"I came round this afternoon," said Roger in an aggrieved tone, "but you were out."
It seems to be a fixed idea, tap-rooted into the very depths of the masculine mind, that it is the bounden duty of women to be in when they call, even if they have not thought fit to mention their flattering intentions. But some of us are ruefully aware that we might remain indoors twenty years without having our leisure interrupted. Janey had on many occasions waited indoors for Roger, but not since he had seen Annette home after the choir practice.
"You never seem to be about nowadays," he said.
"I was in the Hulver gardens."
"Yes, so I thought I would come round now."
Roger could extract more creaking out of one wicker garden chair than any other man in Lowshire, and more crackling out of a newspaper, especially if music was going on: that is, unless Annette was singing.
He was as still as a stone on those occasions.
"How is Aunt Louisa?"
"Just the same."
"Doctor been?"
"No."
"I was over at Noyes this morning about the bridge. Stirling gave me luncheon. I don"t know where I"m going to get the money for it, with Aunt Louisa in this state. It"s her business to repair the bridge. It"s going to cost hundreds."
Janey had heard all this before many times. She was aware that Roger was only marking time.
"When I was over there," continued Roger, "I saw Bartlet, and he told me Mary Deane--you know who I mean?"
"Perfectly."
"I heard the child, the little girl, had died suddenly last week. Croup or something. They ought to have let me know. The funeral was yesterday."
"Poor woman!"
"She and the old servant between them carried the little coffin themselves along the d.y.k.e and across the ford. Wouldn"t let anyone else touch it. I heard about it from Bartlet. He ought to have let me know. I told him so. He said he thought I _did_ know. That"s Bartlet all over.
And he said he went up to see her next day, and--and she was gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes, gone. Cleared out; and the servant too. Cowell said a man from Welysham had called for their boxes. They never went back to the house after the funeral. I ought to have been told. And to-day I get this,"
Roger pulled a letter out of his pocket and held it out to her. He lit a match, and by its wavering light she read the few lines, in an educated hand:--
"_I only took the allowance from you when d.i.c.k became too ill to send it, on account of Molly. Now Molly is dead, I do not need it, or the house, or anything of d.i.c.k"s any more. The key is with Cornell.--M._"
"Poor woman!" said Janey again.
"It"s a bad business," said Roger. "She was--there was something nice about her. She wasn"t exactly a lady, but there really _was_ something nice about her. And the little girl was d.i.c.k over again. You couldn"t help liking Molly."
"I suppose she has gone back to her own people?"
Roger shook his head.
"She hasn"t any people--never knew who her parents were. She was--the same as her child. She loved d.i.c.k, but I don"t think she ever forgave him for letting Molly be born out of wedlock. She knew what it meant. It embittered her. It was not only her own pride which had been wounded, and she was a proud woman. But Molly! She resented Molly being illegitimate."
"Oh, Roger, what will become of her?"
"Goodness knows."
"d.i.c.k oughtn"t to have done it," said Roger slowly, as if he were enunciating some new and startling hypothesis. "But to do him justice I do believe he might have married her if he"d lived. I think if he cared for anybody it was for her. d.i.c.k meant well, but he was touched in his head. She ought not to have trusted him. Not quite like other people; no memory: and never in the same mind two days running."
There was a short silence. But Roger had got under way at last. Very soothing at times is a monologue to the weary masculine mind.
"I used to think," he went on, "that d.i.c.k was the greatest liar and swindler under the sun. He went back on his word, his written word, and he wasn"t straight. I"m certain he ran a ramp at Leopardstown. That was the last time he rode in Ireland. You couldn"t trust him. But I begin to think that from the first he had a bee in his bonnet, poor chap. I remember Uncle John leathering him within an inch of his life when he was a boy because he said he had not set the big barn alight. And he _had_. He"d been seen to do it by others as well as by me. I saw him, but I never said. But I believe now he wasn"t himself, sort of sleep-walking, and he really had clean forgotten he"d done it. And do you remember about the Eaton Square house?"
Of course Janey remembered, but she said, "What about that?"
"Why, he wrote to me to tell me he had decided to sell it only last August, a month before his accident, as he wanted cash. He had clean forgotten he had sold it two years ago and had had the money. Twenty thousand it was."
Puff! Puff!
"Jones, his valet, you know!"
"Yes."
"Jones told me privately when I was in Paris a month ago that d.i.c.k couldn"t last much longer. Gangrene in both feet. The wonder is he has lived so long. Aunt Louisa will get her wish after all. You"ll see he will die intestate, and everything will go to Harry. Pity you weren"t a boy, Janey. d.i.c.k can"t make a will now, that"s certain, though I don"t believe if he could and wanted to, Lady Jane would let him. But whatever happens, the family ought to remember Jones when d.i.c.k"s gone, and settle something handsome on him for life. Jones has played the game by d.i.c.k."
Janey thought it was just like Roger to be anxious about the valet, when his own rightful inheritance was slipping away from him. For Roger came next in the male line after d.i.c.k, if you did not count Harry.
There was a long silence.
"When d.i.c.k does go," said Roger meditatively,--"moon looks jolly, doesn"t it, peeping out behind the tower?--I wonder whether we shall have trouble with the other woman, the one who was with him when he was taken ill."
"At Fontainebleau?"
"Yes. I hear she was not at all a common person either, and as handsome as paint."
At the back of his mind Roger had a rueful, half-envious feeling that really the luck had been with d.i.c.k: one pretty woman after another, while he, Roger, plodded along as good as gold and as dull as ditch water, and only had to provide for the babes of these illicit unions. It did not seem fair.
"Perhaps there is another child there," he said.
"Oh no, no!" said Janey, wincing.
"It"s no use saying, "Oh no, no!" my good girl. It may be, "Oh yes, yes!" The possibility has to be faced." Roger spoke as a man of the world. "There may be a whole brood of them for aught we know."
"Do you think he may possibly have married this--second one?" said Janey tentatively.
"No, I don"t. If he had, she wouldn"t have bolted. Besides, if d.i.c.k had married anyone, I do believe it would have been Mary Deane. Well, she"s off our hands, poor thing. She won"t trouble us again, but I don"t expect we shall get off as easy with number two."