The Beggar Man Part 28

When Peg went to Faith's room that night for their usual gossip, she found the door locked against her.

She rattled the handle impatiently and called:

"Faith!"

There was no answer, and she rapped on the panel, a vague feeling of surprise in her heart.

"Faith! It's only me--let me in."

There was an answer then.

"I've gone to bed--I'm tired."

"Tired!" Peg echoed the word with disdainful incredulity. She did not see how Faith could be tired after a day of such ease. She herself was as fresh and wide awake as a lark.

"You can't be tired," she said emphatically, and rattled the handle once more. "Faith, let me come in. Does your head ache?"

"Of course not, but I want to go to sleep. Good-night."

There was such finality in the voice that the colour rose to Peg's handsome face. It was the first time she had ever been shut out from Faith's confidence, and she searched her mind wildly for some reason that would explain things.

What had she done? How had she offended?

As she stood there, her fingers on the handle of the locked door, the Beggar Man came up the stairs.

He had heard Peg's rather loud, insistent voice from the smoking-room below, and had momentarily left his friend to see if anything was the matter.

Peg blushed fiery red when she saw him. Her black hair was unbound and streaming down over her shoulders. She wore a brilliant cherry-coloured dressing-gown, and her feet were thrust into gaudy Oriental slippers.

"Oh, my gracious!" she said with a gasp.

Forrester's eyes met hers indifferently, though he would have been less than human had he been blind to the picture she made as she stood there in the half-light.

The brilliant gown she wore, her dark hair, and the bright, confused colour in her cheeks accentuated her beauty, for Peg was a beauty, even if it was of a crude, rather vulgar type, and unconsciously Forrester's eyes grew admiring as he asked: "Is anything the matter? I thought you called."

Peg laughed nervously.

"Faith won't open the door, that's all. She says she's tired. There's nothing the matter." Then she giggled, and swung her long hair back from her shoulders. "I didn't think you'd come up," she apologized.

The Beggar Man coloured a little.

"I thought perhaps something might be the matter," he said awkwardly, and turned to go downstairs again, when quite suddenly Faith's door opened and she came out.

There was a moment of embarra.s.sed silence. Then Peg laughed.

"It's like a bit out of a novelette, isn't it?" she said shrilly, driven by her sheer and unaccountable nervousness to say the wrong thing.

"Heroine opens her door and finds her best friend talking to her husband--_tete-a-tete_, as it were."

She p.r.o.nounced the French words quite incorrectly, and she struck a melodramatic pose, one hand flung out towards Forrester and the other pressed hard over her heart.

The Beggar Man looked at his wife.

"I heard Miss Fraser calling to you," he said stiffly, "and I thought perhaps something might be the matter. That is all." He waited a moment, his eyes seeking Faith's wistfully.

The two girls made a strong contrast. One so small and pale and fair and the other so tall, with her dark, gipsy-like beauty.

But Faith did not even glance his way, and with a half-sigh Forrester went on down the stairs, and they heard the shutting of the smoking-room door.

Faith turned to close her own again, but Peg was too quick for her. She was past her and inside the room instantly. She sat down on the side of the bed and looked at the younger girl with challenging eyes.

"Well--out with it," she said defiantly. "What have I done?"

Faith did not answer. There was a look in her blue eyes that Peg had never seen there before--an aloofness in her manner that was almost painfully eloquent--and after a second of utter astonishment Peg sprang to her feet and caught Faith roughly by the arm, peering down to look into her face.

"What are you thinking?" she demanded.

Faith tried to free herself, but she was a child in Peg's muscular grasp, until with a little contemptuous exclamation Peg released her and turned away.

"Jealous! Is that it?" she asked crudely. "Jealous! Because the man you won't look at yourself happened to see me with my hair loose and this gown on."

She walked over to the long gla.s.s in Faith's dressing-table and regarded her gaudy reflection with fiery eyes.

"I do look rather a picture, don't I?" she said deliberately. "It only wants a cigarette in my mouth or a red rose in my hair to make me look like one of those dancing girls--the French ones, I mean. What do you call them--apache or something." She p.r.o.nounced that word wrongly also.

Faith did not answer, and Peg laughed.

"I'd never be such a dog in the manger," she said mockingly.

Her heart was beating fast with a sudden wild hope.

Was there any cause for Faith to be jealous? Had Forrester at last ceased to be indifferent to her? She recalled the slow look of admiration in his eyes, and her pulses leapt.

Well, Faith would have none of him! Could she be surprised if, after all that had happened.... But before the thought was complete in her mind she was ashamed of it. She turned away from the mirror, and looked at Faith with angry eyes.

"You little idiot!" she said, with good-natured irritation. "Do you think he'd look at me if ...?" Then once again she stopped.

Supposing unconsciously she had begun to teach Faith a lesson. Supposing by allowing her to be jealous it might be the means of making her care for Forrester--at last!

She caught her breath with a little exultant sound. She had so longed to make him happy, and if the only way to do so was by giving him his wife at the sacrifice of her own love, well--who was she to complain?

He had done everything for her. He had taken her from the sordid surroundings where she had pa.s.sed all the days of her life. He had done his best to make a lady of her. He had trusted her, treated her as a friend. Was there any sacrifice too great to make in return?

Peg was not one to hesitate once an idea had taken shape in her mind, and even as Faith looked at her she saw the dark, handsome face harden and grow defiant as she turned with a shrug of her shoulders and opened the closed door.

"Well, I've been in pleasanter company, I must say!" she said in her old nonchalant tone. "So I'll leave you to yourself. Good-night, fair Lady Elaine, and pleasant dreams!"

She swept Faith a low, mocking curtsy, the folds of her cherry-coloured gown sweeping the floor all around her, then she laughed and went off to her own room.