Will O’ the Wisp (23 page)

“I suppose she dropped the letter. One doesn't like to say so.”

Betty's repetition of the phrase roused David to speech. He said slowly and heavily:

“Mrs. Perrott says she gave the letter to you.”

“To me!” said Betty. Her voice rose sharply. “My dear David!”

“She says she met you just inside the gates and gave you the letter.”

Betty picked up the pink cushion and dropped it again.

“And do you mean to say you believe a word of all that rubbish? As if anyone could remember
one
letter nearly five years afterwards! The whole thing's too ridiculous for words! What do you think I did with it if she gave it to me?”

“I don't know. You might have put it down somewhere and forgotten it. You might—half a dozen things might have happened. Betty—the letter was so important that I'm bound to ask you if you can't remember something about it.”

Betty's manner changed. Without looking at him, she asked:

“Who was it from?”

David hesitated, then plunged again.

“It was from my wife.”

“Oh!” said Betty with a sort of gasp. “Your—David! What do you mean?”

“I didn't tell anyone because I thought she was dead—I thought she was drowned. Now I am told she is alive. I am told she wrote me those two letters in the autumn of '22. I never got either of them.”

He looked at Betty as he spoke. He could see only the back of her neck and part of an averted cheek. Both neck and cheek were crimson.

“Who—told—you?”

“Told me what?”

“Who told you she was alive?”

“There was an advertisement.”

“Who told you about the letters? There wasn't anything about them—”

“In the advertisement? No, there wasn't, was there? Look here, Betty, what do you know about all this? What do you know about the advertisement?”

“I—I read it.”

She had turned round now and was staring at David.

David came towards her with a look on his face which she had never seen there before.

“Tell me what you know about it. Tell me at once. Do you hear?
Tell me!
”

He had her by the shoulders. The heavy grip, the look on his face, made a stranger of him. She flinched and burst out crying.

“Don't look at me like that! You're hurting me—oh, you're hurting me!”

“I'll kill you if you don't tell me,” said David in a low, steady voice.

“I will—I will. David, let go! Oh, you're hurting me!”

He let go and stood back as she dropped into the corner of the sofa sobbing. He was full of the shuddering rage of a man betrayed on his own hearth. He stood back from Betty because he could not trust his hands. He was in horror of himself and of her. Betty and Francis plotting against him in this damned pink room! There was a frieze of roses with the heavy heads of bloom dropping down the white paper; there were wreaths of pink and crimson roses on the Aubusson carpet; roses crawled on the chintz of every chair, and the fat pink cushions bulged on top of them. Francis and Betty had stood here whispering in the dark!

CHAPTER XXXIII

The silence lasted so long that Betty stopped crying. Her sense of injury and self-pity passed into cold, constraining fear. David hadn't moved at all; he stood with his hands clenched looking past her. It was David, whom she had never been afraid of in her life; and she was so much afraid that she could not speak. The ticking of the old gilt clock on the mantelpiece seemed to grow louder and louder.

Betty sat huddled up in the sofa corner just as she had fallen when David thrust her away. The pink cushion that should have been behind her shoulders had slipped sideways and was crunched up under her right elbow. She wanted to move it to shift her position, but the cold fear held her motionless.

The clock went on ticking.

David spoke at last. He spoke, but he didn't move.

“Tell me what you did with that letter.”

Betty was able to move again. When David spoke, she stopped being so much afraid of him. She began to grope for her pocket-handkerchief.

“I—I didn't—”

“Tell me what you know about the letter. You had better not tell me any lies.”

“Oh!” said Betty. “How can you!”

“Go on—tell me what you know. You'd better. You'd better tell me the truth.”

Betty sniffed into her pocket-handkerchief.

“How can I tell you anything when you speak to me like that? I'm sure it was an accident that might—that might have happened to anyone.”

He turned a cold, dark look upon her.

“You're not making yourself very clear. What was an accident?”

“The—the letter was. It might have happened to anyone.” She sniffed again and with more heart.

“You had an accident with the letter. Is that what you're asking me to believe?”

She had a momentary spasm of fear at his tone.

“I—I—really, David, I don't see why you should blame me. It was Mrs. Perrott's fault for giving it to me.”

“
Will
you tell me what happened? You admit that Mrs. Perrott gave you the letter.”

“She ought to have taken it up to the house,” said Betty. “She'd no business to give it to me like that.”

“What did you do with it?” said David.

Betty put the pink cushion behind her shoulders.

“I slipped it into the pocket of my jumper, and when I got back to the house I should have given it to you, only the telephone bell rang, and—and it was Francis.”

“He wasn't in England.”

An odd look crossed Betty's face.

“He was often over here when nobody knew. He used to let me know, so that I could meet him somewhere. He—he didn't use his own name of course. I'm sure the way he was
persecuted
was shameful—everyone turning against him except me. If you'd stood up for him, things might have been very different.”

“We won't discuss Francis. You're to tell me about the letter.”

“I am telling you—and then you'll see how unjust you've been. Francis wanted me to come to him at once. He was quite stranded—ill and without money to pay for anything. I can't bear to think about it—he had a most dreadful time.”

“You went to him?”

“Of course I did. I had to tell you something, so I told you old Nurse was ill and I was going to look after her. And I forgot all about your wretched letter—anyone hearing suddenly that their husband was ill would have forgotten a thing like that.”

David drew a long breath. He had himself under control again. He said sharply:

“You forgot about the letter. When did you remember it?”

“Not till I got back again—not—oh, not for a month at least. And I don't suppose I should have remembered it then, only I was putting away my summer things and I felt something crackle when I was folding up the jumper I had on that day, and I put my hand in the pocket, and there was the miserable letter.”

“Yes,” said David. “And why didn't you give it to me then?”

Betty sat up straight.

“
Really
, David, anyone would think I was a
thief!
” She gave a little angry laugh. “Perhaps when you've got your temper back you'll see that I did what I thought was the
kindest
thing to
you
.”

David's eyes narrowed.

“You haven't told me what you did. I don't think I'll start thanking you till I know.”

Betty took an aggrieved tone.

“I did what I thought was the
best
thing to do. I was naturally
very
much upset when I found the letter, and I thought I'd better just look at it and see if it was important.”

“You mean you read it.”

“I thought I ought to look at it. And I got a most
dreadful
shock when I found it was from someone we'd never heard of, who said she was your wife.”

David clenched his hands again. He could not trust himself to speak.
It was true
. Erica had survived—Erica had written. It was true.

Every trace of colour left his face; his lips were stiff as he said:

“You kept the letter back.”

Betty sniffed loudly.

“It was the most dreadful shock I've ever had, except—things about Francis. I was most
terribly
upset.”

“You kept the letter back.”

“David, you're most unreasonable. You don't seem to think what a shock it was to find you'd been secretly married for goodness knows how long. I was so upset I didn't know what to do.”

“You kept the letter back.” His voice was quite low and expressionless.

“It was out of kindness to you,” said Betty, “and you ought to be grateful to me instead of looking like that. At first I was too upset to think. And then I read the letters again, and I realized that you'd been thinking this girl was dead. And the letter from the people she was with said how ill she was, and I thought it would be dreadful for you to hear she was alive and then perhaps find out that she'd died after the letter was sent off.”

Everything Heather Down had said was true. There had been a letter from Erica, and a covering letter from the people she was with, just as Heather Down had said.

“What did you do with the letter?”

“I put it away,” said Betty. “I—I asked Francis what I had better do, and he said I was quite right not to raise your hopes. He said he'd got a friend in Cape Town and he'd write and ask him to find out how things were before we told you anything. It was all for your own good and to save you anxiety. But, as Francis said, if she'd been alive and getting better, there'd have been more letters—and there hadn't been. So he said not to do anything until he heard from his friend.”

“There was another letter,” said David.

“It came at Christmas.” Betty's tone was quite eager. “Francis said his friend must be away, because we hadn't heard from him. And then, just after Christmas, there was a registered letter for you from Cape Town.”

“Go on,” said David.

“You were away for a couple of days. I couldn't send it on to you without explaining about the first one. You
can
see that, I suppose?”

She flushed at the contempt in his voice as he said:

“It was awkward—yes.”

“David, I think you're most unreasonable. You don't try to understand my position.”

“I wasn't thinking about your position. What did you do with the second letter?”

“Francis said we'd waited so long that it was no good being in a hurry. He said he'd send a cable to the address she wrote from, asking for news. He said—”

David's mind was wholly fixed upon the letters.

“What did you do with the letter—with both the letters?”

“I'm telling you what I did.”

“Did you destroy them?”

“No, of course I didn't.”

“You've got them still?”

“Yes, of course I have.”

“Give them to me.”

“But—”

“I don't want anything but the letters. Give them to me at once!”

Betty got up. She said something under her breath and went across to the writing-table.

“Are they there?” He spoke roughly.

“
Really
, David!”

“Are the letters there?” His voice took a tone that frightened her again.

Her hand shook, and the bunch of keys she was holding jingled. With a little clatter she unlocked one of the small drawers of the bureau and pulled it out. It was a small deep drawer full of letters tied up in packets. She began to take the packets out. At the bottom of the drawer there were two letters in long-shaped envelopes. Betty took them up and turned with them in her hand. She began to speak, to say something. But David did not hear what she said. He took the letters from her hand and went out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

CHAPTER XXXIV

David went into his study with the letters. He sat down in his writing-chair and laid the envelopes side by side on the table before him. Both the letters were addressed in the same clear commercial hand. He remembered Erica's childish scrawl and frowned.

After a moment he took up the first letter. Betty had not torn the envelope; she had steamed open the flap. The little bitter thought went through his mind that if it had suited Francis Lester, the flap would have been stuck down again, and he, David, would never have known that the letter had been read.

He took the two enclosures out of the envelope, and was stabbed at once with a painful sense of pity. This was Erica's own hand, weaker and more childish than he remembered it. She had written in pencil, and the marking was faint—so faint as to be almost illegible. He read slowly and with difficulty the words which he had slowly written to Heather Down's dictation:

“D
EAR
D
AVID
,

“I have been very ill. I can't write much. I didn't know who I was till just now. They have been very kind. Please come quickly if you can.

“E
RICA
.”

When he had read her name he took up the enclosure, written in ink in the same hand that had addressed the envelope. He read:

“D
EAR
S
IR
,

“Your wife has been ill in my house for some months. She has only recently been able to tell us who she is and to give us your address. Without wishing to alarm you, I should say it would be as well if you could come to her without delay.

“Yours faithfully,

“L. B
AKER
.”

The letter was dated September 4th, 1922, from an address in Cape Town.

David took up the second letter. It had been registered, and the postmark bore the date of December 7th. The flap of the envelope was open, but not torn. This letter too had been read.