Bertie's mouth, when he read this, got suddenly dry, and with a hand that he observed was quite steady, he poured himself out a cup of tea and sipped it, reading the letter through again. Also he had a horrible feeling of emptiness inside him, resembling great hunger, but of some sickly kind, for, so far from being hungry, he could not touch the eggs and bacon to which he had just helped himself. He could not yet even begin to think; but again he filled his cup with tea, again drank it, and again read the letter. Then he suddenly felt hot, stifled, and though the morning was of a brisk chilliness, he went to the window and leaned out. He was aware that a cold sweat had gathered on his forehead, and he wiped it away. Then all at once his feeling of physical faintness and thirst left him altogether, and he was back in his room, lighted a cigarette, and sat down squarely on his sofa to think the matter out.
His first impulse – namely, to go straight to Mr. Palmer with the letter – did not last long. He had told him, after Amelie had accepted him, in answer to questions which were very delicately put, that there were no pages in his past life which he feared. Mr. Palmer, with the tact and finesse which is inseparable from great ability, had indicated his meaning with absolute precision and clearness. He had not hinted that he wished Bertie to confess any liaisons he might ever have had, he only asked him with considerable solemnity to assure him that he had done nothing which, coming to light at a future time, could, humanly speaking, bring unhappiness to, and possibly rupture between, him and Amelie. He had not pressed him for an answer immediately.
'Think it all over,' he had said, 'and tell me to-morrow. Young men will be young men as long as women are women. I don't mean that. What I do mean is whether anyone can rake things up afterwards. If anyone can, I should like to know about it. I needn't ask you to be straight with me. I guess you are straight without being asked.'
Now, it had not occurred to Bertie to tell him about Mrs. Emsworth, for the very simple reason that he was quite innocent. That he had been foolish – mad, if you will – was perfectly true, but morally he was clean. And now, at this moment, she was on tour in America – where, he had no notion. Bilton, no doubt, knew, but Bilton had been instructed to admit no discussion of any kind. And to-morrow would be January 7.
His second impulse was also short-lived – namely, to go straight with the letter to Scotland Yard. But what did that mean? An action for blackmail against Mrs. Emsworth, a dragging into the public view all that had happened, a feast for the carrion-crows of London, and for him – well, celibacy. For Mrs. Emsworth, clever woman as she was, knew well what justice is done by the world to those who invoke the justice of the law. The verdict of the world is always the same: 'There must have been something in it;' and though every judge and jury in the land might testify to his innocence, the world would simply shrug its shoulders: 'There must have been something in it.' For it is not in the least necessary to touch pitch to be defiled; it is quite sufficient if somebody points a casual finger at you and merely says 'Pitch.'
Yes, it was on this that she, the blackmailer, counted; here lay her security – namely, that his bringing her to justice meant that he must lay himself open to the justice of the world. And what justice in that case would Mr. Palmer give him? If he was to know at all, it must be Bertie who told him. And Bertie knew he could not, after the assurance he had given him.
For a moment his brain deserted the question of what to do, and put in as a parenthesis that the blackmail scheme had been brilliantly planned. It was excellently timed; it gave him quite long enough to think the matter over, and not rush, as he might possibly have done, in desperation to Mr. Palmer or Scotland Yard, if he had only been given an hour or so to decide, and, at the same time, it did not give him an opportunity of communicating with Mrs. Emsworth. The extracts, too, were cleverly chosen, their genuineness he could not doubt, and they gave him a very fair idea of the impression that the whole letter would make on an unbiassed mind. Then suddenly he sprang to his feet.
'But I am not guilty!' he cried. 'My God, I am not guilty!'
His fit of passion subsided as suddenly as it had sprung up, and his thoughts turned to Dorothy. He remembered with great distinctness his interview with her on the morning after her debut in New York, and the uneasiness with which what his sober self thought was mere chaff had inspired him. But afterwards, at their various meetings in New York and down at Long Island, he had been quite at his ease again, and ashamed of his momentary suspicions. She was a better actress than he knew, it appeared, for never did anything seem to him more genuine than her kindliness towards him. She had made friends with Amelie, too; for Amelie had told him of their meeting in the dewy gardens, of her entrancing way with children, which had quite won her heart. Then – this.
Then a third alternative struck him. What if he did nothing, just waited to see if anything would happen, if by to-morrow evening he had not paid this hideous sum to his blackmailer? But again he turned back daunted. The whole plot had been too elaborately, too neatly laid to allow him to think that the threat would not be carried out. If in a sudden passion Dorothy had threatened to send the letter to Mr. Palmer, he might, so he thought, have reasoned with her, appealed to her pity, appealed, above all, to her knowledge of his innocence. He might even have threatened, have coolly and seriously told her that he would lay information against her unless she gave up his letter to him. But he was not dealing, he felt, with a woman in a passion; he was dealing with a cold, well-planned plot, conceived perhaps in anger, but thought out by a very calm and calculating brain. There was not, he felt, even an outside chance that, having worked it out so carefully, she would hold her hand at the last moment. True, he held now in his own hand evidence against her for blackmail sufficient to secure her, if he chose, a severe sentence. Only he could not do it; he had not nerve enough to take that step. She had calculated on that, no doubt. She had calculated correctly.
Then this money must be raised somehow; there was no way out. In order to silence a false accusation against himself he had to pay £10,000. It was this question of how to get it that he carried about with him all the morning, and this that had sat beside him at lunch. Gallio might possibly lend it him, but it would entail telling Gallio the whole story, which he did not in the least wish to do. However, if no better means offered itself he determined to telegraph to him that evening. And so at a quarter to four, his brain still going its dreary rounds from point to point of his difficulties, he again presented himself at the Carlton.
He was shown by the noiseless valet through the noiseless door of Mr. Palmer's sitting-room. The latter had not heard him enter, and Bertie, in the strangeness of the sight that met his eye, forgot for a moment his own entanglements. For Lewis Palmer was seated in an easy-chair by the window, doing nothing. His arms hung limply by his side, his head was half sunk into his chest, and his whole attitude expressed a lassitude that was indescribable. But next minute he half turned his head languidly towards the door, and saw Bertie standing there.
'Ah, come in, come in,' he said. 'I was waiting for you. No, you are not late.'
He rose.
'Bertie, never be a very rich man,' he said. 'It is a damnable slavery. You can't stop; you have to go on. You can't rest; you are in the mill, and the mill keeps on turning.'
He stood silent a moment, then pulled himself together.
'I hope nobody overheard,' he said. 'They would think I was mad. Now and then, just now and then, I get like that, and then I would give all I have to get somebody to press out the wrinkles in my brain, and let it rest. I should be quite content to be poor, if I could forget all this fever in which my life has been spent. I might even do something as an art critic. There, it's all over. Sit down. There are the cigars by you.
'Now you talked to me straight enough once before,' he went on, 'and told me, I believe, the exact truth. I wanted you to start with Amelie with a clean sheet in that direction, and I want you to have a clean sheet in another. I want you to pay off all your debts. All, mind; don't come to me with more afterwards. I know it's difficult to state the whole. Please try to do so. Take time.'
Bertie sat quite still a moment, with a huge up-leap of relief in his mind.
'I can't tell you accurately,' he said. 'But I am afraid they are rather large.'
'Well, a million pounds,' suggested Mr. Palmer dryly. Bertie laughed; already he could laugh.
'No, not quite,' he said. 'But between ten thousand and twenty. About twelve I should say.'
'Confiding people, English tradesmen,' remarked Mr. Palmer. 'Been going to the Jews?'
'No.'
'Well, don't. My house doesn't charge so high. Now, I'm not going to give you the money. I shall deduct it from the settlement I am going to make, the amount of which I have already determined on. Only I shall give you that at once, and ask you to pay them at once.'
'You are most generous,' said Bertie. 'I can't thank you.'
'Don't, then. Are you sure thirteen thousand will cover them? Mind, it doesn't matter to me; it is all deducted.'
'I am sure it will.'
Mr. Palmer did not answer, but drew a chair to the table and wrote the cheque.
'Pay them at once, then,' he said. 'Now, you looked worried at lunch. Anything wrong?'
'It was,' said Bertie. 'It isn't now.'
Mr. Palmer looked at him a moment with strong approval.
'I like you,' he said. 'Now go away. The mill has to commence again.'
The relief was as profound as the oppression had been, and now that the strain was over Bertie was conscious of a luxurious relaxation; the tension and strain on his nerves had passed, and a feeling of happy weariness, as when a dreaded operation is well over, set in. He could scarcely yet find it in his mind to be bitter or angry even with Mrs. Emsworth; she had done a vile thing, but he would not any longer be in her power, and being free from it, he scarcely resented it, so strong was his relief. Mr. Palmer, he knew, had designed to make some settlement of money on him; what it was to be he did not yet know, but the fact that this had been deducted from it prevented his feeling that he had come by the money in any crooked fashion. As it was, a certain payment to be made to him had been partly anticipated, and he looked forward to paying his blackmail almost with eagerness.
He made an appointment by telegraph with Bilton for the next morning, and at the hour waited on him at his office in Pall Mall. He had always rather liked the man; his practical shrewdness, the entire absence of what might be called 'nonsense' about him, a certain hard, definite clearness about him and his ways, was somehow satisfactory to the mind. And this morning these characteristics were peculiarly developed.
He gave Bertie a blunt and genuine welcome.
'Delighted to see you,' he said. 'Just come over, haven't you? Smoke?'
Bertie took a cigarette.
'I've called about some business connected with Mrs. Emsworth,' he said. 'I am here to settle it.'
Bilton looked puzzled a moment.
'Mrs. Emsworth?' he said. 'Business with Mrs. Emsworth? Ah, I remember. She sent me certain instructions some time ago. Let's see; where did I put them?' He took down an alphabetical letter-case from a shelf, and after a short search drew out a packet.
'That's it,' he said. 'Ah, I see there is no discussion to pass between us. Curious love of mystery a woman has, especially when there is nothing to make a mystery about, as I dare say is the case here.'
'You don't know what the business is?' asked Bertie.
'I only know these instructions, and one of them, if you will pardon me reminding you, is that no discussion is to pass between us. You are to deliver to me a cheque, which I am to place to her account, and I am to deliver to you a sealed packet. This is it, is it not? Yes. You are also to deliver to me a certain letter which I am to verify, and then destroy in your presence.'
'I heard nothing of that,' said Bertie.
'It is in my instructions,' said Bilton.
'I can't give up that letter,' said Bertie. 'It – ' He stopped.
Bilton got up.
'I am afraid I can do nothing, then,' he said, 'except fulfil the rest of Mrs. Emsworth's directions, and, if this is not done by the evening of January 7, to-day, give the packet to Mr. Palmer.'
He referred again to one of the papers he had taken out.
'Yes, give the packet to Mr. Palmer,' he repeated.
'Which you intend to do?' Bertie asked.
'Certainly. At the same time, I may tell you that I have written a very strong letter to Mrs. Emsworth, protesting against her making use of me in – in private matters of this kind. I am a busy man' – and he looked at his watch – 'I have no taste for other people's intrigues.'
Bertie thought intently for a moment. If he gave up the letter, he would be powerless in the future to prove anything with regard to the blackmail. The fact that he had drawn a cheque for £10,000 to Bilton was in itself nothing to show that he had done so under threats, especially if, as it suddenly occurred to him, Bilton was, if not in league with Mrs. Emsworth, at any rate cognizant of her action. On the other hand, if he refused, he had to risk that letter of his being sent to Mr. Palmer. He had been unable to face that risk before, and it was as unfaceable now. But the idea that Bilton was concerned in this was interesting. It had been suggested by the slight over-emphasizing of the fact that he was busy, by the looking at his watch. That was, however vaguely, threatening; it implied time was short, or that he himself was concerned in Bertie's acceptation of the ultimatum.
Bilton sat down again and tapped with his fingers on the table.
'Excuse me, Lord Keynes,' he said, 'but no purpose is served by our sitting here like this. You will, of course, please yourself in this matter. Here is the packet for you if you decide one way; there is the letter-box if you decide the other.' The speech was well-chosen, and left no room for doubt in Bertie's mind that the letter-box would be used. He took the desired document from his pocket.
'Here is the cheque,' he said, 'and here is the letter. The latter, you say, you are going to verify. I, on my side, I suppose, may verify what you give me.'
Bilton appeared to consider this for a moment.
'There was nothing said about that,' he remarked, 'but I feel certain that the lady would be willing to let you receive proof of her honourable dealing with you.'
'Did you say honourable dealing?' asked Bertie in a tone which required no answer.
Bilton opened the letter Bertie gave him, referred to a paper out of the alphabetical case, looked at the cheque, and handed him the packet. Bertie glanced at it, saw enough, and put it in his pocket.
'That's correct, then,' said Bilton.
Bertie rose.
'Next time you see Mrs. Emsworth, pray congratulate her for me,' he said. 'She has missed her vocation by going on the stage.'
'I am inclined to disagree with you,' said Bilton. 'It has developed her sense of plot. Must you be going? Good-bye. I suppose you are off to America again in a month. You may meet her there.'
'That is not possible,' said Bertie.
Bilton's smile which sped the parting guest did not at once fade when the guest had gone. It remained, a smile of amusement, on his face for a considerable time.
'God, what a fool!' he permitted himself to remark as he settled down to his work again.
CHAPTER XIII
Some three weeks after this Ginger was occupying the whole of the most comfortable sofa in the rooms of his father occupied by Bertie, and was conversing to him in his usual amiable manner. The rooms wore the look of those belonging to a man shortly to take a journey; there were packets and parcels lying about, a bag gaped open-mouthed on a chair, and Bertie himself was sorting and tearing up papers at a desk, listening with half an ear to the equable flow of Ginger's conversation. He had a good deal to say, and a good deal to ask about, but, with the instinct of the skilled conversationalist, he did not bring out his news in spate, nor ask a succession of questions, but ambled easily, so to speak, up and down the lanes and byways of intercourse, only occasionally emerging on to the highroads.
'It may appear odd,' he was just saying, 'but I never was in these rooms before. Gallio has never asked me here. I am glad to see that he appears to make himself fairly comfortable. I suppose he is at Monte Carlo still. Heard from him, Bertie?'
'Yes, a letter of extreme approbation at my marriage, and a regret that he will be unable to visit America for it. Also a cheque for £500 as a wedding-present. Out of his hardly lost losings, he says.'
'Gallio's in funds now, or was till he went to Monte Carlo,' remarked Ginger. 'He got two hundred thousand for the sale of Molesworth. But he has to settle half of it on you, doesn't he? And where do I come in?'
'You don't, I'm afraid.'
'I think Gallio made a very good bargain,' said Ginger; 'but I think it remains to be seen whether Mr. Palmer didn't make a better.'
'How's that?'
'Whether, with his American spirit of enterprise, he won't begin digging for the fabulous coal which was supposed to exist.'
Bertie looked up.
'Turn Molesworth into a colliery? He won't find it very easy. You see, he has settled it on Amelie, or, rather, is going to on our marriage.'
'By Gad! he does things in style,' said Ginger. 'And you think Amelie would not allow it?'
'I think she would attach some weight to my wishes.'
'Do you feel strongly about it? I thought you were rather in favour of its being done when it was spoken of before.'
'I know; there was an awful need of money. It is a necessity before which sentiment must give way. But now there is not. And my sentiment is rather strong. After all, it has been ours a good long time; and now we can afford to keep the coal underfoot, if it is there at all. Besides, do you know for certain that he has any thought of it?'
'No; Bilton put it into my head,' said Ginger. 'He hinted that Mr. Palmer had made a good bargain. He seemed rather elated at something, so I did not question him further. I don't like elated people. I suppose he had made some good bargain, or done somebody in the eye; that is the American idea of humour. He went off to Davos the other day.'
Bertie again looked up.
'Hasn't he realized the fruitlessness of that yet?' he asked. 'Sybil refused him point-blank, I know; and really, when she follows that up by going out to Davos to coax Charlie back to life, you would have thought that a third party was not – well, exactly of the party.'
'Sybil is an enigma,' said Ginger. 'She went to America in the autumn with the avowed intention of getting married, with Bilton indicated. She comes back in a scurry, refuses him, and instantly constitutes herself life-preserver to Charlie, whom she had also refused. What is she playing at? That's what I want to know.'
Bertie took up a quantity of waste-papers, and thrust them down into the basket.
'She's not playing at anything just now,' he said. 'She's just being a human woman, trying to save the life of a friend. Judy talked to me about it. The only interest in life to Charlie was she, and she is trying to get him to take an interest in life that isn't her!'
'That will require some delicacy of touch,' remarked Ginger.
'It will. She has it – whether enough remains to be seen. Charlie had one foot in the grave when she came back, I'm told; she has taken that out, anyhow.'
'But does she mean to marry him?' asked Ginger. 'I can't believe she will succeed in getting him back to life without, anyhow, holding that out as a prospect.'
'It's really a delicate position,' said Bertie; 'and it is made more interesting by the fact that physically Charlie is so like Bilton. In other respects,' he added, 'they are remarkably dissimilar.'
'Do you like him?'
'No; I have got an awful distaste for him. Why I don't quite know. That rather accentuates it.'
Ginger sat up from his reclining attitude.
'Bertie, I'm awfully interested in one thing, and I haven't seen you since you came back,' he said. 'Was there any – well, any difficulty with Dorothy Emsworth?'
Bertie paused in his labours, divided in his mind as to whether he should tell Ginger or not. He had a great opinion of his shrewdness, but, having himself managed his crisis, paid up, and got back the letter, he did not consider that there was any need for advice or counsel from anybody. So he decided not to tell him.
'She was quite friendly in America,' he said; 'I saw her several times; she even stayed down at Port Washington.'
Ginger, as has been seen, was immensely interested in other people's affairs, having none, as he said, of his own which could possibly interest anybody. On this occasion he could not quite stifle his curiosity.
'I remember you telling me that you once wrote her a very – very friendly letter,' he said.
'Certainly. It is in my possession now. I keep it as an interesting memento.'
Ginger shuddered slightly.
'I should as soon think of keeping a corpse,' he said.
'Burn it. She's rather a brick to have given it you back, though. Sort of wedding-present?'
'Yes, a valuable one.'
'Does she still carry on with Bilton?' asked Ginger.
'I don't know.'
'Well, I hope she didn't show it him before she returned it,' said the other.
January in London, with few exceptions, had been a month of raw and foggy days – days that were bitter cold, with the coldness of a damp cloth, and stuffy with the airlessness of that which a damp cloth covers. Far otherwise was it at Davos, where morning after morning, after nights of still, intense cold, the sun rose over the snow-covered hills, and flamed like a golden giant, rejoicing in his strength, through the arc of crystalline blue. Much snow had fallen in December, but when the fall was past, the triumphant serenity of the brilliant climate reasserted itself. The pines above the long, one-streeted village had long ago shaken themselves clear of their covering, and stood out like large black holes burned in the hillside of white. Day after day the divine windlessness of the high Alpine valley had communicated something of its briskness to those fortunate enough to be there, and the exhilaration of the atmosphere seemed to percolate into minds of not more than ordinary vivacity.
The village itself lies on a gentle down gradient of road, some mile in length, where Alpine chalets jostle with huge modern hotels. Below lies the puffy little railway which climbs through the pinewoods above the town, and communicates in many loops and detours with the larger routes; and straight underneath the centre of the village is the skating-rink, where happy folk all day slide with set purpose on the elusive material, and with great content perform mystic evolutions of the most complicated order. Others, by the aid of the puffy railway, mount to the top of the hills above the town, and spend enraptured days in sliding down again on toboggans to the village of Klosters. Motion, in fact, of any other sort than that of walking is the aim and object of Davos life – an instinct dictated and rendered necessary by the keen exhilaration of the air. At no other place in the world, perhaps, is the sluggard so goaded to physical activity; at no other, perhaps, is the active brain so lulled or intoxicated into quiescence. It lies, in fact, basking and smiling, while the rejuvenated body, free from the low and cramping effects of thought, goes rejoicing on its way.
Charlie, by reason of his malady, had been debarred from taking either much or violent exercise; he had been told to be out always and to be idle usually. This he found extremely easy, for his mother was there to be idle with him, and Sybil was there to furnish entertainment for both. With her usual decision and eye for fitness, she had seen at once that for the present there was only one thing in the world worth doing – namely, skating. She skated extremely badly, but with an enjoyment that was almost pathetic, in consideration of the persistence of 'frequent fall.' Thus, morning after morning, she, setting out at earlier hours, would be followed down to the rink by Charlie and his mother, where they would lunch together, returning to the hotel before dark fell for the cosy brightness of the long winter evenings.
Mrs. Brancepeth was a widow, cultivated, intelligent, and gifted with a discernment that was at times really rather awkward to herself, though never to those to whom she applied it, since she never used what her intuition had enabled her to see, to their discomfort. This gift put her into very accurate possession of the state of affairs between Charlie and Sybil; it was clear to her, that is to say, that Sybil was wiling him back into the desire to live, waking his dormant interests, as if by oft-repeated little electric shocks of her own vitality, charming him back into life. She knew, of course, the state of her son's feelings towards Sybil, and did her the justice of allowing that, not byword or look, direct or indirect, did she ever hold herself out as the prize for which life was worth living. Indeed, Mrs. Brancepeth admired with all the highly-developed power of appreciation that was in her the constant effacement of herself which Sybil practised – effacement, that is, of the personal element, while by all healthy and impersonal channels she tried to rekindle his love for life. Whatever was – so Sybil's gospel appeared to run – was worth attention. Her own falls on the ice were matters for amused comment; the outside edge was per se a thing of beauty; the stately march of the sun was enough to turn one Parsee. Enthusiastic, vitally active as Sybil always had been, it required less penetration than Mrs. Brancepeth possessed to see that her amazing flood of vitality was deliberately outpoured for the sake of Charlie. This was the more evident to her by the fact that Sybil, when alone with her, subsided, sank into herself, and rested from an effort. At times, indeed, when Charlie was not there, she was almost peevish, which, in a woman of equable temper, is a sure sign of some overtaxed function. Such an instance occurred, so Mrs. Brancepeth thought, on an evening shortly before Bilton arrived at Davos. In the six weeks that they had now spent there, the elder woman had got to know the younger very well, to like her immensely, and to respect, with almost a sense of awe, the extreme cleverness with which she managed her affair. The 'affair' was briefly, to her mind, to make Charlie take a normal interest in life again, without exciting an abnormal interest in herself – to transfer his affection, in fact, from herself to life.
They had dined together that evening at their small table at the Beau Site, and Sybil had traced loops on the tablecloth with a wineglass, and sketched threes and brackets to a centre with the prong of a fork.
'Yes, it sounds silly,' she said, 'but it is the most fascinating thing in the world to try to do anything which you at present believe yourself incapable of doing. I have no eye for colour at all, therefore two years ago I took violently, as Charlie remembers, to painting. I have no eye for balance, therefore now I spend my day in trying to execute complicated movements which depend entirely on it.'
Charlie's eye lit up.
'The quest of the impossible,' he said. 'How I sympathize!'
This 'was direct enough; with returning health he had got far greater directness. Mrs. Brancepeth waited for Sybil's reply; it came as direct as his.
'Oh, Charlie, you always confuse things,' she said. 'You do not mean the quest of the impossible, but the quest of the improbable. The quest of the improbable is the secret of our striving. Anyone can grasp the impossible; it is merely an affair of the imagination. I can amuse myself by planning out what my life would be if I were a man. What I cannot do is to plan out for myself a successful career as a woman.'
'Surely you have plans enough,' said Mrs. Brancepeth.
'No, no plans,' said Sybil – ' desires merely. I have lots of desires. One is control of the outside edge; that is unrealized. Dear Charlie, you look so well this evening; that is another of my plans. It is getting on.'
'He gained two pounds last week,' said his mother.
'How nice! I lost a hundred, because I speculated on the Stock Exchange. It sounds rather grand to speculate, but it wasn't at all grand. What happened was that a pleasant young gentleman here, whose name I don't know, said two days ago to me, "Buy East Rands." I bought a hundred. They went down a point. I sold. But I bought many emotions with my hundred pounds. One was that one could get interested in anything, whether one knew what it was or not, as long as one put money into it. And if money interests you, surely anything else will.' This, too – so Mrs. Brancepeth interpreted it – was a successful red herring drawn across the path. Charlie appeared equally interested.
'Ah, you are wrong there, Sybil,' he said. 'Money in excelsis must be the most interesting thing in the world; there is nothing it cannot do.'
'Oh, it can do everything that is not worth doing,' interrupted Sybil; 'I grant that.'
'And most things that are,' he continued. 'For, except content, which it will not bring you, there is nothing which is not in its sphere.'
'Toothache,' said Sybil promptly. 'I had three minutes' toothache yesterday, and was miserable.'
'Painless extraction.'
'But not the courage for extraction,' said she. 'I always think that extraction is at the root of it. One can get along all right with what one has not got; what one cannot do is to part with something that one has which gives pain.'