Richard Marsh

“ You see, Dodwell, I know you. Since I was last in this room I've been in some strange company; I've met one or two men like you, and I haven't liked them. I know how you treated me; I saw how you treated Draycott that night at Avonham; you would treat me, and Draycott, exactly the same again tomorrow--if you had the chance. You can't like the man whom you know is that kind of person; you avoid him, if you can; you are on your guard against him, if you can't. ”

“ What was to be done to restore the harmony that had heretofore reigned it was not easy to see; a single jarring note is so apt to keep on ringing in the ears. Sydney Beaton had gone--where, no one, not even his nearest and dearest, seemed to know. He had been one of the most popular persons in the regiment, not only with his brother officers, but with the rank and file; his own company adored him. Not only was the one hideous scandal still fresh in men's memories, but now still worse stories were being whispered about it. ”

“ I do not believe that you are Sydney Beaton's wife; your statement that you are makes me doubt all that you have said. I am sure that you are not his wife; I believe him to be incapable of marrying such a creature as you. He may have sunk low, but I do not think that he could ever fall quite so low as that. The fact that you have told me that one great lie makes it obvious that you have probably told me others; I doubt that he is the kind of person you make him out to be. ”

“ All the time she had been talking to Major Reith she had been wondering what would be the nearest convenient place in which to hide it, if opportunity offered. Against the wall, within a few feet of where she was standing, was an old oak chest, which was sometimes used as a seat, which was covered with a piece of dark blue velvet, embroidered almost as if it had been an altar cloth. Lady Cantyre had told her that it was half-full of things, but she herself did not know what they were; no one ever looked inside. If the lid was open, there might be room for the bag; it would be the very place. ”

“ Sydney has been too long under a cloud which was none of his making; I am going to bring him out from under it into the sun. I am going to do it single-handed; and it's because I am so sure that I shall do it that I cannot be unhappy. Major Reith, I talk like a braggart of doing it all single-handed; but all the same I am conscious that occasion may arrive when I shall require some assistance; if I do, will you give it?"
"I will give you, very gladly, all the assistance which, in such a position, a man may give to a woman." ”

“ You know Lady Cantyre?"
"Who doesn't? Saving your presence, is there anyone better worth knowing?"
"Saving nothing, there isn't; and she's my very, very dear friend. She knows the pickle I'm in and she's going to help me; this is between ourselves, mind. I want to get at Mr. Noel Draycott under circumstances in which he will find it hard to get away. She has asked him down to Avonham, and I shall be there to meet him; before we part I shall find out a great deal more about what Mr. Noel Draycott really did see, as well as about other things, than he in the least anticipates." ”

“ Then by degrees I began to understand that I was in bed, in a strange room, and that Beaton was leaning over me. 'Why, Syd!' I said--it wasn't a very brilliant remark to make, but I remember that I did make it. What he said I don't know, I fancy I must have slipped back into unconsciousness again. To make a long story short, when I did come really to myself again, I found that I was in Beaton's rooms."
"But how on earth did you get there?" demanded Major Reith. "When I last saw you I could have sworn that you were lying dead on the floor of that room at Avonham. ”

“ Then, in that supreme moment, when he needed to keep his head more than ever in his life, he lost his balance altogether and played the fool.
"Do you think," he shouted, "that I'll condescend to deny such a charge coming from a beast like Draycott and a cur like Dodwell? I tell you what I will do, I'll take them on both together and fight them to a standstill, and choke their infernal lies back into their throats. Major Harold Reith, if I do get hold of you, I'll tear your lying tongue out by the roots." ”

“ Margaret, if you were a man of honour, consider what your feelings would be if those whom you had esteemed your friends treated you as those men did Sydney."
"It's not easy for me to put myself into such a position; but if I had been in his place, and been innocent, I think I should have recognised the danger of my position, have kept calm, and have had the matter thrashed right out."
"My dear Margaret, you don't seem to realise that all these men were half beside themselves. I can quite fancy what men can be in such a moment. Sydney wanted to fly at Dodwell's throat. ”

“ So long as he has friends to give him a lift he may manage somehow, but when his only friend is himself he's scrambling for crusts in the gutter almost before he himself knows it. To one who has had to earn his bread all his life by the sweat of his brow it's nothing less than amazing how soon he gets there. Mr. Sydney Beaton was in the gutter, and worse than the gutter, when I first met him. ”

“ The countess, when her guests would let her, was content to look on and smile; only when she could not help it did she essay the part of peacemaker. Although the choosing of each one's property ought to have been the simplest thing in the world, it would seem, when the task of selection was done, as if no one lady was on the best of terms with any other; a fact on which it is inconceivable that the countess had calculated as likely to prevent any undesirable discussion of her story of the dream. ”

“ You saw me engaged in the practice of my profession that night at Avonham."
"Did I? Dear me! How terrible! Why should I mind?"
"You ought to mind; you do mind; at least it is certain that you would mind if you understood."
"It is because I do understand that I don't mind; unfortunately the understanding is all on one side; you do seem to be so slow in grasping the true inwardness of things. I want you to answer me one or two questions--will you?"
She had placed herself in an old arm-chair, and was looking up at him with the tip of a first finger touching either cheek. ”

“ What you don't understand is that if you go to New South Wales, and leave me here, I shall die--yes, Sydney, I shall die."
"Violet!"
"That's the first time you've called me by my Christian name--you wretch! And now you haven't made it Vi. Hasn't a man any imagination? A girl can project herself into his mind, even when he's miles and miles away, and she doesn't even know where he is; is he absolutely incapable of projecting himself into hers? ”

“ He would not let me leave him. I didn't want to have a row with him; I knew there would be more than enough scandal anyhow; I was in a house in which I was a stranger. As you know, the whole lot of us were asked to the dance, and I had no acquaintance with either my host or hostess; but it was only after a sort of rough and tumble that I managed to slip away."
He paused, as if to enable himself to recall quite clearly what had occurred. Dodwell, seizing a billiard cue which rested against a chair, glared at him as if he would have liked to continue the quarrel where it had left off. ”

“ Do you want me to shout? We are leaving here to-day; we are starting on the Sea Bird to-morrow for wherever Captain Slocock likes to take us; you and I alone together."
"Are we?"
"Yes, we are. Is that the dying-duck-in-a-thunderstorm sort of fashion in which you take my surprising piece of information? Move some of those bedclothes and let me see your face, or, if you won't, I will." ”

“ I'm not the Countess of Cantyre. Who cares what I look like?"
"You little humbug! It's only your conceit; it's simply that you take it for granted that you always look your best, which couldn't be improved." Her ladyship was arranging the drapery of her skirt as she glanced in the mirror. "What have you got out of Noel Draycott?"
"Nothing, as yet. I haven't tried; but I shall. I mean to drop a bomb at his feet at the moment he least expects it."
"If it's to be to-night, don't let it go off with too loud a bang. I don't know if I told you that the whole regiment has decided to come. ”

“ I said to him: 'If the girl does marry you, you'll want to drown her and yourself inside six weeks.' Well, that didn't seem to cheer him."
Miss Forster looked at the old gentleman with doubtful glance, as if she suspected him of malign intention.
"Such a remark on your part was quite unnecessary. Major Reith is not likely to find himself in such a situation. I am going to marry Sydney Beaton."
Had she actually dropped a live bomb at his feet, Mr. Hovenden could not have seemed more disturbed.
"That pestilent young scoundrel! Was there ever anything like a woman for sheer impossibility?" ”

“ He was coming into the road which leads through the park from the Corner to the Marble Arch. He had still sense enough to see that a motorcar was coming along the road, slowing as it came. It came to a standstill just as it was abreast of him. The sole occupant of the body of the car was a woman, who all at once opened the door, stood up, and beckoned to him. He did not pause to think what the gesture might mean, who this fair owner of a motor-car might be who had fallen from the skies. ”

“ That locket was stolen from him when he was trying to get some sleep on one of the steps of the tunnel under Hungerford Bridge by two men who knew he had got it on him. One of them sold it to--an acquaintance of mine; he showed it to me, I recognised you from the picture he had cut out of the paper, and I bought it."
"Why didn't you give it back to Mr. Beaton? You knew that it was his."
"Well, that's one of the peculiarities of human nature. I didn't. I couldn't tell you why; at least, it would take me a very long time to do it; human nature is such a mass of complications and contradictions. ”

“ Nothing could have been more gracious or graceful than her solicitude for his seeming incapacity to take proper care of himself; no wife could have taken more tender care of a delicate husband. He did not know what place this was at which they stopped, and she did not tell him. When presently he found himself seated in an arm-chair, he had only the vaguest idea of how he had got there, and no knowledge whatever of the room in which he was. There was a gentleman who occupied a seat behind a table who he had a dim feeling was observing him with considerable curiosity. ”

“ What's going to happen to this bag? It's his bag. As you pretend to have some sort of feeling about him, and I know he is an old friend of yours, why don't you go back upstairs to bed, and keep from interfering in what, after all, is no concern of yours? I give you my personal assurance that there isn't so much as a ha'p'orth of anything in that bag that belongs to you. For his sake what you don't want is a fuss; he'll never forget the debt he owes you if you keep from making one; you may be the death of him if you do; let me give you my arm to help you up the stairs. ”

“ Of course, Major Reith had been under a misapprehension. In the first shock of his surprise at finding the man in such a dreadful condition on the floor, he jumped to the not unnatural conclusion that he was dead, which, though natural, was absurd. Who had ever heard of a dead man picking himself up and taking himself off? Which was what Noel Draycott had done. ”

“ No man knows of what he is capable until his whole being cries out for food, and gets none. When a man who has been nurtured as Sydney Beaton had finds himself on the verge of starvation, his plight is much worse than that of the man who has fared hardly all his days. His powers of resistance are less, in more senses than one. Let so much be urged in excuse of Sydney Beaton, because that night he went to Hyde Park with some idea of asking for alms. ”

“ I can't think of any way in which Sydney could have earned a farthing, circumstanced as he was. When his money was gone, which probably lasted only a very little time, he perhaps went hungry. Oh, you don't believe that men do go hungry! My dear, since Sydney went, I've seen crowds of men, in London streets and parks and public places, who, I am convinced, go hungry nearly all the time. Margaret--again I give you permission to laugh--as I've been lying here between the sheets I've seen Sydney starving in rags. ”

“ Miss Spurrier was settling her beautiful hat upon her well-groomed head.
"It's not a pretty story--not very much to his credit or mine. You don't know how little of a hero a man can be when his stomach's empty and he has nothing to put into it, especially when he's a gentleman."
Apparently the visitor got her hat all right. She rested both hands on the handle of her parasol and she smiled.
"I want to slur over the disagreeable places in my story, Miss Forster--I always do like to avoid as much as possible what is unpleasant--and I don't want to keep you any longer than I can help. ”

“ Mr. Tickell gave a little sigh of satisfaction; the young woman beside him was distinctly a find--as he would himself have phrased it, "a ripping dancer, awfully well turned out, and a dazzler to look at." He had no doubt that he was in for an extremely good time, and therein showed that the prophetic eye was certainly not his, because he had been there only a very few minutes before he began very ardently to wish that that alcove had been occupied by a dozen, or even twenty, people, instead of being left invitingly open for him.
"Are you fond of dancing?" ”

“ I've seldom felt less like it. Being a wife is a very serious thing. Aren't you conscious of your weighty responsibilities as a husband?"
"I know you're joking." A strange something came on to his face which might have been a smile, but, if it was, it was a pathetic one. She smiled back at him. Into her smile there came, upon an instant, a something which was hardly genial.
"But I'm not joking. You are Sir Jocelyn Kingstone, and I am Lady Kingstone, your lawful wife." ”

“ It was seen when he spoke that the change had extended to his voice.
"So there is someone?"
"Oh dear, yes; there always has been, and there always will be."
"Your uncle gave me to understand that the field was clear."
"My uncle Geoffrey Hovenden is--I'm sorry to have to say it of a relation of mine--a Machiavellian old gentleman. No one is better acquainted with my piteous plight than he is; but because he wants you, and wants me to want you, he says nothing about it. Do you mean to say you don't know who it is?" ”

“ Major Reith spoke.
"Don't make bad worse, Beaton, please; this is not a matter with which you can deal on quite those lines. Do we understand you to deny what Dodwell and Draycott say?"
The fact was, Beaton had not only had his share of wine at the table, he had been drinking since, liqueur after liqueur. Trifles of that kind, when in sufficient numbers, do not tend to cool a young man's already heated brain. For longer than they supposed Sydney had not been his real self; many and various were the causes which had been tending to make him lose his balance. ”

“ Gentlemen of your habits of body are only courageous when they know themselves to be in a position in which they are sure of being protected by their friends."
"I don't think I ever was afraid of you, Dodwell; but you were a mystery to me, I didn't understand you, and I was a fool. But now I do understand you; if you were holding a revolver to my throat I shouldn't be afraid of the kind of man you are. I know you."
Draycott turned to the girl.
"You remember, Miss Forster, that on the night of the Easter ball you said something to me about that poker business?" ”