CHAPTER XXXI. BLACKMAIL.
Poor Mr. Marrable was very much frightened by the effect of his words upon Chris. He rushed to the door of the room, and summoned Mrs. Abercarne with frantic cries.
But before her mother could reach the room, Chris had entirely recovered her self-command under the influence of a strong feeling of relief, and when Mr. Marrable went downstairs to await John Bradfield’s return, she was brighter and less listless than she had been since her illness.
In the first place, the hope, weak as it was, which Lilith’s words had woke in her, was enough to live upon for a day or two at least; and in the second place, the fact she had learnt from Alfred Marrable had relieved her from the last trace of suspicion that she had given her love to a maniac. Now that she knew that Mr. Richard had been deaf and dumb, she understood much that had appeared strange in his conduct towards her. It was clear that when he had left her questions unanswered, it was because he could not hear them; and she now remembered that he had watched her lips as often as possible when she spoke, and had evidently understood her words by these means. This, then, was the infirmity to which he had alluded in his letter; and now the only thing which puzzled her was the fact that on the last two occasions when she had met him he had spoken to her. When and how had he recovered or obtained the power of speech?
It is a curious fact that this interview with Mr. Marrable, and the information he had given her, increased, without her being able to account for it, her new belief that her lover might be still alive. She moved about with new cheerfulness, nourishing the hope that her mother would either take her, or send her to London, where, as she knew, all those people go who for any reason wish to remain for a time in concealment.
On the other hand, what reason could Dick have for wishing to remain in hiding? Would he not rather, if he had escaped the dangers of the night of the fire, return either to see her, or to bring Mr. Bradfield to book for his long incarceration? And what had been the object of that incarceration? What, also, had been the meaning of the scene she witnessed on the night of the fire?
With these and similar questions the young girl’s brain seemed to reel as she sat at her window looking out at the grey sea.
Meanwhile Mr. Bradfield had returned from his morning’s ride, and had been greeted, on dismounting from his horse, with the information that Mr. Marrable was waiting to see him.
John Bradfield entered the dining-room, into which the discriminating footman had shown the visitor as a person not quite smart enough for the drawing-room, with a frown on his face.
“Oh, so you’re here again, are you?” was his abrupt greeting.
Alfred, who felt better after the glass of beer and crust of bread and cheese which he had modestly chosen as his refreshment, came towards his old friend smiling, and trying to look cheerful.
“Yes,” he answered mildly, “as you say, I’m here again.”
His cheerfulness did not please Mr. Bradfield, who frowned still more as he asked shortly:
“Well, and what do you want?”
Now this Mr. Marrable did not quite like to confess. So he went on smiling, until he perceived by an ominous motion of his friend’s boot, that that gentleman’s endurance was about to give way.
“Well, John, it’s no use beating about the bush. The fact is, I’m down on my luck; there’s nothing doing up in town, and things don’t seem to get any better, and——”
“And you want some money, I suppose; your next quarter’s allowance advanced you, in fact?”
“Well, no; not exactly that, though I don’t say it wouldn’t be a convenience.”
John looked at him incredulously.
“What do you want, then?”
He wasn’t exactly afraid of Marrable, who seemed too flabby a sort of person to inspire one with much fear of what he might do; at the same time there was no denying that the weak vessel before him contained some perilous stuff in the way of undesirable knowledge. The man’s audacity in coming down again so soon gave him food for reflection.
“The fact is,” answered Marrable, softly, “that my wife and I were talking things over last night, and she said things were so bad that it would be better for us to part, and she said she was sure you wouldn’t mind giving an old friend like me a shelter for a time.”
“The d——l she did!” exclaimed Mr. Bradfield, in amazement. “And hadn’t you the sense to tell her that the suggestion was like her cheek?”
“Why, no, John,” returned Marrable, just as gently as ever. “I didn’t tell her that, for I thought myself it wasn’t a bad idea.”
There was a pause, during which John Bradfield, considered the downcast, hang-dog face of the other, while his own grew perceptibly paler.
“Why?” he presently asked.
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t want to make myself unpleasant in any way, John, but it seemed so odd to find Gilbert Wryde’s son here, shut up as a lunatic——”
John Bradfield shivered. And the look he cast at the other was not pleasant to see.
“Do you mean to suggest that you had any reason for thinking that he was not a lunatic?”
Marrable’s answer came quickly. He was evidently anxious to get it out before he got afraid to say it:
“Well, I should like to see him, that’s all.”
“You haven’t heard, then, about the fire down here? He overturned his lamp, set fire to the place, and was burnt alive.”
“Dear me! Was there an inquest?”
These direct questions, put timorously, had the effect of making John Bradfield so furious that he stammered as he spoke:
“There was no inquest. The body could not be found!”
“Perhaps,” suggested Marrable, “he wasn’t burnt at all. Perhaps he escaped, or perhaps——”
Although he paused, significantly, John Bradfield did not urge him to go on. There was a silence before Alfred said, in the same infantile manner as before:
“And what became of all his money, John?”
“He never had any.”
“But he ought to have had plenty,” rejoined Marrable, in the same sing-song voice. “Now, I’ll make a clean breast of it, John. Not that I wish to make myself unpleasant, as I said before, but when I was down here at Christmas I thought things looked fishy (I don’t want to be unkind, but they really did); so when I got back to town I got a friend to cable over to Melbourne for me, and find out the particulars of Gilbert Wryde’s will.”
Then there was a pause. John Bradfield looked, not at his old chum, but out at the sea, which lay a bright blue grey in the sunshine. To think that he should have escaped detection all these years, to be brought to book at last by such a paltry creature—that was the thought that was surging in his mind as he stood digging his nails into his own flesh and not listening very eagerly for the next words, for he knew so well what they would be.
“I only got the letter yesterday which gave me all particulars. I know that Gilbert Wryde left all his money to you in trust for his son. So,” pursued Alfred, slowly, and apparently without vindictiveness, “you never really made any money at all yourself, John, any more than I? But you’ve lived like a fighting-cock on Gilbert Wryde’s. That’s about the size of it, isn’t it, old chap?”
Although he was trying to give a playful turn to his conversation, Marrable did not speak cheerfully.
There was a long pause. John Bradfield, being hopelessly cornered, saw that there was nothing for it but to find out the lowest price at which Alfred would be bought. His methods were always blunt, so that Marrable was not surprised when his old chum simply planted himself on the carpet in front of him, jingling some money in his pockets, and asked briefly:
“How much do you want?”
Marrable, who never looked up at his friend if he could help it, bleated out, quite plaintively:
“Well, John, for myself, I should be sorry to stoop so low as to take anything; but I should like to send home a ten-pound note, if you could spare it, and all I ask of you is to put me up here for a bit, and let me make myself at home as we used to do in the old days together.”
John Bradfield was so much amazed at this request, that for a few moments he could give no answer whatever. The thought of having always in the house with him this flabby, weak-kneed creature, who was, nevertheless, his master, by virtue of his knowledge, was so galling, that he would rather have given up the half of his ill-gotten property than have supported the infliction. He laughed shortly, therefore, and said, in a jeering tone:
“What, believing me to be capable of what you accuse me of, you are willing to trust yourself under the same roof with me? It wouldn’t be very hard to make you pass for a lunatic with all the medical men in the county, you know!”
But Marrable bore the jibe placidly.
“If anything were to happen to me, John, while I was down here,” he answered, composedly, “my wife, who put me up to coming down, would come down after me; and if once she got hold of you, John, oh! wouldn’t you wish me back again, that’s all!”
John Bradfield was silent. The net was closing round him. Already the fatal knowledge was in the power of more persons than he knew; he felt the strong walls of his citadel, in which he had been secure for seventeen years, crumbling. He was man enough, however, to be able to keep his feelings to himself.
“All right,” said he, shortly, “you can stay if you like, of course. And when you like to go, you can take what you want with you.”
But Marrable, who had a conscience, was not quite satisfied.
“Thank you, John,” he answered, rather dismally. “I thought you wouldn’t mind giving a shelter to an old chum down on his luck. But, mind you,” he went on, shaking a slow, fat forefinger impressively as he spoke, “I don’t mind taking a crust from you as a friend, seeing that, after all, it’s not your money at all, but Gilbert Wryde’s, and that he’d have helped me like a prince without my asking. But you understand that I wouldn’t be so mean as to take a bribe to hold my tongue if Gilbert’s son were still alive.”
Blunt as John Bradfield habitually was, his bluntness was as nothing to the terribly tactless and blundering plain-speaking of Alfred, who thought he was conducting the interview with equal amiability and cleverness, while, in reality, every speech he uttered made John Bradfield wince, and filled him with an ever-growing wish that he dared kick his meek master.
And so Alfred Marrable became a permanent guest at Wyngham House.