent to go with
me?'
My faculty for promptly making up such mind as I possess stood me once
more in good stead. 'Implicitly,' I answered. 'Dear Harold, this
calamity has its happy side--for without it, much as I love you, I could
never have brought myself to marry you!'
'One moment,' he cried. 'Before you go, recollect, this step is
irrevocable. You will marry a man who may be torn from you this evening,
and from whom fourteen years of prison may separate you.'
'I know it,' I cried, through my tears. 'But-- I shall be showing my
confidence in you, my love for you.'
He kissed me once more, fervently. 'This makes amends for all,' he
cried. 'Lois, to have won such a woman as you, I would go through it all
a thousand times over. It was for this, and for this alone, that I hid
myself last night. I wanted to give you the chance of showing me how
much, how truly you loved me.'
'And after we are married?' I asked, trembling.
'I shall give myself up at once to the police in Edinburgh.'
I clung to him wistfully. My heart half urged me to urge him to escape.
But I knew that was wrong. 'Give yourself up, then,' I said, sobbing.
'It is a brave man's place. You must stand your trial; and, come what
will, I will strive to bear it with you.'
'I knew you would,' he cried. 'I was not mistaken in you.'
We embraced again, just once. It was little enough after those years of
waiting.
'Now, come!' he cried. 'Let us go.'
I drew back. 'Not with you, dearest,' I whispered. 'Not in the
Maharajah's carriage. You must start by yourself. I will follow you at
once, to King's Cross, in a hansom.'
He saw I was right. It would avoid suspicion, and it would prevent more
scandal. He withdrew without a word. 'We meet,' I said, 'at ten, at
King's Cross Station.'
I did not even wait to wash the tears from my eyes. All red as they
were, I put on my hat and my little brown travelling jacket. I don't
think I so much as glanced once at the glass. The seconds were precious.
I saw the Maharajah drive away, with Harold in the dickey, arms crossed,
imperturbable, Orientally silent. He looked the very counterpart of the
Rajput by his side. Then I descended the stairs and walked out boldly.
As I passed through the hall, the servants and the visitors stared at me
and whispered. They spoke with nods and liftings of the eyebrows. I was
aware that that morning I had achieved notoriety.
At Piccadilly Circus, I jumped of a sudden into a passing hansom.
'King's Cross!' I cried, as I mounted the step. 'Drive quick! I have no
time to spare.' And, as the man drove off, I saw, by a convulsive dart
of someone across the road, that I had given the slip to a disappointed
reporter.
At the station I took a first-class ticket for Edinburgh. On the
platform, the Maharajah and his attendants were waiting. He lifted his
hat to me, though otherwise he took no overt notice. But I saw his keen
eyes follow me down the train. Harold, in his Oriental dress, pretended
not to observe me. One or two porters, and a few curious travellers,
cast inquiring eyes on the Eastern prince, and made remarks about him to
one another. 'That's the chap as was up yesterday in the Ashurst will
kise!' said one lounger to his neighbour. But nobody seemed to look at
Harold; his subordinate position secured him from curiosity. The
Maharajah had always two Eastern servants, gorgeously dressed, in
attendance; he had been a well-known figure in London society, and at
Lord's and the Oval, for two or three seasons.
'Bloomin' fine cricketer!' one porter observed to his mate as he passed.
'Yuss; not so dusty for a nigger,' the other man replied. 'Fust-rite
bowler; but, Lord, he can't 'old a candle to good old Ranji.'
As for myself, nobody seemed to recognise me. I set this fact down to
the fortunate circumstance that the evening papers had published rough
wood-cuts which professed to be my portrait, and which naturally led the
public to look out for a brazen-faced, raw-boned, hard-featured
termagant.
I took my seat in a ladies' compartment by myself. As the train was
about to start, Harold strolled up as if casually for a moment. 'You
think it better so?' he queried, without moving his lips or seeming to
look at me.
'Decidedly,' I answered. 'Go back to Partab. Don't come near me again
till we get to Edinburgh. It is dangerous still. The police may at any
moment hear we have started and stop us half-way; and now that we have
once committed ourselves to this plan it would be fatal to be
interrupted before we have got married.'
'You are right,' he cried; 'Lois, you are always right, somehow.'
I wished I could think so myself; but 'twas with serious misgivings that
I felt the train roll out of the station.
Oh, that long journey north, alone, in a ladies' compartment--with the
feeling that Harold was so near, yet so unapproachable: it was an
endless agony. _He_ had the Maharajah, who loved and admired him, to
keep him from brooding; but I, left alone, and confined with my own
fears, conjured up before my eyes every possible misfortune that Heaven
could send us. I saw clearly now that if we failed in our purpose this
journey would be taken by everyone for a flight, and would deepen the
suspicion under which we both laboured. It would make me still more
obviously a conspirator with Harold.
Whatever happened, we must strain every nerve to reach Scotland in
safety, and then to get married, in order that Harold might immediately
surrender himself.
[Illustration: HE TOOK A LONG, CARELESS STARE AT ME.]