The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (18 page)

Quite consumed with pity, Mr. Brett watched her, not daring to move or speak. Then Mrs. Bunnion told him why she wanted him to go. She confessed what she had done and how she had hoped his departure would carry away her guilt. She told him that she was no longer young, and that all her life meant was to be with her husband, that there was nothing else for her, and that to lose him would be to lose everything. Such love as there was between them was not like the love of the young. It was no longer a blaze from which many another brand might be lighted. It was a gentle, forlorn glow in a large
and empty night. There were no other brands any more. There was but the husband and the wife.

Mr. Brett remained silent. He did not know what to say. This scene of human fear and misery dazed him. Stupidly and irrelevantly all he could think of was that he would have to go to bed without his night things as it was impossible to start looking for them now. “Goodnight, ma'am,” he mumbled, and left the room.

He went down to his classroom, the place of his triumph. He sat at his desk and stared over the shadowy seats that were unnaturally quiet. There were not even any ghosts to comfort him. He was utterly alone. What did his victory mean? Someone else's defeat. He frowned and rubbed his eyes. Must success always bankrupt another? Can nothing be won without inflicting despair elsewhere? Was this the only way of the world?

What if he agreed to take the blame for the letter? For a moment this seemed possible; then he shook his head. Dr. Bunnion would dismiss him in such a rage that Mrs. Bunnion would be compelled to confess.

He opened his desk and fumbled for paper and ink. There were two letters for him to write. One was to Dr. Bunnion, explaining that he'd been called away on family business. The other was to Mrs. Bunnion, begging her to look after Tizzy and tell her he loved her dearly and would send for her when he could. He did not really believe that such a time would ever come, but the essential gentleness of his nature made him offer this forlorn hope.

When the letters were written, he left one in his classroom, and after listening for sounds of Mrs. Bunnion and concluding she was asleep, pushed the other under her door. Then he returned to his classroom to gather such books as he kept there, and settled himself down as best he could to wait for the dawn. He would have to leave his clothes where they were, in the wardrobe in his room, and this extra sacrifice seemed to lend an added nobility to his renunciation.

Upstairs, Mrs. Bunnion had not been asleep. She had seen the letter appear under the door and had lain quite still for several minutes, not daring to take it up. Another crushing disappointment was more than she could endure. Finally, she could bear it no longer.

She read Mr. Brett's letter three times over, as if unable to believe it. Then she lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Thank God!” she whispered. “Thank God!”

Beside her the night candle flickered wildly till, with a sudden splutter and gulp, it went out. But Mrs. Bunnion, the letter still clutched in her hand, was already fast asleep.

SATURDAY'S WAS A
morning made for farewells. The rain was falling heavily, as if to hurry everyone on their way and then wash out all trace of them. From time to time there were vague flashes of lightning and distant, impatient grumbles of thunder. Major Alexander, who'd woken early, looked out on it all with melancholy satisfaction. At least such weather made the world not so hard to leave.

It completed also Mr. Brett's misery as he slipped out of the school and hastened through the teeming air. He was going to the Old Ship to get a coach to anywhere, and if he caught a chill on the way and died of it, so much the better—so much the better for all. He knew he was being noble, but he got no pleasure from it, and wondered if anybody ever did.

It was scarcely five o'clock and the town was still asleep, so he was surprised to see someone trudging toward him. At first he took the other to be an early washerwoman, then he saw it was a young man in a monk's gown. The young man was quite extraordinarily wet and his pleasant, innocent face with its crown of fair hair stuck out of his gown like a washed stick of celery poking out of a sack.

Taking him for a member of some charitable order, Mr. Brett wished him good morning and offered him a shilling. The young man thanked him, took it and squinted up at the glum sky.

“What we need, sir,” he said surprisingly, “is a God for today.”

“Indeed,” agreed Mr. Brett, “if He'd stop it raining for us.”

But this did not seem to be what the young man had in mind, for he frowned at Mr. Brett and continued on his soaking way. Mr. Brett smiled after him. There was something he'd rather liked about the wayward monk. There was something about his features that had reminded him of someone . . .

At last, Adam Alexander, who'd had to walk a good part of the way from Southwark, drew near to Dr. Bunnion's Academy. The shilling he'd just been given would have been much more useful ten miles back, but then he was used to God being out of date and too late.

At last, there it was standing before him. His new home!

He approached the front door and was about to knock, when it opened and his father appeared before him.

“Can't explain now!” muttered the Major, seizing his son's cassock with nervous violence. “But come around the back, lad. And for pity's sake, hold your tongue!”

Mrs. Alexander, whose ears were quite as sharp as her husband's, for the first time in many a long year had occasion to bless the arrival of her son. As soon as she was certain the Major was somewhere at the back of the house and occupied in silencing Adam, she left her room and went in search of Mr. Brett. He was not with the boarders so she suspected him of mooning in his classroom. But he wasn't there, either. She was about to leave when she noticed a letter on his desk. It was addressed to Dr. Bunnion, but trifles like that did not bother her. Where her daughter's happiness was concerned, she was capable of great feats of dishonesty. To be frank, Mrs. Alexander, deep down, was not a particularly honest woman. It was perhaps this quality that had first attracted the Major.

She opened the letter and read it. She scowled. She had half expected Mr. Brett to run away. In her experience, all men, except her husband, tried to escape once they felt themselves to be entrapped. She sighed and shook her head. Not for nothing had she lived so long with the ex-Major of Engineers. She had made preparations. Besides, she thought to
herself as she hurried to her daughter's room, if he got away from Tizzy, he'd be caught by somebody else, and maybe by somebody not half so good as her Tizzy. So she was really doing him a kindness . . .

“Qvick,
liebchen!
Up! Dress! Ve'll cetch him yet! Hurry, hurry! Everythink is mended and packed. Qvickly! Gott forbid you should be left behind and have to marry such a man as did your ma. He loves you, and you love him! It's natural! Vat more do you vant?”

When Mr. Brett reached the Old Ship there was no one about but a pair of horse boys playing dice under a projecting roof in the inn yard. After some moments, during which he became absently interested in their game, he asked them when the first coach would be pulling out.

“Where to, mister?”

“Anywhere . . . anywhere at all.”

The boys grinned at each other. “Coach going to Southampton at about eight.”

Southampton! A misty vision of ships sailing to forgetfulness filled his aching mind. “Is there anywhere I can wait till it leaves?”

“Not for an hour or more, mister.”

“May I shelter here?”

“Suit yourself, mister. Only don't get in the way of the dice.”

Mr. Brett nodded and knelt down beside the players. After a little while he became fascinated enough to ask if he might join them. After all, what had he to
lose, except money? The boys stared at one another, then grinned again.

“Suit yourself, mister, so long as you play fair. Remember, we ain't much more'n children.”

So he began to play, at first winning and then losing so steadily that he began to wonder if there was more skill in the game than he'd thought. Sometimes he suspected one or the other of them to be cheating, but he couldn't see how it might be done. Besides, they always looked so childishly surprised when they won.

“Gawd 'elp us!” said one of them suddenly. “There's someone comin'! Thanks for the game, mister!” They grabbed their winnings, and with the speed of stable rats, scuttled away and vanished.

“So you have so much money you can throw it away, Herr Prett? Tizzy,
liebchen
, it's a gambler you are marrying!”

Then Mrs. Alexander broke down and cried her eyes out while her daughter was in her lover's arms. “And—and don't forget to give him the veddink shirt,
liebchen
! I finished it only yesterday, Herr Prett!”

At about half-past six a loud rattle of thunder awoke Mr. Raven. “Yes!” he whispered to the grim bulge of his boot under the blanket. Then he stared through the filthy window to the thick sky. “And the day is made for it!” He left his bed and fetched in his other boot which he always left outside the door, though more as a gesture than anything else, as it hadn't been cleaned for days. Then he dressed
and clumped downstairs for his morning brandy and water.

The landlord was not yet about, so the inquiry agent wandered to a window that looked out onto the yard. He stiffened with excitement. He had seen them! Brett and the woman he had good reason to know as Maggie Hemp. Brett was smiling, laughing; he seemed possessed by a spirit of ruthless gaiety. He caught sight of the inquiry agent's terrible face. He waved and grinned and put his arm about the female, Hemp.

A nerve twitched and jumped inside Mr. Raven's huge boot so that it beat on the floor like an enormous wounded bird. The inquiry agent had seen baggage. The malevolent pair were on the point of escaping!
This
he had not expected!

“When does the first coach leave?” His voice trembled as he asked the potboy who came in, surly and slow, to take his order.

“Eight o'clock. Southampton.”

“Eight o'clock!” The inquiry agent groaned harshly. Even the ordinary affairs of daily life seemed to work in favor of his adversary. At eight o'clock other matters would be afoot—matters of life and death and etcetera. What was he to do? For the first time he cursed the burden of his boot. He could not move quickly enough.

He closed his eyes. He must not panic. Panic was the death of thought. He looked out of the window again. He caught his breath. The baggage was plainly
the female's. Brett had none. Mr. Raven smiled. He understood. Brett was not going.

Once more Brett's eyes met his, and this time the inquiry agent returned his cheerful wave with an ironic inclination of the head. How nearly the devil had succeeded in panicking him, thought Mr. Raven grimly. But he was not to be bluffed. “Laugh and grin to your heart's content,” he murmured. “But I know what I know, etcetera . . .”

Faintly he heard the potboy muttering to someone at the back, “Brandy an' water at this time in the morning! I tell you, he ain't human!”

But Mr. Raven was human. All too much so. In some men, being human was a sign of strength. In Mr. Raven it was definitely a weakness. He smiled at the potboy when his drink came and wondered whether it was too late to enmesh him in the web. He attempted to call up in his mind the immensely complicated tangle of intrigue to see if there was a space for the insolent potboy. But it was hopeless. No mortal mind could envisage that plan in all its tortured detail.

At length he could bear it no longer and the continuing sight of Brett and his paramour aggravated him terribly. He swallowed his drink and stumbled back to his room. With trembling hands he spread out the grotesque plan again and stared, for the last time, on the tangled lives and murderous plots that comprised the Adelaide affair. His finger moved from place to place, but it was in vain. The
design was complete and the potboy would have to go to the devil on his own.

Carefully he folded up the plan and thrust it into his boot. “You'll keep the secret, eh?” he chuckled. Again the nerve twitched and his boot shuddered. The plan, perhaps meaningless to a casual observer, fairly screamed to Selwyn Raven that a murderer was moving along one of the spidery lines toward a certain intersection where there waited the man to be murdered. But the inquiry agent had the measure of it all. Brett's bluff had failed and all the monsters were doomed. The time had come for Mr. Raven to launch his thunderbolt. He struck his boot to stop it trembling and then clumped unobtrusively out of the Old Ship and made his way toward the house of Dr. Harris, where he had not been asked to stay to lunch . . .

UTTERLY WORN OUT
by her night of grieving, Mrs. Bunnion still slept. Mr. Brett's letter had fallen from her hand to the floor. No one else in the house knew that he had gone.

In the kitchen extension, tragically unaware that the duel need now no longer take place, Major Alexander was making his peace with his son and apologizing for having brought him so far for nothing. There was no vacancy in the school. There was only approaching tragedy. Still, he was glad to see Adam for what might well turn out to be the last time. He felt that of all people, Adam was the only one who understood him. They were very close.

“Come, Father,” murmured Adam, embarrassed
by the Major's display of emotion. “It's not over yet. There's still hope.”

But the Major shook his head. All his elaborate schemes had misfired, and he was morbidly convinced his pistol would do the same. “Whatever anyone says of me, son, afterwards,
you'll
know I acted honorably. To know that will be a great comfort to me. It's all been only for your sister's good name. Perhaps I was wrong to put family honor so high, but such is my nature. And I feel yours is the same, son. I know, if you had been here, you would have done the same.”