She sat staring into the fire. Presently Perry took away the tray. Some time after that the telephone bell rang. She heard a voice say “Hullo!” and at once her heart began to beat against her side, for she thought she had heard the voice before, It had asked then whether she was Mrs Denny, and whether she was alone, and had passed to what she was warned not to call blackmail. The opening was the same today:
“Is that Mrs Denny? Are you alone?”
Rosalind said “Yes” to both questions. The second question was in Jeremy’s voice. She said before she could stop herself, “Who are you? Oh, who are you?”
“Don’t you know?”
It wasn’t quite Jeremy’s voice this time. It might have been Jeremy trying to disguise his voice. A terror of what that implied, a sick terror of her own doubt, swept over Rosalind. There were people who trusted a friend in the face of more damning evidence than this. How did they do it? She hadn’t even been able to trust Gilbert, whom she loved. She would have given all the world to be sure and to trust Jeremy, but it was beyond her. She could only suffer.
The voice said, “You had those photographs? That was a very foolish letter for Mr Denny to have written.”
Rosalind’s lips said, “He never wrote it.” Her heart said, “Gilbert—Gilbert darling—why did you? Why?”
“Oh come, Mrs Denny! What is the good of saying that? Don’t you think you can be practical for a change? Just face the facts for a moment. You say you don’t believe Mr Denny wrote that letter. How many people do you think will share your opinion when a facsimile of the letter has been published?”
“Not one,” said Rosalind’s heart. Her lips were silent. They were very stiff and cold.
“It would be a great pity if the letter were published, Mrs Denny. I’m sure you agree with me about that.”
That was the way Jeremy said “Mrs Denny.” Rosalind bit hard upon the inside of her lip and forced her voice.
“What do you want?”
“Something quite reasonable. You must understand that this letter is not in my possession. Otherwise, of course, it would be at your disposal. I think I could get it for five hundred pounds.”
“Five hundred pounds!”
“A very moderate sum for a first-class reputation. Don’t you think so?”
An indignant fire sprang hot in Rosalind.
“It’s blackmail!”
“I thought I warned you not to use that word. The consequences might be very unfortunate. Now please listen to me. You will draw out the five hundred pounds. I’m sorry to be troublesome, but I must insist on pound notes, with the exception of two twenty-fives. You will put them in your hand-bag—if you haven’t a big enough one, you can buy what is called a shopping-bag—and at six o’clock to-morrow evening you will walk down Oxford Street. Someone will take the bag—you needn’t bother about that part of it—and I will see that Mr Denny’s indiscreet letter is burned. Did you say something?”
“I must have the letter,” said Rosalind, and felt cold with shame because with those words she was admitting her own lack of faith in Gilbert.
“Oh certainly,” said the voice—“if you don’t trust me.” There was a laugh—Jeremy’s laugh; and then, “Six o’clock to-morrow, or else I’m afraid the person who has the letter will have made arrangements for its publication.”
Rosalind hung up the receiver and stepped back. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She couldn’t have that letter published. She could get the money. Old Aunt Agatha’s legacy had been paid into her account a day or two before. Jeremy knew that. She didn’t know what she was going to do. If she paid, it would only be the beginning. Frank Garrett was out of town. Besides she knew what he would say. It came to her that she must see Jeremy. If she saw him, she might know that she trusted him. It was when he was away that these horrible whispers came.
She went to her room, changed into an afternoon dress, and put on a small dark hat and her fur coat. It was going to be a horribly cold night. She called to Perry that she was going out, slipped her latch-key into her bag, and ran down the stairs to the entrance without waiting for the lift.
It was not as foggy as it had been the night before, but the air was heavy and dark, with a cold damp in it as if at any moment it might thicken into mist or dissolve in rain. Rosalind was glad to walk. She was not quite sure what time it was—somewhere between nine and half-past. She would reach Nym’s Row by ten, and Jeremy would not have gone to bed.
He might be out. The thought dismayed her so much that she was frightened and stood still in the street to reason with herself. If he was out, she would have had her walk for nothing. That was all. It did not really matter. She could see Jeremy to-morrow—and, on the word, dismay deepened into despair. She must see him to-night. He mustn’t be out. To-morrow wouldn’t do.
She began to walk again, quickly, as if she were trying to distance her fears, and in her hurry and preoccupation she took a wrong turning and presently found herself in a totally unfamiliar square. It was a place as silent and deserted as a grave-yard. The streets which led out of it were all asleep. An occasional car flashed by, but for some time she met no one of whom she could ask the way. When at last she did so, it was to find that she must turn and go back again.
It was nearly half-past ten when she reached Nym’s Row and stood at the entrance to the mews remembering that Jeremy’s Mrs Walker kept early hours. If her impulse to see Jeremy had been less strong, she would have turned round and gone home. As it was, she went hesitatingly forward.
The Walkers had the third garage. The living-rooms were over it, but Jeremy’s room didn’t face this way. He had told her that he faced towards the back of Bernard Mannister’s house in Marsh Street. She counted the garage doors, and at the third stepped back and looked up. There was no light over it. There was only one light in the whole row, and that was over the fourth garage, the one to the right of the Walkers’. The square of the lighted window showed, with a man’s shadow moving on the yellow blind.
Rosalind’s glance passed from the lighted window and became fixed in despair upon the darkened house next door. She could not have explained this despair. It was out of all reason. She had come to find Jeremy, and if she could not find him, there was no help for her anywhere. Gilbert had left them both defenceless. Even his good name would be taken from her. She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t fight these people. They had broken Gilbert, and they would break her too. It came to her that it would hurt less if she stopped fighting and let herself be broken. She stood there in the dark without energy and without hope. Two very forlorn cold tears ran slowly down to her chin.
And then the lighted window drew her eyes again. It was just because it was lighted—one yellow square breaking the line of the dark houses. She looked at it with a sort of miserable fixity. Behind the yellow blind a man was shaving himself. His arm crossed the light, huge and black. The lather gave him a monstrous, nightmare look. She stood there watching him. Sometimes the shadow loomed so large that it filled the blind. Sometimes there was just the hard black outline of a hand and a razor. She didn’t know why she went on looking.
In the end the shadow slipped away and the yellow square was empty. She put her hand to her cold, wet cheek and sighed. She didn’t know how she was going to get home again. She was so tired. She was so dreadfully tired.
Quite suddenly the shadow filled the blind again. The man who had been shaving was rubbing his face and head with a towel. The towel flapped up and down and was flung away. For a moment the man’s head stood out like a silhouette, black, clear and distinct in the middle of the blind.
Rosalind opened her lips, but she did not know whether she cried out or not, because all the blood in her body seemed to be surging and roaring against her ears. The line of the mews lifted and the houses rocked, tilting over towards her and swinging back again. The darkness was filled with wavering lines of fire.
And then with great suddenness there was silence and darkness again. Only the window above the fourth garage showed its square of lighted blind. But there was no shadow on it now.
Rosalind went to the door beneath it and knocked. She knocked with her hand until she bruised it against metal and found that there was a knocker on the door. She knocked again, and the sound fell sharply on her heart. She was like a strung wire that will quiver at a touch. Footsteps were coming down the stairs.
Rosalind caught at the jamb on either side and waited for the door to open. When it swung in, she saw Gilbert Denny standing there with a candle in his hand.
CHAPTER XXXIV
ROSALIND LOOKED, AS IF from a long way off, at this presentment of Gilbert who was drowned. How could this be Gilbert? It was Gilbert. Because his eyes met hers and changed for her. It was Gilbert. And with that the dark fell in.
Mr John Brown, who was Gilbert Denny, stepped forward and caught her in his free arm. Then he put the candle down on the stair behind him and held her close. She came back out of that darkness to Gilbert’s voice and Gilbert’s kiss, and for a moment she did not know where she was. He had pulled to the outer door, and there was dusk, and candle-light, and Gilbert. And Gilbert was alive. These were living arms that held her, and a living heart that was beating against her own.
She lifted up her lips to his and kissed him with all the anguish of her widowhood and a joy that broke her heart. There was a time that passed, and then he said,
“I was coming to you to-night, but I can’t come like this.” It was Gilbert’s own voice, gentle and a little quizzical, but it was more moved than even she had ever heard it. He said, “Come upstairs and I’ll put a coat on.” And then she saw what she must have seen before, that he was in shirt and breeches, and the shirt open at the neck.
He took up the candle, and they climbed the stair. Rosalind wondered whether there was anyone else in the house, and whether they were asleep, and whether they would wake. There was an upward rush of shadows, and then the door opened on a little lighted room with an oil stove warming it, and a red counterpane on the narrow bed and red curtains hanging straight on either side of the yellow blind. He shut the door and pulled the curtains across.
Rosalind looked at him as if she were afraid to look away. Suppose it was a dream and she were to wake and be alone again. Would a dream Gilbert hold her in such a strong embrace? She said,
“You won’t go—again?”
“I was coming to you to-night. Rosalind—can you forgive me—your suffering—but it was for you. I couldn’t see any other way.”
She had sunk down upon the bed, and he was kneeling beside her, his head bowed in her lap. As she touched his hair, she thought, “It’s a dream. Gilbert’s hair wasn’t dark like this.” This was dark hair, and Gilbert’s hair was fair. She said,
“Your hair—” And then in a frightened voice, “Don’t hide your face. I want to be sure it’s you.”
Then when he looked up it was really Gilbert and not a dream of him, but where he had shaved there was a pallor that contrasted oddly with the tanned skin above.
“I’ve just taken off a very fine black beard. You wouldn’t have known me—you didn’t know me. What were you doing at Number One Tilt Street the other day? You came out and you nearly fainted, and I picked you up and drove you home in my taxi. I’m a taxi-driver, and my name’s John Brown.”
“It was you. That’s why I felt so safe.” He could only just hear the words. She leaned against him, and felt safer still. From that safety she looked back. “Gilbert, why did you go? Why did you let me think—”
He said, “You’ve got to forgive me.”
“Why?” said Rosalind.
He got up and sat beside her on the bed, holding her hands and looking into her face.
“Rosalind, do you remember the Engelberg Note in the autumn of twenty-nine?”
She said, “Yes,” her eyes wide upon his face, her hands holding to his.
“There was a leakage—we couldn’t account for it. The Bourse was badly hit. We thought over here that things had got out in Paris. Then there was the election. I was over-worked, over-strained—you’ve got to remember that. You remember we went away for a month, but it wasn’t long enough. Late in January I began to be blackmailed.” He leaned nearer, his face hard and set. “You’ve got to forgive me, Rosalind.”
She said, “Nothing matters—you’re here.”
Gilbert Denny went on.
“I was rung up. I was told that the Engelberg Note had been copied in my house and the copy sold for a thousand pounds. I was told that a letter asking this price was in the hands of the person telephoning to me, and that a photographic copy had been posted to my address. It came next day.” His hands gripped hers painfully. “Rosalind, I can’t forgive myself.”
A little, clear light shone in Rosalind’s mind. She said simply and calmly,
“The letter was in my writing? You thought I had written it? Poor Gilbert!”
She could only say that, because she knew what he had suffered.
Gilbert Denny sprang up and paced the room.
“You would have sworn you had written it yourself. You were away with the Effinghams. I nearly went mad. I paid them two hundred pounds for the letter. Of course I knew that was only the beginning. Blackmail is a damned bog—you get deeper in at every step and with every struggle. I burned the letter. You came back. I couldn’t ask you about it. I tried to, but I couldn’t. I thought perhaps you’d tell me, and then I hoped you wouldn’t, so that I might go on thinking that there was some mistake. At the end of February they rang me up again. There was another letter—the photograph was on its way to me. It came, and this time it was my own handwriting, and I could have sworn to it—anyone would have sworn to it—a preliminary inquiry as to how much would be paid for a copy of the Engelberg Note. Well, they’d got me. I chucked in my hand when I paid that first two hundred pounds, and the farther I went, the worse it got. I was over-drawn in October, and I hadn’t looked at my pass-book for three or four months—I’ve always been damned careless about money. Well, I asked the devil who did the telephoning what I was supposed to have got out of it, and he told me to look in my pass-book and see. I did. And a thousand pounds was paid into my account on the eighth of October. I went to the bank. It had been paid in over the counter in one-pound notes. The pay in slip was signed ‘A. Meunier.’”
“A thousand pounds—” said Rosalind faintly. All the colour had withdrawn from her face as Gilbert spoke. The words seemed to repeat themselves: “A thousand pounds. … Why should anyone do that?” Her voice died away, because as she spoke she began to see why.
Gilbert came to a standstill in front of her. He too was very pale.
“Yes, why?” he said in a quiet, bitter tone. “Isn’t that what the whole world would have said? Would anyone have believed in my ignorance? Is one paid a thousand pounds for nothing? Would it have been possible to convince the world that I hadn’t been paid for selling the Engelberg Note?”
Rosalind felt a pricking horror go over her. She said, “Why?” again.
“They wanted to drive me out of politics, and they meant to bleed me dry. They had got their thousand pounds back by May, and another five hundred as well, and they were only just getting into their stride. Every time I paid I damned myself deeper. I couldn’t see any way out. I couldn’t sleep. I thought you had changed—I thought you were avoiding me.”
She lifted a pale, rigid face.
“Gilbert, wait! I must tell you. I heard you talking on the telephone one day. And you talked in your sleep about blackmail. I—was afraid—I didn’t know what you had done—I didn’t want to know. It was because I was a coward. I loved you so much. I couldn’t bear to lose—you. If I hadn’t been a coward—”
He walked to the window and stood with his back to her. The horrible suffering of those months swep
t between them—the estrangement, the terrified suspicion, the fear that would not face what might be there to face. Tears began to run down Rosalind’s cheeks. She began to say in a soft despairing voice,
“Jeremy told me I was a coward. No, he didn’t say that. He said I didn’t trust—people. It’s true. I lost you because I didn’t trust you all the way. I ought to have known. I’ve been dreadfully punished.” She spoke almost in an undertone with little pauses between the sentences.
She wrung Gilbert Denny’s heart. She seemed to have forgotten that he had not trusted her. She only accused herself. He did not speak, because he could not command his voice. In the end, still without speaking, he came back and took her in his arms. They clung together silently, and the bitterness passed away.
Rosalind felt as if the years had rolled back and left her a child again. She had done wrong, and she was sorry, and she was forgiven. She put up her face to Gilbert and said with a deep, deep sigh,
“It’s over. We’ll begin again.”
Gilbert said, in a voice more moved than hers,
“We made a mess of it between us. I thought you’d be better off without me. I made up my mind to take out the boat and go overboard. I thought it would be the best thing for you in the end.”
“Gilbert!” It was a choked, heart-broken cry.
“Don’t cry—don’t look like that! I tell you I was nearly off my head.” He kissed her, comforting her. “Why are you crying? I’m not drowned. I only meant to drown myself for about a week. It went too damnably against the grain to let them get away with it. I began to make plans—”
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