Whatsoever a Man Soweth

Jack laughed.

“No good worrying about Tibbie, mater. She’ll turn up all right to-morrow, or you’ll get a wire from her. You remember that time she met the Hursts in Nice and went off yachting with them down the Mediterranean, and we didn’t know where she was for three weeks. And then she calmly said she’d quite forgotten to tell us where she was going.”

“Ah, I remember,” said the viscountess, a kind-faced old lady whom I liked immensely. “I do wish she would consider my feelings a little more.”

With that the subject dropped.

Next morning I took leave of them all, and promising to meet Eric a few days later, took the train up to town to keep the secret tryst with my little friend who had so suddenly disappeared.

As I stood at the kerb looking up and down the wet pavement with its busy, hurrying crowd carrying umbrellas, I knew that I had commenced a very dangerous game. Would she keep her appointment? Did she really intend to go into voluntary exile in some mean street in one of the dismal southern suburbs? Was it possible that she who had from her birth been used to every luxury and extravagance could pose successfully as the wife of a compositor with forty shillings a week?

Ah! would not her very voice, her smart expressions, betray her as a lady?

I heard the rumbling of a train below, and once again up the grimy stairs came a long string of eager men and women returning from the City to their homes, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get back after the day’s toil. They swept past me along the Pentonville Road, and then I stood again, reflecting and watching, until suddenly a figure in neat black halted before me, and I found myself face to face with the fugitive.

“Tibbie!” I cried. “Then you’ve really come, after all?”

“Of course,” was her answer in a low, half-frightened tone. “When I make an appointment I keep it. Where shall we go? We can’t talk here, can we?”

A hansom was passing, and hailing it we got in hurriedly. I told the man to drive across Waterloo Bridge to the Elephant and Castle, a neighbourhood where we would be both quite unknown. Then, as I sank beside her, she asked, with a pretty, mischievous smile, —

“Well, Wilfrid, and how do you like me as your wife?”

“My wife!” I echoed. “By Jove, yes. I forgot that,” and I recollected the strange game I was playing.

“Don’t Mason’s things fit me well? She’s just my figure. I took this dress, jacket and hat from her box and put them into mine when I left Ryhall in the car. I thought they’d come in useful.”

I looked at her, and saw that with her brown hair brushed severely from her forehead, her small close-fitting hat and slightly shabby black jacket she was quite a demure little figure. The exact prototype of the newly-married wife of a working-man.

“It’s really quite a suitable get-up, I think,” I said, laughing.

“Yes. I’ve decided to explain to the curious that I was a lady’s-maid, and that we’ve been married nearly a year. Recollect that – in order to tell the same story. Where’s the ring? Did you think of that?” Yes, I had thought of it. I felt in my vest pocket, and taking out the plain little band of gold that I had bought in a shop in Regent Street that afternoon, placed it upon the finger, she laughing heartily, and then bending to examine it more closely in the uncertain light of the gas-lamps in Gray’s Inn Road.

“If I told you the truth, Wilfrid, you’d be horribly annoyed,” she said, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.

“No. What is it?” I asked.

“Well – only – only that I wish you were my real husband,” she answered frankly. “If you were, then I should fear nothing. But it cannot be – I know that.”

“What do you fear, Tibbie?” I asked, very seriously. “Tell me – do tell me.”

“I – I can’t – I can’t now,” was her nervous response in a harder voice, turning her gaze away from mine. “If I did, you would withdraw your help – you would not dare to risk your own reputation and mine, as you are now doing, just because we are old boy-and-girl friends.”

On we went through the streaming downpour along Chancery Lane and the Strand, the driver lowering the window, for the rain and mud were beating into our faces.

“Well,” I said, “and what do you suggest doing?”

“To-night I must disappear. I shall sleep in some obscure hotel across the water, and to-morrow you must call for me, and we’ll go together to fix upon our future ‘home.’” Then she inquired eagerly what impression her absence had produced at Ryhall, and I told her.

For a time she remained serious and thoughtful. Her countenance had changed.

“Then Mason came back, as I ordered her?”

“Yes,” I answered, “but won’t she miss those things of hers you are now wearing?”

“No. Because they were in a trunk that she had packed ready to send up to town. She won’t discover they’ve gone for some weeks, I feel sure.”

She described her night run from Chichester to Bournemouth, how she had escaped from Mason, taken train direct up to Birmingham, remained that night at the Grand, then went on to Leicester, where she had spent a day, arriving in London that evening at seven o’clock. In Bull Street, Birmingham, she had been recognised by a friend, the wife of an alderman, and had some difficulty in explaining why she was there alone.

Our present position was not without its embarrassments. I looked at the pretty woman who was about to pose as my wife, and asked, —

“And what name shall we adopt? Have you thought of one?”

“No. Let’s see,” she said. “How about Morton – Mr and Mrs William Morton?”

“All right, then after to-morrow I shall be known as William Morton, compositor?”

“And I shall be your very loving and devoted wife,” she laughed, her eyes dancing. “In any case, life in Camberwell will be an entirely new experience.”

“Yes,” I said. “I only hope we sha’n’t be discovered. I must be careful – for I shall be compelled to lead a double life. I may be followed one day.”

“Yes, but it is for my sake, Wilfrid,” she exclaimed, placing her small trembling hand upon my arm. “Remember that by doing this you are saving my life. Had it not been for you I should have been dead three days ago. My life is entirely in your hands. I am in deadly peril,” she added, in a low, desperate whisper. “You have promised to save me – and you will, Wilfrid – I know you will!”

And she gripped my arm tightly, and looked into my face.

Notwithstanding her assumed gaiety of manner, she was in terror.

Was that dead, white face still haunting her – the face of the stranger who had, in secret, fallen by her hand?

Chapter Ten.

Explains Certain Important Facts

That night she remained at a small quiet hotel near Waterloo Station, a place patronised by third-class passengers from the West of England, and at ten o’clock next morning I called for her.

To disguise oneself as a working-man is no easy matter. I had experienced one difficulty which I had not foreseen, namely, how to allay the suspicions of my man, Budd, when he found me going out in the cheap clothes and hat I had purchased at an outfitter’s in the Lambeth Road on the previous night.

On getting up I dressed myself in them, and then examined myself in the glass. I cut a figure that was, in my eyes, ridiculous. The suit bore a stiff air and odour of newness that was tantalising, yet I saw no way of altering it, save by pressing out the creases, and with that object I called Budd, who first looked me up and down, and then regarded me as though I had taken leave of my senses.

“Is that a new suit, sir?” he asked, scrutinising it.

“Yes, Budd,” I replied. “Now, you see what it is. I want to appear like a working-man,” I added confidentially. “The truth is I’m watching somebody, though, of course, you’ll say nothing.”

“Of course not, sir,” he answered discreetly, for he was a reliable servant.

Then I took counsel with him how to take off the palpable newness of the clothes, and he, like the clever valet he was, took them out, and after a while returned with them greatly improved.

So when dressed in a cheap cotton shirt, a dark red tie, a suit of dark grey tweed, and a drab cap, I at last looked the typical working-man from South London wearing his best clothes.