"You didn't know I was married? Would you care to hear the story of my marriage? It isn't a very happy story, but it might serve to show you what a different thing your marriage will yet turn out to be."

"I should like to hear what you can tell me," Toni said slowly; and after a moment's hesitation Herrick began the story which he had rightly called unhappy.

CHAPTER XVII

"It is just four years since I met the girl who was to be my wife. I was taking a holiday in Ireland at the time; and daring a visit to an old friend in Dublin I was introduced to a certain Mr. Payton, an Irish squire, who had brought his two daughters up from the country for a few weeks' gaiety. Well, we took a fancy to one another. I was always a queer sort of chap, hating convention and all the trammels of society, and I liked the old man at once. He was a big, jolly old boy, a thorough sportsman and Irish to the backbone. Poor as a rat, yet living somehow like a Prince; hospitable to a fault, and looking on debts and duns in the light of a joke."

He paused for a second, then went on quietly:

"I went back with him and his two girls after their Dublin visit was ended. They were all very kind to me, and there was a sort of charm about the old castle where they lived, always in difficulties, yet keeping open house, and managing, in some mysterious way, to have the best of everything. There are people like that, you know--people who, without possessing a penny, manage to acquire pounds' worth of everything. It's an art, and old Squire Payton had it at his finger-tips."

Outside the rain still fell. Inside the room everything was very quiet.

"Well, the end of it was that I fell in love with Eva Payton. She was just eighteen--a bewitching age, I used to think, and as pretty as a picture. Golden curls that were generally tied up with a blue ribbon, big Irish eyes, put in, as they say, with a s.m.u.tty finger, a little mouth all soft curves, the tiniest, whitest teeth--oh, there's no denying she was a beauty; and she made my heart beat faster every time she looked at me."

He had spoken rather dreamily, and Toni sat still, fascinated by this authentic peep into another's life; but with a sudden rather harsh laugh, Herrick resumed his story in a different tone.

"Well, we were married. In those days I had a little money--not a great deal, but I managed to make a fair income by painting. I never told you I painted, did I? Well, I did--portraits chiefly; and made quite a decent bit of money."

Toni, who knew nothing of art and artists, never suspected that she was in the company of one of the best-known portrait-painters of the day; and Herrick was well content to keep her in ignorance.

"So we were married and came back to London. We had a house in Kensington--quite an unfashionable locality, but one of the big, old-fashioned houses you find there, with a large garden which was worth a fortune, to my way of thinking. But I soon found that my wife wasn't satisfied to live quietly, out of the world, as it were. She hankered after a house in St. John's Wood, among the 'other artists' or in Hampstead among the rich people. She didn't want to be stuck down among frumps and dowds, she said. West Kensington was all very well for women who were churchy, given up to good works, but she wanted to be in a lively, social, bridge-playing set; and she moped and pined so in our quiet life that I gave in and we moved to a much smarter locality."

Toni, her eyes fixed on his face, said nothing when he paused; and after a minute he resumed his narrative.

"Well, from the first it was an unlucky move--for me. The house was too big, and required a lot of extra furnishing. The studio wasn't as good as my other one had been, and there was only an apology for a garden.

But Eva had her wish. People called on her, and finding her pretty, vivacious, clever in her quick Irish way, they took her up and made a fuss of her. She was invited here and there, and of course her personal expenditure rose in consequence. Unfortunately my work didn't increase in proportion. I had the bad luck to fall ill--the only time in my life I've ever had an illness--and for several months I was unable to touch a brush. Of course I had a little money put by, and with ordinary prudence we should have pulled through all right. But Eva had never learned prudence. She had lived all her life in an atmosphere of debt and dunning creditors and over in easy-going old Ireland no one cared a straw if one were in debt or no. So to my horror when I was convalescent I found my foolish little wife had been running up enormous bills.

Everything was in arrears. The housekeeping money had gone to pay for her daily amus.e.m.e.nts, the servants were unpaid, the tradespeople clamouring."

He laughed, rather drearily.

"Well, I sold out a little stock I had and set matters right or so I thought. I put the rest of the money in the bank and told Eva she must be rather careful. But imagine my horror when one day she came to me, whimpering with fright, and confessed she had several personal bills unpaid and the creditors were pressing her. At first she did not tell me the whole truth. She prevaricated, showed me one or two bills not made up to date, and was vague about the different amounts. Finally she owned that she was in debt for nearly five hundred pounds."

"Five hundred pounds!" It was Toni's first interruption.

"Yes. Sounds a lot, doesn't it? We'd only been married a year. Still there was nothing for it but to realize some more capital, and I did it, and then asked for the bills. She brought them unwillingly, after a vain attempt to get me to entrust the payment to her; and to my surprise and relief, I found that three hundred would cover the lot."

"But----"

"Oh, it didn't--by a long way. By dint of a good deal of persuasion, I got it out of my wife that the rest was owing to different friends for bridge and racing debts. Of course I had forgotten that my little Irish wife was a born horse-lover, and, I'm sorry to say, gambler; and I ought not to have been surprised. But I was. And I'm afraid I was a bit brutal. You see I couldn't help thinking it was rather hard that the money I'd worked for was to be squandered; and I spoke rather sharply to the poor child."

Toni, listening, thought he was justified in speaking sharply, but she did not venture to say so.

"I scolded her first--she was like a child expecting to be sent to bed--and then I got a statement of her debts and paid them. But I told her, at the same time, that I should never do it again. I promised to help her in little ways if the allowance I made her was insufficient; but I pointed out to her that my income wouldn't stand the drain of huge payments like these; and she cried pitifully and promised, solemnly, that she would never play for money again."

"And she did?" Toni's interest in the story was her excuse.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Of course. It was in her blood. Gambling in one form or another she must have. Someone told me afterwards--after the crash--that it was an almost uncanny sight to see my wife, looking like a child with her curls and her big grey eyes, sitting at the bridge table playing feverishly into the small hours of the morning; or talking to bookmakers' clerks with an evidently inborn knowledge of the ways of horse-racing. I was a fool, of course. Instead of sitting in my studio painting portraits, I ought to have gone about with her--and yet, if I had, there'd have been no money for either of us."

He sighed heavily.

"Well, the crash came eventually. Twice more I paid her debts and twice she swore to give up her folly. Then I was sent for to a big place in Wales, to paint some portraits--those of the three daughters of the house--and of course I had to go. I had been there a month when I got an urgent wire from my solicitors to return at once; and back to town I went, to see what mischief my little wife had been getting into."

"And you found----"

"I found the house in an uproar. Waiting for me was my solicitor, and with him a Jewish-looking man who was the head of a large jeweller's business in the West End. Also--in another room--were a detective and a well-known p.a.w.nbroker. Now--can you reconstruct the story they told me--between them?"

She shook her head.

"No, I can't imagine what it was."

"You wouldn't." For a moment a sort of tenderness softened his tone, which hardened again as he went on. "It seems my wife had never, from the beginning, told me the truth, with regard to the extent of her liabilities. Besides those I knew of, she owed two or three hundreds to a money-lender, to whom she had gone in a panic on first discovering she was in debt. He had lent her the money, at an enormous rate of interest, and as she had been unable to pay anything he was now pressing for immediate payment. Distracted by his threats, and by the other bills which her extravagance had run up, too terrified to appeal to me after her solemn promises, Eva conceived a really desperate plan. Taking advantage of my absence she went to Jordan and Green, the jewellers, and asked if she might have a very fine pearl necklace on approval. They demurred a little, politely, at first, and asked her name, whereon she gave it, without hesitation, as Lady Eileen Greenlay, an Irish girl with whom she had been acquainted in Dublin, and to whom she bore a striking resemblance. She gave them Lady Eileen's address in Hamilton Terrace, and one of the clerks, who knew the lady by sight, advised the head of the firm that this was really she. Of course they knew the family were wealthy people, and as Eva was beautifully dressed, with furs--unpaid for--worth two hundred pounds, they let her have the necklace, and off she went with it."

"But how risky!" Toni breathed the word in horror.

"A desperate woman sticks at very little," Herrick reminded her grimly.

"Well, the misguided girl took her trophy and went off to Rockborough, the big p.a.w.nbroker, where she displayed the necklace and asked for a loan. Seeing no reason to doubt her genuineness, they advanced her a large sum--though not, of course, the full value of the jewels, and she took the money and paid the money-lender and one or two more people who were pressing her. But it happened by a queer coincidence that a day or two later Jordan and Green had a visit from an aunt of the real Lady Eileen's, who wished to send her a little diamond pendant for a birthday present; and when she gave the address to which it was to be sent as one of the best hotels in Mentone, the jewellers became uneasy. They inst.i.tuted inquiries, found the young lady's family were all out of town, the Hamilton Terrace house closed; and it became pretty evident they had been hoaxed."

He paused; but Toni did not speak.

"The first thing they did was to make inquiries at the big p.a.w.nbrokers, and of course they knew in an hour or two that they had been done. With a queer sort of cleverness, Eva had given herself out, to the second lot of people, as an actress to whom the necklace--a present--was worth little compared with the value in cash; and they had believed her story.

But naturally it was soon proved to be false; and at first matters were at a deadlock. Well, the police were called in; and by dint of many inquiries among taxi-drivers, the girl was finally traced to the money-lender's office in Holborn. He, of course, was as close as the grave; but one of his clerks was bribed into giving the lady's name; and everything was easy after that."

"Oh, poor girl!" Toni's soft heart felt a great compa.s.sion for the frightened wife.

"At first, of course, she denied everything. Unfortunately, Lord Thirsk, the father of the girl she had impersonated, took up a very violent att.i.tude and demanded the utmost rest.i.tution; and since so many people were in the secret it was absolutely impossible to hush it up. I did my best; I offered everything I had in the world if they would let the matter drop without a prosecution, but it was useless. The thing had to go to court, and there was a big excitement over the case."

"And----"

"Oh, the result was a foregone conclusion. In spite of everything, in spite of her denials, her terrified lies, her vain attempts to clear herself by"--he hesitated--"by implicating me, the case against her was as clear as the day. I tried my hardest--I perjured myself to try to clear her of the worst guilt--I strove my best to make her out my tool, but it wasn't any good. The Counsel on the other side simply turned me inside out in two minutes. In spite of all my efforts I couldn't convince him I'd had a hand in it--and of course my absence from town showed the truth pretty plainly. Well, Eva spoke out, in the end."

Ho set his lips as he thought of the miserable girl's confession, following on hours of mental torture at the hands of the prosecuting Counsel.

"In the end I think it was a relief to her to speak the truth. After seeing all her lies, all the pitiful, sordid little lies, torn to pieces, after hearing all the weight of evidence against her, seeing the net close in on her--on one helpless, terrified little girl--she gave in and begged desperately for mercy. She seemed to think if she told the truth--at last--they would pardon her, let her off, and she poured out the whole story and cried out for forgiveness. She couldn't believe they would send her to prison...."

His brow was wet with the reminiscent agony of those closing scenes.

"Of course they could do nothing but sentence her. Then, when she understood that she was to be sent to prison after all, she went nearly off her head with fright ... she swore she'd lied, retracted everything she'd said ... oh, there was a terrible scene--she shrieked when they tried to silence her, clung to the dock so that they shouldn't take her away ... my G.o.d! It was horrible, horrible to see her, so little and fragile, screaming to me to save her from the men who were all against her...."

Toni, white to the lips, could see it all. She had forgotten her own griefs now in contemplation of this far more terrible sorrow.

"Even the Judge was upset when he had to sentence her. The court was full of women--I told you the case had attracted a lot of attention--but thank G.o.d they were rendered miserable by their presence there in the end. When she heard her sentence--eighteen months in the second division--she couldn't grasp it at first--and then just as I was beginning to feel I must do something or I should go mad, she fainted clean away and was carried out insensible."