CHAPTERII.HUSBAND, WIFE—AND ANOTHER.
Cora Hartsilver was preparing to go out next morning, when she was told that “Miss Yootha Hagerston would like to see her.”
“Oh, ask her to come up!” she exclaimed. “And Jackson——”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“If Mr. Hartsilver should come in while I am out, he had better be told that I shall not be in for lunch.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jackson, the maid, went downstairs with a look of mild amusement in her eyes. She had been in the Hartsilvers’ service two years, and was fond of expressing her opinion to the other servants on the subject of what she called her master and mistress’s “matrimonialmésalliance.”
“I give them another year,” she had observed to the cook only the night before, “and that will see the end of it. However a lady like her came to marry that—that old woman of a husband of hers fair beats me.”
“Not so much of the ‘old woman,’” the cook had answered sharply—she showed signs of age herself. “But I do agree with you, Mary, nevertheless. Ah, well, the old feller’s got the money-bags,and that goes a long way when it comes to marryin’, I always says. I never did hold with these love and cottage matches, nor I never shall. I’ve had some of it, I can tell you, and I have told you before now, but seein’ as my poor old man lies in Carlisle churchyard,nil nisi bonus. Isn’t that how they put it? And he had his good points for all he was poor as a rat, that I will admit.”
Yootha Hagerston was one of Cora’s oldest and dearest friends, the one friend, indeed, of whom she had for years made an intimate confidant. Yootha was not married, but that was not due to any lack of suitors, for the proposals she had had were numerous. She was a very pretty girl, about two years younger than Cora: tall, slim, extremely graceful, and with a face full of expression. She was one of those girls who attract through their personality rather than by the beauty of their features. The look in the large intelligent eyes betrayed her temperamental nature. She lived alone in an unpretentious flat near Knightsbridge, which she had taken two years before, after leaving her home near Penrith owing, as she put it, to the “impossible sort of life my people expected me to lead, boxed up in the country and with nothing on earth to do.” The truth was that her stepmother disliked her, and that her father was intemperate. Yootha was the youngest of three children; her two brothers were serving oversea.
When she entered Cora’s bedroom, Cora came forward and kissed her fondly.
“You dear thing,” she exclaimed. “I am so glad you have come. I have not seen you for a week. Where in the world have you been?”
“Oh, my people have been in town. You know what that means.”
“Indeed I don’t! Your people? You mean your father and mother?”
“Stepmother, if you please,” Yootha corrected. “For goodness’ sake don’t insult my mother’s memory. Yes, they both came up unexpectedly, and for what do you think?”
“I give it up.”
“To try to persuade me to go home!” and Yootha laughed merrily. “Can you see me back in the old homestead with its memories of my happy childhood’s days, and by contrast the atmosphere which prevails there now? No, thank you! And why do you think they wanted me back again, Cora?”
“Oh, stop asking conundrums.”
“Because some busybody has been telling my father that the way I live in my bachelor flat is notcomme il faut, if you please, and so he thinks—or says he thinks—that I may end by bringing the family name into disrepute. Just think of that! Now, if you ask me, I will tell you what I believe the true reason is. On my twenty-fifth birthday I come into some money from a defunct aunt, my father’s only sister—quite a nice little sum safely invested—and I am pretty sure my stepmother hopes to induce me to make over a portion of the nestegg to her, or to my father. You have no idea how amiable she was, and my father too. Couldn’t make enough of me or do too much for me. The money comes to me in five months’ time.”
“But didn’t they know before that you would inherit it?”
“Apparently not. I knew nothing about it myself until a few weeks ago, and I purposely didn’t tell you then because the lawyer who wrote to me—he is a friend of mine—asked me to say nothing about it just yet. He told me about it more or less in confidence—said he thought I might like to know.”
“So you are not going back to Cumberland?”
“My darling Cora, what a question!”
“Oh, I am glad!” Mrs. Hartsilver exclaimed. “I don’t know how I should live if you went away. You are the only friend I have; you are, really. Tell me, did your father or mother—I beg your pardon ‘stepmother’—say anything about Stephen Lethbridge? You have read about the tragedy, of course.”
“Indeed I have, and I at once thought of you. Yes, they were full of it last night. My father said he saw Stephen less than ten days ago, and was struck by the change that had come over him.”
“How—‘change’?”
“He said he looked years older than when he saw him a month ago, and he mentioned the fact to my stepmother at the time. Then he said that strange-looking people had been staying at Abbey Hall lately.”
“Men or women?”
“Men. There were rumors, too, my father said, that Stephen had become financially embarrassed.”
“Really? But he was so well off, or supposed to be.”
“I know. That adds to the mystery. I suppose there was a woman, or women, in the case. I see in to-day’s paper that an inquest will be held.”
Cora did not answer. She was staring out of the window towards Regent’s Park—the house was in Park Crescent—with troubled eyes, as though her thoughts were miles away.
“Don’t fret, Cora,” her friend said at last. “I know you were fond of him, and that he was fond of you, but——”
“Oh, don’t, don’t speak like that,” Mrs. Hartsilver exclaimed hastily, pressing her fingers to her eyes. “It is all too terrible, I can’t bear to think of it; and yet I can’t help thinking about it and wondering—wondering——”
Yootha Hagerston encircled her friend with her arm, and kissed her warmly.
“I know—I know,” she said in a tone of deep sympathy. “No, we won’t talk about it. Did Henry refer to it at all?”
“Henry!”
The tone betrayed utter contempt, almost hatred.
“Oh, yes, Henry referred to it all right. At least I drew his attention to the report in last night’s paper, and—oh, you should have heard him! I felt I wanted to scream. I longed to strike him. He has no heart, Yootha, no sympathy for anythingor any one. I wonder sometimes why I go on living with him. He said he felt only contempt for any man who took his life, no matter in what circumstances!”
Like many another, Henry Hartsilver had succeeded in supplying himself with petrol during the war, and as his limousine sped slowly down Bond Street a little later that morning with his wife and Yootha Hagerston in it, officers home on leave who noticed it wondered if people at home actually realized what was happening on the Western front.
“More profiteers’ belongings!” a captain in the Devons, limping painfully out of Clifford Street, observed grimly. “I sometimes wish the Boches could land a few thousand troops here to give our folk a taste of the real thing. Who’s that they are talking to? I seem to know his face.”
For the car, after slowing down, had stopped owing to the traffic congestion, and a tall, good looking, well-groomed man who could not have been more than seven-and-twenty, had raised his hat to its occupants and now stood on the curb, talking to them.
“Know him!” the officer’s companion answered; he was a gray-haired man who looked as if he had been a sportsman. “Probably you do know him—I wonder who doesn’t. It’s Archie La Planta, one of the most popular men in town, some say because he’s so handsome, but I expect it’s largely because he is such a good matrimonial catch.”
“Why isn’t he serving?”
“Oh, ask me another, Charlie. Why are half the youths one meets not serving? They’ve managed to wangle it somehow. Haven’t you ever met him?”
“Not to the best of my recollection. You see, I’ve been in France three years. But I am sure I have seen him somewhere.”
“Here he comes. I’ll introduce you. He knows everybody worth knowing, and is quite an interesting lad.”
La Planta was about to cross the street, when he caught sight of his friend on the pavement, hesitated an instant, then waited for his friend and the wounded officer to come up.
“’Morning, Archie,” the man exclaimed who had told Captain Preston who La Planta was. “Preston, let me introduce Mr. La Planta.”
The two men bowed formally to each other.
“Archie, who are those two ladies to whom you were talking, if you don’t mind my asking?” his friend said a moment later.
La Planta told him.
“You must have heard of Henry Hartsilver,” he added. “You won’t find a list of contributors to any public war charity in which his name doesn’t appear—mind, I emphasize thepublic. Mrs. Hartsilver is his wife, a charming woman.”
“Oh, that bounder,” the first speaker observed. “Yes, I know all about him; one of our profiteers!”
“Exactly, and a quite impossible person in addition. Which way are you going?”
The three progressed slowly, owing to Preston’slimp, along the pavement, in the direction of Piccadilly. Preston hardly spoke. He was almost morose. The reason was that La Planta’s personality repelled him. Why it repelled him he could not explain. It was one of those natural repulsions which all of us have experienced regarding certain persons, and that we are at a loss to account for.
“Where are you both lunching?” La Planta asked as they approached Piccadilly.
“Nowhere in particular,” Preston’s companion, whose name was Blenkiron, replied.
“Well, why not lunch with me at the Ritz, and I’ll introduce you to Mrs. Hartsilver and her friend. They have promised to meet me there at one o’clock. It is about the only place where one can get anything decent to eat. You will find both ladies charming.”
It was then noon, and La Planta, saying that he had an appointment at his club, left them after arranging that they should all meet at the Ritz at one.
“I am not attracted by the fellow,” Captain Preston remarked some moments later. “I would sooner have lunched with you alone, George. Who and what is he?”
Blenkiron shrugged his shoulders.
“What he is, we know—a man of leisure and of fortune. Who he is, whence he comes...?”
He made an expressive gesture.
“And, after all, what does it matter? Who knows who half the people are whom one meetseverywhere to-day? They can afford to do you well, they do do you well, and that is all that most people care about. Though ‘La Planta’ is not precisely a British name, the man looks, and evidently is an Englishman. He has a great friend, indeed, two great friends, who are almost always with him. Profane people have nicknamed the three ‘The Trinity.’ One is a man called Aloysius Stapleton, the other is a young widow—Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, a perfectly lovely creature; heaven knows what her dressmaking bills must come to.”
“Or who pays them?”
“Charlie, that is unkind of you, what the women call ‘catty.’ Why should we conclude that she doesn’t pay her own bills?”
“And why should we conclude that she does? Well, I shall be interested to meet Mrs. Hartsilver at lunch presently. I don’t think I have ever before met the wife of a profiteer.”
In spite of the Food Comptroller’s regulations, the luncheon supplied at the Ritz lacked little. It was the second day of our great offensive, August 9th, 1918, but a stranger looking about him in the famous dining-room, where everybody seemed to be in the best of spirits and spending money lavishly, might have found it difficult to believe that men were being shot down, mangled, tortured, and blown to pieces in their thousands less than two hundred miles away. Captain Preston thought of it, and of the striking contrast, for that morning he had, while at the War Office, listened on the telephone to thegreat bombardment in progress. And that perhaps was the reason he looked glum, and why he was, as Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson afterwards remarked to La Planta as they drove away together, “a regular wet blanket right through the whole of lunch.”
Aloysius Stapleton, though not distinguished-looking, was one of those men who, directly they begin to talk, rivet the attention of their hearers. Forty-two years of age, he did not look a day over thirty-five, and in addition to being an excellent conversationalist, his knowledge of men and women was exceptional. He had traveled several times round the world, or rather, as he put it, zig-zagged over it more than once. He appeared to possess friends, or at least acquaintances, in every capital in Europe, also in many American cities and in far-off China and Japan. The only country he had not visited, he observed that day at lunch, was New Guinea, but he meant to go there some day to complete his education.
“Were you ever in Shanghai?” Preston inquired carelessly, looking him straight in the eyes across the table. As this was only the second time Preston had spoken since they had sat down to lunch, everybody looked towards him.
“Yes,” Stapleton answered, meeting his gaze. “I was there twice, some years before the war.”
“I stayed there several months in 1911,” Preston said, “and I believe I met you there. Your face seemed familiar to me when I was introduced to you just now——” he was about to add that hehad just remembered it was in Shanghai he had seen La Planta before, but he checked himself.
“Were you there in the autumn, and did you stay at the Astor Hotel?” Stapleton asked.
“I did, and in the autumn.”
“Then no doubt we did meet, though I can’t at the moment recollect the occasion.”
For a couple of seconds the two men looked hard at each other. It was rather a curious look, as though each were trying to read the other’s character. The conversation was changed by Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s saying suddenly:
“What is everybody going to do after lunch, I wonder?”
And then, as nobody seemed to have any fixed plans, she went on:
“Why don’t you all come to a little party I am giving? Just a few intimate friends. We shall play bridge, and several well-known artists will come in later and have promised to sing. It would be nice of you if you would all come.”
There was a strange expression, partly cynical and partly of contempt, in Captain Preston’s gray eyes as Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson stopped speaking. The sound of the terrific slaughter which he had listened to an hour or two before, and which must be in progress still, he reflected, rang again in his ears. And here in London, in the London which, but for the heroism of our troops and their allies, and the unflagging watchfulness of the nations’ navies, might already have been running in blood,these people, especially Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson and her friends Stapleton and La Planta, seemed to have no thought except for amusement and for themselves.
“Good heavens,” he muttered, as presently they all rose from the table. “I wish the Boches could get here just to show them all what war and its atrocities are like! Well, perhaps they may get here yet.”
The only member of the party who had really interested him had been Cora Hartsilver, and that was due perhaps to the fact that La Planta had told him that she had lost her brothers in the war. Yootha Hagerston, too, he had rather liked; the “atmosphere” surrounding both these women was quite different he at once realized, from the “atmosphere” of Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson and the men who, so Blenkiron had told him, were her particular friends.
And yet, before he had been long in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s beautifully appointed house in Cavendish Square, its luxury and the sense of ease and comfort the whole of her entourage exhaled began to have its effect upon him. He was not a card-player, but music at all times appealed to him intensely, and as he lay back among the cushions in a great soft arm-chair which Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson had specially prepared for him, and listened with rapt attention to Tchaikowsky’s wonderful “None but the Weary Heart,” sung with violin obligato, those thoughts of the horrors he had witnessed “outthere,” which so perpetually haunted him, faded completely from his mind, and even the dull, throbbing pain in his injured leg became for the time forgotten.
At last the music ceased, and he became conscious of conversation in subdued tones at his elbow. The speakers were late arrivals, and as he caught the name “Hartsilver” his attention became focused on what was being said.
“A terrible affair—and his wife over there, talking, knows nothing about it as yet.”
“When did it happen?”
“About midday. It must have been premeditated, because when he was found dead in his bath he had opened an artery with a razor.”