Faith went back to the factory the next day and asked to be taken on
again. Miss Dell would like to have refused, but she met Peg's fierce
eyes across the room and changed her mind, and Faith was reinstated.
There was not much time for talking that morning. There was a rush of
work on hand and hardly a moment to spare, but during the dinner hour
Peg asked a storm of questions.
"What has happened? He's not coming back, of course! What a brute!
Didn't I always say he was a brute?"
Faith shivered.
There were moments when she still clung passionately to the hope that
there was some mistake--that when he came back he would be able to
explain and put matters right. And there were other times when she
shrank from the very thought of him, and only wished to be able to
forget those few days of delirium.
She would not even confide in Peg. All she would do was to beg her to
ask no questions.
"It's all over and done with," she said tremblingly. "You said he would
not come back. I hope he never will."
"I said I should not be at all surprised if he didn't," Peg answered.
"But, of course, he may do. Sometimes in novelettes the villain of the
story turns out to be the hero after all, you know."
Faith did not think it was at all likely in this case, and the days
began slowly to creep away.
When a fortnight had gone and the seventeenth day drew near, panic
closed about her heart. Supposing he came after all?
She had had no word from him, and she hardly knew whether to be glad or
sorry. Perhaps it meant that he never would come back. She wished she
could believe this.
At other times, lying awake at night in her little room with its sloping
roof, against her will she was forced to remember every word the Beggar
Man had said to her, every kindly action that he had done, and there was
always a great unanswered question in her mind.
"Why did he marry me if he was bad, as they say he is? He need not have
married me. There are heaps of other girls in the world."
Mr. Shawyer wrote and begged her to go and see him, but she neither went
nor answered the letter.
She spent as much of her time with Peg as possible, and the elder girl
once more resumed her role of friend and protector.
"If you're worrying about that good-for-nothing!" she said to Faith one
day in her blunt manner, "you're a little fool. There are as good fish
in the sea as any that were caught, my girl, and don't you make any
mistake. Let old Scammel stay in America. Jolly good riddance, I say!"
Faith did not answer, but her nerves were tearing her to pieces. Every
time a man's voice sounded in the passages of the factory or a door
opened suddenly she was sure it was the Beggar Man come back to find and
claim her. Every time she heard the sound of a motor coming up the
street her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe. She never knew
how she dragged through the seventeenth day, but it passed somehow, and
the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth, and still there was no sign
of Nicholas Forrester.
She began to pluck up courage. He would not come now, she was sure. If
he had returned to England he had found her wedding ring and the
returned money and had understood what she meant. Perhaps even he had
repented as much as she, long before he got back home.
Or perhaps he was still abroad! That would be best of all, if she could
only be sure that the sea was still dividing them.
Five days after Nicholas was due to return Mrs. Ledley spoke of him.
"He'll never come back, Faith." There was triumphant thankfulness in her
voice. "Somehow I felt all along that he would never come back."
Faith could not answer. Though her fear had decreased it was not yet
dead, and only last night she had dreamed of the Beggar Man, dreamed
that she was on one side of a locked door on which he knocked, knocked
ceaselessly. It was early evening, and Faith had come home from work to
find Mrs. Ledley dressed to go out.
"You won't be long, mother, will you?" she urged. She dreaded being
alone in the house. Though it was early evening, the twins were in bed
and asleep, and everything seemed very still.
"I shan't be long," her mother answered, "but I must have a breath of
air. The house has stifled me all day. I can't breathe at all
sometimes."
Faith watched her down the street and went back indoors.
And Mrs. Ledley had not been gone more than half an hour, when there was
a great knocking at the outer door. Shaking in every limb, Faith went to
open it. A strange woman stood there, and down at the gate was a little
crowd and a policeman. The strange woman put kind arms round the girl's
shrinking figure and told her as gently as she could that something
terrible had happened, but that she must try to be brave and----
"Mother!" said Faith. She broke away like a mad thing from the arms that
would have held her and rushed to the gate. She gave one look at the
white face of the woman they were carrying home and screamed, hiding her
face with distraught hands.
Mrs. Ledley was dead. She had been walking along quite naturally, so
they said, and suddenly had been seen to fall.
There was nothing to be done. Hard work and sorrow and bitterness had
taken their toll of her strength and ended her life.
Faith could not shed a tear. After that first wild scream she had been
silent. She went to the room where the twins lay sleeping and crouched
down beside them, desperately holding a chubby hand of each.
Downstairs a kindly neighbour was in charge of the house; presently she
came upstairs to Faith and bent over her.
"A gentleman, dearie. I told him you couldn't see anyone, but he seemed
so distressed. I promised to tell you. He says he must see you, and such
a nice gentleman he is."
Faith turned her face away.
"I can't! I don't want anyone! Leave me alone!"
The woman sighed and went away, and presently another step ascended the
narrow stairs--a man's heavier step.
Faith was crouched against the bed, facing the door, her eyes closed,
her cheek pressed to the sleeping hands to which she clung. Someone
spoke her name through the silent room: "Faith!" and then again, with
deepest pity: "Faith!"
The girl did not move. For a moment she thought she was dreaming, and
that the voice had spoken in her dream. Then as she looked up with a
wild hope that it was so--that all the past hour would prove to be
nothing but a terrible nightmare--her dazed, piteous eyes met those of
the Beggar Man.
All his life Nicholas Forrester remembered that room with its sloping
roof and poor furniture, and the sleeping twins lying on the bed, with
Faith, little more than a child herself, crouched on the floor beside
them.
Hot evening sunshine shone through the narrow window and fell right upon
the motherless little group, as with a stifled exclamation he went
forward and, stooping, lifted Faith to her feet.
"My poor little girl," he said, keeping his arms round her, and though
she made no effort to resist him, she stood apathetically enough, only
turning her head away when he would have kissed her.
He broke out into incoherent explanations.
"I only got to Liverpool last night. We ran into a fog-bank and had to
reduce speed. I tried to let you know but it seemed hopeless. I came as
quickly as I could."
She heard what he said disinterestedly, wondering why he chose to make
explanations at all, and when he had finished she looked at him with
dazed brown eyes.
"Mother is dead; did they tell you?"
"The woman downstairs told me. I can't tell you how grieved I am. If I
had only been here. If I had only been able to help."
The girl looked at him blankly; he had a kind face she thought, even as
she had thought that time of their first meeting, but now she knew that
he was not really kind or anything that he looked. He was Scammel who
had ruined her father, Scammel for whose sake all those girls at
Heeler's factory worked and sweated, and made money whereby to enrich
him.
"I don't know why you came here, anyway," she said helplessly.
He flushed and bit a lip, but he answered gently enough: "I came
straight to you, of course! Who had a better right! Have you forgotten
so soon that you are my wife?"
She held out her bare left hand.
"I sent your ring back. I am sorry I ever married you. It's all over and
done with."
He took but little notice of her words. He knew that she was overwrought
and broken-hearted, and that it was no time now to press his claim.
The twins began to rouse, and sat up, two rosy-cheeked youngsters with
eyes still drowsy with sleep, but which opened widely enough at sight of
the stranger.
"Is it teatime?" was their first demand, regardless of the fact that
they had had their tea hours ago, and Forrester answered that supper was
ready downstairs. Would they like to be carried?
They made a wild rush at him immediately, but Faith was too quick for
him. She put her arms round both the children, and looked at him across
their tousled heads with defensive eyes.
"They're all I've got in the world," she said hoarsely. "You can't have
them, too."
The Beggar Man did not answer. He followed them down the stairs to the
sitting-room, where the kindly neighbour had made more tea, more for
something to do than for any other reason, but the twins consumed slice
after slice of bread and jam uncomplainingly, and regarded the Beggar
Man with eyes of smiling interest.
"Do you like chocolates?" he inquired when the meal was ended. "Well,
run along to a shop and buy some." He gave them half a crown, and
bundled them out of the room amid shrieks of delight, then he shut the
door and went back to where Faith sat by the window, her listless eyes
on the sunbaked street.
He stood beside her silently for a moment. Then he asked gently:
"How soon can you be ready to leave this house--to-morrow?"
She looked up.
"I don't know what you mean. I am never going to leave it. I shall stay
here and work for the twins, as mother did."
Her voice faltered a little as she spoke that beloved name, but no
tears came, and Forrester said patiently:
"You cannot stay here. It's impossible. You must let me see to things
for you. I promise you that everything shall be done exactly as you
wish." He waited, but she did not speak, and he said again with a touch
of impatience in his voice:
"Faith, you are angry with me. What have I done?"
She temporized, with the feeling that as yet she could not bring herself
to say all that she knew she meant to say sooner or later.
"You never wrote to me." The words were apathetic. She had not cared
whether he wrote to her or not.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I had no chance, and what sense was there in writing? I have got here
almost as soon as a letter would have done." He walked a pace from her
and came back. "I'm a bad hand at writing, anyway," he said, sombrely.
She was looking again into the street, and the weary outline of her face
touched his heart.
"I thought of you all the time," he said, impulsively. "I cursed every
minute that we were delayed."
She asked another question.
"Have you been to your flat?"
"I came straight here, of course. I was anxious about you. I thought you
might be wondering what had become of me."
She drew a long sigh.
"Then you haven't got it?"
"Haven't got what?" he asked gently.
She rose to her feet.
"My ring and the money. It was all a mistake. I don't want to be married
to you any more." She regarded him with wide, frightened eyes. For the
first time it was slowly dawning upon her that perhaps it was not such
an easy thing to get unmarried as it had been to get married.
"Please!" she added with faint appeal.
The Beggar Man's face hardened.
"My dear child," he said as patiently as he could, "it's not possible to
stop being married like that, for no reason! Come, Faith, be reasonable!
I make every allowance for you. I--I'm grieved at your mother's death,
but...."
The burning colour rushed suddenly to the girl's face. Her blank eyes
woke into life and passion.
"Grieved! When you helped to kill her!" she cried. She broke into wild
laughter. "When you helped to kill her!" she said again helplessly.
The Beggar Man caught her by both arms.
"Faith! For God's sake," he said hoarsely. He thought that the shock of
her mother's death had turned her brain. He tried to draw her to him,
but she resisted him fiercely.
"You killed my father and ruined his life," she went on, raving. "You
killed my father, and now you've killed my mother. Oh, I wish I could
die, too! I wish I had never seen you." And quite suddenly she seemed to
collapse, and would have fallen but for Forrester's upholding arms.
He laid her down on the couch by the window, and called to the kindly
neighbour. The doctor had just arrived for Mrs. Ledley, and he came at
once to Faith.
Forrester stood by, pale and anxious.
"The mother is dead, of course?" he asked once hopelessly, and the
doctor looked up for a moment to answer.
"She must have died instantly. It was heart failure!" His eyes searched
the young man's agitated face.
"May I ask who you are?" he inquired, faintly amazed.
"Yes." The Beggar Man glanced down at Faith.
"She is my wife," he said, briefly.
"Your wife! That child!" The amazed words were out before the doctor
could check them, and he hastened to apologize. "I beg your pardon, but
she looks so young."
"She is young," said the Beggar Man, flintily. "I am nearly twenty years
older than she is."
Faith was coming back to consciousness, and the doctor said hurriedly:
"I think it will be better for you to go away for the present, if you
will--I want her to be kept quite quiet."
Nicholas went out into the narrow passage. The twins had returned and
were squabbling over an enormous bag of sticky sweets. They hailed
Nicholas with delight.
"I thought I said you were to buy chocolates?" he said, with pretended
severity.
He sat down on the stairs and took the bag from them, dividing it into
equal parts and sharing out its contents. "Ough! How sticky," he
complained, with a little grimace.
"Nice!" said the twins, unanimously. They were quite happy; nobody had
told them, poor mites, of their irreparable loss.
Nicholas did his best to amuse them. He was worried and unhappy, but he
racked the recesses of his brain for forgotten fairy tales, and told
them of the wolves that used to howl over the prairie at night when he
was a boy and of a tiger which his father had once shot in India.
They listened, wide-eyed and wondering, and when at last he paused they
both scrambled to their feet.
"Tell Mums! Go and tell Mums!"
That was the beginning of the trouble. In vain he tried to put them off
with stories that their mother was not well, that her head ached, that
she was lying down and must not be disturbed. The twins were
disbelieving, grew angry, and finally broke into tears and sobs.
Nicholas took them up, one on each arm, and carried them into the
kitchen. He was afraid they would disturb Faith. He sat down in a big
old armchair, a child on each knee, and soothed and petted, and made
vague promises for the morrow if they were good, until finally they both
fell asleep with his arms round them.
It was getting late then. A clock on the kitchen shelf struck eight, but
Nicholas was afraid to move. His arms were cramped, and he was racked
with anxiety for Faith, but he sat doggedly on until the kindly
neighbour and the doctor came to him.
The doctor smiled as he saw Forrester's burdens, and the kindly
neighbour came forward with little murmurs of sympathy, and carried the
twins away one at a time, still sleeping, to bed.
The Beggar Man stood up and stretched his arms.
"Well! This is a bad business," he said despondently.
"Yes." The doctor was looking at him with puzzled eyes. "You must
forgive me," he said at last, "but I have known Mrs. Ledley and her
family for several years now, and I had no idea that the child in the
next room was married!"
Forrester coloured a little.
"We were married three weeks ago," he explained grudgingly. "And I had
to leave her at once, on business, for America! I only got back last
night and came here to find--this!" He looked round the room helplessly.
"Of course everything will be all right," he added hurriedly. "I shall
look after the children. There are only the two, aren't there?" he asked
with a shade of anxiety.
The doctor smiled. "Yes, only the twins."
"And my wife? How is she?" the Beggar Man asked.
"She is suffering from shock, severe shock, of course, and must be kept
perfectly quiet. I asked her if she wished to see you, and--I am
sorry--but she said No! You must humour her, and not take it seriously,"
he explained kindly. "I asked if there was anyone she would like to see,
and she said, 'Yes, Peg.' Do you know who Peg is?"
The Beggar Man frowned.
"Yes--a friend of hers."
The doctor turned away to the door. He was a kind man, but overworked
and underpaid, and could not afford to waste a moment more than he was
obliged.
"Well, I should send for her," he said briskly. "The woman here tells me
she cannot stay all night. She has her own home and children to attend
to. If you know where this 'Peg' is--send for her."
Forrester saw the doctor out, and went in search of the kindly neighbour
who had tucked the twins up in bed, and was tidying the house.
He had no more idea than the dead how he was going to find Peg, but he
asked the neighbour hopefully for information.
"Yes, I know her," she said. "I know her well--she lives about ten
minutes away from here. Yes, I can give you her address."
Forrester wrote it down on his shirt cuff, promised to be back quickly,
and went out.
The door of the room where Faith lay was open as he passed it, but some
queer impulse prevented him from entering. She had said that she did not
want him--well, he could wait.
But his heart was sore as he went up and down the narrow streets in
search of Peg.
She was at the door of the house when he reached it, laughing and
talking with a youth in a loud check suit and a highly-coloured tie, and
her handsome face hardened as Forrester approached and raised his hat.
She vouchsafed no answer to his "Good evening," only stared as he
explained his errand.
"I think you are a friend of my wife's. She is ill, and has asked for
you." He paused, and the youth in the check suit lounged off and down
the street.
"My name is Forrester," the Beggar Man went on after a moment. "I don't
know whether you have heard of me, but I have heard of you, and I know
you are Faith's friend. Will you come? She is in great trouble. Her
mother died suddenly this evening."
"Died!" Peg's eyes opened in horror. "Oh, poor kid!" she ejaculated.
"Here, wait a minute." She turned into the house, and he heard her
shouting to someone that she was going out and might not be home all
night. Then she came back to him, banged the door behind her, and they
set off down the road together.
People stared at them curiously as they passed, but Forrester was
unconscious of it. He was not greatly prepossessed with Peg, but then
few people were at first sight, although she was a handsome girl and
magnificently built.
She was gaudily dressed for one thing, and Forrester hated gaudy
clothes, and she wore long silver gipsy earrings and a string of bright
green beads dangling from her neck.
She did not speak to him till they were nearly at their destination.
Then she said bluntly:
"You've come back then?"
Forrester looked at her.
"Yes. I came back last night."
She gave a short laugh.
"I told Faith I didn't believe you would," she said.
He coloured angrily.
"I am much obliged to you, I am sure," he said, curtly.
Peg laughed again.
"Oh, don't mention it!" she said, airily. "I'm glad to be wrong for once
in my life." She paused. "Faith's mighty fond of you," she added, almost
threateningly.
Forrester frowned: he resented this girl's blunt, downright manner of
speech, but Peg went on, quite indifferent to his obvious annoyance.
"She went for me hot and strong when I told her you were Ralph Scammel.
Up like a spitfire she was!"
"When you told her--what?"
Her blue eyes met his defiantly.
"When I told her that you were Scammel and owned Heeler's," she
repeated. "I knew, and I didn't see why she shouldn't know, too! Not
that she believed it, though," she added, with a touch of chagrin. The
Beggar Man made no answer, but he quickened his steps a little. He
thought of Faith's strange manner towards him and Peg's words seemed all
at once to have explained a great deal.