“Everything,” he groaned.
“But, darling!” She gripped his shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“I’m afraid it’s a beautiful dream, my dear. We must call it off.”
She uttered a breathless “Why?”
“It’s far beyond our means.”
She broke into her gay laugh and hugged him and called him a silly fellow. Hadn’t they settled all that side of it long ago? Her fingers were itching to draw cheques. She had scarcely put pen to pink paper since their marriage. Hadn’t he insisted on supporting her?
“And I’ll go on insisting,” said he. “I’m not the man to live on my wife’s money. No, no——” with uplifted hand he checked her generous outburst. “I know what you’re going to say, sweetheart, but it can’t be done. I was willing for you to advance a certain amount. But I would have paid it back—well, I would have accepted it if it gave you pleasure. Anyhow, things are different now. Suddenly different.”
He writhed under the half-truths, the half-sincerities he was speaking. In marrying her his conscience absolved him of fortune seeking. It had been the pride of his Northumbrian blood to maintain his wife as she should be maintained, out of his earnings—this draft on her fortune for the jaunt he had made up a Tyneside mind to repay. Given the passport, the whole thing was as simple as signing a cheque. But no passports to be given, he had to lie. How else, in God’s name, to explain?
“My dear,” said he, in answer to her natural question, “there’s one thing about myself I’ve not told you. It has seemed quite unimportant. In fact, I had practically forgotten it. But this is the story. During my last flight through Russia a friend, one of the old Russian nobility, gave me shelter. He was in hiding, dressed as a peasant. His wife and children had escaped the Revolution and were, he was assured, in England. He entrusted me with a thousand pounds in English bank-notes which he had hidden in a scapulary hanging round his neck, and which I was to give to his family on my arrival. I followed his example and hung the few paper roubles I had left, together with his money, round my neck. As you know, I was torpedoed. I was hauled out of the water in shirt and drawers, and landed penniless. The string of the scapulary had broken, and all the money was at the bottom of the North Sea. I went to every conceivable Russian agency in London to get information about the Vronsky family. There was no trace of them. I came to the conclusion that they had never landed in England, and to-day I found I was right. They hadn’t. They had disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“To-day?” queried Olivia.