The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
body, one witness, even, who was prepared to swear the crime
premeditated.
"More than once I've heard her say," swore Maggie Peterson, a frowzy,
blowzy creature whose hands showed like collops of raw meat against her
blowzy skirt, "that she wished Bill was dead. And there's others as
heard her besides me."
In the case of Lucy Towers, the weak-kneed unimposing solicitor for the
defense reserved his cross-examination, but for Fielding, to Ronnie's
surprise, he put up a most spirited fight; and despite the prosecution's
every effort to implicate the sailor as accessory to the shooting, the
jury refused to give a verdict against him. "As if," decided the
unimaginative jury, "armless men could fire pistols."
But Lucy Towers they found guilty of murder. "And quite rightly," said
John Cartwright, as the woman--with a faint smile in the direction of
her released cousin--was led from the room.
5
"All the same, mater, I'll swear that--in intention--Lucy Towers is
innocent."
It was Sunday afternoon at Daffadillies, and ever since his arrival
Ronnie had been harping on the same topic. But Ronnie found his
womenfolk hard to convince. In their eyes, as in the eyes of the public,
Fleet Street's report of the inquest, and more particularly Maggie
Peterson's evidence, branded Lucy Towers irrevocably murderess.
"Rubbish!" said Julia--it was one of her "good" days--"Rubbish! She's
guilty, and she'll either hang or go to jail for life."
"That would be an outrage," answered Ronnie gravely.
"Why?" The novelist laughed. "Lucy Towers shot her husband. She'll never
get over that point. Not in England, anyway. In France it's just
possible that a sentimental jury would give her their verdict. We, thank
heaven, do not indulge in that sort of perverted justice."
Aliette reluctantly sided with Julia.
"But, of course, man," said Aliette, "of course, I'm sorry for the poor
creature. Still, whatever her husband did, she had no right to shoot
him."
"Not even in self-defense?"
"No, not even in self-defense."
"In defense of an armless man, then?" countered Ronnie; and, so
countering, saw in one vivid flash of insight his one and only chance of
victory should Cartwright give him the brief.
CHAPTER XXIX
1
"There is always," says Bertram Standon in his book "How I Fought Fleet
Street," "a psychological news-moment. To be premature with news is even
worse than to be dilatory with it. The editor who knows when _not_ to
publish is worth his weight in gold."
In the Towers-public defender stunt, the proprietor of the "Democratic
News" backed his maxim to the limit. Clean through a newsless August,
and well into a newsless September, he stirred the pool of the
controversy he had started; whipped up every ripple of public interest
to a wave of excitement over the guilt or innocence of Lucy Towers; but
gave no hint of the rope he, Standon the Magnificent, intended to pull
when finally the last act of the great drama should be launched upon
London.
Even Ronnie, chafing for his chance, could ascertain no detail of the
magnate's intention. Cartwright, pumped whenever etiquette allowed it,
only beamed, "Wait and see!" Jimmy, who must have known something, had
disappeared into Devonshire. At her second ordeal, the trial before the
magistrate, Lucy Towers--still represented by the same unimposing
solicitor--reserved her defense and was formally committed for trial at
the Old Bailey.
Meanwhile Julia Cavendish worked on.
2
Physically and mentally, as day followed September day, Ronnie's mother
felt well--better, indeed, than at any other period of her illness. The
weapon of her forging grew sharp and sharper under her hand.
Despite the realization, every time she set pencil to paper, that the
candle of her life was burning remorselessly to its socket, that her
mind and her body must alike expire at task's completion, she
experienced no fear. Her brain, rapt in the creative ecstasy of Julia
Cavendish, living novelist, regarded Julia Cavendish, dying woman, from
a point of view of the coolest detachment.
Outwardly, to her watchers, to Ronnie, nurse, Aliette, and Mrs.
Sanderson, she played a part; the part of the convalescent. That they,
in their ignorance, should believe the part she played to be real, gave
to her detachment a whimsical and peculiar happiness.
And always in those days the illusion of immortality sustained her. She
used to think, lying weary of work on her great bed: "Like Horace, I
shall not utterly die. Dying, I shall leave my Ronnie this sword of the
written word. What greater proof of love and service could any son or
any god require?"
For now, almost at the end of her race with death, Julia Cavendish knew
the conviction of Godhead. The priest-hoisted sectarian idol of her
middle years lay shattered into a thousand fragments. In its stead was a
spiritual Presence, all-pervading, all-comprehending, all-pardoning: an
Individual of Individuals, to whom, freed from the slave-allegiance of
the formal churches, each unhampered soul must fight its own unhampered
way: a Soul of Souls who--despising no man-made creed--yet demanded more
than any creed made of man, even the courage to look on life and death
and Himself alike fearlessly.
But to that Godhead the soul of Aliette Brunton had not yet come. Her
second honeymoon-time was over; Daffadillies no longer "Joyous Gard";
Ronnie no more the single-minded lover of July. Between them, like a
wraith, hovered a man's ambition.
And, "If only--if only I could be with child," thought Aliette. "If only
there could be given me one tiny mite of love--one human atom to be
wholly mine." For always now--as it seemed--Ronnie and Ronnie's mother
grew less and less dependent on her affection. To each was their work:
to her only the waiting.
Ronnie's nerves, Ronnie's chafing after success, reminded her of Hector,
of the Hector she had married. Every Monday morning, as she drove with
him down the odorous country roads to West Water, his talk would be of
Lucy Towers: "She's innocent, Alie. I'll swear she's innocent"; "If only
I can get that brief, I'll be a made man"; "A made man, I tell you;
Cartwright said so."
Rushing back to Daffadillies she used to think: "I'm selfish, selfish. I
mustn't stand between him and his career. I must help him--help both of
them." But at Daffadillies, demanding no help, resolute over her desk,
sat Julia; and Aliette, looking up at the magnolia-sheathed window,
would feel lonely; lonelier than ever before; so lonely that not even
Ronnie's letters could console her through the desert week.
Yes! even his letters seemed less loving. Through every line of them she
could feel the pulse and surge of a new desire--of the desire for
success--which, if gratified, must leave her lonelier yet. Once she had
cherished his letters at her breasts. But now her very breasts were a
reproach; a reproach of childlessness. Once, laying her head among the
pillows, she had dreamed of him beside her. But now, every night, her
pillows were wet; wet with tears. Strange terrors tore her in the
nighttime. She dreamed herself utterly outcast--the woman reproached of
her own children--mother indeed, but mother-in-shame.
3
And then suddenly, a bare fortnight before the reopening of the Central
Criminal Courts, Ronnie's dreams came true. John Cartwright himself
brought round the brief, the long taped document marked on the outside:
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT. Session October.
REX _v._ TOWERS. Brief for the Defense.
MR. RONALD CAVENDISH. 50 gns. Conference 5 gns.
Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright, Norfolk Street.
"Standon jibbed a bit at that fifty," chuckled John. "He said you ought
to take the case for nothing, considering the publicity he's going to
give you."
"Oh, did he?" Ronnie laughed; but his nerves were quivering. "My whole
career," he thought. "Riches--success--fame. It's all in my own hands
now. Standon thinks he's overpaid me, does he? Perhaps he has. But I'll
give him a run for his money. Fight! By Jove, I'll fight every foot,
every inch of the way."
"I shall want an order to see the prisoner," he went on. "And, look
here, if Standon's people can find out----" The cautious voice dropped;
so that Benjamin Bunce, in the outer office, heard only a vague drone of
talk.
"That'll be all right," answered the solicitor; and two days later a
very different Ronnie caught the Saturday afternoon train to West Water.
"I'll get her off," he told Julia and Aliette, seated at tea under the
cedar. "I'll get her off--or die in the attempt. This is my chance, I
tell you. My big chance at last!"
"Optimist!" Julia laughed, a little wearily. "How can you 'get her off'?
As far as I can see there's nothing in the woman's favor except that
she's a little like our Aliette."
"A little like her! Mater, it's amazing. When I saw her yesterday, in
that wretched place at Brixton, I could have sworn it _was_ Alie." And
he went on talking, talking, talking of "his chance" till the sun sank
behind the cedar-tree; till--Julia, utterly tired out, having been
carried into the house--Aliette interrupted him with, "I've been rather
worried about her this week. Don't you think we might have Sir Heron
down again?"
"We might see what she's got to say about it in the morning," answered
Ronnie; but next morning, Sunday, the "Democratic News" drove all
thoughts save one from his mind.
At long last, Bertram Standon had launched his journalistic thunderbolt.
"Shall Lucy Towers hang?" howled Bertram Standon. "Never--if she be
innocent--while we can prevent it. Never--if she be innocent--while
there's a dollar in our purse or a sense of pity in our hearts. Let the
state pour out the taxpayers' money like water--let the bureaucrats
brief their 'hanging prosecutor' if they will. We, so far failing in our
efforts to secure the appointment of a public defender, have
briefed--out of our own pocket--a defender for Lucy Towers, a young man,
an untried man, but a man in whom both we and the unfortunate woman in
whose defense he will rise at the Old Bailey have the most unbounded
confidence. And who is this young man? He is Ronald Cavendish--son of a
woman who is known wherever the English language is spoken, of Julia
Cavendish, our greatest woman novelist."
And squeezed away in the "stop press," so inconspicuous that Julia, who
did not see the papers till tea-time, was the first of the three to
notice it, stood the news: "_Brixton Murder. Saturday night. The Crown
has briefed Mr. Hector Brunton, K.C., for the prosecution of Lucy
Towers._"
4
Hector Brunton sat alone in his chambers at King's Bench Walk. Within
the dusty book-littered room brooded silence. From without, from under
trees already browning for a hint of autumn, sounded the occasional
tup-tup of feet on the flagstones, the occasional staccato of a raised
voice. The noises fretted Brunton, distracting his attention from the
multitudinous papers prepared by the director of public prosecutions in
the case of Rex _v._ Towers, which stood piled on his ink-stained desk.
"I'm getting jumpy," he thought, turning from the signed and sealed
findings of the coroner's jury, through the verbatim reports of the
proceedings before the magistrate, to the actual indictment.
Concentrating, the K.C. reread the words of that indictment.
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT
THE KING _v._ LUCY TOWERS
Lucy Towers is charged with the following offense:
_Statement of Offense_: Homicide.