Peter Digby seemed to begin a new chapter of life for the entire household. He took it for granted, whether intentionally or in ignorance, that his friend's marriage was a normal one, and proceeded to organize amusements and means of enjoying his stay with them to the full.
He booked theatre seats and arranged dinners, and refused to listen when Forrester protested.
"My dear chap!" he said, "I've got plenty of money, and I'm going to enjoy myself in my own way. I landed myself on you, and as I don't suppose you'll allow me to pay for my board and lodging I'm going to get my own back by taking the girls about as much as I can. Hang it all, I've never enjoyed anything so much in my life. What's the matter with you, you old bear?"
Forrester laughed and shrugged his shoulders. He had been quick enough to see that both Faith and Peg had unanimously taken hisfriend to their hearts, and were having every bit as good a time with him as he was with them. Faith had never looked so well or so happy. The colour had come back to her cheeks and her eyes danced. She always seemed happy and light-hearted, and it gave the Beggar Man a stab of pain to know that Peter Digby had succeeded where he himself had so completely failed.
After the first few days he began to excuse himself from accompanying them on their pleasure trips. He was busy. He had a great deal to see to, so he said when Digby called him a slacker. In a sense it was true, for things at Heeler's were not going particularly well, and there had lately been a good deal of unrest amongst his workpeople.
Forrester kept all his worries to himself, and by doing so doubled his burden. There is nothing so hard to carry as a trouble unshared, but there was nobody in whom he could confide.
He had aged years since his marriage, and his hair was plentifully sprinkled with grey.
Peg alone noticed the change in him. There was very little that escaped her sharp eyes.
One day she walked boldly into his study and tackled him in her usual direct way.
"Mr. Forrester, why aren't you coming with us to-day?"
Peter Digby could drive Forrester's car, and had arranged to take the two girls for a long run into the country, and the Beggar Man had excused himself on the score of "work."
He was poring over a pile of papers when Peg opened the door and walked in.
"Why aren't you coming with us to-day?" she demanded.
She stood on the opposite side of his writing table, looking at his tired face with a wonderful softening in her eyes.
She was dressed for the drive, and looked rather like a handsome bird of Paradise in her bright green veil and red motor coat.
She still wore the swinging gipsy earrings, but lately they had somehow ceased to annoy Forrester; or perhaps he was beginning to realize that, after all, trifles count very little in the sum total of things.
He looked up at her with a pucker between his eyes.
"I told you—I'm too busy to come," he answered.
"I know that's what you said, but it's only an excuse, isn't it?" she asked bluntly.
Forrester smiled. "I don't think it's worth arguing about, anyway," he said.
"Don't you? Well, I do," said Peg. She went back and shut the door, which was on the jar only, and came again to stand beside him.
"There's none so blind as those who won't see," she said with seeming irrelevance.
Forrester laid down his pen and half turned in his chair.
"What do you mean?" he asked quietly.
Peg coloured a little, but her eyes met his steadily.
"I mean that you ought to look after your wife yourself," she said. There was no mistaking her meaning, and Forrester made no attempt to do so.
There was a little silence; then he laughed shortly.
"And supposing my wife refuses to allow me to look after her?" he asked.
Peg shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
"What's the good of being a big, strong man like you if you can't master one little slip of a girl?" she said.
The Beggar Man coloured.
"I've said all that to myself scores of times," he answered frankly; "but it's not in me to bully any woman. I thought it was; I know better now." He looked up at her deprecatingly. "You've been honest with me," he said, "and I'll be honest with you. My marriage is the biggest mistake of my life, and I've made a few in my time. If—if Faith wishes to be free of me, well——"
Peg pulled at the strings of her gaudy veil as if they were choking her.
"Oh, she's a fool—a silly little fool!" she cried bitterly. "Sometimes I can hardly keep my hands off her when I see——" She broke off, her passion dying away as quickly as it had arisen. "I beg your pardon," she said bluntly.
There was an eloquent silence; then she broke out again with a most strange humility:
"Mr. Forrester, come with us to-day. Please come with us."
Forrester knew Peg well enough to know alsothat there was some deep reason for her request, and, in spite of what he had just said, his heart contracted with a fierce pain as he thought of the rapidly-growing friendship between his wife and Digby.
"Please," said Peg again, and impulsively she laid her hand on his shoulder.
The Beggar Man looked down at her firm, strong fingers irresolutely. Then suddenly he lifted his hand and covered them with a warm pressure.
"Very well, but it's only because you have asked me," he said.
He rose and began pushing the pile of papers away into a drawer, and Peg walked out of the room, her head drooping, her face quivering.
She met Faith in the hall.
"I've been looking for you everywhere," the younger girl said. "Where have you been? Mr. Digby's been ready to start ever so long."
"I know. I was talking to Mr. Forrester," Peg answered defiantly.
Faith glanced towards the closed study door.
"I suppose I'd better go and say good-bye to him," she said with faint nervousness.
Peg laughed.
"You needn't trouble. He's coming, after all."
Faith's eyes widened.
"Coming with us? He said he couldn't!"
"I know. I made him change his mind."
She walked to the open front door and looked at the waiting car. Digby was standing beside it.
"Are you ready, Miss Fraser?" he asked with a touch of impatience.
"We're waiting for Mr. Forrester," Peg said casually. "He's coming, after all."
She was not slow to see the swift shadow of disappointment that crossed his face, though he said heartily enough:
"Changed his mind, has he? Good!"
"Yes; I persuaded him," Peg said laconically.
She was fully aware that Faith was close beside her, and it gave her a fierce sort of joy to know that the girl's eyes were turned upon her with the faintest shadow of suspicion in them.
When Forrester appeared Peg called to him quickly.
"Come and sit next to me, Mr. Forrester. The back seat's the most comfortable."
Faith's lips moved as if she would have spoken, but she closed them again and took her place beside Digby without comment.
Not one of the four could have said that the day was enjoyable. There was an intangible something in the air which they all could feel but none of them explain.
They drove into the heart of the country and lunched at a wayside inn. Faith was very quiet, and she kept glancing at Peg and her husband with scared eyes.
Afterwards, when they went out into the woods in their wonderful autumn tints, she found herself with Digby, and, looking quickly round, saw that her husband and Peg were some little distance behind, sauntering along leisurely and apparently the best of friends.
She could hear Forrester's deep voice and Peg's rather loud laugh, and a queer sense of unwantedness crept into her heart.
"A penny for your thoughts!" Digby said, touching her arm, and she started and smiled and said they were not worth anything.
"It would be a penny badly invested," she said with an effort at lightness.
Digby looked down at her and swiftly away again. He knew quite well that it was for this girl that he lingered so long in his friend's house, and there was bitterest envy in his heart.
Forrester had always been lucky. The best of this world's goods had always gone his way.
He had envied him for his business capabilities and gift of making money, but he envied him more now because he had this girl for his wife.
"Aren't the woods lovely?" Faith asked, with an effort to break the silence. "I've never seen anything quite so lovely."
"You must get Forrester to take you abroad," Digby said, stifling a sigh. "Have you ever been out of England?"
"No."
"Always lived in London?"
"Yes."
"You haven't really begun to live yet, then," he told her.
Their eyes met, and there was a queer, wistfullook in the man's that brought the colour rushing to Faith's cheeks, though she hardly knew why. She stopped dead and looked back through the leafy wood.
"Shall we wait for the others?" she asked nervously.
It was some seconds before Peg and Forrester joined them.
"Mrs. Forrester tells me that she has never been out of England," Digby said. "And I tell her that if that is so she has not yet begun to live! London's all right—finest place in the world, bar none, but to appreciate it properly you ought to go away from it for months."
"I hate London," Faith said impulsively.
He opened his eyes in amazement.
"Really! What part have you lived in?"
Faith coloured and did not answer, but Peg broke in in her usual blunt way:
"Poplar. That's where she lived till she got married. I lived there, too. It's a frightful hole! No wonder she hates London; you would if you'd seen the rotten side of it as we have."
Faith glanced quickly at her husband. She was so sure that he would be angry with Pegfor her frankness, but to her surprise he was smiling.
"One would hardly choose the East End for a permanent residence, certainly," Digby said, in some perplexity; "but everyone to their taste."
"It wasn't a question of 'taste,'" Peg said dryly; "it was more like Hobson's choice. I had to be where the bread and cheese was, and it happened to be in Poplar—that's all."
There was a little silence. Digby was beginning to see that he was on delicate ground.
"I think we ought to be turning back," Forrester said.
They retraced their steps silently.
"Shall we change places going home?" Faith asked, as she slipped into her big coat when they reached the car again. She looked at Peg. "Perhaps you would rather sit in the front for a change," she said hesitatingly.
Peg looked at the Beggar Man, and he answered for her readily:
"We were quite comfortable as we were, I think, Miss Fraser?"
"Quite," said Peg.
Faith took a hurried step towards Digby.
"Oh, very well. I would really prefer to sit in the front; I only thought it would look rather selfish."
There was a note of uncertainty in her voice, and Peg's blue eyes gleamed with a vixenish light as she settled herself comfortably beside Forrester.
They were rather silent on the way home, but beneath her gaudy veil Peg's quick brain was hard at work.
She knew that Faith was faintly resentful, if not actively jealous, and a sense of triumph warmed her heart.
She had read in one of her favourite novelettes of a heroine who had never appreciated the goodness and worth of the man to whom she was married until another woman—a "syren" she had been called in the story—had stolen him from her, and with a wild flight of sentimental imagination she already saw herself nicely fitted with the part.
She stole a little glance at Forrester, and a sigh shook her. What happiness to be loved by such a man! Nothing that she had ever comeacross in fiction could yield half such exquisite bliss.
To be his wife! To be with him always!... She lost herself in a world of dreams.
Never once did she think now of his wealth, nor the advantages to be gained from it. The man himself filled the picture of her thoughts. She could have been equally happy with him in the dreary streets of Poplar as in the luxury of the house at Hampstead.
How she had hated him at first! How she had sneered at Faith and tried to set her against him, and now the scales had tipped the other way and left her kneeling at his feet.
She was humble enough to know herself far below him, shrewd enough to realize that, though she might find it heaven to be with him, his happiness could never lie with her. She knew that she jarred on him in a thousand ways, though lately she had recognized that he had subtly changed towards her, was kinder, more tolerant, and for one wild moment she allowed her thoughts to soar up into the blue skies of impossibility.
King Cophetua had loved the Beggar Maid and been happy with her. Why should the dayof such miracles be at an end? She looked again at the man beside her, and saw that his eyes were fixed on his wife with such a look of sadness in them that she felt the tears rising to her own.
He loved Faith. Whatever he might say or pretend, Peg knew that he loved her, and she gripped her hands beneath the cover of the rug. What a fool Faith was! What a blind little fool, that she could laugh and be merry with a man like Digby when this king amongst men was waiting for her to look his way.
And the pendulum of Peg's emotions swung back again. After all, what was her own happiness compared with his? And her thoughts flew to the latest and as yet unfinished novelette lying on her bed at home in which the Lady Gwendoline Maltravers had just dropped gracefully on to her aristocratic knees to plead for her lover's honour with the brutal squire who had sworn to ruin him.
"Take me! Body and soul I will be yours, if only you will spare him! Spare the man I love, and give him his happiness!"
Peg thought it a noble and lofty sentiment,and a curious feeling of sympathy and kinship with the Lady Gwendoline swept through her heart.
She, too, if the occasion arose could sacrifice everything—body and soul—in order that the man she loved might be happy.
When Peg went to Faith's room that night for their usual gossip, she found the door locked against her.
She rattled the handle impatiently and called:
"Faith!"
There was no answer, and she rapped on the panel, a vague feeling of surprise in her heart.
"Faith! It's only me—let me in."
There was an answer then.
"I've gone to bed—I'm tired."
"Tired!" Peg echoed the word with disdainful incredulity. She did not see how Faith could be tired after a day of such ease. She herself was as fresh and wide awake as a lark.
"You can't be tired," she said emphatically, and rattled the handle once more. "Faith, let me come in. Does your head ache?"
"Of course not, but I want to go to sleep. Good-night."
There was such finality in the voice that the colour rose to Peg's handsome face. It was thefirst time she had ever been shut out from Faith's confidence, and she searched her mind wildly for some reason that would explain things.
What had she done? How had she offended?
As she stood there, her fingers on the handle of the locked door, the Beggar Man came up the stairs.
He had heard Peg's rather loud, insistent voice from the smoking-room below, and had momentarily left his friend to see if anything was the matter.
Peg blushed fiery red when she saw him. Her black hair was unbound and streaming down over her shoulders. She wore a brilliant cherry-coloured dressing-gown, and her feet were thrust into gaudy Oriental slippers.
"Oh, my gracious!" she said with a gasp.
Forrester's eyes met hers indifferently, though he would have been less than human had he been blind to the picture she made as she stood there in the half-light.
The brilliant gown she wore, her dark hair, and the bright, confused colour in her cheeks accentuated her beauty, for Peg was a beauty,even if it was of a crude, rather vulgar type, and unconsciously Forrester's eyes grew admiring as he asked: "Is anything the matter? I thought you called."
Peg laughed nervously.
"Faith won't open the door, that's all. She says she's tired. There's nothing the matter." Then she giggled, and swung her long hair back from her shoulders. "I didn't think you'd come up," she apologized.
The Beggar Man coloured a little.
"I thought perhaps something might be the matter," he said awkwardly, and turned to go downstairs again, when quite suddenly Faith's door opened and she came out.
There was a moment of embarrassed silence. Then Peg laughed.
"It's like a bit out of a novelette, isn't it?" she said shrilly, driven by her sheer and unaccountable nervousness to say the wrong thing. "Heroine opens her door and finds her best friend talking to her husband—tête-à-tête, as it were."
She pronounced the French words quite incorrectly, and she struck a melodramatic pose,one hand flung out towards Forrester and the other pressed hard over her heart.
The Beggar Man looked at his wife.
"I heard Miss Fraser calling to you," he said stiffly, "and I thought perhaps something might be the matter. That is all." He waited a moment, his eyes seeking Faith's wistfully.
The two girls made a strong contrast. One so small and pale and fair and the other so tall, with her dark, gipsy-like beauty.
But Faith did not even glance his way, and with a half-sigh Forrester went on down the stairs, and they heard the shutting of the smoking-room door.
Faith turned to close her own again, but Peg was too quick for her. She was past her and inside the room instantly. She sat down on the side of the bed and looked at the younger girl with challenging eyes.
"Well—out with it," she said defiantly. "What have I done?"
Faith did not answer. There was a look in her blue eyes that Peg had never seen there before—an aloofness in her manner that was almost painfully eloquent—and after a second ofutter astonishment Peg sprang to her feet and caught Faith roughly by the arm, peering down to look into her face.
"What are you thinking?" she demanded.
Faith tried to free herself, but she was a child in Peg's muscular grasp, until with a little contemptuous exclamation Peg released her and turned away.
"Jealous! Is that it?" she asked crudely. "Jealous! Because the man you won't look at yourself happened to see me with my hair loose and this gown on."
She walked over to the long glass in Faith's dressing-table and regarded her gaudy reflection with fiery eyes.
"I do look rather a picture, don't I?" she said deliberately. "It only wants a cigarette in my mouth or a red rose in my hair to make me look like one of those dancing girls—the French ones, I mean. What do you call them—apache or something." She pronounced that word wrongly also.
Faith did not answer, and Peg laughed.
"I'd never be such a dog in the manger," she said mockingly.
Her heart was beating fast with a sudden wild hope.
Was there any cause for Faith to be jealous? Had Forrester at last ceased to be indifferent to her? She recalled the slow look of admiration in his eyes, and her pulses leapt.
Well, Faith would have none of him! Could she be surprised if, after all that had happened.... But before the thought was complete in her mind she was ashamed of it. She turned away from the mirror, and looked at Faith with angry eyes.
"You little idiot!" she said, with good-natured irritation. "Do you think he'd look at me if ...?" Then once again she stopped.
Supposing unconsciously she had begun to teach Faith a lesson. Supposing by allowing her to be jealous it might be the means of making her care for Forrester—at last!
She caught her breath with a little exultant sound. She had so longed to make him happy, and if the only way to do so was by giving him his wife at the sacrifice of her own love, well—who was she to complain?
He had done everything for her. He had taken her from the sordid surroundings where she had passed all the days of her life. He had done his best to make a lady of her. He had trusted her, treated her as a friend. Was there any sacrifice too great to make in return?
Peg was not one to hesitate once an idea had taken shape in her mind, and even as Faith looked at her she saw the dark, handsome face harden and grow defiant as she turned with a shrug of her shoulders and opened the closed door.
"Well, I've been in pleasanter company, I must say!" she said in her old nonchalant tone. "So I'll leave you to yourself. Good-night, fair Lady Elaine, and pleasant dreams!"
She swept Faith a low, mocking curtsy, the folds of her cherry-coloured gown sweeping the floor all around her, then she laughed and went off to her own room.
Faith ran to the door and shut and locked it. Her throat was throbbing with suppressed sobs and her lips shook.
She had been so fond of Peg. She had lookedup to her and admired her, but to-night she could find it in her heart to hate her for her handsome beauty and insolence.
She, too, had seen the look of admiration in Forrester's eyes, and a little sick suspicion rose above the angry tumult of her heart.
Supposing he really did like Peg? Supposing he more than liked her? She was handsome enough to take any man's fancy, and Faith knew how badly Forrester had suffered over the disappointment of his marriage.
A hundred little incidents came crowding back to her mind, cruelly magnified. The way he invariably chose to talk to Peg in preference to herself. The way he had elected to sit with her at the back of the car that afternoon, though she had offered to change places. The way he had overruled her objections with regard to Peg's gaudy choice of decoration when first they came to the house.
"What does it matter if it pleases her?" he had said, in his careless way. "I like to see her happy."
She had thought nothing of it at the time, but it seemed a great matter now. And at thememory of Peg's crude accusation the blood rushed stingingly to Faith's pale cheeks.
"I'm not jealous! How dare she say so? I hate her—I hate her!"
She spoke the words in a whisper through the silent room and the bitter sound of them frightened her.
Hate Peg! Oh, no, she did not mean that. Peg had been a good friend to her—Peg had never failed.
Faith tried hard to recover her composure and look at things more sensibly.
After all, what had happened? Little enough, she knew, but she could not forget the picture Peg had made during those moments on the landing or the look of admiration in the Beggar Man's eyes.
She had felt herself colourless and insignificant beside Peg, and her soul writhed as she recalled the mocking, nervous words that the elder girl had spoken.
"It's like a bit out of a novelette, isn't it?... Heroine opens her door and finds her best friend talking to her husband,tête-à-tête, as it were."
Though she knew that Peg had meant no harm, and though she had heard her say similar things scores of times before, to-night somehow the words grated deeply on Faith's sensitiveness.
It was as if someone had held up a scorching light in front of her friend, showing just how rough and unrefined she really was and could be.
Faith remembered how, not so long ago, Forrester had told her that he wished her friendship with Peg to cease. Did he wish it still?
She lay awake for hours, turning things over in her mind, torturing herself with doubts and perplexities.
It was not that she cared for him at all, so she told herself again and again. It was just that it was so horrible to think that perhaps he and Peg ... and then once more her better nature came uppermost. How could she think such base things? How dared she? Peg was her best friend, had proved herself in a thousand ways, and Forrester—when had he ever been anything but kind and considerate?
She was bound to admit that last truth now,though for weeks she had tried to hate him, and had blamed him for the death of both her parents.
She turned the pillow over and tried to sleep.
"I don't care. I wish I could be free. I don't care," she told herself, but when at last she fell asleep it was to dream of her husband as he had been during the first days of their acquaintance; to dream of the kindliness of his eyes and the clasp of his hand, and her own feeling of warmth and gratitude towards him.
She woke in the morning unrefreshed, and with a bad headache. She dreaded meeting Peg, but she need not have done, for Peg greeted her as if nothing had happened, with a kiss and her usual cheery, "Hullo, Faith! Had a bad night? You look pale enough."
"I had a very good night," Faith answered emphatically. "And I'm ever so hungry."
But at breakfast she ate nothing, and Digby watched her with concerned eyes.
"We've rushed you about too much lately," he said. "You're not strong like Miss Fraser."
"Me! Oh, I'm as strong as a horse," Peg said cheerfully. "Nothing ever tires me!"
Forrester looked across at her and laughed, and Faith clenched her hands in her lap.
There seemed such a spirit of comradeship between these two, she wondered why she had never noticed it before.
When breakfast was over she followed her husband into the hall. As a rule, she avoided him, and he looked up in surprise as she stood beside him while he brushed his coat and hat.
"Have you got to go to the City to-day?" she asked at last with an effort.
He echoed her words blankly:
"Have I got to go? What do you mean?"
"Only that"—she hesitated nervously—"only—it's so fine, I thought perhaps you might stay at home."
Forrester flushed a little, but he only said dryly, "Oh, I see," and got into his coat.
Faith watched him with timid eyes, that yet held a dawning resolution. Yesterday he had gone motoring with them to please Peg, and because Peg had asked him. Would he stay athome this morning to please her, if she could find the courage to ask him?
"I've a great deal to see to to-day," he went on lightly. "There's been trouble down at Heeler's, you know."
Faith knew, but it had not interested her. She never wished to think of Heeler's any more. It was like another part of her life—a part she only wanted to forget.
The Beggar Man had turned to the door.
"Well, good-bye," he said constrainedly.
Another moment and he would be gone, she knew, and, in desperation, Faith took a quick step towards him....
"Nicholas ... will you ... I want you to stay at home."
She was crimson, and she could not meet his eyes; but she knew his were upon her, and her heart seemed to stop beating while she waited for his answer.
It was a long time coming. Then the Beggar Man said, very gently:
"I am sorry. I am afraid it is quite impossible, Faith."
She drew back at once.
"Oh ... very well!" she said blankly, and the next moment he had gone....
Faith stood for some seconds staring at the closed door. She felt as if someone had struck her across the face.
It was the first time she had ever definitely asked a favour of him, and he had refused!
Peg, coming into the hall, noticed her pallor.
"What's the matter, little 'un?" she asked in concern, but Faith would not answer. She went upstairs to her room, and after a moment Peg followed.
"What's up?" she asked again. "Anything I can do?"
There was a momentary silence, then Faith said, in a queer, cold little voice:
"Yes. Come in; I want to speak to you."
Peg obeyed. There was an amused smile hovering round the corners of her mouth. "I'm all attention," she said. "Fire away."
Faith's hands were trembling and she clasped them together to hide the humiliating fact.
"I've been thinking," she said, with an effort. "I've been thinking that—that though you've been very kind, I...." She could not go on.
Peg looked up, a gleam of fire in her eyes. She knew without further words what it was that Faith was trying to tell her.
"You mean you want me to clear out?" she said bluntly.
Faith wavered for a moment; then she thought of the way in which Forrester had refused her request five minutes ago, though yesterday he had been so easily persuaded by Peg. "You need not put it like that," she said hoarsely, "but ... yes, that is what I mean."
The crimson blood swept Peg's face and died away again, leaving her as white as marble. It was the last thing of which she had ever dreamed that this child—this baby—would ever turn her out of the house!
Her loyal heart felt as if it must burst with shame and pain, but she shrugged her shoulders with a brave display of indifference.
"Well, I'll see what Mr. Forrester says," sheanswered coolly. "If he wants me to go—well.... He's master of the house, isn't he? I came here because he asked me to, and so I guess I'll take my marching orders from him."
But in spite of her defiance, Peg was desperately unhappy. Her cheeks burned as she walked out of the room, her head high in the air.
She was torn between her love for Forrester and her desire to secure his happiness and her loyalty to her friend. She knew quite well what Faith must be thinking, and while she was rejoiced that at last she had succeeded in rousing her jealousy, she was bitterly ashamed of the part she had set herself to play.
She went up to her gaudy room and shut the door, standing for a moment leaning against it, her hands in her favourite position, on her hips.
What was she to do now? Would Forrester refuse to have her so summarily turned out of his house? She did not see how he could very well go against his wife's wishes.
For the first time the gaudiness of the room irritated her. It seemed a vivid reminder of the vast difference that lay between her life andFaith's. She caught up one of the peacock green cushions from an armchair and flung it at a particularly offensive looking bird in the wall-paper.
The violent action made her feel better. She opened the window wide and cooled her hot cheeks with the September breeze.
It was still quite early in the morning, and she wondered how she could occupy her time till Forrester came home. That Faith would not speak to her she was sure. She was not at all surprised to hear presently from one of the maids that Faith had gone out with Digby and was not returning to lunch.
Peg made a little grimace. This was throwing down the glove with a vengeance, but she only laughed as she turned away.
"I shan't be in either," she said, though she had no more idea than the dead what she meant to do. But she put on her hat and coat and went out.
It was a lovely morning, sunny and with just a touch of crispness in the air, as if during the night winter had passed that way and breathed on the world.
Peg wandered round the West End staring vacantly into shop windows, but her thoughts were far away. It was only when, towards one o'clock, she began to feel hungry the sudden idea came to her that she would go home.
She had only visited her own people twice since she left them at Forrester's request. There was a tingling of excitement in her veins as she climbed on to a city omnibus.
What would they say to her, she wondered. Not that she cared.
Peg had never got on with her mother, who had married again, her second husband being a man named Johnson, employed at Heeler's factory.
There were two small step-brothers, rough, red-haired little boys, too like their father for Peg to care about them. But nevertheless the house in the mean street was the only home she had known, and there was a faintly pleasurable warmth in her heart as she climbed off the bus at the corner of the street and walked the remaining few yards.
The street looked more squalid than usual to-day, she thought, not realizing that the changelay in herself. The door of the house was open, and down the narrow passage she could hear her mother's scolding voice and the sound of a well-administered box on the ears, followed by a prolonged howl from one of the boys.
Peg shivered as she walked down the passage and pushed open the kitchen door. Had she ever really been happy and contented to live in such surroundings? And fear went through her heart as she realized that before long she might have to return to them again.
The kitchen seemed full of people, though at first she could only distinguish her mother through the mist of steam that was rising from a wash-tub.
"Hullo!" Peg said laconically. She looked round for a chair, but they were all occupied, so she leaned against the door, hands on hips.
The red-haired boy who had had his ears boxed stopped howling to stare at her. Mrs. Johnson deserted the wash-tub and came forward, wiping soapy arms on a not over-clean apron.
"Well, who'd have thought of seeing you?" she said blankly.
Peg nodded carelessly to her stepfather, who had risen awkwardly to offer her a chair.
"Thanks, no—I'll stand; I only looked in for a minute." Then her face changed a little as she recognized a second man who had been lolling in the background against a crowded dresser.
"Hullo, Ben!" she said, and the colour deepened in her cheeks.
She and Ben Travers had once been very good friends. There had been a time when she had seriously contemplated taking him on trial as a sweetheart, but her friendship with Faith had put an end to it all, though Ben had never forgiven her, and Peg knew it well enough.
The last time she had seen him had been the day when Forrester came to admit his defeat and to ask her to live at his flat, and she realized with a faint sense of discomfort that she and he had grown many miles apart since then.
But he only nodded and said, "Hullo, Peg," quite unconcernedly.
There was an awkward silence, broken by Peg's mother.
"Well, you look a fine enough lady now,"she said, a shade of envy in her voice. "How long's it going to last?"
"As long as I like," said Peg coolly. She was not going to tell them that already the end of her happiness was in sight.
Mrs. Johnson looked at her daughter uncomfortably.
"You'd best come in the parlour," she said. "You'll get all messed up if you stay here."
But Peg declined to move. She looked at Ben again.
"Why aren't you at Heeler's?" she asked.
He laughed sheepishly, and exchanged glances with her stepfather.
"Because we ain't, that's why," he said, significantly.
Peg's mother broke in fretfully:
"A lazy, ungrateful lot—that's what I say they are! Never satisfied! What's the use of being out of work for a few extra shillings a week and letting us all starve.... No; I shan't shut up!" she added, as her husband tried to check her flow of eloquence. "It's true, what I'm saying. You've always been treated fair at Heeler's, and never no complaints till that newmanager came, but now ... nothing right! Something always wrong." She turned to Peg. "They think they've got a grudge against Mr. Heeler," she explained. "Think! They don't know, mind you! None of 'em!"
Peg's eyes dilated a little.
"There is no Mr. Heeler," she said, quickly.
Ben Travers laughed.
"She means Scammel," he explained, "or Forrester, as I dare say you call him now he's spending his money on you!" His face flushed with dull anger as he looked at her. "Fine feathers make fine birds, all right," he said laconically. "But it won't last as long as you think it will, my girl, you mark my words...." He moved away from the dresser and hitched at his collar. "Well, I'm off," he said.
Peg followed him out of the kitchen and caught his arm.
"What are you hinting at?" she asked quietly, though her heart was racing with apprehension.
She knew Ben very well—knew just how reckless and unjust he would be if anybody managed to persuade him that he really had a grievance.He tried to shake her off, but she clung to him.
"You mind your own business," he said roughly. "You threw me over for that...." He bit back an ugly word. "Well, that's your look out!"
"Ben, you're not going to do anything ... foolish!" There was a throb of fear in her voice, and he smiled grimly, "Promise me you're not going to do anything—wicked," she urged.
He turned and looked into her face.
"What's it got to do with you, eh?" he asked brutally. Then suddenly the hot blood surged in a crimson wave to the roots of his hair as he read the passionate anxiety of her eyes.
"Oh, so that's it, is it?" he asked thickly. He dragged himself free of her, his savage eyes wandering over her expensive clothes. "Well, I might have known," he said. "Women are all the same. It's always the chap with the money—no matter if he's a wrong 'un or not."
He went off down the road, deaf to her when she called his name, and Peg went back to her mother with a trembling heart.
There was some plot afoot to injure Forrester, she was sure. She questioned her stepfather, but he would admit nothing, and her mother was evidently too afraid to say anything, even if she had the knowledge.
Peg went back to Hampstead, sick with fear, though she tried hard to conquer it.
Ben would never be so foolish. She knew he was wild, but even he would surely hesitate at violence. It seemed an eternity until she heard Forrester's key in the door that evening.
He was home earlier than he had expected, he said, as she went to meet him. He looked round—"Where is Faith?"
"She went out with Mr. Digby to lunch. They haven't come back yet."
She saw the little frown that crossed Forrester's face, but he made no comment as he turned towards his study.
Peg followed. He did not want her company, she knew, but she had made up her mind to tell him of her suspicions, and nothing in the world would have prevented her.
Forrester looked round, hearing her step behind him. "I'm busy," he said. "I've a lot ofwriting to do. If you want to speak to me would you mind putting it off until later?"
"I must speak now," said Peg, breathlessly. She rushed at once to her point. "I went home this morning. I saw my stepfather and Ben Travers. You don't know him, but he works at Heeler's." She stopped, breathless. "Is there any trouble round there?" she asked tensely.
Forrester did not answer at once, then he said evasively:
"There has been a little discontent, but nothing serious. Travers was sacked with several others. I know the man quite well. He's an insolent young cub."
Peg flushed darkly.
"He hates you!" she said, falling into her favourite melodrama. "He would like to do you an injury—if he dared!"
Forrester smiled.
"I don't think there is any cause for alarm," he said cynically. "I am certainly not afraid of Travers."
There was an impatient dismissal in his voice, and Peg could see that he thought she wasmaking a fuss about nothing. She wished she could think the same, but her heart was full of apprehension.
She knew the class of men her stepfather and Travers were, even better than Forrester knew, and she was about to renew her pleading when the door opened and Faith came in.
There was a little silence, then Peg laughed.
"You've got back, then," she said.
Faith did not answer, and Peg shrugged her shoulders and walked past her out of the room.
Faith shut the door and looked at her husband.
"I suppose she told you," she said breathlessly.
The Beggar Man raised his brows.
"Told me? What has she told me?"
"That I have asked her to go."
"Asked her to go?" He echoed her words with blank incredulity.
"Yes." Faith looked at him with burning eyes. Was he really surprised, or was this an arranged thing between them, she wondered.
"Yes, I ... I think I would rather live here alone," she said unsteadily.
Forrester's eyes never left her face.
"But, surely, after all Miss Fraser has done for you," he began in perplexity.
Faith flushed hotly.
"I know, but—all the same—I want her to go." He shrugged his shoulders.
"Very well—tell her so."
"I have told her," said Faith tersely.
"Well?"
"She said that she came here because you asked her. She said that you were master of the house and she would only go if you said you wished it."
She stopped, her breath coming fast. What was he going to say?
Her strained eyes saw the wave of colour that rushed to his face, and her heart contracted with bitter jealousy.
"I am sorry," Forrester said gently. "But it is quite impossible. After all that has happened, I could never ask Miss Fraser to leave the house ... even if I wished it."
"You mean that you don't wish it?" Hewas amazed at the intensity of her question. He could not understand the situation at all, but something in it vaguely irritated him.
"Certainly I do not wish her to go," he said.
Faith turned to the door. Her childish face was hard and determined.
Forrester rose to his feet vaguely uneasy.
"Faith, come here."
She stopped, but did not turn.
"Come here, I said, Faith."
"Well?" She faced him now.
"Do you want me to understand that you really wish Peg to go?" he asked deliberately.
It was the first time since Peg had lived with them that she had ever heard him speak of her friend by her Christian name, and Faith winced as if he had hurt her, but she answered clearly.
"Yes."
"Why?" His critical eyes searched her face.
She flushed and stammered.
"Why? Oh, well ... you see...."
He made an impatient gesture.
"If you have no real reason it's absurd to expect me to ask her to leave the house. Ifthere is a reason...." He paused. "Faith, tell me the reason."
But she would not. How could she tell him that it was jealousy that was driving her? She would rather have died than admit to him that it hurt her intolerably to know that little by little Peg was taking the place she herself had once held in his heart.
She raised her dainty head with dignity.
"There is no reason," she said proudly. "Let her stay."
He went back to his papers.
"Very well. Then there is nothing more to be said."
Faith left him without another word. She was blind with passion as she went up to her room. She would never have believed it possible for jealousy to get such a grip of her emotions. She had believed that she hated Forrester, and it crushed her to the earth with shame to realize that now he no longer wanted her she loved him with all her heart and soul.
Later, down in the drawing-room, she slipped a note into Digby's hand as they went in to dinner.
He had no chance to read it then, but later when the two girls had left him to smoke with Forrester he found a moment.
There were only two hurriedly scribbled lines.
"I said no this afternoon when you asked me to come away with you. I have changed my mind; if you still want me I will come.—Faith."
"I said no this afternoon when you asked me to come away with you. I have changed my mind; if you still want me I will come.—Faith."
Peter Digby crushed the little note in his hand and looked guiltily across at his friend. But Forrester had noticed nothing; he seemed absorbed in his own thoughts, and Digby rose to his feet with a little sigh of relief.
"Well, shall we join the ladies?" he asked.
Forrester raised his eyes.
"By all means, you go. I must go out again." He looked at his watch.
"Go out?" Digby echoed. "My dear chap, at this time of night?"
But he was unutterably relieved. Forrester's absence would make things so much more simple.
"Yes, I must go down to Heeler's again.I'm afraid there's going to be serious trouble there. I don't like the look of things at all."
Digby frowned.
"Why don't you cut the whole show?" he asked. "With your money you don't want to waste time bothering about a business like that. Sell it and clear out. I should, if I were in your place."
"No, you wouldn't; and I'm not going to, anyway. If they think they can scare me into running away they're mistaken. A handful of loafers!" The Beggar Man looked almost ugly in his obstinacy and contempt, and Digby shrugged his shoulders and turned towards the door.
"Well, you know your own business best, of course," he said. "But if I were you I'd cut the worry and start enjoying myself."
Forrester did not answer; there was a strange look in his eyes as he watched his friend leave the room.
He knew well enough what was going on beneath his very eyes. He had known before that afternoon when Peg tried to warn him, and he was amazed because he cared so little.
In a way, it was almost a relief to know that perhaps before long the strain of the past weeks would be lifted. Even the violence of a final snap would be preferable to the constant nerve racking uncertainty he had been suffering.
Disappointment and bitterness had set a wall about his heart, and he told himself as he looked after Digby's retreating figure that he did not care what happened.
Faith would go if she wanted to. Well, let her! He would not lift a finger to detain her.
He turned back to his papers, and Digby crossed the hall to the drawing-room where the two girls were sitting together in constrained silence.
Peg had been trying to read one of her favourite novelettes, a particularly exciting one of its kind, in which the hero had just been confronted at the altar steps with a previous wife. But she could not keep her thoughts on what she was reading. She was restless and unhappy. Her nerves seemed tightly strung, as if she were waiting for something unknown to happen.
When the door opened to admit Digby shestarted up with a little exclamation, laughing nervously to hide her agitation.
"Oh, it's you? You made me jump."
Digby looked past her to where Faith sat on a low stool by the fire. He wished there was some way of getting rid of Peg. He had never liked her, and he knew that she disliked him as heartily.
His entrance was followed almost immediately by a knock on the door, and Peg started up again.
"Oh, come in! Gracious! I'm all nerves to-night."
But it was only one of the maids. She looked round the room apologetically. "I thought the master was here," she said.
"He's in the study." It was Digby who answered, and the door closed again, only to re-open almost immediately.
"The master has gone out, ma'am." The girl looked at Faith. "And it's Mr. Farrow, from the factory, to see him; most urgent he says it is." Faith turned her face away.
"I don't know where he has gone," she said, in a cold little voice. "Tell Mr. Farrow."
The maid was leaving the room when Peg sprang up. She brushed past the astonished girl unceremoniously, and went straight to where Farrow, the manager of Heeler's, stood in the hall, nervously twisting his hat.
"What's the matter?" she asked, in her usual direct fashion.
Farrow knew Peg well, and had always had a queer sort of respect for her, in spite of the odd things which he knew had been said of her from time to time.
He answered without hesitating that there was trouble brewing down at the works, and that he had come to warn Mr. Forrester to stay at home that evening.
"I've warned him before," he added, in distress. "But I might as well have spoken to the wall."
Peg caught her breath with a little hard sound.
"Who is it, Ben Travers and his gang?" she asked.
"Yes. Ben had too much drink in the Green Man public-house, close by Heeler's, last night, and he talked, and I know that ifMr. Forrester's wise he will stay at home to-night."
"But he's gone already!" The words burst from Peg's lips in despair.
For a moment she stood staring at him, her handsome face quite colourless. Then she turned suddenly and rushed upstairs.
She caught up the first coat she could find, and, hatless as she was, rushed down again and out through the front door, running to overtake Farrow, who had already left the house.
She caught him up at the end of the street, breathless and panting.
"Get a taxi! Oh, how slow you are!" she broke out passionately.
She dashed out into the road, nearly getting run over in her excitement, and pulled up a slowly passing taxicab.
Farrow had recovered himself and hurriedly followed.
"It may be all bluff," he said, rather shamefacedly, as they drove away; "but I don't like the look of things, and that's a fact. And I thought it my duty to warn the guv'nor."Man-like, he hated to feel that he had made an unnecessary fuss.
Peg did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the dark night, and her hands hard clasped in her lap. Every second seemed an eternity. The speeding cab seemed to crawl.
Presently she broke out hoarsely:
"You are sure—sure that's where he has gone—to Heeler's?"
"He told me he should go. He told me to meet him there," Farrow answered.
Peg bit her lip till the blood came.
"And you think—do you think ... they are ... waiting for him?"
"That was what it sounded like from the talk."
"Who told you?"
"The landlord of the Green Man overheard and sent for me."
Peg groaned. Her love for Forrester exaggerated the possible danger a thousandfold. She suffered tortures as they drove through the dark streets; and when at last the cab stopped close to the closed gates of Heeler's factory she flung herself from it headlong.
But the whole building was in darkness, and when she shook the padlocked gates with frantic hands they yielded nothing.
The cabman was staring at her curiously, and Peg came back to consciousness of her surroundings with a little gasping laugh.
She looked at Farrow.
"He can't have come, after all," she said faintly. Farrow shrugged his shoulders. He was beginning to feel rather foolish.
Peg spoke to him sharply.
"Pay the man, and tell him to go. What's he think he's staring at?"
She was angry and shaken; she leaned against the closed yard gates, trembling from head to foot. Suddenly she laughed.
"Well—we've had a wild-goose chase," she said dryly. "Come on, we may as well go home. I daresay Mr. Forrester went to his club after all. Come on, I say," she added angrily as Farrow did not move. "What are you waiting for?"
But she knew before he answered, for at that moment Forrester's tall figure suddenly grew out of the darkness beside them.
He was making for the smaller gate, of which Peg knew he kept a duplicate key, and which led to the offices, and with sudden impulse she darted forward and caught his arm.
"Mr. Forrester!"
The Beggar Man turned sharply and peered down at her white face.
"You! Good heavens! is anything the matter.... Faith?" His mind flew with swift apprehension to his wife.
Peg laughed bitterly.
"Oh, no, she's safe and sound enough. It's you."
"Me!" His eyes went beyond her to where Farrow stood. "Good heavens! What's the meaning of it all?" he demanded angrily. "Farrow, if you've been down to Hampstead frightening my wife...."
He turned on the man threateningly as a shrill warning scream broke from Peg, and the next instant Forrester felt himself seized violently from behind and flung backwards.
The darkness was filled with voices and shouting, and the street seemed suddenly to have grown alive with men.
It all happened so quickly that afterwards Forrester could remember no details, but, above all the din and tumult, he could hear Peg's voice raised in a wild scream of entreaty.
"Ben—Ben—for God's sake!"
The scuffle was all about him as he stood with his back to the locked gates trying to see what was happening, and to free himself of her encumbering body, but her arms were round his neck, and as by main force he tried to unclasp them and throw her aside a terrific blow fell somewhere from out of the darkness—not on him, but on the girl who clung to him so frantically; and suddenly she sagged against him and would have fallen but for his upholding arms.
There were running steps in the street, and the shrill blast of a police whistle rose above the discord as the crowd of hooligans broke and scattered in all directions, panic-stricken.
Forrester laid Peg on the pavement, still keeping his arms about her. He felt confused and dazed; he could not realize what had happened.
One of the police who had come upon the sceneturned the light of his lantern on Peg's face; the blow that had struck her had torn her hair down, and it lay in a tangled mass about her white face, but her eyes were open and fixed on the Beggar Man.
"Peg! Peg!" he said hoarsely.
It was the first time he had ever called her by her Christian name, and a little smile wavered across her face.
"I—I saved your life, anyway——" she whispered weakly, and then more softly still, "It's like a novelette!" said Peg, and closed her eyes.