Now, however, I was really to discover something definite. When we returned to our home at Long Wilton, only a little before we finally left it, I completed my examination of Peters’ papers. His various diaries and notebooks, notes of travel and notes of study, jottings and completed passages for his psychological book, I found to be of fascinating interest, and I lingered over them long, but there was not a hint among them all of Longhurst, the Eleanor or any kindred topic. One of the journals, I noticed, had had some leaves cut out. The last place of my search was a small wooden trunk which I had brought home from his house (now sold). On the top of it lay a sheet of paper with, written in his mother’s hand, “Some little things which I have put aside for Eustace. His wife or his children may care to see them hereafter.” It may have been from a false sense of pathos, but my eyes filled with tears, and I was indisposed to rifle callously these relics so lovingly put aside with natural hopes which now could never be fulfilled. I was about to make a bonfire of the box and all its contents, reverently but with speed, when my wife arrested me in amazement at my folly. “Why,” she said, “cannot you see? His letters to his mother will be in it.” “His letters from the East,” she added, as I still did not comprehend. And they were in it.
XIII
I here set down in order of their date several extracts from Peters’ letters to his mother written from Saigon in the years 1878 to 1880.
First extract:
“I have a new acquaintance, one Willie Cartwright, a young fellow who was at Oxford just after me. I spend a good deal of time with him because of talking Oxford shop and because he is fond of books; at least he was brought up among them, and reads the books he thinks he ought to read. I have not got very much in common with him, for he is a narrow-shouldered, bilious-looking, unathletic fellow, with no instinct of sport in him; but he is a welcome addition to my circle, because he is refined—in a negative way at least—and most of my friends’ conversation here is—well, not refined, and it becomes a bore.”
Second extract:
“How curious that you should have known some of young Cartwright’s people, for it is W. V. Cartwright. I thought they must have lost their money since I heard of him at Oxford. Yes, I will try to ‘take care of him’ a little, as you say, but really, though he is quiet and not sociable among men, he is by no means a timid youth, and he has quite got the name of a shrewd business man already.”
Third extract:
“I am rather sorry about Willie Cartwright. He seems to have got into the hands of a fellow named Longhurst, who has lately turned up here, no one knows why. He, Longhurst, is a rough customer whom no one seems to know anything about, except that he has been in Australia. He has been a mining engineer, and seems to know also a lot about tropical forestry. He has wonderful yarns of the discoveries he has made in the Philippines, the Dutch Indies and all over the shop. I should not believe his yarns, but he seems to have made a little money somehow. Well, Cartwright now talks of becoming a partner with him in some wildcat venture, and I am afraid he will get let in. He says himself he thinks Longhurst will try to do him. He had much better stick to his humdrum business here, which will give him a living at any rate, and perhaps enable him to retire comfortably when he is, say, forty-five, young enough to enjoy life, though one does age soon in this climate.”
Fourth extract:
“Cartwright and Longhurst have actually gone off together. Parker, whom Cartwright was with, is very sick about it. … By the way, I ought to confess I was quite wrong about Longhurst. I have seen a good deal of him since, and found him a very kind fellow, with an extraordinary simplicity about him in spite of all his varied experiences. I generally assume that when a man is spoken of as a rough diamond, the roughness is a too obvious fact, and the diamond a polite hypothesis, but I was wrong in Longhurst’s case. Also I think you may reassure C.’s aunt about the chances of his being swindled. In strict confidence I think the chances are the other way. MacAndrew, the lawyer here, told me a story he had no business to tell about the agreement between …” (Part of letter lost.)
This was all. Peters before long was moved to Java; and the letters to his mother ceased soon after, for she died.
Not long afterwards I got Bryanston’s answer to my letter of enquiry to him. He told me little but things of which by this time I was sure. “C.” was Cartwright (William V. Cartwright, he called him), and was, he conjectured, the man whom Peters connected with Longhurst’s death. He would be glad to tell me at any time anything that he could, but he was off now for a sea voyage which the state of his health made necessary (a long absence immediately before accounted for some delay in his answering me), and at present he could think of nothing to tell me but what I should see in Peters’ letter to him, of which he was keeping the original and now enclosed a copy.
The important part of the letter enclosed was as follows: “I have a question to ask you which perhaps you will answer this time by return of post. Never mind my previous question about the old
