CHAPTER XVIITHE SECOND HONEYMOON
Only three of the electric lights were on in the music-room. In the rosy light and half shadows the room looked larger than when seen in daylight, and different.
She had wandered from the Mazurka into Paderewski’s Mélodie Op. 8. No. 3, a lonesome sort of tune it seemed to him, as he dropped into a chair, crossed his legs and listened.
Then as he listened he began to think. Up to this his thoughts had been in confusion, chasing one another or pursued by the monstrosity of the situation. Now he was thinking clearly.
She was his, that girl sitting there at the piano with the light upon her hair, the light upon her bare shoulders and the sheeny fabric of her dress. He had only to stretch out his hand and take her. Absolutely his, and he had only met her twice. She was the most beautiful woman in London, she had a mind that would have made a plain woman attractive, and a manner delightful, full of surprises and contrarieties and tendernesses—and she loved him.
The Arabian Nights contained nothing like this, nor had the brain that conceived Tantalus risen to the heights achieved by accident and coincidence.
She finished the piece, rose, turned over some sheets of music and then came across the room—floated across the room, and took her perch on the arm of the great chair in which he was sitting. Then he felt her fingers on his hair.
“I want to feel your bumps to see if you have improved—Ju-ju, your head isn’t so flat as it used to be on top. It seems a different shape somehow, nicer. Blunders is as flat as a pancake on top of his head. Flatness runs in families I suppose. Look at Venetia’s feet! Ju-ju, have you ever seen her in felt bath slippers?”
“No.”
“I have—and a long yellow dressing gown, and her hair on her shoulders all wet, in rat tails. I’m not a cat, but she makes me feel like one and talk like one. I want to forget her. Do you remember our honeymoon?”
“Yes.”
She had taken his hand and was holding it.
“We were happy then. Let’s begin again and let this be our second honeymoon, and we won’t quarrel once—will we?”
“No, we won’t,” said Jones.
She slipped down into the chair beside him, pulled his arm around her and held up her lips.
“Now you’re kissing me really,” she murmured; “you seemed half frightened before—Ju-ju, I want to make a confession.”
“Yes?”
“Well—somebody pretended to care for me very much a little while ago.”
“Who was that?”
“Never mind. I went last night to a dance at the Crawleys’ and he was there.”
“Yes.”
“Yes—is that all you have to say? You don’t seem to be very much interested.”
“I am though.”
“I don’t want you to be too much interested, and go making scenes and all that—though you couldn’t for you don’t know his name. Suffice to tell you—as the books say—he is a very handsome man, much, much handsomer than you, Ju—Well, listen to me. He asked me to run off with him.”
“Run off with him?”
“Yes—to Spain. We were to go to Paris first and then to Spain—Spain, at this time of year!”
“What did you say?”
“I said: ‘Please don’t be stupid.’ I’d been reading a novel where a girl said that to a man who wanted to run off with her—she died at the end—but that’s what she said at first—Fortunate I remembered it.”
“Why?”
“Because—because—for a moment I felt inclined to say ‘yes.’ I know it was dreadful, but think of my position, you going on like that, and me all alone with no one to care for me—It’s like a crave for drink. I must have someone to care for me and Ithought you didn’t—so I nearly said ‘yes.’ Once I had said what I did I felt stronger.”
“What did he say?”
“He pleaded passionately—like the man in the book, and talked of roses and blue seas—he’s not English—I sat thinking of Venetia in her felt bath room slippers and yellow wrapper. You know she reads St. Thomas à Kempis and opens bazaars. She opened one the other day, and came back with her nose quite red and in a horrid temper—I wonder what was inside that bazaar?—Well, I knew if I did anything foolish Venetia would exult, and that held me firm. She’s not wicked. I believe she is really good as far as she knows how, and that’s the terrible thing about her. She goes to church twice on Sunday, she takes puddings and things to old women in the country, she opens bazaars and subscribes to ragged schools—yet with one word she sets everyone by the ears—Well, when I got home from the dance I began to think, and to-day, when they were all out, I had my boxes packed and came right back here. I’d have given anything to see their faces when they got home and found me gone.”
She sprang up suddenly. A knock had come to the door, it opened and a servant announced Miss Birdbrook.
Venetia had not changed that evening, she was still in her big hat. She ignored Jones, and, standing, spoke tersely to Teresa.
“So you have left us?”
“Yes,” replied the other. “I have come back here, d’you mind?”
“I?” said Venetia. “It’s not a question of my minding in the least, only it was sudden, and as you left no word as to where you were going we thought it best to make sure you were all right.”
She took her seat uncomfortably on a chair and the Countess of Rochester perched herself again by Jones.
“Yes, I am all right,” said she, with her hand resting on his shoulder.
Venetia gulped.
“I am glad to know it,” she said. “We tried to make you comfortable—I cannot deny that mother feels slightly hurt at having no word from you before leaving, and one must admit that it cannot but seem strange to the servants your going like that—but of course that is entirely a question of taste.”
“You mean,” said Teresa, “that it was bad taste on my part—well, I apologise. I am sorry, but the sudden craving to get—back here was more than I could resist. I would have written to-night.”
“Oh, it does not matter,” said Venetia, “the thing is done. Well, I must be going—but have you both thought over the future and all that it implies?”
“Have we, Ju-ju?” asked the girl, caressingly stroking Jones’ head.
“Yes,” said Jones.
“I’m sure,” went on Venetia with a sigh, “I have always done my best to keep things together. I failed. Was it my fault?”
“No,” said Teresa, aching for her to be gone. “I am sure it was not.”
“I am glad to hear you say that. I always tried to avoid interfering in your life. I never did—or only when ordinary prudence made me speak, as for instance, in that baccarat business.”
“Don’t rake up old things,” said Teresa suddenly.
“And the Williamson affair,” got in Venetia. “Oh, I am the very last to rake up things, as you call it. I, for one, will say no more of things that have happened, but Imustspeak of things that affect myself.”
“What is affecting you?”
“Just this. You know quite well the financial position. You know what the upkeep of this house means. You can’t do it. You plainly can’t do it. Your income is not sufficient.”
“But how does that affect you?”
“When tradespeople talk it affects me; it affects us all. Why not let this house and live quietly, somewhere in the country, ’til things blow over?”
“What do you mean by things blowing over?” asked Teresa. “One would think that you were talking of some disgrace that had happened.”
Venetia pulled up her long left hand glove and moved as though about to depart. She said nothing but looked at her glove.
During the whole of this time she had neither looked at nor spoken to Jones, nor included him by word in the conversation. Her influence had been working upon him ever since she entered the room.He began now more fully to understand the part she had played in the life of Rochester. He felt that he wanted to talk to Venetia as Rochester had, probably, never talked.
“A man once said to me that the greatest mistake a fellow can make is to have a sister to live with him after his marriage,” said Jones.
Venetia pulled up her right hand glove.
“A sister that has had to face mad intoxication andworse, can endorse that opinion,” said she.
“What do you mean by worse?” fired Teresa.
“I mean exactly what I say,” replied Venetia.
“That is no answer. Do you mean that Arthur has been unfaithful to me?”
“I did not say that.”
“Well, what can be worse than intoxication—that is the only thing worse that I know of—unless murder. Do you mean that he has murdered someone?”
“I will not let you drag me into a quarrel,” said Venetia; “you are putting things into my mouth. I think mad extravagance is worse than intoxication, inasmuch as it is committed by reasonable people uninfluenced by drugs or alcohol. I think insults levelled at inoffensive people are worse than the wildest deeds committed under the influence of that demon alcohol.”
“Who are the inoffensive people who have been insulted?”
“Good gracious—well, of course you don’t know—you have not had to interview people.”
“What people?”
“Sir Pleydell Harcourt for instance, who had sixteen pianos sent to him only last week, to say nothing of pantechnicon vans and half the contents of Harrods’ and Whiteleys’, so that Arlington Street was blocked, simply blocked, the whole of last Friday.”
“Did he say Arthur had sent them?”
“He had no direct proof—but he knew. There was no other man in London would have done such a thing.”
“Did you send them, Ju-ju?”
“No,” said Jones. “I did not.”
Venetia rose.
“You admitted to me, yourself, that you did,” said she.
“I was only joking,” he replied.
Teresa went to the bell and rang it.
“Good night,” said Venetia, “after that I have nothing more to say.”
“Thank goodness,” murmured Teresa when she was gone. “She made me shiver with her talk about extravagance. I’ve been horribly extravagant the last week—when a woman is distracted she runs to clothes for relief—anyhow I did. I’ve got three new evening frocks and I want to show you them. I’ve never known your taste wrong.”
“Good,” said Jones, “I’d like to see them.”
“Guess what they cost?”
“Can’t.”
“Two hundred and fifty—and they are a bargain. You’re not shocked, are you?”
“Not a bit.”
“Well, come and look at them—what’s the time? Half past ten.” She led the way upstairs.
On the first landing she turned to the left, opened a door and disclosed a bed-room where a maid was moving about arranging things and unpacking boxes.
A large cardboard box lay open on the floor, it was filled with snow white lingerie. The instinct to bolt came upon Jones so strongly that he might have obeyed it, only for the hand upon his arm pressing him down into a chair.
“Anne,” said the Countess of Rochester, “bring out my new evening gowns, I want to show them.”
Then she turned to the cardboard box. “Here’s some more of my extravagance. I couldn’t resist them, Venetia nearly had a fit when she saw the bill—Look!”
She exhibited frilled and snow white things, delicate and diaphanous and fit to be worn by angels. Then the dresses arrived, and were laid out on the bed and inspected. There was a black gown and a grey gown and a confection in pale blue. If Jones had been asked to price them he would have said a hundred dollars. Like most men he was absolutely unconscious of the worth of a woman’s dress. To a woman a Purdy and a ten guinea Birmingham gun are just the same, and to a man, a ten guinea Bayswater dress is little different, if worn by a pretty girl, from a seventy guinea Bond Street—is it Bond Street—rig out. Unless he is a man milliner.
Jones said “beautiful,” gave the palm to the blue, and watched them carried off again by the maid.
He had left his cigarettes down stairs; there were some in a box on a table, she made him take one and lit it for him, then she disappeared into a room adjoining, returning in a few minutes dressed in a kimono covered with golden swallows and followed by the maid. Then she took her seat before a great mirror and the maid began to take down her hair and brush it.
As the brushing went on she talked to the maid and to Jones upon all sorts of subjects. To the maid about the condition of her—Teresa’s—hair, and a new fashion in hair dressing, to Jones about the Opera, the stoutness of Caruso, and kindred matters.
The hair having been arranged in one great gorgeous plait, Jones suddenly breaking free from a weird sort of hypnotism that had held him since first entering the room, rose to his feet.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” said he.
He crossed the room, reached the door, opened it and passed out closing the door. In the corridor he stood for half a moment with his hand to his head.
Then he came down the stairs, crossed the hall, seized a hat and overcoat, put them on and opened the hall door.
All the way down the stairs and across the hall, he felt as though he were being driven along by some viewless force, and now, standing at the door, that same force pushed him out of the house and on to the steps.
He closed the door, came down the steps, and turned to the right.
CHAPTER XVIIITHE MENTAL TRAP
It was a beautiful night, warm and starlit, the waning moon had just begun to rise in the east and as he turned into the green Park a breath of tepid wind, grass-scented and balmy blew in his face.
He walked in the direction of Buckingham Palace.
Where was he to go? He had no ideas, no plans.
He had failed in performing the Duty that Fate had arranged for him to perform. He had failed, but not through cowardice, or at least not through fear of consequences to himself.
The man who refuses to cut a lamb’s throat, even though Duty calls him to the act, has many things to be said for him.
His distracted mind was not dealing with this matter, however. What held him entirely was the thought of her waiting for him and how she would feel when she found he had deserted her. He had acted like a brute and she would hate him accordingly. Not him, but Rochester.
It was the same thing. The old story. Hatred, obloquy, disdain levelled against Rochester affected him as though it were levelled against himself. Hecould not take refuge in his own personality. Even on the first day of his new life he had found that out at the club. Since then the struggle to maintain his position and the battles he had fought had steadily weakened his mental position as Jones, strengthened his position as Rochester.
The strange psychological fact was becoming plain, though not to him, that the jealousy he ought to have felt on account of this woman’s love for Rochester was not there.
This woman had fascinated him, as women had perhaps never fascinated a man before; she had kissed him, she loved him, and though his reason told him quite plainly that he was Victor Jones and that she loved and had kissed another man, his heart did not resent that fact.
Rochester was dead. It seemed to him that Rochester had never lived.
He left the Park and came along Knightsbridge still thinking of her sitting there waiting for him, his mind straying from that to the kiss, the dinner, the bowl of roses that stood between them—her voice.
Then all at once these considerations vanished, all at once, and like an extinguisher, fell on him that awful sensation of negation.
His mind pulled this way and that between contending forces, became a blank written across with letters of fire forming the question:
“Who am I?”
The acutest physical suffering could not have been worse than that torture of the over-taxed brain, thatfeeling that if he did not clutch athimselfhe would become nothing.
He ran for a few yards—then it passed and he found himself beneath a lamp-post recovering and muttering his own name rapidly to himself like a charm to exorcise evil.
“Jones—Jones—Jones.”
He looked around.
There were not many people to be seen, but a man and woman a few yards away were standing and looking at him. They had evidently stopped and turned to see what he was about and they went on when they saw him observing them.
They must have thought him mad.
The hot shame of the idea was a better stimulant than brandy. He walked on. He was no longer thinking of the woman he had just left. He was thinking of himself.
He had been false to himself.
The greatest possession any man can have in the world is himself. Some men let that priceless property depreciate, some improve it, it is given to few men to tamper with it after the fashion of Jones.
He saw this now, and just as though a pit had opened before him he drew back. He must stop this double life at once and become his own self in reality; failing to do that he would meet madness. He recognised this. No man’s brain could stand what he had been going through for long; had he been left to himself he might have adapted his mind gradually tothe perpetual shifting from Jones to Rochester and vice versa. The woman had brought things to a crisis. The horror that had now suddenly fallen on him, the horror of the return of that awful feeling of negation, the horror of losing himself, cast all other considerations from his mind.
He must stop this business at once.
He would go away, return straight to America.
That was easy to be done—but would that save him? Would that free him from this horrible clinging personality that he had so lightly cast around himself?
Nothing is stranger than mind. From the depth of his mind came the whisper, “No.” Intuition told him that were he to go to Timbuctoo, Rochester would cling to him, that he would wake up from sleep fancying himself Rochester and then that feeling would return. What he required was the recognition by other people that he was himself, Jones, that the whole of this business was a deception, a stage play in real life. Their abuse, their threats would not matter. Their blows would be welcome, so he thought. Anything that would hit him back firmly into his real position in the scheme of things and save him from the dread of some day losing himself.
After a while the exercise and night air calmed his mind. He had come to the great decision. A decision immutable now, since it had to do with the very core of his being. He would tell her everything. To-morrow morning he would confess all. Her fascinationupon him had loosened its hold, the terror had done that. He no longer loved her. Had he ever loved her? That was an open question, or in other words, a question no man could answer. He only knew now that he did not crave for her regard, only for her recognition of himself as Jones.
She was the door out of the mental trap into which his mind had blundered.
These considerations had carried him far into a region of mean streets and suburban houses. It was long after twelve o’clock and he fell to thinking what he should do with himself for the rest of the night. It was impossible to walk about till morning and he determined to return to Carlton House Terrace, let himself in with his latch key and slip upstairs to his room. If by any chance she had not retired for the night and he chanced to meet her on the stairs or in the hall then the confession must be made forthwith.
It was after two o’clock when he reached the house. He opened the door with his key and closing it softly, crossed the hall and went up the stairs. One of the hall lamps had been left burning, evidently for him: a lamp was burning also, in the corridor. He switched on the electric light in his room and closed the door.
Then he heaved a sigh of relief, undressed and got into bed.
All across the hall, up the stairs, and along the corridor he had been followed by the dread of meeting her and having to enter on that terrible explanation right away.
The craving to tell her all had been supplanted for the moment by the dread of the act.
In the morning it would be different. He would be rested and have more command over himself, so he fancied.
CHAPTER XIXESCAPE CLOSED
He was awakened by Mr. Church—one has always to give him the prefix—pulling up the blinds. His first thought was of the task before him.
The mind does a lot of quiet business of its own when the blinds are down and the body is asleep, and during the night, his mind, working in darkness, had cleared up matters, countered and cut off all sorts of fears and objections and drawn up a definite plan.
He would tell her everything that morning. If she would not take his word for the facts, then he would have a meeting of the whole family. He felt absolutely certain that explaining things bit by bit and detail by detail he could convince them of the death of Rochester and his own existence as Jones; absolutely certain that they would not push matters to the point of publicity. He held a trump card in the property he had recovered from Mulhausen, were he to be exposed publicly as an impostor, all about the Plinlimon letters, Voles and Mulhausen would come out. Mulhausen, that very astute practitioner, would not be long in declaring that he had been forced toreturn the title deeds to protect his daughter’s name. Voles would swear anything, and their case would stand good on the proved fact that he, Jones, was a swindler. No, assuredly the family would not press the matter to publicity.
Having drunk his tea, he arose, bathed, and dressed with a calm mind.
Then he came down stairs.
She was not in the breakfast-room, where only one place was laid, and, concluding that she was breakfasting in her own room, he sat down to table.
After the meal, and with another sheaf of the infernal early post letters in his hand, he crossed to the smoking-room, where he closed the door, put the letters on the table and lit a cigar. Then, having smoked for a few minutes and collected his thoughts, he rang the bell and sent for Mr. Church.
“Church,” said he when that functionary arrived, “will you tell—my wife I want to see her?”
“Her ladyship left last night, your Lordship, she left at ten o’clock, or a little after.”
“Left! where did she go to?”
“She went to the South Kensington Hotel, your Lordship.”
“Good heavens! what made her—why did she go—ah, was it because I did not come back?”
“I think it was, your Lordship.”
Mr. Church spoke gravely and the least bit stiffly. It could easily be seen that as an old servant and faithful retainer he was on the woman’s side in the business.
“I had to go out,” said the other. “I will explain it to her when I see her—It was on a matter of importance—Thanks, that will do, Church.”
Alone again he finished his cigar.
The awful fear of the night before, the fear of negation and the loss of himself had vanished with a brain refreshed by sleep and before this fact.
What a brute he had been! She had come back forgiving him for who knows what, she had taken his part against his traducers, kissed him. She had fancied that all was right and that happiness had returned—and he had coldly discarded her.
It would have been less cruel to have beaten her. She was a good sweet woman. He knew that fact, now, both instinctively and by knowledge. He had not known it fully till this minute.
Would it, after all, have been better to have deceived her and to have played the part of Rochester? That question occurred to him for a moment to be at once flung away. It was not so much personal antagonism to such a course nor the dread of madness owing to his double life that cast it out so violently, but the recognition of the goodness and lovableness of the woman. Leaving everything else aside to carry on such a deception with her, even to think of it, was impossible.
More than ever was he determined to clear this thing up and tell her all, and, to his honour be it said, his main motive now was to do his best by her.
He finished his cigar, and then going into the hall obtained his hat and left the house.
He did not know where the South Kensington Hotel might be, but a taxi solved that question and shortly before ten o’clock he reached his destination.
Yes, Lady Rochester had arrived last night and was staying in the hotel, and whilst the girl in the manager’s office was sending up his name and asking for an interview Jones took his seat in the lounge.
A long time—nearly ten minutes—elapsed, and then a boy brought him her answer in the form of a letter.
He opened it.
“Never again. This is good-bye.”“T.”
“Never again. This is good-bye.”
“T.”
That was the answer.
He sat with the sheet of paper in his hand, contemplating the shape and make of an armchair of wicker-work opposite him.
What was he to do?
He had received just the answer he might have expected, neither more nor less. It was impossible for him to force an interview with her. He had overthrown Voles, climbed over Mulhausen, but the flight of stairs dividing him now from the private suite of the Countess of Rochester was an obstacle not to be overcome by courage or direct methods, and he knew of no indirect method.
He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. Then he left the hotel and took his way back to Carlton House Terrace.
If she would not see him she could not refuse toread a letter. He would write to her and explain all. He would write in detail giving the whole business, circumstance by circumstance. It would take him a long while; he guessed that, and ordinary note-paper would not do. He had seen a stack of manuscript paper, however, in one of the drawers of the bureau, and having shut the door and lit a cigarette he took some of the sheets of long foolscap, ruled thirty four lines to the page, and sat down to the business. This is what he said:
“Lady Rochester,“I want you to read what follows carefully and not to form any opinion on the matter till all the details are before you. This document is not a letter in the strict sense of the term, it’s more in the nature of an invoice of the cargo of stupidity and bad luck, which I, the writer, Victor Jones of Philadelphia, have been freighted with by an all-wise Providence for its own incomprehensible ends.”
“Lady Rochester,
“I want you to read what follows carefully and not to form any opinion on the matter till all the details are before you. This document is not a letter in the strict sense of the term, it’s more in the nature of an invoice of the cargo of stupidity and bad luck, which I, the writer, Victor Jones of Philadelphia, have been freighted with by an all-wise Providence for its own incomprehensible ends.”
Providence held him up for a moment. Was Providence neuter or masculine?—he risked it and left it neuter and continued.
When the servant announced luncheon he had covered twenty sheets of paper and had only arrived at the American bar of the Savoy.
He went to luncheon, swallowed a whiting and half a cutlet, and returned.
He sat down, read what he had written, and tore it across.
That would never do. It was like the vast prelude to a begging letter. She would never read it through.
He started again, beginning this time in the American bar of the Savoy, writing very carefully. He had reached, by tea-time, the reading of Rochester’s death in the paper.
Well satisfied with his progress he took afternoon tea, and then sat down comfortably to read what he had written.
He was aghast with the result. The things that had happened to him were believable because they had happened to him, but in cold writing they had an air of falsity. She would never believe this yarn. He tore the sheets across. Then he burned all he had written in the grate, took his seat in the armchair and began to think of the devil.
Surely there was something diabolical in the whole of this business and the manner in which everything and every circumstance headed him off from escape. After dinner he was sitting down to attempt a literary forlorn hope, when a sharp voice in the hall made him pause.
The door opened, and Venetia Birdbrook entered. She wore a new hat that seemed bigger than the one he had last beheld and her manner was wild.
She shut the door, walked to the table, placed her parasol on it and began peeling off a glove.
“She’s gone,” said Venetia.
Jones had risen to his feet.
“Who’s gone?”
“Teresa—gone with Maniloff.”
He sat down. Then she blazed out.
“Are you going to do nothing—are you going to sit there and let us all be disgraced? She’s gone—she’s going—to Paris. It was through her maid I learned it; she’s gone from the hotel by this—gone with Maniloff—are you deaf or simply stupid? Youmustfollow her.”
He rose.
“Follow her now, follow her and get her back, there is just a chance. They are going to the Bristol. The maid told everything—I will go with you. There is a train at nine o’clock from Victoria, you have only just time to catch it.”
“I have no money,” said Jones, feeling in his pockets distractedly, “only about four pounds.”
“I have,” replied she, “and our car is at the door—are you afraid, or is it that you don’t mind?”
“Come on,” said Jones.
He rushed into the hall, seized a hat and overcoat, and next minute was buried in a stuffy limousine with Venetia’s sharp elbow poking him in the side.
He was furious.
There are people who seem born for the express purpose of setting other people by the ears. Venetia was one of them. Despite Voles, Mulhausen, debts and want of balance one might hazard the opinion that it was Venetia who had driven the unfortunate Rochester to his mad act.
The prospect of a journey to Paris with this woman in pursuit of another man’s wife was bad enough,but it was not this prospect that made Jones furious, though assisting. No doubt, it was Venetia herself.
She raised the devil in him, and on the journey to the station, though she said not a word, she managed to raise his exasperation with the world, herself, himself and his vile position to the limit just below the last.—The last was to come.
At the station they walked through the crowd to the booking-office where Venetia bought the tickets. Reminiscences of being taken on journeys as a small boy by his mother flitted across the mind of Jones and did not improve his temper.
He looked at the clock. It wanted twenty minutes of the starting time and he was in the act of evading a barrow of luggage when Venetia arrived with the tickets.
It had come into the mind of Jones that not only was he travelling to Paris with the Hon. Venetia Birdbrook, in pursuit of the wife of another man, but that they were travelling without luggage. If, in Philadelphia, he had dreamt of himself in such a position he would have been disturbed as to the state of his health and the condition of his liver, yet now, in reality, the thing did not seem preposterous, he was concerned as to the fact about the want of luggage.
“Look here,” said he, “what are we to do—I haven’t even a night-suit of pyjamas. I haven’t even a toothbrush. No hotel will take us in.”
“We don’t want an hotel,” said Venetia, “we’ll come back straight if we can save Teresa. If not,if she insists in pursuing her mad course, you had better not come back at all. Come on and let us take our places in the train.”
They moved away and she continued.
“For if she does you will never be able to hold up your head again, everyone knows how you have behaved to her.”
“Oh, stop it,” said he irritably. “I have enough to think about.”
“You ought to.”
Only just those three words, yet they set him off.
“Ought I? Well, what of yourself? She told me last night things aboutyou.”
“About me. What things?”
“Never mind.”
“But I do,” she stopped and he stopped.
“I mind very much. What things did she tell you?”
“Nothing much, only that you worried the life out of her, and that though I was bad you were worse.”
Venetia sniffed. She was just turning to resume her way to the train when she stopped dead like a pointer.
“That’s them,” she said, in a hard, tense whisper.
Jones looked.
A veiled lady accompanied by a bearded man, with a folded umbrella under his arm and following a porter laden with wraps and small luggage, were making their way through the crowd towards the train.
The veil did not hide her from him. He knew at once it was she.
It was then that Venetia’s effect upon him acted as the contents of the white-paper acts when emptied into the tumbler that holds the blue-paper-half of the seidlitz powder.
Venetia saw his face.
“Don’t make a scene,” she cried.
That was the stirring of the spoon.
He rushed up to the bearded man and caught him by the arm. The bearded one turned sharply and pushed him away. He was a big man; he looked a powerful man. Dressed up as a conquering hero he would have played the part to perfection, the sort of man women adore for their “power” and manliness. He had a cigarette between his thick, red, bearded lips.
Jones wasn’t much to look at, but he had practised at odd times at Joe Hennessy’s, otherwise known as Ike Snidebaum, of Spring Garden Street, Philadelphia, and he had the fighting pluck of a badger.
He struck out, missed, got a drum sounder in on the left ribs, right under the uplifted umbrella arm and the raised umbrella—and then—swift as light got in an upper cut on the whiskers under the left side of the jaw.
The umbrella man sat down, as men sit when chairs are pulled from under them, then, shouting for help—that was the humorous and pitiable part of it—scrambled on to his feet instantly to be downed again.
Then he lay on his back with arms out, pretending to be mortally injured.
The whole affair lasted only fifteen seconds.
You can fancy the scene.
Jones looked round. Venetia and the criminal, having seen the display—and at the National Sporting Club you often pay five pounds to see worse—were moving away together through the throng, the floored one with arms still out, was murmuring: “Brandee—brandee,” into the ear of a kneeling porter, and a station policeman was at Jones’ side.
Jones took him apart a few steps.
“I am the Earl of Rochester,” said he, in a half whisper. “That guy has got what he wanted—never mind what he was doing—kick the beast awake and ask him if he wants to prosecute.”
The constable came and stood over the head end of the sufferer, who was now leaning on one arm.
“Do you want to prosecute this gentleman?” asked the constable.
“Nichévo,” murmured the other. “No. Brandee.”
“Thought so,” said Jones. Then he walked away towards the entrance with the constable.
“My address is Carlton House Terrace,” said he. “When you get that chap on his pins you can tell him to come there and I’ll give him another dose. Here’s a sovereign for you.”
“Thanks, your Lordship,” said the guardian of the Peace, “you landed him fine, I will say. I didn’t see the beginning of the scrap, but I saw the knock out—you won’t have any more bother with him.”
“I don’t think so,” said Jones.
He was elated, jubilant, a weight seemed liftedfrom his mind, all his evil humour had vanished. The feel of those whiskers and the resisting jaw was still with him, he had got one good blow in at circumstance and the world. He could have sung. He was coming out of the station when someone ran up from behind.
It was Venetia. Venetia, delirious and jabbering.
“Teresa is in the car—You have done it now—you have done it now. Whatmadeyou do this awful thing? Are you mad? Here in the open station—before everyone—you have h-h-heaped this last disgrace on us—onme.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Jones.
He sighted the car, ran to it and opened the door. A whimpering bundle in the corner stretched out hands as if to ward him off.
“Oh! oh! oh!” sighed and murmured the bundle.
Jones caught one of the hands, leaned in and kissed it. Then he turned to Venetia who had followed him.
“Get in,” he said.
She got in. He got in after her and closed the door. Venetia put her head out of the window:
“Home,” cried she to the chauffeur.
Jones said nothing till they had cleared the station precincts. Then he began to talk in the darkness, addressing his remarks to both women in a weird sort of monologue.
“All this is nothing,” said he, “you must both forget it. When you hear what I have to tell you to-morrow you won’t bother to remember all this. No one that counts saw that, they were all strangers andmaking for the cars—I gave the officer a sovereign. What I have to say is this—I must have a meeting of the whole family to-morrow, to-morrow morning. Not about this affair, about something else, something entirely to do with me. I have been trying to explain all day—tried to write it out but couldn’t. I have to tell you something that will simply knock you all out of time.”
Suddenly the sniffing bundle in the corner became articulate.
“I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to do it—I hate him—oh, Ju-Ju, if you had not treated me so last night, I would never have done it, never, never, never.”
“I know,” he replied, “but it was not my fault leaving you like that. I had to go. You will know everything to-morrow—when you hear all you will very likely never speak to me again—though I am innocent enough, Lord knows.”
Then came Venetia’s voice:
“This is new—Heavenknowswe have had disgrace enough—what else is going to fall on us?—Why put it off till to-morrow—what new thing have you done?”
Before Jones could reply, the warm hearted bundle in the corner ceased sniffing and turned on Venetia.
“No matter what he has done, you are his sister and you have no right to accuse him.”
“Accuse him!” cried the outraged Venetia.
“Yes, accuse him; you don’t say it, but you feel it.I believe you’d be glad in some wicked way if he had done anything really terrible.”
Venetia made a noise like the sound emitted by a choking hen.
Teresa had put her finger on the spot.
Venetia was not a wicked woman, she was something nearly as bad, a Righteous woman, one of the Ever-judges. The finding out of other people’s sins gave her pleasure.
Before she could reply articulately, Jones interposed; an idea had suddenly entered his practical mind.
“Good heavens,” said he, “what has become of your luggage?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” replied the roused one, “let it go with the rest.”
The car drew up.
“You will stay with us to-night, I suppose,” said Venetia coldly.
“I suppose so,” replied the other.
Jones got out.
“I will call here to-morrow morning at nine o’clock,” said he. “I want the whole family present.”—Then, to the unfortunate wife of the defunct Rochester—“Don’t worry about what took place this evening. It was all my fault. You will think differently about me when you hear all in the morning.”
She sighed and passed up the steps following Venetia like a woman in a dream. When the door closed on them he took the number of the house,then at the street corner he looked at the name of the street. It was Curzon street. Then he walked home.
Come what might he had done a good evening’s work. More than ever did he feel the charm of this woman, her loyalty, her power of honest love.
What a woman! and what a fate!
It was at this moment, whilst walking home to Carlton House Terrace, that the true character of Rochester appeared before him in a new and lurid light.
Up to this Rochester had appeared to him mad, tricky, irresponsible, but up to this he had not clearly seen the villainy of Rochester. The woman showed it. Rochester had picked up a stranger, because of the mutual likeness, and sent him home to play his part, hoping, no doubt, to have a ghastly hit at his family. What about his wife? He had either never thought of her, or he had not cared.
And such a wife!
“That fellow ought to be dug up and—cremated,” said Jones to himself as he opened the door with his latch key. “He ought, sure. Well, I hope I’ll cremate his reputation to-morrow.”
Having smoked a cigar he went upstairs and to bed.
He had been trying to think of how he would open the business on the morrow, of what he would say to start with—then he gave up the attempt, determining to leave everything to the inspiration of the moment.