Potterism Part 19

Especially, I am afraid, innocent women. I suppose they were too innocent to talk about facts.

After all, the country didn't have to fight the thing through for very long, and there were no murders, for the strike ended on October the 5th.

6

That same week, Jukie came in to see me. Jukie doesn't often come, because his evenings are apt to be full. A parson's work seems to be like a woman's, never done. From 8 to 11 p.m. seems to be one of the great times for doing it. Probably Jukie had to cut some of it the evening he came round to Gough Square.

I always like to see Jukie. He's entertaining, and knows about such queer things, that none of the rest of us know, and believes such incredible things, that none of the rest of us believe. Besides, like Arthur, he's all out on his job. He's still touchingly full of faith, even after all that has and hasn't happened, in a new heaven and a new earth. He believed at that time that the League of Nations was going to kill war, that the Labour Party were going to kill industrial inequity, that the country was going to kill the Coalition Government, that the Christian Church was going to kill selfishness, that some one was going to kill Horatio Bottomley, and that we were all going to kill Potterism. A perfect orgy of murders, as Arthur said, and all of them so improbable.

Jukie is curate in a slummy parish near Covent Garden. He succeeds, apparently, in really being friends--equal and intimate friends--with a lot of the men in his parish, which is queer for a person of his kind. I suppose he learnt how while he was in the ranks. He deserved to; Arthur told me that he had persistently refused promotion because he wanted to go on living with the men; and that's not a soft job, from all accounts, especially for a clean and over-fastidious person like Jukie. Of course he's very popular, because he's very attractive. And, of course, it's spoilt him a little. I never knew a very popular and attractive person who wasn't a little spoilt by it; and in Jukie's case it's a pity, because he's too good for that sort of thing, but it hasn't really damaged him much.

He came in that evening saying, 'Katherine, I want to speak to you,' and sat down looking rather worried and solemn. He plunged into it at once, as he always does.

'Have you heard any talk lately about Gideon?' he asked me.

'Nothing more interesting than usual,' I said. 'But I seldom hear talk. I don't mix enough. We don't gossip much in the lab, you know. I look to you and my Fleet Street friends for spicy personal items. What's the latest about Arthur?'

'Just this,' he said. 'People are going about saying that he pushed Hobart downstairs.'

I felt then as if I had known all along that of course people were saying that.

'Then why isn't he arrested?' I asked stupidly.

'He probably will be, before long,' said Jukie. 'There's no evidence yet to arrest him on. At present it's merely talk, started by that Pinkerton woman, and sneaking about from person to person in the devilish way such talk does.... I was with Gideon yesterday, and saw two people cut him dead.... You see, it's all so horribly plausible; every one knows they hated each other and had just quarrelled; and it seems he was there that night, just before it happened. He went home with Jane.'

I remembered that they had left my place together. But neither Arthur nor Jane had told me that he had gone home with her.

'The inquest said it was accidental,' I said, protesting against something, I didn't quite know what.

Jukie shrugged his shoulders.

'That's not very likely to stop people talking.'

He added after a moment, 'But it's got to be stopped somehow.... I went to an awful bazaar this afternoon, on purpose to meet that woman. I met her. I spoke to her. I told her to chuck it. She as good as told me she wasn't going to. I mentioned the libel law--she practically dared Gideon to use it against her. She means to go on. She's poisoning the air with her horrible whispers and slanders. Why can't some one choke her? What can we do about it, that's the question? Ought one of us to tell Gideon?

I'm inclined to think we ought.'

'Are you sure he doesn't know it already?'

'No, I'm not sure. Gideon knows most things. But the person concerned is usually the last to hear such talk. And, in case he has no suspicion, I think we should tell him.'

'And get him to issue, through the _Fact_, a semi-official declaration that "the whole story is a tissue of lies."'

Then I wished I hadn't used that particular phrase. It was an unfortunate one. It suggested a similarity between Lady Pinkerton's story and Mr.

Bullitt's, between Arthur Gideon's denial and Lloyd George's.

Jukie's eyes met mine swiftly, not dreamy and introspective as usual, but keen and thoughtful.

'Katherine,' he said, 'we may as well have this out. It won't hurt Gideon here. _Is_ it a lie? I believe so, but, frankly, I don't feel certain. I don't know what to think. Do you?'

I considered it, looking at it all ways. The recent past, Arthur's att.i.tude and Jane's, were all lit up by this horrible flare of light which was turned upon them.

'No,' I said at last. 'I don't know, either.... We can't a.s.sume for certain that it is a lie.'

Jukie let out a long breath, and leant forward in his chair, resting his head on his hands.

'Poor old Gideon,' he said. 'It might have happened, without any intention on his part. If Hobart found him there with Jane ... and if they quarrelled ... Gideon's got a quick temper, and Hobart always made him see red.... He might have hit him--pushed him down, without meaning to injure him--and then it would be done. And then--if he did it--he must have left the house at once ... perhaps not knowing he'd killed him.

Perhaps he didn't know till afterwards. And then Jane might have asked him not to say anything ... I don't know. I don't know. Perhaps it's nonsense; perhaps it _is_ a tissue of lies. I hope to G.o.d it is.... I only know one thing that makes me even suspect it may be true, and that is that Gideon has been absolutely miserable, and gone about like a man half stunned, ever since it happened. _Why_?'

He shot the question at me, hoping I had some answer. But I had none. I shook my head.

'Well,' said Jukie sadly, 'it isn't, I suppose, our business whether he did or didn't do it. That's between him and--himself. But it _is_ our business, whether he's innocent or guilty, to put him on his guard against this talk. It's for you or me to do that, Katherine. Will you?'

'If you like.'

'I'd rather you did it, if you will ... I think he's less likely to think that you're trying to find things out.... You see, I warned him once before, about another thing, and he might think I was linking it in my mind with that.'

'With Jane,' I said, and he nodded.

'Yes. With Jane ... I spoke to him about Jane a few days before it happened. I thought it might be some use. But I think it only made things worse.... I'd rather leave this to you, unless you hate it too much....

Oh, it's all pretty sickening, isn't it? Gideon--_Gideon_ in this sort of mess. Gideon, the best of the lot of us.... You see, even if it's all moons.h.i.+ne about Hobart, as I'm quite prepared to believe it probably is, he's gone and given plausibility to the yarn by falling in love with Hobart's wife. Nothing can get round that. Why couldn't he have chucked it--gone away--anything--when he felt it coming on? A strong, fine, keen person like that, to be bowled over by his sloppy emotions and dragged through the mud, like any beastly sensualist, or like one of my own cheery relations.... I'd rather he'd done Hobart in. There'd have been some sense about that, if he had. After all, it would have been striking a blow against Potterism. Only, if he did do it, it would be more like him to face the music and own to it. What I can't fit into the picture is Gideon sneaking away in the dark, afraid ... Oh well, it's not my business ... Good-night, Katherine. You'll do it at once, won't you? Ring him up to-morrow and get him to dine with you or something. If there's any way of stopping that poisonous woman's tongue, we'll find it....

Meanwhile, I shall tell our parish workers that Leila Yorke's works are obscene, and that they're not to read them to mother's meetings as is their habit.'

I sat up till midnight, wondering how on earth I was going to put it to Arthur.

7

I didn't dine with Arthur. I thought it would last too long, and that he might want me to go, and that I should certainly want to go, after I had said what I had to say. So I rang him up at the office and asked if he could lunch. Not at the club; it's too full of people we know, who keep interrupting, and who would be tremendously edified at catching murmurs about libel and murder and Lady Pinkerton being poisoned. So I said the Temple Bar restaurant in Fleet Street, a disagreeable place, but so noisy and crowded that you can say what you like unheard--unheard very often by the person you are addressing, and certainly by every one else.

We sat downstairs, at a table at the back, and there I told him, in what hardly needed to be an undertone, of the rumours that were being circulated about him. I felt like a horrid woman in a village who repeats spiteful gossip and says, 'I'm telling you because I think you ought to know what's being said.' As a matter of fact, this was the one and only case I have ever come across in which I have thought the person concerned ought to know what was being said. As a rule, it seems the last thing they ought to know.

He listened, staring at the tablecloth and crumbling his bread.

'Thank you,' he said, 'for telling me. As a matter of fact, I knew.

Or, anyhow, guessed.... But I'm not sure that anything can be done to stop it.'

'Unless,' I said, looking away from him, 'you could find grounds for a libel action. You might ask a lawyer.'

'No,' he returned quickly. 'That's quite impossible. Out of the question.... There are no grounds. And I wouldn't if there were. I'm not going to have the thing made a show of in the courts. It's exactly what the Pinkertons would enjoy--a first-cla.s.s Pinkerton scoop. No, I shall let it alone.'

'Is there no way of stopping it, then?' I asked.

'Only one,' he murmured, absently, beneath his breath, then caught himself up. 'I don't know. I think not.'

I didn't make any further suggestions. What was the good of advising him to remonstrate with the Pinkertons? If they were lying, it was the obvious course. If they weren't, it was an impossible one. I let it alone.

Arthur was frowning as he ate cold beef.