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

never heard him use before he said:

"Now tell me about your house. That's much more interesting."

CHAPTER XXV IN THE LIBRARY

Henry Thresk took Mrs. Pettifer in to dinner that night and she found him poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before. She had come dressed in a slim gown of shimmering blue with her small head erect, a smile upon her lips and a bright colour in her cheeks. Thresk hardly knew her, he had to tell himself again and again that this was the Stella Ballantyne whom he had known here and in India. She was not the girl who had ridden with him upon the downs and made one month of his life very memorable and one day a shameful recollection. Nor was she the stricken creature of the tent in Chitipur. She was a woman sure of her resources, radiant in her beauty, confident that what she wore was her colour and gave her her value. Yet her trouble was greater than Thresk's, and many a time during the course of that dinner, when she felt his eyes resting upon her, her heart sank in fear. She sought his company after dinner, but she had no chance of a private word with him. Old Mr. Hazlewood took care of that. One moment Stella must sing; at another she must play a rubber of bridge. He at all events had not laid aside his enmity and suspected some understanding between her and his guest. At eleven Mrs. Pettifer took her leave. She came across the room to Henry Thresk.

"Are you staying over to-morrow?" she asked, and Thresk with a laugh answered:

"I wish that I could. But I have to catch an early train to London. Even to-night my day's work's not over. I must sit up for an hour or two over a brief."

Stella rose at the same time as Mrs. Pettifer.

"I was hoping that you would be able to come across and see my little cottage to-morrow morning," she said. Thresk hesitated as he took her hand.

"I should very much like to see it," he said. He was in a very great difficulty, and was not sure that a letter was not the better if the more cowardly way out of it. "If I could find the time."

"Try," said she. She could say no more for Mr. Hazlewood was at her elbow and Dick was waiting to take her home.

It was a dark clear night; a sky of stars overarched the earth, but there was no moon, and though lights shone brightly even at a great distance there was no glimmer from the road beneath their feet. Dick held her close in his arms at the door of her cottage. She was very still and passive.

"You are tired?" he asked.

"I think so."

"Well, to-night has seen the last of our troubles, Stella."

She did not answer him at once. Her hands clung about his shoulders and with her face smothered in his coat she whispered:

"Dick, I couldn't go on without you now. I couldn't. I wouldn't."

There was a note of passionate despair in her voice which made her words suddenly terrible to him. He took her and held her a little away from him, peering into her face.

"What are you saying, Stella?" he asked sternly. "You know that nothing can come between us. You break my heart when you talk like that." He drew her again into his arms. "Is your maid waiting up for you?"

"No."

"Call her then, while I wait here. Let me see the light in her room. I want her to sleep with you to-night."

"There's no need, Dick," she answered. "I am unstrung to-night. I said more than I meant. I swear to you there's no need."

He raised her head and kissed her on the lips.

"I trust you, Stella," he said gently; and she answered him in a low trembling voice of so much tenderness and love that he was reassured. "Oh, you may, my dear, you may."

She went up to her room and turned on the light, and sat down in her chair just as she had done after her first dinner at Little Beeding. She had foreseen then all the troubles which had since beset her, but she had seemed to have passed through them—until this afternoon. Over there in the library of the big house was Henry Thresk—the stranger. Very likely he was at this moment writing to her. If he had only consented to come over in the morning and give her the chance of pleading with him! She went to the window and, drawing up the blind, leaned her head out and looked across the meadow. In the library one of the long windows stood open and the curtain was not drawn. The room was full of light. Henry Thresk was there. He had befriended her this afternoon as he had befriended her at Bombay, for the second time he had won the victory for her; but the very next moment he had warned her that the end was not yet. He would send her a letter, she had not a doubt of it. She had not a doubt either of the message which the letter would bring.

A sound rose to her ears from the gravel path below her window—the sound of a slight involuntary movement. Stella drew sharply back. Then she leaned out again and called softly:

"Dick."

He was standing a little to the left of the window out of reach of the light which streamed out upon the darkness from the room behind her. He moved forward now.

"Oh, Dick, why are you waiting?"

"I wanted to be sure that all was right, Stella."

"I gave you my word, Dick," she whispered and she wished him good-night again and waited till the sound of his footsteps had altogether died away. He went back to the house and found Thresk still at work in the library.

"I don't want to interrupt you," he said, "but I must thank you again. I can't tell you what I owe you. She's pretty wonderful, isn't she? I feel coarse beside her, I tell you. I couldn't talk like this to any one else, but you're so sympathetic."

Henry Thresk had responded with nothing more than a grunt. He sat slashing at his brief with a blue pencil, all the while that Dick Hazlewood was speaking, and wishing that he would go to bed. Dick however was unabashed.

"Did you ever see a woman look so well in a blue frock? Or in a black one either? There's a sort of painted thing she wears sometimes too. Well, perhaps I had better go to bed."

"I think it would be wise," said Thresk.

Young Hazlewood went over to the table in the corner and lit his candle.

"You'll shut that window before you go to bed, won't you?"

"Yes."

Hazlewood filled for himself a glass of barley-water and drank it, contemplating Henry Thresk over the rim. Then he went back to him, carrying his candle in his hand.

"Why don't you get married, Mr. Thresk?" he asked. "You ought to, you know. Men run to seed so if they don't."

"Thank you," said Thresk.

The tone was not cordial, but mere words were an invitation to Dick Hazlewood at this moment. He sat down and placed his lighted candle on the table between Thresk and himself.

"I am thirty-four years old," he said, and Thresk interposed without glancing up from his foolscap:

"From your style of conversation I find that very difficult to believe,
Captain Hazlewood."

"I have wasted thirty-four complete years of twelve months each," continued the ecstatic Captain, who appeared to think that on the very day of his birth he would have recognised his soul's mate. "Just jogging along with the world, a miracle about one and not half an eye to perceive it. You know."

"No, I don't," Thresk observed. He lifted the candle and held it out to
Dick. Dick got up and took it.

"Thank you," he said. "That was very kind of you. I told you—didn't
I?—how sympathetic I thought you."

Thresk was not proof against his companion's pertinacity. He broke into a laugh. "Are you going to bed?" he pleaded, and Dick Hazlewood replied, "Yes I am." Suddenly his tone changed.

"Stella had a very good friend in you, Mr. Thresk. I am sure she still has one," and without waiting for any answer he went upstairs. His bedroom was near to the front in the side of the house. It commanded a view of the meadow and the cottage and he rejoiced to see that all Stella's windows were dark. The library was out of sight round the corner at the back, but a glare of light from the open door spread out over the lawn. Hazlewood looked at his watch. It was just midnight. He went to bed and slept.

In the library Thresk strove to concentrate his thoughts upon his brief. But he could not, and he threw it aside at last. There was a letter to be written, and until it was written and done with his thoughts would not be free. He went over to the writing-table and wrote it. But it took a long while in the composition and the clock upon the top of the stable was striking one when at last he had finished and sealed it up.

"I'll post it in the morning at the station," he resolved, and he went to the window to close it. But as he touched it a slight figure wrapped in a dark cloak came out of the darkness at the side and stepped past him into the room. He swung round and saw Stella Ballantyne.

"You!" he exclaimed. "You must be mad."

"I had to come," she said, standing well away from the window in the centre of the room as though she thought he would drive her out. "I heard you say you would be sitting late here."

"How long have you been waiting out there?"

"A little while…I don't know…Not very long. I wasn't sure that you were alone."

Thresk closed the window and drew the curtain across it. Then he crossed the room and locked the doors leading into the dining-room and hall.

"There was no need for you to come," he said in a low voice. "I have written to you."

"Yes." She nodded her head. "That's why I had to come. This afternoon you spoke of leaving your pipe behind. I understood," and as he drew the letter from his pocket she recoiled from it. "No, it has never been written. I came in time to prevent its being written. You only had an idea of writing. Say that! You are my friend." She took the letter from him now and tore it across and again across. "See! It has never been written at all."

But Thresk only shook his head. "I am very sorry. I see to-night the stricken woman of the tent in Chitipur. I am very sorry," and Stella caught at the commiseration in his voice. She dropped the cloak from her shoulders; she was dressed as she had been at the dinner some hours before, but all her radiance had gone, her cheeks trembled, her eyes pleaded desperately.

"Sorry! I knew you would be. You are not hard. You couldn't be. You must come close day by day in your life to so much that is pitiful. One can talk to you and you'll understand. This is my first chance, the first real chance I have ever had, Henry, the very first."

Thresk looked backwards over the years of Stella Ballantyne's unhappy life. It came upon him with a shock that what she said was the bare truth; and remorse followed hard upon the heels of the shock. This was her first real chance and he himself was to blame that it had come no earlier. The first chance of a life worth the living—it had been in his hands to give her and he had refused to give it years ago on Bignor Hill.

"It's quite true," he admitted. "But I don't ask you to give it up, Stella." She looked at him eagerly. "No! You would