A Woman Perfected

Clifford stared, as if the other had been speaking in a foreign language.

"What's that? Would you mind saying that again?"

"I'll not say it again; I'll not pipe to your dancing, you brazen vagabond!"

"Are you hinting that Joseph Oldfield is, or was, I don't know which it ought to be, a pseudonym? that he had, or has, another name?"

"Is that the trick you're trying to play? You wish it to be believed that you didn't know there was such a person as Donald Lindsay; that he and Joseph Oldfield were one and the same; and that in putting the name upon a bill stamp you did it innocently, in ignorance that was childlike and bland. The idea is ingenious; as, I fancy, Mr. Clifford, most of your ideas are; but you won't find a judge or jury quite so simple."

Ignoring Mr. Morgan, Frank Clifford, to the unprejudiced observer, seemed to be engaged in reflections of his own; to which he presently gave shape in disconnected words.

"Donald Lindsay? I seem to have heard the name."

"I shouldn't be surprised."

"Donald Lindsay? Why-it can't be!"

"That conscience is pricking you at last? No, it can't be that."

"Harry Trevor wouldn't-couldn't-he couldn't do a thing like that; and yet-"

"And yet? So it's Harry Trevor now; as usual, everybody's guilty except the man who did it."

"Mr. Morgan, I'm willing to believe that you don't realize what a confused nightmare I seem all at once to be moving in, and that that explains your attitude. If you did realize how wholly you have taken me by surprise-"

"I do realize that; I quite think that you're altogether the most surprised man I've lately met. I don't know what you did expect when you rang that bell, but I don't suppose that you expected this."

"I did not; though you speak in one sense, and I in another. With reference to what you say about those bills, a horrible-I can only call it fear, has come into my mind, of which I scarcely dare to think, lest I should be guilty of heinous injustice; and before I speak of it-"

"You would like to have time to think it over?"

"I should."

"Then you shall have it; that's what I'm coming to. You will be at the office to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock."

"I will."

"You had better."

"You need not tell me that."

"Needn't I? I think I need. Mr. Nash and I are administering Mr. Oldfield's estate."

"Are you an executor?"

"I am; the only executor. I do not know that I ought to say so, but you will understand that I am not committing myself, and that I speak without prejudice; but, at present, it is our wish-Mr. Nash's and mine-not to prosecute."

"Prosecute!"

"Prosecute. Do you wish me to believe that you were unaware that forgers are occasionally prosecuted? Our first consideration is, and must be, the business; we fear that it may do the business no good to have the manager sent to penal servitude for forgery. These bills have been taken up, in the first place under a misapprehension, at a very heavy cost; we will tell you all about that to-morrow; you will have to make that loss good."

"I shall!"

"You will; do you imagine that you are to escape scathless? You are a truly remarkable person. But, as I have said, we will discuss that in the morning. I only trust that no further irregularities may be brought to light."

"Mr. Morgan!"

"Please drop that tone; it makes me sick; nothing is so nauseous as a futile hypocrite. My advice to you is, think things over, carefully, seriously; in the morning make a clean breast of everything; the more candid we find you the better it will be. Now, as Mr. Nash and I have much to attend to, I must ask you to leave us."

"That I am willing to do; but so far you have done all the talking; but, before I go, there are some remarks which I wish to make."

"We wish to hear nothing now-nothing; think first, Mr. Clifford, think."

"It is not necessary to think before making simple statements dealing with plain facts, and you will have to listen, willingly or not; I have had to listen, now it is your turn. What I have to say is this; that I did not know Mr. Oldfield was dead; that I did not know that he had any name but Oldfield; that I had no knowledge of his connection with Donald Lindsay, of Cloverlea; that this is the first time I have been made aware that there ever was such a person as Donald Lindsay; that I never before saw the bill of exchange which you showed me just now."

"I have proof to the contrary."

"That's impossible. That there may be a mystery about that bill, and about the others of which you have spoken, I admit; between this and to-morrow I may be able to institute inquiries which will throw light on it; but I assure you, Mr. Morgan, I am as incapable of forgery as you are. If Mr. Oldfield really did believe that I was capable of such conduct he was a much worse judge of character than I believed he was. Now, Mr. Morgan, I will go."

"With a lie upon your lips."

"No, sir, not with a lie upon my lips. You will either give your authorities for the statements you have made, or, in the morning, you will apologize. You will find that you will have to make many apologies, Mr. Morgan. I notice, Mr. Nash, that you have not associated yourself with the charges Mr. Morgan has made, nor with the language he has used; when I lay the facts before you in the morning, as I hope to be in a position to do, you will have no cause to regret your attitude."

With that Mr. Clifford marched out of the room, and through the front door. When he had gone Mr. Morgan leaned against a corner of a table, with his hands in his trousers pockets, and whistled; then he looked at Mr. Nash, and smiled.

"Got a face, hasn't he? He can bluff. We may find him rather a harder nut to crack than I imagined; it's just possible that we may have to change our plan of operations; the line he has taken up is a little unexpected. What do you think?"

"I don't think, Mr. Morgan; I know."

Mr. Morgan purposely ignored the peculiarity of the other's tone.

"What do you know, my dear Nash?"

"I know one thing; that if you do go to Mr. Clifford's office in the morning you will go alone."

"Shall I? How's that? Got a previous engagement?"

"Here, and now, you and I part company; you go your way, I go mine; under no circumstances will I associate myself with you again."

"Steady, Nash, steady; do you know where talk like that will lead you?"

"It will lead to honesty."

"It will lead you to jail, and pretty soon."

"Will it? I'll take the risk. It is not necessary for you to remind me that on a certain occasion I behaved like a blackguard, and perhaps worse; I have only regretted it once, and that's been ever since."

"Regrets, in a case like yours, are useless; they simply mean that you regret that you're found out. Of course you do."

"You'll find that my regrets mean more than that. I've behaved badly since; I've acted like a coward in allowing you to use your guilty knowledge."

"Guilty knowledge?"

"Yes, your guilty knowledge, as you'll discover if you're not careful; I've let you use it as a lever to drive me into further misdoing. You've threatened me with the consequences of my misconduct; I've been afraid to face them. That's over now; I'm going to face them, if only as the lesser of two evils."

"Tell me, Nash, what's started you in this conversational strain?"

"What's brought me to the sticking-point is your conduct to Mr. Clifford. He's an innocent man; of that I'm absolutely certain; every insult you flung at him stung me; it shamed me to feel that I was your associate. I'll be your associate no longer. I'll have no part or parcel in your attempts to entangle Mr. Clifford as you've entangled me. I believe they'll fail; but if they do or don't, I'll have no share in them. Henceforward you and I are strangers; I'm going; if you stay, you stay alone."

"Going, are you? Oh no, you're not!"

Morgan moved between Nash and the door. The two men confronted each other; there was something on Herbert Nash's face which made of him a new man.

"Mr. Morgan" – even in his voice there was a new tone-"more than once my fingers have itched to take you by the throat, and choke the life half out of you. If you are wise, you will not attempt to detain me, or I may find the temptation too strong."

Possibly Mr. Morgan was conscious that there was something unusual about Herbert Nash; his manner continued to be so conciliatory.

"Come, my dear fellow, don't let us fall out about nothing at all. I'm quite ready to listen to anything you have to say; only, before you take a step there's no retracing, do listen to reason."

"No, thank you; I've heard too much of what you call reason already; I'll hear no more. Stand out of my way."

"Nash, Nash, don't be hasty! If you'll only let me speak a dozen words, you'll view the situation in quite a different light."

"Shall I? Then I'll not let you speak them. I see the situation now in the only light I mean to see it. Stand out of my way."

Nash, moving forward, gripped Morgan by the shoulders; either the assault was unexpected, or he used great force. Swinging Morgan round, he sent him reeling backwards half across the room; until, coming into unlooked-for contact with a chair, he fell heavily on to the floor. Before he could recover Nash had gone from the room, and was out of the flat. Picking himself up, although he seemed a trifle dazed, Morgan went rushing after him. When he reached the landing he heard Nash's voice come up the well of the staircase, from the floor below.

"Porter, the man Morgan, whom I have left in Mr. Oldfield's flat, has no right whatever to be there."

"Hasn't he, sir? How's that? He seems to have done something to upset Mr. Clifford."

"When he comes down, if you find that he has anything on him belonging to the flat-papers, letters, anything-they have been stolen. If you allow him to leave the building with them on him, possibly you will be held responsible."

"Shall I? He shan't leave here with anything on him that doesn't belong to him, I promise you; there are two or three people about the place who'll see to that."

Mr. Morgan waited to hear no more. He slunk back into the flat and shut the door.

CHAPTER XXXI

HUSBAND AND WIFE

When Herbert Nash quitted Bloomsbury Mansions he went straight back to Littlehampton, by the last train of the day to reach that primitive place. When he arrived at Ocean Villas it was past ten o'clock. His wife had gone to bed; or, at least, she had retired to her bedroom. As a matter of fact, she felt as if she never wanted to go to bed again; unless going to bed was synonymous with eternal sleep. If only she could go to sleep and never wake! She was of opinion that she was the most miserable woman; many women think themselves that with less cause than she had. She was half-undressed, and, crouching on the floor, rested her head against the bed. In her hands was a telegram, which she had read again, and again, and again, until it seemed to have branded itself upon her throbbing brain so that she could not get it out of her sight even for a second. It had come to her earlier in the day, and, as telegrams are apt to be, was curt.

"Send another five hundred immediately. No excuses will be accepted.

"Morgan."

Only a day or two ago she had given him a hundred pounds; then sent him another four hundred, and here already he was demanding five hundred more. The inference was plain; he would persist in his demands until he had wrung from her all that she had found on Donald Lindsay's table. Though he stripped her of every penny she would still be at his mercy; what would he demand from her then? Whatever it might be, how would she dare refuse him then, if she dare not refuse him now?

In a sense, indeed, she had refused him, as it was. He had bade her send the cash "immediately." That she had not done; she had purposely not sent it by the night's post; and now was racked by fears of the measures he might take to show her his resentment. Suppose he told her husband, as he had threatened to do? If he did! if he did! Had she not better hide in the sea before Herbert came back again?

His opportunities for telling were so numerous; he and Herbert were away together at that moment. That was another of her burdens. What was the meaning of this sudden, ill-omened connection which had sprung up between them? Why, all at once, had her husband become the inseparable companion of the man who had been wont to stand behind her chair? He had resented, so hotly, the fellow's presumption in even venturing to write to him; yet now they might be bosom friends; he even expected her to receive him as an equal. What did it mean?

Nothing kindles the imagination like a coward conscience. All sorts of hideous surmises had tormented her. A dozen explanations had occurred to her; every fresh one more unsavoury than the last. She could see that her husband had changed; in himself, as well as to her. He was not the same man; he was always brooding, irritable, depressed. Of late, not only had he not spoken to her a tender word, he had only addressed her when compelled, and then with scant civility. What did such conduct on his part portend? All kinds of doubts afflicted her; yet among them one was foremost. Was it not possible that Morgan had poisoned her husband's mind against her? He, perhaps, had not told him everything, she did not believe he had; but, with diabolical ingenuity, he might have hinted just enough to make Herbert afraid of hearing more. In that case her husband might be working Morgan's will under the delusion that, by so doing, he was protecting her; and all the while the man was wresting from her all that she had risked so much to gain-for Herbert's sake.

As, on the floor in the bedroom there, she wrestled with wild beasts of her own creation, on a sudden she heard the front door open, and a familiar step come into the house. It was her husband. She sprang to her feet, not with joy, but with terror. Why had he come back? He had told her that he would not return that night; perhaps not on the morrow. Why had he returned-when he had said that he would not return-without notice, at that hour of the night? for it seemed to her that she had been in her bedroom hours.

She heard him go into the sitting-room; finding it in darkness, no one there, he came towards where she was. As she heard him take the half-dozen steps which divided the two rooms, she stood by the bedstead, trembling from head to foot; it might have been her executioner, not her husband, who was coming. A wild, frenzied impulse came to her to turn the key in the lock, and so gain time; but before she could do it he had opened the door, and was standing in the room.

It did not need such a rarefied vision as hers was then to perceive that with him all was not well. She seemed to see him in a blaze of lightning, phantom-haunted, as she was. It was borne in on her that he saw her as the hideous thing she saw herself to be, and that that was why he stood there, white and terrible. If she could she would have dropped to the floor, and crawled to him, and hung about his knees, and cried for mercy; but she could not; she had to stand there, straight and rigid, waiting for him to speak. When he spoke his voice sounded strange in her ears, as indeed, though she was not aware of it, it did in his own.

"I see you guess why I am here!"

"Guess? How-how can I guess?"

"Has Morgan told you nothing?"

"Morgan? What-what could Morgan tell me?"

"Hasn't he told you that I'm a blackguard and a thief?"

The words were so wholly different from any she had expected him to utter that, in the stress of her agitation, they conveyed no meaning to her mind; she stared at him like one bereft of her senses, as, in fact, for the moment she was. He misconstrued her look entirely.

"Elaine," he cried, "don't look at me like that, don't! If you only knew what I have suffered, what I've gone through, you'd pity me, you wouldn't look at me as if I was something wholly outside the pale. I know you've guessed that there was something wrong ever since that-that brute came; you knew I wouldn't breathe the same air with him if I could help it; but it mayn't be, Elaine, it mayn't be so bad as you suppose. I don't ask you to forgive me; I don't even ask you to continue to regard me as your husband; I know I've forfeited all claims I may have had on you. All I ask of you is to believe that, at last, I'm going to try to be a man. I've come to tell you that, and to tell you that chiefly. I'm not going to stay; you need not fear that I'll contaminate the house which shelters you; but before I go I think I ought to tell you just what I've done, and what the temptation was; not to excuse myself, but so that, whatever happens, you, at least, may know the truth. I felt that I could not let the night pass without telling you the truth, if only because I have kept it from you so long, and in the morning it may be too late; I may not have the chance of telling it to you, face to face, again."

The longer he spoke, the more her bewilderment grew.

"I-I-don't understand," she stammered.

He made her understand, telling his tale as straightforwardly, as clearly, as it could be told; as it might have been told even by an impartial witness; the man that was in him was coming to the front at last.

"You see," he said, "I was at Morgan's mercy, or he thought I was; and, for a time, I thought so too; I was such a coward! And before long I should have been wholly at his mercy, had not the sight of that man, Clifford, roused me to a consciousness of what a coward I really was; then I knew that the only way to be free was to tell the truth, and let Morgan do what he likes. I've come to tell you the truth, first of all; and to-morrow I'm going to tell Frank Clifford the truth; and when I've found Miss Lindsay, I'll tell her the truth. If I have to suffer for it, I'll suffer; but at any rate I've escaped from Morgan. What a weight would have been off my mind if I'd escaped from him before!"

As she began to grasp the drift of what it was that he was telling her, she had sunk on to the edge of the bed, and, with distended eyes and gaping mouth, sat staring at him as if at some thing of horror. He mistook the meaning of her attitude.

"I don't wonder you look at me as if I were some repulsive object; I couldn't be more repulsive to you than I am to myself; I understand what you feel, what you think; I know I deserve it. I know you never would have married me if you had known me to be the thing I am; I have wronged you more than any one. I can't undo the bonds which bind us, that is not in my power, and I'm afraid the law will not help you. But this I can do, and I will; I'll take myself out of your life as completely as I can. Your aunt left you enough to live on; I think you had better sink it in an annuity; you'll be safer that way; and when I can I'll contribute what I can. I don't wish to be released from any of my obligations; on the contrary, I wish to fulfil them both in the letter and the spirit, and I will. So soon as I am earning money you shall have your proper share; but in any case it will be a comfort to me to feel that, in any case, you are provided for. And, in time, when I've done something towards regaining my self-respect, and-and you send for me, I'll come to you again, if only for just long enough to show that I am still alive. But you're rid of me till then. Good-bye."

He moved towards the door, as if the whole thing was at an end; as if husband and wife could be sundered quite so easily. She stopped him as he was going.

"Herbert!" She spoke in the queerest whisper, as if something had gone wrong with her vocal chords, the effect of which was to leave her partially strangled. She held out the telegram she had still in her hand. "Look at that."

He took it reluctantly, as if he feared it was a weapon which she aimed at him. Glancing at it, he read it aloud.

"'Send another five hundred immediately. No excuses will be accepted.

'Morgan.'

What-what does this mean?"

"It means that I'm worse than you; much worse than you."

"Elaine!" She tried to speak, but could not; her voice was strangled in her throat; it was not nice to watch her struggles to regain the use of it. He moved towards her, startled. "Elaine! what's the matter?"

"I'm-I'm-I'm going to tell you, only I-I- Give me-something-to drink-there's some water-in the bottle." She pointed to the washstand. He brought her some water; but she could not drink it. She could not hold the glass in her own hand; she could not swallow when he raised it to her lips. He put the glass down on the floor. Her condition frightened him. Although he had just been speaking of leaving her for an indefinite period, now he knelt beside her on the floor, and, putting his arms about her, held her close, soothing her as best he could. It was while he held her that she told him; she confessed in her agony; the words being wrung from her as if they had been gouts of blood. He continued to hold her all the time. When, in his turn, he began to understand her story, he was man enough to realize that it was only his support which gave her the strength she needed; that but for his encircling arms, and the consciousness that they were his arms, she would collapse. As, by degrees, her meaning was borne in on his understanding, the fashion of his countenance was changed, and he kept his face averted, but he never moved. When, in disconnected sentences, the root of the matter had been told, she did what he had not done; she began, in a manner, to excuse herself. "It was-because you said that you wanted money, and-that we couldn't be married without it, that I went back and took the money-which was on the table. And Morgan saw me."

"Morgan saw you!"

It was the first time he had spoken; there was a curious contrast between his voice and hers.

"He was in the room all the time-but in the darkness-I never knew it."

"So Morgan has held us in the hollow of his hand; both of us!"

"I gave him five hundred pounds the other day, and now he's telegraphed for more."

"Poor Elaine! It seems, after all, that we're a well-matched pair, both thieves and cowards."

"Herbert!"

She spoke as if she shrieked.

"My dear, do let us look facts in the face now that we are trying to make ourselves known to each other."

"I-shouldn't have taken the money-if I hadn't thought-Nora was rich-and it would make no difference."

"I'm afraid that the question of Miss Lindsay's wealth or poverty could make no difference to the thing you did."

"I know that-now."

"When it seemed that Miss Lindsay was a pauper did you give her back any of the money you had taken under a misconception?"

"I meant to-but I never did-I meant to give her a thousand pounds."

"It's a pity you didn't; it might have caused the residue to appear a little less dingy. We're a pair of beauties! God help us both; we need His help!"

"I-haven't dared to ask for it."

But she did dare that night; they both of them dared. Already, since they had been married, they had had some strange days and nights; but that was the strangest night of their strange honeymoon.

CHAPTER XXXII

A FORGOTTEN COAT

Lady Jane Carruthers was one of those elderly ladies who are never quite well, yet seldom actually ill. She was a great believer in what she called "air."

"If you breathe the right air you're all right; and if you breathe the wrong air you're all wrong, and there's the whole science of medicine in a nutshell; believe me, my dear, because I know; mine's the teaching of actual experience. So long as I'm well in a place I stay there; I know the air's right; but so soon as I begin to feel a little out of sorts I know the air has ceased to be right, I go away at once; the consequence is that there are very few people who move about as much as I do."

It chanced that, in one of her pursuits after the right air, Lady Jane went to Littlehampton; and, being there, with nothing to do except breathe the right air, by way of doing something she sent for her nephew, the Hon. Robert Spencer. She dispatched to him this telegram-

"Come down to me this afternoon. I wish to speak to you."

When he received the telegram the Honourable Robert pulled a face; he happened to have a good deal to do. His impulse was to wire back-

"Can't come. Speak on."