“I’m very glad to hear it, I’m sure,” said the banker with a dubious cough. “I think we shall have some rain before morning. Good-night, Mr. Bristow. Very pleased to have made your acquaintance. Hope we shall meet again.”
The banker took counsel with himself as he was being driven home by his son. “I think it will be advisable to send Edward to New York for a couple of months,” he thought. “In case the worst comes to the worst, the affair can then be broken off without scandal. The squire’s playing some underhand game which will bring him to grief if he’s not very, very careful. Meanwhile, all I can do is to wait and watch.”
Strange to say, Tom Bristow’s dreams that night were of Jane Culpepper. “I wonder whether she dreamed about me,” he murmured to himself next morning as he was stropping his razor. “Not likely. And I was no better than a fool to dream about her.”
CHAPTER XIV.
AT ALDER COTTAGE.
Tom Bristow seldom let a day pass over without seeing Lionel Dering. Sometimes he accompanied Mr. Hoskyns to the prison, sometimes he went alone. The lawyer and he held many long consultations together as to the probable result of the trial. They could not conceal from themselves that there was grave cause for apprehension. The weight of circumstantial evidence that would be brought to bear against Lionel was almost overwhelming; while, on the other hand, not a single tittle of evidence was forthcoming which tended to implicate any other person. Notwithstanding all this, Tom was as morally convinced of his friend’s innocence as he was of his own existence. Mr. Hoskyns, in his way, was equally positive. He felt sure that Lionel had not knowingly committed the crime, but he thought it possible that he might have done it in a fit of mental aberration, without retaining the least recollection of it afterwards. In the annals of criminal jurisprudence such cases are by no means unknown. And this was the supposition on which the eminent counsel whom he had retained for the trial seemed inclined to base his argument for the defence. Hoskyns had engaged a detective from Scotland Yard, and had left no stone unturned in his efforts to lift at least some portion of the dreadful weight of evidence from off his client’s shoulders, but up to the present time all such efforts had been utterly in vain. That there might possibly be some foul conspiracy on foot to get rid of Lionel was an idea that for a little while found a lodging in the lawyer’s mind. But in all the wide world, as far as he knew, there was only one person who would be benefited by the death of Lionel Dering. That person was Kester St. George, and of evidence implicating him in the murder there was absolutely none. It was currently reported that he was lying seriously ill in London, which accounted for his not having been seen in Duxley since the day of the inquest.
The shock of his friend Osmond’s dreadful death, taken in conjunction with the terrible accusation against his cousin, and the fact that he himself had been called upon to give evidence at the inquest, was considered by the gossips of the little town amply sufficient to account for Mr. St. George’s illness. It was to be hoped that his health would be restored before the day appointed for his cousin’s trial, he being one of the chief witnesses who would be called on that important occasion.
Tom Bristow was obliged to confess himself beaten, as Mr. Hoskyns had been beaten before him. There was a mystery about the case which he was totally unable to fathom. His conviction of his friend’s innocence never wavered for a single moment, and yet when he asked himself: How came the jet stud into Osmond’s hand? How came the stains on Dering’s shirt? he felt himself utterly unable to suggest any answer that would satisfy his own reason, or that would be likely to satisfy the reason of a judge and jury. It was very easy to say that Dering must be the victim of some foul conspiracy, but unless some proof, however faint, could be advanced of the existence of some such plot, his assertion would go for nothing, or merely be set down as the unwarranted utterance of a too partial friend.
Tom had not been half an hour in Lionel’s company before he knew all about his friend’s marriage, and next day he called on Edith with a note of introduction from her husband. Edith had heard so much, at different times, about Bristow, that she welcomed him with unfeigned gladness, and he, on his side, was deeply impressed with the sweet earnestness and womanly tenderness of her disposition. He was not long in perceiving that Edith altogether failed to realize the full measure of her husband’s danger. She talked as if his acquittal were a matter that admitted of no dispute; and on one occasion, Tom found her busy sketching out the plan of a Continental tour for Lionel and herself on which they were to start the day after the trial should be over. It made Tom’s heart ache to see how sanguine she was; but, as yet, the necessity for undeceiving her had not arisen.
Mrs. Garside and Edith were living in quiet lodgings in a quiet part of the town. They had brought one servant with them—Martha Vince by name, from whom they had few or no secrets. Martha had been Edith’s nurse, and had lived with her ever since, and hoped to stay with her till she died. To the world at large she seemed nothing more than a shrewd, hard-working, money-saving woman; but Edith knew well the faithful and affectionate heart that beat behind the plain exterior of Martha Vince.
The life led by the two ladies was necessarily a very lonely one, and they had no wish that it should be otherwise. They never went out, except to the prison, or to take a walk for health’s sake through the quiet fields at the back of the town. They were always closely veiled when they went abroad, and to the people of Duxley their features were absolutely unknown. Mr. Hoskyns and Tom were their only visitors—their only friends in those dark hours of adversity.