The Tree of Knowledge Part 42

He disagreed entirely with the inference that Elsa's odd conduct of the preceding day, and seeming uncertainty as to where she had parted from her brother, was a sign of guilt.

"We cannot," he urged, "any of us dwell for a moment on such a hypothesis as that it was a murder in cold blood. The next conclusion, then, would be, a blow struck in a fit of pa.s.sion, unintentionally causing death. Now, consider probabilities for a moment. In such a case, would it not be the only impulse of any girl, terrified by the unexpected result of her anger, to rush for help? Miss Brabourne has never seen death--she would think of a swoon from loss of blood as the worst possible contingency, she would have hurried home, she would have told the first wayfarer she met, she would have been so agitated as to render concealment impossible. Besides, the poor boy's clothes were saturated with blood; how could she have lifted him--how could she have scooped any sort of hole without her clothes bearing such evident traces of it?"

"The front of her dress was very dirty," said Claud, reluctantly. "You know I always notice that sort of thing. No rain had fallen then, so it was not mud; but it was chalk, I am certain."

"You have not watched Elsa, Mr. Percivale, as I have done," said Henry, sadly. "You are ignorant of her character, and her bringing-up. She has never known what sympathy meant. Every trivial offence has been treated as a crime. Her childhood was one long atmosphere of punishment. The Misses Willoughby are good women, but they have not understood how to bring her up--repression, authority, decorum, those are their ideas. If ever Elsa laughed, she laughed alone; if she suffered, it was in secret.

She is reserved by nature, and this training has made her far more so.

Were she to fall into any grievous trouble, such as this, for instance,"

pausing a moment, he then added firmly, "I must confess that I think her first, second, and third impulse would be to conceal it."

Percivale made no reply.

"Her temper, too--she has never been taught to govern it," went on Henry, sadly; "and it is very violent. Add to this the provocation she has had----"

"Have you," asked Claud, suddenly, "have you mentioned to anyone the book we found on the cliff last night?"

Henry made a gesture of despair.

"I had forgotten that," he said, miserably. "But it is another strong piece of evidence."

Claud explained to Percivale.

"Miss Brabourne told us that she had not been on the cliffs yesterday.

As we walked home, we found a favorite book of hers lying out in the rain--a book which only some very unforeseen agitation would induce her to part with."

"Of course we could suppress that evidence at the inquest," was the immoral suggestion of the Justice of the Peace.

"It will not be necessary," tranquilly replied their companion. "I shall know the truth by then."

They were out on the cliffs by this time, and presently became aware, by the halting of the sailors in front, that the fatal spot was reached.

They saw Mrs. Orton cast herself on the ground in the theatrical way which seemed habitual to her, and saw her husband's face turn greenish white as he averted it from the little corpse over which she bent so vehemently. Walking forward, they too stood beside the dead boy.

Every feeling of animosity, of dislike, which Henry Fowler might have cherished, melted before the pitiful sight. It was through a mist of tears, which came near to falling, that he gazed down on the child's white face.

It was quite composed and the eyes half shut. A certain drawn look about the mouth, and the added placidity and beauty of death gave to it a likeness to Elsa which had not seemed to exist in life. It was somewhat horrible to contemplate. In her moments of dumb obstinacy Henry had seen her look so.

He turned away his face for a moment, looking out over the busy, tossing, sunlit sea, where the shadows of the clouds chased each other in soft blurs of shadow, with green and russet shoals between.

The fresh quick air swept over the chalk, laden with brine. A warm odor of thyme was in its breath, and there lay G.o.dfrey, with stiff limbs and still heart, in a silence only broken by his aunt's sobs, and the whistling of the wind among the rocks.

"How do you know that death was caused by a blow?" asked Mr. Percivale of the sailors, at length.

Bergman explained, in his German accents, that they had made an examination of the body to see if it could be identified.

"It is not lying now as we found it, sir. It was bent together--we straightened the limbs. In pulling down the s.h.i.+rt to see if there was a name marked on it, we discovered a livid bruise."

Mr. Percivale knelt down by the dead boy, and, pa.s.sing an arm gently beneath him, raised the lifeless head till it lay against his shoulder, and exposed the bruise in question.

Mrs. Orton, who had been silent till now, uttered an inarticulate cry of rage:

"Look there!" she gasped.

"Is anyone here ignorant enough to a.s.sert that this scar is the result of the blow of a girl's fist?" demanded Percivale, raising his head. "It has been done with a stick--a heavy stick. See, it has grazed the skin right across; you can follow the direction of it. Does Miss Brabourne carry a weapon of that description?"

"She had no stick when we met her in the lane yesterday," said Claud, eagerly.

"Idiot! As if she could not throw away a dozen on her way home from here," pa.s.sionately broke in Mrs. Orton.

"Ottilie," said her husband, in a low, warning voice, "take care."

"Take care! Too late to say that now," she cried. "Why didn't I take care sooner--care of my poor little boy? Why did I ever send him to this den of a.s.sa.s.sins? But, thank Heaven, we are in England, and shall have justice--a life for a life," she concluded, wildly.

"We are willing to make all possible allowances for Mrs. Orton's feelings," said Percivale, with great gentleness. "I must agree with her that it is much to be regretted that she trusted such a delicate child, and one on whose life so much depended, out of her own personal care."

"What do you mean, sir?" cried Ottilie, suddenly.

"What do I mean? Merely what I said, madam," he answered, astonished.

"You are trying to make insinuations," she cried, too excited to think of prudence. "What depended on G.o.dfrey's life? Do you suppose I am thinking of the paltry few hundreds a year we received for taking care of him?"

"Madam," he replied at once, "an hour since you did not scruple openly, in the presence of numbers of people, to accuse Miss Brabourne of murdering her brother to obtain his fortune; I am therefore not surprised that you imagine others may be ready to supply a base motive for your grief at his death. Believe me, however, my imagination is not so vivid as yours; what you suggest had not occurred to me until you mentioned it."

She had no answer to make; she was choking with rage; the stranger was a match for her. Her husband stood by, reflecting for the first time on the effect which G.o.dfrey's death must have for him. The few hundreds of which his wife spoke so contemptuously had nevertheless been particularly acceptable to people who habitually lived far beyond their income, and were always in want of ready money. But beyond this--had G.o.dfrey lived to attain his majority, the whole of his fortune would have been practically in his uncle's hands. He could have invested it, turned it over, betted with it, speculated with it; and the boy would have made a will immensely in his favor. He had never looked forward to a long life for the young heir.

Weakly, and viciously inclined, he had always imagined that four or five years of indulgence would "finish" him; but that he should live to be twenty-one was all-important. Now the whole of that untouched fortune was Elsa's, unless this murder could be proved against her. Mr. Orton began to divine the more rapid workings of his wife's mind. In the event of both children dying unmarried, the money was willed, half to Frederick, half to the Misses Willoughby.

Never had Mr. and Mrs. Orton been in more urgent, more terrible need than at this moment. The year had been a consistently unlucky one. Their Ascot losses had merely been the beginning of sorrows.

The hurried flight from Homburg had really been due, not to poor G.o.dfrey's complaints of his dulness, but to an inability to remain longer; and they had arrived at Edge with the full intention of partaking of the Misses Willoughby's hospitality as long as they could manage to endure the slowness of existence at their expense.

And now here was this dire calamity befallen them! Frederick smarted under a righteous sense of injury. He thought Fate had a special spite against him. What was a man to do if everything would persist in being a failure? Every single road towards paying his debts seemed to be inexorably closed. This was most certainly his misfortune and not his fault; he was perfectly willing to pay, if some one would give him the money to do it with; and, as n.o.body would, it followed that he was most deeply to be pitied.

CHAPTER XXVII.

One friend in that path shall be To secure my step from wrong; One to count night day for me, Patient through the watches long, Serving most with none to see.

_A Serenade at the Villa._

Nothing could well look blacker than did the case to Henry Fowler. He could see no way out of it. Had the boy been found at the foot of the cliffs, a verdict of accidental death could so easily have been returned; but here, and with the marks of violence plainly visible on the body, the presumption seemed terribly strong.

He stood with head sunk upon his chest, feeling beaten down, degraded, stricken. Over and over in his mind did he turn the circ.u.mstances to see if there would be enough evidence to justify the coroner in committing Elaine for trial.

Absolute proof of her guilt would not, he thought, be possible; the night had been so wild, the spot so lonely. But the very fact of standing to take her trial on such a charge would be more than enough to blast the young girl's future. Supposing she had to go through life stigmatised as one acquitted of murder merely because the jury did not see enough evidence to convict? The thought was literally agony to his large, gentle heart. Was this to be the fate of Alice's daughter? He stood as one accused in his own eyes of culpable neglect; in some way such a culmination should have been avoided--he should have been able to watch over Elaine better than he had done.