Читать книгу The Salt Of The Earth - Fred M. White - Страница 10

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Adela gave the necessary directions to the driver, and as they drove along the dismal position of her affairs again occupied her thoughts. It would be no longer possible to pose as a great heiress. Even the immediate future looked black and threatening, for she had no money, and was deeply in debt. A few days ago the debts seemed nothing; they would easily be wiped out by a cheque from her benefactor; but now they would overwhelm her. How could she pay them? Looking listlessly out of the cab, she passed a score of shops, at each of which her account was very large, at each of which she was welcomed with a smile and the obsequious always shown to the lavish customer. Half unconsciously she began to reckon up her indebtedness, and its amount was appalling. Five or six thousand pounds at least would be required to set her free.

But where was the money to come from? Certainly not from the man by her side. He had shot his bolt. The end to the meteoric career of Samuel Burton was at hand. The passer-by might not deem the brilliant man of the world played out. But Adela had been permitted to peep behind the scenes, and she knew.

Indeed, Samuel Burton looked anything but done for.

There was a smile upon his face, the snatch of an operatic air upon his lips. He seemed to be perfectly at ease, and interested in the bustle of the traffic, and recognised a score of people in passing vehicles. He was chattering gaily enough when Adela's flat in St. Veronica's Mansions was reached. He criticised her drawing room with the air of a connoisseur.

"Very nice, indeed. I like your tone colors immensely. Your scheme of letting pictures into the panels has my warmest approval. Perhaps your lamp shades are a trifle too effeminate, but, on the whole, it is a most charming room, a sort of restful place that brings out all one's best qualities. But it must be expensive, my dear child, very expensive. Have you ever considered what this costs you?"

Adela shrugged her shoulders and Burton smiled benignly.

"I thought not," he said. "From what I could see of the hall, I presume everything is on the same gorgeous scale. I remember, about a year ago reading in one of the New York papers an article all about your flat. My dear, you can't think how interested I was, and I was not the less amused because just at that time I was suffering from a temporary reverse of fortune. In the language of Brer Rabbit I was lying low, hard put to it to obtain the bare necessities of life. You can't tell how curious it was to me to feel that I was the founder of your great reputation. But keep it up, my dear child, keep it up. You will probably marry a Duke and become persona grata at Court."

Adela was feeling a sense of shame that tingled through every nerve, the pain was physical as well as mental. She loathed herself and would have liked to strip all her finery, to have done anything to stand before the world with a light heart and clean conscience.

She had met many frauds and shams in her time, but not one of them was so empty or pretentious as herself. She was no more than a splendid lie, a living, breathing falsehood. Ah! and she might be worse before long.

"Give me time to think," she cried. "Your society chattering unnerves me. Can't you see that you have done a bitterly cruel thing? Can't you see how much kinder it would have been to leave me alone? I have brains, courage and resolution, and could have made my way in the world. You assure me you befriended me because I once did you a kindness. What have you done to me in return? You have ruined me body and soul. You have allowed me to believe I was a great heiress, have forced me into a position I was not intended to occupy, and will compel me to sink under a burden of shame and ignomy and disgrace. You must have known that it was impossible to keep this up for ever. Nor is that all, for you have deprived me of the consolation of feeling that all these years I have been spending honestly earned money. On your own confession you are a criminal and a thief. From your own lips I have learnt that all this wealth was the result of fraud and crime. Now you are an old man, past further conspiracies, with one foot in the grave. Do you want to drag me down with you? Do you want my creditors to prosecute me for robbing them as you have robbed other people? Oh, I know it is useless to protest. I know that my indignation goes over your head. But I didn't think you were going to be as cruel as this. I did not expect you to lower me to the level of a swindler and adventuress."

Adela paused for sheer want of breath. She stood, a beautiful, glowing figure of righteous anger, her breast heaving tumultuously, the diamonds around her neck sparkling and quivering. Burton leant back in an armchair, regarding this lovely picture through narrowed eyelids. He did not seem in the least ashamed or annoyed at her outburst. He might have been a painter viewing one of his own masterpieces with critical approval, chastened by experience.

"My dear child," he protested, "my dear child, really, you are going too far. You might give me credit for a little feeling, for a certain amount of affection. Now, let me see, it must be something like eighteen years since I first met you. I was in a very, very tight place then. I daresay you have forgotten all about it."

"I haven't the smallest recollection of it."

"Ah, but I have. You were the prettiest little thing, and you learnt your lesson so easily. You had only to tell a little lie or two to put people off my track. You had only to play a little game of pretending. Naturally, I am a hard man. I have had to fight my own battles all my life, but I confess that I was touched upon that occasion, and the more I thought about you the more did my scheme expand in my mind. It was only when I heard your mother was dead that I began to put it into execution. I removed you from your relations. You were running about with bare feet and were clad in miserable rags; your features were pinched and drawn for want of food. Do you know what you would have grown up to if I hadn't taken you away as I did? You would have been a criminal, my dear child, or the wife of a criminal. At the very best, you could only have expected to marry a laborer. Fancy you, a slum mother, with half a dozen children clamoring for food you couldn't give them! You may smile, but that was the life I saved you from."

Adela shuddered and sat down.

"I suppose you meant it for the best."

"I did," Burton went on. "Every penny I could rake together I spent on you. I gave you the best of educations, and started you in life. I am responsible for the position you occupy to-day. Yet I am exactly what you stigmatise me—a cosmopolitan thief and adventurer. Things were different at one time. In my younger days I bore an honored name, and held a commission in a crack cavalry regiment. I will not excuse my exit from the Army; I disgraced my name and my family, and was cashiered. I was too clever, my dear, that's the thing against me. I tried to get an honest living for a year or two, but why go into that? I am what I am, and I shall never be anything else."

"But that doesn't help me," Adela protested. "How am I to pay my debts? How am I to get out of this mess? You have little money now, and will have still less in the future. What will people say when I leave my tradesmen unpaid? If I had enough to satisfy them, the crash would only be a nine days' wonder, and my name would be saved."

"How much do you want?"

"Ten thousand pounds, at the very east," Adela said desperately.

Burton sat nodding his head thoughtfully.

"It seems a pity to give it all up, doesn't it?" he asked. "Why do it at all? I shall be able to find the money you want, and after that it is possible you may have to provide for yourself. You are a woman of the world, and I suppose you have contemplated the possibility of making a good marriage."

"I suppose so," Adela said carelessly.

"There you are, then, what more do you need? And the very man is to your hand. I don't like him; there's too much of the brute and bulldog in his nature for my taste. But if you are wise you won't think twice about accepting Mark Callader. He is rich, and all you want is a hold over him. That sort of man is always kept best in hand with a big stick, and you shall have you big stick Adela. I will show you later how to keep Mark Callader in order, and when he comes into the title and estates in a year or two—"

"You are dreaming. His cousin is in the way; quite a boy, and a very healthy one, too."

Burton snapped his teeth together with a clink.

"I know what I am talking about," he said. "Within two years from now Mark Callader will be Marquis of Kempston. I do not go about with my eyes shut. Besides, in his way, the man is in love with you, and if you play your cards properly, you won't be unhappy. I can find the money for your present wants, but as to the rest, it is in your own hands. Of course, if you like to tell the truth, you can get out of it all without a stain on your character, as they say in the police courts. But will you do it, my child? Are you willing to wear ready-made frocks and live in a bed sitting-room with two meals a day? I doubt whether you are. Think it over. You know you can have Mark Callader for the asking, and as to this money, I'll see that it is paid into your bank by the end of the week. I am going. You'll give me one kiss, won't you?"

Adela held back. There was an expression in her eyes that brought the thin blood into Burton's cheeks. Something like a sigh escaped her lips. Then he laughed good naturedly, though he seemed disappointed.

"Very well," he said. "Perhaps it is too much to expect at present. I don't think you realise how fond I am of you. Good-night. I declare I was going off without my umbrella. I must not forget that whatever I do."