***
The last link in this chain of strange occurrences was given me the following September, the year of Frank’s wedding.
We were at the breakfast-table, and I had just finished narrating an absurd dream in which I encircled the island of Corsica in a flying machine.
‘Thy dream seems to have been very curious,’ said Mrs Bennet, ‘but I had one last night, that I believe I may say was even more so. In my dream I was present at a large ball, I think it must have been a ball, though I never attended one in my life. Everyone wore beautiful white dresses, and we all drank soup out of large china bowls. I had begun to drink mine, when someone pushed me violently from behind, with the result that I spilt the whole of the contents of the basin over my dress, and I am sure must have ruined it. At the same time, I heard an odd voice behind me say: “Yes, Sarah, it was I who did it, and for the last fifty years I have been trying to apologise.” I looked round to see who it was speaking in so unusual a manner, and thou canst picture my surprise when I saw a monkey, I think it must have been a monkey, dressed in men’s clothes and standing at my elbow. There was something so human in the pathos of its look, that I burst out laughing. The poor animal seemed quite offended, and slunk away to the sideboard where the waiters were serving soup. It turned round once, and with a snarl that showed all its teeth, muttered “Too late!” and then was gone.’ And Mrs Bennet laughed heartily. The old lady had a great gift of humour.
Each of the occurrences that I have narrated impressed me more or less forcibly at the time, but I should probably soon have forgotten them if I had not heard the story which to my mind links them together in a very definite way.
When Sarah Bennet was a girl, she had loved and married a captain in the Engineers.
He was clever, with a love of poetry and literature unusual in one of his profession, but his nature was wild and dissolute. He was cruel too. I heard only yesterday a story told of him, that dealt with the sacking of a Burmese village; it was only part of a story too, for a peppery Indian colonel stopped the teller before he was half way through.
This captain, I learned, had married his wife for a bet. He had gone with a friend of his out of curiosity to a Friends’ meeting, and there they had seen Sarah Cruikshank. I suppose the difference between the quietly dressed Quaker girl and the disreputable scoundrel at his side seemed so immense to the man who proposed the wager, that he staked his guineas recklessly. But he lost his bet, and the captain married his bride against the wish of her parents, taking her from her quiet country home to a life of squalor and misery in a garrison town. At the end of six months the regiment was to move, but he deceived her as to its destination. She awoke one morning to find that her husband had left with his company for India, while she, with hardly a shilling to pay for the next meal, was saddled with his bad debts. Through the kindness of the members of her society, Sarah Bennet was able to return home, and there she lived with her parents, trying to forget that she had ever left them.
No tidings ever came to her from her husband. She had thought of him as dead long before she read in the paper the brief notice of the action in which he was killed. And so as time went on the tragedy of her past was forgotten by others; even for herself it lost its sting.
The evil which befalls us is often forgotten. It is harder to forget the evil that we do.
When the little that remained of Captain Bennet that was not carnal passed into the great unknown, he realised, as his wife had never realised, the extent of the evil that he had done. He tried with all his power to let her know his sorrow, tried perhaps with all the more success, because his soul was not far removed from earth. But, as of old, there was the great gulf fixed, the unbridgeable abyss between good and evil. There was the tragedy of it, his repentance had come too late.
I sometimes think that if she had been less holy, he might have succeeded in letting her know of his repentance; but as it was, his greatest strivings appeared to her nothing more than the ludicrous images of a dream.
In the past, he scarcely lingered in her memory; in the present there was no channel left, there was nothing in common between her and him.
Mrs Bennet, laughing over her dream, is an epitome of the cruelty of perfect justice.
After her death when I was looking through the old lady’s papers, I came across two sets of verses written in her exquisite hand. I do not think she could have copied them. As a conscientious minister of the Society of Friends, she would have disapproved of the sentiments. These verses I have placed at the beginning and end of my story, for they seem to afford final proof of the fact of Sarah Bennet’s possession.
Plenty followed after Peace,
And bought her men with gold
Who spoke of the time when wars should cease,
Forgetting the days of old.
But men for ever will arise
Who hate with holy rage
The easy cant of compromise,
Who know their heritage!
It’s not for the sound of fife and drum;
But they like the life and so they come,
As their fathers came before—
English boys from the playing fields—
To taste the joys that slaying yields,
To play the game of war!
Give us war in our time, O Lord!
For peace let women pray,
A hardened heart and a two-edged sword
And a lust to kill and slay!
Fire and famine in our wake,
The cities lie before,
Nerve your arm for the plunder’s sake,
Follow the dogs of war!
They’ll come to the call of the drum and fife,
And laughing leave their home and wife,
As before their fathers came.
The tattered flag has cleft the wind,
And it’s only the wounded are left behind,
For war, red war’s the game!
THE TORTOISE
ONE WORD as to the documentary part of my story.
The letter was written by Tollerton, the butler, five weeks before his death. Sandys, to whom he addressed it, was, I believe, his brother; in any case the man was not known at Revelstoke Mansions, and the letter came back to Baldby Manor unopened.
I read it twice before it dawned upon me that the man was writing of himself. I then remembered the diary which, with the rest of his belongings, had never been claimed. Each partly explains the other. Nothing to my mind will ever explain the tortoise.
Here is the letter—
‘BALDBY MANOR.
‘MY DEAR TOM. —You asked in your last for particulars. I suppose, as the originator of the story, I am the only person able to supply them, but the task is rather hard. First as to the safety of the hero. You need not be alarmed about that; my stories have always ended happily.
‘You wonder how it all came about so successfully. Let me give you the general hang of the plot. To begin with, the man was old, a miser, and consequently eccentric. The villain of the piece (the same in this case as the hero, you know) wanted money badly, and moreover knew where the money was kept.
‘Do you remember Oppenheim’s Forensic Medicine, and how we used to laugh over the way they always bungled these jobs? There was no bungling here, and consequently no use for the luck that attended the hero. (I still think of him as hero, you see; each man is a hero to himself.)
‘The victim occasionally saw the doctor, and the doctor knew that the old fellow was suffering from a disease which might end suddenly. The hero knew what the graver symptoms of the disease were, and with diabolical cunning told the doctor’s coachman how his master had begun to complain, but refused to see any medical man. Three days later that “intelligent old butler—I rather think he must have come down in the world, poor fellow”—is stopped in the village street by Æsculapius.
‘ “How is your master, John?” “Very bad, sir.” Then follows an accurate account of signs and symptoms, carefully cribbed up from old B
anks’s Handbook. Æsculapius is alarmed at the gravity of the case, but delighted at the accuracy of the observations. The butler suggests that an unofficial visit should be paid on the morrow; he complains of the responsibility. Æsculapius replies that he was about to suggest the very same thing himself. “I fear I can do little,” he adds as he drives away.
‘The old man sleeps soundly at night. The butler goes his usual round at twelve, and enters his master’s room to make up the fire, and then—well, after all the rest can be imagined. De Quincey himself would have approved of the tooling, cotton-wool wrapped in a silk handkerchief. There was no subsequent bleeding, no fracture of the hyoid or thyroid, and this because the operator remembered that aphorism in Oppenheim, that murderers use unnecessary violence. Only gold is taken, and only a relatively small quantity. I have invented another aphorism: The temperate man is never caught.
‘Next day the butler enters the bedroom with his master’s breakfast. The tray drops to the floor with a crash, he tugs frantically at the bell-rope, and the servants rush into the room. The groom is sent off post haste for help. The doctor comes, shakes his head, and says, “I told you so; I always feared the end would be this!”
‘Even if there had been an inquest, nothing would have been discovered. The only thing at all suspicious was a slight haemorrhage into the right conjunctiva, and that would be at best a very doubtful sign.
‘The butler stays on; he is re-engaged by the new occupier, a half-pay captain, who has the sincerity not to bemoan his cousin’s death.
‘And here comes a little touch of tragedy. When the will is read, a sum of two hundred pounds is left to John the butler, as “some slight reward for faithful service rendered”. Question for debate: “Would a knowledge of the will have induced a different course of action?” It is difficult to decide. The man was seventyseven and almost in his dotage, and, as you say, the option of taking up those copper shares is not a thing to be lightly laid aside.
‘It’s not a bad story, is it? But I am surprised at your wanting to hear more than I told you at first. One of the captain’s friends—I have forgotten his name—met you last winter in Nice; he described you as “respectability embalmed”. We hear all these things in the servants’ hall. That I got from the parlourmaid, who was uncertain of the meaning of the phrase. Well, so long. I shall probably chuck this job at the end of the year.
‘P.S.—Invest anything that is over in Arbutos Rubbers. They are somewhere about 67 at present, but from a straight tip I overheard in the smoke-room, they are bound to rise.’
That is the letter. What follows are extracts from Tollerton’s diary.
‘Kingsett came in this morning with a large tortoise they had found in the kitchen-garden. I suppose it is one of the half-dozen Sir James let loose a few years ago. The gardeners are always turning them out, like the ploughshares did the skulls in that rotten poem we used to learn at school about the battle of Blenheim. This one I haven’t seen before. He’s much bigger than the others, a magnificent specimen of Chelonia what’s-its-name.
‘They brought it into the conservatory and gave it some milk, but the beast was not thirsty. It crawled to the back of the hot-water pipes, and there it will remain until the children come back from their aunt’s. They are rather jolly little specimens, and like me are fond of animals.
‘The warmth must have aroused the tortoise from its lethargy, for this morning I found it waddling across the floor of the hall. I took it with me into my pantry; it can sleep very well with the cockroaches in the bottom cupboard. I rather think tortoises are vegetable feeders, but I must look the matter up.
‘There is something fascinating in a tortoise. This one reminds one of a cat in a kennel. Its neck muscles are wonderfully active, especially the ones that withdraw the head. There is something quite feline in the eyes—wise eyes, unlike a dog’s in never for a moment betraying the purpose of the brain behind them.
‘The temperature of the pantry is exactly suited to the tortoise. He keeps awake and entertains me vastly, but has apparently no wish to try the draughty passages again. A cat in a kennel is a bad simile; he is more like a god in a shrine. The shrine is old, roofed with a great ivory dome. Only occasionally do the faithful see the dweller in the shrine, and then nothing but two eyes, all-seeing and all-knowing. The tortoise should have been worshipped by the Egyptians.
‘I still hear nothing from Tom; he ought to have replied by now. But he is one of those rare men whom one can trust implicitly. I often think of the events of the past two months, not at night, for I let nothing interfere with that excellent habit of sleeping within ten minutes from the time my head has touched the pillow, but in the daytime when my hands are busy over their work.
‘I do not regret what I have done, though the two hundred would weigh on my mind if I allowed it to do so. I am thankful to say I bore my late master no ill-will. I never annoyed him; he always treated me civilly. If there had been spite or malice on my side I should never have acted as I did, for death would only have removed him beyond my reach. I have found out by bitter experience that by fostering malice one forfeits that peaceable equanimity which to my mind is the crown of life, besides dwarfing one’s nature. As it is, I can look back with content to the years we have spent together, and if in some future existence we should meet again, I, for my part, shall bear no grudge.
‘Tortoises do not eat cockroaches. Mine has been shut up in a box for the last half-hour with three of the largest I can find. They are still undevoured.
‘Some day I shall write an essay upon tortoises, or has the thing been already botched by some one else? I should lead off with that excellent anecdote of Sydney Smith’s. A child, if I remember, was found by that true-hearted divine stroking the back of a tortoise. “My dear,” he said, “you might as well stroke the dome of St Paul’s in order to propitiate the Dean and Chapter.” Tortoises are not animals to be fondled. They have too much dignity, they are far too aloof to be turned aside from their purpose by any of our passing whims.
‘The pantry has grown too warm, and the tortoise has taken to perambulating the passages, returning always at night to the cupboard. He seems to have been tacitly adopted as an indoor fixture, and what is more, he has been named. I named him. The subject cropped up at lunchtime. The captain suggested “Percy” because he was so “Shelley”, a poor sort of joke with which to honour the illustrious dead, but one which of course found favour with a table full of limerick makers. There followed a host of inappropriate suggestions. I am the last person to deny the right of an animal to a name, but there is invariably one name, and one name only, that is suitable. The guests seemed to think as I did, for all agreed that there was some one of whom the beast was the very image, not the vicar, not Dr Baddely, not even Mrs Gilchrist of the Crown. As they talked, I happened to notice an enlargement of an old portrait of Sir James, which had just come back from being framed. It showed him seated in his bath-chair, the hood of which was drawn down. He was wrapped up in his great sealskin cape; his sealskin cap was on his head, with the flaps drawn close over his ears. His long, scraggy neck; covered with shrivelled skin, was bent forward, and his eyes shone dark and penetrating. He had not a vestige of eyebrow to shade their brilliance. The captain laughingly turned to me to end their dispute. The old man’s name was on my lips. As it was, I stuttered out “Jim”, and so Jim he is in the dining-room. He will never be anything else than Sir James in the butler’s pantry.
‘Tortoises do not drink milk; or, to avoid arguing from the particular to the general, Sir James does not drink milk, or indeed anything at all. If it were not so irreverent I should dearly like to try him with some of our old port.
‘The children have come back. The house is full of their laughter. Sir James, of course, was a favourite at once. They take him with them everywhere, in spite of his appalling weight. If I would let them they would be only too glad to keep him upstairs in the dolls’-house: as it is, the tortoise is in the nursery half the day, unless
he is being induced to beat his own record from the night-nursery door to the end of the passage.
‘I still have no news of Tom. I have made up my mind to give notice next month; I well deserve a holiday.
‘Oh, I must not forget. Sir James does, as I thought, take port. One of the gentlemen drank too deep last night; I think it must have been the Admiral. Anyhow there was quite a pool of dark liquid on the floor that exactly suited my purpose. I brought Sir James in. He lapped it up in a manner that seemed to me uncanny. It is the first time I ever used that word, which, till now, has never conveyed any meaning to my mind. I must try him some day with hot rum and water.
‘I was almost forgetting the fable of the hare and the tortoise. That must certainly figure in my essay; for the steady plod plod of Sir James as he follows one (I have taught him to do that) would be almost pathetic if one did not remember that perseverance can never be pathetic, since perseverance means ultimate success. He reminds me of those old lines, I forget whose they are, but I think they must be Elizabethan—
‘Some think to lose him
By having him confined;
And some do suppose him,
Poor heart, to be blind;
But if ne’er so close ye wall him,
Do the best that ye may,
Blind love, if so ye call him,
He will find out his way.
‘There is no striving
To cross his intent;
There is no contriving
His plots to prevent;
But if once the message greet him
That his True Love doth stay,
If Death should come and meet him
Love will find out the way.’
‘I have given notice. The captain was exceedingly kind. Kindness and considerate treatment to servants seem to belong to the family. He said that he was more than sorry to lose me, but quite understood my wish to settle down. He asked me if there was any favour he could do me. I told him yes, I should like to take “Jim” with me. He seemed amused, but raised no objection, but I can imagine the stormy scenes in the nursery.
The Double Eye Page 7