"Yes," Rawson-Clew said; "why did you call it "The Good Comrade?""
Julia began to recover herself and also her natural caution. This was not the question she expected, but the rogue in her made her wary even of the seemingly simple and safe. "I called it after three friends,"
she said, "who were good comrades to me--you, Johnny and Joost Van Heigen. Why do you ask?"
"Because I wondered if it was a case of telepathy; I also named something "The Good Comrade.""
"You?" she said. "What did you name? Was it a dog?"
"No, a bottle--small, wide-necked, stopper fastened with a piece of torn handkerchief, about two-thirds full of a white powder!"
Julia had begun washing the cups; she did her best to betray no sign, and really she did it very well; her eyelids flickered a little and her breath came rather quickly, nothing more.
"Why did you name it?" she asked. "It is rather odd to do so, isn"t it?"
"I named it after the person who gave it to me."
Julia"s breath came a little quicker; she forgot to remark that the same reason had helped her in naming her flower; she was busy asking herself if he meant her by the good comrade.
"Perhaps I did not exactly name my bottle," he went on to say, "but it stood for the person to me. It was a sort of physical manifestation--rather a grotesque one, perhaps--of a spiritual presence which had not really left me since a certain sunny morning last year."
"That is very interesting," Julia managed to say; her native caution had not misled her; the innocently beginning talk had taken a devious way to the expected end.
"It was interesting," Rawson-Clew said, "but not quite satisfying, at least not to the natural man. He is not content with a manifestation any more than with a spiritual presence; he wants a corporal fact."
Julia looked up; the talk was taking an unforseen turn that she did not quite follow, so she looked up. And then she read something in his face that set her heart beating, that made her afraid, less perhaps of him than of herself, and the thrill that ran like fire through her body.
"I don"t quite understand," she said, and dropped a cup.
It was meant to fall on the flagged floor and break; it would create a diversion, and picking up the pieces would give her time to get used to the suffocating heart-beats. She had enough of the Polkington self-mastery left to think of the manoeuvre and its advisability, but not enough to carry it out properly; the cup fell on the doubled-up tea-cloth that lay at her feet and was not broken at all.
Nevertheless the incident and her own contempt for her failure steadied her a little.
Rawson-Clew picked up the cup. "Do you not understand," he said. "It is quite simple; I have put it to you before, too--not in the same words, but it comes to the same--the plain terms used then were--will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"
Julia"s heart seemed to stop for a second, then it went on heavily as before, but she only asked, "Did you not get my letter, the one I wrote in Holland about that?"
"The one when you told me of your arrangements? By the way you did not mention that you were going to Van de Greutz"s for the explosive, yes, I got that, but it was scarcely an answer."
"I explained that it meant "no.""
"In a postscript; you cannot answer a proposal of marriage in a postscript."
There really does not seem sufficient ground to justify this statement, still she did not combat it. "Can"t I?" she said. "Then I will answer it now--no. It was good of you to offer, generous and honourable, but, of course, I should not accept. I mean, I could not even if there had been any need, and, as you see, there was not a particle of need then, still less now."
"No need, no," he answered, and there was a new note in his voice; "it is not a case of necessity or anything of the sort. Put all that nonsense of justice and honour and grat.i.tude out of the question, you know that it does not come in. I own it did weigh somewhat then, but now--now I want the good comrade; I don"t deserve her, or a t.i.the of what she has done for me, but I can"t do without her--herself, the corporal fact--don"t you know that?"
"No," Julia said; somehow it was all she could say.
"You don"t know it? Then I"ll tell you." But he did not for she prevented him.
"Please don"t," she said. "You cannot really want me because you do not really know me. Oh, no, you do not!"
"I think I do; I know enough to begin with; the rest of the ignorance you can remedy at your leisure."
"My leisure is now," she said; "I will tell you several things, I will tell you how I got the explosive. I went as a cook and stole like a thief--you could have got it as easily as I if you would have stooped as readily as I did. You admire that? Perhaps so, now, but you would not if you had seen it being done. That is the sort of thing I do, and I will tell you the sort of thing I like. The day I came home from Holland I did what I liked--as soon as I reached London I went to Johnny Gillat, my dear old friend, who I love better than any one else in the world, and we had a supper of steak and onions in a back bedroom, and we enjoyed it--you see what my tastes are? Afterwards I heard how father had taken to drink and mother had got into debt--you see what a nice family we are?"
But here Rawson-Clew stopped her. "I knew something like this before,"
he said; "the details are nothing; I do not see what it has to do with the matter."
"It ought to have a lot," she answered. "But even if you do know it and a good deal more and realise it too, which is a different thing, there is still the other side. I don"t know you, I don"t even know your name."
Then he remembered that he must have signed that offer of marriage, as he signed all letters, and so left himself merely "H. F. Rawson-Clew"
to her.
"You see," she was saying, "it is a mistake for people who don"t know each other very well to marry, they would always be getting unpleasant surprises afterwards. Besides, it would be so uncomfortable; it must be pretty bad to live at close quarters with some one you were--who you didn"t know very well, with whom you minded about things."
She had touched on something that did matter now, that might matter very much indeed; Rawson-Clew realised it, and realised with a start of pain, that there might be a great gulf between him and the good comrade after all. Her quick intuitions and perceptions had bridged it over and led him to forget that he was a man of years and experience while she was a girl, a young, shy, half-wild thing, veiled, and fearing to draw the veil for his experienced eyes.
"Tell me," he said, facing her and looking very grave and old, "is that how you feel about me?"
She fidgeted the tea-cloth with her foot, but being a Polkington, she was able to answer something. "We belong to different lots of people,"
she said, examining the shape the thing had taken on the floor; "I have got my life here, working in my garden and so on; and you have got yours a long way off among greater things."
"You have not answered me," he said. "Tell me--am I the man you described?"
He turned her so that she could look at him, the thing she dared not do. His touch was light, almost momentary, but it was too much, it thrilled through her wildly, irresistibly, and she drew back fearing to do anything else.
"Don"t!" she said, and her voice was sharp with the anger of pain.
He stepped back a pace. "Thank you," he said; "I am answered."
Captain Polkington had been dozing; there really was nothing else to do; but suddenly he was aroused; there was a sound below; the motor moving at last. Yes, it was going, really going; he went to the window and, taking care not to be seen, watched the car go down the sandy road. After that he went down-stairs, and finding Johnny, who had finished his watering, persuaded him to come for a stroll on the heath. They took a basket to bring home anything they might find, and shouted news of their intention to Julia, who did not answer, then set out.
Now, in the present state of their development, motors are not things on which a man can always rely. More especially is this the case when any one like Mr. Gillat has had anything to do with them. The obliging Johnny, had arranged the inside of Rawson-Clew"s car, covering up what he thought might be hurt by the sun and blowing sand while it stood at the roadside, and taking into the house when he went in to tea, anything that could be stolen if--as was quite out of the question--one came that way with a mind to steal. Johnny had brought back most of the things and replaced them before Rawson-Clew started, but not quite all. When the car had got a little distance down the road it, with a perversity worthy of a reasonable being, developed a need for the forgotten item. Rawson-Clew searched for it, could not find it, discovered that he could not get on without it, and, thinking if not saying something not very complimentary about Mr.
Gillat, walked back to the cottage.
He supposed he would find Johnny in the garden, but he did not; he and the Captain were some way out on the heath now, and, fortunately for the latter"s peace, neither saw any one approach the cottage.
Rawson-Clew looked round the garden and finding no one decided, rather reluctantly, that he must go to the house. He did not want to meet Julia again; he thought it rather unlikely that she should still be in the kitchen, but there was a chance of it, so he approached with a view to reconnoitering before presenting himself. The outer kitchen, which partook rather of the nature of a wash-house, had a large unglazed window; when he drew near to this he heard a noise from within. It sounded like some one sobbing, not quiet sobs, but slow deep spasmodic ones like the last remains of a tempest of tears which has not spent itself but only been imperfectly suppressed by sheer will. Rawson-Clew paused though possibly he had no business to do so.
"Oh, why," one wailed from within, "why is not father dead? If he were dead--if only he had been dead!"
The unglazed window was large and rather high up, but Rawson-Clew was a man of fair height; he was also usually considered an honourable one, but when he heard the voice, saying something which was plainly only meant for the hearing of Omnipotence, he did not go away. He put his hands on the flintwork of the window-sill and in a moment found himself in the twilight of the unceiled kitchen.
Julia was crouching in a corner, her elbows on the old chopping-block, her face hidden on her tightly-clenched hands, while she struggled angrily with the shaking sobs. For a moment she struggled, then mastered herself somehow and looked up, perhaps because she meant to rise and set about her work. She had been crying hard and tears do not improve the average face, certainly they did not hers; and she had been trying hard to stop, cramming a screwed-up handkerchief into her eyes and that did not improve matters either. One would have said her face could have expressed nothing but the extremity of unbecoming woe, yet when she caught sight of Rawson-Clew standing just under the window it changed extraordinarily and to anger.
"Go away!" she said; "go away! Do you hear?"
Rawson-Clew did not go away; he came nearer and Julia drew further into the corner, ensconsing herself behind the chopping-block, and looking about as inviting of approach as a trapped rat.
"Julia," he said.