CHAPTER XX ROUGH JUSTICE
A true witness delivereth souls.—Proverbs.
Late in February a blizzard swept over the north; it was followed by still, intense, stringent cold. By night the fogs were dense; by day the white world glittered in sunshine. Trees of snow-blossom and iron filigree raised their heads, as white as plumes, against a china-blue sky. Posts, hedges, buildings, snow-hooded and sparkling, rising out of pearly frost-haze, threw azure shadows on the softly rippled velvet of the drift. Country lanes were buried many feet deep, but a passage had been carved down the Westby road; the slow carts, lumbering in to market, crunched their way between tall, strange, silvery and chalky-white cliffs, like the sugar icing on a bridecake, along tracks made golden with the scattered sand. The sun found rainbows in the icicles and diamonds in the snow, but it did not melt them; and at night, under the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the jeweled bands of Orion, the frost struck deeper and deeper into the earth, the ice grew thicker and thicker on the steely lakes.
In spite of the weather, Westby was full. Not only was it market-day, but the Assizes were on, with a sensational case. Everybody knew that the late owner of the Easedale Hotel was to be tried for killing one of his own guests. The celebrated Hancock, K.C., had been retained for the Crown; and Bullard, for the defense, was only less popular. Moreover, the case was to be tried before Mr. Justice Beckwith, who was said to be dead nuts on crimes of violence. Blue look-out for the prisoner, every one agreed. The court was crowded, stuffy, and bitterly cold. Mr. Gardiner, a valorous and pathetic little figure, shivered and coughed under his rusty inverness. Tom was doing his best to keep him covered up; but as often as he tucked the capes round his father's shoulders, that perverse and petulant invalid tossed them back. "I can't listen stuffed up like that!" he complained.
Tom was gloomy. This was the second day of the trial; he had heard Hancock open for the Crown, he had listened to the evidence of the police, Dr. Scott, Miss Marvin, Louisa; and he felt it was all up with his brother. What was more, he knew that Kellett the lawyer thought so too. "It's unlucky, most unlucky, that Mr. Gardiner can't remember Major Trent's actual words," was all he would say when they discussed it; and he pulled a very long face on hearing the name of the judge. "Beckwith? Well, he hasn't a reputation for leniency, certainly!" Tom was fully expecting penal servitude. He saw no ray of hope. Unless, by any wild chance—there were those unexpected and seemingly aimless questions which Bullard had put to Miss Marvin, questions about the rooms and the other guests—was it possible that they had a hidden meaning? Had something fresh turned up at the last minute? Had Kellett a surprise up his sleeve? No, Tom decided, it was not possible, it was absurd to imagine it. He returned to his gloom.
As to the prisoner, he had summoned just enough surface gayety to take in the reporters and his father, whose eyes were dim; but beneath it he looked sick, and sorry, and desperately tired. Heavy lines were drawn to the corners of his mouth, and his jaw-bone stuck out, gaunt and ugly, from hollows under the ear where his neck was corded like an old man's. Tom could see his throat swelling with suppressed yawns; but he woke up at any stir among the spectators. Again and again his eyes went questing eagerly round the benches. What was he looking for? Tom had no idea. He had never heard of Lettice Smith.
"Who's that? Who is it going into the box now, Tom?"
"That's Mrs. Trent, sir."