When the righteous man turneth away from his righteousness and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live?—Ezekiel.
The prison gates shut. Silence fell. The troubled waters settled into calm. Tom went back to Queenstown; Mr. Gardiner to Woodlands—and to bed, with a couple of nurses in attendance. Denis was presumably at Dent-de-lion, working for the Aero Show. Mrs. Trent had gone no one knew whither. And Lettice, her duty done, had escaped unmolested to her attic in Pimlico, where she settled back into her groove, with that sort of capillary attraction towards the inconspicuous and the ordinary, which marked her conduct always except when she was making one of her gravely calculated excursions into the extraordinary.
Why had she held her tongue? Her friends did not need to be told. "It's Lettice all over!" said Gardiner himself, half fond, half laughing. She had had two main motives (or rather springs of action; for "motive" implies conscious volition, whereas Lettice did simply without thinking what came natural)—the one a principle, the other a prejudice. First, she would never, if she could possibly avoid it, interfere in other people's affairs—that was the principle; and second, with every taste and instinct she hated to be made conspicuous—that was the prejudice, and a tough one.
With these reasons against speaking, moreover, she saw none for. It never entered her head that some people might say she had treated Gardiner unfairly, in letting him tell his tale while keeping her own knowledge in reserve. What[Pg 182] difference could it possibly make? Why should she have spoken? It would only have made him very uncomfortable, and Denis would simply have hated it. All this, of course, rested on the assumption of her own detachment, insulation, negligibility: in which Lettice was so rooted and grounded that she was quite surprised to find other people surprised by what to her came natural as breathing.
Her explanation, given in court, ran something as follows:—"I didn't speak before the inquest because I know there were two other witnesses, and I didn't see I was wanted; and after it, by the time I heard what had happened, it was too late. There would have been no sense in disturbing things again. It would have been bad for everybody all round, and worst for Mrs. Trent. But now—now things were different. I had to speak now. It was time for the truth to come out."
Full time. Best for Dorothea, as well as for her victim. She had been screened, and in the darkness evil things had grown up. Down with all screens now. In the light of truth, the whole jumble resolved itself into order. Honor to whom honor was due; judgment to whom judgment. Even Gardiner's sentence fell into place. It might be too heavy for the particular offense; but no one knew better than himself that it was the just penalty for his months of cowardice.
February passed into March, a sweet, mild March: blue skies, brown buds, thrushes singing, daisies on every lawn, violets round every bush, white and golden daffodils ruffling under the trees, flood-water glistening like frosted silver among tender blades of grass. Towards the end of the month the prisoner saw his first visitor. Mr. Gardiner, being still too weak to go himself, sent Tom. Tom's impressions were recorded in a duty letter to Miss Smith: "I saw my brother for a few minutes yesterday in the presence of a warder. He seems very fairly cheerful and fit. His work is in the printing room. He asked me to let you know he is going strong." Dry crumbs! Lettice's consolation was that Mr. Gardiner would be no better satisfied than herself, and[Pg 183] that next month he would send Denis. Denis had at least a tongue in his head. That is to say, he used to have—unless—
A few days later she received another letter, this time from her cousin. He inclosed tickets for the Aero Show. "I know these things aren't much in your line, but you can give them away to somebody or other. As a matter of fact, we've not much worth seeing on our stand this year. The seaplane didn't get done after all. Yes, I may be in town for the week-end, but I'm afraid I shan't be able to look you up. Better luck next time, perhaps." And overleaf, a hastily scribbled postscript: "I suppose you've heard nothing from Westby? I've just had a line from Mr. Gardiner: he says Harry's been in a row—insubordination and assaulting a warder—and all letters and visits are stopped off for the next two months. No particulars, only that. I was to have gone down there next month, you know, but of course that's off now. Bad job, isn't it?"
Lettice laid down the letter with an unaccustomed sinking of the heart. Of the postscript she utterly refused to let herself think; it was bad enough without that. It was not the first time she had felt uneasy about her cousin. How often had she seen him since Westby? Not once; yet formerly they had met, as a matter of course, whenever he came to town. Formerly, too, he had written to her regularly every week—by an unexpected trait, Denis was a graphic writer, just as with his friends he was a garrulous talker; in that came out his Irish blood. Now she might think herself lucky if she heard once a month; and what things his letters were, when they came! The last had been an essay on the uses of the deck or cable plane. This present one—well, this was the climax. Over and over again, whenever he mentioned the Show (and it had been his staple conversation for months), she had been given to understand that she was to be taken to Olympia, and dragged round the exhibits, and stuffed with information whether she liked it or not; and that her guide was to be no other than himself.
[Pg 184]
Lettice faced the conclusion that there was something wrong.
By this and by that, by what she had seen herself and by what Gardiner had said at Westby, she had gathered how things stood between Denis and Dorothea. What would be the effect of such a shock? Lettice found herself unable to guess. Up to a certain point, Denis was transparent; for years she had read him like a book, and had been able to predict not merely what he would do or say, but the very gesture and accent with which he would do or say it. Dear Denis, tried friend, good as good bread, in Gardiner's expressive idiom, pig-headed Ulsterman with those dark blue Southern Irish eyes, truculent fighter answering to the lightest touch of her silken rein!—Lettice was a good lover, and she had given him of her best. But now—now, like Gardiner, she found herself up against a door that had no key. What was going on inside? What was Denis doing there, to heal him of his deadly wound? She did not know—she could not guess. But one thing was certain: he would accept no help. Gardiner in his weakness had cried out to her and rested on............