A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 28

"I wanted him to go," Peggy replied impatiently.

"Quite so," said Sir Robert. "But you allowed him to stay?"

She heard once more that inexorable persistence, that bland, pa.s.sionless, but remorseless voice.

The little flicker of gaiety and of respite was over. She braced herself once more to stand up against this relentless onslaught, and clutched the rail of the witness-box before her.

"We are very old friends, Sir Robert," she answered. "I saw no particular harm in it."

"If you saw no particular harm in it, why did you not care to speak to your husband when he rang up?"

"One may do perfectly harmless things," she replied, "and yet not care to tell every one about them."

"And this was one of those perfectly harmless things which you didn't care to tell every one, or even your husband, about?"

"There was no harm in it," Peggy replied, and her voice rang out with a dreadful sense of suppressed irritation and pain.

"So little that you permitted Mr. Collingwood to stay with you--for quite a long time?"

"Not very long," she answered.

"Until the telephone call from your husband?"

"I suppose so."

Sir Robert Fyffe began to seem very pleased with himself. There was no bitterness in his voice--only an extreme politeness. But by now he kept glancing carefully at the jury, watching them with lightning glances, and gathering all the information he possibly could from the expressions on their faces--their immobility or movements of interest.

"Up to that time," Sir Robert remarked--and his question had really the note of a casual inquiry--"up to that time had he shown any sign of going?"

"I don't think so."

The next query startled the whole court, not so much from its directness--though that was patent enough,--but by reason of the way in which it was rapped out.

It was said in a hard, threatening, staccato voice: "What were you both doing?"

The answer was rather reflective than otherwise. It showed no apprehension of the intention of the examiner.

"Sitting on the sofa--he was smoking, I think," Peggy said.

"Should I be right in saying that during most of this time he was making pa.s.sionate love to you?"

All the reporters looked up, their pencils poised, their eyes avid of sensation.

"He was very fond of me," Mrs. Admaston replied.

"Pa.s.sionately in love with you?"

There was a perceptible hesitation. "I think he was very fond of me."

Sir Robert's words came from him like the blows of a hammer upon a nail: "Have you any doubt that he was pa.s.sionately in love with you?"

"He told me so."

"I put it to you that you knew it, and had known it for months?"

It was an odd contrast between the triumphant note which had crept into the great barrister's voice and the diminuendo of Peggy's.

There was no gaiety now. The forces were joined. The battle, which had been an affair of skirmishes before, was now in full cry.

"I only knew what he told me." The voice was quite desperate now.

"And when did he first tell you? The night you were in Paris? Is that when you say?"

"Yes," the answer came, and the President leant forward to be sure that he heard the admission aright.

The big, round, red face of Sir Robert Fyffe was now redder than ever.

His eyes blinked as if the lids could hardly veil the silent fire which peered out from them.

"Do you swear that? Please be careful...."

"I think that was the first time."

"I suggest to you," said Sir Robert, turning towards the jury, the President, and then to Peggy--"I suggest to you, Mrs. Admaston, that he had been making pa.s.sionate love to you for months."

There was an intense silence in the court.

The members of the jury were obviously excited. Different members showed it in different ways. There were men who struggled to give no indication of their feelings, and made effort at an entire lack of expression.

Others showed evident and lively interest.

"I knew for some months that he was very fond of me."

"And did your husband know?" echoed out into the court.

"I suppose so," was the faint answer.

"Do you suggest that your husband would ever have permitted you to go away, even in the company of friends, with a man who had been abusing his friendship by making pa.s.sionate love to his wife?"

There was no answer to that. No sound came from the witness-box--the whole court waited for the response.

Sir Robert was leaning forward now, his head shaking from side to side, his blood-hound face, his extremely vivid eyes, fixed upon Peggy's face.

"Do you really ask the jury to believe that?" he said.

Still Peggy was silent. She seemed to have drooped into something like a faded flower. She said nothing. There was nothing for her to say.

And in the silence the calm, judicial voice of the President, full of commiseration--without prejudice one way or the other, nevertheless,--made its demand. "You must answer, Mrs. Admaston," said the judge.

"I don't think my husband knew _how_ fond of me he was," Peggy said.

"If he had known," Sir Robert said, very gently now, and with a little quiver in his voice--"if he had known, don't you think, Mrs. Admaston, he would have been very angry to know how you were situated in Paris?"