The Good Comrade | Page 8

be arranged at Bath, a place which was a cheap fare from Marbridge. Mrs. Polkington would probably go somewhere for part of the time, then there could be some real retrenchments not otherwise possible. Mary might be dismissed; Mr. Gillat even might come to board with them for a little; the outside world need not know he was a guest that paid.
Julia was not satisfied with these plans; they would barely meet the difficulty she knew, even with credit stretched to the uttermost and the household crippled for some time; but she could think of nothing better, and determined to suggest them to Mrs. Polkington. With these thoughts in her mind, she went up-stairs; as she passed the drawing-room, she noticed that the blinds had not been pulled down; she went to the window to remedy the omission, and so saw in the street below the young man who, with the debt owing to him, she had lately dismissed from her mind. There was a street lamp directly below the window, and she stood a moment by the curtain looking down. Mr. Rawson-Clew was riding past, but slowly; it was quite possible to see his face, which did not contradict her former opinion--good-natured but foolish, and possibly weak. He turned in his saddle just below the window to speak to his companion, and she noticed that it was a stranger with him, a man wearing a single eyeglass, ten years older than the other, and of a totally different stamp. Indeed, of a stamp differing from any she had seen at Marbridge, so much so that she wondered how he came to be here, and what he was doing. But this was rather a waste of time, for the next day she knew.
The next day he came down the street again, but this time alone and on foot. He stopped at No. 27, and there asked for Captain Polkington. Julia, hearing the knock, and the visitor subsequently being ushered into the dining-room, guessed it must be Mr. Gillat, perhaps come with his parcel again; when she saw Mary she asked her.
"No, miss," was the answer; "it's another gentleman to see the master."
"Who?" Julia's mind was alert for fresh difficulties.
"Mr. Rawson-Clew."
"I don't know who he is," Mary went on; "I've never set eyes on him before, but he's a grand sort of gentleman; I hardly liked to put him in the dining-room, only missis's orders was 'Mr. Gillat or any gentleman to see the master there.'"
Which was true enough, and might reasonably have been reckoned a safe order, for no one but Mr. Gillat ever did come to see the Captain.
"I hope I've done right," Mary said.
"Quite right," Julia answered, though she did not feel so sure of it. The name and the vague description of the visitor somehow suggested to her mind the stranger who had ridden past with young Mr. Rawson-Clew. She went up-stairs, uneasy as much from intuition as from experience. In the hall she stood a minute. The dining-room door did not shut too well, the lock was old and worn, and unless it was fastened carefully, it came open; the Captain never managed to fasten it, and now it stood ajar; Julia could hear something of what was said within almost as soon as she reached the top of the kitchen stairs. The visitor spoke quietly, his words were not audible, but the Captain's voice was raised with excitement.
"The money, sir, the money that your cousin lent--accommodation between gentlemen--"
So Julia heard incompletely, and then another disjointed sentence.
"Do you take me for an adventurer, a sharper? I am a soldier, sir, a soldier and a gentleman--at least, I was--I mean I was a soldier, I am a gentleman--"
Julia came swiftly up the hall, the instinct of the female to spread frail wings and protect her helpless belongings (old equally as much as young) was strong upon her. The pushed open the dining-room door and walked in.
"Father," she said, "is anything the matter?"
Both men turned, the stranger clearly surprised and annoyed by the interruption, the Captain for a moment thinking of pulling himself together and dismissing his daughter with a lie. But he did not do it; he was too shaken to think quickly, also there was a sense of reinforcement in her presence; this he did not realise; indeed, he realised nothing except that she spoke again before he had collected himself.
"Is it about the money Mr. Rawson-Clew lent you?" she asked.
He nodded, and she turned to the other man, who had risen on her entrance, and now stood with his back to the evil-smelling stove which Mary had lighted as usual in honour of Captain Polkington's visitors. She measured him swiftly, and no detail escaped her; the well-bred impassive face, where the annoyance caused by her