The Turnbulls

by Taylor Caldwell

  John glanced with meaning bitterness at the locked mahogany desk. “Or perhaps you’ve just got plans for yourself, Mr. Wilkins. You’ve asked me to trust you, but how am I to know I’m not just a cat’s-paw for you, after all?”

  Mr. Wilkins smiled blandly. “There’s no way for you to know, Mr. Turnbull, I admits that. You’ve got to take me on trust.”

  He took out his big gold repeater and looked at it. He rose. “Well, now, sir, I must be leaving.” He paused. “You’ve got the copies, like, eh?”

  John smiled sombrely. Then he took a key from his pocket, went to the desk and unlocked it. He brought out a thick sheaf of foolscap paper, closely covered with his black and angular writing. He held the sheaf in his hand, turned to Mr. Wilkins, and smiled with great unpleasantness.

  “It’s all here, Mr. Wilkins. All the contents of Mr. Gorth’s confidential business files. All his most closely guarded business dealings and connivings and skullduggery, all his market reports. Everything that could ruin him.”

  A vast stillness had come over Mr. Wilkins. He did not stir even a finger. But he gazed at the thick sheaf in John’s hand like a man enthralled.

  “Why should I give it to you?” continued John. “Why should I trust you?”

  Mr. Wilkins slowly lifted his eyes and looked at John. He whispered: “You’ve got to trust me, Mr. Turnbull, sir. You’ve got only my word for it. Wot could you do with that information? Nothin’, nothin’ at all. It means nothin’ to you.”

  “Perhaps,” said John, with a disagreeable grin, “you’ve picked me up and used me just for this very thing. To get you this information, to be your thief and dupe.”

  Mr. Wilkins’ ruddy colour had faded to such an extent that there were only mottled spots left on his round and suetty cheeks. But his eyes, so strange, so exultant, so terrible, now, did not leave John’s face.

  “I’ve said,” he whispered, “that you’ve got to trust me. I say it again.”

  There was a sudden hard silence in the room. The pale sunlight brightened to a vivid glow at the windows. The chill seemed to grow more intense.

  Then John shrugged, enraged at his helplessness and impotence. He thrust the sheaf stiffly at Mr. Wilkins, and said harshly: “Take them. Perhaps I’m a fool. I probably am. I can’t help it, it seems.”

  Mr. Wilkins took the sheaf. He ruffled the pages quickly, his eye flicking over line after line, darting like an avid beetle. He seemed to forget John. His beaming smile became evil, gloating, deeply satisfied. “Ah,” he murmured at intervals. John watched him with a dour and heavily suspicious look.

  Mr. Wilkins glanced up. His plump face glowed like the sun itself. He clapped John on the shoulder. “Capital, sir, capital,” he said, and his voice was curiously breathless. Then, his exultation overcoming him, he cried: “It’s more than I expected! Mr. Turnbull, your fortun is made. And mine.”

  “That is very agreeable,” said John sourly. Nevertheless, his heart had begun to beat with unusual rapidity. He went back to the desk and brought out a stout manila envelope. He reached for the sheaf, but Mr. Wilkins, archly and naughtily shaking his head, took the envelope himself and carefully and lovingly put the sheaf in it. He tucked it under his arm, held out his hand.

  “Mr. Turnbull,” he said solemnly, “allow me to congratulate you. Your servant, sir.”

  “Or yours,” said John, with a glower. But he took Mr. Wilkins’ hand.

  When his strange and inexplicable visitor had left, John experienced a nameless depression of spirit. He paced back and forth, up and down, the room, chewing his lip, striking the fist of one hand in the palm of another. His thoughts were turbulent, confused, sick with pain, shaken with uneasiness. The thing he had done was reprehensible, dishonourable, and even, he thought, despicable. He shook his head savagely, as he thought these things, and allowed his galling bitterness to wash away any qualms he felt. His head began to ache furiously, with a heavy pain. He flung himself into a chair, covered his face with his hands. An utter sickness and lassitude overcame him.

  The sun fled from the window. A dank dimness and chill pervaded the apartments. Somewhere a clock faintly chimed the hour. A carriage rolled over the stones of the street below, followed by the rocking and clamour of a horse-car. Coals dropped on the hearth. A long slow shivering passed over John’s body.

  He had written his father once since coming to America. But he had received no reply. He lifted his head as he thought this, and his eyes became suffused, his lip shaken.

  If, he thought, I had received only a word from him, a single word, I would never have done this!

  His heart felt wounded and sore. He swallowed convulsively, as if to keep back a sob, for he was still young, still vulnerable, unused as yet to villainy and duplicity.

  A single word, he repeated to himself. And then, “Eugenia,” he whispered.

  At last, feeling bruised and aching in every muscle, he pushed himself to his feet. He lit a lamp, looked about him at the chill stark gloom of the big parlour. He shivered again. He poked up the fire, all his movements sluggish. A single rosy streamer of light struck the white ceiling.

  He heard the faintest of dolorous sounds, and glanced quickly at the closed door of the bedroom. His face wrinkled with sad and involuntary disgust. Then, sighing, he opened the door and went into the chamber which he shared with Lilybelle.

  The girl was lying across the bed, clutching the white coverlet, her face buried in the pillows. Her crushed mauve satin, the heaving lines of her young figure, her tumbled auburn head, all spoke eloquently of the hopeless desolation which pervaded her, and her helplessness.

  “Lilybelle!” he said, harshly.

  She pushed herself upright, not looking at him, wiping her tears away with the backs of her hands, childishly. He stared at her quivering back, and something seemed to break in his heart. He went to her quickly, sat down on the bed and pulled her roughly into his arms. Her head fell on his shoulder. She sobbed aloud, clutching him with desperate and clinging arms, and hands.

  “Oh, Lilybelle, you are such a fool!” he said angrily. “You cry over nothing, like an infant.” Nevertheless, he kissed her with violence, and great pain.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mr. Wilkins descended the stairs slowly. Once in the square and dusty hall below, so cold, clean and bleak, he lurked about a few moments, chewing his fingernail in deep thoughtfulness. Then he tapped gently on the forbidding front of a oaken door off the hall, and assumed his usual expression of radiant affability.

  Kitty, the Irish maid, opened the door and glowed upon him. The “missus,” she informed him, would see him immediately. Mr. Wilkins, hat and gloves elegantly in hand, his cane tucked under his arm, bowed and beamed his way into the tall dim parlour, where a dark floor glimmered like a shadowed mirror, and where panelled walls, grim and lofty, reflected that dim light. Here was the same gleaming bitter cleanness and dignity of the upstairs apartment, enhanced by austere polished furniture, and very little of that. Miss Beardsley, who did not believe in “pampering” others, nevertheless did not carry this to extremes for herself, for a low red fire crackled on the tiled hearth of a mahogany fireplace. Nor did Miss Beardsley care for too much sunlight in her house. It “faded” the furnishings. So heavy crimson draperies were drawn over the high windows, a narrow crack between them allowing the entry of pale and furtive light. Near the fire, in a high ladder-back straight chair, Miss Beardsley sat in formidable stiffness and majesty, her knotted livid hands folded on her bony knees, her white-capped head as rigid as if upheld by a board. Indeed, there was something wooden about all of Miss Beardsley, from her lathe-like back and front, her broadlike shoulders and sharp angles.

  Dressed in black wool which revealed no softness of outline, and with a black fringed shawl about her broad thin shoulders, she was the picture of a spinster, grim, relentless, suspicious and gaunt. Under her white cap, her hair was black, threaded with silver, and drawn severly in a net to a high position on her head. She had a long
cavernous face, with a wide thin mouth, tiny acidulous blue eyes, a wide low forehead, and a bony Phoenician nose. Nevertheless, she exuded that nameless air of breeding which always inspired Mr. Wilkins’ sincere respect. This was a gentlewoman, full of integrity, righteousness, “character” and haughtiness. Nothing, Mr. Wilkins reaffirmed to himself, would shake that stony woman, except money.

  Miss Beardsley’s attitude, though stately, expressed a frozen quality rather than repose. As she saw Mr. Wilkins, she inclined her head with majesty, and indicated a chair near her with a slight motion of her mottled hand. Mr. Wilkins repressed a shiver at the barren coldness of the room, but sat down with every manifestation of affectionate geniality and pleasure at finding himself in this virginal presence.

  “A beautiful day, Miss Beardsley, a beautiful day!” he said, with rich enthusiasm. “I trust you enjoyed your constitutional?”

  “I walk for my health, not for frivolity,” said Miss Beardsley, in a frigid voice. “I remember it is the Sabbath, and while I Walked, I meditated upon the weakness of human nature. It is a very interesting subject, Mr. Wilkins. One sees much food for thought while pursuing one’s way through the city.”

  “Oh, I agree with you perfectly, Miss Beardsley,” said Mr. Wilkins, with a knowing look, a momentary quenching of his brightness, and a deep sigh. “One can’t ’elp but think of the frailty of human natur in the raw. Revealing, I allus says.”

  Miss Beardsley inclined her head with severe approval of these worthy sentiments. If it could be called that, her attitude relaxed just the slightest. She echoed Mr. Wilkins’ sigh, touched her dry eyes with the corner of a stiff linen kerchief, and assumed a look of noble and unflinching suffering.

  “On the Lord’s Day, one would expect sober faces upon the streets, and meek and meditative attitudes. But one sees nothing but the most sinful gaiety and heedlessness. One might even say, thoughtlessness. There is no dearth of gentlemen and ladies walking in the parks, idling away precious time, though the churches are more than half empty. One can only fear what the end will be, in this new Babylon.”

  Mr. Wilkins was not certain what Babylon was, but he nodded heavily, sighted again, tilted his head and stared despondently at the floor.

  Miss Beardsley cleared her throat ominously, and stared rigidly before her. “It is the Catholic influence, certainly, Mr. Wilkins. We ought not to have allowed those professing that heathen faith to enter America. It has destroyed our reverence for the Sabbath, for the Holy Book and our Protestant austerity and lofty simplicity. I fear that this is just the beginning, that eventually we shall see the influx of impossible persons of strange ideals and stranger ways of life. America, as we know it, will be destroyed. I can only prophesy, Mr. Wilkins, and you need not look incredulous or doubting, that we are to be devoured in the wrath of God, as Sodom and Gomorrah were devoured, or Nineveh.”

  As Mr. Wilkins had very little acquaintance with the Bible, he said nothing, but only sighed over and over, shaking his head.

  “I love my country,” continued Miss Beardsley, in a tone of low and noble anguish, “and it is a great trial to me to discover her in the throes of dissolution.”

  “Ah, perhaps not,” breathed Mr. Wilkins. “I have such faith in Ameriky.”

  Miss Beardsley gloomily considered this for a moment, then, after a sad glance of acknowledgment at Mr. Wilkins for this sentiment, she shook her head, bowed her spade-like chin on her flat bosom, and sighed.

  “I hope we shall not disappoint you, Mr. Wilkins,” she said, in a fatal tone. “I cannot reassure you with real sincerity. The city is rife with sin and darkness. One dares not think how close and terrible the end is to be.”

  She sank into melancholy. Mr. Wilkins did not see what her expression intended to convey to him: meek and long-suffering holiness and regret. He saw the real expression, mean and hating envy of all that was alive and warm and full of colour. He saw that Miss Beardsley was a quite malignant and virulent woman. In other words, an excellent woman “for his money.”

  “You are a busy lady, Miss Beardsley,” he murmured, leaning towards her with deep reverence. “And I’m not one as imposes on others. I’d like to ’ave a word with you about certain young persons now under your roof.”

  Miss Beardsley lifted her head. In the dusky cold of the room, her little blue eyes glittered with eager malevolence. She pressed her lips together, smoothed her brow with one finger, as if a pain had suddenly invaded it.

  “Ah, yes, certainly, they are protégés of yours, are they not, Mr. Wilkins?” She hesitated elaborately, then, with an air of determined courage she said: “I also wished to talk with you, Mr. Wilkins, about them. I fear I cannot accommodate them any longer.”

  “No!” exclaimed Mr. Wilkins, in a tone of strong consternation. “’Ave they offended you in some way, Miss Beardsley?”

  She compressed her lips until her mouth was a mere livid slit in her horsey face. She regarded Mr. Wilkins with grim sternness.

  “Not exactly, Mr. Wilkins. That is, young Mrs. Turnbull has not offended me. It is evident that she is a young person who has married out of her station. However, I admire her for her admission of this, and her desire for improvement. I find her respectful, and eager for proper training, and very complaisant and obliging. One of the servant class, I presume, but not forward and above herself. At your own request, and hers, very respectfully advanced, I have endeavoured to supply her with the rudimentary conduct becoming a born lady. I must admit that she is an excellent pupil.”

  She paused. Mr. Wilkins leaned forward with every evidence of absorbed attention.

  “I have acquired a fondness for Mrs. Turnbull,” resumed Miss Beardsley in a severe and uncompromising tone. “I think I could do much with her, as you requested, Mr. Wilkins. It is Mr. Turnbull that I find objectionable.”

  “I regrets to ’ear that,” said Mr. Wilkins, in a concerned voice. “I know ’e’s a blasted opinionated beggar, beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, and given to violence and such. But ’e’s a gentleman, and I’m one as knows that.”

  “A gentleman is as a gentleman does,” Miss Beardsley remarked, with a swift toss of her head and a sniff. “I find him boorish and impossible, and quite rude. He appears to be of the opinion that I am a professional lodging-house keeper, and treats me in a very cavalier and demanding fashion, and, though you will scarcely believe this, with disdain.”

  “And I was partiklar to inform him that you was a lady of breeding and famly,” mourned Mr. Wilkins, “and that you accommodate him and his wife out of friendship for me.”

  Miss Beardsley sniffed again, with dolorous offense, but did not answer.

  “What ’as he done?” urged Mr. Wilkins, sorrowfully.

  “It is more Mr. Turnbull’s attitude than what he has actually done,” said Miss Beardsley with reproving severity. “He has no consideration for my sensibilities. He smokes cheroots in my dining-room, though I have specifically informed him that it is offensive to my nostrils, and has a tendency to darken the walls. Worse than that, Mr. Wilkins,” and she gazed at him formidably, “I have smelt liquor upon his breath, and even while passing his door. You can hardly believe that Mr. Wilkins? I assure you that I am not one to indulge in vagrant imaginings. I had rather a sharp talk with Mr. Turnbull on the subject, and he replied very offensively, and asked me if I was receiving my rent on time, and, if so, that he would thank me to mind my own business.”

  “I can ’ardly credit that!” cried Mr. Wilkins, with horror.

  Miss Beardsley smiled darkly. “I assure you it is quite true. You can see, therefore, that despite my liking and patronage of young Mrs. Turnbull, I cannot continue to shelter them.”

  Mr. Wilkins shook his head over and over to himself, as if he was too aghast to speak immediately.

  “Sad, sad,” he murmured, at last. “And ’ere I was about to inform you, ma’am, that within a few weeks these young persons would be renting your second floor apartments at a rent, say, of seventy-five dollars a m
onth, with appropriate adjustments for dining privileges.”

  Miss Beardsley turned her head to him alertly, and frowned.

  “And Mrs. Turnbull was athinkin’, too, of engagin’ a personal maid for herself, and another for the apartments, and settin’ up a genteel establishment,” continued Mr. Wilkins, studying the floor mournfully.

  Miss Beardsley cleared her throat. “How can that be, Mr. Wilkins? You informed me that Mr. Turnbull was receiving but seventy-five dollars a month at the firm of Richard Gorth, and that he can pay me but fifty dollars for the apartments he now occupies.”

  Mr. Wilkins winked ponderously. “Ah, but there will soon be another song to sing. I can’t tell you much more, ma’am. ’E’s got go, that one, and there is some gentleman who is much interested in Mr. Turnbull’s talents.”

  Miss Beardsley reflected on this in silence. She pursed her lips, scowled, rubbed her brow, touched her eyes with her kerchief. Mr. Wilkins staring at the floor again, apparently saw nothing of this.

  It’s be cruel to put Mrs. Turnbull on the street now, just when she’s profitin’ so proper like from your instructions, ma’am,” continued Mr. Wilkins in a tone that suggested inner weeping.

  Miss Beardsley said thoughtfully: “We have been doing some exercises with the backboard, and I have been preparing a lotion of honey and milk of almonds for the child’s hands. I have had excellent hopes for her. Her taste is somewhat extreme, but we were to shop for a more restrained wardrobe, one of elegance. She really is very civil, poor young creature, and anxious to learn. I have offered to teach her her letters; she is quite illiterate. And to instruct her on the piano. Her gratitude is truly touching.”

  She lifted her head again with noble resolution. “Mr. Wilkins,” she said, in a ringing voice, full of dedicated exaltation, “I would be failing in my duty to a fellow creature if I did not continue my instruction of Mrs. Turnbull. I must be at hand to console her, on the inevitable occasion when she learns the true character of her husband.”