"'Why—don't—you marry the girl?D'you want—the poor thing—to die?You can see—she's gone—upon—youBy the twin—kle in—her eye!Do—the trick—for se—ven-and-six,Take—the tip—of a pal—I've—been—watching your game—Why don't you marry the gal?'"
"'Why—don't—you marry the girl?D'you want—the poor thing—to die?You can see—she's gone—upon—youBy the twin—kle in—her eye!Do—the trick—for se—ven-and-six,Take—the tip—of a pal—I've—been—watching your game—Why don't you marry the gal?'"
"'Why—don't—you marry the girl?
D'you want—the poor thing—to die?
You can see—she's gone—upon—you
By the twin—kle in—her eye!
Do—the trick—for se—ven-and-six,
Take—the tip—of a pal—
I've—been—watching your game—
Why don't you marry the gal?'"
Then I felt that last desperate hope of mine slipping away—Aschael was beginning to forget the words, and to make out with gestures and grimaces, leaving gaps through which there started up thin and tinkling and facetious horrors.... I saw that Kato had realised; I had once come upon him and Archie drinking whisky and soda together; his eyes met mine curiously, and I fancied his lips shaped the name:
"Merridew?"
This next I have from Billy Izzard. He tells me that all at once I sprang to my feet and cried, in a huge and boisterous voice that drowned everything else, "Never mind, Aschael—chorus—all together!—"
"'Why—don't—you marry the girl?D'you want—the poor thing to die?You can see—she's gone—upon youBy the twin-kle in—her eye!La—la la—sing up!Take the tip—go on, Aschael!—I've been—watching your game—Why don't you marry the gal?'"
"'Why—don't—you marry the girl?D'you want—the poor thing to die?You can see—she's gone—upon youBy the twin-kle in—her eye!La—la la—sing up!Take the tip—go on, Aschael!—I've been—watching your game—Why don't you marry the gal?'"
"'Why—don't—you marry the girl?
D'you want—the poor thing to die?
You can see—she's gone—upon you
By the twin-kle in—her eye!
La—la la—sing up!
Take the tip—go on, Aschael!—
I've been—watching your game—
Why don't you marry the gal?'"
Clapping my hands, Billy says, I fell back into a chair.
But I was out of it again in an instant. I was not to escape so easily as all that. Kato had his finger on the lever; I cannot say how, nor whether, he guessed what was to come, nor whether he tried to avert it; if he did, he was too late. From that damnable box there came a long catarrhal wheeze—high-pitched and tenor the words came:
"Now, Evie—Evie's turn—make her sing, mother—bosh—of course she's going to sing!——"
"Now, Evie—Evie's turn—make her sing, mother—bosh—of course she's going to sing!——"
I was neither at Aunt Angela's party nor yet in a boat on a summer's evening up the River. How can I tell you where I was? In what drawing-room? Sitting on what chair? Surrounded by what company?... I swear to you that I have seen a place I have never seen, been in a place I never in my life was in. I can describe to you a family gathering with Mrs Merridew there, and her son there, and Evie there, and myself never, never there. I have seen, whether they ever existed or not, French windows opening on a lawn, and a slackened tennis-net beyond, and an evening flush in the sky, and the air dark with homing rooks.... Nothing will persuade methat these eyes are in fact ignorant of that quiet home of Archie Merridew's—and yet Guildford is a place in which I have never been.
Then a sound like the hissing of a thousand cisterns filled my ears. Through it I heard Kitty Windus's scream of terror, but it sounded an infinite distance away. From Evie I had heard nothing. For one moment I saw everything reel and aslant—Kato, the Schmerveloffians on the sofa, the cistern-post with its hats and coats and one hook empty, steeving up towards a tilted ceiling....
Then came the blow on the back of my head, and the sounds of the cistern ceased. I had fallen across Aunt Angela's tiled hearth, and lay in a cloud of steam from the kettle I had overturned in my fall.
It is against the advice of my doctors that I have written these last pages—these last chapters in fact—at all. But I wrote them only a very little at a time, after I came back from Hastie's place in Scotland. And I went to Scotland only after I came back from Egypt. But I am back at the Consolidation now, having missed nearly a year, and I really don't think that this private writing tires me too much.
I admit that it seems odd that I should wish to do it at all, and doubly odd that I should have kept, not one private record, but two.[2]I thought I had finished when the first one came to an end. Then I found I hadn't. Let me say quite plainly, however, that the second one is no retractation of the first. There is not a single statement in that first writing from which I recede. I stand by every word of it. I wrote there, for example, that I did not fear to be left alone in my library at night; and that is true. I wrote that there glided no shadowy shape by my side when I stepped into my brougham or passed between the saluting commissionaires in Pall Mall; and that also is true. It is true that I play with my clean-born children, both of them, and still do not pardon eventhe meditation of that old crime that would have made the life of her I love an abhorrence worse than death. These things are as true now as when I first wrote them, and I shall die without regret for them.
But the impulse that drives a man to write about himself at all still remains a curious thing. I don't find it an inexplicable one—but as I shall return to this by-and-by, I will leave it for the present. Let me say this, however, now; that whatever cares may or may not weigh on me, I neither consider myself on my defence nor yet join hands with Schmerveloff and his crew in their sweeping and futile denunciations of the whole Scheme of Things as they are. If I cannot stand alone I can at least fall alone, and I haven't fallen yet.
Nevertheless, this writing will have to be less frequently indulged (if that is the word); there is little sense in paying doctors if you don't take their advice. There have been few physically stronger men than I; especially my strength of finger and forearm and wrist have been remarkable; and I can still bend a half-crown and make a dog's leg out of a thick poker. But I don't pretend that I am the man I was. Separately, my brain and body work as well as ever they did, but they do not always jump together. I don't know whether this is due to the hole Aunt Angela's blackleaded fender made in my skull. It was a bad hole, and I cracked three of Aunt Angela's brown tiles. Perhaps that is the reason why my doctoradvised me to get to bed early, and cautioned me about the use of stimulating drinks and heating foods.... Let me see, let me see....
Ah, yes, I was going to speak of that evening. Mercifully, Evie was spared the worst of that shock. So gently and easily that for quite a time nobody discovered it, she had slid off into a faint at the very beginning of that song of Aschael's, and so had not seen my own headlong fall. This saved us from a disaster, for otherwise our little girl would probably not have been born in the following July, not to be welcomed by her father until October came. Indeed, I had to wait till October before I learned a good many things; but such was my state of lassitude that I was able to do so without impatience, and even without much interest, content to be free from pain and to be looked after by those people of Hastie's party. After a time they began to allow me to do little things—superintend the packing of the luncheon-baskets and, as I grew better, to join the guns in the clearing when the whistle went; and Evie, away at Broadstairs with Aunt Angela (who had given up her room in the little "circus"), sometimes seemed part of a charming but not very moving dream to me. You see from this how bad I was.... Then I returned, and the winter in Egypt and Hastie's house in Scotland began in their turn to fade.
Apart from my work at the Consolidation, I began to be full of a curiously single preoccupation. I hadnot brooded on this while I had been away: as I have said, I had not brooded on anything; it merely came back to me as the most natural thing to do, a matter of course. It was the thing that Louie Causton, against what she conceived to be her own interests, had advised that night when I had dined with her at the Models' Club. There was something I must now tell Evie.
I think I let it go, vaguely, as "something." It was not that I did not know perfectly well what it was; but those lazy days free from pain among the heather had made that also somehow unreal; I suppose I had worn smooth the thought of it; and it seemed nothing to make a fuss about. It did not even require resolution. It was merely something that ought to have been done long ago. This was my attitude of mind then. I don't say that it is now.
That long separation had altered our relation in more ways than one. With such joy did I rejoin Evie that for both of us it was as if we were newly, and yet both more strongly and more peacefully, married again. My lovely little Phyllis had put even poor Jackie's nose out of joint. On the other hand, a year is a year, and if my own time had been one of vacancy and healing, Evie's had not. I had only to listen to her and Aunt Angela to become aware of this. They had made quite a circle of acquaintances in Broadstairs; several of these had since been kept up in London; and there were things I was at leasttemporarily out of. I mention this not because I wanted to be in at them; indeed it all seemed to me a little casual; but I could hardly have expected Evie to sit moping in a boarding-house parlour all that time, and certainly she looked a picture of blooming health. I say "looked," because it was only later that I learned what the first question of the doctor who had attended her had been: "Has she ever had a severe shock?"
I am unable to explain how it was that at first I was quite incurious to know what people had thought of that extraordinary collapse of mine, and why the effect of that song on Kitty Windus, for example, should have been less marked than its effect on myself. For Kitty, though she had screamed, and babbled incoherent things that probably I have never been told about, had sustained no lasting injury. An icy breath had passed over everybody there, and nobody, I thought, would be so morbid as to push their inquiries into the varying degrees of iciness. I may say at once that I thought quite rightly. Nobody has, not even (so far as I am aware) Miriam Levey.
It was from Aunt Angela, of course, that I learned what that first question of the Broadstairs doctor had been; and it brought me face to face with that so easily assumed resolution of mine rather sharply. By mere luck Evie had escaped that shock of the party, but the original one, the seven or eight years'old one, remained. That I might know exactly to what extent this might affect my determination, I had the Broadstairs doctor to meet my own more distinguished one. I told this one of the tragedy of Evie's former engagement, and related the affair of the gramophone. He looked grave.
"You must see that she doesn't get another shock," he said.
Evie herself was not made aware that the visit had more than an ordinary significance.
But Louie's advice now seemed rather beside the mark.
I saw Louie daily now; and whether it was that she had been able to entrench herself behind her work in my absence, or had found somemodus vivendimidway between that ecstasy of the night when she had supported me in a Chelsea doorway and the anguished outbreak of that other evening in the Models' Club, or however it was, my fears for the impossibility of the situation now appeared to have been groundless. Whitlock, indeed, saw more of her than I. He spoke exceedingly favourably of her. She used quickness and common-sense in her work, he said, and, when he had half-a-dozen things to do at once, did not take down a remark interpolated to somebody else as part of the letter he was dictating. I was not surprised to learn that she "flashed" intelligently at unexplained meanings. She converted Whitlock's rapid mumbled instructions into(commercial) English with ease, and had already attracted Pepper's notice.
I don't know whether it has struck you that Evie, who had given it as a sufficient reason for renewing her intimacy with Miriam Levey and Kitty Windus that they had been at the old Business College in Holborn together, had never once urged the same thing on behalf of Louie Causton. It was not that I wanted her to do so; as a matter of fact I very much preferred them apart. And I thought I saw the reason for Evie's silence. Louie trailed an unhappy story behind her. Louie had been a model. Aunt Angela had not asked her to her party. If there was any coolness between Miriam Levey and Louie, which now might well be, Evie would naturally be disposed to take the part of the former. I don't mean to say that she looked down on Louie. It was only later that I learned that she wasted a thought on Louie. I only mean that their paths lay in different directions, and that Evie had hitherto appeared content that they should do so.
It was in a roundabout way that I discovered that Louie had a place in Evie's thoughts. Acting under my doctor's orders, I had begun to come home early in the afternoon, seldom working after tea; and I entered the drawing-room one afternoon to find a couple of her Broadstairs acquaintances, a Mr and Mrs Smithson, with her. Smithson was, I think, a cycle agent; she was an openwork-stockinged,flirtatious little woman, for ever making eyes, and apparently under the impression that all conversation would languish unless she took the greater part of it upon herself. I imagine it had been she who had sent Evie one or two vulgar seaside post cards that, had they been addressed to me, would have gone straight into the fire. It appeared that they knew Peddie slightly, my old Jun. Ex. Con. of the F.B.C., and now Whitlock's abstract clerk; and I was not disposed to congratulate Peddie on the acquaintance.
They were just leaving as I arrived, so that we only exchanged a few words; indeed, the ringing of the telephone I had had fixed up in my study gave me an excuse to cut our leave-taking short. I went to the instrument; it was Louie Causton with a message from Whitlock; and I gave my instructions and returned to Evie.
Now Jackie, who was just beginning to babble and notice things, was greatly interested in the telephone, and I entered the drawing-room just in time to hear him make some remark about "plitty typies." As I took no notice, Jackie repeated the unchildlike expression. Evie was pouring me out more tea.
"Plitty typies, farzer," Jackie clamoured, imperious for notice.
I turned to Evie.
"Where did he pick that up?" I asked.
Evie said: "Oh, it was some silly joke of Florrie's."
"Florrie is Mrs Smithson?"
"Yes."
I was not pleased. I suppose that, like Charles Lamb, I am squeamish about my women and children, and I remembered Mrs Smithson's post cards. One of them had borne the legend, "Detained at office—very pressing business," and if you have seen these things you will not want it described. But I was loth to raise again the question I had formerly raised about Miss Levey and Aschael, and so I merely asked whether it was not possible for her to give Mrs Smithson tea without having Jackie there. She said, "Very well," though in a tone a little subdued. She knew what I meant.
It was ten minutes later that, returning of her own accord to the subject, she said a little poutingly: "I don't see much to make a fuss about. He doesn't know what it means."
"That doesn't improve matters very much," I said. "It seems to me to make them worse."
"Oh, very well," she answered.
But she returned to the subject yet again. She spoke defensively.
"I had to have him at Broadstairs with me. You couldn't have him in Scotland with you."
"Jackie, you mean?"
"Yes."
She gave a slightly marked shade of meaning to the words "in Scotland." To tell the truth, it wasa little on my mind that I had had the more desirable summer of the two of us. I am no snob, but I do prefer some people to others, and if people do run in strata, well, nobody can tell me much I don't know about the clerk and cycle-agent class, and they don't charm me. I spoke with a little compunction.
"I wish it could have been helped, darling. Anyway, we sha'n't be separated again."
(I may say that I don't think Evie had thought it very remarkable that I should have had that accident at Aunt Angela's party. She had fainted herself, and knew little of the later events; and we have lived too long together for her not to be aware that, rugged as I may appear to the rest of the world, I am a sensitive man.)
After a moment's silence: "Mrs Smithson has asked me down to Broadstairs for a week," she said. "She—of course she hadn't met you."
"You mean she's asked you without me?"
"She hadn't met you," Evie excused Mrs Smithson.
"And—shall you go?"
She answered quite readily: "Of course not—not without you."
I got up and kissed her. I had expected no less of her.
But I knew that she would have liked to go to Broadstairs, and was only staying away out of her duty to me, it was not for me to deny her her sex'sequivalent of a grumble—a sigh. Then we began to talk.
We talked quite equably: I never in my life wrangled with Evie. I said, quite gently, that I did not wish the boy to acquire precocious chatter about pressing business and pretty typists, and Evie made no opposition; indeed, she laughed when I suggested how unlikely it was that any pretty typist would have pressing business with myself. By-and-by she asked me who had rung me up, and I told her. "Oh, yes, I forgot; she's with you now," she said; "Mr Whitlock engaged her, didn't he?"
"Yes," I answered. Then, after a little further talk, we kissed again, and she went out to give Phyllis her bath.
Oddly enough, very soon after speaking thus of Louie after that long silence, she saw Louie herself. One morning she announced that she was going shopping that day, and would call for me at Pall Mall and bring me home to tea. She finished her shopping earlier than she had thought she would, and, not wishing to disturb me before the appointed time, had come upon Louie in the counting-house. She told me this when we got home. She had asked Louie to show her round, and was full of the wonders of the place—the lifts, the telephone exchange, the series of waiting-rooms, the advice-board from Lloyd's, the acre-wide office full of busy clerks. "What a change from Holborn!" she said she had said to Louie, andthen Louie had brought her to my own private room.
The next day Louie made a mistake in a rather important draft. It was not like her, and Whitlock blamed himself for having left too much to her intuition. The error necessitated a consultation between Louie, Whitlock and myself. It was set right, and Louie was going out again when I glanced at Whitlock. He looked inquiringly, nodded, and left us. There was something I wanted to say to Louie; perhaps it was rather something that it would not be very graceful not to say; perhaps it was both.
I think this was the first time I spoke to her at the Consolidation except on business.
"Well, that will be all right," I said, dismissing the error in the draft.... "By the way, you saw my wife yesterday, didn't you?"
She gave a little nod.
"And showed her round? It was very good of you. She enjoyed it very much. She told me all about it."
Louie said something about it being no trouble, and then appeared to be going. But I stopped her. Then, when I had stopped her, I didn't quite know what to say.
"Oh—er——" I said awkwardly, looking at her and then looking away again. "Without opening matters up—you know what I mean—going into things—I want to say just one thing. It's about—a piece of advice you once gave me."
She had half opened the inner door, and stood, as it were, on the threshold of the box-like space between the inner one and the outer one of baize. The look she gave me was almost hostile, and the tourmalines were shut. I don't think, by the way, that she ever heard of that incident at Aunt Angela's party. I neither asked her whether she had, nor ever told her about it.
"If you feel that you must——" she said, not very invitingly.
"It's merely this," I said rather hurriedly, "that what you suggested is impossible now."
"Yes," she said; "I suppose it is."
"Her doctor's forbidden it—I mean, he says she mustn't have another shock."
Instantly I saw, by the way in which she said, "Oh!" that she had had something else in her mind. "Oh!... I see," she said, and I pondered.
"Ah!" I said at last. "You mean you've just seen—just this moment?"
She made no reply.
"You've just seen, just this moment. Then why did you say yes, you supposed so?"
Her answer was impatient. "Oh,mustyou?"
"Must I what?"
"Must you do this?"
"Ask you why you assented when I said something was impossible now?"
"Ask me anything at all!" she almost snapped.
I gave her a long look. "Shut the door," I said.... "Now tell me why you agreed with me when I said that it was impossible to take your advice now."
The tourmalines flickered almost scornfully. "Don't you know?"
"I do not."
"What! You can't guess?"
"Will you tell me?"
For a moment she looked as if she was going to sit down for something that would require time; but she changed her mind, and stood, a crumple of skirt grasped in either hand.
"Ask me again and I will," she said, in a slightly raised voice.
"I do ask you."
Then, with a harsh little laugh, Louie made her second mistake of that day.
"Because she's jealous," she said. "Evidently that wasn'tyourreason; I don't know what yours was; but that's mine."
"Oh!" I said. In the face of a statement so preposterous I really could think of nothing else to say.
"What else did she come here yesterday for?" Louie demanded.
I smiled. That was too absurd. "Well—shall we say to keep an appointment with her husband?" I suggested.
"Oh, if you like!... Then why does she want to come and see me at my house?" she demanded.
It was news to me that Evie did want to go and see Louie at her house, but I was careful not to let Louie see that.
"Oh!" I said, still smiling. "And you think these grounds enough for your statement?"
"My good——" she broke out. "I'm not asking you to accept them. I know better than to try to persuadeyou! You asked me, and I've told you; that's all."
"And if I say once for all that it is not so, and that nothing could make it so?"
"Make it so!" she broke out. "Really, Jeff, you talk like—a man! 'Make it so!'... If you can't see your little definite reason for everything, you deny the fact! If I could say that Kitty Windus and Miriam Levey had been chattering—I'm not aware that they have, but if Icouldsay that—I suppose you'd call that a reason, and listen to it; but anything else—pshaw! I don't care a button for your reason! Your reason may have made this business, but it won't persuade a woman against something she knows—myselforEvie. It just is so, and there's an end of it. And of course you see the beautiful new fix it puts you in." She gave a little stamp that made her garments quiver.
"Louie, I can't——"
"Oh, a perfect fix! Really, I'm curious to knowwhat you're going to do about it! Try to persuade her that there's nothing between you and me! Try it, try it! Why, how shouldn't she be jealous when I am? Do you think she doesn't see that? Oh, I don't know why I waste words with you!... But you see your fix. It was Kitty before, and you tried half telling then; now it's me; but it isn't either of us really; oh, if it only could be!... It's the secret, Jim. You've got to tell her—and you can't. I don't know what this is about a shock, but it's too late now. Try it if you like—I don't care what you say about me. Try the half truth again—give her reason—the reason's yours whenever you want it."
Of course I couldn't listen to this nonsense and immodesty and worse. Who should know better whether Evie was jealous or not, Louie or I? Evie jealous!... Of course, if it were so, the positionwouldbe precisely as Louie had stated it. Ishouldhave to choose between Evie's love and the risk the doctor had so gravely foreshadowed. Our very existence togetherwouldhang on precisely that last desperate chance. And from the bottom of my heart I blessed my Maker that, tossed and buffeted as my life had been, at least that perfected anguish of body and spirit was to be spared me....
I had risen. Smiling rather sadly, I turned to Louie.
"Well—as I said—I don't want to re-open things," I said.
With the door already half open, she turned.
"Do you think they're closed?" she said.
And she did not wait for my reply.
FOOTNOTE:[2]See "In Accordance with the Evidence."
[2]See "In Accordance with the Evidence."
[2]See "In Accordance with the Evidence."
It is as I feared: this writing, as a continuous record, will have to stop. My life is getting too full. I daresay its crowded outward happenings are a good thing for me; it is better, as the saying is, to wear out than to rust out; and I am beginning almost to enjoy change for change's sake.
My newest change is a removal. Pepper's latest cosmopolitan, Baron Stillhausen, wants to be rid of that Iddesleigh Gate house as it stands, and already I have taken Evie round to see it. It almost took away her breath: I didn't know how near delight could come to timidity—I almost said to dismay. When I said, "Well, darling, am I to take it?" she looked at me as much as to say "Dareyou?"... I think I dare—though I have only to remember my own beginnings to be a little intimidated myself. I walked over to Verandah Cottage the other evening; a sign-writer has the place now; and it seems either very much more or very much less than four years since I lived there—sometimes hardly four months, sometimes half-a-lifetime.... But Evie will very quickly be turning up her nose at Well Walk. Already she had begun to shop quite freely. For getting to and from Pall Mall (I told you I was to sparemyself physically for the present) I have bought a small runabout of a car. Really it is only an ordinary taxi, with a rather superior shell placed on it, and I have an agreement with a young fellow who has just taken his driving certificate; but Evie was talking about a livery for him the other night, and I was pleased. That is as it should be. It will be a joy to me to see her take her proper place....
So this record will have to be more and more a diary, jotted down as I can find opportunity for it. I need not say that the change to Iddesleigh Gate will be a larger undertaking than, say, Aunt Angela's installation in the little "circus" near King's Cross was. And there is the Consolidation. That is heavy work, and the heavier that at present we are working very much in the dark. In these present industrial troubles, for example, we do not quite know where we shall come out; we can only throw in our weight with the big natural forces that, in history as in dynamics, balance themselves in the end. The air is thick with dust of Schmerveloff's raising; and though all this dust may turn out presently to be like the comet's tail, packable into a portmanteau, for the present it certainly obscures our vision. We have to take into account, too, that even dust is not raised without a cause; and so in public we sit, Radicals all, in solemn inquiry into things, with plenty of Westminster stage thunder, while behind the scenes we get in good old Tory heavy work, not necessarilybecause we are Tories, but because Toryism serves a useful purpose just at present. Once or twice lately I have disobeyed my doctor, and stayed at the office for tea, so closely in touch have I had to keep with various Committees and Conferences; and we have had to keep our staff late too, which is rather hard on them, since they get none of the kudos. But the days when I could burn the candle at both ends all the time are over for me, I'm afraid.
Louie Causton rarely gets away early now; in that respect she was better off when she sat for the evening classes at the Art Schools; but she gravitates more and more to Pepper's side of the business. That bee she has in her bonnet about Evie's being jealous of her does not, I am glad to say, impair her business efficiency. The other day Pepper remarked on her distinguished carriage, and, as he never neglects appearances, he chooses her, when an amanuensis is necessary, for his more important consultations. The other night he took her and Whitlock to dinner before going to Sir Peregrine Campbell's. I can picture his dismay had it ever been suggested that he should take Miss Levey out to dinner. And Stonor and Peddie do not crack the old jokes they did at the F.B.C., about "Miss Causton's pal—Sir Peregrine," or "You know who I mean—that friend of Miss Causton's—the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs." Indeed there seem to be fewer jokes going about than there used to be. We are all getting older—Louie (save for those slender yacht-like lines of hers), Aunt Angela (whose self-satisfied humilities have rather lost their resilience since that night of her housewarming in the little "circus"), Evie (who now takes the prospect of a day and a night nursery as a matter of course, and has bills sent in to me quite naturally) and the rest of us. Even Billy Izzard, clean painter as he is, seems to be forcing his jokes. He has lately found an artificial amusement in balls and pageants, rather to the neglect of his work; and all this, slight as it seems—I mean the spread of the love of amusement—has actually more to do with Consolidation than you would guess.... But I must stop. I get Consolidation enough during the day without bringing it home with me at night. Evie has just knocked at the door. That is her signal that I have "consolidated" enough—as she calls this journal of which she has never heard.
1st March.—For the first time I make this frankly a diary. According to my agreement, we go into Iddesleigh Gate on Lady Day; as a matter of fact we are there now. My lease is for ten years. I got as many of Stillhausen's effects as I wanted at forced-sale rates; a good deal I didn't want. Evie went half wild with joy about a certain crystal bath; I about the Amaranth Room. It is extraordinary how few pieces it takes to furnish this last splendid apartment: a settee, a few chairs, a few cabinets, a bust or two,and the vast turfy carpet.... A smaller room would look half empty with twice the furniture. Billy says it's the proportions, and is puzzling about them, seeking what he calls "the unit," and taking now the length of a gilt Empire settee, now the height of a lacquered cabinet, now his own height, etc., etc. It is Evie's music room; she has begun her lessons; but it will be some time, I am afraid, before she makes very much of it. Billy threatens to quarter himself on us while he makes paintings of the whole house. Aunt Angela has two rooms on the second floor, with distempered walls; and she began her furnishing with a crucifix. My library is stately. The heavy, slow-moving doors scarcely make a click when they close, and a bell-connection down the passage warns me of the approach of anybody. I suppose Stillhausen found this useful; he was in the Diplomatic Service; and perhaps it is well that these stamped leather walls do not whisper secrets. There is a secret of my own that I keep in the bureau by the heat-regulator there. I am not sure that the fire would not be the best place for it. It is odd, by the way, that this impulse to burn these papers should lately have become almost as strong as the impulse to write them formerly was.
I have a telephone switchboard to half the rooms in the house, and the line to Pall Mall is doubled, the second wire not passing through the Company's Exchange. A switch turns on the masked lightsbehind the cornice, and what with one device and another, it would pay me to have a private electrician. Aunt Angela, I may say, who has managed to reconcile herself to heavier expenditures, is harrowed at the waste of electric power, and wanders about the house turning off switches. On a Jacobean table at the far end of the library are two small bright things with branches—that is to say, they seem small until you take a walk to them. They are Pepper's candlesticks. I have attained the scale.
28th March.—That impulse to destroy these papers has reminded me of a little thing that happened while I was away in Scotland. One of Hastie's boys, Ronald, aged fourteen, has a little den of his own in the back part of the house, and during my convalescence he was so good as to make me welcome there. The paraphernalia of I don't know how many hobbies littered the place; his latest had been chemistry; and he stank of chemicals, and had his clothes red-spotted with acids. His greatest success, at which I was privileged to assist, was to fill ginger-beer bottles with hydrogen and explode them. One day he invited me to witness a really superior explosion. It was lucky he did invite me. He had charged an earthenware jar, as big as a bucket, with the gas and would probably have blown the wall out. He said he didn't funk it, but I did, and we opened the window and allowed the gas to be lost.
I feel rather like that about this writing. Last night I almost made away with the dangerous stuff. But I hung back. It has cost so hideously dear. This may be a sentimentalism, and obscure, but there it is, and as it puzzles me I shall try to get to the bottom of it....
N.B.—Evie says she will soon "begin to feel that she lives here." She is getting used to having things; soon she will be getting used to having people. Soon she'll have to be thinking about her first dinner-party. Must stop now. The more sleep I get before midnight the better. I shall think about the destroying, though.
29th April.—(A month since I made an entry.) A rather curious conversation with Evie last night. You will remember that Louie Causton, trying to justify that ridiculous attitude of hers about Evie's jealousy, had exclaimed, as if that clinched something, "Why does she want to come to my house, then?" Well, she has been. Apparently she went some little time ago, but she only spoke of it last night. I shall not ask Louie for her account of it; this is Evie's:
She went on a Saturday afternoon, taking the train from Clapham Junction. Louie was just setting out with her boy to the South Kensington Museum, but she turned back. Since Kitty left her she has got another governess for the lad, but she still devotesher Saturdays and Sundays to him. There are several things about Evie's account I am not quite clear about, but I admit that she has no great gift for picking out the essentials of a conversation, and perhaps unconsciously she has emphasised the wrong things. She told me, for example, a good deal about Master Jim, but said very little about Kitty's reason for going over to Miriam Levey. She wandered off into old recollections of the Business College in Holborn that I had forgotten all about, and allowed these things to divert her from the visit itself. I had to ask her whether Louie seemed comfortable in her rooms, whether they were decently furnished or not, and so on; and she said, "Oh, of course, you've never seen them," and described them to me in excellent detail. Then suddenly she asked me whether Miss Lingard (who had been away out of sorts), was back at the Consolidation yet. Miss Lingard was my own private amanuensis, and during her absence Louie had had to help with her work.... And so we talked. This was in our own bedroom, while Evie was making ready for the night.
"Well," I said, yawning, "and what did you talk about besides the Holborn days?"
"Oh, lots of things," she answered brightly, busily brushing. "She's got to look older since then—but I daresay you wouldn't notice that, seeing her every day."
"Louie Causton, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Did she say anything about Miss Levey?"
"Oh, yes. Her correspondence class is a great success. Schmerveloff's taken her up, and she's no end of pupils. Wasn't it funny, our living next door to Schmerveloff and not knowing it? They little thought that in a few years we should be living here!"
I laughed a little. She glows prettily when she shows her pride in my achievement. Then I yawned again. "Well," I said sleepily, "I hope Kitty's changed friends for the better."
"Oh, she thinks so," Evie replied promptly. "You see, it wasn't very nice for her, when she'd had the boy all days, and Louie didn't come in till ten or eleven or twelve at night, or later, to be snapped at and spoken crossly to."
Here I checked a yawn. "What's that?" I said. "Miss Causton didn't tell you that, did she?"
"Eh?" said Evie. "Oh, no, of course she didn't. Didn't I tell you I looked in at their offices in Gray's Inn one day—Kitty's and Miriam's? Oh, that was a fortnight and more ago! I'm sure I told you, Jeff!... And Miriam took me to the New College in Kingsway. It's nothing like the Consolidation, of course, but it's such an improvement on that poky old Holborn place! How we ever gave a dance there I can't imagine. You remember that dance, Jeff?"
And she was back at the old College once more.
I said this conversation was curious, but perhaps that was not quite the word. Slightly distasteful would be nearer, for of course you see what it all implied. It implied that Evie might easily be dragged into some trumpery quarrel between Louie Causton and Miriam Levey. For Miriam would not be at all above concluding that Louie had schemed to get her place, and that I had thrown my influence into the balance; and anybody could always make poor Kitty agree with them. I didn't want Evie mixed up in anything of that kind. I was even a little sorry she had been to see Louie. How little, for my own part, there existed in the way of affection between Louie and myself you already know; and, if the thing was not quite the same from Louie's point of view, I did not see that any useful end would be served by their being much together. On that morning when Louie had first made her ridiculous suggestion about jealousy, her whole manner had been rather that of one who throws up the sponge, ceases to exercise care, I don't know what; and there is no sense in deliberately manufacturing something that doesn't exist. And about that other visit to Gray's Inn. I am quite sure that Miriam Levey would not scruple to hurt me in any way she could.... There's the telephone; Whitlock, I expect.
10th May.—In a week Evie is to give her first dinner-party. Naturally she is a little timorousabout it. The fact that Pepper, with whom, I am sorry to say, she gets on no better, will be there to watch her, would be quite enough to flurry her; but there will also be other people there whom she hasn't seen yet—the Hasties, the Campbells, Sichel, a Mrs Richmond (a very smart little woman, a friend of Pepper's) and others. Poor dear, it will be rather an ordeal for her, and no wonder she spoke to me the other night a little crossly. It hurt a little at the time, but I have forgotten it. I will put it down, however.
Among all these "Hons. and Sirs," as she calls them, plain familiar Whitlock and Billy Izzard (I am dragging Billy in because these people may be useful to him when he has got over his pageant craze) were her chief comforts; but the question of the final chair, a lady's, had arisen. There being nobody else I particularly wanted, I had been disposed to call on Pepper, who can always produce a prettily frocked woman or a well-turned-out young man at a moment's notice; but Evie had managed to get a dig in at Pepper, at which I laughed heartily. "He might bring Mrs Toothill for all we know," she had said. "No, Jeff, it's our party," she had demurred, and had then ruminated....
"All right, anybody you like," I had agreed cheerfully.
"You don't like Mrs Smithson," she had then said doubtfully.
Of course, having just given her full liberty, I ought not to have qualified it, even by a look; but I confess my face fell. It was only for an instant, and I hoped my darling hadn't noticed it.
"Have Mrs Smithson if you like," I said a little shortly, I am afraid.
But she had noticed. She spoke shortly too.
"No, thank you, not to have her thrown in my face afterwards. I know you don't think the Smithsons are good enough."
I was shocked. "Dearest," I said slowly, "when have I 'thrown things in your face afterwards,' as you call it?"
She must indeed have been tried, otherwise she would never have said the absurd thing she did.
"Well, if you don't say it, you think it. Better have your friend, Miss Causton. She can go out to dinner with Sir Julius, it seems."
"Evie!" I exclaimed, for the moment deeply wounded.
"Well, you told me she did, and if she can dine with him she can with you, I suppose."
I turned away. "I shall leave it entirely to you," I said. I reproach myself now for my impatience.
But instantly her generous little heart was itself again. She ran after me and threw her arms about my neck.
"Forgive me, Jeff," she pleaded tearfully. "I didn't mean anything, and I amsoafraid of it all!I'mnotused to it, you know, but I am doing my best. Do ask Mr Pepper to bring somebody."
And we kissed and said no more about it. Perhaps I am foolish to write it down.
14th May.—Evie has made the acquaintance of most of her guests for the seventeenth beforehand. The Hasties have called on her, and Lady Campbell, and Pepper has brought Mrs Richmond (who, I confess, strikes me as rather a superfine Mrs Smithson), and half her fears are gone. She didn't much care for Mrs Richmond, she says; "toney" was the adjective she used; but she quite took dear homely Lady Campbell under her wing. She likes receiving, she says, and remarked, rather acutely, that what makes these little afternoon functions the occasion for bickering they are, is that people seem to rattle off what they have to say without an interval for breath, and then to take their departure. She had Jackie down, and Phyllis was brought down for a moment by her nurse; and Jackie showed Lady Campbell his ship. Lady Campbell married her husband when he was master and a fifth-part owner of a coasting boat; and when Jackie lifted the hatch of his model to show her the "cabin" she laughed, and said it was a far more comfortable cabin than that in which she spent her honeymoon. Then Jackie, of course, wanted to know what a honeymoon was, and when told made some remark about a honeymoon that set everybodylaughing except Evie, who blushed. I hope she will not forget how to blush among all her smart ladies. I find her blushing adorable.
17th May, 4P.M.—Without warning, a thing that I had thought impossible has come upon me. For nearly twenty hours—since nine o'clock last night—my thoughts have been such a series of jerks, stoppings, leapings forward and dead stops again as only once before in my life I have known. I have paced my private room at the Consolidation for half the day, and have done no work since I looked over and signed the papers that were brought to me here last night. Were I able to speak of "mere nothings" I should say that a mere nothing has brought all this about. Let me tell it. I have come home for the purpose of telling it.
Since I began to leave the Consolidation early, papers have often been brought to me here. Usually Stonor brings them, and is shown straight into the library. You may judge of their urgency when I tell you that last night there was nobody to bring them but Louie Causton.
Evie, Aunt Angela and I were just finishing dinner when the servant whispered to me. I think he said "Somebody from Pall Mall, sir," for if he had said "A lady" I should have wondered who the lady was, which I didn't do. I was expecting the papers; they would not keep me long; so, telling Evie thatI should be back in a few minutes, I followed the servant out.
Louie was standing by my desk. She had not lifted her veil, and I do not know what it was about her attitude that struck me. Something did; I suppose it was some proportion or relation; something that Billy would perhaps have called the "beautiful unit" of the room; some purely æsthetic quality, I don't doubt, which it is odd I should remember now.... She was looking towards me as I entered; she had heard that discreet bell of Stillhausen's; and only when I advanced did she push her veil back.
"Here are these," she said, with a twisted, pained sort of little smile. "The others had all gone home, and I understood they were to come at once. No, thanks, I won't sit down."
Even when it appeared that, after all, the papers would need a few minutes' looking into, she still refused to sit down. She stood as close to the papers she had brought as if, without them, her sole reason for being there, she might have been ejected; and as she still persisted in her refusal to sit, I sat down myself.
It took me perhaps a quarter of an hour to go through the papers. It was as I was pushing back my chair that Stillhausen's bell purred again. A moment later there was a tap at the door. "Come in!" I called.
Evie entered.
I was not embarrassed. It humiliates me to have to write that word now, so many hours later. There was nothing to be embarrassed at. Indeed, as Evie advanced from the door, I barely explained the reason for Miss Causton's call. Louie touched the hand Evie extended. Evie was not, as she was with Miriam Levey and Kitty Windus, on kissing terms with Louie.
"I think you'll find these all right now," I said, giving Louie back the papers. "I don't know whether Miss Causton has had supper, Evie?"
Evie smiled graciously. "Yes, won't you have something, Miss Causton? Let me have them lay a tray for you—it will be really no trouble."
But Louie would take nothing. She had drawn down her veil again, and was extending her fingers to Evie. "Don't trouble to come, Mr Jeffries," she said, moving towards the door, while Evie prattled polite phrases.
But I took her to the door. Four words—a "Good-night" on either side—were all that passed between us. Then I returned to the library.
Evie was standing where Louie had been standing, but no sooner did I enter than she passed me. Taking into account the warning of Stillhausen's bell, she must have waited for the purpose of so passing me. But this did not strike me until a little later. Only when she reached the door did she turn and speak.
"Did Miss Causton ask for me?" she said.
"Eh?" I asked, surprised.... "No. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. Only that I thought that when one called one asked for the lady of the house."
I smiled as I set my writing-table to rights. "'Called?' It was hardly a call, my dear."
"Evidently not."
I looked quickly up. Evie's tone was new to me.
"Come, come, darling—a necessary matter of business," I expostulated.
"I'm sorry I interrupted."
"'Interrupted!'... Good gracious, Evie!"
"But of course I didn't; you can't be interrupted here."
I was astonished.
"Why, what—what do you mean?"
She looked coldly at me, without replying.
I frowned. I am ashamed to say that it cost me a little effort to master an impatience that had suddenly arisen in me. I spoke slowly for that purpose.
"If by your last remark you mean that bell, Evie, it was here before we came, and I fancy you knew it was. At any rate it shall be taken away to-morrow."
Very irritatingly (I have told you how I am not quite the man of phlegm I was) she took me up at my last word.
"Oh, yes, about to-morrow," she said. "You don't happen to be going out to-night, do you?"
"No. Why?" This was stranger than ever. She knew I never went out at night now.
"Because Mrs. Hastie telephoned me to-day. Joan isn't well, and can't come. So perhaps you'd like Sir Julius to ask somebody else—unless, of course——"
"Unless what?"
"Unless—there's somebody you'd rather ask yourself."
For a moment I was silent; then, "Evie," I said slowly, "do you—I don't see how you can, but do you—mean Louie Causton?"
She laughed tremulously. "Oh, very well; if I can't, I can't, I suppose, so that ends it."
And the next moment she was gone.
Half-an-hour later I met her on the stairs.
"Oh," she announced, without preface, "Phyllis isn't very well, and I think I shall spend the night in the nursery with her."
She has done so.
I have had a wretched night. I turned and turned, but found no sleep. By dint of turning, I found something else, though—a new meaning in those words Louie Causton had said to me: "If I could say that Miriam Levey and Kitty Windus had been chattering, which I can't——" I tossed and tossed.
At half-past ten this morning I went round to the offices of the Women's Emancipation League inGray's Inn. I can't say, even when I found myself there, asking for Miss Levey, that I was very clear in my own mind as to why I had gone, but if anybodyhadbeen tampering with Evie, it was as likely to be the Jewess as anybody else.
She kept me waiting: a thing, I may say, that few people do nowadays. I waited in a matchboarded anteroom, among emancipated flappers and middle-aged disciples of Schmerveloff. Then Miss Levey herself came in as if by accident, and gushed out into apologies. She had had no idea it was I, she said; she did so beg my pardon.... She showed me into an inner room in which a hairy man, the single male-bird of the run, was expounding from a Blue Book to three or four more women; one of them was the lady who had participated in the intellectual courtship on the night of Aunt Angela's party. I turned to Miss Levey.
"I should like, if I may, to speak to you in private," I said.
She asked if Mr Boris's room was empty. The hairy man, looking up from his Blue Book for a moment, said that he thought so. She led the way into Mr Boris's room.
At the sight of her all my old dislike revived, and I found myself able to go straight to the point. I did so, without wasting a word.
"I've called to ask you, Miss Levey, whether you've given my wife the impression that I was the causeof your leaving the Freight and Ballast Company in order that room might he made for Miss Causton?"
She gave a shocked "Mis-ter Jeffries!" but I held up my hand.
"I know I'm putting it bluntly. You can be as blunt as you like also. Will you tell me whether that is so?"
"May I die, Mr Jeffries—butsurelyyou know I'd arranged with Mr Schmerveloff long before!"
"I see. You dismissed us. Very well. Then let me put it in another form. Have you, in my wife's hearing, associated my name with Miss Causton's in any way whatever?"
This time her answer was not quite so ready. When it came, it was a question.
"Do you mean lately, Mr Jeffries?"
"At any time, but especially lately."
Then she broke into glib speech, and all her "w's" became "v's."
"There, now Iknewthere vould be mischief before it was all over! 'Votisthe good of going into it?' I said; 'votisthe good, ven nobody even believed it at the time? Evie was there,'I said, 'and knew it was not true, so vy rake it all up now, Kitty?' I said. 'Ve all knew all about poor Louie,' I said, 'and vot's done's done anyway, and Evie doesn't vant to hear about it.'"
Here, suddenly tingling curiously all over, Iinterrupted Miss Levey. I spoke with a steadiness that astonished myself.
"One moment. You seem to be speaking of a definite occasion. Was this lately?"
Miss Levey was all pouting bosom, thick lips and fluent hands.
"Vy,yes! Ven Evie came here. Evie and Kitty and me, though vy I have Kitty here at all I don't know, seeing she makes slips in her work, and Mr Schmerveloff grumbles, and the other girls has it all to do over again——"
And the torrent continued.
I don't know what else she said; the rest didn't matter. Why it didn't matter you will see when I tell you that the tongue of a dead young libertine once, years before, had made free with Louie Causton's name and my own, and that the abominable slander, which had lasted for some days, had turned on nothing less than the paternity of Louie's child. All at the Business College, including Evie, had known of it; they had known, too, of the public apology I had been prompt to exact; but that mattered nothing, nothing, nothing now. This wretched little Israelite, revelling in her "v's," and even touching my sleeve from time to time, had seen to that. What the filthy rest was I do not know. Doubtless, beginning with that, and with the feeble Kitty to support her, she had made a complete history of jealousy.... And she did not even triumph openly. Shelisped and protested, and put all on Kitty.... I left her, and almost fled from Louie also when, returning to Pall Mall, I encountered her coming out of Whitlock's room.
And now I have sat since lunch wondering what is to be done next. The afternoon hours have brought me no more light then those of the night did. Dully, I liken my life to that Maze at Hampton Court in which, one happy Sunday I don't know how long ago, Evie and I spent an hour. As then I seem to see Miss Levey's flamingo red behind the green hedges; she seems to lurk in my life, too wary to confront me, too malicious not to scratch. I am lost in winding intricacies. True, there is a door, even as there is a door at Hampton Court that is opened when the labyrinth is to be emptied. I find myself brought up against this door time after time, but I do not know what lies beyond it. You see what the door is: it is to tell Evie everything—everything.... Too wonderful Louie! Why, if you foresaw all this, did you notmakeme tell her—thrust me into a closet with her and keep the door until it was done—instead of letting me grope in my blindness and slip ever further and further away from her?... Oh, I am tired, tired.
I am too tired even to be angry for my poor practised-upon darling. For they have sprung this horrible thing upon her. Half the time she does not, cannot, believe it; of the other half of her lifethey have made a torment. Poor lamb! Of course if they are cruel enough they can make it seem plausible to her; I only wonder that, harrowed as she must have been for all these weeks, she has borne up at all.Iknow the horror she must have wrestled with!... Thatthatwicked old story should crop up again!... But I must stop. Perhaps an hour's sleep will do me good.
5.30P.M.—That was a reckless thing to do, to go to sleep with these papers spread out on the table and my door unlocked. Not that my household is a staff of commercial collegiates, able to read this out-of-date old shorthand; but it was foolish for all that. Anyhow I am rather better, and think I can face the dinner to-night. After that I don't know what I shall do. I have not seen Evie all day.
I never felt less up to a dinner. But a little champagne will keep me going. They will be here in two hours and a half. It will take Evie an hour and a half to dress; I wonder what she is doing for the final hour! Dear heart, if she only knew how I ache to go up to her; but I must not do that until I have made up my mind what course to take. I shall have come to a resolution before I sleep to-night that will settle things one way or the other. We cannot stop at thisimpasse. I don't think Evie's is a real jealousy. To-morrow she will be sobbing on my shoulder that she has harboured it. But at presentit has the venomous effect of the real thing, and if I do not put an end to it, it will recur. Let me think....
Again it comes upon me—why do I write this at all, that I shall most certainly be destroying? I have hardly the heart to think it out, but as it may have some bearing on what I shall have to say to Evie presently I must. I don't think it's that I'm urged to set myself right with anybody, even with myself. At first, when I began, I thought it was that—the need for self-justification—but now I don't think it's a question of justification or condemnation at all. It is a far more essential question. Suppose we call it the question of the personal standard....
I dare say my standards pass for low. That physical basis of marriage, for example, may pass for low—I'm sure it must to that ardent young couple who pant for intellectual companionship and Schmerveloff. And I confess that several of the Beatitudes are beyond me. To tell the truth I am not really at home with anything much higher than the best of human intelligence; and when I hear people speaking glibly of "man-made laws," I recognise that some folk are on terms of affability with Omnipotence that are denied to me. I suppose I am temperamentally reluctant to alter as much as a regulation once it is established, and I am certainly not ready with divine amendments to everything of man's offhand. Man'slaw I hold to be a necessarily imperfect, but roughly sufficient measure of man's conduct, and in the light of that law I may presently have a murder to confess.
I sayamurder, not murder. Is there a difference? I do not know, and I am too weary to split hairs about it. Call them, if you like, one and the same thing. Still, if the one command be absolute, for the other a case may be stated. Do I, then, write to state a case?
But state it to whom? There is one Addressee to whom I have not lifted up my eyes. I, proud and conquering whom among my fellow-worms, have found the lesser law press hard on me, but I have not straightway invoked the greater. Man's decrees I have found strong and wise and admirable; the other is too wonderful for me. And this is the conclusion I promised you. To man, man's law is of more consequence than God's. Perhaps the damned are not utterly damned, so long as they do not add presumptuousness to their error. To have appealed and to have had that appeal rejectedweredamnation.... I do not appeal.
Nor can I see that I state my case to man. Nay, for I confess man's authority, lest it should appear that I do not, I shall destroy these papers. To-night or to-morrow I shall destroy them. Man shall not say that I have shirked the human issue. I refuse to plead at all. Let any who take it upon themselves to accuse or defend me plead or charge what they will. I am mute. I burn this....
I am tired....
And yet one boon I do crave. Perhaps those standards of mine, by their very lowness, may be the evidence, not of a smaller, but of a larger conception of Him Who Reigneth than might at first glance appear....
I am tired....
But all this advances me little with my resolution. Indeed, a fresh glare has just broken in on my brain. I was looking back a few moments ago on that long chain of circumstances with which my darling has been torturing herself—that old slander, innocencies between Louie and myself possible to have been misconstrued, my coming upon her that night in Billy's top room, Evie's own temperamental bias against Louie's profession, her silences, her belief of the calumny. Had Miriam Levey but known of my visit to the Models' Club and that strange walk of ours on the night of the Berkeley dinner, her case had indeed been complete! I had been reviewing all this, I say; and suddenly it struck me, suppose I do tell her?What then?...
Do you see—as the terrible Louie had seen—what then? I am supposing that the revelation did not kill her; do you see what then?
At last I saw it, and groaned. What then? Why, what but that I had put another before herself? What but that, while she had shared my board and bed, that fatal burden of my honour and confidenceand trust had gone to another? What but that Louie, after all,hadhad the key and password of my life that I had denied to herself? What could I answer did she live to say, "What, you married me without telling me this? You tell menow, after having concealed it until concealment is no longer possible? You give me,now, something she's had the use of and has passed on to me? What is she to you, then, thatIam not? Where do I fall short as a wife thatIcouldn't have borne this for my husband or died trying to bear it? Take it. Give it to her. She can have it. Fool, that I couldn't see this for myself, but must have Miriam Levey to point it out to me!"
Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear! We had never a fair start....
I do not know whether she intends to spend the night in the nursery again....
Seven o'clock. I must dress. And I must drink something now, or I shall never get through the evening....
And even yet I have not come to my decision.
11.30P.M.This page at least it will be almost superfluous to destroy. My hand shakes like dodder-grass. That is the liquor I have drunk, but I had to do it.
They have gone. As I thought would be the case, I have had to play Evie's part too. That's twice Billy Izzard has seen me do that, for to-night was toall intents and purposes a repetition of that other night, when I tried to silence the voice of a gramophone by jumping up and bawling out an overstrained merriment. I don't mean that I jumped up and bawled to-night, of course. I merely had a number of flowers removed from the table, so that my eyes had a straight lane to Evie's at the other end, and sent down smiles and encouragement and support to her. And I allowed the men a bare ten minutes afterwards before I hurried off to her aid again. That and plenty of champagne; and I think I pulled it off. Billy, who lingered behind until I turned him out, says everything went splendidly. He didn't know I'd such gaiety in me, he said.
And Evie has gone to the nursery, but is not going to stay there. She told me that, with a hot little kiss, and a grip of her moist hand.... This was on the stairs, and she whispered (words illegible), and she had to run away so that the gratitude in her eyes would not run quite over—but that she whispered (words illegible)....
I shall do it to-night, unless my tongue is as shaky as my hand. There is a perfect stillness in my brain. I can see the whole thing spread out in my mind like a map; never have I been so triumphantly the master of a thing ... (words illegible).... The map is as steady as a rock, too; I turn my attention from it for a moment, choosing the form in which I shall present this aspect of the case or that, and when Ireturn to the map it hasn't moved. Words, whole phrases, rise up in my mind, all so perfect that there will hardly be any shock at all. Evie cannot help but see it as I see it, and then I shall beg her pardon that I didn't tell her long ago. I have never loved her as I love her to-night, and those lovely pools of her eyes on the stairs (words illegible).
At last we are going to have a fair start. We hadn't that, you know. I still think I was right to stand between her and much of life, but this other thing was really too huge to be hidden. And she will not be jealous any more of Louie when I tell her that though Louie dragged all this out of me—she's no idea really how clever Louie is—my pulse has never quickened at Louie's touch nor my eyes brightened when they have met hers. "With my body" I have worshipped Evie, and shall (words illegible).... And so to-morrow will be a new beginning for us. I am rich; I have power; my only desire is now almost within my grasp. It was nonsense I wrote an hour or two ago—or perhaps it was the other day—about this only being the beginning of a deathless jealousy between those two. Evie will see. I shall make it all perfectly plain. I could almost do impossibilities to-night, with the words running like quicksilver in my mind and that chart I have in my brain steady as a rock. And if the anticipation of peace is such bliss, what will the peace itself be?...
I suppose she will be ready about twelve. I mustn't let this wondrous stillness of my brain slip from me. I was clever enough to foresee that it might, and so had the tray of liqueurs sent down here. But it doesn't do for an abstemious man to mix his liqueurs; the brandy again, I think. (Several lines undecipherable). I have only been drunk once in my life; I forget when that was; and once I shammed drunk; I don't suppose I shall ever be drunk again. A moment ago I felt a twinge where I made that dent in my head on the corner of Aunt Angela's fender, but it has passed.... It was a good dinner-party; I saw to that.... Evie, sweetheart—she'll be ready about twelve....