"Vi!"
Miss Forster looked about the room into which he had ushered her, the
first room on the right when you had come through the front door. It
was the usual ground-floor front apartment of the £45 a year suburban
"modern residence," a fair size, as a habitation for a "single
gentleman," with a sufficiency of light, and air, and space.
"If this is one of your 'wretched rooms,' I don't think it's very
wretched, don't you know; it compares not at all unfavourably with my
best parlour."
Standing before the empty fireplace, he was observing her with singular
intentness, brows knit, head bowed between his shoulders.
"You understand where the money to pay for this palatial apartment has
come from; how it has been--earned? You saw me engaged in the practice
of my profession that night at Avonham."
"Did I? Dear me! How terrible! Why should I mind?"
"You ought to mind; you do mind; at least it is certain that you would
mind if you understood."
"It is because I do understand that I don't mind; unfortunately the
understanding is all on one side; you do seem to be so slow in grasping
the true inwardness of things. I want you to answer me one or two
questions--will you?"
She had placed herself in an old arm-chair, and was looking up at him
with the tip of a first finger touching either cheek. Her pallor had
given way to a faint pink flush, which kept coming and going. Her whole
face was lighted with laughter, as if challenging the persistent
gravity which was on his.
"I will answer any questions you like to put, to the best of my
ability."
"That's right, that's the proper tone in which to speak; as if you were
faced by the rack and the thumb-screw, and similar pretty things. To
begin with--I will make a statement; I was at Avonham that night."
"As if I didn't know it."
"I was wondering if you might have forgotten it." This was said with a
little air of malice. "I saw poor Mr. Draycott lying on the floor, and
I, as well as Major Reith, thought that he was dead. I've been asking
myself how, during the very few minutes I was out of the room, you
managed to take him away."
"You remember that I ran up against you in the hall?"
"Am I likely to forget? You did surprise me."
"And you surprised me; I hadn't a notion that you were in the house, or
I shouldn't have been there."
"You might have stayed to say good-night, or ask me how I was; I had
hurt my foot most frightfully. You didn't show the slightest sympathy."
"How was I to know?"
"That's just it. If you'd only said how-do-you-do, you'd have known. In
your hurry you even left your bag behind you."
One could see the man wince; the woman's pause was perhaps to enable
him to recover himself.
"Did you see what was in it?"
"The countess did--as probably Jane Simmons told you."
"That woman!"
"That woman! She came to see me the other day."
"What?"
"We had rather an interesting conversation. She's going to be married."
"Going to be married? To----"
He left the sentence unfinished, and the name unspoken; she smiled and
nodded, as if she understood.
"I shouldn't be surprised; it's as likely to be him as anybody else.
She's going to turn over a new leaf."
"Is she?"
"She's going to America with her husband."
"Are you sure of that?"
"I think she must have got married the very next day, and started the
day after, because only the other morning a little box came through the
post, postmarked Pittsburg, and in it was a piece of wedding cake, with
a card on which was written, 'With the compliments of Julia Spurrier
and her husband.'"
"Who was Julia Spurrier?"
"She was Jane Simmons; I dare say she had one or two other names
besides, within your knowledge."
"She had. You understood what kind of person she was?"
"Perfectly; she made me understand."
"And I dare say she told you one or two things about me."
"She did--one or two; but we're coming to that presently. I want you
first to explain to me how you got Mr. Draycott out of the house that
night."
"I was rushing off to get something to wrap him in when I met you. I
heard you and Reith go into that room, and I heard you both go out--I
was outside the window. Directly you left it, I opened the window,
picked up Draycott, carried him out, closed the window again--and it
was done."
"I see--you call that done. But how did you manage to get him away from
the neighbourhood of the house?"
"There was a motor-car a little way along the path, about as silent a
one as there is made; I put him in that and off I went."
"Nothing could be simpler, could it? But why did you trouble to take
him at all? What affair was he of yours? It wasn't as though he had
treated you very nicely."
"Don't you see that it was the chance of my life?"
"The chance of your life? Good gracious! How?"
"That poker business--they said I cheated; it was a lie--an infernal
lie."
"They've admitted it themselves to-night."
"They hadn't admitted it then, and I never thought I should have a
chance of making them do it, until I saw that dear man Dodwell doing
his best to murder Draycott as he lay there on the floor. Well, then,
it was a wild-cat idea, but it was an idea. I thought that if I could
get hold of Draycott, and he wasn't quite dead, and I could bring him
back to life, he might feel some--some sort of gratitude. It was
Draycott who supported Dodwell; I don't think they would ever have
believed him if it hadn't been for Draycott. I fancy there wasn't a man
in the regiment who hadn't a sort of feeling that Dodwell was a liar;
it was Draycott's endorsement of his lie that did it."
She could see, when he paused, how the muscles of his face were
working, and how his fingers twitched as he clenched and unclenched his
hands.
"When I started to think afterwards, when hell was all about
me, at first it was all a blur, I couldn't think how it could have
happened--all of it; it was so--so impossible that they could have
thought such a thing of me. Then, by degrees, I began to put trifles
together, and to get some sort of a vague idea how--how it had all come
about."
He pressed his hands to his temples; she fancied it must have become a
trick with him; he had done it once or twice before, even when they
were in the cab.
"I'd had a row with Dodwell about some money which he said I owed him;
as you know, I owed pretty nearly everybody money, but I was quite sure
I didn't owe him any. The way in which he made out that I did, did
credit to something besides his financial genius. I had a suspicion
that Draycott had had a row with him of the same kind. He had told me
that he would be even with me for the position which I had taken up;
and I began to see, afterwards, when I--I was looking for crusts in the
gutter, that that lie he had told was his way of getting even, and I
began to wonder if Draycott had backed it because Dodwell had got him
under his thumb."
He gave a great sigh, which was the most eloquent thing he had done
yet; there was something about the matter-of-fact way in which he did
it which showed that, at any rate, that was an habitual trick of his.
The abomination of desolation which, it suggested, was in his very
soul, moved the girl with a sudden pain which seemed to go right
through her.
"When, as I've said, I saw Dodwell hammering Draycott, the wild-cat
idea came to me that, if I did Draycott a good turn, he might be
disposed to do me another; Dodwell would have killed him if it hadn't
been for me, so he did owe me something, if he was to owe me nothing
more. If he would only own to me, between ourselves, that he hadn't
seen me do what he said he had, that would be some satisfaction. I
didn't like to feel that there was any possibility that he really
believed that I was--that kind of thing; if he would admit to me, in
private, that he had spoken in haste, that he might have been in error,
I should have been a happier man. The reality surpassed all my
expectations."
A wintry smile passed over his face; he stood up straighter; but he
continued to speak in the halftones of the man from whose life all the
salt has gone.
"Draycott turned out a perfect trump. We had a pretty tough time--the
landlady here, who's a dear, good old soul, the doctor, and I between
us--in pulling him through; Dodwell had used him cruelly, he will carry
some of the scars with him to the grave--but it was a labour of love. I
hadn't been so happy for I don't know how long; I had never thought I
should be so happy again, as I was as I sat by Draycott's bedside,
sometimes all night and sometimes all day, watching him, slowly, come
back to life again. You see, it was the first thing I had done of which
I hadn't cause to be ashamed for ever so long. Directly he was safe he
told me the whole story, which I expect you heard to-night. He's
behaved like a trump."
"I suppose it doesn't strike you that, in any degree, or in any sense,
you've behaved like a trump?"
"I had a motive for what I did. Draycott's father is a big bug over in
New South Wales. They've been telegraphing to each other, he and his
father, spending no end of money on wires. It seems that the old man
heard that he was missing and got flurried; but they've made that all
right by telegram. Draycott's going back to his father; he is the only
son, his father has big interests, and wants him, and he hasn't made a
very good thing of soldiering; so Draycott's going back. And, what is
much more--to me--I'm going with him."
"Sydney! Really?"
"Very really--thanks to Draycott. I couldn't stay in England--now; and
I wouldn't. I've made such a mess of things that I shouldn't be able to
breathe if I stayed. I want to put the old things behind me, and to get
into a new world, and a new life."
There was silence; he seemed to be straining his eyes with the effort
to see the new life for which he longed.
"And that means?"
"That means that the man you knew is dead."
"Is he? I wonder! Sydney?" He did not speak, but he looked at her.
"Have you ever thought of me during all you've gone through?"
"Before I answer your question, as I will do presently, let me say what
I've got to say. I'm a criminal."
The girl rose quickly from her seat.
"And let me tell you that I won't let you say it--I will not. You
answer my question, and then we'll say something to each other. Answer
me--did you ever think of me when, as you put it yourself, you were
picking crusts out of the gutter?"
"It's not a fair question."
"Why?"
"Because you'll draw deductions from my answer which you must not
draw."
"What is your answer? We'll talk about deductions afterwards. Answer
me--did you ever think of me when you were picking crusts out of the
gutter?"
The man closed his eyes and turned his face away. She pressed her
question home.
"Answer me!"
"There was a time when I was so hungry, and so cold, and so deep down
in hell, that I tried to stop thinking of you--and I couldn't."
"They stole the locket from you which I gave you."
"They did--the devils! Who told you?"
"You cut my picture out of one of the papers, and you made a case for
it with a piece of silk with your own hands, and you carried it next
your bosom."
"It's there now. Who told you all these things?"
"And if you go to New South Wales you'll take that picture with you?"
"I did mean to."
"And why shouldn't you take me with it? Oh, you needn't if you don't
want; but unless you take a whole ship to yourself you can't prevent my
travelling by the same boat, which I shall do, with or without your
leave. You say you're going with Noel Draycott. I'll soon find out from
Mr. Draycott the ship he's going by, if I can't get the information
from you, and, as I don't suppose that my money will be refused by the
people who own that ship, we'll make a party of three. Of course, you
needn't speak to me while we're on the voyage, but I dare say Mr.
Draycott will, when he's a moment to spare. And I hope so to find
favour in Mr. Draycott's eyes that he will be able to persuade his
father to invite me to pay him a little visit--so we'll all three of us
be together there."
"You don't understand what it is you're proposing."
"Do credit me with some perception, please; I do understand, quite
well. What you don't understand is that if you go to New South Wales,
and leave me here, I shall die--yes, Sydney, I shall die."
"Violet!"
"That's the first time you've called me by my Christian name--you
wretch! And now you haven't made it Vi. Hasn't a man any imagination? A
girl can project herself into his mind, even when he's miles and miles
away, and she doesn't even know where he is; is he absolutely incapable
of projecting himself into hers? I know you've been thinking about
me--thinking, thinking, thinking! And it's been bread and meat and life
to me, and morning, noon, and night, all the long weary time, I've been
thinking, thinking of you, and you pretend that you don't know it. You
know it perfectly well! Don't you know it?"
She went and stood close up to him.
"What would all the world think of me if I took you at your word? What
would you yourself think in the time to come?"
"Isn't every drop of blood in your body burning with the desire to take
me in your arms?"
"If I did--afterwards--what then? When I had the consciousness that
with my shame I had sullied you?"
"Can't you feel, as I stand here close to you, that I'm all on fire
with the longing that you should kiss me as the man kisses the woman
who loves him? Do that first--do it first, I tell you! Then, when
you've kissed some of the craving out of me--if you only knew how I
longed for you to kiss me, you wouldn't keep your lips from the
refreshment for which, I believe, they're dying. Kiss me!"
The limit of his powers of resistance had been reached; he did what,
from the first, with the whole force of his being, he had longed to do;
he took her in his arms.
"Vi!"
"Vi! That's better; say it again, my dear--just like that; say it
again, and again, and again! Now, wasn't that worth while?"
She drew herself a little away from him, so that, standing face to
face, they held each other's hands.
"Wasn't that worth waiting for?" Her voice dropped to a whisper; she
looked at him with eyes which seemed to make him tremble. "Are you
going to New South Wales without me?"
The street door was heard to open; someone came along the passage.
"Is that someone coming to your room?"
"I think it's Draycott."
"Is it? That's all right. You needn't take your hands away. Sydney! of
course he knows."
The door opened, to admit Noel Draycott. He paused when he saw them.
"I beg your pardon, I had no idea----"
"Oh, yes, you had, you had every idea; so you can come right straight
in--because you understand. Mr. Draycott, I am coming with you to New
South Wales."
"Are you? I'm delighted to hear it; I thought you would."
She turned to Beaton.
"There, Sydney, you see? He thought I would."