It did seem to follow, even as Monty said, that with the removal of the whole Case out of the regions of ordinary crime, there might be an end also of the nightmare shadows that had oppressed Audrey Cunningham's soul.
IV
This record has already taken so many turns and windings, anticipations and doublings back upon itself, that I cannot see that one more excursion will either make or mar it. Many pages ago I wrote that the Case was a Case, complete, self-contained, and independent of the larger issues and forces in which it is nevertheless paradoxically rooted and involved. And though the Case as an entity is approaching its close, the outside influences continue. The Scepter decision, for example, is being appealed against, and Mackwith tells me that there is every likelihood that it will end up in the Lords. The Press, from which I shall shortly retire, seems to be attaining something like a real policy with regard to the matters of which I have spoken, and, encouraged by certain signs of Ministerial yielding, has taken still better heart. Cairo to the Cape has for the present failed, and Charles Valentine Smith did not succeed in becoming a member of that gallant Expedition; but other great projects are in meditation, and this very day the announcement is made of an impending flight round the world itself, for which Cooks and Ansons and Drakes and Dampiers of little more than half my age will eagerly flock to enter. The gloomy forebodings of Hills, my fellow-clubman, that attack and defense will presently become a matter of black typhus cultures do not at present seem likely to be fulfilled, not altogether for the reasons publicly given, but for quite other ones; but the chances are that he is right about gas, and that one day we may have to carry fans and box-respirators as we now carry umbrellas. What must come must come, even as it came to our fathers before us, and we, like they, can only do the duty of our day. The rest is out of our hands, and it is impotence and vanity even to dream too far ahead. So to our immediate business, of which my own present portion is the final putting to bed of our Case. With the permission of Philip Esdaile, A.R.A., and the others, I bid you to yet another breakfast. This time it is a wedding breakfast, and a double one. Hardly an hour ago Joan Merrow, spinster, became Mrs. Charles Valentine Smith, and Audrey Cunningham (née Herbert) Mrs. Montagu Rooke. Joan was married at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, and wears her full bridal attire; but Audrey Rooke wears the gray costume and the black satin hat (that sticks out on each side of her head like the serifs of a capital "I") in which she walked from the Registry Office. And there is present the same party, with the addition of Chummy, with which this story opened.
V
Again the breakfast recess was full of charming light. About the walls the love-making butterflies danced when carafes were moved, and only the flowers on the table were different—for it was early in a halcyon autumn, and the mulberry outside had already begun to turn. The faces of the Esdailes and the Rookes were enviably brown, for Monty and Audrey had spent three weeks at Santon and the whole party had returned together; and Joan, who knows perfectly well that I adore her, had very simply and sweetly come over to my side of the table and linked her hands for a moment round my arm. Then, after a warm little pressure, she had returned to Chummy again, who had risen. He was staying at an hotel in Gloucester Road, must get out of his wedding garments, and would then return to take Joan away.
"Don't change your mind and not come back," Joan called after him; and he waved his hand from the door and was off.
"What about Joan? Isn't it time she was changing too?" Philip hinted.