The Freelands Part 43

John answered slowly:

"I think your duty's plain, my dear. The question for the police will be whether or not to take notice of this false confession. For us to keep the knowledge that it's false from them, under the circ.u.mstances, is clearly not right. Besides being, to my mind, foolish."

For Felix to watch this mortal conflict going on in the soul of his daughter--that soul which used to seem, perhaps even now seemed, part of himself; to know that she so desperately wanted help for her decision, and to be unable to give it, unable even to trust himself to be honest--this was hard for Felix. There she sat, staring before her; and only her tight-clasped hands, the little movements of her lips and throat, showed the struggle going on in her.

"I couldn't, without seeing him; I MUST see him first, Uncle!"

John got up and went over to the window; he, too, had been affected by her face.

"You realize," he said, "that you risk everything by that. If he's given himself up, and they've believed him, he's not the sort to let it fall through. You cut off your chance if he won't let you tell. Better for your father and me to see him first, anyway." And Felix heard a mutter that sounded like: 'Confound him!'

Nedda rose. "Can we go at once, then, Uncle?"

With a solemnity that touched Felix, John put a hand on each side of her face, raised it, and kissed her on the forehead.

"All right!" he said. "Let's be off!"

A silent trio sought Paddington in a taxi-cab, digesting this desperate climax of an affair that sprang from origins so small.

In Felix, contemplating his daughter's face, there was profound compa.s.sion, but also that family dismay, that perturbation of self-esteem, which public scandal forces on kinsmen, even the most philosophic. He felt exasperation against Derek, against Kirsteen, almost even against Tod, for having acquiesced pa.s.sively in the revolutionary bringing-up which had brought on such a disaster. War against injustice; sympathy with suffering; chivalry! Yes! But not quite to the point whence they recoiled on his daughter, his family, himself!

The situation was impossible! He was fast resolving that, whether or no they saved Derek from this quixotry, the boy should not have Nedda. And already his eyes found difficulty in meeting hers.

They secured a compartment to themselves and, having settled down in corners, began mechanically unfolding evening journals. For after all, whatever happens, one must read the papers! Without that, life would indeed be insupportable! Felix had bought Mr. Cuthcott's, but, though he turned and turned the sheets, they seemed to have no sense till these words caught his eyes: "Convict's tragic death! Yesterday afternoon at Worcester, while being conveyed from the a.s.size court back to prison, a man named Tryst, sentenced to three years' penal servitude for arson, suddenly attacked the warders in charge of him and escaped. He ran down the street, hotly pursued, and, darting out into the traffic, threw himself under a motor-car going at some speed. The car struck him on the head, and the unfortunate man was killed on the spot. No reason whatever can be a.s.signed for this desperate act. He is known, however, to have suffered from epilepsy, and it is thought an attack may have been coming on him at the time."

When Felix had read these words he remained absolutely still, holding that buff-colored paper before his face, trying to decide what he must do now. What was the significance--exactly the significance of this? Now that Tryst was dead, Derek's quixotic action had no meaning. But had he already 'confessed'? It seemed from this account that the suicide was directly after the trial; even before the boy's letter to Nedda had been written. He must surely have heard of it since and given up his mad idea! He leaned over, touched John on the knee, and handed him the paper. John read the paragraph, handed it back; and the two brothers stared fixedly at each other. Then Felix made the faintest movement of his head toward his daughter, and John nodded. Crossing to Nedda, Felix hooked his arm in hers and said:

"Just look at this, my child."

Nedda read, started to her feet, sank back, and cried out:

"Poor, poor man! Oh, Dad! Poor man!"

Felix felt ashamed. Though Tryst's death meant so much relief to her, she felt first this rush of compa.s.sion; he himself, to whom it meant so much less relief, had felt only that relief.

"He said he couldn't stand it; he told me that. But I never thought--Oh!

Poor man!" And, burying her face against his arm, she gave way.

Petrified, and conscious that John at the far end of the carriage was breathing rather hard, Felix could only stroke her arm till at last she whispered:

"There's n.o.body now for Derek to save. Oh, if you'd seen that poor man in prison, Dad!"

And the only words of comfort Felix could find were:

"My child, there are thousands and thousands of poor prisoners and captives!"

In a truce to agitation they spent the rest of that three hours'

journey, while the train rattled and rumbled through the quiet, happy-looking land.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

It was tea-time when they reached Worcester, and at once went up to the Royal Charles Hostel. A pretty young woman in the office there informed them that the young gentleman had paid his bill and gone out about ten o'clock; but had left his luggage. She had not seen him come in. His room was up that little staircase at the end of the pa.s.sage. There was another entrance that he might have come in at. The 'Boots' would take them.

Past the hall stuffed with furniture and decorated with the stags' heads and battle-prints common to English county-town hotels, they followed the 'Boots' up five red-carpeted steps, down a dingy green corridor, to a door at the very end. There was no answer to their knock. The dark little room, with striped walls, and more battle-prints, looked out on a side street and smelled dusty. On a shiny leather sofa an old valise, strapped-up ready for departure, was reposing with Felix's telegram, unopened, deposited thereon. Writing on his card, "Have come down with Nedda. F. F.," and laying it on the telegram, in case Derek should come in by the side entrance, Felix and Nedda rejoined John in the hall.

To wait in anxiety is perhaps the hardest thing in life; tea, tobacco, and hot baths perhaps the only anodynes. These, except the baths, they took. Without knowing what had happened, neither John nor Felix liked to make inquiry at the police station, nor did they care to try and glean knowledge from the hotel people by questions that might lead to gossip.

They could but kick their heels till it became reasonably certain that Derek was not coming back. The enforced waiting increased Felix's exasperation. Everything Derek did seemed designed to cause Nedda pain.

To watch her sitting there, trying resolutely to mask her anxiety, became intolerable. At last he got up and said to John:

"I think we'd better go round there," and, John nodding, he added: "Wait here, my child. One of us'll come back at once and tell you anything we hear."

She gave them a grateful look and the two brothers went out. They had not gone twenty yards when they met Derek striding along, pale, wild, unhappy-looking. When Felix touched him on the arm, he started and stared blankly at his uncle.

"We've seen about Tryst," Felix said: "You've not done anything?"

Derek shook his head.

"Good! John, tell Nedda that, and stay with her a bit. I want to talk to Derek. We'll go in the other way." He put his hand under the boy's arm and turned him down into the side street. When they reached the gloomy little bedroom Felix pointed to the telegram.

"From me. I suppose the news of his death stopped you?"

"Yes." Derek opened the telegram, dropped it, and sat down beside his valise on the shiny sofa. He looked positively haggard.

Taking his stand against the chest of drawers, Felix said quietly:

"I'm going to have it out with you, Derek. Do you understand what all this means to Nedda? Do you realize how utterly unhappy you're making her? I don't suppose you're happy yourself--"

The boy's whole figure writhed.

"Happy! When you've killed some one you don't think much of happiness--your own or any one's!"

Startled in his turn, Felix said sharply:

"Don't talk like that. It's monomania."

Derek laughed. "Bob Tryst's dead--through me! I can't get out of that."

Gazing at the boy's tortured face, Felix grasped the gruesome fact that this idea amounted to obsession.

"Derek," he said, "you've dwelt on this till you see it out of all proportion. If we took to ourselves the remote consequences of all our words we should none of us survive a week. You're overdone. You'll see it differently to-morrow."

Derek got up to pace the room.

"I swear I would have saved him. I tried to do it when they committed him at Transham." He looked wildly at Felix. "Didn't I? You were there; you heard!"

"Yes, yes; I heard."

"They wouldn't let me then. I thought they mightn't find him guilty here--so I let it go on. And now he's dead. You don't know how I feel!"