THE LETTER
Oh, you shall walk in the mummers’ train,
And dance for a beggar’s boon,
And wear as mad a motley
As any under the moon,
And you shall pay the piper—
But I will call the tune.
Old Mr. Mottisfont had been dead for about a fortnight when the letter
arrived. David Blake found it upon his breakfast table when he came
downstairs. It was a Friday morning, and there was an east wind blowing.
David came into the dining-room wishing that there were no such thing as
breakfast, and there, propped up in front of his plate, was the letter.
He stared at it, and stared again. A series of sleepless or hag-ridden
nights are not the best preparation for a letter written in a dead man’s
hand and sealed with a dead man’s seal. If David’s hand was steady when
he picked up the letter it was because his will kept it steady, and for
no other reason. As he held it in his hand, Mrs. Havergill came bustling
in with toast and coffee. David passed her, went into his consulting
room and shut the door.
“First he went red and then he went white,” she told Sarah, “and he
pushed past me as if I were a stock, or a post, or something of that
sort. I ’ope he ’asn’t caught one of them nasty fevers, down in some
slum. ’Tisn’t natural for a man to turn colour that way. There was only
one young man ever I knew as did it, William Jones his name was, and he
was the sexton’s son down at Dunnington. And he’d do it. Red one minute
and white the next, and then red again. And he went off in a galloping
decline, and broke his poor mother’s heart. And there’s their two graves
side by side in Dunnington Churchyard. Mr. Jones, he dug the graves
hisself, and never rightly held his head up after.”
David Blake sat down at his table and spread out old Mr. Mottisfont’s
letter upon the desk in front of him. It was a long letter, written in a
clear, pointed handwriting, which was characteristic and unmistakable.
“My dear David,”—wrote old Mr. Mottisfont,—“My dear David, I have just
written a letter to Edward—a blameless and beautiful letter—in which I
have announced my immediate, or, as one might say, approximate
intention of committing suicide by the simple expedient of first
putting arsenic into a cup of tea and then drinking the tea. I shall
send Edward for the tea, and I shall put the arsenic into it, under
his very nose. And Edward will be thinking of beetles, and will not
see me do it. I am prepared to bet my bottom dollar that he does not
see me do it. Edward’s letter, of which I enclose a copy, is the sort
of letter which one shows to coroners, and jurymen, and legal
advisers. Of course things may not have gone as far as that, but, on
the other hand, they may. There are evil-minded persons who may have
suspected Edward of having hastened my departure to a better world.
You may even have suspected him yourself, in which case, of course, my
dear David, this letter will be affording you a good deal of
pleasurable relief.” David clenched his hand and read on. “Edward’s
letter is for the coroner. It should arrive about a fortnight after my
death, if my valued correspondent, William Giles, of New York, does as
I have asked him. This letter is for you. Between ourselves, then, it
was that possible three years of yours that decided me. I couldn’t
stand it. I don’t believe in another world, and I’m damned if I’ll put
in three years’ hell in this one. Do you remember old Madden? I do,
and I’m not going to hang on like that, not to please any one, nor I’m
not going to be cut up in sections either. So now you know all about
it. I’ve just sent Edward for the tea. Poor Edward, it will hurt his
feelings very much to be suspected of polishing me off. By the way,
David, as a sort of last word—you’re no end of a damn fool—why don’t
you marry the right woman instead of wasting your time hankering after
the wrong one? That’s all. Here’s luck.
“Yours.
“E. M. M.”
David read the letter straight through without any change of expression.
When he came to the end he folded the sheets neatly, put them back in
the envelope, and locked the envelope away in a drawer. Then his face
changed suddenly. First, a great rush of colour came into it, and then
every feature altered under an access of blind and ungovernable anger.
He pushed back his chair and sprang up, but the impetus which had
carried him to his feet appeared to receive some extraordinary check.
His movement had been a very violent one, but all at once it passed into
rigidity. He stood with every muscle tense, and made neither sound nor
movement. Slowly the colour died out of his face. Then he took a step
backwards and dropped again into the chair. His eyes were fixed upon the
strip of carpet which lay between him and the writing-table. A small,
twisted scrap of paper was lying there. David Blake looked hard at the
paper, but he did not see it. What he saw was another torn and twisted
thing.
A man’s professional honour is a very delicate thing. David had never
held his lightly. If he had violated it, he had done so because there
were great things in the balance. Mary’s happiness, Mary’s future,
Mary’s life. He had betrayed a trust because Mary asked it of him and
because there was so much in the balance. And it had all been illusion.
There had been no risk—no danger. Nothing but an old man’s last and
cruelest jest. And he, David, had been the old man’s dupe. A furious
anger surged in him. For nothing, it was all for nothing. He had
wrenched himself for nothing, forfeited his self-respect for nothing,
sold his honour for nothing. Mary had bidden him, and he had done her
bidding, and it was all for nothing. A little bleak sunlight came in at
the window and showed the worn patches upon the carpet. David could
remember that old brown carpet for as long as he could remember
anything. It had been in his father’s consulting room. The writing-table
had been there too. The room was full of memories of William Blake. Old
familiar words and looks came back to David as he sat there. He
remembered many little things, and, as he remembered, he despised
himself very bitterly. As the moments passed, so his self-contempt grew,
until it became unbearable. He rose, pushing his chair so that it fell
over with a crash, and went into the dining-room.
Half an hour later Sarah put her head round the corner of the door and
announced, “Mr. Edward Mottisfont in the consulting room, sir.” David
Blake was sitting at the round table with a decanter in front of him. He
got up with a short laugh and went to Edward.
Edward presented a ruffled but resigned appearance. He was agitated, but
beneath the agitation there was plainly evident a trace of melancholy
triumph.
“I’ve had a letter,” he began. David stood facing him.
“So have I,” he said.
Edward’s wave of the hand dismissed as irrelevant all letters except his
own. “But mine—mine was from my uncle,” he exclaimed.
“Exactly. He was obliging enough to send me a copy.”
“You—you know,” said Edward. Then he searched his pockets, and
ultimately produced a folded letter.
“You’ve had a letter like this? He’s told you? You know?”
“That he’s played us the dirtiest trick on record? Yes, thanks, Edward,
I’ve been enjoying the knowledge for the best part of an hour.”
Edward shook his head.
“Of course he was mad,” he said. “I have often wondered if he was quite
responsible. He used to say such extraordinary things. If you remember,
I asked you about it once, and you laughed at me. But now, of course,
there is no doubt about it. His brain had become affected.”
David’s lip twitched a little.
“Mad? Oh, no, you needn’t flatter yourself, he wasn’t mad. I only hope
my wits may last as well. He wasn’t mad, but he’s made the biggest fools
of the lot of us—the biggest fools. Oh, Lord!—how he’d have laughed. He
set the stage, and called the cast, and who so ready as we? First
Murderer—Edward Mottisfont; Chief Mourner—Mary, his wife; and Tom Fool,
beyond all other Tom Fools, David Blake, M.D. My Lord, he never said a
truer word than when he wrote me down a damn fool!”
David ended on a note of concentrated bitterness, and Edward stared at
him.
“I would much rather believe he was out of his mind,” he said
uncomfortably. “And he is dead—after all, he’s dead.”
“Yes,” said David grimly, “he’s dead.”
“And thanks to you,” continued Edward, “there has been no scandal—or
publicity. It would really have been dreadful if it had all come out.
Most—most unpleasant. I know you didn’t wish me to say anything.”
Edward began to rumple his hair wildly. “Mary told me, and of course I
know it’s beastly to be thanked, and all that, but I can’t help saying
that—in fact—I _am_ awfully grateful. And I’m awfully thankful that the
matter has been cleared up so satisfactorily. If we hadn’t got this
letter, well—I don’t like to say such a thing—but any one of us might
have come to suspect the other. It doesn’t sound quite right to say it,”
pursued Edward apologetically, “but it might have happened. You might
have suspected me—oh, I don’t mean really—I am only supposing, you
know—or I might have suspected you. And now it’s all cleared up, and no
harm done, and as to my poor old uncle, he was mad. People who commit
suicide are always mad. Every one knows that.”
“Oh, have it your own way,” said David Blake. “He was mad, and now
everything is comfortably arranged, and we can all settle down with
nothing on our minds, and live happily ever after.”
There was a savage sarcasm in his voice, which he did not trouble to
conceal.
“And now, look here,” he went on with a sudden change of manner. He
straightened himself and looked squarely at Edward Mottisfont. “Those
letters have got to be kept.”
“Now I should have thought—” began Edward, but David broke in almost
violently.
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t start thinking, Edward.” He said: “Just you
listen to me. These letters have got to be kept. They’ve got to sit in a
safe at a lawyer’s. We’ll seal ’em up in the presence of witnesses, and
send ’em off. We’re not out of the wood yet. If this business were ever
to leak out—and, after all, there are four of us in it, and two of them
are women—if it were ever to leak out, we should want these letters to
save our necks. Yes—our necks. Good Lord, Edward, did you never realise
your position? Did you never realise that any jury in the world would
have hanged you on the evidence? It was damning—absolutely damning. And
I come in as accessory after the fact. No, thank you, I think we’ll keep
the letters, until we’re past hanging. And there’s another thing—how
many people have you told? Mary, of course?”
“Yes, Mary, but no one else,” said Edward.
David made an impatient movement.
“If you’ve told her, you’ve told her,” he said. “Now what you’ve got to
do is this: you’ve got to rub it into Mary that it’s just as important
for her to hold her tongue now as it was before the letter came. She was
safe as long as she thought your neck was in danger, but do, for
Heaven’s sake, get it into her head that I’m dead damned broke, if it
ever gets out that I helped to hush up a case that looked like murder
and turned out to be suicide. The law wouldn’t hang me, but I should
probably hang myself. I’d be _broke_. Rub that in.”
“She may have told Elizabeth,” said Edward hesitatingly. “I’m afraid she
may have told Elizabeth by now.”
“Elizabeth doesn’t talk,” said David shortly.
“Nor does Mary.” Edward’s tone was rather aggrieved.
“Oh, no woman ever talks,” said David.
He laughed harshly, and Edward went away with his feelings of gratitude
a little chilled, and a faint suspicion in his mind that David had been
drinking.