Effie Vessunt remained at Jawbones for a fortnight. At the end of that
time Dot's knee had, so to speak, submitted and returned to barracks,
and she could resume her ordinary work. Effie went to Bournemouth,
where she took a position as kennel maid.
Luke heard nothing from Jona. Occasionally he saw her name in the
newspaper as one of those present at some social function. Twice he
read that her husband had been fined for being drunk while driving a
motor-car. Beyond this, nothing. Luke adhered to his resolution. He
never sent her a letter. He wrote one. It was a long and passionate
letter, full of poetry and beauty. But he never posted it.
He made a paper boat of it. And launched it on that old-world stream.
It floated away under the bridge, and on and on for nearly twenty
yards. Then an old-world cow came down to the edge of the stream and
ate it. The cow died.
And so the months passed away. He completed another little monograph
for the firm entitled "Pulp," of which he said beautifully that it was
the beginning of all jam and the end of all books. Then he remembered
that Jona had rather seemed to encourage him in his idea of writing
his biography. He planned it all out in his mind. He pictured himself
wrongly suspected, loathed by everybody (except Jona), suffering
horribly, terribly ill. He thoroughly enjoyed it.
He enjoyed it so much that he felt he had to tell Mabel about it. He
did.
"Mabel," he said, "have you ever realized that under certain
circumstances the most awful things would happen to me that ever
befell the hero of a melodrama? Just take the train of events. Effie
has an illegitimate child. She writes and tells you about it."
"But she wouldn't," said Mabel. "She was with me for a fortnight, and
I always kept her in her place."
"Well, she refuses to say who the father is."
"Why?" asked Mabel.
"Because the story can't possibly go on if she doesn't. Please don't
interrupt me again until I've finished. Effie has no money. She goes
to see her father, who will take her in, but not the child. It's an
accepted convention that the unmarried mother must be parted from her
child. So Effie and the baby turn up here. I say that they shall stay.
You say that in that case you'll go, which you do, having previously
dismissed Dot and Dash. In consequence, everybody in this neighborhood
cuts me, I am turned out of my business, and as the dates agree, I am
believed to be the father of the child. Effie has the housework to do
as well as the baby to look after, and in consequence, I am horribly
neglected. The handle of the front door is not polished, and when an
old friend comes down from London to see me, I have nothing to give
him for lunch except cold meat and a fruit tart that is no longer in
its first youth. So I take a week-end at Brighton without Effie. She
cleans my straw hat with oxalic acid, which I have bought for her. I
throw away the hat and buy another. While I am at Brighton she kills
herself and the baby with what is left of the oxalic acid. At the
inquest I am unable to say anything except 'Look here,' am severely
censured by the coroner's jury, and nearly lynched by the crowd
outside. I go back to the house and find a letter on the clock, which
entirely clears me and tells me that the father of the child is the
son of Dobson, the dirty dog who sneaked my partnership. So I go to
see Dobson and find that he has just got the news that his son is
dead. I therefore burn Effie's letter so as to get the sole evidence
of my innocence out of the way, and then have a haemorrhage of the
brain. And you divorce me, and then----"
"Look here, Luke, you'd better go and lie down for a little. You've
been bicycling in the sun, you know."
"What do you mean? Wouldn't it happen so? Isn't it all absolutely
inevitable?"
"Not absolutely," said Mabel. "The previous knowledge that one has of
you would go for something. There was never any sign of an attachment
of that kind between you and Effie. If you had been the father of the
child you would most certainly not have left her alone, without any
provision, at the time the child was born. I should be quite certain
of that. So would the two maids here. Effie would apply to young
Dobson, and failing him, to old Dobson. This is about the last house
to which she would come. Her instinct would be to keep away from the
neighborhood where she was known. If her own father agreed to take her
in, it's almost certain that he would take the baby as well. Your
ideas about that convention are exaggerated, and old-fashioned. If she
did come here, and you insisted on her staying, I should put up with
it, though I should not like it, until some arrangement could be made
for her to go elsewhere with her child. And that arrangement could be
made easily and quickly. I do not see why I should dismiss the maids,
and if I did they are paid with your money, and are much more devoted
to you than they are to me. You would only have to speak and they
would remain. No seducer would bring his victim and her child to the
house where his wife was living. You would be thought quixotic but not
guilty. If Effie saw that you were cut by everybody and that she had
brought trouble on you, she would be particularly careful not to cause
more serious trouble for you by committing suicide. And if she
committed suicide, she would not implicate you in it by making you buy
the poison. She would neither make fruit tart, nor clean a straw hat,
because she simply would not have the time. You don't know much about
young babies, do you? I should not divorce you, and should have no
evidence on which I could get a divorce. In fact, the whole thing's
skittles. By the way, when did Effie have her baby?"
"She never did," said Luke despondently. "That's always the way.
Whenever I make a beautiful thing, some cow always gets it. It's
happened before. If I wrote my beautiful biography, some cow would
parody it. The world's full of cows."
"Well, I'm sorry, of course," said Mabel. "You can do most incredibly
foolish things. You do frequently fail to say what you should say. But
even with those advantages, I doubt if it would be possible for you to
incur so much suffering and suspicion as you describe. I shall have to
think out some other little martyrdom for you."