The editor’s account

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

I did not open Edmund Rook’s packet for profit. This must be understood before anything else. For six months it remained in the lowest drawer of my desk, bearing the instruction, in his hand, ‘To be burned, unread.’ The wax was already cracked when I took it out on Tuesday; age, or cold, will make wax brittle. I cannot now remember whether the string was loose.

That morning, Mrs Rook had come to the office with her youngest child. She would not sit down. The landlord, she said, meant to sell their furniture, and the two older children had been removed from school. ‘I have not come to ask for charity, Mr Vale. I only wish to know whether Edmund left anything that belongs to them.’

I told her that the packet contained unfinished pages of no value. When she asked how I knew this, I said I had judged from its weight. She looked at the drawer, though I am certain it was closed, and thanked me for keeping her husband’s confidence.

Rook had made me promise. I remember his hand closing upon my sleeve and the effort with which he spoke: ‘Not a line of it, Vale. Let that be the last service you do me.’ Yet promises are made to protect the living as well as the dead. I did not think those words then; they occurred to me much later.

The manuscript ended halfway through a sentence. Nevertheless, its people seemed more alive than many who walk into this office. I altered nothing except the punctuation, three repetitions and the title. In the announcement, I first described it as Rook’s final work, then crossed out ‘work’ and substituted ‘literary remains’. Accuracy has always mattered to me.

The bookseller advanced a sum sufficient to settle the landlord’s claim and return the children to school. I sent every shilling to Mrs Rook and refused the share usually paid to an editor. She wrote that I had restored her faith in her husband’s profession. I did not show her the instruction from the packet. Its severity would only have wounded her, and so I burned it.

My name appeared beneath the preface at the printer’s insistence. One newspaper praised the unnamed editor’s ‘courage and delicacy’; another printed my name and called the publication an act of friendship. I kept both notices. They may one day be of interest to Rook’s children, which is the only reason they remain in the drawer where his packet used to lie.

‘Vale insists that he acted for Mrs Rook’s family, but the passage leaves his motives open to question.’

Evaluate how successfully the writer creates this uncertainty. Use detailed evidence from the passage to support your judgement.