CONFESSION
Rivière was at his glass-topped, bevel-edged bench in the private
biological laboratory at Wiesbaden, surrounded by his apparatus of
experiment. At the moment he was looking down with one eye through the
high-power immersion lens of his microscope at two tiny blobs of life in
a drop of water. From day to day the salinity of the water was being
slowly altered, and this was only one of thousands of experiments he had
planned on the effect of changing conditions of life on the elemental
organisms.
Every day he was passing in review scores of slides on which the
elemental reaction to abnormal conditions was unfolding itself for his
observation. Each drop of water was a world where the vital spark was
struggling against the harshness of nature. Each drop of water embodied
a fight of primitive protoplasm against disease. Each drop of water was
contributing its tiny quota to the new book of knowledge he hoped one
day to give to his fellow-men.
Like all trained microscopists, Rivière worked with both eyes open. The
amateur observer has to screw one eye tight in order to avoid a
confusion of impressions, and quickly tires himself. The trained man
keeps both eyes open, and schools his brain to concentrate on the one
vision and ignore the other. He sees only the miniature world at the
further end of his complex of lenses.
But Rivière, self-controlled as he was, could not keep attention on his
experimental slide. The vision of the miniature world faded out, and
through the other eye came the impression of the outside of the polished
brass tube of the microscope; the glass slide beyond, lit up by the
reflector as though with a searchlight; and the plate-glass bench
mirroring the cases of specimens and the shelves of chemical reagents.
And then the material vision of both eyes faded away, and he saw only
the inner vision of Elaine lying with bandaged eyes in the darkened room
of the Dr Hegelmann's surgical home. The great specialist, pulling at
his beard with his long, delicately-chiselled fingers, so out of keeping
with the shapelessness of his bulky, untidy figure, had taken Rivière
aside and had given him orders in that wonderfully musical voice of his.
"Fraulein is worrying--that is bad for the recovery. I will not have her
worried. You must tell her that everything will come right--you must
make her smile again."
"But I'm only a casual acquaintance. We met by mere chance a few days
before the attack at Nîmes," Rivière had said.
"Nevertheless, you can do much for her. She will listen to you gladly.
You are no longer casual acquaintances. I am an observer of human nature
as well as a surgeon, and I know that the mind is the key to the bodily
health. I know that _you_ can influence her. Talk to her freely--it will
not tire her. That is my order."
But Rivière had not been able to carry out the spirit of the old man's
shrewd command. When he was by her bedside, a great constraint had come
upon him. What had been easy to embody in a letter, was terribly
difficult to frame in spoken speech. Several times he had tried to open
the way to a confession. He knew it must scarify Elaine, and he shrank
from it. But yet it was plain her mind was not at rest, and that was
worse for her than the knowledge of the truth.
He, too, must act the surgeon.
With sudden resolution, Rivière put away his microscope and placed his
experimental slides in their air-tight incubating chamber. He changed
from his laboratory coat to his outdoor coat, and made his way rapidly
towards the surgical home.
As he crossed the Wilhelmstrasse--gay with its alluring shops and its
crowd of well-dressed, leisured saunterers--a man came up with
outstretched hand to Rivière and then hesitated visibly.
"Excuse me, sir, but I thought for the moment you were a friend of mine,
a Mr Clifford Matheson. I see now that I was mistaken by a very striking
resemblance."
"My half-brother."
"Ah, that's it!" said the man, visibly relieved. "Well, remember me to
him when you see him. Warren is my name--Major Warren."
"I'll certainly do so."
"Thanks--good afternoon."
It was not the first proof Rivière had had of the safety of his new
identity. Though Larssen and Olive had penetrated the disguise, others
who knew him well, even his own clerks, had been perfectly satisfied
with the explanation of the "half-brother."
When he was ushered into the darkened room at the surgical home, Elaine
smiled greeting to him, and the smile stabbed him with self-reproach. He
had come to wound her. There must be no further delay. He must act the
surgeon _now_.
Elaine half-sat, half-lay in a _chaise longue_. His white lilac and
fuchsia--those were her favourite flowers he had discovered--were on a
small table by her side, scenting the room faintly but definitely. She
had a letter in her hands, which she asked him to open and read to her.
"The nurse doesn't read English well," she explained.
Rivière looked first at the signature. "It's from your friend Madge in
Paris."
"Then it will be good reading."
As he read it out to her, he kept glancing now and again at her face to
note the effect of the words. The letter was mostly a gay account of the
girl's doings in Paris--the amusements of the past week, little scraps
about mutual friends, theatrical gossip, and so on. It was meant to
cheer, but it did not cheer. Rivière could see that Elaine was reading
into every sentence the might-have-been of her own wrecked life. He
hurried through it as quickly as possible, and then they chatted for
some time of impersonal matters.
His words began to come from him with a curious husky abruptness.
Elaine felt the tension, and knew that he had something important to
tell her. She sought to help him to it.
"Your journey to London," she said. "Did it effect your purpose? You
haven't told me much."
"I had the hardest fight of my life," he replied, taking up her opening
with relief. This would lead him to what he had come to tell her.
"And you won?"
"I was beaten to my knees."
"That doesn't sound like you as I knew you at Arles."
"The fight's not over yet. I managed to stumble up again for a final
round."
"May I know what the fight was about?"
"I want you to know every detail of it," he answered swiftly. "I want
your advice--your help."
"My help?" There was a faint flush in her cheeks below the bandages.
"What can _I_ do?"
He paused a moment before replying, seeking the right beginning to his
story.
"You remember at Nîmes telling me that your father had lost the last
remnant of his fortune speculating in one of the Clifford Matheson
companies?"
"Yes. And I was surprised to find how different you were to my
conception of your brother."
"I am Clifford Matheson."
"I don't understand!" she gasped.
"I am Clifford Matheson. I took the name of John Rivière because ...
well, the reason for that is one part of the story I have to tell you."
The pain, so evident in the drawn lines about her mouth, made him pause.
It was the first stroke of the scalpel.
From outside the window came the care-free chirping of the birds making
their Spring nests and telling the whole world of their happiness.
Presently she whispered "Go on," as though she had steeled herself to
bear the next stroke of the knife.
"My reason was that I wanted to cut myself loose--completely--from my
life in the financial world and from my married life. A sudden
opportunity came to me two days before I first met you at Arles. I
seized the opportunity and planned to disappear entirely from my world.
I arranged evidence of a violent death, in the belief that it would be
accepted by my friends and by the Courts. My wife would be freed; she
would come into my property; and I myself should be free to carry out in
quiet the scientific work I'd planned."
"Which was _the_ reason?"
"The last."
"Your wife, then, is the woman I saw in the Côte d'Azur Rapide?"
"Yes."
Elaine considered this in silence for some moments. A question framed
itself on her lips; she hesitated; finally it came out:
"Then you were not happy together?"
"My marriage was a ghastly mistake. I was quite unsuited to my wife....
But I made a bigger mistake when I thought to cut loose from the life
I'd woven for myself. One thread pulled me back inexorably. I had half
committed myself to a deal involving five millions of the public's money
with Lars Larssen, the shipowner----"
"Larssen!" she exclaimed.
"You know him?"
"No; but he was once pointed out to me at the Academy, the year the
portrait of his little boy was exhibited there. I could feel at once the
tremendous strength of will behind the man. Something beyond the human.
I was fascinated and repelled at the one time. So that is the man
who----"
"Who wants to drag you into a divorce court."
Elaine sat up rigid with shock. "A divorce court! How--why? What
possible----?"
"Larssen doesn't stick at possibilities."
"I realise that, but----"
"I'll not let him drag you into court. Be quite sure in your mind of
that. But listen, Elaine!" Her name came from him unconsciously.
"Listen, I want you to know every detail. It's your right."
Elaine flushed. Her voice held a delicate softness as she answered:
"I'll listen without interruption."
Then Rivière told her of what had happened since the crucial night of
March 14th, omitting nothing that she ought to know, sparing nothing of
himself. She listened quietly to his account of the interview at the Rue
Laffitte when he had, as he thought, made the final settlement with
Larssen; and to the recital of what had occurred from the moment of his
seeing the notice in the _Europe Chronicle_ of the coming flotation of
Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd.
He did not tell her of what he had seen through the lighted window of
Thornton Chase, but passed on to the interview at Larssen's office.
She shuddered as he spoke of the shipowner's brutal insinuations, and
burst out: "It was blackmail."
"Yes, but legalized blackmail."
"You never gave in to him on that ground?"
"Listen further."
Rivière spoke of his wife's unexpected entry into the office at
Leadenhall Street, and the scene that had followed when Olive and
Larssen together had bent their joint wills to the task of forcing him
to his knees. When he concluded on the signature wrung out of the
shipowner at the last moment, Elaine cried her relief:
"Then you're not beaten down! I'm glad--I'm glad!"
On his further conversation with Olive, Rivière touched very briefly,
merely indicating the terms his wife had rigidly demanded.
"And that's how the matter rests at present," he ended bitterly. "I've
taken away your livelihood; and dragged your name into this unsavoury
mire; and there's no finality reached.... But I'll get this tangle
straightened out somehow, if I have to choke Larssen to do it!"
Rivière had strode over to the window--not to look out, because the
curtains were close-drawn, but from sheer force of habit. He turned
round sharply as a half-whispered question--an utterly unexpected
question--came from Elaine.
"Why did you leave me so abruptly at Arles?"
Rivière's blood leapt hot in his veins and he answered recklessly:
"Because I loved you! Loved you from the first moment we met! And I
hadn't the right to love you. I wasn't running away from _you_--I was
running away from _myself_."
"Now I see. I thought then.... And when you offered to devote your life
to me? You remember that, don't you?" She was trembling as she spoke.
"I meant every word of it!"
"It was not pity for me? I want the truth--nothing but the truth! Oh, if
I could only see you now, to know if it were the truth!" Her hands went
up impulsively to the bandages over her eyes, then dropped helplessly to
her side as she remembered they must on no account be touched.
"As God hears me, it was not pity but love!" he answered with passionate
sincerity.
"Then you give me something to live for!"
Her meaning thundered upon him.
"You intended to----?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"When my money was exhausted."
"I never dreamt!"
"What else was left for me?"
"Surely you knew that I'd provide for you?"
"I couldn't accept it--then."
"You'll accept it now?"
"I must think."
"I insist! I claim it as my right! You wouldn't torture me all my life
with the thought that I'd driven you to----"
"Don't say it."
Rivière took her hand and bent to kiss it reverently. There was silence
for many moments--a silence of deep sympathy. Elaine's flushed cheeks
told Rivière more plainly than words what she was feeling.
"I'm so glad," she said at length. "So glad to know."
"And I'm glad to have told you."
"I shall get my sight back now. I have something to live for."
"Please God, you will."
"I feel it. I have something to live for.... Dear John!"
She sought to take his hand in hers, but he rose abruptly from beside
her couch and strode away.
"We're forgetting!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I'm still Clifford
Matheson."
"Not to me."
"Nothing can alter the fact."
"Let us live in dreamland awhile," she pleaded gently.
"But the awakening must come."
"We have till May 3rd."
"Till May 3rd.... And then?"
"And then you will go back to the fight."
"Yes. But Larssen won't relent. Nor will my wife."
"Something may happen before then."
"We must make things happen."
"We?"
"Yes--you and I."
There was silence again for some moments. He came back to her side. She
sought for his hand, and he let her take it in hers.
Gradually the glow of an idea lit up her cheeks.
"I think I see the way out!" she exclaimed.
"What's the plan?"
"Will you trust to me--trust to me implicitly without asking for
reasons?"
"I'd trust you to the world's end!"
"Then write to your wife for me."
"To say----?"
"To say that I want to meet her."
"But she'd never come!"
"I know her better than you do. I saw her in the train that
morning--heard her speak. It told me a great deal. We women know one
another's springs of actions. If you write the letter I dictate, she'll
come!"
"If she came, it would only exhaust you and hinder your recovery. Dr
Hegelmann would certainly not allow it if he knew. He's given me strict
orders to chase away worry from you."
"It would worry me still more not to write that letter.... I shall be
fighting for you, and that will help me to get back my sight. Please!"
"Then I'll fetch pen and paper and write for you. But we must let a week
go by before posting. Every day will give you new strength."
"Through your love," she whispered.