Chapter X: Part IV: Iddesleigh Gate (2)

I don't know what else she said; the rest didn't matter. Why it didn't matter you will see when I tell you that the tongue of a dead young libertine once, years before, had made free with Louie Causton's name and my own, and that the abominable slander, which had lasted for some days, had turned on nothing less than the paternity of Louie's child. All at the Business College, including Evie, had known of it; they had known, too, of the public apology I had been prompt to exact; but that mattered nothing, nothing, nothing now. This wretched little Israelite, revelling in her "v's," and even touching my sleeve from time to time, had seen to that. What the filthy rest was I do not know. Doubtless, beginning with that, and with the feeble Kitty to support her, she had made a complete history of jealousy.... And she did not even triumph openly. She lisped and protested, and put all on Kitty.... I left her, and almost fled from Louie also when, returning to Pall Mall, I encountered her coming out of Whitlock's room.

And now I have sat since lunch wondering what is to be done next. The afternoon hours have brought me no more light then those of the night did. Dully, I liken my life to that Maze at Hampton Court in which, one happy Sunday I don't know how long ago, Evie and I spent an hour. As then I seem to see Miss Levey's flamingo red behind the green hedges; she seems to lurk in my life, too wary to confront me, too malicious not to scratch. I am lost in winding intricacies. True, there is a door, even as there is a door at Hampton Court that is opened when the labyrinth is to be emptied. I find myself brought up against this door time after time, but I do not know what lies beyond it. You see what the door is: it is to tell Evie everything--everything.... Too wonderful Louie! Why, if you foresaw all this, did you not _make_ me tell her--thrust me into a closet with her and keep the door until it was done--instead of letting me grope in my blindness and slip ever further and further away from her?... Oh, I am tired, tired.

I am too tired even to be angry for my poor practised-upon darling. For they have sprung this horrible thing upon her. Half the time she does not, cannot, believe it; of the other half of her life they have made a torment. Poor lamb! Of course if they are cruel enough they can make it seem plausible to her; I only wonder that, harrowed as she must have been for all these weeks, she has borne up at all. _I_ know the horror she must have wrestled with!... That _that_ wicked old story should crop up again!... But I must stop. Perhaps an hour's sleep will do me good.

5.30 P.M.--That was a reckless thing to do, to go to sleep with these papers spread out on the table and my door unlocked. Not that my household is a staff of commercial collegiates, able to read this out-of-date old shorthand; but it was foolish for all that. Anyhow I am rather better, and think I can face the dinner to-night. After that I don't know what I shall do. I have not seen Evie all day.

I never felt less up to a dinner. But a little champagne will keep me going. They will be here in two hours and a half. It will take Evie an hour and a half to dress; I wonder what she is doing for the final hour! Dear heart, if she only knew how I ache to go up to her; but I must not do that until I have made up my mind what course to take. I shall have come to a resolution before I sleep to-night that will settle things one way or the other. We cannot stop at this _impasse_. I don't think Evie's is a real jealousy. To-morrow she will be sobbing on my shoulder that she has harboured it. But at present it has the venomous effect of the real thing, and if I do not put an end to it, it will recur. Let me think....

Again it comes upon me--why do I write this at all, that I shall most certainly be destroying? I have hardly the heart to think it out, but as it may have some bearing on what I shall have to say to Evie presently I must. I don't think it's that I'm urged to set myself right with anybody, even with myself. At first, when I began, I thought it was that--the need for self-justification--but now I don't think it's a question of justification or condemnation at all. It is a far more essential question. Suppose we call it the question of the personal standard....

I dare say my standards pass for low. That physical basis of marriage, for example, may pass for low--I'm sure it must to that ardent young couple who pant for intellectual companionship and Schmerveloff. And I confess that several of the Beatitudes are beyond me. To tell the truth I am not really at home with anything much higher than the best of human intelligence; and when I hear people speaking glibly of "man-made laws," I recognise that some folk are on terms of affability with Omnipotence that are denied to me. I suppose I am temperamentally reluctant to alter as much as a regulation once it is established, and I am certainly not ready with divine amendments to everything of man's offhand. Man's law I hold to be a necessarily imperfect, but roughly sufficient measure of man's conduct, and in the light of that law I may presently have a murder to confess.

I say _a_ murder, not murder. Is there a difference? I do not know, and I am too weary to split hairs about it. Call them, if you like, one and the same thing. Still, if the one command be absolute, for the other a case may be stated. Do I, then, write to state a case?

But state it to whom? There is one Addressee to whom I have not lifted up my eyes. I, proud and conquering whom among my fellow-worms, have found the lesser law press hard on me, but I have not straightway invoked the greater. Man's decrees I have found strong and wise and admirable; the other is too wonderful for me. And this is the conclusion I promised you. To man, man's law is of more consequence than God's. Perhaps the damned are not utterly damned, so long as they do not add presumptuousness to their error. To have appealed and to have had that appeal rejected _were_ damnation.... I do not appeal.

Nor can I see that I state my case to man. Nay, for I confess man's authority, lest it should appear that I do not, I shall destroy these papers. To-night or to-morrow I shall destroy them. Man shall not say that I have shirked the human issue. I refuse to plead at all. Let any who take it upon themselves to accuse or defend me plead or charge what they will. I am mute. I burn this....

I am tired....

And yet one boon I do crave. Perhaps those standards of mine, by their very lowness, may be the evidence, not of a smaller, but of a larger conception of Him Who Reigneth than might at first glance appear....

I am tired....

But all this advances me little with my resolution. Indeed, a fresh glare has just broken in on my brain. I was looking back a few moments ago on that long chain of circumstances with which my darling has been torturing herself--that old slander, innocencies between Louie and myself possible to have been misconstrued, my coming upon her that night in Billy's top room, Evie's own temperamental bias against Louie's profession, her silences, her belief of the calumny. Had Miriam Levey but known of my visit to the Models' Club and that strange walk of ours on the night of the Berkeley dinner, her case had indeed been complete! I had been reviewing all this, I say; and suddenly it struck me, suppose I do tell her? _What then?_...

Do you see--as the terrible Louie had seen--what then? I am supposing that the revelation did not kill her; do you see what then?

At last I saw it, and groaned. What then? Why, what but that I had put another before herself? What but that, while she had shared my board and bed, that fatal burden of my honour and confidence and trust had gone to another? What but that Louie, after all, _had_ had the key and password of my life that I had denied to herself? What could I answer did she live to say, "What, you married me without telling me this? You tell me _now_, after having concealed it until concealment is no longer possible? You give me, _now_, something she's had the use of and has passed on to me? What is she to you, then, that _I_ am not? Where do I fall short as a wife that _I_ couldn't have borne this for my husband or died trying to bear it? Take it. Give it to her. She can have it. Fool, that I couldn't see this for myself, but must have Miriam Levey to point it out to me!"

Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear! We had never a fair start....

I do not know whether she intends to spend the night in the nursery again....

Seven o'clock. I must dress. And I must drink something now, or I shall never get through the evening....

And even yet I have not come to my decision.

11.30 P.M. This page at least it will be almost superfluous to destroy. My hand shakes like dodder-grass. That is the liquor I have drunk, but I had to do it.

They have gone. As I thought would be the case, I have had to play Evie's part too. That's twice Billy Izzard has seen me do that, for to-night was to all intents and purposes a repetition of that other night, when I tried to silence the voice of a gramophone by jumping up and bawling out an overstrained merriment. I don't mean that I jumped up and bawled to-night, of course. I merely had a number of flowers removed from the table, so that my eyes had a straight lane to Evie's at the other end, and sent down smiles and encouragement and support to her. And I allowed the men a bare ten minutes afterwards before I hurried off to her aid again. That and plenty of champagne; and I think I pulled it off. Billy, who lingered behind until I turned him out, says everything went splendidly. He didn't know I'd such gaiety in me, he said.

And Evie has gone to the nursery, but is not going to stay there. She told me that, with a hot little kiss, and a grip of her moist hand.... This was on the stairs, and she whispered (_words illegible_), and she had to run away so that the gratitude in her eyes would not run quite over--but that she whispered (_words illegible_)....

I shall do it to-night, unless my tongue is as shaky as my hand. There is a perfect stillness in my brain. I can see the whole thing spread out in my mind like a map; never have I been so triumphantly the master of a thing ... (_words illegible_).... The map is as steady as a rock, too; I turn my attention from it for a moment, choosing the form in which I shall present this aspect of the case or that, and when I return to the map it hasn't moved. Words, whole phrases, rise up in my mind, all so perfect that there will hardly be any shock at all. Evie cannot help but see it as I see it, and then I shall beg her pardon that I didn't tell her long ago. I have never loved her as I love her to-night, and those lovely pools of her eyes on the stairs (_words illegible_).

At last we are going to have a fair start. We hadn't that, you know. I still think I was right to stand between her and much of life, but this other thing was really too huge to be hidden. And she will not be jealous any more of Louie when I tell her that though Louie dragged all this out of me--she's no idea really how clever Louie is--my pulse has never quickened at Louie's touch nor my eyes brightened when they have met hers. "With my body" I have worshipped Evie, and shall (_words illegible_).... And so to-morrow will be a new beginning for us. I am rich; I have power; my only desire is now almost within my grasp. It was nonsense I wrote an hour or two ago--or perhaps it was the other day--about this only being the beginning of a deathless jealousy between those two. Evie will see. I shall make it all perfectly plain. I could almost do impossibilities to-night, with the words running like quicksilver in my mind and that chart I have in my brain steady as a rock. And if the anticipation of peace is such bliss, what will the peace itself be?...

I suppose she will be ready about twelve. I mustn't let this wondrous stillness of my brain slip from me. I was clever enough to foresee that it might, and so had the tray of liqueurs sent down here. But it doesn't do for an abstemious man to mix his liqueurs; the brandy again, I think. (_Several lines undecipherable_). I have only been drunk once in my life; I forget when that was; and once I shammed drunk; I don't suppose I shall ever be drunk again. A moment ago I felt a twinge where I made that dent in my head on the corner of Aunt Angela's fender, but it has passed.... It was a good dinner-party; I saw to that.... Evie, sweetheart--she'll be ready about twelve....

It is a quarter to now. I must be getting up. But first I must put these papers away. One of them slipped away somewhere a few minutes ago; I stumbled and upset a pile of them, but gathered them all up again, all but that one; never mind, I will look for it in the morning. It was my foot that slipped, not my brain. My brain is all right....

Well, it will be all right to-morrow....

END OF JEFFRIES' JOURNAL

ENVOI

SIR JULIUS PEPPER DICTATES

ENVOI

"Er--Miss Causton--can you stay for an hour or so? No, a private affair; I hope it's not inconvenient; thanks, and if I might give you supper afterwards?...

"Fact is, it's about poor old Jeffries. Better date it, and keep it safe. They've asked me to write something about him, and I'm no writer; but Izzard's found me a man who'll lick it into shape if I supply the material. 'Just talk it anyhow,' he said. Easily enough said, about a chap like Jeffries....

"You've seen this cutting, of course? No, not the first one; this from this morning's paper, about Mrs Jeffries. By Jove! it has followed quickly; awful! (By the way, you once met her, didn't you?) No, I want this copy; you can get another to-morrow; I'll read it out:

TRAGIC DEATH OF A LADY

We have to report a melancholy sequel to the death of Mr James
Herbert Jeffries, of the Exploration and Mercantile Consolidation,
Pall Mall, which was announced in our issue of the 10th ult. The
circumstances of Mr Jeffries' sudden demise are still fresh in the
public mind. The deceased gentleman, it will be remembered,
succumbed to an attack of cerebral haemorrhage brought on by strain
and overwork and culminating on the night of a dinner-party given
by him at his mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. It is with the deepest
regret that we now announce that his widow has survived him only a
few weeks.

We understand that during the intervening time the bereaved lady
had occupied herself by going through the private papers of her
late husband, sitting up late at night in order to render this last
devout service. At about three o'clock yesterday morning Ann
Madeley, a housemaid in Mrs Jeffries' employ, suffering from
insomnia, had recourse to a medicine closet, situated where the
servants' quarters adjoin the dwelling parts of the house. Her
attention was attracted to a strong smell of escaping gas. She woke
James Baines, a butler, and the two, wisely refraining from
striking a light, made their way in the direction from which the
smell of gas seemed to come. This brought them to their mistress'
room. Obtaining no answer to their knocks, an entrance was forced,
and in a small dressing-room lately used by Mr Jeffries----

"I hope this doesn't distress you too much, Miss Causton----

--Mrs Jeffries was found, fully dressed, stretched on a couch. The
doors and windows had been closed, and a gas-fire turned on. We
understand from Baines that Mrs Jeffries had remained as usual
downstairs in the library until a late hour; and a page of notes in
her husband's shorthand which has been found under one of the
pillars of the writing-table----

"I've got that page of notes, by the way.----

--is sufficiently eloquent testimony as to what her sad duty had
been. Dr McKechnie, who was at once summoned, certified that life
had been extinct for some hours. The deceased lady, who was a great
favourite in society, leaves two children in the care of a maiden
aunt, Miss Angela Soames. The inquest is fixed for Tuesday next.

"Sad business, sad business.... Afraid they'll have to bring it in suicide--through grief, probably....

"Well, let's put it down as it comes. Of course he was a big man; lived an intense crowded life too. I should say at a guess there weren't many things he hadn't done at one time and another, short of committing a murder or a matrimonial infidelity. Don't think he could have been tempted to do that. One woman could do anything she liked with him, but the others wouldn't have much chance. Oh yes, a full life. Did you know, Miss Causton, that the man who first passed him over to me found him helping to pick a fallen horse up in Fleet Street, when he hadn't a penny to his name? He was a commissionaire once.... As you know, he was the steam of this concern; it was the chance of my lifetime finding him, poor chap. Extraordinary man! He used to go at things by a sort of intuition; he tried to explain it to me, but I never could understand it. Once I said something about 'scientific method'; but he said it wasn't scientific method at all. Scientific method, he said, was something purely empirical, concerned with investigation, and not practically constructive in the least. Constructiveness came after. His method, he said, was based on the truths of art, 'the only truths we know anything about,' he said, whatever he meant. I never could follow him at all.... Well, if that's so, it rather explains a lot of these business giants going in for collecting--I mean it isn't that they just have the money to gratify their artistic tastes. But, as I say, I could never make head nor tail of it.... Which reminds me; that paper that got wafted under his desk; that was a dabbling in art in its way; fiction; did you know he tried his hand at fiction, Miss Causton? Here it is--an odd page--Whitlock knows a bit of shorthand, and he transcribed it for me:

_'--show him that red thing on the floor, and that curved thing on
the door.'_

_But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had
suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in
his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the
physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I
stood over him huge and black as Fate.... 'Spare him if you can,'
that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly...._

_'Merridew,' I said heavily, 'you'll disappear to-morrow
morning--or----'_

_'Shall I?' he bragged falteringly...._[3]

"And so on----

_His only chance now was to have screamed aloud; but he did not
scream. Instead he stooped quickly, caught up the poker, and struck
at my head with it._[3]

"And that's the end of the page. Sort of grim tale he would write. Queer hobby for a mercantile and political giant, wasn't it? But I'd go in for fiction myself if I thought it would make me like him.

"Verandah Cottage--that was no place for a chap like him. I hated to see him there. He could always go anywhere, meet anybody, was on equal terms with the best--and he without antecedents that I ever heard of, standing out solitary against a black background, just genius.... I wonder who his people were! Something uncommon, or else he was just a gigantic 'sport'----

"Of course--_de mortuis_ and so on--but he did marry the wrong woman. To tell the truth, she was as ordinary as they make 'em; would have looked her best in the lights of the Holborn Restaurant at half-past six, waiting with the rest of the shop-girls for her bus home. He was a mass of contradictions, and one of 'em was that he merely idealised her. Pretty, of course, but poor Jeffries could have done better for himself than that. She never could bear me.... Well, there's nothing to be said now, poor creatures.... But sometimes it made me almost angry that he hadn't married the woman he ought....

"Well, let's begin with the day he first came to the F.B.C.----"

And Louie's pencil flew on.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] See "In Accordance with the Evidence."

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