(V)

Mr. Parham-Carter's room looked very warm and home-like after the comfortlessness of the damp lamp-lit streets. It was as has already been related: the Madonna, the prints, the low book-cases, the drawn curtains, the rosy walls, the dancing firelight and the electric lamp.

It was even rea.s.suring at first--safe and protected, and the three sat down content. A tray with some cold meat and cheese rested on the table by the fire, and cocoa in a brown jug stood warming in the fender. They had had irregular kinds of refreshments in the Men's Club at odd intervals, and were exceedingly hungry....

They began to talk presently, and it was astonishing how the sight and touch of Frank had cheered them. More than one of the three has confessed to me since that a large part of the anxiety was caused by his simple absence and by imaginative little pictures of street accidents.

It would have been so extremely ironical if he had happened to have been run over on the day on which he became Lord Talgarth.

They laid their little plans, too, for the next day. d.i.c.k had thought it all out. He, Jack and Frank were to call at the lawyers' office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and leave a message, as the office would be closed of course, immediately after the wanderer had been dressed properly in ready-made clothes. Then they would catch the early afternoon train and get to Merefield that night. The funeral could not possibly take place for several days: there would have to be an inquest.

Then they read over the account of the smash in the _Star_ newspaper--special edition. It seemed to have been n.o.body's fault. The brake had refused to act going down a steep hill; they had run into a wall; the chauffeur had been thrown clean over it; the two pa.s.sengers had been pinned under the car. Lord Talgarth was dead at once; Archie had died five minutes after being taken out.

So they all talked at once in low voices, but in the obvious excitement of relief. It was an extraordinary pleasure to them--now that they looked at it in the sanity conferred by food and warmth--to reflect that Frank was within a quarter of a mile of them--certainly in dreary surroundings; but it was for the last time. To-morrow would see him restored to ordinary life, his delusions and vagaries plucked from him by irresistible circ.u.mstance, and the future in his hands.

Midnight still found them talking--alert and cheerful; but a little silence fell as they heard the chiming of bells.

"Christmas Day, by George!" said the clergyman. "Merry Christmas!"

They shook hands, smiling shamefacedly, as is the custom of Englishmen.

"And to think of old Frank--" mused Jack half aloud. "I told you, Guiseley, about his coming to me in the autumn?" (He had been thinking a great deal about that visit lately, and about what Frank had told him of himself--the idea he had of Something going on behind the scenes in which he had pa.s.sively to take his part; his remark on how pleasant it must be to be a squire. Well, the play had come to an end, it seemed; now there followed the life of a squire indeed. It was curious to think that Frank was, actually at this moment, Lord Talgarth!)

d.i.c.k nodded his head, smiling to himself in his beard. Somehow or another the turn things had taken had submerged in him for the present the consciousness of the tragedy up at Merefield, and his own private griefs, and the memory of Jenny.

Jack told it all again briefly. He piled it on about the Major and his extreme repulsiveness, and the draggled appearance of Gertie, and Frank's incredible obstinacy.

"And to think that he's brought it off, and got the girl home to her people.... Well, thank the Lord that's over! We shan't have any more of that sort of thing."

d.i.c.k got up presently and began to walk about, eyeing the pictures and the books.

"Want to turn in?" asked the cleric.

"Well, I think, as we've an early start--"

The clergyman jumped up.

"You've a beastly little room, I'm afraid. We're rather full up. And you, Mr. Kirkby!"

"I'll wait till you come back," he said.

The two went out, after good-nights, and Jack was left staring at the fire.

He felt very wide-awake, and listened contentedly to the dying noises of the streets. Somewhere in that hive outside was Frank--old Frank. That was very good to think of....

During these last months Frank's personality had been very persistently before him. It was not that he pretended to understand him in the very least; but he understood enough now to feel that there was something very admirable in it all. It was mad and quixotic and absurd, but it had a certain light of n.o.bility. Of course, it would never do if people in general behaved like that; society simply could not go on if everyone went about espousing the cause of unhappy and badly-behaved individuals, and put on old clothes and played the a.s.s. But, for all that, it was not unpleasant to reflect that his own friend had chosen to do these things in despite of convention. There was a touch of fineness in it. And it was all over now, thank G.o.d.... What times they would have up in the north!

He heard a gate clash somewhere outside. The sound just detached itself from the murmur of the night. Then a late train ran grinding over the embanked railway behind the house, and drew up with the screaming of brakes at Victoria Park Station, and distracted him again.

"Are you ready, Mr. Kirkby?" said the clergyman, coming in.

Jack stood up, stretching himself. In the middle of the stretch he stopped.

"What's that noise?" he asked.

They stood listening.

Then again came the sharp, prolonged tingle of an electric bell, followed by a battering at a door downstairs.

Jack, looking in the other's face, saw him go ever so slightly pale beneath his eyes.

"There's somebody at the door," said Mr. Parham-Carter. "I'll just go down and see."

And, as Jack stood there, motionless and breathless, he could hear no sound but the thick hammering of his own heart at the base of his throat.

CHAPTER VIII

(I)

At half-past eleven o'clock Mrs. Partington came upstairs to the room where the two men were still drinking, to make one more suggestion that it was time to go to bed.

It was a dreary little room, this front bedroom on the first floor, where Frank and the Major had slept last night in one large double bed.

The bed was pushed now close against the wall, the clothes still tumbled and unmade, with various articles lying upon it, as on a table. A chair without a back stood between it and the window.

The table where the two men still sat was pulled close to the fire that had been lighted partly in honor of Mr. Partington and partly in honor of Christmas, and was covered with a _debris_ of plates and gla.s.ses and tobacco and bottles. There was a jam-jar filled with holly obtained from the butcher's shop, in the middle of the table. There was very little furniture in the room; there was a yellow-painted chest of drawers opposite the door, and this, too, held a little regiment of bottles; there was a large oleograph of Queen Victoria hanging above the bed, and a text--for some inscrutable reason--was permitted to hang above the fireplace, proclaiming that "The Lord is merciful and long-suffering,"

in Gothic letters, peeping modestly out of a wealth of painted apple-blossoms, with a water-wheel in the middle distance and a stile.

On the further side of the fireplace was a washhand-stand, with a tin pail below it, and the Major's bowler hat reposing in the basin. There was a piece of carpet underneath the table, and a woolly sort of mat, trodden through in two or three places, beside the bed.

Mrs. Partington coughed as she came in, so tremendous was the reek of tobacco smoke, burning paraffin and spirits.

"Bless the men!" she said, and choked once more.

She was feeling comparatively light-hearted; it was a considerable relief to her that Frank actually had not come back, though she never had for one instant expected him to do so. But she didn't want any more disturbances or quarrels, and, as she looked at the Major, who turned in his chair as she came in, she felt even more relieved. His appearance was not rea.s.suring.

He had been drinking pretty steadily all day to drown his grief, and had ended up by a very business-like supper with his landlord. There were four empty beer bottles and one empty whisky bottle distributed on the table or floor, and another half-empty whisky bottle stood between the two men on the table. And as she looked at the Major (she was completely experienced in alcoholic symptoms), she understood exactly what stage he had reached....

Now the Major was by no means a drunkard--let that be understood. He drank whenever he could, but a tramp cannot drink to very grave excess.