THE CHANCE
Leonora was aware that she had tamed one of the lions which menaced her
husband's path; she could not conceive that Arthur Twemlow, whatever his
mysterious power over John, would find himself able to exercise it now;
Twemlow was a friend of hers, and so disarmed. She wished to say proudly
to John: 'I neither know nor wish to know the nature of the situation
between you and Arthur Twemlow. But be at ease. He is no longer
dangerous. I have arranged it.' The thing was impossible to be said; she
was bound to leave John in ignorance; she might not even hint.
Nevertheless, Leonora's satisfaction in this triumph, her pleasure in
the mere memory of the intimate talk by the fire, her innocent joyous
desire to see Twemlow again soon, emanated from her in various subtle
ways, and the household was thereby soothed back into a feeling of
security about John. Leonora ignored, perhaps deliberately, that
Stanway had still before him the peril of financial embarrassment, that
he was mortgaging the house, and that his colloquies with David Dain
continued to be frequent and obviously disconcerting. When she saw him
nervous, petulant, preoccupied, she attributed his condition solely to
his thought of the one danger which she had secretly removed. She had a
strange determined impulse to be happy and gay.
An episode at an extra Monday night rehearsal of the Amateur Operatic
Society seemed to point to the prevalence of certain sinister rumours
about Stanway's condition. Milly, inspired by dreams of the future, had
learnt her part perfectly in five days. She sang and acted with
magnificent assurance, and with a vivid theatrical charm which awoke
enthusiasm in the excitable breasts of the male chorus. Harry Burgess
lost his air of fatigued worldliness, and went round naïvely demanding
to be told whether he had not predicted this miracle. Even the conductor
was somewhat moved.
'She'll do, by gad!' said that man of few illusions to his crony the
accompanist.
But it is not to be imagined that such a cardinal event as the elevation
of a chit like Millicent Stanway to the principal rôle could achieve
itself without much friction and consequent heat. Many ladies of the
chorus thought that the committee no longer deserved the confidence of
the society. At least three suspected that the conductor had a private
spite against themselves. And one, aged thirty-five, felt convinced that
she was the victim of an elaborate and scandalous plot. To this maid had
been offered Milly's old part of Ella; it was a final insult--but she
accepted it. In the scene with Angela and Bunthorne in the first act,
the new Ella made the same mistake three times at the words, 'In a
doleful train,' and the conductor grew sarcastic.
'May I show you how that bit goes, Miss Gardner?' said Milly afterwards
with exquisite pertness.
'No, thank you, Milly,' was the freezing emphasised answer; 'I dare say
I shall be able to manage without _your_ assistance.'
'Oh, ho!' sang Milly, delighted to have provoked this exhibition, and
she began a sort of Carmen dance of disdain.
'Girls grow up so quick nowadays!' Miss Gardner exclaimed, losing
control of herself; 'who are _you_, I should like to know!' and she
proceeded with her irrelevant inquiries: 'who's _your_ father? Doesn't
every one know that he'll have gone smash before the night of the
show?' She was shaking, insensate, brutal.
Millicent stood still, and went very white.
'Miss Gardner!'
'_Miss_ Stanway!'
The rival divas faced each other, murderous, for a few seconds, and then
Milly turned, laughing, to Harry Burgess, who, consciously secretarial,
was standing near with several others.
'Either Miss Gardner apologises to me at once,' she said lightly, 'at
_once_, or else either she or I leave the Society.'
Milly tapped her foot, hummed, and looked up into Miss Gardner's eyes
with serene contempt. Ethel was not the only one who was amazed at the
absolute certitude of victory in little Millicent's demeanour. Harry
Burgess spoke apart with the conductor upon this astonishing
contretemps, and while he did so Milly, still smiling, hummed rather
more loudly the very phrase of Ella's at which Miss Gardner had
stumbled. It was a masterpiece of insolence.
'We think Miss Gardner should withdraw the expression,' said Harry after
he had coughed.
'Never!' said Miss Gardner. 'Good-bye all!'
Thus ended Miss Gardner's long career as an operatic artist--and not
without pathos, for the ageing woman sobbed as she left the room from
which she had been driven by a pitiless child.
* * * * *
According to custom Harry Burgess set out from the National School,
where the rehearsals were held, with Ethel and Milly for Hillport. But
at the bottom of Church Street Ethel silently fell behind and joined a
fourth figure which had approached. The two couples walked separately to
Hillport by the field-path. As Harry and Milly opened the wicket at the
foot of Stanway's long garden, Ethel ran up, alone again.
'That you?' cried a thin voice under the trees by the gate. It was Rose,
taking late exercise after her studies.
'Yes, it's us,' replied Harry. 'Shall you give me a whisky if I come
in?'
And he entered the house with the three girls.
'I'm certain Rose saw you with Fred in the field, and if she did she's
sure to split to mother,' Milly whispered as she and Ethel ran upstairs.
They could hear Harry already strumming on the piano.
'I don't care!' said Ethel callously, exasperated by three days of
futility at the office, and by the manifest injustice of fate.
'My dear, I want to speak to you,' said Leonora to Ethel, when the
informal supper was over, and Harry had buckishly departed, and Rose and
Milly were already gone upstairs. Not a word had been mentioned as to
the great episode of the rehearsal.
'Well, mother?' Ethel answered in a tone of weary defiance.
Leonora still sat at the supper-table, awaiting John, who was out at a
meeting; Ethel stood leaning against the mantelpiece like a boy.
'How often have you been seeing Fred Ryley lately?' Leonora began with a
gentle, pacific inquiry.
'I see him every day at the works, mother.'
'I don't mean at the works; you know that, Ethel.'
'I suppose Rose has been telling you things.'
'Rose told me quite innocently that she happened to see Fred in the
field to-night.'
'Oh, yes!' Ethel sneered with cold irony. 'I know Rose's innocence!'
'My dear girl,' Leonora tried to reason with her. 'Why will you talk
like that? You know you promised your father----'
'No, I didn't, ma,' Ethel interrupted her sharply. 'Milly did; I never
promised father anything.'
Leonora was astonished at the mutinous desperation in Ethel's tone. It
left her at a loss.
'I shall have to tell your father,' she said sadly.
'Well, of course, mother,' Ethel managed her voice carefully. 'You tell
him everything.'
'No, I don't, my dear,' Leonora denied the charge like a girl. 'A week
last night I heard Fred Ryley talking to you at your window. And I have
said nothing.'
Ethel flushed hotly at this disclosure.
'Then why say anything now?' she murmured, half daunted and half daring.
'Your father must know. I ought to have told him before. But I have been
wondering how best to act.'
'What's the matter with Fred, mother?' Ethel demanded, with a catch in
her throat.
'That isn't the point, Ethel. Your father has distinctly said that he
won't permit any'--she stopped because she could not bring herself to
say the words; and then continued: 'If he had the slightest suspicion
that there was anything between _you_ and Fred Ryley he would never have
allowed you to go to the works at all.'
'Allowed me to go! I like that, mother! As if I wanted to go to the
works! I simply hate the place--father knows that. And yet--and yet----'
She almost wept.
'Your father must be obeyed,' Leonora stated simply.
'Suppose Fred _is_ poor,' Ethel ran on, recovering herself. 'Perhaps he
won't be poor always. And perhaps we shan't be rich always. The things
that people are saying----' She hesitated, afraid to proceed.
'What do you mean, dear?'
'Well!' the girl exclaimed, and then gave a brief account of the Gardner
incident.
'My child,' was Leonora's placid comment, 'you ought to know that
Florence Gardner will say anything when she is in a temper. She is the
worst gossip in Bursley. I only hope Milly wasn't rude. And really this
has got nothing to do with what we are talking about.'
'Mother!' Ethel cried hysterically, 'why are you always so calm? Just
imagine yourself in my place--with Fred. You say I'm a woman, and I am,
I am, though you don't think so, truly. Just imagine----No, you can't!
You've forgotten all that sort of thing, mother.' She burst into gushing
tears at last. 'Father can kill me if he likes! I don't care!'
She fled out of the room.
'So I've forgotten, have I!' Leonora said to herself, smiling faintly,
as she sat alone at the table waiting for John.
She was not at all hurt by Ethel's impassioned taunt, but rather amused,
indulgently amused, that the girl should have so misread her. She felt
more maternal, protective, and tender towards Ethel than she had ever
felt since the first year of Ethel's existence. She seemed perfectly to
comprehend, and she nobly excused, the sudden outbreak of violence and
disrespect on the part of her languid, soft-eyed daughter. She thought
with confidence that all would come right in the end, and vaguely she
determined that in some undefined way she would help Ethel, would yet
demonstrate to this child of hers that she understood and sympathised.
The interview which had just terminated, futile, conflicting, desultory,
muddled, tentative, and abrupt as life itself, appeared to her in the
light of a positive achievement. She was not unhappy about it, nor about
anything. Even the scathing speech of Florence Gardner had failed to
disturb her.
'I want to tell you something, Jack,' she began, when her husband at
length came home.
'Who's been drinking whisky?' was Stanway's only reply as he glanced at
the table.
'Harry brought the girls home. I dare say he had some. I didn't
notice,' she said.
'H'm!' Stanway muttered gloomily, 'he's young enough to start that
game.'
'I'll see it isn't offered to him again, if you like,' said Leonora.
'But I want to tell you something, Jack.'
'Well?' He was thoughtlessly cutting a piece of cheese into small
squares with the silver butter-knife.
'Only you must promise not to say a word to a soul.'
'I shall promise no such thing,' he said with uncompromising bluntness.
She smiled charmingly upon him. 'Oh yes, Jack, you will, you must.'
He seemed to be taken unawares by her sudden smile. 'Very well,' he said
gruffly.
She then told him, in the manner she thought best, of the relations
between Ethel and Fred Ryley, and she pointed out to him that, if he had
reflected at all upon the relations between Harry Burgess and Millicent,
he would not have fallen into the error of connecting Milly, instead of
her sister, with Fred.
'What relations between Milly and young Burgess?' he questioned
stolidly.
'Why, Jack,' she said, 'you know as much as I do. Why does Harry come
here so often?'
'He'd better not come here so often. What's Milly? She's nothing but a
child.'
Leonora made no attempt to argue with him. 'As for Ethel,' she said
softly, 'she's at a difficult age, and you must be careful----'
'As for Ethel,' he interrupted, 'I'll turn Fred Ryley out of my office
to-morrow.'
She tried to look grave and sympathetic, to use all her tact. 'But won't
that make difficulties with Uncle Meshach? And people might say you had
dismissed him because Uncle Meshach had altered his will.'
'D----n Fred Ryley!' he swore, unable to reply to this. 'D----n him!'
He walked to and fro in the room, and all his secret, profound
resentment against Ryley surged up, loose and uncontrolled.
'Wouldn't it be better to take Ethel away from the works?' Leonora
suggested.
'No,' he answered doggedly. 'Not for a moment! Can't I have my own
daughter in my own office because Fred Ryley is on the place? A pretty
thing!'
'It is awkward,' she admitted, as if admitting also that what puzzled
his sagacity was of course too much for hers.
'Fred Ryley!' he repeated the hateful syllables bitterly. 'And I only
took him out of kindness! Simply out of kindness! I tell you what,
Leonora!' He faced her in a sort of bravado. 'It would serve 'em d----n
well right if Uncle Meshach died to-morrow, and Aunt Hannah the day
after. I should be safe then. It would serve them d----n well right, all
of 'em--Ryley and Uncle Meshach; yes, and Aunt Hannah too! She hasn't
altered her will, but she'd no business to have let uncle alter his.
They're all in it. She's bound to die first, and they know it.... Well,
well!' He was a resigned martyr now, and he turned towards the hearth.
'Jack!' she exclaimed, 'what's the matter?'
'Ruin's the matter,' he said. 'That's what's the matter. Ruin!'
He laughed sourly, undecided whether to pretend that he was not quite
serious, or to divulge his real condition.
Her calm confident eyes silently invited him to relieve his mind, and he
could not resist the temptation.
'You know that mortgage on the house,' he said quickly. 'I got it all
arranged at once. Dain was to have sent the deed in last Tuesday night
for you to sign, but he sent in a letter instead. That's why I had to
go over and see him. There was some confounded hitch at the last moment,
a flaw in the title----'
'A flaw in the title!' It was the phrase only that alarmed her.
'Oh! It's all _right_,' said Stanway, wondering angrily why women should
always, by the trick of seizing on trifles, destroy the true perspective
of a business affair. 'The title's all right, at least it will be put
right. But it means delay, and I can't wait. I must have money at once,
in three days. Can you understand that, my girl?'
By an effort she conquered the impulses to ask why, and why, and why;
and to suggest economy in the house. Something came to her mysteriously
out of her memory of her own father's affairs, a sudden inspiration; and
she said:
'Can't you deposit my deeds at the bank and get a temporary advance?'
She was very proud of this clever suggestion.
He shook his head: 'No, the bank won't.'
The fact was that the bank had long been pressing him to deposit
security for his over-draft.
'I tell you what might be done,' he said, brightening as her idea gave
birth to another one in his mind. 'Uncle Meshach might lend some money
on the deeds. You shall go down to-morrow morning and ask him, Nora.'
'Me!' She was scared at this result.
'Yes, you,' he insisted, full of eagerness. 'It's your house. Ask him to
let you have five hundred on the house for a short while. Tell him we
want it. You can get round him easily enough.'
'Jack, I can't do it, really.'
'Oh yes, you can,' he assured her. 'No one better. He likes you. He
doesn't like me--never did. Ask him for five hundred. No, ask him for a
thousand. May as well make it a thousand. It'll be all the same to him.
You go down in the morning, and do it for me.'
Stanway's animation became quite cheerful.
'But about the title--the flaw?' she feebly questioned.
'That won't frighten uncle,' said Stanway positively. 'He knows the
title is good enough. That's only a technical detail.'
'Very well,' she agreed, 'I'll do what I can, Jack.'
'That's good,' he said.
And even now, the resolve once made, she did not lose her sense of
tranquil optimism, her mild happiness, her widespreading benevolence.
The result of this talk with John aroused in her an innocent vanity,
for was it not indirectly due to herself that John had been able to see
a way out of his difficulties?
They soon afterwards dismissed the subject, put it with care away in a
corner; and John finished his supper.
'Is Mr. Twemlow still in the district?' she asked vivaciously.
'Yes,' said John, and there was a pause.
'You're doing some business together, aren't you, Jack?' she hazarded.
John hesitated. 'No,' he said, 'he only wanted to see me about old
Twemlow's estate--some details he was after.'
'I felt it,' she mused. 'I felt all the time it was that that was wrong.
And John is worrying over it! But he needn't--he needn't--and he doesn't
know!'
She exulted.
She could read plainly the duplicity in his face. She knew that he had
done some wicked thing, and that all his life was a maze of more or less
equivocal stratagems. But she was so used to the character of her
husband that this aspect of the situation scarcely impressed her. It was
her new active beneficent interference in John's affairs that seemed to
occupy her thoughts.
'I told you I wouldn't say anything about Ethel's affair,' said John
later, 'and I won't.' He was once more judicial and pompous. 'But, of
course, you will look after it. I shall leave it to you to deal with.
You'll have to be firm, you know.'
'Yes,' she said.
* * * * *
Not till after breakfast the next day did Leonora realise the utter
repugnance with which she shrank from the mission to Uncle Meshach. She
had declined to look the project fairly in the face, to examine her own
feelings concerning it. She had said to herself when she awoke in the
dark: 'It is nothing. It is a mere business matter. It isn't like
begging.' But the idea, the absurd indefensible idea, of its similarity
to begging was precisely what troubled her as the moment approached for
setting forth. She pondered, too, upon the intolerable fact that such a
request as she was about to prefer to Uncle Meshach was a tacit
admission that John, with all his ostentations, had at last come to the
end of the tether. She felt that she was a living part of John's
meretriciousness. She had the fancy that she should have dressed for the
occasion in rusty black. Was it not somehow shameful that she, a
suppliant for financial aid, should outrage the ugly modesty of the
little parlour in Church Street by the arrogant and expensive perfection
of her beautiful skirt and street attire?
Moreover, she would fail.
The morning was fine, and with infantile pusillanimity she began to hope
that Uncle Meshach would be taking his walks abroad. In order to give
him every chance of being out she delayed her departure, upon one
domestic excuse or another, for quite half an hour. 'How silly I am!'
she reflected. But she could not help it, and when she had started down
the hill towards Bursley she felt sick. She had a suspicion that her
feet might of their own accord turn into a by-road and lead her away
from Uncle Meshach's. 'I shall never get there!' she exclaimed. She
called at the fishmonger's in Oldcastle Street, and was delighted
because the shop was full of customers and she had to wait. At last she
was crossing St. Luke's Square and could distinguish Uncle Meshach's
doorway with its antique fanlight. She wished to stop, to turn back, to
run, but her traitorous feet were inexorable. They carried her an
unwilling victim to the house. Uncle Meshach, by some strange accident,
was standing at the window and saw her. 'Ah!' she thought, 'if he had
not been at the window, if he had not caught sight of me, I should have
walked past!' And that chance of escape seemed like a lost bliss.
Uncle Meshach himself opened the door.
'Come in, lass,' he said, looking her up and down through his glasses.
'You're the prettiest thing I've seen since I saw ye last. Your aunt's
out, with the servant too; and I'm left here same as a dog on the chain.
That's how they leave me.'
She was thankful that Aunt Hannah was out: that made the affair simpler.
'Well, uncle,' she said, 'I haven't seen you since you came back from
the Isle of Man, have I?'
Some inspiration lent her a courage which rose far beyond embarrassment.
She saw at once that the old man was enchanted to have her in the house
alone, and flattered by the apparatus of feminine elegance which she
always displayed for him at its fullest. These two had a sort of cult
for each other, a secret sympathy, none the less sincere because it
seldom found expression. His pale blue eyes, warmed by her presence,
said: 'I'm an old man, and I've seen the world, and I keep a few of my
ideas to myself. But you know that no one understands a pretty woman
better than I do. A glance is enough.' And in reply to this challenge
she gave the rein to her profoundest instincts. She played the simple
feminine to his masculine. She dared to be the eternal beauty who rules
men, and will ever rule them, they know not why.
'My lass,' he said in a tone that granted all requests in advance, after
they had talked a while, 'you're after something.'
His wrinkled features, ironic but benevolent, intimated that he knew she
wished to take an unfair advantage of the gifts which Nature had
bestowed on her, and that he did not object.
She allowed herself to smile mysteriously, provocatively at him.
'Yes,' she admitted frankly, 'I am.'
'Well?' He waited indulgently for the disclosure.
She paused a moment, smiling steadily at him. The contrast of his
wizened age made her feel deliciously girlish.
'It's about my house, at Hillport,' she began with assurance. 'I want
you----'
And she told him, with no more than a sufficiency of detail, what she
wanted. She did not try to conceal that the aim was to help John, that,
in crude fact, it was John who needed the money. But she emphasised
'_my_ house,' and '_I_ want you to lend _me_.' The thing was well done,
and she knew it was well done, and felt satisfied accordingly. As for
Meshach, he was decidedly caught unawares. He might, perhaps, have
suspected from the beginning that she was only an emissary of John's,
but the form and magnitude of her proposal were a violent surprise to
him. He hesitated. She could see clearly that he sought reasons by which
to justify himself in acquiescence.
'It's your affair?' he questioned meditatively.
'Quite my own,' she assured him.
'Let me see----'
'I shall get it!' she said to herself, and she was astounded at the
felicitous event of the enterprise. She could scarcely believe her good
luck, but she knew beyond any doubt that she was not mistaken in the
signs of Meshach's demeanour. She thought she might even venture to ask
him for an explanation of his warning letter about Arthur Twemlow.
At that moment Aunt Hannah and the middle-aged servant re-entered the
house, and the servant had to pass through the parlour to reach the
kitchen. The atmosphere which Meshach and Leonora had evolved in
solitude from their respective individualities was dissipated instantly.
The parlour became nothing but the parlour, with its glass partition,
its antimacassars, its Meshach by the hob, and its diminutive Hannah
uttering fatuous, affectionate exclamations of pleasure.
Leonora's heart was pierced by a sudden stab of doubt, as she waited for
the result.
'Sister,' said Meshach, 'what dost think? Here's your nephew been
speculating in stocks and shares till he can't hardly turn round----'
'Uncle!' Leonora exclaimed horrified, 'I never said such a thing!'
'Sh!' said Hannah in an awful whisper, as she shut the kitchen door.
'Till he can't hardly turn round,' Meshach continued; 'and now he wants
Leonora here to mortgage her house to get him out of his difficulties.
Haven't I always told you as John would find himself in a rare fix one
of these days?'
Few human beings could dominate another more completely than Meshach
dominated his sister. But here, for Leonora's undoing, was just a case
where, without knowing it, Hannah influenced her brother. He had a
reputation to keep up with Hannah, a great and terrible reputation, and
in several ways a loan by him through Leonora to John would have damaged
it. A few minutes later, and he would have been committed both to the
loan and to the demonstration of his own consistency in the humble eyes
of Hannah; but the old spinster had arrived too soon. The spell was
broken. Meshach perceived the danger of his position, and retired.
'Nay, nay!' Hannah protested. 'That's very wrong of John. Eh, this
speculation!'
'But, really, uncle,' Leonora said as convincingly as she could. 'It's
capital that John wants.'
She saw that all was lost.
'Capital!' Meshach sarcastically flouted the word, and he turned with a
dubious benevolence to Leonora. 'No, my lass, it isn't,' he said,
pausing. 'John'll get out of this mess as he's gotten out of many
another. Trust him. He's your husband, and he's in the family, and I'm
saying nothing against him. But trust him for that.'
'No,' Hannah inserted, 'John's always been a good nephew.... If it
wasn't----'
Meshach quelled her and proceeded: 'I'll none consent to John raising
money on your property. It's not right, lass. Happen this'll be a lesson
to him, if anything will be.'
'Five hundred would do,' Leonora murmured with mad foolishness.
Of what use to chronicle the dreadful shame which she endured before she
could leave the house, she who for a quarter of an hour had been a queen
there, and who left as the pitied wife of a wastrel nephew?
'You're not _short_, my dear?' Hannah asked at the end in an anxious
voice.
'Not he!' Uncle Meshach testily ejaculated, fastening the button of that
droll necktie of his.
'Oh dear no!' said Leonora, with such dignity as she could assume.
As she walked home she wondered what 'speculation' really was. She could
not have defined the word. She possessed but a vague idea of its
meaning. She had long apprehended, ignorantly and indifferently and
uneasily, that John was in the habit of tampering with dangerous things
called stocks and shares. But never before had the vital import of these
secret transactions been revealed to her. The dramatic swiftness of the
revelation stunned her, and yet it seemed after all that she only knew
now what she had always known.
When she reached home John was already in the hall, taking off his
overcoat, though the hour of one had not struck. Was this a coincidence,
or had he been unable to control his desire to learn what she had done?
In silence she smiled plaintively at him, shaking her head.
'What do you mean?' he asked harshly.
'I couldn't arrange it,' she said. 'Uncle Meshach refused.'
John gave a scarcely perceptible start. 'Oh! That!' he exclaimed.
'That's all right. I've fixed it up.'
'This morning?'
'Eh? Yes, this morning.'
During dinner he showed a certain careless amiability.
'You needn't go to the works any more to-day,' he said to Ethel.
To celebrate this unexpected half-holiday, Ethel and Millicent decided
that they would try to collect a scratch team for some hockey practice
in the meadow.
'And, mother, you must come,' said Millicent. 'You'll make one more
anyway.'
'Yes,' John agreed, 'it will do your mother good.'
'He will never know, and never guess, and never care, what I have been
through!' she thought.
Before leaving for the works John helped the girls to choose some
sticks.
When he reached his office, the first thing he did was to build up a
good fire. Next he looked into the safe. Then he rang the bell, and
Fred Ryley responded to the summons.
This family connection, whom he both hated and trusted, was a rather
thickset, very neatly dressed man of twenty-three, who had been mature,
serious, and responsible for eight years. His fair, grave face, with its
short thin beard, showed plainly his leading qualities of industry,
order, conscientiousness, and doggedness. It showed, too, his mild
benevolence. Ryley was never late, never neglectful, never wrong; he
never wasted an hour either of his own or his employer's time. And yet
his colleagues liked him, perhaps because he was unobtrusive and
good-natured. At the beginning of each year he laid down a programme for
himself, and he was incapable of swerving from it. Already he had
acquired a thorough knowledge of both the manufacturing and the business
sides of earthenware manufacture, and also he was one of the few men, at
that period, who had systematically studied the chemistry of potting. He
could not fail to 'get on,' and to win universal respect. His chances of
a truly striking success would have been greater had he possessed
imagination, humour, or any sort of personal distinction. In appearance,
he was common, insignificant; to be appreciated, he 'wanted knowing';
but he was extremely sensitive and proud, and he could resent an
affront like a Gascon. He had apparently no humour whatever. The sole
spark of romance in him had been fanned into a small steady flame by his
passion for Ethel. Ryley was a man who could only love once for all.
'Did you find that private ledger for me out of the old safe?' Stanway
demanded.
'Yes,' said Ryley, 'and I put it in your safe, at the front, and gave
you the key back this morning.'
'I don't see it there,' Stanway retorted.
'Shall I look?' Ryley suggested quietly, approaching the safe, of which
the key was in the lock.
'Never mind, now! Never mind, now!' Stanway stopped him. 'I don't want
to be bothered now. Later on in the afternoon, before Mr. Twemlow
comes.... Did you write and ask him to call at four thirty?'
'Yes,' said Ryley, departing without a sign on his face, the model
clerk.
'Fool!' whispered Stanway. It would have been impossible for Ryley to
breathe without irritating his employer, and the fact that his plebeian
cousin's son was probably the most reliable underling to be got in the
Five Towns did not in the slightest degree lessen Stanway's dislike of
him; it increased it.
Stanway had been perfectly aware that the little ledger was in his
safe, and as soon as Ryley had shut the door he jumped up, unlatched the
safe, removed the book, and after tearing it in two stuck first one half
and then the other into the midst of the fire.
'That ends it, anyhow!' he thought, when the leaves were consumed.
Then he selected some books of cheque counterfoils, a number of
prospectuses of companies, some share certificates (exasperating relic
of what rich dreams!), and a lot of letters. All these he burnt with
much neatness and care, putting more coal on the fire so as to hide
every trace of their destruction. Then he opened a drawer in the desk,
and took out a revolver which he unloaded and loaded again.
'I'm pretty cool,' he flattered himself.
He was the sort of flamboyant man who keeps a loaded revolver in
obedience to the theory that a loaded revolver is a necessary and proper
part of the true male's outfit, like a gold watch and chain, a gold
pencil case, a razor for every day in the week, and a cigar-holder with
a bit of good amber to it. He had owned that revolver for years, with no
thought of utilising the weapon. But in justice to him, it must be said
that when any of his contemporaries--Titus Price, for instance--had
made use of revolvers or ropes in a particular way, he had always
secretly justified and commended them.
He put the revolver in his hip-pocket, the correct location, and donned
his 'works' hat. He did not reflect. Memories of his past life did not
occur to him, nor visions of that which was to come. He did not feel
solemn. On the contrary he felt cross with everyone, and determined to
pay everyone out; in particular he was vexed, in a mean childish way,
with Uncle Meshach, and with himself for having fancied for a moment
that an appeal to Uncle Meshach could be successful. One other idea
struck him forcibly by reason of its strangeness: namely, that the works
was proceeding exactly as usual, raw material always coming in, finished
goods always going out, the various shops hot and murmurous with toil,
money tinkling in the petty cash-box, the very engine beneath his floor
beating its customary monotonous stroke; and his comfortable home was
proceeding exactly as usual, the man hissing about the stable yard, the
servants discreetly moving in the immaculate kitchens, Leonora elegant
with sovereigns in her purse, the girls chattering and restless; not a
single outward sign of disaster; and yet he was at the end, absolutely
at the end at last. There was going to be a magnificent and
unparalleled sensation in the town of Bursley ... He seemed for an
instant dimly to perceive ways, or incomplete portions of ways, by which
he might still escape ... Then with a brusque gesture he dismissed such
futile scheming and yielded anew to the impulse which had suddenly and
piquantly seized him, three hours before, when Leonora said: 'Uncle
Meshach won't,' and he replied, 'I've fixed it up.' His dilemma was too
complicated. No one, not even Dain, was aware of its intricacies; Dain
knew a lot, Leonora a little, and sundry other persons odd fragments.
But he himself could scarcely have drawn the outlines of the whole
sinister situation without much reference to books and correspondence.
No, he had finished. He was bored, and he was irritable. The impulse
hurried him on.
'In half an hour that ass Twemlow will be here,' he thought, looking at
the office dial over the mantelpiece.
And then he left his room, calling out to the clerks' room as he passed:
'Just going on to the bank. I shall be back in a minute or two.'
At the south-western corner of the works was a disused enamel-kiln which
had been built experimentally and had proved a failure. He walked
through the yard, crept with some difficulty into the kiln, and closed
the iron door. A pale silver light came down the open chimney. He had
decided as he crossed the yard that he should place the mouth of the
revolver between his eyes, so that he had nothing to do in the kiln but
to put it there and touch the trigger. The idea of this simple action
preoccupied him. 'Yes,' he reflected, taking the revolver from his
pocket, 'that is where I must put it, and then just touch the trigger.'
He thought neither of his family, nor of his sins, nor of the grand
fiasco, but solely of this physical action. Then, as he raised the
revolver, the fear troubled him that he had not burnt a particular
letter from a Jew in London, received on the previous day. 'Of course I
burnt it,' he assured himself. 'Did I, though?' He felt that a
mysterious volition over which he had no control would force him to
return to his office in order to make sure. He gave a weary curse at the
prospect of having to put back the revolver, leave the kiln, enter the
kiln again, and once more raise the revolver.
As he passed by the archway near the packing house the afternoon postman
appeared and gave him a letter. Without thinking he halted on the spot
and opened it. It was written in haste, and ran: 'My Dear Stanway,--I am
called away to London and _may_ have to sail for New York at once.
Sorry to have to break the appointment. We must leave that affair over.
In any case it could only be a mere matter of form. As I told you, I was
simply acting on behalf of my sister. My kindest regards to your wife
and your daughters. Believe me, yours very truly,--ARTHUR TWEMLOW.'
He read the letter a second time in his office, standing up against the
shut door. Then his eye wandered to the desk and he saw that an envelope
had been placed with mathematical exactitude in the middle of his
blotting-pad. 'Ryley!' he thought. This other letter was marked private,
and as the envelope said 'John Stanway, Esq.,' without an address, it
must have been brought by special messenger. It was from David Dain, and
stated that the difficulty as to the title of the house had been
settled, that the mortgage would be sent in for Mrs. Stanway to sign
that night, and that Stanway might safely draw against the money
to-morrow.
'My God!' he exclaimed, pushing his hat back from his brow. 'What a
chance!'
In five minutes he was drawing cheques, and simultaneously planning how
to get over the disappearance of the old private ledger in case Twemlow
should after all, at some future date, ask to see original documents.
'What a chance!' The thought ran round and round in his brain.
As he left the works by the canal side, he paused under Shawport Bridge
and furtively dropped the revolver into the water. 'That's done with!'
he murmured.
He saw now that his preparations for departure, which at the moment he
had deemed to be so well designed and so effective, were after all
ridiculous. No amount of combustion could have prevented the disclosure
at an inquest of the ignominious facts.
* * * * *
During tea he laughed loudly at Milly's descriptions of the hockey
match, which had been a great success. Leonora had kept goal with
distinction, and admitted that she rather enjoyed the game.
'So it is arranged?' said Leonora, with a hint of involuntary surprise,
when he handed her the mortgage to sign.
'Didn't I tell you so this morning?' he answered loftily. There is
always a despicable joy in resuscitating a lie which events have changed
into a truth.
He insisted on retiring early that night. In the bedroom he remarked:
'Your friend Twemlow's had to go to London to-day, and may return
straight from there to New York. I had a note from him. He sent you his
kindest regards and all that sort of thing.'
'Then we mayn't see him again?' she said, delicately fingering her hair
in front of the pier-glass.