Hector Brunton tottered out of his car and up the steps into his chambers like a man in a palsy. Three clients were waiting in the outer office for consultations. He told Patterson: "Send them away. Get rid of them. Say I'm too ill to see anybody." Then heavily he sat down at his desk.
The shock of Maggie Peterson's arrest, climaxing emotion, was still on him. Definitely his experience knew himself defeated. "God!" he muttered, "another night--another night of the rack."
The previous night had been torment enough. Then he had thought: "I may fail. Cavendish may have something up his sleeve"; then he had seen only success in jeopardy; dreaded only the failure of his vengeance. But now--now he was beaten--worse than beaten--delivered up, body and soul, to the Furies.
The clerk came in to ask if he might go. "Yes," said Brunton; "go. Go as soon as you like." The clerk went out, leaving him alone; alone with his Furies.
The Furies showed him Aliette, infinitely fastidious, infinitely desirable; they showed him Renée, Renée who would even now be awaiting him; they showed Lucy, Lucy Towers, stubborn in her cell. "Don't let her go free from her cell," whispered the Furies. "You're not beaten yet. She did kill the man. Convict her, Hector Brunton. Convict her of manslaughter."
They showed him Cavendish, Cavendish gloating at the prospect of victory. "To be beaten," whispered the Furies, "to be beaten by Cavendish, by the adulterer who stole away your wife!"
But all the time Hector Brunton knew in his inmost soul that he had sought to compass the death of an innocent woman; that he had sinned against his own code, against the holy ghost of justice.
And gradually, terrifyingly, the reason of that sinning was brought home to him. He had sinned, not as a woman sins, lovingly, but for sheer hate. Out of his hatred for Cavendish he had plotted--as surely as any murderer--the death of Lucy Towers.
And suddenly, starkly, irresistibly, it was brought home to him that--even as he had plotted the death of Lucy Towers--so, and for the same hideous reason, he had plotted the social ruin of his own wife.
Till finally the ultimate pretext, the pretext of his love for Aliette, was stripped from him, and he saw that love in all its hideous nakedness, as lust--the savage sadic lust which had hounded him to crime.
David Patterson had long gone home; but Brunton sat on--alone in his chambers--alone with his conscience, naked before his God. His worldly house, the sure material legal house of his own making, had crashed, in that one second of time when he watched Lucy Towers step down from the dock, to ruin. The law, basis of work and life, lay--a tablet shattered to ten thousand fragments--at his feet. Ghosts--the palpable ghosts of those two women for the compassing of whose ruin he had invoked the law--sidled about the darkling room, terrifying him. He knew himself a prisoner--prisoner in the invisible house of God.
Was there no way out? No escape from God's house of conscience? Had he, abiding by the letter of man's law, forfeited--for all time--the merciful spirit of the law of God?
"Yes," said conscience, "there is one way out. One way, and one way only, of escape. Make reparation, Hector Brunton. Set both these women free."
Must he, then, give up everything--wife, vengeance, victory--because of this one damnable insistent whisper, this whisper of conscience that was driving him to madness?
And now, again, he saw the phantoms--phantom of Aliette and phantom of Lucy Towers. They were behind bars--bars--innocent women behind bars which he, Hector Brunton, had socketed home with his own hands.
At last, thought of those bars drove him into the night. King's Bench Walk lay deserted, chill-gleaming under autumnal trees. Leaves strewed it, swishing against his boots as he strode. "Autumn," thought Brunton. "Autumn! We've reached middle age, the year and I. And what have I garnered? Nothing."
Suddenly he realized whither his feet were carrying him; suddenly he found himself under the colonnade of Pump Court, at the door of his rival's chambers. The door was shut, the court deserted. Yet for a long time Brunton stood by the door; stood, as a man stands who waits for some sign, for an opening window or the gleam of a light. But no window opened, no light gleamed.
He came, hardly knowing how, out of the gloom of the Temple into the raw glare of empty Fleet Street. In front of him uprose the long fa?ade of the high courts, the courts where he had won fame and money. What did fame and money matter to him--to Hector Brunton, who, gaining the whole legal world, had lost his own soul?
2
Counsel for the defense, as he watched counsel for the prosecution make his way into court next morning, could almost feel sorry for the man. Brunton, the overbearing, overconfident Brunton, looked the veriest wreck of his old self. He tottered rather than walked to his seat. His eyes were dull, bloodshot; his hands trembled; his jowl twitched and twitched.
The judge had not yet arrived; and Ronnie's eyes, switching here and there about the packed court, suddenly envisaged, below the judge's dais, the "exhibits" of the prosecution: among them the revolver which had killed its man. More than once, in the last year, he, Ronald Cavendish, had known the desire to kill his man. But now, looking on the wreck which had been Brunton, he knew the desire dead. No longer could he even hate Brunton. The man was beaten--beaten.
Bunce, approaching, handed up a telegram: "Congratulations. Masterly. Feel confident of your success. Bertram Standon."
Ronnie's heart glowed at the penciled words. Already he saw success, fame, victory; already the sentences he would speak throbbed in his brain. And then, abruptly, the sight of Lucy Towers entering the witness-box for re?xamination recalled the fact that Brunton was still undefeated. The alternative charge of manslaughter had yet to be fought out between them!
The judge took his seat. The short re?xamination of Lucy Towers began--ended. Quietly she went back to the dock; quietly she took her seat by the blue-uniformed wardress.
"Robert Fielding!" called the constables on guard outside the doors.
The armless sailor, unskilled in law, had taken small comfort from the morning's papers. His face, shaved clean, was gray with apprehension; his whole body drooped as he made his way into the box. Ronnie could see pity written clear on the faces of the jury. The fat matron--she still wore her red hat--made a convulsive movement as if to assist, when the crier of the court lifted the Bible to the kiss of that trembling mouth. Even the two dour spinsters seemed moved.
Robert Fielding's tale of the happenings at Laburnum Grove on the afternoon of July 5 corroborated his cousin's in almost every detail. Yet he told it haltingly; only when Ronnie asked, "Have you any knowledge of the relations between Mrs. Towers and her husband?" did any certainty come into the low voice.
"Nobody except me," said Robert Fielding, "knows all that Lucy had to put up with from that fellow. He was always a wrong 'un, was Bill Towers. I looked after her all I could, but a cripple like me hasn't got much chance."
"Did you ever make any secret of your affection for your cousin?"
"No, sir."
"When you told James Travers that your cousin's husband ought to be shot, what did you mean to imply?"
The sailor hesitated; and Ronnie, nervous of the one weakness left in his case, tried to prompt him. "When you told James Travers that Bill Towers ought to be shot, did you have any intention----"
But at that, the judge intervened--leading questions being barred in law; and Ronnie, a trifle annoyed with himself for the solecism, repeated his former query.
Again Fielding hesitated; then he said, self-excusingly: "When I made that remark, I made it as a good many of us who have been in the service do make it--in a general sort of way, meaning that Bill Towers was a bad lot, and that it wouldn't be any loss if somebody did shoot him."
"I see." Ronnie smiled; and a man on the jury, obviously an ex-service man, smiled with him. "Now, about the pistol--or rather the revolver. Can you tell us how long it had been in your possession?"
"Two years, I should say."
"Had it always been loaded?"
"Yes. Ever since I can remember."
"When did your cousin first know that you possessed this revolver?"
"Not until that afternoon."
"Which afternoon?"
"The afternoon she shot Bill Towers."
"One other point. James Travers told us that you said to him, 'I'd rather cut off my right hand than that Lucy should marry Bill Towers.' Did you ever make such a statement to James Travers?"
The sailor looked down, piteously, at his two empty sleeves. "I may have," he said. "But if I did, it must have been a long time ago."
"Before she married?"
"Yes, before she married."
"James Travers also told us that you said to him, when you showed him the revolver, 'This will cook Bill's goose for him.' Did you say that?"
"Yes." The answer was hardly audible. "He'd been knocking Lucy about--and I was mad with him."
"Was there any other reason why you were mad with him?"
"Yes, there was." And the sailor--fears momentarily forgotten--rapped out, so swiftly that even the judge could not stop him, "He drank, and he was carrying on with another woman. Everybody in the house knew about it."
On the hush which followed that statement--a statement confirmatory of the point which Ronnie, without specifically alleging it, had been trying to establish ever since his opening question to Maggie Peterson--fell the last question of Mr. Justice Heber: "Do you know, of your own knowledge, any woman other than his wife with whom the dead man was on terms of sexual intimacy?"
And Robert Fielding, looking squarely into those gleaming spectacles, answered, "Yes, my lord. With Maggie Peterson. Many's the time I've seen the blackguard a-sneaking into her room."
3
At two o'clock of the afternoon, in a court packed to suffocation point, Ronald Cavendish rose to begin his final speech for the defense of Lucy Towers.
Robert Fielding's testimony, unshaken in cross-examination, had been followed by more evidence, collected by Standon's assiduous reporters, as to the character of the dead man; and that evidence--Ronnie felt,--coupled with the arrest of Maggie Peterson, made the main issue, the issue of wilful murder, safe.
Nevertheless, the Wixton imagination in him was doubtful of the second issue, the issue of manslaughter. In England, the unwritten law did not run; and although, thanks to the press, the streets outside were black with people, with a mob hungry for news of the verdict, determined on his client's acquittal, Ronnie knew the difficulties of securing that acquittal too well for overconfidence.
Again he had spent the luncheon interval alone; praying--voicelessly--that his oratory might not fail; visualizing always those two dour-faced spinsters on the jury, and Mr. Justice Heber, having summed up in cold legal phraseology the bare facts of the case, awarding, on the jury's recommendation, the lenient sentence of a year's imprisonment.
In those few seconds of time before his speech began, Ronnie's imagination could almost hear the murmur of the mob without. The murmur flustered him. After all, Lucy had shot her husband. Between her, pale in the dock, and the dark cell of felony, stood only a dumb advocate, a fencer unskilled with the sword of the spoken word.
Till suddenly, standing there silent before Lucy's peers, it seemed to Ronnie as though all the emotions of the last year stirred in his heart, as though all that pity for womankind which Aliette had engendered in him fought for utterance at his lips. For one fleeting moment, his keen gaze swept the court, envisaging judge, jury, the motionless figure of his client, the constable and the wardress either side of her, the spectators standing two-deep round the closed doors, Benjamin Bunce, David Patterson, John Cartwright, Brunton. For one fleeting moment he thought of Brunton, and of the wrong which Brunton had done to the woman he loved. Then, gravely, quietly, feeling the sword of the spoken word quiver like a live blade at his lips, he engaged his enemy.
Sentence by calm sentence, Julia Cavendish's son--making scarcely a gesture, referring hardly to a note--traversed the statements of his enemy and of the witnesses for his enemy; sentence by grave sentence, he demonstrated to those twelve watchful faces, to the nine men and the three women in the jury-box, that the crime---if crime it were--had been committed on a sudden impulse, without motive, without malice, without premeditation.
"Members of the jury, if we except the evidence of Maggie Peterson--evidence which we now know to be one tissue of lies,--what proof have we of motive or of malice aforethought? No proof, no proof whatsoever. When counsel for the Crown dared to call my client an adulteress, on what did he base his foul allegation? On the word of a proved liar. I venture to tell him that, if any one fact has emerged from the evidence which he has seen fit to put before you, it is the fact of my client's fidelity to the blackguard whom she had the misfortune to marry."
At that, fearfully, the "hanging prosecutor" craned forward in his seat; and fearfully--as though it were of himself and not of the dead that Ronnie spoke--his bloodshot eyes glanced up at the set, stern face of counsel for the defense. But counsel for the defense deigned him never a glance. Terribly, counsel for the defense went on:
"My lord, members of the jury, he, counsel for the Crown, is a distinguished, perhaps our most distinguished advocate. Behind him are all the resources of the public purse, of the public power. Yet I, the humblest of pleaders, should not be doing my duty to my client did I not tell him that this prosecution to which he has thought fit to add the weight of his advocacy is a prosecution founded on false witness, bolstered on perjury, a prosecution which no just advocate would have dared to support."
With those words, unprofessional, unpremeditated--for now the sword of oratory had outlunged Ronnie's self-control, so that he spoke from his heart, careless of etiquette,--a shiver of excitement rippled the gray-wigged heads behind. The wigged heads nodded toward one another, whispering, "I say! Why the deuce don't Brunton protest!" But Brunton did not protest. And counsel for the defense spoke on:
"Why he has so dared, is for my learned friend to explain. My learned friend spoke of mercy. The poet tells us that the quality of mercy is not strained. Did my learned friend ponder that saying when his hands drew up the indictment against my client? Did any spirit of mercy move him when his brain schemed the evidence which has been put before this court? Is he merciful or merciless, truthful or truthless, when he asks you to believe that this woman, this unfortunate Lucy Towers, is guilty not only of murder but of adultery?"
Still Brunton did not protest. His eyes, the bloodshot eyes under the wig awry, dared look no more upon his enemy. For now it seemed to Hector Brunton as though Ronnie pleaded with him--as he had pleaded long ago--not only for the freedom of the woman in the dock, but for the freedom of Aliette.
"Adultery!" pleaded Ronnie. "Has my learned friend brought any proof of that adultery? He has brought none. None. None. Has he brought any proof of murder? Any proof of that malice aforethought without which--as he himself has told you--there can be no murder? He has brought none. None. None. Yet deliberately he has sought to twine"--one hand shot out, pointing first at Brunton, then at the unmoving figure of Lucy Towers--"the hangman's rope round the neck of this innocent woman. For she is innocent! Innocent of murder as she is of adultery. Innocent--I declare it to you in all solemnity!--innocent before the sight of man as she is innocent before the sight of God--of any and of every charge that counsel for the Crown has thought fit to bring against her. Of no charge, not even of manslaughter, can she be found guilty! Is it manslaughter to defend the defenseless? Is it manslaughter when a weak woman protects the man she loves from the beast who makes her days and her nights a living hell?
"A living hell!" For a second the flood of oratory ceased; for a second, through the silence of bated breaths, it seemed to Ronald Cavendish as though once again he caught the murmurs of the crowd without. But now the crowd gave strength to his words.
"Members of the jury, I do not ask for mercy. I ask only for justice. I ask you, when you weigh your verdict, to remember what manner of man was this William Towers. I ask you to look upon my client. I ask you to think of this woman, faithful always, complaining never, enduring always--year after hellish year--the bestial defilements of the drunken reprobate into whose black heart, not of premeditation but in sheer and sudden defense of a fellow-creature, she fired her fatal shot. Oh, yes, Lucy Towers fired that shot. Lucy Towers and no other killed her husband. That is the one truth in the tissue of lies which has been put before you. But was that killing a crime? Is not the world well rid of men like William Towers? Members of the jury, you, who have heard from the lips of unbiased witnesses what were his cruelties, what his drinkings and what his lecheries, will you not say to yourselves--as I say to myself--when you come to consider your verdict: 'God save all women from such a man.'"
And then, for the first time, Ronnie deigned one scornful look upon his enemy.
"Yet, believe me, you men and you women on whose word depends life or death for this woman I am defending, it is not on the ground of her husband's cruelties that I ask you to let her go free. However degraded, however debauched, however cruel; this man, this William Towers still had the right to live. Neither by his lechery nor by his drunkenness did he forfeit his life. Yet his life was forfeit. Why? Let me tell you why. Let me tell you in one sentence. Because he sought to take the life of another.
"Remember that. Never forget that. William Towers sought to take the life of another!" Ronnie's voice slowed to emphasis. Subconsciously, he knew himself at the very core of his defense. But consciously he knew nothing. The faces of the judge, of the jury and the spectators--phantom symbols whose intelligences his own intelligence must now grapple--blurred to his sight. He swayed as he stood.
"Members of the jury, that is the issue; the whole simple issue before this court. Dismiss from your minds all prejudice. That my learned friend stooped to call false witnesses is for my learned friend's conscience to excuse. You have not been summoned to decide the guilt of Maggie Peterson. You are not here to weigh the sins of the dead. You have been summoned to decide whether or no my client is guilty of any crime. Judge--impartially yet compassionately--that single simple issue. And, judging, keep before your minds this picture, the picture my client herself painted for you in unshaken, unforgettable words, the picture of the poor clean room in the tenement-house where Lucy Towers sits with her cousin; with the armless man, whose arms (need I remind you?) were sacrificed for your sake and for mine.
"Day by day Lucy Towers has visited that room; day by day her hands and hers alone have ministered to its helpless, to its defenseless occupant. Day by day she has brought him, despite her husband's threats, a little money--food perhaps. Is that a crime? But to-day she has not even brought money. She has only helped him--the piteousness of it!--to drink his tea. They are cousins, these two. They are happy with one another; not, as my learned friend would have you believe, guiltily happy, but innocently happy. They love one another--as they themselves told you--in the best, in the highest way, even as brother and sister love one another.
"So, they are sitting. And then, without warning, comes the crash of a stick-handle on the door. Startled, they look up. Startled, they see, framed in the doorway, the cruel terrible face of a man, of this woman's legal owner, of William Towers. In his hand this reprobate, this cruel drunken reprobate, brandishes his stick. The stick is no ordinary walking-stick. It is a weapon--a deadly weapon--a loaded stick. William Towers grasps the loaded stick by the ferrule. He lifts it menacingly; he makes as though to brain Robert Fielding--the armless, the helpless, the defenseless man, Robert Fielding. Robert Fielding's cousin is afraid; she fears this reprobate's violence, fears that he has been drinking, fears his ungovernable temper. There is a revolver in the cupboard. A revolver!
"A revolver!" Unconsciously, Ronnie's hand shot out, pointing at the weapon.
"My client runs to the cupboard. She opens the cupboard. She sees the revolver. Mad with fear, she grasps the revolver. She points it at William Towers. And William Towers jeers at her, jeers at them both. 'I'll do you in. I'll do you both in, damn you!' shouts this madman, this drunken madman who has made my client's life a living hell. And again he brandishes his stick, threatening a defenseless man.
"And then? Even then, does Robert Fielding call upon his cousin to fire? No. Remember that he knows himself in danger of his life; knows that one pressure of his cousin's finger on the trigger will save his life. Yet Robert Fielding does not call upon his cousin to fire. He warns the man--the reprobate who is seeking to slay him; he cries, 'Look out, Bill. The gun's loaded.' But William Towers only sneers. 'You can't frighten me,' sneers William Towers, and once more he brandishes his weapon, making as though to batter out Robert Fielding's life.
"To batter out Robert Fielding's life!" Now, irresistible, the sword of the spoken word plunges to its peroration. "My lord, members of the jury, was it murder, or a defense against murder, when my client, my innocent client, maddened by fear--driven to desperation by the thought of this foul crime which only she could prevent--pulled the trigger, sped the bullet which sent William Towers to his account with God? My lord, members of the jury, all you who listen to me in this court to-day, is there any one of you who--fearful as my client was fearful--provoked as my client was provoked--maddened as my client was maddened, by the sight of an armless man, of the one creature she loved in all the world, about to suffer death at the hands of a reprobate--would not have done what Lucy Towers did, would not have torn madly at the revolver trigger, would not have taken a life that a life might live?
"Men and women in whose hands lies the fate of my client, it is on that plea--on that plea alone--on the plea that the life she took was a life already forfeit--that I ask you to set her free. Were I in France, were I in America, I might plead the unwritten law. I do not plead it. By the written statutes of England; by every precedent of British justice; by the written law and by the written law alone; by that inalienable right which every citizen of this country possesses, the right to kill in another's defense, I ask you by your verdict to-day to manumit Lucy Towers of all and every penalty, to let her go free from this court, to acquit her at the hands of her fellow-men--as I, her advocate, am convinced that she stands acquitted at the hands of God."
4
To Ronald Cavendish, the actual world--the judge, the jury, the spectators, the motionless woman in the dock--were still blurred, a blur of many faces. He knew only that he had made his effort; that he was still on his feet; that he was tottering on his feet. His hands still gripped the lapels of his robe. He could feel the sweat of his hands as they gripped the black stuff; feel the sweat pouring down his body. He knew that his body was twitching; twitching in every nerve. But his brain was a gutted mechanism, unfunctioning, telling neither success nor failure. Of all the words his lips had spoken, no memory remained.
And then, sharply, the actual world came back. He saw the faces distinctly; Heber's face, the faces of the jury. Followed tumult. Men, men and women, were applauding; applauding him, Ronald Cavendish, who could remember no word of all the words he had spoken. Had he succeeded? Surely, he must have succeeded? Mr. Justice Heber was threatening to have the court cleared; but the men, the men and the women in the well of the court still applauded. Even Cartwright--"that old stick Cartwright" was applauding. . . .
At last the tumult quelled; and Ronnie was conscious of a silence, the silence of abashed English folk. Only one sound--the sound of a woman's sobs--intruded upon that silence. And Ronnie knew that the woman in the dock was crying; crying like a broken soul; crying to herself, faintly, feebly, careless of the judge, careless of the spectators, careless of the other woman, the woman in the blue prison-uniform, who bent over her, patting her shoulder, striving to comfort.
Then even that sound ceased; and Ronnie, leaning back exhausted against the oak, saw that his enemy had risen.
But no words came from Hector Brunton. Speechless, he eyed the jury. The jury turned from him; turned their heads this way and that in conference. The jury--men and women--shifted up and down on their benches, taking counsel with one another. Whispers carried across from the jury-box; tense shrill whispers: "It ought to stop." "I've heard enough." "Too much." "Don't let him say any more." And promptly, a bearded man rose among the jury and turned to the judge.
"My lord," the man's lips trembled, "we have heard all we want to hear. We are all of one opinion. We have made up our minds. We find the prisoner not guilty."
Once again, tumult--the tumult of men and women applauding--broke upon Ronnie's ears. Then he saw Mr. Justice Heber hold up his hand; heard the crier calling for silence; heard his lordship's quiet "Prisoner at the bar, the jury have found you not guilty. With that verdict I concur. You are discharged"; and saw Hector Brunton collapse, as a stricken boxer collapses to the knock-out.
5
There followed, on that amazing and unprecedented verdict, the craziest half-hour in Ronnie's life. Still stunned by the swiftness of his victory, he heard--as a man battle-mazed hears gunfire--the plaudits in the court, the plaudits on landing and staircase, the plaudits of the mob without.
The plaudits of the mob deepened to a roar, to a great sullen roar of cheers, till it seemed to Ronnie as though all England must have been waiting in the street below. And within, all about him, were men; mad excitable men. One of those men--Cartwright--was shouting in his ear, "Bravo, my boy! Bravo!" A second--Spillcroft--kept on smiting him between the shoulders. A third--the gigantic Henry Smith-Assher--had grasped both his hands, whispering, "By God, you deserved to beat us," as another robed figure, a figure whom Ronnie remembered to have been his one-time enemy, slunk off through the crowding people.
Then, for a second, the people parted; and his eyes--dazed as his brain--saw Aliette. Aliette stood, high above him, ringed by people, in the oak-paneled dock. A wardress, a blue-uniformed prison-wardress, was kissing her; kissing his Aliette on the cheeks. Damn it, he had freed Aliette, freed her from the dock! Why didn't the wardress release her? Damn it, he'd release her himself.
"Come on, old man," said a voice; Spillcroft's voice; and suddenly Ronnie felt himself impelled through the people, impelled toward the dock.
And Aliette came down to him from the dock! Only now his brain, clearing a little, knew that this was not Aliette, but Lucy, Lucy Towers whom he had saved from the hangman's rope and the felon's cell.
She came toward him through the ringing, crowding people. He was looking into her eyes; Aliette's eyes. The eyes were tear-stained; and he knew, thrilling, that her reserve--the reserve stubborn as Aliette's own--had been broken at last.
They had reached one another. Both her hands were outstretched. Her hands grasped his. He knew that she was trying to raise his hands to her lips. But people pressed on them. People--panting, emotional people--pressed them apart. He heard some one say, "Let's chair them. Let's chair them both." He felt himself lifted off his feet. He heard a constable's voice: "Easy on, gentlemen. Easy on. This ain't a bear-garden."
And suddenly he found himself in the street of Old Bailey. The street, from wall to wall, was a river of upturned faces, laughing faces, cheering faces, shouting faces.
For the London mob had gone mob-mad; and the police could not hold them, hardly tried to hold them. "Good old Cavendish," howled the mob. "Good old Cut Cavendish. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it!" And again: "Luc-ee Towers. We want ter see Luc-ee. Where's Luc-ee? We want to see Standon--Standon. Where's Bertram Standon?"
6
Hector Brunton, K.C., hearing, alone in the deserted robing-room, the hoarse cheering of the mob, seemed to hear in it his father's rumbling voice: "The man who lets his wife live with somebody else is a common or garden pimp."