“For instance—by the way, I think I will take a little of that whisky—for instance, a young man is enamoured of a young woman. Difficulties ensue. Correspondence there must be, but how? By invisible ink, let us say, which becomes visible when breathed upon. For a year and a day the young man writes to his Dulcinea with ink of this description. Suddenly she wearies or he does. What does he do, give her aconite pills? He gives a sheet of paper a bath of hydrocyanic, a coating of starch to protect it and drops it in a letter box. When the young woman receives it, she breathes on it to decipher what he has written, and falls dead, a piece of white paper in her hands. Coroner’s verdict: heart disease.
“On the other hand, supposing he has had no time or no need to train her to the advantages of invisible ink. As a love-token he sends her a box of flowers saturated with a similar preparation. She opens the box, the hydrocyanic escapes and she is dead. Verdict: heart failure.”
The novelist emptied his glass and looked at Nevius. But the latter had got his face in the shadow, a hand before it as well.
“All that,” Jones added thoughtfully, “all that is for the Year of our Lord 2001. Nowadays people have such prejudices, and yet if stupidity hurt how many would yell!”
For a while neither spoke, and to amuse himself perhaps, Jones took a sheet of paper and began to scribble. Presently he looked up.
“But what a rattling good story the whole thing would make. And what a lot I could do with you. I could begin with you from the cradle, carry you right through everything, put your hat on and kill you. Suicide is always a good climax. And I could call it—let me see, I should have to find something comprehensive, a title both neat and terse, one that would convey an entire existence.”
His eyes roamed to the ceiling, consulted the pencil, fell again on the paper on which he had written, and lighted sagaciously.
“I have it—From Womb to Tomb. Carol, dear boy, what do you say to that?”
As Nevius seemingly had nothing to say, Jones nodded complacently to himself and rose from his seat.
“I have accomplished my object, beau ténébreux. I have bored you so that your anger is gone. Thank me now and let me go also, but remember I sail on Saturday and you must sail, too.”
For a while longer Nevius sat, a hand before his face. But behind that hand were passing the incidents of the day: the coming of that little girl, the letters which she had found in her lover’s rooms, letters with which she had threatened the lover until threats were idle and his engagement was announced. And these letters, brought to him with the intelligence of that engagement, were written by one who had pretended to love him, whom he had defended, lauded and worshipped, who called herself Mrs. Nevius still and who had wrecked three lives. Back to him crowded the memories of the past. The scraps of the letter found in the basket. That was to Jenny, was it? How clever she had been that day. How cleverly black had been turned to white. How clever, too, had been her tactics in regard to that poor girl. And with what neatness and despatch had she not brought Vührer to the house. Yes, she had been very clever, but the cleverest thing of all was in declaring herself brokenhearted. And this was the little Hilda whom he thought would be so sorry when she learned the truth. The truth indeed! It had been for him to learn it. And now that he had—Madam Sapphira, be on your guard!
He repeated the menace; the echo perhaps aroused him. On the table were the letters, and near them a bit of paper embroidered with pencil-marks, the rough sketch of a tombstone, on which in neat characters was writ:
Here Lies Hilda Snaith,
And That is All She Ever Did.
Requies catin pace.
At this effort of the novelist’s he barely glanced; his eyes were fumbling the shelves. There was a book on chemistry that he wanted, and having got it he opened it, questioned it, and sitting down again interrogated the future and roamed through the past.
XIX
The Why had gone. He was no longer haunted, he knew. There are people to whom doubt is better than certainty and Nevius was one of them. The problem had occupied him; that gone he had nothing left—a duty merely—to which he presently turned his attention.
Of the incidents remote and dismissed which had suddenly returned was one he detained—the memory of a young girl examining her wedding gifts. Among these gifts were two vinaigrettes, and he could see her still, holding one, then the other to the mirror to judge which was the more becoming. The choice made, the rejected vinaigrette had been returned to Tiffany and some exchange effected.
It was the one incident of the old prenuptial days that had jarred, and it had particularly jarred in that the vinaigrette which had been exchanged, was the gift to his bride of one whose hand he had held and whose hand he had loved to hold. Apart, then, from any sentiment which he might have attached to the tribute, the commercial aspect with which it was regarded annoyed, and continued to annoy until, other incidents intervening, it was forgot.
But it
