1

While Clare talked to Juke in the vestry, Jane talked to her parents at Potter's Bar. She was trying to make them drop their campaign against Gideon. But she had no success. Lady Pinkerton said, 'The claims of Truth are inexorable. Truth is a hard god to follow, and often demands the sacrifice of one's personal feelings.' Lord Pinkerton said, 'I think, now the thing has gone so far, it had better be thoroughly sifted. If Gideon is innocent, it is only due to him. If he is guilty, it is due to the public. You must remember that he edits a paper which has a certain circulation; small, no doubt, but still, a circulation. He is not altogether like a private and irresponsible person.'

Lady Pinkerton remarked that we are none of us that, we all owe a duty to society, and so forth.

Then Clare came in, just as they had finished dinner. She would not have any. Her face was red and swollen with crying. She said she had something to tell them at once, that would not keep a moment. Mr. Gideon mustn't be suspected any more of having killed Oliver, for she had done it herself, after Mr. Gideon had left the house.

They did not believe her at first. She was hysterical, and they all knew Clare. But she grew more circumstantial about it, till they began to believe it. After all, they reasoned, it explained her having been so completely knocked over by the catastrophe.

Jane asked her why she had done it. She said she had only meant to push him away from her, and he had fallen.

Lady Pinkerton said, 'Push him away, my dear! Then was he …'

Was he too close, she meant. Clare cried and did not answer. Lady Pinkerton concluded that Oliver had been trying to kiss Clare, and that Clare had repulsed him. Jane knew that Lady Pinkerton thought this, and so did Clare. Jane thought 'Clare means us to think that. That doesn't mean it's true. Clare hasn't got what Arthur calls a grip on facts.'

Lord Pinkerton said, 'This is very painful, my dears; very painful indeed. Jane, my dear …'

He meant that Jane was to go away, because it was even more painful for her than for the others. But Jane didn't go. It wasn't painful for Jane really. She felt hard and cold, and as if nothing mattered. She was angry with Clare for crying instead of explaining what had happened.

Lady Pinkerton said, passing her hand over her forehead in the tired way she had and shutting her eyes, 'My dear, you are over-wrought. You don't know what you are saying. You will be able to tell us more clearly in the morning.'

But Clare said they must believe her now, and Lord Pinkerton must telephone up to the Haste and have the stuff about the Hobart Mystery stopped.

'My poor child,' said Lady Pinkerton, 'what has made you suddenly, so long after, tell us this terrible story?'

Clare sobbed that she hadn't been able to bear it on her mind any more, and also that she hadn't known till lately that Gideon was suspected.

Lord and Lady Pinkerton looked at each other, wondering what to believe, then at Jane, wishing she was gone, so that they could ask Clare more about it. Jane said, 'Don't mind me. I don't mind hearing about it.' Jane meant to stay. She thought that if she was gone they would persuade Clare she had dreamed it all and that it had been really Gideon after all.

Jane asked Clare why she had pushed Oliver, thinking that she ought to explain, and not cry. But still Clare only cried, and at last said she couldn't ever tell any one. Lady Pinkerton turned pink, and Lord Pinkerton walked up and down and said, 'Tut tut,' and it was more obvious than ever what Clare meant.

She added, 'But I never meant, indeed I never meant, to hurt him. He just fell back, and …'

'Was killed,' Jane finished for her. Jane thought Clare was like their mother in trying to avoid plain words for disagreeable things.

Clare cried and cried. 'Oh,' she said, 'I've not had a happy moment since,' which was as nearly true as these excessive statements ever are.

Lady Pinkerton tried to calm her, and said, 'My poor, dear child, you don't know what you are saying. You must go to bed now, and tell us in the morning, when you are more yourself.'

Clare didn't go to bed until Lord Pinkerton had promised to ring up the Haste. Then she went, with Lady Pinkerton, who was crying too now, because she was beginning to believe the story.

2

Jane didn't know what she believed. She didn't believe what Clare had implied—that Oliver had tried to kiss her. Because Oliver hadn't been like that; it wasn't the sort of thing he did. Jane thought it caddish of Clare to have tried to make them think that of him. But she might, Jane thought, have been angry with him about something else; she might have pushed him…. Or she might not; she might be imagining or inventing the whole thing. You never knew, with Clare.

If it was true, Jane thought, she had been a fool about Arthur. But, if he hadn't done it, why had he been so queer? Why had he avoided her, and been so odd and ashamed from the first morning on?

Perhaps, thought Jane, he had suspected Clare.

She would see him to-morrow morning, and ask him.

3

Jane saw Gideon next day. She rang him up, and he came over to Hampstead after tea.

It was the first time Jane had seen him alone for more than a month. He looked thin and ill.

Jane loved him. She had loved him through everything. He might have killed Oliver; it made no difference to her caring for him.

But she hoped he hadn't.

He came into the drawing-room. Jane remembered that other night, when Oliver—poor Oliver—had been vexed to find him there. Poor Oliver. Poor Oliver. But Jane couldn't really care. Not really, only gently, and in a way that didn't hurt. Not as if Gideon were dead and shut away from everything. Not as if she herself were.

Jane didn't pretend. As Lady Pinkerton would say, the claims of Truth were inexorable.

Gideon came in quickly, looking grave and worried, as if he had something on his mind.

Jane said, 'Arthur, please tell me. Did you knock Oliver down that night?'

He stood and stared at her, looking astonished and startled.

Then he said, slowly, 'Oh, I see. You mean, am I going to admit that I did, when I am accused…. If there's no other way out, I am…. It will be all right, Jane,' he said very gently. 'You needn't be afraid.'

Jane didn't understand him.

'Then you did it,' she said, and sat down. She felt sick, and her head swam.

Gideon stood over her, tall and stooping, biting the nail of his middle finger.

'You see,' Jane said, 'I'd begun to hope last night that you hadn't done it after all.'

'What are you talking about?' he asked.

Jane said, 'Clare told us that it happened—that he fell—after you had left the house. So I hoped she might be speaking the truth, and that you hadn't done it after all. But if you did, we must go on thinking of ways out.'

'If—I—did,' Gideon said after her slowly. 'You know I didn't, Jane. Why are you talking like this? What's the use, when I know, and you know, and you know that I know, the truth about it? It can do no good.'

He was, for the first time, stern and angry with her.

'The truth?' Jane said. 'I wish you'd tell it me, Arthur.'

The truth. If Gideon told her anything, it would be the truth, she knew.
He wasn't like Clare, who couldn't.

But he only looked at her oddly, and didn't speak. Jane looked back into his eyes, trying to read his mind, and so for a moment he stared down at her and she stared up at him.

Jane perceived that he had not done it. Had he, then, guessed all this time that Clare had, and been trying to shield her?

Then, slowly, his face, which had been frowning and tense, changed and broke up.

'Good God!' he said. 'Tell me the truth, Jane. It was you, wasn't it?'

Then Jane understood.

She said, 'You thought it was me…. And I thought it was you! Is it me you've been so ashamed of all this time then, not yourself?'

'Yes,' he said, still staring at her. 'Of course…. It wasn't you, then…. And you thought it was me?… But how could you think that, Jane? I'd have told; I wouldn't have been such a silly fool as to sneak away and say nothing. You might have known that. You must have had a pretty poor opinion of me, to think I'd do that…. Good lord, how you must have loathed me all this time!'

'No, I haven't. Have you loathed me, then?'

He said quickly, 'That's different,' but he didn't explain why.

After a moment he said, 'It was just an accident then, after all.'

'Yes … Clare was talking to him when he fell…. She's only just told about it, because you were being suspected. But I never know whether to believe Clare; she's such a gumph. I had to ask you…. What made you suspect me, by the way?'

'Your manner, that first morning. You dragged me into the dining-room, do you remember, and talked about how they all thought it was an accident, and no one would guess if we were careful, and I wasn't to say anything. What else was I to think? It was really your own fault.'

Jane said, 'Well, anyhow, we're quits. We've both spent six weeks thinking each other murderers. Now we'll stop…. I don't wonder you fought shy of me, Arthur.'

He looked at her curiously.

'Didn't you fight shy of me, then? You can hardly have wanted to see much of me in the circumstances.'

'I didn't, of course. It was awful. Besides, you were so queer and disagreeable. I thought it was a guilty conscience, but really I suppose it was disgust.'

'Not disgust. No. Not that.' He seemed to be balancing the word 'disgust' in his mind, considering it, then rejecting it. 'But,' he said, 'it would have been difficult to pretend nothing had happened, wouldn't it…. I didn't blame you, you know, for the thing itself. I knew it must have been an accident—that you never meant … what happened…. Well, anyhow, that's all over. It's been pretty ghastly. Let's forget it…. What Potterish minds you and I must have, Jane, to have built up such a sensational melodrama out of an ordinary accident. I think Lord Pinkerton would find me useful on one of his papers; I'm wasted on the Fact. You and I; the two least likely people in the world for such fancies, you'd think—except Katherine. By the way, Katherine half thought I'd done it, you know. So did Jukie.'

'I'm inclined now to think that K thought I had, that evening she came to see me. She was rather sick with me for letting you be accused.'

'A regular Potter melodrama,' said Gideon. 'It might be in one of your mother's novels or your father's papers. That just shows, Jane, how infectious a thing Potterism is. It invades the least likely homes, and upsets the least likely lives. Horrible, catching disease.'

Gideon was walking up and down the room in his restless way, playing with the things on the tables. He stopped suddenly, and looked at Jane.

'Jane,' he said, 'we won't, you and I, have any more secrets and concealments between us. They're rotten things. Next time it occurs to you that I've committed a crime, ask me if it is so. And I'll do the same to you, at whatever risk of being offensive. We'll begin now by telling each other what we feel…. You know I love you, my dear.'

Oh, yes, Jane knew that. She said, 'I suppose I do, Arthur.'

He said, 'Then what about it? Do you …' and she said, 'Rather, of course I do.'

Then they kissed each other, and settled to get married next May or June.
The baby was coming in January.

'You'll have to put up with baby, you know, Arthur,' Jane said.

'Of course, poor little kid. I rather like them. It's rough luck on it not having a father of its own. I'll try to be decent to it.'

That would be queer, thought Jane, Arthur being decent to Oliver's kid; a boy, perhaps, with Oliver's face and Oliver's mind. Poor little kid: but Jane would love it, and Arthur would be decent to it, and its grandparents would spoil it; it would be their favourite, if any more came. They wouldn't like the others, because they would be Gideon's. They might look like little Yids. Perhaps there wouldn't be any others. Jane wasn't keen. They were all right when they were there—jolly little comics, all slippy in their baths, like eels—but they were an unspeakable nuisance while on the way. A rotten system.

4

All next day Jane felt like stopping people in the streets and shouting at them, 'Arthur didn't do it. Nor did I. It was only that silly ass, Clare, or else it was an accident.' For even now Jane wasn't sure which she thought.

But the only person to whom she really said it was Katherine. One told Katherine things, because she was as deep and as quiet as the grave. Also, if Jane hadn't told her what Clare had said, she would have gone on thinking it was Jane, and Jane didn't like that. Jane did not care to give Katherine more reasons for making her feel cheap than necessary. She would always think Jane cheap, anyhow, because Jane only cared about having a good time, and Katherine thought one should care chiefly about one's job. Jane supposed she was cheap, but didn't much care. She felt she would rather be herself. She had a better time, and would have a better time still before she had done; better than Johnny, with the rubbishy books he was writing and making his firm bring out for him and feeling so pleased with. Jane knew she could write better stuff than Johnny could, any day. And her books would be in addition to Gideon, and babies, and other amusing things.

Jane told Katherine Clare's story. Katherine said, 'H'm. Perhaps. I wonder. It's as likely as not all bumkum that she pushed him. She was probably talking to him when he fell, and got worked up about it later. The Potter press and Leila Yorke touch. However, you never know. Quite a light push might do it. Those stairs of yours are awful. I really advise you to be careful, Jane.'

'You thought I'd done it, didn't you, old thing?'

'For a bit, I did. For a bit I thought it was Arthur. So did Jukie. You never know. Any one might push any one else. Even Clare may have.'

'You must have thought I was a pretty mean little beast, to let Arthur be suspected without owning up.'

'I did,' Katherine admitted. 'Selfish …'

She was looking at Jane in her considering way. Her bright blue eyes seemed always to go straight through what she was looking at, like X-rays. When she looked at Jane now, she seemed somehow to be seeing in her not only the present but the past. It was as if she remembered, and was making Jane remember, all kinds of old things Jane had done. Things she had done at Oxford; things she had done since; things Katherine neither blamed nor condemned, but just took into consideration when thinking what sort of a person Jane was. You had the same feeling with Katherine that you had sometimes with Juke, of being analysed and understood all through. You couldn't diddle either of them into thinking you any nicer than you were. Jane didn't want to. It was more restful just to be taken for what one was. Oliver had been always idealising her. Gideon didn't do that; he knew her too well. Only he didn't bother much about what she was, not being either a priest or a scientific chemist, but a man in love.

'By the way,' said Katherine, 'are you and Arthur going to get married?'

Jane told her in May or June.

Katherine, who was lighting a cigarette, looked at Jane without smiling. The flame of the match shone into her face, and it was white and cold and quiet.

'She doesn't think I'm good enough for Arthur,' Jane thought. And anyhow, K didn't, Jane knew, think much of marriage at all. Most women, if you said you were going to get married, assumed it was a good thing. They caught hold of you and kissed you. If you were a man, other men slapped you on the back, or shook hands or something. They all thought, or pretended to think, it was a fine thing you were doing. They didn't really think so always. Behind their eyes you could often see them thinking other things about it—wondering if you would like it, or why you chose that one, and if it was because you preferred him or her to any one else or because you couldn't get any one else. Or they would be pitying you for stopping being a bachelor or spinster and having to grow up and settle down and support a wife or manage servants and babies. But all that was behind; they didn't show it; they would say, 'Good for you, old thing,' and kiss you or shake your hand.

Katherine did neither to Jane. She hadn't when it was Oliver Hobart, because she hadn't thought it a suitable marriage. She didn't, now it was Arthur Gideon, perhaps for the same reason. She didn't talk about it. She talked about something else.