XI
A Midnight Episode
The weather out of doors was in tune with my frame of mind, I was in a deuce of a temper, and it was a deuce of a night. A keen north-east wind, warranted to take the skin right off you, was playing catch-who-catch-can with intermittent gusts of blinding rain. Since it was not fit for a dog to walk, none of your cabs for me, nothing would serve but pedestrian exercise.
So I had it.
I went down Park Lane, and the wind and rain went with me, also, thoughts of Dora Grayling. What a bounder I had been, and was! If there is anything in worse taste than to book a lady for a dance, and then to leave her in the lurch, I should like to know what that thing is, when found it ought to be made a note of. If any man of my acquaintance allowed himself to be guilty of such a felony in the first degree, I should cut him. I wished someone would try to cut me, I should like to see him at it.
It was all Marjorie’s fault, everything! past, present, and to come. I had known that girl when she was in long frocks I had, at that period of our acquaintance, pretty recently got out of them; when she was advanced to short ones; and when, once more, she returned to long. And all that time, well, I was nearly persuaded that the whole of the time I had loved her. If I had not mentioned it, it was because I had suffered my affection, ‘like the worm, to lie hidden in the bud,’ or whatever it is the fellow says.
At any rate, I was perfectly positive that if I had had the faintest nation that she would ever seriously consider such a man as Lessingham I should have loved her long ago. Lessingham! Why, he was old enough to be her father, at least he was a good many years older than I was. And a wretched Radical! It is true that on certain points I, also, am what some people would call a Radical, but not a Radical of the kind he is. Thank Heaven, no! No doubt I have admired traits in his character, until I learnt this thing of him. I am even prepared to admit that he is a man of ability, in his way! which is, emphatically, not mine. But to think of him in connection with such a girl as Marjorie Lindon, preposterous! Why, the man’s as dry as a stick, drier! And cold as an iceberg. Nothing but a politician, absolutely. He a lover! how I could fancy such a stroke of humour setting all the benches in a roar. Both by education, and by nature, he was incapable of even playing such a part; as for being the thing, absurd! If you were to sink a shaft from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, you would find inside him nothing but the dry bones of parties and of politics.
What my Marjorie if everyone had his own, she is mine, and, in that sense, she always will be mine what my Marjorie could see in such a dry-as-dust out of which even to construct the rudiments of a husband was beyond my fathoming.
Suchlike agreeable reflections were fit company for the wind and the wet, so they bore me company all down the lane. I crossed at the corner, going round the hospital towards the square. This brought me to the abiding-place of Paul the Apostle. Like the idiot I was, I went out into the middle of the street, and stood awhile in the mud to curse him and his house, on the whole, when one considers that that is the kind of man I can be, it is, perhaps, not surprising that Marjorie disdained me.
‘May your following,’ I cried, it is an absolute fact that the words were shouted! ’both in the House and out of it, no longer regard you as a leader! May your party follow after other gods! May your political aspirations wither, and your speeches be listened to by empty benches! May the Speaker persistently and strenuously refuse to allow you to catch his eye, and, at the next election, may your constituency reject you! Jehoram! what’s that?’
I might well ask. Until that moment I had appeared to be the only lunatic at large, either outside the house or in it, but, on a sudden, a second lunatic came on the scene, and that with a vengeance. A window was crashed open from within, the one over the front door, and someone came plunging through it on to the top of the portico. That it was a case of intended suicide I made sure, and I began to be in hopes that I was about to witness the suicide of Paul. But I was not so assured of the intention when the individual in question began to scramble down the pillar of the porch in the most extraordinary fashion I ever witnessed, I was not even convinced of a suicidal purpose when he came tumbling down, and lay sprawling in the mud at my feet.
I fancy, if I had performed that portion of the act I should have lain quiet for a second or two, to consider whereabouts I was, and which end of me was uppermost. But there was no nonsense of that sort about that singularly agile stranger, if he was not made of india-rubber he ought to have been. So to speak, before he was down he was up, it was all I could do to grab at him before he was off like a rocket.
Such a figure as he presented is seldom seen, at least, in the streets of London. What he had done with the rest of his apparel I am not in a position to say, all that was left of it was a long, dark cloak which he strove to wrap round him. Save for that, and mud! he was bare as the palm of my hand, Yet it was his face that held me. In my time I have seen strange expressions on men’s faces, but never before one such as I saw on his. He looked like a man might look who, after living a life of undiluted crime, at last finds himself face to face with the devil. It was not the look of a madman, far from it; it was something worse.
It was the expression on the man’s countenance, as much as anything else, which made me behave as I did. I said something to him, some nonsense, I know not what. He regarded me with a silence which was supernatural. I spoke to him again; not a word issued from those rigid lips; there was not a tremor of those awful eyes, eyes which I was tolerably convinced saw something which I had never seen, or ever should. Then I took my hand from off his shoulder, and let him go. I know not why, I did.
He had remained as motionless, as a statue while I held him, indeed, for any evidence of life he gave, he might have been a statue; but, when my grasp was loosed, how he ran! He had turned the corner and was out of sight before I could say, ‘How do!’
It was only then, when he had gone, and I had realised the extra-double-express-flash-of-lightning rate at which he had taken his departure that it occurred to me of what an extremely sensible act I had been guilty in letting him go at all. Here was an individual who had been committing burglary, or something very like it, in the house of a budding cabinet minister, and who had tumbled plump into my arms, so that all I had to do was to call a policeman and get him quodded, and all that I had done was something of a totally different kind.
‘You’re a nice type of an ideal citizen!’ I was addressing myself, ‘A first chop specimen of a low-down idiot, to connive at the escape of the robber who’s been robbing Paul. Since you’ve let the villain go, the least you can do is to leave a card on the Apostle, and inquire how he’s feeling.’
I went to Lessingham’s front door and knocked, I knocked once, I knocked twice, I knocked thrice, and the third time, I give you my word, I made the echoes ring, but still there was not a soul that answered.
‘If this is a case of a seven or seventy-fold murder, and the gentleman in the cloak has made a fair clearance of every living creature the house contains, perhaps it’s just as well I’ve chanced upon the scene, still I do think that one of the corpses might get up to answer the door. If it is possible to make noise enough to waken the dead, you bet I’m on to it.’
And I was, I punished that knocker! until I warrant the pounding I gave it was audible on the other side of Green Park. And, at last, I woke the dead, or, rather, I roused Matthews to a consciousness that something was going on Opening the door about six inches, through the interstice he protruded his ancient nose.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Nothing, my dear sir, nothing and no one. It must have been your vigorous imagination which induced you to suppose that there was, you let it run away with you.’
Then he knew me, and opened the door about two feet.
‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Atherton. I beg your pardon, sir, I thought it might have been the police.’
‘What then? Do you stand in terror of the minions of the law, at last?’
A most discreet servant, Matthews, just the fellow for a budding cabinet minister. He glanced over his shoulder, I had suspected the presence of a colleague at his back, now I was assured. He put his hand up to his mouth, and I thought how exceedingly discreet he looked, in his trousers and his stockinged feet, and with his hair all rumpled, and his braces dangling behind, and his nightshirt creased.
‘Well, sir, I have received instructions not to admit the police.’
‘The deuce you have! From whom?’
Coughing behind his hand, leaning forward, he addressed me with an air which was flatteringly confidential.
‘From Mr Lessingham, sir.’
‘Possibly Mr Lessingham is not aware that a robbery has been committed on his premises, that the burglar has just come out of his drawing-room window with a hop, skip, and a jump, bounded out of the window like a tennis-ball, flashed round the corner like a rocket,’
Again Matthews glanced over his shoulder, as if not clear which way discretion lay, whether fore or aft.
‘Thank you, sir. I believe that Mr Lessingham is aware of something of the kind.’ He seemed to come to a sudden resolution, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘The fact is, sir, that I fancy Mr Lessingham’s a good deal upset.’
‘Upset?’ I stared at him. There was something in his manner I did not understand. ‘What do you mean by upset? Has the scoundrel attempted violence?’
‘Who’s there?’
The voice was Lessingham’s, calling to Matthews from the staircase, though, for an instant, I hardly recognised it, it was so curiously petulant. Pushing past Matthews, I stepped into the hall.
A young man, I suppose a footman, in the same undress as Matthews, was holding a candle, it seemed the only light about the place. By its glimmer I perceived Lessingham standing half-way up the stairs. He was in full war paint, as he is not the sort of man who dresses for the House, I took it that he had been mixing pleasure with business.
‘It’s I, Lessingham, Atherton. Do you know that a fellow has jumped out of your drawing-room window?’
It was a second or two before he answered. When he did, his voice had lost its petulance.
‘Has he escaped?’
‘Clean, he’s a mile away by now.’
It seemed to me that in his tone, when he spoke again, there was a note of relief.
‘I wondered if he had. Poor fellow! more sinned against than sinning! Take my advice, Atherton, and keep out of politics. They bring you into contact with all the lunatics at large. Good night! I am much obliged to you for knocking us up. Matthews, shut the door.’
Tolerably cool, on my honour, a man who brings news big with the fate of Rome does not expect to receive such treatment. He expects to be listened to with deference, and to hear all that there is to hear, and not to be sent to the right-about before he has had a chance of really opening his lips. Before I knew it almost! the door was shut, and I was on the doorstep. Confound the Apostle’s impudence! next time he might have his house burnt down and him in it! before I took the trouble to touch his dirty knocker.
What did he mean by his allusion to lunatics in politics, did he think to fool me? There was more in the business than met the eye, and a good deal more than he wished to meet mine, hence his insolence. The creature.
What Marjorie Lindon could see in such an opusculum surpassed my comprehension; especially when there was a man of my sort walking about, who adored the very ground she trod upon.