The Black Cabinet (20 page)

“I'm a perfect fool,” said Chloe in a little, sobbing voice. “It's no good your saying I'm not, because I am. I'm a rabbit, and an idiot, and a fool. But oh, Michael, I
am
frightened. That business this afternoon was a sort of last straw; it scared me stiff.”

“I'm going to take you right away from it all. I told you I'd gone into partnership. Well, I can get a week or ten days off, and we'll go away and have an absolutely ripping time. Look here, this is Friday; and if I go and wrestle round, we can get married on Tuesday, and just go off anywhere you'd like to. What about Paris?”

“Lovely!” said Chloe. “But won't it cost a lot?”

Michael became very business-like.

“We shan't be rich, but we ought to be able to rub along. I've got about five hundred a year of my own, and I expect to do quite well out of the business. We'll go to Paris and have no end of a time.”

Chapter XXXVI

Chloe's wedding day dawned wet and windy. The clouds instead of lifting darkened to a day of settled gloom.

“It's just as well,” said Chloe to Mrs. Moffat, “isn't it, Moffy dear?”

“‘Happy's the bride that the sun shines on,' is how the proverb goes. But where there's real true love like Mr. Michael's got for you, there's always sunshine in a manner of speaking—not but what a lift in the weather wouldn't be a treat too.”

Chloe shook her head.

“It's not going to lift; and it's much better it shouldn't, for of all the dowdy, disreputable frumps of brides, I'm sure I'm the dowdiest, and disreputablest, and frumpiest.”

“Oh, miss!” Eliza Moffat was obviously shocked.

“Moffy dear, I
am.
Just look at me! Wouldn't I make a perfectly sweet paragraph in one of the Society papers?—‘Miss Dane absolutely riveted the eyes of all beholders by her daringly original choice of a wedding dress. Exquisitely gowned in brown tweed, her raven locks crowned with priceless felt, she had only to be seen to be admired. Her stockings were the latest thing in darned needle-work, and her feet displayed the new open-work shoe which, a little bird tells me, is to be
all
the rage.' Oh, Moffy dear, if you love me,
does
the hole show very much?”

“It shows,” said Mrs. Moffat—“no one can't say that it don't show. But they're shined up lovely.”

“I
would
have liked a proper wedding dress,” said Chloe. “I've thought so often what I'd be married in; and I never, never,
never
dreamt of its being brown tweed.”

“Didn't Mr. Michael—”

Chloe's cheeks flamed.

“He knows I wouldn't let him! He'll just have to make the best of the shabbiest bride in London.”

“My dear,” said Eliza Moffat, “do you think he'll see your clothes? When a man loves a girl true like Mr. Michael loves you, he don't see anything except just her, and the way he loves her. You take it from me, my dear, you'll be all in shining white for him, because that's the way he thinks of you.”

Chloe flung her arms round Mrs. Moffat's neck and kissed her.

“Moffy you
dear
!” she said.

Chloe and Michael were married in a little dark church with Mr. Monody, Mrs. Moffat, and Mrs. Rowse for witnesses. The responses echoed in the empty space. A red angel with yellow hair looked down at them from a little stained glass window; he held in his hand a pair of scales. The parson murmured, and Michael murmured.

Chloe said, “I, Chloe Mary, take thee, Michael—” Her voice dropped to inaudibility on his second name because the young parson had boggled at it. Stannard or Standen—she must ask him afterwards what it really was. Ridiculous not to know one's husband's second name.

“I pronounce you man and wife,” said the young parson; and a voice deep inside Chloe spoke to her so loudly, clearly, and insistently that she stopped hearing anything else. “You're married,” said the voice, “you're married—you're married—you're married.” The words went over and over, and on and on. Suddenly the parson's voice broke in upon them; it had a tone of finality about it: “As long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement,” he announced, quoting the Apostle Peter.

Michael and Chloe walked into the little vestry, followed by an abstracted Mr. Monody, a composed Mrs. Rowse, and a highly tearful Mrs. Moffat.

“I knew Lizzie would kiss me,” said Michael in Chloe's ear.

“Ssh,” said Chloe. She herself kissed Mrs. Rowse and Mrs. Moffat, and, to her extreme surprise, received an absent-minded salute from Mr. Monody. Then Michael's hand on her arm.

“Come and sign this register thing. I've done it. Why do you suppose they want to know what one's father's Christian names are?”

Chloe laughed.

“It does seem odd.”

She came forward, still laughing, took the pen which somebody put into her hand, and bent over the register.

“Just here,” said the young parson. “Your full names, please.”

Chloe wrote Chloe Mary Dane, and then looked at Michael's signature above her own. The names stood out black in a clear, boyish writing. Chloe stared as she might have stared at death. The names stood clear and black:—Michael Stranways Fossetter.

The laughter and the warmth were struck out of her, leaving her colder than she had ever been in all her life before. She was not faint, or ill; she was able to say, “Lawrence John” quite clearly and steadily in response to a request for her father's Christian names. She said “Thank you,” and smiled when the parson shook hands with her and offered her his good wishes—he only thought that her hand was very cold.

Next moment the little cold hand was on Michael's arm, and they were walking down the aisle together. Chloe walked to the steady beat of one insistent refrain, “Stran—Stran is short for Stranways.” It just went on and on in her head like a chance-heard tune that one can't get rid of—her own question, “Who is Stran?” and Leonard Wroughton's answer, “Stran is short for Stranways.”

They came out into the damp, draughty porch, and down the wet steps to the horrible rhythm. She got into Michael's car, and heard the engine beating out the same measure, “Stran is short for Stranways—Stran is short for Stranways.”

Michael spoke to her, and she answered him.

“Is anything the matter? Are you cold, darling?”

Chloe said, “Yes, I'm cold.” And behind the question and answer the maddening beat went on, “Who is Stran?—Stran is short for Stranways.”

They stopped at Mrs. Moffat's door and got out. In the hall a letter lay face downwards on the floor. Michael picked it up and handed it to Chloe.

“Come along in to the fire,” he said, and put his arm about her. “I haven't kissed you yet, Chloe, I haven't kissed you yet.”

Chloe detached herself with a queer, jerky movement. The letter was from Emily Wroughton. She said, “Wait—please wait,” and began to open it.

Michael watched her. What had happened? Why on earth was she looking like this? He had seen her look cold, tired, angry, and frightened; but he had never seen her look like this. There was no expression in her face; a smooth, even pallor seemed to have blotted all feeling from it. He looked at her, and felt afraid.

Chloe let the envelope fall on to the floor. Her face never changed as she unfolded the letter and read it. There was no formal beginning:

“I
must
tell you, because he has found out where you live. I didn't tell you the truth at Danesborough—I told you what Leonard had told me to tell you. The real plot was to frighten you into marrying Stran. He was to make you keep the money. That was the real plot—to marry you to Stran. The rest was only lies. I couldn't bear it when you thanked me.”

The words were smudged and blotted. There was no signature.

Chloe put out her hand and let the letter fall into the fire. Well, the plot had succeeded. Emily's letter was too late. She had married Stran.

“Chloe, my darling!” said Michael, and put his arm about her.

With all her strength she thrust him away, and turned to face him with her head up.

“If it was because of the money you married me—I shall never take it—you will never get me to take it!” The bleak voice and slow utterance were of all things in the world most unlike the Chloe Michael knew.

He could only stammer her name.

“Nobody can make me take the money!”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Michael. “Are you ill?”

She shook her head slightly.

“No, I'm not ill.”

“What is it then? What was in that letter? Chloe, what is it?”

Mrs. Moffat opened the door, looked in, and withdrew hurriedly.

“You know!” said Chloe. “You know! I didn't know until I saw your name written down. But I know now.”

“My name! But you knew my name—you knew it was Fossetter.”

“No. You called it Foster—every one did.”

“Every one does who knows us. On my honour, Chloe, I thought you knew. Meeting you at Miss Tankerville's and all, I didn't know that you had never seen it written—how could I? I thought you knew Martin was a cousin. We talked about him, and I told you I barred him—I always have. Chloe—Chloe darling, don't be angry!”

Chloe backed away from him.

“Don't touch me!—don't touch me!” Michael stopped dead. His outstretched arms fell to his side.

“I won't touch any woman who doesn't want me to touch her—you needn't be afraid. Have you gone mad, Chloe?”

“Yes,” said Chloe. “I was mad when I trusted you. And I was mad when I married you. But that's the end. I'm not going to go on being mad any longer.”

Michael was as pale as she was.

“Will you tell me what you're accusing me of?”

“Yes, I will,” said this new, icy Chloe. “I'm accusing you of having lied to me and deceived me. I'm accusing you of being a blackmailer. I'm accusing you of marrying me in order to get hold of Mr. Dane's money.” She paused, dropped her voice to its lowest tone, and said, “But you won't get it—you'll never get it, Michael!”

All the time that she was speaking she watched him with a hard stare. When a sudden flush ran up to the roots of his hair and he made a half step toward her with clenched hands, she felt a little stab of exultation. She was hurting him. He looked at her with a blaze of fury in his blue eyes, and she laughed. Then she turned her back on him and went out of the room, and so up the stairs and into the room which had been Michael's before it had been hers. Everything in her was bent to the one purpose—she must get away. Her mind was cool and clear. She must get away before this coldness melted and turned to burning pain. She must get away from Michael, who wasn't Michael any more, but Stran.

On the bed was her grey coat and the travelling case which Michael had given her. The things she had brought away from Danesborough were already packed in it. She took them out and made a parcel with the brown paper and string which Eliza Moffat had taken off the new travelling case only an hour or two before—her admiring comments sounded faintly in Chloe's memory, coming back as though across long, intervening years. Chloe laid the parcel on the bed beside the empty suit-case and put on her coat. Then she took out her purse and opened it. There were two shillings, a threepenny bit, four pennies, and a very battered halfpenny. She picked up the parcel, crossed the landing, and knocked at Mr. Monody's door.

Mr. Monody opened it in his shirt sleeves. When he saw Chloe he rumpled his hair and said: “I can't come down and eat cake at this hour—and what's more, I won't. If you could get Mrs. Moffat to believe that I won't, I shall never stop being grateful to you. She's a most pertinacious woman.”

“Yes,” said Chloe. “Will you lend me some money, please?” She spoke without a tremor, and held out her hand just as a child might have done.

With equal simplicity Mr. Monody replied:

“How much?”

“A pound.” She dropped her voice because a sound came up from below.

Mr. Monody extracted a pound note from his waistcoat pocket and gave it to her.

“Thank you,” said Chloe. “I'll pay it back. Good bye.”

Without another word she went to the top of the stairs and stood there listening. Then she went down four steps and looked over the banisters. She held her parcel in her left hand.

Without any warning Michael burst out of Mrs. Moffat's sitting-room. She had no time to move or go back. She saw him cross the hall at a stumbling run. He wrenched the front door open and plunged out. The door banged with a violence that set the gas pendant swaying and rattling; the tiny flakes from the broken mantle fluttered down from it like snow. Chloe watched them fall.

The hall was empty. She came down into it noiselessly, and reached the front door. It opened, and she slipped out and stood for a moment on the step. Michael's car still stood by the kerb. But there was no sign of Michael. The door closed gently, gently. She let go of the handle, and went down into the street.

Chapter XXXVII

Chloe went down the street, crossed over, and took the first turning that she came to. She kept on walking and taking turnings without thinking where she was going. She had not, indeed, begun to think at all. She only wanted to get away, to hide, to bury herself where Michael couldn't find her.

She did not remember what she had said to him, or what he had said to her; but the unspoken clash between them had been so violent that the instinct of each was the same—blind headlong flight. She thought of Michael's rush through the hall, the momentary glimpse that she had had of his face convulsed with rage, and fierce little stabs of anger began to break through the icy cold which had come upon her when she bent over the register and read Michael's names. In Eliza Moffat's sitting-room he had looked at her as if he would like to take her up and break her; she had at least stung him to that. And, for the rest, he should never find her—
never
.

She found herself all at once on a crowded bus route. She could get away quicker by bus. She got into the first one that stopped, and sat rigidly upright, her parcel on her lap, staring out at the shops, the other buses, the streams of people flowing like water along the pavement.

“Where to?” said the conductor.

Chloe had no idea. She said, “A pennyworth;” and took her ticket. She crumpled the thin cardboard in her hand and tried to think. She couldn't go to Maxton because Michael would look for her there. She couldn't go to Mrs. Rowse. She couldn't go to Danesborough. She couldn't go any distance by train because Mr. Monody's pound and her own two and sevenpence halfpenny were all the money she had, and you can't go very far or live for very long on twenty-two and sevenpence halfpenny.

She went on looking out of the window, and presently saw the great block of The Luxe slide into view. The bus stopped with a jerk, and as it stopped, Chloe got up and followed the stream of descending passengers. She crossed over and walked up the steps of The Luxe, a composed, shabby figure carrying a brown paper parcel. The ice in her was fast melting into flame, and between icy pride and flaming anger there was no place at all for self-consciousness or shyness. She walked into the hall and approached the porter.

“I am Mrs. Mostyn Llewellyn's secretary. I have a message for Miss Cross, one of the clerks employed here.” Neither voice nor manner failed her, and the porter actually ceased to be conscious of the brown paper parcel. He said, “Certainly,” waved to an underling, and a minute later Chloe was resting her parcel on a counter of polished mahogany and looking over it at Connie Cross.

“Hullo!” said Connie, looking up; and then added in a different tone, “My! You do look bad! Anything wrong, dear?”

Chloe shook her head. She didn't quite know why she had come to Connie. She had just seen The Luxe and walked in without having any definite idea of what she was going to do next. In the daylight Connie's hair looked several shades more improbable than it had by night. But Connie's voice was friendly.

“You do look bad all the same,” she repeated.

“I'm all right,” said Chloe. She stood at the counter, leaning on it a little and looking down at its polished surface.

Connie put a warm hand on her wrist.

“Look here, what is it? For the Lord's sake, don't go fainting in here!”

Chloe pulled herself together just in time.

“I want a place to go to—a room. I thought—can you help me?”

“Well, dear——” Connie began, and then broke off, considering; the new wedding ring had caught her eye.

“Just for you?” she asked.

Chloe followed the direction of her eyes. The gold band stood out on her ungloved left hand. She turned so white that she frightened Connie, and said: “I'm alone—I'm quite alone.”

“My!” said Connie. “Has he let you down already? Don't you take it too much to heart—that's my advice. Men aren't worth it—that's the truth. Ernie now, that I told you about, he's treated me something shameful—took up with that girl that was trying to get him away from me. Well, she's got him, and I hope she likes her bargain.” She tossed the impossibly golden head. “I'm not going to break my heart for him, not if I know it. I shan't lose my beauty sleep worrying over Ernie. And my advice to you is, keep smiling and don't let any man think you care enough to worry. There, that's good advice, dear,—you can take it from me it is. Leave 'em and they come running after you; but you start running after them, and, Lord help you, they'll keep you running.”

“Don't!” said Chloe. Then she looked Connie straight in the face. “I've nowhere to go,” she said in a piteous whisper.

The easy tears sprang into Miss Cross's large blue eyes. She gave them a perfunctory dab with a highly scented handkerchief.

“Oh, Lord, dear, don't talk like that, or I shall cry. Look here, you can share with me till you get something else. Aunt's the difficulty of course; but you take care she sees your wedding ring, and she'll be all right. I wish I could come along with you myself. But I'll write you a line—and don't you take any notice if she's disagreeable or inclined to talk pious, because that's just her way. She's not such a bad old sort; only she thinks a girl's going straight to the devil if she powders her face and has a gentleman friend. And what I say is, where's the harm?—and, anyhow, what'ud life be like if you didn't?”

She scribbled rapidly on a piece of paper as she spoke, scrawled her name at the bottom, and resumed:

“There, you give her this. And tell her I'll be home at my usual. Here's what I've said:

‘Dear Aunt,

‘This is my friend Mrs. Dene,—“Will that do?”—‘Her husband has had to go off and leave her most unexpected, and I've told her she can share with me while she looks round for something.'”

She wrote the address,

Mrs. Cross,

7, Blanesbury Terrace,

Tooting.

and added some practical advice as to the shortest way of getting there.

“And mind you keep smiling, dear,” she concluded. “See you this evening.”

Chloe said “Thank you.” She tried to say more, but the words wouldn't come. Contact with human kindness had thawed the last of the ice. Pride was gone; she felt defenceless against pain. She went out of The Luxe, and followed Connie's directions carefully. With all her heart she hoped that she would reach 7, Blanesbury Terrace before the last of her strength gave way. She found she was talking to herself, as she used to talk to herself when she was a child: “You can't cry in a bus. You mustn't cry in a bus. You mustn't cry or faint in front of all these people.” An old man opposite her was reading
The Poultry Keeper's Journal.
She wondered what he would think if she were to break down suddenly. “You mustn't do it. You can't do it—not in a bus.”

She came to Blanesbury Terrace at the end of her tether, and put Connie's note without a word into the hand of the tall, grim woman who opened the door of No. 7. She did not speak, but she searched Mrs. Cross's face for comfort; it did not promise very much. A conviction of the sinfulness of most other people had drawn hard lines about the eyes and mouth. The iron-grey hair was tightly plaited after an obsolete fashion. The black alpaca dress reached almost to the floor.

Mrs. Cross looked up from her niece's note with sharp grey eyes.

“I'm sorry,” she said in the stiffest of stiff voices.
“I'm
sorry; but Connie's taken too much on herself. She rents a room in my house, but I'm not prepared for her to share it with her friends. Good morning, Mrs. Dene.”

She began to shut the door. Chloe took a step forward, caught at the door-post, and clung there.

“Mayn't I come in?” Mrs. Cross could hardly catch the words.

“Connie takes too much on herself,” said Mrs. Cross. “I don't let apartments.”

Chloe had ceased to mind what she said or did. She looked at Mrs. Cross with the eyes of a hurt animal and said:

“I've nowhere to go.”

Mrs. Cross became a little more erect than before, her voice carefully refined.

“I'm
reelly
very sorry.”

Chloe's eyes shut. She said “Oh!” quite softly, and sank down fainting at Mrs. Cross's feet. When she recovered, it was to the feel of horsehair under her cheek. She was, in fact, lying full length on the old-fashioned horsehair sofa in Mrs. Cross's parlour; there was a very hard bolster under her head, with a horsehair button at either end. There was an antimacassar on every chair, and spangled shavings in the fireplace. The room was very cold, and her hair was wet.

Chloe sat up, and as she did so, Mrs. Cross came into the room with a cup of hot soup in her hand. When Chloe had drunk the soup, Mrs. Cross looked at her searchingly.

“You're a married woman?”

Chloe remembered that she was married; she remembered that she had married “Stran.” She looked as if she was going to faint again as she caught her breath and said:

“Yes.”

Mrs. Cross took the empty cup, put it down, and planted herself grimly on a chair. Chloe, shivering on the edge of the sofa, saw purpose in the very way in which the bony hands were folded.

“Where is your husband?” said Mrs. Cross.

“I don't know.” The words shook and tumbled over one another.

“Has he deserted you?”

“N'no,” said Chloe out of her breaking heart. A gleam of pleasurable triumph altered for a moment Mrs. Cross's harsh contours.

“I knew it,” she announced. “And what, may I ask, do you make of your duty and of the Bible? ‘Wives obey your husbands', Mrs. Dene,—what do you make of that, may I ask?”

Chloe put out her hand and laid it on Mrs. Cross's knee.

“Did you ever trust anyone very much, and have them fail you?” she asked.

The older woman frowned.

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them,” she said.

“No, there isn't, is there?” said Chloe with the tears running down her face. “I thought he was good; and he isn't.”

“What's he done?” said Mrs. Cross sharply.

“I can't tell you—I can't tell anyone. I came away because if I'd stayed, he would have tried to make me do a wicked thing.”

“Lord, have mercy!” said Mrs. Cross. “Was it as bad as that?”

“It was money,” said Chloe. “I couldn't take it because it had been come by wickedly. But if I'd stayed, he would have tried to make me take it. I
had
to come away.” She spoke to something in this forbidding woman which she could trust. Mrs. Cross looked at her very hard. Chloe rose to her feet.

“I'm sorry I troubled you. I'll go now. It was kind of you to give me the soup.”

“I'm a woman that does her duty,” said Mrs. Cross. “No one can ever say I'm not. I took Connie without a penny; and I'd have brought her up pious if she'd have let me. If you can give me your word that you're a fit companion for her, you may stay. No one can say I'm the woman to turn any respectable young woman from my door if she's got nowhere to go to. Look me in the face, Mrs. Dene, and tell me the gospel truth. Are you a good-living young woman, and fit to be with Connie? For mind you Connie's worldly, and takes no heed of religion; but she's a good-living girl, and some day, I'm in hopes, she'll turn her mind to serious things.”

Chloe's eyes met the hard, grey stare with perfect simplicity.

“I won't hurt Connie,” she said; and quite suddenly a most dreadful desire to laugh came over her. She buried her face in her hands, and Mrs. Cross saw her shoulders heave.

“I'm dishing dinner,” she said. “You come along in and sit down.”