Helen Vardon's confession
but if you make the separation determinable by mutual consent, that
will provide for all eventualities.”
He agreed, with a somewhat wry smile, that this was so, and then asked
how soon I should like to have the deed executed.
“As it must be signed before I give my evidence,” I replied, “it had
better be done now. If you will make two copies, I will go and fetch
the maids to witness the signatures.”
“Dear me, Helen!” he exclaimed. “What an extraordinarily business-like
young lady you are! But I suppose you are right; only I would suggest
that you do not acquaint the witnesses with the nature of the
document. We don’t want to take the world into our confidence,
especially just now.”
This was reasonable enough, though it would obviously be impossible to
keep the world in the dark as to our position, particularly after what
I had said to Mr. Jackson. However, I agreed to maintain a discreet
reticence, and when he had made the two copies--which I carefully read
through--I went out and called Jessie and the cook.
“I want you,” said I, “to witness my signature and Mr. Otway’s to a
couple of documents. You have just to see us sign our names and then
sign your own underneath.”
The two women came into the study with an air of mystery and awe,
gazing furtively from me to Mr. Otway. The two documents lay on the
table, each with a sheet of blotting paper spread over it, exposing
only the blank spaces which were to receive the signatures, on each of
which a red wafer seal had been stuck. Mr. Otway signed first, and
then, indicating to the cook the place where she was to write her
name, placed the pen in her hand.
“That’s right,” said he, when she had painfully and with protruded
tongue, executed the signature of “Ivy Stokes.” “Now you will do the
same with the other paper as soon as Mrs. Otway has signed.”
The cook gazed curiously at me as I signed the second document, and
then, in the same strained and laborious fashion, traced the scrawling
characters over the name that I had lightly pencilled in for her
guidance. Having watched with feverish interest while I marked the
next space, she drew back and made way for Jessie, who, by watching
her colleague, had learned what was required of her.
When the formalities were completed and the two maids dismissed--to
discuss these strange proceedings, doubtless, in the kitchen--Mr.
Otway handed me the copy, bearing his signature, and, taking the
other, rose to depart.
“Before I go, Helen,” he said, “there is one matter to settle. In the
document I thought it best to say nothing about an allowance----”
“You were quite right,” I interrupted. “Of course, I should not ask
for, or accept, any allowance under the circumstances.”
“You won’t need one at present,” said he. “We know there are five
thousand pounds lying to your father’s credit at his bank----”
“That money was not his,” I said, “and it is not mine. As soon as the
will is proved it will be paid to you on behalf of your clients.”
“But that is quite unnecessary, Helen,” said he. “The use, for an
unspecified time, of that sum of money was the consideration in
respect of which you agreed to marry me. As the marriage has taken
place, it is only fair and reasonable that you should receive the
consideration. In effect, that five thousand is yours by the terms of
our agreement.”
I was on the point of replying that our agreement was null and void,
and that I had no intention of carrying out its conditions; but
prudence whispered that I had better keep my intentions to myself, at
least as to my ultimate conduct. Besides which, Mr. Otway’s statement
was not entirely correct, as I proceeded to point out.
“The use of this money,” I said, “was to relieve my father, who was
assumed to be insolvent. But it appears that he was not insolvent; and
it is my intention that all his debts shall be paid, in so far as
there are funds to meet them. It is certainly what he would have
wished.”
“But,” Mr. Otway protested, “supposing the payment of these debts
should consume all the available assets? How are you going to live?”
“I suppose I shall do as other women do when they have no independent
means. I shall work for my living. But it is premature to discuss that
until I have had Mr. Jackson’s report. I don’t suppose I shall be
absolutely penniless.”
He shook his head gloomily. “You are Quixotic, Helen, and
wrong-headed, too. There is no reason why you should work for your
living. As a married woman, you are entitled to maintenance, and I am
willing, and even anxious, to maintain you. But I won’t press the
matter now. If you want money, you know that you can have it, not as a
favour but as a right. And now there is just one other matter that I
want to speak about. In the deed of separation I said nothing about
our relations other than was actually necessary. I made no stipulation
as to your keeping me informed of your whereabouts; but I ask you now,
if you should be leaving Maidstone, to let me have your address and to
allow me to keep up communication with you. It is a reasonable
request, Helen, and I am sure you will not hesitate to accede to it.”
I did hesitate, however, for some time. In truth, I was not at all
willing to agree to this proposal. My wish was to sponge Mr. Otway,
once and for all, out of my life and to make a fresh start. Still, the
request was a reasonable one, and could, I suspected, have been
enforced as a demand; and, in the end, though very reluctantly, I
yielded.
“Thank you, Helen,” said he, holding out his hand; “then I won’t worry
you any more just now. It is understood that I am not to lose sight of
you, and that if you should want help, pecuniary or other, you will
let me know. And I may rely on you to say no more at the inquest than
is actually necessary?”
I gave him the required assurance on this point, and, having somewhat
frigidly shaken his hand, accompanied him to the hall door and let him
out.
As I stood in the open doorway, watching him walk away up the street
in his heavy, elephantine fashion, a man entered at the gate, and,
approaching with a deferential and rather uncomfortable air, took off
his hat and offered me a small, blue envelope, which bore the
superscription “Mrs. Lewis Otway.” I took it from him, and, closing
the door, went back to the study, where I opened the envelope and
extracted the little slip of blue paper that it enclosed; which turned
out, as I had expected, to be the subpœna to the inquest. I glanced
through the peremptory phrases of the summons, and, laying the slip of
paper on the table, went up to my own room to be quiet and think upon
all that lay before me.
But thought--orderly, useful thought--was impossible. Everything
around me spoke of the life that had been so tragically broken off,
rather than of the future that loomed so vague and empty before me.
The open book on the reading-stand, the hastily scribbled notes upon
the writing-block, the unanswered letters and a little pile of rough
drawings on the table, all seemed to call to me to take up afresh the
thread that had been dropped; seemed to interpose the unfinished past
before the uncommenced future. Restlessly I wandered down to the
workshop--where the coal scuttle still stood on the bench, a mute but
eloquent memorial of that tragic final evening--only to gather a fresh
sense of loss and desolation. And so, for the rest of the day, I
haunted the house like some unquiet spirit, watched with pity, not
unmixed with fear, by the awe-stricken servants, tearless and
outwardly calm, but inwardly torn by grief and a sense of bereavement
that seemed to intensify moment by moment.
And yet, when, in the silence of the night, the tears came at last,
and my sorrow, no longer mute, voiced itself in sobs and moans of
pain, still, under the feeling of utter bereavement and desolation,
was a half-felt sense of peace, of respite, and reprieve.
Chapter IX.
Testimony and Counsel
Those who are apt to refer in contemptuous terms to the
artificiality of the plots of the novelist must have failed to observe
the orderly way in which events arrange themselves in real life; how
the circumstances of the vital and essential happenings of our lives
may, if attentively considered, be separated out in a coherent group
of causes and effects as closely knit and inevitably connected as the
parts of the story-teller’s plot.
The reflection is suggested to me by the distressing experiences of
the inquest on my father’s death. Clearly enough, indeed, did I
realise at the time that this would never have been but for those
fateful words so calamitously overheard by me, and for my
ill-considered, though well-meant, efforts to avert the apparently
impending catastrophe. But I realised not at all--as, indeed, how
should I?--that this day of sorrow, of shame and humiliation, was not
only the harvest of the irrevocable past but the seed-time of an even
more momentous future.
As I approached the school-house in which the inquest was to be held,
I observed Mr. Otway pacing slowly up and down the little court-yard.
He was pale and haggard, and though he preserved his usual ponderously
reposeful manner, it was not difficult to see that he was in a state
of intense, nervous excitement and suppressed anxiety.
He was evidently waiting for me, and turned to meet me as I entered
the gate.
“I thought we had better go in together, Helen,” he said, as we
exchanged a formal greeting. “They know that we are married, and, of
course, they don’t know that our--ah--our arrangements are in--ah--in
suspense. And it would perhaps be as well if no reference were made
to--ah--to those--ahem--temporary modifications which--ah--in short,
to our provisional agreement.”
He looked at me deprecatingly and I nodded. There would be quite
enough painful detail to be dragged into the light of day without this
sordid addition. Besides, any reference to the deed of separation
would start enquiries which neither of us desired, as was plainly
evident to Mr. Otway; for he continued in a husky undertone, as we
approached the schoolroom door:
“And you will fulfil your part of our covenant faithfully, Helen, I am
sure.”
“Most undoubtedly I shall,” I replied. “But you will remember that our
covenant does not include false evidence. I shall say as little as is
possible, but if I am asked a direct question I must answer it, and
answer it truthfully.”
“Of course you must,” he agreed: “but it is often possible to ward off
an inconvenient question which may lead to others still more
inconvenient.”
“You make take it,” I said, “that I shall carry out my part of our
bargain in the spirit as well as in the letter.”
With this assurance he appeared to be satisfied, and we now moved
slowly towards the door of the school-house. While we had been
talking, a party of men--the coroner and his jury--had filed past us
and entered; and when we followed a minute later, we found them
already in their places and the proceedings about to begin. We seated
ourselves on the two chairs placed for us, which were next to those of
the two medical witnesses, and as I glanced round the Court, I
observed Mr. Jackson sitting near the coroner, and by his side a
gentleman whose face I seemed to recognise, but to whom I could not
give a name. Some dim recollection connected the quiet, strong,
intellectual face with my father and the happy past, but not until
near the close of the inquiry was I able to bring my memory to a clear
focus.
The attitude of the coroner and jury alike--they were all local men
and most of them known to me--made my difficult task as easy as was
possible. They were all anxious to spare me to the utmost and to make
the best of what the coroner described as “a grievous and terrible