This would take years to cure, if in a woman of this one’s age it could be ever wholly cured. Clearly this could not be Lucy’s work, since it was absolutely incompatible with her direct duties as Charlie’s wife and Hugh’s mother.
She shuddered to realise how easily she might have been so lulled into false security as to have left Hugh for an hour or two in the charge of this well-behaved, kindly woman, perhaps to find her home a heap of cinders and her child a charred corpse!
They had scarcely finished breakfast when Wilfrid Somerset drove up in his cab. He had felt anxious lest morning might bring some violent and distressing scene. He was soon satisfied that there was little to fear on that head. But he was urgent that Mrs. Morison should leave the house at once. Lucy feared she had but a few shillings left, and in her present depressed state was only too likely to spend those in bringing more shame upon herself. So Mr. Somerset’s advice was that the cousin, the Willesden plumber, should be communicated with. Mr. Somerset charged himself with the transmission of the telegram, and worded it with much tact and policy.
Before evening, just as the shadows were deepening, the cousin’s wife arrived.
She expressed great disgust at “Jessie’s” lapse. But she did not need it to be explained. She evidently knew what was to be expected. All that she could say was that she had really hoped “Jessie” had learned more wisdom at last. They had done all they could for her. They had thought her cured. She had “kept straight” for so many weeks. They had never let her go out without one of their children with her, and they had kept all her money from her. She had called on Jessie, poor body, on the day she thought she would get her wages, and had taken them away, and was keeping them for her. Jessie was quite willing for one to do that, if one took her at the right time. She could not think what “Jessie” had done to get money, for she had said she gave up all.
“I paid her a month’s wages a few days in advance,” explained Mrs. Challoner; “and, when I did so, she told me that you had called to borrow money from her, and how gladly she had spared it.”
The cousin looked up at Mrs. Challoner, hesitated for a moment, and said—
“She didn’t say that till she knew you were going to pay her in advance, did she?”
“No, she did not,” Mrs. Challoner admitted. “Nor did she ask me for the advance. I offered it.”
“That’s it,” said the cousin. “The craving was on her, and the moment she saw a way to satisfy it, she began to tell lies. She’s as true as daylight at any other time, and as honest.”