Clementina went to bed a happier woman than she had been for many a day. Distrusting the ministrations of the Chinese nurse, she had set up a little bed for Sheila in her own room. The child lay there fast asleep, the faithful Pinkie projecting from a folded arm in a staring and uncomfortable attitude of vigilance. Clementina’s heart throbbed as she bent over her. All that she had struggled for and had attained, mastery of her art, fame and fortune, shrank to triviality in comparison with this glorious gift of heaven. She remembered scornful words she had once spoken to Tommy: “Woman has always her sex hanging round the neck of her spirit.” She recognised the truth of the saying and thanked God for it. She undressed very quietly and walked about the room in stocking-feet, feeling a strange sacredness in the presence of the sleeping child. She was happier, too, in that she had forgiven Quixtus; for the first time since she had known him she felt a curiosity regarding him, a desire for his friendship; scarcely formulated, arose a determination to bring something vital into his life. As the notable housewife entering a forlorn man’s neglected house longs to throw open windows, shake carpets, sweep down cobwebs, abolish dingy curtains, and fill the place with sunlight and chintz and other gaiety, so did Clementina long to sweep and garnish Quixtus’s dusty heart. He had many human possibilities. After all, there must be something sound in a man who had treasured in his mind the memory of her picture. Sheila and herself, between them, would transform him into a gaunt angel. She fell asleep smiling at the thought.
Clementina did not suffer fools gladly. That was why, thinking Quixtus a fool, she had not been able to abide him for so many years. And that was why she could not abide the fat Chinese nurse, who showed herself to be a mass of smiling incompetence. “The way she washes the child makes me sick,” she declared. “If I see much more of her heathen idol’s grin, I’ll go mad and bite her.” So the next day Clementina, with Quixtus as a decorative adjunct, hunted up consular and other authorities and made with them the necessary arrangements for shipping her off to Shanghai, for which she secretly pined, by the next outward-bound steamer. When they got to London she would provide the child with a proper Christian nurse, who would bring her up in the fear of the Lord and in habits of tidiness; and in the meanwhile she herself would assume the responsibility of Sheila’s physical well-being.
“I’m not going to have a flighty young girl,” she remarked. “I could tackle her, but you couldn’t.”
“Why should I attempt to tackle her?” asked Quixtus.
“You’ll be responsible for the child when she stays in Russell Square.”
“Russell Square?” he echoed.
“Yes. She will live partly with you and partly with me—three months with each of us, alternately. Where did you expect the child to live?”
“Upon my soul,” said he, “I haven’t considered the matter. Well—well——”
He walked about the vestibule, revolving this new and alarming proposition. To have a little girl of five planted in his dismal, decorous house—what in the world should he do with her? It would revolutionise his habits. Clementina watched him out of a corner of her eye.
“You didn’t suppose I was going to have all the worry, did you?”
“No, no,” he said hastily. “Of course not. I see I must share all responsibilities with you. Only—won’t she find living with me rather dull?”
“You can keep a lot of cats and dogs and rocking-horses, and give children’s parties,” said Clementina.
Sheila, who had been apparently absorbed in the mysteries of the Parisian toilet of a flaxen-haired doll which Clementina had bought for her at an extravagant price, cheerfully lifted up her face.
“Auntie says that when I come to stay with you, I’m to be mistress of the house.”
“Indeed?” said Quixtus.
“And I’m to be a real lady and sit at the end of the table and entertain the guests.”
“I suppose that settles it?” he said, with a smile.
“Of course it does,” said Clementina, and she wondered whether his masculine mind would ever be in a condition to grasp the extent of the sacrifice she was making.
That day the remains of Will Hammersley were laid to rest in the little Protestant cemetery. The consular chaplain read the service. Only the two elders stood by the graveside, thinking the ordeal too harrowing for the child. Clementina wept, for some of her wasted youth lay in the coffin. But Quixtus stood with dry eyes and set features. Now he was sane. Now he could view life calmly. He knew that his memory of the dead would always be bitter. Reason could not sweeten it. It were better to forget. Let the dead past bury its dead. The dead man’s child he would take to his heart for her own helpless, sweet sake. Should she, in years to come, turn round and repay him with treachery and ingratitude, it would be but the way of all flesh. In the meanwhile he would be loyal to his word.
After the service came to a close he stood for a few moments gazing into the grave. Clementina edged close to him and pointed down to the coffin.
“He may have wronged you, but he trusted you,” she said in a low voice.
“That’s true,” said Quixtus. And as they drove back in silence, he murmured once or twice to himself, half audibly:
“He wronged me, but he trusted me.”
That evening they started for Paris.
Undesirous of demonstrative welcome at half-past eight in the morning, Clementina had not informed Tommy and Etta of the time of her arrival, and Quixtus had not indulged in superfluous correspondence with Huckaby. The odd trio now so closely related stood lonely at the exit of the Lyons Station, while porters deposited their luggage in cabs. Each of the elders felt a curious reluctance to part—even for a few hours, for they had agreed to lunch together. Sheila shed a surprised tear. She had adjusted her small mind to the entrance of her Uncle Ephraim into her life. The sudden exit startled her. On his promising to see her very soon, she put her arms prettily round his neck and kissed him. He drove off feeling the flower-like pressure of the child’s lips to his, and it was very sweet.
It helped him to take up the threads of Paris where he had left them, a difficult task. Deep shame smote him. What could be henceforward his relations with Huckaby whom, with crazy, malevolent intent, he had promised to maintain in the path of clean living? With what self-respect could he look into the eyes of Mrs. Fontaine, innocent and irreproachable woman, whose friendship he had cultivated with such dastardly design? She had placed herself so frankly, so unsuspectingly in his hands. To him, now, it was as unimaginable to betray her trust as to betray that of the child whose kiss lingered on his lips. If ever a woman deserved compensation, full and plenteous, at the hands of man, that was the woman. An insult unrealised is none the less an insult; and he, Quixtus, had insulted a woman. If only to cleanse his own honour from the stain, he must make compensation to this sweet lady. But how? By faithful and loyal service.
When he solemnly reached this decision I think that more than one angel wept and at the same time wanted to shake him.
And behind these two whom he would meet in Paris, loomed the forbidding faces of Billiter and Vandermeer. He shivered as at contact with something unclean. He had chosen these men as ministers of evil. He had taken them into his crazy confidence. With their tongues in their cheeks, these rogues had exploited him. He remembered loathsome scenarios of evil dramas they had submitted. Thank Heaven for the pedantic fastidiousness that had rejected them! Billiter, Vandermeer, Huckaby—the only three of all men living who knew the miserable secret of his recent life! In a rocky wilderness he could have raced with wild gestures like the leper, shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” But Paris is not a rocky wilderness, and the semi-extinct quadruped in the shafts of the modern Paris fiacre conveys no idea of racing.
Yet while his soul cried this word of horror, the child’s kiss lingered as a sign and a consecration.
The first thing to do was to set himself right with Huckaby. Companionship with the man on the recent basis was impossible. He made known his arrival, and an hour afterwards, having bathed and breakfasted, he sat with Huckaby in the pleasant courtyard of the hotel. Huckaby, neat and trim and clear-eyed, clad in well-fitting blue serge, gave him the news of the party. Mrs. Fontaine had introduced him to some charming French people whose hospitality he had ventured to accept. She was well and full of plans for little festas for the remainder of their stay in Paris. Lady Louisa had found a cavalier, an elderly French marquis of deep gastronomic knowledge.
“Lady Louisa,” said he with a sigh of relief and a sly glance at Quixtus, “is a charming lady, but not a highly intellectual companion.”
“Do you really crave highly intellectual companions, Huckaby?” asked Quixtus.
Huckaby bit his lip.
“Do you remember our last conversation?” he said at last.
“I remember,” said Quixtus.
“I asked you for a chance. You promised. I was in earnest.”
“I wasn’t,” said Quixtus.
Huckaby started and gripped the arm of his chair. He was about to protest when Quixtus checked him.
“I want you to know,” said he, “that great changes have taken place since then. I left Paris in ill-health, I return sound. I should like you to grasp the deep significance underlying those few words. I will repeat them.”
He did so. Huckaby looked hard at his patron, who stood the scrutiny with a grave smile.
“I think I understand,” he replied slowly. “Then Billiter and Vandermeer?”
“Billiter and Vandermeer I put out of my life for ever; but I shall see they are kept from want.”
“They can’t be kept from wanting more than you give them,” said Huckaby, whose brain worked swiftly and foresaw blackmail. “You must impose conditions.”
“I never thought of that,” said Quixtus.
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” said the other bitterly; “I’m telling you for your own good.”
“If they attempt to write to me or see me, their allowances will cease.”
He covered his eyes with his hand, as though to shut out their hateful faces. There was a short silence. Huckaby’s lips grew dry. He moistened them with his tongue.
“And what about me?” he asked at last.
Quixtus drew away his hand with a despairing gesture, but made no reply.
“I suppose you’re right in classing me with the others,” said Huckaby. “Heaven knows I oughtn’t to judge them. I was in with them all the time”—Quixtus winced—“but I can’t go back to them.”
“My treating you just the same as them won’t necessitate your going back to them.”
Huckaby bent forward, quivering, in his chair. “As there’s a God in Heaven, Quixtus, I wouldn’t accept a penny from you on those terms.”
“And why not?”
“Because I don’t want your money. I want to be put in a position to earn some honourably for myself. I want your help as a man, your sympathy as a human being. I want you to help me to live a clean, straight life. I kept the promise, the important promise I made you, ever since we started. You can’t say I haven’t. And since you left I’ve not touched a drop of alcohol—and, if you promise to help me, I swear to God I never will as long as I live. What can I do, man,” he cried, throwing out his arms, “to prove to you that I’m in deadly earnest?”
Quixtus lay back in his chair reflecting, his finger-tips joined together. Presently a smile, half humorous, half kindly, lit up his features—a smile such as Huckaby had not seen since ............