It was odd what a disinclination the elder lady showed to meet the young one's eyes. She moved hither and thither, as if possessed by a spirit of restlessness; but, though Miss Arnott kept her gaze fixed on her unfalteringly wherever she went, she herself never glanced in the girl's direction.
"Excited! I can't help being excited! How you can keep so cool is what I don't know! Everyone is pointing a finger and saying that you were out in the woods at the very time that--that wretched man was--was being murdered"--Mrs Plummer cast furtive looks about her as if the deed was being enacted that very moment before her eyes--"and asking where you were and what you were doing all alone in the woods at that hour, and how it was that you knew nothing at all of what was taking place, possibly quite close by you; and you let them ask, and say and do nothing to stop their tongues; and if they are not stopped heaven only knows where they'll lead them. My dear, won't you tell me where you went? and what it was that you were doing?"
"No, Mrs Plummer, I won't--so now your question is answered. And as I have some letters to write may I ask you to leave me?"
Mrs Plummer did glance at Miss Arnott for one moment; but for only one. Then, as if she did not dare to trust herself to speak again, she hurried from the room. Left alone, the young lady indulged in some possibly ironical comments on her companion's deportment.
"Really, to judge from Mrs Plummer's behaviour, one would imagine that this business worried her more than it does me. If she doesn't exercise a little more self-control I shouldn't be surprised if it ends in making her actually ill."
CHAPTER XXII
[MR ERNEST GILBERT]
Miss Arnott wrote to Mr Ernest Gilbert--the famous lawyer whose name Mr Stacey had given her--asking him to make all necessary arrangements for Jim Baker's defence. She expressed her own personal conviction in the man's innocence, desiring him to leave no stone unturned to make it plain, and to spare no expense in doing so. In proof of her willingness to pay any costs which might be incurred she enclosed a cheque for £500, and assured him that she would at once forward any further sum which might be required. Mr Gilbert furnished himself with a copy of the depositions given before the committing justices, and also before the coroner; and, having mastered them, went down to see his client in Winchester Gaol.
He found Mr Baker in very poor plight. The gamekeeper, who probably had gipsy blood in his veins, had been accustomed from childhood to an open air life. Often in fine weather he did not resort to the shelter of a roof for either sleeping or eating. Crabbed and taciturn by constitution he loved the solitude and freedom of the woods. On a summer's night the turf at the foot of a tree was couch enough for him, the sky sufficient roof. Had he been able to give adequate expression to his point of view, his definition of the torments of hell would have been confinement within four walls. In gaol--cribbed, cabined and confined--he seemed to slough his manhood like a skin. His nature changed. When Mr Gilbert went to see him, the dogged heart of the man had lost half its doggedness. He pined for freedom--for God's air, and the breath of the woods--with such desperate longing that, if he could, he would have made an end of every soul in Winchester Gaol to get at it.
Mr Gilbert summed him up--or thought he did--at sight. He made it a rule in these sort of cases to leap at an instant conclusion, even though afterwards it might turn out to be erroneous. Experience had taught him that, in first interviews with clients of a certain kind, quickness of speech--and of decision--was a trick which often paid. So that the door had hardly been closed which left the pair together than--metaphorically--he sprang at Mr Baker like a bull terrier at a rat.