Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [9]
The strain and embarrassment of the new relationship with her master were intensified by the arrival of a daughter, and doubled when that daughter came to a knowledgeable age. Marguerite Whitland had the inherent culture of her father and the grace and delicate beauty which had ever distinguished the women of the house of Bortledyne.
When the Professor died, Mrs Whitland mourned him in all sincerity. She was also relieved. One half of the burden which lay upon her had been lifted; the second half was wrestling with the binomial theorem at Cheltenham College.
She had been a widow twelve months when she met Mr Cresta Morris, and, if the truth be told, Mr Cresta Morris more fulfilled her conception as to what a gentleman should look like than had the Professor. Mr Cresta Morris wore white collars and beautiful ties, had a large gold watch-chain over what the French call poetically a gilet de fantasie, but which he, in his own homely fashion, described as a “fancy weskit.” He smoked large cigars, was bluff and hearty, spoke to the widow – he was staying at Harrogate at the time in a hydropathic establishment – in a language which she could understand. Dimly she began to realize that the Professor had hardly spoken to her at all.
Mr Cresta Morris was one of those individuals who employed a vocabulary of a thousand words, with all of which Mrs Whitland was well acquainted; he was also a man of means and possessions, he explained to her. She, giving confidence for confidence, told of the house at Cambridge, the furniture, the library, the annuity of three hundred pounds, earmarked for his daughter’s education, but mistakenly left to his wife for that purpose, also the four thousand three hundred pounds invested in War Stock, which was wholly her own.
Mr Cresta Morris became more agreeable than ever. In three months they were married, in six months the old house at Cambridge had been disposed of, the library dispersed, as much of the furniture as Mr Morris regarded as old-fashioned sold, and the relict of Professor Whitland was installed in a house in Brockley.
It was a nice house – in many ways nicer than the rambling old building in Cambridge, from Mrs Morris’ point of view. And she was happy in a tolerable, comfortable kind of fashion, and though she was wholly ignorant as to the method by which her husband made his livelihood, she managed to get along very well without enlightenment.
Marguerite was brought back from Cheltenham to grace the new establishment and assist in its management. She shared none of her mother’s illusions as to the character of Mr Cresta Morris, as that gentleman explained to a very select audience one January night.
Mr Morris and his two guests sat before a roaring fire in the dining-room, drinking hot brandies-and-waters. Mrs Morris had gone to bed: Marguerite was washing up, for Mrs Morris had the “servant’s mind,” which means that she could never keep a servant.
The sound of crashing plates had come to the dining-room and interrupted Mr Morris at a most important point of his narrative. He jerked his head round.
“That’s the girl,” he said “she’s going to be a handful.”
“Get her married,” said Job Martin wisely.
He was a hatchet-faced man with a reputation for common-sense. He had another reputation which need not be particularized at the moment.
“Married?” scoffed Mr Morris. “Not likely!”
He puffed at his cigar thoughtfully for a moment, then: “She wouldn’t come in to dinner – did you notice that? We are not good enough for her. She’s fly! Fly ain’t the word for it. We always find her nosing and sneaking around.”
“Send her back to school,” said the third guest.
He was a man of fifty-five, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, who had literally played many parts,