The Beggar Man Part 27

"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, wistful look in the man's that brought the colour rus.h.i.+ng 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 Peg for 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 come across 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 day of 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 n.o.ble and lofty sentiment, and a curious feeling of sympathy and kins.h.i.+p 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.

CHAPTER XI