"Miss Boyce!"
Marcella turned hastily and saw Wharton beside her. Aldous also saw him, and the two men interchanged a few words.
"There is a private room close by," said Wharton, "I am to take you there, and Mr. Raeburn will join us at once."
He led her along a corridor, and opened a door to the left. They entered a small dingy room, looking through a begrimed window on a courtyard.
The gas was lit, and the table was strewn with papers.
"Never, never more beautiful!" flashed through Wharton"s mind, "with that knit, strenuous brow--that tragic scorn for a base world--that royal gait--"
Aloud he said:
"I have done my best privately among the people I can get at, and I thought, before I go up to town to-night--you know Parliament meets on Monday?--I would show you what I had been able to do, and ask you to take charge of a copy of the pet.i.tion." He pointed to a long envelope lying on the table. "I have drafted it myself--I think it puts all the points we can possibly urge--but as to the names--"
He took out a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket.
"It won"t do," he said, looking down at it, and shaking his head. "As I said to you, it is so far political merely. There is a very strong Liberal and Radical feeling getting up about the case. But that won"t carry us far. This pet.i.tion with these names is a demonstration against game preserving and keepers" tyranny. What we want is the co-operation of a _neighbourhood_, especially of its leading citizens. However, I explained all this to you--there is no need to discuss it. Will you look at the list?"
Still holding it, he ran his finger over it, commenting here and there.
She stood beside him; the sleeve of his gown brushed her black cloak; and under his perfect composure there beat a wild exultation in his power--without any apology, any forgiveness--to hold her there, alone with him, listening--her proud head stooped to his--her eye following his with this effort of anxious attention.
She made a few hurried remarks on the names, but her knowledge of the county was naturally not very serviceable. He folded up the paper and put it back.
"I think we understand," he said. "You will do what you can in the only quarter"--he spoke slowly--"that can really aid, and you will communicate with me at the House of Commons? I shall do what I can, of course, when the moment comes, in Parliament, and meanwhile I shall start the matter in the Press--our best hope. The Radical papers are already taking it up."
There was a sound of steps in the pa.s.sage outside. A policeman opened the door, and Aldous Raeburn entered. His quick look ran over the two figures standing beside the table.
"I had some difficulty in finding a cab," he explained, "and we had to get some brandy; but she came round, and we got her off. I sent one of our men with her. The carriage is here."
He spoke--to Marcella--with some formality. He was very pale, but there was both authority and tension in his bearing.
"I have been consulting with Miss Boyce," said Wharton, with equal distance of manner, "as to the pet.i.tion we are sending up to the Home Office."
Aldous made no reply.
"One word, Miss Boyce,"--Wharton quietly turned to her. "May I ask you to read the pet.i.tion carefully, before you attempt to do anything with it? It lays stress on the _only_ doubt that can reasonably be felt after the evidence, and after the judge"s summing up. That particular doubt I hold to be entirely untouched by the trial; but it requires careful stating--the issues may easily be confused."
"Will you come?" said Aldous to Marcella. What she chose to think the forced patience of his tone exasperated her.
"I will do everything I can," she said in a low, distinct voice to Wharton. "Good-bye."
She held out her hand. To both the moment was one of infinite meaning; to her, in her high spiritual excitement, a sacrament of pardon and grat.i.tude--expressed once for all--by this touch--in Aldous Raeburn"s presence.
The two men nodded to each other. Wharton was already busy, putting his papers together.
"We shall meet next week, I suppose, in the House?" said Wharton, casually. "Good-night."
"Will you take me to the Court?" said Marcella to Aldous, directly the door of the carriage was shut upon them, and, amid a gaping crowd that almost filled the little market-place of Widrington, the horses moved off. "I told mamma, that, if I did not come home, I should be with you, and that I should ask you to send me back from the Court to-night."
She still held the packet Wharton had given her in her hand. As though for air, she had thrown back the black gauze veil she had worn all through the trial, and, as they pa.s.sed through the lights of the town, Aldous could see in her face the signs--the plain, startling signs--of the effect of these weeks upon her. Pale, exhausted, yet showing in every movement the nervous excitement which was driving her on--his heart sank as he looked at her--foreseeing what was to come.
As soon as the main street had been left behind, he put his head out of the window, and gave the coachman, who had been told to go to Mellor, the new order.
"Will you mind if I don"t talk?" said Marcella, when he was again beside her. "I think I am tired out, but I might rest now a little. When we get to the Court, will you ask Miss Raeburn to let me have some food in her sitting-room? Then, at nine o"clock or so, may I come down and see Lord Maxwell and you--together?"
What she said, and the manner in which she said it, could only add to his uneasiness; but he a.s.sented, put a cushion behind her, wrapped the rugs round her, and then sat silent, train after train of close and anxious thought pa.s.sing through his mind as they rolled along the dark roads.
When they arrived at Maxwell Court, the sound of the carriage brought Lord Maxwell and Miss Raeburn at once into the hall.
Aldous went forward in front of Marcella. "I have brought Marcella," he said hastily to his aunt. "Will you take her upstairs to your sitting-room, and let her have some food and rest? She is not fit for the exertion of dinner, but she wishes to speak to my grandfather afterwards."
Lord Maxwell had already hurried to meet the black-veiled figure standing proudly in the dim light of the outer hall.
"My dear! my dear!" he said, drawing her arm within his, and patting her hand in fatherly fashion. "How worn-out you look!--Yes, certainly--Agneta, take her up and let her rest--And you wish to speak to me afterwards? Of course, my dear, of course--at any time."
Miss Raeburn, controlling herself absolutely, partly because of Aldous"s manner, partly because of the servants, took her guest upstairs straightway, put her on the sofa in a cheerful sitting-room with a bright fire, and then, shrewdly guessing that she herself could not possibly be a congenial companion to the girl at such a moment, whatever might have happened or might be going to happen, she looked at her watch, said that she must go down to dinner, and promptly left her to the charge of a kind elderly maid, who was to do and get for her whatever she would.
Marcella made herself swallow some food and wine. Then she said that she wished to be alone and rest for an hour, and would come downstairs at nine o"clock. The maid, shocked by her pallor, was loth to leave her, but Marcella insisted.
When she was left alone she drew herself up to the fire and tried hard to get warm, as she had tried to eat. When in this way a portion of physical ease and strength had come back to her, she took out the pet.i.tion from its envelope and read it carefully. As she did so her lip relaxed, her eye recovered something of its brightness. All the points that had occurred to her confusedly, amateurishly, throughout the day, were here thrown into luminous and admirable form. She had listened to them indeed, as urged by Wharton in his concluding speech to the jury, but it had not, alas! seemed so marvellous to her then, as it did now, that, _after_ such a plea, the judge should have summed up as he did.
When she had finished it and had sat thinking awhile over the declining fire, an idea struck her. She took a piece of paper from Miss Raeburn"s desk, and wrote on it:
"Will you read this--and Lord Maxwell--before I come down? I forgot that you had not seen it.--M."
A ring at the bell brought the maid.
"Will you please get this taken to Mr. Raeburn? And then, don"t disturb me again for half an hour."
And for that time she lay in Miss Raeburn"s favourite chair, outwardly at rest. Inwardly she was ranging all her arguments, marshalling all her forces.
When the chiming clock in the great hall below struck nine, she got up and put the lamp for a moment on the mantelpiece, which held a mirror.
She had already bathed her face and smoothed her hair. But she looked at herself again with attention, drew down the thick front waves of hair a little lower on the white brow, as she liked to have them, and once more straightened the collar and cuffs which were the only relief to her plain black dress.
The house as she stepped out into it seemed very still. Perfumed breaths of flowers and pot-pourri ascended from the hall. The pictures along the walls as she pa.s.sed were those same Caroline and early Georgian beauties that had so flashingly suggested her own future rule in this domain on the day when Aldous proposed to her.
She felt suddenly very shrinking and lonely as she went downstairs. The ticking of a large clock somewhere--the short, screaming note of Miss Raeburn"s parrot in one of the ground-floor rooms--these sounds and the beating of her own heart seemed to have the vast house to themselves.
No!--that was a door opening--Aldous coming to fetch her. She drew a childish breath of comfort.
He sprang up the stairs, two or three steps at a time, as he saw her coming.
"Are you rested--were they good to you? Oh! my precious one!--how pale you are still! Will you come and see my--grandfather now? He is quite ready."
She let him lead her in. Lord Maxwell was standing by his writing-table, leaning over the pet.i.tion which was open before him--one hand upon it.
At sight of her he lifted his white head. His fine aquiline face was grave and disturbed. But nothing could have been kinder or more courtly than his manner as he came towards her.