BLACKMAIL.
Poor Mr. Marrable was very much frightened by the effect of his words
upon Chris. He rushed to the door of the room, and summoned Mrs.
Abercarne with frantic cries.
But before her mother could reach the room, Chris had entirely
recovered her self-command under the influence of a strong feeling of
relief, and when Mr. Marrable went downstairs to await John Bradfield’s
return, she was brighter and less listless than she had been since her
illness.
In the first place, the hope, weak as it was, which Lilith’s words
had woke in her, was enough to live upon for a day or two at least;
and in the second place, the fact she had learnt from Alfred Marrable
had relieved her from the last trace of suspicion that she had given
her love to a maniac. Now that she knew that Mr. Richard had been
deaf and dumb, she understood much that had appeared strange in his
conduct towards her. It was clear that when he had left her questions
unanswered, it was because he could not hear them; and she now
remembered that he had watched her lips as often as possible when she
spoke, and had evidently understood her words by these means. This,
then, was the infirmity to which he had alluded in his letter; and now
the only thing which puzzled her was the fact that on the last two
occasions when she had met him he had spoken to her. When and how had
he recovered or obtained the power of speech?
It is a curious fact that this interview with Mr. Marrable, and the
information he had given her, increased, without her being able to
account for it, her new belief that her lover might be still alive. She
moved about with new cheerfulness, nourishing the hope that her mother
would either take her, or send her to London, where, as she knew,
all those people go who for any reason wish to remain for a time in
concealment.
On the other hand, what reason could Dick have for wishing to remain
in hiding? Would he not rather, if he had escaped the dangers of the
night of the fire, return either to see her, or to bring Mr. Bradfield
to book for his long incarceration? And what had been the object of
that incarceration? What, also, had been the meaning of the scene she
witnessed on the night of the fire?
With these and similar questions the young girl’s brain seemed to reel
as she sat at her window looking out at the grey sea.
Meanwhile Mr. Bradfield had returned from his morning’s ride, and had
been greeted, on dismounting from his horse, with the information that
Mr. Marrable was waiting to see him.
John Bradfield entered the dining-room, into which the discriminating
footman had shown the visitor as a person not quite smart enough for
the drawing-room, with a frown on his face.
“Oh, so you’re here again, are you?” was his abrupt greeting.
Alfred, who felt better after the glass of beer and crust of bread and
cheese which he had modestly chosen as his refreshment, came towards
his old friend smiling, and trying to look cheerful.
“Yes,” he answered mildly, “as you say, I’m here again.”
His cheerfulness did not please Mr. Bradfield, who frowned still more
as he asked shortly:
“Well, and what do you want?”
Now this Mr. Marrable did not quite like to confess. So he went on
smiling, until he perceived by an ominous motion of his friend’s boot,
that that gentleman’s endurance was about to give way.
“Well, John, it’s no use beating about the bush. The fact is, I’m down
on my luck; there’s nothing doing up in town, and things don’t seem to
get any better, and----”
“And you want some money, I suppose; your next quarter’s allowance
advanced you, in fact?”
“Well, no; not exactly that, though I don’t say it wouldn’t be a
convenience.”
John looked at him incredulously.
“What do you want, then?”
He wasn’t exactly afraid of Marrable, who seemed too flabby a sort of
person to inspire one with much fear of what he might do; at the same
time there was no denying that the weak vessel before him contained
some perilous stuff in the way of undesirable knowledge. The man’s
audacity in coming down again so soon gave him food for reflection.
“The fact is,” answered Marrable, softly, “that my wife and I were
talking things over last night, and she said things were so bad that it
would be better for us to part, and she said she was sure you wouldn’t
mind giving an old friend like me a shelter for a time.”
“The d----l she did!” exclaimed Mr. Bradfield, in amazement. “And
hadn’t you the sense to tell her that the suggestion was like her
cheek?”
“Why, no, John,” returned Marrable, just as gently as ever. “I didn’t
tell her that, for I thought myself it wasn’t a bad idea.”
There was a pause, during which John Bradfield, considered the
downcast, hang-dog face of the other, while his own grew perceptibly
paler.
“Why?” he presently asked.
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t want to make myself unpleasant in any way, John,
but it seemed so odd to find Gilbert Wryde’s son here, shut up as a
lunatic----”
John Bradfield shivered. And the look he cast at the other was not
pleasant to see.
“Do you mean to suggest that you had any reason for thinking that he
was not a lunatic?”
Marrable’s answer came quickly. He was evidently anxious to get it out
before he got afraid to say it:
“Well, I should like to see him, that’s all.”
“You haven’t heard, then, about the fire down here? He overturned his
lamp, set fire to the place, and was burnt alive.”
“Dear me! Was there an inquest?”
These direct questions, put timorously, had the effect of making John
Bradfield so furious that he stammered as he spoke:
“There was no inquest. The body could not be found!”
“Perhaps,” suggested Marrable, “he wasn’t burnt at all. Perhaps he
escaped, or perhaps----”
Although he paused, significantly, John Bradfield did not urge him to
go on. There was a silence before Alfred said, in the same infantile
manner as before:
“And what became of all his money, John?”
“He never had any.”
“But he ought to have had plenty,” rejoined Marrable, in the same
sing-song voice. “Now, I’ll make a clean breast of it, John. Not that I
wish to make myself unpleasant, as I said before, but when I was down
here at Christmas I thought things looked fishy (I don’t want to be
unkind, but they really did); so when I got back to town I got a friend
to cable over to Melbourne for me, and find out the particulars of
Gilbert Wryde’s will.”
Then there was a pause. John Bradfield looked, not at his old chum, but
out at the sea, which lay a bright blue grey in the sunshine. To think
that he should have escaped detection all these years, to be brought to
book at last by such a paltry creature--that was the thought that was
surging in his mind as he stood digging his nails into his own flesh
and not listening very eagerly for the next words, for he knew so well
what they would be.
“I only got the letter yesterday which gave me all particulars. I know
that Gilbert Wryde left all his money to you in trust for his son. So,”
pursued Alfred, slowly, and apparently without vindictiveness, “you
never really made any money at all yourself, John, any more than I? But
you’ve lived like a fighting-cock on Gilbert Wryde’s. That’s about the
size of it, isn’t it, old chap?”
Although he was trying to give a playful turn to his conversation,
Marrable did not speak cheerfully.
There was a long pause. John Bradfield, being hopelessly cornered, saw
that there was nothing for it but to find out the lowest price at which
Alfred would be bought. His methods were always blunt, so that Marrable
was not surprised when his old chum simply planted himself on the
carpet in front of him, jingling some money in his pockets, and asked
briefly:
“How much do you want?”
Marrable, who never looked up at his friend if he could help it,
bleated out, quite plaintively:
“Well, John, for myself, I should be sorry to stoop so low as to take
anything; but I should like to send home a ten-pound note, if you could
spare it, and all I ask of you is to put me up here for a bit, and let
me make myself at home as we used to do in the old days together.”
John Bradfield was so much amazed at this request, that for a few
moments he could give no answer whatever. The thought of having always
in the house with him this flabby, weak-kneed creature, who was,
nevertheless, his master, by virtue of his knowledge, was so galling,
that he would rather have given up the half of his ill-gotten property
than have supported the infliction. He laughed shortly, therefore, and
said, in a jeering tone:
“What, believing me to be capable of what you accuse me of, you are
willing to trust yourself under the same roof with me? It wouldn’t be
very hard to make _you_ pass for a lunatic with all the medical men in
the county, you know!”
But Marrable bore the jibe placidly.
“If anything were to happen to me, John, while I was down here,” he
answered, composedly, “my wife, who put me up to coming down, would
come down after me; and if once _she_ got hold of you, John, oh!
wouldn’t you wish me back again, that’s all!”
John Bradfield was silent. The net was closing round him. Already the
fatal knowledge was in the power of more persons than he knew; he
felt the strong walls of his citadel, in which he had been secure for
seventeen years, crumbling. He was man enough, however, to be able to
keep his feelings to himself.
“All right,” said he, shortly, “you can stay if you like, of course.
And when you like to go, you can take what you want with you.”
But Marrable, who had a conscience, was not quite satisfied.
“Thank you, John,” he answered, rather dismally. “I thought you
wouldn’t mind giving a shelter to an old chum down on his luck. But,
mind you,” he went on, shaking a slow, fat forefinger impressively as
he spoke, “I don’t mind taking a crust from you as a friend, seeing
that, after all, it’s not your money at all, but Gilbert Wryde’s, and
that he’d have helped me like a prince without my asking. But you
understand that I wouldn’t be so mean as to take a bribe to hold my
tongue if Gilbert’s son were still alive.”
Blunt as John Bradfield habitually was, his bluntness was as nothing
to the terribly tactless and blundering plain-speaking of Alfred,
who thought he was conducting the interview with equal amiability
and cleverness, while, in reality, every speech he uttered made John
Bradfield wince, and filled him with an ever-growing wish that he dared
kick his meek master.
And so Alfred Marrable became a permanent guest at Wyngham House.