I stared at it for a moment in unthinking wonder, and then in a twinkling it flashed across me what these portraits were, and above all, what this portrait of Jim, placed in this scoundrel’s album meant. I remembered how anxious the Colonel had been as the lad’s examination drew near; how bitterly he had denounced the competitive system, and vowed a dozen times a day that, what with pundits and crammers and young officers who should have been girls and gone to Girton, the service was going to the dogs. “To the dogs, do you hear me, sir!” And then I recalled his great relief when the boy came out quite high up; and the change which had at once taken place in his sentiments. “We must move with the times, sir; it is no good running your head against a brick wall! We must move with the times, begad!” and so forth. And — well, I let fall a pretty strong word, at which the Colonel turned.
“What is it, Major?” he said. But, seeing me standing motionless by the window, he turned again and spoke to the young man beside him. “Well, think about it, and let me know at that address. Now,” he continued, advancing towards me, “what is it, Joe?”
“What is what?” I said. I had shut the album by this time, and was standing between him and the table on which it lay. I do not know why — perhaps it came of the kindness he had been doing — but I noticed in a way I had never noticed before what a fine figure of a man, tall and straight, my old comrade still was. And a bit of a dimness, such as I have experienced once or twice lately when I have taken a third glass of sherry at lunch, came over my sight. “Confound it!” I said.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something in my eye!”
“Let me get it out,” he said — always the kindest fellow under the sun.
“No! I’ll get it out myself!” I snarled like a bear with a sore head. And, without stopping to explain I plunged out of the room and down the stairs. The Colonel, wondering no doubt what was the matter with me, followed more at his leisure, after pausing to say a last word to the young rascal at the door, whom I had not had the patience to speak to: so that I had already closed a warm dispute with the cabman, by sending him off with a flea in his ear and his fare to a sixpence, when the Colonel overtook me.
“What is up, Joe?” he asked, laying his hand on my shoulder.
“That d —— d dizziness came over me again. But there, I have always said the ‘73 sherry at the club is not sound. I do not feel quite up to the mark,” I continued with truth. “I think I will go home alone, Colonel — for to-day, if you do not mind.”
“I do mind,” he said stoutly. “You may want an arm.” But somehow I made it clear to him that I would rather go alone, and that the walk would do me good, and he got into a hansom at last and drove off, his grey moustache and fine old nose peering at me round the side of the cab, until a corner hid him altogether.
I walked on a few paces, waving my umbrella cheerfully. Then I stopped, and, retracing my steps, I mounted the staircase of twenty-seven, and without parley opened the door. The young fellow we had left was pacing the floor, turning over in his mind, I fancied, what the Colonel had said to him. He stood still on seeing me, and then glanced round the room. “Have you forgotten anything?” he said.
“Nothing, young man,” I answered. “I want to ask you a question.”
“You can ask,” he replied, eyeing me askance.
“That album,” I said, pointing to it— “it contains, I suppose, the photographs of the people you have been employed to personate?”
“Possibly.”
“But does it?”
“I did not know,” he said slowly, the most provoking manner, “that I had to do with a detective. What is the charge?”
“There is no charge,” I answered, keeping my temper really admirably. “But I have seen the face of a friend of mine in that book, and I’ll in a word, I’ll be hanged, young man, if I don’t learn all about it!” I continued. “All — do you hear? So there! Now, out with it, and do not keep me waiting, you young rascal!”
He only whistled and stared; and finding I was getting a little warm, I took out my handkerchief, and wiping my forehead, sat down, the thought of the Colonel’s grief taking all the strength out of me. “Look here,” I said in a different tone, “I’ll take back what I have just said, and I give you my word of honour I do not want to harm the — the gentleman. But I have seen his portrait, and, if I know no more, must think the worse. Now I will give you a ten-pound note if you will answer three questions.”
He shook his head; but I saw that he wavered. “I did not show you the portrait,” he said. “If you have seen it, that is your business. I will name no names.”
“I want none,” I answered. I threw open the album at the tell-tale photograph, and laid my shaky finger on the face. “Was this sent to you that you might personate the original?”
He nodded.
“From what place?”
He considered a moment. Then he said reluctantly: “From Frome, in Somerset, I believe.”
“Last year?”
He nodded. Alas! Jim had been at a crammer’s near Frome. Jim had passed his examination during the last year. I took out the money and gave it to the man; and a minute later I was standing in the street with a sentence common enough at mess in the old days, ringing in my ears: “Refer it to the Colonel! He is the soul of honour.”
The soul of honour! Ay! And what would he think of this? The soul of honour! And his son, his son Jim, had done this! I walked through the streets, lost in amazement. I had loved the boy right well myself, and was ready to choke on my own account when I thought of him. But his father — I knew that his father was wrapped up in him. His father had been a mother to him as well, and that for years — had bought him toys as a lad, and furnished his quarters later with things of which only a mother would have thought. It would kill his father.
I wiped my forehead as I thought of this and put my latchkey into the door in Pont Street. I walked in with a heavy sigh — I do not know that I ever entered with so sad a heart — and the next moment, with a flutter of skirts, Kitty was out of the dining-room, where I do not doubt she had been watching for me, and in my arms. Before Heaven! until I saw her I had not thought of her — I had never considered her at all in connection with this matter! No, nor how I should deal with her, until I heard her say, with her face on my shoulder, and her eyes looking into mine: “Oh, father, father, I am happy! Be the first to wish me joy.”
Wish her joy! I could not. I could only mutter, “Wait, girl — wait, wait!” and lead her into the dining-room, and, turning my back on her, go to the window and look out — though for all I saw I might have had my head in a soot-bag. She was alarmed of course — but to save her that I could not face her. She came after me and clung to my arm, asking me again and again what it was.
“Nothing, nothing,” I said. “There — wait a minute; don’t you know that I shall lose you?”
“Father,” she said, trying to look into my face, “it is not that. You know you will not lose me! There is something else the matter. There is something you are hiding from me! Ah! Jim went in a cab, and — —”
“Jim is all right.” I answered, feeling her hand fall from my arm. “In that way at any rate.”
“Then I am not afraid,” she answered stoutly, “if you and Jim are all right.”
“Look here, Kitty,” I said, making up my mind, “sit down, I want to talk to you.”
And she did sit down, and I told her all. With some girls it might not have been the best course; but Kitty is not like most of the girls I meet nowadays — of whom one half are blue stockings, with no more fitness for the duties of wives and mothers than the statuettes in a shop window, and the other half are misses in white muslin, who are always giggling pertly or sitting with their thumbs in their mouths. Kitty is a companion, a helpmeet, God bless her! She knows that Wellington did not fight at Blenheim, and she does not think that Lucknow is in the Crimea. She knows so much, though she knows no Greek and she loves dancing — her very eyes da
nce at the thought of it. But she would rather sit at home with the man she loves than waltz at Marlborough House. And if she has not learned a little fortification on the sly, and does not know how many men stand between Jim and his company — I am a Dutchman! Lord! when I see a man marry a doll with a pretty face — not that Kitty has not a pretty face, and a sweet one too, no thanks to her father — I wonder whether he has considered what it will be to sit opposite my lady at, say, twenty thousand nine hundred meals on an average! That is the test, sir.
So I told Kitty all, and the way she took it showed me that I was right. “What?” she exclaimed, when I had finished the story, to which she had listened, with her face turned from me, and her arm on the mantelpiece, “is that all, father?”
“My dear,” I said sadly, “you do not understand.” I remembered how often I had heard — and sometimes noticed — that women’s ideas of honour differ from men’s.
“Understand!” she retorted, turning upon me, fiery hot. “I understand that you think Jim has done this mean, miserable, wretched thing. Father,” she continued, with sudden gravity, and she laid both her hands on my shoulders, so that her brave eyes looked into my eyes, “if three people came to you and told you that I had gone into your bedroom and taken money from the cash-box in your cupboard to pay a bill of mine, and that when I had done it I had kept it from you, and told stories about it — if three, four, five people told you that they had seen me do it, would you believe them?”
“No, Kitty,” I said, smiling against my will, “not though five angels told me so, my dear. I know you too well.”
“And, sir, though five angels told me this, I would not believe it! Do you think I do not know him — and love him?”
And the foolish girl, who had begun to waltz round the room like a mad thing, stopped and looked at me with tears in her eyes and her lips quivering.
I could not but take some comfort from her confidence.
“True,” I said. “The Colonel brought him up, and it seems hardly possible that the lad should turn out so bad. But the photograph, my girl — the photograph? What do you say to that? It was Jim, I swear. I could not be mistaken. There could not be another so like him.”
“There is no one like him,” she said softly.
“Very well. And then I have noticed that he has been in bad spirits lately. I’m afraid — I’m afraid a bad conscience, my dear.”
“You dear old donkey!” she answered, shaking me with both her hands. “That was about me. He has told me all that. He thought Mr. Farquhar — Mr. Farquhar, indeed!”
“Oh, that was it, was it?” I said. “Well, that may account for his depression. But look you here, Kitty; was he not rather nervous about his examination?”
“A little,” she answered with reluctance.
“And, nonetheless, did he not come out pretty high?”
“Seventeenth. Thirteen thousand four hundred and twenty-six marks,” Kitty replied glibly.
“Just so! And if he had failed he would have suffered in your eyes?”
“Not a scrap. And, besides, he did not fail,” she retorted.
“But he may have thought he would suffer,” I answered, “if he failed. That would be a sharp temptation, Kitty.”
She did not reply at once. She was busy rolling up a ribbon of her frock into the smallest possible compass, and unrolling it again. At last — it was clear I had made her think —
“I know he did not do it,” she said, “but that is all I do know. I cannot prove to you that white is not black; but it is not, and I know it is not.”
“Well, my dear, I hope you are right,” I answered. And it cheered me to find that she held him worthy of confidence.
She promised readily to let me have the first word with the lad when he called next day. And as for undertaking to have nothing more to do with him if the charge proved to be true, she made nothing of that — because, as she said, it meant nothing.
“A Jim who had done that would not be my Jim at all,” she explained gaily, “but quite a different Jim — a James, sir.”
Certainly, a girl’s faith is a wonderful thing. And hers so far affected me that I regretted I had not taken a bolder course, and, showing the photograph to the Colonel, had the whole thing threshed out on the spot. Possibly I might have saved myself a very wretched hour or two. But no; on second thoughts I could not see how the boy could be innocent. I could not help piecing the evidence together — the damning evidence, as it seemed to me; the certain identity of Jim with the original of the photograph, the arrival of the latter from Frome, where the lad had spent the last weeks previous to his examination, the fears he had expressed before the ordeal, and his success beyond his hopes at it; these things seemed almost conclusive. I had only the boy’s character, his father’s training, and his sweetheart’s faith, to set against them.
His sweetheart’s faith, did I say? Ah, well! when I came down to breakfast next morning, whom should I find in tears — and she, as a rule, the most equable girl in the world — but Kitty.
“Hallo!” I said. “What is all this?”
At the sound of my voice she sprang to her feet. She had been kneeling by the fireplace groping with her hands inside the fender. Her cheeks were crimson, and she was crying — yes, certainly crying, although she tried by a hasty dab of the flimsy thing she calls a pocket-handkerchief to remove the traces.
“Well!” I said, for she was dumb. “What is it, my dear?”
“I have — torn up a letter,” she answered, a little sob dividing the sentence into two.
“So I see,” I answered dryly. “And now, I suppose, you are sorry for it.”
“It was a horrid letter, father,” she cried, her eyes shining like electric lamps in a shower— “about Jim.”
“Indeed,” I said, with a very nasty feeling inside me. “What about Jim? And why did you tear it up, my dear? One half of it, I should say, has gone into the fire.”
“It was from — a woman!” she answered.
And presently she told me that the letter, which was unsigned, asserted that Jim had played with the affections of the writer, and warned Kitty to be on her guard against him, and not to be a party to the wrong he was doing an innocent girl.
“Pooh!” I said, with a contemptuous laugh. “That cock will not fight, my dear. It has been tried over and over again. You do not mean to say that that has made you cry? Why, if so, you are — you are just as big a fool as any girl I know.”
In truth, I was surprised to find Kitty’s faith in her lover, which had been proof against a charge made on the best of evidence, fail before an unsigned accusation — because, forsooth, it mentioned a woman. “What postmark did it bear?” I asked.
“Frome,” she murmured.
That was certainly odd — very odd. Pretty devilments I knew those fellows at crammers’ were up to sometimes. Could it be that we were mistaken in Master Jim, as I have once or twice known a lad’s family to be mistaken in him? Was he all the time an out-and-out bad one? Or had he some enemy at Frome plotting against his happiness? This seemed most unlikely and absurd besides; since we had lit upon Isaac Gold by a chance, and on the portrait by a chance within a chance, and no enemy, however acute — not Machiavelli himself — could have foreseen the rencontre or arranged the circumstances which had led me to the photograph. Therefore, though the anonymous letter might be the work of an ill-wisher, I did not see how the other could be. However, I gathered up the few fragments of writing which had escaped the fire, and put them aside, to serve, if need be, for evidence.
On one thing I was making up my mind, however — I must put an end to the matter between Jim and my girl unless he could clear himself of these suspicions — when what should I hear but his voice, and his father’s, in the hall. There is something in the sound of a familiar voice which so recalls our knowledge of the speaker that I know nothing which pierces the cloud of doubt more thoroughly. At any rate, when the two came in, I jumped up and gave a hand to each. Behind Jim�
��s back one might suspect him: confronted by his open eyes, and his brown, honest, boyish face — well, by the Lord! I could as soon suspect my old comrade, God bless him!
“Jim,” I found myself saying, his hand in mine, and every one of my prudent resolutions gone to the wind, “Jim, my boy, I am a happy man. Take her and be good to her, and God bless you! No, Colonel, no,” I continued in desperate haste, “I do not ask a question. Let the lad take her. If your son cannot be trusted no one can. There, I am glad that is settled.”
I verily believe I was almost blubbering; and though I said only what I should have said if this confounded matter had never arisen, I let drop, it seems, enough to set the Colonel questioning, for in five minutes I had told him the whole story of the photograph.
It was pleasant to observe his demeanour. Though he never for a moment lost his faith in Jim — mind, he had not seen the portrait — and his eyes continued to shoot little glances of confidence at his son, he drew back his chair and squared his shoulders, and assumed a judicial air.
“Now, sir,” he said, with his hands on his knees, “this must be explained. We are much obliged to the Major for bringing it to our notice. You will be good enough to explain, my lad.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 821