Read Ebook: False Evidence by Oppenheim E Phillips Edward Phillips Grieffenhagen Maurice Illustrator

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"Dearest, you don't understand! This is ruin to me. My father has turned me from the house, commanded me to bear another name, disowned me. Be brave, Marian, for we must part. I am here only to tell you this, and to bid you farewell."

Still she would not let him go.

"You will do nothing of the sort, sir. I'll not be thrown over in that fashion," she said, struggling to smile through her tears. "And, Herbert, oh, Herbert! how ill you look! You've been out all night."

He did not deny it, but again he strove to disengage himself. But she would have none of it.

"Bertie, dearest," she spoke cheerfully, though her eyes were still swimming with tears, "you mustn't think that you're going to get rid of us in this way. You've just got to come in to breakfast with me, and afterwards we'll tell Grannie all about it. Come along, sir, I insist."

He braced himself up for resistance, but he had still to learn that against a woman's love a man's will can prevail nothing. At first he was firm, then wavering, and finally he was led in triumph across the smooth lawn and along the winding path to the French windows of the morning-room. But when he found himself face to face with the kind old lady who had loved him as her own son, and saw the tears trickle down her withered, apple-red cheeks as she listened to the tale which Marian poured out, he felt that he had passed the limits of self-endurance. For more than twenty-four hours he had neither eaten nor drunk, and he was sick at heart. Gradually Marian felt the arm, which she had drawn tightly through hers, grow heavier and heavier until at last as she finished her tale with a little tremulous burst of indignation, he sank back in the arm-chair, and slowly fainted. But through the mist which closed in upon him he saw nothing but kindly pitying faces bending over his, and heard Grannie's gentle whisper--

"I believe you, Herbert," and more emphatic but none the less earnest were her words, whose sweet, tear-stained face, so close to his, was the last he saw when unconsciousness was closing in upon him.

"So do I, Bertie, I hate Rupert," and sweeter than the most heart-stirring music were the faltering words she added--

"And I love you better than ever. Oh, Grannie, Grannie, he has fainted!"

MY APOLOGY

Fortune is the strangest mistress a man ever wooed. Who courts her she shuns, who deserves her she passes over, and on him who defies her and takes no pains to secure her she lavishes her favours. I am one of those to whom she has shown herself most kind. Many years ago I vowed my life away to one purpose, and that partly an immoral one. It was a purpose which held my life. I swore to seek no end apart from it, and I put away from my thoughts all joys that were not included in its accomplishment. And yet, having kept my oath, I still possess in the prime of life everything which a man could wish for. I am rich, and well thought of amongst my fellows. I am married to the woman whom I love, and life is flowing on with me as calmly and peacefully as the murmuring waters of a woodland stream in the middle of summer. And, above all, my heart is at ease, for I have kept my vow.

She is a strange mistress, indeed! Nothing have I sought or deserved of her, yet everything I have. Whilst he who was far above me in his deservings, and whose sufferings none save myself thoroughly understood, passed through a gloomy life, buffeted by every wind, stranded by every tide of fortune; misunderstood, wronged, falsely accused, and narrowly escaped remaining in men's minds only as a prototype of a passionate, unforgiving, Quixotic man.

That the world may know him as he was, and form a better judgment as to his character, I have gathered together the threads of my life indissolubly connected with his, and have turned them inside out. I have never indulged myself with the feminine luxury of a diary, but with a surer progress than of pen over paper has the record of my strange life been written into my mind; and so I tell it just as it all comes back to me, not as a professed story-teller, with harmonious dates and regular evolution of plot, and neatly paged chapters, but in a bolder way, leaving much to be guessed at, and some things untold. If there be any of whom I have occasion to speak still amongst the living , let them remember for what purpose I write, and for his sake forbear to complain. If the sword were the pen, then would mine be the pen of a ready writer, and I might be able to touch lightly on their shortcomings, and gild over the black spots on my own life. But enough of excuses. I take up my pen a blunt Englishman, an athlete rather than a scholar, to write a plain story which shall serve not as a eulogy, but as a justification of the man to whom many years of my life have been ungrudgingly given. Let all those who may feel disposed to cavil at the disconnectedness of my loosely jointed story, remember this, and be silent.

THE FIRST CLOUD

About a mile seaward from Porlock, separated from it by a narrow strip of the most luxuriant meadowland in Devonshire, lies the village of Bossington. Perhaps it were better called a hamlet, for at the time when I knew anything about it it consisted but of six or seven cottages, a farmhouse, and a half-ruined old manor-house, for the privilege of living in which my father paid ten pounds a year, or some such trifling sum, to the neighbouring clergyman whose property it was.

But what the place lacked in size was certainly atoned for--and more than atoned for--by the beauty of its situation. High above it, like a mighty protecting giant, rose Bossington Headland, covered always with a soft, springy turf, and glowing in midsummer with the brilliant colouring of rich purple heather and yellow gorse. Often have I stood on its highest point, and with my head bared to the strong fresh breeze, watched the sun rise over the Exmoor Hills and Dunkerry Beacon, and waited until it shed its first warm gleams on the white cottages and queer old church-tower of Porlock, which lay clustered together in picturesque irregularity at the head of the little bay. And almost as often have I gazed upon the same scene from the same spot by the less distinct but more harmonious light of the full harvest moon, and have wondered in which guise it seemed the fairest.

Behind Bossington lay Allercombe Woods, great tree-covered hills sloping on one side down to the road which connected, and still connects, Porlock with Minehead and the outside world, and on the other, descending precipitously to the sea; so precipitously indeed that it seemed always a wonder to me how the thickly growing but stunted fir-trees could preserve their shape and regularity. The descent from Bossington Headland into Porlock was by a steep winding path through Allercombe Woods, and many a time I have looked through the thin coating of green leaves upon the fields which stretched like a piece of patchwork below down to the sea, and wondered whether any other country in the world could be more beautiful than this.

Within a stone's throw of where the blue sea of our English Bay of Naples rippled in on to the firm white sands, was the tumble-down old building in which we lived. What there had been of walls had long before our time been hidden by climbing plants and ivy, and in summer-time the place from a distance somewhat resembled a gigantic nosegay of cottage roses, jessamine, and other creeping flowers. There was but a small garden and no ground, for Bossington Headland rose precipitously close to the back of the house, and in front there was no space for any. A shed served as a stable for one or two Exmoor ponies, and also as a sleeping-place for the lanky, raw-boned Devonshire lad whom we kept to look after them.

There were but few habitable rooms in our mansion, but they were sufficient, for our household was a small one. My father, mother, sister, myself, and a country servant comprised it. We never had a visitor, save occasionally the clergyman from Porlock. We never went anywhere. We knew no one, and at seventeen years of age an idea which had been developing in me for a long time, took to itself the tangible shape of words.

"Father," I said to him one evening when we were sitting out upon our little strip of lawn together, he smoking, I envying him for being able to smoke, "do you know that I have never been out of Devonshire--never been further than Exeter even, and I am eighteen years old?"

It was long before he answered me, and when, at last, he turned round and did so, I was distressed to see the look of deep anxiety in his worn, handsome face, and the troubled light in his clear eyes.

"I know it, my boy," he said, pityingly. "I have been expecting this. You are weary of the country."

I stood up, with my hands in my pockets, and my back against the latticed wall of the house, gazing over the sparkling, dancing sea, to where, on the horizon, the stars seemed to stoop and meet it. Was I tired of this quiet home? I scarcely knew; country sports and country sights were dear to me, and I had no desire to leave them for ever. I thought of the fat trout in the Exford streams, and the huntsman's rallying call from "t'other side Dunkerry," and the wild birds that needed so much getting at and such quick firing, and of the deep-sea fishing, and the shooting up the coombes from Farmer Pulsford's boat, and of the delight of shipping on a hot summer's day and diving deep down into the cool bracing water. Why should I wish to leave all this? What should I be likely to find pleasanter in the world of which, as yet, I knew nothing? For a moment or two I hesitated--but it was only for a moment or two. The restlessness which had been growing up within me for years was built upon a solid foundation, and would not be silenced.

"No, I'm not tired of the country, father," I answered, slowly. "I love it too much ever to be tired of it. But men don't generally live all their lives in one place, do they, without having any work or anything to do except enjoy themselves?"

"And what should you like to be?" my father asked, quickly.

I had long ago made up my mind upon that point, and was not slow to answer--

"I should like to be a soldier," I declared, emphatically.

I was very little prepared for the result of my words. A spasm of what seemed to be the most acute pain passed across my father's face, and he covered it for a moment with his hands. When he withdrew them he looked like a ghost, deathly pale in the golden moonlight, and when he spoke his voice trembled with emotion.

"God forbid that you should wish it seriously!" he said, "for it is the one thing which you can never be!"

"Oh, Hugh, you do not mean it really; you do not wish to go away from us!"

I turned round, for the voice, a soft and gentle one, was my mother's. She was standing in the open window with a fleecy white shawl around her head, and her eyes, the sweetest I ever saw, fixed appealingly upon me. I glanced from one to the other blankly, for my disappointment was great. Then, like a flash, a sudden conviction laid hold of me. There was some great and mysterious reason why we had lived so long apart from the world.

"THE BOY MUST BE TOLD"

That was quite an eventful night in our quiet life. Whilst we three stood looking at one another half fearfully--I full of this strange, new idea which had just occurred to me--we heard the latch of our garden gate lifted, and Mr. Cox, the vicar of Porlock and my instructor in the classics, followed by no fewer than four large-limbed, broad-shouldered, Porlock men, entered.

They made their way up the steep garden path, and my father, in no little surprise, rose to greet them. With Mr. Cox he shook hands and then glanced inquiringly at his followers, who, after touching their hats respectfully, stood in a row looking supremely uncomfortable, and each betraying a strong disposition to retire a little behind the others. Mr. Cox proceeded to explain matters.

"You are pleased to look upon us as a deputation," he said, pleasantly, waving his hand towards the others, "of which I am the spokesman. We come from the Porlock Working Men's Conservative Club."

My father bowed, and bidding me bring forward a garden seat, requested the deputation to be seated. Then he called into the house for Jane to bring out some jugs of cider and glasses, and a decided smile appeared on the somewhat wooden faces of the deputation. I was vastly interested, and not a little curious.

When the cider had been brought and distributed, and a raid made upon the tobacco jar, Mr. Cox proceeded with his explanation.

"We have come to ask you a favour, Mr. Arbuthnot," he said. "We are going to hold a political meeting in the school-room at Porlock next week. A gentleman from Minehead is going to give us an address on the land question which promises to be very interesting, and Mr. Bowles here has kindly promised to say a few words."

The end man on the seat here twirled his hat, and, being nudged by his neighbour, betrayed his personality by a broad grin. Finally, to relieve his modesty, he buried his face in the mug of cider which stood by his side.

"The difficulty we are in is this," continued Mr. Cox; "we want a chairman. I have most unfortunately promised to be in Exeter on that day and shall not be able to return in time for the meeting, or else we would not have troubled you. But as I shall not be available, we thought that perhaps you might be induced to accept the office. That is what we have come to ask you."

My father shook his head.

"It is very kind of you to think of me," he said, hesitatingly, "but I fear that I must decline your offer. Politics have lost most of their interest for me--and--and, in short, I think I would rather not."

"I hope you will reconsider that," Mr. Cox said, pleasantly. "It will be a very slight tax upon you after all. You need only say a very few words. Come, think it over again. We really are at our wit's end or we would not have troubled you.

"There is Mr. Sothern," my father protested.

"He is in bed ill. An attack of pleurisy, I think."

"Mr. Brown, then?"

"A rank Radical."

"Mr. Jephcote?"

"Away."

"Mr. Hetton?"

"Gone to London for a week."

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