out of them. “My father was a doctor in Liverpool. He is worth twenty
thousand of me, and he never made enough to live on. A poor
middle-class practice, the work wore him out by the time he was
fifty, and now he’s an invalid in Devonshire. He can’t walk upstairs
even--heart, you know. And he simply pines to work. Oh, I know this
doesn’t matter to you, but I can’t forget it. If only people were
paid what they’re worth! I beg your pardon. This isn’t business-like.
Well, he was the doctor the Kimball family went to. Old Mr. Kimball
was a clerk, and the son, the man who was drowned the other day,
began like that too. The old people died about the time young Mr.
Kimball and his sister grew up. She kept house for her brother. He
began as a broker and got on. In a way--my father always says
that--in a way he was devoted to her. Nothing he could pay for was
too good for her. He always wanted her with him. But he made awful
demands on her. She mustn’t have any interests of her own. She
mustn’t make any friends. Like some men are with their wives, you
know. Horrible, isn’t it?” She turned upon Reggie.
“Common form of selfishness. Passing into mania. Not only male, you
know. Some mothers are like that.”
“Yes, I know they are. But it’s worst with men and their wives.”
“The wife can’t grow up. The children can,” Reggie agreed.
“It is exactly that,” said she eagerly. “You understand. Oh, well,
this isn’t business-like either. Ellen Kimball fell in love. He was
just an ordinary sort of man, a clerk of some sort--Sandford was his
name. Horace Kimball was furious. My father says Sandford was nothing
in particular. There was no special reason why she should marry him
or why she shouldn’t. He was insignificant.”
“Heredity.” Reggie nodded to Lomas.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your father understood men. Miss Amber.”
“Indeed he does. Of course Horace Kimball did the absurd thing, said
she mustn’t marry, abused Sandford, and so on, and of course that
made her marry. Unfortunately--this really seems to be the only thing
against her--unfortunately she was married in a sly, secret sort of
way. She didn’t tell her brother she’d made up her mind, or when the
marriage was to be or anything. She simply slunk out of his house and
left him to find out. I suppose he had terrified her, poor thing, or
his bullying made her sullen,” said Miss Amber. “It was rather feeble
of her. Only one hates to blame her. Her brother was furious. My
father says that he never saw such a strange case of a man holding
down a passionate rage. He thought at one time that Horace Kimball
would have gone mad. The thing seemed like an obsession. Doesn’t it
seem paltry? A man wild with temper because he was jealous of his
sister marrying!”
“Most jealousy is paltry.” Lomas shrugged.
“Jealous of his sister marrying,” Reggie repeated. “Yes, I dare say
seven men in ten are. Common human emotion. Commonest in the form of
mothers hating their sons’ wives, Miss Amber. Still, men do their
bit. Fathers proverbially object to daughters marrying.
Brothers--well, there’s quite a lot of folklore about brothers
killing their sisters’ lovers. Yes, common human emotion.”
“I think jealousy is simply loathsome,” said Miss Amber, with a
quiver of her admirable nose. “Well, it’s fair to say Horace Kimball
seemed to get over the worst of his. He just lost himself in his
business, my father says. He wouldn’t see his sister again, not even
when her child was born (it was a boy). He simply swept her out of
his life. Even when Sandford got into trouble, he wouldn’t hear of
helping her. My father quarrelled with him over that. He said to my
father, ‘She’s made her bed, and they can all die in it’. Oh, I know
he’s dead, and one oughtn’t to say things. But I call that simply
devilish.”
“Yes, I believe in the devil too,” said Reggie. “Devilish! You’re
exactly right, Miss Amber. Sandford got into trouble, did he? What
was that?”
“It was some scandal about his business. A breach of trust in some
way. His employers didn’t prosecute, but they dismissed him in
disgrace. My father doesn’t remember the details. It was giving away
some business secrets.”
Reggie looked at Lomas. “That’s very interesting,” he said.
“Interesting! Poor people, it was misery for them. Sandford was
ruined. My father says he never really tried to make a fresh start.
He just died because he didn’t want to go on living. And his wife
broke her heart over it. She seemed like a woman frightened out of
her senses, my father says. She got it into her head that it was all
her brother’s fault, that he had planned the whole thing. It was
absurd, of course, but can you wonder?”
“I don’t wonder,” said Reggie.
“She was deadly afraid of her brother. She made up her mind that he
would be the death of her baby too. So she ran away from Liverpool
and hid in a little village in North Wales, Llanfairfechan, and
nobody knew where she had gone. She had a little money of her own,
and her husband had been well insured. She had just enough, and she
lived quite alone in a cottage off the road to the mountains, and
there she died. My father says her son did rather well. He got
scholarships to Oxford, and my father fancies he went into the Civil
Service, but he lost sight of him after the mother died.”
“I’m infinitely obliged to you. Miss Amber,” said Reggie, and rang
for tea.
“Oh, no, don’t! I always thought that poor woman’s story was too
miserably sad. I don’t know why you wanted it--no, no, I’m not
asking--but if it could set anything right, or do anybody any good,
it seems somehow to make it better. It wouldn’t be so uselessly
cruel.”
“Over the past the gods themselves have no power,” Reggie said. “We
can’t help her, poor soul. I dare say it’s something to her to know
that her son is safe and making good--in spite of all the devilry.”
“Something to her--of course it is!” said Miss Amber, and looked
divine.
“There’s that,” said Reggie, watching her.
“You won’t mind my saying professionally that you have been very
useful. Miss Amber,” said Lomas. “You have cleared up what was a very
tiresome mystery. I was being bothered. That’s a serious disturbance
of the machinery of Empire.” He succeeded, as he desired, in setting
the conversation to a lighter tune. He made Miss Amber’s eyes again
merry. He did not prevent Reggie from looking at her. “You must
promise me another opportunity to thank you,” he said, as she was
going.
“Dear me, I thought you had been doing nothing else,” said she
demurely, and looked at the table and made a face. “Oh, Mr. Fortune,
what, what a tea! I leave all my reputation behind me. Men hate to
see women eat, don’t they? But do men always make teas like this?”
“I’ve a simple mind. I live the simple life.”
She looked at him fairly. “You said simple. Do you know how I feel? I
feel as if I hadn’t a secret left all my own,” and she swept away. He
was a long time gone letting her out.
“And that’s that,” Reggie said when he came back.
“Really?” Lomas was dim behind cigar smoke.
“All quite natural now, isn’t it?”
“My dear fellow, you knew it all and you knew it right. You told me
so. Kamerad, kamerad.”
Reggie lit his pipe. “Jealously, hate, mania. He broke the man the
girl married. Curious that affair, wasn’t it? Even the great
criminal, he runs in a groove, he keeps to one kind of crime. The
same dodge for the son that he used for the father. Then either he
lost track of the mother or he preferred to hurt her through the son.
He was an epicure in his little pleasures. The son came along. I dare
say Kimball took that department because the son was in it. And then
he was ready to smash everything for the sake of his hate--damage his
own career, do a filthy murder, die himself, if he could torture his
sister’s child. Yes. The devil is with power, Lomas.”
“I fancy you annoy him a little, my dear Fortune. But how can you
believe in the devil? You have just seen--her.”
Reggie smiled. “She is a woman, isn’t she?”
“I think you might act on that theory. When is it to be?”
“Lomas, old thing, you’re not only bland, you’re obvious. Which is
much worse.”
Transcriber's Note
Extra pages preceding each chapter containing only the chapter title
have been omitted.