"If you doubt it, you can. Say you don't believe me. Well--don't. I taught him one way of keeping himself alive and of putting money in his pocket, and he managed to do both. But it was a way he never liked; there were times when, I believe, that after all he would have rather starved."

"So I should imagine."

"Oh, you can imagine a great deal, I shouldn't wonder, but do you think you've imagination enough to enable you to put yourself in the place of the woman who was peddling matches at the corner of the street as we came along, with odd boots on--such boots!--and no stockings, and probably little more on than a skirt which it would make you uncomfortable to think of touching even with your finger-tips? You say you never could be in the position of such a woman--but he was."

One could see that, in spite of herself, Miss Forster shivered.

"Is that absolutely a fact?"

"The second time I met him he was carrying a sandwich-board in the Strand--now it's out--in that cold weather we had last January; and he hadn't three-penn'orth of clothing on him--three-pennyworth! Why, a rag-man would have wanted to be paid for carrying away what he had on.

He was perished with the cold; he was nothing but skin and bone; misery and hunger had made him half-witted. In that weather he had slept out of doors every night--in the streets. He hadn't had six-pennyworth of food in a week. You stand there, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed, and you think yourself a paragon of all the virtues, ent.i.tled to look down on such as I am, on what he became. You've not yourself to thank for being what you are. If you were to be stripped naked, and put into the woman's rags who was peddling matches, and had to live her life, for only a month, what kind of a fine lady, with pretty sentiments, do you think you'd be by then?"

Miss Spurrier had become suddenly so much in earnest that there was no doubt about her having succeeded in interesting Violet Forster at last.

A light seemed to have come into her face, and a glow into her eyes.

"Do you really mean--that he was a sandwichman--in the Strand, one of those men who carry boards upon their backs?"

The visitor laughed as if she regretted the warmth to which she had given way; but there was something in her laughter which did not ring altogether true.

"Oh, I didn't mean to give myself away--or him either. I don't suppose he's very proud of his little experiences, so if you ever meet him again don't let him know that I told you; I shouldn't like him to think that I'd given him away on a thing like that--especially to you, because I happen to know that there's nothing in the world for which he cares except your good opinion, and that makes it so funny."

"How do you know he cares for my good opinion?"

"As if I didn't know! Why, he bought a portrait of yours in a picture paper; he cut it out, he made a little case for it--a sort of little silk bag stiffened with cardboard--he bought the silk himself, shaped it, put every st.i.tch in it with his own needle and thread; he carried it about with him inside his shirt; I believe he said his prayers to it."

The girl had all at once grown scarlet; what was almost like a flame seemed blazing in her eyes.

"If--if he so wanted my portrait, how did you come to be possessed of that locket with my likeness in it?"

"That's one of the things of which I am ashamed; and, as I'm going to turn over a new leaf and become a respectable married woman, it's one which I want to make a clean breast of--to you. That locket was stolen from him when he was trying to get some sleep on one of the steps of the tunnel under Hungerford Bridge by two men who knew he had got it on him. One of them sold it to--an acquaintance of mine; he showed it to me, I recognised you from the picture he had cut out of the paper, and I bought it."

"Why didn't you give it back to Mr. Beaton? You knew that it was his."

"Well, that's one of the peculiarities of human nature. I didn't. I couldn't tell you why; at least, it would take me a very long time to do it; human nature is such a ma.s.s of complications and contradictions.

I gave it to you instead."

"As if that were the same thing!"

"As if I didn't know that it wasn't. Haven't I admitted that that is something for which you are ent.i.tled to throw bricks at my head, or articles of furniture, or anything that comes handy?"

As the girl showed no inclination to throw anything, but stood there with that light still flaming in her eyes and her cheeks all glowing, Miss Spurrier went on, with something in her bearing more than a trifle malicious.

"Well, now that I've told you everything that I came to tell you, and all you want to know, I'm going."

She made a movement towards the door. The girl found her tongue.

"But you haven't told me anything; at least, I don't understand what it is you have told me."

"I've told you the one thing you want to know: that the one thing he values in the world is your good opinion; that still, although he's been very near to the gate of h.e.l.l, he loves you. Good day."

"You swear that you don't know where he is?"

"I've no more idea of where he is, or where he has been, since that night at Avonham than you; and, as things are turning out, I would much rather continue in complete ignorance of his whereabouts until that business of Captain Draycott has blown over, which is a consummation devoutly to be hoped for. Is there any other question you would like to ask me?"

She stood by the door, presenting a sufficiently appetising picture of a pretty woman, fitly and gaily apparelled to take her walks abroad on a sunny day. Something which she perhaps saw in her face moved the girl to what, coming from her, was an unexpected confession.

"I'm not sure that I haven't been doing you an injustice."

The woman laughed.

"I shouldn't wonder. I've been doing the same to you. We are all of us continually doing each other an injustice; that sort of thing depends a good deal on the mood you're in and on whether the world is going well with us. I hope that, for both of us, in the future it will go very well indeed. Good-bye."

The woman was gone and the door was closed, and almost before she knew it the girl was left alone. Some few minutes later there came a tapping at the door; it was opened, and Major Reith came in. He found Violet Forster sitting on the floor beside the couch, her face pillowed on a cushion. When she raised it he saw that she was crying. The sight moved him to sympathy and anger.

"Miss Forster!" he exclaimed. "What has that abominable woman been saying--or doing?"

Her answer filled him with amazement.

"I'm not sure," she said, "that she is an abominable woman, and--I'm not sure that I'm not the happiest girl in the world."

It seemed such an astounding thing for her to say that he appeared to be in doubt as to whether he ought to credit the evidence of his own ears. But there was such a light upon her face, which was no longer white, and such a smile was shining from behind the tears that, almost incredible though he deemed it, he was forced to the conclusion that he must have heard aright, especially when, rising to her feet, she came close to him and laughed in his face.

"Yes," she told him, "you may stare; but at least I am not sure that I am not much happier than I deserve. And now I'll wash my face and dry my eyes, and I'll put my hat on straight; I know it's all lop-sided--you've no idea how easy it is for a woman's hat to get lop-sided--and then you can take me for that stroll in the park."

CHAPTER XXVII

A Game of Billiards

The officers' mess of the Guards--the billiard-room. Dinner was over, coffee was being drunk while the diners played a game of snooker pool, that is, some of them. There had been something in the atmosphere during the meal which was hardly genial. It is essential that all the members of a regimental mess should be as a band of brothers, as it were, a big and perfectly happy family. Unless they are on the best of terms with each other, that easy atmosphere is absent, and things become impossible; there must not be even a suspicion of a rift in the lute, if that complete harmony is to reign without which the position becomes unbearable.

In the officers' mess of a British regiment, as a rule, the conditions which make for comfort are not to seek; in that famous regiment, in the whole history of its mess, they never had been to seek until quite recently. Now something had crept in which jarred. First there had been the deplorable business of Sydney Beaton. They were just beginning to recover from that when there came the peculiar conduct of Jackie Tickell, his own version of which we have heard Major Reith tell Miss Forster. Mr. Tickel's action had had an even more deplorable effect upon the morals of the mess than the major had cared to admit. This had been to a large extent owing to the position taken up by Anthony Dodwell. He had declared that what Mr. Tickell had done was a slur upon himself, and had gone so far as to demand that the whole affair should be referred to a court of honour.

Than that sort of thing nothing could have been more foreign to the regimental traditions. It had always been regarded as a matter of course that among the officers of the Guards there should be no differences of opinion; if there were, they were certainly not to make themselves heard in public. The regiment never had been concerned in any such inquiry as that which Dodwell suggested. If his suggestion was acted upon, all sorts of unpleasant consequences would follow. Not only would the whole disreputable business have to be made officially public, but outsiders would have to be called in to adjudicate in what after all was a family quarrel; which, in effect, would mean that other regiments would sit in judgment on the Guards. In the eyes of authority, than that a more inconceivable state of affairs there could scarcely be.

What was to be done to restore the harmony that had heretofore reigned it was not easy to see; a single jarring note is so apt to keep on ringing in the ears. Sydney Beaton had gone--where, no one, not even his nearest and dearest, seemed to know. He had been one of the most popular persons in the regiment, not only with his brother officers, but with the rank and file; his own company adored him. Not only was the one hideous scandal still fresh in men's memories, but now still worse stories were being whispered about it.

It was difficult to say how they had first gained currency. Someone must have been the first to whisper something, but who that someone was no one seemed to know. Two stories had gone right through the regiment; one, that Sydney Beaton had turned professional thief; the other, that he had murdered Noel Draycott.

Why Mr. Tickell had chosen the moment when these stories filled all the air to take up the position he had done, his friends and acquaintances were quite at a loss to determine. The thing was over and done with; Beaton had admitted his guilt by running away; what on earth possessed Tickell, they demanded, that he should want to start muddying the water all over again? If he had had any doubts on the matter, he might have kept them to himself; it was too late to declare them in public now; he ought to have done it ages ago; the thing was all settled and done with. Then there was the absence of Draycott. If Draycott had been about, and he had said what he had said, Mr. Tickell would soon have been disposed of; Draycott would have agreed with Dodwell, there would have been two to one, Tickell would have been compelled to bow to the weight of evidence. As things were, the case against Beaton rested on one man's word only--Anthony Dodwell's. Tickell had not directly impugned it; but he had done almost as bad. He had stood up to Dodwell in a quite unexpected fashion. Jackie Tickell was an easy-going, good-natured youngster, who in general preferred to do anything rather than come to an open rupture with anyone; yet he had stood up to Dodwell; and all the regiment knew that there was no more unpleasant man to quarrel with. He had said to him in the hearing of them all:

"You know, Dodwell, I'm not saying for a moment that you didn't see what you thought you saw."

Dodwell interposed.