ESCAPE CLOSED
He was awakened by Mr. Church--one has always to give him the
prefix--pulling up the blinds. His first thought was of the task before
him.
The mind does a lot of quiet business of its own when the blinds are
down and the body is asleep, and during the night, his mind, working in
darkness, had cleared up matters, countered and cut off all sorts of
fears and objections and drawn up a definite plan.
He would tell her everything that morning. If she would not take his
word for the facts, then he would have a meeting of the whole family. He
felt absolutely certain that explaining things bit by bit and detail by
detail he could convince them of the death of Rochester and his own
existence as Jones; absolutely certain that they would not push matters
to the point of publicity. He held a trump card in the property he had
recovered from Mulhausen, were he to be exposed publicly as an impostor,
all about the Plinlimon letters, Voles and Mulhausen would come out.
Mulhausen, that very astute practitioner, would not be long in declaring
that he had been forced to return the title deeds to protect his
daughter's name. Voles would swear anything, and their case would stand
good on the proved fact that he, Jones, was a swindler. No, assuredly
the family would not press the matter to publicity.
Having drunk his tea, he arose, bathed, and dressed with a calm mind.
Then he came down stairs.
She was not in the breakfast-room, where only one place was laid, and,
concluding that she was breakfasting in her own room, he sat down to
table.
After the meal, and with another sheaf of the infernal early post
letters in his hand, he crossed to the smoking-room, where he closed the
door, put the letters on the table and lit a cigar. Then, having smoked
for a few minutes and collected his thoughts, he rang the bell and sent
for Mr. Church.
"Church," said he when that functionary arrived, "will you tell--my wife
I want to see her?"
"Her ladyship left last night, your Lordship, she left at ten o'clock,
or a little after."
"Left! where did she go to?"
"She went to the South Kensington Hotel, your Lordship."
"Good heavens! what made her--why did she go--ah, was it because I did
not come back?"
"I think it was, your Lordship."
Mr. Church spoke gravely and the least bit stiffly. It could easily be
seen that as an old servant and faithful retainer he was on the woman's
side in the business.
"I had to go out," said the other. "I will explain it to her when I see
her--It was on a matter of importance--Thanks, that will do, Church."
Alone again he finished his cigar.
The awful fear of the night before, the fear of negation and the loss of
himself had vanished with a brain refreshed by sleep and before this
fact.
What a brute he had been! She had come back forgiving him for who knows
what, she had taken his part against his traducers, kissed him. She had
fancied that all was right and that happiness had returned--and he had
coldly discarded her.
It would have been less cruel to have beaten her. She was a good sweet
woman. He knew that fact, now, both instinctively and by knowledge. He
had not known it fully till this minute.
Would it, after all, have been better to have deceived her and to have
played the part of Rochester? That question occurred to him for a moment
to be at once flung away. It was not so much personal antagonism to such
a course nor the dread of madness owing to his double life that cast it
out so violently, but the recognition of the goodness and lovableness of
the woman. Leaving everything else aside to carry on such a deception
with her, even to think of it, was impossible.
More than ever was he determined to clear this thing up and tell her
all, and, to his honour be it said, his main motive now was to do his
best by her.
He finished his cigar, and then going into the hall obtained his hat and
left the house.
He did not know where the South Kensington Hotel might be, but a taxi
solved that question and shortly before ten o'clock he reached his
destination.
Yes, Lady Rochester had arrived last night and was staying in the hotel,
and whilst the girl in the manager's office was sending up his name and
asking for an interview Jones took his seat in the lounge.
A long time--nearly ten minutes--elapsed, and then a boy brought him her
answer in the form of a letter.
He opened it.
"Never again. This is good-bye."
"T."
That was the answer.
He sat with the sheet of paper in his hand, contemplating the shape and
make of an armchair of wicker-work opposite him.
What was he to do?
He had received just the answer he might have expected, neither more nor
less. It was impossible for him to force an interview with her. He had
overthrown Voles, climbed over Mulhausen, but the flight of stairs
dividing him now from the private suite of the Countess of Rochester was
an obstacle not to be overcome by courage or direct methods, and he knew
of no indirect method.
He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. Then he left the hotel
and took his way back to Carlton House Terrace.
If she would not see him she could not refuse to read a letter. He
would write to her and explain all. He would write in detail giving the
whole business, circumstance by circumstance. It would take him a long
while; he guessed that, and ordinary note-paper would not do. He had
seen a stack of manuscript paper, however, in one of the drawers of the
bureau, and having shut the door and lit a cigarette he took some of the
sheets of long foolscap, ruled thirty four lines to the page, and sat
down to the business. This is what he said:
"Lady Rochester,
"I want you to read what follows carefully and not to form any
opinion on the matter till all the details are before you. This
document is not a letter in the strict sense of the term, it's more
in the nature of an invoice of the cargo of stupidity and bad luck,
which I, the writer, Victor Jones of Philadelphia, have been
freighted with by an all-wise Providence for its own
incomprehensible ends."
Providence held him up for a moment. Was Providence neuter or
masculine?--he risked it and left it neuter and continued.
When the servant announced luncheon he had covered twenty sheets of
paper and had only arrived at the American bar of the Savoy.
He went to luncheon, swallowed a whiting and half a cutlet, and
returned.
He sat down, read what he had written, and tore it across.
That would never do. It was like the vast prelude to a begging letter.
She would never read it through.
He started again, beginning this time in the American bar of the Savoy,
writing very carefully. He had reached, by tea-time, the reading of
Rochester's death in the paper.
Well satisfied with his progress he took afternoon tea, and then sat
down comfortably to read what he had written.
He was aghast with the result. The things that had happened to him were
believable because they had happened to him, but in cold writing they
had an air of falsity. She would never believe this yarn. He tore the
sheets across. Then he burned all he had written in the grate, took his
seat in the armchair and began to think of the devil.
Surely there was something diabolical in the whole of this business and
the manner in which everything and every circumstance headed him off
from escape. After dinner he was sitting down to attempt a literary
forlorn hope, when a sharp voice in the hall made him pause.
The door opened, and Venetia Birdbrook entered. She wore a new hat that
seemed bigger than the one he had last beheld and her manner was wild.
She shut the door, walked to the table, placed her parasol on it and
began peeling off a glove.
"She's gone," said Venetia.
Jones had risen to his feet.
"Who's gone?"
"Teresa--gone with Maniloff."
He sat down. Then she blazed out.
"Are you going to do nothing--are you going to sit there and let us all
be disgraced? She's gone--she's going--to Paris. It was through her maid
I learned it; she's gone from the hotel by this--gone with Maniloff--are
you deaf or simply stupid? You _must_ follow her."
He rose.
"Follow her now, follow her and get her back, there is just a chance.
They are going to the Bristol. The maid told everything--I will go with
you. There is a train at nine o'clock from Victoria, you have only just
time to catch it."
"I have no money," said Jones, feeling in his pockets distractedly,
"only about four pounds."
"I have," replied she, "and our car is at the door--are you afraid, or
is it that you don't mind?"
"Come on," said Jones.
He rushed into the hall, seized a hat and overcoat, and next minute was
buried in a stuffy limousine with Venetia's sharp elbow poking him in
the side.
He was furious.
There are people who seem born for the express purpose of setting other
people by the ears. Venetia was one of them. Despite Voles, Mulhausen,
debts and want of balance one might hazard the opinion that it was
Venetia who had driven the unfortunate Rochester to his mad act.
The prospect of a journey to Paris with this woman in pursuit of another
man's wife was bad enough, but it was not this prospect that made Jones
furious, though assisting. No doubt, it was Venetia herself.
She raised the devil in him, and on the journey to the station, though
she said not a word, she managed to raise his exasperation with the
world, herself, himself and his vile position to the limit just below
the last.--The last was to come.
At the station they walked through the crowd to the booking-office where
Venetia bought the tickets. Reminiscences of being taken on journeys as
a small boy by his mother flitted across the mind of Jones and did not
improve his temper.
He looked at the clock. It wanted twenty minutes of the starting time
and he was in the act of evading a barrow of luggage when Venetia
arrived with the tickets.
It had come into the mind of Jones that not only was he travelling to
Paris with the Hon. Venetia Birdbrook, in pursuit of the wife of another
man, but that they were travelling without luggage. If, in Philadelphia,
he had dreamt of himself in such a position he would have been disturbed
as to the state of his health and the condition of his liver, yet now,
in reality, the thing did not seem preposterous, he was concerned as to
the fact about the want of luggage.
"Look here," said he, "what are we to do--I haven't even a night-suit
of pyjamas. I haven't even a toothbrush. No hotel will take us in."
"We don't want an hotel," said Venetia, "we'll come back straight if we
can save Teresa. If not, if she insists in pursuing her mad course, you
had better not come back at all. Come on and let us take our places in
the train."
They moved away and she continued.
"For if she does you will never be able to hold up your head again,
everyone knows how you have behaved to her."
"Oh, stop it," said he irritably. "I have enough to think about."
"You ought to."
Only just those three words, yet they set him off.
"Ought I? Well, what of yourself? She told me last night things about
_you_."
"About me. What things?"
"Never mind."
"But I do," she stopped and he stopped.
"I mind very much. What things did she tell you?"
"Nothing much, only that you worried the life out of her, and that
though I was bad you were worse."
Venetia sniffed. She was just turning to resume her way to the train
when she stopped dead like a pointer.
"That's them," she said, in a hard, tense whisper.
Jones looked.
A veiled lady accompanied by a bearded man, with a folded umbrella under
his arm and following a porter laden with wraps and small luggage, were
making their way through the crowd towards the train.
The veil did not hide her from him. He knew at once it was she.
It was then that Venetia's effect upon him acted as the contents of the
white-paper acts when emptied into the tumbler that holds the
blue-paper-half of the seidlitz powder.
Venetia saw his face.
"Don't make a scene," she cried.
That was the stirring of the spoon.
He rushed up to the bearded man and caught him by the arm. The bearded
one turned sharply and pushed him away. He was a big man; he looked a
powerful man. Dressed up as a conquering hero he would have played the
part to perfection, the sort of man women adore for their "power" and
manliness. He had a cigarette between his thick, red, bearded lips.
Jones wasn't much to look at, but he had practised at odd times at Joe
Hennessy's, otherwise known as Ike Snidebaum, of Spring Garden Street,
Philadelphia, and he had the fighting pluck of a badger.
He struck out, missed, got a drum sounder in on the left ribs, right
under the uplifted umbrella arm and the raised umbrella--and then--swift
as light got in an upper cut on the whiskers under the left side of the
jaw.
The umbrella man sat down, as men sit when chairs are pulled from under
them, then, shouting for help--that was the humorous and pitiable part
of it--scrambled on to his feet instantly to be downed again.
Then he lay on his back with arms out, pretending to be mortally
injured.
The whole affair lasted only fifteen seconds.
You can fancy the scene.
Jones looked round. Venetia and the criminal, having seen the
display--and at the National Sporting Club you often pay five pounds to
see worse--were moving away together through the throng, the floored one
with arms still out, was murmuring: "Brandee--brandee," into the ear of
a kneeling porter, and a station policeman was at Jones' side.
Jones took him apart a few steps.
"I am the Earl of Rochester," said he, in a half whisper. "That guy has
got what he wanted--never mind what he was doing--kick the beast awake
and ask him if he wants to prosecute."
The constable came and stood over the head end of the sufferer, who was
now leaning on one arm.
"Do you want to prosecute this gentleman?" asked the constable.
"Nichévo," murmured the other. "No. Brandee."
"Thought so," said Jones. Then he walked away towards the entrance with
the constable.
"My address is Carlton House Terrace," said he. "When you get that chap
on his pins you can tell him to come there and I'll give him another
dose. Here's a sovereign for you."
"Thanks, your Lordship," said the guardian of the Peace, "you landed him
fine, I will say. I didn't see the beginning of the scrap, but I saw the
knock out--you won't have any more bother with him."
"I don't think so," said Jones.
He was elated, jubilant, a weight seemed lifted from his mind, all his
evil humour had vanished. The feel of those whiskers and the resisting
jaw was still with him, he had got one good blow in at circumstance and
the world. He could have sung. He was coming out of the station when
someone ran up from behind.
It was Venetia. Venetia, delirious and jabbering.
"Teresa is in the car--You have done it now--you have done it now. What
_made_ you do this awful thing? Are you mad? Here in the open
station--before everyone--you have h-h-heaped this last disgrace on
us--on _me_."
"Oh, shut up," said Jones.
He sighted the car, ran to it and opened the door. A whimpering bundle
in the corner stretched out hands as if to ward him off.
"Oh! oh! oh!" sighed and murmured the bundle.
Jones caught one of the hands, leaned in and kissed it. Then he turned
to Venetia who had followed him.
"Get in," he said.
She got in. He got in after her and closed the door. Venetia put her
head out of the window:
"Home," cried she to the chauffeur.
Jones said nothing till they had cleared the station precincts. Then he
began to talk in the darkness, addressing his remarks to both women in a
weird sort of monologue.
"All this is nothing," said he, "you must both forget it. When you hear
what I have to tell you to-morrow you won't bother to remember all this.
No one that counts saw that, they were all strangers and making for the
cars--I gave the officer a sovereign. What I have to say is this--I must
have a meeting of the whole family to-morrow, to-morrow morning. Not
about this affair, about something else, something entirely to do with
me. I have been trying to explain all day--tried to write it out but
couldn't. I have to tell you something that will simply knock you all
out of time."
Suddenly the sniffing bundle in the corner became articulate.
"I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to do it--I hate him--oh, Ju-Ju,
if you had not treated me so last night, I would never have done it,
never, never, never."
"I know," he replied, "but it was not my fault leaving you like that. I
had to go. You will know everything to-morrow--when you hear all you
will very likely never speak to me again--though I am innocent enough,
Lord knows."
Then came Venetia's voice:
"This is new--Heaven _knows_ we have had disgrace enough--what else is
going to fall on us?--Why put it off till to-morrow--what new thing have
you done?"
Before Jones could reply, the warm hearted bundle in the corner ceased
sniffing and turned on Venetia.
"No matter what he has done, you are his sister and you have no right to
accuse him."
"Accuse him!" cried the outraged Venetia.
"Yes, accuse him; you don't say it, but you feel it. I believe you'd be
glad in some wicked way if he had done anything really terrible."
Venetia made a noise like the sound emitted by a choking hen.
Teresa had put her finger on the spot.
Venetia was not a wicked woman, she was something nearly as bad, a
Righteous woman, one of the Ever-judges. The finding out of other
people's sins gave her pleasure.
Before she could reply articulately, Jones interposed; an idea had
suddenly entered his practical mind.
"Good heavens," said he, "what has become of your luggage?"
"I don't know and I don't care," replied the roused one, "let it go with
the rest."
The car drew up.
"You will stay with us to-night, I suppose," said Venetia coldly.
"I suppose so," replied the other.
Jones got out.
"I will call here to-morrow morning at nine o'clock," said he. "I want
the whole family present."--Then, to the unfortunate wife of the defunct
Rochester--"Don't worry about what took place this evening. It was all
my fault. You will think differently about me when you hear all in the
morning."
She sighed and passed up the steps following Venetia like a woman in a
dream. When the door closed on them he took the number of the house,
then at the street corner he looked at the name of the street. It was
Curzon street. Then he walked home.
Come what might he had done a good evening's work. More than ever did he
feel the charm of this woman, her loyalty, her power of honest love.
What a woman! and what a fate!
It was at this moment, whilst walking home to Carlton House Terrace,
that the true character of Rochester appeared before him in a new and
lurid light.
Up to this Rochester had appeared to him mad, tricky, irresponsible, but
up to this he had not clearly seen the villainy of Rochester. The woman
showed it. Rochester had picked up a stranger, because of the mutual
likeness, and sent him home to play his part, hoping, no doubt, to have
a ghastly hit at his family. What about his wife? He had either never
thought of her, or he had not cared.
And such a wife!
"That fellow ought to be dug up and--cremated," said Jones to himself as
he opened the door with his latch key. "He ought, sure. Well, I hope
I'll cremate his reputation to-morrow."
Having smoked a cigar he went upstairs and to bed.
He had been trying to think of how he would open the business on the
morrow, of what he would say to start with--then he gave up the attempt,
determining to leave everything to the inspiration of the moment.