He looked at her in utter amazement. “Do Mark and his sister know about this?”
“No.”
“But you’ve chosen to tell me?”
“Yes,” she said, somewhat shocked by what she’d done. “I guess I needed to tell someone.”
The dark man said, “So that is why we haven’t heard from you.”
“Partly,” she said. “My mind has been on other things beside the business.”
“That is reasonable,” he said. “First, let me say I’m sorry.”
“Why should you be?”
He gazed at her unflinchingly. “You should know why. I’ve been in love with you since the first time I set eyes on you.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“I have no reason to lie.”
“You want me to help you win Mark’s permission to change the company policy.”
“I’m not telling you this because of the business,” he said with impatience.
“No?” Her grief helped her to be cynical.
“No,” he said earnestly. “I do really care for you.”
“You’re a married man with a wife and an infant son,” she said.
“Vera hates being married,” Bart said grimly. “I might have known. It was fortunate she became pregnant early. She won’t let me touch her now. She’s as frigid as her mother!”
She stared at him. “You are telling me you and Vera are not living as man and wife?”
“Not for months,” he said with some anger. “She bleats about her frail health and her general dislike of the entire business between man and wife!”
“Can’t you have her mother talk to her?”
“Her mother encourages her. They are as alike as peas in a pod. Only Matthew is of any worth. And James does nothing but send for money to keep him in style in America.”
She stared at his troubled face. “I can believe you,” she said. “It seems it is a night for confessions.”
The big man said, “We might gain a good deal from being honest. I take it Mark is no longer a husband to you in the full sense of the word.”
“Not in the full sense of the word,” she said grimly. “Not for a long time. I was a bar maid when he married me. I worked in the dock slums in a tavern operated by a man named Crown.”
“I know it,” Bart Woods said. “I have been there. I thought I was the only lowly-born living here in style. I’m happy to have a comrade.”
“I was happy as a bar maid,” she mused. “I had such wonderful dreams for the future. So did Peg for that matter. None of our dreams came true!”
“Like myself you have risen in life,” the handsome Bart said. “We can be grateful for that. We should not know poverty for the rest of our lives. Unless the shipyard collapses.”
She eyed him sadly. “Has money bought you any more happiness than it has me?”
“I don’t care about money,” he said with disgust. “I like power! Power is all that counts! I have that now if I play the game right. And I have a son!”
“Yes. At least Vera was more generous with you than Mark has been with me. I’m quite alone.”
“You have my love,” he said.
“I wonder.”
“I would like to attend your sister’s funeral in the morning.”
She was startled. “Why?”
“I’d like to pay my respects, for your sake and for her. I knew many prostitutes along the docks. Most of them had good qualities.”
“So you’d pay homage to those earlier conquests by paying honor to my poor sister?”
“Yes, if you wish to see it that way.”
She hesitated, then said, “Trinity Church. The cemetery in the rear. Ten o’clock. If you’re not there, I will not be hurt. I don’t really expect you to attend.”
“Ten o’clock at Trinity churchyard,” he repeated after her. “I shall be there. Do try to rest tonight.”
“I doubt that I shall sleep.”
“Try,” he said. “You will need your strength to see you through tomorrow. Do you want me to take you to the cemetery?”
“No. I couldn’t risk that. I have a friend whom I’m meeting,” she said.
He nodded. “Then, goodnight!” he said awkwardly.
“Goodnight,” she said in a low voice and turned away.
When she looked around again he had vanished. And she found it hard to believe that the meeting between them had taken place, and that they had said the things she remembered them saying. So Bart Woods was in love with her? She supposed she should be pleased. But she was not in the mood for romantic thoughts. Yet she had turned to him in her despair, and he had not failed her. She should not forget that.
• • •
The morning was thick with fog and drizzle. And it was colder than it had been. She stood between Phineas Pennifeather and Luther Crown as the young clergyman read the Anglican burial service. It was simple, meaningful, and short. Mrs. Crown sobbed aloud on the other side of the grave, with little Jimmy Davis standing sorrowfully beside her on his crutches. The clergyman had come to the final words of the service when Bart came to stand by the grave. He respectfully removed his hat.
The clergyman came to Becky and said, “You must be thankful your sister is at rest. And when the stone is ready, let our sexton know; we will see that it is properly placed above her grave.”
She thanked him. When he left, she spent some minutes with the Crowns and little Jimmy. These three went on their way together after she’d promised she would keep in touch with them. There was now only Phineas Pennifeather and Bart Woods left at the cemetery, aside from the grave diggers busy filling in the grave.
Phineas and Bart had introduced themselves and were talking in quiet tones when she joined them after bidding the others goodbye.
She gave Bart a grateful look. “You did come.”
“I said I was going to,” he replied.
“I had no intention of holding you to it,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “You’ll be returning home in the company of Mr. Pennifeather?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Very well,” Bart said. “Then I shall see you later.”
“Yes, later,” she repeated, the finality of it all now striking her. She would never see Peg again. It was over. Just the grave and silence.
Bart said goodbye to Mr. Pennifeather and left. Then she and the private detective returned to her carriage. The old man continued to be sympathetic and helpful.
He told her, “You must not brood on this. Find some new interest. Keep busy. It is normal for you to sorrow for a time. After a while the grief will pass, though a touch of sadness about this will always remain with you. But it will be bearable.”
“I picked well when I sought you out to help me,” she said.
“You have always paid me my fee,” he said as the carriage rolled through the foggy streets. “I owed you my best.”
“And you have given it,” she said. “I shall always think of you as a friend.”
“I’m flattered,” the old man said. “And if you should ever need me again as a detective or as a friend, do not hesitate to come to me.”
“I shan’t,” she said, meaning it.
The rest of the day and night were an ordeal for her. She wandered about the house like a lost soul. Elizabeth always went up to bed early. And since his illness Mark also slept long and was never seen after dinner, His nurse occupied the room next to his and matched her sleeping time to that of her patient. So once the servants had retired to their quarters downstairs, Becky found herself alone in the big house.
She could not settle down but moved restlessly about. The fog was still thick. She went to the French Doors which overlooked the garden from the big living room, and saw that it was as gray and misty as ever. As she stood by the doors she saw someone outside in the drizzle. A moment later the figure came up to the patio, and she saw that it was Bart.
She opened one of the French Doors to let him enter. He st
epped inside, his black hair damp from the mist. She said, “What were you doing out there?”
“Trying to get the nerve to come and speak with you.”
She said, “You needed no special preparation for that. You are welcome. I’m alone in the house. The rest are all asleep.”
The handsome Bart was wearing a fine blue frock coat and brown trousers and vest. He said, “How are you?”
“Not good.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“You want me to think you really care?” she said facing him, and speaking in a cynical fashion.
He frowned. “Must you always doubt me?”
“I know something of your past. How ruthless you are.”
“I had to be.”
“All cruel men say that,” she told him.
“Have you found me cruel?”
“No.”
“Then let us have an understanding. You take me as you find me, and I’ll do the same with you.”
She taunted him, “But you’re madly in love with me? Isn’t that bound to make you blind to my faults?”
“You think I’m lying,” he said.
“Well?”
“I’m not,” he said. “Whatever you wish to think.”
“I’d say you want my help in twisting my insane husband into helping you rebuild the shipyard.”
“I have a plan.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. It will not involve you, except to keep silent. Or in the event of questioning, to tell a small lie.”
“I might have known.”
“Wait until I explain.”
“Go on,” she said.
“I have a paper here signed by Mark and giving me full authority to act for him.”
“How did you get that?”
“I forged his name to the agreement,” Bart said without any hint of apology.
She stared at him. “That sounds like you.”
“All that you have to do is agree it’s his signature if you are asked.”
“He is not well enough to sign his name. Elizabeth and the nurse know that.”
Bart said, “If they should question the document, you can tell them you often visit Mark’s room after they are asleep, that occasionally you make love with him and that he seems most alert in the after midnight hours. It was during one of these secret sessions in which you had him sign the agreement.”
“I marvel at you,” she said. “You think of everything.”
He said, “I do not expect you to be involved. I don’t think the bank will question Mark’s signature. They really want to go along with us. They stand to lose if we collapse, so it is in their interest to believe he has agreed to building iron ships.” He waved the paper. “This should save us all!” And he placed it in an inside pocket of his frock coat.
She sighed. “Since it will do nothing but good, I can’t very well oppose you.”
“Thank you, Becky,” he said with sudden warmth. “It may be that out of all this misery there will come a great happiness for us.”
Becky said, “After all that has happened I begin to question that there is any happiness in the world!”
Bart Woods was staring at her with great intensity. He said, “I love you, Becky, and I need you! And I believe you need someone like me!”
She stared up into his handsome face and saw that he was most earnest in what he’d said. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her with deep feeling. She did not know what she might have done under different circumstances, but in this moment when her spirits were at their lowest ebb she was hungry for love!
The warmth of being in his embrace helped ease the great ache she’d known since Peg’s death. She felt that Bart Woods knew her and understood her. And she also felt she could depend on him for protection. So she responded ardently to his kisses and clung to him.
In the next moment he lifted her up in his arms and carried her like a child up the stairs to the bedroom on the second floor which she had occupied for so long. He closed and locked the door of the room and then removed his frock coat and vest.
So they became lovers! As they lay side by side in her bed she found herself comparing the handsome Bart’s lovemaking with that of the other men she had known. Though not as meaningful as with her first love, Davy, nor as coldly brusque as the brief interludes she’d known with her husband, Mark, Bart offered her an unexpectedly gentle kind of lovemaking, which left no doubt that he truly cared for her.
Looking back, she would realize that the illicit passion between them made their otherwise difficult lives bearable. In the warmth of Bart’s love she was able to overcome her grief for Peg and the melancholy frustration of her ruined marriage to Mark. She found hereself in better spirits and had more tolerance for her ailing mate. And always she looked forward to those secret moments with Bart.
On certain nights he came to her place when all the others were safely asleep. Occasionally she would meet him in a flat belonging to a friend of his. And there were meetings for luncheons in the city, intriguing because they had always to be secretly planned and carried out.
Becky came to know much more about the handsome man. He still believed in power and violence when it was required to bring about his ends. He was the product of the London docks, where he’d spent his boyhood. Now he had accquired manners and could pass as a gentleman. But beneath the new facade there was still the ambitious and unscrupulous man who had once shanghaied drunken sailors and turned them over to captains of ships sailing far away for a price.
Often when they were together, he asked questions of her. And it turned out that as a lad he had met her father several times and admired him as a hard worker. Becky could not truly say she was deeply in love with the dark man, but she was surely fond of him. And he was supporting her emotionally at a time in her life when she desperately required such support.
She tried to spend more time with Mark, but he was so vague and disinterested she gave up. She left him with the jolly nurse most of the time. Nurse Hazel Green treated the sick man like a spoiled child and that was almost what he had become. Becky was a trifle uneasy about Elizabeth, worrying that the spinster might have guessed that she and Bart were lovers. But Elizabeth said nothing and was spending more and more time at her mission, which had been enlarged.
From all that she knew from her own observations and what Bart had told her, things at the Kerr house were much the same as they had been. Vera was more than normally devoted to her little boy, Donald, and Bart was a loving father. But they lived in separate rooms of the great mansion and were no longer all that one expected a husband and wife to be. Old Matthew Kerr relapsed to grow more feeble, leaving full management of the shipyard to Bart at a critical time. Alice Kerr devoted herself to her husband and her grandchild. Like Elizabeth, she also had numerous charities to which she gave both money and her own efforts.
There was talk that either Disraeli or Gladstone had prevailed upon Queen Victoria to give up her deep mourning for her dead Prince Consort. It was explained to her that her bleak mood had tainted the whole of her Empire, that out of consideration for her people she must show more interest in life and the desire to plunge forward and make new beginnings.
From the moment Bart changed the shipyard to the building of iron ships, all went well. Gregg & Kerr soon had more orders than they could fill. And the bank had never questioned Mark’s forged signature.
The fact that the Kerrs and the Greggs no longer did any socializing made it easier for Becky and Bart to carry on their intrigue. Becky seldom saw old Matthew Kerr except at meetings of the company board. And she did not see Alice or Vera at all. Once she met Vera on a summer afternoon with her baby in a pram.
Becky had stopped and made much of the child, telling his prim mother, “What a healthy little lad Donald is. Just like his father!”
Vera’s pale face had shown annoyance. “He is more a Kerr in manner.”
Becky smiled at the other young woman, “Then there is something about hi
m to please you both. That is how it ought to be.”
“Yes,” Vera said brusquely. “I must take him inside; it is past the hour for his afternoon nap.” And she had hurried on with obvious relief at not having to make any other pleasantries.
Becky, somewhat hurt, for Vera had avoided her whenever possible, watched after the departing mother and pram and thought what a selfish, spoiled prig Vera had become—no doubt under her frigid mother’s tutelage. Had she been a proper wife to Bart it was not likely that he would have turned elsewhere for love, since he had great pride in his marriage and son. Being linked to the Kerr family meant a good deal to him.
It was to be expected that sooner or later the lovers would be caught. And it happened quietly one night when Becky in nightgown and bathrobe was escorting a fully-dressed Bart from her bedroom to the french doors downstairs, which he regularly used to make his secret visits.
They were emerging from her bedroom, his arm around her, when suddenly Mark appeared in the hall in robe and pajamas. It was unheard of for him to be out of his room at this time of night. Becky could scarcely believe her eyes.
Leaving Bart, she took a step towards her husband and said, “Mark! You should be in bed!”
The prematurely-aged man who barely resembled the stern, square-jawed leader whom she’d married, stared at her in a vague, mournful fashion and said nothing. Then he turned and, leaning on his cane, limped back into the darkness at the end of the hall to vanish in his own room.
Bart stood frowning. “Shall I speak to him?”
“No,” she said, turning to him. “I don’t think he really took in the situation. It probably will seem only a bad dream to him.”
“He seemed to know me,” Bart worried.
“I saw no recognition,” she said, realizing she was allowing her fervent wish to make her accept this as truth.
Bart gave a deep sigh. “I’m sorry.”
“It will be all right,” she said. “I’m sure.”
Bart said, “Let me know. If you need me, I will come back at once.”
“I will not need you,” she said. “Now go on.” And she urged him on his way.
Vintage Love Page 110