"Why should it?" Tommy answered his searching gaze with a slightly puzzled look. "Of course, I'm sorry. He was becoming useful. But we couldn't expect him to stop with us always, could we?"
Peter, rubbing his hands, broke into a chuckle. "I told him 'twas all fiddlesticks. Clodd, he would have it you were growing to care for the fellow."
"For Dick Danvers?" Tommy laughed. "Whatever put that into his head?"
"Oh, well, there were one or two little things that we had noticed."
"We?"
"I mean that Clodd had noticed."
I'm glad it was Clodd that noticed them, not you, dad, thought Tommy to herself. They'd have been pretty obvious if you had noticed them.
"It naturally made me anxious," confessed Peter. "You see, we know absolutely nothing of the fellow."
"Absolutely nothing," agreed Tommy.
"He may be a man of the highest integrity. Personally, I think he is. I like him. On the other hand, he may be a thorough-paced scoundrel. I don't believe for a moment that he is, but he may be.
Impossible to say."
"Quite impossible," agreed Tommy.
"Considered merely as a journalist, it doesn't matter. He writes well. He has brains. There's an end of it."
"He is very painstaking," agreed Tommy.
"Personally," added Peter, "I like the fellow." Tommy had returned to her work.
Of what use was Peter in a crisis of this kind? Peter couldn't scold. Peter couldn't bully. The only person to talk to Tommy as Tommy knew she needed to be talked to was one Jane, a young woman of dignity with sense of the proprieties.
"I do hope that at least you are feeling ashamed of yourself," remarked Jane to Tommy that same night, as the twain sat together in their little bedroom.
"Done nothing to be ashamed of," growled Tommy.
"Making a fool of yourself openly, for everybody to notice."
"Clodd ain't everybody. He's got eyes at the back of his head.
Sees things before they happen."
"Where's your woman's pride: falling in love with a man who has never spoken to you, except in terms of the most ordinary courtesy."
"I'm not in love with him."
"A man about whom you know absolutely nothing."
"Not in love with him."
"Where does he come from? Who is he?"
"I don't know, don't care; nothing to do with me."
"Just because of his soft eyes, and his wheedling voice, and that half-caressing, half-devotional manner of his. Do you imagine he keeps it specially for you? I gave you credit for more sense."
"I'm not in love with him, I tell you. He's down on his luck, and I'm sorry for him, that's all."
"And if he is, whose fault was it, do you think?"
"It doesn't matter. We are none of us saints. He's trying to pull himself together, and I respect him for it. It's our duty to be charitable and kind to one another in this world!"
"Oh, well, I'll tell you how you can be kind to him: by pointing out to him that he is wasting his time. With his talents, now that he knows his business, he could be on the staff of some big paper, earning a good income. Put it nicely to him, but be firm. Insist on his going. That will be showing true kindness to him--and to yourself, too, I'm thinking, my dear."
And Tommy understood and appreciated the sound good sense underlying Jane's advice, and the very next day but one, seizing the first opportunity, acted upon it; and all would have gone as contemplated if only Dick Danvers had sat still and listened, as it had been arranged in Tommy's programme that he should.
"But I don't want to go," said Dick.
"But you ought to want to go. Staying here with us you are doing yourself no good."
He rose and came to where she stood with one foot upon the fender, looking down into the fire. His doing this disconcerted her. So long as he remained seated at the other end of the room, she was the sub-editor, counselling the staff for its own good. Now that she could not raise her eyes without encountering his, she felt painfully conscious of being nothing more important than a little woman who was trembling.
"It is doing me all the good in the world," he told her, "being near to you."
"Oh, please do sit down again," she urged him. "I can talk to you so much better when you're sitting down."
But he would not do anything he should have done that day. Instead he took her hands in his, and would not let them go; and the reason and the will went out of her, leaving her helpless.
"Let me be with you always," he pleaded. "It means the difference between light and darkness to me. You have done so much for me.
Will you not finish your work? Will you not trust me? It is no hot passion that can pass away, my love for you. It springs from all that is best in me--from the part of me that is wholesome and joyous and strong, the part of me that belongs to you."
Releasing her, he turned away.
"The other part of me--the blackguard--it is dead, dear,--dead and buried. I did not know I was a blackguard, I thought myself a fine fellow, till one day it came home to me. Suddenly I saw myself as I really was. And the sight of the thing frightened me and I ran away from it. I said to myself I would begin life afresh, in a new country, free of every tie that could bind me to the past. It would mean poverty--privation, maybe, in the beginning. What of that? The struggle would brace me. It would be good sport. Ah, well, you can guess the result: the awakening to the cold facts, the reaction of feeling. In what way was I worse than other men?
Who was I, to play the prig in a world where others were laughing and dining? I had tramped your city till my boots were worn into holes. I had but to abandon my quixotic ideals--return to where shame lay waiting for me, to be welcomed with the fatted calf. It would have ended so had I not chanced to pass by your door that afternoon and hear you strumming on the piano."
So Billy was right, after all, thought Tommy to herself, the piano does help.
"It was so incongruous--a piano in Crane Court--I looked to see where the noise came from. I read the name of the paper on the doorpost. 'It will be my last chance,' I said to myself. 'This shall decide it.'"
