PAGE 23
His Own People
by
Lady Mount-Rhyswicke maintained silence for a time, while her companion waited, his heart pounding with dreadful apprehensions. Finally she gave a short, hard laugh and said:
“I saw your face by the corner light. Been havin’ a hard day of it?”
The fear of breaking down kept him from answering. He gulped painfully once or twice, and turned his face away from her. Light enough from a streetlamp shone in for her to see.
“I was rather afraid you’d refuse,” she said seriously. “Really, I wonder you were willin’ to come!”
“I was–I was afraid not to.” He choked out the confession with the recklessness of final despair.
“So?” she said, with another short laugh. Then she resumed her even, tired monotone: “Your little friend Cooley’s note this morning gave us all a rather fair notion as to what you must be thinkin’ of us. He seems to have found a sort of walkin’ ‘Who’s-Who-on-the-Continent’ since last night. Pity for some people he didn’t find it before! I don’t think I’m sympathetic with your little Cooley. I ‘guess,’ as you Yankees say, ‘he can stand it.’ But”–her voice suddenly became louder–“I’m not in the business of robbin’ babies and orphans, no, my dear friends, nor of helpin’ anybody else to rob them either!–Here you are!”
She thrust into his hand a small packet, securely wrapped in paper and fastened with rubber bands. “There’s your block of express checks for six hundred dollars and your I O U to Sneyd with it. Take better care of it next time.”
He had been tremulous enough, but at that his whole body began to shake violently.
“What!” he quavered.
“I say, take better care of it next time,” she said, dropping again into her monotone. “I didn’t have such an easy time gettin’ it back from them as you might think. I’ve got rather a sore wrist, in fact.”
She paused at an inarticulate sound from him.
“Oh, that’s soon mended,” she laughed drearily. “The truth is, it’s been a good thing for me–your turning up. They’re gettin’ in too deep water for me, Helene and her friends, and I’ve broken with the lot, or they’ve broken with me, whichever it is. We couldn’t hang together after the fightin’ we’ve done to-day. I had to do a lot of threatenin’ and things. Welch was ugly, so I had to be ugly too. Never mind”–she checked an uncertain effort of his to speak–“I saw what you were like, soon as we sat down at the table last night–how new you were and all that. It needed only a glance to see that Helene had made a mistake about you. She’d got a notion you were a millionaire like the little Cooley, but I knew better from your talk. She’s clever, but she’s French, and she can’t get it out of her head that you could be an American and not a millionaire. Of course, they all knew better when you brought out your express checks and talked like somebody in one of the old-time story-books about ‘debts of honor.’ Even Helene understood then that the express checks were all you had.” She laughed. “I didn’t have any trouble gettin’ the note back!”
She paused again for a moment, then resumed: “There isn’t much use our goin’ over it all, but I want you to know one thing. Your little friend Cooley made it rather clear that he accused Helene and me of signalin’. Well, I didn’t. Perhaps that’s the reason you didn’t lose as much as he did; I can’t say. And one thing more: all this isn’t goin’ to do you any harm. I’m not very keen about philosophy and religion and that, but I believe if you’re let in for a lot of trouble, and it only half kills you, you can get some good of it.”
“Do you think,” he stammered–“do you think I’m worth saving?”
She smiled faintly and said:
“You’ve probably got a sweetheart in the States somewhere–a nice girl, a pretty young thing who goes to church and thinks you’re a great man, perhaps? Is it so?”