TEN days after Mrs. Ryves’s visit he paid by appointment another call on
the editor of the Promiscuous. He found him in the little wainscoted
Chelsea house, which had to Peter’s sense the smoky brownness of an old
pipebowl, surrounded with all the emblems of his office—a litter of
papers, a hedge of encyclopædias, a photographic gallery of popular
contributors—and he promised at first to consume very few of the moments
for which so many claims competed. It was Mr. Locket himself however who
presently made the interview spacious, gave it air after discovering that
poor Baron had come to tell him something more interesting than that he
couldn’t after all patch up his tale. Peter had begun with this, had
intimated respectfully that it was a case in which both practice and
principle rebelled, and then, perceiving how little Mr. Locket was
affected by his audacity, had felt weak and slightly silly, left with his
heroism on his hands. He had armed himself for a struggle, but the
Promiscuous didn’t even protest, and there would have been nothing for
him but to go away with the prospect of never coming again had he not
chanced to say abruptly, irrelevantly, as he got up from his chair:
“Do you happen to be at all interested in Sir Dominick Ferrand?”
Mr. Locket, who had also got up, looked over his glasses. “The late Sir
Dominick?”
“The only one; you know the family’s extinct.”
Mr. Locket shot his young friend another sharp glance, a silent retort to
the glibness of this information. “Very extinct indeed. I’m afraid the
subject today would scarcely be regarded as attractive.”
“Are you very sure?” Baron asked.
Mr. Locket leaned forward a little, with his fingertips on his table, in
the attitude of giving permission to retire. “I might consider the
question in a special connection.” He was silent a minute, in a way that
relegated poor Peter to the general; but meeting the young man’s eyes
again he asked: “Are you—a—thinking of proposing an article upon him?”
“Not exactly proposing it—because I don’t yet quite see my way; but the
idea rather appeals to me.”
Mr. Locket emitted the safe assertion that this eminent statesman had
been a striking figure in his day; then he added: “Have you been studying
him?”
“I’ve been dipping into him.”
“I’m afraid he’s scarcely a question of the hour,” said Mr. Locket,
shuffling papers together.
“I think I could make him one,” Peter Baron declared.
Mr. Locket stared again; he was unable to repress an unattenuated “You?”
“I have some new material,” said the young man, colouring a little.
“That often freshens up an old story.”
“It buries it sometimes. It’s often only another tombstone.”
“That depends upon what it is. However,” Peter added, “the documents I
speak of would be a crushing monument.”
Mr. Locket, hesitating, shot another glance under his glasses. “Do you
allude to—a—revelations?”
“Very curious ones.”
Mr. Locket, still on his feet, had kept his body at the bowing angle; it
was therefore easy for him after an instant to bend a little further and
to sink into his chair with a movement of his hand toward the seat Baron
had occupied. Baron resumed possession of this convenience, and the
conversation took a fresh start on a basis which such an extension of
privilege could render but little less humiliating to our young man. He
had matured no plan of confiding his secret to Mr. Locket, and he had
really come out to make him conscientiously that other announcement as to
which it appeared that so much artistic agitation had been wasted. He
had indeed during the past days—days of painful indecision—appealed in
imagination to the editor of the Promiscuous, as he had appealed to other
sources of comfort; but his scruples turned their face upon him from
quarters high as well as low, and if on the one hand he had by no means
made up his mind not to mention his strange knowledge, he had still more
left to the determination of the moment the question of how he should
introduce the subject. He was in fact too nervous to decide; he only
felt that he needed for his peace of mind to communicate his discovery.
He wanted an opinion, the impression of somebody else, and even in this
intensely professional presence, five minutes after he had begun to tell
his queer story, he felt relieved of half his burden. His story was very
queer; he could take the measure of that himself as he spoke; but
wouldn’t this very circumstance qualify it for the Promiscuous?
“Of course the letters may be forgeries,” said Mr. Locket at last.
“I’ve no doubt that’s what many people will say.”
“Have they been seen by any expert?”
“No indeed; they’ve been seen by nobody.”
“Have you got any of them with you?”
“No; I felt nervous about bringing them out.”
“That’s a pity. I should have liked the testimony of my eyes.”
“You may have it if you’ll come to my rooms. If you don’t care to do
that without a further guarantee I’ll copy you out some passages.”
“Select a few of the worst!” Mr. Locket laughed. Over Baron’s
distressing information he had become quite human and genial. But he
added in a moment more dryly: “You know they ought to be seen by an
expert.”
“That’s exactly what I dread,” said Peter.
“They’ll be worth nothing to me if they’re not.”
Peter communed with his innermost spirit. “How much will they be worth
to _me_ if they _are_?”
Mr. Locket turned in his study-chair. “I should require to look at them
before answering that question.”
“I’ve been to the British museum—there are many of his letters there.
I’ve obtained permission to see them, and I’ve compared everything
carefully. I repudiate the possibility of forgery. No sign of
genuineness is wanting; there are details, down to the very postmarks,
that no forger could have invented. Besides, whose interest could it
conceivably have been? A labor of unspeakable difficulty, and all for
what advantage? There are so many letters, too—twenty-seven in all.”
“Lord, what an ass!” Mr. Locket exclaimed.
“It will be one of the strangest post-mortem revelations of which history
preserves the record.”
Mr. Locket, grave now, worried with a paper-knife the crevice of a
drawer. “It’s very odd. But to be worth anything such documents should
be subjected to a searching criticism—I mean of the historical kind.”
“Certainly; that would be the task of the writer introducing them to the
public.”
Again Mr. Locket considered; then with a smile he looked up. “You had
better give up original composition and take to buying old furniture.”
“Do you mean because it will pay better?”
“For you, I should think, original composition couldn’t pay worse. The
creative faculty’s so rare.”
“I do feel tempted to turn my attention to real heroes,” Peter replied.
“I’m bound to declare that Sir Dominick Ferrand was never one of mine.
Flashy, crafty, second-rate—that’s how I’ve always read him. It was
never a secret, moreover, that his private life had its weak spots. He
was a mere flash in the pan.”
“He speaks to the people of this country,” said Baron.
“He did; but his voice—the voice, I mean, of his prestige—is scarcely
audible now.”
“They’re still proud of some of the things he did at the Foreign
Office—the famous ‘exchange’ with Spain, in the Mediterranean, which took
Europe so by surprise and by which she felt injured, especially when it
became apparent how much we had the best of the bargain. Then the
sudden, unexpected show of force by which he imposed on the United States
our interpretation of that tiresome treaty—I could never make out what it
was about. These were both matters that no one really cared a straw
about, but he made every one feel as if they cared; the nation rose to
the way he played his trumps—it was uncommon. He was one of the few men
we’ve had, in our period, who took Europe, or took America, by surprise,
made them jump a bit; and the country liked his doing it—it was a
pleasant change. The rest of the world considered that they knew in any
case exactly what we would do, which was usually nothing at all. Say
what you like, he’s still a high name; partly also, no doubt, on account
of other things his early success and early death, his political ‘cheek’
and wit; his very appearance—he certainly was handsome—and the
possibilities (of future personal supremacy) which it was the fashion at
the time, which it’s the fashion still, to say had passed away with him.
He had been twice at the Foreign Office; that alone was remarkable for a
man dying at forty-four. What therefore will the country think when it
learns he was venal?”
Peter Baron himself was not angry with Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had
simply become to him (he had been “reading up” feverishly for a week) a
very curious subject of psychological study; but he could easily put
himself in the place of that portion of the public whose memory was long
enough for their patriotism to receive a shock. It was some time
fortunately since the conduct of public affairs had wanted for men of
disinterested ability, but the extraordinary documents concealed (of all
places in the world—it was as fantastic as a nightmare) in a “bargain”
picked up at second-hand by an obscure scribbler, would be a calculable
blow to the retrospective mind. Baron saw vividly that if these relics
should be made public the scandal, the horror, the chatter would be
immense. Immense would be also the contribution to truth, the
rectification of history. He had felt for several days (and it was
exactly what had made him so nervous) as if he held in his hand the key
to public attention.
“There are too many things to explain,” Mr. Locket went on, “and the
singular _provenance_ of your papers would count almost overwhelmingly
against them even if the other objections were met. There would be a
perfect and probably a very complicated pedigree to trace. How did they
get into your davenport, as you call it, and how long had they been
there? What hands secreted them? what hands had, so incredibly, clung to
them and preserved them? Who are the persons mentioned in them? who are
the correspondents, the parties to the nefarious transactions? You say
the transactions appear to be of two distinct kinds—some of them
connected with public business and others involving obscure personal
relations.”
“They all have this in common,” said Peter Baron, “that they constitute
evidence of uneasiness, in some instances of painful alarm, on the
writer’s part, in relation to exposure—the exposure in the one case, as I
gather, of the fact that he had availed himself of official opportunities
to promote enterprises (public works and that sort of thing) in which he
had a pecuniary stake. The dread of the light in the other connection is
evidently different, and these letters are the earliest in date. They
are addressed to a woman, from whom he had evidently received money.”
Mr. Locket wiped his glasses. “What woman?”
“I haven’t the least idea. There are lots of questions I can’t answer,
of course; lots of identities I can’t establish; lots of gaps I can’t
fill. But as to two points I’m clear, and they are the essential ones.
In the first place the papers in my possession are genuine; in the second
place they’re compromising.”
With this Peter Baron rose again, rather vexed with himself for having
been led on to advertise his treasure (it was his interlocutor’s
perfectly natural scepticism that produced this effect), for he felt that
he was putting himself in a false position. He detected in Mr. Locket’s
studied detachment the fermentation of impulses from which, unsuccessful
as he was, he himself prayed to be delivered.
Mr. Locket remained seated; he watched Baron go across the room for his
hat and umbrella. “Of course, the question would come up of whose
property today such documents would legally he. There are heirs,
descendants, executors to consider.”
“In some degree perhaps; but I’ve gone into that a little. Sir Dominick
Ferrand had no children, and he left no brothers and no sisters. His
wife survived him, but she died ten years ago. He can have had no heirs
and no executors to speak of, for he left no property.”
“That’s to his honour and against your theory,” said Mr. Locket.
“I _have_ no theory. He left a largeish mass of debt,” Peter Baron
added. At this Mr. Locket got up, while his visitor pursued: “So far as
I can ascertain, though of course my inquiries have had to be very rapid
and superficial, there is no one now living, directly or indirectly
related to the personage in question, who would be likely to suffer from
any steps in the direction of publicity. It happens to be a rare
instance of a life that had, as it were, no loose ends. At least there
are none perceptible at present.”
“I see, I see,” said Mr. Locket. “But I don’t think I should care much
for your article.”
“What article?”
“The one you seem to wish to write, embodying this new matter.”
“Oh, I don’t wish to write it!” Peter exclaimed. And then he bade his
host good-by.
“Good-by,” said Mr. Locket. “Mind you, I don’t say that I think there’s
nothing in it.”
“You would think there was something in it if you were to see my
documents.”
“I should like to see the secret compartment,” the caustic editor
rejoined. “Copy me out some extracts.”
“To what end, if there’s no question of their being of use to you?”
“I don’t say that—I might like the letters themselves.”
“Themselves?”
“Not as the basis of a paper, but just to publish—for a sensation.”
“They’d sell your number!” Baron laughed.
“I daresay I should like to look at them,” Mr. Locket conceded after a
moment. “When should I find you at home?”
“Don’t come,” said the young man. “I make you no offer.”
“I might make _you_ one,” the editor hinted. “Don’t trouble yourself; I
shall probably destroy them.” With this Peter Baron took his departure,
waiting however just afterwards, in the street near the house, as if he
had been looking out for a stray hansom, to which he would not have
signalled had it appeared. He thought Mr. Locket might hurry after him,
but Mr. Locket seemed to have other things to do, and Peter Baron
returned on foot to Jersey Villas.