Reginald Cruden, Talbot Baines Reed [best black authors txt] 📗

A very few words more, reader, and my story is done.

The trial of Medlock and Shanklin took place in due time, and among the witnesses the most important, but the most reluctant, was Reginald Cruden. It was like a hateful return to the old life to find himself face to face with those men, and to have to tell over again the story of their knavery and his own folly. But he went through with it like a man.

The prisoners, who were far more at their ease than the witness, troubled him with no awkward cross-examination, and when presently the jury retired, he retired too, having neither the curiosity nor the vindictiveness to remain and hear their sentence.

On his way out a familiar voice accosted him.

“Cruden, old man, will you shake hands? I’ve been a cad to you, but I’m sorry for it now.”

It was Blandford, looking weak and pale, with one arm still in a sling.

Reginald took his proffered hand eagerly and wrung it.

“I’ve been bitten over this affair, as you know,” continued Blandford, “and I’ve paid up for my folly. I wish I could come out of it all with as easy a conscience as you do, that’s all! Among them all I’ve lost a good deal more than money; but if you and Horrors will take me back in your set there’ll be a chance for me yet. I’m going to University College, you know, so I shall be staying in town. Harker and I will probably be lodging together, and it won’t be my fault if it’s far away from your quarters.”

And arm in arm the old schoolfellows walked, with their backs on the dark past and their faces turned hopefully to the future.

Had Reginald remained to hear the end of the trial, he would have found himself the object of a demonstration he little counted on.

The jury having returned with their expected verdict, and sentence having been passed on the prisoners, the counsel for the prosecution got up and asked his lordship for leave to make one observation. He spoke in the name of the various victims of the sham Corporation when he stated that his clients desired to express their conviction that the former secretary of the Corporation, whose evidence that day had mainly contributed to the exposure of the fraud, was himself entirely clear of any imputation in connection with the conspiracy.

“I should not mention this, my lord,” said the counsel, “had not a certain magistrate, in another place, at an earlier stage of this inquiry, used language—in my humble opinion harsh and unwarranted—calculated to cast a slur on that gentleman’s character, if not to interfere seriously with his future prospects. I merely wish to say, my lord, that my clients, and those of us who have gone fully into the case, and may be expected to know as much about it even as a north-country magistrate, are fully convinced that Mr Cruden comes out of this case with an unsullied character, and we feel it our duty publicly to state our opinion to that effect.”

The counsel sat down amid signs of approval from the Court, not unmixed with amusement at the expense of the north-country magistrate, and the judge, calling for order, replied, “I make no objection whatever to the statement which has just fallen from the lips of the learned counsel, and as it commends itself entirely to my own judgment in the matter, I am glad to inform Mr Cruden, if he be still in court, that he will quit it to-day clear of the slightest imputation on his character unbecoming an upright but unfortunate gentleman.”

Reginald was not in court, but he read every word of it next day with grateful and overflowing heart.

Three months have passed. The winter has given way to spring, and Number 3, Dull Street is empty. Jemima Shuckleford still nurses her sorrow in secret, and it will be a year or two yet before the happy man is to turn up who shall reconcile her to life, and disestablish the image of Reginald Cruden from her soft heart. Meanwhile she and her mother are constant visitors at the little house in Highbury where the Crudens now live, and as often as they go they find a welcome. Samuel writes home from the country that he is doing great things, and expects to become Lord Chancellor in a few years. Meanwhile he too contemplates matrimony with a widow and four children, who will probably leave him among them very little leisure for another experiment in the amateur detective business.

The Shuckleford ladies were invited, but unfortunately were unable to go, to a little quiet house-warming given by the Crudens on the occasion of their taking possession of the new house.

But though they could not go, Miss Crisp could, and, as a matter of course, Mr Booms, in all the magnificence of last year’s spring costume. And Waterford came too, and young Gedge, as did also the faithful Harker, and—with some little trepidation—the now sobered Blandford.

The company had quite enough to talk about without having to fall back on shouting proverbs or musical chairs. Indeed, there were several little excitements in the wind which came out one by one, and made the evening a sort of epoch in the lives of most of those present.

For instance, young Gedge was there no longer as a common compositor. He had lately been made, youth as he was, overseer in the room of Durfy; and the dignity of his new office filled him with sobriety and good-humour.

“It’s no fault of mine,” said he, when Mrs Cruden congratulated him on his promotion. “If Cruden hadn’t stood by me that time he first came to the Rocket, I should have gone clean to the dogs. I mean it. I was going full tilt that way.”

“But I went off and left you after all,” said Reginald.

“I know you did; and I was sorry at the time you hadn’t left that cab-horse to finish his business the evening you picked me up. But Horace here and Mrs Cruden—”

“Picked you up again,” said Waterford. “Regular fellow for being picked up, you are. All comes of your habit of picking up types. One of nature’s revenges—and the last to pick you up is the Rocket. What an appetite she’s got, to be sure!”

“I should think so from the way she swallows your and Horace’s lucubrations every week,” says Gedge, laughing. “Why, I actually know a fellow who knows a fellow who laughed at one of your jokes.”

“Come, none of your chaff,” said Horace, looking not at all displeased. “You never laughed at a joke, I know, because you never see one.”

“No more I do. That’s what I complain of,” replied the incorrigible young overseer.

“Never mind, we shall have our revenge when he has to put our joint novel in print,” said Waterford. “Ah, I thought you’d sit up there, my boy. Never mind, you’ll know about it some day. The first chapter is half done already.”

“Jolly work that must be,” says Harker. “More fun than higher mathematics and Locke on the Understanding, eh, Bland?”

“Perhaps they would be glad to change places with us before they are through with it, though,” observes Blandford.

“Never knew such a beggar for grinding as Bland is turning out,” says Harker. “He takes the shine out of me; and I’m certain he’ll knock me into a cocked hat at the matric..”

“You forget I’ve lost time to make up,” replies Blandford, gravely; “and I’m not going to be content if I don’t take honours.”

“Don’t knock yourself up, that’s all,” says Reginald, “especially now cricket’s beginning. We ought to turn out a good eleven with four old Wilderhams to give it a backbone, eh?”

And at the signal the four chums somehow get together in a corner, and the talk flies off to the old schooldays, and the battles and triumphs of the famous Wilderham Close.

Meanwhile Booms and Miss Crisp whisper very confidentially together in another corner. What they talk about no one can guess. It may be collars, or it may be four-roomed cottages, or it may be only the weather. Whatever it is, Booms’s doleful face relaxes presently into a solemn smile, and Miss Crisp goes over and sits by Mrs Cruden, who puts her arm round the blushing girl and kisses her in a very motherly way on the forehead. It is a curious piece of business altogether, and it is just as well the four young men are too engrossed in football and cricket to notice it, and that Gedge and Waterford find their whole attention occupied by the contents of the little bookcase in the corner to have eyes for anything else.

“Jolly lot of books you’ve got,” says Waterford, when presently the little groups break up and the big circle forms again. “I always think they are such nice furniture in a room, don’t you, Mrs Cruden?”

“Yes, I do,” says Mrs Cruden; “especially when they are all old friends.”

“Some of these seem older friends than others,” says Waterford, pointing to a corner where several unbound tattered works break the ranks of green-cloth gilt-lettered volumes. “Look at this weatherbeaten little fellow, for instance, a bit of a Pilgrim’s Progress. That must be a very poor relation; surely you don’t count him in?”

“Don’t I,” says Reginald, taking the book in his hands, and speaking in a tone which makes every one look up at him. “This little book is worth more to me than all the rest put together.”

And as he bends his head over the precious little relic, and turns its well-thumbed pages one by one, he forgets where he is, or who is looking on. And a tear steals into his eyes as his mind flies far away to a little green grave in the north country over which the soft breezes of spring play lovingly, and seem to whisper in a voice he knows and loves to remember—“Come there too, guv’nor.”