The Beggar Man Part 14

Faith watched her down the street and went back indoors.

And Mrs. Ledley had not been gone more than half an hour, when there was a great knocking at the outer door. Shaking in every limb, Faith went to open it. A strange woman stood there, and down at the gate was a little crowd and a policeman. The strange woman put kind arms round the girl's shrinking figure and told her as gently as she could that something terrible had happened, but that she must try to be brave and----

"Mother!" said Faith. She broke away like a mad thing from the arms that would have held her and rushed to the gate. She gave one look at the white face of the woman they were carrying home and screamed, hiding her face with distraught hands.

Mrs. Ledley was dead. She had been walking along quite naturally, so they said, and suddenly had been seen to fall.

There was nothing to be done. Hard work and sorrow and bitterness had taken their toll of her strength and ended her life.

Faith could not shed a tear. After that first wild scream she had been silent. She went to the room where the twins lay sleeping and crouched down beside them, desperately holding a chubby hand of each.

Downstairs a kindly neighbour was in charge of the house; presently she came upstairs to Faith and bent over her.

"A gentleman, dearie. I told him you couldn't see anyone, but he seemed so distressed. I promised to tell you. He says he must see you, and such a nice gentleman he is."

Faith turned her face away.

"I can't! I don't want anyone! Leave me alone!"

The woman sighed and went away, and presently another step ascended the narrow stairs--a man's heavier step.

Faith was crouched against the bed, facing the door, her eyes closed, her cheek pressed to the sleeping hands to which she clung. Someone spoke her name through the silent room: "Faith!" and then again, with deepest pity: "Faith!"

The girl did not move. For a moment she thought she was dreaming, and that the voice had spoken in her dream. Then as she looked up with a wild hope that it was so--that all the past hour would prove to be nothing but a terrible nightmare--her dazed, piteous eyes met those of the Beggar Man.

All his life Nicholas Forrester remembered that room with its sloping roof and poor furniture, and the sleeping twins lying on the bed, with Faith, little more than a child herself, crouched on the floor beside them.

Hot evening sunshine shone through the narrow window and fell right upon the motherless little group, as with a stifled exclamation he went forward and, stooping, lifted Faith to her feet.

"My poor little girl," he said, keeping his arms round her, and though she made no effort to resist him, she stood apathetically enough, only turning her head away when he would have kissed her.

He broke out into incoherent explanations.

"I only got to Liverpool last night. We ran into a fog-bank and had to reduce speed. I tried to let you know but it seemed hopeless. I came as quickly as I could."

She heard what he said disinterestedly, wondering why he chose to make explanations at all, and when he had finished she looked at him with dazed brown eyes.

"Mother is dead; did they tell you?"

"The woman downstairs told me. I can't tell you how grieved I am. If I had only been here. If I had only been able to help."

The girl looked at him blankly; he had a kind face she thought, even as she had thought that time of their first meeting, but now she knew that he was not really kind or anything that he looked. He was Scammel who had ruined her father, Scammel for whose sake all those girls at Heeler's factory worked and sweated, and made money whereby to enrich him.

"I don't know why you came here, anyway," she said helplessly.

He flushed and bit a lip, but he answered gently enough: "I came straight to you, of course! Who had a better right! Have you forgotten so soon that you are my wife?"

She held out her bare left hand.

"I sent your ring back. I am sorry I ever married you. It's all over and done with."

He took but little notice of her words. He knew that she was overwrought and broken-hearted, and that it was no time now to press his claim.

The twins began to rouse, and sat up, two rosy-cheeked youngsters with eyes still drowsy with sleep, but which opened widely enough at sight of the stranger.

"Is it teatime?" was their first demand, regardless of the fact that they had had their tea hours ago, and Forrester answered that supper was ready downstairs. Would they like to be carried?

They made a wild rush at him immediately, but Faith was too quick for him. She put her arms round both the children, and looked at him across their tousled heads with defensive eyes.

"They're all I've got in the world," she said hoa.r.s.ely. "You can't have them, too."

The Beggar Man did not answer. He followed them down the stairs to the sitting-room, where the kindly neighbour had made more tea, more for something to do than for any other reason, but the twins consumed slice after slice of bread and jam uncomplainingly, and regarded the Beggar Man with eyes of smiling interest.

"Do you like chocolates?" he inquired when the meal was ended. "Well, run along to a shop and buy some." He gave them half a crown, and bundled them out of the room amid shrieks of delight, then he shut the door and went back to where Faith sat by the window, her listless eyes on the sunbaked street.

He stood beside her silently for a moment. Then he asked gently:

"How soon can you be ready to leave this house--to-morrow?"

She looked up.

"I don't know what you mean. I am never going to leave it. I shall stay here and work for the twins, as mother did."

Her voice faltered a little as she spoke that beloved name, but no tears came, and Forrester said patiently:

"You cannot stay here. It's impossible. You must let me see to things for you. I promise you that everything shall be done exactly as you wish." He waited, but she did not speak, and he said again with a touch of impatience in his voice:

"Faith, you are angry with me. What have I done?"

She temporized, with the feeling that as yet she could not bring herself to say all that she knew she meant to say sooner or later.

"You never wrote to me." The words were apathetic. She had not cared whether he wrote to her or not.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I had no chance, and what sense was there in writing? I have got here almost as soon as a letter would have done." He walked a pace from her and came back. "I'm a bad hand at writing, anyway," he said, sombrely.

She was looking again into the street, and the weary outline of her face touched his heart.

"I thought of you all the time," he said, impulsively. "I cursed every minute that we were delayed."

She asked another question.

"Have you been to your flat?"

"I came straight here, of course. I was anxious about you. I thought you might be wondering what had become of me."

She drew a long sigh.