Witness for the Defence Part 24

"There are others--plenty," she said, and tried to thrust him away.

"Not for me," he rejoined, and he would not let her go. Her struggles ceased, she buried her face in his coat, her hands caught his shoulders, she stood trembling and shivering against him.

"Stella," he whispered. "Stella!"

He raised her face and bent to it. Then he straightened himself.

"Not here!" he said.

They were standing in the darkness of a tree. He put his arms about her waist and lifted her into an open s.p.a.ce where the moonlight shone bright and clear and there were no shadows.

"Here," he said, and he kissed her on the lips. She thrust her head back, her face uplifted to the skies, her eyes closed.

"Oh, d.i.c.k," she murmured, "I meant that this should never be. Even now--you shall forget it."

"No--I couldn't."

"So one says. But--oh, it would be your ruin." She started away from him.

"Listen!"

"Yes," he answered.

She stood confronting him desperately a yard or so away, her bosom heaving, her face wet with her tears. d.i.c.k Hazlewood did not stir.

Stella's lips moved as though she were speaking but no words were audible, and it seemed that her strength left her. She came suddenly forward, groping with her hands like a blind person.

"Oh, my dear," she said as he caught them. They went on again together.

She spoke of his father, of the talk of the countryside. But he had an argument for each of hers.

"Be brave for just a little, Stella. Once we are married there will be no trouble," and with his arms about her she was eager to believe.

Stella Ballantyne sat late that night in the armchair in her bedroom, her eyes fixed upon the empty grate, in a turmoil of emotion. She grew cold and shivered. A loud noise of birds suddenly burst through the open window. She went to it. The morning had come. She looked across the meadow to the silent house of Little Beeding in the grey broadening light. All the blinds were down. Were they all asleep or did one watch like her? She came back to the fireplace. In the grate some torn fragments of a letter caught her eyes. She stooped and picked them up.

They were fragments of the letter of regret which she had written earlier that evening.

"I should have sent it," she whispered. "I should not have gone. I should have sent the letter."

But the regret was vain. She had gone. Her maid found her in the morning lying upon her bed in a deep sleep and still wearing the dress in which she had gone out.

CHAPTER XVII

TROUBLE FOR MR. HAZLEWOOD

When d.i.c.k and Stella walked along the drive to the lane Harold Hazlewood, who was radiant at the success of his dinner-party, turned to Robert Pettifer in the hall.

"Have a whisky-and-soda, Robert, before you go," he said. He led the way back into the library. Behind him walked the Pettifers, Robert ill-at-ease and wishing himself a hundred miles away, Margaret Pettifer boiling for battle. Hazlewood himself dropped into an arm-chair.

"I am very glad that you came to-night, Margaret," he said boldly. "You have seen for yourself."

"Yes, I have," she replied. "Harold, there have been moments this evening when I could have screamed."

Robert Pettifer hurriedly turned towards the table in the far corner of the room where the tray with the decanters and the syphons had been placed.

"Margaret, I pa.s.s my life in a scream at the injustice of the world,"

said Harold Hazlewood, and Robert Pettifer chuckled as he cut off the end of a cigar. "It is strange that an act of reparation should move you in the same way."

"Reparation!" cried Margaret Pettifer indignantly. Then she noticed that the window was open. She looked around the room. She drew up a chair in front of her brother.

"Harold, if you have no consideration for us, none for your own position, none for the neighbourhood, if you will at all costs force this woman upon us, don't you think that you might still spare a thought for your son?"

Robert Pettifer had kept his eyes open that evening as well as his wife.

He took a step down into the room. He was anxious to take no part in the dispute; he desired to be just; he was favourably inclined towards Stella Ballantyne; looking at her he had been even a little moved. But d.i.c.k was the first consideration. He had no children of his own, he cared for d.i.c.k as he would have cared for his son, and when he went up each morning by the train to his office in London there lay at the back of his mind the thought that one day the fortune he was ama.s.sing would add a splendour to d.i.c.k's career. Harold Hazlewood alone of the three seemed to have his eyes sealed.

"Why, what on earth do you mean, Margaret?"

Margaret Pettifer sat down in her chair.

"Where was d.i.c.k yesterday afternoon?"

"Margaret, I don't know."

"I do. I saw him. He was with Stella Ballantyne on the river--in the dusk--in a Canadian canoe." She uttered each fresh detail in a more indignant tone, as though it aggravated the crime. Yet even so she had not done. There was, it seemed, a culminating offence. "She was wearing a white lace frock with a big hat."

"Well," said Mr. Hazlewood mildly, "I don't think I have anything against big hats."

"She was trailing her hand in the water--that he might notice its slenderness of course. Outrageous I call it!"

Mr. Hazlewood nodded his head at his indignant sister.

"I know that frame of mind very well, Margaret," he remarked. "She cannot do right. If she had been wearing a small hat she would have been Frenchified."

But Mrs. Pettifer was not in a mood for argument.

"Can't you see what it all means?" she cried in exasperation.

"I can. I do," Mr. Hazlewood retorted and he smiled proudly upon his sister. "The boy's better nature is awakening."

Margaret Pettifer lifted up her hands.

"The boy!" she exclaimed. "He's thirty-four if he's a day."

She leaned forward in her chair and pointing up to the bay asked: "Why is that window open, Harold?"

Harold Hazlewood showed his first sign of discomfort. He shifted in his chair.