THE LETTER IN THE BOOK
I wanted above all things to be alone; to re-order my disordered
thoughts; to marshal into some sort of coherence the fantastic figures
which ran riot in my brain. I felt like some stunned animal turning to
creep away and bury itself in shadow and solitude. The clack of the
train in my head was like the worry of a screw shaft to a sea-sick
passenger. I had to adapt all my reflections to its mechanic monotony.
I could not detach my thoughts from those regular beats. They even
assumed to my mind presently a definite measurement. A thought was
exactly three inches long, and the wheels tapped it out, tapped it out
to one endlessly repeated pattern.
I was horribly, ungraciously apprehensive of running across Johnny
Dando in Footover. The vision of his round beneficent face would rise
like an obtrusive moon over the troubled waters of my soul. To gain
time for self-communion before he learned of my return was my most
feverish desire. I was even, truth to tell, wishing the poor dear boy
out of my way altogether. There was no longer room in my philosophy
for even this gentle _farceur_.
But he did not cross my path, and I succeeded in reaching my cold
hermitage unobserved. There was no fire in it this doleful evening--no
sign of any feminine grace or thought for me. I had to make out my own
comforts--lay my grate, provide my own meal. Well, that was nothing
new; nor was it any new discovery that a passing indulgence often
makes a spoilt content. But I confess I was peevish at having only
myself to help myself again.
However, I persisted, and, after feeding ravenously on meats I had
brought with me, for I was fairly famished, I took a book, haphazard
and for form’s sake, from the shelf, lit my pipe, and sat down before
the glow to excogitate the moral and practical effect I was called
upon to give to an amazing revelation.
As to that, it was patent at once that it had thrown all the machinery
of my life out of gear. The questions of love, duty, resentment,
retribution must all be unpieced and readjusted, to suit a new point
of view. I had no longer, it appeared, true relations with the old. My
position was become one of independence; my attitude one of hard
triumphant aloofness. Only the mystery of my being was deepened, not
resolved. If my mother’s baby had died, I could not be my mother’s
son. That, paradoxically, was the postulate. Then, if not hers, whose
son was I, and for what inexplicable reason had she undertaken the
risk and responsibility of acknowledging me for her own? That there
had been foul play somewhere--trickery, fraud, monstrous
imposition--was very plain, I thought. My mission, if it had proved
abortive in one direction, had been deadly prolific in another. How to
wrench truth from the maze of lies!
The wildest theories flashed into my mind, only to be flouted. Was it
possible that Lady Skene could have done this donna Quixotic thing for
a friend--have imposed on her husband as her own, in some fit of
Evangelical Samaritanism, the fruit of a poor sister’s frailty? Out of
the question. She was utterly truthful, by temperament and religion.
If, on a single occasion, she had let a misunderstanding pass by
default, she had had not only the sanction but the encouragement of
her Church to justify her. Then Pugsley, at least, believed I was her
son, and, as certainly, in all things she believed what Pugsley
believed. Granting which, one must grant her innocence of any
partnership in a fraud which had apparently imposed upon her, the
principal, as it had imposed upon him the unwitting agent.
Yet, had it imposed? or was she, after all, a practised queen of
guile--a Lamia, with the serpent in her blood? I thought of her
villainous antecedents; I thought of the old obscene harpy down in
Lambeth; and my heart would take cold at the thought, insisting that
she knew the truth, that she must know it, and that therein was
confessed the real secret of her antipathy to me.
Then, so much admitted, or assumed, was it not a consequent assumption
that his secret knowledge of the fact that I was not Lady Skene’s
child constituted Dalston’s hold over her? That would be to infer that
he, at least, was cognisant of my true parentage. But would it be that
she was? or, even more inexplicably, that he was practising upon her
ignorance of the truth? But how _could_ she be ignorant--how _could_
she? The hypothesis appeared incredible, monstrous.
One only clear fact seemed to detach itself from the inextricable
tangle of things--that I was not my supposed mother’s son.
Now--so perverse is human nature--I was no sooner self-assured of my
moral quittance from the bonds which had held me so long and so
wistfully to an imaginary grievance, than my soul rose in mutiny
against my own emancipation. Was she not actually, then, my mother
after all--this cold, beautiful spirit, whose countenance I had so
longed to gain, whose aversion, so little concealed, had been the
cruel pain of my life? It would appear so, indeed; it would appear
that I had been wasting my heart on the shadow of a love--the
blasphemy of a worship which God Himself had suddenly exposed for a
sham. I was stripped in a moment even of the cold comfort of that
false religion. I had no longer the right of natural appeal from an
inhuman sentence.
And I had only myself to thank for my awakening. Wilfully, with my
eyes open, I had gone about this business of my own damnation.
There was such an intolerable sting in the thought, that, in its last
full realisation, I jumped to my feet, restless to pace away the
agitation it caused me. As I did so, the book which I had taken from
the shelf dropped roughly from my knees to the floor, and a folded
paper fell from it.
I stooped mechanically to pick up the latter, as mechanically opened
it out, and, two-thirds preoccupied, ran my eyes down the sheet.
Instantly, with a little shock of amazement, they were caught and
riveted to a name written thereon.
A sigh, as of one just awakened, came from me, What was to follow? I
thought I could tell already. There was a signature at the foot of the
paper, and I believed I knew whose it would be--the signature of
Charlie Skene, his lordship’s dead son; and so it proved. It gave me
an odd thrill to look at it--the boyish scrawl in its faded ink; and
attesting--what? You shall hear. Walking on tiptoe, as if in some
instinctive emotion towards secrecy, I carried my “find” to the lamp
and examined it.
It was the half, the second half, of a sheet of foreign notepaper, and
had been used evidently by some reader (probably the correspondent to
whom it had been addressed) for a marker in the volume I had dropped.
Heedless trifling with a thing so pregnant with destiny! Yet Luck, no
doubt, had arranged it so. It ran as follows, starting on a broken
sentence:--
“... right under the fall, and as secret as you could wish. You can
see through, like as if you were behind a window and the rain coming
down in sheets outside, and there’s no more sound to be heard than
with that. It’s just shut away from there, the noise I mean, and all
you can hear is a drone like a hive, and all you can see is the trees
and the hills pulled crooked, like we saw ourselves in that
looking-glass in the confectionier’s at Swanage don’t you remember how
we laughed George? There is a fellow here Antonio Geoletti that acts
as our guide and cetera and that would give his ears I expect to know
of it for the sake of tips. But I’ve a fancy to keep it to myself such
fun, and not tell anyone of it unless perhaps you-know-who, and
perhaps if he’s good my tutor _mister_ Cecil Mansel Delane oh
lawk!--but wait a minute. Geoletti’s a great rascal but I like
him--always a little attracted to rogues you know George, and he shall
hear of it too before we go. But now I’ve got something to tell you
only don’t blab to the Governor. George, my boy, I’ve found out that
Delane isn’t my tutor’s name at all, but Dalston is--Mark Dalston.
There was a young fellow Bruno Travers passed through here, and
recognised him for a master he’d been under at some Grammar School or
other Clapham I think it was, and he called him to his face and Delane
had to own up. There was only us three together, and my tutor admitted
that his name was Dalston right enough, and that he’d only taken up
the other for its seeming more marketable to a man with his ambitions,
sounded good familyish and all that, and he asked us not to give him
away and we promised. But Travers didn’t believe a word of his reason,
and told me so in private. He said he’d go nap that it was to escape
the consequences of an intrigue with some girl in Clapham, this Mark
Dalston being a pretty rapid lot, and known for it to some of the
young gentlemen that he coached. I don’t know, but I’ve had my
suspicions, especially in his making those eyes at you-know-who for
her looks and the rest. But mum’s the word. I shall want all my nerve
when the time comes for an explanation and it can’t be long now, oh
lawky lawky!--Your affectionate friend,
Charles Skene.”
My hand, with the letter in it, dropped to my side. Luck! Was this
still Luck, or a fierce and merciless fatality? It had answered clear
on my cry for light long uttered--an echo returned from a vast
distance. “_To escape the consequences of an intrigue with some
girl._” Oh! an excellent shot, Mr Travers--an intrigue with Lady
Skene, _née_ Carey, that was to say. It was Dalston himself all the
while, and I had been looking over his head for the principal. There
could be no doubt about it. Here was the explanation of the beast’s
hold on that wretched lady--a grip doubly dastard, since, it would
seem, he had repudiated his responsibility for her shame only so long
as he saw the opposite to any profit in admitting it. Could there be
in hell a hound more abject?
And to what, but a day earlier, had my inquiries been tending--to
proof of what relationship with this infamous creature? That fable,
thank God, was discounted before even realised by me. And yet for what
alternative? There was none that I could see. If he was not trading
upon her belief that I was his child, their child, what subtler
knowledge helped him to her bleeding? Could it be one that turned upon
the question of my apparent resurrection from the grave? Was I,
perhaps, a changeling? It seemed incredible. To whose possible
interest could it have been to substitute a living child for a dead
one? Not to his assuredly--a piece of good fortune it would have
appeared to him in those days, that fruit of his villainy perished and
removed. To his victim’s, then? to her mother’s? There was more
plausibility there. Yet I could not conceive Lady Skene a party to any
such fraud; and yet again his discovery of the imposition, had it been
committed, would not have weakened his hold on her--rather
substantiated it. _Had_ she done this thing, or her mother for her, in
order to levy false tax on the father of her dead child?
It was a horrible thought. All night I sat out by the fire, hating it,
and dismissing, and returning to it. The coincidence of this Dalston’s
double connection with the family hardly occurred to me. And yet it
was a coincidence, as strange as any that the annals of villainy can
record. But then Coincidence is the father of Luck.
This strange, strange letter! this old young voice from the clouds,
dropping upon me all in an unexpected moment like a ghostly message
from Thibet. It must have its meaning in the sequences of Fate--must
have been meant to have. That the fellow should have been young
Skene’s tutor--his monitor, great God! a vulgar intrigant, with a
past, hardly past indeed, and caught, in despite of it, making eyes at
“you-know-who”! You-know-who? How odd and plaintive sounded the arch
allusion down all that flight of years, like a strange voice laughing
very faint in distant attics. Poor little you-know-who! What had been
thy pretty name and station, and to whose confidence was this cryptic
reference to thee entrusted?
I bent on the thought, and picked up the fallen book from the floor.
It was one of those with which Lord Skene had furnished me from the
library of his deceased young neighbour--a volume of “Armadale” by
Wilkie Collins. I remember it well, a story containing a mystery
something analogous with that which was vexing my life. Turning to the
title-page, I found inscribed on it a name, George Thesiger--the
George, without doubt, of the letter. And he, too, was dead--no hope
of enlightenment there--had closed the book perhaps for the last time
on a mystery more real and tragic than any contained in its pages.
They must have been close friends, those two. I put the book gently
away, and fell into frowning thought again. Not all I could learn or
discover had brought me one step nearer the truth of my own identity.
I might trace out others; myself I could not trace. My name, like
Peter Schlemihl’s body, threw no shadow.
I suppose, in the end, I must have fallen asleep where I sat, for I
was suddenly conscious of the sound of voices outside the lodge. I
rubbed my eyes--it was broad daylight in the room, and shiveringly
cold. I staggered to my feet, a stale spectre of nightmare, and walked
unsteadily to the window. There was a thin fleece of snow fallen on
the grass, and sharply defined on it stood the figures of Johnny and
Miss Christmas.
Now I don’t know what influence was at work in me; but quite suddenly
and strangely, seeing the girl, my eyes flushed hot and wet. I set my
teeth, and gave myself a good curse for my folly; but there it was,
and I could not but be conscious of a fierce pleasure in it. I suppose
I had been a bit overwrought--spectre-ridden; and this vision touched
me like balm. I felt like one who wakes from a dream of damnation to
hear the birds singing. She was so young and happy and fresh; so
detached from the sordid realism of my story; so remote from me at
last. I had never thought her worth my consideration until she was
risen above it; and now I was feeling like a child, who, having
wandered in the track of some absorbing interest, wakes to the sudden
realisation that he is lost. It was just the primal need bubbling in
me. My mother was taken from me, true; but perhaps the more for that
did I wail for a skirt to cling to.
The two seemed to be in intimate talk, and Johnny’s strained squeak of
a laugh reached me irresistibly. A misty sun jewelled the snow, and
there were flowers sparkling, and fountains showering, and the rich
throats of birds choiring among the trees--but all only in seeming;
for love full-hearted has but to look down, and there is a garden
sprung about her feet.
Suddenly it struck me, Had this little diffidence been so wrought
through with passion as to have dared, on short acquaintance, the most
audacious throw a man can stake his all on? If it were so, it would
seem that fortune had favoured the bold, for the couple appeared to be
already on terms as happy as familiar. And why not? Johnny was no
nameless, penniless bastard; but a lord of acres, with a stake in the
land and a right to sue to honour. He was my friend, moreover, and not
to be grudged by me any such triumph. I trusted, I saw no reason to
doubt, that they would prove an excellent match; and, in the midst of
that very Christian reflection, was planning how to get rid of the
little man with all possible despatch.
Why?
_Il y a quelque chose qui couve_, says a French idiom.
Now all in a moment I realised that I was in a measure spying--a trick
grown obnoxious to me. I turned from the window, and went resolutely
out into the open. They saw me at once, and Johnny hurried up with his
greeting, and a rather shameful face, I thought.
“I was coming to see you, and met Miss Christmas in the grounds,” he
said. “We supposed you were still away, old fellow, as there was no
sign of your moving in there.”
“Why should there be at this hour?”
“This hour? Don’t you know it’s near midday?”
“No, by the Lord--is it! What a sleep I’ve had.”
I turned to Miss Christmas.
“Did you want me for anything?” I asked.
“No,” she said, in one hard little icicle of a word. She turned to
Johnny, and the sunlight broke on her face.
“I must go back now,” she said, “but I daresay we shall meet again.”
I went to her as she turned, and spoke low in her ear--two words, “I’m
sorry.” She appeared to start; but she gathered her skirts up, and
went off through the woods, without an acknowledgment of any sort. I
took Johnny’s arm persuasively, as we walked back to the lodge
together.
“Am I to congratulate you, old man?”
He flushed to fire.
“Don’t bait me, Dick. I--I don’t think I can bear it. If a year’s
devotion would win me just the permission to kiss her little hand.”
“No more than that?”
“No more. What right have _I_ to dream of such a thing!”
He was so obviously moved that I had not the heart to banter him, if I
had the inclination. I don’t know about that. I felt of a sudden some
sympathy with his diffidence, and all on my own account. What right
had he, certainly? Material fortune was not to stand for everything in
this world. I was in no mind to let it in my misanthropy; in no mood,
with my new sense of independence, to allow myself to be relegated to
the ranks of the of-no-accounts. I could still be a dog in the manger,
it seemed. And yet my heart was soft with a superior affection for
this old chum of mine.
“Johnny,” I said, as I laid and lit the fire, “are you still in the
mind to help me?”
“Am I _not_!” he answered. “Only tell me how.”
I turned round, inspired, with the match in my hand.
“Watch old Pugsley.”
He gave a chirp.
“The parson?”
“Yes, Pugsley.”
He beamed on me delighted.
“Of course,” he said; “why didn’t I ever think of that? If I could
only catch those two talking together now, I might get at something
valuable.”
“Which two?” I asked.
It appeared that he meant Dalston and Pugsley. Somehow he had got it
into his head that they were in league to keep me out of the Skene
succession, by pretending that I was not the lawful son of my mother.
So much for my power of trenchant summarising. It did not really
matter a bit, so long as I could put him harmlessly out of the way. My
shot for the parson was quite a happy one. Pugsley would never
apprehend that he was being watched; and if he did suspect it, his
conceit would put it down to the fascination of his apostolic person.
“Very well,” I said. “Pugsley’s your quarry. Don’t wander much from
those preserves. Besides, you know, it will employ you about the
neighbourhood, and you’d like that.”
“Of course I should.”
“But there mustn’t be any suspicion of our colluding. You must keep
away from _me_, and only communicate by letter.”
He jumped to his feet in excitement.
“I’ve got it. We’ll have a code. I’ll telegraph to you, Dick.”
“All right. Hit out your code.”
I left him presently busy over it, full of a shrewd importance. There
was a purpose I had in my mind, some information I was hot to obtain,
and my eagerness emboldened me to seek it at headquarters.
Lord Skene received me very genially in his study. He was dressed in a
suit of new tweeds, and looked as fresh and dapper as a boy on his
honeymoon.
“Well, Gaskett,” he said, “what is it?”
I held out to him, title-page open, the book in which I had found the
letter the night before.
“Yes?” he said, with a sort of curious dryness. “George Thesiger.”
“He’s dead, sir?”
“Yes, he’s dead.”
“May I ask, sir--pray forgive me--was he a great friend of----”
I glanced up at the portrait--the bright young face hanging on the
wall opposite him.
“Of Charlie’s?” he said, but with a certain restraint. “O yes! Charlie
and he were immense friends.”
I was silent a moment, struggling with my difficulty. He appeared to
watch me, even with a painful interest.
“What’s on your mind, Richard?” he said at last.
The kind tone, the unwonted familiarity, loosened my speech. After
all, was I not striking for the honour, the happiness of this good
soul, to whom I owed all that of genial tolerance which had accepted
and endured me?
“Can you tell me, sir,” I burst out with, in broken sentences--“will
you tell me--I know I have no right to ask--the--the circumstances
of--I really have my reasons, sir--I would not venture
otherwise--the--the pain--and the impertinence----”
He put his hand across his eyes, and answered me quietly without
looking up.
“What is it you wish to know?”
“Only this, sir,” I said. “The man--his tutor--Delane----”
“Yes?”
“Did you ever see him?”
“No. I was on circuit at the time. He was engaged by my sister, Lady
Thorold, in answer to an advertisement.”
“And Lady Thorold is dead too?”
“Yes.”
Seeing I did not answer, he added voluntarily after a moment:
“Delane was the last to--to see and speak with my boy. They had parted
on the hillside, and Charlie went on alone--a reckless fellow: always
a reckless fellow. The man himself I never saw or spoke to. His
depositions were sent me by Lady Thorold, who represented me out
there. I was too ill to go myself. When I did, Delane had disappeared
beyond tracing--not that I could have any object in wishing to see
him, beyond a morbid sickness to dwell upon things best accepted and
forgotten. They had been on the best of terms, as I understood, and
Lady Thorold was struck with his genuine grief over the catastrophe.
What makes you curious about him, Gaskett?”
What, indeed? This man in sympathy with grief and stricken hearts!
this abject cur a disinterested mourner! What made me curious? How
could I answer? It had been hardly in expectation of learning anything
to Delane’s discredit. Scoundrels, to the simplest understanding, do
not prevail by making a boast of their characteristic qualities. Yet I
had been curious; and how to explain myself without self-committal was
the difficulty. I sorrowed for this unsuspecting faith; I sorrowed for
the wretched woman, whose sin, long past and long repented, was
threatening to engulf in ruin all that it had sinned to gain. And yet,
for some incalculable reason, I felt myself destined to be the
minister of that Nemesis, whether to launch or withhold, to baffle or
direct, I could not tell. But a sense of unrealised, indefinite power
drove me on. I dwelt a little on my answer before I spoke.
“I _am_ curious, sir. I will tell you the truth. I found a letter--or
part of a letter--in this book last night. It was written by your
son--apparently to Mr Thesiger himself--and there were some references
in it to Mr Delane. They set me speculating, that’s all. I will beg
you, sir, not to ask me to show you the letter--not just at present
anyhow. I don’t fancy, from what I can gather, that the man was
altogether what you supposed him to be. But I would rather pursue my
inquiries independently; I would rather bring down my quarry before
boasting of my skill.”
He was obviously startled and perturbed. He shifted some papers on his
table, and his lips were not quite steady as he looked up at me.
“Quarry and skill!” said he. “This sounds all very formidable,
Gaskett. I will not ask to see the letter, since you wish it, but----”
“I believe, sir,” I said impulsively, “that the man was a villain.”
He buried his face in his hands a minute.
“What do you want me to do?” he said suddenly. “When do you propose
enlightening me?”
“When I have my case, sir.” He smiled faintly. “I ask you in the
meantime to accept me for your counsel, and to believe that it is your
interests alone which I have at heart.”
A longish silence ensued. Then he sighed.
“It is all very mysterious; but--have it as you will. You--you won’t,
I trust, keep me longer than necessary in this state of suspense?”
Though he essayed to dismiss the matter lightly, I knew that I had
greatly disturbed him. The dogs of doubt, of suspicion, of some
formless apprehension, were awake in him. It grieved me to the soul so
to leave him; but I felt that for the moment I had no choice. I must
at least face his unhappy wife, offer her the chance of defence,
explanation, before I decided upon my course.
I found Johnny triumphant in the completion of his code. It was,
numerically, simplicity itself; but the ingenuity of its parts was
devastating. Thus, for example, Dalston was Dalston junction, was
points, was a pointer, was a dog. Therefore _Dog_ represented Dalston.
Pugsley was a pug, was a pug-nose, was tip-tilted. Therefore _Tip_
represented Pugsley.
Miss Christmas, of course, was Noel, was no-hell, which naturally was
heaven, and _Heaven_ was Miss Christmas.
Lord Skene was a skein, was woolly, was a sheep, was a baa. Therefore
_Baa_ stood for Lord Skene.
His lady, by the same reasoning, was an ewe, and you being not-I, was
knotty, which the point at issue was. Therefore _Point_ represented
Lady Skene.
I myself was Gaskett, was (what I hadn’t known; but Johnny was a
learned and travelled little person) a piece of canvas used in furling
sails, was a fastening, was a _Button_--and there I stop. I hadn’t the
faintest conception of the use to which he proposed converting all
these symbols; but he was very convinced of their necessity, and so I
let the question go by default, and accepted a key.
He left me during the afternoon, to return, provisionally, to his inn
in Footover, and I regret to say that I was never relieved over
anything so much as over his departure. It was agreed that, until
further notice from me, we were to hold no communication with one
another unless in the code, and on that understanding we shook hands
affectionately at the gate, and parted, strangers, beyond it.
Dear fervent little man. I wish I could have repaid your devotion as
it deserved.