hoping against hope—as he thought. In point of fact he spent a great portion of this time in dropping asleep and being awakened by nearly falling off the chair. He was sometimes tempted to expend this chair-penny in food, but restrained the base cravings of his lower nature. He pictured himself arrayed in the correctest of dress, nonchalantly seated on a Park chair, gaily observing the gyrations of the giddy throng of fashionable human ephemeræ—suddenly seeing Peggy, and rising, accosting her with graceful badinage, airy flippancy, and casual interest. Peggy would laugh and talk amusingly and lightly, he would beg her to come and lunch with him at the Club, or take tea if such were the hour; he would feast his eyes and ears and soul as he had promised himself—and then?—then he would lay down his arms and cease to fight this relentless Foe—sickness, disease, and death—that besieged him day and night, and sought to prevent his walk to the Club, sought to thwart the pursuit of his Quest. Having seen Peggy again, heard her laugh and speak, looked into her hopelessly perfect and wonderful eyes, he would surrender the fortress he no longer wished to hold, and would permit the Enemy to enter—trusting that le bon Dieu, Le Bon Général, would see to it that, for a broken old soldier, death was annihilation, peace, and rest....
Daily he grew thinner, as a sick man living on fourpence a day must, and frequently he would finger the sovereign that always lay in his waistcoat pocket—ready for the day when Peggy should lunch at the Club with him. It is not wholly easy to keep a sovereign intact while you slowly starve and every fibre of your being craves for tobacco, for brandy, for food—as you smell choice Havanas in the Club smoking-room, see fat, healthy men drinking their whiskies and brandies, and when you are violently smitten by rich savours of food as you pass the door of the dining-room.
The fragrance of coffee and eggs-and-bacon! The glimpse of noble barons of beef on the sideboard! The sight of tea-and-toast at four in the afternoon when you have had nothing since four in the morning! But the sovereign remained intact. With that he and Peggy could have an excellent lunch—without wine—and Peggy never touched wine....
* * *
He started to his feet.
"I really beg your pardon! I am afraid I..." A stranger had awakened him as he slept in a smoking-room arm-chair.... He did not recollect how he came to do such a thing when he should have been in the Park.... What was the man saying—"Ill?"
"I was afraid you were ill. To tell the truth, I jolly well thought you were dead for the moment. Let me drive you to my doctor's. Splendid chap. Just going that way.... No—don't run away."
"Most awfully kind," replied Geoffry, peering through the veil, "but I'm quite all right. Just a bit tired, you know. I am going to have a real Rest soon.... At present I have a Quest."
The poor devil looked absolutely starved, thought Colonel Doddington. Positively ghastly.
"Come and have some lunch with me," he said, "and let me tell you about this doctor of mine, anyhow."
Geoffry flushed—though it was remarkable that there was sufficient blood in so meagre a body and feeble a heart for the purpose.
Lunch! A four-course lunch in a beautiful room—silver, crystal, fine napery, good service—perhaps wine, certainly alcohol of some sort, and real coffee....
It was a cruel temptation. But he put it from him. After all, one was a gentleman, and a gentleman does not accept hospitality which he cannot return, from a stranger.
"Awfully sorry—but I must go," he replied. "I'm feeding out." He was—late that night, on twopence.
He fled, and outside mopped his brow. It had been a terrible temptation and ordeal. For two pins he would go back and have a brandy-and-soda at the cost of two days' food. No, he dared not risk collapse—and two days' complete starvation would probably mean collapse. Collapse meant expense too, and money was time to him. The expenditure of more than fourpence a day would shorten the time of his Quest. A day lost, was a chance lost. She might pass through London at that very time, if he lay ill in the Hammersmith Rowton House.
That night he had to take a 'bus home or lie down in the street. Next day, dressing took so long and his walk to the Club was so painful and slow, that he had to omit the Bond Street, Regent Street, and Piccadilly walk, and go straight to the Park.
There he had shocking luck. A zealous but clumsy policeman rendered him First Aid to the Fainting with such violence that he spoilt the collar and shirt-front that should have lasted another two days. Why could not the worthy fool have left him to come out of his faint alone? He went into it alone, all right. And there was an accursed, gaping crowd. Nor could he give the policeman two pennies, and so gave him nothing—which was very distressing. A most unlucky day!
Well—the days of his Quest were numbered, and the number was lessened.
Next day he found the Enemy very powerful and the tottering fortress closely beset. He would be hard put to it to walk to the Club—but come!—an old Legionary who had done his fifty kilometres a day under a hundred-weight kit, over loose sand, with the thermometer at 120° in the shade; and who had lived on a handful of rice-flour and a mouthful of selenitic water in the Sahara—surely he was not going to shirk a stroll from Hammersmith Broadway to Pall Mall and round the Town to the Park?
He had got as far as Devonshire House, when a lady, who was driving from the Berkeley Hotel, where she had been lunching, to the Coburg Hotel, where she was to have tea with friends who were taking her on to Ranelagh, suddenly saw him and thought she saw a ghost. As her carriage crawled through the crush into Berkeley Street it brought her within a yard of him.
She turned very pale and lay back on the cushions. Immediately she sat upright again, and then leaned towards him. It could not be! Not this poor wreck, this shattered ruin—her splendid Geoff—the Geoff who had seemed to love her, five years ago, and had suddenly dropped her, and so been the cause of her marrying in haste and repenting in even greater haste, to the day of her widowhood.
"Geoff!" she said.
He raised his hat with a trembling hand and his face was transfigured.... Was he dying on his feet, wondered the woman.
"Get in, Geoff," she said, and the footman half-turned and then jumped down.
Geoffry Brabazon-Howard, with a great and almost final effort, stepped into the victoria.
"Will you come to lunch with me at..." he began, and then burst into tears.
Later, it was the woman who wept, tears of joy and thankfulness, after the agonizing suspense when the great specialist staked his reputation on his plain verdict that the man was not organically diseased. He was in a parlous state, no doubt, practically dying of starvation and nervous exhaustion—but nursing could save him.
Nursing did—the nursing of Lady Peggy Brabazon-Howard.
XII. "Vengeance Is Mine..."
As Jean Rien expressed it, he was bien touché; as le Légionnaire 'Erbiggin put it, he had got it in the neck; as the Bucking Bronco "allowed," his monica was up; as Jean Boule saw, he was dying.
One cannot blame him, since an Arab lance had pinned him to the ground and an Arab flissa had nearly severed his arm from his shoulder.
Jean
