He returned to his bole. After a long time another small company of deer passed quite close at hand. Suddenly they quickened their pace, their feet rustling on the turf.
“Well,” Etta Hudson said from close beside him, “what is it you want?”
He said: “It’s like this: three days ago Dudley Leicester seemed to go mad. He assaulted a man after asking him an apparently senseless question. We have had him under observation ever since. And he’s twice stopped strangers in the street and asked them the same question. When they’ve answered ‘No’ he attempts to assault them. He’s got an attendant now, and if he’s headed off before he can ask the question he’s calm enough; but he won’t speak a word.”
Etta said: “You might let me sit down there; I can’t stand.” And when she was on the bole she asked expressionlessly: “What’s the question he asks?”
“It’s always,” Grimshaw said, “whether the man—a perfect stranger—rang up your telephone number.”
Etta Stackpole said: “Ah! ...”
She sat silent for a long time, looking down at the ground, Grimshaw standing before her and looking musingly at her face.
“Well, what is it you want to know?”
“I want to know,” he said, “what happened on the night he saw you home.”
“I didn’t think,” she said expressionlessly, “that you could play the cad as well as the private detective.”
Robert Grimshaw uttered sharply the one word, “Rot!”
“Well, it’s a cad’s question, and you must have played the private detective to know that he saw me home.”
“My dear woman,” he said, “don’t the Phyllis Trevors know it, and Mme. de Mauvesine, and Mme. de Bogota, and half London. I am not making any accusations.”
“I don’t care a pin if you are,” she said.
“It’s merely a question of this sort,” he went on. “The doctor who’s in charge of the case wants to know whether he had any shock on that night. He wasn’t by any chance knocked down at a crossing? He didn’t fall? The cab horse hadn’t been down?” She shook her head minutely. “There wasn’t any violent scene? Your husband ...”
“Oh, he ...” she said. “Besides, he was in Paris.” Suddenly she broke out: “Look here, you don’t know what this means to me. I don’t mean to say that Leicester’s very much to me, but still, it’s pretty sickening to have it happen to him.”
“Well”—Grimshaw conceded a point—“I’m not saying that it’s your fault.”
“Oh, I’m not worrying about whose fault it is,” she said. “It’s him. It’s the thought of him, poor harmless devil!” She looked up at Grimshaw. “What doctor have you got? What does he say?”
“We’ve got a man called Wells,” he answered. “He doesn’t say much either way. He says he can’t tell till he knows what happened.”
She scrutinized his face.
“Look here,” she said, “thisistrue? You aren’t merely telling me a tale to get things out of me?” Grimshaw did not even answer her before she looked desolately down again. “Of course it’s true,” she said; “you aren’t that sort.”
“And you knew I knew already that he saw you home and that he stayed two hours,” Grimshaw said. “What I want to know is what gave him a shock.”
“Ah! ... you’d get that from his servant,” she said. “He’d be sitting up for Dudley. Well, I don’t care about that; I’d fight any case on that.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Grimshaw said. “I promise you that Pauline ...”
“Don’t you,” she said suddenly, and clenching her hands, “don’t you mention that little pink toad to me, if you want to get anything out of me. I hate her and I hate you! You got Dudley away from me together. Why, it’s been like devils and angels fighting for a man’s soul. That’s what it’sbeen. I’m a religious woman, though you mayn’t believe it. I believe in angels and the devil, too.” She pulled her skirt a little up from the ground. “I expect you’ll say,” she began again, “that you’re on the side of the angels. Well, see what you’ve made of him, poor dear! This wouldn’t have happened if you’d left him to me. It’s you that are responsible for it all—you, poking your nose into what doesn’t concern you.”
“Ah!” he said slowly and rather mournfully, “perhaps it has turned out like that if we get outside and look on. But as to which of us is which—angel and devil—I should not care to say.”
She looked up at him.
“You wouldn’t?” she said.
“You see,” he said, and he shook his head slowly, “perhaps it’s only a case of a square peg and a round hole. I don’t know. If you’d had him you’d have let him be a loafer all his life. Perhaps that’s all he’s really fitted for. Possibly, by shoving him on to do things, Pauline and I—or I principally—have brought this sort of thing on. Englishmen haven’t any sense of responsibility. Perhaps it’s bad for them to have it aroused in them. They can work; they can fight; they can do things; but it’s for themselves alone. They’re individualists. But there is a class that’s got the sense of duty to the whole. They’ve got a rudimentary sense of it—a tradition, at least, if not a sense. And Leicester comes of that class. But the tradition’s dying out. I suppose it was never native to them. It was forced on them becausesomeonehad to do the public work and it was worth their while. But now that’s changing, it isn’t worth while. So no doubt Dudley hadn’t got it in his blood.... And yet I don’t know,” he said; “he’s shaped so well. I would have sworn he had it in him to do it with careful nursing. And Pauline had it in her—the sense of the whole, of the clan, the class, the county, and all the rest of it. Women have it much more often than men. That’s why she isn’t going for you. Only the other day she said to me: ‘I’m not the sort of girl to give ourselves away.’”
“Now, look here,” she said, “what right have you, a confounded foreigner, to run us down? We take you up; we let you be one of us, and then you gas. There’s a great deal too many of you in the country. Taken as you are, on your own showing, poor dear Dudley, that you patronize—damn you—is worth a score of you. If you’re so set on the public service why isn’t it you who’s standing for Parliament instead of him? You’re ten times as rich. You’ve a hundred times more the gift of the gab ...” and she broke off, to begin again.
“Whatever you can say of him,” she said “he doesn’t go nosing out secrets and peeping and prying. He is straight and clear, and as innocent as a baby, and as honest as a die....”
“If he’s as honest as a die,” Robert Grimshaw said, “why was he carrying on an intrigue with you all that time? He must have been pretty deep to keep it concealed from me.”
She looked up at him with pale fury.
“Oh, you horrible-minded man!” she said. “How dare you! How dare you! You may kick me as much as you like. I am down. But you let Dudley Leicester alone. He’s too decent to be jumped on by a man like you.”
Grimshaw displayed a sudden and incomprehensible agitation.
“Then he hadn’t been carrying on with you?” he said.
“Carrying on with me?” she mocked him, but with a bitter scorn. “Do you mean to say that you suspected him of that? I suppose you suspected him of fooling about with me before he was married to his Pauline, and after? What an unspeakable toad of a mind you’ve got!”
Robert Grimshaw said, “Good God!”
She struck her hip with her clenched hand. “I see it,” she said, “you thought Dudley Leicester had seized the chance of his wife’s mother being ill to monkey about with me. You thought he’d been doing it before. You thought he was going to go on doing it. You thought he’d managed to conceal it from you. You thought he was a deep, dark ne’er-do-well like yourself or any other man. But I tell you this: Dudley Leicester’s a man in a thousand. I’m the only person that’s to blame. I tell you Dudley Leicester hasn’t spoken a word to me since the day we parted. I tell you I got him just that one night to show myself what I could do. He couldn’t help being with me; he had to see me home. We were all at the Esmeralda together, and all the rest of us were married, or engaged or coupled up somehow. Hehadto see me home as we lived next door. He did it with the worst grace in the world. He tried to get out of it. It was because he behaved so like an oaf that I set myself to get him. I swear that it is true. I swear as I am a religious woman. I believe in God and things.”
Again Robert Grimshaw said, “Good God” and his agitation grew on him.
“Well,” Etta Stackpole said, “what is there to get so upset about? It doesn’t count in Dudley for dissoluteness. There isn’t a man in the world, not even yourself, Robert Grimshaw, could get out of my having him if I set myself to it at that time of night and after that sort of evening. I’m not boasting about it. It’s the nature of the beast that you men are. I set myself to do it because I knew it would mortify him; because it would make him feel he was a dirty sort of dog next morning. What are you in such a stew about?” she said. “It wasn’t anything to do with Dudley’s real nature. I tell you he’s as pure-minded as a sucking-lamb.”
Robert Grimshaw was walking nervously up and down, striking the side of his trousers with his ebony stick.
“Oh,” she said with a sudden gibe, “I know what’s the matter with you; you’re feeling remorse. You’re upset because you suspected Dudley of being a mean hound. I know you, Robert Grimshaw. You were jealous of him; you were madly jealous of him. You married him to that little pink parroquet and then you got jealous of him. Youwantedto believe that he was mean and deceitful. You wanted to believe that he was going to turn out a bad hat. You wanted to believe it so that you could take your Pauline off his hands again, and now you’re feeling remorse because you suspected him. You knew in your heart that he was honest and simple and pure, but your jealousy turned you mad; I know you, Robert Grimshaw. Well, go on feeling remorse. Get all you can of it. I tell you this: I got Dudley Leicester into my hands and I did what I wanted with him, and nothing happened to shock him except when the telephone bell rang and someone recognized his voice. I guess that was shock enough for him. I thought he was in for something. I could tell it by the look of his eyes, but that only proves the thorough good sort he was. It wasn’t till then that he understood what he’d been up to. Then he was knocked flat.”
“There wasn’t anything else at all?” Robert Grimshaw said. He had pulled himself together and stood with his stick behind his back, leaning upon it a little. “Yes I admit I misjudged Dudley; but it’s a queer sort of world. You’re quite sure there wasn’t anything else?”
“What more do you want?” she asked. “Could a chap like that have had anything more beastly happen to him? Besides, it’s indicated in the form you say his madness takes. He’s always asking who it was who rung us up. Doesn’t it prove that that’s what hit his brain? No, he wasn’t thrown out of a cab. He didn’t stumble. My husband didn’t turn up, no. Nothing of the sort. He was just knocked plumb-centre by that chap saying: ‘Isn’t that Dudley Leicester speaking?’”
Robert Grimshaw’s face was the hue of wood-ash.
“My dear Etta,” he said with his gentle collectiveness. “It’s perfectly obvious that you aren’t responsible for Dudley’s collapse. It was the meddling fool at the other end of the telephone.”
“It was rather meddlesome when you come to think of it, but then perhaps he didn’t know there was anything wrong in Dudley’s being where he was.”
“Perhaps he didn’t,” Robert Grimshaw said. “Let’s go and have lunch.”
“Oh, I don’t want any lunch,” she said. “Take me home.”
She supported herself on his arm as they walked up the long avenue, for her footsteps were not very steady.