Laid up in Lavender Part 11

"Nothing, young man," I answered. "I want to ask you a question."

"You can ask," he replied, eyeing me askance.

"That alb.u.m," I said, pointing to it--"it contains, I suppose, the photographs of the people you have been employed to personate?"

"Possibly."

"But does it?"

"I did not know," he said slowly, the most provoking manner, "that I had to do with a detective. What is the charge?"

"There is no charge," I answered, keeping my temper really admirably.

"But I have seen the face of a friend of mine in that book, and I'll in a word, I'll be hanged, young man, if I don't learn all about it!" I continued. "All--do you hear? So there! Now, out with it, and do not keep me waiting, you young rascal!"

He only whistled and stared; and finding I was getting a little warm, I took out my handkerchief, and wiping my forehead, sat down, the thought of the Colonel's grief taking all the strength out of me.

"Look here," I said in a different tone, "I'll take back what I have just said, and I give you my word of honour I do not want to harm the--the gentleman. But I have seen his portrait, and, if I know no more, must think the worse. Now I will give you a ten-pound note if you will answer three questions."

He shook his head; but I saw that he wavered. "I did not show you the portrait," he said. "If you have seen it, that is your business. I will name no names."

"I want none," I answered. I threw open the alb.u.m at the tell-tale photograph, and laid my shaky finger on the face. "Was this sent to you that you might personate the original?"

He nodded.

"From what place?"

He considered a moment. Then he said reluctantly: "From Frome, in Somerset, I believe."

"Last year?"

He nodded. Alas! Jim had been at a crammer's near Frome. Jim had pa.s.sed his examination during the last year. I took out the money and gave it to the man; and a minute later I was standing in the street with a sentence common enough at mess in the old days, ringing in my ears: "Refer it to the Colonel! He is the soul of honour."

The soul of honour! Ay! And what would he think of this? The soul of honour! And his son, his son Jim, had done this! I walked through the streets, lost in amazement. I had loved the boy right well myself, and was ready to choke on my own account when I thought of him. But his father--I knew that his father was wrapped up in him. His father had been a mother to him as well, and that for years--had bought him toys as a lad, and furnished his quarters later with things of which only a mother would have thought. It would kill his father.

I wiped my forehead as I thought of this and put my latchkey into the door in Pont Street. I walked in with a heavy sigh--I do not know that I ever entered with so sad a heart--and the next moment, with a flutter of skirts, Kitty was out of the dining-room, where I do not doubt she had been watching for me, and in my arms. Before Heaven!

until I saw her I had not thought of her--I had never considered her at all in connection with this matter! No, nor how I should deal with her, until I heard her say, with her face on my shoulder, and her eyes looking into mine: "Oh, father, father, I am happy! Be the first to wish me joy."

Wish her joy! I could not. I could only mutter, "Wait, girl--wait, wait!" and lead her into the dining-room, and, turning my back on her, go to the window and look out--though for all I saw I might have had my head in a soot-bag. She was alarmed of course--but to save her that I could not face her. She came after me and clung to my arm, asking me again and again what it was.

"Nothing, nothing," I said. "There--wait a minute; don't you know that I shall lose you?"

"Father," she said, trying to look into my face, "it is not that. You know you will not lose me! There is something else the matter. There is something you are hiding from me! Ah! Jim went in a cab, and----"

"Jim is all right." I answered, feeling her hand fall from my arm. "In that way at any rate."

"Then I am not afraid," she answered stoutly, "if you and Jim are all right."

"Look here, Kitty," I said, making up my mind, "sit down, I want to talk to you."

And she did sit down, and I told her all. With some girls it might not have been the best course; but Kitty is not like most of the girls I meet nowadays--of whom one half are blue stockings, with no more fitness for the duties of wives and mothers than the statuettes in a shop window, and the other half are misses in white muslin, who are always giggling pertly or sitting with their thumbs in their mouths.

Kitty is a companion, a helpmeet, G.o.d bless her! She knows that Wellington did not fight at Blenheim, and she does not think that Lucknow is in the Crimea. She knows so much, though she knows no Greek and she loves dancing--her very eyes dance at the thought of it. But she would rather sit at home with the man she loves than waltz at Marlborough House. And if she has not learned a little fortification on the sly, and does not know how many men stand between Jim and his company--I am a Dutchman! Lord! when I see a man marry a doll with a pretty face--not that Kitty has not a pretty face, and a sweet one too, no thanks to her father--I wonder whether he has considered what it will be to sit opposite my lady at, say, twenty thousand nine hundred meals on an average! That is the test, sir.

So I told Kitty all, and the way she took it showed me that I was right. "What?" she exclaimed, when I had finished the story, to which she had listened, with her face turned from me, and her arm on the mantelpiece, "is that all, father?"

"My dear," I said sadly, "you do not understand." I remembered how often I had heard--and sometimes noticed--that women's ideas of honour differ from men's.

"Understand!" she retorted, turning upon me, fiery hot. "I understand that you think Jim has done this mean, miserable, wretched thing.

Father," she continued, with sudden gravity, and she laid both her hands on my shoulders, so that her brave eyes looked into my eyes, "if three people came to you and told you that I had gone into your bedroom and taken money from the cash-box in your cupboard to pay a bill of mine, and that when I had done it I had kept it from you, and told stories about it--if three, four, five people told you that they had seen me do it, would you believe them?"

"No, Kitty," I said, smiling against my will, "not though five angels told me so, my dear. I know you too well."

"And, sir, though five angels told me this, I would not believe it! Do you think I do not know him--and love him?"

And the foolish girl, who had begun to waltz round the room like a mad thing, stopped and looked at me with tears in her eyes and her lips quivering.

I could not but take some comfort from her confidence.

"True," I said. "The Colonel brought him up, and it seems hardly possible that the lad should turn out so bad. But the photograph, my girl--the photograph? What do you say to that? It was Jim, I swear. I could not be mistaken. There could not be another so like him."

"There is no one like him," she said softly.

"Very well. And then I have noticed that he has been in bad spirits lately. I'm afraid--I'm afraid a bad conscience, my dear."

"You dear old donkey!" she answered, shaking me with both her hands.

"That was about me. He has told me all that. He thought Mr.

Farquhar--Mr. Farquhar, indeed!"

"Oh, that was it, was it?" I said. "Well, that may account for his depression. But look you here, Kitty; was he not rather nervous about his examination?"

"A little," she answered with reluctance.

"And, nonetheless, did he not come out pretty high?"

"Seventeenth. Thirteen thousand four hundred and twenty-six marks,"

Kitty replied glibly.

"Just so! And if he had failed he would have suffered in your eyes?"

"Not a sc.r.a.p. And, besides, he did not fail," she retorted.

"But he may have thought he would suffer," I answered, "if he failed.

That would be a sharp temptation, Kitty."

She did not reply at once. She was busy rolling up a ribbon of her frock into the smallest possible compa.s.s, and unrolling it again. At last--it was clear I had made her think--

"I know he did not do it," she said, "but that is all I do know. I cannot prove to you that white is not black; but it is not, and I know it is not."

"Well, my dear, I hope you are right," I answered. And it cheered me to find that she held him worthy of confidence.

She promised readily to let me have the first word with the lad when he called next day. And as for undertaking to have nothing more to do with him if the charge proved to be true, she made nothing of that--because, as she said, it meant nothing.