The four Britishers walked back together. They came to the harbour.
“If you gentlemen will come on board the Fenton,” said the skipper, “I’ll open a bottle of port for you. I ’appened to see it in the store this mornin’, and I always think a bottle of port’s the right thing after a funeral. I mean, it’s not like beer and whisky. There’s somethin’ serious about port.”
“I never thought of it before,” said Frith, “but I quite see what you mean.”
“I’m not coming,” said Fred. “I’ve got a hump. Can I go along with you, doctor?”
“If you like.”
“We’ve all got a ’ump,” said Captain Nichols. “That’s why I vote we ’ave a bottle of port. It won’t take the ’ump away. Not by any manner of means. It’ll make it worse if anythin’, at least that’s my experience, but it means you can enjoy it, if you follow me, you get something out of it, and it’s not wasted.”
“Go to hell,” said Fred.
“Come on, Frith. If you’re the man I take you for, you and me can drink a bottle of port without strainin’ ourselves.”
“We live in degenerate days,” said Frith. “Two-bottle men, three-bottle men, they’re as extinct as the dodo.”
“An Australian bird,” said Captain Nichols.
“If two grown men can’t drink one bottle of port between them I despair of the human race. Babylon is fallen, is fallen.”
“Exactly,” replied Captain Nichols.
They got into the dinghy and a blackfellow rowed them out to the Fenton. The doctor and Fred walked slowly on. When they reached the hotel they went in.
“Let’s go to your room,” said Fred.
The doctor poured himself out a whisky and soda and gave one to Fred.
“We’re sailing at dawn,” said the boy.
“Are you? Have you seen Louise?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you going to?”
“No.”
Dr. Saunders shrugged his shoulders. It was no business of his. For a while they drank and smoked in silence.
“I’ve told you so much,” the boy said at last, “I may as well tell you the rest.”
“I’m not curious.”
“I’ve wanted to tell someone badly. Sometimes I could hardly prevent myself from telling Nichols. Thank God, I wasn’t such a fool as that. Grand opportunity for blackmail it would have been for him.”
“He isn’t the sort of man I’d choose to confide a secret to.”
Fred gave a little derisive chuckle.
“It wasn’t my fault, really. It was just rotten luck. It is bloody that your life should be ruined by an accident like that. It’s so damned unfair. My people are in a very good position. I was in one of the best firms in Sydney. Eventually, my old man was going to buy me a partnership. He’s got a lot of influence and he could have thrown business in my way. I could have made plenty of money and sooner or later of course I should have married and settled down. I expect I should have gone into politics like father did. If ever anyone had a chance I had. And look at me now. No home, no name, no prospects, a couple of hundred pounds in my belt and whatever the old man’s sent to Batavia. Not a friend in the world.”
“You’ve got youth. You’ve got some education. And you’re not bad looking.”
“That’s what makes me laugh. If I’d had a squint in my eye or a hump-back I’d have been all right. I’d be in Sydney now. You’re no beauty, doctor.”
“I am conscious of the fact and resigned to it.”
“Resigned to it! Thank your lucky stars every day of your life.”
Dr. Saunders smiled.
“I’m not prepared to go as far as that.”
But the foolish boy was desperately serious.
“I don’t want you to think I’m conceited. God knows I’ve got nothing to be conceited about. But you know, I’ve always been able to get any girl I wanted to. Oh, almost since I was a kid. I thought it rather a lark. After all, you’re only young once. I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have all the fun I could get. D’you blame me?”
“No. The only people who would are those who never had your opportunities.”
“I never went out of my way to get them. But when they practically asked for it, well, I should have been a fool not to take what I could get. It used to make me laugh sometimes to see them all in a dither and often I’d pretend I didn’t notice. They’d get furious with me. Girls are funny, you know, nothing makes them so mad as a chap standing off. Of course, I never let it interfere with my work; I’m not a fool, you know, in any sense of the word, and I wanted to get on.”
“An only child, were you?”
“No. I’ve got a brother. He went into the business with father. He’s married. And I’ve got a married sister, too.
“Well, one Sunday last year, a chap brought his wife to spend the day up at our house. His name was Hudson. He was a Roman Catholic, and he’d got a lot of influence with the Irish and the Italians. Father said he could make all the difference at the election, and he told mother she was to do them proud. They came up to dinner, the Premier came and brought his wife, and mother gave them enough to eat to feed a regiment. After dinner father took them into his den to talk business and the rest of us went and sat in the garden. I’d wanted to go fishing, but father said I’d got to stay and make myself civil. Mother and Mrs. Barnes had been at school together.”
“Who was Mrs. Barnes?”
“Mr. Barnes is the Premier. He’s the biggest man in Australia.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“They always had a lot to talk about. They tried to be polite to Mrs. Hudson, but I could see they didn’t much like her. She was doing her best to be nice to them, admiring everything and buttering them up, but the more she laid it on the less they liked it. At last, mother asked me if I wouldn’t show her round the garden. We strolled off and the first thing she said was: ‘For God’s sake give me a cigarette.’ She gave me a look when I lit it for her and she said: ‘You’re a very good-looking boy.’ ‘D’you think so?’ I said. ‘I suppose you’ve been told that before?’ she said. ‘Only by mother,’ I said, ‘and I thought perhaps she was prejudiced.’ She asked me if I was fond of dancing and I said I was, so she said she was having tea at the Australia next day and if I liked to come in after the office we could have a dance together. I wasn’t keen on it, so I said I couldn’t; then she said: ‘What about Tuesday or Wednesday?’ I couldn’t very well say I was engaged both days, so I said Tuesday would suit me all right; and when they’d gone away I told father and mother. She didn’t much like the idea, but father was all for it. He said it wouldn’t suit his book at all to have us stand-offish. ‘I didn’t like the way she kept on looking at him,’ said mother, but father told her not to be silly. ‘Why, she’s old enough to be his mother,’ he said. ‘How old is she?’ Mother said: ‘She’ll never see forty again.’
“She was nothing to look at. Thin as a rail. Her neck was absolutely scraggy. Tallish. She had a long thin face, with hollow cheeks, and a brown skin, all one colour, rather leathery if you know what I mean; and she never seemed to take any trouble with her hair, it always looked as though it would come down in a minute; and she’d have a wisp hanging down in front of her ear or over her forehead. I do like a woman to have a neat head, don’t you? It was black, rather like a gipsy’s, and she had enormous black eyes. They made her face. When you talked to her you didn’t really see anything else. She didn’t look British, she looked like a foreigner, a Hungarian or something like that. There was nothing attractive about her.
“Well, I went on the Tuesday. She knew how to dance, you couldn’t deny that. You know, I’m rather keen on dancing. I enjoyed myself more than I expected. She had a lot to say for herself. I shouldn’t have had a bad time if there hadn’t been some of my pals there. I knew they’d rot my head off for dancing the whole afternoon with an old geyser like that. There are ways and ways of dancing. It didn’t take me long to see what she was up to. I couldn’t help laughing. Poor old cow, I thought, if it gives her any pleasure, well, let her have it. She asked me to go to the pictures with her one night when her husband had to go to a meeting. I said I didn’t mind, and we made a date. I held her hand at the pictures. I thought it’d please her and it didn’t do me any harm, and afterwards she said, Couldn’t we walk a bit. We were pretty friendly by then; she was interested in my work, and she wanted to know all about my home. We talked about racing; I told her there was nothing I’d like to do more than ride in a big race myself. In the dark she wasn’t so bad, and I kissed her. Well, the end of it was that we went to a place I knew and we had a bit of a rough and tumble. I did it more out of politeness than anything else. I thought that would be the finish. Not a bit of it. She went crazy about me. She said she’d fallen in love with me the first time she saw me. I don’t mind telling you that just at first I was a bit flattered. She had something. Those great flashing eyes, sometimes they made me feel all funny, and that gipsy look, I don’t know, it was so unusual, it seemed to take you right away and you couldn’t believe you were in good old Sydney; it was like living in a story about Nihilists and Grand Dukes and I don’t know what all. By God, she was hot stuff. I thought I knew a thing or two about all that, but when she took me in hand I found I didn’t know a thing. I’m not particular, but really, sometimes she almost disgusted me. She was proud of it. She used to say that after a chap had loved her, other women were duller than cold roast mutton.
“I couldn’t help liking it in a way, but you know I didn’t feel easy about it. You don’t like a woman to be absolutely shameless. There was no satisfying her either. She made me see her every day, and she’d ring me up at the office and ring me up at home. I told her for God’s sake to be careful, after all she had a husband to think of, and there was father and mother, father was quite capable of packing me off to a sheep-station for a year if he had the smallest suspicion that things weren’t going right, but she said she didn’t care. She said if I was packed off to a sheep-station she’d come with me. She didn’t seem to mind what risks she took, and if it hadn’t been for me it would have been all over Sydney in a week. She’d telephone to mother and ask if I couldn’t go to supper at her place and make a four at bridge, and when I was there she’d make love to me under her husband’s nose. When she saw I was scared she laughed her head off. It excited her. Pat Hudson just treated me like a boy, he never took much notice of me, he fancied himself at bridge, and got a lot of fun out of telling me all about it. I didn’t dislike him. He was a bit of a rough-neck, and he could put his liquor away rather, but he was a smart fellow in his way. He was ambitious, and he liked having me there because I was father’s son. He was quite ready to come in with father, but he wanted to get something pretty substantial for himself out of it.
“I was getting a bit fed up with it all. I couldn’t call my soul my own. And she was as jealous as hell. If we were anywhere and I happened to look at a girl it would be: ‘Who’s that? Why d’you look at her like that? Have you had her?’ And if I said I hadn’t ever spoken to her even, she’d say I was a damned liar. I thought I’d slack off a bit. I didn’t want to chuck her too suddenly in case she got her knife in me. She could turn Hudson round her little finger, and I knew father wouldn’t be very pleased if he did the dirty on us at the election. I began to say I was busy at the office or had to stay at home, when she wanted me to go out with her. I told her mother was getting suspicious and that we must be careful. She was as sharp as a knife. She wouldn’t believe a word I said. She made me the most awful scenes. To tell you the truth I began to get rather scared. I’d never known anyone like that. With most of the girls I’d played about with, well, they’d known it was just a lark, same as I did, and it just ended naturally, without any fuss or bother. You’d have thought, when she guessed I’d had enough, her pride would prevent her from clinging on to me. But no. Quite the contrary. D’you know, she actually wanted me to run away with her, to America or somewhere, so that we could get married. It never seemed to occur to her that she was twenty years older than me. I mean, it was too ridiculous. I had to pretend that it was out of the question, on account of the election, you know, and because we shouldn’t have anything to live on. She was absolutely unreasonable. She said, what did we care about the election, and anyone could make a living in America, she said, she’d been on the stage and she was sure she could get a part. She seemed to think she was a girl. She asked me if I’d marry her if it wasn’t for her husband and I had to say I would. The scenes she made got me so nervous I was ready to say anything. You don’t know what a life she led me. I wished to God I’d never set eyes on her. I was so worried I didn’t know what to do. I had half a mind to tell mother, but I knew it would upset her so frightfully. She never left me alone for a minute. She came up to the office once. I had to be polite to her and pretend it was all right, because I knew she was capable of making a scene before everybody, but afterwards I told her if she ever did it again I wouldn’t have anything more to do with her. Then she started waiting for me in the street outside. My God, I could have wrung her neck. Father used to go home in a car and I always walked to his office to fetch him, and she insisted on walking there with me. At last things got to such a pitch that I just couldn’t stick it any more; I didn’t care what happened. I told her I was sick and tired of the whole thing and it had got to stop.
“I made up my mind that I was going to say it and I did. My God, it was awful. It was at her place, they had a little jerry-built house, overlooking the harbour, on a cliff, rather far out, and I’d got off from the office in the middle of the afternoon on purpose. She screamed and she cried. She said she loved me and she couldn’t live without me and I don’t know what all. She said she’d do anything I liked and she wouldn’t bother me in future and she’d be quite different. She promised every sort of thing. God knows what she didn’t say. Then she flew into a rage and cursed me and swore at me and called me every name under the sun. She went for me, and I had to hold her hands to prevent her from scratching my eyes out. She was like a mad woman. Then she said she was going to commit suicide, and tried to run out of the house. I thought she’d throw herself over the cliff or something, and I held her back by main force.
She kicked and struggled. And then she threw herself on her knees and tried to kiss my hands, and when I pushed her away she fell on the ground and started sobbing and sobbing. I seized the opportunity and made a bolt for it.
“I’d hardly got home before she rang me up. I wouldn’t speak to her and rang off. She rang again and again, fortunately mother was out, and I just didn’t answer. There was a letter waiting for me at the office next morning, ten pages of it, you know the sort of thing; I took no notice of it; I certainly wasn’t going to answer. When I went out for lunch at one o’clock she was standing in the doorway waiting for me, but I walked right past her, as quick as I could, and got away in the crowd. I thought she might be there when I came back, so I walked along with one of the chaps at the office, who had his dinner the same place that I had lunch. She was there right enough, but I pretended I didn’t see her, and she was afraid to speak. I found another chap to walk out with in the evening. She was still there. I suppose she’d been waiting all the time so that I shouldn’t slip out. D’you know, she had the nerve to come straight up to me. She put on a society manner.
“ ‘How d’you do, Fred,’ she said. ‘What a bit of luck meeting you. I’ve got a message for your father.’
“The chap walked on before I could stop him, and I was caught.
“ ‘What d’you want?’ I said.
“I was in a flaming passion.
“ ‘Oh, my God, don’t talk to me like that,’ she said. ‘Have pity on me. I’m so unhappy. I can’t see straight.’
“ ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t help it.’
“Then she began to cry, right there in the middle of the street, with people passing all the time. I could have killed her.
“ ‘Fred, it’s no good,’ she said, ‘you can’t throw me over. You’re everything in the world to me.’
“ ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ I said. ‘You’re an old woman and I’m hardly more than a kid. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
“ ‘What does that matter?’ she said. ‘I love you with all my heart.’
“ ‘Well, I don’t love you,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear the sight of you. I tell you it’s finished. For God’s sake leave me alone.’
“ ‘Isn’t there anything I can do to make you love me?’ she said.
“ ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m fed up with you.’
“ ‘Then I shall kill myself,’ she said.
“ ‘That’s your trouble,’ I said, and I walked away quickly before she could stop me.
“But although I said it just like that, as if I didn’t care a damn, I wasn’t easy about it. They say people who threaten to commit suicide never do, but she wasn’t like other people. The fact is, she was a madwoman. She was capable of anything. She was capable of coming up to the house and shooting herself in the garden. She was capable of swallowing poison and leaving some awful letter behind. She might accuse me of anything. You see, I hadn’t only myself to think of, I had to think of father, too. If I was mixed up in something it might have done him an awful lot of harm, especially just then. And he isn’t the sort of man to let you off easy, if you’ve made a fool of yourself. I can tell you I didn’t sleep much that night. I worried myself sick. I should have been furious if I’d found her hanging about the street outside the office in the morning, but in a way I’d have been rather relieved. She wasn’t there. There was no letter for me either. I began to get a bit scared, and I had a job to prevent myself ringing up to see if she was all right. When the evening paper came out I just made a grab at it. Pat Hudson was pretty prominent, and if something had happened to her there’d sure to be a lot about it. But there wasn’t a thing. That day there was nothing, no sign of her, no telephone message, no letter, nothing in the paper, and the day after, and the day after that it was just the same. I began to think it was all right and I was rid of her. I came to the conclusion it was all a bluff. Oh, my God, how thankful I was! But I’d had my lesson. I made up my mind to be damned careful in future. No more middle-aged women for me. I’d got all nervous and wrought-up. You can’t think what a relief it was to me. I don’t want to make myself out any better than I am, but I have some sense of decency and really that woman was the limit. I know it sounds silly, but sometimes she just horrified me. I’m all for having a bit of fun, but damn it all, I don’t want to make a beast of myself.”
Dr. Saunders did not reply. He understood pretty well what the boy meant. Careless and hot-blooded, with the callousness of youth, he took his pleasure where he found it, but youth is not only callous, it is modest, and his instinct was outraged by the unbridled passion of the experienced woman.
“Then about ten days later I got a letter from her. The envelope was typewritten or I shouldn’t have opened it. But it was quite sensible. It started, ‘Dear Fred.’ She said she was awfully sorry she’d made me all those scenes, and she thought she must have been rather crazy, but she’d had time to calm down and she didn’t want to be a nuisance to me. She said it was her nerves, and she’d taken me much too seriously. Everything was all right now, and she didn’t bear me any ill will. She said I mustn’t blame her, because it was partly my fault for being so absurdly good-looking. Then she said she was starting for New Zealand next day, and was going to be away for three months. She’d got a doctor to say she needed a complete change. Then she said Pat was going to Newcastle that night, and would I come in for a few minutes to say good-bye to her. She gave me her solemn word of honour that she wouldn’t be troublesome, all that was over and done with, but somehow or other Pat had got wind of something, it was nothing important, but it was just as well I told the same story as her if by any chance he asked me any questions. She hoped I’d come, because though it couldn’t matter to me and I was absolutely safe, things might be a little awkward for her and she certainly didn’t want to get into any trouble if she could help it.
“I knew it was true about Hudson going to Newcastle because my old man had said something about it at breakfast that morning. The letter was absolutely normal. Sometimes she wrote in a scrawl that you could hardly read, but she could write very well when she wanted to, and I could see that when she’d written this she’d been absolutely calm. I was a little anxious about what she’d said about Pat. She had insisted on taking the most awful risks, though I’d warned her over and over again. If he’d heard anything it did seem better that we should tell the same lie, and forewarned is forearmed, isn’t it? So I rang her up and said I’d be there about six. She was so casual over the telephone that I was almost surprised. It sounded as though she didn’t much care if I came or not.
“When I got there she shook hands with me as if we were just friends. She asked me if I’d like some tea. I said I’d had it before I came. She said she wouldn’t keep me a minute because she was going to the pictures. She was all dressed up. I asked her what was the matter with Pat, and she said it wasn’t really very serious, only he’d heard that I’d been at the pictures with her, and he didn’t much like it. She’d said it was just an accident. Once I’d seen her sitting by herself and come over and sat by her, and another time we’d met in the vestibule, and as she was alone I’d paid for her seat and we’d gone in together. She said she didn’t think Pat would mention it, but if he did, she wanted me to back her up. Of course I said I would. She mentioned the two times he was asking about, so that I should know, and then she began talking about her journey. She knew New Zealand well and she started talking about it. I’d never been there. It sounded fine. She was going to stay with friends and she made me laugh telling me about them. She could be jolly nice when she liked. She was awfully good company when she was in a good temper, I must admit that, and I never realised that time was passing. She was just like what she was when I first knew her. At last she got up and said she’d better be going. I suppose I’d been there about half an hour, may be three-quarters. She gave me her hand and she looked at me half laughing.
“ ‘It wouldn’t really hurt you to kiss me good-bye, would it?’ she said.
“She said it chaffingly, and I laughed.
“ ‘No, I don’t suppose it would,’ I said.
“I bent down and kissed her. Or rather she kissed me. She put her arms round my neck and when I tried to break away she wouldn’t let me go. She just clung to me like a vine. And then she said, as she was going away to-morrow, wouldn’t I have her just once more. I said she’d promised she wouldn’t make a nuisance of herself, and she said she didn’t mean to, but seeing me, she couldn’t help herself, and she swore it would be the last time. After all, she was going away, and it couldn’t matter just once. And all the time she was kissing me and stroking my face. She said she didn’t blame me for anything, and she was just a foolish woman and wouldn’t I be kind to her? Well, it had all gone off so well and I was so relieved that she seemed to accept the situation; I didn’t want to be a brute. If she’d been staying I’d have refused at any price, but as she was going away I thought I might just as well send her away happy.
“ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s go upstairs.’
“It was a little two-storey house, and the bedroom and spare-room were on the first floor. They’ve been building a lot of them round Sydney lately.
“ ‘No,’ she said. ‘The whole place is in a mess.’
“She drew me towards the sofa. It was one of those Chesterfields, and there was lots of room to cuddle up in it.
“ ‘I love you, I love you,’ she kept on saying.
“Suddenly the door opened. I sprang up and there was Hudson. For a minute he was just as startled as I was. Then he shouted at me, I don’t know what he said, and jumped. He let out his fist, but I dodged it; I’m pretty quick on my feet, and I’ve done a bit of boxing; and then he just chucked himself at me. We grappled. He was a big, powerful chap, bigger than me, but I’m pretty strong. He was trying to get me down, but I wasn’t going to let him do that if I could help it. We were struggling all over the room. He hit me when he could, and I hit him back. Once I got away from him, but he charged me like a bull and I staggered. We knocked down chairs and tables. We had a hell of a fight. I tried to get away from him again, but I couldn’t. He wanted to trip me up. It didn’t take me long to find out he was a lot stronger than me. But I was more active. He’d got his coat on and I hadn’t got anything but my undies. Then he got me down; I don’t know if I slipped, or if he just forced me, but we were rolling over on the floor like a couple of madmen. He got on top of me and began hitting my face; there was nothing I could do then, and I just tried to protect it with my arm. Suddenly I thought he was going to kill me. God, I was scared. I made a hell of an effort and slipped away, but he was on me again like a flash of lightning. I felt my strength giving out; he put his knee on my windpipe and I knew I’d choke. I tried to shout, but I couldn’t. I threw out my right arm and suddenly I felt a revolver put in my hand; I swear I didn’t know what I was doing, it all happened in a second, I twisted my arm and fired. He gave a cry and started back. I fired again. He gave a great groan and rolled off me on to the floor. I slid away and jumped to my feet.
“I was trembling like a leaf.”
Fred threw himself back in his chair and closed his eyes, so that Dr. Saunders thought he was going to faint. He was as white as a sheet and great beads of sweat stood on his forehead. He took a long breath.
“I was in a sort of daze. I saw Florrie kneel down, and though you wouldn’t believe it I noticed that she was careful about it so that she shouldn’t get any blood on her. She felt his pulse and she pulled down his eyelid. She got up.
“ ‘I think it’s all right,’ she said. ‘He’s dead.’ She gave me a funny look. ‘It wouldn’t have been very nice if we’d had to polish him off.’
“I was horror-struck. I suppose I couldn’t have been all there or I wouldn’t have said anything so stupid as I did.
“ ‘I thought he was at Newcastle,’ I said.
“ ‘No, he didn’t go,’ she said. ‘He had a telephone message.’
“ ‘What telephone message?’ I said. Somehow I couldn’t understand what she was talking about. ‘Who sent it?’
“D’you know that she almost laughed?
“ ‘I did,’ she said.
“ ‘What for?’ I said. Then it suddenly flashed across me. ‘You don’t mean to say it was a put-up job?’
“ ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘What you’ve got to do now is to keep your head. You go home and have supper quite quietly with the family. I’m going to the pictures like I said I would.’
“ ‘You’re crazy,’ I said.
“ ‘No, I’m not,’ she said. ‘I know what I’m doing. You’ll be all right if you do what I say. You just behave as if nothing had happened and leave it all to me. Don’t forget that if it comes out you’ll hang.’
“I expect I nearly jumped out of my skin when she said that, because she laughed. My God, the nerve that woman had got!
“ ‘You’ve got nothing to be afraid of,’ she said. ‘I won’t let them touch a hair of your head. You’re my property, and I know how to look after what belongs to me. I love you and I want you, and when it’s all over and forgotten we’ll be married. What a fool you were to think I was ever going to give you up.’
“I swear to you that I felt my blood run icy in my veins. I was in a trap and there was no getting out of it. I stared at her and I hadn’t a thing to say. I shall never forget the look on her face. Suddenly she looked at my undervest. I hadn’t got anything on but that and my drawers.
“ ‘Oh, look,’ she said.
“I looked at myself and saw that on one side it was just dripping with blood. I was just going to touch it, I don’t know why, when she caught hold of my hand.
“ ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘Wait a minute.’
“She got a newspaper and began rubbing it.
“ ‘Hold your head down,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it off.’
“I bent my head and she skinned me.
“ ‘Have you got any blood anywhere else?’ she said. ‘Damned lucky for you you hadn’t got your trousers on.’
“My drawers were all right. I dressed myself as quick as I could. She took the vest.
“ ‘I’ll burn it and I’ll burn the paper,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a fire in the kitchen. It’s my washing day.’
“I looked at Hudson. He was dead all right. It made me feel rather sick to look at him. There was a great pool of blood on the carpet.
“ ‘Are you ready?’ she said.
“ ‘Yes,’ I said.
“She came out in the passage with me and just before she opened the door she put her arms round my neck and kissed me as if she wanted to eat me alive.
“ ‘My darling,’ she said. ‘Darling. Darling.’
“She opened the door and I slipped out. It was pitch dark.
“I seemed to walk in a dream. I walked pretty quick. As a matter of fact, I had all I could do not to run. I had my hat as far down as it would go and my collar turned up, but I hardly passed anybody and no one could have recognised me. I went a long way round, as she’d said I was to, and took the tram from right away in the neighbourhood of Chester Avenue.
“They were just going to sit down to dinner when I got home. We always had late dinner and I ran upstairs to wash my hands. I looked at myself in the glass, and d’you know, I was absolutely astonished because I looked just the same as usual. But when I sat down and mother said, ‘Tired, Fred? You’re looking very white,’ I went as red as a turkey-cock. I didn’t manage to eat very much. Luckily I didn’t have to talk, we never talked much when we were alone, and after dinner father started to read some reports and mother looked at the evening paper. I was feeling awful.”
“Half a minute,” said the doctor. “You said you suddenly felt a revolver in your hand. I don’t quite understand.”
“Florrie put it there.”
“How did she get it?”
“How should I know? She took it out of Pat’s pocket when he was on the top of me or else she had it there. I only fired in self-defence.”
“Go on.”
“Suddenly mother said, ‘What’s the matter, Fred?’ It came so unexpectedly and her voice was so—gentle, it just broke me. I tried to control myself; I couldn’t, I just burst out crying. ‘Hullo, what’s this?’ said father. Mother put her arms round me and rocked me as if I was a baby. She kept on asking me what was the matter, and at first I wouldn’t say. At last I had to. I pulled myself together. I made a clean breast of the whole thing. Mother was frightfully upset, and started weeping, but father shut her up. She began reproaching me, but he wouldn’t let her do that either. ‘All that doesn’t matter now,’ he said. His face was like thunder. If the earth could have opened and swallowed me on a word of his, he’d have said the word. I told them everything. Father had always said the only chance a criminal has is to be absolutely frank with his lawyer, and that a lawyer couldn’t do a thing unless he knew every single fact.
“I finished. Mother and I looked at father. He’d stared at me all the time I was speaking, but now he looked down. You could see he was thinking like hell. You know, in some ways father’s an extraordinary man. He’s always been very keen on culture. He’s one of the trustees of the Art Gallery and he’s on the committee that gets up the symphony concerts and all that. He’s gentlemanly and rather quiet. Mother used to say he looked very distinguished. He was always very mild and amiable and polite. You’d have thought he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He was everything he seemed, but there was a lot more in him than that. After all, he’d got the biggest lawyer’s business in Sydney, and there was nothing he didn’t know about people. Of course he was highly respected, but everyone knew it wasn’t much good trying on any hanky-panky with him. And it was the same in politics. He ran the party and old Barnes never did a thing without consulting him. He could have been premier himself if he’d wanted to, but he didn’t, he was quite satisfied just to be in the government and manage the whole shooting match behind the scenes.
“ ‘You mustn’t blame the boy too much, Jim,’ mother said.
“He made a sort of impatient movement with his hand. I almost thought he wasn’t thinking about me at all. It sent a chill down my spine. He spoke at last.
“ ‘It looks very much like a put-up job between those two,’ he said. ‘Hudson has been rather difficult lately. I shouldn’t be surprised if there was blackmail behind it. And she double-crossed him.’
“ ‘What’s Fred to do?’ said mother.
“Father looked at me. You know, he looked just as mild as always and his voice had the same rather pleasant note in it. ‘If he’s caught, he’ll hang,’ he said. Mother gave a shriek and father frowned a little. ‘Oh, I’m not going to let him hang,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid. He can escape that by going out now and shooting himself.’ ‘Jim, d’you want to kill me?’ said mother. ‘Unfortunately that wouldn’t help us much,’ he said. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Your shooting yourself,’ he said. ‘The thing’s got to be hushed up. We can’t afford a scandal. We’re going to have a stiff fight at the election, and with me out of it and all this we shouldn’t have much chance.’ ‘Father, I’m so awfully sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t doubt that,’ he said. ‘Fools and blackguards generally are when they have to take the consequences of their actions.’
“We were all silent for a bit and then I said, ‘I’m not sure if it wouldn’t be the best thing if I went and shot myself.’ ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he said, ‘that would only make things worse. D’you think the newspapers are such fools that they wouldn’t put two and two together? Don’t talk. Let me think.’ We sat like mutes. Mother was holding my hand. ‘There’s the woman to deal with, too,’ he said at last. ‘We’re in her clutches all right. Nice to have her as a daughter-in-law.’ Mother didn’t dare say a word. Father leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. A little smile came into his eyes. ‘Fortunately we live in the most democratic country in the world,’ he said. ‘Nobody is above corruption.’ He liked saying that. He looked at us for a minute or two. He had a way of thrusting out his jaw when he’d made up his mind to do something and meant to put it through that I knew as well as mother did. ‘I suppose it’ll be in the paper to-morrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and see Mrs. Hudson. I think I know what she’s going to say. If she sticks to her story, barring accidents I don’t think anyone can prove anything. It looks to me as if she’d worked it all out pretty thoroughly. The police will question her, but I’ll see they don’t interview her without my being present.’ ‘And what about Fred?’ said mother. Father smiled again. You’d have sworn butter couldn’t melt in his mouth. ‘Fred’ll go to bed and stay there,’ he said. ‘By a merciful interposition of providence there’s a lot of scarlet fever about, an epidemic practically; to-morrow or the next day we’ll rush him off to the fever hospital.’ ‘But why?’ asked mother. ‘What’s the use of that?’ ‘My dear,’ said father, ‘it’s the best way I know of keeping someone out of the way for a few weeks with perfect security.’ ‘But supposing he catches it?’ said mother. ‘He’d be acting natural,’ he said.
“In the morning father rung up my boss and said I’d got a temperature and he didn’t half like the look of it. He was keeping me in bed and had sent for the doctor. The doctor came all right. He was my uncle, mother’s brother, and he’d attended me since I was born. He said he couldn’t say for certain, it looked like scarlet fever, but he wouldn’t send me to the hospital till the symptoms declared themselves. Mother told the cook and the maid that they weren’t to come near me, and she’d look after me herself.
“The evening paper was full of the murder. Mrs. Hudson had gone to the pictures by herself, and when she came home and went into the sitting-room she had found the body of her husband. They didn’t keep a servant. You don’t know Sydney, but the house was a sort of little villa in a quarter they’d been developing; it stood in its own ground, and the next house was twenty or thirty yards away. Florrie didn’t know the people who lived in it, but she ran there and battered on the door till they opened it. They were in bed and asleep. She told them her husband had been murdered and asked them to come quickly; they ran along, and there he was lying all heaped up on the floor. The man from the other house remembered after a while that he’d better call up the police. Mrs. Hudson was hysterical. She threw herself on her husband, screaming and crying, and they had to drag her away.
“Then there were all the details that the reporters had managed to pick up. The police doctor thought the man had been dead two or three hours. Strangely enough he’d been shot with his own revolver, but the possibility of suicide was dismissed at once. When Mrs. Hudson had collected herself a bit she told the police that she’d spent the evening at a picture palace. She had part of the ticket still in her bag, and she had spoken while there to two people she knew. She explained that she had decided to go to the pictures that evening because her husband had arranged to go to Newcastle. He’d come home shortly before six and told her he wasn’t going. She said she’d stay at home with him and get him his supper, but he told her to go as she’d intended. Someone was coming to see him on important business, and he wanted to be alone. She went out and that was the last she saw of him alive. There were signs of a terrific struggle in the room. Hudson had evidently fought desperately for his life. Nothing had been stolen from the house, and the police and the reporters at once jumped to the conclusion that the crime had a political motive. Passions run pretty high politically in Sydney, and Pat Hudson was known to be mixed up with some very rough characters. He had a lot of enemies. The police were prosecuting their enquiries, and the public were asked to inform them if they had seen a suspicious-looking person, possibly an Italian, in the neighbourhood or in a tram coming away from there who bore signs of having been engaged in a fight. A couple of nights later an ambulance came to our house and I was taken to the hospital. They kept me there for three or four days, and then I was slipped out and brought to the place where the Fenton was waiting for me.”
“But that cable,” said the doctor. “How did they manage to get the death certificate?”
“I know no more than you do. I’ve been trying to puzzle it out. I didn’t enter the hospital as myself, I was told to call myself Blake. I’ve been asking myself if someone else didn’t go in as me. They’d done all they could in the papers to pretend there wasn’t an epidemic, but there was, and the hospital was crowded. The nurses were just run off their feet, and there was a lot of confusion. It’s pretty clear that someone died and was buried in my place. Father’s clever, you know, and he wouldn’t stick at much.”
“I think I should like to meet your father,” said Dr. Saunders.
“It’s struck me that perhaps people got suspicious. After all we must have been seen about together, and they may have started asking questions. I expect the police went into it all pretty thoroughly. I daresay father thought it safer to have me die. I expect he got a lot of sympathy.”
“It may be that’s why she hanged herself,” said the doctor.
Fred started violently.
“How did you know that?”
“I read it in the paper Erik Christessen brought the other night from Frith’s.”
“Did you know it was anything to do with me?”
“No, not till you began to tell me. Then I remembered the name.”
“It gave me an awful turn when I read it.”
“Why d’you think she did it?”
“It said in the paper she’d been worried by malicious gossip. I don’t think father would be satisfied till he got even with her. D’you know, I think the thing that made him see red was that she’d wanted to marry into his family. He must have got a lot of pleasure when he told her I was dead. She was horrible, and I hated her, but, by God, she must have loved me to do that.” Fred hesitated for a moment reflectively. “Father knew the whole story. I shouldn’t put it past him to tell her that I’d confessed before my death and the police were going to arrest her.”
Dr. Saunders slowly nodded. It seemed to him a pretty device. He only wondered that the woman had adopted such an unpleasant means of death as hanging. Of course it looked as though she were in a hurry to do what she intended. Fred’s supposition seemed very plausible.
“Anyway, she’s out of it,” said Fred. “And I’ve got to go on.”
“You surely don’t regret her?”
“Regret her? She’s ruined my life. And the rotten thing is that the whole thing happened by the merest chance. I never intended to have an affair with her. I wouldn’t have touched her if I’d known she was going to take it seriously. If father had let me go out fishing that Sunday, I shouldn’t even have met her. I don’t know what to make of anything. And except for that I should never have come to this blasted island. I seem to bring misfortune wherever I go.”
“You should put a little vitriol on your handsome face,” said the doctor. “You are certainly a public danger.”
“Oh, don’t sneer at me. I’m so awfully unhappy. I’ve never cared for a chap like I cared for Erik. I shall never forgive myself for his death.”
“Don’t think he killed himself on your account. You had very little to do with that. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, he killed himself because he couldn’t survive the shock of finding out that the person whom he’d endowed with every quality and every virtue was, after all, but human. It was madness on his part. That’s the worst of being an idealist; you won’t accept people as they are. Wasn’t it Christ who said, forgive them, for they know not what they do?”
Fred stared at him with perplexed and haggard eyes.
“But you’re not a religious man, are you?”
“Sensible men are all of the same religion. And what is that? Sensible men never tell.”
“My father wouldn’t say that. He’d say that sensible men don’t go out of their way to give offence. He’d say, it looks well to go to church and you must respect the prejudices of your neighbours. He’d say, what is the good of getting off the fence when you can sit on it very comfortably? Nichols and I have talked about it all. You wouldn’t believe it, but he can talk about religion by the hour. It’s funny, I’ve never met a meaner crook, or a man who had less idea of decency, and yet he honestly believes in God. And hell, too. But it never strikes him that he may go there. Other people are going to suffer for their sins and serve ’em damn well right. But he’s a stout fellow, he’s all right, and when he does the dirty on a friend it isn’t of any importance; it’s what anyone would do under the circumstances, and God isn’t going to hold that up against him. At first I thought he was just a hypocrite. But he isn’t. That’s the odd thing about it.”
“It shouldn’t make you angry. The contrast between a man’s professions and his actions is one of the most diverting spectacles that life offers.”
“You look at it from the outside and you can laugh, but I look at it from the in, and I’m a ship that’s lost its bearings. What does it all mean? Why are we here? Where are we going? What can we do?”
“My dear boy, you don’t expect me to answer, do you? Ever since men picked up a glimmer of intelligence in the primeval forests, they’ve been asking those questions.”
“What do you believe?”
“Do you really want to know? I believe in nothing but myself and my experience. The world consists of me and my thoughts and my feelings; and everything else is mere fancy. Life is a dream in which I create the objects that come before me. Everything knowable, every object of experience, is an idea in my mind, and without my mind it does not exist. There is no possibility and no necessity to postulate anything outside myself. Dream and reality are one. Life is a connected and consistent dream, and when I cease to dream, the world, with its beauty, its pain and sorrow, its unimaginable variety, will cease to be.”
“But that’s quite incredible,” cried Fred.
“That is no reason for me to hesitate to believe it,” smiled the doctor.
“Well, I’m not prepared to be made a fool of. If life won’t fulfil the demands I make on it, then I have no use for it. It’s a dull and stupid play, and it’s only waste of time to sit it out.”
The doctor’s eyes twinkled and a grin puckered his ugly little face.
“Oh, my dear boy, what perfect nonsense you talk. Youth, youth! You’re a stranger in the world yet. Presently, like a man on a desert island, you’ll learn to do without what you can’t get and make the most of what you can. A little common sense, a little tolerance, a little good humour, and you don’t know how comfortable you can make yourself on this planet.”
“By giving up all that makes life worth while. Like you. I want life to be fair. I want life to be brave and honest. I want men to be decent and things to come right in the end. Surely that’s not asking too much, is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s asking more than life can give.”
“Don’t you mind?”
“Not much.”
“You’re content to wallow in the gutter.”
“I get a certain amount of fun from watching the antics of the other creatures that dwell there.”
Fred gave his shoulder an angry shrug and a sigh was wrung from him.
“You believe nothing. You respect nobody. You expect man to be vile. You’re a cripple chained to a bath-chair and you think it’s just stuff and nonsense that anyone should walk or run.”
“I’m afraid you don’t very much approve of me,” the doctor suggested mildly.
“You’ve lost heart, hope, faith and awe. What in God’s name have you got left?”
“Resignation.”
The young man jumped to his feet.
“Resignation? That’s the refuge of the beaten. Keep your resignation. I don’t want it. I’m not willing to accept evil and ugliness and injustice. I’m not willing to stand by while the good are punished and the wicked go scot-free. If life means that virtue is trampled on and honesty is mocked and beauty is fouled, then to hell with life.”
“My dear boy, you must take life as you find it.”
“I’m fed up with life as I find it. It fills me with horror. I’ll either have it on my own terms or not at all.”
Rhodomontade. The boy was nervous and upset. It was very natural. Dr. Saunders had little doubt that in a day or two he would be more sensible, and his reply was designed to check this extravagance.
“Have you ever read that laughter is the only gift the gods have vouchsafed to man that he does not share with the beasts?”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Fred sullenly.
“I have acquired resignation by the help of an unfailing sense of the ridiculous.”
“Laugh, then. Laugh your head off.”
“So long as I can,” returned the doctor, looking at him with his tolerant humour, “the gods may destroy me, but I remain unvanquished.”
Rhodomontade? Perhaps.
The conversation might have proceeded indefinitely if at that moment there had not come a knock on the door.
“Who the devil is that?” cried Fred irascibly.
A boy who spoke a little English came in to say that someone wished to see Fred, but they could not understand who it was. Fred, shrugging his shoulders, was about to go when an idea struck him and he stopped.
“Is it a man or a woman?”
He had to repeat the question in two or three different ways before the boy caught his meaning. Then with a smile brightened by the appreciation of his own cleverness, he answered that it was a woman.
“Louise.” Fred shook his head with decision. “You say, Tuan sick, no can come.”
The boy understood this and withdrew.
“You’d better see her,” said the doctor.
“Never. Erik was worth ten of her. He meant all the world to me. I loathe the thought of her. I only want to get away. I want to forget. How could she trample on that noble heart!”
Dr. Saunders raised his eyebrows. Language of that sort chilled his sympathy.
“Perhaps she’s very unhappy,” he suggested mildly.
“I thought you were a cynic. You’re a sentimentalist.”
“Have you only just discovered it?”
The door was slowly opened, pushed wide, silently, and Louise stood in the doorway. She did not come forward. She did not speak. She looked at Fred, and a faint, shy, deprecating smile hovered on her lips. You could see that she was nervous. Her whole body seemed to express a timid uncertainty. It had, as much as her face, an air of appeal. Fred stared at her. He did not move. He did not ask her to come in. His face was sullen and in his eyes was a cold and relentless hatred. The little smile froze on her lips and she seemed to give a gasp, not with her mouth, but with her body, as though a sharp pain pierced her heart. She stood there, for two or three minutes, it seemed, and neither of them moved an eyelash. Their eyes met in an insistent stare. Then, very slowly, and as silently as when she opened it, she drew the door to and softly closed it on herself. The two men were left alone once more. To the doctor the scene had appeared strangely, horribly pathetic.
+-mymaughamcollection.blogspot.com-+ | | | | \|/ | | \~|~/ | | ,#####\/ | ,\/§§§§ | | # #\./#__|_§_\./ | | # \./ # _|_§ \./ | | # #/ # | § \ | | # # # | `~§§§§§ | +--------mmccl.blogspot.com--------+