He broke off suddenly. He had been going on hurriedly and feverishly, filling up the time as best he might, trying to forget the embarra.s.sing situation into which he had brought his wife and himself, when the sound of heavy footsteps fell upon his ear. A sound of shuffling, the creak of men"s boots, a little gruff whispering in the doorway--what was it all about? Were the men whom he had helped and guided going to turn against him openly--to give him in his wife"s presence some other insult beside the tacit insult of their absence? He turned round sharply, with the feeling that if he was brought to bay the men would have a bad time of it. He certainly looked a formidable antagonist. The hair had fallen over his forehead, his brows were knotted, his eyes gleamed rather fiercely beneath them, his under lip was thrust out aggressively. "As fierce as a lion," said one of the observers, afterwards. But even while his eyes darted flame and fury at the men who had deserted them, his body kept its half-protecting, half-deferential pose with respect to Lady Alice; and the hand that held her arm was studiously gentle in its touch.
Lady Alice turned round, amazed. There was a little crowd in the pa.s.sage: the room was already half full. Men and women too were there, and more crowded in from behind. There must have been nearly fifty, when all were seen, and there were more men than women. But they did not sit down: they stood, they leaned against the walls; one or two mounted on the benches at the back and stood where they could get a good view of the proceedings. Caspar"s scowl remained fixed, but it was a scowl of astonishment. He looked round for Maurice, whom he presently saw beckoning to him to take his usual place near the piano. He said a word to his wife, and brought her round with him towards his sister and his friend. The men still stood, and crowded a little nearer to him as he reached his place. There was very little talking in the room, and the men"s faces looked somewhat solemn: it was evidently a serious occasion.
"Is this--this--what usually goes on?" queried the puzzled Lady Alice.
"This? Oh no!" said Maurice, to whom she had addressed herself, with a sudden happy laugh, and a perfectly beaming face. "_This_ is--a demonstration. Here, Caspar, old man, you"ve got to stand here. _Now_, Gregson."
Lady Alice accepted the chair offered to her, and Miss Brooke another.
Caspar began to look utterly perplexed, but a little relieved also, for his eye, in straying over the crowd, had recognized two or three faces as those of intimate friends who seemed to be mingling with the men, and he felt sure that they had no inimical purpose towards him. All that he could do was to look down and grasp his beard, as usual, while Jim Gregson, the man who had once spoken to Lesley so warmly of her father, being pushed forward by the crowd as their spokesman, addressed himself to Caspar.
"Mr. Brooke--Sir: We have made bold to change the order of the proceedings for this "ere afternoon. Instead of beginning with the music, we just want to say a few words; and that"s why we"ve come in all at once, so as to show that we are all of one mind. We think, sir, that this is a very suitable opportunity for presenting you with a mark of our--our grat.i.tude and esteem. We have always found you a true friend to us, and an upright man that would never allow the weak to be trampled on, nor the poor to be oppressed, and we wish to show that whatever the newspapers may say, sir, we have got heads on our shoulders and know a good man when we see him." This sentence was uttered with great emphasis, to an accompaniment of "Hear, hear," from the audience, and considerable stamping of feet, umbrellas and sticks. "What we wish to say, sir," and Mr. Gregson became more and more embarra.s.sed as he came to this point, "is that we respect you as a man and as a gentleman, and that we take this opportunity of asking you to accept this small tribute of our feelings towards you, and we wish to say that there"s not a member of the club as has not contributed his mite towards it, as well as many poor neighbors in the Buildings. It"s a small thing to give, but that you will excuse on account of the shortness of the notice, so to speak: the suggestion having been made amongst ourselves and by ourselves only three days ago. We beg you"ll accept it as a token of respect, sir, from the whole of the Macclesfield Buildings Working Men"s Club, of which you was the founder, and which we hope you"ll continue for many long years to be the president _of_." And with a resounding emphasis on the preposition, Mr. Gregson finished his speech. A tremendous salvo of applause followed his last word, and before it had died away a woman was hastily dragged to the front, with a child--a blue-eyed fairy of two or three years old--in her arms. The child held a brown paper parcel, and presented it with baby solemnity to Mr. Brooke, who kissed her as he took it from her hands. And then, under cover of more deafening applause, Mr. Brooke turned hurriedly to Maurice and said, in a very unheroic manner--
"I say, I can"t stand much more of this. I shall make a fool of myself directly."
"Do: they"ll like it, the beggars!" returned Maurice in high glee.
But he had more sympathy in his eyes than his words expressed, and the grip that he gave his friend"s hand set the audience once more applauding enthusiastically. An audience of Londoners with whom a speaker is in touch, is one of the most sympathetic and enthusiastic in the world.
While they applauded, the parcel was opened. It contained a morocco case, lined with dark blue satin and velvet--an unromantic and prosaic expression of as truly high and n.o.ble feeling as ever found a vent in more poetic ways--and on the velvet cushion lay--twelve silver spoons!
There was an odd little touch of bathos about it, and an outsider might perhaps have smiled at the way in which the British workman and his wife had chosen to manifest their faith in the man who had been in their eyes wrongfully accused; but n.o.body present in the little a.s.sembly saw the humorous side of it at all, not even a young gentleman who was hastily making a sketch of it for the _Graphic_, for he blew his nose as vigorously as anybody else. And there was a good display of handkerchiefs and some rather troublesome coughing and choking in the course of the afternoon, which showed that the donors of the spoons did not look on the gift exactly in the light of a joke.
Mr. Brooke was a practised speaker; and when he opened his lips to reply, his sister dried her eyes and put down her handkerchief with a gratified smile as much as to say, "Now we shall have a treat." And she settled herself so that she could watch the effect of the speech on Lady Alice, who had forgotten to wipe her tears away, and sat with eyelashes wet and cheeks slightly flushed, looking astoundingly young and pretty in the excitement of the moment. But Miss Brooke was doomed to be disappointed. Caspar began once, twice, thrice--and broke down irrevocably. The only intelligible words he got out were, "My dear friends, I can"t tell you how I thank you." And that was quite true: he couldn"t.
But there was all the more applause, and all the more kindly feeling for that failure of his to make a speech; and then one or two other men spoke of the good that Mr. Brooke had done in that neighborhood, and of the help that he had given them all in founding the club, and of the brave and encouraging words that he had spoken to them, and so on; and the young artist for the _Graphic_ sketched away faster and faster, and said to himself, "My eye, there"ll be a precious row if they try to hang him after this, whatever he"s done." But the sensation of the afternoon was yet to come.
"I can only say once more, my friends," said Caspar, as the hour wore away, "that I thank you for this expression of your confidence in me, and that I have never had a prouder moment in my life than this, in which you tell me of your own accord that you believe in my innocence of the crime attributed to me. Of that, however, I will not speak. I wish only, before we separate, to introduce you to my wife, who has never been here before, and whom I am sure you will welcome for my sake."
There was a moment of astonishment. Every one knew something of the story of Caspar"s married life, and was taken aback by the appearance of his wife. But when Maurice Kenyon led the way by clapping his hands vigorously, someone took up the word, and cried, "Three cheers for Mrs.
Brooke." And Lady Alice started at the new t.i.tle, and thought that it sounded much better than the one by which she was usually known.
"Shall I say any more?" said Caspar, smiling as he stooped down to her.
But suddenly she rose to her feet and put her hand within his arm. "No,"
she said, "I am going to do it myself."
The storm of clapping was renewed and died away when it was perceived that Lady Alice was about to speak. She was a little flushed, but perfectly self-possessed, and her clear silvery voice could be heard in every corner of the room.
"I wish to thank you, too," she said, "for your kindness to my husband and myself. I hope I shall know more of his work here by and by, and in the meantime I can only tell you that you are right to trust him and believe in him--as _I_ trust him and believe in him with all my heart and soul!"
She turned to him a little as she spoke, her eyes shining, her face transfigured--the faith in her making itself manifest in feature and in gesture alike. There was not applause so much as a murmur of a.s.sent when she had done; and Caspar, laying hold of her hand, looked down at her with a new warmth of tenderness, and said half wonderingly,
"Why, Alice!"
"Do you think I could let them go without telling them what you are to me?" she said, with a kind of pa.s.sion in her voice which reminded him of Lesley. But there was no time to say more, for every person in the room presented himself or herself to shake hands with Caspar and his wife, and to admire the spoons, which had been purchased only the night before.
"Very glad to see you amongst us, Mrs. Brooke, mum; and hope you"ll come again," was heard so often that Lady Alice was quite amazed by the warmth of the greeting. "And the young lady too--where"s she? she ought to have been here as well," said one woman; to which Maurice Kenyon responded in a pleased growl--
"Yes, confound your blundering, so she ought; and so she would have been, if you hadn"t nearly made such a blessed mull of the whole affair."
He did not think that anybody heard him, and was rather taken aback when Lady Alice smiled at him over her shoulder. "What do you mean, Mr.
Kenyon?" she said.
Maurice was on his good behavior immediately. "Oh, nothing, Lady Alice; only that Miss Brooke might have been here if we had only had a hint beforehand, and it is a pity she should have missed it."
"A great pity," said Lesley"s mother; and she looked quite complacently at the twelve silver spoons, which she was guarding so jealously, as if she feared they would be taken away from her.
Outside the doors, when the a.s.sembly had reluctantly dispersed, after an improvised collation, given by Caspar, of hot drinks and plum cake, a little crowd of men and boys cheered the departing hero of the day so valiantly that Lady Alice was almost glad to find herself once more driving through the dusky London streets with her husband at her side.
Miss Brooke and Maurice had elected to walk home.
"There"s one thing," said Caspar, rather later in the day, as a history of these experiences was unfolded to Lesley; "we quite, forgot to tell the good folks your mother"s name and t.i.tle. She was applauded to the echo as "Mrs. Brooke.""
"Oh, you must never tell them," said Lady Alice, hastily. "I do not want to be anything else, please--now."
"I wish they had let one know beforehand," said Maurice, "they kept it a dead secret--even from me."
"All the greater surprise for us," said Mr. Brooke. Then he looked at Maurice for a moment, and smiled. But it was long before they mentioned to each other what both had thought and felt in that heart-breaking minute of suspense when they believed that Caspar was deserted in the hour of need.
"Well," said Caspar Brooke, at length, "whatever may happen now"--and he made a pause which was fraught with graver meaning than he would have cared to put into words--"I can feel at any rate that "I have had my say." And you, Alice--well, my dear, you will always have those silver spoons to look at! So we have not done badly after all."
Like Sir Thomas More, he would have joked when going to the scaffold; but jokes under such circ.u.mstances have rather a ghastly sound in the ears of his family.
CHAPTER XL.
CAIN.
Maurice Kenyon took an early opportunity of asking Lady Alice whether she would recognize the man Smith if she saw him again.
"I think so. Why do you ask? You know I talked to him a good deal."
"I have been very blind," said Maurice seriously. "I never thought until to-day of a.s.sociating him in my mind with someone else--someone whom I have seen twice during the past week. May I speak freely to you? You know I am as anxious as anyone can possibly be that this mystery should be cleared up. I wish to speak of Francis Trent, the brother of Oliver Trent, and the husband of the woman who makes this accusation against Mr. Brooke."
Lady Alice recoiled. "You cannot mean that John Smith had anything to do with him?"
"I have a strong belief that John Smith and Francis Trent are one and the same. To my shame be it spoken, I did not recognize him either on Wednesday or Friday when I paid him a visit. Ethel wished me to go when she heard that he was ill." He said this in a deprecating tone.
"I quite understand. You saw this man--Francis Trent--then?"
"Yes, and could not imagine where I had seen him before. I think it is the man I used to see in hospital. Lady Alice--if you saw him yourself----"
"I, Mr. Kenyon? What! see the man and woman who accuse my husband of murder?"--There was genuine horror in her tone. "How could I speak to them?"
"It is just a chance," said Maurice, in a low voice. "If he knew that _you_ were the wife of the man who was accused--perhaps something would come of it."
"What do you mean?"