65 Short Stories (9 page)

‘I guess you’ve heard of Arnold Jackson,’ he said, looking at Edward with a frown.

Edward hesitated. His natural truthfulness obliged him to admit a knowledge he would gladly have been able to deny.

‘Yes, I have. But it’s a long time ago. I guess I didn’t pay very much attention.’

‘There are not many people in Chicago who haven’t heard of Arnold Jackson,’ said Mr Longstaffe bitterly, ‘and if there are they’ll have no difficulty in finding someone who’ll be glad to tell them. Did you know he was Mrs Longstaffe’s brother?’

‘Yes, I knew that.’

‘Of course we’ve had no communication with him for many years. He left the country as soon as he was able to, and I guess the country wasn’t sorry to see the last of him. We understand he lives in Tahiti. My advice to you is to give him a wide berth, but if you do hear anything about him Mrs Longstaffe and I would be very glad if you’d let us know’

‘Sure.’

‘That was all I wanted to say to you. Now I daresay you’d like to join the ladies.’

There are few families that have not among their members one whom, if their neighbours permitted, they would willingly forget, and they are fortunate when the lapse of a generation or two has invested his vagaries with a romantic glamour. But when he is actually alive, if his peculiarities are not of the kind that can be condoned by the phrase, ‘he is nobody’s enemy but his own’, a safe one when the culprit has no worse to answer for than alcoholism or wandering affections, the only possible course is silence. And it was this which the Longstaffes had adopted towards Arnold Jackson. They never talked of him. They would not even pass through the street in which he had lived. Too kind to make his wife and children suffer for his misdeeds, they had supported them for years, but on the understanding that they should live in Europe. They did everything they could to blot out all recollection of Arnold Jackson and yet were conscious that the story was as fresh in the public mind as when first the scandal burst upon a gaping world. Arnold Jackson was as black a sheep as any family could suffer from. A wealthy banker, prominent in his church, a philanthropist, a man respected by all, not only for his connexions (in his veins ran the blue blood of Chicago), but also for his upright character, he was arrested one day on a charge of fraud; and the dishonesty which the trial brought to light was not the sort which could be explained by a sudden temptation; it was deliberate and systematic. Arnold Jackson was a rogue. When he was sent to the penitentiary for seven years there were few who did not think he had escaped lightly.

When at the end of this last evening the lovers separated it was with many protestations of devotion. Isabel, all tears, was consoled a little by her certainty of Edward’s passionate love. It was a strange feeling that she had. It made her wretched to part from him and yet she was happy because he adored her.

This was more than two years ago.

He had written to her by every mail since then, twenty-four letters in all, for the mail went but once a month, and his letters had been all that a lover’s letters should be. They were intimate and charming, humorous sometimes, especially of late, and tender. At first they suggested that he was homesick, they were full of his desire to get back to Chicago and Isabel; and, a little anxiously, she wrote begging him to persevere. She was afraid that he might throw up his opportunity and come racing back. She did not want her lover to lack endurance and she quoted to him the lines:

I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.

But presently he seemed to settle down and it made Isabel very happy to observe his growing enthusiasm to introduce American methods into that forgotten corner of the world. But she knew him, and at the end of the year, which was the shortest time he could possibly stay in Tahiti, she expected to have to use all her influence to dissuade him from coming home. It was much better that he should learn the business thoroughly, and if they had been able to wait a year there seemed no reason why they should not wait another. She talked it over with Bateman Hunter, always the most generous of friends (during those first few days after Edward went she did not know what she would have done without him), and they decided that Edward’s future must stand before everything. It was with relief that she found as the time passed that he made no suggestion of returning.

‘He’s splendid, isn’t he?’ she exclaimed to Bateman.

‘He’s white, through and through.’

‘Reading between the lines of his letter I know he hates it over there, but he’s sticking it out because ...’

She blushed a little and Bateman, with the grave smile which was so attractive in him, finished the sentence for her.

‘Because he loves you.’

‘It makes me feel so humble,’ she said.

‘You’re wonderful, Isabel, you’re perfectly wonderful.’

But the second year passed and every month Isabel continued to receive a letter from Edward, and presently it began to seem a little strange that he did not speak of coming back. He wrote as though he were settled definitely in Tahiti, and what was more, comfortably settled. She was surprised. Then she read his letters again, all of them, several times; and now, reading between the lines indeed, she was puzzled to notice a change which had escaped her. The later letters were as tender and as delightful as the first, but the tone was different. She was vaguely suspicious of their humour, she had the instinctive mistrust of her sex for that unaccountable quality, and she discerned in them now a flippancy which perplexed her. She was not quite certain that the Edward who wrote to her now was the same Edward that she had known. One afternoon, the day after a mail had arrived from Tahiti, when she was driving with Bateman he said to her:

Did Edward tell you when he was sailing?’

‘No, he didn’t mention it. I thought he might have said something to you about it.’

Not a word.’

‘You know what Edward is,’ she laughed in reply, ‘he has no sense of time. If it occurs to you next time you write you might ask him when he’s thinking of coming.’

Her manner was so unconcerned that only Bateman’s acute sensitiveness could have discerned in her request a very urgent desire. He laughed lightly. ‘Yes. I’ll ask him. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking about.’

A few days later, meeting him again, she noticed that something troubled him. They had been much together since Edward left Chicago; they were both devoted to him and each in his desire to talk of the absent one found a willing listener; the consequence was that Isabel knew every expression of Bateman’s face, and his denials now were useless against her keen instinct. Something told her that his harassed look had to do with Edward and she did not rest till she had made him confess.

‘The fact is,’ he said at last, ‘I heard in a roundabout way that Edward was no longer working for Braunschmidt and Co., and yesterday I took the opportunity to ask Mr Braunschmidt himself.’

‘Well?’

‘Edward left his employment with them nearly a year ago.’

‘How strange he should have said nothing about it!’

Bateman hesitated, but he had gone so far now that he was obliged to tell the rest. It made him feel dreadfully embarrassed. ‘He was fired.’

‘In heaven’s name what for?’

‘It appears they warned him once or twice, and at last they told him to get out. They say he was lazy and incompetent.’

‘Edward?’

They were silent for a while, and then he saw that Isabel was crying. Instinctively he seized her hand.

‘Oh, my dear, don’t, don’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear to see it.’

She was so unstrung that she let her hand rest in his. He tried to console her. ‘It’s incomprehensible, isn’t it? It’s so unlike Edward. I can’t help feeling there must be some mistake.’

She did not say anything for a while, and when she spoke it was hesitatingly. ‘Has it struck you that there was anything queer in his letters lately?’ she asked, looking away, her eyes all bright with tears.

He did not quite know how to answer.

‘I have noticed a change in them,’ he admitted. ‘He seems to have lost that high seriousness which I admired so much in him. One would almost think that the things that matter-well, don’t matter.’

Isabel did not reply. She was vaguely uneasy.

‘Perhaps in his answer to your letter he’ll say when he’s coming home. All we can do is to wait for that.’

Another letter came from Edward for each of them, and still he made no mention of his return; but when he wrote he could not have received Bateman’s inquiry. The next mail would bring them an answer to that. The next mail came, and Bateman brought Isabel the letter he had just received; but the first glance of his face was enough to tell her that he was disconcerted. She read it through carefully and then, with slightly tightened lips, read it again.

‘It’s a very strange letter,’ she said. ‘I don’t quite understand it.’

‘One might almost think that he was joshing me,’ said Bateman, flushing. ‘It reads like that, but it must be unintentional. That’s so unlike Edward.’

‘He says nothing about coming back.’

‘If I weren’t so confident of his love I should think ... I hardly know what I should think.’

It was then that Bateman had broached the scheme which during the afternoon had formed itself in his brain. The firm, founded by his father, in which he was now a partner, a firm which manufactured all manner of motor vehicles, was about to establish agencies in Honolulu, Sydney, and Wellington; and Bateman proposed that himself should go instead of the manager, who had been suggested. He could return by Tahiti; in fact, travelling from Wellington, it was inevitable to do so; and he could see Edward.

‘There’s some mystery and I’m going to clear it up. That’s the only way to do it.’

‘Oh, Bateman, how can you be so good and kind?’ she exclaimed.

‘You know there’s nothing in the world I want more than your happiness, Isabel.’

She looked at him and she gave him her hands.

‘You’re wonderful, Bateman. I didn’t know there was anyone in the world like you. How can I ever thank you?’

‘I don’t want your thanks. I only want to be allowed to help you.’

She dropped her eyes and flushed a little. She was so used to him that she had forgotten how handsome he was. He was as tall as Edward and as well made, but he was dark and pale of face, while Edward was ruddy. Of course she knew he loved her. It touched her. She felt very tenderly towards him.

It was from this journey that Bateman Hunter was now returned.

The business part of it took him somewhat longer than he expected and he had much time to think of his two friends. He had come to the conclusion that it could be nothing serious that prevented Edward from coming home, a pride, perhaps, which made him determined to make good before he claimed the bride he adored; but it was a pride that must be reasoned with. Isabel was unhappy. Edward must come back to Chicago with him and marry her at once. A position could be found for him in the works of the Hunter Motor Traction and Automobile Company. Bateman, with a bleeding heart, exulted at the prospect of giving happiness to the two persons he loved best in the world at the cost of his own. He would never marry. He would be godfather to the children of Edward and Isabel, and many years later when they were both dead he would tell Isabel’s daughter how long, long ago he had loved her mother. Bateman’s eyes were veiled with tears when he pictured this scene to himself

Meaning to take Edward by surprise he had not cabled to announce his arrival, and when at last he landed at Tahiti he allowed a youth, who said he was the son of the house, to lead him to the Hotel de la Fleur. He chuckled when he thought of his friend’s amazement on seeing him, the most unexpected of visitors, walk into his office.

‘By the way,’ he asked, as they went along, ‘can you tell me where I shall find Mr Edward Barnard?’

‘Barnard?’ said the youth. ‘I seem to know the name.’

‘He’s an American. A tall fellow with light brown hair and blue eyes. He’s been here over two years.’

‘Of course. Now I know who you mean. You mean Mr Jackson’s nephew’

‘Whose nephew?’

‘Mr Arnold Jackson.’

‘I don’t think we’re speaking of the same person,’ answered Bateman, frigidly. He was startled. It was queer that Arnold Jackson, known apparently to all and sundry, should live here under the disgraceful name in which he had been convicted. But Bateman could not imagine whom it was that he passed off as his nephew. Mrs Longstaffe was his only sister and he had never had a brother. The young man by his side talked volubly in an English that had something in it of the intonation of a foreign tongue, and Bateman, with a sidelong glance, saw, what he had not noticed before, that there was in him a good deal of native blood. A touch of hauteur involuntarily entered into his manner. They reached the hotel. When he had arranged about his room Bateman asked to be directed to the premises of Braunschmidt and Co. They were on the front, facing the lagoon, and, glad to feel the solid earth under his feet after eight days at sea, he sauntered down the sunny road to the water’s edge. Having found the place he sought, Bateman sent in his card to the manager and was led through a lofty barn-like room, half store and half warehouse, to an office in which sat a stout, spectacled, bald-headed man.