The Thousandth Woman Part 13

"I've told you so before. I meant to take him back to Australia with me--I never told you that--but I meant to take him, and not a soul out there to know who he was." He sighed aloud over the tragic stopper on that plan.

"And would you still?" she asked.

"If I could get him off."

"Guilty or not guilty?"

"Rather!"

There was neither shame, pose, nor hesitation about that. Blanche went through into the room without a word, but her eyes shone finely in the lamplight. Then she returned with a book, and stood half in the balcony, framed as in a panel, looking for a place.

"You remind me of _The Thousandth Man_," she told him as she found it.

"Who was he?"

"He's every man who does a thousandth part of what you're doing!" said Blanche with confidence. And then she read, rather shyly and not too well:

"'One man in a thousand, Solomon says, Will stick more close than a brother.

And it's worth while seeking him half your days If you find him before the other.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend On what the world sees in you, But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend With the whole round world agin you.'"

"I should hope he would," said Cazalet, "if he's a man at all."

"But this is the bit for you," said Blanche:

"'His wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right, In season or out of season.

Stand up and back it in all men's sight-- With _that_ for your only reason!

Nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bide The shame or mocking or laughter, But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side _To the gallows-foot_--and after!'"

The last italics were in Blanche's voice, and it trembled, but so did Cazalet's as he cried out in his formula:

"That's the finest thing I ever heard in all my life! But it's true, and so it should be. _I_ don't take any credit for it."

"Then you're all the more the thousandth man!"

He caught her suddenly by the shoulders. His rough hands trembled; his jaw worked. "Look here, Blanchie! If _you_ had a friend, wouldn't you do the same?"

"Yes, if I'd such a friend as all that," she faltered.

"You'd stand by his side 'to the gallows-foot'--if he was swine enough to let you?"

"I dare say I might."

"However bad a thing it was--murder, if you like--and however much he was mixed up in it--not like poor Scruton?"

"I'd try to stick to him," she said simply.

"Then you're the thousandth woman," said Cazalet. "G.o.d bless you, Blanchie!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "G.o.d bless you, Blanchie!"]

He turned on his heel in the balcony, and a minute later found the room behind him empty. He entered, stood thinking, and suddenly began looking all over for the photograph of himself, with a beard, which he had seen there a week before.

XIII

QUID PRO QUO

It was his blessing that had done it; up to then she had controlled her feelings in a fashion worthy of the t.i.tle just bestowed upon her. If only he had stopped at that, and kept his blessing to himself! It sounded so very much more like a knell that Blanche had begun first to laugh, and then to make such a fool of herself (as she herself reiterated) that she was obliged to run away in the worst possible order.

But that was not the end of those four superfluous words of final benediction; before the night was out they had solved, to Blanche's satisfaction, the hitherto impenetrable mystery of Cazalet's conduct.

He had done something in Australia, something that fixed a gulf between him and her. Blanche did not mean something wrong, much less a crime, least of all any sort of complicity in the great crime which had been committed while he was on his way home. Obviously he could have had no connection with that, until days afterward as the accused man's friend.

Yet he had on his conscience some act or other of which he was ashamed to speak. It might even itself be shameful; that was what his whole manner had suggested, but what Blanche was least ready and at the same time least unwilling to believe. She felt she could forgive such an old friend almost anything. But she believed the worst he had done was to emulate his friend Mr. Potts, and to get engaged or perhaps actually married to somebody in the bush.

There was no reason why he should not; there never had been any sort or kind of understanding between herself and him; it was only as lifelong friends that they had written to each other, and that only once a year.

Lifelong friendships are traditionally fatal to romance. Blanche could remember only one occasion on which their friendship had risen to something more--or fallen to something less! She knew which it had been to her; especially just afterward, when all his troubles had come and he had gone away without another word of that kind. He had resolved not to let her tie herself, and so had tied her all the tighter, if not tighter still by never stating his resolve. But to go as far as this is to go two or three steps further than Blanche went in her perfectly rational retrospect: she simply saw, as indeed she had always seen, that they had both been free as air; and if he was free no longer, she had absolutely no cause for complaint, even if she was fool enough to feel it.

All this she saw quite clearly in her very honest heart. And yet, he might have told her; he need not have flown to see her, the instant he landed, or seemed so overjoyed, and such a boy again, or made so much of her and their common memories! He need not have begun begging her, in a minute, to go out to Australia, and then never have mentioned it again; he might just as well have told her if he had or hoped to have a wife to welcome her! Of course he saw it afterward, himself; that was why the whole subject of Australia had been dropped so suddenly and for good.

Most likely he had married beneath him; if so, she was very sorry, but he might have said that he was married. Had Blanche been a.n.a.lyzing herself, and not just the general position of things, she would have had hereabouts to account to her conscience for a not unpleasing spasm at the sudden thought of his being unhappily married all the time.

One proof was that he had utterly forgotten all about the waltz of _Eldorado_--even its name! No; it had some vague a.s.sociations for him, and that was worse than none at all. Blanche had its long note (not "bars and bars," though, Sweep) wailing in her head all night. And so for him their friendship had only fallen to something lower, to that hateful haunting tune that he could not even decently forget!

Curiously enough, it was over Martha that she felt least able to forgive him. Martha would say nothing, but her unspoken denunciations of Cazalet would be only less intolerable than her unspoken sympathy with Blanche.

Martha had been perfectly awful about the whole thing. And Martha had committed the final outrage of being perfectly right, from her idiotic point of view.

Now among all these meditations of a long night, and of a still longer day, in which n.o.body even troubled to send her word of the case at Kingston, it would be too much to say that no thought of Hilton Toye ever entered the mind of Blanche. She could not help liking him; he amused her immensely; and he had proposed to her twice, and warned her he would again. She felt the force of his warning, because she felt his force of character and will. She literally felt these forces, as actual emanations from the strongest personality that had ever impinged upon her own. Not only was he strong, but capable and cultivated; and he knew the whole world as most people only knew some hole or corner of it; and could be most interesting without ever talking about himself or other people.

In the day of reaction, such considerations were bound to steal in as single spies, each with a certain consolation, not altogether innocent of comparisons. But the battalion of Toye's virtues only marched on Blanche when Martha came to her, on the little green rug of a lawn behind the house, to say that Mr. Toye himself had called and was in the drawing-room.

Blanche stole up past the door, and quickly made herself smarter than she had ever done by day for Walter Cazalet; at least she put on a "dressy" blouse, her calling skirt (which always looked new), and did what she could to her hair. All this was only because Mr. Toye always came down as if it were Mayfair, and it was rotten to make people feel awkward if you could help it. So in sailed Blanche, in her very best for the light of day, to be followed as soon as possible by the silver teapot, though she had just had tea herself. And there stood Hilton Toye, chin blue and collar black, his trousers all knees and no creases, exactly as he had jumped out of the boat-train.

"I guess I'm not fit to speak to you," he said, "but that's just what I've come to do--for the third time!"

"Oh, Mr. Toye!" cried Blanche, really frightened by the face that made his meaning clear. It relaxed a little as she shrank involuntarily, but the compa.s.sion in his eyes and mouth did not lessen their steady determination.

"I didn't have time to make myself presentable," he explained. "I thought you wouldn't have me waste a moment if you understood the situation. I want your promise to marry me right now!"

Blanche began to breathe again. Evidently he was on the eve of yet another of his journeys, probably back to America, and he wanted to go over engaged; at first she had thought he had bad news to break to her, but this was no worse than she had heard before. Only it was more difficult to cope with him; everything was different, and he so much more pressing and precipitate. She had never met this Hilton Toye before. Yes; she was distinctly frightened by him. But in a minute she had ceased to be frightened of herself; she knew her own mind once more, and spoke it much as he had spoken his, quite compa.s.sionately, but just as tersely to the point.

"One moment," he interrupted. "I said nothing about my feelings, because they're a kind of stale proposition by this time; but for form's sake I may state there's no change there, except in the only direction I guess a person's feelings are liable to change toward you, Miss Blanche!