"Well, understand--my best thanks;" and really he seemed to feel some little grat.i.tude as well as great satisfaction. "Jane, you"re a brick.
You never show malice. You"ve a large heart."
"No," she said huskily; and with a curious slow gesture, she raised her numbed hands and pressed them against her breast. "I had a large heart once; but it has grown smaller and smaller, and harder and harder--till now it is a lump of stone."
"No, no. Rot."
"Yes. And that"s lucky--or before this you would have broken it."
He stood staring at the door when it had closed behind her. Then he shrugged his shoulders, turned to the table, and replenished his gla.s.s with whisky.
XXIII
It was immediately after this fatiguing episode that Mr. Prentice made his last urgent prayer to Mrs. Marsden. Complying with his request for an interview, she had come again to the panelled room in Hill Street.
But on this occasion she chose a different chair, and sat with her back to the windows and her face in shadow.
"You see for yourself," said Mr. Prentice, with culminating plainness: "he is an unmitigated blackguard. Get rid of him."
"I can"t."
"You can. Yates is still game--I mean, Yates has not forgotten anything.
Yates will swear to everything that she remembers.... So far as Yates goes, her evidence may be all the better for the delay. It will be all the more difficult to shake it after the lapse of time.... Of course we shall be asked, "Why have you sat down on your wrongs for so long?" But we have our answer now. This is the answer. You put up with his ill-usage and infidelities until he befouled your home. A disgraceful affair with a servant girl under your own roof! That was the last straw--and it has driven you to the Court, to ask for the relief to which you have been ent.i.tled for years."
"Oh, no--impossible."
"I pledge you my word, we shan"t fail. We shall pull it off to a certainty."
"No, I can"t do it. And even if we succeeded, it would be only a half relief. Divorce wouldn"t end the business partnership."
"No. But when once your marriage is dissolved, we shall be able to make terms with him. Wipe him out as your husband, and he loses the tremendous hold he has on you. Get rid of your incubus. Think what it would mean to you. He would be gone--you would be alone again; able to pull things together, work up the business, nurse it back to life. On my honour, I think you are capable of restoring your fortunes even at this late day."
But Mrs. Marsden only shook her head, while Mr. Prentice continued to entreat her to act on his advice.
"Suppose you always have to go on paying him half of all you can make by your industry? Never mind. What does it matter? You"ll pay it to him at a distance--you"ll never have to see him--you will have swept him out of your life. My dear, the years will roll off your back; you"ll be able to breathe, to _live_--you"ll feel that you are your own self again."
"No--impossible."
"Yes. Leave it to me. I answer for everything, before and afterwards.
I"ll manage my fine gentleman--I"ll cut his claws so that he"ll be a very quiet sort of partner in the years to come. I"ll work at it till I drop--but I swear I"ll put you on safe ground, if only you"ll trust me and let me tackle the job."
And Mr. Prentice, leaning forward in his chair, took her hand and pressed it imploringly.
"You are what you have always been to me, Mr. Prentice,--the best, the kindest of friends." She allowed him to retain her hand for a few moments, and then gently withdrew it. "But it is difficult for me to explain--so that you would understand me."
"I shall understand any explanation."
"I took him for better for worse. And once I promised him that I would hold to him until he set me free." She paused, as if carefully putting her thought into appropriate words. "It may come to it.... Yes, it is what I hope for--that he himself may give me back my freedom."
"But how?"
"He might consent to a separation--without scandal, without publicity."
"Why should he do that? While you"ve a shot in the locker, he"ll stick to you."
Mr. Prentice"s voice conveyed his sense of despair. She would not be convinced. He got up, sat down again, and vigorously resumed his appeal.
"Can"t you see now the force of what I have told you so often? He will not only disgrace you, he will eat you up. It is what he is doing--has almost done. And when you have let him squander your last farthing, he"ll desert you--but he won"t desert you till then."
But Mrs. Marsden again shook her head, and once more fell back upon the vagueness that baffles argument if it cannot refute it.
"No--dear Mr. Prentice, I feel that I couldn"t make any move now. Life is so complicated--there are difficulties on all sides--my hands are tied.... Perhaps I will ask you for your aid--but not now--and not for a divorce."
"But if you wait, no one will be able to aid you. The hour for aid will have pa.s.sed forever." And Mr. Prentice brought out all his eloquence in vain. "Try to recover your old att.i.tude of mind. Consider the thing as a business woman. Tear away sentiment and feminine fancies. Make this effort of mind--you would have been strong enough to do it a little while ago,--and consider yourself and him as if you were different people. Now--from the business point of view--and no sentiment! He is an undeserving blackguard."
"No. I can"t do anything now.... I _have_ considered it as a business woman. I have looked at it from every point of view. Believe me, I must go my own way."
This was the final appeal of Mr. Prentice. He said no more on the subject then, or afterwards. He had shot his bolt.
XXIV
Early in the new year Marsden had a serious illness. He caught a chill on a suburban racecourse, came home to shiver and groan and curse, and two days afterwards was down with double pneumonia.
He kept the hospital nurses, his wife, and the doctor busy for three weeks; and throughout this time there was no point at which it could be said that he was not in imminent danger of death.
Then the shop a.s.sistants heard, with properly concealed feelings of exultation, that a devoted wife, a clever doctor, and two skilled nurses had saved the governor"s life. The governor had pulled through. Dr.
Eldridge, as the shop understood, was able to make the gratifying p.r.o.nouncement that the patient possessed a naturally magnificent frame and const.i.tution, which had been but partially weakened or impaired by carelessness and imprudence. They need not entertain any further fear.
The dear governor will last for a splendidly long time yet.
But his convalescence was slow; and after the recovery of normal health he pa.s.sed swiftly into a third phase. He showed no inclination to rush about; his mental indolence had become so great that the mere notion of a train-journey fatigued him; he did his betting locally, and spent his days with the red-haired barmaid in the Dolphin bar.
At the Dolphin Hotel he had slid down a descending scale of importance which emblematized, with a strange accurateness, his descent in the town of Mallingbridge and in the world generally. Once he used to come swaggering into the n.o.ble coffee room, and be flattered by the landlord and fawned on by the manager while he gave his orders for sumptuous luncheons and dinners a la carte, with champagne of the choicest brands, and the oldest and costliest of liqueurs. After that, a period arrived when the restaurant and a table-d"hote repast, washed down with any cheap but strong wine, were good enough for him. Then he was seen only in the billiard room; or in the small grill-room, where he would sit drinking for hours while relays of commercial travellers and minor tradesmen bolted their chops and steaks. Now he had descended to what was called the saloon bar; and here, since he had lost his club, he made himself quite at ease, and was listened to with some semblance of respect by the shabby frequenters, and always smiled upon by the barmaid--who was an old, and of late a very intimate friend. He could not drop any lower at the Dolphin, unless he went out to the stable yard and sat with ostlers and fly-drivers in the taproom beneath the arch.
At mid-day there were eatables of a light sort on the saloon counter; but, rejecting such scratchy fare, Mr. Marsden regularly came home for his solid luncheon. After lunching heavily he went back to the saloon, stayed there through the tea hour, and returned to St. Saviour"s Court for dinner. He was regular in his attendance at meals, but except for meal-time the house never saw him. In fact he was settling down into stereotyped habits. When dinner was over he retired again--to take his grog in the saloon, to help the barmaid close the saloon, and to escort her thence to her modest little dwelling-house.
Mrs. Marsden knew all about this barmaid, with her fascinating smiles and her Venetian red hair--and indeed about her dwelling-house also. It was common knowledge that a few years ago she had been a parlourmaid in Adelaide Crescent; had somehow got into trouble; and somehow getting out of it, had risen to the surface as a saloon siren, and proved herself attractive to more persons than one. As to her place of residence, an illuminating letter had reached Marsden & Thompson and been duly opened behind the gla.s.s--"re No. 16 New Bridge Road. We beg to remind you that your firm have guaranteed Miss Ingram"s rent, and the same being now nearly a quarter in arrear, we beg, etc., etc...."
Then it was to Number Sixteen that Mr. Marsden walked every evening, wet or fine. No one knew when he returned home again. But he was always ready for his late breakfast in his own bed.
Thanks to the regularity of these habits, Enid could now come and see her mother without risk of encountering her stepfather. That cruel threat of his had been often repeated, but never converted into an explicit order; he disapproved of Mrs. Kenion"s visits, and if they were brought to his notice he would certainly prohibit them. But now the house was safe ground between luncheon and dinner; and there were few Thursday afternoons on which Enid did not come with her child to share Mrs. Marsden"s weekly half holiday.
Little Jane was old enough to do without the constant vigilance of a nurse; and almost old enough, it sometimes seemed, to understand that she was her mother"s only joy and consolation.