The Witness for the Defense by A. E. W. Mason (best mystery novels of all time TXT) 📖

everything … Between us we haven't a couple of pennies to rub together … How she rides! … She was never meant for Brixton … No, nor I … Why didn't I hold my tongue? … Oh what a fool, what a fool! Thank Heaven the horses come out of a livery stable … They can't go on for ever and—oh, my God! there are rabbit-holes on the Downs." And his voice rose to a shout: "Stella! Stella!"

But she never looked over her shoulder. She fled the more desperately, shamed through and through! Along the high ridge, between the bushes and the beech-trees, their shadows flitted over the turf, to a jingle of bits and the thunder of hoofs. Duncton Beacon rose far behind them; they had crossed the road and Charlton forest was slipping past like dark water before the mad race came to an end. Stella became aware that escape was impossible. Her horse was spent, she herself reeling. She let her reins drop loose and the gallop changed to a trot, the trot to a walk. She noticed with gratitude that Thresk was giving her time. He too had fallen to a walk behind her, and quite slowly he came to her side. She turned to him at once.

"This is good country for a gallop, isn't it?"

"Rabbit-holes though," said he. "You were lucky."

He answered absently. There was something which had got to be said now. He could not let this girl to whom he owed—well, the only holiday that he had ever taken, go home shamed by a mistake, which after all she had not made. He was very near indeed to saying yet more. The inclination was strong in him, but not so strong as the methods of his life. Marriage now—that meant to his view the closing of all the avenues of advancement, and a life for both below both their needs.

"Stella, just listen to me. I want you to know that had things been different I should have rejoiced beyond words."

"Oh, don't!" she cried.

"I must," he answered and she was silent. "I want you to know," he repeated, stammering and stumbling, afraid lest each word meant to heal should only pierce the deeper. "Before I came here there was no one. Since I came here there has been—you. Oh, my dear, I would have been very glad. But I am obscure—without means. There are years in front of me before I shall be anything else. I couldn't ask you to share them—or I should have done so before now."

In her mind ran the thought: what queer unimportant things men think about! The early years! Wouldn't their difficulties, their sorrows be the real savour of life and make it worth remembrance, worth treasuring? But men had the right of speech. Not again would she forget that. She bowed her head and he blundered on.

"For you there'll be a better destiny. There's that great house in the Park with its burnt walls. I should like to see that rebuilt and you in your right place, its mistress." And his words ceased as Stella abruptly turned to him. She was breathing quickly and she looked at him with a wonder in her trouble.

"And it hurts you to say this!" she said. "Yes, it actually hurts you."

"What else could I say?"

Her face softened as she looked and heard. It was not that he was cold of blood or did not care. There was more than discomfort in his voice, there was a very real distress. And in his eyes his heart ached for her to see. Something of her pride was restored to her. She fell at once to his tune, but she was conscious that both of them talked treacheries.

"Yes, you are right. It wouldn't have been possible. You have your name and your fortune to make. I too—I shall marry, I suppose, some one"—and she suddenly smiled rather bitterly—"who will give me a Rolls-Royce motor-car." And so they rode on very reasonably.

Noon had passed. A hush had fallen upon that high world of grass and sunlight. The birds were still. They talked of this and that, the latest crisis in Europe and the growth of Socialism, all very wisely and with great indifference like well-bred people at a dinner-party. Not thus had Stella thought to ride home when the message had come that morning that the horses would be at her door before ten. She had ridden out clothed on with dreams of gold. She rode back with her dreams in tatters and a sort of incredulity that to her too, as to other girls, all this pain had come.

They came to a bridle-path which led downwards through a thicket of trees to the weald and so descended upon Great Beeding. They rode through the little town, past the inn where Thresk was staying and the iron gates of a Park where, amidst elm-trees, the blackened ruins of a great house gaped to the sky.

"Some day you will live there again," said Thresk, and Stella's lips twitched with a smile of humour.

"I shall be very glad after to-day to leave the house I am living in," she said quietly, and the words struck him dumb. He had subtlety enough to understand her. The rooms would mock her with memories of vain dreams. Yet he kept silence. It was too late in any case to take back what he had said; and even if she would listen to him marriage wouldn't be fair. He would be hampered, and that, just at this time in his life, would mean failure—failure for her no less than for him. They must be prudent—prudent and methodical, and so the great prizes would be theirs.

A mile beyond, a mile of yellow lanes between high hedges, they came to the village of Little Beeding, one big house and a few thatched cottages clustered amongst roses and great trees on the bank of a small river. Thither old Mr. Derrick and his wife and his daughter had gone after the fire at Hinksey Park had completed the ruin which disastrous speculations had begun; and at the gate of one of the cottages the riders stopped and dismounted.

"I shall not see you again after to-day," said Stella. "Will you come in for a moment?"

Thresk gave the horses to a passing labourer to hold and opened the gate.

"I shall be disturbing your people at their luncheon," he said.

"I don't want you to go in to them," said the girl. "I will say goodbye to them for you."

Thresk followed her up the garden-path, wondering what it was that she had still to say to him. She led him into a small room at the back of the house, looking out upon the lawn. Then she stood in front of him.

"Will you kiss me once, please," she said simply, and she stood with her arms hanging at her side, whilst he kissed her on the lips.

"Thank you," she said. "Now will you go?"

He left her standing in the little room and led the horses back to the inn. That afternoon he took the train to London.

CHAPTER III IN BOMBAY

It was not until a day late in January eight years afterwards that Thresk saw the face of Stella Derrick again; and then it was only in a portrait. He came upon it too in a most unlikely place. About five o'clock upon that afternoon he drove out of the town of Bombay up to one of the great houses on Malabar Hill and asked for Mrs. Carruthers. He was shown into a drawing-room which looked over Back Bay to the great buildings of the city, and in a moment Mrs. Carruthers came to him with her hands outstretched.

"So you've won. My husband telephoned to me. We do thank you! Victory means so much to us."

The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers, Bombay merchants, had found themselves involved in a partnership suit due to one or two careless phrases in a solicitor's letter. The case had been the great case of the year in Bombay. The issue had been doubtful, the stake enormous and Thresk, who three years before had taken silk, had been fetched by young Carruthers from England to fight it.

"Yes, we've won," he said. "Judgment was given in our favor this afternoon."

"You are dining with us to-night, aren't you."

"Thank you, yes," said Thresk. "At half-past eight."

"Yes."

Mrs. Carruthers gave him some tea and chattered pleasantly while he drank it. She was fair-haired and pretty, a lady of enthusiasms and uplifted hands, quite without observation or knowledge, yet with power to astonish. For every now and then some little shrewd wise saying would gleam out of the placid flow of her trivialities and make whoever heard it wonder for a moment whether it was her own or whether she had heard it from another. But it was her own. For she gave no special importance to it as she would have done had it been a remark she had thought worth remembering. She just uttered it and slipped on, noticing no difference in value between what she now said and what she had said a second ago. To her the whole world was a marvel and all things in it equally amazing. Besides she had no memory.

"I suppose that now you are free," she said, "you will go up into the central Provinces and see something of India."

"But I am not free," replied Thresk. "I must get immediately back to
England."

"So soon!" exclaimed Mrs. Carruthers. "Now isn't that a pity! You ought to see the Taj—oh, you really ought!—by moonlight or in the morning. I don't know which is best, and the Ridge too!—the Ridge at Delhi. You really mustn't leave India without seeing the Ridge. Can't things wait in London?"

"Yes, things can, but people won't," answered Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers was genuinely distressed that he should depart from India without a single journey in a train.

"I can't help it," he said, smiling back into her mournful eyes. "Apart from my work, Parliament meets early in February."

"Oh, to be sure, you are in Parliament," she exclaimed. "I had forgotten." She shook her fair head in wonder at the industry of her visitor. "I can't think how you manage it all. Oh, you must need a holiday."

Thresk laughed.

"I am thirty-six, so I have a year or two still in front of me before I have the right to break down. I'll save up my holidays for my old age."

"But you are not married," cried Mrs. Carruthers. "You can't do that. You can't grow comfortably old unless you're married. You will want to work then to get through the time. You had better take your holidays now."

"Very well. I shall have twelve days upon the steamer. When does it go?" asked Thresk as he rose from his chair.

"On Friday, and this is Monday," said Mrs. Carruthers. "You certainly haven't much time to go anywhere, have you?"

"No," replied Thresk, and Mrs. Carruthers saw his face quicken suddenly to surprise. He actually caught his breath; he stared, no longer aware of her presence in the room. He was looking over her head towards the grand piano which stood behind her chair; and she began to run over in her mind the various ornaments which encumbered it. A piece of Indian drapery covered the top and on the drapery stood a little group of Dresden China figures, a crystal cigarette-box, some knick-knacks and half-a-dozen photographs in silver frames. It must be one of those photographs, she decided, which had caught his eye, which had done more than catch his eye. For she was looking up at Thresk's face all this while, and the surprise had gone from it. It seemed to her that he was moved.

"You have the portrait of a friend of mine there," he said, and he crossed the room to the piano.

Mrs. Carruthers turned round.

"Oh, Stella Ballantyne!" she cried. "Do you know her, Mr. Thresk?"

"Ballantyne?" said Thresk. For a moment or two he was silent. Then he asked: "She is married then?"

"Yes, didn't you know? She has been married for a long time."

"It's a long time since I have heard of her," said Thresk. He looked again at the photograph.

"When was this taken?"

"A few months ago. She sent it to me in October. She is beautiful,