It Began in Vauxhall Gardens - Plaidy Jean (бесплатная регистрация книга txt) 📗

"Now," she cried, "we know the reason. We know why she killed him. Mr. Beddoes, you are a lawyer. What next?"

Andrew said: "If we had known before. . . . If she had spoken. . . . But she has been sentenced to death. ..."

"It is no use going over what has happened," said Fermor roughly. "What can we do next?"

"If we can save her from death . . ." began Leon.

"If we can save her!" cried Fermor. "Of course we can save her. We must save her. If necessary ..."

Fenella laid a hand on his arm. "Fermor, be calm, my dear. You are thinking of storming the prison, riding away with her. These are modern times and you cannot do such things. But what we can do is consider this quietly, logically, and with all speed. We must approach this in the modern way. We must not think of breaking into her prison, but breaking through rules and regulations. Our means will not be ladders and ropes, but influence in the right quarters. That is how things are done in the modern world. So let us be calm and think clearly."

"He was a blackmailer," said Andrew. "Blackmailers are despised by all decent people. There is little sympathy for them, and leniency is often shown to those who attack them. And in her case it was not even to save herself that she killed this man. She was thinking of her father. If she had said so . . . oh, if only she had told this in the court. . . most certainly it would not have been the death sentence."

"It is no use saying //*!" cried Fermor. "She has! And what now ? What do we do ? We sit here saying if... if... if! How does that help her? We've got to get her out."

Andrew said: "She would, of course, be sentenced to a term of imprisonment ... no matter what motive she had. No one can kill and escape altogether."

"How long would she . . .?" said Leon. "How long?"

"Ten years perhaps. Who knows?"

"Ten years!" cried Leon and Fermor together.

Fenella said: "Now this is not getting us far. Let us deal with the first thing first. She must be reprieved. I have made many friends over the last twenty or thirty years. I have always believed that a word in the right quarter ... a little discreet suggestion by someone in a high place ..."

They were all looking at her eagerly.

"Please do not hope for too much," she went on. "I cannot say whether I shall succeed. I can only try. I shall go now ... at once . . . to see an old friend of mine . . . someone who, I know, will help me if he can. I am going to plead with him . . . beg him ... go down on my knees to hirn. I am going to show him how I consider myself involved in this. I am going to tell him the whole story. I am going to make him do all that can be done ... if I am able to. Charles, I want you to come with me. I want you to wait in the carriage

316 IT BEGAN IN VAUXHALL GARDENS

while I see him. I shall not ask you to come in with me at first, but perhaps later I may need you. He will have to know whose daughter she is. I must hold nothing back from him."

Charles rose and Fenella, standing beside him, laid her hand on his arm.

She said: "Everybody in this room is fond of her. There is not one of us, I know, who would not do everything in his power to save her."

"Everything I have ..." said Charles.

She looked at him and thought: Your fortune, your name . . . everything. . . . That is how it is with all of us. We are so shallow in our ordinary lives, but when tragedy comes, when there is need to show the best in ourselves, we find that we are, perhaps, a little better than we thought we were.

"If it is a question of money . . ." said Fermor.

Leon put in: "I inherited a fortune. I can . . ."

She waved them back.

"We have money," she said looking at Fermor and Leon. "We have skill." She looked at Andrew. "And we have the will of a father to save his daughter at all cost to himself. And in addition we have my little bit . . . my friendships . . . my influence. Oh, I have had many friends; too many friends, some say. But can one have too many friends? Come along, Charles."

She turned in her gracious way and looked at the three men who were watching her and Charles. She said: "Wait here. We will come back and tell you the result."

They waited—Fermor, Leon and Andrew. They stood at the window and watched the carriage drive away.

Then they sat down or paced the room while the time passed with maddening sloth.

The news was spreading through London and the country.

She shot him because he was threatening to blackmail her father. The tragic story was exposed, the whole country was indignantly demanding fair play for the young girl who had killed a man to save her father's name.

There were deputations to the Home Secretary. Many men of influence asked him to show leniency. Fenella's friends were with her; and Sir Charles was sparing no effort to save his daughter.

The rich and the influential, the poor and the sentimental, were demanding that the death sentence should not be carried out.

And so at length came the news. There was a reprieve for Melisande St. Martin. Her case must be considered in a new light. She had killed, but in extenuating circumstances; and she was no ordinary murderess.

The news was brought to Melisande.

She was not to die. She was to go to prison for some years, for no one could take a life and go free. Human life was sacred—even the life of the blackmailer.

So she was to live.

"The time will pass," said the woman in uniform. "You'll get used to it. And for good conduct you get a remission of sentence. And with friends outside working for you, you'll be out in six or seven years . . . perhaps less."

Six or seven years! At eighteen it seemed a lifetime. Five years ago she had been at the Convent, and one day passing the auberge she had dropped her sabot at the feet of an Englishman; she had thought of that as the beginning.

Now they would take her away to her cell and she would wear the prison clothes, eat the prison food for what would seem a lifetime.

"It will pass," they told her. "You're lucky. Don't you see how lucky? A little while ago they would have sent you to a transport ship. Besides, you've got friends outside to make your lot easy while you're inside . . . and friends who'll be waiting for you when you go out."

There were years in which to think about the future.

Sir Charles had said to her: "You mustn't be afraid any more. I'll do everything I can to make your stay . . . there ... as comfortable as possible. And when it's over, I'll be there . . . waiting for you . . . waiting to make up . . . waiting with a home for you to come to. . . ."

So she had a father waiting for her; she was indeed one of the lucky ones.

L6on had said: "I will wait for you. The time will soon pass. We'll be married. We'll go to America as we always said we would. I shall be there at the end . . . waiting. . . ."

There were not many who were so loved, who had a home and a husband waiting for them.

Fermor had said: "Don't think I shall let this rest. I shall do everything I can to get you freed. And you know . . . when it's over ... I'll be waiting. ..."

It was comforting to think of them.

To be shut away from the world for many years! In a way it would be like being buried alive . . . but not in a granite coffin. She would breathe and eat and think during those years. During them she would leave her girlhood behind and become a woman. Years to live through, to try to understand all those people who had had such an effect on her life.