Poor Askew! Miss Galway proved to be a limpet, and held on to him desperately, not because he was handsome, but for the sake of the two ears he possessed, into which she could pour her archæological triumphs.
She prosed in a manly voice about Hiram of Tyre and the building of Solomon's Temple, and the probability that its design was copied from the Shrine of Moloch, and the remains that Zerubbabel must have found after the Babylonian captivity, until his poor head buzzed like a saw-mill. In the hope of stopping this endless trickle of nothings he cajoled her to the supper-room. There, at a small table well-covered, Lady Jim ate and drank and chatted, light-heartedly, with a sharp-eyed, sun-dried mummy. She nodded a "How d'y do?" to her sailor, and smilingly observed his entanglement. Luckily for the preservation of Askew's temper, a rival archæologist arrived to discuss Hittite grammar, and he managed to slip away while the male and female dryasdusts wrangled over the probable origin of the Perizzites.
"You haven't been near me all the evening," complained Leah, when Wallace received his congé and Askew sat in the seat of the scornful.
"Didn't see you arrive, worse luck. If you'd been dosed with Hivites and Jebusites and all that truck, as I've been, you'd have a headache, too."
"It's unusual for you to have a headache."
"And inevitable for me to have a heartache."
"On account of that alphabet woman, I suppose. Why don't you feed?"
"No appetite. But if you'll come along to the Cecil----"
"Certainly not. We've been there much too often of late. People will talk."
"Let them! What does it matter?"
"Everything matters, when people have tongues and eyes, and envious natures. Don't be silly. I promised the Duke to stop here for half an hour. And after all, it's amusing. I never knew such people existed outsidePunch. Well--what now?" This because, with sudden recollection of an oversight, he brought out an envelope.
"This was waiting at Curzon Street," he explained, handing it across, "and the butler, thinking it might be important asked me to---- Why, what's the matter, Leah?"
It was his turn to inquire, for, reading while he talked, she had suddenly whitened. "Don't call me Leah," she snapped, with the irritation of a shaken woman, then re-read the cablegram, again and again.
"What is it?--what is it?"
"My husband is--dead!" She crushed the paper into a ball, rose to go, and dropped back, overwhelmingly faint. "Oh!" she moaned faintly. For once in her life of shams and sneering and playing with other-world fires she was moved to genuine emotion.
Leah's emotion--as she felt--was almost cruelly genuine. It bore the trademark of sincerity; it made her heart hammer furiously against her ribs, and drove the blood from her cheeks. Yet she knew that Jim still lived; that the lying cablegram was but a necessary card to play for the winning of large stakes. For once, the expected had happened--that was all. Why then should she exhibit emotions which could not possibly have been caused by the excuse offered to the public. Her heart replied with brutal directness, that she had crossed the Old Bailey Rubicon, and was actually participating in a crime. The last word shook her out of cotton-wool wrappings into a naked world. Up to the receipt of the cablegram she could have drawn back. Now, fully committed to the adventure, she was compelled to tread a perilous path. A criminal! Yes: she had been one in intention, which mattered little; she was now criminal in fact, and that meant punishment. Her imagination conjured up visions of the possible. The judge spoke, the prison gaped, the bolts shot home, Curzon Street was exchanged for Wormwood Scrubbs. Ugh! But after all, such queasy thoughts were unnecessary. If she had broken the eighth commandment, she fully intended to keep the eleventh and unwritten one, "Thou shalt not be found out."
The truth to Mrs. Saracen, excusing a hasty departure, served to circulate the fiction of Jim's death, which the widow wished to be speedily and widely known. She could not have selected a bell with a better clapper. Promulgated by the "sauce queen," the sad invention shortly became town-talk, and, disseminated by myriad tongues, ran like a prairie fire throughout Society, with a capital letter. A more weighty bag on the postman's back resulted, and commiserating platitudes showered on Leah, as thick as the over-quoted leaves of Vallombrosa. She glanced through many, replied to a few, and burned--very wisely--the majority. Between-whiles her attention was given to parcels from Jay's, and considerations of widows' caps, and the recognition that the feminine uniform of woe clothed with marked distinction a really beautiful mourner. To women, grief has its consolations in crape millinery.
Seclusion was necessary in those days of lamentation, but none the less wearisome. To play the nun, while people scattered to Cowes and the Continent, chafed the chameleon woman. Some intimate sympathisers she received, and to these she matched mournful words with a mournful countenance. With the blinds half down and sal volatile at hand, in a becoming gown, and using a handkerchief, three inches black-bordered, to redden the driest of eyes, Lady Jim held funereal receptions, and spoke in low tones of her late husband's hitherto unknown good qualities. His palpable evils she cloaked with the "his-own-worst-enemy" phrase; and mentioned twice that, if not an angel, he at least had been a man. The visitor addressed made her exit expressing hopes that Lord James was an angel now, and the door closed in time to prevent her seeing Leah's enjoyment of the picture thus cashed on her amused mind. "Jim, an angel!" murmured the widow, wiping away real tears. "He'd bet on his flying."
With the Duke she played her comedy of sorrow very prettily. Pentland and Frith arrived in haste, while the Marchioness hurried on beforehand, to prepare Leah for the interview. But she was already word-perfect in her part. Aware that Lord Frith would discredit ostentatious grief, she assumed the position of a shocked rather than a broken-hearted widow, though she said nothing but what might have been inscribed on Jim's tombstone. Not a crocodile tear did she shed under Frith's too-observant eyes, but sat near the Duke, holding his gouty lean hand, and skilfully impressed the trio with the belief that she and the deceased had not been so far asunder as was supposed--the corollary of such impression being that she honestly regretted Jim's untimely demise. No more could be expected, even from the most forgiving woman, and no more was demanded by the ducal family.
After these preliminary condolences Pentland suggested that Leah should come to Firmingham for the funeral. It was necessary to agree to this, and she did with graceful readiness; only intimating that she would remain in town, until the remains arrived at Southampton. Even as she made the stipulation, she wondered how Demetrius had contrived to transfer Garth's body from Madeira to Jamaica for the deception.
"I thought poor Jim would have been buried where he died," she remarked tentatively.
The Duke was shocked. "Certainly not. Jim, poor fellow, must rest with his ancestors. We must look upon his face for the last time."
Leah plucked nervously at her black gown, and wondered if the Russian was wise in submitting a substituted corpse to family scrutiny. "They say that death changes people," she ventured uneasily, "and of course, embalming----"
"Just what I said to Bunny," interrupted Lady Frith, in too vivacious a tone for the occasion. "We shall hardly know Jim with the soul out of him."
"My--dear--Hilda!"
"Well, Bunny, you know souls aren't buried."
"They go to a better world, as Jim's has gone," mourned the doting father.
Frith looked doubtfully at his sister-in-law. The less said about Jim's destination, the better: therefore did he crush sentiment with dry business. "I expect Demetrius will arrive with the remains about the end of the month," said he, in the hardest of voices; "after the funeral, we can see about the will."
"It leaves everything to Leah," his father informed him.
"Indeed! And what had Jim to leave behind him besides his character?"
"The insurance money."
"Oh--ah--yes. Jarvey Peel's present. Twenty thousand pounds--eh?"
"And accumulations," supplemented Lady Jim; "but need we talk of such things, now?" and she sighed the conversation back to sentiment.
"Quite so--quite so," quavered the Duke, shaking his head; "terrible loss to you, my dear--and your natural grief, and--hum-hum----" Further fossilised phrases escaped his memory.
"I certainly feel for poor Jim," said Leah, with sedate dignity: "he had his faults, of course; but then, so have I."
"Your kind remembrance of Jim excuses the few you possess," was Pentland's reply; while Frith, compressing his thin lips, made no remark.
Indeed, there was no chance, for Hilda clamoured that Leah should come to her house for beef-tea and consolation. She had never agreed with her more sceptical husband about the Curzon Street menage, and credited Lady Jim with the requisite virtues of a genuine widow.
"Your strength must be kept up, dear," she babbled, as though she expected Leah to faint then and there. "I know exactly how you feel. Just as I should, if Bunny became an angel. But we must all die, dear Leah, and death is the gate of life, and----"
"Can't you leave these proverbial condolences to Lionel?" broke in her exasperated husband.
"Oh, Bunny"--with a wail--"the sacred dead."
"Let the child talk," commanded Pentland; "she expresses my feelings."
Thus encouraged, the child did talk, and Lady Jim listened with a bent head to original remarks about Time, the great consoler, and meetings on a golden shore, to part no more, and keeping the loved memory green, and bowing to the inevitable, and such-like official utterances, without which no funeral is complete. When Hilda stopped for want of breath and memory, Leah kissed her with the affection of one deeply moved, and observed that she was tired. And indeed she was--bored to death, in fact. So the Marchioness, pleased with her plagiarised eloquence, took leave tactfully and tearfully on the Duke's arm. Frith lingered.
"Why don't you laugh?" he said dryly.
"At Hilda in the pulpit? Why should I. She means well."
"Huh! I allude to your demure listening. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, and, after all, Jim was my brother. But are you really and truly sorry?"
"In a way, if youwillpress for an answer. One can't live five years with a man without missing him at the breakfast-table."
"Hum! Though you and I pretend otherwise, to console my father, we know that Jim was no saint."
"Am I?" she asked, shrugging.
"Politeness forbids my answering that question."
"I don't see what politeness has to do with this interview. Have you remained to make yourself disagreeable?"
"On my honour, no. You're a clever woman, Leah, and as a scamp's wife you have conducted yourself admirably."
"As I am now the scamp's widow, had that not better have been left unsaid?"
Frith shrugged in his turn. "I suppose so, since we have agreed to call black white. But I waited to say that I'll help you in any way you wish."
Leah was surprised, and touched. She and Frith had never been good friends. Apparently, he was not such a bad sort after all. But what was behind this offer? Her ineradicable suspicion of human nature made her doubt, though she spared him the question. "It is very good of you," said she, cordially, "but with the insurance money and this house, which your father says I can retain, I shall do very well. There is no need for you to open your purse, or your heart."
The Marquis hunched his shoulders and let them drop. "Hum," he repeated, biting his forefinger; "you will be marrying again?"
"What has that to do with you?" she flashed out, haughtily.
"Well, you bear our family name," he reminded her, "and Demetrius----"
Lady Jim felt qualmish. "Demetrius?" she echoed faintly. What could Frith possibly have to say about the prime mover in the plot?
"The man is crazy about you," said he, frowning.
"I can't help lunatics being at large," said Leah, reassured as to his meaning and at once on the defensive. "Have I encouraged him?"
He hastened to protest. "Oh no. As I said before, your conduct as Jim's wife has been admirable--truly admirable. But I should not like to see you marry Demetrius."
"Why should you think me willing to do so?"
"I don't, since the man is a foreigner and poor and untitled."
"He can be a prince and wealthy, if he chooses to be reconciled with the Russian authorities."
"Even then, Leah, do you really like this man?"
"As a clever doctor and an amusing talker--yes. Well?"
Frith, baffled and perplexed, bit his finger again. "He is devoted to you; they talk of it at the clubs. No, no," hurriedly, as she turned crimson with indignation; "there's not a word said against you. But this absurd infatuation--and you a widow; these foreigners go to ridiculous lengths, so you see----"
"I certainly do not see," interrupted Leah, with conviction. "Did you offer assistance so that you might meddle?"
"Oh no, no," protested the Marquis, looking shocked; "but you have behaved so well as Jim's wife----"
"That is the third time you have said so, and I am by no means stupid. It seems to me," she looked straight at him, "that you believe M. Demetrius will ask me to marry him."
"Yes, I do think so."
"Will it ease your mind if I say that I have no intention of accepting any impertinent proposal he may make?"
"It will and it does," said Frith, bluntly. "I should not like to see you throw yourself away on that man. Should you marry again----"
"It will be entirely my own affair."
"Of course, of course. All the same----"
"Quite so! Good-day, Lord Frith."
He smiled grimly, seeing that she would not permit him to finish a single sentence. "Am I to take your use of my title as an intimation that we are to be strangers?"
"To the extent of supervision, yes."
"But you can't manage things unaided."
"That also is my business. As your interference is concerned with M. Demetrius, and I have set your mind at rest on that point, there is no more to be said."
"As you please. Still, this Demetrius----"
"Oh, Demetrius," she echoed, enraged by this parrot repetition. "I never wish to hear his name or set eyes on his face again."
This was true enough. Now that the Russian had served her turn he could go hang; she had no further use for him, and he could whistle for his well-earned wages. When Frith, after further interrupted expostulations, took his leave, Lady Jim sat down, chin on hand, to consider this town-talk. The love-sick babbling of Demetrius troubled her little. No scandal could attach to a Diana who never hunted the noble quarry, man; and Leah was such a known lover of herself that even scandal refrained from giving her a rival. Still, the Russian was pertinacious, and could be vindictive; he had fulfilled her bidding for a certain price, and that price he would assuredly demand. Make him her second husband she would not. He belonged to Katinka, who could keep him and welcome. The remembrance of the daughter suggested the useful father.
Aksakoff, unfettered by honourable prejudices, certainly could help her, for the attaining of his own ends, if Demetrius became troublesome. Could she lure him to Paris, his disappearance from her life would only be a question of days, perhaps hours. But, for the moment, she did not see how to export her accomplice to Siberia, via the gay city, without becoming a more active agent than was wise. One Russian had her--there was no blinking the fact--under his thumb; and to remove that pressure, in the only way in which it could be removed, meant the substitution of a similar thumb. She would merely jump from the frying-pan into the fire--both equally uncomfortable.
On this account, and lest she should exchange King Log for King Stork, Leah hesitated to enlist Aksakoff s assistance. Luckily, there was no need to come to an immediate decision. She had three weeks at least to consider the matter. The funeral, the procuring of the insurance money, natural grief, for the tricking of the world, and the regulation period of mourning--she could oppose these obstacles, should Demetrius press his suit unduly hard. This being so, she flung off the burden for the time being, although the necessity of settling the matter, sooner or later, haunted her thoughts. Such insistence of the disagreeable broke up her rest, and she would waken at dawn, to plot escape. Chloral, occasionally, aided her to sleep the difficulty out of her head: but she detested drugs that demand extortionate repayment for their kindness, and used narcotic discreetly. A week of these haggard hauntings aged her. Anxiety became apparent in hollow eyes and colourless cheeks. One day, with outspoken horror, she discovered an entirely new wrinkle, and noted later that the unexpected opening of a door caused her nerves to jump. Kind friends ascribed such things to commendable sorrow for the dead, and Leah tacitly accepted their comforting and petting on this obvious plea. But not to regret a thousand Jims would she have risked her beauty; as, after her tongue--for Leah put brains before looks--it was her keenest-edged weapon with which to fight the world, and was supremely powerful to control fools.
Daily the stream of sympathising friends rolled through the dainty drawing-room, and bore Lady Jim away from comedy grief to more pleasant shores, where gossip of he and she and the "tertium quid," interspersed with millinery discussions and shrewd female handling of current society events, made things more tolerable. Lady Richardson babbled herself in, with a box of chocolate from Sir Billy--a consolation not unpalatable to Leah, who liked Billy and loved sweets. "Both being acquired tastes," said Lady Jim, but not to the little mother.
"So thoughtful of him, isn't it?" chattered Lady Richardson, who was coloured in subdued tints, with a gown to match, for the visit. "The dear boy! He said to me that we must prevent you from breaking your heart."
"And prescribes eating," said Leah, humorously. "I never knew Sir Billy was so young. Thank him for me, Fanny, and tell him that when I think of taking a second I'll give him a look in."
"Oh, Billy has thought of that already--such a boy as he is. You're sure to have a badly spelt proposal from him, dear. But seriously speaking, will you,--oh, of course you will."
"Why should I?--you have not."
"My heart is buried in the grave of Billy's father," murmured Lady Richardson, pensively.
"Dig it up again."
"Well, there's Reggy Lake, of course; but he's so poor."
"All the more reason that he should propose. You have a good jointure."
"Settled entirely on myself," said the little woman, shrewdly; then added romantically, "I must be loved for myself alone."
"Oh!" Lady Jim shrugged. "If you expect miracles!"
"Really, Leah!" Her visitor became pinker than her rouge.
"I mean that men are selfish, dear. They always have their eye on the cash-box, you know."
"I hope that won't be your fate, darling," was the spiteful reply, for Lady Richardson always scratched back.
"Oh, my face is my fortune, Fanny. Jim, poor dear spendthrift, has left me with only a few thousands, which won't last long."
"I should think not, in your hands, dear. But there is Mr. Askew and Dr. Demetrius--both admire you."
"Admiration does not necessarily mean marriage. And at present I think more of my loss than of a second husband."
"So sweet of you, and so proper. But you might take a look at the market. Mr. Trent, now, the South African. He's a millionaire."
"So I should think, from his manners."
"Lord Canvey!"
"Would give me a grandmother-in-law of the worst."
"Sir Jacob Machpelah!"
"The man who has taken his name from Abraham's cemetery? I suppose he thought it sounded Scotch. No, thanks. My name is Hebrew, but my tastes are Gentile."
"Johnny Danesbury!"
"A penny doll with a squeak. I want a man."
"Colonel Harrington!"
"He's a brute, without instinct. I begin to think you keep a matrimonial agency, Fanny."
"It wouldn't pay, were you my only client," retorted Lady Richardson, still remembering the miracle dig. "No one seems to satisfy you. I believe you mean to marry Askew, after all. What of him?"
"He's a nice footman, and doesn't ask wages. Aren't these suggestions rather premature? My heart, like yours, may be in my husband's grave."
"I didn't know he was buried yet," said the little woman, crossly. "How impossible you are, darling!"
"Always, when people get on my nerves, dear."
"I believe you want some other woman's husband?"
"Oh dear no! I never covet my neighbour's ass."
Shot and shell were flying rather thickly, and seeing no chance of planting her flag on Leah's bulwarks, Lady Richardson beat a discreet retreat, with Judas kisses and Parthian shots. "So glad if I have cheered you up, dear [kiss]! Bear up and don't break your heart [kiss, kiss]! So sweet your sorrow, and so genuine [kiss, kiss, kiss]!" And having given several Rowlands for one Oliver, Lady Richardson departed.
"Cat!" said Lady Jim to the closed door, and settled to munch Billy's chocolates over Marcel Prévost'sLettres d'une Femme.
The supposed remains of Jim Kaimes duly arrived on British ground in charge of an extraordinarily anxious medical attendant, and Lord Frith arranged for their transfer to Firmingham. There, Leah was already established as Niobe, studiously dismal in the jet-trimmed, crape-flounced equivalent of sackcloth. With the Marchioness, a few decayed cousins, and many hired mourners, connected closely or distantly with the family, she assisted the Duke to lament his Absalom. Therefore, behind lowered blinds, in the twilight atmosphere of the great house, did officially grief-stricken relations move warily on tiptoe, speaking in hushed voices, with downcast eyes, of the deceased and his post-mortem virtues. The apotheosis of the prodigal son, who had thus quietly come home, made the place about as cheerful as a mausoleum.
Limiting the solemnity strictly to the family, Lionel was requested to inter Jim's body, with the rites in which Jim's soul had never believed. Then, for the first time, did he behold Leah in her new character, as hitherto a sympathetic letter had excused a personal interview. Now, face to face, Kaimes considered the advisability, as clergyman, relative, and friend, to administer presumably needed consolation. This last straw broke the widow's overladen back. She had wept with Pentland, mourned with kith and kin, enduring also, for three dreary weeks, twaddling platitudes, written and spoken, by meddlesome well-wishers. These exasperating necessities would have been unendurable, even had Jim been where he deserved to be; but that she should suffer them, when Jim was rejoicing as Mr. Berring and expecting his share of the money she thus laboriously earned, nearly drove her beyond the bounds of decorum. She could have thrown the novel she was reading at Lionel's head, and barely escaped doing so, when he appeared in her sitting-room, almost aggressively sympathetic. But, reflecting that with the funeral would come a cessation of these aggravations, and mindful that the money was almost in her purse, she asked him to be seated and prepared to stomach aphorisms.
"How good of you to come!" she sighed conventionally; then added, to avert, if possible, protracted boredom, "I'm dull company."
"Naturally, Lady James; but I rejoice to see that you are resigned."
"I'm not tearing my hair and gnashing my teeth, if that is what you mean. I will, if you think Jim worthy of such excesses."
"Hush, hush! He is dead."