_ CHAPTER V
John Shawyer looked across his paper-strewn table at Faith's mother and smiled indulgently.
"I really don't think there is any need for you to be so alarmed," he said kindly. "I have known Mr. Forrester for a great many years, and have every reason to believe that he is an honourable man. He came to see me only last Friday and told me all about his romantic marriage. Unfortunately he has had to go to America, as you know. I think at the last it worried him considerably that he had not seen you before he left and been able to explain things. The marriage is perfectly in order, but you can go to the registrar yourself if you would prefer to do so...."
Mrs. Ledley broke in tremblingly.
"It all seems so extraordinary. Mr. Forrester had only seen my daughter three times before he married her, and ... and if he is as rich as you say, surely he would have looked higher for his wife?"
Poor woman! She could remember more than twenty years ago when she had made her own runaway match, the tortures of inquisition through which she had been put by her husband's relatives, and the complete ostracism with which the miserable affair had finally ended.
She had known herself incapable of ascending to his position in the world, and he had loved her well enough to sink into obscurity with her. Was history about to repeat itself in Faith's marriage?
"It is impossible to regulate romance," said Mr. Shawyer; privately he thought that the Beggar Man had shown taste in his choice of a wife. He considered that Faith had a charming face, and he was shrewd enough to see that with a few alterations in clothes the little moth would have no difficulty in spreading her wings and turning into a butterfly.
He was extremely interested in the whole affair. He had always considered Nicholas Forrester unique, and he genuinely admired his pluck in having taken this step.
"I am sure," he went on pleasantly, "that Mr. Forrester would be only too pleased for me to answer any questions you may care to ask. He told me if the occasion arose I was to be perfectly frank--especially in regard to his financial affairs, and...."
Mrs. Ledley interrupted hurriedly.
"It isn't the money I'm thinking of at all. It isn't the money that matters, if he is a good man, and will be kind to my little girl. But I know nothing about him! I only saw him once from the window, when he brought Faith home in his car, and I should not know him again if I saw him. If you could just tell me something about his people--if he has a mother and father living, or what he has been doing all his life...."
Mr. Shawyer cleared his throat and drew his chair closer to the table.
"I shall be only too pleased to answer those questions," he said. "As far as I know, Mr. Forrester is quite without relatives! His mother died when he was a small boy, and for some years he lived in Australia with his father. The father broke his neck in a riding accident, and from that time the son seems to have roughed it all over the world. He must have been born with the gift for making money, as he seems to have made a great deal before he was five and twenty--and spent it!" Mr. Shawyer added with a smile.
"About ten years ago," he went on, "he first came to England on some business deal with which I was concerned, and it proved to be a wonderful success, and I think I am right in saying that from that day he has never looked back. At the present moment I have no doubt that he is one of the richest men in London--he is known everywhere--perhaps I should tell you that he has not always been known under the name of Nicholas Forrester, though it really is his name----"
Faith leaned forward, the colour surging into her face.
"What--what other name, then?" she asked with an effort.
Mr. Shawyer smiled.
"For business purposes," he said gently, as if he were speaking to a child, "he calls himself Ralph Scammel! I know he would not object to your being told, otherwise I should certainly not have mentioned it, I----"
He broke off. Mrs. Ledley had risen to her feet. She was as white as death, and her eyes were like fire as she took a step forward and leaned heavily against the paper-strewn table.
"Scammel!" she said hoarsely. "Ralph Scammel! Is that the man my daughter has married?"
"It is merely an assumed name," Mr. Shawyer said quickly. "For business purposes." Mrs. Ledley was breathing fast. It was with difficulty that she at length found her voice.
"Ralph Scammel is the man who ruined my husband," she said.
Faith had hardly spoken during the whole interview, but now she started up from her chair with a little stifled cry.
Ever since her father's death, though she had never heard the name of the man who had brought about his ruin, she had been encouraged always to think of him with hatred.
Even the twins, in their play, frightened each other with an imaginary bogey of him, whom they called for want of a better name "The Bad Man," and sometimes Mrs. Ledley herself, tired and worried to death, would quiet them and force them to settle down to sleep by telling them that unless they did the "bad man" would come and carry them away.
And now Faith had married him!
She was still child enough to feel a nameless fear of the imaginary bogey, as well as suffocating shame and dread of the thing she had unwittingly done.
After a moment she broke out hysterically:
"It's not true! I won't believe it! You're all against me, all of you! His name is Nicholas Forrester! I tell you his name is Nicholas Forrester!" She broke into violent sobbing.
Mr. Shawyer looked greatly distressed.
"No doubt it is all a misapprehension," he said. "There is some mistake in the name. It is not such a very uncommon name," he suggested. But he knew that it was.
"There is no mistake," Faith's mother insisted flintily. "If my daughter has married that man I will never forgive her to my dying day."
"Mother!" The word came from Faith in a heart-broken cry, and once more Mr. Shawyer rushed gallantly into the breach.
"It is very unjust to my client to take this premature view," he said reprovingly. "Naturally, I know nothing of the circumstances of which you are now speaking, and we can only wait until Mr. Forrester comes home before they are proved or disproved. I speak of him as I have always found him, and I can truthfully say that your daughter will be perfectly safe and happy with him."
But for all notice Mrs. Ledley took he might have spared himself the trouble of speech. Disappointment and sorrow had hardened her, and she could see nothing beyond the fact that her own child had married the man whom she herself most hated in all the world.
Almost before Mr. Shawyer had finished speaking she rose and took up her shabby little handbag.
"There is nothing more we need stay for," she said harshly. "Faith, dry your eyes and come home."
But Faith could only sob on in the bitterness of her heart: "It isn't true--I know it isn't true! And if it is--how did I know--how could I have known?"
Mrs. Ledley looked at her with hard eyes.
"If you had cared for me at all," she said dully, "you would not have married him without my consent. I've been a good mother to you, and this is the reward I get. It was only of yourself you thought when you married him. You never thought of me at all."
Faith looked up, her face all flushed and quivering.
"It was only of you I thought," she sobbed, "you and the twins. I wanted you to be rich--I wanted them to go to a good school and he promised and I knew he was rich!..."
Mrs. Ledley clenched her hand.
"I would rather die than take a penny of his money," she said passionately. "Money made dishonestly--from the ruin of other men's lives."
Mr. Shawyer made another attempt.
"All this may or may not be true," he said smoothly; "but at any rate no fault can be attached to this child here." He laid a kind hand on Faith's arm. "And if you will forgive my saying so, Mrs. Ledley, it is very cruel to her to speak in this way."
Mrs. Ledley turned and faced him proudly across the table.
"I loved my husband," she said, "and if you think--even for my daughter's sake--I shall ever receive Ralph Scammel into my house, you make a very great mistake! Faith has married him, and she can do as she pleases, of course, but it will mean a choice between her husband and me. That is my last word," and she turned and walked out of the room, leaving Faith sobbing in her chair.
Mr. Shawyer rose to his feet and began pacing the room. He hated scenes, and during his lifetime he had been forced into a great many. He was unutterably relieved when Faith stopped crying and put her handkerchief away. Something of the childishness in her face seemed to have deepened to womanhood as, for a moment, she raised her brown eyes to him.
"And what am I to do now?" she asked.
Mr. Shawyer spread his hands.
"My dear young lady, how can I advise you beyond saying that the only thing to do is to wait until Nicholas Forrester comes home. He is your husband and rightful guardian, and if you love him you know what course to adopt. Even if--if what your mother says is a fact, he has not injured you knowingly, at all events. You say he has been all that is kind and good. Well, that is all that concerns you! A man's past is his own."
It was an easy and comfortable doctrine from his point of view, and he went on:
"After all, he is a business man. I never met a keener! And if in the course of business he unfortunately bettered your father in some transaction, well, how can he be blamed?"
Faith had been listening attentively, but now she broke in vehemently:
"If he is Ralph Scammel, he is a bad man! Peg says so, and Peg is always right!" And then again, with renewed anguish: "Oh, but it can't be true, I know it can't."
"If you have that much faith in him," said Mr. Shawyer quickly, "you must be content to wait till he comes back and ask him yourself. Now, take my advice and go home, and you will find that already your mother has repented of her hasty words."
Faith shook her head.
"I don't think so," she said slowly. She knew her mother well in many ways, and she knew the bitter and relentless hatred with which Mrs. Ledley had always regarded the "bad man," as the twins called him.
He had robbed her of all happiness. He had brought her and her children down to poverty. Faith did not think that her mother would ever relent or forgive.
She went home with dragging steps. Before she entered the house she slipped off her wedding ring and put it into a pocket. She felt more free without it, could almost imagine that the whole thing was nothing more, than a bad dream.
She was afraid to face her mother. She went up to her own little room on the top floor and sat down at the window.
There was not much to be seen from it but roofs and telegraph poles and wires, but the sky was blue beyond them all, and against her will Faith thought of the sea, which she had only seen once, years ago, and of Nicholas Forrester, who was even then being carried away from her across its blueness.
Since he said good-bye to her she had many times wished him back again, but now the thought of him made her shiver. She wished never to see him any more.
In her childishness she somehow fancied that she had only to say she regretted her marriage and give back everything he had ever given her to wipe the episode out of her life. She was thankful now that she had not spent a shilling of his money. She took it all from its hiding place and made a little parcel of it, with her wedding ring, and addressed it to the flat where he had taken her for lunch after their marriage.
He would find it when he came back and understand, she thought. She slipped out and posted it at once, for fear she should be tempted to change her mind by the sight of the twins' shabby frocks and the memory of all she could have bought them with the Beggar Man's money.
Then she went into the kitchen to her mother and held out her trembling bare left hand.
"I've sent it back," she said in a whisper. "And the money--I never want to see him any more."
Mrs. Ledley stared at her helplessly, then something in the girl's face, its immature look and innocent eyes, swept the anger and bitterness from her heart.
She took Faith on to her lap as if she had still been a child, and the two kissed and cried together.
Mrs. Ledley did not believe Faith would ever see the Beggar Man again. She thought she knew only too well the type of man he was. She sobbed out that she was only too thankful to have her daughter safely with her.
"I didn't mean to be hard and cruel," she said over and over again. "It would have broken my heart if he had taken you away from me."
"He wanted me to go and I wouldn't," Faith said. She tried to believe that she was quite happy cuddled into her mother's arms, but she knew that she was not. There was something old and sad in her heart which would never leave her again she knew. She listened apathetically while Mrs. Ledley spoke of her husband.
"You haven't forgotten him, Faith? You haven't so soon forgotten your father? He was so good to you. He loved you all so much. This man ruined him and caused his death. I know that my little girl could not love such a man."
"I wanted you to be rich," Faith whispered brokenly. "I wanted everything for you and the twins."
She sat up with sudden energy, pushing the dark hair from her face. "I hope I never see him again!" she said fiercely. "I hope he never comes home any more!..." _