The Debit Account Part 10

"I see," I said slowly....

Again such a silence fell on us as, after prolonged sound, has an importunate quality that even sound has not. As if in a dream, I strove to realise that Evie and Billy Izzard were away over in the Vale of Health, dozing probably, awaiting my return from the Berkeley. I tried to understand the plain fact that I was walking the wet streets in the company of a woman who, judged by ordinary standards, bore a smirched reputation, and that I had permitted that woman to make, though without words, a declaration of her love for me. As this last grew on me a little, I let my mind take that particular bypath of speculation. I almost forgot her presence by my side in my odds and ends of memories of her. Once, at a breaking-up party at the old Business College, she had said to me: "As you don't come to me, I come to you," and at the same party she had asked me for a cup of coffee, which I had brought to her in the crowded room instead of giving it to her in some sequestered corner where we could "sit out." Then other memories came. Memory adding itself to memory until I had all the leading facts of her story--that fatal, insignificant, desperate accident--then, mockingly too late, her love for myself--her so strangely happy life, its fulness now to be turned into a superabundance by her voluntary taking up the care of a weak-minded woman--all, all her happy-unhappy story. And now for us to be thrown together like this! Extraordinary, extraordinary! I fancy we were somewhere in the neighbourhood of Sloane Square by this time--Sloane Square, with Evie and Billy waiting for me in the Vale of Health, and her boy asleep many hours ago!... I smiled, though grimly enough, as my eyes encountered my own trousers. Those expensive garments were soaked to the knees. Louie, broken by her day's arduous sitting, now hung heavily on my arm. Her sleeves lay flat to her arms, and her skirt held pounds' weight of water. And we were still walking down Lower Sloane Street, and approaching the Barracks....

It was in Lower Sloane Street--there is a little naturalist's shop thereabouts--that I stopped, once more facing her. It seemed to me that there was something which, if she didn't know it, she ought to know.

"Louie," I said slowly, putting a hand on her shoulder to turn her face towards mine, "I don't know whether you know what you ought to do?"

I saw that she did know. For the first time I saw a return of her old ironical smile. But "What's that?" she asked.

"What, unless you do to me, I can now equally do to you."

"And what's that?" she smiled.

"There are no accessories in this business. You're a princ.i.p.al too."

She laughed outright. "All right, Jim," she said. "I'll trust you not to give me away."

"But listen to me----"

That was exactly what she would not do. She cut in brusquely.

"Oh, my good man, be quiet! Anybody'd think you thought I was going to blackmail you!" Then, leaning heavily on me once more, "I suppose all you men take that view of it," she went on, with an energy that triumphed momentarily over her fatigue, "but here's _my_ view if you must have it--that men deserve rewards who stamp out creatures like that! Oh, you needn't look at me--_I'm_ experienced if anybody is, and _I_ know why young men hang themselves just before their weddings! And that, Jim--come along, it's no good standing here--that's why I asked you whether you'd told Evie. You know your own business best, but I'll tell you this--that if women were on juries not a jury in the land would convict you! _Oh!_----" She shuddered the more strongly that she earned her daily bread in the way she did. "_I_ can face these things. I've learned--I've had to. Am I the same woman you once knew? I think not.

And I tell you plainly, that if you'd done what you have done for me I'd kiss your feet and ask you to bless me! But of course there's Evie. I don't know why you haven't told her: I don't know her very well, you see. My own opinion is that you'll find you've got to tell her. I'm sure that sooner or later you'll find that. And that reminds me of something else. What do you suppose you ought to do about Kitty?"

I smothered a groan. "Oh, I'm past supposing," I answered dully.

"Poor man!... Well, this is how it is. Kitty's unreliable. She has these outbreaks. I hope she'll be better with me, but I can't answer for that.

So--I'm only preparing you, Jim, but it _may_ come to this, that before she gets it fixed in her head once for all that young Merridew _didn't_ hang himself she's got to be made quite certain that he _did_. Even if she's got to be told so she must be made certain of that. And I shall be greatly surprised if you haven't to tell Evie exactly the opposite.

_Voila!_"

I scarcely heard her now. An overwhelming weariness had come over me.

It was a weariness of the mind no less than of the body. My mind too seemed to be making an endless pilgrimage through wet and benighted streets, far from its rest; and even that strange hallucination of Louie's protection had left me now. After leaving Lower Sloane Street I suppose we must have turned still farther west, for I seem to remember that we pa.s.sed the Chelsea Hospital, but in this I may be wrong, unless they have since pulled down a row of old houses I distinctly remember seeing across the road. It must have been not very far from there that I went for a time, physically and mentally, all to pieces. Probably the net result of all this talk had just begun to sink into me--that, the intervening years notwithstanding--my well-nigh flawless planning notwithstanding[1]--my cares and prayers and vigils notwithstanding--all was not yet over. I have boasted in my time that I have been untroubled by what I had done, and that is also no lie; but the consequences are another matter. Suppose even that Louie were right, and that I had done nothing but a worthy act; there are still worthy acts that overwhelm the doer of them. So the prophets were hounded to their death--and I was no prophet, but, for a s.p.a.ce of time of which I took no account, a broken man, who, in a doorway somewhere near Swan Walk (it was an old doorway, with a porter's grille and an antique bell-rod), gave out utterly, began to double at the knees, and would have fallen but for the two arms of a woman as spent as himself--a woman who murmured, with unthinkable selflessness and a charity and encouragement and comfort past telling: "Oh, come, come--come, come!"...

By-and-by--it could not have lasted very long, for a clock somewhere was striking one, and the public-houses had been closing as we had left Sloane Square--I was better. I was well enough to walk, still supported by her, to a bench on the Embankment, where we sat down. Her umbrella was still in my hands; how I had come to break it I didn't know; but I had broken it, and I remember thinking dully, as if it had been a great matter, that I ought to get her another ... or get that one mended....

It was only right that I should pay for it. Somebody would have to pay for it, and in common fairness it ought not to be she.... And, I thought, while I was about it, I might as well get her a cab also. She must be unspeakably tired, and I had four s.h.i.+llings in my pocket....

"Thanks," I said. She had taken off my ruined silk hat and unfastened my white bow and collar, and was bending over me solicitously, fanning my face ineffectually, now with my own hat, now with her hand. "Thanks.

That was absurd of me. I'm not--not in the habit of giving out like this--but we'll finish--another time, if you don't mind. Where do you live?"

She lived near Clapham Junction. "But what about you?" she said, as we rose.

"Oh, I'll take a cab too. I'll walk a little way though. Up here--this seems a likely place for cabs----"

We took one of the minor streets that led to the King's Road. There I hailed a hansom that was returning eastwards. I had put her into it when a thought struck me.

"By the way," I said, "what is your name--your business name, I mean?"

She smiled, as if at a wasted care. "Oh, the same," she said.

"Does Billy Izzard know you know me?"

"No. That is, he didn't."

"Well, he does by this time probably. If Evie and he have been talking----"

("'Urry up, gov'nor!" growled the cabman.)

"He'll think it odd I didn't speak to you. Never mind. Where can I hear from you?"

"Your office----?"

"Yes--no, I mean, not there." I had suddenly remembered Miss Levey.

"Give me your address."

She gave it to me, and I gave it to the cabman. "You really will take a cab?" she said, looking anxiously at me as the vehicle pivoted round.

"Yes, yes."

And she was off.

I was in the King's Road, without a penny. It was a quarter to two when I pa.s.sed the Post Office near Sloane Square, and it was twenty past by the time I reached Park Lane. After Park Lane I lost count of the time.

I came out of the doze in which I walked to find myself at various times in Upper Baker Street, near Lords, and, I don't know how long after that, on the point of missing the turning into Fitzjohns Avenue. The day began to break greyly. I still walked, sleeping as I went. It was only as I ascended Heath Street, hardly a quarter of a mile from home, that I came sufficiently out of my torpor to begin to wonder what account I should give of my absence to Evie.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See "In Accordance with the Evidence."

IV

Three weeks or a month after that night on which I had reopened, so to speak, a bottle containing a grim and familiar genie, an incident happened that riled me exceedingly. This was nothing less than an unexpected meeting, on one of our Sunday visits to Hampton Court, with Miss Levey.

Under other circ.u.mstances this meeting would have been too ludicrous for annoyance. It happened in the Maze, of all places, where, in some moment of physiological high spirits, I had taken Evie, threatening to lose her and leave her there. As a matter of fact, I had lost both her and myself. Perhaps you know the Maze. Its baffling windings of eight-foot hedges have their single legitimate way out, which you may find if you can; but, for the release of burrowers at turning-out time, there is also a locked iron gate, as impossible to miss as the true exit is to find. Half-a-dozen times, believing ourselves to be at last in the proper alley of green, we had been brought up by this gate; and it was at the gate that we met Miss Levey.

At certain points, where the high mattress-like hedges are a little thin, you can almost see through them; and several times we had caught sight of a scarlet shadow, accompanied by a young man in checks. Now, at the gate, we came full tilt upon this scarlet. Her wide hat and b.u.t.tons only were black, and from her bosom projected an enormous frill, very white against the red cloth, that gave her the appearance of a pouter pigeon. She had lost Lord Ernest or the President of the Board of Trade or whoever her companion was, and of course there was no avoiding her.

"_You_ here!" she cried, seizing both Evie's hands and setting her head so far back and on one side that it was half lost behind the frill.

"Vell!" (I write it so, though her accent was in reality less marked.) "This _is_ delightful!--You see, Mr Jeffries----!"

I was mortified, but couldn't very well show it. I laughed. "Oh! What do I see?"

"Dear Evie and I do meet after all!" she half jested.

"Oh!" I laughed again. "Well, if that's all, you could have met long ago. I a.s.sumed that you didn't come up to see us because you didn't want to."

It was, of course, lame in the extreme, but Miss Levey saw fit to affect to believe it. Again she put her head back like an inquisitive bird, dandling Evie's hands up and down.

"Oh, _I_ thought I wasn't wanted! So of course I stayed away.... Vell, Evie, I _am_ glad!"