The actual words of greeting which passed between Elizabeth and the man whose advent had caused her so much emotion were unimpressive. The newcomer, with the tips of his fingers resting upon the tablecloth, leaned slightly towards her. At close quarters, he was even more unattractive than when Tavernake had first seen him. He was faultily shaped; there was something a little decadent about his deep-set eyes and receding forehead. Neither was his expression prepossessing. He looked at her as a man looks upon the thing he hates.
“So, Elizabeth,” he said, “this pleasure has come at last!”
“I heard that you were back in England,” she replied. “Pray sit down.”
Even then her eyes never left his. All the time they seemed to be fiercely questioning, seeking for something in his features which eluded them. It was terrible to see the change which the last few minutes had wrought in her. Her smooth, girlish face had lost its comeliness. Her eyes, always a little narrow, seemed to have receded. It was such a change, this, as comes to a brave man who, in the prime of life, feels fear for the first time.
“I am glad to find you at supper,” he declared, taking up the menu. “I am hungry. You can bring me some grilled cutlets at once,” he added to the waiter who stood by his side, “and some brandy. Nothing else.”
The waiter bowed and hurried off. The woman played with her fan but her fingers were shaking.
“I fear,” he remarked, “that my coming is rather a shock to you. I am sorry to see you looking so distressed.”
“It is not that,” she answered with some show of courage. “You know me too well to believe me capable of seeking a meeting which I feared. It is the strange thing which has happened to you during these last few months—this last year. Do you know—has any one told you—that you seem to have become even more like—the image of—”
He nodded understandingly.
“Of poor Wenham! Many people have told me that. Of course, you know that we were always appallingly alike, and they always said that we should become more so in middle-age. After all, there is only a year between us. We might have been twins.”
“It is the most terrible thing in likenesses I have ever seen,” the woman continued slowly. “When you entered the room a few seconds ago, it seemed to me that a miracle had happened. It seemed to me that the dead had come to life.”
“It must have been a shock,” the man murmured, with his eyes upon the tablecloth.
“It was,” she agreed, hoarsely. “Can't you see it in my face? I do not always look like a woman of forty. Can't you see the gray shadows that are there? You see, I admit it frankly. I was terrified—I am terrified!”
“And why?” he asked.
“Why?” she repeated, looking at him wonderingly. “Doesn't it seem to you a terrible thing to think of the dead coming back to life?”
He tapped lightly upon the tablecloth for a minute with the fingers of one hand. Then he looked at her again.
“It depends,” he said, “upon the manner of their death.”
An executioner of the Middle Ages could not have played with his victim more skillfully. The woman was shivering now, preserving some outward appearance of calm only by the most fierce and unnatural effort.
“What do you mean by that, Jerry?” she asked. “I was not even with—Wenham, when he was lost. You know all about it, I suppose,—how it happened?”
The man nodded thoughtfully.
“I have heard many stories,” he admitted. “Before we leave the subject for ever, I should like to hear it from you, from your own lips.”
There was a bottle of champagne upon the table, ordered at the commencement of the meal. She touched her glass; the waiter filled it. She raised it to her lips and set it down empty. Her fingers were clutching the tablecloth.
“You ask me a hard thing, Jerry,” she said. “It is not easy to talk of anything so painful. From the moment we left New York, Wenham was strange. He drank a good deal upon the steamer. He used to talk sometimes in the most wild way. We came to London. He had an attack of delirium tremens. I nursed him through it and took him into the country, down into Cornwall. We took a small cottage on the outskirts of a fishing village—St. Catherine's, the place was called. There we lived quietly for a time. Sometimes he was better, sometimes worse. The doctor in the village was very kind and came often to see him. He brought a friend from the neighboring town and they agreed that with complete rest Wenham would soon be better. All the time my life was a miserable one. He was not fit to be alone and yet he was a terrible companion. I did my best. I was with him half of every day, sometimes longer. I was with him till my own health began to suffer. At last I could stand the solitude no longer. I sent for my father. He came and lived with us.”
“The professor,” her listener murmured.
She nodded.
“It was a little better then for me,” she went on, “except that poor Wenham seemed to take such a dislike to my father. However, he hated every one in turn, even the doctors, who always did their best for him. One day, I admit, I lost my temper. We quarreled; I could not help it—life was becoming insupportable. He rushed out of the house—it was about three o'clock in the afternoon. I have never seen him since.”
The man was looking at her, looking at her closely although he was blinking all the time.
“What do you think became of him?” he asked. “What do people think?”
She shook her head.
“The only thing he cared to do was swim,” she said. “His clothes and hat were found down in the little cove near where we had a tent.”
“You think, then, that he was drowned?” the man asked.
She nodded. Speech seemed to be becoming too painful.
“Drowning,” her companion continued, helping himself to brandy, “is not a pleasant death. Once I was nearly drowned myself. One struggles for a short time and one thinks—yes, one thinks!” he added.
He raised his glass to his lips and set it down.
“It is an easy death, though,” he went on, “quite an easy death. By the way, were those clothes that were found of poor Wenham's identified as the clothes he wore when he left the house?”
She shook her head.
“One could not say for certain,” she answered. “I never noticed how he was dressed. He wore nearly always the same sort of things, but he had an endless variety.”
“And this was seven months ago—seven months.”
She assented.
“Poor Wenham,” he murmured. “I suppose he is dead. What are you going to do, Elizabeth?”
“I do not know,” she replied. “Soon I must go to the lawyers and ask for advice. I have very little more money left. I have written several times to New York to you, to his friends, but I have had no answer. After all, Jerry, I am his wife. No one liked my marrying him, but I am his wife. I have a right to a share of his property if he is dead. If he has deserted me, surely I shall be allowed something. I do not even know how rich he was.”
The man at her side smiled.
“Much better off than I ever was,” he declared. “But, Elizabeth!”
“Well?”
“There were rumors that, before you left New York, Wenham converted very large sums of money into letters of credit and bonds, very large sums indeed.” She shook her head. “He had a letter of credit for about a thousand pounds, I think,” she said. “There is very little left of the money he had with him.”
“And you find living here expensive, I dare say?”
“Very expensive indeed,” she agreed, with a sigh. “I have been looking forward to seeing you, Jerry. I thought, perhaps, for the sake of old times you might advise me.”
“Of old times,” he repeated to himself softly. “Elizabeth, do you think of them sometimes?”
She was becoming more herself. This was a game she was used to playing. Of old times, indeed! It seemed only yesterday that these two brothers, who had the reputation in those days of being the richest young men in New York, were both at her feet. So far, she had scarcely been fortunate. There was still a chance, however. She looked up. It seemed to her that he was losing his composure. Yes, there was something of the old gleam in his eyes! Once he had been madly enough in love with her. It ought not to be impossible!
“Jerry,” she said, “I have told you these things. It has been so very, very painful for me. Won't you try now and be kind? Remember that I am all alone and it is all very difficult for me. I have been looking forward to your coming. I have thought so often of those times we spent together in New York. Won't you be my friend again? Won't you help me through these dark days?”
Her hand touched his. For a moment he snatched his away as though stung. Then he caught her fingers in his and held them as though in a vice. She smiled, the smile of conscious power. The flush of beauty was streaming once more into her face. Poor fellow, he was still in love, then! The fingers which had closed upon hers were burning. What a pity that he was not a little more presentable!
“Yes,” he muttered, “we must be friends, Elizabeth. Wenham had all the luck at first. Perhaps it's going to be my turn now, eh?”
He bent towards her. She laughed into his face for a moment and then was once more suddenly colorless, the smile frozen upon her lips. She began to shiver.
“What is it?” he asked. “What is it, Elizabeth?”
“Nothing,” she faltered, “only I wish—I do wish that you were not so much like Wenham. Sometimes a trick of your voice, the way you hold your head—it terrifies me!”
He laughed oddly.
“You must get used to that, Elizabeth,” he declared. “I can't help being like him, you know. We were great friends always until you came. I wonder why you preferred Wenham.”
“Don't ask me—please don't ask me that,” she begged. “Really, I think he happened to be there just at the moment I felt like making a clean sweep of everything, of leaving New York and every one and starting life again, and I thought Wenham meant it. I thought I should be able to keep him from drinking and to help him start a new life altogether over here or on the Continent.”
“Poor little woman,” he said, “you have been disappointed, I am afraid.”
She sighed.
“I am only human, you know,” she went on. “Every one told me that Wenham was a millionaire, too. See how much I have benefited by it. I am almost penniless, I do not know whether he is dead or alive, I do not know what to do to get some money. Was Wenham very rich, Jerry?”
The man laughed.
“Oh, he was very rich indeed!” he assured her. “It is terrible that you should be left like this. We will talk about it together presently, you and I. In the meantime, you must let me be your banker.”
“Dear Jerry,” she whispered, “you were always generous.”
“You have not spoken of the little prude—dear Miss Beatrice,” he reminded her suddenly.
Elizabeth sighed.
“Beatrice was a great trial from the first,” she declared. “You know how she disliked you both—she was scarcely even civil to Wenham, and she would never have come to Europe with us if father hadn't insisted upon it. We took her down to Cornwall with us and there she became absolutely insupportable. She was always interfering between Wenham and me and imagining the most absurd things. One day she left us without a word of warning. I have never seen her since.”
The man stared gloomily into his plate.
“She was a queer little thing,” he muttered. “She was good, and she seemed to like being good.”
Elizabeth laughed, not quite pleasantly.
“You speak as though the rest of us,” she remarked, “were qualified to take orders in wickedness.”
He helped himself to more brandy.
“Think back,” he said. “Think of those days in New York, the life we led, the wild things we did week after week, month after month, the same eternal round of turning night into day, of struggling everywhere to find new pleasures, pulling vice to pieces like children trying to find the inside of their playthings.”
“I don't like your mood in the least,” she interrupted.
He drummed for a moment upon the tablecloth with his fingers.
“We were talking of Beatrice. You don't even know where she is now, then?”
“I have no idea,” Elizabeth declared.
“She was with you for long in Cornwall?” he asked.
Elizabeth toyed with her wineglass for a minute.
“She was there about a month,” she admitted.
“And she didn't approve of the way you and Wenham behaved?” he demanded.
“Apparently not. She left us, anyway. She didn't understand Wenham in the least. I shouldn't be surprised,” Elizabeth went on, “to hear that she was a hospital nurse, or learning typing, or a clerk in an office. She was a young woman of gloomy ideas, although she was my sister.”
He came a little closer towards her.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “we will not talk any more about Beatrice. We will not talk any more about anything except our two selves.”
“Are you really glad to see me again, Jerry?” she asked softly.
“You must know it, dear,” he whispered. “You must know that I loved you always, that I adored you. Oh, you knew it! Don't tell me you didn't. You knew it, Elizabeth!”
She looked down at the tablecloth.
“Yes, I knew it,” she admitted, softly.
“Can't you guess what it is to me to see you again like this?” he continued.
She sighed.
“It is something for me, too, to feel that I have a friend close at hand.”
“Come,” he said, “they are turning out the lights here. You want to know about Wenham's property. Let me come upstairs with you for a little time and I will tell you as much as I can from memory.”
He paid the bill, helped her on with her cloak. His fingers seemed like burning spots upon her flesh. They went up in the lift. In the corridors he drew her to him and she began to tremble.
“What is there strange about you, Jerry?” she faltered, looking into his face. “You terrify me!”
“You are glad to see me? Say you are glad to see me?”
“Yes, I am glad,” she whispered.
Outside the door of her rooms, she hesitated.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, faintly,—“wouldn't it be better if you came to-morrow morning?”
Once more his fingers touched her and again that extraordinary sense of fear seemed to turn her blood cold.
“No,” he replied, “I have been put off long enough! You must let me in, you must talk with me for half an hour. I will go then, I promise. Half an hour! Elizabeth, haven't I waited an eternity for it?”
He took the keys from her fingers and opened the door, closing it again behind them. She led the way into the sitting-room. The whole place was in darkness but she turned on the electric light. The cloak slipped from her shoulders. He took her hands and looked at her.
“Jerry,” she whispered, “you mustn't look at me like that. You terrify me! Let me go!”
She wrenched herself free with an effort. She stepped back to the corner of the room, as far as she could get from him. Her heart was beating fiercely. Somehow or other, neither of these two young men, over whose lives she had certainly brought to bear a very wonderful influence, had ever before stirred her pulses like this. What was it, she wondered? What was the meaning of it? Why didn't he speak? He did nothing but look, and there were unutterable things in his eyes. Was he angry with her because she had married Wenham, or was he blaming her because Wenham had gone? There was passion in his face, but such passion! Desire, perhaps, but what else? She caught up a telegram which lay upon her writing desk, and tore it open. It was an escape for a moment. She read the words, stared, and read them aloud incredulously. It was from her father.
“Jerry Gardner sailed for New York to-day.”
She looked up at the man, and as she looked her face grew gray and the thin sheet went quivering from her lifeless fingers to the floor. Then he began to laugh, and she knew.
“Wenham!” she shrieked. “Wenham!”
There was murder in his face, murder almost in his laugh.
“Your loving husband!” he answered.
She sprang for the door but even as she moved she heard the click of the bolt shot back. He touched the electric switch and the room was suddenly in darkness. She heard him coming towards her, she felt his hot breath upon her cheek.
“My loving wife!” he whispered. “At last!”
Tavernake turned on the light. Pritchard, with a quick leap forward, seized Wenham around the waist and dragged him away. Elizabeth had fainted; she lay upon the floor, her face the color of marble.
“Get some water and throw over her,” Pritchard ordered.
Tavernake obeyed. He threw open the window and let in a current of air. In a moment or two the woman stirred and raised her head.
“Look after her for a minute,” Pritchard said. “I Il lock this fierce little person up in the bathroom.”
Pritchard carried his prisoner out. Tavernake leaned over the woman who was slowly coming back to consciousness.
“Tell me about it,” she asked, hoarsely. “Where is he?”
“Locked up in the bathroom,” Tavernake answered. “Pritchard is taking care of him. He won't be able to get out.”
“You know who it was?” she faltered.
“I do not,” Tavernake replied. “It isn't my business. I'm only here because Pritchard begged me to come. He thought he might want help.”
She held his fingers tightly.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“In the bathroom when you arrived. Then he bolted the door behind and we had to come round through your bedroom.”
“How did Pritchard find out?”
“I know nothing about it,” Tavernake replied. “I only know that he peered through the latticework and saw you sitting there at supper.”
She smiled weakly.
“It must have been rather a shock to him,” she said. “He has been convinced for the last six months that I murdered Wenham, or got rid of him by some means or other. Help me up.”
She staggered to her feet. Tavernake assisted her to an easy chair. Then Pritchard came in.
“He is quite safe,” he announced, “sitting on the edge of the bath playing with a doll.”
She shivered.
“What is he doing with it?” she asked.
“Showing me exactly, with a shawl pin, where he meant to have stabbed you,” Pritchard answered, drily. “Now, my dear lady,” he continued, “it seems to me that I have done you one injustice, at any rate. I certainly thought you'd helped to relieve the world of that young person. Where did he come from? Perhaps you can tell me that.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I suppose I may as well,” she said. “Listen, you have seen what he was like to-night, but you don't know what it was to live with him. It was Hell!”—she sobbed—“absolute Hell! He drank, he took drugs, it was all his servant could do to force him even to make his toilet. It was impossible. It was crushing the life out of me.”
“Go on,” Pritchard directed.
“There isn't much more to tell,” she continued. “I found an old farmhouse—the loneliest spot in Cornwall. We moved there and I left him—with Mathers. I promised Mathers that he should have twenty pounds a week for every week he kept his master away from me. He has kept him away for seven months.”
“What about that story of yours—about his having gone in swimming?” Pritchard asked.
“I wanted people to believe that he was dead,” she declared defiantly. “I was afraid that if you or his relations found him, I should have to live with him or give up the money.”
Pritchard nodded.
“And to-night you thought—”
“I thought he was his brother Jerry,” she went on. “The likeness was always amazing, you know that. I was told that Jerry was in town. I felt nervous, somehow, and wired to Mathers. I had his reply only last night. He wired that Wenham was quite safe and contented, not even restless.”
“That telegram was sent by Wenham himself,” Pritchard remarked. “I think you had better hear what he has to say.”
She shrank back.
“No. I couldn't bear the sight of him again!”
“I think you had better,” Pritchard insisted. “I can assure you that he is quite harmless. I will guarantee that.”
He left the room. Soon he returned, his arm locked in the arm of Wenham Gardner. The latter had the look of a spoilt child who is in disgrace. He sat sullenly upon a chair and glared at every one. Then he produced a small crumpled doll, with a thread of black cotton around its neck, and began swinging it in front of him, laughing at Elizabeth all the time.
“Tell us,” Pritchard asked, “what has become of Mathers?”
He stopped swinging the doll, shivered for a moment, and then laughed.
“I don't mind,” he declared. “I guess I don't mind telling. You see, whatever I was when I did it, I am mad now—quite mad. My friend Pritchard here says I am mad. I must have been mad or I shouldn't have tried to hurt that dear beautiful lady over there.”
He leered at Elizabeth, who shrank back.
“She ran away from me some time ago,” he went on, “sick to death of me she was. She thought she'd got all my money. She hadn't. There's plenty more, plenty more. She ran away and left me with Mathers. She was paying him so much a week to keep me quiet, not to let me go anywhere where I should talk, to keep me away from her so that she could live up here and see all her friends and spend my money. And at first I didn't mind, and then I did mind, and I got angry with Mathers, and Mathers wouldn't let me come away, and three nights ago I killed Mathers.”
There was a little thrill of horror. He looked from one to the other. By degrees their fear seemed to become communicated to him.
“What do you mean by looking like that, all of you?” he exclaimed. “What does it matter? He was only my man-servant. I am Wenham Gardner, millionaire. No one will put me in prison for that. Besides, he shouldn't have tried to keep me away from my wife. Anyway, it don't matter. I am quite mad. Mad people can do what they like. They have to stop in an asylum for six months, and then they're quite cured and they start again. I don't mind being mad for six months. Elizabeth,” he whined, “come and be mad, too. You haven't been kind to me. There's plenty more money—plenty more. Come back for a little time and I'll show you.”
“How did you kill Mathers?” Pritchard asked.
“I stabbed him when he was stooping down,” Wenham Gardner explained. “You see, when I left college my father thought it would be good for me to do something. I dare say it would have been but I didn't want to. I studied surgery for six months. The only thing I remember was just where to kill a man behind the left shoulder. I remembered that. Mathers was a fat man, and he stooped so that his coat almost burst. I just leaned over, picked out the exact spot, and he crumpled all up. I expect,” he went on, “you'll find him there still. No one comes near the place for days and days. Mathers used to leave me locked up and do all the shopping himself. I expect he's lying there now. Some one ought to go and see.”
Elizabeth was sobbing quietly to herself. Tavernake felt the perspiration break out upon his forehead. There was something appalling in the way this young man talked.
“I don't understand why you all look so serious,” he continued. “No one is going to hurt me for this. I am quite mad now. You see, I am playing with this doll. Sane men don't play with dolls. I hope they'll try me in New York, though. I am well-known in New York. I know all the lawyers and the jurymen. Oh, they're up to all sorts of tricks in New York! Say, you don't suppose they'll try me over here?” he broke off suddenly, turning to Pritchard. “I shouldn't feel so much at home here.”
“Take him away,” Elizabeth begged. “Take him away.” Pritchard nodded.
“I thought you'd better hear,” he said. “I am going to take him away now. I shall send a telegram to the police-station at St. Catherine's. They had better go up and see what's happened.”
Pritchard took his captive once more by the arm. The young man struggled violently.
“I don't like you, Pritchard,” he shrieked. “I don't want to go with you. I want to stay with Elizabeth. I am not really afraid of her. She'd like to kill me, I know, but she's too clever—oh, she's too clever! I'd like to stay with her.”
Pritchard led him away.
“We'll see about it later on,” he said. “You'd better come with me just now.”
The door closed behind them. Tavernake staggered up.
“I must go,” he declared. “I must go, too.”
Elizabeth was sobbing quietly to herself. She seemed scarcely to hear him. On the threshold Tavernake turned back.
“That money,” he asked, “the money you were going to lend me—was that his?”
She looked up and nodded. Tavernake went slowly out.
Pritchard was the first visitor who had ever found his way into Tavernake's lodgings. It was barely eight o'clock on the same morning. Tavernake, hollow-eyed and bewildered, sat up upon the sofa and gazed across the room.
“Pritchard!” he exclaimed. “Why, what do you want?”
Pritchard laid his hat and gloves upon the table. Already his first swift glance had taken in the details of the little apartment. The overcoat and hat which Tavernake had worn the night before lay by his side. The table was still arranged for some meal of the previous day. Apart from these things, a single glance assured him that Tavernake had not been to bed.
Pritchard drew up an easy-chair and seated himself deliberately.
“My young friend,” he announced, “I have come to the conclusion that you need some more advice.”
Tavernake rose to his feet. His own reflection in the looking-glass startled him. His hair was crumpled, his tie undone, the marks of his night of agony were all too apparent. He felt himself at a disadvantage.
“How did you find me out?” he asked. “I never gave you my address.”
Pritchard smiled.
“Even in this country, with a little help,” he said, “those things are easy enough. I made up my mind that this morning would be to some extent a crisis with you. You know, Tavernake, I am not a man who says much, but you are the right sort. You've been in with me twice when I should have missed you if you hadn't been there.”
Tavernake seemed to have lost the power of speech. He had relapsed again into his place upon the sofa. He simply waited.
“How in the name of mischief,” Pritchard continued, impressively, “you came to be mixed up in the lives of this amiable trio, I cannot imagine! I am not saying a word against Miss Beatrice, mind. All that surprises me is that you and she should ever have come together, or, having come together, that you should ever have exchanged a word. You see, I am here to speak plain truths. You are, I take it, a good sample of the hard, stubborn, middle-class Briton. These three people of whom I have spoken, belong—Miss Beatrice, perhaps, by force of circumstances—but still they do belong to the land of Bohemia. However, when one has got over the surprise of finding you on intimate terms with Miss Beatrice, there comes a more amazing thing. You, with hard common sense written everywhere in your face, have been prepared at any moment, for all I know are prepared now, to make an utter and complete idiot of yourself over Elizabeth Gardner.”
Still Tavernake did not speak. Pritchard looked at him curiously.
“Say,” he went on, “I have come here to do you a service, if I can. So far as I know at present, this very wonderful young lady has kept on the right side of the law. But see here, Tavernake, she's been on the wrong side of everything that's decent and straight all her days. She married that poor creature for his money, and set herself deliberately to drive him off his head. Last night's tragedy was her doing, not his, though he, poor devil, will have to end his days in an asylum, and the lady will have his money to make herself more beautiful than ever with. Now I am going to let you behind the scenes, my young friend.”
Then Tavernake rose to his feet. In the shabby little room he seemed to have grown suddenly taller. He struck the crazy table with his clenched fist so that the crockery upon it rattled. Pritchard was used to seeing men—strong men, too—moved by various passions, but in Tavernake's face he seemed to see new things.
“Pritchard,” Tavernake exclaimed, “I don't want to hear another word!”
Pritchard smiled.
“Look here,” he said, “what I am going to tell you is the truth. What I am going to tell you I'd as soon say in the presence of the lady as here.”
Tavernake took a step forward and Pritchard suddenly realized the man who had thrown himself through that little opening in the wall, one against three, without a thought of danger.
“If you say a single word more against her,” Tavernake shouted hoarsely, “I shall throw you out of the room!”
Pritchard stared at him. There was something amazing about this young man's attitude, something which he could not wholly grasp. He could see, too, that Tavernake's words were so few simply because he was trembling under the influence of an immense passion.
“If you won't listen,” Pritchard declared, slowly, “I can't talk. Still, you've got common sense, I take it. You've the ordinary powers of judging between right and wrong, and knowing when a man or a woman's honest. I want to save you—”
“Silence!” Tavernake exclaimed. “Look here, Pritchard,” he went on, breathing a little more naturally now, “you came here meaning to do the right thing—I know that. You're all right, only you don't understand. You don't understand the sort of person I am. I am twenty-four years old, I have worked for my own living up here in London since I was twelve. I was a man, so far as work and independence went, at fifteen. Since then I have had my shoulder to the wheel; I have lived on nothing; I have made a little money where it didn't seem possible. I have worried my way into posts which it seemed that no one could think of giving me, but all the time I have lived in a little corner of the world—like that.”
His finger suddenly described a circle in the air.
“You don't understand—you can't,” he went on, “but there it is. I never spoke to a woman until I spoke to Beatrice. Chance made me her friend. I began to understand the outside of some of those things which I had never even dreamed of before. She set me right in many ways. I began to read, think, absorb little bits of the real world. It was all wonderful. Then Elizabeth came. I met her, too, by accident—she came to my office for a house—Elizabeth!”
Pritchard found something almost pathetic in the sudden dropping of Tavernake's voice, the softening of his face.
“I don't know how to talk about these things,” Tavernake said, simply. “There's a literature that's reached from before the Bible to now, full of nothing else. It's all as old as the hills. I suppose I am about the only sane man in this city who knew nothing of it; but I did know nothing of it, and she was the first woman. Now you understand. I can't hear a word against her—I won't! She may be what you say. If so, she's got to tell me so herself!”
“You mean that you are going to believe any story she likes to put up?”
“I mean that I am going to her,” Tavernake answered, “and I have no idea in the world what will happen—whether I shall believe her or not. I can see what you think of me,” he went on, becoming a little more himself as the stress of unaccustomed speech passed him by. “I will tell you something that will show you that I realize a good deal. I know the difference between Beatrice and Elizabeth. Less than a week ago, I asked Beatrice to marry me. It was the only way I could think of, the only way I could kill the fever.”
“And Beatrice?” Pritchard asked, curiously.
“She wouldn't,” Tavernake replied. “After all, why should she? I have my way to make yet. I can't expect others to believe in me as I believe in myself. She was kind but she wouldn't.”
Pritchard lit a cigar.
“Look here, Tavernake,” he said, “you are a young man, you've got your life before you and life's a biggish thing. Empty out those romantic thoughts of yours, roll up your shirt sleeves and get at it. You are not one of these weaklings that need a woman's whispers in their ears to spur them on. You can work without that. It's only a chapter in your life—the passing of these three people. A few months ago, you knew nothing of them. Let them go. Get back to where you were.”
Then Tavernake for the first time laughed—a laugh that sounded even natural.
“Have you ever found a man who could do that?” he asked. “The candle gives a good light sometimes, but you'll never think it the finest illumination in the world when you've seen the sun. Never mind me, Pritchard. I'm going to do my best still, but there's one thing that nothing will alter. I am going to make that woman tell me her story, I am going to listen to the way she tells it to me. You think that where women are concerned I am a fool. I am, but there is one great boon which has been vouchsafed to fools—they can tell the true from the false. Some sort of instinct, I suppose. Elizabeth shall tell me her story and I shall know, when she tells it, whether she is what you say or what she has seemed to me.”
Pritchard held out his hand.
“You're a queer sort, Tavernake,” he declared. “You take life plaguy seriously. I only hope you 'll get all out of it you expect to. So long!”
Tavernake opened the window after his visitor had gone, and leaned out for some few minutes, letting the fresh air into the close, stifling room. Then he went upstairs, bathed and changed his clothes, made some pretense at breakfast, went through his letters with methodical exactness. At eleven o'clock he set out upon his pilgrimage.
Tavernake was kept waiting in the hall of the Milan Court for at least half an hour before Elizabeth was prepared to see him. He wandered aimlessly about watching the people come and go, looking out into the flower-hung courtyard, curiously unconscious of himself and of his errand, unable to concentrate his thoughts for a moment, yet filled all the time with the dull and uneasy sensation of one who moves in a dream. Every now and then he heard scraps of conversation from the servants and passers-by, referring to the last night's incident. He picked up a paper but threw it down after only a casual glance at the paragraph. He saw enough to convince him that for the present, at any rate, Elizabeth seemed assured of a certain amount of sympathy. The career of poor Wenham Gardner was set down in black and white, with little extenuation, little mercy. His misdeeds in Paris, his career in New York, spoke for themselves. He was quoted as a type, a decadent of the most debauched instincts, to whom crime was a relaxation and vice a habit. Tavernake would read no more. He might have been all these things, and yet she had become his wife!
At last came the message for which he was waiting. As usual, her maid met him at the door of her suite and ushered him in. Elizabeth was dressed for the part very simply, with a suggestion even of mourning in her gray gown. She welcomed him with a pathetic smile.
“Once more, my dear friend,” she said, “I have to thank you.”
Her fingers closed upon his and she smiled into his face. Tavernake found himself curiously unresponsive. It was the same smile, and he knew very well that he himself had not changed, yet it seemed as though life itself were in a state of suspense for him.
“You, too, are looking grave this morning, my friend,” she continued. “Oh, how horrible it has all been! Within the last two hours I have had at least five reporters, a gentleman from Scotland Yard, another from the American Ambassador to see me. It is too terrible, of course,” she went on. “Wenham's people are doing all they can to make it worse. They want to know why we were not together, why he was living in the country and I in town. They are trying to show that he was under restraint there, as if such a thing were possible! Mathers was his own servant—poor Mathers!”
She sighed and wiped her eyes. Still Tavernake said nothing. She looked at him, a little surprised.
“You are not very sympathetic,” she observed. “Please come and sit down by my side and I will show you something.”
He moved towards her but he did not sit down. She stretched out her hand and picked something up from the table, holding it towards him. Tavernake took it mechanically and held it in his fingers. It was a cheque for twelve thousand pounds.
“You see,” she said, “I have not forgotten. This is the day, isn't it? If you like, you can stay and have lunch with me up here and we will drink to the success of our speculation.”
Tavernake held the cheque in his fingers; he made no motion to put it in his pocket. She looked at him with a puzzled frown upon her face.
“Do talk or say something, please!” she exclaimed. “You look at me like some grim figure. Say something. Sit down and be natural.”
“May I ask you some questions?”
“Of course you may,” she replied. “You may do anything sooner than stand there looking so grim and unbending. What is it you want to know?”
“Did you understand that Wenham Gardner was this sort of man when you married him?”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly.
“I suppose I did,” she admitted.
“You married him, then, only because he was rich?”
She smiled.
“What else do women marry for, my dear moralist?” she demanded. “It isn't my fault if it doesn't sound pretty. One must have money!”
Tavernake inclined his head gravely; he made no sign of dissent.
“You two came over to England,” he went on, “with Beatrice and your father. Beatrice left you because she disapproved of certain things.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“You may as well know the truth,” she said. “Beatrice has the most absurd ideas. After a week with Wenham, I knew that he was not a person with whom any woman could possibly live. His valet was really only his keeper; he was subject to such mad fits that he needed some one always with him. I was obliged to leave him in Cornwall. I can't tell you everything, but it was absolutely impossible for me to go on living with him.”
“Beatrice,” Tavernake remarked, “thought otherwise.”
Elizabeth looked at him quickly from below her eyelids. It was hard, however, to gather anything from his face.
“Beatrice thought otherwise,” Elizabeth admitted. “She thought that I ought to nurse him, put up with him, give up all my friends, and try and keep him alive. Why, it would have been absolute martyrdom, misery for me,” she declared. “How could I be expected to do such a thing?”
Tavernake nodded gravely.
“And the money?” he asked.
“Well, perhaps there I was a trifle calculating,” she confessed. “But you,” she added, nodding at the cheque in his hand, “shouldn't grumble at that. I knew when we were married that I should have trouble. His people hated me, and I knew that in the event of anything happening like this thing which has happened, they would try to get as little as possible allowed me. So before we left New York, I got Wenham to turn as much as ever he could into cash. That we brought away with us.”
“And who took care of it?”
Elizabeth smiled.
“I did,” she answered, “naturally.”
“Tell me about last night,” Tavernake said. “I suppose I am stupid but I don't quite understand.”
“How should you?” she answered. “Listen, then. Wenham, I suppose got tired of being shut up with Mathers, although I am sure I don't see what else was possible. So he waited for his opportunity, and when the man wasn't looking—well, you know what happened,” she added, with a shiver. “He got up to London somehow and made his way to Dover Street.”
“Why Dover Street?”
“I suppose you know,” Elizabeth explained, “that Wenham has a brother—Jerry—who is exactly like him. These two had rooms in Dover Street always, where they kept some English clothes and a servant. Jerry Gardner was over in London. I knew that, and was expecting to see him every day. Wenham found his way to the rooms, dressed himself in his brother's clothes, even wore his ring and some of his jewelry, which he knew I should recognize, and came here. I believed—yes, I believed all the time,” she went on, her voice trembling, “that it was Jerry who was sitting with me. Once or twice I had a sort of terrible shiver. Then I remembered how much they were alike and it seemed to me ridiculous to be afraid. It was not till we got upstairs, till the door was closed behind me, that he turned round and I knew!”
Her head fell suddenly into her hands. It was almost the first sign of emotion. Tavernake analyzed it mercilessly. He knew very well that it was fear, the coward's fear of that terrible moment.
“And now?”
“Now,” she went on, more cheerfully, “no one will venture to deny that Wenham is mad. He will be placed under restraint, of course, and the courts will make me an allowance. One thing is absolutely certain, and that is that he will not live a year.”
Tavernake half closed his eyes. Was there no sign of his suffering, no warning note of the things which were passing out of his life! The woman who smiled upon him seemed to see nothing. The twitching of his fingers, the slight quivering of his face, she thought was because of his fear for her.
“And now,” she declared, in a suddenly altered tone, “this is all over and done with. Now you know everything. There are no more mysteries,” she added, smiling at him delightfully. “It is all very terrible, of course, but I feel as though a great weight had passed away. You and I are going to be friends, are we not?”
She rose slowly to her feet and came towards him. His eyes watched her slow, graceful movements as though fascinated. He remembered on that first visit of his how wonderful he had thought her walk. She was still smiling up at him; her fingers fell upon his shoulders.
“You are such a strange person,” she murmured. “You aren't a little bit like any of the men I've ever known, any of the men I have ever cared to have as friends. There is something about you altogether different. I suppose that is why I rather like you. Are you glad?”
For a single wild moment Tavernake hesitated. She was so close to him that her hair touched his forehead, the breath from her upturned lips fell upon his cheeks. Her blue eyes were half pleading, half inviting.
“You are going to be my very dear friend, are you not—Leonard?” she whispered. “I do feel that I need some one strong like you to help me through these days.”
Tavernake suddenly seized the hands that were upon his shoulders, and forced them back. She felt herself gripped as though by a vice, and a sudden terror seized her. He lifted her up and she caught a glimpse of his wild, set face. Then the breath came through his teeth. He shook all over but the fit had passed. He simply thrust her away from him.
“No,” he said, “we cannot be friends! You are a woman without a heart, you are a murderess!”
He tore her cheque calmly in pieces and flung them scornfully away. She stood looking at him, breathing quickly, white to the lips though the murder had gone from his eyes.
“Beatrice warned me,” he went on; “Pritchard warned me. Some things I saw for myself, but I suppose I was mad. Now I know!”
He turned away. Her eyes followed him wonderingly.
“Leonard,” she cried out, “you are not going like this? You don't mean it!”
Ever afterwards his restraint amazed him. He did not reply. He closed both doors firmly behind him and walked to the lift. She came even to the outside door and called down the corridor.
“Leonard, come back for one moment!”
He turned his head and looked at her, looked at her from the corner of the corridor, steadfastly and without speech. Her fingers dropped from the handle of the door. She went back into her room with shaking knees, and began to cry softly. Afterwards she wondered at herself. It was the first time she had cried for many years.
Tavernake walked to the city and in less than half an hour's time found himself in Mr. Martin's office. The lawyer welcomed him warmly.
“I'm jolly glad to see you, Tavernake,” he declared. “I hope you've got the money. Sit down.”
Tavernake did not sit down; he had forgotten, indeed, to take of his hat.
“Martin,” he said, “I am sorry for you. I have been fooled and you have to pay as well as I have. I can't take up the option on the property. I haven't a penny toward it except my own money, and you know how much that is. You can sell my plots, if you like, and call the money your costs. I've finished.”
The lawyer looked at him with wide-open mouth.
“What on earth are you talking about, Tavernake?” he exclaimed. “Are you drunk, by any chance?”
“No, I am quite sober,” Tavernake answered. “I have made one or two bad mistakes, that's all. You have a power of attorney for me. You can do what you like with my land, make any terms you please. Good-day!”
“But, Tavernake, look here!” the lawyer protested, springing to his feet. “I say, Tavernake!” he called out.
But Tavernake heard nothing, or, if he heard, he took no notice. He walked out into the street and was lost among the hurrying throngs upon the pavements.