The Under-Secretary

“My own behaviour is my own affair, Miss Mortimer,” he said in a determined voice.

“Yes, all but suicide,” she assented. “That is an affair which concerns your friends.”

“Of whom you are scarcely one,” he observed meaningly.

“No,” she replied, stretching forth her hand until it rested upon his arm. “You entirely misunderstand me, Mr Chisholm. As in this affair you have already involuntarily confided in me, I beg of you to rely upon my discretion and secrecy, and to allow me to become your friend.”

Chapter Twenty Two.

Requires Solution

With his face to the intruder, Chisholm stood leaning with his hand upon the back of a chair.

“Friends are to me useless, Miss Mortimer,” he answered her.

“Others perhaps are useless, but I may prove to be the exception,” she said very gravely. “You want a friend, and I am ready to become yours.”

“Your offer is a kind one,” he replied, still regarding her with suspicion, for he could not divine the real reason of her visit there, or why she had concealed herself, unless she had done so to learn, if possible, his secret. “I thank you for it, but cannot accept it.”

“But, surely, you do not intend to perform such a cowardly act as to take your own life,” she said in a measured tone of voice, looking at him with her wide-open eyes. “It is my duty to prevent you from committing such a mad action as that.”

“I quite admit that it would be mad,” he said. “But the victim of circumstances can only accept the inevitable.”

“Why, how strangely and despondently you talk, Mr Chisholm! From my hiding-place at the back of those curtains, I’ve been watching you this hour or more. Your nervousness has developed into madness, if you will permit me to criticise. Had it not been for my presence here you would by this time have taken your life. For what reason? Shall I tell you? Because, Mr Chisholm, you are a coward. You are in terror of an exposure that you dare not face.”

“How do you know?” he cried fiercely, springing towards her in alarm. “Who told you?”

“You told me yourself,” she answered. “Your own lips denounced you.”

“What did I say? What foolish nonsense did I utter in my madness?” he demanded, the fact now being plain that she had heard all the wild words that had escaped him. The old colonel had warned him that this woman was not his friend. He reflected that, at all costs he must silence her. She paused for a few moments in hesitation.

“Believing yourself to be here alone, you discussed aloud your secret in all its hideousness – the secret of your sin.”

“And if I did – what then?” he demanded defiantly. His courtliness towards her had been succeeded by an undisguised resentment. To think that she should have been brought into his house to act as eavesdropper, and to learn his secret!

“Nothing, except that I am now in your confidence, and, having rescued you from an ignominious end, am anxious to become your friend,” she answered in a quiet tone of voice. Her face was pale, but she was, nevertheless, firm and resolute.

He was puzzled more than ever in regard to her. With his wild eyes full upon her, he tried to make out whether it was by design or by accident that she was there, locked in that room with him. That she was an inveterate novel-reader he knew, but her excuse that she had come there to obtain a book at so late an hour scarcely bore an air of probability. Besides, she had exchanged her smart dinner-gown for a dark stuff dress. No, she had spied upon him. The thought lashed him to fury.

“To calculate the amount of profit likely to accrue to oneself as the result of a friend’s misfortune is no sign of friendship,” he said in a sarcastic voice. “No, Miss Mortimer, you have, by thus revealing your presence, prolonged my life by a few feverish minutes, but your words certainly do not establish the sincerity of your friendship. Besides,” he added, “we scarcely know each other.”

“I admit that; but let us reconsider all the facts,” she said, leaning a little toward him, across the back of a chair. “Your actions have shown that the matter is to you one of life or death. If so, it manifestly deserves careful and mature consideration.”

He nodded, but no word passed his lips. She seemed a strangely sage person, this girl with the fair hair, whose parentage was so obscure, and whose invitation to his house was due to some ridiculous penchant felt for her by Claudia. Why she had ever been invited puzzled him. He would gladly have asked her to return to town on the day of her arrival if it had been possible to forget the laws of hospitality and chivalry. The whole matter had annoyed him greatly, and this was its climax.

“Well, now,” she went on, in a voice which proved her to be in no way excited, “I gather from your words and actions that you fear to face the truth – that your guilt is such that exposure will mean ruin. Is this so?”

“Well, to speak plainly, it is so,” he said mechanically, looking back at the glassful of death on the table.

“You must avoid exposure.”

“How?”

“By acting like a man, not like a coward.”

He looked at her sharply, without replying. She spoke with all the gravity of a woman twice her years, and he could not decide whether she were really in earnest in the expression of her readiness to become his friend. One thing was absolutely certain, namely, that she was acquainted with the innermost secrets of his heart. In the wild madness of despair he had blurted out his fear and agony of mind, and she had actually been the witness of those moments of sweet melancholy when, at the sight of that lock of hair, he had allowed his thoughts to wander back to the days long dead, when the world was to him so rosy and full of life. Should he conciliate her, or should he, on the other hand, defy her and refuse her assistance? That she, of all women, should in this fashion thrust herself into his life was strange indeed. But had she actually thrust herself upon him, or was her presence there, as she had alleged, a mere freak of fortune?

“You say that I ought to act like a man, Miss Mortimer. Well, I am ready to hear your suggestion.”

“My suggestion is quite simple: it is that you should live, be bold, and face those who seek your downfall.”

He sighed despairingly.

“In theory that’s all very well, but in practice, impossible,” he answered after a short pause.

“Think! You are wealthy, you are famous, with hosts of friends who will come to your aid if you confide in them – ”

“Ah! but I cannot confide in them,” he cried despondently, interrupting her. “You are the only person who knows the secret of my intention.”

“But surely you will not deliberately seek such an inglorious end – you, the pride and hope of a political party, and one of a race that has century after century been famous for producing noble Englishmen. It is madness – sheer madness!”

“I know it,” he admitted; “but to me birth, position, wealth, popularity are all nothing.”

“I can quite understand that all these qualities may count as nothing to you, Mr Chisholm,” she said in a tone of voice indicative of impatience, “but there is still one reason more why you should hesitate to take the step you have just been contemplating.”

“And what is that?”

For a moment she remained silent, looking straight at him with her splendid eyes, as if to read the book of his heart. At length she made answer:

“Because a woman worships you.”

He started, wondering quickly if his midnight visitor intended those words to convey a declaration of love. With an effort he smiled in a good-humoured way, but almost instantly his dark features regained their tragic expression.

“And if a woman pays me that compliment, is it not a misfortune for her?” he asked. There was a motive in her concealment there. What could it be?

“It surely should not be so, if the love is perfect, as it is in the present case.”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “apparently you are better acquainted with my private affairs than I am myself, Miss Mortimer. But in any case the love of this woman whom you mention can be only a passing fancy. True, I was loved once, long ago. But that all belongs to the past.”

“And the only relic of the bygone romance is that lock of hair? Yes, I know all. I have seen all. And your secret is, I assure you, safe with me.”

“But this woman who – well, who is attracted towards me? What is her name?” he demanded, not without some interest.

“You surely know her,” she answered. “The woman who is your best and most devoted friend – the woman in whom you should surely confide before attempting to take such a step as you are contemplating to-night – Lady Richard Nevill.”

His lips again set themselves hard at the mention of that name. Was it uttered in sarcasm, or was she in real earnest? He regarded her keenly for a moment, and then inclined to the latter opinion.

“The relations existing between Lady Richard and myself are our own affair,” he said, vexed by her reference to a subject which of all others, next to the knowledge of his sin, perturbed him most.