She was less than halfway to bed when she heard, as she thought, Susan Burr's return. It could not be Mo, so soon. Besides, he would have struck a match at once. He always did.
She listened for Susan's limping footstep on the stairs. Why did it not come? Something wrong there, or at least unusual! Leaving her candle, she wrapped herself hurriedly in a flannel garment she called her dressing-gown, and went downstairs to the landing. All was dark below, and the door was shut, to the street. She called in a loud whisper:--"Is that Susan?" and no answer came:--"Who is that?" and still no answer.
She went back quickly for her candle, and descended the stairs, holding it high up to see all round. No one in the kitchen itself, certainly.
The little parlour-door stood open. She thought she had shut it. Could she be sure? She looked in, and could see no one--advanced into the room, still seeing no one--and started suddenly forward as the door swung to behind her.
She turned terrified, and found herself alone with the man she most dreaded--her husband. He had waited behind the door till she entered, and had then pushed it to, and was leaning against it.
"Didn't expect to see me, Polly Daverill, did you now? It's me." He pulled a chair up, and, placing it against the door, sat back in it slouchingly, with a kind of lazy enjoyment of her terror that was worse than any form of intimidation. "What do you want to be scared for? I'm a lamb. You might stroke me! This here's a civility call. For to thank you for your letter, Polly Daverill."
She had edged away, so as to place the table between them. She could only suppose his words sardonically spoken, seeing what she had said in her letter. "I wrote it for your own sake, Daverill," said she deprecatingly, timidly. "What I said about the Police was true."
"Can't foller that. Say it again!"
"They _had_ put on a couple of men, to keep an eye. They may be there now. But I'd made my mind up you should not be taken along of me, so I wrote the letter."
"Then what the Hell...!" His face set angrily, as he searched a pocket.
The sunken line that followed that twist in his jaw grew deeper, and the scar on his knitted forehead told out smooth and white, against its reddening furrows. He found what he sought--her letter, which she recognised--and opened it before he finished his speech. "What the Hell," he repeated, "is the meaning of _this_?" He read it in a vicious undertone, biting off each word savagely and throwing it at her.
She had rallied a little, but again looked more frightened than ever. It cost her a gasping effort to say:--"You are reading it wrong! Do give an eye to the words, Daverill."
"Read it yourself," he retorted, and threw the letter across the table.
She read it through and remained gazing at it with a fixed stare, rigid with astonishment. "I never wrote it so," said she at last.
"Then how to God Almighty did it come as it is? Answer me to that, Polly Daverill."
Her bewilderment was absolute, and her distress proportionate. "I never wrote it like that, Daverill. I declare it true and solemn I never did.
What I wrote was for you to keep away, and I made the words according.
I can't say no other, if I was to die for it."
"None of your snivelling! How came it like it is?--that's the point!
Nobody's touched the letter." He used his ill-chosen adjective for the letter as he pointed at it, so that one might have thought he was calling attention to a stain upon it. He dropped his finger slowly, maintaining his reproachful glare. Then suddenly:--"Did you invellop the damned thing yourself?"
She answered tremulously:--"I wrote it in this room at this table, where you sit, and put it in its invellop, and stuck it to, firm. And I put back the blotting-book where I took it from, not to tell-tale...."
He interrupted her roughly. "Got the cursed thing there? _Where_ did you take it from?... Oh--_that's_ your blotting-book, is it? Hand it over!"
She had produced it from the table-drawer close at hand, and gave it to him without knowing why he asked for it.
There is no need to connect his promptness to catch a clue to a forgery with his parentage. The clue is too simple--the spelling-book lore of the spy's infancy. The convict pulled out the top sheet of blotting-paper, and reversed it against the light. The second line of the letter was clear, and ended "now not." The "not" might, however, have been erased independently--probably would have been. But how about the end of the fourth line, also clear, with the word "run" on an oasis of clean paper, and nothing after it. That "no" in the letter was not the work of its writer.
"I put it in its invellop, Daverill, and not a soul see inside that letter from me till you...."
"How do you know that?" He paused, reflecting. "It wasn't Juliar. She'd got no ink." This man was clever enough to outwit Scotland Yard, with an offer of fifty pounds for his capture, but fell easily to the cunning of a woman, roused by jealousy. It wasn't Julia, clearly? "Who had hold of the letter, between you and her?" said he, quite off the right scent.
"Only young Micky Ragstroar...."
"There we've got it!" The man pounced. "Only that young offender and the Police. That was good for half a sov. for him.... Don't see what I mean?
I'll tell you. _He_ delivered your letter all right, after they'd run their eyes over it. I'll remember _him_, one day!" A word in this is not the one Daverill used, and his adjective is twice omitted. Aunt M'riar's puzzled face produced a more temperate explanation, to the effect that Micky had carried the letter to a "tec," or detective, who had "got at him," and that the letter had been tampered with at the police-station.
"I wouldn't believe it of Micky, and I don't," said Aunt M'riar. "The boy's a good boy at heart, and no tale-bearer." She ventured, as an indirect appeal on Micky's behalf, to add:--"I'm shielding you, Daverill, and a many wouldn't."
He affected to recognise his indebtedness, but only grudgingly. "You're what they call a good wife, Polly Daverill. Partner of a cove's joys and sorrows! Got your marriage lines to show! That's your style. You stick to that!"
Something in his tone made M'riar say:--"Why do you speak like that? You know that I have." Her speech did not seem to arise from his words. She had detected a sneer in them.
"You've got 'em to show.... Ah! But I shouldn't show 'em, if I were you."
"Am I likely?"
"That's not what I was driving at."
"What do you mean?"
"Shall I tell you, Polly, my angel? Shall I tell you, respectable married woman?"
"Don't werrit me, Daverill. I don't deserve it of you!"
"Right you are, old Polly! And told you shall be!... Sure you want to know?... There, there--easy does it! I'm a-telling of you." He suddenly changed his manner, and spoke quickly, collectedly, drily. "The name on your stifficate ain't the correct name. _I_ saw to that. Only you needn't fret your kidneys about it, that I see. You're an immoral woman, you are! Poor Polly! Feel any different?"
Anyone who knows the superstitious reverence for the "sacred" marriage tie that obtains among women of M'riar's class and type will understand her horror and indignation. And all the more if he knows the extraordinary importance they attach to a certificate which is, after all, only a guarantee that the marriage-bond is recorded elsewhere, not the attested record itself. For a moment she was unable to speak, and when words did come, they were neither protest nor contradiction, but:--"Let me out! Let me out!"
The convict shifted his chair without rising, and held the door back for her exit. "Ah," said he, "go and have a look at it!" He had taken her measure exactly. She went straight upstairs, carrying her candle to the wardrobe by Dolly's bed, where her few private possessions were hidden away. Dolly would not wake. If she did, what did it matter? Aunt M'riar heard a small melodious dream-voice in the pillow say tenderly:--"One cup wiv soody." It was the rehearsal of that banquet that the great Censorship had disallowed.
A lock in a drawer, refractory at first, brought to terms at last. A box found far back, amenable to its key at sight. A still clean document, found and read by the light of a hurriedly snuffed candle. Then an exclamation of relief from the reader:--"There now! As if I could have been mistook!" It was such a relief that she fairly gasped to feel it.
No doubt a prudent, judicious person, all self-control and guiding maxims, would have refolded and replaced that document, locked the drawer, hidden the key, and met the cunning expectancy of the evil face that awaited her with:--"You are entirely mistaken, and I was absolutely right."
But M'riar was another sort. Only one idea was present in the whirlwind of her release from that hideous anxiety--the idea of striking home her confutation of the lie that had caused it in the face of its originator.
She did the very thing his subtlety had anticipated. As he heard her returning footsteps, and the rustle of the paper in her hand, he chuckled with delight at his easy triumph, and perhaps his joy added a nail in the coffin of his soul.
The snicker had gone from his face before she returned, marriage certificate in hand, and held it before his eyes. "There now!" said she.
"What did I tell you?"
He looked at it apathetically, reading it, but not offering to take it from her. "'Taint reg'lar!" said he. "Name spelt wrong, for one thing.
My name."
"Oh, Daverill, how can you say that? It's spelt right."
"Let's have a look!" He stretched out his hand for it in the same idle way. Aunt M'riar's nature might have been far less simple than it was, and yet she might have been deceived by his manner. That he was aiming at possession of the paper was the last thing it seemed to imply. But he knew his part well, and whom he had to deal with.
Absolutely unsuspicious, she let his fingers close upon it. Even then, so sure did he feel of landing his fish, that he played it on the very edge of the net. "Well," said he. "Just you look at it again," and relinquished it to her. Then, instead of putting his hand back in his pocket, he stretched it out again, saying:--"Stop a bit! Let's have another look at it."
She instantly restored it, saying:--"Only look with your eyes, and you'll see the name's all right." And then in a startled voice:--"But what?--but why?" provoked by the unaccountable decision with which he folded it, never looking at it.
He slipped it inside the breast-pocket of his coat, and buttoned it over. "That was my game, you see!" said he, equably enjoying the dumb panic of his victim.
As for her, she was literally speechless, for the moment. At last she just found voice to gasp out:--"Oh, Daverill, you can't mean it! Give it me back--oh, give it me back! Will you give it me back for money?... Oh, how can you have the heart?..."