Array Sapper - The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile Sapper

It was a hat shop—Chez Bernie it was called: and Molly had taken me there for the purpose of disregarding my advice. It appeared that she often came to this shop. It was run by a lady who had built up the business herself. Moreover she was a dear: had struggled through a real bad time and now had made good. Sheila Bernie was her name, and from the corner to which I had retired I saw Sheila Bernie come out from an inner sanctum and greet Molly.

And Sheila Bernie was the girl I had known as Sheila Blair—the wife of Raymond Blair, drunken derelict.

Molly called me up to introduce me, and for a moment Jim's girl—in my mind I always called her that—stared at me with a puzzled frown.

"Surely," she said hesitatingly, "we have met somewhere?"

I bowed and took her hand.

"Tampico," I said. "In the South Seas."

I heard her catch her breath, and then I went on.

"Mr. Maitland and I landed in London about a month ago."

I knew that Molly was looking from one to the other of us, but she didn't make any fool remark about the world being small. And even when the girl went on, with her head thrown back in that queer little way that I remembered so well, Molly said nothing, being that manner of human who knows when to speak and when not to.

"Will you tell Mr. Maitland," said the girl quietly, "that I made a very grave mistake which I have never ceased regretting. I can quite understand that he will find it impossible to forgive me, but I had no method of communicating with him."

"I will certainly tell him," I assured her. "But is there any reason, Mrs. Blair, why you shouldn't tell him yourself?"

For a moment she hesitated.

Then: "I am here every day from nine till five."

She turned to Molly, but for the first and last time in her life Molly's interest in hats seemed to have waned. Tea was her sole thought, and she would come back again tomorrow when she had more time. So tea it was, and at tea came the inquisition.

"Tell me everything, Dick. Why did you call her Mrs. Blair? I've known her now for two years: I've stayed with her sometimes down in a little bungalow she's got down in Sussex. And she's never mentioned the fact that she was married."

"Her husband died some years ago," I said quietly, and my thoughts went back to that sun-drenched dusty street in Tampico.

"It's an amazing, an incredible coincidence running into her this afternoon. You see there has never been another woman in Jim's life since he met her. And I think he'd given up all hope of ever seeing her again."

And then I told her the whole story. I told her of Tampico, of its loneliness and its rottenness; I told her of the human derelicts who died their drink-sodden deaths in it. And I told her of Raymond Blair.

"In your life, Molly," I. said, "you've probably never come across such a case. You've seen men tight maybe, and on that you've based your ideas of drunkenness. Blair was a crawling, pitiful thing: he wasn't a man at all. When the drink was out of him there was no depth to which he wouldn't sink to get it: when the drink was in him—and this is the point I want to make clear—he was almost normal. In fact, he had got into the last and final stage of the drunkard."

"And that was Sheila's husband," said Molly, very low.

"That was her husband," I answered gravely. "She wasn't out there with him, and she thought he was a trader in a big way. In fact, she used to send out money to him every month to help him expand his business. How she got it I don't know—but it went down his throat right enough."

"What a brute!" cried Molly.

"When a man gets to that condition, my dear, he's dead to every sense of decency. And things might have gone on till he died without her ever finding out, but for the fact that she suddenly decided to come out herself and see her husband. She arrived with Jim—he looked after her on the way out. And that was when I met him first."

"And what was her husband doing?"

"Raymond Blair was in a saloon reciting nursery rhymes for the benefit of a bunch of Dagos, and crawling on the floor like a dog to get the nickels they flung at him in their contempt."

"How awful!" whispered Molly.

"You see the drink was out of him, and that was the problem."

And then I briefly sketched for her the fight in Dutch Joe's gin hall, and the council of war in MacAndrew's house.

"There he was—a gibbering, crawling thing: and waiting for him at the hotel was his wife, utterly unsuspecting—his wife, the woman Jim loved. Don't make any mistake about that point—Jim loved her, and she wasn't far off loving Jim. But she was straight, and she was white, and she had come out to join her husband.

"It was Jim who decided. He might have taken Blair to the hotel as he was, and then waited for the inevitable end that could not be long delayed. But he didn't: he gave the man a bottle of gin and turned him into something comparatively normal. You see, as I've told you before, with Blair the position of things was reversed. Blair drunk was normal: Blair sober was just a dreadful nightmare. And it seemed to Jim that it was the only way of playing the game. But you could hardly expect the girl to understand that.

"What Blair said to her I don't know. I suppose she found him peculiar and changed—I suppose he tried to make some pitiful excuse. At any rate she found out that he had just drunk a complete bottle of gin. He'd gone to the hotel with Jim, and it was Jim she blamed. She thought he'd deliberately gone out of his way to make her husband drunk. Which was no more than the truth, but not for the reason which she imagined.

"I suppose she knew Jim was in love with her, and thought he hoped by this method to blacken her husband in her eyes. So she called Jim a cur, and told him she never wished to see him again. And Jim never said a word nor would he let MacAndrew or me explain. He just stood there until she'd finished—and at the top of the stairs stood her husband with his hands shaking and his lips trembling and a look of pitiable entreaty in his eyes. One could almost hear him saying, 'Don't give me away.' And Jim didn't. He turned on his heel and went out into the night, and he's never seen her since that day. We went off together next morning on the boat."

"But it was big, Dick—big," said Molly, and her eyes were shining. "And she knows now, anyway."

"Yes—she knows now," I answered. "During the remaining six months of his life she must have seen him sober fairly often. And maybe MacAndrew put her wise later."

"So it's all come right after all," cried Molly. "You'll tell Jim, and he'll go round and they'll meet again."

"I shall tell Jim right enough," I answered. "But he's a queer, proud sort of blighter, you know, and—"

"You don't mean to say," interrupted Molly, "that you think he'll be such an ass as to stick in his toes and jib?"

"Dash it all!" I said rather feebly, "you must admit that it's a bit galling to a fellow to be abused like a pickpocket for doing one of the whitest things he could possibly have done."

"That was years ago," cried Molly scornfully. "He ought to have forgotten all about it by this time."

"Well, he hasn't," I said. "Besides, how do you know that she is in love with him?"

"Because I saw her face when you mentioned his name."

"You weren't looking at her: you were looking at me."

"My dear boy," said Molly kindly, "don't expose your limitations too much. These things are a little beyond you. I have definitely decided that Jim and Sheila Bernie—or Blair, whichever you prefer—are to be married on the same day as you and I. You will, therefore, tell him where she is to be found, and if necessary conduct him to her shop tomorrow morning personally. You will then leave them alone, and engage a table for four at the Ritz for lunch."