With the fatuousness of a weak man cornered, he clung to unimportant details. “But the body was believed to be mine by every one,” he stammered angrily. “My papers and books were burnt,—there was no evidence.”
“And why was there not?” she said witheringly, staring doggedly in his face. “Because I stopped it! Because when I knew those bones and rags shut up in that office weren't yours, and was beginning to make a row about it, a strange man came to me and said they were the remains of a friend of his who knew your bankruptcy and had come that night to warn you,—a man whom you had half ruined once, a man who had probably lost his life in helping you away. He said if I went on making a fuss he'd come out with the whole truth—how you were a thief and a forger, and”—she stopped.
“And what else?” he asked desperately, dreading to hear his wife's name next fall from her lips.
“And that—as it could be proved that his friend knew your secrets,” she went on in a frightened, embarrassed voice, “you might be accused of making away with him.”
For a moment James Smith was appalled; he had never thought of this. As in all his past villainy he was too cowardly to contemplate murder, he was frightened at the mere accusation of it. “But,” he stammered, forgetful of all save this new terror, “he KNEW I wouldn't be such a fool, for the man himself told me Duffy had the papers, and killing him wouldn't have helped me.”
Mrs. Cutler stared at him a moment searchingly, and then turned wearily away. “Well,” she said, sinking into her chair again, “he said if I'd shut my mouth he'd shut his—and—I did. And this,” she added, throwing her hands from her lap, a gesture half of reproach and half of contempt,—“this is what I get for it.”
More frightened than touched by the woman's desperation, James Smith stammered a vague apologetic disclaimer, even while he was loathing with a revulsion new to him her draggled finery, her still more faded beauty, and the half-distinct consciousness of guilt that linked her to him. But she waved it away, a weary gesture that again reminded him of the dead Scranton.
“Of course I ain't what I was, but who's to blame for it? When you left me alone without a cent, face to face with a lie, I had to do something. I wasn't brought up to work; I like good clothes, and you know it better than anybody. I ain't one of your stage heroines that go out as dependants and governesses and die of consumption, but I thought,” she went on with a shrill, hysterical laugh, more painful than the weariness which inevitably followed it, “I thought I might train myself to do it, ON THE STAGE! and I joined Barker's Company. They said I had a face and figure for the stage; that face and figure wore out before I had anything more to show, and I wasn't big enough to make better terms with the manager. They kept me nearly a year doing chambermaids and fairy queens the other side of the footlights, where I saw you today. Then I kicked! I suppose I might have married some fool for his money, but I was soft enough to think you might be sending for me when you were safe. You seem to be mighty comfortable here,” she continued, with a bitter glance around his handsomely furnished room, “as 'Don Diego Smith.' I reckon skedaddling pays better than staying behind.”
“I have only been here a few weeks,” he said hurriedly. “I never knew what had become of you, or that you were still here”—
“Or you wouldn't have come,” she interrupted, with a bitter laugh. “Speak out, Jim.”