“If I hadn’t pulled it out and held it up like lightning, I should probably be in prison at this very minute,” she said. “Michael, it’s the second time in a week—and next time perhaps it’ll come off.”
“What do you mean?” said Michael blankly.
“Some one in that lift was all ready to say I had stolen that purse. If I hadn’t felt their wicked, prowling hand, and got in in front of them, that’s what they’d have done; and I should have been in prison instead of having tea with you, because there was that wretched purse actually in my pocket—nobody could say it wasn’t.”
“But who on earth—”
“The same people,” said Chloe with a gasp. “The woman on my right—I didn’t see her face properly until just as she went out of the lift—she’d white hair and sort of old lady clothes, but I’m sure it was that sham secretary dressed up.”
Michael didn’t say anything; he did not, in fact, speak at all until they were standing in Mrs. Moffat’s hall, which seemed to be quite full of the smell of cabbage. Then he opened the sitting-room door and said rather shortly:
“Will you come in here? I want to speak to you.”
He lit the gas, and a mantle with a large hole in one side shed a fluttering light upon the red plush suite, the crimson Axminster, and the striped green wall-paper up which there climbed endless rows of pale magenta sweet peas. Over the mantelpiece the great blue eye in the ancestral print gazed severely upon Chloe’s shivering attempt at composure and Michael’s set pallor.
Michael shut the door and turned.
“Look here, all this has got to stop,” he said.
Chloe nodded.
“I wish it would.”
“It’s got to! Something’s got to be done. Will you let me go to the police about these people?”
“No!” said Chloe. “No—no—no!”
“Why not?”
Chloe saw herself climbing over the garden wall in the dark and running away with Martin Fossetter. She saw Emily Wroughton sniffing and dabbing her pink eyelids. She saw headlines in evening papers: “Heiress Elopes.” She stamped her foot and said through chattering teeth:
“No, no, you’re not to!”
“Will you let me consult a solicitor then?”
“No, no, I won’t—not till I’m of age—not till I can sign something and get rid of Mr. Dane’s horrible money. I won’t do anything except hide till I’m of age. A solicitor would say I oughtn’t to have taken the letters; and he’d try and make me take the money, and ask all sorts of questions. No, I won’t go near one till I can say what I mean to do, and do it.”
“Who gets it if you don’t?”
“Mr. Hudson told me I ought to make a will as soon as I was of age, because otherwise the money all went to the Crown.”
“It seems a pity,” said Michael slowly.
Chloe flared.
“It doesn’t—it isn’t—you say that because you don’t know—no decent person could touch a penny of it—I’d rather go to prison for the rest of my life!”
Michael looked at her, frowning.
“You want some one to look after you.”
“N’ no—I don’t.”
“You do. My people have gone to Madeira for two months, or I’d have got my mother to take a hand—she’d have done it like a shot. I can’t think what people want to go to Madeira for. But they’ve gone, so that only leaves me.” Chloe darted a look at him. He was very pale.
“Chloe,” he said, “I’d look after you if you’d let me.” And in her own mind Chloe heard Eliza Moffat say, “He loves you true”; and then again, “He loves you true.” She said,
“Would you?”
“Yes, I would,” said Michael. “I’ve wanted to ever since the second time I saw you; and you don’t know how frightfully I’ve wanted to since you came here. When I see you going about looking for some beastly job, it makes me feel like running amok and smashing things. And when it comes to these damn blackguards,—” he took a big stride forward and caught Chloe’s hands in his—“I can’t stick it. You’ve got to let me take care of you.”
“Oh,” said Chloe; it wasn’t a very audible sound. She pulled her hands away and tried again: “M’Michael, d’don’t glare at me like that.”
Michael put his arms around her.
“I love you frightfully,” he said. “I love you frightfully.”
“Why?” said Chloe with a little sob.
“Because I do. It’s—it’s just me. I mean there isn’t any me that doesn’t love you—I’m all in. I—Chloe, can’t you—won’t you—couldn’t you like me a little?—enough to let me look after you?”
His arms were very strong. Chloe had stopped shaking, and she had stopped feeling cold. She looked straight up into Michael’s face, and the tears began to run down her cheeks. Michael kissed her.
“M’Michael,” said Chloe.
Michael hugged her.
“M’Michael, will you always be frightfully nice to me?”
“What’ll you do if I’m not?”
“Run away of course.”
Michael laughed rather unsteadily and laid his cheek against hers.
“I’ve got a beast of a temper,” he said.
“Have you? What do you do when you lose it?”
“I don’t do anything—I just want to smash things up.”
“I stamp my foot,” said Chloe.
“Yes, I’ve seen you. Chloe, let’s get married at once.”
“What do you call at once?”
“Well I asked a parson, and he said it took three days.”
Chloe put both hands in the middle of his chest and pushed him away.
“Don’t talk nonsense! D’you know, pushing you is exactly like pushing a stone wall.” Michael looked pleased.
“I am pretty hard. Look here, it isn’t nonsense; it’s the only thing to be done.”
Chloe whirled to the other side of the room, blew him a kiss, and said, “Pouf!”
“No—really. You see, I can’t look after you properly until we’re married. And—and I do so hate these beastly jobs you keep looking for.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Chloe brightly. “Perhaps there’s a most fearfully nice and lucrative job waiting for me round the next corner—and perhaps I should like it ever so much better than being married to you.”
“Perhaps you would. On the other hand—” his tone was rather grim—“you might walk into another of those infernal traps.”
The sparkle died out of Chloe’s look. She put out her hands with an involuntary gesture, and found them taken and held very tightly indeed.
“Chloe! Sweetheart! Darling! Don’t look like that. What a brute I was to say it!”
“I’m a perfect fool,” said Chloe in a little, sobbing voice. “It’s no good your saying I’m not, because I am. I’m a rabbit, and an idiot, and a fool. But oh, Michael, I am frightened. That business this afternoon was a sort of last straw; it scared me stiff.”
“I’m going to take you right away from it all. I told you I’d gone into partnership. Well, I can get a week or ten days off, and we’ll go away and have an absolutely ripping time. Look here, this is Friday; and if I go and wrestle round, we can get married on Tuesday, and just go off anywhere you’d like to. What about Paris?”
“Lovely!” said Chloe. “But won’t it cost a lot?”
Michael became very business-like.
“We shan’t be rich, but we ought to be able to rub along. I’ve got about five hundred a year of my own, and I expect to do quite well out of the business. We’ll go to Paris and have no end of a time.”
Chapter XXXVI
Chloe’s wedding day dawned wet and windy. The clouds instead of lifting darkened to a day of settled gloom.
“It’s just as well,” said Chloe to Mrs. Moffat, “isn
’t it, Moffy dear?”
“‘Happy’s the bride that the sun shines on,’ is how the proverb goes. But where there’s real true love like Mr. Michael’s got for you, there’s always sunshine in a manner of speaking—not but what a lift in the weather wouldn’t be a treat too.”
Chloe shook her head.
“It’s not going to lift; and it’s much better it shouldn’t, for of all the dowdy, disreputable frumps of brides, I’m sure I’m the dowdiest, and disreputablest, and frumpiest.”
“Oh, miss!” Eliza Moffat was obviously shocked.
“Moffy dear, I am. Just look at me! Wouldn’t I make a perfectly sweet paragraph in one of the Society papers?—‘Miss Dane absolutely riveted the eyes of all beholders by her daringly original choice of a wedding dress. Exquisitely gowned in brown tweed, her raven locks crowned with priceless felt, she had only to be seen to be admired. Her stockings were the latest thing in darned needle-work, and her feet displayed the new open-work shoe which, a little bird tells me, is to be all the rage.’ Oh, Moffy dear, if you love me, does the hole show very much?”
“It shows,” said Mrs. Moffat—“no one can’t say that it don’t show. But they’re shined up lovely.”
“I would have liked a proper wedding dress,” said Chloe. “I’ve thought so often what I’d be married in; and I never, never, never dreamt of its being brown tweed.”
“Didn’t Mr. Michael—”
Chloe’s cheeks flamed.
“He knows I wouldn’t let him! He’ll just have to make the best of the shabbiest bride in London.”
“My dear,” said Eliza Moffat, “do you think he’ll see your clothes? When a man loves a girl true like Mr. Michael loves you, he don’t see anything except just her, and the way he loves her. You take it from me, my dear, you’ll be all in shining white for him, because that’s the way he thinks of you.”
Chloe flung her arms round Mrs. Moffat’s neck and kissed her.
“Moffy you dear!” she said.
Chloe and Michael were married in a little dark church with Mr. Monody, Mrs. Moffat, and Mrs. Rowse for witnesses. The responses echoed in the empty space. A red angel with yellow hair looked down at them from a little stained glass window; he held in his hand a pair of scales. The parson murmured, and Michael murmured.
Chloe said, “I, Chloe Mary, take thee, Michael—” Her voice dropped to inaudibility on his second name because the young parson had boggled at it. Stannard or Standen—she must ask him afterwards what it really was. Ridiculous not to know one’s husband’s second name.
“I pronounce you man and wife,” said the young parson; and a voice deep inside Chloe spoke to her so loudly, clearly, and insistently that she stopped hearing anything else. “You’re married,” said the voice, “you’re married—you’re married—you’re married.” The words went over and over, and on and on. Suddenly the parson’s voice broke in upon them; it had a tone of finality about it: “As long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement,” he announced, quoting the Apostle Peter.
Michael and Chloe walked into the little vestry, followed by an abstracted Mr. Monody, a composed Mrs. Rowse, and a highly tearful Mrs. Moffat.
“I knew Lizzie would kiss me,” said Michael in Chloe’s ear.
“Ssh,” said Chloe. She herself kissed Mrs. Rowse and Mrs. Moffat, and, to her extreme surprise, received an absent-minded salute from Mr. Monody. Then Michael’s hand on her arm.
“Come and sign this register thing. I’ve done it. Why do you suppose they want to know what one’s father’s Christian names are?”
Chloe laughed.
“It does seem odd.”
She came forward, still laughing, took the pen which somebody put into her hand, and bent over the register.
“Just here,” said the young parson. “Your full names, please.”
Chloe wrote Chloe Mary Dane, and then looked at Michael’s signature above her own. The names stood out black in a clear, boyish writing. Chloe stared as she might have stared at death. The names stood clear and black:—Michael Stranways Fossetter.
The laughter and the warmth were struck out of her, leaving her colder than she had ever been in all her life before. She was not faint, or ill; she was able to say, “Lawrence John” quite clearly and steadily in response to a request for her father’s Christian names. She said “Thank you,” and smiled when the parson shook hands with her and offered her his good wishes—he only thought that her hand was very cold.
Next moment the little cold hand was on Michael’s arm, and they were walking down the aisle together. Chloe walked to the steady beat of one insistent refrain, “Stran—Stran is short for Stranways.” It just went on and on in her head like a chance-heard tune that one can’t get rid of—her own question, “Who is Stran?” and Leonard Wroughton’s answer, “Stran is short for Stranways.”
They came out into the damp, draughty porch, and down the wet steps to the horrible rhythm. She got into Michael’s car, and heard the engine beating out the same measure, “Stran is short for Stranways—Stran is short for Stranways.”
Michael spoke to her, and she answered him.
“Is anything the matter? Are you cold, darling?”
Chloe said, “Yes, I’m cold.” And behind the question and answer the maddening beat went on, “Who is Stran?—Stran is short for Stranways.”
They stopped at Mrs. Moffat’s door and got out. In the hall a letter lay face downwards on the floor. Michael picked it up and handed it to Chloe.
“Come along in to the fire,” he said, and put his arm about her. “I haven’t kissed you yet, Chloe, I haven’t kissed you yet.”
Chloe detached herself with a queer, jerky movement. The letter was from Emily Wroughton. She said, “Wait—please wait,” and began to open it.
Michael watched her. What had happened? Why on earth was she looking like this? He had seen her look cold, tired, angry, and frightened; but he had never seen her look like this. There was no expression in her face; a smooth, even pallor seemed to have blotted all feeling from it. He looked at her, and felt afraid.
Chloe let the envelope fall on to the floor. Her face never changed as she unfolded the letter and read it. There was no formal beginning:
“I must tell you, because he has found out where you live. I didn’t tell you the truth at Danesborough—I told you what Leonard had told me to tell you. The real plot was to frighten you into marrying Stran. He was to make you keep the money. That was the real plot—to marry you to Stran. The rest was only lies. I couldn’t bear it when you thanked me.”
The words were smudged and blotted. There was no signature.
Chloe put out her hand and let the letter fall into the fire. Well, the plot had succeeded. Emily’s letter was too late. She had married Stran.
“Chloe, my darling!” said Michael, and put his arm about her.
With all her strength she thrust him away, and turned to face him with her head up.
“If it was because of the money you married me—I shall never take it—you will never get me to take it!” The bleak voice and slow utterance were of all things in the world most unlike the Chloe Michael knew.
He could only stammer her name.
“Nobody can make me take the money!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Michael. “Are you ill?”
She shook her head slightly.
“No, I’m not ill.”
“What is it then? What was in that letter? Chloe, what is it?”
Mrs. Moffat opened the door, looked in, and withdrew hurriedly.
“You know!” said Chloe. “You know! I didn’t know until I saw your name written down. But I know now.”
“My name! But you knew my name—you knew it was Fossetter.”
“No. You called it Foster—every one did.”
“Every one does who kno
ws us. On my honour, Chloe, I thought you knew. Meeting you at Miss Tankerville’s and all, I didn’t know that you had never seen it written—how could I? I thought you knew Martin was a cousin. We talked about him, and I told you I barred him—I always have. Chloe—Chloe darling, don’t be angry!”
Chloe backed away from him.
“Don’t touch me!—don’t touch me!” Michael stopped dead. His outstretched arms fell to his side.
“I won’t touch any woman who doesn’t want me to touch her—you needn’t be afraid. Have you gone mad, Chloe?”
“Yes,” said Chloe. “I was mad when I trusted you. And I was mad when I married you. But that’s the end. I’m not going to go on being mad any longer.”
Michael was as pale as she was.
“Will you tell me what you’re accusing me of?”
“Yes, I will,” said this new, icy Chloe. “I’m accusing you of having lied to me and deceived me. I’m accusing you of being a blackmailer. I’m accusing you of marrying me in order to get hold of Mr. Dane’s money.” She paused, dropped her voice to its lowest tone, and said, “But you won’t get it—you’ll never get it, Michael!”
All the time that she was speaking she watched him with a hard stare. When a sudden flush ran up to the roots of his hair and he made a half step toward her with clenched hands, she felt a little stab of exultation. She was hurting him. He looked at her with a blaze of fury in his blue eyes, and she laughed. Then she turned her back on him and went out of the room, and so up the stairs and into the room which had been Michael’s before it had been hers. Everything in her was bent to the one purpose—she must get away. Her mind was cool and clear. She must get away before this coldness melted and turned to burning pain. She must get away from Michael, who wasn’t Michael any more, but Stran.
On the bed was her grey coat and the travelling case which Michael had given her. The things she had brought away from Danesborough were already packed in it. She took them out and made a parcel with the brown paper and string which Eliza Moffat had taken off the new travelling case only an hour or two before—her admiring comments sounded faintly in Chloe’s memory, coming back as though across long, intervening years. Chloe laid the parcel on the bed beside the empty suit-case and put on her coat. Then she took out her purse and opened it. There were two shillings, a threepenny bit, four pennies, and a very battered halfpenny. She picked up the parcel, crossed the landing, and knocked at Mr. Monody’s door.
The Black Cabinet Page 21
