Baron Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood

“ Morning brought to his eyes, though not yet to his comprehension, the presence of a huge calamity, for the ground was white with snow in which, if Trethewy had come through it, his tracks would still be seen. Soon he heard that Trethewy had in fact come home when the snow lay there. Then at last his whole mind rose to the full height of the occasion, to a height of composure and energy from which in all his later doings he never declined far. I have an unbounded hatred for that prevalent worship of strong men which seems to me to be born of craven fear. ”

“ I, who knew Peters so well, know that he cannot have done the spiteful things which Vane-Cartwright said, but I do not doubt for one moment that he did repel his young associate when he need not have done so. Peters was young too, and may well be forgiven, but I can imagine that by that chill touch he sped his comrade on the downward course which chanced to involve his own murder.
Altogether it is easy enough to form some image, not merely monstrous, of the way in which that character formed itself out of its surroundings; to understand how the poor lad became more and more centred in himself ”

“ Mrs. Trethewy would be there in a moment and could help us out; or—why did not that old rustic help us?
They say that men in moments of extreme peril take in all manner of things with extraordinary rapidity, but I do not know whether I really saw all as I see it in memory now, or whether what I did was from accident and the instinct of fear.
I glanced up, and the old rustic stood over us raising a mighty stick which I thought was not unlike that which Vane-Cartwright had carried in the morning. ”

“ It is not, I think, that the picturesque circumstances, like the guttering candle whose image got on my nerves that night, affect me profoundly. It is, I believe, that, while many men, most if you like, are middling, the distinctly bad are really much worse and the distinctly good are really much better than the world of middling people is at all ready to allow. When I looked at the whole circumstances of the crime, as I now conceived them, a great hatred of Vane-Cartwright possessed my soul. ”

“ At last we were in Callaghan’s room and seated ourselves round a table.
“I see,” said Vane-Cartwright, “that it puzzles you gentlemen why I should ask for this interview. You think I am an ordinary criminal, which perhaps I am, and you thought that like an ordinary criminal I should try all means to save a disgraced life, which I certainly shall not do. I know that you have not got the knowledge which would convict me of murder. I do not suppose you think you have, and in any case you have not. ”

“ And no innocent man suffered under suspicion. Trethewy had been found a good place by some unlooked-for benefactor, where no memory of the crime would pursue him. Callaghan’s numerous enough friends understood him far too well to suspect him, and as for his numerous acquaintances who were not friends, if they did suspect him, the good man would be rather amused than otherwise. Let Vane-Cartwright live and adorn society which is adorned by men and women worse than he, to whom circumstances have never brought the opportunity of dramatic wrong-doing. ”

“ I said there was a small window to a housemaid’s closet which was not fastened, and that the housemaid could not be quite certain that the door of the closet was really locked overnight, for it did not shut properly; but it was very doubtful whether a man could get through the window. “Who in the world,” he said, “could have a motive for killing Peters, dear old Eustace Peters?” I was beginning to lose my head, for I felt I was playing an unworthy part. “Well,” I said, with no particular purpose, “it seems certain that it cannot have been Mr. Thalberg.” ”

“ I resolved in fact to make the sort of place for myself in the world which every man, except the three men in this room and Thalberg, thinks I have secured. If I had no scruples as to the way in which I should carry out that resolve, I differed from the people around me only in knowing that I had no scruples, and in having instead a set purpose which I was man enough to pursue through life. And I am man enough, I hope, not to care much for life now that that purpose has failed. ”

“ The comradeship of Peters, who settled there a few months after me, did more than to put an end to my loneliness; by shrewd, casual remarks, which were always blunt and unexpected but never seemed intrusive or even bore the semblance of advice, he had, without dreaming of it—for he cared very little about the things of the Church—shown me the core of most of my parish difficulties and therewith the way to deal with them. So it was that with my growing affection for the man there was mingled an excessive feeling of mental dependence upon him. ”

“ He had been enraged to the point of desiring Peters’ death, and the threat which Callaghan reported had been actually uttered. He had meant, it may be, nearly nothing by his threat when he uttered it; but, when once this almost insane notion, of killing for such a trifle a man whom normally he liked, had taken shape in words, it recurred to him every time that he was put out, or that a third glass of spirits went to his lips. ”

“ I at any rate saw that something I said had revived all Peters’ suspicions of me, and this time with the addition of a suspicion, which was true, that I had murdered Longhurst.
“Now, I ask you, if you have any lingering idea that that was why I killed him, how was it possible that he could ever prove me guilty? Have you any inkling of how he could have done it? I have not. Now what could induce me, on account of a mere idle suspicion on the part of a man who need be nothing to me, to run the risk amounting almost to certainty of being hanged for murdering him? ”

“ I am not justified in inferring from this that Peters—who had seen Longhurst several times since he had seen me—had again been repeating to him some malicious falsehood with which he had been stuffed before he left Saigon; but can you wonder that I did infer it? On the march down—when we were alone, for we had sent on our servants before—Longhurst began again more savagely than ever, and for about an hour he heaped all sorts of charges and vile insinuations upon me, which I answered for a while as patiently as I could. ”

“ As I look back, I often ask myself: Was there indeed no truth, beyond what we knew, in the tale that this man told to Callaghan and me, and which was skilfully woven to accord as far as possible with many things which we might have and had in fact discovered. In point of vital facts it was certainly false. I could now disprove every syllable of that love story; his acquaintance with Miss Denison was only a few months old; she had never known Peters; and the letter that he showed us was a forgery of course. ”

“ There was fresh shouting and whistling on the platform; the stationmaster saying angrily, “Put him in here”; a voice that sounded somehow well known, but which I could not recognise, answering him vigorously; and just as the train began to go faster a big man, still shouting and very hot with pursuit, tumbled into the carriage. To my delighted surprise I found myself joined by Callaghan.
The most surprising turns of good fortune, I have learned to think, are generally the reward of more than common forethought on the part of some one. ”

“ There is not much that can be done for a thatched cottage once well alight, and for such salvage as could be done there were plenty of ready helpers soon upon the scene. That aged rustic was not among them, nor did I afterwards see or hear of him; but among them before long appeared Vane-Cartwright himself, brisk and alert, and forward to proffer to Trethewy every sort of help and accommodation for his now homeless family. Trethewy’s response was characteristic—total and absolute silence. ”

“ The enquiry upon which I had now stirred myself to enter, could not be an easy one, but it should have seemed for the present to be narrowed down to a question about a single man. Perhaps it was from repugnance against consciously going about to hang a man who had sheltered under my roof, that I did not even then definitely put to myself the question of that man’s guilt. By some half-conscious sequence of thought I was led to begin my search far afield. It started with the two letters which had come for Peters from Mr. Charles Bryanston, or rather first with the later letter. ”

“ It is not safe to be dealing with a desperate man, but, if you happen not to pity him, it is not a disagreeable sensation. As we passed over a footbridge (I was going first, and there were stakes and big stones below on which a man might hurt himself if he fell) it was probably one of my fancies that the shadow of my companion, cast before him, made an odd, quick movement with its arm. Anyhow, I turned my head and said with a laugh what a handsome stick Mr. Vane-Cartwright was carrying. ”

“ Was he relying overmuch upon the skill and mastery of himself and others which he would bring to bear in this strange interview? Had the fearful strain under which he had been living of late taken away the coolness and acuteness of his judgment? Could he rely so much upon the chance of enlisting our compassion that he could afford to give us a certainty of his guilt, which, for all he knew, we had not got before, and to throw away the hope of making an escape by flight, which with a man of his resource might easily have been successful? ”

“ And men (on whose souls also may God have mercy) are not rare among us, who, without his intellect or his daring, are as hard as he, but for whom, through circumstances—not uncommon and I do not call them fortunate—the path of consistent selfishness does not diverge from the path of a respectable life.
Strangely too, one of those lesser acts of unkindness was needed to bring about his downfall. If I had never seen him at Florence, the spark of my baffled ire would not have been rekindled, nor could I have met Trethewy’s family till they had gone beyond the seas. ”

“ Go away from here, and visit Long Wilton again and hear what they say there now; or, if you will not do that, stay here long enough to watch Trethewy, and the girl, and the people that you may see about with them,—one man in particular. Well, good-bye, Mr. Driver, pardon my saying I respect you in spite of Florence.” The manner of this last remark was maddening. I was keenly stung. I said, “Mr. Vane-Cartwright, after all, Peters’ death is not the only mysterious death you and I know of.” “Oh, Longhurst,” he said, with a light laugh which this time really took me aback. ”

“ Vane-Cartwright sat for a long time with his face covered with his hands. At last he sat up and looked me straight in the face. “Mr. Driver, did you never suspect there was a romance in Peters’ life of which you knew nothing? I did know of it, and I honoured him for it, but I hated him for it too. Certainly you did not suspect that there was a romance in mine. It does not seem likely that a great passion should come to a calculating man like me, with the principles of conduct of which I have made no secret to-day. ”

“ There were three other guests at supper, James Callaghan, C.I.E., William Vane-Cartwright, and one Melchior Thalberg. Callaghan was an old school-fellow of Peters, and the two, though for years they must have seen each other seldom, appeared to have always kept up some sort of friendship. I knew Callaghan well by this time, for he had been staying three weeks at Grenvile Combe, and he was easy to know, or rather easy to get on with. I should say that I liked the man, but that I am seldom sure whether I like an Irishman, and that my wife, a far shrewder judge than I, could not bear him. ”

“ But I think that, to my Irish friend, Vane-Cartwright appeared the embodiment of those characteristics of the Englishman which an Irishman knows he dislikes, but thinks that he ought to respect. So I should guess that, as long as he could, he had dutifully forced himself to believe in Vane-Cartwright as a very estimable person full of English rectitude. In any case, for all the pains he took to follow up his suspicion that Thalberg was somehow connected with the crime, I know that he had not fully seen the conclusion to which this was leading him. ”

“ Now I know you will answer me straight. You are too brave a man to care about playing the part you played at Florence. Have you found or have you not found any direct evidence whatever, true or false, that convicts any man—convicts him if it is true—of making those tracks, or of going to or coming from the place where they were made? Shall I repeat my question? Is it not clear, or are you still uncertain whether you will answer it?” I could do no other; I told him truly that I had nothing but inference to go upon as to who made those tracks, and I told him that my inference pointed to him. ”