“I think I understand. One part of you killed those little animals whom the other part loved. The impulse came over you suddenly to kill … and you felt that was not really you, for you were Jamie, quiet, gentle Jamie, wanting to live in peace with the world.”
“I loved Effie,” he said slowly, “but she went on and on making me feel that I ought never to have married her, reminding me that I couldn’t give her the things that she wanted. And then … one night when she was going on and on … it was too much. I picked up the poker and hit her. We were standing at the top of the stairs and she fell. I told myself she tripped … but I knew I’d done it. Then it seemed it was Donald and they brought in Not Proven … and there was a chance to get away.”
“I understand, Jamie. I understand now.”
“And Mrs. Landower … I always hated her. She wanted to spoil everything … not only for me but for everyone else. She was always asking questions and going on and on. She’s a natural spoiler. And then she went to Edinburgh and she’d gone on asking questions there and she’d seen it in the papers. Then she came to see me and she said she thought I ought to tell the whole story. She said it wasn’t right to have secrets … So … I took the poker and I hit her … just like I’d hit Effie. And then I took her out in the trap and put her down the mine shaft.”
“Oh, Jamie,” I said. I was shivering.
“It’s the end, I know,” he said. “And you know now … so the only thing I can do if I want to live in peace is to send you with her.”
“But you couldn’t do that, Jamie,” I said. “Jamie is back now.
Jamie would never do it. Donald has gone … and now that you’ve told me, Donald will go forever.”
He covered his face with his hands. “What will become of me?” he asked.
“I think you’ll go away from here. You’re sick, I think. It isn’t the same … if you’re sick you’re not to blame.”
“And Lion and Tiger and the bees … what would become of them?”
“There’d be someone to take care of them.”
“I couldn’t hurt you, Miss Tressidor. No matter what …”
“I know. As soon as I knew that, I knew who you really were. And you were out there with the bees when I came. Only Jamie could have stood among them. They wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to go unprotected into their midst.”
“What can I do, Miss Tressidor?”
Again he covered his face with his hands. Lionheart came up to him and leaped onto the table. He began to lick his face, and Tiger came and rubbed himself against his legs.
“Oh, Jamie,” I said. “My poor, poor Jamie.”
I went to the door. There was no one there. I stood there for ten minutes before I heard someone in the road.
It was one of the grooms from Landower.
I called: “Will you ask Mr. Landower to come to the lodge immediately. Tell him he is wanted … desperately.”
When Paul came I clung to him. I was a little incoherent as I tried to tell him what had happened.
He put his arms round me and said: “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid any more.”
Then we went into the lodge together.
DIAMOND JUBILEE
I sat in the big bow window of one of the most successful fashion houses in London to watch the procession pass by, and my thoughts must inevitably go back to that other occasion, ten years before, when I had sat at a window near Waterloo Place and watched another Jubilee.
It was so similar, but it was a woman who had taken the place of the innocent girl. It seemed incredible that so much could have happened in ten years.
The sun shone brilliantly—just as it had on that other day. Royal weather, they called it. The little old lady in her carriage did not look much different. There was a feeling of tremendous excitement in the air just as there had been that other time. On the previous day I had driven through the city and seen some of the triumphal arches, the decorations and in the evening the gas jets had been lighted and there were even some of the new electric light bulbs which were coming into use.
“Our Hearts Thy Throne,” said one inscription. “Sixty Glorious Years,” said another; and yet another, “She Wrought Her People Lasting Good.”
And as the procession passed along, it was not so much the magnificent uniforms and all the brilliance of the royal gathering of princes and notables from all over the world that I saw. It was the passing cavalcade of the last ten years during which I had ceased to be an innocent young girl and had become a mature woman. It was not the bands and the martial music that I heard but voices from the past.
I could cast my mind back to the day when I had sat with my mother, Olivia and Captain Carmichael and watched that other Jubilee. It was then that life had taken its dramatic turn and I had a strange feeling that I had lived through the turbulent years to come not only to happiness but to a greater understanding.
I was no longer hasty in my judgements. I saw what happened through different eyes. I was mellow. I did not judge harshly now. I had learned to accept the frailties of human nature and to understand that people are not divided into the good and the evil.
My mother, pleasure-loving butterfly, yet brought happiness to her Alphonse, for the marriage had been a great success. She was content and she made those around her content. I had despised Robert Tressidor as a hypocrite with his outward show of virtue and his secret prurience. But perhaps I had judged him harshly. I was sure he had wished to be a pillar of virtue. He had had to fight his human sensuality and he could not resist the temptation to indulge it; and when he was discovered, he fought desperately to cover it and doubtless the strain had something to do with his early death. And Jeremy, the fortune hunter? Had he been born rich he might not have been forced into mercenary calculation. He had charm, good looks; if he had not had that urgent need to find a means of living in luxury he might have been quite a worthy young man. And Paul, my Paul, who sat beside me now, what a temptation he had faced when it was incumbent on him to save Landower. I had bitterly criticised him for marrying to save the house for the family, but I now saw how easy it had been for the most honourable of men to succumb to that need.
In my youthful innocence I had endowed those I admired with godlike qualities. But they were not gods. They were men.
I came across some lines of Browning’s the other day and I shall always remember them.
“Men are not angels; neither are they brutes; Something we may see, all we cannot see.”
I wish I had understood that earlier, for to understand the motives of others is surely the greatest gift one can have—and to understand is not to judge and to blame.
I think often of Gwennie … Gwennie who wanted to be happy, and did not know how to. She wanted to bargain all the time; she could not understand that money could buy her a great mansion but it could not buy love. Poor Gwennie, if only she had known that one must give willingly and without thought of recompense, and only then does one reap the rewards of love.
I am sermonizing to myself, but I know I should be grateful for having lived through such experiences which have taught me so much.
I often think of Gwennie, whose insatiable curiosity brought her to her death. “Curiosity killed the cat.” I remembered her saying that. Curiosity killed Gwennie. They found her body in the mine shaft, just as Jamie had said. The story came out at the inquest. She had discovered the truth which he had been trying to hide. The great task of Jamie’s life was to keep up the myth that Donald and Jamie were not the same person. There were two sides to his nature. He saw himself as two people in one body. There was Jamie, the gentle lover of animals, the man who wanted to live at peace with his neighbours; but there was Donald who could be swayed by uncontrollable urges to destroy; and the two natures had warred together in Jamie’s childhood; and Donald James McGill, unable to live with the murderous instincts which came over him at times, had come to terms with life by dividing himself into two personalities. While he could live as Jamie he was safe. But Donald came back when Gwennie threatened to betray him.