The Real Thing and Other Tales

It took Baron some minutes to pursue his inquiry, during which he reflected that the people of the shop were not such fools after all.  They had admitted moreover that they had accidentally neglected this relic of gentility—it had been overlooked in the multiplicity of their treasures.  He now recalled that the man had wanted to polish it up before sending it home, and that, satisfied for his own part with its honourable appearance and averse in general to shiny furniture, he had in his impatience declined to wait for such an operation, so that the object had left the place for Jersey Villas, carrying presumably its secret with it, two or three hours after his visit.  This secret it seemed indeed capable of keeping; there was an absurdity in being baffled, but Peter couldn’t find the spring.  He thumped and sounded, he listened and measured again; he inspected every joint and crevice, with the effect of becoming surer still of the existence of a chamber and of making up his mind that his davenport was a rarity.  Not only was there a compartment between the two backs, but there was distinctly something in the compartment!  Perhaps it was a lost manuscript—a nice, safe, old-fashioned story that Mr. Locket wouldn’t object to.  Peter returned to the charge, for it had occurred to him that he had perhaps not sufficiently visited the small drawers, of which, in two vertical rows, there were six in number, of different sizes, inserted sideways into that portion of the structure which formed part of the support of the desk.  He took them out again and examined more minutely the condition of their sockets, with the happy result of discovering at last, in the place into which the third on the left-hand row was fitted, a small sliding panel.  Behind the panel was a spring, like a flat button, which yielded with a click when he pressed it and which instantly produced a loosening of one of the pieces of the shelf forming the highest part of the davenport—pieces adjusted to each other with the most deceptive closeness.

This particular piece proved to be, in its turn, a sliding panel, which, when pushed, revealed the existence of a smaller receptacle, a narrow, oblong box, in the false back.  Its capacity was limited, but if it couldn’t hold many things it might hold precious ones.  Baron, in presence of the ingenuity with which it had been dissimulated, immediately felt that, but for the odd chance of little Sidney Ryves’s having hammered on the outside at the moment he himself happened to have his head in the desk, he might have remained for years without suspicion of it.  This apparently would have been a loss, for he had been right in guessing that the chamber was not empty.  It contained objects which, whether precious or not, had at any rate been worth somebody’s hiding.  These objects were a collection of small flat parcels, of the shape of packets of letters, wrapped in white paper and neatly sealed.  The seals, mechanically figured, bore the impress neither of arms nor of initials; the paper looked old—it had turned faintly sallow; the packets might have been there for ages.  Baron counted them—there were nine in all, of different sizes; he turned them over and over, felt them curiously and snuffed in their vague, musty smell, which affected him with the melancholy of some smothered human accent.  The little bundles were neither named nor numbered—there was not a word of writing on any of the covers; but they plainly contained old letters, sorted and matched according to dates or to authorship.  They told some old, dead story—they were the ashes of fires burned out.

As Peter Baron held his discoveries successively in his hands he became conscious of a queer emotion which was not altogether elation and yet was still less pure pain.  He had made a find, but it somehow added to his responsibility; he was in the presence of something interesting, but (in a manner he couldn’t have defined) this circumstance suddenly constituted a danger.  It was the perception of the danger, for instance, which caused to remain in abeyance any impulse he might have felt to break one of the seals.  He looked at them all narrowly, but he was careful not to loosen them, and he wondered uncomfortably whether the contents of the secret compartment would be held in equity to be the property of the people in the King’s Road.  He had given money for the davenport, but had he given money for these buried papers?  He paid by a growing consciousness that a nameless chill had stolen into the air the penalty, which he had many a time paid before, of being made of sensitive stuff.  It was as if an occasion had insidiously arisen for a sacrifice—a sacrifice for the sake of a fine superstition, something like honour or kindness or justice, something indeed perhaps even finer still—a difficult deciphering of duty, an impossible tantalising wisdom.  Standing there before his ambiguous treasure and losing himself for the moment in the sense of a dawning complication, he was startled by a light, quick tap at the door of his sitting-room.  Instinctively, before answering, he listened an instant—he was in the attitude of a miser surprised while counting his hoard.  Then he answered “One moment, please!” and slipped the little heap of packets into the biggest of the drawers of the davenport, which happened to be open.  The aperture of the false back was still gaping, and he had not time to work back the spring.  He hastily laid a big book over the place and then went and opened his door.

It offered him a sight none the less agreeable for being unexpected—the graceful and agitated figure of Mrs. Ryves.  Her agitation was so visible that he thought at first that something dreadful had happened to her child—that she had rushed up to ask for help, to beg him to go for the doctor.  Then he perceived that it was probably connected with the desperate verses he had transmitted to her a quarter of an hour before; for she had his open manuscript in one hand and was nervously pulling it about with the other.  She looked frightened and pretty, and if, in invading the privacy of a fellow-lodger, she had been guilty of a departure from rigid custom, she was at least conscious of the enormity of the step and incapable of treating it with levity.  The levity was for Peter Baron, who endeavoured, however, to clothe his familiarity with respect, pushing forward the seat of honour and repeating that he rejoiced in such a visit.  The visitor came in, leaving the door ajar, and after a minute during which, to help her, he charged her with the purpose of telling him that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse—that of thanking him for it in person and without delay.

“It was the impulse of a kind nature,” he said, “and I can’t tell you what pleasure you give me.”

She declined to sit down, and evidently wished to appear to have come but for a few seconds.  She looked confusedly at the place in which she found herself, and when her eyes met his own they struck him as anxious and appealing.  She was evidently not thinking of his song, though she said three or four times over that it was beautiful.  “Well, I only wanted you to know, and now I must go,” she added; but on his hearthrug she lingered with such an odd helplessness that he felt almost sorry for her.

“Perhaps I can improve it if you find it doesn’t go,” said Baron.  “I’m so delighted to do anything for you I can.”

“There may be a word or two that might be changed,” she answered, rather absently.  “I shall have to think it over, to live with it a little.  But I like it, and that’s all I wanted to say.”

“Charming of you.  I’m not a bit busy,” said Baron.

Again she looked at him with a troubled intensity, then suddenly she demanded: “Is there anything the matter with you?”

“The matter with me?”

“I mean like being ill or worried.  I wondered if there might be; I had a sudden fancy; and that, I think, is really why I came up.”

“There isn’t, indeed; I’m all right.  But your sudden fancies are inspirations.”

“It’s absurd.  You must excuse me.  Good-by!” said Mrs. Ryves.

“What are the words you want changed?” Baron asked.

“I don’t want any—if you’re all right.  Good-by,” his visitor repeated, fixing her eyes an instant on an object on his desk that had caught them.  His own glanced in the same direction and he saw that in his hurry to shuffle away the packets found in the davenport he had overlooked one of them, which lay with its seals exposed.  For an instant he felt found out, as if he had been concerned in something to be ashamed of, and it was only his quick second thought that told him how little the incident of which the packet was a sequel was an affair of Mrs. Ryves’s.  Her conscious eyes came back to his as if they were sounding them, and suddenly this instinct of keeping his discovery to himself was succeeded by a really startled inference that, with the rarest alertness, she had guessed something and that her guess (it seemed almost supernatural), had been her real motive.  Some secret sympathy had made her vibrate—had touched her with the knowledge that he had brought something to light.  After an instant he saw that she also divined the very reflection he was then making, and this gave him a lively desire, a grateful, happy desire, to appear to have nothing to conceal.  For herself, it determined her still more to put an end to her momentary visit.  But before she had passed to the door he exclaimed: “All right?  How can a fellow be anything else who has just had such a find?”

She paused at this, still looking earnest and asking: “What have you found?”

“Some ancient family papers, in a secret compartment of my writing-table.”  And he took up the packet he had left out, holding it before her eyes.  “A lot of other things like that.”

“What are they?” murmured Mrs. Ryves.

“I haven’t the least idea.  They’re sealed.”

“You haven’t broken the seals?” She had come further back.

“I haven’t had time; it only happened ten minutes ago.”

“I knew it,” said Mrs. Ryves, more gaily now.

“What did you know?”

“That you were in some predicament.”

“You’re extraordinary.  I never heard of anything so miraculous; down two flights of stairs.”

“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.