The song was in the mouths of the people that year. She laughed, and rubbed her pale cheek against his.

"You be my eyes, deer. Peep and see if the Doctor is in 'is room."

It was ten o'clock on a shining May morning, and the clouds that raced over great grimy London were white, and there were patches of blue between. The trees in the squares were dressed in new green leaves, and the irises and ranunculuses in the parks were out, and the policemen had shed their heavy uniforms, and instead of hyacinths behind the gla.s.s there were pots of tulips in bloom upon the window-sills of the two rooms over the garage. And the Doctor, who had been seeing patients ever since nine, was sitting at the writing-table, said W. Keyse, with his 'ead upon 'is 'ands.

"Like as if 'e was tired, deer, or un'appy? Or tired an un'appy both?"

"Stryte, you 'ave it!" admitted W. Keyse, after cautious inspection.

"The Doctor--don't let 'im see you lookin' at 'im, darlin', or 'e might think, which Good Gracious know how wrong it 'ud be, as you was a kind o'

Peepin' Pry--the Doctor 'ave fell orf an' chynged a good deal lately--in 'is looks, I mean!" said Mrs. Keyse, tucking in the corner of the flannel over the little downy head. "Wasted in 'is flesh, like--got 'oller round the eyes----"

"So 'e 'as!" W. Keyse whistled and slapped his leg. "An' I bin' noticin'

it on me own for a long while back--now I come to think of it. Woddyou pipe's the matter wiv 'im? Not ill? Lumme! if 'e was ill----" The eyes of W. Keyse became circular with consternation.

"No, no, deer!" She rea.s.sured him, in his ignorance that the maladies of the soul are more agonising far than those that afflict the body.

"Down'arted, like, an' 'opeless an'--an' lonely----"

Downhearted, and hopeless, and lonely! The jaw of W. Keyse dropped, and his ugly eyes became circular with sheer astonishment.

"_Him!_ Wiv a beautiful 'ouse to live in--an' Carriage Toffs with t.i.tles fair beggin' 'im to come an' feel their pulses an' be pyde for it, an'

Scientific Inst.i.tooshuns an' 'Orspital Committees fightin' to git 'im on their staffs--an' all the pypers praisin' 'im for wot 'e done at Gueldersdorp, an' Government tippin' 'im the 'Ow Do? an' thank you kindly, Mister!--an'----" W. Keyse could only suppose that Mrs. Keyse was playing a bit of gaff on hers truly--"and him with a wife, too! Married an'

'appy, an' goin' to be 'appier yet!" He pointed to the little red snub nose peeping between the folds of the flannel. "When a little nipper like that comes----"

She reddened, paled, burst out crying.

"O William! William----"

Her William kissed her, and dried her tears. He called it mopping her dial, but you have not forgotten that, as the upper house-and-parlour-maid had at first said, both Her and Him were plainly descended from the Lowest Circles. She had melted afterwards, on learning that Mrs. Keyse had been actually mentioned in Despatches for carrying tea under fire to the prisoners at the Fort; had sought her society, lent paper-patterns, and imparted, in confidence, what she knew of the secret of Saxham's wedded life.

"Dear William! My good, kind Love! Best I should 'urt you, deer, if 'urt you 'ave to be. You see them three large winders covered wiv lovely lace?"

"'Ers--Mrs. Saxham's!" He nodded, trying to look wise.

"Yes, darlin'. Mrs. Saxham's bedroom and dressin'-room they belongs to.

I've bin inside the bedroom wiv the upper 'ouse-an'-parlour-myde, an' a Fairy Princess in a Drury Lane Pantomime might 'ave a bigger place to sleep in--but not a beautifuller. When the Foreign Young Person come in of evenin's to git 'er lady dressed for dinner, she snaps up the lights, bein' a kind soul, before she draws the blinds, to give me a charnst like, to see in." She stroked the tweed sleeve. "An' once or twice Mrs. Saxham 'as come in before they'd bin pull down, an' then--O William!--there was everythink in that room on Gawd's good earth a 'usband could ask for to make 'im 'appy, except the wife's 'art beatin' warm and lovin' in the middle of it all!"

"Cripps!... You don't never mean ...?" He gasped. "Wot? Don't the Doctor make no odds to 'er? A Man Like That?" ...

She clung to the heart that loved her, and told him what she had heard....

And if Saxham had known how two of the unconscious actors in his shadow-play pitied him, the knowledge would have been as vitriol poured into an open wound.

LXIII

The card of Major Bingham Wrynche, C.B., was brought to Saxham one morning, as, his early-calling patients seen and dismissed, the Doctor was going out to his waiting motor-brougham.

Bingo, following what he was p.r.o.ne to call his pasteboard, presented himself--a large, cool, well-bred, if rather stupid-looking, man, arrayed in excellently-fitting clothes, saying:

"You were goin' out? Don't let me keep you. Look in again!"--even as he deposited a tightly-rolled silk umbrella in the waste-paper basket, and tenderly balanced his gleaming hat upon the edge of the writing-table, and chose, by the ordeal of punch, a comfortable chair, as a man prepared to remain. Saxham, pushing a cigar-box across the consulting-room table, asked after Lady Hannah.

"First-rate! Seems to agree with her, having a one-armed husband to fuss over!"

"She won't have a one-armed husband long," returned Saxham, not unkindly, glancing at the bandaged and strapped-up limb that had been shattered by an expanding bullet, and was neatly suspended in its cut sleeve in the shiny black sling.

"By the Living Tinker! she's had him long enough for me!" exploded Bingo, who seemed larger and fussier than ever, if a thought less pink. "So'd you say if they tucked a napkin under your chin at meals, and cut your meat up into dice for you, and you'd ever tried to fold up your newspaper with one hand, or had to stop a perfect stranger in the street, as I did just now outside your door, and ask him to fish a cab-fare out of your right-hand trouser-pocket if he'd be so good? because your idiot of a man ought to have put your money in the other one."

"You're lookin' at my head," pursued the Major, "and I don't wonder. She's been and given me a fringe again. 'Stonishing thing the Feminine Touch is.

Let your servant part your hair and knot your necktie, and you simply look a filthy bounder. Your wife does it--and you hardly know yourself in the gla.s.s, and wonder why they didn't christen you Anna-Maria. Not bad weeds these, by half! You remember those cigars of Kreil's and the thunderin'

price me and Beauvayse paid for 'em, biddin' against each other for fun?"

The big man blew a heavy sigh with the light blue smoke-wreath, and added: "And before the last box was dust and ashes, poor old Toby was! And that chap Levestre--never fit to brown his shoes--is wearing 'em; and 'll be Marquess of Foltlebarre when the old man goes. Queer thing, Luck is--when you come to think of it?"

Saxham nodded and looked at the clock. A dull impatience of this large, bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat had left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyegla.s.s that a.s.sisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the b.u.t.tonhole of his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoat in shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered, West End swelldom, the type of a cla.s.s Saxham abhorred. He had seen the heavy dandy under other conditions, in circ.u.mstances strenuous, severe, even tragic. Then he had borne himself after a simple, manly fashion. Now he had backslidden, retrograded, relaxed. Saxham, always dest.i.tute of the saving sense of humour, frowned as he looked upon the pampered son of Clubland, and the sullen lowering of the Doctor's heavy smudge of black eyebrow suggested to the Major that his regrets for "poor old Toby!" had been misplaced. The man who had married Miss Mildare could hardly be expected to join with heartiness in deploring the untimely decease of his predecessor.

"Not that it could have come to anything between poor Toby and her if the dear old chap had lived," reflected Bingo, and wondered if the Doctor knew about--about Lessie? "Bound to," he mentally decided, "if he keeps his ears only half as open as other men keep theirs. Didn't a brace of bounders of the worst discuss the story in all its bearin's, sittin'

behind my wife and Mrs. Saxham in the stalls at the theatre the other night! Everybody _is_ discussin' it now that the Foltlebarres have left off payin' Lessie not to talk, and provided for her and the youngster out of the estate, and Whittinger's given her a back seat in the family....

That family, too!... Lord! what a rum thing Luck is!"

The musing Major cleared his throat, and his large, rather stupid, blonde face was perfectly stolid as he smoked and stared at his host, reminding himself that Beauvayse had been jealous of Saxham, Attached Medical Staff, Gueldersdorp, and had feared that, if the fellow knew of the scratch against him, he might force the running; and recalling, with a tingling of the shamed blood in his expansive countenance, how he--Wrynche--had let Beauvayse into the sordid secret that Alderman Brooker had blabbed. He wondered, looking at the square, set face, whether Saxham had ever really earned the degrading nickname that he could not get quite right. The 'Peg Doctor,' was it?--or the 'Lush Doctor?' Something in that way.... Not that Saxham looked like a man given to lifting his elbow with undue frequency....

"--But you never know," thought experienced Bingo sagely, even as, in his heavy fashion, he went pounding on: "The Chief's continuin' the Work of Pacification, and acceptin' the surrender of arms--any date of manufacture you like between the _cha.s.sepot_ of 1870 and the leather-breeched firelock of Oliver Cromwell's time. The modern kind, you find by employin' the Divinin' Rod"--the large narrator bestowed a wink on Saxham and added--"on the backs of the fellows who buried the guns. Never fails--used in that way. And--as it chances--I have a communication to make to you."

"A communication--a message--from the Chief to me?"

Saxham's face changed, and softened, and brightened curiously and pleasantly.

Major Bingo nodded and cleared his throat. He rebalanced his shiny hat upon the table corner, and said with his eyes engaged in this way:

"I was to remind you--from him--that--not long before the ending of the Siege, a lady who is now a near connection of yours sustained a terrible bereavement through the--infernally dastardly crime of a--person then unknown!"

Saxham's vivid eyes leaped at the speaker's as if to drag out the knowledge he withheld. But Bingo was balancing the glossy triumph of a Bond Street hatter, and looked at it and not at the Doctor, who said:

"You refer to the murder of the Mother-Superior at the Convent of the Holy Way on February the --th, 1900. And you say a person _then_ unknown....

Has the murderer been arrested?"

Major Bingo shook his head.

"He hasn't been arrested, but his name is known. You remember the runner who came in from Diamond Town with a letter for a man called Casey? Not long after--after my wife was exchanged for a spy of Brounckers'?"

"I did not see the man myself," returned Saxham, "but I perfectly recollect his getting through."

Major Bingo said: