CHAPTERVI.CORA HARTSILVER’S CONFESSION.
Though Yootha Hagerston had now inherited the little fortune left to her by her aunt, she had not thought it necessary to change her mode of living, or even to move from her flat near Knightsbridge into more expensive quarters, as one or two of her snobbish-minded acquaintances had told her they supposed she would do.
Of late she had, however, changed in some ways, as many people had noticed. She seemed pensive, at times quitedistraite, and this gave rise to various conjectures among her many casual acquaintances. By some it was hinted that “there must be a man in the case,” though none could think who the man could be, as Yootha was not by any means fond of men’s society; on the contrary, she often freely admitted that the conversation of most young men, and even middle-aged men, bored her considerably.
“Yootha Hagerston will never marry—mark my words,” a woman who had known her “since she was so high,” observed sententiously one day. She lived in the neighborhood of Yootha’s home in Cumberland with a crushed creature she called a husband, and had always strongly disapproved of what she called “the girl’s abominable independence” in deserting the stagnation of her native villageto live her own life in London. “What is more,” the woman used sometimes to add, “I should not be a bit surprised if one day we heard some deplorable story about her. It’s just what the Bible says, ‘Bring up a child and away it do go,’ and the Bible speaks the truth every time, you know.”
It was this futile person who had first hinted to Yootha’s parents that it was notcomme il fautfor a daughter of theirs to live a bachelor life in London, and it was on the strength of her having said so that Yootha’s father had spoken as he had done on the occasion of his visit to London with his wife some months before, when they had tried to induce Yootha to go back with them to Cumberland.
“I wish you would tell me, Yootha darling, what is the matter with you these days.”
The speaker was her dear friend, Cora Hartsilver, and as she spoke she encircled the girl with her arm and pressed her cheek to hers.
“Don’t you think you might tell just little me?” she went on coaxingly, as Yootha tried feebly to disengage herself. “Haven’t we always exchanged secrets, and confided in each other implicitly? Don’t say there is nothing the matter, because I can see that you have something on your mind. I have noticed the change in you for weeks, and others have noticed it too. Who is it, my darling? Or perhaps—you will let me give one little guess?”
“Cora, what nonsense you talk!” the girl answered quickly. “I am perfectly well, I have neverbeen better, and there is nothing at all on my mind.”
“On your word of honor?”
“On my word of——”
She stopped abruptly.
“Ah, I knew that like Washington you couldn’t tell a lie,” Cora laughed. “Well, then, may I make my little guess?”
“Oh, guess anything you like, if it gratifies a whim!” Yootha exclaimed, coloring slightly. “I suppose you are going to say that you think I am in love! Why do married women always imagine that every girl they meet is bound to be in love? It’s a perfectly rotten notion. Men as a rule bore me stiff, as I have often told you. The majority of the men I meet, except a few in Bohemian circles, seem not to have half-a-dozen original ideas of their own.”
“Isn’t that rather tautologic? Well, yes, many men are dull, that I admit, but all are not dull, even those who don’t live, or, so far as I know, even mix in what you call Bohemian circles. Also there are men, you know, who to some appear dull, but to others....
“Do you remember a little lunch party at the Ritz some time before the Armistice, Yootha?” she went on. “We were invited by Archie La Planta, and among the people he introduced to us was a man who to most of us seemed unutterably dull—beautiful Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson, for instance, had difficulty in concealing the fact that this man boredher intensely, and yet I am convinced that even that day Captain Charlie Preston attracted you in a way you had never before been attracted by anyone, and——”
She stopped for her friend’s expression had suddenly completely changed. She was looking up at Cora now with shining eyes, while her lips, slightly parted, quivered a little as her breath came rather quickly. Then all at once, as though acting on impulse, she gripped Cora’s wrists.
“Who told you?” she asked in a quick undertone. “I thought nobody even suspected.”
“Naturally you would. Women in love always think, and often do, the wrong thing. Good heavens, Yootha, I’ve known it for months! I suspected it the first time you and he met, that day at the Ritz, and the only thing I am surprised at is that you should have kept me in ignorance—or so you thought—all this time. Has he said anything yet?”
“Said anything? Of course not! What a question to ask!”
“Yes, I suppose it is silly to ask a girl if a man who is obviously in love with her has asked her to——”
“Say that again!” Yootha interrupted excitedly. “Do you really mean it? Do you really think that——”
“Well, go on—think that he really loves you? I don’t merely think it. I know it.”
“How? Has he told you?”
“Oh, Yootha, we spoke a moment ago about peoplebeing dull. You, I think, are the most obtuse person I have ever met.”
Thus they continued to talk, and the girl, having at last fully admitted the truth, ended by baring her soul to the woman who had so long been her friend. Now, without fear or reticence, she told Cora Hartsilver that she had fallen madly in love that day at lunch at the Ritz with the wounded officer who had, during the whole meal, hardly spoken at all.
But it was at Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s “at home” afterwards, she went on to explain, when they had sat together listening to Tchaikowsky’s “None but the Weary Heart,” that the full flood of her affection had poured forth. It had poured forth in silence, for naturally she had not dared on such short acquaintanceship, to allow her feelings to betray themselves. And ever since that afternoon the pain of her love for the wounded man whom she had pitied perhaps almost as much as she loved him, had continued to increase.
While conversing the two women who were such friends had been together on a settee. Now, all at once, Cora Hartsilver became strangely silent. Yootha looked at her in surprise for some moments.
“Why, Cora, what has come over you?” she said suddenly, moving closer to her. “You are not put out at what I have told you, are you?”
“Put out? Indeed no,” and as she spoke she unconsciously laid her hand upon the girl’s andheld it rather tightly. “No, I was only thinking—it was only something that——”
She caught her breath, and Yootha heard her sob.
“Cora, Cora,” she exclaimed. “Oh, do tell me what is the matter! What is it you are thinking of?”
Their arms were about each other now, their faces pressed together. Then, suddenly, Cora Hartsilver broke down, and began to cry piteously.
“It is something I meant never to tell anybody,” she said when at last Yootha had succeeded in comforting her to some extent. “But what you have told me about your love for Captain Preston has brought it all back afresh. If I tell you, will you promise on your word never to tell a living soul?”
“Of course I will. I promise now, and on my word. What is it, Cora? I have confided in you completely, so surely you can confide in me? You know I can keep a secret, don’t you, dear? Now tell me all about it.”
For some moments Cora remained silent, at intervals mopping her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief. Then at last she said, speaking in a low tone:
“You remember Sir Stephen Lethbridge?”
“Remember him? Why, of course.”
“Yootha, I was dreadfully in love with him! I was in love with him when I married, and after my marriage my love for him increased so that I hardly knew what to do.”
“But why have you never told me this before, dear? I had not the slightest suspicion. Did Henry suspect anything?”
“No. But then Henry was extraordinarily obtuse. When I read in the newspaper the account of the tragedy, he was in the room, but I managed to conceal my feelings and to speak and act as though nothing unusual had occurred. How I did it I don’t know. And next day when we all lunched at the Ritz, the day Captain Preston was introduced to you, I showed nothing, did I? Yet my heart was almost breaking.”
She paused a moment, and then continued:
“And that day—Henry died! Oh, if only he had died a little sooner, before poor Stephen had made away with himself—just think, Yootha, I might have saved Stephen, he might be alive to-day, and——”
She broke down suddenly and began to sob again piteously. Minutes passed before her friend succeeded in calming her once more.
“But how could you have saved his life even if Henry had died sooner?” Yootha said presently in a puzzled tone.
“Why, a week before, Stephen had written begging me to come to him. He was in great trouble, he declared, something he could not explain in a letter, or, as he put it, ‘dared not explain.’ We had been friends from childhood, as you know, and he had, when a boy, told me many of his secrets. But of course I couldn’t go. What excuse could I have made to Henry? You know the sort of manHenry was, and how he thought it a wife’s ‘duty’ to have no secrets from her husband. Somehow when I got that letter from Stephen the tone in which he wrote frightened me. The thought actually flashed through my mind that he might be contemplating something dreadful, though I did not suspect—that.”
“Did he know you were in love with him?”
“Yes, he had known it a long time. Also he looked on me as his best friend. What has worried me so since his death is the thought of what can have made him shoot himself. I had heard rumors of his mixing with undesirable people; spending more money than he ought. Those rumors may not have been true. Even if they were, that could not be a reason for him to take his life. I feel convinced that what made him do it was something he was going to tell me.”
“Your saying that, Cora, reminds me of Lord Froissart. I hear that he is moving heaven and earth to find out why Vera ended her life—everybody knows that she did end it. I hear he thinks there was some mystery; also I am told—though this may not be true—that he fancies Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson knows the reason. She and Vera were very intimate.”
“Oh, Yootha,” Mrs. Hartsilver exclaimed, now fast recovering from her outburst of grief. “I meant to have told you that Lord Froissart is coming here this evening. I kept it secret at first, because he is bringing, at my request, CaptainPreston with him. I meant to spring Captain Preston upon you as a surprise, because, as I have told you, I knew all along you were in love with him.”
Yootha could hardly contain herself. In her ecstasy of delight she drew her friend to her and kissed her.
“How perfectly sweet of you, Cora,” she cried. “And how exactly like you that is, always trying to give people pleasure. How soon will they be here?”
“Lord Froissart is dining at his club, and Captain Preston is dining with him. Lord Froissart said he would bring him along after dinner.”
And so it came about that three days after the incidents which had occurred in the house with the bronze face, Lord Froissart, Captain Preston, Cora Hartsilver and Yootha Hagerston were gathered together in Cora’s drawing-room in her house in Park Crescent.
Though at first the conversation of the four was commonplace and conventional, by degrees, as was inevitable, it drifted to a subject in which all were deeply interested. Lord Froissart had been relating as much as he deemed it advisable to tell them about his unpleasant experience in the house with the bronze face, when Cora suddenly asked:
“Might not the Metropolitan Secret Agency be able to discover some clue which would lead to the mysteries being cleared up which surround the many strange deaths that have occurred withinthe past year or so? You and I both have cause, Lord Froissart, to wish that something could be done in that respect.”
For a moment nobody spoke. Mrs. Hartsilver and Lord Froissart had known each other some years, and once before, about a month previously, they had spoken about this.
“Well, as you have broached the subject,” he said at last, “I don’t mind telling you now that my visit to the house in question was made for the purpose of consulting Stothert on that very point. The series of tragedies that has occurred is so remarkable that one cannot help thinking there must have been some reason for it. And if I may say so, Mrs. Hartsilver, your husband’s death was, in my opinion, the most astonishing of all. I can say with truth that if anybody had asked me to pick out from among my many acquaintances the man I considered the least likely to make an attempt on his life, I should unhesitatingly have named poor Hartsilver. Self-destruction was a thing we once spoke about, and he appeared to have a horror of the bare thought of it.”
“I wonder, Mrs. Hartsilver,” Captain Preston said slowly, and as he spoke he fixed his great gray eyes upon her, “if you can tell me anything about this woman whose name seems to be on everybody’s lips, and whose portrait we see in all the picture papers—this Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson?”
A tense silence followed.
“I am afraid I cannot,” Cora said, after a pause.“People say she is of Australian extraction, and that her father was a sheep farmer.”
“I have heard that, too,” Lord Froissart said quickly.
“Therefore three of us have heard it, and presumably from different sources. Yet this afternoon a friend of mine, George Blenkiron, who has lived twenty years in Australia and knows the up country and down, assured me that there is no sheep farmer of the name of either Robertson or Mervyn-Robertson out there, nor ever has been within his recollection.”
“But Mervyn-Robertson is surely her husband’s name?” Yootha said.
“Quite right. Oddly enough, however, her maiden name was Robertson. Blenkiron knew that much, though he doesn’t live in London, or mix much in London society. He found it out quite by accident, and in rather a curious way.”