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Thousandth Woman

[Pg 181] <h2>XIII QUID PRO QUO</h2> It was his blessing that had done it; up to then she had controlled her feelings in a fashion worthy of the title 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. [Pg 182] 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. [Pg 183] 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,[Pg 184] 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[Pg 185] married. Had Blanche been analyzing 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 associations 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[Pg 186] 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 nobody 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[Pg 187] 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[Pg 188] 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 compassion in his eyes and mouth did not lessen their steady determination. "I didn't have time to make myself[Pg 189] 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 compassionately, but just as tersely to the point. [Pg 190] "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! I'm a worse case than ever, if that makes any difference." Blanche shook her yellow head. "Nothing can," she said. "There must be no possible mistake about it this time, because I want you to be very good and never ask me again. And I'm glad you didn't make all the proper speeches, because I needn't either, Mr. Toye! But—I know my own mind better than I ever did until this very minute—and I could simply never marry you!" Toye accepted his fate with a ready resignation, little short of alacrity. There[Pg 191] was a gleam in his somber eyes, and his blue chin came up with a jerk. "That's talking!" said he. "Now will you promise me never to marry Cazalet?" "Mr. Toye!" "That's talking, too, and I guess I mean it to be. It's not all dog-in-the-manger, either. I want that promise a lot more than I want the other. You needn't marry me, Miss Blanche, but you mustn't marry Cazalet." Blanche was blazing. "But this is simply outrageous—" "I claim there's an outrageous cause for it. Are you prepared to swear what I ask, and trust me as I'll trust you, or am I to tell you the whole thing right now?" "You won't force me to listen to another word from you, if you're a gentleman, Mr. Toye!" [Pg 192] "It's not what I am that counts. Swear that to me, and I swear, on my side, that I won't give him away to you or any one else. But it must be the most solemn contract man and woman ever made." The silver teapot arrived at this juncture, and not inopportunely. She had to give him his tea, with her young maid's help, and to play a tiny part in which he supported her really beautifully. She had time to think, almost coolly; and one thought brought a thrill. If it was a question of her marrying or not marrying Walter Cazalet, then he must be free, and only the doer of some dreadful deed! "What has he done?" she begged, with a pathetic abandonment of her previous attitude, the moment they were by themselves. "Must I tell you?" His reluctance rang genuine. [Pg 193] "I insist upon it!" she flashed again. "Well, it's a long story." "Never mind. I can listen." "You know, I had to go back to Italy—" "Had you?" "Well, I did go." He had slurred the first statement; this one was characteristically deliberate. "I did go, and before I went I asked Cazalet for an introduction to some friends of his down in Rome." "I didn't know he had any," said Blanche. She was not listening so very well; she was, in fact, instinctively prepared to challenge every statement, on Cazalet's behalf; and here her instinct defeated itself. "No more he has," said Toye, "but he claimed to have some. He left the Kaiser Fritz the other day at Naples—just when I came aboard. I guess he told you?" [Pg 194] "No. I understood he came round to Southampton. Surely you shared a cabin?" "Only from Genoa; that's where Cazalet rejoined the steamer." "Well?" "He claimed to have spent the interval mostly with friends in Rome. Those friends don't exist, Miss Blanche," said Toye. "Is that any business of mine?" she asked him squarely. "Why, yes, I'm afraid it's going to be. That is, unless you'll still trust me—" "Go on, please." "Why, he never stayed in Rome at all, nor yet in Italy any longer than it takes to come through on the train. Your attention for one moment!" He took out a neat pocketbook. Blanche had opened her lips, but she did not interrupt; she just[Pg 195] grasped the arms of her chair, as though about to bear physical pain. "The Kaiser Fritz"—Toye was speaking from his book—"got to Naples late Monday afternoon, September eighth. She was overdue, and I was mad about it, and madder still when I went aboard and she never sailed till morning. I guess I'd wasted—" "Do tell me about Walter Cazalet!" cried Blanche. It was like small talk from a dentist at the last moment. "I want you to understand about the steamer first," said Toye. "She waited Monday night in the Bay of Naples, only sailed Tuesday morning, only reached Genoa Wednesday morning, and lay there forty-eight hours, as the German boats do, anyhow. That brings us to Friday morning before the Kaiser Fritz gets quit of Italy, doesn't it?" "Yes—do tell me about Walter!" [Pg 196] "He was gone ashore Monday evening before I came aboard at Naples. I never saw him till he scrambled aboard again Friday, about the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour." "At Genoa?" "Sure." "And you pretend to know where he'd been?" "I guess I do know"—and Toye sighed as he raised his little book. "Cazalet stepped on the train that left Naples six fifty Monday evening, and off the one timed to reach Charing Cross three twenty-five Wednesday." "The day of the m—" "Yes. I never called it by the hardest name, myself; but it was seven thirty Wednesday evening that Henry Craven got his death-blow somehow. Well, Walter Cazalet left Charing Cross again by[Pg 197] the nine o'clock that night, and was back aboard the Kaiser Fritz on Friday morning—full of his friends in Rome who didn't exist!" The note-book was put away with every symptom of relief. "I suppose you can prove what you say?" said Blanche in a voice as dull as her unseeing eyes. "I have men to swear to him—ticket-collectors, conductors, waiters on the restaurant-car—all up and down the line. I went over the same ground on the same trains, so that was simple. I can also produce the barber who claims to have taken off his beard in Paris, where he put in hours Thursday morning." Blanche looked up suddenly, not at Toye, but past him toward an overladen side-table against the wall. It was there that Cazalet's photograph had stood[Pg 198] among many others; until this morning she had never missed it, for she seemed hardly to have been in her room all the week; but she had been wondering who had removed it, whether Cazalet himself (who had spoken of doing so, she now knew why), or Martha (whom she would not question about it) in a fit of ungovernable disapproval. And now there was the photograph back in its place, leather frame and all! "I know what you did," said Blanche. "You took that photograph with you—the one on that table—and had him identified by it!" Yet she stated the fact, for his bowed head admitted it to be one, as nothing but a fact, in the same dull voice of apathetic acquiescence in an act of which the man himself was ashamed. She could see him wondering at her; she even wondered at[Pg 199] herself. Yet if all this were true, what matter how the truth had come to light? "It was the night I came down to bid you good-by," he confessed, "and didn't have time to wait. I didn't come down for the photo. I never thought of it till I saw it there. I came down to kind of warn you, Miss Blanche!" "Against him?" she said, as if there was only one man left in the world. "Yes—I guess I'd already warned Cazalet that I was starting on his tracks." And then Blanche just said, "Poor—old—Sweep!" as one talking to herself. And Toye seized upon the words as she had seized on nothing from him. "Have you only pity for the fellow?" he cried; for she was gazing at the bearded photograph without revulsion. "Of course," she answered, hardly attending. [Pg 200] "Even though he killed this man—even though he came across Europe to kill him?" "You don't think it was deliberate yourself, even if he did do it." "But can you doubt that he did?" cried Toye, quick to ignore the point she had made, yet none the less sincerely convinced upon the other. "I guess you wouldn't if you'd heard some of the things he said to me on the steamer; and he's made good every syllable since he landed. Why, it explains every single thing he's done and left undone. He'll strain every nerve to have Scruton ably defended, but he won't see the man he's defending; says himself that he can't face him!" "Yes. He said so to me," said Blanche, nodding in confirmation. "To you?" "I didn't understand him." [Pg 201] "But you're been seeing him all this while?" "Every day," said Blanche, her soft eyes filling suddenly. "We've had—we've had the time of our lives!" "My God!" said Toye. "The time of your life with a man who's got another man's blood on his hands—and that makes no difference to you! The time of your life with the man who knew where to lay hands on the weapon he'd done it with, who went as far as that to save the innocent, but no farther!" "He would; he will still, if it's still necessary. You don't know him, Mr. Toye; you haven't known him all your life." "And all this makes no difference to a good and gentle woman—one of the gentlest and the best God ever made?" "If you mean me, I won't go so far as that," said Blanche. "I must see him first." [Pg 202] "See Cazalet?" Toye had come to his feet, not simply in the horror and indignation which had gradually taken possession of him, but under the stress of some new and sudden resolve. "Of course," said Blanche; "of course I must see him as soon as possible." "Never again!" he cried. "What?" "You shall never speak to that man again, as long as ever you live," said Toye, with the utmost emphasis and deliberation. "Who's going to prevent me?" "I am." "How?" "By laying an information against him this minute, unless you promise never to see or to speak to Cazalet again." Blanche felt cold and sick, but the bit[Pg 203] of downright bullying did her good. "I didn't know you were a blackmailer, Mr. Toye!" "You know I'm not; but I mean to save you from Cazalet, blackmail or white." "To save me from a mere old friend—nothing more—nothing—all our lives!" "I believe that," he said, searching her with his smoldering eyes. "You couldn't tell a lie, I guess, not if you tried! But you would do something; it's just a man being next door to hell that would bring a God's angel—" His voice shook. She was as quick to soften on her side. "Don't talk nonsense, please," she begged, forcing a smile through her distress. "Will you promise to do nothing if—if I promise?" "Not to go near him?" "No." "Nor to see him here?" [Pg 204] "No." "Nor anywhere else?" "No. I give you my word." "If you break it, I break mine that minute? Is it a deal that way?" "Yes! Yes! I promise!" "Then so do I, by God!" said Hilton Toye. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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