Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  The defence seemed indeed a weak and feeble theory. Somebody unknown had committed the murder, and this somebody, seen from behind, had been mistaken by John for Joe Harley. The blood-stains need not be human, as the cross-examination went to show, but were only known by counter-experts to be mammalian — perhaps a rabbit’s. Every poacher — and it was admitted that Joe was a poacher — was liable to get his clothes blood-stained. Grant they were human, Joe, it appeared, had himself once shot off his little finger. All these points came out from the examination of the earlier witnesses. At last, counsel put the curate himself into the box, and proceeded to examine him briefly as a witness for the defence.

  Walter Dene stepped, pale and haggard still, into the witness-box. He had made up his mind to make one final effort ‘for Christina’s happiness.’ He fumbled nervously all the time at a small glass phial in his pocket, but he answered all questions without a moment’s hesitation, and he kept down his emotions with a wonderful composure which excited the admiration of everybody present. There was a general hush to hear him. Did he see the prisoner, Joseph Harley, on the day of the murder? Yes, three times. When was the first occasion? From the library window, just before the vicar left the house. What was Joseph Harley then doing? Walking in the opposite direction from the copse. Did Joseph Harley recognise him? Yes, he touched his hat to him. When was the second occasion? About ten minutes later, when he, Walter, was leaving the vicarage for a stroll. Did Joseph Harley then recognise him? Yes, he touched his hat again, and the curate said, ‘Good morning, Joe; a fine day for walking.’ When was the third time? Ten minutes later again, when he was returning from the lane, carrying wounded little King Charlie. Would it have been physically possible for the prisoner to go from the vicarage to the spot where the murder was committed, and back again, in the interval between the first two occasions? It would not. Would it have been physically possible for the prisoner to do so in the interval between the second and third occasions? It would not.

  ‘Then in your opinion, Mr. Dene, it is physically impossible that Joseph Harley can have committed this murder?’

  ‘In my opinion, it is physically impossible.’

  While Walter Dene solemnly swore amid dead silence to this treble lie, he did not dare to look Joe Harley once in the face; and while Joe Harley listened in amazement to this unexpected assistance to his case — for counsel, suspecting a mistaken identity, had not questioned him too closely on the subject — he had presence of mind enough not to let his astonishment show upon his stolid features. But when Walter had finished his evidence in chief, he stole a glance at Joe; and for a moment their eyes met. Then Walter’s fell in utter self-humiliation; and he said to himself fiercely, ‘I would not so have debased and degraded myself before any man to save my own life — what is my life worth to me, after all? — but to save Christina, to save Christina, to save Christina! I have brought all this upon myself for Christina’s sake.’

  Meanwhile, Joe Harley was asking himself curiously what could be the meaning of this new move on parson’s part. It was deliberate perjury, Joe felt sure, for parson could not have mistaken another person for him three times over; but what good end for himself could parson hope to gain by it? If it was he who had murdered the vicar (as Joe strongly suspected), why did he not try to press the charge home against the first person who happened to be accused, instead of committing a distinct perjury on purpose to compass his acquittal? Joe Harley, with his simple everyday criminal mind, could not be expected to unravel the intricacies of so complex a personality as Walter Dene’s. But even there, on trial for his life, he could not help wondering what on earth young parson could be driving at in this business.

  The judge summed up with the usual luminously obvious alternate platitudes. If the jury thought that John had really seen Joe Harley, and that the curate was mistaken in the person whom he thrice saw, or was mistaken once only out of the thrice, or had miscalculated the time between each occurrence, or the time necessary to cover the ground to the gate, then they would find the prisoner guilty of wilful murder. If, on the other hand, they believed John had judged hastily, and that the curate had really seen the prisoner three separate times, and that he had rightly calculated all the intervals, then they would find the prisoner not guilty. The prisoner’s case rested entirely upon the alibi. Supposing they thought there was a doubt in the matter, they should give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt. Walter noticed that the judge said in every other case, ‘If you believe the witness So-and-so,’ but that in his case he made no such discourteous reservation. As a matter of fact, the one person whose conduct nobody for a moment dreamt of calling in question was the real murderer.

  The jury retired for more than an hour. During all that time two men stood there in mortal suspense, intent and haggard, both upon their trial, but not both equally. The prisoner in the dock fixed his arms in a dogged and sullen attitude, the colour half gone from his brown cheek, and his eyes straining with excitement, but showing no outward sign of any emotion except the craven fear of death. Walter Dene stood almost fainting in the body of the court, his bloodless fingers still fumbling nervously at the little phial, and his face deadly pale with the awful pallor of a devouring horror. His heart scarcely beat at all, but at each long slow pulsation he could feel it throb distinctly within his bosom. He saw or heard nothing before him, but kept his aching eyes fixed steadily on the door by which the jury were to enter. Junior counsel nudged one another to notice his agitation, and whispered that that poor young curate had evidently never seen a man tried for his life before.

  At last the jury entered. Joe and Walter waited, each in his own manner, breathless for the verdict. ‘Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?’ Walter took the little phial from his pocket, and held it carefully between his finger and thumb. The awful moment had come; the next word would decide the fate of himself and Christina. The foreman of the jury looked up solemnly, and answered with slow distinctness, ‘Not guilty.’ The prisoner leaned back vacantly, and wiped his forehead; but there was an awful cry of relief from one mouth in the body of the court, and Walter Dene sank back into the arms of the bystanders, exhausted with suspense and overcome by the reaction. The crowd remarked among themselves that young Parson Dene was too tender-hearted a man to come into court at a criminal trial. He would break his heart to see even a dog hanged, let alone his fellow-Christians. As for Joe Harley, it was universally admitted that he had had a narrow squeak of it, and that he had got off better than he deserved. The jury gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  As soon as all the persons concerned had returned to Churnside, Walter sent at once for Joe Harley. The poacher came to see him in the vicarage library. He was elated and coarsely exultant with his victory, as a relief from the strain he had suffered, after the manner of all vulgar natures.

  ‘Joe,’ said the clergyman slowly, motioning him into a chair at the other side of the desk, ‘I know that after this trial Churnside will not be a pleasant place to hold you. All your neighbours believe, in spite of the verdict, that you killed the vicar. I feel sure, however, that you did not commit this murder. Therefore, as some compensation for the suffering of mind to which you have been put, I think it well to send you and your wife and family to Australia or Canada, whichever you like best. I propose also to make you a present of a hundred pounds, to set you up in your new home.’

  ‘Make it five hundred, passon,’ Joe said, looking at him significantly.

  Walter smiled quietly, and did not flinch in any way. ‘I said a hundred,’ he continued calmly, ‘and I will make it only a hundred. I should have had no objection to making it five, except for the manner in which you ask it. But you evidently mistake the motive of my gift. I give it out of pure compassion for you, and not out of any other feeling whatsoever.’

  ‘Very well, passon,’ said Joe sullenly, ‘I accept it.’

  ‘You mistake again,’ Walter went on blandly, for he was himself again now. ‘
You are not to accept it as terms; you are to thank me for it as a pure present. I see we two partially understand each other; but it is important you should understand me exactly as I mean it. Joe Harley, listen to me seriously. I have saved your life. If I had been a man of a coarse and vulgar nature, if I had been like you in a similar predicament, I would have pressed the case against you for obvious personal reasons, and you would have been hanged for it. But I did not press it, because I felt convinced of your innocence, and my sense of justice rose irresistibly against it. I did the best I could to save you; I risked my own reputation to save you; and I have no hesitation now in telling you that to the best of my belief, if the verdict had gone against you, the person who really killed the vicar, accidentally or intentionally, meant to have given himself up to the police, rather than let an innocent man suffer.’

  ‘Passon,’ said Joe Harley, looking at him intently, ‘I believe as you’re tellin’ me the truth. I zeen as much in that person’s face afore the verdict.’

  There was a solemn pause for a moment; and then Walter Dene said slowly, ‘Now that you have withdrawn your claim as a claim, I will stretch a point and make it five hundred. It is little enough for what you have suffered. But I, too, have suffered terribly, terribly.’

  ‘Thank you, passon,’ Joe answered. ‘I zeen as you were turble anxious.’

  There was again a moment’s pause. Then Walter Dene asked quietly, ‘How did the vicar’s face come to be so bruised and battered?’

  ‘I stumbled up agin ’im accidental like, and didn’t know I’d kicked ‘un till I’d done it. Must ‘a been just a few minutes after you’d ‘a left ‘un.’

  ‘Joe,’ said the curate in his calmest tone, ‘you had better go; the money will be sent to you shortly. But if you ever see my face again, or speak or write a word of this to me, you shall not have a penny of it, but shall be prosecuted for intimidation. A hundred before you leave, four hundred in Australia. Now go.’

  ‘Very well, passon,’ Joe answered; and he went.

  ‘Pah!’ said the curate with a face of disgust, shutting the door after him, and lighting a perfumed pastille in his little Chinese porcelain incense-burner, as if to fumigate the room from the poacher’s offensive presence. ‘Pah! to think that these affairs should compel one to humiliate and abase oneself before a vulgar clod like that! To think that all his life long that fellow will virtually know — and misinterpret — my secret. He is incapable of understanding that I did it as a duty to Christina. Well, he will never dare to tell it, that’s certain, for nobody would believe him if he did; and he may congratulate himself heartily that he’s got well out of this difficulty. It will be the luckiest thing in the end that ever happened to him. And now I hope this little episode is finally over.’

  When the Churnside public learned that Walter Dene meant to carry his belief in Joe Harley’s innocence so far as to send him and his family at his own expense out to Australia, they held that the young parson’s charity and guilelessness was really, as the doctor said, almost Quixotic. And when, in his anxiety to detect and punish the real murderer, he offered a reward of five hundred pounds from his own pocket for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the criminal, the Churnside people laughed quietly at his extraordinary childlike simplicity of heart. The real murderer had been caught and tried at Dorchester Assizes, they said, and had only got off by the skin of his teeth because Walter himself had come forward and sworn to a quite improbable and inconclusive alibi. There was plenty of time for Joe to have got to the gate by the short cut, and that he did so everybody at Churnside felt morally certain. Indeed, a few years later a blood-stained bowie-knife was found in the hedge not far from the scene of the murder, and the gamekeeper ‘could almost ‘a took his Bible oath he’d zeen just such a knife along o’ Joe Harley.’

  That was not the end of Walter Dene’s Quixotisms, however. When the will was read, it turned out that almost everything was left to the young parson; and who could deserve it better, or spend it more charitably? But Walter, though he would not for the world seem to cast any slight or disrespect upon his dear uncle’s memory, did not approve of customs of primogeniture, and felt bound to share the estate equally with his brother Arthur. ‘Strange,’ said the head of the firm of Watson and Blenkiron to himself, when he read the little paragraph about this generous conduct in the paper; ‘I thought the instructions were to leave it to his nephew Arthur, not to his nephew Walter; but there, one forgets and confuses names of people that one does not know so easily.’ ‘Gracious goodness!’ thought the engrossing clerk; ‘surely it was the other way on. I wonder if I can have gone and copied the wrong names in the wrong places?’ But in a big London business, nobody notes these things as they would have been noted in Churnside; the vicar was always a changeable, pernickety, huffy old fellow, and very likely he had had a reverse will drawn up afterwards by his country lawyer. All the world only thought that Walter Dene’s generosity was really almost ridiculous, even in a parson. When he was married to Christina, six months afterwards, everybody said so charming a girl was well mated with so excellent and admirable a husband.

  And he really did make a very tender and loving husband and father. Christina believed in him always, for he did his best to foster and keep alive her faith. He would have given up active clerical duty if he could, never having liked it (for he was above hypocrisy), but Christina was against the project, and his bishop would not hear of it. The Church could ill afford to lose such a man as Mr. Dene, the bishop said, in these troubled times; and he begged him as a personal favour to accept the living of Churnside, which was in his gift. But Walter did not like the place, and asked for another living instead, which, being of less value— ‘so like Mr. Dene to think nothing of the temporalities,’ — the bishop even more graciously granted. He has since published a small volume of dainty little poems on uncut paper, considered by some critics as rather pagan in tone for a clergyman, but universally allowed to be extremely graceful, the perfection of poetical form with much delicate mastery of poetical matter. And everybody knows that the author is almost certain to be offered the first vacant canonry in his own cathedral. As for the little episode, he himself has almost forgotten all about it; for those who think a murderer must feel remorse his whole life long, are trying to read their own emotional nature into the wholly dispassionate character of Walter Dene.

  CECCA’S LOVER

  They’re a queer lot, these Italians. After twenty years spent among them I don’t yet understand them. Italy itself I love — every artist must. I love the very dirt. I love the squalid towns. I love the crumbling walls; I love every stone of them. When I came to the country first, I dropped into it like one to the manner born. I said on the mere threshold, by the slope of the Alps, stretching out my hands to the soil of Italy, ‘Ecco la mia patria!’ But the Italians! — ah, there! — that’s quite another question. I like them, understand well; I don’t say a word against them; but comprehend them? — no, no; they’re at once too simple and too complex, by far, for our Northern intelligence.

  There was Cecca’s case, for example; what a very queer history! You must have noticed Cecca — that black-haired, flashing-eyed Neapolitan maid of ours, who goes out with my little ones. Have I never told you the story about Cecca’s strange courtship? Well, well; sit down here under the shade of the stone-pine, and light your cigarette while I tell you all about it. Be careful of your match, though; don’t throw it away lighted in the midst of the rosemary bushes; the myrtles and lentisks on these dry hillsides flare up like tinder; the white heath crackles and fizzes in a second; before you know where you are, the flame runs up the junipers and pine-trees, corkscrew-wise; and hi, presto! in rather less time than it takes to say so, the forest’s ablaze from Santa Croce to the Roya.

  It was before we settled down here at Bordighera that the thing began; indeed, it was Cecca, indirectly speaking, that brought us to the coast here. We were living at Naples then, or, rather, near Castellamare.
Cecca was our housemaid. Her full name’s Francesca. She’s handsome still, but she was beautiful then; the prettiest fisher-girl from Sorrento to Pozzuoli. Fanny took her from her parents when she was twelve years old, and trained her up in the house like an English servant. But the hot Neapolitan nature burnt strong in her, all the same; nobody could ever tame Cecca.

  Well, she had a lover, of course; every girl has a lover — especially in Italy. He was a fisherman, like her own people; for the fishermen are a caste, and no well-bred fisher-girl ever dreams of marrying any man outside it. The fellow’s name was Giuseppe. Our children loved him. He used to bring them dried sea-horses with long curled tails, and queer shells with wings to them, and creepy great octopuses with staring goggle eyes, that they loved to see and yet shrank from in terror. He was a mighty hunter of sea-eggs and cuttle-fish. Cecca pretended not to care for him, Neapolitan fashion — for they are a crooked folk; but we could see very well she was madly in love with him for all that. If we sent her on the hills to take the children for a walk, we always found, in the end, she’d gone on the beach instead, if Giuseppe was hauling the seine, or mending his nets, or tarring and towing the gaping chinks in the hull of the Sant’ Elmo.

  One morning I was sitting under the shadow of a boat, on the shingle by the sea, doing a little water-colour; the children were close by, playing with stranded jelly-fish; and Cecca was there to look after them, basking in the sun like a lizard. Presently, on the shore, Giuseppe’s boat drove in, and he hauled her up close by, with the aid of his brown-legged mates, never noticing us so near him. Cecca noted him stealthily, glancing askance at me to keep silence. The young man began sorting his fish — you know the kind of thing — strange frutti di mare that they make frittura of. All’s fish that comes to their net — mussels, squids, or sea-spiders. As he was doing it, another pretty fisher-girl strolled up that way, brown-skinned like himself, and with a bright red handkerchief twisted carelessly round that glossy black head of hers. Cecca crept closer, under shelter of the boat, her eyes like coals of fire, and listened to the talk of them. I heard it all, too; frank fisher-folk chaff, with frank fisher-folk words, in the frank fisher-folk dialect. A good part of it, don’t you see, would be totally unfit for publication in English.