The Odds - Ethel May Dell (read full novel .TXT) 📗

/> She met his look with quivering eyelids.
"Yes," she said.
"Are you engaged to him?" he pursued.
She winced in spite of herself.
"No."
He raised his brows.
"You have refused him, then?"
Her face was burning.
"He hasn't proposed to me--yet," she said. "Perhaps he never will."
"I see." His manner was relentless, his hold compelling. "I will defend Burleigh Wentworth," he said, "upon one condition."
"What is that?" she whispered.
"That you marry me," said Percival Field with his steady eyes upon her face.
She was trembling from head to foot.
"You--you--have never seen me before to-day," she said.
"Yes, I have seen you," he said, "several times. I have known your face and figure by heart for a very long while. I haven't had the time to seek you out. It seems to have been decreed that you should do that part."
Was there cynicism in his voice? It seemed so. Yet his eyes never left her. They held her by some electric attraction which she was powerless to break.
She looked at him, white to the lips.
"Are you--in--earnest?" she asked at last.
Again for an instant she saw his faint smile.
"Don't you know the signs yet?" he said. "Surely you have had ample opportunity to learn them!"
A tinge of colour crept beneath her pallor.
"No one ever proposed to me--like this before," she said.
His hand was still upon her arm. It closed with a slow, remorseless pressure as he made quiet reply to her previous question.
"Yes. I am in earnest."
She flinched at last from the gaze of those merciless eyes.
"You ask the impossible," she said.
"Then it is all the simpler for you to refuse," he rejoined.
Her eyes were upon the hand that held her. Did he know that its grasp had almost become a grip? It was by that, and that alone, that she was made aware of something human--or was it something bestial--behind that legal mask?
Suddenly she straightened herself and faced him. It cost her all the strength she had.
"Mr. Field," she said, and though her voice shook she spoke with resolution, "if I were to consent to this--extraordinary suggestion; if I married you--you would not ask--or expect--more than that?"
"If you consent to marry me," he said, "it will be without conditions."
"Then I cannot consent," she said. "Please let me go!"
He released her instantly, and, turning, picked up her cloak.
But she moved away to the window and stood there with her back to him, gazing down upon the quiet river. Its pearly stillness was like a dream. The rush and roar of London's many wheels had died to a monotone.
The man waited behind her in silence. She had released the blind-cord, and was plucking at it mechanically, with fingers that trembled.
Suddenly the blast of a siren from a vessel in mid-stream shattered the stillness. The girl at the window quivered from head to foot as if it had pierced her. And then with a sharp movement she turned.
"Mr. Field!" she said, and stopped.
He waited with absolute composure.
She made a small but desperate gesture--the gesture of a creature trapped and helpless.
"I--will do it!" she said in a voice that was barely audible. "But if--if you ever come--to repent--don't blame me!"
"I shall not repent," he said.
She passed on rapidly.
"And--you will do your best--to save--Burleigh Wentworth?"
"I will save him," said Field.
She paused a moment; then moved towards him, as if compelled against her will.
He put the cloak around her shoulders, and then, as she fumbled with it uncertainly, he fastened it himself.
"Your veil?" he said.
She made a blind movement. Her self-control was nearly gone. With absolute steadiness he drew it down over her face.
"Have you a conveyance waiting?" he asked.
"Yes," she whispered.
He turned to the door. He was in the act of opening it when she stayed him.
"One moment!" she said.
He stopped at once, standing before her with his level eyes looking straight at her.
She spoke hurriedly behind her veil.
"Promise me, you will never--never let him know--of this!"
He made a grave bow, his eyes unchangeably upon her.
"Certainly," he said.
She made an involuntary movement; her hands clenched. She stood as if she were about to make some further appeal. But he opened the door and held it for her, and such was the finality of his action that she was obliged to pass out.
He followed her into the lift and took her down in unbroken silence.
A taxi awaited her. He escorted her to it.
"Good night!" he said then.
She hesitated an instant. Then, without speaking, she gave him her hand. For a moment his fingers grasped hers.
"You may depend upon me," he said.
She slipped free from his hold. "Thank you," she said, her voice very low.
A few seconds later Field sat again at his table by the window. The wind was blowing in from the river in rising gusts. The blind-tassel tapped and tapped, now here, now there, like a trapped creature seeking frantically for escape. For a space he sat quite motionless, gazing before him as though unaware of his surroundings. Then very suddenly but very quietly he reached out and caught the swaying thing. A moment he held it, then pulled it to him and, taking a penknife from the table, grimly, deliberately, he severed the cord.
The tassel lay in his hand, a silken thing, slightly frayed, as if convulsive fingers had torn it. He sat for a while and looked at it. Then, with that strange smile of his, he laid it away in a drawer.


CHAPTER II

The trial of Burleigh Wentworth for forgery was one of the sensations of the season. A fashionable crowd went day after day to the stifling Court to watch its progress. The man himself, nonchalant, debonair, bore himself with the instinctive courage of his race, though whether his bearing would have been as confident had Percival Field not been at his back was a question asked by a good many. He was one of the best-known figures in society, a general favourite in sporting circles, and universally looked upon with approval if not admiration wherever he went. He had the knack of popularity. He came of an old family, and his rumoured engagement to Lady Violet Calcott had surprised no one. Lord Culverleigh, her brother, was known to be his intimate friend, and the rumour had come already to be regarded as an accomplished fact when, like a thunder-bolt, had come Wentworth's arraignment for forgery.
It had set all London talking. The evidence against him was far-reaching and overwhelming. After the first shock no one believed him innocent. The result of the trial was looked upon before its commencement as a foregone conclusion until it became known that Percival Field, the rising man of the day, had undertaken his defence, and then like the swing of a weather cock public opinion veered. If Field defended him, there must be some very strong point in his favour, men argued. Field was not the sort to touch anything of a doubtful nature.
The trial lasted for nearly a week. During that time Lady Violet went day after day to the Court and sat with her veil down all through the burning hours. People looked at her curiously, questioning if there really had been any definite understanding between the two. Did she really care for the man, or was it mere curiosity that drew her? No one knew with any certainty. She wrapped herself in her reserve like an all-enveloping garment, and even those who regarded themselves as her nearest friends knew naught of what she carried in her soul.
All through the trial she sat in utter immobility, sphinx-like, unapproachable, yet listening with tense attention to all that passed. Field's handling of the case was a marvel of legal ingenuity. There were many who were attracted to the trial by that alone. He had made his mark, and whatever he said carried weight. When he came at last to make his speech for the defence, men and women listened with bated breath. It was one of the greatest speeches that the Criminal Court had ever heard.
He flung into it the whole weight of his personality. He grappled like a giant with the rooted obstacles that strewed his path, flinging them hither and thither by sheer force of will. His scorching eloquence blasted every opposing power, consumed every tangle of adverse evidence. It was as if he fought a pitched battle for himself alone. He wrestled for the mastery rather than appealed for sympathy.
And he won his cause. His scathing attacks, his magnetism, his ruthless insistence left an indelible mark upon the minds of the jury--such a mark as no subsequent comments from the judge could efface or even moderate. The verdict returned was unanimous in spite of a by no means favourable summing-up. The prisoner was Not Guilty.
At the pronouncement of the verdict there went up a shout of applause such as that Court had seldom heard. The prisoner, rather white but still affecting sublime self-assurance, accepted it with a smile as a tribute to himself. But it was not really directed towards him. It was for the man who had defended him, the man who sat at the table below the dock and turned over a sheaf of papers with a faint, cynical smile at the corners of his thin lips. This man, they said, had done the impossible. He had dragged the prisoner out of his morass by sheer titanic effort. Obviously Percival Field had believed firmly in the innocence of the man he had defended, or he had not thus triumphantly vindicated him.
The crowd, staring at him, wondered how the victory affected him. It had certainly enhanced his reputation. It had drawn from him such a display of genius as had amazed even his colleagues. Did he feel elated at all over his success? Was he spent by that stupendous effort? No one knew?
Now that it was over, he looked utterly indifferent. He had fought and conquered, but it seemed already as if his attention were turning elsewhere.
The crowd began to stream out. The day was hot and the crush had been very great. On one of the benches occupied by the public a woman had fainted. They carried her out into the corridor and there gradually she revived. A little later she went home alone in a taxi with her veil closely drawn down over her face.


CHAPTER III

The season was drawing to a close when the announcement of Lady Violet Calcott's engagement to Percival Field took the world by storm.
It very greatly astonished Burleigh Wentworth, who after his acquittal had drifted down to Cowes for rest and refreshment before the advent of the crowd. He had not seen Lady Violet before his departure, she having gone out of town for a few days immediately after the trial. But he took the very next train back to London as soon as he had seen the announcement, to find her.
It was late in the evening when he arrived, but this fact did not daunt him. He had always been accustomed to having his own way, and he had a rooted belief, which the result of his trial had not tended to lessen, in his own lucky star. He had dined on the train and he merely waited to change before he went straight to Lord Culverleigh's house.
He found there was a dinner-party in progress. Lady Culverleigh, Violet's sister-in-law, was an indefatigable hostess. She had the reputation for being one of the hardest-working women in the West End.
The notes of a song reached Wentworth as he went towards the drawing-room. Lady Violet was singing. Her voice