PHRIDA MAKES CONFESSION.
I sat in my rooms in Albemarle Street utterly bewildered.
My meeting with the mysterious woman who wore the spray of mimosa had,
instead of assisting to clear up the mystery, increased it a hundredfold.
The grave suspicions I had entertained of Phrida had been corroborated by
her strangely direct insinuations and her suggestion that I should go to
her and tell her plainly what had been alleged.
Therefore, after a sleepless night, I went to Cromwell Road next morning,
determined to know the truth. You can well imagine my state of mind when
I entered Mrs. Shand's pretty morning-room, where great bowls of
daffodils lent colour to the otherwise rather dull apartment.
Phrida entered, gay, fresh, and charming, in a dark skirt and white
blouse, having just risen from breakfast.
"Really, Teddy," she laughed, "you ought to be awarded a prize for early
rising. I fear I'm horribly late. It's ten o'clock. But mother and I went
last night to the Aldwych, and afterwards with the Baileys to supper at
the Savoy. So I may be forgiven, may I not--eh?"
"Certainly, dear," I replied, placing my hand upon her shoulder. "What
are you doing to-day?"
"Oh! I'm quite full up with engagements," she replied, crossing to the
writing-table and consulting a porcelain writing tablet.
"I'm due at my dressmaker's at half-past eleven, then I've to call in
Mount Street at half-past twelve, lunch at the Berkeley, where mother has
two women to lunch with her, and a concert at Queen's Hall at
three--quite a day, isn't it?" she laughed.
"Yes," I said. "You are very busy--too busy even to talk seriously with
me--eh?"
"Talk seriously!" she echoed, looking me straight in the face. "What do
you mean, Teddy? Why, what's the matter?"
"Oh! nothing very much, dearest," was my reply, for I was striving to
remain calm, not withstanding my great anxiety and tortured mind.
"But there is," she persisted, clutching at my hand and looking eagerly
into my face. "What is amiss? Tell me," she added, in low earnestness.
I was silent for a moment, and leaving her I crossed to the window and
gazed out into the broad, grey thoroughfare, grim and dispiriting on that
chilly January morning.
For a moment I held my breath, then, with sudden determination, I walked
back to where she was standing, and placing both hands upon her
shoulders, kissed her passionately upon the lips.
"You are upset to-day, Teddy," she said, with deep concern. "What has
happened? Tell me, dear."
"I--I hardly know what's happened," I replied in a low voice. "But,
Phrida," I said, looking straight into her great eyes, "I want to--to ask
you a question."
"A question--what?" she demanded, her cheeks paling slightly.
"Yes. I want you to tell me what you know of a Mrs. Petre, a----"
"Mrs. Petre!" she gasped, stepping back from me, her face pale as death
in an instant. "That woman!"
"Yes, that woman, Phrida. Who is she--what is she?"
"Please don't ask me, Teddy," my love cried in distress, covering her
pretty face with her hands and bursting suddenly into tears.
"But I must, Phrida--I must, for my own peace of mind," I said.
"Why? Do you know the woman?"
"I met her last night," I explained. "I delivered to her a note which my
friend Digby had entrusted to me."
"I thought your friend had disappeared?" she said quickly.
"It was given to me before his flight," was my response. "I fulfilled a
confidential mission with which he entrusted me. And--and I met her. She
knows you--isn't that so?"
I stood with my eyes full upon the white face of the woman I loved,
surveying her coldly and critically, so full of black suspicion. Was my
heart at that moment wholly hers? In imagination, place yourself, my
reader, in a similar position. Put before yourself the problem with
which, at that second, I found myself face to face.
I loved Phrida, and yet had I not obtained proof positive of her
clandestine visit to my friend on that fateful night? Were her
finger-prints not upon the little glass-topped specimen-table in his
room?
And yet so clever, so ingenious had she been, so subtle was her woman's
wit, that she had never admitted to me any knowledge of him further than
a formal introduction I had once made long ago.
I had trusted her--aye, trusted her with all the open sincerity of an
honourable man--for I loved her better than anything else on earth. And
with what result?
With my own senses of smell and of hearing I had detected her presence on
the stairs--waiting, it seemed, to visit my friend in secret after I had
left.
No doubt she had been unaware of my identity as his visitor, or she would
never dared to have lurked there.
As I stood with my hand tenderly upon her arm, the gaze of my
well-beloved was directed to the ground. Guilt seemed written upon her
white brow, for she dared not raise her eyes to mine.
"Phrida, you know that woman--you can't deny knowledge of her--can you?"
She stood like a statue, with her hands clenched, her mouth half open,
her jaws fixed.
"I--I--I don't know what you mean," she faltered at last, in a hard voice
quite unusual to her.
"I mean that I have a suspicion, Phrida--a horrible suspicion--that you
have deceived me," I said.
"How?" she asked, with her harsh, forced laugh.
I paused. How should I tell her? How should I begin?
"You have suppressed from me certain knowledge of which you know I ought
to have been in possession for my friend Digby's sake, and----"
"Ah! Digby Kemsley again!" she cried impatiently. "You've not been the
same to me since that man disappeared."
"Because you know more concerning him than you have ever admitted to me,
Phrida," I said in a firm, earnest voice, grasping her by the arm and
whispering into her ear. "Now, be open and frank with me--tell me the
truth."
"Of what?" she faltered, raising her eyes to mine with a frightened look.
"Of what Mrs. Petre has told me."
"That woman! What has she said against me?" my love demanded with quick
resentment.
"She is not your friend, in any case," I said slowly.
"My friend!" she echoed. "I should think not. She----"
And my love's little hands clenched themselves and she burst again into
tears without concluding her sentence.
"I know, dearest," I said, striving to calm her, and stroking her hair
from her white brow. "I tell you at once that I do not give credence to
any of her foul allegations, only--well, in order to satisfy myself, I
have come direct to you to hear your explanation."
"My--my explanation!" she gasped, placing her hand to her brow and bowing
her head. "Ah! what explanation can I make of allegations I have never
heard?" she demanded. "Surely, Teddy, you are asking too much."
I grasped her hand, and holding it in mine gazed again upon her. We were
standing together near the centre of the room where the glowing fire
shed a genial warmth and lit up the otherwise gloomy and solemn
apartment.
Ah! how sweet she seemed to me, how dainty, how charming, how very pure.
And yet? Ah! the recollection of that woman's insinuations on the
previous night ate like a canker-worm into my heart. And yet how I loved
the pale, agitated girl before me! Was she not all the world to me?
A long and painful silence had fallen between us, a silence only broken
by the whirl of a taxi passing outside and the chiming of the long,
old-fashioned clock on the stairs.
At last I summoned courage to say in a calm, low voice;
"I am not asking too much, Phrida. I am only pressing you to act with
your usual honesty, and tell me the truth. Surely you can have nothing to
conceal?"
"How absurd you are, Teddy!" she said in her usual voice. "What can I
possibly have to conceal from you?"
"Pardon me," I said; "but you have already concealed from me certain very
important facts concerning my friend Digby."
"Who has told you that? The woman Petre, I suppose," she cried in anger.
"Very well, believe her, if you wish."
"But I don't believe her," I protested.
"Then why ask me for an explanation?"
"Because one is, I consider, due from you in the circumstances."
"Then you have set yourself up to be my judge, have you?" she asked,
drawing herself up proudly, all traces of her tears having vanished. I
saw that the attitude she had now assumed was one of defiance; therefore
I knew that if I were to obtain the information I desired I must act with
greatest discretion.
"No, Phrida," I answered. "I do not mistrust or misjudge you. All I ask
of you is the truth. What do you know of my friend Digby Kemsley?"
"Know of him--why, nothing--except that you introduced us."
For a second I remained silent. Then with severity I remarked:
"Pardon me, but I think you rather misunderstood my question. I meant to
ask whether you have ever been to his flat in Harrington Gardens?"
"Ah! I see," she cried instantly. "That woman Petre has endeavoured to
set you against me, Teddy, because I love you. She has invented some
cruel lie or other, just as she did in another case within my knowledge.
Come," she added, "tell me out plainly what she has alleged against me?"
She was very firm and resolute now, and I saw in her face a hard, defiant
expression--an expression of bitter hatred against the woman who had
betrayed her.
"Well," I said; "loving you as intensely as I do, I can hardly bring
myself to repeat her insinuations."
"But I demand to know them," she protested, standing erect and facing me.
"I am attacked; therefore, I am within my right to know what charges the
woman has brought against me."
"She has brought no direct charges," was my slow reply. "But she has
suggested certain things--certain scandalous things."
"What are they?" she gasped, suddenly pale as death.
"First tell me the truth, Phrida," I cried, holding her in my arms and
looking straight into those splendid eyes I admired so much. "Admit
it--you knew Digby. He--he was a friend of yours?"
"A--a friend--" she gasped, half choking with emotion. "A--friend--yes."
"You knew him intimately. You visited him at his rooms unknown to me!" I
went on fiercely.
"Ah!" she shrieked. "Don't torture me like this, Teddy, when I love you
so deeply. You don't know--you can never know all I have suffered--and
now this woman has sought to ruin and crush me!"
"Has she spoken the truth when she says that you visited Digby--at
night--in secret!" I demanded, bitterly, between my teeth, still holding
her, her white, hard-set face but a few inches from my own.
She drew a long, deep breath, and in her eyes was a strange
half-fascinated look--a look that I had never seen in them before.
"Ah! Teddy," she gasped. "This--this is the death of all our love. I
foresee only darkness and ruin before me. But I will not lie to you. No!
I--I----"
Then she paused, and a shudder ran through her slim frame which I held
within my grasp. "I'll tell you the truth. Yes. I--I--went to see your
friend unknown to you."
"You did!" I cried hoarsely, with fierce anger possessing my soul.
"Yes, dear," she faltered in a voice so low that I could scarce catch her
reply. "Yes--I--I went there," she faltered, "because--because he--he
compelled me."
"Compelled you!" I echoed in blank dismay.
But at that instant I saw that the blackness of unconsciousness had
fallen upon my love even as I held her in my embrace.
And for me, too, alas! the sun of life had ceased to shine, and the world
was dead.