"Yes," said one of the curates, fiercely. "You may say 'Lord,' but we were determined to get in, and in we have got. John, shut the door. Mother, don't put yourself about."
John, being the heavy-faced and heavy-handed man, shut the door.
"Where is Mr. Henry Leek?" demanded the other curate.
Now Priam, whose curiosity had been excusably excited by the unusual sounds in the hall, was peeping through a chink of the sitting-room door, and the elderly woman caught the glint of his eyes. She pushed open the door, and, after a few seconds' inspection of him, said:
"There you are, Henry! After thirty years! To think of it!"
Priam was utterly at a loss.
"I'm his wife, ma'am," the visitor continued sadly to Alice. "I'm sorry to have to tell you. I'm his wife. I'm the rightful Mrs. Henry Leek, and these are my sons, come with me to see that I get justice."
Alice recovered very quickly from the shock of amazement. She was a woman not easily to be startled by the vagaries of human nature. She had often heard of bigamy, and that her husband should prove to be a bigamist did not throw her into a swoon. She at once, in her own mind, began to make excuses for him. She said to herself, as she inspected the real Mrs. Henry Leek, that the real Mrs. Henry Leek had certainly the temperament which manufactures bigamists. She understood how a person may slide into bigamy. And after thirty years!... She never thought of bigamy as a crime, nor did it occur to her to run out and drown herself for shame because she was not properly married to Priam!
No, it has to be said in favour of Alice that she invariably took things as they were.
"I think you'd better all come in and sit down quietly," she said.
"Eh! It's very kind of you," said the mother of the curates, limply.
The last thing that the curates wanted to do was to sit down quietly. But they had to sit down. Alice made them sit side by side on the sofa. The heavy, elder brother, who had not spoken a word, sat on a chair between the sideboard and the door. Their mother sat on a chair near the table. Priam fell into his easy-chair between the fireplace and the sideboard. As for Alice, she remained standing; she showed no nervousness except in her handling of the toasting-fork.
It was a great situation. But unfortunately ordinary people are so unaccustomed to the great situation, that, when it chances to come, they feel themselves incapable of living up to it. A person gazing in at the window, and unacquainted with the facts, might have guessed that the affair was simply a tea party at which the guests had arrived a little too soon and where no one was startlingly proficient in the art of small-talk.
Still, the curates were apparently bent on doing their best.
"Now, mother!" one of them urged her.
The mother, as if a spring had been touched in her, began: "He married me just thirty years ago, ma'am; and four months after my eldest was born--that's John there"--(pointing to the corner near the door)--"he just walked out of the house and left me. I'm sorry to have to say it. Yes, sorry I am! But there it is. And never a word had I ever given him! And eight months after that my twins were born. That's Harry and Matthew"--(pointing to the sofa)--"Harry I called after his father because I thought he was like him, and just to show I bore no ill-feeling, and hoping he'd come back! And there I was with these little children! And not a word of explanation did I ever have. I heard of Harry five years later--when Johnnie was nearly five--but he was on the Continent and I couldn't go traipsing about with three babies. Besides, if I had gone!... Sorry I am to say it, ma'am; but many's the time he's beaten me, yes, with his hands and his fists! He's knocked me about above a bit. And I never gave him a word back. He was my husband, for better for worse, and I forgave him and I still do. Forgive and forget, that's what I say. We only heard of him through Matthew being second curate at St. Paul's, and in charge of the mission hall. It was your milkman that happened to tell Matthew that he had a customer same name as himself. And you know how one thing leads to another. So we're here!"
"I never saw this lady in my life," said Priam excitedly, "and I'm absolutely certain I never married her. I never married any one; except, of course, you, Alice!"
"Then how do you explain this, sir?" exclaimed Matthew, the younger twin, jumping up and taking a blue paper from his pocket. "Be so good as to pass this to father," he said, handing the paper to Alice.
Alice inspected the document. It was a certificate of the marriage of Henry Leek, valet, and Sarah Featherstone, spinster, at a registry office in Paddington. Priam also inspected it. This was one of Leek's escapades! No revelations as to the past of Henry Leek would have surprised him. There was nothing to be done except to give a truthful denial of identity and to persist in that denial. Useless to say soothingly to the lady visitor that she was the widow of a gentleman who had been laid to rest in Westminster Abbey!
"I know nothing about it," said Priam doggedly.
"I suppose you'll not deny, sir, that your name is Henry Leek," said Henry, jumping up to stand by Matthew.
"I deny everything," said Priam doggedly. How could he explain? If he had not been able to convince Alice that he was not Henry Leek, could he hope to convince these visitors?
"I suppose, madam," Henry continued, addressing Alice in impressive tones as if she were a crowded congregation, "that at any rate you and my father are--er--living here together under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Leek?"
Alice merely lifted her eyebrows.
"It's all a mistake," said Priam impatiently. Then he had a brilliant inspiration. "As if there was only one Henry Leek in the world!"
"Do you really recognize my husband?" Alice asked.
"Your husband, madam!" Matthew protested, shocked.
"I wouldn't say that I recognized him as he was," said the real Mrs. Henry Leek. "No more than he recognizes me. After thirty years!....Last time I saw him he was only twenty-two or twenty-three. But he's the same sort of man, and he has the same eyes. And look at Henry's eyes. Besides, I heard twenty-five years ago that he'd gone into service with a Mr. Priam Farll, a painter or something, him that was buried in Westminster Abbey. And everybody in Putney knows that this gentleman----"
"Gentleman!" murmured Matthew, discontented.
"Was valet to Mr. Priam Farll. We've heard that everywhere."
"I suppose you'll not deny," said Henry the younger, "that Priam Farll wouldn't be likely to have two valets named Henry Leek?"
Crushed by this Socratic reasoning, Priam kept silence, nursing his knees and staring into the fire.
Alice went to the sideboard where she kept her best china, and took out three extra cups and saucers.
"I think we'd all better have some tea," she said tranquilly. And then she got the tea-caddy and put seven teaspoonfuls of tea into one of the tea-pots.
"It's very kind of you, I'm sure," whimpered the authentic Mrs. Henry Leek.
"Now, mother, don't give way!" the curates admonished her.
"Don't you remember, Henry," she went on whimpering to Priam, "how you said you wouldn't be married in a church, not for anybody? And how I gave way to you, like I always did? And don't you remember how you wouldn't let poor little Johnnie be baptized? Well, I do hope your opinions have altered. Eh, but it's strange, it's strange, how two of your sons, and just them two that you'd never set eyes on until this day, should have made up their minds to go into the church! And thanks to Johnnie there, they've been able to. If I was to tell you all the struggles we've had, you wouldn't believe me. They were clerks, and they might have been clerks to this day, if it hadn't been for Johnnie. But Johnnie could always earn money. It's that engineering! And now Matthew's second curate at St. Paul's and getting fifty pounds a year, and Henry'll have a curacy next month at Bermondsey--it's been promised, and all thanks to Johnnie!" She wept.
Johnnie, in the corner, who had so far done nought but knock at the door, maintained