Darkness was falling, and Jim, whose heart was in his boots, was
beginning to feel cold in spite of the mildness of the day, when
Smiley-face made his appearance, touching his forelock ingratiatingly.
“I been a long time, sir,” he explained, “but you know what that there
Ted Barnes is. Slow to talk and wanting a power of persuading. But I got
the address from ’im: ’ere it is, wrote on this paper.”
He handed Jim a slip of paper, upon which the address of a Kensington
hotel was written. He was grinning triumphantly, as though he had
performed some great service for his friend.
“Good lad,” said Jim. “That’s very smart of you. I say, Smiley: I’ve had
the deuce of a time while you were in the village. I met my wife!”
The poacher smiled from ear to ear. “O Lordee!” he chuckled. “I reckon
that ’ud give her a bit of a turn, like.”
Jim told him something of what had occurred, but Smiley’s attitude of
frank amusement caused him to cut the story short; and it was not long
before he brought the interview to an end.
As they shook hands at the edge of the wood, Smiley suddenly paused and
raised his finger. “Did you hear anything?” he asked.
“No,” said Jim, after listening for a few moments.
“Thought I heard a step,” the poacher went on. “There’s a heap o’ tramps
about these days. I seen ’em in the woods sometimes, but I don’t allow no
one to poach there except me....”
He was in a loquacious mood, and Jim found it necessary to make a
resolute interruption of the flow of his words by shaking him warmly by
the hand once more and setting off down the dark lane in the direction of
Oxford.
He reached London, somewhat dazed, in time for dinner, and by nine
o’clock he was driving out to Kensington to pay a visit to Mrs. Darling.
Now that Dolly knew that he was alive, it would be as well for him to
enlist the services of her mother as soon as possible. He could, perhaps,
make it worth her while to aid him in regard to the divorce.
Upon arriving at the small private hotel where she was staying he was
shown into an unoccupied sitting-room.
“What name, sir?” asked the page.
“Mr. Tundering-West,” said Jim, apprehensive of the jolt the announcement
would cause, but feeling that since a shock could not be avoided, it
would be better for her to receive it before she entered the room.
He had not long to wait: after a few minutes of uncomfortable fiddling
with his hat, Mrs. Darling suddenly bounced in, as though she had been
kicked from behind. Then, with astonished eyes fixed on Jim, she shut the
door and stood staring at him in complete silence.
“Yes,” he said, nervously smiling, “it’s me, Mrs. Darling!”
“Good gracious!” she gasped. “Jim! You—you—you lunatic! What on earth
are you doing in the land of the living? You’re supposed to be dead and
buried.”
“No, not buried,” he corrected her. “I was knifed, you remember, and
dropped into the sea.”
She passed her hand across her forehead. “You mean you swam back home?”
Her voice was awed.
“Something like that,” he laughed. “Anyway, here I am; and I’ve come to
you to ask what I’m to do next. I’ve just had a talk with Dolly.”
Mrs. Darling threw up her hands, and therewith she set about his
cross-examination, asking him a number of questions in regard to his
life, and receiving a number of evasive replies. “My good man,” she said
at length, “do you realize that Dolly is an established widow, on the
look out, in fact, for another husband? Do you realize that we’ve had a
solemn memorial service for you, and put a tablet up in the church?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” he answered. “It made me blush for shame.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” she said. “You may well be ashamed that you
have fallen so far short of the virtues attributed to you. I always think
it is such a wonderful thing in nature that the only creatures who can
blush are the only creatures who have occasion to.”
Considering that it was her daughter’s future which was at stake, Mrs.
Darling seemed to Jim to be treating matters very lightly.
“Do you realize,” she went on, her voice rising, “that your will has been
read, and Dolly owns every penny you had, and gives me three hundred
pounds a year allowance?”
“Only three hundred?” he remarked. “That’s mean. I’ll give you four.”
“It’s not yours to give,” she answered. “You’re dead—dead as mutton. You
can’t play fast and loose with death like that, you know. When you’re
murdered, you’re murdered, and there’s an end of it. It would make things
absolutely impossible if people could go popping in and out of their
graves like you are doing. Surely you can see that. What did Dolly say?”
“Oh, she was very upset,” he told her. “She stormed at me and called me
every name under the sun; said she had always hated me; told me she was
going to marry George Merrivall.”
“Well, what else did you expect? She says you ill-treated her horribly.”
“That’s a lie,” said Jim, sharply.
“Yes, so I told her,” Mrs. Darling replied. “I know you. You’re perfectly
mad, but I always felt you were very decent to Dolly, considering what a
little fraud she is.”
“Anyhow, I don’t mind her saying I ill-treated her,” he added, “if that’s
any use for the purpose of our divorce.”
“Divorce?” cried Mrs. Darling. “Do you want her to divorce you? What for?”
“So that I can be quit of her, and marry again if I find the right woman.”
Mrs. Darling held up her hands. “What sublime courage! But you mustn’t
let marriage become a habit, for the divorce courts are very slow, you
know. I have a woman friend who is already three marriages ahead of her
divorces. I should have thought that a man like you, who is something of
a philosopher and thinker, would now shun marriage like the plague. But I
suppose even the cleverest men.... There is the famous case of Socrates,
who died of an overdose of wedlock.”
“Hemlock,” he corrected her.
“Ah, yes, to be sure. Perhaps it is simply your youth: you still look
very young, in spite of your recent death. I remember, in the days before
my bright future had resolved itself into a shady past, I, too, was an
optimist about marriage. But I was soon cured. So long as he liked me,
my husband was so terribly jealous of me. It was quite intolerable.
He would not even let my eyes wander from him. Why, I remember once
turning my head away from him for a moment because I had hiccups, and
being instantly cured by his seizing my throat in a consequent fit of
passion.... Were you ever jealous of Dolly?”
“No,” said Jim; “and this afternoon I saw her making love to George
Merrivall without any feeling except annoyance with myself for ever
having believed in her.”
“Poor Dolly,” sighed her mother. “I am devoted to her, as you know; but I
do realize her faults, and I know what you had to put up with.”
For some time they discussed the possibilities of divorce, and Mrs.
Darling was frankly business-like in regard to the financial side of the
affair.
“Of course,” she said, “it is very hard to do business with you, my dear
Jim, because you are an honest man. I prefer dealing with crooks. It is
so simple, because you always know that at some stage of the game they
are going to try to trip you up. But with honest men, you never know what
they’ll do next.”
The upshot of their conversation was an understanding that Mrs. Darling
should go down next day to Eversfield and win her daughter over to the
idea of divorce; and, this being arranged, he rose to go.
“Good-bye,” he said, warmly shaking her hand. “I can’t begin to thank you
for your kindness, and generosity of mind.”
“Oh, nonsense!” she laughed. “I’m just a scheming old woman, Jim. As I’ve
often told you, I’d sell my soul for an income; and in this case it is
obvious that, since you are alive, you hold the family purse-strings.
That’s why I am nice to you.”
“I don’t believe it,” he answered.
“Well, anyway,” she said, “I wish you well, dead or alive. Good-bye, my
dear. May you be with the rich in this world and with the poor in the
world to come.”
Jim arrived back at his hotel in a somewhat happier frame of mind, and
went at once to his bedroom, tired after the adventures of the day. When
he was in bed, however, he found that sleep had deserted him; and for
some time he lay on his back, vainly endeavouring to quell the turbulence
of the mob of his thoughts. The figure of Dolly kept presenting itself to
his mind, and his inward ears heard her voice continuously railing at him
and reproaching him.
Her pretty, silly little face seemed to push in upon his thoughts
of Monimé; and suddenly he sat up, scared by the vividness of the
impression, and wondering whether it were some sort of portent of coming
calamity in regard to the new life for which he hoped so passionately. He
switched on the light, and, kicking off the bedclothes, went across to
the washstand and poured himself out a dose of whisky from his flask. The
radiator was too hot, and the room felt stuffy; but, throwing open the
window, a blast of cold air and wet sleet searched him to the skin, and
obliged him to shut it again.
“Oh, what a God-forsaken country!” he muttered; and therewith fetched
his guitar from its case, and sitting cross-legged upon the bed in his
pyjamas, began twanging the strings and singing old songs in a minor key
which sounded like dirges for the dead. The music soothed him, and soon
he was pouring his whole heart into the melodies, oblivious to all around
him. They were songs of love now, and as he sang his thoughts went out
over the seas to Cairo where Monimé at this moment was probably lying
asleep in her bed, her black hair spread upon the pillow.
There was a sharp knock upon the door. “Come in,” he called out, pausing
in his song, but remaining seated upon the bed, with his fingers upon the
strings of his guitar.
A red-faced, grey-moustached man of military appearance stumped into the
room, clad in a brown dressing-gown. “Confound you, sir!” he roared. “If
you don’t put that damned banjo away and go to bed, I’ll ring for the
manager.”
“What’s it to do with you?” Jim asked, twanging the strings dreamily.
“It’s disturbing the whole hotel,” he answered. “Nobody can get a wink of
sleep with that blasted noise going on. Damn it, sir!—have you no sense
of duty to your neighbour?”
The question hit home: once again he had been proved wanting in
consideration. “I’m most awfully sorry,” he said, with genuine
contrition. “I’d clean forgotten I was in a hotel. Please forgive me.
Have a whisky and soda? Have a cigar?”
His visitor did not deign to reply. He stared at Jim with hot, scowling
eyes, and then, making a contemptuous gesture, left the room again,
slamming the door after him.
“Well, that’s that,” Jim muttered, thereafter returning to bed, annoyed
with himself and distressed that he should have caused annoyance to
others. “What a swine I am,” he thought.
Matthew Arnold’s lines:—
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be....
came into his brain, and gloomily he repeated them half aloud. Would
Monimé marry him? Or would she, too, find him impossible? What a mess he
had made of his life! Perhaps Dolly had been justified in her dislike of
him.
With such thoughts as these he at last fell off to sleep.
Next morning, after breakfast, he picked up a newspaper in the
smoking-room, and for some minutes read the foreign news without much
interest. Then suddenly a set of headlines caught his attention, and
caused him to sit up, aghast, in his chair. The printed words swayed
before his eyes as he read the appalling news.
“Last night,” the story began, “the body of Mrs. Dorothy Tundering-West,
widow of the late James Tundering-West, of the Manor, Eversfield, near
Oxford, was found in a wood adjoining the grounds of the Manor. The back
of the skull was smashed in, probably by a blow from a large stone which
was found near by with bloodstains upon it. Mrs. West had been missing
since four o’clock in the afternoon, and medical evidence indicates that
death must have occurred at about that hour....”
With desperate haste his eyes travelled down the column. There was
no doubt that she had been murdered, said the report, but the thick
carpeting of damp leaves upon the ground had retained no impression of
the offender’s footprints. She was lying on her face, and a second wound
upon her forehead was probably caused by her fall. The motive was not
apparent, for there had been no robbery, and there were no signs of a
struggle.
The police, he read, attached some significance to the presence of a man
of foreign appearance who was seen in the early afternoon picking berries
from a hedge in the neighbourhood. In this connection it was recalled
that Mr. Tundering-West had died by the hand of an assassin in Italy only
a few months ago, and it was possible that the two crimes were both the
outcome of some secret vendetta. What had induced the unfortunate lady to
go into the woods was a mystery, and perhaps indicated that she had been
lured to her doom.
Jim’s first emotions were those of extreme horror at the crime, and pity
for Dolly. The manner of her death appalled him; and though he was not
conscious of any binding relationship to her, the catastrophe of her
murder swept across his being like a fierce wind, as it were, uprooting
the plantations of his overstocked brain, or like a breaking wave
thundering on to the shingle of his multitudinous thoughts.
It was fortunate that he was alone in the smoking-room, for his agitation
was such that his exclamations were uttered audibly, and soon he was
pacing the floor, the newspaper crumpled in his hand. It seemed to be
his fate that the crises of his life should be announced to him through
the columns of the daily Press. In this manner he had read of his
inheritance, of his supposed murder at Pisa, and now of the death of his
wife. It was as though roguish powers had selected him as a victim on
whom thus to spring surprises.
Who could have committed the crime? The thought of Smiley-face came
immediately to his mind, but was as quickly dismissed again. The poacher,
he knew, had been busy in the village getting Mrs. Darling’s address from
the postman; and, moreover, his behaviour when they had met again clearly
proclaimed his innocence. Possibly some tramp had been lurking in the
woods, as Smiley had suspected, and Dolly had been assaulted by him as
she ran from Jim. He remembered now with awe the sudden silence which had
followed her loud flight through the crackling undergrowth.
The wretched Merrivall, he realized, would have to keep his movements
well hidden; for if it were known that he had been in the woods with
Dolly he would most assuredly be suspected, motive or no motive. If
anybody had seen him running across the manor garden on his way to the
forgotten whist-drive it would go hard with him.
Suddenly, following this thought, came the awful realization of his own
peril. He, Jim, was the last man to see her alive; and in his own case a
motive would not be lacking. Smiley-face would be certain to suspect him,
and by some mistake might give the secret away.
And then—Mrs. Darling! She knew he had seen Dolly in the woods, she knew
they had quarrelled violently! Of course, she would accuse him! The
thought blared at him like a discordant trumpet, proclaiming his guilt to
the world, while his heart drummed a wild accompaniment.
In bewilderment he ran blindly up the stairs to his bedroom and locked
the door behind him.