Читать книгу The Iron Stair - Eliza Margaret Humphreys - Страница 4

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What next?

It was a persistent question. One that haunted him through his saunter homewards; that faced him in flaunting content bills of late editions; that gave him an uncomfortable half-hour at the club, and was still clamouring for response as he rested in his luxurious quarters in the Albany, preparatory to dressing for dinner.

He was dining out at eight o'clock, in Grosvenor Square, and expected to be bored as usual. He glanced at the card on his mantelshelf, and then at the clock, and wondered why he had accepted the invitation. There would be politicians who bored you with facts, and lamented a Radical Government largely constituted by their own laziness and inefficiency. There would be a strain of that Semitic element now forcing its way into every channel of society—Finance, Art, and the Press—by reason of its money bags. There might be a few decent women, but that would depend on whether Bridge was or was not the raison d'être of the evening. Mrs. Daniel Schultze's card parties were noted for high play, and society had grown a little shy of them since the éclat of a Club scandal had brought her name into prominence.

Aubrey rather liked Bridge, but the women who played it in Mrs. Daniel Schultze's drawing-rooms had a rooted objection to losing, and an equal objection to paying their losses. He hated to remind a woman of a debt. The result of such unusual chivalry was disastrous to his purse, and trying to his temper. Besides chivalry and generosity were thrown away on the class of women who made Bridge the sole object of existence. It was the day of the outsider; the moneyed plutocrat of any nationality. Fine feelings were wasted on such people. Yet Aubrey FitzJohn Derringham could not divest himself of a certain delicacy and generosity of mind and manner even in dealing with them. Such traits deserved to be the heritage of a descendant of a hundred Earls, instead of the hallmark of a New Peerage.

"If it had been one of them!" he reflected. "They've done meaner things, wickeder things than that poor boy in the dock to-day. Card sharping is as dishonourable as forgery . . . and yet I'll have to grin and smile and put up with pretences of 'forgetfulness' when there's a palpable revoke, or a subterfuge of shuffling when a 'no trump' hand is desired."

Only that Mrs. Schultze was witty and amusing, and gave dinners that put the Marlborough and the Automobile into the shade, he would not have accepted her invitation. As it was——

He pressed the button of the bell, and Chaffey appeared. He and the car had been sent back from the Law Courts at the conclusion of the case.

"I want to ask you something," said Aubrey, as he lit a cigarette. "You waited for the verdict, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir. You were kind enough to——"

"I know, I know. I saw you were interested. Then you heard what that boy called out?"

"Spontaneous, wasn't it, sir? Sort o' made a lump come up in one's throat when they seized his arms and hurried him off."

"Dramatic," said Aubrey, "but not convincing. At least I suppose not. What I want to ask you, Chaffey, is to—well, to put yourself in that boy's place for the time being. Tell me exactly how you felt, when you were hurried off and—away, as he was? I want to know what comes next?"

The man fidgeted nervously at some pretence of tidying a scrupulously tidy room. As far as lay in his power he had tried to outlive the memory of his own downfall and its consequences. That the Law still honoured him with undesirable supervision he knew, and his master knew. The magnificent idea of treating a criminal as a "suspect" in perpetuo is one of the triumphs of legal obscurity; an idea worthy of a nation where Christianity is the hypocrite's defence and the honest man's despair. Chaffey owed his quixotic master a deeper debt than even his dog-like fidelity acknowledged. It had been possible to hold up his head among honest men, and work once more in an atmosphere of trust and confidence.

The question now put threw him off his balance for a moment. There lay so sharp a sting in its demand; so painful a memory behind its answer.

"I'll try to go back, sir. It's all a bit—a bit confused, so to say. One isn't quite oneself as you may suppose, sir. There's been the waiting, and the suspense, and the worrying of lawyers, and the feeling that you're not believed, no matter whether you're innocent or not."

"That must be the hard part of it," said Aubrey.

"No, sir. There's worse than that. It's the—degradation, sir. The feeling that you're treated as a mere brute beast; no sense; no feelings, no decent instincts. That's what makes criminals of us, sir, ninety-nine times out of every hundred. . . . But you want to know how it's going on with young Gale—now?"

Aubrey nodded.

"He'll be taken from the court in the van, sir. To one of the nearer prisons, temporary. Then there's the stripping and searching and photographing and impressioning, and his first night in the cells. Then he may be taken on to Wormwood Scrubs, or one of the large convict prisons. I can't say which. There he'll have to work out his sentence. It's a hard one for a first offence, sir, but it struck me there was a sort o'—o' anymus, don't they call it? A dead set against him from the first."

"It's rather hard, I suppose? That—first night in the cells and afterwards—the waking?"

"It is, sir. You feel desperate. At war with the whole world, so to say. When you're condemned—wrongful, I don't know what it must be. Hell, sir, I'd say, if you'll excuse the langwidge."

"We make our own hells, Chaffey, and pretty hot ones sometimes."

"I'm not religious, as you know, sir, an' what I've seen and heard hasn't 'elped to make me so. But those as sins don't want much after punishment I'd say, if so be as they've had a taste of prison life here."

"That boy—I can't forget his face, somehow. Do you think his sentence will do him much harm, morally speaking?"

"He'll never be the same again, sir. The prison taint don't wash off. Pitch is soapsuds to it! No, it sticks and sticks, and burns and burns, and you don't ever feel yourself clean and self-respecting again!"

"Never, Chaffey? I hoped——"

"I know your goodness, sir. I know what you've done for me. Times I do feel that it's all been a bad dream, and that I am what you're kind enough to think me, sir. But then, it'll come back. It's bound to come back. Pitch, Sir, that's what it is. Sticks so fast, and so close, You're bound to know it's there!"

Aubrey was silent, and the man went quietly out of the room. "Poor beggar," thought his master, "I suppose he'll never really forget!"

He turned to the low bookshelf which ran along one side of the wall, and took out a volume, and opened it. It treated of English prison life in the old convict days when foetid hulks and Botany Bay spelt the doom of manhood however justly punished.

Aubrey had read it before. He read portions of it again on this May evening, while the sun sank low in the west, and the life of the Great City rolled on and on like waves of a restless sea. In his quiet retreat no sound reached his ears save the occasional hoot of a motor, or the faint hum of Piccadilly traffic. The season was in full swing, and the fashionable world was trying to cheat itself once more into the belief that pleasure is an inventive goddess.

Aubrey put back the volume in its place and rose at last. He must dress and get off to Grosvenor Square, unless he wished to keep the table waiting.

Everything was ready for him. Chaffey never neglected a duty, or a collar stud. As Aubrey changed into immaculate evening dress his thoughts went again to that boy in his prison cell, cut off from every enjoyment, sentenced to a living death by the Law he was supposed to have outraged.

"I don't believe he ever did it!"

Aubrey's own voice startled himself. He was conscious of standing before his toilet glass gazing at his own reflection, and yet seeing behind it only that young passionate face, and the trembling lips that proclaimed innocence.

"Funny. I can't get away from that memory!" he said to himself. "Sort of obsesses me! To think of him to-night, and then look at this!"

"This" meant the luxury of his own dressing-room, with its appointments and comforts; its note of refined taste, and bachelor independence. The sight of his face in the glass showed it less bored and indifferent than its wont. A certain uneasiness and distress replaced its usual composure. What was the reason? Aubrey asked himself that question again, and found no answer. He had gone to hear this case out of pure curiosity. He had heard it with a sense of indignant helplessness; an irritation provoked by every word of the dogmatic counsel who voiced the prosecution. He had read prejudice into every stilted phrase and stereotyped theory. He had focussed blunders and smiled at deductions. Yet—he had done nothing; he could do nothing. And for two years that unfortunate boy would be condemned to the horrors of which he had been reading. The coarse food, the tyranny, the hateful routine, the hard labour, and worst of all the loneliness and isolation of undeserved imprisonment.

"For he never did it!" Aubrey repeated. "I'll swear be never did it!"

"You're right, sir," said the subdued tones of his attentive valet, at hand to fasten sleeve links, and brush specks from speckless broadcloth. "He never did, if I'm any judge of guilt, or innocence. I ought to be, I've sampled some."

"Chaffey," said his master, "do you think you could possibly find out anything about this case that hasn't transpired in evidence? It seems to me there must be something behind it all. A motive of some sort. Supposing any one bore the boy a grudge? Had an interest in getting him into a false position? Would it be possible to make such enquiries as would lead to a clearing up of the mystery?"

Chaffey shook his head. "I shouldn't worry, sir. The thing's over and done with. No good could come of raking up an old scandal to cover a new one. You see his own people were dead against him. They must have known."

"One's own people are sometimes one's harshest foes," said Aubrey, taking the proffered handkerchief and gloves. "I wish you'd think it out, Chaffey. You're rather keen on detective blunders."

"If you wish it, sir, I'll give the matter my best attention. It's a bit queer, if I may say so, that we should both feel so concerned about this young Gale. . . . Taxi, sir?"

"Yes. I suppose five minutes'll do the trick?"

"The streets are a bit congested, sir. But I'll tell the man to do his best."

As Aubrey Derringham was whirled in and out of the noisy motor traffic that had begun to disorganize London's thoroughfares, he wondered who he was to meet at Mrs. Daniel Schultze's dinner. His previous acquaintance with her hospitality had been limited to an afternoon At Home, or a furious evening of Auction Bridge. There would be sure to be Bridge after to-night's dinner, but he was determined to leave before the dreaded "fours" were arranged. He felt in no mood for such excitement as those rabid enthusiasts proffered.

He was thinking of the different meanings of life as typified by individual interests. Social position to one, wealth to another, success, fame, ambition, achievement. So it had been in past ages, in cities as magnificent, empires as imposing. And Time's relentless scythe had passed over them all, leaving only histories more or less credible. So much, so little; so little, so much. And the same sun still shone on the just and the unjust, the same moon rose on the mysteries and sorrows and wickedness of nights such as this present one. Bringing hope or joy, peace or woe, desire or death. How wonderful it was, and how puzzling.

He looked at the passing crowd. The cabs and carriages and motor cars, each with their well-dressed occupants; each emblematic of some hope, or gain, or intrigue, or mystery. And the houses. Those mansions of the great and the rich, those humbler neighbours elbowing themselves out of a mews, or a back street, in the endeavour to achieve postal significance. What was the real meaning of it all? For what purpose were these crowds, this wealth, these sated, wasteful, extravagant lives, and the puppets who danced in and out of the show?

Before he could realize the drift of such a question his taxi drew up at the Schultze mansion, and he found himself on crimson carpet, and amidst obsequious flunkeys, to the tune of whose ministrations he was soon shaking hands and listening to introductions in the blue and gold drawing-rooms of Mrs. Daniel Schultze.

* * * * * *

The lady, of ample presence and Semitic origin, called by her intimates "Mrs. Danny," was extraordinarily gracious to Aubrey FitzJohn Derringham. In the first place he was the son of a Peer. In the next he was considered very exclusive, and extremely difficult to get hold of. Again he was unmarried, and an excellent Bridge player. Mrs. Danny had two fair, or strictly speaking two dark daughters, gifted with that vivid oriental beauty for which their race is famed—in youth. It was her earnest desire that they should become aristocrats by marriage, and she hailed even impecunious younger sons with delight, if only they possessed titled relations, or coroneted prospects.

One of those daughters was Aubrey's dinner complement. She was only just "out," so the season and everything connected with it held charms of the "unknown." Her more blasé sister was trembling on the verge of an engagement not yet announced.

Miriam Schultze was as lovely as a dream of the orient, but she possessed no attraction for the Honourable Aubrey. He foresaw the changes that a few years would bring even to a profile as faultless, a figure as slim. Besides, in all she said, and looked, there lurked that touch of vulgarity from which her father and mother suffered, and which no education had eradicated in their offspring. But to-night the girl embarked upon a subject of discussion that rendered her companion less critical than usual. Nothing more or less than the forgery case which was engrossing Aubrey's mind. "I'm so interested in it," she said, "for Joss Myers, who defended the boy, is a cousin of ours. He was very full of it. It's his first really important case. And I see by to-night's paper there was a verdict of guilty. He'll be awfully sore about that."

Aubrey was astonished. He plunged straightway into a discussion of his own day's occupation. He tried to find out from the girl what was her cousin's real opinion of his client.

"Oh—he thought all along the boy hadn't done it!" she exclaimed. "And that night out of which they made so much was a put-up thing. He was made drunk, and then supposed to have got into a scrape for which he had to pay the piper. Joss says he's inclined to think it was really the other brother who's guilty, not Geoffrey Gale."

"The other brother!"

Aubrey rejected a sorbet in his excitement. "The young curate? What on earth makes your cousin think that?"

"Have you read all the evidence?" asked the girl.

"Not any. I was present this morning by mere accident. I heard the speeches for prosecution and defence, and the summing up, and the verdict. The case interested me strangely. The boy was so young, and then—that heart-broken cry of his—at the end. It made a lasting impression on my mind."

"I read it in to-night's Pall Mall, while my hair was being done," she said. "I wish I had gone to the Courts. I was there the first day, but I couldn't spare the time again. One's days are so full at the commencement of the season."

Aubrey smiled indulgently at the affectation of importance. Then he led her back to the all engrossing subject of the Forgery Case. He wanted to hear what Joshua Myers had learnt of the boy's character, nature, and associations. Before he left the dinner table he had made up his mind to seek the young lawyer himself, and try to fit disjointed facts and circumstances into the complicated puzzle that had meant Geoffrey Gale's prosecution.

He did his best to avoid Bridge, pleading another engagement. He might have succeeded but for Miriam's intervention. "Just one rubber. Do—and play at my table. Joss Myers hasn't come yet. He promised to be my partner."

"Myers? Is he coming?"

Aubrey hesitated, and was lost. He felt that he might as well stay on the chance of an introduction to the barrister who had lost his first case. He might learn some important facts that would throw light on Geoffrey Gale's history.