Part 2

But the girl was taking not the slightest notice of him; her eyes were fixed on the stranger, who was talking for a moment to David Dawlish.

"You forgot to take my cap," he said to the secretary, with a smile. "If you like I will send it along by post; or, if you prefer it, I have it on me now."

And at that moment it occurred. It was all so quick that no one could be quite sure what happened. Perhaps it was a horse barging into the black's quarters; perhaps it was the sudden flash of young Dawson's cigarette-case in the sun. Perhaps only Uncle David saw what really caused the black suddenly to give one wild convulsive buck and bolt like the wind with the girl sawing vainly at its mouth.

For a moment there was a stunned silence; then, with an agonized cry, Sir Hubert started to clamber into his saddle.

"The quarry!" His frenzied shout sent a chill into the hearts of everyone who heard, and half the hunt started to mount. Only too well did they know the danger; the black was heading straight for the old disused slate-pit.

But it was the immaculate Dawson who suffered the greatest shock. He had just got his loot into the stirrup when he felt himself picked up like a child and deposited in the mud. And mounted on _his_ chestnut was the man in ratcatcher.

"Keep back--all of you." The tall, spare figure rose in the saddle and dominated the scene. "It's a one-man job." Then he swung the chestnut round, gave him one rib-binder, and followed the bolting black.

"Hi! you, sir!" spluttered Dawson, shaking a fist at the retreating figure. "That's my horse."

But no one paid the smallest attention to the aggrieved youth; motionless and intent, they were staring at the two galloping horses. They saw the man swinging left-handed, and for a moment they failed to realize his object.

"What's he doing? What's he doing?" David Dawlish was jumping up and down in his excitement. "He'll never catch her like that."

"He will," roared the cavalryman. "Oh, lovely, lovely--look at that recovery, sir--I ask you, look at it! Don't you see his game, man?" He turned to the secretary. "He's coming up between her and the quarry, and he'll ride her off. If he came up straight behind, nothing could save 'em. It's too close."

Fascinated, the field watched the grim race--helpless, unable to do anything but sit and look on. The man in ratcatcher had been right, and they knew it, when he had called it a one-man job. A crowd of galloping horses would have maddened the black to frenzy.

And as for the two principal performers, they were perhaps the coolest of all. For a few agonizing seconds, when the girl first realized that Nigger was bolting, she panicked; then, being a thoroughbred herself, she pulled herself together and tried to stop him. But he was away with her--away with her properly; and it was just as she realized it, with a sickening feeling of helplessness, that a strong, ringing voice came clearly from behind her left shoulder.

"Drop your near rein, Molly; put both hands on your off, and pull--girl--pull! I'm coming."

She heard the thud of his horse behind her, and the black spurted again. But the chestnut crept up till it was level with her girths--till the two horses were neck and neck.

"Pull, darling, pull!" With a wild thrill she heard his voice low and tense beside her; regardless of everything, she stole one look at his steady eyes, which flashed a message of confidence back.

"Pull--pull, on that off rein."

She felt the chestnut hard against her legs, boring into her as the man, exerting every ounce of his strength, started to ride her off.

The black was coming round little by little; no horse living could have resisted the combined pull of the one rein and the pressure of the consummate rider on the other side. More and more the man swung her right-handed, never relaxing his steady pressure for an instant, and, at last, with unspeakable relief, she realized that they were galloping parallel with the edge of the quarry and not towards it. It had been touch and go--another twenty yards; and then, at the same moment, they both saw it. Straight in front of them, stretching back from the top of the pit, there yawned a great gap. She had forgotten the landslip during the last summer.

She saw the man lift his crop, and give the black a heavy blow on the near side of his head; she heard his frenzied shout of "Pull--for God's sake--pull!" and then she was galloping alone. Dimly she heard a dreadful crash and clatter behind her; she had one fleeting glimpse of a chestnut horse rolling over and over, and bumping sickeningly downwards, while something else bumped downwards too; then she was past the gap with a foot to spare. That one stunning blow with the crop had swung the amazed black through half a right-angle to safety; it had made the chestnut swerve through half a right-angle the other way to----

Ah, no! not that. Not dead--not dead. He couldn't be that--not Danny. And she knew it was Danny; had known it all along. Blowing like a steam-engine, the black had stopped exhausted, and she left him standing where he was, as she ran back to the edge of the gap.

"Danny! Danny--my man!" she called in an agony. "Speak--just a word, Danny. My God! it was all my fault!"

Feverishly she started to clamber down towards the still figure sprawling motionless below. But no answer came to her; only the thud of countless other horses, as the field came up to the scene of the disaster.

Sir Hubert, almost beside himself with emotion, was babbling incoherently; the secretary and Joe Mathers were little better.

"Only Danny could have done it," he cried over and over again. "Only Danny could have saved her. And, by Gad! sir, he has--and given his life to do it." He peered over the top, and called out anxiously to the girl below: "Careful, my darling, careful; we can get to him round by the road."

But the girl paid no heed to her father's cry: and when half a dozen men, headed by David Dawlish, rode furiously in by the old entrance to the quarry, they found her sitting on the ground with the unconscious man's head pillowed on her lap.

She lifted her face, streaming with tears, and looked at the secretary.

"He's dead, Uncle David. Danny! my Danny! And it was all my fault."

For a few moments no one spoke; then one of the men stepped forward.

"May I examine him, Miss Gollanfield?" He knelt down beside the motionless figure. "I'm not a doctor, but----" For what seemed an eternity he bent over him; then he rose quickly. "A flask at once. There is still life."

It was not until the limp body had been gently placed on an extemporized stretcher, to wait for the ambulance, that the cavalryman turned to David Dawlish.

"Danny!" he said, thoughtfully. "Not Danny Drayton?"

"Himself and no other," replied the secretary. "Masquerading as John Marston."

The cavalryman whistled softly. "The last time I saw him was at Aintree, before the war. I never could get to the bottom of that matter."

"Couldn't you?" said David Dawlish. "And yet it's not very difficult. 'The sins of the fathers are visited'--you know the rest. He disappeared; and every single sufferer in that crash is being paid back."

"But why that dreadful quod to-day?" pursued the soldier.

"All he could get, most likely. Boddington's cattle are pretty indifferent these days." Dawlish glanced at the stretcher, and the corners of his mouth twitched. "The damned young fool could have had the pick of my stable if he'd asked for it," he said, gruffly. "Danny--on that herring-gutted brute--at Spinner's Copse! But he was always as proud as Lucifer, was Danny: and I'm thinking no one will ever know what he's suffered since the crash." And then, with apparently unnecessary violence, the worthy secretary blew his nose. "This cursed glare makes my eyes water," he announced, when the noise had subsided.

The cavalryman regarded the dull gloom of the old pit dispassionately.

"Quite so, Major," he murmured at length. "Er--quite so."

*III*

"Well, Sir Philip!" With her father and David Dawlish, Molly was waiting in the hall to hear the verdict. The ambulance had brought the unconscious man straight to the Master's house: and for the last quarter of an hour Sir Philip Westwood, the great surgeon, who by a fortunate turn of Fate was staying at an adjoining place, had been carrying out his examination. Now he glanced at the girl, and smiled gravely.

"There is every hope, Miss Gollanfield," he said, cheerfully.

With a little sob the girl buried her face against Sir Hubert's shoulder.

"As far as I can see," continued the doctor, "there is nothing broken: only very severe bruises and a bad concussion. In a week he should be walking again."

"Thank God!" whispered the girl, and Sir Philip patted her shoulder.

"A great man," he said, "and a great deed. I'll come over to-morrow and see him again."

He walked towards the front door, followed by Sir Hubert, and the girl turned her swimming eyes on David Dawlish.

"If he'd died, Uncle David," she said, brokenly, "I--I----"

"He's not going to, Molly," interrupted the secretary. Then, after a pause, "Why did you put the spur into Nigger?" he asked, curiously.

"You saw, did you?" The girl stared at him miserably. "Because I was a little fool: because I was mad with him--because I loved him, and he called himself John Marston." She rose, and laughed a little wildly. "And then when Nigger really did bolt I was glad--glad: and when I saw him beside me, I could have sung for joy. I knew he'd come--and he did. And now I could kill myself."

And staunch old David Dawlish--uncle by right of purchase with many sweets in years gone by, if not by blood--was still thinking it over when the door of her room banged upstairs.

"A whisky and soda, Hubert," he remarked, as the latter joined him, "is clearly indicated."

"We'll have trouble with him, David," grunted the Master. "Damned quixotic young fool. He's got no right to get killed officially: it upsets all one's plans. Probably have to pass an Act of Parliament to bring him to life again."

"Leave it to Molly, old man." The secretary measured out his tot. "Leave it all to her."

"I never do anything else," sighed Sir Hubert. "What is worrying me is young Dawson."

"There's nothing really in that, is there?" David Dawlish looked a little anxiously at his old friend: as has been said before, he was no lover of young Dawson.

"There's a blood chestnut stone-dead at the bottom of a pit," returned the other. "However----"

"Quite," assented Dawlish. "Leave it to Molly: leave it all to her."

Which, taking everything into consideration, was quite the wisest decision they could have come to; it saved such a lot of breath.

They both glanced up as a hospital nurse came down the stairs. "Miss Gollanfield asked me to tell you, Sir Hubert," she remarked, "that the patient is conscious. She is sitting with him for a few minutes."

"Oh, she is, is she?" Sir Hubert rose from his chair a little doubtfully.

"Sit down, Hubert; sit down," grinned Dawlish. "Haven't we just decided to leave it all to her?"

"Well, John Marston! Feeling better?"

The man turned his head slowly on the pillow, and stared at the girl.

"What an unholy----" he muttered. "How's the horse?"

The girl looked at him steadily. "Dead--back broken. We thought you'd done the same."

"Poor brute! A grand horse." He passed one of his hands dazedly across his forehead. "I had to take him--I couldn't have caught you on mine. I must explain things to your fiance."

"My what?" asked the girl.

"Aren't you engaged to him?" said the man. "They told me----" The words tailed off, and he closed his eyes.

For a moment the girl looked at him with a great yearning tenderness on her face; then she bent over and laid a cool hand on his forehead.

"Go to sleep, Danny Drayton," she whispered. "Go to sleep."

But the name made him open his eyes again.

"I told you my name was John Marston," he insisted.

"Then I require an immediate explanation of why you called me darling," she answered.

He looked at her weakly; then with a little tired smile he gave in.

"Molly," he said, very low, "my little Molly. I've dreamed of you, dear; I don't think you've ever been out of my thoughts all these long years. Just for the moment--I am Danny; to-morrow I'll be John Marston again."

"Will you?" she whispered, and her face was very close to his. "Then there will be a scandal. For I don't see how John Marston and Mrs. Danny Drayton can possibly live together. My dear, dear man!"

Thus did the man in ratcatcher fall asleep, with the feel of her lips on his, and the touch of her hand on his forehead. And thus did two men find them a few moments later, only to tiptoe silently downstairs again, after one glance from the door.

"Damn this smoke," said David Dawlish, gruffly. "It's got in my eyes again."

"You're a liar, David," grunted Sir Hubert. "And a sentimental old fool besides. So am I."

_*II -- "An Arrow at a Venture"*_

*I*

For the twentieth time the Man went through the whole wretched business again, in his mind. To the casual diner at the Milan, he was just an ordinary well-groomed Englishman, feeding by himself, and if he ate a little wearily, and there was a gleam of something more than sadness in the deep-set eyes, it was not sufficiently noticeable to attract attention.

"Monsieur finds everything to his satisfaction?" The head-waiter paused by the table, and the Man glanced up at him. A smile flickered round his mouth as the irony of the question struck home, and, almost unconsciously, his hand touched the letter in his coat pocket.

"Everything, thank you," he answered, gravely. "Everything, Francois, except the whole infernal universe."

The head-waiter shook his head sympathetically.

"I regret, Monsieur Lethbridge, that our kitchen is not large enough to keep that on the bill of fare."

"Otherwise you'd cook it to a turn and make even it palatable," said Lethbridge, bitterly. "No, it's beyond you, Francois; and, at the moment, it looks as if it was beyond me. Tell 'em to bring me a half bottle of the same, will you?"

The head-waiter picked up the empty champagne bottle, and then paused for a moment. Lethbridge was an old customer, and with Francois that was the same as being an old friend. For years he had come to the Milan, and, latterly, he had always brought the Girl with him, a wonderful, clear-eyed, upstanding youngster, who seemed almost too young for the narrow gold ring on her left hand. And Francois, who had once heard him call her his Colt, had nodded his approval and been glad. It seemed an ideal marriage, and he was nothing if not sentimental. But to-night all was not well; the Colt had been a bit tricky perhaps; the snaffle had not been quite light enough in the tender mouth. And so Francois paused, and the eye of the two men met.

"The younger they are, M'sieur--the more thoroughbred--the gentler must be the touch. Otherwise----" He shrugged his shoulders, and brushed an imaginary crumb from the table.

"Yes, Francois," said Lethbridge, slowly, "otherwise----"

"They hurt their mouths, M'sieur; and that hurts those who love them. And sometimes it's not the youngster's fault."

The next moment he was bowing some new arrivals to a table, while Hugh Lethbridge stared thoughtfully across the crowded room to where the orchestra was preparing to give their next selection.

"Sometimes it's not the youngster's fault." He took the letter out of his pocket and read it through again, though every word of it was branded in letters of fire on his brain.

"I hope this won't give you too much of a shock," it began, "but I can't live with you any more."

"Too much of a shock!" Dear Heavens! It had been like a great, stunning blow from which he was still dazedly trying to recover.

"Nothing seems to count with you except your business and making money." Hugh's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "You grudge me every penny I spend; and then refuse to let me have my own friends."

Oh, Colt, Colt, how brutally untrue a half truth can be!

"Everything has been going wrong lately, and so I think it's better to have a clean cut. There's no good you asking me to come back.--DORIS."

Once more Hugh Lethbridge stared across the room. A waiter placed the new bottle on the table, but he took no notice. His mind was busy with the past, and his untasted food grew cold on the plate in front of him.

It was in the summer of 1917 that Hugh Lethbridge, being on sick leave from France, met Doris Lashley for the first time. She was helping at the hospital where Hugh came to rest finally; and having once set eyes on her, he made no effort to hurry his departure unduly. The contrast between talking to Doris and wallowing in the mud-holes of Passchendaele was very pleasant; and in due course, assisted by one or two taxi-rides and some quiet dinners _a deux_, he proposed and was accepted. In October he married her; in November he returned to France, after a fortnight's honeymoon spent in Devonshire.

He went back to his old battalion, and stagnated with them through the winter. But the stagnation was made endurable by the wonder of the girl who was his: by the remembrance of those unforgettable days and nights when he had been alone with her in the little hotel down Dawlish way; by the glory of her letters. For she was a very human girl, even though she was just a Colt. Nineteen and a half is not a very great age, and sometimes of a night Hugh would lie awake listening to the rattle of a machine-gun down the line, and the half-forgotten religion of childhood would surge through his mind. Thirty seems old to nineteen, and dim, inarticulate prayers would rise to the great brooding Spirit above that He would never let this slip of a girl down. Then sleep would come--sleep, when a kindly Fate would sometimes let him dream of her; dreams when she would come to him out of the mists, and they would stand together again in the little sandy cove with the red cliffs towering above them. She would put her hands on his shoulders, and shake him gently to and fro until, just as he was going to kiss her, a raucous voice would bellow in his ear, "Stand to." And the Heaven of imagination would change to the Hell of grey trenches just before the dawn.

In March, 1918, Hugh wangled a fortnight's leave. And at this point it is necessary to touch for a moment on that unpleasant essential to modern life--money. The girl had brought in as her contribution to the establishment the sum of one hundred pounds a year left her by her grandmother; Hugh had about three hundred a year private means in addition to his Army pay. Before the war it had been in addition to what he was making in the City; after the war it would be the same again. And, as everyone knows, what a man may make in the City depends on a variety of circumstances, many of which are quite outside his own control. That point, however, concerns the future; and for the moment it is March, 1918--leave. Moreover, as has been said, the girl was just a Colt.

For a fortnight they lived--the Man with his eyes wide open, but not caring--at the rate of five thousand a year. They blew two hundred of the best, and loved every minute of it. Then came the German offensive, and we are not concerned with the remainder of 1918. Sufficient to say that in his wisdom--or was it his folly?--there was no addition to the family when, in February, 1919, he was demobilized, and the story proper begins.

Hugh's gratuity was just sufficient to supply the furniture for one room in the house they took near Esher. If it had been expended on lines of utility rather than those of show it would have gone farther; but the stuff was chosen by Doris one afternoon while he was at the office, and when she pointed it out to him with ill-concealed pride at the shop, he stifled his misgivings and agreed that it was charming. It was; so was the price. For the remainder of the furniture he dipped into his capital, at a time when he wanted every available penny he could lay his hands on for his business. He never spoke to Doris about money; there were so many other things to discuss as the evenings lengthened and spring changed to early summer. They were intensely personal things, monotonous to a degree to any Philistine outsider who might have been privileged to hear them. But since they seemed to afford infinite satisfaction to the two principal performers, the feelings of a Philistine need not be considered.

And then one evening a whole variety of little things happened together. To start with, Hugh had spent the afternoon going more carefully than usual into books and ledgers, and when he had finished he lit a cigarette and stared a trifle blankly at the wall opposite. There was no doubt about it, business was rotten. Stuff which he had been promised, and for which heavy deposits had been paid, was not forthcoming. It was no fault of the firms he was dealing with; he knew that their letters of regret were real statements of fact. War-weariness, labour unrest, a hundred other almost indefinable causes were at work, and the stuff simply wasn't there to deliver. If he liked, as they had failed in their contract, he could have his deposit back, etc., etc. So ran half a dozen letters, and Hugh turned them over on his desk a little bitterly. It was no good to him having his deposit back; it was no good to him living on his capital. And there was no use mincing matters: as things stood he was making practically no income out of his work. It would adjust itself in time--that he knew. The difficulty was the immediate present and the next few months. What a pity it was he couldn't do as he would have done in the past--take rooms and live really quietly till things adjusted themselves. And then, with a start, he realized why he couldn't, and with a quick tightening of his jaw lie rose and reached for his hat. She must never know--God bless her. Hang it, things would come right soon.

He bought an evening paper on his way down, and glanced over it mechanically.

"If," had written some brilliant contributor, "the nation at large, and individuals in particular, will not realize, and that right soon, that any business or country whose expenditure exceeds its income must inevitably be ruined sooner or later----"

Hugh got no farther. He crushed the paper into a ball and flung it out of the window, muttering viciously under his breath.

"Backed a stiff 'un?" said his neighbour, sympathetically. "I've had five in succession."

He walked from the station a little quicker than usual. There was nothing for it but drastic economy; and as for any idea of the little car Doris was so keen on, it simply couldn't be done. Anyway, as the agent had told him over the 'phone that morning, there was no chance of delivery for at least six months. Had advised getting a secondhand one if urgently needed--except that, of course, at the present moment they were more expensive than new ones. But still one could get one at once--in fact, he had one. Only three-fifty.

Hugh hung up his hat in the hall and stepped into the drawing-room. He could see Doris outside working in the garden, but for a moment or two he made no movement to join her. His eyes were fixed on the huge, luxurious ottoman, covered with wonderful fat cushions. It was undoubtedly the most comfortable thing he had ever sat on: it was made to be sat on, and nightly it was sat on--by both of them. It was the recipient of those intensely personal things so monotonous to the Philistine; and it had cost, with cushions and trappings complete, one hundred and twenty Bradburys.

He was still looking at it thoughtfully when the girl came in through the open window.

"I want a great big kiss, ever so quick, please," she announced, going up to him. "One more. Thank you!"