She did not know what expression it was of hers that caused him to say:
"I don't wonder you look so shocked. I was shocked. Women don't often do
that sort of thing...." She wanted to cry out that that sort of thing
didn't often happen to women, but he was going on. He had risen and was
walking slowly up and down before the smoldering fire, and in his
incisive, deliberate, well-bred voice he was excoriating the woman who
had been so cowardly as to desert a dying man. "Even if she hadn't
seriously cared, or if, for that matter, she hadn't cared at all, it
would seem that mere common decency.... It puts, frankly, a very
unpleasant light on the whole affair.... Ayling was a gentleman,
and--you will forgive me for saying so, I'm sure--just the decent sort
to be imposed upon, to allow himself to be led into the most unfortunate
affair."
She wanted to stop him, to cry out, to protest. But his words were like
physical blows which stunned her and made her too weak to speak. She
felt that if he went on much longer she would lose consciousness
altogether. Even now she heard only fragments of words.
Suddenly she heard the word "publicity." He had stopped before her and
was looking down at her.
"I think, Mrs. Lonsdale, that the thing we both wish--that is, we at the
club, and you, as his friend--is to do what we can to save any
unnecessary scandal in connection with poor Ayling's death. It is the
least we can do for him."
"Yes!" She grasped frantically at the straw. "Yes, by all means that!"
"You would be willing to help?"
"Yes, anything! But what is there I can do?"
He was maddeningly deliberate. "You are the only person, it appears--at
least the only person available--who has been aware of the condition of
Mr. Ayling's heart. You can say, can you not, with certainty, that he
did suffer from a serious affection of the heart?"
"He came home from India on account of it."
"Very well, then. It was also the verdict of the doctor who was called.
I think together we may be able to obviate the necessity of a too public
investigation--at any rate, we shall see. It must be done, of course,
before the official investigation begins. Therefore, if you will come
down with me this afternoon, in my car--"
"Come with you? Where?"
"To the inn, at Homebury," he said.
She was trapped ... trapped.... The realization of it sprang upon her,
but too late, for already she cried out, "Oh, I couldn't--I couldn't do
that!"
Mr. Burke was looking down at her. He loomed above her like the figure
of fate.... She was trapped.... There was no way out, and suddenly she
realized that she had risen and said: "Forgive me! To be sure I will
go."
"I understand," said Mr. Burke, "how one shrinks from that sort of
thing."
She did not know what she was going to do. She only knew that for this
step, at least, she could no longer resist. Again she had the sensation
of speaking and moving automatically, of decisions making themselves
without the effort of her will.
She asked how soon he wished to go, and he said, consulting his watch,
that they ought to start at once; his car was waiting in the street,
since he had planned to go on directly from her house. She excused
herself, and went to her room. She did not change her dress, but put on
a long, warm coat, her hat, her veil, her gloves, and made sure of her
key in her purse. Then she came out and said she was ready to go. He
complimented her, with a smile, on the short time it had taken her, and
she wondered if he had really seen her hesitation of a few moments
before. They went down the stairs together. At the curb a chauffeur
stood beside a motor, into which, with the utmost consideration for her
comfort, Mr. Burke handed her. Then he gave his instructions to the
chauffeur, and followed her in.
And there began for Bessie Lonsdale that fantastic ride in which she
felt herself being carried forward, as if on the effortless wings of
fate itself, to the very scene from which she had fled.
She had no idea, no dramatization in her mind, of what awaited her or of
what she intended to do. Her imagination refused to focus upon it; and,
strangely, she seemed almost to be resting, leaning back against the
tufted cushions, resting against the time when she should be called upon
for her strength. For she only knew that when the time came to act she
would act.
It was curious how she did not think of Peggy. She was like a lover who
has been set a herculean task to accomplish before he may even think of
his beloved.
Beside her, Mr. Burke seemed to understand that she did not wish to
talk. Perhaps he was thinking of other things; after all, he had not
been Richard Ayling's friend; it was only a human duty he performed.
Long stretches went by in which she saw nothing on either side, and
other stretches in which everything--houses, trees, objects of all
kinds--were exceedingly clear cut and magnified....
"I'm afraid," said Mr. Burke's voice, "that we're running into a storm."
Bessie Lonsdale looked up, and saw that those fleecy, light-gray clouds
which she had seen in the sky early that morning as she stood waiting
for Ayling in the garden of the inn, and which had been gathering all
day, hung now black and menacing just above her head.
It descended upon them suddenly; torrents ran in the road. The wind
veered, and sent great gusts of rain into the car. The chauffeur turned
and asked if he should stop and put the curtains up. Mr. Burke said no,
to go on, they might run through it, and it was too violent to last.
Meantime he worked with the curtains himself, and she helped. But it was
no use; they were getting drenched, and the wind whipped the curtains
out of their hands. Mr. Burke leaned forward and called to the chauffeur
to ask if there was any place near where they might stop.
"There's an inn about half a mile farther on. Shall I make it?"
"By all means."
They ran presently into the strips of light that shed outward from the
lighted windows of the inn. A half-dozen motors already were lined up
outside. They got out and together ran for the door.
Inside, the small public room was almost filled. People sat at the
tables, ordering things to eat and drink, and making the best of it.
They chose a small corner table, a little apart from the rest. The
landlord bustled up and took their coats to dry before the kitchen fire.
A very gay, very dripping party of six came in, assembled with much
laughter the last two tables remaining unoccupied, and settled next to
them, so that they were no longer in a secluded spot.
In a few moments there came in, almost blown through the door by a
violent gust of wind and rain, a short, stout, ruddy person, who, when
the landlord had relieved him of his hat and coat, stood looking about
for a vacant seat. The landlord came toward the table where sat Mrs.
Lonsdale and Mr. Burke.
"Sorry, sir," he said; "it's the only place left."
"May I?" asked the stranger, and at Mrs. Lonsdale's nod and smile, and
Mr. Burke's assent, he drew out the chair and sat down. The two men
spoke naturally of the suddenness of the storm, of the good fortune of
finding a refuge so near.
Bessie Lonsdale was glad of some one else, glad when she heard the
stranger and Mr. Burke fall into the easy passing conversation of men.
It would relieve her of the necessity to talk. It would give her time to
think; for it seemed, dimly, that respite had been offered her. Into her
thoughts broke the voice of Mr. Burke addressing her:
"How very singular, Mrs. Lonsdale! This gentleman is Mr Ford, the
coroner, also on his way to Homebury!"
The stranger was on his feet, bowing and acknowledging the introduction
of Mr. Burke. Bessie Lonsdale had the sensation of waters closing over
her, yet she, too, was bowing and acknowledging the introduction of Mr.
Burke. She had a vivid impression of light shining downward upon the
red-gray hair of Mr. Ford, as he sat down again; and of Mr. Burke saying
something about "the case," and about Mrs. Lonsdale being an old friend
of the dead man; about her having been good enough to volunteer to shed
whatever light she might have upon the case, and of their meeting being
the "most fortunate coincidence."
Mr. Ford signified that he, too, looked upon it in that way. They would
go on to Homebury together, he said, when the storm had cleared.
"I suppose," he asked, leaning forward a little, confidentially, "that
Mrs. Lonsdale knows of the--peculiar element----"
"The woman--yes," said Mr. Burke. And Bessie Lonsdale inclined her head
and said, "I know."
"And do you know who she was?"
She had only to make a negative sign, for Mr. Burke, with nice
consideration, anticipated her reply:
"Unfortunately, Mr. Ford, no one appears to have the least idea who she
might be. Mrs. Lonsdale, however, has been able to clear up a point
which may, I fancy, make the identity of the woman less important than
it might otherwise appear to be. Mrs. Lonsdale has known for some time
of the serious condition of Mr. Ayling's heart. It was because of it,
she tells me, that Mr. Ayling came home from India. Mrs. Lonsdale's
testimony, together with the statement of the physician who was called,
would seem to leave little doubt that it was merely a case of heart."
Mr. Ford was nodding his head. "So it would," he said. "Yes, so it
would." He stopped nodding, and sat there an instant, as if he were
thinking of something else. "If that's the case," he broke out, "what a
rotter, by Jove! that woman was!"
"Rotter, I think," said Mr. Burke, "was precisely the word _I_ used."
And Bessie Lonsdale listened for the second time that day while two
voices, now, instead of one, were lifted in excoriation of some woman
who seemed to grow, as they talked, only a shade less real than herself.
She had again the sensation of the words beating upon her like blows
which she was powerless to resist. She lost, as one does in physical
pain, all sense of time....
"However," Mr. Ford brought down his hand with a kind of judicial
finality, "if Mrs. Lonsdale will come on down with us now--the storm
seems to have slackened--we'll see what can be done." He turned in his
chair as if he were preparing to rise.
At the movement Bessie Lonsdale seemed to grow rigid in her chair.
"Wait."
Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned, startled by the strangeness of her tone.
They waited for her to speak.
"I can't go."
"Can't go?" They echoed it together. "Why not?"
"Because," said she, "I am the woman you have been talking about."
For an instant they sat perfectly motionless, the three of them. Then
slowly Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned their heads and looked at each
other, as if to verify what they had heard. Mr. Burke put out his hand
toward Bessie Lonsdale's arm, resting on the table, and he spoke very
gently indeed:
"My dear Mrs. Lonsdale, this is impossible."
"Impossible," she said, passing her hand across her eyes, "impossible?"
"Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale." He spoke reasonably, as if she were a child. "It
couldn't be you." He turned now to include Mr. Ford, who sat staring at
them both. "I myself gave Mrs. Lonsdale the news of Mr. Ayling's death,
over the telephone. She was at her home, in Cambridge Terrace, quietly
having tea with a friend; the friend was still there when I arrived. You
have been at home, in London, all day."
"No," she said. "No, Mr. Burke."
"I think," said Mr. Ford, also very gently indeed, "that perhaps Mrs.
Lonsdale is trying to shield some one."
Until that instant Bessie Lonsdale had no plan. She had only known that
she could not go with them to Homebury St. Mary, there to be recognized.
But something in the suggestion of Mr. Ford--in the tone, perhaps, more
than the words--caused her to say, looking from one to the other of
these two men so lately strangers to her:
"I wonder--I wonder if I could make you understand!"
They begged her to believe that that was the thing they wished most to
do.
"I did it"--she paused, and forced herself to go on--"because of my
daughter."
Intent upon her truth, she did not even see by the shocked expression of
their faces the awfulness of the thing they thought she confessed, and
the obviousness of the reason to which their minds had leaped.
Mr. Burke put out his hand again and laid it upon her arm, which
trembled slightly at his touch. "Mrs. Lonsdale," he said, and this time
he spoke even more gently, but more urgently, than before, "are you
_sure_ you wish to tell?"
"No," said Bessie Lonsdale, "but I've _got_ to, don't you see?"
Mr. Ford moved in his chair, and spoke, guarding his voice, judicially.
"Since we have gone so far, it will be even better, perhaps, for Mrs.
Lonsdale to tell it to us here."
Mr. Burke nodded, and they looked toward her expectantly.
"Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale?" said Mr. Ford.
An instant the brown-flecked eyes appeared to be searching for some
human contact which she seemed vaguely to have lost. And then she began
at the beginning--with her daughter's engagement to young Andrew McCrae,
her happiness, her security--and quietly, with only now and then a
slight tension of her body and her voice, she told it all to them,
exactly as it happened, without plea or embellishment. She had only one
stress, and that she tried to make reasonable to them--her child's
security.
And they waited, attentive and patient, for the motive to emerge, for
the beginning of that complication between her daughter and Richard
Ayling, which they believed was to be the crux of her narrative.
And as her story progressed their bewilderment increased, for never, it
appeared, had Bessie Lonsdale's daughter so much as heard of the
existence of the man who lay dead at Homebury inn. She seemed even to
make a special point of that.
They thought she but put it off against the time when it should be
forced from her lips; but her story did not halt; she was telling it
step by step, accounting for every hour of the time.
They waited for her to offer proof of the condition of Ayling's heart.
She did not mention it, except to say, when she came to relating the
moment of her discovery, that she had not thought of it; that even when
she opened the door of his room she did not think directly of his heart;
and only when she saw him actually lying there so peacefully dead did
she remember the danger in which he constantly lived. She seemed to
offer it as proof of the suddenness and completeness of her shock, and
in extenuation of the thing she afterward did.
Slowly, gradually, as they listened, and as the light of her omissions
made it clear, it had begun to dawn upon them that Bessie Lonsdale was
telling the whole of the truth. And by it she sought to disprove
_something_, but not the thing they thought.
She had paused, at the point of her flight, to attempt, a little
hopelessly, to make her impulse real to them. She spoke of the
inflexible honor of the McCraes, of the great respect which had for
generations attached to their name. Then suddenly, as if she saw the
utter hopelessness of making them understand, she seemed with a gesture
to give up abstractions and obscurities and to find in the depth of her
mother's heart the final simple words:
"Don't you see?" she said. "I hadn't thought how my being there at the
same inn with Mr. Ayling would look--and then, all at once, it came over
me. The whole thing, how it would look to the world, how it would look
to the family of my daughter's fiancé,--and that it might mean the
breaking of the engagement,--the wreck of her future happiness--don't
you see--I didn't think of 'being a rotter'--I only thought of her!"
They uttered, both of them, a sudden exclamation, as if they had been
struck. By their expressions one might have thought the woman the
accuser and the two men the accused.
"Oh, my dear Mrs. Lonsdale--!" they both began at once, but she stopped
them with a gesture of her hand.
"I don't blame you," she said, "I don't blame you. I _was_ a rotter, to
run, but I simply didn't think of myself."
Her tone, her gentleness, were the final proof. Only the innocent so
graciously forgive.
"And now," she was saying, a great weariness in her voice, "I've told
you. Do you want me to go on? It isn't raining any more."
"Perhaps, Mr. Ford--" Mr. Burke began. A look passed between them, like
a question and an assent.
"If you, Mr. Burke," said Mr. Ford, "will come on with me, I think we
can let your man drive Mrs. Lonsdale home. It will not be necessary for
her to appear."
Bessie Lonsdale's thankfulness could find itself no words; it was lost
in that first moment in astonishment. She had not really expected them
to believe. It had not even, as she told it, seemed to her own ears
adequate.
"I think," said Mr. Burke, seeing her silent so long, "that Mrs.
Lonsdale hasn't an idea of the seriousness of the charge she has
escaped."
"Charge?" she repeated--"Charge?--" and without another word, Bessie
Lonsdale fainted in her chair. And as she lost consciousness she heard,
dim and far away, the voice of Mr. Ford reply: "That--the fact that she
_hadn't_ an idea of it--and that alone, is why she _has_ escaped."
* * * * *
"I'm perfectly sure," said Peggy Lonsdale, on Saturday afternoon, "that
you _did_ let yourself have a dull time!" She was exploring the flat
before she had taken off her things, and had stopped to sit for a moment
on the arm of her mother's chair. "Anyway, mother dear, you didn't have
to think of me! That must have been a relief!"
She put down her head and kissed her, and Bessie Lonsdale patted the
fragrant young cheek.
"Oh, I thought of you occasionally," she said.