"And I don't want to puzzle anybody, nor to enlighten anybody either. Still, you've done much for us—Mala says she would have died but for you. If you care for a very simple story you can have it."
"Just as you like," I said. "But I should imagine that your story would be interesting."
"I do not think so. A little more than a year ago I was in Paris. Mala was also there. I met her through a friend of mine. I brought her to England and married her. You know how such a marriage is regarded here—how a woman of colour is regarded in any case. Very well, Felonsdene was a place where we could live to ourselves."
He stopped, as if there had been no more to say.
"So far," I said, "you have told me precisely what one might have conjectured. How did it all happen? What were you doing in Paris—and Mala? Who was the friend? How did it come about?"
He spoke slowly, more to himself, as it seemed, than to me. "My friend was an English Catholic, an ex-priest, a religious man like myself. His mind gave way, and he is shut up in an asylum now. He took me to see Mala. Night after night. Sometimes it was miraculous—and sometimes nothing. When the performance went badly, the uncle beat her. We could stop that because it was only a question of money. I remember it all—settled after midnight at a café where we drank absinthe—the uncle with arms too long and very prognathous, like a dressed-up ape, pouncing on the bank-notes with hairy fingers and counting aloud in French, very bad French, not like Mala's. He was very old—a hundred years, he said—he cannot have been her uncle really. A great-uncle perhaps. He was not a religious man at all. He kept patting the pocket where the bank-notes were. We put him in a fiacre, because he was drunk. We were out of Paris that night—my friend, and Mala, and myself. Next morning we crossed the Channel, and next night there was a riot at the theatre because Mala did not appear. Did I say where we went in England? I am not used to speaking so much, and it confuses me."
I was afraid he would stop again. "I don't think you mentioned the exact name," I said.
"Wilsing, my friend's own place. High walls, and lonely gardens, but too many servants—they all looked questions at us. Gardeners would touch their caps and look round after we had passed—you can imagine it. It was while we were at Wilsing that I married Mala. And shortly afterwards my poor friend had to be taken away. You see, doctor, he was a very earnest man, and very religious. He had gone too far along a new road, and he was horribly frightened but could not go back. It was too much for him. Mala and I had to go away also, of course. I remember hotels that would not take us in. We have been followed in the streets by jeering crowds. Even when I had found Felonsdene there was endless trouble before I could buy it. No tenant could be found for it—there is some silly story that the place is haunted. Besides, the house was all in ruins, and too far from—from everything. And yet the owner would not sell."
He paused. "And in the end?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, I got it in the end. I tempted him. Here we have arranged life as we wish it to be, and we practise our religion without molestation. There are consolations."