VI

THE DECREE MADE ABSOLUTE

James Tapster was eating his solitary, well-cooked dinner in his comfortable and handsome house, a house situated in one of the half-moon terraces which line and frame the more aristocratic side of Regent's Park, and which may indeed be said to have private grounds of their own, for each resident enjoys the use of a key to a portion of the Park ent.i.tled locally "The Enclosure."

Very early in his life Mr. Tapster had made up his mind that he would like to live in c.u.mberland Crescent and now he was living there; very early in his life he had decided that no one could order a plain yet palatable meal as well as he could himself, and now for some months past Mr. Tapster had given his own orders, each morning, to the cook.

To-night Mr. Tapster had already eaten his fried sole, and he was about to cut himself off a generous portion of the grilled under-cut before him, when he heard the postman's steps hurrying round the Crescent. He rose with a certain quick deliberateness, and going out into the hall, opened the front door just in time to avoid the rat-tat-tat. Then, the one letter he had expected duly in his hand, he waited till he had sat down again in front of his still empty plate before he broke the seal and glanced over the typewritten sheet of notepaper.

SHORTERS COURT, THROGMORTON ST.,

_November 4th, 190--_.

DEAR JAMES,

In reply to your letter of yesterday's date, I have been to Bedford Row and seen Greenfield, and he thinks it probable that the decree will be made absolute to-day; in that case you will have received a wire before this letter reaches you.

Your affect. Brother,

WM. A. TAPSTER.

In the same handwriting as the signature were added two holograph lines: "Glad you have the children home again. Maud will be round to see them soon."

Mr. Tapster read over once again the body of the letter, and there came upon him an instinctive feeling of intense relief; then, with a not less instinctive feeling of impatience, his eyes travelled down again to the postscript--"Maud will be round to see them soon."

Well, he would see about that! But he did not exclaim, even mentally, as most men feeling as he then felt would have done, "I'll be d.a.m.ned if she will!" knowing the while that Maud certainly would.

His brother's letter, though most satisfactory as regarded its main point, put Mr. Tapster out of conceit with the rest of his dinner; so he rang twice and had the table cleared, frowning at the parlour-maid as she hurried through her duties, and yet not daring to rebuke her for having neglected to answer the bell the first time he rang.

After a pause, he rose and turned towards the door--but, no, he could not face the large, cheerless drawing-room upstairs; instead, he sat down by the fire, and set himself to consider his future, and, in a more hazy sense, that of his now motherless children.

But very soon, as generally happens to those who devote any time to that least profitable of occupations, Mr. Tapster found that his thoughts drifted aimlessly, not to the future where he would have them be, but to the past--that past which he desired to forget, to obliterate from his memory.

Till rather more than a year ago few men of his age--he had then been sixty, he was now sixty-one--enjoyed a pleasanter and, from his own point of view, a better-filled life than James Tapster. How he had scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer,--in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious,--not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life, and so inclining he had found contentment and great material prosperity.

Not even in those days to which he was now looking back so regretfully had Mr. Tapster always been perfectly content; but now the poor man sitting alone by his dining-room fire, only remembered what had been good and pleasant in his former state. He was aware that his brother William--and William's wife, Maud--both thought that even now he had much to be thankful for; his line of business was brisk, scarcely touched by foreign compet.i.tion, his income increasing at a steady rate of progression, and his children were exceptionally healthy.

But, alas! now that, in place of a pretty little Mrs. Tapster on whom to spend easily-earned money, his substance was being squandered by a crowd of unmanageable and yet indispensable thieves,--for so Mr. Tapster voicelessly described the five servants whose loud talk and laughter were even now floating up from the bas.e.m.e.nt below,--he did not feel his financial stability so comfortable a thing as he had once done.

His very children, who should now be, as he told himself complainingly, his greatest comfort, had degenerated from two st.u.r.dy, well-behaved little boys and a charming baby girl, into three unruly, fretful imps, setting him at defiance, and terrorising their two attendants, who, though carefully chosen by their Aunt Maud, did not seem to manage them as well as the old nurse who had been an ally of the ex-Mrs. Tapster.

Looking back at the whole horrible affair, for so in his own mind Mr.

Tapster justly designated the divorce case in which he had figured as the successful pet.i.tioner, he wondered uneasily if he had done quite wisely--wisely, that is, for his own repute and comfort.

He knew very well that had it not been for William--or rather for Maud--he would never have found out the dreadful truth. Nay, more; he was dimly aware that but for them, and for their insistence on it as the only proper course open to him, he would never have taken action. All would have been forgiven and forgotten had not William--and more especially Maud--said he must divorce Flossy, if not for his own sake, ah! what irony! then for that of his children.

Of course he felt grateful to his brother William and to his brother's wife for all they had done for him since that sad time. Still, in the depths of his heart, Mr. Tapster felt ent.i.tled to blame, and sometimes almost to hate, his kind brother and sister. To them both--or rather to Maud--he really owed the break-up of his life, for, when all was said and done, it had to be admitted (though Maud did not like him to remind her of it) that Flossy had met the villain while staying with the William Tapsters at Boulogne. Respectable London people should have known better than to take a furnished house at a disreputable French watering-place--a place full of low English!

Sometimes it was only by a great exercise of self-control that he, James Tapster, could refrain from telling Maud what he thought of her conduct in this matter, the more so that she never seemed to understand how greatly she--and William--had been to blame.

On one occasion Maud had even said how surprised she had been that James had cared to go away to America, leaving his pretty young wife alone for as long as three months. Why hadn't she said so at the time, then?

Of course, he had thought that he could leave Flossy to be looked after and kept out of mischief by Maud--and William. But he had been--in more than one sense, alas!--bitterly deceived.

Still, it's never any use crying over spilt milk, so Mr. Tapster got up from his chair and walked round the room, looking absently, as he did so, at the large Landseer engraving of which he was naturally proud. If only he could forget--put out of his mind for ever--the whole affair!

Well, perhaps with the Decree being made Absolute would come oblivion.

He sat down again before the fire. Staring at the hot embers, he reminded himself that Flossy, wicked, ungrateful Flossy, had disappeared out of his life. This being so, why think of her? The very children had at last left off asking inconvenient questions about their mamma----

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 Pet.i.tioner had scarcely seen Flossy's dreadful ingrat.i.tude in its true colours till he had heard his Counsel's moderate comments on the case.

This evening Mr. Tapster saw Flossy's dreadful ingrat.i.tude 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mvented 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.