Part 2 — THE PAPERS OF ANTHONY KAY—Part II

II

Dr. Sabran read the papers I sent him the very same night he received them, and the following evening he asked me to dinner, and after dinner we sat on the verandah of his terrace and discussed the story.

"I recognized Haréville," said Dr. Sabran, "of course, although his Saint-Yves-les-Bains might just as well have been any other watering-place in the world. I do not know his heroine, nor her aunt, even by sight, because I only arrived at Haréville two years ago after they had left, and last year I was absent. Princess Kouragine I have met in Paris. She and yourself therefore are the only two characters in the book whom I know."

"He bored Princess Kouragine," I said.

"Yes," said Sabran, "that is why he has to invent a Slav microbe to explain her indifference. But Mrs. Lennox flattered him?"

"Very thoroughly," I said.

"Well, the first thing I want to know is," said Sabran, "what happened? What happened then? but first of all, what happened afterwards?"

I said I knew little. All I knew was that Miss Brandon was still unmarried; that Canning went back to Africa, stayed out his time, and had then come back to England last year; and that I had heard from Kranitski once or twice from Africa, but for the last ten months I had heard nothing, either from or of him.

"But," I said, "before I say anything, I want you to tell me what you think happened and why it happened."

"Well," said the doctor, "to begin with, I understand, both from your story as well as from his, that Kranitski and Miss Brandon were engaged to be married and that the engagement was broken off. But I also understood from your MS. that the man Canning was for nothing in the rupture of the engagement. It happened before he arrived. It was due, in my opinion, to something which happened to Kranitski.

"Now, what do we know about Kranitski as related by you? First of all, that he was for a long time attached to a Russian lady who was married, and who would not divorce because of her children.

"Then, from what he told you, we know that although a believing Catholic he said he had been outside the Church for seven years. That meant, obviously, that he had not been pratiquant. That is exactly what would have happened if he had been living with a married woman and meant to go on doing so. Then when he arrives at Haréville, he tells you that the obstacle to his practising his religion no longer exists. Kranitski makes the acquaintance of Miss Brandon, or rather renews his old acquaintance with her, and becomes intimate with her. Princess Kouragine finds she is becoming a different being. You go away for a month, and when you come back she almost tells you she is engaged—it is the same as if she told you. The very next day Kranitski meets you, about to spend a day at the lakes with Miss Brandon and evidently not sad—on the contrary. He received a letter in your presence. You are aware after he has read this letter of a sudden change in him.

"Then a few days later he comes to see you and announces a change of plans, and says he is going to Africa. He also gives you to understand that the obstacle has not come back into his life. What obstacle? It can only be one thing, the obstacle he told you of, which was preventing him from practising his religion.

"Now, what do we learn from the novel?

"We learn from the novel that the day after that expedition to the lakes, Rudd describes the Russian having a conversation with the novelist (himself) in which he tells the novelist, firstly, that he is going away, probably to Africa. So far we know that he was telling the truth. Then he says that just as he found himself, as he thought, free, an old debt or tie or obligation rises up from the past which has to be paid or regarded or met. Rudd, in the person of Arkright, thinks he is inventing. They talk of conflicts and divided duties and the choice between two duties. The Russian is made to say that the most difficult complication is when duty and pleasure are both on one side and an obligation is on the other side, and one has to choose between them. The novelist gives no explanation of this, he treats it merely as a gratuitous piece of embroidery—a fantasy.

"Now, I believe the Russian said what Rudd makes him say, because if he didn't it doesn't seem to me like the kind of fantasy the novelist would have invented had he been inventing. If he had been inventing, I think he would have found something else."

"All the same," I interrupted, "we don't know whether he said that."

"We don't know whether he said anything at all," said Sabran.

"I know they had a conversation," I said, "because I was in the park all that morning and someone told me they were talking to each other. On the other hand, he may have invented the whole thing, as Rudd says that the novelist in his story knew about the Russian's former entanglement, and lays stress on the fact that the Russian did not know that he knew. So it may have been on that little basis of fact that all this fancy-work was built."

"I think," said Sabran, "that the conversation did take place. And I think that it happened so. I think he spoke about the past and said that thing about the blotting paper. There is a poem of Pushkin's about the impossibility of wiping out the past."

"And I think," I said, "that the Russian laughed, and said, 'You novelists are terrible people.' Only he was laughing at the novelist's density and not applauding his intuition."

"Well, then," said Sabran, "let us postulate that the Russian did say what he was reported to have said to the novelist, and let us conclude that what he said was true."

"In that case, the Russian said he was in the position of choosing between a pleasure, that is to say, something he wanted to do which was not contrary to his duty——"

"For which duty might even be pleaded as an excuse," said Sabran, quoting the very words said to have been used by the Russian.

"And an obligation which was contrary both to duty and to inclination. That is to say, there is something he wants to do. He could say it was his duty to do it. And there is something he doesn't want to do, and he can say it is contrary to his duty. And yet he feels he has got to do it. It is an obligation, something which binds him."

"It is the old liaison," said Sabran.

"In that case," I said, "why did he go to Africa?"

"Yes, why did he go to Africa? And stay there at any rate such a long time. Did he talk of coming back?"

"No, he said nothing about coming back. He said he liked the country and the life, but he said little about either. He wrote chiefly about books and abstract ideas."

"Perhaps," said Sabran, "there is something else in his life which we know nothing about. There is another reason why I do not think that the old liaison is the obligation. He took the trouble to come and see you before he went away and to tell you that the obstacle which had prevented his practising his religion had not reappeared in his life. It is probable that he was speaking the truth. And he knew he was going to Africa. So it must be something else."

"Perhaps," I said, "it was something to do with Canning. What are your theories about Canning, the other man?"

"What are yours?" he said. "I heard nothing about him."

I said I thought that all Mrs. Summer had told me about Canning was true. Rudd, I explained to Sabran, disliked Mrs. Summer, and had drawn a portrait of her as a swooping gentle harpy, which I knew to be quite false. "Although," I said, "I think the things he makes her say about Canning are quite true. I think he reports her thoughts correctly but attributes to her the wrong motives for saying them. I don't believe she ever talked to him about Canning; but he knew her ideas on the subject, through Mrs. Lennox. I believe that Canning arrived at Haréville on purpose to see Miss Brandon. I know that the Italian lady had played no part in his life and that it was just a chance that they met at Haréville. I believe he arrived full of hope, and that when he saw Miss Brandon he realized the situation as soon as he had spoken to her. This is what Rudd makes Mrs. Summer say, and I believe that is what happened. In Rudd's version of Mrs. Summer she is lying. Rudd had already a preconceived notion that Miss Brandon's first love was to forget her. He had made up his mind about that long before the young man came upon the scene, before he knew he was coming on the scene, and when he did, he distorted the facts to suit his fiction."

"Then," said Sabran, "his ideas about Miss Brandon. All that idea of her being the 'Princess without dreams,' without passion, being muffled and half-awake—'overlooked,' as he says, which I suppose means ensorcelée."

I told him I thought that was not only fiction but perfectly baseless fiction. I reminded him of what Princess Kouragine had said about Miss Brandon.

"I must think it over," said Sabran. "For the present I do not see any completely satisfactory solution. I am convinced of one thing only, and that is that the novelist drew false deductions from facts which were perhaps sometimes correctly observed."

I said I agreed with him. Rudd's deductions were wrong; his facts were probably right in some cases; Sabran's deductions were right, I thought, as far as they went; but we either had not enough facts or not enough intuition to arrive at a solution of the problem.

As I was saying this, Sabran interrupted me and said:

"If we only knew what was in the letter that the Russian received when he was with you we should have the key of the enigma. It was from the moment that he received that letter that he was different, wasn't it?"

I said this was so, and what happened afterwards proved that it was not my imagination.

"What in the world can have been in that letter?" said Sabran.

I said I did not think we should ever know that.

"Probably not," he said, musingly. "And that incident about the story of the Brass Ring. Do you think that happened? Did they say all that?"

I was able to tell him exactly what had happened with regard to that incident.

"I was sitting in the garden. It was, I think, the morning after they had all been to the lakes, and about the middle of the day, after the band had stopped playing, shortly before déjeuner, that Rudd, Miss Brandon, Kranitski and Mrs. Summer all came and talked to me before I went into the hotel.

"Miss Brandon gave the copy of the Saturday Review, or whatever the newspaper was, back to Rudd, and mentioned the story of the 'Brass Ring,' and they discussed it, and I asked what it was about. Rudd was asked to read it aloud to us, and he did. Miss Brandon and Kranitski made no comments; and Rudd asked Kranitski if he thought the man had done right to throw away his ring, and Kranitski said: 'A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.'

"Rudd said: 'Perhaps the brass ring was the strongest link.'

"Kranitski and Miss Brandon said nothing, and Mrs. Summer said she was glad the man had not thrown the ring away. Then Rudd asked Miss Brandon whether she had ever thrown away her brass ring.

"Miss Brandon said she hadn't got one, and changed the subject. Then they all left me. That was all that happened."

"I understand," said Sabran; "that is interesting, and it helps us to understand the methods of the novelist. But we are still no nearer a solution. I must think it over. Que diable y avait-il dans cette lettre?"