Fire Within

by Patricia Wentworth

  David Blake sat down at his table and spread out old Mr. Mottisfont’s letter upon the desk in front of him. It was a long letter, written in a clear, pointed handwriting, which was characteristic and unmistakable.

  “My dear David,”—wrote old Mr. Mottisfont,—“My dear David, I have just written a letter to Edward—a blameless and beautiful letter—in which I have announced my immediate, or, as one might say, approximate intention of committing suicide by the simple expedient of first putting arsenic into a cup of tea and then drinking the tea. I shall send Edward for the tea, and I shall put the arsenic into it, under his very nose. And Edward will be thinking of beetles, and will not see me do it. I am prepared to bet my bottom dollar that he does not see me do it. Edward’s letter, of which I enclose a copy, is the sort of letter which one shows to coroners, and jurymen, and legal advisers. Of course things may not have gone as far as that, but, on the other hand, they may. There are evil-minded persons who may have suspected Edward of having hastened my departure to a better world. You may even have suspected him yourself, in which case, of course, my dear David, this letter will be affording you a good deal of pleasurable relief.” David clenched his hand and read on. “Edward’s letter is for the coroner. It should arrive about a fortnight after my death, if my valued correspondent, William Giles, of New York, does as I have asked him. This letter is for you. Between ourselves, then, it was that possible three years of yours that decided me. I couldn’t stand it. I don’t believe in another world, and I’m damned if I’ll put in three years’ hell in this one. Do you remember old Madden? I do, and I’m not going to hang on like that, not to please any one, nor I’m not going to be cut up in sections either. So now you know all about it. I’ve just sent Edward for the tea. Poor Edward, it will hurt his feelings very much to be suspected of polishing me off. By the way, David, as a sort of last word—you’re no end of a damn fool—why don’t you marry the right woman instead of wasting your time hankering after the wrong one? That’s all. Here’s luck.

  “Yours.

  “E.M.M.”

  David read the letter straight through without any change of expression. When he came to the end he folded the sheets neatly, put them back in the envelope, and locked the envelope away in a drawer. Then his face changed suddenly. First, a great rush of colour came into it, and then every feature altered under an access of blind and ungovernable anger. He pushed back his chair and sprang up, but the impetus which had carried him to his feet appeared to receive some extraordinary check. His movement had been a very violent one, but all at once it passed into rigidity. He stood with every muscle tense, and made neither sound nor movement. Slowly the colour died out of his face. Then he took a step backwards and dropped again into the chair. His eyes were fixed upon the strip of carpet which lay between him and the writing-table. A small, twisted scrap of paper was lying there. David Blake looked hard at the paper, but he did not see it. What he saw was another torn and twisted thing.

  A man’s professional honour is a very delicate thing. David had never held his lightly. If he had violated it, he had done so because there were great things in the balance. Mary’s happiness, Mary’s future, Mary’s life. He had betrayed a trust because Mary asked it of him and because there was so much in the balance. And it had all been illusion. There had been no risk—no danger. Nothing but an old man’s last and cruelest dupe. A furious anger surged in him. For nothing, it was all for nothing. He had wrenched himself for nothing, forfeited his self-respect for nothing, sold his honour for nothing. Mary had bidden him, and he had done her bidding, and it was all for nothing. A little bleak sunlight came in at the window and showed the worn patches upon the carpet. David could remember that old brown carpet for as long as he could remember anything. It had been in his father’s consulting room. The writing-table had been there too. The room was full of memories of William Blake. Old familiar words and looks came back to David as he sat there. He remembered many little things, and, as he remembered, he despised himself very bitterly. As the moments passed, so his self-contempt grew, until it became unbearable. He rose, pushing his chair so that it fell over with a crash, and went into the dining-room.

  Half an hour later Sarah put her head round the corner of the door and announced, “Mr. Edward Mottisfont in the consulting room, sir.” David Blake was sitting at the round table with a decanter in front of him. He got up with a short laugh and went to Edward.

  Edward presented a ruffled but resigned appearance. He was agitated, but beneath the agitation there was plainly evident a trace of melancholy triumph.

  “I’ve had a letter,” he began. David stood facing him.

  “So have I,” he said.

  Edward’s wave of the hand dismissed as irrelevant all letters except his own. “But mine—mine was from my uncle,” he exclaimed.

  “Exactly. He was obliging enough to send me a copy.”

  “You—you know,” said Edward. then he searched his pockets, and ultimately produced a folded letter.

  “You’ve had a letter like this? He’s told you? You know?”

  “That he’s played us the dirtiest trick on record? Yes, thanks, Edward, I’ve been enjoying the knowledge for the best part of an hour.”

  Edward shook his head.

  “Of course he was mad,” he said. “I have often wondered if he was quite responsible. He used to say such extraordinary things. If you remember, I asked you about it once, and you laughed at me. But now, of course, there is no doubt about it. His brain had become affected.”

  David’s lip twitched a little.

  “Mad? Oh, no, you needn’t flatter yourself, he wasn’t mad. I only hope my wits may last as well. He wasn’t mad, but he’s made the biggest fools of the lot of us—the biggest fools. Oh, Lord!—how he’d have laughed. He set the stage, and called the cast, and who so ready as we? First Murderer—Edward Mottisfont; Chief Mourner—Mary, his wife; and Tom Fool, beyond all other Tom Fools, David Blake, M.D. My Lord, he never said a truer word than when he wrote me down a damn fool!”

  David ended on a note of concentrated bitterness, and Edward stared at him.

  “I would much rather believe he was out of his mind,” he said uncomfortably. “And he is dead—after all, he’s dead.”

  “Yes,” said David grimly, “he’s dead.”

  “And thanks to you,” continued Edward, “there has been no scandal—or publicity. It would really have been dreadful if it had all come out. Most—most unpleasant. I know you didn’t wish me to say anything.”

  Edward began to rumple his hair wildly. “Mary told me, and of course I know it’s beastly to be thanked, and all that, but I can’t help saying that—in fact—I am awfully grateful. And I’m awfully thankful that the matter has been cleared up so satisfactorily. If we hadn’t got this letter, well—I don’t like to say such a thing—but any one of us might have come to suspect the other. It doesn’t sound quite right to say it,” pursued Edward apologetically, “but it might have happened. You might have suspected me—oh, I don’t mean really—I am only supposing, you know—or I might have suspected you. And now it’s all cleared up, and no harm done, and as to my poor old uncle, he was mad. People who commit suicide are always mad. Every one knows that.”

  “Oh, have it your own way,” said David Blake. “He was mad, and now everything is comfortably arranged, and we can all settle down with nothing on our minds, and live happily ever after.”

  There was a savage sarcasm in his voice, which he did not trouble to conceal.

  “And now, look here,” he went on with a sudden change of manner. He straightened himself and looked squarely at Edward Mottisfont. “Those letters have got to be kept.”

  “Now I should have thought—” began Edward, but David broke in almost violently.

  “For Heaven’s sake, don’t start thinking, Edward.” He said: “Just you listen to me. These letters have got to be kept. They’ve got to sit in a safe at a lawyer’s. We’ll seal ’em up in the presence of witnesses,
and send ’em off. We’re not out of the wood yet. If this business were ever to leak out—and, after all, there are four of us in it, and two of them are women—if it were ever to leak out, we should want these letters to save our necks. Yes—our necks. Good Lord, Edward, did you never realize your position? Did you never realize that any jury in the world would have hanged you on the evidence? It was damning—absolutely damning. And I come in as accessory after the fact. No, thank you, I think we’ll keep the letters, until we’re past hanging. And there’s another thing—how many people have you told? Mary, of course?”

  “Yes, Mary, but no one else,” said Edward.

  David made an impatient movement.

  “If you’ve told her, you’ve told her,” he said. “Now what you’ve got to do is this: you’ve got to rub it into Mary that it’s just as important for her to hold her tongue now as it was before the letter came. She was safe as long as she thought your neck was in danger, but do, for Heaven’s sake, get it into her head that I’m dead damned broke, if it ever gets out that I helped to hush up a case that looked like murder and turned out to be suicide. The law wouldn’t hang me, but I should probably hang myself. I’d be broke. Rub that in.”

  “She may have told Elizabeth,” said Edward hesitatingly. “I’m afraid she may have told Elizabeth by now.”

  “Elizabeth doesn’t talk,” said David shortly.

  “Nor does Mary.” Edward’s tone was rather aggrieved.

  “Oh, no woman ever talks,” said David.

  He laughed harshly and Edward went away with his feelings of gratitude a little chilled, and a faint suspicion in his mind that David had been drinking.

  CHAPTER VII

  ELIZABETH CHANTREY

  “Whatever ways we walk in and whatever dreams come true, You still shall say, “God speed” to me, and I, “God go with you.”

  SOME days later Elizabeth Chantrey went away for about a month, to pay a few long-promised visits. She went first to an old school-friend, then to some relations, and lastly to the Mainwarings. Agneta Mainwaring had moved to town after her mother’s death, and was sharing a small flat with her brother Louis, in a very fashionable quarter. She had been engaged for about six months to Douglas Strange, and was expecting to marry him as soon as he returned from his latest, and most hazardous journey across Equatorial Africa.

  “I thought you were never coming,” said Agneta, as they sat in the firelight, Louis on the farther side of the room, close to the lamp, with his head buried in a book.

  “Never, never, never!” repeated Agneta, stroking the tail of Elizabeth’s white gown affectionately and nodding at every word. She was sitting on the curly black hearth-rug, a small vivid creature in a crimson dress. Agneta Mainwaring was little and dark, passionate, earnest, and frivolous. A creature of variable moods and intense affections, steadfast only where she loved. Elizabeth was watching the firelight upon the big square sapphire ring which she always wore. She looked up from it now and smiled at Agneta, just a smile of the eyes.

  “Well, I am here,” she said, and Agneta went on stroking, and exclaimed:

  “Oh, it’s so good to have you.”

  “The world not been going nicely?” said Elizabeth.

  Agneta frowned.

  “Oh, so, so. Really, Lizabeth, being engaged to an explorer is the devil. Sometimes I get a letter two days running, and sometimes I don’t get one for two months, and I’ve just been doing the two months’ stretch.”

  “Then,” said Elizabeth, “you’ll soon be getting two letters together, Neta.”

  “Oh, well, I did get one this morning, or I shouldn’t be talking about it,” Agneta flushed and laughed, then frowned again. Three little wrinkles appeared upon her nose. “What worries me is that I am such a hopeless materialist about letters. Letters are rank materialism. Rank. Two people as much in touch with one another as Douglas and I oughtn’t to need letters. I’ve no business to be dependent on them. We ought to be able to reach one another without them. Of course we do—really—but we ought to know that we are doing it. We ought to be conscious of it. I’ve no business to be dependent on wretched bits of paper, and miserable penfuls of ink. I ought to be able to do without them. And I’m a blatant materialist. I can’t.”

  Elizabeth laughed a little.

  “I shouldn’t worry, if I were you. It’ll all come. You’ll get past letters when you’re ready to get past them. I don’t think your materialism is of a very heavy order. It will go away if you don’t fuss over it. We’ll all get past letters in time.”

  Agneta tossed her head.

  “Oh, I don’t suppose there’ll be any letters in heaven,” she said. “I’m sure I trust not. My idea is that we shall sit on nice comfy clouds, and play at telephones with thought-waves.”

  Louis shut his book with a bang.

  “Really, Agneta, if that isn’t materialism.” He came over and sat down on the hearth-rug beside his sister. They were not at all alike. Where Agneta was small, Louis was large. Her hair and eyes were black, and his of a dark reddish-brown.

  “I didn’t know you were listening,” she said.

  “Well, I wasn’t. I just heard, and I give you fair warning, Agneta, that if there are going to be telephones in your heaven, I’m going somewhere else. I shall have had enough of them here. Hear the bells, the silver bells, the tintinnabulation that so musically swells. From the bells, bells, bells, bells—bells, bells, bells.”

  Agneta first pulled Louis’s hair, and then put her fingers in her ears.

  “Stop! stop this minute! Oh, Louis, please. Oh, Lizabeth, make him stop. That thing always drives me perfectly crazy, and he knows it.”

  “All right. It’s done. I’ve finished. I’m much more merciful than Poe. I only wanted to point out that if that was your idea of heaven, it wasn’t mine.”

  “Oh, good gracious!” cried Agneta suddenly. She sprang up and darted to the door.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve absolutely and entirely forgotten to order any food for to-morrow. Any food whatever. All right, Louis, you won’t laugh when you have to lunch on bread and water, and Lizabeth takes the afternoon train back to her horrible Harford place, because we have starved her.”

  Louis gave a resigned sigh and leaned comfortably back against an empty chair. For some moments he gazed dreamily at Elizabeth. Then he said: “How nicely your hair shines. I like you all white and gold like that. If Browning had known you he needn’t have written. ‘What’s become of all the gold, used to hang and brush their bosoms.’ You’ve got your share.”

  “But my hair isn’t golden at all, Louis,” said Elizabeth.

  Louis frowned.

  “Yes, it is,” he said, “it’s gold without the dross—gold spiritualised. And you ought to know better than to pretend. You know as well as I do that your hair is a thing of beauty. The real joy for ever sort. It’s no credit to you. You didn’t make it. And you ought to be properly grateful for being allowed to walk about with a real live halo. Why should you pretend? If it wasn’t pretence, you wouldn’t take so much trouble about doing it. You’d just twist it up on a single hairpin.”

  “It wouldn’t stay up,” said Elizabeth.

  “I wish it wouldn’t. Oh, Lizabeth, won’t you let it down just for once?”

  “No, I won’t,” said Elizabeth, with pleasant firmness.

  Louis fell into a gloom. His brown eyes darkened.

  “I don’t see why,” he said; and Elizabeth laughed at him.

  “Oh, Louis, will you ever grow up?

  Louis assumed an air of dignity. “My last book,” he said, “was not only very well reviewed by competent and appreciative persons, but I would have you to know that it also brought me in quite a large and solid cheque. And my poems have had what is known as a succss d’estime, which means that you and your publisher lose money, but the critics say nice things. These facts, my dear madam, all point to my having emerged from the nursery.”

  “Go on emerging, Lou
is,” said Elizabeth, with a little nod of encouragement. Louis appeared to be plunged in thought. He frowned, made calculations upon his fingers, and finally inquired:

  “How many times have I proposed to you, Lizabeth?”

  Elizabeth looked at him with amusement.

  “I really never counted. Do you want me to?”

  “No. I think I’ve got it right. I think it must be eight times, because I know I began when I was twenty, and I don’t think I’ve missed a year since. This,” said Louis, getting on to his knees and coming nearer, “this will be number nine.”

  “Oh, Louis, don’t,” said Elizabeth.

  “And why not?”

  “Because it really isn’t kind. Do you want me to go away to-morrow? If you propose to me, and I refuse you, every possible rule of propriety demands that I should immediately return to Market Harford. And I don’t want to.” Louis hesitated.

  “How long are you staying?”

  “Nice, hospitable young man. Agneta has asked me to stay for a fortnight.”

  “All right.” Louis sat back upon his heels. “Let’s talk about books. Have you read Pender’s last? It’s a wonder—just a wonder.”

  Elizabeth enjoyed her fortnight’s stay very much. She was glad to be away from Market Harford, and she was glad to be with Agneta and Louis. She saw one or two good plays, had a great deal of talk of the kind she hade been starving for, and met a good many people who were doing interesting things. On the last day of her visit Agneta said:

  “So you go back to Market Harford for a year. Is it because Mr. Mottisfont asked you to?”

  “Partly.”

  There was a little pause.

  “What are you going to do with your life, Lizabeth?”

  Elizabeth looked steadily at the blue of her ring. Her eyes were very deep.