I am glad I devoted last night and the past hour this morning to bringing up to date this trivial record, for I have a premonition that the time is rapidly approaching when I shall no longer have the strength of will or body to continue it. The little pain has increased in intensity and frequency the last few days, and though I try to delude myself into the belief that otherwise I am as strong as ever, I know in my heart that I am daily growing weaker, daily losing vitality. I shall soon have to call in a doctor to give me some temporary relief, and doubtless he will put me to bed, feed me on slops, cut off alcohol, forbid noise and excitement, and keep me in a drugged, stupefied condition until I fall asleep, to wake up in the Garden of Prosperpine. Death is nothing; it is the dying that is such a nuisance. It is going through so much for so little. It is as bad as the campaign before a parliamentary election. It offends one's sense of proportion. In a well-regulated universe there would be no tedious process of decay, either before or after death. You would go about your daily avocation unconcerned and unwarned, and then at the moment appointed by an inscrutable Providence for your dissolution—phew!—and your clothes would remain standing for a surprised second, and then fall down in a heap without a particle of you inside them. If we have to die, why doesn't Providence employ this simple and sensible method? It would save such a lot of trouble. It would be so clean, so painless, so picturesque. It would add to the interest of our walks abroad. Fancy a stout, important policeman vanishing from his uniform—the helmet falling over the collar, the tunic doubling in at the belt, the knees giving way, and the unheard, merry laughter of the disenuniformed spirit winging its way truncheonless into the Empyrean.
But if you think you are going to get any fun out of dying in the present inconvenient manner, you are mistaken. Believe one who is trying.
I will remain on my feet, however, as long as my will holds out. In this way I may continue to be of service to my fellow creatures, and procure for myself a happy lot or portion. Even this morning I have been able to feel the throb of eumoiriety. A piteous letter came from Latimer, and a substantial cheque lies on my table ready to be posted. I wonder how much I have left? So long as it is enough to pay my doctor's bills and funeral expenses, what does it matter?
The last line of the above was written on December 21st. It is now January 30th, and I am still alive and able to write. I wish I weren't. But I will set down as plainly as I can what has happened in the interval.
I had just written the last word, seated at my hotel window in the sunshine, and enjoying, in spite of my uncheerful thoughts, the scents that rose from the garden, when I heard a knock at my door. At my invitation to enter, Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the room in a great state of excitement carrying the familiar bunch of papers. He put his hat on the floor, pitched the papers into the hat, and ran up to me.
“My dear sir, don't get up, I implore you. And I won't sit down. I have just seen the ever beautiful and beloved lady.”
I turned my chair away from the table, and faced him as he stood blowing kisses with one little hand, while the other lay on his heart. In a flash he struck a new gesture; he folded his arms and scowled.
“I was with her. She was opening her inmost heart to me. She knows I am her champion. A servant came up announcing Monsieur Vauvenarde. She dismissed me. I have come to my patron and friend, the English statesman. Her husband is with her now.”
I smiled. “Madame Brandt told me that she had asked for an interview.”
“And you allow it? You allow her to contaminate her beautiful presence with the sight of that traitor, that cheat at cards, that murderer, that devil? Ah, but I will not have it! I am her champion. I will save her. I will save you. I will take you both away to Egypt, and surround you with my beautiful cats, and fan you with peacock's feathers.”
This was sheer crackedness of brain. For the first time I feared for the little man. When people begin to talk that way they are not allowed to go about loose. He went on talking and the three languages he used in his jargon got clotted to the point of unintelligibility. He spoke very fast and, as far as I could understand, poured abuse on the head of Captain Vauvenarde, and continued to declare himself Lola's champion and my devoted friend. He stamped up and down the room in his tightly buttoned frock-coat from the breastpocket of which peeped the fingers of his yellow dogskin gloves. At last he stopped, and drawing a chair near the window perched on it with a little hop like a child. He held out his hand.
“Do you believe I am your friend?”
“I am sure of it, my dear Professor.”
“Then I'll betray a sacred confidence. Thecarissima signoraloves you. You didn't know it. But she loves you.”
I stared for a moment at the dwarf as if he had been a reasonable being. Something seemed to click inside my head, like a clogged cog-wheel that had suddenly freed itself, and my mind went whirling away straight through the past few weeks. I tried to smile, and I said:
“You are quite mistaken.”
“Oh, no,” he replied, wagging his Napoleonic head. “Anastasius Papadopoulos is never mistaken. She told me so herself. She wept. She put her beautiful arms round my neck and sobbed on my shoulder.”
I found myself reproving him gently. “You should not have told me this, my dear Professor. Such confidences are locked up in the heart ofun galant homme, and are not revealed even to his dearest friend.”
But my voice sounded hollow in my own ears, and what he said for the next few minutes I do not remember. The little man had told the truth to me, and Lola had told the truth to him. The realisation of it paralysed me. Why had I been such a fool as not to see it for myself? Memories of a hundred indications came tumbling one after another into my head—the forgotten glove, the glances, the changes of mood, the tears when she learned of my illness, the mysterious words, the abrupt little “You?” of yesterday. The woman was in love, deeply in love, in love with all the fervour of her big nature. And I had stood by and wondered what she meant by this and by that—things that would have been obvious to a coalheaver. I thought of Dale and I felt miserably guilty, horribly ashamed. How could I expect him to believe me when I told him that I had not wittingly stolen her affections from him. And her affections?Bon Dieu! What on earth could I do with them? What is the use of a woman's love to a dead man? And did I want it even for the tiny remainder of life?
Anastasius, perceiving that I paid but scant attention to his conversation, wriggled off his chair and stood before me with folded arms.
“You adore each other with a great passion,” he said. “She is my Madonna, and you are my friend and benefactor. I will be your protection and defence. I will never let her go away with that infamous, gambling and murdering scoundrel. My gigantic combinations have matured. I bless your union.”
He lifted his little arms in benediction. The situation was cruelly comical. For a moment I hated the mournful-visaged, posturing monkey, and had a wild desire to throw him out of the window and have done with him. I rose and, towering over him, was about to lecture him severely on his impertinent interference, when the sight of his scared face made me turn away with a laugh. What would be the use of reproaching him? He would only sit down on the floor and weep. So I paced the room, while he followed me with his eyes like an uncertain spaniel.
“Look here, Professor,” said I at last. “Now that you've found Captain Vauvenarde, brought Madame Brandt and him together, and told me that she is in love with me, don't you think you've done enough? Don't you think your cats need your attention? Something terrible may be happening to them. I dreamed last night,” I added with desperate mendacity, “that they were turned into woolly lambs.”
“Monsieur,” said the dwarf loftily, “my duty is here. And I care not whether my cats are turned into the angels of Paradise.”
I groaned. “You are wasting a great deal of money over this affair,” I urged.
“What is money to my gigantic combinations?”
“Tell me,” I cried with considerable impatience. “What are your confounded combinations?”
He began to tremble violently. “I would rather die,” said he, “than betray my secret.”
“It's all some silly nonsense about that wretched horse!” I exclaimed.
He covered his ears with his hands. “Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Don't utter it!”
In another moment he was cowering on his knees before me.
“You, of all men, mustn't blaspheme. You whom I love like my master. You whom the divine lady loves. I can't bear it!” He continued to gibber unintelligibly.
He was stark mad. There was no question of it. For a moment I stood irresolute. Then I lifted him to his feet and patted his head soothingly.
“Never mind,” said I. “I was wrong. It was a beautiful horse. There never was such a horse in the world. If I had a picture of him I would hang it up on the wall over my bed.”
“Would you?” he cried joyfully. “Then I will give you one.”
He trotted over to the bundle of papers that reposed in his hat on the floor, searched through them, and to my dismay handed me a faded, unmounted, and rather torn and crumpled photograph of the wonderful horse.
“There!” said he.
“I could not rob you of it,” I protested.
“It will be my joy to know that you have it—that it is hanging over your bed. See—have you a pin? I myself will fix it for you.”
While he was searching my table for pins the chasseur of the hotel came with a message from Madame Brandt. Would Monsieur come at once to Madame in her private room?
“I'll come now,” I said. “Professor, you must excuse me.”
“Don't mention it. I shall occupy myself in hanging the picture in the most artistic way possible.”
So I left him, his mind apparently concentrated on the childish task of pinning the photograph of the ridiculous horse on my bedroom wall, and went with the most complicated feelings downstairs and through the corridors to Lola's apartments.
She rose to meet me as I entered.
“It's very kind of you to come,” she said in her fluent but Britannic French. “May I present my husband, Monsieur Vauvenarde.”
Monsieur Vauvenarde and I exchanged bows. I noticed at once that he wore the Frenchman's costume when he pays avisite de ceremonie, frock-coat and gloves, and that a silk hat lay on the table. I was glad that he paid her this mark of respect.
“I have had the pleasure of meeting you before, Monsieur,” said he, “in circumstances somewhat different.”
“I remember perfectly,” said I.
“And your charming but inexperienced little friend—is he well?”
“He is at present decorating my room with photographs of Madame's late horse, Sultan,” said I.
He was startled, and gave me a quick, sharp look. I did not notice it at the time, but I remembered it later. Then he broke into an indulgent laugh.
“The poor animal!” He turned to Lola. “How jealous I used to be of him! And how quickly the time flies. But give yourself the trouble of seating yourself, Monsieur.”
He motioned me to a chair and sat down. He was a man of polished manner and had a pleasant voice. I guessed that in the days when he paid court to Lola, he had been handsome in his dark Norman way, and possessed considerable fascination. Evil living and sordid passions had coarsened his features, produced bagginess under the eyes and a shiftiness of glance. Idleness and an inverted habit of life were responsible for the nascent paunch and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck. He suggested the revivified corpse of a fine gentleman that had been unnaturally swollen. I had disliked him at the Cercle Africain; now I detested him heartily. The idea of Lola entering the vitiated atmosphere of his life was inexpressibly repugnant to me.
Contrary to her habit, Lola sat bolt upright on the stamped-velvet suite, the palms of her hands pressing the seat on either side of her. She caught the shade of disgust that swept over my face, and gave me a quick glance that pleaded for toleration. Her eyes, though bright, were sunken, like those of a woman who has not slept.
“Monsieur,” said Vauvenarde, “my wife informs me that to your disinterested friendship is due this most charming reconciliation.”
“Reconciliation?” I echoed. “It was quickly effected.”
“Mon Dieu,” he said. “I have always longed for the comforts of a home. My wife has grown tired of a migratory existence. She comes to find me. I hasten to meet her. There is nothing to keep us apart. The reconciliation was a matter of a few seconds. I wish to express my gratitude to you, and, therefore, I ask you to accept my most cordial thanks.”
“It has always been a pleasure to me,” said I very frigidly, “to place my services at the disposal of Madame Brandt.”
“Vauvenarde, Monsieur,” he corrected with a smile.
“And is Madame Vauvenarde equally satisfied with the—reconciliation?” I asked.
“I think Monsieur Vauvenarde is somewhat premature,” said Lola, with a trembling lip. “There were conditions—”
“A mere question of protocol.” He waved an airy hand.
“I don't know what that is,” said Lola. “There are conditions I must fix, and I thought the advice of my friend, Monsieur de Gex—”
“Precisely, my dear Lola,” he interrupted. “The principle is affirmed. We are reconciled. I proceed logically. The first thing I do is to thank Monsieur de Gex—you have a French name, Monsieur, and you pronounce it English fashion, which is somewhat embarrassing—But no matter. The next thing is the protocol. We have no possibility of calling a family council, and therefore, I acceded with pleasure to the intervention of Monsieur. It is kind of him to burden himself with our unimportant affairs.”
The irony of his tone belied the suave correctitude of his words. I detested him more and more. More and more did I realise that the dying eumoirist is capable of petty human passions. My vanity was being sacrified. Here was a woman passionately in love with me proposing to throw herself into another man's arms—it made not a scrap of difference, in the circumstances, that the man was her husband—and into the arms of such a man! Having known me to decline—etcetera, etcetera! How could she face it? And why was she doing it? To save herself from me, or me from herself? She knew perfectly well that the little pain inside would precious soon settle that question. Why was she doing it? I should have thought that the first glance at the puffy reprobate would have been enough to show her the folly of her idea. However, it was comforting to learn that she had not surrendered at once.
“If I am to have the privilege, Monsieur,” said I, “of acting as a family council, perhaps you may forgive my hinting at some of the conditions that doubtless are in Madame's mind.”
“Proceed, Monsieur,” said he.
“I want to know where I am,” said Lola in English. “He took everything for granted from the first.”
“Are you willing to go back to him?” I asked also in English.
She met my gaze steadily, and I saw a woman's needless pain at the back of her eyes. She moistened her lips with her tongue, and said:
“Under conditions.”
“Monsieur,” said I in French, turning to Vauvenarde, “forgive us for speaking our language.”
“Perfectly,” said he, and he smiled meaningly and banteringly at us both.
“In the first place, Monsieur, you are aware that Madame has a little fortune, which does not detract from the charm you have always found in her. It was left her by her father, who, as you know, tamed lions and directed a menagerie. I would propose that Madame appointed trustees to administer this little fortune.”
“There is no necessity, Monsieur,” he said. “By the law of France it is hers to do what she likes with.”
“Precisely,” I rejoined. “Trustees would prevent her from doing what she liked with it. Madame has indeed a head for affairs, but she also has a woman's heart, which sometimes interferes with a woman's head in the most disastrous manner.”
“Article No. 1 of the protocol.Allez toujours, Monsieur.”
I went on, feeling happier. “The next article treats of a little matter which I understand has been the cause of differences in the past between Madame and yourself. Madame, although she has not entered the arena for some time, has not finally abandoned it.” I smiled at the look of surprise on Lola's face. “An artist is always an artist, Monsieur. She is willing, however, to renounce it for ever, if you, on your side, will make quite a small sacrifice.”
“Name it, Monsieur.”
“You have a little passion for baccarat——”
“Surely, Monsieur,” said he blandly, “my wife would not expect me to give up what is the mere recreation of every clubman.”
“As a recreation pure and simple—she would not insist too much, but——” I shrugged my shoulders. I flatter myself on being able to do it with perfect French expressiveness. I caught, to my satisfaction, an angry gleam in his eye.
“Do you mean to say, Monsieur, that I play for more than recreation?”
“How dare I say anything, Monsieur. But Madame is prejudiced against the Cercle Africain. For a bachelor there is little to be said against it—but for a married man—you seize the point?” said I.
“Bien, Monsieur,” he said, swallowing his wrath. “And Article 3?”
“Since you have left the army—would it not be better to engage in some profession—unless your private fortune dispenses you from the necessity.”
He said nothing but: “Article 4?”
“It would give Madame comfort to live out of Algiers.”
“Moi aussi,” he replied rather unexpectedly. “We have the whole of France to choose from.”
“Would not Madame be happier if she lived out of France, also? She has always longed for a social position.”
“Eh, bien? I can give her one in France.”
“Are you quite sure?” I asked, looking him in the eyes.
“Monsieur,” said he, rising and giving his moustache a swashbuckler twist upward, “what are you daring to insinuate?”
I leaned back in my chair and fingered the waxed ends of mine.
“Nothing, Monsieur; I ask a simple question, which you surely can have no difficulty in answering.”
“Your questions are the height of indiscretion,” he cried angrily.
“In that case, before we carry this interview further, the Family Council and Madame would do well to have a private consultation.”
“Monsieur,” he cried, completely losing his temper. “I forbid you to use that tone to me. You are making a mock of me. You are insulting me. I bore with you long enough to see how much further your insolence would dare to go. I'm not to have a hand in the administration of my wife's money? I'm to forsake a plentiful means of livelihood? I'm to become a commercial traveller? I'm to expatriate myself? I'm to explain, too, the reasons why I left the army? I would not condescend. Least of all to you.”
“May I ask why, Monsieur?”
“Tonnerre de Dieu!” He stamped his foot. “Do you take me for a fool? Here I am—I came at my wife's request, ready to take her back as my wife, ready to condone everything—yes, Monsieur, as a man of the world—you think I have no eyes, no understanding—ready to take her off your hands—”
I leaped to my feet.
“Monsieur!” I thundered.
Lola gave a cry and rushed forward. I pushed her aside, and glared at him. I was in a furious rage. We glared at each other eye to eye. I pointed to the door.
“Monsieur, sortez!”
I went to it and flung it wide. Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the room.
His entrance was so queer, so unexpected, so anti-climatic, that for the moment the three of us were thrown off our emotional balance.
“I have heard all, I have heard all,” shrieked the little man. “I know you for what you are. I am the champion of thecarissima signoraand the protector of the English statesman. You are a traitor and murderer—”
Vauvenarde lifted his hand in a threatening gesture.
“Hold your tongue, you little abortion!” he shouted.
But Anastasius went on screaming and flourishing his bundle of papers.
“Ask him if he remembers the horse Sultan; ask him if he remembers the horse Sultan!”
Lola took him by the shoulders.
“Anastasius, you must go away from here—to please me. It's my orders.”
But he shook himself free, and the silk hat which he had not removed fell off in the quick struggle.
“Ask him if he remembers Saupiquet,” he screamed, and then banged the door.
A malevolent devil put a sudden idea into my head and prompted speech.
“Doyou remember Saupiquet?” I asked ironically.
“Monsieur, meddle with your own affairs and let me pass. You shall hear from me.”
The dwarf planted himself before the door.
“You shall not pass till you have answered me. Do you remember Saupiquet? Do you remember the five francs you gave to Saupiquet to let you into Sultan's stable? Ah! Ha! Ha! You wince. You grow pale. Do you remember the ball of poison you put down Sultan's throat?”
Lola started forward with flaming eyes and anguished face.
“You—you?” she gasped. “You were so ignoble as to do that?”
“The accursed brute!” shouted Vauvenarde. “Yes, I did it. I wish I had burned out his entrails.”
Anastasius sprang at him like a tiger cat. I had a quick vision of the dwarf clinging in the air against the other's bulky form, one hand at his throat, and then of an incredibly swift flash of steel. The dwarf dropped off and rolled backwards, revealing something black sticking out of Vauvenarde's frock-coat—for the second I could not realise what it was. Then Vauvenarde, with a ghastly face, reeled sideways and collapsed in a heap on the ground.
Of what happened immediately afterwards I have but a confused memory. I remember that Lola and I both fell on our knees beside the stabbed man, and I remember his horrible staring eyes and open mouth. I remember that, though she was white and shaky, she neither shrieked, went into hysterics, nor fainted. I remember rushing down to the manager; I remember running with him breathlessly through obscure passages of the hotel in search of a doctor who was attending a sick member of the staff. I remember the rush back, the doctor bending over the body, which Lola had partially unclothed, and saying:
“He is dead. The blade has gone straight through his heart.”
And I have in my mind the unforgettable and awful picture of Anastasius Papadopoulos disregarded in a corner of the room, with his absurd silk hat on—some reflex impulse had caused him to pick it up and put it on his head—sitting on the floor amid a welter of documents relating to the death of the horse Sultan, one of which he was eagerly perusing.
After this my memory is clear. It was only the first awful shock and horror of the thing that dazed me.
The man was dead, said the doctor. He must lie until the police arrived and drew up theproces-verbal. The manager went to telephone to the police, and while he was gone I told the doctor what had occurred. Anastasius took no notice of us. Lola, holding her nerves under iron control, stood bolt upright looking alternately at the doctor and myself as we spoke. But she did not utter a word. Presently the manager returned. The alarm had not been given in the hotel. No one knew anything about the occurrence. Lola went into her bedroom and came back with a sheet. The manager took it from her and threw it over the dead man. The doctor stood by Anastasius. The end of a strip of sunlight by the window just caught the dwarf in his corner.
“Get up,” said the doctor.
Anastasius, without raising his eyes from his papers, waved him away.
“I am busy. I am engaged on important papers of identification. He had a white star on his forehead, and his tail was over a metre long.”
Lola approached him.
“Anastasius,” she said gently. He looked up with a radiant smile. “Put away those papers.” Like a child he obeyed and scrambled to his feet. Then, seeing the unfamiliar face of the doctor for the first time, he executed one of his politest and most elaborate bows. The doctor after looking at him intently for a while, turned to me.
“Mad. Utterly mad. Apparently he has no consciousness of what he has done.”
He lured him to the sofa and sat beside him and began to talk in a low tone of the contents of the papers. Anastasius replied cheerfully, proud at being noticed by the stranger. The papers referred to a precious secret, a gigantic combination, which he had spent years in maturing. I shivered at the sound of his voice, and turned to Lola.
“This is no place for you. Go into your bedroom till you are wanted.”
I held the door open for her. She put her hands up to her face and reeled, and I thought she would have fallen; but she roused herself.
“I don't want to break down—not yet. I shall if I'm left alone—come and sit with me, for God's sake.”
“Very well,” said I.
She passed me and I followed; but at the door I turned and glanced round the cheerful, sunny room. There, against the background of blue sky and tree tops framed by the window, sat Anastasius Papadopoulos, swinging his little legs and talking bombastically to the tanned and grizzled doctor, and opposite stood the correctly attired hotel manager in the attitude in which he habitually surveyed the lay-out of the table d'hote, keeping watch beside the white-covered shape on the floor. I was glad to shut the sight from my eyes. We waited silently in the bedroom, Lola sitting on the bed and hiding her face in the pillows, and I standing by the window and looking out at the smiling mockery of the fair earth. An agonising spasm of pain—amomento mori—shot through me and passed away. I thanked God that a few weeks would see the end of me. I had always enjoyed the comedy of life. It had been to me a thing of infinite jest. But this stupid, meaningless tragedy was carrying the joke too far. My fastidiousness revolted at its vulgarity. I no longer wished to inhabit a world where such jests were possible. . . . I had never seen a man die before. I was surprised at the swiftness and the ugliness of it. . . . I suddenly realised that I was smoking a cigarette, which I was quite unconscious of having lit. I threw it away. A minute afterwards I felt that if I did not smoke I should go crazy. So I lit another. . . . The ghastly silliness of the murder! . . . Colonel Bunnion's loud laugh rose from the terrace below, jarring horribly on my ears. A long green praying mantis that had apparently mounted on the bougainvillea against the hotel wall appeared in meditative stateliness on the window-sill. I picked the insect up absent-mindedly, and began to play with it. Lola's voice from the bed startled me and caused me to drop the mantis. She spoke hoarsely.
“Tell me—what are they going to do with him?”
I turned round. She had raised a crushed face from the pillows, and looked at me haggardly. I noticed a carafe of brandy and a siphon by the bedside. I mixed her a strong dose, and, before replying, made her drink it.
“They'll place him under restraint, that's all. He's not responsible for his actions.”
“He did that once before—I told you—but without the knife—I wish I could cry—I can't—You don't think it heartless of me—but my brain is on fire—I shall always see it—I wish to God I had never asked him to come—Why did I? My God, why did I?—It was my fault—I wanted to see him—to judge for myself how much of the old Andre was left—there was good in him once—I thought I might possibly help him—There was nothing for me to do in the world—Without you any kind of old hell was good enough—That's why I sent for him—When he came, after a bit, I was afraid, and sent for you——”
“Afraid of what?” I asked.
“He asked me at once what money I had—Then there seemed to be no doubt in his mind that I would join him—We spoke of you—the friend who could advise me—He never said—what he said afterwards—I thought it kind of him to consent to see you—I rang the bell and sent the chasseur for you. I supposed Anastasius had gone home—I never thought of him. The poor little man was sweet to me, just like a dog—a silent, sympathetic dog—I spoke to him as I would to something that wouldn't understand—all sorts of foolish things—Now and then a woman has to empty her heart”—she shivered—her hands before her face.
“It's my fault, it's my fault.”
“These things are no one's fault,” I said gently. But just as I was beginning to console her with what thumb-marked scraps of platitude I could collect—the only philosophy after all, such is the futility of systems, adequate to the deep issues of life—the door opened and the manager announced that the police had arrived.
We went through the ordeal of theproces-verbal. Anastasius, confronted with his victim, had no memory of what had occurred. He shrieked and shrank and hid his face in Lola's dress. When he was forced to speak he declared that the dead man was not Captain Vauvenarde. Captain Vauvenarde was at the Cercle Africain. He, himself, was seeking him. He would take the gendarmes there, and they could arrest the Captain for the murder of Sultan of which his papers contained indubitable proofs. Eventually the poor little wretch was led away in custody, proud and smiling, entirely convinced that he was leading his captors to the arrest of Captain Vauvenarde. On the threshold he turned and bowed to us so low that the brim of his silk hat touched the floor. Then Lola's nerve gave way and she broke into a passion of awful weeping.
Thecommissaire de policesecured the long thin knife (how the dwarf had managed to conceal it on his small person was a mystery) and the bundle of documents, and accompanied me to my room to see whether he had left anything there to serve as apiece de conviction. We found only the crumpled picture of the horse Sultan neatly pinned against my bedroom wall, and on the floor a ribbon tied like a garter with a little bell opposite the bow. On it was written “Santa Bianca,” and I knew it was the collar of the beloved cat which he must have been carrying about him for a talisman. Thecommissairetook this also.
If you desire to know the details of the judicial proceedings connected with the murder of Andre Marie-Joseph Vauvenarde, ex-Captain in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the trial of Anastasius Papadopoulos, I must refer you to the Algerian, Parisian, and London Press. There you will find an eagerly picturesque account of the whole miserable affair. Now, not only am I unable to compete with descriptive verbatim reporters on their own ground, but also a consecutive statement, either bald or graphic, of the tedious horrors Lola Brandt and I had to undergo, would be foreign to the purpose of these notes, however far from their original purpose an ironical destiny has caused them to wander. You know nearly all that is necessary for you to know, so that when I am dead you may not judge me too harshly. The remainder I can summarise in a few words. At any rate, I have told the truth, often more naively than one would have thought possible for a man who prided himself as much as I did on his epicurean sophistication.
These have been days, as I say, of tedious horror. There have been endless examinations, reconstructions of the crime, exposures in daring publicity of the private lives of the protagonists of the lunatic drama. The French judges and advocates have accepted the account given by Lola and myself of our mutual relations with a certain mocking credulity. The Press hasn't accepted it at all. It took as a matter of course the view held by the none too noble victim. At first, seeing Lola shrug her shoulders with supreme indifference as to her own reputation, I cared but little for these insinuations. I wrote such letters to my sisters and to Dale as I felt sure would be believed, and let the long-eared, gaping world go hang. Besides, I had other things to think of. Physical pain is insistent, and I have suffered damnable torture. The pettiness of the legal inquiry has been also a maddening irritation. Nothing has been too minute for the attention of the French judiciary. It seemed as though the whole of the evil gang of the Cercle Africain were called as witnesses. They testified as to Captain Vauvenarde's part proprietorship of the hell—as to wrong practices that occurred there—as to the crazy conduct of both Anastasius and myself on the occasion of my insane visit. Officers of the Chasseurs d'Afrique were compelled further to blacken the character of the dead man—he had been a notorious plucker of pigeons during most of his military career, and when at last he was caught red-handed palming the king atecarte, he was forced to resign his commission. Arabs came from the slums with appalling stories. Even the stolid Saupiquet, dragged from Toulon, gave evidence as to the five-franc bribe and the debt of fifteen sous, and identified the horse Sultan by the crumpled photograph. Lola and I have been racked day after day with questions—some, indeed, prompted by the suspicion that Vauvenarde might have met his death directly by our hand instead of that of Anastasius. It was the Procureur-general who said: “It can be argued that you would benefit by the decease of the defunct.” I replied that we could not benefit in any way. My sole object was to effect a reconciliation between husband and wife. “Will you explain why you gave yourself that trouble?” I never have smiled so grimly as I did then. How could I explain my precious pursuit of the eumoirous to a French Procureur-general? How could I put before him the point of view of a semi-disembodied spirit? I replied with lame lack of originality that my actions proceeded from disinterested friendship. “You are a pure altruist then?” said he. “Very pure,” said I. . . . It was only the facts of the scabbard of the knife having been found attached to the dwarf's person beneath his clothes, and of certain rambling menaces occurring in his Sultan papers that saved us from the indignity of being arrested and put into the dock. . . .
During all this time I remained at the hotel at Mustapha Superieur. Lola moved to a suite of rooms in another hotel a little way down the hill. I saw her daily. At first she shrank from publicity and refused to go out, save in a closed carriage to the town when her presence was necessary at the inquiries. But after a time I persuaded her to brave the stare of the curious and stroll with me among the eucalyptus woods above. We cut ourselves off from other human companionship and felt like two lost souls wandering alone through mist. She conducted herself with grave and simple dignity. . . . Once or twice she visited Anastasius in prison. She found him humanely treated and not despondent. He thought they had arrested him for the poisoning of the horse, and laughed at their foolishness. As they refused to return him his dossier, he occupied himself in reconstructing it, and wrote pages and pages of incoherence to prove the guilt of Captain Vauvenarde. He was hopelessly mad. . . . The bond of pain bound me very close to Lola.
“What are you going to do with your life?” I asked her one day.
“So long as I have you as a friend, it doesn't greatly matter.”
“You forget,” I said, “that you can't have me much longer.”
“Are you going to leave me? It's not because I have dragged you through all this dirt and horror. Another woman might say that of another man—but not I of you. Why are you going to leave me? I want so little—only to see you now and then—to keep the heart in me.”
“Can't you realise, that what I said in London is true?”
“No. I can't. It's unbelievable. You can't believe it yourself. If you did, how could you go on behaving like anybody else—like me for instance?”
“What would you do if you were condemned to die?”
She shuddered. “I should go mad with fear—I——” She broke off and remained for some moments reflective, with knitted brow. Then she lifted her head proudly. “No, I shouldn't. I should face it like you. Only cowards are afraid. It's best to show things that you don't care a hang for them.”
“Keep that sublimeje m'en fich'ismeup when I'm dead and buried,” said I, “and you'll pull through your life all right. The only thing you must avoid is the pursuit of eumoiriety.”
“What on earth is that?” she asked.
“The last devastating vanity,” said I.
And so it is.
“When you are gone,” she said bravely, “I shall remember how strong and true you were. It will make me strong too.”
I acquiesced silently in her proposition. In this age of flippancy and scepticism, if a human soul proclaims sincerely its faith in the divinity of a rabbit, in God's name don't disturb it. It issomethingwhereto to refer his aspirations, his resolves; it is a court of arbitration, at the lowest, for his spiritual disputes; and the rabbit will be as effective an oracle as any other. For are not all religions but the strivings of the spirit towards crystallisation at some point outside the environment of passions and appetites which is the flesh, so that it can work untrammelled: and are not all gods but the accidental forms, conditioned by circumstance, which this crystallisation takes? All gods in their anthropo-, helio-, thero-, or what-not-morphic forms are false; but, on the other hand, all gods in their spiritual essence are true. So I do not deprecate my prospective unique position in Lola Brandt's hagiology. It was better for her soul that I should occupy it. Even if I were about to live my normal life out, like any other hearty human, marry and beget children, I doubt whether I should attempt to shake my wife's faith in my heroical qualities.
This was but a fragment of one among countless talks. Some were lighter in tone, others darker, the mood of man being much like a child's balloon which rises or falls as the strata of air are more rarefied or more dense. Perhaps during the time of strain, the atmosphere was more often rarefied, and our conversation had the day's depressing incidents for its topics. We rarely spoke of the dead man. He was scarcely a subject for panegyric, and it was useless to dwell on the memory of his degradation. I think we only once talked of him deeply and at any length, and that was on the day of the funeral. His brother, a manufacturer at Clermont-Ferrand, and a widowed aunt, apparently his only two surviving relatives, arrived in Algiers just in time to attend the ceremony. They had seen the report of the murder in the newspapers and had started forthwith. The brother, during an interview with Lola, said bitter things to her, reproaching her with the man's downfall, and cast on her the responsibility of his death.
“He spoke,” she said, “as if I had suggested the murder and practically put the knife into the poor crazy little fellow's hand.”
The Vauvenardes must have been an amiable family.
“Before I came,” she said a little while later, “I still had some tenderness for him—a woman has for the only man that has been—really—in her life. I wish I could feel it now. I wish I could feel some respect even. But I can't. If I could, it would lessen the horror that has got hold of me to my bones.”
It was a torture to her generous soul that she could not grieve for him. She could only shudder at the tragedy. In her heart she grieved more for Anastasius Papadopoulos, and in so doing she was, in her feminine way, self-accusative of callous lack of human feeling. It was my attempt to bring her to a more rational state of mind that caused us to review the dead man's career, and recapitulate the unpleasing incidents of the last interview.
Of Captain Vauvenarde, no more. He has gone whither I am going. That his soul may rest in peace is my earnest prayer. But I do not wish to meet him.
Lola went tearless and strong through the horrible ordeal of the judicial proceedings. She said I gave her courage. Perhaps, unconsciously, I did. It was only when the end came that she broke down, although she knew exactly what the end would be. And I, too, felt a lump in my throat when they sentenced Anastasius Papadopoulos to the asylum, and I saw him for the last time, the living parody of Napoleon III, frock-coated and yellow-gloved, the precious, newly written dossier in his hand, as he disappeared with a mournful smile from the court, after bowing low to the judge and to us, without having understood the significance of anything that had happened.
In the carriage that took us home she wept and sobbed bitterly.
“I loved him so. He was the only creature on earth that loved me. He loved me as only a dog can love—or an angel.”
I let her cry. What could I say or do?
These have been weeks of tedious horror and pain. With the exception of Colonel Bunnion, I have kept myself aloof from my fellow creatures in the hotel, even taking my meals in my own rooms, not wishing to be stared at as the hero of the scandal that convulsed the place. And with regard to Colonel Bunnion shall I be accused of cynicism if I say that I admitted him—not to my confidence—but to my company, because I know that it delighted the honest but boring fellow to prove to himself that he could rise above British prejudice and exhibit tact in dealing with a man in a delicate position? For, mark you, all the world—even those nearest and dearest to me as I soon discovered—believed that the wife of the man who was murdered before my eyes was my mistress. Colonel Bunnion was kind, and he meant to be kind. He was a gentleman for all his wearisomeness, and his kindness was such as I could accept. But I know what I say about him is true. Ye gods! Haven't I felt myself the same swelling pride in my broadmindedness? When a man is going on my journey he does not palter with truth.
Though I held myself aloof, as I say, from practically all my fellow creatures here, I have not been cut off from the outside world. My sisters, like this French court in Algiers, have accepted my statement with polite incredulity. Their letters have been full of love, half-veiled reproach, anxiety as to their social position, and an insane desire to come and take care of me. This I have forbidden them to do. The pain they would have inflicted on themselves, dear souls, would have far outweighed the comfort I might have gained from their ministrations. Then I have had piteous letters from Dale.
“. . . Your telegram reassured me, though I was puzzled. Now I get a letter from Lola, telling me it's all off—that she never loved me—that she valued my youth and my friendship, but that it is best for us not to meet again. What is the meaning of it, Simon? For Heaven's sake tell me. I can't think of anything else. I can't sleep. I am going off my head. . . .”
Again. “. . . This awful newspaper report and your letter of explanation—I have them side by side. Forgive me, Simon. I don't know what to believe, where to turn. . . . I have looked up to you as the best and straightest man I know. You must be. Yet why have you done this? Why didn't you tell me she was married? Why didn't she tell me? I can't write properly, my head is all on a buzz. The beastly papers say you were living with her in Algiers—but you weren't, were you? It would be too horrible. In fact, you say you weren't. But, all the same, you have stolen her from me. It wasn't like you. . . . And this awful murder. My God! you don't know what it all means to me. It's breaking my heart. . . .”
And Lady Kynnersley wrote—with what object I scarcely know. The situation was far beyond the poor lady's by-laws and regulations for the upbringing of families and the conduct of life. The elemental mother in her battled on the side of her only son—foolishly, irrationally, unkindly. Her exordium was as correct as could be. The tragedy shocked her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to believe; she sympathised with me deeply. But then she turned from me to Dale, and feminine unreason took possession of her pen. She bitterly reproached herself for having spoken to me of Madame Brandt. Had she known how passionate and real was this attachment, she would never have interfered. The boy was broken-hearted. He accused me of having stolen her from him—his own words. He took little interest in his electioneering campaign, spoke badly, unconvincingly; spent hours in alternate fits of listlessness and anger. She feared for her darling's health and reason. She made an appeal to me who professed to love him—if it were honourably possible, would I bring Madame Brandt back to him? She was willing now to accept Dale's estimate of her worth. Could I, at the least, prevail on Madame Brandt to give him some hope—of what she did not know—but some hope that would save him from ruining his career and “doing something desperate”?
And another letter from Dale:
“. . . I can't work at this election. For God's sake, give her back to me. Then I won't care. What is Parliament to me without her? And the election is as good as lost already. The other side has made as much as possible of the scandal. . . .”
The only letters that have not been misery to read have come from Eleanor Faversham. There was one passage which made me thank God that He had created such women as Eleanor—
“Don't fret over the newspaper lies, dear. Those who love you—and why shouldn't I love you still?—know the honourable gentleman that you are. Write to me if it would ease your heart and tell me just what you feel you can. Now and always you have my utter sympathy and understanding.”
And this is the woman of whose thousand virtues I dared to speak in flippant jest.
Heaven forgive me.
After receiving Lady Kynnersley's appeal, I went to Lola. It was just before the case came on at the Cour d'Assises. She had finished luncheon in her private room and was sitting over her coffee. I joined her. She wore the black blouse and skirt with which I have not yet been able to grow familiar, as it robbed her of the peculiar fascinating quality which I have tried to suggest by the word pantherine. Coffee over, we moved to the window which opened on a little back garden—the room was on the ground floor—in which grew prickly pear and mimosa, and newly flowering heliotrope. I don't know why I should mention this, except that some scenes impress themselves, for no particular reason, on the memory, while others associated with more important incidents fade into vagueness. I picked a bunch of heliotrope which she pinned at her bosom.
“Lola,” I said, “I want to speak to you seriously.”
She smiled wanly: “Do we ever speak otherwise these dreadful days?”
“It's about Dale. Read this,” said I, and I handed her Lady Kynnersley's letter. She read it through and returned it to me.
“Well?”
“I asked you a week or two ago what you were going to do with your life,” I said. “Does that letter offer you any suggestion?”
“I'm to give him some hope—what hope can I give him?”
“You're a free woman—free to marry. For the boy's sake the mother will consent. When she knows you as well as we know you she will—”
“She will—what? Love me?”
“She's a woman not given to loving—except, in unexpected bursts, her offspring. But she will respect you.”
She stood for a few moments silent, her arm resting against the window jamb and her head on her arm. She remained there so long that at last I rose and, looking at her face, saw that her eyes were full of tears. She dashed them away with the back of her hand, gave me a swift look, and went and sat in the shadow of the room. An action of this kind on the part of a woman signifies a desire for solitude. I lit a cigarette and went into the garden.
It was a sorry business. I saw as clearly as Lola that Lady Kynnersley desired to purchase Dale's immediate happiness at any price, and that the future might bring bitter repentance. But I offered no advice. I have finished playing at Deputy Providence. A madman letting off fireworks in a gunpowder factory plays a less dangerous game.
Presently she joined me and ran her arm through mine.
“I'll write to Dale this afternoon,” she said. “Don't let us talk of it any more now. You are tired out. It's time for you to go and lie down. I'll walk with you up the hill.”
It has come to this, that I must lie down for some hours during the day lest I should fall to pieces.
“I suppose I'll have to,” I laughed. “What a thing it is to have the wits of a man and the strength of a baby.”
She pressed my arm and said in her low caressing voice which I had not heard for many weeks: “I shouldn't be so proud of those man's wits, if I were you.”
I knew she said it playfully with reference to masculine non-perception of the feminine; but I chose to take it broadly.
“My dear Lola,” said I, “it has been borne in upon me that I am the most witless fool that the unwisdom of generations of English country squires has ever succeeded in producing.”
“Don't talk rot,” she said, with foolishness in her eyes.
She accompanied me bareheaded in the sunshine to the gate of my hotel.
“Come and dine with me, if you're well enough,” she said as we parted.
I assented, and when the evening came I went. Did I not say that we were like two lost souls wandering alone in the mist?
It was only when I rose to bid her good-night that she referred to Dale.
“I wrote to him this afternoon,” she announced curtly.
“You said you would do so.”
“Would you like to know what I told him?”
She put her hands behind her back and stood facing me, somewhat defiantly, in all her magnificence. I smiled. Women, much as they scoff at the blindness of our sex, are often transparent.
“It's your firm determination to tell me,” said I. “Well?”
She advanced a step nearer to me, and looked me straight in the eyes defiantly.
“I told him that I loved you with all my heart and all my soul. I told him that you didn't know it; that you didn't care a brass curse for me; that you had acted as you thought best for the happiness of himself and me. I told him that while you lived I could not think of another man. I told him that if you could face Death with a smile on your face, he might very well show the same courage and not chuck things right and left just because a common woman wouldn't marry him or live with him and spoil his career. There! That's what I told him. What do you think?”
“Heaven knows what effect it will have,” said I, wearily, for I was very, very tired. “But why, my poor Lola, have you wasted your love on a shadow like me?”
She answered after the foolish way of women.
I have not heard from either Dale or Lady Kynnersley. A day or two ago, in reply to a telegram to Raggles, I learned that Dale had lost the election.
This, then, is the end of myapologia pro vita mea, which I began with so resonant a flourish of vainglory. I have said all that there is to be said. Nothing more has happened or is likely to happen until they put me under the earth. Oh, yes, I was forgetting. In spite of my Monte Cristo munificence, poor Latimer has been hammered on the Stock Exchange. Poor Lucy and the kids!
I shall have, I think, just enough strength left to reach Mentone—this place is intolerable now—and there I shall put myself under the care of a capable physician who, with his abominable drugs, will doubtless begin the cheerful work of inducing the mental decay which I suppose must precede physical dissolution.
I must confess that I am disappointed with the manner of my exit. I had imagined it quite different. I had beheld myself turning with a smile and a jest for one last view of the faces over which I, in my eumoirous career, had cast the largesse of happiness, and the vanishing with a gallant carelessness through the dusky portals. Instead of that, here am I sneaking out of life by the back door, covering my eyes for very shame. And glad? Oh, God, how glad I am to slink out of it!
I have indeed accomplished the thing which I set out to do. I have severed a boy from the object of his passion. What an achievement for the crowning glory of a lifetime! And at what a cost: one fellow-creature's life and another's reason. On me lies the responsibility. Vauvenarde, it is true, did not adorn this grey world, but he drew the breath of life, and, through my jesting agency, it was cut off. Anastasius Papadopoulos, had he not come under my malign influence would have lived out his industrious, happy and dream-filled days. Lesser, but still great price, too, has been paid. Jealous hatred, misery and failure for the being I care most for in the world, the shame of a sordid scandal to those that hold me dear, the hopeless love and speedy mourning of a woman not without greatness.
I have tried to make a Tom Fool of Destiny—and Destiny has proved itself to be the superior jester of the two, and has made a grim and bedraggled Tom Fool of me.
. . . I must end this. I have just fallen in a faint on the floor, and Rogers has revived me with some drops Hunnington had given me in view of such a contingency.
These are the last words I shall write. Life is too transcendentally humorous for a man not to take it seriously. Compared with it, Death is but a shallow jest.