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CHAPTER III - THE MYSTERY OF THE WELL
Cyprian Paynter did not know what he expected to see rise out
of the well--the corpse of the murdered man or merely the spirit
of the fountain. Anyhow, neither of them rose out of it,
and he recognized after an instant that this was, after all,
perhaps the more natural course of things. Once more he pulled
himself together, walked to the edge of the well and looked down.
He saw, as before, a dim glimmer of water, at that depth no
brighter than ink; he fancied he still heard a faint convulsion
and murmur, but it gradually subsided to an utter stillness.
Short of suicidally diving in, there was nothing to be done.
He realized that, with all his equipment, he had not even
brought anything like a rope or basket, and at length decided
to return for them. As he retraced his steps to the entrance,
he recurred to, and took stock of, his more solid discoveries.
Somebody had gone into the wood, killed the Squire and thrown
him down the well, but he did not admit for a moment that it
was his friend the poet; but if the latter had actually
been seen coming out of the wood the matter was serious.
As he walked the rapidly darkening twilight was cloven with
red gleams, that made him almost fancy for a moment that some
fantastic criminal had set fire to the tiny forest as he fled.
A second glance showed him nothing but one of those red sunsets
in which such serene days sometimes close.
As he came out of the gloomy gate of trees into the full glow he saw
a dark figure standing quite still in the dim bracken, on the spot
where he had left the woodcutter. It was not the woodcutter.
It was topped by a tall black hat of a funeral type, and the whole
figure stood so black against the field of crimson fire that edged
the sky line that he could not for an instant understand or recall it.
When he did, it was with an odd change in the whole channel
of his thoughts.
"Doctor Brown!" he cried. "Why, what are you doing up here?"
"I have been talking to poor Martin," answered the doctor,
and made a rather awkward movement with his hand toward the road
down to the village. Following the gesture, Paynter dimly saw
another dark figure walking down in the blood-red distance.
He also saw that the hand motioning was really black, and not
merely in shadow; and, coming nearer, found the doctor's dress
was really funereal, down to the detail of the dark gloves.
It gave the American a small but queer shock, as if this were
actually an undertaker come up to bury the corpse that could
not be found.
"Poor Martin's been looking for his chopper," observed Doctor Brown,
"but I told him I'd picked it up and kept it for him.
Between ourselves, I hardly think he's fit to be trusted
with it." Then, seeing the glance at his black garb, he added:
"I've just been to a funeral. Did you know there's been another loss?
Poor Jake the fisherman's wife, down in the cottage on the shore,
you know. This infernal fever, of course."
As they both turned, facing the red evening light,
Paynter instinctively made a closer study, not merely of
the doctor's clothes, but of the doctor. Dr. Burton Brown
was a, tall, alert man, neatly dressed, who would otherwise have
had an almost military air but for his spectacles and an almost
painful intellectualism in his lean brown face and bald brow.
The contrast was clinched by the fact that, while his face
was of the ascetic type generally conceived as clean-shaven,
he had a strip of dark mustache cut too short for him to bite,
and yet a mouth that often moved as if trying to bite it.
He might have been a very intelligent army surgeon, but he had
more the look of an engineer or one of those services that
combine a military silence with a more than military science.
Paynter had always respected something ruggedly reliable
about the man, and after a little hesitation he told him
all the discoveries.
The doctor took the hat of the dead Squire in his hand,
and examined it with frowning care. He put one finger
through the hole in the crown and moved it meditatively.
And Paynter realized how fanciful his own fatigue must have
made him; for so silly a thing as the black finger waggling
through the rent in that frayed white relic unreasonably
displeased him, The doctor soon made the same discovery
with professional acuteness, and applied it much further.
For when Paynter began to tell him of the moving water
in the well he looked at him a moment through his spectacles,
and then said:
"Did you have any lunch?"
Paynter for the first time realized that he had, as a fact,
worked and thought furiously all day without food.
"Please don't fancy I mean you had too much lunch," said the medical man,
with mournful humor. "On the contrary, I mean you had too little.
I think you are a bit knocked out, and your nerves exaggerate things.
Anyhow, let me advise you not to do any more to-night. There's
nothing to be done without ropes or some sort of fishing tackle,
if with that; but I think I can get you some of the sort
of grappling irons the fishermen use for dragging. Poor Jake's
got some, I know; I'll bring them round to you tomorrow morning.
The fact is, I'm staying there for a bit as he's rather in a state,
and I think is better for me to ask for the things and not a stranger.
I am sure you'll understand."
Paynter understood sufficiently to assent, and hardly knew why
he stood vacantly watching the doctor make his way down the steep
road to the shore and the fisher's cottage. Then he threw off
thoughts he had not examined, or even consciously entertained,
and walked slowly and rather heavily back to the Vane Arms.
The doctor, still funereal in manner, though no longer so in costume,
appeared punctually under the wooden sign next morning,
laden with what he had promised; an apparatus of hooks and a
hanging net for hoisting up anything sunk to a reasonable depth.
He was about to proceed on his professional round, and said
nothing further to deter the American from proceeding
on his own very unprofessional experiment as a detective.
That buoyant amateur had indeed recovered most, if not all,
of yesterday's buoyancy, was now well fitted to pass any
medical examination, and returned with all his own energy
to the scene of yesterday's labors.
It may well have brightened and made breezier his second day's toil that
he had not only the sunlight and the bird's singing in the little wood,
to say nothing of a more scientific apparatus to work with,
but also human companionship, and that of the most intelligent type.
After leaving the doctor and before leaving the village be had
bethought himself of seeking the little court or square where stood
the quiet brown house of Andrew Ashe, solicitor, and the operations
of dragging were worked in double harness. Two heads were peering
over the well in the wood: one yellow-haired, lean and eager;
the other redhaired, heavy and pondering; and if it be true that two heads
are better than one, it is truer that four hands are better than two.
In any case, their united and repeated efforts bore fruit at last,
if anything so hard and meager and forlorn can be called a fruit.
It weighed loosely in the net as it was lifted, and rolled out on
the grassy edge of the well; it was a bone.
Ashe picked it up and stood with it in his hand, frowning.
"We want Doctor Brown here," he said. "This may be the bone
of some animal. Any dog or sheep might fall into a hidden well."
Then he broke off, for his companion was already detaching a second
bone from the net.
After another half hour's effort Paynter had occasion to remark,
"It must have been rather a large dog." There were already a heap
of such white fragments at his feet.
"I have seen nothing yet," said Ashe, speaking more plainly.
"That is certainly a human bone." "I fancy this must be a human bone,"
said the American.
And he turned away a little as he handed the other a skull.
There was no doubt of what sort of skull; there was
the one unique curve that holds the mystery of reason,
and underneath it the two black holes that had held human eyes.
But just above that on the left was another and smaller black hole,
which was not an eye.
Then the lawyer said, with something like an effort:
"We may admit it is a man without admitting it is--any particular man.
There may be something, after all, in that yarn about the drunkard;
he may have tumbled into the well. Under certain conditions,
after certain natural processes, I fancy, the bones might be
stripped in this way, even without the skill of any assassin.
We want the doctor again."
Then he added suddenly, and the very sound of his voice suggested
that he hardly believed his own words.
"Haven't you got poor Vane's hat there?"
He took it from the silent American's hand, and with a sort of hurry
fitted it on the bony head.
"Don't!" said the other involuntarily.
The lawyer had put his finger, as the doctor had done,
through the hole in the hat, and it lay exactly over the hole
in the skull.
"I have the better right to shrink," he said steadily,
but in a vibrant voice. "I think I am the older friend."
Paynter nodded without speech, accepting the final identification.
The last doubt, or hope, had departed, and he turned to the dragging
apparatus, and did not speak till he had made his last find.
The singing of the birds seemed to grow louder about them,
and the dance of the green summer leaves was repeated beyond
in the dance of the green summer sea. Only the great roots
of the mysterious trees could be seen, the rest being far aloft,
and all round it was a wood of little, lively and happy things.
They might have been two innocent naturalists, or even two children
fishing for eels or tittlebats on that summer holiday when Paynter
pulled up something that weighed in the net more heavily than any bone.
it nearly broke the meshes, and fell against a mossy stone
with a clang.
"Truth lies at the bottom of a well," cried the American,
with lift in his voice. "The woodman's ax."
It lay, indeed, flat and gleaming in the grasses by the well
in the wood, just as it had lain in the thicket where
the woodman threw it in the beginning of all these things.
But on one corner of the bright blade was a dull brown stain.
"I see," said Ashe, "the woodman's ax, and therefore
the Woodman. Your deductions are rapid."
"My deductions are reasonable," said Paynter, "Look here,
Mr. Ashe; I know what you're thinking. I know you distrust Treherne;
but I'm sure you will be just for all that. To begin with,
surely the first assumption is that the woodman's ax is used
by the Woodman. What have you to say to it?"
"I say 'No' to it," replied the lawyer. "The last weapon a woodman
would use would be a woodman's ax; that is if he is a sane man."
"He isn't," said Paynter quietly; "you said you wanted the doctor's
opinion just now. The doctor's opinion on this point is the same
as my own. We both found him meandering about outside there;
it's obvious this business has gone to his head, at any rate.
If the murderer were a man of business like yourself,
what you say might be sound. But this murderer is a mystic.
He was driven by some fanatical fad about the trees.
It's quite likely he thought there was something solemn
and sacrificial about the ax, and would have liked to cut off
Vane's head before a crowd, like Charles I's. He's looking
for the ax still, and probably thinks it a holy relic."
"For which reason," said Ashe, smiling, "he instantly chucked
it down a well."
Paynter laughed.
"You have me there certainly," he said. "But I think you have
something else in your mind. You'll say, I suppose, that we
were all watching the wood; but were we? Frankly, I could almost
fancy the peacock trees did strike me with a sort of sickness--
a sleeping sickness."
"Well," admitted Ashe, "you have me there too. I'm afraid I
couldn't swear I was awake all the time; but I don't put it down
to magic trees--only to a private hobby of going to bed at night.
But look here, Mr. Paynter; there's another and better argument
against any outsider from the village or countryside having
committed the crime. Granted he might have slipped past us somehow,
and gone for the Squire. But why should he go for him in the wood?
How did he know he was in the wood? You remember how suddenly
the poor old boy bolted into it, on what a momentary impulse.
'It's the last place where one would normally look for such a man,
in the middle of the night. No, it's an ugly thing to say, but we,
the group round that garden table, were the only people who knew.
Which brings me back to the one point in your remarks which I happen
to think perfectly true."
"What was that?" inquired the other.
"That the murderer was a mystic," said Ashe. "But a cleverer
mystic than poor old Martin."
Paynter made a murmur of protest, and then fell silent.
"Let us talk plainly," resumed the lawyer. "Treherne had all
those mad motives you yourself admit against the woodcutter.
He had the knowledge of Vane's whereabouts, which nobody can
possibly attribute to the woodcutter. But he had much more.
Who taunted and goaded the Squire to go into the wood
at all? Treherne. Who practically prophesied, like an infernal
quack astrologer, that something would happen to him if he did
go into the wood? Treherne. Who was, for some reason,
no matter what, obviously burning with rage and restlessness
all that night, kicking his legs impatiently to and fro on
the cliff, and breaking out with wild words about it being all
over soon? Treherne. And on top of all this, when I walked
closer to the wood, whom did I see slip out of it swiftly and
silently like a shadow, but turning his face once to the moon?
On my oath and on my honor--Treherne."
"It is awful," said Paynter, like a man stunned.
"What you say is simply awful."
"Yes," said Ashe seriously, "very awful, but very simple.
Treherne knew where the ax was originally thrown. I saw him,
on that day he lunched here first, watching it like a wolf,
while Miss Vane was talking to him. On that dreadful night
he could easily have picked it up as he went into the wood.
He knew about the well, no doubt; who was so likely to know any old
traditions about the peacock trees? He hid the hat in the trees,
where perhaps he hoped (though the point is unimportant)
that nobody would dare to look. Anyhow, he hid it, simply because it
was the one thing that would not sink in the well. Mr. Paynter,
do you think I would say this of any man in mere mean dislike?
Could any man. say it of any man unless the case was complete,
as this is complete?"
"It is complete," said Paynter, very pale. "I have nothing left against
it but a faint, irrational feeling; a feeling that, somehow or other,
if poor Vane could stand alive before us at this moment he might tell
some other and even more incredible tale."
Ashe made a mournful gesture.
"Can these dry bones live?" he said.
"Lord Thou knowest," answered the other mechanically.
"Even these dry bones--"
And he stopped suddenly with his mouth open, a blinding light
of wonder in his pale eyes.
"See here," he said hoarsely and hastily. "You have said the word.
What does it mean? What can it mean? Dry? Why are these bones dry?"
The lawyer started and stared down at the heap.
"Your case complete!" cried Paynter, in mounting excitement.
"Where is the water in the well? The water I saw leap like a flame?
Why did it leap? Where is it gone to? Complete! We are
buried under riddles."
Ashe stooped, picked up a bone and looked at it.
"You are right," he said, in a low and shaken voice:
"this bone is as dry--as a bone."
"Yes, I am right," replied Cyprian. "And your mystic is still
as mysterious as a mystic."
There was a long silence. Ashe laid down the bone, picked up
the ax and studied it more closely. Beyond the dull stain
at the corner of the steel there was nothing unusual about it
save a broad white rag wrapped round the handle, perhaps to give
a better grip. The lawyer thought it worth, noting, however,
that the rag was certainly newer and cleaner than the chopper.
But both were quite dry.
"Mr. Paynter," he said at last, "I admit you have scored,
in the spirit if not in the letter. In strict logic,
this greater puzzle is not a reply to my case. If this ax
has not been dipped in water, it has been dipped in blood;
and the water jumping out of the well is not an explanation
of the poet jumping out of the wood. But I admit that
morally and practically it does make a vital difference.
We are not faced with a colossal contradiction, and we don't
know how far it extends. The body might have been broken
up or boiled down to its bones by the murderer, though it
may be hard to connect it with the conditions of the murder.
It might conceivably have been so reduced by some property
in the water and soil, for decomposition varies vastly with
these things. I should not dismiss my strong prima facie case
against the likely person because of these difficulties.
But here we have something entirely different. That the bones
themselves should remain dry in a well full of water,
or a well that yesterday was full of water--that brings us
to the edge of something beyond which we can make no guess.
There is a new factor, enormous and quite unknown.
While we can't fit together such prodigious facts, we can't fit
together a case against Treherne or against anybody. No; there is
only one thing to be done now. Since we can't accuse Treherne,
we must appeal to him. We must put the case against him frankly
before him, and trust he has an explanation--and will give it.
I suggest we go back and do it now."
Paynter, beginning to follow, hesitated a moment, and then said:
"Forgive me for a kind of liberty; as you say, you are an older
friend of the family. I entirely agree with your suggestion,
but before you act on your present suspicions, do you know,
I think Miss Vane ought to be warned a little? I rather fear
all this will be a new shock to her."
"Very well," said Ashe, after looking at him steadily for an instant.
"Let us go across to her first."
From the opening of the wood they could see Barbara Vane writing
at the garden table, which was littered with correspondence,
and the butler with his yellow face waiting behind her chair.
As the lengths of grass lessened between them, and the little
group at the table grew larger and clearer in the sunlight,
Paynter had a painful sense of being part of an embassy of doom.
It sharpened when the girl looked up from the table and smiled
on seeing them.
"I should like to speak to you rather particularly if I may,"
said the lawyer, with a touch of authority in his respect;
and when the butler was dismissed he laid open the whole matter
before her, speaking sympathetically, but leaving out nothing,
from the strange escape of the poet from the wood to the last
detail of the dry bones out of the well. No fault could be
found with any one of his tones or phrases, and yet Cyprian,
tingling in every nerve with the fine delicacy of his nation
about the other sex, felt as if she were faced with an inquisitor.
He stood about uneasily, watched the few colored clouds
in the clear sky and the bright birds darting about the wood,
and he heartily wished himself up the tree again.
Soon, however, the way the girl took it began to move him to
perplexity rather than pity. It was like nothing he had expected,
and yet he could not name the shade of difference.
The final identification of her father's skull, by the hole
in the hat, turned her a little pale, but left her composed;
this was, perhaps, explicable, since she had from the first
taken the pessimistic view. But during the rest of the tale
there rested on her broad brows under her copper coils
of hair, a brooding spirit that was itself a mystery.
He could only tell himself that she was less merely receptive,
either firmly or weakly, than he would have expected.
It was as if she revolved, not their problem, but her own.
She was silent a long time, and said at last:
"Thank you, Mr. Ashe, I am really very grateful for this. After all,
it brings things to the point where they must have come sooner or later."
She looked dreamily at the wood and sea, and went on: "I've not only
had myself to consider, you see; but if you're really thinking THAT,
it's time I spoke out, without asking anybody. You say, as if it were
something very dreadful, 'Mr. Treherne was in the wood that night.'
Well, it's not quite so dreadful to me, you see, because I know he was.
In fact, we were there together."
"Together!" repeated the lawyer.
"We were together," she said quietly, "because we had a right
to be together."
"Do you mean," stammered Ashe, surprised out of himself,
"that you were engaged?"
"No, no," she said. "We were married."
Then, amid a startled silence, she added, as a kind of afterthought:
"In fact, we are still."
Strong as was his composure, the lawyer sat back in his chair with a sort
of solid stupefaction at which Paynter could not help smiling.
"You will ask me, of course," went on Barbara in the same
measured manner, "why we should be married secretly,
so that even my poor father did not know. Well, I answer
you quite frankly to begin with; because, if he had known,
he would certainly have cut me off with a shilling. He did not
like my husband, and I rather fancy you do not like him either.
And when I tell you this, I know perfectly well what you will say--
the usual adventurer getting hold of the usual heiress.
It is quite reasonable, and, as it happens, it is quite wrong.
If I had deceived my father for the sake of the money,
or even for the sake of a man, I should be a little ashamed
to talk to you about it. And I think you can see that I
am not ashamed."
"Yes," said the American, with a grave inclination, "yes, I
can see that."
She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as if seeking words
for an obscure matter, and then said:
"Do you remember, Mr. Paynter, that day you first lunched here
and told us about the African trees? Well, it was my birthday;
I mean my first birthday. I was born then, or woke up or something.
I had walked in this garden like a somnambulist in the sun.
I think there are many such somnambulists in our set and our society;
stunned with health, drugged with good manners, fitting their
surroundings too well to be alive. Well, I came alive somehow;
and you know how deep in us are the things we first realize when we
were babies and began to take notice. I began to take notice.
One of the first things I noticed was your own story, Mr. Paynter. I feel
as if I heard of St. Securis as children hear of Santa Claus,
and as if that big tree were a bogey I still believed in. For I do still
believe in such things, or rather I believe in them more and more;
I feel certain my poor father drove on the rocks by disbelieving,
and you are all racing to ruin after him. That is why I do honestly
want the estate, and that is why I am not ashamed of wanting it.
I am perfectly certain, Mr. Paynter, that nobody can save this
perishing land and this perishing people but those who understand.
I mean who understand a thousand little signs and guides in the very
soil and lie of the land, and traces that are almost trampled out.
My husband understands, and I have begun to understand; my father
would never have understood. There are powers, there is the spirit
of a place, there are presences that are not to be put by.
Oh, don't fancy I am sentimental and hanker after the good old days.
The old days were not all good; that is just the point,
and we must understand enough to know the good from the evil.
We must understand enough to save the traces of a saint or a
sacred tradition, or, where a wicked god has been worshiped,
to destroy his altar and to cut down his grove."
"His grove," said Paynter automatically, and looked toward
the little wood, where the sunbright birds were flying.
"Mrs. Treherne," said Ashe, with a formidable quietness, "I am
not so unsympathetic with all this as you may perhaps suppose.
I will not even say it is all moonshine, for it is something better.
It is, if I may say so, honeymoonshine. I will never deny the saying
that it makes the world go round, if it makes people's heads go
round too. But there are other sentiments, madam, and other duties.
I need not tell you your father was a good man, and that what has
befallen him would be pitiable, even as the fate of the wicked.
This is a horrible thing, and it is chiefly among horrors that we
must keep our common sense. There are reasons for everything,
and when my old friend lies butchered do not come to me with even
the most beautiful fairy tales about a saint and his enchanted grove."
"Well, and you!" she cried, and rose radiantly and swiftly.
"With what kind of fairy tales do you come to me?
In what enchanted groves are YOU walking? You come and tell
me that Mr. Paynter found a well where the water danced and
then disappeared; but of course miracles are all moonshine!
You tell me you yourself fished bones from under the same water,
and every bone was as dry as a biscuit; but for Heaven's
sake let us say nothing that makes anybody's head go round!
Really, Mr. Ashe, you must try to preserve your common sense!"
She was smiling, but with blazing eyes; and Ashe got to his feet
with an involuntary laugh of surrender.
"Well, we must-be going," he said. "May I say that a
tribute is really due to your new transcendental training?
If I may say so, I always knew you had brains; and you've been
learning to use them."
The two amateur detectives went back to the wood for the moment,
that Ashe might consider the removal of the unhappy Squire's remains.
As he pointed out, it was now legally possible to have an inquest,
and, even at that early stage of investigations, he was in favor
of having it at once.
"I shall be the coroner," he said, "and I think it will be a case
of 'some person or persons unknown.' Don't be surprised;
it is often done to give the guilty a false security.
This is not the first time the police have found it convenient
to have the inquest first and the inquiry afterward."
But Paynter had paid little attention to the point; for his great gift
of enthusiasm, long wasted on arts and affectations, was lifted to
inspiration by the romance of real life into which he had just walked.
He was really a great critic; he had a genius for admiration,
and his admiration varied fittingly with everything he admired.
"A splendid girl and a splendid story," he cried. "I feel as if I
were in love again myself, not so much with her as with Eve or Helen
of Troy, or some such tower of beauty in the morning of the world.
Don't you love all heroic things, that gravity and great candor,
and the way she took one step from a sort of throne to stand in a
wilderness with a vagabond? Oh, believe me, it is she who is the poet;
she has the higher reason, and honor and valor are at rest in her soul."
"In short, she is uncommonly pretty," replied Ashe, with some cynicism.
"I knew a murderess rather well who was very much like her, and had
just that colored hair."
"You talk as if a murderer could be caught red-haired instead
of red-handed," retorted Paynter. "Why, at this very minute,
you could be caught red-haired yourself. Are you a murderer,
by any chance?"
Ashe looked up quickly, and then smiled.
"I'm afraid I'm a connoisseur in murderers, as you are in poets,"
he answered, "and I assure you they are of all colors in hair
as well as temperament. I suppose it's inhumane, but mine is a
monstrously interesting trade, even in a little place like this.
As for that girl, of course I've known her all her life, and--But--
but that is just the question. Have I known her all her life?
Have I known her at all? Was she even there to be known?
You admire her for telling the truth; and so she did, by God, when she
said that some people wake up late, who have never lived before.
Do we know what they might do--we, who have only seen them asleep?"
"Great heavens!" cried Paynter. "You don't dare suggest that she--"
"No, I don't," said the lawyer, with composure, "but there
are other reasons. . . . I don't suggest anything fully,
till we've had our interview with this poet of yours.
I think I know where to find him."
They found him, in fact, before they expected him,
sitting on the bench outside the Vane Arms, drinking a mug
of cider and waiting for the return of his American friend;
so it was not difficult to open conversation with him.
Nor did he in any way avoid the subject of the tragedy;
and the lawyer, seating himself also on the long bench that fronted
the little market place, was soon putting the last developments
as lucidly as he had put them to Barbara.
"Well," said Treherne at last, leaning back and frowning at the signboard,
with the colored birds and dolphins, just about his head;
"suppose somebody did kill the Squire. He'd killed a good many people
with his hygiene and his enlightened landlordism."
Paynter was considerably uneasy at this alarming opening;
but the poet went on quite coolly, with his hands in his pockets
and his feet thrust out into the street.
"When a man has the power of a Sultan in Turkey, and uses it with
the ideas of a spinster in Tooting, I often wonder that nobody puts
a knife in him. I wish there were more sympathy for murderers, somehow.
I'm very sorry the poor old fellow's gone myself; but you gentlemen
always seem to forget there are any other people in the world.
He's all right; he was a good fellow, and his soul, I fancy,
has gone to the happiest paradise of all."
The anxious American could read nothing of the effect of this
in the dark Napoleonic face of the lawyer, who merely said:
"What do you mean?"
"The fool's paradise," said Treherne, and drained his pot of cider.
The lawyer rose. He did not look at Treherne, or speak to him;
but looked and spoke straight across him to the American,
who found the utterance not a little unexpected.
"Mr. Paynter," said Ashe, "you thought it rather morbid of me
to collect murderers; but it's fortunate for your own view of
the case that I do. It may surprise you to know that Mr. Treherne
has now, in my eyes, entirely cleared himself of suspicion.
I have been intimate with several assassins, as I remarked;
but there's one thing none of them ever did. I never knew
a murderer to talk about the murder, and then at once deny
it and defend it. No, if a man is concealing his crime,
why should he go out of his way to apologize for it?"
"Well," said Paynter, with his ready appreciation, "I always said you
were a remarkable man; and that's certainly a remarkable idea."
"Do I understand," asked the poet, kicking his heels on the cobbles,
"that both you gentlemen have been kindly directing me
toward the gallows?"
"No," said Paynter thoughtfully. "I never thought you guilty;
and even supposing I had, if you understand me, I should
never have thought it quite so guilty to be guilty.
It would not have been for money or any mean thing, but for something
a little wilder and worthier of a man of genius. After all,
I suppose, the poet has passions like great unearthly appetites;
and the world has always judged more gently of his sins.
But now that Mr. Ashe admits your innocence, I can honestly
say I have always affirmed it."
The poet rose also. "Well, I am innocent, oddly enough," he said.
"I think I can make a guess about your vanishing well, but of
the death and dry bones I know no more than the deadif so much.
And, by the way, my dear Paynter"--and he turned two bright
eyes on the art critic--"I will excuse you from excusing me
for all the things I haven't done; and you, I hope, will excuse
me if I differ from you altogether about the morality of poets.
As you suggest, it is a fashionable view, but I think it is a fallacy.
No man has less right to be lawless than a man of imagination.
For he has spiritual adventures, and can take his holidays when he likes.
I could picture the poor Squire carried off to elfland whenever I wanted
him carried off, and that wood needed no crime to make it wicked for me.
That red sunset the other night was all that a murder would
have been to many men. No, Mr. Ashe; show, when next you sit
in judgment, a little mercy to some wretched man who drinks and robs
because he must drink beer to taste it, and take it to drink it.
Have compassion on the next batch of poor thieves, who have to hold
things in order to have them. But if ever you find ME stealing
one small farthing, when I can shut my eyes and see the city
of El Dorado, then"--and he lifted his head like a falcon--"show
me no mercy, for I shall deserve none."
"Well," remarked Ashe, after a pause, "I must go and fix things up
for the inquest. Mr. Treherne, your attitude is singularly interesting;
I really almost wish I could add you to my collection of murderers.
They are a varied and extraordinary set."
"Has it ever occurred to you," asked Paynter, "that perhaps the men
who have never comitted murder are a varied and very extraordinary set?
Perhaps every plain man's life holds the real mystery, the secret
of sins avoided."
"Possibly," replied Ashe. "It would be a long business to stop the next
man in the street and ask him what crimes he never committed and why not.
And I happen to be busy, so you'll excuse me."
"What," asked the American, when he and the poet were alone,
"is this guess of yours about the vanishing water?"
"Well, I'm not sure I'll tell you yet," answered Treherne,
something of the old mischief coming back into his dark eyes.
"But I'll tell you something else, which may be connected with it;
something I couldn't tell until my wife had told you about
our meeting in the wood." His face had grown grave again,
and he resumed after a pause:
"When my wife started to follow her father I advised her to go back
first to the house, to leave it by another door and to meet me in
the wood in half an hour. We often made these assignations, of course,
and generally thought them great fun, but this time the question
was serious, and I didn't want the wrong thing done in a hurry.
It was a question whether anything could be done to undo an experiment
we both vaguely felt to be dangerous, and she especially thought,
after reflection, that interference would make things worse.
She thought the old sportsman, having been dared to do something,
would certainly not be dissuaded by the very man who had dared him
or by a woman whom he regarded as a child. She left me at last in a
sort of despair, but I lingered with a last hope of doing something,
and drew doubtfully near to the heart of the wood; and there,
instead of the silence I expected, I heard a voice. It seemed
as if the Squire must be talking to himself, and I had the unpleasant
fancy that he had already lost his reason in that wood of witchcraft.
But I soon found that if he was talking he was talking with two voices.
Other fancies attacked me, as that the other was the voice of the tree
or the voices of the three trees talking together, and with no man near.
But it was not the voice of the tree. The next moment I knew
the voice, for I had heard it twenty times across the table.
It was the voice of that doctor of yours; I heard it as certainly
as you hear my voice now."
After a moment's silence, he resumed: "I left the wood,
I hardly knew why, and with wild and bewildered feelings;
and as I came out into the faint moonshine I saw that old
lawyer standing quietly, but staring at me like an owl.
At least, the light touched his red hair with fire, but his square
old face was in shadow. But I knew, if I could have read it,
that it was the face of a hanging judge."
He threw himself on the bench again, smiled a little, and added:
"Only, like a good many hanging judges, I fancy, he was waiting
patiently to hang the wrong man."
"And the right man--" said Paynter mechanically.
Treherne shrugged his shoulders, sprawling on the ale bench,
and played with his empty pot.
Content of CHAPTER III - THE MYSTERY OF THE WELL [G K Chesterton's novel: The Trees of Pride]
_
Read next: CHAPTER IV - THE CHASE AFTER THE TRUTH
Read previous: CHAPTER II - THE WAGER OF SQUIRE VANE
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