My purpose? I have done it for her sake. I don’t care a penny for the gaping world; all I ask is, let this book stand as the monument of an ardour which exceeded the orthodox. Let it be a fantastic tribute to a mistress who never can be mine. Let it take the place of a sigh and a sob for love’s labours lost. While I handled and recast this matter, I lived near her again in Highglen House, shared hours that held all life’s sweetness, and remembered that she did not despise me!
If I may offer a suggestion to you who are to receive this manuscript, I advise that you present it unaltered to the public as a piece of fiction, with the name of some obscure but ambitious author upon the title-page. And if he will be so generous, I trust that Lord Ludlow will write a foreword to give the thing the stamp of reality.
I trust, finally, that I may be forgiven if I remark that this is the last that will ever be heard of me.
Paula!
The Communication of
April 17, 1926
No matter where I am. It is a different place from where you think, and it will be no good tracing this letter, for you’ll find only that you are mistaken. The man who is going to take it to Rangoon and mail it two months hence, is an outcast like myself and will certainly keep faith.
Occasionally a paper gets through to me from England, and I read it with more or less amusement. Bloodthirsty wretches, the English, who would like nothing better than to see me suspended between time and eternity. But it shall not be.
There has been some discussion as to what “really” happened the evening Maryvale attempted to shoot the cat. One copy of a newspaper I came across contained a sort of symposium on the subject. One or two letters came near the simple truth, which was that, being afraid of Maryvale’s revolver, I took the chance which was offered to remove the bullets from as many cartridges as I could, managing to insure that his first three shots would be ineffective. Hints that I deliberately intended to craze the poor fellow, for whom I had a sincere liking, are false.
Through Lord Ludlow my diary has reached the authorities upon guarantee that it will not be confiscated, and from official announcements it seems they believe it to be an equal mixture of necessary truth and designing falsehood. To my astonishment, moreover, they have reported that it is a masterpiece of indiscretion—which is nonsense. About myself, to be sure, I have perhaps written a thing or two that most men would not care to have known of them during life. But I am dead. Yes, in all that concerns life as I knew it, my friends, my studies, my pleasures—in all that matters—I am dead. The authorities, however, scoff at the diary, and adduce the “mystic bone.”
Fools! The episode of the bone hanging white in the gloom was not invention, or delusion either. It was the white patch on Cosgrove’s head while he waited in the darkness and surveyed the Hall, planning Noah’s Flood and the crisis which would arise when Sir Brooke met the gorilla-man. The close-cropped nape of his neck between his black hair and the black collar of his sportsman’s coat, and the knobs that were his ears—I did not comprehend at first that these were what I saw. When my amazement and alarm had subsided, and I realized that Cosgrove was in there—I think I hated him then. His odious behaviour toward his intended wife and the sinister hint beneath Bob’s bitter outbreak had rankled. My survey from outside my window a minute later happened to prove that no one was in the immediate vicinity of the Hall. Otherwise I should hardly have felt the sense of satisfaction snug at the heart of my shivering soul when—after the bracket had given way—I realized that something had happened! But not until I reached the lawn did I know that it had happened to Cosgrove. I shall never be sure in my inmost soul whether or not I was quite aware that this trivial act might loose some destructive force—whether I am a murderer or the toy of Fate.