Maurice Baring
Overlooked
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?"
THE PAPERS OF ANTHONY KAY – PART II
III
The more I thought over the whole story the more puzzling it seemed to me. The puzzle was increased rather than simplified by a letter which I received from Kranitski from Africa, in which he expressed no intention of coming back, but said he was living by himself, quite contented in his solitude.
I told Sabran of this letter and the Doctor said we were without one important donnée, some probably quite simple fact which would be the clue of the whole situation: the contents of the letter Kranitski had received when he was with me —
"What we want," he said, "is a moral Sherlock Holmes, to deduce what was in that letter – "
It was after I had been at Haréville about ten days, that Sabran asked me whether I would like to make the acquaintance of a Countess Yaskov. She was staying at Haréville and was taking the waters. He had only lately made her acquaintance himself, but she was dining with him and he wanted to ask a few people to meet her. I asked him what she was like. He said she was not exactly pretty, but gentle and attractive. He said: "Elle n'est pas vraiment jolie, mais elle a une jolie taille, de beaux yeux, et des perles."
She had been divorced from her husband for years and lived generally at Rome, so he had been told.
I went to Sabran's dinner. There were several people there. I had never met Countess Yaskov before. She seemed to be a very pleasant and agreeable lady. I sat next to her. She was an accomplished musician, and she played the pianoforte after dinner with a ravishing touch. She was certainly gentle, intelligent, and natural. We were talking of Italy, when she astonished me by saying she had not been there for some time. Later on she astonished me still more by talking of her husband in the most natural way in the world. But I had heard cases of Russians being divorced and yet continuing to be good friends. I longed to ask her if she knew Kranitski, but I could not bring his name across my lips. I asked her if she knew Princess Kouragine. She said, "Which one?" And when I explained or tried to describe the one I knew, there turned out to be about a dozen Princess Kouragines scattered all over Europe; some of them Russian and some of them not, so we did not get any further, and Countess Yaskov was vagueness itself.
We talked of every conceivable subject. As she was going away she asked Sabran if he could lend her a book. He lent her Rudd's Unfinished Dramas, and asked me if he might lend her Overlooked. I said certainly, but I explained that it was more or less a private book about real people.
Two or three days later I met her in the park. She asked me if I had read Rudd's story. I told her it had been read to me.
"But it is meant to happen here, isn't it?" she said. "And aren't you one of the characters?"
I said this was, I believed, the case.
"Then you were here when all that happened?" she said. "Did it happen like that, or was it all an invention?"
I said I thought there was some basis of fact in the story, and a great deal of fancy, but I really didn't know. I did not wish to let her know at once how much I knew.
"Novelists," I said, "invent a great deal on a very slender basis, especially James Rudd."
"You know him?" she said. "He was here with you, of course?"
I told her I had made his acquaintance here, but that I had never seen him before or since.
"What sort of man is he?" she asked.
I gave her a colourless, but favourable portrait of Rudd.
"And the young lady?" she said, "Miss – I've forgotten her name."
"The heroine?" I asked.
"Yes, the heroine who is 'overlooked.' Do you think she was 'overlooked'?"
"In what sense?"
"In the fairy-tale sense."
I said I thought that was all fancy-work.
"I wonder," she said, "if she married the young man."
"Which one?"
"The Englishman."
I said I had not heard of her being married.
"And was there a Russian here, too?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "his name was Kranitski."
"That sounds like a Polish name."
I said he was a Russian.
"You knew him, too?"
"Just a little."
"It is an interesting story," she said, "but I think Rudd makes all the characters more complicated than they probably were. Does Mr. Rudd know Russia?"
I said I believed not at all.
"I thought not," she said.
I said that Kranitski seemed to me a far simpler character than Rudd's Anikin.
"Did Dr. Sabran know all those people?" she asked.
I said Dr. Sabran had not been here while it was going on.
"It would be very annoying for that poor girl to find herself in a book," she said, "if he published it."
I said that Rudd would probably never publish it – although he would probably deny that he had made portraits, and to some extent with reason, as his Kathleen Farrel was quite unlike Miss Brandon.
"Oh, her name was Miss Brandon," Countess Yaskov said, pensively. "If she comes here this year you must introduce me to her. I think I should like her."
"Everyone said she was beautiful," I said.
"One sees that from the novel. I suppose James Rudd invented a character which he thought suited her face."
I said that that was exactly what had happened. Rudd had started with a theory about Miss Brandon, that she was such and such person, and he distorted the facts till they fitted with his theory. At least, that was what I imagined to have been the case.
I asked Countess Yaskov what she thought of the psychology of Rudd's Russian. I said she ought to be a good judge. She laughed and said:
"Yes, I ought to be a good judge. I think he is rather severe on the Slavs, don't you? He makes that poor Anikin so very complicated, and so very sly and fickle as well."
I said I thought the excuses which Rudd credited the Russian with making to himself for breaking off the engagement with the heroine of the book, were absurd.
"Do you think the Russian said those things or that the novelist invented them?" she asked.
I said I thought he had said what he was reported to have said.
"If he said that, he was not lying," she said.
I agreed, and I also thought he had said all that; but that Rudd's explanation of his words was wrong. If that was true he must have broken off his engagement.
"There is nothing very improbable in that, is there?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said. And yet I thought that Kranitski had finished with whatever there was in the past that might have been an obstacle to his present.
"Did he tell you that?" she asked.
As she said that, although the tone of her voice was quite natural, almost too natural, there was a peculiar intonation in the way she said the word "he," in that word and that word only, which gave me the curious sensation of a veil being lifted. I felt I was looking through a hole in the clouds. I felt certain that Countess Yaskov had known Kranitski.
"He never told me one word that had anything to do with what Rudd tells in his novel," I said.
I felt that my voice was no longer natural as I said this. There was a strain in it. There was a pause. I do not know why I now felt certain that Countess Yaskov possessed the key of the mystery. I suddenly felt she was the woman whom Kranitski had known and loved for seven years, so much so, that I could say nothing further. I also felt that she knew that I knew. We talked of other things. In the course of the conversation I asked her if she thought of staying a long time at Haréville.
"It depends on my husband," she said. "I don't know yet whether he is coming here to fetch me, or whether he wants me to meet him. At any rate I shall go back to Russia for my boys' holidays. I have two sons at school."
The next time I saw Sabran I asked him what he had meant by telling me that Countess Yaskov was divorced from her husband. I told him what she had said to me about her husband and her sons. He did not seem greatly surprised; but he stuck to his point that she was divorced.
The next time I saw Countess Yaskov, she told me she had told a friend of hers about Rudd's story. Her friend had instantly recognized the character of Anikin.
"My friend tells me," she said, "that the novelist is quite false as far as that character is concerned, false and not fair. She said what happened was this: The man whom Rudd describes as Anikin had been in love for many years with a married woman. She was in love with him, too, but she did not want to divorce her husband, for various reasons. So they separated. They separated after having known each other a long time. Then the woman changed her mind and she settled she would divorce, and she let Anikin know. She wrote to him and said she was willing, at last, to divorce. My friend says it was complicated by other things as well. She did not tell me the whole story, but the man went to Africa and the woman did not divorce. What Anikin was supposed to have said to the novelist was true. He told the truth, and the novelist thought he was saying false things. That is what you thought, too. But all has been for the best in the end, because do you know what there is in to-day's Daily Mail?" she asked.
I said no one had read me the newspaper as yet.
"The marriage is announced," she said, "of Miss Brandon to a man called Sir Somebody Canning."
"That," said I, "is the Englishman in the book."
"So Mr. Rudd was wrong altogether," she said, and she laughed.
That is all that passed between us on this occasion, and I think this is a literal and complete transcription of our conversation. Countess Yaskov told me her story, the narrative of her friend, with perfect naturalness and with a quiet ease. She talked as if she were relating facts that had no particular personal interest for her. There was not a tremor in her voice, not an intonation, either of satisfaction or pain, nothing but the quiet impersonal interest one feels for people in a book. She might have been discussing Anna Karenina, or a character of Stendhal. She was neutral and impartial, an interested but completely disinterested spectator.
The tone of her voice was subtly different from what it had been the other day towards the end of our conversation. For during that conversation, admirably natural as she had been, and although her voice only betrayed her in the intonation of one syllable. I feel now, looking back on it, that she was not sure of herself, that she knew she was walking the whole time on the edge of a precipice.
This time I felt she was quite sure of herself; sure of her part. She was word-perfect and serenely confident.
Of course, what she said startled me. First of all, the soi-disant explanation of her friend. Had she told a friend about the story? I thought not. Indeed, I feel now quite certain that the friend was an invention, quite certain that she knew I had recognized her as the missing factor in the drama, and that she had wished me not to have a false impression of Kranitski. But at the time, while she was talking she seemed so natural that for the moment I believed, or almost believed, in the friend. But when she told me of Miss Brandon's marriage she furnished me with the explanation of her perfect acting, if it was acting. I thought it was the possession of this piece of news which enabled her to tell me that story so calmly and so dispassionately.
Of course I may still be quite wrong. I may be seeing too much. Perhaps she had nothing to do with Kranitski, and perhaps she did tell a friend. She has friends here.
Nevertheless I felt certain during our first conversation, at the moment I felt I was looking through the clouds, that she had been aware of it; aware that I had not been able to go on talking of the story as naturally as I had done before. Her explanation, what her friend was supposed to have said, fitted in exactly with my suppositions, and with what I already knew. Sabran had been right. The clue to the whole thing was the letter. The letter that Kranitski had received when he was talking to me and which had made so sudden a change in him was the letter from her, from Countess Yaskov, saying she was ready to divorce and to marry him. He received this letter just after he was engaged to be married to Miss Brandon. It put him in a terrible situation. This situation fitted exactly with what Rudd made him say to the novelist in the story: his obligation to the past conflicted with his inclination, namely, his desire to marry Miss Brandon.
Of course I might be quite wrong. It might all be my imagination. The next day I got a belated letter, from Miss Brandon, forwarded from Cadenabbia, telling me of her engagement. She said they were to be married at once, quite quietly. She knew it was no use asking me, but if I had been in London, etc. She made no other comments.
That evening I dined with Sabran. I told him the news about Miss Brandon, and I told him what Countess Yaskov had told me her friend had told her about the story.
"Half the problem is solved," he said. "The story of Countess Yaskov's friend explains the words which Rudd lends to the Russian. His inclination, which was to marry Miss Brandon, coincides with the religious duty of a croyant, which is not to marry a divorcée, and not to put himself once more outside the pale of the Church, but it clashes with his obligation, which is to be faithful to his friend of seven years. His inclination coincides with his duty, but his duty is in conflict with his obligation. What does he do? He goes away. Does he explain? Who knows? He was, indeed, in a fichu situation. And now Miss Brandon marries the young man. Either she had loved him all the time, or else, feeling her romance was over, she was marrying to be married. In any case, her novel, so far from being ended, is only just beginning. And the Russian? Was it a real amour or a coup-de-tête? Time will show. For himself he thought it was only a coup-de-tête: he will go back to his first love, but she will never divorce."
I asked him again whether he was sure that Countess Yaskov was divorced from her husband. He was quite positive. He knew it de source certaine. She had been divorced years ago, and she lived at Rome. I was puzzled. In that case, why did she try and deceive me, and at the same time if she wanted to deceive me why did she tell me so much? Why did she give me the key of the problem? I said nothing of that to Sabran. I saw it was no use.
A few days later, Countess Yaskov left Haréville. She told me she was going to join her husband. I did not remain long at Haréville after that. A few days before I left, Princess Kouragine arrived. I told her about Miss Brandon's marriage. She said she was not surprised. Canning deserved to marry her for having waited so long. "But," she said, "he will never light that lamp."
I asked her if she was sorry for Kranitski. She said:
"Very, but it could not be otherwise."
That is all she said. When I told her that I had made the acquaintance of Countess Yaskov, she said:
"Which one?"
I said it was the one who lived in Rome and who was separated from her husband.
The next day she said to me: "You were mistaken about Countess Yaskov. The Countess Yaskov who was here is Countess Irina Yaskov. She is not divorced, and she lives in Russia now. The one you mean is Countess Helene Yaskov. She lives at Rome. They are not relations even. You confused the two, because they both at different times lived at Rome." I now saw why I had been put off the scent for a moment by Sabran. I asked her if she knew my Countess Yaskov. She said she had met her, but did not know her well.
"She is a quiet woman," she said. "On dit qu'elle est charmante."
Just about this time I received a long letter from Rudd. He said he must publish Overlooked. He had been told he ought to publish it by everybody. He might, he said, just as well publish it, since printing five hundred copies and circulating them privately was in reality courting the maximum of publicity: the maximum in quality if not in quantity. By doing this, one made sure that the only people it might matter reading the book, read it. He did not care who saw it, in the provinces, in Australia, or in America. The people who mattered, and the only people who mattered, were friends, acquaintances and the London literary world, and now they had all seen it. Besides which, his series of unfinished dramas would be incomplete without it; and he did not think it was fair on his publisher to leave out Overlooked. "Besides which," he said, "it is not as if the characters in the books were portraits. You know better than anyone that this is not so." He ended up, after making it excruciatingly clear that he had irrevocably and finally made up his mind to publish, by asking my advice; that is to say, he wanted me to say that I agreed with him. I wrote to him and said that I quite understood why he had settled to publish the story, and I referred to Miss Brandon's marriage at the end of my letter. Before I heard from him again, I was called away from Haréville, and I had to leave in a hurry. It was lucky I did so, because I got away only just in time, either to avoid being compelled to remain at Haréville for a far longer time than I should have wished to do, or from having to take part in a desperate struggle for escape. The date of my departure was July 27th, 1914.
The morning I left I said good-bye to Princess Kouragine, and I reminded her that when I had said good-bye to her two years ago she had said to me, talking of Miss Brandon: "The man behaved well." I asked her which man she had meant. She said:
"I meant the other one."
"Which do you call the other one?" I asked.
She said she meant by the other one:
"Le grand amoureux."
I said I didn't know which of the two was the "grand amoureux."
"Oh, if you don't know that you know nothing," she said.
At that moment I had to go. The motor-bus was starting.
I feel that Princess Kouragine was right and that, after all, perhaps I know nothing.
