Witness for the Defence Part 1

Witness For The Defence.

by A.E.W. Mason.

CHAPTER I

HENRY THRESK

The beginning of all this difficult business was a little speech which Mrs. Thresk fell into a habit of making to her son. She spoke it the first time on the spur of the moment without thought or intention. But she saw that it hurt. So she used it again--to keep Henry in his proper place.

"You have no right to talk, Henry," she would say in the hard practical voice which so completed her self-sufficiency. "You are not earning your living. You are still dependent upon us;" and she would add with a note of triumph: "Remember, if anything were to happen to your dear father you would have to s.h.i.+ft for yourself, for everything has been left to me."

Mrs. Thresk meant no harm. She was utterly without imagination and had no special delicacy of taste to supply its place--that was all. People and words--she was at pains to interpret neither the one nor the other and she used both at random. She no more contemplated anything happening to her husband, to quote her phrase, than she understood the effect her barbarous little speech would have on a rather reserved schoolboy.

Nor did Henry himself help to enlighten her. He was shrewd enough to recognise the futility of any attempt. No! He just looked at her curiously and held his tongue. But the words were not forgotten. They roused in him a sense of injustice. For in the ordinary well-to-do circle, in which the Thresks lived, boys were expected to be an expense to their parents; and after all, as he argued, he had not asked to be born. And so after much brooding, there sprang up in him an antagonism to his family and a fierce determination to owe to it as little as he could.

There was a full share of vanity no doubt in the boy's resolve, but the antagonism had struck roots deeper than his vanity; and at an age when other lads were vaguely dreaming themselves into Admirals and Field-Marshals and Prime-Ministers Henry Thresk, content with lower ground, was mapping out the stages of a good but perfectly feasible career. When he reached the age of thirty he must be beginning to make money; at thirty-five he must be on the way to distinction--his name must be known beyond the immediate circle of his profession; at forty-five he must be holding public office. Nor was his profession in any doubt. There was but one which offered these rewards to a man starting in life without money to put down--the Bar.

So to the Bar in due time Henry Thresk was called; and when something did happen to his father he was trained for the battle. A bank failed and the failure ruined and killed old Mr. Thresk. From the ruins just enough was sc.r.a.ped to keep his widow, and one or two offers of employment were made to Henry Thresk.

But he was tenacious as he was secret. He refused them, and with the help of pupils, journalism and an occasional spell as an election agent, he managed to keep his head above water until briefs began slowly to come in.

So far then Mrs. Thresk's stinging speeches seemed to have been justified. But at the age of twenty-eight he took a holiday. He went down for a month into Suss.e.x, and there the ordered scheme of his life was threatened. It stood the attack; and again it is possible to plead in its favour with a good show of argument. But the attack, nevertheless, brings into light another point of view.

Prudence, for instance, the disputant might urge, is all very well in the ordinary run of life, but when the great moments come conduct wants another inspiration. Such an one would consider that holiday with a thought to spare for Stella Derrick, who during its pa.s.sage saw much of Henry Thresk. The actual hour when the test came happened on one of the last days of August.

CHAPTER II

ON BIGNOR HILL

They were riding along the top of the South Downs between Singleton and Arundel, and when they came to where the old Roman road from Chichester climbs over Bignor Hill, Stella Derrick raised her hand and halted. She was then nineteen and accounted lovely by others besides Henry Thresk, who on this morning rode at her side. She was delicately yet healthfully fas.h.i.+oned, with blue eyes under broad brows, raven hair and a face pale and crystal-clear. But her lips were red and the colour came easily into her cheeks.

She pointed downwards to the track slanting across the turf from the brow of the hill.

"That's Stane Street. I promised to show it you."

"Yes," answered Thresk, taking his eyes slowly from her face. It was a morning rich with sunlight, noisy with blackbirds, and she seemed to him a necessary part of it. She was alive with it and gave rather than took of its gold. For not even that finely chiselled nose of hers could impart to her anything of the look of a statue.

"Yes. They went straight, didn't they, those old centurions?" he said.

He moved his horse and stood in the middle of the track looking across a valley of forest and meadow to Halnaker Down, six miles away in the southwest. Straight in the line of his eyes over a shoulder of the down rose a tall fine spire--the spire of Chichester Cathedral, and farther on he could see the water in Bosham Creek like a silver mirror, and the Channel rippling silver beyond. He turned round. Beneath him lay the blue dark weald of Suss.e.x, and through it he imagined the hidden line of the road driving straight as a ruler to London.

"No going about!" he said. "If a hill was in the way the road climbed over it; if a marsh it was built through it."

They rode on slowly along the great whaleback of gra.s.s, winding in and out amongst brambles and patches of yellow-flaming gorse. The day was still even at this height; and when, far away, a field of long gra.s.s under a stray wind bent from edge to edge with the swift motion of running water, it took them both by surprise. And they met no one. They seemed to ride in the morning of a new clean world. They rose higher on to Duncton Down, and then the girl spoke.

"So this is your last day here."

He gazed about him out towards the sea, eastwards down the slope to the dark trees of Arundel, backwards over the weald to the high ridge of Blackdown.

"I shall look back upon it."

"Yes," she said. "It's a day to look back upon."

She ran over in her mind the days of this last month since he had come to the inn at Great Beeding and friends of her family had written to her parents of his coming. "It's the most perfect of all your days here. I am glad. I want you to carry back with you good memories of our Suss.e.x."

"I shall do that," said he, "but for another reason."

Stella pushed on a foot or two ahead of him.

"Well," she said, "no doubt the Temple will be stuffy."

"Nor was I thinking of the Temple."

"No?"

"No."

She rode on a little way whilst he followed. A great bee buzzed past their heads and settled in the cup of a wild rose. In a copse beside them a thrush shot into the air a quiverful of clear melody.

Stella spoke again, not looking at her companion, and in a low voice and bravely with a sweet confusion of her blood.

"I am very glad to hear you say that, for I was afraid that I had let you see more than I should have cared for you to see--unless you had been anxious to see it too."

She waited for an answer, still keeping her distance just a foot or two ahead, and the answer did not come. A vague terror began to possess her that things which could never possibly be were actually happening to her. She spoke again with a tremor in her voice and all the confidence gone out of it. Almost it appealed that she should not be put to shame before herself.

"It would have been a little humiliating to remember, if that had been true."

Then upon the ground she saw the shadow of Thresk's horse creep up until the two rode side by side. She looked at him quickly with a doubtful wavering smile and looked down again. What did all the trouble in his face portend? Her heart thumped and she heard him say:

"Stella, I have something very difficult to say to you."

He laid a hand gently upon her arm, but she wrenched herself free. Shame was upon her--shame unendurable. She tingled with it from head to foot.

She turned to him suddenly a face grown crimson and eyes which brimmed with tears.

"Oh," she cried aloud, "that I should have been such a fool!" and she swayed forward in her saddle. But before he could reach out an arm to hold her she was upright again, and with a cut of her whip she was off at a gallop.

"Stella," he cried, but she only used her whip the more. She galloped madly and blindly over the gra.s.s, not knowing whither, not caring, loathing herself. Thresk galloped after her, but her horse, maddened by her whip and the thud of the hoofs behind, held its advantage. He settled down to the pursuit with a jumble of thoughts in his brain.

"If to-day were only ten years on ... As it is it would be madness ...

madness and squalor and the end of everything ... Between us we haven't a couple of pennies to rub together ... How she rides! ... She was never meant for Brixton ... No, nor I ... Why didn't I hold my tongue? ... Oh what a fool, what a fool! Thank Heaven the horses come out of a livery stable ... They can't go on for ever and--oh, my G.o.d!

there are rabbit-holes on the Downs." And his voice rose to a shout: "Stella! Stella!"

But she never looked over her shoulder. She fled the more desperately, shamed through and through! Along the high ridge, between the bushes and the beech-trees, their shadows flitted over the turf, to a jingle of bits and the thunder of hoofs. Duncton Beacon rose far behind them; they had crossed the road and Charlton forest was slipping past like dark water before the mad race came to an end. Stella became aware that escape was impossible. Her horse was spent, she herself reeling. She let her reins drop loose and the gallop changed to a trot, the trot to a walk. She noticed with grat.i.tude that Thresk was giving her time. He too had fallen to a walk behind her, and quite slowly he came to her side. She turned to him at once.