HEU QUAM MUTATUS
When the righteous man turneth away from his righteousness and
doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth,
shall he live?--EZEKIEL.
The prison gates shut. Silence fell. The troubled waters settled into
calm. Tom went back to Queenstown; Mr. Gardiner to Woodlands--and to
bed, with a couple of nurses in attendance. Denis was presumably at
Dent-de-lion, working for the Aero Show. Mrs. Trent had gone no one
knew whither. And Lettice, her duty done, had escaped unmolested to
her attic in Pimlico, where she settled back into her groove, with
that sort of capillary attraction towards the inconspicuous and the
ordinary, which marked her conduct always except when she was making
one of her gravely calculated excursions into the extraordinary.
Why had she held her tongue? Her friends did not need to be told. "It's
Lettice all over!" said Gardiner himself, half fond, half laughing. She
had had two main motives (or rather springs of action; for "motive"
implies conscious volition, whereas Lettice did simply without thinking
what came natural)--the one a principle, the other a prejudice. First,
she would never, if she could possibly avoid it, interfere in other
people's affairs--that was the principle; and second, with every taste
and instinct she hated to be made conspicuous--that was the prejudice,
and a tough one.
With these reasons against speaking, moreover, she saw none for. It
never entered her head that some people might say she had treated
Gardiner unfairly, in letting him tell his tale while keeping her own
knowledge in reserve. What difference could it possibly make? Why
should she have spoken? It would only have made him very uncomfortable,
and Denis would simply have hated it. All this, of course, rested on
the assumption of her own detachment, insulation, negligibility: in
which Lettice was so rooted and grounded that she was quite surprised
to find other people surprised by what to her came natural as breathing.
Her explanation, given in court, ran something as follows:--"I didn't
speak before the inquest because I know there were two other witnesses,
and I didn't see I was wanted; and after it, by the time I heard
what had happened, it was too late. There would have been no sense
in disturbing things again. It would have been bad for everybody all
round, and worst for Mrs. Trent. But now--now things were different. I
had to speak now. It was time for the truth to come out."
Full time. Best for Dorothea, as well as for her victim. She had been
screened, and in the darkness evil things had grown up. Down with all
screens now. In the light of truth, the whole jumble resolved itself
into order. Honor to whom honor was due; judgment to whom judgment.
Even Gardiner's sentence fell into place. It might be too heavy for the
particular offense; but no one knew better than himself that it was the
just penalty for his months of cowardice.
February passed into March, a sweet, mild March: blue skies, brown
buds, thrushes singing, daisies on every lawn, violets round every
bush, white and golden daffodils ruffling under the trees, flood-water
glistening like frosted silver among tender blades of grass. Towards
the end of the month the prisoner saw his first visitor. Mr. Gardiner,
being still too weak to go himself, sent Tom. Tom's impressions were
recorded in a duty letter to Miss Smith: "I saw my brother for a few
minutes yesterday in the presence of a warder. He seems very fairly
cheerful and fit. His work is in the printing room. He asked me to let
you know he is going strong." Dry crumbs! Lettice's consolation was
that Mr. Gardiner would be no better satisfied than herself, and that
next month he would send Denis. Denis had at least a tongue in his
head. That is to say, he used to have--unless--
A few days later she received another letter, this time from her
cousin. He inclosed tickets for the Aero Show. "I know these things
aren't much in your line, but you can give them away to somebody or
other. As a matter of fact, we've not much worth seeing on our stand
this year. The seaplane didn't get done after all. Yes, I may be
in town for the week-end, but I'm afraid I shan't be able to look
you up. Better luck next time, perhaps." And overleaf, a hastily
scribbled postscript: "I suppose you've heard nothing from Westby?
I've just had a line from Mr. Gardiner: he says Harry's been in a
row--insubordination and assaulting a warder--and all letters and
visits are stopped off for the next two months. No particulars, only
that. I was to have gone down there next month, you know, but of course
that's off now. Bad job, isn't it?"
Lettice laid down the letter with an unaccustomed sinking of the heart.
Of the postscript she utterly refused to let herself think; it was bad
enough without that. It was not the first time she had felt uneasy
about her cousin. How often had she seen him since Westby? Not once;
yet formerly they had met, as a matter of course, whenever he came to
town. Formerly, too, he had written to her regularly every week--by an
unexpected trait, Denis was a graphic writer, just as with his friends
he was a garrulous talker; in that came out his Irish blood. Now she
might think herself lucky if she heard once a month; and what things
his letters were, when they came! The last had been an essay on the
uses of the deck or cable plane. This present one--well, this was the
climax. Over and over again, whenever he mentioned the Show (and it
had been his staple conversation for months), she had been given to
understand that she was to be taken to Olympia, and dragged round the
exhibits, and stuffed with information whether she liked it or not; and
that her guide was to be no other than himself.
Lettice faced the conclusion that there was something wrong.
By this and by that, by what she had seen herself and by what Gardiner
had said at Westby, she had gathered how things stood between Denis
and Dorothea. What would be the effect of such a shock? Lettice found
herself unable to guess. Up to a certain point, Denis was transparent;
for years she had read him like a book, and had been able to predict
not merely what he would do or say, but the very gesture and accent
with which he would do or say it. Dear Denis, tried friend, good as
good bread, in Gardiner's expressive idiom, pig-headed Ulsterman with
those dark blue Southern Irish eyes, truculent fighter answering to
the lightest touch of her silken rein!--Lettice was a good lover,
and she had given him of her best. But now--now, like Gardiner, she
found herself up against a door that had no key. What was going on
inside? What was Denis doing there, to heal him of his deadly wound?
She did not know--she could not guess. But one thing was certain: he
would accept no help. Gardiner in his weakness had cried out to her
and rested on her strength; but Denis was neither weak nor dependent.
Whatever went on behind the closed door was between him and his God.
Lettice picked up the tickets again. "He's sent me these things because
he felt he must, but he doesn't mean me to use them," ran her slow
thoughts. "I expect that means he's going to be there himself. Up for
the week-end; then he'll probably go on the Saturday--"
Lettice rarely framed a definite resolution, but after long brooding
her thoughts would settle into a sediment of purpose. The outcome of
that hiatus was that on Saturday she put on her best things and went to
Olympia to see for herself.
The whole floor space of the exhibition hall was cut up into a
chess-board of stands, each one carpeted with red felt and inclosed in
a white railing. Within these crimson plots might be seen every variety
of aëroplane. Pusher, tractor, hydroplane, bat-boat, super-marine, the
names sounded very imposing, but to the uninstructed (_videlicet_ to
Lettice) they all looked as much alike as a crowd of Chinamen. Visitors
might wander about at will, stooping under huge pale arching wings,
or mounting steps to inspect the fittings of the pilot's cockpit.
Lettice had expected to be bored, but she was not. At that time, before
it became mechanically perfect and virtually fool-proof, while its
imperfections had still to be pieced out with human skill and daring,
the aeroplane was no machine but an individual. Denis and his fellows
talked of particular planes as a man talks of particular hunters in his
stable.
After wandering round the stands, and duly gazing at the Smith
monoplane, Lettice retired to the tea-room where she established
herself in a corner behind a group of palms. Be it understood that
she had come strictly to see, not to speak to her cousin; she knew
she could dodge his short-sighted eyes. This being the last day of
the show, the hall was full. All the flying world seemed to be there.
Celebrities were thick as blackberries in the woods above Frahan; here
a young mechanic who had become famous in a day, there a hereditary
legislator who had ended his last race (luckily the incident hadn't got
into the papers) head downwards in a ditch. Many of the men belonged to
a certain well-defined physical type, lean, wiry, and small-made. Other
things being equal, the light-weight pilot has an advantage. The women,
on the other hand, _raræ nantes in gurgite vasto_, were mostly hothouse
flowers. Lettice, of course, knew no one; she would have been quite at
a loss but for her neighbor at the next table, a big man rather like a
mastiff, with an incongruous soft voice, who was obligingly giving the
_carte du pays_ to his companion.
"See that old cock with the iron-gray hair? That's Arthur Sturt, the
ironmaster; he's running the Derby Flying School, and making pots of
money. Able chap; there aren't many men of sixty who have receptivity
enough to believe in the aeroplane. What? Oh, certainly, sir, the
compliment applies to you." He laughed, pausing to light a cigar. "The
youngster eating strawberries with the flapper in a pigtail--got him?
That's Tommy Wyatt. Riviera cup, you know. A perfect young devil. You
ought to have been at Hendon last Saturday; he was putting up some
wonderful stunts--simply playing cup-and-ball with his bus. Oh, I'm
quite a back number these days. Soon be sixty myself, what?"
"I dare say you'll find you're good for a year or so yet," said his
companion dryly. He was a lean, elderly clergyman with an adventurous
eye. "By the by, is your partner here?"
The younger man shook his head. "Not he! Hasn't been near the place.
I don't know what's taken him--that's to say I do, and wish I didn't.
He's not done a stroke of work this year. Let me down rather badly
over the seaplane; I particularly wanted to show it. I told you about
that nasty affair he was mixed up in, didn't I? For a straight-laced,
fastidious fellow like him it must have been the deuce of a jolt, and
of course one makes every allowance; but it's a nuisance, all the same.
I'm personally sorry, too," he added. "It's a bad job when a chap of
that type runs off the rails. What? Oh, no, no mistake about it, I'm
afraid; she's making a perfect fool of herself. Byrne will get his
divorce this time, as sure as eggs. Hullo! by George--"
"That's not he?"
"Yes, it is, though," said Wandesforde, craning forward. "Good Lord!
fancy Evey Byrne letting herself be dragged to the Aero Show! She must
have got it badly!"
Mrs. Byrne was a very pretty woman, and even more charming than she was
pretty. She had a husband who was impossible to live with and whom she
could not divorce because she was a Catholic. He had no such scruples,
however; he had dragged her through the court on trumped-up evidence,
and she had emerged, like Susannah, without a stain on her character.
It was felt that she had been hardly used. In the circumstances, and as
she knew how to give a good dinner and was popular with women as well
as men, she was allowed a good deal of license. She needed it all. She
was very sweet, and very innocent, and hopelessly indiscreet, with an
Irish aptitude for tumbling into scrapes. She could no more help using
her lovely eyes than a violet can help smelling; and men buzzed round
her always like wasps round a peach. The latest of her captives, having
led her to a seat, now stood beside her with bent head to receive
her instructions, while she drew the gloves off her lovely hands and
arms. What Denis felt it was impossible to say; his attitude bespoke
admiration, but nothing more.
She finished her directions, he nodded assent, and threaded his way
through the crowd towards the buffet. Turning to retrace his steps
with a nicely balanced load of tea and strawberries, he came face to
face with another pair who had just come in. The encounter might have
been foreseen, and indeed Lettice had given the chance a thought;
for Dorothea's eyes were not, like Denis's, easy to dodge. Here she
was, then, she too with a cavalier in attendance, to judge from his
expression a devoted cavalier. And no wonder; Dorothea, in a long cloak
of violet velvet, and a big velvet hat with sweeping plume, made an
enchanting figure. Her face, which had lost its childish softness, was
less pretty, but far more alluring. April was unfolding to the bloom of
May.
Seeing Denis, she stopped dead; then her face broke into sunshine,
she colored like a damask rose, and moved forward impulsively with
outstretched hands. Denis continued on his way. The violet velvet was
actually brushing his sleeve. "I beg your pardon!" he said with unmoved
politeness, drawing back from contact. He rejoined his companion and
sat down at her table.
For the first time in her life Lettice found herself enjoying the sight
of pain.