Part 2. The Phonograph - Chapter 19. What The Phonograph Said

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_ PART II. THE PHONOGRAPH
CHAPTER XIX. WHAT THE PHONOGRAPH SAID

In case I should die before I can complete my arrangements for the future (said the phonograph, reproducing the voice of Francis Tudor), I am making a brief statement of the whole case into this phonograph. I am exhausted with to-day's work, and I shall find it easier and much quicker to speak than to write; and I'm informed that I ought never to exert myself more than is necessary. Supposing I were to die within the next few days--and I have yet to go through the business of the funeral ceremonies!--circumstances might arise which might nullify part of my plan, unless a clear account of the affair should ultimately come into the hands of some person whom I could trust not to make a fool of himself--such as Polycarp, my solicitor, for instance.

Hence I relate the facts for a private record.

When I first met Camilla Payne she was shorthand clerk or private secretary, or whatever you call it, to Louis Ravengar. I saw her in his office. Curiously, she didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the moment. By the way, Polycarp, if it is indeed you who listen to this, you must excuse my way of relating the facts. I can only tell the tale in my own way. Besides meddling with finance, I've dabbled in pretty nearly all the arts, including the art of fiction, and I can't leave out the really interesting pieces of my narrative merely because you're a lawyer and hate needless details, sentimental or otherwise. But _do_ you hate sentimental details? I don't know. Anyhow, this isn't a counsel's brief. What was I saying? Oh! She didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the moment, but I thought of her afterwards. I thought of her a good deal in a quiet way after I had left her--so much so that I made a special journey to Ravengar's a few days afterwards, when there was no real need for me to go, in order to have a look at her face again. I should explain that I was dabbling in finance just then, fairly successfully, and had transactions with Ravengar. He didn't know that I was the son of the man who had taken his stepmother away from his father, and I never told him I had changed my name, because the scandals attached to it by Ravengar and his father had made things very unpleasant for any bearer of that name. Still, Ravengar happened to be the man I wanted to deal with, and so I didn't let any stupid resentment on my part stop me from dealing with him. He was a scoundrel, but he played the game, I may incidentally mention. I venture to give this frank opinion about one of your most important clients, because he'll be dead before you read this, Polycarp. At least, I expect so.

Well, the day I called specially with a view to seeing her she was not there. She had left Ravengar's employment, and disappeared. Ravengar seemed to be rather perturbed about it. But perhaps he was perturbed about the suicide which had recently taken place in his office. I felt it--I mean I felt her disappearance. However, the memory of her face gave me something very charming to fall back on in moments of depression, and it was at this time something occurred sufficient to make me profoundly depressed for the remainder of my life. I was over in Paris, and seeing a good deal of Darcy, my friend the English doctor there. We were having a long yarn one night in his rooms over the Cafe Americain, and he said to me suddenly: 'Look here, old chap, I'm going to do something very unprofessional, because I fancy you'll thank me for it.' He said it just like that, bursting out all of a sudden. So I said, 'Well?' He said: 'It's very serious, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand I should be a blundering idiot to tell you.' I said to him: 'You've begun. Finish. And let's see whether I'll thank you.' He then told me that I'd got malignant disease of the heart, might die at any moment, and in any case couldn't live more than a few years. He said: 'I thought you'd like to know, so that you could arrange your life accordingly.' I thanked him. I was really most awfully obliged to him. It wanted some pluck to tell me. He said: 'I wouldn't admit to anyone else that I'd told you.' I never admired Darcy more than I did that night. His tone was so finely casual.

In something like a month I had got used to the idea of being condemned to death. At any rate, it ceased to interfere with my sleep. I purchased a vault for myself in Brompton Cemetery. Then I took this flat that I'm talking in now, and began deliberately to think over how I should finish my life. I'd got money--much more than old Ravengar imagined--and I'm a bit of a philosopher, you know; I have my theories as to what constitutes real living. However, I won't bother you with those. I expect they're pretty crude, after all. Besides, my preparations were all knocked on the head. I saw Camilla Payne again in Hugo's. She had stopped typewriting, and was a milliner there. I tried my level best to strike up an intimacy with her, but I failed. She wouldn't have it. The fact is, I was too rich and showy. And I had a reputation behind me which, possibly--well, you're aware of all that, Polycarp. In about a fortnight I worshipped her--yes, I did actually worship her. I would have done anything she ordered me, except leave her alone; and that I wouldn't do. I dare say I might have got into a sort of friendship with her if she'd had any home, any relatives, any place to receive me in. But what can a girl do with nothing but a bed-sitting-room? I asked her to go up the river; I asked her to dinner and to lunch, and to bring her friends with her; I even asked her to go with me to an A.B.C. shop, but she wouldn't. She was quite right, in a general way. How could she guess I wasn't like the rest, or like what I had been?

Once, when she let me walk with her from Hugo's down to Walham Green, I nearly went mad with joy. I think I verily was mad for a time. I used to take out licenses for our marriage, and I used to buy clothes for her--heaps of clothes, in case. Yes, I was as good as mad then. And when she made it clear that this walking by my side was nothing at all, meant nothing, and must be construed as nothing, I grew still more mad.

At last I wrote to her that if she didn't call and see me at my flat, I should blow my brains out. I didn't expect her to call, and I did expect that I should blow my brains out. I was ready to do so. A year more or a year less on this earth--what did it matter to me?

Some people may think--_you_ may think, Polycarp--that a man like me, under sentence of death from a doctor, had no right to make love to a woman. That may be so. But in love there isn't often any question of right. Human instincts have no regard for human justice, and when the instinct is strong enough, the sense of justice simply ceases to exist for it. When you're in love--enough--you don't argue. You desire--that's all.

To my amazement, she came to the flat. When she was announced, I could scarcely tell the servant to show her in, and when she entered, I couldn't speak at all for a moment. She was so--however, I won't describe her. I couldn't, for one thing. No one could describe that woman. She didn't make any fuss. She didn't cry out that she had ruined her reputation or anything like that. She simply said that she had received my letter, and that she had believed the sincerity of my threat, while regretting it, and what did I wish to say to her--she wouldn't be able to stay long. It goes without saying I couldn't begin. I couldn't frame a sentence. So I suggested we should have some tea. Accordingly, we had some tea. She poured it out, and we discussed the furniture of the drawing-room. I might have known she had fine taste in furniture. She had. When tea was over, she seemed to be getting a little impatient. Then I rang for the tray to be removed, and as soon as we were alone again, I started: 'Miss Payne--'

Now, when I started like that, I hadn't the ghost of a notion what I was going to say. And then the idea stepped into my head all of a sudden: 'Why not tell her exactly what your situation is? Why not be frank with her, and see how it works?' It was an inspiration. Though I didn't believe in it, and thought in a kind of despair that I was spoiling my chances, it was emphatically an inspiration, and I was obliged to obey it.

So I told her what Darcy had told me. I explained how it was that I couldn't live long. I said I had nothing to hope for in this world, no joy, nothing but blackness and horror. I said how tremendously I was in love with her. I said I knew she wasn't in love with me, but at the same time I thought she ought to have sufficient insight to see that I was fundamentally a decent chap. I went so far as to say that I didn't see how she could dislike me. And I said: 'I ask you to marry me. It will only be for a year or two, but that year or two are all my life, while only a fraction of yours. I am rich, and after my death you will be rich, and free from the necessity of this daily drudgery of yours. But I don't ask you to marry me for money; I ask you to marry me out of pity. I ask you, out of kindness to the most unfortunate and hopeless man in the world, to give me a trifle out of your existence. Merely out of pity; merely because it is a woman's part in the world to render pity and balm. I won't hide anything from you. There will be the unpleasant business of my sudden death, which will be a shock to you, even if you learn to hate me. But you would get over that. And you would always afterwards have the consciousness of having changed the last months of a man's career from hell to heaven. There's no disguising the fact that it's a strange proposition I'm making to you, but the proposition is not more strange than the situation. Will you consent, or won't you?' She was going to say something, but I stopped her. I said: 'Wait a moment. I shan't try to terrorize you by threats of suicide. And now, before you say "Yes" or "No," I give you my solemn word not to commit suicide if you say "No."' Then I went on in the same strain appealing to her pity, and telling her how humble I should be as a husband.

I could see I had moved her; and now I think over the scene I fancy that my appeal must have been a lot more touching than I imagined it was when I was making it.

She said: 'I have always liked you a little. But I haven't loved you, and I don't love you.' And then, after a pause--I was determined to say nothing more--she said: 'Yes, I will marry you. I may be doing wrong--I am certainly doing something very unusual; but I have no one to advise me against it, and I will follow my impulse and marry you. I needn't say that I shall do all I can to be a good wife to you. Ours will be a curious marriage.... Perhaps, after all, I am very wicked!'

I cried out: 'No, you aren't--no you aren't! The saints aren't in it with you!'

She smiled at this speech. She's so sensible, Camilla is. She's like a man in some things; all really great women are.

I could tell you a lot more that passed immediately afterwards, but I can feel already my voice is getting a bit tired. Besides, it's nothing to you, Polycarp.

Then, afterwards, I said: 'You _will_ love me, you know.'

And I meant it. Any man in similar circumstances would have said it and meant it. She smiled again. And then I wanted to be alone with her, to enjoy the intimacy of her presence, without a lot of servants all over the place; so I went out of the drawing-room and packed off the whole tribe for the evening, all except Mrs. Dant. I kept Mrs. Dant to attend on Camilla.

We had dinner sent up; it was like a picnic, jolly and childish. Camilla was charming. And then I took photographs of her by flashlight, with immense success. We developed them together in the dark-room. That evening was the first time I had ever been really happy in all my life. And I was really happy, although every now and then the idea would shoot through my head: 'Only for a year or two at most; perhaps only for a day or two!'

I returned to the dark-room alone for something or other, and when I came back into the drawing-room she was not there. By heaven! my heart went into my mouth. I feared she had run away, after all. However, I met her in the passage. She looked very frightened; her face was quite changed; but she said nothing had occurred. I kissed her; she let me.

Soon afterwards she went on to the roof. She tried to be cheerful, but I saw she had something on her mind. She said she must go home, and begged my permission to precede me into the flat in order to prepare for her departure. I consented. When ten minutes had elapsed I followed, and in the drawing-room, instead of finding Camilla, I found Louis Ravengar.

I needn't describe my surprise at all that.

Ravengar was beside himself with rage. I gathered after a time that he claimed Camilla as his own. He said I had stolen her from him. I couldn't tell exactly what he was driving at, but I parleyed with him a little until I could get my revolver out of a drawer in my escritoire. He jumped at me. I thrust him back without firing, and we stood each of us ready for murder. I couldn't say how long that lasted. Suddenly he glanced across the room, and his eyes faltered, and I became aware that Camilla had entered silently. I was so startled at her appearance and by the transformation in Ravengar that I let off the revolver involuntarily. I heard Camilla order him, in a sharp, low voice, to leave instantly. He defied her for a second, and then went. Before leaving he stuttered, in a dreadful voice: 'I shall kill you'--meaning her. 'I may as well hang for one thing as for another.'

I said to Camilla, gasping: 'What is it all? What does it mean?'

She then told me, after confessing that she had caught Ravengar hiding in the dressing-room, and had actually suspected that I had been in league with him against her, that long ago she had by accident seen Ravengar commit a crime. She would not tell me what crime; she would give me no particulars. Still, I gathered that, if not actually murder, it was at least homicide. After that Ravengar had pestered her to marry him--had even said that he would be content with a purely formal marriage; had offered her enormous sums to agree to his proposal; and had been constantly repulsed by her. She admitted to me that he had appeared to be violently in love with her, but that his motive in wanting marriage was to prevent her from giving evidence against him. I asked her why she had not communicated with the police long since, and she replied that nothing would induce her to do that.

'But,' I said, 'he will do his best to kill you.'

She said: 'I know it.'

And she said it so solemnly that I became extremely frightened. I knew Ravengar, and I had marked the tone of his final words; and the more I pondered the more profoundly I was imbued with this one idea: 'The life of my future wife is not safe. Nothing can make it safe.'

I urged her to communicate with the police. She refused absolutely.

'Then one day you will be killed,' I said.

She gazed at me, and said: 'Can't you hit on some plan to keep me safe for a year?'

I demanded: 'Why a year?'

I thought she was thinking of my short shrift.

She said: 'Because in a year Mr. Ravengar will probably have--passed away.'

Not another word of explanation would she add.

'Yes,' I said; 'I can hit on a plan.'

And, as a matter of fact, a scheme had suddenly flashed into my head.

She asked me what the scheme was. And I murmured that it began with our marriage on the following day. I had in my possession a license which would enable us to go through the ceremony at once.

'Trust me,' I said. 'You have trusted me enough to agree to marry me. Trust me in everything.'

I did not venture to tell her just then what my scheme was.

She went to her lodging that night in my brougham. After she had gone I found poor old Mrs. Dant drugged in the kitchen. On the next morning Camilla and I were married at a registry office. She objected to the registry-office at first, but in the end she agreed, on the condition that I got her a spray of orange-blossom to wear at her breast. It's no business of yours, Polycarp, but I may tell you that this feminine trait, this almost childish weakness, in a woman of so superb and powerful a character, simply enchanted me. I obtained the orange-blossom.

Then you will remember I sent for you, Polycarp, made my will, and accompanied you to my safe in your private vault, in order to deposit there some secret instructions. I shall not soon forget your mystification, and how you chafed under my imperative commands.

Camilla and I departed to Paris, my brain full of my scheme, and full of happiness, too. We went to a private hotel to which Darcy had recommended us, suitable for honeymoons. The following morning I was, perhaps, inclined to smile a little at our terror of Ravengar; but, peeping out of the window early, I saw Ravengar himself standing on the pavement in the Rue St. Augustin.

I told Camilla I was going out, and that she must not leave that room, nor admit anyone into it, until I returned. I felt that Ravengar, what with disappointed love, and jealousy, and fear of the consequences of a past crime, had developed into a sort of monomaniac in respect to Camilla. I felt he was capable of anything. I should not have been surprised if he had hired a room opposite to us on the other side of that narrow street, and directed a fusillade upon Camilla.

When I reached the street he had disappeared--melted away.

It was quite early. However, I walked up the Rue de Grammont, and so to Darcy's, and I routed him out of bed. I gave him the entire history of the case. I convinced him of its desperateness, and I unfolded to him my scheme. At first he fought shy of it. He said it might ruin him. He said such things could not be done in London. I had meant to carry out the scheme in this flat. Hence the reason, Polycarp, of the clause in my will which provides for the sealing up of the flat in case I die within two months of my wedding. You see, I feared that I might be cut off before the plan was carried out or before all traces of it were cleared away, and I wanted to keep the place safe from prying eyes. As it happened, there was no need for such a precaution, as you will see, and I shall make a new will to-morrow.

Darcy said suddenly: 'Why not carry out your plan here in Paris; and now?'

The superior advantages of this alternative were instantly plain. It would be safer for Camilla, since it would operate at once; and also Darcy said that the formal details could be arranged much better in Paris than in London, as doctors could be found there who would sign anything, and clever sculptors, who did not mind a peculiar commission, were more easily obtainable in the Quartier Montparnasse than in the neighbourhood of the Six Bells and the Arts Club, Chelsea.

We found the doctor and the sculptor.

The hotel was informed that Camilla was ill, and that the symptom pointed to typhoid fever. Naturally, she kept her room. That day the sculptor, a young American, who said that a thing was 'bully' when he meant it was good, arrived, and took a mask of Camilla's head. By the way, this was a most tedious and annoying process. The two straws through which the poor girl had to breathe while her face was covered with that white stuff--! Oh, well, I needn't go into that.

The next day typhoid fever was definitely announced. Hotels generally prefer these things to be kept secret, but we published it everywhere--it was part of our plan. In a few hours the entire Rue St. Augustin was aware that the English bride recently arrived from London was down with typhoid fever.

The disease ran its course. Sometimes Camilla was better, sometimes worse. Then all of a sudden a haemorrhage supervened, and the young wife died, and the young husband was stricken with trouble and grief. The whole street mourned. The death even got into the Paris dailies, and the correspondence column of the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_ was filled with outcries against the impurities of Parisian water.

It was colossal. I laughed, Polycarp.

My mind unhinged by sorrow, I insisted on taking the corpse to London for burial. I had a peculiar affection for the Brompton Cemetery, though neither her ancestors nor mine had been buried there. I insisted on Darcy accompanying me. The procession left the Rue St. Augustin, and the hotel was disinfected. This alone cost me a thousand francs. I gave the sculptor one thousand five hundred, and the doctor two thousand. Then there were the expenses of the journey with the coffin. I forget the figure, but I know it was prodigious.

But I was content. For, of course, Camilla was not precisely in that coffin. Camilla had not been suffering from precisely typhoid fever. In strict fact, she had never been ill the least bit in the world. In strict fact, she had been spirited out of the hotel one night, and at the very moment when her remains were crossing the Channel in charge of an inconsolable widower, she was in the middle of the Mediterranean on a steamer. The coffin contained a really wonderful imitation of her outward form, modelled and coloured by the American sculptor in a composition consisting largely of wax. The widower's one grief was that he was forced to separate himself from his life's companion for a period of, at least, a week.

A pretty enough scheme, wasn't it, Polycarp? We shall shortly bury the wax effigy in Brompton Cemetery, with the assistance of Hugo's undertakers, and a parson or so, and grave-diggers, and registrars of deaths, and so on and so on. Louis Ravengar will breathe again, thankful that typhoid fever has relieved him of an unpleasant incubus, and since Camilla is underground, he will speedily forget all about her. She will be absolutely safe from him. The inconsolable widower will ostentatiously seek distraction in foreign travel, and in a fortnight, at most, will, under another name, resume his connubial career in a certain villa unsurpassed, I am told, for its picturesque situation.

To-morrow or the next day I must make that new will, dispensing with the shutting-up of the flat. The secret instructions, however, will stand.

You may wonder why I confide all this to the phonograph, Polycarp. I will tell you. The record will be placed by me to-morrow in my safe in your vault. To-night I shall lock it up in the safe here. When I am dead, Polycarp, you will find that the secret instructions instruct you to realize all my estate, and to keep the proceeds in negotiable form until a lady named Mrs. Catherine Pounds, a widow, comes to you with an autograph letter from me. You will hand everything to that lady, or to her representative, without any further inquiry. But it has struck me this very day, Polycarp, that you, with your confounded suspicious and legal nature, when you see Mrs. Catherine Pounds, if she should come in person, may recognise in her a striking resemblance to Camilla. And you may put difficulties in the way, and rake up history which was not meant to be raked up. This phonographic record is to prevent you from doing so, if by chance you have an impulse to do so. Think it over carefully, Polycarp. Consider our situation, and obey my instructions without a murmur. The thought of the false death certificates and burial certificates, and of the unprofessionalism of Darcy, will abrade your legal susceptibilities; but submit to the torture for my sake, Polycarp. You are human. I shall add to the letter which Mrs. Catherine Pounds will bring you a note to say that if you have any scruples, you are to listen to the phonographic records in the safe; if not, you are to destroy the phonographic records.

Do I seem gay, Polycarp?

I ought to be. I have carried through my scheme. I have outwitted Ravengar. I have saved Camilla from death at his hands. I can look forward to an idyll--brief, perhaps, but ecstatic--in a villa with the loveliest view on all the Mediterranean. I ought to be gay. And yet I am not. And it is not the knowledge of my fatal disease that saddens me. No; I think I have been saddened by a day and a night spent with that coffin. It is a fraud of a coffin, but it exists. And when I saw it just now occupying the drawing-room, it gave me a sudden shock. It somehow took hold of my imagination. I was obliged to look within, and to touch the waxen image there. And that image seemed unholy. I did not care to dwell on the thought of it going into the ground, with all the solemnities of the real thing. What do you suppose will happen to that waxen image on the Judgment Day, Polycarp? Surely, someone in authority, possibly a steward, fussy and overworked, will exclaim: 'There is some mistake here!' I can hear you say that I am mad, Polycarp, that Francis Tudor was always a little 'wrong.' But I am not mad. It is only that my brain is too agile, too fanciful. I am a great deal more sane than you, Polycarp.

And I am trying to put some heart into myself. I am trying to make ready to enjoy the brief ecstatic future where Camilla awaits me. But I am so tired, Polycarp. And there's no disguising the fact that it's an awful nuisance never to be quite sure whether you won't fall down dead the next minute or the next second. I must go in and have another glance at that singular swindle of a coffin.

* * * * *

The phonograph went off into an inarticulate whirr of its own machinery. The recital was over. Tudor must have died immediately after securing the record in the safe in his bedroom, where Hugo had just listened to it.

'She lives!' was Hugo's sole thought.

The profound and pathetic tragedy of Tudor's career did not touch him until long afterwards.

'She lives! Ravengar lives! Ravengar probably knows where she is, and I do not know! And Ravengar is at large! I have set him at large.'

His mind a battlefield on which the most glorious hope struggled against a frenzied fear, Hugo rose from the chair in front of the phonograph-stand, and, after a slight hesitation, left the flat as he had entered it. Before dawn the pane had been replaced in the drawing-room window, and the side-door secured. _

Read next: Part 3. The Tomb: Chapter 20. 'Are You There?'

Read previous: Part 2. The Phonograph: Chapter 18. Husband And Wife

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