A Woman's Burden: A Novel

"Well; and he acted up to his promise. It was not his fault that his will was stolen. In that will he did make you his heir."

"If you believe that, you ought to allow me anyhow a thousand a year."

"I don't agree that I ought to allow you anything, strictly speaking. But I certainly would do so if you were a different sort of man. Unfortunately you are not; and to allow you an independent income would simply be to encourage you to drink, and degrade yourself and your unhappy wife."

"It would be nothing of the kind. I won't allow you to speak to me like that, John – even to salve your own conscience. And let me tell you straight, if the day ever comes when that will turns up, I'll have my rights – every penny of them. So you know."

"In such circumstances I would not attempt to deprive you of them. You would be dead within the year – or locked up. Look here, Gerald, you know I'm not a man to mince my words. When you married Miriam Crane, you married a woman in a thousand. What have you been to her? Have you made her a decent husband? For a time, I grant, you kept pretty straight, and did your work well, but now you are drifting back to your old tricks as fast as you jolly well can. Only the other day, when I was in the city and dropped in to see Crichton at the office, he was complaining to me about you – "

"It's like his damned impudence," retorted Gerald at white heat. "For two pins I'd chuck him and his beastly office, and clear out."

"And live on your wits, I suppose, or on your wife. You're quite capable of it."

Things were not going to Gerald's liking at all. The cheque he had promised himself was vanishing rapidly. So he made no retort to the Major's last remark, and submitted with the best grace he could muster, to the lecture that warrior did not hesitate to administer to him. Then, having promised and vowed everything that was demanded of him in the future, he made so bold as to ask for a trifle of fifty pounds, and was straightway refused.

The Major had been subject to discipline all his life, and was not one to relax it, more especially in the case of such a man as his cousin. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was a precept upon which he had always laid the greatest stress. Gerald had been spared – and spoiled.

From the bottom of his heart he pitied Miriam. "How awfully things have gone askew," he said to himself, as he spun east in a quick-going hansom. What would he not give to be in that young rascal's shoes – yes, even without the Manor House and its five thousand a year.

By the time he reached the Soudan Hotel he was getting horribly sentimental. But he looked with confidence to his wife to dispel all weakness of that sort. Where Hilda was, he knew, sentiment could not be.

He dismissed his cab, and inquired if his wife was at home. He was somewhat surprised to hear that she was not. He presumed she must have gone to pay a call. But the porter informed him that a boy was waiting to see him – a boy, who it appeared, had called already once or twice during the week when he had been out. He had not the least idea who it could be, the genus puer being one in nowise affected by the Major. However, he would seem to be a youth of no little pertinacity, so he gave orders for him to be shown in.

A few moments later the lad appeared – a short, squat, leering creature, somewhere in his teens, and clothed in a tweed suit of aggressively severe design. There was upon his face an expression of extreme sanctimony, which was horribly repellent to the Major. He recognised him at once as Gideon Anab, alias Shorty.

"Well, what is it?" he asked sharply. "What can I do for you, lad?"

"I ain't arter you're doin' nuffin' fur me, sir; but I ken do a 'eap fur you!"

"What the deuce do you mean, you – ?"

Shorty glanced at the door to make sure that it was fast closed. Then he shifted nervously from one leg to the other, and finally his facial muscles began to describe what he evidently intended for a smile. It was a very weird achievement, and for the moment quite disturbed the Major.

"Well, I ken put yer on a lay as you'll be glad to get a 'old of, Mister Major!"

"Go on, explain yourself – out with it, or I'll out with you; quick! if you've anything to say."

"Guess I 'ave, if I'm treated proper. P'r'aps yer don't know as I was down at that there village when the old 'un was scragged that time? Well, I wos, guvnor, and wot's more, I wus round 'bout the 'ouse on that night, 'cos it wos Chris'mus time, and I wos bloomin' 'ungry, and yer see there's of'en times some pickin's to be 'ad about big 'ouses at them times – "

"Go on, go on!" urged the Major, getting excited. "You know who did it?"

"No I don't, guvnor; but I know who cobbed that there will!"

The Major sat back in his chair. This was not what he had expected. In a flash he saw his position.

"Who was it?" he demanded harshly of the boy.

"No yer don't, sir, yer not goin' to git it that way. It's worth summat, my little bit o' noos!"

"You young devil you! here take this." He took from his pocket a five-pound note and held it out The boy clutched at it eagerly. Then he leaned forward and whispered hoarsely in the Major's ear a name, the mention of which secured for him as thorough a shaking as he had ever experienced in his eventful life.

"You young liar!" cried the enraged soldier; "say that again, and I'll break every bone in your wretched body!"

"S'elp me, it's true, guvnor," gasped Shorty when he could get his breath, "I seed 'er grab it!"

CHAPTER IV.

DICKY'S DISCOVERY

The name whispered by the unhappy Shorty into the Major's ear was that of Mrs. Dacre Darrow – or, to use his peculiar phonetic variation of it – "Mrs. Darrer." As has been related its effect upon the Major was immediate, and fraught with, to Shorty, very tangible consequences. The sound of his cousin's name in the boy's mouth had upset his equanimity altogether for the moment. But the expenditure of his indignation physically, upon that very ample frame, soon brought the Major into a calmer state of mind, and resulted eventually in recourse to less forcible methods on his part. He came to the conclusion that for a time at least verbal tactics might prove of vastly more advantage to himself. So he released the boy, and submitted him instead to the fire of cross-examination. And from the look of relief on Shorty's face, he was quick to appreciate the change.

Not for one moment did the Major believe there was any truth in the accusation brought against his cousin. He had no high opinion of her, to be sure, but he felt quite certain that she would never stoop to an act of this kind. Besides, even granting that her sense of moral rectitude were sufficiently flexible to allow of such a lapse on her part, he failed to see what motive she could have had. She must be aware that even to suppress the existence of this will would be to put herself within reach of the law.

But Shorty held firmly to his story of that night. Seeing a light in the library he had gone on to the terrace, and the blind being up, he had been able to see into the room without himself being seen.

"And you say Mr. Barton was alive then?" queried the Major.

"Oh, the ole cove wer' alive right enough then – I seed 'im go out o' the room an' leave a long paper – that wer' the will – on the table."

"And how, pray, do you come to know a will when you see one?"

"I didn't know wot it was then, but a'rterwards Mrs. Parsley, she told me as 'ow a will 'ad been nabbed, an' it didn't take me long to twig as 'ow it must ha' been that paper wot I saw Mrs. Darrer bone. She slipped into the room jest as the ole cove 'ad gone out – then 'er eye catches the paper on the table, an' she gives a kind o' jump, an' begins a-readin' of it. An' lorksy, didn't she look mad when she'd read a bit! Then she slips it somewhere in the stern of 'er, an' clears out. I thought then as 'ow it were about time I cleared out too, so I hooked it down the steps, and back through the medder that way."

"What time was this?"

"Oh, arter supper – leastways I s'pose it wer' supper. I'd seen yer all eatin' an' drinkin' 'bout 'alf a hour before, an' it dudn't make me feel no better, I kin tell yer!"

Dundas reflected. It was just possible the boy was speaking truth. He remembered how Barton had shut himself up in the library while he and the other men had had their smoke in the dining-room. It was quite possible that Julia should have dropped into the room just as he had described. But what could there be in the will to cause her to purloin it? – a revocation of the clause relating to her income? Surely not. He continued to question Shorty.

"Did the old gentleman enter the room again after that?"

"Well, as I tell yer, I cleared out, sir. I never thought no more about it till I 'eard as 'ow a will had been prigged, and as 'ow you 'ad got the tin wot t'other cove ought to 'ave 'ad. Then o' course I seed 'ow it was, so I thought I'd just come 'ere an' – "

"Do a little blackmailing, eh?"

"No, sir, only I thought as 'ow 'twould be worth a tip to 'ave yer mind made easy like. 'Tain't much of a tip though as yer've parted with – strikes me I'd do better to go now to t'other cove, an' see what 'e's got to say!"

"Look here, you young blackguard, not another penny do you get from me, do you understand? And I'll take very good care that Mrs. Parsley knows the sort of scamp you are. Now clear out of this!" thundered the Major, bringing down his cane on the table, "or I'll give you as sweet a hiding as you ever had in your life."

At this Gideon Anab made a hasty exit. He had no fancy for any further chastisement at the hands of the irate Major. After all a fiver with a whole skin was better than nothing with a damaged one, and he had a very shrewd idea that that was how it would be with him if he remained. So he left the Major to reflect on his position.

It was not a pleasant one which ever way he looked at it. On the one hand he was liable at any moment to lose everything by the production of the lost will; on the other he was placed in the position of compounding a felony, or at least of retaining and enjoying what he knew was not his to enjoy. If he took what he held to be the only right course open to him the result would be very far reaching. For himself he did not care so much, although he was in nowise insensible to the difference between some five hundred – which was the amount of his private means – and five thousand a year. But he really did not like to think what the effect would be upon Hilda, when that young lady was called upon to give up all that she had schemed for – he knew well by this time that she had schemed for it. And upon Miriam too this reversal of fortune would fall hardly, since it would mean the speedy and inevitable degradation of her husband. As he turned all this over in his mind, he was sorely tempted for her sake and for his wife's to leave things as they were.

There was just one loop-hole of escape! – that Mrs. Darrow might have destroyed the will. In that case no possible good was to be achieved by exposing her. He would let her see that he knew her for what she was. But a scandal was a thing he had a loathing of, and would never be the one to bring about. Of course all this was based upon the hypothesis that Shorty had told the truth. There was always the possibility that he had not.

Hilda arrived home for dinner in the best of tempers. Her visit had been to her thoroughly successful, since not only had she been the best looking and best dressed woman in the room, but had been told so, which was infinitely more important. Her husband told her of the arrangement he had made for her to take Dicky to Rosary Mansions the following afternoon. She was pleased to express herself delighted. It, too, was likely to be a highly successful visit from her point of view. She, the mistress of Thorpe Manor, conferring her presence upon Dicky's quondam governess now married to the man whom she had jilted, and resident in one of the meaner tenements of West Kensington, was a picture in which she could see herself quite plainly. Still she was prepared to be cordial.

When Miriam came to welcome her she was surprised at the warmth of her manner. Dicky of course was embraced and made much of.