"James Berring, bachelor."
"Bachelor, certainly. I haven't married her, and if Askew says I have, he's a liar."
"And assuredly a marplot," said Leah, dryly, "since he has exploded your romance. I understood from him that this lady loves you."
"So she does."
"And you love her?"
Jim wriggled. "Oh, go on--go on! Kick a chap when he's down!"
"If I had intended to kick, you would have been black and blue by now, Mr. James Berring. But you needn't flatter yourself that my feelings are hurt in any way. You're not worth it."
"Other women think differently."
"Lola Fajardo, for instance."
"Well, I can't help that, can I? If you'd been a different sort of woman, I'd have----"
"You said that before. Had we not better get to business?"
"What business?"
"The insurance business. I don't care for you, and you show very plainly that you don't care for me. It is useless for us to struggle together like a couple of ill-matched dogs in leash. Give me fifteen thousand of this money, and then you can marry your Lola woman."
Jim turned white again. "You seem jolly anxious to get rid of me."
"Can you wonder if I do? How many women would take this scandalous matter as quietly as I do?"
"It's not scandalous," said Kaimes, fiercely. "She thinks that I am a bachelor, and I'm not even engaged to her. I have tried to be true to you, Leah," declared Jim, pathetically.
His wife shrugged her shoulders. It was rather late in the day for Jim to talk sentiment, besides being a waste of time. "Well?" she asked, facing him squarely.
Jim read her purpose in a very flinty face. "I'll do what you want," he said weakly.
"Then there's no more to be said," remarked Leah, coldly, moving towards the door of her bedroom. "Demetrius will explain, if you will afford him half an hour's private conversation."
"Leah, do you really mean it?"
"I have meant it from the first moment you put the idea into my head," she said in a harsh voice. "This underhand love-making of yours only makes me the more determined."
"But there was no----"
"Don't lie, Jim. A man can no more love two women than he can serve two masters. Is it to be Lola Fajardo, or myself?"
"I leave it to you, Leah."
"Then I choose the fifteen thousand pounds," she said, and vanished into the bedroom. Jim took an impulsive step towards the door, but the sharp click of a turning key showed him that he was locked out for ever.
That evening Leah talked so gaily, and looked so beautiful, that her father-in-law was absolutely fascinated. "Is it all right between you and James?" he asked graciously.
"Yes," Leah assured him; "we understand one another thoroughly."
Leah welcomed the New Year at Firmingham, with the fervent hope that its bounty would bestow the insurance money, and rid her of an official husband. It really seemed as though Providence, or the fetish, was in a benign mood, for Jim caught the worst of colds while skating. Being confined to an undesired bed, and fed with food tasteless to a cultivated palate, he lost both flesh and temper. Demetrius talked gravely of weak lungs, and hinted at inherited consumption. The Duke was anxious, but scarcely surprised, and recalled similar cases of a grandmother, two ancestors, and a rackety uncle. Lady Jim encouraged these pulmonary recollections for obvious reasons. She and Demetrius winked privately at one another like the celebrated augurs, when they heard the old man's lamentations. Nature was acting strictly on the lines of the Russian's proposed medicine, and there was no need to dose Jim into a sickly likeness of Garth. Day by day he grew as white-faced, as haggard, and as lean, until he became alarmed at the anxiety of Providence to forward the schemes of himself and Leah.
But there was no end to the kindness of an overruling fate. Jim's illness afforded his wife the opportunity of posing as a sister of mercy, and she fussed round the patient so ostentatiously, that the Duke was quite touched. He began to think that Leah was a true ministering angel, and not the money-wasting doll he had considered her to be. Jim grinned as Leah measured medicine, and fed him with gruel, and read him interesting bits from the sporting journals.
"I believe I'm goin' to get well," he chuckled.
"Why so, dear?" asked his wife, who was profuse of adjectives in private, so that they might slip out the more easily in public.
"You look so uncommon dismal."
"It is necessary to keep up appearances," Leah assured him. "Besides, this will be the last chance of my doing anything for you. In future, Lola will soothe your weary pillow;" after which and similar passages of arms, Jim would curse himself to sleep, and wake up to accuse his wife of wishing to poison him.
This fortunate illness kept Lady Jim at Firmingham when the house-party disintegrated. But as the Duke was a twaddling old ass, and Jim the most trying of patients, Leah looked upon her ten days' boredom as a kind of Lenten penance. Besides, she had frequent confabulations with Demetrius, to settle details of the plot. Already the doctor had explained to the Duke that Garth would die easier in the tropics, and Funchal had been selected as the most agreeable place for his demise.
"And then?" asked Lady Jim.
"Your husband must go to Jamaica, to wait events."
"What events?"
"Those which I propose to bring about," retorted Demetrius, who had his reasons for not explaining himself too fully.
Leah did not question him closely. With a selfish regard for her own safety, in case anything might leak out, she preferred that the doctor should arrange matters in his own way. But she obeyed instructions to the extent of hinting to the Duke that Kingston was the very best place for dear Jim's weak lungs.
"Will you go with him?" asked Pentland, anxiously.
"Oh no," said Lady Jim, sweetly; "we mustn't make too much fuss over him, else he'll think he's going to die."
"He might," sighed the Duke. "I had an uncle----" and he described the sufferings of old Lord George for the tenth time.
Leah comforted him after the manner of one Bildad, a Shuhite. "Oh, Kingston will do Jim no end of good, my dear Duke. It won't cure one lung, but it may patch up the other. And then, you know, if he gets worse, I can always reach him in fourteen days."
"Does Demetrius think he will die?" asked the Duke, piteously.
"He doesn't think poor Jim will ever be so strong as he was," said Leah, gravely; "but he'll hang on, with care."
"Just like my grandmother," muttered the Duke, and then detailed the sufferings of a dowager duchess, who couldn't be kept alive beyond the age of sixty.
"If Jim lives till that age, I shall be content," said Leah.
"Are you thinking of the insurance money?" demanded Pentland, with sudden anger.
"What insurance money? Oh yes, I think Jim did mention something about an insurance."
"He gets it if he lives till sixty."
"Really! I don't quite understand, Duke, but I'm sure it's all right."
"I hope so, my dear. Has he made his will?"
"No. Why should he?"
"Because, in the event of his dying, the insurance money should be left to you. No will means trouble."
Leah had never thought of a will, as it seemed natural that the money should come to her without the necessity of paying lawyers' bills. But her quick brain seized the chance of smoothing the way to acquiring the fortune with as little trouble as possible, and she promptly cornered the Duke. "Youspeak to him," she suggested.
And this the Duke did, with the result that a will leaving the money to Leah was drawn up and signed, after some opposition, by Jim. He did not at all relish the carrying out of this necessary step. It was too like preparing a death certificate to please Jim.
However, as a reward for his obedience, Demetrius set him on his legs, and Jim went to Torquay with the devoted Leah. But when he was settled in a comfortable hotel as an interesting invalid, and with a superfluity of pretty girls to soothe him with sympathy, Lady Jim left him for a round of visits to various country-houses. Now that the Duke was out of sight, Jim's connubial comforts were out of mind; but Leah left strict injunctions that he was not to put on flesh. Within the month, she was to see him start for Jamaica, and impressed upon him the necessity of looking quite ready to depart for a place where Jim had no desire to go.
"I don't see why you want to make a holy show of me," grumbled Jim.
"We must make your death appear as plausible as possible."
"But I don't want to look like a livin' skeleton."
"Oh, I don't think Lola will mind," said Leah, cruelly, and started out to enjoy herself in the best of spirits.
While at Lord Sargon's seat in Shropshire, she met Askew in the company of the fixture. The young man's betrothed was extremely like a dairy-maid, and her frocks set Lady Jim's teeth on edge. If she could combine colours that did not match, she always did so, and her character was as colourless as her wardrobe was gaudy. Marjory was the creature's name, and her conversation was the "Pa-pa!" "Mam-ma!" of a squeaking doll.
"How much are you paying for her?" asked Leah, after satisfying herself that the young lady was really a woman.
"Five thousand a year," replied the lieutenant, sulkily.
"What a bargain!"
"Don't laugh at me," he implored; "you know there is but one woman in the world for me."
"So you told me. Lola--what's her name?"
"Some one nearer and dearer than her!" he murmured, with what the Americans call "goo-goo" eyes, whereat Lady Jim laughed, and allowed him to fetch and carry, and sit on his hind legs and bark prettily, like a well-trained lap-dog. It amused her, and kept him on tenterhooks. The only annoying thing was, that Marjory seemed to care little for this annexation of her lover. She much preferred a fox-hunting squire, who talked "stables," and glowered on Askew for not appreciating the dairy-maid.
In this capture of another woman's man, Leah combined pleasure with business. She did not wish to spoil Jim's little game with the Spanish lady, and it would never do for Askew to detail Mr. Berring's past in a quarter where such betrayal would lead to trouble. By this time the amorous sailor was the slave of beauty, so Lady Jim was sufficiently mistress of his will to limit his correspondence. This she did one evening after dinner, while admiring Marjory's new frock.
"Yellow and green," murmured Leah, when she and Askew filled up a corner, and watched frantic people playing bridge; "poached egg on spinach. If you design her gowns, Mr. Askew, I should advise a less lavish use of primary colours."
"She means well," he muttered, apologetically.
"People who need excuses for existing always do," retorted Lady Jim; "but she is really a sweetly simple girl, with two ideas, neither of which includes you, my dear boy. I am sure you will be very happy together, doing cake-walks."
"Doing cake-walks?"
"That sort of dress always makes me think of South Carolina and the 'old Kentucky home,' you know. They invented cake-walks there, I believe. But I forgot--you prefer places below the equator."
"I never think of South America," he protested.
"Of course not. The jewel is more attractive than the casket. When did you last hear from Señorita Fajardo?"
"I never had a letter from her in my life."
"She is cautious, it seems. Are you?"
"I don't write to her, if that is what you mean. I did love her----"
"What a polite thing to say to me!"
"But I don't any longer. You see, I thought that Berring--your----"
"There's nothing in that," said Lady Jim, quickly. "There never really was, and if you really love this estancia lady, why not marry her?"
"I am engaged already."
"To me, or to that pretty, vivacious girl over there?"
As Marjory was looking particularly like a wooden Dutch doll at the moment, Askew reddened.
"I wish you wouldn't say these things, Lady Jim----"
"Lady James!"
"Lady James, then. Marjory can't help herself."
"It seems to me she has--to that intelligent young man with the face like a sheep and the manners of a costermonger."
"They were boy and girl together."
"And are still, from the infantile look of them. I quite expect to see their nurse arrive. You know, it won't do," said Leah, gravely; "here I am making fun of Marjory, and you aren't man enough to stand up for her."
The young man coloured still deeper, and mumbled something about a woman's privilege. Shortly he made a lame excuse, and left Leah to devote himself to Marjory, who was not grateful for the attention. Leah did not mind. She had learned that Askew did not correspond with Lola Fajardo, and had no intention of doing so; therefore there was little likelihood that Jim's fettered past would ever become known at the Estancia, San Jago. Being really a good-natured woman with her affections thoroughly under control, Leah half decided to loosen her apron-strings and let Askew lead his bargain to the altar. But this she did not do, for two obtrusive reasons, firstly, the fox-hunting squire and Marjory were made for one another; and secondly, it would be just as well to keep the sailor under her eye for the next year. She did not wish him to hark back to Lima, for melodramatic purposes.
After a very pleasant visit, thanks to Askew's infatuation, Lady Jim returned to Curzon Street. There she found a letter from Demetrius announcing that he and Garth had sailed for Madeira early in the previous week, and that it would be as well if Lord James Kaimes journeyed forthwith to Jamaica. Leah promptly sent an answer to her accomplice at Funchal, a telegram to Jim, a paragraph to a society paper, and a lengthy letter of sorrowful forebodings to the Duke. Then she sat down to wait events, and, meanwhile, considered the situation.
Pentland was all right, thanks to her cajoling. Before she left Firmingham he had arranged to free the income, to pay the debts, and to allow her to occupy the Curzon Street house until such time as Jamaica should kill or cure Jim. That interesting invalid had gone halves over the cheque, and Leah's purse still contained over fifty pounds, which would do for the present. But she intended to get a few hundreds from the Duke, by playing off Jim's sickly looks and her own lonely condition of grass-widowhood. It was really very satisfactory, and she found it hard to look miserable, as in duty bound, when Pentland arrived to see the last of Jim. Leah arranged that the parting between father and son should be in town. She did not want to have a bereaved father bothering at Southampton. The journey back to town after Jim's dispatch would be boring at the best, and her consolatory powers were not great.
"You look disgustingly fit," said Leah, when Jim was established on the drawing-room sofa, with a rug and a few unnecessary medicine bottles, and other sick-room paraphernalia.
"Sorry I can't be more of a corpse," growled the invalid; "but it's not easy to pretend you're a goner, when y' feel fit to jump over the moon."
"Try and cough louder," suggested his wife.
"Shan't! It hurts m' throat. Hang it, I've lost three stone. I believe you want me dead in real earnest."
Lady Jim thought for a moment. "No, I don't," she said, truly enough. "You haven't treated me over well, and I should have been a different woman, had you been a different man----"
"Divorce court lingo," said Jim, remembering what she had said at Firmingham, and with a derisive laugh.
"All the same, I hope you'll have a good time in South America."
"Why not in Jamaica?"
"Because you've got to be thoroughly sick there. Demetrius will come along later with Garth's corpse, and----"
"Ugh! Drop it! What about the money--my share?"
"I'll get the cash, as soon as you are sent home."
"Me? What for? Ain't I goin' to disappear?"
"Of course," said Leah, impatiently; "but Demetrius has to embalm your body and bring you home to the family vault."
"I say, don't," cried Jim uneasily; "that's the other Johnny you're talkin' about. Leah," he looked round cautiously, "I hope Demetrius won't polish off that poor fellow. He's a sort of relative of mine, y' know."
"Don't worry your head," said Lady Jim, calmly. "Garth's dying as fast as he can; he may be dead by this time, for all we know. And don't think that I would allow Demetrius to be so wicked," she cried, with virtuous indignation. "I'm not a criminal."
"Oh, Lord!" was all Jim could find to say, as he thought of what they were doing, and conversation ended for the time being. Leah went to the theatre and supper at the Savoy that evening, leaving Jim to practise coughing amongst the useless medicine bottles.
Next day, both Pentland and his eldest son arrived at eleven, and were informed by a sad-faced wife that her dear husband would travel to Southampton by the afternoon train. At the sight of Leah's dismal looks and attentive care, Frith expressed his opinion that women were protean.
"Never thought you cared so much for Jim," he said bluntly.
"Oh, I don't for a moment say that I think Jim is a good man," was Leah's artistic reply; "and we've had our tiffs, like other married people. But Jim's my husband, after all. And he has his good points."
"What are they?"
Lady Jim was not prepared with a catalogue of her husband's perfections. "Oh, I don't know," she murmured vaguely; "he drinks in moderation, you know. That's something."
"There's no virtue in resisting a non-existent temptation," said the Marquis, grimly. "Jim doesn't come of a drinking family."
"Of a consumptive one, I believe," retorted Leah, softly.
Frith was nettled at the implied slight. "Not at all," he said, with unusual gruffness. "Look at me."
"But that poor Garth----"
"Oh, he--I don't understand--and if you----" Frith coloured as he met her derisive eyes, and devoted himself to his brother.
Lady Jim left the affectionate trio together, lengthening out their farewells, and retired, laughing, to her room. It was really amusing to think that Jim, who was as healthy as a trout in a pond, should be wept over, and coddled, and pitied, and generally elevated to a sainthood. The business was serious enough, no doubt; but Leah could not help seeing the humorous side. She felt unequal to keeping a grave face while the comedy in the drawing-room was being played, and therefore did not rejoin her husband till the principal comedians had departed.
"We are a couple of rotters," said Jim, gloomily, when she appeared.
"Speak for yourself, my dear," she retorted coolly. "Well, and what did they say?"
"Never you mind. You'd only snigger over a father takin' leave of his dyin' son."
"Oh! I did not know that the Duke had seen Harold Garth."
"Leah," cried her husband, fiercely, "you're a--never mind. Whatever you are, I'm another."
"Did the Duke leave a cheque for me?" asked Leah, more business-like than sympathetic.
Jim banged about among the medicine bottles. "Five hundred."
"Dear man," cried his wife, snatching the cheque from his very reluctant hand. "I must go and dress for the journey."
"Won't you kiss me, Leah?" quavered Jim, really moved, and quite forgetting the rascally plot in which he was taking so prominent a part.
At the door she turned with an expression of withering scorn. "Keep your kisses for your wife, Mr. Berring!" cried this too-previous widow, and left him to digest the insult at his leisure.
The paragraph sent by Leah to her pet editor intimated concisely to the tuft-hunting world of Tom, Dick, and Harriet, that the suddenly developed pulmonary complaint of Lord James Kaimes necessitated his wintering in Jamaica. This intelligence surprised the clubs, as Jim's hectoring voice and devotion to damp field sport had always suggested aggressively sound lungs.
"Never knew him to be chippy in his life," growled one man, who admired Leah as much as he hated Jim for possessing her. "What's his game this time, I wonder?"
"Perhaps he wants to get away from his wife," hinted a pigeon of Jim's plucking. "Bit of a tongue, hasn't she?"
"Tongue be hanged! She has both wit and beauty."
The pigeon sniggered, knowing the speaker's devotion to Delilah. "Oh, Kaimes appreciates those qualities--in another man's wife."