AN INDISCREET LETTER
The library of the house in Grosvenor Square was spacious, handsome and
ornate. Mr. Algernon H. Carraby, M.P., who sat dictating letters to a
secretary in an attitude which his favorite photographer had rendered
exceedingly familiar, at any rate among his constituents, was also, in
his way, handsome and ornate. Mrs. Carraby, who had just entered the
room, fulfilled in an even greater degree these same characteristics.
It was acknowledged to be a very satisfactory household.
"I should like to speak to you for a moment, Algernon," his wife
announced.
Mr. Carraby noticed for the first time that she was carrying a letter
in her hand. He turned at once to his secretary.
"Haskwell," he said, "kindly return in ten minutes."
The young man quitted the room. Mrs. Carraby advanced a few steps
further towards her husband. She was tall, beautifully dressed in the
latest extreme of fashion. Her movements were quiet, her skin a little
pale, and her eyebrows a little light. Nevertheless, she was quite a
famous beauty. Men all admired her without any reservations. The best
sort of women rather mistrusted her.
"Is that the letter, Mabel?" her husband asked, with an eagerness which
he seemed to be making some effort to conceal.
She nodded slowly. He held out his hand, but she did not at once part
with it.
"Algernon," she said quietly, "you know that I am not very scrupulous.
We both of us want success--a certain sort of success--and we have both
of us been content to pay the price. You have spent a good deal of
money and you have succeeded very well indeed. Somehow or other, I feel
to-day as though I were spending more than money."
He laughed a little uncomfortably.
"My dear Mabel!" he protested. "You are not going to back out, are
you?"
"No," she replied, "I do not think that I shall back out. There is
nothing in the whole world I want so much as to have you a Cabinet
Minister. If there had been any other way--"
"But there is no other way," her husband interrupted. "So long as
Julien Portel lives, I should never get my chance. He holds the post I
want. Every one knows that he is clever. He has the ear of the Prime
Minister and he hates me. My only chance is his retirement."
Mrs. Carraby looked at the letter.
"Well," she said, "I have played your game for you. I have gone even to
the extent of being talked about with Julien Portel."
Her husband moved uneasily in his chair.
"That will all blow over directly," he declared. "Besides, if--if
things go our way, we shan't see much more of Portel. Give me the
letter."
Still she hesitated. It was curious that throughout the slow evolution
of this scheme to break a man's life, for which she was mainly
responsible, she had never hesitated until this moment. Always it had
been fixed in her mind that Algernon was to be a Cabinet Minister; she
was to be the wife of a Cabinet Minister. That there were any other
things greater in life than the gratification of so reasonable an
ambition had never seemed possible. Now she hesitated. She looked at
her husband and she saw him with new eyes. He seemed suddenly a mean
little person. She thought of the other man and there was a strange
quiver in her heart--a very unexpected sensation indeed. There was a
difference in the breed. It came home to her at that moment. She found
herself even wondering, as she swung the letter idly between her thumb
and fore-finger, whether she would have been a different woman if she
had had a different manner of husband.
"The letter!" he repeated.
She laid it calmly on the desk before him.
"Of course," she said coldly, "if you find the contents affectionate
you must remember that I am in no way responsible. This was your
scheme. I have done my best."
The man's fingers trembled slightly as he broke the seal.
"Naturally," he agreed, pausing for an instant and looking up at her.
"I knew that I could trust you or I would never have put such an idea
into your head."
She laughed; a characteristic laugh it was, quite cold, quite
mirthless, apparently quite meaningless. Carraby turned back to the
letter, tore open the envelope and spread it out before them. He read
it out aloud in a sing-song voice.
_Downing Street. Tuesday_
MY DEAREST MABEL,
I had your sweet little note an hour ago. Of course I was disappointed
about luncheon, as I always am when I cannot see you. Your promise to
repay me, however, almost reconciles me.
The man looked up at his wife.
"Promise?" he repeated hoarsely. "What does he mean?"
"Go on," she said, with unchanged expression. "See if what you want is
there."
The man continued to read:
I am going to ask you a very great favor, Mabel. When we are alone
together, I talk to you with absolute freedom. To write you on matters
connected with my office is different. I know very well how deep and
sincere your interest in politics really is, and it has always been one
of my greatest pleasures, when with you, to talk things over and hear
your point of view. Without flattery, dear, I have really more than
once found your advice useful. It is your understanding which makes our
companionship always a pleasure to me, and I rely upon that when I beg
you not to ask me to write you again on matters to which I have really
no right to allude. You do not mind this, dear? And having read you my
little lecture, I will answer your question. Yes, the Cabinet Council
was held exactly as you surmise. With great difficulty I persuaded
B---- to adopt my view of the situation. They are all much too
terrified of this war bogey. For once I had my own way. Our answer to
this latest demand from Berlin was a prompt and decisive negative.
Nothing of this is to be known for at least a week.
I am sorry your husband is such a bear. Perhaps on Monday we may meet
at Cardington House?
Please destroy this letter at once.
Ever affectionately yours,
JULIEN.
The man's eyes, as he read, grew brighter.
"It is enough?" the woman asked.
"It is more than enough!"
Slowly he replaced it in its envelope and thrust it into the
breast-pocket of his coat.
"What are you going to do with it?" she inquired.
"I have made my plans," he answered. "I know exactly how to make the
best and most dignified use of it."
He rose to his feet. Something in his wife's expression seemed to
disturb him. He walked a few steps toward the door and came back again.
"Mabel," he said, "are you glad?"
"Naturally I am glad," she replied.
"You have no regrets?"
Again she laughed.
"Regrets?" she echoed. "What are they? One doesn't think about such
things, nowadays."
They stood quite still in the centre of that very handsome apartment.
They were almost alien figures in the world in which they moved,
Carraby, the rankest of newcomers, carried into political life by his
wife's ambitions, his own self-amassed fortune, and a sort of subtle
cunning--a very common substitute for brains; Mrs. Carraby, on whom had
been plastered an expensive and ultra-fashionable education, although
she was able perhaps more effectually to conceal her origin, the
daughter of a rich Yorkshire manufacturer, who had secured a paid
entrance into Society. They were purely artificial figures for the very
reason that they never admitted any one of these facts to themselves,
but talked always the jargon of the world to which they aspired, as
though they were indeed denizens therein by right. At that moment,
though, a single natural feeling shook the man, shook his faith in
himself, in life, in his destiny. There was Jewish blood in his veins
and it made itself felt.
"Mabel," he began, "this man Portel--you've flirted with him, you say?"
"I have most certainly flirted with him," she admitted quietly.
"He hasn't dared--"
A flash of scorn lit her cold eyes.
"I think," she said, "that you had better ask me no questions of that
sort."
Carraby went slowly out. Already the moment was passing. Of course he
could trust his wife! Besides, in his letter was the death warrant of
the man who stood between him and his ambitions. Mrs. Carraby listened
to his footsteps in the hall, heard his suave reply to his secretary,
heard his orders to the footman who let him out. From where she stood
she watched him cross the square. Already he had recovered his alert
bearing. His shoes and his hat were glossy, his coat was of an
excellent fit. The woman watched him without movement or any change of
expression.