“But, of course, I could see you suspected me, sir, and I guessed you been on the roof spying after me. All I could do was to slip out in the small hours that night, turn that bag inside out and all and then burn it in the stove, and thought I was quit of it till I saw you looking at those embers and poking them on the lawn and knew you was on my track again. And then I heard you telephoning to Scotland Yard, sir, and so then I decided on my little ruse with those turret steps, sir! Just to get you knocked out as it were, and keep you quiet with luck for a day or two till I could talk to Ma and see how we stood. I got the flowers and papers to her early Friday afternoon but wasn’t allowed to see her and the reports were cruel bad as you know. It seemed as if all the world was against her and me, and specially you, Mr. Marlin, sir, and I had to rid myself of you!”
“What you really wanted to do was to save your own skin,” suggested Mack unkindly.
“Well, I was in a predicament, sir. It looked like me or Mother, didn’t it? and her dying too. I don’t know what would have come of it all if Mr. Marlin hadn’t arranged all these interviews. But I can say, sir, that I don’t think I could have been through a worse time if I’d been arrested and hanged straight out. It ’as,” concluded Soames with absolute sincerity, “been just fair b—y Hell!”
“You may have more of it too if Mr. Marlin likes to summon you for assault and intent to do bodily harm,” declared Mack with a sad lack of sympathy. “I only held him, Dick, and waited to arrest him after hearing of your accident from the Chaplain this morning. I thought we might as well learn first from your enquiries about the fellow’s real parentage. I still think you should summons him, Dick. And throughout he was obstructing justice, what’s more, leading us to entertain groundless, though,” emphasized Mack, “wholly justifiable suspicions! Well, I suppose the next thing to do is to apply for a formal arrest for that poor old soul, but I must own it goes against the grain, Dick.”
But before Dick could reply, or Soames could babble out his protests, there was a knock at the door and one look at the Sister’s face showed them that the other fell sergeant, Death, was taking Moira to a higher Court.
“She wants you, Mr. Marlin—she—she feels she did wrong, Mrs. Mortimer has made out from her whispers. She wants a priest, she thinks. Yes, you’d better come, Mr. Soames.”
Mack and Tonks were left alone staring at each other, each visualizing in his own way the scene in that room down the corridor. “Funny job, a parson’s,” volunteered Mack once, and “A priest’s is a very high calling, sir,” replied Tonks solemnly, “for I suppose in view of the emergency Mr. Marlin will venture on his full spiritual responsibilities before to-morrow.” That remark was not quite intelligible to Mack, but later Sue understood very well Judith’s one confidence to her, or to any one, about the strange moments of Moira’s passing. “She just knew, just understood, I think—he did all the talking for her. Your Dick is a darling, Sue! I’m pretty hard-boiled, as you know, but he made me keep on thinking of our old nursery hymn—‘Tender Shepherd’. I’d rather live with Clive, darling, I’m not your sort, but I’d like to die with Dick around!” Cook was the only other to hear of the scene from Soames, and his comment, if less suggestive, was as whole-hearted in its praise. “A true Christian, Mr. Marlin, and a perfect gentleman!” was his solemn verdict.
Mack had gathered his hat and coat and stick together when the oddly assorted party returned, leaving Moira to peace at last. He was in a state of such perturbation that his eyebrows and hair were entangled in the hearth rug, Judith was to report later.
“I knew I’d an urgent appointment! Must go at once! And, by Jove, do you know what it is? Slipped my memory in all this! It’s to meet this fellow from Scotland Yard! Scotland Yard! What’ll he say I’d like to know when we’ve nothing for him to do! Why did you make me send for him, Dick?”
“I didn’t, sir! You weren’t thinking of it yesterday!”
“Well, I only decided on it last night when I thought I must arrest—you know what I thought. When you rang me up with that tale about Soames’ birth and parentage and all the rest of it I still thought we’d keep him busy making out the case against this fellow here! And there’s nothing to clear up but all this business about the morphia. Mrs. Mortimer has still to do that. Look here, you come and meet the Yard chap with me, Dick!”
“He’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Judith decidedly. “He’ll just drive back to the Palace with me and go straight to bed, and I’ll tell him bed-time stories about my business with the bottles! But I’ll just tell you here and now, Major Mack!” Judith’s mercurial spirits leapt upwards suddenly. “Guess where the tube was all the time you were searching me and my room! In this hat, this very hat! D’you see this nice wide flat bow?” She pulled off the small chic hat delightedly. “Wrapped in a bit of tissue paper but winking at you all the time, I’m sure!”
It was certainly as well that Mack was obliged to hurry off at once before he could find a suitable reproof for this crowning insult. “But I’ll never really like this hat or wear it again,” was Judith’s last comment as they got into the car. “I think I shall give it to Mrs. Mack!”
XV
SUNDAY ENDING
But the bed-time fairy-tales had to be postponed. When the strange small party reached the house it was to find Dr. Lee’s car at the door. The Bishop had collapsed altogether after the strain of Friday’s interview and lain awake all night preparing for his arrest. Now he lay in bed, on the verge of “what we’d have called in old days brain fever,” said Dr. Lee. “A bad nervous breakdown and no Cathedral for him to-morrow or for weeks to come.” He found great pleasure in making the same pronouncement to Dick whom he met limping upstairs, and scolded well for his disobedience and folly. Poor Bobs was left to telephone and wire hopelessly for some leisured prelate to take the Ordination, to enquire when, if, and how long it might be postponed, to deal with the enquiries of candidates, excited reporters, the Cathedral authorities and the sympathetic questions of personal friends. It was not till Sunday evening that Dick persuaded Mrs. Broome to let the girls and Bobs come to his room. He couldn’t sleep, he explained, till he had heard Judith’s story and he would sleep much better when he had seen Sue. Probably he felt that he deserved such a treat, when Mrs. Broome said that if he could possibly limp just along the passage for a few minutes the Bishop would be very thankful to see him.
Dick could not refuse but had little pleasure in the prospect. He had no wish to tell the whole tangled story again: he was ashamed to look one whom he had ventured to suspect, even for one moment, in the face: he did not feel well enough, or at any time qualified, to justify the ways of God to man, or indeed man to man, as the Bishop often loved to do.
But he returned to his room in a very different mood. For the Bishop asked for no details save for one or two of these points which Mrs. Broome had naturally failed to make clear, and indulged in no reflections on how good came out of evil, but lay there, a tired, sad, yet serene old man, who had sinned and repented and was sure of forgiveness.
“It may be my duty to resign my bishopric, Dick, I don’t know. I see now how mixed my motives were in hushing up the old scandal: it was for my sake more than for my Church. Ulder had raked up a very old indiscretion of my College days—no need to worry you with it now! I have spoken of it to my wife. I sinned indeed in persuading myself that all I did was for the sake of the Church.”
“But, sir, it was the general opinion!”
“Not yours, Dick. You only acted as mediator for us with Ulder, by our request and against your real judgement, I know. I was a coward in my dealings with my Judith, too. She was all that was left me when my wife died, and I feared to alienate her affections if I thwarted her. So she grew up unbridled, and she has paid a heavy price. Yes, very nearly were bread and tears her portion to eat and drink!” (But they never were the portion of the Judiths of this world, thought Dick.) “I was a coward to demand that morphine when war began, a coward to dose myself lat
er, a coward when I dared not confess. I tell you this, not because you will ever share my temptation, but because I wish to tell one whom I love almost as if he were my own son, that, however we may deceive ourselves, however far we may wander from true self-knowledge, we are not left in our darkness, if all our lives we have tried to turn our faces to the light. We may seem to have dwelt in Plato’s cavern of shadows, but we are given grace to turn and see absolute truth and beauty if we have tried to keep faith.”
“May I come in, my lord?” Canon Wye had knocked so quietly at the door and entered so gently that the Bishop and Dick alike looked up in surprise. Nor was it fancy that the hard, gem-like eyes were lit by a kindlier, more human flame, and his voice lowered to a gentler note.
“You are going, my dear Canon? Sit down for a little.”
“I am only allowed, my lord, by Mrs. Broome’s orders to say good-bye and no more, but I must thank you for all your kindness—and for all you have done, Marlin, too! We all owe you our thanks!”
“It has been a strange time, a strange testing time,” said the Bishop. “I have been telling Dick that such trials must be sent us to help us in that wearisome life-long lesson of knowing our true selves.”
“You are right, my lord. I have taught little to the candidates, but I carry away the knowledge that I must learn humility, that I must distinguish, as I have never done, between my zeal for the Church and my pride, yes, personal pride as a priest! Humility—that fair forsaken Christian virtue—”
“And I must even at my age struggle for the Christian—and pagan—virtue of courage! But I have been trying to encourage our young friend here, as he considers our failings, to reflect that we can and do discover them. Our faith gives us a perfect standard, so that we may acknowledge our weakness. There surely we have the advantage over agnostics, for how lenient one would be to any departure from an ethical standard of one’s own! When our lamps flicker we know that we have failed to trim them.”
“But what of our example to others—those who see sins we have failed to rid ourselves of and judge the Church by the clergy? Can Marlin here feel that we can hand on the torch, however unworthily, to him and those like him, on the threshold of the priesthood?”
“I looked up Evelake once,” said Dick, avoiding the question with embarrassment. “The name comes in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, you know. Evelake was a king and all his knights rode into battle with veiled shields. But when they conquered and removed the veils in triumph, the shield bore the likeness of Our Lord and His Apostles. Whatever we may seem to the outer world I like to think that we have this behind the veil.” (Having missed my ordination, usurped priest’s Orders and served as a policeman, I now seem to be giving a short address to my superiors! he reflected in horror.) But the two men smiled as if pleased.
“In exitu Israeli! I thank you, Canon. I thank you, my dear Dick, and hope to see you again.”
But if Dick crept back into bed touched to the heart and anxious for his old friend’s health he was after all young and at the end of an ugly adventure, and he had a great new hope in life springing up before him. His spirits rose as Mrs. Broome and her daughters came on their visit after tea. Sue was sitting near him in a green frock that suggested spring, her pretty smile always ready to meet his, and Judith was her own absurd disgraceful, delightful self again.
“Well, Lucasta Messalina Borgia, tell us all about it,” said Dick. “I go all in a huddle when I try to work out just what you did with that tube of morphine!”
“It was quite simple, really,” said Judith airily, sitting on a tabouret against the arm of her mother’s chair, the fire light making a mystery of her naughty eyes, and lighting up the exquisite lines of her head and neck. “Moira, poor darling, should have been told nothing that night; that was the whole trouble and I began it too! I let out to her about Ulder’s threats before he arrived, and then I told her when he was taken ill. She’d been so restless without her usual injections that I just told her anything that came into my head!”
“So unlike your usual discretion, darling!” put in Sue ironically.
“I wouldn’t call Ju really discreet,” said dear literal Mrs. Broome.
“Well, I wasn’t discreet anyway about the morphia! But I did think it so cruel of Dr. Lee to leave her like that, for all night as far as we knew, just because they might or might not operate next day. So when, after suddenly lying quite still a bit and thinking, she asked me to get some medicine from Daddy’s secret drawer, I went like a shot. It was something he took for a bad pain he had sometimes, she told me—”
“How did she know about it when even I didn’t?” asked Mrs. Broome.
“Darling, you don’t spring-clean the house as she does. I don’t know how she knew about his pains—perhaps Soames inherited the keyhole habit from her—you know she always did know everything. She said she’d keep the stuff and only take it if the pain were very bad and that I must put it back next day—’For your poor papa might be taken bad.’ Then when I went in for a last good night she asked for some whisky—which was most unlike her, but I know invalids have odd fancies. I’ll soon be asking for green apricots like the Duchess of Malfi, shan’t I? That was when you saw me, Mamma! I’d taken Moira’s drink and I suppose that wretch next door heard the happy sound of a gurgling siphon for he called out for some, and I thought all of a sudden I might get him tight, and coax him not to be a blackguard.”
“There, Judith love, you did over-estimate your charms, I think,” said Dick.
“Well, anyhow, I left Moira quite jolly with her drink and her dope. I’d no idea it was morphine or any sort of poison you know, and I never looked at that silly little label! It wasn’t till all the fun and games began next morning—”
“Judith dear,” protested Mrs. Broome.
“Sorry! I mean the sad tragedy, that I had any qualm about it all, for Moira herself was all right you see. And then Moira told me to listen at the partition wall to hear what it was all about, and I heard Dr. Lee and you, Dick, talking about an overdose of morphine. I didn’t think of Moira’s having anything to do with it for a minute, but I did hop to her bedside and look at the tube and saw it was morphine, so I felt it was best out of the way, and put it back in Daddy’s drawer. Dr. Lee gave Moira an injection then, you remember, because he wasn’t sure if the ambulance was coming, so she didn’t know what I was doing. The person who got the fright of his life was poor old Soames, I gather. He’d seen the morphine tube by Moira’s bed when he went in late to say good night while you were all at Chapel, and I’d gone to try to get the one hot bath of the season. I do hope Clive’s home has a better hot-water system than ours! Moira told Soames then that she was going to try to persuade Ulder to leave me alone—preserve my fair fame sort of thing, I suppose—and persuade him not to expose Soames and the truth about him. Would you really have minded so much if you’d known he was her son, Mummy?”
“Well, dear, it would have been a great shock, but as a matter of fact,” admitted Mrs. Broome truthfully, “I’d have engaged almost anyone then, fathers or no fathers!”
“I said so that night, but I don’t think she could bear you ever to know she wasn’t what she called respectable. ‘Aren’t we a nice pair!’ I said to cheer her up, you know, but she didn’t rise! I suppose she told him then to take the bag when Ulder was asleep and bring the papers to her, so that she could look through them and destroy them, and that Soames was to put the bag back when he called Ulder next morning, I imagine. Well, by the time Soames managed to sneak in and hook out the bag he failed to find its key and they couldn’t get out the papers. They didn’t know what to do, so they decided to hide the bag till next day—oh yes, you all know all that, and then next day Soames went in to call Ulder, and found he’d never have a next day at all. If Soames had had the sense of a rabbit he’d have burnt the lock somehow, taken the bag back without the papers, but of course he was rattled by seeing the glass of whisky by Ulder’s bed, and then noticing that the tube of morphine
wasn’t in Moira’s room any longer. But you know his part in it all. I knew nothing about bags or papers, of course, but I was worried about Papa’s dope, so I went to Moira’s room and listened again when Mack came, but don’t worry, darlings! I shan’t adopt the keyhole habit because I’m sure one’s hair would catch terribly! When you agreed that some one else must have provided the dope I was a bit worried and when the search began I really felt quite frantic—just like being late for one’s dentist, you know. I couldn’t get into Daddy’s room because the maids were doing it and then Mack came up with Tonks and Corn, just like God in a thunderstorm, muttering about a search. I was petrified! I was sure he’d nose out secret drawers even if Tonks didn’t—how could you be a posh copper and miss a thing like that? But luckily he started with me and I managed to nip into Daddy’s room through yours—you were lying down, Mum my, you remember?—and take the thing and put it in my hat—wasn’t our Mack’s face a dream when I told him about that? I do pity the next young woman he suspects, for he’ll strip her from cover to cover.”
“Well, it’s a tangled tale, all right,” said Dick. “But why on earth, Ju, didn’t you throw the thing away or take it away with you? Why put it back?”
“I’d promised Moira,” said Judith simply. “And you see later on I’d seen Tonks and Corn shaking out Daddy’s aprons and gaiters, and having much more quiet fun over it than Mack had over my frillies. I never thought any one would go near his room again. And I couldn’t tell Father about it without giving Moira away, you see.”
Arrest the Bishop? Page 23
