Witness for the Defence by A. E. W. Mason
CHAPTER XIII
LITTLE BEEDING AGAIN
But though she disappeared Stella Ballantyne was not in flight from menand women. She avoided them because they did not for the moment count inher thoughts, except as possible hindrances. She was not so much runningaway as running to the place of her desires. She yielded to an impulsewith which they had nothing whatever to do, an impulse so overmasteringthat even to the Reptons her precipitancy wore a look of ingratitude. Shedrove home with Jane Repton as soon as she was released, to the house onKhamballa Hill, and while she was still in the carriage she said:
"I must go away to-morrow morning."
She was sitting forward with a tense and eager look upon her face and herhands clenched tightly in her lap.
"There is no need for that. Make your home with us, Stella, for a littlewhile and hold your head high."
Jane Repton had talked over this proposal with her husband. Both ofthem recognised that the acceptance of it would entail on them somelittle sacrifice. Prejudice would be difficult. But they had thrustthese considerations aside in the loyalty of their friendship and JaneRepton was a little hurt that Stella waved away their invitationwithout ceremony.
"I can't. I can't," she said irritably. "Don't try to stop me."
Her nerves were quite on edge and she spoke with a greater violence thanshe knew. Jane Repton tried to persuade her.
"Wouldn't it be wiser for you to face things here, even though it meanssome effort and pain?"
"I don't know," answered Stella, still in the quick peremptory tone ofone who will not be argued with. "I don't care either. I have nothing todo with wisdom just now. I don't want people at all. I want--oh, how Iwant--" She stopped and then she added vaguely: "Something else," and hervoice trailed away into silence. She sat without a word, all tinglingimpatience, during the rest of that drive and continued so to sit afterthe carriage had stopped. When Jane Repton descended, and she woke upwith a start and looked at the house, it was as though she brought hereyes down from heaven to earth. Once within the house she went straightup to Repton. He had left his wife behind with Stella at the Law Courtsand had come home in advance of them. He had not spoken a word to Stellathat day, and he had not the time now, for she began immediately in aneager voice and a look of fever in her eyes:
"You won't try to stop me, will you? I must go away to-morrow."
Repton used more tact now than his wife had done. He took the troubledand excited woman's hand and answered her very gently:
"Of course, Stella. You shall go when you like."
"Oh, thank you," she cried, and was freed to remember the debt which sheowed to these good friends of hers. "You must think me a brute, Jane! Ihaven't said a word to you about all your kindness. But--oh, you'llthink me ridiculous, when you know"--and she began to laugh and to sobin one breath. Stella Ballantyne had remained so sunk in apathy throughall that long trial that her friends were relieved at her outburst oftears. Jane Repton led her upstairs and put her to bed just as if shehad been a child.
"There! You can get up for dinner if you like, Stella, or stay where youare. And if you'll tell us what you want to do we'll make thearrangements for you and not ask you a question."
Jane Repton kissed her and left her alone; and it was while Stella wassleeping upstairs that Henry Thresk called at the house and was told thatthere was no news for him.
"No doubt she will write to you, Mr. Thresk, if she wishes you to knowwhat she is doing. But I should not count upon it if I were you," saidJane Repton, in a sweet voice and with eyes like pebbles. "She did notmention you, I am sorry to say, when the trial was over."
She could not forgive him because of her own share in what she now calledhis "treachery" towards Stella. She had no more of the logician in hercomposition than Thresk had of the hero. He had committed under a greatstress of emotion and sympathy what the whole experience and method ofhis life told him was one of the worst of crimes. And now that its objectwas achieved, and Stella Ballantyne free, he was in the mood to see onlythe harm which he had done to the majesty of the law; he was uneasy; hewas not troubled by the thought that discovery would absolutely ruin him.That indeed did not enter into his thoughts. But he could not but make apicture of himself in the robe of a King's Counsel, claiming sternly theanger of the Law against some other man who should have done just what hehad done, no more and no less. And so when Mrs. Repton's door was finallyclosed upon him, and no message was given to him from the woman he hadsaved, he was at once human and unheroic enough to visit a little of hisresentment upon her. He had not spoken to her at all since the night atChitipur; he had no knowledge of the stupor and the prostration intowhich, after her years of misery, she had fallen; he had no insight intothe one compelling passion which now had her, body and soul, in its grip.He turned away from the door and went back to the Taj Mahal. A steamerwould be starting for Port Said in two days and by that steamer he wouldtravel. That Stella was in the house on the Khamballa Hill he did notdoubt, but since she had no word or thought to spare for him he could notbut turn his back and go.
Stella herself got up to dinner, and after it was over she told herfriends of the longing which filled her soul.
"All through the trial," she said shyly, with the shrinking of those whoreveal a very secret fancy and are afraid that it will be ridiculed, "inthe heat of the court, in the close captivity of my cell, I was consciousof just one real unconquerable passion--to feel the wind blowing againstmy face upon the Sussex Downs. Can you understand that? Just to see thebroad green hills with the white chalk hollows in their sides and theforests marching down to the valleys like the Roman soldiers fromChichester--oh! I was mad for the look and the smell and the sounds ofthem! It was all that I thought about. I used to close my eyes in thedock and I was away in a second riding through Charlton Forest or overFarm Hill, or looking down to Slindon from Gumber Corner, and over itswoods to the sea. And now that I am free"--she clasped her hands and herface grew radiant--"oh, I don't want to see people." She reached out ahand to each of her friends. "I don't call you people, you know. But evenyou--you'll understand and forgive and not be hurt--I don't want to seefor a little while."
The beaten look of her took the sting of ingratitude out of her words.She stood between them, her delicate face worn thin, her eyes unnaturallybig; she had the strange transparent beauty of people who have been lyingfor months in a mortal sickness. Jane Repton's eyes filled with tears andher hand sought for her handkerchief.
"Let's see what can be done," said Repton. "There's a mail-steamer ofcourse, but you won't want to travel by that."
"No."
Repton worked out the sailings from Bombay and the other ports on thewestern coast of India while Stella leaned over his shoulder.
"Look!" he said. "This is the best way. There's a steamer going toKurrachee to-morrow, and when you reach Kurrachee you'll just have timeto catch a German Lloyd boat which calls at Southampton. You won't behome in thirteen days to be sure, but on the other hand you won't bepestered by curious people."
"Yes, yes," cried Stella eagerly. "I can go to-morrow."
"Very well."
Repton looked at the clock. It was still no more than half-past ten. Hesaw with what a fever of impatience Stella was consumed.
"I believe I could lay my hand on the local manager of the line to-nightand fix your journey up for you."
"You could?" cried Stella. He might have been offering her a crown, sobrightly her thanks shone in her eyes.
"I think so."
He got up from the table and stood looking at her, and then away from herwith his lips pursed in doubt.
"Yes?" said she.
"I was thinking. Will you travel under another name? I don't suggest itreally, only it might save you--annoyance."
Repton's hesitation was misplaced, for Stella Ballantyne's pride wasquite beaten to the ground.
"Yes," she said at once. "I should wish to do that"; and both he and hiswife understood from that ready answer more completely
"It's all settled," he said. "You will have a cabin on deck in bothsteamers. I gave your name in confidence to the manager here and he willtake care that everything possible is done for you. There will be veryfew passengers on the German boat. The season is too early for either thetourists or the people on leave."
Thus Stella Ballantyne crept away from Bombay and in five weeks' timeshe landed at Southampton. There she resumed her name. She travelled intoSussex and stayed for a few nights at the inn whither Henry Thresk hadcome years before on his momentous holiday. She had a little money--thetrifling income which her parents had left to her upon their death--andshe began to look about for a house. By a piece of good fortune shediscovered that the cottage in which she had lived at Little Beedingwould be empty in a few months. She took it and before the summer was outshe was once more established there. It was on an afternoon of Augustwhen Stella made her home in it again. She passed along the yellow lanedriven deep between high banks of earth where the roots of greatelm-trees cropped out. Every step was familiar to her. The lane with manytwists under overarching branches ran down a steep hill and came out intothe open by the big house with its pillared portico and its light greystone and its wonderful garden of lawn and flowers and cedars. A tinychurch with a narrow graveyard and strange carefully-trimmed squarebushes of yew stood next to the house, and beyond the church the lanedipped to the river and the cottage.
Stella went from room to room. She had furnished the cottage simply anddaintily; the walls were bright, her servant-girl had gathered flowersand set them about. Outside the window the sunlight shone on a greengarden. She was alone. It was the home-coming she had wished for.
For three or four months she was left alone; and then one afternoon asshe came into the cottage after a walk she found a little white card uponthe table. It bore the name of Mr. Hazlewood.