Chapter 16

was, I know some girls do it, but I never could have. I suppose I'm too proud or something.'

She paused, but I made no comment. I never comment on the pride of which I am so often informed by those who possess it.

She resumed, 'Well, it went on and on, and I didn't seem to get to feel any better about it. And I hated Jane. Oh, I know that was wicked, of course.'

As she knew it, I again made no comment.

'And sometimes I think I hated _him_, when he thought of nothing but her and never at all of me.... Well, sometimes there was trouble between them, because Jane would do things and go about with people he didn't like. And especially Mr. Gideon. We none of us like Mr. Gideon at home, you know; we think he's awful. He's so rude, and has such silly opinions, and is so conceited and unkind. He's been awfully rude to father's papers always. And that horrid article he had in his silly paper about what he called 'Potterite Fiction,' mostly about mother's books--did you read it?'

'Yes. But Gideon didn't write it, you know. It was some one else.'

'Oh, well, it was in his paper, anyhow. And he _thought_ it.... And, anyhow, what are books, to hurt people's feelings about?'

(A laudable sentiment, and one which should be illuminated as a text on the writing table of every reviewer.)

'Oh, of course I know he's a friend of yours,' she added. 'That's really why I came to you.... But we none of us like him at home. And Oliver couldn't stick him. And he begged Jane not to have anything more to do with him, but she would. She wrote in his paper, and she was always seeing him. And Oliver got more and more disgusted about it, and I couldn't bear to see him unhappy.'

'No?' I questioned.

She paused, checked by the interruption. Then, after a moment, she said, 'I suppose you mean I was glad really, because it came between them.... Well, I don't know.... Perhaps I was, then.... Well, wouldn't any one be?'

'Most people,' I agreed. 'Yes?'

She went on a little less fluently, of which I was glad. Fluency and accuracy are a bad pair. I would rather people stumbled and stammered out their stories than poured them.

'And I think he thought--Oliver thought--he began to suspect--that Mr. Gideon was--you know--_in love_ with Jane. And I thought so too. And he thought Jane was careless about not discouraging him, and seeing so much of him and all. But _I_ thought she was worse than that, and encouraged him, and didn't care.... Jane was always dreadfully selfish, you know....'

'And ... that evening?' I prompted her, as she paused.

'Well, that evening,' she shuddered a little, and went on quickly. 'I'd been dining with a friend, and I was to sleep at Jane's. I got there soon after ten, and no one was in, so I went to my room to take my things off. Then I heard Jane come in, with Mr. Gideon. They went upstairs to the drawing-room, and I heard them talking there. My door was a little open, and I heard what they said. And he said ...'

'Perhaps,' I suggested, 'you'd better not tell me what they said, since they thought they were alone. What do you think?'

'Oh, very well. There's no harm. I thought I'd better tell you everything. But as you like.' She was a little disappointed, but picked herself up and continued.

'Well, then I heard Oliver coming upstairs, and he stopped at the drawing-room door for a moment before they saw him, I think, because he didn't speak quite at once. Then he said, "Good evening," and they said, "Hallo," and they all began to be nasty--in their voices, you know. He said he'd obviously come home before he was expected, and then Jane went upstairs, pretending nothing was the matter--Jane never bothers about anything--and I heard Mr. Gideon come up to Oliver and ask him what he meant by that. And they talked just outside my door, and they were very disagreeable, but I suppose you don't want me to tell you what they said, so I won't. Anyhow it wasn't much, only Oliver gave Mr. Gideon to understand he wasn't to come there any more, and Mr. Gideon said he certainly had no intention of doing so. Oh, yes, and he said, "Damn you" rather loud. And then he went downstairs and left the house. I heard the door shut after him, then I came out of my room, and there was Oliver standing at the top of the stairs, looking as if he didn't see anything. He didn't seem to see me, even. I couldn't bear it, he was so white and angry and thinking of nothing but Jane, who wasn't worth thinking about, because she didn't care.... And then ... I lost my head. I think I was mad ... I'd felt awfully queer for a long time.... I couldn't bear it any more, his being unhappy about Jane and not even seeing me. I went up to him and said, "Oliver, I'm glad you've got rid of that horrid man."

'He stared at me and still didn't seem to see me. That somehow made me furious. I said, "Jane's much too fond of him.... She's always with him now.... They spent this evening together, you know, and came home together."

'Then he seemed to wake up, and he looked at me with a look I hadn't ever seen before, and it was as if the world was at an end, because I saw he hated me for saying that. And he said, "Kindly let my affairs and Jane's alone," in a horrible, sharp, cold voice. I couldn't bear it. It seemed to kill something in me; my love for him, perhaps. I went first cold then hot, and I was crazy with anger; I pushed him back out of the way to let me pass--I pushed him suddenly, and so hard that he lost his balance.... Oh, you know the rest.... He was standing at the top of those awful stairs--why are people _allowed_ to make stairs like that?--and he reeled and fell backwards.... Oh, dear, oh, dear, and you know the rest....'

She was sobbing bitterly now.

'Yes, yes,' I said, 'I know the rest,' and I said no more for a time.

I was puzzled. That she had truly repeated what had passed between her and Hobart I believed. But whether she had pushed him, or whether he had lost his own balance, seemed to me still an open question. I had to consider two things--how best to help this girl, and how to get Gideon out of the mess as quickly and as quietly as possible. For both these things I had to get at the truth--if I could.

'Now, look here,' I said presently, 'is this story you've told me wholly true? Did it actually happen precisely like that? Please think for a moment and then tell me.'

But she didn't think, not even for a moment.

'Oh,' she sobbed, 'true! Why should I _say_ it if it wasn't?'

Why indeed? I began to enumerate some possible reasons--an inaccurate habit of mind, a sensational imagination (both these misfortunes being hereditary), an egotistic craving for attention, even unfavourable attention--it might be any of these things, or all. But I hadn't got far before she broke in, 'Oh, God. I've not had a moment's peace since ... I loved him, and I killed him.... I let them think it was an accident.... It was as if I was gagged, I _couldn't_ speak. And after a bit, when it had all settled down, there didn't seem to be any reason why I should say anything.... I never thought, truly I never thought, that they'd ever suspect some one else.... And then, a little while ago, I heard mother saying something, to some one about Mr. Gideon, and last night Katherine Varick came and told Jane people were saying it everywhere. And this morning there was that piece in the _Haste_. ... Oh! what shall I _do?_'

'You don't really,' I said, 'feel any doubt about that. Do you?'

She lifted her wet, puckered face and stared at me, and I saw that, for the moment at least, she was not thinking of herself at all, but only of her tragedy and her problem.

'You mean,' she whispered, 'that I must tell ...'

'It's rather obvious, isn't it,' I said gently, because I was horribly sorry for her. 'You must tell the truth, whatever it is.'

'And be tried for murder--or manslaughter? Appear in the docks?' she quavered, her frightened brown eyes large and round.

'I don't think it would come to that. All you have to do is to tell your parents. Your father is responsible for the stuff in the papers, and your mother, I gather, for the spreading of the story personally. Your confession to them would stop that. They would withdraw, retract what they have said, and say publicly that they were mistaken, that the evidence they thought they had, had been proved false. Then it would be generally assumed again that the thing was an accident, and the talk would die down. No one need ever know but your parents and myself. I am bound, and they would choose, not to repeat it to any one.'

'Not to Jane?' she questioned.

'Well, what does Jane think at present? Does she suspect?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. Jane's been rather queer all day.... I've sometimes thought she suspected something. Only if she did, I believe she'd have told me. Jane doesn't consider people's feelings, you know; she'd say anything, however awful.... Only she's deep, too. Not like me. I must have things out; she'll keep them dark, sometimes.... No, I don't know what Jane thinks, really I don't.'

I didn't know either. Another thing I didn't know was what Gideon thought. They might both suspect Clare, and this might have tied Gideon's hands; he might have shrunk from defending himself at the expense of a frightened, unhappy girl and Jane's sister.

But this wasn't my business.

'Well,' I said, 'you may find you have to tell Jane. Perhaps, in a way, you owe it to Jane to tell her. But the essential thing is that you should tell your parents. That's quite necessary, of course. And you should do it at once--this evening, directly you get home. Every minute lost makes the thing worse. I think you should catch the next train back to Potter's Bar. You see, what you say may affect what is in to-morrow morning's papers. This thing has to be stopped at once, before further damage is done.'

She looked at me palely, her hands twisting convulsively in and out of each other. I saw her, for all her seven or eight-and-twenty years, as a weak, frightened child, ignorant, like a child, of the mischief she was doing to others, concerned, like a child, with her own troubles and fears and the burden on her own conscience. I was inclined now to believe in that push.

'Oh,' she whimpered, 'I _daren't_.... All this time I've said nothing.... How can I, now? It's too awful ... too difficult ...'

I looked at her in silence.

'What's your proposal, then?' I asked her. I may have sounded hard and unkind, but I didn't feel so; I was immensely sorry for her. Only, I believe a certain amount of hard practicality is the only wholesome treatment to apply to emotional and wordy people. One has to make them face facts, put everything in terms of action. If she had come to me for advice, she should have it. If she had come to me merely to get relief by unburdening her tortured conscience, she should find the burden doubled unless she took the only possible way out.

She looked this way and that, with scared, hunted eyes.

'I thought perhaps ... they might be made to think it was an accident ...'

'How?'

'Well, you see, I could tell them that he'd left the house--Mr. Gideon, I mean--before Oliver ... fell. That would be true. I could say I heard Mr. Gideon go, and heard Oliver fall afterwards. That's what I thought I'd say. Then he'd be cleared, wouldn't he?'

'Why haven't you,' I asked, 'said this already, directly you knew that Gideon was suspected?'

'I--I didn't like,' she faltered. 'I wanted to ask some one's advice. I wanted to know what you thought.'

'I've told you,' I answered her, 'what I think. It's more than thinking. I know. You've got to tell them the exact truth whatever it is. There's really no question about it. You couldn't go to them with a half true story ... could you?'

'I don't know,' she sighed, pinching her fingers together nervously.

'You do know. It would be impossible. You couldn't lie about a thing like that. You've got to tell the truth.... Not all you've told me, if you don't want to--but simply that you pushed him, in impatience, not meaning to hurt him, and that he fell. It's quite simple really, if you do it at once. It won't be if you leave it until the thing has gone further and Gideon is perhaps arrested. You'd have to tell the public the story then. Now it's easy.... No, I beg your pardon, it's not easy; I know that. It's very hard. But there it is: it's got to be done, and done at once.'

She listened in silence, drooping and huddled together. I was reminded pitifully of some soft little animal, caught in a trap and paralysed with fear.

'Oh,' she gasped, 'I must, I must, I know I must. But it's _difficult_ ...'

I'm not going to repeat the things I said. They were the usual truisms, and one has to say them. I had accepted her story now: it seemed simpler. The complex part of the business was that at one moment I was simply persuading a frightened and reluctant girl to do the straight and decent and difficult thing, and at the next I was wasting words on an egotist (we're all that, after all) who was subconsciously enjoying the situation and wanting to prolong it. One feels the difference always, and it is that duplicity of aim in seekers after advice that occasionally makes one cruel and hard, because it seems the only profitable method.

It must have been ten minutes before I wrung out of her a faltering but definite, 'I'll do it.'

Then I stood up. There was no more time to be wasted.

'What train can you get?' I asked her.

'I don't know.... The 7.30, perhaps.' She rose, too, her little wet crumpled handkerchief still in her hand. I saw she had something else to say.

'I've been so miserable ...'

'Well, of course.'

'It's been on my _mind_ so ...'

What things people of this type give themselves the trouble of saying!

'Well, it will be off your mind now,' I suggested.

'Will it? But it will still be there--the awful thing I did. I ought to confess it, oughtn't I, and get absolution? I do make my confession, you know, but I've never told this, not properly. I know I ought to have done, but I couldn't get it out ever--I put it so that the priest couldn't understand. I suppose it was awfully mean and cowardly of me, and I ought to confess it properly.'

But I couldn't go into that question, not being entirely sure even now _what_ she ought to confess. I merely said, 'Well, why make confessions at all if you don't make them properly?'

She only gave her little soft quivering sigh. It was too difficult a question for her to answer. And, after all, a foolish one to ask. Why do we do all the hundreds of things that we don't do properly? Reasons are many and motives mixed.

I walked with her to the King's Cross bus and saw her into it. We shook hands as we parted, and hers was hot and clinging. I saw that she was all tense and strung up.

'Good-bye,' she whispered. 'And thank you ever so much for being so good to me. I'll do what you told me to-night. If it kills me, I will.'

'That's good,' I returned. 'But it won't kill you, you know.'

I smiled at her as she got on to the bus, and she smiled pitifully back.

5

I walked back to my rooms. I felt rather tired, and had a queer feeling of having hammered away on something soft and yielding and yet unbreakable, like putty. I felt sick at having been so hard, and sick too that she was so soft. Sick of words, and phrases, and facile emotions, and situations, and insincerities, and Potterisms--and yet with an odd tide of hope surging through the sickness, because of human nature, which is so mixed that natural cowards will sometimes take a steep and hard way where they might take an easy one, and because we all, in the middle of our egotism and vanity and self-seeking, are often sorry for what we have done. Really sorry, beneath all the cheap penitence which leads nowhere. So sorry that we sometimes cannot bear it any more, and will break up our own lives to make amends....

And if, at the same time, we watch our sorrow and our amends, and see it as drama and as interesting--well, after all, it is drama and it is interesting, so why not? We can't all be clear and steely unsentimentalists like Katherine Varick.

One has to learn to bear sentimentalism. In parishes (which are the world) one has to endure it, accept it. It is part of the general muddle and mess.

6

I got a _Daily Haste_ next morning early, together with the _Pink Pictorial_, the illustrated Pinkerton daily. I looked through them quickly. There was no reference to the Hobart Mystery. I was relieved. Clare Potter had kept her word, then--or anyhow had said enough to clear Gideon (I wasn't going further than that about her; I had done my utmost to make her do the straight thing in the straight way, and must leave the rest to her), and the Pinkertons were withdrawing. They would have, later, to withdraw more definitely than by mere abstaining from further accusation (I intended to see to that, if no one else did), but this was a beginning. It was, no doubt, all that Pinkerton had been able to arrange last night over the telephone.

It would have interested me to have been present at that interview between Clare and her parents. I should like to have seen Pinkerton provided by his innocent little daughter with the sensation of his life, and Leila Yorke, the author of _Falsely Accused_ forced to realise her own abominable mischief-making; forced also to realise that her messages from the other side had been as lacking in accuracy as, unfortunately, messages from this side, too, so often are. I hoped the affair Hobart would be a lesson to both Pinkertons. But, like most of the lessons set before us in this life, I feared it would be a lesson unlearnt.

Anyhow, Pinkerton was prompt and business like in his methods. His evening paper contained a paragraph to this effect:--

'DEATH OF MR HOBART

'NOW CONSIDERED ACCIDENTAL

'FOUL PLAY NOT SUSPECTED

'The investigation into the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of Mr. Oliver Hobart, the late editor of the _Daily Haste_, have resulted in conclusive evidence that the tragedy was due to Mr. Hobart's accidental stumbling and falling. His fall, which was audible to the other inmates of the house, took place after the departure of Mr. Arthur Gideon, with whom he had been talking. A statement to this effect has been made by Miss Clare Potter, who was staying in the house at the time, and who was at the time of the inquest too much prostrated by the shock to give evidence.'

It was a retraction all right, and all that could be expected of the Pinkerton Press. In its decision and emphasis I read scare.

I didn't give much more thought just then to the business. I was pretty busy with meetings and committees, and with rehearsals of _A New Way to pay Old Debts,_ which we were playing to the parish in a week. I had stage-managed it at Oxford once, and had got some of the same people together, and it was going pretty well but needed a good deal of attention. I had, too, to go away from town for a day or two, on some business connected with the Church Congress. Church Congresses keep an incredible number of people busy about them beforehand; besides all the management of committees and programmes and side-shows, there is the management of all the people of divergent views who won't meet each other, such as Mr. George Lansbury and Mr. Athelstan Riley. (Not that this delicate task fell to me; I was only concerned with Life and Liberty.)

On the day after I came back I met Jane at the club, after lunch. She came over and sat down by me.

'Hallo,' she said. 'Have you been seeing the _Haste_?'

'I have. It's been more interesting lately than my own paper.'

'Yes.... So Arthur's acquitted without a stain on his character. Poor mother's rather sick about it. She thought she'd had a Message, you know. That frightful Ayres woman had a vision in a glass ball of Arthur knocking Oliver downstairs. I expect you heard. Every one did.... Mother went round to see her about it the other day, but she still sticks to it. Poor mother doesn't know what to make of it. Either the ball lied, or the Ayres woman lied, or Clare is lying. She's forced to the conclusion that it was the Ayres. So they've had words. I expect they'll make it up before long. But at present there's rather a slump in Other Side business.... And she wrote a letter of apology to Arthur. Father made her, he was so afraid Arthur would bring a libel action.'

'Why didn't he?' I asked, wondering, first, how much of the truth either Arthur or Jane had suspected all this time, and, secondly, how much they now knew.

Jane looked at me with her guarded, considering glance.

'Well,' she said, 'I don't mind your knowing. You'd better not let on to him that I told you, though; he mightn't like it. The fact is, Arthur thought I'd done it. He thought it was because my manner was so queer, as if I was trying to hush it up. I was. You see, I thought Arthur had done it. It seemed so awfully likely. Because, I left them quarrelling. And Arthur's got an awfully bad temper. And _his_ manner was so queer. We never talked it out, till two days ago; we avoided talking to each other at all, almost, after the first. But on that first morning, when he came round to see me, we somehow succeeded in diddling one another, because we were each so anxious to shield the other and hush it all up.... Clare might have saved us both quite a lot of worrying if she'd spoken out at once and said it was ... an accident.'

Jane's voice was so unemotional, her face and manner so calm, that she is a very dark horse sometimes. I couldn't tell for certain whether she had nearly instead of 'an accident' said 'her,' or whether she had spoken in good faith. I couldn't tell how much she knew, or had been told, or guessed.

I said, 'I suppose she didn't realise till lately that any one was likely to be suspected,' and Jane acquiesced.

'Clare's funny,' she said, after a moment.

'People are,' I generalised.

'She has a muddled mind,' said Jane.

'People often have.'

'You never know,' said Jane thoughtfully, 'how much to believe of what she says.'

'No? I dare say she doesn't quite know herself.'

'She does not,' said Jane. 'Poor old Clare.'

We necessarily left it at that, since Jane didn't, of course, mean to tell me what story Clare had told of that evening's happenings, and I couldn't tell Jane the one Clare had told me. I didn't imagine I should ever be wiser than I was now on the subject, and it certainly wasn't my business any more.

When I met Clare Potter by chance, a week or two later, on the steps of the National Gallery with another girl, she flushed, bowed, and passed me quickly. That was natural enough, after our last interview.

Queer, that those two girls should be sisters. They were an interesting study to me. Clare, shallow, credulous, weak in the intelligence, conventional, emotional, sensitive, of the eternal type of orthodox and timid woman, with profound powers of passion, and that touch of melodrama, that sense of a situation, which might lead her along strange paths.... And Jane, level-headed, clear-brained, hard, calm, straight-thinking, cynical, an egotist to her finger-tips, knowing what she wanted and going for it, tough in the conscience, and ignorant of love except in its crudest form of desire for the people and things which ministered to her personal happiness....

It struck me that the two represented two sides of Potterism--the intellectual and moral. Clare, the ignorant, muddle-headed sentimentalist; Jane, reacting against this, but on her part grabbing and exploiting. Their attitude towards truth (that bugbear of Potterism) was typical; Clare couldn't see it; Jane saw it perfectly clearly, and would reject it without hesitation if it suited her book. Clare was like her mother, only with better, simpler stuff in her; Jane was rather like her father in her shrewd native wit, only, while he was vulgar in his mind, she was only vulgar in her soul.

Of one thing I was sure: they would both be, on the whole, satisfied with life, Jane because she would get what she wanted, Clare because she would be content with little. Clare would inevitably marry; as inevitably, she would love her husband and her children, and come to regard her passion for Oliver Hobart and its tragic sequel as a romantic episode of girlhood, a sort of sowing of wild oats before the real business of life began. And Jane would, I presumed, ultimately marry Gideon, who was too good for her, altogether too fine and too good. For Gideon was direct and keen and passionate, and loved and hated cleanly, and thought finely and acutely. Gideon wasn't greedy; he took life and its pleasures and triumphs and amusements in his stride, as part of the day's work; he didn't seek them out for their own sakes. Gideon lived for causes and beliefs and ideals. He was temperamentally Christian, though he didn't happen to believe Christian dogma. He had his alloy, like other people, of ambition and selfishness, but so much less than, for instance, I have, that it is absurd that he should be the agnostic and I the professing Christian.

7

The Christian Church. Sometimes one feels that it is a fantasy, the flaming ideal one has for it. One thinks of it as a fire, a sword, an army with banners marching against dragons; one doesn't see how such power can be withstood, be the dragons never so strong. And then one looks round and sees it instead as a frail organisation of the lame, the halt, and the blind, a tepid organisation of the satisfied, the bourgeois, the conventionally genteel, a helpless organisation of the ignorant, the half-witted, the stupid; an organisation full to the brim of cant, humbug, timid orthodoxy, unreality, self-content, and all kinds of Potterism--and one doesn't see how it can overcome anything whatever.

What is the truth? Where, between these two poles, does the actual church stand? Or does it, like most of us its members, swing to and from between them, touching now one, now the other? A Potterite church--yes; because we are most of us Potterites. An anti-Potterite church--yes, again; because at its heart is something sharp and clean and fine and direct, like a sword, which will not let us be contented Potterites, but which is for ever goading us out of ourselves, pricking us out of our trivial satisfactions and our egotistic discontents.

I suppose the fact is that the Church can only work on the material it finds, and do a little here and a little there. It would be a sword in the hands of such men as Gideon; on the other hand, it can't do much with the Clare Potters. The real thing frightens them if ever they see it; the sham thing they mould to their own liking, till it is no more than a comfortable shelter from the storms of life. It is the world's Potters who have taken the Church and spoilt it, degraded it to the poor dull thing it is. It is the Potterism in all of us which at every turn checks and drags it down. Personally, I can forgive Potterism everything but that.

What is one to do about it?