“Poor Marjorie!” exclaimed the old man. “For her marriage I blame myself, largely. When Marjorie Dorrance was left an orphan, I was her nearest relative of an age and position such as to constitute a moral claim of guardianship. She visited here when she was eighteen; came like a flood of sunlight into this house. A beautiful vivid girl, half-child, half-woman; with a beautiful vivid mind. For her mother’s sake, if not for her own, I should have watched over her, and warded her against the danger of an ‘advantageous’ marriage, such as is always imminent in the set which she entered. Ah, well, I live among the dust and cobwebs of my own dim interests—and when I returned from one of my journeys into the past, I found that Marjorie was engaged to that wretched creature. Now, he is dead. Let be. I have seen little of her in late years. God grant the life with him has not crushed out of her all her sweetness and happiness.”
“While I am no judge of women,” said Kent judicially, “I should venture to aver that it hasn’t. But about calling on her—my being a stranger, you see—and in the first days of her widowhood—social conventions, and that sort of thing.”
The old scholar made a sweeping gesture of surprising swiftness, suggesting incongruously the possession of great muscular power. The cards flew far and wide, from the stand.
“Mist and moonshine, my dear sir! Moonshine and mist! Marjorie is one of those rare human beings who deal honestly with themselves. Her husband’s death can be nothing but a welcome release. She feels no grief; she will pretend to none. Not even to herself. I will take you to her to-morrow.”
“Blair ill-treated her?” asked Kent.
“Oh, ill-treatment! That is a wide term. I believe that the poor weakling did his best to keep faith and honor. But ropes of mud are strong. Those with which he had bound himself drew him resistlessly back to the sewers. Hers was but a marriage of glamour, at best. And, at the first scent of foulness in her nostrils, it became only a marriage of law. Society does her the justice to believe her faithful to him, and praises the devotion with which, since his breakdown and retirement, she has given up her world to devote herself to his care. Essentially the girl is Puritan in her concepts of duty.”
“Does she know anything of the manner of Blair’s death?”
“No one knows much of it, from what I understand, unless it be Alexander Blair. One of the family, who went to Hedgerow House for the funeral, called upon me, as a courtesy due to Mrs. Blair’s nearest relative. Alexander Blair, he said, was reticent; his dread of publicity is notorious. But from what he, the relative, could ascertain, the affair was substantially this: On the evening before the woman’s body was found, Wilfrid Blair, who had been exhibiting symptoms of melancholia, left the house secretly. No one saw him go; but, about the time that he left, the unknown woman was seen in the vicinity of Hedgerow House.”
“By whom?”
“By a half-breed Indian, a devoted servant of the family, who was practically young Blair’s body-servant.”