Sir, I offer a challenge. I offer a challenge to any living man—to you I proffer the challenge rather as an entreaty. The name and history of Edward Chaloner are easily enough to be ascertained—his birthplace and day, the names of his parents and relations, the particulars of his early life. Let these be ascertained by anybody, and let me be questioned—cross-examined. If I fail to answer accurately even to the smallest particular, I will protest and struggle no more; I will sink back silent into the hell I live in to wait for the release of death; unless it be—and this is my fearfullest thought—that by the operation of the horrid bedevilment that encompasses me, I am to be denied this last blessing, the simple human blessing of death.
I have made the challenge before; I have poured out the story of my early life—dates, names, everything—in the ears of anybody who would listen; but all to no effect. My words are speculated upon curiously, as prompted perhaps by a madman’s cunning, perhaps by delusion fed by chance knowledge in days of sanity, perhaps by some unusual freak of telepathic cerebration; always from the fixed and immovable assumption that I am mad. But I beg—I demand—that the matter be tested; tested with the last and most minute severity that human ingenuity may attain.
My name, as I have said, is Edward Chaloner. My early life was passed in the comfort of a moderate prosperity, and this continued till some little while after my marriage. But then, with a young wife dependent on me, and the future of a family to provide for, I fell upon such a series of misfortunes as left me penniless. It is needless for my purpose to detail those misfortunes here, but please note that I am ready, dispossessed as I am of all papers and memoranda, to give so close and accurate an account of those misfortunes as alone should establish the identity I daim.
It was in these circumstances that I first became fully aware of the fact that the civilised part of the world, with all its high pretensions and illusory ideals, is the mere creature and slave of money, by, with, and for which the life that is called civilised is conducted. I need not argue the question with a man of intelligence like yourself, whose sole doubt will be that I could have lived so long without observing the fact; the truth being that my easy life had given me little occasion to remark it. I discovered, now, that I and my little family were wholly friendless; and, being so forcibly taught that a man’s only true friend is the money in his pocket, I resolved to devote myself utterly to the making of money, until such time as I could once again face the world on even terms.
I have heard it said that a man will gain the esteem of the world by the possession of money, no matter by what methods it may be accumulated, so long as his operations do not bring him into gaol. But I think the exception is ill-reasoned, for I believe that the thieves who go to prison are not despised for their imprisonment, nor for their thievery, but for the beggarly sums they derive from it; and I am convinced that if a burglar could steal (and keep) half a million of money at the cost of five years’ penal servitude, he would be greatly respected and sought after on his release. But notwithstanding these views—or rather because of them—in my money-making I resolved to be scrupulous; scrupulous, that is, to the degree of doing nothing for which the law might get a hold of me; and I kept my resolve with great care.
With this sole restriction I gave myself wholly to the getting of money, and I succeeded. You must not suppose me a man of a naturallyaricious temperament. My wife and my children were more to me than myself, and for their sake I went through years of work which, for the time, may have seemed to change my very nature. I went into the city with no money, and I drew my prizes from them that speculate and invest. At first I acted on behalf of another, handling work which he did not wish to be seen to touch, and then, since he could not help it—for I knew awkward things—I became his partner. We “played the game,” as the expression went, and we did it at great profit. There were times when my wife remonstrated, on some fancied point of honour, so that I lost temper at her ingratitude; and to some extent we became estranged. But I let it stand, for I had no time then for the family affections, as she might have understood. I saved all for the day when I should be able to quit my moneymaking and turn again at last to the wife and children for whose sake I had gone through it all.
People called me hard names, but they were the losers in the game; in general, of course, I was vastly respected, for I had money, and was making more. In time it came to pass that even my partner abused me bitterly, for indeed, seeing my opportunity, I “played the game” on him, and won. He was inconsistent and illogical, and we separated. And here again, my wife, who had been quieter of late, gave me foolish reproaches, and I struck her. I repented the act as soon as it was done, and I resolved that I would treat her all the more handsomely when this servitude of money-getting was over, and all was made right, as it should be. For her part, I believe she forgave me readily in her mind, but I had an appointment and could not wait to make inquiries.
Unhampered by a timid partner, I was still more successful, and soon the time arrived when I could contemplate a near release from all my labours and struggles. In six crowded years I had made a fortune, and I had managed so well that in all the time, though many hard things were said, I never once had to face as much as an action for recovery. I set myself to look about for a house in some beautiful part of the country, where I could go with my wife and children, and where we could renew together that happy family life which had been interrupted by my years of fight for the means of their well-being. An excellent house offered, far from London,—a full eight hours’ journey, indeed,—a circumstance which I counted a gain, since I designed a total change in my way of life. I bought the property.
House and grounds were admirable, and such alterations and repairs as were needed I set going at once. Twice or thrice I travelled down from London to see that my wishes were being properly carried out, and to give orders as to the placing of the new furniture.
For I designed no mere removal, but a beginning afresh of my life where my misfortunes had interrupted it, with no single reminder of the years that had intervened. My children were young still, and indeed my wife was young also, though the few years had aged her strangely. But all should be made well, I was resolved, in the future; any neglect, any unkindness that had marked those six years should be atoned a hundredfold.
I broke up my London establishment, and sent my family to the seaside for the short period remaining till the new house should be ready; and in the city I busied myself in winding up my affairs. This was readily done in the main, for I had contemplated my retirement for some little time; but one matter detained me longer than I had expected, though the profit was large. It was a matter that could not have been carried through as I did it at any earlier period, for it would have made me so many enemies in the city that I could not have continued business. But, now that my money-getting was coming to a close, I could well afford to do it, and laugh at them all, for I took care that the transaction left me clear beyond the finger-tips of the law; and so I ended my commercial career with a stroke of high profit.
This matter, as I have said, kept me longer than I had expected, and meantime I had arranged that my family should go direct to my new house to await me.
But once the affair was closed, and my last investments safely made, I lost not a second; but caught the express that very night, so that my new life of joy and ease might begin on the morrow.
Of late I had found myself subject to distressing headaches and fits of faintness, the result, doubtless, of too prolonged and unremitting application to business. Perhaps, in view of these ailments, I should have avoided night travelling in a sleeping-saloon, but my eagerness, my longing to find myself once again in the midst of life as I had known it before my business days, overcame all. I engaged both berths of a sleeping compartment, in order to travel alone and undisturbed.
My sleep, such as I had, was a very fury of nightmare. Once or twice I half awoke, and I was then conscious that amid all
the roar and oscillation of the carriage my head was aching worse than I had ever known. It was positively ringing with an agony that, lulled as it might be by increasing slumber, was then only exchanged for demoniac sweating dreams. So I lay while there grew upon me a shaking fear that for long I could not interpret; till at last I found myself floundering from my couch and staring through the dim light at the berth opposite.
There, on the couch that I had last seen flat and empty, lay a muffled figure, with its back turned; and my horror, the fear that was now a choking anguish, was lest the face should turn toward me and the eyes look into mine.
I flung myself back in my berth, and plunged head and shoulders beneath the coverlet. So I lay till my nerves calmed somewhat, and I reflected that no doubt after all this was merely some passenger strayed into the wrong compartment. In awhile, though the roar and rattle of the train made my brain throb beyond bearing, I became sufficiently easy to resolve to rise and inform the guard. I got up, therefore, and looked again; but now I could see that the berth was flat and empty as ever.
I decided to attempt no more sleep, but to dress and wash ready to leave the train immediately on its arrival. This I did, but, having done so, I fell straightway into so deep a lethargy that I remember no more till the guard woke me at my destination.
Wearied and faint, I left the carriage, and directed that the single bag that was all my luggage should be sent on by cart. This settled, I ordered breakfast at the hotel, and made an effort to eat.
I suffered from a faintness and a lassitude of a character novel and strange in my experience. My attempts to eat succeeded only in sickening me, and at last I ordered a cab. I had no vehicle of my own to meet me, for as yet I had bought no horses. That was to make one of the early interests of my new life.
The bright fields and the dear air so far cheered and freshened me that I stopped the cab a mile out of the town and went the remaining mile and a half on foot, gathering a new vigour with every step. I saw my new life beginning before my eyes, and I planned its beginning to the letter. “My dear wife,” I would say, “the bad years are gone and forgotten, and you will forgive me for whatever I may have done that has displeased you, for indeed it was all for your sake—yours and your children’s. For your sake and theirs I changed my nature, but now I am renewed, and come to you, your husband of old.” And I would take her in my arms, and my children would limb my knees once again.
So I came to the house at last, and made my way through a side gate, for that was my nearest entrance. I went by a way of yew hedges toward the house front, and presently, as I turned into a path screened only by a larch, I saw my wife walking on the lawn, and my three little ones playing about her. With a full heart, with my hands extended before me, I went toward her, calling her by name.
To my amazement she turned, and, with her children at her side, began to walk toward the house. I mended my pace, and called to the children. My children ran from me terrified, pulling my wife with them by her skirt!
“Muriel!” I cried, “what is this? Do you turn from me now? Now, when the reward is ours at last?”
She caught the youngest child in her arms, and a man came running from the end of the terrace, with another at his heels. They were men of my own employ, men I had engaged when last I was there. Yet now they stood before me, unrecognising and insolent, demanding to know my business.
“Muriel!” I cried again. “Muriel, I have been ill, but am I so much changed? Surely the children must know me?”
And as I said the words there came from the house before me—will you believe the horror?—there came from the house before me the figure of myself! A creature, ghost or devil, in the shape and guise of myself; and my children ran to it and clung about its knees! They clung about its knees, calling it father, and complaining of the strange man who had frightened them!
I stood like a man of stone, and the soul within me shrank and shuddered; for the eyes of this horror were upon me—my own eyes, pitiless and exultant, that searched my spirit through.
What more? Nothing I saw but the eyes, nothing I heard but the names of my children, screamed in a voice I could scarce have guessed my own. I felt nothing of the struggle, nothing of being carried from the place.
And now that I have written it, can I wonder if even you think me mad? What can I think myself? Is there no test, no unfailing touchstone provided by a merciful God, whereby a man may prove his sanity? Or is the boon withheld because the punishment of hell is a thing of this life after all?
LOST TOMMY JEPPS
First published in The Strand Magazine, Sepmtember 1902
I.
A guardian angel—no, a legion of them—watches the London railway stations on Bank Holiday mornings. Nobody can doubt it who has seen Stratford Main station at such a time. For there are about half a dozen platforms, with stairs and an underground passage to join them; and all these platforms, as well as the stairs and the passage and the booking-offices, are packed so closely with excited people that there seems to be no room for even a single walking-stick more. The fortunate persons in front stick to the edge of the platform somehow by their heels, in defiance of natural laws. When a train arrives, the people in the booking-office rush at the passage, the people in the passage rush at the stairs, the people on the stairs rush at the platform, and nothing seems left for the people on the platform but slaughter and destruction, beginning with the equilibrists at the edge. And yet nobody gets killed. Half the people are on the wrong platforms, but are wholly unable to struggle through to the right ones; and I believe the other half are on the wrong platforms too, but don’t know it. And yet everybody gets somewhere, eventually.
It is an experience that would test any man’s philosophy, and the general good temper is such that, without a doubt, the place is a resort of philosophers of all ages.
There was an August Bank Holiday on which Stratford station was as full of philosophers as ever, and not the least, though one of the smallest of these philosophers was Tommy Jepps. He made one of a family party, and the Jepps family party was one of I won’t guess how many such in the crowd, and in many respects like most of the others. There was Thomas Jepps the elder himself, head of the family by courtesy, but now struggling patiently at its tail, carrying the baby always, and sometimes also carrying Bobby, aged four. There was Mrs. Jepps, warm and short of temper; there were Aunt Susan, rather stout, and Cousin Jane, rather thin; and there was I Cousin Jane’s sister’s young man’s aunt, warmer than ’Tilda Jepps and stouter than Aunt Susan, and perpetually losing something, or losing herself, or getting into original difficulties in the crowd. And then, beside the baby and Bobby, there were Tommy and Polly, whose ages were nine and seven respectively, though it was Polly who tyrannised. It was the way of this small woman to rate her bigger brother in imitation of her mother’s manner; Tommy remaining moodily indifferent to the scolding of both, so long as he judged himself beyond the radius of his mother’s arm.
“What ’a’ you bin an’ done with the tickets now?” demanded Mrs. Jepps of her husband, in the midst of the wrestle in the booking-office.
“Me?” asked Jepps, innocently, from behind the baby’s frills. “Me? I—I dunno. Ain’t you got ’em?”
“Yes,” piped Tommy, partly visible beneath the capacious lunch-bag of Cousin Jane’s sister’s young man’s aunt, whose shorter name was Mrs. Lunn. “Yes, mother’s got ’em!”
“You look after your little brother an’ don’t go contradictin’ me!” snapped Mrs. Jepps. “Of course I ain’t got ’em,” she went on to Jepps. “You’ve bin an’ lost ’em, that’s what you’ve done!”
“Don’t contradict mother,” Polly echoed, pragmatically, to her wicked brother. “You be a good boy an’ look after Bobby. That’s what you’ve got to do. Ain’t it, mother?”
“Oh, don’t worrit me!” answered the distracted parent. “Where’s them tickets? Did he give ’em to you, A
unt Susan?”
Aunt Susan hadn’t seen them, and passed the question on to Cousin Jane. Cousin Jane, with a reproachful look at the unhappy Jepps, declared that he had never given them to her, whatever he might say or fancy; and her sister’s young man’s aunt gasped and stared and swayed in the crowd, and disclaimed all knowledge of the tickets; also she announced that whatever had become of them she expected to be taken to Southend, and that whatever happened she wasn’t going to pay again. Poor Jepps defended himself weakly, but he was generally held to have spoiled the day’s pleasure at the beginning. “I think you’ve got ’em, really, ’Tilda,” he protested; “look in your purse!”
“Yes,” piped Tommy once more, this time from behind Aunt Susan; “I see mother put ’em in her purse!”
Mrs. Jepps’s plunge at Tommy was interrupted by Jepps. “You might look, at least,” he pleaded.
“Look?” she retorted, tearing open her bag, and snatching the purse from within. “Look yourself, if you won’t believe your own wife!” She spread the purse wide, and displayed—the tickets; all in a bunch, whole tickets and halves mixed together…
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 125