And I must have succeeded in keeping that dreadful mirth of mine to myself, for Kitty had noticed nothing. She stood by my side in the crowded station afterwards, murmuring to me how lovely it had been.
That is all I remember about that picnic.
Nor have I any reason for not telling you the truth about this. I am concealing neither the man nor the devil in me. For many years I have been almost entirely untroubled by it all, and I make even this slight qualification only because during the last month I have had feelings, not of remorse, but of something that is better described as a sort of backward curiosity. Perhaps it is a little more even than that, for a certain measure of admiration is not entirely absent from it. Don"t misunderstand me, however. That tincture of admiration is not so strong that I cannot rest unless somebody admires my cleverness with me.
Nothing irresistibly urges me to give myself away. But I have felt a little that backward pull of a man"s own acts. I do not know, though practically it has not come near me, why men revisit places. I do not revisit that house near the Foundling Hospital--yet I do write this shorthand carefully locking my door before I begin and committing it to the most private recess of my cabinet as I complete each instalment....
Yet other compunction, if this be compunction, have I none. I am rich, I am serving my age by a more arduous grappling with its economic problems than any of my contemporaries, I could have had Pepper"s knighthood had I wished for it, and I have been married this long time to Evie Soames.... No, on the whole I do not believe in melodramatic retributions. No shadowy shape of a fair-haired and red-waistcoated figure glides at my elbow or steps with me into my brougham, and when I close my eyes at night I do not see as on a painted curtain that dimity-papered, lamp-lighted upper chamber of his. I do not start at sudden sounds, nor fear to be left alone in my library when it grows late. I play with my clean-born children. Evie is happy with me. And I even have Miss Angela in a cleft stick--for, when things go well, she is my gentle and much-loved maiden aunt by marriage, but when they go across she is my mother-in-law, who would stare incredulously at any who might hint that my brain could plot a horror and my two hands execute it.
And yet I write this, and sometimes waste an hour in wondering why, all of a sudden, Kitty Windus threw me over without giving a reason, and, when I went for one, had left her rooms in Percy Street and gone goodness knows where.
But bah! They are wrong who say that for every crime somebody has to pay. They speak from hearsay. I do not speak from hearsay. To my own knowledge one crime has been committed for which n.o.body has paid and n.o.body ever will.
Well, things are as they are ... and so I will make an end.
My desperate struggles to save Archie Merridew included an interview that I had positively to force from Miss Angela. I had to force it for the reason that, though I was now theoretically exculpated from the charge under which I had lain, slander always sticks, and some of it still stuck with Miss Soames in spite of her efforts to forget it. That, I think, was the reason why she saw me in the dining-room at Woburn Place instead of in her own sitting-room, where, I knew, Evie was.
There, among the empty chairs, toying with Mr. Shoto"s napkin-ring and putting it down again as I remembered whose it was, and then unconsciously taking it up again, I told her in such terms as I could find how matters stood. She nodded from time to time.
Again it was not my fault if she failed to understand. She did, I now know, fail, and failed the more hopelessly that she thought she did understand. Many, many thick wrappings lie between placid Aunt Angela and the stark realities of Life.
"I see perfectly," she said, when I had made that statement that would have appalled any but herself. "It was exactly the same with George. (I was once--engaged--to a man called George.) George put a precisely similar case quite plainly before me. _He_ was consumptive, or rather his poor father was, and they do say it skips a generation--poor George!"
I shook my head, but she only sighed with gentle content. She did not really miss George.
"But," she went on, while my eyes wandered to the corner by the sideboard where Archie had had his conversation with Mr Shoto about the Yoshiwara, "I shouldn"t have refused him for that. (I did refuse him, and I heard afterwards that for weeks he ate scarcely anything at all.) It was something quite different that came between us--I"ve never told even Evie what the real reason was."
I interrupted her. "Are you sure, Miss Soames, that you"ve quite understood my real reason?" (More plainly I dared not speak, lest later there should be a c.h.i.n.k in my own armour.)
"Oh yes!" she purred lightly. "Old woman as I am, I _quite_ understand!
As you say ... "the children." ..." Then, forgetting her att.i.tude for a moment, she became playfully roguish. "Of course, it isn"t as if you weren"t in love with Miss Windus, and so in a sense feel it more nearly.
You know how _you_ would feel about it. I only say this that you may see that I _quite_ understand these things do make a difference--eh?"
"But when I solemnly a.s.sure you that that has nothing whatever to do with it."
She adjusted the Indian shawl coquettishly about her shoulders.
"Ah, that"s what you think! Come, Mr Jeffries you"re positively ungallant! As if I was so old that I"d forgotten! And not only George either! I hope you won"t be offended, Mr Jeffries, if I tell you that I suspect--I suspect--that in this I know you better than you know yourself!"
Against that phrase there is no argument. Some people do not and cannot see. And again I did not think Miss Angela had the right to extract from me the uttermost word. I was aware that the very possession of that awful weapon of mine was dangerous; merely to have it might be to use it; but the question is one of your resolve, and I was fully resolved.
My job had to be done, or (as I still dared in certain moments to hope) not to be done; but if it was to be done, it was going to be done thoroughly. My neck was not going into a noose because of other people"s blindness. It was of no use talking to Miss Angela.
And that being so, I abandoned my attempt with her. I smiled.
"Well, perhaps you"re right," I said. "When one is in love oneself, and looking forward--well, perhaps it does bring it home to one. Perhaps it makes one a little of a busybody. So," I concluded, "I hope you won"t exaggerate what I"ve been saying."
And a few minutes" further talk of things she had actually seen for herself in Archie--such things as his slight intemperance on the night of the birthday-party--made me quite safe with Miss Angela also.
To Kitty I was able to say even less than this. Indeed, she now detested Archie so thoroughly that I was scarcely able to say anything at all.
And, looking back with all the care I am master of, I cannot see that anything I did say could have been the cause of that extraordinary breaking off with me without a word.
To Evie I said nothing at all.
There remained one more attempt with himself.
The time I chose for this was fixed by the exigencies of all the circ.u.mstances. I would have wrestled with him for the whole of the two days that remained before his wedding, but his own absence for a day precluded this. And as during that day I sought him in vain, I thought, very wearily, that he must now take his chance. Therefore, when it came to the very last day, the day before his wedding, I recognised that that also gave a perfect touch to the Evidence. The _very_ eve of his wedding.
_Several_ evenings before would somehow have been less plausible.
As I walked to his rooms that night I carried with me three things.
Under my arm was my old brown-paper parcel--for to make a final use of his bath had seemed to me the most natural excuse for my calling on him.
In my breast pocket I carried that piece of paper that was to be the Evidence to the world. And in another pocket I had his latch-key, for which I foresaw a use later in the evening.
I knocked at his door a little after eight, and Jane admitted me. She gave a familiar look at the parcel that contained my shirt, and also said something about a box Mr Merridew was leaving behind for the care of which he wanted me to be responsible. I pa.s.sed this box on the first landing. It was locked, but only half addressed--Archie had not yet secured the rooms to which he would return with Evie. But he had not yet said anything about the box to me.
I found him walking about his rooms, taking last peeps into empty drawers to see whether there was anything he had forgotten. His packing was finished, and he kept stopping in his prowl to throw another handful of old letters on to the smouldering heap in his old Queen Anne teapot of a grate. A little pile of these condemned letters still remained by the side of his perforated bra.s.s fender.
"Hallo!" he cried as I entered. "Just give a squint round, will you, and tell me if there"s anything so big I can"t see it. And I say: I"ve left a box downstairs; I wonder if you"d look after it for me? I"ve told Jane."
"Right!" I said. "Bath ready?"
"All ready. By Jove! how letters do acc.u.mulate! You go and scrub yourself, while I polish this lot off."
I went into his bathroom.
But I did not make use of his bath. Somehow I could not bring myself to it. I only wanted the bath to be known as my motive for calling. So I filled it, stood by it for a number of minutes, and then ran the water off again. I took the same brown-paper parcel with me into his sitting-room that I had brought out.
I did not stay long after that. I was coming back. At nine I rose.
"What, are you off?" he said. "I must say you take what you want and clear off pretty quick! Supper"ll be up presently."
"A last stag-party?" I said. "I"m afraid you"ll have to have it without me. I"ve got to get to Bedford yet. So," I added, "I shall have to wish you--you know--get it over now."
"Oh, don"t put on so much blessed ceremony!" he said. "It isn"t as if you weren"t going to see me again!"
It wasn"t.
"Oh, about that box," I said. "Better call Jane, and tell me in her presence."
"Well, if you _will_ leave me to eat my last bachelor supper alone. But I should have had to clear out myself just after. Got to have a word with Aunt Angela--she let"s me call her that now."
He moved towards the door.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To call Jane," he replied. "Bell"s busted now--time I cleared out of here--whole place is coming to pieces.... Jane! Ja--ne!" he shouted down the well of the stairs.
Then as Jane didn"t hear he descended to the floor below.
His old red woollen bell-rope lay in a heap on the floor. That also had happened as a result of my studies in the British Museum. I busied myself with it.... By the time he had returned I had made it quite ready and was gazing thoughtfully into his fireplace.