“I’VE had time to look a little further into what we’re prepared to do,
and I find the case is one in which I should consider the advisability of
going to an extreme length,” said Mr. Locket. Jersey Villas the next
morning had had the privilege of again receiving the editor of the
Promiscuous, and he sat once more at the davenport, where the bone of
contention, in the shape of a large, loose heap of papers that showed how
much they had been handled, was placed well in view. “We shall see our
way to offering you three hundred, but we shouldn’t, I must positively
assure you, see it a single step further.”
Peter Baron, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his hands in his
pockets, crept softly about the room, repeating, below his breath and
with inflections that for his own sake he endeavoured to make humorous:
“Three hundred—three hundred.” His state of mind was far from hilarious,
for he felt poor and sore and disappointed; but he wanted to prove to
himself that he was gallant—was made, in general and in particular, of
undiscourageable stuff. The first thing he had been aware of on stepping
into his front room was that a four-wheeled cab, with Mrs. Ryves’s
luggage upon it, stood at the door of No. 3. Permitting himself, behind
his curtain, a pardonable peep, he saw the mistress of his thoughts come
out of the house, attended by Mrs. Bundy, and take her place in the
modest vehicle. After this his eyes rested for a long time on the
sprigged cotton back of the landlady, who kept bobbing at the window of
the cab an endlessly moralising old head. Mrs. Ryves had really taken
flight—he had made Jersey Villas impossible for her—but Mrs. Bundy, with
a magnanimity unprecedented in the profession, seemed to express a belief
in the purity of her motives. Baron felt that his own separation had
been, for the present at least, effected; every instinct of delicacy
prompted him to stand back.
Mr. Locket talked a long time, and Peter Baron listened and waited. He
reflected that his willingness to listen would probably excite hopes in
his visitor—hopes which he himself was ready to contemplate without a
scruple. He felt no pity for Mr. Locket and had no consideration for his
suspense or for his possible illusions; he only felt sick and forsaken
and in want of comfort and of money. Yet it was a kind of outrage to his
dignity to have the knife held to his throat, and he was irritated above
all by the ground on which Mr. Locket put the question—the ground of a
service rendered to historical truth. It might be—he wasn’t clear; it
might be—the question was deep, too deep, probably, for his wisdom; at
any rate he had to control himself not to interrupt angrily such dry,
interested palaver, the false voice of commerce and of cant. He stared
tragically out of the window and saw the stupid rain begin to fall; the
day was duller even than his own soul, and Jersey Villas looked so
sordidly hideous that it was no wonder Mrs. Ryves couldn’t endure them.
Hideous as they were he should have to tell Mrs. Bundy in the course of
the day that he was obliged to seek humbler quarters. Suddenly he
interrupted Mr. Locket; he observed to him: “I take it that if I should
make you this concession the hospitality of the Promiscuous would be by
that very fact unrestrictedly secured to me.”
Mr. Locket stared. “Hospitality—secured?” He thumbed the proposition as
if it were a hard peach.
“I mean that of course you wouldn’t—in courtsey, in gratitude—keep on
declining my things.”
“I should give them my best attention—as I’ve always done in the past.”
Peter Baron hesitated. It was a case in which there would have seemed to
be some chance for the ideally shrewd aspirant in such an advantage as he
possessed; but after a moment the blood rushed into his face with the
shame of the idea of pleading for his productions in the name of anything
but their merit. It was as if he had stupidly uttered evil of them.
Nevertheless be added the interrogation:
“Would you for instance publish my little story?”
“The one I read (and objected to some features of) the other day? Do you
mean—a—with the alteration?” Mr. Locket continued.
“Oh, no, I mean utterly without it. The pages you want altered contain,
as I explained to you very lucidly, I think, the very _raison d’être_ of
the work, and it would therefore, it seems to me, be an imbecility of the
first magnitude to cancel them.” Peter had really renounced all hope
that his critic would understand what he meant, but, under favour of
circumstances, he couldn’t forbear to taste the luxury, which probably
never again would come within his reach, of being really plain, for one
wild moment, with an editor.
Mr. Locket gave a constrained smile. “Think of the scandal, Mr. Baron.”
“But isn’t this other scandal just what you’re going in for?”
“It will be a great public service.”
“You mean it will be a big scandal, whereas my poor story would be a very
small one, and that it’s only out of a big one that money’s to be made.”
Mr. Locket got up—he too had his dignity to vindicate. “Such a sum as I
offer you ought really to be an offset against all claims.”
“Very good—I don’t mean to make any, since you don’t really care for what
I write. I take note of your offer,” Peter pursued, “and I engage to
give you to-night (in a few words left by my own hand at your house) my
absolutely definite and final reply.”
Mr. Locket’s movements, as he hovered near the relics of the eminent
statesman, were those of some feathered parent fluttering over a
threatened nest. If he had brought his huddled brood back with him this
morning it was because he had felt sure enough of closing the bargain to
be able to be graceful. He kept a glittering eye on the papers and
remarked that he was afraid that before leaving them he must elicit some
assurance that in the meanwhile Peter would not place them in any other
hands. Peter, at this, gave a laugh of harsher cadence than he intended,
asking, justly enough, on what privilege his visitor rested such a demand
and why he himself was disqualified from offering his wares to the
highest bidder. “Surely you wouldn’t hawk such things about?” cried Mr.
Locket; but before Baron had time to retort cynically he added: “I’ll
publish your little story.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“I’ll publish anything you’ll send me,” Mr. Locket continued, as he went
out. Peter had before this virtually given his word that for the letters
he would treat only with the Promiscuous.
The young man passed, during a portion of the rest of the day, the
strangest hours of his life. Yet he thought of them afterwards not as a
phase of temptation, though they had been full of the emotion that
accompanies an intense vision of alternatives. The struggle was already
over; it seemed to him that, poor as he was, he was not poor enough to
take Mr. Locket’s money. He looked at the opposed courses with the
self-possession of a man who has chosen, but this self-possession was in
itself the most exquisite of excitements. It was really a high revulsion
and a sort of noble pity. He seemed indeed to have his finger upon the
pulse of history and to be in the secret of the gods. He had them all in
his hand, the tablets and the scales and the torch. He couldn’t keep a
character together, but he might easily pull one to pieces. That would
be “creative work” of a kind—he could reconstruct the character less
pleasingly, could show an unknown side of it. Mr. Locket had had a good
deal to say about responsibility; and responsibility in truth sat there
with him all the morning, while he revolved in his narrow cage and,
watching the crude spring rain on the windows, thought of the dismalness
to which, at Dover, Mrs. Ryves was going back. This influence took in
fact the form, put on the physiognomy of poor Sir Dominick Ferrand; he
was at present as perceptible in it, as coldly and strangely personal, as
if he had been a haunting ghost and had risen beside his own old
hearthstone. Our friend was accustomed to his company and indeed had
spent so many hours in it of late, following him up at the museum and
comparing his different portraits, engravings and lithographs, in which
there seemed to be conscious, pleading eyes for the betrayer, that their
queer intimacy had grown as close as an embrace. Sir Dominick was very
dumb, but he was terrible in his dependence, and Peter would not have
encouraged him by so much curiosity nor reassured him by so much
deference had it not been for the young man’s complete acceptance of the
impossibility of getting out of a tight place by exposing an individual.
It didn’t matter that the individual was dead; it didn’t matter that he
was dishonest. Peter felt him sufficiently alive to suffer; he perceived
the rectification of history so conscientiously desired by Mr. Locket to
be somehow for himself not an imperative task. It had come over him too
definitely that in a case where one’s success was to hinge upon an act of
extradition it would minister most to an easy conscience to let the
success go. No, no—even should he be starving he couldn’t make money out
of Sir Dominick’s disgrace. He was almost surprised at the violence of
the horror with which, as he shuffled mournfully about, the idea of any
such profit inspired him. What was Sir Dominick to him after all? He
wished he had never come across him.
In one of his brooding pauses at the window—the window out of which never
again apparently should he see Mrs. Ryves glide across the little garden
with the step for which he had liked her from the first—he became aware
that the rain was about to intermit and the sun to make some grudging
amends. This was a sign that he might go out; he had a vague perception
that there were things to be done. He had work to look for, and a
cheaper lodging, and a new idea (every idea he had ever cherished had
left him), in addition to which the promised little word was to be
dropped at Mr. Locket’s door. He looked at his watch and was surprised
at the hour, for he had nothing but a heartache to show for so much time.
He would have to dress quickly, but as he passed to his bedroom his eye
was caught by the little pyramid of letters which Mr. Locket had
constructed on his davenport. They startled him and, staring at them, he
stopped for an instant, half-amused, half-annoyed at their being still in
existence. He had so completely destroyed them in spirit that he had
taken the act for granted, and he was now reminded of the orderly stages
of which an intention must consist to be sincere. Baron went at the
papers with all his sincerity, and at his empty grate (where there lately
had been no fire and he had only to remove a horrible ornament of
tissue-paper dear to Mrs. Bundy) he burned the collection with infinite
method. It made him feel happier to watch the worst pages turn to
illegible ashes—if happiness be the right word to apply to his sense, in
the process, of something so crisp and crackling that it suggested the
death-rustle of bank-notes.
When ten minutes later he came back into his sitting-room, he seemed to
himself oddly, unexpectedly in the presence of a bigger view. It was as
if some interfering mass had been so displaced that he could see more sky
and more country. Yet the opposite houses were naturally still there,
and if the grimy little place looked lighter it was doubtless only
because the rain had indeed stopped and the sun was pouring in. Peter
went to the window to open it to the altered air, and in doing so beheld
at the garden gate the humble “growler” in which a few hours before he
had seen Mrs. Ryves take her departure. It was unmistakable—he
remembered the knock-kneed white horse; but this made the fact that his
friend’s luggage no longer surmounted it only the more mystifying.
Perhaps the cabman had already removed the luggage—he was now on his box
smoking the short pipe that derived relish from inaction paid for. As
Peter turned into the room again his ears caught a knock at his own door,
a knock explained, as soon as he had responded, by the hard breathing of
Mrs. Bundy.
“Please, sir, it’s to say she’ve come back.”
“What has she come back for?” Baron’s question sounded ungracious, but
his heartache had given another throb, and he felt a dread of another
wound. It was like a practical joke.
“I think it’s for you, sir,” said Mrs. Bundy. “She’ll see you for a
moment, if you’ll be so good, in the old place.”
Peter followed his hostess downstairs, and Mrs. Bundy ushered him, with
her company flourish, into the apartment she had fondly designated.
“I went away this morning, and I’ve only returned for an instant,” said
Mrs. Ryves, as soon as Mrs. Bundy had closed the door. He saw that she
was different now; something had happened that had made her indulgent.
“Have you been all the way to Dover and back?”
“No, but I’ve been to Victoria. I’ve left my luggage there—I’ve been
driving about.”
“I hope you’ve enjoyed it.”
“Very much. I’ve been to see Mr. Morrish.”
“Mr. Morrish?”
“The musical publisher. I showed him our song. I played it for him, and
he’s delighted with it. He declares it’s just the thing. He has given
me fifty pounds. I think he believes in us,” Mrs. Ryves went on, while
Baron stared at the wonder—too sweet to be safe, it seemed to him as
yet—of her standing there again before him and speaking of what they had
in common. “Fifty pounds! fifty pounds!” she exclaimed, fluttering at
him her happy cheque. She had come back, the first thing, to tell him,
and of course his share of the money would be the half. She was rosy,
jubilant, natural, she chattered like a happy woman. She said they must
do more, ever so much more. Mr. Morrish had practically promised he
would take anything that was as good as that. She had kept her cab
because she was going to Dover; she couldn’t leave the others alone. It
was a vehicle infirm and inert, but Baron, after a little, appreciated
its pace, for she had consented to his getting in with her and driving,
this time in earnest, to Victoria. She had only come to tell him the
good news—she repeated this assurance more than once. They talked of it
so profoundly that it drove everything else for the time out of his
head—his duty to Mr. Locket, the remarkable sacrifice he had just
achieved, and even the odd coincidence, matching with the oddity of all
the others, of her having reverted to the house again, as if with one of
her famous divinations, at the very moment the trumpery papers, the
origin really of their intimacy, had ceased to exist. But she, on her
side, also had evidently forgotten the trumpery papers: she never
mentioned them again, and Peter Baron never boasted of what he had done
with them. He was silent for a while, from curiosity to see if her fine
nerves had really given her a hint; and then later, when it came to be a
question of his permanent attitude, he was silent, prodigiously,
religiously, tremulously silent, in consequence of an extraordinary
conversation that he had with her.
This conversation took place at Dover, when he went down to give her the
money for which, at Mr. Morrish’s bank, he had exchanged the cheque she
had left with him. That cheque, or rather certain things it represented,
had made somehow all the difference in their relations. The difference
was huge, and Baron could think of nothing but this confirmed vision of
their being able to work fruitfully together that would account for so
rapid a change. She didn’t talk of impossibilities now—she didn’t seem
to want to stop him off; only when, the day following his arrival at
Dover with the fifty pounds (he had after all to agree to share them with
her—he couldn’t expect her to take a present of money from him), he
returned to the question over which they had had their little scene the
night they dined together—on this occasion (he had brought a portmanteau
and he was staying) she mentioned that there was something very
particular she had it on her conscience to tell him before letting him
commit himself. There dawned in her face as she approached the subject a
light of warning that frightened him; it was charged with something so
strange that for an instant he held his breath. This flash of ugly
possibilities passed however, and it was with the gesture of taking still
tenderer possession of her, checked indeed by the grave, important way
she held up a finger, that he answered: “Tell me everything—tell me!”
“You must know what I am—who I am; you must know especially what I’m not!
There’s a name for it, a hideous, cruel name. It’s not my fault! Others
have known, I’ve had to speak of it—it has made a great difference in my
life. Surely you must have guessed!” she went on, with the thinnest
quaver of irony, letting him now take her hand, which felt as cold as her
hard duty. “Don’t you see I’ve no belongings, no relations, no friends,
nothing at all, in all the world, of my own? I was only a poor girl.”
“A poor girl?” Baron was mystified, touched, distressed, piecing dimly
together what she meant, but feeling, in a great surge of pity, that it
was only something more to love her for.
“My mother—my poor mother,” said Mrs. Ryves.
She paused with this, and through gathering tears her eyes met his as if
to plead with him to understand. He understood, and drew her closer, but
she kept herself free still, to continue: “She was a poor girl—she was
only a governess; she was alone, she thought he loved her. He did—I
think it was the only happiness she ever knew. But she died of it.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you tell me—it’s so grand of you!” Baron murmured.
“Then—your father?” He hesitated, as if with his hands on old wounds.
“He had his own troubles, but he was kind to her. It was all misery and
folly—he was married. He wasn’t happy—there were good reasons, I
believe, for that. I know it from letters, I know it from a person who’s
dead. Everyone is dead now—it’s too far off. That’s the only good
thing. He was very kind to me; I remember him, though I didn’t know
then, as a little girl, who he was. He put me with some very good
people—he did what he could for me. I think, later, his wife knew—a lady
who came to see me once after his death. I was a very little girl, but I
remember many things. What he could he did—something that helped me
afterwards, something that helps me now. I think of him with a strange
pity—I _see_ him!” said Mrs. Ryves, with the faint past in her eyes.
“You mustn’t say anything against him,” she added, gently and gravely.
“Never—never; for he has only made it more of a rapture to care for you.”
“You must wait, you must think; we must wait together,” she went on.
“You can’t tell, and you must give me time. Now that you know, it’s all
right; but you had to know. Doesn’t it make us better friends?” asked
Mrs. Ryves, with a tired smile which had the effect of putting the whole
story further and further away. The next moment, however, she added
quickly, as if with the sense that it couldn’t be far enough: “You don’t
know, you can’t judge, you must let it settle. Think of it, think of it;
oh you will, and leave it so. I must have time myself, oh I must! Yes,
you must believe me.”
She turned away from him, and he remained looking at her a moment. “Ah,
how I shall work for you!” he exclaimed.
“You must work for yourself; I’ll help you.” Her eyes had met his eyes
again, and she added, hesitating, thinking: “You had better know,
perhaps, who he was.”
Baron shook his head, smiling confidently. “I don’t care a straw.”
“I do—a little. He was a great man.”
“There must indeed have been some good in him.”
“He was a high celebrity. You’ve often heard of him.”
Baron wondered an instant. “I’ve no doubt you’re a princess!” he said
with a laugh. She made him nervous.
“I’m not ashamed of him. He was Sir Dominick Ferrand.”
Baron saw in her face, in a few seconds, that she had seen something in
his. He knew that he stared, then turned pale; it had the effect of a
powerful shock. He was cold for an instant, as he had just found her,
with the sense of danger, the confused horror of having dealt a blow.
But the blood rushed back to its courses with his still quicker
consciousness of safety, and he could make out, as he recovered his
balance, that his emotion struck her simply as a violent surprise. He
gave a muffled murmur: “Ah, it’s you, my beloved!” which lost itself as
he drew her close and held her long, in the intensity of his embrace and
the wonder of his escape. It took more than a minute for him to say over
to himself often enough, with his hidden face: “Ah, she must never, never
know!”
She never knew; she only learned, when she asked him casually, that he
had in fact destroyed the old documents she had had such a comic caprice
about. The sensibility, the curiosity they had had the queer privilege
of exciting in her had lapsed with the event as irresponsibly as they had
arisen, and she appeared to have forgotten, or rather to attribute now to
other causes, the agitation and several of the odd incidents that
accompanied them. They naturally gave Peter Baron rather more to think
about, much food, indeed, for clandestine meditation, some of which, in
spite of the pains he took not to be caught, was noted by his friend and
interpreted, to his knowledge, as depression produced by the long
probation she succeeded in imposing on him. He was more patient than she
could guess, with all her guessing, for if he was put to the proof she
herself was not left undissected. It came back to him again and again
that if the documents he had burned proved anything they proved that Sir
Dominick Ferrand’s human errors were not all of one order. The woman he
loved was the daughter of her father, he couldn’t get over that. What
was more to the point was that as he came to know her better and
better—for they did work together under Mr. Morrish’s protection—his
affection was a quantity still less to be neglected. He sometimes
wondered, in the light of her general straightness (their marriage had
brought out even more than he believed there was of it) whether the
relics in the davenport were genuine. That piece of furniture is still
almost as useful to him as Mr. Morrish’s patronage. There is a
tremendous run, as this gentlemen calls it, on several of their songs.
Baron nevertheless still tries his hand also at prose, and his offerings
are now not always declined by the magazines. But he has never
approached the Promiscuous again. This periodical published in due
course a highly eulogistic study of the remarkable career of Sir Dominick
Ferrand.