"Toye's gone back to Italy," said Cazalet. "He says he may be away only a week. Let's make it the week of our lives!"
The scene was the little room it pleased Blanche to call her parlor, and the time a preposterously early hour of the following forenoon. Cazalet might have 'planed down from the skies into her sunny snuggery, though his brand-new Burberry rather suggested another extravagant taxicab. But Blanche saw only his worn excited face; and her own was not at its best in her sheer amazement.
If she had heard the last two sentences,to understand them at the time she would have felt bound to take them up first, and to ask how on earth Mr. Toye could affect her plans or pleasures. But such was the effect of the preceding statement that all the rest was several moments on the way to her comprehension, where it arrived, indeed, more incomprehensible than ever, but not worth making a fuss about then.
"Italy!" she had ejaculated meanwhile. "Whendid he go?"
"Nine o'clock last night."
"But"—she checked herself—"I simply can't understand it, that's all!"
"Why? Have you seen him since the other afternoon?"
His manner might have explained those other two remarks, now bothering her when it was too late to notice them; on the other hand, she was by no means surethat it did. He might simply dislike Toye, and that again might explain his extraordinary heat over the argument at Littleford. Blanche began to feel the air somewhat heavily charged with explanations, either demanded or desired; they were things she hated, and she determined not to add to them if she could help it.
"I haven't set eyes on him again," she said. "But he's been seen here—in a taxi."
"Who saw him?"
"Martha—if she's not mistaken."
This was a little disingenuous, as will appear; but that impetuous Sweep was in a merciful hurry to know something else.
"When was this, Blanche?"
"Just about dark—say seven or so. She owns it was about dark," said Blanche, though she felt ashamed of herself.
"Well, it's just possible. He left meabout six; said he had to see some one, too, now I think of it. But I'd give a bit to know what he was doing, messing about down here at the last moment!"
Blanche liked this as little as anything that Cazalet had said yet, and he had said nothing that she did like this morning. But there were allowances to be made for him, she knew. And yet to strengthen her knowledge, or rather to let him confirm it for her, either by word or by his silence, she stated a certain case for him aloud.
"Poor old Sweep!" she laughed. "It's a shame that you should have come home to be worried like this."
"I am worried," he said simply.
"I think it's just splendid, all you're doing for that poor man, but especially the way you're doing it."
"I wish to God you wouldn't say that, Blanche!"
He paid her the compliment of speaking exactly as he would have spoken to a man; or rather, she happened to be the woman to take it as a compliment.
"But I do say it, Sweep! I've heard all about it from Charlie. He rang me up last night."
"You're on the telephone, are you?"
"Everybody is in these days. Where have you lived? Oh, I forgot!" And she laughed. Anything to lift this duet of theirs out of the minor key!
"But what does old Charlie really think of the case? That's more to the point," said Cazalet uneasily.
"Well, he seemed to fear there was no chance of bail before the adjourned hearing. But I rather gathered he was not going to be in it himself?"
"No. We decided on one of those sportsmen who love rushing in where afamily lawyer like Charlie owns to looking down his nose. I've seen the chap, and primed him up about old Savage, and our find in the foundations. He says he'll make an example of Drinkwater, and Charlie says they call him the Bobby's Bugbear!"
"But surely he'll have to tell his client who's behind him?"
"No. He's just the type who would have rushed in, anyhow. And it'll be time enough to put Scruton under obligations when I've got him off!"
Blanche looked at the troubled eyes avoiding hers, and thought that she had never heard of a fine thing being done so finely. This very shamefacedness appealed to her intensely, and yet last night Charlie had said that old Sweep was in such tremendous spirits about it all! Why was he so down this morning?
She only knew she could have taken his hand, but for a very good reason why she could not. She had even to guard against an equivocally sympathetic voice or manner, as she asked, "How long did they remand him for?"
"Eight days."
"Well, then, you'll know the best or the worst to-day week!"
"Yes!" he said eagerly, almost himself again. "But, whichever way it goes, I'm afraid it means trouble for me, Blanche; some time or other I'll tell you why; but that's why I want this to be the week of our lives."
So he really meant what he had said before. The phrase had been no careless misuse of words; but neither, after all, did it necessarily apply to Mr. Toye. That was something. It made it easier for Blanche not to ask questions.
Cazalet had gone out on the balcony; now he called to her; and there was no taxi, but a smart open car, waiting in the road, its brasses blazing in the sun, an immaculate chauffeur at the wheel.
"Whose is that, Sweep?"
"Mine, for the week I'm talking about! I mean ours, if you'd only buck up and get ready to come out! A week doesn't last forever, you know!"
Blanche ran off to Martha, who fussed and hindered her with the best intentions. It would have been difficult to say which was the more excited of the two. But the old nurse would waste time in perfectly fatuous reminiscences of the very earliest expeditions in which Mr. Cazalet had lead and Blanche had followed, and what a bonny pair they had made even then, etc. Severely snubbed on that subject, she took to peering at her mistress, once her bairn,with furtive eagerness and impatience; for Blanche, on her side, looked as though she had something on her mind, and, indeed, had made one or two attempts to get it off. She had to force it even in the end.
"There's just one thing I want to say before I go, Martha."
"Yes, dearie, yes?"
"You know when Mr. Toye called yesterday, and I was out?"
"Oh, Mr. Toye; yes, I remember, Miss Blanche."
"Well, I don't want you to say that he came in and waited half an hour in vain; in fact, not that he came in at all, or that you're even sure you saw him, unless, of course, you're asked."
"Who should ask me, I wonder?"
"Well, I don't know, but there seems to be a little bad blood between Mr. Toye and Mr. Cazalet."
Martha looked for a moment as though she were about to weep, and then for another moment as though she would die of laughing. But a third moment she celebrated by making an utter old fool of herself, as she would have been told to her face by anybody but Blanche, whose yellow hair was being disarranged by the very hands that had helped to imprison it under that motor-hat and veil.
"Oh, Blanchie, is that all you have to tell me?" said Martha.
And then the week of their lives began.
The weather was true to them, and this was a larger matter than it might have been. They were not making love. They were "not out for that," as Blanche herself actually told Martha, with annihilating scorn, when the old dear looked both knowing and longing-to-know at the end of the first day's run. They were out to enjoy themselves, and that seemed shocking to Martha "unless something was coming of it." She had just sense enough to keep her conditional clause to herself.
Yet if they were only out to enjoy themselves, in the way Miss Blanchevowed and declared (more shame for her), they certainly had done wonders for a start. Martha could hardly credit all they said they had done, and as an embittered pedestrian there was nothing that she would "put past" one of those nasty motors. It said very little for Mr. Cazalet, by the way, in Martha's private opinion, that he should take her Miss Blanche out in a car at all; if he had turned out as well as she had hoped, and "meant anything," a nice boat on the river would have been better for them both than all that tearing through the air in a cloud of smoky dust; it would also have been much less expensive, and far more "the thing".
But, there, to see and hear the child after the first day! She looked so bonny that for a time Martha really believed that Mr. Cazalet had "spoken," andallowed herself to admire him also as he drove off later with his wicked lamps alight. But Blanche would only go on and on about her day, the glories of the Ripley Road and the grandeur of Hindhead. She had brought back heaps of heather and bunches of leaves just beginning to turn; they were all over the little house before Cazalet had been gone ten minutes. But Blanche hadn't forgotten her poor old Martha; she was not one to forget people, especially when she loved and yet had to snub them. Martha's portion was picture post-cards of the Gibbet and other landmarks of the day.
"And if you're good," said Blanche, "you shall have some every day, and an album to keep them in forever and ever. And won't that be nice when it's all over, and Mr. Cazalet's gone back to Australia?"
Crueller anticlimax was never planned, but Martha's face had brought it on her; and now it remained to make her see for herself what an incomparably good time they were having so far.
"It was a simply splendid lunch at the Beacon, andsucha tea at Byfleet, coming back another way," explained Blanche, who was notoriously indifferent about her food, but also as a rule much hungrier than she seemed to-night. "It must be that tea, my dear. It wastoomuch. To-morrow I'm to take theSirram, and I want Walter to see if he can't get a billy and show me how they make tea in the bush; but he says it simply couldn't be done without methylated."
The next day they went over the Hog's Back, and the next day right through London into Hertfordshire. This was a tremendous experience. The car was agood one from a good firm, and the chauffeur drove like an angel through the traffic, so that the teeming city opened before them from end to end. Then the Hertfordshire hedges and meadows and timber were the very things after the Hog's Back and Hindhead; not so wonderful, of course, but more like old England and less like the bush; and before the day was out they had seen, through dodging London on the way back, the Harrow boys like a lot of young butlers who had changed hats with the maids, and Eton boys as closely resembling a convocation of slack curates.
Then there was their Buckinghamshire day—Chalfont St. Giles and Hughenden—and almost detached experiences such as the churchyard at Stoke Poges, where Cazalet repeated astounding chunks of itsElegy, learned as long ago as hispreparatory school-days, and the terrible disillusion of Hounslow Heath and its murderous trams.
Then there was the wood they found where gipsies had been camping, where they resolved that moment to do the same, just exactly in every detail as Cazalet had so often done it in the bush; so that flesh and flour were fetched from the neighboring village, and he sat on his heels and turned them into mutton and damper in about a minute; and after that a real camp-fire till long after dark, and a shadowy chauffeur smoking his pipe somewhere in the other shadows, and thinking them, of course, quite mad. The critic on the hearth at home thought even worse of them than that. But Blanche only told the truth when she declared that the whole thing had been her idea; and she might have added, a bitter disappointment toher, because Walter simply would not talk about the bush itself, and never had since that first hour in the old empty schoolroom at Littleford.
(By the way, she had taken to calling him Walter to his face.)
Of other conversation, however, there was not and never had been the slightest dearth between them; but it was, perhaps, a sad case of quantity. These were two outdoor souls, and the one with the interesting life no longer spoke about it. Neither was a great reader, even of the papers, though Blanche liked poetry as she liked going to church; but each had the mind that could batten quite amiably on other people. So there was a deal of talk about neighbors down the river, and some of it was scandal, and all was gossip; and there was a great deal about what Blanche called their stone-age days, but again farless about themselves when young than there had been at Littleford, that first day. And so much for their conversation, once for all; it was frankly that of two very ordinary persons, placed in an extraordinary position to which they had shut their eyes for a week.
They must have had between them, however, some rudimentary sense of construction; for their final fling, if not just the most inspiring, was at least unlike all the rest. It was almost as new to Blanche, and now much more so to Cazalet; it appealed as strongly to their common stock of freshness and simplicity. Yet cause and effect were alike undeniably lacking in distinction. It began with cartloads of new clothes from Cazalet's old tailor, and it ended in a theater and the Carlton.
Martha surpassed herself, of course; she had gone about for days (or rathermornings and evenings) in an aggressive silence, her lips provocatively pursed; but now the time had come for her to speak out, and that she did. If Miss Blanche had no respect for herself, there were those who had some for her, just as there were others who seemed to have forgotten the meaning of the word. The euphemistic plural disappeared at the first syllable from Blanche. It was nothing to Martha that she had been offered a place in the car (beside that forward young man) more days than one; well did Mr. Cazalet know her feelings about motors before he made her the offer. But she was not saying anything about what was past.Thiswas the limit; an expression which only sullied Martha's lips because Blanche had just applied it to her interference. It was not behaving as a gentleman; it was enough to work unpleasantmiracles in her poor parents' graves; and though Martha herself would die sooner than inform Mr. Charlie or the married sisters, other people were beginning to talk, and when this came out she knew who would get the blame.
So Blanche seemed rather flushed and very spirited at the short and early dinner at Dieudonne's; but it was a fact that the motoring had affected her skin, besides making her eyes look as though she had been doing what she simply never did. It had also toned up the lower part of Cazalet's face to match the rest; otherwise he was more like a meerschaum pipe than ever, with the white frieze across his forehead (but now nothing else) to stamp him from the wilds. And soon nobody was laughing louder at Mr. Payne and Mr. Grossmith; nobody looked better qualified for his gaiety stall, nobody lesslike a predestined figure in impending melodrama.
So also at the Carlton later; more champagne, of course, and the jokes of the evening to replenish a dwindling store, and the people at the other tables to give a fresh fillip to the game of gossip. Blanche looked as well as any of them in a fresher way than most, and Cazalet a noble creature in all his brand-new glory; and she winced with pride at the huge tip she saw him give the waiter; for an old friend may be proud of an old friend, surely! Then they got a good place for watching more people in the lounge; and the fiddling conductor proved the best worth watching of the lot, and was pronounced the very best performer that Cazalet had ever heard in all his life. Many other items were praised in the samefervent formula, which Blanche confirmed about everything except his brandy and cigar.
Above all was it delightful to feel that their beloved car was waiting for them outside, to whirl them out of all this racket just as late as they liked; for quite early in the week (and this was a glaring aggravation in Martha's eyes) Cazalet had taken lodgings for himself and driver in those very Nell Gwynne Cottages where Hilton Toye had stayed before him.
All the evening nothing had been better of its kind than this music at the very end; and, of course, it was the kind for Blanche and Cazalet, who for his part liked anything with a tune, but could never remember one to save his life. Yet when they played an aged waltz, actually in its second decade, just upon half pasttwelve, even Cazalet cocked his head and frowned, as though he had heard the thing before.
"I seem to know that," he said. "I believe I've danced to it."
"I have," said Blanche. "Often," she added suddenly; and then, "I suppose you sometimes dance in the bush, Walter?"
"Sometimes."
"That's where it was, then."
"I don't think so. You couldn't get that tremendous long note on a piano. There it goes again—bars and bars of it! That's what I seem to remember."
Blanche's face never changed. "Now, that's the end. They're beginning to put the lights out, Walter. Don't you think we'd better go?"
It had been new life to them, but now it was all over. It was the last evening of their week, and they were spending it rather silently on Blanche's balcony.
"I make it at least three hundred," said Cazalet, and knocked out a pipe that might have been a gag. "You see, we were very seldom under fifty!"
"Speak for yourself, please! My longevity's a tender point," said Blanche, who looked as though she had no business to have her hair up, as she sat in a pale cross-fire between a lamp-post and her lighted room.
Cazalet protested that he had onlymeant their mileage in the car; he made himself extremely intelligible now, as he often would when she rallied him in a serious voice. Evidently that was not the way to rouse him up to-night, and she wanted to cheer him after all that he had done for her. Better perhaps not to burke the matter that she knew was on his mind.
"Well, it's been a heavenly time," she assured him just once more. "And to-morrow it's pretty sure to come all right about Scruton, isn't it?"
"Yes! To-morrow we shall probably have Toye back," he answered with grim inconsequence.
"What has that to do with it, Walter?"
"Oh, nothing, of course."
But still his tone was grim and heavy, with a schoolboy irony that he would not explain but could not keep to himself. So Mr. Toye must be turned out of theconversation, though it was not Blanche who had dragged him in. She wished people would stick to their point. She meant to make people, just for once and for their own good; but it took time to find so many fresh openings, and he only cutting up another pipeful of that really rather objectionable bush tobacco.
"There's one thing I've rather wanted to ask you," she began.
"Yes?" said Cazalet.
"You said the other day that it would mean worry for you in any case—after to-morrow—whether the charge is dismissed or not!"
His wicker chair creaked under him.
"I don't see why it should," she persisted, "if the case falls through."
"Well, that's where I come in," he had to say.
"Surely you mean just the other wayabout? If they commit the man for trial, then you do come in, I know. It's like your goodness."
"I wish you wouldn't say that! It hurts me!"
"Then will you explain yourself? It's not fair to tell me so much, and then to leave out just the bit that's making you miserable!"
The trusty, sisterly, sensible voice, half bantering but altogether kind, genuinely interested if the least bit inquisitive, too, would have gone to a harder or more hardened heart than beat on Blanche's balcony that night. Yet as Cazalet lighted his pipe he looked old enough to be her father.
"I'll tell you some time," he puffed.
"It's only a case of two heads," said Blanche. "I know you're bothered, and I should like to help, that's all."
"You couldn't."
"How do you know? I believe you're going to devote yourself to this poor man—if you can get him off—I mean, when you do."
"Well?" he said.
"Surely I could help you there! Especially if he's ill," cried Blanche, encouraged by his silence. "I'm not half a bad nurse, really!"
"I'm certain you're not."
"Does helookvery ill?"
She had been trying to avoid the direct question as far as possible, but this one seemed so harmless. Yet it was received in a stony silence unlike any that had gone before. It was as though Cazalet neither moved nor breathed, whereas he had been all sighs and fidgets just before. His pipe was out already—that was the one merit of bush tobacco, it required constant attention—and he did not look like lighting it again.
Until to-night they had not mentioned Scruton since the motoring began. That had been a tacit rule of the road, of wayside talk and indoor orgy. But Blanche had always assumed that Cazalet had been to see him in the prison; and now he told her that he never had.
"I can't face him," he cried under his breath, "and that's the truth! Let me get him out of this hole, and I'm his man forever; but until I do, while there's a chance of failing, I simply can't face the fellow. It isn't as if he'd asked to see me. Why should I force myself upon him?"
"He hasn't asked to see you because he doesn't know what you're doing for him!" Blanche leaned forward as eagerly as she was speaking, all her repressed feelings coming to their own in her for just a moment. "He doesn't know because I do believe you wouldn't have him told thatyou'd arrived, lest he should suspect! Youarea brick, Sweep, you really are!"
He was too much of one to sit still under the name. He sprang up, beating his hands. "Why shouldn't I be—to him—to a poor devil who's been through all he's been through? Ten years! Just think of it; no, it's unthinkable to you or me. And it all started in our office; we were to blame for not keeping our eyes open; things couldn't have come to such a pass if we'd done our part, my poor old father for one—I can't help saying it—and I myself for another. Talk about contributory negligence! We were negligent, as well as blind. We didn't know a villain when we saw one, and we let him make another villain under our noses; and the second one was the only one we could see in his true colors, even then. Do you think we owe him nothing now? Don'tyou thinkIowe him something, as the only man left to pay?"
But Blanche made no attempt to answer his passionate questions. He had let himself go at last; it relieved her also in a way, for it was the natural man back again on her balcony. But he had set Blanche off thinking on other lines than he intended.
"I'm thinking of whathemust have felt he owed Mr. Craven and—and Ethel!" she owned.
"I don't bother my head over either of them," returned Cazalet harshly. "He was never a white man in his lifetime, and she was every inch his daughter. Scruton's the one I pity—because—because I've suffered so much from that man myself."
"But you don't think he did it!" Blanche was sharp enough to interrupt.
"No—no—but if he had!"
"You'd still stand by him?"
"I've told you so before. I meant to take him back to Australia with me—I never told you that—but I meant to take him, and not a soul out there to know who he was." He sighed aloud over the tragic stopper on that plan.
"And would you still?" she asked.
"If I could get him off."
"Guilty or not guilty?"
"Rather!"
There was neither shame, pose, nor hesitation about that. Blanche went through into the room without a word, but her eyes shone finely in the lamplight. Then she returned with a book, and stood half in the balcony, framed as in a panel, looking for a place.
"You remind me ofThe Thousandth Man," she told him as she found it.
"Who was he?"
"He's every man who does a thousandth part of what you're doing!" said Blanche with confidence. And then she read, rather shyly and not too well:
"'One man in a thousand, Solomon says,Will stick more close than a brother.And it's worth while seeking him half your daysIf you find him before the other.Nine hundred and ninety-nine dependOn what the world sees in you,But the Thousandth Man will stand your friendWith the whole round world agin you.'"
"'One man in a thousand, Solomon says,Will stick more close than a brother.And it's worth while seeking him half your daysIf you find him before the other.Nine hundred and ninety-nine dependOn what the world sees in you,But the Thousandth Man will stand your friendWith the whole round world agin you.'"
"'One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother.
And it's worth while seeking him half your days
If you find him before the other.
Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend
On what the world sees in you,
But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend
With the whole round world agin you.'"
"I should hope he would," said Cazalet, "if he's a man at all."
"But this is the bit for you," said Blanche:
"'His wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right,In season or out of season.Stand up and back it in all men's sight—Withthatfor your only reason!Nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bideThe shame or mocking or laughter,But the Thousandth Man will stand by your sideTo the gallows-foot—and after!'"
"'His wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right,In season or out of season.Stand up and back it in all men's sight—Withthatfor your only reason!Nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bideThe shame or mocking or laughter,But the Thousandth Man will stand by your sideTo the gallows-foot—and after!'"
"'His wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right,
In season or out of season.
Stand up and back it in all men's sight—
Withthatfor your only reason!
Nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bide
The shame or mocking or laughter,
But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side
To the gallows-foot—and after!'"
The last italics were in Blanche's voice, and it trembled, but so did Cazalet's as he cried out in his formula:
"That's the finest thing I ever heard in all my life! But it's true, and so it should be.Idon't take any credit for it."
"Then you're all the more the thousandth man!"
He caught her suddenly by the shoulders. His rough hands trembled; his jaw worked. "Look here, Blanchie! Ifyouhad a friend, wouldn't you do the same?"
"Yes, if I'd such a friend as all that," she faltered.
"You'd stand by his side 'to the gallows-foot'—if he was swine enough to let you?"
"I dare say I might."
"However bad a thing it was—murder, if you like—and however much he was mixed up in it—not like poor Scruton?"
"I'd try to stick to him," she said simply.
"Then you're the thousandth woman," said Cazalet. "God bless you, Blanchie!"
God bless you, Blanchie
"God bless you, Blanchie!"
He turned on his heel in the balcony, and a minute later found the room behind him empty. He entered, stood thinking, and suddenly began looking all over for the photograph of himself, with a beard, which he had seen there a week before.
It was his blessing that had done it; up to then she had controlled her feelings in a fashion worthy of the title just bestowed upon her. If only he had stopped at that, and kept his blessing to himself! It sounded so very much more like a knell that Blanche had begun first to laugh, and then to make such a fool of herself (as she herself reiterated) that she was obliged to run away in the worst possible order.
But that was not the end of those four superfluous words of final benediction; before the night was out they had solved, to Blanche's satisfaction, the hitherto impenetrable mystery of Cazalet's conduct.
He had done something in Australia, something that fixed a gulf between him and her. Blanche did not mean something wrong, much less a crime, least of all any sort of complicity in the great crime which had been committed while he was on his way home. Obviously he could have had no connection with that, until days afterward as the accused man's friend. Yet he had on his conscience some act or other of which he was ashamed to speak. It might even itself be shameful; that was what his whole manner had suggested, but what Blanche was least ready and at the same time least unwilling to believe. She felt she could forgive such an old friend almost anything. But she believed the worst he had done was to emulate his friend Mr. Potts, and to get engaged or perhaps actually married to somebody in the bush.
There was no reason why he should not; there never had been any sort or kind of understanding between herself and him; it was only as lifelong friends that they had written to each other, and that only once a year. Lifelong friendships are traditionally fatal to romance. Blanche could remember only one occasion on which their friendship had risen to something more—or fallen to something less! She knew which it had been to her; especially just afterward, when all his troubles had come and he had gone away without another word of that kind. He had resolved not to let her tie herself, and so had tied her all the tighter, if not tighter still by never stating his resolve. But to go as far as this is to go two or three steps further than Blanche went in her perfectly rational retrospect: she simply saw, as indeed she had always seen,that they had both been free as air; and if he was free no longer, she had absolutely no cause for complaint, even if she was fool enough to feel it.
All this she saw quite clearly in her very honest heart. And yet, he might have told her; he need not have flown to see her, the instant he landed, or seemed so overjoyed, and such a boy again, or made so much of her and their common memories! He need not have begun begging her, in a minute, to go out to Australia, and then never have mentioned it again; he might just as well have told her if he had or hoped to have a wife to welcome her! Of course he saw it afterward, himself; that was why the whole subject of Australia had been dropped so suddenly and for good. Most likely he had married beneath him; if so, she was very sorry, but he might have said that he wasmarried. Had Blanche been analyzing herself, and not just the general position of things, she would have had hereabouts to account to her conscience for a not unpleasing spasm at the sudden thought of his being unhappily married all the time.
One proof was that he had utterly forgotten all about the waltz ofEldorado—even its name! No; it had some vague associations for him, and that was worse than none at all. Blanche had its long note (not "bars and bars," though, Sweep) wailing in her head all night. And so for him their friendship had only fallen to something lower, to that hateful haunting tune that he could not even decently forget!
Curiously enough, it was over Martha that she felt least able to forgive him. Martha would say nothing, but her unspoken denunciations of Cazalet would beonly less intolerable than her unspoken sympathy with Blanche. Martha had been perfectly awful about the whole thing. And Martha had committed the final outrage of being perfectly right, from her idiotic point of view.
Now among all these meditations of a long night, and of a still longer day, in which nobody even troubled to send her word of the case at Kingston, it would be too much to say that no thought of Hilton Toye ever entered the mind of Blanche. She could not help liking him; he amused her immensely; and he had proposed to her twice, and warned her he would again. She felt the force of his warning, because she felt his force of character and will. She literally felt these forces, as actual emanations from the strongest personality that had ever impinged upon her own. Not only was hestrong, but capable and cultivated; and he knew the whole world as most people only knew some hole or corner of it; and could be most interesting without ever talking about himself or other people.
In the day of reaction, such considerations were bound to steal in as single spies, each with a certain consolation, not altogether innocent of comparisons. But the battalion of Toye's virtues only marched on Blanche when Martha came to her, on the little green rug of a lawn behind the house, to say that Mr. Toye himself had called and was in the drawing-room.
Blanche stole up past the door, and quickly made herself smarter than she had ever done by day for Walter Cazalet; at least she put on a "dressy" blouse, her calling skirt (which always looked new), and did what she could to her hair. Allthis was only because Mr. Toye always came down as if it were Mayfair, and it was rotten to make people feel awkward if you could help it. So in sailed Blanche, in her very best for the light of day, to be followed as soon as possible by the silver teapot, though she had just had tea herself. And there stood Hilton Toye, chin blue and collar black, his trousers all knees and no creases, exactly as he had jumped out of the boat-train.
"I guess I'm not fit to speak to you," he said, "but that's just what I've come to do—for the third time!"
"Oh, Mr. Toye!" cried Blanche, really frightened by the face that made his meaning clear. It relaxed a little as she shrank involuntarily, but the compassion in his eyes and mouth did not lessen their steady determination.
"I didn't have time to make myselfpresentable," he explained. "I thought you wouldn't have me waste a moment if you understood the situation. I want your promise to marry me right now!"
Blanche began to breathe again. Evidently he was on the eve of yet another of his journeys, probably back to America, and he wanted to go over engaged; at first she had thought he had bad news to break to her, but this was no worse than she had heard before. Only it was more difficult to cope with him; everything was different, and he so much more pressing and precipitate. She had never met this Hilton Toye before. Yes; she was distinctly frightened by him. But in a minute she had ceased to be frightened of herself; she knew her own mind once more, and spoke it much as he had spoken his, quite compassionately, but just as tersely to the point.
"One moment," he interrupted. "I said nothing about my feelings, because they're a kind of stale proposition by this time; but for form's sake I may state there's no change there, except in the only direction I guess a person's feelings are liable to change toward you, Miss Blanche! I'm a worse case than ever, if that makes any difference."
Blanche shook her yellow head. "Nothing can," she said. "There must be no possible mistake about it this time, because I want you to be very good and never ask me again. And I'm glad you didn't make all the proper speeches, because I needn't either, Mr. Toye! But—I know my own mind better than I ever did until this very minute—and I could simply never marry you!"
Toye accepted his fate with a ready resignation, little short of alacrity. Therewas a gleam in his somber eyes, and his blue chin came up with a jerk. "That's talking!" said he. "Now will you promise me never to marry Cazalet?"
"Mr. Toye!"
"That's talking, too, and I guess I mean it to be. It's not all dog-in-the-manger, either. I want that promise a lot more than I want the other. You needn't marry me, Miss Blanche, but you mustn't marry Cazalet."
Blanche was blazing. "But this is simply outrageous—"
"I claim there's an outrageous cause for it. Are you prepared to swear what I ask, and trust me as I'll trust you, or am I to tell you the whole thing right now?"
"You won't force me to listen to another word from you, if you're a gentleman, Mr. Toye!"
"It's not what I am that counts. Swear that to me, and I swear, on my side, that I won't give him away to you or any one else. But it must be the most solemn contract man and woman ever made."
The silver teapot arrived at this juncture, and not inopportunely. She had to give him his tea, with her young maid's help, and to play a tiny part in which he supported her really beautifully. She had time to think, almost coolly; and one thought brought a thrill. If it was a question of her marrying or not marrying Walter Cazalet, then he must be free, and only the doer of some dreadful deed!
"Whathashe done?" she begged, with a pathetic abandonment of her previous attitude, the moment they were by themselves.
"Must I tell you?" His reluctance rang genuine.
"I insist upon it!" she flashed again.
"Well, it's a long story."
"Never mind. I can listen."
"You know, I had to go back to Italy—"
"Had you?"
"Well, I did go." He had slurred the first statement; this one was characteristically deliberate. "I did go, and before I went I asked Cazalet for an introduction to some friends of his down in Rome."
"I didn't know he had any," said Blanche. She was not listening so very well; she was, in fact, instinctively prepared to challenge every statement, on Cazalet's behalf; and here her instinct defeated itself.
"No more he has," said Toye, "but he claimed to have some. He left theKaiser Fritzthe other day at Naples—just when I came aboard. I guess he told you?"
"No. I understood he came round to Southampton. Surely you shared a cabin?"
"Only from Genoa; that's where Cazalet rejoined the steamer."
"Well?"
"He claimed to have spent the interval mostly with friends in Rome. Those friends don't exist, Miss Blanche," said Toye.
"Is that any business of mine?" she asked him squarely.
"Why, yes, I'm afraid it's going to be. That is, unless you'll still trust me—"
"Go on, please."
"Why, he never stayed in Rome at all, nor yet in Italy any longer than it takes to come through on the train. Your attention for one moment!" He took out a neat pocketbook. Blanche had opened her lips, but she did not interrupt; she justgrasped the arms of her chair, as though about to bear physical pain. "TheKaiser Fritz"—Toye was speaking from his book—"got to Naples late Monday afternoon, September eighth. She was overdue, and I was mad about it, and madder still when I went aboard and she never sailed till morning. I guess I'd wasted—"
"Do tell me about Walter Cazalet!" cried Blanche. It was like small talk from a dentist at the last moment.
"I want you to understand about the steamer first," said Toye. "She waited Monday night in the Bay of Naples, only sailed Tuesday morning, only reached Genoa Wednesday morning, and lay there forty-eight hours, as the German boats do, anyhow. That brings us to Friday morning before theKaiser Fritzgets quit of Italy, doesn't it?"
"Yes—do tell me about Walter!"
"He was gone ashore Monday evening before I came aboard at Naples. I never saw him till he scrambled aboard again Friday, about the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour."
"At Genoa?"
"Sure."
"And you pretend to know where he'd been?"
"I guess I do know"—and Toye sighed as he raised his little book. "Cazalet stepped on the train that left Naples six fifty Monday evening, and off the one timed to reach Charing Cross three twenty-five Wednesday."
"The day of the m—"
"Yes. I never called it by the hardest name, myself; but it was seven thirty Wednesday evening that Henry Craven got his death-blow somehow. Well, Walter Cazalet left Charing Cross again bythe nine o'clock that night, and was back aboard theKaiser Fritzon Friday morning—full of his friends in Rome who didn't exist!"
The note-book was put away with every symptom of relief.
"I suppose you can prove what you say?" said Blanche in a voice as dull as her unseeing eyes.
"I have men to swear to him—ticket-collectors, conductors, waiters on the restaurant-car—all up and down the line. I went over the same ground on the same trains, so that was simple. I can also produce the barber who claims to have taken off his beard in Paris, where he put in hours Thursday morning."
Blanche looked up suddenly, not at Toye, but past him toward an overladen side-table against the wall. It was there that Cazalet's photograph had stoodamong many others; until this morning she had never missed it, for she seemed hardly to have been in her room all the week; but she had been wondering who had removed it, whether Cazalet himself (who had spoken of doing so, she now knew why), or Martha (whom she would not question about it) in a fit of ungovernable disapproval. And now there was the photograph back in its place, leather frame and all!
"I know what you did," said Blanche. "You took that photograph with you—the one on that table—and had him identified by it!"
Yet she stated the fact, for his bowed head admitted it to be one, as nothing but a fact, in the same dull voice of apathetic acquiescence in an act of which the man himself was ashamed. She could see him wondering at her; she even wondered atherself. Yet if all this were true, what matter how the truth had come to light?
"It was the night I came down to bid you good-by," he confessed, "and didn't have time to wait. I didn't come down for the photo. I never thought of it till I saw it there. I came down to kind of warn you, Miss Blanche!"
"Against him?" she said, as if there was only one man left in the world.
"Yes—I guess I'd already warned Cazalet that I was starting on his tracks."
And then Blanche just said, "Poor—old—Sweep!" as one talking to herself. And Toye seized upon the words as she had seized on nothing from him.
"Have you only pity for the fellow?" he cried; for she was gazing at the bearded photograph without revulsion.
"Of course," she answered, hardly attending.
"Even though he killed this man—even though he came across Europe to kill him?"
"You don't think it was deliberate yourself, even if he did do it."
"But can you doubt that he did?" cried Toye, quick to ignore the point she had made, yet none the less sincerely convinced upon the other. "I guess you wouldn't if you'd heard some of the things he said to me on the steamer; and he's made good every syllable since he landed. Why, it explains every single thing he's done and left undone. He'll strain every nerve to have Scruton ably defended, but he won't see the man he's defending; says himself that he can't face him!"
"Yes. He said so to me," said Blanche, nodding in confirmation.
"To you?"
"I didn't understand him."
"But you're been seeing him all this while?"
"Every day," said Blanche, her soft eyes filling suddenly. "We've had—we've had the time of our lives!"
"My God!" said Toye. "The time of your life with a man who's got another man's blood on his hands—and that makes no difference to you! The time of your life with the man who knew where to lay hands on the weapon he'd done it with, who went as far as that to save the innocent, but no farther!"
"He would; he will still, if it's still necessary. You don't know him, Mr. Toye; you haven't known him all your life."
"And all this makes no difference to a good and gentle woman—one of the gentlest and the best God ever made?"
"If you mean me, I won't go so far as that," said Blanche. "I must see him first."
"See Cazalet?"
Toye had come to his feet, not simply in the horror and indignation which had gradually taken possession of him, but under the stress of some new and sudden resolve.
"Of course," said Blanche; "of course I must see him as soon as possible."
"Never again!" he cried.
"What?"
"You shall never speak to that man again, as long as ever you live," said Toye, with the utmost emphasis and deliberation.
"Who's going to prevent me?"
"I am."
"How?"
"By laying an information against him this minute, unless you promise never to see or to speak to Cazalet again."
Blanche felt cold and sick, but the bitof downright bullying did her good. "I didn't know you were a blackmailer, Mr. Toye!"
"You know I'm not; but I mean to save you from Cazalet, blackmail or white."
"To save me from a mere old friend—nothing more—nothing—all our lives!"
"I believe that," he said, searching her with his smoldering eyes. "You couldn't tell a lie, I guess, not if you tried! But you would do something; it's just a man being next door to hell that would bring a God's angel—" His voice shook.
She was as quick to soften on her side.
"Don't talk nonsense, please," she begged, forcing a smile through her distress. "Will you promise to do nothing if—ifIpromise?"
"Not to go near him?"
"No."
"Nor to see him here?"
"No."
"Nor anywhere else?"
"No. I give you my word."
"If you break it, I break mine that minute? Is it a deal that way?"
"Yes! Yes! I promise!"
"Then so do I, by God!" said Hilton Toye.
"It's all perfectly true," said Cazalet calmly. "Those were my movements while I was off the ship, except for the five hours and a bit that I was away from Charing Cross. I can't dispute a detail of all the rest. But they'll have to fill in those five hours unless they want another case to collapse like the one against Scruton!"
Old Savage had wriggled like a venerable worm, in the experienced talons of the Bobby's Bugbear; but then Mr. Drinkwater and his discoveries had come still worse out of a hotter encounter with the truculent attorney; and Cazalet haddescribed the whole thing as only he could describe a given episode, down to the ultimate dismissal of the charge against Scruton, with a gusto the more cynical for the deliberately low pitch of his voice. It was in the little lodging-house sitting-room at Nell Gwynne's Cottages; he stood with his back to the crackling fire that he had just lighted himself, as it were, already at bay; for the folding-doors were in front of his nose, and his eyes roved incessantly from the landing door on one side to the curtained casement on the other. Yet sometimes he paused to gaze at the friend who had come to warn him of his danger; and there was nothing cynical or grim about him then.
Blanche had broken her word for perhaps the first time in her life; but it had never before been extorted from her by duress, and it would be affectation tocredit her with much compunction on the point. Her one great qualm lay in the possibility of Toye's turning up at any moment; but this she had obviated to some extent by coming straight to the cottages when he left her—presumably to look for Cazalet in London, since she had been careful not to mention his change of address. Cazalet, to her relief, but also a little to her hurt, she had found at his lodgings in the neighborhood, full of the news he had not managed to communicate to her. But it was no time for taking anything but his peril to heart. And that they had been discussing, almost as man to man, if rather as innocent man to innocent man; for even now, or perhaps now in his presence least of all, Blanche could not bring herself to believe her old friend guilty of a violent crime, however unpremeditated, for which another hadbeen allowed to suffer, for however short a time.
And yet, he seemed to make no secret of it; and yet—it did explain his whole conduct since landing, as Toye had said.
She could only shut her eyes to what must have happened, even as Cazalet himself had shut his all this wonderful week, that she had forgotten all day in her ingratitude, but would never, in all her days, forget again!
"There won't be another case," she heard herself saying, while her thoughts ran ahead or lagged behind like sheep. "It'll never come out—I know it won't."
"Why shouldn't it?" he asked so sharply that she had to account for the words, to herself as well as to him.
"Nobody knows except Mr. Toye, and he means to keep it to himself."
"Why should he?"
"I don't know. He'll tell you himself."
"Are you sure you don't know? What can he have to tell me? Why should he screen me, Blanche?"
His eyes and voice were furious with suspicion, but still the voice was lowered.
"He's a jolly good sort, you know," said Blanche, as if the whole affair was the most ordinary one in the world. But heroics could not have driven the sense of her remark more forcibly home to Cazalet.
"Oh, he is, is he?"
"I've always found him so."
"So have I, the little I've seen of him. And I don't blame him for getting on my tracks, mind you; he's a bit of a detective, I was fair game, and he did warn me in a way. That's why I meant to have the week—" He stopped and looked away.
"I know. And nothing can undothat," she only said; but her voice swelled with thanksgiving. And Cazalet looked reassured; the hot suspicion died out of his eyes, but left them gloomily perplexed.
"Still, I can't understand it. I don't believe it, either! I'm in his hands. What have I done to be saved by Toye? He's probably scouring London for me—if he isn't watching this window at this minute!"
He went to the curtains as he spoke. Simultaneously Blanche sprang up, to entreat him to fly while he could. That had been her first object in coming to him as she had done, and yet, once with him, she had left it to the last! And now it was too late; he was at the window, chuckling significantly to himself; he had opened it, and he was leaning out.
"That you, Toye, down there? Comeup and show yourself! I want to see you."
He turned in time to dart in front of the folding-doors as Blanche reached them, white and shuddering. The flush of impulsive bravado fled from his face at the sight of hers.
"You can't go in there. What's the matter?" he whispered. "Why shouldyoube afraid of Hilton Toye?"
How could she tell him? Before she had found a word, the landing door opened, and Hilton Toye was in the room, looking at her.
"Keep your voice down," said Cazalet anxiously. "Even if it's all over with me but the shouting, we needn't start the shouting here!"
He chuckled savagely at his jest; and now Toye stood looking at him.
"I've heard all you've done," continuedCazalet. "I don't blame you a bit. If it had been the other way about, I might have given you less run for your money. I've heard what you've found out about my mysterious movements, and you're absolutely right as far as you go. You don't know why I took the train at Naples, and traveled across Europe without a hand-bag. It wasn't quite the put-up job you may think. But, if it makes you any happier, I may as well tell you that Iwasat Uplands that night, and Ididget out through the foundations!"
The insane impetuosity of the man was his master now. He was a living fire of impulse that had burst into a blaze. His voice was raised in spite of his warning to the others, and the very first sound of Toye's was to remind him that he was forgetting his own advice. Toye had not looked a second time at Blanche; nor didhe now; but he took in the silenced Cazalet from head to heel, by inches.
"I always guessed you might be crazy, and I now know it," said Hilton Toye. "Still, I judge you're not so crazy as to deny that while you were in that house you struck down Henry Craven, and left him for dead?"
Cazalet stood like a red-hot stone.
"Miss Blanche," said Toye, turning to her rather shyly, "I guess I can't do what I said just yet. I haven't breathed a word, not yet, and perhaps I never will, if you'll come away with me now—back to your home—and never see Henry Craven's murderer again!"
"And who may he be?" cried a voice that brought all three face-about.
The folding-doors had opened, and a fourth figure was standing between the two rooms.