Then suddenly I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes past ten. I still had some minutes, and I used them for a sort of cadenza to whatever my performance might have been. Then, rising abruptly, I said I must be off.
"I must be getting along myself presently," said Pepper.
He came downstairs with me and saw me into my hat and coat. I saw his glance at my new topper, but he said nothing either about my appearance or my recent demeanour. Instead it was I who said suddenly, as we walked to the door, "By the way—you didn't tell me that that neighbour of mine was Schmerveloff."
He laughed. "Didn't I? Well, you ought to know who your neighbour is better than I do!" It was only then that he added, "Well, I think we've done the trick, Jeffries!"
I left him, and turned towards Swan & Edgar's. I had another trick to do now, though of what its nature might prove to be I had not the faintest conception.
As they had done three hours before, again our eyes met simultaneously. She had been sheltering in a doorway, but she advanced immediately, and without hesitation took my arm. I suppose she must have chosen our direction, for we had crossed to the corner of Lower Regent Street before I had as much as wondered where, at that hour of the night, we were to go. It was still raining; the flimsy umbrella she carried protected her soft grey hat, but not her skirts; and I did not wish to take her to any of the brightly lighted establishments of the Circus for two reasons—first, because I had only four shillings in my pocket, and secondly, because I wanted—well, say to distinguish. The west-bound buses start from the corner to which we had crossed, and it looked as if we should have to talk in whichever of them took her homewards.
"This one?" I said laconically, as a West Kensington bus drew up.
But she drew me away. "Let's go this way," she said.
I took her umbrella, and with her hand still on my arm she led me down Lower Regent Street.
If we had anything important to say to oneanother, it was extraordinary how we delayed to say it. We reached the offices of the F.B.C. without having spoken, and turned along Pall Mall East and into Trafalgar Square still without a word. And when presently she did speak, at the top of Parliament Street, it was merely to tell me that my hat would be spoiled if I didn't take my share of the umbrella.
"Then you might at least turn your trousers up," she added, as I made no reply; and I stooped and did so. We resumed our walk, stopped at the Horse Guards, and made our way slowly towards the Mall.
"Are you warm?" I asked some minutes later.
"Quite," she replied; and the silence fell on us again.
At last, somewhere near the spot where the Artillery Memorial now is, she did speak. It was a curious question she put, her fingers working slightly on my sleeve as she did so. During the past minutes a sense—I hardly know how to describe it except as a sense of protection—had begun to grow on me, the odd thing being that it was not I who protected her, but she me. Perhaps the perfect calm with which she had claimed my arm had begun it; it certainly now informed the very curious question she suddenly put.
"Are you happy?" she asked.
You may imagine I was a little surprised. Quite apart from the nameless reassurance that thrilled inher tone, some queer gage of fidelity, though fidelity to what I could not make out, the question itself was a long way out of the ordinary. Was I happy! Ought I not, from any point of view she could possibly have, to be happy? Newly married—sure of myself—wearing clothes the luxury of which was only an anticipation—fresh from a conference with the great ones of the land (though to be sure she could hardly know all this)—what else should I be but happy? It looked as if for some reason or other she had supposed I wouldnotbe happy.... I spoke slowly.
"I wish you would tell me," I said, "what makes you ask that?"
She looked straight before her through the rain. "Why I ask that? It's just that that I wanted to ask you," she replied.
"It's just that that you——" I repeated after her, stopping, however, half-way.
Yet I felt somehow that that she had just uttered was no banal compliment. She was not thinking of the kind of felicitation that had been implied when she had sent Evie the teacloth. She had not asked after Evie, and was not, I knew already, thinking of Evie. And again I had that odd sense that she was protecting me, and would continue to protect me.
"Well, it's an odd question—the whole thing'sodd, of course—but since you ask, I don't mind telling you. I am happy."
She turned under the umbrella eagerly, almost (I thought) joyously.
"Youare?"
"Iam," I emphasised slightly.
But still she did not mention Evie. Again we walked. Then:
"You are? After all—that?"
Softly from the background of my memory there came forward what I conceived to be her meaning. It was a humiliating one, and I hung my head humbly.
"You mean after—poor Kitty?"
But it seemed I was quite wrong. "No, I don't mean that," she said. "Or at any rate only partly that."
"Then," I asked quickly, "will you tell me what youdomean?"
In Billy's studio we had been positively straining at one another to speak; since then, free any time this last half-hour to say what we would, we had hung just as desperately back; but now came a sudden enough end both to straining and to reluctance. She turned to me; my eyes would have fallen before the gaze she gave me, but were compelled to endure it; and the lightning is not more instantaneous and direct than were the words that now burst from her.
"Tell me—you killed that boy, didn't you?"
I said you should have it soon. It has been a little longer than I thought. At any rate you have it now.
The remaining events of that evening are easier to set down than to account for. My difficulty perhaps is that I am trying to tell an extraordinary thing in terms that are inappropriately plain. Nothing, for example, would be simpler than to say how we stopped in our walk, presently resumed it, slowly passed the Palace and the Royal Mews, and in course of time found ourselves walking up Grosvenor Place. It is true that we did these things, but it is also true that they are all more or less beside the mark. I need not urge my point, how beside the mark they are, by comparison with the remarkable results of being asked by a woman whom you have known only slightly and whom you have almost forgotten all about whether you have killed a certain young man. Therefore if, as may very well be the case, you yourself have no experience on such a point, that is all the more reason why you should trust me to give, in my own way, the essence of an hour without parallel in my experience, and, I imagine, to be matched in that of few others.
As she had spoken I had stepped back, without haste, a pace from her, taking her umbrella with me.I was stepping back another pace, when my back encountered the iron railings, stopping me. Until then her hand had not left my sleeve. Now perhaps three yards separated us, she standing in the rain, I with her gimcrack of an umbrella. There was a lamp not far away; the veil of falling rain held and diffused the light of it, so that I actually saw her with more evenness of detail than I should have done had she stood directly in the light, one side of her face illumined, and the other dark; and probably my own face was not entirely lost in the shadow of the umbrella. Our eyes had met again, exactly as they had met in the studio....
On her soft floppy hat and over the shoulders of her three-quarters grey coat I saw the rime of fine rain gather. It became a sort of soft moss of rain, that gave her figure a faintly discerned outline of light. Though her wrists were damp and dark, and her skirts straight and heavy, I still did not think of passing her the umbrella; it is wonderful how many small things escape you when you have just been asked whether you have put an end to a young man's life. The rain came on still more sharply. I saw it gleam on the backs of her kid gloves....
It never occurred to me to wonder how she knew. I suppose I ought to have wondered this, but I gave it no thought. Instead, I was wondering why I had never noticed before what her eyes were like—why, indeed, I had thought them to be quite different.Had you asked me that morning what Louie Causton's eyes were like I should first have rummaged in my memory for who Louie Causton was, then have dismissed them as ordinary and a sort of grey, and so have missed a wonder. Grey? Yes, they were grey, but that is not saying anything. And perhaps after all it was not the eyes that held me. Perhaps the eyes were no more than rounds of crystal between us, pure crystal, hiding nothing. Better still, perhaps they were of that substance which, placed across itself, allows no light to pass, but, turned parallel, ceases to intercept. Formerly I had seen those tourmaline rounds of Louie Causton's grey eyes as it were transversely placed, opaque, riddling, mocking, impenetrable; now, quicker than the flicker of a camera-shutter, they had changed, and, for me, would never again change back. I had seen down into her soul. Her physical form, three hours before, had not been more openly offered to my gazing than was that measureless deep interior she showed me now....
And that she too had plunged to the bottom of my own soul, her question was sufficient evidence.
And now, as that vision of her spirit, stark and piercing as Billy Izzard's of her body had been, must abide with me for ever, there was no special need for hurrying matters. Though I had known it not, it was for that last stripping look that I had whispered so breathlessly to her over the screen;and she, unlike me, had known why she had whispered back. So, the thing being now done, our time was our own. As slowly as I had retreated to the railings, I advanced from them again. Once more I held the umbrella over her.
"Come," I said. "You're getting wet."
Again, without a moment's hesitation, she passed her hand under my arm, and we moved towards the Palace.
There are some supreme moments—they say the moment of violent death is one of them—in which all Life's obscurations are made instantaneously clear; but if my own supreme moment ought to have taken that form, I can only say that it did not. No sudden explanations of the hitherto inexplicable flashed through my mind. Afterwards, when a certain amount of imperfection had supervened between me and that perfect look, these explanations did present themselves, yes, in crowds, but not then. I did not ask why, knowing me for a murderer, she should still take my arm. I did not wonder how she regarded the matter from Merridew's point of view. I did not trouble myself about how she knew, nor, for the matter of that, whether she did know—for she had made no charge, had only put a question. I cared for nothing but that sweet yet terrible depth and stillness I had seen beyond the tourmalines of her eyes. Indeed, somewhere near the Palace, I suddenly found myself irresistibly longing to look intothose eyes again. We were approaching another lamp. I stopped. Again I did not notice that I did so under a dripping plane-tree. I looked. They were still the same—flawless transmitters, accesses to the ether of her soul....
Again she put her question.
"You did kill that boy, didn't you?"
"Yes." (I could not have dared to lie to her.)
"Ah!"...
We walked on again.
And I know not what rest, akin to the longing of a weary spirit for death, I found in it all. Nor do I know whence came the special and unimaginable peace that filled me. For that peace was special. My marriage had been a different rapture; the dreams of the first days of my love had not been the same; and it was perhaps this that I had implored in vain that night when, stretching out among my swags and gargoyles, I had cried to Whatever lay beyond the marbled sky that, might I but be delivered from this body of an ancient death, my life should be a dedicated thing. And now, when I least expected it, I had it. Between me, a man who had committed murder, and her, the mother of a nameless child, something I knew not—something still and splendid and awful—had come into being. Do you wonder that, in the stillness and splendour and awe of it, my brain slumbered within me, so that thoughthose grey abysses full of answers waited for me, not a question did I put?...
"Yes," I said. "You know I killed him."
And "Ah!" she said again.
You will not find it difficult to believe that when you have been asked the question I had been asked, you and your questioner are not on ordinary terms. Indeed—believe me—you are hardly flesh and blood at all. You become eyes and voices, and yet not exactly that either—you are parts of an immanent vision and speech. You will also see that to dare such a question is to dare to be questioned in your turn. Therefore, less as wanting the information than as doing her the reciprocal honour of putting her on the same stark footing as myself, I again sought those marvellous eyes.
"You asked me," I said, "whether I was happy. I told you.... Are you?"
You have learned what she was; to what you already know I will add one or two things I picked up later. I wish to show you what elements she had to make happiness out of. She did fairly well out of her sittings. Ordinarily she made as much as two pounds a week, and she made more still when she was engaged for an evening class. To this were to be added the small sums she made by her crochet-work during her short rests. (Evie's teacloth had been made during the rests.) When she did not crochet,she made garments for her boy. She rose daily at seven, dressed her boy, breakfasted with him, and at nine o'clock brought him out with her. They walked a quarter of a mile together to her bus, where the child was met each day by a guardian, an old governess she trusted. She kissed him, and blew him another kiss as the bus turned the corner. He always waited with the old governess for this, but sometimes other buses intervened, so that she went without her last glimpse of him. Then she sought the studio where she happened to be engaged. There she posed, crocheted, posed again, lunched, and once more posed. She usually reached home again at eight o'clock, but when she secured evening sittings it was eleven before she got back. By that time her boy was in bed. She dressed him well, fed him well, told him tales, and bought him tops and toy soldiers. She paid the governess ten shillings a week. Sundays were her heavenly days. If they were cold or wet, she spent them in playing with the tops and soldiers on the floor; if they were fine she took him out on to the commons of Clapham or Wandsworth, or to the Zoo, for which her employers gave her Sunday tickets. She had saved a few pounds, and was adding to this sum by shillings and half-crowns, against the day when she would have to send him to school and start him in the world. This was her life.
And when I asked her if she was happy, she said,in a voice little above a whisper, "Yes—now."
Then, with another deep, clear look, she added, "I think I have all the best of Life."
It did not occur to me just then to wonder what she meant by that "now." I was pondering her last words. All at once, on a sudden impulse (though I was pretty sure beforehand what her answer would be), I said:
"He left you?"
Her answer was supremely tranquil and unaffected.
"Yes—as far as he was ever there to leave. It meant nothing—a folly—merely stupid—it had no significance whatever. I've no grudge against him. He didn't really wrong me. It hardly mattered, ever—it doesn't matter—now——"
A question must have shown in my eyes even as I decided not to put it, for all at once she laughed a little.
"Oh, I'd tell you if you wished to know, but you'd be no wiser. It's a name you've never heard. But one thing I should like——" For one moment she hesitated.
"I ask you nothing."
"No; but I should like you to know one thing—oh, quite for my own sake! If ever youshouldhear a name—three names—four—you needn't believe them. I lied perfectly recklessly. It seemed to me—stupidly perhaps—that I owed him that. So Iblackened myself. You see, they tried to find out—my friends——"
"You mean——?"
"Oh, one lover was enough," she answered, with another laugh, rich, low, and without bitterness. "And it doesn't matter—now."
It was then that I knew what she meant by that reiterated "now." The thing that beat suddenly in on me explained in a flash that curious attitude of protection towards myself. That kiss blown from the top of the morning bus—the shillings she earned by sitting to morose and impatient artists—those heavenly Sundays—that desertion which also she ranked as a happiness—her self-slanders rather than betray her betrayer—all these things together had not, somehow, seemed to me to make up that "best part of Life" of which she spoke. Beyond even her beautiful devotion to her boy must lie some other deep sustaining dream. Without such a dream, her life would not have been what patently it was—full....
But now it was all in the eyes she turned on me....
And I knew that the look that told me she lovedme, had long loved me, and must now go on loving me to the end, put love between us high out of our reach for ever.
"You can't prevent it," she almost triumphed, shining it all out on me. "It's mine, whether youwant me to have it or not. And of course it makes no difference to you——"
"None," I murmured mechanically....
"Thenhaven'tI all the best of Life?" she exulted, smiling up at me.
And before that strange tension that for so long had held us had quite left us, I had muttered, with a little choke, "God bless your little chap, anyway!"
It was all I could say. The other thing she had told me could make no difference to me.
Then came the swift change. It came as we reached the top of Grosvenor Place, turned, and descended again. It came as a torrent of rapid speech, sometimes both of us speaking at once, both stopping and waiting, and then both breaking out simultaneously as before. They were short, half sentences, taken and given back with bewildering quickness.
"And now you want to know——" she said.
"Yes——?"
"—how I knew?"
"How did you?"
"I didn't—quite—I knew in myself—not otherwise."
"In yourself—how?"
"Oh, how does one know these things? One sees this—hears that——"
I clutched at her hand.
"Not so quickly. What 'this'? What 'that'?"
"Well, for one thing, Kitty Windus——"
"Does she know?"
"No——"
"You hesitate."
"She doesn't know. She helped me to knowledge. She doesn't know she did."
Again I snatched at her hand.
"That's not the same thing. She may know of—that other—but not know she's let you know."
"That's just possible. That's why I——"
"Oh, anything's possible!" I broke out. "Let's be plain. Does she know that I killed——?"
"I don't think so. Indeed I'll say no."
"But you hesitate again. (Come this way—it's quieter.)"
As if a fusillade had been suspended there came a thrilling silence. We were passing St. Peter's Church at the east end of Eaton Square. We were in the Square before she replied.
"Very well. Don't interrupt unless I ask you questions. I'll be as plain as I can. It's extraordinarily difficult...."
I waited.
"You see," she began carefully, "Kitty's so—queer. You couldn't expect that insane arrangement with her to go on indefinitely—I mean that incredible engagement of yours. She was bound to find out something. She——"
"Yes—that's it—whatdidshe find out?" broke once more from me.
"Sssh!... Of course she found out—about Evie—that it was Evie you were in love with. Naturally she did. What woman wouldn't?Isaw it, with far less reason than Kitty had. We won't waste time over that. So after she left you, she expected week by week to hear of the next thing—your becoming engaged to Evie. Week by week, I say. How many weeks was it?"
"Four years."
"Week by week, for four years. All those weeks. If it didn't come one week it would be the next—you see. She prophesied it. It became anidée fixe. You never saw her during that time?"
"I never as much as——"
"Nor heard of her?"
"No."
"You didn't hear of her breakdown?"
"No; but all this doesn't——"
"Doesn't go beyond you and Evie. I know. Don't interrupt. And Evie didn't hear of her breakdown either?"
"No—I think I can say that."
"What did Evie think of—let us say Archie Merridew's suicide?"
I hesitated. "What should she think? She thought what everybody thought—more or less."
"As something inexplicable?"
"I assume so—but of course I've never——"
"What does she think now?"
"I hope she doesn't think of it at all. As far as I've been able——"
"Yes, yes, yes.... Plainly, then, have you told her? Told her what you did?"
"Told her? No!"
"Have youthoughtof telling her?"
"Have I thought ... do you mean have I thought of killing her too?"
Louie was suddenly silent. A hansom slipped swiftly through the deserted Square, its wheels making no sound and the slap of the horse's hoofs dying gradually away in the distance. The rain had stopped, but the trees still dripped sadly, and something vague and far away had approached, resolved itself into a policeman's shining cape, and passed again before Louie spoke.
"Well," she said slowly, "after all, that's not the immediate point. That comes later. The first thing's Kitty's condition. That condition, as far as I can make it out, is this. You showed yourself clever and unscrupulous almost beyond belief in one thing, and she found you out in that; now, I fancy, she thinks there's no end to your cleverness and unscrupulousness. Positively no end. You'recapable de tout.... So she broods. Of course she ought never to have been allowed to live alone.... And she knows she has these—fancies—about you—andso when she's all right she's quite persuaded theyarefancies. And most of the time sheisall right. Then the fits come, and—she's off."
A quick shiver took me. "Do you mean——?" I faltered.
"Violently? Oh no. At the best she's just as she used to be; at the worst she's merely helpless, a child. Otherwise I should never dare to have her come and live with me."
"What, you're——?"
"Well, somebody's got to look after her."
"And so you——?"
"She's coming to me next week."
"I see," I said slowly....
Again such a silence fell on us as, after prolonged sound, has an importunate quality that even sound has not. As if in a dream, I strove to realise that Evie and Billy Izzard were away over in the Vale of Health, dozing probably, awaiting my return from the Berkeley. I tried to understand the plain fact that I was walking the wet streets in the company of a woman who, judged by ordinary standards, bore a smirched reputation, and that I had permitted that woman to make, though without words, a declaration of her love for me. As this last grew on me a little, I let my mind take that particular bypath of speculation. I almost forgot her presence by my side in my odds and ends of memories of her. Once, at a breaking-up party at the old Business College, shehad said to me: "As you don't come to me, I come to you," and at the same party she had asked me for a cup of coffee, which I had brought to her in the crowded room instead of giving it to her in some sequestered corner where we could "sit out." Then other memories came. Memory adding itself to memory until I had all the leading facts of her story—that fatal, insignificant, desperate accident—then, mockingly too late, her love for myself—her so strangely happy life, its fulness now to be turned into a superabundance by her voluntary taking up the care of a weak-minded woman—all, all her happy-unhappy story. And now for us to be thrown together like this! Extraordinary, extraordinary! I fancy we were somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sloane Square by this time—Sloane Square, with Evie and Billy waiting for me in the Vale of Health, and her boy asleep many hours ago!... I smiled, though grimly enough, as my eyes encountered my own trousers. Those expensive garments were soaked to the knees. Louie, broken by her day's arduous sitting, now hung heavily on my arm. Her sleeves lay flat to her arms, and her skirt held pounds' weight of water. And we were still walking down Lower Sloane Street, and approaching the Barracks....
It was in Lower Sloane Street—there is a little naturalist's shop thereabouts—that I stopped, once more facing her. It seemed to me that there wassomething which, if she didn't know it, she ought to know.
"Louie," I said slowly, putting a hand on her shoulder to turn her face towards mine, "I don't know whether you know what you ought to do?"
I saw that she did know. For the first time I saw a return of her old ironical smile. But "What's that?" she asked.
"What, unless you do to me, I can now equally do to you."
"And what's that?" she smiled.
"There are no accessories in this business. You're a principal too."
She laughed outright. "All right, Jim," she said. "I'll trust you not to give me away."
"But listen to me——"
That was exactly what she would not do. She cut in brusquely.
"Oh, my good man, be quiet! Anybody'd think you thought I was going to blackmail you!" Then, leaning heavily on me once more, "I suppose all you men take that view of it," she went on, with an energy that triumphed momentarily over her fatigue, "but here'smyview if you must have it—that men deserve rewards who stamp out creatures like that! Oh, you needn't look at me—I'mexperienced if anybody is, andIknow why young men hang themselves just before their weddings! And that, Jim—come along, it's no good standing here—that's whyI asked you whether you'd told Evie. You know your own business best, but I'll tell you this—that if women were on juries not a jury in the land would convict you!Oh!——" She shuddered the more strongly that she earned her daily bread in the way she did. "Ican face these things. I've learned—I've had to. Am I the same woman you once knew? I think not. And I tell you plainly, that if you'd done what you have done for me I'd kiss your feet and ask you to bless me! But of course there's Evie. I don't know why you haven't told her: I don't know her very well, you see. My own opinion is that you'll find you've got to tell her. I'm sure that sooner or later you'll find that. And that reminds me of something else. What do you suppose you ought to do about Kitty?"
I smothered a groan. "Oh, I'm past supposing," I answered dully.
"Poor man!... Well, this is how it is. Kitty's unreliable. She has these outbreaks. I hope she'll be better with me, but I can't answer for that. So—I'm only preparing you, Jim, but itmaycome to this, that before she gets it fixed in her head once for all that young Merridewdidn'thang himself she's got to be made quite certain that hedid. Even if she's got to be told so she must be made certain of that. And I shall be greatly surprised if you haven't to tell Evie exactly the opposite.Voilà!"
I scarcely heard her now. An overwhelmingweariness had come over me. It was a weariness of the mind no less than of the body. My mind too seemed to be making an endless pilgrimage through wet and benighted streets, far from its rest; and even that strange hallucination of Louie's protection had left me now. After leaving Lower Sloane Street I suppose we must have turned still farther west, for I seem to remember that we passed the Chelsea Hospital, but in this I may be wrong, unless they have since pulled down a row of old houses I distinctly remember seeing across the road. It must have been not very far from there that I went for a time, physically and mentally, all to pieces. Probably the net result of all this talk had just begun to sink into me—that, the intervening years notwithstanding—my well-nigh flawless planning notwithstanding[1]—my cares and prayers and vigils notwithstanding—all was not yet over. I have boasted in my time that I have been untroubled by what I had done, and that is also no lie; but the consequences are another matter. Suppose even that Louie were right, and that I had done nothing but a worthy act; there are still worthy acts that overwhelm the doer of them. So the prophets were hounded to their death—and I was no prophet, but, for a space of time of which I took no account, a broken man, who, in a doorway somewhere near Swan Walk (it was an old doorway, with a porter'sgrille and an antique bell-rod), gave out utterly, began to double at the knees, and would have fallen but for the two arms of a woman as spent as himself—a woman who murmured, with unthinkable selflessness and a charity and encouragement and comfort past telling: "Oh, come, come—come, come!"...
By-and-by—it could not have lasted very long, for a clock somewhere was striking one, and the public-houses had been closing as we had left Sloane Square—I was better. I was well enough to walk, still supported by her, to a bench on the Embankment, where we sat down. Her umbrella was still in my hands; how I had come to break it I didn't know; but I had broken it, and I remember thinking dully, as if it had been a great matter, that I ought to get her another ... or get that one mended.... It was only right that I should pay for it. Somebody would have to pay for it, and in common fairness it ought not to be she.... And, I thought, while I was about it, I might as well get her a cab also. She must be unspeakably tired, and I had four shillings in my pocket....
"Thanks," I said. She had taken off my ruined silk hat and unfastened my white bow and collar, and was bending over me solicitously, fanning my face ineffectually, now with my own hat, now with her hand. "Thanks. That was absurd of me. I'm not—not in the habit of giving out like this—but we'll finish—another time, if you don't mind. Where do you live?"
She lived near Clapham Junction. "But what about you?" she said, as we rose.
"Oh, I'll take a cab too. I'll walk a little way though. Up here—this seems a likely place for cabs——"
We took one of the minor streets that led to the King's Road. There I hailed a hansom that was returning eastwards. I had put her into it when a thought struck me.
"By the way," I said, "what is your name—your business name, I mean?"
She smiled, as if at a wasted care. "Oh, the same," she said.
"Does Billy Izzard know you know me?"
"No. That is, he didn't."
"Well, he does by this time probably. If Evie and he have been talking——"
("'Urry up, gov'nor!" growled the cabman.)
"He'll think it odd I didn't speak to you. Never mind. Where can I hear from you?"
"Your office——?"
"Yes—no, I mean, not there." I had suddenly remembered Miss Levey. "Give me your address."
She gave it to me, and I gave it to the cabman. "You really will take a cab?" she said, looking anxiously at me as the vehicle pivoted round.
"Yes, yes."
And she was off.
I was in the King's Road, without a penny. It was a quarter to two when I passed the Post Office near Sloane Square, and it was twenty past by the time I reached Park Lane. After Park Lane I lost count of the time. I came out of the doze in which I walked to find myself at various times in Upper Baker Street, near Lords, and, I don't know how long after that, on the point of missing the turning into Fitzjohns Avenue. The day began to break greyly. I still walked, sleeping as I went. It was only as I ascended Heath Street, hardly a quarter of a mile from home, that I came sufficiently out of my torpor to begin to wonder what account I should give of my absence to Evie.
FOOTNOTE:[1]See "In Accordance with the Evidence."
[1]See "In Accordance with the Evidence."
[1]See "In Accordance with the Evidence."
Three weeks or a month after that night on which I had reopened, so to speak, a bottle containing a grim and familiar genie, an incident happened that riled me exceedingly. This was nothing less than an unexpected meeting, on one of our Sunday visits to Hampton Court, with Miss Levey.
Under other circumstances this meeting would have been too ludicrous for annoyance. It happened in the Maze, of all places, where, in some moment of physiological high spirits, I had taken Evie, threatening to lose her and leave her there. As a matter of fact, I had lost both her and myself. Perhaps you know the Maze. Its baffling windings of eight-foot hedges have their single legitimate way out, which you may find if you can; but, for the release of burrowers at turning-out time, there is also a locked iron gate, as impossible to miss as the true exit is to find. Half-a-dozen times, believing ourselves to be at last in the proper alley of green, we had been brought up by this gate; and it was at the gate that we met Miss Levey.
At certain points, where the high mattress-like hedges are a little thin, you can almost see through them; and several times we had caught sight of ascarlet shadow, accompanied by a young man in checks. Now, at the gate, we came full tilt upon this scarlet. Her wide hat and buttons only were black, and from her bosom projected an enormous frill, very white against the red cloth, that gave her the appearance of a pouter pigeon. She had lost Lord Ernest or the President of the Board of Trade or whoever her companion was, and of course there was no avoiding her.
"Youhere!" she cried, seizing both Evie's hands and setting her head so far back and on one side that it was half lost behind the frill. "Vell!" (I write it so, though her accent was in reality less marked.) "Thisisdelightful!—You see, Mr Jeffries——!"
I was mortified, but couldn't very well show it. I laughed. "Oh! What do I see?"
"Dear Evie and I do meet after all!" she half jested.
"Oh!" I laughed again. "Well, if that's all, you could have met long ago. I assumed that you didn't come up to see us because you didn't want to."
It was, of course, lame in the extreme, but Miss Levey saw fit to affect to believe it. Again she put her head back like an inquisitive bird, dandling Evie's hands up and down.
"Oh,Ithought I wasn't wanted! So of course I stayed away.... Vell, Evie, Iamglad!"
So Evie said she was glad, and I said that I wasglad too, with something about the ridiculousness of such old acquaintances standing on ceremony, and Miss Levey, I knew, was the only glad one of the three.
"Isn't it annoying, the way we always find ourselves at this gate!" she said, when at last she had dropped Evie's hands. "Aschael and I have been here at least ten times! You ought to know the way out, Mr Jeffries, a clever man like you!"
"I'm afraid I don't, but there's the man up the perch there—he'll always point out the way."
"Oh, but one doesn't like to be beaten!" she said, with a covert look at me. "Dear me, I'm quite hot! I think Aschael must have given me the slip. Perhaps you wouldn't mind finding him for me, Mr Jeffries?"
My polite "With pleasure" didn't in the least represent my feelings, but as I thought I should recognise the pawnbroker's assistant who had brought our Arab horse-tamers, I bade them stay where they were, and left them.
After I had found the ringleted Aschael it took us half-an-hour to escape from the pair of them, and even then it was done only at the cost of the invitation I had so obstinately withheld. Miss Levey was to come up with me from the F.B.C. on the following Wednesday evening, and Aschael was to fetch her away again at ten o'clock. It seemed quite a nicely balanced point whether she would kiss Evie or notwhen she left, but she did not, and for some minutes after we had lost sight of them I saw the man up the perch pointing out turnings and heard his calling to them.
"Deuce take her!" I muttered, twenty minutes later, when Evie and I had also been shown the way out. We had passed the glowing parterre, and were just turning into the cool Fountain Court.
"It couldn't be helped, dear," said Evie. "It was all there was to do. We needn't get into the habit of asking her if you don't want her."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," I answered absently. I was once more wondering whether Pepper intended to take Miss Levey over presently from the F.B.C. Already I was pretty well resolved that he should not.
And I was quite resolved on this point when Evie next spoke. We had stopped by one of the arches, and were looking over the grass plot and fountain in the middle. The Court was deliciously cool, and I should have liked Billy Izzard to make a sketch of Evie as she leaned against the pillar, dressed in soft pink muslin, her hand touching her cheek, and only her dark eyes darker than that Black Knight sweet-pea of her hair. Those eyes were full of grave thought.
"Jeff," she said diffidently by-and-by.
"What, dear?"
"You know where you left us just now——"
"Left you and Miss Levey?"
"Yes.... She told me something I think I ought to tell you."
"Oh? She didn't lose much time," I could not forbear remarking.
"It was something I know you'd far rather I told you—it was something about poor Kitty," Evie went awkwardly on.
"Oh?"...
You may guess from this "Oh?" that I had told Evie no more than I had thought fit about my meeting with Louie. Indeed, of that extraordinary walk that had begun at Swan & Edgar's corner and ended in the King's Road, Chelsea, I had told her nothing at all. When I had reached home again, at four o'clock in the morning, Evie had been in bed, Billy asleep by the ashes of the dining-room fire. He had yawned hugely and stiffly: "A-a-a-h!... I like your idea of a couple of hours in the evening, my friend! I say, you look rather done up; what have you been doing with yourself?... Evie? She went to bed at two; she would sit up till then. What time is it? Nice goings-on at the Berkeley!"
And Billy and I had lighted the fire and breakfasted, moving about quietly so as not to wake Evie. Evie did not know the exact hour of my return, and had made no remark about the condition of my hat and trousers.
It seems an odd thing to say, but I simply hadnot dared to tell her. When I say that she would never, never have understood I am not belittling her either; she simply would not have understood. It would have been different had I been able to tell her all, but better nothing than half. Nay, what she already knew was in its way almost too much, for of course Billy, taking studio mysteries for granted, had told her, rather as a joke against myself, of my coming upon Louie Causton. Seeing Evie's almost painful blush, he had been a little sorry he had spoken. For while Evie liked Billy, she could never get used to the idea of his models. It was a little as if some outwardly very charming person should be in reality a known dynamiter. And even when she had grasped the model (so to speak) in theory, it had only to be made a personal matter for the blood to rise into her cheeks. Suppose I had come upon Aunt Angela thus!... So, unable to tell her all, of the later events I had told her nothing.
But now she said again, looking over the quiet Fountain Court, "It's about poor Kitty. Louie didn't tell you, I suppose?" (I had admitted having had a few words with Louie.)
"In Billy's studio, do you mean?"
"Yes."
"No," I answered, with what strictness of veracity you will observe.
I saw, by the way she dropped her great eyes and pushed a bit of gravel about with her toe, whathad come over her again. Just as, on that Bank Holiday evening in the tea-garden in the Vale of Health, she had had Kitty, if not on her conscience, at any rate on her magnanimity, so she had her now. By reason of that slight emptiness and waiting state of her life (in spite of all that I could do), her thoughts still flew back. Between my departures in the mornings and returns again o' nights, reminiscences, the freer in their play that her work was merely mechanical, still occupied her. These reminiscences welled up again in her now, and, added to them, filling her breast completely, was that half-compunctious desire of the victress for the squaring of accounts that is to be found in the exercise of compassion.
And as I saw her perturbation, something welled up in me too. She did not know I was looking at her, but I was, and already I had begun to see the only thing that would be more than temporarily efficacious against these strayings. There was only one thing. A picture came into my mind of a woman who blew a kiss from the top of a bus, played on the floor on Sundays with her boy, and found her life full and happy....
"Oh, my darling," I thought as I looked at her, "is it so very, very long—so very long and empty?... Very well.... It will modify a good many plans, but better that.... Your life too shall be full—and your arms——"
When next she looked up there was, about her eyes, a tiny bright edging of tears that did not fall.
"Jeff," she said, unusually quickly, "Kitty's ill. She has attacks of some kind. I couldn't quite make it out. I suppose Miriam Levey'll tell us all about it on Wednesday. I know you don't like Miriam, but she's awfully troubled about Kitty, and thinks she ought to be looked after. Somebody told her—told Miriam—that poor Kitty'd been found one night walking round and round Lincolns Inn Fields, and when the policeman asked her, she couldn't remember at first where she lived. Oh, Jeff, it does seem so sad!"
Privately I found that horrible. It had been in Lincolns Inn Fields that Kitty and I had walked together, and to think of her still haunting the place, alone, I found very horrible. But if that horror was mine, it was not going to be Evie's if I could help it. I nodded gravely, and took her arm.
"Well," I said (although I was again cudgelling my brains to see how Miss Levey's visit could be frustrated), "no doubt you will hear all about it next Wednesday. I wouldn't worry till then.... What about tea?"
We left the Palace, and sought the teashop near the Bridge. Miss Levey and Aschael passed the door of the shop as we sat, and Miss Levey waved her hand and gave us an artificially bright smile. But her goose was cooked with Jeffries & Pepper.I had far too much respect for her inquisitiveness and persistence to admit her to our new enterprise. Between her and myself Pepper would not hesitate for long, and I intended, if necessary, to put the matter in precisely that form....
After tea, Evie and I took another turn in the Palace. It was a golden evening, with a wonderful bloom on the old walls, windows flashing yellow, and the forests of twisted chimney-stacks brightly gilded. Her arm was in mine, and her hand made little delicious pressures from time to time, and ever and again her cheek seemed to be on the point of falling against my shoulder. Louie Causton's touch had not thrilled me thus. Some high forbiddance would ever have said Louie Causton and myself Nay, but here was flesh of my flesh, and the promise of sweet and rosy flesh between us—for we had spoken of it, and the west that bathed all in golden light was not more tranquil than that other heaven in our hearts....
I remember very well our journey back from Waterloo in the old horse-bus that night. I remember it because of that whispered new pact between Evie and myself. She, tired out no less by that gentle vista than by the fatigues of the day, slept for the greater part of the way with her head on my shoulder and her hat in my lap; and I had to wake her to change buses. In the new bus she settled down again; and I was left free to consider whetherthe promise I had passed would or would not necessitate a hastening of matters with Pepper. If it should turn out so, so much the worse. In any case it had to be done. For fear of the seven devils, Evie's mind was no longer going to be left as it now was, swept and garnished.
As it happened, I was spared the trouble, though not the subsequent responsibility, of putting Miss Levey off for the following Wednesday evening. On the morning of that very day, as I took Judy a number of drafts, he said, in Miss Levey's hearing, "Are you doing anything to-night?"
"To-night? I'm afraid I am," I replied, though solely for Miss Levey's benefit. "To-morrow I'm not."
"To-morrow won't do. You're a dashed difficult man to get, Jeffries!"
"You should have given me a little notice," I said, though foreseeing already that Pepper would eat Miss Levey's supper that night.
"Well, we'll talk about it presently; if you can possibly put your engagement off, do.... Now, Miss Levey——"
He began to give instructions to Miss Levey.
Later in the morning Miss Levey sought me.
"Oh, Mr Jeffries," she began, veryempressée, "I think we won't come to-night. Mr Pepper——"
"It is rather awkward," I admitted. "I'm awfully sorry——"
"Please don't apologise. It really doesn't matter. I can come up any evening, you know."
"Well, in that case——"
"We'll fix another evening. I know you and Mr Pepper have private affairs."
"Yes," I thought, not very graciously, "and to be in at 'em's the only thing you want more than to pry into my domestic ones." But aloud I said, "It's awfully good of you—do tell Mr Aschael how sorry I am."
So it was Judy Pepper, and not Miriam Levey and Aschael, who dined at Verandah Cottage that night.
Were it for no other reason than to let you know a little of these Schmerveloff neighbours of mine I should have to tell you of Judy's visit that evening. This sounds a little portentous, as if my tale were about to take a sensational turn, with bombs and secret agents in it. Be calm, it is not; I only mention these Schmerveloffs as standing, in a way, for certain forces of which Pepper and I intended to make use. A very few words will explain what I mean.
We are not social theorists, Pepper and I; we have to handle social problems practically, as they come; and so in the wider humanitarian sense we may be all wrong. But even then this Schmerveloff school of thought had its importance for us. It was very useful to us, for instance, when the Aliens' Actwas drafting; and with the outbreak of Syndicalism, with all the bearings that has had on Trades Disputes, it became very important indeed. Perhaps, after all, the only hint I need give you as to the way in which we handled it is this: that, the rate of progress of this International Socialism being necessarily that of the slowest-moving and most backward partner in the alliance—Russia—we have used that fact either as a drag on Syndicalism or as an apparent encouragement of it, as the needs of the moment dictated. And when I say "apparent encouragement," I mean that we have winked at all this translation from the Russian pessimists that has harnessed art to purposes of social propaganda. That, since racial development is of far greater lasting weight than economic theory, has seemed to us the readiest way of letting folk see that Russia's problems are not necessarily ours; and if we can only keep Syndicalism in check, they may Russianise our literature completely for all Pepper and I care.
So we talked of Russia that night. Evie, as soon as she had seen Pepper instead of Miss Levey, had worked herself into a flurry in changing preparations at the last moment, and had had to run out for candles for our guest's candlesticks. But when dinner was at last served, half-an-hour late, nowhere could have been found a prettier waitress than we had—Evie herself. Indeed, she seemed to prefer waiting to dining. As long as she was doing things she feltherself on safe ground; it was the folding hands afterwards to talk to our terribly engaging visitor that she dreaded. She strove to attain by little formalisms what he achieved by the mere ease of nature, and, as she stuck tenaciously to it, I admired what was neither more nor less than a kind of courage in her. We finished dinner, and ascended to the drawing-room, I carrying those cumbersome candlesticks.
Pepper worked really hard that night to put Evie at her ease, but alas! through no fault of anybody's, but by the sheer decreeing of the stars, his labours were not a success. The first accident he had was when he asked her how she found her neighbours, compelling her to say that she didn't find them at all—didn't know them. And when he said, "Ah, Russians are like that," and related an anecdote, she perturbed me a little by asking him whether he had been in Russia—for I did not know that the extraordinary man had, and fancied the question not very kindly put. But Pepper surprised me by saying "Oh yes," and went on to tell more stories....
With these stories he was safe for a time, but presently he again had bad luck. He was speaking, as if he had come for no other purpose than to tell us travellers' tales, of the difficulty of the Russian language, which I gathered to be great; and suddenly he said, "But it's an exceedingly valuable asset from a commercial point of view. Should you have a boyto put into business, Mrs Jeffries, let him learn Russian."
It was, of course, hyper-sensitive of Evie, but not unnatural in the circumstances. She coloured deeply; she rose; she said good-night; and even then Pepper was not at the end of his troubles, for, advancing punctiliously to open the bedroom door for her, that insecure old door, that always opened at a touch, flew back, displaying the unmade bed on which Evie had lain that afternoon, and the general disorder of the interior. Pepper was already in the midst of a deep bow, but he must have seen.... After that I got him whisky; we settled down to our talk, and, ordinary speech being plainly audible from the bedroom, he dropped his voice to match my own tones—and was, I dare say, heartily glad when the evening was over.
This mention of our cramped quarters reminds me that I may as well get those inconveniences of which I told you over at once. To save time, I will tell you both what they were then, and what they afterwards became.
I had begun well-nigh to hate children. The schools, you see, had not yet reopened, and urchins played under our windows till half-past nine or ten o'clock at night. I frequently had work in the evenings that demanded close concentration, and it mostly happened that, when I sat down to it, as if by appointment the noise began. I do not know whichhowl or thump or bump was the most hideous. Iron hoops, driven with a hooked iron rod, were bad, but the shouts and whoops and calls, all in a blood-curdling Cockney accent, were worse; for while by great resolution you can nerve yourself to endure an iron hoop, you never know which yell or shout a child is going to emit next. These had all the horror of unexpectedness. I used to make mental bets on it, and I was always wrong.... And then sometimes there would come an endless racket that resembled nothing so much as a fire-engine in full career, which, on descending, I should discover to come from a diminutive cart at the end of a string, pulled by a toddler of four.
Sometimes these noises drove me half frantic. I carried my papers from the dining-room to the drawing-room—thence to the bedroom—I even tried the kitchen; and this, mark you, was important work, work that has since, I may say without boasting, become of national value. I spoke to policemen—I even used the power of beauty, and got Evie to speak to policemen—but only to be told that they were as helpless as I: "Children is eddicated now, and not as afraid of bobbies as they used to be." And on a fatal evening I was so unthinking as to distribute a number of pennies in order to buy an hour's peace for a calculation that seriously involved the interests of three shipping lines. That settled it. Thenceforward I was never without children. One Sundayafternoon I forgot myself and boxed the ears of the biggest of them. That brought round a parent—not a father, but a mother.... Ugh!——
And the house itself was far too small. Billy Izzard's sketches on our walls shook to my tread, and passing vans made the very foundations tremble. In order to get even our small belongings into the place Evie had to put boxes inside boxes, and boxes inside these again, so that in the finding of a garment she had not worn for some time the whole tiny bedroom floor was choked with boxes. Save for the little recess in the kitchen, the triangular cupboard under the stairs was the only storage accommodation we had. With the greatest care, Evie could not always avoid hanging an old skirt over my best hopsack (West's, Bond Street), or mislaying some article of which I had need in the very moment of bolting for my bus. And worst of all was that screen on the verandah that gave us nothing to look at but a short slope of parched green. Verandah Cottage! By Jove, yes!...
One other thing I will mention, though this did not come till the winter. The neighbouring house, which hitherto had been a tomb, became alive. I never knew the reason for this sudden awakening, nor whether Schmerveloff had suddenly found himself reduced to taking in lodgers, or whether he was merely holding out a helping hand to co-revolutionaries in the hour of their need; but I do know thatpresently he began to have a succession of extraordinary visitors. Hairy, uncouth-looking men, with soft hats, came for a week or a month, and brought their women, fat, spare, astrakhan-capped or bare-headed. They wore smocks and embroideredportières, and worked at peasant industries. One of them had a child, the sweetest of little girls—but oh, her sweetness vanished from me when she began to play at all hours in the garden, shouting, crowing, and impossible to turn away! I went so far as to wait on Schmerveloff himself about this dreadful child, and was told that, inconvenient as these things might be to me, the question was not a private one at all. It was a Social Question. Society oppressed them, they oppressed me; it was Society that was wrong.... I told our fellows this afterwards, when the Aliens' Act was drafting; Robson was immensely amused. "What did you say?" he asked.... Of course there was nothing to say....
And then, about Christmas, the Social Question became acute indeed. For the development of the peasant industries the most Asiatic barber-robber of the lot set up a furnace, a lathe and an anvil....
No wooden walls (save Nelson's) could have kept that racket out....
Had the sum of the world's beautiful things been added to, I could have grinned and borne it, but it was beaten copper-work the Asiatic made.
And I could do nothing.
I pass on.
Weeks before this invasion of beards and embroidered casement-cloth, I earnestly hoped that my firstborn, when I should have one, would never remember that little house with the glass-panelled door and the verandah. But the prospect of our "domestic event," as Miss Levey called it, hardly weighed on me yet. I gave little heed to Louie Causton's prophecy, that I might sooner or later find myself driven to take the desperate course of telling Evie what, so far, only Louie and myself knew; and I did not see, as Louie seemed to see, where the peril lay. If it was only a question of keeping Evie busy and amused for a little while longer, I thought I should be able to manage that. Only later did I see myself as a man who pours water constantly into a vessel and tells himself that because the level remains the same there is no leak. I still intended to stand between Evie and Life. In effect, if necessary, I would live much of her life for her. And now let me, before I leave this part of my tale, tell you briefly what that life was at its loveliest.