At the end of it Gelert stood sorrowing over the body and made a speech of intense dignity and poetic feeling. And at that point she heard the voice of Stephen at the front door, and started away, remembering suddenly that this reading was a breach of confidence. But why—why was she not allowed to see it?
Yet that, after all, was a small thing; and she went to bed very happy, dreaming such golden dreams of the success of the poem as she might have dreamed if she had written it herself.
XV
The Chase was true to its highest traditions. Before the week was over it was known that the sum determined on by the Egerton Defence Fund Committee had been already promised, and more.
Stephen Byrne, with a heavy heart, went to the “general meeting” on Tuesday evening. To have stayed away would have looked odd; also he was anxious to know the worst. He walked there as most men go to a battle, full of secret foreboding, yet dubiously glad of the near necessity for action. If, indeed, there was to be a libel action, backed by all the meddlesome resources of The Chase, things would have to come to a head. This was a development which had never been provided for in his calculations and plans. It would have been easier, somehow, if John had been arrested, charged by the Crown with murder. He would have known then what to do—or he thought he would. He wished now that he had been to see John, found out what he was thinking. But he was nervous of John now, or rather he was nervous of himself. He could not trust himself not to do something silly if he met John in private again; the only thing to do was to try to forget him, laugh at him if possible. And that was the devil of this libel business. He would have to be there himself, he would have to give evidence again, and sit there probably while poor old John was stammering and mumbling in the box. Yet he had done it before—why not again? Somehow he felt that he could not do it again. It all seemed different now.
And that poem! Why the hell had he written it? Why had he sent it to The Argus. He had had it typed on Thursday, and sent it off by special messenger on Friday, just in time for the number. The Argus liked long poems. What a fool he had been! Or had he? He knew very well himself what it all meant—but how could anyone else connect it with life—with Emily Gaunt? No, that was all right. And it was damned good stuff! He was glad he had sent it. It would go down well. And another day would have meant missing the number.
Yes, it was damned good stuff! He stood at the Whittakers’ door, turning over in his head some favourite lines from Gelert’s speech in the forest. Damned good! As he thought how excellent it was, there was a curious sensation of tingling and contraction in the flesh of his body and the back of his legs.
When he came out, an hour later, he was a happier man. He was almost happy. For it had been announced at the meeting, with all the solemnity of shocked amazement, that Mr. Egerton had refused to avail himself of the generous undertakings of The Chase and neighbourhood. The money promised would enable him to sue with an easy mind. But he would not sue.
There was nothing to be done, then, but put and carry votes of thanks to the unofficial Committee for their labour and enterprise, to Whittaker for the use of his house, to Henry Stimpson for his wasted efforts. The last of these votes was felt by most to be effort equally wasted, since they knew well that Henry Stimpson had in fact thoroughly enjoyed collecting promises and cash, and had now the further unlooked-for delight of having to return the money already subscribed.
This done, the meeting broke up with a sense that they had been thwarted, or at any rate unreasonably debarred from a legitimate exercise of their communal instincts.
But apart from this intelligible disappointment there was a good deal of head-shaking, and plain, if not outspoken, disapproval of Egerton’s conduct. Stephen, moving among the crowd, gathered easily the sense of The Chase, and it had veered surprisingly since Whittaker’s announcement. For John Egerton had advanced, it seemed, the astounding reason that he might lose the case. To the simple people of The Chase—as indeed to the simple population of England—there was only one test to a libel action. Either you won or you lost. The complex cross-possibilities of justification and privilege and fair comment and the rest of it, which Mr. Dimple was heard to be apologetically explaining in a corner to a deaf lady, were lost upon them. If you failed to win your case, what the other man said was true, and if you were not confident of winning, your conscience could not be absolutely clear. The meeting rather felt that John Egerton had let them down, but they were certain that he had let himself down. And it was clear that even his staunchest supporters, men like Whittaker and Tatham, were shaken in their allegiance.
But Stephen Byrne was happy. He had trusted to luck again, and luck, or rather the quixotic lunacy of John Egerton, had saved him again. It was wonderful. It was all over now. John had finally made his bed, and he must lie on it. He thought little of what this must mean to John, this aggravation of the local suspicions. He saw only one thing, that yet another wall had been raised between himself and exposure, that once more his anxieties might be thrust into the background. That he might settle down again with a comfortable
