by Grant Allen
Mr. Solomons let her lean back and cry till she was tired. Meanwhile he stood and eyed her with undisguised grimness.
“As soon as you’re capable of reasonable talk,” he said at last, in a cold, clear tone, “I have some questions to ask you. Answer them plainly if you want attention.”
Mme. Ceriolo stifled her sobs with an effort, and dried her eyes. She was really and truly frightened now. She saw she had made a false step — perhaps an irretrievable one — or, rather, she saw that the wreck and discovery and Lionel’s death had so completely upset all her well-laid plans for her future in life that retreat in any direction was well-nigh impossible. She was the victim of contingencies, sacrificed by fate on the altar of the unforeseen. She composed herself, however, with what grace she might, and answered bravely, through the ghost of a sob, but in a creditably firm voice, that she was quite prepared now to consider any questions Mr. Solomons might put to her.
Mr. Solomons, sitting there, wrecked and unmanned himself, began once more in a mood of hollow calmness:
“You say you come as Lionel’s widow. Is that true, in the first place? Were you ever married to him? If so, when, where, and what evidence have you?”
With the conscious pride of the virtuous British matron at last achieved, Mme. Ceriolo drew from her pocket an official-looking paper, which she handed across at once for Mr. Solomons’ inspection.
“There’s my marriage-certificate,” she said simply, “saved from the wreck.” She felt she was scoring. The old man had miscalculated and misunderstood her character.
Mr. Solomons scanned it close and hard.
“This seems perfectly correct,” he said at last, in his cold, stern tone. “I can find no mistake in it. My poor boy’s signature, firm and clear as ever. And on Saturday last, too! O God! the shame of it!”
Mme. Ceriolo bowed and answered nothing.
Mr. Solomons gazed at it and sighed three times. Then he looked up once more with a fiercely scrutinizing look at the strange woman.
“Lionel Solomons,” he murmured half to himself, perusing the marriage lines through his slowly rolling tears, “Lionel Solomons. My poor boy’s own signature; Lionel Solomons. No deception there. All plain and aboveboard.”
Then he raised his face, and met Mme. Ceriolo’s eyes with sudden vehement inquiry.
“But you called yourselves Burton on board,” he continued fiercely. “You were Mrs. Burton, you know, to your fellow-passengers. Why did you do that, if you were all so innocent?”
The unexpectedness of the question took madame’s breath away once more. A second time she broke down and began to cry. Paul looked across at her with genuine sympathy. No young man, at least, can bear to see tears in a pretty woman’s eyes, rightly or wrongfully. But Mr. Solomons felt no such human weakness. He paused as before, rhadamantine in his severity, and awaited her restoration to a rational and collected frame of mind for undergoing further cross-examination. Madame cried on silently for a moment or so, and then dried her tears.
“You’re very cruel,” she murmured, sobbing, “so soon after poor dear Lionel’s death, too! You’re very cruel!”
Mr. Solomons waved his hand impatiently on one side.
“You lured him to his death,” he answered with grim, retributive sternness. “No talk like that, if you please. It only aggravates me. I mean to do what I think is just, if you’ll answer my questions truly and simply. I ask you again: Why, if you please, did you call yourself Burton?”
“Poor Leo told me to,” madame sobbed, quite nonplussed.
“Did he explain his reasons?” Mr. Solomons persisted.
“N — not exactly. He said he must go incognito to South America. I thought he might have business reasons of his own. I come of a noble Tyrolese family myself. I don’t understand business.”
“Nonsense!” Mr. Solomons answered with crushing promptitude. “Don’t talk like that. Sherrard, my detective, has got up the case against you. Here are his telegrams from town, and, if I chose, I could prosecute; but for Leo’s sake — for Leo’s memory’s sake — I prefer to leave it.” He faltered for a moment. “I couldn’t have Leo’s name dragged through the mud in the Courts,” he went on, with a melting inflection in his stern voice; “and for his sake — for dead Leo’s sake — I’ve induced Sherrard and the Scotland Yard people not to proceed for the present against you. But that’s all lies. You know it’s lies. You’re the daughter of an Italian organ-grinder, born in a court off Saffron Lane, and your mother was a ballet-girl at Drury Lane Theater.” —
Madame bowed her head and wept silently once more.
“You — you’re a cruel, hard man,” she murmured half inaudibly.
But Mr. Solomons had screwed his righteous indignation up to sticking-point now, and was not to be put down by such feminine blandishments. “You’re a grown woman, too,” he went on, staring hard in her face and flinging out his words at her with angry precision. “You’re a woman of the world, and you’re forty, if you’re a day — though you’ve falsely put yourself down in the marriage lines as twenty-eight — and you know as well as I do that you’re not so innocent and trustful and confiding as all that comes to; you perfectly well understood why my poor boy wanted to give himself a false name on board the Dom Pedro. You perfectly well understood why he wanted to rob me; and you egged him on, you egged him to it. If you hadn’t egged him on, he’d never have done it. My poor Leo was far too clever a lad to do such a foolish thing as that — except with a woman driving him. There’s nothing on earth a man won’t do when a woman like you once gets fairly hold of him. It’s you that have done it all; it’s you that are guiltiest; it’s you that have robbed me of my money — and of Leo.”
Mme. Ceriolo cowered with her face in her hands, but answered nothing. Clever woman as she was, and swift to do evil, she was still no match for an old man’s fiery indignation.
“But you did worse than that,” Mr. Solomons went on, after a brief pause, like an accusing angel. “You did worse than that. For all that, I might, perhaps, in the end forgive you. But what else you did I can never forgive. In the last hour of all you basely deserted him!”
Mme. Ceriolo raised her head and stared him wildly back. “No, I didn’t!” she cried angrily. “I didn’t, I didn’t!”
Mr. Solomons rose and looked down upon her with scorn. “More lies,” he answered contemptuously. “More lies still, woman. Those who were with you on the steamer that night have told me all. Don’t try to deceive me. When you saw all hope was gone, you left him to his fate, and thought only of saving your own wretched life — you miserable creature! You left him to drown. You know you left him.”
“He would go back to his cabin to fetch his valuables!” Mme. Ceriolo moaned. “It wasn’t my fault. I tried to dissuade him.”
“Lies,” Mr. Solomons answered once more with astonishing vehemence. “You let him go willingly. You abetted him in his errand. You wanted to be rid of him. And as soon as he was gone, you tried to save yourself by jumping into a boat. I have found out everything. You missed your jump, and were carried off by the wave. But you never waited or cared to know what had become of Leo. Your one thought was for your own miserable neck, you Delilah!”
Mme. Ceriolo plunged her face in her hands afresh, and still answered nothing. She must hold her tongue for prudence sake, lest speech should undo her. The old man had spoken of doing what was just. There were still hopes he might relent to some practical purpose. It was best not to reply and needlessly irritate him. So she sobbed mutely on, and waited for a turn in the tide of his emotions.
For many minutes Mr. Solomons went on talking, explaining, partly to her and partly to Paul, who looked on somewhat horrified, the nature of the whole conspiracy, as he understood it, and madame still cowered and shook with sobbing. At last Mr. Solomons paused, and allowed her to recover her equanimity a little. Then he began once more, eying her sternly as ever. “And now, woman,” he said, “if I’d only wanted to tell you all this I wouldn’
t have sent for you at all this evening. But I wished also to give you a chance of explaining, if explanation was possible, before I decided. You take refuge in lies, and will explain nothing. So I know the worst, I believe, is true. You concocted this plan, and when you found it was failing, you basely tried to desert my poor Lionel. Very well; on that score I owe you nothing, but fourteen years’ imprisonment with hard labor. Still, I loved Lionel; and I can never forget that you are Lionel’s widow. This paper you give me shows me you were his wife — a pitiful wife for such a man as my Lionel. But he made you his wife, and I respect his decision. As long as you live I shall pay you an allowance of two hundred a year. I will give a lump sum that will bring in that much to the Jewish Board of Guardians of London: they shall hold it in trust for you during your life, and on your death it will revert to the poor of my own people. If ever you’d told me you’d wanted to marry Leo you’d have been richer far — a great deal richer than even Leo suspected — for I’ve done well for myself in life; for Leo — for Leo. But you chose to go to work the underhand way, and that shall be your penalty. You may know what you’ve lost. Never come near my sight again. Never write to me or communicate with me in any way hereafter. Never dare to obtrude yourself on my eyes for a moment. But take your two hundred. Take them and go away. Do you accept my conditions?”
Madame felt there was no use in further pretenses now.
“I do,” she answered calmly, drying her reddened eyes with surprising ease. “Two hundred a year for life, payable quarterly?”
Mr. Solomons nodded. “Just so,” he said. “Now go, woman.” —
Mme. Ceriolo hesitated. “This has been a curious interview,” she said, staring round and mincing a little, “and Sir Paul Gascoyne and you will go away, perhaps, and take advantage of my silence to say to other people—”
Mr. Solomons cut her short with a terrible look. “I would never soil my lips with mentioning your name again,” he cried out angrily. “You are dead to me forever. I’ve done with you now. And as for Sir Paul Gascoyne — why, miserable creature that you are — don’t you even know when you have a gentleman to deal with?”
Mme. Ceriolo bowed, and retreated hastily. It was an awkward interview, to be sure: but, after all, two hundred a year for life is always something. And she thought that she could really and truly trust to the Scallywag’s innocence: he was one of those simple-minded, foolish young men, don’t you know, who have queer ideas of their own about the sacredness of honor!
CHAPTER XLIV.
“A MODERN MIRACLE.”
ONE other curious thing happened before they left Cornwall. At breakfast next morning, as they sat moody and taciturn — for Mr Solomons didn’t greatly care to talk, nor Paul to break in upon his companion’s blank misery — the elder man suddenly interrupted the even flow of their silence by saying with a burst, “I think Miss Blair lives in Cornwall.”
“She does,” Paul answered, starting, and completely taken aback, for he had no idea Mr. Solomons even knew of his Nea’s existence. Then, after a slight pause, he added shyly, “She lives near Fowey.”
“We passed the junction station on our way down, I noticed,” Mr. Solomons went on in a measured voice.
“Yes,” Paul replied, surprised once more that the old man had observed it. Young people always imagine their little love-affairs entirely escape the eyes of their elders: which is absurd. As a matter of fact, everybody discovers them.
“We shall pass it again on our way back,” Mr. Solomons went on, in that weary, dreary, dead-alive tone in which he had said everything since Lionel’s death and his terrible awakening.
“Naturally,” Paul answered, looking up in amaze, and much wondering whither this enigmatic conversation tended.
Mr. Solomons paused, and looked over toward him kindly. “Paul, my boy,” he said, with a little tremor in his throat— “you’ll excuse my calling you Paul now as I used to do in the old days, you know — Paul, my boy, it seems a pity, now you’re so near, you shouldn’t drop in as you pass and see her.”
Paul let his fork drop in blank astonishment. To be sure, he had thought as much a dozen times himself, but he had never dared to envisage it as practically possible. “How good of you to think of it — and now especially!” he exclaimed with genuine gratitude.
Mr. Solomon drew himself up stiffly, and froze at once. “I was thinking,” he said, “that as a matter of business, it might be well if you got that question about marrying settled some day, one way or the other. I regarded it only in the light of my own interests — the interests of the Jewish widows and orphans. They’re all I have left to work for now: but you don’t get rid of the habits of a lifetime in a day; and I shall look after their money as I looked after — Lionel’s. It’s become an instinct with me. Now, you see, Sir Paul, I’ve got a vested interest, so to speak, in your future — it’s mortgaged to me, in fact, as you know; and I must do my best by it. If you won’t marry the sort of lady I expected you to marry, and had a claim to believe you’d try to marry, in my interest — at least don’t let me be a loser by your remaining single. I’ve always considered that being in love’s a very bad thing indeed for a man’s business prospects. It upsets his mind, and prevents him from concentrating himself body and soul on the work he has in hand. A man who has to make his own way in the world, therefore, ought to do one of two things. Either he should avoid falling in love at all, which is much the safest plan — I followed it myself — or else, if he can’t do that, he should marry out of hand, and be able to devote himself thenceforward unreservedly to business.”
Paul could hardly help smiling at this intensely practical view of the situation, in spite of the cold air of utter despondency with which Mr. Solomons delivered it: but he answered with as grave a face as he could, “I think myself it may act the other way — as a spur and incentive to further exertion.”
“No,” Mr. Solomons retorted firmly. “In your case no. If you waited to marry till you’d cleared off your debt, you’d lose heart at once. As a security for myself, I advise you to marry as soon as ever the lady’ll take you.”
“And yet,” Paul answered, “it was consideration for your claims that made us both feel it was utterly hopeless.”
“Exactly so,” Mr. Solomons replied, in the same cold, hard voice. “That’s just where it is. What chance have I got of ever seeing my money back again — my hard-saved money, that I advanced for your education and to make a gentleman of you — if you begin by falling in love with a penniless girl, and feeling, both of you, that it’s utterly hopeless? Is that the kind of mood that makes a man fit for earning and saving money, I ask you?”
“I’m afraid not,” Paul answered, penitently.
“And I’m afraid not either,” Mr. Solomons went on, with icy sternness. “You’ve paid up regularly so far — that I admit in justice: and mind, I shall expect you to pay up just as regularly in future. Don’t suppose for a moment I won’t look after the Jewish widows’ and orphans’ interests as carefully as ever I looked after poor Leo’s. You’ve got into debt with your eyes open, and you’ve got to get out of it now as best you can.” (Paul, listening aghast, felt that his disillusionment had hardened Mr. Solomons terribly.) “And the only way I can see for you to do is to put the boldest face upon it at once, and marry this young lady.”
“You think so?” Paul asked timidly, half wishing he could see things in the same light.
“Yes, I do,” Mr. Solomons replied, with snappish promptitude. “I look at it this way. You can keep your wife for very little more than it costs you to keep yourself; and your talents will be set free for your work alone. You could teach her to help you copy your manuscripts or work a typewriter. I believe you’d earn twice as much in the end, if you married her for a typewriter, and you’d pay me off a great deal faster.”
“Well, I’ll think about it,” Paul answered.
“Don’t think about it,” Mr. Solomons replied, with curt incisiveness. “In business, thinking’s the thief
of opportunity. It’s prompt decision that wins the prize. Stop at Fowey this very afternoon and talk it over off hand with the lady and her father.”
And so, to his own immense surprise, almost before he’d time to realize the situation, Paul found himself, by three o’clock that day, knocking at the door of Mr. Blair’s rectory. —
He knocked with a good deal of timorous hesitation; for though, to be sure, he had sent on a telegram to announce his coming to Nea, he was naturally so modest and diffident a young man that he greatly feared his reception by Nea’s father. Fathers are always such hard nuts to tackle. Indeed, to say the truth, Paul was even now, in spite of experience, slow to perceive the difference in his position made by his accession to the dignity of the baronetcy. No doubt, every day would serve to open his eyes more to the real state of the case in this important particular; but each such discovery stood alone, as it were, on its own ground, and left him almost as nervous as ever before each new situation, and almost as much surprised when that social “Open sesame!” once more succeeded in working its familiar wonders.
Any doubt he might have felt, however, disappeared almost at once when Nea in person, more visibly agitated than he had ever yet beheld her, opened the door for him, and when her father with profuse hospitality, instead of regarding him as a dangerous intruder, expressed with much warmth his profound regret that Sir Paul couldn’t stop the night at the rectory. Nay, more, that prudent father took special care they should all go out into the garden for the brief interview, and that he himself should keep at a safe distance with a convenient sister-in-law, pacing the lawn, while Paul and Nea walked on in front and discoursed — presumably — about the flowers in the border.
Thus brought face to face with the future, Paul briefly explained to Nea Mr. Solomons’ new point of view, and the question which it left open so clearly before them.
Now Nea was young, but Nea was a rock of practical commonsense, as your good and impulsive West Country girl is often apt to be. Instead of jumping foolishly at Mr. Solomons’ proposal because it offered a loophole for immediate marriage, as you or I would have done, she answered at once, with judicious wisdom, that, much as she loved Paul and much as she longed for that impossible day to arrive when they two might be one, she couldn’t bear, even with Mr. Solomons’ consent, so far to burden Paul’s already too heavily mortgaged future.
