She felt a surge of angry fear of Roger Gretorex’s mother, but she had quickly made up her mind to be what she called “sweet” to her unwelcome visitor. When, always against her will, the thought of Gretorex forced itself on her mind, there was coupled with it the terrifying perception that by now he must be well aware of who it was who had brought about the death of Jervis Lexton.
“Appearances,” said Mrs. Gretorex in a low, quiet voice, “are very much against Roger. His counsel is thinking, we understand, of putting forward a theory that your husband committed suicide. I have come to ask you if you can advance anything to add even a tinge of probability to that theory? Was there insanity in Mr. Lexton’s family? Did he, above all, say, even once, that he might be tempted to take his life?”
These clear, passionless questions gave Ivy no opportunity for the display of her special gifts. She asked herself nervously what she ought to say in answer to these definite queries.
Would it be to her interest to allow it to be thought that she, at any rate, believed it possible that Jervis had done away with himself? Then she decided that, no, it would not pay her to accept what everyone who had ever come in contact with her husband, including Nurse Bradfield, and the two doctors who had been attending him, would know to be impossible. So:
“I never heard him say anything of that sort,” she answered regretfully, “except in fun, of course.” She added, as an afterthought, “But I know how much Jervis hated to be poor, Mrs. Gretorex.”
The older woman threw an imperceptible look round the luxurious room.
“But he wasn’t poor,” she said quickly. “He had just got, or so we understand, a good new post.”
“I know he had. That’s one of the things that makes it all so dreadful—”
And then Mrs. Gretorex, who was herself a very honest woman, felt impelled to ask what was perhaps a dangerous question.
“I need hardly ask you what you think? Whatever be the truth, you do not believe, Mrs. Lexton, that my son poisoned your husband?”
Ivy did not answer for what seemed to Mrs. Gretorex a long, long time. Then she exclaimed, twisting her fingers together:
“It’s no good asking me that sort of thing, because I honestly don’t know what to think. It’s all so strange!”
“But surely you know Roger to be innocent?”
Ivy let her eyes drop.
“Of course, I want to think that,” she said in a low tone.
“You want to think it, Mrs. Lexton? D’you mean that you have any doubt about it?”
Again Ivy twisted her fingers together.
“It’s all so strange,” she repeated falteringly. “And it’s so unfortunate that Dr. Gretorex was the last one to see my husband alone on the day he died.”
Mrs. Gretorex got up.
“I see,” she said in a dull tone. “Then you are half inclined to believe that Roger did do this terrible thing—for love, I suppose, of you?”
And there flashed a look of awful condemnation over the mother’s worn face.
“Please don’t say that, Mrs. Gretorex! I never said that I thought poor Roger really did it!” cried Ivy hysterically. “Perhaps Jervis did commit suicide, but, as nurse says, if he did poison himself, where did he get the stuff to do it with? Also Roger was so fearfully gone on me. It’s all so very, very strange!”
Oh, why had Mrs. Gretorex come here, just to torture her and frighten her? It was too cruel!
Then Roger Gretorex’s mother did make to the woman who stood before her, this woman whom her son loved to his undoing, a desperate appeal, though she worded what she had to say quietly enough.
“I understand that you’re going to be the principal witness for the Crown at my son’s trial?”
Ivy began to cry.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Isn’t it dreadful—dreadful? As if I hadn’t gone through enough without having to go through that too!”
“On what you say,” went on Mrs. Gretorex firmly, “may depend Roger’s life or death. After all, you and he were dear friends?”
She uttered that last sentence in a tone she strove to make conciliatory.
Ivy stopped crying. Then Roger hadn’t given her away, even to a very little extent, to his mother? It was a great relief to know that.
“I implore you to guard your tongue when you are in the witness-box,” went on Mrs. Gretorex.
“I will! I will indeed—”
“Can you think of no natural explanation with regard to the utterly mysterious thing which happened?”
Her eyes were fixed imploringly on the beautiful little face of this frivolous—Mrs. Gretorex believed mindless—woman, whom Roger still loved so desperately.
“I’ve thought, and thought, and thought—” whispered Ivy.
And then for the fourth time during this brief interview she uttered the words, “It’s all so strange.”
As, a few minutes later, she walked down Kensington High Street, still full of bustling, happy people on shopping intent, Roger Gretorex’s mother was in an agony of doubt, wondering whether she had done well or ill in thus forcing herself on Mrs. Jervis Lexton.
Again and again there echoed in her ear the silly, vulgar little phrase: “Roger was so fearfully gone on me.”
Gone on her? Alas, that had been, that was still, only too true. Even now his one thought seemed to be how to spare Ivy pain, and, above all, disgrace.
She stepped up into a crowded omnibus at the corner of Chapel Street, and for a while she had to stand. Then a girl gave up her seat to her, and heavily she sat down.
Who, looking however closely at Mrs. Gretorex sitting there, her worn face calm and still, would have thought her other than an old-fashioned, highly bred lady, leading the placid life of her fortunate class, that class which even now is financially secure, and seems to be so far apart from and above the sordid ills and anxieties of ordinary humanity?
Yet there can be little doubt that Roger Gretorex’s mother was the most miserable and the most unhappy woman of the
