Potterism Part 26

2

Jane didn't know what she believed. She didn't believe what Clare had implied--that Oliver had tried to kiss her. Because Oliver hadn't been like that; it wasn't the sort of thing he did. Jane thought it caddish of Clare to have tried to make them think that of him. But she might, Jane thought, have been angry with him about something else; she might have pushed him.... Or she might not; she might be imagining or inventing the whole thing. You never knew, with Clare.

If it was true, Jane thought, she had been a fool about Arthur. But, if he hadn't done it, why had he been so queer? Why had he avoided her, and been so odd and ashamed from the first morning on?

Perhaps, thought Jane, he had suspected Clare.

She would see him to-morrow morning, and ask him.

3

Jane saw Gideon next day. She rang him up, and he came over to Hampstead after tea.

It was the first time Jane had seen him alone for more than a month. He looked thin and ill.

Jane loved him. She had loved him through everything. He might have killed Oliver; it made no difference to her caring for him.

But she hoped he hadn't.

He came into the drawing-room. Jane remembered that other night, when Oliver--poor Oliver--had been vexed to find him there. Poor Oliver. Poor Oliver. But Jane couldn't really care. Not really, only gently, and in a way that didn't hurt. Not as if Gideon were dead and shut away from everything. Not as if she herself were.

Jane didn't pretend. As Lady Pinkerton would say, the claims of Truth were inexorable.

Gideon came in quickly, looking grave and worried, as if he had something on his mind.

Jane said, 'Arthur, please tell me. _Did_ you knock Oliver down that night?'

He stood and stared at her, looking astonished and startled.

Then he said, slowly, 'Oh, I see. You mean, am I going to admit that I did, when I am accused.... If there's no other way out, I am.... It will be all right, Jane,' he said very gently. 'You needn't be afraid.'

Jane didn't understand him.

'Then you did it,' she said, and sat down. She felt sick, and her head swam.

Gideon stood over her, tall and stooping, biting the nail of his middle finger.

'You see,' Jane said, 'I'd begun to hope last night that you hadn't done it after all.'

'What are you talking about?' he asked.

Jane said, 'Clare told us that it happened--that he fell--after you had left the house. So I hoped she might be speaking the truth, and that you hadn't done it after all. But if you did, we must go on thinking of ways out.'

'If--I--did,' Gideon said after her slowly. 'You know I didn't, Jane.

Why are you talking like this? What's the use, when I know, and you know, and you know that I know, the truth about it? It can do no good.'

He was, for the first time, stern and angry with her.

'The truth?' Jane said. 'I wish you'd tell it me, Arthur.'

The truth. If Gideon told her anything, it would be the truth, she knew.

He wasn't like Clare, who couldn't.

But he only looked at her oddly, and didn't speak. Jane looked back into his eyes, trying to read his mind, and so for a moment he stared down at her and she stared up at him.

Jane perceived that he had not done it. Had he, then, guessed all this time that Clare had, and been trying to s.h.i.+eld her?

Then, slowly, his face, which had been frowning and tense, changed and broke up.

'Good G.o.d!' he said. 'Tell me the truth, Jane. It _was_ you, wasn't it?'

Then Jane understood.

She said, 'You thought it was _me_.... And I thought it was you! Is it me you've been so ashamed of all this time then, not yourself?'

'Yes,' he said, still staring at her. 'Of course.... It _wasn't_ you, then.... And you thought it was me?... But how could you think that, Jane? I'd have told; I wouldn't have been such a silly fool as to sneak away and say nothing. You might have known that. You must have had a pretty poor opinion of me, to think I'd do that.... Good lord, how you must have loathed me all this time!'

'No, I haven't. Have you loathed me, then?'

He said quickly, 'That's different,' but he didn't explain why.

After a moment he said, 'It was just an accident then, after all.'

'Yes ... Clare was talking to him when he fell.... She's only just told about it, because you were being suspected. But I never know whether to believe Clare; she's such a gumph. I had to ask you.... What made you suspect _me_, by the way?'

'Your manner, that first morning. You dragged me into the dining-room, do you remember, and talked about how they all thought it was an accident, and no one would guess if we were careful, and I wasn't to say anything.

What else was I to think? It was really your own fault.'

Jane said, 'Well, anyhow, we're quits. We've both spent six weeks thinking each other murderers. Now we'll stop.... I don't wonder you fought shy of me, Arthur.'

He looked at her curiously.

'Didn't you fight shy of me, then? You can hardly have wanted to see much of me in the circ.u.mstances.'

'I didn't, of course. It was awful. Besides, you were so queer and disagreeable. I thought it was a guilty conscience, but really I suppose it was disgust.'

'Not disgust. No. Not that.' He seemed to be balancing the word 'disgust'

in his mind, considering it, then rejecting it. 'But,' he said, 'it would have been difficult to pretend nothing had happened, wouldn't it.... I didn't blame you, you know, for the thing itself. I knew it must have been an accident--that you never meant ... what happened.... Well, anyhow, that's all over. It's been pretty ghastly. Let's forget it....

What Potterish minds you and I must have, Jane, to have built up such a sensational melodrama out of an ordinary accident. I think Lord Pinkerton would find me useful on one of his papers; I'm wasted on the _Fact_. You and I; the two least likely people in the world for such fancies, you'd think--except Katherine. By the way, Katherine half thought I'd done it, you know. So did Jukie.'

'I'm inclined now to think that K thought I had, that evening she came to see me. She was rather sick with me for letting you be accused.'

'A regular Potter melodrama,' said Gideon. 'It might be in one of your mother's novels or your father's papers. That just shows, Jane, how infectious a thing Potterism is. It invades the least likely homes, and upsets the least likely lives. Horrible, catching disease.'

Gideon was walking up and down the room in his restless way, playing with the things on the tables. He stopped suddenly, and looked at Jane.

'Jane,' he said, 'we won't, you and I, have any more secrets and concealments between us. They're rotten things. Next time it occurs to you that I've committed a crime, ask me if it is so. And I'll do the same to you, at whatever risk of being offensive. We'll begin now by telling each other what we feel.... You know I love you, my dear.'