A TRIVIAL INCIDENT.
Lady Levallion had been committed for trial at the assizes, and, as
Houghton had foreseen, was refused bail.
In the county jail at Valehampton she must stay alone, comfortless--a
girl of nineteen; must be a month away from liberty and free air before
her trial. Of after that Houghton dared not think. He worked wonders
for her comfort, though, and instead of a cell she had a room, plain
and bare, but still a room. Yet it seemed prisonlike enough to Sir
Thomas Annesley, when at last he had leave to go and see her.
Door after door was unlocked and locked behind him; corridor after
corridor sickened him with its cold smell of carbolic acid, till at
last he stood in the small room that was properly part of the jail
infirmary, and heard its iron door click behind his heels.
“Tommy!” she cried, incredulous, rapturous, though she had known he was
coming.
But the boy could not answer; could only cling to her, trying to choke
back his pitiful sobbing against her shoulder. For he had seen her
face, and knew a little, just a little, of what her days and nights
must have been.
“Don’t cry, darling!” she whispered, as though it had been he and not
she that was in peril of life. “Oh, Tommy, I thought I would die for
want of you!”
“They wouldn’t let me come.” He lifted his head. “Who’s that?” he cried
sharply. For a woman was sewing by the window.
“The matron,” softly. “Did you think they’d let you see me alone?”
The woman looked up.
“Don’t mind me, sir!” she cried, her hard face very gentle. “I’ll not
heed anything you say.”
For Houghton, by good luck, was the prison doctor, and she believed in
him as in the four Gospels.
“She’s been very good to me,” Ravenel said gratefully, and the matron
smiled, but her eyes were wet. For, if Lady Levallion were innocent ten
times over, she could not prove it. And the matron’s only daughter who
died would have been just the age now of this girl, who presently would
be tried for murder. She moved to the farthest limit of the room as the
brother and sister sat down on the bed.
“Are you well, Tommy?” Ravenel whispered. “You look so thin!”
“Never mind me; I’m all right.” He grabbed at her hand. “I can only
stay half an hour. Tell me, can’t you think of anything I don’t know?”
“Nothing,” deliberately. For once having perjured herself because
she had seen a flying glimpse of a man she thought was Adrian, there
was nothing to do but stick by it. If she had been certain he was in
London, she could have told the truth; but yet it would have helped her
very little in face of those two bottles.
“You’ve seen your lawyer?”
She nodded. There had been little enough in that clever man’s face to
reassure her.
“Don’t fret,” she said slowly. “There are three weeks before I--my
trial.”
“And so far we haven’t found out one thing,” he said, and hid his face
again.
“I’ve thought of something, though it can’t help me,” she began,
smoothing the boy’s rough hair. “The Umbrella, Tommy! She didn’t send
for me to tell me about that old story of Sylvia. She sent for me to
warn me about Levallion. I feel it, and he did, too; else why did he
say, before he died: ‘We should have gone’?”
“But the Umbrella’s dead. We’ll never know.”
“No! But if she knew something, some one else may. It’s sure to come
out.”
“But if it doesn’t?” he gasped.
A dreadful shudder took her. To die, with a rope around her neck, in a
prison-yard!
“Pray it will!” she cried. “Oh, Tommy, I know you’d help me if you
could! But if you can’t, pretend it’s all right. It’s the only thing
you can do for me. I--I’ve got to be brave!”
The boy sat up, but he did not look at her.
“Look here,” he said; “what do you think about Gordon?”
“He didn’t do it!” quickly; for all her pains, joyfully.
“No! I don’t mean that. But if he wants to help you, why doesn’t he
come back to Levallion Castle and watch those servants? He’s vanished,
clean gone. Went to London the day of the funeral, and nobody knows
where he is.”
“He couldn’t help me,” loyally. “Those servants know no more than they
said.” But her heart sank in her. Was it possible that he did not care?
And yet it had not been so much for Adrian’s sake as for Levallion’s
that she had lied at the inquest. No one should be able to say that one
of the dead man’s own blood had murdered him because he had loved his
wife.
“Perhaps not! But Gordon ought to be there,” gruffly.
“Are you there?” she asked.
“Where can I go?” miserably. “I’ve no money. If I had I couldn’t leave
you.”
“Adrian will look after you.” She hesitated, for she had a dim idea
that if they hanged her the crown would take her jointure.
“I wouldn’t take his money. It was all his!” bitterly.
“It was all Sylvia.” For the first time she had color in her face. “Oh,
don’t hark back to it, Tommy! Levallion was kind to us; and some one
killed him for it.”
The door swung back heavily.
“Time’s up, sir,” said the warden.
It did not seem five minutes, but it was nearer forty than thirty.
“I’ll come,” said Sir Thomas Annesley, and he looked ten years older.
“Ravenel, I nearly forgot. The duchess wrote to me. She’s coming here,
to Valehampton, to be near you. She’ll come here as often as they’ll
let her.”
“I’m glad,” simply. “But I think I only want you.” (And one other,
whose hand she would never touch again in life!)
She sat down, tearless. One breath, of all the world she could have
hidden her face against; one strong shoulder would have known her
tears. But between Adrian Gordon and her was a deep gulf set: a gulf of
blood that cried aloud.
But Tommy Annesley was blind with tears as he drove the long ten miles
between Valehampton and Levallion Castle. It was bitter work to stay
there eating Adrian’s bread; but he could not go away.
“Perhaps the duchess will take me with her,” he thought, “till----” But
even to himself he could not finish. When the trial was over it was not
likely that Tommy Annesley would have overmuch care for what happened.
He would get away, he and Jacobs, from every soul who had known
him--would work, somehow, for his living. A lump rose in his throat as
he walked into the broad hall of Levallion Castle, all soft firelight
and welcome, and thought of its mistress sitting on her pallet bed in
Valehampton Jail.
Tea was waiting, but he could not swallow it. He flew out into the
desolate, twilit garden, and rambled aimlessly, he hardly saw where.
Jacobs, for once, was not with him; all alone, his hands in his
pockets, his slow feet silent on the frozen grass, Sir Thomas walked
mechanically, racking his brain to no purpose over that mysterious man
and woman the detectives had been unable to trace.
He might have racked his brain still harder if he had known the reason
of the silence that reigned concerning them. In Adrian’s theory
about the absconding tenant of the bungalow, no one believed at all.
Arlington’s man had been almost openly unbelieving about dragging a
strange woman into the case, and the prosecution merely smiled at the
idea of there being any mystery whatever, thanks to that hasty evidence
of Sir Thomas Annesley’s. It was all very well for him to believe he
had made a mistake; no one else did. In the eyes of the world, those
two people who drank champagne in a wood had been Captain Gordon
and Lady Levallion, since the only man who could have sworn to her
whereabouts was dead!
“If I only could think of something!” the boy mused desperately, and
stopped short at a queer sound.
He had wandered into the dark kitchen-garden, behind a row of deserted
potting sheds; and from them came a sound exactly like the beating of
carpets. It was no concern of Tommy’s, though the hour was a queer one,
and he was moving on when a pitiful moaning like a dog being beaten to
death made him jump. His thoughts flew to the absent Jacobs, and the
cook who had a grudge against him.
Silent, with flying feet, Tommy ran to the back of the shed, full of
fury. But as he paused by the latticed, glassless window at the back of
it, he knew it was no dog which was concerned in the carpet-beating,
but a boy.
“Don’t! don’t!” he was crying. “I won’t go away. I’ll stay with you.
I’ll do whatever you say!”
The sound of blows ceased.
“That is a sensible, amiable boy!” said a voice, and it was the chef’s.
“And you will say to the world that you love me--that there was never
any one like me, eh?”
The boy groaned.
“Yes!”
Sir Thomas heard the whistle of a stick uplifted.
“Oh, yes! Don’t hit me.”
“It is for your good that I break the bones in your skin,” returned
Carrousel. “We shall hear no more of this running away?”
“No,” in exhausted sobs. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever you tell me.
I----”
Sir Thomas bounced round the corner of the shed.
“What the devil’s this?” he said fiercely, and a lighted match
flickered in his hand.
There was Carrousel, his face like a devil’s, grasping a heavy stick,
and on the mud floor the boot-boy, quivering with pain. The match went
out.
“How dare you beat the boy like that?” cried Tommy. “I’ll have you up
for assault.”
“He disobeyed me, refused to do his work.”
In the dark Carrousel’s boot grazed the boy’s ribs. “Did you not, eh?”
“Yes.” The answer was little better than a moan.
“I don’t see what a cook has to do with blacking boots!” angrily. “And
if he disobeyed you a dozen times, you’ve no right to beat him like
this.”
“He runs my errands,” said Carrousel sullenly. “He would not do his
work; he played, idled.”
“You get out of this and let him alone,” authoritatively. “And if I
catch you at this again I’ll have you arrested. Go now, sharp! My
dog’ll be here in a minute,” significantly.
“You threaten me--intimidate?” In the dark Carrousel’s face was not
pretty. But like lightning he changed his tone.
“I regret if you think the punishment too severe. The boy--earned it!”
He spoke like oil, and in the dark stooped and whispered two words in
the boot-boy’s ear.
“Clear out!” Tommy stamped his foot, unconscious of that whisper. “Get
back to your pots and pans, or I’ll have you driven there. Jacobs! Hi,
Jacobs!” he yelled.
But Monsieur Carrousel was gone.
Tommy stooped over the boot-boy.
“Why did you let him beat you like that?” he said. “Why didn’t you
yell?”
But he got no answer. Another match flickered in the shed. Towers, the
boot-boy, was lying on his face, shaking with sobs.
“See here,” said Tommy, “don’t! Here’s half a crown for you”--his last
coin--“if you couldn’t fight that beast why didn’t you complain if he
ill-treated you? Has he done it before?”
No answer.
“Well,” disgustedly, “if you won’t tell, I shall! I’ll have Carrousel
hauled up.”
Towers said something; caught at Tommy in the dark, as if to stop him.
“Don’t!” he gasped. “Don’t sir! He’d kill me.”
“Rot! He couldn’t. What’s the matter with him? Has he got anything
against you--why are you afraid of him?”
“I am not afraid. He is kind to me. I will go with him if he leaves
this place.”
Tommy drew a long breath. The short sentences had come out in the
singsong whine of the village school, exactly as if they had been
learned by rote.
“Then you must be a fool!” he observed candidly. “Do you mean you don’t
want me to complain of the beast?”
Towers said no, still in that unnatural voice.
“Go back to the house and wash your face!” the other boy, who was but
four years older, advised. “And if he beats you again, you come to me,
and I’ll settle him.”
Towers’ teeth chattered.
“I made him angry,” he said, shivering. “I won’t do it again. Don’t say
anything, sir; oh, please!”
“All right,” disgustedly. “If you like being pounded, it’s no concern
of mine!” and, being cold, he assisted the boot-boy to his feet and
departed.
“Carrousel did look a devil!” he thought. “But the boy seems
half-witted. Yet----”
He stopped short in the dark.
“Cooky looked as if he would kill him!” he gasped. “I wonder if--but it
couldn’t be. But if I could think it, I--I’d make him swing.”
He ran to the house as hard as he could go. For the first time he had
“thought of something.”
“Mr. Arlington,” he cried, bursting in on the lawyer where he sat
toiling over bundles of Levallion’s neglected and unopened letters in
the hope of finding some clue to some one who had a grudge against him.
“Do you know Captain Gordon’s address?” For reasons of his own he said
nothing about that trivial incident in the garden.
“No!” slowly. “Lord Levallion’s, you mean? I’ve never heard one word
from him.”
The boy’s flushed face paled.