To keep from any woman who loves, knowledge of her lover's mood, is as
hard as to keep music from moving the heart. But when that woman has
lived in suffering, and for the first time knows the comfort of love,
then let the lover try as he may to disguise his heart--no use! Yet by
virtue of subtler abnegation she will often succeed in keeping it from
him that she knows.
When Keith was gone the girl made no outcry, asked no questions, managed
that Larry should not suspect her intuition; all that evening she acted
as if she knew of nothing preparing within him, and through him, within
herself.
His words, caresses, the very zest with which he helped her to prepare
the feast, the flowers he had brought, the wine he made her drink, the
avoidance of any word which could spoil their happiness, all--all told
her. He was too inexorably gay and loving. Not for her--to whom every
word and every kiss had uncannily the desperate value of a last word
and kiss--not for her to deprive herself of these by any sign or gesture
which might betray her prescience. Poor soul--she took all, and would
have taken more, a hundredfold. She did not want to drink the wine he
kept tilting into her glass, but, with the acceptance learned by women
who have lived her life, she did not refuse. She had never refused
him anything. So much had been required of her by the detestable, that
anything required by a loved one was but an honour.
Laurence drank deeply; but he had never felt clearer, never seen things
more clearly. The wine gave him what he wanted, an edge to these few
hours of pleasure, an exaltation of energy. It dulled his sense of pity,
too. It was pity he was afraid of--for himself, and for this girl.
To make even this tawdry room look beautiful, with firelight and
candlelight, dark amber wine in the glasses, tall pink lilies spilling
their saffron, exuding their hot perfume he and even himself must look
their best. And with a weight as of lead on her heart, she managed that
for him, letting him strew her with flowers and crush them together with
herself. Not even music was lacking to their feast. Someone was playing
a pianola across the street, and the sound, very faint, came stealing
when they were silent--swelling, sinking, festive, mournful; having a
far-off life of its own, like the flickering fire-flames before which
they lay embraced, or the lilies delicate between the candles. Listening
to that music, tracing with his finger the tiny veins on her breast, he
lay like one recovering from a swoon. No parting. None! But sleep, as
the firelight sleeps when flames die; as music sleeps on its deserted
strings.
And the girl watched him.
It was nearly ten when he bade her go to bed. And after she had gone
obedient into the bedroom, he brought ink and paper down by the fire.
The drifter, the unstable, the good-for-nothing--did not falter. He had
thought, when it came to the point, he would fail himself; but a sort
of rage bore him forward. If he lived on, and confessed, they would shut
him up, take from him the one thing he loved, cut him off from her; sand
up his only well in the desert. Curse them! And he wrote by firelight
which mellowed the white sheets of paper; while, against the dark
curtain, the girl, in her nightgown, unconscious of the cold, stood
watching.
Men, when they drown, remember their pasts. Like the lost poet he had
“gone with the wind.” Now it was for him to be true in his fashion. A
man may falter for weeks and weeks, consciously, subconsciously, even in
his dreams, till there comes that moment when the only thing impossible
is to go on faltering. The black cap, the little driven grey man looking
up at it with a sort of wonder--faltering had ceased!
He had finished now, and was but staring into the fire.
“No more, no more, the moon is dead,
And all the people in it;
The poppy maidens strew the bed,
We'll come in half a minute.”
Why did doggerel start up in the mind like that? Wanda! The weed-flower
become so rare he would not be parted from her! The fire, the candles,
and the fire--no more the flame and flicker!
And, by the dark curtain, the girl watched.
X
Keith went, not home, but to his club; and in the room devoted to the
reception of guests, empty at this hour, he sat down and read the report
of the trial. The fools had made out a case that looked black enough.
And for a long time, on the thick soft carpet which let out no sound
of footfall, he paced up and down, thinking. He might see the defending
counsel, might surely do that as an expert who thought there had been
miscarriage of justice. They must appeal; a petition too might be
started in the last event. The thing could--must be put right yet, if
only Larry and that girl did nothing!
He had no appetite, but the custom of dining is too strong. And while he
ate, he glanced with irritation at his fellow-members. They looked so at
their ease. Unjust--that this black cloud should hang over one blameless
as any of them! Friends, connoisseurs of such things--a judge among
them--came specially to his table to express their admiration of his
conduct of that will case. Tonight he had real excuse for pride, but he
felt none. Yet, in this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with
decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some
comfort. This surely was reality; that shadowy business out there only
the drear sound of a wind one must and did keep out--like the poverty
and grime which had no real existence for the secure and prosperous. He
drank champagne. It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows seem more
shadowy. And down in the smoking-room he sat before the fire, in one of
those chairs which embalm after-dinner dreams. He grew sleepy there, and
at eleven o'clock rose to go home. But when he had once passed down the
shallow marble steps, out through the revolving door which let in no
draughts, he was visited by fear, as if he had drawn it in with the
breath of the January wind. Larry's face; and the girl watching it! Why
had she watched like that? Larry's smile; and the flowers in his hand?
Buying flowers at such a moment! The girl was his slave-whatever he told
her, she would do. But she would never be able to stop him. At this very
moment he might be rushing to give himself up!
His hand, thrust deep into the pocket of his fur coat, came in contact
suddenly with something cold. The keys Larry had given him all that time
ago. There they had lain forgotten ever since. The chance touch decided
him. He turned off towards Borrow Street, walking at full speed. He
could but go again and see. He would sleep better if he knew that he had
left no stone unturned. At the corner of that dismal street he had to
wait for solitude before he made for the house which he now loathed with
a deadly loathing. He opened the outer door and shut it to behind him.
He knocked, but no one came. Perhaps they had gone to bed. Again and
again he knocked, then opened the door, stepped in, and closed it
carefully. Candles lighted, the fire burning; cushions thrown on the
floor in front of it and strewn with flowers! The table, too, covered
with flowers and with the remnants of a meal. Through the half-drawn
curtain he could see that the inner room was also lighted. Had they gone
out, leaving everything like this? Gone out! His heart beat. Bottles!
Larry had been drinking!
Had it really come? Must he go back home with this murk on him; knowing
that his brother was a confessed and branded murderer? He went quickly,
to the half-drawn curtains and looked in. Against the wall he saw a bed,
and those two in it. He recoiled in sheer amazement and relief. Asleep
with curtains undrawn, lights left on? Asleep through all his knocking!
They must both be drunk. The blood rushed up in his neck. Asleep! And
rushing forward again, he called out: “Larry!” Then, with a gasp he went
towards the bed. “Larry!” No answer! No movement! Seizing his brother's
shoulder, he shook it violently. It felt cold. They were lying in each
other's arms, breast to breast, lips to lips, their faces white in the
light shining above the dressing-table. And such a shudder shook Keith
that he had to grasp the brass rail above their heads. Then he bent
down, and wetting his finger, placed it close to their joined lips. No
two could ever swoon so utterly as that; not even a drunken sleep could
be so fast. His wet finger felt not the faintest stir of air, nor was
there any movement in the pulses of their hands. No breath! No life! The
eyes of the girl were closed. How strangely innocent she looked! Larry's
open eyes seemed to be gazing at her shut eyes; but Keith saw that they
were sightless. With a sort of sob he drew down the lids. Then, by
an impulse that he could never have explained, he laid a hand on his
brother's head, and a hand on the girl's fair hair. The clothes had
fallen down a little from her bare shoulder; he pulled them up, as if
to keep her warm, and caught the glint of metal; a tiny gilt crucifix
no longer than a thumbnail, on a thread of steel chain, had slipped down
from her breast into the hollow of the arm which lay round Larry's neck.
Keith buried it beneath the clothes and noticed an envelope pinned to
the coverlet; bending down, he read: “Please give this at once to the
police.--LAURENCE DARRANT.” He thrust it into his pocket. Like
elastic stretched beyond its uttermost, his reason, will, faculties
of calculation and resolve snapped to within him. He thought with
incredible swiftness: 'I must know nothing of this. I must go!' And,
almost before he knew that he had moved, he was out again in the street.
He could never have told of what he thought while he was walking home.
He did not really come to himself till he was in his study. There, with
a trembling hand, he poured himself out whisky and drank it off. If he
had not chanced to go there, the charwoman would have found them when
she came in the morning, and given that envelope to the police! He took
it out. He had a right--a right to know what was in it! He broke it
open.
“I, Laurence Darrant, about to die by my own hand, declare that this
is a solemn and true confession. I committed what is known as the Glove
Lane Murder on the night of November the 27th last in the following
way”--on and on to the last words--“We didn't want to die; but we could
not bear separation, and I couldn't face letting an innocent man be
hung for me. I do not see any other way. I beg that there may be no
postmortem on our bodies. The stuff we have taken is some of that which
will be found on the dressing-table. Please bury us together.
“LAURENCE DARRANT.
“January the 28th, about ten o'clock p.m.”
Full five minutes Keith stood with those sheets of paper in his hand,
while the clock ticked, the wind moaned a little in the trees outside,
the flames licked the logs with the quiet click and ruffle of their
intense far-away life down there on the hearth. Then he roused himself,
and sat down to read the whole again.
There it was, just as Larry had told it to him-nothing left out, very
clear; even to the addresses of people who could identify the girl as
having once been Walenn's wife or mistress. It would convince. Yes! It
would convince.
The sheets dropped from his hand. Very slowly he was grasping the
appalling fact that on the floor beside his chair lay the life or death
of yet another man; that by taking this confession he had taken into his
own hands the fate of the vagabond lying under sentence of death; that
he could not give him back his life without incurring the smirch of this
disgrace, without even endangering himself. If he let this confession
reach the authorities, he could never escape the gravest suspicion that
he had known of the whole affair during these two months. He would have
to attend the inquest, be recognised by that policeman as having come to
the archway to see where the body had lain, as having visited the
girl the very evening after the murder. Who would believe in the mere
coincidence of such visits on the part of the murderer's brother. But
apart from that suspicion, the fearful scandal which so sensational an
affair must make would mar his career, his life, his young daughter's
life! Larry's suicide with this girl would make sensation enough as it
was; but nothing to that other. Such a death had its romance; involved
him in no way save as a mourner, could perhaps even be hushed up! The
other--nothing could hush that up, nothing prevent its ringing to the
house-tops. He got up from his chair, and for many minutes roamed the
room unable to get his mind to bear on the issue. Images kept starting
up before him. The face of the man who handed him wig and gown each
morning, puffy and curious, with a leer on it he had never noticed
before; his young daughter's lifted eyebrows, mouth drooping, eyes
troubled; the tiny gilt crucifix glinting in the hollow of the dead
girl's arm; the sightless look in Larry's unclosed eyes; even his own
thumb and finger pulling the lids down. And then he saw a street and
endless people passing, turning to stare at him. And, stopping in his
tramp, he said aloud: “Let them go to hell! Seven days' wonder!” Was he
not trustee to that confession! Trustee! After all he had done nothing
to be ashamed of, even if he had kept knowledge dark. A brother! Who
could blame him? And he picked up those sheets of paper. But, like
a great murky hand, the scandal spread itself about him; its coarse
malignant voice seemed shouting: “Paiper!... Paiper!... Glove Lane
Murder!... Suicide and confession of brother of well-known K.C.....
Well-known K.C.'. brother.... Murder and suicide.... Paiper!” Was he
to let loose that flood of foulness? Was he, who had done nothing, to
smirch his own little daughter's life; to smirch his dead brother, their
dead mother--himself, his own valuable, important future? And all for
a sewer rat! Let him hang, let the fellow hang if he must! And that was
not certain. Appeal! Petition! He might--he should be saved! To have got
thus far, and then, by his own action, topple himself down!
With a sudden darting movement he thrust the confession in among the
burning coals. And a smile licked at the folds in his dark face,
like those flames licking the sheets of paper, till they writhed and
blackened. With the toe of his boot he dispersed their scorched and
crumbling wafer. Stamp them in! Stamp in that man's life! Burnt! No more
doubts, no more of this gnawing fear! Burnt? A man--an innocent-sewer
rat! Recoiling from the fire he grasped his forehead. It was burning hot
and seemed to be going round.
Well, it was done! Only fools without will or purpose regretted. And
suddenly he laughed. So Larry had died for nothing! He had no will,
no purpose, and was dead! He and that girl might now have been living,
loving each other in the warm night, away at the other end of the
world, instead of lying dead in the cold night here! Fools and weaklings
regretted, suffered from conscience and remorse. A man trod firmly, held
to his purpose, no matter what!
He went to the window and drew back the curtain. What was that? A gibbet
in the air, a body hanging? Ah! Only the trees--the dark trees--the
winter skeleton trees! Recoiling, he returned to his armchair and sat
down before the fire. It had been shining like that, the lamp turned
low, his chair drawn up, when Larry came in that afternoon two months
ago. Bah! He had never come at all! It was a nightmare. He had been
asleep. How his head burned! And leaping up, he looked at the calendar
on his bureau. “January the 28th!” No dream! His face hardened and
darkened. On! Not like Larry! On! 1914.