The Man Who Lost Himself
by H. De Vere Stacpoole · English · Gutenberg #23988 · 388,499 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Man Who Lost Himself
Author: H. De Vere Stacpoole
Release date: December 23, 2007 [eBook #23988]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23988
Credits: E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF
by
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
Author of "Sea Plunder," "The Gold Trail,"
"The Blue Lagoon," Etc.
New York: John Lane Company
Toronto: S. B. Gundy :: MCMXVIII
Copyright, 1917-1918
by Street & Smith
Copyright, 1918
by John Lane Company
The Plimpton Press
Norwood Mass U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Jones 9
II. The Stranger 14
III. Dinner and After 18
IV. Carlton House Terrace 20
V. The Point of the Joke 38
PART II
VI. The Net 45
VII. Luncheon 52
VIII. Mr. Voles 61
IX. More Intruders 74
X. Lady Plinlimon 85
XI. The Coal Mine 94
XII. The Girl in the Victoria 104
XIII. Teresa 119
PART III
XIV. The Attack 125
XV. The Attack (Continued) 131
XVI. A Wild Surprise 136
XVII. The Second Honeymoon 148
XVIII. The Mental Trap 158
XIX. Escape Closed 164
XX. The Family Council 179
XXI. Hoover's 200
XXII. An Interlude 212
XXIII. Smithers 222
XXIV. He Runs to Earth 230
XXV. Moths 234
XXVI. A Tramp, and Other Things 241
XXVII. The Only Man in the World Who Would Believe Him 264
XXVIII. Pebblemarsh 274
XXIX. The Blighted City 283
XXX. A Just Man Angered 289
XXXI. He Finds Himself 294
THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF
PART I
CHAPTER I
JONES
It was the first of June, and Victor Jones of Philadelphia was seated in
the lounge of the Savoy Hotel, London, defeated in his first really
great battle with the thing we call life.
Though of Philadelphia, Jones was not an American, nor had he anything
of the American accent. Australian born, he had started life in a bank
at Melbourne, gone to India for a trading house, started for himself,
failed, and become a rolling stone. Philadelphia was his last halt.
With no financial foundation, Victor and a Philadelphia gentleman had
competed for a contract to supply the British Government with Harveyised
steel struts, bolts, and girders; he had come over to London to press
the business; he had interviewed men in brass hats, slow moving men who
had turned him over to slower moving men. The Stringer Company, for so
he dubbed himself and Aaron Stringer, who had financed him for the
journey, had wasted three weeks on the business, and this morning their
tender had been rejected. Hardmans', the Pittsburg people, had got the
order.
It was a nasty blow. If he and Stringer could have secured the contract,
they could have carried it through all right, Stringer would have put
the thing in the hands of Laurenson of Philadelphia, and their
commission would have been enormous, a stroke of the British
Government's pen would have filled their pockets; failing that they were
bankrupt. At least Jones was.
And justifiably you will say, considering that the whole business was a
gigantic piece of bluff--well, maybe, yet on behalf of this bluffer I
would put it forward that he had risked everything on one deal, and that
this was no little failure of his, but a disaster, naked and complete.
He had less than ten pounds in his pocket and he owed money at the
Savoy. You see he had reckoned on doing all his business in a week, and
if it failed--an idea which he scarcely entertained--on getting back
third class to the States. He had not reckoned on the terrible expenses
of London, or the three weeks delay.
Yesterday he had sent a cable to Stringer for funds, and had got as a
reply: "Am waiting news of contract."
Stringer was that sort of man.
He was thinking about Stringer now, as he sat watching the guests of the
Savoy, Americans and English, well to do people with no money worries,
so he fancied. He was thinking about Stringer and his own position,
with less than ten pounds in his pocket, an hotel bill unreceipted, and
three thousand miles of deep water between himself and Philadelphia.
Jones was twenty-four years of age. He looked thirty. A serious faced,
cadaverous individual, whom, given three guesses you would have judged
to be a Scotch free kirk minister in mufti; an actor in the melodramatic
line; a food crank. These being the three most serious occupations in
the world.
In reality, he had started life, as before said, in a bank, educated
himself in mathematics and higher commercial methods, by correspondence,
and, aiming to be a millionaire, had left the bank and struck out for
himself in the great tumbling ocean of business.
He had glimpsed the truth. Seen the fact that the art of life is not so
much to work oneself as to make other people work for one, to convert by
one's own mental energy, the bodily energy of others into products or
actions. Had this Government contract come off, he would have, and to
his own profit, set a thousand hammers swinging, a dozen steel mills
rolling, twenty ships lading, hammers, mills and ships he had never
seen, never would see.
That is the magic of business, and when you behold roaring towns and
humming wharves, when you read of raging battles, you see and read of
the work of a comparatively small number of men, gentlemen who wear
frock coats, who have never handled a bale, or carried a gun, or steered
a ship with their own hands. Magicians!
He ordered a whisky and soda from a passing attendant, to help him
think some more about Stringer and his own awful position, and was
taking the glass from the salver when a very well dressed man of his own
age and build who had entered by the passage leading up from the
American bar drew his attention.
This man's face seemed quite familiar to him, so much so that he started
in his chair as though about to rise and greet him. The stranger, also,
seemed for a second under the same obsession, but only for a second; he
made a half pause and then passed on, becoming lost to sight beyond the
palm trees at the entrance. Jones leaned back in his chair.
"Now, _where_ did I see that guy before?" asked he of himself. "Where on
earth have I met him? and he recognised me--where in the--where in
the--where in the--?"
His memory vaguely and vainly searching for the name to go with that
face was at fault. He finished his whisky and soda and rose, and then
strolled off not heeding much in what direction, till he reached the
book and newspaper stand where he paused to inspect the wares, turning
over the pages of the latest best seller without imbibing a word of the
text.
Then he found himself downstairs in the American bar, with a champagne
cocktail before him.
Jones was an abstemious man, as a rule, but he had a highly strung
nervous system and it had been worked up. The unaccustomed whiskey and
soda had taken him in its charge, comforting him and conducting his
steps, and now the bar keeper, a cheery person, combined with the
champagne cocktail, the cheeriest of drinks, so raised his spirits and
warmed his optimism, that, having finished his glass he pushed it across
the counter and said, "Give me another."
At this moment a gentleman who had just entered the bar came up to the
counter, placed half a crown upon it and was served by the assistant bar
keeper with a glass of sherry.
Jones, turning, found himself face to face with the stranger whom he had
seen in the lounge, the stranger whose face he knew but whose name he
could not remember in the least.
Jones was a direct person, used to travel and the forming of chance
acquaintanceships. He did not hang back.
"'Scuse me," said he. "I saw you in the lounge and I'm sure I've met you
somewhere or another, but I can't place you."
CHAPTER II
THE STRANGER
The stranger, taking his change from the assistant bar tender, laughed.
"Yes," said he, "you have seen me before, often, I should think. Do you
mean to say you don't know where?"
"Nope," said Jones--he had acquired a few American idioms--"I'm clear
out of my reckoning--are you an American?"
"No, I'm English," replied the other. "This is very curious, you don't
recognise me, well--well--well--let's sit down and have a talk, maybe
recollection will come to you--give it time--it is easier to think
sitting down than standing up."
Now as Jones turned to take his seat at the table indicated by the
stranger, he noticed that the bar keeper and his assistant were looking
at him as though he had suddenly become an object of more than ordinary
interest.
The subtlety of human facial expression stands unchallenged, and the
faces of these persons conveyed the impression to Jones that the
interest he had suddenly evoked in their minds had in it a link with the
humorous.
When he looked again, however, having taken his seat, they were both
washing glasses with the solemnity of undertakers.
"I thought those guys were laughing at me," said Jones, "seems I was
wrong, and all the better for them--well, now, let's get to the bottom
of this tangle--who are you, anyway?"
"Just a friend," replied the other, "I'll tell you my name presently,
only I want you to think it out for yourself. Talk about yourself and
then, maybe, you'll arrive at it. Who are you?"
"Me," cried Jones, "I'm Victor Jones of Philadelphia. I'm the partner of
a skunk by name of Stringer. I'm the victim of a British government that
doesn't know the difference between tin plate and Harveyised steel. I'm
a man on the rocks."
The flood gates of his wrath were opened and everything came out,
including the fact of his own desperate position.
When he had finished the only remark of the stranger was:
"Have another."
"Not on your life," cried Jones. "I ought to be making tracks for the
consul or somewhere to get my passage back to the States--well--I don't
know. No--no more cocktails. I'll have a sherry, same as you."
The sherry having been despatched, the stranger rose, refusing a return
drink just at that moment.
"Come into the lounge with me," said he, "I want to tell you something I
can't tell you here."
They passed up the stairs, the stranger leading the way, Jones
following, slightly confused in his mind but full of warmth at his
heart, and with a buoyancy of spirit beyond experience. Stringer was
forgotten, the British Government was forgotten, contracts, hotel bills,
steerage journeys to the States, all these were forgotten. The warmth,
the sumptuous rooms, and the golden lamps of the Savoy were sufficient
for the moment, and as he sank into an easy chair and lit a cigarette,
even his interest in the stranger and what he had to say was for a
moment dimmed and diminished by the fumes that filled his brain, and the
ease that lapped his senses.
"What I have to say is this," said the stranger, leaning forward in his
chair. "When I saw you here some time ago, I recognised you at once as a
person I knew, but, as you put it, I could not place you. But when I got
into the main hall a mirror at once told me. You are, to put it frankly,
my twin image."
"I beg your pardon," said Jones, the word image shattering his
complacency. "Your twin which do you say?"
"Image, likeness, counterpart--I mean no offence--turn round and glance
at that mirror behind you."
Jones did, and saw the stranger, and the stranger was himself. Both men
belonged to a fairly common type, but the likeness went far beyond
that--they were identical. The same hair and colour of hair, the same
features, shape of head, ears and colour of eyes, the same serious
expression of countenance.
Absolute likeness between two human beings is almost as rare as
absolute likeness between two pebbles on a beach, yet it occurs, as in
the case of M. de Joinville and others well known and confirmed, and
when I say absolute likeness, I mean likeness so complete that a close
acquaintance cannot distinguish the difference between the duplicates.
When nature does a trick like this, she does it thoroughly, for it has
been noticed--but more especially in the case of twins--the likeness
includes the voice, or at least its timbre, the thyroid cartilage and
vocal chords following the mysterious law that rules the duplication.
Jones' voice and the voice of the stranger might have been the same as
far as pitch and timbre were concerned, the only difference was in the
accent, and that was slight.
"Well, I'm d-d-d--," said Jones.
He turned to the other and then back to the mirror.
"Extraordinary, isn't it?" said the other. "I don't know whether I ought
to apologise to you or you to me. My name is Rochester."
Jones turned from the mirror, the two champagne cocktails, the whisky
and the sherry were accommodating his unaccustomed brain to support this
most unaccustomed situation. The thing seemed to him radiantly humorous,
yet if he had known it there was very little humour in the matter.
"We must celebrate this," said Jones, calling an attendant and giving
him explicit orders as to the means.
CHAPTER III
DINNER AND AFTER
A small bottle of Böllinger was the means, and the celebration was
mostly done by Jones, for it came about that this stranger, Rochester,
whilst drinking little himself, managed by some method to keep up in
gaiety and in consequence of mind with the other, though every now and
then he would fall away from the point, as a ship without a steersman
falls away from the wind, and lapse for a moment into what an acute
observer might have deemed to be the fundamental dejection of his real
nature.
However, these lapses were only momentary, and did not interfere at all
with the gay spirits of his companion, who having found a friend in the
midst of the loneliness of London, and his twin image in the person of
that friend, was now pouring out his heart on every sort of subject,
always returning, and with the regularity of a pendulum to the fact of
the likeness, and the same question and statement.
"What's this, your name? Rochester! well, 'pon my soul this beats me."
Presently, the Bollinger finished, Jones found himself outside the Savoy
with this new found friend, walking in the gas lit Strand, and then,
without any transition rememberable, he found himself seated at dinner
in a private room of a French restaurant in Soho.
Afterwards he could remember parts of that dinner quite distinctly. He
could remember the chicken and salad, and a rum omelette, at which he
had laughed because it was on fire. He could remember Rochester's
gaiety, and a practical joke of some sort played on the waiter by
Rochester and ending in smashed plates--he could remember remonstrating
with the latter over his wild conduct. These things he could remember
afterwards, and also a few others--a place like Heaven--which was the
Leicester Lounge, and a place like the other place which was Leicester
Square.
A quarrel with a stranger, about what he could not tell, a taxi cab, in
which he was seated listening to Rochester's voice giving directions to
the driver, minute directions as to where he, Jones, was to be driven.
A lamp lit hall, and stairs up which he was being led.
Nothing more.
CHAPTER IV
CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE
He awoke from sleep in bed in the dark, with his mind clear as crystal
and hot shame clutching at his throat. Rochester was the first
recollection that came to him, and it was a recollection tinged with
evil. He felt like a man who had supped with the devil. Led by Rochester
he had made a fool of himself, he had made a brute of himself, how would
he face the hotel people? And what had he done with the last of his
money?
These thoughts held him motionless for a few terrific moments. Then he
clapped his hand to his unfortunate head, turned on his side, and lay
gazing into the darkness. It had all come back to him clearly.
Rochester's wild conduct, the dinner, the smashed plates, the quarrel.
He was afraid to get up and search in his pockets, he guessed their
condition. He occupied himself instead, trying to imagine what would
become of him without money and without friends in this wilderness of
London. With ten pounds he might have done something; without, what
could he do? Nothing, unless it were manual labour, and he did not know
where to look for that.
Then Rochester, never from his mind, came more fully before him--that
likeness, was it real, or only a delusion of alcohol? And what else had
Rochester done? He seemed mad enough to have done anything, plum
crazy--would he, Jones, be held accountable for Rochester's deeds? He
was fighting with this question when a clock began to strike in the
darkness and close to the bed, nine delicate and silvery strokes, that
brought a sudden sweat upon the forehead of Jones.
He was not in his room at the Savoy. There was no clock in the Savoy bed
room, and no clock in any hotel ever spoke in tones like these. On the
sound, as if from a passage outside, he heard a voice:
"Took all his money, and sent him home in another chap's clothes."
Then came the sound of a soft step crossing the carpet, the sound of
curtain rings moving--then a blind upshrivelled letting the light of day
upon a room never before seen by Jones, a Jacobean bed room, severe, but
exquisite in every detail.
The man who had pulled the blind string, and whose powerful profile was
silhouetted against the light, showed to the sun a face highly but
evenly coloured, as though by the gentle painting of old port wine,
through a long series of years and ancestors. The typical colour of the
old fashioned English Judge, Bishop, and Butler.
He was attired in a black morning coat, and his whole countenance, make,
build and appearance had something grave and archiepiscopal most holding
to the eye and imagination.
It terrified Jones, who, breathing now as though asleep, watched
through closed eyelids whilst the apparition, with pursed lips, dealt
with the blind of the other window.
This done, it passed to the door, conferred in muted tones with some
unseen person, and returned bearing in its hands a porcelain early
morning tea service.
Having placed this on the table by the bed, the apparition vanished,
closing the door.
Jones sat up and looked around him.
His clothes had disappeared. He always hung his trousers on the bed post
at the end of his bed and placed his other things on a chair, but
trousers or other things were nowhere visible, they had been spirited
away. It was at this moment that he noticed the gorgeous silk pyjamas he
had got on. He held out his arm and looked at the texture and pattern.
Then, in a flash came comfort and understanding. He was in Rochester's
house. Rochester must have sent him here last night. That apparition was
Rochester's man servant. The vision of Rochester turned from an evil
spirit to an angel, and filled with a warm sensation of friendliness
towards the said Rochester he was in the act of pouring out a cup of
tea, when the words he had heard spoken in the passage outside came back
to him.
"Took all his money, and sent him home in another chap's clothes."
What did that mean?
He finished pouring out the tea and drank it; there was thin bread and
butter on a plate but he disregarded it. Whose money had been taken,
and who had been sent home in another chap's clothes?
Did those words apply to him or to Rochester? Had Rochester been robbed?
Might he, Jones, be held accountable?
A deep uneasiness and a passionate desire for his garments begotten of
these queries, brought him out of bed and on to the floor. He came to
the nearer window and looked out. The window gave upon the Green Park, a
cheerful view beneath the sky of a perfect summer's morning. He turned
from the window, and crossing the room opened the door through which the
apparition had vanished. A thickly carpeted corridor lay outside, a
corridor silent as the hypogeum of the Apis, secretive, gorgeous, with
tasseled silk curtains and hanging lamps. Jones judged these lamps to be
of silver and worth a thousand dollars apiece. He had read the Arabian
Nights when a boy, and like a waft now from the garden of Aladdin came a
vague something stirring his senses and disturbing his practical nature.
He wanted his clothes. This silent gorgeousness had raised the desire
for his garments to a passion. He wanted to get into his boots and face
the world and face the worst. Swinging lamps of silver, soft carpets,
silken curtains, only served to heighten his sensitiveness as to his
apparel and whole position.
He came back into the room. His anger was beginning to rise, the nervous
anger of a man who has made a fool of himself, upon whom a jest is being
played, and who finds himself in a false position.
Seeing an electric button by the fire place he went to it and pressed it
twice, hard, then he opened the second door of the room and found a bath
room.
A Pompeian bath room with tassellated floor, marble walls and marble
ceiling. The bath was sunk in the floor. Across hot water pipes, plated
with silver, hung towels of huck-a-back, white towels with cardinal red
fringes. Here too, most un-Pompeian stood a wonderful dressing table,
one solid slab of glass, with razors set out, manicure instruments,
brushes, powder pots, scent bottles.
Jones came into this place, walked round it like a cat in a strange
larder, gauged the depth of the bath, glanced at the things on the
table, and was in the act of picking up one of the manicure implements,
when a sound from the bed room drew his attention.
Someone was moving about there.
Someone who seemed altering the position of chairs and arranging things.
He judged it to be the servant who had answered the bell; he considered
that it was better to have the thing out now, and have done with it. He
wanted a full explanation, and bravely, but with the feelings of a man
who is entering a dental parlour, he came to the bath room door.
A pale faced, agile-looking young man with glossy black hair, a young
man in a sleeved waistcoat, a young man carrying a shirt and set of pink
silk undergarments over his left arm, was in the act of placing a pair
of patent leather boots with kid tops upon the floor. A gorgeous
dressing gown lay upon the bed. It had evidently been placed there by
the agile one.
Jones had intended to ask explanations. That intention shrivelled,
somehow, in the act of speech. What he uttered was a very mildly framed
request.
"Er--can I have my clothes, please?" said Jones.
"Yes, my Lord," replied the other. "I am placing them out."
The instantaneous anger raised by the patent fact that he was being
guyed by the second apparition was as instantly checked by the
recollection of Rochester. Here was another practical joke. This house
was evidently Rochester's--the whole thing was plain. Well, he would
show that tricky spirit how he could take a joke and turn it on the
maker. Like Brer Rabbit he determined to lie low.
He withdrew into the bath room and sat down on the rush bottomed chair
by the table, his temper coiled, and ready to fly out like a spring. He
was seated like this, curling his toes and nursing his resolve, when the
Agile One, with an absolute gravity that disarmed all anger, entered
with the dressing gown. He stood holding it up, and Jones, rising, put
it on. Then the A. O. filled the bath, trying the temperature with a
thermometer, and so absorbed in his business that he might have been
alone.
The bath filled, he left the room, closing the door.
He had thrown some crystals into the water, scenting it with a perfume
fragrant and refreshing, the temperature was just right, and as Jones
plunged and wallowed and lay half floating, supporting himself by the
silver plated rails arranged for that purpose, the idea came to him
that if the practical joke were to continue as pleasantly as it had
begun, he, for one, would not grumble.
Soothed by the warmth his mind took a clearer view of things.
If this were a jest of Rochester's, as most certainly it was, where lay
the heart of it? Every joke has its core, and the core of this one was
most evidently the likeness between himself and Rochester.
If Rochester were a Lord and if this were his house, and if Rochester
had sent him--Jones--home like a bundle of goods, then the extraordinary
likeness would perhaps deceive the servants and maybe other people as
well. That would be a good joke, promising all sorts of funny
developments. Only it was not a joke that any man of self respect would
play. But Rochester, from those vague recollections of his antics, did
not seem burdened with self respect. He seemed in his latter
developments crazy enough for anything.
If he had done this, then the servants were not in the business; they
would be under the delusion that he, Jones, was Rochester, doped and
robbed and dressed in another man's clothes and sent home.
Rochester, turning up later in the morning, would have a fine feast of
humour to sit down to.
This seemed plain. The born practical joker coming on his own twin image
could not resist making use of it. This explanation cleared the
situation, but it did not make it a comfortable one. If the servants
discovered the imposition before the arrival of Rochester things would
be unpleasant. He must act warily, get downstairs and escape from the
place as soon as possible. Later on he would settle with Rochester. The
servants, if they were not partners in the joke, had taken him on his
face value, his voice had evidently not betrayed him. He felt sure on
this point. He left the bath and, drying himself, donned the dressing
gown. Tooth paste and a tooth brush stood on a glass tray by a little
basin furnished with hot and cold water taps, and now, so strangely are
men constituted, the main facts of his position were dwarfed for a
second by the consideration that he had no tooth brush of his own.
Just that little thing brought his energies to a focus and his growing
irritation.
He, opened the bed-room door. The glossy haired one was putting links in
the sleeves of a shirt.
"Get me a tooth brush--a new one," said Jones, brusquely, almost
brutally. "Get it quick."
"Yes, my Lord."
He dropped the shirt and left the room swiftly, but not hurriedly,
taking care to close the door softly behind him.
It was the first indication to Jones of a method so complete and a
mechanism so perfectly constituted, that jolts were all but eliminated.
"I believe if I'd asked that guy for an elephant," he said to himself,
"he'd have acted just the same--do they keep a drug store on the
premises?"
They evidently kept a store of tooth brushes, for in less than a minute
and a half Expedition had returned with the tooth brush on a little
lacquered tray.
Now, to a man accustomed to dress himself it comes as a shock to have
his underpants held out for him to get into as though he were a little
boy.
This happened to Jones--and they were pink silk.
A pair of subfusc coloured trousers creased and looking absolutely new
were presented to him in the same manner. He was allowed to put on his
own socks, silk and never worn before, but he was not allowed to put on
his own boots. The perfect valet did that kneeling before him, shoe horn
and button hook in hand.
Having inducted him into a pink silk under vest and a soft pleated
shirt, with plain gold links in the sleeves, each button of the said
links having in its centre a small black pearl, a collar and a subfusc
coloured silk tie were added to him, also a black morning vest and a
black morning coat, with rather broad braid at the edges.
A handkerchief of pure white cambric with a tiny monogram also in white
was then shaken out and presented.
Then his valet, intent, silent, and seeming to move by clockwork, passed
to a table on which stood a small oak cabinet. Opening the cabinet he
took from it and placed on the table a watch and chain.
His duties were now finished, and, according to some prescribed rule, he
left the room carefully and softly, closing the door behind him.
Jones took up the watch and chain.
The watch was as thin as a five shilling piece, the chain was a mere
thread of gold. It was an evening affair, to be worn with dress
clothes, and this fact presented to the mind of Jones a confirmation of
the idea that, not only was he literally in Rochester's shoes, but that
Rochester's ordinary watch and chain had not returned.
He sat down for a moment to consider another point. His own old
Waterbury and rolled gold chain, and the few unimportant letters in his
pockets--where were they?
He determined to clear this matter at once, and boldly rang the bell.
The valet answered it.
"When I came back last night--er--was there anything in my pockets?"
asked he.
"No, my Lord. They had taken everything from the pockets."
"No watch and chain?"
"No, my Lord."
"Have you the clothes I came back in?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"Go and fetch them."
The man disappeared and returned in a minute with a bundle of clothes
neatly folded on his arm.
"Mr. Church told me to keep them careful, lest you'd want to put the
matter in the hands of the police, my Lord, shockin' old things they
are."
Jones examined the clothes. They were his own. Everything he had worn
yesterday lay there, and the sight of them filled his mind with a
nostalgia and a desire for them--a home sickness and a clothes
sickness--beyond expression.
He was absolutely sure from the valet's manner that the servants were
not "in the know." A wild impulse came on him to take the exhibitor of
these remnants of his past into his confidence. To say right out: "I'm
Jones. Victor Jones of Philadelphia. I'm no Lord. Here, gimme those
clothes and let me out of this--let's call it quits."
The word "police" already dropped held him back. He was an impostor. If
he were to declare the facts before Rochester returned, what might be
the result? Whatever the result might be one thing was certain, it would
be unpleasant. Besides, he was no prisoner, once downstairs he could
leave the house.
So instead of saying: "I'm Victor Jones of Philadelphia," he said: "Take
them away," and finding himself alone once more he sat down to consider.
Rochester must have gone through his pockets, not for loot, but for the
purpose of removing any article that might cast suspicion, or raise the
suspicion that he, Jones, was not Rochester. That seemed plain enough,
and there was an earnestness of purpose in the fact that was disturbing.
There was no use in thinking, however. He would go downstairs and make
his escape. He was savagely hungry, but he reckoned the Savoy was good
enough for one more meal--if he could get there.
Leaving the watch and chain--unambitious to add a charge of larceny to
his other troubles, should Fate arrest him before the return of
Rochester, he came down the corridor to a landing giving upon a flight
of stairs, up which, save for the gradient, a coach and horses might
have been driven.
The place was a palace. Vast pictures by gloomy old artists, pictures of
men in armour, men in ruffs, women without armour or ruffs, or even a
rag of chiffon, pictures worth millions of dollars no doubt, hung from
the walls of the landing, and the wall flanking that triumphant
staircase.
Jones looked over into the well of the hall, then he began to descend
the stairs.
He had intended, on finding a hat in the hall, to clap it on and make a
clean bolt for freedom and the light of heaven, get back to the Savoy,
dress himself in another suit, and once more himself, go for Rochester,
but this was no hall with a hat-rack and umbrella-stand. Knights in
armour were guarding it, and a flunkey, six feet high, in red plush
breeches, and with calves that would have made Victor Jones scream with
laughter under normal conditions.
The flunkey, seeing our friend, stepped to a door, opened it, and held
it open for him. Not to enter the room thus indicated would have been
possible enough, but the compelling influence of that vast flunkey made
it impossible to Jones.
His volition had fled, he was subdued to his surroundings, for the
moment conquered.
He entered a breakfast room, light and pleasantly furnished, where at a
breakfast table and before a silver tea urn sat a lady of forty or so,
thin faced, high nosed, aristocratic and rather faded.
She was reading a letter, and when she saw the incomer she rose from
the table and gathered some other letters up. Then she, literally, swept
from the room. She looked at him as she passed, and it seemed to Jones
that he had never known before the full meaning of the word "scorn."
For a wild second he thought that all had been discovered, that the
police were now sure to arrive. Then he knew at once. Nothing had been
discovered, the delusion held even for this woman, that glance was meant
for Rochester, not for him, and was caused by the affair of last night,
by other things, too, maybe, but that surely.
Uncomfortable, angry, nervous, wild to escape, and then yielding to
caution, he took his seat at the table where a place was laid--evidently
for him.
The woman had left an envelope on the table, he glanced at it.
THE HONBLE: VENETIA BIRDBROOK,
10A Carlton House Terrace,
London, S. W.
Victor read the inscription written in a bold female hand.
It told him where he was, he was in the breakfast-room of 10A Carlton
House Terrace, but it told him nothing more.
Was the Honble: Venetia Birdbrook his wife, or at least the wife of his
twin image? This thought blinded him for a moment to the fact that a
flunkey--they seemed as numerous as flies in May--was at his elbow with
a _menu_, whilst another flunkey, who seemed to have sprung from the
floor, was fiddling at the sideboard which contained cold edibles,
tongue, ham, chicken and so forth.
"Scrambled eggs," said he, looking at the card.
"Tea or coffee, my Lord?"
"Coffee."
He broke a breakfast roll and helped himself mechanically to some
butter, which was instantly presented to him by the sideboard fiddler,
and he had just taken a mechanical bite of buttered roll, when the door
opened and the Archiepiscopal gentleman who had pulled up his window
blind that morning entered. Mr. Church, for Jones had already gathered
that to be his name, carried a little yellow basket filled with letters
in his right hand, and in his left a great sheaf, The Times, Daily
Telegraph, Morning Post, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Chronicle, and Daily
News. These papers he placed on a side table evidently intended for that
purpose. The little letter basket he placed on the table at Jones' left
elbow.
Then he withdrew, but not without having spoken a couple of murmured
words of correction to the flunkey near the sideboard, who had omitted,
no doubt, some point in the mysterious ritual of which he was an
acolyte.
Jones glanced at the topmost letter.
THE EARL OF ROCHESTER,
10A, Carlton House Terrace,
London, S. W.
Ah! now he knew it. The true name of the juggler who had played him this
trick. It was plain, too, now, that Rochester had sent him here as a
substitute.
But the confirmation of his idea did not ease his mind. On the contrary
it filled him with a vague alarm. The feeling of being in a trap came
upon him now for the first time. The joke had lost any semblance of
colour, the thing was serious. Rochester ought to have been back to put
an end to the business before this. Had anything happened to him? Had he
got jailed?
He did not touch the letters. Without raising suspicion, acting as
naturally as possible the part of a peer of the realm, he must escape as
swiftly as possible from this nest of flunkeys, and with that object in
view he accepted the scrambled eggs now presented to him, and the
coffee.
When they were finished, he rose from the table. Then he remembered the
letters. Here was another tiny tie. He could not leave them unopened and
untouched on the table without raising suspicion. He took them from the
basket, and with them in his hand left the room, the fellow in waiting
slipping before to open the door.
The hall was deserted for a wonder, deserted by all but the men in
armour. A room where he might leave the infernal letters, and find a
bell to fetch a servant to get him a hat was the prime necessity of the
moment.
He crossed to a door directly opposite, opened it, and found a room half
library, half study, a pleasant room used to tobacco, with a rather
well worn Turkey carpet on the floor, saddle bag easy chairs, and a
great escritoire in the window, open and showing pigeon holes containing
note paper, envelopes, telegraph forms, and a rack containing the A. B.
C. Railway Guide, Whitakers Almanac, Ruffs' Guide to the Turf, Who's
Who, and Kelly.
Pipes were on the mantel piece, a silver cigar box and cigarette box on
a little table by one of the easy chairs, matches--nothing was here
wanting, and everything was of the best.
He placed the letters on the table, opened the cigar box and took from
it a Ramon Alones. A blunt ended weapon for the destruction of
melancholy and unrest, six and a half inches long, and costing perhaps
half-a-crown. A real Havana cigar. Now in London there are only four
places where you can obtain a real and perfect Havana cigar. That is to
say four shops. And at those four shops--or shall we call them
emporiums--only known and trusted customers can find the sun that shone
on the Vuelta Abajos in such and such a perfect year.
The Earl of Rochester's present representative was finding it now, with
little enough pleasure, however, as he paced the room preparatory to
ringing the bell. He was approaching the electric button for this
purpose, when the faint and far away murmuring of an automobile, as if
admitted by a suddenly opened hall door, checked his hand. Here was
Rochester at last. He waited listening.
He had not long to wait.
The door of the room suddenly opened, and the woman of the breakfast
table disclosed herself. She was dressed for going out, wearing a hat
that seemed a yard in diameter, and a feather boa, from which her
hen-like face and neck rose to the crowning triumph of the hat.
"I am going to Mother," said she. "I am not coming back."
"Um-um," said Jones.
She paused. Then she came right in and closed the door behind her.
Standing with her back close to the door she spoke to Jones.
"If you cannot see your own conduct as others see it, who can make you?
I am not referring to the disgrace of last night, though heaven knows
that was bad enough, I am talking of _everything_, of your poor wife who
loves you still, of the estate you have ruined by your lunatic conduct,
of the company you keep, of the insults you have heaped on people--and
now you add drink to the rest. That's new." She paused.
"That's new. But I warn you, your brain won't stand _that_. You know the
taint in the family as well as I do, it has shewn itself in your
actions. Well, go on drinking and you will end in Bedlam instead of the
workhouse. They call you 'Mad Rochester'; you know that." She choked. "I
have blushed to be known as your sister--I have tried to keep my place
here and save you. It's ended." She turned to the door.
Jones had been making up his mind. He would tell the whole affair. This
Rochester was a thoroughly bad lot evidently; well, he would turn the
tables on him now.
"Look here," said he. "I am not the man you think I am."
"Tosh!" cried the woman.
She opened the door, passed out, and shut it with a snap.
"Well, I'm d----d," said Jones, for the second time in connection with
Rochester.
The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to a quarter to eleven; the faint
sound of the car had ceased. The lady of the feather boa had evidently
taken her departure, and the house had resumed its cloistral silence.
He waited a moment to make sure, then he went into the hall where a huge
flunkey--a new one, more curious than the others, was lounging near the
door.
"My hat," said Jones.
The thing flew, and returned with a glossy silk hat, a tortoiseshell
handled cane, and a pair of new suede gloves of a delicate dove colour.
Then it opened the door, and Jones, clapping the hat on his head, walked
out.
The hat fitted, by a mercy.
CHAPTER V
THE POINT OF THE JOKE
Out in the open air and sunshine he took a deep satisfying breath. He
felt as though he had escaped from a cage full of monkeys. Monkeys in
the form of men, creatures who would servilely obey him as Rochester,
but who, scenting the truth, would rend him in pieces.
Well, he was clear of them. Once back in the Savoy he would get into his
own things, and once in his own things he would strike. If he could not
get a lawyer to take his case up against Rochester, he would go to the
police. Yes, he would. Rochester had doped him, taken his letters, taken
his watch.
Jones was not the man to bring false charges. He knew that in taking his
belongings, this infernal jester had done so, not for plunder, but for
the purpose of making the servants believe that he, Rochester, had been
stripped of everything by sharks, and sent home in an old suit of
clothes; all the same he would charge Rochester with the taking of his
things, he would teach this practical joker how to behave.
To cool himself and collect his thoughts before going to the Savoy, he
took a walk in the Green Park.
That one word "Tosh!" uttered by the woman, in answer to what he had
said, told him more about Rochester than many statements. This man
wanted a cold bath, he wanted to be held under the tap till he cried for
mercy.
Walking, now with the stick under his right arm and his left hand in his
trousers pocket, he felt something in the pocket. It was a coin. He took
it out. It was a penny, undiscovered evidently, and unremoved by the
valet.
It was also a reminder of his own poverty stricken condition. His
thoughts turned from Rochester and his jokes, to his own immediate and
tragic position. The whole thing was his own fault. It was quite easy to
say that Rochester had led him along and tempted him; he was a full
grown man and should have resisted temptation. He had let strong drink
get hold of him; well, he had paid by the loss of his money, to say
nothing of the way his self-respect had been bruised by this jester.
Near Buckingham Palace he turned back, walking by the way he had come,
and leaving the park at the new gate.
He crossed the plexus of ways where Northumberland Avenue debouches on
Trafalgar Square. It was near twelve o'clock, and the first evening
papers were out. A hawker with a bundle of papers under his arm and a
yellow poster in front of him like an apron, drew his attention; at
least the poster did.
"Suicide of an American in London!" were the words on the poster.
Jones, remembering his penny, produced it and bought a paper.
The American's suicide did not interest him, but he fancied vaguely that
something of Rochester's doings of the night before might have been
caught by the Press through the Police news. He thought it highly
probable that Rochester, continuing his mad course, had been gaoled.
He was rewarded. Right on the first page he saw his own name. He had
never seen it before in print, and the sight and the circumstances made
his tongue cluck back, as though checked by a string tied to its root.
This was the paragraph:
"Last night, as the 11.35 Inner Circle train was entering the Temple
Station, a man was seen to jump from the platform on to the metals.
Before the station officials could interfere to save him, the
unfortunate man had thrown himself before the incoming engine. Death was
instantaneous.
"From papers in possession of deceased, his identity has been verified
as that of Mr. V. A. Jones, an American gentleman of Philadelphia,
lately resident at the Savoy Hotel, Strand."
Jones stood with the paper in his hand, appalled. Rochester had
committed suicide!
This was the Jest--the black core of it. All last evening, all through
that hilarity he had been plotting this. Plotting it perhaps from the
first moment of their meeting. Unable to resist the prompting of the
extraordinary likeness, this joker, this waster, done to the world, had
left life at the end of a last jamboree, and with a burst of
laughter--leaving another man in his clothes, nay, almost one might say
in his body.
Jones saw the point of the thing at once.
PART II
CHAPTER VI
THE NET
He saw something else. He was automatically barred from the Savoy, and
barred from the American Consul. And on top of that something else. He
had committed a very grave mistake in accepting for a moment his
position. He should have spoken at once that morning, spoken to "Mr.
Church," told his tale and made explanations, failing that he should
have made explanations before leaving the house. He had left in
Rochester's clothes, he had acted the part of Rochester.
He rolled the paper into a ball, tossed it into the gutter, and entered
Charing Cross to continue his soliloquy.
He had eaten Rochester's food, smoked one of his cigars, accepted his
cane and gloves. All that might have been explainable with Rochester's
aid, but Rochester was dead.
No one knew that Rochester was dead. To go back to the Savoy and
establish his own identity, he would have to establish the fact of
Rochester's death, tell the story of his own intoxication, and make
people believe that he was an innocent victim.
An innocent victim who had gone to another man's house and palpably
masqueraded for some hours as that other man, walking out of the house
in his clothes and carrying his stick, an innocent victim, who owed a
bill at the Savoy.
Why, every man, the family included you may be sure, would be finding
the innocent victim in Rochester.
What were Jones' letters doing on Rochester? That was a nice question
for a puzzle-headed jury to answer.
By what art did Jones, the needy American Adventurer--that was what they
would call him--impose himself upon Rochester, and induce Rochester to
order him to be taken to Carlton House Terrace?
Oh, there were a lot more questions to be asked at that phantom court of
Justice, where Jones beheld himself in the dock trying to explain the
inexplicable.
The likeness would not be any use for white-washing; it would only
deepen the mystery, make the affair more extravagant. Besides, the
likeness most likely by this time would be pretty well spoiled; by the
time of the Assizes it would be only verifiable by photographs.
Sitting on a seat in Charing Cross station, he cogitated thus, chasing
the most fantastic ideas, yet gripped all the time by the cold fact.
The fact that the only door in London open to him was the door of 10A,
Carlton House Terrace.
Unable to return to the Savoy, he possessed nothing in the world but the
clothes he stood up in and the walking stick he held in his hand.
Dressed like a lord, he was poorer than any tramp, for the simple reason
that his extravagantly fine clothes barred him from begging and from
the menial work that is the only recourse of the suddenly destitute.
Given time, and with his quick business capacity, he might have made a
fight to obtain a clerk-ship or some post in a store--but he had no
time. It was near the luncheon hour and he was hungry. That fact alone
was an indication of how he was placed as regards Time.
He was a logical man. He saw clearly that only two courses lay before
him. To go to the Savoy and tell his story and get food and lodging in
the Police Station, or to go to 10A, Carlton House Terrace and get food
and lodging as Rochester.
Both ideas were hateful, but he reckoned, and with reason, that if he
took the first course, arrest and ignominy, and probably imprisonment
would be certain, whereas if he took the second he might be able to
bluff the thing out till he could devise means of escape from the net
that surrounded him.
He determined on the second course. The servants, and even that
scarecrow woman in the feather boa had accepted him as good coin; there
was no reason why they should not go on accepting him for a while. For
the matter of that, there was no reason why they should not go on
accepting him forever.
Even in the midst of his disturbance of mind and general tribulation,
the humour of the latter idea almost made him smile. The idea of living
and dying as Lord Rochester, as a member of the English Aristocracy,
always being "My Lorded," served by flunkeys with big calves, and
inducted every morning into his under pants by that guy in the sleeved
jacket!
This preposterous idea, more absurd than any dream, was yet based on a
substantive foundation. In fact he had that morning put it in practice,
and unless a miracle occurred he would have to continue putting it in
practice for some days to come.
However, Jones, fortunately or unfortunately for himself, was a man of
action and no dreamer. He dismissed the ideas and came to practical
considerations.
If he had to hold on to the position, he would have to make more sure of
his ground.
He rose, found his way into Charing Cross Station Hotel, and obtained a
copy of "Who's Who" from the hotel clerk.
He turned the pages till he found the R's. Here was his man.
Rochester. 21st Earl of (cr. 1431) Arthur Coningsby Delamere. Baron
Coningsby of Wilton, ex Lieut. Rifle Brigade, m. Teresa, 2d daughter of
Sir Peter Mason Bart. 9 v. Educ. Heidelberg. Owns about 21,000 acres.
Address 10A, Carlton House Terrace. Rochester Court, Rochester. The
Hatch, Colney, Wilts. Clubs, Senior Conservative, National Sporting,
Pelican.
That was only a part of the sayings of "Who's Who" regarding Rochester,
Arthur Coningsby, Delamere. The last decadent descendant of a family
that had been famous in long past years for its power, prodigality and
prolificacy.
If Jones could have climbed up his own family tree he might have found
on some distaff branch the reason of his appalling likeness to
Rochester, Arthur Coningsby, Delamere, but this was a pure matter of
speculation, and it did not enter the mind of Jones.
He closed the book, returned it, and walked out.
Now that his resolve was made, his fighting spirit was roused. In other
words he felt the same recklessness that a man feels who is going into
battle, the regardlessness of consequence which marks your true
explorer. For Stanley on the frontier of Darkest Africa, Scott on the
ice rim of the Beardmore Glacier, had before them positions and
districts simple in comparison to those that now fronted Jones, who had
before him the Western and South Western London Districts, with all they
contained in the way of natives in top hats, natives painted and
powdered, tribes with tribal laws of which he knew little, tricks of
which he knew less, convenances, ju-pu's and fetishes. And he was
entering this dark and intricate and dangerous country, not as an
explorer carrying beads and bibles, but disguised as a top man, a chief.
Burton's position when he journeyed to Mecca disguised as a Mohammedan
was easy compared to the position of Jones. Burton knew the ritual. He
made one mistake in it it is true, but then he was able to kill the man
who saw him make that mistake. Jones could not protect himself in this
way, even if the valet in the sleeved jacket were to discover him in a
position analogous to Burton's.
He was not thinking of any of these things at the present moment,
however; he was thinking of luncheon. If he were condemned to play the
part of a Lord for awhile, he was quite determined to take his salary in
the way of everything he wanted. Yet it seemed that to obtain anything
he wanted in his new and extraordinary position, he would have to take
something he did not want. He wanted luncheon but he did not want to go
back to Carlton House Terrace, at least not just now. Those
flunkeys--the very thought of them gave him indigestion--more than that,
he was afraid of them. A fear that was neither physical nor moral, but
more in the nature of the fear of women for mice, or the supposed fear
of the late Lord Roberts for cats.
The solemn Church, the mercurial valet, the men with calves, belonged to
a tribe that maybe had done Jones to death in some past life: either
bored him to death or bludgeoned him, it did not matter, the antipathy
was there, and it was powerful.
At the corner of Northumberland Avenue an idea came to him. This
Rochester belonged to several clubs, why not go and have luncheon at one
of them on credit? It would save him for the moment from returning to
the door towards which Fate was shepherding him, and he might be able to
pick up some extra wrinkles about himself and his position. The idea was
indicative of the daring of the man, though there was little enough
danger in it. He was sure of passing muster at a club, since he had done
so at home. He carried the names of two of Rochester's clubs in his
mind, the Pelican and the Senior Conservative. The latter seemed the
more stodgy, the least likely to offer surprises in the way of shoulder
clapping, irresponsible parties who might want to enter into general
conversation.
He chose it, asked a policeman for directions, and made for Pall Mall.
Here another policeman pointed out to him the building he was in search
of.
It stood on the opposite side of the way, a building of grey stone, vast
and serious of feature, yet opulent and hinting of the best in all
things relative to comfort.
It was historical. Disraeli had come down those steps, and the great
Lord Salisbury had gone up them. Men, to enter this place, had to be
born, not made, and even these selected ones had to put their names down
at birth, if they wished for any chance of lunching there before they
lost their teeth and hair.
It took twenty-one years for the elect to reach this place, and on the
way they were likely to be slain by black balls.
Victor Jones just crossed the road and went up the steps.
CHAPTER VII
LUNCHEON
He had lunched at the Constitutional with a chance acquaintance picked
up on his first week in London, so he knew something of the ways of
English clubs, yet the vast hall of this place daunted him for a moment.
However, the club servants seeming to know him, and recognising that
indecision is the most fatal weakness of man, he crossed the hall, and
seeing some gentlemen going up the great staircase he followed to a door
in the first landing.
He saw through the glass swing doors that this was the great luncheon
room of the club, and having made this discovery he came downstairs
again where good fortune, in the form of a bald headed man without hat
or stick, coming through a passage way, indicated the cloak room to him.
Here he washed his hands and brushed his hair, and looking at himself in
a glass judged his appearance to be conservative and all right. He, a
democrat of the Democrats in this hive of Aristocracy and old crusted
conservatism, might have felt qualms of political conscience, but for
the fact that earthly politics, social theories, and social instincts
were less to him now than to an inhabitant of the dark body that
tumbles and fumbles around Sirius. Less than the difference between the
minnow and the roach to the roach in the landing net.
Leaving the place he almost ran into the arms of a gentleman who was
entering, and who gave him a curt "H'do."
He knew that man. He had seen his newspaper portrait in America as well
as England. It was the leader of His Majesty's Opposition, the Queen bee
of this hive where he was about to sit down to lunch. The Queen bee did
not seem very friendly, a fact that augured ill for the attitude of the
workers and the drones.
Arrived at the glass swing doors before mentioned, he looked in.
The place was crowded.
It looked to him as though for the space of a mile and a half or so, lay
tables, tables, tables, all occupied by twos and threes and fours of
men. Conservative looking men, and no doubt mostly Lords.
It was too late to withdraw without shattering his own self respect and
self confidence. The cold bath was before him, and there was no use
putting a toe in.
He opened the door and entered, walking between the tables and looking
the luncheon parties in the face.
The man seated has a tremendous advantage over the man standing in this
sort of game. One or two of the members met by the newcomer's glance,
bowed in the curious manner of the seated Briton, the eyes of others
fell away, others nodded frigidly, it seemed to Jones. Then, like a
pilot fish before a shark leading him to his food, a club waiter
developed and piloted him to a small unoccupied table, where he took a
seat and looked at a menu handed to him by the pilot.
He ordered fillet of sole, roast chicken, salad, and strawberry ice.
They were the easiest things to order. He would have ordered roast
elephant's trunk had it been easier and on the menu.
A man after the storming of Hell Gate, or just dismounted after the
Charge of the Light Brigade, would have possessed as little instinct for
menu hunting as Jones.
He had pierced the ranks of the British Aristocracy; that was
nothing--he was seated at their camp fire, sharing their food, and they
were all inimical towards him; that was everything.
He felt the draught. He felt that these men had a down on him; felt it
by all sorts of senses that seemed newly developed. Not a down on him,
Jones, but a down on him, Rochester, Arthur Coningsby Delamere, 21st
Earl of.
And the extraordinary thing was that he felt it. What on earth did it
matter to him if these men looked coldly upon another man? It did. It
mattered quite a lot, more than perhaps it ever mattered to the other
man. Is the soul such a shallow and blind thing that it cannot sort the
true from the false, the material from the immaterial, cannot see that
an insult levelled at a likeness is not an insult levelled at _it_?
Surely not, and yet the soul of Victor Jones resented the coolness of
others towards the supposed body of Rochester, as though it were a
personal insult.
It was the first intimation to Jones that when the actor puts on his
part he puts on more than a cloak or trunk hose, that the personality he
had put on had nerves curiously associated with his own nerves, and
that, though he might say to himself a hundred times with respect to the
attitudes of other people, "Pah! they don't mean me," that formula was
no charm against disdain.
The wine butler, a gentleman not unlike Mr. Church, was now at his
elbow, and he found himself contemplating the wine card of the Senior
Conservative, a serious document, if one may judge by the faces of the
men who peruse it.
It is in fact the Almanach de Gotha of wines. The old kings of wine are
here, the princess and all the aristocracy. Unlike the Almanach de
Gotha, however, the price of each is set down. Unlike the Almanach de
Gotha, the names of a few commoners are admitted.
Macon was here, and even Blackways' Cyder, the favourite tipple of the
old Duke of Taunton.
Jones ran his eye over the list without enthusiasm. He had taken a
dislike to alcohol even in its mildest guise.
"Er--what minerals have you got?" asked he.
"Minerals!"
The man with the wine card was nonplussed. Jones saw his mistake.
"Soda water," said he. "Get me some soda water."
The fillet of sole with sauce Tartare was excellent. Nothing, not even
the minerals could dim that fact. As he ate he looked about him, and
with all the more ease, because he found now that nobody was looking at
him; his self consciousness died down, and he began speculating on the
men around, their probable rank, fortune, and intellect. It seemed to
Jones that the latter factor was easier of determination than the other
two.
What struck him more forcibly was a weird resemblance between them all,
a phantom thing, a link undiscoverable yet somehow there. This tribal
expression is one of the strangest phenomena eternally comforting and
battering our senses.
Just as men grow like their wives, so do they grow like their fellow
tradesmen, waiters like waiters, grooms like grooms, lawyers like
lawyers, politicians like politicians. More, it has been undeniably
proved that landowners grow like landowners, just as shepherds grow like
sheep, and aristocrats like aristocrats.
A common idea moulds faces to its shape, and a common want of ideas
allows external circumstances to do the moulding.
So, English Conservative Politicians of the higher order, being worked
upon by external circumstances of a similar nature, have perhaps a
certain similar expression. Radical Politicians on the other hand, shape
to a common idea--evil--but still an idea. Jones was not thinking this,
he was just recognising that all these men belonged to the same class,
and he felt in himself that, not only did he not belong to that class,
but that Rochester also, probably, had found himself in the same
position.
That might have accounted for the wildness and eccentricity of
Rochester, as demonstrated in that mad carouse and hinted at by the
woman in the feather boa. The wildness of a monkey condemned to live
amongst goats, hanging on to their horns, and clutching at their scuts,
and playing all the tricks that contrariness might suggest to a contrary
nature.
Something of this sort was passing through Jones' mind, and as he
attacked his strawberry ice, for the first time since reading that
momentous piece of news in the evening newspaper his mental powers
became focussed on the question that lay at the very heart of all this
business. It struck him now so very forcibly that he laid down his spoon
and stared before him, forgetful of the place where he was and the
people around him.
"Why did that guy commit suicide?"
That was the question.
He could find no answer to it.
A man does not as a rule commit suicide simply because he is eccentric
or because he has made a mess of his estates, or because being a
practical joker he suddenly finds his twin image to defraud. Rochester
had evidently done nothing to bar him from society. Though perhaps
coldly received by his club, he was still received by it. Had he done
something that society did not know of, something that might suddenly
obtrude itself?
Jones was brought back from his reverie with a snap. One of the
confounded waiters was making off with his half eaten ice.
"Hi," cried he. "What you doing? Bring that back."
His voice rang through the room, people turned to look. He mentally
cursed the ice and the creature who had snapped it from him, finished
it, devoured a wafer, and then, rising to his feet, left the room. It
was easier to leave than to come in, other men were leaving, and in the
general break up he felt less observed.
Downstairs he looked through glass doors into a room where men were
smoking, correct men in huge arm chairs, men with legs stretched out,
men smoking big cigars and talking politics no doubt. He wanted to
smoke, but he did not want to smoke in that place.
He went to the cloak room, fetched his hat and cane and gloves and left
the club.
Outside in Pall Mall he remembered that he had not told the waiter to
credit him with the luncheon, but a trifle like that did not bother him
now. They would be sure to put it down.
What did trouble him was the still unanswered question, "Why did that
guy commit suicide?"
Suppose Rochester had murdered some man and had committed suicide to
escape the consequences? This thought gave him a cold grue such as he
had never experienced before. For a moment he saw himself hauled before
a British Court of Justice; for a moment, and for the first time in his
life, he found himself wondering what a hangman might be like.
But Victor Jones, though a visionary sometimes in business, was at base
a business man. More used to his position now, and looking it fairly in
the face, he found that he had little to fear even if Rochester had
committed a murder. He could, if absolutely driven to it, prove his
identity. Driven to it, he could prove his life in Philadelphia, bring
witnesses and relate circumstances. His tale would all hang together,
simply because it was the truth. This inborn assurance heartened him a
lot, and, more cheerful now, he began to recognise more of the truth.
His position was very solid. Every one had accepted him. Unless he came
an awful bump over some crime committed by the late defunct, he could go
on forever as the Earl of Rochester. He did not want to go on forever as
the Earl of Rochester; he wanted to get back to the States and just be
himself, and he intended so to do having scraped a little money
together. But the idea tickled him just as it had done in Charing Cross
Station, and it had lost its monstrous appearance and had become
humorous, a highly dangerous appearance for a dangerous idea to take.
Jones was a great walker, exercise always cleared his mind and
strengthened his judgment. He set off on a long walk now, passing the
National Gallery to Regent Circus, then up Regent Street and Oxford
Street, and along Oxford Street towards the West. He found himself in
High Street Kensington, in Hammersmith, and then in those dismal regions
where the country struggles with the town.
Oh, those suburbs of London! Within easy reach of the city! Those
battalions of brick houses, bits of corpses, of what once were fields;
those villas, laundries----
The contrast between this place and Pall Mall came as a sudden
revelation to Jones, the contrast between the power, ease, affluence and
splendour of the surroundings of the Earl of Rochester, and the
surroundings of the bank clerks and small people who dwelt here.
The view point is everything. From here Carlton House Terrace seemed
almost pleasing.
Jones, like a good Democrat, had all his life professed a contempt for
rank. Titles had seemed as absurd to him as feathers in a monkey's cap.
It was here in ultra Hammersmith that he began to review this question
from a more British standpoint.
Tell it not in Gath, he was beginning to feel the vaguest antipathetic
stirring against little houses and ultra people.
He turned and began to retrace his steps. It was seven o'clock when he
reached the door of 10A, Carlton House Terrace.
CHAPTER VIII
MR. VOLES
The flunkey who admitted him, having taken his hat, stick and gloves,
presented him with a letter that had arrived by the midday post, also
with a piece of information.
"Mr. Voles called to see you, my Lord, shortly after twelve. He stated
that he had an appointment with you. He is to call again at quarter past
seven."
Jones took the letter and went with it to the room where he had sat that
morning. Upon the table lay all the letters that he had not opened that
morning. He had forgotten these. Here was a mistake. If he wished to
hold to his position for even a few days, it would be necessary to guard
against mistakes like this.
He hurriedly opened them, merely glancing at the contents, which for the
most part were unintelligible to him.
There was a dinner invitation from Lady Snorries--whoever she might
be--and a letter beginning "Dear old Boy" from a female who signed
herself "Julie," an appeal from a begging letter writer, and a letter
beginning "Dear Rochester" from a gentleman who signed himself simply
"Childersley."
The last letter he opened was the one he had just received from the
servant.
It was written on poor paper, and it ran:
"Stick to it--if you can. You'll see why I couldn't. There's a
fiver under the papers of the top right hand drawer of bureau in
smoke room.
"ROCHESTER."
Jones knew that this letter, though addressed to the Earl of Rochester,
was meant for him, and was written by Rochester, written probably on
some bar counter, and posted at the nearest pillar box just before he
had committed the act.
He went to the drawer in the bureau indicated, raised the papers in it
and found a five pound note.
Having glanced at it he closed the drawer, placed the note in his
waistcoat pocket and sat down again at the table.
"Stick to it--if you can." The words rang in his ears just as though he
had heard them spoken.
Those words, backed by the five pound note, wrought a great change in
the mind of Jones. He had Rochester's permission to act as he was
acting, and a little money to help him in his actions.
The fact of his penury had been like a wet blanket upon him all day. He
felt that power had come to him with permission. He could think clearly
now. He rose and paced the floor.
"Stick to it--if you can."
Why not--why not--why not? He found himself laughing out loud, a great
gush of energy had come to him. Jones was a man of that sort, a new and
great idea always came to him on the crest of a wave of energy; the
British Government Contract idea had come to him like that, and the wave
had carried him to England.
Why not be the Earl of Rochester, make good his position finally, stand
on the pinnacle where Fate had placed him, and carry this thing through
to its ultimate issue?
It would not be all jam. Rochester must have been very much pressed by
circumstances; that did not frighten Jones, to him the game was
everything, and the battle.
He would make good where Rochester had failed, meet the difficulties
that had destroyed the other, face them, overcome them.
His position was unassailable.
Coming over from New York he had read Nelson's shilling edition of the
Life of Sir Henry Hawkins. He had read with amazement the story of
British credulity expressed in the Tichborne Case. How Arthur Orton, a
butcher, scarcely able to write, had imposed himself on the Public as
Roger Tichborne, a young aristocrat of good education.
He contrasted his own position with Orton's.
He was absolutely unassailable.
He went to the cigar box, chose a cigar and lit it.
There was the question of hand writing! That suddenly occurred to him,
confronting his newly formed plans. He would have to sign cheques,
write letters. A typewriter could settle the latter question, and as
for the signature, he possessed a sample of Rochester's, and would have
to imitate it. At the worst he could pretend he had injured his
thumb--that excuse would last for some time. "There's one big thing
about the whole business," said he to himself, "and that is the chap's
eccentricity. Why, if I'm shoved too hard, I can pretend to have lost my
memory or my wits--there's not a blessed card I haven't either in my
hand or up my sleeve, and if worst comes to worst, I can always prove my
identity and tell my story." He was engaged with thoughts like these
when the door opened and the servant, bearing a card on a salver,
announced that Mr. Voles, the gentleman who had called earlier in the
day, had arrived.
"Bring him in," said Victor. The servant retired and returned
immediately ushering in Voles, who entered carrying his hat before him.
The stranger was a man of fifty, a tubby man, dressed in a black frock
coat, covered, despite the summer weather, by a thin black overcoat with
silk facings. His face was evil, thick skinned, yellow, heavy nosed, the
hair of the animal was jet black, thin, and presented to the eyes of the
gazer a small Disraeli curl upon the forehead of the owner.
The card announced:
MR. A. S. VOLES
12B. Jermyn Street
Voles himself, and unknown to himself, announced a lot of other things.
Victor Jones had a sharp instinct for men, well whetted by experience.
He nodded to the newcomer, curtly, and without rising from his chair;
the servant shut the door and the two men were alone.
Just as a dog's whole nature livens at the smell of a pole cat, so did
Jones' nature at the sight of Voles. He felt this man to be an enemy.
Voles came to the table and placed his hat upon it. Then he turned, went
to the door and opened it to see if the servant was listening.
He shut the door.
"Well," said he, "have you got the money for me?"
Another man in Jones' position might have asked, and with reason. "What
money?"
Jones simply said "No."
This simple answer had a wonderful effect. Voles, about to take a seat,
remained standing, clasping the back of the chair he had chosen. Then he
burst out.
"You fooled me yesterday, and gave me an appointment for to-day. I
called, you were out."
"Was I?"
"Were you? You said the money would be here waiting for me--well, here I
am now, I've got a cab outside ready to take it."
"And suppose I don't give it to you?" asked Jones.
"We won't suppose any nonsense like that!" replied Voles taking his
seat, "not so long as there are policemen to be called at a minute's
notice."
"That's true," said the other, "we don't want the police."
"You don't," replied Voles. He was staring at Jones. The Earl of
Rochester's voice struck him as not quite the same as usual, more spring
in it and vitality--altered in fact. But he suspected nothing of the
truth. Passed as good coin by Voles, Jones had nothing to fear from any
man or woman in London, for the eye of Voles was unerring, the ear of
Voles ditto, the mind of Voles balanced like a jeweller's scales.
"True," said Jones. "I don't--well, let's talk about this money.
Couldn't you take half to-night, and half in a week's time?"
"Not me," replied the other. "I must have the two thousand to-night,
same as usual."
Jones had the whole case in his hands now, and he began preparing the
toast on which to put this most evident blackmailer when cooked.
His quick mind had settled everything. Here was the first obstacle in
his path, it would have to be destroyed, not surmounted. He determined
to destroy it. If the worst came to the worst, if whatever crime
Rochester had committed were to be pressed home on him by Voles, he
would declare everything, prove his identity by sending for witnesses
from the States, and show Rochester's letter. The blackmailing would
account for Rochester's suicide.
But Jones knew blackmailers, and he knew that Voles would never
prosecute. Rochester must indeed have been a weak fool not to have
grasped this nettle and torn it up by the roots. He forgot that
Rochester was probably guilty--that makes all the difference in the
world.
"You shall have the money," said he, "but see here, let's make an end of
this. Now let's see. How much have you had already?"
"Only eight," said Voles. "You know that well enough, why ask?"
"Eight thousand," murmured the other, "you have had eight thousand
pounds out of me, and the two to-night will make ten. Seems a good price
for a few papers." He made the shot on spec. It was a bull's eye.
"Oh, those papers are worth a good deal more than that," said Voles, "a
good deal more than that."
So it was documents not actions that the blackmailer held in suspense
over the head of Rochester. It really did not matter a button to Jones,
he stood ready to face murder itself, armed as he was with Rochester's
letter in his pocket, and the surety of being able to identity himself.
"Well," said he, "let's finish this business. Have you a cheque book on
you?"
"I have a cheque book right enough--what's your game now?"
"Just an idea of mine before I pay you--bring out your cheque book,
you'll see what I mean in a minute."
Voles hesitated, then, with a laugh, he took the cheque book from the
breast pocket of his overcoat.
"Now tear out a cheque."
"Tear out a cheque," cried the other. "What on earth are you getting
at--one of my cheques--this is good."
"Tear out a cheque," insisted the other, "it will only cost you a penny,
and you will see my meaning in a moment."
The animal, before the insistent direction of the other, hesitated, then
with a laugh he tore out a cheque.
"Now place it on the table."
Voles placed it on the table.
Jones going to the bureau fetched a pen and ink. He pushed a chair to
the table, and made the other sit down.
"Now," said Jones, "write me out a cheque for eight thousand pounds."
Voles threw the pen down with a laugh--it was his last in that room.
"You won't?" said Jones.
"Oh, quit this fooling," replied the other. "I've no time for such
stuff--what are you doing now?"
"Ringing the bell," said Jones.
Voles, just about to pick up the cheque, paused. He seemed to find
himself at fault for a moment. The jungle beast, that hears the twig
crack beneath the foot of the man with the express rifle, pauses like
that over his bloody meal on the carcass of the decoy goat.
The door opened and a servant appeared, it was the miracle with calves.
"Send out at once, and bring in an officer--a policeman," said Jones.
"Yes, my Lord."
The door shut.
Voles jumped up, and seized his hat. Jones walked to the door and locked
it, placing the key in his pocket.
"I've got you," said he, "and I'm going to squeeze you, and I'm going to
make you squeal."
"You're going to--you're going to--you're going to--" said Voles. He was
the colour of old ivory.
"I'm going to make you go through this--"
"Here, d--n this nonsense--stop it--you fool, I'll smash you," said
Voles. "Here, open that door and stop this business."
"I told you I was going to make you squeal," said Jones, "but that's
nothing to what's coming."
Voles came to the table and put down his hat. Then, facing Jones, he
rapped with the knuckles of his right hand on the table.
"You've done it now," said he, "you've laid yourself open to a nice
charge, false imprisonment, that's what you've done. A nice thing in the
papers to-morrow morning, and intimidation on top of that. Over and above
those there's the papers. _I'll_ have no mercy--those papers go to Lord
Plinlimon to-morrow morning, you'll be in the divorce court this day
month, and so will she. Reputation! she won't have a rag to cover
herself with."
"Oh, won't she?" said Jones. "This is most interesting." He felt a great
uplift of the heart. So this blackmail business had to do with a woman.
The idea that Rochester was some horrible form of criminal had weighed
upon him. It had seemed to him that no man would pay such a huge sum as
eight thousand pounds in the way of blackmail unless his crime were in
proportion. Rochester had evidently paid it to shield not only his own
name, but the name of a woman.
"Most interesting," said Voles. "I'm glad you think so--" Then in a
burst, "Come, open that door and stop this nonsense--take that key out
of your pocket and open the door. You always were a fool, but this is
beyond folly--the pair of you are in the hollow of my hand, you know
it--I can crush you like that--like that--like that!"
He opened and shut his right hand. A cruel hand it was, hairy as to the
back, huge as to the thumb.
Jones looked at him.
"You are wasting a lot of muscular energy," said he. "My determination
is made, and it holds. You are going to prison, Mr. Filthy Beast, Voles.
I'm up against you, that's the plain truth. I'm going to cut you open,
and show your inside to the British Public. They'll be so lost in
admiration at the sight, they won't bother about the woman or me.
They'll call us public benefactors, I reckon. You know men, and you know
when a man is determined. Look at me, look at me in the face, you
sumph--"
A knock came to the door.
Jones took the key from his pocket and opened the door.
"The constable is here, my Lord," said the servant.
"Tell him to come in," said Jones.
Voles had taken up his hat again, and he stood now by the table, hat in
hand, looking exactly what he was, a criminal on his defence.
The constable was a fresh-looking and upstanding young man; he had
removed his helmet and was carrying it by the chin strap. He had no
bludgeon, no revolver, yet he impressed Jones almost as much as he
impressed the other.
"Officer," said Jones. "I have called you in for the purpose of giving
this man in charge for attempting--"
"Stop," cried Voles.
Then something Oriental in his nature took charge of him. He rushed
forward with arms out, as though to embrace the policeman.
"It is all a mistake," cried he, "constable, one moment, go outside one
moment, leave me with his lordship. I will explain. There is nothing
wrong, it is all a big mistake."
The constable held him off, glancing for orders at Jones.
Jones felt no vindictiveness towards Voles now; disgust, such as he
might have felt towards a vulture or a cormorant, but no vindictiveness.
He wanted that eight thousand pounds.
He had determined to make good in his new position, to fight the world
that Rochester had failed to fight, and overcome the difficulties sure
to be ahead of him. Voles was the first great difficulty, and lo, it
seemed, that he was about not only to destroy it, but turn it to a
profit. He did not want the eight thousand for himself, he wanted it for
the game; and the fascination of that great game he was only just
beginning to understand.
"Go outside, officer," said he to the constable.
He shut the door. "Sit down and write," said he. Voles said not a word.
He went to the table, sat down and picked up the pen. The cheque was
still lying there. He drew it towards him. Then he flung the pen down.
Then he picked it up, but he did not write. He waved it between finger
and thumb, as though he were beating time to a miniature orchestra
staged on the table before him. Then he began to write.
He was making out a cheque to the Earl of Rochester for the sum of eight
thousand pounds, no shillings, no pence.
He signed it A. S. Voles.
He was about to cross it, but Jones stopped him. "Leave it open," said
he, "and now one thing more, I must have those papers to-morrow morning
without fail. And to make certain of them you must do this."
He went to the bureau and took a sheet of note paper, which he laid
before the other.
"Write," said he. "I will dictate. Begin June 2nd."
Voles put the date.
"'My Lord,'" went on the dictator. "'This is to promise you that
to-morrow morning I will hand to the messenger you send to me
all the papers of yours in my possession. I confess to having
held those papers over you for the purpose of blackmail, and of
having obtained from you the sum of eight thousand pounds, and I
promise to amend my ways, and to endeavour to lead an honest life.
Signed. A. S. VOLES.'"
To The Earl of Rochester.
That was the letter.
Three times the rogue at the table refused to go on writing, and three
times his master went to the door, the rattle of the door handle always
inspiring the scribe to renewed energy.
When the thing was finished Jones read it over, blotted it, and put it
in his pocket with the cheque.
"Now you can go," said he. "I will send a man to-morrow morning at eight
o'clock to your home for the papers. I will not use this letter against
you, unless you give trouble--Well, what do you want?"
"Brandy," gasped Voles. "For God's sake some brandy."
CHAPTER IX
MORE INTRUDERS
The little glass that had held the _fin champagne_ stood on the table,
the door was shut, Voles was gone, and the incident was ended.
Jones, for the first time in his life, felt the faintness that comes
after supreme exertion. He could never have imagined that a thing like
that would have so upset him. He was unconscious during the whole of the
business that he was putting out more energy than ordinary, he knew it
now as he contemplated the magnitude of his victory, sitting exhausted
in the big saddle-bag chair on the left of the fire place and facing the
door.
He had crushed the greatest rogue in London, taken from him eight
thousand pounds of ill gotten money, and freed himself of an incubus
that would have made his position untenable.
Rochester could have done just the same, had he possessed daring, and
energy, and courage enough. He hadn't, and there was an end of it.
At this moment a knock came to the door, and a flunkey--a new
one--appeared.
"Dinner is served, my Lord."
Jones sat up in his chair.
"Dinner," said he. "I'm not ready for it yet. Fetch me a whisky and
soda--look here, tell Mr. Church I want to see him."
"Yes, my Lord."
Jones, as stated before, possessed that very rare attitude--an eye for
men. It was quite unknown to him; up to this he had been condemned to
take men as he found them; the pressure of circumstances alone had made
him a business partner with Aaron Stringer. He had never trusted
Stringer. Now, being in a position of command, he began to use this
precious gift, and he selected Church for a first officer. He wanted a
henchman.
The whisky and soda arrived, and, almost immediately on it, Church.
Jones, placing the half empty glass on the table, nodded to him.
"Come in," said he, "and shut the door."
Church closed the door and stood at attention. This admirable man's face
was constructed not with a view to the easy interpretation of emotions.
I doubt if an earthquake in Carlton House Terrace and the vicinity could
have altered the expression of it.
He stood as if listening.
Jones began: "I want you to go to-morrow at eight o'clock to No. 12B
Jermyn Street to get some documents for me. They will be handed to you
by A. S. Voles."
"Yes, my Lord."
"You will bring them back to me here."
"Yes, my Lord."
"I have just seen the gentleman, and I've just dealt with him. He is a
very great rogue and I had to call an officer--a constable in. I settled
him."
Mr. Church opened his mouth as though he were going to speak. Then he
shut it again.
"Go on," said Jones. "What were you going to say?"
"Well, your Lordship, I was going to say that I am very glad to hear
that. When you told me four months ago, in confidence, what Voles was
having out of you, you will remember what advice I gave your Lordship.
'Don't be squeezed,' I said. 'Squeeze him.' Your Lordship's solicitor,
Mr. Mortimer Collins, I believe, told you the same."
"I have taken your advice. I find it so good that I am going to ask your
advice often again--Do you see any difference in me, Mr. Church?"
"Yes, my Lord, you have changed. If your Lordship will excuse me for
saying so."
"How?"
"You have grown younger, my Lord, and more yourself, and you speak
different--sharper, so to say."
These words were Balm of Gilead to Jones. He had received no opinion of
himself from others till now; he had vaguely mistrusted his voice,
unable to estimate in how much it differed from Rochester's. The
perfectly frank declaration of Church put his mind at rest. He spoke
sharper--that was all.
"Well," said he. "Things are going to be different all round; better
too."
He turned away towards the bureau, and Church opened the door.
"You don't want me any longer, my Lord?"
"Not just now."
He opened Kelly's directory, and looked up the solicitors, till he came
to the name he wanted.
Mortimer Collins, 10, Sergeant's Inn, Fleet Street.
"That's my man," said he to himself, "and to-morrow I will see him." He
closed the book and left the room.
He did not know the position of the dining room, nor did he want to. A
servant seeing him, and taking it for granted that at this late hour he
did not want to dress, opened a door.
Next minute he was seated alone at a large table, stared at by defunct
Rochesters and their wives, and spreading his table napkin on his knees.
The dinner was excellent, though simple enough. English society has
drifted a long way from the days when Lord Palmerston sat himself down
to devour two helpings of turtle soup, the same of cod and oyster sauce,
a huge plateful of York ham, a cut from the joint, a liberal supply of
roast pheasant, to say nothing of kickshaws and sweets; the days when
the inside of a nobleman after dinner was a provision store floating in
sherry, hock, champagne, old port, and punch.
Nothing acts more quickly upon the nervous system than food; before the
roast chicken and salad were served, Jones found himself enjoying his
dinner, and, more than that, enjoying his position.
The awful position of the morning had lost its terrors, the fog that had
surrounded him was breaking. Wrecked on this strange, luxuriant, yet
hostile coast, he had met the natives, fed with them, fought them, and
measured their strength and cunning.
He was not afraid of them now. The members of the Senior Conservative
Club Camp had left him unimpressed, and the wild beast Voles had
bequeathed to him a lively contempt for the mental powers of the man he
had succeeded.
Rightly or wrongly, all Lords caught a tinge of the lurid light that
shewed up Rochester's want of vim and mental hitting power.
But he did not feel a contempt for Lords as such. He was longing to
appreciate the fact that to be a Lord was to be a very great thing. Even
a Lord who had let his estates run to ruin--like himself.
A single glass of iced champagne--he allowed himself only
one--established this conviction in his mind, also the recognition that
the flunkeys no longer oppressed him, they rather pleased him. They knew
their work and performed it perfectly, they hung on his every word and
movement.
Yesterday, sitting where he was, he would have been feeling out of
place, and irritable and awkward. Even a few hours ago he would have
felt oppressed and wanting to escape somewhere by himself. What lent him
this new magic of assurance and sense of mastery of his position?
Undoubtedly it was his battle with Voles.
Coffee was served to him in the smoking room, and there, sitting alone
with a cigar, he began clearly and for the first time to envisage his
plans for the future.
He could drop everything and run. Book a passage for the United States,
enter New York as Lord Rochester, just as a diver enters the sea, and
emerge as Jones. He could keep the eight thousand pounds with a clear
conscience--or couldn't he?
This point seemed a bit obscure.
He did not worry about it much. The main question had not to do with
money. The main question was simply this, shall I be Victor Jones for
the future, or shall I be the Earl of Rochester? The twenty-first Earl
of Rochester?
Shall I clear out, or stick to my guns? Remain boss of this show and try
and make something of the wreckage, or sneak off with nothing to show
for the most amazing experience man ever underwent?
Rochester had sneaked off. He was a quitter. Jones had once read a story
in the Popular Magazine, in which a Railway Manager had cast scorn on a
ne'er-do-well. "God does surely hate a quitter," said the manager.
These words always remained with him. They had crystallised his
sentiments in this respect: the quitter ranked in his mind almost with
the sharper.
All the same the temptation to quit was strong, even though the
temptation to stay was growing.
A loophole remained open to him. It was not necessary to decide at once;
he could throw down his cards at any moment and rise from the table if
the game was getting too much for him, or if he grew tired of it.
He saw difficult times ahead for him in the mess in which Rochester had
left his affairs--that was, perhaps, his strongest incentive to remain.
He was roused from his reverie by voices in the hall. Loud cheery
voices.
A knock came to the door and a servant announced: "Sir Hugh Spicer and
Captain Stark to see you, my Lord." Jones sat up in his chair. "Show
them in," said he.
The servant went out and returned ushering in a short bibulous looking
young man in evening dress covered with a long fawn coloured overcoat;
this gentleman was followed by a half bald, evil looking man of fifty or
so, also in evening attire.
This latter wore a monocle in what Jones afterwards mentally called,
"his twisted face."
"Look at him!" cried the young man, "sitting in his blessed arm chair
and not dressed. Look at him!"
He lurched slightly as he spoke, and brought up at the table where he
hit the inkstand with the cane he was carrying, sending inkpot and pens
flying. Jones looked at him.
This was Hughie. Pillar of the Criterion bar, President of the Rag Tag
Club, baronet and detrimental--and all at twenty three.
"Leave it alone, Hughie," said Stark, going to the silver cigar box and
helping himself. "Less of that blessed cane, Hughie--why, Jollops, what
ails you?"
He stared at Jones as he lit a cigar. Jones looked at him.
This was Spencer Stark, late Captain in His Majesty's Black Hussars,
gambler, penniless, always well dressed, and always well fed--Terrible.
Just as beetles are beetles, whether dressed in tropical splendour or
the funereal black of the English type, so are detrimentals
detrimentals. Jones knew his men.
"I beg your pardon," said he, "did you mean that name for me?"
He rose as he spoke, and crossing to the bell rang it. They thought he
was speaking in jest and ringing for drinks; they laughed, and Hughie
began to yell, yell, and slash the table with his cane in time to what
he was yelling.
This beast, who was never happy unless smashing glasses, making a noise
or tormenting his neighbours, who had never been really sober for the
space of some five years, who had destroyed a fine estate, and broken
his mother's heart, seemed now endeavouring to break his wanghee cane on
the table.
The noise was terrific.
The door opened and calves appeared.
"Throw that ruffian out," said Jones.
"Out with him," cried Hughie, throwing away his cane at this joke. "Come
on, Stark, let's shove old Jollops out of doors."
He advanced to the merry attack, and Stark, livened up by the other,
closed in, receiving a blow on the midriff that seated him in the
fender.
The next moment Hughie found himself caught by a firm hand, that had
somehow managed to insert itself between the back of his collar and his
neck, gripping the collar.
Choking and crowing he was rushed out of the room and across the hall to
the front door, a running footman preceding him. The door was opened and
he was flung into the street.
The ejection of Stark was an easier matter. The hats and coats were
flung out and the door shut finally.
"If either of those guys comes here again," said Jones to the acolyte,
"call an officer--I mean a constable."
"Yes, my Lord."
"I wonder how many more people I will have to fling out of this house,"
said he to himself, as he returned to the smoking room. "My God, what a
mess that chap Rochester must have made all round. Bar bummers like
those! Heu!"
He ordered the ink to be cleared up, and then he sent for Mr. Church. He
was excited.
"Church," said he. "I've shot out two more of that carrion. You know all
the men I have been fool enough to know. If they come here again tell
the servants not to let them in."
But he had another object in sending for Church. "Where's my cheque
book?" he asked.
Church went to the bureau and opened a lower drawer.
"I think you placed it here, my Lord." He produced it.
When he was gone Jones opened the book; it was one of Coutt's.
He knew his banker now as well as his solicitor. Then he sat down, and
taking Rochester's note from his pocket began to study the handwriting
and signature.
He made a hundred imitations of the signature, and found for the first
time in his life that he was not bad at that sort of work.
Then he burnt the sheets of paper he had been using, put the cheque book
away and looked at the clock; it pointed to eleven.
He switched out the lights and left the room, taking his way upstairs.
He felt sure of being able to find the bed-room he had left that morning,
and coming along the softly lit corridor he had no difficulty in
locating it. He had half dreaded that the agile valet in the sleeved
jacket might be there waiting to tuck him up, but to his relief the room
was vacant.
He shut the door, and going to the nearest window pulled the blind up
for a moment.
The moon was rising over London, and casting her light upon the Green
Park. A huge summer moon. The sort of moon that conjures up ideas about
guitars and balconies.
Jones undressed, and putting on the silk pyjamas that were laid out for
him, got into bed, leaving only the light burning by the bedside.
He tried to recall the details of that wonderful day, failed utterly,
switched out the light, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER X
LADY PLINLIMON
The most curious thing in the whole of Jones' extraordinary experiences
was the way in which things affecting Rochester affected him. The
coldness of the club members was an instance in point. He knew that
their coldness had nothing to do with him, yet he resented it
practically just as much as though it had.
Then again, the case of Voles. What had made him fight Voles with such
vigour? It did not matter to him in the least whether Voles gave
Rochester away or not, yet he had fought Voles with all the feeling of
the man who is attacked, not of the man who is defending another man
from attack.
The attitude of Spicer and the other scamp had roused his ire on account
of its want of respect for him, the supposed Earl of Rochester.
Rochester's folly had inspired that want of respect, why should he,
Jones, bother about it? He did. It hit him just as much as though it
were levelled against himself. He had found, as yet to a limited degree,
but still he had found that anything that would hurt Rochester would
hurt him, that his sensibility was just as acute under his new guise,
and, wonder of wonders, his dignity as a Lord just as sensitive as his
dignity as a man.
If you had told Jones in Philadelphia that a day would come when he
would be angry if a servant did not address him as "my Lord," he would
have thought you mad. Yet that day had come, or was coming, and that
change in him was not in the least the result of snobbishness, it was
the result of the knowledge of what was due to Rochester, Arthur
Coningsby Delamere, 21st Earl of, from whom he could not disentangle
himself whilst acting his part.
He was awakened by Mr. Church pulling up his window blinds.
He had been dreaming of the boarding-house in Philadelphia where he used
to live, of Miss Wybrow, the proprietress, and the other guests, Miss
Sparrow, Mr. Moese--born Moses--Mr. Hoffman, the part proprietor of
Sharpes' Drug Store, Mrs. Bertine, and the rest.
He watched whilst Mr. Church passed to the door, received the morning
tea tray from the servant outside, and, placing it by the bed, withdrew.
This was the only menial service which Mr. Church ever seemed to
perform, with the exception of the stately carrying in of papers and
letters at breakfast time.
Jones drank his tea. Then he got up, went to the window, looked out at
the sunlit Green Park, and then rang his bell. He was not depressed nor
nervous this morning. He felt extraordinarily fit. The powerful good
spirits natural to him, a heritage better than a fortune, were his
again. Life seemed wonderfully well worth living, and the game before
him the only game worth playing.
Then the Mechanism came into the room and began to act. James was the
name of this individual. Dumb and serious and active as an insect, this
man always filled Jones' mind with wonderment; he seemed less a man than
a machine. But at least he was a perfect machine.
Fully dressed now, he was preparing to go down when a knock came to the
door and Mr. Church came in with a big envelope on a salver.
"This is what you requested me to fetch from Jermyn Street, my Lord."
"Oh, you've been to Jermyn Street?"
"Yes, my Lord, directly I had served your tea at quarter to eight, I
took a taxi."
"Good!" said Jones.
He took the envelope, and, Church and the Mechanism having withdrawn, he
sat down by the window to have a look at the contents.
The envelope contained letters.
Letters from a man to a woman. Letters from the Earl of Rochester to
Sapphira Plinlimon. The most odiously and awfully stupid collection of
love letters ever written by a fool to be read by a wigged counsel in a
divorce court.
They covered three months, and had been written two years ago.
They were passionate, idealistic in parts, drivelling. He called her his
"Ickle teeny weeny treasure." Baby language--Jones almost blushed as he
read.
"He sure was moulting," said he, as he dropped letter after letter on
the floor. "And he paid eight thousand to hold these things back--well,
I don't know, maybe I'd have done the same myself. I can't fancy seeing
myself in the _Philadelphia Ledger_ with this stuff tacked on to the end
of my name."
He collected the incriminating documents, placed them in the envelope,
and came downstairs with it in his hand.
Breakfast was an almost exact replica of the meal of yesterday; the pile
of letters brought in by Church was rather smaller, however.
These letters were a new difficulty, they would all have to be answered,
the ones of yesterday, and the ones of to-day.
He would have to secure the services of a typist and a typewriter: that
could be arranged later on. He placed them aside and opened a newspaper.
He was accustomed enough now to his situation to be able to take an
interest in the news of the day. At any moment his environment might
split to admit of a new Voles or Spicer, or perhaps some more dangerous
spectre engendered from the dubious past of Rochester; but he scarcely
thought of this, he had gone beyond fear, he was up to the neck in the
business.
He glanced at the news of the day, reading as he ate. Then he pushed the
paper aside. The thought had just occurred to him that Rochester had
paid that eight thousand not to shield a woman's name but to shield his
own. To prevent that gibberish being read out against him in court.
This thought dimmed what had seemed a brighter side of Rochester, that
obscure thing which Jones was condemned to unveil little by little and
bit by bit. He pushed his plate away, and at this moment Mr. Church
entered the breakfast room.
He came to the table and, speaking in half lowered voice said:
"Lady Plinlimon to see you, your Lordship."
"Lady Plinlimon?"
"Yes, your Lordship. I have shown her into the smoking room."
Jones had finished breakfast. He rose from the table, gathered the
letters together, and with them in his hand followed Church from the
breakfast room to the smoking room. A big woman in a big hat was seated
in the arm chair facing the door.
She was forty if an hour. She had a large unpleasant face. A dominating
face, fat featured, selfish, and made up by art.
"Oh, here you are," said she as he entered and closed the door. "You see
I'm out early."
Jones nodded, went to the cigarette box, took a cigarette and lit it.
The woman got up and did likewise. She blew the cigarette smoke through
her nostrils, and Jones, as he watched, knew that he detested her. Then
she sat down again. She seemed nervous.
"Is it true what I hear, that your sister has left you and gone to live
with your mother?"
"Yes," said Jones, remembering the bird woman of yesterday morning.
"Well, you'll have some peace now, unless you let her back--but I
haven't come to talk of her. It's just this, I'm in a tight place."
"Oh!"
"A very tight place. I've got to have some money--I've got to have it
to-day."
"Oh!"
"Yes. I ought to have had it yesterday, but a deal I had on fell
through. You've got to help me, Arthur."
"How much do you want?"
"Fifteen hundred. I'll pay it back soon."
"Fifteen hundred pounds?"
"Yes, of course."
A great white light, cold and clear as the dawn of Truth, began to steal
across the mind of Jones. Why had this woman come to him this morning so
quickly after the defeat of Voles who held her letters? How had Voles
obtained those letters? This question had occurred to him before, and
this question seemed to his practical mind pregnant now with
possibilities.
"What do you want the money for?" asked he.
"Good heavens, what a question, what does a woman want money for? I want
it, that's enough--What else will you ask?"
"What was the deal you expected money from yesterday?"
"A stock exchange business."
"What sort of business?"
She crimsoned with anger.
"I haven't come to talk of that. I came as a friend to ask you for help.
If you refuse, well, there that ends it."
"Oh, no, it doesn't," said he. "I want to ask you a question."
"Well, ask it."
"It's just a simple question."
"Go on."
"You expected to receive fifteen hundred pounds yesterday?"
"I did."
"Did you expect to receive it from Mr. A. S. Voles?"
He saw at once that she was guilty. She half rose from her chair, then
she sat down again.
"What on earth do you mean?" she cried.
"You know quite well what I mean," replied he, "you would have had
fifteen hundred of Voles' takings on those letters. You heard last night
I had refused to part. He was only your agent. There's no use in denying
it. He told me all."
Her face had turned terrible, white as death, with the rouge showing on
the white.
"It is all untrue," she stuttered. "It is all untrue." She rose
staggering. He did not want to pursue the painful business, the pursuit
of a woman was not in his line. He went to the door and opened it for
her.
"It is all untrue. I'll write to you about this--untrue."
She uttered the words as she passed out. He reckoned she knew the way to
the hall door, and, shutting the door of the room, he turned to the fire
place.
He was not elated. He was shocked. It seemed to him that he had never
touched and handled wickedness before, and this was a woman in the
highest ranks of life!
She had trapped Rochester into making love to her, and used Voles to
extort eight thousand pounds from him on account of his letters.
She had hypnotized Rochester like a fowl. She was that sort. Held the
divorce court over him as a threat--could Humanity descend lower? He
went to "Who's Who" and turned up the P's till he found the man he
wanted.
Plinlimon: 3rd Baron, created 1831, Albert James, b. March 10th 1862. O.
S. of second Baron and Julia d. of J. H. Thompson, of Clifton, m.
Sapphira. d. of Marcus Mulhausen, educ. privately. Address The Roost,
Tite Street, Chelsea.
Thus spake, "Who's Who."
"I bet my bottom dollar that chap's been in it as well as she," said
Jones, referring to Plinlimon, Albert James. Then a flash of humour lit
the situation. Voles had returned eight thousand pounds; as an agent he
had received twenty five per cent., say, therefore, he stood to lose at
least six thousand. This pleased Jones more even than his victory. He
had a racial, radical, soul-rooted antipathy to Voles. Not an anger
against him, just an antipathy. "Now," said he, as he placed "Who's
Who" back on the bureau, "let's get off and see Mortimer Collins."
He left the house, and, calling a taxi cab, ordered the driver to take
him to Sergeant's Inn. He had no plan of campaign as regards Collins. He
simply wanted to explore and find out about himself. Knowledge to him in
his extraordinary position was armour, and he wanted all the armour he
could get, fighting, as he was, not only the living present, but also
another man's past--and another man's character, or want of character.
CHAPTER XI
THE COAL MINE
Sergeant's Inn lies off Fleet Street, a quiet court surrounded with
houses given over to the law. The law has always lived there ever since
that time when, as Stow quaintly put it, "There is in and about the city
a whole University as it were, of students, practicers, and pleaders,
and judges of the laws of this realm, not living of common stipends, as
in other universities it is for the most part done, but of their own
private maintenance, as being fed either by their places or practices,
or otherwise by their proper revenue, or exhibition of parents or
friends--of their houses, there be at this day fourteen in all; whereof
nine do stand within the liberties of this city, and five in the suburbs
thereof."
Sergeant's Inn stood within the liberties, and there to-day it still
stands, dusty, sedate, once the abode of judges and sergeants, now the
home of solicitors. On the right of entrance lay the offices of Mortimer
Collins, an elderly man, quiet, subfusc in hue, tall, sparsely bearded,
a collector of old prints in his spare hours, and one of the most
respected members of his profession.
His practice lay chiefly amongst the nobility and landed gentry, a fact
vaguely hinted at by the white or yellow lettering on the tin deed
boxes that lined the walls of his offices, setting forth such names and
statements as: "The Cave Estate," "Sir Jardine Jardine," "The Blundell
Estate," and so forth and so on. He knew everyone, and everything about
everyone, and terrible things about some people, and he was to be met
with at the best houses. People liked him for himself, and he inspired
the trust that comes from liking.
It was to this gentleman that Jones was shown in, and it was by this
gentleman that he was received coldly, it is true, but politely.
Jones, with his usual directness, began the business.
"I have come to have a serious talk with you," said he.
"Indeed," said the lawyer, "has anything new turned up?"
"No. I want to talk about my position generally. I see that I have made
a fool of myself."
The man of law raised his hands lightly with fingers spread, the gesture
was eloquent.
"But," went on the other, "I want to make good, I want to clear up the
mess."
The lawyer sighed. Then he took a small piece of chamois leather from
his waistcoat pocket and began to polish his glasses.
"You remember what I told you the day before yesterday," said he; "have
you determined to take my advice? Then you had nothing to offer me but
some wild talk about suicide."
"What advice?"
Collins made an impatient gesture.
"Advice--why to emigrate and try your luck in the Colonies."
"H'm, h'm," said Jones. "Yes, I remember, but since then I have been
thinking things out. I'm going to stay here and make good."
Again the lawyer made a gesture of impatience.
"You know your financial position as well as I do," said he. "How are
you to make good, as you express it, against that position? You can't,
you are hopelessly involved, held at every point. A month ago I told you
to reduce your establishment and let Carlton House Terrace; you said you
would and you didn't. That hurt me. I would much sooner you had refused
the suggestion. Well, the crash if it does not come to-day will come
to-morrow. You are overdrawn at Coutts', you can raise money on nothing,
your urgent debts to tradesmen and so forth amount, as you told me the
day before yesterday, to over two thousand five hundred pounds. See for
yourself how you stand."
"I say again," said Jones, "that I am going to make good. All these
affairs seem to have gone to pieces because--I have been a fool."
"I'm glad you recognise that."
"But I'm a fool no longer. You know that business about Voles?"
The man of affairs nodded.
"Well, what do you think of that?" He took Voles' cheque from his pocket
and laid it before the lawyer.
"Why, what is this?" said the other. "Eight thousand pounds."
"He called on me for more blackmail," replied Jones, "and I squeezed
him, called in a--policeman, made him disgorge, and there's his cheque.
Do you, think he has money enough to meet it?"
"Oh, yes, he is very wealthy, but you told me _distinctly_ he had only
got a thousand out of you."
Jones swore mentally. To take up the life and past of a rogue is bad, to
take up the life and past of a weak-kneed and shifty man is almost
worse.
"I told you wrong," said he.
Collins suppressed a movement of irritation and disgust. He was used to
dealing with Humanity.
"What can a doctor do for a patient who holds back essential facts?"
asked he. "Nothing. How can I believe what you say?"
"I don't know," replied the other. "But I just ask you to. I ask you to
believe I'm changed. I've had a shock that has altered my whole nature.
I'm not the same man who talked to you the day before yesterday."
Collins looked at him curiously.
"You have altered," said he, "your voice is different, somehow, too. I
am not going to ask you _what_ has brought about this change in your
views. I only trust it may be so--and permanent."
"Bedrock," said Jones. "I'm going to begin right now. I'm going to let
that caravan--"
"Caravan!"
"The Carlton House place, your idea is good, will you help me through
with it? I don't know how to start letting places."
"I will certainly assist you. In fact I believe I can get you a tenant
at once. The Bracebridges want just such a house, furnished. I will get
my clerk to write to them--if you really mean it."
"I mean it."
"Well, that's something. I pressed the point about your really meaning
it, because you were so violently opposed to such a course when I spoke
of it before. In fact you were almost personal, as though I had proposed
something disgraceful--though it was true you came to agree with me at
last."
"I guess the only disgrace is owing money and not being able to pay,"
said the present Lord Rochester. "I've come to see that now."
"Thank God!" said Collins.
"I'll take rooms at a quiet hotel," went on the other, "with this eight
thousand and the rent from that Gazabo, I ought to tide over the rocks."
"I don't see why not, I don't really see why not," replied Collins
cheerfully, "if you are steadfast in your purpose. Fortunately your
wife's property is untouched, and how about her?"
"Yes," said Jones, with a cold shiver.
"The love of a good wife," went on the other, "is a thing not to be
bought, and I may say I have very good reason to believe that, despite
all that has occurred, you still have your wife's affection. Leaving
everything else aside I think your greatest mistake was having your
sister to live with you. It does not do, and, considering Miss
Birdbrook's peculiar temper, it especially did not do in your case. Now
that things are different would you care to see your wife, and have a
quiet talk over matters?"
"No," said Jones, hurriedly. "I don't want to see her--at least, not
yet."
"Well, please yourself," replied the other. "Perhaps later on you will
come to see things differently."
The conversation then closed, the lawyer promising to let him know
should he secure an offer for the house.
Jones, so disturbed by this talk about his wife that he was revolving in
his mind plans to cut the whole business, said good-bye and took his
departure. But he was not destined to leave the building just yet.
He was descending the narrow old stairs when he saw some people coming
up, and drew back to let them pass.
A stout lady led the way and was followed by an elderly gentleman and a
younger lady in a large hat.
"Why it is Arthur," cried the stout woman. "How fortunate. Arthur, we
have come to see Mr. Collins, such a terrible thing has happened."
The unfortunate Jones now perceived that the lady with the huge hat was
the bird woman, the elderly gentleman he had never seen before, but the
elderly gentleman had evidently often seen him, was most probably a near
relative, to judge by the frigidity and insolence of his nod and general
demeanour. This old person had the Army stamp about him, and a very
decided chin with a cleft in it.
"Better not talk out here," said he, "come in, come in and see Collins."
Jones did not want in the least to go in and see Collins, but he was
burning to know what this dreadful thing was that had happened. He half
dreaded that it had to do with Rochester's suicide. He followed the
party, and next moment found himself again in Collins' room, where the
lawyer pointed out chairs to the ladies, closed the door, and came back
to his desk table where he seated himself.
"Oh, Mr. Collins," said the elderly lady, "such a dreadful thing has
happened--coal--they have found coal." She collapsed.
The old gentleman with the cleft chin took up the matter.
"This idiot," said he, indicating Jones, "has sold a coal mine, worth
maybe a million, for five thousand. The Glanafwyn property has turned up
coal. I only heard of it last night, and by accident. Struthers said to
me straight out in the club, 'Do you know that bit of land in Glamorgan,
Rochester sold to Marcus Mulhausen?' Yes, I said. 'Well,' said he, 'it's
not land, it's the top of the biggest coal mine in Wales, steam coal,
and Mulhausen is going to work it himself. He was offered two hundred
and fifty thousand for the land last week, they have been boring there
for the last half year,' that's what he told me, and I verified it this
morning. Of course Mulhausen spotted the land for what it was worth, and
laid his trap for this fool."
Jones restrained his emotions with an effort, not knowing in the least
his relationship to the violent one. Mr. Collins made it clear.
"Your nephew has evidently fallen into a trap, your Grace," said he.
Then turning to Jones:
"I warned you not to sell that land--Heaven knows I knew little enough
of the district and less of its mineral worth; still, I was adverse from
parting with land--always am--and especially to such a sharp customer as
Mulhausen. I told you to have an expert opinion. I had not minerals in
my mind. I thought, possibly, it might be some railway extension in
prospect--and it was your last bit of property without mortgage on it.
Yes, I told you not to do it, and it's done."
"Oh, Arthur," sighed the elderly woman. "Your last bit of land--and to
think it should go like that. I never dreamed I should have to say those
words to my son." Then stiffening and turning to Collins. "But I did not
come to complain, I came to see if justice cannot be done. This is
robbery. That terrible man with the German name has robbed Arthur. It is
quite plain. What can be done?"
"Absolutely nothing," replied Collins.
"Nothing?"
"Your ladyship must believe me when I say nothing can be done. What
ground can we have for moving? The sale was perfectly open and above
board. Mulhausen made no false statement--I am right in saying that, am
I not?" turning to Jones.
Jones had to nod.
"And that being the case we are helpless."
"But if it can be proved that he knew there was coal in the land, and if
he bought it concealing that knowledge, surely, surely the law can make
him give it back," said the simple old lady, who it would seem stood in
the place of Rochester's unfortunate mother.
Mr. Collins almost smiled.
"Your ladyship, that would give no handle to the law. Now, for instance,
if I knew that the Canadian Pacific Railway, let us say, had discovered
large coal bearing lands, and if I used that private knowledge to buy
your Canadian Pacific stock at, say, one hundred, and if that stock rose
to three hundred, could you make me give you your stock back? Certainly
not. The gain would be a perfectly legitimate product of my own
sharpness."
"Sharpness," said the bird woman, "that's just it. If Arthur had had
even sense, to say nothing of sharpness, things would have been very
different all round--all round."
She protruded her head from her boa and retracted it. Jones, furious,
dumb, with his hands in his pockets and his back against the window,
said nothing.
He never could have imagined that a baiting like this, over a matter
with which he had nothing to do, could have made him feel such a fool,
and such an ass.
He saw at once how Rochester had been done, and he felt, against all
reason, the shame that Rochester might have felt--but probably wouldn't.
His uncle, the Duke of Melford, for that was the choleric one's name,
his mother, the dowager Countess of Rochester, and his sister, the Hon.
Venetia Birdbrook, now all rose up and got together in a covey before
making their exit, and leaving this bad business and the fool who had
brought it about.
You can fancy their feelings. A man in Rochester's position may be
anything, almost, as long as he is wealthy, but should he add the crime
of poverty to his other sins he is lost indeed. And Rochester had not
only flung his money away, he had flung a coal mine after it.
No wonder that his uncle did not even glance at him again as he left the
room, shepherding the two women before him.
"It's unfortunate," said Collins, when they found themselves alone. It
was the mildest thing he could say, and he said it.
CHAPTER XII
THE GIRL IN THE VICTORIA
When Jones found himself outside the office at last, and in the bustle
of Fleet Street, he turned his steps west-wards.
He had almost forgotten the half formed determination to throw down his
cards and get up from this strange game, which he had formed when
Collins had asked him whether he would not have an interview with his
wife. This coal mine business pushed everything else aside for the
moment; the thought of that deal galvanized the whole business side of
his nature, so that, as he would have said himself, bristles stood on
it. A mine worth a million pounds, traded away for twenty five thousand
dollars!
He was taking the thing to heart, as though he himself had been tricked
by Mulhausen, and now as he walked, a block in the traffic brought him
back from his thoughts, and suddenly, a most appalling sensation came
upon him. For a moment he had lost his identity. For a moment he was
neither Rochester nor Jones, but just a void between these two. For a
moment he could not tell which he was. For a moment he was neither. That
was the terrible part of the feeling. It was due to over taxation of the
brain in his extraordinary position, and to the intensive manner in
which he had been playing the part of Rochester. It lasted perhaps, only
a few seconds, for it is difficult to measure the duration of mental
processes, and it passed as rapidly as it had come.
Seeing a bar he entered it, and a small glass of brandy closed the
incident and made him forget it. He asked the way to Coutts' Bank, which
in 1692 was situated at the "Three Crowns" in the Strand, next door to
the Globe Tavern, and which still holds the same position in the world
of commerce, and nearly the same in the world of bricks and mortar.
He reached the door of the bank and was about to enter, when something
checked him. It was the thought that he would have to endorse the cheque
with Rochester's signature.
He had copied it so often that he felt competent to make a fair
imitation, but he had begun life in a bank and he knew the awful eye a
bank has for a customer's signature. His signature--at least
Rochester's--must be well known at Coutts'. It would never do to put
himself under the microscope like that, besides, and this thought only
came to him now, it might be just as well to have his money in some
place unknown to others. Collins and all that terrible family knew that
he was banking at Coutts', events might arise when it would be very
necessary too for him to be able to lay his hands on a secret store of
money.
He had passed the National Provincial Bank in the Strand, the name
sounded safe and he determined to go there.
He reached the bank, sent his name into the manager, and was at once
admitted. The manager was a solid man, semi-bald, with side whiskers,
and an air of old English business respectability delightful in these
new and pushing days, he received the phantom of the Earl of Rochester
with the respect due to their mutual positions.
Jones, between Coutts' and the National Provincial, had done a lot of
thinking. He foresaw that even if he were to give in a passable
imitation of Rochester's signature, all cheques signed in future would
have to tally with that signature. Now a man's handwriting, though
varying, has a personality of its own, and he very much doubted as to
whether he would be able to keep up that personality under the
microscopic gaze of the bank people. He decided on a bold course. He
would retain his own handwriting. It was improbable that the National
Provincial had ever seen Rochester's autograph; even if they had, it was
not a criminal thing for a man to alter his style of writing. He
endorsed the cheque Rochester, gave a sample of his signature, gave
directions for a cheque book to be sent to him at Carlton House Terrace,
and took his departure.
He had changed Rochester's five pound note before going to Collins, and
he had the change in his pocket, four pounds sixteen and sixpence. Five
pounds, less the price of a cigar at the tobacconist's where he had
changed his note, the taxi to Sergeants' Inn, and the glass of liqueur
brandy. He remembered that he still owed for his luncheon yesterday at
the Senior Conservative, and he determined to go and pay for it, and
then lunch at some restaurant. Never again would he have luncheon at
that Conservative Caravanserai, so he told himself.
With this purpose in mind, he was standing waiting to cross the road
near Southampton Street, when a voice sounded in his ear and an arm took
his.
"Hello, Rochy," said the voice.
Jones turned, and found himself arm in arm with a youth of eighteen--so
he seemed, a gilded youth, if there ever was a gilded youth,
immaculately dressed, cheery, and with a frank face that was entirely
pleasing.
"Hello," said Jones.
"What became of you that night?" asked the cheery one, as they crossed
the road still arm in arm.
"Which night?"
"Which night? Why the night they shot us out of the Rag Tag Club. Are
you asleep, Rawjester--or what ails you?"
"Oh, I remember," said Jones.
They had unlinked now, and walking along together they passed up
Southampton Street and through Henrietta Street towards Leicester
Square. The unknown doing all the talking, a task for which he seemed
well qualified.
He talked of things, events, and people, absolutely unknown to his
listener, of horses, and men, and women. He talked Jones into Bond
Street, and Jones went shopping with him, assisting him in the choice of
two dozen coloured socks at Beale and Inmans. Outside the hosier's, the
unknown was proposing luncheon, when a carriage, an open Victoria,
going slowly on account of the traffic, drew Jones' attention.
It was a very smart turn out, one horsed, but having two liveried
servants on the box. A coachman, and a footman with powdered hair.
In the Victoria was seated one of the prettiest girls ever beheld by
Jones. A lovely creature, dark, with deep, dreamy, vague blue-grey
eyes--and a face! Ah, what pen could describe that face, so mobile,
piquante, and filled with light and inexpressible charm.
She had caught Jones' eye, she was gazing at him curiously, half
mirthfully, half wrathfully, it seemed to him, and now to his amazement
she made a little movement of the head, as if to say, "come here." At
the same moment she spoke to the coachman.
"Portman, stop please."
Jones advanced, raising his hat.
"I just want to tell you," said the Beauty, leaning a little forward,
"that you are a silly old ass. Venetia has told me all--It's nothing to
me, but don't do it--Portman, drive on."
"Good Lord!" said Jones, as the vehicle passed on its way, bearing off
its beautiful occupant, of whom nothing could now be seen but the lace
covered back of a parasol.
He rejoined the unknown.
"Well," said the latter, "what has your wife been saying to you?"
"My _wife_!" said Jones.
"Well, your late wife, though you ain't divorced yet, are you?"
"No," said Jones.
He uttered the word mechanically, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
That lovely creature his wife! Rochester's wife!
"Get in," said the unknown. He had called a taxi.
Jones got in.
Rochester's wife! The contrast between her and Lady Plinlimon suddenly
arose before him, together with the folly of Rochester seen gigantically
and in a new light.
The taxi drew up in a street off Piccadilly; they got out; the unknown
paid and led the way into a house, whose front door presented a modest
brass door plate inscribed with the words:
"MR. CARR"
They passed along a passage, and then down stairs to a large room, where
small card tables were set out. An extraordinary room, for, occupying
nearly half of one side of it stood a kitchen range, over which a cook
was engaged broiling chops and kidneys, and all the other elements of a
mixed grill. Old fashioned pictures of sporting celebrities hung on the
walls, and opposite the range stood a dresser, laden with priceless old
fashioned crockery ware. Off this room lay the dining room, and the
whole place had an atmosphere of comfort and the days gone by when days
were less laborious than our days, and comfort less allied to glitter
and tinsel.
This was Carr's Club.
The unknown sat down before the visitor's book, and began to write his
own name and the name of his guest.
Jones, looking over his shoulder, saw that his name was Spence, Patrick
Spence. Sir Patrick Spence, for one of the attendants addressed him as
Sir Patrick. A mixed grill, some cheese and draught beer in heavy pewter
tankards, constituted the meal, during which the loquacious Spence kept
up the conversation.
"I don't want to poke my nose into your affairs," said he, "but I can
see there's something worrying you; you're not the same chap. Is it
about the wife?"
"No," said Jones, "it's not that."
"Well, I don't want to dig into your confidences, and I don't want to
give you advice. If I did, I'd say make it up with her. You know very
well, Rochy, you have led her the deuce of a dance. Your sister got me
on about it the other night at the Vernons'. We had a long talk about
you, Rochy, and we agreed you were the best of chaps, but too much given
to gaiety and promiscuous larks. You should have heard me holding forth.
But, joking apart, it's time you and I settled down, old chap. You can't
put old heads on young shoulders, but our shoulders ain't so young as
they used to be, Rochy. And I want to tell you this, if you don't hitch
up again in harness, the other party will do a bolt. I'm dead serious.
It's not the thing to say to another man, but you and I haven't any
secrets between us, and we've always been pretty plain one to the
other--well, this is what I want to say, and just take it as it's meant.
Maniloff is after her. You know that chap, the _attaché_ at the Russian
Embassy, chap like a billiard marker, always at the other end of a
cigarette--other name's Boris. Hasn't a penny to bless himself with. I
know he hasn't, for I've made kind enquiries about him through Lewis,
reason why--he wanted to buy one of my racers for export to Roosia.
Seven hundred down and the balance in six months. Lewis served up his
past to me on a charger. The chap's rotten with debt, divorced from his
wife, and a punter at Monte Carlo. That's his real profession, and card
playing. He's a sleepy Slav, and if he was told his house was on fire
he'd say, "nichévo," meaning it don't matter, it's well insured--if he
had a house to insure, which he hasn't. But women like him, he's that
sort. But Heaven help the woman that marries him. He'd take her money
and herself off to Monte, and when he'd broken her heart and spoiled her
life and spent her coin, he'd leave her, and go off and be Russian
_attaché_ in Japan or somewhere. I know him. Don't let her do it,
Rochy."
"But how am I to help it?" asked the perplexed Jones, who saw the
meaning of the other. It did not matter in reality to him, whether a
woman whom he had only seen once were to "bolt" with a Russian and find
ruination at Monte Carlo, but this world is not entirely a world of
reality, and he felt a surprisingly strong resentment at the idea of
the girl in the Victoria "bolting" with a Russian.
It will be remembered that in Collins' office, the lawyer's talk about
his "wife" had almost decided him to throw down his cards and quit. This
shadowy wife, first mentioned by the bird woman, had, in fact, been the
one vaguely felt insuperable obstacle in the way of his grand
determination to make good where Rochester had failed, to fight
Rochester's battles, to be the Earl of Rochester permanently maybe, or,
failing that, to retire and vanish back to the States with honourable
pickings.
The sight of the real thing had, however, altered the whole position.
Romance had suddenly touched Victor Jones; the gorgeous but sordid veils
through which he had been pushing had split to some mystic wand, and had
become the foliage of fairy land.
"I want to tell you--you are an old ass."
Those words were surely enough to shatter any dream, to turn to pathos
any situation. In Jones' case they had acted as a most potent spell. He
could still hear the voice, wrathful, but with a tinge of mirth in it,
golden, individual, entrancing.
"How are you to help it?" said Spence. "Why, go and make up with her
again, kick old Nichévo. Women like chaps that kick other chaps; they
pretend they don't, but they do. Either do that or take a gun and shoot
her, she'd be better shot than with that fellow."
He lit a cigarette and they passed into the card room, where Spence,
looking at his watch, declared that he must be off to keep an
appointment. They said good-bye in the street, and Jones returned to
Carlton House Terrace.
He had plenty to think about.
The pile of letters waiting to be answered on the table in the smoking
room reminded him that he had forgotten a most pressing necessity--a
typist. He could sign letters all right, with a very good imitation of
Rochester's signature, but a holograph letter in the same hand was
beyond him. Then a bright idea came to him, why not answer these letters
with sixpenny telegrams, which he could hand in himself?
He found a sheaf of telegraph forms in the bureau, and sat down before
the letters, dealing with them one by one, and as relevantly as he
could. It was a rather interesting and amusing game, and when he had
finished he felt fairly satisfied. "Awfully sorry can't come," was the
reply to the dinner invitations. The letter signed "Childersley" worried
him, till he looked up the name in "Who's Who" and found a Lord
answering to it at the same address as that on the note paper.
He had struck by accident on one of the alleviations of a major misery
of civilized life, replying to Letters, and he felt like patenting it.
He left the house with the sheaf of telegrams, found the nearest post
office--which is situated directly opposite to Charing Cross
Station--and returned. Then lighting a cigar, he took the friendly and
indefatigable "Who's Who" upon his knee, and began to turn the pages
indolently. It is a most interesting volume for an idle moment, full of
scattered romance, tales of struggle and adventure, compressed into a
few lines, peeps of history, and the epitaphs of still living men.
"I want to tell you--you are an old ass."
The words still sounding in his ears made him turn again to the name
Plinlimon. The contrast between Lady Plinlimon and the girl, whose
vision dominated his mind, rose up again sharply at sight of the printed
name.
Ass! That name did not apply to Rochester. To fit him with an
appropriate pseudonym would be impossible. Fool, idiot, sumph--Jones
tried them all on the image of the defunct, but they were too small.
"Plinlimon: 3rd Baron," read Jones, "created 1831, Albert James, b.
March 10th, 1862. O. S. of second Baron and Julia d. of J. H. Thompson
of Clifton, m. Sapphira, d. of Marcus Mulhausen, educ. privately.
Address The Roost, Tite Street, Chelsea."
Mulhausen! He almost dropped the book. Mulhausen! Collins, his office,
and that terrible family party all rose up before him. Here was the
scamp who had diddled Rochester out of the coal mine, the father of the
woman who had diddled him out of thousands. The paragraph in "Who's Who"
turned from printed matter to a nest of wriggling vipers. He threw the
book on the table, rose up, and began to pace the floor.
The girl-wife in the Victoria, his own position--everything was
forgotten, before the monstrous fact half guessed, half seen.
Rochester had been plucked right and left by these harpies. He had
received five thousand pounds for land worth a million from the father,
he had paid eight thousand, or a good part of eight thousand to the
daughter. Fine business that!
I compared Jones, when he was fighting Voles, to a terrier. He had a
good deal of the terrier in his composition, the honesty, the rooting
out instinct, and the fury before vermin. Men run in animal groups, and
if you study animals you will be surprised by nothing so much as the old
race fury that breaks out in the most civilized animal before the old
race quarry or enemy.
For a few seconds, as he paced the floor, Jones was in the mental
condition of a dog in proximity to a hutched badger. Then he began to
think clearly. The obvious fact before him was that Voles, the
Plinlimons and Mulhausen were a gang; the presumptive fact was that the
money paid in blackmail had gone back to Mulhausen, or at least a great
part of it.
Was Mulhausen the spider of the web? Were all the rest his tools and
implements?
Jones had a good deal of instinctive knowledge of women. He did not in
his heart believe that a woman could be so utterly vile as to use love
letters directed to her for the purpose of extracting money from the man
who wrote them. Or rather that, whilst she might use them, it was
improbable that she would invent the method. The whole business had the
stamp of a mind masculine and utterly unscrupulous. Even at first he had
glimpsed this vaguely, when he considered it probable that Lord
Plinlimon had a hand in the affair.
"Now," thought Jones, "if I could bring this home to Mulhausen, I could
squeeze back that coal mine from him. I could sure."
He sat down and lit another cigar to assist him in dealing with this
problem.
It was very easy to say "squeeze Mulhausen," it was a different thing to
do it. He came to this conclusion after a few minutes' earnest
concentration of mind on that problematical person. Hitherto he had been
dealing with small men and wasters. Voles was a plain scoundrel, quite
easily overthrown by direct methods. But Marcus Mulhausen he guessed to
be a big man. The first thing to be done was to verify this supposition.
He rang the bell and sent for Mr. Church.
"Come in," said he, when the latter appeared, "and shut the door. I want
to ask you something."
"Yes, my Lord."
"It's just this. I want you to tell me what you think of Lord Plinlimon,
and what you have heard said about him. I have my own opinions--I want
yours."
"Well, my Lord," began Church. "It's not for me to say anything against
his Lordship, but since you ask me I will say that it's generally the
opinion that his Lordship is a bit--soft."
"Do you think he's straight?"
"Yes, my Lord--that is to say--"
"Spit it out," said Jones.
"Well, my Lord, he owes money, that's well known; and I've heard it said
a good deal of money has been lost at cards in his house, but not
through his fault. Indeed, you yourself said something to me to that
effect, my Lord."
"Yes, so I did--But what I want to get at is this. Do you think he's a
man who would do a scoundrelly thing--that's plain?"
"Oh, no, my Lord, he's straight enough. It's the other party."
"Meaning his wife?"
"No, my Lord--her brother, Mr. Julian."
"Ah!"
Church warmed a bit. "He's always about there, lives with them mostly.
You see, my Lord, he has no what you may call status of his own, but he
manages to get known to people through her Ladyship."
"Kind of sucker," said Jones.
Mr. Church assented. The expression was new to him, but it seemed to
apply.
Then Jones dismissed him.
The light was becoming clearer and clearer. Here was another member of
the gang, another instrument of Marcus Mulhausen.
"To-morrow," said Jones to himself, "I will go for these chaps. Voles is
the key to the lot of them, and I have Voles completely under my thumb."
Then he put the matter from his mind for a while, and fell to thinking
of the girl--his wife--Rochester's wife.
The strange thought came to him that she was a widow and did not know
it.
He dined out that night, going to a little restaurant in Soho, and he
returned to bed early, so as to be fresh for the business of the morrow.
He had looked himself up again in "Who's Who," and found that his wife's
name was Teresa. Teresa. The name pleased him vaguely, and now that he
had captured it, it stuck like a burr in his mind. If he could only make
good over the Mulhausen proposition, re-capture that mine, prove
himself--would she, if he told her all--would she--?
He fell asleep murmuring the word Teresa.
CHAPTER XIII
TERESA
He woke up next morning, to find the vision of Teresa, Countess of
Rochester--so he called her--standing by his bedside.
Have you ever for a moment considered the influence of women? Go to a
public meeting composed entirely of men and see what a heavy affair it
can be, especially if you are a speaker; sprinkle a few women through
the audience, and behold the livening effect. At a party or a public
meeting in the Wheat Pit or the battlefield, women, or the recollection
of a woman, form or forms one of the greatest liveners to conversation,
speech, or action. Most men fight the battle of life for a woman. Jones,
as he sat up and drank his morning tea, gazing the while at the vision
of Teresa, Countess of Rochester, had found, almost unknown to himself,
a new incentive to action.
The position yesterday had begun to sag, very little would have made him
"quit," take a hundred pounds from the eight thousand and a passage by
the next boat to the States; but that girl in the Victoria, those eyes,
that voice, those words--they had altered everything.
Was he in love? Perhaps not, but he was fascinated, held, dazzled.
More than that, the world seemed strange--brighter; he felt younger,
filled with an energy of a new brand. He whistled as he crossed the
floor to look out of the window, and as he tubbed he splashed the water
about like a boy.
It was easy to see that the unfortunate man had tumbled into a position
more fantastic and infinitely more dangerous than any position he had
hitherto occupied since setting foot in the house of Rochester.
That vanished and fantastic humourist would have found plenty to feed
his thoughts could he have returned.
The cheque book from the National Provincial Bank arrived by the first
post, and after breakfast he put it aside in a drawer of the bureau in
the smoking room. He glanced through the usual sheaf of letters from
unknown people, tradesmen, whose accounts were marked "account rendered"
and gentlemen who signed themselves with the names of counties. One of
the latter seemed indignant.
"I take this d--d bad of you, Rochester," said he. "I've found
it out at last, you are the man responsible for that telegram. I
lost three days and a night's sleep rushing up to Cumberland on
a wild goose chase, and I'm telling people all about it. Some
day you'll land yourself in a mess. Jokes that may be funny
amongst board school boys are out of place amongst men.
"LANGWATHBY."
Jones determined to send Langwathby a telegram of apology when he had
time to look his name up in "Who's Who"; then he put the letters aside,
called for his hat and cane and left the house.
He was going to Voles first.
Voles was his big artillery. He guessed that the fight with Marcus
Mulhausen would be a battle to the death. He reckoned a lot on Voles. In
Trafalgar Square he called a taxi and told the driver to take him to
Jermyn Street.
PART III
CHAPTER XIV
THE ATTACK
A. S. Voles, money lender and bill discounter, lived over his business.
That is to say his office was his dining room. He owned the house in
Jermyn Street. Jones, dismissing the taxi, rang the bell and was
admitted by a man servant, who, not sure whether Mr. Voles was in or
not, invited the visitor into a small room on the right of the entrance
hall and closed the door on him.
The room contained a desk table, three chairs, a big scale map of
London, a Phoenix Insurance Almanac, and a photogravure reproduction of
Mona Lisa. The floor was covered with linoleum, and the window gave upon
a blank wall.
This was the room where creditors and stray visitors had to wait. Jones
took a chair and looked about him.
Humanity may be divided into three classes: those who, having seen,
adore, those who tolerate, and those who detest Mona Lisa. Jones
detested her. That leery, sleery, slippery, poisonous face was hateful
to him as the mask of a serpent.
He was looking at the lady when the door opened and in came Voles.
Voles looked yellower and older this morning, but his face showed
nothing of resentment. The turning of the Earl of Rochester upon him had
been the one great surprise of his life. He had always fancied that he
knew character, and his fancy was not ill founded. His confidence in
himself had been shaken.
"Good morning," said Jones. "I have come to have a little talk with
you."
"Sit down," said Voles.
They seated themselves, Voles before the desk.
"I haven't come to fight," said Jones, "just to talk. You known that
Marcus Mulhausen has got that Welsh land from me for five thousand, and
that it is worth maybe a million now."
Voles nodded.
"Well, Mulhausen has to give that property back."
Voles laughed.
"You needn't laugh. You have seen my rough side. I'm holding the smooth
towards you now--but there is no occasion to laugh. I'm going to skin
Mulhausen."
"Well," said Voles. "What have I to do with that?"
"You are the knife."
"Oh!"
"Yes, indeed. Let's talk. When you got that eight thousand from me, you
were only the agent of the Plinlimon woman, and she was only the agent
of Marcus. She got something, you got something, but Marcus got the
most. Julian got something too, but it was Marcus got the joints. He
gave you three the head, and the hoofs, and the innards, and the tail.
I've had it out with the Plinlimon woman and I know. You were a gang."
Voles heaved up in his chair.
"What more have you to say?" asked he thickly.
"A lot. There is nothing more difficult to get at than a gang, because
they cover each other's traces. I pay you a certain sum in cash, you
deduct your commission and hand the remainder over to the Plinlimon
woman, she pays her Pa, and gets a few hundred to pay her milliner.
Who's to prove anything? No cheques have passed."
"Just so," said Voles.
"I'm glad you see my point," replied Jones. "Now if you can't untie a
knot, you can always cut it if you have a knife--can't you?"
Voles shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, I said you were a knife, didn't I, and I'm going to cut this knot
with you, see my point?"
"Not in the least."
"I'm sorry, because that makes me speak plain, and that's unpleasant.
This is my meaning. I have to get that property back, or else I will go
to the police and rope in the whole gang. Tell the whole story. I will
accuse Marcus. Do you understand that? Marcus, and Marcus' daughter, and
Marcus' son, and you. And I won't do that to-morrow, I'll do it to-day.
To-night the whole caboodle of you will be in jail."
"You said you hadn't come to fight," cried Voles. "What do you want?
Haven't you had enough from me? Yet you drive me like this. It's
dangerous."
"I have not come to fight. At least not you. On the contrary, when I get
this property back, if it turns out worth a million, I'll maybe pay you
your losses. You've been paying the piper for Marcus, it seems to me."
"I have," groaned Voles.
The two words proved to Jones that he was right all through.
"Well, it's Marcus I'm up against, and you have to help me."
Then Voles began to speak. The something Oriental in his nature, the
something that had driven him rushing with outspread arms at the
constable that evening, began now to talk.
Help against Marcus! What could he do against Marcus? Why Marcus
Mulhausen held him in the hollow of his hand. Marcus held everyone: his
daughter, her husband, his own son Julian, to say nothing of A. S. Voles
and others.
Jones listened with patient attention to all this, and when the other
had finished and wiped the palms of his hands on his handkerchief, said:
"But all the same, Marcus is held by the fact that he forms one of a
gang."
Voles made a movement with his hand.
"Don't interrupt me. The head of a shark is the cleverest part of it,
but it has to suffer with the body when the whole shark is caught;
that's the fix Marcus is in. When I close on the lot of you, Marcus
will be the first to go into the jug. Now, see here, you have got to
take my orders; they won't be hard."
"What are they?"
"You have got to write me a note, which I will take to Marcus, telling
him the game's up, the gang's burst, and to deliver."
"Why d--n it, what ails you?" said Voles.
"What ails me?"
"You aren't talking like yourself--you have never been like yourself
since you've taken this line."
Jones felt himself changing colour. In his excitement he had let his
voice run away with him.
"It doesn't matter a button whether I'm like myself or not," said he,
"you've got to write that note, and do it now while I dictate."
Voles drummed on the desk with his fingers, then he took a sheet of
paper and an envelope from a drawer.
"Well," said he, "what is it to be?"
"Nothing alarming," said the other. "Just three words. 'It's all
up'--how do you address him?"
Without reply Voles wrote.
"Dear M.
"It's all up."
"That'll do," said Jones, "now sign your name and address the envelope."
Voles did so.
Jones put the letter in his pocket.
"Well," said he, "that ends the business. I hope, with this, and what I
have to say to him, Marcus will part, and as I say, if things turn out
as I hope, maybe I'll right your losses--I have no quarrel with
you--only Marcus."
Suddenly Voles spoke.
"For God's sake," said he, "mind how you deal with that chap; he's never
been got the better of, curse him. Go cautiously."
"You never fear," said Jones.
CHAPTER XV
THE ATTACK (Continued)
Jones had already obtained Marcus Mulhausen's address from the
invaluable Kelly.
Mulhausen was a financier. A financier is a man who makes money without
a trade or profession, and Mulhausen had made a great deal of money,
despite this limitation, during his twenty years of business life, which
had started humbly enough behind the counter of a pawnbroker's in the
Minories.
His offices were situated in Chancery Lane. They consisted of three
rooms: an outer waiting room, a room inhabited by three clerks, that is
to say a senior clerk, Mr. Aaronson, and two subordinates, and an inner
room where Mulhausen dwelt.
Jones, on giving his name, was shown at once into the inner room where
Mulhausen was seated at his desk.
Mulhausen was a man of sixty or so, small, fragile looking, with grey
side whiskers and drowsy heavy-lidded eyes.
He nodded to Jones and indicated a chair. Then he finished his work, the
reading of a letter, placed it under an agate paper weight, and turned
to the newcomer.
"What can I do for you this morning?" asked Mulhausen.
"You can just read this letter," said Jones.
He handed over Voles' letter.
Mulhausen put on his glasses, opened the letter, and read it. Then he
placed the open letter on top of the one beneath the agate paper weight,
tore up the envelope, and threw the two fragments into the waste paper
basket behind him.
"Anything more?" asked he.
"Yes," replied the other, "a lot more. Let us begin at the beginning.
You have obtained from me a piece of real estate worth anything up to a
million pounds; you paid five thousand for it."
"Yes!"
"You have got to hand me that property back."
"I beg your pardon," said Mulhausen. "Do you refer to the Glanafwyn
lands?"
"Yes."
"I see. And I have to hand those back to you--anything more?"
"No, that's all. I received your daughter's letters back from Voles
yesterday--Let's be plain with one another. Voles has confessed
everything. I have his confession under his own handwriting, you are all
in a net, the whole gang of you--you, your daughter, your son and Voles.
You plucked me like a turkey. You know the whole affair as well as I do,
and if I do not receive that property back before five o'clock to-day, I
shall go to the nearest police office and swear an information against
you."
"I see," said Mulhausen, without turning a hair, "you will put us all in
prison, will you not? That would be very unpleasant. Very unpleasant
indeed."
He rose, went to some tin boxes situated on a ledge behind him, took out
his keys and opened one.
Jones, fancying that he was going to produce the title deeds, felt a
little jump at his thyroid cartilage. This was victory without a battle.
But Mr. Marcus Mulhausen took no title deeds from the box. He produced a
letter case, came back with it to the table, and sat down.
Then holding the letter case before him he looked at Jones over his
glasses.
"You rogue," said Mulhausen.
That was the most terrific moment in Jones' life. Mulhausen from a
criminal had suddenly become a judge. He spoke with such absolute
conviction, ease, sense of power and scorn, that there could be no
manner of doubt he held the winning cards. He opened the letter case and
produced a paper.
"Here is the bill of exchange for two hundred and fifty pounds, to which
you forged Sir Pleydell Tuffnell's name," said Marcus Mulhausen,
spreading the paper before him. "That was two years ago. We all know Sir
Pleydell and his easy going ways. He is so careless you thought he would
never find out; so good, he would never prosecute. But it came into my
hands, it is my property, and I have no hesitation in dealing with
rogues. Now do you suppose for a moment that if I were moving against
you in any unlawful way--which I deny--I would have done so without a
protector? Could you find a better protection than this? The punishment
for forgery let me remind you, is five years penal servitude at the
least." He looked down at the document with a cold smile, and then he
glanced up again at his victim. Jones saw that he was done; done not by
Marcus Mulhausen, but by Rochester. He had tripped over a kink in
Rochester's character, just as a man trips over a kink in a carpet. Then
rage came to him. The sight of the horrible scoundrel with whiskers,
triumphant and gloating, roused the dog in his nature, and all the craft
that lay hidden in him.
He heaved a sigh, rose brokenly, and approached the desk, and the
creature behind it.
"You are a cleverer man than I am," said he, "shake hands and call it
quits."
Next moment he had snatched the paper from the fingers that held it,
crumpled it, crammed it into his mouth. He rushed to the door and locked
it, whilst Mulhausen, screaming like a woman, reached him and clutched
him by the shoulders.
Then, swiftly turning, Jones gripped the financier by both arms and held
him so, chewing, chewing, chewing, mute and facing the shouting other
one.
They were hammering at the door outside. Mr. Aaronson and the clerks,
useless people for breaking-down-door purposes, were assisting their
employer with their voices--mainly, the whole block of offices was
raised, and boys and telephones were summoning the police.
Meanwhile, Jones was chewing, and the bill was slowly being converted
into what the physiologist terms a bolus. It took three minutes before
the bolus, properly salivated and raised by the tongue, passed the
anterior pillars of the fauces, then the epiglottis shut down, and the
bolus slipping over it and seized by the muscles of the esophagus passed
to its destined abode.
Jones had swallowed Rochester's past, or at least a most important part
of it. The act accomplished, he sat down as a boa constrictor recoils
itself, still gulping. Marcus Mulhausen rushed to the door and opened
it. A vast policeman stood before him, behind the policeman crowded Mr.
Aaronson and the clerks, and behind these a dozen or two of the block
dwellers, eager for gory sights at a distance.
Marcus looked round.
"What's all this?" said he. "There is nothing wrong, just a little
dispute with a gentleman. It is all over--Mr. Aaronson, clear the
office. Constable, here is two shillings for your trouble. Good day."
He shut the door on the disappointed crowd and turned to Jones.
The battle was over.
CHAPTER XVI
A WILD SURPRISE
At five o'clock that day the transference of the property was made out
and signed by Marcus Mulhausen in Mortimer Collins' office, and the
Glanafwyn lands became again the property of the Earl of Rochester--"for
the sum of five thousand pounds received and herewith acknowledged,"
said the document.
Needless to say no five thousand pounds passed hands. Collins,
mystified, asked no questions in the presence of Mulhausen. When the
latter had taken his departure, however, he turned to Jones.
"Did you pay him five thousand?" asked the lawyer.
"Not a cent," replied the other.
"Well, how have you worked the miracle, then?"
Jones told.
"You see how I had them coopered," finished he. "Well, just as I was
going to grab the kitty he played the ace of spades, produced an old
document he held against me."
"Yes?"
"I pondered for a moment--then I came to a swift conclusion--took the
doc from him and ate it."
"You ate the document?"
"Sure."
Jones rubbed his stomach and laughed.
"Well, well," said the solicitor with curious acquiescence and want of
astonishment after the first momentary start caused by this surprising
statement, "we have the property back, that's the main thing."
"You remember," said Jones, "I talked to you about letting that place."
"Carlton House Terrace?"
"Yes--well, that's off. I've made good. Do you see?"
"M--yes," replied Collins.
"I'll have enough money now to pay off the mortgages and things."
"Undoubtedly," said Collins, "but, now, don't you think it would be a
good thing if you were to tie this property up, so that mischance can't
touch it. You have no children, it is true, but one never knows.
Honestly, I think you would be well advised if you were to take
precautions."
"Don't worry," said Jones brightly. "I'll give the whole lot to--my
wife--when I can come to terms with her."
"That's good hearing," replied the other. Then Jones took his departure,
leaving the precious documents in the hands of the lawyer.
He was elated. He had proved the facts which he had only guessed by
instinct up to this, that a rogue is the weakest person in the world
before a plain dealer, if the plain dealer has a weapon in his hand. The
almost instantaneous collapse of Voles and Mulhausen was due to the
fact that they stood on rotten foundations. He told himself now as he
walked along homeward that he need not have eaten that document.
Mulhausen would never have used it. If he had just gone out and called
in a policeman, Mulhausen, seeing him in earnest, would have collapsed.
However the thing was eaten and done with and there was no use in
troubling any more on the matter. He had other things to think of. He
had made good. He had saved the Rochester name and estates, he had
recaptured one million, eight thousand pounds, reckoning that the coal
bearing lands were worth a million, and, more than that; he was a sane
man, able to look after what he had recaptured.
The Rochester family, if they knew, would have no cause to grumble at
the interloper and the substitution of new brains and push in the place
of decadence, craziness and sloth. The day when he had changed places
with Rochester was the best day that had ever dawned for them.
He was thinking this when all of a sudden that horrible, unreal feeling
he had suffered from once before, came upon him again. This time it was
not a question of losing his identity, it was a shuffle of his own taxed
brain between two identities. Rochester--Jones--Jones--Rochester. It
seemed to him for the space of a couple of seconds that he could not
tell which of those two individuals he was, then the feeling passed and
he resumed his way, reaching Carlton House Terrace shortly after six.
He gave his hat and cane and gloves to the flunkey who opened the door
for him--He had obtained a latch-key from Church that morning but forgot
to use it--and was crossing the hall when a strain of music brought him
to a halt. The tones of a piano came from a door on the right. Someone
was playing Chaminade's _Valse Tendre_ and playing it to perfection.
Jones turned to the man-servant.
"Who is that?" he asked.
"It is her ladyship, my Lord, she arrived half an hour ago. Her luggage
has gone upstairs."
Her ladyship!
Jones thrown off his balance hesitated for a moment, _what_ ladyship
could it be. Not, surely, that awful mother!
He crossed to the door, opened it, found a music-room, and there, seated
at a piano, the girl of the Victoria.
She was in out-door dress and had not removed her hat.
She looked over her shoulder at him as he came in, her face wore a half
smile, but she did not stop playing. Anything more fascinating, more
lovely, more distracting than that picture it would be hard to imagine.
As he crossed the room she suddenly ceased playing and twirled round on
the music-stool.
"I've come back," said she. "Ju-ju, I couldn't stand it. You are bad but
you are a lot, lot better than your mother--and Venetia. I'm going to
try and put up with you a bit longer--_Ju-Ju_, what makes you look so
stiff and funny?"
"I don't know," said Jones, passing his hand across his forehead. "I've
had a hard day." She looked at him curiously for a moment, then
pityingly, then kindly.
Then she jumped up, made him sit down on a big couch by the wall, and
took her seat beside him.
Then she took his hand.
"Ju-Ju--why will you be such a fool?"
"I don't know," said Jones.
The caress of the little jewelled hand destroyed his mental powers. He
dared not look at her, just sat staring before him.
"They told me all about the coal mine," she went on, "at least Venetia
did, and how they all bully-ragged you--Venetia was great on that.
Venetia waggled that awful gobbly-Jick head of hers while she was
telling me--they're _mad_ over the loss of that coal thing--oh, Ju-Ju,
I'm so glad you lost it. It's wicked, I suppose, but I'm glad. That's
what made me come back, the way they went on about you. I listened and
listened and then I broke out. I said all I've wanted to say for the
last six months to Venetia. You know she told me how you came home the
other night. I said nothing then, just listened and stored it up. Then,
last night, when they all got together about the coal mine I went on
listening and storing it up. Blunders was there as well as your mother
and Venetia. Blunders said he had called you an ass and that you were.
Then I broke out. I said a whole lot of things--well, there it is. So I
came back--there were other reasons as well. I don't want to be alone. I
want to be cared for--I want to be cared for--when I saw you in Bond
Street, yesterday--I--I--I--Ju-Ju, do you care for me?"
"Yes," said Jones.
"I want to confess--I want to tell you something."
"Yes."
"If you didn't care for me--if I felt you didn't, I'd--"
"Yes."
"Kick right over the traces. I would. I couldn't go on as I have been
going, lonely, like a lost dog."
She raised his fingers and rubbed them along her lips.
"You will not be lonely," said the unfortunate man in a muted voice.
"You need not be afraid of that." The utter inadequacy of the remark
came to him like one of those nightmare recognitions encountered as a
rule only in Dreamland. Yet she seemed to find it sufficient, her mind
perhaps being engaged elsewhere.
"What would you have said if I had run away from you for good?" asked
she. "Would you have been sorry?"
"Yes--dreadfully."
"Are you glad I've come back?"
"I am."
"Honestly glad?"
"Yes."
"Really glad?"
"Yes."
"Truthfully, really, honestly glad?"
"Yes."
"Well, so am I," said she. She released his hand.
"Now go and play me something. I want something soothing after
Venetia--play me Chopin's Spianato--we used to be fond of that."
Now the only thing that Jones had ever played in his life was the Star
Spangled Banner and that with one finger--Chopin's Spianato!
"No," he said. "I'd rather talk."
"Well, talk then--mercy! There's the first gong."
A faint and far away sound invaded the room, throbbed and ceased. She
rose, picked up her gloves, which she had cast on a chair, and then
peeped at herself in a mirror by the piano.
"You have never kissed me," said she, speaking as it were half to
herself and half to him, seeming to be more engaged in a momentary
piercing criticism of the hat she was wearing than in thoughts of
kisses. He came towards her like a schoolboy, then, as she held up her
face he imprinted a chaste kiss upon her right cheek bone.
Then the most delightful thing that ever happened to mortal man happened
to him. Two warm palms suddenly took his face between them and two moist
lips met his own.
Then she was gone.
He took his seat on the music stool, dazed, dazzled, delighted, shocked,
frightened, triumphant.
The position was terrific.
Jones was no Lothario. He was a straight, plain, common-sensical man
with a high respect for women, and the position of leading character in
a bad French comedy was not for him. Jones would just as soon have
thought of kissing another man's wife as of standing on his head in the
middle of Broadway.
To personate another man and to kiss the other man's wife under that
disguise would have seemed to him the meanest act any two-legged
creature could perform.
And he had just done it. And the other man's wife had--heu! his face
still burned.
She had done it because of his deception.
He found himself suddenly face to face with the barrier that Fate had
been cunningly constructing and had now placed straight before him.
There was no getting over it or under it, he would have to declare his
position _at once_--and what a position to declare!
She loved Rochester.
All at once that terrific fact appeared before him in its true
proportions and its true meaning.
She loved Rochester.
He had to tell her the truth. Yet to tell her the truth he would have to
tell her that the man she loved was dead.
Then she would want proofs.
He would have to bring up the Savoy Hotel people, fetch folk from
America--disinter Rochester. Horror! He had never thought of that. What
had become of Rochester? Up to this he had never thought once of what
had become of the mortal remains of the defunct jester, nor had he cared
a button--why should he?
But the woman who loved Rochester would care. And he, Jones, would
become in her eyes a ghoul, a monstrosity, a horror.
He felt a tinge of that feeling towards himself now. Up to this
Rochester had been for him a mechanical figure, an abstraction, but the
fact of this woman's love had suddenly converted the abstraction into a
human being.
He could not possibly tell her that he had left the remains of this
human being, this man she loved, in the hands of unknown strangers,
callously, as though it were the remains of an animal.
He could tell her nothing.
The game was up, he would have to quit. Either that, or to continue the
masquerade which was impossible; or to tell her all, which was equally
impossible.
Yet to quit would be to hit her cruelly. She loved Rochester.
Rochester, despite all his wickedness, frivolity, shiftlessness and
general unworthiness--or perhaps because of these things--had been able
to make this woman love him, take his part against his family and return
to him.
To go away and leave her now would be the cruelest act. Cruel to her and
just as cruel to himself, fascinated and held by her as he was. Yet
there was no other course open to him. So he told himself--so he tried
to tell himself, knowing full well that the only course open to him as a
man of honour was a full confession of the facts of the case.
To sneak away would be the act of a coward; to impose himself on her as
Rochester, the act of a villain; to tell her the truth, the act of a
man.
The result would be terrific, yet only by facing that result could he
come clear out of this business. For half an hour he sat, scarcely
moving. He was up against that most insuperable obstacle, his own
character. Had he been a crook, everything would have been easy; being a
fairly straight man, everything was impossible.
He had got to this bed-rock fact when the door opened and a servant made
his appearance.
"Dinner is served, my Lord."
Dinner!
He rose up and came into the hall. Standing there for a moment,
undecided, he heard a laugh and looked up. She was standing in evening
dress looking over the balustrade of the first landing.
"Why, you are not dressed!" she said.
"I--I forgot," he answered.
Something fell at his feet, it was a rose. She had cast it to him and
now she was coming down the stairway towards him, where he stood, the
rose in his hand and distraction at his heart.
"It is perfectly disgraceful of you," said she, looking him up and down
and taking the rose from him, "and there is no time to dress now; you
usen't to be as careless as that," she put the rose in his coat. "I
suppose it's from living alone for a fortnight with Venetia--what would
a month have done!" She pressed the rose flat with her little palm.
Then she slipped her fingers through the crook of his elbow and led him
to the breakfast-room door.
She entered and he followed her.
The breakfast table had been reduced in size and they dined facing one
another across a bowl of blush roses.
That dinner was not a conversational success on the part of Jones, a
fact which she scarcely perceived, being in high spirits and full of
information she was eager to impart.
It did not seem to matter to her in the least whether the flunkeys in
waiting were listening or not, she talked of the family, of "your mater"
and "Blunders" and "V" and other people, touching, it seemed on the most
intimate matters and all with a lightness of tone and spirit that would
have been delightful, no doubt, had he known the discussed ones more
intimately, and had his mind been open to receive pleasurable
impressions.
He would have to tell her directly after dinner the whole of his
terrible story. It was as though Fate were saying to him, "You will have
to kill her directly after dinner."
All that light-hearted chatter and new found contentment, all that
brightness would die. Grief for the man she loved, hatred of the man who
had supplanted him, anguish, perplexity, terror, would take their
places.
When the terrible meal was over, she ordered coffee to be served in the
music-room. He lingered behind for a moment, fiddling with a cigarette.
Then, when he came into the hall with the sweat standing in beads upon
his forehead, he heard the notes of the piano.
It was a Mazurka of Chopin's, played with gaiety and brilliancy, yet no
funeral march ever sounded more fatefully in the ears of mortal.
He could not do it. Then--he turned the handle of the music-room door
and entered.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SECOND HONEYMOON
Only three of the electric lights were on in the music-room. In the rosy
light and half shadows the room looked larger than when seen in
daylight, and different.
She had wandered from the Mazurka into Paderewski's Mélodie Op. 8. No.
3, a lonesome sort of tune it seemed to him, as he dropped into a chair,
crossed his legs and listened.
Then as he listened he began to think. Up to this his thoughts had been
in confusion, chasing one another or pursued by the monstrosity of the
situation. Now he was thinking clearly.
She was his, that girl sitting there at the piano with the light upon
her hair, the light upon her bare shoulders and the sheeny fabric of her
dress. He had only to stretch out his hand and take her. Absolutely his,
and he had only met her twice. She was the most beautiful woman in
London, she had a mind that would have made a plain woman attractive,
and a manner delightful, full of surprises and contrarieties and
tendernesses--and she loved him.
The Arabian Nights contained nothing like this, nor had the brain that
conceived Tantalus risen to the heights achieved by accident and
coincidence.
She finished the piece, rose, turned over some sheets of music and then
came across the room--floated across the room, and took her perch on the
arm of the great chair in which he was sitting. Then he felt her fingers
on his hair.
"I want to feel your bumps to see if you have improved--Ju-ju, your head
isn't so flat as it used to be on top. It seems a different shape
somehow, nicer. Blunders is as flat as a pancake on top of his head.
Flatness runs in families I suppose. Look at Venetia's feet! Ju-ju, have
you ever seen her in felt bath slippers?"
"No."
"I have--and a long yellow dressing gown, and her hair on her shoulders
all wet, in rat tails. I'm not a cat, but she makes me feel like one and
talk like one. I want to forget her. Do you remember our honeymoon?"
"Yes."
She had taken his hand and was holding it.
"We were happy then. Let's begin again and let this be our second
honeymoon, and we won't quarrel once--will we?"
"No, we won't," said Jones.
She slipped down into the chair beside him, pulled his arm around her
and held up her lips.
"Now you're kissing me really," she murmured; "you seemed half
frightened before--Ju-ju, I want to make a confession."
"Yes?"
"Well--somebody pretended to care for me very much a little while ago."
"Who was that?"
"Never mind. I went last night to a dance at the Crawleys' and he was
there."
"Yes."
"Yes--is that all you have to say? You don't seem to be very much
interested."
"I am though."
"I don't want you to be too much interested, and go making scenes and
all that--though you couldn't for you don't know his name. Suffice to
tell you--as the books say--he is a very handsome man, much, much
handsomer than you, Ju--Well, listen to me. He asked me to run off with
him."
"Run off with him?"
"Yes--to Spain. We were to go to Paris first and then to Spain--Spain,
at this time of year!"
"What did you say?"
"I said: 'Please don't be stupid.' I'd been reading a novel where a girl
said that to a man who wanted to run off with her--she died at the
end--but that's what she said at first--Fortunate I remembered it."
"Why?"
"Because--because--for a moment I felt inclined to say 'yes.' I know it
was dreadful, but think of my position, you going on like that, and me
all alone with no one to care for me--It's like a crave for drink. I
must have someone to care for me and I thought you didn't--so I nearly
said 'yes.' Once I had said what I did I felt stronger."
"What did he say?"
"He pleaded passionately--like the man in the book, and talked of roses
and blue seas--he's not English--I sat thinking of Venetia in her felt
bath room slippers and yellow wrapper. You know she reads St. Thomas à
Kempis and opens bazaars. She opened one the other day, and came back
with her nose quite red and in a horrid temper--I wonder what was inside
that bazaar?--Well, I knew if I did anything foolish Venetia would
exult, and that held me firm. She's not wicked. I believe she is really
good as far as she knows how, and that's the terrible thing about her.
She goes to church twice on Sunday, she takes puddings and things to old
women in the country, she opens bazaars and subscribes to ragged
schools--yet with one word she sets everyone by the ears--Well, when I
got home from the dance I began to think, and to-day, when they were all
out, I had my boxes packed and came right back here. I'd have given
anything to see their faces when they got home and found me gone."
She sprang up suddenly. A knock had come to the door, it opened and a
servant announced Miss Birdbrook.
Venetia had not changed that evening, she was still in her big hat. She
ignored Jones, and, standing, spoke tersely to Teresa.
"So you have left us?"
"Yes," replied the other. "I have come back here, d'you mind?"
"I?" said Venetia. "It's not a question of my minding in the least, only
it was sudden, and as you left no word as to where you were going we
thought it best to make sure you were all right."
She took her seat uncomfortably on a chair and the Countess of Rochester
perched herself again by Jones.
"Yes, I am all right," said she, with her hand resting on his shoulder.
Venetia gulped.
"I am glad to know it," she said. "We tried to make you comfortable--I
cannot deny that mother feels slightly hurt at having no word from you
before leaving, and one must admit that it cannot but seem strange to
the servants your going like that--but of course that is entirely a
question of taste."
"You mean," said Teresa, "that it was bad taste on my part--well, I
apologise. I am sorry, but the sudden craving to get--back here was more
than I could resist. I would have written to-night."
"Oh, it does not matter," said Venetia, "the thing is done. Well, I must
be going--but have you both thought over the future and all that it
implies?"
"Have we, Ju-ju?" asked the girl, caressingly stroking Jones' head.
"Yes," said Jones.
"I'm sure," went on Venetia with a sigh, "I have always done my best to
keep things together. I failed. Was it my fault?"
"No," said Teresa, aching for her to be gone. "I am sure it was not."
"I am glad to hear you say that. I always tried to avoid interfering in
your life. I never did--or only when ordinary prudence made me speak, as
for instance, in that baccarat business."
"Don't rake up old things," said Teresa suddenly.
"And the Williamson affair," got in Venetia. "Oh, I am the very last to
rake up things, as you call it. I, for one, will say no more of things
that have happened, but I _must_ speak of things that affect myself."
"What is affecting you?"
"Just this. You know quite well the financial position. You know what
the upkeep of this house means. You can't do it. You plainly can't do
it. Your income is not sufficient."
"But how does that affect you?"
"When tradespeople talk it affects me; it affects us all. Why not let
this house and live quietly, somewhere in the country, 'til things blow
over?"
"What do you mean by things blowing over?" asked Teresa. "One would
think that you were talking of some disgrace that had happened."
Venetia pulled up her long left hand glove and moved as though about to
depart. She said nothing but looked at her glove.
During the whole of this time she had neither looked at nor spoken to
Jones, nor included him by word in the conversation. Her influence had
been working upon him ever since she entered the room. He began now
more fully to understand the part she had played in the life of
Rochester. He felt that he wanted to talk to Venetia as Rochester had,
probably, never talked.
"A man once said to me that the greatest mistake a fellow can make is to
have a sister to live with him after his marriage," said Jones.
Venetia pulled up her right hand glove.
"A sister that has had to face mad intoxication and _worse_, can endorse
that opinion," said she.
"What do you mean by worse?" fired Teresa.
"I mean exactly what I say," replied Venetia.
"That is no answer. Do you mean that Arthur has been unfaithful to me?"
"I did not say that."
"Well, what can be worse than intoxication--that is the only thing worse
that I know of--unless murder. Do you mean that he has murdered
someone?"
"I will not let you drag me into a quarrel," said Venetia; "you are
putting things into my mouth. I think mad extravagance is worse than
intoxication, inasmuch as it is committed by reasonable people
uninfluenced by drugs or alcohol. I think insults levelled at
inoffensive people are worse than the wildest deeds committed under the
influence of that demon alcohol."
"Who are the inoffensive people who have been insulted?"
"Good gracious--well, of course you don't know--you have not had to
interview people."
"What people?"
"Sir Pleydell Harcourt for instance, who had sixteen pianos sent to him
only last week, to say nothing of pantechnicon vans and half the
contents of Harrods' and Whiteleys', so that Arlington Street was
blocked, simply blocked, the whole of last Friday."
"Did he say Arthur had sent them?"
"He had no direct proof--but he knew. There was no other man in London
would have done such a thing."
"Did you send them, Ju-ju?"
"No," said Jones. "I did not."
Venetia rose.
"You admitted to me, yourself, that you did," said she.
"I was only joking," he replied.
Teresa went to the bell and rang it.
"Good night," said Venetia, "after that I have nothing more to say."
"Thank goodness," murmured Teresa when she was gone. "She made me shiver
with her talk about extravagance. I've been horribly extravagant the
last week--when a woman is distracted she runs to clothes for
relief--anyhow I did. I've got three new evening frocks and I want to
show you them. I've never known your taste wrong."
"Good," said Jones, "I'd like to see them."
"Guess what they cost?"
"Can't."
"Two hundred and fifty--and they are a bargain. You're not shocked, are
you?"
"Not a bit."
"Well, come and look at them--what's the time? Half past ten." She led
the way upstairs.
On the first landing she turned to the left, opened a door and disclosed
a bed-room where a maid was moving about arranging things and unpacking
boxes.
A large cardboard box lay open on the floor, it was filled with snow
white lingerie. The instinct to bolt came upon Jones so strongly that he
might have obeyed it, only for the hand upon his arm pressing him down
into a chair.
"Anne," said the Countess of Rochester, "bring out my new evening gowns,
I want to show them."
Then she turned to the cardboard box. "Here's some more of my
extravagance. I couldn't resist them, Venetia nearly had a fit when she
saw the bill--Look!"
She exhibited frilled and snow white things, delicate and diaphanous and
fit to be worn by angels. Then the dresses arrived, and were laid out on
the bed and inspected. There was a black gown and a grey gown and a
confection in pale blue. If Jones had been asked to price them he would
have said a hundred dollars. Like most men he was absolutely unconscious
of the worth of a woman's dress. To a woman a Purdy and a ten guinea
Birmingham gun are just the same, and to a man, a ten guinea Bayswater
dress is little different, if worn by a pretty girl, from a seventy
guinea Bond Street--is it Bond Street--rig out. Unless he is a man
milliner.
Jones said "beautiful," gave the palm to the blue, and watched them
carried off again by the maid.
He had left his cigarettes down stairs; there were some in a box on a
table, she made him take one and lit it for him, then she disappeared
into a room adjoining, returning in a few minutes dressed in a kimono
covered with golden swallows and followed by the maid. Then she took her
seat before a great mirror and the maid began to take down her hair and
brush it.
As the brushing went on she talked to the maid and to Jones
upon all sorts of subjects. To the maid about the condition of
her--Teresa's--hair, and a new fashion in hair dressing, to Jones about
the Opera, the stoutness of Caruso, and kindred matters.
The hair having been arranged in one great gorgeous plait, Jones
suddenly breaking free from a weird sort of hypnotism that had held him
since first entering the room, rose to his feet.
"I'll be back in a minute," said he.
He crossed the room, reached the door, opened it and passed out closing
the door. In the corridor he stood for half a moment with his hand to
his head.
Then he came down the stairs, crossed the hall, seized a hat and
overcoat, put them on and opened the hall door.
All the way down the stairs and across the hall, he felt as though he
were being driven along by some viewless force, and now, standing at the
door, that same force pushed him out of the house and on to the steps.
He closed the door, came down the steps, and turned to the right.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MENTAL TRAP
It was a beautiful night, warm and starlit, the waning moon had just
begun to rise in the east and as he turned into the green Park a breath
of tepid wind, grass-scented and balmy blew in his face.
He walked in the direction of Buckingham Palace.
Where was he to go? He had no ideas, no plans.
He had failed in performing the Duty that Fate had arranged for him to
perform. He had failed, but not through cowardice, or at least not
through fear of consequences to himself.
The man who refuses to cut a lamb's throat, even though Duty calls him
to the act, has many things to be said for him.
His distracted mind was not dealing with this matter, however. What held
him entirely was the thought of her waiting for him and how she would
feel when she found he had deserted her. He had acted like a brute and
she would hate him accordingly. Not him, but Rochester.
It was the same thing. The old story. Hatred, obloquy, disdain levelled
against Rochester affected him as though it were levelled against
himself. He could not take refuge in his own personality. Even on the
first day of his new life he had found that out at the club. Since then
the struggle to maintain his position and the battles he had fought had
steadily weakened his mental position as Jones, strengthened his
position as Rochester.
The strange psychological fact was becoming plain, though not to him,
that the jealousy he ought to have felt on account of this woman's love
for Rochester was not there.
This woman had fascinated him, as women had perhaps never fascinated a
man before; she had kissed him, she loved him, and though his reason
told him quite plainly that he was Victor Jones and that she loved and
had kissed another man, his heart did not resent that fact.
Rochester was dead. It seemed to him that Rochester had never lived.
He left the Park and came along Knightsbridge still thinking of her
sitting there waiting for him, his mind straying from that to the kiss,
the dinner, the bowl of roses that stood between them--her voice.
Then all at once these considerations vanished, all at once, and like an
extinguisher, fell on him that awful sensation of negation.
His mind pulled this way and that between contending forces, became a
blank written across with letters of fire forming the question:
"Who am I?"
The acutest physical suffering could not have been worse than that
torture of the over-taxed brain, that feeling that if he did not clutch
at _himself_ he would become nothing.
He ran for a few yards--then it passed and he found himself beneath a
lamp-post recovering and muttering his own name rapidly to himself like
a charm to exorcise evil.
"Jones--Jones--Jones."
He looked around.
There were not many people to be seen, but a man and woman a few yards
away were standing and looking at him. They had evidently stopped and
turned to see what he was about and they went on when they saw him
observing them.
They must have thought him mad.
The hot shame of the idea was a better stimulant than brandy. He walked
on. He was no longer thinking of the woman he had just left. He was
thinking of himself.
He had been false to himself.
The greatest possession any man can have in the world is himself. Some
men let that priceless property depreciate, some improve it, it is given
to few men to tamper with it after the fashion of Jones.
He saw this now, and just as though a pit had opened before him he drew
back. He must stop this double life at once and become his own self in
reality; failing to do that he would meet madness. He recognised this.
No man's brain could stand what he had been going through for long; had
he been left to himself he might have adapted his mind gradually to the
perpetual shifting from Jones to Rochester and vice versa. The woman had
brought things to a crisis. The horror that had now suddenly fallen on
him, the horror of the return of that awful feeling of negation, the
horror of losing himself, cast all other considerations from his mind.
He must stop this business at once.
He would go away, return straight to America.
That was easy to be done--but would that save him? Would that free him
from this horrible clinging personality that he had so lightly cast
around himself?
Nothing is stranger than mind. From the depth of his mind came the
whisper, "No." Intuition told him that were he to go to Timbuctoo,
Rochester would cling to him, that he would wake up from sleep fancying
himself Rochester and then that feeling would return. What he required
was the recognition by other people that he was himself, Jones, that the
whole of this business was a deception, a stage play in real life. Their
abuse, their threats would not matter. Their blows would be welcome, so
he thought. Anything that would hit him back firmly into his real
position in the scheme of things and save him from the dread of some day
losing himself.
After a while the exercise and night air calmed his mind. He had come to
the great decision. A decision immutable now, since it had to do with
the very core of his being. He would tell her everything. To-morrow
morning he would confess all. Her fascination upon him had loosened its
hold, the terror had done that. He no longer loved her. Had he ever
loved her? That was an open question, or in other words, a question no
man could answer. He only knew now that he did not crave for her regard,
only for her recognition of himself as Jones.
She was the door out of the mental trap into which his mind had
blundered.
These considerations had carried him far into a region of mean streets
and suburban houses. It was long after twelve o'clock and he fell to
thinking what he should do with himself for the rest of the night. It
was impossible to walk about till morning and he determined to return to
Carlton House Terrace, let himself in with his latch key and slip
upstairs to his room. If by any chance she had not retired for the night
and he chanced to meet her on the stairs or in the hall then the
confession must be made forthwith.
It was after two o'clock when he reached the house. He opened the door
with his key and closing it softly, crossed the hall and went up the
stairs. One of the hall lamps had been left burning, evidently for him:
a lamp was burning also, in the corridor. He switched on the electric
light in his room and closed the door.
Then he heaved a sigh of relief, undressed and got into bed.
All across the hall, up the stairs, and along the corridor he had been
followed by the dread of meeting her and having to enter on that
terrible explanation right away.
The craving to tell her all had been supplanted for the moment by the
dread of the act.
In the morning it would be different. He would be rested and have more
command over himself, so he fancied.
CHAPTER XIX
ESCAPE CLOSED
He was awakened by Mr. Church--one has always to give him the
prefix--pulling up the blinds. His first thought was of the task before
him.
The mind does a lot of quiet business of its own when the blinds are
down and the body is asleep, and during the night, his mind, working in
darkness, had cleared up matters, countered and cut off all sorts of
fears and objections and drawn up a definite plan.
He would tell her everything that morning. If she would not take his
word for the facts, then he would have a meeting of the whole family. He
felt absolutely certain that explaining things bit by bit and detail by
detail he could convince them of the death of Rochester and his own
existence as Jones; absolutely certain that they would not push matters
to the point of publicity. He held a trump card in the property he had
recovered from Mulhausen, were he to be exposed publicly as an impostor,
all about the Plinlimon letters, Voles and Mulhausen would come out.
Mulhausen, that very astute practitioner, would not be long in declaring
that he had been forced to return the title deeds to protect his
daughter's name. Voles would swear anything, and their case would stand
good on the proved fact that he, Jones, was a swindler. No, assuredly
the family would not press the matter to publicity.
Having drunk his tea, he arose, bathed, and dressed with a calm mind.
Then he came down stairs.
She was not in the breakfast-room, where only one place was laid, and,
concluding that she was breakfasting in her own room, he sat down to
table.
After the meal, and with another sheaf of the infernal early post
letters in his hand, he crossed to the smoking-room, where he closed the
door, put the letters on the table and lit a cigar. Then, having smoked
for a few minutes and collected his thoughts, he rang the bell and sent
for Mr. Church.
"Church," said he when that functionary arrived, "will you tell--my wife
I want to see her?"
"Her ladyship left last night, your Lordship, she left at ten o'clock,
or a little after."
"Left! where did she go to?"
"She went to the South Kensington Hotel, your Lordship."
"Good heavens! what made her--why did she go--ah, was it because I did
not come back?"
"I think it was, your Lordship."
Mr. Church spoke gravely and the least bit stiffly. It could easily be
seen that as an old servant and faithful retainer he was on the woman's
side in the business.
"I had to go out," said the other. "I will explain it to her when I see
her--It was on a matter of importance--Thanks, that will do, Church."
Alone again he finished his cigar.
The awful fear of the night before, the fear of negation and the loss of
himself had vanished with a brain refreshed by sleep and before this
fact.
What a brute he had been! She had come back forgiving him for who knows
what, she had taken his part against his traducers, kissed him. She had
fancied that all was right and that happiness had returned--and he had
coldly discarded her.
It would have been less cruel to have beaten her. She was a good sweet
woman. He knew that fact, now, both instinctively and by knowledge. He
had not known it fully till this minute.
Would it, after all, have been better to have deceived her and to have
played the part of Rochester? That question occurred to him for a moment
to be at once flung away. It was not so much personal antagonism to such
a course nor the dread of madness owing to his double life that cast it
out so violently, but the recognition of the goodness and lovableness of
the woman. Leaving everything else aside to carry on such a deception
with her, even to think of it, was impossible.
More than ever was he determined to clear this thing up and tell her
all, and, to his honour be it said, his main motive now was to do his
best by her.
He finished his cigar, and then going into the hall obtained his hat and
left the house.
He did not know where the South Kensington Hotel might be, but a taxi
solved that question and shortly before ten o'clock he reached his
destination.
Yes, Lady Rochester had arrived last night and was staying in the hotel,
and whilst the girl in the manager's office was sending up his name and
asking for an interview Jones took his seat in the lounge.
A long time--nearly ten minutes--elapsed, and then a boy brought him her
answer in the form of a letter.
He opened it.
"Never again. This is good-bye."
"T."
That was the answer.
He sat with the sheet of paper in his hand, contemplating the shape and
make of an armchair of wicker-work opposite him.
What was he to do?
He had received just the answer he might have expected, neither more nor
less. It was impossible for him to force an interview with her. He had
overthrown Voles, climbed over Mulhausen, but the flight of stairs
dividing him now from the private suite of the Countess of Rochester was
an obstacle not to be overcome by courage or direct methods, and he knew
of no indirect method.
He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket. Then he left the hotel
and took his way back to Carlton House Terrace.
If she would not see him she could not refuse to read a letter. He
would write to her and explain all. He would write in detail giving the
whole business, circumstance by circumstance. It would take him a long
while; he guessed that, and ordinary note-paper would not do. He had
seen a stack of manuscript paper, however, in one of the drawers of the
bureau, and having shut the door and lit a cigarette he took some of the
sheets of long foolscap, ruled thirty four lines to the page, and sat
down to the business. This is what he said:
"Lady Rochester,
"I want you to read what follows carefully and not to form any
opinion on the matter till all the details are before you. This
document is not a letter in the strict sense of the term, it's more
in the nature of an invoice of the cargo of stupidity and bad luck,
which I, the writer, Victor Jones of Philadelphia, have been
freighted with by an all-wise Providence for its own
incomprehensible ends."
Providence held him up for a moment. Was Providence neuter or
masculine?--he risked it and left it neuter and continued.
When the servant announced luncheon he had covered twenty sheets of
paper and had only arrived at the American bar of the Savoy.
He went to luncheon, swallowed a whiting and half a cutlet, and
returned.
He sat down, read what he had written, and tore it across.
That would never do. It was like the vast prelude to a begging letter.
She would never read it through.
He started again, beginning this time in the American bar of the Savoy,
writing very carefully. He had reached, by tea-time, the reading of
Rochester's death in the paper.
Well satisfied with his progress he took afternoon tea, and then sat
down comfortably to read what he had written.
He was aghast with the result. The things that had happened to him were
believable because they had happened to him, but in cold writing they
had an air of falsity. She would never believe this yarn. He tore the
sheets across. Then he burned all he had written in the grate, took his
seat in the armchair and began to think of the devil.
Surely there was something diabolical in the whole of this business and
the manner in which everything and every circumstance headed him off
from escape. After dinner he was sitting down to attempt a literary
forlorn hope, when a sharp voice in the hall made him pause.
The door opened, and Venetia Birdbrook entered. She wore a new hat that
seemed bigger than the one he had last beheld and her manner was wild.
She shut the door, walked to the table, placed her parasol on it and
began peeling off a glove.
"She's gone," said Venetia.
Jones had risen to his feet.
"Who's gone?"
"Teresa--gone with Maniloff."
He sat down. Then she blazed out.
"Are you going to do nothing--are you going to sit there and let us all
be disgraced? She's gone--she's going--to Paris. It was through her maid
I learned it; she's gone from the hotel by this--gone with Maniloff--are
you deaf or
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