"I don"t want to know; they put me into a state."
"What sort of a state?"
"I don"t know; they haunt me."
"They haunted me; that was why, early one morning, suddenly, I couldn"t keep my hands off them. I had told you I wouldn"t touch them. I had deferred to your whim, your superst.i.tion (what is it?) but at last they got the better of me. I had lain awake all night threshing about, itching with curiosity. It made me ill; my own nerves (as I may say) were irritated, my capacity to work was gone.
It had come over me in the small hours in the shape of an obsession, a fixed idea, that there was nothing in the ridiculous relics and that my exaggerated scruples were making a fool of me. It was ten to one they were rubbish, they were vain, they were empty; that they had been even a practical joke on the part of some weak-minded gentleman of leisure, the former possessor of the confounded davenport. The longer I hovered about them with such precautions the longer I was taken in, and the sooner I exposed their insignificance the sooner I should get back to my usual occupations. This conviction made my hand so uncontrollable that that morning before breakfast I broke one of the seals. It took me but a few minutes to perceive that the contents were not rubbish; the little bundle contained old letters-- very curious old letters."
"I know--I know; "private and confidential." So you broke the other seals?" Mrs. Ryves looked at him with the strange apprehension he had seen in her eyes when she appeared at his door the moment after his discovery.
"You know, of course, because I told you an hour later, though you would let me tell you very little."
Baron, as he met this queer gaze, smiled hard at her to prevent her guessing that he smarted with the fine reproach conveyed in the tone of her last words; but she appeared able to guess everything, for she reminded him that she had not had to wait that morning till he came downstairs to know what had happened above, but had shown him at the moment how she had been conscious of it an hour before, had pa.s.sed on her side the same tormented night as he, and had had to exert extraordinary self-command not to rush up to his rooms while the study of the open packets was going on. "You"re so sensitively organised and you"ve such mysterious powers that you re uncanny,"
Baron declared.
"I feel what takes place at a distance; that"s all."
"One would think somebody you liked was in danger."
"I told you that that was what was present to me the day I came up to see you."
"Oh, but you don"t like me so much as that," Baron argued, laughing.
She hesitated. "No, I don"t know that I do."
"It must be for someone else--the other person concerned. The other day, however, you wouldn"t let me tell you that person"s name."
Mrs. Ryves, at this, rose quickly. "I don"t want to know it; it"s none of my business."
"No, fortunately, I don"t think it is," Baron rejoined, walking with her along the Parade. She had Sidney by the hand now, and the young man was on the other side of her. They moved toward the station--she had offered to go part of the way. "But with your miraculous gift it"s a wonder you haven"t divined."
"I only divine what I want," said Mrs. Ryves.
"That"s very convenient!" exclaimed Peter, to whom Sidney had presently come round again. "Only, being thus in the dark, it"s difficult to see your motive for wishing the papers destroyed."
Mrs. Ryves meditated, looking fixedly at the ground. "I thought you might do it to oblige me."
"Does it strike you that such an expectation, formed in such conditions, is reasonable?"
Mrs. Ryves stopped short, and this time she turned on him the clouded clearness of her eyes. "What do you mean to do with them?"
It was Peter Baron"s turn to meditate, which he did, on the empty asphalt of the Parade (the "season," at Dover, was not yet), where their shadows were long in the afternoon light. He was under such a charm as he had never known, and he wanted immensely to be able to reply: "I"ll do anything you like if you"ll love me." These words, however, would have represented a responsibility and have const.i.tuted what was vulgarly termed an offer. An offer of what? he quickly asked himself here, as he had already asked himself after making in spirit other awkward dashes in the same direction--of what but his poverty, his obscurity, his attempts that had come to nothing, his abilities for which there was nothing to show? Mrs. Ryves was not exactly a success, but she was a greater success than Peter Baron.
Poor as he was he hated the sordid (he knew she didn"t love it), and he felt small for talking of marriage. Therefore he didn"t put the question in the words it would have pleased him most to hear himself utter, but he compromised, with an angry young pang, and said to her: "What will you do for me if I put an end to them?"
She shook her head sadly--it was always her prettiest movement. "I can promise nothing--oh, no, I can"t promise! We must part now," she added. "You"ll miss your train."
He looked at his watch, taking the hand she held out to him. She drew it away quickly, and nothing then was left him, before hurrying to the station, but to catch up Sidney and squeeze him till he uttered a little shriek. On the way back to town the situation struck him as grotesque.
CHAPTER V.
It tormented him so the next morning that after threshing it out a little further he felt he had something of a grievance. Mrs. Ryves"s intervention had made him acutely uncomfortable, for she had taken the att.i.tude of exerting pressure without, it appeared, recognising on his part an equal right. She had imposed herself as an influence, yet she held herself aloof as a partic.i.p.ant; there were things she looked to him to do for her, yet she could tell him of no good that would come to him from the doing. She should either have had less to say or have been willing to say more, and he asked himself why he should be the sport of her moods and her mysteries. He perceived her knack of punctual interference to be striking, but it was just this apparent infallibility that he resented. Why didn"t she set up at once as a professional clairvoyant and eke out her little income more successfully? In purely private life such a gift was disconcerting; her divinations, her evasions disturbed at any rate his own tranquillity.
What disturbed it still further was that he received early in the day a visit from Mr. Locket, who, leaving him under no illusion as to the grounds of such an honour, remarked as soon as he had got into the room or rather while he still panted on the second flight and the smudged little slavey held open Baron"s door, that he had taken up his young friend"s invitation to look at Sir Dominick Ferrand"s letters for himself. Peter drew them forth with a prompt.i.tude intended to show that he recognised the commercial character of the call and without attenuating the inconsequence of this departure from the last determination he had expressed to Mr. Locket. He showed his visitor the davenport and the hidden recess, and he smoked a cigarette, humming softly, with a sense of unwonted advantage and triumph, while the cautious editor sat silent and handled the papers.
For all his caution Mr. Locket was unable to keep a warmer light out of his judicial eye as he said to Baron at last with sociable brevity--a tone that took many things for granted: "I"ll take them home with me--they require much attention."
The young man looked at him a moment. "Do you think they"re genuine?" He didn"t mean to be mocking, he meant not to be; but the words sounded so to his own ear, and he could see that they produced that effect on Mr. Locket.
"I can"t in the least determine. I shall have to go into them at my leisure, and that"s why I ask you to lend them to me."
He had shuffled the papers together with a movement charged, while he spoke, with the air of being preliminary to that of thrusting them into a little black bag which he had brought with him and which, resting on the shelf of the davenport, struck Peter, who viewed it askance, as an object darkly editorial. It made our young man, somehow, suddenly apprehensive; the advantage of which he had just been conscious was about to be transferred by a quiet process of legerdemain to a person who already had advantages enough. Baron, in short, felt a deep pang of anxiety; he couldn"t have said why. Mr.
Locket took decidedly too many things for granted, and the explorer of Sir Dominick Ferrand"s irregularities remembered afresh how clear he had been after all about his indisposition to traffic in them. He asked his visitor to what end he wished to remove the letters, since on the one hand there was no question now of the article in the Promiscuous which was to reveal their existence, and on the other he himself, as their owner, had a thousand insurmountable scruples about putting them into circulation.
Mr. Locket looked over his spectacles as over the battlements of a fortress. "I"m not thinking of the end--I"m thinking of the beginning. A few glances have a.s.sured me that such doc.u.ments ought to be submitted to some competent eye."
"Oh, you mustn"t show them to anyone!" Baron exclaimed.
"You may think me presumptuous, but the eye that I venture to allude to in those terms--"
"Is the eye now fixed so terribly on ME?" Peter laughingly interrupted. "Oh, it would be interesting, I confess, to know how they strike a man of your acuteness!" It had occurred to him that by such a concession he might endear himself to a literary umpire hitherto implacable. There would be no question of his publishing Sir Dominick Ferrand, but he might, in due acknowledgment of services rendered, form the habit of publishing Peter Baron. "How long would it be your idea to retain them?" he inquired, in a manner which, he immediately became aware, was what incited Mr. Locket to begin stuffing the papers into his bag. With this perception he came quickly closer and, laying his hand on the gaping receptacle, lightly drew its two lips together. In this way the two men stood for a few seconds, touching, almost in the att.i.tude of combat, looking hard into each other"s eyes.
The tension was quickly relieved however by the surprised flush which mantled on Mr. Locket"s brow. He fell back a few steps with an injured dignity that might have been a protest against physical violence. "Really, my dear young sir, your att.i.tude is tantamount to an accusation of intended bad faith. Do you think I want to steal the confounded things?" In reply to such a challenge Peter could only hastily declare that he was guilty of no discourteous suspicion- -he only wanted a limit named, a pledge of every precaution against accident. Mr. Locket admitted the justice of the demand, a.s.sured him he would restore the property within three days, and completed, with Peter"s a.s.sistance, his little arrangements for removing it discreetly. When he was ready, his treacherous reticule distended with its treasures, he gave a lingering look at the inscrutable davenport. "It"s how they ever got into that thing that puzzles one"s brain!"
"There was some concatenation of circ.u.mstances that would doubtless seem natural enough if it were explained, but that one would have to remount the stream of time to ascertain. To one course I have definitely made up my mind: not to make any statement or any inquiry at the shop. I simply accept the mystery," said Peter, rather grandly.
"That would be thought a cheap escape if you were to put it into a story," Mr. Locket smiled.
"Yes, I shouldn"t offer the story to YOU. I shall be impatient till I see my papers again," the young man called out, as his visitor hurried downstairs.
That evening, by the last delivery, he received, under the Dover postmark, a letter that was not from Miss Teagle. It was a slightly confused but altogether friendly note, written that morning after breakfast, the ostensible purpose of which was to thank him for the amiability of his visit, to express regret at any appearance the writer might have had of meddling with what didn"t concern her, and to let him know that the evening before, after he had left her, she had in a moment of inspiration got hold of the tail of a really musical idea--a perfect accompaniment for the song he had so kindly given her. She had scrawled, as a specimen, a few bars at the end of her note, mystic, mocking musical signs which had no sense for her correspondent. The whole letter testified to a restless but rather pointless desire to remain in communication with him. In answering her, however, which he did that night before going to bed, it was on this bright possibility of their collaboration, its advantages for the future of each of them, that Baron princ.i.p.ally expatiated. He spoke of this future with an eloquence of which he would have defended the sincerity, and drew of it a picture extravagantly rich.
The next morning, as he was about to settle himself to tasks for some time terribly neglected, with a sense that after all it was rather a relief not to be sitting so close to Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had become dreadfully distracting; at the very moment at which he habitually addressed his preliminary invocation to the muse, he was agitated by the arrival of a telegram which proved to be an urgent request from Mr. Locket that he would immediately come down and see him. This represented, for poor Baron, whose funds were very low, another morning sacrificed, but somehow it didn"t even occur to him that he might impose his own time upon the editor of the Promiscuous, the keeper of the keys of renown. He had some of the plasticity of the raw contributor. He gave the muse another holiday, feeling she was really ashamed to take it, and in course of time found himself in Mr. Locket"s own chair at Mr. Locket"s own table--so much n.o.bler an expanse than the slippery slope of the davenport--considering with quick intensity, in the white flash of certain words just brought out by his host, the quant.i.ty of happiness, of emanc.i.p.ation that might reside in a hundred pounds.
Yes, that was what it meant: Mr. Locket, in the twenty-four hours, had discovered so much in Sir Dominick"s literary remains that his visitor found him primed with an offer. A hundred pounds would be paid him that day, that minute, and no questions would be either asked or answered. "I take all the risks, I take all the risks," the editor of the Promiscuous repeated. The letters were out on the table, Mr. Locket was on the hearthrug, like an orator on a platform, and Peter, under the influence of his sudden ultimatum, had dropped, rather weakly, into the seat which happened to be nearest and which, as he became conscious it moved on a pivot, he whirled round so as to enable himself to look at his tempter with an eye intended to be cold. What surprised him most was to find Mr. Locket taking exactly the line about the expediency of publication which he would have expected Mr. Locket not to take. "Hush it all up; a barren scandal, an offence that can"t be remedied, is the thing in the world that least justifies an airing--" some such line as that was the line he would have thought natural to a man whose life was spent in weighing questions of propriety and who had only the other day objected, in the light of this virtue, to a work of the most disinterested art.
But the author of that incorruptible masterpiece had put his finger on the place in saying to his interlocutor on the occasion of his last visit that, if given to the world in the pages of the Promiscuous, Sir Dominick"s aberrations would sell the edition. It was not necessary for Mr. Locket to reiterate to his young friend his phrase about their making a sensation. If he wished to purchase the "rights," as theatrical people said, it was not to protect a celebrated name or to lock them up in a cupboard. That formula of Baron"s covered all the ground, and one edition was a low estimate of the probable performance of the magazine.
Peter left the letters behind him and, on withdrawing from the editorial presence, took a long walk on the Embankment. His impressions were at war with each other--he was flurried by possibilities of which he yet denied the existence. He had consented to trust Mr. Locket with the papers a day or two longer, till he should have thought out the terms on which he might--in the event of certain occurrences--be induced to dispose of them. A hundred pounds were not this gentleman"s last word, nor perhaps was mere unreasoning intractability Peter"s own. He sighed as he took no note of the pictures made by barges--sighed because it all might mean money. He needed money bitterly; he owed it in disquieting quarters. Mr.
Locket had put it before him that he had a high responsibility--that he might vindicate the disfigured truth, contribute a chapter to the history of England. "You haven"t a right to suppress such momentous facts," the hungry little editor had declared, thinking how the series (he would spread it into three numbers) would be the talk of the town. If Peter had money he might treat himself to ardour, to bliss. Mr. Locket had said, no doubt justly enough, that there were ever so many questions one would have to meet should one venture to play so daring a game. These questions, embarra.s.sments, dangers--the danger, for instance, of the cropping-up of some lurking litigious relative--he would take over unreservedly and bear the brunt of dealing with. It was to be remembered that the papers were discredited, vitiated by their childish pedigree; such a preposterous origin, suggesting, as he had hinted before, the feeble ingenuity of a third-rate novelist, was a thing he should have to place himself at the positive disadvantage of being silent about. He would rather give no account of the matter at all than expose himself to the ridicule that such a story would infallibly excite. Couldn"t one see them in advance, the clever, taunting things the daily and weekly papers would say? Peter Baron had his guileless side, but he felt, as he worried with a stick that betrayed him the granite parapets of the Thames, that he was not such a fool as not to know how Mr. Locket would "work" the mystery of his marvellous find. Nothing could help it on better with the public than the impenetrability of the secret attached to it. If Mr. Locket should only be able to kick up dust enough over the circ.u.mstances that had guided his hand his fortune would literally be made. Peter thought a hundred pounds a low bid, yet he wondered how the Promiscuous could bring itself to offer such a sum--so large it loomed in the light of literary remuneration as. .h.i.therto revealed to our young man. The explanation of this anomaly was of course that the editor shrewdly saw a dozen ways of getting his money back. There would be in the "sensation," at a later stage, the making of a book in large type--the book of the hour; and the profits of this scandalous volume or, if one preferred the name, this reconstruction, before an impartial posterity, of a great historical humbug, the sum "down," in other words, that any lively publisher would give for it, figured vividly in Mr. Locket"s calculations. It was therefore altogether an opportunity of dealing at first hand with the lively publisher that Peter was invited to forego. Peter gave a masterful laugh, rejoicing in his heart that, on the spot, in the repaire he had lately quitted, he had not been tempted by a figure that would have approximately represented the value of his property.
It was a good job, he mentally added as he turned his face homeward, that there was so little likelihood of his having to struggle with that particular pressure.
CHAPTER VI.