I could not work that evening, the thought of the old diaries haunted me, came between me and the page that I was trying to write. I found myself sitting idle, staring in front of me with unseeing eyes. I had not thought about the old diaries before, but now that my attention had been directed to them they drew me in a strange fashion. Had Garth meant me to have the old diaries as well as the diary of the expedition? “Also to the aforesaid Charlotte Mary Dean I bequeath my diaries”—did that mean all his diaries or merely the diary upon which the book was to be based? I tried to look at it calmly and without prejudice, and it really seemed to mean all his diaries. He could so easily have worded it more explicitly if he had intended it to mean the diary of the expedition only. In law the diaries were mine—that was clear—but what was Garth’s intention?
If I read the diaries I should be able to make a real biography of Garth. I could put extracts from the diaries into the biography to show the trend of his thoughts; to show how he grew from childhood to manhood; to show his aim and the clean shining light of his ambition, and how he moved toward it from the childish games of make-believe-travel to the reality of exploration. I wanted to do this, I wanted to write Garth’s story from the inside. It was a fascinating prospect.
I had ascertained from Nanny that the old diaries were in a chest in the front attic. She had given me the key of the chest—the key of Bluebeard’s Chamber. The key lay on the bureau beside me, a small shiny key with a strange ward.
I could not sleep that night. The moonlight, strong and white, poured through the open window and lay upon the floor of my room in a bright swathe. The owls hooted mournfully as they wheeled round the old house. I heard a mouse scraping industriously in the wainscot. I tossed and turned upon my bed, I lay and stared at the ceiling—should I read the diaries or not? Did Garth mean me to have them? Should I burn them?
The moon sank behind the trees and left me in darkness.
***
I was busy all the morning in the rock garden, but after lunch I took the key and went upstairs. The attic was full of lumber; mirrors and chairs and pictures which had been discarded by various generations of Wisdons stood about, dirty and forlorn, or leaned disconsolately against the walls. The sun streamed in through a small round window showing up the thick fine dust that lay over everything and floated suspended in the air. It seemed to me, as I looked about me, that there was valuable stuff here. Someday I would go over it all carefully and pick out what was good. I would refurnish the drawing room, discarding Kitty’s modern trash, and transform it into the beautiful room it was intended to be. That old spinet should have an honored place, and so should the Chippendale table with the beautiful inlaid front. I visualized the drawing room (denuded of its gilt mirrors and purple carpet) papered with cream, and with a few Persian rugs on its polished floor. It should be a restful room; I would give it back its soul.
The big, carved wooden chest stood beneath the round window just as Nanny had described. The key turned easily in the lock, I flung the lid back and there were the diaries—piles of them, with the dates written upon little labels gummed onto their shiny covers—Garth’s diaries!
I took some of them out and looked at them without opening them—it was extraordinary how strong the feeling was that held me back from opening those diaries. The Unwritten Law of childhood warred with my reason. The Unwritten Law that our diaries were sacred, not to be pried into by alien eyes. This was one thing that held me back, but there was another feeling, equally strong—it was fear. I was afraid of what I might find in the diaries. I might find something dreadful, something that would force me to take Garth from his pedestal of Valiance and Virtue.
There was something in Garth’s life which had changed him in a few months from a gentle-natured boy into a cynical, disillusioned man. I had told myself that the war had done it, but I did not really believe it was the war. I believed that there was something else, something more personal than the war, and I feared to know what it was. The diaries would tell me Garth’s secret—I was sure of that. They would resurrect the past which had been buried for so long; they would open old wounds; they might change the whole tenor of my thoughts toward their author. Could I bear it?
I sat down and argued with myself. There were two courses open to me, I must either read the diaries or burn them. It was balking my fence to keep them where they were, unread. If anything were to happen to me they would fall into other hands—Clementina’s most likely—they would be read by other eyes than mine, less interested, less understanding. I must either read them or burn them…and I couldn’t burn them. They were Garth, the essence of him, all that remained of his personality…I couldn’t burn them.
I picked up a book at random and began to read. I read a bit here and a bit there, passing over weeks or years, dipping into Garth’s past—and my own past too. Sometimes the tears rained down my cheeks so that I had to stop and wipe them away before I could see the words. I forgot, very soon, the purpose of my reading—to gather material for the biography—that could wait. I could do that afterward (go back and gather up the threads of Garth’s life, sifting, weighing, putting in a passage that showed his development, leaving out another because it was too intimate, too poignant, too passionate. Garth would have hated his soul laid bare to the public eye; he was fastidious, he hated to show his feelings, he hated sentiment. I should have to apply the touchstone of Garth’s fastidious mind to all I wrote. There was much that was beautiful here, much that I could gather for my book, but that was for afterward; today I was concerned only with Garth and myself, with our relationship to each other; with the part I had played in his life, and the part he had played in mine.