Collins accepted the advent of the Marbles into his wife’s life with the lack of interest that he evinced towards everything. He talked with weary politeness to Marble himself on the one or two occasions that the latter had accompanied Annie there. But he probably did not know their names. After all these years of married life he had ceased to be interested in his wife’s doings. Marguerite, red-haired, brown-eyed, tempestuously passionate, and with her native peasant craftiness to guide her, was by no means the ideal wife for him. By that time they both knew it.
Marguerite played her new capture with dexterous skill—not that there was much skill needed, seeing that Marble’s greatest wish at the moment was to be her captive, provided no one else knew about it. There had been glances from her hot brown eyes into which Mr. Marble was at liberty to weave all sorts of meanings. There had been strange coincidences when she had happened to be out shopping just when Mr. Marble was walking home from the bus that brought him from the station. There had been times, anxiously awaited, when he had escorted her home after she had been to Malcolm Road calling in the evening. Then, in the comforting darkness, she had walked close at his side so that he could feel her warmth against his. She had long ago decided that she would yield to him, but she was not going to yield too readily. She wanted money as well as intrigue, money that she could put into the bank account that stood in her name alone, in which her husband had no share. Peasant avarice was in her blood, the avarice that demands hard money and plenty of it—enough too, to enable her to forsake her spiritless husband and live her own life in Rouen or even Paris.
But she nearly miscalculated, owing to her not being in possesion of all the data. There came a time when in place of the pleasant lunches in town—when she had to be up buying her materials—a little dinner was suggested. Marguerite had the whole scene in her mind’s eye. There would be a private room, and a discreet waiter, and plenty of good wine—Burgundy, she thought would be best. Then, with Mr. Marble well warmed and comforted, would come the tale of unexpected business losses and of pressing debts. Mr. Marble might not believe it; he would be welcome not to. But he would offer a loan, nevertheless, and when she had it safely in her purse, she would melt with gratitude towards him. She would be overcome, yielding, tender. Then she would hear no more about that “loan.” But the farce would be necessary, nevertheless. Otherwise Mr. Marble might get unwelcome ideas into his head—that it was solely by his charms that he had overcome her resistance. Marguerite preferred to have matters on a sound business footing.
At first everything went according to plan. Marguerite arrived only ten minutes late, just enough to make Mr. Marble anxious and yet not long enough seriously to annoy him. And at the sight of her all anxiety vanished. She was in splendid evening dress, low-cut and dazzling, so that Mr. Marble caught his breath as he looked at her. He himself was in a lounge suit, as was necessary with a wife at home who would look for some explanation should he do anything so extraordinary as to go out in dress clothes.
There had been no difficulty about obtaining a room to themselves; the waiter had been discreet, the wine had been good, the dinner excellent. Marguerite noted with pleasure that Marble ate hardly anything. He seemed to be in a fever.
Marble sat at the table. He was paying no attention to the woman opposite him. Coffee and liqueur brandy stood awaiting his leisure. The waiter had gone for good, with his bill paid. Marguerite was about to bring her carefully-rehearsed story into action, when she noticed the look on his face. He was staring, staring hard, past her at the opposite wall. In that direction lay the door that led into the tawdry bedroom, but clearly he was not thinking about that. The stare was a stare of agony.
Marble had felt uneasy almost as soon as the arrival of Madame Collins had set free his thoughts to wander where they would. He had a sudden awful suspicion that while he was dallying here someone was interfering with the flowerbed in his backyard. It would be poetic justice if it were so—newspaper poetic justice. He could imagine their baldly moral comments in the flaming reports that would appear in the next day’s papers. Cases of that kind, where there had been long concealment of the body, were nearly as popular in the newspapers as cases where the body had been cut up or burnt. And he would be dragged away. Then—his thoughts jumped back to half-remembered fragments of a stray copy of “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” which had come into his possession. There was something about “the black dock’s dreadful pen.” His mind hovered there for a space, and then fled on through all the horrible verses about “the silent men who watch him night and day” and about crossing his own coffin as he moves into the hideous shed. Then writhing into his mind came the lines about having a cloth upon his face and a noose about his neck. Marble’s breath came croakingly through his dry, parted lips. In imagination he already had a cloth upon his face. He could feel it, stifling, blinding him, while the officials padded warily about him making all ready. Marble struggled in his chair.
Madame Collins’ voice came to him, apparently from an immense distance, asking him if he were ill. Even then he only came partially to himself. At her anxious questionings he
