Violet Forster's Lover
by Richard Marsh · English · Gutenberg #40450 · 452,486 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Violet Forster's Lover
Author: Richard Marsh
Illustrator: E. S. Hodgson
Release date: August 8, 2012 [eBook #40450]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIOLET FORSTER'S LOVER ***
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(Oxford University)
VIOLET FORSTER'S LOVER
By the Same Author
* * *
TWIN SISTERS
THE LOVELY MRS. BLAKE
THE INTERRUPTED KISS
* * *
_Cassell & Co., Ltd., London_
[Illustration: "'Sydney!' she cried. 'My darling! Thank God, it's
you.'" (_see page 145_).]
VIOLET FORSTER'S LOVER
BY
RICHARD MARSH
_Author of "The Interrupted Kiss," "The Lovely Mrs. Blake,"
"Twin Sisters," etc. etc_.
WITH A FRONTISPIECE IN COLOUR BY
E. S. HODGSON
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD.
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1912
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1. The Card on the Floor.
2. While the Groom Waited.
3. "Stop, Thief!"
4. The Good Samaritan.
5. Dreaming.
6. His Wife.
7. Among Thieves.
8. The Sandwich-man.
9. The Drapery.
10. The Woman Tempted Me.
11. In the Wood.
12. "What Does it Mean?"
13. The Alcove.
14. "Who is Simmons?"
15. 'Twixt the Dark and Daylight.
16. The Lacquered Club.
17. Sleepers Awakened.
18. In Bed.
19. The Two Women.
20. The Leather Bag.
21. An Envelope.
22. The Countess and Violet.
23. The Latest Story.
24. 2A Cobden Mansions.
25. Julia Spurrier.
26. Happiness!
27. A Game of Billiards.
28. An Irregular Visitor.
29. The Visitor Remains.
30. The Story of what Happened after the Easter Ball.
31. Asking Forgiveness.
32. In the Taxicab.
33. "Vi!"
34. Some Letters and a Telegram.
VIOLET FORSTER'S LOVER
CHAPTER I
The Card on the Floor
Tickell turned his cards.
"A straight." The men all bent over to look. "King high--there you are,
nine, ten, knave, queen, king; a mixed lot, but they'll take some
beating."
Something on Beaton's face seemed to suggest that the other's hand was
unexpectedly strong. He smiled--not easily.
"You're right, they will; and I'm afraid----" He turned his hand half
over, then, letting the five cards fall uppermost on the table, sat and
stared at him, as if startled. It was Major Reith who announced the
value of the hand.
"A full and ace high--he's got you, Jack; a bumper, Sydney."
He pushed the salver which served as a pool over towards Beaton.
Obviously it contained a great deal of money; there were both notes and
gold, and cheques and half-sheets of paper.
"What will you take for it, Sydney?" asked George Pierce.
Anthony Dodwell interposed.
"One moment, before Beaton takes either the pool or--anything else.
Perhaps he won't mind saying what is the card that he dropped on the
floor."
They all looked at him--Beaton with a sudden startled turn of the head.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
Dodwell met his eager gaze with a calmness which, in its way, was
almost ominous.
"I'm afraid that question is quite unnecessary; I fancy you know quite
well what I mean. Will you pick up the card you dropped, or shall I?"
"I dropped no card." He drew his chair a little away from the table so
as to enable him to see the floor. "I didn't know it, but there does
seem to be one down there."
"Unless some good fairy removed it since you dropped it, there was
bound to be. Draycott, would you mind picking up that card?"
Noel Draycott, stooping, picking up the card, showed it to the
assembled players, in whose demeanour, for some as yet unspoken reason,
there seemed to have come a sudden change.
"It's only the nine of spades."
"Exactly, which was possibly the reason why Beaton dropped it; with the
nine of spades he could hardly have made a full."
Beaton rose to his feet, his face flushed, his tones raised.
"Dodwell, are you--are you insinuating----" The other cut him short.
"I'm insinuating nothing. You are the dealer; there's a pack close to
your hand; you gave yourself three cards; I saw you glance at them,
then drop one on to the floor, and take another off the top of the
pack--in the hope, I presume, that it was a better one. It clearly was;
the card you dropped was the nine of spades; the hand you have shown
there consists of three aces and a pair of knaves; I can't say which
was the card you took from the top of the pack, but it was one of them,
and it certainly gave you the full."
There was silence, that curious silence which suggests discomfort,
which presages a storm. It is not often that an accusation of foul play
is made at a card-table around which are seated English gentlemen.
These men were officers in one of His Majesty's regiments of Guards;
they were having what they called "a little flutter at poker" after the
mess dinner--it had gone farther perhaps than some of them had
intended. Considerable sums had been staked, and won and lost. Sydney
Beaton in particular had punted heavily. For the most part he had
lost--all his ready cash and more. For some time he had been betting
with I.O.U.'s scribbled on odd scraps of paper. There had just been a
jackpot. Five men had come in, dropping out one after the other until
only Beaton and Tickell had been left. Tickell's last raise had been a
hundred pounds; Beaton had covered the bet with an I.O.U. for £100 to
see him; the hand he had exposed was, of course, the better one; there
was a large sum of money in the pool, much the largest which it had as
yet contained; if it was his, then it would probably more than set him
on his feet again. It was the fact that there seemed to be an "if"
which caused those present to stare at each other and at him as if all
at once tongue-tied.
Beaton had gone red, then white; and now one felt that something must
have happened to the muscles of his face, its expression seemed to have
become so set and rigid. Major Reith, who was the oldest man present,
broke the silence.
"Dodwell, please be careful what you say. Come, Sydney, tell him he is
mistaken."
What Beaton said was gasped rather than spoken.
"It's a lie!"
Dodwell's manner continued unruffled. He turned to Draycott.
"Noel, I fancy I caught your eye. Am I wrong in supposing that you also
saw what happened?"
"I'm afraid I did."
"You saw Beaton drop one of the three cards he gave himself, and take
another off the top of the pack?"
"I'm afraid I did."
As Draycott repeated his former words, Beaton, still on his feet,
swinging round, struck him with such violence that the man and the
chair on which he was seated both went together to the floor. The thing
was so unexpected that it had been done before anyone could interpose.
Frank Clifford, who was on the other side of him, caught at Beaton's
arm.
"Sydney! That won't do!"
Beaton, instead of heeding his words, was endeavouring to thrust the
table away in order to get at Dodwell, who was on the other side. The
others were able to prevent his doing that.
"If I get at him," he gasped, "I'll kill him."
But they did not allow him to get at his accuser, for they held him
back; and they were five or six to one. Major Reith spoke.
"Don't make bad worse, Beaton, please; this is not a matter with which
you can deal on quite those lines. Do we understand you to deny what
Dodwell and Draycott say?"
The fact was, Beaton had not only had his share of wine at the table,
he had been drinking since, liqueur after liqueur. Trifles of that
kind, when in sufficient numbers, do not tend to cool a young man's
already heated brain. For longer than they supposed Sydney had not been
his real self; many and various were the causes which had been tending
to make him lose his balance. Then, in that supreme moment, when he
needed to keep his head more than ever in his life, he lost his balance
altogether and played the fool.
"Do you think," he shouted, "that I'll condescend to deny such a charge
coming from a beast like Draycott and a cur like Dodwell? I tell you
what I will do, I'll take them on both together and fight them to a
standstill, and choke their infernal lies back into their throats.
Major Harold Reith, if I do get hold of you, I'll tear your lying
tongue out by the roots."
He tried to get at the major, but of course they would not let him. For
a few minutes there was a discreditable scene; Beaton behaved like a
lunatic. Those who tried to keep him from attacking Major Reith he
fought tooth and nail. Between them he was borne to the ground, then,
as if he had been some wild beast, they had to drag him out of the
room, and fling the door to in his face.
When, later, inquiries were made as to his whereabouts, he was not to
be found. His room was empty. He had apparently paid a hurried visit to
it. His mess uniform was on the floor. Apparently he had torn it off
him and attired himself in something else. What he had done afterwards
there was little to show. The sentry on duty, when closely questioned,
said that Captain Beaton, in civilian dress, had passed him, reeling
like a drunken man, and vanished into the night. The sentry was the
last man connected with his regiment who saw him. Not a line came from
him; nothing was heard; the place which had known him knew him no more.
He had gone, a pariah, out into the world. He had been one of the
best-liked men in the regiment; there were many who missed him; but
there was one whose heart was nearly broken.
CHAPTER II
While the Groom Waited
Two days before that fatal night Sydney Beaton had gone down to see his
brother, Sir George Beaton, head of the family, and practically its
sole representative, in his old home at Adisham, in the County of
Wilts. The visit had been of the nature of a forlorn hope. Sydney
wanted help, pecuniary help, as he had done more than once before. He
was in a very tight place. He had piled folly on to folly, and just
lately he had surmounted the pile with the biggest of the lot. If he
could not get money quickly matters would go very ill with him.
Money-lenders and all those sort of people were not to be persuaded; he
owed them already more than they ever expected to get. Nor did he know
of any friend or acquaintance who would be likely to do what he
required; his credit was bad even among them. He did not think he would
be able to get the money from his brother; George had told him on a
previous occasion that he would never let him have another farthing;
there was evidence that he meant to keep his word. Still, Sydney had to
try lest worse befell.
But he failed, badly. There was something very like a quarrel. Sydney
confessed, after a fashion. He warned George that if he did not get the
money he wanted the family name might suffer. George, in reply, said
right out what he thought of him; he made it quite clear that his
opinion of his brother could hardly have been a worse one. He refused
to let him have even so much as a five-pound note.
"Sydney," he said with brutal frankness, "nothing can save
you--certainly my money can't; I mean, nothing can save you from
yourself. I mayn't be the steadiest mover; I'm not holding myself up as
an example----"
"There you show your wisdom."
"But you--you're the limit. In the sense in which they use the word in
the stable, you're a rogue. You're worse than an unbroken, bad-tempered
colt; you're not safe either to ride or drive. You're absolutely
certain to come a cropper, and probably a bad one. I give you my word
that I have no intention, if I can help it, of letting you bring me
down with you. You know, I'm not a rich man; I want all the money I've
got for my own use----"
"That I will admit."
"If you had your way you'd make a bankrupt of me in another couple of
years. But you're not going to have your own way; not another sovereign
do you get out of me. That's my last word."
The younger brother seemed to be moistening his lips before answering;
there was a strained look in his eyes.
"You understand that if you won't help me I'm in a hole?"
"I understand that clearly. I also understand that if I won't, what you
call, 'help' you, you'll drag me in with you. In fact, what you're
after is sheer blackmail. If there had been a witness of our
conversation, I could give you into custody for attempting to obtain
money by means of threats, and you'd be convicted. If the family name
is to be dragged in the mud by you, then I shall want all the money I
have to get it out again. Hadn't you better go? I don't propose to
offer you a bed for the night, and if you waste much more time the last
train will need some catching."
Sydney did go, after some very unbrotherly words had been exchanged;
but he did not catch the last train. The last train from that part of
the world left early; another interview which immediately followed the
one with his brother delayed him till it was dawn. As he was leaving
the house in which he was born, Ling, the butler, handed him a note,
remarking, as if imparting a confidence:
"From Miss Forster, Mr. Sydney. It reached me just after you came, but
I thought I had better not bring it in to you while you were with Sir
George."
Without a word he tore the envelope open. Within was a sheet of paper
on which were half a dozen lines.
"DEAR SYDNEY,--Why did you not let me know you were coming? How dare
you not to? If I had not seen you driving from the station I might
never have known. I shall be at the old place this evening at seven
o'clock; mind you come. I don't know that I need give a special reason
why you are to come; I take it for granted that you will jump at the
chance, but there is a special reason all the same.--VI.
"Mind--I said seven! Just you make it _seven_."
Sydney looked at his watch; it was a quarter to seven. The last train
left for London soon after eight. The station was nearly eight miles
off; the dog-cart in which he had come was waiting at the door; he had
not much time to spare if the train was not to go without him. He
arrived at a sudden resolution--all his resolutions were arrived at
suddenly, or he would have been a happier man. He spoke to the groom in
the cart.
"Go down the village and wait for me at 'The Grapes.' I'll be with you
as soon as I can."
He strode off. The groom touched his hat. He winked at Ling, who had
appeared on the doorstep. The butler resented the familiarity.
"I don't want anything of that sort from you, Sam Evans; you mind your
own business and leave others to mind theirs. You do as Mr. Sydney
tells you, and wait for him at 'The Grapes.'"
"I'll wait for him right enough, but I wouldn't mind having a trifle on
it that I keep on waiting till it's too late for him to catch his
train."
Sam Evans grinned; he kept on grinning as he drove off, although the
butler had done his best to keep him in his place. But the groom was
right; the dog-cart waited outside the village inn till it was too late
for Sydney Beaton to catch the last up train.
Autumn was come. The nights were drawing in. It was dusk. Sydney Beaton
pursued his way through gathering shadows, through trees whose foliage
had assumed the russet hues of autumn. There had been rain earlier in
the day; a northerly breeze had blown it away, the same breeze was
bringing the leaves down in showers about him as he walked. He went
perhaps a good half-mile, taking a familiar short cut across his
brother's property on to the neighbouring estate of Nuthurst. He came
to a ring of trees which ran round a little knoll, on the top of which
was what looked to be an old-fashioned summer-house. His footsteps must
have been audible as they tramped through the dry leaves; that his
approach had been heard was made plain by the fact that a feminine
figure came out of the building and down the rising ground to meet him
as he came. What sort of greeting he would have offered seemed
doubtful; something in his bearing suggested that it would have been a
less ardent one than that which he received. Moving quickly towards
him, without any hesitation the lady placed her two hands upon his
shoulders and kissed him again and again.
"Sydney, you are a wretch! Why didn't you let me know that you were
coming?"
"I scarcely knew myself until I was in the train."
"You might have sent me a telegram before the train started."
"I'm only here for half an hour; I shall have to hurry off to catch the
last train back to town."
Something in his words or manner seemed to strike her. She drew a
little away from him in order to see him better.
"Sydney, what's wrong?"
He smiled, not gaily. To her keen eyes his bearing seemed to lack that
touch of boyish carelessness with which she was familiar.
"What isn't wrong? Isn't everything always wrong with me? Aren't I one
of those unlucky creatures with whom nothing ever does go right?"
"Have you quarrelled with George again?"
"He's told me he couldn't give me a bed for the night, which doesn't
seem to point to our being on the best of terms."
There was a momentary pause before she spoke again; and then it was
with quizzically uplifted eyebrows.
"More money, Sydney?"
He was silent. His hands in his jacket pockets, his feet a little
apart, he stood and looked at her, something on his handsome face which
seemed to have obscured its sunshine. When he spoke it was with what,
coming from him, was very unusual bitterness.
"Vi, what's the use of this? I didn't want to let you know that I was
coming; I didn't mean to let you know that I had come, because--what's
the use of it?"
"What's the use of my loving you, do you mean? Well, for one thing, I
thought that you loved me.
"An unlucky beggar who is always in a mess, and only scrambles out of
one hole to get into another--what does his love matter to anyone?"
"I cannot tell you how much it matters to me. And, Sydney, doesn't my
love matter to you?"
"Vi! you mustn't tempt me."
"How do you mean, tempt you?"
"If you only knew how I longed to take you in my arms, and keep you
there. But what's the good of longing?"
"You can take me in your arms--and keep me there--for about ten
seconds."
"Yes, I know; I know that you're a darling, the sweetest girl in the
world, but what right have I to do it? What prospect have I of ever
making you my wife? All debts, and nothing to pay them. What would your
uncle say if he came upon us now? Wouldn't he warn me off the premises,
as my brother has done? You know, my dear, you're not for such as I am.
I don't want to say anything unkind, but don't you see, can't you see,
that the only thing left for me to do is to withdraw and leave the
field open for a better man?"
"Sydney, this time you must have come a cropper."
There was that in the girl's tone which, in spite of himself, brought a
real smile to the young man's lips.
"I have. You're right. One which is going to make an end of me."
The girl shook her head gaily.
"Oh, no, it won't. I know you better. You've been coming croppers ever
since I have known you, and that's all my life, some of them awful
croppers; there must have been quite twenty from which you were never
going to rise again. But you've managed, and you'll manage again. Only,
really, I do wish you'd get out of the habit, if only for a while."
"Vi, you don't understand, this time you really don't. I'm done. I went
to my brother as a last resource--you may be pretty sure it was a last
resource--for the money which was the only thing that could save me. I
am quite serious. He told me he would not give me so much as a
sovereign; he even refused me a night's lodging. That means, as I tell
you, that I'm done. I don't know quite what will happen to me, but
something not pretty. When you and I meet again it is quite possible it
will not be as equals; I shall be in a class of which you do not take
social cognisance."
Again the young lady shook her head; if again it was with an attempt at
gaiety, there was something which looked very much like tears in her
eyes.
"What a cropper you must have come; it makes my blood run cold to hear
you talking. Have you been robbing a bank?"
"I might as well have done. I'm likely to be in as awkward a position
as if I had."
The girl looked at him steadily; his eyes met hers. Each might have
been looking into the other's soul.
"Sydney, do you still love me?"
"Wouldn't it be better for you if I were to tell you straight out that
I don't? Think, wouldn't it?"
"No, it wouldn't; it would be much worse. It would be a cowardly thing
to say, and also, I happen to know, an untrue one. I know that you do
still love me. I only asked you for the sake of hearing your answer.
You do."
"It has become a habit."
"And habits are not things which are easily rooted up."
"So it would seem."
"I don't flatter myself that your love for me is such an important a
factor in your life as I should like it to be, or you would keep clear
of croppers. I don't think you are capable of very strong and enduring
emotions where a woman is concerned; nowadays men aren't. But, in your
own fashion, you love me all the same, and you'll keep on loving me. I
know you. And it's a fashion with which I should be very well content
if----"
"Yes, if; that's it--if! So what's the use?"
"You're frightfully selfish."
"Is that a new discovery? You've told me so--how many times? And now,
when for the first time in my life I'm really generous, you say it
again."
"But you're not generous; you're only considering yourself. You're more
selfish than ever. You love me in your fashion, but you must remember
that I love you in mine. I don't see myself how I'm going to marry you
just yet awhile."
"Just yet awhile!"
"Yes, I said just yet awhile. But then, are you thinking of marrying
someone else?"
"I shall never marry any other woman if I don't marry you. I'm not that
kind of man."
"Precisely. I believe you. Nor am I that kind of girl. As I say, I may
not be able to marry you just yet awhile, nor may I ever be able to
marry you at all, but--it's you or no one. Sydney, whatever becomes of
you, you will always be the only man in the world for me. You may come
badly to grief; you may do things I would much rather you didn't do;
you may make me suffer more than the average man makes the woman who
loves him suffer; but I'd rather anything than lose you. Whatever may
become of you, whatever you do, wherever you may be, be sure of one
thing, always--that I love you. I'll make open confession. Sydney, I'd
marry you to-morrow if you wished me. I don't think you're likely to,
nor do I think that it would be good for either of us if you did,
but--there's the truth. And that confession stands for always. In
whatever plight you may find yourself, penniless and in rags--I'm only
talking to suit your mood, you know--you have merely to say so that I
can hear you, 'Come, let's marry,' and I'll be your wife, your glad and
loving wife. Here's my hand on it, and my lips to boot if you'd like
them, as soon as the thing may be."
CHAPTER III
"Stop, Thief!"
Since his brother had refused him hospitality; since Violet Forster had
spoken such sweet words to him by the summer-house; since he had been
thrown by his brother officers out of the room which he had regarded
almost as his own--these things, to Sydney Beaton, seemed how many
years ago? It was as though the Sydney Beaton that had been belonged to
one world and the Sydney Beaton that was to another. And indeed that
was the case. He had in truth passed from one world to another; out of
a world in which it was all joy, into another in which it was all
misery. But, instead of being divided by years from one another, it was
only by days. It seemed incredible that so much could have happened to
him in so short a time; but in cases such as his it is the incredible
which happens. Scarcely more than four weeks ago, twenty-eight days,
and already he was brought to this. During the last few days he had
been practically penniless; now he was literally without a farthing, or
the prospect of getting one, and it was November in London, one of
those damp, cold, foggy, uncharitable Novembers which Londoners know
well. Never since the night when he had been thrown out of the room
could he be said to have had all his wits about him, to have been, in
any real sense, himself. It was as though a cloud had settled on his
brain and dulled it; which was, perhaps, an explanation why from that
last moment of his crowning degradation he had behaved like an utter
fool. He had left the barracks with, as his whole fortune, the suit of
clothes which he was wearing, his watch and chain, his studs and links,
and about three pounds in money. All the rest of his cash, which had
been little enough, was in that last pool. His account at the bank was
overdrawn; no one owed him anything; and, placed as he was, there was
not a soul to whom he could turn. His first idea, if he could be said
to have had a really clear one, was to get out of England--it generally
is the first idea of men placed as he was; they are to be met all over
the English-speaking colonies. In his case it was impossible. He had
heard vaguely of a man working his passage, but he had no idea how it
was done. When he found his way down to the docks, and began to have
some glimmering of an idea of the state of things that obtained there,
it was borne in upon him that he had as much chance of working his
passage to any place worth going to as he had of getting to the moon.
For him there was only London, the seamy side of it.
His money lasted about a week. Then he pawned his watch and chain for
£10, and had fooled that away before he knew it. He got five more for
his links and studs, and that went. There was nothing left but the
clothes he stood up in. They were already in a state in which he had
never dreamt that clothes of his could ever be. It is unnecessary to
enter into details, but his full wardrobe was in what, a very short
time ago, would have been to him an unthinkable condition. He had to
get money somehow, or--he could not think or what. He had contemplated
suicide during the first few days; vague thoughts in that direction
still passed through his mind; but--he still lived. If he was to keep
on living, food was necessary. The less chance he had of getting food
the more he seemed to crave for it, with a craving which became sheer
agony.
That November night hunger seemed to be driving him mad. He had lived
during the last week on two or three shillings, but he himself could
scarcely have said how. He had come to look upon a common lodging-house
as a desirable haven, of a Rowton House as positive luxury; he had
slept two nights running in a Salvation Army shelter, and had been
thankful for that. The last three nights he had slept--if he could be
said to have slept at all--out of doors, under the November sky, in
mist and mire, cold and gloom. To-night he found himself in Hyde Park.
No man knows of what he is capable until his whole being cries out for
food, and gets none. When a man who has been nurtured as Sydney Beaton
had finds himself on the verge of starvation, his plight is much worse
than that of the man who has fared hardly all his days. His powers of
resistance are less, in more senses than one. Let so much be urged in
excuse of Sydney Beaton, because that night he went to Hyde Park with
some idea of asking for alms. Darkness, he thought, might shelter him;
in some sort hide his shame. He would not be able to see clearly whom
he accosted; what was much more, they would not be able to see him. But
almost at the outset he had a shock which drove all notion of playing
the beggar from him.
He was on the path on the Knightsbridge side of the Ring, under cover
of a tree. A fine rain was falling; it was the only shelter to be had.
Two men same swinging along the path. Something in their gait told him
even in the darkness, while they were still at some distance, that they
were well-to-do. He made up his mind that he would try to get out of
them at least the price of a loaf of bread; the mere thought of a hot
crusty loaf fresh from the oven made his brain reel. If he could only
get the wherewithal to purchase one from the men who were coming
towards him! Nearer they came, and nearer; they were almost on him. He
was just coming out from under the tree when one of them spoke and the
other laughed. He shrank back against the friendly trunk trembling,
shivering. He knew who the two men were; in the other world which he
had left behind they had been his brother officers: one was Anthony
Dodwell, who had accused him of foul play, the other was Noel Draycott,
who had supported the accusation! And he had been about to ask them for
the price of a loaf of bread! If he had!
They went on. Dodwell's voice came back to him again, and Draycott's
laughter. His heart was thumping so against his side that it seemed to
be shaking him to pieces. He felt sure they had not seen him. He had
noticed particularly that they never turned their heads; they were too
anxious to press on to look his way--but if they had! It was some time
after they were out of both sight and hearing that he recovered himself
sufficiently to venture out into the open. Then, like a frightened cur,
he slunk across the roadway towards the remoter portions of the park on
the other side.
What a night that was, almost the worst of all the nights that he had
had. Something, he knew not what, kept him in the park. When the hour
for closing approached, he was cowering under a clump of bushes not far
from the Serpentine. No one saw him. A policeman tramped along the
path, but did not trouble himself to search for stragglers either on
his right or left, seemingly taking it for granted that on such a night
even the most miserable wretch would not choose such quarters.
Towards morning the weather improved. When the tardy light came
back into the sky, Beaton ventured to show himself--a rain-sodden,
half-frozen, shivering, weary, hopeless, starving wretch; his hunger
seemed to be tearing at his vitals like some wild animal. A keeper eyed
him suspiciously.
"What are you doing here? Where have you been all night? Have you been
in the park?"
"In the park! Why, man, I spent last night at Claridge's Hotel, where
I've just had breakfast. You haven't got a crust of bread about you,
have you, something which you were going to give to the ducks?"
"No, I haven't. You had better take yourself outside of here. You're up
to no good, I'm sure."
The keeper passed on, leaving Beaton to obey him or not as he chose.
Sydney, aware that the park was now open to the public, did not choose.
The morning grew brighter; positively the sun began to appear in the
sky, a faint, uncertain sun in a watery sky. Riders began to come upon
the scene, for the most part masculine; those victims of too much work,
or perhaps too good living, who for various reasons are unable to take
exercise in any other form, and are ordered by their doctors to take a
regular morning ride in the park, no matter what the season of the year
or the weather. Possibly because the morning, for November, was a fine
one, the equestrians became quite numerous. Sydney stood up against the
rail to watch them. There had been times, not so very long ago, when he
had taken his morning canter in the park. As he watched the riders come
and go, it seemed incredible--now. In spite of his physical distress it
still tickled him to notice how badly some of them rode; the "Liver
Brigade" always had been famous for its bad riding. But what did it
matter how they rode? The world went very well with them; they had
slept on spring mattresses, between linen sheets, had come from
luxurious homes, were returning to an excellent meal, which they
probably lacked appetite to enjoy; while he----! He was rapidly
approaching that state of mind in which the anarchist throws bombs; if
he had had one handy he might have thrown it at one of those well-fed
looking persons there and then. If he were to stop one of them and ask
him for the price of a loaf of bread? Was it not probable that, instead
of giving him what he asked, he would summon the police? He knew them,
ignorant, stupid, selfish to the backbone, thinking that no one could
be hungry because they themselves were too well fed. The pangs of
hunger seemed suddenly to grow more intense; he would have to get food
somewhere, somehow, soon.
Two pedestrians came down the path, an old and a young man. They hailed
a passing rider. He stopped; they drew close up to the rails as he came
towards them. They were within three feet of Sydney Beaton. He could
hear distinctly what was said. The elder man drew out a sovereign
purse, and from it two gold coins. He said to the equestrian:
"You were right, Buxton, and I'm the loser. Here are your ill-gotten
gains."
He held out the coins towards the man on the horse. Always a creature
of impulse, Sydney Beaton gave way to the worst impulse he had ever had
yet; in other words, he all at once went stark, staring mad. The old
gentleman's umbrella was under his arm, in his left hand were the two
coins, in his right the sovereign purse, still open. A heavy gold chain
stretched from pocket to pocket across his waistcoat unguarded.
Probably there was a handsome gold watch at the other end of it. No
thought of anything of the kind had been in Beaton's mind one instant;
the next he stepped forward and, snatching at the unguarded chain, had
it in his possession before he himself clearly realised what he was
doing. The act was so audacious, so instantaneous, so unexpected, so
astounding, that for three or four seconds even the victim did not
appreciate what had happened. Then he shouted, so that he might have
been heard outside the park:
"The scoundrel's taken my watch and chain!"
Then his companion became alive to what had occurred, and the man on
the horse to whom he had been about to give the coins, and presently
everyone within sight and earshot. It is conceivable, and even
probable, that Beaton did not understand what he was doing till
he had done it; it was only when he saw the watch and chain in his
own hand that understanding really came. He knew he was a thief; and
the first instinct of a thief was born within him, the instinct of
self-preservation. In a moment all his energies were centred in an
attempt to escape. He rushed across the path, vaulted over the railing,
tore across the grass as fast as his feet could carry him, with the
chase at his heels. The old gentleman could not do much in the way of
chasing, but seemingly his companion could, and there, were others who
joined him who plainly were still capable of running after such a
quarry. Swift-footed though he knew himself to be, before he had taken
many steps Sydney knew that he would owe not a little to fortune if he
escaped scot free. His impulse was to hurl from him the incriminating
watch and chain, but that was an impulse to which he did not yield. It
would do him no good; everyone would see him throw it, just as everyone
had seen him take it. The watch would certainly be damaged, perhaps
ruined; there would be nothing gained by treating it in such brutal
fashion. So he crammed it into his jacket pocket, and set himself to
move yet faster. The victim's companion was uncomfortably close behind
him.
It was plain that he would have to reckon with more pursuers than one.
People were coming towards him from all sides, even from the front. A
crowd was gathering, all bent on capturing him. He saw a keeper
hurrying down the path which bounded the stretch of grass which he was
crossing, possibly the keeper who had already accosted him. A constable
was advancing from the other side. If he shook off the amateur
thief-catchers, he would have to reckon with them. The pair would
probably be more than a match for him, but he would not be taken if he
could help it. That would be indeed the end.
As he neared the opposite railing three or four persons were already
there to meet him, others were rapidly approaching, including the
keeper and the constable. He swerved to one side, ran rapidly along the
railing, vaulted over it a dozen yards lower down, alighting within a
few feet of the constable. That official halted, seeming to take it for
granted that the criminal had delivered himself into his hands. He was
premature. Nothing was farther from his intention. Sydney charged right
at him, as he had learnt to do in his old days of Rugby football. The
policeman, taken unawares, went over like a ninepin; he made a vain
grab at the other's legs as he fell. Sydney sped triumphantly on.
But, although he had sent the policeman sprawling, he knew that he had
almost shot his bolt; the next fence would bring him down. His breath
was failing him; the world seemed spinning round; a few more steps and
he would be able to go no farther; they would have him; all would be
ended.
At the very moment when already his pace was getting slower something
happened which, if he had had his wits sufficiently about him and time
enough to use them, would have seemed to him very like a miracle. He
was coming into the road which leads through the park from the Corner
to the Marble Arch. He had still sense enough to see that a motorcar
was coming along the road, slowing as it came. It came to a standstill
just as it was abreast of him. The sole occupant of the body of the car
was a woman, who all at once opened the door, stood up, and beckoned to
him. He did not pause to think what the gesture might mean, who this
fair owner of a motor-car might be who had fallen from the skies. There
was not time, nor had he wit enough; his senses were fast leaving him.
He was so conscious that this was so that he made a last desperate
effort, scrambled pantingly over the railing, got somehow to the side
of the car. When he had got there, unless the woman inside had given
him a helping hand, he would have been hard put to it to enter.
The moment he was in the door was slammed, the car was off. For Sydney
that was the end of the chapter. He just managed to drop back on to the
seat, but almost before he reached it his few remaining senses fled; he
was as unconscious of what was happening as if he had not been there.
CHAPTER IV
The Good Samaritan
The thing was successful because so unexpected. The car was started,
quickened its pace, and was out of the park before, probably, any of
Beaton's pursuers understood what was being done. It was a triumph of
impudence. The car had joined the other traffic, and was running along
Piccadilly, without anyone lifting so much as a finger in an attempt to
stop it. It turned up Bond Street, crossed Oxford Street, and began to
thread its way among the maze of streets which constitute Marylebone.
The unexpected passenger continued unconscious throughout the entire
run. The night and morning had completed the havoc wrought by the last
few weeks; the works had run down at last. On his seat sat the
chauffeur, a youngish man, clad in immaculate livery; he had apparently
paid not the slightest heed to the incident of picking up in such
strange fashion so singular a passenger. Although he had received no
instructions as to the route he was to take, he drove steadily on
without the slightest hesitation, as if carrying out a prearranged
programme. By Sydney's side sat the woman who had opened the door,
beckoned to him, and assisted him to enter. In spite of its being an
open car, she was scarcely dressed in what is generally known as a
motoring costume, but was rather attired as a lady might be who is
taking the air in the park, or paying a morning call. It was not easy,
from her appearance, to determine her age. Where a woman is concerned
it seldom is, but she was certainly not old; she might have been
anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. Nor was she ill-looking.
At times, as she glanced at the man beside her, her face was lit by a
smile which made it even more than pretty, then the smile went, and was
succeeded by an expression which had in it something hard and cruel and
even sinister; but even then, after some uncomfortable fashion, it was
a handsome face, though scarcely one which one would have chosen for a
friend. Her immobility was striking. Although she had been guilty of
such a quixotic action as to rescue a man, a vagabond, who obviously
was flying from the police, so soon as she was in the car her interest
in him had seemed to cease. One might have supposed that this was a
sentimental person, whose emotional nature was prone to lead her into
what she supposed to be acts of kindness which afterwards she would
have reason to regret, but there was nothing suggestive either of
sentiment or emotion as she sat by Beaton. He presented such a pitiable
spectacle, huddled there in the corner of the car, limp and lifeless,
that the average woman would surely have shown some sign either of
interest or sympathy. Not only did she do nothing to relieve his
position, which was a more than sufficiently uneasy one, but she made
no effort, even by speaking to him, to win him back to consciousness.
She regarded him almost continually, but rather as if he were a lay
figure than a living man. One wondered if she proposed to use him as a
model for a picture; she seemed to be studying him with so curious an
air. She was observing him closely enough; one felt that nothing about
him escaped her scrutiny--that she noted the well-cut clothes as well
as the state that they were in; the hand which dangled helplessly by
his side, that it was not that of a man who had done much manual
labour; the face, which, unshaven and unwashed though it was, was not
only a handsome one, but also the face of a man of breeding. Possibly
she was putting these things together, and from them drawing her own
conclusions.
Whatever her conclusions were, she kept them to herself. Clearly,
instead of being the prey of her own emotions, this was a woman who
kept her own feelings in the background; whose face was a mask; who was
mistress of herself; who, to judge from her bearing, was as cool and
calm and calculating as if she had been thrice her years. Which made
this thing she had done seem all the stranger.
The car drew up in a short street of dull, old-fashioned houses, with
stuccoed fronts, tall, narrow, dingy. The moment it stopped, before the
lady had the chance to alight from the car, the door of the house flew
open, and a tall, clean-shaven man appeared on the doorstep who might
have been a servant. Crossing the pavement, he opened the door of the
car; the lady got out. As she moved towards the house she made one
remark, which seemed an odd one:
"I've got him."
That was all she said. Moving easily--one noticed as she did so what a
charming figure she had--she passed into the hall. The chauffeur sat
still; he did not so much as glance round at the man who had come out
of the house. That individual shared the general calmness of demeanour.
He exhibited no surprise at what the lady had said or at the sight of
the figure which was huddled in the car. He said nothing. Leaning
forward, he put his arms under Beaton and raised him as if he were a
child, carried him into the house, up a flight of stairs, into a room
at the back, and laying him on a couch which it contained, looked down
at him with an air of detached curiosity without showing any sign of
having turned a hair. Beaton had grown lighter of late, but he had
nearly six feet of bone and muscle, and still weighed something. The
man must have been possessed of unusual strength, as well as knack; it
is something of a feat to lift a big and unconscious person out of a
vehicle and carry him up a steep flight of stairs as if he were a baby.
Presently the woman entered. The man was still standing by the couch,
with a watch and chain and sovereign purse held in his hand. He was
examining the watch. He nodded towards it as the woman appeared.
"What does this mean?"
He spoke quietly in a not unmusical voice; his accent was that of an
educated person; his tone, though respectful, was that of one who
addresses an equal, not that of a servant who speaks to his mistress.
"What's what?" She glanced at what he was holding. "It looks as if it
were a watch and the usual appendages. Where were they?"
"In his jacket pocket. There's a name on the watch--Charles Carter--and
a crest, and there are a couple of sovereigns in the purse."
"So that's why they wanted him."
"Who's they?"
"I was coming through the park when I saw that something interesting
was taking place on one side of me: one man was trying to get away from
a number of others. When I saw the way he bowled over a policeman I
said to myself, 'That's the gentleman I want,' and here he is."
"I presume that watch and chain and sovereign purse explain the
interest the crowd was taking in him. I imagine that they are articles
that have only very recently come into his possession. He's a
gentleman."
"I felt sure he was from the way he handled that policeman."
"There's his name on the jacket." He picked up the garment in question,
of which he had relieved the still unconscious Sydney, and which was
hanging over the back of a chair. "Here it is on the tab. The jacket
was made in Savile Row, and here's his name: Sydney Beaton."
"It might, of course, have been made for someone else and come into his
possession; he alone knows how."
"No; it was made for him, it fits too well. His name is Sydney Beaton,
and he's a swell who's down on his luck."
"That's the kind of person we want, isn't it?"
For the first time the man's and woman's eyes met. In hers there was a
gleam as of laughter. In his there was no expression at all. His was
one of those square faces whose blue cheeks and chin show how strong
the beard would be which is not allowed to grow. He glanced from the
woman to the unconscious figure on the couch before he spoke.
"Perhaps. When will he be wanted?"
"By to-morrow morning. I ought to write at once to say that he is
coming; it will be safer."
"Safer!" The man's thin lips were parted by what was rather a sneer
than a grin, as if the word she had used had borne an odd significance.
He continued to survey the unconscious Sydney, as a surgeon might
survey a body which he is about to dissect. "He'll have to be ready."
"There's time; and no one can do that sort of thing better than you."
Again the lips parted in that curious substitute for a smile, as if the
woman's words had conveyed a compliment.
"Oh, yes, there's time; and, as you say, I dare say I'll be able to
make a decent job of him."
When the woman left him it was to remove her hat and coat. Then she
went into a good-sized apartment, in which there was a blazing fire. In
a corner was a bookshelf filled with books; she took one down, it was
Burke's "Landed Gentry." She took a case out of some receptacle in her
bodice, and lit a cigarette. Settling herself in a big arm-chair before
the fire, she put her feet upon a second chair, and set to studying
Burke. She found what she wanted among the B's.
"There it is: 'Beaton, Sir George, seventh baronet,' and all the rest
of it. 'Seat, Adisham, Wilts; unmarried; next heir, his brother,
Sydney, D.S.O., the Guards, captain, twenty-eight years old.' If that
coat was built for him it looks as if that ought to be our man."
She closed the book and let it fall upon the floor. She inhaled the
smoke of her cigarette, staring with a contemplative air at the flaming
fire.
"I wonder what's his record? One can, of course, find out, but there
will be hardly time before he's wanted. An heir to a baronetcy, a
captain in the Guards, and a D.S.O. hardly comes to snatching watches
and chains without good and sufficient reasons. And yet, in spite of
the state he's in, he hardly looks it, and by this time I ought to be a
judge of that kind of thing. He must have had some queer experiences,
that young gentleman. I wonder if any of them have been queerer than
the one he'll have to-morrow. And what'll become of him afterwards? It
seems a pity, but so many things are pitiful which have to be."
As she indulged in the expression of that almost philosophical opinion
she expelled the smoke of her cigarette from between her pretty lips,
and she smiled. Then she sat up straighter in her chair, and threw her
scarcely half-consumed cigarette into the fire.
"And there are those who pretend that this is a very good world that we
live in!"
CHAPTER V
Dreaming
"Will you have all the apollinaris, Sir Jocelyn?"
Sydney Beaton looked up. He was vaguely conscious of having been roused
from slumber by someone, possibly by the person who was standing by his
side. He was still very far from being wide awake; his eyes, limbs,
body, all were heavy. He had not a notion where he was. There was a
real bed, in striking contrast to the makeshifts he had known of late;
there were soft sheets, a soft pillow, and there were hangings. It was
not really a large room, but, compared to the kind of accommodation
with which he had recently been made familiar, it was palatial. There
seemed to be some decent furniture, and a carpet on the floor. It was
not well lighted; there was only one not over large window, on the
other side of which was the November fog. What had happened to him?
Where could he be? He put his wondering into words.
"Where am I? Who are you?"
The man at his bedside did not answer. He was holding in one hand a
tray on which was a glass; in the other was a bottle, out of which he
was pouring something into the glass. He repeated in another form his
first inquiry:
"Will that be enough apollinaris, Sir Jocelyn?"
"I'm not Sir Jocelyn, if you're talking to me. What's in that glass?"
"A good pick-me-up. I think you will find it just about right, Sir
Jocelyn." Sydney took the glass which the man advanced. Whatever its
contents, they were pleasant to swallow.
"That's good, uncommon good. My word!" He had another drink. "I haven't
tasted anything as good as that since"--he hesitated--"since I don't
know when."
"I thought you'd find it refreshing, Sir Jocelyn?"
"Why do you call me Sir Jocelyn? Who are you? Where am I? How did I
come to be here?" The question was again ignored.
"Her ladyship wished me to say that if you felt equal to it, Sir
Jocelyn, she would be glad if you would join her at breakfast."
"Her ladyship! Who's her ladyship? Didn't you hear me ask you where I
am?"
Perhaps it was because the man was busy with certain articles of the
gentleman's wardrobe that he did not hear what was said.
"I thought you might like to wear this suit to-day." He was placing
three garments over the back of a chair, which Sydney felt, hazily,
were certainly not his. "Everything is quite ready, Sir Jocelyn."
Why did the fellow persist in calling him by a name which was not his?
What had happened to him? What did it all mean? What was the matter
with his head that he felt so incapable of collecting his thoughts? He
had never felt so stupid before. Before he clearly understood what was
occurring, the bed-clothes were being removed from the bed, and he was
being assisted on to the floor as if he were a child or a sick man;
indeed, as his feet touched the ground he felt as if, literally, he was
a sick man. The room swam round him; his legs refused him support; had
not the other had his arm half round him he would have collapsed on to
the carpet.
"What," he asked, with a sudden thickness of voice, "what is the
matter?"
Had he been clearly conscious of anything he could scarcely have helped
but notice the keen scrutiny with which his attendant was observing
him. His manner almost suggested a medical man; it was so suave, yet he
treated Sydney as if he were an irresponsible patient.
"You've not been quite well, Sir Jocelyn. You've had rather a bad
night. I think you'd better have another pick-me-up."
Sydney was placed in an easy chair. Presently he found himself drinking
the contents of another tumbler. How good it was. And it did him good;
it seemed to relieve some of the heaviness which weighed down his limbs
and to render the confusion in his head less obvious, but it was very
far from restoring him to himself. The other dressed him, slipping on
garment after garment with a curious deftness, for Sydney seemed
incapable of giving him any help at all. Beaton was dressed actually
before he knew it in garments which he realised were not his, but which
somehow seemed to fit him. How he had come to be in them he could not
have told; yet so skilful was his valet that in a surprisingly short
time his costume was completed, even to his collar and his tie, yet he
had not once moved out of the arm-chair in which he had originally been
placed.
The other took a final survey of his handiwork, standing a little back
to enable him to do so. He gave audible expression to his candid
opinion; he was plainly aware that the other was not in a condition to
resent anything he might either say or do.
"You look very well indeed, Sir Jocelyn, quite remarkably well,
considering. You want one more pick-me-up, made a trifle strong, then I
think we'll take you downstairs, and breakfast with her ladyship may be
trusted to do the rest."
For the third time Sydney Beaton emptied the contents of a tumbler
which was insinuated into his hand. Possibly because it was more potent
it had a more visible effect upon him than either of the other two. The
other watched the effect the liquid made on him with about his thin
lips that not quite agreeable something that was half a sneer and half
a grin.
"Now, Sir Jocelyn, how are we feeling? Do you think you could manage to
stand up?"
Sydney proved it by standing up there and then, but there was an
unsteadiness about the fashion with which he managed to keep his feet
which the other could scarcely fail to notice.
"I'm all right," he said; "pounds better; sound as a roach; if
this----" He held out the glass with a hand that was shaky. "What was
the stuff you gave me? It's first rate, a regular corpse reviver."
"It is rather effective, under certain conditions, in its way." The
man's tone, in spite of its suavity, could hardly have been drier.
"Now, Sir Jocelyn, I think you'll find that her ladyship awaits you."
"Her ladyship? Why will you keep calling me Sir Jocelyn? That's not my
name. And who's her ladyship?"
Once more the questions were ignored. The other placed his fingers
lightly on Sydney's arm, and Sydney found himself moving towards the
door. But whether he was moving of his own volition or in obedience to
the other's behest he would not have found it easy to say. The man
opened the door, led him through it, walked beside him down the
stairs--always with his fingers on his arm. At the foot of the stairs
he paused:
"Now, Sir Jocelyn, how are you feeling?"
For the moment Sydney really could not say; he was feeling very queer
indeed, incapable of expressing himself in articulate words. Had it not
been that the other's arm was again half round him he might have found
it difficult to retain his perpendicular.
"Another taste, Sir Jocelyn?"
It seemed that the man had brought the glass with him down the stairs
refilled. Sydney had it between his fingers without his quite knowing
how it came there. He took another taste; it had on him the same effect
as before, seeming to steady his limbs and to clear his brain. Before
the effect could pass away the man had led him to a door, had opened
it, and was ushering him into the room beyond. Someone advanced to him,
a woman, whom even in his hazy state he was aware was good to look at.
"I am so glad to see you; you can't think how anxious I have been. I
hope you're feeling better, quite yourself again?"
Sydney knew not what to say. The woman's voice was a pleasant one, and
was grateful to his ears; her face was lit by such a delicious smile,
it was grateful to his eyes. He had a feeling that this must be some
old and very dear friend. Yet he could not place her, he had not the
dimmest notion who she was; his memory must be playing him a trick. It
was part of the general haziness through which he was looking out upon
the world. But she did not seem to wait for an answer or to be hurt by
his silence.
"Come," she said, "breakfast has been waiting quite a while. Will you
have the seat by the fire, or will it be too much for you?"
"I'll sit wherever you please."
He managed to get out that much. She laughed, as if he had been guilty
of a joke. She had quite a musical laugh.
"Then you shall sit by the fire, and I will do the honours. For once in
a way I'll wait on you. I don't think you'll be required." The last
words were addressed to the man who was still standing in the open
doorway. They exchanged glances, of which Sydney was oblivious. The man
made a significant gesture with the empty tumbler which he was holding
in his hand, then touched his finger to his forehead. "I quite
understand," said the lady. "But I tell you again that I don't think
you'll be required. If I want you I will ring. In the meantime you may
go."
The man went. Outside the door he paused; an odd look came on his face;
he knit his brows; he glanced about him quickly, back and front; then
he drew himself up straight and grinned.
"It's a ticklish game she's got to play, but there's few can play a
ticklish game better than she can."
CHAPTER VI
His Wife
To Sydney it was all as if it were part of a dream. He had not
dreamed--he did not know since when. This was like one of the dreams he
used to have when he was a boy; a delightful dream. The sense of
comfort which filled the room, the charmingly laid breakfast table,
glorious with pretty china and shining plate; the charming woman who,
with the most natural air, was treating him as one who not only had an
assured footing, but who was both near and dear. Whether in this matter
it was he who dreamed or she, he could not make sure. He wondered if he
had been ill. He had such a strange feeling that he very easily might
have been; he might have been ill for quite a long time; all sorts of
things might have happened, and he might have forgotten all about them.
It was the more possible since he could remember nothing; all he could
remember was that he had awakened and found the man at his bedside with
a tray on which was a tumbler. Before that, beyond that, his mind was a
hazy blank.
But there seemed nothing hazy about his hostess, if she was his
hostess; he supposed she was. If she was not his hostess, then who was
she? She was ministering to his creature comforts in a manner which
made the dream seem still more delightful, and such a very real one,
too.
Through the haze which served him as a mind there seemed to gleam
something which troubled him. The breakfast was excellent, the coffee,
the food, everything. Was that not, in part, because at some remote
period he had gone without breakfast, without--anything? He was
frantically hungry. There was a fragrance about the hot rolls which
recalled something. Was there not a time when he had wanted a hot roll
very badly, or something like it? The effort of recollection caused him
to stop eating, a fact on which the lady commented.
"Of what are you thinking? You looked as if your thoughts were miles
away. Won't you have a little more bacon?"
He had a little more. There was an exquisite flavour about that bacon
which made it seem fit food for a god. He ate and ate, while she sat
by, putting more food upon his plate as soon as it was empty or
replacing one plate with another. At last he ceased. How much he had
eaten he had no notion; he could eat no more.
"Now," she said, "you must have a cigar and a liqueur."
It did not occur to him to ask if it was usual to follow such a
breakfast as he had had with a liqueur; he was too full of physical
content to care. He watched her as she brought a box of cigars to the
table, choose one, cut it, put it between his lips, and, striking a
match, held it up to him. The first puff at that cigar was ecstasy, so
great as to be almost painful. What was the flood of recollections
which it brought back? How long ago was it since he had tasted such a
cigar as that--a cigar at all? What dreadful things had happened to him
since? She had poured something out of a bottle into a glass. She had
spoken of a liqueur; but it was not a liqueur glass which she held out
to him and from which he sipped.
It was curious how willing he seemed to be to have everything done for
him; to eat and drink what was given to him; to have no taste of his
own; to behave almost as if he were a puppet, moving when she pulled
the string. And it seemed to amuse her to observe that it was so. One
felt that she was curious to learn how far in this direction she might
go, to what extent she could pull the strings and he would move. She
put almost the same question to him as the man had put to him upstairs:
"Now, how are you feeling?"
"I'm feeling--well, I can't tell you how I'm feeling. I'm feeling just
right. But do you know--I hope you'll forgive my saying so--but do you
know, it's a fact that I can't make things out at all."
"What sort of things?"
"Why--everything; all sorts of things."
"Explain just what you mean."
"I'll try; but somehow, you know, it doesn't seem easy." He took the
cigar from between his lips and had another sip from the glass which
was not a liqueur glass. Something in his manner seemed to be tickling
her more and more; each moment the smile on her face seemed to be
growing more pronounced; it was, apparently, only with an effort that
she could keep herself from bursting into a roar of laughter. He was
looking her straight in the face with something in his eyes which
seemed to cause her profound amusement. "Have I been ill, or--or queer,
or something? I don't quite know how it is, but I feel so--rummy, if
you'll excuse the word, that I feel as if I had had something."
It was some seconds before she answered. She sat with her elbows on the
table looking at him with twinkling eyes.
"Well, you have had something; indeed, I should say that you had
something now."
"That's how I feel. You know"--he put his hands up to his forehead--"it
seems as if there was something wrong with the works. I can't think nor
understand. As for remembering--I can't remember anything at all."
"I should imagine that that might be awkward."
"It is; you've no idea. For instance--you laugh--but I can't make out
where I am, or how I got here, or--and that's the worst of it, it does
seem so ridiculous--but I can't remember who you are."
"I'm your wife."
She said it with a face all laughter. That the statement took him aback
was evident. He started and stared as if he could not make out if she
were in jest or earnest.
"My--what?"
"Your wife."
"I suppose you're joking?"
"Not at all; I've seldom felt less like it. Being a wife is a very
serious thing. Aren't you conscious of your weighty responsibilities as
a husband?"
"I know you're joking." A strange something came on to his face which
might have been a smile, but, if it was, it was a pathetic one. She
smiled back at him. Into her smile there came, upon an instant, a
something which was hardly genial.
"But I'm not joking. You are Sir Jocelyn Kingstone, and I am Lady
Kingstone, your lawful wife."
"Now, I do know that you are pulling my leg, in spite of the something
wrong up here." He touched his forehead with his finger. "I do know
that my name is not Kingstone, and I'm just as sure that I'm not
married--no such luck."
"Can't you regard yourself as married for, say, a few hours, perhaps
even less? Can't you act as if you were?"
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing much. But, you see, I've done you a favour--I don't want to
mention it, but I have--and couldn't you do me one in return?"
"I feel you've done me a favour--I've a sort of consciousness of it in
my bones--but for the life of me I can't straighten things out."
He presented an odd picture as he sat there endeavouring to get his
wits into working order; he seemed to be gradually collapsing under the
strain. Instead of being touched by his obviously piteous plight, it
seemed to add to her amusement.
"Don't let's go into details; don't try, it will only worry you. I have
done you a service, and that's enough. Now I want you to do me one, and
as you're a gentleman, and all that sort of thing, I don't think I
shall need to ask you twice; you'll do it the first time of asking."
"What is it you want me to do? I'll do what I can, but there's precious
little I can do; I'm so--well, you can see for yourself how it is with
me."
"I've told you already what it is I want you to do. I want you to
consent to regard yourself as my husband for--probably only a very few
minutes."
"But I don't understand. I don't see what good you're going to get from
my pretending to be your husband. A very poor sort of a husband I
should make."
"You'll only be my husband _pro forma_--I think that's the proper term.
You see, I'm in a position in which I've got to have a husband, just
for a very few minutes; it doesn't matter what sort, so long as he's
fairly presentable, and you know you're quite nice looking."
If he heard the compliment, it went unnoticed.
"It may be my muddled head, but I still don't see what you're driving
at."
"It's like this--I'll try to make it plain: There's a large sum of
money which is due to me, but I can't get it without my husband's
assistance. He's got to come with me to the banker's, and sign papers,
and things like that."
"Sign papers, and things like that?"
"That's all."
"That's all?" Again he echoed her words, as if, by dint of doing so, he
was trying to get at their meaning. "But, signing papers, and things
like that, isn't that rather a deal? What sort of papers would he have
to sign?"
"Oh, nothing very dreadful." The smile with which she regarded him was
a bewitching one. "You're not drinking your liqueur." She took up the
glass and put it into his hand. He sipped at it with that docility with
which he seemed to do all things. "You'd merely have to sign your
name."
"Yes; but to what?"
"I really can scarcely tell you. I'm not a lawyer or a banker. I don't
know what the forms are on such occasions, but I guess--mind you, it's
only a guess--that you'll have to say you are my husband, and sign for
the money after you've got it."
"Wouldn't that be forgery?"
"Forgery? How?" The smile did not fade, but a gleam came into her eyes
which hinted that the question had taken her a trifle aback; it is
conceivable that she had not supposed that he was sufficiently
clear-headed for it to occur to him. "What an extraordinary thing to
say! My dear man, it would be done with my authority, at my wish, and
in my presence."
"Yes; but where is your husband?"
"At this moment he is not easily accessible, or I shouldn't want to
worry you. I'd no idea that you'd have made such a fuss."
She made a little grimace, which became her very well. There was
nothing to show that he observed it. He seemed to be struggling to
follow out the line of thought which had come into his head.
"Is the money to be paid to your husband or to you?"
"Nominally to him, but really to me."
"Does he know about it?"
"How do you mean, does he know?" All at once she rose, and came and
stood in front of him. "Young man, you're not to ask curious questions.
This is a very private matter; there's a lot about it which I don't
wish to explain, and which I don't think you're quite in a state to
understand if I did. I'll tell you exactly what it is I want you to do.
I want you to drive with me in, say, half an hour to the banker's.
There I shall take you into a private room, and I shall tell them that
you are my husband, Sir Jocelyn Kingstone; that you have not been very
well, and cannot stand much worry, so that they're to get matters
through as quickly as they can. If you like, you need not speak at all;
you can leave all the talking to me, and, I may add, all the
responsibility, too. Then, I imagine, they may ask you to sign a paper
of some sort--I don't quite know what, but it won't be very much--then
they'll hand you the money, and you'll sign for it, and then we'll come
away. You see that the whole thing won't last more than five or, at the
outside, ten minutes. We'll drive back here together, and in return for
the service you've done me I'll do anything you like--mind, anything
you like--for you. You'll find in me the best friend you ever had."
She knelt beside him on the floor, cajoling him, whispering things
which he barely understood, but which were pleasant to hear. Somehow
the feeling of physical well-being seemed to dull his senses still
more. The dream became more dream-like; the woman's hands softly
smoothed his hair; her lips were close to his; her eyes bewitched him;
her words charmed his ears. She refilled the big sherry glass, and,
even unwittingly, he sipped the insidious liqueur. In short, she played
the fool with him, which, after all, was easy. At the best, after what
he had lately gone through, he was little more than the husk of a man;
but they had taken care that he should not be at his best. Her male
accomplice had, as they put it, "readied" him. It was true that they
had fed and washed and clothed him, but it was also true that they had
dosed and drugged him. Being helpless in their hands, they had played
tricks with him of which he had no notion and against which he had no
defence.
After awhile the woman went out of the room. Without, suspiciously
close to the door, was the man. They exchanged a few hurried sentences.
She asked: "Is the brougham outside?"
"It's been there ever since I brought him down."
"I'm going to put on my hat. Give me his; I'll put it on for him. He's
in a state in which he's more in my line than in yours."
The man grinned. He rubbed his chin as if considering.
"How long shall you be?"
"I ought to be back inside an hour. I shall come straight back."
She began to ascend the stairs, the man watching her as she went.
"I'll take care that you come straight back. You may have a card up
your sleeve which you mean to play; but I have another, which will
perhaps surprise you."
These words were not spoken aloud; they were said to himself. He looked
as if he meant them, and as if they had a significance--an ominous
significance--which was a little secret of his own.
CHAPTER VII
Among Thieves
She sat very close to him as they went through the streets in the
brougham. She had persuaded him to have still another taste of the
liqueur before they started; the world seemed more dream-like than
ever. When the vehicle drew up, she helped him out into the street. The
air of the misty November morning seemed to add to the fog which was in
his brain. Nothing could have been more gracious or graceful than her
solicitude for his seeming incapacity to take proper care of himself;
no wife could have taken more tender care of a delicate husband. He did
not know what place this was at which they stopped, and she did not
tell him. When presently he found himself seated in an arm-chair, he
had only the vaguest idea of how he had got there, and no knowledge
whatever of the room in which he was. There was a gentleman who
occupied a seat behind a table who he had a dim feeling was observing
him with considerable curiosity. Something was said to him which he did
not catch, possibly because his hearing was unusually dull. The woman
at his side repeated it.
"My dear Jocelyn, this gentleman is asking if you are my husband, if
you are Sir Jocelyn Kingstone."
Sydney said something. He did not know what he said; he never did know;
but it seemed to be regarded as an efficient answer. Shortly something
else was said to him, which the woman again repeated. He had a misty
notion that she was doing a good deal of talking; that notion became
clearer in the days that were to come. She put her hand lightly on his
arm.
"Come, Jocelyn." She led him nearer to the table, placing him on a
chair which was drawn close up to it. "This is what you are to sign.
They have given me the money; here it is."
She held up what, although he did not realise it, was a bundle of
bank-notes.
"Is it all right?"
He did not know why he asked the question, but he asked it. It was the
first thing he had said consciously since he was in the room. He had
had an odd feeling that she wished him to ask the question. She smiled.
"Quite all right. I will count it if you like, but I assure you it's
right. Would you rather I counted it, or would you like to count it
yourself?"
"No; it doesn't matter, so long as it's right."
He was conscious that a piece of paper was on the table in front of
him, and that he had a pen between his fingers, though he was not sure
how either of them had got there. She pointed to the paper with her
finger.
"Sign here. Just put your name--Jocelyn Kingstone. My dear boy, how
your hand does shake!"
He was aware that it shook, but he was not aware of the glance that the
lady exchanged with the gentleman who was on the other side of the
table, to whom, when he had made an end of writing, she handed the
sheet of paper.
"What a scrawl! Jocelyn, your writing's getting worse and worse." Then,
to the elderly gentleman: "I'm afraid my husband's signature is not a
very easy one to read."
The elderly gentleman surveyed the performance through a pair of
gold-rimmed pince-nez smilingly.
"It isn't very legible, is it? Your signature is not very legible, Sir
Jocelyn; it would take an expert to decipher it. Would you mind, Lady
Kingstone, witnessing the fact that it is your husband's signature?"
"Do I mind? Of course I don't." She laughed as if she appreciated the
joke of the suggestion. "There--'Witness, Helena Kingstone,'--I think
you will be able to read that."
"That certainly is legible enough. You write a good bold hand, Lady
Kingstone, the sort of hand I like a woman to write."
When the pair had left the room the elderly gentleman said to a younger
one who was seated at a table to one side:
"That's a sad case, a very sad case indeed. That is quite a charming
woman, and not bad-looking; while he--he's the sort of person who, in a
better ordered state of society, would be consigned to a lethal chamber
at the earliest possible moment. Upon my word, I often wonder what
makes a woman marry such a man. Fancy, at this time of day, drunk."
The younger man seemed to consider before he spoke.
"It struck me that he was something else as well as drunk. He didn't
carry himself like an ordinary drunken man. He seemed to be under the
influence of some drug. She says that he's been ill; he looks it. I
wonder if they've been drugging him to bring him up to concert pitch."
The elder man shook his head. He seemed to be weighing the other's
words.
"It's a sad case, a very sad case, whichever way you look at it. Poor
woman! She may have had her own motives when she promised to love,
honour, and obey him, but it's a long row she has set herself to
plough."
When the pair in question were back in the brougham, and the horse's
head was turned the other way, they had not gone very far before a
distinct change took place in the lady's manner. She was no longer
solicitous; she no longer sat close to her companion's side; indeed,
she seemed disposed to give him as wide a berth as possible, to ignore
him as completely as the exigencies of the situation permitted, and she
never spoke a word. She was, possibly, too engrossed with the
singularity of her proceedings to pay any attention to him. On her lap
was a pile of bank-notes which she was dividing into separate parcels;
these parcels she was bestowing in distinctly surprising portions of
her attire. She slipped one parcel in the top of one stocking, a second
into the top of the other; she took off her shoes, and placed a wad of
notes in each; she turned up the sleeves of her coat--into the lining
about the wrists, in which an aperture seemed to have been purposely
cut, she inserted quite a number. Loosening her bodice, she slipped
several into the band at the top of her skirt. With the residue she
performed quite a surprising feat of legerdemain. She produced a small
bag which was made of what looked like oil-skin, into which she crammed
the notes; raising it to the back of her neck, she gave her shoulders a
sort of hunch, it slipped down the back of her dress; one could see
from the movements she made that she was trying to get it to settle in
its proper place. Then, for the first time, she turned towards Beaton.
Some of her performances had been hardly of the kind which the average
woman would care to essay in front of an entire stranger. She had been
as indifferent to her companion's presence as if he had been a
mechanical figure; and, indeed, when she looked at him, one perceived
that he might just as well have been. He seemed to be as devoid of
intelligence, as incapable of taking active interest in what was going
on about him; it was probable that he had been quite oblivious of what
she had been doing. But this time the spectacle he presented, instead
of amusing her, seemed to fill her with quite different feelings. She
addressed him all at once as if he had been a dog, her voice hard,
cold, strident, even a trifle vulgar:
"Hullo--over there!" He remained still, clearly not realising that he
was being spoken to. She went on in the same tone: "Now then, wake up!
Haven't you been ill quite long enough? Try another sort of game. Do
you hear me speak to you?" Apparently he did not. "Don't you, or won't
you? Are you drunk? Now then, this won't do. I'm very much obliged to
you, but I've had quite enough of it."
Leaning towards him, taking him by the shoulder, she began to shake him
with considerable vigour, considering he was a man, and a big one, and
she was a woman. The effect was, in its way--a grim way, ludicrous. His
hat first tilted forward over his nose, then dropped on to the floor;
his head fell forward over his chest. It seemed as if, if she kept on
shaking him, he would come to pieces. Perceiving this, she stopped,
eyeing him more closely, but still with no show of amusement, rather
with contempt and annoyance.
"What's the matter with you? Are you ill, or is it the liqueurs
and--the other things? Anyhow, I've had enough of it; I'm not going to
have you ill in here. The time has come when we must part. Do you hear?
Wake up!"
He did seem to wake up, in a kind of a fashion. He raised his head with
an effort, looking at her with lack-lustre eyes.
"What is it?"
"What is it? It's the key of the street, the same key you had before."
A thought seemed all at once to occur to her. Stooping, she took off
her right shoe, from it the wad of notes; selecting one, she replaced
the others and the shoe.
"When I first made your acquaintance you had nothing, and rather less.
Now, you've had a good night's rest, a bath, and other luxuries; you've
had good food and drink; you are rigged out in decent clothes from head
to foot; you've not done badly; but here's something else, as a sort of
tit-bit."
She held out the note. He not only paid no heed to it, but seemingly he
had no idea of what it was, or of what she was talking. This time she
did seem to be amused; she laughed right out, as if his grotesque
helplessness tickled her.
"Here, you're a pretty sort; I'll put it in your waistcoat pocket
for you. Mind you, it's a ten-pound note--do you hear, it's a
ten-pound note--for goodness sake do look as if you were trying to
understand--and it's in your waistcoat pocket; I've put it there; take
care, and don't you lose it; you'll want it before you're very much
older."
She slipped the note into his waistcoat pocket without his showing the
slightest sign of interest in what she was doing; he seemed to be
mumbling something, for his lips were moving, but it was impossible to
make out what he said.
"Now then, my funny friend, you'd better pull yourself together; we're
going to part--try to look as if you were sober, if you aren't."
She tapped at the window; the carriage stopped; she opened the door and
descended.
"This way, please." Taking him by the arm she drew him towards her, he
yielding with the old, uncomfortable docility. Somehow he joined her on
the pavement. "You've left your hat behind you, you can't go about
London without a hat." Picking it up from the floor of the carriage,
she placed it on his head. "That's not straight; there, that's better.
What a helpless child it is! Sorry I can't stop, but I've another
engagement; pleased to have met you; glad to have been able to do you a
good turn."
She was re-entering the carriage with a smile again upon her face, when
the man who had acted as Beaton's valet came round from the back and
stood beside her; at sight of him her smile vanished. He raised his hat
to Beaton.
"I also am pleased to have met you." He turned to the woman. "I think,
if you don't mind, or even if you do, that we'll keep that engagement
together. After you into the carriage."
Evidently she found the sight of him by no means gratifying.
"What's the meaning of this? What are you doing here? I thought it was
agreed that you should wait for me till I came back."
"I had a sort of idea that I might keep on waiting; it even struck me
as just possible that you might never come back at all. After you into
the carriage."
She hesitated; looked as if she would like to refuse; then, with a
laugh, which was hardly a happy one, she did as he suggested. He
followed her; the door was shut; the carriage drove off. Sydney Beaton
was left standing on the pavement; oblivious of what was taking place,
of where he was; as incapable, just then, of taking care of himself as
any inmate of an asylum. He remained standing where they had left him,
swaying to and fro. The fog had thickened; a drizzling rain had begun
to fall. It was not easy to make out where he was, but he was at the
corner of a street, in what seemed to be an old-world square, which in
that moment was as deserted as if all the houses round about it had
been empty and it was miles away from anywhere.
But presently his solitude was broken; two men came round the corner,
doubtful-looking men, shabby-genteel looking men, in some queer way the
sort of men one would expect to find prowling about in such a place at
such a time. At sight of Beaton they paused; they exchanged glances;
one nudged the other. Then one spoke to him, with what he possibly
meant to be an ingratiating smile.
"Nasty day, captain; looks as if we were going to have a real London
particular." When Sydney seemed to be unconscious even of his presence
his tone became a little insolent. "Waiting for anybody, guv'nor--or
are you just a-taking of the air?"
The other spoke, with a glance at his companion which had in it
something which was evil:
"Can't you see that the gentleman's taking of the air? What he wants is
someone to take it with him; what do you say to our offering the
gentleman our society?"
Sydney remained speechless, motionless, save that he continued swaying
to and fro. They again exchanged glances. The first man said, with
ostentatious impudence:
"I say, old cock, can you tell us how many beans make five?" Sydney was
still silent. The first man went on. "Here, Gus, you take one of the
gentleman's arms and I'll take the other: what he wants is a little
bright, cheerful society, and he'll get it if we take him along with
us."
Each of this most unpromising-looking pair took one of Sydney's arms;
and without his attempting to remonstrate, or to offer the faintest
show of resistence, they led him away.
CHAPTER VIII
The Sandwich-man
A bitingly cold afternoon towards the end of January. Six sandwich-men
trudged along the Strand, urged by the cutting wind to more rapid
movement than is general with their class. On the board of the last man
which was slung over his back were the words, "Look at the man in
front." On the board which was at the back of the man in front, to
which your attention was directed, was "for Warmth And Sunshine Try
Cox's Bitters." The legend was repeated all along the six. It almost
seemed as if it must be a joke, of a grim order, to compel such
unfortunate wretches to stare for hour after hour at such advice, on
such a day. One had only to glance at them to see how much they stood
in need of both warmth and sunshine; yet the chance seemed extremely
slight that they would have an opportunity of trying Cox's bitters.
Some of the passers-by, who were in better plight than the six in the
gutter, seemed to be struck by the fact that a jest might be intended,
and where there were two of them together, they commented on it to each
other.
"Poor beggars!" said one of the passers-by to the acquaintance at his
side. "It's pretty rough on them to make them carry about a thing like
that, when they're pretty nearly at death's door for want of the very
things which, according to their own showing, are so easy to get."
The words were heard by someone who happened at that moment to be
passing them--a woman. Possibly, as is easy in London, the sight is
such a common one, she had been unconscious that the sandwich-men were
there. When she heard the words she glanced at them to see to what they
might apply. As she did so she started and stopped, as if she had seen
something which had amazed her. The sandwich-men passed on, none of
them had noticed her; they were probably too far gone in misery to
notice anything, each kept his unseeing eyes fixed on his fellow's
back.
The woman stood still, seemed to hesitate, went on, then turned and
looked after the retreating sandwich-men. She seemed to be asking
herself if it would be possible to catch them up, they were already at
a distance from her of perhaps fifty yards. Then, as if arriving at a
sudden determination, she moved quickly after them. Yet, although she
walked so quickly, it was some little time before she caught them up,
so that she had an opportunity to consider whatever it was that was
passing through her mind. At last she was abreast of them again; was
passing them; she scanned the last man, the fifth, the fourth, and,
with much particularity, the third. Behind the others was probably all
of life that was worth having, if it had been worth having to them; it
seemed scarcely likely that the scanty, broken fragments of what
remained of it could be worth anything to them. Theirs would probably
be a continual tramp through the gutter, or its equivalent, to the
grave.
But with the third man in the line it was different. He was young. In
spite of the grotesqueness of his attire--he was clad in ill-assorted,
ragged and tattered oddments of somebody else's clothing--there was
something in his bearing which suggested that he was still a man. These
others were but torsos. And although the hair beneath his greasy cap
stood in crying need of both a barber and a brush, and there was an
untrimmed, unsightly growth upon his cheeks and chin, a shrewd observer
might have ventured on a small wager that if his hair had been cut and
trimmed and he had been shaved and washed, he would not be altogether
ugly.
One thing was noticeable, that though the woman stared at him he took
no heed at all of her--he did not take his eyes off the man in front of
him; and that although the woman kept step beside him in a manner which
the others began to mark. All at once, as if moved by an overmastering
impulse, she stretched out her umbrella and touched him on the
shoulder.
"Hullo!"
That was all she said, but it was enough; he turned his head. At the
sight of the eyes which glanced at her out of that dreadful face she
started again, not without excuse. This was the face of one of those
men of whom society has good reason to go in terror. Desperation was in
every line of it; something like madness was in the eyes. This was the
face of a man who had suffered much, and who, if opportunity offered,
would stick at nothing to get even with those who had made him suffer.
He looked at the woman with, at first, no sign of recognition in his
glance. Then, a muscle moved; something came into his eyes which had
not been there before; all at once the fashion of his countenance was
changed. He stopped, bringing those behind him to sudden confusion. He
turned, the better to look at her; beyond doubt this was a woman of
nerve, or she would have shrunk from that which was on his face. One
felt that if, in that first wild moment, he had not been impeded by the
boards which bound him, he would have laid violent hands upon her, and
she would have fared ill.
But the boards did bind him. With them there he could do nothing but
stand and stare. She met his gaze unflinchingly. Not only did she show
no sign of concern at the threat which was in it, something in the
expression of her own face suggested that it occasioned her positive
pleasure. Certainly she could not have been more completely at her
ease.
"Take those things off and come with me."
The man glared at her as if he wondered if his senses were playing him
a trick.
"Come with you?"
It was an interrogation conveying, it would seem, a world of meaning.
She smiled; at sight of the smile the gleam in his eyes grew more
pronounced, his face more threatening. But she was in no way troubled.
"You heard what I said; you're not in the state in which you were when
I saw you last; but in case you didn't quite hear I'll repeat it. I
said, 'Take those things off and come with me.' And be quick about it,
please, if you don't want to have a crowd collect and mob us; you see
they're gathering already."
There was a momentary, very obvious, hesitation, then he did what she
requested--he took the things off, meaning the boards which were
suspended from his shoulders. When he had them off he put a question:
"What shall I do with them--shall I bring them with me?"
From the purse she took out of her handbag she chose a coin, speaking
to the man behind him:
"There are five of you, there's half a sovereign; that's two shillings
apiece. Take these articles back to their owner, and explain that the
gentleman who was in charge of them has been called away."
She hailed a taxicab; at her suggestion he got in first, she followed,
and the cab drove off towards a destination the driver alone had heard.
The five remaining sandwich-men followed it with a chorus of thanks;
one of them exclaimed, "Good luck, old pal! I wish I was in your
place." He was a very old man, quite probably in the seventies, small
in stature, nearly bent double as if shrivelled by the cold. For some
cause his words, uttered in shrill, quavering tones, seemed to amuse
the bystanders. A crowd had gathered, a heterogeneous crowd which so
quickly does gather in a London thoroughfare; the five remaining
sandwich-men were explaining to the people, as best they could, what
had happened. In the taxicab nothing was said; the passengers were a
queerly assorted pair, offering even a more striking contrast than
when, on that first occasion, they had been alone together in the motor
in the park. Then it was she who looked at him; now it was he who
looked at her.
She sat in her own corner of the cab, her glance kept straight in front
of her, so that she never looked his way. He, on the other hand, never
took his eyes off her; it was perhaps as well she did not see them,
they were unfriendly. His grimy hands were clenched in front of him; to
judge from his expression they might, in fancy, have been clenched
about her throat; no one watching him could have doubted that he was
capable of such an action; this was rather a savage animal than a
civilised man.
The cab crossed Brompton Road into a street on the other side, and
after one or two turnings drew up in front of a small house which
formed one of a terrace of old-fashioned villas. The woman paid the
cab, opened the door with a latch-key, ushered the man into a room of
fair size, comfortably furnished, a bright fire made it seem a
veritable haven of refuge after the inclemency of the weather without.
For the first time she spoke.
"Come to the fire and warm yourself; I should think you must be cold."
He echoed her last word with a very different accent.
"Cold!" He said it again in a tone of voice which was indescribable; in
the word as he uttered it there was a whole dictionary of meaning.
"Cold!"
"Have a drink?"
She was moving towards the sideboard on which there were bottles and
glasses.
"The last time I saw you I had a drink at your expense, though I'm
always paying for it."
"The world doesn't seem to have been using you very well since I met
you last."
His speech was not a reply to hers.
"At least you have courage."
"Women of my sort have to; experience gives it to them. Without courage
where should we be?"
"I wonder where you are sometimes even with it. Do you know that you've
scarcely ever been out of my thoughts more than an hour or two at a
time since we parted?"
"That's very nice of you."
"You think so. I've told myself over and over again that when I did get
within reach of you--that's just the trouble, I've never quite been
able to make up my mind what I'd do to you. I've told myself I'd kill
you; in some of my happiest moments, in imagination, I've been wringing
your neck; it was a delicious sensation."
"For you?"
"For me."
"Very well, then, give yourself that delicious sensation in real
earnest--wring it. Here I am, quite close, ready to make things easy; I
promise that I'll do nothing to keep you from wringing it to your
heart's content." She had gone right up to him. He drew himself up
straight, with a look upon his face as if he were about to take her at
her word; but he stood still. Observing his indecision, she laughed.
"How long do you propose to keep me waiting? Are you going to wring it
now, or--it might be rather a nuisance in such a matter to have one's
moment chosen for one--would you rather wait?"
"I'll wait."
"Good; then while you're waiting won't you come closer to the fire and
have a drink? That's whisky and soda."
She held out to him a tumbler.
"Don't you give me that."
"Why not? It's warming."
"Last time you gave me something which was--warming."
"I see." She laughed. "You're thinking this is the same as that. I
understand; or--are you very hungry?"
"Don't you ask me questions; I'll take neither food nor drink from you.
I'll pay my debt and then----"
He left his sentence unfinished. If his bearing was more than a little
melodramatic, hers was easiness itself.
"Before we go any farther--and we are going farther, so you needn't
glare at me--we'll clear that up about what you call your debt. You
think you owe me one?"
"Think! I've been in hell because of you; I'm in it still. Now I've a
chance I'm going to make it my business to give you a taste of it too."
"There's nothing so silly as using extravagant language. I found that
out long ago; and I'm a woman, and women are supposed to be inclined
that way, and you're a man."
"You're a woman? A woman!"
"Yes, I'm a woman, a woman, a woman, and all the vitriolic bitterness
you can get into your tone won't alter that. Now just you keep still
and let me talk. You've your own point of view--of course, you would
have, being a man--and I've mine; before you start paying that debt
which weighs so heavily on your chest, you'll listen to what it is.
I'll be as brief as I can, and while I'm talking I'll lay the table;
I'm acting as my own maid just now. I may remark that you and I are
quite alone in the house, so that if you do feel like wringing my neck
you need fear no personal interference. I'm going to put some food upon
the table, because I'm going to eat something, if you aren't."
Out of a drawer in the sideboard she took a tablecloth.
"Now about that debt you were speaking of; but before I talk of it, I'd
better go and see what there is in the pantry that really is worth
eating. Wouldn't you like to come and help me? There will be a tray to
carry."
She had laid the table, and now stood at the open doorway looking at
him with a smile on her face. Plainly he was in more than two minds as
to what to do; this woman was, so far, proving more than a match for
him. His tone was surly.
"I'm not coming with you."
"Aren't you? Very well, don't; stop there. I may as well go upstairs
and take off my hat and coat and make myself look decent, even if I am
to have my neck wrung directly afterwards. And then I'll go and forage
in the pantry. Until we meet again."
With a saucy little nod she paused out of the room and shut the door.
A student in pantomime would have been interested by the man's
proceedings when he found himself thus left alone, he was so evidently
at a loss. He stared, or rather glared, at the door through which the
woman had vanished; he seemed to be in doubt as to whether to go
through it and out of the house. Then his eyes moved round the room,
and stayed; as if it were all in such delightful contrast to what he
had been used to that he had to stay. He made a half-step towards the
fire, then drew back, with clenched hands and knitted brows; he would
not warm himself beside this woman's fire. Then he saw the tumbler on
the table, which she had left on the snowy tablecloth invitingly
beneath his nose; his hand moved towards that--it was harder to keep
that back, but he did. He saw, for the first time, the mirror above the
mantel; as if unwillingly he went to it; the action was significant, a
mirror had not been a necessary adjunct to his toilet for a
considerable time.
He stared at the face that looked back at him as if it were that of a
stranger, as if he found it difficult to realise that it could by any
possibility be his, as if it were incredible that the man who had been
could be the man who was now. He took the greasy cap off his head, as
if the mirror had made him conscious that it was there. No woman could
have shown keener interest in a tale told by the mirror; so absorbed
was he by his own image that apparently he could not tear himself away.
He became aware that the fire was just beneath; he stretched out his
hands to the grateful blaze, then, remembered, glanced round him
shamefacedly, moved away towards the window. How cheerless it was
without, how cheery it was within. He twisted his cap as if he would
have torn it; his jaw was hard set; his eyes looked this way and that.
He moved from the window, this time towards the door, as if he were
trying to bring himself to the sticking point, to retreat in time. He
was nearly there when the door reopened and the woman appeared.
"Now then, you really must come and help me carry this tray; it's
perfectly absurd to suppose that I can do everything while you do
nothing. My maid is out; I only keep one, and it's her day out. You
needn't eat anything; the fates forbid that I should press my food on
you or my anything. But surely you can help me to get something to eat
myself. Do you hear?"
"Yes, I hear."
"And you're not coming?"
"No, I'm not coming."
"You won't help me to carry the tray?"
"I won't."
"Then thank you very much. You know, you used to be a gentleman."
She passed out of the room with her head in the air. He let her go,
waiting, grimly, for her return, the greasy cap between his hands.
Presently she was back, bearing a well-filled tray.
"Won't you sit down? I should think even my chairs would not do you any
serious injury; but, of course, stand if you prefer it; I suppose you
can wring my neck better standing. I'm going to have some tea, the
kettle's boiling, and I feel like tea. I suppose it's no use suggesting
tea to you, but I've brought a second cup, which you can throw at me if
you care to use it for nothing else. It might amuse you to throw things
at me before you wring my neck, including the teapot and the tray."
She was laying the table while she spoke. He kept his eyes turned from
her, which was perhaps the reason why she imparted to him information
which he declined to observe for himself.
"That's a tongue; nothing of your tinned or glass things, but a
Portland and Mason; and that's a ham, a small Westphalian boned ham; I
like Westphalian ham, even if you don't; and that was a chicken at
lunch, and it's very nearly a chicken now, and there's honey, and
marmalade, and jam, and cakes, and bread, and lots of things which some
people wouldn't turn their noses up at, whatever others may do. I don't
know that I'm fond of a meat tea, or high tea, or whatever you call it,
as a rule; though after all we do have sandwiches, all sorts of
sandwiches, with tea; everybody does, so it doesn't make such a very
great difference. Anyhow, I'm going to eat meat--all sorts of
meat--with my tea this afternoon, and you can watch me. There are two
plates, and two knives, and two forks, and two of everything for two
people, and two chairs; if you should know of anyone who will do me the
honour to take tea with me, I'll be very glad of--his society. I'm
going to begin."
She had placed a chair at one side of the table in which she sat,
making as if to pour out tea; then suddenly sprang up, turning to the
man who still stood twisting his cap between his fingers.
"Do you think you're playing the noble pudding-headed hero in a Drury
Lane drama? Haven't you got sense enough to get in out of the rain? Do
you suppose I don't know you're starving? How long ago is it since you
had a square meal?"
"Didn't I tell you not to ask me questions?"
"You didn't tell me! It will need a very different person from you to
tell me things of that kind in my own house."
"Then I'll leave your house."
"No, you don't!" She interposed herself between him and the door. "I
say no, you don't; and you can glare at me for all you are worth. I've
been glared at by much more dangerous persons than you, and I still
live on. You wouldn't lay a finger on me if I'd treated you twenty
times as badly as I have done; you may think you would, but you
wouldn't; you may tell yourself that you will when you're all alone,
but you won't, and you couldn't; you're that kind of man. The devil may
get into you, but he won't get into you enough to induce you, when it
comes to the pinch, to lay violent hands upon a woman. You say you are
going to leave my house, and I say you're not. I say I won't let you;
there's a direct challenge. You won't touch me, but I shan't hesitate
to touch you. I am that kind. You understand, you are not to leave my
house without my permission; and in order that we may know exactly
where we are I'm going to lock the door and put the key in my pocket."
"You shan't do that."
"Shan't I? Well, we'll see." All at once her tone changed to one of the
most singular appeal. "Man, do you know that I've been starving, and
not so very long ago? Why, for years of my life I as good as starved;
but there have been times when I've gone without food for days
together, and known what it is to feel as you are feeling now." She
laid her finger-tips softly on his ragged coat-sleeve. "You're a much
stronger man than I supposed, but please don't be a fool; do sit down
and have some tea with me, and afterwards you can wring my neck; you'll
want lots of strength to do it properly."
CHAPTER IX
The Drapery
He was persuaded, he knew not how; he never meant to be. The something
which was in him, the craving for food which was life, was on her side;
he did have tea with her, a gargantuan tea. He ate of everything there
was to eat, while she showed that the necessity that she should have
something to eat of which she had spoken was a fiction, by trifling
with odds and ends, while she watched that his plate was kept well
supplied, and kept on talking. She was even autobiographical.
"Compared with what I have gone through, with my course of training in
life's hard school, what you've endured is nothing, and you see that
outwardly I'm none the worse for it. I used to think that there wasn't
such a thing in the world as laughter for me, that it was just as
improbable that I should have a good time as that I should jump over
the moon. Yet, I've learnt to laugh at times, nearly all the time; and
as for a good time, I've acquired the knack even of getting that. It
will be the same with you, and more."
"I doubt it."
"Of course, all green hands do; they take life too seriously."
"Do they? When you left me I don't remember; when I remembered anything
again I was in the workhouse infirmary. I'd been found senseless and
practically stripped in an alley off the Gray's Inn Road. I'd been in
the infirmary more than a week before I came to my senses, after a
fashion; then they wanted me to account for myself. I couldn't, or I
wouldn't, they were not sure which, so they put me out again into the
street. I'm not certain, but I fancy that they gave me the choice of
that or of being an able-bodied pauper. It was snowing on the day they
turned me out; you should have seen the clothes I was wearing, and the
boots!"
"I know the Christian charity of the parish and of the workhouse
master!"
"It's rather more than two months ago, and since then I've never had a
square meal nor a comfortable night's lodging. You know what kind of
weather we've been having, an old-fashioned winter, the best skating
we've had for years. I don't know how I've lived through it, but I
have. And there are thousands who've been no better off than I have,
men, women, and children; I've herded with them. What a world! And for
what I've suffered I have to thank you."
"That's not true."
"That's a lie. I'm eating your food--I can't help eating it, I've got
to that--but don't you fancy that I'm under any obligation to you
because of it. I owe everything I've had to bear to you, and I'll pay
you for it. I've told myself that I would over and over again, and I
will."
"You talk nonsense; would you rather I had let you go to gaol?"
"What do you mean?"
"Have you forgotten that when I first had the honour of meeting you I
saved you from the police? I came on the scene in the very nick of
time. In another minute they'd have laid you by the heels and marched
you to the station."
He laid down his knife and fork.
"So I was right."
"About what?"
"It's all been a haze; something must have happened to me, something
must have cracked in here." He laid his hand on his head. "I don't seem
to remember anything beyond a certain point. I don't remember how it
was I came to meet you. I know you took me to your house, and dosed and
drugged me, and dyed my hair and painted my face, and that while I was
still more than half stupefied by your drugs you made a catspaw of me
to enable you to bring off some swindle--what it was I've never
understood--and that then you left me in the street, as if I were
carrion that you were throwing to the dogs; but how I first came to get
into your house I have never been able to make out."
"I have upstairs the watch, chain and purse of which you relieved an
old gentleman in Hyde Park, just before I came upon the scene. There's
his name inside the watch. I only have to communicate with the owner--I
know all about him--and you'll be sentenced to a long term of
imprisonment, during which you'll suffer much worse things than
anything you've had to bear because of me."
"Is that true, that I did what you say?"
"Perfectly, honestly; do you mean to say that you can't remember?"
"Now that you speak of it I do seem to recall something; it's coming
back."
"I should think that it probably was; it will all of it come back if
you give it time. I know all about you. I know your name, your record,
the whole dirty story; you were as deep in the gutter when I first met
you as you are now, and perhaps deeper--certainly you had no more
chance of getting out of it; men with your record never do, I know."
"What's my name?"
"Do you mean to tell me that you don't know?"
"Not--not clearly; sometimes I nearly know, it's on the tip of my
tongue, I can see it written, somewhere; but the writing is not
plain--I can't quite make it out."
"What do you call yourself?"
"They call me 'Balmy."'
"Who's they?"
"Oh, some of them; some of the swine with whom I herd. I didn't know
what 'balmy' meant before they told me; it seems that it means a man
who's not right in his head--not quite mad, but very nearly. I don't
think I'm mad, or even nearly, but, looking back, I can't get beyond a
certain point--beyond you. What did you do to me that caused it? Can't
you undo it?"
"Personally, I did nothing. There was somebody else there besides me;
can't you remember him?"
"I do seem to remember someone; wasn't it a man?" She nodded. "I do
seem to remember a man, a black-faced man. I suppose he was your tool,
and what he did to me was done by your orders."
"He certainly was not my tool. You say they tell you that you're not in
your right mind; you were not when I first met you. I should say that
you were practically starving and had been living the life of a London
gutter man; that bolt from the police finished you; we had to do
something to get life back into you. You certainly had your senses no
more about you than you say you had in the workhouse infirmary. I
declare to you that when I left you you were in a much better condition
than when I met you. You had your senses more about you; you had been
well fed, I believe the food I gave you saved your life; you were well
dressed, you had money in your pocket. I don't see how I can fairly be
held responsible for what happened to you afterwards; if you were in
your right mind now, you'd see I can't."
"I don't know how much of what you're telling me is true. What do you
want with me now? Why have you brought me here, do you want to use me
as a catspaw again?"
"Let me tell you my story, and then you'll begin to understand. Do you
mind if I have a cigarette? I can always talk better when I am smoking.
And won't you have a cigar?"
"I had a cigar when I saw you last."
"You remember that? Have another now that we meet again. You'll find
that there's nothing the matter with those cigars, they're good
tobacco."
She placed a box of cigars in front of him. He glared at them as if he
would rather they had not been there, but the craving that was in him
got the upper hand again. He took and lighted one, puffing at it while
she talked.
"My father was a country schoolmaster; I don't remember my mother, but
my father died when I was, I suppose, about fourteen. My only relative,
an uncle, found me a situation in a draper's shop, where I got no pay
because I was so young, but where they worked me from the first thing
in the morning till the last thing at night, and gave me in return my
food and lodging--such lodging and such food. When I had been there
three years they turned me out because I objected to the attentions of
the master's son. I knew my uncle wouldn't have me; I'd known that all
along. I should have been without a penny, absolutely, if it hadn't
been for one of the assistants who lent me a sovereign. With that I
came to town--I had ever an adventurous spirit. I went to a big shop, a
famous shop; they took me on at once. A sale was coming on, they were
in want of extra hands; with people of that sort they didn't want
references; the assistants there never had a chance of being dishonest,
they were too well looked after. They wanted no character when you
came, and they gave you none when you left; you were liable to be
discharged at a moment's notice, without any cause being given, and
assistants were being discharged like that continually, and they gave
you no character though you had been there ten years; they never do
give characters, it's a rule of the house. I was there rather more than
two years. I was in the mantles when I left. One afternoon just as I
was going down for tea, they called me into the office, gave me my
wages, and told me I could go; trade was slack, the season was over;
they gave me no reason, but that was the only one I could guess that
they had for sacking me."
She stopped to knock the ash off her cigarette, smiling to herself as
she did so.
"I got another berth after--well, after experiences something like
those which you have lately had; I was looking a nice sort of drab by
the time I got it. It was in a shop which did a cutting trade, a
low-class shop, an open-to-all-hours-of-the-night sort of shop, in a
low-class neighbourhood in which people did not start buying till an
hour when the shops ought to be closed. What a life I had there! You
talk about what you've been doing, and you're a man."
Her thoughts seemed to be harking back, but she still smiled.
"I've seen columns of gush in the papers about the woes of shop
assistants; if the British public only knew--if every woman had to
serve a term as assistant in some of the shops I could tell them of,
things would be altered pretty quick."
She leaned towards him over the table.
"You say you'd like to wring my neck; if you only knew the number of
people there were in that shop to whom I would have given almost
anything for the chance of wringing theirs--I almost did wring one
woman's, who was, ironically, called a housekeeper, and who was an
unspeakable thing! You talk of the swine with whom you've herded;
you've never had to associate with the likes of her, and be under her
thumb--and that's why I left."
Restlessness seemed all at once to seize her. She rose from her seat
and stood in front of the fire.
"I did some more starving, and--that sort of thing, then I got another
berth, no better than the other. They said my accounts were wrong--they
couldn't prove it, and I don't believe they were, but they sent me
packing that very day. You've no notion for how little, for nothing at
all, a draper's assistant, who may have given months and years good
service, is thrown into the ditch, no reason vouchsafed, no remedy
obtainable, no character to be had."
She swept out her hands, as if she were brushing from her a flood of
memories.
"Oh, I had all sorts of experiences; I was in the place you mentioned
for years, although I'm not an old woman now; you see, I got there
first when I was so very young; that does make a difference. Oh, I saw
the drapery in all its phases; to this hour I can't enter a draper's
shop without feeling a chill at the bottom of my spinal column; my skin
goes all goose-fleshy; I think of what drapers' shops once meant to me.
But there came a time when I had done with them--I'll take care that
it's for ever; that was when I reached the very lowest circle in the
pit. How many circles were there in Dante's hell? I'm convinced I
reached the bottom one."
CHAPTER X
The Woman Tempted Me
"I'd been out of a berth for practically a year; not all the time--I'd
been taken on for a few days here, for a week of two there, as odd hand
when the rush of the sales was on; but for a year I had had no regular
work. How I lived I can't tell you; you know, I had to live, and--well,
you talk of the things you've endured, you have no conception how much
worse that sort of thing is for a woman than for a man. At last I came
down to selling flowers--yes I that was a nice profession, wasn't it?"
She put her hands up to her brow, pressing back her hair; she presented
a sufficiently dainty picture then, with her well-fitting gown and her
look of perfect health.
"One evening--I'd had a bad day--I was hawking in the Strand, just
where I met you when I saw you with those boards upon your back. How it
all came back to me! My flowers had not been in very good condition in
the morning, they had not grown fresher as the day went on. I offered
them to a man who came sauntering along; he stopped to look at them, he
soon spotted the state that they were in. 'Why,' he said, 'these things
are only fit for throwing away.' Then he looked at me. 'Bertha!' he
exclaimed, 'surely it must be you?'"
She laughed. Turning, she stood looking down into the fire, tapping her
toe against the curb.
"If I'd only had a peep at him in time I should have let him pass; I
shouldn't have tried to make of him a customer, but I hadn't. I had
just seen that he was well dressed and looked as though he had money,
and, in the dim light, that was all."
She paused for so considerable a space of time that one wondered if she
proposed to carry the story any farther. When she did go on it was in
an altered tone of voice; she spoke very quietly, very coldly, as if
she wished to make a mere statement of facts.
"In one of the shops in which I had had the honour of being an
assistant he had acted as shopwalker. We had been on quite decent
terms, which was not the case with most of the gentlemen of his sort
that I had come across. Rather than that he should have seen me, in my
rags, hawking faded flowers in the streets, I would--I would have done
anything. When I tried to get away from him he wouldn't hear of it. He
called a cab, put me in it, and took me home with him, to his wife;
they had quite a nice little house Peckham way. I recognised her as one
of the girls who had been at the opposite counter to mine. It was not
strange that he had married her; what was queer was that they should be
living in such a house, unless one of them had come into a fortune."
Again she paused, staring at the fire as if she were seeking words
among the burning coals. Then, turning, she faced the man who was still
seated at the table. He had scarcely moved since she had begun her
story, as if he found in it a fascination that was not upon the
surface, as if he were looking forward, with eager interest, to what he
felt was coming.
"Nobody could have been kinder to me than those two people. They gave
food, and drink, and clothing, and shelter, and, something more, they
gave me the secret of the philosopher's stone; told me how it was that,
though no one had left them a fortune, they came to be living there."
Holding her shapely hands in front of her she kept pressing the tips of
the fingers together, and then withdrawing them.
"A piece of silk was missing at the shop. She was charged with stealing
it. She assured me that she had not stolen it, that she did not know
who had, that she knew nothing at all about it; they had not the
slightest real evidence that she was the guilty party, but they sacked
her all the same. And because the shop-walker sided with her, they
chose to assume that he was at least in part responsible for its
disappearance, and they sacked him too. So they married. That's a funny
sort of love story, isn't it?"
The man spoke, for the first time since she had begun her story.
"It's as good as others I've heard."
"No doubt, love stories are the funniest things. For what would you
marry?"
She was looking at him with laughing eyes.
"I shall never marry."
"Sure? Nothing's ever a certainty in that sort of thing. It was only
after they were married that they thought of ways and means. They had
about twenty pounds between them; they tried and tried, but neither
could get a berth; so they decided to throw up the drapery--probably
because it had thrown them up--and try another trade. They had given
honesty a trial; they decided to try the other, and see if it couldn't
be made to pay. It paid uncommonly well; the house in which they were
living, the way in which it was furnished, the style in which they did
things, was proof enough of that. They told me all about it, quite
frankly; then they suggested that I should join them in their new
profession. The occasions were not infrequent on which they wanted a
partner of my sex, who had her wits about her, and upon whom they could
absolutely rely. I did not need much persuasion; like them, I had had
enough of honesty; and--here I am--flourishing like a green bay tree."
"Do you mean that you're a thief?"
"A professional thief, exactly; just as you're a gutter-snipe--a much
less creditable, and a very much less profitable profession than mine."
She spoke in the airiest of tones, as if the thing that she admitted
was a trifle of no account. When she saw that he kept silent she went
on.
"I'm about to suggest that you come into the business as a partner of
mine."
"What prompts you to suggest it--affection?"
"Not altogether--no." Her eyes were dancing. "What prompts a woman to
do anything? She seldom knows, really and truly; I don't believe there
ever was a woman who was able to give all the reasons which moved her
to do anything. I've had you in my mind ever since I saw you last. I
did not do you anything like the ill turn you seem to imagine; I vow
and declare to you that when we parted you were, if anything, better
off than when we met. But sometimes--oh, sometimes--I think that I must
be the very queerest woman that ever was; but then I know better,
because all women are queer, and, when she's in the mood, every woman
can be the very queerest that ever was."
Quitting the fire, perching herself upon the side of the table, with
one foot upon a chair, she began to light another cigarette.
"Sometimes I've felt very bad about you; I didn't like to think of what
might have become of you after we had parted. Then when I began to
learn certain little facts about your personal history, I was conscious
of feeling a sympathy for you which you might have found amusing. I
told myself that if ever chance did throw us across each other's path
again, I would, if I could, if you stood in need of it, do you a real
good turn. When I saw you just now, in that dreary procession of six,
and realised that it was you, I knew that my opportunity had come. So
now I hope you understand."
"Only very dimly. I am still not so clear-headed as I might be. I want
to have things made very plain."
"I will try to make them as plain as you can possibly want them. First
of all, I want a partner; do you want to know why?"
"If it wouldn't be troubling you too much."
"I'm not altogether without associates, though I do miss my two first
friends."
"What became of them?"
"They brought off a big coup, got bags full of money, went off with it
to America, where they started a business of their own, in which I
believe they are now doing very well."
"Why didn't they take you with them? Didn't you get your share?"
"Rather, and a first-class time I had with it; one of the times of my
life; and I may mention, between ourselves, that, of late years, I've
had some good ones. I may tell you about some of them one fine day."
She seemed to be laughing to herself, as if the recollection tickled
her. He sat stark, stiff and silent, his strange hollow eyes fixed on
her face. She enjoyed her cigarette in silence for some seconds before
she went on.
"And as for why they didn't take me with them, one reason is that I
wouldn't have gone. Why should I? I should have been in their way, and
they most certainly would have been in mine. We parted on the very best
of terms; we correspond; one of these days I'm going to pay them a long
visit. But, from a purely professional point of view, I've never been
able to fill their place, especially his. You've very nearly finished
that cigar. Won't you have another?"
"No, thank you; I'm not at the end of this; I'm enjoying it--slowly."
She watched the rings of her cigarette smoke ascending to the ceiling.
"You see, in my profession, there are so very few gentlemen; and of all
the professions in the world, it's the one in which gentlemen are most
needed, the one in which they're sure to get the best reward for their
labours. There are one or two things in my mind, big things, things
involving quite possibly thousands of pounds, which I can't work alone,
in which I need the co-operation of a man whose birth and breeding,
whose knowledge of the manners and customs of good society are beyond
question. Now, you're the very sort of person I want; Eton and the
Guards; from my point of view there couldn't be a finer qualification."
"How do you come to know anything about me?"
"Your name--Sydney Beaton--was on the tab of that very well-worn coat
which you had on when first I met you. I know all about Sydney Beaton;
shall I tell you what I do know?"
"You needn't."
"I thought you said that you'd forgotten such a lot; that your mind,
beyond a certain point, was a blank?"
She was eyeing him with a malicious twinkle in her laughing eyes; he
was grimly silent, meeting her look with what seemed to be a strange
defiance.
"I'd rather not remember--now."
"I see; it's like that, is it? I don't blame you. I've no wish to touch
your sore places, though never so lightly; I've plenty of my own which
I'd just as soon people kept their fingers off; I'm not pachydermatous
quite. But there's one thing which I should like to ask, if you will
let me, and it's this: Have you any expectation of getting back to
where you were?"
"None."
"I don't wish to push the knife in, but--do you think there's any
probability of your regaining the position you once held? I repeat the
question in another form because, as you said, I want to be plain; this
time I want you and me to be colleagues, not what we were before, to
run no risk of a misunderstanding."
"Not only is there no probability, there is no possibility."
"Not even a thousand to one chance?"
"Nor a million to one. That side of me is dead; there can be no
resurrection. There is no person of the name you mentioned any longer;
some of my new friends call me 'Balmy'; I call myself James Langham."
"Then, Mr. Langham, let me put it to you as a sound business
proposition, that you've everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by
becoming my partner in certain delicate matters which I have in my
mind's eye."
"You're proposing that I should become a thief?"
"Well, 'a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'"
What might have been meant for a smile distorted his attenuated visage.
"The sort of thing that I've gone through turns the whole world
topsy-turvy; the ladies and gentlemen with whom I have associated think
nothing of stealing; they've robbed me times without number of the
worthless trifles of which I could be plundered, and--I had to bear it.
I've said to myself over and over again when I've been mad with misery,
that I would rob a bank if I dared."
"Yes, and if you had the chance. You would not see your way, for
instance, to enter, say, the London County and Westminster Bank attired
as you are, with the intention of coming out of it a wealthier man."
"You're quite right, I shouldn't."
"What I'm offering you is the opportunity to do that sort of thing with
perfect impunity; I'm not doing it out of philanthropic motives; at
least I'm not a humbug. I'll give you the means to replenish your
wardrobe, which needs it, and to live in comfort for a reasonable time,
on the understanding that you'll consider seriously certain
propositions that I shall make you, and, if you see your way, that
you'll give me your assistance in carrying them out, on sharing terms.
Is it a deal?"
For the first time he moved, withdrawing himself from the table and
standing up; he was so thin, there was something about him which was so
little human, that the ill-assorted, filthy rags of which his attire
consisted seemed to be hanging on a scarecrow.
"You feel that you can trust me?"
"I am sure of it."
"Knowing my record?"
"Records like yours don't count in my eye. There's nothing in your
record which hints that you ever played false to a woman. I know that
you won't play false to me."
"You expect me to tell you that I know you'll never play false to me?"
"Not a bit of it; I know what you've got in your head quite well. I
don't ask you to trust me one inch farther than you can see. But at the
beginning, at any rate, the confidence will be all on the other side.
I'm willing to make an investment for which my only security is faith
in you. When you know what these little schemes are of which I have
spoken as being in my head, you'll see that it isn't trust I'm asking
for; that what I propose is merely a matter of plain and open dealing,
in which no question of trust or mistrust can arise on either side.
Once more, is it a deal? Are you going back to carrying sandwich-boards
in the Strand at a shilling a day in weather like this; with the
certainty of there being certain intervals in which you'll be even
without a sandwich-board; or are you willing to get something out of
the world in return for what it's done for you; to throw black care to
the dogs, and laugh with me? Which do you choose--the sty and the
swine, cold, hunger and misery; or as good a time as ever a gentleman
had? England was made by freebooters; I'm suggesting that you should be
a freebooter up to date. As things are, a man can choose no other life
which gives much promise of adventure."
There was silence; although she waited for him to speak, the silence
remained unbroken. Presently he turned, and looked through the window
at the snow which had begun to fall fast, and was being driven here and
there by the shrieking wind; then he turned again, and looked at her
and at the fire. He still said nothing; but he shivered; and she said:
"I see that you have chosen."
CHAPTER XI
In the Wood
"I Don't think I need tell you that this is a very severe blow to
me; it almost knocks me out, but not quite; there's some fight still
left in me. There's one thing which I should take it as a very great
favour if you would tell me; have you said--what you have done,
because--there's someone else? I know I've no right to ask such a
question, but--I can't help it."
Major Harold Reith looked as if he could not; a more woe-begone looking
gentleman of six-feet-two one could hardly expect to find. The most
absurd part of it was that he had been so very nearly confident. The
lady had been so kind--so very much kinder, perhaps, than he supposed,
but for that she had her reasons. Then her uncle, old Geoffrey
Hovenden, had been not only on his side but so delightfuly sanguine.
When the major expressed a doubt as to what the lady's sentiments might
be, Mr. Hovenden had pooh-poohed it.
"Don't talk like a schoolboy, Reith; you know better than that; you
admit that the girl likes you--you can't expect to be told how much
till you give her a chance."
Now he had given her a chance, and if he had not been told how much,
she had at least endeavoured to make it clear that it was not as much
as he wanted. Her answer to the question he had asked put an end to the
little remaining hope he had left.
The proposal had been made in the wood. He had gone for a stroll with
her with the intention of finding an opportunity to ask her to be his
wife; being conceivably quite aware of his intentions, she had given
him one. It was the commencement of April. Spring promised to be early
that year. The wood was carpeted with primroses. She had been picking
them as they walked, and was arranging her nosegay as she talked.
"Of course, on the face of it, no one has a right to ask a girl such a
question; she might be consumed by a secret passion which was not
reciprocated, which she knew never would be, and yet which she was
aware would render it impossible that she should ever listen to
another; by another I mean, for instance, you."
"Is yours a case of a secret passion?" She had dropped some of her
primroses; he stooped to pick them up for her; a great bunch of them
she had, almost as large as her two hands would hold.
"Thanks; no, I can't say that mine is; yet all the same--I've a
fellow-feeling for you."
"That's very good of you; but in what sense have you what you call a
fellow-feeling, and to what extent does it go?"
"It goes all the way. There go some of these primroses again; they are
such droppy things."
"If you really mean what you say then I am a very happy man."
"You may be or you mayn't; happiness is often largely a question of
temperament. For example, I ought to be a very unhappy girl, but I'm
not; somehow unhappiness doesn't seem to come easy to me."
"You are very fortunate; what cause have you for unhappiness? I should
have thought that there were few people who had less. Has it anything
to do with the imagination?"
"There's only one thing I want in this world, and it looks as if I were
as little likely to get it as if it were the moon; you may call that
imagination, but it's a fact."
"And what may that one thing be?"
"You were just now saying some pretty things about there being only one
thing you wanted, and that was the girl you loved, meaning me. I am in
the same delightfully romantic situation; there's only one thing I
want, and that's the man I love."
A slight change took place in his face, as if a cloud had obscured the
sun. He looked at her in silence; it would have been hard to say which
was the prettier--she or the flowers. It was seen when he spoke that
the change had extended to his voice.
"So there is someone?"
"Oh dear, yes; there always has been, and there always will be."
"Your uncle gave me to understand that the field was clear."
"My uncle Geoffrey Hovenden is--I'm sorry to have to say it of a
relation of mine--a Machiavellian old gentleman. No one is better
acquainted with my piteous plight than he is; but because he wants you,
and wants me to want you, he says nothing about it. Do you mean to say
you don't know who it is?"
"Do you suppose that if I had even guessed that there was another I
should have said what I have done?"
"There's no telling; his own brother knew all about it, but that didn't
stop him."
"Who is the lucky man?"
"Lucky! Pray do let us keep clear of the language of exaggeration, but
I doubt if there is a more unlucky creature on the face of God's
earth."
"You pique my curiosity; standing with you as he does I can hardly
conceive of him as unlucky. Do I know him?"
"You did, if you don't now."
"You speak in riddles, at which I was never any good."
"Sydney Beaton."
He seemed to start away from her. This time not only his face, but his
whole bearing, the entire man, seemed to change.
"Miss Forster, are you in earnest?"
His tone, his manner seemed all at once to have grown cold; he could
hardly have held his figure more stiffly erect.
"And pray why shouldn't I be in earnest?"
"You place me in a difficult position; what answer am I to give to
that?"
"I know very well what you mean. No one knows better than I do that
Sydney is not all wisdom, but do you suppose a woman loves a man
because he is wise? Go to!"
"I presume that there are qualities that a woman requires in a man."
"What are they?"
"Surely she looks for at least some of the primitive virtues, say,
common honesty, some sense of decency, and that kind of thing."
"Well?" She paused as if for him to speak, but he was still. "Now how
am I going to tie these flowers together? I ought to have brought a
reel of cotton; as I haven't, you'll have to find me a nice long piece
of grass. Yes, I think that will do. Now, I'll hold the flowers if
you'll pass it round--so."
While together they secured the primroses she went on. The exigencies
of the situation required that they should be very close together; her
nearness so affected him that he found it difficult to comment upon her
words as frankly as he might otherwise have done, which was a fact of
which she was possibly aware.
"I know very well all about his having been supposed to have cheated at
cards; but I also know him much too well to believe for a single
instant that he ever did it; he couldn't, not Sydney Beaton."
"Then--forgive my saying so--why did he run away?"
"Oh, I'll forgive you anything; I want you to say just what is in your
mind; that's what I brought you here for. You brought me here to
propose; and I brought you because I wanted you to tell me things which
I could never find out from anybody else; you've done what you wanted,
so now it's my turn."
"It's beginning to occur to me that your uncle is not the only
Machiavellian member of your family."
"No? Perhaps not. I wish you'd pull that tighter--what big, strong
fingers you have got! Most of my information has been derived from what
I call tainted sources--from his brother, for instance. George Beaton
wants me to believe that his brother is an unutterable creature. He has
told me tales about him which have had quite a different effect to that
which he intended; it sometimes is like that when a man tells a girl
tales about another man. It seems to me that between you Sydney has
been very badly used indeed. His brother's behaviour has been
inconceivably bad, and so I took the liberty to tell him. And I'm
afraid you don't come out with flying colours."
"What have I done? I am not conscious of having even mentioned his name
to you."
"All those men against one; though I'll do you the justice to admit
that I think it's quite possible that you are ashamed of yourself."
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow." Again his bearing had stiffened.
"If you don't take care, all these primroses will fall, and then where
shall we be? That's better--tied at last. Thank you, Major Reith.
George Beaton told me all about the affair--how all you men set upon
one, and actually--according to Sir George--threw him out of the room.
I can't think whatever men can be made of, that you should still be
walking about with your heads in the air."
"It's a subject, Miss Forster, which I'm afraid I can hardly discuss
with you; there are subjects which men do not discuss with women."
"Is that so, Major Reith? And pray is that meant for a snub? That shows
the kind of treatment which I might expect to receive if I consented to
become your wife; because I'll have you know that this is a subject
that I mean a good many men to discuss with this woman, and, to begin
with, you're going to be one of them. What do you think I brought you
into the wood for? Didn't I tell you? Now you're in the witness box; if
you don't answer all the questions which are put to you I'll have you
committed for contempt of court. Sydney Beaton is alleged to have
cheated at cards; what is the exact act of which he is said to have
been guilty?"
"He substituted one card for another."
"Did you see him do it?"
"No, but he was seen by others. The original accusation was made by
Anthony Dodwell--you know Dodwell?"
"I know of him, Major Reith, and, thank you, that is quite enough. Was
Mr. Dodwell the only eyewitness?"
"Draycott saw him also. Do you know Draycott?"
"Mr. Noel Draycott? Oh, yes, I do know Mr. Noel Draycott. I daresay Mr.
Noel Draycott means well; I wish to speak ill of no one, but I've heard
him make some surprising statements, and I'm afraid I shouldn't believe
anything Mr. Noel Draycott said merely because he said it. Was he seen
to do this thing by anyone else?"
"He was not actually seen."
"What do you mean by that, Major Reith? Either he was, or he was not,
seen; surely in such a juxtaposition the word 'actually' is out of
place. Explain yourself; don't convey to my mind the impression that
you also are prejudiced."
"I assure you that, so far as I am concerned, it is all the other way.
I should be only too glad to believe him innocent, but--Miss Forster,
it's a tall order."
"Tell me exactly why; has he ever been suspected of such practices
before?"
"Never. God forbid! To some extent I am inclined to excuse him as it
is; he had been drinking too much. I think that had as much to do with
it as anything."
"My dear Major Reith, that is not an excuse, but an aggravation. I have
seen it written somewhere that when a man is drunk his real character
is seen, because he is no longer able to hide it. If what you suggest
is correct, then--Sydney Beaton must be past praying for. But it is
incorrect. I am convinced that Sydney Beaton, drunk or sober, is a man
of honour; else I could not love him as I do."
"But what has become of him? Do you know?"
"I do not, but I'm going to find out; so now you see why I ought to be
unhappy. All these months I've been wondering where he was--waiting,
longing, hoping to hear. Every post I thought would bring me news;
every time that there was a telegram my heart beat a little faster. I
made inquiries in my own way, but I've found nothing. All I know is
that one night his brother officers attacked him--about twelve men to
one. I have the charity to suppose that they were in a condition in
which they did not know what they were doing. Sydney was always apt to
do things first and think afterwards. I don't wonder that such
treatment caused him to lose his head; I should have wondered if it
hadn't. I can understand why he hasn't communicated with me; I know my
Quixote. But now that all these months have gone, and there's still no
news, I'm getting anxious."
"I don't wonder. Has absolutely nothing been heard of him, by anyone,
by his brother?"
"Sir George Beaton would be the last to hear, if Sydney could help it.
You can be trusted to keep a secret?"
"Where you are concerned I certainly can."
"I have been a bone of contention between those two brothers since
ever. George, being the head of the family, is of opinion that he has
the first claim on me; as I think otherwise, he shows what seems to me
to be the most unfraternal eagerness to think the very worst of Sydney.
And that seems to be the case with everyone. You all, when you come to
look into the matter, seem to have discreditable reasons of your own
for pretending to think ill of him."
"Am I included among that 'all'?"
"No, it happens that you're not, and that's why I'm talking to you now.
I'm going to look for Sydney; I'm going to leave no stone unturned to
find out where he is. I'm getting tired of waiting; and, while I'm
looking, I'm going to find out the truth of what took place on that
disgraceful night. You're going to tell me all you know; I'm sure that
will be the truth as far as it goes, but I'm afraid it won't go far
enough. I shall have to go to other sources to get at all I want, and
that is what I am presently going to do."
"How do you propose to set about it?"
"I have a friend--a very, very dear friend. You know Lady Cantyre?"
"Who doesn't? Saving your presence, is there anyone better worth
knowing?"
"Saving nothing, there isn't; and she's my very, very dear friend. She
knows the pickle I'm in and she's going to help me; this is between
ourselves, mind. I want to get at Mr. Noel Draycott under circumstances
in which he will find it hard to get away. She has asked him down to
Avonham, and I shall be there to meet him; before we part I shall find
out a great deal more about what Mr. Noel Draycott really did see, as
well as about other things, than he in the least anticipates."
"I can quite believe it; when a man like Draycott is concerned, I
should imagine that you could turn him inside out like an old glove."
"I don't know about the old glove, but I do mean to do something like
turn him inside out, and the process is going to begin next week.
Sydney has been too long under a cloud which was none of his making; I
am going to bring him out from under it into the sun. I am going to do
it single-handed; and it's because I am so sure that I shall do it that
I cannot be unhappy. Major Reith, I talk like a braggart of doing it
all single-handed; but all the same I am conscious that occasion may
arrive when I shall require some assistance; if I do, will you give
it?"
"I will give you, very gladly, all the assistance which, in such a
position, a man may give to a woman."
"Then--that's all right. Thank you, Major Reith."
In her left hand she had the bunch of primroses, which she held close
to her face; her right she held out to him.
CHAPTER XII
"What Does it Mean?"
The night of the Easter Ball--the event of the year at Avonham.
The Countess of Cantyre, on her way to the scene of action, looked in
on Miss Violet Forster. That young lady, apparently already fully
equipped, seated in an arm-chair, was studying what seemed to be a
small memorandum book. She looked up as the Countess entered. Her
ladyship came well into the centre of the room, drew herself to her
full height, which was less than she would have liked it to be, and
slowly revolved in a complete circle, by way of exhibiting her plumes
for the lady's inspection. When she had made an end, she prompted the
criticism which did not come.
"Well?"
"Excellent."
"You think I shall do?"
"Margaret, you're a dream of delight."
"You really think so? You like the dress? I was afraid there was a
little too much on the bodice."
"There is nothing anywhere which could be altered in the slightest
degree for the better; the gown and the wearer are perfectly matched:
they are both lovely."
Her ladyship dropped a curtsy.
"Thank you, that's just what I wanted you to say. Now you stand up, and
I'll give you my candid opinion."
"Very much obliged, but I'm not sure that I want it; I'm not the
Countess of Cantyre. Who cares what I look like?"
"You little humbug! It's only your conceit; it's simply that you take
it for granted that you always look your best, which couldn't be
improved." Her ladyship was arranging the drapery of her skirt as she
glanced in the mirror. "What have you got out of Noel Draycott?"
"Nothing, as yet. I haven't tried; but I shall. I mean to drop a bomb
at his feet at the moment he least expects it."
"If it's to be to-night, don't let it go off with too loud a bang. I
don't know if I told you that the whole regiment has decided to come.
They telegraphed this afternoon that they would all be able to get off,
as I understand, to a man. You'll have a chance of dropping a bombshell
at the feet of every one of them."
"I should like to. Every time I look at Mr. Noel Draycott I feel--I
can't tell you what I feel."
"Any news of the absentee?"
"None; but I'm beginning to dream of him again."
"You'd better be careful what you have for dinner; eat nothing for at
least three hours before you go to bed."
"Last night I dreamt that he was starving; and to save himself from
starving he was doing something so awful that it woke me up, and I lay
wide awake, trembling with terror."
"You poor child! You may congratulate yourself that it was a dream. Are
you coming? I must be off."
"I'll follow in a minute or two; don't you wait for me."
Left alone, the girl tried to resume her study of the small volume she
was holding; but the effort seemed in vain. Her eyes refused to be
fixed upon the page; they stared into vacancy at something which was
not there. She rose; placing the little book in a leather case which
stood upon the dressing-table, she pressed down the lid, which shut
with a spring.
"It's very odd, but I seem to feel that something is going to happen
to-night; I wonder what it is?"
There was a tapping at the door; a maid came in. She advanced towards
the girl with something held out in her hand.
"Excuse me, Miss Forster, but is this yours?"
It was a locket, attached to a slender gold chain. The girl looked
round quickly; she made as if to open the box she had just now shut.
Then she said:
"I don't think it can be mine, but it resembles one I have; please let
me look at it."
She took the locket and examined it closely. As she did so her face
changed, as if something had startled her. She looked at the maid, with
in her eyes what might almost have been a look of fear. Then, turning
her back, as if to hide the agitation which she could not help but
feel, she touched a spring; the locket came open. At the sight of what
was within she broke into a sudden exclamation; she swung right round
again. There was no doubt that something had startled her now; the
blood had come into her cheeks, her eyes were wide open, she trembled.
"Where did you get this?" she cried.
"If you please, miss, I found it on the floor outside your room. I was
coming along and I saw it lying there, and it was so close to your door
that I thought you might have dropped it."
"When was this? When did you see it there?"
"A moment ago, miss; as soon as I had picked it up, I knocked at your
door."
"But it's inconceivable, incredible! It certainly wasn't there just now
when Lady Cantyre went out."
"That I can't say, miss; I didn't see her ladyship."
"But if it had been there she would have seen it." The girl moved a
step closer. "Who are you?"
The maid seemed as if she did not know what to make of Miss Forster's
manner, which was peculiar; so peculiar that it might almost have been
described as threatening.
"Me, miss? I'm Simmons."
Miss Forster was silent, not, it would seem, because she had nothing to
say, but because she had so much that she didn't know how to say it.
All at once she moved towards the door of the room.
"Come here; now show me, please, exactly where you found this locket,
the very spot."
Opening the door, she allowed the maid to precede her into the passage.
As if, as was only natural, disconcerted by the young lady's manner,
the maid did what was required. She pointed to the floor.
"I can't, of course, miss, say which was the exact spot--nobody could;
but I should say, as near as possible, it was just there."
"Then Lady Cantyre must have seen it as she went out; if she had she
would have brought it to me; she would have done something."
"As to that, miss, I cannot speak."
"You say that your name is Simmons?"
"Yes, miss, Jane Simmons."
"Have you been here long?"
"No, miss; I'm one of the new servants who came in just before Easter
when the family returned from town."
"What made you think that the locket had anything to do with me?"
"I didn't, miss. I didn't think anything at all about it; there was the
locket and there was your door. I thought that someone who was the
other side of the door might have something to do with the locket. I
didn't know that you were in your room, miss; I thought that you might
have dropped it going out."
"There's something about this that I don't understand; but, for the
present, that will do. I may have some questions to put to you later,
Jane Simmons. You can go; when I've spoken to Lady Cantyre, you will
probably hear from me again."
Violet Forster, back in her room, stared at the locket as if it were
some strange, terrible mystery; which to her, in a sense, it was.
"My locket; the one I gave him; the double of the one he gave me."
Unlocking the leather case which stood upon the dressing-table--from
what was perhaps intended to be a secret receptacle at the bottom, she
took a locket which was attached to a slender gold chain, comparing it
with the one the maid had brought.
"It's my locket--there are my initials--my portrait inside; they are a
pair--only I'm in one and he's in the other. He told me that mine
should never leave him; that if it wasn't about his neck, it would
always be somewhere about his person; how came it to be there, where
that woman said it was? Is this the something which I felt was going to
happen? What does it mean? Is it a message? From whom?--from him? I
feel--I feel--Sydney, where are you?"
She swung suddenly round, gazing round the brightly lighted room with
startled, staring eyes, as if she did not know for what she was
looking. Then she caught sight of something which was lying on the
floor almost at her feet.
"What's that?" She picked it up. "Where did that come from? Surely it
was not there just now; what--what does it all mean?"
It was an envelope which she had picked up from the carpet; she was
holding it gingerly between her finger and thumb as if it were some
dangerous thing.
"What's written on it? 'Sydney Beaton's card'--what! There's something
inside it." Tearing it open, she took out what it contained. "It's a
playing-card, the ace of clubs. What does it mean?"
CHAPTER XIII
The Alcove
The ball was a great success, it was generally admitted. Miss Forster
could have danced each number on the programme with half a dozen
different partners if she had chosen. She danced with Mr. Noel
Draycott; when it came to sitting out, he found her manner a little
disconcerting. He was of the fatuous type of young man, a better dancer
than conversationalist. He had a sort of cut-and-dried routine on such
occasions, saying the same things, as much as possible, to each of his
partners in turn. New ideas would not come to him quickly, especially
when he was talking to women; if they would not keep to the subject
which he felt was appropriate to the occasion, he preferred not to talk
at all.
Miss Forster treated him in that respect quite badly. When he tried to
make one of his orthodox remarks, which were meant to be compliments,
she ignored him utterly. She not only said things which worried him--to
him it always was a labour to find an answer to a remark that was
unexpected--she asked him questions which puzzled him still more,
questions which he felt that she had no right to ask; particularly of a
man in the middle of a dance.
When he had quitted her, before seeking his next partner, he unburdened
himself to his friend, Anthony Dodwell.
"She's a top-hole dancer, Miss Forster, and as pretty as paint, but
when it comes to asking a man if he likes liars I draw the line."
"Did she ask you if you liked liars?"
"She asked me much worse things than that. She was just asking me, when
I hooked it, what I thought was the most shameful way in which a man
could treat a friend. If I hadn't hooked it, I don't know what she
wouldn't have asked me next; she's taken the stiffening out of my
collar, talking to a man like that, between a two-step and a waltz."
When his friend had left him, Dodwell advanced to the lady of whom they
had been speaking.
"May I have the pleasure of a dance, Miss Forster?"
She had her hand on the arm of the partner who was about to bear her
off; looking Captain Dodwell up and down in a fashion which, to say the
least, was marked, she said, in a tone of voice which was clearly
audible to those around:
"In any case, Captain Dodwell, you would have been too late." She
looked him straight in the face, then she turned to her partner. "Will
you please take me away?"
It was not strange that, as the pair moved off, Anthony Dodwell did not
look happy; if she had flicked a whip in his face her intention could
hardly have been plainer. He was conscious that while there were smiles
on some of the faces about him, and while some observed him with
curious eyes, there were others who kept their eyes carefully averted.
On the whole, he carried the thing off uncommonly well. He strolled
away, and presently was dancing with a lady whose charms were not so
obvious as they possibly once had been. While he danced he was saying
things to himself which would have surprised his partner if she could
have heard them.
"What the devil did the little cat mean by that? What have I ever done
to her? I swear I've done nothing. I expect that the tale is being told
all round the room at this moment; people will be taking it for granted
that I've behaved to her like--God alone knows what. I'll have an
explanation from her before the night's out--and an apology. I should
like to force her down upon her knees before everybody who heard her,
the little----"
He left the sentence unfinished, even though he was only speaking to
himself; as if he could not find words which would give adequate
expression to his feelings. His partner asked him a question, he
answered it; but even while he was speaking, as he steered her round
the room, he was thinking of Violet Forster.
A little later Miss Forster was dancing with another of his brother
officers, Mr. John Tickell, better known as Jackie. Mr. Tickell was not
only still a subaltern, he was a junior subaltern; it was his habit to
mention the fact, with an air of grievance, to persons of the feminine
sex, after a very brief acquaintance, if they showed signs of being
sympathetic. As he was quite a nice boy, and not bad-looking, as he
would himself have expressed it, when he "struck" a girl, nine times
out of ten, he found her as sympathetic as he could possibly have
desired. He had made Miss Forster's acquaintance for the first time
that night; had booked a dance with her with the brightest hopes, which
were destined to be blighted. There was no mistake about her dancing,
their steps went perfectly together; it was in other directions that
disappointment came. He led her, when the music ceased, to a spot on
which he had had his mind's eye all along. In the passage outside the
ballroom there was an alcove, quite a small one; it was screened by a
palm in a wooden tub, a sensible-sized palm, with plenty of leaves,
which really did do service as a screen. Behind this palm there were
chairs, two chairs; no more. Any two persons who sat on them would be
in the midst of the crowd; there was a perpetual procession up and down
the corridor; and yet as much alone as the most sensitive young man who
was in need of sympathy could possibly desire. Mr. Tickell made
straight for that alcove, rather hurrying the lady.
"I know a first-rate place for sitting out, if only someone isn't there
before us."
No one was; they placed themselves in the two chairs. Mr. Tickell gave
a little sigh of satisfaction; the young woman beside him was
distinctly a find--as he would himself have phrased it, "a ripping
dancer, awfully well turned out, and a dazzler to look at." He had no
doubt that he was in for an extremely good time, and therein showed
that the prophetic eye was certainly not his, because he had been there
only a very few minutes before he began very ardently to wish that that
alcove had been occupied by a dozen, or even twenty, people, instead of
being left invitingly open for him.
"Are you fond of dancing?"
He also had his methods of commencing such conversations; this was one
of his stereotyped openings; he liked to lead up to the sympathetic
point by routes with which he was acquainted.
"Don't I dance as if I were--is that what you mean?"
This was not at all the sort of answer he had expected; from his point
of view, it was not playing the game. While he was still floundering
about for a suitable answer, she put a question to him on her own
account.
"What are you fond of?"
He would have liked to say that he was fond of her. He had had partners
to whom he would have said it without the slightest hesitation; but
somehow he felt that this was a partner with whom the remark might not
have the success it deserved; and before he spoke she again went on.
"Are you fond of gambling?"
"Gambling?" He stared at her with startled eyes, it seemed to him to be
such a singular question to have hurled at him.
"I mean, for instance, are you fond of poker?" Again she went on before
he could speak, taking an answer for granted in a fashion which he
found a trifle disconcerting. "But, of course, I know you are; I have
heard of some of your performances at poker."
He really did not like her tone at all; there was something in it which
made him conscious of a vague discomfort. What could the girl be
driving at?
"Particularly I've heard of one."
She said it while she was glancing at him over the top of her fan,
which she was opening and shutting.
"Which one?"
"Weren't you playing some months ago when one of your brother officers
was accused of cheating?"
Small wonder if his eyes seemed to grow rounder, the bad taste of such
a remark! To say nothing of its unexpectedness.
"Really, I don't know to what you refer."
"Oh yes, you do. You know perfectly well; if you don't, I'll explain."
"Thank you very much, but if you don't mind, I'll take you back to the
ballroom; there's someone whom I've just thought I ought to be behaving
nicely to."
"You'll behave as nicely as you can to me before you try your practised
hand on anybody else. You've presence of mind, Mr. Tickell, but it
won't do. You sit still until I let you go."
Except by violence, he could hardly have got away; he saw now why she
had expressly directed him to take the farther chair. He could scarcely
get out of the alcove without passing her; he did not see how he could
do it if she did not choose to let him.
"At the game of poker to which I wish to call your attention, right at
the close, you were betting against Mr. Sydney Beaton."
"If you don't mind, I'd much rather not talk about it; I don't
know how you came to know anything about it, but you'll understand
that it's rather a painful subject to me. What do you think of the
floor--first-rate, isn't it?"
If he hoped to get her to confine her conversation to what he regarded
as proper topics, his hope was doomed to disappointment, as she at once
made plain.
"There was a good bit of money in the pool, at the point on which I
wish to refresh your memory--over a thousand pounds, I've been given to
understand, at the moment when Mr. Beaton covered your raise--you had a
straight, king high; Mr. Beaton had a full, three aces and a pair of
knaves, a much better hand than yours, and yet, I'm told, you claimed
the pool."
"Then you've been misinformed. Excuse me, Miss Forster, I don't know
what all this has to do with you."
"It has a very great deal to do with me. You claimed the pool----"
"I did not claim the pool; really, Miss Forster, I don't think this is
the sort of thing to talk about at a dance."
"You took the pool, you conveyed its contents to your pockets."
"It was adjudged to be mine. But with all possible apologies, Miss
Forster, I must decline to discuss the subject with you, especially at
such a moment as this. May I take you back to the ballroom?"
He stood up, his face a little flushed; if he thought that she would be
overawed by his air of determination, he was mistaken. She also stood
up, in such a way that without an actual tussle it would have been
impossible for him to escape--that well-screened alcove had its
drawbacks.
"You will not leave me, Mr. Tickell, till you have given me certain
explanations which I am about to require from you. Sit down."
Nothing could have been more dictatorial than her manner, or more
uncalled for; his visage sufficiently expressed the amazement he felt.
"Miss Forster!"
"You have done me a very serious injury, Mr. Tickell, a wrong which no
man with any pretensions to decency would do any woman; if you decline
to sit down, if you try to leave this place, there'll be a scandal,
because I shall follow you into the ballroom, and wring an explanation
from you there. I am not friendless; I will take care that you don't
leave this house till I have it."
The young gentleman sat down, with every appearance of the most extreme
discomfiture. His words came from stammering lips.
"I--I--I never heard such a thing in my life; I--I've done you a wrong?
Why, Miss Forster, I never met you before. Of course, I've heard of
you, everybody has; as--as to doing you a wrong, I'd no more think of
doing you a wrong than--than---- Whatever makes you think I have?"
She resumed her seat beside him with an air that was much more
commanding than he had ever seen worn by his colonel.
"Be so good as to answer the question which I put to you just now, Mr.
Tickell: why did you convey to your own pockets the contents of the
pool which properly belonged to Mr. Beaton, since he had won it?"
"I do not know why you are talking to me like this, Miss Forster--I
give you my word I don't--but if you know so much you must know the
chaps said he cheated."
"What chaps?"
"All the chaps."
"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Tickell, on your honour, that all the men
who were present in the room accused Mr. Beaton of cheating?"
"That's what it amounts to, but, of course, it began with Dodwell."
"I am perfectly aware that Captain Dodwell made a certain statement for
which Mr. Beaton was only kept from knocking him down by the rest of
you--brave men! What I want to know is if you were all in the
conspiracy. Did you yourself see, with your own eyes, Mr. Beaton
cheat?"
"I can't say that I did."
"You were watching him the whole time?"
"I suppose I was."
"Did you see anything in the least suspicious about anything he did?"
"I'm bound to say I didn't, at least, not to notice it."
"Had you any suspicions of him?"
"Not the faintest shadow of one, we were chums; I would as soon have
suspected myself."
"So, except for what Captain Dodwell said, which was, after a fashion,
corroborated by Mr. Noel Draycott, you had no reason to suppose that
Mr. Beaton had been guilty of the slightest irregularity?"
"I suppose I hadn't, if you look at it like that."
"You would unhesitatingly have handed the pool to Mr. Beaton, without
even the slightest feeling of having been ill-used?"
"Of course I would; he had won it; his hand was better than mine."
"He denied having done what Captain Dodwell stated?"
"Rather; as you said, he wanted to knock him down; he was as mad as a
hatter."
"Would you have behaved with perfect calmness in the face of Captain
Dodwell's hideous accusation?"
"I don't expect I should, especially as we were all of us pretty warm
to begin with."
"Would you want to knock a man down who said that kind of thing of
you?"
"You bet, I should want to kill him."
"Because Mr. Beaton felt exactly as you would have done, his brother
officers, chivalrous creatures, threw him out of the room--you assisted
them?"
"Upon my word, I hardly know what I did do, it was a regular
rough-and-tumble; Beaton fought like ten wild cats. I daresay I did
bear a hand."
"Oh, you dare say? I congratulate you, Mr. Tickell, on the courageous
assistance you lent your brother officers; was it twelve or twenty
against one? They could scarcely have done without you. Cowards! And
having assisted your friends in getting rid of the rightful claimant,
you had no scruple in placing Mr. Beaton's money in your pocket, and, I
presume, paying with it some of the more pressing debts which I
understand you owed?"
The young gentleman winced, the lady's thrust had gone home.
"That's all I want from you, Mr. Tickell; I am obliged to you for the
confession you have made. I advise you to consider your position, and
to ask yourself, when you are dancing with your next partner, if a
person who has behaved as you have done is entitled to show his face in
such a house as this. Mr. Beaton cheated no one; he is incapable of
such conduct as yours; you cheated him, having first joined yourself
with some twelve or twenty of your friends to get him out of the way.
Think over what I have said to you, Mr. Tickell, instead of whispering
soft nothings to your partners, and remember that I shall be watching.
Now you may go."
CHAPTER XIV
"Who is Simmons?"
Miss Forster was strolling by herself along the corridor; she had
declined to permit Mr. Tickell to accompany her, and the youth had
seemed glad enough to get away. She examined her programme; she had it
in her mind to cut the next dance, not from one of the reasons which
usually prompt that nefarious course of action, but because she had a
strong feeling that for a few minutes she would like to be alone. She
passed into the conservatory through a door which was at the end of the
corridor. The music for the next dance had already commenced; the
sitters-out, to whom the conservatory is a haven much to be desired,
had gone. She moved to a couch which was flanked on either side by
towering ferns. She had just sat down and was congratulating herself
upon the prospect of remaining, for at least a brief period,
undisturbed, when a voice addressed her.
"I am fortunate, Miss Forster, in finding you alone."
The speaker was Captain Anthony Dodwell. She said nothing, but, rising,
made as if to go away. He treated her as she had just treated Mr.
Tickell; he interposed himself so as to render it difficult for her to
pass.
"Pardon me, Miss Forster, but, as you are aware, there is an
explanation which you owe me, and which you will be so good as to let
me have before you go."
"Stand aside, sir."
"A short time ago you more than suggested that I was not the kind of
person with whom you cared to dance--with whom, indeed, any decent
woman would care to dance. You did this publicly, in such a way that
your treatment of me is, at this moment, a common topic of conversation
in the ballroom. What explanation have you to give?"
"None; you are not the kind of person with whom any decent woman would
care to dance, or talk. Are you going to stand on one side, or am I to
call for assistance?"
"What grounds have you for what you just now said--what have I ever
done to you that you should say it?"
"Captain Dodwell--it seems incredible, but I believe you still do hold
that rank in the King's service--you are a liar, a coward, and, I
believe, a thief. That you are not, in any sense, an honest man, is
certain; to what extent your dishonesty goes, you know better than I
do, though I hope to make the thing quite clear before very long. Do
you really imagine that an explanation is required as to why a decent
woman is unwilling to dance, to talk, or to be associated in any way
whatever, with a person of that kind?"
"You are taking advantage of your being a woman, Miss Forster; can you
give me the name of any man who will be willing to be associated with
you in what you just now said?"
"On an infamous occasion, Captain Dodwell, you found one man, Mr. Noel
Draycott, who, for reasons of his own, was so base as to be willing to
be associated with a foul lie which you uttered; but before very long I
confidently hope that every man who was then present will be associated
with me against you. Will you let me pass, or would you prefer that I
should repeat what I have just now said in the presence of the dancers
who are now leaving the ballroom?"
He let her pass. The music had ceased, couples were streaming in; among
the first was Lady Cantyre on the arm of her attendant cavalier. At
sight of the girl she started.
"Haven't you been dancing?" She glanced towards Dodwell, whose attitude
scarcely suggested riotous enjoyment. As her eye caught Violet's she
seemed to have a glimmer of understanding. She turned to her partner.
"That was a perfect dance she's missed, wasn't it?" Then, to Violet,
"And, by the way, I think I heard a certain gentleman inquiring for
you--with an air!"
Miss Forster danced through the rest of the programme--no other of her
partners had occasion to complain of her in any way whatever. Her
demeanour could not have been more orthodox; she behaved just as a
young woman ought to who is having a first-rate time at a delightful
ball. During the dances and in that more critical period between them,
she was all that her partners could possibly have desired; lucky men!
No one, to look at her, or to listen to her, would have guessed that
anything had happened to crumple a single rose leaf, to mar in the
least degree her night's enjoyment.
Only when dancing with one partner was a word said which was not,
perhaps, altogether in keeping with the spirit of the hour. The partner
was Major Reith, and, in the beginning, the words came from him. That
scene in the woods, far from weakening, had rather strengthened their
friendship. He was years older than she; what had passed between them
on that occasion seemed to have produced in him the attitude, say, of
an uncle, who was on the best terms with his niece. He said the word,
after the dance was over, when they had settled themselves on chairs
which were in full view of the whole assembly; there was evidently no
thought of the privacy of the alcove for them.
"What's this I hear you've been saying to Anthony Dodwell and to Jackie
Tickell?"
"How can I tell what you hear behind my back?"
"Exactly; how can you? And you can't guess either?"
"Did I ever pretend to be any good at guessing?"
"It seems that you said something to Dodwell, when he asked you for a
dance, which has set people's tongues wagging; you alone know what you
said to Jackie, but he's going about with a face as black as his
shoes."
"My dear Major Reith, I understand that you are sleeping here to-night.
If you ask me in the morning for information, I will give you all I
can; but, while I may remark that I have said to both the persons you
name only a little of what I propose to say, I would rather not tell
you what I have said now. This is a ball; I want that to be the only
fact in my mind for the remainder of the night."
"One more question and it shall. Have you heard anything of Beaton?"
"I haven't; but I may have. Something has happened that I don't
understand, which puzzles me; but ask me about that also in the
morning. As Mr. Tickell said when he wished to change the conversation,
isn't it a capital floor?"
The major took the hint, which was more than she had done. The rest of
the conversation was more in harmony with the moment; that is, they
talked of nothing in which either took the slightest real interest.
The ball had come to the end to which all balls come at last, and Miss
Forster, having retired to her room, had gone through, with her maid's
assistance, the preliminary stages of unrobing, when, Lady Cantyre
entering, she informed the maid that her services would no longer be
required--and the friends were left alone. The countess, who was
attired in a mysterious garment of sky-blue silk, which became her, if
the thing were possible, even more than the dress which she had worn at
the ball, had placed herself in an arm-chair, and was toasting her toes
at the fire.
"Violet, I'm told that you've been going it."
"Haven't we all been going it?"
"Yes, but not quite, I hope, on the same lines as you. You practically,
it seems, treated Captain Dodwell to a whipping in the middle of the
ballroom. That is not exactly the sort of treatment that one expects
one guest to mete out to another."
"Margaret, I am more than ever convinced that Sydney Beaton has been
the victim of a conspiracy. Something which was on Captain Dodwell's
face during the brief interview I had with him, which he forced on me,
made me absolutely certain that, for some purpose of his own, which I
intend to get at the bottom of very soon, he was guilty of a deliberate
falsehood on that horrible night; that he's a liar and a coward, as I
had the pleasure of telling him."
"Oh, you did. No wonder that I had a feeling that he looked as if he
had not altogether enjoyed the night. That was not a pretty thing for
you to say. Vi, take care; be very sure of what you do. Things, from
your point of view, are pretty bad already, you don't want to make them
worse."
"I'm not going to make them worse--I couldn't. Margaret, something has
happened to Sydney--something dreadful; something which I don't
understand. Look at this. Do you know anything about it?"
She handed the countess something which she had taken out of the
leather case upon the table.
"Isn't it your locket, the one he gave you, with his picture? Why do
you ask if I know anything about it?"
"It's the one I gave him. You remember that you came to see me before
you went downstairs; when you went out, did you see anything lying on
the floor just outside my room?"
"Not that I'm aware of. Why?"
"Did you see that locket?"
"I certainly didn't; why am I being cross-examined?"
"Do you know anything about a maid in your employ named Simmons?"
"I don't; is there such an one?"
"Almost directly after you had gone a maid, who said that her name was
Simmons, came into the room with that locket in her hand, and said that
she'd picked it up off the floor just outside my room. Margaret, how
could that locket have got there?"
"I don't believe it was there when I went out; I remember, quite well,
looking up and down to see who was about. I could hardly have helped
seeing it if it was there. But what's the mystery?"
"When we became engaged, we gave each other a locket; here's the one he
gave me, that's the one I gave him; he said that it should never leave
him. The last time I saw him--you know, I told you all about it--I
showed him my locket, where it was; he put his finger inside his
collar, he hooked up that chain, and on it was that locket; he declared
it had never left him since he had had it, and that it never should. I
am quite sure that he took it away with him that night; how came it to
be on the floor outside my door?"
"It does seem odd."
"I should say it's as certain as anything could be, that that
locket has been with him all the time he's been away. As you know,
I've had no communication with him of any sort or kind, in spite
of all my efforts; I've not had the faintest clue to his whereabouts.
Isn't it an extraordinary thing that that locket--from which he was
inseparable--should be picked up on the floor just outside my room by a
complete stranger, especially as it couldn't have been there before she
came on the scene, or you'd have noticed it?"
"Simmons? I don't remember the name; and I rather pride myself on the
fact that I do know the names of all the maids. Perhaps she came with
one of the other women."
"No, she told me that she had been here only a few days, and that she
came with some other new servants last week from town. Margaret, I've a
feeling that that woman brought the locket with her; that she'd never
found it as she pretended, that she knows more about it than she chose
to say--the feeling was strong on me as she stood there with her
smiling face. This locket came into her possession in some queer way. I
saw it on her face, although she kept on smiling. If I hadn't been
going down to the dance, I'd have had it out of her."
"Had what out of her?"
"The truth! If you only knew how I feel that everything--everyone--is
against us; against me, and against Sydney; if you only knew what I've
had to bear at home, from uncle, and other ways--from myself. Sydney is
in some desperate plight; I'm as convinced of it as if he himself had
told me. If I could only get at him to help him! But I can't! I can't!
I don't know where he is! And now that woman brings me his locket, from
which I'm perfectly certain he would not allow himself to be parted
unless he were at his last gasp--unless something worse than death
stared him in the face. I do believe he'd stick to it--yes, Margaret, I
mean it. I know Sydney, as no one else does, as no one else can; he has
his faults--no one need tell me that, but I know he loves me, and that,
having said what he did say about that locket, he'd stand to his word
while the breath was in his body, unless--mind!--unless some awful
thing has befallen him, and that's what I'm afraid of. You may laugh,
but there's something here"--the girl pressed her hands to her
side--"which tells me--if you only knew how afraid I am--oh, Margaret,
if you only knew!"
The girl sank on to her knees at the countess's side, she hid her face
on her ladyship's silken lap--and she cried.
CHAPTER XV
'Twixt the Dark and Daylight
The night had gone, the morning was well advanced, the day would soon
break, the countess had long since gone, and still Miss Forster had not
gone to bed. There was something which kept her from placing herself
between the sheets; and now that at last she was beginning to have
thoughts in that direction, something occurred which banished sleep
still farther from her eyes.
She was just about to remove her dressing-gown, and really make herself
ready for bed, when the silence of the night was broken by a sound.
"What was that? Wasn't it in my passage?"
She stood in an attitude of listening.
"There it is again. Isn't it just outside my door? I wonder if there's
anyone there at this hour of the morning? I believe there is."
Altering her intention, she suffered her dressing-gown to remain where
it was. Rapidly crossing the room, she stood close up to the door and
listened.
"There is someone. Who can it be, at this hour of the morning? Whoever
it is, is running away."
She suddenly opened the door and looked out. There was no one there.
She went into the passage. Although the lights were out, she was still
able to make out dimly that a figure, but whether of a man or a woman
she could not be sure, was moving rapidly along the passage, to vanish
round the corner.
"I wonder who that was?"
She hesitated, returned into her room, and shut the door.
"It might have been anyone. It certainly might not be any business of
mine; people can move about the house at any hour they please without
consulting me. What was that? It sounded as if someone was calling.
There it is again. And there is someone running past my door again. I'm
going to see what this means."
Reopening the door, she returned into the passage.
"There's someone running down the stairs as if in a very great hurry.
What's that? That's a queer noise. Someone calling again; someone
calling for help. There's something queer going on downstairs. Someone
is quarrelling. I'm going to find out what it is. I don't care if it is
no business of mine; people shouldn't make a noise like that at this
time of night. It's everybody's business when they do."
She went a few steps down the darkened passage. When she got out of
range of the electric light shining through her open door, it was not
easy to find her way; she had to touch the wall with her outstretched
fingers and feel it.
"I ought to have brought some matches, or something; the place is as
dark as pitch. Shall I go back and fetch them? Whatever was that?
There's a light downstairs; someone is still up. That's a man's voice.
I seem to know it. Whose can it be? I know it quite well. And that's
another man's voice. They're quarrelling. I believe they're fighting.
What are they doing? They're making noise enough. Surely, I'm not the
only person in the place who hears them--a noise like that; it sounds
as if they were fighting like two mad dogs."
She had reached what she realised to be the head of the great
staircase. A faint light streamed in through the stained-glass window.
She hesitated; she might have been frightened by the noise that was
going on below. A strange sound was coming through the darkness, as if
furniture was being upset in all directions by persons who were chasing
each other round the room; then--surely they were blows. Then a voice
exclaimed, in a tone which suggested that the speaker, stricken with
sudden, dreadful fear, was fighting for his life. The words which, in
his agony, he uttered were destined to keep ringing in her ears:
"Beaton! My God!"
The sound of a blow, heavier than any of the others; the noise of a
heavy body falling to the ground, and bringing articles of furniture
down crashing with it. Silence, except for the light footsteps of the
girl who was flying down the staircase as if for life. Beaton!--that
was what he had said. Someone had called upon her lover's name in that
terrible voice. What did it mean? She was rushing down to see. As she
neared the bottom she caught her heel in her dressing-gown; striving to
disentangle it in her haste, in the darkness she missed her footing,
stumbled, went bungling to the foot of the staircase. Luckily, she had
only a short distance to fall, but it was far enough; the thing was so
unlooked for. She had fallen clumsily, heavily; the shock had nearly
stunned her. For some moments she lay in doubt as to what really had
befallen her; then, rising, not without difficulty, to her feet, she
found that she was trembling, that her whole frame seemed to ache, that
her right ankle pained her so that she could scarcely stand on it.
But it was no time to consider her bruises, what had happened to her;
there was something else for her to do. She listened, but all was
still; there was no sound of voices, of struggling, of falling
furniture, or blows--no sound of anything. The silence, after what she
had heard, in itself was ominous. Something terrible had happened.
She went limping across the hall, wincing each time her right foot
touched the ground. All sorts of unseen things were in her way. The
hall was used as a sitting-room; the household had its tea there. It
was crowded with all kinds of impedimenta; it was not easy, by mere
instinct, to find her way among them. She did not know until she had
come in sometimes painful contact with them that the things were there.
Presently she tripped, with her bad foot, over what doubtless was a
footstool; she would have gone headlong to the ground had not an
arm-chair saved her. It was an arm-chair; she was in doubt as to what
it was at first, but when she perched herself upon its friendly arm she
knew. She had been unable to keep back a cry of pain; the jerk to her
twisted ankle had sent a shock all over her, as if red-hot needles were
being driven into her limbs.
How it hurt her as she sat there; it really was excruciating agony. The
foot was dangling in the air. How much worse it would be when, putting
it back upon the ground, she would have to use it to stand and walk
upon. She essayed a little experiment: putting it gingerly down,
resting her weight upon it as lightly as she could. She flattered
herself on her capacity to bear pain, but that was too much even for
her. A sound, which was half wail, half sob, came from between her
lips.
She had a feeling as, back again upon the arm of the chair, with an
effort she held her breath, that someone had heard the cry which came
from her lips. She peered about her; it was impossible to make things
out, to see what was there and what wasn't. She might have been
surrounded by a dozen people without her eyes even hinting that a soul
was there. There was something which did her better service than her
eyes--perhaps it was her ears--some subtle sense which she would have
been unable to define. She felt sure that she had been overheard
by--she did not know by whom or by what--by someone, something. It
might have been a man, or a woman, or an animal--a dog. It could
scarcely have been the latter; it is not the canine habit to preserve
such silence when the sense of hearing is assailed. It was something
human. She was not alone; someone else was with her in the hall.
She adopted the simplest way of finding out. She asked:
"Who's there?"
No answer. She had a feeling that her question had put the unseen
person on his--or her--guard; that someone had withdrawn farther from
her, and was awaiting a chance to effect a safe retreat. She was
persuaded that there had been a just audible movement, that someone had
been quite close to her, and had drawn away. While she waited, with
straining ears and bated breath, uncertain whether to speak again or
what to do--her foot was causing her such pain that walking was beyond
her strength--there came what was undoubtedly a sound of an
unmistakable kind. Someone had come hastening into the hall from the
direction of the suite of rooms which was on the other side, someone
who was pressed for time. Although he moved with a curious
noiselessness, as if his feet had been shod with velvet, she felt sure
that it was a man. She doubted if he was able to see any better than
she could; the fashion of his progress suggested it. He seemed to be
making for the side of the hall on which she was, and to be following
her example by coming into contact with most of the objects which he
met upon his way. She heard him mutter something beneath his breath
which might have been an oath. She was sure it was a man. Plainly he
was as blind as a bat; he was floundering closer and closer; he was
nearly on her, came into actual contact with the chair on which she was
perched. That was too much. She had to speak.
"Who are you? Take care--oh!"
This last was a cry of pain wrung from her much against her will. The
chair on which she was resting had received a sudden push; she was
precipitated forward, on to the bad foot. The result was anguish; her
feelings escaped her in spite of herself. Whoever had done it was
evidently as much taken by surprise as she was. There was a muttered,
distinctly masculine ejaculation. Then, as she continued to wail--there
can be few things more painful than a twisted ankle, and the pain of
that was really unendurable--all at once a light was shining in her
face. Her unintentional assailant was carrying a dark lantern; turning
the shutter, he flashed it on her. For a second or two the effect it
had on her was to make her blinder still; then the hand of the person
who was holding it swerved, a pencil of light passed across his face so
that she caught a glimpse of it--only one glimpse, but that was enough.
"Sydney!" she cried. "My darling! Thank God, it's you."
In the first wild rapture of the recognition she forgot everything--her
foot, the singularity of the fact that her lover should be there at
all; all she thought of was to reach him. Even while she was speaking
she moved quickly towards him. That same instant the light was
darkened, her foot gave way beneath her. As she sank to the floor she
was conscious that the bearer of the lantern, instead of sharing her
rapture, of coming to her assistance, of rushing to take her in his
arms, was retreating with so much expedition that things were being
overturned in all directions in his haste to get away. She had been
aware that, as he started back instead of forward, something had fallen
from his hand on to the seat of the chair on whose arm she had been
resting. He had not stopped to retrieve it, whatever it was. Her hand
came into contact with it as she tried to raise herself. It was a
leather bag of some sort, so much she learnt from the sense of touch.
She found the handle, tried to lift it; it was oddly heavy.
As she was still trying to lift it she became conscious that someone
else was coming down the stairs. Her heart was heavy as lead within
her. She was filled with a great fear; the presence of that bag had
frightened her more than anything else. A cushion was on the ground
beside her; she picked it up, using it to cover the bag to the best of
her ability so that its presence on the chair need not be at once
detected.
The person who had descended the stairs had paused at the bottom. A
match was struck. If she had only brought a box of matches with her,
how much might have been avoided! The holder of the match moved forward
towards an electric switch; immediately a light was shining down at
her. A voice addressed her:
"Miss Forster! What on earth are you doing here?"
She looked up at the kindly, friendly face which was bending over her.
"Major Reith!"
Then something came to her. All at once the world was whirling round;
for the first time in her life she had fainted.
CHAPTER XVI
The Lacquered Club
There was a sort of self-consciousness in her brain, even though she
swooned; something which told her that this was the moment in all her
life in which it was most necessary that she should keep her wits about
her--and here she was losing them. They were willing to slip still
farther away; with comfort she could have remained, to all intents and
purposes, unconscious for quite a considerable length of time; but she
would not. So it came about that her faintness endured but for a
moment.
Major Reith's ideas as to what to do with a young lady who had fainted
were vague. His impulse was to return upstairs and alarm the household;
but before he could put his impulse into practice the lady relieved him
of his difficulties by sitting up and returning to life.
"Oh, Major Reith, I've hurt my foot."
He thought that he had never seen her looking prettier. He probably
never had; that dressing-gown became her.
"I'm very sorry." His tone was gravity itself. "Is it very bad? Let me
help you to get up."
He helped her; would have placed her on the chair on which was the
cushion and, underneath, the bag, but she managed to make him
understand that she preferred another. He was all sympathy.
"Can I do anything for it, or would you rather that I let the people
know?"
"Thank you, I would rather that you didn't. It is painful for the
moment, but I shall manage; it's the first twinge. Did you hear a
strange noise upstairs?"
"I did, and wondered what it was; it was that which brought me down."
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what had brought her down, but
he refrained. Where she was concerned he was a man of quick perception.
He was already conscious that there was something in the situation
which he did not understand, which, possibly, she would rather that he
did not understand.
"What did you hear?"
"I thought I heard someone in the hall just now, but I suppose it was
you."
"I expect it was. I heard something, and I came down to see what it
was, tripped on the stairs, and I've been behaving like a goose ever
since."
"As I came round the corner from my room I saw a light flashing down in
the hall. Was that you?"
"A light? What light?" She went on without giving him a chance to
answer the questions she asked: "Did you hear a sound as if someone was
quarrelling?"
"That's what roused me. First of all, I heard someone running up and
down my passage----"
"So did I."
"I looked out to see what was up, thinking that someone might be ill;
then I heard a din as if a free fight was taking place downstairs."
"Did you hear anyone call out?"
"I heard voices."
"More than one?"
"I should certainly say that there was more than one. I couldn't hear
what they said, but it seemed to me that two men were slanging each
other at the top of their voices for all they were worth. Then I heard
something which brought me down."
"What was it? I don't know; it's no good your looking at me as if you
thought I did. I've been able to get no farther than where you see me
now. Like you, I heard what seemed to me to be two men quarrelling, so
I came down hoping to prevent mischief being done."
"It was very plucky of you to come down all alone. And you don't know
what's happened?"
"No more than you. I'm not very well up in the geography of the house,
but I thought that the argument was taking place in one of the rooms on
the other side; but before I could get down it had stopped. It was the
sudden stopping I did not like."
"Nor I, to be frank. Shall I help you upstairs, or will you stay here
while I go and see? We may both of us be false alarmists; let's hope we
are."
She seemed to be considering.
"I think you had better leave me where I am, only--mind you're not
long. It's very silly of me, but I don't feel as if I'd care to be left
alone too long."
She watched his tall figure, shrouded in a long grey dressing-gown
which covered his pyjamas, across the hall. Directly he was out of
sight she rose from her chair; leaning on the back of it, standing on
one foot, she looked eagerly about the hall. The one electric light
illumined the spot on which she stood; it scarcely penetrated the
shadows beyond. She hesitated whether to switch on other lights, to
make sure that no hidden eyes were watching, but it was only with
difficulty that she could move; there was not time, the major might be
back at any moment. She took the bag from underneath the cushion;
considering it was only a small, brown, brief bag, it was curiously
heavy. All the time she had been talking to Major Reith she had been
wondering what would be the nearest convenient place in which to hide
it, if opportunity offered. Against the wall, within a few feet of
where she was standing, was an old oak chest, which was sometimes used
as a seat, which was covered with a piece of dark blue velvet,
embroidered almost as if it had been an altar cloth. Lady Cantyre had
told her that it was half-full of things, but she herself did not know
what they were; no one ever looked inside. If the lid was open, there
might be room for the bag; it would be the very place.
She managed to get as far as the chest, hopping, for the most part, on
one foot. The lid was open. She raised it. Pressing back the velvet
cover, she saw that there was room. She thrust in the bag, lowered the
lid, and returned to where the major had left her. She would have liked
to sink into the chair, only to relieve her foot; something stopped
her. She might have been guilty of some crime, her bearing was so
strange. She pressed her hand to her side, as if to calm the beating of
her heart. She endeavoured to peer into all the shadowy places in the
great hall; there were so many places in which, in that light, a spy
might be hidden. Suppose she had been seen?
Why was the major so long? She had expressly requested him to be quick;
it seemed to her to be a frightful time since he had gone. What could
be keeping him? She would have liked to call to him, but she did not
dare. Something must be keeping him which perhaps she ought to know.
She was suddenly afraid of what the major might have learnt. She would
go and see what it was. She hobbled across the hall, ignoring the pain
which each movement gave her, bent on being stayed by nothing. She
passed into the room through whose door the major had vanished. It was
brightly lit. He had switched on the lights, but he was not there. She
listened. All was so still. He might be in the room beyond.
She had walked thirty miles with much greater ease than she traversed
those less than thirty feet. More than once she had to stop. It needed
all her self-control to keep from crying out; she was conscious that
beads of perspiration were on her brow, induced either by the effort or
the pain. When she came to the door leading to the other room she had
to lean against it on one foot, the agony of putting the other to the
ground had become so great. She turned the handle and, somehow, went
through.
That room was also lighted, the electrics serving to show that it was
in a state of singular confusion. The fine old furniture was all
anyhow; chairs, tables, ornaments were overturned; scarcely anything
seemed in its place. But she had found the major. He was on his knees
about the centre of the room, leaning over something which was
recumbent on the floor, something by which he was so engrossed that,
plainly, her entrance had gone unnoticed. His unconsciousness of her
presence affected her unpleasantly.
When he continued to ignore her, her heart stood still. She stole
closer towards him, again resolute to disregard her suffering foot. She
came to a point at which she could see what he was looking at--and she
saw.
On the floor, in the centre of a sort of circle formed by ill-used
articles of furniture, a man was lying--very quietly. It
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