The Seven Secrets

“What have you found there?” inquired Ambler Jevons, quickly interested, and yet surprised at my determination to conceal it from him.

“Something that concerns me,” I replied briefly.

“Concerns you?” he ejaculated. “I don’t understand. How can anything among the old man’s private papers concern you?”

“This concerns me personally,” I answered. “Surely that is sufficient explanation.”

“No,” my friend said. “Forgive me, Ralph, for speaking quite plainly, but in this affair we are both working towards the same end—namely, to elucidate the mystery. We cannot hope for success if you are bent upon concealing your discoveries from me.”

“This is a private affair of my own,” I declared doggedly. “What I have found only concerns myself.”

He shrugged his shoulders with an air of distinct dissatisfaction.

“Even if it is a purely private matter we are surely good friends enough to be cognisant of one another’s secrets,” he remarked.

“Of course,” I replied dubiously. “But only up to a certain point.”

“Then, in other words, you imply that you can’t trust me?”

“I can trust you, Ambler,” I answered calmly. “We are the best of friends, and I hope we shall always be so. Will you not forgive me for refusing to show you these letters?”

“I only ask you one question. Have they anything to do with the matter we are investigating?”

I hesitated. With his quick perception he saw that a lie was not ready upon my lips.

“They have. Your silence tells me so. In that case it is your duty to show me them,” he said, quietly.

I protested again, but he overwhelmed my arguments. In common fairness to him I ought not, I knew, keep back the truth. And yet it was the greatest and most terrible blow that had ever fallen upon me. He saw that I was crushed and stammering, and he stood by me wondering.

“Forgive me, Ambler,” I urged again. “When you have read this letter you will fully understand why I have endeavoured to conceal it from you; why, if you were not present here at this moment, I would burn them all and not leave a trace behind.”

Then I handed it to him.

He took it eagerly, skimmed it through, and started just as I had started when he saw the signature. Upon his face was a blank expression, and he returned it to me without a word.

“Well?” I asked. “What is your opinion?”

“My opinion is the same as your own, Ralph, old fellow,” he answered slowly, looking me straight in the face. “It is amazing—startling—tragic.”

“You think, then, that the motive of the crime was jealousy?”

“The letter makes it quite plain,” he answered huskily. “Give me the others. Let me examine them. I know how severe this blow must be to you, old fellow,” he added, sympathetically.

“Yes, it has staggered me,” I stammered. “I’m utterly dumfounded by the unexpected revelation!” and I handed him the packet of correspondence, which he placed upon the table, and, seating himself, commenced eagerly to examine letter after letter.

While he was thus engaged I took up the first letter, and read it through—right to the bitter end.

It was apparently the last of a long correspondence, for all the letters were arranged chronologically, and this was the last of the packet. Written from Neneford Manor, Northamptonshire, and vaguely dated “Wednesday,” as is a woman’s habit, it was addressed to Mr. Courtenay, and ran as follows:—

“Words cannot express my contempt for a man who breaks his word as easily as you break yours. A year ago, when you were my father’s guest, you told me that you loved me, and urged me to marry you. At first I laughed at your proposal; then when I found you really serious, I pointed out the difference of our ages. You, in return, declared that you loved me with all the ardour of a young man; that I was your ideal; and you promised, by all you held most sacred, that if I consented I should never regret. I believed you, and believed the false words of feigned devotion which you

wrote to me later under seal of strictest secrecy. You went to Cairo, and none knew of our secret—the secret that you intended to make me your wife. And how have you kept your promise? To-day my father has informed me that you are to marry Mary! Imagine the blow to me! My father expects me to rejoice, little dreaming how I have been fooled; how lightly you have treated a woman’s affections and aspirations. Some there are who, finding themselves in my position, would place in Mary’s hands the packet of your correspondence which is before me as I write, and thus open her eyes to the fact that she is but the dupe of a man devoid of honour. Shall I do so? No. Rest assured that I shall not. If my sister is happy, let her remain so. My vendetta lies not in that direction. The fire of hatred may be stifled, but it can never be quenched. We shall be quits some day, and you will regret bitterly that you have broken your word so lightly. My revenge—the vengeance of a jealous woman—will fall upon you at a moment and in a manner you will little dream of. I return you your letters, as you may not care for them to fall into other hands, and from to-day I shall never again refer to what has passed. I am young, and may still obtain an upright and honourable man as husband. You are old, and are tottering slowly to your doom. Farewell.“Ethelwynn Mivart.”

The letter fully explained a circumstance of which I had been entirely ignorant, namely, that the woman

I had loved had actually been engaged to old Mr. Courtenay before her sister had married him. Its tenor showed how intensely antagonistic she was towards the man who had fooled her, and in the concluding sentence there was a distinct if covert threat—a threat of bitter revenge.

She had returned the old man’s letters apparently in order to show that in her hand she held a further and more powerful weapon; she had not sought to break off his marriage with Mary, but had rather stood by, swallowed her anger, and calmly calculated upon a fierce vendetta at a moment when he would least expect it.

Truly those startling words spoken by Sir Bernard had been full of truth. I remembered them now, and discerned his meaning. He was at least an honest upright man who, although sometimes a trifle eccentric, had my interests deeply at heart. In the progress I had made in my profession I owed much to him, and even in my private affairs he had sought to guide me, although I had, alas! disregarded his repeated warnings.

I took up one after another of the letters my friend had examined, and found them to be the correspondence of a woman who was either angling after a wealthy husband, or who loved him with all the strength of her affection. Some of the communications were full of passion, and betrayed that poetry of soul that was innate in her. The letters were dated from Neneford, from Oban, and from various Mediterranean ports, where she had gone yachting with her uncle, Sir

Thomas Heaton, the great Lancashire coal-owner. Sometimes she addressed him as “Dearest,” at others as “Beloved,” usually signing herself “Your Own.” So full were they of the ardent passion characteristic of her that they held me in amazement. It was passion developed under its most profound and serious aspects; they showed the calm and thoughtful, not the brilliant side of intellect.

In Ethelwynn’s character the passionate and the imaginative were blended equally and in the highest conceivable degree as combined with delicate female nature. Those letters, although written to a man in whose heart romance must long ago have been dead, showed how complex was her character, how fervent, enthusiastic and self-forgetting her love. At first I believed that those passionate outpourings were merely designed to captivate the old gentleman for his money; but when I read on I saw how intense her passion became towards the end, and how the culmination of it all was that wild reproachful missive written when the crushing blow fell so suddenly upon her.

Ethelwynn was a woman of extraordinary character, full of picturesque charm and glowing romance. To be tremblingly alive to the gentle impressions, and yet be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable heart, amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity. I knew her as a woman of highest mental powers touched with a melancholy sweetness. I was now aware of the cause of that melancholy.

Yet it was apparent that the serious and energetic part of her character was founded on deep passion, for after her sister’s marriage with the man she had herself loved and had threatened, she had actually come there beneath their roof, and lived as her sister’s companion, stifling all the hatred that had entered her heart, and preserving an outward calm that had no doubt entirely disarmed him.

Such a circumstance was extraordinary. To me, as to Ambler Jevons who knew her well, it seemed almost inconceivable that old Mr. Courtenay should allow her to live there after receiving such a wild communication as that final letter. Especially curious, too, that Mary had never suspected or discovered her sister’s jealousy. Yet so skilfully had Ethelwynn concealed her intention of revenge that both husband and wife had been entirely deceived.

Love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of passion and imagination. I had foolishly believed that this calm, sweet-voiced woman had loved me, but those letters made it plain that I had been utterly fooled. “Le mystère de l’existence,” said Madame de Stael to her daughter, “c’est la rapport de nos erreurs avec nos peines.”

And although there was in her, in her character, and in her terrible situation, a concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity, she was nevertheless a murderess.

“The truth is here,” remarked my friend, laying his hand upon the heap of tender correspondence which had been brought to such an abrupt conclusion by the letter I have printed in its entirety. “It is a strange, romantic story, to say the least.”

“Then you really believe that she is guilty?” I exclaimed, hoarsely.

He shrugged his shoulders significantly, but no word escaped his lips.

In the silence that fell between us, I glanced at him. His chin was sunk upon his breast, his brows knit, his thin fingers toying idly with the plain gold ring.

“Well?” I managed to exclaim at last. “What shall we do?”

“Do?” he echoed. “What can we do, my dear fellow? That woman’s future is in your hands.”

“Why in mine?” I asked. “In yours also, surely?”

“No,” he answered resolutely, taking my hand and grasping it warmly. “No, Ralph; I know—I can see how you are suffering. You believed her to be a pure and honest woman—one above the common run—a woman fit for helpmate and wife. Well, I, too, must confess myself very much misled. I believed her to be all that you imagined; indeed, if her face be any criterion, she is utterly unspoiled by the world and its wickedness. In my careful studies in physiognomy I have found that very seldom does a perfect face like hers cover an evil heart. Hence, I confess, that this discovery has amazed me quite as much as it has you. I somehow feel——”

“I don’t believe it!” I cried, interrupting him. “I don’t believe, Ambler, that she murdered him—I can’t believe it. Her’s is not the face of a murderess.”

“Faces sometimes deceive,” he said quietly. “Recollect that a clever woman can give a truthful appearance to a lie where a man utterly fails.”

“I know—I know. But even with this circumstantial proof I can’t and won’t believe it.”

“Please yourself, my dear fellow,” he answered. “I know it is hard to believe ill of a woman whom one loves so devotedly as you’ve loved Ethelwynn. But be brave, bear up, and face the situation like a man.”

“I am facing it,” I said resolutely. “I will face it by refusing to believe that she killed him. The letters are plain enough. She was engaged secretly to old Courtenay, who threw her over in favour of her sister. But is there anything so very extraordinary in that? One hears of such things very often.”

“But the final letter?”

“It bears evidence of being written in the first moments of wild anger on realising that she had been abandoned in favour of Mary. Probably she has by this time quite forgotten the words she wrote. And in any case the fact of her living beneath the same roof, supervising the household, and attending to the sick man during Mary’s absence, entirely negatives any idea of revenge.”

Jevons smiled dubiously, and I myself knew that my argument was not altogether logical.

“Well?” I continued. “And is not that your opinion?”

“No. It is not,” he replied, bluntly.

“Then what is to be done?” I asked, after a pause.

“The matter rests entirely with you, Ralph,” he replied. “I know what I should do in a similar case.”

“What would you do? Advise me,” I urged eagerly.

“I should take the whole of the correspondence, just as it is, place it in the grate there, and burn it,” he said.

I was not prepared for such a suggestion. A similar idea had occurred to me, but I feared to suggest to him such a mode of defeating the ends of justice.

“But if I do that will you give me a vow of secrecy?” I asked, quickly. “Recollect that such a step is a serious offence against the law.”

“When I pass out of this room I shall have no further recollection of ever having seen any letters,” he answered, again giving me his hand. “In this matter my desire is only to help you. If, as you believe, Ethelwynn is innocent, then no harm can be done in destroying the letters, whereas if she is actually the assassin she must, sooner or later, betray her guilt. A woman may be clever, but she can never successfully cover the crime of murder.”

“Then you are willing that I, as finder of those letters, shall burn them? And further, that no word shall pass regarding this discovery?”

“Most willing,” he replied. “Come,” he added, commencing to gather them together. “Let us lose no time, or perhaps the constable on duty below or one of the plain-clothes men may come prying in here.”

Then at his direction and with his assistance I willingly tore up each letter in small pieces, placed the whole in the grate where dead cinders still remained, and with a vesta set a light to them. For a few moments they blazed fiercely up the chimney, then died out, leaving only black tinder.

“We must make a feint of having tried to light the fire,” said Jevons, taking an old newspaper, twisting it up, and setting light to it in the grate, afterwards stirring up the dead tinder with the tinder of the letters. “I’ll remark incidentally to the constable that we’ve tried to get a fire, and didn’t succeed. That will prevent Thorpe poking his nose into it.”

So when the whole of the letters had been destroyed, all traces of their remains effaced and the safe re-locked, we went downstairs—not, however, before my companion had made a satisfactory explanation to the constable and entirely misled him as to what we had been doing.