The Revellers

“The doctor says you are in a bad state.”

“Booked, squire, booked! And no return ticket. I don’t care. I’ve made all arrangements – that is, I’ll have a free mind this time to-morrow – and then, well, I’ll face the music.”

He caught sight of the police officer.

“Hello, Jonas! You there? Come for my last dying depositions, eh? All right. Fire away! Betsy, my lass, leave us for a bit. The nurse can stay. The more witnesses the merrier.”

Betsy arose. There was no fear in her eyes now – only dumb agony. She walked steadily from the room. While Mr. Beckett-Smythe was thanking Providence under his breath that a most distressing task was thus being made easy for him, they all heard a dreadful sob from the exterior landing, followed by a heavy thud. The nurse hurried out. Betsy had fainted.

With a painful effort Pickering raised himself on one arm. His forced gayety gave place to loud-voiced violence.

“Confound you all!” he roared. “Why come here to frighten the poor girl’s life out of her?”

He cursed both the magistrate and Superintendent Jonas by name; were he able to rise he would break their necks down the stairs. The policeman crept out on tip-toe; Mr. Beckett-Smythe sat down. Pickering stormed away until the nurse returned.

“Miss Thwaites is better,” she said. “She was overcome by the long strain, but she is with her sister now, and quite recovered.”

Betsy was crying her heart out in Kitty’s arms: fortunately, the sounds of her grief were shut out from their ears. Jonas came back and closed the door. The doomed man sank to the pillow and growled sullenly:

“Now, get on with your business, and be quick over it. I’ll not have Betsy worried again while I have breath left to protest.”

“I am, indeed, very sorry to disturb you, George,” said the magistrate quietly. “It is a thankless office for an old friend. Try and calm yourself. I do not ask your forbearance toward myself and Mr. Jonas, but there are tremendous issues at stake. For your own sake you must help us to face this ordeal.”

“Oh, go ahead, squire. My bark is worse than my bite – not that I have much of either in me now. If I spoke roughly, forgive me. I couldn’t bear to hear yon lass suffering.”

Thinking it best to avoid further delay, Mr. Beckett-Smythe nodded to the police officer, who drew forward a small table, which, with writing materials, he placed before the magistrate.

A foolscap sheet bore already some written words. The magistrate bent over it, and said, in a voice shaken with emotion:

“Listen, George. I have written here: ‘I, George Pickering, being of sound mind, but believing myself to be in danger of death, solemnly take oath and depose as follows’: Now, I want you to tell me, in your own words, what took place last Monday night. You are going to the awful presence of your Creator. You must tell the truth, fully and fearlessly, not striving to determine the course of justice by your own judgment, but leaving matters wholly in the hands of God. You are conscious of what you are doing, fully sensible that you will soon be called on to meet One who knoweth all things. I hope, I venture to pray, that you will give testimony in all sincerity and righteousness… I am ready.”

Pickering heard this solemn injunction with due gravity. His features were composed, his eyes fixed on the distant landscape through the open window. No disturbing noise reached him save the lowing of cattle and the far-off rattle of a reaping machine, for the police had ordered the removal of the shooting gallery and roundabout to the other end of the green.

He remained silent so long that the two men glanced at him anxiously, but were reassured by the belief that he was only collecting his thoughts. Indeed, it was not so. He was striving to bridge that dark chasm on whose perilous verge he tottered – striving to frame an excuse that would not be uttered by his mortal lips.

At last he spoke.

“On Monday night, about five minutes past ten, I met Kitty Thwaites, by appointment, at the wicket gate which opens into the garden from the bowling green of the ‘Black Lion Hotel,’ Elmsdale. We walked down the garden together. We were talking and laughing about the antics of a groom in this hotel, a fellow named Fred – I do not know his surname – who was jealous of me because I was in the habit of chaffing Kitty and placing my arm around her waist if I encountered her on the stairs. This man Fred, I believe, endeavored to pay attentions to Kitty, which she always refused to encourage. Kitty and I stopped at the foot of the garden beneath a pear tree which stands in the boundary fence of the paddock.

“I had my arm around her neck, but was only playing the fool, which Kitty knew as well as I. There was a bright moon, and, although almost invisible ourselves in the shadow of the hedge and tree, we could see clearly into both paddock and garden. My back was toward the hotel. Suddenly, we heard someone running down the gravel path. I turned and saw that it was Betsy Thwaites, Kitty’s sister, a girl whom I believed to be then in a situation at Hereford. I had promised to marry Betsy, and was naturally vexed at being caught in an apparently compromising attitude with her sister. Betsy had a knife in her hand. I could see it glittering in the moonlight.”

He paused. He was corpse-like in color. The red spots on his face were darker than before by contrast with the wan cheeks. He motioned to the nurse, who gave him a glass of barley water. He emptied it at a gulp. Catching Mr. Beckett-Smythe’s mournful glance, he smiled with ghastly pleasantry.

“It sounds like a coroner’s inquest, doesn’t it?” he said.

Then, while his eyes roved incessantly from the face of the policeman to that of the magistrate, he continued:

“I imagined that Betsy meant to do her sister some harm, so sprang forward to meet her. Then I saw that she was minded to attack me, for she screamed out: ‘You have ruined my life. I’ll take care you do not ruin Kitty’s.’”

The words, of course, were spoken very slowly. They alternated with the steady scratching of the pen. Others in the room were pallid now. Even the rigid nurse yielded to the excitement of the moment. Her linen bands fluttered and her bosom rose and fell with the restraint she imposed on her breathing.

George Pickering suddenly became the most composed person present. His hearers were face to face with a tragedy. After all, did he mean to tell the truth? Ah, it was well that his affianced wife was weeping in an adjoining room, that her soul was not pierced by the calm recital which would condemn her to prison, perchance to the scaffold.

“Her cry warned me,” he went on. “I knew she could not hurt me. I was a strong and active man, she a weak, excited woman. She was very near, advancing down the path which runs close to the dividing hedge of the garden and the stackyard. To draw her away from Kitty, I ran toward this hedge and jumped over. It was dark there. I missed my footing and stumbled. I felt something run into my left breast. It was the prong of a pitchfork.”

The pen ceased. A low gasp of relief came from the nurse, for she was a woman. The superintendent looked gravely at the floor. But the magistrate faltered:

“George – remember – you are a dying man!”

Pickering again lifted his body. His face was convulsed with a spasm of pain, but the strong voice cried fearlessly:

“Write what I have said. I’ll swear it with my last breath. I’ll tell the same story to either God or devil. Write, I say, or shall I finish it with my own hand?”

They thought that by some superhuman effort he would rise forthwith to reach the table. The nurse, the policeman, leaped to restrain him.

Mr. Beckett-Smythe was greatly agitated.

“If I cannot persuade you – ” he began.

“Persuade me to do what? To bolster up a lying charge against the woman I am going to marry? By the Lord, do you think I’m mad?”

They released him. The set intensity of his face was terrible. It is hard to say what awful power could have changed George Pickering’s purpose in that supreme moment. Yet he clenched his hands in the bedclothes, as if he would choke some mocking fiend that grinned at him, and his voice was hoarse as he murmured:

“Oh, man, if you have a heart, end your inquisition, or I’ll die too soon!”

Again the pen resumed its monotonous scrape. It paused at last. The fateful words were on record.

“And then what happened?”

The magistrate’s question was judicially cold. He held strong convictions regarding the deeper mysteries of life; his faculties were benumbed by this utter defiance of all that he believed most firmly.

“I said something, swore very likely, and staggered into the moonlight, at the same time tearing the fork from my breast. Betsy saw what I was doing, and screamed. I managed to get over the hedge again, and she ran away in mortal fright, for I had pulled open my waistcoat, and she could see the blood on my shirt. She fell as she ran, and cut herself with the knife. By that time Kitty had reached the hotel, screaming wildly that Betsy was trying to murder me. That is all. Betsy never touched me. The wound I am suffering from was inflicted by myself, accidentally. It was not caused by the knife, as is shown by the fact that I am dying of blood poisoning, while Betsy’s cuts are healing and have left her unharmed otherwise.”

His hearers were greatly perturbed, but they knew that further protest would be unavailing. And there was an even greater shock in store.

Pickering turned in the bed and poised his pain-racked frame so as to reach the manuscript placed before him for signature. With unwavering hand he added the words:

“So help me God!”

Then he wrote his name.

“Now, sign that, all of you, as witnesses,” he commanded, and they did not gainsay him. It was useless. Why prolong his torture and their own?

Mr. Beckett-Smythe handed the sheets of paper to Jonas. He seemed inclined to leave the room without another spoken word, but humane impulse was stronger than dogma; he held out his hand.

“Good-by, George,” he said brokenly. “‘Judge not,’ it is written. Let my farewell be a prayer that you may die peacefully and painlessly, if, indeed, God in His mercy does not grant your recovery.”

“Good-by, squire. You’ve got two sons. Find ’em plenty of work; they’ll have less time for mischief. Damn it all, hark to that reaper! It’ll soon be time to rouse the cubs. I’ll miss the next hunt breakfast, eh? Well, good luck to you all! I’ve had my last gallop. Good-by, Jonas! Do you remember the fight we had that morning with the poachers? Look here! When you meet Rabbit Jack, tell him to go to Stockwell for a sovereign and swim in beer for a week. Nurse, where’s Betsy? I want her before it is dark.”