1
"There is always," says Bertram Standon in his book "How I Fought Fleet
Street," "a psychological news-moment. To be premature with news is even
worse than to be dilatory with it. The editor who knows when _not_ to
publish is worth his weight in gold."
In the Towers-public defender stunt, the proprietor of the "Democratic
News" backed his maxim to the limit. Clean through a newsless August,
and well into a newsless September, he stirred the pool of the
controversy he had started; whipped up every ripple of public interest
to a wave of excitement over the guilt or innocence of Lucy Towers; but
gave no hint of the rope he, Standon the Magnificent, intended to pull
when finally the last act of the great drama should be launched upon
London.
Even Ronnie, chafing for his chance, could ascertain no detail of the
magnate's intention. Cartwright, pumped whenever etiquette allowed it,
only beamed, "Wait and see!" Jimmy, who must have known something, had
disappeared into Devonshire. At her second ordeal, the trial before the
magistrate, Lucy Towers--still represented by the same unimposing
solicitor--reserved her defense and was formally committed for trial at
the Old Bailey.
Meanwhile Julia Cavendish worked on.
2
Physically and mentally, as day followed September day, Ronnie's mother
felt well--better, indeed, than at any other period of her illness. The
weapon of her forging grew sharp and sharper under her hand.
Despite the realization, every time she set pencil to paper, that the
candle of her life was burning remorselessly to its socket, that her
mind and her body must alike expire at task's completion, she
experienced no fear. Her brain, rapt in the creative ecstasy of Julia
Cavendish, living novelist, regarded Julia Cavendish, dying woman, from
a point of view of the coolest detachment.
Outwardly, to her watchers, to Ronnie, nurse, Aliette, and Mrs.
Sanderson, she played a part; the part of the convalescent. That they,
in their ignorance, should believe the part she played to be real, gave
to her detachment a whimsical and peculiar happiness.
And always in those days the illusion of immortality sustained her. She
used to think, lying weary of work on her great bed: "Like Horace, I
shall not utterly die. Dying, I shall leave my Ronnie this sword of the
written word. What greater proof of love and service could any son or
any god require?"
For now, almost at the end of her race with death, Julia Cavendish knew
the conviction of Godhead. The priest-hoisted sectarian idol of her
middle years lay shattered into a thousand fragments. In its stead was a
spiritual Presence, all-pervading, all-comprehending, all-pardoning: an
Individual of Individuals, to whom, freed from the slave-allegiance of
the formal churches, each unhampered soul must fight its own unhampered
way: a Soul of Souls who--despising no man-made creed--yet demanded more
than any creed made of man, even the courage to look on life and death
and Himself alike fearlessly.
But to that Godhead the soul of Aliette Brunton had not yet come. Her
second honeymoon-time was over; Daffadillies no longer "Joyous Gard";
Ronnie no more the single-minded lover of July. Between them, like a
wraith, hovered a man's ambition.
And, "If only--if only I could be with child," thought Aliette. "If only
there could be given me one tiny mite of love--one human atom to be
wholly mine." For always now--as it seemed--Ronnie and Ronnie's mother
grew less and less dependent on her affection. To each was their work:
to her only the waiting.
Ronnie's nerves, Ronnie's chafing after success, reminded her of Hector,
of the Hector she had married. Every Monday morning, as she drove with
him down the odorous country roads to West Water, his talk would be of
Lucy Towers: "She's innocent, Alie. I'll swear she's innocent"; "If only
I can get that brief, I'll be a made man"; "A made man, I tell you;
Cartwright said so."
Rushing back to Daffadillies she used to think: "I'm selfish, selfish. I
mustn't stand between him and his career. I must help him--help both of
them." But at Daffadillies, demanding no help, resolute over her desk,
sat Julia; and Aliette, looking up at the magnolia-sheathed window,
would feel lonely; lonelier than ever before; so lonely that not even
Ronnie's letters could console her through the desert week.
Yes! even his letters seemed less loving. Through every line of them she
could feel the pulse and surge of a new desire--of the desire for
success--which, if gratified, must leave her lonelier yet. Once she had
cherished his letters at her breasts. But now her very breasts were a
reproach; a reproach of childlessness. Once, laying her head among the
pillows, she had dreamed of him beside her. But now, every night, her
pillows were wet; wet with tears. Strange terrors tore her in the
nighttime. She dreamed herself utterly outcast--the woman reproached of
her own children--mother indeed, but mother-in-shame.
3
And then suddenly, a bare fortnight before the reopening of the Central
Criminal Courts, Ronnie's dreams came true. John Cartwright himself
brought round the brief, the long taped document marked on the outside:
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT. Session October.
REX _v._ TOWERS. Brief for the Defense.
MR. RONALD CAVENDISH. 50 gns. Conference 5 gns.
Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright, Norfolk Street.
"Standon jibbed a bit at that fifty," chuckled John. "He said you ought
to take the case for nothing, considering the publicity he's going to
give you."
"Oh, did he?" Ronnie laughed; but his nerves were quivering. "My whole
career," he thought. "Riches--success--fame. It's all in my own hands
now. Standon thinks he's overpaid me, does he? Perhaps he has. But I'll
give him a run for his money. Fight! By Jove, I'll fight every foot,
every inch of the way."
"I shall want an order to see the prisoner," he went on. "And, look
here, if Standon's people can find out----" The cautious voice dropped;
so that Benjamin Bunce, in the outer office, heard only a vague drone of
talk.
"That'll be all right," answered the solicitor; and two days later a
very different Ronnie caught the Saturday afternoon train to West Water.
"I'll get her off," he told Julia and Aliette, seated at tea under the
cedar. "I'll get her off--or die in the attempt. This is my chance, I
tell you. My big chance at last!"
"Optimist!" Julia laughed, a little wearily. "How can you 'get her off'?
As far as I can see there's nothing in the woman's favor except that
she's a little like our Aliette."
"A little like her! Mater, it's amazing. When I saw her yesterday, in
that wretched place at Brixton, I could have sworn it _was_ Alie." And
he went on talking, talking, talking of "his chance" till the sun sank
behind the cedar-tree; till--Julia, utterly tired out, having been
carried into the house--Aliette interrupted him with, "I've been rather
worried about her this week. Don't you think we might have Sir Heron
down again?"
"We might see what she's got to say about it in the morning," answered
Ronnie; but next morning, Sunday, the "Democratic News" drove all
thoughts save one from his mind.
At long last, Bertram Standon had launched his journalistic thunderbolt.
"Shall Lucy Towers hang?" howled Bertram Standon. "Never--if she be
innocent--while we can prevent it. Never--if she be innocent--while
there's a dollar in our purse or a sense of pity in our hearts. Let the
state pour out the taxpayers' money like water--let the bureaucrats
brief their 'hanging prosecutor' if they will. We, so far failing in our
efforts to secure the appointment of a public defender, have
briefed--out of our own pocket--a defender for Lucy Towers, a young man,
an untried man, but a man in whom both we and the unfortunate woman in
whose defense he will rise at the Old Bailey have the most unbounded
confidence. And who is this young man? He is Ronald Cavendish--son of a
woman who is known wherever the English language is spoken, of Julia
Cavendish, our greatest woman novelist."
And squeezed away in the "stop press," so inconspicuous that Julia, who
did not see the papers till tea-time, was the first of the three to
notice it, stood the news: "_Brixton Murder. Saturday night. The Crown
has briefed Mr. Hector Brunton, K.C., for the prosecution of Lucy
Towers._"
4
Hector Brunton sat alone in his chambers at King's Bench Walk. Within
the dusty book-littered room brooded silence. From without, from under
trees already browning for a hint of autumn, sounded the occasional
tup-tup of feet on the flagstones, the occasional staccato of a raised
voice. The noises fretted Brunton, distracting his attention from the
multitudinous papers prepared by the director of public prosecutions in
the case of Rex _v._ Towers, which stood piled on his ink-stained desk.
"I'm getting jumpy," he thought, turning from the signed and sealed
findings of the coroner's jury, through the verbatim reports of the
proceedings before the magistrate, to the actual indictment.
Concentrating, the K.C. reread the words of that indictment.
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT
THE KING _v._ LUCY TOWERS
Lucy Towers is charged with the following offense:
_Statement of Offense_: Homicide.
_Particulars of Offence_: Lucy Towers on the fifth day of July, in the
County of Middlesex, murdered her husband, William Towers, by shooting
him with a revolver.
Reading, an expression almost of mania flickered across Brunton's face.
Behind the words of the indictment, his mind visualized the actual
crime: the woman, some blowzy Messalina of the slums lusting horribly
for a mutilated lover: the lover, a puppet in her adulterous arms: the
husband, shot down in cold blood because he dared to come between the
woman and her desires.
A fitting client--thought Brunton--for this other adulterer, this Ronald
Cavendish with his gutter-press backing, to defend. But he would defend
her in vain!
The K.C.'s long fingers prodded among the papers. Ever since the Cairns
case, he had derived--subconsciously--a satisfaction, a secret
chop-licking satisfaction, from his title of "hanging prosecutor." It
was as though, harrying Mrs. Cairns to her death, he had taken his
revenge on all women. And he thought: "Hilda Cairns escaped my rope.
Lucy Towers shall not escape it."
Concentrating again, he reread the entire evidence. Outside it grew
darker--silent. He switched on the opal-shaded reading-lamp; and sent
David Patterson home. It was good--good to be alone with this chess-game
of death: Messalina for its queen, his brain the mover of those pawns
which would sweep her from the board.
Brunton's gray pupils shrank to pin-points. There were flaws, flaws in
the evidence. The chess-board, as prepared by the solicitors for the
Crown, lacked one pawn; the pawn of premeditation. Given himself, with
his gift of oratory, to defend her, Lucy Towers might escape the
black-cap sentence of the murderess.
Now the K. C.'s brain took the other side of the chess-board. He played
the queen against himself; played her to the stalemate of
"manslaughter." That would be Cavendish's gambit; a reduction of the
charge.
But could Cavendish succeed?
For a long time Hector Brunton sat motionless, brooding; a cruel figure
in the green glare of the desk-light. Then he drew the proof of Maggie
Peterson's evidence from the paper pile; and, recasting it word by word,
saw the rope tighten, tighten round his victim's neck, saw her drop feet
first through the sliding floor.
God! but it would be good--good to know Cavendish beaten; to know him as
incapable of defending this woman as of defending that other.
And at that, abruptly, the K.C.'s concentration snapped. The Furies were
on him again, lashing at his loins, lashing him to blood-frenzy. He
sprang to his feet; and his chair crashed backward as he sprang. This
woman, this Lucy Towers, must hang. Hang! Between him and his enemy,
between him and the man whose body possessed Aliette, she, the Messalina
of the slums, stood for a symbol. Destroying the one, he would destroy
all three. This was his chance; his chance for revenge.
Vengeance at last! Too long Aliette and Cavendish had eluded him--eluded
the torturer.
God! If only he could torture Aliette; torture her, not as he would
torture this other woman when she stood before him in the witness-box,
but physically. Of what avail was the law--the law that had reprieved
Hilda Cairns from the rope, that left Aliette to revel unpunished in the
arms of her paramour--the law that gave him, the wronged husband, no
remedy for his wrongs save to set the woman who had wronged him
free--free to marry her paramour, to flaunt herself as her paramour's
wife before an uncensorious world?
The Furies were howling at him: "Don't set her free, Hector Brunton.
Don't set her free! Get her back, Hector Brunton! Make her come back to
you! Make her submit--submit her cold unyielding body to your hot
desires. Make her your slave, your puppet--as the armless man was puppet
of the woman you have sworn to hang."
With a great shock of self-disgust, of self-realization, Aliette's
husband controlled his distraught brain. But his loins still quivered to
memory of the lash; sweat beaded his forehead; his hands, as he lifted
the overset chair, felt hot and clammy on the polished rail. For months
he had succeeded in forgetfulness; in chasing the Furies from his mind.
Work had helped him to forget--and Renée, Renée with her red and riotous
hair, her facile, faithless sensuality. Other women too--facile,
unfastidious.
Christ! but he was tired of it all. Tired! Work and women, women and
work--month after month, the same eternal treadmill! Now he was weary;
wearied alike of his work and his women. Remained in him only the one
desire; the desire for vengeance. That desire he would satisfy. And
after that?
What did it matter? He, Hector Brunton, knew the hollowness of all
desires. Even in success, even in hatred, even in vengeance, could be no
enduring satisfaction.
A great mood of self-pity submerged his mind. Fame, riches, every fruit
of his up-reaching--he had won. And the choicest fruits left only a
bitterness in his mouth. How could a man enjoy those fruits in
loneliness?
Christ! but he was lonely--lonely. He hadn't even a friend. Not one
single friend with whom to take counsel! Not one solitary being in all
the world who would listen--as a friend listens--to---to the still,
small scarce-articulate voice which had begun to whisper in Hector
Brunton's soul.
That voice, the still small voice of conscience, was whispering now.
"Cruel," it whispered; "cruel. Set her free. Set her free!"
Heavily Hector Brunton sat him down at his desk. His gray pupils stared
vacantly at the light. He saw two faces in the light: his wife's face,
torture-pale; and the face he imagined Lucy's, heavy-jowled, animal, yet
with a hint of soul behind the animal eyes.
The two faces seemed to be pleading with him, pleading for pity. "We
have known love," they pleaded, "but you--how should you understand?"
The faces vanished; and in their stead he saw Renée--insatiate,
submissive, her mouth still upcurled for his. "_I_ am love," said the
mouth of Renée.
But always the still small voice of conscience whispered in Hector's
soul. "Between love and lust," whispered the voice, "between the good
and the bad that is in you, between the cruelty that cries for vengeance
and the understanding which is pity--choose!"