Whatsoever a Man Soweth
“I have no wish to be released,” I answered. “I only desire to know the truth. By a fortunate circumstance, Sybil, I have discovered your secret love for Arthur Rumbold – and yet at Ryhall you said you had decided to marry Ellice Winsloe.”
“A woman does not always marry the man she really loves,” she argued. “It is a regrettable fact, but horribly true.”
“Then you love this man, Arthur Rumbold? Come, do not tell me an untruth. We are old enough friends to be frank with each other.”
“Yes, we are. I am frank with you, and tell you that you have blamed yourself for assisting me, now that you have discovered my folly.”
“Folly of what?”
“Of my love. Is it not folly to love a man whom one can never marry?”
“Then he is already married, perhaps?”
She was silent, and glancing at her I saw that tears stood in her magnificent eyes. She was thinking of him, without a doubt.
I recollected those words penned by the dead man; that allegation that she was fooling me. Yes. What he said was correct. The scales had now fallen from my eyes. I read the truth in her white countenance, that face so very beautiful, but, alas! so false.
Who was Nello, the man with whom she corresponded by means of that cipher – the man she trusted so implicitly? Was he identical with Arthur Rumbold? Had she killed the writer of that extraordinary letter because he knew the truth – because she was in terror of exposure and ruin?
My knowledge of Rumbold had entirely upset all her calculations. In those moments of her hesitancy and confusion she became a changed woman. Her admission had been accompanied by a firm defiance that utterly astounded me.
I noticed how agitated she had become. Her small hands were trembling; and she was now white to the lips. Yet she was still determined not to reveal her secret.
“Ah! you can never know, Wilfrid, what I have suffered – what I am suffering now,” she said in a deep intense voice, as we stood there together in the gardens. “You have thought me gay and careless, and you’ve often told me that I was like a butterfly. Yes, I admit it – I admit all my defects. When I was old enough to leave the schoolroom, society attracted me. I saw Cynthia, the centre of a smart set, courted, flattered, and admired, and like every other girl, I was envious. I vied with her successes, until I, too, became popular. And yet what did popularity and smartness mean? Ah! I can only think of the past with disgust.” Then, with a sigh, she added, “You, of course, cannot believe it, Wilfrid, but I am now a changed woman.”
“I do believe you, Tibbie,” was my blank reply, for want of something else to say.
“Yes,” she went on, “I see the folly of it all now, the emptiness, the soul-killing wear and tear, the disgraceful shams and mean subterfuges. The woman who has success in our set stands alone, friendless, with a dozen others constantly trying to hurl her from her pedestal, and ever ready with bitter tongues to propagate grave insinuations and scandal. It is woman to woman; and the feuds are always deadly. I’m tired of it all, and have left it, I hope, for ever.”
“Then it was some adventure in that gay circle, I take it, that is responsible for your present position?” I said slowly.
“Ah!” she sighed in a low, hoarse voice, “I – I never dreamed of the pitfalls set for me, and in my inexperience believed in the honesty of everyone. But surely I was not alone! Beneath a dress shirt beats the heart of many a blackguard, and in our London drawing-rooms are to be found persons whose careers, if exposed, would startle the world. There are men with world-famous names who ought to be in the criminal dock, but whose very social position is their safeguard; and women with titles who pose as charity patrons, but are mere adventuresses. Our little world, Wilfrid, is, indeed, a strange one, a circle of class and criminality utterly inconceivable by the public who only know of us through the newspapers. I had success because, I suppose, of what people are pleased to call my good looks, but – but, alas! I fell a victim – I fell into a trap ingeniously set for me, and when I struggled to set myself free I only fell deeper and deeper into the blackguardly intrigue. You see me now!” she cried after a brief pause, “a desperate woman who cares nought for life, only for her good name. I live to defend that before the world, for my poor mother’s sake. Daily I am goaded on to kill myself and end it all. I should have done so had not Providence sent you to me, Wilfrid, to aid and counsel me. Yet the blow has again fallen, and I now see no way to vindicate myself. The net has closed around me – and – and – I must die!”
And she burst into a sudden torrent of tears.
Were they tears of remorse, or of heart-broken bitterness?
“There is no other way!” she added in a faint, desperate voice, her trembling hand closing upon my wrist. “You must leave me to myself. Go back to London and remain silent. And when they discover me dead you will still remain in ignorance – but sometimes you will think of me – think of me, Wilfrid,” she sobbed, “as an unhappy woman who has fallen among unscrupulous enemies.”
“But this is madness!” I cried. “You surely will not admit yourself vanquished now?”
“No, not madness, only foresight. You, too, are in deadly peril, and must leave me. With me, hope is now dead – there is only the grave.”
She spoke those last words so calmly and determinedly that I was thoroughly alarmed. I refused to leave her. The fact that Parham had discovered her showed that all hope of escape was now cut off. This she admitted to me. Standing before me, her countenance white and haggard, I saw how terribly desperate she was. Her chin then sank upon her breast and she sobbed bitterly.
I placed my hand tenderly upon her shoulder, full of sympathy.
“The story of your unhappiness, Tibbie, is the story of your love. Is it not?” I asked, slowly.
Her chest rose and fell slowly as she raised her tearful eyes to mine, and in reply, said in a low, faltering voice, —
“Listen, and I will tell you. Before I die it is only right that you should know the truth – you who are my only friend.”
And she burst again into a flood of tears, stirred by the painful remembrance of the past.
I stood there holding her for the first time in my arms. And she buried her face upon my shoulder, trembling and sobbing as our two hearts beat in unison.
Chapter Twenty Five.
Makes Plain a Woman’s Fear
“Tell me,” I said at last, full of sympathy for her in her dire unhappiness, “tell me, Tibbie, about this man Rumbold.”
For some moments she was silent. Her pale lips trembled.
“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?
She had killed the man who had held her in thraldom. That was an undoubted fact. Eric had fully explained it, and could testify to the deed, although he would, I knew, never appear as witness against her. The unknown blackguard scorning her defiance had goaded her to a frenzy of madness, and she had taken her revenge upon the cowardly scoundrel.
Could she be blamed? In taking a life she had committed a crime before God and man, most certainly. The crime of murder can never be pardoned, yet in such circumstances surely the reader will bear with me for regarding her action with some slight degree of leniency – with what our French neighbours would call extenuating circumstances.
And the more so when I recollected what the dead unknown had written to his accomplice in Manchester. The fellow had laid a plot, but he had failed. The woman alone, unprotected and desperate, had defended herself, and he had fallen dead by her hand.
In my innermost heart I decided that he deserved the death.
Why Ellice Winsloe had recognised the body was plain enough now. The two men were friends – and enemies of Sybil Burnet.
I clenched my fingers when I thought of the dangerous man who was still posing as the chum of young Lord Scarcliff, and I vowed that I would live to avenge the wrong done to the poor trembling girl at my side.
She burst into hot tears again when I declared that it would be better for us to return again to the obscurity of Camberwell.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Act as you think best, Wilfrid. I am entirely in your hands. I am yours, indeed, for you saved my life on – on that night when I fled from Ryhall.”
We turned into the town again through Gallowgate when she had dried her eyes, and had lunch at a small eating-house in New Bridge Street, she afterwards returning to her hotel to pack, for we had decided to take the afternoon train up to King’s Cross.
She was to meet me at the station at half-past three, and just before that hour, while idling up and down Neville Street awaiting the arrival of her cab, of a sudden I saw the figure of a man in a dark travelling ulster and soft felt hat emerge from the station and cross the road to Grainger Street West.
He was hurrying along, but in an instant something about his figure and gait struck me as familiar; therefore, walking quickly after him at an angle before he could enter Grainger Street, I caught a glimpse of his countenance.
It was John Parham! And he was going in the direction of the Douglas Hotel.
He had again tracked her down with an intention which I knew, alas! too well could only be a distinctly evil one.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Takes me a Step Further
We were back again in Neate Street, Camberwell.
In Newcastle we had a very narrow escape. As Parham had walked towards the hotel, Sybil had fortunately passed him in a closed cab. On her arrival at the station she was in entire ignorance of the fellow’s presence, and as the train was already in waiting we entered and were quickly on our way to London, wondering by what means Parham could possibly have known of her whereabouts.
Was she watched? Was some secret agent, of whom we were in ignorance, keeping constant observations upon us and reporting our movements to the enemy? That theory was Sybil’s.
“Those men are utterly unscrupulous,” she declared as we sat together in the little upstairs room in Camberwell. “No secret is safe from them, and their spies are far better watchers than the most skilled detectives of Scotland Yard.”
At that moment Mrs Williams entered, delighted to see us back again, for when we had left, Tibbie had, at my suggestion, paid rent for the rooms for a month in advance and explained that we were returning.
“Two gentlemen came to inquire for you a week ago, Mr Morton,” she exclaimed, addressing me. “They first asked whether Mrs Morton was at home, and I explained that she was away. They then inquired for you, and appeared to be most inquisitive.”
“Inquisitive? About what?” asked my pseudo wife.
“Oh! all about your private affairs, mum. But I told them I didn’t know anything, of course. One of the men was a foreigner.”
“What did they ask you?” I inquired in some alarm.
“Oh, how long you’d been with me, where you worked, how long you’d been married – and all that. Most impudent, I call it. Especially as they were strangers.”
“How did you know they were strangers?”
“Because they took the photograph of my poor brother Harry to be yours – so they couldn’t have known you.”
“Impostors, I expect,” I remarked, in order to allay the good woman’s suspicions. “No doubt they were trying to get some information from you in order to use it for their own purposes. Perhaps to use my wife’s name, or mine, as an introduction somewhere.”
“Well, they didn’t get much change out of me, I can tell you,” she laughed. “I told them I didn’t know them and very soon showed them the door. I don’t like foreigners. When I asked them to leave their names they looked at each other and appeared confused. They asked where you were, and I told them you were in Ireland.”
“That’s right,” I said, smiling. “If they want me they can come here again and find me.”
Then, after the landlady had gone downstairs, I asked Tibbie her opinion.
“Did I not tell you that inquiries would be made to ascertain whether I were married?” she said. “The woman evidently satisfied them, for she has no suspicion of the true state of affairs.”
“Then you are safe?”
“Safe only for the present. I may be in increased peril to-morrow.”
“And how long do you anticipate this danger to last?” I asked her seriously, as she sat there gazing into the meagre fire.
“Last! Until my life’s end,” she answered very sadly. Then turning her wonderful eyes to mine she added, “I know you cannot sacrifice your life for me in this way much longer, Wilfrid. Therefore it must end. Yet life, after all, is very sweet. When I am alone I constantly look back upon my past and recognise how wasted it has been; how I discarded the benefits of Providence and how from the first, when I came out, I was dazzled by the glitter, gaiety, and extravagance of our circle. It has all ended now, and I actually believe I am a changed woman. But it is, alas! too late – too late.”
Those words of hers concealed some extraordinary romance – the romance of a broken heart. She admitted as much. Why were these men so persistently hunting her down if they were in no fear of her? It could only be some desperate vendetta – perhaps a life for a life!
What she had said was correct. Mine was now a most invidious position, for while posing as William Morton, I was unable to go to Bolton Street or even call upon Scarcliff or Wydcombe for fear that Winsloe and his accomplices should learn that I was still alive. Therefore I was compelled to return to the Caledonian Hotel in the Adelphi, where Budd met me in secret each evening with my letters and necessaries.
Another week thus went by. The greater part of the day I usually spent with Tibbie in that dull little room in Neate Street, and sometimes, when the weather was fine, we went to get a breath of air in Greenwich Park or to Lewisham or Dulwich, those resorts of the working-class of South London. At night, ostensibly going to work, I left her and spent hours and hours carefully watching the movements of Ellice Winsloe.
To Lord Wydcombe’s, in Curzon Street, I followed him on several occasions, for he had suddenly become very intimate with Wydcombe it appeared, and while I stood on the pavement outside that house I knew so well my thoughts wandered back to those brilliant festivities which Cynthia so often gave. One night, after Winsloe had dined there, I saw the brougham come round, and he and Cynthia drove off to the theatre, followed by Jack and Wydcombe in a hansom. On another afternoon I followed Winsloe to the Scarcliffs in Grosvenor Place, and later on saw him laughing with old Lady Scarcliff at the drawing-room window that overlooked Hyde Park Corner. He presented a sleek, well-to-do appearance, essentially that of a gentleman. His frock coat was immaculate, his overcoat of the latest cut, and his silk hat always ironed to the highest perfection of glossiness.
Tibbie, of course, knew nothing of my patient watchfulness. I never went near my chambers, therefore Ellice and Parham certainly believed me dead, while as to Domville’s hiding in Paris, I confess I doubted the truth of the statement of Tibbie’s friend. If the poor fellow still lived he would most certainly have written to me. No! He was dead – without a doubt. He had fallen a victim in that grim house of doom.
