HUSBAND AND WIFE
Morrice stayed in the next day waiting for the return of his wife from
her country visit. She was to arrive home in time for lunch. About
twelve o’clock Rosabelle came into his room; she had just returned from
her visit to Lane.
“Oh, uncle, there is a strange young man in the hall with a letter for
auntie. He says his instructions are to give it into her own hands. He
was told that she would be back before lunch-time, and he said he would
wait. He seems rather mysterious. Would you like to see him?”
Morrice nodded his head and strode into the hall, where he found
standing a sallow-faced young fellow, quite a youth, with a tall
footman mounting guard over him, as it were, on the look-out for
felonious attempts.
“What is it you’re wanting, my man?” he asked roughly. He did not, any
more than his servant, like the appearance of the fellow, who seemed a
furtive kind of creature with a shifty expression.
The furtive one explained hesitatingly in a strong cockney accent: “A
letter for Mrs. Morrice, sir. I was to be sure and give it into no
hands but her own.”
Something very suspicious about this, certainly. Morrice thought a
moment, pondering as to the best way to proceed with this rather
unprepossessing specimen of humanity. He had a common and unintelligent
kind of face, but he looked as if he possessed a fair share of low
cunning.
A week ago Morrice would have thought nothing of such an incident;
he would have told the man to come later when his wife would have
returned. But recent events had developed certain faculties and made
him anxious to probe everything to the bottom, to scent mystery in
every trifling act.
“Who sent you with the letter, and gave you such precise instructions,
my man?”
The answer came back: “Mrs. Macdonald, sir.”
Morrice’s brows contracted. He was as sure as he could be of anything
that the man was telling a lie.
“Mrs. Macdonald, eh? Where does she live?” was the next question.
This time the answer did not come as readily; there was a perceptible
hesitation. Morrice guessed the reason as rapidly as Lane himself would
have done. The sender of the letter had primed the messenger with a
false address. Out of loyalty to his employer, he had been cudgelling
his rather slow brains to invent one.
“Number 16 Belle-Vue Mansions, Hogarth Road, Putney,” he said, speaking
after that slight hesitation with a certain glibness that was likely to
carry conviction.
Morrice did not know of any woman of the name of Macdonald amongst
his wife’s acquaintances. Still, that might mean nothing; it might be
a begging letter which the writer had taken these unusual means of
getting to her.
“Let me have a look at the envelope,” demanded Morrice.
The shabby, furtive-looking young fellow began to appear a bit uneasy,
with the dictatorial master of the house regarding him with anything
but a favourable eye, the young girl standing in the background who
seemed no more friendly, and the tall footman standing before the door,
barring a sudden exit.
“Beg pardon, sir, but my orders was most precise to only give it into
the hands of the lady herself.”
Morrice saw that he must change his tactics. He took from his pocket a
couple of treasury-notes which made a pleasant crackle as he flourished
them before the youth’s face.
“You see these, don’t you? I take it you haven’t got too much money.
They are yours if you let me see the envelope, only the envelope. I
don’t want to take your letter,” he added with a cunning that was quite
a recent development of his character. “As soon as I’ve seen that
you can go out and come back in an hour when Mrs. Morrice will have
returned home.”
The youth fell into the trap. Slowly he produced from his pocket the
letter which he held gingerly between his finger and thumb for the
inspection of the superscription on the envelope. Quick as lightning,
Morrice snatched at it and put his hand behind his back, throwing at
him with his disengaged hand the treasury-notes he had promised.
“Now get out of this, my fine fellow, and never dare to come to this
house again with such an impudent message. Tell Mrs. Macdonald of
Putney, or whoever it may be that sent you, that Mr. Morrice insisted
on having that letter, and that it will be given to Mrs. Morrice on her
return.”
The furtive creature slunk away; after that drastic action he had
no more fight in him. Morrice remembered the waiting footman whose
impassive countenance did not betray any surprise at this rather
extraordinary scene over what seemed a trifle, and turned to his niece
with a smile that was decidedly forced.
“Never heard of such cheek in my life. Some impudent mendicant, I
expect. By gad, they are up to all sorts of dodges nowadays.”
He marched back into his own room, and Rosabelle went to hers to think
over what this action of her uncle’s meant. It was evident he attached
considerable significance to that letter which was only to be delivered
into Mrs. Morrice’s hands. What was he going to do with it? Well, it
did not much matter. He knew enough now, and in a very short time the
bolt would fall, according to what Lane had told her.
Morrice had made up his mind what to do with it. Never in his life
had he opened correspondence not intended for his perusal; never
again, he hoped, would he be forced to resort to such a mean action.
But everything was fair now; it was justifiable to meet cunning with
cunning, duplicity with corresponding duplicity.
He opened that letter with the sure instinct that it would be of help
to him, and he was not deceived. There was no address and no signature.
Evidently the handwriting was too well known to Mrs. Morrice to require
either. It was very brief; but even if he had not known what he already
did, it would have revealed to him a great portion of what he had
lately learned.
“A young man has been to see me, says he is not a professional
detective, and doesn’t look like one, but very keen. Wanted to get out
of me all about your early life. Of course, he got nothing. The worst
is he seems to know something about Archie, knows that I brought him
up. Be on your guard; I am afraid trouble is brewing.”
He put this damaging missive in his pocket along with the anonymous
letter, and presently went up to his wife’s room to await her return
to the home which, he had resolved, should no longer shelter a woman
who had deceived him so grossly. He guessed at once the writer of this
warning note—it could be none other than Alma Buckley, the friend of
her youth. The reference to her having brought up the man known as
Archie Brookes proved that beyond the possibility of doubt.
How long it seemed before the minutes passed and the door opened to
admit the familiar figure! Preoccupied with her own thoughts, Mrs.
Morrice hardly looked at her husband as she advanced to give him
the perfunctory kiss which is one of the courtesies of a placid and
unemotional married life.
But when he drew back with a gesture of something like repugnance
from the proffered caress, she noted for the first time the terrible
expression on his face, and was overcome with a deadly fear.
“What is the matter? Why are you looking like that?” she gasped in a
trembling voice.
Consumed inwardly with fury as Morrice was, he exercised great control
over himself. He knew that he would put himself at a disadvantage if
he stormed and raged; he must overwhelm this wretched woman with the
pitiless logic of the facts he had accumulated. He must act the part of
the pitiless judge rather than that of the impassioned advocate.
He advanced to the door and turned the key, then came back to her and
pointed to a chair. There was a cold and studied deliberation about his
movements that filled her guilty soul with a fearful terror.
“Sit there while I speak to you,” he said in a harsh and grating voice.
“You have much to account to me for. Read that.”
He drew the anonymous letter from his pocket and flung it in her lap.
Like one dazed, she drew it from the envelope with trembling fingers,
and very slowly, for her thoughts were in terrible confusion, mastered
its accusing contents. Then she looked up at him with a face from which
all the colour had fled, leaving it ghastly to look at.
“It is a lie,” she stammered in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
“It is the truth,” he thundered, “and you are as shameless in the hour
of your detection as you have been in your career of fraud and deceit.”
“Prove it,” she cried faintly, still feebly trying to oppose his
gathering anger.
“You have lived with me a good many years,” he said witheringly, “and
yet you know so little of me as to think I should speak like that if
I were not sure I was on firm ground. And yet perhaps you have some
excuse. I have been a blind fool so long that you were justified in
your hopes I should continue blind to the end. Well, that letter opened
my eyes. Your fortunate absence gave me facilities that it might have
been difficult to create. I have taken several of the most valuable
articles in your collection and had them examined. Need I tell you the
result? Your guilty face shows plainly enough that you need no telling.”
And then her faint efforts at bravado broke down.
“Forgive me,” she moaned. “I yielded in a moment of temptation. Many
women have done the same; they were my own property after all,” she
added with a feeble effort at self-justification.
That answer only provoked him the more. “A moment of temptation,” he
repeated with scornful emphasis. “Rather many moments of temptation.
This has been going on for years; these things were realized piece by
piece. And now tell me—for I will have the truth out of you before you
leave this room—where have these thousands gone, what have you got to
show for them?”
It was a long time before she could steady her trembling lips to speak,
and when she did the words were so low that he could only just catch
them.
“Nothing. I have been a terribly extravagant woman. I have lost
large sums of money at cards. You never guessed that I was a secret
gambler—there is not a year in which I have not overstepped my
allowance, generous as it was. I was afraid to come to you.”
He silenced her with a scornful wave of the hand. “Lies, lies, every
word you have uttered! You have done none of these things you pretend;
it is an excuse you have invented in your desperation.”
He drew himself up to his full height and pointed a menacing finger
at the stricken woman. “Will you tell me where these thousands have
gone? No, you are silent. Well then, I will tell _you_—not in gambling
debts, not in unnecessary personal luxuries—no, if it were so I would
be readier to forgive. They have gone to support the extravagance of
that wretched idler and spendthrift who is known by the name of Archie
Brookes. Do you dare to deny it?”
She recognized that he knew too much, that further prevarication was
useless. “I do not deny it,” she answered in a moaning voice.
And after a little pause he proceeded with his denunciation.
“It is as well that you do not, seeing I know everything. Well, bad
as that is, there is worse behind. I have learned more; I know that
you, in conjunction with that smooth scoundrel Clayton-Brookes, have
practised upon me, upon all your friends, a gross and impudent fraud in
passing off this young profligate as your nephew.”
She made a last attempt to defend her crumbling position. “Who dares to
say that?” But her ashen lips, her trembling voice proved her guilt.
“You deceived me when I married you with a fictitious account of your
family—the only truth in your many statements being that your father
was a clever artist of dissolute habits. I know now that you were an
only child and that your mother died when she gave you birth; it is
therefore impossible you can have a nephew. The same applies to your
confederate. He had no sisters, and his two brothers died bachelors. I
would demand from you the motives of this fraud, but I know you will
refuse to confess them. Well, I can wait. The people who have unmasked
you so far will unmask you still farther, and in time I shall know all
in spite of your obstinate silence.”
She said nothing for a long time. When she spoke it was in a voice of
resigned despair. “What do you intend to do?”
In a cold, hard voice he delivered his inflexible sentence.
“From this day, from this hour, we are absolute strangers, and this
roof can no longer shelter us both. I am not going to turn you
out penniless—for your own small income is insufficient even for
necessities—I will pay the penalty of my folly in having married you.
Through my solicitors I will pay you an income sufficient to maintain
you in decent comfort, but not enough for extravagance or for the
maintenance of unscrupulous pensioners.”
She rose from her chair, half-tearful, half-defiant, but she did not
attempt to dispute the justice of the sentence pronounced upon her.
“When do you wish me to go?”
He handed her two envelopes, one containing the unsigned letter which
he had opened, the other a bundle of notes.
“As soon as possible. Eat your last meal in this house if you wish.
Here is something for immediate necessities; my solicitors will see to
the rest. Take what you want for to-day and to-night; the rest of your
property I will send later on to any address you give me.”
“And what is to be said to the world?” she interrupted in a broken
voice.
“Ah, I had forgotten that, but it is already cut and dried in my mind.
We will both tell the same tale; it will make curiosity silent if
it does not altogether satisfy it. For years we have led an unhappy
life through incompatibility of ideas and temperament; it has at last
culminated in this. There is one other thing before we part for ever.
That other letter which you will read is one addressed to you which I
opened. It is from the friend of your youth, Alma Buckley, who brought
up this impostor, and confirms the knowledge which I had already gained
from another source.”
At those terrible words she seemed on the point of collapsing, but
recovered herself with a strong effort. “I will go as soon as possible.
You must hate the sight of me, I am sure of that.”
He did not contradict her statement. He was as pitiless as he had once
been considerate and generous.
“When I believed that Richard Croxton had proved ungrateful and
betrayed the trust I reposed in him, I told you what I then said to
him. I repeat those words to you. I shall return here in about a couple
of hours. When I re-enter this house, let me find it empty of your
presence.”
He turned on his heel, unlocked the door and passed out, leaving the
wretched woman alone to confront the ruin of her life, to face the
punishment of her treachery.