“My dear fellow, these men all drink,” answered Smolendo, cheerfully. “But Roberts is a treasure. He’s always sober in business.”
Again Jack tried the effect of remonstrance with his wife, just as vainly as before.
“If you weren’t a fool you would make Smolendo give me an extra five pounds a week on account of the danger, instead of worrying me about it,” she said.
“I am not going to make the safety of your life a question of money,” he answered; and after this there was no more said between them on the subject of the coral bower, but that speech of the scene shifter’s haunted Jack Chicot.
“When she is drunk.” The memory of that speech was bitter. Though his wife’s habits had long been patent to him, it was not the less galling to think that everyone—the lowest servant in the theatre even—knew her vices.
Towards the end of April, Chicot and his wife had a serious quarrel. It arose out of a packet which had been left at the stage door for the dancer—a packet containing a gold bracelet, in a morocco case, bearing the name of one of the most fashionable and expensive jewellers at the West End. There was nothing to show whence the offering came; but on a narrow strip of paper, nestling under the massive gold band, there was scrawled in a mean little foreign-looking hand—
“Homage to genius.”
La Chicot carried the gift home in triumph and exhibited it to her husband, clasped upon her round white arm, a solid belt of gold, flat, wide, and thick, like a fetter, severely simple, an ornament for the arm of a Greek dancing girl.
“You will send it back, of course,” said Jack, frowning at the thing.
“But, my friend, where should I send it?”
“To the jeweller. He must know his customer.”
“I am not so stupid. There can be no harm in accepting an anonymous gift. I shall keep it, of course.”
“I did not think you had fallen so low.”
Upon this La Chicot retorted insolently, and there were very hard words spoken on both sides. The lady kept the bracelet, and the gentleman went next day to the jeweller who had supplied it, and tried to discover the name of the purchaser.
The jeweller was studiously polite, but he had no memory. Jack Chicot minutely described the bracelet, but the jeweller assured him that he sold a dozen such in a week.
“I think you must be mistaken,” said Chicot, “this is a bracelet of very uncommon form. I never saw one like it,” and then he repeated his description.
The jeweller shook his head with a gentle smile.
“The style is new,” he said, “but I assure you we have sold several exactly corresponding to your description. It would be quite impossible to recall—”
“I see,” said Chicot, “you would not like to disoblige a good customer. I dare say you know what the bracelet was meant for. Such shops as yours could hardly thrive unless they were indulgent to the vices of their patrons.”
And after launching that shaft Mr. Chicot left the shop.
He returned to his lodgings to pack a small portmanteau, and then went off to take his own pleasure. What need had such a wife as his of a husband’s care? She would not accept his advice, or be ruled by him. She had chosen her road in life, and would follow it to the fatal end. Of what avail was his weak arm to bar the path? To this daughter of the people, with her deadened conscience and indomitable will, that interposing arm was no more than a straw in her way.
“Henceforth I have done with her,” he said to himself. “The law could desire no stronger divorce between us than this which she has made. And if she does me wrong the law shall part us. I will have no mercy.”
While he was packing his portmanteau an idea flashed into his mind. It was a horrible notion, and his cheek paled at the first aspect of it, but he took it to his heart nevertheless.
He was going away, for an indefinite time, perhaps. He would set a watch upon his wife. Her audacity, her insolence, had aroused the darkest suspicions. A woman who thus openly defied him must be capable of anything.
“Whom can I trust?” he asked himself, pausing in his preparations, on his knees before the portmanteau. “The Landlady, Mrs. Evitt? No, she is sly enough, but she has too long a tongue. A glass of grog would loosen that tongue of hers at any time, and she would betray me to my wife. It must be a man. Yes, the very man. He has all the qualities of the trade.”
Chicot locked his portmanteau, strapped it, and carried it out on to the landing. Then he ran up to the second floor, and knocked at the door of the front room.
“Come in,” said a languid voice, and Jack Chicot went in.
The room smelt of brandy and stale cigars. It was shabbier and tawdrier than the sitting-room on the first floor—a sordid copy of that sordid original. There was the same attempt at finery, tarnished ormolu, gaudy chintz curtains and chair covers, where roses and lilies were almost effaced by dirt. The cheap tapestry carpet was threadbare, a desert of arid canvas, with here and there an oasis of faded colour, which hinted at the former richness of the soil. The windows were clouded with London grime and London smoke, and lent an additional gloom to the chilly sky and the dingy street upon which they looked. The cracked and bulging ceiling was brown with the smoke of ages. Dirt was the pervading impression which the room left upon the stranger’s mind.
On a rickety old sofa lay the present proprietor of the apartment, dozing gently at noontide, with the Daily Telegraph slipping from his loosened grasp. The remains of a bachelor breakfast, a
