Chapter XX Blackmail
I
The bolt fell from the blue with shattering effect upon Posy and James. Susan, however, with that instinct which makes a woman grab at her petticoats when she is tumbling over a precipice, exclaimed shrilly:
“Joe! He can’t take her without her stockings!”
“That’s his affair,” said Quinney.
His shrewd eye had marked a collapse on the part of James. He felt reasonably assured that the young man was bluffing; he knew that this “downy cove” wanted a wife with more than stockings, no matter how pretty her bare feet might be. Fortified by this conclusion, he, so to speak, fixed bayonets and charged. Unfortunately, he did not take Susan’s character into account, which a husband so acute should have done. He was well aware that his wife, with all her shining qualities, was obstinate and emotional. More, he had never regarded her as a mother, although that significant name crossed his lips a hundred times each day. Susan was his wife.
When he charged, head down, seeing “red,” intent only upon “downing” the clever knave and the foolish virgin, Susan interposed, metaphorically, her soft body.
“Joe, you ain’t serious? You ain’t turning our child out of our house at midnight?”
We must admit that Quinney was not serious, but for the moment he was in no condition to think soberly. He replied fiercely:
“I’m turning out a—adder!”
Susan faced him. He had lost his head; she lost hers.
“If you do this——” she gasped.
“Go on!”
“If you do this unnatural, cruel, wicked——”
“That’s right. Hit a man when he’s down!”
“Down!” she retorted, as fiercely as he; “it’s up you are, Joe Quinney, tens o’ thousands o’ feet above all common sense and common decency. It is things you care for—things—things—things! And our Posy—my Posy, bless her!—is right to prefer persons to the graven images, the false gods, which you’ve set up and worshipped—yes, worshipped! There’s only one person in all the world you care for, and that’s yourself—yourself!”
She flung herself into a chair in a paroxysm of grief and distress, covering her face with the hands which had worked so faithfully for a husband changed beyond recognition. Posy flew to her.
“Darling mother!”
Quinney pushed the girl aside.
“All your fault, you baggage! Susan! Susan!”
Susan sobbed inarticulately. Quinney shook her, speaking loudly, but not unkindly, confounded in his turn by an indictment which he hardly understood.
“Stop it, old dear, stop it! I care about you. Susie—I do, indeed! Worked for you, I have, made a perfect lady of yer! Couldn’t get along without you, no how! And you know it! Darby and Joan—what? Oh, bung it! Gawd bless me soul! you’ll melt away like, if you ain’t careful. Sue, s’elp me, you come first.”
She lifted her head with disconcerting suddenness.
“Do I? Sure?”
He seized her hand, and pressed it.
“Why, of course. Nice old cup of tea, you are, to doubt that!”
“You’d miss me if I went?”
The sharp interrogation ought to have given him pause.
Perhaps he had always underrated Susan’s subtlety. The most foolish mothers can be subtle as the serpent when the happiness of their children is at stake.
“Miss you? Haven’t I said time and again that I hoped as I’d be taken first?”
She sat up alert, strangely composed after this tempest of emotion.
“Oh yes, you’ve said so——”
He was far too excited to perceive that she was leading him into a trap cunningly contrived.
“Meant it, too! Man o’ my word, I am!”
Susan stood up.
“Man of your word,” she repeated ironically. “Tell me you was joking when you threatened to turn young Posy into the street?”
His mouth opened, his eyes protruded, as if he were a victim of that rare malady known as Graves’s disease. Had his Susan plotted and planned to trip him up? Was she a superlative actress? He moistened his parched lips with his tongue, measuring his will against hers, sorry for her, but sorrier still for himself. Then he said more calmly:
“Young Posy needn’t leave us unless she wants to. I’ll keep on James. I’ll sweeten his salary again to please you, but our child ain’t for the likes of him. He’s no class.”
Posy interrupted, with a toss of her head.
“James is good enough class for a child of yours.”
Quinney curbed an angry retort. His temper was at last under control. He said quietly:
“It comes to this, Posy. You’ve got to choose between James Miggott and us. Now, not another word. You scoot off to bed. We’ll talk of this again to-morrow.”
“I shall choose Jim to-morrow.”
Then Susan fired the decisive shot. Nobody will ever know whether she meant it. She had been tried too high. Doubtless the spirit of bluff was hovering in the sanctuary, playing pranks now with this victim, and now with that.
“If you drive Posy out of this house, Joe, I shall go with her. If she never returns to it, I shall never return to it.”
Quinney wiped his forehead, as he ejaculated:
“The pore soul’s gone potty!”
Susan continued:
“I was ever so happy when we went to live in the Dream Cottage; I have been very unhappy in this big house filled with things which you love more than me.”
“Unhappy—here? Lordy! You’ll complain of the Better Land when you get there!”
James spoke. So far he had kept his powder dry and his head cool.
“May I suggest——”
“What?”
“A compromise, sir. You have always impressed me with the wisdom of doing nothing rashly.”
“Pity you couldn’t profit by such advice, Mr. Marry-in-Haste.”
“I’ve been courting Posy for more than three months.”
“You’ve the rest of your life to regret it.”
James hesitated, trying to determine the right policy to pursue. Then he said firmly:
“There are one or two matters to talk over, sir, before we part company.”
“Meaning, my lad?”
“Matters we had better discuss quietly, and—alone.”
“Ho! Hear that, Susan? He’s not quite in such a hurry to take the young lady without her stockin’s. Very good! You pop off to bed, my girl. Susan, you go with her. I’ll see you later.”
Posy glanced at James, who nodded.
“Good-night, Jim!”
“Good-night, my darling!”
“Tchah!” muttered Quinney. For the third time in his life the remembrance of the Channel crossing vividly presented itself. He felt deadly sick!
II
As mother and daughter retired, Quinney exclaimed, more to himself than to James:
“When I think of what I’ve done for them two thankless females!”
“What have you done?” asked James.
“Slaved for ’em for twenty years! Sweated blood, I have! Thanks to me, they’ve lived in cotton-wool, able to take it easy all the time. Enough o’ that! What you got to say to me—alone? Hey?”
“Can’t you guess? Didn’t you overhear just now what I said to Posy? I told her that I thought I could deal with you, and that the time had come to do it.”
“Deal away, my lad. Pull the cards out o’ yer sleeve. Lay ’em on the table.”
“My cards, sir, are chairs.”
“Chairs? You gone potty, too?”
“Chairs. The chairs which Mr. Tomlin bought for fifty pounds; the chairs which I ‘restored’; the chairs which were done up with old needlework covers taken from other chairs; the chairs which you put up at Christopher’s and bought in after spirited bidding—faked bidding—for nine hundred pounds; the chairs which you sold to Mr. Hunsaker this morning for eleven hundred; the chairs which you ordered me to pack at once. Nice little tale to tell Mr. Hunsaker, when he calls to-morrow! Nice little bit of ‘copy’ for the newspapers.”
We know that this young fellow rehearsed his speeches. He had rehearsed this. It flowed smoothly from his lips.
“Blackmail!” gasped Quinney.
“I prefer to call it a weapon, sir, which you are forcing me, sorely against my will, to use.”
“This puts the lid on.”
“Yes, it does.”
“I understand. It’s my daughter against your silence, hey? Hold hard! Does she know of this?”
“No. Don’t you remember? She asked for information, which I withheld out of respect for you and her. Posy believes you to be scrupulously honest.”
“I’m damned!”
“I fear that you will be, if this story becomes public.”
“My Posy against your silence. My Posy against my reputation. My Posy against my wife!”
He was profoundly moved. James perceived this, and proceeded to follow up his advantage. His tactics, admittedly, were intelligently conceived and carried out. His error—a fundamental one—lay in his ignorance of Quinney’s character. Like Susan, who had been carried away by her maternal emotions; like Posy, who was still in her salad days, he had taken for granted that Quinney did prefer things to persons.
“May I put my case this way, sir? As your prospective son-in-law, working hard in and for your interest, do I not present serious claims upon your attention?”
Quinney stared at him. This was, indeed, a “plant,” skilfully prepared by a rascal and fortune-hunter. He said roughly:
“Cut that prospective son-in-law cackle! As yourself, my lad, you do present very serious claims indeed upon my attention.”
“Have it as you please, Mr. Quinney.”
“That’s exactly how I mean to have it.”
“What have you against me, sir?”
Quinney had been pacing the room restlessly. He stopped suddenly, opposite James, within two feet of his pale face.
“You ain’t honest; you ain’t straight; you ain’t fit to marry an honest girl!”
James raised his eyebrows.
“Isn’t this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?”
“Yes, it is. We’re both pots—dirty pots. How dirty I someway never saw till to-night. But my Posy is porcelain—clean, dainty porcelain. You can’t touch her without defilin’ her. Now—scoot!”
“Without settling anything?”
“You shall be settled to-morrow. Don’t worry.”
The young man smiled.
“You are wise, sir, to take a night to sleep over it.”
“Done talkin’?”
“For to-night, yes.”
“Good! Because with every extra word you’re givin’ yourself dead away. Easier to marry money than to make it, hey? Kennel up, you puppy!”
The puppy snarled at this, but withdrew.
III
Alone, Quinney opened the cupboard beneath the china cabinet, taking from it a cut-glass decanter half-filled with brown sherry, and two glasses, which he placed upon his desk. Then he summoned Susan. She drifted in rather helplessly, somewhat of a wreck after the storm. Quinney ensconced her in a chair, filled the two glasses with wine, and pushed one across the desk to Susan. She shook her head.
“Drink it, you old spoof-sticks! Lordy, Sue, I didn’t know you had it in yer! What a spirit! What a little tigress!”
He tossed off his glass, smacking his lips.
“I meant it, Joe.”
“Tch! tch! In two sticks you’ll have my pore leg pulled out of shape.”
“I meant it, every word of it.”
“What? You’d leave the best and kindest hubby in the world?”
“I’d leave a crool, heartless father.”
For answer, Quinney seized his empty glass and slammed it down upon the desk, smashing it riotously. Susan said in the same weak, obstinate tone: “Do that to her dear heart, you would.” He snatched at the full glass, and hurled that to the floor. Susan merely observed: “Another two shillings gone!”
“Two shillings? Ten! Old Bristol! Lovely stuff!”
“There you go again.”
“Ho! You really think I care about money?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, I don’t. You say I care about things. So I do. But things have been a means to an end with me. Never mind that now. If you don’t know yer luck in havin’ Joe Quinney for a husband, he’s too busy a man to learn ye. I want to talk about something else. This James Miggott’s a bad lad. He’s threatening me.”
The word challenged Susan’s attention.
“Threatening you, Joe? What about?”
Quinney’s high colour deepened. Susan had cornered him. His voice became less masterful.
“Never you mind what about! He ain’t goin’ to down me that way.”
Susan glanced sharply at her husband. He tried to meet her honest eyes, but failed. The impulse surged within him to confess, to ask forgiveness, to promise to run straight for the future. The horns of the dilemma pierced his vitals. How could he expose James without revealing himself stark naked to the wife whose good opinion was dearer to him than all the treasures in his sanctuary? She beheld him squirming, and hastened to draw the wrong conclusion. James, of course—gallant youth—had threatened to take Posy without her stockings. She said tartly:
“James is fighting for our Posy.”
“No, he ain’t. He’s fighting—and hittin’ below the belt, too—for things. These things.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Right! You can believe this, I shall fight to a finish. No quarter—see?”
“Very well. Good-night!”
She rose, whey-faced, but resolute.
“What d’ye mean by ‘good-night’?”
“I’m going to sleep with Posy.”
“You ain’t?”
“Yes, I am!”
She went out slowly, not closing the door. Quinney listened to her familiar steps as she mounted the oak stairs. She ascended higher and higher till she reached Posy’s room. Quinney heard the door shut, and then—significant sound—the click of a turning key.
He appeared confounded.