4
One Thursday in early September, when Juke and Jane and I had lunched alone together at the club, and Jane and I had gone off to some meeting afterwards, Juke dropped in on me in the evening after dinner. He sat down and lit a pipe, then got up and walked about the room, and I knew he had something on his mind, but wasn't going to help him out. I felt hard and rather sore that evening.
Soon he said, in his soft, indifferent voice, 'Of course you'll be angry at what I'm going to say.'
'I think it probable,' I replied, 'from the look of you. But go on.'
'Well,' he said quietly, 'I don't think these Thursday lunches will do any more.'
'For you?' I asked.
'For any of us. Not with Jane Hobart there.' He wouldn't look at me, but stood by the window looking out at Gray's Inn Road.
'And why not with Jane? Because she's married to the enemy?'
'It makes it awkward,' he murmured.
'Makes it awkward,' I repeated. 'How does it make it awkward? Whom does it make awkward? It doesn't make Jane awkward. Nor me, nor any one else, as far as I know. Does it make you awkward? I didn't know anything could do that. But something obviously has, this evening. It's not Jane, though; it's being afraid to say what you mean. You'd better spit it out, Jukie. You're not enough of a Jesuit to handle these jobs competently, you know. I know perfectly well what you've got on your mind. You think Jane and I are getting too intimate with each other. You think we're falling, or fallen, or about to fall, in love.'
'Well,' he wheeled round on me, relieved that I had said it, 'I do. And you can't deny it…. Any fool could see it by now. Why, the way you mooned about, depressed and sulky, this last month, when she's been out of town, and woke up the moment she came back, was enough to tell any one.'
'I dare say,' I said indifferently. 'People's minds are usually offensively open to that particular information. If you'll define being in love, I'll tell you whether I'm in love with Jane…. I'm interested in Jane; I find her attractive, if you like, extraordinarily attractive, though I don't admire her character, and she's not beautiful. I like to be with her and to talk to her. On the other hand, I've not the least intention of asking her to elope with me. Nor would she if I did. Well?'
'You're in love,' Juke repeated. 'You mayn't know it, but you are. And you'll get deeper in every day, if you don't pull up. And then before you know where you are, there'll be the most ghastly mess.'
'Don't trouble yourself, Jukie. There won't be a mess. Jane doesn't like messes. And I'm not quite a fool. Don't imagine melodrama…. I claim the right to be intimate with Jane—well, if you like, to be a little in love with Jane—and yet to keep my head and not play the fool. Why should men and women lose their attraction for each other just because they marry and promise loyalty to some one person? They can keep that compact and yet not shut themselves away from other men and other women. They must have friends. Life can't be an eternal duet…. And here you come, using that cant Potterish phrase, "in love," as if love was the sea, or something definite that you must be in or out of and always know which.'
'The sea—yes,' Juke took me up. 'It's like the sea; it advances and advances, and you can't stand there and stop it, say "Thus far and no farther" to it. All you can do is to turn your back upon it and walk away in time.'
'Well, I'm not going to walk away. There's nothing to walk away from. I've no intention of behaving in a dishonourable way, and I claim the right to be friends with Jane. So that's that.'
I was angry with Juke. He was taking the prudish, conventional point of view. I had never yet been the victim of passion; love between men and women had always rather bored me; it is such a hot, stupid, muddling thing, ail emotion and no thought. Dull, I had always thought it; one of those impulses arranged by nature for her own purposes, but not in the least interesting to the civilised thinking being. Juke had no right to speak as if I were an amorous fool, liable to be bowled over against my better judgment.
'I've told you what I think,' said Juke bluntly. 'I can't do any more. It's your own show.' He took out his watch. 'I've got a Men's Social,' he said, and went. That is so like parsons. Their conversations nearly always have these sudden ends. But I suppose that is not their fault.
5
And, after all, Juke was right. Juke was right. It was love, and I was in it, and so was Jane. Five minutes after Juke left me that night I knew that. I had been in love with Jane for years; perhaps since before the war, only I had never known it. On that Anti-Potter investigation tour I had observed and analysed her, and smiled cynically to myself at the commercial instinct of the Potter twins, the lack of the fineness that distinguished Katherine and Juke. I remembered that; but I remembered, too, how white and round Jane's chin had looked as it pressed against the thymy turf of the cliff where we lay above the sea. All through the war I had seen her at intervals, enjoying life, finding the war a sort of lark, and I had hated her because she didn't care for the death and torture of men, for the possible defeat of her country, or the already achieved economic, moral, and intellectual degradation of the whole of Europe. She had merely profiteered out of it all, and had a good time. I remembered now my anger and my scorn; but I remembered too the squareness and the whiteness of her forehead under her newly-cut hair, that leave when I had first seen it bobbed.
I had been moved by desire then without knowing it; I had let Hobart take her, and still not known. The pang I had felt had been bitterness at having lost Jane, not bitterness against Jane for having made a second-rate marriage.
But I knew now. Juke's words, in retrospect, were like fire to petrol; I was suddenly all ablaze.
In that case Juke was right, and we mustn't go on meeting alone. There might be, as he said, the most ghastly mess. Because I knew now that Jane was in love with me too—a little.
We couldn't go on. It was too second-rate. It was anti-social, stupid, uncivilised, all I most hated, to let emotion play the devil with one's reasoned principles and theories. I wasn't going to. It would be sentimental, sloppy—'the world well lost for love,' as in a schoolgirl's favourite novel, a novel by Leila Yorke.
Now there are some loves that the world, important though it is, may be well lost for—the love of an idea, a principle, a cause, a discovery, a piece of knowledge or of beauty, perhaps a country; but very certainly the love of lovers is not among these; it is too common and personal a thing. I hate the whole tribe of sentimental men and women who, impelled by the unimaginative fool nature, exalt sexual love above its proper place in the scheme of things. I wasn't going to do it, or to let the thing upset my life or Jane's.
6
I kept away from Jane all that week. She rang me up at the office once; it may have been my fancy that her voice sounded strange, somehow less assured than usual. It set me wondering about that last lunch and afternoon together which had roused Juke. Had it roused Jane, too? What had happened, exactly? How had I spoken and looked? I couldn't remember; only that I had been glad—very glad—to have Jane back in town again.
I didn't go to the club next Thursday. As it happened, I was lunching with some one else. So, by Thursday evening, I hadn't seen Jane for a week.
Wanting company, I went to Katherine's flat after dinner. Katherine had just finished dinner, and with her was Jane.
When I saw her, lying there smoking in the most comfortable arm-chair as usual, serene and lazy and pale, Juke's words blazed up between us like a fire, and I couldn't look at her.
I don't know what we talked about; I expect I was odd and absent. I knew Katherine was looking at me, with those frosty, piercing, light blue eyes of hers that saw through, and through, and beyond….
All the time I was saying to myself, 'This won't do. I must chuck it. We mustn't meet.'
I think Jane talked aboutAbraham Lincoln, which she disliked, and Lady Pinkerton's experiments in spiritualism, which were rather funny. But I couldn't have been there for more than half an hour before Jane got up to go. She had to get home, she said.
I went with her. I didn't mean to, but I did. And here, if any one wants to know why I regard 'being in love' as a disastrous kink in the mental machinery, is the reason. It impels you to do things against all your reasoned will and intentions. My madness drove me out with Jane, drove me to see her home by the Hampstead tube, to walk across the Vale of Health with her in the moonlight, to go in with her, and upstairs to the drawing-room.
All this time we had talked little, and of common, superficial things. But now, as I stood in the long, dimly-lit room and watched Jane take off her hat, drop it on a table, and stand for a moment with her back to me, turning over the evening post, I knew that I must somehow have it out, have things clear and straight between us. It seemed to me to be the only way of striking any sort of a path through the intricate difficulties of our future relations.
'Jane,' I said, and she turned and looked at me with questioning gray eyes.
At that I had no words for explanation or anything else: I could only repeat, 'Jane. Jane. Jane,' like a fool.
She said, very low, 'Yes, Arthur,' as if she were assenting to some statement I had made, as perhaps she was.
I somehow found that I had caught her hands in mine, and so we stood together, but still I said nothing but 'Jane,' because that was all that, for the moment, I knew.
Hobart stood in the open doorway, looking at us, white and quiet.
'Good-evening,' he said.
We fell apart, loosing each other's hands.
'You're early back, Oliver,' said Jane, composedly.
'Earlier, obviously,' he returned, 'than I was expected.'
My anger, my hatred, my contempt for him and my own shame blazed in me together. I faced him, black and bitter, and he was not only to me Jane's husband, the suspicious, narrow-minded ass to whom she was tied, but, much more, the Potterite, the user of cant phrases, the ignorant player to the gallery of the Pinkerton press, the fool who had so little sense of his folly that he disputed on facts with the experts who wrote for theWeekly Fact. In him, at that moment, I saw all the Potterism of this dreadful world embodied, and should have liked to have struck it dead.
'What exactly,' I asked him, 'do you mean by that?'
He smiled.
Jane yawned. 'I'm going to take my things off,' she said, and went out of the room and up the next flight of stairs to her bedroom. It was her contemptuous way of indicating that the situation was, in fact, no situation at all, but merely a rather boring conversation.
As, though I appreciated her attitude, I couldn't agree with her, I repeated my question.
Hobart added to his smile a shrug.
1
Love and truth are the only things that count. I have often thought that they are like two rafts on the stormy sea of life, which otherwise would swamp and drown us struggling human beings. If we follow these two stars patiently, they will guide us at last into port. Love—the love of our kind—the undying love of a mother for her children—the love, so gloriously exhibited lately, of a soldier for his country—the eternal love between a man and a woman, which counts the world well lost—these are the clues through the wilderness. And Truth, the Truth which cries in the market-place with a loud voice and will not be hid, the Truth which sacrifices comfort, joy, even life itself, for the sake of a clear vision, the Truth which is far stranger than fiction—this is Love's very twin.
For Love's sake, then, and for Truth's, I am writing this account of a very sad and very dreadful period in the lives of those close and dear to me. I want to be very frank, and to hide nothing. I think, in my books, I am almost too frank sometimes; I give offence, and hurt people's egotism and vanity by speaking out; but it is the way I have to write; I cannot soften down facts to please. Just as I cannot restrain my sense of the ridiculous, even though it may offend those who take themselves solemnly; I am afraid I am naughty about such people, and often give offence; it is one of the penalties attached to the gift of humour. Percy often tells me I should be more careful; but my dear Percy's wonderful caution, that has helped to make him what he is, is a thing that no mere reckless woman can hope to emulate.
2
I am diverging from the point. I must begin with that dreadful evening of the 4th of September last. Clare was dining with a friend in town, and stopping at Jane's house in Hampstead for the night. Percy and I were spending a quiet evening at our house at Potter's Bar. We were both busy after dinner; he was in his study, and I was in my den, as I call it, writing another instalment of 'Rhoda's Gift' for theEvening Hustle, I find I write my best after dinner; my brain gets almost feverishly stimulated. My doctor tells me I ought not to work late, it is not fair on my nerves, but I think every writer has to live more or less on his or her nervous capital, it is the way of the reckless, squandering, thriftless tribe we are.
Laying down my pen at 10.45 after completing my chapter, the telephone bell suddenly rang. The maids had gone up to bed, so I went into the hall to take the call, or to put it through to Percy's study, for the late calls are usually, of course, for him, from one of the offices. But it was not for him. It was Jane's voice speaking.
'Is that you, mother?' she said, quite quietly and steadily. 'There's been an accident. Oliver fell downstairs. He fell backwards and broke his neck. He died soon after the doctor came.'
The self-control, the quiet pluck of these modern girls! Her voice hardly shook as she uttered the terrible words.
I sat down, trembling all over, and the tears rushed to my eyes. My darling child, and her dear husband, cut off at the very outset of their mutual happiness, and in this awful way! Those stairs—I always hated them; they are so steep and narrow, and wind so sharply round a corner.
'Oh, my darling,' I said. 'And the last train gone, so that I can't be with you till the morning! Is Clare there?'
'Yes,' said Jane. 'She's lying down…. She fainted.'
My poor darling Clare! So highly-strung, so delicate-fibred, far more like me than Jane is! And I always had a suspicion that her feeling for dear Oliver went very deep—deeper, possibly, than any of us ever guessed. For, there is no doubt about it, poor Oliver did woo Clare; if he wasn't in love with her he was very near it, before he went off at a tangent after Jane, who was something new, and therefore attractive to him, besides being thrown so much together in Paris when Jane was working for her father. The dear child has put up a brave fight ever since the engagement, and her self-control has been wonderful, but she has not been her old self. If it had not been for the unfortunate European conditions, I should have sent her abroad for a thorough change. It was terrible for her to be on the spot when this awful accident happened.
'My dear, dear child,' I said, hardly able to speak, my voice shook so with crying. 'I've no words…. Have you rung up Frank and Johnny? I should like Frank to be with you to-night; I know he would wish it.'
'No,' said Jane. 'It's no use bothering them till to-morrow. They can't do anything. Is daddy at home?… You'll tell him, then…. Good-night.'
'Oh, my darling, you mustn't ring off yet, indeed you mustn't. Hold on while I tell daddy; he would hate not to speak to you at once about it.'
'No, he won't need to speak to me. He'll have to get on to theHasteat once, and arrange a lot of things. I can keep till the morning. Good-night, mother.'
She rang off. There is something terrible to me about telephone conversations, when they deal with intimate or tragic subjects; they are so remote, cold, impersonal, like typed letters; is it because one can't watch the soul in the eyes of the person one is talking to?
3
I went straight to Percy. He was sitting at his writing table going through papers. At his side was the black coffee that he always sipped through the evenings, simmering over a spirit lamp. Percy will never go up to bed until the small hours; I suppose it is his newspaper training. If he isn't working, he will sit and read, or sometimes play patience, and always sip strong coffee, though his doctor has told him he should give it up. But he is like me; he lives on his nervous energy, reckless of consequences. He spends himself, and is spent, in the service of his great press. It was fortunate for him, though I suppose I ought not to say it, that he married a woman who is also the slave of literature, though of a more imaginative branch of literature, and who can understand him. But then that was inevitable; he could never have cared for a materialistic woman, or a merely domestic woman. He demanded ideas in the woman to whom he gave himself.
I could hardly bear to tell him the dreadful news. I knew how overcome he would be, because he was so fond of dear Oliver, who was one of his right hands, as well as a dear son-in-law. And he had always loved Jane with a peculiar pride and affection, devoted father as he was to all his children, for he said she had the best brain of the lot. And Oliver had been doing so well on theDaily Haste. Percy had often said he was an editor after his own heart; he had so much flair. When Percy said some one had flair, it was the highest praise he could give. He always told me I had flair, and that was why he was so eager to put my stories in his papers. I remember his remark when that dreadful man, Arthur Gideon, said in some review or other (I dislike his reviews, they are so conceited and cocksure, and show often such bad taste), 'Flair and genius are incompatible.' Percy said simply, 'Flairisgenius.' I thought it extraordinarily true. But whether I have flair or not, I don't know. I don't think I ever bother about what the public want, or what will sell. I just write what comes natural to me; if people like it, so much the better; if they don't, they must bear it! But I will say that they usually do! No, I don't think I have flair; I think I have, instead, a message; or many messages.
But I had to break it to Percy. I put my arms round him and told him, quite simply. He was quite broken up by it. But, of course, the first thing he had to do was to get on to theHasteand let them know. He told them he would be up in the morning to make arrangements.
Then he sat and thought, and worked out plans in his head, in the concentrated, abstracted way he has, telephoning sometimes, writing notes sometimes, almost forgetting my presence. I love to be at the centre of the brain of the Pinkerton press at the moments when it is working at top speed like this. Cup after cup of strong black coffee he drank, hardly noticing it, till I remonstrated, and then he said absently, 'Very well, dear, very well,' and drank more. When I tried to persuade him to come up to bed, he said, 'No, no; I have things to think out. I shall be late. Leave me, my dear. Go to bed yourself, you need rest.' Then he turned from the newspaper owner to the father, and sighed heavily, and said, 'Poor little Janie. Poor dear little Babs. Well, well, well.'
4
I left him and went upstairs, knowing I must get all the strength I could before to-morrow.
My poor little girl a widow! I could hardly realise it. And yet, alas, how many young widows we have among us in these days! Only they are widowed for a noble cause, not by a horrid accident on the stairs. Poor Oliver, of course, had exemption from military service; he never even had to go before the tribunal for it, but had it direct from the War Office, like nearly all Percy's staff, who were recognised by the Government as doing more important work at home than they could have done at the front. I have a horror of the men whoevadedservice during the war, but men like Oliver Hobart, who would have preferred to be fighting but stayed to do invaluable work for their country, one must respect. And it seemed very bitter that Oliver, who hadn't fallen in the war, should have fallen now down his own stairs. Poor, poor Oliver! As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I saw his beautiful face before me. He was quite the most beautiful man I have ever known. I have given his personal appearance to the hero of one of my novels,Sidney, a Man. It was terrible to me to think of that beauty lost from the world. Whatever view one may take of another world (and personally, far as I am from any orthodox view on the subject, my spiritual investigations have convinced me that there is, there must be, a life to come; I have had the most wonderful experiences, that may not be denied) physical beauty, one must believe, is a phenomenon of this physical universe, and must perish with the body. Unless, as some thinkers have conceived, the immortal soul wraps itself about in some aural vapour that takes the form it wore on earth. This is a possibility, and I would gladly believe it. I must, I decided, try to bring my poor Jane into touch with psychic interests; it would comfort her to have the wonderful chance of getting into communication with Oliver. At present she scouts the whole thing, like all other forms of supernatural belief. Jane has always been a materialist. It is very strange to me that my children have developed, intellectually and spiritually, along such different lines from myself. I have never been orthodox; I am not even now an orthodox theosophist; I am not of the stuff which can fall into line and accept things from others; it seems as if I must always think for myself, delve painfully, with blood and tears, for Truth. But I have always been profoundly religious; the spiritual side of life has always meant a very great deal to me; I think I feel almost too intensely the vibration of Spirit in the world of things. I probe, and wonder, and cannot let it alone, like most people, and be content with surfaces. Of late years, and especially since I took up theosophy, I have found great joy and comfort from my association with the S.P.R. I am in touch with several very wonderful thought-readers, crystal-gazers, mediums, and planchette writers, who have often strangely illumined the dark places of life for me. To those who mock and doubt, I merely say, 'try.' Or else I cite, not 'Raymond' nor Conan Doyle, but that strange, interesting, scientific book by a Belfast professor, who made experiments in weighing the tables before and after they levitated, and weighing the mediums, and finding them all lighter. I think that was it; anyhow it is all, to any open mind, entirely convincing thatsomethinghad occurred out of the normal, which is what Percy and the twins never will believe. When I say 'try' to Percy, he only answers, 'I should fail, my dear. I may, as I have been called, be a superman, but I am not a superwoman, and cannot call up spirits.' And the children are hopeless about it, too. Frank says we are not intended to 'lift the curtain' (that is what he calls it). He is such a thorough clergyman, and never had my imagination; he calls my explorations 'dabbling in the occult.' His wife jeers, and asks me if I've been talking to many spooks lately. But then her family are hard-headed business people, quite different from me. Clare says the whole thing frightens her to death. For her part she is content with what the Church allows of spiritual exploration, which is not much. Clare, since what I am afraid I must call her trouble, has been getting much Higher Church; incense and ritual seem to comfort her. I know the phase; I went through it twenty years ago, when my baby Michael died and the world seemed at an end. But I came out the other side; it couldn't last for me, I had to have much more. Clare may remain content with it; she has not got my perhaps too intense instinct for groping always after further light. And I am thankful that she should find comfort and help anywhere. Only I rather hope she will never join the Roman Church; its banks are too narrow to hold the brimming river of the human spirit—even my Clare's, which does not, perhaps, brim very high, dear, simple child that she is.
As for the twins, they are merely cynical about all experiments with the supernatural. I often feel that if my little Michael had lived…. But, in a way, I am thankful to have him on the other side, reaching his baby hands across to me in the way he so often does.
That night I determined I would make a great effort to bring Jane into the circle of light, as I love to call it. She would find such comfort there, if only it could be. But I knew it would be difficult; Jane is so hard-headed, and, for all her cleverness in writing, has so little imagination really. She said thatRaymondmade her sick. And she wouldn't look atRupert Lives! orAcross the Stream, E.F. Benson's latest novel about the other side. She quite frankly doesn't believe there is another side. I remember her saying to me once, in her school-girl slang, when she was seventeen or so, 'Well, I'd like to think I went on, mother; I think it's simply rotten pipping out. Ilikebeing alive, and I'd like to have tons more of it—but there it is, I can't believe anything so weird and it's no use trying. And if I don't pip out after all, it'll be such a jolly old surprise and lark that I shall be glad I couldn't believe in it here.' Johnny, I remember, said to her (those two were always ragging each other), 'Ah, you may be wishing you onlycouldpip out, then….' But I told him that I wished he wouldn't, even in joke, allude to that bogey of the nurseries of my generation, a place of punishment. That terrible old teaching! Thank God we are outgrowing much of it. I must say that the descriptions They give, when They give any, of Their place of being, do not sound very cheerful—but it cannot at all resemble the old-fashioned place of torment, it sounds so much less clear-cut and definite than that, more like London in a yellow fog.
5
I do not think I slept that night. I am bad at sleeping when I have had a shock. My idiotic nerves again. Crane, in his book,Right and Wrong Thinking, says one should drop discordant thoughts out of one's mind as one drops a pebble out of one's hand. But my interior calm is not yet sufficient for this exercise, and I confess I am all too easily shaken to pieces by trouble, especially the troubles of those I love.
I felt a wreck when I met Percy at an early breakfast next morning. He, too, looked jaded and strained, and ate hardly any breakfast, only a little force and three cups of strong tea—an inadequate meal, as I told him, upon which to face so trying a day. For we had to have strength not only for ourselves but for our children. Giving out: it is so much harder work than taking in, and it is the work for us older people always.
Percy passed me theHaste, pointing to a column on the front page. That had been part of his business last night, to see that theHastehad a good column about it. The news editor had turned out a column about a Bolshevik advance on the Dvina to make room for it, and it was side by side with the Rectory Oil Mystery, the German Invasion (dumped goods, of course), the Glasgow Trades' Union Congress, the French Protest about Syria, Woman's Mysterious Disappearance, and a Tarring and Feathering Court Martial. The heading was 'Tragic Death of the Editor of theDaily Haste,' and there followed not only a full report of the disaster, but an account of Oliver's career, with one of those newspaper photographs which do the original so little justice.
'Binney's been pretty sharp about it,' said Percy approvingly. 'Of course, he had all the biographical facts stored.'
6
We went up by the 9.24, and went straight to Hampstead.
Quietly and sadly we entered that house of death. The maid, all flustered and red-eyed with emotional unrest, told us that Jane was upstairs, and Clare too. We went up the narrow stairs, now become so tragic in their associations. On which step, I wondered, had he fallen, and how far?
Jane came out of the drawing-room to meet us. She was pale, and looked as if she hadn't slept, but composed, as she always is. I took her in my arms and gave her a long kiss. Then her father kissed her, and smoothed her hair, and patted her head as he used to do when she was a child, and said, 'There, there, there, my poor little Babs. There, there, there.'
I led her into the drawing-room. I felt her calm was unnatural. 'Cry, my darling,' I said. 'Have your cry out, and you will feel better.'
'Shall I?' she said. 'I don't think so, mother. Crying doesn't make me feel better, ever. It makes my head ache.'
I thought of Tennyson's young war widow and the nurse of ninety years, and only wished it could have been six months later, so that I could have set Jane's child upon her knee.
'When you feel you can, my darling,' I said, wiping my eyes, 'you must tell me all about it. But not before you want to.'
'There isn't much to tell,' she answered quietly, still without tears.'He fell down the stairs backwards. That's all.'
'Did you … see him, darling?'
She hesitated a moment, then said 'Yes. I saw him. I was in here. He'd just come in from the office…. He lost his balance.'
'Would you feel up, my dear,' said her father, 'to giving me an account of it, that I could put in the papers?'
'You can put that in the papers, daddy. That's all there is to say about it, I'm afraid…. I've had seventeen reporters round this morning already, and I told Emily to tell them that. That's probably another,' she added, as the bell rang.
But it was not. Emily came up a moment later and asked if Jane could seeMr. Gideon.
It showed the over-wrought state of Jane's nerves that she started a little. She never starts or shows surprise. Besides, what could be more natural than that Mr. Gideon, who, disagreeable man though he is, is a close friend of hers (far too close, I always thought, considering that Oliver was on almost openly bad terms with him) should call to inquire, on seeing the dreadful news? It would, all the same, I thought, have been better taste on his part to have contented himself with leaving kind inquiries at the door. However, of course, one would never expect him to do the right-minded or well-bred thing on any occasion.
'I'll go down,' Jane said quietly. 'Will you wait there?' she added to her father and me. 'You might,' she called from the stairs, 'go and see Clare. She's in her room.'
I crossed the passage to the spare bedroom, and as I did so I caught a glimpse of that man's tall, rather stooping figure in the hall, and heard Jane say, rather low, 'Arthur!' and add quickly, 'Mother and dad are upstairs. Come in here.'
Then they disappeared into the dining-room, which was on the ground floor, and shut the door after them.
7
I went in to Clare. She was sitting in an armchair by the window. When she turned her face to me, I recoiled in momentary shock. Her poor, pretty little face was pinched and feverishly flushed; her brown eyes stared at me as if she was seeing ghosts. Her hands were locked together on her knees, and she was huddled and shivering, though it was a warm morning. I had known she would feel the shock terribly, but I had hardly been prepared for this. I was seriously afraid she was going to be ill.
I knelt down beside her and drew her into my arms, where she lay passive, seeming hardly to realise me.
'My poor little girl,' I murmured. 'Cry, darling. Cry, and you will feel better.'
Clare was always more obedient than Jane. She did cry. She broke suddenly into the most terrible passion of tears. I tried to hold her, but she pulled away from me and laid her head upon her arms and sobbed.
I stayed beside her and comforted her as best I could, and finally went to Jane's medicine cupboard and mixed her a dose of sal volatile.
When she was a little quieter, I said, 'Tell me nothing more than you feel inclined to, darling. But if it would make you happier to talk to me about it, do.'
'I c-can't talk about it,' she sobbed.
'My poor pet!… Did it happen after you got here, or before?'
I felt her stiffen and grow tense, as at a dreadful memory.
'After…. But I was in my room; I wasn't there.'
'You heard the fall, I suppose….'
She shuddered, and nodded.
'And you came out….' I helped her gently, 'as Jane did, and found him….'
She burst out crying afresh. I almost wished I had not suggested this outlet for her horror and grief.
'Don't, mother,' she sobbed. 'I can't talk about it—I can't.'
'My pet, of course you can't, and you shan't. It was thoughtless of me to think that speech would be a relief. Lie down on your bed, dear, and have a good rest, and you will feel better presently.'
But she opposed that too.
'I can't stay here. I want to go homeat once. At once, mother.'
'My dearest child, you must wait for me. I can't let you go alone in this state, and I can't, of course, go myself until Jane is ready to come with me.'
'I'm going,' she repeated. 'I can go alone. I'm going now, at once.'
And she began feverishly cramming her things into her suit-case.
I was anxious about her, but I did not like to thwart her in her present mood. Then I heard Frank's voice in the drawing-room, and I thought I would get him to accompany her, at least to the station. Frank and Clare have always been fond of one another, and she has a special reliance on clergymen.
I went into the drawing-room, and found Frank and Johnny both there, withJane and Percy. So that dreadful Jew must have gone.
I told Frank that Clare was in a terrible state, and entrusted her to his care. Frank is a good unselfish brother, and he went to look after her.
Johnny, silent and troubled, and looking as if death was out of his line, though, Heaven knows, he had seen enough of it during the last five years, was fidgeting awkwardly about the room. His awkwardness was, no doubt, partly due to the fact that he had never much cared for Oliver. This does make things awkward, in the presence of the Great Silencer.
Percy had to leave us now, in order to go to theHasteand see about things there. He said he would be back in the afternoon. He would, of course, take over the business of making the last sad arrangements, which Jane called, rather crudely, 'seeing about the funeral'; the twins would always call spades 'spades.'
Presently I made the suggestion which I had for some time had in my mind.
'May I, dear?' I asked very softly, half rising.
Jane rose, too.
'See Oliver, you mean? Oh, yes. He's in his room.'
I motioned her back. 'Not you, darling. Johnny will take me.'
Johnny didn't want to much, I think; it is the sort of strain on the emotions that he dislikes, but he came with me.
8
What had been Oliver lay on the bed, stretched straight out, the beautiful face as white and delicate as if modelled in wax. One saw no marks of injury; except for that waxy pallor he might have been sleeping.
In the presence of the Great White Silence I bowed my head and wept. He was so beautiful, and had been so alive. I said so to Johnny.
'He was so alive,' I said, 'so short a time ago.'
'Yes,' Johnny muttered, staring down at the bed, his hands in his pockets. 'Yesterday, of course. Rotten bad luck, poor old chap. Rotten way to get pipped.'
For a minute longer I kept my vigil beside that inanimate form.
'Peace, peace, he is not dead,' I repeated to myself. 'He sleeps whom men call dead…. The soul of Adonais, like a star, beckons from the abode where the eternal are.'
Death is wonderful to me; not a horrible thing, but holy and high. Here was the lovely mortal shell, for which 'arrangements' had to be made; but the spirit which had informed it was—where? In what place, under what conditions, would Oliver Hobart now fulfil himself, now carry on the work so faithfully begun on earth? What word would he be able to send us from that Place of Being? Time would (I hoped) show.
As we stood there in the shadow of the Great Mystery, I heard Frank talking to Clare, whose room was next door.
'It is wrong to give way…. One must not grieve for the dead as if one would recall them. We know—you and I know, don't we, Clare—that they are happier where they are. And we know too, that it is God's will, and that He decides everything for the best. We must not rebel against it…. If you really want to catch the 12.4 to Potter's Bar, we ought to start now.'
Conventional phraseology! It would never have been adequate for me; I am afraid I have an incurable habit of rebelling against the orthodox dogma beloved of clergymen, but Clare is more docile, less 'tameless and swift and proud.'
I touched Johnny's arm. 'Let us come away,' I murmured.
Clare, her face beneath her veil swollen with crying, went off with Frank, who was going to see her into the train. I, of course, was going to stop with Jane until the funeral, as she called it; I would not leave her alone in the house. So I asked Frank if Peggy would go down to Potter's Bar and be with Clare, who was certainly not fit for solitude, poor child, until my return. Peggy is a dear, cheerful girl, if limited, and she and Clare have always been great friends. Frank said he was sure Peggy would do this, and I went back to Jane, who was writing necessary letters in the drawing-room.
Johnny said to her, 'Well, if you're sure I can't be any use just now, old thing, I suppose I ought to go to the office,' and Jane said, 'Yes, don't stay. There's nothing,' and he went.
I offered to help Jane with the letters, but she said she could easily manage them, and I thought the occupation might be the best thing for her, so I left her to it and went down to speak to Emily, Jane's nice little maid. Emily is a good little thing, and she was obviously terribly, though not altogether unpleasantly, shocked and stirred (maids are) by the tragedy.
She told me much more about the terrible evening than Jane or Clare had. It was less effort, of course, for her to speak. Indeed, I think she really enjoyed opening out to me. And I liked to hear. I always must get a clear picture of events: I suppose it is the story-writer's instinct.
'I went up to bed, my lady,' she said, 'feeling a bit lonely now cook's on her holiday, soon after Miss Clare came in. And I was just off to sleep when I heard Mrs. Hobart come in, with Mr. Gideon; they were talking as they came up to the drawing-room, and that woke me up.'
'Mr. Gideon!' I exclaimed in surprise. 'Was he there?'
'Yes, my lady. He came in with Mrs. Hobart. I knew it was him, by his voice. And soon after the master came in, and they was all talking together. And then I heard the mistress come upstairs to her bedroom. And then I dozed off, and I was woke by the fall…. Oh, dear, my lady, how I did scream when I came down and saw…. There was the poor master laying on the bottom stair, stunned-like, as I thought, I'm sure I never knew he was gone, and the mistress and Miss Clare bending over him, and the mistress calling to me to telephone for the doctor. The poor mistress, she was so white, I thought she'd go off, but she kept up wonderful; and Miss Clare, she was worse, all scared and white, as if she'd seen a ghost. I rang for Dr. Armes, and he came round at once, and I got hot-water bottles and put them in the bed, but the doctor wouldn't move him for a bit, he examined him where he lay, and he found the back was broke. He told the mistress straight out. "His back's broke," he said. "There's no hope," he said. "It may be a few hours, or less," he said. Then he sent for a mattress and we laid the master on it, down in the hall, and put hot-water bottles to his feet, and then the mistress said I'd better go back to bed; but, oh, dear, I couldn't do that, so I just waited in the kitchen and got a kettle boiling in case the mistress and Miss Clare would like a cup of tea, and I had a cup myself, my lady, for I was all of a didder, and nothing pulls you round like a drop of hot tea. Then I took two cups out into the hall for the mistress and Miss Clare, and when I got there the doctor was saying, "It's all over," and, dear me, so it was, so I took the tea back to keep it hot against they were ready for it, for I couldn't speak to them of tea just at first, could I, my lady? Then the doctor called me, and there was Miss Clare laying in a fit, and he was bringing her round. He told me to help her to her room, and so I did, and she seemed half stunned-like, and didn't say a word, but dropped on her bed like a stone. Then I had to help the doctor and the mistress carry the poor master on the mattress up to his room, and lay him on his bed; and the doctor saw to Miss Clare a little, then he went away and said he'd send round a woman for the laying out…. Poor Miss Clare, I was sorry for her. Laid like a stone, she did, as white as milk. She's such a one to feel, isn't she, my lady? And to hear the fall and run out and find him like that! The poor master! Them stairs, I always hated them. The back stairs are bad enough, when I have to carry the hot water up and down, but they don't turn so sharp. The poor master, he must have stumbled backwards, the light not being good, and fallen clean over. And it isn't as if he was like some gentlemen, that might have had a drop at dinner; no one ever saw the master the worse, did they, my lady? I'm sure cook and me and every one always thought him such a nice, good gentleman. I don't know what cook will say when she hears, I'm sure I don't.'
'It is indeed all very terrible and sad, Emily,' I said to her. I left her then, and went up to the drawing-room.
Jane was sitting at the writing table, her pen in one hand, her forehead resting on the other.
'My dear,' I said to her, 'Emily has been giving me some account of last night. She tells me that Mr. Gideon was here.'
'She's quite right,' said Jane listlessly. 'I met him at Katherine's, and he saw me home and came in for a little.'
I was silent for a moment. It seemed to me rather sad that Jane should have this memory of her husband's last evening on this earth, for she knew that Oliver had not liked her to see much of Mr. Gideon. I understood why she had been loath to mention it to me.
'And had he gone,' I asked her softly, 'when … It … happened?'
Jane frowned, in the way the twins always frown when people put things less bluntly and crudely than they think fit. For some reason they call this, the regard for the ordinary niceties of life, by the foolish name of 'Potterism.'
'When Oliver fell?' she corrected me, still in that quiet, listless, almost indifferent tone. 'Oh, yes. He wasn't here long.'
'Well, well,' I said very gently, 'we must let bygones be bygones, and not grieve over much. Grief,' I added, wanting so much that the child should rise to the opportunity and take her trial in a large spirit, 'is such a big, strong, beautiful thing. If we let it, it will take us by the hands and lead us gently along by the waters of comfort. We mustn't rebel or fight; we must look straight ahead with welcoming eyes. For whatever life brings us we canuse.'
Jane still sat very still at the writing table, her head on her hand, her fingers pushing back her hair from her forehead. I thought she sighed a little, a long sigh of acquiescence which touched me.
This seemed to me to be the moment to speak to her of what was in my mind.
'And, my dear,' I said, 'there is another thing. We mustn't think thatOliver has gone down into silence. You must help him to speak to you, alittle later, when you are fit and whenhehas found his way to theDoor. You mustn't shut him out, my child.'
'Mother,' said Jane, 'you know I don't believe in any of that.'
'I only ask you to try,' I said earnestly. 'Don't bolt and bar the Door….Ishall try, my dear, for you, if you will not, and he shall communicate with you through me.'
'I shan't believe it,' said Jane, stating not a resolve but a fact, 'if he does. Of course, do what you like about all that, mother, I don't care. But, if you don't mind, I'd rather not hear about it.'
I decided to put off any further discussion of the question, particularly as the child looked and must have been tired out.
I went down to the kitchen to talk to Emily about Jane's lunch. I felt that she ought to have a beaten egg, and perhaps a little fish.
But I wished that she had told me frankly about that man Gideon's visit last night. Jane was always so reserved.
1
It was rather a strange, sad life into which we settled down after the inquest and funeral. Jane remained in her little Hampstead house; she said she preferred it, though, particularly in view of the dear little new life due in January or so, I wanted her to be at Potter's Bar with us. I went up to see her very often; I was not altogether satisfied about her, though outwardly she went on much as of old, going to see her friends, writing, and not even wearing black. But I am no stickler for that heathen custom.
It was, however, about Clare that I was chiefly troubled. The poor child did not seem able to rally from her shock at all. She crept about looking miserable and strained, and seemed to take an interest in nothing. I sent her away to her aunt at Bournemouth for a change; Bournemouth has not only sea air but ritualistic churches of the kind she likes; but I do not think it did her much good. Her affection for poor Oliver had, indeed, gone very deep, and she has a very faithful heart.
Percy appointed theHaste'sassistant editor to the editorship; he had not Oliver's flair, Percy said, but he did very well on the lines laid out for him. There was a rumour in Fleet Street that the proprietors of theWeekly Factmeant to start a daily, under the editorship of that man Gideon, and that it would have for its special object a campaign against our press. But they would have to wait for some time, till the paper situation was easier. The rumour gave Percy no alarm, for he did not anticipate a long life for such a venture. A paper under such management would certainly never, he said, achieve more than a small circulation.
Meanwhile, times were very troubled. The Labour people, led astray by that bad man, Smillie, were becoming more and more extreme in their demands. Ireland was, as always, very disturbed. The Coalition Government—not a good government, but, after all, better than any which would be likely to succeed it—was shaking from one bye-election blow after another. The French were being disagreeable about Syria, the Italians about Fiume, and every one about the Russian invasion, or evacuation, or whatever it was, which even Percy's press joined in condemning. And coal was exorbitant, and food prices going up, and the reviews ofAudrey against the Worldmost ignorant and unfair. I believe that that spiteful article of Mr. Gideon's about me did a good deal of harm among ignorant and careless reviewers, who took their opinions from others, without troubling to read my books for themselves. So many reviewers are like that—stupid and prejudiced people, who cannot think for themselves, and often merely try to be funny about a book instead of giving it fair criticism. Of course, thatFactarticle was merely comic; I confess I laughed at it, though I believe it was meant to be taken very solemnly. But I was always like that. I know it is shocking of me, but I have to laugh when people are pompous and absurd; my sense of the ridiculous is too strong for me.
After Oliver's death, I did not recognise Mr. Gideon when I met him, not in the least on personal grounds, but because I definitely wished to discourage his intimacy with my family. But we had one rather strange interview.
2
I was going to see Jane one afternoon, soon after the tragedy, and as I was emerging from the tube station I met Mr. Gideon. We were face to face, so I had to bow, which I did very coldly, and I was surprised when he stopped and said, in that morose way of his, 'You're going to see Jane, aren't you, Lady Pinkerton?'
I inclined my head once more. The man stood at my side, staring at the ground and fidgeting, and biting his finger-nail in that disagreeable way he has. Then he said, 'Lady Pinkerton, Jane's unhappy.'
The impertinence of the man! Who was he to tell me that of my own daughter, a widow of a few weeks?
'Naturally,' I replied very coolly. 'It would be strange indeed if she were not.'
'Oh, well—' he made a queer, jerking movement.
'You'll say it's not my business. But please don't … er … let people worry her—get on her nerves. It does rather, you know. And—and she's not fit.'
'I'm afraid,' I said, putting up my lorgnette, 'I do not altogether understand you, Mr. Gideon. I am naturally acquainted with my daughter's state better than any one else can be.'
'It gets on her nerves,' he muttered again. Then, after a moment of silent hesitation, he half shrugged his shoulders, mumbled, 'Oh, well,' and jerked away.
A strange person! Amazingly rude and ill-bred. To take upon himself to warn me to take care of my own child! Andwhatdid he mean 'got on her nerves?' I really began to think he must be a little mad. But one thing was apparent; his feeling towards Jane was, as I had long suspected, much warmer than was right in the circumstances. He had, I made no doubt, come from her just now.
I found Jane silent and unresponsive. She was not writing when I came in, but sitting doing nothing. She said nothing to me about Mr. Gideon's call, till I mentioned him myself. Then she seemed to stiffen a little; I saw her hands clench over the arms of her chair.
'His manner was very strange,' I said. 'I couldn't help wondering if he had been having anything.'
'If he was drunk, you mean,' said Jane. 'I dare say.'
'Then hedoes!' I cried, a little surprised.
Jane said not that she knew of. But every one did sometimes. Which was just the disagreeable, cynical way of talking that I regret in her and Johnny. As if she did not know numbers of straight, clean-living, decent men and women who never had too much in their lives. But, anyhow, it convinced me that Mr. Gideondiddrink too much, and that she knew it.
'He had been here, I suppose,' I said gently, because I didn't want to seem stern.
'Yes,' said Jane, and that was all.
'My dear,' I said, after a moment, laying my hand on hers, 'is this man worrying you … with attentions?'
Jane laughed, an odd, hard laugh that I didn't like.
'Oh, no,' she said. 'Oh, dear no, mother.'
She got up and began to walk about the room.
'Never mind Arthur,' she said. 'I wouldn't let him get on my mind if I were you, mother…. Let's talk about something else—baby, if you like.'
I perceived from this that Jane was really anxious to avoid discussion of this man, for she did not as a rule encourage me to talk to her about the little life which was coming, as we hoped, next spring. So I turned from the subject of Arthur Gideon. But it remained on my mind.
3
You know how, sometimes, one wakes suddenly in the night with an extraordinary access of clearness of vision, so that a dozen small things which have occurred during the day and passed without making much apparent impression on one's mind stand out sharp and defined in a row, like a troop of soldiers with fixed bayonets all pointing in one direction. You look where they are pointing—and behold, you see some new fact which you never saw before, and you cannot imagine how you came to have missed it.
It was in this way that I woke in the middle of the night after I had metArthur Gideon in Hampstead. All in a row the facts stood, pointing.
Mr. Gideon had been in the house only a few minutes before Oliver was killed.
He and Oliver hated each other privately, and had been openly quarrelling in the press for some time. He had an intimacy with Jane which Oliver disliked.
Oliver must have been displeased at his coming home that evening with Jane.
Gideon drank.
Gideon now had something on his mind which made him even more peculiar than usual.
Jane had been very strange and secretive about his visit there on the fatal evening.
He and Oliver had probably quarrelled.
Only Jane had seen Oliver fall.
* * * * *
Had she?
* * * * *
This awful question shot into my mind like an arrow, and I sat straight up in bed with a start.
How, indeed?
I shuddered, but unflinchingly faced an awful possibility.
If it were indeed so, it was my duty to leave no stone unturned to discover and expose the awful truth. Painful as it would be, I must not shrink.
A second terrible question came to me. If my suspicion were correct, how much did Jane know or guess? Jane had been most strange and reserved. I remembered how she had run down to meet the wretched man that first morning, when we were there; I remembered her voice, rather hurried, saying, 'Arthur! Mother and dad are upstairs. Come in here,' and how she took him into the dining-room alone.
Did Jane know all? Or did she only suspect? I could scarcely believe that she would wish to shield her husband's murderer, if he were that. Yet…. why had she told me that she had seen the accident herself? If, indeed, my terrible suspicion were justified, and if Jane was in the secret, it seemed to point to a graver condition of things than I had supposed. No girl would lie to shield her husband's murderer unless … unless she was much fonder of him than a married woman has any right to be.
I resolved quickly, as I always do. First, I must save my child from this awful man.
Secondly, I must discover the truth as expeditiously as possible, shrinking from no means.
Thirdly, if I discovered the worst, and it had to be exposed, I must see that Jane's name was kept entirely out of it. The journalistic squabbles and mutual antipathy of the two men would be all that would be necessary to account for their quarrel, together with Gideon's probably intoxicated state that evening.
I heard Percy moving downstairs still, and I nearly went down to him to communicate my suspicions to him at once. But, on second thoughts, I refrained. Percy was worried with a great many things just now. Besides, he might only laugh at me. I would wait until I had thought it over and had rather more to go on. Then I would tell him, and he should make what use he liked of it in the papers. How interested he would be if the man who was one of his bitterest journalistic foes, who fought so venomously everything that he and his press stood for, and who was the editor-designate of the possible new anti-Pinkerton daily, should be proved to be the murderer of his son-in-law. What ascoop! The vulgar journalese slang slid into my mind strangely, as light words will in grave moments.
But I pulled myself together. I was going too far ahead. After all, I was still merely in the realms of fancy and suspicion. It is true that I have queer, almost uncanny intuitive powers, which have seldom failed me. But still, I had as yet little to go on.
With an effort of will, I put the matter out of my mind and tried to sleep. Counsel would, I felt sure, come in the morning.
4
It did. I woke with the words ringing in my head as if some one had spoken them—'Why not consult Amy Ayres?'
Of course! That was the very thing. I would go that afternoon.
Amy Ayres had been a friend of mine from girlhood. We had always been in the closest sympathy, although our paths had diverged greatly since we were young. We had written our first stories together forForget-me-notandHearth and Home, and together enjoyed the first sweets of success. But, while I had pursued the literary path, Amy had not. Her interests had turned more and more to the occult. She had fallen in with and greatly admired Mrs. Besant. When her husband (a Swedenborgian minister) left her at the call of his conscience to convert the inhabitants of Peru to Swedenborgianism, and finally lost his life, under peculiarly painful circumstances, in the vain attempt, Amy turned for relief to spiritualism, which was just then at its zenith of popularity. At first she practised it privately and unofficially, with a few chosen friends, for it was something very sacred to her. But gradually, as she came to discover in herself wonderful powers of divination and spiritual receptivity, and being very poor at the time, she took it up as a calling. She is the most wonderful palm-reader and crystal-gazer I have come across. I have brought people to her of whom she has known nothing at all, and she has, after close study and brief, earnest prayer, read in their hands their whole temperament, present circumstances, past history, and future destiny. I have often tried to persuade Percy to go to her, for I think it would convince him of that vast world of spiritual experience which lies about him, and to which he is so blind. If I have to pass on before Percy, he will be left bereaved indeed, unless I can convince him of Truth first.
5
I went to see Amy in her little Maid of Honour house in Kensington that very afternoon.
I found her reading Madame Blavatski (that strange woman) in her little drawing-room.
Amy has not worn, perhaps, quite so well as I have. She has to make up a little too thickly. I sometimes wish she would put less black round her eyes; it gives her a stagey look, which I think in her particular profession it is most important not to have, as people are in any case so inclined to doubt the genuineness of those who deal in the occult. Besides, what an odd practice that painting the face black in patches is! As unlike real life as a clown's red nose, though I suppose less unbecoming. I myself only use a little powder, which is so necessary in hot, or, indeed, cold weather.
However, this is a digression. I kissed Amy, and said, 'My dear, I am here on business to-day. I am in great perplexity, and I want you to discover something from the crystal. Are you in the mood this afternoon?' For I have enough of the temperament myself to know that crystal-gazing, even more than literary composition, must wait on mood. Fortunately, Amy said she was in a most favourable condition for vision, and I told her as briefly as possible that I wished to learn about the circumstances attendant on the death of Oliver Hobart. I wished her to visualise Oliver as he stood that evening at the top of those dreadful stairs, and to watch the manner of his fall. I told her no more, for I wanted her to approach the subject without prejudice.
Without more ado, we went into the room which Amy called her Temple ofVision, and Amy got to work.
6
I was travelling by the 6.28 back to Potter's Bar. I lay back in my corner with closed eyes, recalling the events of that wonderful afternoon in the darkened, scented room. It had been a strange, almost overwhelming experience. I had been keyed up to a point of tension which was almost unendurable, while my friend gazed and murmured into the glass ball. These glimpses into the occult are really too much for my system; they wring my nerves. I could have screamed when Amy said, 'Wait—wait—the darkness stirs. I see—I see—a fair man, with the face of a Greek god.'
'Is he alone?' I whispered.
'He is not alone. He is talking to a tall dark man.'
'Yes—yes?' I bent forward eagerly, as she paused and seemed to brood over the clear depths where, as I knew, she saw shadows forming and reforming.
'They talk,' she murmured. 'They talk.'
(Knowing that she could not, unfortunately, hear what they said, I did not ask.)
'They are excited…. They are quarrelling…. Oh, God!' She hid her eyes for a moment, then looked again.
'The dark man strikes the fair man…. He is taken by surprise; he steps backward and falls … falls backwards … down … out of my vision…. The dark man is left standing alone…. He is fading … he is gone…. I can see him no more…. Leila, I have come to an end; I am overdone; I must rest.'
She had fallen back with closed eyes.
A little later, when she had revived, we had had tea together, and I had put a few questions to her. She had told me little more than what she had revealed as she gazed into the crystal. But it was enough. She knew the fair man for Oliver, for she had seen him at the wedding. She had not seen the dark man's face, nor had she ever met Arthur Gideon, but her description of him was enough for me.
I had left the house morally certain that Arthur Gideon had murdered (or anyhow manslaughtered) Oliver Hobart.
7
I told Percy that evening, after Clare had gone to bed. I had confidence in Percy: he would believe me. His journalistic instinct for the truth could be counted on. He never waived things aside as improbable, for he knew, as I knew, how much stranger truth may be than fiction. He heard me out, nodding his head sharply from time to time to show that he followed me.
When I had done, he said, 'You were right to tell me. We must look into it. It will, if proved true, make a most remarkable story. Most sensational and remarkable.' He turned it over in that acute, quick brain of his.
'We must go carefully,' he said. 'Remember we haven't much to go on yet.'
He didn't believe in the crystal-gazing, of course, so had less to go on than I had. All he saw was the inherent possibility of the story (knowing, as he did, the hatred that had existed between the two men) and the damning fact of Gideon's presence at the house that evening.
'We must be careful,' he repeated. 'Careful, for one thing, not to start talk about the fellow's friendship with Jane. We must keep Jane out of it all.'
On that we were agreed.
'I think we must ask Clare a few questions,' said Percy.
He did so next day, without mentioning our suspicion. But Clare could still scarcely bear to speak of that terrible evening, poor child, and returned incoherent answers. She knew Mr. Gideon had been in the house, but didn't know what time he had gone, nor the exact time of the accident.
I resolved to question Emily, Jane's little maid, more closely, and did so when I went there that afternoon. She was certainly more circumstantial than she had been when she had told me the story before, in the first shock and confusion of the disaster. I gathered from her that she had heard her master and Mr. Gideon talking immediately before the fall; she had been surprised when her mistress had said that Mr. Gideon had left the house before the fall. She thought, from the sounds, that he must have left the house immediately afterwards.
'It is possible,' I said, 'that Mrs. Hobart did not know precisely whenMr. Gideon left the house. It was all very confusing.'
'Oh, my lady, indeed it was,' Emily agreed. 'I'm sure I hope I shall never have such a night again.'
I said nothing to Jane of my suspicion. If I was right in thinking that the poor misguided child was shielding her husband's murderer, from whatever motives of pity or friendship, the less said to disturb her the better, till we were sure of our ground.
But I talked to a few other people about it, on whose discretion I could rely. I tried to find out, and so did Percy, what was this man's record. What transpired of it was not reassuring. His father was, as we knew before, a naturalised Russian Jew, presumably of the lowest class in his own land, though well educated from childhood in this country. He was, as every one knew, a big banker, and mixed up, no doubt, with all sorts of shady finance. Some people said he was probably helping to finance the Bolsheviks. His daughter had married a Russian Jewish artist. Jane knew this artist and his wife well, at that silly club of hers. Arthur Gideon, on coming of age, had reverted to his patronymic name, enamoured, it seemed, of his origin. He had, of course, to fight in the war, loath though he no doubt was. But directly it was over, or rather directly he was discharged wounded, he took to shady journalism.
Hardly a reassuring record! Add to it the ill-starred influence he had always attempted to exert over Johnny and Jane (he had, even in Oxford days, brought out their worst side) his quarrels with Oliver in the press, his unconcealed hatred of what he was pleased to call 'Potterism' (he was president of the foolish so-called 'Anti-Potter League'), his determined intimacy with Jane against her husband's wishes, and Jane's own implication that he at times drank too much—and you had a picture of a man unlikely to inspire confidence in any impartial mind.
Anyhow, most of the people to whom I broached the unpleasant subject (and I saw no reason why I should not speak freely of my suspicion) seemed to think the man's guilt only too likely.
Some of my friends said to me, 'Why not bring a charge against him and have him arrested and the matter thoroughly investigated?' But Percy told me we had not enough to go on for that yet. All he would do was to put the investigation into the hands of a detective, and entrust him with the business of collecting evidence.
The only people we kept the matter from were our two daughters. Clare would have been too dreadfully upset by this raking up of the tragedy, and Jane could not, in her present state, be disturbed either.