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Thousandth Woman

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<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</SPAN></span></p> <h2><span>XII</span> <span class="smaller">THE THOUSANDTH MAN</span></h2> <p>It had been new life to them, but now it was all over. It was the last evening of their week, and they were spending it rather silently on Blanche's balcony.</p> <p>"I make it at least three hundred," said Cazalet, and knocked out a pipe that might have been a gag. "You see, we were very seldom under fifty!"</p> <p>"Speak for yourself, please! My longevity's a tender point," said Blanche, who looked as though she had no business to have her hair up, as she sat in a pale cross-fire between a lamp-post and her lighted room.</p> <p>Cazalet protested that he had only<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</SPAN></span> meant their mileage in the car; he made himself extremely intelligible now, as he often would when she rallied him in a serious voice. Evidently that was not the way to rouse him up to-night, and she wanted to cheer him after all that he had done for her. Better perhaps not to burke the matter that she knew was on his mind.</p> <p>"Well, it's been a heavenly time," she assured him just once more. "And to-morrow it's pretty sure to come all right about Scruton, isn't it?"</p> <p>"Yes! To-morrow we shall probably have Toye back," he answered with grim inconsequence.</p> <p>"What has that to do with it, Walter?"</p> <p>"Oh, nothing, of course."</p> <p>But still his tone was grim and heavy, with a schoolboy irony that he would not explain but could not keep to himself. So Mr. Toye must be turned out of the <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</SPAN></span>conversation, though it was not Blanche who had dragged him in. She wished people would stick to their point. She meant to make people, just for once and for their own good; but it took time to find so many fresh openings, and he only cutting up another pipeful of that really rather objectionable bush tobacco.</p> <p>"There's one thing I've rather wanted to ask you," she began.</p> <p>"Yes?" said Cazalet.</p> <p>"You said the other day that it would mean worry for you in any case—after to-morrow—whether the charge is dismissed or not!"</p> <p>His wicker chair creaked under him.</p> <p>"I don't see why it should," she persisted, "if the case falls through."</p> <p>"Well, that's where I come in," he had to say.</p> <p>"Surely you mean just the other way<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</SPAN></span> about? If they commit the man for trial, then you do come in, I know. It's like your goodness."</p> <p>"I wish you wouldn't say that! It hurts me!"</p> <p>"Then will you explain yourself? It's not fair to tell me so much, and then to leave out just the bit that's making you miserable!"</p> <p>The trusty, sisterly, sensible voice, half bantering but altogether kind, genuinely interested if the least bit inquisitive, too, would have gone to a harder or more hardened heart than beat on Blanche's balcony that night. Yet as Cazalet lighted his pipe he looked old enough to be her father.</p> <p>"I'll tell you some time," he puffed.</p> <p>"It's only a case of two heads," said Blanche. "I know you're bothered, and I should like to help, that's all."</p> <p>"You couldn't."</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</SPAN></span></p> <p>"How do you know? I believe you're going to devote yourself to this poor man—if you can get him off—I mean, when you do."</p> <p>"Well?" he said.</p> <p>"Surely I could help you there! Especially if he's ill," cried Blanche, encouraged by his silence. "I'm not half a bad nurse, really!"</p> <p>"I'm certain you're not."</p> <p>"Does he <i>look</i> very ill?"</p> <p>She had been trying to avoid the direct question as far as possible, but this one seemed so harmless. Yet it was received in a stony silence unlike any that had gone before. It was as though Cazalet neither moved nor breathed, whereas he had been all sighs and fidgets just before. His pipe was out already—that was the one merit of bush tobacco, it required constant attention—and he did not look like lighting it again.</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</SPAN></span></p> <p>Until to-night they had not mentioned Scruton since the motoring began. That had been a tacit rule of the road, of wayside talk and indoor orgy. But Blanche had always assumed that Cazalet had been to see him in the prison; and now he told her that he never had.</p> <p>"I can't face him," he cried under his breath, "and that's the truth! Let me get him out of this hole, and I'm his man forever; but until I do, while there's a chance of failing, I simply can't face the fellow. It isn't as if he'd asked to see me. Why should I force myself upon him?"</p> <p>"He hasn't asked to see you because he doesn't know what you're doing for him!" Blanche leaned forward as eagerly as she was speaking, all her repressed feelings coming to their own in her for just a moment. "He doesn't know because I do believe you wouldn't have him told that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</SPAN></span> you'd arrived, lest he should suspect! You <i>are</i> a brick, Sweep, you really are!"</p> <p>He was too much of one to sit still under the name. He sprang up, beating his hands. "Why shouldn't I be—to him—to a poor devil who's been through all he's been through? Ten years! Just think of it; no, it's unthinkable to you or me. And it all started in our office; we were to blame for not keeping our eyes open; things couldn't have come to such a pass if we'd done our part, my poor old father for one—I can't help saying it—and I myself for another. Talk about contributory negligence! We were negligent, as well as blind. We didn't know a villain when we saw one, and we let him make another villain under our noses; and the second one was the only one we could see in his true colors, even then. Do you think we owe him nothing now? Don't<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</SPAN></span> you think <i>I</i> owe him something, as the only man left to pay?"</p> <p>But Blanche made no attempt to answer his passionate questions. He had let himself go at last; it relieved her also in a way, for it was the natural man back again on her balcony. But he had set Blanche off thinking on other lines than he intended.</p> <p>"I'm thinking of what <i>he</i> must have felt he owed Mr. Craven and—and Ethel!" she owned.</p> <p>"I don't bother my head over either of them," returned Cazalet harshly. "He was never a white man in his lifetime, and she was every inch his daughter. Scruton's the one I pity—because—because I've suffered so much from that man myself."</p> <p>"But you don't think he did it!" Blanche was sharp enough to interrupt.</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</SPAN></span></p> <p>"No—no—but if he had!"</p> <p>"You'd still stand by him?"</p> <p>"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.</p> <p>"And would you still?" she asked.</p> <p>"If I could get him off."</p> <p>"Guilty or not guilty?"</p> <p>"Rather!"</p> <p>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.</p> <p>"You remind me of <i>The Thousandth Man</i>," she told him as she found it.</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</SPAN></span></p> <p>"Who was he?"</p> <p>"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:</p> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <div>"'One man in a thousand, Solomon says,</div> <div class="i1">Will stick more close than a brother.</div> <div>And it's worth while seeking him half your days</div> <div class="i1">If you find him before the other.</div> <div>Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend</div> <div class="i1">On what the world sees in you,</div> <div>But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend</div> <div class="i1">With the whole round world agin you.'"</div> </div></div> <p>"I should hope he would," said Cazalet, "if he's a man at all."</p> <p>"But this is the bit for you," said Blanche:</p> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <div>"'His wrong's your wrong, and his right's your right,</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</SPAN></span><div class="i1">In season or out of season.</div> <div>Stand up and back it in all men's sight—</div> <div class="i1">With <i>that</i> for your only reason!</div> <div>Nine hundred and ninety-nine can't bide</div> <div class="i1">The shame or mocking or laughter,</div> <div>But the Thousandth Man will stand by your side</div> <div class="i1"><i>To the gallows-foot</i>—and after!'"</div> </div></div> <p>The last italics were in Blanche's voice, and it trembled, but so did Cazalet's as he cried out in his formula:</p> <p>"That's the finest thing I ever heard in all my life! But it's true, and so it should be. <i>I</i> don't take any credit for it."</p> <p>"Then you're all the more the thousandth man!"</p> <p>He caught her suddenly by the shoulders. His rough hands trembled; his jaw worked. "Look here, Blanchie! If <i>you</i> had a friend, wouldn't you do the same?"</p> <p>"Yes, if I'd such a friend as all that," she faltered.</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</SPAN></span></p> <p>"You'd stand by his side 'to the gallows-foot'—if he was swine enough to let you?"</p> <p>"I dare say I might."</p> <p>"However bad a thing it was—murder, if you like—and however much he was mixed up in it—not like poor Scruton?"</p> <p>"I'd try to stick to him," she said simply.</p> <p>"Then you're the thousandth woman," said Cazalet. "God bless you, Blanchie!"</p> <div class="center"><ANTIMG src="images/ill03.jpg" width-obs='467' height-obs='700' alt="God bless you, Blanchie" /></div> <p class="bold">"God bless you, Blanchie!"</p> <p>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.</p> <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />

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