Then the Colonel spoke instead of Sir John.
"But apart from Rodhaven, we have evidence against you from the village. Your neighbors, Mr. Dale, complain more forcibly than anybody else."
"Is that so?" Dale felt as if he had received a wickedly violent blow in the dark. "Of course," and he moved his hands spasmodically--"Of course I've long expected I'd enemies." Then he snorted. "But I suppose, sir, you're alluding now to a certain Member of Parliament whose name I needn't mention."
"Yes, I allude to him, and to others--to several others."
"If some have spoken against me, there's a many more would have spoken for me."
"But they have not done so," said the Colonel dryly.
For a moment Dale's mental distress was so acute that his ideas seemed to blend in one vast confused whirl. Some answer was imperatively necessary, and no answer could evolve itself. Hesitation would be interpreted as the sign of a guilty conscience. And in this dreadful arrest of his faculties, the sense of bodily fatigue accentuated itself till it seemed that it would absolutely crush him.
"Gentlemen, as I was venturing to say--" Really the pause had been imperceptible: "From the vicar downwards, there's many would have spoke to my credit--if I'd asked them. And I did not ask them--and for why?"
"Well, why?"
"Because," said Dale, with a brave effort, "I relied implicitly on the fair play that would be meted out here. From the hour I knew I was to be heard at headquarters, I said this is now between me and headquarters, and I don't require any one--be it the highest in the land--coming between us."
"Ah, I understand," said the Colonel, with great politeness.
"Such was my confident feeling, sir--my full confidence that, having heard me, you'd bear me out as doing my duty, and no more nor no less than my duty."
Yet, even as he said so, his whole brain seemed as if fumes from some horrid corrosive acid were creeping through and through it. In truth, all his confidence had gone, and only his courage remained. These men were hostile to him; they had prejudged him; their deadly politeness and their airs of suave impartiality could not conceal their abominable intentions. He had trusted them, and they were going to show themselves unworthy of trust.
"Gentlemen," he said the word very loudly, and again there came the check to the sequence of his ideas. In another whirl of thought he remembered those courtyards at the Abbey House, the loyal service of his wife's family, the great personage who might have spoken up for him. Oh, why hadn't he allowed Mavis to write a second time imploring aid? "Gentlemen--" He echoed the word twice, and then was able to go on. "My desire has ever bin to conduct the service smooth and expeditious, and in strict accordance with the regulations--more particularly as set out in the manual, which I can truly ass-ass-assev'rate that I read more constant and careful than what I do the Bible."