A Woman Perfected

CHAPTER XXVI

AN OFFER OF FRIENDSHIP

Mr. Nash was at the station when the 12.28 came in, and alone; it might have been by some sort of coincidence that he happened to be there just then, but Mr. Morgan seemed to take it for granted that he had come to meet him, an inference which Mr. Nash apparently resented. Mr. Morgan came up to him smiling in the most friendly fashion, and with hand held out.

"My dear Nash, how are you?"

There was no smile on Mr. Nash's face, and he ignored the proffered hand.

"Thank you, Mr. Morgan, I am well."

"And my good friend, your dear wife? blooming, eh?"

"I'm not aware that Mrs. Nash ever was a friend of yours."

"No! my dear fellow! when we were so often under the same roof together."

"Do the servants of a house always regard their master's friends as their own?"

"My dear Nash, if you hadn't said that I should have said it was meant to be nasty. I was in the service of the head of the house, and your wife was a sort of attendant of the daughter's.

"Do you dare to say that my wife was ever Miss Lindsay's attendant?"

"Unpaid attendant, my boy, unpaid; sort of hanger-on-poor companion. I received a regular income; she got an occasional frock; some article of clothing; now and then a few pounds; as it were, the crumbs which fell from Miss Lindsay's table. Of course, pecuniarily mine was much the better position of the two; but I always have been one to overlook a mere financial difference, and I hope I always shall be."

"Look here, Morgan, if you're come down with the express intention of being insolent, I'll wring your neck, here, in the station."

Mr. Nash looked as if he were capable of at least trying to perform that operation on Mr. Morgan there and then, but Mr. Morgan only smiled.

"My dear Nash! the idea! Nothing can be further from my wish than to be insolent to you; as I'll show you before I've done. Where can we go where we can be quiet, and have a little chat together? And afterwards if you'll take me to 37, Ocean Villas, and offer me a little lunch, and give me an opportunity of renewing my acquaintance with your charming wife, I think you'll find that we are on better terms than you seem to suppose. Where are you going?"

Mr. Nash was striding out of the station.

"To the golf-links; you say you want to go somewhere where we can be quiet; you'll have the quietude you want there."

"Thank you; I don't think we need go quite so far as the golf-links, really; nor is that exactly the sort of solitude I was thinking of. You come with me; I'll be conductor." He opened the door of a fly which was by the kerb, and stood with the handle in his hand. "Step in."

The two men looked at each other, as if each was measuring the other's strength. Then Mr. Nash said-

"Where do you think you're going?"

Mr. Morgan spoke to the driver.

"Take us to the east end of the promenade, right to the extreme end." Then he turned to Nash. "We shall have all the quietude we want there. After you."

Nash hesitated, then entered the fly; Morgan followed; the fly drove off. As it rumbled along Mr. Morgan beguiled the way by spirited attempts at conversation; but he had all the talking to himself; not once did his companion open his lips. Mr. Nash sat with unbending back, stiff neck, grim face, looking straight in front of him; Mr. Morgan might not have been in the same vehicle for all the notice he took of him. Under the circumstances his unruffled affability did the latter gentleman credit. The vehicle set them down not only at the extreme end of the promenade, but beyond it. When the fly had gone Mr. Morgan called his companion's attention to their surroundings.

"You see! where could we have more privacy, even on the golf-links? Not a creature within many yards of us. We can sit on the beam of this groyne-could it be at a more convenient height? – and talk at our leisure."

Again Mr. Nash seemed to be measuring the other with his eye; his bearing did not point to his being at all in the conversational frame of mind which Mr. Morgan's words suggested; indeed he said as much.

"Now, my man, if you have anything to say, out with it; I've not the dimmest notion what it is you think you've got to say; to be quite frank, your whole conduct looks to me like infernal insolence; but, whatever it is, make it short; and take my advice, and be careful how you say it."

"My dear Nash, I assure you that no one could be more careful than I shall be."

"And don't you call me your dear Nash! you swollen-headed butler! I don't propose to allow a servant to treat me as an equal, nor do I propose to consort with him."

"Don't you? Now that shows how different we are. I don't mind with whom I consort; I'm even willing to consort with a thief."

"What-what the devil do you mean?"

Mr. Nash's eyes blazed; but they blazed out of a face which, consciously to himself or not, had suddenly grown pale. Mr. Morgan smiled as affably as ever; he offered Mr. Nash his cigar-case.

"Try one of my cigars; I think you'll find them something rather exceptional."

"Confound your cigars! I don't want your cigars! What do you mean by what you said just now?"

"You know what I mean as well as I do. There are moments when it's so unpleasant to have to dot one's i's; surely this is one. Then isn't it rather childish to pretend that you don't know what I mean when you do?"

"Are you going to tell me what you mean?"

"Certainly, if you insist; but is it wise?"

"Morgan, am I to knock you down?"

"You can try if you like; I dare say I can put up as good a fight as you can."

Again they seemed to gauge each other, eye to eye; Nash as if half beside himself with rage, Morgan all smiles.

"Will you tell me what you mean?"

Morgan looked away from the other's face, up into the air. He blew a ring of smoke from the cigar which he had lighted, following it with his eyes. Nothing could have been pleasanter than his manner, or more affable than his smile; he spoke as one who meditated.

"I happen to know that you borrowed certain sums of money from the late Mr. Donald Lindsay, for which you gave him notes of hand, amounting altogether to a little over a hundred pounds; a flea-bite to him, but a deal to you. When you were going through Mr. Lindsay's papers, on behalf of his daughter, you came upon those notes of hand; you put them into your pocket; you concealed their existence; in plainer words, you stole them."

"It's-it's an infernal lie!"

"My dear Nash, I saw you do it."

"You saw me!"

"I did. If you like I can describe to you, in detail, how you found them, and where, and how you looked to an unprejudiced observer, and precisely what you did when you had found them; but is it necessary?"

"Why-why don't I knock you down?"

"Because you have more sense. Pray don't indulge in heroics for my benefit, I beg of you; I know! I know! I also saw you steal another paper."

"What other paper?"

"That's what I said to myself; what can that other paper be? I confess that I was gravelled; and I continued gravelled until I called on you the other day at Ocean Villas, and found it in your letter-case."

"You-you scoundrel!"

"That's a hard word, from one who is both a scoundrel and a thief. Don't let us bandy epithets. Here is the paper-gently! I should have said, here is a copy of the paper. You and I know how desirable it is that so important a document should be in safe keeping. I have arranged that if I don't turn up at a certain place, at a certain time, the actual letter-you know it is a letter-will be posted to Dr. Banyard, together with a history of how it came into my possession, and particulars of those notes of hand you stole; so let us hope, for your sake, that no accident will happen to me. I will read you the copy I made of the letter; you will possibly have forgotten the precise wording, and the precise wording is of such importance-

'Dear Sir,

'Referring to the acceptances of yours which we hold, and which fall due on the 7th inst., they reached us, in the ordinary course, through a client with whom we have done business before; who informed us that they came to him from Mr. Frank Clifford, of Marlborough Buildings, Farringdon Road, E.C., who, we presume, discounted them for you. We do not know that we are called upon to furnish you with this information, and, as your inquiry is an unusual one, we shall be glad to know why you make it.

Now that, my dear Nash, is the letter which you found; I don't know if your memory will enable you to recognize the accuracy of the copy." Mr. Nash was silent, presenting a curious picture of indecision; of the man who lets "I dare not" wait upon "I would." Mr. Morgan went affably on, diplomatically ignoring the singularity of the other's attitude. "To the superficial eye there is nothing in that letter; it is a mere routine business communication; in fact, however, as matters were, you could scarcely have found anything more important. I take it that you recognized this, or you would hardly have appropriated it; but I fancy that you only recognized it dimly. Your whole after-behaviour seems to point to it." Mr. Morgan glanced round at the moment, in time to catch the ghost of a smile, which seemed to flicker across Mr. Nash's face; Mr. Morgan's comment on that flickering smile was characteristic. "Perhaps not so dimly as I supposed; the springs of human action do lie so deep. Perhaps, after all, it has occurred to you, as it has to me, that that letter killed Donald Lindsay. You remember where you found it? Lindsay's was a pedestal writing-table; it was on the floor, under one of the pedestals, with one corner of the paper just showing. I think that was the last letter Donald Lindsay ever read. He had read it again and again before, and was re-reading it; but that re-reading was just the one too many. The strain of that cumulative shock was greater than he could bear; something snapped; he fell forward; the letter slipped from his fingers, under one of the pedestals, where it might have remained but for your sharp eyes." Mr. Morgan held the paper out in front of him with the air of one who is explaining something which he desires to make quite plain. "Now what is there in this letter which could have produced so extraordinary an effect upon a person possessed of so much self-restraint as Donald Lindsay undoubtedly was? What does the letter itself tell us? It tells us that Messrs. Guldenheim, as is the custom, I have reason to know, of a certain type of usurer, had written to advise him that certain acceptances of his, which matured at a certain date, had come into their hands. I'll bet sixpence that Lindsay was a man who never in his life put his name on a piece of paper which was likely, in the ordinary course, as they put it, to fall into the hands of carrion like the Guldenheims; that first communication of theirs must in itself have been a shock to him. But he was a cautious man; he liked to move gently; whether he already had suspicions I cannot say; evidently he wrote a non-committal letter, asking them from whom they had obtained acceptances of his. This was their reply; they informed him that originally the acceptances came from Mr. Frank Clifford, of Marlborough Buildings, Farringdon Road, and that information killed him. Is that how it occurred to you?"

"Never mind what occurred to me."

"Quite so, I won't; I'll content myself with telling you what occurred to me. I've only known what was in this letter a couple of days, and, with its aid, I have already learned that, when he died, Donald Lindsay was, probably, one of the richest men in England. Have you learned that?"

"I-I had my doubts."

"But you hadn't verified them? I see. Other matters interfered; for instance, your marriage. Now, my dear Nash, pray understand that I congratulate you, from the bottom of my heart, on what is, in all respects, an auspicious event; but you must forgive my saying that you were one of the last persons I should have associated with a love match. Now I happen to know that neither Miss Harding nor you had money, or prospects. Indeed, I've been wondering how you managed between you to pay the marriage fees, to say nothing of the expenses of your honeymoon. Did a good fairy drop down from the skies?"

"It strikes me, Morgan, that you are constitutionally incapable of seeing how infernally insolent you are."

"Am I? Perhaps; you should be a better judge of insolence than I. And believe me that I quite understand that a man is entitled to keep his own counsel; I don't wish to pry into your secrets; only I was wondering if you had a secret. However, to return to business. Do you know that this letter means a fortune for you, and incidentally, perhaps, also one for me; but certainly a fortune for you. All we have to do is to pull together; treat each other as friends, not enemies; although I say it, you'll find my friendship well worth having, from every point of view. Don't let the accident of my having once been a butler stand in the way; that's nonsense. Let me tell you that the butler at Cloverlea had a better position, in every respect, than the average clerk in a government office; as for your banks, and such dustbins-pah! he was better off than many a solicitor; though I know that's a delicate subject. But don't let's cut each other's throats for the sake of a merely imaginary social distinction; let's be friends, and I'll undertake to make your fortune. That's the proposition I've come down to Littlehampton to make."

CHAPTER XXVII

A ROYAL ROAD TO FORTUNE

Mr. Nash considered. The expression which had been on his face a few minutes ago had nearly vanished. The ex-butler had expressed himself in terms which the solicitor felt might justify him in modifying the attitude he had been disposed to take up. That Morgan had been, and still was, presumptuous went without saying; at the same time, as matters were turning out, it seemed that there were things which might be said on the other side; at least so it appeared to Herbert Nash. On the whole, he was inclined to concede as much. He took a few steps, to and fro, beside the groyne; then planting himself directly in front of Morgan, he told him his mind, rather in sorrow, perhaps, than in anger; indeed his bearing altogether was very different from what it had been.