Генри Джеймс
Sir Dominick Ferrand
“Are you in a quandary?” the visitor asked.
“Yes, about giving them back.” Peter Baron stood smiling at her and rapping his packet on the palm of his hand. “What do you advise?”
She herself smiled now, with her eyes on the sealed parcel. “Back to whom?”
“The man of whom I bought the table.”
“Ah then, they’re not from your family?”
“No indeed, the piece of furniture in which they were hidden is not an ancestral possession. I bought it at second hand—you see it’s old—the other day in the King’s Road. Obviously the man who sold it to me sold me more than he meant; he had no idea (from his own point of view it was stupid of him), that there was a hidden chamber or that mysterious documents were buried there. Ought I to go and tell him? It’s rather a nice question.”
“Are the papers of value?” Mrs. Ryves inquired.
“I haven’t the least idea. But I can ascertain by breaking a seal.”
“Don’t!” said Mrs. Ryves, with much expression. She looked grave again.
“It’s rather tantalising—it’s a bit of a problem,” Baron went on, turning his packet over.
Mrs. Ryves hesitated. “Will you show me what you have in your hand?”
He gave her the packet, and she looked at it and held it for an instant to her nose. “It has a queer, charming old fragrance,” he said.
“Charming? It’s horrid.” She handed him back the packet, saying again more emphatically “Don’t!”
“Don’t break a seal?”
“Don’t give back the papers.”
“Is it honest to keep them?”
“Certainly. They’re yours as much as the people’s of the shop. They were in the hidden chamber when the table came to the shop, and the people had every opportunity to find them out. They didn’t—therefore let them take the consequences.”
Peter Baron reflected, diverted by her intensity. She was pale, with eyes almost ardent. “The table had been in the place for years.”
“That proves the things haven’t been missed.”
“Let me show you how they were concealed,” he rejoined; and he exhibited the ingenious recess and the working of the curious spring. She was greatly interested, she grew excited and became familiar; she appealed to him again not to do anything so foolish as to give up the papers, the rest of which, in their little blank, impenetrable covers, he placed in a row before her. “They might be traced—their history, their ownership,” he argued; to which she replied that this was exactly why he ought to be quiet. He declared that women had not the smallest sense of honour, and she retorted that at any rate they have other perceptions more delicate than those of men. He admitted that the papers might be rubbish, and she conceded that nothing was more probable; yet when he offered to settle the point off-hand she caught him by the wrist, acknowledging that, absurd as it was, she was nervous. Finally she put the whole thing on the ground of his just doing her a favour. She asked him to retain the papers, to be silent about them, simply because it would please her. That would be reason enough. Baron’s acquaintance, his agreeable relations with her, advanced many steps in the treatment of this question; an element of friendly candour made its way into their discussion of it.
“I can’t make out why it matters to you, one way or the other, nor why you should think it worth talking about,” the young man reasoned.
“Neither can I. It’s just a whim.”
“Certainly, if it will give you any pleasure, I’ll say nothing at the shop.”
“That’s charming of you, and I’m very grateful. I see now that this was why the spirit moved me to come up—to save them,” Mrs. Ryves went on. She added, moving away, that now she had saved them she must really go.
“To save them for what, if I mayn’t break the seals?” Baron asked.
“I don’t know—for a generous sacrifice.”
“Why should it be generous? What’s at stake?” Peter demanded, leaning against the doorpost as she stood on the landing.
“I don’t know what, but I feel as if something or other were in peril. Burn them up!” she exclaimed with shining eyes.
“Ah, you ask too much—I’m so curious about them!”
“Well, I won’t ask more than I ought, and I’m much obliged to you for your promise to be quiet. I trust to your discretion. Good-by.”
“You ought to reward my discretion,” said Baron, coming out to the landing.
She had partly descended the staircase and she stopped, leaning against the baluster and smiling up at him. “Surely you’ve had your reward in the honour of my visit.”
“That’s delightful as far as it goes. But what will you do for me if I burn the papers?”
Mrs. Ryves considered a moment. “Burn them first and you’ll see!”
On this she went rapidly downstairs, and Baron, to whom the answer appeared inadequate and the proposition indeed in that form grossly unfair, returned to his room. The vivacity of her interest in a question in which she had discoverably nothing at stake mystified, amused and, in addition, irresistibly charmed him. She was delicate, imaginative, inflammable, quick to feel, quick to act. He didn’t complain of it, it was the way he liked women to be; but he was not impelled for the hour to commit the sealed packets to the flames. He dropped them again into their secret well, and after that he went out. He felt restless and excited; another day was lost for work—the dreadful job to be performed for Mr. Locket was still further off.
III
Ten days after Mrs. Ryves’s visit he paid by appointment another call on the editor of the Promiscuous. He found him in the little wainscoted Chelsea house, which had to Peter’s sense the smoky brownness of an old pipebowl, surrounded with all the emblems of his office—a litter of papers, a hedge of encyclopædias, a photographic gallery of popular contributors—and he promised at first to consume very few of the moments for which so many claims competed. It was Mr. Locket himself however who presently made the interview spacious, gave it air after discovering that poor Baron had come to tell him something more interesting than that he couldn’t after all patch up his tale. Peter had begun with this, had intimated respectfully that it was a case in which both practice and principle rebelled, and then, perceiving how little Mr. Locket was affected by his audacity, had felt weak and slightly silly, left with his heroism on his hands. He had armed himself for a struggle, but the Promiscuous didn’t even protest, and there would have been nothing for him but to go away with the prospect of never coming again had he not chanced to say abruptly, irrelevantly, as he got up from his chair:
“Do you happen to be at all interested in Sir Dominick Ferrand?”
Mr. Locket, who had also got up, looked over his glasses. “The late Sir Dominick?”
“The only one; you know the family’s extinct.”
Mr. Locket shot his young friend another sharp glance, a silent retort to the glibness of this information. “Very extinct indeed. I’m afraid the subject today would scarcely be regarded as attractive.”
“Are you very sure?” Baron asked.
Mr. Locket leaned forward a little, with his fingertips on his table, in the attitude of giving permission to retire. “I might consider the question in a special connection.” He was silent a minute, in a way that relegated poor Peter to the general; but meeting the young man’s eyes again he asked: “Are you—a—thinking of proposing an article upon him?”
“Not exactly proposing it—because I don’t yet quite see my way; but the idea rather appeals to me.”
Mr. Locket emitted the safe assertion that this eminent statesman had been a striking figure in his day; then he added: “Have you been studying him?”
“I’ve been dipping into him.”
“I’m afraid he’s scarcely a question of the hour,” said Mr. Locket, shuffling papers together.
“I think I could make him one,” Peter Baron declared.
Mr. Locket stared again; he was unable to repress an unattenuated “You?”
“I have some new material,” said the young man, colouring a little. “That often freshens up an old story.”
“It buries it sometimes. It’s often only another tombstone.”
“That depends upon what it is. However,” Peter added, “the documents I speak of would be a crushing monument.”
Mr. Locket, hesitating, shot another glance under his glasses. “Do you allude to—a—revelations?”
“Very curious ones.”
Mr. Locket, still on his feet, had kept his body at the bowing angle; it was therefore easy for him after an instant to bend a little further and to sink into his chair with a movement of his hand toward the seat Baron had occupied. Baron resumed possession of this convenience, and the conversation took a fresh start on a basis which such an extension of privilege could render but little less humiliating to our young man. He had matured no plan of confiding his secret to Mr. Locket, and he had really come out to make him conscientiously that other announcement as to which it appeared that so much artistic agitation had been wasted. He had indeed during the past days—days of painful indecision—appealed in imagination to the editor of the Promiscuous, as he had appealed to other sources of comfort; but his scruples turned their face upon him from quarters high as well as low, and if on the one hand he had by no means made up his mind not to mention his strange knowledge, he had still more left to the determination of the moment the question of how he should introduce the subject. He was in fact too nervous to decide; he only felt that he needed for his peace of mind to communicate his discovery. He wanted an opinion, the impression of somebody else, and even in this intensely professional presence, five minutes after he had begun to tell his queer story, he felt relieved of half his burden. His story was very queer; he could take the measure of that himself as he spoke; but wouldn’t this very circumstance qualify it for the Promiscuous?
“Of course the letters may be forgeries,” said Mr. Locket at last.
“I’ve no doubt that’s what many people will say.”
“Have they been seen by any expert?”
“No indeed; they’ve been seen by nobody.”
“Have you got any of them with you?”
“No; I felt nervous about bringing them out.”
“That’s a pity. I should have liked the testimony of my eyes.”
“You may have it if you’ll come to my rooms. If you don’t care to do that without a further guarantee I’ll copy you out some passages.”
“Select a few of the worst!” Mr. Locket laughed. Over Baron’s distressing information he had become quite human and genial. But he added in a moment more dryly: “You know they ought to be seen by an expert.”
“That’s exactly what I dread,” said Peter.
“They’ll be worth nothing to me if they’re not.”
Peter communed with his innermost spirit. “How much will they be worth to me if they are?”
Mr. Locket turned in his study-chair. “I should require to look at them before answering that question.”
“I’ve been to the British museum—there are many of his letters there. I’ve obtained permission to see them, and I’ve compared everything carefully. I repudiate the possibility of forgery. No sign of genuineness is wanting; there are details, down to the very postmarks, that no forger could have invented. Besides, whose interest could it conceivably have been? A labor of unspeakable difficulty, and all for what advantage? There are so many letters, too—twenty-seven in all.”
“Lord, what an ass!” Mr. Locket exclaimed.
“It will be one of the strangest post-mortem revelations of which history preserves the record.”
Mr. Locket, grave now, worried with a paper-knife the crevice of a drawer. “It’s very odd. But to be worth anything such documents should be subjected to a searching criticism—I mean of the historical kind.”
“Certainly; that would be the task of the writer introducing them to the public.”
Again Mr. Locket considered; then with a smile he looked up. “You had better give up original composition and take to buying old furniture.”
“Do you mean because it will pay better?”
“For you, I should think, original composition couldn’t pay worse. The creative faculty’s so rare.”
“I do feel tempted to turn my attention to real heroes,” Peter replied.
“I’m bound to declare that Sir Dominick Ferrand was never one of mine. Flashy, crafty, second-rate—that’s how I’ve always read him. It was never a secret, moreover, that his private life had its weak spots. He was a mere flash in the pan.”
“He speaks to the people of this country,” said Baron.
“He did; but his voice—the voice, I mean, of his prestige—is scarcely audible now.”
“They’re still proud of some of the things he did at the Foreign Office—the famous ‘exchange’ with Spain, in the Mediterranean, which took Europe so by surprise and by which she felt injured, especially when it became apparent how much we had the best of the bargain. Then the sudden, unexpected show of force by which he imposed on the United States our interpretation of that tiresome treaty—I could never make out what it was about. These were both matters that no one really cared a straw about, but he made every one feel as if they cared; the nation rose to the way he played his trumps—it was uncommon. He was one of the few men we’ve had, in our period, who took Europe, or took America, by surprise, made them jump a bit; and the country liked his doing it—it was a pleasant change. The rest of the world considered that they knew in any case exactly what we would do, which was usually nothing at all. Say what you like, he’s still a high name; partly also, no doubt, on account of other things his early success and early death, his political ‘cheek’ and wit; his very appearance—he certainly was handsome—and the possibilities (of future personal supremacy) which it was the fashion at the time, which it’s the fashion still, to say had passed away with him. He had been twice at the Foreign Office; that alone was remarkable for a man dying at forty-four. What therefore will the country think when it learns he was venal?”
Peter Baron himself was not angry with Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had simply become to him (he had been “reading up” feverishly for a week) a very curious subject of psychological study; but he could easily put himself in the place of that portion of the public whose memory was long enough for their patriotism to receive a shock. It was some time fortunately since the conduct of public affairs had wanted for men of disinterested ability, but the extraordinary documents concealed (of all places in the world—it was as fantastic as a nightmare) in a “bargain” picked up at second-hand by an obscure scribbler, would be a calculable blow to the retrospective mind. Baron saw vividly that if these relics should be made public the scandal, the horror, the chatter would be immense. Immense would be also the contribution to truth, the rectification of history. He had felt for several days (and it was exactly what had made him so nervous) as if he held in his hand the key to public attention.
“There are too many things to explain,” Mr. Locket went on, “and the singular provenance of your papers would count almost overwhelmingly against them even if the other objections were met. There would be a perfect and probably a very complicated pedigree to trace. How did they get into your davenport, as you call it, and how long had they been there? What hands secreted them? what hands had, so incredibly, clung to them and preserved them? Who are the persons mentioned in them? who are the correspondents, the parties to the nefarious transactions? You say the transactions appear to be of two distinct kinds—some of them connected with public business and others involving obscure personal relations.”
“They all have this in common,” said Peter Baron, “that they constitute evidence of uneasiness, in some instances of painful alarm, on the writer’s part, in relation to exposure—the exposure in the one case, as I gather, of the fact that he had availed himself of official opportunities to promote enterprises (public works and that sort of thing) in which he had a pecuniary stake. The dread of the light in the other connection is evidently different, and these letters are the earliest in date. They are addressed to a woman, from whom he had evidently received money.”
Mr. Locket wiped his glasses. “What woman?”
“I haven’t the least idea. There are lots of questions I can’t answer, of course; lots of identities I can’t establish; lots of gaps I can’t fill. But as to two points I’m clear, and they are the essential ones. In the first place the papers in my possession are genuine; in the second place they’re compromising.”
With this Peter Baron rose again, rather vexed with himself for having been led on to advertise his treasure (it was his interlocutor’s perfectly natural scepticism that produced this effect), for he felt that he was putting himself in a false position. He detected in Mr. Locket’s studied detachment the fermentation of impulses from which, unsuccessful as he was, he himself prayed to be delivered.
Mr. Locket remained seated; he watched Baron go across the room for his hat and umbrella. “Of course, the question would come up of whose property today such documents would legally he. There are heirs, descendants, executors to consider.”
“In some degree perhaps; but I’ve gone into that a little. Sir Dominick Ferrand had no children, and he left no brothers and no sisters. His wife survived him, but she died ten years ago. He can have had no heirs and no executors to speak of, for he left no property.”
“That’s to his honour and against your theory,” said Mr. Locket.
“I have no theory. He left a largeish mass of debt,” Peter Baron added. At this Mr. Locket got up, while his visitor pursued: “So far as I can ascertain, though of course my inquiries have had to be very rapid and superficial, there is no one now living, directly or indirectly related to the personage in question, who would be likely to suffer from any steps in the direction of publicity. It happens to be a rare instance of a life that had, as it were, no loose ends. At least there are none perceptible at present.”
“I see, I see,” said Mr. Locket. “But I don’t think I should care much for your article.”
“What article?”
“The one you seem to wish to write, embodying this new matter.”
“Oh, I don’t wish to write it!” Peter exclaimed. And then he bade his host good-by.
“Good-by,” said Mr. Locket. “Mind you, I don’t say that I think there’s nothing in it.”
“You would think there was something in it if you were to see my documents.”
“I should like to see the secret compartment,” the caustic editor rejoined. “Copy me out some extracts.”
“To what end, if there’s no question of their being of use to you?”
“I don’t say that—I might like the letters themselves.”
“Themselves?”
“Not as the basis of a paper, but just to publish—for a sensation.”
“They’d sell your number!” Baron laughed.
“I daresay I should like to look at them,” Mr. Locket conceded after a moment. “When should I find you at home?”
“Don’t come,” said the young man. “I make you no offer.”
“I might make you one,” the editor hinted. “Don’t trouble yourself; I shall probably destroy them.” With this Peter Baron took his departure, waiting however just afterwards, in the street near the house, as if he had been looking out for a stray hansom, to which he would not have signalled had it appeared. He thought Mr. Locket might hurry after him, but Mr. Locket seemed to have other things to do, and Peter Baron returned on foot to Jersey Villas.
