Twilight, Julia Frankau [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

have no means of knowing, but that it included the information that you had stayed in the house there is not much reason to doubt. And down came this woman like a ton of bricks on Wednesday morning and flung a bomb on us in the shape of a demand for a thousand pounds.”

“What woman?”

“The man’s employer. She had set him on to it.”

“Who?”

“This blackmailing person.”

The “us” tightened Gabriel’s thin lips and hardened his deep-set eyes. Had they been alone he might have remembered what Margaret must have suffered, what a dreadful thing this visit must have been to her. As it was, and for the moment, he thought of nothing but of Peter Kennedy’s intervention, interference.

“Why did you see her?” he asked Margaret.

“I thought she came from Anne,” she faltered.

“From Anne!”

“She is the Christian Science woman,” Peter explained.

And now indeed the full force of the blow struck him.

“Mrs. Roope?” he got out.

“No other,” Peter answered. “Crammed chokefull of extracts from Mrs. Eddy. James Capel is her husband’s cousin. At least so she says. And that he never wanted to be divorced from his wife, and would welcome a chance of stopping the decree from being made absolute. She said the higher morality bade her go to him. ‘ Husband and wife should never separate if there is no Christian demand for it,’ she quoted. But help toward the Christian Science Church, or movement, she would construe as ‘ a Christian demand.’ She asked for a thousand pounds! Mrs. Capel,” this time for some unknown reason he said “Mrs. Capel “and Gabriel heard better, “was quite overwhelmed, knocked to pieces by her impudence. That’s when I came on the scene. I told the woman what I thought of her; you may bet I didn’t mince matters. And then I offered her a hundred…”

Gabriel got up suddenly, abruptly, his face flushed.

“You… you offered her a hundred pounds?”

“Well! there was not a bit of good trying for less. It was a round sum.”

“You allowed Mrs. Capel to be blackmailed!”

“What would you have done? Of course I did.”

“It was disgraceful, indefensible.”

“Gabriel.” She called him by his name, she wanted him to sit down by her, but he remained standing. “There was no time to send for any one, ask for advice…”

“It was a case of ‘your money or your life!’ The woman put a pistol to our heads. ‘Pay up or I’ll take my tale to James Capel’ was the beginning and end of what she said. I got her down finally to 250.’

“You gave the woman, this infamous, blackmailing person, 250?”

“And cheap enough too. Wait a bit. I can guess what you are thinking. I’m not such a fool as you take me for. She only had a hundred in cash, the other is a post-dated cheque, not due until the decree is made absolute. Then I ran her out of the house.”

“Who wrote those cheques?” The flush deepened, Gabriel could hardly control his voice.

“I wrote them and Mrs. Capel signed them. She was absolutely bowled over, it was as much as she could do to sign her name.”

Gabriel was beside himself or he would not have spoken as he did.

“You did an infamous thing, sir, an infamous thing. You should have guarded this lady, since I was not here, sheltered her innocence. To allow oneself to be blackmailed is an admission of guilt. The way you sheltered her innocence was to advise her practically to admit guilt.” He was choked with anger.

“Gabriel,” she pleaded.

“My dear,” never had he spoken to her in such a way, he seemed hardly to remember she was there, “I acquit you entirely. You did not know what you were doing, could not be expected to know. But this fellow, this blackguard…” He actually advanced a step or two toward him, threateningly. “Her good name was at stake, mine as well as hers, was and is at stake.”

“And I saved it for you, for both of you. I’ve shut Mrs. Roope’s mouth. You’ll never hear a word more…”

“Not hear more?” Gabriel was deeply contemptuous. “Did you ever know a blackmailer who was satisfied with the first blood? You have opened the door wide to her exactions…”

“You are taking an entirely wrong view, you are prejudiced. Because you don’t like me you blame me whether I am right or wrong.”

“You don’t know the difference between right and wrong.”

“I wasn’t going to have my patient upset,” he said obstinately.

“Gabriel, listen to me, hear me. Don’t be so angry with Peter. I wanted the woman paid to keep quiet. I insisted upon her being paid.” And then under her breath she said, “There is such a little time more.”

“There is all our lives,” Gabriel answered in that deep outraged voice. “All our lives it will be a stain that money was paid. As if we had something to conceal.”

His point of view was not theirs, neither Peter’s nor Margaret’s. They argued and protested, justifying themselves and each other. But it seemed to Gabriel there was no argument. When Margaret pleaded he had to listen, to hold himself in hand, to say as little as possible. Toward Peter Kennedy he was irreconcilable. “A man ought to have known,” he said doggedly.

“He wanted to ward off an attack.”

Dr. Kennedy went away ultimately, he had that amount of sense. By this time he was at least as antagonistic to Gabriel Stanton as Gabriel to him.

“Stiff-necked blighter! He’d talk ethics if she were dying. What does it matter whether it was right or wrong? Anyway, I got rid of the woman for her, set her mind at rest. I bet my way was as good as any he’d have found! Now I suppose he’ll argue her round until she looks upon me as the villain of the play.” In which, as the sequel shows, he wronged his lady love. “Insufferable prig!” And with that and a few more muttered epithets he went off to endure a hideous few days, fearing for her all the time, in the hands of such a man as Gabriel Stanton, whom he deemed hard and selfrighteous.

But he need not have feared. The two men were poles apart in temperament, education, and environment. Circumstances aided in making them intolerant of each other. Their judgment was biased. Margaret saw them both more clearly than they saw each other. Her lover was the stronger, finer man, had the higher standard. And he was right, right this time, as always. Yet she thought sympathetically of the other and the weakness that led him to compromise. The Christian Scientist should not have been paid, she should have been prosecuted. Margaret saw it now, she, too, had not seen it at the moment. She confessed herself a coward.

“But our happiness was at stake, our whole happiness. In less than three weeks now…”

Now that they were alone Gabriel could show his quality. The thing she had done was indefensible. And he had hardly a hope that it would achieve its object. He, himself, would not have done evil that good might come of it, submitted, admitted… the blood rushed to his face and he could not trust himself even to think of what had practically been admitted. But she had done it for love of him to secure their happiness together. What man but would be moved by such an admission, what lover? He could not hold out against her, nor continue to express his doubts.

“Must we talk any more about it? I can’t bear your reproaches. Gabriel, don’t reproach me any more.” She was nestling in the shelter of his arms. “You know why I did it. I wish you would be glad.”

“My darling, I wish I could be. It was not your fault. I ought to have come down. You ought not to have been left alone, or with an unscrupulous person like this doctor.”

“Peter acted according to his lights. He did it for the best, he thought only of me.”

“His lights are darkness, his best outrageous. Never mind, I will not say another word, only you must promise me faithfully, swear to me that if you do hear any more of this woman, or of the circumstance, from this or any other quarter, you will do nothing without consulting me, you will send for me at once…”

Margaret promised, Margaret swore.

“I want to lean upon your strength. I have so altered I don’t know myself. Love has loosened, weakened me. I am no longer as I was, proud, selfreliant. Gabriel, don’t let me be sorry that I love you. I am startled by myself, by this new self. What have you done to me? Is this what love means weakness?”

When she said she needed to lean upon his strength his heart ran like water to her. When she pleaded to him for forgiveness because she had allowed herself to be blackmailed rather than delay their happiness together, his tenderness overflowed and flooded the rock of his logic, of his clear judgment. His arms tightened about her.

“I ought to have come to you whether you said yes or no. I knew you were in trouble.”

“Not any longer.” She nestled to him.

“God knows…”

He thrust aside his misgivings later and gave himself up to soothing and nursing her. Peter Kennedy need have had no fear, but then of course this was a Gabriel Stanton he did not know.

Gabriel would not hear of Margaret coming down to dinner nor into the drawingroom. She was to stay on the sofa in the music room, to have her dinner served to her there. He said he would carve for her, not be ten minutes away.

“All this trouble has made me forget that I have something to tell you. No, no! Not now, not until you have rested.”

“I can’t wait, I can’t wait. Tell me now, at once. But I know. I know by your face. It is about our little house. You have seen a house our house!”

“Not until after dinner. I must not tell you anything until you have rested, had something to eat. You have been too agitated. Dear love, you have been through so much. Yes, I have seen the house that seems to have been built for us. Don’t urge me to tell you now. This has been the first cloud that has come between us. It will never happen again. You will keep nothing from me.”

“Haven’t I promised? Sworn?”

“Sweetheart!” And as he held her she whispered:

“You will never be angry with me again?”

“I was not angry with you. How could I be?”

She smiled. She was quite happy again now, and content.

“It looked like anger.”

“You focussed it wrongly,” he answered.

After they had dined; she on her sofa from a tray he supervised and sent up to her, he in solitary state in the dining-room, hurrying through the food that had no flavour to him in her absence: he told her about the little house in Westminster that he had seen, and that seemed to fit all their requirements. It was very early eighteenth-century, every brick of it had been laid before Robert Adam and his brother went to Portland Place, the walls were panelled and the mantelpieces untouched. They were of carved wood in the drawingroom, painted alabaster in the library and bedrooms, marble in the dining-room only. It was almost within the precincts of the Abbey and there was a tiny courtyard or garden. Margaret immediately envisaged it tiled and Dutch. Gabriel left it stone and defended his opinion. There was a lead figure with the pretence of a fountain.

“I could hardly believe my good luck when first