The Thousandth Woman

"To you?"

"I didn't understand him."

"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."

"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 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?"

"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.

XIV

FAITH UNFAITHFUL

"It's all perfectly true," said Cazalet calmly. "Those were my movements while I was off the ship, except for the five hours and a bit that I was away from Charing Cross. I can't dispute a detail of all the rest. But they'll have to fill in those five hours unless they want another case to collapse like the one against Scruton!"

Old Savage had wriggled like a venerable worm, in the experienced talons of the Bobby's Bugbear; but then Mr. Drinkwater and his discoveries had come still worse out of a hotter encounter with the truculent attorney; and Cazalet had described the whole thing as only he could describe a given episode, down to the ultimate dismissal of the charge against Scruton, with a gusto the more cynical for the deliberately low pitch of his voice. It was in the little lodging-house sitting-room at Nell Gwynne's Cottages; he stood with his back to the crackling fire that he had just lighted himself, as it were, already at bay; for the folding-doors were in front of his nose, and his eyes roved incessantly from the landing door on one side to the curtained casement on the other. Yet sometimes he paused to gaze at the friend who had come to warn him of his danger; and there was nothing cynical or grim about him then.

Blanche had broken her word for perhaps the first time in her life; but it had never before been extorted from her by duress, and it would be affectation to credit her with much compunction on the point. Her one great qualm lay in the possibility of Toye's turning up at any moment; but this she had obviated to some extent by coming straight to the cottages when he left her – presumably to look for Cazalet in London, since she had been careful not to mention his change of address. Cazalet, to her relief, but also a little to her hurt, she had found at his lodgings in the neighborhood, full of the news he had not managed to communicate to her. But it was no time for taking anything but his peril to heart. And that they had been discussing, almost as man to man, if rather as innocent man to innocent man; for even now, or perhaps now in his presence least of all, Blanche could not bring herself to believe her old friend guilty of a violent crime, however unpremeditated, for which another had been allowed to suffer, for however short a time.

And yet, he seemed to make no secret of it; and yet – it did explain his whole conduct since landing, as Toye had said.

She could only shut her eyes to what must have happened, even as Cazalet himself had shut his all this wonderful week, that she had forgotten all day in her ingratitude, but would never, in all her days, forget again!

"There won't be another case," she heard herself saying, while her thoughts ran ahead or lagged behind like sheep. "It'll never come out – I know it won't."

"Why shouldn't it?" he asked so sharply that she had to account for the words, to herself as well as to him.

"Nobody knows except Mr. Toye, and he means to keep it to himself."

"Why should he?"

"I don't know. He'll tell you himself."

"Are you sure you don't know? What can he have to tell me? Why should he screen me, Blanche?"

His eyes and voice were furious with suspicion, but still the voice was lowered.

"He's a jolly good sort, you know," said Blanche, as if the whole affair was the most ordinary one in the world. But heroics could not have driven the sense of her remark more forcibly home to Cazalet.

"Oh, he is, is he?"

"I've always found him so."