Chapter VIII (7)

He ought to have some soup or gruel or something, but he could not be bothered to make it. He turned out the lamp. And all night long Caleb turned and fretted, and strangely enough he gave little thought to Agnes. She was now becoming the unreality, the vain fancy, a feather drifting on the ocean. She was nothing to him. She had no part in that deep consciousness, amongst whose folds he had sought so desperately to find inner relief. What was it? Where was it? Toward dawn he slept fitfully, struggling to keep awake on account of the disturbing dreams that crowded upon him. When things at last became visible the first thing he was aware of was an old shawl of his wife’s on a nail by the door, and cap which she wore to do the housework in. The things became to him an emblem of the love she bore him, and truth came to him with the rising of the sun. Love--the deep secret her hand had sought; the love that struggles to endure through any conditions, the love that as far as human nature is concerned is permanent and indestructible. He observed its action upon his own career. His mother’s love for his father, a love which he had so tragically misinterpreted. Later his love for his country, which had crept upon him across the years and whispered to him across the endless waste of waters. And lastly the love that existed between his wife and himself, a love that was so near and familiar to him that he could not always see it. He sighed and the dreams no longer worried him. It must have been some hours later that he awoke and made himself some tea. He was still shaky, and his shoulder hurt, so he went back to bed.

In the middle of the morning he heard the latch of the front door click, and his heart beat rapidly.

“She has come back,” he thought. He heard some one moving in the passage, his door opened, and on the threshold of the room stood--Agnes! It was queer that on observing her his first thought was with regard to his teeth. During the war he had lost three front teeth. A loving government had presented him with a plate and three false teeth which he always wore in daytime, but which at night, on Anne’s advice, he always kept in a glass of water by the side of the bed. He stretched out his hand for the teeth, and then he felt that he would be ridiculous putting the plate in, so he left the matter alone. She advanced into the room, and neither of them spoke. It is difficult to know precisely what attitude Agnes had resolved to take, but the appearance and atmosphere of that room may have altered or modified it. She merely grinned rather uncomfortably at Caleb. He could not have been an attractive sight. He had slept badly, and he had not washed or shaved. He was wearing a coarse woollen nightgown, and his three front teeth were missing. Perhaps it occurred to her abruptly that in the round of life one has to take the unshorn early morning with the gaily bedecked evening, and she was already wondering whether the combination was worth while. In any case she merely said:

“Well?”

And Caleb replied, “Hullo!”

They both looked a little ashamed then, and Agnes glanced out of the window as though dreading some one’s approach. As he did not speak further, she turned and said:

“You’re not coming then?”

He turned his face to the wall and answered “No.”

There was a definite expression of relief on the girl’s face. She was very smartly dressed in a tailor-made coat and skirt. She edged toward the door. Then she said in a mildly querulous voice:

“I knew you’d back out of it.”

Caleb sat up and exclaimed feelingly:

“I’m sorry, Agnes.”

This seemed to quite appease her, and she said:

“Anything you want, Caleb, before I go?”

The man stared thoughtfully at the ceiling before replying:

“Yes; wait a minute, Agnes.”

He took a pencil and a sheet of paper, and wrote out a telegram addressed to his wife:

“Come back, dear, I want you.”

The girl took up the telegram and read it through thoughtfully. Then she once more edged toward the door. She fumbled with the latch. Suddenly she turned and said:

“That’ll be elevenpence.”

“Eh?”

“That’ll be elevenpence--for the telegram.”

“Oh, ay, that’s it. Yes, elevenpence.”

He fumbled with his trousers on the chair by the side of the bed and produced a shilling.

“There, lass, I haven’t any change. Don’t bother about the penny.”

She took the shilling and went back to the door.

“Good-bye, Caleb.”

“Good-bye.”

When she had gone he thought it was rather queer of her to ask for the shilling. He had already given her a thousand pounds, and many frocks and presents. She might in any case have offered to give him the penny change. However, he soon forgot her in the fever of anxiety he was in as to the return of his wife. All day long no one came near the cottage. The day was wet, and a thick white mist drifted with the rain. He could not trouble to light the fire. He ate some bread and cheese at mid-day, and vainly tried to rub his shoulder with the oil. Soon after five it began to be dark again. He was in a terror of remorse and fear. Had he destroyed the lamp of his happiness? He buried his face in the pillow and groaned: “I didn’t understand! I didn’t understand!”

He began to feel so weak; he was losing sense of time. He awakened once with a start. The room seemed suddenly filled with an enveloping comfort. He held out his arms. He felt those wet cheeks pressed close to his. That voice so dear and familiar to him was whispering in his ear:

“Silly Billy, I knew ye would send for me.”

THE BROWN WALLET

Giles Meiklejohn was a beaten man. Huddled in the corner of a third class railway carriage on the journey from Epsom to London, he sullenly reviewed the unfortunate series of episodes which had brought him into the position he found himself. Dogged by bad luck!... Thirty-seven years of age; married; a daughter ten years old; nothing attained; his debts exceeding his assets; and now--out of work!

He had tried, too. A little pampered in his up-bringing; when the crisis came he had faced it manfully. When, during his very first year at Oxford, the news came of his father’s bankruptcy and sudden death from heart failure, he immediately went up to town and sought a situation in any capacity. His mother had died many years previously, and his only sister was married to a missionary in Burmah. His accomplishments at that time? Well, he could play cricket and squash rackets; he knew a smattering of Latin and a smudge of French; he remembered a few dates in history, and he could add up and subtract (a little unreliably). He was good looking, genial, and of excellent physique. He had no illusions about the difficulties which faced him.

His father had always been a kind of practical visionary. Connected with big insurance interests, he was a man of large horizons, profound knowledge, and great ideals. Around his sudden failure and death there had always clung an atmosphere of mystery. That he had never expected to fail, and was unprepared for death a week before it happened is certain. He had had plans for Giles which up to that time he had had no opportunity of putting into operation. The end must have been cyclonic.

Through the intervention of friends, Giles obtained a situation as clerk in an insurance office, his wages amounting to fifteen shillings a week, a sum he had managed to live on. In the evening he attended classes, and studied shorthand and typewriting. At first the freshness of this experience, aided by youth and good health, stimulated him. But as time went on he began to realize that he had chosen work for which he was utterly unsuited. He worked hard but made no progress. He had not a mathematical mind; he was slow in the up-take. The chances of promotion were remote. The men around him seemed so quick and clever. At the end of two years he decided to resign and try something else. If only he had been taught a profession! After leaving the insurance office he went through various experiences; working at a seedsman’s nursery, going round with a circus, attempting to get on the stage and failing, working his passage out to South Africa, more clerking, nearly dying from enteric through drinking polluted water, working on an ostrich farm, returning to England as a male nurse to a young man who was mentally deficient.

It was not till he met Minting that he achieved any success at all. They started a press-cutting agency in two rooms in Bloomsbury. Minting was clever, and Giles borrowed fifty pounds (from whom we will explain later). Strangely enough the press-cutting agency was a success. After the first six months they began to do well.

It was at that time that he met Eleanor. She was secretary to Sir Herbert Woolley, the well-known actor-manager, and she happened to call one day concerning the matter of press-cuttings for her employer. From the very first moment there was never any question on either side but that both he and she had met their fate. Neither had there been an instant’s regret on either side ever since. They were completely devoted. With the business promising well, he married her within three months. It is probable that if the business had not existed he would have done the same. They went to live in a tiny flat in Maida Vale, and a child was born the following year.

A period of unclouded happiness followed. There was no fortune to be made out of press-cuttings, but a sufficient competence to keep Eleanor and the child in reasonable comfort. Everything progressed satisfactorily for three years. And then one July morning the blow fell. At that time he and Minting were keeping a junior clerk. Giles and Eleanor had been away to the sea for a fortnight’s holiday. Minting was to go on the day of their return. When Giles arrived at the office he found the clerk alone. To his surprise he heard that Minting had not been there himself for a fortnight. He did not have long to wait to find the solution of the mystery. The first hint came in the discovery of a blank counterfoil. Minting had withdrawn every penny of their small capital and vanished!

Giles did not tell his wife. He made a desperate effort to pull the concern together, but in vain. There were a great number of outstanding debts, and he had just nine shillings when he returned from his holiday. He rushed round and managed to borrow a pound or two here and there, sufficient to buy food and pay off the clerk, but he quickly foresaw that the crash was inevitable. He had not the business acumen of Minting, and no one seemed prepared to invest money in a bankrupt press-cutting agency. In the midst of his troubles the original source of the fifty pounds upon which he started the business, wrote peremptorily demanding the money back. He went there and begged and pleaded, but it was obvious that the “original source” looked upon him as a waster and ne’er-do-well.

He went bankrupt, and Eleanor had to be told. She took it in just the way he knew she would take it. She said:

“Never mind, darling. We’ll soon get on our feet again.”

She had been a competent secretary, with a knowledge of French, bookkeeping, shorthand and typewriting. She set to work and obtained a situation herself as secretary to the manager of a firm of wallpaper manufacturers, housing the child during the day with a friendly neighbour.

Giles was idle the whole of August. They gave up the flat and went into lodgings. In September he got work as a clerk to a stationer. His salary was thirty shillings a week, a pound less than his wife was getting. He felt the situation bitterly. Poor Eleanor! How he had let her down. When he spoke about it though she only laughed and said:

“If our troubles are never anything worse than financial ones, darling, I shan’t mind.”

They continued to be only financial ones till the following year when Eleanor became very ill. She gave birth to a child that died. In a desperate state Giles again approached the “original source.” After suffering considerable recrimination and bullying he managed to extract another ten pounds, which quickly vanished. It was three months before Eleanor was well enough to resume work, and during that time they lived in a state of penury. Giles lived almost entirely on tea and bread, and became very run down and thin. He pretended to Eleanor that he had had an increase, and that he had a good lunch every day, so that all the money he earned could be spent on her and the baby. In the meantime he dissected desperately that grimmest of all social propositions--the unskilled labour market. If only he had been taught to be a boot-maker, a plumber, or a house-painter he would have been better off. Manners may make men, but they don’t make money, and one has to make money to live. He became envious of his fellow clerks and shop assistants who had never tasted the luxurious diet of a public school training. That he had brains he was fully aware, but they had never been trained in any special direction. They were, moreover, the kind of brains that do not adapt themselves to commercial ends. He had always had a great affection for his father, but he began to nurture a resentment against his memory. His father had treated him badly, bringing him up to a life of ease and assurance and then deserting him.

It would be idle and not very interesting to trace the record of his experiences during the next years up to the time when we find him in the train on the way back from Epsom. It is a dreary story, the record of a series of dull underpaid jobs, a few bright gleams of hope, even days and nights of complete happiness, then dull reactions, strain, worry, hunger, nervous fears, blunted ambitions, and thwarted desires. Through it all the only thing that remained unalterably bright and inspiring, was his wife’s face. Not once did she flinch, not once did she lose hope. Her constant slogan: “Never mind, old darling, we’ll soon be on our feet again,” was ever in his ears, buoying him up through the darkest hours.

And again he was out of work, again Eleanor was not well, and again he had been to the “original source.”

The “original source” was his uncle, his father’s brother. He was a thin, acid old gentleman, known in commercial circles as a money-maniac. Living alone in a large house at Epsom, with all kinds of telephonic connections with the city, he thought and dreamed of nothing at all but his mistress--money. Between him and Giles’ father had always existed a venomous hatred, far more pronounced on the side of his uncle than of his father. It had dated back many years. When his father died and Giles appealed to his uncle, the old gentleman appeared thoroughly to enjoy giving him five pounds as an excuse for a lecture and a subtly conveyed sneer at his father’s character.

He was a very wealthy man, and he could easily have launched Giles into the world by putting him through the training for one of the professions, but he preferred to dole out niggardy little bits of charity and advice, and to boast that he himself was a self-made man, who had had no special training.

“No,” thought Giles, “but you have an instinct for making money. I haven’t. You don’t have to train a duck to swim.”

Naturally, they very quickly quarrelled, and his uncle seemed to rejoice in his failures. It was only in his most desperate positions that he appealed to him again.

Lying back in the dimly lighted railway carriage he kept on visualizing his uncle’s keen malevolent eyes, the thrust of the pointed chin. The acid tones of his voice echoed through his brain:

“It’s quite time, my lad, you pulled yourself together. You ought to have made your fortune by now. Don’t imagine I’m always going to help you.”

Giles had humbled his pride for his wife and child’s sake. He had spent the night at his uncle’s, and by exercising his utmost powers of cajolery, had managed to extort three pounds. Three pounds! and the rent overdue, bills pressing, his wife unwell and he--out of work. What was he going to do?

The train rumbled into Waterloo Station without any satisfactory answer being arrived at. He pulled his bag out from under the seat, and stepped slowly out of the carriage.

Walking along the platform it suddenly occurred to him that he was feeling weak and exhausted. “I hope to God I’m not going to be ill,” he thought.

The bag, which only contained his night things and a change of clothes, seemed unbearably heavy. A slight feeling of faintness came over him as he passed the ticket-collector.

“I believe I shall have to have a cab,” flashed through him.

Two important-looking men got out of a taxi which had just driven up. Giles engaged it, and having given his address he stepped in and sank back exhausted on to the seat. It was very dark in the cab, and he lay huddled in the corner--a beaten man. Everything appeared distant and dim, and unimportant. He had hardly eaten any lunch, and his uncle seemed to have arranged that he should leave his house just before dinner. It was late, and he was hungry and over-wrought.

The cab turned a corner sharply, and Giles lurched and thrust his hand on to the other end of the seat to prevent himself falling. As he did so his knuckles brushed against an object. Quite apathetically he felt to see what it was. He picked it up and held it near the window. It was a brown leather wallet, with a circular brass lock. He regarded it dubiously, and for an instant hesitated whether he should tell the driver to go back to the station, the wallet presumably belonging to one of those two important-looking men who had got out. But would it be possible to find them? By that time they would probably have gone off by train. No, the right thing to do was to give it up to the police, of course.

It was a fat wallet, and he sat there with it in his hand ruminating. He wondered what it contained. Quite easy just to have a squint anyway. He tried to slip the catch but it wouldn’t open. It was locked. It is difficult to determine the extent to which this knowledge affected him. If it had not been locked Giles Meiklejohn’s immediate actions, and indeed his future career might have been entirely different. It irritated him that the wallet was locked ... tantalized him. If it was locked it meant that it contained something ... pretty useful. All round the park he lay back in the cab hugging the wallet like one in a trance.

A desperate, beaten man, holding a fat wallet in his hand. Contrary forces were struggling within his tired mind. Going up Park Lane one of these forces seemed to succumb to the other. Almost in a dream he leant out of the cab, and said quietly to the driver:

“Drive to the Trocadero. I think I’ll get a bit of supper first.”

Arriving there, he paid the cabman, concealed the wallet in his overcoat and went in. He entered a lavatory and locked himself in. With unruffled deliberation he took out a penknife and began to saw away at the leather around the lock.

“I just want to have a squint,” he kept on mentally repeating.

It took him nearly a quarter of an hour to get the wallet open, and when he did his heart was beating like a sledge hammer.

The wallet contained eight thick packets of one pound treasury notes! He feverishly computed the number which each packet contained, and decided that it must be two hundred and fifty. In other words, he had two thousand pounds’ worth of ready cash in his possession!

A desperate, beaten man, with a wife and child, hungry ... out of work ... two thousand pounds!...

There seemed no question about it all then. One side of the scale was too heavily weighted. He took seventeen of the one pound notes and put them in his pocket book, the rest he divided into the pockets of his overcoat, where he also concealed the wallet. He went up into the bar and ordered a double brandy and soda. He drank it in two gulps and went out and hailed another taxi. On the way home he stopped at a caterer’s, and bought a cold fowl, some pressed beef, new rolls, cheese, a box of chocolates, and a bottle of wine. Then he drove homeward.

Up to this point his actions seemed to have been controlled by some sub-conscious force. So far as his normal self was concerned, he had hardly thought at all. But as he began to approach his own neighbourhood--his own wife--the realization of what he had done--what he was doing--came home to him....

“It was practically stealing. It is stealing, you know.”

Yes, but what would any one else have done in that position? He couldn’t let his wife and child starve. There was only one thing he was afraid of ... his wife’s eyes. She must never know. He would have to be cunning, circumspect. He must get rid of the wallet, conceal the notes from his wife--eke them out in driblets, pretend he was making money somehow. But the wallet? He couldn’t leave it in the cab. It would be found and the cabman would give evidence. He mustn’t drive home at all. He must get out again, think again. Between Paddington and Maida Vale runs a canal. Happy thought! a canal! he stopped at the bridge and dismissed the man again, tipping him lavishly. The banks of the canal were railed off. It was only possible to get near enough to throw anything in from the bridge. Thither he walked at a rapid stride. The feeling of exhaustion had passed. He was tingling with excitement. He looked eagerly about for a stone, and cursed these modern arrangements of wooden pavements. There were no stones near the canal. Never mind, the thing would probably sink. If it didn’t, who could trace its discovery to his action? The point was to get rid of it unseen.

He reached the bridge. A few stray people were passing backward and forward--must wait till everyone was out of sight. He hung about, gripping his portmanteau in one hand, and the wallet in his right hand overcoat pocket. He crossed the bridge once, but still seeing dark figures about he had to return. Why not throw it now? No, there was someone watching in the road opposite--might be a policeman! The police! never had cause to feel frightened at the police before. There would be a splash. Someone might come out of the darkness, a deep voice:

“What was that you threw in the canal?”

No, no, couldn’t do it. The bridge was too exposed, too much of a fairway. He hurried off walking rapidly down side streets in the direction of his home. At last an opportunity presented itself. Shabby, deserted little street, a low stone wall enclosing a meagre garden. Not a soul in sight. Like a flash he slipped the wallet over the wall and dropped it. Instantaneously he looked up at the house connected with the garden. A man was looking out of the first floor window, watching him!

He turned and walked quickly back. He thought he heard a call. At the first turning he ran, the portmanteau banging against his leg and impeding his progress. He only ceased running because people stopped and looked at him suspiciously.

“It’s all right! It’s all right!” he kept saying to himself. “I’ve got rid of it.”

Yes, he was rid of that danger, but there loomed before him the more insidious difficulty of concealing the notes. His pockets bulged with them. When he arrived home, Eleanor would run out into the landing and throw her arms round him. He could almost hear the tones of her gentle voice saying:

“Whatever have you got in your pockets, darling?”

If he put them in the portmanteau she would be almost certain to open it, or she would be in the room when he went to unpack. Very difficult to conceal anything from Eleanor; she knew all about him; every little thing about him interested her. Nothing in their rooms was locked up. Moreover, she was very observant, methodical and practical. Someone had called her psychic, but this was only because she thought more quickly than most people, and had unerring intuitions.

Giles would have to be very cunning. His mental energies were so concerned with the necessity for deceiving Eleanor that the moral aspect of his position was temporarily blurred. He plunged on through the darkness, his mind working rapidly. At the corner of their meagre street he was tempted to stuff the notes in a pillar box and hurry home.

“Don’t be a fool,” said the other voice. “Here is comfort and luxury interminably--not only for yourself, for the others.”

He went boldly up to the house and let himself in. He heard other lodgers talking in the front ground floor room. He hurried by and reached his own landing. To his relief Eleanor’s voice came from the room above:

“Is that you, darling?”

He dumped the bag down and in a flash had removed his overcoat and hung it on a peg in a dark corner. Then he called out:

“Hullo, old girl. Everything all right?”

Within a minute his wife’s arms were around him, and he exclaimed with forced triumph:

“I touched the old boy for twenty pounds! I’ve brought home a chicken and things.”

“Oh! how splendid! A chicken! Rather extrav. isn’t it, darling?”

“One must live, dear angel.”

Her confidence and trust in him, her almost childish glee over the gay feast, her solicitude in his welfare, her anxiety that little Anna should have some chicken, but keep the sweets till the morrow, her voice later crooning over the child--all these things mocked his conscience. But he couldn’t afford to have a conscience. He couldn’t afford to say:

“I stole all this and more.”

He was eager for the attainment of that last instance--crooning over the child. Whilst she was putting the little girl to bed, he crept out into the passage and extracted the packets of notes from his overcoat pocket. He took them into the sitting room and wrapped them up in brown paper. He wrote on the outside, “stationery.” Then he stuffed the parcel at the back of a cupboard where they kept all kinds of odds and ends.

“That’ll have to do for to-night,” he thought. “I’m too tired to think of anything better.”

When she came down he enlarged the claims of his exhaustion. He had a bit of a head he explained, just as well to turn in early. In the darkness he clung to her fearfully, like a child in terror of separation.

It was not till she was sleeping peacefully that the enormity of his offence came home to him.

If he were found out! It would kill her.

He remembered her expression:

“If our troubles are never anything worse than financial ones, darling, I shan’t mind.”

Good God! What had he done? He could call it what he liked, but crudely speaking it was just stealing. He had stolen. He was a criminal, a felon. If found out, it meant arrest, trial, imprisonment--all these horrors he had only vaguely envisaged as concerning a different type of person to himself. In the rough and tumble of his life he had never before done anything criminal, never anything even remotely dishonest. And she, Eleanor, what would she think of him? It would destroy her love, destroy her life, ruin the child.

He must get up, go into the other room and--what? What could he do with the notes? Burn them? Eleanor had that mother’s curious faculty for profound, but at the same time, watchful sleep. If he got out of bed she would be aware of it. If he went into the next room and began burning things, she would be instantly alert.

“What’s that burning, darling?”

An ever-loving wife may be an embarrassment when one is not quite playing the game. By destroying the wallet he had burnt his boats. If he returned the money he would have to explain what the wallet was doing in a neighbour’s garden with the brass lock cut away.

“Besides, you’ve already spent some,” interjected that other voice. “You’re horribly in debt. Here’s succour. The money probably belongs to some rich corporation. It’s not like taking it from the poor. Don’t be a fool. Go to sleep.”

For hours he tossed feverishly, the pendulum of his resolutions swinging backward and forward. If he was to keep the money, he would have to invent some imaginary source of income, a fictitious job, perhaps, and that would be very difficult because Eleanor was so solicitous, such a glutton for details concerning himself. He might have made out that his uncle had given him a much larger sum of money, but in that case there was the danger that in her impetuous manner Eleanor might have written to the old man, and the old man would smell a rat. Doubtless the affair of the lost wallet would be in the papers the next day, and wouldn’t the old man be delighted to bring it home to Giles!

There was nothing to be done but to trust to fate. The milk carts were clattering in the road before he slept.

It was hours later that he heard Anna’s merry little laugh, and his wife’s voice saying:

“Hush, darling, daddy’s asleep. He’s very tired.”

He got up and faced the ordeals of the day. The place at the back of the lumber cupboard seemed the most exposed in the world. He racked his brains for a more suitable spot. But whichever place he thought of danger seemed to lurk. One never quite knew what Eleanor might do. She was so keen on tidying up and clearing things out. He decided that a crisp walk might clear his mind. He made up the excuse that he was going to the public library to look through the advertisements and went out. He meant to smuggle the parcel of notes out with him. but Eleanor was too much on the spot. She helped him on with his overcoat and said:

“It’ll soon be all right again, darling.”

Poor Eleanor! What a capacity she had for living! She ought to have married a rich, successful, and clever man. She ought to have everything a beautiful woman desires. Well?... He walked quickly to the nearest news-agent and bought a paper. There was nothing in the morning paper about the loss of the wallet. He felt annoyed about this, until he realized that of course there wouldn’t have been time. It would come out later. And indeed whilst standing on the curb anxiously scrutinizing his morning paper, boys came along the street selling the _Star_ and the _Evening News_.

A paragraph in the _Star_, headed “£2,000 left in a taxi,” supplied him with the information he needed. It announced that Sir James Cusping, K.B.E., a director of a well-known bank and a chief cashier, left a wallet containing two thousand pounds in treasury notes in a taxi at Waterloo Station. The money was the result of a cash transaction concerning certain bank investments. Any one giving information likely to lead to recovery would be suitably rewarded. It also announced that Scotland Yard had the matter in hand.

So far the information was satisfactory. Sir James Cusping was a notoriously wealthy man, and the chief cashier was hardly likely to be held seriously responsible for a loss for which such an important person was jointly responsible. The bank mentioned was a bank that advertised that its available assets exceeded four hundred million pounds. Two thousand pounds meant less to it than two pence would mean to Giles. No one was hurt by the transfer of this useful sum to his own pocket. The sun was shining. Why be down in the mouth about it? What he had done he had done, and he must see it through.

How could anybody trace the theft to him? The two cabmen? They would be hardly likely to remember his face, and neither of them had driven him home. There was no danger from any one except Eleanor. A sudden fever of dread came over him. She would assuredly turn out that cupboard to-day, find the packet of “stationery.” Then--what?

He hurried back home. Approaching the house other fears assailed him. He had visions of policemen waiting for him on the other side of the hall door.

Damn it! His nerves were going to pot. He opened the door with exaggerated nonchalance. There was no one there. No one up in his rooms except his wife and child. Eleanor was singing. The kettle was on the gas ring, ready for tea.

“What a cad I am to her,” he thought.

The condition of frenzied agitation continued till the following afternoon when it reached a crisis. He was feeling all unstrung. Seated alone in their little sitting room he was struggling with the resolution to confess everything to Eleanor, when she entered the room. He glanced at her and nearly screamed. _She was holding up the parcel in her hand!_

In her cheerful voice she said:

“What is this parcel marked stationery, darling? I was turning out the cupboard.”

Like an animal driven to bay he jumped up and almost snatched it from her. The inspiration of despair prompted him to exclaim:

“Oh!... that! Yes, yes, I wanted that. It’s something a chap wanted me to get for him.... It doesn’t belong to me.”

A chap! What chap? Giles didn’t usually refer to chaps. They had no secrets apart. She looked surprised.

“I was just going to open it. As a matter of fact we have run out of stationery.”

“Eh? No, no, not that. I must send that back. I’ll get some more stationery.”

He tucked the packet under his arm and went out into the hall.

“You’re not going out at once?” said Eleanor, following.

“Yes, yes, I must post it at once. I’d quite forgotten.”

He slipped on his coat and went out without his customary embrace.

Beads of perspiration were on his brow.

“That’s done it!” he muttered in the street, “I must never take it back.”

An extravagant plan formed in his mind. He went to the library and looked at the advertisements in a local paper. He took down some addresses in St. John’s Wood. In half an hour’s time he was calling on a landlady in a mean street.

“You have a furnished room to let?” he said when she appeared.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, it’s like this. I am an author. I want a quiet room to work in during the day time.”

“I’ve got a nice room as would suit you.”

“Come on, then, let me see it, please.”

He booked the room, a shabby little over-crowded apartment.

“I’ll be coming in to-day,” he said.

“Very good, sir. What name might it be?”

“Er--name? Oh, yes, name--er--John Parsons.”

He fled down the street and sought a furnishing establishment.

“I want an oak desk which I can lock up--a good strong lock.”

He paid seven pounds ten for the desk, and got it taken round at once on a barrow. He then bought scribbling papers, paper, and ink. He established himself in his room, stuffed the packet of notes in the desk and locked it. Then he went out into the street again. The fresh air fanned his temples. He almost chuckled.

“By God! Why didn’t I think of this at first?” he reflected. “After the life I’ve led one forgets the power of money.”

He felt singularly calm and confident. It was dark when he got home. He kissed Eleanor and made up an elaborate story about a fellow clerk named Lyel Bristowe, who used to work in the same office, and whom he had met in the street recently. He had wanted this particular stationery most particularly. He had been to see him, and Bristowe was giving him an introduction to a man who might be able to offer him a good situation. The story went down reasonably well, but he thought he detected a pucker of suspicion about his wife’s brow.

He was too involved now to turn back. The following day he visited his furnished room. He anxiously unlocked the desk, took out the notes, examined them, put them back, took them out again, stuffed them in his pocket.... Very dangerous after all leaving them there, a flimsy lock ... there might be a burglary. He had told the landlady that he was an author, and it is true that he spent a great portion of the day inventing fiction ... lies to tell Eleanor. He eventually locked the notes up again and went home.

He assumed a somewhat forced air of triumph. He had been successful. Through the influence of Bristowe, he had secured a position as chief cashier to a firm of surgical instrument makers in Camden Town. His salary was to be five pounds a week to commence. Eleanor clapped her hands.

“Oh, but how lovely, darling! I suppose you can do it? You’re such an old silly at figures!”

He explained that the work was quite simple, and added ironically that the great thing Messrs. Binns and Binns wanted was a man they could trust.

Then the narrow life of lies proceeded apace. Every day he went to his room, fingered the notes, took some when he needed them, deliberately invented the names and characters of his fellow workers at Messrs. Binns and Binns, even made up little incidents and stories concerning his daily experiences. The whole affair was so inordinately successful. No further reference was made in the newspapers to the missing wallet, and though Scotland Yard were supposed to have the matter in hand, what could they do? Even if by chance suspicion fell on him, there was nothing incriminating to be found in his lodgings, and not a soul knew the whereabouts of “John Parsons.” His wife and child were living comfortably. He was gradually paying off his debts.

But if the purely material side of his adventure was successful, the same cannot be said of the spiritual. He was tortured beyond endurance. Lies bred lies. The moral lapse bred other moral lapses. He was conscious of his own moral degeneration. He was ashamed to look his wife in the face. In the evening when he intended to be gay and cheerful he sat morosely in the corner, wishing that the night would come--and go. In the day time he would sit in his room, fretful and desolate. In a mood of despair he began to set down his experiences in terms of fiction, ascribing his feelings to an imaginary person. Sometimes when the position became unbearable he would go out and drink. Often he would go up to the West End and lunch extravagantly at some obscure restaurant. He came into touch with unsavoury people of the underworld.

The marks of his deterioration quickly became apparent to his wife. One morning she said:

“Darling, you’re working too hard at that place. You look rotten. Last night when you came home you smelt of brandy.”

Then she wept a little, a thing she had never done in their days of adversity. He promised not to do such a thing again. He swore that the work was not hard; the firm were very pleased with him and were going to give him a raise.

The weeks and months went by and he struggled to keep straight. But little by little he felt himself slipping back. He managed to write a few things which he sent off to publishers, but for the most part he avoided his room for any length of time, and sat about in obscure cafés in Soho, drinking and playing cards.

Between himself and his wife the great chasm seemed to be yawning. She was to him the dearest treasure in the world, and he was thrusting her away. In that one weak moment he had destroyed all chance of happiness--hers and his. Too late! Too late! In six months’ time he found that he had spent nearly five hundred pounds! At this rate in another eighteen months it would all be gone, and then--what? His moral character destroyed, his wife broken in health, the child without protection or prospects.

One morning he observed his wife glancing in the mirror as she did her hair. It came home to him abruptly that she had aged, aged many years in the last six months. Soon she would be turning gray, middle-aged, old-aged. And he? His hair was thin on top, his face flabby, his organisms becoming inefficient and weak, his nerves eternally on edge. Sometimes he was rude and snappy to her. And he buried his face in the pillow and thought:

“Oh, my darling, what have I done? What have I done?”

That day he concentrated on a great resolve. This thing would have to stop. He would rather be a starving clerk again, rather a bricklayer’s navvy, a crossing-sweeper, anything. He wandered the streets, hugging his determination. He avoided his old haunts. There must be no compromise. The thing should be cut clean out. He would confess. They would send back the remainder of the money anonymously, and start all over again. It was hard, but anything was better than this torture.

He returned home early in the afternoon, his face pale and tense. His wife was on the landing. She said:

“Oh, I was just going to send a telegram on to you. It’s from your uncle. He says come at once.”

A queer little stab of the old instinct of conspiracy went through him. If she had sent the telegram on, it would have come back: “No such firm known at this address.”

What did his uncle want? Come at once? Should he go, or should he make his confession first?

“I think you ought to go, darling. It sounds important.”

Very well, then. The confession should be postponed till his return.

He caught a train at a quarter to four, and arrived at his uncle’s house in daylight. An old housekeeper let him in and said:

“Ah! Your uncle’s been asking for you. The doctor’s here.”

“Is he ill?”

“They say he hasn’t long to live. The poor man is in great agony.”

He was kept waiting ten minutes. A doctor came out to him, looking very solemn.

“I’ve just given him an injection of strychnine. He wishes to see you alone.”

His uncle was propped up against the pillows. His face unrecognizable except for the eyes, which were unnaturally bright. Giles went close up to him, and took his hand. The old man’s voice was only just audible. He whispered:

“Quickly! quickly! I shall be going----”

“What is it, uncle?”

“It mustn’t come out, see? mustn’t get into the newspapers, nothing, the disgrace, see? That’s why ... no cheques must pass; all cash transaction, see?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“On that bureau ... a brown paper parcel ... it’s yours, all in bonds and cash, see? Twenty-eight thousand pounds ... it really belongs to your father ... I can’t explain ... I’m going. He--I swindled him ... he thought he was ... it’s all through me he ... bankrupt, death, see?”

“Do you mean my father ... killed himself?”

“Not exactly, see? Hastened his end ... thought he would get into trouble. Take it, Giles, for God’s sake! Let me die in peace.”

“Why did you? Why did you?”

“I loved your mother.... Take it, Giles, for God’s sake. Oh, this pain! ... it’s coming ... God help me!”

It was very late when Giles arrived home. His wife was asleep in bed. All the way home he had been repeating to himself in a dazed way:

“Twenty-eight thousand pounds. No, twenty-six thousand. Two thousand to be sent back anonymously to the bank. No need for confession. Twenty-six thousand pounds. Eleanor, Anna. Oh, my dears!”

On the table in the sitting-room was a letter from a firm of publishers, addressed to Mr. John Parsons. It stated that the firm considered the short novel submitted to be a work of striking promise, and the manager would be glad if Mr. Parsons would call on them.

“Perhaps I’ve found out what I can do,” Giles meditated.

Eleanor came into the room in her dressing-gown and embraced him.

“All right, darling?”

“Very much. Uncle has given me twenty-eight--I mean twenty-six thousand pounds. He said he cheated my father out of it.”

“Darling! Cheated! How awful.”

No, there was no need for confession. The sudden wild change in their fortunes got into his blood. He gripped her round the waist and lifted her up.

“Think of it, old girl, money to live on for ever. A place in the country, eh? You know, your dream: a bit of land and an old house, flowers, chickens, dogs, books, a pony perhaps. What about it?”

“Oh, Giles, I can’t realize it. But how splendid, too, about the publishers’ letter. Why didn’t you tell me you were writing? Why do you call yourself John Parsons?”

No need for confession, no, no, let’s go to bed. But oh! to get back to the old intimacy....

And so in the silent night he told her everything.

And the tears she shed upon his burning cheeks gave him the only balm of peace he had enjoyed since the hour he had destroyed the wallet.

It was Eleanor’s hand which printed in Roman lettering on the outside of a parcel the address of Sir James Cusping, K.B.E. Inside were two thousand pounds in treasury notes, and on a slip of paper in the same handwriting: “_Conscience money._ Found in a taxi.”

THE END

Transcriber’s Note:

Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged, as were jargon, dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings. Dialect sometimes omits apostrophes in contractions. Thirteen misspelled words were corrected.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Those in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Final stops were substituted for commas at the end of sentences. Duplicate words at line endings were removed.

The word ‘and’ was removed from ‘This seemed to satisfy the big man, [and] except that he growled:’