Part 14

By the way, would Flossy still be their mamma after the Decree had been made Absolute?--so Mr. Tapster now suddenly asked himself. He hesitated perplexed.

But yes, the Decree being made Absolute would not undo, or even efface, that fact. The more so, though surely here James Tapster showed himself less logical than usual--the more so that Flossy, in spite of what Maud had always said about her, had been a loving and, in her own light-hearted way, a careful mother. But though Flossy would remain the mother of his children--odd that the Law hadn't provided for that contingency--she would soon be absolutely nothing, and less than nothing, to him, the father of those children. Mr. Tapster was a great believer in the infallibility of the Law, and he subscribed whole-heartedly to the new reading, "What Law has put asunder, let not man join together."

To-night Mr. Tapster could not help looking back with a certain complacency to his one legal adventure. Nothing could have been better done, or more admirably conducted, than the way the whole matter had been carried through. His brother William, and William's solicitor, Mr. Greenfield, had managed it all so very nicely. True, there had been a few uncomfortable moments in the witness-box, but everyone, including the Judge, had been most kind.

As for his Counsel, the leading man who makes a specialty of these sad affairs, not even James Tapster himself could have put his own case in a more delicate and moving fashion. "A gentleman possessed of considerable fortune," so had he been justly described, and Counsel, without undue insistence on irrelevant detail, had drawn a touching--and a true--picture of Mr. Tapster's one romance, his marriage eight years before to the twenty-year-old daughter of an undischarged bankrupt. Even the Petitioner had scarcely seen Flossy's dreadful ingratitude in its true colours till he had heard his Counsel's moderate comments on the case.

This evening Mr. Tapster saw Flossy's dreadful ingratitude terribly clearly, and he wondered, not for the first time, how his wife could have had the heart to break up his happy home!

Why, but for him and his offer of marriage, Flossy Ball--that had been his wife's maiden name--would have had to have earned her own living! And as she had been very pretty, very "fetching," she would probably have married some good-for-nothing young fellow of her own age lacking the means to support a wife in decent comfort,--such a fellow, for instance, as the wretched "Co." in the case. While with Mr. Tapster--why, she had had everything the heart of woman could wish for, a good home, beautiful clothes, and the being waited on hand and foot. A strange choking feeling came into his throat as he thought of how good he had been to Flossy, and how very bad had been her return for that kindness.

But this--this was dreadful! He was actually thinking of her again, and not, as he had meant to do, of himself and his poor, motherless children. Time enough to think of Flossy when he had news of her again. If her lover did not marry her--and from what Mr. Greenfield had discovered about him, it was most improbable that he would ever be in a position to do so--she would certainly reappear on the Tapster horizon; Mr. Greenfield said "they" always did. In that case, it was arranged that William should pay her a weekly allowance. Mr. Tapster, always, as he now reminded himself sadly, ready to do the generous thing, had fixed that allowance at three pounds a week--a sum which had astonished, in fact quite staggered, Mr. Greenfield's head clerk, a very decent fellow, by the way.

"Of course, it shall be as you wish, Mr. Tapster, but you should think of the future and of your children. A hundred and fifty pounds a year is a large sum; you may feel it a tax, sir, as years go on----"

"That is enough," Mr. Tapster had answered, kindly but firmly; "you have done your duty in laying that side of the case before me. I have, however, decided on the amount named; should I see reason to alter my mind, our arrangement leaves it open to me at any time to lower the allowance."

But though this conversation had taken place some months ago, and though Mr. Tapster still held true to his generous resolve, as yet Flossy had not reappeared.

Mr. Tapster sometimes told himself that if he only knew where she was, what she was doing,--whether she was still with that young fellow, for instance,--he would think much less about her than he did now. Only last night, when going for a moment into the night nursery,--poor Mr. Tapster now only enjoyed his children's company when he was quite sure that they were asleep,--he had had an extraordinary, almost a physical, impression of Flossy's presence; he certainly had felt a faint whiff of her favourite perfume. Flossy had been fond of scent, and though Maud always said that the use of scent was most unladylike, he, James, did not dislike it.

With sudden soreness Mr. Tapster now recalled the one letter Flossy had written to him just before the actual hearing of the divorce suit.

It had been a wild, oddly-worded appeal to him to take her back, not--as Maud had at once perceived on reading the letter--because she was sorry for the terrible thing she had done, but simply because she was beginning to hanker after her children. Maud had described the letter as shameless and unwomanly in the extreme; and even William, who had never judged his pretty young sister-in-law as severely as his wife had always done, had observed sadly that Flossy seemed quite unaware of the magnitude of her offence against God and man.

* * * * *

Mr. Tapster, who prided himself on his sharp ears, suddenly heard a curious little sound--he knew it for that of the front door being first opened and then shut again, extremely quietly. He half rose from his chair by the fire, then sat down again, heavily.

By Maud's advice he always locked the area gate himself, when he came home each evening. But how foolish of Maud--such a sensible woman too,--to think that servants and their evil ways could be circumvented so easily! Of course, the maids went in and out by the front door in the evening, and the policeman--a most respectable officer standing at point duty a few yards lower down the road--must be well aware of these disgraceful "goings on."

For the first two or three months of his widowerhood (how else could he term his present peculiar wifeless condition?) there had been a constant coming and going of servants, first chosen, and then dismissed, by Maud. At last she had suggested that her brother-in-law should engage a lady housekeeper, and the luckless James Tapster had even interviewed several applicants for the post after they had been chosen--sifted out, as it were--by Maud. Unfortunately they had all been each more or less of his own age; and plain--very plain; while he, naturally enough, would have preferred to see something young and pretty about him again.

It was over this housekeeper question that he had at last escaped from Maud's domestic thraldom, for his sister-in-law, offended by his rejection of each of her candidates, had declared that she would take no more trouble about his household affairs! Nay, more; she had reminded him with a smile which she had honestly tried to make pleasant, that there is, after all, no fool like an old fool--about women! This insinuation had made Mr. Tapster very angry, and straightway he had engaged a respectable cook-housekeeper, and, although he had soon become aware that the woman was feathering her own nest,--James Tapster, as you will have divined ere now, was fond of good workaday phrases,--yet she had a pleasant, respectful manner, and kept rough order among the younger servants.

Mr. Tapster's sister-in-law only now interfered where his children were concerned. Never having been herself a mother, she had, of course, been able to form a clear and unprejudiced judgment as to how children, and especially as to how little boys, should be physically and mentally trained.

As yet, however, Maud had not been very successful with her two nephews and infant niece, but this was doubtless owing to the fact that there had been something gravely amiss with each of the five nurses who had been successively engaged by her during the last year.

The elder of Mr. Tapster's sons was six and the second four; the youngest child, a little girl named unfortunately Flora after her mother, was three years old. There had been a fourth, Flossy's second baby, also a girl, who had only lived one day. All this being so, was it not strange that a young matron who had led, for some four years out of the eight years her married life had lasted, so wholly womanly and domestic an existence as had fallen to the lot of Flossy, should have been led astray by the meretricious allurements of unlawful love?--Maud's striking thought and phrase this.

And yet Flossy, in spite of her frivolity, had somehow managed the children far better than Maud was now able to do. At the present time, so Mr. Tapster admitted to himself with something very like an inward groan, his two sons possessed every vice of which masculine infancy is capable. They had become--so he was told by their indignant nurses--the terror of the well-behaved children who shared with them the pleasures of the Park Enclosure, where they took their daily exercise; and Baby, once so sweet and good, was now very fretful and peevish.

* * * * *

Again the train of Mr. Tapster's mournful thoughts was disturbed by a curious little sound--that of someone creeping softly down the staircase leading from the upper floors.

Once more he half rose from his chair, only to fall heavily back again with a look of impotent annoyance on his round, whiskered face. Where was the use of his going out into the hall and catching Nurse on her way to the kitchen? Maud had declared, very early in the day, that there should be as little communication as possible between the kitchen and the nursery; but Mr. Tapster sometimes found himself in secret sympathy with the two women whose disagreeable duty it was to be always with his three turbulent children.

Mr. Tapster frowned and stared gloomily into the fire; then he suddenly pulled himself together rather sharply, for the door behind him had slowly swung open. This was intolerable! The parlour-maid had again and again been told that, whatever might have been the case in her former places, no door in Mr. Tapster's house was to be opened without the preliminary of a respectful knock.

Fortified by the memory of what had been a positive order, he turned round and nerved himself to deliver the necessary rebuke; but instead of the shifty-eyed, impudent-looking woman he had thought to see, there stood close to him, so close that he could almost have touched her--Flossy, his wife, or rather the woman who, though no longer his wife, had still, as he had been informed to his discomfiture, the right to bear his name.

A very strange feeling, and one so complicated that it sat uneasily upon him, took instant possession of Mr. Tapster--anger, surprise, and relief warred with one another in his heart.

Then he began to think that his eyes must be playing him some curious trick, for the figure at which he was staring remained strangely still and motionless.

Was it possible that his mind, dwelling constantly on Flossy, had evoked her wraith? But, no; looking up in startled silence at the still figure standing before him, he realised that not so would memory have conjured up the pretty, bright little woman of whom he had once been proud. Flossy still looked pretty, but she was thin and pale, and there were dark rings round her eyes; also her dress was worn, her hat curiously shabby.

As Mr. Tapster stared up at her, noting these things, one of her hands began playing nervously with the fringe of the dining-table cover, and the other sought the back of what had once been one of her dining-room chairs.

As he watched her making these slight movements, nature so far reasserted itself that a feeling of poignant regret, of pity for her--as well as, of course, a much larger share of pity for himself--came over James Tapster.

Had Flossy spoken then,--had she possessed the intuitive knowledge of men which is the gift of so many otherwise unintelligent women,--the whole of Mr. Tapster's future, to say nothing of her own, might have been different, and, it may be suggested, happier.

But the moment of softening and mansuetude slipped quickly by, and was succeeded by a burst of anger, for Mr. Tapster suddenly became aware that Flossy's left hand, the little thin hand resting on the back of the chair, was holding two keys which he recognised at once as his property. The one was a replica of the latch-key which always hung on his watch-chain, while the other and larger key, to which was attached a brass tab bearing the name of Tapster and the address of the house, gave access to the Enclosure Garden opposite Cumberland Crescent.

Avoiding her eager, pitiful look, Mr. Tapster set himself to realise, with a shrewdness for which William and Maud would never have given him credit, what Flossy's possession of those two keys had meant during the last few months.

This woman, who both was and was not Mrs. Tapster, had retained the power to come freely in and out of _his_ house! She had been able to make her way, with or without the connivance of the servants, into _his_ children's nursery at any hour of the day or night convenient to herself. With the aid of that Enclosure key she had no doubt often seen the children during their daily walk! In a word, Flossy had been able to enjoy all the privileges of motherhood while having forfeited all those of happy wifehood!

His mind hastened heavily on--what a fool he must have looked before his servants, how they must have laughed to think that he was being so deceived and taken in! Why, even the policeman who stood at point duty outside must have known all about it!

Small wonder that Mr. Tapster felt extremely incensed; small wonder that his heart, hardening, solidifying, expelled any feeling of pity provoked by Flossy's sad and downcast appearance.

"I must request you," he said, in a voice which even to himself sounded harsh and needlessly loud, "to give up those keys which you hold in your hand. You have no right to their possession, and I grieve to think that you took advantage of my great distress of mind not to return them with the things of which I sent you a list by my brother William. I cannot believe"--and now Mr. Tapster lied as only the very truthful can lie on occasion--"I cannot believe, I say, that you have taken advantage of my having overlooked them, and that you have ever before to-night forced yourself into this house! Still less can I believe that you have taught our--_my_--children to deceive their father!"

Even when uttering his first sentence he had noticed that there had come over Flossy's face--which was thinner, if quite as pretty and youthful-looking as when he had last seen it--an expression of obstinacy which he had once well known and always dreaded. It had been Flossy's one poor weapon against her husband's superior sense and power of getting his own way, and sometimes it had vanquished him in that fair fight which is always being waged between the average husband and wife.

"You are right," she cried passionately; "I have not taught the children to deceive you! I have never come into this house until I felt sure that they were asleep and alone, though I've often wondered that they never woke up and knew that their own mother was there! But more than once, James, I've felt like going after that Society which looks after badly-treated children--for the last nurse you had for them was so cruel! If she hadn't left you soon I should have _had_ to do something. I used to feel desperate when I saw her shake Baby in her pram; why, one day, in the Enclosure, a lady spoke to her about it, and threatened to tell her--her mistress----"

Flossy's voice sank to a shamed whisper. The tears were rolling down her cheeks; she was speaking in angry gasps, and what she said actually made James Tapster feel, what he knew full well he had no reason to feel, ashamed of himself.

"That is why"--she went on--"that is why I have, as you say, forced myself into your house, and why, too, I have now come here to ask you to forgive me--to take me back--just for the sake of the children."

Mr. Tapster's mind was one that travelled surely if slowly. He saw his chance and seized it.

"And why," he said impressively, "had that woman--the nurse, I mean--no mistress? Tell me that, Flossy. You should have thought of all that before you behaved as you did!"

"I didn't know--I didn't think----"

Mr. Tapster finished the sentence for her. "You didn't think," he observed impressively, "that I should ever find you out."

Then there came over him a morbid wish to discover--to learn from her own lips--why Flossy had done such a shameful and extraordinary thing as to be unfaithful to her marriage vow.

"Whatever made you behave so?" he asked in a low voice. "I wasn't unkind to you, was I? You had a nice, comfortable home, hadn't you?"

"I was mad," she answered with a touch of sharp weariness. "I don't suppose I could ever make you understand, and yet"--she looked at him deprecatingly--"I suppose, James, that you too were young once, and--and--mad?"

Mr. Tapster stared at Flossy. What extraordinary things she said! Of course he had been young once; for the matter of that he didn't feel old--not to say old--even now. But he had always been perfectly sane--she knew that well enough! As for her calling herself mad, that was a mere figure of speech. Of course, in a sense she had been mad to do what she had done, and he was glad that she now understood this, but her saying so simply begged the whole question, and left him no wiser than he was before.

There was a long, tense silence between them. Then Mr. Tapster slowly rose from his armchair and faced his wife.

"I see," he said, "that William was right. I mean, I suppose I may take it that that young fellow has gone and left you?"

"Yes," she said, with a curious indifference, "he has gone and left me. His father made him take a job out in Brazil just after the case was through."

"And what have you been doing since then?" asked Mr. Tapster suspiciously. "How have you been living?"

"His father gives me a pound a week." Flossy still spoke with that curious indifference. "I tried to get something to do"--she hesitated, then offered the lame explanation, "just to have something to do, for I've been awfully lonely and miserable, James. But I don't seem to be able to get anything."

"If you had written to Mr. Greenfield or to William, they would have told you that I had arranged for you to have an allowance," he said, and then again he fell into silence....

Mr. Tapster was seeing a vision of himself magnanimous, forgiving,--taking the peccant Flossy back to his heart, and becoming once more, in a material sense, comfortable! If he acceded to her wish, if he made up his mind to forgive her, he would have to begin life all over again, move away from Cumberland Crescent to some distant place where the story was not known,--perhaps to Clapham, where he had spent his boyhood.

But how about Maud? How about William? How about the very considerable expense to which he had been put in connection with the divorce proceedings? Was all that money to be wasted?

Mr. Tapster suddenly saw the whole of his little world rising up in judgment, smiling pityingly at his folly and weakness. During the whole of a long and of what had been, till this last year, a very prosperous life, Mr. Tapster had always steered his safe course by what may be called the compass of public opinion, and now, when navigating an unknown sea, he could not afford to throw that compass overboard, so----

"No," he said. "No, Flossy. It would not be right for me to take you back. _It wouldn't do._"

"Wouldn't it?" she asked piteously. "Oh! James, don't say no like that, all at once! People do forgive each other--sometimes. I don't ask you to be as kind to me as you were before; only to let me come home and see after the children!"

But Mr. Tapster shook his head. The children! Always the children! He noticed, even now, that she didn't say a word of wanting to come back to _him_; and yet he had been such a kind, nay, if Maud were to be believed, such a foolishly indulgent, husband.

And then Flossy looked so different. Mr. Tapster felt as if a stranger were standing there before him. Her appearance of poverty shocked him. Had she looked well and prosperous, he would have felt injured, and yet her pinched face and shabby clothes certainly repelled him. So again he shook his head, and there came into his face a look which Flossy had always known in the old days to spell finality; when he again spoke she saw that her knowledge had not misled her.

"I don't want to be unkind," he said ponderously. "If you will only go to William, or write to him if you would rather not go to the office,"--Mr. Tapster did not like to think that anyone once closely connected with him should "look like that" in his brother's office,--"he will tell you what you had better do. I'm quite ready to make you a handsome allowance--in fact, it's all arranged. You need not have anything more to do with that fellow's father--an Army Colonel, isn't he?--and his pound a week; but William thinks, and I must say I agree, that you ought to go back to your maiden name, Flossy, as being more fair to me."

"And am I never to see the children again?" she asked.

"No; it wouldn't be right for me to let you do so."

He hesitated, then added, "They don't miss you any more now,"--with no unkindly intent he concluded, "soon they'll have forgotten you altogether."

And then, just as Mr. Tapster was hesitating, seeking for a suitable and not unkindly sentence of farewell, he saw a very strange, almost a desperate, look come over Flossy's face, and, to his surprise, she suddenly turned and left the room, closing the door very carefully behind her.

He stared after her. How very odd of her to say nothing! And what a queer look had come over her face! He could not help feeling hurt that she had not thanked him for what he knew to be a very generous and unusual provision on the part of an injured husband.... Mr. Tapster took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and passed it twice over his face, then once more he sought and sank into the armchair by the fire.

Even now he still felt keenly conscious of Flossy's nearness. What could she be doing? Then he straightened himself and listened.

Yes, it was as he feared; she had gone upstairs--upstairs to look at the children, for now he could hear her coming down again. How obstinate she was--how obstinate and ungrateful! Mr. Tapster wished he had the courage to go out into the hall and face her in order to tell her how wrong her conduct was. Why, she had actually kept the keys--those keys that were his property!

Suddenly he heard her light footsteps hurrying down the hall; now she was opening the front door,--it slammed, and again Mr. Tapster felt pained to think how strangely indifferent Flossy was to his interests. Why, what would the servants think, hearing the front door slam like that?

But still, now that it was over, he was glad the interview had taken place, for henceforth--or so at least Mr. Tapster believed--the Flossy of the past, the bright, pretty, prosperous Flossy of whom he had been so proud, would cease to haunt him.