Miss Arnott's Marriage Part 31

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean exactly what I say. Won't you see?"

"I can see that you are in a state of excitement which is not warranted by anything I understand."

It was odd what a disinclination the elder lady showed to meet the young one's eyes. She moved hither and thither, as if possessed by a spirit of restlessness; but, though Miss Arnott kept her gaze fixed on her unfalteringly wherever she went, she herself never glanced in the girl's direction.

"Excited! I can't help being excited! How you can keep so cool is what I don't know! Everyone is pointing a finger and saying that you were out in the woods at the very time that--that wretched man was--was being murdered"--Mrs Plummer cast furtive looks about her as if the deed was being enacted that very moment before her eyes--"and asking where you were and what you were doing all alone in the woods at that hour, and how it was that you knew nothing at all of what was taking place, possibly quite close by you; and you let them ask, and say and do nothing to stop their tongues; and if they are not stopped heaven only knows where they'll lead them. My dear, won't you tell me where you went? and what it was that you were doing?"

"No, Mrs Plummer, I won't--so now your question is answered. And as I have some letters to write may I ask you to leave me?"

Mrs Plummer did glance at Miss Arnott for one moment; but for only one.

Then, as if she did not dare to trust herself to speak again, she hurried from the room. Left alone, the young lady indulged in some possibly ironical comments on her companion's deportment.

"Really, to judge from Mrs Plummer's behaviour, one would imagine that this business worried her more than it does me. If she doesn't exercise a little more self-control I shouldn't be surprised if it ends in making her actually ill."

CHAPTER XXII

MR ERNEST GILBERT

Miss Arnott wrote to Mr Ernest Gilbert--the famous lawyer whose name Mr Stacey had given her--asking him to make all necessary arrangements for Jim Baker's defence. She expressed her own personal conviction in the man's innocence, desiring him to leave no stone unturned to make it plain, and to spare no expense in doing so. In proof of her willingness to pay any costs which might be incurred she enclosed a cheque for 500, and a.s.sured him that she would at once forward any further sum which might be required. Mr Gilbert furnished himself with a copy of the depositions given before the committing justices, and also before the coroner; and, having mastered them, went down to see his client in Winchester Gaol.

He found Mr Baker in very poor plight. The gamekeeper, who probably had gipsy blood in his veins, had been accustomed from childhood to an open air life. Often in fine weather he did not resort to the shelter of a roof for either sleeping or eating. Crabbed and taciturn by const.i.tution he loved the solitude and freedom of the woods. On a summer's night the turf at the foot of a tree was couch enough for him, the sky sufficient roof. Had he been able to give adequate expression to his point of view, his definition of the torments of h.e.l.l would have been confinement within four walls. In gaol--cribbed, cabined and confined--he seemed to slough his manhood like a skin. His nature changed. When Mr Gilbert went to see him, the dogged heart of the man had lost half its doggedness. He pined for freedom--for G.o.d's air, and the breath of the woods--with such desperate longing that, if he could, he would have made an end of every soul in Winchester Gaol to get at it.

Mr Gilbert summed him up--or thought he did--at sight. He made it a rule in these sort of cases to leap at an instant conclusion, even though afterwards it might turn out to be erroneous. Experience had taught him that, in first interviews with clients of a certain kind, quickness of speech--and of decision--was a trick which often paid. So that the door had hardly been closed which left the pair together than--metaphorically--he sprang at Mr Baker like a bull terrier at a rat.

"Now, my man, do you want to hang?"

"Hang? me? No, I don't. Who does?"

"Then you'll tell me who stuck a knife into that fellow in Cooper's Spinney."

"Me tell you? What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean, and you know who handled that knife; and it's only by telling me that you'll save your neck from the gallows."

Baker stared with tightened lips and frowning brows. This spruce little gentleman was beyond him altogether.

"Here! you go too fast for me. I don't know who you are, not from Adam.

Who might you be?"

"My name's Gilbert--I'm a lawyer--and I'm going to save you from the gallows, if I can."

"A lawyer?" Baker put up a gnarled hand to rasp his stubbly chin. He looked at the other with eyes which trouble had dimmed. "Has she sent you?"

"She? Who?"

"You know who I mean."

"I shall know if you tell me. How can I know if you don't tell me?"

"Has Miss Arnott sent you?"

"Miss Arnott? Why should Miss Arnott send me?"

"She knows if you don't."

"Do you think Miss Arnott cares if you were strung up to the top of the tallest tree to-morrow?"

"She mightn't care if I was strung up, but I ain't going to be strung up; and that she does know."

The lawyer looked keenly at the countryman. All at once he changed his tone, he became urbanity itself.

"Now, Baker, let's understand each other, you and I. I flatter myself that I've saved more than one poor chap from a hempen collar, and I'd like to save you. You never put that knife into that man."

"Of course I didn't; ain't I kept on saying so?"

"Then why should you hang?"

"I ain't going to hang. Don't you make any mistake about it, and don't let n.o.body else make any mistake about it neither. I ain't going to hang."

"But, my good fellow, in these kind of affairs they generally hang someone; if they can't find anyone else, it will probably be you. How are you going to help it?"

Baker opened and closed his mouth like a trap, once, twice, thrice, and nothing came out of it. There was a perceptible pause; he was possibly revolving something in his sluggish brain. Then he asked a question,--

"Is that all you've got to say?"

"Of course it's not. My stock of language isn't quite so limited. Only I want you to see just where you're standing, and just what the danger is that's threatening. And I want you to know that I know that you know who handled that knife; and that probably the only way of saving you from the gallows is to let me know. You understand that it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm going to tell everyone; the secret will be as safe with me as with you. Only this is a case in which, if I'm to do any good, I must know where we are. Now, Baker, tell me, who was it who used the knife?"

Again Baker's jaws opened and shut, as if automatically; then, after another interval, again he asked a question.

"You ain't yet told me if it was Miss Arnott as sent you?"

"And you haven't yet told me why Miss Arnott should send me?"

"That's my business. Did she? Do you hear me ask you--did she?"

Baker brought his fist down with a bang on to the wooden table by which he was standing. Mr Gilbert eyed him in his eager, terrier-like fas.h.i.+on, as if he were seeking for a weak point on which to make an attack. Then, suddenly, again his manner altered. Ignoring Baker's question as completely as if it had never been asked, he diverted the man's attention from the expected answer by all at once plunging into entirely different matters. Before he knew what was happening Baker found himself subjected to a stringent examination of a kind for which he was wholly unprepared. The solicitor slipped from point to point in a fas.h.i.+on which so confused his client's stupid senses that, by the time the interview was over, Jim Baker had but the vaguest notion of what he had said or left unsaid.

Mr Gilbert went straight from the gaol to a post-office from which he dispatched this reply-paid telegram:--

"To HUGH MORICE, Oak Dene.

"When I was once able to do you a service you said that, if ever the chance offered, you would do me one in return. You can do me such a service by giving me some dinner and a bed for to-night.