The Black Cabinet (21 page)

Chapter XXXVIII

Mrs. Cross proved to be a woman of some efficiency. Within an hour or two of Chloe's arrival she had actually obtained work for her with a little dressmaker who attended the same chapel.

“She can't afford much in the way of wages, but she's a God-fearing woman, and you won't hear any loose talk in her house.”

Chloe took the work thankfully, and submitted to a thorough examination by Mrs. Cross, at the close of which her contribution to the household expenditure was assessed.

“You won't do better than that anywhere else—and seeing that you're here, it may be that it's laid on me to look after you. There's plenty of roaring lions going about seeking whom they may devour, and a young married woman that isn't living with her husband can't be too careful.”

Chloe settled down to a life of outwardly placid routine. All day she worked for Miss Morrison, who made terrible clothes for the elder members of the congregation. In the evening she sat and mended her own things, whilst Connie went out to meet a “gentleman friend.” It was only by the most constant mending that Chloe's things held together at all. Mrs. Cross approved her industry, and, herself occupied in like manner, discoursed at length on such exhilarating subjects as:

The Worldly Tendencies of The Young;

The Iniquity of Face Powder;

The Prevalence of Divorce; and

The Danger of Gentlemen Friends.

Chloe grew thin and lost her colour. The nights were the worst. Towards two or three in the morning she would have welcomed the gloomiest and most acid of Mrs. Cross's discourses. She lay cold and rigid in the narrow iron bed next to Connie's, listening to her hearty breathing, and struggling to repress the low, heart-broken sobs which threatened to overwhelm her during the long, dark hours. If she could have gone on feeling proud and angry it would have helped; but it wasn't in Chloe's heart to go on being angry with anyone. Her anger against Michael was all gone. The trouble was that the Michael she had known was gone too. He was quite gone. It was like the old stories where a person changed before your eyes into something horrible—wild beast or dragon. She had trusted him and loved him with all her heart. But the Michael whom she had loved and trusted had never really existed. She was lonely and cold and heart-broken for Michael. But there wasn't any Michael; there never had been any Michael. There was only Stran.

As she lay awake through the long hours, she went over and over all the things about Stran. Mr. Dane's warning, “Don't trust him a yard.” The endorsements on those terrible letters: “From Stran”—“Two letters from Stran.” The first thought of the letters brought her bolt upright in bed, her hands clutching the sides of it. She had given the letters to Michael to destroy. No—no—no—there wasn't any Michael: she had given the letters to Stran. That was the very bitterest moment of all. She had gone through so much to save the letters, and then in the end she had let herself be tricked into handing them over to Stran.

Even as the thought stabbed her she saw Michael's face looking at her as he had looked when she gave him the letters, and again when he told her how he had destroyed them. How could he look like that if he was Stran? There was no answer.

Chloe had been at Blanesbury Terrace for about ten days. She had saved five shillings towards repaying her debt to Mr. Monody, and she had written to Eliza Moffat. Connie posted the letter on the other side of London; it was very short:

“Dear Moffy,

“You were heavenly good to me, and I shall never forget it. Don't think me an ungrateful beast.

Chloe.”

“She will, of course,” Chloe thought. “They all will, unless they think I'm mad. Oh, why can't one just wake up and find it's all a horrible dream?”

Sometimes she just let herself think that it was nothing but a dream after all, and that at any minute she might wake from it and find Michael. She didn't dare to do this very often because it hurt so much, and she mustn't cry in the day time, she mustn't think of anything but her mending and what Mrs. Cross was saying.

“Aunt loves you because you're such a good listener,” Connie said, laughing. “I'm fond enough of her, but I can't be bothered listening to all the old stuff she talks. It stands to reason a girl's bound to be fed up with being told she's going to hell. I told her so straight only the other day. ‘If I was going to be hanged, Aunt,' I said, ‘I wouldn't want some one telling me about it all the time first.'”

Chloe sat and sewed. Mrs. Cross, on the other side of the table, mended Connie's silk stockings with a disapproving air. Every now and then she looked searchingly at Chloe. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to grow louder and louder.

Mrs. Cross rolled up Connie's stocking, put it on one side, and said:

“It's laid on me that maybe it's your duty to go back to your husband.”

Chloe looked up, startled; her face was white in the gas-light; there were dark circles under her eyes.

“It's laid on me,” said Mrs. Cross, “to tell you faithful that a wife's got her duty, and that, bad or good, marriage is marriage.”

“I can't,” said Chloe just above a whisper.

“The Lord don't take ‘can't' for an answer,” said Mrs. Cross. “And we're not in this world to do what's pleasant, like all you young folk think. We're here to do the Lord's will; and it's not His will for a wife to leave her husband and live separate. And you needn't think I'm talking about what I don't know. I married a man that was a heavy drinker, and I thought I was going to reform him. Well, I didn't. But I saw my duty, and I didn't leave him. I'd fifteen years of it; and a woman that's lived fifteen years with a drunkard has got the right to tell you what I tell you now. A wife's duty is with her husband.”

“I can't,” said Chloe again.

Mrs. Cross's sharp eyes dwelt for a moment on the quivering face.

“Did you quarrel?” she asked quite suddenly.

“Yes,” said Chloe, “we did.”

“I thought as much. You've a hasty temper, Mrs. Dene, and you'd do well to make it a subject for prayer. What did you quarrel about? “

“I can't tell you.”

Mrs. Cross nodded.

“That generally means there isn't much to tell. I've kept quiet and watched you. You're hasty. It's my belief you spoke hasty and acted hasty. Did you wait to hear what he'd got to say for himself?”

Chloe flushed; the shaft was a pointed one.

“No.”

“I thought as much.” She took a needle with a larger eye, threaded it, and picked up a black woollen stocking of her own. “Everyone's got a right to a hearing. The Lord knows that man is full of vain excuses. But it's your duty to hear what they are, whether you like it or no.”

The colour sprang to Chloe's cheeks in two scarlet spots. She jerked her chair back and got up, letting her work fall on the floor.

“Duty! Duty! Duty!” she said. “I'm sick of the word. I never heard it so often in all my life!” She stamped her foot and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Mrs. Cross watched her go, and nodded again.

“Hasty—very hasty,” she said, and went on darning.

Half an hour later Chloe came back and begged her pardon. Her eyes were red with crying.

“It's not for us poor human beings to say we forgive or don't forgive,” said Mrs. Cross. “You remember that when you think about your husband, Mrs. Dene. There, don't look like that. I forgive you fast enough. There's worse things than a hasty temper—not but what you oughtn't to strive against it all the same.”

“It just goes off bang,” said Chloe—“and then I'm frightfully sorry afterwards.” She took one of Mrs. Cross's hands and squeezed it in both her own. “You've been an angel to me, and I'm a bad-tempered beast.”

Mrs. Cross shut her mouth with a snap. Then she pulled her hand away and said: “Don't talk so light about angels—no, nor beasts neither. We're both poor sinners that need the Lord's mercy.”

Chapter XXXIX

Chloe lay awake that night. She did not cry any more; she just lay quite still with her hands clasped behind her head, thinking. If you cried, you did not think clearly; and she had got to the place where she must be quiet and think. It was Mrs. Cross who had brought her to this place. That dreadfully pointed, “Did you wait to hear what he had to say for himself?” would not away from her mind; the point of it went deeper and deeper.

Chloe set out her facts and tried to look at them impartially.

Michael's name was Fossetter, not Foster. That had naturally been a shock to her, but she could not say that he had deceived her about it. She had never seen it written until she saw it in the register; the mistake might have come about without any deception on his part. Then the other name—Stranways—it was the shock of that that had taken her right off her balance. “Stran is short for Stranways.” You couldn't get away from that. And then Emily Wroughton's letter: “the real plot is to frighten you into marrying Stran.”

Chloe tried to consider it all quite calmly, as if it had happened to somebody else.

She had married Stran.
Had she?
She looked into the darkness and saw Michael's face, Michael's eyes. Suppose she believed what his eyes said, and what something very deep down in her own heart said. Suppose, oh, suppose that she could really wake up out of this nightmare and find that Michael wasn't Stran at all. Chloe sat up and pushed her hair back from her face. What then? She said Michael's name in a quick, frightened whisper, and began to tremble violently. If Michael wasn't Stran; if he was Michael, her lover and her friend; why, then he would never, never forgive her.

“You didn't wait to hear what he'd got to say for himself.” No, she hadn't waited—not an instant—before she flung dreadful words at him and fled. Nobody could ever forgive a thing like that—at least a girl might, but a man wouldn't. She didn't see how Michael could forgive—if he were really Michael and not Stran. Chloe went on thinking. Whether he forgave her or not, she'd got to be sure. She couldn't go on here, sewing black bead trimmings on to black cashmere dresses, and not be sure. How was she going to be sure? She could go and ask Emily Wroughton; but that wouldn't make her sure, because Emily, by her own confession, told lies when she was frightened; and she was nearly always frightened. No, there was just one way in which she could be sure. The envelope with “Stran's receipts” was still in the safe at Danesborough. When she took the last of the letters out she had thrown it back on the account books; and if Leonard Wroughton had not succeeded in opening the safe since, then it would still be there, and inside it the name and the handwriting of the man who was Stran.

A curious rush of mingled feelings carried her to the point of decision. She
had
to know who Stran was; and if she had to go to Danesborough to find out, why then she would go to Danesborough. After all, everything that could happen had already happened. If Michael were Stran, why then the plot had succeeded in so far as it could succeed; they had the letters, and she was married to Stran. And if Michael wasn't Stran, the letters were burnt, and the plot had failed, because she was married to Michael. No, there was nothing that could happen.

Chloe sewed for Miss Morrison next day as usual. Whilst she sewed she made her plans. At six o'clock she went back to Blanesbury Terrace and told Mrs. Cross that she was going to be away all night on business. Mrs. Cross proved so hard to satisfy as to the necessity of any business that kept a young woman out all night that Chloe in the end told her the plain truth:

“I'm going down to my old home to get some papers which will tell me whether the things I've been believing are true or not.”

“About your husband?”

“Yes. I
must
go—I really must.”

“Well, the Lord go with you,” said Mrs. Cross. Chloe passed Connie at the station, and stopped for a moment to speak to her. Connie was in a state of giggling excitement.

“What do you think? I've been followed all the way from The Luxe—a handsome young chap too! Never offered to speak or anything like that, and quite the gentleman by his looks. First he asked one of the other girls if that wasn't Miss Cross—there's two or three of us come off together—and when she said ‘Yes,' he followed me. I thought he was going to speak once, but he didn't.” She tossed her head. “They think all the more of you if you're not too free. Wait a minute and I'll point him out to you. No—that's odd now, I can't see him.”

Chloe took her ticket, only half listening. Connie had some such adventure as this nearly every day in the week. She got into her train, and was glad to sit still and shut her eyes; she did not, therefore, see Martin Fossetter cross the platform and get into the next carriage.

She caught the last train to Daneham. It was half-past ten when she left Daneham station behind her and started on her seven mile walk to Danesborough. It was black dark, wet under foot, but not raining; it was not cold either. A great, buffeting southwest wind moved the trees far overhead, but left the heavy air unstirred between the hedgerows.

Chloe walked quickly. She was not afraid of the darkness or of the lonely lanes. After London with its hurrying crowds it was good to be alone, to feel oneself covered and sheltered by the dark. When she had gone about half a mile, a taxi passed her, going fast. She flattened herself against the hedge to let it go by. Someone who had come by the same train as herself driving to one of the houses in the neighbourhood. She gave it no further thought until, nearly two miles further on, it passed her again on its return journey. Except for this double encounter she neither met anyone nor did anyone pass her on the road.

She came to the gates of Danesborough just before half-past twelve, and there for the first time it came to her that she might find them locked. The thought terrified her. Why had it not occurred to her before? She had been thinking of the safe and of the paper in the safe; she had never thought that the gates might be locked against her. She came to them, put out her hand quickly, grasped the handle, and pushed. With a creak one half of the gates swung inwards. Chloe went through, closed it behind her, and began to walk up the drive.

In her two hours' walk her eyes had become accustomed to the dark; she could see the shrubbery dead black, and the trees like a blurred pattern smudged in Indian ink on a background of soft gloom. Overhead the wind came and went, setting the bare, wet branches creaking, shaking the rain from the evergreens in sudden make-believe showers.

It was between two gusts, when she had stopped to take breath for a moment, that Chloe heard the footstep behind her, a quiet step, rather slow, a man's step following her own. She walked on quickly, listening; and before the wind drowned every sound but its own she heard the footstep quicken too. The wind came battering, driving, shaking everything. The air was full of noise and wetness.

Chloe ran as fast as she could to the turn of the drive, and there cut off on to the grass. She felt no fear, but a great sense of exhilaration. Ever since she had run away from Michael, days and nights had been full of a dull, flat weariness. That, at least, was broken. She ran along under the terrace, and then stood still, listening intently. She could hear nothing but the wind and the swish of the trees. She slipped up the steps on to the terrace, turned the corner of the house, and stood close to the end window of the drawing-room, the big one that looked east, and listened again. If anyone were to cross the gravel, she would hear them, however lightly they stepped.

As she stood there flattened against the wall, the words of the old fairy tale slid into her mind:

“Sister Anne, Sister Anne, what do you see? What do you see?”

“I can see the grass growing and the wind blowing.”

The wind was blowing; but the following footstep was gone. She gave a sigh of relief, turned to the window, and broke it with her shoe. It was really extraordinarily easy to burgle a house. The little tinkling sound which the glass made would never have been heard in the servants' wing even if the night had been deadstill. She wrapped a fold of her thick tweed coat about her right hand, and pulled away the broken glass until the hole was large enough to let her in. Then she crawled through the gap, parted the curtains, and began to grope her way to the fireplace.

The darkness in the drawing-room was quite different to the dark outside. It was a flat, even gloom out of which things jabbed you—the hummocky back of a chair, or the sharp corner of a polished table on which your fingers slid. Chloe moved with the greatest care.

The settee on the right of the fireplace was her landmark. When she reached that the rest was easy; she had only to pass along the back of the settee and feel for the shaded lamp on the table against the wall. She put the light on, and looked back to make sure that the curtains were quite closed. She must have a light; but she did not want to advertise her whereabouts to the owner of the footstep in case he should still be following at a distance. The pale folds hung straight and close from valance to floor.

She took the key of the cabinet from her purse and opened the doors. The golden river caught the light for a moment; the little men stood unmoved amongst the water reeds. They had never changed or moved since Chloe was a child. There was something assuaging about the unchangingness of Henry Planty and Timmy Jimmy.

Chloe let herself have these thoughts because deep down in her there was a dreadful eagerness and a dreadful fear. Just on the other side of that thin sheet of steel there was something that was going to change her whole life for good or bad. Once she had opened the long envelope and read Stran's signature, there would be no going back: there would be certainty.

Chloe stood with the door of the cabinet in her hand, and was afraid.