- Chapter XVI. A Declaration of Independence.
“He’s gone for a couple of days,” observed Vicot bluntly, as he opened the door of Andrew’s apartment to Radwalader, about noon of the following day. “He left a note for you. It’s on his desk.”
“I’ll come in and read it,” answered Radwalader, with his customary lack of manifest surprise. “It may require an answer.”
He pulled off his gloves in a leisurely manner, as he entered the little salon, and stood looking down at the note addressed to him.
“Perhaps,” he added, “you’ll save me the trouble of opening this by giving me a brief epitome of its contents.”
“He didn’t honour me with his confidence,” said Vicot. “And he left the note sealed.”
Radwalader turned the envelope, flap up.
“I see you’ve been careful to restore it to its original condition,” he remarked. “You’re skilful at this kind of thing, my friend — uncommonly skilful. I fail to perceive the slightest evidence of your tampering.”
“Then why not give me the benefit of the doubt?” demanded the other sullenly.
“Because, with the best will in the world, it’s quite impossible to give you the benefit of something which doesn’t exist. A sealed letter and a corked bottle, you see, are two things which habit has long since made it impossible to resist.”
“Not a drop of liquor has touched my lips to-day!” exclaimed Vicot.
“And it’s past noon!” retorted Radwalader lightly. “Is this a miracle of which you are informing me, or have you been taking it through a tube?”
He took up the note, and seated himself deliberately in Andrew’s chair. Vicot watched him alertly, gnawing his lip.
“Am I to know what it’s about?” he demanded presently.
“There’s no conceivable reason why you should,” was the answer; “but, on the other hand, there seems to be no conceivable reason why you shouldn’t. Only pray don’t stand upon ceremony, my good Jules. If you know the contents, do be kind enough to say so, and spare me the effort of useless recapitulation.”
“I’ve practically told you already. I haven’t touched it.”
“Curiously enough,” said Radwalader, “I believe you.”
He threw the note upon the table, and Vicot, picking it up, scanned it eagerly.
‘“I’ve gone back’” he read slowly, “‘for another try.’”
“Well?” inquired Radwalader pleasantly. “Are you any the wiser?”
“What does it mean?” asked Vicot, looking down at him.
“It means,” said Radwalader, “that the game is up.”
“Damnation!”
“My good Jules!” protested Radwalader, “pardon the license of an old friend, who begs to suggest that your interruption is in most execrable taste!”
“What are you driving at?” exclaimed Vicot impatiently. “What does it mean, all this palaver? There’s something back of it. You can’t hoodwink me, Radwalader.”
“Far be it from me to attempt the impossible, my astute Jules. Quite justly, you demand what I’m driving at, and, quite frankly, I’ve told you. The game is up. Mr. Vane has outplayed us. He’s managed to get out of this pretty little tangle in a fashion at once ingenious and unexpected. I confess myself beaten. He’s gone back to the girl he intends to marry.”
Radwalader paused for an instant, as a thought struck him.
“And he would have gone back long ago,” he added, “if he had received a certain telegram which was sent to him three weeks ago. If that particular telegram was not intercepted en route, it should have reached him; if that particular telegram was intercepted en route, it should have reached me. Well?”
Vicot stared at him blankly, his hand groping in his pocket.
“A telegram?” he repeated, and then drew out the blue missive which had arrived, almost simultaneously with Mirabelle, three weeks before.
“I forgot,” he stammered.
“You ass!” exclaimed Radwalader. “It’s lucky enough for you that your carelessness didn’t interfere with my plans. As it is, I don’t see that it makes much difference. Vane has been too sharp for us, all around. For once in my life, I’ve made a miscalculation. He’s out of the net, right enough, and the best we can do is to abandon the chase and apply ourselves to something more profitable. I’m glad to think that, however unsatisfactory, from a financial point of view, the venture may have proved to me, at least you have not suffered—”
“Enough of that!” broke in Vicot. “Get to the point!”
“Why, the point is simply this. On the return of Mr. Vane, you will present, in due form, your resignation from his employ, and resume your careful surveillance of my window in the Rue de Villejust. When you shall observe it to be ornamented with a certain unpretentious blue jar, you will know that I am once more at home to you. I think I can promise you that the next case deserving of our joint attention will not be so barren of result as this one, which we are now with reluctance forced to relinquish. You might go back to driving a cab, meanwhile.”
“I’m to leave Mr. Vane’s employ,” said Vicot, less in the tone of inquiry than in that of reflection. “I’m to leave Mr. Vane’s employ.”
“Quite so, my perspicacious Jules.”
“Well, then — I won’t!” said Jules Vicot.
He seated himself upon the edge of Andrew’s desk and folded his arms.
“Radwalader,” he added, “many’s the time I’ve listened to you. Now it’s your turn to listen to me.”
Radwalader, following the impulse of a momentary whim, folded his arms in turn.
“Mon cher confrère,” he said amusedly, “I shall listen with reverent attention to whatever you may have to say.”
“I know too well,” continued the other, “that I can’t appeal with any hope of success to your sense of pity — because you haven’t any. Wilfully or otherwise, you have contrived to stifle the promptings of feeling which weaken — or is it strengthen? — other men. You’re trained to perfection. But there must be one thing which even you are unable to forget — I mean the time when we were young and clean, when we smiled by day as we dreamed of what lay before us, instead of shuddering by night, as now, as we dream of what lies behind.”
Radwalader nodded. “I’m not addicted, myself, to the unpleasant habit of shuddering,” he said, “but I think I know what you mean by the other part of your preamble. ‘When all the world was young, lad, and all the trees were green: and every goose a swan, lad, and every lass a queen!’ Isn’t that it? Yes, I seem to remember something of the sort, and with a not unpleasurable emotion. Continue, my good Jules.”
“Sometimes,” said Vicot, moistening his lips, “the thought of that time must come back even to you. Sometimes even you, with all your callousness, must contrast what you might have been with what you are. Sometimes a face, among all those we meet, must recall to you the days when better things were possible. But if you have never been thrust back thus upon your own youth, and grown sick at thought of it, I have! There’s nothing more awful.”
“We’ve been over all this before,” put in Radwalader, with a suggestion of weariness.
“You said you’d hear me out! I’m not talking religion, or even morality. I’m trying to spare you the cant to which you once objected. I don’t care about the future. I’m like you in having no more dread of hell than love of heaven. No, it’s not the future which hits me. But the past —! The world — the world which, long since, I ran to meet so eagerly — has made me rotten, rotten, rotten to the core!”
“Severe,” commented Radwalader, “but strictly accurate. Continue, my Jules.”
“You can’t make me angry, Radwalader. I’m changed a good bit in these past few weeks. I’ve been going easy on the drink for one thing, which may account for the fact that my head has cleared, and that I see a number of things in a very different light.”
For an instant his eyes gleamed with a kind of eagerness.
“I wish you were easier to talk to, Radwalader,” he added, his voice suddenly grown timorous with a hint of the old whimper. “With all your cold-bloodedness, you’re the only—”
“When you’ve anything worth saying, I’m as easy to talk to as the next man,” said Radwalader. “It’s only when you begin to lament through your nose about the past, and remorse; and ‘I remember, I remember the house where I was born,’ that I’m not the pink of polite attention. I confess I can’t stand that kind of thing; but, for this once, let it go. I’ll hear you out.”
“Well,” continued the other, “one thing I’ve found out is that there is less tragedy than comedy about an old man looking back shamefacedly upon the past.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said,” observed Radwalader.
“The tragic spectacle,” added Vicot, “is that of the young man looking forward hopefully upon the future. Now the old man and the young man I describe have been in close proximity for several weeks, and the old man has learned that his own security isn’t worth much, one way or another, when compared with the young man’s security.”
“The old man gets ten in modesty.” Radwalader carefully entered the mark in an imaginary report-book.
“The old man sees,” pursued Vicot, “that a certain person whom he has been fearing is really of infinitely minor importance, after all.”
“Grand merci!”
“This person has been jumping out of dark corners and shouting ‘Boo!’ — that’s all. Even if he should tell all he knows about the old man — but he won’t, no matter what happens: that’s another thing the old man has learned — it wouldn’t make any difference. Do you see? It wouldn’t make any difference at all!”
He peered at Radwalader triumphantly, but the latter noted that under his folded left arm Vicot’s right thumb twitched ceaselessly against his sleeve. He hugged himself upon perceiving this, and nodded.
“Shrewd old man!” he said. “Pity he didn’t find all this out sooner.”
“Well, soon or late,” went on Vicot, “the knowledge is his now, and it’s bound to be useful — not to himself, mind you, but to the young man! Do you begin to see? If this person is going to hound this young man, and ruin his life as he has ruined others, it will have to be by new tricks. The old man knows all the old ones — he would recognize them in their earliest stages — he would be able to checkmate this — this person, before he had fairly made the first move!”
“Is that all?” inquired Radwalader.
“All? Yes — it’s all until I hear what you have to say.”
“Oh, I’m expected to take part in the conversation, am I? I thought I was only to listen. Well, then, my good Jules, if you will allow me to dispense with the thin disguise of the old man and the young man and the certain person — as the phrases are becoming wearisome — suppose I were to say to you that all this is entirely without interest, so far as I’m concerned? We’ve fought over all this ground of my hold upon you; and you know as well as I that you’re at liberty to test its efficacy whenever your courage is equal to the ordeal. We’ve also wasted some time upon your maunderings over your past probity, youthful innocence, and present degeneration. I’m sorry, but I can’t get up the faintest gleam of enthusiasm on this subject. Indeed, it bores me intolerably, and I beg you’ll spare me from it in the future. As regards Mr. Andrew Vane, whom you see fit to think in danger of being ‘ruined,’ I’ve already stated that I’ve no further designs upon him. Altogether, my good Jules, I consider that I’ve done no more than shamefully waste my time by giving you my undivided attention for the past ten minutes.”
Vicot revolved these remarks in silence for a few moments, glancing up covertly once or twice from under his heavy lids, as if in hope of surprising the other in an expression indicative of some idea at variance with his words. But in each instance Radwalader met his eyes with his quiet, non-committal smile.
“It seems you were right,” continued the latter presently, “in saying you have changed. If it pleases you to imagine that the alteration is in the nature of a great moral awakening, by all means consider it so. To my way of thinking, it’s more like one of the transient panics of a Louis XI., praying to the little images in his cap, and ready, the next moment, to resume his misdoing at the point where he left off. Only one thing is made clear by what you’ve said, and that is that you’re no longer fit for the kind of work I’ve thus far found for you. From to-day we part company.”
He rose slowly to his feet, and was about to move towards the door, when he was checked by a movement on the other’s part. Following his old habit, Vicot had thrust his hands into his pockets.
“That suits me,” he answered. “But please to remember this. I’ve been cleaning and loading your weapons for you so long that I know their uses as well as yourself. I’m able to turn them effectively against you, and I’ll do it if need be. I would be resigning the little hold I have upon security, perhaps; but I’d not be doing it uselessly. Some men fling themselves into the sea, simply to be rid of life: others save the life of another by quietly slipping off a log that won’t keep two afloat. Both acts are suicide, but, somehow, there’s a difference.”
“Ah, I begin to see,” said Radwalader. “Sidney Carton all over again — eh? I, in the leading rôle of guillotine, come down upon you and chop off your head, while Mr. Vane goes free. ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done,’ and all that. It’s a pity that Mr. Vane, by his own shrewdness, has already obviated the danger which threatened him, and that you no longer have the opportunity of exercising your lofty purpose.”
“If I could believe that!” observed Vicot.
“Believe what?”
“Why, believe that the smallest part of what you’ve told me is true — that the game’s up — that you’re beaten — that Mr. Vane is free. But I can’t. What have you often said to me? — that you never turn back, never give up. And yet, knowing you’re defeated, I find you smiling, careless, ready to chuck the game and begin on something else. Does that ring true? You know whether it does or not. You know whether I’ve any reason to trust you? No! And so I refuse to leave Mr. Vane’s employ.”
“Might one inquire,” asked Radwalader, “what you expect to gain?”
“Nothing,” replied Vicot, “which you would appreciate or even understand. I expect to gain self-respect.”
“Indeed! May I ask whose?”
“If I cannot be anything myself,” continued Vicot, disregarding the sneer, “I can at least be of use to this boy. I can show him my life, teach him how insignificant slips are the beginnings of moral avalanches, and how bitter are the dregs when one has had the wine.”
“You’re an authority on that point, at all events,” commented Radwalader dryly. “But what insensate delusion is this, my eloquent, disreputable Jules? What can you possibly be to him, or he to you? How can you even begin to speak to him upon this personal plane? At the first symptom of such insolent effrontery, he’d give you a week’s wages in lieu of notice, and show you the door. Faugh! Why, man, he’s your master, your employer, your—”
“He’s my son!” said Jules Vicot.