44
Verrinder wanted to be merciful and avoid any more climaxes.
“You see it’s all up, Sir Joseph, don’t you?” he said.
Sir Joseph drew himself again as high as he could, though the burden of his flesh kept pulling him down. He did not answer.
“Come now, Sir Joseph, be a sport.”
“The Englishman’s releechion,” sneered Sir Joseph, “to be einSportmann.”
“Oh, I know you can’t understand it,” said Verrinder. “It seems to be untranslatable into German––just as we can’t seem to understandGermanityexcept that it is the antonym ofhumanity. You fellows have no boyhood literature, I am told, no Henty or Hughes or Scott to fill you with ideas of fair play. You have no games to teach you. One really can’t blame you for being such rotters, any more than one can blame a Kaffir for not understanding cricket.
“But sport aside, use your intelligence, old man.I’ve laid my cards on the table––enough of them, at least. We’ve trumped every trick, and we’ve all the trumps outstanding. You have a few high cards up your sleeve. Why not toss them on the table and throw yourselves on the mercy of his Majesty?”
The presence of Marie Louise drove the old couple to a last battle for her faith. Lady Webling stormed, “All what you accuse us is lies, lies!”
Verrinder grew stern:
“Lies, you say? We have you, and your daughter––also Nicky. We have––well, I’ll not annoy you with their names. Over in the States they have a lot more of you fellows.
“You and Sir Joseph have lived in this country for years and years. You have grown fat––I mean to say rich––upon our bounty. We have loved and trusted you. His Majesty has given you both marks of his most gracious favor.”
“We paid well for that,” sneered Lady Webling.
“Yes, I fancy you did––but with English pounds and pence that you gained with the help of British wits and British freedom. You have contributed to charities, yes, and handsomely, too, but not entirely without the sweet usages of advertisement. You have not hidden that part of your bookkeeping from the public.
45
“But the rest of your books––you don’t show those. We know a ghastly lot about them, and it is not pretty, my dear lady. I had hoped you would not force us to publish those transactions. You have plotted the destruction of the British Empire; you have conspired to destroy ships in dock and at sea; you have sent God knows how many lads to their death––and women and children, too. You have helped to blow up munitions-plants, and on your white heads is the blood of many and many a poor wretch torn to pieces at his lathe. You have made widows of women and orphans of children who never heard of you, nor you of them. Nor have you cared––or dared––to inquire.
“Sir Joseph has been perfecting a great scheme to buy up what munitions-plants he could in this country in order to commit sabotage and slow up the production of the ammunition our troops are crying for. He has plotted with others to send defective shells that will rip up the guns they do not fit, and powders that will explode too soon or not at all. God! to think that the lives of our brave men and the life of our Empire should be threatened by such people as you!
“And in the American field Sir Joseph has connived with a syndicate to purchase factories, to stop production at the source, since your U-boats and your red-handed diplomatic spies cannot stop it otherwise. Your agents have corrupted a few of the Yankees, and killed others, and would have killed more if the name of your people had not become such a horror even in that land where millions of Germans live that every proffer is suspect.
“You see, we know you, Lady Webling and Sir Joseph. We have watched you all the while from the very first, and we know that you are not innocent even of complicity in the supreme infamy of luring theLusitaniato her death.”
He was quivering with the rush of his emotions over the broken dam of habitual reticence.
Lady Webling and Sir Joseph had quivered, too, less under the impact of his denunciation than in the confusion of their own exposure to themselves and to Marie Louise.
They had watched her eyes as she heard Mr. Verrinder’s philippic. They had seen her pass from incredulity to belief. They had seen her glance at them and glance away in fear of them.
46
This broke them utterly, for she was utterly dear to them. She was dearer than their own flesh and blood. She had replaced their dead. She had been born to them without pain, without infancy, born full grown in the prime of youth and beauty. They had watched her love grow to a passion, and their own had grown with it.
What would she do now? She was the judge they feared above England. They awaited her sentence.
Her eyes wandered to them and searched them through. At first, under the spell of Verrinder’s denunciation, she saw them as two bloated fiends, their hands dripping blood, their lips framed to lies, their brains to cunning and that synonym for Germanism,ruthlessness––the word the Germans chose, as their Kaiser chose Huns for an ideal.
But she looked again. She saw the pleading in their eyes. Their very uncomeliness besought her mercy. After all, she had seen none of the things Verrinder described. The only real things to her, the only things she knew of her own knowledge, were the goodnesses of these two. They were her parents. And now for the first time they needed her. The mortgage their generosity had imposed on her had fallen due.
How could she at the first unsupported obloquy of a stranger turn against them? Her first loyalty was due to them, and no other loyalty was under test. Something swept her to her feet. She ran to them and, as far as she could, gathered them into her arms. They wept like two children whom reproaches have hardened into defiance, but whom kindness has melted.
Verrinder watched the spectacle with some surprise and not altogether with scorn. Whatever else Miss Webling was, she was a good sport. She stuck to her team in defeat.
He said, not quite harshly, “So, Miss Webling, you cast your lot with them.”
“I do.”
“Do you believe that what I said was true?”
“No.”
“Really, you should be careful. Those messages you carried incriminate you.”
“I suppose they do, though I never knew what was in them. No, I’ll take that back. I’m not trying to crawl out of it.”
47
“Then since you confess so much, I shall have to ask you to come with them.”
“To the––the Tower of London?”
“The car is ready.”
Marie Louise was stabbed with fright. She seized the doomed twain in a faster embrace.
“What are you going to do with these poor souls?”
“Their souls my dear Miss Webling, are outside our jurisdiction.”
“With their poor bodies, then?”
“I am not a judge or a jury, Miss Webling. Everything will be done with propriety. They will not be torpedoed in midocean without warning. They will have the full advantage of the British law to the last.”
That awful word jarred them all. But Sir Joseph was determined to make a good end. He drew himself up with another effort.
“Excuse, pleass, Mr. Verrinder––might it be we should take with us a few little things?”
“Of course.”
“Thang gyou.” He bowed and turned to go, taking his wife and Marie Louise by the arm, for mutual support.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll come along,” said Mr. Verrinder.
Sir Joseph nodded. The three went heavily up the grandiose stairway as if a gibbet waited at the top. They went into Sir Joseph’s room, which adjoined that of his wife. Mr. Verrinder paused on the sill somewhat shyly:
“This is a most unpleasant task, but––”
Marie Louise hesitated, smiling gruesomely.
“My room is across the hall. You can hardly be in both places at once, can you?”
“I fancy I can trust you––especially as the house is surrounded. If you don’t mind joining us later.”
Marie Louise went to her room. Her maid was there in a palsy of fear. The servants had not dared apply themselves to the keyholes, but they knew that the master was visited by the police and that a cordon was drawn about the house.
The ashen girl offered her help to Marie Louise, wondering if she would compromise herself with the law, but incapable of deserting so good a mistress even at such a crisis. Marie Louise thanked her and told her to go to bed, compelled her48to leave. Then she set about the dreary task of selecting a few necessaries––a nightgown, an extra day gown, some linen, some silver, and a few brushes. She felt as if she were laying out her own grave-clothes, and that she would need little and not need that little long.
She threw a good-by look, a long, sweeping, caressing glance, about her castle, and went across the hall, lugging her hand-bag. Before she entered Sir Joseph’s room she knocked.
It was Mr. Verrinder that answered, “Come in.”
He was seated in a chair, dejected and making himself as inoffensive as possible. Lady Webling had packed her own bag and was helping the helpless Sir Joseph find the things he was looking for in vain, though they were right before him. Marie Louise saw evidences that a larger packing had already been done. Verrinder had surprised them, about to flee.
Sir Joseph was ready at last. He was closing his bag when he took a last glance, and said:
“My toot’-brush and powder.”
He went to his bathroom cabinet, and there he saw in the little apothecary-shop a bottle of tablets prescribed for him during his illness. It was conspicuously labeled “Poison.”
He stood staring at the bottle so long in such fascination that Lady Webling came to the door to say:
“Vat is it you could not find now, papa?”
She leaned against the edge of the casement, and he pointed to the bottle. Their eyes met, and in one long look they passed through a brief Gethsemane. No words were exchanged. She nodded. He took the bottle from the shelf stealthily, unscrewed the top, poured out a heap of tablets and gave them to her, then poured another heap into his fat palm.
“Prosit!” he said, and they flung the venom into their throats. It was brackish merely from the coating, but they could not swallow all the pellets. He filled a glass of water at the faucet and handed it to his wife. She quaffed enough to get the pellets down her resisting throat, and handed the glass to him.
They remained staring at each other, trying to crowd into their eyes an infinity of strange passionate messages, though their features were all awry with nausea and the premonition of lethal pains.
49
Verrinder began to wonder at their delay. He was about to rise. Marie Louise went to the door anxiously. Sir Joseph mumbled:
“Look once, my darlink. I find some bong-bongs. Vould you like, yes?”
With a childish canniness he held the bottle so that she could see the skull and cross-bones and the word beneath.
Marie Louise, not realizing that they had already set out on the adventure, gave a stifled cry and snatched at the bottle. It fell to the floor with a crash, and the tablets leaped here and there like tiny white beetles. Some of them ran out into the room and caught Verrinder’s eye.
Before he could reach the door Sir Joseph had said, triumphantly, to Marie Louise:
“Mamma and I did eat already. Too bad you do not come vit.Adé, Töchterchen. Lebewohl!”
He was reaching his awkward arms out to clasp her when Verrinder burst into the homely scene of their tragedy. He caught up the broken bottle and saw the word “Poison.” Beneath were the directions, but no word of description, no mention of the antidote.
“What is this stuff?” Verrinder demanded, in a frenzy of dread and wrath and self-reproach.
“I don’t know,” Marie Louise stammered.
Verrinder repeated his demand of Sir Joseph.
“Weiss nit,” he mumbled, beginning to stagger as the serpent struck its fangs into his vitals.
Verrinder ran out into the hall and shouted down the stairs:
“Bickford, telephone for a doctor, in God’s name––the nearest one. Send out to the nearest chemist and fetch him on the run––with every antidote he has. Send somebody down to the kitchen for warm water, mustard, coffee.”
There was a panic below, but Marie Louise knew nothing except the swirling tempest of her own horror. Sir Joseph and Lady Webling, blind with torment, wrung and wrenched with spasms of destruction, groped for each other’s hands and felt their way through clouds of fire to a resting-place.
Marie Louise could give them no help, but a little guidance toward the bed. They fell upon it––and after a hideous while they died.
50CHAPTER VI
The physician arrived too late––physicians were hard to get for civilians. While he was being hunted down and brought in, Verrinder fought an unknown poison with what antidotes he could improvise, and saw that they merely added annoyance to agony.
His own failure had been unnerving. He had pursued this eminent couple for months, trying in vain to confirm suspicion by proof and strengthen assurance with evidence, and always delaying the blow in the hope of gathering in still more of Germany’s agents. At last he had thrown the slowly woven net about the Weblings and revealed them to themselves as prisoners of his cunning. Then their souls slipped out through the meshes, leaving their useless empty bodies in his care, their bodies and the soul and body of the young woman who was involved in their guilt.
Verrinder did not relish the story the papers would make of it. So he and the physician devised a statement for the press to the effect that the Weblings died of something they had eaten. The stomach of Europe was all deranged, and Sir Joseph had been famous for his dinners; there was a kind of ironic logic in his epitaph.
Verrinder left the physician to fabricate and promulgate the story and keep him out of it. Then he addressed himself to the remaining prisoner, Miss Marie Louise Webling.
He had no desire to display this minnow as his captive after the whales had got away, but he hoped to find her useful in solving some of the questions the Weblings had left unanswered when they bolted into eternity. Besides, he had no intention of letting Marie Louise escape to warn the other conspirators and to continue her nefarious activities.
His first difficulty was not one of frightening Miss Webling into submission, but of soothing her into coherence. She had loved the old couple with a filial passion, and the sight51of their last throes had driven her into a frenzy of grief. She needed the doctor’s care before Verrinder could talk to her at all. The answers he elicited from her hysteria were full of contradiction, of evident ignorance, of inaccuracy, of folly. But so he had found all human testimony; for these three things are impossible to mankind: to see the truth, to remember it, and to tell it.
When first Marie Louise came out of the avalanche of her woes, it was she who began the questioning. She went up and down the room disheveled, tear-smirched, wringing her hands and beating her breast till it hurt Verrinder to watch her brutality to that tender flesh.
“What––what does it mean?” she sobbed. “What have you done to my poor papa and mamma? Why did you come here?”
“Surely you must know.”
“What do I know? Only that they were good sweet people.”
“Good sweet spies!”
“Spies! Those poor old darlings?”
“Oh, I say––really, now, you surely can’t have the face, the insolence, to––”
“I haven’t any insolence. I haven’t anything but a broken heart.”
“How many hearts were broken––how many hearts were stopped, do you suppose, because of your work?”
“My what?”
“I refer to the lives that you destroyed.”
“I––I destroyed lives? Which one of us is going mad?”
“Oh, come, now, you knew what you were doing. You were glad and proud for every poor fellow you killed.”
“It’s you, then, that are mad.” She stared at him in utter fear. She made a dash for the door. He prevented her. She fell back and looked to the window. He took her by the arm and twisted her into a chair. He had seen hysteria quelled by severity. He stood over her and spoke with all the sternness of his stern soul.
“You will gain nothing by trying to make a fool of me. You carried messages for those people. The last messages you took you delivered to one of our agents.”
Her soul refused her even self-defense. She could only stammer the fact, hardly believing it as she put it forth:
52
“I didn’t know what was in the letters. I never knew.”
Verrinder was disgusted by such puerile defense:
“What did you think was in them, then?”
“I had no idea. Papa––Sir Joseph didn’t take me into his confidence.”
“But you knew that they were secret.”
“He told me that they were––that they were business messages––secret financial transactions.”
“Transactions in British lives––oh, they were that! And you knew it.”
“I did not know it! I did not know it! I did not know it!”
She realized too late that the strength of the retort suffered by its repetition. It became nonsense on the third iterance. She grew afraid even to defend herself.
Seeing how frightened she was at bay, Mr. Verrinder forebore to drive her to distraction.
“Very well, you did not know what the messages contained. But why did you consent to such sneaking methods? Why did you let them use you for such evident deceit?”
“I was glad to be of use to them. They had been so good to me for so long. I was used to doing as I was told. I suppose it was gratitude.”
It was then that Mr. Verrinder delivered himself of his bitter opinion of gratitude, which has usually been so well spoken of and so rarely berated for excess.
“Gratitude is one of the evils of the world. I fancy that few other emotions have done more harm. In moderation it has its uses, but in excess it becomes vicious. It is a form of voluntary servitude; it absolutely destroys all respect for public law; it is the foundation of tyrannies; it is the secret of political corruption; it is the thing that holds dynasties together, family despotism; it is soul-mortgage, bribery. It is a monster of what the Americans call graft. It is chloroform to the conscience, to patriotism, to every sense of public duty. ‘Scratch my back, and I am your slave’––that’s gratitude.”
Mr. Verrinder rarely spoke at such length or with such apothegm.
Marie Louise was a little more dazed than ever to hear gratitude denounced. She was losing all her bearings. Next he demanded:
53
“But admitting that you were duped by your gratitude, how did it happen that your curiosity never led you to inquire into the nature of those messages?”
“I respected Sir Joseph beyond all people. I supposed that what he did was right. I never knew it not to be. And then––well, if, I did wonder a little once in a while, I thought I’d better mind my own business.”
Verrinder had his opinion of this, too. “Minding your own business! That’s another of those poisonous virtues. Minding your own business leads to pacifism, malevolent neutrality, selfishness of every sort. It’s death to charity and public spirit. Suppose the Good Samaritan had minded his own business! But–– Well, this is getting us no forwarder with you. You carried those messages, and never felt even a woman’s curiosity about them! You met Nicky Easton often, and never noted his German accent, never suspected that he was not the Englishman he pretended to be. Is that true?”
He saw by the wild look in her eyes and their escape from his own that he had scored a hit. He did not insist upon her acknowledging it.
“And your only motive was gratitude?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You never asked any pay for it?”
“No, sir.”
“You never received anything for it?”
“No, sir.”
“We find the record of a transfer to you of securities for some twenty thousand pounds. Why was that given you?”
“It––it was just out of generosity. Sir Joseph said he was afraid I might be––that his will might be broken, and––”
“Ah! you discussed his will with him, then?”
She was horrified at his implication. She cried, “Oh, I begged him not to, but he insisted.”
“He said there were other heirs and they might contest his will. Did he mention the heirs?”
“No, sir. I don’t think so. I don’t remember that he did.”
“He did not by any chance refer to the other grandparents of the two children? Mr. and Mrs. Oakby, the father and mother of the father of Victor and Bettina?”
54
“He didn’t refer to them, I’m sure. Yes, I am quite sure.”
“Did he say that his money would be left in trust for his grandchildren?”
“No.”
“And he gave you twenty thousand pounds just out of generosity?”
“Yes. Yes, Mr. Verrinder.”
“It was a fairish amount of money for messenger fees, wasn’t it? And it came to you while you were carrying those letters to Nicky?”
“No! Sir Joseph had been ill. He had had a stroke of paralysis.”
“And you were afraid he might have another?”
“No!”
“You were not afraid of that?”
“Yes, of course I was, but–– What are you trying to make me say––that I went to him and demanded the money?”
“That idea occurs to you, does it?”
She writhed with disgust at the suggestion. Yet it had a clammy plausibility. Mr. Verrinder went on:
“These messages, you say, concerned a financial transaction?”
“So papa told me.”
“And you believed him?”
“Naturally.”
“You never doubted him?”
All the tortures of doubt that had assailed her recurred to her now and paralyzed her power to utter the ringing denial that was needed. He went on:
“Didn’t it strike you as odd that Sir Joseph should be willing to pay you twenty thousand pounds just to carry messages concerning some mythical business?”
She did not answer. She was afraid to commit herself to anything. Every answer was a trap. Verrinder went on: “Twenty thousand pounds is a ten-per-centum commission on two hundred thousand pounds. That was rather a largish transaction to be carried on through secret letters, eh? Nicky Easton was not a millionaire, was he? Now I ask you, should you think of him as a Rothschild? Or was he, do you think, acting as agent for some one else, perhaps, and if so, for whom?”
55
She answered none of these. They were based on the assumption that she had put forward herself. She could find nothing to excuse her. Verrinder was simply playing tag with her. As soon as he touched her he ran away and came at her from another direction.
“Of course, we know that you were only the adopted daughter of Sir Joseph. But where did you first meet him?”
“In Berlin.”
The sound of that word startled her. That German name stood for all the evils of the time. It was the inaccessible throne of hell.
Verrinder was startled by it, too.
“In Berlin!” he exclaimed, and nodded his head. “Now we are getting somewhere. Would you mind telling me the circumstances?”
She blushed a furious scarlet.
“I––I’d rather not.”
“I must insist.”
“Please send me to the Tower and have me imprisoned for life. I’d rather be there than here. Or better yet––have me shot. It would make me happier than anything you could do.”
“I’m afraid that your happiness is not the main object of the moment. Will you be so good as to tell me how you met Sir Joseph in––in Berlin.”
Marie Louise drew a deep breath. The past that she had tried to smother under a new life must be confessed at such a time of all times!
“Well, you know that Sir Joseph had a daughter; the two children up-stairs are hers, and––and what’s to become of them, in Heaven’s name?”
“One problem at a time, if you don’t mind. Sir Joseph had a daughter. That would be Mrs. Oakby.”
“Yes. Her husband died before her second baby was born, and she died soon after. And Sir Joseph and Lady Webling mourned for her bitterly, and––well, a year or so later they were traveling on the Continent––in Germany, they were, and one night they went to the Winter Garten in Berlin––the big music-hall, you know. Well, they were sitting far back, and an American team of musicians came on––the Musical Mokes, we were called.”
56
“We?”
She bent her head in shame. “I was one of them. I played a xylophone and a saxophone and an accordion––all sorts of things. Well, Lady Webling gave a little gasp when she saw me, and she looked at Sir Joseph––so she told me afterward––and then they got up and stole ’way up front just as I left the stage––to make a quick change, you know. I came back––in tights, playing a big trombone, prancing round and making an awful noise. Lady Webling gave a little scream; nobody heard her because I made a loud blat on the trombone in the ear of the black-face clown, and he gave a shriek and did a funny fall, and––”
“But, pardon me––why did Lady Webling scream?”
“Because I looked like her dead daughter. It was so horrible to see her child come out of the grave in––in tights, blatting a trombone at a clown in that big variety theater.”
“I can quite understand. And then––”
“Well, Sir Joseph came round to the stage door and sent in his card. The man who brought it grinned and told everybody an old man was smitten on me; and Ben, the black-face man, said, ‘I’ll break his face,’ but I said I wouldn’t see him.
“Well, when I was dressed and leaving the theater with the black-face man, you know, Sir Joseph was outside. He stopped me and said: ‘My child! My child!’ and the tears ran down his face. I stopped, of course, and said, ‘What’s the matter now?’ And he said, ‘Would you come with me?’ and I said, ‘Not in a thousand years, old Creepo Christmas!’ And he said: ‘My poor wife is in the carriage at the curb. She wants to speak to you.’ And then of course I had to go, and she reached out and dragged me in and wept all over me. I thought they were both crazy, but finally they explained, and they asked me to go to their hotel with them. So I told Ben to be on his way, and I went.
“Well, they asked me a lot of questions, and I told them a little––not everything, but enough, Heaven knows. And they begged me to be their daughter. I thought it would be pretty stupid, but they said they couldn’t stand the thought of their child’s image going about as I was, and I wasn’t so stuck on the job myself––odd, how the old language comes back, isn’t it? I haven’t heard any of it for57so long I’d almost forgotten it.” She passed her handkerchief across her lips as if to rub away a bad taste. It left the taste of tears. She sighed: “Well, they adopted me, and I learned to love them. And––and that’s all.”
“And you learned to love their native country, too, I fancy.”
“At first I did like Germany pretty well. They were crazy about us in Berlin. I got my first big money and notices and attention there. You can imagine it went to my head. But then I came to England and tried to be as English as I could, so as not to be conspicuous. I never wanted to be conspicuous off the stage––or on it, for that matter. I even took lessons from the man who had the sign up, you remember, ‘Americans taught to speak English!’ I always had a gift for foreign languages, and I got to thinking in English, too.”
“One moment, please. Did you say ‘Americans taught?’ Americans?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not American?”
“Why, of course!”
“Damned stupid of me!”
Verrinder frowned. This complicated matters. He had cornered her, only to have her abscond into neutral territory. He had known that Marie Louise was an adopted child, but had not suspected her Americanism. This required a bit of thinking. While he studied it in the back room of his brain his forehead self was saying:
“So Sir Joseph befriended you, and that was what won your amazing, unquestioning gratitude?”
“That and a thousand thousand little kindnesses. I loved them like mother and father.”
“But your own––er––mother and father––you must have had parents of your own––what was their nationality?”
“Oh, they were, as we say, ‘Americans from ’way back.’ But my father left my mother soon after I was born. We weren’t much good, I guess. It was when I was a baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I got my runaway nature from him. But I’ve outgrown that. Anyway, he left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother was a seamstress in a little town out West––an awful hole it was. I was a tiny little girl when they took me to58my mother’s funeral. I remember that, but I can’t remember her. That was my first death. And now this! I’ve lost a mother and father twice. That hasn’t happened to many people. So you must forgive me for being so crazy. So many of my loved are dead. It’s frightful. We lose so many as we grow up. Life is like walking through a graveyard, with the sextons always busy opening new places. There was so much crying and loneliness before, and now this war goes on and on––as if we needed a war!”
“God knows, we don’t.”
Marie Louise went to the window and raised the curtain. A haggard gray light had been piping the edges of the shade. Now the full casement let in a flood of warm morning radiance.
The dull street was alive again. Sparrows were hopping. Wagons were on the move. Small and early tradesfolk were about their business. Servants were opening houses as shops were being opened in town.
The big wheel had rolled London round into the eternal day. Doors and windows were being flung ajar. Newspapers and milk were taken in, ashes put out, cats and dogs released, front stoops washed, walks swept, gardens watered. Brooms were pendulating. In the masters’ rooms it was still night and slumber-time, but humble people were alert.
The morning after a death is a fearful thing. Those papers on the steps across the way were doubtless loaded with more tragedies from the front, and among the cruel facts was the lie that concealed the truth about the Weblings, who were to read no more morning papers, eat no more breakfasts, set out on no more journeys.
Grief came to Marie Louise now with a less brackish taste. Her sorrow had the pity of the sunlight on it. She wept not now for the terror and hatefulness of the Weblings’ fate, but for the beautiful things that would bless them no more, for the roses that would glow unseen, the flowers that would climb old walls and lean out unheeded, asking to be admired and proffering fragrance in payment of praise. The Weblings were henceforth immune to the pleasant rumble of wagons in streets, to the cheery good mornings of passers-by, the savor of coffee in the air, the luscious colors of fruits piled upon silver dishes.
59
Then she heard a scamper of bare feet, the squeals of mischief-making children escaping from a pursuing nurse.
It had been a favorite pastime of Victor and Bettina to break in upon Marie Louise of mornings when she forgot to lock her door. They loved to steal in barefoot and pounce on her with yelps of savage delight and massacre her, pull her hair and dance upon her bed and on her as she pleaded for mercy.
She heard them coming now, and she could not reach the door before it opened and disclosed the grinning, tousle-curled cherubs in their sleeping-suits.
They darted in, only to fall back in amazement. Marie Louise was not in bed. The bed had not been slept in. Marie Louise was all dressed, and she had been crying. And in a chair sat a strange, formidable old gentleman who looked tired and forlorn.
“Auntie!” they gasped.
She dropped to her knees, and they ran to her for refuge from the strange man.
She hugged them so hard that they cried, “Don’t!”
Without in the least understanding what it was all about, they heard her saying to the man:
“And now what’s to become of these poor lambs?”
The old stranger passed a slow gray hand across his dismal face and pondered.
The children pointed, then remembered that it is impolite to point, and drew back their little index hands and whispered:
“Auntie, what you up so early for?” and, “Who is that?”
And she whispered, “S-h-h!”
Being denied the answer to this charade, they took up a new interest.
“I wonder is grandpapa up, too, and all dressed,” said Victor.
“And maybe grandmamma,” Bettina shrilled.
“I’ll beat you to their room,” said Victor.
Marie Louise seized them by their hinder garments as they fled.
“You must not bother them.”
“Why not?” said Victor.
“Will so!” said Bettina, pawing to be free.
Marie Louise implored: “Please, please! They’ve gone.”
60
“Where?”
She cast her eyes up at that terrible query, and answered it vaguely.
“Away.”
“They might have told a fellow good-by,” Victor brooded.
“They––they forgot, perhaps.”
“I don’t think that was very nice of them,” Bettina pouted.
Victor was more cheerful. “Perhaps they did; perhaps they kissed us while we was asleep––wereasleep.”
Bettina accepted with delight.
“Seems to me I ’member somebody kissin’ me. Yes, I ’member now.”
Victor was skeptical. “Maybe you only had a dream about it.”
“What else is there?” said Mr. Verrinder, rising and patting Victor on the shoulder. “You’d better run along to your tubs now.”
They recognized the authority in his voice and obeyed.
The children took their beauty with them, but left their destiny to be arranged by higher powers, the gods of Eld.
“What is to become of them,” Louise groaned again, “when I go to prison?”
Verrinder was calm. “Sir Joseph’s will doubtless left the bulk of his fortune to them. That will provide for their finances. And they have two grandparents left. The Oakbys will surely be glad to take the children in, especially as they will come with such fortunes.”
“You mean that I am to have no more to do with them?”
“I think it would be best to remove them to a more strictly English influence.”
This hurt her horribly. She grew impatient for the finishing blow.
“And now that they are disposed of, have you decided what’s to become of me?”
“It is not for me to decide. By the by, have you any one to represent you or intercede for you here, or act as your counsel in England?”
She shook her head. “A good many people have been very nice to me, of course. I’ve noticed, though, that even they grew cold and distant of late. I’d rather die than ask any of them.”
61
“But have you no relatives living––no one of importance in the States who could vouch for you?”
She shook her head with a doleful humility.
“None of our family were ever important that I ever heard of, though of course one never knows what relatives are lurking about. Mine will never claim me; that’s certain. I did have a sister––poor thing!––if she’s alive. We didn’t get along very well. I was too wild and restless as a girl. She was very good, hard-working, simple, homely as sin––or homely as virtue. I was all for adventure. I’ve had my fill of it. But once you begin it, you can’t stop when you’ve had enough. If she’s not dead, she’s probably married and living under another name––Heaven knows what name or where. But I could find her, perhaps. I’d love to go to her. She was a very good girl. She’s probably married a good man and has brought up her children piously, and never mentioned me. I’d only bring disgrace on her. She’d disown me if I came home with this cloud of scandal about me.”
“No one shall know of this scandal unless you tell.”
She laughed harshly, with a patronizing superiority.
“Really, Mr. Verrinder, did you ever know a secret to be kept?”
“This one will be.”
She laughed again at him, then at herself.
He rose wearily. “I think I shall have to be getting along. I haven’t had a bath or a shave to-day. I shall ask you to keep to your room and deny yourself to all visitors. I won’t ask you to promise not to escape. If the guard around the house is not capable of detaining you, you’re welcome to your freedom, though I warn you that England is as hard to get out of as to get into nowadays. Whatever you do, for your own sake, at least, keep this whole matter secret and stick to the story we agreed on. Good morning!”
He bowed himself out. No rattling of chains marked his closing of the door, but if he had been a turnkey in Newgate he could not have left Marie Louise feeling more a prisoner. Her room was her body’s jail, but her soul was in a dungeon, too.
As Verrinder went down the hall he scattered a covey of whispering servants.
The nurse who had waited to seize the children when they62came forth had left them to dress themselves while she hastened to publish in the servants’ dining-room the appalling fact that she had caught sight of a man in Miss Marie Louise’s room. The other servants had many other even more astounding things to tell––to wit: that after mysterious excitements about the house, with strange men going and coming, and the kitchen torn to pieces for mustard and warm milk and warm water and strong coffee, and other things, Sir Joseph and Lady Webling were no more, and the whole household staff was out of a job. Strange police-like persons were in the house, going through all the papers in Sir Joseph’s room. The servants could hardly wait to get out with the gossip.
And Mr. Verrinder had said that this secret would be kept!
63CHAPTER VII
Somewhere along about this time, though there is no record of the exact date––and it was in a shabby home in a humble town where dates made little difference––a homely woman sniffed.
Her name was Mrs. Nuddle.
What Mrs. Nuddle was sniffing at was a page of fashion cartoons, curious human hieroglyphs that women can read and run to buy. Highly improbable garments were sketched on utterly impossible figures––female eels who could crawl through their own garters, eels of strange mottlings, with heads like cranberries, feet like thorns, and no spines at all.
Mrs. Nuddle was as opposite in every way as could be. She could not have crawled through her own washtub if she had knocked the bottom out of it. She was a caricature made by nature and long, hard work, and she laughed at the caricatures devised by art in a hurry.
She was about to cast the paper aside as a final rebuke when she caught sight of portraits of real people of fashion. They did not look nearly so fashionable as the cartoons, but they were at least possible. Some of them were said to be prominent in charity; most of them were prominent out of their corsages.
Now Mrs. Nuddle sniffed at character, not at caricature. Leaning against her washtub and wringer, both as graceful as their engineer, she indulged herself in the pitiful but unfailing solace of the poor and the ugly, which is to attribute to the rich dishonesty and to the beautiful wickedness.
The surf Mrs. Nuddle had raised in the little private sea of her tub had died down, and a froth of soap dried on the rawhide of her big forearms as her heifer eyes roamed the newspaper-gallery of portraits. One sudsy hand supported and suppressed her smile of ridicule. These women, belles and swells, were all as glossy as if they had been ironed.