"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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sistance 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-a.s.sorted, 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion?" 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."