The Beggar Man. Ruby M. Ayres
His grey eyes rested on her serious little face. "Or perhaps we won't say good-bye, as I hope we shall meet again."
The colour surged to her cheeks; a little ripple of laughter flickered into her brown eyes.
"Oh, good-bye, Beggar Man," she answered, and then caught her breath at her own daring. But the man only laughed, and presently the big car was gliding slowly away down the road.
Faith watched it go before she turned indoors. She felt very much as Cinderella must have done when she got back to the kitchen from the Prince's ball.
Her mother, who had seen the car drive away, met her in the narrow hall; she was a sweet-looking woman with tired eyes and a perpetual cough.
"Well, little girl?" she said, and there was a world of anxiety in her voice.
Faith kissed her, and explained: "I fainted—it was so hot—and he brought me home in his car." Her eyes fell for some reason which she could not understand. "He was very kind," she added.
"And you don't know who he is?" her mother asked anxiously.
Faith shook her head. "He didn't tell me, but … mother—who was King Cophetua?"
They were in the little sitting-room now, where tea was laid ready, and the twins sitting up to table.
Mrs. Ledley was busying herself with the teapot. She answered absently that King Cophetua was only a man in a story, a king who married a beggar maid.
"But it was only a story, Faith," she added earnestly. "One of those stories which couldn't end happily even if it came true."
Perhaps those tired eyes of hers had seen more than one would have imagined; perhaps she guessed the trend of her daughter's thoughts.
Faith went on with her tea, but above the noise and chatter of the twins she seemed to hear the soft purr of the wonderful car that had brought her home, and the voice of its owner who had called himself "the Beggar Man."
He was not very young, he was not very good-looking, but his voice and his eyes had been kind, and he had given Faith her first glimpse of the romance for which her youth had been unconsciously hungering.
CHAPTER II
When she met Peg in the morning Faith told her what had happened.
Peg listened sceptically; she seemed more impressed with Faith's fainting than with its sequence. "I said you ought to give up and have a holiday," she said bluntly.
Faith was vaguely disappointed. She had been so sure that Peg would see the romance of her adventure. She worked badly that day; her fingers seemed all thumbs.
Twice the forewoman spoke to her sharply, and once Peg said with a faint smile: "You're thinking about that car, aren't you, Faith?"
The girl flushed sensitively, with quick denial.
"Of course not." But she knew that she was.
She looked at herself anxiously in a tiny glass before she started home. For the first time she realized how pale and thin she was, and how poor her clothes. Her heart swelled with a sense of the injustice of life as she trudged along the hot streets.
To-day there was no Beggar Man, no wonderful car gliding up to the kerb to pick her up and carry her the weary way home; such a thing could not happen a second time.
"But it was only a story, Faith. … " That was what her mother had said, so perhaps everything wonderful in life was just a story, too—never coming true!
She quickened her steps with a feeling of shame. The day of miracles had passed; fairy princes did not go about the East End of London disguised as big, burly men with kind eyes.
Faith turned a corner sharply and came face to face with "the Beggar Man." …
He pulled up short with a conventional apology, then all at once he smiled.
"I was thinking of you a moment ago. It was just here that we met yesterday, wasn't it?"
"Yes." Faith had flushed like a rose. "I was just thinking of you, too," she said, with courage born of her delight.
He looked at her. "Have you had your tea?" he asked in his abrupt manner.
"No, I'm just going home."
"Then we'll have some tea first; there's a shop just along the road."
Faith followed obediently. He looked younger to-day, she thought, and better-looking! She wished with all her heart that Peg or some of the other girls could see her. They faced one another across a marble-topped table, and the man ordered tea and cakes.
"Are you hungry?" he asked. Faith shook her head; she was too pleased to be hungry.
She kept telling herself that, of course, it must be a dream. Under cover of the table she gave herself a hard pinch to make sure that she was really awake. …
"You're not eating anything," the man said, and she awoke with a start to realities.
"How old are you?" he asked, and she told him with fluttering haste, "I'm nineteen."
"Nineteen!" He raised his brows. "I should have said sixteen," he smiled. "How old do you think I am?"
She considered for a moment. "Forty?" she hazarded.
He laughed. "Not quite so bad; I'm six-and-thirty."
"Oh!" She looked at him gravely. "It's not very old," she said kindly.
"Nearly twenty years older than you," he reminded her.
"Yes."
He went on: "I've lived abroad most of my life, and that ages a man, you know. I've slept under the sky for months at a time and never spoken to a living soul for weeks. I've starved and begged." He laughed. "Once I even robbed a man. But I paid him back when I got the money. Are you shocked?" he asked.
"Oh, no!" She thought him the most wonderful person she had ever met.
"Tell me something about yourself," said the Beggar Man abruptly.
She told him the little she knew—how that her father had been "a gentleman"; how his people had cast him off for marrying her mother; how that he had died three years ago, leaving them without a penny.
"And I work at Heeler's," she added.
"Yes, you told me that yesterday. And they treat you—well?"
"Peg says it might be worse. Peg is my best friend and I love her," said Faith fervently.
"Lucky Peg!" said the Beggar Man.
Faith shook her head. "She doesn't think she's lucky," she answered seriously. "She's always saying how unfair things are. She hates rich people and she hates Mr. Scammel, too! She says that she would like to murder him."
"And who is Scammel?" asked the Beggar Man.
"Heeler's belongs to him," she told him. "He's ever so rich, and he's got a house in Park-lane and a place on the river, and a yacht and a car——"
"Anything else?" the man asked amusedly.
"Oh, yes, I expect so. Peg says he makes his money out of us, that he squeezes us dry to make himself rich. I think he must be something like the man who ruined my father," she added.
"Have some more cake?" said the Beggar Man.
"No, thank you."
Faith finished her tea and looked round the room. Hitherto she had only had eyes for her companion. The shop was not very full.
A girl at the next table was staring at her, and the girl in the cash desk by the door