1

On the day of the inquest the ground was starry with frost. From both the Poplars, from Munford, from Greater and Lesser Uppington, from Rest Wythies, from Stoneford and Bringham and Leaford, the cars came crunching the keen surface of the roads, filled with people in fur jackets and warm overcoats, talking, posturing, speculating, all intent on the event, unaware of their similarity to their early Roman prototypes who gathered with the same abominable expectancy to view some young girl racked on the Little Horse or torn with the pincers. They said (one carload so nearly resembled another that the conversations might be taken as identical) that this might have been expected; that the family was about as friendly as a host of Kilkenny cats; that there were ugly rumours about a criminal charge on quite a different ground; that you couldn’t trust these smooth-tongued Jews; that the younger son had come down with unmentionable threats; that he had his father and his elder brother in his power; that there had been ferocious debates between Richard and Amy for ascendancy… Excited and pleased at this new sensation, they drove up to the door of the Assembly Rooms at King’s Poplars where the inquest was to be held, and descended with much shaking of rugs, chatter, banter, exchange of greetings, agitated murmurs of the necessity for haste lest someone else secure a coveted seat.

Frobisher was attending the inquest on behalf of the family generally; but Eustace had sent to London for his own solicitor, knowing that against him, at the last, public opinion must inevitably turn. Hinde was a tall, thin man, with a decisive profile; he had heard Eustace’s story and his face was forbidding and sceptical, though he appeared bland enough as he entered the court. He sat with folded arms, his wrists, unexpectedly bony, protruding from the flannel shirt he affected. Brand’s attention was caught and held by him from the first. There was in that austere, cynical face so much strength, character, and courage that he sketched it surreptitiously, feeling that even he, on such an occasion, could scarcely defy the conventions and do his work openly.

The evidence was not sensational until the end of Ross’s history of his investigations. He spoke of the handkerchief, of the burnt blotting-paper—clearly, he said, burnt to conceal the record it contained, since there was a practically empty wastepaper-basket at the dead man’s elbow—other ashes that could not now be identified, Brand’s document, and the finger-prints on the safe. No explanation, he said, had been offered by any member of the family concerning the missing cheque, whose counterfoil indicated that a sum of ten thousand pounds had been made over to Eustace Moore in the early hours of Christmas morning. No amount of search had revealed it, and although the counterfoil had been blotted, as was clear from the appearance of the ink, no record of this could be found on any of the blotting-paper in the library. Ross then detailed his search of the room, his discovery of the safe and of the finger-prints that, he informed the court, had been discovered to be those of Eustace Moore.

At this sensational revelation the excitement rose to fever-pitch. The evidence of other members of the family was scarcely digested; the attention of the whole court focused on the figure of Moore, who was presently called to explain the position. His explanation was strange and unsatisfying to practically everyone present.

Circumstances compelled him to admit that he had, despite his earlier denials, been in the library in the early morning of Christmas Day. He had come down to King’s Poplars with the intention of explaining to his father-in-law the difficult position in which they found themselves. He had been singularly unfortunate in his explanations. Gray had not shown a trace of reason, had accused him of being a common thief and embezzler, of tricking him out of his money, and had finally declared that he would himself bring an action against his son-in-law. Moore added that he had no belief in this bombast, which was simply the old man’s way of letting off steam, but he was convinced that he would obtain no financial assistance from this quarter.

In reply to questions from the coroner, he repeated in some detail the conversation that had eventuated between them. It appeared to be violent and decisive. Racked with anxiety as to the future, seeing no one else to whom he could turn for assistance, he determined to make a second appeal the following day. In the course of a chance conversation with Richard, however, he was compelled to realise that there was no possibility of Gray changing his mind. During the day—that is, on Christmas Eve—he saw both his brothers-in-law enter the library, with the intention of tackling their father for monetary help.

The coroner here interrupted to say that, so far as he could see, Mr. Moore had no definite proof as to this last statement. Eustace stared at him, incredulous that anyone should suppose either of Gray’s sons to be visiting at King’s Poplars for any other reason. Then he continued his story. He had heard from his sister-in-law of Brand’s suggestion that Sophy and her children should make their home at the Manor for an indefinite period; he understood that that plan had been refused consideration, but that Brand was now demanding a lump sum down, to enable him to get away, preferably abroad, and shift the responsibility of his family on to other shoulders. Amy had also spoken in furious tones of the iniquity of purchasing titles and expecting other men to pay for them (Richard winced and flushed at that); and she had followed up these comments by a long and depressing harangue on the impossibility of housekeeping (with cream and Benger’s for the old lady) on the meagre sum allowed her by her father, with details as to personal expenditure, her own fastidious habits, and the rising prices of butter, coal, and meat.

Eustace continued that he had despaired of making any of his relatives understand the seriousness of their father’s situation. They seemed under the impression that a man could be a director of a foundering company with no more inconvenience than if his shares had depreciated slightly. He had, therefore, in desperation (and here Eustace showed traces of an overwhelming apprehension and nervousness) formulated a plan that, he admitted at once, was criminal in intent. It was obvious that he confessed to this only as the final expedient, the sole alternative that presented itself to an accusation of wilful murder.

When the household retired for the night, he had come to no decision, and for some time had discussed the problem with his wife. She had then expressed herself as exhausted, and he had left her alone in the bedroom, going to the dressing-room, where he made no attempt to go to bed, but sat brooding over the position. He denied, of course, Brand’s story of seeing him on the stairs at midnight, but admitted that at about half-past two he remembered his father-in-law telling him that he had valuable documents in the safe. These documents were to be Gray’s standby, and in no circumstances would he allow Eustace to handle them. He, Eustace, knew the whereabouts of the safe, and he determined to try and discover the combination and remove the documents. This, he said passionately, was a final endeavour to save an intolerable situation. He had forgotten, if he had ever known, that it was Gray’s habit to lock his door when he left the library at night, and so it did not strike him as strange that it should be open when he went down. He had met no one; and the room, when he entered it, was perfectly dark. The curtain had blown across the window that was opened, and in his haste and anxiety he had not realised that it was not closed. The safe was set in a deep recess, lighted from the floor by a discreetly concealed electric bulb that flung radiance into the safe without illuminating the rest of the room. Gray, he understood, had had this fitted in, so that if he were suddenly disturbed while examining his securities, he could extinguish the light without moving, and foil the curiosity-mongers. He was always unnaturally secretive about his affairs. He, Eustace, had crossed the room in bedroom slippers, felt for and found the switch of the light, and set himself to open the safe. This, however, he was not able to do. He supposed he was in the room for the greater part of an hour. It did not occur to him that there was any way of entry except by the door. He kept a sharp look-out for the signs of a light being switched on in the hall. The recess was deep enough for a man to hide, unless anyone came directly into it. At the end of an hour he had desisted. Panic had increased in his breast, and he dared not risk being found by any member of the family. When he heard from the police that they had opened the safe and found it practically empty, he had been half distracted.

That was the substance of his story, and most people who heard it found it quite inadequate. They argued that on so cold and windy a night a man must have become aware of the open window; that it would be impossible to spend so long in a room where a man lay dead without seeing the body; that it was absurd to suppose the police could with little difficulty open a safe that had defied his efforts; that the whole explanation, in short, was lame and improbable.

The jury, and even Moore’s own lawyer, took the same view. The former were away for about forty minutes, during which a number of people in the court stirred and came outside into the pale sunlight to discuss various aspects of this most exciting mystery.

2

The jury discussed the position with animation.

“We take it for granted that the doctor’s right in saying the slab of brass was the implement used?”

“It seems likely, seeing it was bright and polished like nothing else was. Besides, two people—Miss Amy and a servant—remember it being on top of a pile of loose papers, and it was not on any papers at all when they found it.”

There was general agreement with that. The foreman continued, “I’ll tell you how I see it. I believe he did come down, as he says, and began tinkering with the safe. I daresay he didn’t notice about the window. When all your mind’s set on one thing you’re absorbed. Heat and cold don’t seem to strike you in the same way. Well, there he was, trying to help himself to Mr. Gray’s papers, when through the open window comes Mr. Gray himself. There’s a wide verandah outside, as happen you know, and he might have slipped out there when he heard footsteps, not wanting to be disturbed by anyone else that night. Then he watched, and found this fellow trying the safe. Mind you, I don’t for a minute believe he stood there for an hour, but this chap wants to make out the best story he can. I daresay the old man watched him for some time; then he came in and took his son-in-law by surprise. Terrified and taken unawares, the fellow hit out…”

“What about the cheque?” interrupted a more far-seeing juryman. “That wasn’t drawn till the morning.”

“That’s true. We shall have to alter that story. Look here. Suppose Mr. Moore made Mr. Gray understand how bad things were, and persuaded him to give him a cheque? Or p’raps he threatened him, standing over him while he wrote it out. And then Mr. Gray told him in that sarcastic way of his that it wasn’t worth the form it was written on. He’d be glad enough to have the last laugh. And then Mr. Moore, wild at being cheated, and not seeing any hope anywhere, hit out, just to make him stop talking, perhaps, and not meaning to kill him at all. When he saw what had happened he put the cheque on the fire and wiped the paper-weight and came upstairs again. He didn’t think about finger-prints on the safe. How does that fit?”

At the end of forty minutes the jury returned, with a verdict of wilful murder against Eustace Moore.

3

There was little surprise though much excitement in the court when this verdict was announced. It had been obvious from the trend of examination and argument in which direction the tide of suspicion had turned. Yet it seemed, for a moment, as though, of all present, Eustace himself had not anticipated this consummation. For a minute his control broke utterly. He glared wildly round the court, rose to speak, could not command his voice, clutched at a chair with both hands, and trembled violently from head to foot. There was something so repulsive, so divorced from normal human dignity in the spectacle of this pale, middle-aged man in impeccable morning garb, clinging to a chair-back and shivering with fear, that even his lawyer could scarcely conceal his disgust. But when he was taken away by the police a little later, his expression had changed already. Now it was that of a man who is accustomed to bathing among sharks, and, instead of expending time and energy bemoaning his present humiliation, he was even now laying new schemes for regaining his liberty. The long, sallow face, with its flat cheeks, resolute nose, and keen, prying eyes, all these were expressive of his invincible determination to extricate himself from this extremity, as he had done from others.

4

The affair involved all the family in very disagreeable publicity. The papers made a good deal of it, and shortly after Eustace’s arrest a number of little paragraphs appeared, chiefly in local and evening papers, with melodramatic headlines, such as son finds father hanging; found in the river; wife’s terrible discovery in barn, and so forth. Most of Eustace’s victims were small men who had put their life’s savings into what appeared to them a safe and remunerative market, and when these little men of Highgate and Peckham and Barnet were forced to realise that nothing would ever be recovered, numbers of insignificant anonymous tragedies were reported in little towns and suburbs and the remoter districts of London. Isobel and Laura said candidly that what Eustace was known to have done was worse than any murder, but Richard told them bitterly to stop that folly. It did no good to anyone, and it blackened the case against their brother-in-law.

Richard was paying his share of the general expense and it was proving a heavy one. The appointment for which he had run such risks and schemed so dearly went to Pollenfex after all. (In point of fact, though Richard never knew this, he would have been defeated in any case, the history of Eustace’s defalcations not affecting F——’s decision. Ironically enough, it was the very expense and luxury into which he had plunged that had destroyed Richard’s chances, F—— shrewdly observing that a man so reckless with his own money would be even less temperate when he had control of public funds.) Laura took the affair far more phlegmatically than he, but then she had nothing to lose—except her lover, who retired completely after the débâcle, leaving her to put the pieces of her life together in what proved to be a quite satisfactory pattern. Anyway, she was happier after this than she had been since her marriage. One or two people, including Miles Amery, were privileged to hear a point of view so unconventional and so much at variance with her husband’s interests that the majority would have been shocked at her heartlessness and lack of co-operation with Richard’s ambitions.

“All these years, Miles,” she said, “I’ve never had any life of my own. Richard’s friends have come crowding in, claiming my attention and my hospitality and my brain-force. There’s never been anything left over for my own enjoyment or profit. Now all that crowd will disappear; we’re pretty sure to be more or less ostracised in the fashionable and influential circles Richard loves. I doubt if he’s ever able to climb back. Besides, it’s been such a blow to him, I think it will be a long time before he recovers his second wind. And this is my turn. Now, at last, I shall have my house to myself, where my friends can come in, and where I can be alone.” (But she didn’t, of course, refer here to any house made with hands.) “It’s what I’ve dreamed of, hoped for, prayed for, for years.”

Olivia made the Manor House intolerable by her hysterics and the numberless scenes in which she insisted on implicating every member of the family. She fainted, she cried, she raved about traitors and plots and snares. She called perpetually for her sons to come to her, but they were spending their holiday in Switzerland and could not be reached at a moment’s notice. When she was not fainting or screaming, she went about like a madwoman, silent for long stretches of time, and then suddenly bursting into wild and unfounded accusations against each member of the household in turn, even abusing the servants, to the effect that he or she was responsible for a diabolical trap into which her innocent and unsuspecting husband had been enticed.

Amy was too much enraged at her own position to pay much heed to anyone else. Blind with passion at the cruel trick her father had played upon her, she demanded ferociously whether she was expected to find some remunerative employment at her age, she who was trained for no particular work, and who had, naturally, expected to be left provided for.

“What am I supposed to do?” she cried in turn to each of her embarrassed relatives. “I’m a woman of forty and I haven’t been taught to earn a living. It’s all very well for young girls; their position’s quite different. I suppose you all expect me to take a post as a working housekeeper somewhere, doing floors and emptying slops and peeling potatoes.”

In due course, she addressed this rhetorical question to old Mrs. Gray, who replied in a remote and tranquil voice, “I’m sure I don’t know why you should expect anything so foolish, Amy. You will live with me, of course. Mr. Frobisher says he can find just enough to pay the rent of a little flat somewhere—at the seaside. I’ve always hoped I should die by the sea—Felixstowe, perhaps, or Worthing, or Bournemouth, but that’s rather expensive. I’m sure we shall manage quite well. We’re accustomed to one another, and at my age I should have to have some kind of companion.”

She actually smiled as she spoke. Amy had become something very remote in her imagination, of little more consequence, really, than the furniture among which she moved. Miles was astounded at the eagerness and warmth in the old voice. He had, like everyone else, taken it for granted that the old cease to experience desire, that their passion is spent, their feeling, even, numbed. They become, in fact, like the chairs and cupboards among which their days are passed. The old lady was the one redeeming feature in this sordid case. No one but herself genuinely grieved for the dead man. To her, he had been primarily the son she had borne nearly seventy years ago. And he remained at once the child for whom she had dreamed, and the disappointed, embittered creature he had become. She had watched him change, lose his first fine ideals, seen him gradually sink, lose hope, go down and down. And her affection for him had remained stable; it was rooted in no fineness of his, no achievement, not even in the qualities he possessed. It lay in their common blood and heritage. And now he had gone, and she preserved an attitude dignified and remote. Yet, despite her years, her sorrow, and the cumulative experience of her days, she still retained sufficient vitality to have desires and hopes, and at length to achieve them. They were little things, perhaps, but desires are comparative, after all. And it was to such things that the attention of old people instinctively turned, thought Miles, when they were at too great a remove from the fierce ambitions of their youth to be stirred by them any longer.

There was in these bleak days something beautiful about her, as she spoke, listened, and suggested in the midst of her kinspeople, herself tranquil and unattainable. Into that secret chamber where the spirit sits alone she admitted no one. But, above all, beauty remained. It was not, in essence, any beauty of feature or even of bone or expression; springing from a certain graciousness in her own nature, and the courage the old will often display, it held the attention of all the more thoughtful of the household—the Amerys, Laura, Isobel, Brand.

Isobel had reacted oddly to the position. Since her father’s death she had changed, awakened, begun to glow; as a piece of silver that has not been polished for years, suddenly receiving attention, catches the light in a dozen places, reflects, burns, almost illuminates the room where it is placed, so Isobel flashed with an ardour that had been typical of her early years, but that had been quenched for so long that few recognised its return. She said to Brand, shortly before their separation, “You’re right, my dear. It’s a terrible warning. It would be frightful to come to death with no more to show or to carry with you than he had.” She left the house before her grandmother and sister departed to the Worthing flat, and found herself work in London. Brand, hearing of it, thought, “That alone would be justification for what I did. She was a prisoner so long as he was alive. And whereas his life held neither promise nor hope, hers is chock-a-block with both.”

5

Brand returned in due course to his wife in Fulham. Walking up the dreary road, carrying his shabby case, his senses exulted at the prospect of leaving this behind for ever. Since Eustace’s arrest he had put the whole affair of the murder out of his mind; he no longer identified himself with the man who had cringed and scraped and quarrelled with Sophy for so many years. It was as though a new personality, purged by his ordeal and the weight of knowledge that still lay upon him, had risen in the dark library on Christmas morning, its face set towards the dawn, its being cleansed from fear.

The house presented its usual ramshackle, slovenly appearance. It was one of a long terrace, each house separated from its neighbour by a thin, dingy wall; a long flight of cracked steps led to the front door, whose dirty paint was peeling. Some of the houses had inartistic little excrescences bulging from the ground floor, square green or brown painted boxes, ludicrously christened conservatories, with panes of blue and red glass, alternating with the opaque oblongs found in bath- and waiting-rooms. The houses were Victorian, heavy and ungraceful, inconvenient and ugly, displaying none of the beauty of antiquity or the brisk cheerfulness of good housekeeping. Brand mounted the steps, noting that it was several days since they had been washed, and stood for a moment under the pretentious, hideous portico. Trails of ivy coiled over the windows, soiled yellow blinds hung awry on the further side of the glass, that was further obscured by long lace curtains. The whole aspect was one of a cheap and sordid poverty.

The door was opened by his second daughter, Eleanor, a child of nine years old. Her face was a travesty of youth, though the features were immature enough in their pinched and colourless fashion. Her fair hair hung over her eyes and was untidily cut on the nape of her neck. Neither her face nor her hands was clean, and her frock was torn. Yet she would never, in any assembly, be overlooked. It was, perhaps, the expression that held the stranger’s gaze. It was arresting, fierce, and withdrawn. After seeing father and child together, there could be no doubt of their relationship. The little girl, also, had none of the candour and vitality of her years, but resembled a creature perpetually on guard, prepared for any new torment or alarm the days may hold, armed with a bitter stoicism that, in a less inattentive parent, would have touched and cut the heart.

“Where’s your mother?” Brand asked.

“She’s upstairs. She didn’t know you were coming to-day.”

“She doesn’t have to make any preparations for me. Tell her I’m here.”

He turned into the living-room to the left of the front door; the other side was a blank wall, separating them from the next house. He had neither offered nor expected a kiss or any sign of affection from the young creature whom he had begotten. He heard her going upstairs slowly, and the thought went through his mind, “More fuss with Sophy, I suppose. It’s a wonder she hasn’t killed some of the brats before now.”

This was a typical sloven’s room—dirty plates on the table, a torn cloth, rags of garments lying about on the chairs, and dust everywhere. But, though he had often railed at his wife for such matters, today he was scarcely aware of them. The present held him in too light a grasp; beyond lay the glittering future, and to that he looked forward, as a traveller, solacing himself with the thought of the sea round the next bend of the road, can face with courage the wind, the heat, and the grit in the air because they will so soon belong to the past.

Eleanor came back, saying her mother was just coming down.

“Wasn’t she dressed?” asked Brand indifferently.

The child shook her head. “She said, ‘God knows there’ll be no peace when he comes back, so we’ll take it while we can.’”

He looked at her for the first time with curiosity; she had spoken with a certain defiance and spirit, as though to assert herself, not to him, but to her own heart. A momentary sense of fellowship for her loneliness and determination moved him.

He said, smiling faintly, “Manners aren’t your strong suit, are they? In fact, in a properly constituted household, you’d probably be beaten for that. But, of course, those tests don’t apply here.”

She folded her hands behind her back, and regarded him steadily. He returned her gaze, and suddenly he saw her tremble. In an instant she had recovered her self-control, but the fear remained in her mind, though her flesh denied it. Observing her more closely, and with a growing sympathy, he realised that she feared he might put that careless threat into action and was resolved to withstand his power, though she could not evade the consequences of it. Even at her age, he thought, she commanded attention, even a kind of respect. Already her personality was forming, and he reflected, “Courage; that’s the answer to her attitude. It’s the one thing that matters. That and knowing the only thing in your life that counts and never letting go.”

Sophy came in, dragging a shapeless coat over her shoulders; her dark hair straggled from its untidy knot down her back. Her features were sharp, inquisitive, and acquisitive; she had the look of some horrible bird of prey, agape for carrion, and in the very stoop of her shoulders, the curve of her hands, the malevolent gleam of her eyes, she expressed a cruelty innate in her temperament. So shabby did she seem, so poor and ugly and unclean, that Brand was smitten with a feeling compounded of disgust, compassion, amazement, and awe.

“Can it be true that I was so low, so stripped of all decency, that I was compelled to take any pleasure I could get even from that?” he thought. “My God, I’ve been down. It takes a thing like this to open one’s eyes. Well, this is the end.”

Sophy said in a harsh voice, “What’s this bastard been telling you? You know what you can expect, you ——, if you’ve been opening your mouth. I never knew such a bloody little liar in all my days,” she added to her husband. “They fall out of her like water out of a tap.”

Eleanor watched her, pale, defensive, guarded. Brand knew now why the woman had been in bed when he returned. Those prolonged drinking-bouts had been one of the horrors of his married life. Even now she was not sober, and he felt her as some loathsome disease touching and defiling his own life.

“So you’ve come back?” she said, slumping into a chair.

“You didn’t expect to see me?”

She shrugged. “How could I tell?”

“You thought, like everyone else, that I’d done it?”

“Well, I don’t suppose you’re very sorry, anyway.”

Brand asked, “It wouldn’t trouble you, would it, if I were guilty?”

“Why the hell should it? We weren’t good enough to know him. He’s no loss to us.” And then, leaning forward, her stupid animal face twisted into a leer of mingled greed and coaxing, “How did you get the money, Brand? Don’t tell me he gave it you.”

Brand replied callously, “Oh, you won’t see a penny of that.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean that cheque’s not worth the paper it’s written on. He’s broke, like the rest of us.”

“And what are you going to do about that?”

“Clear out, of course.”

“You haven’t the money. I know that.”

Brand’s laughter jarred. “Been through my pockets, have you? God, you’re a decent wife for any man. Anyway, I’m going. What’s it to you where I get my money from?”

“You mean that? You’re going to desert us?” Her face was dreadful.

A nerve of brutality in Brand was rasped by her voice, her appearance, the recognition of the havoc she had already wrought in his life, all that she might mean, her frustration of his hopes. He exclaimed bitterly, “Yes, and thank God for the chance.”

“And we’re to starve, I suppose?”

They argued furiously, hurling abuse at one another. Sophy shouted that she had five children to maintain. Brand retorted that she had worked before and could work again, and had, doubtless, other money-making devices at her finger-tips.

“For instance, you might try Ferdinand’s father,” he suggested brutally.

Sophy became so abusive that even the child, accustomed though she was to such scenes, shivered and withdrew behind the ragged tapestry chair near the fireplace. It was a dreadful scene, not so much on account of the language in which their ugly conversation was couched as in their frank and shameless revelation of themselves one to the other, unconcealed even by the barest of draperies of decency and self-respect. Towards this woman, who invariably aroused all the most bestial passions in his nature, Brand felt himself incapable of pity. Every past occasion of infidelity or ill-usage, every head under which complaints could be lodged, every instant of mutual surrender to a base instinct that neither attempted to clothe in the garments of reticence, all these recollections, bitternesses, occasions of ugliness and cruelty, were flung like actual missiles by one of this deplorable pair at the other. For Brand, it was a lowering of the gates of self-possession that had withstood the tide of his own fears and the suspicions of other people for the past week. As for the woman, she was too far past any considerations of self-respect to be even conscious of the degradation of the scene.

Presently Brand said carelessly, “Be reasonable, my dear Sophy. Within a month you’ll be as thankful for the change as myself. It’ll give you more scope.” And he laughed.

Sophy demanded furiously whether he proposed to abandon the children altogether.

“It won’t make much difference to them,” said Brand. “One man or another…”

Eleanor felt a sudden reaction from this wild interchange of insults. She, a personality distinct from either of them, with already her own dreams and visions, was being set aside like any inanimate thing that may be alternatively placed on a shelf or in a cupboard, a thing not worthy of consideration. She emerged from behind her chair; her instincts were those of any wild thing that is accustomed to thongs and pursuers.

“I suppose, mother, when father’s gone, the gentleman who’s been staying with us this week will be here for good, won’t he? I like him. He gives me pence sometimes.”

The air with which she flung up her small head, the calculated insolence of her bearing towards both parents, stung Sophy to an ungovernable half-drunken rage. She rushed at the child and boxed her ears till Eleanor was dizzy and aghast. Brand, seating himself on the edge of the table, had begun to laugh. As on that occasion on Christmas Day at the Manor, he found himself incapable of immediate control. He seemed unaware of his wife’s treatment of the child, whom she now thrust from the room, crying, “Go on up and wait for me. I’ll teach you to hold your tongue, you little devil, if it kills me.”

With the abrupt closing of the door Brand’s laughter became more temperate. He said mockingly, “My dear Sophy, I congratulate you. You don’t suppose that child told me anything I didn’t know already? I’m glad to hear the gentleman is likely to be faithful.”

“Yes, you’d be glad to be free of having to keep me, wouldn’t you? But you won’t get off as easily as that. What if you have got this other fellow taken instead of you? Do you suppose I don’t know you did the murder?”

Brand, still in that mocking drawl, replied, “Well, and suppose you’re right? What do you expect me to do? Make a magnificent gesture? Gentlemen, you are deceived. Your prisoner is innocent of his crime. Behold the man!” He smote his breast dramatically. “But surely that wouldn’t suit your book? And mightn’t it scare away your devoted protector? After all, a murderer’s widow…” He began to laugh.

Upstairs, standing in her dingy chemise by the partly opened window (the cords were broken and the window stuck; no one could shut it even in the most bitter weather), the child, Eleanor, caught fragments of this conversation. Her sharp animal brain pieced them together. It did not shock or frighten her that her father should even jeeringly acknowledge his guilt; whether he had killed his father or not was no concern of hers. But she realised that he was going away, and, though she had no affection for him, she regarded him in some sense as a background, and to that extent she resented his going.

The door opened and Sophy whirled in, her face dark with passion. The child stiffened at the sight of her. The foul words she used fell unheeded on ears to whom lewd language was as natural as the baby-talk of more fortunate children; but even her courage was not finally proof against the fury of her mother’s blows. Bruised and stripped of that quality of self-respect that is a lonely child’s armour against despair, she was helpless in that powerful grasp. It was several minutes before Brand, fallen again into a rhapsody, was aware that the shrieks assailing his mind came from his own house. Flinging himself up the stairs, he rushed into his daughter’s room and dragged her from her mother’s hands.

“My God, Sophy, isn’t one murder in a family enough for you? Can you never let your filthy temper be?”

He thrust the stupefied child into bed, saying harshly, “Stop that noise. Why don’t you keep your mouth shut, if you want any peace?”

Blind anger against these degrading circumstances, and a dreadful fear that a momentary compassion for youth assaulted would destroy his strength, drove him to a ruthless cruelty. When Sophy gibed in spiteful tones, “An affectionate father you are, aren’t you?” he returned, in tones that were deliberately hard, “Oh, it’s her turn now. But let her wait a few years and she’ll be making hell of some man’s life. It’s what women are for.”

He went into the room they shared and began to fling some clothes into a box. He paid no heed to Sophy’s shrill disclaimers and insults; inside his head a pulse had begun to beat, warning him that not for much longer could he safely remain under the same roof as this woman to whom he was married. As he walked up from the station, he had contemplated a brief and effective scene, never this disgusting exhibition of a man’s worst feelings and compulsions. It was like stepping into a shed full of dirt, and emerging stained and repulsive. He slammed down the lid of the box—it had neither locks nor straps—and carried it into the narrow hall. Sophy followed him, still shouting her accusations against him for a murderer.

“You wait till the trial begins,” she jeered. “Who’s going to believe your story? Adrian Gray wouldn’t have given you two thousand pounds or even pretended to. Why should he? No one would believe a word you said. You couldn’t frighten him. You don’t count, you don’t, for all your bloody fine opinion of yourself.”

Escaping from the house, Brand felt all that squalor and shame fall away like the husk of a nut. Now he was, at length, free. He did not contemplate the future except as a blank canvas for the purpose of his own achievement. He did not consider the possibility of a jury releasing Eustace and putting him in the financier’s place. It would be some weeks before the trial was held, and that interim space he regarded as the span of his personal life. During that period he must be uninterrupted, untouched by the wild flurry of suspicion and fear in which this trial would be engulfed. He left England that night, and was instantly swallowed up in the purlieus of the Paris he knew. Anonymous as a shadow he went in and out of the tall, narrow houses, spoke with men at corners and in cafés, drank and worked and conceived, a man so divorced from the occurrences of all previous time that he might have no connection with any other Hildebrand Gray the world had known. It was not fame and not hope that he pursued so relentlessly during that period. Having beheld the work he must do, he proceeded to achieve it; as to the consequences, he found them no concern of his. Like some tense, electric, indomitable spirit of Labour, he exhausted his actual life.