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.
This seemed an admirable arrangement, and in a couple of minutes he had
set off. The light cast by the lantern was excellent; it shone brightly
to guide his path, and gleamed on the rails of the four tracks as they
pointed in narrowing perspective up the black cavern that lay before
him until they were lost in the darkness. He walked on the right-hand
side of the tunnel; immediately on his left, was the main line from
Southampton to Liverpool, along which he would soon return at a brisker
pace than that which was his now. For some hundreds of yards the gray
glimmer from the end of the tunnel where he had entered also cast a
diffused light into the darkness, but as he proceeded the light faded
and grew dim, and when he was now some third of the way through, the
slight continuous bend in the tunnel, which had been necessary in order
to avoid a belt of unstable and shifty strata, obscured it altogether,
and he walked, but for the light from his lantern, in absolute
darkness. His own footsteps echoed queerly from the curved vault, but
there was otherwise dead silence save for some occasional drip of
water; all outside noises of the world were entirely cut off from him.
He was stepping along thus when he saw, with a sudden start of horror,
that there was something dark lying between the second and third pair
of rails a little way ahead of him. From the fact that he started, he
was conscious that his nerves were not working with their accustomed
smoothness and coolness, and he heard his heart hammering in his
throat. Then he pulled himself together, crossed the two rails which
lay between him and it, turned the lantern on it, and saw next moment,
with a spasm of relief, that it was only a coat, left there and
forgotten, no doubt, by some workman. With a cheap impulse of kindness,
he picked it up, meaning to leave it with his lantern at the signal-box
at the far end. But as he picked it up and stepped on again to regain
the side path where he had been walking, his foot tripped in it, or on
the corner of some sleeper, and he fell forward, the lantern flying
from his hand, and smashing itself to atoms on the hard metal of the
road, and his head struck full on the temple against the steel of the
track. The blow completely stunned him.
About the same time the party left Molesworth to drive to the station,
where the Liverpool express would be stopped for them. It was a
distance of not more than three miles, but they stopped in the village
close to the station in case there was anything at the post-office
which had come by the second post, and would thus miss them. There
was only one thing--a telegram from Bilton, re-directed from Seaton
House, asking that the train might be stopped at Wyfold. So they drove
on to the station, and there learned that the express had already
passed through Wyfold without stopping, and would reach Molesworth in
six or seven minutes. So Mr. Palmer, who never wasted regrets on the
inevitable, shrugged his shoulders and inspected the book-stall, while
Mrs. Palmer inundated the telegraph-office with despatches, and Bertie
and Amelie strolled up and down the platform.
Bilton came to himself with a blank unconsciousness of where he was.
It was quite dark, and he first realized that he was not in bed by the
feel of his clothes. Then he put his hand to his head, and drew it away
with a start of horror, for it was warm and wet. Then he felt with his
hand the metal of the roadway, and, following that, encountered one of
the rails. At that the broken ends of memory joined themselves, and he
knew where he was. Simultaneously he heard the dead silence broken by a
distant roar and rumble.
At this he started to his feet, wavered, and nearly fell again. All
his senses were suddenly electrified, vivified, by that noise, and he
remembered all--how he had started to walk through the tunnel, how he
had picked up the coat, how he had fallen, how the engineer had told
him that the next train through would be that to Liverpool. But where
was he? On which line had he fallen? There were four tracks; he thought
he ought to move to the right across the rails--no, to the left. Hell!
was it to the right or to the left that that train would pass?
The roar got louder; it echoed with an infernal clangour from the
curved sides of the tunnel; it prevented him thinking, and he felt sure
that if it would only stop for one second his head would be clear, and
he could take two steps to safety. But that noise must stop a moment,
and in a frenzy, no longer master of himself, he shouted hoarsely, and
impotently waved his hand in the darkness. From which way did it come?
From in front of him or behind him? If he could only settle that, he
would know what to do.
The roaring grew unbearable: it drove him mad; and, with his fingers in
his ears, he began to run he did not know where, and he again tripped
on some rail and fell. On the sides of the tunnel there shone a red,
gloomy light, but he did not see it; above the roar and rattle of the
racing wheels there sounded the hot, quick panting of some monster, but
he did not hear it. He knew one moment of awful shock, of the sense
of being torn and battered in pieces; then the roar sank down, as the
train passed on, and diminished into silence as it emerged from the
darkness of the tunnel into the pure and glorious sunlight of that
September morning. And to him who had been pitiless and relentless in
life had come death as swift and relentless as himself.
Amelie and Bertie were at the fore-end of the platform when the express
drew up, and they turned back. Just as they got opposite the engine,
Bertie gave one short gasp of horror, and grasped his wife's arm.
'Bertie, what is it?' she said.
'Go on, Amelie,' he said quickly. 'Don't look to right or left, but
walk straight on.'
She obeyed him, and he went to the engine-driver.
'There is something on your engine,' he said.
EPILOGUE
It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, and all down the
glades of Molesworth, where Bertie and Amelie had sat one hot morning
in June last year, innumerable companies of daffodils danced and
flickered in the sun. The great trees were yet for the most part bare
of leaves, but round the birches a green mist hovered, and the red buds
on the limes were ready to burst. Boisterous, but warm and fruitful,
and teeming with the promise of the opening year, the wind shouted
through the branches, and bowled, as a child bowls a hoop, great fleecy
clouds across the blue of the sky. Movement, light, fruitfulness of the
warm earth, were all triumphant; the strength of all that lived was
renewed; spring was there.
To-day Amelie was pacing alone up and down the glade near the fallen
tree-trunk where she had sketched before. She walked briskly, for it
was not yet a day to loiter in; and as she came to the end of her
beat within sight of the house, she looked eagerly towards it as if
expecting someone. But the brilliance of her face and of the smile that
every now and then hovered round her lips was in no way diminished when
she turned again without seeing him whom she waited for. It seemed she
was content to wait, and, though eager, did not fear disappointment.
The grass where she walked was all bright with the springing shoots of
young growth, and the daffodils nodded and tossed their heads all round
her. Not yet was the full note of woodland summer sounding, but the
great orchestra of nature, as it were, was tuning up for the concert.
Somehow the fragmentary broken sounds and scraps of summer melody
strangely pleased her; often she stopped in her walk, and looked with
her brilliant smile to right and left. Once she threw her arms wide, so
that her red cloak stood away from her bosom, as if to take the world
to it.
At last he came, and her heart embraced him ere yet he reached her. He
was hatless, and the yellow gold of his hair was tossed by the wind.
At the sight of him her whole being leaped towards him with stronger
ecstasy than she had known yet, for the love between them seemed
perfect; and she, woman-like, and loving her task, knew that a little
word of comfort and sympathy was demanded of her.
'Dear one,' she said, and 'Dear one' again. 'Poor Bertie! you look
tired. You should have waited the night in London, and come down this
evening.'
'Should I, when you were waiting?' he asked. 'Oh, what a morning from
God! And you, Amelie, among the daffodils.'
She put her arm into his.
'Tell me,' she said, 'did you get there in time? Did your father know
you?'
Bertie shook his head.
'No; he knew no one from the time of his seizure. But I am glad I went.
He will be buried here on Friday.'
She pressed his arm; that sympathy of touch was more eloquent to him
than words.
'And the baby?' he asked.
'Oh, Bertie, so wonderful! Nurse says he will speak in no time at all
if he goes on like this. She says she never saw such a clever baby.'
Bertie laughed.
'That is a remark I never heard before,' he said.
'Then you will hear it lots of times in future,' said Amelie with some
dignity; 'nurse says it nearly every day.'
They had passed out of the shade of the trees on to the lawn near the
house. Just in front of them was an ugly patch of black-looking earth,
on which, however, the new growth of grass was beginning to show.
Amelie stopped when they came to it.
'Ah, Bertie, those weeks!' she said--'those weeks when we were
strangers! This black patch, where the bore-hole was begun, makes them
more vivid to me than my memory of them. It is like them--a black
patch.'
'Yet the grass springs again,' said he.
She took both his hands in hers.
'Yes, Bertie,' she said, 'the grass springs again, for the winter is
past; I read it this morning only. It says beautiful things. "The
flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is
come." That is now, is it not? Then, further on, "My beloved is mine,
and I am his."'
'And that is the best of all,' said he.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Relentless City, by Edward Frederic Benson