“Dinny!”
“Uncle Lawrence would love it.”
Lady Mont seemed to go into a sort of coma.
“Where’s Blore?” she said: “I want one of those pancakes after all.”
“You sent him away.”
“Oh! yes.”
“Shall I tread on the gas, Aunt Em?” said Clare; “it’s under my chair.”
“I had it put there for your Uncle. He’s been readin’ me Gulliver’s Travels, Dinny. The man was coarse, you know.”
“Not so coarse as Rabelais, or even as Voltaire.”
“Do you read coarse books?”
“Oh! well, those are classics.”
“They say there was a book—Achilles, or something; your Uncle bought it in Paris; and they took it away from him at Dover. Have you read that?”
“No,” said Dinny.
“I have,” said Clare.
“From what your Uncle tells me, you oughtn’t to.”
“Oh! one reads anything now, Auntie, it never makes any difference.”
Lady Mont looked from one niece to the other.
“Well,” she said, cryptically, “there’s the Bible. Blore!”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Coffee in the hall on the tiger. And put a sniff on the fire, Blore. My Vichy.”
When she had drunk her glass of Vichy they all rose.
“Marvellous!” whispered Clare in Dinny’s ear.
“What are you doin’ about Hubert?” said Lady Mont, in front of the hall fire.
“Sweating in our shoes, Auntie.”
“I told Wilmet to speak to Hen. She sees Royalty, you know. Then there’s flyin’. Couldn’t he fly somewhere?”
“Uncle Lawrence went bail for him.”
“He wouldn’t mind. We could do without James, he’s got adenoids; and we could have one man instead of Boswell and Johnson.”
“Hubert would mind, though.”
“I’m fond of Hubert,” said Lady Mont: “and bein’ married—it’s too soon. Here’s the sniff.”
Blore, bearing coffee and cigarettes, was followed by James bearing a cedar log; and a religious silence ensued while Lady Mont made coffee.
“Sugar, Dinny?”
“Two spoonfuls, please.”
“Three for me. I know it’s fattenin’. Clare?”
“One, please.”
The girls sipped, and Clare sighed out:
“Amazing!”
“Yes. Why is your coffee so much better than anybody else’s, Aunt Em?”
“I agree,” said her aunt. “About that poor man, Dinny: I was so relieved that he didn’t bite either of you after all. Adrian will get her now. Such a comfort.”
“Not for some time, Aunt Em: Uncle Adrian’s going to America.”
“But why?”
“We all thought it best. Even he did.”
“When he goes to Heaven,” said Lady Mont, “someone will have to go with him, or he won’t get in.”
“Surely he’ll have a seat reserved!”
“You never know. The Rector was preachin’ on that last Sunday.”
“Does he preach well?”
“Well, cosy.”
“I expect Jean wrote his sermons.”
“Yes, they used to have more zip. Where did I get that word, Dinny?”
“From Michael, I expect.”
“He always caught everythin’. The rector said we were to deny ourselves; he came here to lunch.”
“And had a whacking good feed.”
“Yes.”
“What does he weigh, Aunt Em?”
“Without his clothes—I don’t know.”
“But with?”
“Oh! quite a lot. He’s goin’ to write a book.”
“What about?”
“The Tasburghs. There was that one that was buried, and lived in France afterwards, only she was a Fitzherbert by birth. Then there was the one that fought the battle of—not Spaghetti—the other word, Augustine gives it us sometimes.”
“Navarino? But did he?”
“Yes, but they said he didn’t. The rector’s goin’ to put that right. Then there was the Tasburgh that got beheaded, and forgot to put it down anywhere. The rector’s nosed that out.”
“In what reign?”
“I never can be bothered with reigns, Dinny. Edward the Sixth—or Fourth, was it? He was a red rose. Then there was the one that married into us. Roland his name was—or was it? But he did somethin’ strikin’—and they took away his land. Recusancy—what is that?”
“It means he was a Catholic, Auntie, in a Protestant reign.”
“They burnt his house first. He’s in Mercurius Rusticus, or some book. The rector says he was greatly beloved. They burnt his house twice, I think, and then robbed it—or was it the other way? It had a moat. And there’s a list of what they took.”
“How entrancing!”
“Jam, and silver, and chickens, and linen, and I think his umbrella, or something funny.”
“When was all this, Auntie?”
“In the Civil War. He was a Royalist. Now I remember his name wasn’t Roland, and she was Elizabeth after you, Dinny. History repeatin’ itself.”
Dinny looked at the log.
“Then there was the last Admiral—under William the Fourth—he died drunk, not William. The Rector says he didn’t, so he’s writin’ to prove it. He says he caught cold and took rum for it; and it didn’t click—where did I get THAT word?”
“I sometimes use it, Auntie.”
“Yes. So there’s quite a lot, you see, besides all the dull ones, right away back to Edward the Confessor or somebody. He’s tryin’ to make out they’re older than we are. So unreasonable.”
“My Aunt!” murmured Clare. “Who would read a book like that?”
“I shouldn’t think so. But he’ll simply love snobbin’ into it: and it’ll keep him awake. Here’s Alan! Clare, you haven’t seen where my portulaca was. Shall we take a turn?”
“Aunt Em, you’re shameless,” said Dinny in her ear; “and it’s no good.”
“‘If at first you don’t succeed’—d’you remember every mornin’ when we were little? Wait till I get my hat, Clare.”
They passed away.
“So your leave’s up, Alan?” said Dinny, alone with the young man. “Where shall you be?”
“Portsmouth.”
“Is that nice?”
“Might be worse. Dinny, I want to talk to you about Hubert. If things go wrong at the Court next time, what’s going to happen?”
All ‘bubble and squeak’ left Dinny, she sank down on a fireside cushion, and gazed up with troubled eyes.
“I’ve been enquiring,” said young Tasburgh; “they leave it two or three weeks for the Home Secretary to go into, and then, if he confirms, cart them off as soon as they can. From Southampton it would be, I expect.”
“You don’t really think it will come to that, do you?”
He said gloomily: “I don’t know. Suppose a Bolivian had killed somebody, here, and gone back, we should want him rather badly, shouldn’t we, and put the screw on to get him?”
“But it’s fantastic!”
The young man looked at her with an extremely resolute compassion.
“We’ll hope for the best; but if it goes wrong something’s got to be done about it. I’m not going to stand for it, nor is Jean.”
“But what could be done?”
Young Tasburgh walked round the hall looking at the doors; then, leaning above her, he said:
“Hubert can fly, and I’ve been up every day since Chichester. Jean and I are working the thing out—in case.”
Dinny caught his hand.
“My dear boy, that’s crazy!”
“No crazier than thousands of things done in the war.”
“But it would ruin your career.”
“Blast my career! Look on and see you and Jean miserable for years, perhaps, and a man like Hubert broken rottenly like that—what d’you think
?”
Dinny squeezed his hand convulsively and let it go.
“It can’t, it shan’t come to that. Besides, how could you get Hubert? He’d be under arrest.”
“I don’t know, but I shall know all right if and when the time comes. What’s certain is that if they once get him over there, he’ll have a damned thin chance.”
“Have you spoken to Hubert?”
“No. It’s all perfectly vague as yet.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t consent.”
“Jean will see to that.”
Dinny shook her head. “You don’t know Hubert; he would never let you.”
Alan grinned, and she suddenly recognised that in him there was something formidably determined.
“Does Professor Hallorsen know?”
“No, and he won’t, unless it’s absolutely necessary. But he’s a good egg, I admit.”
She smiled faintly. “Yes, he’s a good egg; but an outsize.”
“Dinny, you’re not gone on him, are you?”
“No, my dear.”
“Well, thank God for that! You see,” he went on, “they’re not likely to treat Hubert as an ordinary criminal. That will make things easier perhaps.”
Dinny gazed at him, thrilled to her very marrow. Somehow that last remark convinced her of the reality of his purpose. “I’m beginning to understand Zeebrugge. But—”
“No buts, and buck up! That boat arrives the day after tomorrow, and then the case will be on again. I shall see you in Court, Dinny. I must go now—got my daily flight. I just thought I’d like you to know that if the worst comes to the worst, we aren’t going to take it lying down. Give my love to Lady Mont; shan’t be seeing her again. Good-bye, and bless you!” And, kissing her hand, he was out of the hall before she could speak.
Dinny sat on beside the cedar log, very still, and strangely moved. The idea of defiance had not before occurred to her, mainly perhaps because she had never really believed that Hubert would be committed for trial. She did not really believe it now, and that made this ‘crazy’ idea the more thrilling; for it has often been noticed that the less actual a risk, the more thrilling it seems. And to the thrill was joined a warmer feeling for Alan. The fact that he had not even proposed added to the conviction that he was in dead earnest. And on that tiger-skin, which had provided very little thrill to the eighth baronet, who from an elephant had shot its owner while it was trying to avoid notice, Dinny sat, warming her body in the glow from the cedar log, and her spirit in the sense of being closer to the fires of life than she had ever yet been. Her Uncle’s old black and white spaniel dog, Quince, who in his master’s absences, which were frequent, took little interest in human beings, came slowly across the hall and, lying down four-square, put his head on his fore-paws and looked up at her with eyes that showed red rims beneath them. “It may be all that, and it may not,” he seemed to say. The log hissed faintly, and a grandfather clock on the far side of the hall struck three with its special slowness.
CHAPTER 32
Over any impending issue, whether test match, ultimatum, the Cambridgeshire, or the hanging of a man, excitement beats up in the last few hours, and the feeling of suspense in the Cherrell family became painful when the day of Hubert’s remand was reached. As some Highland clan of old, without summons issued, assembled when one of its number was threatened, so were Hubert’s relatives collected in the Police Court. Except Lionel, who was in session, and his and Hilary’s children, who were at school, they were all there. It might have been a wedding or a funeral, but for the grimness of their faces, and the sense of unmerited persecution at the back of every mind. Dinny and Clare sat between their father and mother, with Jean, Alan, Hallorsen and Adrian next them; just behind them were Hilary and his wife, Fleur and Michael and Aunt Wilmet; behind them again sat Sir Lawrence and Lady Mont, and in the extreme rear the Rector formed the spear tail of an inverted phalanx.
Coming in with his lawyer, Hubert gave them a clansman’s smile.
Now that she was actually in Court, Dinny felt almost apathetic. Her brother was innocent of all save self-defence. If they committed him, he would still be innocent. And, after she had answered Hubert’s smile, her attention was given to Jean’s face. If ever the girl looked like a leopardess, it was now; her strange, deep-set eyes kept sliding from her ‘cub’ to him who threatened to deprive her of it.
The evidence from the first hearing having been read over, the new evidence—Manuel’s affidavit—was produced by Hubert’s lawyer. But then Dinny’s apathy gave way, for this affidavit was countered by the prosecution with another, sworn by four muleteers, to the effect that Manuel had not been present at the shooting.
That was a moment of real horror.
Four half-castes against one!
Dinny saw a disconcerted look flit across the magistrate’s face.
“Who procured this second affidavit, Mr. Buttall?”
“The lawyer in charge of the case in La Paz, Your Honour. It became known to him that the boy Manuel was being asked to give evidence.”
“I see. What do you say now on the question of the scar shown us by the accused?”
“Beyond the accused’s own statement there is no evidence whatever before you, Sir, or before me, as to how or when that scar was inflicted.”
“That is so. You are not suggesting that this scar could have been inflicted by the dead man after he was shot?”
“If Castro, having drawn a knife, had fallen forward after he was shot, it is conceivable, I suppose.”
“Not likely, I think, Mr. Buttall.”
“No. But my evidence, of course, is that the shooting was deliberate, cold-blooded, and at a distance of some yards. I know nothing of Castro’s having drawn a knife.”
“It comes to this, then: Either your six witnesses are lying, or the accused and the boy Manuel are.”
“That would appear to be the position, Your Honour. It is for you to judge whether the sworn words of six citizens are to be taken, or the sworn words of two.”
Dinny saw the magistrate wriggle.
“I am perfectly aware of that, Mr. Buttall. What do you say, Captain Cherrell, to this affidavit that has been put in as to the absence of the boy Manuel?”
Dinny’s eyes leaped to her brother’s face. It was impassive, even slightly ironic.
“Nothing, Sir. I don’t know where Manuel was. I was too occupied in saving my life. All I know is that he came up to me almost immediately afterwards.”
“Almost? How long afterwards?”
“I really don’t know, Sir—perhaps a minute. I was trying to stop the bleeding; I fainted just as he came.”
During the speeches of the two lawyers which followed, Dinny’s apathy returned. It fled again during the five minutes of silence which succeeded them. In all the Court the magistrate alone seemed occupied; and it was as if he would never be done. Through her lowered lashes she could see him consulting this paper, consulting that; he had a red face, a long nose, a pointed chin, and eyes which she liked whenever she could see them. Instinctively she knew that he was not at ease. At last he spoke.
“In this case,” he said, “I have to ask myself not whether a crime has been committed, or whether the accused has committed it; I have only to ask myself whether the evidence brought before me is such as to satisfy me that the alleged crime is an extraditable offence, that the foreign warrant is duly authenticated, and that such evidence has been produced as would in this country justify me in committing the accused to take his trial.” He paused a moment and then added: “There is no question but that the crime alleged is an extraditable offence, and that the foreign warrant is duly authenticated.” He paused again, and in the dead silence Dinny heard a long sigh, as if from a spirit, so lonely and disembodied was the sound. The Magistrate’s eyes passed to Hubert’s face, and he resumed:
“I have come to the conclusion reluctantly that it is my duty on the evidence adduced to commit the accused to prison to await surrender to the f
oreign State on a warrant from the Secretary of State, if he sees fit to issue it. I have heard the accused’s evidence to the effect that he had an antecedent justification removing the act complained of from the category of crime, supported by the affidavit of a witness which is contradicted by the affidavit of four others. I have no means of judging between the conflicting evidence of these two affidavits except in so far that it is in the proportion of four to one, and I must therefore dismiss it from my mind. In face of the sworn testimony of six witnesses that the shooting was deliberate, I do not think that the unsupported word of the accused to the contrary would justify me in the case of an offence committed in this country in refusing to commit for trial; and I am therefore unable to accept it as justification for a refusal to commit for trial in respect of an offence committed in another country. I make no hesitation in confessing my reluctance to come to this conclusion, but I consider that I have no other course open to me. The question, I repeat, is not whether the accused is guilty or innocent, it is a question of whether or not there should be a trial. I am not able to take on myself the responsibility of saying that there should not. The final word in cases of this nature rests with the Secretary of State, who issues the surrender warrant. I commit you, therefore, to prison to await the issue of such a warrant. You will not be surrendered until after fifteen days, and you have the right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus in regard to the lawfulness of your custody. I have not the power to grant you any further bail; but it may be that you may secure it, if you so desire, by application to the King’s Bench Division.”
Dinny’s horrified eyes saw Hubert, standing very straight, make the magistrate a little bow, and leave the dock, walking slowly and without a look back. Behind him his lawyer, too, passed out of Court.
She herself sat as if stunned, and her only impression of those next minutes was the sight of Jean’s stony face, and of Alan’s brown hands gripping each other on the handle of his stick.
She came to herself conscious that tears were stealing down her mother’s face, and that her father was standing up.
“Come!” he said: “Let’s get out of here!”
At that moment she was more sorry for her father than for any other of them all. Since this thing began he had said so little and had felt so much. It was ghastly for him! Dinny understood very well his simple feelings. To him, in the refusal of Hubert’s word, an insult had been flung not merely in his son’s face, and his own as Hubert’s father, but in the face of what they stood for and believed in; in the face of all soldiers and all gentlemen! Whatever happened now, he would never quite get over this. Between justice and what was just, what inexorable incompatibility! Were there men more honourable than her father and her brother, or than that magistrate, perhaps? Following him out into that dishevelled backwater of life and traffic, Bow Street, she noted that they were all there except Jean, Alan and Hallorsen. Sir Lawrence said:
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