The Guinea Stamp Part 24

'When do we go to Troon? Isn't it next week?'

'Yes, on Tuesday.'

'Do you think,' she asked then, with a slight hesitation, 'that Mrs.

Fordyce would allow me to pay a little visit to my old home before I go, for the last time?'

There was all the simplicity and wistfulness of a child in her manner, and it touched Clara to the quick.

'Gladys, are you a prisoner here, dear? Don't vex me by saying things like that. Do you not know that you can go out and in just as you like?

Of course you shall go. I will take you myself, if mamma cannot, and wait for you outside.'

True to her promise, Clara ordered the brougham on Monday afternoon, and carried Gladys off to Colquhoun Street. Clara was, like most quiet people, singularly observant, and she noted with interest, not unmixed with pity, how nervous Gladys became as they neared their destination.

Mingling with her pity was a great curiosity to see the young man whose image seemed to dwell in the constant heart of Gladys. It was a romance, redeemed from vulgarity by the beauty and the sweet individuality of the chief actor in it.

'I shall not knock. Don't let James get down,' cried Gladys, when the carriage stopped at the familiar door. 'I shall just run in. I have a fancy to enter unannounced.'

Clara nodded, and Gladys, springing out, opened and closed the familiar door. Her very limbs shook as she went lightly along the dark pa.s.sage and pushed open the kitchen door. It was unchanged, yet somehow sadly changed. A desolateness chilled her to the soul as she looked round the wide, gaunt place, saw the feeble fire choking in the grate, and the remains of a poor meal on the uncovered table. The light struggling through the barred windows had never looked upon a more cheerless picture. All things, they say, are judged by contrast. Perhaps it was the contrast to what she had just left which made Gladys think she had never seen her old home look more wretched and forlorn.

So lightly had she entered, and so lightly did she steal up the warehouse stair, that the solitary being making out accounts at the desk was not aware of her presence until she spoke. And then, oh how timid her look and tone, just as if she feared greatly her reception.

'Excuse me coming in, Walter. I wanted so much to see you, I could not help coming. I will not hinder you long.'

He leaped up in the greatness of his surprise, in his agitation knocking over the stool on which he had been sitting. His face was dusky red, his firm mouth trembling, as he touched for a moment the outstretched, daintily-gloved hand.

'Oh, it is you? Won't you sit down? It is a battered old chair, but if you wait a moment I'll bring you another,' he said awkwardly.

'No, don't. I have often sat on this box. I can sit on it again,' she said unsteadily. 'I won't sit on ten chairs, Walter, though you should bring them to me this moment.'

She sat down, and her movement sent a faint whiff of perfume about her, dainty as herself. And then there was just a moment's painful silence.

The awkwardness of the moment dwelt with them both; it would be hard to say which felt it more.

'I suppose,' said Walter stiffly, 'you are getting on all right?'

'Yes. I thought you would have come to see me before this, Walter,' said Gladys quietly.

'You need not have thought so. I said I wouldn't come, that nothing would induce me to come,' he answered shortly.

'We are going away into Ayrs.h.i.+re, so I thought I must come to say good-bye,' Gladys said then.

'To your estate?'

'No; to Troon, where the sea is.'

'Oh, and will you stay long?'

'Perhaps all the summer. How are you getting on here all alone, Walter?

You must tell me that.'

'Oh, well enough.'

'Does Mrs. Macintyre come to work for you?'

'Yes, morning and night she looks in. I'm going to make this thing pay.'

He looked as if he meant it. His square jaw was firmly set, his whole look that of a man determined to succeed.

'I hope you will, Walter. I feel sure of it,' she said brightly.

'It'll be awful drudgery for a while,' he continued, almost in the confidential tones of yore. 'To have so much money, your uncle had the poorest way of doing business. He had the customers all under his thumb, and made them fetch and carry what they wanted themselves; in that way he saved a man's wages. I'm not giving anything on credit, and after they've once freed themselves, and can pay cash for what they get, they'll want it delivered to them, and quite right. Then I'll get a man and a horse and cart, and when I once get that, the thing will grow like a mushroom.'

'How clever you are to think of all that!' said Gladys admiringly. 'I am quite sure you will succeed.'

'I mean to,' he said soberly, but with a quiet determination which convinced Gladys how much in earnest he was.

'But don't let success make you hard, Walter,' she said gently.

'Remember how we used to plan what we should do for the poor if we were rich.'

'Your opportunity is here, then,' he said sharply; 'mine is only to come.'

The tone, more than the words, wounded her afresh. Oh, this was not the Walter of old! She rose from the old box a trifle wearily, and looked round her with slightly saddened air.

'Have you heard anything of your sister?' she asked him.

'No, nothing.'

'She has never written to any one?'

'No. I think she has gone to London to join a theatre. The girl who was her chum thinks so too.'

'Are your father and mother well?'

'As well as they deserve to be. They wanted to come here and live. Had they been decent and respectable, it wouldn't have been a bad arrangement. As they are, I simply wouldn't have it; I'd _never_ get on.

Of course they cast my pride in my teeth, but G.o.d knows I have little enough to be proud of.'

His mood cast its dark spell over the girl's sensitive heart, and she turned to go.

'It is all so different,' she said in a low voice, 'but the difference is not in me. Shall we never meet now, Walter?'

'It will be better not. If I ever succeed, and I have sworn to do it, we may then meet on more equal ground,' he said steadily, and not a sign of the unutterable longing in his heart betrayed itself in his set face.

His pride was as cruel as the grave.

'Till then it is good-bye, then, I suppose?' she said quietly.

'Yes, till then; the day will come, or I shall know the reason why.'

'But it may be too late then, Walter, for us both.'

With these words, destined to ring their warning changes in his ears for many days, she left him, without touch of the hand or other farewell.