IDDESLEIGH GATE
I
It is against the advice of my doctors that I have written these last
pages--these last chapters in fact--at all. But I wrote them only a very
little at a time, after I came back from Hastie's place in Scotland. And
I went to Scotland only after I came back from Egypt. But I am back at
the Consolidation now, having missed nearly a year, and I really don't
think that this private writing tires me too much.
I admit that it seems odd that I should wish to do it at all, and doubly
odd that I should have kept, not one private record, but two.[2] I
thought I had finished when the first one came to an end. Then I found I
hadn't. Let me say quite plainly, however, that the second one is no
retractation of the first. There is not a single statement in that first
writing from which I recede. I stand by every word of it. I wrote there,
for example, that I did not fear to be left alone in my library at
night; and that is true. I wrote that there glided no shadowy shape by
my side when I stepped into my brougham or passed between the saluting
commissionaires in Pall Mall; and that also is true. It is true that I
play with my clean-born children, both of them, and still do not pardon
even the meditation of that old crime that would have made the life of
her I love an abhorrence worse than death. These things are as true now
as when I first wrote them, and I shall die without regret for them.
But the impulse that drives a man to write about himself at all still
remains a curious thing. I don't find it an inexplicable one--but as I
shall return to this by-and-by, I will leave it for the present. Let me
say this, however, now; that whatever cares may or may not weigh on me,
I neither consider myself on my defence nor yet join hands with
Schmerveloff and his crew in their sweeping and futile denunciations of
the whole Scheme of Things as they are. If I cannot stand alone I can at
least fall alone, and I haven't fallen yet.
Nevertheless, this writing will have to be less frequently indulged (if
that is the word); there is little sense in paying doctors if you don't
take their advice. There have been few physically stronger men than I;
especially my strength of finger and forearm and wrist have been
remarkable; and I can still bend a half-crown and make a dog's leg out
of a thick poker. But I don't pretend that I am the man I was.
Separately, my brain and body work as well as ever they did, but they do
not always jump together. I don't know whether this is due to the hole
Aunt Angela's blackleaded fender made in my skull. It was a bad hole,
and I cracked three of Aunt Angela's brown tiles. Perhaps that is the
reason why my doctor advised me to get to bed early, and cautioned me
about the use of stimulating drinks and heating foods.... Let me see,
let me see....
Ah, yes, I was going to speak of that evening. Mercifully, Evie was
spared the worst of that shock. So gently and easily that for quite a
time nobody discovered it, she had slid off into a faint at the very
beginning of that song of Aschael's, and so had not seen my own headlong
fall. This saved us from a disaster, for otherwise our little girl would
probably not have been born in the following July, not to be welcomed by
her father until October came. Indeed, I had to wait till October before
I learned a good many things; but such was my state of lassitude that I
was able to do so without impatience, and even without much interest,
content to be free from pain and to be looked after by those people of
Hastie's party. After a time they began to allow me to do little
things--superintend the packing of the luncheon-baskets and, as I grew
better, to join the guns in the clearing when the whistle went; and
Evie, away at Broadstairs with Aunt Angela (who had given up her room in
the little "circus"), sometimes seemed part of a charming but not very
moving dream to me. You see from this how bad I was.... Then I returned,
and the winter in Egypt and Hastie's house in Scotland began in their
turn to fade.
Apart from my work at the Consolidation, I began to be full of a
curiously single preoccupation. I had not brooded on this while I had
been away: as I have said, I had not brooded on anything; it merely came
back to me as the most natural thing to do, a matter of course. It was
the thing that Louie Causton, against what she conceived to be her own
interests, had advised that night when I had dined with her at the
Models' Club. There was something I must now tell Evie.
I think I let it go, vaguely, as "something." It was not that I did not
know perfectly well what it was; but those lazy days free from pain
among the heather had made that also somehow unreal; I suppose I had
worn smooth the thought of it; and it seemed nothing to make a fuss
about. It did not even require resolution. It was merely something that
ought to have been done long ago. This was my attitude of mind then. I
don't say that it is now.
That long separation had altered our relation in more ways than one.
With such joy did I rejoin Evie that for both of us it was as if we were
newly, and yet both more strongly and more peacefully, married again. My
lovely little Phyllis had put even poor Jackie's nose out of joint. On
the other hand, a year is a year, and if my own time had been one of
vacancy and healing, Evie's had not. I had only to listen to her and
Aunt Angela to become aware of this. They had made quite a circle of
acquaintances in Broadstairs; several of these had since been kept up in
London; and there were things I was at least temporarily out of. I
mention this not because I wanted to be in at them; indeed it all seemed
to me a little casual; but I could hardly have expected Evie to sit
moping in a boarding-house parlour all that time, and certainly she
looked a picture of blooming health. I say "looked," because it was only
later that I learned what the first question of the doctor who had
attended her had been: "Has she ever had a severe shock?"
I am unable to explain how it was that at first I was quite incurious to
know what people had thought of that extraordinary collapse of mine, and
why the effect of that song on Kitty Windus, for example, should have
been less marked than its effect on myself. For Kitty, though she had
screamed, and babbled incoherent things that probably I have never been
told about, had sustained no lasting injury. An icy breath had passed
over everybody there, and nobody, I thought, would be so morbid as to
push their inquiries into the varying degrees of iciness. I may say at
once that I thought quite rightly. Nobody has, not even (so far as I am
aware) Miriam Levey.
It was from Aunt Angela, of course, that I learned what that first
question of the Broadstairs doctor had been; and it brought me face to
face with that so easily assumed resolution of mine rather sharply. By
mere luck Evie had escaped that shock of the party, but the original
one, the seven or eight years' old one, remained. That I might know
exactly to what extent this might affect my determination, I had the
Broadstairs doctor to meet my own more distinguished one. I told this
one of the tragedy of Evie's former engagement, and related the affair
of the gramophone. He looked grave.
"You must see that she doesn't get another shock," he said.
Evie herself was not made aware that the visit had more than an ordinary
significance.
But Louie's advice now seemed rather beside the mark.
I saw Louie daily now; and whether it was that she had been able to
entrench herself behind her work in my absence, or had found some _modus
vivendi_ midway between that ecstasy of the night when she had supported
me in a Chelsea doorway and the anguished outbreak of that other evening
in the Models' Club, or however it was, my fears for the impossibility
of the situation now appeared to have been groundless. Whitlock, indeed,
saw more of her than I. He spoke exceedingly favourably of her. She used
quickness and common-sense in her work, he said, and, when he had
half-a-dozen things to do at once, did not take down a remark
interpolated to somebody else as part of the letter he was dictating. I
was not surprised to learn that she "flashed" intelligently at
unexplained meanings. She converted Whitlock's rapid mumbled
instructions into (commercial) English with ease, and had already
attracted Pepper's notice.
I don't know whether it has struck you that Evie, who had given it as a
sufficient reason for renewing her intimacy with Miriam Levey and Kitty
Windus that they had been at the old Business College in Holborn
together, had never once urged the same thing on behalf of Louie
Causton. It was not that I wanted her to do so; as a matter of fact I
very much preferred them apart. And I thought I saw the reason for
Evie's silence. Louie trailed an unhappy story behind her. Louie had
been a model. Aunt Angela had not asked her to her party. If there was
any coolness between Miriam Levey and Louie, which now might well be,
Evie would naturally be disposed to take the part of the former. I don't
mean to say that she looked down on Louie. It was only later that I
learned that she wasted a thought on Louie. I only mean that their paths
lay in different directions, and that Evie had hitherto appeared content
that they should do so.
It was in a roundabout way that I discovered that Louie had a place in
Evie's thoughts. Acting under my doctor's orders, I had begun to come
home early in the afternoon, seldom working after tea; and I entered the
drawing-room one afternoon to find a couple of her Broadstairs
acquaintances, a Mr and Mrs Smithson, with her. Smithson was, I think, a
cycle agent; she was an openwork-stockinged, flirtatious little woman,
for ever making eyes, and apparently under the impression that all
conversation would languish unless she took the greater part of it upon
herself. I imagine it had been she who had sent Evie one or two vulgar
seaside post cards that, had they been addressed to me, would have gone
straight into the fire. It appeared that they knew Peddie slightly, my
old Jun. Ex. Con. of the F.B.C., and now Whitlock's abstract clerk; and
I was not disposed to congratulate Peddie on the acquaintance.
They were just leaving as I arrived, so that we only exchanged a few
words; indeed, the ringing of the telephone I had had fixed up in my
study gave me an excuse to cut our leave-taking short. I went to the
instrument; it was Louie Causton with a message from Whitlock; and I
gave my instructions and returned to Evie.
Now Jackie, who was just beginning to babble and notice things, was
greatly interested in the telephone, and I entered the drawing-room just
in time to hear him make some remark about "plitty typies." As I took no
notice, Jackie repeated the unchildlike expression. Evie was pouring me
out more tea.
"Plitty typies, farzer," Jackie clamoured, imperious for notice.
I turned to Evie.
"Where did he pick that up?" I asked.
Evie said: "Oh, it was some silly joke of Florrie's."
"Florrie is Mrs Smithson?"
"Yes."
I was not pleased. I suppose that, like Charles Lamb, I am squeamish
about my women and children, and I remembered Mrs Smithson's post cards.
One of them had borne the legend, "Detained at office--very pressing
business," and if you have seen these things you will not want it
described. But I was loth to raise again the question I had formerly
raised about Miss Levey and Aschael, and so I merely asked whether it
was not possible for her to give Mrs Smithson tea without having Jackie
there. She said, "Very well," though in a tone a little subdued. She
knew what I meant.
It was ten minutes later that, returning of her own accord to the
subject, she said a little poutingly: "I don't see much to make a fuss
about. He doesn't know what it means."
"That doesn't improve matters very much," I said. "It seems to me to
make them worse."
"Oh, very well," she answered.
But she returned to the subject yet again. She spoke defensively.
"I had to have him at Broadstairs with me. You couldn't have him in
Scotland with you."
"Jackie, you mean?"
"Yes."
She gave a slightly marked shade of meaning to the words "in Scotland."
To tell the truth, it was a little on my mind that I had had the more
desirable summer of the two of us. I am no snob, but I do prefer some
people to others, and if people do run in strata, well, nobody can tell
me much I don't know about the clerk and cycle-agent class, and they
don't charm me. I spoke with a little compunction.
"I wish it could have been helped, darling. Anyway, we sha'n't be
separated again."
(I may say that I don't think Evie had thought it very remarkable that I
should have had that accident at Aunt Angela's party. She had fainted
herself, and knew little of the later events; and we have lived too long
together for her not to be aware that, rugged as I may appear to the
rest of the world, I am a sensitive man.)
After a moment's silence: "Mrs Smithson has asked me down to Broadstairs
for a week," she said. "She--of course she hadn't met you."
"You mean she's asked you without me?"
"She hadn't met you," Evie excused Mrs Smithson.
"And--shall you go?"
She answered quite readily: "Of course not--not without you."
I got up and kissed her. I had expected no less of her.
But I knew that she would have liked to go to Broadstairs, and was only
staying away out of her duty to me, it was not for me to deny her her
sex's equivalent of a grumble--a sigh. Then we began to talk.
We talked quite equably: I never in my life wrangled with Evie. I said,
quite gently, that I did not wish the boy to acquire precocious chatter
about pressing business and pretty typists, and Evie made no opposition;
indeed, she laughed when I suggested how unlikely it was that any pretty
typist would have pressing business with myself. By-and-by she asked me
who had rung me up, and I told her. "Oh, yes, I forgot; she's with you
now," she said; "Mr Whitlock engaged her, didn't he?"
"Yes," I answered. Then, after a little further talk, we kissed again,
and she went out to give Phyllis her bath.
Oddly enough, very soon after speaking thus of Louie after that long
silence, she saw Louie herself. One morning she announced that she was
going shopping that day, and would call for me at Pall Mall and bring me
home to tea. She finished her shopping earlier than she had thought she
would, and, not wishing to disturb me before the appointed time, had
come upon Louie in the counting-house. She told me this when we got
home. She had asked Louie to show her round, and was full of the wonders
of the place--the lifts, the telephone exchange, the series of
waiting-rooms, the advice-board from Lloyd's, the acre-wide office full
of busy clerks. "What a change from Holborn!" she said she had said to
Louie, and then Louie had brought her to my own private room.
The next day Louie made a mistake in a rather important draft. It was
not like her, and Whitlock blamed himself for having left too much to
her intuition. The error necessitated a consultation between Louie,
Whitlock and myself. It was set right, and Louie was going out again
when I glanced at Whitlock. He looked inquiringly, nodded, and left us.
There was something I wanted to say to Louie; perhaps it was rather
something that it would not be very graceful not to say; perhaps it was
both.
I think this was the first time I spoke to her at the Consolidation
except on business.
"Well, that will be all right," I said, dismissing the error in the
draft.... "By the way, you saw my wife yesterday, didn't you?"
She gave a little nod.
"And showed her round? It was very good of you. She enjoyed it very
much. She told me all about it."
Louie said something about it being no trouble, and then appeared to be
going. But I stopped her. Then, when I had stopped her, I didn't quite
know what to say.
"Oh--er----" I said awkwardly, looking at her and then looking away
again. "Without opening matters up--you know what I mean--going into
things--I want to say just one thing. It's about--a piece of advice you
once gave me."
She had half opened the inner door, and stood, as it were, on the
threshold of the box-like space between the inner one and the outer one
of baize. The look she gave me was almost hostile, and the tourmalines
were shut. I don't think, by the way, that she ever heard of that
incident at Aunt Angela's party. I neither asked her whether she had,
nor ever told her about it.
"If you feel that you must----" she said, not very invitingly.
"It's merely this," I said rather hurriedly, "that what you suggested is
impossible now."
"Yes," she said; "I suppose it is."
"Her doctor's forbidden it--I mean, he says she mustn't have another
shock."
Instantly I saw, by the way in which she said, "Oh!" that she had had
something else in her mind. "Oh!... I see," she said, and I pondered.
"Ah!" I said at last. "You mean you've just seen--just this moment?"
She made no reply.
"You've just seen, just this moment. Then why did you say yes, you
supposed so?"
Her answer was impatient. "Oh, _must_ you?"
"Must I what?"
"Must you do this?"
"Ask you why you assented when I said something was impossible now?"
"Ask me anything at all!" she almost snapped.
I gave her a long look. "Shut the door," I said.... "Now tell me why you
agreed with me when I said that it was impossible to take your advice
now."
The tourmalines flickered almost scornfully. "Don't you know?"
"I do not."
"What! You can't guess?"
"Will you tell me?"
For a moment she looked as if she was going to sit down for something
that would require time; but she changed her mind, and stood, a crumple
of skirt grasped in either hand.
"Ask me again and I will," she said, in a slightly raised voice.
"I do ask you."
Then, with a harsh little laugh, Louie made her second mistake of that
day.
"Because she's jealous," she said. "Evidently that wasn't _your_ reason;
I don't know what yours was; but that's mine."
"Oh!" I said. In the face of a statement so preposterous I really could
think of nothing else to say.
"What else did she come here yesterday for?" Louie demanded.
I smiled. That was too absurd. "Well--shall we say to keep an
appointment with her husband?" I suggested.
"Oh, if you like!... Then why does she want to come and see me at my
house?" she demanded.
It was news to me that Evie did want to go and see Louie at her house,
but I was careful not to let Louie see that.
"Oh!" I said, still smiling. "And you think these grounds enough for
your statement?"
"My good----" she broke out. "I'm not asking you to accept them. I know
better than to try to persuade _you_! You asked me, and I've told you;
that's all."
"And if I say once for all that it is not so, and that nothing could
make it so?"
"Make it so!" she broke out. "Really, Jeff, you talk like--a man! 'Make
it so!'... If you can't see your little definite reason for everything,
you deny the fact! If I could say that Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey had
been chattering--I'm not aware that they have, but if I _could_ say
that--I suppose you'd call that a reason, and listen to it; but anything
else--pshaw! I don't care a button for your reason! Your reason may have
made this business, but it won't persuade a woman against something she
knows--myself _or_ Evie. It just is so, and there's an end of it. And of
course you see the beautiful new fix it puts you in." She gave a little
stamp that made her garments quiver.
"Louie, I can't----"
"Oh, a perfect fix! Really, I'm curious to know what you're going to do
about it! Try to persuade her that there's nothing between you and me!
Try it, try it! Why, how shouldn't she be jealous when I am? Do you
think she doesn't see that? Oh, I don't know why I waste words with
you!... But you see your fix. It was Kitty before, and you tried half
telling then; now it's me; but it isn't either of us really; oh, if it
only could be!... It's the secret, Jim. You've got to tell her--and you
can't. I don't know what this is about a shock, but it's too late now.
Try it if you like--I don't care what you say about me. Try the half
truth again--give her reason--the reason's yours whenever you want it."
Of course I couldn't listen to this nonsense and immodesty and worse.
Who should know better whether Evie was jealous or not, Louie or I? Evie
jealous!... Of course, if it were so, the position _would_ be precisely
as Louie had stated it. I _should_ have to choose between Evie's love
and the risk the doctor had so gravely foreshadowed. Our very existence
together _would_ hang on precisely that last desperate chance. And from
the bottom of my heart I blessed my Maker that, tossed and buffeted as
my life had been, at least that perfected anguish of body and spirit was
to be spared me....
I had risen. Smiling rather sadly, I turned to Louie.
"Well--as I said--I don't want to re-open things," I said.
With the door already half open, she turned.
"Do you think they're closed?" she said.
And she did not wait for my reply.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] See "In Accordance with the Evidence."
II
It is as I feared: this writing, as a continuous record, will have to
stop. My life is getting too full. I daresay its crowded outward
happenings are a good thing for me; it is better, as the saying is, to
wear out than to rust out; and I am beginning almost to enjoy change for
change's sake.
My newest change is a removal. Pepper's latest cosmopolitan, Baron
Stillhausen, wants to be rid of that Iddesleigh Gate house as it stands,
and already I have taken Evie round to see it. It almost took away her
breath: I didn't know how near delight could come to timidity--I almost
said to dismay. When I said, "Well, darling, am I to take it?" she
looked at me as much as to say "_Dare_ you?"... I think I dare--though
I have only to remember my own beginnings to be a little intimidated
myself. I walked over to Verandah Cottage the other evening; a
sign-writer has the place now; and it seems either very much more or
very much less than four years since I lived there--sometimes hardly
four months, sometimes half-a-lifetime.... But Evie will very quickly be
turning up her nose at Well Walk. Already she had begun to shop quite
freely. For getting to and from Pall Mall (I told you I was to spare
myself physically for the present) I have bought a small runabout of a
car. Really it is only an ordinary taxi, with a rather superior shell
placed on it, and I have an agreement with a young fellow who has just
taken his driving certificate; but Evie was talking about a livery for
him the other night, and I was pleased. That is as it should be. It will
be a joy to me to see her take her proper place....
So this record will have to be more and more a diary, jotted down as I
can find opportunity for it. I need not say that the change to
Iddesleigh Gate will be a larger undertaking than, say, Aunt Angela's
installation in the little "circus" near King's Cross was. And there is
the Consolidation. That is heavy work, and the heavier that at present
we are working very much in the dark. In these present industrial
troubles, for example, we do not quite know where we shall come out; we
can only throw in our weight with the big natural forces that, in
history as in dynamics, balance themselves in the end. The air is thick
with dust of Schmerveloff's raising; and though all this dust may turn
out presently to be like the comet's tail, packable into a portmanteau,
for the present it certainly obscures our vision. We have to take into
account, too, that even dust is not raised without a cause; and so in
public we sit, Radicals all, in solemn inquiry into things, with plenty
of Westminster stage thunder, while behind the scenes we get in good old
Tory heavy work, not necessarily because we are Tories, but because
Toryism serves a useful purpose just at present. Once or twice lately I
have disobeyed my doctor, and stayed at the office for tea, so closely
in touch have I had to keep with various Committees and Conferences; and
we have had to keep our staff late too, which is rather hard on them,
since they get none of the kudos. But the days when I could burn the
candle at both ends all the time are over for me, I'm afraid.
Louie Causton rarely gets away early now; in that respect she was better
off when she sat for the evening classes at the Art Schools; but she
gravitates more and more to Pepper's side of the business. That bee she
has in her bonnet about Evie's being jealous of her does not, I am glad
to say, impair her business efficiency. The other day Pepper remarked on
her distinguished carriage, and, as he never neglects appearances, he
chooses her, when an amanuensis is necessary, for his more important
consultations. The other night he took her and Whitlock to dinner before
going to Sir Peregrine Campbell's. I can picture his dismay had it ever
been suggested that he should take Miss Levey out to dinner. And Stonor
and Peddie do not crack the old jokes they did at the F.B.C., about
"Miss Causton's pal--Sir Peregrine," or "You know who I mean--that
friend of Miss Causton's--the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs."
Indeed there seem to be fewer jokes going about than there used to be.
We are all getting older--Louie (save for those slender yacht-like
lines of hers), Aunt Angela (whose self-satisfied humilities have rather
lost their resilience since that night of her housewarming in the little
"circus"), Evie (who now takes the prospect of a day and a night nursery
as a matter of course, and has bills sent in to me quite naturally) and
the rest of us. Even Billy Izzard, clean painter as he is, seems to be
forcing his jokes. He has lately found an artificial amusement in balls
and pageants, rather to the neglect of his work; and all this, slight as
it seems--I mean the spread of the love of amusement--has actually more
to do with Consolidation than you would guess.... But I must stop. I get
Consolidation enough during the day without bringing it home with me at
night. Evie has just knocked at the door. That is her signal that I have
"consolidated" enough--as she calls this journal of which she has never
heard.
_1st March._--For the first time I make this frankly a diary. According
to my agreement, we go into Iddesleigh Gate on Lady Day; as a matter of
fact we are there now. My lease is for ten years. I got as many of
Stillhausen's effects as I wanted at forced-sale rates; a good deal I
didn't want. Evie went half wild with joy about a certain crystal bath;
I about the Amaranth Room. It is extraordinary how few pieces it takes
to furnish this last splendid apartment: a settee, a few chairs, a few
cabinets, a bust or two, and the vast turfy carpet.... A smaller room
would look half empty with twice the furniture. Billy says it's the
proportions, and is puzzling about them, seeking what he calls "the
unit," and taking now the length of a gilt Empire settee, now the height
of a lacquered cabinet, now his own height, etc., etc. It is Evie's
music room; she has begun her lessons; but it will be some time, I am
afraid, before she makes very much of it. Billy threatens to quarter
himself on us while he makes paintings of the whole house. Aunt Angela
has two rooms on the second floor, with distempered walls; and she began
her furnishing with a crucifix. My library is stately. The heavy,
slow-moving doors scarcely make a click when they close, and a
bell-connection down the passage warns me of the approach of anybody. I
suppose Stillhausen found this useful; he was in the Diplomatic Service;
and perhaps it is well that these stamped leather walls do not whisper
secrets. There is a secret of my own that I keep in the bureau by the
heat-regulator there. I am not sure that the fire would not be the best
place for it. It is odd, by the way, that this impulse to burn these
papers should lately have become almost as strong as the impulse to
write them formerly was.
I have a telephone switchboard to half the rooms in the house, and the
line to Pall Mall is doubled, the second wire not passing through the
Company's Exchange. A switch turns on the masked lights behind the
cornice, and what with one device and another, it would pay me to have a
private electrician. Aunt Angela, I may say, who has managed to
reconcile herself to heavier expenditures, is harrowed at the waste of
electric power, and wanders about the house turning off switches. On a
Jacobean table at the far end of the library are two small bright things
with branches--that is to say, they seem small until you take a walk to
them. They are Pepper's candlesticks. I have attained the scale.
_28th March._--That impulse to destroy these papers has reminded me of a
little thing that happened while I was away in Scotland. One of Hastie's
boys, Ronald, aged fourteen, has a little den of his own in the back
part of the house, and during my convalescence he was so good as to make
me welcome there. The paraphernalia of I don't know how many hobbies
littered the place; his latest had been chemistry; and he stank of
chemicals, and had his clothes red-spotted with acids. His greatest
success, at which I was privileged to assist, was to fill ginger-beer
bottles with hydrogen and explode them. One day he invited me to witness
a really superior explosion. It was lucky he did invite me. He had
charged an earthenware jar, as big as a bucket, with the gas and would
probably have blown the wall out. He said he didn't funk it, but I did,
and we opened the window and allowed the gas to be lost.
I feel rather like that about this writing. Last night I almost made
away with the dangerous stuff. But I hung back. It has cost so hideously
dear. This may be a sentimentalism, and obscure, but there it is, and as
it puzzles me I shall try to get to the bottom of it....
_N.B._--Evie says she will soon "begin to feel that she lives here." She
is getting used to having things; soon she will be getting used to
having people. Soon she'll have to be thinking about her first
dinner-party. Must stop now. The more sleep I get before midnight the
better. I shall think about the destroying, though.
_29th April._--(A month since I made an entry.) A rather curious
conversation with Evie last night. You will remember that Louie Causton,
trying to justify that ridiculous attitude of hers about Evie's
jealousy, had exclaimed, as if that clinched something, "Why does she
want to come to my house, then?" Well, she has been. Apparently she went
some little time ago, but she only spoke of it last night. I shall not
ask Louie for her account of it; this is Evie's:
She went on a Saturday afternoon, taking the train from Clapham
Junction. Louie was just setting out with her boy to the South
Kensington Museum, but she turned back. Since Kitty left her she has got
another governess for the lad, but she still devotes her Saturdays and
Sundays to him. There are several things about Evie's account I am not
quite clear about, but I admit that she has no great gift for picking
out the essentials of a conversation, and perhaps unconsciously she has
emphasised the wrong things. She told me, for example, a good deal about
Master Jim, but said very little about Kitty's reason for going over to
Miriam Levey. She wandered off into old recollections of the Business
College in Holborn that I had forgotten all about, and allowed these
things to divert her from the visit itself. I had to ask her whether
Louie seemed comfortable in her rooms, whether they were decently
furnished or not, and so on; and she said, "Oh, of course, you've never
seen them," and described them to me in excellent detail. Then suddenly
she asked me whether Miss Lingard (who had been away out of sorts), was
back at the Consolidation yet. Miss Lingard was my own private
amanuensis, and during her absence Louie had had to help with her
work.... And so we talked. This was in our own bedroom, while Evie was
making ready for the night.
"Well," I said, yawning, "and what did you talk about besides the
Holborn days?"
"Oh, lots of things," she answered brightly, busily brushing. "She's got
to look older since then--but I daresay you wouldn't notice that, seeing
her every day."
"Louie Causton, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Did she say anything about Miss Levey?"
"Oh, yes. Her correspondence class is a great success. Schmerveloff's
taken her up, and she's no end of pupils. Wasn't it funny, our living
next door to Schmerveloff and not knowing it? They little thought that
in a few years we should be living here!"
I laughed a little. She glows prettily when she shows her pride in my
achievement. Then I yawned again. "Well," I said sleepily, "I hope
Kitty's changed friends for the better."
"Oh, she thinks so," Evie replied promptly. "You see, it wasn't very
nice for her, when she'd had the boy all days, and Louie didn't come in
till ten or eleven or twelve at night, or later, to be snapped at and
spoken crossly to."
Here I checked a yawn. "What's that?" I said. "Miss Causton didn't tell
you that, did she?"
"Eh?" said Evie. "Oh, no, of course she didn't. Didn't I tell you I
looked in at their offices in Gray's Inn one day--Kitty's and Miriam's?
Oh, that was a fortnight and more ago! I'm sure I told you, Jeff!... And
Miriam took me to the New College in Kingsway. It's nothing like the
Consolidation, of course, but it's such an improvement on that poky old
Holborn place! How we ever gave a dance there I can't imagine. You
remember that dance, Jeff?"
And she was back at the old College once more.
I said this conversation was curious, but perhaps that was not quite the
word. Slightly distasteful would be nearer, for of course you see what
it all implied. It implied that Evie might easily be dragged into some
trumpery quarrel between Louie Causton and Miriam Levey. For Miriam
would not be at all above concluding that Louie had schemed to get her
place, and that I had thrown my influence into the balance; and anybody
could always make poor Kitty agree with them. I didn't want Evie mixed
up in anything of that kind. I was even a little sorry she had been to
see Louie. How little, for my own part, there existed in the way of
affection between Louie and myself you already know; and, if the thing
was not quite the same from Louie's point of view, I did not see that
any useful end would be served by their being much together. On that
morning when Louie had first made her ridiculous suggestion about
jealousy, her whole manner had been rather that of one who throws up the
sponge, ceases to exercise care, I don't know what; and there is no
sense in deliberately manufacturing something that doesn't exist. And
about that other visit to Gray's Inn. I am quite sure that Miriam Levey
would not scruple to hurt me in any way she could.... There's the
telephone; Whitlock, I expect.
_10th May._--In a week Evie is to give her first dinner-party. Naturally
she is a little timorous about it. The fact that Pepper, with whom, I
am sorry to say, she gets on no better, will be there to watch her,
would be quite enough to flurry her; but there will also be other people
there whom she hasn't seen yet--the Hasties, the Campbells, Sichel, a
Mrs Richmond (a very smart little woman, a friend of Pepper's) and
others. Poor dear, it will be rather an ordeal for her, and no wonder
she spoke to me the other night a little crossly. It hurt a little at
the time, but I have forgotten it. I will put it down, however.
Among all these "Hons. and Sirs," as she calls them, plain familiar
Whitlock and Billy Izzard (I am dragging Billy in because these people
may be useful to him when he has got over his pageant craze) were her
chief comforts; but the question of the final chair, a lady's, had
arisen. There being nobody else I particularly wanted, I had been
disposed to call on Pepper, who can always produce a prettily frocked
woman or a well-turned-out young man at a moment's notice; but Evie had
managed to get a dig in at Pepper, at which I laughed heartily. "He
might bring Mrs Toothill for all we know," she had said. "No, Jeff, it's
our party," she had demurred, and had then ruminated....
"All right, anybody you like," I had agreed cheerfully.
"You don't like Mrs Smithson," she had then said doubtfully.
Of course, having just given her full liberty, I ought not to have
qualified it, even by a look; but I confess my face fell. It was only
for an instant, and I hoped my darling hadn't noticed it.
"Have Mrs Smithson if you like," I said a little shortly, I am afraid.
But she had noticed. She spoke shortly too.
"No, thank you, not to have her thrown in my face afterwards. I know you
don't think the Smithsons are good enough."
I was shocked. "Dearest," I said slowly, "when have I 'thrown things in
your face afterwards,' as you call it?"
She must indeed have been tried, otherwise she would never have said the
absurd thing she did.
"Well, if you don't say it, you think it. Better have your friend, Miss
Causton. She can go out to dinner with Sir Julius, it seems."
"Evie!" I exclaimed, for the moment deeply wounded.
"Well, you told me she did, and if she can dine with him she can with
you, I suppose."
I turned away. "I shall leave it entirely to you," I said. I reproach
myself now for my impatience.
But instantly her generous little heart was itself again. She ran after
me and threw her arms about my neck.
"Forgive me, Jeff," she pleaded tearfully. "I didn't mean anything, and
I am _so_ afraid of it all! I'm _not_ used to it, you know, but I am
doing my best. Do ask Mr Pepper to bring somebody."
And we kissed and said no more about it. Perhaps I am foolish to write
it down.
_14th May._--Evie has made the acquaintance of most of her guests for
the seventeenth beforehand. The Hasties have called on her, and Lady
Campbell, and Pepper has brought Mrs Richmond (who, I confess, strikes
me as rather a superfine Mrs Smithson), and half her fears are gone. She
didn't much care for Mrs Richmond, she says; "toney" was the adjective
she used; but she quite took dear homely Lady Campbell under her wing.
She likes receiving, she says, and remarked, rather acutely, that what
makes these little afternoon functions the occasion for bickering they
are, is that people seem to rattle off what they have to say without an
interval for breath, and then to take their departure. She had Jackie
down, and Phyllis was brought down for a moment by her nurse; and Jackie
showed Lady Campbell his ship. Lady Campbell married her husband when he
was master and a fifth-part owner of a coasting boat; and when Jackie
lifted the hatch of his model to show her the "cabin" she laughed, and
said it was a far more comfortable cabin than that in which she spent
her honeymoon. Then Jackie, of course, wanted to know what a honeymoon
was, and when told made some remark about a honeymoon that set
everybody laughing except Evie, who blushed. I hope she will not forget
how to blush among all her smart ladies. I find her blushing adorable.
_17th May_, 4 P.M.--Without warning, a thing that I had thought
impossible has come upon me. For nearly twenty hours--since nine o'clock
last night--my thoughts have been such a series of jerks, stoppings,
leapings forward and dead stops again as only once before in my life I
have known. I have paced my private room at the Consolidation for half
the day, and have done no work since I looked over and signed the papers
that were brought to me here last night. Were I able to speak of "mere
nothings" I should say that a mere nothing has brought all this about.
Let me tell it. I have come home for the purpose of telling it.
Since I began to leave the Consolidation early, papers have often been
brought to me here. Usually Stonor brings them, and is shown straight
into the library. You may judge of their urgency when I tell you that
last night there was nobody to bring them but Louie Causton.
Evie, Aunt Angela and I were just finishing dinner when the servant
whispered to me. I think he said "Somebody from Pall Mall, sir," for if
he had said "A lady" I should have wondered who the lady was, which I
didn't do. I was expecting the papers; they would not keep me long; so,
telling Evie that I should be back in a few minutes, I followed the
servant out.
Louie was standing by my desk. She had not lifted her veil, and I do not
know what it was about her attitude that struck me. Something did; I
suppose it was some proportion or relation; something that Billy would
perhaps have called the "beautiful unit" of the room; some purely
aesthetic quality, I don't doubt, which it is odd I should remember
now.... She was looking towards me as I entered; she had heard that
discreet bell of Stillhausen's; and only when I advanced did she push
her veil back.
"Here are these," she said, with a twisted, pained sort of little smile.
"The others had all gone home, and I understood they were to come at
once. No, thanks, I won't sit down."
Even when it appeared that, after all, the papers would need a few
minutes' looking into, she still refused to sit down. She stood as close
to the papers she had brought as if, without them, her sole reason for
being there, she might have been ejected; and as she still persisted in
her refusal to sit, I sat down myself.
It took me perhaps a quarter of an hour to go through the papers. It was
as I was pushing back my chair that Stillhausen's bell purred again. A
moment later there was a tap at the door. "Come in!" I called.
Evie entered.
I was not embarrassed. It humiliates me to have to write that word now,
so many hours later. There was nothing to be embarrassed at. Indeed, as
Evie advanced from the door, I barely explained the reason for Miss
Causton's call. Louie touched the hand Evie extended. Evie was not, as
she was with Miriam Levey and Kitty Windus, on kissing terms with Louie.
"I think you'll find these all right now," I said, giving Louie back the
papers. "I don't know whether Miss Causton has had supper, Evie?"
Evie smiled graciously. "Yes, won't you have something, Miss Causton?
Let me have them lay a tray for you--it will be really no trouble."
But Louie would take nothing. She had drawn down her veil again, and was
extending her fingers to Evie. "Don't trouble to come, Mr Jeffries," she
said, moving towards the door, while Evie prattled polite phrases.
But I took her to the door. Four words--a "Good-night" on either
side--were all that passed between us. Then I returned to the library.
Evie was standing where Louie had been standing, but no sooner did I
enter than she passed me. Taking into account the warning of
Stillhausen's bell, she must have waited for the purpose of so passing
me. But this did not strike me until a little later. Only when she
reached the door did she turn and speak.
"Did Miss Causton ask for me?" she said.
"Eh?" I asked, surprised.... "No. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. Only that I thought that when one called one asked for the
lady of the house."
I smiled as I set my writing-table to rights. "'Called?' It was hardly a
call, my dear."
"Evidently not."
I looked quickly up. Evie's tone was new to me.
"Come, come, darling--a necessary matter of business," I expostulated.
"I'm sorry I interrupted."
"'Interrupted!'... Good gracious, Evie!"
"But of course I didn't; you can't be interrupted here."
I was astonished.
"Why, what--what do you mean?"
She looked coldly at me, without replying.
I frowned. I am ashamed to say that it cost me a little effort to master
an impatience that had suddenly arisen in me. I spoke slowly for that
purpose.
"If by your last remark you mean that bell, Evie, it was here before we
came, and I fancy you knew it was. At any rate it shall be taken away
to-morrow."
Very irritatingly (I have told you how I am not quite the man of phlegm
I was) she took me up at my last word.
"Oh, yes, about to-morrow," she said. "You don't happen to be going out
to-night, do you?"
"No. Why?" This was stranger than ever. She knew I never went out at
night now.
"Because Mrs. Hastie telephoned me to-day. Joan isn't well, and can't
come. So perhaps you'd like Sir Julius to ask somebody else--unless, of
course----"
"Unless what?"
"Unless--there's somebody you'd rather ask yourself."
For a moment I was silent; then, "Evie," I said slowly, "do you--I don't
see how you can, but do you--mean Louie Causton?"
She laughed tremulously. "Oh, very well; if I can't, I can't, I suppose,
so that ends it."
And the next moment she was gone.
Half-an-hour later I met her on the stairs.
"Oh," she announced, without preface, "Phyllis isn't very well, and I
think I shall spend the night in the nursery with her."
She has done so.
I have had a wretched night. I turned and turned, but found no sleep. By
dint of turning, I found something else, though--a new meaning in those
words Louie Causton had said to me: "If I could say that Miriam Levey
and Kitty Windus had been chattering, which I can't----" I tossed and
tossed.
At half-past ten this morning I went round to the offices of the Women's
Emancipation League in Gray's Inn. I can't say, even when I found
myself there, asking for Miss Levey, that I was very clear in my own
mind as to why I had gone, but if anybody _had_ been tampering with
Evie, it was as likely to be the Jewess as anybody else.
She kept me waiting: a thing, I may say, that few people do nowadays. I
waited in a matchboarded anteroom, among emancipated flappers and
middle-aged disciples of Schmerveloff. Then Miss Levey herself came in
as if by accident, and gushed out into apologies. She had had no idea it
was I, she said; she did so beg my pardon.... She showed me into an
inner room in which a hairy man, the single male-bird of the run, was
expounding from a Blue Book to three or four more women; one of them was
the lady who had participated in the intellectual courtship on the night
of Aunt Angela's party. I turned to Miss Levey.
"I should like, if I may, to speak to you in private," I said.
She asked if Mr Boris's room was empty. The hairy man, looking up from
his Blue Book for a moment, said that he thought so. She led the way
into Mr Boris's room.
At the sight of her all my old dislike revived, and I found myself able
to go straight to the point. I did so, without wasting a word.
"I've called to ask you, Miss Levey, whether you've given my wife the
impression that I was the cause of your leaving the Freight and Ballast
Company in order that room might he made for Miss Causton?"
She gave a shocked "Mis-ter Jeffries!" but I held up my hand.
"I know I'm putting it bluntly. You can be as blunt as you like also.
Will you tell me whether that is so?"
"May I die, Mr Jeffries--but _surely_ you know I'd arranged with Mr
Schmerveloff long before!"
"I see. You dismissed us. Very well. Then let me put it in another form.
Have you, in my wife's hearing, associated my name with Miss Causton's
in any way whatever?"
This time her answer was not quite so ready. When it came, it was a
question.
"Do you mean lately, Mr Jeffries?"
"At any time, but especially lately."
Then she broke into glib speech, and all her "w's" became "v's."
"There, now I _knew_ there vould be mischief before it was all over!
'Vot _is_ the good of going into it?' I said; 'vot _is_ the good, ven
nobody even believed it at the time? Evie was there,'I said, 'and knew
it was not true, so vy rake it all up now, Kitty?' I said. 'Ve all knew
all about poor Louie,' I said, 'and vot's done's done anyway, and Evie
doesn't vant to hear about it.'"
Here, suddenly tingling curiously all over, I interrupted Miss Levey. I
spoke with a steadiness that astonished myself.
"One moment. You seem to be speaking of a definite occasion. Was this
lately?"
Miss Levey was all pouting bosom, thick lips and fluent hands.
"Vy, _yes_! Ven Evie came here. Evie and Kitty and me, though vy I have
Kitty here at all I don't know, seeing she makes slips in her work, and
Mr Schmerveloff grumbles, and the other girls has it all to do over
again----"
And the torrent continued.
I don't know what else she said; the rest didn't matter. Why it didn't
matter you will see when I tell you that the tongue of a dead young
libertine once, years before, had made free with Louie Causton's name
and my own, and that the abominable slander, which had lasted for some
days, had turned on nothing less than the paternity of Louie's child.
All at the Business College, including Evie, had known of it; they had
known, too, of the public apology I had been prompt to exact; but that
mattered nothing, nothing, nothing now. This wretched little Israelite,
revelling in her "v's," and even touching my sleeve from time to time,
had seen to that. What the filthy rest was I do not know. Doubtless,
beginning with that, and with the feeble Kitty to support her, she had
made a complete history of jealousy.... And she did not even triumph
openly. She lisped and protested, and put all on Kitty.... I left her,
and almost fled from Louie also when, returning to Pall Mall, I
encountered her coming out of Whitlock's room.
And now I have sat since lunch wondering what is to be done next. The
afternoon hours have brought me no more light then those of the night
did. Dully, I liken my life to that Maze at Hampton Court in which, one
happy Sunday I don't know how long ago, Evie and I spent an hour. As
then I seem to see Miss Levey's flamingo red behind the green hedges;
she seems to lurk in my life, too wary to confront me, too malicious not
to scratch. I am lost in winding intricacies. True, there is a door,
even as there is a door at Hampton Court that is opened when the
labyrinth is to be emptied. I find myself brought up against this door
time after time, but I do not know what lies beyond it. You see what the
door is: it is to tell Evie everything--everything.... Too wonderful
Louie! Why, if you foresaw all this, did you not _make_ me tell
her--thrust me into a closet with her and keep the door until it was
done--instead of letting me grope in my blindness and slip ever further
and further away from her?... Oh, I am tired, tired.
I am too tired even to be angry for my poor practised-upon darling. For
they have sprung this horrible thing upon her. Half the time she does
not, cannot, believe it; of the other half of her life they have made a
torment. Poor lamb! Of course if they are cruel enough they can make it
seem plausible to her; I only wonder that, harrowed as she must have
been for all these weeks, she has borne up at all. _I_ know the horror
she must have wrestled with!... That _that_ wicked old story should crop
up again!... But I must stop. Perhaps an hour's sleep will do me good.
5.30 P.M.--That was a reckless thing to do, to go to sleep with these
papers spread out on the table and my door unlocked. Not that my
household is a staff of commercial collegiates, able to read this
out-of-date old shorthand; but it was foolish for all that. Anyhow I am
rather better, and think I can face the dinner to-night. After that I
don't know what I shall do. I have not seen Evie all day.
I never felt less up to a dinner. But a little champagne will keep me
going. They will be here in two hours and a half. It will take Evie an
hour and a half to dress; I wonder what she is doing for the final hour!
Dear heart, if she only knew how I ache to go up to her; but I must not
do that until I have made up my mind what course to take. I shall have
come to a resolution before I sleep to-night that will settle things one
way or the other. We cannot stop at this _impasse_. I don't think Evie's
is a real jealousy. To-morrow she will be sobbing on my shoulder that
she has harboured it. But at present it has the venomous effect of the
real thing, and if I do not put an end to it, it will recur. Let me
think....
Again it comes upon me--why do I write this at all, that I shall most
certainly be destroying? I have hardly the heart to think it out, but as
it may have some bearing on what I shall have to say to Evie presently I
must. I don't think it's that I'm urged to set myself right with
anybody, even with myself. At first, when I began, I thought it was
that--the need for self-justification--but now I don't think it's a
question of justification or condemnation at all. It is a far more
essential question. Suppose we call it the question of the personal
standard....
I dare say my standards pass for low. That physical basis of marriage,
for example, may pass for low--I'm sure it must to that ardent young
couple who pant for intellectual companionship and Schmerveloff. And I
confess that several of the Beatitudes are beyond me. To tell the truth
I am not really at home with anything much higher than the best of human
intelligence; and when I hear people speaking glibly of "man-made laws,"
I recognise that some folk are on terms of affability with Omnipotence
that are denied to me. I suppose I am temperamentally reluctant to alter
as much as a regulation once it is established, and I am certainly not
ready with divine amendments to everything of man's offhand. Man's law
I hold to be a necessarily imperfect, but roughly sufficient measure of
man's conduct, and in the light of that law I may presently have a
murder to confess.
I say _a_ murder, not murder. Is there a difference? I do not know, and
I am too weary to split hairs about it. Call them, if you like, one and
the same thing. Still, if the one command be absolute, for the other a
case may be stated. Do I, then, write to state a case?
But state it to whom? There is one Addressee to whom I have not lifted
up my eyes. I, proud and conquering whom among my fellow-worms, have
found the lesser law press hard on me, but I have not straightway
invoked the greater. Man's decrees I have found strong and wise and
admirable; the other is too wonderful for me. And this is the conclusion
I promised you. To man, man's law is of more consequence than God's.
Perhaps the damned are not utterly damned, so long as they do not add
presumptuousness to their error. To have appealed and to have had that
appeal rejected _were_ damnation.... I do not appeal.
Nor can I see that I state my case to man. Nay, for I confess man's
authority, lest it should appear that I do not, I shall destroy these
papers. To-night or to-morrow I shall destroy them. Man shall not say
that I have shirked the human issue. I refuse to plead at all. Let any
who take it upon themselves to accuse or defend me plead or charge what
they will. I am mute. I burn this....
I am tired....
And yet one boon I do crave. Perhaps those standards of mine, by their
very lowness, may be the evidence, not of a smaller, but of a larger
conception of Him Who Reigneth than might at first glance appear....
I am tired....
But all this advances me little with my resolution. Indeed, a fresh
glare has just broken in on my brain. I was looking back a few moments
ago on that long chain of circumstances with which my darling has been
torturing herself--that old slander, innocencies between Louie and
myself possible to have been misconstrued, my coming upon her that night
in Billy's top room, Evie's own temperamental bias against Louie's
profession, her silences, her belief of the calumny. Had Miriam Levey
but known of my visit to the Models' Club and that strange walk of ours
on the night of the Berkeley dinner, her case had indeed been complete!
I had been reviewing all this, I say; and suddenly it struck me, suppose
I do tell her? _What then?_...
Do you see--as the terrible Louie had seen--what then? I am supposing
that the revelation did not kill her; do you see what then?
At last I saw it, and groaned. What then? Why, what but that I had put
another before herself? What but that, while she had shared my board and
bed, that fatal burden of my honour and confidence and trust had gone
to another? What but that Louie, after all, _had_ had the key and
password of my life that I had denied to herself? What could I answer
did she live to say, "What, you married me without telling me this? You
tell me _now_, after having concealed it until concealment is no longer
possible? You give me, _now_, something she's had the use of and has
passed on to me? What is she to you, then, that _I_ am not? Where do I
fall short as a wife that _I_ couldn't have borne this for my husband or
died trying to bear it? Take it. Give it to her. She can have it. Fool,
that I couldn't see this for myself, but must have Miriam Levey to point
it out to me!"
Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear! We had never a fair start....
I do not know whether she intends to spend the night in the nursery
again....
Seven o'clock. I must dress. And I must drink something now, or I shall
never get through the evening....
And even yet I have not come to my decision.
11.30 P.M. This page at least it will be almost superfluous to destroy.
My hand shakes like dodder-grass. That is the liquor I have drunk, but I
had to do it.
They have gone. As I thought would be the case, I have had to play
Evie's part too. That's twice Billy Izzard has seen me do that, for
to-night was to all intents and purposes a repetition of that other
night, when I tried to silence the voice of a gramophone by jumping up
and bawling out an overstrained merriment. I don't mean that I jumped up
and bawled to-night, of course. I merely had a number of flowers removed
from the table, so that my eyes had a straight lane to Evie's at the
other end, and sent down smiles and encouragement and support to her.
And I allowed the men a bare ten minutes afterwards before I hurried off
to her aid again. That and plenty of champagne; and I think I pulled it
off. Billy, who lingered behind until I turned him out, says everything
went splendidly. He didn't know I'd such gaiety in me, he said.
And Evie has gone to the nursery, but is not going to stay there. She
told me that, with a hot little kiss, and a grip of her moist hand....
This was on the stairs, and she whispered (_words illegible_), and she
had to run away so that the gratitude in her eyes would not run quite
over--but that she whispered (_words illegible_)....
I shall do it to-night, unless my tongue is as shaky as my hand. There
is a perfect stillness in my brain. I can see the whole thing spread out
in my mind like a map; never have I been so triumphantly the master of a
thing ... (_words illegible_).... The map is as steady as a rock, too; I
turn my attention from it for a moment, choosing the form in which I
shall present this aspect of the case or that, and when I return to the
map it hasn't moved. Words, whole phrases, rise up in my mind, all so
perfect that there will hardly be any shock at all. Evie cannot help but
see it as I see it, and then I shall beg her pardon that I didn't tell
her long ago. I have never loved her as I love her to-night, and those
lovely pools of her eyes on the stairs (_words illegible_).
At last we are going to have a fair start. We hadn't that, you know. I
still think I was right to stand between her and much of life, but this
other thing was really too huge to be hidden. And she will not be
jealous any more of Louie when I tell her that though Louie dragged all
this out of me--she's no idea really how clever Louie is--my pulse has
never quickened at Louie's touch nor my eyes brightened when they have
met hers. "With my body" I have worshipped Evie, and shall (_words
illegible_).... And so to-morrow will be a new beginning for us. I am
rich; I have power; my only desire is now almost within my grasp. It was
nonsense I wrote an hour or two ago--or perhaps it was the other
day--about this only being the beginning of a deathless jealousy between
those two. Evie will see. I shall make it all perfectly plain. I could
almost do impossibilities to-night, with the words running like
quicksilver in my mind and that chart I have in my brain steady as a
rock. And if the anticipation of peace is such bliss, what will the
peace itself be?...
I suppose she will be ready about twelve. I mustn't let this wondrous
stillness of my brain slip from me. I was clever enough to foresee that
it might, and so had the tray of liqueurs sent down here. But it doesn't
do for an abstemious man to mix his liqueurs; the brandy again, I think.
(_Several lines undecipherable_). I have only been drunk once in my
life; I forget when that was; and once I shammed drunk; I don't suppose
I shall ever be drunk again. A moment ago I felt a twinge where I made
that dent in my head on the corner of Aunt Angela's fender, but it has
passed.... It was a good dinner-party; I saw to that.... Evie,
sweetheart--she'll be ready about twelve....
It is a quarter to now. I must be getting up. But first I must put these
papers away. One of them slipped away somewhere a few minutes ago; I
stumbled and upset a pile of them, but gathered them all up again, all
but that one; never mind, I will look for it in the morning. It was my
foot that slipped, not my brain. My brain is all right....
Well, it will be all right to-morrow....
END OF JEFFRIES' JOURNAL
ENVOI
SIR JULIUS PEPPER DICTATES
ENVOI
"Er--Miss Causton--can you stay for an hour or so? No, a private affair;
I hope it's not inconvenient; thanks, and if I might give you supper
afterwards?...
"Fact is, it's about poor old Jeffries. Better date it, and keep it
safe. They've asked me to write something about him, and I'm no writer;
but Izzard's found me a man who'll lick it into shape if I supply the
material. 'Just talk it anyhow,' he said. Easily enough said, about a
chap like Jeffries....
"You've seen this cutting, of course? No, not the first one; this from
this morning's paper, about Mrs Jeffries. By Jove! it has followed
quickly; awful! (By the way, you once met her, didn't you?) No, I want
this copy; you can get another to-morrow; I'll read it out:
TRAGIC DEATH OF A LADY
We have to report a melancholy sequel to the death of Mr James
Herbert Jeffries, of the Exploration and Mercantile Consolidation,
Pall Mall, which was announced in our issue of the 10th ult. The
circumstances of Mr Jeffries' sudden demise are still fresh in the
public mind. The deceased gentleman, it will be remembered,
succumbed to an attack of cerebral haemorrhage brought on by strain
and overwork and culminating on the night of a dinner-party given
by him at his mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. It is with the deepest
regret that we now announce that his widow has survived him only a
few weeks.
We understand that during the intervening time the bereaved lady
had occupied herself by going through the private papers of her
late husband, sitting up late at night in order to render this last
devout service. At about three o'clock yesterday morning Ann
Madeley, a housemaid in Mrs Jeffries' employ, suffering from
insomnia, had recourse to a medicine closet, situated where the
servants' quarters adjoin the dwelling parts of the house. Her
attention was attracted to a strong smell of escaping gas. She woke
James Baines, a butler, and the two, wisely refraining from
striking a light, made their way in the direction from which the
smell of gas seemed to come. This brought them to their mistress'
room. Obtaining no answer to their knocks, an entrance was forced,
and in a small dressing-room lately used by Mr Jeffries----
"I hope this doesn't distress you too much, Miss Causton----
--Mrs Jeffries was found, fully dressed, stretched on a couch. The
doors and windows had been closed, and a gas-fire turned on. We
understand from Baines that Mrs Jeffries had remained as usual
downstairs in the library until a late hour; and a page of notes in
her husband's shorthand which has been found under one of the
pillars of the writing-table----
"I've got that page of notes, by the way.----
--is sufficiently eloquent testimony as to what her sad duty had
been. Dr McKechnie, who was at once summoned, certified that life
had been extinct for some hours. The deceased lady, who was a great
favourite in society, leaves two children in the care of a maiden
aunt, Miss Angela Soames. The inquest is fixed for Tuesday next.
"Sad business, sad business.... Afraid they'll have to bring it in
suicide--through grief, probably....
"Well, let's put it down as it comes. Of course he was a big man; lived
an intense crowded life too. I should say at a guess there weren't many
things he hadn't done at one time and another, short of committing a
murder or a matrimonial infidelity. Don't think he could have been
tempted to do that. One woman could do anything she liked with him, but
the others wouldn't have much chance. Oh yes, a full life. Did you know,
Miss Causton, that the man who first passed him over to me found him
helping to pick a fallen horse up in Fleet Street, when he hadn't a
penny to his name? He was a commissionaire once.... As you know, he was
the steam of this concern; it was the chance of my lifetime finding him,
poor chap. Extraordinary man! He used to go at things by a sort of
intuition; he tried to explain it to me, but I never could understand
it. Once I said something about 'scientific method'; but he said it
wasn't scientific method at all. Scientific method, he said, was
something purely empirical, concerned with investigation, and not
practically constructive in the least. Constructiveness came after. His
method, he said, was based on the truths of art, 'the only truths we
know anything about,' he said, whatever he meant. I never could follow
him at all.... Well, if that's so, it rather explains a lot of these
business giants going in for collecting--I mean it isn't that they just
have the money to gratify their artistic tastes. But, as I say, I could
never make head nor tail of it.... Which reminds me; that paper that got
wafted under his desk; that was a dabbling in art in its way; fiction;
did you know he tried his hand at fiction, Miss Causton? Here it is--an
odd page--Whitlock knows a bit of shorthand, and he transcribed it for
me:
_'--show him that red thing on the floor, and that curved thing on
the door.'_
_But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had
suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in
his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the
physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I
stood over him huge and black as Fate.... 'Spare him if you can,'
that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly...._
_'Merridew,' I said heavily, 'you'll disappear to-morrow
morning--or----'_
_'Shall I?' he bragged falteringly...._[3]
"And so on----
_His only chance now was to have screamed aloud; but he did not
scream. Instead he stooped quickly, caught up the poker, and struck
at my head with it._[3]
"And that's the end of the page. Sort of grim tale he would write. Queer
hobby for a mercantile and political giant, wasn't it? But I'd go in for
fiction myself if I thought it would make me like him.
"Verandah Cottage--that was no place for a chap like him. I hated to see
him there. He could always go anywhere, meet anybody, was on equal terms
with the best--and he without antecedents that I ever heard of, standing
out solitary against a black background, just genius.... I wonder who
his people were! Something uncommon, or else he was just a gigantic
'sport'----
"Of course--_de mortuis_ and so on--but he did marry the wrong woman. To
tell the truth, she was as ordinary as they make 'em; would have looked
her best in the lights of the Holborn Restaurant at half-past six,
waiting with the rest of the shop-girls for her bus home. He was a mass
of contradictions, and one of 'em was that he merely idealised her.
Pretty, of course, but poor Jeffries could have done better for himself
than that. She never could bear me.... Well, there's nothing to be said
now, poor creatures.... But sometimes it made me almost angry that he
hadn't married the woman he ought....
"Well, let's begin with the day he first came to the F.B.C.----"
And Louie's pencil flew on.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] See "In Accordance with the Evidence."