by Grant Allen
The forged letter still remained in his pocket unposted. He passed a couple of pillar-boxes, but could not nerve himself up to drop it in. Some grain of grace within him was fighting hard even now for the mastery of his soul. He shrank from committing himself irrevocably by a single act to that despicable life of ingrained deception. In the smoking-room of the club he found nobody, for it was still early. He took up the “Times,” which he had not yet had time to consult that morning. In the Agony Column, a familiar conjunction of names attracted his eye as it moved down the outer sheet. They were two names never out of his thoughts for a moment for the last fortnight. “Elsie,” the advertisement ran in clear black type, “Do write to me. I can stand this fearful suspense no longer. Only a few lines to say you are well. I am so frightened. Ever yours, Winifred.”
He laid the paper down with a sudden resolve, and striding across the room gloomily to the letter-box on the mantel-piece, took the fateful envelope from his pocket at last, and held it dubious, between finger and thumb, dangling loose over the slit in the lid. Heaven and hell still battled fiercely for the upper hand within him. Should he drop it in boldly, or should he not? To be or not to be a liar for life? that was the question. The envelope trembled between his finger and thumb. The slit in the box yawned hungry below. His grasp was lax. The letter hung by a corner only. Nor was his impulse, even, so wholly bad: pity for Winifred urged him on; remorse and horror held him back feebly. He knew not in his own soul how to act; he knew he was weak and wicked only.
As he paused and hesitated, unable to decide for good or evil a noise at the door made him start and waver. Somebody coming! Perhaps Warren Relf. That address on the envelope “Miss Meysey, The Hall, Whitestrand, Suffolk.” If Relf saw it, he would know it was well an imitation of Elsie’s handwriting. She had sent a note to Relf on the morning of the sandhills picnic. If any one else saw it, they would see at least it was a letter to his fiancee and they would chaff him accordingly with chaff that he hated, or perhaps they would only smile a superior smile of fatuous recognition and smirking amusement. He could stand neither above all, not Relf. His fingers relaxed upon the cover of the envelope. Half unconsciously, half unwillingly, he loosened his hold. Plop! it fell through that yawning abyss, three inches down, but as deep as perdition itself. The die w r as cast! A liar for a lifetime!
He turned round, and Hatherley, the journalist, stood smiling good-morning by the open doorway. Hugh Massinger tried his hardest to look as if nothing out of the common had happened in any way. He nodded to Hatherley, and buried his face once more in the pages of the “Times.”
“The Drought in Wales.”
“The Bulgarian Difficulty.”
“Painful Disturbances on the West Coast of Africa.” Pah! What nonsense! What commonplaces of opinion! It made his gorge rise with disgust to look at them. Wales and Bulgaria and the West Coast of Africa, when Elsie was dead! dead and unnoticed!
A boy in buttons brought in a telegram Central News Agency and fixed it by the corners with brassheaded pins in a vacant space on the accustomed noticeboard. Hatherley, laying down his copy of “Punch,” strolled lazily over to the board to examine it. “Meysey! JVleysey!” he repeated musingly. “Why, Massinger, that must be one of your Whitestrand Meyseys. Precious uncommon name. There can’t be many of them.”
Hugh rose and glanced at the new telegram unconcernedly. It couldn’t have much to do with himself! But its terms brought the blood with a hasty rush to his pale cheek again. “Serious Accident on the Scotch Moors. Aberdeen, Thursday. As Sir Malcolm Farquharson’s party were shooting over the Glenbeg estate yesterday, near Kmcardine-O’Neil, a rifle held by Mr. Wyville Meysey burst suddenly, wounding the unfortunate gentleman in the face and neck, and lodging a splinter of jagged metal in his left temple. He was conveyed at once from the spot in an insensible state to Invertanar Castle, where he now lies in a most precarious condition. His wife and daughter were immediately telegraphed for.”
“Invertanar, 10:40 a m. Mr. Wyville Meysey, a guest of Sir Malcolm Farquharson’s at Invertanar Castle, wounded yesterday by the bursting of his rifle on the Glenbeg moors, expired this morning very suddenly at 9:20. The unfortunate gentleman did not recover consciousness for a single moment after the fatal accident.”
A shudder of horror ran through Hugh’s frame as he realized the meaning of that curt announcement. Not for the mishap; not for Mrs. Meysey; not for Winifred: oh, dear no; but for his own possible or rather probable discomfiture. His first thought was a characteristic one. Mr. Meysey had died unexpectedly. There might or there might not be a will forthcoming. Guardians might or might not be appointed for his infant daughter. The estate might or might not go to Winifred. He might or he might not now be permitted to marry her. If she happened to be left a ward in Chancery, for example, it would be a hopeless business: his chance would be ruined. The court would never consent to accept him as Winifred’s husband. And then and then it would be all up with him.
It was bad enough to have sold his own soul for a mess of pottage for a few hundred acres of miserable salt marsh, encroached upon by the sea with rapid strides, and half covered with shifting, drifting sandhills. It was bad enough to have sacrificed Elsie dear, tender, delicate, loving-hearted Elsie, his own beautiful, sacred, dead Elsie to that wretched, sordid, ineffective avarice, that fractional worship of a silver-gilt Mammon. He had regretted all that in sackcloth and ashes for one whole endless hopeless fortnight or more, already. But to have sold his own soul and to have sacrificed Elsie for the privilege of being rejected by Winifred’s guardian for the chance of being publicly and ignominiously jilted by the Court of Chancery for the opportunity of becoming a common laughing-stock to the quidnuncs of Cheyne Row and the five o’clock tea-tables of half feminine London that was indeed a depth of possible degradation from which his heart shrank with infinite throes of self-commiserating reluctance. He could sell his own soul for very little, and despise himself well for the squalid ignoble bargain; but to sell his own soul for absolutely nothing, with a dose of well-deserved ridicule thrown in gratis, and no Elsie to console him for his bitter loss, was more than even Hugh Massinger’s sense of mean self-abnegation could easily swallow.
He flung himself back unmanned, in the big leathercovered armchair, and let the abject misery of his own thoughts overcome him visibly in his rueful countenance.
“I never imagined,” said Hatherley afterward to his friends, the Relfs, “that Massinger could possibly have felt anything so much as he seemed to feel the sudden death of his prospective father-in-law, when he read that telegram. It really made me think better of the fellow.”
CHAPTER XXI.
CLEARING THE DECKS.
Warren Relf had arranged for his mother and sister, with Elsie Challoner, to seek the friendly shelter of San Remo early in October. The sooner away from England the better. Before they went, however, to avert the chance of a disagreeable encounter, he met them on their arrival in town at Liverpool Street, and saw them safely across to the continental train at London Bridge. It chanced to be the very self-same day that Hugh Massinger had posted his second forged note to poor fatherless Winifred.
Elsie dared hardly look the young painter in the face even now, for shame and timidity; and Warren Relf, respecting her natural sensitiveness, concentrated most of his attention on his mother and Edie, scarcely allowing Elsie to notice by shy side-glances his unobtrusive preparations for her own personal comfort on the journey. But Elsie’s quick eye observed them all, gratefully, none the less for that. She liked Warren: it was impossible for anybody not to like and respect the frank young painter, with his honest bronzed face, and his open, manly, outspoken manners. Timid as she was and broken-hearted still, she could not go away from England forever and ever for Elsie never meant to return again without thanking him just once in a few short words for all his kindness. As they stood on the bare and windy platform with which the South-Eastern Railway Company wooes our suffrages at London Bridge, she drew him
aside for a moment from his mother and sister with a little hasty shrinking glance which Warren could not choose but follow. “Mr. Relf,” she said, looking down at the floor and fumbling with her parasol, “I want to thank you; I can’t go away without thanking you once.”
He saw the effort it had cost her to say so much, and a wild lump rose sudden in his throat for gratitude and pleasure. “Miss Challoner,” he answered, looking back at her with an unmistakable light in his earnest eyes, “say nothing else. I am more than sufficiently thanked already. I have only one thing to say to you now. I know you wish this episode kept secret from every one: you may rely upon me and upon my mate in the yawl. If ever in my life I can be of any service to you, remember you can command me. If not, I shall never again obtrude myself upon your memory. Good-bye, good-bye.” And taking her hand one moment in his own, he held it for a second, then let it drop again. “Now go,” he said in a tremulous voice “go back to Edie.”
Elsie one blush went back as he bade her. “Goodbye,” she said, as she glided from his side “good-bye, and thank you.” That was all that passed between those two that day. Yet Elsie knew, with profound regret, as the train steamed off through the draughty corridors on its way to Dover, that Warren Relf had fallen in love with her; and Warren Relf, standing alone upon the dingy, gusty platform, knew with an ecstacy of delight and joy that Elsie Challoner was grateful to him and liked him. It is something, gratitude. He valued that more from Elsie Challoner than he would have valued love from any other woman.
With profound regret, for her part, Elsie saw that Warren Relf had fallen in love with her; because he was such an honest, manly, straightforward, good fellow, and because from the very first moment she had liked him. Yet what to her were love and lovers now? Her heart lay buried beneath the roots of the poplar at Whitestrand, as truly as Hugh Massinger thought it lay buried in the cheap sea-washed grave in the sand at Orfordness. She was grieved to think this brave and earnest man should have fixed his heart on a hopeless object It was well she was going to San Remo forever. In the whirl and bustle and hurry of London life, Warren Relf would doubtless soon forget her. But some faces are not easily forgotten.
From London Bridge, Warren Relf took the Metropolitan to St. James’ Park, and walked across, still flushed and hot, to Piccadilly. At the club, he glanced hastily at that morning’s paper. The first paragraph on which his eye lighted was Winifred Meysey’s earnest advertisement in the Agony Column. It gave him no little food for reflection. If ever Elsie saw that advertisement, it might alter and upset all her plans for the future and all his own plans into the bargain. Already she felt profoundly the pain and shame of her false position with Winifred and the Meyseys: that much Warren Relf had learned from Edie. If only she knew how eagerly Winifred pined for news of her, she might be tempted after all to break her reserve, to abandon her concealment, and to write full tidings of her present whereabouts to her poor little frightened and distressed pupil. That would be bad; for then the whole truth must sooner or later come out before the world; and for Elsie’s sake, for Winifred’s sake, perhaps even a wee bit for his own sake also, Warren Relf shrank unspeakably from that unhappy exposure. He couldn’t bear to think that Elsie’s poor broken bleeding heart should be laid open to its profoundest recesses before the eyes of society, for every daw of an envious old dowager to snap and peck at. He hoped Elsie would not see the advertisement. If she did, he feared her natural tenderness and her own sense of self-respect would compel her to write the whole truth to Winifred.
She might see it at Marseilles, for they were going to run nght through to the Mediterranean by the special express, stopping a night to rest themselves at the Hotel du Louvre in the Rue Cannebiere. Edie would be sure to look at the “Times,” and if she saw the advertisement, to show it to Elsie.
But even if she didn’t, ought he not himself to call her attention to it? Was it right of him, having seen it, not to tell her of it? Should he not rather leave to Elsie herself the decision what course she thought best to take under these special circumstances?
He shrank from doing it It grieved him to the quick to strain her poor broken heart any further. She had suffered so much: why rake it all up again? And even as he thought all these things, he knew each moment with profounder certainty than ever that he loved Elsie. There is nothing on earth to excite a man’s love for a beautiful woman like being compelled to take tender care for that woman’s happiness having a gentle solicitude for her most sacred feelings thrust upon one by circumstances as an absolute necessity. Still, Warren Relf was above all things honest and trustworthy. Not to send that advertisement straight to Elsie, even at the risk of hurting her own feelings, would constitute in some sort, he felt, a breach of confidence, a constructive falsehood, or at the very best a suppressio veri; and Warren Relf was too utterly and transparently truthful to allow for a moment any paltering with essential verities. He sighed a sigh of profound regret as he took his penknife with lingering hesitation from his waistcoat pocket. But he boldly cut out the advertisement from the Agony Column, none the less, thereby defacing the first page of the “Times,” and rendering himself liable to the censure of the committee for wanton injury to the club property; after the perpetration of which heinous offense he walked gravely and soberly into the adjoining writing-room and sat down to indite a hasty note intended for his sister at the Hotel du Louvre:
“My dear Edie:
“Just after you left, I caught sight of enclosed advertisement in the second column of this morning’s Times,’ Show it to Her. I can’t bear to send it I can’t bear to cause her any further trouble or embarrassment of any sort after all she has suffered; and yet it would be wrong, I feel, to conceal it from her. If she takes my advice, she will not answer it. Better let things remain as they are. To write one line would be to upset all. For heaven’s sake, don’t show her this letter.
“With love to you both and kind regards to Her, Your affectionate brother, “W. R.”
He addressed the letter, “Miss Relf,’ Hotel du Louvre, Marseilles,” and went over with it to the box on the mantelshelf, where Hugh Massinger’s letter was already lying.
When Edie Relf received that letter next evening at the hotel in the Rue Cannebiere, she looked at it once and glanced over at Elsie. She looked at it twice and glanced over at Elsie. She looked at it a third time and then, with a woman’s sudden resolve, she did exactly what Warren himself had told her not to do she handed it across the table to Elsie.
Hugh’s plot trembled indeed in the balance that moment; for if only Elsie wrote to Winifred, ignoring of course his last forged letter, then lying on the hall table at Whitestrand, all would have been up with him. His lie would have come home to him straight as a lie. The two letters would in all probability not have coincided. Winifred would have known him from that day forth for just what he was a liar and a forger.
And yet if, by that simple and natural coincidence, Elsie had sent a letter from Marseilles merely assuring Winifred of her safety and answering the advertisement, it would have fallen in completely with Hugh’s plot, and rendered Winifred’s assurance doubly certain. Elsie had sailed to Australia by way of Marseilles, then. In a npvel, that coincidence would surely have occurred. In real life, it might easily have done so, but as a matter of fact it didn’t; for Elsie read the letter slowly first, and then the advertisement.
“Poor fellow!” she said as she passed the letter back again to Edie. “It was very kind of him; and he did quite right. I think I shall take his advice, after all. It’s terribly difficult to know what one ought to do. But I don’t think I shall write to Winifred.”
Not for herself. She could bear the exposure, if it was to save Winifred. But for Winifred’s sake, for poor dear Winifred’s. She couldn’t deprive her of her new lover.
Ought she to let Winifred marry him? What trouble might not yet be in store for Winifred? No, no. Hugh would surely be kinder to her. He had sacrificed one loving heart for her sake; he was not likely now
to break another.
How little we all can judge for the best. It would have been better for Elsie and better for Winifred, if Elsie had done as Warren Relf did, and not as he said if she had written the truth, and the whole truth at once to Winifred, allowing her to be her own judge in the matter. But Elsie had not the heart to crush Winifred’s dream; and very naturally. No one can blame a woman for refusing to act with more than human devotion and foresight.
Hugh Massinger had left the headquarters of Bohemia for twenty minutes at the exact moment when Warren Relf entered the Cheyne Row Club. He had gone to telegraph his respectful condolences to Winifred and Mrs. Meysey at Invertanar Castle, on their sad loss, with conventional politeness. When he came back, he found, to his surprise, the copy of the “Times” still lying open on the smoking-room table; but Winifred’s advertisement was cut clean out of the Agony Column with a sharp penknife. In a moment he said to himself, aghast: “Some enemy hath done this thing.” It must have been Relf! Nobody else in the club knew anything. Such espionage was intolerable, unendurable, not to be permitted. For three days he had been trembling and chafing at the horrid fact that Relf knew all and might denounce and ruin him. That alone was bad enough. But that Relf should be plotting and intriguing against him! That Relf should use his sinister knowledge for some evil end! That Relf should go spying and eavesdropping and squirming about like a common detective! The idea was fairly past endurance. Among gentlemen such things were not to be permitted. Hugh Massinger was prepared not to permit them.
He passed a day and night of inexpressible annoyance. This situation was getting too much for him. He was fighting in the dark: he didn’t understand Warren Relf’s silence. If the fellow meant to crush him, for what was he waiting? Hugh could not hold all the threads in his mind together. He felt as though Warren Relf was going to make, not only the Cheyne Row Club, but all London altogether too hot for him. To have drowned Elsie, to be jilted by Winifred, and to be baffled after all by that creature Relf this, this was the hideous and ignominious future he saw looming now visibly before him!
