Again I was struck by the man's resemblance to Mr. Townsend. It was obvious even in the way in which he advanced towards me across the room. It was almost as if Townsend had slipped on some costume of a masquerade, and reappeared in it to play tricks with me. The fellow, going to the centre of the room, crossed his arms, in theatrical fashion, across his chest, and stood and stared at me--glared at me would be the more correct expression. Not caring to meet his glances, and to return him glare for glare, as if we were two madmen trying to outstare each other, I fumbled with the papers on my table.
"You have called for that handkerchief of yours? I am obliged to you for the loan of it; but I had to leave home for town so early this morning that my wife was not able to get it ready in time for me to bring it with me. If you will give me your address I will see that it is sent to you through the post."
There was a considerable interval before he answered me--an interval during which he continued to glare, and I to fumble with my papers. When he did speak, it was in one of those portentous and assumed bass voices, which one inevitably connects with the proverbial "Villain at the Vic."
"I have not called for my handkerchief."
"Then, may I ask to what I am indebted for the pleasure of your presence here. I have only just come in, and I have some rather pressing business which I must do."
"Your business has nothing to do with me."
"Probably not; but it has with me."
He came a step nearer, still keeping his arms crossed upon his chest. This time he spoke in a sort of a hiss. It seemed obvious that at some period of his career he must have had something to do with the stage.
"Do you not know what has brought me here. Does your own conscience not tell you, man?"
I began to suspect that he had been drinking. I looked up at him. He was eyeing me with a scowl which, to say the least of it, was scarcely civil.
"How should I know what has brought you here, if it is not a desire to regain possession of your property? I take it that you hardly intend to suggest a further deposit."
I do not think that he altogether relished the allusion. His scowl became less theatrical, and a good deal more natural. He seemed, for a moment, to be at a loss as to what to say. Then a word came from between his lips which startled me.
"Murderer!"
That was rather more than I could stand. I sprang to my feet.
"What do you mean, sir, by addressing me like that? Are you mad?"
My assumption of indignation did not seem to impress him in the least. He returned to the basso profundo.
"Have you seen the evening papers?"
At the question something began to swim before my eyes. I had to lean against the edge of the table.
"No; what is there in the evening papers to interest me?"
"I will show you."
He began to unfold a paper which he took from his pocket. Laying the open sheet before me on the table, he pointed to a column of leaded type.
"Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest that, if you can."
The heading of the column was enough for me. It was headed, "Tragedy on the Brighton Line." I could read no farther. I dropped down into my chair again. The stranger continued to regard me with accusatory eyes.
"What's the matter with you? You don't seem well."
"I've not been feeling well all day."
"So I should imagine. Else you had been more or less than human. Since you are not able to read the paper yourself, at which I am not surprised, I will read it for you. The paper says that the body of a woman has been found on the up side of the Brighton line, just before Three Bridges Station."
"Dead?"
"Dead--murdered."
I was speechless, tongue-tied. The whole hideous folly of which I had been guilty rose in front of me, and paralysed my brain. I saw, too clearly, and too late, the dreadful nature of the error I had made. I realised the awful something which, owing to my own cowardice, now stared me in the face. It might have been bad enough if I had played the man; but it would have been better than this.
The stranger kept his eyes fixed on my countenance. I have no doubt that on it was seen some of the horror which racked me. His voice sounded to me like an echo from far away.
"That explains how it was that I saw a woman get into your carriage at Brighton, and that she was not there when we reached Victoria. You had left her on the line."
I made an effort to shake off the stupor which oppressed me. It was out of the question that I should continue to sit there passively, and allow this fellow to jump, in his own fashion, at his own conclusions. Better late than never! There might still be time for me to play the man. I took out my handkerchief to wipe away the moisture from my brow. I looked at the man in front of me.
"May I ask you for your name, sir?"
"My name is immaterial."
"Excuse me, but it is not immaterial. You thrust yourself upon me last night, you thrust yourself upon me again to-day. If I am to have anything to say to you, I must know with whom I am dealing."
"You are dealing with the witness of your crime."
"That is not the case. I have been guilty of no crime."
"Why do you lie to me? Don't you know that I could go straight from this room and hang you?" He raised his voice in a manner which told upon my nerves. I looked furtively about the room. I had to wipe the moisture from my brow again.
"Is it necessary that you should speak so loudly, sir! Do you wish to be overheard? There are clerks in the adjoining room."
"Then send them away; or don't try to hoodwink me--me!" He struck his hand against his chest, accentuating the second "me," as if he were an individual altogether separate and apart. "If I were to follow the promptings of my bosom, I should go at once to the police, and leave you to dangle on the gallows."
"You are under a misapprehension, sir. I give you my word of honour that you are. I may have been guilty--I have been guilty--of an error of judgment, but not of a crime."
"Do you call murder an error of judgment?"
"There has been no murder--I swear it!"
He held up his hand to check me. "Let me tell you how much I know about the business before you go out of your way to lie to me." Seating himself on the edge of my writing-table, he brought his right hand down upon it now and then to emphasise his words. "Directly the train started I heard two voices in the compartment next to mine--in your compartment. The voices were raised in quarrelling. I had, by the purest accident, seen a woman get into your compartment just as we were leaving Brighton, and I knew that the voices were yours and hers. The quarrelling got worse and worse. I feared every moment that something dreadful would happen. I was just going to sound the alarm, when there was silence. Immediately after a door banged--the door of your carriage. I was afraid that something dreadful had happened. And yet, I told myself, if nothing had happened I should look foolish if I stopped the train. Unable to make up my mind what to do, I did nothing. When on reaching Victoria I made a bolt for your carriage and found that the woman was not there, I saw that my worst fears were realised. Then I understood the sudden silence, and the banging of the door."
"She had fallen out."
"Fallen out?"
"Yes."
"Who opened the door for her to fall?"
"I did." Seeing the slip I had made I endeavoured to correct myself. "That is, I opened the door with the intention of leaving the carriage, in order to escape her violence. In trying to prevent my leaving she herself fell out."
"If, as you say, the whole thing was an accident, why did you not sound the alarm?"
"I ought to have done; I know I ought to have done. I can only say that it was all so sudden and so unexpected that I lost my head."
"To whom have you mentioned a word about the--accident, until this moment I have charged you with your crime?"
"To no one. My reticence, unfortunately, is the error of judgment to which I referred."
"You call that an error of judgment! Then, let me tell you, it was an error of judgment of a somewhat peculiar kind. A mere outsider would say that reticence was the best course you could possibly pursue."
The fellow's way of looking at the matter made things look blacker and blacker. The moisture accumulated upon my brow so fast that I could scarcely keep it from trickling down my cheeks.
"It might have been the best course to pursue had I been guilty, but I am not guilty; I swear it. I am as innocent as you are. It was my misfortune that there were peculiar circumstances connected with the matter which I wished to keep private. I feared to be misunderstood."
"You were not misunderstood by me, I do assure you. I understood, and understand you only too well. The point is that you still seem unable to understand me. You still appear to be unable to realise that I was in the next compartment to yours, that the divisions between the compartments are thin, and that you shouted at the top of your voice. I distinctly heard you threaten to kill the woman--yes, and more than once, and in a tone of voice which sounded very much as if you meant it."
He was wrong, and he was right. That was the worst of it. Undoubtedly, there had been strong language used on either side, uncommonly strong language. A listener who was not acquainted with all the circumstances might have supposed that some of it was meant. I can only protest that, so far as I was concerned, I had never meant what I had said half so much as she had meant what she said. No, nor a quarter as much. Nor, for the matter of that, an eighth. She had aggravated me to such an extent that I undoubtedly had said something--and perhaps in rather a loud tone of voice--to the effect that I should like to kill her. But I said it metaphorically. Every one who knows me knows that in practice I am the least bloodthirsty man alive. I never could kill a cat. Even when there are kittens to drown I have to leave them to my wife. Instead of the woman having killed herself I would infinitely rather she had killed me.
But it was no use trying to explain these things to the man in front of me. I saw that plainly. So far as he was concerned, my guilt was as if it were written in the skies. Taking up a position in front of the fire, he assumed what he possibly intended to be a judicial air, but which struck me as being a mixture of truculence with impudence.
"When a man threatens to kill a woman, and she is killed immediately afterwards, one asks who killed her. I do not ask, simply because I know. My impulse is to let the world know too. When I do get into the witness-box my evidence will hang you."
I thought it possible, nay, I thought it probable. If I had only made a clean breast of it when the scoundrel had first accosted me the night before!
"The thing now is, what am I to do?"
"I should have thought," I gasped, "that the thing now is what am I to do."
"Nothing of the sort. You have placed yourself outside the pale of consideration. It is myself I must consider." He said this with a lordly wave of the hand.
Crushed though I was, I found his manner a little trying.
"It is my misfortune that my ears are ever open to the promptings of mercy."
"I had not previously supposed that a characteristic of that kind was a misfortune."
"It is a misfortune, and one of the gravest kind. It is one, moreover, against which I have had to battle my whole life long. The truly fortunate man is he who can always mete out justice. But the still, small voice of mercy I have ever heard. It is a weakness, but it is mine own. My obvious duty to society would be to take prompt steps to rid it of such a man as you."
That was a pleasant sort of observation to have addressed to one.
"It strikes me that you take rather a strained view of your duty, sir."
"That would strike you. It doesn't me. But I will be frank with you. Why should I not be frank--although you are not frank with me. Though perhaps I can afford to be frank better than you can."
He threw his ancient overcoat, faced with ancient mock astrachan, wide open. He tilted his ancient silk hat on to the back of his head. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his ancient trousers.
"The plain fact is, Mr. Tennant, that I am a victim of the present commercial depression."
He looked it, every inch of him. Though, at the moment, I scarcely cared to tell him so.
"The depreciation in landed property, and in various securities, has hit me hard."
"To what securities do you allude?"
I fancy he made an effort at recollection, and that the effort failed.
"To South American securities, and others. But I need not particularise." He repeated the former lordly gesture with his hand. "The truth is that my income is not only seriously crippled, but that I am, at this present moment, actually in want of ready cash." I believed him, without his protestations. I judged from his looks. "Now, if I do something for you, will you do something for me?"
"What will you do for me?"
"Keep silence. I am not compelled to blurt out all I know. If I show mercy to you, what return will you make me for my kindness?"
I did not quite like his way of putting it. But that I had to stomach.
"What return will you require?"
He looked at me; then round the room; then back again to me. He was evidently making up his mind as to what it would be advisable for him to say.
"I should require you to make me an immediate, and, of course, temporary advance of £100--in gold."
"A hundred pounds? I am not exactly a poor man; on the other hand, I am emphatically not a rich one. To me a hundred pounds are a hundred pounds. Say ten."
"Say ten! I'll be hanged if I say ten! And you'll be hanged if you try to make me."
"Twenty."
"Nor twenty."
"I'm afraid I could not go beyond thirty."
"Then the discussion is at an end."
"Suppose--I only say suppose, mind--that I was able to find fifty."
"I won't take a penny less than a hundred pounds--not one centime."
"Would you undertake to go abroad?"
"Go abroad! I'll be shot if I would. You might go abroad. I have my business to attend to. You forget that I am a private detective in a very extensive way."
"For how long will you keep silence?"
"A month."
"Then, in that case, I must decline to advance you even so much as a hundred pence."
"Two months."
"No--nor in that case either."
"Three months."
"If you will undertake to keep silence until you are compelled to speak, I will give your suggestion my most careful consideration."
"Give it your most careful consideration! Oh, will you? It strikes me, Mr. Tennant, that you are as far from understanding me as ever. If you don't put the money down upon that table at once I go to the police."
He straightened his hat. He began to button up his overcoat. He looked, and, it struck me, sounded as though he meant it. I hesitated. If the woman who hesitates is lost, so also is the man. I was lost before; I was lost again, because I hesitated. I was conscious that still the bold part was the better part; that I should be wise to go to the authorities and tell them the whole plain truth, although so tardily. I knew that this man was a mean bloodsucker; that he would spend my money, and then come to me for more and more, and, after all, would hang me if he could. But I dared not face the prospect of being handed, there and then, to the police; of being delivered by him into their clutches, with his evidence to hang me. I wanted to see my wife, my child, again. I wanted, if I could, to prepare them for the cloud which was about to burst in storm upon their heads. I wanted breathing space; time to look about me; to make ready. I wanted to postpone the falling of the hammer. So I gave him the hundred pounds which he demanded, bitterly conscious all the while of what a fool I was for giving it.
He would not take my cheque. Nothing would do for him but gold. I had to send a clerk to the bank to get it. He thrust the washleather bag in which it came, as it was, into his pocket. He was good enough to say that he would not insult me by counting it; he would treat me as one gentleman should always treat another. Then, with a triumphant grin, and an airy raising of his hat, he left me to enjoy my reflections--if I could.
I did not go home even when he had left me, though shortly afterwards I started to. As I was going along Throgmorton Street I met MacCulloch. He was jubilant. He had pulled off a big stake over some race or other--upon my word, I forget what. It was one which had been run that day. He asked me to have a small bottle with him. While we were having it three other fellows joined us. Then MacCulloch asked the lot of us to go and dine with him. I knew that I ought not to, but I didn't care. I seemed to care for nothing. The moral side of me seemed dead, or sleeping. I was aware that, instead of plunging into dissipation with MacCulloch and his friends, duty, not to speak of common sense, required that, without further loss of time, I should prepare Lucy for the worst. Instead of following the path of duty, I went to dine, and that without sending to Lucy a word of warning not to wait for me. When the usually good husband does misbehave himself, it strikes me that he is worse than the usually bad one. I speak from what seems to me to be the teachings of my own experience.
We went down, all of us, in two hansoms to the West End. I rode upon MacCulloch's knees. We began by playing billiards at some place in Jermyn Street. I know that I lost three pounds at pool. Then we dined in a private room at the Café Royal. I have not the faintest recollection of what we had for dinner, but I am under a strong impression that I ate and drank of whatever there was to eat and drink, and that of both there was too much. My digestion is my weak point. The plainest possible food is best for me, and only a little of that. I was unwell before the dinner was half way through. Still I kept pegging away. I never did know why. By the time it was over I was only fit for bed. But when I suggested that the next item on the programme should be a liver pill or a seidlitz-powder and then home, they wouldn't hear of it. Their idea of what was the proper thing for men in our situation was another couple of cabs and a music-hall.
I am not certain what music-hall it was. Something, I can scarcely say what, leads me to believe that it was one at which there was a ballet. So far as I was concerned, as soon as I was in my stall I fell asleep. They wouldn't let me sleep it out. Some one, I don't know who, woke me, as I understood the matter, because I snored. When sleeping my breathing is a trifle stertorous perhaps; at least, so Lucy has informed me more than once. Then we went for a turn in the promenade. So far as I am able to recollect, MacCulloch who, I suspect, in common with the other men, had been since dinner making further efforts to quench his thirst, wanted to introduce me to some one whom he didn't seem to know, and who certainly didn't seem to want to know me. I fancy Kenyan, one of the fellows who was with us, trod upon somebody else's toes, or somebody else trod upon his. At any rate there was an argument, which in an extraordinarily short time began to be punctuated by blows. Some one hit me, I don't know who, and I hit some one--I am disposed to think MacCulloch, because his back was turned to me, and he happened to be nearest. Then there was a row. The next thing I can remember was finding myself on the pavement in the street--sitting down on it, if I do not err. They did not lock us up; personally, I should rather have preferred their doing so; it would have relieved me of a feeling of responsibility. Having, I believe, helped me up, MacCulloch, slipping his arm through mine, suggested that we should go upon the spree. I did not, and do not, know what he meant, nor what he supposed we had been doing up to then. Anyhow, I strenuously objected. I insisted upon a cab and home. He, or some one else, put me into one, and off I went.
The presumption is that directly the cabman started I fell asleep. When I awoke I found him bending over me, pulling at the collar of my coat.
"Now then, sir, wake up; this is Hackney."
I stared at him. I did not understand. "Hackney! What do you mean?"
"The gentleman told me to drive you to Hackney, and this is Mare Street. What part of Hackney do you want?"
I supposed the man was joking. I had never been to Hackney in my life. I did not even know, exactly, in what part of town it was situated. My house is in West Kensington. Why he imagined that I wished to pay a first visit to Hackney at that hour of the night I was at a loss to understand. I told him so. In return, his bearing approached to insolence. He wanted to know if I was having a lark with him. I, on my side, wanted to know if he was having a lark with me. He declared that the gentleman who had put me into the cab had instructed him to drive me to Hackney. Then it dawned on me that MacCulloch, or his friends, might have been having a little joke at my expense, and not the cabman.
When I desired to be taken to West Kensington in the shortest possible space of time, Jehu did not altogether appear to see it. He observed that his horse was tired, that he ought to have been in the stable before now, and that the stable was on the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge. We compromised. He was to drive me to the Strand. When there, I was to find another cab to take me the remainder of the distance. When we did reach the Strand the man demanded a most extortionate sum for his fare. But, as I did not feel in a fit frame of mind to conduct another heated argument, I gave him what he asked, none the less conscious that I was enjoying myself in a most expensive kind of way, as I was aware that Lucy, if she ever came to hear of it, would think.
I was wide awake during the remainder of my journey. Having found another cab, I made a point of seeing that its driver did not go wrong. I did not want this time to find myself, say, at New Cross or Hampstead Heath. When he drew up in front of my house--at last!--I was looking forward, with a morbid sense of expectation and a bad headache, to the sort of greeting I might expect to receive inside. But--I repeat it--I was wide awake.
Directly the cab stopped, I got out. As I stepped upon the pavement, something came at me, through the darkness--a woman. It was a dark night--it all happened very suddenly. The details of the figure and the costume I could not, or at least I did not, make out. That I own. But about the face I have not the slightest doubt. I saw it as plainly as ever I saw a face in my life. It looked at me with wide, staring eyes. There was a look in them which I had never seen before. The lips were parted--I saw that the teeth were clenched. It was very white, and it struck me, just in the moment during which I saw it, as looking strangely white.
But it was none of these things which made my heart stand still, which made me, with a gasp of horror, reel backwards against the cab. I cared nothing for what the face looked like. What I did care for was that I should have seen that face at all. That it should have come to me, like an accusing spirit, all in an instant, out of the darkness of the night. For it was the face of the woman whom, like a coward, I had left lying dead on the Brighton line. It was the face of Ellen Howth.
"He will be all right now."
The voice seemed to come to me out of the land of dreams. I seemed to be in a dream myself. What I saw, I seemed to see in a dream. It was some moments before I realised that the man bending over me was Ferguson, our doctor; that I was lying undressed in bed; that my wife was standing by the doctor's side. When I did realise it, I sat up with a start.
"What's the matter?" I asked. "Have I been ill?"
It struck me that, as he replied to my question with another, the doctor's eyes were twinkling behind his glasses.
"How are you feeling?"
I felt, now that I was once more conscious of any sort of feeling, very far from well. My head was splitting. Everything was dancing before my eyes. I sank back on my pillow with a groan. The doctor laid his hand upon my brow. It felt beautifully soft and cool. He said something to my wife; then he went. Lucy went with him, I presume, to see him out.
Presently my wife returned. She did not even glance at me as she passed. Going straight to the other side of the room, she began busying herself with something on the dressing-table. I might not have been there for all the notice she took of me. I could not make her demeanour out at all. Indeed, the whole proceedings were mysterious to me. She was wont to be so solicitous when I was ill.
"What's the time?" I asked.
"Half-past four."
That was all she said. She never turned her head to say that. The silence became oppressive. "How long have I been lying here?"
"It's an hour since the cabman rang the bell."
"The cabman?" It all came back to me with a rush. The appearance of the apparition--the face I had seen gleaming at me through the darkness; the sudden blank which followed. I half rose in bed. "Has she gone?" I cried.
Then Lucy did turn round. Words came from between her lips as if they were icicles.
"Mr. Tennant, to whom are you alluding as 'she'? Have you not yet grasped the fact that you are in the presence of your wife?"
Then I perceived that I was misunderstood. I lay down again. Seldom had I felt so ill. I closed my eyes; even then I saw things dancing about. This unkindness of Lucy's was the final straw. I could have cried.
"My dear, why do you speak to me like that? What has happened?"
"I will tell you what has happened. I can quite understand how it is you do not know. You came home, Mr. Tennant, in such a condition that when you got out of the cab which brought you, you could not stand. Had the cabman not been a good Samaritan you might have lain in the gutter till the milkman came. If the milkman had found you it would, of course, have been pleasant both for your wife and family. I thought you were dead. I sent for Dr. Ferguson; but, when he came, he informed me that you were only"--what a stress she laid upon the adverb!--"drunk."
I knew that she misjudged me--that she had not even an inkling of the situation I was in. But at that moment I could not even hint at it. She went on--
"I don't know, Mr. Tennant, how much money you went out with. You have come back with 1s. 3d. in your pockets."
That "Good Samaritan" of a cabman must have robbed me. I felt sure that I had more than 1s. 3d. when I got into his cab.
"You have broken your watch; you have spoiled your clothes, and you appear to have either given away or lost your hat. The cabman said that you were not wearing one when you engaged him."
That I could hardly believe. What could I have done with it? It seemed incredible that I could have driven to Hackney and back without a hat.
"I may add that, if you take my advice, at the earliest possible moment you will have a bath." She moved towards the door. "I am going to try to get some sleep in the spare room."
I could not bear to think of her leaving me like that. I called to her, "Lucy."
"Well?"
"You are hard on me. I have been dining with MacCulloch."
"I don't know who MacCulloch may be, but next time you dine with him if you give me warning I will keep a doctor waiting on the premises ready for your return."
"Lucy! You would not speak to me like that if you knew all. I am in great trouble."
Her tone changed on the instant. She came towards the bed.
"Tom! What do you mean!"
"I know that I have been a fool, and worse. Even you don't know how great a fool I have been. To-night I have been trying to drown thought."
She knelt on the floor beside the bed, stretching out her hands to me across the coverlet.
"Tom! You're not playing with me, as they say some husbands do play with their wives? Tell me what you mean?"
I found this tone harder to bear than the other. A shudder went all over me. I closed my eyes. What did I mean? How could I tell her? My throat went dry and husky--a condition which was not owing to the potations of the night.
"I've been a good husband to you, haven't I? I've tried to be."
"My darling, you've been the best husband in the world. That's what makes this seem so strange." She alluded to the events of the night. "Why have you been so silly?" Putting her arms about my neck, she drew me towards her.
"You have no conception how silly I have been."
She laid her cool cheek against my fevered one. "Tell me all about it. Is it money?"
"Money would be nothing."
Her voice sank. "What is it?"
"It is something which happened last night."
I felt her shiver. "I knew it. I felt there was something wrong when you came in, although you would not own there was."
"I was afraid to tell you."
She drew closer to me. Again her voice dropped to a whisper. "What was it, Tom?"
"It was something which happened in the train." I paused. My tongue seemed to stick in my throat. "When we left Brighton a woman got into my carriage."
"A woman?" She withdrew herself a little. Then I felt that I could not tell her who the woman was; at least, not then.
"She had been drinking. At least, so I suppose. As soon as the train started she began to quarrel."
"To quarrel?"
"Yes. I was afraid there would be a row. You know the express does not stop between London and Brighton. I did not know whether to pull the alarm-bell or not. I made up my mind to try to leave my carriage and get into the next."
"Do you mean while the train was moving?"
"Yes. I thought it better to run the risk than to stop the train, and have a scene, and, possibly, a scandal. One never knows what may come of being mixed up in that sort of thing with a woman."
"Well?"
"She tried to stop me leaving the carriage, and in trying she fell out."
"Tom!" Taking her cheek away from mine, Lucy looked me in the face. "Fell out?"
"Yes."
"While the train was moving?"
I nodded.
"How awful! She might have been hurt! What did you do?"
"That's where my folly began. I did nothing."
She continued to stare at me, evidently not comprehending. My task was getting more and more difficult. After all, I almost wished that I had not begun it.
"It was all so sudden, and I was so bewildered that I lost my head."
"Then don't you know what became of her?"
"I did not know till the evening papers appeared. She was killed."
"Killed!" Lucy's arms were still about my neck. I felt them give a convulsive twitch. "What did you do when you knew she was killed?"
"Went with MacCulloch to dine. You see, it seems that the body was found on the line. They appear to have jumped to the conclusion that there has been murder done. It struck me that if I went and told my story the odds were that I should be arrested as her murderer. I had not the courage to face the situation, and so by way of a compromise I went with MacCulloch to dine."
Lucy removed her arms from about my neck. She put her hand to her forehead as if perplexed.
"Tell me, plainly, just what happened. How did she fall out? Was there a scuffle?"
"In a sense there was. To prevent my leaving the carriage she took me by the shoulder. In trying to maintain her hold she got her back to the open door. She must have stepped backwards before either of us realised how near to the open door she really was, because, before I had the faintest suspicion of what had happened or was about to happen, she had disappeared."
There was silence. I did not feel equal to meeting Lucy's eyes, but I felt they were on my face. At last she spoke.
"I see. No wonder I saw that something had happened. No wonder that you found it difficult to tell me what it was." Rising to her feet, she went to the fireplace. Leaning her elbow on the mantelshelf, she stood in such a position that her face was turned away from me. "Is there any probability of their being able to connect the affair with you?"
"Given certain conditions, there is an absolute certainty. To my shame be it said, that is really the reason why I went with MacCulloch to dine."
Then I told her about the fellow who had been in the adjoining compartment. How he had forced himself upon me at Victoria; how he claimed to have overheard all that had taken place; how he had arrived at his own conclusions; how he had levied on me blackmail. Lucy listened quietly, putting a question now and then, but never looking at me all the time.
"And am I to understand that this person believes that you committed murder, and is prepared to go into the witness-box and swear it?"
It was not only the question, it was, more than anything, the way in which she asked it, which made me shiver.
"The fellow is a scoundrel."
"Is that why you gave him the hundred pounds? If he is such a scoundrel as you say, why did you not show him the door, and defy him to do his worst?"
The calmness with which she spoke made me writhe. My tone became dogged.
"I have no excuse to offer. I was, and am, quite conscious of my folly."
"I don't wish to say anything unkind to you; I quite realise how you stand in need of all the kindness one can show you; but I don't at all understand your story as you tell it. Why did you quarrel with this woman?"
"I did not quarrel with her; she quarrelled with me."
"But it takes two to make a quarrel. Why did she quarrel with you?"
"I tell you, she had been drinking."
"But, even then, what did she say to you, or what did you say to her, which could have caused such a disturbance? Because, I can see, from your own statements, that both of you had lost your tempers."
I was silent. I knew not what to answer.
"I suppose that the woman was a stranger to you--that you had never seen her before?"
What could I say? I felt that if I did not tell the truth then it would come out afterwards. Better, while I was about it, make a clean breast of everything.
And yet I found it hard. Lucy's ideas are narrow. She has her own views of things, and strong views some of them are. She thinks, for instance, that there ought to be the same standard for a man as for a woman: the same moral standard--that a man ought to come to his wife with clean hands, in the same sense in which a woman ought to come with clean hands to her husband. I am afraid that I had been rather in the habit of finding favour in her eyes by endorsing her opinions. It seemed hard that the only real peccadillo of which I had been guilty should be cropping up against me after all this lapse of time. I had repented of it, and put it behind me, long ago; and yet here it was, as fresh and vigorous as ever, rising to confront me from its tomb.
Lucy seemed struck by my continued silence. She repeated her question in an altered form. "Had you seen her before?"
"Many years ago."
"Many years ago? You knew her, then?"
"I used to know her, to my sorrow, once upon a time, long before I knew you, my dear."
The final words were intended as a sort of propitiation--I saw that she was getting roused at last--but they failed in their effect. She stood straight up, facing me, her fists clenched at her sides.
"Who was she? What was her name?"
"Her name was Ellen Howth. I assure you, my dear, that there is no necessity for you to get warm. I have heard and seen nothing of her since I married you. Indeed, these many years I have thought she was dead."
"Why did you think she was dead? What did it matter to you if she was dead or alive? What did you know of her?"
"Really nothing, I am afraid, to her advantage."
"What do you mean? Tell me the truth, Tom, if you have never told me it before. What was she to you?"
"She was nothing to me. My dear, she was a person of indifferent character."
"Do you mean----" She paused. She came close to the bed. She leant over me. "Was she----"
I knew what she meant too well. My heart and my voice sank as I replied. I did not know how she would take it.
"I'm afraid that she was."
She stood straight up. She drew a long breath. She looked down at me. When she spoke her voice trembled--half with passion, half with scorn.
"I see! Now I understand your story very well, and just what happened in the train. And you are the man who has always held himself up to me as different to other men--as a model of what a man should be. And all the time you have had this story in your life; and how many more besides?"
"You are very hard on me, my dear. I assure you, this is the only one."
"So you tell me now. Not long ago you told me there was not one."
"I have always meant to tell you all about it."
"Indeed? Then how skilfully you have concealed your meaning! I suppose that, like other men, when you wearied of your light-o'-love you cast her from you. Years afterwards she meets you in the train. She takes advantage of the opportunity--probably the first opportunity which has offered--to tell you what she thinks of you. Your coward conscience plays you such tricks that you try to flee from her, even at the peril of your life. She will not let you off so easily, so you threw her from the train."
"I did not. I never laid a hand on her. So far as I was concerned, it was pure accident. I swear it."
"Whether that is true or not can only be known to your God, and you."
Lucy turned on her heels. Without another word she left the room.