Chapter XXV: Closing Strands

Hamilton Fairfax came into the drawing-room of their newly bought house in Kent and kissed his wife, and sat down in a deep armchair. She perched herself upon the arm and leaned her shoulder against his. He was looking gloomy, and she commented on it.

“I don’t feel cheerful, my dear, and that’s a fact,” he said. “I’ve had to run down to Portland to see that pernicious old guardian of yours, and the sight of fallen splendor is never very exhilarating.”

“Poor Mr. Shelf!” said Amy Fairfax, softly. “I suppose he deserves his fourteen years, but, on my soul, I’m sorry for him. I wish from my heart that he had managed to get away in the _Gazelle_.”

“And scoffed at the law?”

“Oh, bother the law! I’m thinking of the man; not of what he did. He was always most kind to me.”

“If it hadn’t been for some one else who took an interest in you, my dear, he’d have made off with your fortune with his other plunder.”

“Don’t blow your own trumpet, Hamilton. I know quite well all about that. But the facts remain that he didn’t get it; and that he was always fond of me; and that he maneuvered to get me out of the house that awful night when the _exposé_ came. That last thing alone would make me think kindly of him if nothing else did. What is he doing now? Tell me!”

“Studying the mechanical properties of oolitic limestone; making up to the jail chaplain; and sampling a diet which is entirely new to him. He’s gone through his spell of solitary work, and is employed now in the quarries. He has lost three stone in weight, wears his knickerbocker suit most jauntily, and looks brown and muscular, and vastly healthy. He is not so dejected as one might expect. He has a position in Portland just as he had in London. The humbler operators look up to him and envy his dashing knaveries. They naturally feel a respect for a man who has pilfered more pounds than they have stolen pennies, and yet earned no heavier a sentence.”

“You are bitter against him, Hamilton.”

“I know I am, dear, and I can’t help it. The very sight of the man makes my gorge rise inside me. When I think of the awful misery he has caused to so many thousands of people, I feel that the only thing suitable for him is one of those Chinese punishments with physical torture in them. He couldn’t have risen superior to that. But as it is, he has had strength of mind to accept the situation philosophically, and use his wit to make it as endurable as possible. They told me he is a model convict; gets up early and cleans his cell; sings in chapel with noise and zeal; works in the quarries with cheerfulness and intelligence; and is as keen to earn all his marks and his shilling a week without stoppages as ever he was to turn a profit in the City. He was sent into penal servitude to suffer and repent, and he isn’t doing either. He’s amusing his brain by humbugging the chaplain with a well-acted repentance, by courting admiration amongst the other convicts, and by scheming to get the largest possible amount of bodily benefits possible under the circumstances. And he’s looking forward to a snug and comfortable retirement when his spell of prison is over. He’s a living piece of ridicule to the law that sentenced him, and I felt that I wanted to make him wear a _cangue_, or to pour boiling oil over him, to make him properly sorry for himself.”

“Well,” said Amy, “if married people didn’t differ occasionally, married life would be very dull. This is one of the times when we counteract dullness, because here I don’t agree with you in the very least. I’m quite human enough to be glad that a man I always liked is making the best of a very bad job. I know he’d feel the same if I were in his shoes. He always liked me—and George. Now it isn’t many men who, when the trouble was thickest on them, would have taken all the care he did over a dog.”

“Well, George has got a comfortable berth here,” said Fairfax. “But old Shelf needn’t have made such a fuss about it. We’d have given the animal a home just for the bare asking.”

“I like him for the fuss,” Amy retorted. “It wasn’t humbug in the least; any one could see that. He just loved that dog, and he was genuinely anxious about what was going to happen to him.”

The fox-terrier, who was lying on the hearth-rug, gave a lazy tail-wag at hearing his name mentioned, and blinked sleepily.

“If fatness is any criterion, George has got a very comfortable job of it as dog to this establishment,” said Fairfax. “He seems to drop into altered circumstances as philosophically as his master does.”

“I wonder what Mrs. Shelf is doing now,” said the young wife, dreamily. “I wonder if she is alive anywhere. She could not have disappeared more completely. She was seen on the night of that memorable ball; and the next morning she was not; and no one seems to have got a word of her since. I do wonder what has happened to her.”

“That,” said Fairfax, “is the other piece of news I have for you, and though you may like her fate, it isn’t to my taste at all. The lady is not only very much alive, but she is practising her old game with the most brilliant success in Paraguay. She is now Donna Laura Anaquel (which is ‘Shelf’ in a Spanish garb), a grass widow, and the leader of State society in Asuncion. The reigning President is a widower, and the Bishop of Asuncion has offered to grant Donna Laura a divorce on the ground of desertion. It is a polite piece of attention, and according to accounts she could certainly be Mrs. President if she liked; but she has refused to cut herself adrift from the excellent Theodore; and at the pace she is going will probably get herself elected Dictatoress of the Republic at the next election or revolution, or whatever it may be, through sheer weight of influence and popularity. She is really a most astounding woman.”

“She’s as clever as paint, if that is what you mean. But why Paraguay? and what’s she doing it on? That sort of amusement costs money.”

“Of course she has money at her command. Previous reputation counts nothing, either one way or the other, in that blissful republic. But with money and wit you can do mostly anything you want. As usual, she has to thank Mr. Theodore Shelf for the sinews of war. He, bless his heart, foresaw his crash in this country for two whole years before it came to pass, and bought a fine _estançia_ near Asuncion, and transmitted shareholders’ money to banks in that city to run it on. She’s got hold of the lot, and as England has no extradition treaty with the rogues out there, she’s making it hum. That woman’s a lot too clever for my liking, Amy; but I’ve one solid hope for her. Either she may meddle with politics too much and get shot, or else she may work out human justice by spending up all the stolen hoard, and leave that old rascal Shelf nothing to fall back on when he gets out of Portland on his ticket-of-leave.”

“That,” replied Mrs. Fairfax, “is another point on which we will disagree amiably. According to accounts, there is room for much improvement in Paraguay in every way. The Shelfs are just the people to bring it about. They simply bristle with energy. If he had the handling of the finances of the country they would be bound to take an upward turn; and, for the social part, she is just the one woman in all the world to lay down an entire set of new and up-to-date laws. Moreover, she’d make them dress like Christians and Parisians, and that is an art (if one may believe pictures) in which they are obviously deficient.”

“Hum,” said Fairfax. “Your notions may be generous, Amy, but I’m afraid they lean towards anarchy.”

“I am grateful to people who have done well by me personally, that is all. You apparently are not. You might remember, my dear boy, that it was through Mrs. Shelf that you and I came together in the first instance. But, perhaps, you are angry with her for that? You may be tired of me already?”

Hamilton Fairfax laughed, and drew down his wife’s face to his own, and kissed her three times. “If you put it that way,” he said, “I shall have to swallow my resentment against the Shelfs for good and all.”

“That’s right,” said Amy. “Now I like you ever so much better. I say, ring the bell and let’s go out for a spin in the tandem.”