Lying in bed he made up his mind to go down to Margery the following
Tuesday. But Margery, too, had been making up her mind. She wired at
lunch time, and arrived herself at tea. She was tired, she said, of
living alone in her Paradise. But she did not scold or question or worry
him; so glad she was to be at home again with her Stephen. Stephen also
was very glad, astonishingly glad, he felt. He greeted her and kissed
her with a tender warmth which surprised them both. This sudden
home-coming of his wife, of chattering Joan and bubbling Michael and
comfortable old Nurse, and all that atmosphere of staid domesticity
which they brought with them into the house seemed to set an opportune
seal on his new resolutions, on the final renunciation which he had made
last night. It was the one thing he wanted, he felt, to confirm him in
virtue.
He took little Joan into the garden to see the rabbits. She was two and
a half now, a bright and spirited child, with her mother's fairness and
fragile grace, and something of Stephen's vitality. She greeted with
delighted cries her old friends among the bunnies, Peter and Maud and
Henry, and all their endless progeny, little grey bunnies and yellow
bunnies and black bunnies and tiny little brown bunnies that were mere
scurrying balls of fur, coloured like a chestnut mare. The rabbit Peter
and the rabbit Maud ran out of their corners and sniffed at her ankles,
their noses twitching, as she stood in the sun. She stroked them and
squeezed them and kissed them, and they bore it patiently in the
expectation of food. But when they saw that she had no food, they
stamped petulantly with their hind legs and ran off. Then she laughed
her perfect inimitable laugh, and tried to coax the tiniest bunnies to
come to her with a piece of decayed cabbage; and they pattered towards
her in a doubtful crescent, their tiny noses twitching with the precise
velocity of their parents' noses, their ears cocked forward in
suspicion. When they had eddied back and forth for a little, like
playful children defying the sea, they saw that the bait was indeed a
rotten one, unworthy of the deed of daring which was asked of them, and
they scuttled finally away into corners, where they lay heaving with
their eyes slewed back, looking for danger. The rabbit Maud was annoyed
by the clatter they made, and, chased them impatiently about the run,
nipping them viciously at the back of their necks; and the rabbit Peter,
excited beyond bearing by the commotion, pursued the rabbit Maud as she
pursued their young. Then they all stopped suddenly to nibble
inconsequently at old bits of cabbage, or scratch their bellies, or
scrabble vainly on the stone floor, or stamp with venom in the hutches,
or lie full length and operate their noses. Little Joan loved them
whatever they did, and Stephen, listening and watching while she gurgled
and exclaimed, was sensible as he had never been before of the pride and
privilege of being a father. The sight of his daughter playing with the
young rabbits, young and playful and innocent as they, stirred him to an
appropriate and almost mawkish remorse. For the great writer who, by his
gifts of selection and restraint, can keep out from his writings all
sentimentality and false emotion, cannot by the same powers keep them
from his mind. Stephen Byrne, looking at innocence and thinking of his
own wickedness, forgot his proportions, forgot the balanced realism
which he put into everything he wrote, and swore to himself that by this
sight he was converted, that by this revelation of innocence, he, too,
would be innocent again.
So they began again the quiet routine of domestic content, and Margery
was very happy, putting out of her mind as an artist's madness the
strange failure of Stephen to join her in the country. In the third week
of September there were printed in the autumn number of a literary
Quarterly "Six Love-Songs," by Stephen Byrne, which he had sent in hot
haste to the editor on the morning of the Greenwich expedition. There
was printed above them the dedication "_To M._," and Margery as she read
them was touched and melted with a great tenderness and pride. She would
not speak of them to him, but she looked up, blushing, at the end of
them and said only "_Stephen!_" And Stephen cursed himself in a hot
shame for having thought them and written them and sent them to the
paper. But since she liked them so well, and appreciated them as Muriel
had never done, and since he persuaded himself that at this moment he
might have written the same songs to his wife, so tenderly did he think
of her now, he slowly came to forget the vicious squalor of their
origin; and in time, when literary friends spoke of them and
congratulated him (for they made a great stir) the shame had all gone,
and he answered with a virtuous and modest pride, as if indeed they had
been written to his wife--and so in fact he almost believed.
All September he worked steadily at the new poem. Very soon Margery
asked if she might read as much as he had written. And first he
hesitated, and then he said she might not.
Not till that moment did he realize the true character of what he was
doing. The idea of the poem was very simple. He had taken the base
history of his own life in this amazing summer, and was making of it a
romantic and glorious poem. Everything was there--Emily and his cruelty
to Emily and the chivalry of John Egerton and his treachery to John,
Margery, and Muriel, and his betrayal of both of them, and the second
treachery to John in the stealing of Muriel. They were all there, and
the deeds were there. But the names they bore were the names of old
knights and fine ladies, moving generously through an age of chivalry
and gallant ways; and the deeds he had done were invested with so rich a
romance by the grace of and imagery and humanity of his verse, and by
the gracious atmosphere of knighthood and adventure and forest battles
which he wrapped about them, that they were beautiful. They were poetry.
Himself in the story was a brave and legendary figure, Gelert by name,
and Margery, the Princess, was his fair lady. And he had slain Emily by
mischance in a forest encounter with another knight. He had hidden her
body in a dark mysterious lake in the heart of the forest; this lake was
beautifully described. John, his faithful companion, was present and
helped him, and because of the honour in which he held the Princess, he
engaged to stay in the forest and do battle with the people of Emily if
they should discover the crime, while Gelert rode off on some secret
venture of an urgent and noble character. So John stayed, and was
grievously wounded. But Gelert rode off to the castle of John's love and
poisoned her mind against John, and wooed her and won her and flung her
away when he was tired of her; but she loved him still too well to love
any other from that day; and when John came to her she cast him out.
More, because he was the companion-at-arms of Gelert, and she would do
anything to wound Gelert, she sent word to the people of Emily that it
was John indeed who had slain Emily, and they sought him out and slew
him. But Gelert went home to his castle and swore great vows in passages
of amazing dignity, and was absolved from his sins, and ruled the land
for a long time in godly virtue, helping the weak and succouring the
oppressed. And so finely was all this presented that at the end of it
you felt but a conventional sympathy for the unfortunate John, while
Gelert remained in the mind as a mixed, but on the whole a knightly
character.
It was a lunatic excess of self-revelation, and Stephen was afraid of
it. Nothing would have persuaded him to modify in any way his artistic
purpose, and in his heart he flattered himself that the romantic
disguise of his story was strong enough to protect it from the
suggestion of reality. It would stand that test, he was sure. Yet he
was not sure--not at any rate just now, with the sordid facts still
fresh in his mind. Later, no doubt, when the thing was complete, and he
could polish and prune it as a whole, he would be able to make himself
absolutely safe. But just now, while the work was still shadowy and
formless, he shrank from risking the revelations it might convey. To
Margery most of all. Also, maybe, he was a little afraid that she would
laugh at him.
And Margery said nothing, but wondered to herself what it might mean.
* * * * *
John came home in the middle of September, and called the same evening
at the Tarrants' house. But he was told after a long wait that they were
not at home.
The next morning, as he walked to the station, he passed in the street a
parcel delivery van. On the front of it were the twin red posters of _I
Say_, a weekly organ of the sensational patriotic type. It was a paper
which did in fact a great deal of good in championing the cause of the
under-dog, yet at the same time impressing upon the under-dog the
highest constitutional principles. But it had to live. And it lived by
the weekly promises of sensation which blazed at the public from the red
posters all over England, and travelled everywhere on the front of
delivery vans and the backs of buses. There was seldom more than a
single sensation to each issue. But the very most was made of it by an
ingenious contrivance of the editor, who himself arranged the wording of
the posters; for each sensation he composed two and sometimes three
quite different posters, cunningly devised so that any man who saw all
three of them was as likely as not to buy the paper in the confident
belief that he was getting for his penny three separate sensations.
The two posters that John saw ran as follows: one "A CIVIL SERVANT'S
NAME," and the other "OUR ROTTEN DETECTIVES." At the station he saw
another one specially issued to the West London paper stalls--"MYSTERY
OF HAMMERTON CHASE." And at Charing Cross there was yet another--"WHO
OUGHT TO BE HANGED?"
John had no doubt of what he would find in the paper. He had wondered
often at the long quiescence of the Gaunt family. Clearly they had taken
their tale to the editor of _I Say_, and had probably been suitably
compensated for their trouble and expense in bringing to the notice of
the people's champion a shameful case of oppression and wrong.
So John walked on to the station with a strange feeling of lightness in
the head and pain in his heart. At Hammersmith there was no copy of _I
Say_ to be had; at Charing Cross he bought two. The week's sensation
was dealt with in a double-page article by the editor, diabolically
clever. It set out at length the sparse facts of "The Hammerton Mystery"
as revealed at the inquest, with obsequious references to "the genius of
Stephen Byrne, the poet and prophet of Younger England"; and it
contained some scathing comments on "the crass ineptitude of our
detective organization." But it attacked no person, it imputed nothing.
The sole concern of the editor was that "months have passed and a
hideous crime is yet unpunished. This poor girl went forth from her
father and mother, and the young man who had promised to share her life;
she went out into the world, innocent and fresh, to help her family in
the battle of life with the few poor shillings she could earn by menial
services in a strange house. It was not her fault that she was
attractive to a certain type of man; but that attraction was no doubt
her undoing. She took the fancy of some amorous profligate; she resisted
his unknightly attentions; she was done to death. Her body was consigned
in circumstances of the foulest indignity to a filthy grave in the river
ooze.
"We are entitled to ask--What are the police doing? The matter has faded
now from the public memory--has it faded from theirs? It is certain that
it has not faded in the loyal hearts of the Gaunt family. At the time of
the inquest the public were preoccupied with national events of the
first importance, and the murder did not excite the attention it
deserved. We have only too good reason to believe that our Criminal
Investigation mandarins, supine as ever until they are goaded to
activity by the spur of popular opinion, are taking advantage of that
circumstance to allow this piece of blackguardly wickedness to sink for
ever into oblivion. We do not intend that it should sink into oblivion,
etc. etc."
But in the tail of the article lay the personal sting, cleverly
concealed.
"But there is another aspect of this vile affair which we are compelled
to notice. While the family of the murdered girl are nursing silently
their broken hearts; while our inspectors and chief inspectors and
criminal investigators are enjoying their comfortable salaries, there is
a young man in Hammerton, a public servant of high character and
irreproachable antecedents, over whom a black cloud of suspicion is
hanging in connection with this crime. We cannot pretend that his
evidence at the inquest was wholly satisfactory either in substance or
in manner; it was shiftily given, and in the mind of any men less
incompetent than the local coroner and the local dunderheads who
composed the jury, would have raised questions of fundamental
importance. But we are confident that John Egerton is innocent; and we
say that it is a reproach to the whole system of British justice that he
should still be an object of ignorant suspicion owing to the failure of
the police-force to hound down the villain responsible for the crime.
"The fair name of a good citizen is at stake. It must be cleared."
At the office there were whisperings and curious looks; and John's
chiefs conferred in dismay on a position of delicacy that was unexampled
in their official experience.
John went home early, with his _I Say's_ crumpled in his pocket. And
there he found the Rev. Peter Tarrant striding about impatiently with a
copy open on the table before him. His head moved about like a great bat
just under the low roof; his jolly red face was as full of anger as it
could ever be.
"Look here, John," he roared, "what are you going to do about this--this
MUCK?"
"Nothing."
In truth he had thought little of what he was going to do; he had been
too angry and bewildered and ashamed. Only he had sworn vaguely to
himself that whatever happened he would stand by his old determination
to keep this business from Margery. And, now that the question was put
to him, the best way of doing that was clearly to do nothing. He began
to think of reasons for doing nothing.
The Rev. Peter thundered again, "_Nothing?_ But you _must_--you must
do--something." He stuttered with impotent rage and brought his fist
down on _I Say_ with a titanic force, so that the table jumped and the
wedgwood plate clattered on the dresser. "You can't sit down under this
sort of thing--you must bring an action--"
"Can't afford it; it would cost me a thousand if I won--and five
thousand if--if I lost."
"If you _lost_!" The Rev. Peter looked at him in wonder. John tried to
look him straight in the face, but his glance wavered in the shy
distress of an innocent man who suspects the beginnings of doubt in a
friend's mind.
"Yes--you know what a Law Court is--anything may happen--and I should
never make a good show in the witness box, if I stood there for ever."
"I don't care--you can't sit down under it. You'll lose your job, won't
you--for one thing?"
"No--I don't know--I can't help it if I do."
"Well, if you don't lose that you'll lose Muriel." The Rev. Peter
lowered his voice. "Look here, I want you two to fix things up. I've
just been to see her--she looks unhappy--she's lonely, I believe, with
that damned old mother of hers. But you can't expect her to marry you
with this sort of thing going about uncontradicted."
And at that John wavered. But he thought of Margery and his knightly
vow, and he thought of the witness box; of himself stammering and
shifting hour after hour in that box; of pictures in the Press; of
columns in the Press; of day after day of public wretchedness--the
inquest over again infinitely enlarged. And he thought of the open,
perhaps inevitable, ignominy of losing a libel action. And he was sure
that he was right.
They argued about this for a long time, and the Rev. Peter yielded at
last.
But he bellowed then, "Well, you must write them a letter at once. Sit
down now, and I'll dictate it. Sit down, will you? By God, it makes me
sweat, this!"
John sat down meekly and wrote to the editor of _I Say_, as the Rev.
Peter commanded. The Rev. Peter dictated in round tones of a man
practising a speech:
"'_Dear Sir_:
"'I have seen your infamous article. It is a cruel and disgusting
libel. I wish to state publicly that I had nothing to do with the
death of Emily Gaunt; that so far as I know no suspicion does rest
upon me here or elsewhere; and that, if indeed there is suspicion,
it is not in the minds of any one whose opinion I value, and I can
therefore ignore it. In any case I should prefer to do without your
dirty assistance.'"
"Can't say 'dirty'--can we?" said John.
"Why not? They _are_ dirt--filth--muck! Well, then--put
'dishonouring'--'your dishonouring assistance.' Go on:
"'I am not a rich man, and I cannot afford to bring an action for
libel against you. A successful suit would cost me far more money
and trouble than I should like to waste upon it. You, on the other
hand, could easily afford to lose and would probably be actually
benefited by a substantial increase in your circulation.
"'I must ask you to print this letter in your next issue and insist
also on an unqualified apology for your use of my name.
"'I am sending this letter to the local Press.'"
The editor of _I Say_ did not print this letter, as the Rev. Peter had
fondly imagined he would, but he referred in his second article, which
was similar to the first, only more outspoken, to "the receipt of an
abusive letter from the suspected person."
Slowly that week a copy of _I Say_ found its way into every house in The
Chase; and the article was read and discussed and argued about, and the
whole controversy of May, which had been almost forgotten, sprang into
life again. And the following week the local papers were bought and
borrowed and devoured, and John's spirited and courageous letter was
admired and laughed at and condemned. The Chase fell again into
factions, though now the Whittaker (pro-John) faction was the stronger.
For nobody liked _I Say_, though it was always exciting to read when
there was some special excuse for bringing it into the house. Besides,
the honour of The Chase was now at stake.
John and the Rev. Peter had reckoned without the generosity and communal
feeling of the people of The Chase. They were never so happy as when
they had some communal enterprise on foot, a communal kitchen, or a
communal crèche or a communal lawsuit, some joint original venture which
offered reasonable opportunities for friendly argument and committee
meetings and small subscriptions. This spirit had of course unlimited
scope during the war, and perhaps it was the communal Emergency
Food-Kitchen that had been its most ambitious and perfect expression.
But it lived on vigorously after the war. Several of the busiest and
earliest workers among the men shared a communal taxi into town every
day. There was a communal governess, and one or two semi-communal boats.
There was also a kind of communal Housing Council, which met whenever a
house in The Chase was to be let or sold, and exerted pressure on the
outgoing tenant as to his choice of a successor. Outside friends of The
Chase who desired and were desired to come into residence were placed
upon a roster by the Housing Council, and when the Council's edict had
once gone forth, the outgoing tenant was expected at all costs to see
that the chosen person was enabled to succeed him, and if he did not, or
if he allowed the owner of the house to enter into some secret
arrangement with an outsider, unknown and unapproved by the Council, it
was a sin against the solidarity of The Chase.
And there had already been a communal lawsuit, that great case of
_Stimpson and Others_ versus _The Quick Boat Company_--an action for
nuisance brought by the entire Chase, because of the endless and
intolerable noise and smell of the defendant company's motor-boats,
which they manufactured half a mile up the river and exercised all day
snorting and phutting and dashing about with loud and startling reports
in the narrow reach between the Island and The Chase.
Nine gallant champions had stood forward with Stimpson for freedom and
The Chase. But all The Chase had attended the preliminary meetings; all
The Chase had subscribed; all The Chase and all their wives had given
evidence in Court; and before this unbroken, or almost unbroken, front
(for there were a few black sheep) the Quick Boat Company had gone down
heavily. Judgment for the plaintiffs had been given in the early spring.
So that when it was widely understood that for lack of money John
Egerton, a member of The Chase, was unable to defend himself from a
scurrilous libel in a vulgar paper, the deepest instincts of the
neighbourhood were aroused. A small informal Committee met at once at
the Whittakers' house--Whittaker and Mr. Dimple (for legal advice) and
Andrews and Tatham and Henry Stimpson. Stephen Byrne was asked to come,
but had an engagement.
Mr. Dimple's advice was simple. He said that subject to certain
reservations--as to which he would not bother the Committee, since they
related rather to the incalculable niceties of the law, and lawyers, as
they knew, were always on the nice side (laughter--but not much)--and
assuming that Mr. Egerton won his case, as to which he would express no
opinion, though as a man he might venture to say that he knew of no one
in The Chase--he had almost said no one in London--of whom it would be
more unfair--he would not put it stronger than that, for he liked to
assume that even a paper such as _I Say_ was sincere and honest at
heart--to make the kind of suggestion which he knew and they all knew
had been made in that paper, about Mr. Egerton--a quiet, God-fearing,
honest citizen--but they all knew him as well as he did, so he would say
no more about that--subject then to what he had said first and assuming
what he had just said--and bearing in mind the proverbial--he thought he
might say proverbial (Dickens, after all, was almost a proverb)
uncertainties and surprises of his own profession, he thought they would
not be wildly optimistic or unduly despondent--and for himself he wanted
to be neither--if they estimated the costs of the action at a thousand
pounds, but of course--
Waking up at the word "pounds"--the kind of word for which they had been
subconsciously waiting--the Committee began the process of unravelling
which was always necessary after one of Mr. Dimple's discourses. And
their conclusion was that it was up to The Chase to subscribe as much of
the money as possible, as much at any rate as would enable John Egerton
to issue a writ without the risk of financial ruin.
Henry Stimpson was naturally deputed to collect the money. Stimpson was
an indefatigable man, a laborious Civil Servant who worked from 10 till
7.30 every day (and took his lunch at the office), yet was not only
ready but pleased to spend his evenings and his week-ends, canvassing
for subscriptions, writing whips for meetings, or working out elaborate
calculations of the amount due to Mrs. Ambrose in money and kind on her
resigning from the communal kitchen after paying the full subscription
and depositing a ham in the Committee's charge which had been cooked by
mistake and sent to Mrs. Vincent. He genuinely enjoyed this kind of
task, and he did it very, very well.
Henry Stimpson duly waited on the Byrnes and explained the position.
Stephen Byrne had read the articles in _I Say_, and Margery had read
them. And a gloom had fallen upon Stephen, for which Margery was unable
wholly to account as a symptom of solicitude for his friend's
troubles--especially as they never seemed to see each other nowadays. To
her knowledge they had not met at all since the summer holidays.
Nor had they. They avoided each other. This resurrection of the Emily
affair, these articles and the new publicity, and now on top of that the
prospect of a libel action, was to Stephen like a slap in the face. He
had almost forgotten his old anxieties in the absorption of work and the
soothing atmosphere of his new resolutions. But he would not go to John;
he had been lucky before; he might be lucky again; he would wait. Old
John might be trusted to do nothing precipitate.
So he promised to subscribe to the fund for the defence of John
Egerton's good name, and Stimpson went away. The money was to be
collected by that day week, and on the following Thursday there would be
a general meeting to consider a plan of campaign. Stimpson's eyes as he
spoke of "a general meeting" were full of quiet joy.
And Stephen went on with his work--very slowly now, but he went on. The
poem was nearly finished; he had only to polish it a little. But he sat
now for long minutes glowering and frowning over his paper, staring out
of the window, staring at nothing. Margery, watching him, wondered yet
more what work he was at, and what was the secret of this gloom. She
began to think that the two things might be connected; he might be
attempting some impossible task; he might be overworked and stale. This
had happened before. But in his worst hours of artistic depression he
had never looked so black as sometimes she saw him now. And she noticed
that he tried to conceal this mood from her; he would manufacture a
smile if he caught her watching him. And that, too, was unusual.
Then one evening when she went to her table for some small thing she
saw there the unmistakable manuscript of this new work lying in an
irregular heap on the blotter. Her eyes were caught by the title--"The
Death in the Wood"--written in large capitals at the head; and almost
without thinking she read the first line. And she read the few following
lines. Then, urged on by an uncontrollable curiosity and excitement, she
read on. She sat down at the table and read, threading a slow way
through a maze of alterations and erasions, and jumbles of words
enclosed in circles on the margin or at the bottom or at the top and
wafted with arrows and squiggly lines into their intended positions. But
she understood the strange language of creative manuscript, and she read
through the whole of the first section--Gelert riding through the
forest, the battle in the forest, and the death of the maiden. And as
she read she was deeply moved. She forgot the problem of Stephen's gloom
in her admiration and affectionate pride.
At the end of it Gelert stood sorrowing over the body and made a speech
of intense dignity and poetic feeling. And at that point she heard the
voice of Stephen at the front door, and started away, remembering
suddenly that this reading was a breach of confidence. But why--why was
she not allowed to see it?
Yet that, after all, was a small thing; and she went to bed very happy,
dreaming such golden dreams of the success of the poem as she might have
dreamed if she had written it herself.