The Story Behind the Verdict/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE CASE OF MORNINGTON RANSBY
"Suicide of a London barrister." "A London barrister shoots himself on Wimbledon Common." So ran the posters, but there was not sufficient interest taken in the case to fill the coroner's court at Wimbledon when the inquiry was opened.
The jury, having been sworn, filed into the mortuary to see the body. The walls were whitewashed, and the floor of stone. The body of Mornington Ransby lay uncoffined, and these twelve men, eleven of them perfunctorily, and one with seeing eyes, gazed at him as he lay. This one was an artist, absurdly out of place with his fellow-jurymen, surprised at finding himself in such a position, and yet curious of the adventure.
Roger Macphail saw in the cold clay, and mentally translated to sculptured marble, the torso of an athlete and a head low-browed and Greek, hair close-cropped and black, with a kink in it, a resolute chin, delicate ears, lips a little thick, and a square jaw. Involuntarily he exclaimed:
"What an extraordinarily handsome man."
"You're looking at his face, sir. His hands would tell you more. See if he hasn't got a thick or deformed thumb. Suicides and murderers generally have something unusual with their thumbs."
Roger Macphail looked as he was bidden by one of his fellow- jurymen, and saw that, though the dead hands were finely modelled, the left thumb was short and stumpy, as if unfinished.
"You've noticed that before?" he asked his informant.
"Often and often," was the reply. "You look out for it when you're called again."
Roger Macphail shuddered at the idea that he should ever be called again to serve on a coroner's jury.
They filed back to their places. The coroner, Mr. Flynn, took his seat, and the first witness was sworn. The first witness was the milkman who had found the body and given notice to the police. Mr. Flynn was quick and impatient, and managed to keep all the evidence relevant.
James Welling was not allowed to dilate upon the gruesomeness of the spectacle, nor his feelings when he "came acrost it." What he said to his missus was ruled out, and in lieu of the great access of self-importance, he felt snubbed and slighted when he was told to stand down.
Next came the police evidence, and then that of the relatives.
Dr. Robert Hunt was the first witness from whom any evidence of importance was to be expected. It was from his house Mornington Ransby had gone forth to his death.
Dr. Hunt gave his evidence nervously and hestitatingly. He had done little more than admit to his own name, address, profession, and relationship to the deceased, before Roger Macphail, practised as he was in reading facial expression, decided the witness was not standing there with the intention of speaking "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but in order to deliver, parrot fashion, a story in which he had been well coached.
"I am a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, and practise in Wimbledon. Mornington Ransby was my wife's brother. He had broken down in nerve, and was staying with us to recruit."
"What do you mean by broken down?"
"He was very depressed."
Examined and cross-examined by the medical coroner. Dr. Hunt gave the text-book symptoms of neurasthenia or nervous breakdown. It appeared that Mornington Ransby had lacked none of these, was depressed in spirits and sleepless, ate irregularly, suffered from indigestion, and thought himself incapable of getting through his work.
"What was the nature of his work?" interrupted Mr. Flynn.
"He had a growing practice at the Bar."
"Was he in any pecuniary difficulties?"
"Oh, no: he was a rich man."
"You know of no personal or private troubles?"
The witness here hesitated, and the coroner pressed his question.
"There had been, I believe, some little friction between him and his wife."
A slender, grey-whiskered gentleman here rose and said he represented the widow of the late Mr. Mornington Ransby.
Mr. Flynn asked if Mrs. Ransby were in court.
"Mrs. Ransby is unable to be present: she is prostrate with grief. The differences between her and her husband were due solely to Mr. Ransby's state of health. Mrs. Ransby saw her husband the Tuesday before his death, was concerned at his condition, and came to us with a view to taking steps to safeguard him."
The grey-whiskered lawyer with gold pince-nez was a partner in the firm of the celebrated criminal lawyers, Messrs. Lauser and Lauser. He went on to make a statement, which he himself might have described as ex parte, as to Mr. Mornington Ransby's mental condition. He said the whole affair was naturally very painful to the family, and he asked the gentlemen of the Press—of whom, by the way, there was only one present—not to give the matter more publicity than was necessary. He spoke feelingly of Mr. Ransby's gifts, and the promising career that had been cut short in this untimely way.
Further evidence elicited that when last seen alive Mr. Ransby had told his host that he would be engaged with correspondence, and did not wish to be disturbed.
Mr. Flynn asked pertinently, if Mr. Ransby had been engaged in correspondence, what had become of the letters? Dr. Hunt said that none had been found, and it was conjectured that he made this an excuse in order to secure solitude. Dr. Hunt said, further, that the deceased resented the watch that was kept upon him, and evaded it to such good purpose that he had purchased a six-chambered revolver on the day of the tragedy. Five chambers were still loaded when they found the body with the pistol beside it.
Mr. Flynn told the jury death must have been instantaneous, that the cause being so evident he had not thought it necessary to order a post-mortem examination to be made, and he directed them to their finding.
A verdict of "Suicide whilst of unsound mind" was brought in, and everybody except Roger Macphail seemed completely satisfied.
Roger Macphail, whose wide forehead and brilliant eyes, crumpled face—humorous, with a touch of grotesquerie—was made more remarkable by a black eighteenth-century stock, had the distinction of being, according to the opinion of cultured London, the only living exponent of the lost art of painting.
From the court he went to the Savoy for lunch, meeting there Keightley Wilbur, with whom he was on terms of intimacy, and who listened to his description of the inquiry at Wimbledon with interest.
"I am sure there was a story behind that verdict, if we had only been allowed to hear it."
"There is always a story behind a coroner's verdict," Keightley answered sententiously.
"That little grey lawyer was there to burke inquiry. I am convinced of it."
Roger went on to tell Keightley what a juryman had said about the thumbs of murderers and suicides, and Wilbur spread out his own hands thoughtfully. They were nervous and slender, without irregularity, and said:
"I should think that theory would not stand the test of examination." Then he began to talk of the extraordinary fatuity of uneducated observation. Roger brought him back with difficulty to the subject in hand.
"I should like to get to know what was the story behind this verdict. What a model Mornington Ransby would have made!"
Roger drew a thumbnail sketch of him on the table-cover aa he talked. "Six feet high at least, and forty inches round the chest." He went on: "He was at the Bar, had a practice—surely many people must have known him. How am I to get to hear something more about him, Wilbur?"
"Ask Devenish. Devenish knows everybody and everything; it is his profession."
Keightley Wilbur then yawned, and said he had only just got up, and wished he had stayed in bed another hour or two, proceeding to state that daylight was "so damned indecorous," and one or two other characteristic things.
"Suicide whilst of unsound mind! I don't believe he was any madder than you or I. He looked quite sane: he had a noble head. I did not want to sit in judgment upon him. They made me, and now I am haunted by the feeling of having done him an injustice—agreed to bear false witness against him."
Keightley said there were so many lawyers, and they were so curiously ineffective, that it was not unnatural if one or two made away with themselves. Probably Mornington Ransby had discovered the incompatibility of law and justice.
Roger was unable to fall in with this persiflage.
"He haunts me, Wilbur. I would have liked to paint him, but as I can't, I want to do him justice. Rich, and apparently successful, extraordinarily handsome, and with thirty or forty good years in front of him—why should he commit suicide?"
"Because he was mad."
"I tell you he was not mad. No madman could have that brow."
David Devenish joined them.
"You know Macphail, don't you?" Keightley introduced the two men. "We were just talking about you. We want your chastened and considered judgment."
"What is the subject under discussion," David asked, "the menu?"
"The coroner's jury and Mornington Ransby," both men answered simultaneously.
"Did you know him?" Roger asked.
"Mornington Ransby? Very slightly. He did a little work for us on one occasion. By the way, this is the long vacation. I saw the medical witness spoke of overwork. Where did Mornington Ransby find his overwork in the long vacation? "
David Devenish looked at Roger when he asked this question, and Roger had no answer. Keightley, who up to now had feigned a lack of interest, now said carelessly that the same thing had struck him.
"Roger's idea is that the inquiry was burked."
"I know it: I feel it," the artist answered. "I tell you it comes between me and my work that I have assisted at a crime. I have libelled the dead."
"You'll have to help him, Devenish. We cannot have Roger's work interrupted."
David Devenish said a courteous and assenting word.
"I will have some inquiries made."
"It will be awfully good of you."
Keightley was never so deeply engrossed as when he pretended indifference. Now he said:
"Wait. I believe I have a clue—half a clue. I say, Devenish, didn't Mornington Ransby marry one of the Jerman girls?"
"I think that was his wife's maiden name. Why?"
"Of course: I remember all about it now. So that is the man! The plot thickens. I was at his wedding. What a curious coincidence that I should be at his wedding and Roger at his inquest. You will have to go to his funeral, Devenish. Was nothing said about his wife?"
"That she was distressed"
"Then she couldn't have been one of the Jerman girls," Keightley answered with decision. "Or else whoever said it lied. The Jerman girls are never distressed."
Before they had time to consider this cryptic utterance the waiter intervened.
"What are you fellows going to have to eat? Bring me a finnan-haddock and some poached eggs."
Roger Macphail was completely indifferent to food, and asked for underdone cold beef, whilst he continued to draw the head of the dead man on the tablecloth. David was a gourmet, and took some time before he decided upon sole diablée and a double cutlet. After which interlude they got back to the topic.
"Didn't Lauser say there were no differences between Ransby and his wife, or only slight ones?" David asked.
"Yes."
"Bring me a slice of smoked salmon—mind you cut it very thin, and some Savoy toast. That must have been a mistake. Mornington Ransby filed his petition a few weeks ago. I remember noticing it because he had been married less than two years."
"Filed his petition!"
"He certainly started divorce proceedings against his wife."
"Sooner or later the Jermans are always divorced," Keightley interpolated complacently. "It is the way they were brought up. Old Mother Jerman, when you shake hands with her, presses yours, sighs, and says, 'But I must be faithful to my husband!' Before the eldest girl was sixteen, John Jerman used to lock her bedroom door from the outside and take the key whenever there was company in the house."
"Keightley never exaggerates Can't you remember to bring in vinegar with the smoked salmon?" This was to the waiter.
"But seriously now"
"My dear Roger, you are so infernally serious already that if you only painted a little worse they would make you an Academician."
"He is telling you the story in his own way," David explained. "According to him, Mornington Ransby stumbled into a nest of scorpions when he married a Jerman, and shot himself in the agony of being stung."
"How you do mix your metaphors!" Keightley bewailed, with his mouth full of haddock.
"Not at all. Think it over. The allusion was classical."
"My mistake."
Keightley then continued to talk about the Jermans, of whom he told incredible and quite unprintable stories. He said there were four girls, one lovelier than the other, and three sons, all without the moral sense.
"John Jerman spends the bulk of his outrageous income in paying his sons' disgraceful debts and hushing up their worst misdemeanours; in burying off his daughters' lovers and subsidising their complaisant husbands. John has a horror of scandal, was a Jew, and is a churchwarden, hopes and believes that no one knows the first and everybody the second. He is the greatest criminal I have ever met and the most respectable; without a private conscience, but with a most sensitive public one. His creed is that any crime is to be condoned so long as it cannot be proved. His daughters understand him thoroughly, and profit by their knowledge."
David Devenish asked where these lovely and corrupt Jerman girls were to be met, but Roger Macphail was interested only in hearing about the one who had married Mornington Ransby.
"Ransby married the most beautiful of them all—Esmé. I can't take you to see her because I don't know where she is to be found at the moment. But Leda, the eldest sister, is an intimate friend of mine. I can take you both to see Leda as soon as we have finished lunch."
David Devenish pleaded an engagement.
"Will she talk about Mornington Ransby? Will she tell me why he committed suicide?" Roger asked, looking up from his drawing.
"I shouldn't be surprised. She is not at all a reticent person. It depends how you handle her."
"Let me know if you hear anything sensational," David said lightly, as he went off, leaving the other two together.
"It won't be fit for the chaste columns of the Daily Grail," Keightley said when he had gone. "True stories have always to be emasculated for newspaper consumption," he explained. "The naked truth is an indecent thing."
Roger and Keightley sat long over lunch, and then continued smoking and talking in the lounge until it was time to pay an afternoon call. Roger was full of the inquest, and no other subject held him for long. He put off a sitter by telephone, and said again he could not work until he had satisfied himself about the man on whom he had sat in judgment.
"I'll swear he was not mad," he said in the taxi, for about the fourth time. "The coroner prejudged the case and hurried it through. Lauser was briefed for Mrs. Ransby: no one defended him."
Leda Jerman lived in a little house in Weymouth Street, where the woodwork was black and the paint yellow, the prints Japanese, and the smell of incongruous incense all pervading.
Leda was in the drawing-room alone, but there were several cups on the tea-table that was drawn up to the sofa, as if she expected guests. She wore a wonderful Japanese teagown, and was smoking a Turkish cigarette. She expressed herself delighted to meet Roger Macphail, and thanked Keightley for bringing him; she was obviously well acquainted with his work. Roger found her less beautiful than Keightley had described, but had not been in the room ten minutes before he was ready to admit she was also, and compensatingly, more brilliant. She laid herself out to entertain him.
"You must come and see me when Keightley isn't here," she said presently. "Keightley always insists upon absorbing the conversation. If he fails he becomes epigrammatic, in a soft undercurrent of sound! I want to talk to you about that wonderful picture you did of mauve orchids and a lead figure. I want to know why Pan was crying instead of piping. Was it because the orchids ought not to have been out of doors? Do tell me. I adored the colour scheme—greys and purples, and the rents of blue in the cloudy sky."
"Macphail is not here to talk about the eccentricities of genius, nor to expound his artistic creed. He asked me to bring him in order that you should tell him about Mornington Ransby. He was on the jury that found Mornington committed suicide whilst of unsound mind," Keightley broke in without the slightest ceremony. "He wants you to explain your relative to him."
"Were you on the jury? How strange! They didn't say anything unkind about him, did they? I hope not. Poor, dear Mornie!"
"He was your brother-in-law?" Roger asked.
"Was he mad?" inquired Keightley. "That is what we really want to know: and if so, what was it that drove him out of his mind?"
"Mad! Of course not. What an idea! He was very clever and nice"
"The story behind the verdict—that is what Roger has come to hear. Tell us the story, Leda."
Keightley, lounging in a double-cushioned black satin chair, was obviously at home and at ease in this quaint drawing-room.
"Roger has stopped work: he can't think of anything but inquests. He is haunted by the ghost of a man who lay at the mercy of twelve very common jurymen without anyone to defend him. Roger is really a sentimentalist, although he doesn't paint babies and dogs."
Roger disclaimed the title, and Leda commiserated with him for having had to serve on a coroner's jury. They talked a little of procedure, and of how the coroner was judge, jury, advocate, and medical witness all rolled into one. Keightley had evidently read the evidence very carefully for all his affectation of ignorance, and asked presently:
"By the way, what did become of those letters? Of course there were letters?"
Leda answered at once:
"I can show you mine."
"He did not destroy them then?" Roger asked quickly. "He wrote to you?"
"Did George Lauser say they were destroyed? How clever! But how dangerous! "
"A lawyer and a liar are permissible synonyms," Keightley put in.
"Do be quiet. What do you want to know about poor Mornie?" she asked, turning from Keightley to Roger. "Is it really because you think it unjust he should lie under the stigma of lunacy that you are inquiring? It is so sweet of you, but what does it matter? He is quite dead."
"And even buried. Tell us all about it, Leda. I want Roger to go on with his painting."
"Can't you really paint?" she asked feelingly. But when Leda Jerman spoke with feeling there always seemed to be something artificial in her emphasis. "It would be dreadful if you could not paint because of Mornie. I am sure he would hate to interfere with your work; he was such a dear about art and things like that."
"I put off a sitter to-day and one yesterday," Roger answered with seriousness.
"‘The world and you will be the poorer,’" jeered Wilbur. "Go on, Leda. Devenish wants to know—we all want to know. Why did Ransby shoot himself?"
"You don't want to publish it? You won't publish it?" She got Roger's assurance, and then said, as if it were the merest commonplace:
"Poor Mornie killed himself because papa wanted him to take Esmé back."
"Come, come Leda! That's not the way to tell a story. Begin at the beginning. Remember Roger Macphail knows nothing of papa and his methods or of the Jerman passion for hushing up family scandals, keeping their tainted name from the public purview. Tell us of the marriage; of what manner of man was this Mornington Ransby who turned his back upon the world: of the events that led to the tragedy. Settle yourself comfortably. Take advantage of the gathering dusk and all extraneous circumstances. Come over and sit by me on the fender stool; let the firelight play on your peroxide head."
She, too, had dramatic instinct, and the situation appealed instinctively to her.
Roger Macphail was celebrated, and she wished to impress him. He might easily become another scalp, and Leda collected scalps. She knew exactly where to sit, and that it was where she was and not by Keightley's side. She hesitated a little, and then said again the story must never be breathed outside those four walls. But after further encouragement from Keightley she went on more easily.
"We first met Mornie at a musical party at Menzas'. Esmé was one of Menzas' pupils, and he accompanied her when she sang 'Good Night and Good-bye,' that incomparable masterpiece"
"Muckispiece."
"Don't interrupt. I can't go on if you interrupt, if you cramp my style."
"I am dumb. Proceed, but don't, I implore you, copy the popular novelist's methods too closely—abjure adjectives."
"Esmé sang. She looked lovely in pale blue and a Madonna manner, like a Murillo. Mornie fell speechlessly in love. We all saw him doing it. He asked Menzas to introduce him. Esmé deprecated his compliments about her singing in her childish, embarrassed way, looking at him shyly, and then dropping her lids. We knew the way so well because we used to see her practising it for hours before her looking-glass. But she could have been absolutely natural with Mornie. He was bowled over the first moment, and even listened for hours to papa's platitudes in order to be near her.
"Papa thought extremely well of him, and, in fact, said he was a 'worthy young man.' Papa has a habit of talking like that. But of course what really made him worthy in papa's eyes was an inheritance of about £25,000, and a growing income at the Bar. Curiously enough, Mornie was really a little like papa's encomium, like hot roast beef and suet pudding, and coming home to it after a Sunday sermon—quite good and domestic. He adored Esmé's saintliness, admitted that I was brilliantly clever and 'unhappily married,' believed that Alma was devoted to her children, and Sylvia to mamma. He even believed in mamma, and that in her youth she had been a great pianist. There was hardly anything that was told him that he did not believe. He was enchanted with the family as well as with Esmé."
"I don't know why I never met him while all this was going on?"
"I kept you a secret. Mornie had no taste for the bizarre, and he was always glad that 'under my trying circumstances I was so circumspect.’"
"Oh!"
"We all guarded his innocence. Poor dear! When he married he still had us all in his mind as various mythological goddesses in mid-Victorian clothes. The whole thing was a little hard on Esmé, but papa fawned on her to keep it up, positively fawned. They actually took a house in Bayswater—Bayswater! And when they came back from their honeymoon we all crowded round Esmé to see how she would behave. It looked at first as if she had grown into the skin of her part, as if she had become the plaster saint Mornie thought her. She wore nothing but a halo of domesticity and something substantial and brown out of her trousseau. She came to dinner with papa and talked of her 'housekeeping books' demurely. She took us all in, and we all played up to her. Alma put on her company manners and one would never have dreamed that she supplemented the marital stock-broker. We all began to believe that Menzas only gave Sylvia singing lessons"
"It is lucky Roger paints insteads of writes, or I should put in an objection. I, myself, have always intended to write the story of the Jermans, in the manner of the Rougon-Macquart series."
"You would not make us credible. Don't forget we are all in society. Papa is so anxious that none of us should forget that."
Roger asked when it was that Mornington Ransby found his wife out.
"That is really the most important part of the story—the dramatic part. Esmé must have become the character she assumed, because when she fell in love, and falling in love was a habit with her, she did incredibly foolish things, like women in novels."
"For instance?"
"Mornie wanted Esmé's picture painted, and either Alma or Sylvia suggested Gordon Graem. Gordon Graem! I don't suppose you ever heard of him. He is of the great chocolate-box school. You know, Keightley, what a strong sense of humour Sylvia has. Gordon found Esmé a very difficult subject. At first she gave him a two hours' sitting, but afterwards I think it took about six to get her posed. At first she went twice a week, and then three times, and then every day. Gordon said he wanted to study her expression at all times and under all circumstances, that the picture was going to be his masterpiece. She played at being Emma, Lady Hamilton, and that Gordon Graem was Romney! He dined with them, and they brought him to see papa. Papa does not approve of artists in a general way, but that of course did not prevent him finding Gordon Graem 'very respectful.'
"Mornie was very quaint and credulous, and quite sympathetic to all Gordon's difficulties with his subject. Gordon attempted Esmé as a mediæval saint, and a Madonna, as a Dryad, and Ceres, and all sorts of things, gravely discussing each new suggestion with her husband.
"It could have gone on almost for ever, certainly a year or two, or until Esmé tired of him. She was sure to have tired of him. Gordon was fair and flabby, wore his hair a little too long, and his clothes a little too négligé, talked of High Art, and painted like Leighton. It had actually been going on for about two months, and not only the whole family, but all our friends knew exactly what was happening. Then, one day, about eleven o'clock in the morning, as Keightley's friend, the popular novelist, would write, 'I was surprised at my toilette' by an amazed servant coming up and saying, 'Mr. Ransby is in the drawing-room and asks if you will see him at once. He says it is very urgent.' To continue from the same MS. notes, 'I hastily donned my wrapper,' and descended. Mornie was standing by the window looking extraordinarily tall and lachrymose. When I first spoke to him he did not seem to hear me.
"‘Esmé has left me,' he said. He seemed really unhappy about it, and as if he were going to cry. I was startled: it seemed so unnecessary. I said:
"‘Oh, no, Mornie: I am sure you have made a mistake. Why should she? Everything was going on so nicely.'
"‘She has gone away with Gordon Graem,' he said, in the most tragic way you could imagine.
"Nothing I could say would convince him that it was impossible. Esmé had determined apparently on doing everything in the most elementary manner. She had even left him a letter! He said he did not know how he could break the contents to papa. He seemed quite stunned. I tried to console him, and said she would probably soon come back, and that Gordon Graem was really not amusing and would be certain to bore her, and all the right sort of thing. But he did not seem to understand what I was saying.
"You can imagine the scene when papa came in. Papa first raved and then wept; mamma retired to bed and said she was 'prostrated,' sent for a doctor, several new novels from the circulating library, ordered beef-tea and a sweetbread cooked in cream. …
"When papa had finished raving and weeping, he said he must find where the misguided girl had gone: must follow and bring her back. He assured Mornie it was all a mistake, that he was sure there was some explanation, some quite simple explanation. When Mornie went away papa sent telegrams to my brothers and talked in quotations about his grey hairs being brought in sorrow to the grave, and about King Lear. At the end of three days he managed to discover that Esmé had gone to Paris. He followed them and met Gordon Graem in the hall of the Grand Hotel. I did tell you that he had my brother Stacy with him, didn't I? Stacy spoke to Gordon and asked about Esmé. Papa was too agitated. Gordon, you know, was soft and sloppy, and he had always been very poor. Neither papa nor Stacy have high sensibilities, and Stacy told me they came to the point very soon. Papa raved a little about morality, which embarrassed Gordon a good deal. But when Stacy asked bluntly, as they had arranged, what Gordon would take to go away at once, to America or Australia, everything was quite easy.
"The one thing that makes me think less of Gordon Graem is that he was satisfied with so little. I am sure papa would have given him five thousand pounds. But he offered five hundred to begin with—you know papa was in business when he was a young man, and he loves bargaining. Gordon jumped at it, simply jumped at it, Stacy told me. He had never had so much money of his own in his life.
"He accepted all the terms: he never even said good-bye to Esmé. Stacy saw him off at the Gare du Nord within an hour.
"Of course when papa and Stacy saw Esmé and told her that Gordon had gone, she made a fearful scene. But as there was nothing left to do she agreed to come back with them to England.
"Papa brought her home to Kensington Gardens Square, and went at once to Mornie, telling him how bitterly and how quickly she had repented, and how unhappy she was and anxious for his forgiveness. Papa also mentioned that Graem was going to America.
"Mornie behaved like an angel. He never said a word to papa about what he thought of Esmé, nor of what he intended to do, but he went down to Southampton with Tom Brandon and met Gordon on his way to the steamer. Tom told me no man had ever had such a thrashing before. Gordon Graem had to go to a hotel and send for a doctor. People came round and asked what it was all about. I think a policeman offered to take Mornie into custody, but Gordon had the sense not to charge him.
"Then he came back to town and filed his petition.
"Papa practically sat on the doorstep of Westbourne Crescent when he heard of this, crying and imploring Mornie to forgive his 'poor daughter:' asking him if he was going to ruin a girl of twenty-four for a moment's indiscretion, drawing a piteous picture of her state of mind, of her repentance and longing for his forgiveness. Papa has really a vivid imagination. He worked upon Mornie's feelings with such good result that in the end he agreed to an interview with Esmé. Of course he still adored her.
"I saw Mornie directly after the interview. He walked up and down this room and told me what had happened. Esmé did not play papa's game at all. She could not get over the way Gordon had been spirited away from her, and knew nothing of the thrashing at Southampton. She was still in love with him, and told Mornie so. She told him, too, how bored she had been during her two years of married life. He poured it all out to me, and how papa came to fetch her, and of their three-cornered talk. Papa begged and implored that there should be no divorce, that what he called 'the fair fame' of the family should not be tarnished. Esmé cried and said she loved Gordon Graem, and would go to him in America or join him anywhere.
"Mornie was quite distracted as he told me this, and walked up and down the room.
"I comforted him and told him it would all blow over, and that if necessary papa would send Gordon another five hundred pounds to keep him out of the way, and that he had decided to give Esmé no pocket money so that she could not pay her passage. He could not grasp the point at all. He said if Esmé loved Gordon Graem she must go to him. He seemed to think papa was quite right in not wanting the blot of a divorce on our family escutcheon. You see, he really was kind and nice. I told him that all of us—Alma and Sylvia, as well as I—would be more than sisters to him, and that we were all quite as good-looking as Esmé, and rather cleverer. But he did not show any gratitude.
"He and Esmé had another interview, and yet another. Then he went down to his sister who lived in Wimbledon. It is really a place where people play tennis. But his sister actually does live there! Absurd, isn't it?
"He wrote to us all: it was puerile of George Lauser to say the letters were destroyed, or never written. Mornie wrote papa that he saw no other way out. To Esmé that he would not stand between her and her heart's desire. To me quite a dear letter, thanking me for having been so kind to him. He said Esmé must have her freedom without the shame of a divorce, that none of us must be hurt. …
"Papa was so pleased when he heard poor Mornie had committed suicide. You know, papa is like that; he can't help it. Everything was to be hushed up; no one now would ever know that Esmé had been what papa now called 'a little indiscreet.' Poor Mornie! I think he behaved very well, don't you?"
When she had finished speaking there was a silence in the room. Even Keightley, for a moment, was unable to think of an epigram. Roger Macphail was dumbfounded at the callousness of the revelation and the attitude of the mind it revealed.
Naturally it was Keightley who recovered himself first. He got up from his chair and stood beside Leda, his hand upon her shoulder. Then he said:
"I suppose, Macphail, you will admit now the jury brought in the right verdict?" He laughed that little half-stifled characteristic laugh of his. "Mornington Ransby shot himself to save a slur on the fair fame of the Jermans! 'Suicide whilst of unsound mind.' What else could the verdict be?"
Roger answered, half -mechanically:
"‘Greater love hath no man than this …’" He, too, rose, but Leda begged him not to go yet. She told Keightley not to paw her, and he moved away from the sofa again.
"Esmé looks lovely in her widow's weeds, and speaks of Mornie so beautifully. Wouldn't you like to meet her? Of course she won't go out yet, not for quite a long time. But I could get her here. Mornie left her all his money; she is quite independent of papa now."
"And I suppose she will go to America by the first fast boat?" asked Keightley.
"Oh, no, no: of course not. You don't know Esmé; she is quite like she used to be again. I dined in Kensington Square last night. Sir Rupert Douran was there. Esmé was drooping her lids and looking angelic. You know we have no title in the family. Esmé reminded us of that when we sat together in the drawing-room afterwards. And there was a very contemptuous notice of Gordon's work in one of the evening papers. Esmé said that if ever she was painted again it must be by Sargent or Mr. Macphail. I think she has quite got over it. And she is such a bad sailor! Sir Rupert is a little bald, but so sympathetic, she said."
Very soon afterwards Roger Macphail took his leave. Leda begged him to come again.
"You do think Mornie was a dear, don't you? I am going to have an enlarged photograph of him for my writing table. Papa has ordered a marble monument, such an original design—a broken column. You will come and see me again, won't you? And do paint another orchid. …"
In justice to our one and only artist it must be said that the story behind the verdict, now he had heard it, did not send him back to his work with an easy mind. It was some time before he could paint at all, and then he refused on offer that reached him, through Keightley, to paint the Jerman sisters in a family group under the title "The Innocents at Home" as a birthday present for their father.