It is always rather amusing dining at Aylesbury House, with my stimulating family. Especially since Chloe, my present stepmother, entered it, three years ago. Chloe is great fun; much more entertaining than most variety artists. I know plenty of these, because Wycombe, my eldest brother, introduces them to me. As a class they seem pleasant and good-humoured, but a little crude, and lacking in the subtler forms of wit or understanding. After an hour or so of their company I want to yawn. But Chloe keeps me going. She is vulgar, but racy. She is also very kind to me, and insists on coming down to help with theatrical entertainments in the parish. It is so decent of her that I can't say no, though she doesn't really fit in awfully well with the O.U.D.S. people, and the Marlowe Society people, and the others whom I get down for theatricals. In fact, Elizabethan drama isn't really her touch. However, the parish prefers Chloe, I need hardly say.
I dined there on Chloe's birthday, October 15th, when we always have a family gathering. Family and other. But the family is heterogeneous enough to make quite a good party in itself. It was represented on that particular evening by my father and Chloe, my young sister Diana, my brothers Wycombe and Tony, Tony's wife, myself, my uncle Monsignor Juke, my aunt the Marchesa Centurione and a daughter, and my Aunt Cynthia, who had recently, on her own fiftieth birthday, come out of a convent in which she had spent twenty-five years and was preparing to see Life. Besides the family, there were two or three theatrical friends of Chloe's, and two friends of my father's—a youngish literary man called Bryan, and the cabinet minister to whom Tony was secretary, but whom I will not name, because he might not care for it to be generally known that he was an inmate of so fast a household.
My Aunt Cynthia, having renounced her vows, and having only a comparatively short time in which to enjoy the world, the flesh and the devil, is making the most of it. She has only been out of her convent a year, but is already a spring of invaluable personal information about men and manners. She knows everything that is being said of everybody else, and quite a lot that hasn't even got as far as that. Her Church interests (undiminished in keenness) provide a store of tales inaccessible to most of my family and their set (except my Uncle Ferdinand, of course, and his are mostly Roman not Anglican). Aunt Cynthia has a string of wonderful stories about Cowley Fathers biting Nestorian Bishops, and Athelstan Riley pinching Hensley Henson, and so forth. She is as good as Ronnie Knox at producing or inventing them. I'm not bad myself, when I like, but Aunt Cynthia leaves me out of sight.
This evening she was full of vim. She usually talks at the top of a very high and strident voice (I don't know what they did with it at the convent), and I suddenly heard her screaming to the cabinet minister, 'Haven't you heard that? Oh, everybody's quoting it in Fleet Street, aren't they, Mr. Bryan? But I suppose you never go to Fleet Street, Mr. Blank; it's so important, isn't it, for the government not to get mixed up with the press. Well, I'll tell it you.
'There was a young journalist Yid, Of his foes of the press he got rid In ways brief and bright, For, at dead of the night, He threw them downstairs, so he did.
It's about the late editor of the Daily Haste and Mr. Gideon of the Weekly Fact. No, I don't know who's responsible for it, but I believe it's perfectly true. They're saying so everywhere now. I believe that awful Pinkerton woman is going about saying she has conclusive evidence; it's been revealed from the Beyond, I believe; I expect by poor Mr. Hobart himself. No, I'm sure she didn't make the limerick; she's not a poet, only a novelist. Perhaps it came from the Beyond, through planchette. Anyhow, they say Mr. Gideon will be arrested on a murder charge very shortly, and that there's no doubt he's guilty.'
I leant across the table.
'Who's saying so, Aunt Cynthia?' I asked her.
Aunt Cynthia hates being asked that about her stories. Of course. Every one does. I do myself.
Aunt Cynthia looked at me with her childlike convent stare.
'My dear Laurie, how can I remember who says anything, with every one saying everything all the time? Who? Why, all sorts of people…. Aren't they, Chloe?'
Chloe, who was showing a spoon and glass trick to the Monsignor, said, 'Aren't who what?'
'Isn't every one saying that Arthur Gideon threw Oliver Hobart downstairs and killed him?'
'I expect so, dear. Never heard of either of the gentlemen myself. And did he?'
'Of course he did. He's a Jew, and he hated Hobart and his paper like poison. The Fact's so different, you know. Every one's clear he did it. Mind you, I don't blame him. The Daily Haste is a vulgar Protestant rag.'
'The Jew's a dear friend of Laurie's,' put in Wycombe. 'You'd better be careful, Aunt Cynthia.'
'Oh, Laurie dear,' my aunt cried, 'how tactless of me. But, my dear boy, are you really friends with a Jew, and you a Christian priest?'
'I'm friends with Gideon. He's a Gentile by religion, by the way; an ordinary agnostic. Aunt Cynthia, don't go on spreading that nonsense, if you don't mind. You might contradict it if you hear it again.'
'Very well, dear. I'll say you have good reason to know it isn't true. I'll say you've been told who did kill Mr. Hobart, only it was under the seal, so you can't say. Shall I?'
'By all means, if you like.'
Then Aunt Cynthia chased off after another exciting subject, and that was all about Gideon.
2
I came away early (about eleven, that is, which is very early for one of Chloe's evenings, which don't end till summer dawn) feeling more worried than ever about Gideon. If the gossip about him had penetrated from Lady Pinkerton's circle to my aunt's, it must be pretty widespread. I was angry with Aunt Cynthia, and a little with every one I had met that evening. They were so cheerful, so content with things as they were, finding all the world such a screaming farce…. I sometimes get my family on my nerves, when I go there straight from Covent Garden and its slum babies, and see them spending and squandering and being irresponsible and dissolute and not caring twopence for the way two-thirds of the world live. There was Wycombe to-night, with a long story to tell me about his debts and his amours (he's going to be co-respondent in a divorce case directly), and Chloe, as hard as nails beneath her pretty ways, and simply out for a good time, and Aunt Cynthia, with half the gossip of London spouting out of her like a geyser, and Diana, who might turn out fine beyond description or degenerate into a mere selfish rake (it won't be my father's and Chloe's fault if she doesn't do the latter), and my Uncle Ferdinand in purple and fine linen, a prince of the Church, and Tony already booked for a political career, with his chief's shady secrets in his keeping to show him the way it's done. And they bandied about among them the name of a man who was worth the lot of them together, and repeated silly rhymes which might hang him…. It was a little more than I could stand.
One is so queer about one's family. I'm inclined to think every one is. Often I fit in with mine perfectly, and love to see them, and find them immensely refreshing after Covent Garden and parish shop. And then another time they'll be on my nerves and I feel glad I'm out of it all. And another time again I'm jealous of them, and wish I had Wycombe's or Tony's chances of doing something in the world other than what I am doing. That, of course, is sheer vulgar covetousness and grab. It comes on sometimes when I am tired, or bored, and the parish seems stale, and the conferences and committees I attend unutterably profitless, and I want more clever people to talk to, and bigger and more educated audiences to preach to, and I want to have leisure to write more and to make a name…. It is merely a vulgar disease—a form of Potterism. One has to face it and fight it out.
But to-night I wasn't feeling that. I wasn't feeling anything very much, except that Gideon, and all that Gideon stood for, was worth immeasurably more than anything the Aylesbury lot had ever stood for.
And when I got back, I found a note from Katherine saying that she had warned Gideon about the talk and that he wasn't proposing to take any steps.
3
Next morning I had to go to Church House for a meeting. I got the Daily Haste (which I seldom see) to read in the underground. On the front page, side by side with murders, suicides, divorces, allied notes, and Sinn Fein outrages, was a paragraph headed 'The Hobart Mystery. Suspicion of Foul Play.' It was about how Hobart's sudden death had never been adequately investigated, and how curious and suspicious circumstances had of late been discovered in connection with it, and inquiries were being pursued, and the Haste, which was naturally specially interested, hoped to give more news very soon.
So old Pinkerton was making a journalistic scoop of it. Of course; one might have known he would.
At my meeting (Pulpit Exchange, it was about) I met Frank Potter. He is a queer chap—commercial and grasping, like all his family, and dull too, and used to talk one sick about how little scope he had in his parish, and so on. Since he got to St. Agatha's he's cheered up a bit, and talks to me now instead of his big congregations and their fat purses. He's a dull-minded creature—rather stupid and entirely conventional. He's all against pulpit exchange, of course; he thinks it would be out of order and tradition. So it would. And he's a long way keener on order and tradition than he is on spiritual progress. A born Pharisee, he is really, and yet with Christianity struggling in him here and there; and that's why he's rather interesting, in spite of his dullness.
After the meeting I went up to him and showed him the Haste.
'Can't this be stopped?' I asked him.
He blinked at it.
'That's what Johnny is up in arms against too,' he said. 'He swears by this chap who is suspected, and won't hear a word against him.'
'Well,' I said, 'the question is, can Johnny or any one else do anything to stop it?… I've tried. I spoke to Lady Pinkerton the other day. It was no use. Can you do anything?'
'I'm afraid not,' he said, rather apathetically. 'You see, my people believe Gideon killed Hobart, and are determined to press the matter. One can't blame them, you know, if they really think that. My mother feels perfectly sure of it, from various bits of evidence she's got hold of, and won't be happy till the thing is thoroughly sifted. Of course, if Gideon's innocent, it's best for him, too, to have the thing out, now it's got so far. Don't you agree?'
'I don't. Why should a man have to waste his time appearing in a criminal court to answer to a charge of manslaughter or murder which he never committed? Gideon happens to have other things to do than to make a nine days' wonder for the press and public.'
I suppose that annoyed Potter rather. He said sharply, 'It's up to the chap to prove his innocence. Till he does, a great many people will believe him guilty, I'm afraid.'
'Including yourself, obviously.'
He shrugged his shoulders.
'I've no prejudices either way,' he returned, his emphasis on the personal pronoun indicating that I, in his opinion, had.
But there he was wrong. I hadn't. I was quite prepared to believe that Gideon had knocked Hobart downstairs, or that he hadn't. You can't be a parson, or, indeed, anything else, for long, without learning that decent men and women will do, at times, quite indecent things, and that the devil is quite strong enough to make a mess of any human being's life. You hear of a man that he was in love with another man's wife and hated her husband and at last killed him in a quarrel—and you think 'A bad lot.' But he may not be a bad lot at all; he may be a decent chap, full of ideals and generosity and fine thinking. Sometimes I'm inclined to agree with the author of that gushing and hysterical book In Darkest Christendom and a Way Out, that the only unforgiveable sin is exploitation. Exploitation of human needs and human weaknesses and human tragedies, for one's own profit…. And, as we very nearly all do it, in one way or another, let us hope that even that isn't quite unforgiveable. Yes, we nearly all do it. The press exploits for its benefit human silliness and ignorance and vulgarity and sensationalism, and, in exploiting it, feeds it. The war profiteers exploited the war…. We all exploit other people—use their affection, their dependence on us, their needs and their sins, for our own ends.
And that is deliberate. To knock a fellow human being downstairs in a quarrel, so that he dies—that may be impulse and accident, and is not so vile. Even to say nothing afterwards—even that is not so vile.
Still, I would rather, much rather, think that Gideon hadn't done it.
It was odd that, as I was thinking these things, walking up Surrey Street from the Temple Embankment, I overtook Gideon, who was slouching along in his usual abstracted way.
I touched his arm and spoke to him. He gave me his queer, half-ironical smile.
'Hallo, Jukie…. Where are you bound?… By the way, did you by chance see the Haste this morning?'
'Not by chance. That doesn't happen with me and the Haste. But I saw it.'
'They obviously mean business, don't they. The sleuth-hound touch. I expect to be asked for my photograph soon, for the Pink Pictorial and the Sunday Rag. I must get a nice one taken.'
I suppose I looked as I felt, for he said in a different tone, 'Don't worry, old man. There's nothing to be done. We must just let this thing take its course.'
I couldn't say anything, because there was nothing to say that wouldn't seem like asking him questions, or trying to make him admit or deny the thing to me. I wanted to ask him if he couldn't produce an alibi and blow the ridiculous story to the four winds. But—suppose he couldn't…?
So I said nothing but, 'Well, let me know if ever I can be any use,' and we parted at the top of Surrey Street.
4
We have evensong at five at St. Christopher's. No one conies much. The people in the parish aren't the weekday church sort. Those among them who come to church at all mostly confine their energies to evening service on Sundays, though a few of them consent to turn up at choral mass at eleven. And, by means of guilds and persuasion, we've induced a good many of the lads and girls to come to early mass sometimes. The vicar gets discouraged at times, but not so much as most vicars would, because he more or less agrees with me in not thinking church-going a test of Christianity. The vicar is one of the cleverest and most original parsons in the Church, in my opinion. He has a keen, shrewd, practical insight into the distinction between essentials and non-essentials. He is popular in the parish, but I don't think the people understand, as a rule, what he is getting at.
Anyhow, the only people who usually came to our week-day services were a few church workers and an elderly lady or two who happened to be passing and dropped in. The elderly ladies who lived in the parish were much too busy for any such foolishness.
But this evening—the evening of the day I had met Gideon—there was a girl in church. She was rather at the back, and I didn't see who it was till I was going out. Then she stopped me at the door, and I saw that it was Clare Potter. I knew Clare Potter very slightly, and had never found her interesting. I had always believed her to be conventional and commonplace, without the brains of the twins or even the mild spirituality of Frank.
But I was startled by her face now; it was white and strained, and emotion wavered pitifully over it.
'Please,' she said, 'will you hear my confession?'
'I'm very sorry,' I told her, 'but I can't. I'm still in deacon's orders.'
She seemed disappointed.
'Oh! Oh dear! I didn't know….'
I was puzzled. Why had she pitched on me? Hadn't she, I wondered, a regular director, or was it her first confession she wanted to make? I began something about the vicar being always glad … But she stopped me.
'No, please. It must be you. There's a reason…. Well, if you can't hear my confession, may I tell you something in private, and get your advice?'
'Of course,' I said.
'Now, at once, if you've time…. It's very urgent.'
I had time, and we went into the vestry.
She sat down, and I waited for her to speak. She wasn't nervous, or embarrassed, as most people are in these interviews. Two things occurred to me about her; one was that she was, in a way, too far through, too mentally agitated, to be embarrassed; the other was that she was, quite unconsciously, posing a little, behaving as the heroine of one of her mother's novels might have behaved. One knows the situation in fiction—the desperate girl appealing out of her misery to the Christian priest for help. So many women have this touch of melodrama, this sense of a situation…. I believed that she was, as she sat there, in these two conditions simultaneously, exactly as I was simultaneously analysing her and wanting to be of what service I could.
She leant forward across the vestry table, locking and unlocking her hands.
'This is quite private, isn't it,' she said. 'As private as if…?'
'Quite,' I told her.
She drew a long, shivering breath, and leant her forehead on her clasped hands.
'You know,' she said, so low that I had to bend forward to catch it, 'what people are saying—what my people suspect about—about Oliver Hobart's death.'
'Yes, I know.'
'Well—it wasn't Mr. Gideon.'
'You know that?' I said quickly. And a great relief flooded me. I hadn't known, until that moment, because I had driven it under, how large a part of my brain believed that Gideon had perhaps done this thing.
'Yes,' she whispered. 'I know it … Because I know—I know—who did it.'
In that moment I felt that I knew too, and that Gideon knew, and that I ought to have guessed all along.
I said nothing, but waited for the girl's next word, if she had a next word to say. It wasn't for me to question her.
And then, quite suddenly, she gave a little moan of misery and broke into passionate tears.
I waited for a moment, then I got up and poured her out a glass of water. It must have been pretty bad for her. It must have been pretty bad all this time, I thought, knowing this thing about her sister.
She drank the water, and became quieter.
'Do you want to tell me any more?' I asked her, presently.
'Oh, I do, I do. But it's so difficult … I don't know how to tell you…. Oh, God … It was I that killed him!'
'Yes?' I said, after a moment, gently, and without apparent surprise. One learns in parish work not to start, however much one may be startled. I merely added a legitimate inquiry. 'Why was that?'
She gulped. 'I want to tell you everything. I want to.'
I was sure she did. She had reached the familiar pouring-out stage. It was obviously going to be a relief to her to spread herself on the subject. I am pretty well used to being told everything, and at times a good deal more, and have learnt to discount much of it. I looked away from her and prepared to listen, and to give my mind to sifting, if I could, the fact from the fancy in her story. This is a special art, and one which all parsons do well to learn. I have heard my vicar on the subject of women's confessions.
'Women—women. Some of them will invent any crime—give themselves away with both hands—merely to make themselves interesting. Poor things, they don't realise how tedious sin is. One has to be on one's guard the whole time, with that kind.'
I deduced that Clare Potter might possibly be that kind. So I listened carefully, at first neither believing nor disbelieving.
'It's difficult to tell you,' she began, in a pathetic, unsteady voice. 'It hurts, rather …'
'No, I think not,' I corrected her. 'It's a relief, isn't it?'
She stared at me for a moment, then went on, 'Yes, I want to tell. But it hurts, all the same.'
I let her have it her own way; I couldn't press the point. She really thought it did hurt. I perceived that she had, like so many people, a confused mind.
'Go on,' I said.
'I must begin a long way back…. You see, before Oliver fell in love with Jane, he … he cared a little for me. He really did, Mr. Juke. And he made me care for him.' Her voice dropped to a whisper.
This was truth. I felt no doubt as to that.
'Then … then Jane came, and took him away from me. He fell in love with her … I thought my heart would break.'
I didn't protest against the phrase, or ask her to explain it, because she was unhappy. But I wish people wouldn't use it, because I don't know, and they don't know, what they mean by it. 'I thought I should be very unhappy,' is that the meaning? No, because they are already that. 'I thought my heart—the physical organ—would be injuriously affected to the point of rupture.' No; I do not believe that is what they mean. Frankly, I do not know. There should be a dictionary of the phrases in common use.
However, it would have been pedantic and unkind to ask Miss Potter, who could probably explain no phrases, to explain this.
She went on, crying a little again.
'I couldn't stop caring for him all at once. How could I? I suppose you'll despise me, Mr. Juke, but I just couldn't help going on loving him. It's once and for ever with me. Oh, I expect you think it was shameful of me!'
'Shameful? To love? No, why? It's human nature. You had bad luck, that's all.'
'Oh, I did…. Well, there it was, you see. He was married to Jane, and I cared for him so much that I could hardly bear to go to the house and see them together…. Oh, it wasn't my fault; he made me care, indeed he did. I'd never have begun for myself, I'm not that sort of girl, I never was, I know some girls do it, but I never could have. I suppose I'm too proud or something.'
She paused, but I made no comment. I never comment on the pride of which I am so often informed by those who possess it.
She resumed, 'Well, it went on and on, and I didn't seem to get to feel any better about it. And I hated Jane. Oh, I know that was wicked, of course.'
As she knew it, I again made no comment.
'And sometimes I think I hated him, when he thought of nothing but her and never at all of me…. Well, sometimes there was trouble between them, because Jane would do things and go about with people he didn't like. And especially Mr. Gideon. We none of us like Mr. Gideon at home, you know; we think he's awful. He's so rude, and has such silly opinions, and is so conceited and unkind. He's been awfully rude to father's papers always. And that horrid article he had in his silly paper about what he called 'Potterite Fiction,' mostly about mother's books—did you read it?'
'Yes. But Gideon didn't write it, you know. It was some one else.'
'Oh, well, it was in his paper, anyhow. And he thought it…. And, anyhow, what are books, to hurt people's feelings about?'
(A laudable sentiment, and one which should be illuminated as a text on the writing table of every reviewer.)
'Oh, of course I know he's a friend of yours,' she added. 'That's really why I came to you…. But we none of us like him at home. And Oliver couldn't stick him. And he begged Jane not to have anything more to do with him, but she would. She wrote in his paper, and she was always seeing him. And Oliver got more and more disgusted about it, and I couldn't bear to see him unhappy.'
'No?' I questioned.
She paused, checked by the interruption. Then, after a moment, she said, 'I suppose you mean I was glad really, because it came between them…. Well, I don't know…. Perhaps I was, then…. Well, wouldn't any one be?'
'Most people,' I agreed. 'Yes?'
She went on a little less fluently, of which I was glad. Fluency and accuracy are a bad pair. I would rather people stumbled and stammered out their stories than poured them.
'And I think he thought—Oliver thought—he began to suspect—that Mr. Gideon was—you know—in love with Jane. And I thought so too. And he thought Jane was careless about not discouraging him, and seeing so much of him and all. But I thought she was worse than that, and encouraged him, and didn't care…. Jane was always dreadfully selfish, you know….'
'And … that evening?' I prompted her, as she paused.
'Well, that evening,' she shuddered a little, and went on quickly. 'I'd been dining with a friend, and I was to sleep at Jane's. I got there soon after ten, and no one was in, so I went to my room to take my things off. Then I heard Jane come in, with Mr. Gideon. They went upstairs to the drawing-room, and I heard them talking there. My door was a little open, and I heard what they said. And he said …'
'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'you'd better not tell me what they said, since they thought they were alone. What do you think?'
'Oh, very well. There's no harm. I thought I'd better tell you everything. But as you like.' She was a little disappointed, but picked herself up and continued.
'Well, then I heard Oliver coming upstairs, and he stopped at the drawing-room door for a moment before they saw him, I think, because he didn't speak quite at once. Then he said, "Good evening," and they said, "Hallo," and they all began to be nasty—in their voices, you know. He said he'd obviously come home before he was expected, and then Jane went upstairs, pretending nothing was the matter—Jane never bothers about anything—and I heard Mr. Gideon come up to Oliver and ask him what he meant by that. And they talked just outside my door, and they were very disagreeable, but I suppose you don't want me to tell you what they said, so I won't. Anyhow it wasn't much, only Oliver gave Mr. Gideon to understand he wasn't to come there any more, and Mr. Gideon said he certainly had no intention of doing so. Oh, yes, and he said, "Damn you" rather loud. And then he went downstairs and left the house. I heard the door shut after him, then I came out of my room, and there was Oliver standing at the top of the stairs, looking as if he didn't see anything. He didn't seem to see me, even. I couldn't bear it, he was so white and angry and thinking of nothing but Jane, who wasn't worth thinking about, because she didn't care…. And then … I lost my head. I think I was mad … I'd felt awfully queer for a long time…. I couldn't bear it any more, his being unhappy about Jane and not even seeing me. I went up to him and said, "Oliver, I'm glad you've got rid of that horrid man."
'He stared at me and still didn't seem to see me. That somehow made me furious. I said, "Jane's much too fond of him…. She's always with him now…. They spent this evening together, you know, and came home together."
'Then he seemed to wake up, and he looked at me with a look I hadn't ever seen before, and it was as if the world was at an end, because I saw he hated me for saying that. And he said, "Kindly let my affairs and Jane's alone," in a horrible, sharp, cold voice. I couldn't bear it. It seemed to kill something in me; my love for him, perhaps. I went first cold then hot, and I was crazy with anger; I pushed him back out of the way to let me pass—I pushed him suddenly, and so hard that he lost his balance…. Oh, you know the rest…. He was standing at the top of those awful stairs—why are people allowed to make stairs like that?—and he reeled and fell backwards…. Oh, dear, oh, dear, and you know the rest….'
She was sobbing bitterly now.
'Yes, yes,' I said, 'I know the rest,' and I said no more for a time.
I was puzzled. That she had truly repeated what had passed between her and Hobart I believed. But whether she had pushed him, or whether he had lost his own balance, seemed to me still an open question. I had to consider two things—how best to help this girl, and how to get Gideon out of the mess as quickly and as quietly as possible. For both these things I had to get at the truth—if I could.
'Now, look here,' I said presently, 'is this story you've told me wholly true? Did it actually happen precisely like that? Please think for a moment and then tell me.'
But she didn't think, not even for a moment.
'Oh,' she sobbed, 'true! Why should I say it if it wasn't?'
Why indeed? I began to enumerate some possible reasons—an inaccurate habit of mind, a sensational imagination (both these misfortunes being hereditary), an egotistic craving for attention, even unfavourable attention—it might be any of these things, or all. But I hadn't got far before she broke in, 'Oh, God. I've not had a moment's peace since … I loved him, and I killed him…. I let them think it was an accident…. It was as if I was gagged, I couldn't speak. And after a bit, when it had all settled down, there didn't seem to be any reason why I should say anything…. I never thought, truly I never thought, that they'd ever suspect some one else…. And then, a little while ago, I heard mother saying something, to some one about Mr. Gideon, and last night Katherine Varick came and told Jane people were saying it everywhere. And this morning there was that piece in the Haste. … Oh! what shall I do?'
'You don't really,' I said, 'feel any doubt about that. Do you?'
She lifted her wet, puckered face and stared at me, and I saw that, for the moment at least, she was not thinking of herself at all, but only of her tragedy and her problem.
'You mean,' she whispered, 'that I must tell …'
'It's rather obvious, isn't it,' I said gently, because I was horribly sorry for her. 'You must tell the truth, whatever it is.'
'And be tried for murder—or manslaughter? Appear in the docks?' she quavered, her frightened brown eyes large and round.
'I don't think it would come to that. All you have to do is to tell your parents. Your father is responsible for the stuff in the papers, and your mother, I gather, for the spreading of the story personally. Your confession to them would stop that. They would withdraw, retract what they have said, and say publicly that they were mistaken, that the evidence they thought they had, had been proved false. Then it would be generally assumed again that the thing was an accident, and the talk would die down. No one need ever know but your parents and myself. I am bound, and they would choose, not to repeat it to any one.'
'Not to Jane?' she questioned.
'Well, what does Jane think at present? Does she suspect?'
She shook her head. 'I don't know. Jane's been rather queer all day…. I've sometimes thought she suspected something. Only if she did, I believe she'd have told me. Jane doesn't consider people's feelings, you know; she'd say anything, however awful…. Only she's deep, too. Not like me. I must have things out; she'll keep them dark, sometimes…. No, I don't know what Jane thinks, really I don't.'
I didn't know either. Another thing I didn't know was what Gideon thought. They might both suspect Clare, and this might have tied Gideon's hands; he might have shrunk from defending himself at the expense of a frightened, unhappy girl and Jane's sister.
But this wasn't my business.
'Well,' I said, 'you may find you have to tell Jane. Perhaps, in a way, you owe it to Jane to tell her. But the essential thing is that you should tell your parents. That's quite necessary, of course. And you should do it at once—this evening, directly you get home. Every minute lost makes the thing worse. I think you should catch the next train back to Potter's Bar. You see, what you say may affect what is in to-morrow morning's papers. This thing has to be stopped at once, before further damage is done.'
She looked at me palely, her hands twisting convulsively in and out of each other. I saw her, for all her seven or eight-and-twenty years, as a weak, frightened child, ignorant, like a child, of the mischief she was doing to others, concerned, like a child, with her own troubles and fears and the burden on her own conscience. I was inclined now to believe in that push.
'Oh,' she whimpered, 'I daren't…. All this time I've said nothing…. How can I, now? It's too awful … too difficult …'
I looked at her in silence.
'What's your proposal, then?' I asked her. I may have sounded hard and unkind, but I didn't feel so; I was immensely sorry for her. Only, I believe a certain amount of hard practicality is the only wholesome treatment to apply to emotional and wordy people. One has to make them face facts, put everything in terms of action. If she had come to me for advice, she should have it. If she had come to me merely to get relief by unburdening her tortured conscience, she should find the burden doubled unless she took the only possible way out.
She looked this way and that, with scared, hunted eyes.
'I thought perhaps … they might be made to think it was an accident …'
'How?'
'Well, you see, I could tell them that he'd left the house—Mr. Gideon, I mean—before Oliver … fell. That would be true. I could say I heard Mr. Gideon go, and heard Oliver fall afterwards. That's what I thought I'd say. Then he'd be cleared, wouldn't he?'
'Why haven't you,' I asked, 'said this already, directly you knew that Gideon was suspected?'
'I—I didn't like,' she faltered. 'I wanted to ask some one's advice. I wanted to know what you thought.'
'I've told you,' I answered her, 'what I think. It's more than thinking. I know. You've got to tell them the exact truth whatever it is. There's really no question about it. You couldn't go to them with a half true story … could you?'
'I don't know,' she sighed, pinching her fingers together nervously.
'You do know. It would be impossible. You couldn't lie about a thing like that. You've got to tell the truth…. Not all you've told me, if you don't want to—but simply that you pushed him, in impatience, not meaning to hurt him, and that he fell. It's quite simple really, if you do it at once. It won't be if you leave it until the thing has gone further and Gideon is perhaps arrested. You'd have to tell the public the story then. Now it's easy…. No, I beg your pardon, it's not easy; I know that. It's very hard. But there it is: it's got to be done, and done at once.'
She listened in silence, drooping and huddled together. I was reminded pitifully of some soft little animal, caught in a trap and paralysed with fear.
'Oh,' she gasped, 'I must, I must, I know I must. But it's difficult …'
I'm not going to repeat the things I said. They were the usual truisms, and one has to say them. I had accepted her story now: it seemed simpler. The complex part of the business was that at one moment I was simply persuading a frightened and reluctant girl to do the straight and decent and difficult thing, and at the next I was wasting words on an egotist (we're all that, after all) who was subconsciously enjoying the situation and wanting to prolong it. One feels the difference always, and it is that duplicity of aim in seekers after advice that occasionally makes one cruel and hard, because it seems the only profitable method.
It must have been ten minutes before I wrung out of her a faltering but definite, 'I'll do it.'
Then I stood up. There was no more time to be wasted.
'What train can you get?' I asked her.
'I don't know…. The 7.30, perhaps.' She rose, too, her little wet crumpled handkerchief still in her hand. I saw she had something else to say.
'I've been so miserable …'
'Well, of course.'
'It's been on my mind so …'
What things people of this type give themselves the trouble of saying!
'Well, it will be off your mind now,' I suggested.
'Will it? But it will still be there—the awful thing I did. I ought to confess it, oughtn't I, and get absolution? I do make my confession, you know, but I've never told this, not properly. I know I ought to have done, but I couldn't get it out ever—I put it so that the priest couldn't understand. I suppose it was awfully mean and cowardly of me, and I ought to confess it properly.'
But I couldn't go into that question, not being entirely sure even now what she ought to confess. I merely said, 'Well, why make confessions at all if you don't make them properly?'
She only gave her little soft quivering sigh. It was too difficult a question for her to answer. And, after all, a foolish one to ask. Why do we do all the hundreds of things that we don't do properly? Reasons are many and motives mixed.
I walked with her to the King's Cross bus and saw her into it. We shook hands as we parted, and hers was hot and clinging. I saw that she was all tense and strung up.
'Good-bye,' she whispered. 'And thank you ever so much for being so good to me. I'll do what you told me to-night. If it kills me, I will.'
'That's good,' I returned. 'But it won't kill you, you know.'
I smiled at her as she got on to the bus, and she smiled pitifully back.
5
I walked back to my rooms. I felt rather tired, and had a queer feeling of having hammered away on something soft and yielding and yet unbreakable, like putty. I felt sick at having been so hard, and sick too that she was so soft. Sick of words, and phrases, and facile emotions, and situations, and insincerities, and Potterisms—and yet with an odd tide of hope surging through the sickness, because of human nature, which is so mixed that natural cowards will sometimes take a steep and hard way where they might take an easy one, and because we all, in the middle of our egotism and vanity and self-seeking, are often sorry for what we have done. Really sorry, beneath all the cheap penitence which leads nowhere. So sorry that we sometimes cannot bear it any more, and will break up our own lives to make amends….
And if, at the same time, we watch our sorrow and our amends, and see it as drama and as interesting—well, after all, it is drama and it is interesting, so why not? We can't all be clear and steely unsentimentalists like Katherine Varick.
One has to learn to bear sentimentalism. In parishes (which are the world) one has to endure it, accept it. It is part of the general muddle and mess.
6
I got a Daily Haste next morning early, together with the Pink Pictorial, the illustrated Pinkerton daily. I looked through them quickly. There was no reference to the Hobart Mystery. I was relieved. Clare Potter had kept her word, then—or anyhow had said enough to clear Gideon (I wasn't going further than that about her; I had done my utmost to make her do the straight thing in the straight way, and must leave the rest to her), and the Pinkertons were withdrawing. They would have, later, to withdraw more definitely than by mere abstaining from further accusation (I intended to see to that, if no one else did), but this was a beginning. It was, no doubt, all that Pinkerton had been able to arrange last night over the telephone.
It would have interested me to have been present at that interview between Clare and her parents. I should like to have seen Pinkerton provided by his innocent little daughter with the sensation of his life, and Leila Yorke, the author of Falsely Accused forced to realise her own abominable mischief-making; forced also to realise that her messages from the other side had been as lacking in accuracy as, unfortunately, messages from this side, too, so often are. I hoped the affair Hobart would be a lesson to both Pinkertons. But, like most of the lessons set before us in this life, I feared it would be a lesson unlearnt.
Anyhow, Pinkerton was prompt and business like in his methods. His evening paper contained a paragraph to this effect:—
'DEATH OF MR HOBART
'NOW CONSIDERED ACCIDENTAL
'FOUL PLAY NOT SUSPECTED
'The investigation into the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of Mr. Oliver Hobart, the late editor of the Daily Haste, have resulted in conclusive evidence that the tragedy was due to Mr. Hobart's accidental stumbling and falling. His fall, which was audible to the other inmates of the house, took place after the departure of Mr. Arthur Gideon, with whom he had been talking. A statement to this effect has been made by Miss Clare Potter, who was staying in the house at the time, and who was at the time of the inquest too much prostrated by the shock to give evidence.'
It was a retraction all right, and all that could be expected of the Pinkerton Press. In its decision and emphasis I read scare.
I didn't give much more thought just then to the business. I was pretty busy with meetings and committees, and with rehearsals of A New Way to pay Old Debts, which we were playing to the parish in a week. I had stage-managed it at Oxford once, and had got some of the same people together, and it was going pretty well but needed a good deal of attention. I had, too, to go away from town for a day or two, on some business connected with the Church Congress. Church Congresses keep an incredible number of people busy about them beforehand; besides all the management of committees and programmes and side-shows, there is the management of all the people of divergent views who won't meet each other, such as Mr. George Lansbury and Mr. Athelstan Riley. (Not that this delicate task fell to me; I was only concerned with Life and Liberty.)
On the day after I came back I met Jane at the club, after lunch. She came over and sat down by me.
'Hallo,' she said. 'Have you been seeing the Haste?'
'I have. It's been more interesting lately than my own paper.'
'Yes…. So Arthur's acquitted without a stain on his character. Poor mother's rather sick about it. She thought she'd had a Message, you know. That frightful Ayres woman had a vision in a glass ball of Arthur knocking Oliver downstairs. I expect you heard. Every one did…. Mother went round to see her about it the other day, but she still sticks to it. Poor mother doesn't know what to make of it. Either the ball lied, or the Ayres woman lied, or Clare is lying. She's forced to the conclusion that it was the Ayres. So they've had words. I expect they'll make it up before long. But at present there's rather a slump in Other Side business…. And she wrote a letter of apology to Arthur. Father made her, he was so afraid Arthur would bring a libel action.'
'Why didn't he?' I asked, wondering, first, how much of the truth either Arthur or Jane had suspected all this time, and, secondly, how much they now knew.
Jane looked at me with her guarded, considering glance.
'Well,' she said, 'I don't mind your knowing. You'd better not let on to him that I told you, though; he mightn't like it. The fact is, Arthur thought I'd done it. He thought it was because my manner was so queer, as if I was trying to hush it up. I was. You see, I thought Arthur had done it. It seemed so awfully likely. Because, I left them quarrelling. And Arthur's got an awfully bad temper. And his manner was so queer. We never talked it out, till two days ago; we avoided talking to each other at all, almost, after the first. But on that first morning, when he came round to see me, we somehow succeeded in diddling one another, because we were each so anxious to shield the other and hush it all up…. Clare might have saved us both quite a lot of worrying if she'd spoken out at once and said it was … an accident.'
Jane's voice was so unemotional, her face and manner so calm, that she is a very dark horse sometimes. I couldn't tell for certain whether she had nearly instead of 'an accident' said 'her,' or whether she had spoken in good faith. I couldn't tell how much she knew, or had been told, or guessed.
I said, 'I suppose she didn't realise till lately that any one was likely to be suspected,' and Jane acquiesced.
'Clare's funny,' she said, after a moment.
'People are,' I generalised.
'She has a muddled mind,' said Jane.
'People often have.'
'You never know,' said Jane thoughtfully, 'how much to believe of what she says.'
'No? I dare say she doesn't quite know herself.'
'She does not,' said Jane. 'Poor old Clare.'
We necessarily left it at that, since Jane didn't, of course, mean to tell me what story Clare had told of that evening's happenings, and I couldn't tell Jane the one Clare had told me. I didn't imagine I should ever be wiser than I was now on the subject, and it certainly wasn't my business any more.
When I met Clare Potter by chance, a week or two later, on the steps of the National Gallery with another girl, she flushed, bowed, and passed me quickly. That was natural enough, after our last interview.
Queer, that those two girls should be sisters. They were an interesting study to me. Clare, shallow, credulous, weak in the intelligence, conventional, emotional, sensitive, of the eternal type of orthodox and timid woman, with profound powers of passion, and that touch of melodrama, that sense of a situation, which might lead her along strange paths…. And Jane, level-headed, clear-brained, hard, calm, straight-thinking, cynical, an egotist to her finger-tips, knowing what she wanted and going for it, tough in the conscience, and ignorant of love except in its crudest form of desire for the people and things which ministered to her personal happiness….
It struck me that the two represented two sides of Potterism—the intellectual and moral. Clare, the ignorant, muddle-headed sentimentalist; Jane, reacting against this, but on her part grabbing and exploiting. Their attitude towards truth (that bugbear of Potterism) was typical; Clare couldn't see it; Jane saw it perfectly clearly, and would reject it without hesitation if it suited her book. Clare was like her mother, only with better, simpler stuff in her; Jane was rather like her father in her shrewd native wit, only, while he was vulgar in his mind, she was only vulgar in her soul.
Of one thing I was sure: they would both be, on the whole, satisfied with life, Jane because she would get what she wanted, Clare because she would be content with little. Clare would inevitably marry; as inevitably, she would love her husband and her children, and come to regard her passion for Oliver Hobart and its tragic sequel as a romantic episode of girlhood, a sort of sowing of wild oats before the real business of life began. And Jane would, I presumed, ultimately marry Gideon, who was too good for her, altogether too fine and too good. For Gideon was direct and keen and passionate, and loved and hated cleanly, and thought finely and acutely. Gideon wasn't greedy; he took life and its pleasures and triumphs and amusements in his stride, as part of the day's work; he didn't seek them out for their own sakes. Gideon lived for causes and beliefs and ideals. He was temperamentally Christian, though he didn't happen to believe Christian dogma. He had his alloy, like other people, of ambition and selfishness, but so much less than, for instance, I have, that it is absurd that he should be the agnostic and I the professing Christian.
7
The Christian Church. Sometimes one feels that it is a fantasy, the flaming ideal one has for it. One thinks of it as a fire, a sword, an army with banners marching against dragons; one doesn't see how such power can be withstood, be the dragons never so strong. And then one looks round and sees it instead as a frail organisation of the lame, the halt, and the blind, a tepid organisation of the satisfied, the bourgeois, the conventionally genteel, a helpless organisation of the ignorant, the half-witted, the stupid; an organisation full to the brim of cant, humbug, timid orthodoxy, unreality, self-content, and all kinds of Potterism—and one doesn't see how it can overcome anything whatever.
What is the truth? Where, between these two poles, does the actual church stand? Or does it, like most of us its members, swing to and from between them, touching now one, now the other? A Potterite church—yes; because we are most of us Potterites. An anti-Potterite church—yes, again; because at its heart is something sharp and clean and fine and direct, like a sword, which will not let us be contented Potterites, but which is for ever goading us out of ourselves, pricking us out of our trivial satisfactions and our egotistic discontents.
I suppose the fact is that the Church can only work on the material it finds, and do a little here and a little there. It would be a sword in the hands of such men as Gideon; on the other hand, it can't do much with the Clare Potters. The real thing frightens them if ever they see it; the sham thing they mould to their own liking, till it is no more than a comfortable shelter from the storms of life. It is the world's Potters who have taken the Church and spoilt it, degraded it to the poor dull thing it is. It is the Potterism in all of us which at every turn checks and drags it down. Personally, I can forgive Potterism everything but that.
