Chapter XIV.
In Which Mr. Varney Is Disillusioned
Thorndyke’s visit to the Geological Museum was not a protracted affair, for his friend, Mr. Burston, made short work of the investigation.
“You say you have examined the specimens yourself,” said he. “Well, I expect you know what they are; just come to me for an official confirmation, hm? However, don’t tell me what your conclusion was. I may as well start with an open mind. Write it down on this slip of paper and lay it on the table face downwards. And now let us have the specimens.”
Thorndyke produced from his pocket a cigar case from which he extracted a pill-box and the labelled microscope-slide.
“There are two little water-worn fragments in the pill-box,” he explained, “and three similar ones which I have ground into sections. I am sorry the specimens are so small, but they are the largest I had.”
Mr. Burston took the pill-box, and, tipping the two tiny pebbles into the palm of his hand, inspected them through a Coddington lens.
“M’ yes,” said he, “I don’t think it will be very difficult to decide what this is. I think I could tell you offhand. But I won’t. I’ll put it through the regular tests and make quite sure of it; and meanwhile you had better have a browse around the museum.”
He bustled off to some inner sanctum of the Curator’s domain and Thorndyke adopted his advice by straying out into the galleries. But he had little opportunity to study the contents of the cases, for in a few minutes Mr. Burston returned with a slip of paper in his hand.
“Now,” he said facetiously as they re-entered the room, “you see there’s no deception.” He laid his slip of paper on the table beside Thorndyke’s and invited the latter to “turn up the cards.” Thorndyke accordingly turned over the two slips of paper. Each bore the single word “Phonolite.”
“I knew you had spotted it,” said Burston. “However, you have now got corroborative evidence and I suppose you are happy. I only hope I haven’t helped to send some poor devil to chokee or worse. Good-bye! Glad you brought the things to me.” He restored the pill-box and slide and, having shaken hands heartily, returned to his lair, while Thorndyke went forth into Jermyn Street and took his way thoughtfully eastward.
In a scientific sense the Purcell case was now complete. But the more he thought about it the more did he feel the necessity for bringing the scheme of evidence into closer conformity with traditional legal practice. Even to a judge, a purely theoretical train of evidence might seem inconclusive; to a jury who had been well pounded by a persuasive counsel it would probably appear quite unconvincing. It would be necessary to obtain corroboration along different lines and in a new direction; and the direction in which it would be well to explore in the first place was the ancient precinct of Lincoln’s Inn where, at 62 Old Buildings, Mr. John Rodney had his professional chambers.
Now, at the very moment when Thorndyke was proceeding with swift strides from the neighbourhood of Jermyn Street towards Lincoln’s Inn on business of the most critical importance to Mr. Varney, it was decreed by the irony of fate that the latter gentleman should be engaged in bringing his affairs to a crisis of another kind. For some time past he had been watching with growing impatience the dilatory proceedings of the lawyers in regard to Margaret’s petition. Especially had he chafed at the farce of the private detective, searching, as he knew, for a man whose body was lying on the bed of the sea hundreds of miles away from the area of the search. He was deeply disappointed, too. For when his advertisement scheme had been adopted by Thorndyke, he had supposed that all was plain sailing; he had but to send the necessary letter and the dissolution of the marriage could be proceeded with at once. That was how it had appeared to him. And as soon as the marriage was dissolved he would make his declaration and in due course his heart’s desire would be accomplished.
Very differently had things turned out. Months had passed and not a sign of progress had been made. The ridiculous search for the missing man—ridiculous to him only, however—dragged on interminably and made him gnash his teeth in secret. His omniscience was now a sheer aggravation; for it condemned him to look on at the futile activities that Barnby had suggested and Rodney initiated, recognizing all their futility but unable to utter a protest. To a man of his temperament it was maddening.
But there was another source of trouble. His confidence in Margaret’s feelings towards him had been somewhat shaken of late. It had seemed to him there had been a change in her bearing towards him; a slight change, subtle and indefinable, but a change. She seemed as friendly, as cordial as ever; she welcomed his visits and appeared always glad to see him; and yet there was a something guarded—so he felt—as if she were consciously restraining any further increase of intimacy.
The thought of it troubled him profoundly. Of course it might be nothing more than a little extra carefulness, due to her equivocal position. She had need to keep clear of anything in the slightest degree compromising; that he realized clearly. But still the feeling lurked in his mind that she had changed, at least in manner; and sometimes he was aware of a horrible suspicion that he might have been overconfident. More than once he had been on the point of saying something indiscreet; and as time went on he felt ever growing a yearning to have his doubts set at rest.
On this present occasion he was taking tea with Margaret by invitation with the ostensible object of showing her a set of etchings of some of the picturesque corners of Maidstone. He always enjoyed showing her his works because he could see that she enjoyed looking at them; and these etchings of her native town would, he knew, have a double appeal.
“What a lovely old place it is!” she exclaimed as she sipped her tea with her eyes fixed on the etchings that Varney had placed before her on a music stand. “Why is it, Mr. Varney, that an etching or a drawing of any kind is so much more like the place than a photograph? It can’t be a question of accuracy, for the photograph is at least as accurate as a drawing and contains a great deal more detail.”
“Yes,” agreed Varney, “and that is probably the explanation. An artist puts down what he sees and what any one else would see and recognize. A photograph puts down what is there, regardless of how the scene would look to a spectator. Consequently it is full of irrelevant detail which gets in the way of the real effect as the eye would see it; and it may show appearances that the eye never sees at all, as in the case of Muybridge’s instantaneous photographs of galloping horses. A photograph of a Dutch clock might catch the pendulum in the middle of its swing, and then the clock would appear to have stopped. But an artist would always draw it at the end of its swing where it pauses for an instant; and that is where the eye sees it when the clock is going.”
“Yes, of course,” said Margaret; “and now I understand why your etchings of the old streets and lanes show just the streets and lanes that I remember, whereas the photographs that I have all look more or less strange and unfamiliar. I suppose they are full of details that I never noticed; but your etchings pick out and emphasize the things that I used to look at with pleasure and which live in my memory. It is a long time since I have been to Maidstone. I should like to see it again; indeed I am not sure that, if I were free to choose, I shouldn’t like to live there again. It is a dear old town.”
“Yes; isn’t it? But you say ‘if you were free to choose.’ Aren’t you free to choose where you will live?”
“In a sense, I am, I suppose,” she replied; “but I don’t feel that I can make any definite arrangements for the future until—well, until I know what my own future is to be.”
“But surely you know that now. You have got that letter of Dan’s. That practically releases you. The rest is only a matter of time and legal formalities. If Jack Rodney had only got Penfield or some other solicitor to get the case started as soon as you had that letter, you would have had your decree by now and have been your own mistress. At least, that is my feeling on the subject. Of course I am not a lawyer and I may be wrong.”
“I don’t think you are,” said Margaret. “I have thought the same all along, and I fancy Mr. Rodney is beginning to regret that he did not follow Dr. Thorndyke’s advice and rely on the letter only. But he felt that he could hardly go against Mr. Barnby, who has had so much experience in this kind of practice. And Mr. Barnby was very positive that the letter was not enough.”
“Yes, Barnby has crabbed the whole business; and now after all these months you are just where you were, excepting that you have dropped a lot of money on this ridiculous private detective. Can’t you get Rodney to send the fellow packing and get the case started in earnest?”
“I am inclined to think that he is seriously considering that line of action and I hope he is. Of course I have tried to influence him in the matter. It is silly for a lay person to embarrass a lawyer by urging him to do this or that against his judgment. But I must say that I have grown rather despondent as the time has dragged on and nothing has been done, and I shall be very relieved when a definite move is made. I have an impression that it will be, quite soon.”
“That is good hearing,” exclaimed Varney, “because when a move is made, it can’t fail to be successful. How can it? On that letter Dan could offer no defence; and it is pretty obvious that he has no intention of offering any. And if there is no defence, the case must go in your favour.”
“Unless the judge suspects collusion, as Mr. Barnby seems to think he may.”
“But,” protested Varney, “judges don’t give their decisions on what they suspect, do they? I thought they decided on the evidence. Surely collusion would have to be proved like anything else; and it couldn’t be, because there has been no collusion. And I don’t see why any one should suspect that there has been.”
“I agree with you entirely, Mr. Varney,” said Margaret, “and I do hope you are right. You are making me feel quite encouraged.”
“I am glad of that,” said he, “and I am encouraging myself at the same time. This delay has been frightfully disappointing. I had hoped that by this time the affair would have been over and you would have been free. However, we may hope that it won’t be so very long now.”
“It will take some months in any case,” said Margaret.
“Yes, of course,” he admitted; “but that is a mere matter of waiting. We can wait patiently when we see the end definitely in view. And what a relief it will be when it is over! Just think of it. When the words are spoken and the shackles are struck off! Won’t that be a joyful day?” As Varney was speaking, Margaret watched him furtively and a little uneasily. For there had come into his face an expression that she had seen more than once of late; an expression that filled her gentle soul with forebodings of trouble for this impulsive warm-hearted friend. And now the note of danger was heightened by something significant in the words that he had used, something that expressed more than mere friendly solicitude.
“It will certainly be a relief when the whole business is over,” she said quietly; “and it is most kind and sympathetic of you to take such a warm interest in my future.”
“It isn’t kind at all,” he replied, “nor particularly sympathetic. I feel that I am an interested party. In a sense, your future is my future.”
He paused a few moments, and she looked at him in something like dismay. Vainly she cast about for some means of changing the current of the conversation, of escaping to some less perilous topic. Before she had time to recover from her confusion he looked up at her and burst out passionately:
“Maggie, I want to ask you a question. I know I oughtn’t to ask it, but you must try to forgive me. I can’t bear the suspense any longer. I think about it day and night and it is eating my heart out. What I want to ask you is this: When it is all over—when that blessed day comes and you are free, will you—can I hope that you may be willing to listen to me if I ask you to let me be your devoted servant, your humble worshipper and to try to make up to you by love and faithful service all that has been missing from your life in the past? For years—for many years, Maggie, I have been your friend, a friend far more loving and devoted than you have ever guessed, for in those days I hardly dared to dream even of intimate friendship. But now the barrier between us is no longer immoveable. Soon it will be cast down for ever. And then—can it be, Maggie, that my dreams will come true? That you will grant me a lifelong joy by letting me be the guardian of your happiness and peace?”
For a moment there had risen to Margaret’s face a flush of resentment, but it faded almost instantly and was gone, extinguished by a deep sense of the tragedy of this unfortunate but real and great passion. She had always liked Varney and she had recognized and valued his quiet, unobtrusive friendship and the chivalrous deference with which he had been used to treat her. And now she was going to make him miserable, to destroy his cherished hopes of a future made happy in the realization of his great love for her. The sadness of it left no room for resentment, and her eyes filled as she answered unsteadily:
“You know, Mr. Varney, that, as a married woman, I have no right to speak or think of the making of a new marriage. But I feel that your question must be answered and I wish, dear Mr. Varney, I wish from my heart that it could be answered differently. I have always valued your friendship—with very good reason; and I value your love and am proud to have been thought worthy of it. But I cannot accept it. I can never accept it. It is dreadful to me, dear friend, to make you unhappy—you whom I like and admire so much. But it must be so. I have nothing but friendship to offer you, and I shall never have.”
“Why do you say you will never have, Maggie?” he urged. “May it not be that you will change? That the other will come if I wait long enough? And I will wait patiently—wait until I am an old man if need be, so that only the door is not shut. I will never weary you with importunities, but just wait your pleasure. Will you not let me wait and hope, Maggie?”
She shook her head sadly. “No, Mr. Varney,” she answered. “Believe me it can never be. There is nothing to wait for. There will be no change. The future is certain so far as that. I am so sorry, dear, generous friend! It grieves me to the heart to make you unhappy. But what I have said is final. I can never say anything different.”
Varney looked at her in incredulous despair. He could not believe in this sudden collapse of all his hopes; for his doubts of her had been but vague misgivings born of impatience and unrest. But suddenly a new thought flashed into his mind.
“How do you know that?” he asked. “Why are you so certain? Is there anything now that you know of that—that must keep us apart for ever? You know what I mean, Maggie. Is there anything?”
She was silent for a few moments. Naturally she was reluctant to disclose to another the secret that she had held so long locked in her own heart and that even now she dared but to whisper to herself. But she felt that to this man, whose love she must reject and whose happiness she must shatter, she owed a sacred duty. He must not be allowed to wreck his life if a knowledge of the truth would save him.
“I will tell you, Mr. Varney,” she said. “You know how I came to marry Dan?”
“I think so,” he replied. “He never told me, but I guessed.”
“Well, if I had not married Dan, I should have married John Rodney. There was no engagement and nothing was said; but we were deeply attached to one another and we both understood. Then circumstances compelled me to marry Dan. Mr. Rodney knew what those circumstances were. He cherished no resentment against me. He did not even blame me. He has remained my friend ever since and he has formed no other attachment. I know that he has never forgotten what might have been, and neither have I. Need I say any more?”
Varney shook his head. “No,” he replied gruffly. “I understand.”
For some moments there was a deep silence in the room. Margaret glanced timidly at her companion, shocked at the sudden change in his appearance. In a moment all the enthusiasm, the eager vivacity had died out of his face, leaving it aged, drawn and haggard. He had understood; and his heart was filled with black despair. At a word all his glorious dream-castles had come crashing down, leaving the world that had been so sunny a waste of dust and ashes. So he sat for a while silent, motionless, stunned by the suddenness of the calamity. At length he rose and began, in a dull, automatic way to collect his etchings and bestow them in his portfolio. When he had secured them and tied the ribbons of the portfolio, he turned to Margaret and standing before her looked earnestly in her face.
“Good-bye, Maggie,” he said in a strange, muffled voice; “I expect I shan’t see you again for some time.”
She stood up, and with a little smothered sob, held out her hand. He took it in both of his and, stooping, kissed it reverently. “Good-bye again,” he said, still holding her hand. “Don’t be unhappy about me. It couldn’t be helped. I shall often think of you and of how sweet you have been to me to-day; and I shall hope to hear soon that you have got your freedom. And I do hope to God that Rodney will make you happy. I think he will. He is a good fellow, an honest man and a gentleman. He is worthy of you and I wish you both long years of happiness.”
He kissed her hand once more and then, releasing it, made his way gropingly out into the hall and to the door. She followed him with the tears streaming down her face and watched him, as she had watched him once before, descending the stairs. At the landing he turned and waved his hand; and even as she returned his greeting he was gone. She went back to the drawing-room still weeping silently, very sad at heart at this half-foreseen tragedy. For the time being, she could see, Varney was a broken man. He had come full of hope and he had gone away in despair; and something seemed to hint—it may have been the valedictory tone of his last words—that she had looked on him for the last time; that the final wave of his hand was a last farewell.
Meanwhile Varney, possessed by a wild unrest, hurried through the streets, yearning, like a wounded animal, for the solitude of his lair. He wanted to shut himself in his studio and be alone with his misery. Presently he hailed a taxicab and from its window gazed out impatiently to measure its progress. Soon it drew up at the familiar entry, and when he had paid the driver he darted in and shut the door; but hardly had he attained the sanctuary that he had longed for than the same unrest began to engender a longing to escape. Up and down the studio he paced, letting the unbidden thoughts surge chaotically through his mind, mingling the troubled past with the future of his dreams—the sunny future that might have been—and this with the empty reality that lay before him.
On the wall he had pinned an early proof of the aquatint that Thorndyke had liked and that he himself rather liked. He had done it partly from bravado and partly as a memorial of the event that had set both him and Maggie free. Presently he halted before it and let it set the tune to his meditations. There was the lighthouse looking over the fog-bank just as it had looked on him when he was washing the blood-stain from the deck. By that time Purcell was overboard, at the bottom of the sea. His oppressor was gone. His life was now his own; and her life was her own.
He looked at the memorial picture and in a moment it seemed to him to have become futile. The murder itself was futile—so far as he was concerned, though it had set Maggie free. To what purpose had he killed Purcell? It had been to ensure a future for himself; and behold there was to be no future for him after all. Thus in the bitterness of his disappointment he saw everything out of proportion and in false perspective. He forgot that it was not to win Margaret but to escape from the clutches of his parasite that he had pulled the trigger on that sunny day in June. He forgot that he had achieved the very object that was in his mind when he fired the shot; freedom to live a reputable life safe from the menace of the law. His passion for Margaret had become so absorbing that it had obscured all the other purposes of his life; and now that it was gone, it seemed to him that nothing was left.
As he stood thus gloomily reflecting with his eyes fixed on the little picture he began to be aware of a new impulse. The lighthouse, the black-sailed luggers, the open sea, seemed to take on an unwonted friendliness. They were the setting of something besides tragedy. There, in Cornwall, he had been happy in a way despite the abiding menace of Purcell’s domination. There, at Sennen, he had lived under the same roof with her, had sat at her table, had been her guest and her accepted friend. It had not really been a happy period, but memory, like the sun-dial, numbers only the sunny hours, and Varney looked back on it with wistful eyes. At least his dream had not been shattered then. So, as he looked at the picture he felt stirring within him a desire to go back and look upon those scenes again. Falmouth and Penzance and Sennen—especially Sennen—seemed to draw him. He wanted to look out across the sea to the Longships and in the gathering gloom of the horizon to see the diamond and the ruby sparkle as they did that evening when he and the distant lighthouse seemed to hold secret converse.
It was, perhaps, a strange impulse. Whence it came he neither knew nor asked. It may have been the effect of memory and association. It may have been mere unrest. Or it may have been that a dead hand beckoned to him to come. Who shall say? He only knew that he was sensible of the impulse and that it grew from moment to moment.
To a man in his condition, to feel an impulse is to act on it. No sooner was he conscious of the urge to go back and look upon the well-remembered scenes than he began to make his simple preparations for the journey. Like most experienced travellers he travelled light. Most of his kit, including his little case of sketching materials, was in the studio. The rest could be picked up at his lodgings en route for Paddington. Within ten minutes of his having formed the resolve to go, he stood on the threshold locking the studio door from without with the extra key that he used when he was absent for more than a day. At the outer gate he paused to pocket the key and stood for a few moments with his portmanteau in his hand, looking back at the studio with a curiously reflective air. Then, at last, he turned and went on his way. But if he could have looked, as the clairvoyant claims to look, through the bricks and mortar of London, he might at this very time have seen Dr. John Thorndyke striding up Chancery Lane from Fleet Street; might have followed him to the great gateway of Lincoln’s Inn (on the masonry whereof tradition has it that Ben Jonson worked as a bricklayer) and seen him pass through into the little square beyond and finally plunge into the dark and narrow entry of one of the ancient red-brick houses that have looked down upon the square for some three or four centuries, an entry on the jamb of which was painted the name of Mr. John Rodney.
But Varney was not a clairvoyant, and neither was Thorndyke. And so it befell that each of them went his way unconscious of the movements of the other.