sir adam sat still in his place and smoked another thick cigarette before he moved. then he roused himself, got up, sat down at his table, and took a large sheet of paper from a big leather writing-case.
he had no hesitation about what he meant to put down. in a quarter of an hour he had written out a new will, in which he left his whole fortune to his only son brook, on condition that brook did not marry mrs. crosby. but if he married her before his father’s death he was to have nothing, and if he married her afterwards he was to forfeit the whole, to the uttermost farthing. in either of these cases the property was to go to a third person. sir adam hesitated a moment, and then wrote the name of one of his sisters as the conditional legatee. his wife had plenty of money of her own, and besides, the will was a mere formality, drawn up and to be executed solely with a view to checking lady fan’s enthusiasm. he did not sign it, but folded it smoothly and put it into his pocket. he also took his own pen, for he was particular in matters appertaining to the mechanics of writing, and very neat in all he did.
he went out and wandered up and down the terrace in the heat, but no one was there. then he knocked at his wife’s door, and found her absorbed in an interesting conversation with her maid in regard to matters of dress, as connected with climate. lady johnstone at once appealed to him, and the maid eyed him with suspicion, fearing his suggestions. he satisfied her, however, by immediately suggesting that she should go away, whereat she smiled and departed.
lady johnstone at once understood that something very serious was in the air. a wonderful good fellowship existed between husband and wife; but they very rarely talked of anything which could not have been discussed, figuratively, on the housetops.
“brook has got himself into a scrape with that mrs. crosby, my dear,” said sir adam. “what you heard is all more or less true. she has really been to a solicitor, and means to take steps to get a divorce. of course she could get it easily enough. if she did, people would say that brook had let her go that far, telling her that he would marry her, and then had changed his mind and left her to her fate. we can’t let that happen, you know.”
lady johnstone looked at her husband with anxiety while he was speaking, and then was silent for a few seconds.
“oh, you johnstones! you johnstones!” she cried at last, shaking her head. “you’re perfectly incorrigible!”
“oh no, my dear,” answered sir adam; “don’t forget me, you know.”
“you, adam!”
her tone expressed an extraordinary conflict of varying sentiment—amusement, affection, reproach, a retrospective distrust of what might have been, but could not be, considering sir adam’s age.
“never mind me, then,” he answered. “i’ve made a will cutting brook off with nothing if he marries mrs. crosby, and i’m going to send her a copy of it to-day. that will be enough, i fancy.”
“adam!”
“yes—what? do you disapprove? you always say that you are a practical woman, and you generally show that you are. why shouldn’t i take the practical method of stopping this woman as soon as possible? she wants my money—she doesn’t want my son. a fortune with any other name would smell as sweet.”
“yes—but—”
“but what? ”
“i don’t know—it seems—somehow—” lady johnstone was perplexed to express what she meant just then. “i mean,” she added suddenly, “it’s treating the woman like a mere adventuress, you know—”
“that’s precisely what mrs. crosby is, my dear,” answered sir adam calmly. “the fact that she comes of decent people doesn’t alter the case in the least. nor the fact that she has one rich husband, and wishes to get another instead. i say that her husband is rich, but i’m very sure he has ruined himself in the last two years, and that she knows it. she is not the woman to leave him as long as he has money, for he lets her do anything she pleases, and pays her well to leave him alone. but he has got into trouble—and rats leave a sinking ship, you know. you may say that i’m cynical, my dear, but i think you’ll find that i’m telling you the facts as they are.”
“it seems an awful insult to the woman to send her a copy of your will,” said lady johnstone.
“it’s an awful insult to you when she tries to get rid of her husband to marry your only son, my dear.”
“oh—but he’d never marry her!”
“i’m not sure. if he thought it would be dishonourable not to marry her, he’d be quite capable of doing it, and of blowing out his brains afterwards.”
“that wouldn’t improve her position,” observed the practical lady johnstone.
“she’d be the widow of an honest man, instead of the wife of a blackguard,” said sir adam. “however, i’m doing this on my own responsibility. what i want is that you should witness the will.”
“and let mrs. crosby think i made you do this? no—”
“nonsense. i sha’n’t copy the signatures—”
“then why do you need them at all?”
“i’m not going to write to her that i’ve made a will, if i haven’t,” answered sir adam. “a will isn’t a will unless it’s witnessed. i’m not going to lie about it, just to frighten her. so i want you and mrs. bowring to witness it.”
“mrs. bowring?”
“yes—there are no men here, and brook can’t be a witness, because he’s interested. you and mrs. bowring will do very well. but there’s another thing—rather an extraordinary thing—and i won’t let you sign with her until you know it. it’s not a very easy thing to tell you, my dear.”
lady johnstone shifted her fat hands and folded them again, and her frank blue eyes gazed at her husband for a moment.
“i can guess,” she said, with a good-natured smile. “you told me you were old friends—i suppose you were in love with her somewhere!” she laughed and shook her head. “i don’t mind,” she added. “it’s one more, that’s all—one that i didn’t know of. she’s a very nice woman, and i’ve taken the greatest fancy to her!”
“i’m glad you have,” said sir adam, gravely. “i say, my dear—don’t be surprised, you know—i warned you. we knew each other very well—it’s not what you think at all, and she was altogether in the right and i was quite in the wrong about it. i say, now—don’t be startled—she’s my divorced wife—that’s all.”
“she! mrs. bowring! oh, adam—how could you treat her so!”
lady johnstone leaned back in her chair and slowly turned her head till she could look out of the window. she was almost rosy with surprise—a change of colour in her sanguine complexion which was equivalent to extreme pallor in other persons. sir adam looked at her affectionately.
“what an awfully good woman you are!” he exclaimed, in genuine admiration.
“i! no, i’m not good at all. i was thinking that if you hadn’t been such a brute to her i could never have married you. i don’t suppose that is good, is it? but you were a brute, all the same, adam, dear, to hurt such a woman as that!”
“of course i was! i told you so when i told you the story. but i didn’t expect that you’d ever meet.”
“no, it is an extraordinary thing. i suppose that if i had any nerves i should faint. it would be an awful thing if i did; you’d have to get those porters to pick me up!” she smiled meditatively. “but i haven’t fainted, you see. and, after all, i don’t see why it should be so very dreadful, do you? you see, you’ve rather broken me in to the idea of lots of other people in your life, and i’ve always pitied her sincerely. i don’t see why i should stop pitying her because i’ve met her and taken such a fancy to her without knowing who she was. do you?”
“most women would,” observed sir adam. “it’s lucky that you and she happen to be the two best women in the world. i told brook so this morning.”
“brook? have you told him?”
“i had to. he wants to marry her daughter.”
“brook! it’s impossible!”
lady johnstone’s tone betrayed so much more surprise and displeasure than when her husband had told her of mrs. bowring’s identity that he stared at her in surprise.
“i don’t see why it’s impossible,” he said, “except that she has refused him once. that’s nothing. the first time doesn’t count.”
“he sha’n’t!” said the fat lady, whose vivid colour had come back. “he’ll make her miserable—just as you—no, i won’t say that! but they are not in the least suited to one another—he’s far too young; there are fifty reasons.”
“brook won’t act as i did, my dear,” said sir adam. “he’s like you in that. he’ll make as good a husband as you have been a good wife—”
“nonsense!” interrupted lady johnstone. “you’re all alike, you johnstones! i was talking to him this morning about her—i knew there was the beginning of something—and i told him what i thought. you’re all bad, and i love you all; but if you think that clare bowring is as practical as i am, you’re very much mistaken, adam, dear! she’ll break her heart—”
“if she does, i’ll shoot him,” answered the old man with a grim smile. “i told him so.”
“did you? well, i am glad you take that view of it,” said lady johnstone, thoughtfully, and not at all realising what she was saying. “i’m glad i’m not a nervous woman,” she added, beginning to fan herself. “i should be in my grave, you know.”
“no—you are not nervous, my dear, and i’m very glad of it. i suppose it really is rather a trying situation. but if i didn’t know you, i wouldn’t have told you all this. you’ve spoiled me, you know—you really have been so tremendously good to me—always, dear.”
there was a rough, half unwilling tenderness in his voice, and his big bony hand rested gently on the fat lady’s shoulder, as he spoke. she bent her head to one side, till her large red cheek touched the brown knuckles. it was, in a way, almost grotesque. but there was that something in it which could make youth and beauty and passion ridiculous—the outspoken truthful old rake and the ever-forgiving wife. who shall say wherein pathos lies? and yet it seems to be something more than a mere hack-writer’s word, after all. the strangest acts of life sometimes go off in such an oddly quiet humdrum way, and then all at once there is the little quiver in the throat, when one least expects it—and the sad-eyed, faithful, loving angel has passed by quickly, low and soft, his gentle wings just brushing the still waters of our unwept tears.
sir adam left his wife to go in search of mrs. bowring. he sent a message to her, and she came out and met him in the corridor. they went into the reading-room together, and he shut the door. in a few words he told her all that he had told his wife about mrs. crosby, and asked her whether she had any objection to signing the document as a witness, merely in order that he might satisfy himself by actually executing it.
“it is high handed,” said mrs. bowring. “it is like you—but i suppose you have a right to save your son from such trouble. but there is something else—do you know what has happened? he has been making love to clare—he has asked her to marry him, and she has refused. she told me this morning—and i have told her the truth—that you and i were once married.”
she paused, and watched sir adam’s furrowed face.
“i’m glad of that,” he said. “i’m glad that it has all come out on the same day. he knows everything, and he has told me everything. i don’t know how it’s all going to end, but i want you to believe one thing. if he had guessed the truth, he would never have said a word of love to her. he’s not that kind of boy. you do believe me, don’t you?”
“yes, i believe you. but the worst of it is that she cares for him too—in a way i can’t understand. she has some reason, or she thinks she has, for disliking him, as she calls it. she wouldn’t tell me. but she cares for him all the same. she has told him, though she won’t tell me. there is something horrible in the idea of our children falling in love with each other.”
mrs. bowring spoke quietly, but her pale face and nervous mouth told more than her words.
sir adam explained to her shortly what had happened on the first evening after brook’s arrival, and how clare had heard it all, sitting in the shadow just above the platform. mrs. bowring listened in silence, covering her eyes with her hands. there was a long pause after he had finished speaking, but still she said nothing.
“i should like him to marry her,” said sir adam at last, in a low voice.
she started and looked at him uneasily, remembering how well she had once loved him, and how he had broken her heart when she was young. he met her eyes quietly.
“you don’t know him,” he said. “he loves her, and he will be to her—what i wasn’t to you.”
“how can you say that he loves her? three weeks ago he loved that mrs. crosby.”
“he? he never cared for her—not even at first.”
“he was all the more heartless and bad to make her think that he did.”
“she never thought so, for a moment. she wanted my money, and she thought that she could catch him.”
“perhaps—i saw her, and i did not like her face. she had the look of an adventuress about her. that doesn’t change the main facts. your son and she were—flirting, to say the least of it, three weeks ago. and now he thinks himself in love with my daughter. it would be madness to trust such a man—even if there were not the rest to hinder their marriage. adam—i told you that i forgave you. i have forgiven you—god knows. but you broke my life at the beginning like a thread. you don’t know all there has been to forgive—indeed, you don’t. and you are asking me to risk clare’s life in your son’s hands, as i risked mine in yours. it’s too much to ask.”
“but you say yourself that she loves him.”
“she cares for him—that was what i said. i don’t believe in love as i did. you can’t expect me to.”
she turned her face away from him, but he saw the bitterness in it, and it hurt him. he waited a moment before he answered her.
“don’t visit my sins on your daughter, lucy,” he said at last. “don’t forget that love was a fact before you and i were born, and will be a fact long after we are dead. if these two love each other, let them marry. i hope that clare is like you, but don’t take it for granted that brook is like me. he’s not. he’s more like his mother.”
“and your wife?” said mrs. bowring suddenly. “what would she say to this?”
“my wife,” said sir adam, “is a practical woman.”
“i never was. still—if i knew that clare loved him—if i could believe that he could love her faithfully—what could i do? i couldn’t forbid her to marry him. i could only pray that she might be happy, or at least that she might not break her heart.”
“you would probably be heard, if anybody is. and a man must believe in god to explain your existence,” added sir adam, in a gravely meditative tone. “it’s the best argument i know.”
