The Good Comrade. Una L. Silberrad
Julia's mind was alert for fresh difficulties.
"Mr. Rawson-Clew."
"I don't know who he is," Mary went on; "I've never set eyes on him before, but he's a grand sort of gentleman; I hardly liked to put him in the dining-room, only missis's orders was 'Mr. Gillat or any gentleman to see the master there.'"
Which was true enough, and might reasonably have been reckoned a safe order, for no one but Mr. Gillat ever did come to see the Captain.
"I hope I've done right," Mary said.
"Quite right," Julia answered, though she did not feel so sure of it. The name and the vague description of the visitor somehow suggested to her mind the stranger who had ridden past with young Mr. Rawson-Clew. She went up-stairs, uneasy as much from intuition as from experience. In the hall she stood a minute. The dining-room door did not shut too well, the lock was old and worn, and unless it was fastened carefully, it came open; the Captain never managed to fasten it, and now it stood ajar; Julia could hear something of what was said within almost as soon as she reached the top of the kitchen stairs. The visitor spoke quietly, his words were not audible, but the Captain's voice was raised with excitement.
"The money, sir, the money that your cousin lent—accommodation between gentlemen—"
So Julia heard incompletely, and then another disjointed sentence.
"Do you take me for an adventurer, a sharper? I am a soldier, sir, a soldier and a gentleman—at least, I was—I mean I was a soldier, I am a gentleman—"
Julia came swiftly up the hall, the instinct of the female to spread frail wings and protect her helpless belongings (old equally as much as young) was strong upon her. The pushed open the dining-room door and walked in.
"Father," she said, "is anything the matter?"
Both men turned, the stranger clearly surprised and annoyed by the interruption, the Captain for a moment thinking of pulling himself together and dismissing his daughter with a lie. But he did not do it; he was too shaken to think quickly, also there was a sense of reinforcement in her presence; this he did not realise; indeed, he realised nothing except that she spoke again before he had collected himself.
"Is it about the money Mr. Rawson-Clew lent you?" she asked.
He nodded, and she turned to the other man, who had risen on her entrance, and now stood with his back to the evil-smelling stove which Mary had lighted as usual in honour of Captain Polkington's visitors. She measured him swiftly, and no detail escaped her; the well-bred impassive face, where the annoyance caused by her entrance showed only in the rather hard eyes; the straight figure, even the perfection of his tailoring and the style of his boots—she summed it all up with the rapidity of one who has had to depend on her wits before. And her wits were to be depended on, for, in spite of the warmth of her protective anger, she felt his superiority of person, position and ability, and, only too probably, of cause also. She could have laughed at the contrast he presented to her father and herself and the surroundings. It was perhaps for this reason that she asked him maliciously, "Have you come to collect the debt?"
The question went home. "Certainly not," he answered haughtily; "the money—"
But the Captain prevented whatever he was going to say. "He thinks I am an adventurer, a sharper," he bleated, now thoroughly throwing himself on his daughter's protection; "his intention seems to be a warning not to try to get anything more out of his cousin—something of that sort."
Julia paid little attention to her father. "You were going to say," she inquired serenely of Rawson-Clew, "something about the money, I think?"
"No," he answered, with cold politeness. "I only meant to suggest that this is perhaps rather an unpleasant subject for a lady."
He moved as if he would open the door for her, but she stood her ground. "It is unpleasant," she said; "for that reason had we not better get it over quickly? You have not come to collect the debt, you have come, then, for what?"
"To make one or two things plain to Captain Polkington. I believe I have succeeded; if so, he will no doubt tell you anything you wish to know. Good afternoon," and he moved to the door on his own account, whereupon Julia's calmness gave way.
"You do think my father an adventurer, then?" she said. "You think him a sharper and your cousin a gull, and you came to warn him that if he tried to get anything more in future it was you with whom he would have to deal. And the money—you were going to say the money was not what you came for because you never expected to see it again? But you are wrong there; you shall see it; it will be repaid, every penny of it."
Rawson-Clew paused till she had finished; then, "I am sorry for any misunderstanding there may have been," he said. "I trust you will trouble yourself no farther in the matter," and he opened the door.
It was not a denial; it was not, so Julia considered, even an apology; to her it seemed more like a polite request to mind her own business, and she went up to her room after he had gone almost unjustly angry, too angry for the time being to think about the rashness of her promise that the debt should be paid.
"He thought us dirt," she said, sitting on the end of her narrow iron bed. Then she smiled rather grimly. "And we are pretty much what he thought us! Father sponged the money, and I decided to myself that the repaying did not much matter. We are, as we looked to him, two grubby little people of doubtful honesty, in a grubby room with Bouquet," and she laughed outright, although she was alone, and the faculty for seeing and deriding herself as others might, had a somewhat bitter flavour. Nevertheless, she was very angry and quite determined to pay the money somehow, so that at least it should appear to this man that he was mistaken.
An hour later she carried Captain Polkington's tea down to him; when tea was in the drawing-room his was always sent to him thus. She found him not depressed at all, on the contrary quite cheerful, and even dignified. He was reading something when she came in, and seeing that she was alone, he handed it to her. It was from Mr. Rawson-Clew she found, a sort of recognition of the discharge of the debt, or at least a formal cancelling of it. It was carefully and conclusively worded, certainly not the unaided work of the young man who had ridden past last night. It was dictated by the other, she was sure of it; possibly even he had himself discharged the debt so as to end the matter. Her eyes blazed as she read; he would not even allow her the satisfaction of giving him the lie—and the misery of straining and pinching to do the impossible. From pride, or from pity, or from both, he had finished the thing there and then, or he thought he had. She tore the paper across and then across again.
"What are you doing?" Captain Polkington cried, seizing her hands as she would have torn it again. "Don't you know it is valuable? I must keep it; he can't go back on it if he wants to." He took it from her, and began to piece it together. "I can look the world in the face again," he said, admiring the fragments. "I am free, free and cleared; that debt would have hung like a millstone around my neck, but I am free of it; it is cancelled."
"Free!" Julia said with scorn. There are disadvantages in reducing a man to a subordinate position and allowing him no use for his self-respect; it is a virtue that has a tendency to atrophy. Julia recognised this with something like personal shame. "Your debt is discharged," she said gently, "but mine is not; it has been shifted, not cancelled; it lies with me and Mr. Rawson-Clew now, and it shall be paid somehow."
Captain Polkington hardly heeded what she said; he was still smoothing the pieces of paper. "What?" he asked, as he put them away in an envelope, but he did not wait for her answer. "It was very heedless of you to tear it," he said; "but fortunately there is no damage done; it is perfectly valid, all that can be required."
CHAPTER III
NARCISSUS TRIANDRUS AZUREUM