The Child Wife

The mirth was kept up till the guests had got into that condition jocularly called “How come you so?”

It applied alike to male and female. Fan, the Honourable Geraldine, and two other frail daughters of Eve, having indulged in the grape juice as freely as their gentlemen fellow-revellers.

At breaking up, but one of the party seemed firm upon his feet. This was the Count de Valmy.

It was not his habit to be hard-headed; but on this occasion he had preserved himself, and for a purpose.

Busy with their own imbibing, nobody noticed him secretly spilling his liquor into the spittoon, while pretending to “drink fair.”

If they had, they might have wondered, but could not have guessed why. The fiend himself could not have imagined his foul design in thus dodging the drink.

His gay friends, during the early part of the entertainment, had observed his abstraction. The Honourable Geraldine had rallied him upon it. But in due time all had become so mellow, and merry, that no one believed any other could be troubled with depression of spirits.

An outside spectator closely scrutinising the countenance of Mr Swinton might have seen indications of such, as also on his part an effort to conceal it His eyes seemed at times to turn inward, as if his thoughts were there, or anywhere except with his roystering companions.

He had even shown neglectful of his cards; although the pigeon to be plucked was his adversary in the game.

Some powerful or painful reflection must have been causing his absent-mindedness; and it seemed a relief to him when, satiated with carousal, the convives gave tacit consent to a general débandade.

There had been eight of the supper party, and four cabs, called to the entrance door of the café, received them in assorted couples.

It was as much as most of them could do to get inside; but aided by a brace of Haymarket policemen, with a like number of waiters out of the hotel, they were at length safely stowed, and the cabs drove off.

Each driver obeyed the direction given him, Scudamore escorting home the Honourable Geraldine, or rather the reverse; while Swinton, in charge of his tipsy wife, gave his cabman the order —

“Up the Park Road to Saint John’s Wood.”

It was spoken, not loudly, but in a low muttered voice, which led the man to think they could not be a married couple.

No matter, so long as he had his fare, along with a little perquisite, which the gentleman gave him.

Swinton’s weather prophecy had proved true to a shade. The night was dark as pitch, only of a dun colour on account of the fog.

And this was so thick that late fashionables, riding home in their grand carriages, were preceded each carriage by a pair of linkmen.

Along Piccadilly and all through Mayfair, torches were glaring through the thick vapour; the tongues of their bearers filling the streets with jargon.

Farther on across Oxford Street there were fewer of them; and beyond Portman Square they ceased to be seen altogether – so that the cab, a four-wheeler, containing the Count de Valmy and his countess, crept slowly along Baker Street, its lamps illuminating a circle of scarce six feet around it.

“It will do,” said Swinton to himself, craning his neck out of the window, and scrutinising the night.

He had made this reflection before, as, first of his party, he came out on the steps of the Café d’Europe.

He did not speak it aloud, though, for that matter, his wife would not have heard him. Not even had he shouted it in her ear. She was asleep in a corner of the cab.

Before this she had been a “little noisy,” singing snatches of a song, and trying to repeat the words of an ambiguous jeu d’esprit she had heard that evening for the first time.

She was now altogether unconscious of where she was, or in what company – as proved by her occasionally waking up, calling out “Spooney!” – addressing her husband as the other count, and sometimes as “Kate the coper!”

Her own count appeared to be unusually careful of her. He took much pains to keep her quiet; but more in making her comfortable. She had on a long cloth cloak of ample dimensions – a sort of night wrapper. This he adjusted over her shoulders, buttoning it close around her throat that her chest should not be exposed to the fog.

By the time the cab had crawled through Upper Baker Street, and entered the Park Road, Fan had not only become quiet, but was at length sound asleep; her tiny snore alone telling that she lived.

On moved the vehicle through the dun darkness, magnified by the mist to twice its ordinary size, and going slow and silent as a hearse.

“Where?” asked the driver, slewing his body around, and speaking in through the side window.

“South Bank! You needn’t go inside the street. Set us down at the end of it, in the Park Road.”

“All right,” rejoined the Jarvey, though not thinking so. He thought it rather strange, that a gent with a lady in such queer condition should desire to be discharged in that street at such an hour, and especially on such a night!

Still it admitted of an explanation, which his experience enabled him to supply. The lady had stayed out a little too late. The gent wished her to get housed without making a noise; and it would not do for cab wheels to be heard drawing up by “the door.”

What mattered it to him, cabby, so long as the fare should be forthcoming, and the thing made “square”? He liked it all the better, as promising a perquisite.

In this he was not disappointed. At the corner designated, the gentleman got out, lifting his close muffled partner in his arms, and holding her upright upon the pavement.

With his spare hand he gave the driver a crown piece, which was more than double his fare.

After such largess, not wishing to appear impertinent, cabby climbed back to his box; readjusted the manifold drab cape around his shoulders; tightened his reins; touched the screw with his whip; and started back towards the Haymarket, in hopes of picking up another intoxicated fare.

“Hold on to my arm, Fan!” said Swinton to his helpless better half as soon as the cabman was out of hearing. “Lean upon me. I’ll keep you up. So! Now, come along!”

Fan made no reply. The alcohol overpowered her – now more than ever. She was too tipsy to talk, even to walk; and her husband had to support her whole weight, almost to drag her along. She was quite unconscious whither. But Swinton knew.

It was not along South Bank; they had passed the entrance of that quiet thoroughfare, and were proceeding up the Park Road!

And why? He also knew why.

Under the Park Road passes the Regent’s Canal, spanned by the bridge already spoken of. You would only know you were crossing the canal by observing a break in the shrubbery. This opens westward. On the east side of the road is the park wall rising high overhead, and shadowed by tall trees.

Looking towards Paddington, you see an open list, caused by the canal and its tow-path. The water yawns far below your feet, on both sides draped with evergreens; and foot-passengers along the Park Road are protected from straying over by a parapet scarce breast-high.

Upon this bridge Swinton had arrived. He had stopped and stood close up to the parapet, as if for a rest, his wife still clinging to his arm.

He was resting; but not with the intention to proceed farther. He was recovering strength for an effort so hellish, that, had there been light around them, he and his companion would have appeared as a tableau vivant– the spectacle of a murderer about to despatch his victim! And it would have been a tableau true to the life; for such in reality was his design!

There was no light to shine upon its execution; no eye to see him suddenly let go his wife’s arm, draw the wrapper round her neck, so that the clasp came behind; and then, turning it inside out, fling the skirt over her head!

There could be no ear to hear that smothered cry, as, abruptly lifted in his arms, she was pitched over the parapet of the bridge! Swinton did not even himself stay to hear the plunge. He only heard it; indistinctly blending with the sound of his own footsteps, as with terrified tread he retreated along the Park Road!

Chapter Eighty.

On the Tow-Rope

With difficulty cordelling his barge around the Regent’s Park, Bill Bootle, the canal boatman, was making slow speed. This because the fog had thickened unexpectedly; and it was no easy matter to guide his old horse along the tow-path.

He would not have attempted it; but that he was next morning due in the Paddington Basin; where, at an early hour, the owner of the boat would be expecting him.