"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.
