“I’ve come on a fool errand, with a wild and impossible suggestion.”
And then he told her of what had happened overnight, of the merciless flogging which Mrs. Inglethorne had administered.
“The woman is a fence,” he said, “not in a very big way. I think she specializes in furs and silk lengths.”
She knew something of the genus fence, but he told her what he had learnt in Dartmoor, of fences who visited the scene of prospective robberies and priced the lot, practically paying for it, before it was stolen; of skilful men and women who would stand outside a small jeweller’s shop and with one comprehensive glance assess the thieving value of the whole. He told her of “dead” stores—stores which were locked up at night, where nobody lived on the premises, and of “live” stores, where there was either a watchman or a proprietor and his family sleeping on the floors above.
“I am not reporting this officially—I mean the fence part of it, but the child is ill-used. The other little kids get a whacking now and again, but I should think she gets hers all the time.”
“What do you wish me to do?” she asked, looking up at him.
“I don’t know.” He had a sense of awkwardness. “I had a wild idea that possibly you might be able to find—to do something with her.”
“You mean take charge of her?”
She was smiling at him.
“Yes, I suppose I did mean that,” he said after a second’s thought. “It sounds fantastic and impossible now, but Elizabeth has got a grip on me. Probably it is my own rather unhappy childhood which is responding to her wretchedness.”
She laughed.
“I’ll make your mind easy at any rate,” she said. “I had already considered the possibility. In fact I discussed the matter with Lucretia last night before I went out to dinner, and Lucretia was wildly enthusiastic. I have a spare room here; she could go to the Catholic school in Leicester Square. The only point is that we get Mrs. Inglethorne’s consent.”
“She had better,” he said grimly, and her lips twitched.
“Really, you’re almost ferocious when you’re taking up the causes of other people,” she said. “I wish you’d be a little energetic in your own.”
“Aren’t I?”
She shook her head.
“Not very,” she answered, in her quiet way. “Why don’t you see your mother—”
He grinned.
“She saved me the trouble and came last night.”
“To Severall Street?” she asked in astonishment, and when he nodded: “Was it—a pleasant—encounter?”
“A normally strained interview,” he answered cheerfully. “She endeavoured to instil in me a passion for agriculture, and Canadian agriculture at that. I love Canada: you can’t even take a weekend trip into Canada without loving it. But the prospect of milking cows in Saskatchewan didn’t appeal.”
“She wanted you to go abroad? Why?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I suppose she rather feels there isn’t room enough for both of us in London.”
She thought the matter over for a minute.
“Didn’t your father leave you any money?”
“He cut me off without the proverbial shilling.”
The lightness of his tone, she suspected, was assumed. Coldwell had told her how much Peter had loved his father.
“He altered his will at the eleventh hour—the day before I was sentenced—and left me nothing. Poor old dear! I haven’t the slightest grudge; how could I? He was the best father that ever lived.”
She had said she rarely smoked; she took a cigarette from her bag now and lit it without looking at him. Indeed, for the next four minutes, as he talked about his envelope addressing and his future, it seemed that she was more interested in the blue vapour that floated from the end of her cigarette than in his narrative.
“You’re unfortunate.”
She put down the cigarette, carefully took out a spoonful of coffee from the cup and dropped it on the glowing end as it lay in the saucer.
“You’re unfortunate, Peter Dawlish, both as a son—and as a husband!”
He did not speak.
“Terribly unfortunate,” she went on moodily. “I think you must have been born under a very unlucky star. I’m not asking you for confidences—you’d hate me if I did.”
Presently:
“How did you know?”
She fetched a long sigh.
“How did I know? Oh, I only knew yesterday for sure. I’d guessed for a long time—ever since I went on my holidays into Cumberland and found a little volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s with an inscription in doggerel blank verse on the flyleaf. It was when I saw that the first letter of every line reading from below upwards made the words ‘Jane Dawlish’ that I first guessed. But I wasn’t certain—about the marriage. There was no record at Somerset House.”
“We were married in America.”
She nodded.
“I know that now; but why?”
He stared past her out of the window. Here, she thought, was a man who really regarded life as a terribly serious business. She was glad of that.
“Jane was very unhappy at home; her people were rotten. Her father kept a gambling house, and her mother—” He shrugged. “I fell in love with her. If I hadn’t been a fool I would have gone to my father and told him the truth and then, in all probability, there would have been no cause for unhappiness. But I was aware that he knew Jane’s people and knew that they were rotten. We went away to America together and were married in a little town in Connecticut. I suppose you know that? Her father was American born. From the first day the marriage was a ghastly mistake. Jane thought I had unlimited money. I had to pawn her jewels to get home, and there was a fearful scene when we landed at Liverpool. We were both a little crazy, and agreed
