Happiness!
Miss Forster was silent. That her visitor's words had affected her
disagreeably her behaviour showed. Showing Miss Spurrier her back,
facing the mantelshelf, she pretended to be interested by the trifles
which were on it, but to an observant eye few things can be more
eloquent than a person's back; the twitching of her shoulders was in
itself more than sufficiently eloquent. Even her speech betrayed her;
it faltered.
"Do you think--that he's left England?"
"It's on the cards. It all depends on whether he's had the chance. If
he has, let's hope he'll be able to cover his tracks. I suppose nobody
does know anything."
"How can I tell?"
"Exactly, how can you? It's queer that nothing has been found--of the
body." The girl said nothing, but again Miss Spurrier noticed the
twitching shoulders. "There's one thing, nothing can be done till it is
found; and as it looks as if it is in a sure place, he ought to have
something like a start before trouble begins."
The girl still continued silent. The visitor, holding out her gorgeous
parasol, began to fasten the elastic band.
"Miss Forster, I am going away. I don't mean only from this room, but
out of the country; I'm leaving England."
"Are you?" The girl's tone could scarcely have been more void of
interest, but the other still kept her eyes upon her back.
"I'm going to be married."
"Indeed."
"I am going to be married to an old friend with whom I have been
associated in some rather successful--matters; so, as we've got quite a
nice little capital together, we've decided to turn over a new leaf.
We're going to America, to a town in one of the middle States, where we
have, both of us, reason to believe that there's an opening for an
enterprising couple. We are going to start in the dry goods--a store.
It's a trade in which we may both of us be able to show even the
Americans a thing or two. We hope, by strict attention to business, to
do well."
The visitor paused, but the girl said nothing; she still kept her face
turned away.
"Of course, my prospects and intentions don't interest you, but now
that I'm going to put the old things behind me and begin a new life,
and leave England for ever--for we both of us intend at the earliest
possible moment to become American citizens; you do get such a pull on
the other side if you are a citizen--since you and I are alone together
for probably the last time in our lives, there are one or two things
which I should like to tell you about Mr. Beaton. That's one of the
reasons why I wanted to see you. Wouldn't you like to hear them?"
"It depends on what they are. I should advise you to be careful what
you say of him."
"Oh, I'll be careful. To begin with, Mr. Beaton is a gentleman, as I
dare say you know."
"What do you suppose?"
"Now, my experience of what is called a gentleman in England is, that
so long as he has got plenty of money to spend, and everything's made
smooth for him, he may be quite a decent sort; but he's the most
helpless creature on God's earth when his pockets are empty and he has
to trust to himself to fill them. So long as he has friends to give him
a lift he may manage somehow, but when his only friend is himself he's
scrambling for crusts in the gutter almost before he himself knows it.
To one who has had to earn his bread all his life by the sweat of his
brow it's nothing less than amazing how soon he gets there. Mr. Sydney
Beaton was in the gutter, and worse than the gutter, when I first met
him."
At last Miss Forster did turn, and looked the speaker in the face.
"Where did you first meet him?"
Miss Spurrier was settling her beautiful hat upon her well-groomed
head.
"It's not a pretty story--not very much to his credit or mine. You
don't know how little of a hero a man can be when his stomach's empty
and he has nothing to put into it, especially when he's a gentleman."
Apparently the visitor got her hat all right. She rested both hands on
the handle of her parasol and she smiled.
"I want to slur over the disagreeable places in my story, Miss
Forster--I always do like to avoid as much as possible what is
unpleasant--and I don't want to keep you any longer than I can help. I
want to get to what I'm after by the shortest possible way. You know
what my profession is?"
"I can form a shrewd guess."
"I shouldn't be surprised; circumstances have helped you. But the world
in general, Miss Forster, treats me as in every respect your equal. I
was on my beam ends when I adopted it. I dare say you don't know what
it is to be on your beam ends."
"I am thankful to say that is a condition of which I have no personal
knowledge."
"You have cause to be thankful. Well, I have, and so has Sydney Beaton.
If it hadn't been for me he'd have been dead long ago, with cold,
misery and hunger."
"Is that true?"
"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, entitled 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 stitch 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 mass 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 entitled 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 hell, 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."