Trent's Last Case

by E. C. Bentley

  CHAPTER X: The Wife of Dives

  Mrs. Manderson stood at the window of her sitting-room at White Gablesgazing out upon a wavering landscape of fine rain and mist. The weatherhad broken as it seldom does in that part in June. White wreathingsdrifted up the fields from the sullen sea; the sky was an unbroken greydeadness shedding pin-point moisture that was now and then blown againstthe panes with a crepitation of despair. The lady looked out on the dimand chilling prospect with a woeful face. It was a bad day for a womanbereaved, alone, and without a purpose in life.

  There was a knock, and she called 'Come in,' drawing herself up withan unconscious gesture that always came when she realized that theweariness of the world had been gaining upon her spirit. Mr. Trent hadcalled, the maid said; he apologized for coming at such an earlyhour, but hoped that Mrs. Manderson would see him on a matter of urgentimportance. Mrs. Manderson would see Mr. Trent. She walked to a mirror,looked into the olive face she saw reflected there, shook her head atherself with the flicker of a grimace, and turned to the door as Trentwas shown in.

  His appearance, she noted, was changed. He had the jaded look ofthe sleepless, and a new and reserved expression, in which her quicksensibilities felt something not propitious, took the place of his halfsmile of fixed good-humour.

  'May I come to the point at once?' he said, when she had given him herhand. 'There is a train I ought to catch at Bishopsbridge at twelveo'clock, but I cannot go until I have settled this thing, which concernsyou only, Mrs. Manderson. I have been working half the night and thinkingthe rest; and I know now what I ought to do.'

  'You look wretchedly tired,' she said kindly. 'Won't you sit down? Thisis a very restful chair. Of course it is about this terrible businessand your work as correspondent. Please ask me anything you think I canproperly tell you, Mr. Trent. I know that you won't make it worse for methan you can help in doing your duty here. If you say you must see meabout something, I know it must be because, as you say, you ought to doit.'

  'Mrs. Manderson,' said Trent, slowly measuring his words, 'I won't makeit worse for you than I can help. But I am bound to make it bad foryou--only between ourselves, I hope. As to whether you can properly tellme what I shall ask you, you will decide that; but I tell you this on myword of honour: I shall ask you only as much as will decide me whetherto publish or to withhold certain grave things that I have found outabout your husband's death, things not suspected by any one else, nor,I think, likely to be so. What I have discovered--what I believe that Ihave practically proved--will be a great shock to you in any case. Butit may be worse for you than that; and if you give me reason to thinkit would be so, then I shall suppress this manuscript,' he laid a longenvelope on the small table beside him, 'and nothing of what it hasto tell shall ever be printed. It consists, I may tell you, of a shortprivate note to my editor, followed by a long dispatch for publicationin the Record. Now you may refuse to say anything to me. If you dorefuse, my duty to my employers, as I see it, is to take this up toLondon with me today and leave it with my editor to be dealt with athis discretion. My view is, you understand, that I am not entitled tosuppress it on the strength of a mere possibility that presents itselfto my imagination. But if I gather from you--and I can gather it fromno other person--that there is substance in that imaginary possibilityI speak of, then I have only one thing to do as a gentleman and as onewho'--he hesitated for a phrase--'wishes you well. I shall not publishthat dispatch of mine. In some directions I decline to assist thepolice. Have you followed me so far?' he asked with a touch of anxietyin his careful coldness; for her face, but for its pallor, gave no signas she regarded him, her hands clasped before her, and her shouldersdrawn back in a pose of rigid calm. She looked precisely as she hadlooked at the inquest.

  'I understand quite well,' said Mrs. Manderson in a low voice. She drewa deep breath, and went on: 'I don't know what dreadful thing you havefound out, or what the possibility that has occurred to you can be, butit was good, it was honourable of you to come to me about it. Now willyou please tell me?'

  'I cannot do that,' Trent replied. 'The secret is my newspaper's if itis not yours. If I find it is yours, you shall have my manuscript toread and destroy. Believe me,' he broke out with something of his oldwarmth, 'I detest such mystery-making from the bottom of my soul; but itis not I who have made this mystery. This is the most painful hour of mylife, and you make it worse by not treating me like a hound. Thefirst thing I ask you to tell me,' he reverted with an effort to hiscolourless tone, 'is this: is it true, as you stated at the inquest,that you had no idea at all of the reason why your late husband hadchanged his attitude toward you, and become mistrustful and reserved,during the last few months of his life?'

  Mrs. Manderson's dark brows lifted and her eyes flamed; she quickly rosefrom her chair. Trent got up at the same moment, and took his envelopefrom the table; his manner said that he perceived the interview to be atan end. But she held up a hand, and there was colour in her cheeks andquick breathing in her voice as she said: 'Do you know what you ask, MrTrent? You ask me if I perjured myself.'

  'I do,' he answered unmoved; and he added after a pause, 'you knewalready that I had not come here to preserve the polite fictions, MrsManderson. The theory that no reputable person, being on oath, couldwithhold a part of the truth under any circumstances is a politefiction.' He still stood as awaiting dismissal, but she was silent.She walked to the window, and he stood miserably watching the slightmovement of her shoulders until it subsided. Then with face averted,looking out on the dismal weather, she spoke at last clearly.

  'Mr. Trent,' she said, 'you inspire confidence in people, and I feel thatthings which I don't want known or talked about are safe with you. AndI know you must have a very serious reason for doing what you are doing,though I don't know what it is. I suppose it would be assisting justicein some way if I told you the truth about what you asked just now. Tounderstand that truth you ought to know about what went before--I meanabout my marriage. After all, a good many people could tell you as wellas I can that it was not... a very successful union. I was only twenty.I admired his force and courage and certainty; he was the only strongman I had ever known. But it did not take me long to find out that hecared for his business more than for me, and I think I found out evensooner that I had been deceiving myself and blinding myself, promisingmyself impossible things and wilfully misunderstanding my own feelings,because I was dazzled by the idea of having more money to spend than anEnglish girl ever dreams of. I have been despising myself for thatfor five years. My husband's feeling for me... well, I cannot speak ofthat... what I want to say is that along with it there had always beena belief of his that I was the sort of woman to take a great place insociety, and that I should throw myself into it with enjoyment, andbecome a sort of personage and do him great credit--that was his idea;and the idea remained with him after other delusions had gone. I was apart of his ambition. That was his really bitter disappointment, thatI failed him as a social success. I think he was too shrewd not to haveknown in his heart that such a man as he was, twenty years older than I,with great business responsibilities that filled every hour of his life,and caring for nothing else--he must have felt that there was a riskof great unhappiness in marrying the sort of girl I was, brought up tomusic and books and unpractical ideas, always enjoying myself in my ownway. But he had really reckoned on me as a wife who would do the honoursof his position in the world; and I found I couldn't.'

  Mrs. Manderson had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she hadyet shown to Trent. Her words flowed freely, and her voice had begun toring and give play to a natural expressiveness that must hitherto havebeen dulled, he thought, by the shock and self-restraint of the past fewdays. Now she turned swiftly from the window and faced him as she wenton, her beautiful face flushed and animated, her eyes gleaming, herhands moving in slight emphatic gestures, as she surrendered herself tothe impulse of giving speech to things long pent up.

  'The people,' she said. 'Oh, those people! Can you imagine wh
at it mustbe for any one who has lived in a world where there was always creativework in the background, work with some dignity about it, men and womenwith professions or arts to follow, with ideals and things to believein and quarrel about, some of them wealthy, some of them quite poor; canyou think what it means to step out of that into another world where youhave to be very rich, shamefully rich, to exist at all--where moneyis the only thing that counts and the first thing in everybody'sthoughts--where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work,that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when theyhave any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even dullerthan the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for displayand silly amusements and silly immoralities; do you know how awful thatlife is? Of course I know there are clever people, and people of tastein that set, but they're swamped and spoiled, and it's the same thingin the end; empty, empty! Oh! I suppose I'm exaggerating, and I did makefriends and have some happy times; but that's how I feel after itall. The seasons in New York and London--how I hated them! And ourhouse-parties and cruises in the yacht and the rest--the same people,the same emptiness.

  'And you see, don't you, that my husband couldn't have an idea of allthis. His life was never empty. He did not live it in society, and whenhe was in society he had always his business plans and difficulties tooccupy his mind. He hadn't a suspicion of what I felt, and I neverlet him know; I couldn't, it wouldn't have been fair. I felt I mustdo something to justify myself as his wife, sharing his position andfortune; and the only thing I could do was to try, and try, to live upto his idea about my social qualities... I did try. I acted my best. Andit became harder year by year... I never was what they call a popularhostess, how could I be? I was a failure; but I went on trying... I usedto steal holidays now and then. I used to feel as if I was not doing mypart of a bargain--it sounds horrid to put it like that, I know, but itwas so--when I took one of my old school-friends, who couldn't afford totravel, away to Italy for a month or two, and we went about cheaply allby ourselves, and were quite happy; or when I went and made a long stayin London with some quiet people who had known me all my life, and weall lived just as in the old days, when we had to think twice aboutseats at the theatre, and told each other about cheap dressmakers. Thoseand a few other expeditions of the same sort were my best times afterI was married, and they helped me to go through with it the rest of thetime. But I felt my husband would have hated to know how much I enjoyedevery hour of those returns to the old life.

  'And in the end, in spite of everything I could do, he came to know....He could see through anything, I think, once his attention was turned toit. He had always been able to see that I was not fulfilling his idea ofme as a figure in the social world, and I suppose he thought it wasmy misfortune rather than my fault. But the moment he began to see, inspite of my pretending, that I wasn't playing my part with any spirit,he knew the whole story; he divined how I loathed and was weary of theluxury and the brilliancy and the masses of money just because of thepeople who lived among them--who were made so by them, I suppose....It happened last year. I don't know just how or when. It may have beensuggested to him by some woman--for they all understood, of course. Hesaid nothing to me, and I think he tried not to change in his manner tome at first; but such things hurt--and it was working in both of us.I knew that he knew. After a time we were just being polite andconsiderate to each other. Before he found me out we had been on afooting of--how can I express it to you?--of intelligent companionship,I might say. We talked without restraint of many things of the kindwe could agree or disagree about without its going very deep... if youunderstand. And then that came to an end. I felt that the only possiblebasis of our living in each other's company was going under my feet. Andat last it was gone.

  'It had been like that,' she ended simply, 'for months before he died.'She sank into the corner of a sofa by the window, as though relaxingher body after an effort. For a few moments both were silent. Trentwas hastily sorting out a tangle of impressions. He was amazed atthe frankness of Mrs. Manderson's story. He was amazed at the vigorousexpressiveness in her telling of it. In this vivid being, carried awayby an impulse to speak, talking with her whole personality, he had seenthe real woman in a temper of activity, as he had already seen the realwoman by chance in a temper of reverie and unguarded emotion. In bothshe was very unlike the pale, self-disciplined creature of majesty thatshe had been to the world. With that amazement of his went somethinglike terror of her dark beauty, which excitement kindled into anappearance scarcely mortal in his eyes. Incongruously there rushed intohis mind, occupied as it was with the affair of the moment, a littleknot of ideas... she was unique not because of her beauty but becauseof its being united with intensity of nature; in England all the verybeautiful women were placid, all the fiery women seemed to have burnt upthe best of their beauty; that was why no beautiful woman had ever castthis sort of spell on him before; when it was a question of wit inwomen he had preferred the brighter flame to the duller, without muchregarding the lamp. 'All this is very disputable,' said his reason; andinstinct answered, 'Yes, except that I am under a spell'; and a deeperinstinct cried out, 'Away with it!' He forced his mind back to herstory, and found growing swiftly in him an irrepressible conviction. Itwas all very fine; but it would not do.

  'I feel as if I had led you into saying more than you meant to say,or than I wanted to learn,' he said slowly. 'But there is one brutalquestion which is the whole point of my enquiry.' He braced his framelike one preparing for a plunge into cold waters. 'Mrs. Manderson, willyou assure me that your husband's change toward you had nothing to dowith John Marlowe?'

  And what he had dreaded came. 'Oh!' she cried with a sound of anguish,her face thrown up and open hands stretched out as if for pity; and thenthe hands covered the burning face, and she flung herself aside amongthe cushions at her elbow, so that he saw nothing but her heavy crown ofblack hair, and her body moving with sobs that stabbed his heart, and afoot turned inward gracelessly in an abandonment of misery. Like atall tower suddenly breaking apart she had fallen in ruins, helplesslyweeping.

  Trent stood up, his face white and calm. With a senseless particularityhe placed his envelope exactly in the centre of the little polishedtable. He walked to the door, closed it noiselessly as he went out, andin a few minutes was tramping through the rain out of sight of WhiteGables, going nowhere, seeing nothing, his soul shaken in the fierceeffort to kill and trample the raving impulse that had seized him in thepresence of her shame, that clamoured to him to drag himself before herfeet, to pray for pardon, to pour out words--he knew not what words,but he knew that they had been straining at his lips--to wreck hisself-respect for ever, and hopelessly defeat even the crazy purpose thathad almost possessed him, by drowning her wretchedness in disgust, bybabbling with the tongue of infatuation to a woman with a husband notyet buried, to a woman who loved another man.

  Such was the magic of her tears, quickening in a moment the thing which,as his heart had known, he must not let come to life. For Philip Trentwas a young man, younger in nature even than his years, and a way oflife that kept his edge keen and his spirit volcanic had prepared himvery ill for the meeting that comes once in the early manhood of most ofus, usually--as in his case, he told himself harshly--to no purpose butthe testing of virtue and the power of the will.