Lovers ALl Untrue Part IV

Mr Draper gives way and agrees to let Marion get married to Mr Horridge. She hopes that her marriage will help her mother and Ellen and that she will be happy, with Edward Horridge, who is kind and gentle to her. But she still has Johnny and her affair with him in her past. When she comes back home, Johnny comes to see her and she tells him not quite truthfully, that her father has decided to get her married and that she is now engaged to Mr Horridge. Johnny is not at all happy. He has again failed to make a marriage that will immprove his life financially, and he's angry with Marion. He is also ill. He has a delicate stomach which gives him problems and he is not well and upset and eager for revenge on her. He reminds her that he has the love letters she wrote him, which speak of their love making and her being pregnant. Marion fears that she will have to play along with him, and half agrees to leave the house and go to London with him. She tells him that she has a legacy which she will inherit when she comes of age... and Johnny promises then to bring the letters and burn them in front of her. She feels anger at how Johnny treated her, seducing her to get her into a mood where she would hopefully marry him, and now he's using her letters against her, to try and destroy any happiness she might have with Edward Horridge. When he comes the following night, she gets him to burn the letters but still does not trust him entirely, and she offers him a drink of brandy laced with arsenic. A few days later, Johnny is taken ill and dies, and his landlady Mrs Fenner who was fond of him, finds herself left with the task of burying him as he has no family or friends. She sells Johnny's clothes and his few valuables to raise some money, and finds some papers in his hatbox. Reading them, she finds that they are love letters. Johnny had not after all destroyed all of Marion's letters, he was holding out on her. Mrs Fenner is a working woman and she is shocked by the letters Marion has written which are frank about their sexual encounters. She also signs herself Johnny's loving wife and mentions her pregnancy. Mrs Fenner works out that this girl who wrote Johnny letters is the daughter of the town's only maltster. Years ago, her husband worked for Mr Draper, but he was ill treated when he became ill and wasnt able to work. She is maliciously pleased to find that Mr Draper's daughter got pregnant and had to get married as she thinks, and decides to take the letters to Draper and ask for money, just to pay for the funeral. She goes to Mr Draper's house and tells him she has letters which prove that Marion was pregnant and had to get married, he refuses to listen to her, and burns the letters, telling her that he doesn't believe a word of it. However he has always been suspicious of Marion, realising that she was always in rebellion against his dominance, and he determines to find out if she really did marry Johnny De Brissac.