The Relentless City

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 the frou-frou of 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.

CHAPTER XVIII

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.'

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.'

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.