The Plot4

“Has the Figaro come yet?”

It was at Nice, in the reading room of a cosmopolitan club. A little before, I had dined on dishes that a poet had prepared. Now, for after course, and although I had a novel under my arm, I wanted to look at a paper.

“Pardon, monsieur,” said the servant to whom I had spoken. “Behold a gentleman who is reading it.”

I had beheld the gentleman before. That morning I had seen him on the Promenade des Anglais, and that afternoon I had seen him again in this club, where I had heard him talking over the green baize at baccarat. He was a pleasant-looking chap in Saville Row clothes, which he wore with a sort of studied negligence. He wore also a monocle, and his voice was deeply Belgravian.

In that voice he addressed me: “You are asking for the Figaro. Let me relinquish it to you.”

As he spoke, he got up from a chair in which he had been seated, and approached me, the paper in his hand.

In my own hand was the novel, a story by Eric Hereward, which I put on the table before us.

He glanced at the book. “Do you find it interesting?”

“I have not opened it,” I answered.

Before he could say more⁠—that is, if he had intended to⁠—Spencer Poole, an Englishman whom I had long known, sauntered up and joined us.

“If this is a private conversation,” he threw out, “I should like to hear it. Otherwise, I will go away.”

“You may,” I told him. “We were talking opiates.”

“Let us all go,” Poole affably resumed. “There are a thousand louis in the bank. Don’t you want some of them? I know I do.”

“I would rather not add to them,” I remarked.

But already Poole had turned, the other man with him, and I followed them into an adjoining room, where, about a long, oval table that was colored with bank notes, with hillocks of gold, with patches of cards, a crowd of members were gaming.

The room, saturated with tobacco smoke, resounded with brief exclamations, with the announcement of points. Fronting it, two windows that reached to the floor opened on a balcony and the night.

Idly, after a moment, I passed through one of them. A chair stretched its arms to me. Above were the stars, and beyond, on the inky syrup of the Mediterranean, a warship rode. The vessel was strung with lights, and from it, faintly over the waters, a tinkle of music came.

“You don’t play?”

I turned. The man who had offered me the Figaro was drawing a chair beside me.

“You see,” I said, “it seems to me that there is but one thing stupider than winning money you have not earned, and that is losing it.”

He adjusted his monocle. “What I like is the hazard of it. Yet is there such a thing as hazard? I hardly think so.”

He paused, got out a gold case, offered it, and, on my declining, extracted a cigarette, lit it, and, a bit ponderously, inquired whether I believed in fate.

“Not after dinner,” I told him. Ordinarily I would have said nothing of the kind, but I divined that he wanted to use me for a sewer, and, at the moment, I did not care to be so employed. Yet, civility prompting, I added: “Why do you ask?”

“Because I fancy that anyone who really thinks⁠—so few people do think⁠—must believe that somewhere⁠—beyond, above, yet about us⁠—there is a power that knows neither mercy nor wrath, but that compels every cause, great or small, to work out its inevitable results.”

“Let me,” I interrupted, “translate you if I may. As you mete it to others, so shall it be measured unto you.”

“Precisely. You at least believe in that?”

“Whether I have dined or not, I do.”

“I am glad to hear you say so. I have such a curious case in point. Would it bore you if I run it over?”

I felt that it would, but I assured him to the contrary, and for surcease let my thoughts wander among the stars. When they returned to earth, or, more exactly, to the balcony, he was telling of a maiden’s beauty:

“Fancy a lily that for perfume has a heart, and you may perhaps see Janet Mar as I saw her when, for her perdition, she came to Stratton. In my life I have seen nothing fairer. Her hair was a turban of gold, her eyes were pools of purple, her features were those of a Psyche on a fan, and she conveyed just that suggestion of unmateriality that the old masters gave to figures whom they represented as floating off the canvas into space. A painter would have admired her for what she expressed, a poet would have loved her for what she was.

“That, from the ambush where it lurked, fate should have sprung and felled a human flower such as she is explicable only on a theory that I will set before you. But that the point of it may be clearer, other pictures must be shown, and primarily that of her brother, who was her twin, and who worshiped her as only a twin brother could worship a sister so adorably constructed, and so constructed to be adored.

“Together they completed one another. What was fragile in her he made up in strength; what was material in him, her spirituality attenuated. Had you not known they were brother and sister you would have said: ‘There is the ideal couple!’ In some former life perhaps they were.”

“What!” I exclaimed.

“Well, yes, why not?” my companion rejoined. “For if we believe in fate, it is difficult not to believe that we have been here before. Nothing else explains the inequitable inequalities of life. Nothing else explains why some are rich and some are poor; why some are wise and many are not; why some are strong and others weak. Nothing else can give the reason of our joys and sorrows. As in former days, we have meted it to others, so now is it measured unto us.

“Yet, of course, the theory is, I admit, heretical, and if I offer it, it is because it is the one hypothesis that frames this girl. Without it, she would present but a fair portrait smeared, and wantonly smeared, with mud and with blood.

“But now, to fill the picture in, a detail is necessary. When Janet and her brother Hubert came to Stratton, which, as you may know, is a village in Surrey, they were in mourning for their father, who but recently had left them, and who had left them, moreover, with means so slender that Janet gave lessons and Hubert wrote.

“If there are two more beggarly ways of making a living, I have yet to hear of them. Tennyson, I believe, got a guinea a word. For five minutes’ instruction De Reszke, I understand, gets as much. But there has been but one Tennyson⁠—though there are two De Reszkes. For the horde of other teachers and other writers, rates fall sheerly from relative munificence to absolute minims. Sometimes they lack even that.

“Sometimes Janet and Hubert supped on dry bread. Sometimes they had cheese with it. But they knew⁠—what epicures rarely do know⁠—that Epicurus never had more and Caesar frequently less. They were poor, but they were young, and it is a form of genius to be that. Besides, they worked, and I always pity those who do not, though, of course, we both know people who pity those that do. But am I wearying you?”

The question reminded me of Doctor Johnson, who, asked by Boswell how he would feel if he were alone in a tower with a baby, replied that he could not be more vilely distressed than he was. But I am less brave than Johnson, and I hope more polite. As a consequence, I lied. Yet obviously my companion did not expect me to do otherwise. He accepted the lie for what it was not worth, and ran on at once:

“You have now, then, not the frame⁠—that will come in a moment⁠—but the picture. That is, you see that while Hubert hacked in Fleet Street, Janet toiled at home; or, more exactly⁠—and what is worse⁠—in the homes of other people. To children who would never succeed in more than hiccuping French, she tried to impart the proper façon de parler. With others, who had as much taste for music as those who detest mathematics have for algebra, she connived in the murder of Chopin. And for what? In the States a scullion would have been better paid.

“But everything happens because it has to happen. In the course of the lessons, she saw that which she mistook for the recompense. She saw the splendor of splendors, the face and flaming wings of Love.”

“He is becoming lyrical,” I tormentedly reflected, and felt, if possible, more Johnsonian than before. To be alone with a baby is bad, but to be alone with a bore is bitter. For relief, I tried to pretend to myself that I was not there. I even succeeded, I think, for for a minute or two I lost him. When I caught up with him again he was playing another air:

“That was, I think, the case with Janet. She had never loved before, and, now that she did love, the universe became concentrated in this individual who to her was the Unique. To Hubert he was a very ordinary person, the form and substance of that curious thing that is called Antipathy. He said as much and more⁠—and might have saved his breath, for Janet was madly in love with this man, who, at the time, was quite mad about her.

“But madmen have lucid intervals. I have told you of Janet’s beauty; I have told you, too, of her poverty. The one was a charm, the other a douche. Beauty her lover wanted, but also he needed coin. To give the due to the devil, who usually takes it, I have no doubt that in the first fevers, which are so contagious, he meant well by the girl; but to certain temperaments the menace of moneyless matrimony is, perhaps, a febrifuge. Do you not agree with me? Do you not agree, rather, that circumstances alter kisses?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Particularly reduced circumstances.”

“Precisely, and there you have what dramatists call the central situation⁠—a delicious girl wildly in love with a brute whom she considered an angel. The fellow had a keep of his own, and little or nothing to keep it up on⁠—a gaunt, gloomy Tudor affair which had come down to him, and which, unless repaired, would come down on him. Around and about were secular trees that made it all the gloomier. A moment ago I mentioned Tennyson. Somewhere he tells of ‘the moan of doves in immemorial elms.’ That line will give you the place.”

“I don’t want it,” I threw in.

“No, and you will want it less when I tell you more. Where was I?”

“In the central situation.”

“Ah, yes. Well, now enters the other woman, the widow of an astronomer who had died of sunstroke. Her grief for his death, which, if abrupt, was not disagreeably paradoxical, could not have been excessive. In any event, such as it may have been, it was at least assuaged by the fortune that he left her.”

“And which,” I hazarded, “appealed to the brute.”

My companion gestured. “And which, as you say, appealed to Lord Cullen. Now, you will think, we are in the thick of it. Wait a second and you will find it gets thicker. For at the moment⁠—that is, when the blue eyes of the widow’s check book first entranced this man⁠—Janet was unconscious that he was looking into other eyes than her own.

“Not so the widow. She was discerning possibilities in Cullen, who, instead of following the traditions of his caste, and marrying a Gayety girl, had become engaged to a governess. But, if discerning, she was decent, which, of course, the brute understood, or, rather, he realized that no decent woman, however discerning, would consider a man who was the property of another.

“The point with him, therefore, as you may see, was to fight free of Janet and then lay siege to that check book. Already mobilization had been secretly begun. Then came the call to arms, a bugle blast blown at Janet.

“Cullen told her that with him everything was going to the devil, that he could barely maintain a servant. But poverty had no terrors for this girl, who supped, when sup she did, on a crust, and she answered him with smiles.

“Now, however perverse a cad may be, he cannot beat down a dog simply because it loves him. There are limits even to human turpitude. Then, too, I have never known a man, good, bad, or indifferent, who would not prefer to brave mythical redskins, than face a woman’s tears. Janet had shed no tears as yet, or, if she had, they were but tears of joy. The fanfare had been so much music to her.

“Seeing which, Cullen varied his tactics. He defiled into his keep, and from that stronghold wrote Janet a dozen pages, pages in which sordidness struggled with grammar, pages that one word would have covered, pages that said only ‘Finis.’ Only that! Only the trumpet’s note that heralds an eternal silence.”

After that fine phrase, which I had heard before, my companion stopped to light another cigarette. Then at once he was off again:

“I was not with Cullen when he committed that crime, and I cannot tell you how he felt; but I may tell you that when I heard of it I felt that there was no man living whom I envied less. Yet even now I must omit to judge him. We are all of us strangers to one another; not infrequently we are strangers to ourselves. The motives of human actions are not always for human ken. Because of the fate prepared for him, it may be that, whether Cullen wished to or not, he was impelled to act as he did.”

“Yes,” I told my companion. I no longer felt like a boor with a baby or even with a bore; he had got me at last. “Yes, for among all our uncertainties, this perhaps alone is certain⁠—never do useless events occur.”

“Never,” he repeated, “no matter how useless, in our blindness, the events may seem to us. And that fact, while it applies to Cullen, applies also to Janet. I was not with her, nor, poor child, was anyone with her when she got that infamous letter; yet had all the world been with her, she still would have been alone. In the great crises of the soul, everyone is, and Janet was so thoroughly alone that she could not bear it. When at last her brother found her, she had gone.”

“Gone?”

“With a hatpin she had run herself through that aching heart of hers, which, because of the ache, she well knew where to pierce.”

At this, I shifted in my chair, and, whether because of the night air or the story, or both, I shivered. Through the window behind me drifted the hum of talk. From beyond, over the inky syrup, the music from the warship came.

“Beside her was Cullen’s infamy, and beside that, one line: ‘I forgive him, and may God forgive me.’ ”

“And Hubert,” I asked, “was he as generous?”

“Would you have been?”

“You see,” I answered, “when ignorant people are injured, they blame others; the wise blame themselves; the evolved blame no one.”

“Quite so⁠—when the injury is personal. But if it affected someone for whom you deeply cared, would you not then take reprisals? It is a case of conscience, no doubt. Yet, in any event, Hubert did, or at least attempted to. He secured a pistol, and went straight to Cullen, whom he found seated beneath one of his immemorial elms, and occupied, if you please, with a copy of Punch. At sight of Hubert, at sight, rather, of the menace of him, he sprang up. Point-blank, Hubert fired. Cullen dropped, and Hubert, turning the pistol, killed himself.”

“Killed himself also!” I exclaimed.

“No, not also. Cullen was not touched, or but barely touched. The bullet singed the hair above an ear, and lodged itself in the elm. In the elm, mind you, not in Cullen. But the imminence of death, combined with the unlordliness of the lord, did, at the moment, for him. He fainted and toppled over. It was then that Hubert, fancying him dead, turned the pistol on himself. What do you think of it?”

“What do I think of it?” I repeated. “I think that the dice of destiny were strangely cogged. It was Cullen who should have died, Cullen only. What had Janet done that she should have been forced to kill herself? What had Hubert done to have a similar fate?”

My companion raised a hand. “How do I know what they had done? All I know is that Cullen appeared to have wronged them.”

“Appeared to!” I exclaimed. “That seems a bit colorless.”

My companion readjusted his monocle. “Perhaps. But not from the standpoint of anterior lives. According to the theory of it, we none of us can be injured except by those who embody our past. Whatever we suffer comes from there. People who harm us are but puppets come to claim such debts as we ourselves have incurred. Apparently Cullen was but an ordinary brute; actually he may have been the hand of fate.”

“Not a very clean one, then,” I had to protest. “Fate, I think, might have deodorized him.”

“It did,” my companion replied. “And there is the remarkable part of it. By the way, are you superstitious?”

“Oh,” I answered, “when the new year begins on the thirteenth, then, like everyone else, I am apt to fear it may be unlucky. Otherwise, superstition seems to me the parody of faith. But why do you ask?”

“Because Cullen developed a curious dislike for the tree before which he had been shot at. The estate was entailed, and legally he had no right to lop so much as a branch. But he took the law in his own hands. While he was about it, he took an ax. He might as well have used a penknife. But Cullen, who had two deaths to his debit, was not to be balked by an elm. He bored a hole in it, and inserted an explosive. That explosive⁠—”

My companion paused, leisurely lit a fresh cigarette, exhaled the smoke, considered me.

I prodded him. “Well?”

He nodded. “That explosive discharged the bullet that Hubert had fired, the bullet that had been intended for Cullen, but that, having missed him, had bided its time, there in the tree, until it could, and did, get at him.”

“You don’t mean⁠—”

Again my companion nodded. “I do. I do mean it. The bullet went straight through his throat, and severed the carotid artery. Lord Cullen was dead. What do you say to that? Don’t you think it was fate?”

What I did think was that it seemed rather odd that I, who read the papers, had missed an account of a matter so unusual, and I was about to say as much when my companion stood up.

“I should much like to stop and talk it over with you,” he obligingly resumed. “But,” he added, indicating, as he spoke, the warship, “I am due on the Thunderer. They are having a dance there. Good night.”

Feeling that I had been having something of a dance myself, I turned and watched him go.

He passed through the open window into the room from which we had come, and, as he passed, I saw him stop and say a word to Spencer Poole.

A moment later I, too, got up, and entered the room, which, as before, resounded with the call of numbers, the announcement of points.

“Who was that chap?” I asked my friend.

But Poole, his eyes on the cards, did not immediately answer. Then absently he looked at me. “What chap?”

“The man that just spoke to you, the man who was with me in the reading room when you joined us.”

“Oh, that fellow? Why, I thought you knew him. That’s Eric Hereward, the novelist. Has he been rehearsing one of his plots to you? If so, I can sympathize. He did it to me.”