Part 17

"I have bad news for you," he said. "Your twin sister is dead."

"Oh!" I breathed. What could I do but sit there turning red and white, and looking like a fool before him?

"It is a sad and curious coincidence that my twin brother expired at the same instant. What is there for us to do but to console each other?"

He reached out a hand, palm upwards, to me across the table. "You will find life pleasanter as a doctor's wife than as a doctor," he said. "And—"

But I have told you enough till next mail, Berthalina. By that time, perhaps, you will have prepared yourself for the rest of what he said to me, and what I answered.

I wonder if you will think I have been a sensible and self-restrained woman all my life to act like a rash, precipitate fool in the finish?

I wonder!

AUNTIE

"And now, pray, what are you gnashing your teeth about? You never rested until I'd made Auntie promise to stay with us. I didn't wish for her; she didn't wish to come; but, as she's here, the least we can do is to behave decently to her."

"Who said we shouldn't behave decently to her?"

"Well, to see you standing there cursing and gnashing your teeth while you brush your hair!"

"I don't curse, or gnash my teeth, or even brush my hair in public, do I?"

"Oh, of course, it's the wife who has the monopoly of all such pleasing demonstrations!" the wife said. Then she pushed her arms through the short sleeves of the blouse she was going to wear, in honour of Auntie, at dinner that night, and presented her back to Augustus Mellish in order that he might perform a husband's part and fasten the garment.

"You, who have never been in her delightful home at Surbiton, don't know the luxurious sort of life Auntie leads," Mrs Mellish went on. "Travels with her maid, generally; but I told her we could not put her up. Keeps four servants; never does a thing for herself, but is pampered and made much of in every way. Money, of course. There isn't anything in Auntie to call forth all that devotion."

"Money is a useful thing," the husband said. "I wish your infernal dressmaker wouldn't make your things so tight. That's the second nail I've broken, confound it!"

"Gnashing again! If I were to swear and go on in that ridiculous way over every little thing I do for you, I wonder what you'd think of it! Brushing your hats, ironing your ties, putting your trousers into stretchers—and if I ask you to fasten a few buttons, you blaspheme. If you had the worries on your shoulders I have on mine! Cook's in one of her tempers to-day, just because I was anxious for things to go without a hitch, for Auntie. There's a piece of salmon, at half-a-crown a pound, bought because Auntie would think just nothing of the price, and is all the year round accustomed to salmon; cook is certain to send it in bleeding or to boil it to a rag. You, at your office all day long, with nothing to think about, and when you come home everything running on oiled wheels—"

"Oh, I've heard all that before. My life is all perfect joy, according to you," Augustus said. And in such inspiring intercourse the Mellishes passed the few minutes of their tête-à-tête.

In the drawing-room, Auntie awaited them: a large, matronly-looking spinster, with a heavy face and frame, a non-intelligential gaze from dull brown eyes. Not a promising visitor, from a social point of view. She was expensively attired, her garments rustling richly when she moved. Her dark hair was fashionably piled on the top of her head.

She sat in a chair farthest from the window which she regarded distrustfully, it being slightly open. In the railway carriage coming down she had felt sure there was a draught, and now her neck was a little stiff.

She thought slightingly of Grace's drawing-room; indeed, the whole establishment wore a paltry air, to her thinking, who had a predilection for the ornately massive in style. But if Grace had been foolish enough to marry a lawyer, in a town already too full of lawyers, and he young, and with his way to make, what could she expect? Alfred's daughter should surely have done better than that, Auntie said to herself.

Still, later on, she was bound to admit that the lawyer and his wife did their best to make her comfortable, and showed her every attention. Augustus, or Gussie, as Grace instructed her to call him, seemed an agreeable person, although no one could consider him a good-looking one—not half good-looking enough for Grace, who had been considered a beauty. So black he was about the shaven portion of his face, his close-cropped hair, and great eyes, so white everywhere else. Auntie, who associated health with a brick-red complexion like her own, decided that he could not be a strong man. She spoke to her niece about him after dinner.

"He's chalk-white," she said.

Grace was not at all alarmed for her husband's health. "He's always like that," she said. "He's never had a day's illness. I do hope you and Gussie will like each other, Auntie. I can tell you, he's bent on pleasing you."

"He seemed agreeable," Auntie said. "Has he got nerves?" she asked.

"Nerves!" repeated Grace, opening her eyes. "Dear, no! Only like other people's. Why?"

"I only asked the question," Auntie said. "When he isn't talking or eating, his mouth still works; and when he smiles he shows his gums. I thought it was nerves."

"Oh, that's just a habit he's got. He only does it when strangers are present."

"I hope Henry won't catch it," Auntie said. "Children are imitative."

"No fear about Henry. Henry takes after me—colour and all," Mrs Mellish said. She was a brown-haired woman, with cheeks like a damask rose, and Henry was the only child of the house, and was away at a boarding-school.

During the evening a neighbour and his wife came in. He and she and the two ladies played bridge, while Gussie looked on or fidgeted aimlessly about the room, taking up and putting down again books and papers, looking into empty ornamental jars, continually comparing his own watch with the drawing-room clock.

"To tell you the truth, he always goes out in the evening," Grace informed Auntie, while seeing her to her bedroom. "He has his club, you know. They play rather high. I don't think he cares for our careful little game. If you don't mind, I think I shall tell him to go there to-morrow night. He does worry me so when he prowls about the drawing-room."

"Let him go, by all means. I don't mind at all," Auntie acquiesced.

"I knew she'd win. They always do, when they've money, and don't want to," Mellish said to his wife, talking over the evening's game. "Played threepence a hundred, didn't she?"

"Isn't it mean of her!" Grace said. "With a purse full of sovereigns—for I saw them when she gave it to me to pay the cab—and thirty more, she told me, in her jewel-case. By the way, the servants asked for their wages again to-day, Gussie."

"Oh, I daresay! Ask your aunt to pay them."

"I should like to see myself stooping to ask such a thing of Auntie!"

"You don't mind stooping to ask money of me every time you open your mouth."

"I wonder you can dare to say it! I haven't had a penny from you, for a week. I hadn't even the half-crown to buy the child the new paint-box he wrote for."

"Henry? Does he want a paint-box? He shall have it, poor little chap. I will see about it tomorrow."

"Once he's gone to the office, don't you see him any more, all day?" Auntie asked, as the front door closed on the master of the house, next morning.

"Not till dinner. He has a biscuit for his lunch, or goes without it. He isn't a man to care for food at any time."

"No. He isn't what I call a restful man," Auntie said, and spread herself more at her ease in her chair. "He isn't one, I should say, to enjoy the comforts of home."

"Oh, as for that, I don't care for a man always in your way among the chairs and tables," Mrs Mellish said. "Gussie isn't a woman's man, you see, Auntie. He's about as clever as they're made, Gussie is; and when they're like that they're men's men; and I like them better so."

Grace's red cheeks were redder. She was a quick-tempered, high-spirited young woman. "Hands off! he's mine," her manner, more than her words, said to Auntie, who would have liked to listen to a few wifely confidences as she and her niece sat tête-à-tête through the long morning.

They lived in a provincial town, and on the second night of Auntie's stay they went to the theatre, at which a London company happened to be performing.

Grace loved the play, and was in high spirits, making an extra toilette for the occasion. She was not half through it when her husband, who had hurried over his dressing, left her and went downstairs. He had heard Auntie, who was always too early for everything, and made a merit of it, leave her room. He found her in the drawing-room, pulling a pair of long white gloves over her large hands and arms.

"I have been stupid enough to leave myself short of cash," Mellish said, beginning lightly at once, almost before he had closed the door behind him. "I wonder if you could oblige me, Auntie, with a few pounds for a couple of days? Say ten or fifteen? Just to carry me on till my money-ship comes in."

Auntie, working on her tight gloves, looked at him; his tone was carefully careless, but his face, which she had called chalk-white, was surely whiter yet. His question being asked, his lips still moved.

"How Grace can bear to sit opposite to him at meals every day, I don't know!" Auntie said to herself. "He gives me the creeps."

She drew in her lower lip loosely beneath her teeth, her gaze grew blanker; never a clever-looking woman, now she looked a fool. Slowly she shook her head.

"No. I am afraid I can't," she said. "I'm afraid I can't spare it. I only brought as much as I should want to get me back home again."

There was a minute's unbroken silence. Gussie's smile, always so pronounced, spread across his gums till his face looked as if it were cut in two.

"I can let you have half a sovereign," Aunty suggested.

"Oh, thank you; it's of no consequence," Gussie said, making a gesture of refusal. He walked about the room as if hurriedly seeking for something he never found.

Auntie, with her unintelligent gaze divided between his movements and the glove which so reluctantly covered her arm, offered a tardy explanation.

"I never lend money," she said. "It was my father's dying request that I never should. I owe it to him to regard it."

"Quite so; of course," Gussie said. "The matter just came into my head. I merely mentioned it. Pray don't give it a thought."

As they drove to the theatre, Auntie remarked that she should insist on paying for her ticket and her share of the cab, a suggestion at which Gussie and Grace were hospitably offended. She asked, then, if the house was safe, left with only the maid-servants to protect it. In order to reassure her, Augustus informed her that he was intending to go home once in the course of the evening to make sure that things were all right.

"Not that it matters to me," Auntie told him; "for I have brought my valuables with me—jewellery and money, too. I always take them with me, in strange places. I could never enjoy the play if my mind were not at rest. I wear a bag concealed in the skirt of my dress on purpose."

"Ah! I wish I could make Grace as thoughtful!" Gussie said.

"Give me Auntie's money and jewels, then see!" Grace cried.

"And I suppose you go to bed with them, too?" Gussie admiringly inquired. "Grace has never so much as carried up the plate-basket."

He was quite right. Auntie did go to bed with them, always putting the bag containing them under her pillow.

"A wise precaution!" said Gussie.

"I'm a heavy sleeper," Auntie explained. "A robber might break in and take my property, and I never hear him; but let him touch the pillow beneath my head, and I'm wide awake on the moment."

"Yes, but—" said Augustus Mellish, and smiled, "a few drops of chloroform on a handkerchief held over your face, Auntie, and where would you and your jewellery be then?"

They were at the theatre, by that time, and Auntie did not answer. But when she went to bed that night she thought of what Grace's husband had said. She had a little difficulty with breathing, being a stout woman, and a horror of suffocation. The idea of that handkerchief held over her face was terrible. She loved her money and her jewels, but loved more her comfort and her life.

"Once they stopped my breath, I should never wake up again!" she said to herself; and, deciding to alter her usual procedure, she returned her treasure from the bag hidden in her skirts to her jewel-case.

The play had been a moving one. Grace, very susceptible to emotion, had laughed and cried beside her; but Auntie was a phlegmatic person. The comedy was just make-believe. She thought more, as she undressed, of Augustus's request for a loan than of the heart-stirring episodes of the drama. She had been wise not to begin lending him money, but to say at once, straight out, "No." He had asked for only a few pounds; if she had given them, he would have gone on to ask for more, in all probability. Auntie liked Grace well enough, rather better than most people, perhaps; but Grace had pleased herself in getting married; the man she had taken must keep her. He had no claim on Grace's Auntie.

With such thoughts in her mind, as soon as her head touched the pillow, she slept.

She awoke with a sickly, suffocating smell in her nostrils; and her eyes opened wide upon a face bent above her own. She had slept with a small lamp burning beside her, and by its dim light it seemed to her that the face was black.

As she gazed, the face receded. Its owner drew backwards, pulling one empty hand from beneath her pillow. The other hand held the handkerchief whose odour she had felt upon mouth and nostrils.

Auntie flew up in bed. "Burglar!" she cried.

It was the only word spoken between them. The whole incident was over in a half-minute. By the time that epithet had burst without volition from her lips the robber, with his black-veiled face, had slunk to the door and was gone.

With an agility she had not displayed since girlhood, Auntie sprang from the bed, and, clutching the bag containing her money and jewels, furiously rang the bell.

Mrs Mellish, in her nightgown, came running into the room.

"Oh, Auntie! Are you ill? Are you on fire?" she cried.

The stout lady, strengthless and breathless, was lying in a chair, the jewel-case clasped laxly with one arm.

"A robber has been here," she gasped. "A robber, with black on his face, and a chloroformed handkerchief."

"Oh, Auntie! Auntie! Never!"

"Where is your husband? Is he in your room?"

No. For Augustus, ever a restless sleeper, had thought he heard something stirring in the room beneath, and, later, a footstep on the stair. He had risen, therefore, had taken the pistol, which always lay loaded by his side, and gone down to investigate.

Auntie opened her mouth to speak, but closed it without a sound; her eyes, with their most vacant stare, were turned upon her niece; she gathered her underlip loosely beneath her teeth.

It was not until the servants, also aroused by the bell, but having waited to dress, came to Auntie's room, that Mrs Mellish was at liberty to run down to seek her husband.

There was no doubt about the house having been entered, she said, on her return; Auntie had by no means dreamt the burglar.

("No!" interpolated Auntie, with a solemnly emphatic shake of the head.)

A window broken in the kitchen, and a wide-open sash had showed the exploring Gussie the means of ingress. In the dining-room it was evident that a couple of glasses of brandy had been drunk, but none of the silver on the sideboard had been touched. Too clearly, Auntie and her possessions had been the objects of the attempt.

Auntie nodded gloomy affirmation, trembling and gasping in her chair. Where was Gussie, she asked; and showed relief and satisfaction when told he had gone to give notice of the affair to the police. But not even the promise that the servants and Grace would sit beside her and watch her while she slept would induce the poor lady to go to bed again.

"Not in this house. Never again in this house," she protested.

And even when morning brought a cessation of panic and a certain sense of security to all, she could not be persuaded to change her mind.

"I should die if I ever trusted myself to fall asleep under this roof again," she said. "Let me get away from it as soon as possible. I am fifty years of age, but I've never had a bad shock before in my life. I won't risk a second."

The swarthy, fat, foolish face was pale and flabby and aged from the night's adventure and the sleepless hours following.

"Auntie, I am sure you are not well enough to travel," Grace said. But, with a grim determination, Auntie persisted.

"The first train. I should like to get away by the very first."

"It isn't our fault, remember," Grace said, firing up. "It isn't as if we arranged a burglary for you, Auntie."

There was a train at 10.15 a.m., and of this Auntie would avail herself.

No policeman came to the house. Augustus did not return.

"He and the detectives have got on a track, and are following it up," his wife said. "Trust Gussie!"

When the ladies were about to sit down to breakfast, and still the master of the house had not returned, Grace was a little surprised. The neighbour who had played bridge with them came in. He had heard of the burglary, and was come to offer assistance, he said. He picked up a couple of newspapers lying by Mr Mellish's empty plate.

"You let those alone! Gussie hasn't seen them yet," Gussie's wife said. The Mellishes were on terms of great intimacy with the neighbour.

"I'll take them, all the same," he laughed. "Send Gus to me for them if he wants them."

"I tell you what! I think I'll just 'phone up to the office to see if Gussie's there," Grace said. "I don't see the fun of being kept in the dark like this. I should like to know what's going on, and if they've caught anyone."

The face of the friendly neighbour changed as she disappeared to carry out this intention. He walked close to Auntie and whispered in her ear:

"Don't let her get hold of a newspaper," he said. "There's disagreeable news. I heard it last night. Mellish has got into a scrape—forgery, they say. I hope to heaven he's got away—H-s-s-sh!"

There was no need of the caution. Auntie, with the grand talent for silence which distinguished her, sat with a sucked-in lip looking heavily after the retreating neighbour, when Grace returned. Grace, bright and pretty in her neat morning blouse, made a laughing dash at the papers in the neighbour's hand. He flourished them a moment above her head and retired.

"Gussie's not at the office," Mrs Mellish said. "He's on the track of your burglar, Auntie, you bet. He'll catch him, too! You'll be wanted to identify him; could you swear to him, do you think?"

Auntie very hurriedly declared her inability to do this. "All the upper part of his face was covered," she said.

But she thought of a black-shaved chin below the mask, and a jaw that had worked silently, in a way of late familiar to her; and she found herself quite unable to do justice to her niece's eggs and bacon.

At the door of the first-class railway compartment by which Auntie was to travel Grace stood.