I HATE looking back and reading words which I have written when the
printer’s devil was waiting for copy in the hall, but I fancy I have
somewhere called this tale a confession; if not, I meant to do so. It
has no more claim to be called a work of art than the cheapest penny
dreadful. How could it?
It holds but two characters, a man and a woman.
All the rest are the merest supers. Perhaps you may wonder that I thus
anticipate criticism; but review-writing is so easy that I may just as
well fill up with this as with any other kind of padding.
My publisher insists on so many pages of copy. When he does not get what
he wants, the language rich and powerful enough to serve his needs has
yet to be invented.
But he struggles on with the help of a dictionary of American
expletives.
However, we are coming to the conclusion, and that, I think, will waken
the public up! And yet this chapter will be a short one. It will be the
review of a struggle against a temptation to commit, not perhaps crime,
but an act of the grossest bad taste.
To that temptation I succumbed; we both succumbed.
It is a temptation to which I dare think poor human nature has rarely
been subjected.
The temptation to go and see a man, a fellow-creature, tried for a crime
which one’s wife committed, and to which one is an accessory after the
fact.
Oh, that morning!
How well I remember it.
Breakfast was just oyer, the table with its relics of fragrant bloaters
and _terrine_ of _paté_ still stood in the _patio_.
I was alone. I loafed lazily and at my ease.
Then I lighted a princely _havanna_, blaming myself for profaning the
scented air from _el Cuadro de Leicester_.
You see I have such a sensitive aesthetic conscience.
Then I took from my pocket the _Sporting Times_, and set listlessly to
work to skim its lengthy columns.
This was owing to my vow to Philippa, that I would read every journal
published in England. As the day went on, I often sat with them up to my
shoulders, and littering all the _patio_.
I ran down the topics of the day. This scene is an ‘under-study,’ by
the way, of the other scene in which I read of the discovery of Sir
Runan’s hat. At last I turned my attention to the provincial news
column. A name, a familiar name, caught my eye; the name of one who, I
had fondly fancied, had: long-lain unburied in my cellar at the ‘pike.
My princely _havanna_ fell unheeded on the marble pavement of the
_patio_, as with indescribable amazement I read the following ‘par.’
‘William Evans, the man accused of the murder of Sir Runan Errand, will
be tried at the Newnham Assizes on the 20th. The case, which excites
considerable interest among the _élite_ of Boding and district, will
come on the _tapis_ the first day of the meeting. The evidence will be
of a purely circumstantial kind.’
Every word of that ‘par’ was a staggerer. I sat as one stunned, dazed,
stupid, motionless, with my eye on the sheet.
Was ever man in such a situation before?
Your wife commits a murder.
You become an accessory after the fact.
You take steps to destroy one of the two people who suspect the truth.
And then you find that the man on whom you committed murder is accused
of the murder which you and your wife committed.
The sound of my mother’s voice scolding Philippa wakened me from my
stupor. They were coming.
I could not face them.
Doubling up the newspaper, I thrust it into my pocket, and sped swiftly
out of the _patio_.
Where did I go? I scarcely remember. I think it must have been to one of
the public gardens or public-houses, I am not certain which. All sense
of locality left me. I found at last some lonely spot, and there I threw
myself on the ground, dug my finger-nails into the dry ground, and held
on with all the tenacity of despair. In the wild whirl of my brain I
feared that I might be thrown off into infinite space. This sensation
passed off. At first I thought I had gone mad. Then I felt pretty
certain that it must be the other people who had gone mad.
I had killed William Evans.
My wife had killed Runan Errand.
How, then, could Runan Errand have been killed by William Evans?
‘Which is absurd,’ I found myself saying, in the language of Eukleides,
the grand old Greek.
Human justice! What is justice? See how it can err! Was there ever such
a boundless, unlimited blunder in the whole annals of penny fiction?
Probably not. I remember nothing like it in all the learned pages of
the _London Journal_ and the _Family Herald_. Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss
Braddon never dreamed of aught like this. Philippa _must_ be told. It
was too good a joke. Would she laugh? Would she be alarmed?
Picture me lying on the ground, with the intelligence fresh in my mind.
I felt confidence, on the whole, in Philippa’s sense of humour.
Then rose the temptation.
Trust this man (William Evans, late the Sphynx) to the vaunted array of
justice!
Let him have a run for his money.
Nay, more.
Go down and see the fun!
Why hesitate? You cannot possibly be implicated in the deed. You will
enjoy a position nearly unique in human history. You will see the man,
of whose murder you thought you were guilty, tried for the offence which
you know was committed by your wife.
Every sin is not easy. My sense of honour arose against this temptation.
I struggled, but I was mastered. I _would_ go and see the trial. Home
I went and broached the subject to Philippa. The brave girl never
blenched. She had no hesitations, no scruples to conquer.
‘Oh! Basil,’ she exclaimed, with sparkling eyes, ‘wot larx! When do we
start?’
The reader will admit that I did myself no injustice when, at the
commencement of this tale, I said I had wallowed in crime.