A Butterfly on the Wheel Part 30

"Oh! we can't all be perfect! I don't deny that I flirted," Peggy answered.

Her affectation of lightness went very ill with the weighty, measured accusations of Sir Robert Fyffe.

It struck a jarring note in the court. It did her harm.

"You do not deny that you flirted," Sir Robert said, with a little nod of his head--"and encouraged this man, this very charming companion, to flirt with you?"

"And if I did," she replied, still defiant, "my husband trusted me, and knew that there was nothing in it."

"Mrs. Admaston, if that is true, why were you afraid to talk to him upon the night of the 23rd March, and why did you connive at a deliberate lie on the following day?"

There was a cold and deliberate disgust in Sir Robert's voice, and almost every person there gave a little sympathetic shudder.

But Peggy, brave to the last, still fought on. "I was a fool," she said, with a little shrug of the shoulders, as if the question was of no great moment. "I was a fool. The others thought the thing much worse than it was, and that frightened me. I have told you already that I loathed myself for lying as I did."

Sir Robert knitted his brows for a moment, and then decided on his course of action.

That brilliant brain was never at a loss. Again, after a second's hesitation, the deadly thrust was delivered. It was delivered with such apparent suavity and innocence, with such a relaxation of the hard, accusing note, that the girl in the witness-box was utterly deceived.

"You mean," said Sir Robert, "that though you did not tell your husband everything about your harmless flirtations--your peccadilloes--you never before deliberately lied to shield yourself?"

"Yes," Peggy replied eagerly; "that is what I mean."

"Does it not strike you, Mrs. Admaston, that any one who knew of your previous adventures with Mr. Collingwood, the pleasure you obviously find in his society, and the methods you have adopted to blind your husband to the progress of this innocent friendship, would have good ground for supposing that the accident which brought about the last of this series of innocent and pleasant reunions was in reality not accident, but deliberate design?"

"I see what you mean," she answered; "but whatever any one thought, it _was_ an accident!"

"An accident! Oh, just consider this chapter of accidents! By _accident_, you and Mr. Collingwood got on to the wrong train at Boulogne; by _accident_, although the luggage of the whole party was together at Charing Cross Station and Mr. Collingwood was instructed to register it all through to St. Moritz, your luggage and Mr.

Collingwood's was not registered--an _accident_ which enabled you to take it on with you upon the Paris train, which you only entered by _accident_. By _accident_, Mr. Collingwood seems to have taken for himself and a lady rooms at an hotel in Paris which, but for the _accident_ which took you and him to Paris, could have been of no possible use to him. Do you still ask the jury to believe that your visit to Paris was an accident?"

Sir Robert had a little over-emphasised himself--that is, as far as the witness was concerned,--though his accentuated speech had its effect upon the jury. Peggy herself recognised artifice. When there _had_ been a real note of sincerity in the counsel's voice it had frightened her far more than any rhetoric could.

"Certainly I do," she answered with spirit.

The barrister recognised in a moment that, while he had made an effect upon the court, he had at the same time given new courage to the witness. He was, as all great counsel are, a psychologist of the first order. He responded instantly, and in this duel of two minds--his and Mrs. Admaston's--his keener and more trained intelligence realised exactly what was pa.s.sing in her thoughts.

"I suggest to you, Mrs. Admaston," he said very briskly, "that you and Mr. Collingwood had planned this trip to Paris--that he took the rooms with your knowledge--that you both missed the train deliberately, and reached Paris in accordance with your preconceived design?"

"And I tell you," Peggy replied, "that all these suggestions are absolutely false."

"Absolutely false?"

Her voice rang out into the court shrill with the long torture of her examination, but pa.s.sionate with her own certainty of her innocence.

"There's not a rag of truth in any of them. You may think you can make black white, and white black, you may hire spies, tamper with railway servants and waiters...."

An instant reproof came from the judge--two words: "Mrs. Admaston!" he said.

She looked up, but hardly heard him.

"... And do all the rest of the degrading work which seems inseparable from this court."

"Mrs. Admaston," the President said again, "you must not speak like that."

All men, even judges, are influenced by circ.u.mstance. It is probable that the President would have been far more severe at such an outburst as this, if Mrs. Admaston had not been a millionairess in her own right and the wife of a prominent Cabinet Minister. And it is sure also that, under such circ.u.mstances as these, an ordinary woman, without the unconscious consciousness of her financial and social position, would not have dared to do as Peggy did.

Despite the President's admonition, a torrent of half hysterical, wholly indignant words poured from the witness-box.

"And what right have they to treat me like this?" Peggy cried. "Am I to be treated as guilty, merely because I have foolishly courted temptation? I don't know what I have said, I don't know what I shall say before this torture is completed; but I am sensible enough to know that I have no chance in all this farrago of horrible insinuation which twists every little piece of harmless and girlish folly into some vicious and debasing form. I cannot keep quiet under it. I tell you it is all--all--lies--nothing but lies!"

"Now, Mrs. Admaston," Sir Robert said, apparently unmoved by this tirade, "I must ask you to give me your very close attention."

"You must try to be more composed," the President said kindly to Peggy, "if you wish to do yourself justice."

Peggy's white, set face looked straight out before her. She summoned up all her courage to bear the remainder of her torture.

"You still persist," said Sir Robert, "in saying that your trip to Paris resulted from an accident?"

"Emphatically I do," she answered.

Sir Robert looked towards the judge.

"Has your lordship got that doc.u.ment," he said, "which Mr. Admaston identified when he was in the witness-box?"

The President nodded. "That was the anonymous letter received by Miss Admaston--Mr. Admaston's aunt,--was it not, and produced by her on subpoena yesterday? Yes. I have it here in the envelope."

"Perhaps your lordship will allow the witness to look at the envelope."

Mr. M'Arthur jumped up. "My lord," he said, "I submit again that nothing can make this letter evidence."

"And you are quite right, Mr. M'Arthur," the judge answered. "But at present Sir Robert is not suggesting that it is evidence--Usher," he continued, "please hand this to the witness."

"Look at that envelope," Sir Robert continued. "You will see that it is dated March 23rd, and the postmark shows that it was collected at 10.30 a.m. Now, you persist in saying that at the time that letter was posted nothing was further from your mind than that you would be staying the night in Paris."

"I have already said so," Peggy answered.

"And do you say so still?"

"Of course I do," she answered tartly.

"We shall see," Sir Robert Fyffe rapped out. "The letter is addressed to Miss Admaston--is it not? And Mr. Admaston has sworn that she brought it to him to the House of Commons just after three o'clock on the same day. Is Miss Admaston a friend of yours?"

"I don't think she altogether approves of me," Peggy answered.

"You know that Mr. Admaston has sworn that it was the information contained in that letter which determined him to have you watched in Boulogne and in Paris?"

"Yes, I know."

"And at the time that letter was written, no one could possibly have known that you were going to spend the night in Paris or miss the train at Boulogne?"