'I want to be fire'—that was explained now, and that he should want that seemed to her an added insult.
'My dear Amelie,' he seemed to say, 'you are a charming girl, but you don't interest me—like that. I wish you did; I really wish you did.'
She bit her under-lip till it was white with the pressure of her teeth, and clasped her hands so tightly in her lap that the sharp facets of the stones in her rings dinted her fingers. The future spelt impossibility. There were hours daily to be gone through with Bertie; what of them? What of the little lover-like caresses that were still constant between them? What, indeed, of the whole tissue of his simulated love—of his wish to be fire? For the moment, whether it was true or not that the acme of his relationship with Mrs. Emsworth culminated actually in that 'lyrical letter' or not, she hardly cared; it was there, in any case, that his fire had burned—had burned itself out.
For a moment the spinning cage of her thoughts paused, and she moved forward in a straight and horrible line. Since her engagement to Bertie those two had not met. Bertie had returned her wedding-present; he had refused to have her at the house. Why? Because he was afraid of seeing her, lest The fire had burned for her; what if it hadnotyet burned itself out?
The London season was over, and with most admirable industry, now that that garden was empty of flowers, the bees of the world flew in all directions to other gardens, where the autumn flowers bloomed. Cowes was crammed, Carlsbad—this was a medicinal flower—was crammed also. Scotland was beginning to echo with the buzzing, and in a hundred country houses all over the kingdom other bees were resting a moment, cleaning the pollen from their legs, as it were, before they went forth again.
One hot August afternoon a small company of bees were pollen-cleaning at Haworth, talking over, that is to say, the events of the last few months—London's little adventures and ironies. With the exception of Bertie, who was in Scotland with his wife, the party was much the same as that which had sat there just a year ago, before the departure of him and Sybil Massington to America. In fact, the only other change was that the latter was Mrs. Massington no longer. But, just as before, she sat in an extremely comfortable chair on the lawn, with Charlie by her side, and Ginger, his hat over his face, lying on the grass in front of them. As before, also, he was employed in editing the history of the world, and making parenthetical prophecies for the future.
'Oh, we are certainly getting on,' he was saying, 'and the last year, I am happy to inform you, shows great progress. The Palmerization of England is perhaps the most significant sign of the times. England, in fact, consists of men, women and Palmers, chiefly the latter. If you want to go by trains anywhere, the money you pay for your ticket goes into the pockets of Palmers. If you want——'
'You shouldn't complain, then,' interrupted Sybil.
'I don't; I like it. At least, I like most of it. But not all. I went down to Molesworth the other day. There were gangs of navvies busy on the construction of the line. That I don't mind; it was remote from the house.'
'But until Mr. Palmer bought it, you were all remote from the house, too,' said Sybil. 'You none of you ever went near it.'
'Quite true. Reverberating throbs shook the air where they were blasting the tunnel. That also I don't mind, but on the lawn, in the glades, in the garden, they were sinking bore-holes to find the extent and direction of the new coalfield.'
'Have they found coal?' asked Charlie.
'Yes; they found it in the tunnel. They found it also on the Wyfold estate, between which and the tunnel lie the house and gardens. Therefore, I suppose, in a year's time the whole place will be a colliery. I don't like that.'
'I didn't think Amelie would do that,' said Sybil. 'Nor did Bertie. I remember talking to him about it. He said he thought that his wish would have influence with her. One can't blame her, any more than one blames a truffle-hound for finding truffles. It is in the blood, that scent and search for wealth. Of course, the borings are only exploratory, but what is the point of exploring if you do not mean to utilize what you find?'
'I thought she was so fond of Molesworth,' said Sybil.
'She was at first, but she has taken an extraordinary dislike to it. She——' and he stopped.
There was silence a moment.
'But they haven't quarrelled?' asked Sybil at length.
'Oh dear no. They are staying about together in Scotland now. But something has happened. What has happened, I suppose she knows. Bertie doesn't.'
'Since when was this?' asked Charlie.
'About six weeks ago, towards the middle of July—and quite suddenly. Bertie says she had been lunching with her father one day, to talk over the railway matters, and when she came back she was quite a different person. Quite polite, you understand, quite courteous and considerate, but as far away as the Antipodes.'
Sybil got out of her chair with a sudden quick movement.
'Mrs. Emsworth,' she said.
'But there was nothing to know,' said Ginger. 'There were no revelations possible, because there was nothing to reveal.'
'Mrs. Emsworth,' said Sybil again emphatically. 'I remember seeing her about that time, and she told me that Amelie had been to call on her. She said she had been rather prim, rather priggish, and in that connection made remarks about the refining influence of married life. I asked what she meant, and she said that Bertie had cut her, dropped her. She was rather incisive over it, and tried to laugh about it. But she didn't like it, all the same. I can recommend her remarks about Puritans to the attention of—of Puritans.'
Ginger sat up.
'Amelie's an awfully good sort,' he said—'and so is Bertie. But to dine with them as I did just before they went North was like dining with a piece of ice at one end of the table, and a lump of snow at the other. Now, what has happened? I reconstruct this: that Mrs. Emsworth, being annoyed with Bertie, told Amelie what friends they had been. There's a working hypothesis, anyhow.'
'But platonically,' said Charlie.
'Bertie's Platonism was—was Aristotelian in its intensity,' said Ginger. 'He once wrote a letter to her, I believe, which might have been open to misconstruction.'
'And she told Amelie about it, do you think?' asked Sybil.
'That occurs to one. There's Judy taking her Sunday walk. It's just like last year. She is coming here, and she shall give us advice.'
They called to her, but to hurry Judy when she was taking her exercise was an impossible task. However, she arrived at last, and the case was laid before her. She heard in silence, and turned to Ginger.
'Do you mind interfering?' she asked.
'No, I like it. What, then?'
'Write to Bertie. Tell him that Amelie called on Mrs. Emsworth that day.'
'Dear oracle,' observed Sybil.
Judy put down her sunshade, for here under the trees the shade was deep and the air cool.
'I hate seeing two excellent people making such a mess of their lives,' she said. 'They are both proud, they are both reticent, and neither will speak unless the other speaks first. I have a great belief in having things out. If only Amelie would pull Bertie's hair or scratch his face, and say "What are you behaving like sour milk for?" or if only he would do that to her, something must happen. But they go 011 freezing and freezing—every day the ice gets thicker. Soon it will be frozen into a solid block. That is why I advise Ginger to throw a stone at it; so to speak, without delay.'
'I don't know that Bertie will thank me,' said Ginger. 'I don't think he takes the same pleasure in being interfered with as I take in interfering.'
'Probably not. But no situation can be worse than that which at present exists. I remember I was there when she told Bertie that she had given orders to make half a dozen boring-holes for coal in the park. She announced it in the same tone as she might have announced that she had given orders for the carriage to be round at half-past two. And Bertie hardly looked up from his book, and merely said: "The diamond drill is generally used, I believe, in making bore-holes."'
'That is Bertie at his worst,' said Ginger.
'It seemed to me tolerably bad. I looked at Amelie to see how she took it. Her face was like frozen marble. But as she turned away her lip quivered a moment. It made me feel ill. Then soon afterwards I looked at Bertie. He was not reading, but staring straight in front of him. He looked as if his face was made of wood. So I say: "Stir them up at any price."'
Ginger sighed heavily.
'Vanity of vanities,' he said. 'A year ago Bertie thought that nothing would be intolerable if he had money. We most of us think the same until we have got it. Then we find that nothing, on the whole, matters less. That one sees in America. We are supposed to take our pleasures sadly. But in America they take them seriously as well. All the gold of the Indies cannot make a man gay. And all the Palmerization that is going on does not add one jot to anybody's happiness.'
'I hate it,' said Judy suddenly. 'I look on America as some awful cuttlefish. Its tentacles are reaching over the world. It grips hold of some place, and no power on earth can detach those suckers. You cannot see it coming, because it clouds the whole of the atmosphere with the thick opacity of its juice, wealth. Thus, before you know, it is there, and you are powerless. It has come to England. It laid hold first on the newline from Liverpool to Southampton. That is spreading in all directions. It is in London in every sense of the word. What woman was the central figure there this year? The Queen? Not at all. Mrs. Palmer at Seaton House. It laid hold of Worcestershire. The huge new coalfield on the Wyfold estate is theirs. Molesworth is to be a coalfield. Then there is your admirer, Sybil. Half the theatres in London belong to Mr. Bilton. And the worst of it is that, from all practical points of view, America is our benefactor. Theatres are better ventilated and better lighted. Coal will be cheaper; one will get about the country more expeditiously. Only very soon it will not be our country. That is the only drawback, and it is a purely sentimental one.'
Sybil shivered slightly.
'Charlie,' she said, 'I look upon you as my life-preserver. A tentacle touched—just touched me. The juice of wealth, as Judy says, had prevented my seeing what was coming. But one night you were ill, do you remember?' She smiled at him, the complete smile of happiness.
'Life-preserver?' said he. 'And what were you?'
Judy turned to Ginger.
'These slight connubialities are rather embarrassing,' she said. 'Will you walk with me while I finish my exercise for the day?'
Sybil laughed.
'Don't go just yet, Judy,' she said. 'Charlie and I will send you away when we want to be alone.'
Judy rose with some dignity.
'My self-respect cannotquitestand that,' she said. 'Come, Ginger. You shall walk back with me to the house, and I will hold the pen when you write to Bertie.'
'I shall put that in the postscript,' he said. 'The vials of wrath shall descend on both of us.'
The two strolled away out of the shadow of the trees into the yellow flood of sunshine that hung over the lawn. The air was very windless, and the flower-beds below the house basked in full summer luxuriance of colour. Far away in a misty hollow the town of Winchester sunned itself under a blue haze of heat, and languid, dim-sounding church bells clanged distantly. Sybil turned towards her husband.
'A year ago—just a year ago,' she said, 'we sat here like this. I always remember that day as a day of pause before I started on adventures. Oh, Charlie, on what tiny things life and happiness depend! Just as a bullet may pass within an inch of your head, and not touch you, when another inch would have killed you, so the smallest incident may turn the whole course of things. For, do you know, if I had not been in Mrs. Emsworth's room when Mr. Bilton came in, I believe I should have married him.'
'Well, then you see that had just got to happen,' said Charlie, smiling at her.
'I suppose so. Do you know I am very happy to-day.'
'Why particularly?'
'Ah, one never knows the reason for happiness. If one knows the reason, one is only pleased. Ah! there is the train coming out of the cutting. What was it we settled it said?'
'You thought "Utility"; I thought "Brutalité." They sound very much alike.'
There was a pause; the train rumbled itself away into the distance, and its diminuendo grew overscored again with the sounds of summer.
'I met Mr. Bilton again the other night,' said Sybil. 'He wished me every happiness. I felt rather inclined to send the wish back, like Bertie with Mrs. Emsworth's wedding-present. He didn't please me, somehow. I don't trust him. Charlie, he is extraordinarily like you.'
'Many thanks.'
'You old darling! Do you know, I believe it was that which made me first—first cast a favourable eye on him.'
'And what made you firmly remove that favourable eye?'
'I have told you. Then I came back to England and found you ill, and I embarked on a career of most futile diplomacy. I wanted to win you back to life, you see, without permitting or harbouring any sentiment. You proposed to die because you were bored. That seemed to me feeble, futile.'
Charlie laughed.
'It was rather. But under the same circumstances I should do the same again.'
'Ah, the same circumstances can't occur.'
He turned to her with the love-light shining brightly in his eyes.
'Let us "lean and love it over again,"' he said. 'How did it happen? What change came to you? Tell me.'
'And to you?'
'There never came a change to me. I have always loved you.'
'It was your illness first of all,' she said, 'and that made me want to help. I am very practical; the futility of your dying seemed to me so stupid. And as my handiwork, the attachment of you to life, grew, I got rather proud of it. It was like taking a plant that was lying all draggled in the mud and training it upright.'
She paused a moment.
'That grew,' she went on, 'till one night you were taken suddenly ill at Davos. I came up to see you, do you remember? And at that moment—this is the only way I can explain it—I began to become a woman. So that, if you or I could owe each other anything, dear, the debt I owe you is infinitely greater than what you owe me. I gave you perhaps a few years of life, you gave me life itself and love.'
She bent her head, took up his hand where it lay on the arm of her chair, and kissed it.
'Ah, not that, Sybil,' said he.
'Yes, just that,' she answered.
The letter which the joint wits of Judy and Ginger concocted that afternoon went northwards, and reached its destination next morning. It told Bertie merely the fact that on the day on which Amelie had lunched with her father she had been to see Mrs. Emsworth afterwards, and suggested that it would be worth while finding out, if possible, what took place there. Of late the estrangement between him and Amelie, though it had in no ways healed, had been, since they were staying in other houses, where there was less opportunity for intimacy and thus less sense of its absence, less intolerably and constantly present to his consciousness. Every now and then, as on the occasion when she told him that they were going to bore for coal, there had been bitter and stinging moments, but such were rare, and their intercourse, which was rare also, was distinguished by cool if not frigid courtesy.
On this particular morning they were leaving the house they had been staying in near Inverness, and were coming South again to visit other friends in the North of England. It was perfectly natural, therefore, that Bertie should travel some part of the way, at any rate, in a smoking-carriage, but, the train being an express, he never omitted to visit her carriage when it stopped, and inquired whether she wanted anything. Once she was thirsty, and he got her some lemonade from the refreshment-room, bought her papers, and opened for her a window which was stiff to move. These little attentions were accepted by her with the same courtesy as that with which they were offered, and he would stand on the platform chatting to her through the window, or seating himself for a few minutes in her carriage, till it was time for him to go back to his own. They lunched together in her carriage, and it was at her suggestion that at the next stopping-place he went back to the other to smoke after lunch. It was then that he opened the letters which had reached him that morning, having in the hurry of departure forgotten to do so, and found Ginger's communication.
At first his impulse was to do nothing whatever, and treat the letter as if it had never been received, and, following the dictation of hislaisser allernature, make no further effort to investigate any possible source of his domestic estrangement. In a way (the freezing process had already gone far) he had got used to his aloofness from his wife; the acuteness of it had got dulled with time, the intolerable had become bearable. He was tired with conjecturing what had happened, and the pride which at first had prevented him straightforwardly going to her and saying 'What have I done?' had become habit. Not having done so before, he could not now, and until she voluntarily told him the matter must remain in silence. Disgust, fastidiousness, and a bitter sense of having been cheated, had at first stood in her way, where pride stood in his, and she, like him, having lost her first opportunity, waited for him to be the first to speak. But as he watched through the window the giddy scudding by of the brown wind-scoured moors, his indifference began to fade, and curiosity (at first it was no more than that) took its place. Having successfully blackmailed him, had Dorothy, in order to emphasize his own weakness, told his wife that which he had already paid so much to keep secret? To have blackmailed him at all was so utterly unlike what he knew of her that he told himself he knew nothing at all, and if this conjecture was right, she became something monstrous, something portentous. He would really very much like to know if she was stupendous enough to do that.
A rather bitter smile crossed his face, and he took out of his despatch-box a small packet containing the two letters for which he had paid so highly, and a copy of the second blackmailing letter, which he had made before he delivered his cheque and the original at Bilton's office in New York. His own letter he read through again, wondering at himself. Those words of wild adoration—even now he felt a faint internal thrill at the recollection of the mood they conjured up again—were written to a woman who had done this. It seemed to him incredible that no inkling of her real nature had ever crossed his mind. It seemed impossible that he could have loved one to whom this was possible. For mere interest in a phenomenon like this he must find out what had passed between her and Amelie. It was impossible to ask Amelie, therefore he would ask her.
He wrote to her that night asking whether he might come and see her as soon as he got to town. Their northern visits were nearly at an end, and he would be passing through in about a week's time. The matter, he added, was one which might be of great importance to him and his future happiness, and no one in the world could help him but her.
The answer he got was thoroughly characteristic—characteristic, that is, of the Dorothy Emsworth whom he knew, thoroughly uncharacteristic of the Dorothy who had blackmailed and then mocked at him by telling his wife what he had paid so heavily for her not to know.
'Charmed to see you' (it ran), 'though you have behaved so very badly. Yes, perhaps I can help you. I don't know. I am rather afraid I made mischief with your wife; but she annoyed me, and I have, as you well know, the temper of Beelzebub. Really, I am very fond of Amelie, but she is not very fond of me. Deeply pathetic, but I shall get over it.'Yours ever,'D. E.''P.S.—Thank you so much for the charming dressing-bag you sent me. I use it constantly. It has your crest and initials on it, so that I am constantly reminded of you. By the way, I shall give it you hot when we meet, so it is only fair you should be warned.'
'Charmed to see you' (it ran), 'though you have behaved so very badly. Yes, perhaps I can help you. I don't know. I am rather afraid I made mischief with your wife; but she annoyed me, and I have, as you well know, the temper of Beelzebub. Really, I am very fond of Amelie, but she is not very fond of me. Deeply pathetic, but I shall get over it.
'Yours ever,'D. E.'
'P.S.—Thank you so much for the charming dressing-bag you sent me. I use it constantly. It has your crest and initials on it, so that I am constantly reminded of you. By the way, I shall give it you hot when we meet, so it is only fair you should be warned.'
Bertie read this and re-read it, and for the first time a doubt stood by him, dim and shadowy, but apparent, visible to the senses. This last letter was so like her; it threw into brighter light the unlikeness to her of the affair of the blackmail. Yet there was no other explanation the least plausible.
A week later they were both in London. The Palmers were there also, on the eve of their departure to America—Mrs. Palmer having spent August very pleasantly in about thirty different houses, her husband having spent it very profitably in one. In other words, he had remained the whole month in London, and devoted himself to the consolidation and extension of his English interests. He had been able to go ahead more completely on his own lines, and with his own rapidity, owing to the absence of other directors on their holidays, and, octopus-like, had spread his tentacles far and wide. But now affairs in America demanded his presence, and he was leaving his English business in the hands of Bilton, who appeared to him, the better he knew him, to be extraordinarily efficient. He was almost as rapid, and quite as indefatigable, as Mr. Palmer himself, and had the faculty of being able to absorb himself in one branch of his work from ten to eleven, and to pass without pause into a similar state of absorption over another. Since, then, Seaton House was open, and to open their own house just for a couple of days was unnecessary, Bertie and Amelie took up their quarters there.
Mrs. Emsworth, under Bilton's direction, was to make another American tour this autumn, and was, in fact, in London only for a day or two before she left by the same boat by which the Palmers were also going. She had made an appointment with Bertie for the afternoon of the day after his arrival in London, and since she had warned him that he might expect a hot time, he took with him, in order to equalize the temperature on both sides, the contents of the packet that lived under lock and key in his despatch-box. He had himself no wish to indulge in recrimination; as he had told her, he wanted and entreated her help, but if she was proposing to hurl, so to speak, the returned dressing-bag at his head, the letter seemed to him of the nature of a gun that wanted a great deal of silencing.
She was at home when he arrived, and he was at once shown up into the room he knew so well. The outside blinds were down to keep out the stress of the August heat, and the air was thick with the scent of flowers. Then there came the rustle of a dress on the landing outside, and she entered.
'Are you there, Bertie?' she asked. 'It is so dark one can see nothing.'
She drew up one of the blinds.
'That is better,' she said. 'Now, what do you want?' She gave him no other greeting of hand-shake, but sat down on the sofa opposite the chair where he had been sitting. At the sight of her all his pent-up anger and indignation rushed to the surface; he had not known before how vile what she had done seemed to him.
'What have I done to you that you should treat me like this?' he broke out. 'Once I gave you my heart, myself, all I was, and you laughed at me. Then—oh my God! it is too much.'
She looked at him in blank surprise.
'You got over it,' she said. 'You married somebody else. I think I behaved rather well. If I had chosen I might have made things unpleasant for you. But I am not that sort of woman.'
Bertie heard himself laugh, though he was unconscious of any amusement.
'I paid you a high price, and you cheated me,' he said.
'I paid you again. That was not enough, but you must needs tell her. That is the sort of woman you are.'
Dorothy sat up.
'Either you are mad or I,' she said. 'I think it is you. As I told you, your wife annoyed me. She was prim, priggish, Puritan. I thought it would do her good to know that once you were foolish enough to write me a letter. I wished I had kept it, I remember. I should have liked to have seen her face when I showed it her. I can't bear prigs. But you paying me, and I cheating you? If you will excuse the expression, I wish the devil you would tell me what you mean.'
Bertie leant forward.
'You are inimitable,' he said. 'I never much respected your power as an actress till to-day. But I see I was wrong. You told me you were getting rich. So rich, perhaps, that ten thousand pounds for a forgery, and then five thousand more, escape your memory.'
He got up; the mere statement of what she had done, now that he was face to face with her, infuriated him to a sort of madness of rage.
'If you will excuse the expression, you' devil,' he said.
He came a step nearer, and saw her shrink from him, and look round as if to see where the bell was.
'No, no; I am not going to touch you,' he said. 'You needn't be frightened.'
He took from his pocket the letters, and unfolded them.
'Do you remember this, and this?' he said. 'And this, a copy of the instructions you gave? All that I think I could have forgiven you. But on the top of it, you tell Amelie. By your own confession you tell her that, and anything more, I suppose, that occurred to you. No doubt you told her that you had gratified my passion for you. That is the only thing that can account for the change that came over her from the time she saw you.'
Dorothy's frightened look had passed completely off.
'Give me those, Bertie,' she said quietly. 'Before God, I swear to give you them back. You can trust me. I don't use that name unless I mean it.'
His anger had so transported him that his errand to her had been forgotten. He had come to ask for her help, to learn anyhow, if she would tell him, exactly what she had said to Amelie. But the sight of her had somehow driven him to frenzy, to a pitch of passionate anger which he had not known he was capable of. But her words, the quietness of them, the sobriety with which she spoke, sobered him. There was something, too, in her tone that convinced him. So in silence he handed them all to her.
She read through them all without once raising her eyes. Then she gave them back to him, and sat still with eyes downcast. When she raised them, he saw that they were full of tears.
'I know nothing whatever of the whole affair,' she said.
'The torn letter, I think, is yours. I remember tearing it up myself on the day on which you came to see me in New York. The other two I know nothing of. And you thought—you, Bertie, who knew me—thought I had done that.'
'I thought you had done that!' he repeated mockingly.
Then his doubt stood beside him again, a little clearer, a little more precise in outline, and his tone changed.
'You didn't do it?' he said.
She looked at him, half in scorn, half in pity.
'I!' she said in a tone indescribable, and no more. She was far too deeply hurt to reproach him; no words could meet the situation. But, looking at him, she saw the anger die out of his face, and knew that he believed her.
'I am sorry, I am sorry,' he stammered.
She made a gesture of impatience.
'Tell me all about it from the beginning,' she said; and she heard him in silence.
'And you thought I had done that,' she said. 'Certainly it looked like it, but you ought to have known it was impossible. You did not. Now listen.'
She paused a moment.
'Bertie, for many months you saw me almost daily, and guessed nothing. Of all the men I have known—I have known several—I loved one. You. That was why I always refused you. It was my one decent impulse. It was not easy for me. Nor was it easy for me to see you marry Amelie. But I loved you, and liked her. And in a very dim and vague sort of way I realized that there was such a thing as keeping good, as being clean. Even I realized that. So I kept you by me as long as I could, because your passion for me made you lead a proper life. You did not know that other women even existed while you could see me. Then you wrote that letter, and I knew that I could resist no longer if I continued to see you. So I sent you away. I have done a good many horrible things in my life, but I have done just that one decent one. One thing more. You have never known me do a mean thing. I wonder you dared think it was I who blackmailed you. Now, that is absolutely all. I have no other word to say about myself.'
'I have one,' he said. 'Can you forgive me?'
'I have no idea,' she answered.
She got up and walked once or twice up and down the room, he sitting where he was, not looking at her, but hearing only thefrou-frouof her dress. Then he heard the sprit of a lighted match, and a moment afterwards she blew a great cloud of smoke into his face.
'You disgusting, horrible pig!' she said. 'My fingers simply tingle to box your ears. Now, what is to be done? It is perfectly clear who blackmailed you, and if you like you can have him in the hollow of your hand.'
'Bilton,' said Bertie.
'Of course. He really is rather a charming character. He had a grudge against me, because I told Sybil Brancepeth of—of past events. He has made a good attempt to pay it off. Now, what will you do? Personally, I should like you to prosecute him, and I will come to the trial. You could get him years and years for that. But you must not do it except with your wife's permission. England is the home of linen-washing in public; it is the one industry that remains to us. But you must ask her first. Tell me, what terms are you on?'
'Polite speaking terms.'
Dorothy laughed.
'What fools husbands and wives are!' she remarked. 'Why don't you have it out with her? Why don't you explode, boil over, beat her, or something? It is partly my fault, too. I saw she thought there was more to be told, and I did not trouble to convince her, for she did behave so primly. Nose in the air, as if I was a bad smell.'
She paused a moment.
'Go to her now at once,' she said, 'before you have time to think it over. Show her the letter; tell her the whole story. Off with you. Ah! wait a minute.'
She left the room quickly, and came back again with the dressing-bag in her hand.
'Will you take it now?' she said, with her enchanting smile.
He could not speak; there was a pathos about her gaiety that gripped his throat.
'All happiness to you and her, dear Bertie,' she said. 'Now go away.'
It was between eleven and twelve that night when Bertie left the smoking-room and went upstairs. His wife had gone some quarter of an hour before, but Mr. Palmer had detained him talking. He tapped at her bedroom door; her maid opened it, and after a moment he was admitted. She was sitting before her glass in a blue silk and lace dressing-gown, and her hair, a rippling sheet of molten gold, was streaming down her back.
'You want to speak to me?' she asked.
'If I may.'
'You can go,' she said to the maid. 'I will send for you if I want you.'
Amelie got up, smoothing her hair back behind her ears. If she had been the most finished coquette, she would have done exactly that; art would have imitated the complete naturalness of the movement. Her face was very pale, and looked infinitely weary, but its beauty, the beauty of that falling river of gold, the beauty of her bare arm, and the gentle swell of her bosom, half seen through the low opening of the neck of her dressing-gown, had never been more dazzling. But her eyes were lustreless; they looked on him as on a stranger.
'What is it?' she asked.
He tried to school his tongue to begin, but for the moment it would not.
'Would to-morrow do as well?' asked Amelie. 'I am rather tired.'
'No; I want to tell you to-night,' said he. 'It is about Mrs. Emsworth.'
She flushed, and turned her head a little away.
'I do not care to hear,' she said.
'I must tell you, all the same,' he said.
She shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.
'I cannot prevent you,' she said.
She sat down by her toilet-table, turning only a shoulder to him, and with her cool white hands idly arranged the things that stood there, and he began his tale. He told her everything from the beginning: of his wild infatuation for Mrs. Emsworth, of the absolute innocence of that attachment, and of the letter he had written. She interrupted him here.
'I do not see why you tell me this,' she said. 'I knew all you have told me.'
'You did not know it from me,' he said. 'That makes a difference.'
For the first time her face softened a little.
'Yes,' she said, 'I see that.'
'Do you believe what I tell you?'
She turned now and faced him.
'No, Bertie, I am afraid not,' she said. 'It is not reasonable. We all know what sort of a woman Mrs. Emsworth is. You say you were madly in love with her. We know also what a man's code of morality usually is. Is it reasonable?'
'There is a reason,' he said.
'Tell it me, then.'
'It is hard to tell you,' he said. 'But it is this: She loved me. For that reason she wished me not—not to act unworthily. So she laughed at me. She sent me away.'
Amelie got up and stood in front of him, with head downcast. Instinctively and completely she knew this to be the truth, and was humbled. She touched his arm gently with her finger-tips.
'Yes, that is a very good reason,' she said. 'Bertie, I am sorry. All these awful weeks I have believed the other. It has made everything black and bitter to me.'
'Have you minded so much?' he asked.
'I have minded more than I can possibly tell you,' she said. 'But I believe you now. And I am sorry.'
Bertie took her hand and kissed it. There was more to tell yet.
'I want to tell you first about the letter,' he said, 'and then there is just one word more. Mrs. Emsworth destroyed it, or believed she did, but it fell into the hands of a man, whom I will name if you wish. At least, she regards it as certain it was he. He blackmailed me twice over it, sending me once a copy of the letter, the second time the letter itself. I paid him both times.'
'Who was it?' asked she.
'Harold Bilton. Now, what do you wish me to do?'
'It will mean publicity if you prosecute him?' she asked. 'All those horrors of a court?'
'Yes.'
'I don't think I could bear it about you,' she said. 'Threaten him if you like. Get back your money if you can. But not that, Bertie.'
'It shall be as you wish.'
'Do you want to very much?'
'I see red when I think of him,' said he.
'Ah, don't, don't!' she said.
She was silent a moment.
'One thing more, then,' he said. 'I want to show you the letter. I want you to know all. I have brought it here. Will you read it?'
'Yes, if you wish,' she said.
She took it from him, and went over to the brighter light of the dressing-table to read it by. It was long, and it took her some minutes, and in those minutes she learned for the first time what a man's love could be, and she envied with a sense of passionate longing the woman to whom it was written. That was the fire he had spoken of. When she had finished she gave it back to him.
'I have read it all,' she said. 'Poor Bertie! You suffered.'
She paused, and suddenly her jealousy and her desire flamed high.
'You never spoke to me like that,' she said.
His white face looked down on her.
'No, dear. Since then, until weeks after we were married, I thought all power of feeling like that was dead in me. I had forgotten what it meant. I could not imagine ever wanting to care like that again. Then by degrees you and your sweetness and your love and your beauty awoke the desire again. That desire grew, and my power to feel it grew with it, till it trembled on the verge of passion. It was growing every day when things began to come between us, till in these last weeks we have been worse than strangers.'
Something woke in her eyes that he had not seen there for months.
'And will it grow again now?' she asked. 'Or have I spoiled it all?'
He drew her to him.
'Amelie, forgive me,' he said. 'Whether you can or not, I don't know, but if you still care for me at all, try, try to help me.'
The light in her eyes grew more wonderful.
'If I care for you?' she asked. 'If I care for you?'
He kissed her on her beautiful eyes and on her mouth.
'So it is all told, dear,' said he, 'and you will help me. You look very tired. I have been keeping you up.'
'I am not tired now,' she said. 'And, Bertie, Bertie, there is one thing yet. Before very many months I shall be the mother of your child.'
And the long pent-up tempest of her love for him broke, overwhelming and flooding her. Her arms were pressed round his neck, and from his shoulder she raised her face to his.
'Your child,' she whispered again.
On the second morning after this Bilton was seated at breakfast, with his confidential secretary by him, who was engaged in opening and reading his letters to him, and taking shorthand notes of his replies. Bilton himself glanced at the envelopes and directions first, and reserved for his own opening anything that carried a superscription of privacy, or was in the hand of anyone with whom he was on terms of intimacy. There were never many of these; the bulk of his daily correspondence was of a purely business character, which was, on the whole, infinitely more to his mind than the effusions of friends. Of late his mail-bag had put on weight enormously, the English affairs of Mr. Palmer and the swelling trade of his own personal enterprises having almost doubled it in the last few months; but this increase was wholly welcome to him, since every letter received and answered meant business.
On this particular morning there was nothing, as far as he could see, designed for his private eye, and the quiet, smooth-voiced young American who sat by him had the field to himself. Some letters required but a monosyllabic reply from his master, which he jotted down in a corner of the page; others were longer, and demanded some half-page of cabalistic notes; others, again, were set aside to be dealt with by Bilton himself. There were to-day several of them dealing with the subject of a threatened strike at the railway works which were in process of establishment at the junction where the Cardiff line, now in process of construction, would join the existing Liverpool and Southampton. The business was an annoying one; bricklayers employed on repairs on a tunnel there were already out, and now a demand came from platelayers on the same section. Another letter was from the engineer in charge of that section of the line. The entrance to the tunnel, on the work of which the bricklayers had been employed, was, of course, perfectly safe with its wooden casing and strutting, but in case of heavy or continuous rain the ground might get soft, and the struts sink in the ground, thus rendering the passage unsafe for trains. He suggested that labour should be brought from elsewhere at once, unless the men could be induced to go back to work.
The letters dealing with this Bilton had caused to be put on one side; towards the end of his breakfast he asked for a second reading of them. Some of the matters appeared to him to be rather urgent; in addition to that, Mr. Palmer was leaving for Liverpool and America the next morning, and would thus be out of touch for the next eight days. So, after a little consideration, he dictated a telegram to say that he would go down there himself that afternoon.
There were but few letters remaining, and, during Bilton's pause for consideration, the secretary had opened the rest, and had them ready to read. The next was from Amelie.
'DEAR SIR,'Kindly order all work of coal-boring on the Molesworth property to be stopped until further instructions from me.'Faithfully yours,'AMELIE KEYNES.'
'DEAR SIR,
'Kindly order all work of coal-boring on the Molesworth property to be stopped until further instructions from me.
'Faithfully yours,'AMELIE KEYNES.'
Bilton frowned, and held out his hand for this.
'I'll answer that,' he said. 'Go on.'
The smooth-voiced secretary proceeded:
'We are instructed by our client the Earl Keynes to apply to you for the prompt payment of the sum of fifteen thousand pounds. Should your cheque for this not reach us by the evening of Tuesday, September 3, his lordship will place the matter in other hands. He desires me to admit no discussion either from you or your representatives.'We are, dear sir,'Faithfully yours,'HOBARTS & HOWARD.'
'We are instructed by our client the Earl Keynes to apply to you for the prompt payment of the sum of fifteen thousand pounds. Should your cheque for this not reach us by the evening of Tuesday, September 3, his lordship will place the matter in other hands. He desires me to admit no discussion either from you or your representatives.
'We are, dear sir,'Faithfully yours,'HOBARTS & HOWARD.'
Bilton did not ask for this; he plucked it out of the young man's hand.
'Anything more?' he asked.
'No, sir; that is all.'
'Very good. I shall leave by the two o'clock train for Molesworth. I shall spend the night there, and get back to-morrow. If by the evening's post to-day or by to-morrow morning's post there is anything further from Messrs. Hobarts and Howard, telegraph it to me.'
Bilton did not at once move from the breakfast-table after his secretary had left him, but remained seated there, his elbow on the table, his lips caressing an unlit cigar. Adept as he was at seeing combinations, and supplying from his imagination factors which alone would account for certain combinations presented to him as problems, he could not at once see his way through this. More than that, he could not determine with any internal satisfaction on his next move. That move might, of course, be merely a negative move—mere inaction on his part; but, turn the matter over in what way he might, he could not see how to say 'check' in answer to this 'check.' He was threatened—threatened, too, by a firm of eminently reputable solicitors who presumably would not undertake business of any but the securest nature. Fifteen thousand pounds, it is true, did not mean anything very particular to him, but he saw further than that. Should he pay it, the very fact of his payment was equivalent, to his shrewd American brain, to a confession of his guilt. What if he paid only to find that he had clinched the proof against himself? And if he did not pay, if he shrugged his shoulders at the whole matter, what if the 'other hands' were entrusted with it?'
He rose from the table, biting his cigar through.
'The blackmailer blackmailed,' he muttered. 'New sensational novel. Guess I'll think it over.'
He glanced again at the letter, and saw that he had till the evening of the next day in which to commit himself definitely to one or the other course of action. He would be back in London in the course of the next afternoon; there would be time then, and to-day he was really too busy to give the matter the attention which he was afraid it deserved. But by mid-day to-morrow the affair of the strike in any case would be off his mind; he would devote the whole of the hours occupied by his journey back to London, if necessary, to the consideration of this matter. Then there was the note from Amelie stopping the coal-boring.... In a moment a possible reconstruction of what had happened suggested itself to him. She knew.
He went down to the scene of the strike that afternoon, and found things rather more serious than he had anticipated. The bricklayers had already gone out, the platelayers had sent in demands which he did not feel himself justified in accepting without consultation with Mr. Palmer, and, what was much more serious, in spite of their indentures, there was a hint of trouble with the signalmen. It took him, indeed, some two or three hours to find out the full extent of that with which the line was threatened, and in the back of his mind all the time was the consciousness of that with which he himself was threatened. He had, in fact, to leave the inspection of the tunnel till the next morning. He left also till the next morning, in case the result of his negotiations with the strikers might prove to be nugatory, the despatch of a telegram to Mr. Palmer, asking him to have the express in which he would travel to Liverpool stopped at the Wyfold junction, so that he himself might get in there, and during the journey to Liverpool talk over the situation. In that case it would be necessary also perhaps to get an extra day for himself in his own private matter; and after dinner he telegraphed to Messrs. Hobarts and Howard saying that he would reply to them by the evening of September 4. Extremely urgent business, he said, engaged his attention, and, being at a loss to understand their communication, he asked for this extension.
He went up to bed in the rather dingy hotel in which he was forced to stay, conscious of extreme weariness, but unhappily conscious of an inability to obtain the refreshment of sleep. Often before now he had suffered from insomnia, and he was aware when he got into bed that the worst form of insomnia—namely, the utter absence of the slightest drowsiness, which to some extent compensates for the absence of sleep—was likely to be his. He knew that there lay before him a seemingly infinite period of intensely active thought, inharmoniously linked with an intensely active desire for sleep. A mill-race of coherent images foamed through his brain, all tinged with failure. He cursed himself for all he had done: he had made a mess of his courtship of Sybil; he had made a mess over the wretched fifteen thousand pounds. Knowing Bertie, he thought he had known how safe this small transaction was. True, it was scarcely worth while, but the man who makes his million makes it by consideration of very much smaller sums, and it was not in his nature to have neglected any chance. The chance seemed certain: his money was paid; his letters were returned; never had blackmail gone on smoother wheels. But in his wakefulness, and in his agitation about the strike, which involved larger issues to him than the mere payment of this sum, the latter assumed nightmare proportions; it swelled and encompassed him. If he paid, there was his confession; if he did not pay, there were the 'other hands' ready to undertake the business. 'I did not think the young man had so much blood in him,' he thought, as he tossed in his abominable feather-bed.
During the last forty-eight hours the plans of the Palmer family had somewhat altered. Mrs. Palmer, for instance, had discovered that it was necessary to start at ten in the morning in order to join the Liverpool and Southampton line, by which her husband wished to travel. That was clearly out of the question, and the matter resolved itself into a decision whether they should go by Euston or spend the night at Molesworth, stopping the Liverpool express there. The latter counsel prevailed, and a couple of hours after Bilton had left London they also left, four of them; for Bertie was of the party. His plans, too, had changed. He was going to America now instead of following a fortnight later.
The inn at which Bilton passed the night was close to the railway-station at Frampton, near which on the south lay the tunnel where there was trouble with the strikers. Frampton itself was originally a small village, but was now extending huge suckers of jerry-built houses into the country; for it lay on the junction between the Liverpool and Southampton line, and the new communication with South Wales. It was on the junction, too, of the Molesworth and Wyfold estates, Molesworth lying on the north, Wyfold to the south. Consequently, the Palmer party had passed through it the afternoon before, and had got out at the station of Molesworth, some five miles further on. This, of course, was unknown to Bilton, who imagined they were still in London.
He rose from his bed the next morning feeling tired and unrefreshed, dressed, and sent a telegram to Mr. Palmer at Seaton House, asking him to have the train stopped at Wyfold, where he himself would get in, as he wanted to consult with him over the situation. It should reach him in London in plenty of time before he started, and he himself would have the greater part of the morning at Frampton, and would get over to Wyfold in time to take the train there. He wished also to see for himself the condition of the unfinished and abandoned work in the tunnel, and get an estimate, if possible, from the engineer of the shortest time in which it would be possible to finish the work without interrupting traffic, in case he decided to import labour at once. His work in connection with other matters, however, took him rather longer than he had anticipated, and he set off down the mile of line which lay between Frampton and the tunnel to meet the engineer who was appointed to be waiting for him there rather short of time. He had expected to be obliged to go over to Wyfold in the course of the morning, and he had therefore telegraphed to have the train stopped there. This had proved, however, to be unnecessary, but it was too late now to alter the rendezvous to Frampton.
The tunnel in question was a very deep burrow under some mile of hill that rose steeply above it, and its completion—or so close an approach to completion that it could be used—had been the great triumph of speed in the construction of the line. He found that the work remaining to be done was easily compassable within a week or two, if sufficient numbers of men could be brought to the spot, while there was also at the Wyfold end of the tunnel another unfinished piece of less extent, if anything, than this. The report of the engineer also put matters in rather a less serious light: the great beams and timber which supported the wooden arch over which the bricks had to be laid were at present absolutely secure; it would take weeks of rain before danger was even threatened, but would it not be well, if possible, to finish so small a job at once, and have it off their minds? Bilton was decidedly of this opinion, and gave orders that steps should be taken to get outside labour without delay. This concluded his morning's work.
He looked at his watch; it was later than he had known, and to walk back a mile to Frampton, where he could get a trap, and then drive over the huge ridge of the tunnel down into Wyfold, might mean missing the train, which would stop for him there, but would assuredly not wait if he was not on the platform. But the engineer had an easy solution. Why not walk through the tunnel, which would take very little longer than going back to Frampton? He would thus find himself within a mile of the Wyfold Station? He could get there in very little over half an hour, going briskly, and would easily be in time to step into the stopped express. No train was due on either line for the next half-hour; in fact, the next train that would pass would be the Southampton to Liverpool express, in which at the moment he would himself be travelling. The engineer would provide him with a lantern, which he could leave at the signal-box at the other end of the tunnel.
This seemed an admirable arrangement, and in a couple of minutes he had set off. The light cast by the lantern was excellent; it shone brightly to guide his path, and gleamed on the rails of the four tracks as they pointed in narrowing perspective up the black cavern that lay before him until they were lost in the darkness. He walked on the right-hand side of the tunnel; immediately on his left, was the main line from Southampton to Liverpool, along which he would soon return at a brisker pace than that which was his now. For some hundreds of yards the gray glimmer from the end of the tunnel where he had entered also cast a diffused light into the darkness, but as he proceeded the light faded and grew dim, and when he was now some third of the way through, the slight continuous bend in the tunnel, which had been necessary in order to avoid a belt of unstable and shifty strata, obscured it altogether, and he walked, but for the light from his lantern, in absolute darkness. His own footsteps echoed queerly from the curved vault, but there was otherwise dead silence save for some occasional drip of water; all outside noises of the world were entirely cut off from him.
He was stepping along thus when he saw, with a sudden start of horror, that there was something dark lying between the second and third pair of rails a little way ahead of him. From the fact that he started, he was conscious that his nerves were not working with their accustomed smoothness and coolness, and he heard his heart hammering in his throat. Then he pulled himself together, crossed the two rails which lay between him and it, turned the lantern on it, and saw next moment, with a spasm of relief, that it was only a coat, left there and forgotten, no doubt, by some workman. With a cheap impulse of kindness, he picked it up, meaning to leave it with his lantern at the signal-box at the far end. But as he picked it up and stepped on again to regain the side path where he had been walking, his foot tripped in it, or on the corner of some sleeper, and he fell forward, the lantern flying from his hand, and smashing itself to atoms on the hard metal of the road, and his head struck full on the temple against the steel of the track. The blow completely stunned him.
About the same time the party left Molesworth to drive to the station, where the Liverpool express would be stopped for them. It was a distance of not more than three miles, but they stopped in the village close to the station in case there was anything at the post-office which had come by the second post, and would thus miss them. There was only one thing—a telegram from Bilton, re-directed from Seaton House, asking that the train might be stopped at Wyfold. So they drove on to the station, and there learned that the express had already passed through Wyfold without stopping, and would reach Molesworth in six or seven minutes. So Mr. Palmer, who never wasted regrets on the inevitable, shrugged his shoulders and inspected the book-stall, while Mrs. Palmer inundated the telegraph-office with despatches, and Bertie and Amelie strolled up and down the platform.
Bilton came to himself with a blank unconsciousness of where he was. It was quite dark, and he first realized that he was not in bed by the feel of his clothes. Then he put his hand to his head, and drew it away with a start of horror, for it was warm and wet. Then he felt with his hand the metal of the roadway, and, following that, encountered one of the rails. At that the broken ends of memory joined themselves, and he knew where he was. Simultaneously he heard the dead silence broken by a distant roar and rumble.
At this he started to his feet, wavered, and nearly fell again. All his senses were suddenly electrified, vivified, by that noise, and he remembered all—how he had started to walk through the tunnel, how he had picked up the coat, how he had fallen, how the engineer had told him that the next train through would be that to Liverpool. But where was he? On which line had he fallen? There were four tracks; he thought he ought to move to the right across the rails—no, to the left. Hell! was it to the right or to the left that that train would pass?
The roar got louder; it echoed with an infernal clangour from the curved sides of the tunnel; it prevented him thinking, and he felt sure that if it would only stop for one second his head would be clear, and he could take two steps to safety. But that noise must stop a moment, and in a frenzy, no longer master of himself, he shouted hoarsely, and impotently waved his hand in the darkness. From which way did it come? From in front of him or behind him? If he could only settle that, he would know what to do.
The roaring grew unbearable: it drove him mad; and, with his fingers in his ears, he began to run he did not know where, and he again tripped on some rail and fell. On the sides of the tunnel there shone a red, gloomy light, but he did not see it; above the roar and rattle of the racing wheels there sounded the hot, quick panting of some monster, but he did not hear it. He knew one moment of awful shock, of the sense of being torn and battered in pieces; then the roar sank down, as the train passed on, and diminished into silence as it emerged from the darkness of the tunnel into the pure and glorious sunlight of that September morning. And to him who had been pitiless and relentless in life had come death as swift and relentless as himself.
Amelie and Bertie were at the fore-end of the platform when the express drew up, and they turned back. Just as they got opposite the engine, Bertie gave one short gasp of horror, and grasped his wife's arm.
'Bertie, what is it?' she said.
'Go on, Amelie,' he said quickly. 'Don't look to right or left, but walk straight on.'
She obeyed him, and he went to the engine-driver.
'There is something on your engine,' he said.
It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, and all down the glades of Molesworth, where Bertie and Amelie had sat one hot morning in June last year, innumerable companies of daffodils danced and flickered in the sun. The great trees were yet for the most part bare of leaves, but round the birches a green mist hovered, and the red buds on the limes were ready to burst. Boisterous, but warm and fruitful, and teeming with the promise of the opening year, the wind shouted through the branches, and bowled, as a child bowls a hoop, great fleecy clouds across the blue of the sky. Movement, light, fruitfulness of the warm earth, were all triumphant; the strength of all that lived was renewed; spring was there.
To-day Amelie was pacing alone up and down the glade near the fallen tree-trunk where she had sketched before. She walked briskly, for it was not yet a day to loiter in; and as she came to the end of her beat within sight of the house, she looked eagerly towards it as if expecting someone. But the brilliance of her face and of the smile that every now and then hovered round her lips was in no way diminished when she turned again without seeing him whom she waited for. It seemed she was content to wait, and, though eager, did not fear disappointment.
The grass where she walked was all bright with the springing shoots of young growth, and the daffodils nodded and tossed their heads all round her. Not yet was the full note of woodland summer sounding, but the great orchestra of nature, as it were, was tuning up for the concert. Somehow the fragmentary broken sounds and scraps of summer melody strangely pleased her; often she stopped in her walk, and looked with her brilliant smile to right and left. Once she threw her arms wide, so that her red cloak stood away from her bosom, as if to take the world to it.
At last he came, and her heart embraced him ere yet he reached her. He was hatless, and the yellow gold of his hair was tossed by the wind. At the sight of him her whole being leaped towards him with stronger ecstasy than she had known yet, for the love between them seemed perfect; and she, woman-like, and loving her task, knew that a little word of comfort and sympathy was demanded of her.
'Dear one,' she said, and 'Dear one' again. 'Poor Bertie! you look tired. You should have waited the night in London, and come down this evening.'
'Should I, when you were waiting?' he asked. 'Oh, what a morning from God! And you, Amelie, among the daffodils.'
She put her arm into his.
'Tell me,' she said, 'did you get there in time? Did your father know you?'
Bertie shook his head.
'No; he knew no one from the time of his seizure. But I am glad I went. He will be buried here on Friday.'
She pressed his arm; that sympathy of touch was more eloquent to him than words.
'And the baby?' he asked.
'Oh, Bertie, so wonderful! Nurse says he will speak in no time at all if he goes on like this. She says she never saw such a clever baby.'
Bertie laughed.
'That is a remark I never heard before,' he said.
'Then you will hear it lots of times in future,' said Amelie with some dignity; 'nurse says it nearly every day.'
They had passed out of the shade of the trees on to the lawn near the house. Just in front of them was an ugly patch of black-looking earth, on which, however, the new growth of grass was beginning to show. Amelie stopped when they came to it.
'Ah, Bertie, those weeks!' she said—'those weeks when we were strangers! This black patch, where the bore-hole was begun, makes them more vivid to me than my memory of them. It is like them—a black patch.'
'Yet the grass springs again,' said he.
She took both his hands in hers.
'Yes, Bertie,' she said, 'the grass springs again, for the winter is past; I read it this morning only. It says beautiful things. "The flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come." That is now, is it not? Then, further on, "My beloved is mine, and I am his."'
'And that is the best of all,' said he.