Part 16 (1/2)
”I ask in his name. I am authorized by him, for he is not well enough to meet the ordeal.”
”You say so, and I don't mean to dispute your word, Captain Armitage, but I have a right to demand some proof. How am I to know he authorized you?”
”He himself gave me this letter, in your handwriting,” said Armitage; and, opening the long envelope, he held forth the missive over which the poor old colonel had gone nearly wild. ”He found it the morning they left,--in her garden.”
If Jerrold's face had been gray before, it was simply ghastly now. He recoiled from the sight after one fruitless effort to grasp the letter, then rallied with unlooked-for spirit:
”By heaven, Armitage, suppose I _did_ write that letter? What does it prove but what I say,--that somebody has been prying and spying into my affairs? How came the colonel by it, if not by fraud or treachery?”
”He picked it up in the garden, I tell you,--among the rose-bushes, where she--where Miss Renwick had been but a few moments before, and where it might appear that she had dropped it.”
”_She!_ That letter! What had she to do with it? What right had she to read it?”
Armitage stepped impulsively forward. A glad, glorious light was bursting upon his soul. He could almost have seized Jerrold's hand and thanked him; but proofs--proofs were what he needed. It was not his mind that was to be convinced, it was ”society” that must be satisfied of her utter innocence, that it might be enabled to say, ”Well, I never for a moment believed a word of it.” Link by link the chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence must be destroyed, and this was only one.
”You mean that that letter was not intended for Miss Renwick?” he asked, with eagerness he strove hard to repress.
”It was never meant for anybody,” said Jerrold, the color coming back to his face and courage to his eyes. ”That letter was never sent by me to any woman. It's my writing, of course, I can't deny that; but I never even meant it to go. If it left that desk it must have been stolen. I've been hunting high and low for it. I knew that such a thing lying around loose would be the cause of mischief. G.o.d! is _that_ what all this fuss is about?” And he looked warily, yet with infinite anxiety, into his captain's eyes.
”There is far more to it, as you well know, sir,” was the stern answer.
”For whom was this written, if not for her? It won't do to _half_ clear her name.”
”Answer me this, Captain Armitage. Do you mean that that letter has compromised Miss Renwick?--that it is she whose name has been involved, and that it was of her that Chester meant to speak?”
”Certainly it was,--and I too.”
There was an instant's silence; then Jerrold began to laugh nervously:
”Oh, well, I fancy it isn't the first time the revered and respected captain has got away off the track. All the same I do not mean to overlook his language to me; and I may say right now, Captain Armitage, that yours, too, calls for explanation.”
”You shall have it in short order, Mr. Jerrold, and the sooner you understand the situation the better. So far as I am concerned, Miss Renwick needed no defender; but, thanks to your mysterious and unwarranted absence from quarters two very unlucky nights, and to other circ.u.mstances I have no need to name, and to your _penchant_ for letter-writing of a most suggestive character, it _is_ Miss Renwick whose name has been brought into question here at this post, and most prominently so. In plain words, Mr. Jerrold, you who brought this trouble upon her by your own misconduct must clear her, no matter at whose expense, or--”
”Or what?”
”I make no threats. I prefer that you should make the proper explanations from a proper sense of what is due.”
”And suppose I say that no man is called upon to explain a situation which has been distorted and misrepresented by the evil imagination of his fellows?”
”Then I may have to wring the truth out of you,--and _will_; but, for her sake, I want as little publicity as possible. After this display on your part, I am not bound to show you any consideration whatever.
Understand this, however: the array of evidence that you were feloniously inside Colonel Maynard's quarters that night and at his cottage window last night is of such a character that a court would convict you unless your _alibi_ was conclusive. Leave the service you certainly shall, unless this whole thing is cleared up.”
”I never was anywhere near Colonel Maynard's either last night or the other night I was absent.”
”You will have to prove it. Mere denials won't help you in the face of such evidence as we have that you were there the first time.”
”What evidence?”
”The photograph that was stolen from Mrs. Maynard between two and four o'clock that morning was seen in your drawer by Major Sloat at reveille.