"The moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a Word of it."
OMAR KHAYYAM.
"What thou doest do quickly," has been advice which, in its melancholy
sarcasm, has been followed for eighteen hundred years when any special
evil has been afoot in the dark. And yet surely the words apply still
more urgently when the doing that is premeditated is good. What thou
doest do quickly, for even while we speak those to whom we feel tenderly
grow old and grey, and slip beyond the reach of human comfort. Even
while we dream of love, those whom we love are parted from us in an
early hour when we think not, without so much as a rose to take with
them, out of the garden of roses that were planted and fostered for them
alone. And even while we tardily forgive our friend, lo! the page is
turned and we see that there was no injury, as now there is no
compensation for our lack of trust.
Colonel Tempest acted with promptitude, but though he was as expeditious
as he knew how to be, that was not saying much. His continual dread was
that others might be beforehand with him. He had at this time a dream
that recurred, or seemed to recur, over and over again--that he was
running blindly at night, and that unknown adversaries were coming
swiftly up behind him, were breathing close, and passing him in the
darkness, unseen, but felt. It haunted him in the daytime like a
reality.
Superstition would not be superstition if it were amenable to reason.
Punishment hung over him like a sword in mid-air--it might fall at any
moment--what form of punishment it would be hard to say--something evil
to himself. If he struck down another might not the Almighty strike him
down? It seemed to him that God's hand was raised.
"Sin no more." Wipe it out. Obliterate it. Expiate it. Quick, quick.
He set to work in feverish haste to find out Larkin. But although he had
a certain knowledge of how to approach gentlemen of Swayne's class, he
could not at first unearth Larkin. The habitation of the wren is not
more secluded than that of some of our fellow-creatures. Colonel Tempest
went very quietly to work. He never went near the address given him; he
wrote anonymous letters repeatedly, suggesting a personal interview
which would be found greatly to Mr. Larkin's advantage. Mr. Larkin,
however, appeared to take a different view of his own advantage. It was
in vain that Colonel Tempest said he should be walking on the Thames
Embankment the following evening, and would be found at a given point at
a certain hour. No one found him there, or at any other of the places he
mentioned. He took a good deal of unnecessary exercise, or what appeared
so at the time. Still he persisted. While the quarry remained in London,
the hunter would probably remain there also. John had not gone yet.
Colonel Tempest went on every few days making appointments for meeting,
and keeping them rigorously himself.
A fortnight passed. Larkin made no sign.
At last Colonel Tempest heard that John was leaving town. He went to see
him, and came away heavy at heart. John was out; and the servant
informed him that Mr. Tempest was going to Overleigh the following
morning. Colonel Tempest had a presentiment that a stone would be
dropped between the points of the Great Northern. The train would come
to grief, somehow. It would all happen in a moment. There would be one
fierce thrust in the dark which he should not be able to parry. And if
John got safe to Overleigh he would be followed there. The shooting
season was coming on, and some one would load for him, and there would
be an _accident_.
Colonel Tempest went back to his rooms in Brook Street, and stared at
the carpet. He did not know how long it was before he caught sight of a
batch of letters on the table. He looked carelessly at them; the
uppermost was from his tailor. The address of the next was written in
printed letters; he knew in an instant that it was from Larkin, without
the further confirmation of the heavy seal with its shilling impression.
His hands shook so much that he opened it with difficulty. The sheet
contained a somewhat guarded communication also written in laboriously
printed capitals.
"_Yours of the 14th to hand. All right. Place and time you
say._
"_L._"
The writer had been so very desirous to avoid publicity that he had even
taken the trouble to tear off the left inner side of the envelope on
which the maker's name is printed.
That significant precaution gave Colonel Tempest a sickening qualm. It
suggested networks of other precautions in the background, snares which
he might not perceive till too late, subtleties for which he was no
match. He began to feel that it was physically impossible for him to
meet this man; that he must get out of the interview at any cost. The
maddening sense of being lured into a trap came upon him, and he flung
in the opposite direction.
But the facts came and looked him in the face. He seldom allowed them to
do so, but they did it now in spite of him. Eyes that have been once
avoided are ever after difficult to meet. Nevertheless, he had to meet
them--the cold inexorable eyes of facts come up to the surface of his
mind to have justice done them, grimy but redoubtable, like miners on
strike. Cost what it might, he saw that he must capitulate; that he must
take this, his one--his last chance, or--hateful alternative--take
instead the consequences of neglecting it.
He went over the old well-worn ground once again. Detection was
impossible. That nightmare of a murder, and of a voice that cried aloud,
while all the world stood still to hear: "_Thou art the man_:" was only
a nightmare after all. And this was the best way, the only way to get
rid of it.
He tried to recall the time and place of meeting, but it was gone from
him. There had been so many. No, he had scrawled it down on the fly-leaf
of his pocket-book. Six o'clock. It was nearly five now. He had had the
money in readiness for the last fortnight. He had drawn one thousand of
the ten which John had placed to his credit. He got out the ten crisp
hundred pound notes, and put them carefully into his breast pocket. Then
he sat down and waited. When the half-hour chimed he went out.
* * * * *
There is a straight and quiet path behind Kensington Palace which the
lovers and nursery-maids of Kensington Gardens frequent but little. A
line of low-growing knotted trees separates it from the Broad Walk at a
little distance. A hedge and fence on the other side divides the Gardens
from a strip of meadow not yet covered by buildings.
The public esteem this particular walk but lightly. Invalids in
bath-chairs toil down it sometimes; nurses with grown-up children, who
are children still, go there occasionally, where the uncouth gambols and
vacant bearded laugh of forty-five will not attract attention.
But as a rule it is deserted.
Colonel Tempest had it almost to himself for the first ten minutes,
except for a covey of little boys who fought and clambered and jumped on
some stacked timber at one end. He had not chosen the place without
forethought. It would be presumed that he would have a large sum of
money with him, and he had taken care on each occasion to select a
rendezvous where foul play would not be possible. He was within reach of
numbers of persons merely by raising his voice.
An old man on the arm of a young one passed him slowly, absorbed in
earnest conversation. A girl in mourning sat down on one of the benches.
There was privacy enough for business, and not too much for safety.
Colonel Tempest paced up and down, giving each face that passed a
furtive glance. He did not know what to expect.
The three quarters struck. The girl got up and turned away. A stout,
shabby-looking man, whose approach Colonel Tempest had not noticed, was
sitting on one of the benches under a gnarled yew, staring vacantly in
front of him. The old man and the young one were coming down the walk
again. A check suit with six depressed, amber-eyed dachshunds in a leash
passed among the trees.
A few more turns.
The clock began to strike six.
Colonel Tempest's pulse quickened. As he turned once more at the end of
the walk, he could see that the hunched-up figure, with the hat over the
eyes, was still sitting under the yew at the further end. He walked
slowly towards it. How should they recognize each other? Who would speak
first?
A quietly-dressed man, walking rapidly in the opposite direction,
touched his hat respectfully as he passed him. Colonel Tempest
recognized John's valet, and slackened his pace, for he was approaching
the bench under the yew tree, and he did not care to be addressed while
any one was within earshot. He was opposite it now, and he looked hard
at the occupant. The latter stared vacantly, if not sleepily, back at
him, and made no sign.
"He is shamming," said Colonel Tempest to himself. "Or else he is not
sure of me." And he took yet another turn.
The man had moved a little when he came towards him again. He was
leaning back in the corner of the bench, with his head on his chest, and
his legs stretched out. An elderly lady, with curls, and an umbrella
clutched like a defensive weapon, was passing him with evident distrust,
calling to her side a fleecy little toy dog, which seemed to have left
its stand and wheels at home, and to be rather at a loss without them.
Colonel Tempest looked hard a second time at the figure on the bench,
when he came opposite him, and then stopped short.
The man was sleeping the sleep of the just, or, to speak more correctly,
of the just inebriated. His under lip was thrust out. He breathed
stertorously. If it was a sham, it was very well done.
Colonel Tempest stood a moment in perplexity, looking fixedly at him.
Should he wake him? Was he, perhaps, waiting to be waked? Was he really
asleep? He half put out his hand.
"I think, sir," said a respectful voice behind him, "begging your
pardon, sir, the party is very intoxicated. Sometimes if woke sudden
they're vicious."
Colonel Tempest wheeled round.
It was Marshall, John's valet, who had spoken to him, and who was now
regarding the slumbering rough with the resigned melancholy of an
undertaker.
The quarter struck.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting, sir," said Marshall, after a pause, in
which Colonel Tempest wondered why he did not go.
And then, at last, Colonel Tempest understood.
He put his hand feebly to his head.
"Oh, my God!" he said below his breath, and was silent.
Marshall cleared his throat.
There are situations in which, as Johnson has observed respecting the
routine of married life, little can be said, but much must be done.
The slumbering backslider slid a little further back in his seat, and
gurgled something very low down about "jolly good fellows," until, his
voice suddenly going upstairs in the middle, he added in a high quaver,
"daylight does appear."
The musical outburst recalled Colonel Tempest somewhat to himself. He
turned his eyes carefully away from Marshall, after that first long look
of mutual understanding.
The man's apparent respectability, his smooth shaved face and quiet
dress, from his well-brushed hat and black silk cravat to the dark
dog-skin glove that held his irreproachable umbrella, set Colonel
Tempest's teeth on edge.
He had not known what to expect, but--_this_!
In a flash of memory he recalled the several occasions on which he had
seen Marshall in attendance on John, his attentive manner, and noiseless
tread. Once before John could move he had seen Marshall lift him
carefully into a more upright position. The remembrance of that helpless
figure in Marshall's arms came back to him with a shudder that could not
be repressed. Marshall, whose expressionless face had undergone no
change whatever, cleared his throat again and looked at his watch.
"Begging your pardon, sir," he said, "it's nearly half-past six, and
Mr. Tempest dines early to-night."
"Did you receive my other letters?" said Colonel Tempest, pulling
himself together, and beginning to walk slowly down the path.
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry to have put you to the inconvenience of going to so
many places, 'specially as I saw for myself how regular you turned up at
'em. But I wanted to make sure you were in earnest before I showed. My
character is my livelihood, sir. There was a time when I was in trouble
and got into Mr. Johnson's hands, but before that I'd been in service in
'igh families, very 'igh, sir. Mr. Tempest took me on the recommendation
of the Earl of Carmian. I was with him two year."
"Mr. Johnson," said Colonel Tempest, stopping short, and turning a shade
whiter than he had been before. "By ---- I don't know anything about a
Mr. Johnson. What do you mean?"
The two men eyed each other as if each suspected treachery.
"Did you write this?" said Marshall, producing Colonel Tempest's last
letter.
"Yes."
"Then it's all right," said Marshall, who had forgotten the _sir_. "He
had a sight of names. Johnson he was when he found I'd took up
your--your bet. But I wrote to him, I remember, at one place as
Crosbie."
Colonel Tempest recalled the curate's mention of Swayne under the name
of Crosbie.
"Swayne, or Crosbie, or Johnson, it's all one," he said hastily. "I want
a certain bit of paper you have in your possession, and I have ten Bank
of England notes, of a hundred each, in my pocket now to give you in
exchange. I suppose we understand each other. Have you got it on you?"
"Yes."
"Produce it."
"Show up the notes, too, then."
Unnoticed by either, the manner of both, as between gentleman and
servant, had merged into that of perfect equality. Love is not the only
leveller of disparities of rank and position.
They were walking together side by side. There was not a soul in sight.
Each cautiously showed what he had brought. The dirty half-sheet of
common note-paper, with Colonel Tempest's signature, seemed hardly worth
the crisp notes, each one of which Colonel Tempest turned slowly over.
"Ten," said Marshall. "All right."
"Stop," said Colonel Tempest, hoarsely, the date on the ragged sheet he
had just seen suggesting a new idea. "You're too young. You're not five
and thirty. By ---- it's nearly sixteen years ago. You weren't in it.
You couldn't have been in it. How did you come by that? Whom did you
have it from?"
"From one who'll tell no tales," returned Marshall. "He was sick of it.
He had tried twice, and he was near his end, and I took it off him just
before he died."
"Did he die?" said Colonel Tempest. "I am not so sure of that."
"I am," said the man; "or I'd never have had nothing to do with the
business."
"How long have you been with Mr. Tempest?"
"A matter of three months. He engaged me when he came back from Russia
in the spring."
"You will leave at once. That, of course, is understood."
"Yes. I will give warning to-night if----" and the man glanced at the
packet in Colonel Tempest's hand.
Without another word they exchanged papers. Colonel Tempest did not tear
the document that had cost him so much into a thousand pieces. He looked
at it, recognized that it was genuine, put it in his pocket, and
buttoned his coat over it. Then he got out a note-book and pencil.
"And now," he said, "the others. How am I to get at them?"
The man stared. "The others?" he repeated. "What others?"
"You were one," said Colonel Tempest. "Now about the rest. I mean to pay
them all off. There were ten in it. Where are the nine?"
Marshall stood stock still, as if he were realizing something
unperceived till now. Then he shook his fist.
"That Johnson lied to me. I might have known. He took me in from first
to last. I never thought but that I was the--_the only one_. And all
I've spent, and the work I've been put to, when I might just as well
have let one of them others risk it. He never acted square. Damn him."
Colonel Tempest looked at him horror-struck. The man's anger was
genuine.
"Do you mean to say you don't _know_?" he said, in a harsh whisper, all
that was left of his voice. "Swayne, Johnson said you did. On his
death-bed he said so."
"Know," retorted the man, his expressionless face having some meaning in
it at last. "Do you suppose if I'd _known_, I'd have---- But that's been
the line he has gone on from the first, you may depend upon it. He's let
each one think he was alone at the job to bring it round quicker; a
double-tongued, double-dealing devil. Each of them others is working for
himself now, single-handed. I wonder they haven't brought it off before.
Why _that fire_! We was both nearly done for that night. I slept just
above 'im, and it was precious near. If he had not run up hisself and
woke me--that fire----"
Marshall stopped short. His mouth fell ajar. His mind was gradually
putting two and two together. There was no horror in his face, only a
malignant sense of having been duped.
"By----," he said fiercely. "I see it all."
A cold hand seemed to be laid on Colonel Tempest's heart, to press
closer and closer. The sweat burst from his brow. Swayne had been an
economizer of truth to the last. He had deliberately lied even on his
death-bed, in order to thrust away the distasteful subject to which
Colonel Tempest had so pertinaciously nailed him. The two men stood
staring at each other. A governess and three little girls, evidently out
for a stroll after tea, were coming towards them. The sight of the four
advancing figures seemed to shake the two men back in a moment, with a
gasp, to their former relations.
Marshall drew himself up, and touched his hat.
"I ought to be going, sir," he said, almost in his usual ordered tones.
"Mr. Tempest dines early to-night."
Colonel Tempest nodded. He had forgotten for the moment how to speak.
"And it's all right, sir, about--about me," rather anxiously.
Colonel Tempest perceived that Marshall had not realized the possible
hold he might obtain over him by the mere fact of his knowledge of this
last revelation. He had been obtuse before. He was obtuse now.
"As long as you are silent and leave at once," said Colonel Tempest,
commanding his tongue to articulate, "I will be silent too. Not a moment
longer."
Marshall touched his hat again, and went.
Colonel Tempest walked unsteadily to a bench under a twisted yew, a
little way from the path, and sat down heavily upon it.
How cold it was, how bitterly cold! He shivered, and drew his hand
across his damp forehead. The tinkling of voices reached him at
intervals. Foolish birds were making choruses of small jokes in the
branches above his head. Some one laughed at a little distance.
He alone was wretched beyond endurance. Perhaps he did not know what
endurance meant. Panic shook him like a leaf.
And there was no refuge. He did not know how to live. Dared he die? die,
and struggle up the other side only to find an angry judge waiting on
the brink to strike him down to hell even while he put up supplicating
hands? But his hands were red with John's blood, so that even his
prayers convicted him of sin--were turned into sin.
A feeling as near despair as his nature could approach to overwhelmed
him.
One of the most fatal results of evil is that in the same measure that
it exists in ourselves, we imply it in others, and not less in God
Himself. Poor Colonel Tempest saw in his Creator only an omniscient
detective, an avenger, an executioner who had mocked at his endeavours
to propitiate Him, to escape out of His hand, who held him as in a
pillory, and would presently break him upon the wheel.
Superstition has its uses, but, like most imitations, it does not wear
well--not much better, perhaps, than the brown paper boots in which the
English soldier goes forth to war.
A cheap faith is an expensive experience. I believe Colonel Tempest
suffered horribly as he sat alone under that yew tree; underwent all
the throes which self-centred people do undergo, who, in saving their
life, see it slipping through their fingers; who in clutching at their
own interest and pleasure, find themselves sliding into a gulf; who in
sacrificing the happiness and welfare of those that love them to their
whim, their caprice, their shifting temper of the moment, find
themselves at last--alone--unloved.
Are there many sorrows like this sorrow? There is perhaps only one
worse--namely, to realize what onlookers have seen from the first, what
has brought it about. This is hard. But Colonel Tempest was spared this
pain. Those for whom others can feel least compassion are, as a rule,
fortunately able to bestow most upon themselves. Colonel Tempest
belonged to the self-pitying class, and with him to suffer was to begin
at once to be sorry for himself. The tears ran slowly down his cheeks
and his lip quivered. Perhaps there is nothing quite so heartbreaking as
the tears of middle-age for itself.
He saw himself sitting there, so lonely, so miserable, without a
creature in the world to turn to for comfort; entrapped into evil as all
are at times, for he was but human, he had never set up to be better
than his fellows; but to have striven so hard against evil--to have
tried, as not many would have done, to repair what had been wrong (and
the greatest wrong had not been with him) and yet to have been repulsed
by God Himself! Everybody had turned against him. And now God had turned
against him too. His last hope was gone. He should never find those
other men, never buy back those other bets. John would be killed sooner
or later, and he himself would _suffer_.
That was the refrain, the key-note to which he always returned. _He
should suffer._
Natures like Colonel Tempest's go through the same paroxysms of blind
despairing grief as do those of children. They see only the present. The
maturer mind is sustained in its deeper anguish by the power of looking
beyond its pain. It has bought, perhaps dear, the chill experience that
all things pass, that sorrow endures but for a night, even as the joy
that comes in the morning endures but for a morning. But as a child
weeps and is disconsolate, and dries its eyes and forgets, so Colonel
Tempest would presently forget again--for a time.
Indeed, he soon took the best means within his reach of doing so. He
felt that he was too wretched to remain in England. It was therefore
imperative that he should go abroad. Persons of his temperament have a
delightful confidence in the benign influences of the Continent. He
wrote to John, returning him L8,500 of the L10,000, saying that the
object for which it had been given had become so altered as to prevent
the application of the money. He did not mention that he had found a use
for one thousand, and that pressing personal expenses had obliged him to
retain another five hundred, but he was vaguely conscious of doing an
honourable action in returning the remainder.
John wrote back at once, saying that he had given him the money, and
that as his uncle did not wish to keep it, he should invest it in his
name, and settle it on his daughter, while the interest at four per
cent. would be paid to Colonel Tempest during his lifetime.
"Well," said Colonel Tempest to himself, after reading this letter,
"beggars can't be choosers, but if _I_ had been in John's place I _hope_
I should not have shown such a grudging spirit. Eight thousand five
hundred! Out of all his wealth he might have made it ten thousand for
my poor penniless girl. No wonder he does not wish her to know about
it."
And having a little ready money about him, Colonel Tempest took his
penniless girl, much to her surprise, a lapis-lazuli necklace when he
went to say good-bye to her.
On the last evening before he left England he got out the paper Marshall
had given him, and having locked the door, spread it on the table before
him. He had done this secretly many times a day since he had obtained
possession of it.
There it was, unmistakable in black and grime that had once been white.
The one thing of all others in this world that Colonel Tempest loathed
was to be obliged to face anything. Like Peer Gynt, he went round, or if
like Balaam he came to a narrow place where there was no turning room,
he struck furiously at the nearest sentient body. But a widower has no
beast of burden at hand to strike, and there was no power of going
round, no power of backing either, from before that sheet of crumpled
paper. When he first looked at it he had a kind of recollection that was
no recollection of having seen it before.
The words were as distinct as a death-warrant. Perhaps they were one.
Colonel Tempest read them over once again.
"I, Edward Tempest, lay one thousand pounds to one sovereign that I do
never inherit the property of Overleigh in Yorkshire."
There was his own undeniable scrawling signature beneath Swayne's
crab-like characters. There below his own was the signature of that
obscure speculator, since dead, who had taken up the bet.
If anything is forced upon the notice, which yet it is distasteful to
contemplate, the only remedy for avoiding present discomfort is to
close the eyes.
Colonel Tempest struck a match, lit the paper, and dropped it into the
black July grate. It would not burn at first, but after a moment it
flared up and turned over. He watched it writhe under the little
chuckling flame. The word Overleigh came out distinctly for a second,
and then the flame went out, leaving a charred curled nothing behind.
One solitary spark flew swiftly up like a little soul released from an
evil body. Colonel Tempest rubbed the ashes with his foot, and once
again--closed his eyes.