The Yellow Book Volume II Part 31

Gravener's clear, handsome eyes plunged into mine a minute; but evidently without fishing up a clue to this motive--a failure by which I was almost wounded. "What does the letter contain?"

"It's sealed, as I tell you, and I don't know what it contains."

"Why is it sent through you?"

"Rather than you?" I hesitated a moment. "The only explanation I can think of is that the person sending it may have imagined your relations with Miss Anvoy to be at an end--may have been told they were by Mrs. Saltram."

"My relations with Miss Anvoy are not at an end," poor Gravener stammered.

Again, for an instant, I deliberated. "The offer I propose to make you gives me the right to put you a question remarkably direct. Are you still engaged to Miss Anvoy?"

"No, I'm not," he slowly brought out. "But we're perfectly good friends."

"Such good friends that you will again become prospective husband and wife if the obstacle in your path be removed?"

"Removed?" Gravener vaguely repeated.

"If I give Miss Anvoy the letter I speak of she may drop her project."

"Then for G.o.d's sake give it!"

"I'll do so if you're ready to a.s.sure me that her dropping it would now presumably bring about your marriage."

"I'd marry her the next day!" my visitor cried.

"Yes, but would she marry you? What I ask of you of course is nothing less than your word of honour as to your conviction of this. If you give it me," I said, "I'll place the letter in her hand to-day."

Gravener took up his hat; turning it mechanically round, he stood looking a moment hard at its unruffled perfection. Then, very angrily, honestly and gallantly: "Place it in h.e.l.l!" he broke out; with which he clapped the hat on his head and left me.

"Will you read it or not?" I said to Ruth Anvoy, at Wimbledon, when I had told her the story of Mrs. Saltram's visit.

She reflected for a period which was probably of the briefest, but which was long enough to make me nervous. "Have you brought it with you?"

"No indeed. It's at home, locked up."

There was another great silence, and then she said: "Go back and destroy it."

I went back, but I didn't destroy it till after Saltram's death, when I burnt it unread. The Pudneys approached her again pressingly, but, prompt as they were, the c.o.xon Fund had already become an operative benefit and a general amaze; Mr. Saltram, while we gathered about, as it were, to watch the manna descend, was already drawing the magnificent income. He drew it as he had always drawn everything, with a grand abstracted gesture. Its magnificence, alas, as all the world now knows, quite quenched him; it was the beginning of his decline. It was also naturally a new grievance for his wife, who began to believe in him as soon as he was blighted and who to this day accuses us of having bribed him to gratify the fad of a pushing American, to renounce his glorious office, to become, as she says, like everybody else. On the day he found himself able to publish he wholly ceased to produce. This deprived us, as may easily be imagined, of much of our occupation, and especially deprived the Mulvilles, whose want of self-support I never measured till they lost their great inmate. They have no one to live on now. Adelaide's most frequent reference to their dest.i.tution is embodied in the remark that dear far-away Ruth's intentions were doubtless good. She and Kent are even yet looking for another prop, but everyone is so dreadfully robust. With Saltram the type was scattered, the grander, the elder style. They have got their carriage back, but what's an empty carriage? In short, I think we were all happier as well as poorer before; even including George Gravener, who, by the deaths of his brother and his nephew, has lately become Lord Maddock. His wife, whose fortune clears the property, is criminally dull; he hates being in the Upper House and he has not yet had high office. But what are these accidents, which I should perhaps apologise for mentioning, in the light of the great eventual boon promised the patient by the rate at which the c.o.xon Fund must be rolling up?

For the Backs of Playing Cards

By Aymer Vallance

[Ill.u.s.tration: Backs of Four Playing Cards]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Table of Contents and Art]