CONCERNS MY PRIVATE AFFAIRS.
"What have you found there?" inquired Ambler Jevons, quickly
interested, and yet surprised at my determination to conceal it from
him.
"Something that concerns me," I replied briefly.
"Concerns you?" he ejaculated. "I don't understand. How can anything
among the old man's private papers concern you?"
"This concerns me personally," I answered. "Surely that is sufficient
explanation."
"No," my friend said. "Forgive me, Ralph, for speaking quite plainly,
but in this affair we are both working towards the same end--namely,
to elucidate the mystery. We cannot hope for success if you are bent
upon concealing your discoveries from me."
"This is a private affair of my own," I declared doggedly. "What I
have found only concerns myself."
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of distinct dissatisfaction.
"Even if it is a purely private matter we are surely good friends
enough to be cognisant of one another's secrets," he remarked.
"Of course," I replied dubiously. "But only up to a certain point."
"Then, in other words, you imply that you can't trust me?"
"I can trust you, Ambler," I answered calmly. "We are the best of
friends, and I hope we shall always be so. Will you not forgive me for
refusing to show you these letters?"
"I only ask you one question. Have they anything to do with the matter
we are investigating?"
I hesitated. With his quick perception he saw that a lie was not ready
upon my lips.
"They have. Your silence tells me so. In that case it is your duty to
show me them," he said, quietly.
I protested again, but he overwhelmed my arguments. In common fairness
to him I ought not, I knew, keep back the truth. And yet it was the
greatest and most terrible blow that had ever fallen upon me. He saw
that I was crushed and stammering, and he stood by me wondering.
"Forgive me, Ambler," I urged again. "When you have read this letter
you will fully understand why I have endeavoured to conceal it from
you; why, if you were not present here at this moment, I would burn
them all and not leave a trace behind."
Then I handed it to him.
He took it eagerly, skimmed it through, and started just as I had
started when he saw the signature. Upon his face was a blank
expression, and he returned it to me without a word.
"Well?" I asked. "What is your opinion?"
"My opinion is the same as your own, Ralph, old fellow," he
answered slowly, looking me straight in the face. "It is
amazing--startling--tragic."
"You think, then, that the motive of the crime was jealousy?"
"The letter makes it quite plain," he answered huskily. "Give me the
others. Let me examine them. I know how severe this blow must be to
you, old fellow," he added, sympathetically.
"Yes, it has staggered me," I stammered. "I'm utterly dumfounded by
the unexpected revelation!" and I handed him the packet of
correspondence, which he placed upon the table, and, seating himself,
commenced eagerly to examine letter after letter.
While he was thus engaged I took up the first letter, and read it
through--right to the bitter end.
It was apparently the last of a long correspondence, for all the
letters were arranged chronologically, and this was the last of the
packet. Written from Neneford Manor, Northamptonshire, and vaguely
dated "Wednesday," as is a woman's habit, it was addressed to Mr.
Courtenay, and ran as follows:--
_"Words cannot express my contempt for a man who breaks his
word as easily as you break yours. A year ago, when you were
my father's guest, you told me that you loved me, and urged
me to marry you. At first I laughed at your proposal; then
when I found you really serious, I pointed out the
difference of our ages. You, in return, declared that you
loved me with all the ardour of a young man; that I was your
ideal; and you promised, by all you held most sacred, that
if I consented I should never regret. I believed you, and
believed the false words of feigned devotion which you
wrote to me later under seal of strictest secrecy. You went
to Cairo, and none knew of our secret--the secret that you
intended to make me your wife. And how have you kept your
promise? To-day my father has informed me that you are to
marry Mary! Imagine the blow to me! My father expects me to
rejoice, little dreaming how I have been fooled; how lightly
you have treated a woman's affections and aspirations. Some
there are who, finding themselves in my position, would
place in Mary's hands the packet of your correspondence
which is before me as I write, and thus open her eyes to the
fact that she is but the dupe of a man devoid of honour.
Shall I do so? No. Rest assured that I shall not. If my
sister is happy, let her remain so. My vendetta lies not in
that direction. The fire of hatred may be stifled, but it
can never be quenched. We shall be quits some day, and you
will regret bitterly that you have broken your word so
lightly. My revenge--the vengeance of a jealous woman--will
fall upon you at a moment and in a manner you will little
dream of. I return you your letters, as you may not care for
them to fall into other hands, and from to-day I shall never
again refer to what has passed. I am young, and may still
obtain an upright and honourable man as husband. You are
old, and are tottering slowly to your doom. Farewell._
"ETHELWYNN MIVART."
The letter fully explained a circumstance of which I had been entirely
ignorant, namely, that the woman I had loved had actually been
engaged to old Mr. Courtenay before her sister had married him. Its
tenor showed how intensely antagonistic she was towards the man who
had fooled her, and in the concluding sentence there was a distinct if
covert threat--a threat of bitter revenge.
She had returned the old man's letters apparently in order to show
that in her hand she held a further and more powerful weapon; she had
not sought to break off his marriage with Mary, but had rather stood
by, swallowed her anger, and calmly calculated upon a fierce vendetta
at a moment when he would least expect it.
Truly those startling words spoken by Sir Bernard had been full of
truth. I remembered them now, and discerned his meaning. He was at
least an honest upright man who, although sometimes a trifle
eccentric, had my interests deeply at heart. In the progress I had
made in my profession I owed much to him, and even in my private
affairs he had sought to guide me, although I had, alas! disregarded
his repeated warnings.
I took up one after another of the letters my friend had examined, and
found them to be the correspondence of a woman who was either angling
after a wealthy husband, or who loved him with all the strength of her
affection. Some of the communications were full of passion, and
betrayed that poetry of soul that was innate in her. The letters were
dated from Neneford, from Oban, and from various Mediterranean ports,
where she had gone yachting with her uncle, Sir Thomas Heaton, the
great Lancashire coal-owner. Sometimes she addressed him as "Dearest,"
at others as "Beloved," usually signing herself "Your Own." So full
were they of the ardent passion characteristic of her that they held
me in amazement. It was passion developed under its most profound and
serious aspects; they showed the calm and thoughtful, not the
brilliant side of intellect.
In Ethelwynn's character the passionate and the imaginative were
blended equally and in the highest conceivable degree as combined with
delicate female nature. Those letters, although written to a man in
whose heart romance must long ago have been dead, showed how complex
was her character, how fervent, enthusiastic and self-forgetting her
love. At first I believed that those passionate outpourings were
merely designed to captivate the old gentleman for his money; but when
I read on I saw how intense her passion became towards the end, and
how the culmination of it all was that wild reproachful missive
written when the crushing blow fell so suddenly upon her.
Ethelwynn was a woman of extraordinary character, full of picturesque
charm and glowing romance. To be tremblingly alive to the gentle
impressions, and yet be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a
design requires it, an immovable heart, amidst even the most imperious
causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution
of mind, but it is the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity. I knew
her as a woman of highest mental powers touched with a melancholy
sweetness. I was now aware of the cause of that melancholy.
Yet it was apparent that the serious and energetic part of her
character was founded on deep passion, for after her sister's marriage
with the man she had herself loved and had threatened, she had
actually come there beneath their roof, and lived as her sister's
companion, stifling all the hatred that had entered her heart, and
preserving an outward calm that had no doubt entirely disarmed him.
Such a circumstance was extraordinary. To me, as to Ambler Jevons who
knew her well, it seemed almost inconceivable that old Mr. Courtenay
should allow her to live there after receiving such a wild
communication as that final letter. Especially curious, too, that Mary
had never suspected or discovered her sister's jealousy. Yet so
skilfully had Ethelwynn concealed her intention of revenge that both
husband and wife had been entirely deceived.
Love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of passion
and imagination. I had foolishly believed that this calm, sweet-voiced
woman had loved me, but those letters made it plain that I had been
utterly fooled. "Le mystere de l'existence," said Madame de Stael to
her daughter, "c'est la rapport de nos erreurs avec nos peines."
And although there was in her, in her character, and in her terrible
situation, a concentration of all the interests that belong to
humanity, she was nevertheless a murderess.
"The truth is here," remarked my friend, laying his hand upon the heap
of tender correspondence which had been brought to such an abrupt
conclusion by the letter I have printed in its entirety. "It is a
strange, romantic story, to say the least."
"Then you really believe that she is guilty?" I exclaimed, hoarsely.
He shrugged his shoulders significantly, but no word escaped his lips.
In the silence that fell between us, I glanced at him. His chin was
sunk upon his breast, his brows knit, his thin fingers toying idly
with the plain gold ring.
"Well?" I managed to exclaim at last. "What shall we do?"
"Do?" he echoed. "What can we do, my dear fellow? That woman's future
is in your hands."
"Why in mine?" I asked. "In yours also, surely?"
"No," he answered resolutely, taking my hand and grasping it warmly.
"No, Ralph; I know--I can see how you are suffering. You believed her
to be a pure and honest woman--one above the common run--a woman fit
for helpmate and wife. Well, I, too, must confess myself very much
misled. I believed her to be all that you imagined; indeed, if her
face be any criterion, she is utterly unspoiled by the world and its
wickedness. In my careful studies in physiognomy I have found that
very seldom does a perfect face like hers cover an evil heart. Hence,
I confess, that this discovery has amazed me quite as much as it has
you. I somehow feel----"
"I don't believe it!" I cried, interrupting him. "I don't believe,
Ambler, that she murdered him--I can't believe it. Her's is not the
face of a murderess."
"Faces sometimes deceive," he said quietly. "Recollect that a clever
woman can give a truthful appearance to a lie where a man utterly
fails."
"I know--I know. But even with this circumstantial proof I can't and
won't believe it."
"Please yourself, my dear fellow," he answered. "I know it is hard to
believe ill of a woman whom one loves so devotedly as you've loved
Ethelwynn. But be brave, bear up, and face the situation like a man."
"I am facing it," I said resolutely. "I will face it by refusing to
believe that she killed him. The letters are plain enough. She was
engaged secretly to old Courtenay, who threw her over in favour of her
sister. But is there anything so very extraordinary in that? One hears
of such things very often."
"But the final letter?"
"It bears evidence of being written in the first moments of wild anger
on realising that she had been abandoned in favour of Mary. Probably
she has by this time quite forgotten the words she wrote. And in any
case the fact of her living beneath the same roof, supervising the
household, and attending to the sick man during Mary's absence,
entirely negatives any idea of revenge."
Jevons smiled dubiously, and I myself knew that my argument was not
altogether logical.
"Well?" I continued. "And is not that your opinion?"
"No. It is not," he replied, bluntly.
"Then what is to be done?" I asked, after a pause.
"The matter rests entirely with you, Ralph," he replied. "I know what
I should do in a similar case."
"What would you do? Advise me," I urged eagerly.
"I should take the whole of the correspondence, just as it is, place
it in the grate there, and burn it," he said.
I was not prepared for such a suggestion. A similar idea had occurred
to me, but I feared to suggest to him such a mode of defeating the
ends of justice.
"But if I do that will you give me a vow of secrecy?" I asked,
quickly. "Recollect that such a step is a serious offence against the
law."
"When I pass out of this room I shall have no further recollection of
ever having seen any letters," he answered, again giving me his hand.
"In this matter my desire is only to help you. If, as you believe,
Ethelwynn is innocent, then no harm can be done in destroying the
letters, whereas if she is actually the assassin she must, sooner or
later, betray her guilt. A woman may be clever, but she can never
successfully cover the crime of murder."
"Then you are willing that I, as finder of those letters, shall burn
them? And further, that no word shall pass regarding this discovery?"
"Most willing," he replied. "Come," he added, commencing to gather
them together. "Let us lose no time, or perhaps the constable on duty
below or one of the plain-clothes men may come prying in here."
Then at his direction and with his assistance I willingly tore up each
letter in small pieces, placed the whole in the grate where dead
cinders still remained, and with a vesta set a light to them. For a
few moments they blazed fiercely up the chimney, then died out,
leaving only black tinder.
"We must make a feint of having tried to light the fire," said Jevons,
taking an old newspaper, twisting it up, and setting light to it in
the grate, afterwards stirring up the dead tinder with the tinder of
the letters. "I'll remark incidentally to the constable that we've
tried to get a fire, and didn't succeed. That will prevent Thorpe
poking his nose into it."
So when the whole of the letters had been destroyed, all traces of
their remains effaced and the safe re-locked, we went downstairs--not,
however, before my companion had made a satisfactory explanation to
the constable and entirely misled him as to what we had been doing.