The Coquette's Victim Part 2

"I--I believe you are right," he said. "My G.o.d! what can this mean?"

"Look now! his face is turned this way! Look!" cried Mr. Macfarlane, eagerly.

"It is he!" cried the lawyer, and he stood like one turned to stone, then recovering himself, he said quickly:

"Why is he here? What is he charged with?"

Mr. Macfarlane whispered into the lawyer's ear:

"With stealing a watch and ring from the room of Count Jules St. Croix."

"Absurd!" was the reply, in accents of the deepest contempt; "what idiotic nonsense! He steal a watch! I could believe myself mad or dreaming."

"Then," said Mr. Macfarlane. "he has pleaded guilty; he has made no defence, engaged no counsel."

"The boy is mad! completely mad!" cried the lawyer.

"Hus.h.!.+" said the barrister; "the judge is speaking."

Mr. Forster stood in a most impatient mood, while the grave, clear voice of the judge sentenced the prisoner. Then he turned to the barrister abruptly.

"I tell you," he cried, "the boy is mad! Steal a watch! Why, he could buy one-half the watches in London if he liked. I must see him. Come this way."

"No," said Mr. Macfarlane, "he evidently does not wish to be known. I shall not go near him."

"If he got into trouble, why in the world did he not send for me or for some one else?" said the lawyer to himself. "It must be a young man's frolic, a wager, a bet. He has spirit enough for anything. He never could have been such a mad fool as to wreck his life for a paltry watch."

Mr. Forster went to the room, where with other prisoners, John Smith stood, awaiting his removal in the prison van. He went up to him and touched him on the shoulder.

"Is it really you?" he cried, and the luminous gray eyes smiled into his.

"Ah! Forster, I am sorry to see you. What has brought you here?"

"It is you," said the lawyer. "I was in hopes that my senses deceived me."

"I hope you will keep the fact of having seen me here a profound secret."

"But in the name of heaven, what does it mean?" cried Mr. Forster. "You know you have not attempted to steal a watch. Pardon me, but how dare you plead guilty? You will cover yourself with disgrace and infamy. You will break your mother's heart. You will be utterly ruined for life."

"My dear Forster, no one knows of my being here, and no one need know except yourself."

"You are mistaken; you have been recognized. I was sent for to identify you."

Then the proud face did grow pale, but the proud light did not die out of the gray eyes.

"I am sorry for it, but I cannot help it. I must 'dree my weird.'"

Mr. Forster stood looking at him like one stupefied.

"If the sun had fallen from the heavens," he said, "it would not have surprised me more. Surely, surely you are going to trust me and tell me what this means?"

"I cannot. Go on with everything just the same. Tell my mother I have gone abroad for six months, and if you value my name, keep my secret from spreading, if you can."

And then a rough voice called John Smith to the prison van.

CHAPTER III.

The Papers Again.

Mr. Foster went home in a terrible rage. His clerks could not imagine what had happened. He looked pale, worried, anxious and miserable. "I should not think," he said to himself, "that such a thing ever happened in the world before." His clients thought him bad tempered; he had the air of a man with whom everything had gone wrong--out of sorts with all the world.

"The man is mad," he said to himself, with a shrug of his shoulders; "neither more nor less than mad to fling away his life and disgrace his name. It is useless to think it will never be known; those stupid papers are sure to get hold of it, and then there is little chance of secrecy."

He went about his work with a very unsettled, wretched expression on his shrewd face. Something or other had evidently disturbed him very much.

While on his part John Smith, with the same light in his face and the same fire in his eyes, went off in the prison van.

He heard very little of what was going on around him. He seemed to be quite apart in some dreamland, some world of his own. When the coa.r.s.e suit of prison clothes was brought to him, instead of the disgust the attendants expected to see, there came over his face a smile. To himself he said: "I could almost kiss them for her sweet sake."

"That man is no thief," said one of the warders. "I do not care if they did catch him with the watch in his hand, he is no thief! I know the stamp!"

How he pa.s.sed that first day and night was best known to himself. The jailer who brought his breakfast the next morning said, "You look tired."

He smiled and said to himself, "I would have gone to death for her sweet sake! This will be easy to bear."

When that same morning dawned Mr. Forster was all impatience for his newspaper. Twice he rang the bell and asked if it had come, and when the servant brought it up he looked at it eagerly.

"Give it to me quickly," he said. Then he opened it, and was soon engrossed in the contents. Suddenly he flung it down, and almost stamped upon it in his rage.

"I knew it would be so! Now it will be blazoned all over England! What can have possessed him?"

The paragraph that excited his attention and anger ran as follows:

"We are informed on good authority that the John Smith tried yesterday on the charge of stealing a watch is no less a person than Basil Carruthers, Esquire, the owner of Ulverston Priory, and head of one of the oldest families in England."

"What can I do?" cried Mr. Forster; "it will break his mother's heart; she can never forget it. He is ruined for life. For a lawyer, I am strangely unwilling to tell a lie; but it must be done! He must be saved at any price!" He went to his desk and wrote the following note:

"To the Editor of 'The Times':

"Sir: I beg to call your attention to a paragraph that appears in 'The Times' of today stating that a man, tried under the name of John Smith for stealing a watch, is no less a person than Basil Carruthers, Esq., of Ulverston Priory. As the solicitor of that family, and manager of the Ulverston property, I beg to contradict it. Mr. Carruthers, himself, informed me of his intention to go abroad. Without doubt his indignant denial will follow mine. I am, sir, etc.,

"Herbert Forster."

"That may help him," he said. "I do not like doing it, but I cannot see my old friend's son perish without trying to save him. I may fail, but I must try. Perhaps my lie may be blotted out, like Uncle Toby's oath. If I can persuade him to send a denial, and date it Paris or Vienna, he will be saved."

Mr. Forster lost no time in applying for an order to see the prisoner.