Ernest fidgeted. The pince-nez dropped, and he had to stoop down to retrieve them. Once more in an upright position, he was seen to be slightly flushed.
“Had you not better ask her?”
“You endorsed that cheque to Mabel and gave it to her?”
“And I suppose she was not aware that the bank would require her signature. But to speak of an omission of that sort as a serious matter-” He gave a slight offended laugh.
Rachel opened a drawer, drew out a cheque-book, and handed it across the table.
“Will you look at the last two counterfoils, Ernest. The last but one belongs to the cheque I gave you. The one next to it has never been filled in. Maurice presented the cheque belonging to that about three-quarters of an hour ago. The manager was not satisfied and rang me up. The cheque was made out to you and endorsed to Maurice. It was for ten thousand pounds.”
Ernest Wadlow’s mouth fell open. His chin dropped and his eyes stared. They were pale eyes, and with the white showing all about them in a ring they looked paler still. The open mouth was pale too, and the furrowed cheeks were gray.
Miss Silver got up from her chair and came over to him. She put a hand on his shoulder and said firmly and quietly,
“Pull yourself together, Mr. Wadlow. This has been a shock. I will get you a glass of water.”
He still had that dazed look when she came back with a tumbler from Rachel’s bathroom. He gulped the water down, and then bent forward, still clasping the glass.
“You did not know-did you?” said Miss Silver. She looked over his bowed head at Rachel. “I think it is Mrs. Wadlow whom you must ask for an explanation. This cheque was made out for the sum to which she considered Mr. Maurice Wadlow was entitled. I find no difficulty in believing that she forged it. No one who had ever had anything to do with the management of money could have supposed for a moment that a cheque for so large an amount could be cashed across the counter without reference to the drawer. I suspected Mrs. Wadlow immediately. It is probable that Mr. Maurice believed the cheque to be genuine. I can hardly imagine-”
Ernest Wadlow leaned to the writing-table and set down the tumbler with a force that cracked it. He said in a loud, unsteady voice,
“Stop-stop! You’re driving me mad!” He blazed at Rachel. “What’s this woman talking about? I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know what she’s saying. Ten thousand pounds-across the counter-an open cheque! It’s lunacy! I never heard of such a thing! And you ask me to believe that Mabel-that Maurice-”
Miss Silver had seen the door move as he began to speak. It was opened now with a jerk and Mabel Wadlow walked in. She was highly flushed, and she appeared to have forgotten that the stairs brought on her palpitations.
She shut the door with quite a vigorous push and said angrily,
“Maurice doesn’t know anything about it!”
Ernest sprang up.
“Mabel!”
“I knew Rachel would try and put it on Maurice! She has never made the slightest effort to understand him or appreciate him. It isn’t any good her saying she has, because she hasn’t. If she had the slightest feeling for a mother’s anxieties she would have given him the money when I told her how necessary it was that he should have it and be prevented from going to Russia, where he might catch anything, and if he brought me a Bolshevist daughter-in-law, it would break my heart. But what does Rachel care about that? She only cares about the money. And it isn’t even as if it was her own money-it was my father’s, and morally half of it is mine! Are you going to send me to prison, Rachel, for taking some of my own money in order to save my only son from getting shot in a cellar or poisoned with bad drains?”
“Mabel,” said Ernest in a shaking voice-“you can’t know what you’re saying. Rachel, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. Mabel-”
“Be quiet!” said Mabel at the top of her voice. “I know perfectly well what I’m saying. I did the whole thing myself. I thought of it the minute I saw the cheque Rachel had given you. And how she had the nerve-what was the good of a miserable hundred pounds when Maurice wanted ten thousand? So I made up my mind what I was going to do, and I did it very well.” Mabel actually preened herself. “I got another cheque, and I copied the hundred pounds one, only I put ten thousand instead of a hundred. And nobody could possibly have told that it wasn’t Rachel’s signature, so I can’t imagine what all the fuss is about.”
All this time Rachel Treherne had been sitting back in her chair, her face quite without expression, her eyes raised to her sister’s face. She might have been watching a scene in which she had no concern. She spoke now in a cool and level voice.
“Banks are not usually asked to pay so large a sum across the counter on an open cheque. The manager asked Maurice to wait, and rang me up.”
Mabel’s face became convulsed.
“What have they done to him?” She caught at Ernest, and he put his arm about her.
“To Maurice? Nothing at all. Hadn’t you better sit down, Mabel?”
Mrs. Wadlow allowed herself to be piloted to the most comfortable armchair. She clutched her side and inquired eagerly,
“Then you told them it was all right?”
Rachel’s eye brows went up.
“Certainly not. I stopped the cheque.”
“But Maurice-Rachel; have you no feelings? Can’t you see that you are torturing me?”
“I told the manager there was some mistake,” said Rachel coldly.
Ernest bent solicitously over his wife.
“My dear, I beg of you-you will suffer for this.”
“What will he think?” said Mabel with a rending sob.
“That you or Ernest have forged my name.” Rachel’s tone was extremely dry. “I am afraid that Maurice will not get that ten thousand.”
The sound of the lunch bell came up from the hall below. Neusel, who throughout these agitations had remained plunged in slumber, sprang up instantly and trotted to the door.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Civilized life is at the mercy of its own routine. Whatever may be happening in a household, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner follow one another inexorably. Birth, marriage, divorce, meetings, partings, estrangements, love, hate, suspicion, jealousy, battle, murder, and sudden death- through all these comes the sound of the domestic bell or gong, with its summons to eat and drink. Whether you die tomorrow or today, another meal is served.
Rachel Treherne paused at Caroline’s door, heard no sound, and followed the Wadlows downstairs. She was glad to concern herself with ordering a tray to be sent up, and when she turned to the room again discovered that there would have to be two trays. Mabel had disappeared, and Ernest, with reproach in eye and voice, informed her that an attack of palpitations was imminent, and that he had taken it upon himself to insist upon a recumbent position and perfect quiet.
“She over-taxes her strength. We should not have allowed her to excite herself. She will be prostrated for the rest of the day. Yes, certainly some lunch-her strength must be maintained. Light and nutritious food at very frequent intervals, and she should never be thwarted or allowed to over-tax her strength-those are the exact expressions used by Dr. Levitas. No one has understood Mabel’s constitution as he did. I blame myself, but I cannot exonerate you, Rachel-no sisterly kindness, no attempt to calm her, no concern about her health.” All this in low, agitated tones, with a nervous polishing of the pince-nez and small fidgeting movements.
Actually, the arrival of Ella Comperton was a relief. Ella’s range of subjects, from leper colonies to slums, might not be ideal as table topics, but they were at least preferable to a discussion of Mabel’s health and the unsisterly harshness with which she had been thwarted in her maiden attempt at forgery.
Richard and Cosmo both came in extremely late. Richard cut himself a plateful of cold beef and ate it in silence. Cosmo, on the contrary, made an excellent lunch and was in quite his best vein-social anecdotes, art gossip, the Surrealist exhibition in Paris. The flow was easy and continuous, and Rachel blessed him in her heart. She never felt fonder of Cosmo than when she had just refused him. No scowls, no sulks, no lowering of the social temperature. Not like poor Richard. What had gone wrong between him and Caroline? Some stupid little thing. Lovers did quarrel about stupid little things. It couldn’t be anything more. It-couldn’t-be-anything-worse-