CONCERNS A MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
By many readers of the present narrative, of course, the name of
Russell Langford must still be regarded with a large amount of respect
and gratitude. For some years, it is true, he was, like thousands of
other men in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane, nothing better than
a briefless and a hungry barrister, but, unlike most of his rivals, he
got his chance suddenly one day in a theatrical breach of promise case
in which a certain noble lord had been more literary than discreet,
and from that time work was showered upon him from all directions--and
he now boasted of one of the biggest common-law practices in London.
Unkind critics, of course, said that this success was in no sense due
to his merits. One set of them, the really weak and helpless and
hopeless, contended that he had been the victim of luck, and owed
everything he had to nothing lower than the stars which seemed to
fight in their courses for him. The other set, the die-hards of legal
life they might be called, contended that just before the Gaiety
action came to a hearing he had inherited a fortune which had been
spent largely amongst solicitors in need of pecuniary assistance in
the most crafty yet effective fashion with the result that these
debtors had been compelled to send all their business to him, and with
the success seen.
At all events, it is tolerably clear that Russell Langford was in no
sense a real popular favourite. His face was against him in that
respect, for he had small beady black eyes that might, and did, often
look cunning enough but never shone with any frankness or enthusiasm.
His dark hair had turned to grey early in his career, but his bearing
and words never suggested the man of character, only a certain set
legal kind of cleverness that might have been picked up in the Hall of
the Middle Temple as he dined with other and more resourceful
companions.
In time his wife, who had been the daughter of the rector of a small
village in Berkshire, died, and left him with a girl Vera, who now
presided over the magnificent flat he had taken in Emperor’s Gate. At
first sight Vera Langford suggested the wild vengeful kind of Jewish
beauty, for her movements were quick and tempestuous, and her brown
eyes and raven tresses shone with a fire that only gathered a glow
from contrast with the slow carefully-calculated looks of her father.
In age she was just twenty-three, whereas her cousin, Winifred
Pontifex, who had come to reside with her father when Colonel Pontifex
of the Guards died and left his girl whom he had always loved most
devotedly, most unexpectedly unprovided for, was only just twenty-one.
Winifred, however, was a tall, stately-looking girl with golden hair
and eyes of the most wonderful blue, sometimes soft and elusive like
the most delicate forget-me-nots, at other times large and lustrous
like the blue sky above them, and often as unfathomable.
Arthur Hudson who was dark, of middle height, with a long moustache,
and, in many ways, a strong contrast to her in looks, had met her
first of all at the Hunt Ball in Stamford, and had promptly fallen in
love with her. Happily, in this instance, the course of true affection
ran quite smoothly; on both sides the match was considered very
suitable; and a formal engagement had been entered on, with the result
that the date fixed for the marriage was now only three months
distant--in the week after Easter.
Altogether it was a charming picture which Winifred presented that
night as Arthur and Paul crossed the drawing-room to greet her, clad
as she was in a soft girlish gown of dove-grey with black ribbon, and
bending playfully over a King Charles spaniel, the pet of the
household. Her voice, too, was low and soft, and yet so clear that it
seemed instinct with sincerity, purity and truth.
Accustomed as he was to these meetings, even Paul turned away his head
as he saw the fervent hand clasp of the two lovers, and the great
affection that shone so proudly from the eyes of both. Something in
his own heart seemed to stand still just then; almost a feeling of awe
came upon him; and then a knowledge of his own desolation so keen, so
poignant that, as Winifred turned to him, his boyish features became
suddenly quite haggard and drawn.
Another moment, and he was again the smooth-spoken, careless, cynical
man of the world, rallying Russell Langford about a case in which he
had that day vainly tried to get £1,000 damages against a newspaper
for a man who admitted he had done “a bit of dog stealing,” but didn’t
see “any call” for anybody to mention it in public!
Vera came in soon afterwards, and a move was made to the dining-room,
but not until the three men sat together over their wine did Arthur
mention his strange visitor, and then he did it like this:
“By the way, Langford,” he said raising his glass and slowly sipping
his port, “I had a curious client to-day, a man who has searched all
London over for a particularly shaped room, and has got one at last in
Queen Victoria Street of all places in the world, practically a garret
for which he will pay nearly £5 a week rent. Says he knows you too,
and is coming to see you!”
“Indeed,” observed Langford also lifting his glass; “is it on
business, for which a meeting with a madman like that will be rather
novel, or on friendship?”
“Oh, on friendship. True to tell, he rather boasted of his intimacy
with you.”
“Well, he needn’t. I have no intimates, not one,” retorted the
barrister rather pompously. “A man in my position, the repository of a
thousand secrets affecting the good names of a thousand persons,
cannot afford the luxury of an intimate.”
“Well, at all events, Ventris Blake thinks he’s on those terms with
you. Indeed, he is coming to see you!”
To Arthur and Paul’s intense astonishment, the wine-glass fell from
the lawyer’s hand with a crash, and he rose from the table, his face
deathly white.
“That company promoter Ventris Blake coming to see me as a friend,” he
muttered. “Oh! nonsense! nonsense!”
Then catching the look of surprise on his guests’ faces, he tried to
recover himself. “I mean,” he added lamely, “I don’t want him to come.
It--it must be a mistake. We knew each other once--yes, but we agreed
that we would never meet again. We have killed the past. Friendship
now is impossible!” And, as though to assure himself of the truth of
his own words, he lifted the brandy-decanter, poured out a stiff dose
and, without waiting to add any water, gulped the fiery draught down.
“Well, perhaps, he spoke in jest,” said Arthur flushing, for all this
mystery had begun to weigh rather heavily upon him. “He may have done
it to get my good opinion. I knew he was very anxious that I should do
as he wanted.”
“Then don’t,” said Langford sharply. “I can tell you this from five
years’ hard and bitter and cruel experience of this man, that nobody
ever did him a favour who did not regret it most bitterly. Everything
he touches is fortunate for himself; for all others it spells ruin,
stark, staring ruin.”
“It certainly did for his wife,” cut in Paul quietly, “for we had a
telegram at _The Moon_ offices this afternoon to say that she had been
murdered on an open road midway between Filey and Scarborough.”
Russell Langford’s face now was a study in horror. He tried to
speak--but the shock had been too much. He could not articulate.
Luckily just then a tap on the door made itself heard, and a servant
entered, and with a great effort he recovered the semblance of his
composure.
“A gentleman, sir, to see you,” the maid announced, “most important.
He apologises, but says the affair is so urgent he can’t wait,” and
she handed her master a card on which Arthur and Paul saw at a glance
was inscribed the hated name of Ventris Blake.
“Tell him I won’t see him,” gasped the lawyer, livid with rage and
astonishment. “Tell him we have killed the past, friendship is
impossible,” and he pushed out his hands helplessly--as though he
would save himself from a meeting he much dreaded by the mere
repetition of that mystic formula.
“Very good, sir,” said the maid, and she turned to leave, but just
then the door was thrust open and Ventris Blake himself marched in.
“I heard what you said, Langford,” he said coldly, “but you know well
enough it’s all no use. A trifle like that won’t stop me. I have need
of you, and you have got to answer me fairly and help me frankly.
“No doubt,” he went on calmly, “these gentlemen here have told you
that my wife has been found murdered. It is quite true. The police
have been to me already, and have made of me all manner of impertinent
enquiries, not as to a possible criminal but as to what I do, and have
done, so much so, in fact, that I took one of them by the scruff of
the neck, and shot him through the window into the area.
“Now you’ve got to stand up for me,” Blake concluded. “The fact is, I
want you to go down with me to-night by the late train to York to
attend the inquest at Scarborough to-morrow to represent me and other
relatives of the deceased, and to show these official ruffians that I
am a citizen of a great Republic and they must treat me with respect.”
“Oh that’s absurd. It’s a solicitor’s work. The entire legal
profession would laugh at me,” spluttered Langford as he motioned the
servant to leave. “It’s--it’s like taking a Nasmyth hammer to crack a
walnut. I really can’t do it.”
“Well, you must,” persisted Blake, fixing two cold dark scrutinising
eyes on his. “I have decided you must--and you must!”
“That’s hardly the way to talk to a gentleman of the legal eminence of
Mr. Langford, is it?” chivalrously struck in Arthur Hudson, who saw
that for some utterly inexplicable reason his betrothed’s uncle was
now absolutely frightened and nerveless. “Believe me, barristers are
not to be approached even by financial magnates like yourself in the
rough and ready fashion of the miners’ camp.”
“Indeed!” said Ventris Blake, with an open sneer. “However the
business is between Mr. Langford and myself, and it calls for no
outside interference.”
“Yes, yes, it does,” eagerly interposed the lawyer. “Hudson explain to
him that his demand is preposterous. Shew him out.” And he attempted
to slip past the financier, but the man turned swiftly and barred his
way to the door.
“No, no, Russell Langford,” he said in those full, deep, decisive
tones of his. “You musn’t go until I have finished. No doubt this
young man Hudson doesn’t want you to hear my story, but you shall: you
must, for it affects him quite as much as it does myself!”
“What the deuce do you mean, Blake?” put in Paul, who had often
interviewed the magnate for _The Moon_, and knew him exceedingly well.
“Has your trouble turned your head? Have you gone mad? Why you know
you have never seen Hudson in your life prior to this afternoon.”
“I admit _I_ haven’t seen him before this day,” returned Ventris Blake
meaningly, “but somebody else has--my wife!”
“Your wife,” stammered Arthur, crushing down the horror that had again
risen unbidden in his heart. “Never! Never, I swear!”
“Then look at that, Russell Langford,” said the millionaire, quietly
placing a hand in an inner pocket and producing a carefully-sealed
document which Renishaw took and unfolded and then passed to the
lawyer. “Read it, and let me explain to you how I found it. At the
request of the police and with their assistance I have just searched
my wife’s private desks and boxes, including her jewel case. In a
secret drawer of the last I have discovered that,” and he pointed
significantly to the paper.
“What is it?” muttered Hudson hoarsely. “Tell me quickly--how can it
concern me, a stranger.”
“I am afraid it does though,” said Paul Renishaw gently, yet he too
was sorely stricken, “for it is a copy of a certificate of a marriage
between you, Arthur Hudson, house and estate agent of Cheapside and of
7a Kensington Gore, where you live, and Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne
of Meissonier Studios, Peterborough, artist, which was celebrated at
the Registry Office in Peterborough five years ago!”
“But who was this Aimée Lucille Fausta Burgoyne?” gasped Langford,
with a great effort recovering himself.
“That lady was the one who has just been killed,” replied Ventris
Blake. “I thought she was my wife but clearly she was the wife of the
man in front of me, your bosom friend, Arthur Hudson.”
“The whole business is an abominable lie,” Hudson cried, throwing back
his shoulders and boldly facing his persecutor. “I swear by all that I
hold most sacred that I have never spoken to, never even seen, this
Aimée Blake or Burgoyne. Some cruel fiend must have personated me.”
“Prove it,” said Ventris Blake coldly, but his tones exhibited all the
scorn and incredulity of a man who had no doubt of his guiltiness.
“Yes, prove it,” repeated Russell Langford, like all weak men turning
on the friend who had made a fruitless effort to save him to divert
all attack from himself. “Remember I owe a duty to society and to my
own household, and until you have clearly established your innocence
it will be impossible for you to have further communication with my
niece Winifred Pontifex.”
Winifred Pontifex! The mere sound of that dearly-loved name brought
back to Arthur’s mind all the charm and the magic of the sweet
intercourse he had held with her since that fateful ball at Stamford,
and with a great groan he could not stifle, he suddenly realised how
terrible a barrier would be raised between them now Ventris Blake had
produced this document and dragged him right into the centre of a most
squalid murder mystery.
For a minute even doubts of Winifred--or her faith in him in this
terrible hour of perplexity and shame and darkness, of her love, aye,
even of her constancy under this cloud of misunderstanding and
suspicion--caught his heart in a grip like iron, and made his lips
white and his cheeks tremble.
“Oh Langford,” he wailed, in a voice broken in emotion, “you cannot
mean that! Think for an instant. It suggests I am a villain!”
“And if he does,” quietly cut in Paul Renishaw who had not hitherto
spoken, “I can inform him that, although you and I, dear old chap,
will soon make him eat his words, he is still a mean cur!”
“Enough of this,” retorted Langford hotly. “I am not to be
brow-beaten. I have said what I have said, and I am not the man to
depart from it.”
“No, you’re not,” sneered Paul, moving towards the door, “unless
Ventris Blake wants it. Still, I tell you flatly Arthur Hudson is not
going under whatever the pair of you may contrive to fix upon him at
the inquest on that poor creature at Scarborough. He has got a
straight life and a clear conscience on his side, and it will be odd
to me if those don’t win, even in a wretched commercial Yankee driven
country like this!
“Come Arthur,” he went on more gently, stretching out a hand and
drawing his old friend towards him. “_I_ believe in you. _I_ know that
all this business is some put-up job on somebody’s part which only
needs time and patience to unravel. At first, I admit, even my stout
and clear faith in you was shaken--but a moment’s reflection told me
that the charge was absurd.”
“Even though I know the two witnesses to the ceremony, and can put my
hands on them any day I like,” taunted Ventris Blake.
“Aye, even though you do know the two witnesses,” snapped Paul, “for
that is just the reason why I should not believe a thing they
uttered.”
Without a word, however, Arthur turned and marched out of the
drawing-room. The shock of this awful accusation seemed to have left
him cold and numb, so that he did not perceive how Paul slipped into
the drawing-room and beckoned Winifred out, and finally got the poor
girl (who was still unconscious of the dreadful blow that was to be
dealt at her happiness) to put on a shawl and to follow him into the
square in front of the flats. Then however he brought the two of them
face to face, and with something uncommonly like a muttered prayer for
their good understanding and happiness, he slipped behind some bushes
and was instantly lost to sight.
Then, and only then--did Arthur rally under the weight of the
accusation that had been aimed against his reputation so swiftly and
so mysteriously, and, pressing Winifred’s arm in his, he told her
bravely and simply of this foul treacherous thing that had risen up
out of the unknown to ruin him. When, however, he first mentioned
Ventris Blake’s name, he felt Winifred start and tremble and then she
tried to speak, then checked herself, obviously to wait until he had
drawn to an end.
Marvelling, but now quite self-contained, he went on with the terrible
disclosures of the millionaire, and he did not stop once until he had
faithfully repeated to her all that had passed between them up to the
point of his following Paul out of the room.
Still who can measure the capacity of a woman’s heart for suffering,
and for sympathy, and for a brave unswerving loyalty that not even a
charge that strikes at the root of their own honour can pierce or
soften? Surely it is a special gift of the Divine to men, to help them
bear the burden and the anguish of the day’s task, and fail not under
their own load! Certainly even Arthur, who knew Winifred so well,
expected that his tale would momentarily shake her faith in him, and
that, for some good and sweet and gracious reason, it might be
necessary to submit himself for a time to some gentle
cross-examination on her part as to the past, and the possibilities of
error.
Only, as it was, nothing of the sort happened. In some extraordinary,
even miraculous fashion, Winifred seemed to divine the truth of his
position, and to appreciate points that he had only dimly indicated in
his hot and eager and impetuous account of the terrible interview
which he had just had with the barrister and the financier.
“Indeed, darling,” said she slowly and simply. “I quite understand
that this marriage never took place, that you have never met this poor
creature, Aimée Burgoyne, and that it is all some hideous error which
will have to be disentangled in God’s own good time. Truth to tell,
that is not giving me any real concern in the matter, except that my
whole heart goes in sympathy to you for what you have suffered this
night, and may still have to suffer before you stand out before the
world as a most sorely-tried and wronged man. No, my mind runs in
another direction. Why has this plot been put upon you at all? I have
thought and thought whilst you have spoken, and it has just occurred
to me that perhaps I can supply the reason!”
“I would to heaven that you could, dearest,” replied Arthur earnestly,
but his voice shewed no real belief in her words for, bachelor like,
he had yet to learn the wonderful spaces to be bridged by a woman’s
intuition.
“Arthur,” proceeded Winifred slowly, “did I ever tell you that I too
have met this man Ventris Blake?”
“By Jove, you didn’t,” he cried, instantly all eagerness.
“Well, I did--that time I saw you first at the Hunt Ball at Stamford
you must know that a lot of private dances were given during that
fortnight, and at one of them, given by Lady Desborough at The Towers,
Ventris Blake was present, and paid me so much odious attention that I
went to my uncle, Russell Langford, who was present, and complained of
being ill and so was promptly driven home.”
“But the brute was married!” exclaimed Arthur, clenching his hands
tightly to keep down his rage and excitement. “He had no right to pay
you any attention.”
“I know, dearest,” said Winifred sadly. “Unfortunately, men of the
stamp of Ventris Blake don’t trouble about sacred obligations like
those. They are rich, and they fancy with wealth they can do anything
they like. There are too many men of that stamp in the ball rooms of
England.
“As it turned out though,” she proceeded swiftly, “he was not content
with the snubbing I gave him during the dance. He ventured to call at
the Stamford Hotel where we were staying, and asked to see me on the
plea that he was an old friend of my father, and then, when I refused,
he actually sent me a lot of flowers which I took to my uncle who
returned them at once!”
“I should think so! I wonder he didn’t give him a horse-whipping in
the bargain,” hotly ejaculated Arthur. Then all at once he remembered
Russell Langford’s own craven fear of this adventurer, and bit his
lip.
“He took more stringent measures than those even,” added poor
Winifred, who little knew the extent of the intrigue into which both
of them had fallen. “He gave orders for us all to pack at once, and so
we came straight away to Emperor’s Gate. My cousin Vera, I remember,
was horribly annoyed at this, and that reminds me of another thing I
ought to confide to you. Do you know that this man Ventris Blake and
Vera are very intimate friends?”
“Intimate friends!” repeated Arthur incredulously. “Are you quite
certain?”
“Quite,” persisted Winifred with a grave inclination of the head.
“They meet very often at Lady Desborough’s town house in Prince’s
Gate, and once when Vera wanted to make quite a lot of money on the
Stock Exchange he helped her to do so, for she shewed me the cheque;
it was for £3,500.”
“But he has not troubled you again?”
“Not personally,” said Winifred reluctantly, “but indirectly. You see
with Vera such a staunch champion of his, I am bound to hear a lot
about him, and indeed she has done her best to make me go round to
Lady Desborough’s to meet him again on the plea that he is ‘such fun,’
but I have always stoutly refused to encounter him. Then when he sent
me a diamond bracelet worth quite a lot of money with a card ‘From an
old friend of Colonel Pontifex,’ I wrote him the sharpest letter I
could pen, and told him that you as my future husband could provide me
with all or any jewellery I might need. But Vera has been very nasty
since, and,” with something uncommonly like a sob, “I have--have
looked forward eagerly to the time when I was no longer dependent on
her and could leave Emperor’s Gate in peace!”
“Please God the time won’t be long now,” returned Arthur gravely,
bending over her hand and pressing it, for this news of Ventris
Blake’s villainy had steadied him like nothing else, and now he saw
stretched out before him a conflict in which no quarter of any kind
could be given. “For the present I fear I must obey your uncle’s
command and hold no communication with you until my good name is quite
clear, for if I do, injury may be inflicted on you.
“None the less, dear heart,” he added quickly, “it cannot be long
before this scoundrel will be unmasked. Let us both be brave and
patient, and I am certain all will come right in the end. Now, run in
before your absence is discovered. Good-bye! Good-bye!”
And so with a quick embrace they parted--Winifred to hide her grief in
the seclusion of her bedroom, Arthur to find Paul, and to drive
rapidly homeward to concert plans to meet the scheme that now, alas!
threatened to ruin very quickly and completely the happiness and good
name of both lovers.