CHAPTERXXIII.A FRIEND INDEED!
While the events described in the preceding chapter were taking place in Dieppe, Cora Hartsilver was visiting friends who had a place in Jersey, near Gorey. They were people she had known intimately before her marriage, friends of Sir Stephen Lethbridge whom she had loved so terribly even after her marriage, but she had not seen them since her husband’s death, though several times they had asked her to stay with them.
She was glad to be out of London at last. The place had begun to pall on her soon after the Armistice, also her friend, Yootha Hagerston, seemed gradually to have changed in her manner towards her in a way she could not exactly describe, but which she felt. She did not blame Yootha for this change, though secretly she resented it. She attributed it to her friend’s engagement, and hoped that after her marriage Yootha would become her old self again, for she could not believe that her long affection for her could have cooled.
One morning among her correspondence she found a registered letter which mystified and disconcerted her exceedingly. Unsigned, and with no address, it ran as follows:
“The writer possesses nine letters written by you to the late Sir Stephen Lethbridge, and five written by Sir Stephen to you,after your marriage to the late Henry Hartsilver. The former are dated respectively ——” here followed the dates, also the addresses from which the letters had been written. “The latter are dated ——” and then came another list.
“These documents,” the letter continued, “are wholly compromising, and photographic prints of them all will be posted in registered envelopes to the whole of your circle of personal friends and acquaintances unless six thousand pounds is paid to me on or before the first of October next. This is no vain threat, and if the contents of these documents have faded from your memory the writer can send you photographic prints to confirm the accuracy of the statements contained in this letter.
“Reply at once by advertisement in the personal column ofThe Morning Post, and sign it ‘A. B.—from Y. Z.’”
Cora stared at the letter for a minute, then read it through again. Written on a typewriter, it had been posted, according to the postmark, in the London West Central district. The letters to which it referred she remembered only too well. They were all the letters she had written to Sir Stephen and that he had written to her during the time she had been married and while her husband was alive.
She was alone in her room, and she sat down on the bed and began to think. Who in the world could have obtained possession of those letters, especially those she had received? Some servant? Mentallyshe reviewed the various servants who had been in her employment during the past years, but none seemed the sort likely to steal letters or attempt to levy blackmail.
Then, all at once, she remembered Yootha’s telling her long ago, one day when they had been talking in confidence about poor Stephen Lethbridge’s sad end, that her father had told her that strange-looking men and women had been in the habit of visiting Sir Stephen at Abbey Hall, in his place in Cumberland, shortly before his death. She wondered now, as she had wondered then, who those people could have been, and why they had visited Sir Stephen.
But that, after all, she now reflected, was not of moment. What did matter was that her letters should be in the keeping of someone determined to do her an injury which would affect the whole of her future life if she refused to buy them back at the sum named in the letter she held in her hand.
For a quarter of an hour or more she sat there, pondering deeply. She had received in the course of her life several hard knocks, and not once had her spirit failed her. It came back to her now that Stephen had more than once warned her to be more careful about what she put in writing; but then, she reflected, had he not himself been almost as reckless every time he wrote to her? Both were emotional by nature; both were highly imaginative, and they became carried away by their feelings when in correspondence with each other.
That her anonymous correspondent had not exaggeratedwhen he declared the letters to be “wholly compromising,” she well knew. Indeed, at the recollection of some of the violent love passages they contained she shuddered. What would become of her, she wondered feverishly, if those passages, written in her handwriting, or Sir Stephen’s, were to become public property? Oh, how mad she had been to write such things, she exclaimed aloud. The one drop of comfort in her bitterness was the reflection that Henry no longer lived, that he would never know.
Henry!
As she spoke her husband’s name a strange thought flashed in upon her. The mystery of his suicide had never been fathomed, nor had she ever succeeded in puzzling out even a possible solution to the problem, and now, all at once——
Her brain began to work with extraordinary rapidity. During his lifetime he had often read her curtain lectures which had bored her almost to distraction—he had never tired of impressing upon her his views regarding married women who carried on flirtations, and his opinion in general upon a wife’s duties to her husband. At first, when he had spoken thus, her conscience had cried aloud, and she had believed herself a hypocrite and not fit to be married to any honest man, seeing that she loved Stephen Lethbridge so madly.
Then, as time went on, she had succeeded in smothering her conscience by reminding herself that Henry had married her in reality against her will,therefore that she had a right to love Stephen if she chose. Later, she had gone a step further by cultivating the habit of analyzing her feelings calmly and dispassionately, and contrasting her lack of affection for her husband with her all-consuming passion for Sir Stephen, and more than once when so engaged she had secretly wondered what would happen to Henry, and for that matter to herself, should Henry by any terrible mishap discover her deep secret.
“I believe,” she recollected saying to herself once, “he would either kill Stephen and me, or end his own life.”
And now in a flash the thought had come to her—could Henry have, by some means, become aware of her hypocrisy, of the mental double life she had been leading, and in a moment of frenzy at his sudden disillusionment deliberately have ended his existence? And if so, was it possible the writer of the anonymous letter she had just received had been the person to impart that information to her husband, presumably in the hope of extorting blackmail by threatening to make the facts public, and that Henry had in consequence taken his life?
A terrible thought, yet the longer she dwelt on it the more plausible the theory appeared to her to be. Quite likely, too, she reflected, that if this were so the scoundrel, foiled in his first attempt to extort payment for the letters, would presently make another attempt, but that before doing so he would let a reasonable period elapse.
This discovery, as she believed it to be, and the reflection that now she must either pay the sum demanded or stand disgraced before everybody she knew, drove her almost frantic. In her agony of mind she began to pace the room, trying in vain to evolve some means of escape from her unknown persecutor.
Then she began to ask herself whom she could consult, of whom she could take counsel? And again there was nobody. Had the matter been one of less delicacy, less secret, she knew several people, intimate friends others, to whom she would readily have unbosomed herself. But to admit to anyone, even her dearest friend, that she had virtually been carrying on an intrigue, even an harmless intrigue, while married, she felt would be impossible. Besides, would anybody, not excepting her dearest friend, believe the intrigue to have been harmless?
Suddenly she stopped pacing the room. She had read in the Jersey paper that morning that on the previous day a Doctor Johnson—the Doctor Johnson whom she had before consulted on very secret matters—had arrived from Weymouth by the ss.Ibexand gone to the Brees Hotel.
The news had afforded her extreme satisfaction, and she had said to herself at once that they must meet again. Now she remembered how kind and considerate he had been on the occasions when she had sought his advice. Also he was a doctor, and doctors were accustomed to receiving confidences which they never, in any circumstances, disclosed,she reflected. Supposing she were to approach him with reference to this dreadful affair, tell him exactly what had happened, how, though married, she had been hopelessly, though harmlessly, in love with the late Sir Stephen Lethbridge, and if then she were to show him the letter she had received that day threatening her with blackmail——
Somehow she felt she would be able to trust him implicitly, and that his advice would be sound, so on the following afternoon, after telephoning that she wished to see him particularly, she called at the Brees and was at once shown up.
The doctor was frankly glad to see her, and gratified when he found that she wished to consult him on an unprofessional matter.
“I had a letter from Preston the other day,” he said, when they had conversed for a few minutes, “and he seems to have recovered his health and spirits considerably. I suppose you know that Jessica and her inseparables are staying at the hotel in Dieppe where he is; but you may not have heard that they and Miss Hagerston succeeded between them in breaking the bank at the Casino some nights ago.”
“I had not heard that Jessica was there at all,” Cora answered. “But then I have not heard from Yootha since she went there—she wrote to me last from Monmouthshire. But surely you are mistaken, doctor, in saying that she helped Jessica and her friends to break the bank? Yootha was barely on speaking terms with Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson the last time she wrote to me.”
“Indeed I am not mistaken, Mrs. Hartsilver,” Johnson replied with an odd look. “Between ourselves, I rather wish I were, because, as you know, I am not partial to that woman. Preston told me in his letter that she and Miss Hagerston had suddenly become extraordinarily friendly, and he seemed a good bit upset about it. They all met by accident at the Royal Hotel, it seems, and Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson induced Miss Hagerston to play with her at the tables at the Casino, and they had the most amazing luck—even before they broke the bank. Miss Hagerston, he says, has become bitten by the gambling mania, and you know what that means—or perhaps you don’t; I hope you don’t.”
It was some time before Cora could brace herself to broach the subject on which she had come to consult Doctor Johnson. She had been silent for a minute, feeling extremely embarrassed, when suddenly she said:
“I have come to see you, Doctor Johnson, to ask your advice on a matter I feel I couldn’t speak about to anybody else, and of course you will treat what I am going to say as strictly confidential. Doctor, I am in very great trouble.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” he answered quietly. “I take it you mean mental trouble.”
“Yes. Perhaps before I say more you had better read this,” and quickly producing the anonymous letter from her bag, she handed it to him.
He read it through calmly, his face immobile. Then he read it again. After that he folded it and handed it back to her.
“An unfortunate incident,” he observed as he lit a cigarette. “Have you any idea who the writer is?”
“Not the slightest.”
“A woman, I should say, possibly in league with some man. You won’t pay, of course.”
“But then what am I to do? Think what will happen if I don’t pay, doctor!”
“Am I to conclude from that that the allegation is true? Did you write the letters, and were the others written to you?”
Cora colored violently, and looked down.
“Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“That is a pity,” the doctor answered. “Still Mrs. Hartsilver, even the best of us make mistakes at times, and when a mistake has been made the only thing to do is to think of the best way of avoiding unpleasant consequences. I know perhaps better than you do how on occasions a woman’s heart can temporarily overrule her brain and better judgment, and for that reason I look leniently on what I call ‘heart influence.’ Did your husband know anything of this? You will, I am sure, in the circumstances forgive my asking.”
“So far as I know, he knew nothing,” Cora answered quickly. “But since receiving that letter I have wondered if he could, by some means, have found out, or if someone can have told him, and whether—whether it can have been that knowledge which drove him to end his life.”
“I think that is possible, Mrs. Hartsilver; yetI don’t consider you are to blame. I have learned several things concerning your marriage, why you married a man you never loved, and why——”
“Who told you that?” Cora interrupted. “Oh, Doctor Johnson, how did you find out?”
“That is not of consequence, nor is the fact of your husband taking his life of consequence now. The past is finished and done with. What matters to-day—the only thing that matters—is what is going to happen in the immediate future.”
He paused, and then continued:
“You say you want my advice, but if I give it I shall expect you, mind, to follow it.”
“You may depend on my doing that.”
“Good. My advice, then, is that you do not, in any circumstances, pay this hush money, or pay any hush money at all. The writer of the letter you have shown me is almost for certain a professional blackmailer, perhaps the only class of criminal to get, in this country, what he deserves when caught. What we must do then is set a trap for him—or her. And that I think I can do successfully, because I did it comparatively recently with most satisfactory results in a somewhat similar case. Do you remember Lord Froissart’s suicide, and before that his daughter’s suicide, Mrs. Hartsilver?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Blackmail in each case, though it was never made public. I am speaking to you now in strictest confidence; both are dead, or I should not tell even you. Poor Vera Froissart fell madly in love with ascoundrel, who wronged her and subsequently attempted to blackmail her. Afraid to tell anybody, she let terror of exposure prey upon her mind until in a moment of actual madness she made away with herself. Some time after her death the same scoundrel approached her father, Lord Froissart, told him why his daughter had ended her life, and threatened exposure if Froissart refused to pay.
“Froissart paid. He paid again, and then a third time. He was not a man of much backbone, or of strong mentality. When the blackguard to whom he had already paid thousands came to him again for a further sum, Froissart, believing that he must in the end be reduced to beggary through the man’s extortions, went down to Bournemouth and threw himself off the cliff.
“The night before he had written a number of letters at his club—the Junior Carlton. One of those letters was addressed to me—I was his medical adviser. In it he told me everything, and directly I had read the letter I burnt it, as he wished me to do. This is the first time I have revealed his secret, and it is the last time I shall speak of it. I have revealed it to you that it may serve as a warning of what may happen if ever you are so unwise as to pay hush money to anybody. Froissart had mentioned the name of his persecutor, and with some trouble I got the man arrested and convicted. He is in penal servitude to-day, and will be for some years.”