(I)
On the morning of the twenty-fourth a curious little incident
happened--I dug the facts out of the police news--in a small
public-house on the outskirts of South London. Obviously it is no more
than the sheerest coincidence. Four men were drinking a friendly glass
of beer together on their way back to work from breakfast. Their
ecclesiastical zeal seems to have been peculiarly strong, for they
distinctly stated that they were celebrating Christmas on that date, and
I deduce from that statement that beer-drinking was comparatively
infrequent with them.
However, as they were about to part, there entered to them a fifth,
travel-stained and tired, who sat down and demanded some stronger form
of stimulant. The new-comer was known to these four, for his name was
given, and his domicile was mentioned as Hackney Wick. He was a small
man, very active and very silent and rather pale; and he seems to have
had something of a mysterious reputation even among his friends and to
be considered a dangerous man to cross.
He made no mystery, however, as to where he had come from, nor whither
he was going. He had come from Kent, he said, and humorously added that
he had been hop-picking, and was going to join his wife and the family
circle for the festival of Christmas. He remarked that his wife had
written to him to say she had lodgers.
The four men naturally stayed a little to hear all this news and to
celebrate Christmas once more, but they presently were forced to tear
themselves away. It was as the first man was leaving (his foreman
appears to have been of a tyrannical disposition) that the little
incident happened.
"Why," he said, "Bill" (three out of the five companions seemed to have
been usually called "Bill"), "Bill, your boots are in a mess."
The Bill in question made caustic remarks. He observed that it would be
remarkable if they were not in such weather. But the other persisted
that this was not mud, and a general inspection was made. This resulted
in the opinion of the majority being formed that Bill had trodden in
some blood. Bill himself was one of the majority, though he attempted in
vain to think of any explanation. Two men, however, declared that in
their opinion it was only red earth. (A certain obscurity appears in the
evidence at this point, owing to the common use of a certain expletive
in the mouth of the British working-man.) There was a hot discussion on
the subject, and the Bill whose boots were under argument seems to have
been the only man to keep his head. He argued very sensibly that if the
stains were those of blood, then he must have stepped in some--perhaps
in the gutter of a slaughter-house; and if it was not blood, then it
must be something else he had trodden in. It was urged upon him that it
was best washed off, and he seems finally to have taken the advice,
though without enthusiasm.
Then the four men departed.
The landlady's evidence was to the same effect. She states that the
new-comer, with whose name she had been previously unacquainted, though
she knew his face, had remained very tranquilly for an hour or so and
had breakfasted off bacon and eggs. He seemed to have plenty of money,
she said. He had finally set off, limping a little, in a northward
direction.
Now this incident is a very small one. I only mention it because, in
reading the evidence later, I found myself reminded of a parallel
incident, recorded in a famous historical trial, in which something
resembling blood was seen on the hand of the judge. His name was Ayloff,
and his date the sixteenth century.
(II)
Mrs. Partington had a surprise--not wholly agreeable--on that Christmas
Eve. For at half-past three, just as the London evening was beginning to
close in, her husband walked into the kitchen.
She had seen nothing of him for six weeks, and had managed to get on
fairly well without him. I am not even now certain whether or no she
knows what her husband's occupation is during these absences of his--I
think it quite possible that, honestly, she does not--and I have no idea
myself. It seemed, however, this time, that he had prospered. He was in
quite a good temper, he was tolerably well dressed, and within ten
minutes of his arrival he had produced a handful of shillings. Five of
these he handed over to her at once for Christmas necessaries, and ten
more he entrusted to Maggie with explicit directions as to their
expenditure.
While he took off his boots, his wife gave him the news--first, as to
the arrival of the Major's little party, and next as to its unhappy
dispersion on that very day.
"He will 'ave it as the young man's gone off with the young woman," she
observed.
Mr. Partington made a commentatory sound.
"An' 'e's 'arf mad," she added. "'E means mischief if 'e can manage it."
Mr. Partington observed, in his own particular kind of vocabulary, that
the Major's intentions were absurd, since the young man would scarcely
be such a peculiarly qualified kind of fool as to return. And Mrs.
Partington agreed with him. (In fact, this had been her one comfort all
day. For it seemed to her, with her frank and natural ideas, that, on
the whole, Frank and Gertie had done the proper thing. She was pleased,
too, to think that she had been right in her surmises as to Gertie's
attitude to Frank. For, of course, she never doubted for one single
instant that the two had eloped together in the ordinary way, though
probably without any intentions of matrimony.)
Mr. Partington presently inquired as to where the Major was, and was
informed that he was, of course, at the "Queen's Arms." He had been
there, in fact, continuously--except for sudden excursions home, to
demand whether anything had been heard of the fugitives--since about
half-past eleven that morning. It was a situation that needed comfort.
Mrs. Partington added a few comments on the whole situation, and
presently put on her bonnet and went out to supplement her Christmas
preparations with the extra five shillings, leaving her husband to doze
in the Windsor chair, with his pipe depending from his mouth. He had
walked up from Kent that morning, he said.
* * * * *
She returned in time to get tea ready, bringing with her various
"relishes," and found that the situation had developed slightly since
her departure. The Major had made another of his infuriated returns, and
had expanded at length to his old friend Mr. Partington, recounting the
extraordinary kindness he had always shown to Frank and the confidence
he had reposed in him. He had picked him up, it seemed, when the young
man had been practically starving, and had been father and comrade to
him ever since. And to be repaid in this way! He had succeeded also by
his eloquence, Mrs. Partington perceived, in winning her husband's
sympathies, and was now gone off again, ostensibly to scour the
neighborhood once more, but, more probably, to attempt to drown his
grieved and wounded feelings.
Mrs. Partington set her thin lips and said nothing. She noticed also, as
she spread the table, a number of bottles set upon the floor, two of
them with yellow labels--the result of Maggie's errand--and prepared
herself to face a somewhat riotous evening. But Christmas, she reflected
for her consolation, comes but once a year.
It was about nine o'clock that the two men and the one woman sat down to
supper upstairs. The children had been put to bed in the kitchen as
usual, after Jimmie had informed his mother that the clergyman had been
round no less than three times since four o'clock to inquire after the
vanished lodger. He was a little tearful at being put to bed at such an
unusually early hour, as Mr. Parham-Carter, it appeared, had promised
him no less than sixpence if he would come round to the clergy-house
within five minutes after the lodger's return, and it was obviously
impossible to traverse the streets in a single flannel shirt.
His mother dismissed it all as nonsense. She told him that Frankie was
not coming back at all--that he wasn't a good young man, and had run
away without paying mother her rent. This made the situation worse than
ever, as Jimmie protested violently against this shattering of his
ideal, and his mother had to assume a good deal of sternness to cover up
her own tenderness of feeling. But she, too--though she considered the
flight of the two perfectly usual--was conscious of a very slight sense
of disappointment herself that it should have been this particular young
man who had done it.
Then she went upstairs again to supper.
(III)
The famous archway that gives entrance to the district of Hackney Wick
seems, especially on a rainy night, directly designed by the Great
Eastern Railway as a vantage ground for observant loafers with a desire
to know every soul that enters or leaves Hackney Wick. It is, of course,
possible to, enter Hackney Wick by other ways--it may be approached by
the marshes, and there is, I think, another way round about half a mile
to the east, under the railway. But those ways have nothing whatever to
do with people coming from London proper. You arrive at Victoria Park
Station; you turn immediately to the right and follow the pavement down,
with the park on your left, until you come to the archway where the road
unites with that coming from Homerton. One is absolutely safe,
therefore, assuming that one has not to deal with watchful criminals, in
standing under the arch with the certitude that sooner or later, if you
wait long enough, the man whom you expect to enter Hackney Wick will
pass within ten yards of you.
Mr. Parham-Carter, of course, knew this perfectly well, and had,
finally, communicated the fact to the other two quite early in the
afternoon. An elaborate system of watches, therefore, had been arranged,
by which one of the three had been on guard continuously since three
o'clock. It was Jack who had had the privilege (if he had but known it)
of observing Mr. Partington himself returning home to his family for
Christmas, and it was Dick, who came on guard about five, who had seen
the Major--or, rather, what was to him merely a shabby and excited
man--leave and then return to the "Queen's Arms" during his hour's
watch.
* * * * *
After the amazing and shocking news, however, of the accident to Lord
Talgarth and Archie, the precautions had been doubled. It was the
clergyman who had first bought an evening paper soon after five o'clock,
and within five minutes the other two knew it also.
It is of no good to try to describe the effect it had on their minds,
beyond saying that it made all three of them absolutely resolute that
Frank should by no possible means escape them. The full dramatic
situation of it all they scarcely appreciated, though it soaked more and
more into them gradually as they waited--two of them in the Men's Club
just round the corner, and the third, shivering and stamping, under the
arch. (An unemployed man, known to the clergyman, had been set as an
additional sentry on the steps of the Men's Club, whose duty it would
be, the moment the signal was given from the arch that Frank was
coming, to call the other two instantly from inside. Further, the
clergyman--as has been related--had been round three times since four
o'clock to Turner Road, and had taken Jimmie into his pay.)
The situation was really rather startling, even to the imperturbable
Dick. This pleasant young man, to whom he had begun to feel very
strangely tender during the last month or two, now tramping London
streets (or driving a van), in his miserable old clothes described to
him by the clergyman, or working at the jam factory, was actually no one
else at this moment but the new Lord Talgarth--with all that that
implied. Merefield was his, the big house in Berkeley Square was his;
the moor in Scotland.... It was an entire reversal of the whole thing:
it was as a change of trumps in whist: everything had altered its
value....
Well, he had plenty of time, both before he came off guard at seven and
after he had joined the clergyman in the Men's Club, to sort out the
facts and their consequences.
* * * * *
About half-past ten the three held a consultation under the archway,
while trains rumbled overhead. They attracted very little attention
here: the archway is dark and wide; they were muffled to the eyes; and
there usually is a fringe of people standing under shelter here on rainy
evenings. They leaned back against the wall and talked.
They had taken further steps since they had last met. Mr. Parham-Carter
had been round to the jam factory, and had returned with the news that
the van had come back under the charge of only one of the drivers, and
that the other one, who was called Gregory (whom Mr. Parham-Carter was
inquiring after), would certainly be dismissed in consequence. He had
taken the address of the driver, who was now off duty--somewhere in
Homerton--with the intention of going to see him next morning if Frank
had not appeared.
There were two points they were discussing now. First, should the police
be informed? Secondly, was it probable that Frank would have heard the
news, and, if so, was it conceivable that he had gone straight off
somewhere in consequence--to his lawyers, or even to Merefield itself?
Dick remembered the name of the firm quite well--at least, he thought
so. Should he send a wire to inquire?
But then, in that case, Jack shrewdly pointed out, everything was as it
should be. And this reflection caused the three considerable comfort.
For all that, there were one or two "ifs." Was it likely that Frank
should have heard the news? He was notoriously hard up, and the name
Talgarth had not appeared, so far, on any of the posters. Yet he might
easily have been given a paper, or picked one up ... and then....
So the discussion went on, and there was not much to be got out of it.
The final decision come to was this: That guard should be kept, as
before, until twelve o'clock midnight; that at that hour the three
should leave the archway and, in company, visit two places--Turner Road
and the police-station--and that the occupants of both these places
should be informed of the facts. And that then all three should go to
bed.
(IV)
At ten minutes past eleven Dick moved away from the fire in the Men's
Club, where he had just been warming himself after his vigil, and began
to walk up and down.
He had no idea why he was so uncomfortable, and he determined to set to
work to reassure himself. (The clergyman, he noticed, was beginning to
doze a little by the fire, for the club had just been officially closed
and the rooms were empty.)
Of course, it was not pleasant to have to tell a young man that his
father and brother were dead (Dick himself was conscious of a
considerable shock), but surely the situation was, on the whole,
enormously improved. This morning Frank was a pauper; to-night he was
practically a millionaire, as well as a peer of the realm. This morning
his friends had nothing by which they might appeal to him, except common
sense and affection, and Frank had very little of the one, and, it would
seem, a very curious idea of the other.
Of course, all that affair about Jenny was a bad business (Dick could
hardly even now trust himself to think of her too much, and not to
discuss her at all), but Frank would get over it.
Then, still walking up and down, and honestly reassured by sheer reason,
he began to think of what part Jenny would play in the future.... It was
a very odd situation, a very odd situation indeed. (The deliberate and
self-restrained Dick used an even stronger expression.) Here was a young
woman who had jilted the son and married the father, obviously from
ambitious motives, and now found herself almost immediately in the
position of a very much unestablished kind of dowager, with the jilted
son reigning in her husband's stead. And what on earth would happen
next? Diamonds had been trumps; now it looked as if hearts were to
succeed them; and what a very remarkable pattern was that of these
hearts.
But to come back to Frank--
And at that moment he heard a noise at the door, and, as the clergyman
started up from his doze, Dick saw the towzled and becapped head of the
unemployed man and his hand beckoning violently, and heard his hoarse
voice adjuring them to make haste. The gentleman under the arch, he
said, was signaling.
The scene was complete when the two arrived, with the unemployed man
encouraging them from behind, half a minute later under the archway.
Jack had faced Frank fairly and squarely on the further pavement, and
was holding him in talk.
"My dear chap," he was saying, "we've been waiting for you all day.
Thank the Lord you've come!"
Frank looked a piteous sight, thought Dick, who now for the first time
saw the costume that Mr. Parham-Carter had described with such
minuteness. He was standing almost under the lamp, and there were heavy
drooping shadows on his face; he looked five years older than when Dick
had last seen him--only at Easter. But his voice was confident and
self-respecting enough.
"My dear Jack," he was saying, "you really mustn't interrupt. I've only
just--" Then he broke off as he recognized the others.
"So you've given me away after all," he said with a certain sternness to
the clergyman.
"Indeed I haven't," cried that artless young man. "They came quite
unexpectedly this morning."
"And you've told them that they could catch me here," said Frank "Well,
it makes no difference. I'm going on--Hullo! Dick!"
"Look here!" said Dick. "It's really serious. You've heard about--" His
voice broke.
"I've heard about it," said Frank. "But that doesn't make any difference
for to-night."
"But my dear man," cried Jack, seizing him by the lapel of his coat,
"it's simply ridiculous. We've come down here on purpose--you're killing
yourself--"
"One moment," said Frank. "Tell me exactly what you want."
Dick pushed to the front.
"Let him alone, you fellows.... This is what we want, Frank. We want you
to come straight to the clergy-house for to-night. To-morrow you and
I'll go and see the lawyers first thing in the morning, and go up to
Merefield by the afternoon train. I'm sorry, but you've really got to go
through with it. You're the head of the family now. They'll be all
waiting for you there, and they can't do anything without you. This
mustn't get into the papers. Fortunately, not a soul knows of it yet,
though they would have if you'd been half an hour later. Now, come
along."
"One moment," said Frank. "I agree with nearly all that you've said. I
quite agree with you that"--he paused a moment--"that the head of the
family should be at Merefield to-morrow night. But for to-night you
three must just go round to the clergy-house and wait. I've got to
finish my job clean out--and--"
"What job?" cried two voices simultaneously.
Frank leaned against the wall and put his hands in his pockets.
"I really don't propose to go into all that now. It'd take an hour. But
two of you know most of the story. In a dozen words it's this--I've got
the girl away, and now I'm going to tell the man, and tell him a few
other things at the same time. That's the whole thing. Now clear off,
please. (I'm awfully obliged, you know, and all that), but you really
must let me finish it before I do anything else."
There was a silence.
It seemed tolerably reasonable, put like that--at least, it seemed
consistent with what appeared to the three to be the amazing unreason of
all Frank's proceedings. They hesitated, and were lost.
"Will you swear not to clear out of Hackney Wick before we've seen you
again?" demanded Jack hoarsely.
Frank bowed his head.
"Yes," he said.
The clergyman and Dick were consulting in low voices. Jack looked at
them with a wild sort of appeal in his face. He was completely
bewildered, and hoped for help. But none came.
"Will you swear--" he began again.
Frank put his hand suddenly on his friend's shoulder.
"Look here, old man. I'm really rather done up. I think you might let me
go without any more--"
"All right, we agree," said Dick suddenly. "And--"
"Very good," said Frank. "Then there's really no more--"
He turned as if to go.
"Frank, Frank--" cried Jack.
Frank turned and glanced at him, and then went on.
"Good-night," he cried.
And so they let him go.
They watched him, in silence, cross the road by the "Queen's Arms" and
pass up the left-hand pavement. As he drew near each lamp his shadow
lay behind him, shortened, vanished and reappeared before him. After
the third lamp they lost him, and they knew he would a moment later pass
into Turner Road.
So they let him go.
(V)
Mr. Parham-Carter's room looked very warm and home-like after the
comfortlessness of the damp lamp-lit streets. It was as has already been
related: the Madonna, the prints, the low book-cases, the drawn
curtains, the rosy walls, the dancing firelight and the electric lamp.
It was even reassuring at first--safe and protected, and the three sat
down content. A tray with some cold meat and cheese rested on the table
by the fire, and cocoa in a brown jug stood warming in the fender. They
had had irregular kinds of refreshments in the Men's Club at odd
intervals, and were exceedingly hungry....
They began to talk presently, and it was astonishing how the sight and
touch of Frank had cheered them. More than one of the three has
confessed to me since that a large part of the anxiety was caused by his
simple absence and by imaginative little pictures of street accidents.
It would have been so extremely ironical if he had happened to have
been run over on the day on which he became Lord Talgarth.
They laid their little plans, too, for the next day. Dick had thought it
all out. He, Jack and Frank were to call at the lawyers' office in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and leave a message, as the office would be closed
of course, immediately after the wanderer had been dressed properly in
ready-made clothes. Then they would catch the early afternoon train and
get to Merefield that night. The funeral could not possibly take place
for several days: there would have to be an inquest.
Then they read over the account of the smash in the _Star_
newspaper--special edition. It seemed to have been nobody's fault. The
brake had refused to act going down a steep hill; they had run into a
wall; the chauffeur had been thrown clean over it; the two passengers
had been pinned under the car. Lord Talgarth was dead at once; Archie
had died five minutes after being taken out.
So they all talked at once in low voices, but in the obvious excitement
of relief. It was an extraordinary pleasure to them--now that they
looked at it in the sanity conferred by food and warmth--to reflect that
Frank was within a quarter of a mile of them--certainly in dreary
surroundings; but it was for the last time. To-morrow would see him
restored to ordinary life, his delusions and vagaries plucked from him
by irresistible circumstance, and the future in his hands.
* * * * *
Midnight still found them talking--alert and cheerful; but a little
silence fell as they heard the chiming of bells.
"Christmas Day, by George!" said the clergyman. "Merry Christmas!"
They shook hands, smiling shamefacedly, as is the custom of Englishmen.
"And to think of old Frank--" mused Jack half aloud. "I told you,
Guiseley, about his coming to me in the autumn?" (He had been thinking a
great deal about that visit lately, and about what Frank had told him of
himself--the idea he had of Something going on behind the scenes in
which he had passively to take his part; his remark on how pleasant it
must be to be a squire. Well, the play had come to an end, it seemed;
now there followed the life of a squire indeed. It was curious to think
that Frank was, actually at this moment, Lord Talgarth!)
Dick nodded his head, smiling to himself in his beard. Somehow or
another the turn things had taken had submerged in him for the present
the consciousness of the tragedy up at Merefield, and his own private
griefs, and the memory of Jenny.
Jack told it all again briefly. He piled it on about the Major and his
extreme repulsiveness, and the draggled appearance of Gertie, and
Frank's incredible obstinacy.
"And to think that he's brought it off, and got the girl home to her
people.... Well, thank the Lord that's over! We shan't have any more of
that sort of thing."
Dick got up presently and began to walk about, eyeing the pictures and
the books.
"Want to turn in?" asked the cleric.
"Well, I think, as we've an early start--"
The clergyman jumped up.
"You've a beastly little room, I'm afraid. We're rather full up. And
you, Mr. Kirkby!"
"I'll wait till you come back," he said.
* * * * *
The two went out, after good-nights, and Jack was left staring at the
fire.
He felt very wide-awake, and listened contentedly to the dying noises of
the streets. Somewhere in that hive outside was Frank--old Frank. That
was very good to think of....
During these last months Frank's personality had been very persistently
before him. It was not that he pretended to understand him in the very
least; but he understood enough now to feel that there was something
very admirable in it all. It was mad and quixotic and absurd, but it
had a certain light of nobility. Of course, it would never do if people
in general behaved like that; society simply could not go on if everyone
went about espousing the cause of unhappy and badly-behaved individuals,
and put on old clothes and played the Ass. But, for all that, it was not
unpleasant to reflect that his own friend had chosen to do these things
in despite of convention. There was a touch of fineness in it. And it
was all over now, thank God.... What times they would have up in the
north!
He heard a gate clash somewhere outside. The sound just detached itself
from the murmur of the night. Then a late train ran grinding over the
embanked railway behind the house, and drew up with the screaming of
brakes at Victoria Park Station, and distracted him again.
"Are you ready, Mr. Kirkby?" said the clergyman, coming in.
Jack stood up, stretching himself. In the middle of the stretch he
stopped.
"What's that noise?" he asked.
They stood listening.
Then again came the sharp, prolonged tingle of an electric bell,
followed by a battering at a door downstairs.
Jack, looking in the other's face, saw him go ever so slightly pale
beneath his eyes.
"There's somebody at the door," said Mr. Parham-Carter. "I'll just go
down and see."
And, as Jack stood there, motionless and breathless, he could hear no
sound but the thick hammering of his own heart at the base of his
throat.