"It shall make a difference—if you wish," I offered again proudly.
"No," she murmured, apparently understanding this time, and busy with her lace again.
Then I entered into I know not what fantastic explanation of the curious fact that a man with the world in his grasp should have chosen to touch his cap to editors and proprietors. She tried to look as if she believed me, but it was plain that she didn't in the least. Once or twice she tried to interrupt me, but my patience was quickly running out.
"So you see how it was," I said at last, dropping my voice as Weston, the secretary-bird passed. "It was no business of his, and I want to know what he's got to say about it. You can tell him so if you like."
Again that inexplicable look of timorousness came into her small eyes.
"You mean the commissionaire's job, of course?" she said.
"I mean the commissionaire's job," I replied.
That, I thought with satisfaction, would cover my real reason for wishing to see Archie as well as anything else.
Weston passed again, and gave me a look. That look struck me. It was just such a look as a policeman might give a loiterer whom he suspects, yet against whom he has no charge; and I felt my colour mount a little. That tattling little animal! Little he cared, as long as he had his joke, that my five shillings was put in jeopardy. For a business college that styles itself advertisement writer "professor" naturally doesn't want commissionaires on its staff, and I saw my second dismissal looming ahead.
Then, with a new and cautious idea in my head, I turned to Kitty again.
"On second thoughts," I said, "don't say anything to Archie about my wanting an explanation. I'll settle with him. After all, it was bound to come sooner or later. It doesn't much matter. I'll see to it.... Well, I'm off. Good-bye, dear. I don't think I shall be able to see you again till Friday."
And I left her, nodded to Weston, and passed out.
I daresay you guess what my new and cautious idea was. I had something of the last privacy to say to Archie; it was just as well that I should have the cloak of comparatively trivial personal remonstrance to cover it; but this was only part of it. The truth was that my brain had suddenly taken another of those startling leaps forward. In some conceivable last event (I was not planning one, you understand; it was merely that my mind was working somewhere ahead, independently and beyond my control) it might be necessary that I should have no personal quarrel with him. In such an event none must suppose that our relation had been other than amicable. Yet I should be overdoing this (purely anticipatory) prudence to pass over the episode of the sky-blue uniform entirely. The thing was, or might become, a matter of nicely measured proportions. Already I was making the slight private affront serve my turn; presently I might want to make the pardon of that affront serve my turn also. This kind of thing is what I mean by the creation of an attitude of mind and "attention to detail."
I made one more attempt to find Archie as I walked to St Pancras, but he was still not at home. Then I had to run for my train.
I worked in Pettinger's garden that week, carrying water, wheeling barrows, and filling baskets with fruit as I passed between the canes. Pettinger was away for two nights, but on the third evening he came up to me as I was pushing a heavy roller over the lawn and began to talk. I think he began for the sake of a pleasant word or two, but something I said seemed to engage his interest, an hour or more passed, and then, as the phlox and canterbury bells began to glimmer in the twilight, he suddenly said, "Leave this and come inside—we can talk comfortably there."
We went in. I shall never forget that night. It was made memorable by the fact that master and gardener talked till two o'clock in the morning.
"Well, Jeffries," he said at last, with a sleepy yawn, "you're an extraordinary chap. I'm afraid you've made rather a lot of work for me this last hour or two."
"How so?" I asked.
"Well, I was going to try to get you a job something like your last, but you're a difficult man to find a job for. I won't ask you whether you know you're extraordinary; of course you know you are; and I'm going, if I can, to give you a chance—a real chance—not like that other—those cut-throats—what's their name."
I had told him about Rixon Tebb & Masters' and the rest of it.
"I've a bit of a pull here and there," he went on sleepily. "There's the 'Freight and Ballast Company'—I know a couple of their men—but we'll talk about that in the morning. I'm off to bed. Hope they've made you comfortable?"
It does not come within the scope of my present tale to speak of my later rapid rise; but I may say now that I owed my chance to Pettinger and to the berth he got me, with the coming of winter, in the offices of the "F. B. C."
I remained in his house all that week; then, on the Friday evening, I took a return ticket to town in order to attend my class.
I had not been half-an-hour in the college that evening before I was aware that something had happened. Archie Merridew was not there, but Evie was, and so was Kitty Windus. I went through my work as usual, and then, at half-past nine, sought Kitty. It was she who told me the news.
"You've not heard, have you?" she asked, with a glance towards the senior students' room, through which Evie had just passed. Again she was, in some manner I could not understand, eager, reserved, apprehensive and fidgety all at once.
"Heard what?" I asked.
"About Evie. It's come off. She and Archie are properly engaged."
From that moment dated a division of me into two separate men, of which I shall have more to say presently.
"Oh?" I replied, with complete calm. "That's good news indeed! Wait here a minute—I'll speak to her—don't go, for I want to see you."
I met Evie returning with her towel and celluloid box of soap. She too was excited, so excited that she would have passed me, but I thought I understood that. I stopped her.
"Well, Evie?" I said, smiling.
She waited, painfully full, I couldn't help thinking, of emotion.
"It was you who congratulated me before," I said. "It's my turn now, I hear."
She looked at me and away again, and again at me and away.
"Thank you, Mr Jeffries," she said, beginning to make little pointings of her foot this way and that on the floor.
I spoke very gently. "Jeff—or Mr Jeffries if you prefer it—wishes you nothing but happiness, Evie," I said.
"Oh, thank you," she said, with increasing perturbation, "thank you very much indeed—thank you really—Jeff."
It was odd in the extreme. She gave me the reluctant "Jeff," and somehow I wished she hadn't, it came with such difficulty. Something, I was convinced, lay behind it. I did not expect her in the circumstances to be quite collected, but her manner was—I don't know how else to describe it—almost that of a child who has pleaded with authority for permission to bestow one final charity on an undesirable associate.... What! I thought, she also ashamed to know a commissionaire!
"When are you going to be married?" I asked, after an awkward pause.
"Quite soon," she replied, equally awkward. "As soon as I can get my things ready." She stopped.
"I suppose Archie's coming here for you—to-night, I mean?"
"No—he's got a man to see—a friend—in Store Street, I think."
"Then may I walk along with you?"
She seemed to have feared the question. "Oh," she said quickly, "if you don't mind—I've something awfully private to say to Kitty—she and I have arranged to go on together."
("Not wanted," I said to myself.) Aloud, "Well, I hope you'll be happy, Evie," I added.
"Thank you," she said again, lifting curiously appealing eyes for a moment.
I turned abruptly from her, and sought Kitty, who was still waiting. I had picked up a sudden suspicion, and wished to confirm it.
"Ready?" I said, in a tone as matter of fact as I could assume.
Again she began to flutter. I couldn't understand what had come over the whole college.
"I'm sorry, Jeff," she began, with rapid effusiveness. "If I'd only known you wanted—but I've got to go somewhere."
I knew that, Evie had just told me.
"Woburn Place, you mean?"
"No, dear—somewhere else—quite different."
"Really?" I said, incredulously smiling and frowning both at once.
"Of course! How funny you are!"
I looked searchingly down into her eyes.
"I think you're funny," I said slowly.
"You really must excuse me, Jeff—if you'd only let me know."
But I had had enough of this. Gently but irresistibly I took her arm.
"Come along, Kitty," I said quietly. "I particularly want to talk to you."
She quailed, but still hung back.
"Very well," I said. "Will you tell me where you're going?"
"You're going with Evie, of course?"
I knew by the little rush with which she spoke that she was telling the truth and was relieved to be able to do so. "Oh no!" she said. "I'm going quite alone, quite alone—honour, Jeff!"
"Evie's not going with you—to Store Street or wherever it is?"
She stiffened. "I don't know what you mean by Store Street, and I think you've got Evie on the brain," she said.
What the devil ailed them all?
And why had Evie said she was going with Kitty?
As abruptly as I turned away from the one I now turned away from the other.
The next moment: "Er—'Jeffries!" I Heard.
It was Weston with my five shillings. I turned.
"Oh, Jeffries! I'm sorry to say—glad in one sense of course—that Professor Hitchcock will be taking the class again next Friday. The college wishes—wishes to thank you for stopping the gap as you have done. It's been most obliging of you."
I said something—I was glad Hitchcock was better, I said.
"Yes—er—he's quite well again now—quite on his feet again," said the secretary-bird. "And—er—Jeffries—I'm exceedingly sorry, but I've a rather unpleasant duty to perform."
I was utterly mystified. "What is it now?" I demanded almost roughly.
"It's that the Board is of opinion—has come to the conclusion—that consisting as we do of younger students than yourself—it would be of advantage—perhaps of advantage to you too if—if——"
I helped him out. "If I don't come again?"
"I wished to break it gently to you—but that is the substance of it," he stammered.
Curious....
"Thank you, Weston," I said. "I quite understand. Will you please tell them that I didn't ask for any explanation?"
Exceedingly curious....
"Yes, yes, yes," he murmured sympathetically.
"Now," I said to myself some minutes later, as I descended the stairs, "it only requires Miss Angela to turn me down."
I walked to Woburn Place, and there asked a Swiss boy if I might see Miss Angela. Archie's friend Mr Shoto passed me as I waited in the hall, but I did not speak to him. After some minutes the Swiss boy returned. His answer was what I expected. Miss Soames had a nervous headache, and asked to be excused from seeing me.
And all, I thought with amazement as I turned away, because for a week or two I had worn a sky-blue uniform!
IV
That division of me into two men that I have said dated from the time when Kitty told me of Evie's engagement to Archie Merridew was, in a sense, no new thing. I had felt it in some measure before, when I had deliberately avoided Archie that I might give my anger its head and had smiled in his face again when the fit had worked itself out. I had striven, too, to stand between him and the black rages he and my general circumstances had provoked.
But no sooner had the words, that Evie was now definitely engaged, come from Kitty's lips than I knew this division to be complete and irrevocable. Even did he withdraw in time he had still contemplated it; and in my soul I did not now believe he would withdraw. "The Devil was sick, the Devil a Saint would be." And I knew at last who his friend in Store Street was. A name, seen on a medicine bottle in his room, had leaped into my memory. His "friend" was some obscure practitioner of a doctor.
So I now became as the Giant in the story, who was so exquisitely cloven from head to middle by the magic blade that he did not feel the wound that was his death. "Cut, then!" he laughed. "Shake yourself," he was told. And he fell in twain.
A shake, and I too should fall in twain.
I will now tell you how I got that shake.
Thinking over my sudden ostracism in Pettinger's house that night I only became more and more mystified. That the Business College should no longer require me I could understand—for snobbery plays a terrible part in business. That Kitty had reproached me for my lack of trust in her about my commissionaire's post was also easily to be accounted for. Miss Angela might in truth have had a headache and have begged to be excused from receiving me. But that Evie should turn against me was inexplicable. It contradicted every tradition of her upbringing. My being forced into a humble, but not ignoble, occupation could never have made this difference in her. If anything in the whole business could be taken as a certainty, that could. And so the more I thought about it the more sure I became that, though I myself might conceal my real reason for wishing to see Archie Merridew by giving out that I merely wanted to remonstrate with him about his chattering, others were using that very giving-out as a screen for something I was in total ignorance of. Kitty's timorousness returned to me; I believed now that she had actually been trying to tell me something else, whatever it was; and so I tossed and turned on my pillow, vainly racking my brain.
I finally decided to have it out with both Kitty and Archie on the morrow.
I went up to town the next morning, and walked straight to the Business College. I did not wish, after what I had been told the night before, to go up, so I found an office boy on one of the lower floors and sent him up with word that somebody would like to see Miss Windus. Then I waited, just inside the Holburn entrance.
In a few minutes she came down, hatted and gloved. Her face looked old; her eyes were dull, and almost closed—with weeping, I was instantly sure; and she touched my sleeve almost as if she feared I might shake her hand off again.
"I thought it would be you," she said, in a dull voice. "Let's have a walk. I've something to say."
We walked without speaking along Holborn, and presently turned into the little courtyard of Staple's Inn. We sat down on the bench that surrounds the tree in the middle.
She had broken into speech almost before we sat down. It was as if she feared that if she did not get it out at once she would not speak at all. She was intensely agitated.
"Jeff," she said, "I've wronged you—cruelly and basely."
I did not smile at the melodramatic little phrase. I had not the ghost of an idea what she meant, but that something was impending I was already aware.
"I saw you didn't know last night," she went on. "This morning?"
It was a question. "I'm no wiser this morning," I said.
"You asked me where I was going last night."
"I did."
"Can you guess why when—when I tell you it was to Louie Causton's?"
I shook my head.
"Even then I cannot guess."
Then she began to tremble. She grasped the edge of the seat with her hand so that I should not see how she shook.
"Jeff," she said, in a low voice, "if you never want to see me again—I can't blame you if you don't—not after this."
I waited.
"Not that I shouldn't always, always love you. It will be my punishment—I shall have to bear it."
Still I waited.
"Yesterday it was you who offered it—now it's me—it will serve me right."
I thought she would never go on. "You mean our engagement, of course?" I said.
"Yes," she gulped.
"Why?" I asked suddenly.
"Because—because of what I've been beast enough to believe of you, Jeff."
"And that is——"
As I again waited for her to speak I looked round the courtyard. A clerk was at work in a first-floor window, and he caught my eye and looked away again. In another window an office boy stood with a pen in his mouth, turning the pages of a ledger. Then, after a while, and very disjointedly, Kitty went on:
"They said you said it yourself, and I—at first I didn't—but then I believed it. I know I was beastly about it once before—then we quarrelled—but I didn't mean what I said then—believe me, I didn't.... And," she went on, "I didn't know who—who—it was.... She never told me—you know what I mean.... I hate myself—now. I suppose I'm jealous—the green-eyed monster, Jeff—but they did say it—said you'd as much as said so yourself—and——"
I was beginning to get impatient with her rambling.
I said "And what?" but I don't think she heard me.
"So that's why I went to Louie herself—to ask her—right out——"
All at once I felt it coming.
"Well?"
But suddenly she buried her face in her hands, and her thin shoulders shook. Again I saw the clerk watching....
"Oh!" she moaned. "Can you ever, ever forgive me?"
"For——"
"For ever thinking that you and Louie—that you and Louie——"
She lifted her piteous eyes to mine.
I think it was then that the Giant shook himself and fell in twain. He has been more or less roughly cobbled together since, and the halves rub on somehow side by side, but to this day the one man in me faints for the great sweet things of Life, while the other has the devil ever at his elbow.
The whole courtyard had swung round; I actually seemed, with my physical eye, to see it for some moments out of the vertical. Then it righted again, and the whole mystery of the previous evening dissolved in light.
"You and Louie—you and Louie——"
Yet again the courtyard seemed to lean and slide sideways for a moment; then I flung a blazing searchlight back across my memory.
Louie Causton's super-subtle mask. "So long since I saw a man, my dear—the Baboon?—oh, I should know which way to turn then!"
My half-admissions to Archie when he had tried with such persistency to get out of me who it was I was in love with.
Her failure to return to the college, that alone had thrown me into Kitty's arms rather than into her own.
That something, God knows what, that I might have said to Mackie when, after having eaten nothing, I had drunk with him.
Kitty's own desperate possessiveness and jealousy.
All these things fell into place as the coloured granules fall when the kaleidoscope is given a turn. I had been accused of being Miss Causton's lover!
As I remain that divided Giant henceforward until the end of my tale, I will divide my name also, and tell you of a colloquy that began within me between these two men—the honest, human, enraged Jeffries, and that other, whom I will call James Herbert, at whose elbow stood the devil.
"Ah!" choked Jeffries, flaming red.
"Quietly, quietly!" whispered his interlocutor.
"That's Merridew again!" choked the other.
"Quietly—keep your face—there's a clerk in that window watching you!"
"The whole world may see me—let me go and find him!" It was as if this Jeffries struggled to break away there and then.
"No, no—sit still—leave it to me, and keep your face before this weeping woman—I was born where they understand these things!"
And after a hellish minute—the voice of that one prevailed.
I turned to Kitty.
"Good gracious!" I remember I said, with an air almost of amused incredulity. "Why, who on earth told you that ridiculous tale?"
The one who came from the place where they understand these things was right. Kitty looked up. At first she seemed unable to believe her ears—unable to believe that I could treat the monstrous thing with amused disdain. Then, as she slowly realised, her face shone. She gave a quick glad cry.
"Jeff!"
"What, dear?" I said, smiling.
She choked. "Oh ... my good, big man!"
("Laugh now," the wicked one prompted; and I laughed.)
"Good heavens, what a tale!... Who told you? Archie? Just you see if I don't tweak that young man's ears!"
In her infinite relief the poor woman broke down utterly. She shook with the mingled gratitude and humiliation of my pardon.
"Louie Causton!" I scoffed. "You actually asked her that? Why, how she must have laughed!"
"Oh—you're wonderful, Jeff!" Kitty adored me.
"Oh," I replied, quickly recollecting myself, "don't think I'm not angry! I'll give that young man a jacket-dusting! He shall have a wedding present from me he'll remember, I promise you! Why, of all the mean tricks!..."
I went on. Presently Kitty had found me so wonderful that once more she could even toy a little with a peril.
"Louie wouldn't tell me ... who ... she said she'd die first...." she half sobbed by-and-by.
I looked into her little puffed eyes. "Then," I said, smiling, "you've only the word of a not very trustworthy woman for it that after all ... eh?"
A saint could hardly have cheapened the worshipping look she gave me.
"So," I resumed presently, "that was what ailed you all last night, when I was thinking all the time it was my uniform?"
"Yes—I tried hard to tell you, Jeff——"
"And does Archie really believe this tale himself, or is it just one of his little pleasantries?"
She didn't know.
"Is he at the college this morning?"
"Yes."
"Good. Will you send him down to me if I walk back with you? I think we won't lose any time over this."
"And you'll give him a really severe talking-to?" she asked eagerly.
"I will," I promised. "Come——"
Twenty minutes later I was again in the doorway of the Business College, waiting for Archie to descend.
And as I waited I reflected how well-nigh irrevocably I had tied myself up with Kitty now. I think that up to then she would have stuck to me even had this of Miss Causton been true; but now she would never, never let me go. Perhaps I may here mention the plan I had at first had for getting rid of her when I should require her no longer. I had based that plan on the fascination the "compromising situation" of her favourite novels always had for her. I never knew anyone so self-conscious about her defencelessness, and I had worked it out that I had only to propose my own chamber for an assignation and she would conceive herself to be looking into the bright face of danger indeed. All peril and all romance would lie for her in her setting foot on the lowest of my stairs.... And doubtless one glance at that naked room of mine (I had pawned even my oil-stove) would, I had estimated, drive her away in instant and horrified fright.... I had not been above planning this.
But now she would never, never leave her big, wonderful man.
Yes. I had fettered myself fairly completely.
Holborn was noisy that morning, and between the sound of passing vehicles and Archie's own light tread I was not aware of his presence until he spoke. Instantly I saw that he thought he knew why I had come and had resolved to take one bull at least by the horns.
"I say, Jeff," he began at once, with embarrassed sincerity—a sincere desire, that is, to be out of the mess he had landed himself in, "Kitty's just told me. I know—I know you must be beastly angry with me—quite right too—I'm awfully sorry and—and ashamed. It was caddish. But I really didn't mean anything, and—and—and I thought you as much as said it yourself, you know——"
I judged it best not to speak just yet. I stood looking at him.
"You're an awfully good sort," he went on, conciliatingly, "but—but—I really thought you were a bit sweet on her (that was all I meant)—that time—you know—before I knew it was really Kitty. I simply said to Mackie—he watched you too at the party—I admit I was 'on' a bit, and never thought it would end like this——"
Then I spoke. "You mean you didn't think it would end in my getting the sack and being cut by everybody I know except yourself and Mackie? How did you think it would end, then?"
He jumped eagerly at a chance, ready to promise anything.
"I'll see that's all right, old boy—and Hitchcock was coming back anyway, you know—you only had the job while he was away——"
"Oh!" I said, with a nasty laugh. "And in your opinion that's all?... What about my character?" I demanded suddenly. "Eh?"
"I know," he said, with hanging head. "It was rotten of me—but I was 'on'—I really was. And your character's all right, Jeff, with anybody who knows you—they know what a first-rate sort you are——"
"Thank you," I said stiffly. "And what about—the partner in my guilt?"
"Oh, her!" the little animal said, as if she could be left quite out of the question. Then apparently he felt the stirring of returning rectitude. "Well, Jeff, I have apologised.... I don't see what more I can do, except of course to see you all right...."
I noted the birth of the attitude I wished to create. I began to appear to let him down by gradual degrees.
Exactly how much of it was appearance you see. I abhorred the little wretch. And his renewed apologies, promises, explanations!... He had been "on" he had "simply said" to Mackie; I "should have lost my job soon in any case"; and "he'd see I was all right!" ... That was all his sense of a hideous slander! And his almost rebellious "Well, I have apologised." Good heavens, he would be putting me in the wrong presently!... Every muscle in my body was straining to be at him.
But that, I knew, would never, never do.
Presently I turned once more to him. All this, after all, was not in the least what I had come to talk to him about. It was only a screen.
"Very, well," I said at last. "What's done's done. We'll leave that for the present. Now there's something else I want to say to you. Do you know what it is?"
"How should I know?" he said, relieved that the subject was turned.
"Think...."
When Kitty had come down to see me an hour before she had done so in her hat and coat. She had had her confession to make, and had, I fancied, done me even in her attire the courtesy of hinting humbly that she was entirely at my disposal. But Archie evidently thought that our difference could be arranged in a five minutes' talk sandwiched in between two lessons. He had not even put his hat on. He stood, a small fair figure, red-waistcoated, brass-buttoned, hands in his pockets, leaning against the name-board of the tenants of the various floors of the building, while I, with one hand against the board, hung over him like a huge angel of good and evil, bidding him think.
"Think," I said again.
He suddenly realised what I meant. I could no more hold his eyes than I could have held those of a chidden dog. They cringed, evaded, even dared short defiances.
"Think," I said once more.
All at once he said, "I don't know what you mean."
"Then," I said, "I shall have to tell you."
"So," I concluded some minutes later, "do you think you are—doing right—to marry?"
We still stood, he with his back to the name-board, I with my hand against it, almost enveloping him with my physical presence. And now, no detail of my arraignment spared, I had at last caught his eye. Even before he spoke my heart gave a savage leap. Already his soft and spongy nature had begun to be hardened to that attitude I needed.
"Oh!" he said.... Then, proudly, "But this is interference."
"You think," I repeated slowly, "that you have the right to get married?"
His very admission was a defiance of me. "I know I've been rather a rotter," he blustered.
Once more I repeated monotonously:
"You still think, after what I've just said, that you have the right——"
"I think," he broke out, "that if you looked after your own girl and left me to look after mine it would be better. I'm frightfully sorry about the other thing, of course, but—dash it all!—--"
Our long exchange of looks said the rest, and it was not my fault if he didn't understand what his refusal to heed me would involve. Some people never understand, and cry afterwards, "You never told me that!" as if one man had the right to demand of another that he should speak the uttermost word. I cannot see that there is any such right. For such as these there is no uttermost word. Elias and the Prophets cannot make them understand. Though one rose from the dead to tell them they would not believe. The God who made them as they are cannot make Himself known to them—He can only destroy them again. They go out into the night in their ignorance, and for them there is no resurrection in knowledge.... Therefore if the uttermost word will not enlighten them, why speak it? Weakness lies in that word. Because it is weak. Art leaves it unspoken, and the Seer, having spoken it, comes down from Sinai no more. Only by a withholding from it does man achieve. Making three parts greater than the whole, he does not put forth to the last. He will not return bankrupt to heaven. The unuttered utterance is his credential, to be restored to the Bestower of it.
Therefore I did not, at that time, tell Archie Merridew that if he married I should slay him. But all, all else was in my eyes for his taking.
Then our gaze severed.
As I dropped my hand from the wall the devil frisked in me again. I had warned him, and had my own safety to consider now. Without attention to detail you can accomplish nothing in this world, and a thing is bunglingly done when you yourself suffer the consequences of it. Whatever I might do, I intended to suffer no consequences.
"Well, Archie," I said, as a man speaks who washes his hands of something, "I've told you what I think about it. There's no doubt it is, as you say, an interference, but I think it's justified, and so I'll say no more.... And now, about that other: I need hardly say that I expect you to make things all right for me again."
"I will—I really will, Jeff," he promised at once.
"You see," I amplified, while the devil in me frisked, "leaving my reputation out of the question, it's beastly inconvenient. For instance, I'm badly in need of some shorthand practice, and I certainly don't intend to go up these stairs again until I'm rehabilitated."
He leaped at the chance of a reparation that would cost him little. "Oh, that's easy," he said. "Of course your own place—I mean, why not use mine, as you used to?"
"Oh," I objected, "I can't very well use your place when you're not there."
"I'm going to be there most of the time now," he replied. "Perhaps you think I'm off on the skite again, but I'm not." ("The Devil was sick," thought I again.) "I'm dead off all that now—straight. I do wish you'd come!"
"But," I said (while that imp in me positively capered), "you'll be awfully busy—with other things. I hear you're to be married at once——"
"Not too busy for that, old man," he assured me. "Do come!"
"Well, I'll see," I promised.
Half-an-hour later I was sitting in the British Museum reading-room with a stock of books on Medical Jurisprudence before me. Those two spirits within me were whispering again—plotting, machinating, discussing common ground of action. I had not yet resolved to take any action; but I had resolved, and firmly, that if action was to be taken I myself was not going to be caught unawares.
V
It was true that Archie was busy. His "skite" had cost him a good deal of money, and he intended to make good some of the loss by economising on his marriage. With this end in view he had determined that his honeymoon and his summer holiday should be run into one, and had fixed, or Evie had fixed for him, a day towards the end of August for his wedding. He was going to Jersey, for the sake of the breath of the sea (I fancy that in this he was following Store Street advice); and he intended on his return to go into rooms until he should have had time to look round for a house.
His personal preparations were extensive. Ten porters and carmen a day called at the house near the Foundling Hospital, delivering purchases, and his upper floor was heaped up with bags, boxes, drawers taken from their cases and laid upon the floor, brown paper, cardboard boxes, new clothing. And one day—I won't set down the date—he lost his latchkey in the muddle. He did not know that he lost it as a result of my own close studies in the reading-room of the British Museum.
"Can't find the blessed thing anywhere!" he grumbled. "I took it off the bunch to slip into the pocket of my evening waistcoat—you can't carry a bunch of keys about in your evening clothes—and I can't think where the devil I put it!... Well, I shall have to ask Jane for another."
It was also a consequence of my deeply private studies that about the same time I had an accident with the hook of his bedroom door. The night being sultry, I had removed my coat, and hung it on his hook, over one of his, and, somehow, in going through the pockets of the undermost coat in search of the key, he had several times twisted the collar-tab by which my own garment hung. In taking my coat down again a little later I used some force; I used so much force that I fetched the whole hook down, leaving a small piece out of the wood of the door, and, Archie, busy emptying a drawer, remarked that to put it up again would be something for the next tenant to do.
"Oh no—better leave the place as you found it," I said. "You go on—I'll attend to it."
"Well, I don't know where you're going to find the screw-drivers—with my latchkey, I suppose," he remarked.
But I knew where the screw-driver was. I found it, and put the hook up securely again, a couple of inches below its old place.
I also carried constantly in my pocket, ready for use at any moment, a written page of notepaper, the compilation of which had cost me a good deal of thought in the reading-room.
Yet I must make perfectly clear to you that these and twenty other things that had the appearance of preparations committed me to nothing. They were merely part of the prudent course of making ready, not for the best that might happen, but for the worst; and that the worst might be avoided I plotted at the same time with almost extravagant care. For all this last, however, the effective human mind works as it were in separate compartments of the job to be done, and there was no denying that this was or might become a job. I treated it as a job. And as a job it cost me no more qualms and tremors than the cool preparation for an examination in Method might have done. I did not turn pale when I read in a book of forensic medicine that when one man slays another he commonly uses far too much violence; I merely noted the fact, and reminded myself of it from time to time, to be perfect in my (I still hoped superfluous) lesson. I did not blench when I learned that, judicial executions apart, ninety-nine per cent. of hangings were suicidal, so that, certain other precautions being observed, a presumption could be made preponderatingly probable. I merely turned my attention to the qualifying precautions. And as for that sheet of paper I carried—well, young men have killed themselves for less reason, and seldom for greater. Indeed, to die by his own hand might be the final virtuous act in which he took his farewell of the world. I would—still in the last event, you understand—allow him that empty semblance of virtue. Whether he needed it in heaven or not, I needed it on earth.
And (I am still talking purely hypothetically) I now recognise that I had prepared our respective mental attitudes with instinctive skill. That clever fiend within me had seen to that before I had become awake to that fiend's existence. By about the—till say a fortnight before the day fixed for his wedding—none could have told that I had the shadow of a grudge against him. He had made, for his slander of myself, a sort of semi-public apology—that is to say, he had mumbled a few words in the presence of Weston and the Principal of the College; but by that time the question of slander had been already so far from me that I had hardly had to affect an equanimity of manner. Without any effort whatever I had hit the necessary degree of magnanimity to a nicety, and there had been an end of that. I was free to return to the college again. This now mattered little since we were within a few days of the end of the summer term, and it was proposed to have, not a breaking-up party on the premises, but a boating-picnic at Richmond.
That I was in love with Evie Soames none knew. Did they? Could they? She was engaged to Archie, I to Kitty Windus; but I examined it again, to make sure.... No, no suspicion of jealousy could attach to me; none would think of a crime passionel.... And was it jealousy? Was it a crime passionel? I do not think you can say it was. True, I intended in the teeth of all the world to marry Evie Soames, just as I intended one day to be rich and to make my inherent power felt; but there would have been other ways than murder of accomplishing that. I should have found a way.... No; he had the best reason in the world for what I was so carefully planning for him. To me none whatever could be attributed. My preparations (for the worst, of course) would be complete when I had made use of that paper I carried in my pocket.
It was one evening less than a week before the day of his wedding that I chose for the completion of these preparations, and I had walked with him as far as his home. There, with a good-night, I was artfully passing on when he himself detained me.
"Aren't you coming up for a bit?" he said. He had been monstrously hospitable since I had taken him to task about the slander. I had reckoned on this.
"No," I replied, "I must get some shorthand practice—I'm off home."
"Oh, come in," he urged, taking my arm. "I sha'n't get much either this few weeks—come in, and we'll have an hour together at speed. Come on—I've got some books you may as well have—I sha'n't want two sets."
He meant he wouldn't want Evie's text-books as well as his own. I had not been able to afford books for my studies, and so had had to make use of those belonging to the college. This was the nearest he had come since my accusation to speaking about Evie and himself together.
I went up to his rooms for a speed practice in Pitman's Shorthand.
"Here are the books," he said, when he got in. "Better put 'em where you'll have your hand on 'em—once you lose sight of a thing in this mess you can say good-bye to it. That blessed latchkey of mine hasn't turned up yet. Well, shall we get work over first and then talk a bit?"
He swept aside with his arm a heap of new shirts and collars and tissue-paper, took a writing-pad from the drawer of his table, and then looked round for something from which to read aloud. I produced from my pocket a newspaper, which I tossed over to him. I also had cleared a portion of the table for myself and was sharpening a pencil. My pad lay before me. He was taking his watch from the guard.
"Do I read first?" he asked, opening the newspaper. "Right-oh. Say when you're ready."
I drew up my chair. "Right," I said.
And in his rapid, clear, high-pitched voice he began to read.
It was the speech of some politician or other he read, and my pencil flew over the paper, swiftly taking down. Page after page I wrote, and I had almost forgotten that I was engaged on anything more than an ordinary exercise when suddenly he called "Time!" I stopped, and took a long breath.
"Now transcribe," he said. "You'll find paper under those gloves."
"No," I said. "You take down now. Saves time. Transcribing's the slow part, and we can both be doing that together."
"All right," he said, passing over the paper and making ready.
"Right? Go," I said.
And I began in my turn to read.
He had given me a continuous speech, but I gave him the Police Column. "Big Blaze in Bermondsey: Suspected Arson," I gave him. ("That chap'll get a couple of years for that," he interdicted). And then I passed to "Alleged Bucket-shop Frauds." I had already got my paper from my breast-pocket, that paper I had compiled in the reading-room of the British Museum....
"—bail being granted in two sums of £500," I concluded the bucket-shop paragraph and went on without pause:—
"Pathetic Confession"
"At Marlborough Street yesterday Rose Baxter, 24, seamstress, living in Osnaburgh Street, was charged before Mr Siddeley with a determined attempt to commit suicide by hanging herself in a shed adjoining her dwelling, the property of Messrs Wright, Knapton & Co. The beginning of the case was reported in The Argus of 24th June. Inspector Woodhead read aloud a letter purporting to be in the prisoner's handwriting, from which we take the following."
("Cheerful subjects you choose, I must say," commented Archie, sotto voce.)
"'Dearest mother, I cannot face the disgrace. I hope you will forgive me for the trouble I am bringing on you. I have put it off as long as possible, hoping things would get better, but there is only one end to it."
("Kid, eh?" murmured Archie, writing.)
"'I trust God will forgive me. I am not afraid to die, I am afraid to live and face it. I cannot do E. this wrong. Please, dear mother, think of me as I used to be. I have tried and tried, but it is all no good, and I am better out of the world. Give my love to everybody, and try, dear mother, to forgive me.'"
"Time!"
Archie leaned back in his chair.
"Phew! Was that five minutes? Seemed short," he said. "Just a breather before we transcribe." He lighted a cigarette. "I say, Jeff: do you know any dealer who gives a decent price for second-hand clothes? I've heaps here I sha'n't want any more."
I had small use for such a dealer. "You might try Lamb's Conduit Street," I said. "I've bought clothes there."
"Silly ass—— I didn't mean that!" He was now monstrously careful of my feelings.
"Say when you're ready to transcribe," I said, pushing across a wad of paper.
"All right, let's get it over. I'll race you! Ready?"
We plunged into our longhand transcription.
"Ah!" I said, twenty minutes later. "Beat you, Archie!"
He was racing through his last paragraph. "Not by much, you haven't," he said, and then, following our practice with exercises at the college, "No you haven't—you haven't signed—hooray!" he cried, dashing in his signature and looking at his watch. "Thirty-two minutes—pretty smart, what?"
An hour later I left, with his exercise as well as my own slipped between the leaves of Smillie's "Balance of Trade"—one of the text-books he had given me.
My hypothetical case was now completely prepared.
And now I spared no effort to save him. When it is yours to slay or to spare, you have in a sense slain even in sparing, for a life has been yours, even as Archie Merridew's life lay in the folds of that signed sheet of paper.
I carried that signed paper in my breast pocket on the day of the breaking-up party to Richmond. It had not been my intention to go to this picnic, for the sufficient reason that I was penniless pas le sou—but once more Kitty, to whom I had told some tale or other about pressing work, had broken out upon me.
"Oh yes—of course—I might have known!" she had cried, doubtless knowing that "pressure of work" tale of old from Frank and Alf. "Oh yes—it was quite enough that I should set my heart on it and I might have known you'd be busy or something! Busy!"
Her scornful little laugh had set me tingling: I—busy! But I had already seen that I should have to go. It had only remained for me to climb down to the level of Frank and Alf in the easiest possible way.
"Don't carry on like that, Kitty," I had said shortly. "It isn't so much the work; the fact is I'd like to go; but I can't very well ask them to pay me for the work before it's done, and the fact is I've rather miscalculated this week. It will be all right next week, of course."
"Oh, if that's it," she had said, her hand going as naturally to her pocket as if she had inherited the gesture as she had inherited her features or her name.
So I had accepted her purse, having accepted only meals before, and Alf and Frank and I were of a marrow.
The paper was in my breast pocket as we walked down to the stages to hire our boats. We were a largish party, but except for those in the boat in which I presently found myself—Evie, Kitty and Archie Merridew—I have no very clear recollection of who was there. I took one oar, Evie the other, Archie was not exercising himself physically; and he lay back in the steering seat with Kitty. It was hot; I should have liked to remove my coat; but I dreaded to part myself even by a yard from that paper. As it was my movements caused it to work up a little in my inside pocket; I saw a corner of it at the opening of the coat; it had the appearance of wishing to take a peep at Archie; and by-and-by Archie asked me why I didn't take my coat off.
"Not clean shirt day, eh, Jeff?" he laughed, with the recollection of numerous brown-paper parcels in his eyes.
He himself was taking extreme care of a pair of spotless flannels, and at one stage of the afternoon, I forget when, that suddenly struck me as almost funny enough to shriek aloud at—his care for his flannel bags and carelessness about everything else. It struck me as—I use the words quite literally—devilishly funny. It fascinated me, so that I could not keep from watching him. My eyes wandered from time to time to the other boats of our party and of other parties, moving on the shining river, but they always returned in less than a minute to him, irresistibly drawn. This galgenhumor almost mastered me as the paper again crept up to take another peep at him as he lolled, this time with Evie by his side, for Kitty had taken the other oar. It needed so little, so little imagination to look forward and see, strung out into the future, the results of that irrefutable Evidence in my pocket—the inquest at which I should not even be called as a witness—the funeral I need attend only as a mourner—the shock—the hushing up—and the certainty of everybody that they knew all about it! It was all horribly, horribly perfect....
A picnic? Oh yes, this was a picnic....
"Do take your coat off, Jeff—you'll be so much more comfortable—why, you're streaming!" This came from Kitty, who had the air of publicly possessing me, though only partly by reason of having paid for me, I think.
"Oh, I'm quite all right—really quite comfortable," I replied.
And then I thought of Evie, and that horrible humour rolled away from me. Evie. What about her? She spoke even then.
"Jeff's doing all the work," she said. "I'm sure Kitty and I could manage the boat quite well."
"Better stay as we are," I replied. "Archie and I wouldn't trim."
Yes, what about Evie?
Well, for her it was only a choice of sacrifices. The choice was not of my determining; I put that responsibility on him. There was still time; I would save him if I could; that was settled; but further than that I would not go. Should she fail to survive the shock it would be he, not I who had killed her. Better that, however....
If you can see what else I could have done, tell me. I am willing to learn.
And so we went up the river, and drew in under a bank for tea, and then went ashore for a walk, I with Kitty, he with Evie, and so back to the boat again. I do not remember quite how the time went. I know that the sun went down in a flush of rose, and that Japanese lanterns appeared on the water and in the water in long smooth reflections, and that parties were singing and playing banjos in the twilight. I could not have sat by Evie—it really would have put the boat out of trim—and so I had not to sit by Kitty either. She and I pulled again; Archie and Evie in the stern seat were hardly distinguishable; and Archie, who had been singing, was quiet again.
And I must have succeeded in keeping that dreadful mirth of mine to myself, for Kitty had noticed nothing. She stood by my side in the crowded station afterwards, murmuring to me how lovely it had been.
That is all I remember about that picnic.
Nor have I any reason for not telling you the truth about this. I am concealing neither the man nor the devil in me. For many years I have been almost entirely untroubled by it all, and I make even this slight qualification only because during the last month I have had feelings, not of remorse, but of something that is better described as a sort of backward curiosity. Perhaps it is a little more even than that, for a certain measure of admiration is not entirely absent from it. Don't misunderstand me, however. That tincture of admiration is not so strong that I cannot rest unless somebody admires my cleverness with me. Nothing irresistibly urges me to give myself away. But I have felt a little that backward pull of a man's own acts. I do not know, though practically it has not come near me, why men revisit places. I do not revisit that house near the Foundling Hospital—yet I do write this shorthand carefully locking my door before I begin and committing it to the most private recess of my cabinet as I complete each instalment.... Yet other compunction, if this be compunction, have I none. I am rich, I am serving my age by a more arduous grappling with its economic problems than any of my contemporaries, I could have had Pepper's knighthood had I wished for it, and I have been married this long time to Evie Soames.... No, on the whole I do not believe in melodramatic retributions. No shadowy shape of a fair-haired and red-waistcoated figure glides at my elbow or steps with me into my brougham, and when I close my eyes at night I do not see as on a painted curtain that dimity-papered, lamp-lighted upper chamber of his. I do not start at sudden sounds, nor fear to be left alone in my library when it grows late. I play with my clean-born children. Evie is happy with me. And I even have Miss Angela in a cleft stick—for, when things go well, she is my gentle and much-loved maiden aunt by marriage, but when they go across she is my mother-in-law, who would stare incredulously at any who might hint that my brain could plot a horror and my two hands execute it.
And yet I write this, and sometimes waste an hour in wondering why, all of a sudden, Kitty Windus threw me over without giving a reason, and, when I went for one, had left her rooms in Percy Street and gone goodness knows where.
But bah! They are wrong who say that for every crime somebody has to pay. They speak from hearsay. I do not speak from hearsay. To my own knowledge one crime has been committed for which nobody has paid and nobody ever will.
Well, things are as they are ... and so I will make an end.
My desperate struggles to save Archie Merridew included an interview that I had positively to force from Miss Angela. I had to force it for the reason that, though I was now theoretically exculpated from the charge under which I had lain, slander always sticks, and some of it still stuck with Miss Soames in spite of her efforts to forget it. That, I think, was the reason why she saw me in the dining-room at Woburn Place instead of in her own sitting-room, where, I knew, Evie was. There, among the empty chairs, toying with Mr. Shoto's napkin-ring and putting it down again as I remembered whose it was, and then unconsciously taking it up again, I told her in such terms as I could find how matters stood. She nodded from time to time.
Again it was not my fault if she failed to understand. She did, I now know, fail, and failed the more hopelessly that she thought she did understand. Many, many thick wrappings lie between placid Aunt Angela and the stark realities of Life.
"I see perfectly," she said, when I had made that statement that would have appalled any but herself. "It was exactly the same with George. (I was once—engaged—to a man called George.) George put a precisely similar case quite plainly before me. He was consumptive, or rather his poor father was, and they do say it skips a generation—poor George!"
I shook my head, but she only sighed with gentle content. She did not really miss George.
"But," she went on, while my eyes wandered to the corner by the sideboard where Archie had had his conversation with Mr Shoto about the Yoshiwara, "I shouldn't have refused him for that. (I did refuse him, and I heard afterwards that for weeks he ate scarcely anything at all.) It was something quite different that came between us—I've never told even Evie what the real reason was."
I interrupted her. "Are you sure, Miss Soames, that you've quite understood my real reason?" (More plainly I dared not speak, lest later there should be a chink in my own armour.)
"Oh yes!" she purred lightly. "Old woman as I am, I quite understand! As you say ... 'the children.' ..." Then, forgetting her attitude for a moment, she became playfully roguish. "Of course, it isn't as if you weren't in love with Miss Windus, and so in a sense feel it more nearly. You know how you would feel about it. I only say this that you may see that I quite understand these things do make a difference—eh?"
"But when I solemnly assure you that that has nothing whatever to do with it."
She adjusted the Indian shawl coquettishly about her shoulders.
"Ah, that's what you think! Come, Mr Jeffries you're positively ungallant! As if I was so old that I'd forgotten! And not only George either! I hope you won't be offended, Mr Jeffries, if I tell you that I suspect—I suspect—that in this I know you better than you know yourself!"
Against that phrase there is no argument. Some people do not and cannot see. And again I did not think Miss Angela had the right to extract from me the uttermost word. I was aware that the very possession of that awful weapon of mine was dangerous; merely to have it might be to use it; but the question is one of your resolve, and I was fully resolved. My job had to be done, or (as I still dared in certain moments to hope) not to be done; but if it was to be done, it was going to be done thoroughly. My neck was not going into a noose because of other people's blindness. It was of no use talking to Miss Angela.
And that being so, I abandoned my attempt with her. I smiled.
"Well, perhaps you're right," I said. "When one is in love oneself, and looking forward—well, perhaps it does bring it home to one. Perhaps it makes one a little of a busybody. So," I concluded, "I hope you won't exaggerate what I've been saying."
And a few minutes' further talk of things she had actually seen for herself in Archie—such things as his slight intemperance on the night of the birthday-party—made me quite safe with Miss Angela also.
To Kitty I was able to say even less than this. Indeed, she now detested Archie so thoroughly that I was scarcely able to say anything at all. And, looking back with all the care I am master of, I cannot see that anything I did say could have been the cause of that extraordinary breaking off with me without a word.
To Evie I said nothing at all.
There remained one more attempt with himself.
The time I chose for this was fixed by the exigencies of all the circumstances. I would have wrestled with him for the whole of the two days that remained before his wedding, but his own absence for a day precluded this. And as during that day I sought him in vain, I thought, very wearily, that he must now take his chance. Therefore, when it came to the very last day, the day before his wedding, I recognised that that also gave a perfect touch to the Evidence. The very eve of his wedding.
Several evenings before would somehow have been less plausible.
As I walked to his rooms that night I carried with me three things. Under my arm was my old brown-paper parcel—for to make a final use of his bath had seemed to me the most natural excuse for my calling on him. In my breast pocket I carried that piece of paper that was to be the Evidence to the world. And in another pocket I had his latch-key, for which I foresaw a use later in the evening.
I knocked at his door a little after eight, and Jane admitted me. She gave a familiar look at the parcel that contained my shirt, and also said something about a box Mr Merridew was leaving behind for the care of which he wanted me to be responsible. I passed this box on the first landing. It was locked, but only half addressed—Archie had not yet secured the rooms to which he would return with Evie. But he had not yet said anything about the box to me.
I found him walking about his rooms, taking last peeps into empty drawers to see whether there was anything he had forgotten. His packing was finished, and he kept stopping in his prowl to throw another handful of old letters on to the smouldering heap in his old Queen Anne teapot of a grate. A little pile of these condemned letters still remained by the side of his perforated brass fender.
"Hallo!" he cried as I entered. "Just give a squint round, will you, and tell me if there's anything so big I can't see it. And I say: I've left a box downstairs; I wonder if you'd look after it for me? I've told Jane."
"Right!" I said. "Bath ready?"
"All ready. By Jove! how letters do accumulate! You go and scrub yourself, while I polish this lot off."
I went into his bathroom.
But I did not make use of his bath. Somehow I could not bring myself to it. I only wanted the bath to be known as my motive for calling. So I filled it, stood by it for a number of minutes, and then ran the water off again. I took the same brown-paper parcel with me into his sitting-room that I had brought out.
I did not stay long after that. I was coming back. At nine I rose.
"What, are you off?" he said. "I must say you take what you want and clear off pretty quick! Supper'll be up presently."
"A last stag-party?" I said. "I'm afraid you'll have to have it without me. I've got to get to Bedford yet. So," I added, "I shall have to wish you—you know—get it over now."
"Oh, don't put on so much blessed ceremony!" he said. "It isn't as if you weren't going to see me again!"
It wasn't.
"Oh, about that box," I said. "Better call Jane, and tell me in her presence."
"Well, if you will leave me to eat my last bachelor supper alone. But I should have had to clear out myself just after. Got to have a word with Aunt Angela—she let's me call her that now."
He moved towards the door.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To call Jane," he replied. "Bell's busted now—time I cleared out of here—whole place is coming to pieces.... Jane! Ja—ne!" he shouted down the well of the stairs.
Then as Jane didn't hear he descended to the floor below.
His old red woollen bell-rope lay in a heap on the floor. That also had happened as a result of my studies in the British Museum. I busied myself with it.... By the time he had returned I had made it quite ready and was gazing thoughtfully into his fireplace.
I went downstairs with Jane, who herself closed the door behind me. I gave her a very express good-night.
The remainder of that evening I can divide into four distinct stages, and I will adopt that course, taking them numerically.
The first stage was one of an almost overwhelming lassitude. I had an hour and a half and more to kill, and this lassitude came upon me suddenly as I walked slowly in the direction of Cheapside. I was in its power before I recognised its dangers. The man of action had suddenly sunk into abeyance with me, and, now that all was ready, all interest in my job had departed from me. The drudgery of actual performance was all at once beyond my powers. I could have gone on planning—I wished there had been more to plan—but now to carry out....
I collapsed suddenly.
Why (I asked myself wearily) trouble after all! Why trouble about anything? Life was short, yet already too long; its activities overlauded, its glories contemptibly little; why waste it in striving—nay, why live it all? Thirty years of it had brought me nothing; whatever another thirty years might bring me I should have to leave, and what would it matter after that whether I left much or little? Nay, were there really an Infinite Mercy to be "squared," it was perhaps better to cast myself before it helpless, naked, and without profit of my life. Why not end it all now? Why not kill, not Archie, but myself?