Page 10

 

Letter №75, p. 10

Fern had received a letter of mine through a chela, with the injunction of causing it to reach its destination immediately. They were going to take breakfast, and there was no time to lose. Fern had thrown the letter on a table and ought to have left it there, since there would have been no occasion for him then, to lie. But he was vexed with H., and he devised another dodge. He placed the letter in the folds of Mr. H.'s napkin, who at breakfast took it up and accidentally shook out the letter on to the floor; it appears, to the terrible fright of "Moggy" and the contented surprise of Hume. But, his old suspicion returning to him, (a suspicion he had always harboured since I wrote to him that my first letter was brought into the conservatory by one of M.'s chelas, and that my chela could do little, though he had visited invisibly every part of the house before) — Hume looks at Fern full and asks him — whether it was he who had placed it there. Now I have the entire picture before me of F.'s brain at that moment. There's the rapid flash in it — "this saves me. . . for I can swear I never put it there" (meaning the spot on the floor — where it had fallen) — No — he boldly answers. — "I have never put it THERE" — he adds mentally. Then a vision of M. and a feeling of intense satisfaction and relief for not having been guilty of a direct lie. Confused pictures of some Jesuits he had known, — of his little child — a disconnected thought of his room and beams in Mr. H.'s garden, etc. — not a thought of self-deception! Truly then, our friend was taken in but once, but I would pay


Notes: 

Moggy refers to the wife of A. O. Hume.