Whatsoever a Man Soweth

“What is there to tell?” she exclaimed hoarsely. “There was nothing extraordinary in our meeting. We met at a country house, as I met a hundred other men. Together we passed some idle summer days, and at last discovered that we loved each other.”

“Well?”

“Well – that is all,” she answered in a strange, bitter voice. “It is all at an end now.”

“I never recollect meeting him,” I remarked, reflectively.

“No – you never have,” she said. “But please do not let us discuss him further,” she urged. “The memories of it all are too painful. I was a fool!”

“A fool for loving him?” I asked, for so platonic were our relations that I could speak to her with the same frankness as her own brother.

“For loving him!” she echoed, looking straight at me. “No – no. I was a fool because I allowed myself to be misled, and believed what I was told without demanding proof.”

“Why do you fear the man who found you in Glasgow?”

“Ah! That is quite another matter,” she exclaimed quickly. “I warn you to be careful of John Parham. A word from me would place him under arrest; but, alas! I dare not speak. They have successfully closed my lips!”

Was she referring, I wondered, to that house with the fatal stairs?

“He is married, I suppose?”

“Yes – and his wife is in utter ignorance of who and what he is. She lives at Sydenham, and believes him to be something in the City. I know the poor woman quite well.”

It was upon the tip of my tongue to make inquiry about Miss O’Hara, but by so doing I saw I should admit having acted the spy. I longed to put some leading questions to her concerning the dead unknown in Charlton Wood, but in view of Eric’s terrible denunciation how could I?

Where was Eric? I asked her, but she declared that she was in ignorance.

“Some time ago,” she said, “I heard that he was in Paris. He left England suddenly, I believe.”

“Why?”

“The real reason I don’t know. I only know from a friend who saw him one day sitting before a café in the Boulevard des Italiens.”

“Your friend did not speak to him?” I inquired quickly.

“No.”

“Then it might have been a mistake. The person might, I mean, have merely resembled Eric Domville. Was your informant an intimate friend?”

“A friend – and also an enemy.”

“Ah! Many of us have friends of that sort!” I remarked, whereat she sighed, recollecting, no doubt, the many friends who had played her false.

The wild, irresponsible worldliness, the thoughtless vices of the smart woman, the slangy conversation and the loudness of voice that was one of the hall-marks of her go-ahead circle, had now all given place to a quietness of manner and a thoughtful seriousness that utterly amazed me. In her peril, whatever it was, the stern realities of life had risen before her. She no longer looked at men and things through rose-coloured spectacles, she frankly admitted to me, but now saw the grim seriousness of life around her.

Dull drab Camberwell had been to her an object-lesson, showing her that there were other peoples and other spheres beside that gay world around Grosvenor Square, or bridge parties at country houses. Yet she had, alas! learned the lesson too late. Misfortune had fallen upon her, and now she was crushed, hopeless, actually seriously contemplating suicide.

This latter fact caused me the most intense anxiety.

Apparently her interview with Arthur Rumbold’s mother had caused her to decide to take her life. The fact of Parham having found her in Glasgow was, of course, a serious contretemps, but the real reason of her decision to die was the outcome of her meeting with Mrs Rumbold.

What had passed between the two women? Was their meeting at Fort William a pre-arranged one, or was it accidental? It must have been pre-arranged, or she would scarcely have gone in the opposite direction to that of which she left word for me.

The situation was now growing more serious every moment. As we stood together there I asked her to release me from my imposture as her husband, but at the mere suggestion she cried, —

“Ah! no, Wilfrid! You surely will not desert me now – just at the moment when I most need your protection.”

“But in what way can this pretence of our marriage assist you?”

“It does – it will,” she assured me. “You do not know the truth, or my motive would be quite plain to you. I have trusted you, and I still trust in you that you will not desert or betray me.”

“Betray you? Why, Tibbie, what are you saying?” I asked, surprised. Could I betray her? I admired her, but I did not love her. How could I love her when I recollected the awful charge against her?

“Do you suspect that I would play you false, as some of your friends have done?” I asked, looking steadily into her fine eyes.

“No, no; forgive me, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed earnestly, returning my gaze. “I sometimes don’t know what I am saying. I only mean that – you will not leave me.”

“And yet you asked me to go back to London only a few minutes ago!” I said in a voice of reproach.

“I think I’m mad!” she cried. “This mystery is so puzzling, so inscrutable, and so full of horror that it is driving me insane.”

“Then to you also it is a mystery!” I cried, utterly amazed at her words. “I thought you were fully aware of the whole truth.”

“I only wish I knew it. If so, I might perhaps escape my enemies. But they are much too ingenious. They have laid their plans far too well.”

She referred, I supposed, to the way in which those scoundrels had forced money from her by threats. She was surely not alone in her terrible thraldom. The profession of the blackmailer in London is perhaps one of the most lucrative of criminal callings, and also one of the safest for the criminal. A demand can cleverly insinuate without making any absolute threat, and the blackmailer is generally a perfect past-master of his art. The general public can conceive no idea of the widespread operations of the thousands of these blackguards in all grades of society. When secrets cannot be discovered, cunning traps are set for the unwary, and many an honest man and woman is at this moment at the mercy of unscrupulous villains, compelled to pay in order to hush up some affair of which they are in reality entirely innocent. No one is safe. From the poor squalid homes of Whitechapel to the big mansions of Belgravia, from garish City offices to the snug villadom of Norwood, from fickle Finchley to weary Wandsworth, the blackmailer takes his toll, while it is calculated that nearly half the suicides reported annually in London are of those who take their own lives rather than face exposure. The “unsound mind” verdict in many instances merely covers the grim fact that the pockets of the victim have been drained dry by those human vampires who, dressed smugly and passing as gentlemen, rub shoulders with us in society of every grade.

I looked at Sybil, and wondered what was the strange secret which she had been compelled to hush up. Those letters I had filched from the dead man were all sufficient proof that she was a victim. But what was the story? Would she ever tell me? I looked at her sweet, beautiful face, and wondered. We moved on again, slowly skirting the picturesque lake. She would not allow me to release myself from my bond, declaring that I must still pose as William Morton, compositor.

“But everyone knows we are not married,” I said. “Mrs Rumbold, for instance!”

“Not everyone. There are some who believe it, or they would not hesitate to attack me,” was her vague and mysterious response.

“For my own part, Tibbie, I think we’ve carried the masquerade on quite long enough. I’m beginning to fear that Jack, or some of his friends, may discover us. Your description is circulated by the police, remember; besides, my prolonged absence has already been commented upon by your people. Jack and Wydcombe have been to my rooms half a dozen times, so Budd says.”

“No. They will not discover us,” she exclaimed, quite confidently.

“But walking here openly, and travelling up and down the country is really inviting recognition,” I declared. “You were recognised, you’ll remember, in Carlisle, and again in Glasgow. To-morrow you may be seen by one of your friends who will wire to Jack. And if we are found together – what then?”

“What then?” she echoed. “Why, I should be found with the man who is my best – my only friend.”

“But a scandal would be created. You can’t afford to risk that, you know.”

“No,” she answered slowly in a low, hard voice, “I suppose you are right, I can’t. Neither can you, for the matter of that. Yes,” she added, with a deep sigh, “it would be far better for me, as well as for you, if I were dead.”

I did not reply. What could I say? She seemed filled by a dark foreboding of evil, and her thoughts now naturally reverted to the action over which she had perhaps for weeks or months been brooding.

I had endeavoured to assist her for the sake of our passionate idyllic love of long ago, but all was in vain, I said. I recognised that sooner or later she must be discovered, and the blow – the exposure of her terrible crime – must fall. And then?