Trent's Last Case (18 page)

Trent flushed. 'Do you really want to know?' he said.

'I ask you,' she retorted quietly.

'You ask me to humiliate myself again, Mrs. Manderson. Very well. I will tell you what I thought I should most likely find when I returned to London after my travels: that you had married Marlowe to live abroad.'

She heard him with unmoved composure. 'We certainly couldn't have lived very comfortably in England on his money and mine,' she observed thoughtfully. 'He had practically nothing then.'

He stared at her—'gaped', she told him some time afterwards. At the moment she laughed with a little embarrassment.

'Dear me, Mr. Trent! Have I said anything dreadful? You surely must know . . . . I thought everybody understood by now . . . . I'm sure I've had to explain it often enough . . . if I marry again I lose everything that my husband left me.'

The effect of this speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant his face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he gradually drew himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, 'I had no idea of it.'

'It is so,' she said calmly, trifling with a ring on her finger. 'Really, Mr. Trent, it is not such a very unusual thing. I think I am glad of it. For one thing, it has secured me—at least since it became generally known—from a good many attentions of a kind that a woman in my position has to put up with as a rule.'

'No doubt,' he said gravely. 'And . . . the other kind?'

She looked at him questioningly. 'Ah!' she laughed. 'The other kind trouble me even less. I have not yet met a man silly enough to want to marry a widow with a selfish disposition, and luxurious habits and tastes, and nothing but the little my father left me.'

She shook her head, and something in the gesture shattered the last remnants of Trent's self-possession.

'Haven't you, by Heaven!' he exclaimed, rising with a violent movement and advancing a step towards her. 'Then I am going to show you that human passion is not always stifled by the smell of money. I am going to end the business—my business. I am going to tell you what I dare say scores of better men have wanted to tell you, but couldn't summon up what I have summoned up—the infernal cheek to do it. They were afraid of making fools of themselves. I am not. You have accustomed me to the feeling this afternoon.'

He laughed aloud in his rush of words, and spread out his hands. 'Look at me! It is the sight of the century! It is one who says he loves you, and would ask you to give up very great wealth to stand at his side.'

She was hiding her face in her hands. He heard her say brokenly, 'Please . . . don't speak in that way.'

He answered: 'It will make a great difference to me if you will allow me to say all I have to say before I leave you. Perhaps it is in bad taste, but I will risk that; I want to relieve my soul; it needs open confession. This is the truth. You have troubled me ever since the first time I saw you—and you did not know it—as you sat under the edge of the cliff at Marlstone, and held out your arms to the sea. It was only your beauty that filled my mind then. As I passed by you it seemed as if all the life in the place were crying out a song about you in the wind and the sunshine. And the song stayed in my ears; but even your beauty would be no more than an empty memory to me by now if that had been all. It was when I led you from the hotel there to your house, with your hand on my arm, that—what was it that happened? I only knew that your stronger magic had struck home, and that I never should forget that day, whatever the love of my life should be. Till that day I had admired as I should admire the loveliness of a still lake; but that day I felt the spell of the divinity of the lake. And next morning the waters were troubled, and she rose—the morning when I came to you with my questions, tired out with doubts that were as bitter as pain, and when I saw you without your pale, sweet mask of composure—when I saw you moved and glowing, with your eyes and your hands alive, and when you made me understand that for such a creature as you there had been emptiness and the mere waste of yourself for so long. Madness rose in me then, and my spirit was clamoring to say what I say at last now: that life would never seem a full thing again because you could not love me, that I was taken for ever in the nets of your black hair and by the incantation of your voice—'

'Oh, stop!' she cried, suddenly throwing back her head, her face flaming and her hands clutching the cushions beside her. She spoke fast and disjointedly, her breath coming quick. 'You shall not talk me into forgetting common sense. What does all this mean? Oh, I do not recognize you at all—you seem another man. We are not children; have you forgotten that? You speak like a boy in love for the first time. It is foolish, unreal—I know that if you do not. I will not hear it. What has happened to you?' She was half sobbing. 'How can these sentimentalities come from a man like you? Where is your self-restraint?'

'Gone!' exclaimed Trent, with an abrupt laugh. 'It has got right away. I am going after it in a minute.' He looked gravely down into her eyes. 'I don't care so much now. I never could declare myself to you under the cloud of your great fortune. It was too heavy. There's nothing creditable in that feeling, as I look at it; as a matter of simple fact it was a form of cowardice—fear of what you would think, and very likely say—fear of the world's comment too, I suppose. But the cloud being rolled away, I have spoken, and I don't care so much. I can face things with a quiet mind now that I have told you the truth in its own terms. You may call it sentimentality or any other nickname you like. It is quite true that it was not intended for a scientific statement. Since it annoys you, let it be extinguished. But please believe that it was serious to me if it was comedy to you. I have said that I love you, and honor you, and would hold you dearest of all the world. Now give me leave to go.'

But she held out her hands to him.

CHAPTER XIV

Writing a Letter

'If you insist,' Trent said, 'I suppose you will have your way. But I had much rather write it when I am not with you. However, if I must, bring me a tablet whiter than a star, or hand of hymning angel; I mean a sheet of note-paper not stamped with your address. Don't underestimate the sacrifice I am making. I never felt less like correspondence in my life.'

She rewarded him.

'What shall I say?' he enquired, his pen hovering over the paper. 'Shall I compare him to a summer's day? What shall I say?'

'Say what you want to say,' she suggested helpfully.

He shook his head. 'What I want to say—what I have been wanting for the past twenty-four hours to say to every man, woman, and child I met—is "Mabel and I are betrothed, and all is gas and gaiters." But that wouldn't be a very good opening for a letter of strictly formal, not to say sinister, character. I have got as far as "Dear Mr. Marlowe." What comes next?'

'I am sending you a manuscript,' she prompted, 'which I thought you might like to see.'

'Do you realize,' he said, 'that in that sentence there are only two words of more than one syllable? This letter is meant to impress, not to put him at his ease. We must have long words.'

'I don't see why,' she answered. 'I know it is usual, but why is it? I have had a great many letters from lawyers and business people, and they always begin, "with reference to our communication", or some such mouthful, and go on like that all the way through. Yet when I see them they don't talk like that. It seems ridiculous to me.'

'It is not at all ridiculous to them.' Trent laid aside the pen with an appearance of relief and rose to his feet. 'Let me explain. A people like our own, not very fond of using its mind, gets on in the ordinary way with a very small and simple vocabulary. Long words are abnormal, and like everything else that is abnormal, they are either very funny or tremendously solemn. Take the phrase "intelligent anticipation", for instance. If such a phrase had been used in any other country in Europe, it would not have attracted the slightest attention. With us it has become a proverb; we all grin when we hear it in a speech or read it in a leading article; it is considered to be one of the best things ever said. Why? Just because it consists of two long words. The idea expressed is as commonplace as cold mutton. Then there's "terminological inexactitude". How we all roared, and are still roaring, at that! And the whole of the joke is that the words are long. It's just the same when we want to be very serious; we mark it by turning to long words. When a solicitor can begin a sentence with, "pursuant to the instructions communicated to our representative", or some such gibberish, he feels that he is earning his six-and-eightpence. Don't laugh! It is perfectly true. Now Continentals haven't got that feeling. They are always bothering about ideas, and the result is that every shopkeeper or peasant has a vocabulary in daily use that is simply Greek to the vast majority of Britons. I remember some time ago I was dining with a friend of mine who is a Paris cabman. We had dinner at a dirty little restaurant opposite the central post office, a place where all the clients were cabmen or porters. Conversation was general, and it struck me that a London cabman would have felt a little out of his depth. Words like "functionary" and "unforgettable" and "exterminate" and "independence" hurtled across the table every instant. And these were just ordinary, vulgar, jolly, red-faced cabmen. Mind you,' he went on hurriedly, as the lady crossed the room and took up his pen, 'I merely mention this to illustrate my point. I'm not saying that cab-men ought to be intellectuals. I don't think so; I agree with Keats—happy is England, sweet her artless cabmen, enough their simple loveliness for me. But when you come to the people who make up the collective industrial brain-power of the country . . . . Why, do you know—'

'Oh no, no, no!' cried Mrs. Manderson. 'I don't know anything at the moment, except that your talking must be stopped somehow, if we are to get any further with that letter to Mr. Marlowe. You shall not get out of it. Come!' She put the pen into his hand.

Trent looked at it with distaste. 'I warn you not to discourage my talking,' he said dejectedly. 'Believe me, men who don't talk are even worse to live with than men who do. O have a care of natures that are mute. I confess I'm shirking writing this thing. It is almost an indecency. It's mixing two moods to write the sort of letter I mean to write, and at the same time to be sitting in the same room with you.'

She led him to his abandoned chair before the escritoire and pushed him gently into it. 'Well, but please try. I want to see what you write, and I want it to go to him at once. You see, I would be contented enough to leave things as they are; but you say you must get at the truth, and if you must, I want it to be as soon as possible. Do it now—you know you can if you will—and I'll send it off the moment it's ready. Don't you ever feel that—the longing to get the worrying letter into the post and off your hands, so that you can't recall it if you would, and it's no use fussing any more about it?'

'I will do as you wish,' he said, and turned to the paper, which he dated as from his hotel. Mrs. Manderson looked down at his bent head with a gentle light in her eyes, and made as if to place a smoothing hand upon his rather untidy crop of hair. But she did not touch it. Going in silence to the piano, she began to play very softly. It was ten minutes before Trent spoke.

'If he chooses to reply that he will say nothing?'

Mrs. Manderson looked over her shoulder. 'Of course he dare not take that line. He will speak to prevent you from denouncing him.'

'But I'm not going to do that anyhow. You wouldn't allow it—you said so; besides, I won't if you would. The thing's too doubtful now.'

'But,' she laughed, 'poor Mr. Marlowe doesn't know you won't, does he?'

Trent sighed. 'What extraordinary things codes of honor are!' he remarked abstractedly. 'I know that there are things I should do, and never think twice about, which would make you feel disgraced if you did them—such as giving any one who grossly insulted me a black eye, or swearing violently when I barked my shin in a dark room. And now you are calmly recommending me to bluff Marlowe by means of a tacit threat which I don't mean; a thing which hews most abandoned fiend did never, in the drunkenness of guilt—well, anyhow, I won't do it.' He resumed his writing, and the lady, with an indulgent smile, returned to playing very softly.

In a few minutes more, Trent said: 'At last I am his faithfully. Do you want to see it?' She ran across the twilight room, and turned on a reading lamp beside the escritoire. Then, leaning on his shoulder, she read what follows:

DEAR MR MARLOWE,

YOU WILL PERHAPS REMEMBER THAT WE MET, UNDER UNHAPPY CIRCUMSTANCES, IN JUNE OF LAST YEAR AT MARLSTONE.

ON THAT OCCASION IT WAS MY DUTY, AS REPRESENTING A NEWSPAPER, TO MAKE AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE DEATH OF THE LATE SIGSBEE MANDERSON. I DID SO, AND I ARRIVED AT CERTAIN CONCLUSIONS. YOU MAY LEARN FROM THE ENCLOSED MANUSCRIPT, WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AS A DISPATCH FOR MY NEWSPAPER, WHAT THOSE CONCLUSIONS WERE. FOR REASONS WHICH IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO STATE I DECIDED AT THE LAST MOMENT NOT TO MAKE THEM PUBLIC, OR TO COMMUNICATE THEM TO YOU, AND THEY ARE KNOWN TO ONLY TWO PERSONS BESIDE MYSELF.

At this point Mrs. Manderson raised her eyes quickly from the letter. Her dark brows were drawn together. 'Two persons?' she said with a note of enquiry.