Part 55 (1/2)

A sound of fury and disdain broke from Jack.

”Well,” continued d.i.c.k, ”(May I take a cigarette, by the way?), why shouldn't you go round and make inquiries, and find out how the land lies? Then Kirkby and I might perhaps hang about a bit and run up against him--if you'd just give us a hint, you know.”

The other looked at him a moment.

”Well, perhaps I might,” he said doubtfully. ”But what--”

”Good Lord! But you'll be keeping your promise, won't you? After all, it's quite natural we should come down after his letter--and quite on the cards that we should run up against him.... Please to go at once, and let us wait here.”

In a quarter of an hour Mr. Parham-Carter came back quickly into the room and shut the door.

”Yes; he's at the factory,” he said. ”Or at any rate he's not at home.

And they don't expect him back till late.”

”Well?”

”There's something up. The girl's gone, too. (No; she's not at the factory.) And I think there's going to be trouble.”

CHAPTER VI

(I)

The electric train slowed down and stopped at the Hammersmith terminus, and there was the usual rush for the doors.

”Come on, Gertie,” said a young man, ”here we are.”

The girl remained perfectly still with her face hidden.

The crowd was enormous this Christmas Eve, and for the most part laden with parcels; the platforms surged with folk, and each bookstall, blazing with lights (for it was after seven o'clock), was a center of a kind of whirlpool. There was sensational news in the evening papers, and everyone was anxious to get at the full details of which the main facts were tantalizingly displayed on the posters. Everyone wanted to know exactly who were the people concerned and how it had all happened. It was a delightful tragedy for the Christmas festivities.

”Come on,” said the young man again. ”They're nearly all out.”

”I can't,” moaned the girl.

Frank took her by the arm resolutely.

”Come!” he said.

Then she came, and the two pa.s.sed out together into the mob waiting to come in.

”We shall have to walk,” said Frank. ”I'm sorry; but I've got to get home somehow.”

She bowed her head and said nothing.

Gertie presented a very unusual appearance this evening. Certainly she had laid out the two-pound-ten to advantage. She was in a perfectly decent dark dress with a red stripe in it; she had a large hat and some species of boa round her neck; she even carried a cheap umbrella with a sham silver band and a small hand-bag with one pocket-handkerchief inside it. And to her own mind, no doubt, she was a perfect picture of the ideal penitent--very respectable and even prosperous looking, and yet with a dignified reserve. She was not at all flaunting, she must have thought; neither was she, externally, anything of a disgrace. It would be evident presently to her mother that she had returned out of simple goodness of heart and not at all because her recent escapade had been a failure. She would still be able to talk of ”the Major” with something of an air, and to make out that he treated her always like a lady. (When I went to interview her a few months ago I found her very dignified, very self-conscious, excessively refined and faintly reminiscent of fallen splendor; and her mother told me privately that she was beginning to be restless again and talked of going on to the music-hall stage.)