“Then,” said Mr. Davenant, “you had better formally denounce it at once.”
“Why trouble to denounce it?” demanded Mr. Hawkesley. “Much better let me call on Goldstein and make him tear up the duplicate. He has got a fine, handy warming-pan hanging up in his shop. I saw it only this morning.”
“The connection is not very clear to me,” said I.
“It would be clear enough to him,” was the grim reply.
Mr. Davenant chuckled. “Your methods, Hawkesley, appeal to me strongly, I must admit; but they are not politic. Legal process is better than a warming-pan, even if it were filled with hot coals. Let us hand the agreement to a reputable solicitor, and let him write to Goldstein stating the position. Miss Finch won’t hear any more of her benefactor after that.
After some discussion, in which I supported Mr. Hawkesley’s proposal, the less picturesque method of procedure was adopted, and Mr. Davenant was commissioned to carry it out.
“And we will have a one woman show of Blue Bird Ware at the club,” said Mr. Hawkesley. “I will take my whole collection there and exhibit it with a big label giving the artist’s name in block capitals. The pottery collectors will just tumble over one another to get specimens of the work when the artist is known.”
The rest of Mr. Hawkesley’s collection received but a perfunctory consideration. Even the gorgeous De Morgan earthenware, glowing with the hues of the rainbow, came as something of an anti-climax; and we closed the last of the cabinets with almost an air of relief.
“And now,” said Mr. Hawkesley, as he pocketed his keys, “I suggest that we mark this joyful occasion by a modest festival—say, a homely little dinner at the club and an evening at the play. Who seconds my proposal?”
“We shall have to go as we are then,” said I, “as we can’t change.”
“I think we can enjoy ourselves in morning dress,” he rejoined; “and as we shall all be in the same shocking condition, we can keep one another in countenance.”
The proposal was accordingly adopted with acclamation and carried into effect with triumphant success, and some slight disturbance of the orderly routine of the establishment in Wellclose Square; for it was on the stroke of midnight when Miss Polton, blinking owlishly, opened the green door to admit the two roisterers who had just emerged from a hansom-cab.
“It has been a jolly day!” Peggy exclaimed fervently as we said “good-night” on our landing. “And it will be a jolly tomorrow, too.”
“Yes; you will be able to get on with your masterpiece now; and when it is finished we can show it at the club and you will be able to sell it for a small fortune.”
I shan’t want to sell it,” she said. “If it is good enough, and if it wouldn’t seem too forward or improper, I should like to give it to Mr. Hawkesley—as a sort of thank-offering, you know.”
“Thank-offering for what?”
“For his appreciation of my work. I really feel very grateful to him, as well as to you, Sibyl, dear. You see, he not only liked the things, but he thought of the worker who made them. All the time that I was working alone, with the door locked, from morning to night to fill that cormorant’s pockets, Mr. Hawkesley was thinking of me, the unknown worker, looking for me and wanting to help me. I don’t forget that it is you who have got me out of Mr. Goldstein’s clutches. But I do feel very, very grateful to Mr. Hawkesley. Don’t you think it is quite natural that I should, Sibyl?”
“I think you are a little, green goose,” said I, and kissed her; and so ended the day that saw the end of her servitude and the dawn of prosperity and success.
CHAPTER XVIII
Among the Breakers
My preoccupation with Peggy Finch’s affairs had to some extent submerged my own, but now that my little friend had triumphantly emerged from the house of Bondage, I returned to my labours with a new zest. In spite of the various interruptions, the Zodiac spoons had made steady progress, and it was but a few days after our momentous visit to Mr. Hawkesley’s rooms that, almost regretfully, I put the finishing touches to the Fishes spoon—the last of the set.
It had been a pleasant labour, and as I laid out the completed set, I was not dissatisfied. True, there had been difficulties; but difficulties are the salt of craftsmanship. Some of the signs, such as Aries, Taurus, Leo, Virgo and Capricornus, had been quite simple, the head of the Ram, the Bull, or other symbolic creature furnishing an obvious and appropriate knop for the spoon. But others, such as Gemini, Pisces, and especially Libra, had been less easy to manage. Indeed, the last had involved a slight evasion; for, since it seemed quite impossible to work a pair of scales into a presentable knop, I had relegated them to the shoulder of the bowl and formed the knop of a more or less appropriate head of Justice blindfolded. So all the difficulties had been met by a pleasant and interesting exercise of thought and ingenuity, and the work—my magnum opus, for the present—was finished. And it was rounded off by a very agreeable little addition; for Phyllis Barton, who had seen and greatly admired the set, had made a delightful little case to contain it—just a pair of walnut slabs hinged together, the lower slab having twelve shaped recesses to hold the spoons and the lid ornamented with shallow carvings of a winged hour-glass and the phases of the moon.
I made up the spoons into a parcel and the case into another, so that they should not be treated together in a single transaction; and having advised Mr. Campbell by a letter on the previous day, set forth one morning for Wardour Street. The silent willing which should have preceded my entry to the shop was inadvertently omitted, for as I crossed the street I observed Mr. Campbell exchanging blandishments with a large Persian cat of the “smoky” persuasion, and, as he saw me at the same moment, I had no choice but to enter straightway.
He received me with the most encouraging affability—indeed, he even condescended to shake hands—and was evidently pleased to see me. And his reception of my work was still more encouraging. There was none of the buyer’s proverbial disparagement. He was frankly enthusiastic. He held up each spoon separately at arm’s length, wagging his head from side to side; he inspected it through a watchmaker’s lens; he stroked it with a peculiarly flexible thumb, and finally laid it down with a grunt of satisfaction.
Then came the question of terms; and when he offered twenty-four guineas for the set, I was quite glad that the silent willing had been omitted. For I should probably have willed eighteen.
Having settled the price of my own work, I produced the wooden case. Phyllis had priced it at half a guinea, which was ridiculous. I boldly demanded a guinea for it.
“That’s a long price,” said Mr. Campbell, pulling a face; of proportionate length. But I watched his thumb travel ling over the clean-cut carving, I saw him delicately fitting the spoons, one by one, into their little niches, and I knew that that guinea was as good as in Phillibar’s pocket.
“It is a long price, Mrs. Otway,” he repeated, cocking his head on one side at the case. “But it’s a pretty bit of work; and it’s the right thing—that’s what I like about it. So suitable; it would be a sin to put those spoons into a velvet-lined case, as if they were common, stamped, trade-goods. Very well, Mrs. Otway, I’ll spring a guinea for the case; and I should like to see some more work from the same hand.”
This was highly satisfactory (though it was not without a pang of bereavement that I saw the little case closed and hidden from my sight for ever in a locked drawer); and when I had received the two cheques—I asked for a separate one for Phyllis—I tripped away down Wardour Street as buoyantly as if I had not a care in the world.
The association of ideas is a phenomenon that has received a good deal of attention. It was brought to my notice on this occasion when I found myself opposite St Anne’s Church; for no sooner had my eye lighted on its quaint warty spire than my thoughts turned to Mr Davenant—or rather, I should say, to Jasper. Perhaps he was in my mind already; possibly in the subconscious, as Lilith would have said, and the church spire may have acted as an autoscope—it w
ould not have had to be an exceptionally powerful one. At any rate, my thoughts turned to him and to the Magpies Club, and it was not unnatural that my steps should take a similar direction.
As I followed the well-remembered route, I reflected on the changes that a few short months had brought. In that brief space a new life had opened. The solitary, friendless orphan who had sought sanctuary in Miss Polton’s house, how changed was her condition! Happy in her work, in her home, in her friends; for had she not her Lilith, her Phyllis, her Peggy—and Jasper? And here a still, small voice asked softly but insistently a question that had of late intruded itself from time to time. Whither was I drifting? My friendship with Jasper was ripening apace. But ripening to what? There could be but one answer; and that answer only raised a further question. In normal circumstances the love of a man and a woman finds a permanent satisfaction in marriage. But where marriage is impossible love is a mere disaster; a voyage with nothing but rocks and breakers at the end.
So whispered the still, small voice into ears but half attentive; and as I neared the bottom of Essex Street it became inaudible, for approaching the club-house from the opposite direction was Jasper himself.
“Well!” he exclaimed, “this is a piece of luck! And yet I had hoped that you might be coming into town today. Is it business or pleasure?”
“It has been business, and now I hope it is going to be pleasure. I am taking the rest of the day off.”
“Now, what a very singular coincidence! I am actually taking the rest of the day off myself.”
“Your coincidences,” I remarked, “somehow remind me of the misadventures of the bread-and-butter fly; they always happen.”
“Quite so,” he agreed. “But then, you see, if they didn’t happen they wouldn’t be coincidences. Do we begin by fortifying ourselves with nourishment?
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘begin,’ but I came here to get some lunch.”
“So did I—another coincidence, by the way. Shall we take our usual little table in the corner?”
We seated ourselves at the table, and as we waited for our lunch to be brought, I ventured on a few inquiries into Jasper’s professional affairs.
“You seem to take a good many days off,” I remarked.
“I do. There is, so to speak, a distinctly marked ‘off side’ to my practice.”
“And when you are away, what happens? Do you keep a clerk?”
Jasper grinned. “You over-estimate the magnitude of my practice. No; I have a simpler and more economical arrangement. I let my little front office to a law writer, at a peppercorn rent, subject to the condition that he shall interview my clients in my absence, furnish evasive answers to their questions, and supply ambiguous and confusing information.”
“But don’t the clients get rather dissatisfied?”
Again Jasper smiled. “That question,” said he, “involves an important philosophic principle. A famous philosopher has proved his own existence by the formula ‘cogito, ergo sum’—I think, therefore I am—implying that if he didn’t exist he couldn’t think. Now, that principle applies to my clients. Before they can be dissatisfied, they must exist. But they don’t exist. Therefore they are not dissatisfied. Q.E.D.”
“I don’t believe you care whether they exist or not—but that is the worst of having an independent income.”
It is a misfortune, isn’t it? But I bear up under it surprisingly. Will you have some of this stuff? It is called a pelion. I heard the waitress describing it as a pea-lion, apparently misled by the analogy of the pea-cock and the pea-hen. Evidently she is no zoologist.”
At this moment Miss Tallboy-Smith entered the room and halted at our table to exchange greetings and remind me of my engagement.
“Tell Miss Finch not to forget,” said she. “It’s next Wednesday. I shall have my things back from here by then, and I understand that Mr. Hawkesley has secured the cases for a special exhibition of studio pottery. You must bring Miss Finch to that, too.”
Like Jasper’s proxy, I gave an evasive answer to this, for I knew that wild horses would not drag Peggy to an exhibition of her own work. But evidently Mr. Hawkesley had made no confidences so far.
“Have you ever seen the Diploma Gallery at the R.A.?” Jasper asked when Miss Tallboy-Smith had flitted away. “If you haven’t, we might look in there for an hour this afternoon.”
As I had never seen the diploma works, I fell in readily with the suggestion, and accordingly, when we had finished lunch, we strolled thither and spent a very pleasant hour examining and comparing the works of the different academicians, old and new. From Burlington House we drifted into the Green Park, and presently took possession of a couple of isolated and lonely-looking chairs. For some time we gossiped about the pictures at which we had been looking in the gallery; then our talk turned on to the affairs of my friend Peggy.
“Hawkesley seems to have appointed himself Miss Finch’s advertising agent,” Jasper remarked. “And he’ll do the job well. He is an energetic man, and he knows all the pottery connoisseurs. I met him yesterday, and had to listen to Blue Bird ware by the yard.”
“I like him for his enthusiasm,” said I.
“So do I,” agreed Jasper. “And it is quite a little romance. His admiration of the pottery is perfectly genuine, as we know; but there is something in what he calls ‘the personality of the artist.’ I think he is distinctly ‘taken’ with your pretty little friend. How does she like him?”
“I think she is decidedly prepossessed. At any rate, she is profoundly grateful to him for discovering her work, and especially for the interest that he took in the unknown worker.”
“There you are, then,” said Jasper. “There are the ingredients of a life-size romance. Fervid admiration on the one side, gratitude on the other, and good looks and good nature on both. We shall see what we shall see, Helen; and I, for one, shall look on with the green eyes of envy.”
“Why will you? Do you want Peggy Finch for yourself?”
“I want Hawkesley’s good fortune. If he loves this little maid and thinks she cares for him, he can ask her to marry him. That is what makes me envious.”
I made no reply; indeed, there was nothing to say; and already the sound of the breakers was in my ears.
“I suppose, Helen,” he said, after a long pause, “you realize that I love you very dearly?”
“I know that we are the best of friends, and very deeply attached to one another.”
“We are much more than friends, Helen,” said he; “at least, there is much more than friendship on my side. You are my all—all that matters to me in the world. You live in my thoughts every moment of my life. When we are apart I yearn for the sight of you—I reckon the hours that must pass before I shall see you again, and when we are together the happy minutes slip away like grains of golden sand. But I need not tell you this. You must have seen that I love you.”
“I have feared it, Jasper—and that I might presently lose the dearest friend that I have in the world.”
“That you will never do, Helen, dearest, if I have the happiness to be that friend. Why should you?”
“It seems that it has to be. Our friendship has been a sweet friendship to me—too sweet to last, as I feared; and if some might cavil at it, it was innocent and wronged no one. But if it has grown into—into what I had feared it might, then it has become impossible. More than friends we can never be, and yet we cannot remain friends.”
We were both silent for more than a minute, and both were very grave. Then Jasper asked, with a trace of hesitation: “Helen, if we were as those other two are—if you were free—would you be willing to marry me?”
It was a difficult question to answer, in the circumstances and yet I felt it would be an unpardonable meanness to dissemble.
“Yes,” I answered; “of course I should.”
“Then,” said he, “I don’t see why we can never be more than friends.”
“But, Jasper, how can we? I am a married woman.”
“I don’t admit that,” said he. “Your marriage is a fiction. You are really a spinster with a technical impediment to the conventional form of marriage. Your so-called husband is a stranger to whom you have no ties. You don’t like, or even respect him; and certainly you have no obligations of duty to him, seeing that he induced you by a mere fraudulent pretence to go through this form of marriage with him.”
“I am not thinking of Mr. Otway,” said I. “He is nothing to me. I owe him no duty or consideration, and I would not sacrifice a single hair of my head for him. But the fact remains that I am, legally, his wife; and while he lives I can contract no other marriage.”
“But is that quite true, Helen?” he objected.
“Certainly it is; unless you consider a bigamous marriage as an exception, which it is not.”
“Of course I do not. Bigamy is a futile and fraudulent attempt to secure the appearance of a legal sanction. No one but a fool entertains bigamy.”
“Then I don’t see the meaning of your objection.”
“What I mean,” said he, “is that a fictitious marriage does not exclude the possibility of a real marriage.”
“Still I do not quite follow you. What do you mean by a real marriage?”
“A real marriage is a permanent, life-long partnership between a man and a woman. Ordinarily, such a partnership receives the formal endorsement of the State for certain reasons of public policy. But it is the partnership which is the marriage. The legal endorsement is an extrinsic and inessential addition. Now, in your case the State has accepted and endorsed a marriage which does not exist—which is a pure fiction. The result is that if you contract a real marriage, the State will withhold its endorsement. That is all. It cannot hinder the marriage.”
“This is all very ingenious, Jasper,” said I, “and it does credit to your legal training. But it is mere sophistry. The position, as it would appear to a plain person of ordinary common sense, is that a woman who is legally married to one man and is living as the wife of another, is a married woman who is living with a man who is not her husband.”
The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others Page 213