Read Ebook: The Beggar Man by Ayres Ruby M Ruby Mildred

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Ebook has 1178 lines and 31264 words, and 24 pages

"I didn't mean to be hard and cruel," she said over and over again. "It would have broken my heart if he had taken you away from me."

"He wanted me to go and I wouldn't," Faith said. She tried to believe that she was quite happy cuddled into her mother's arms, but she knew that she was not. There was something old and sad in her heart which would never leave her again she knew. She listened apathetically while Mrs. Ledley spoke of her husband.

"You haven't forgotten him, Faith? You haven't so soon forgotten your father? He was so good to you. He loved you all so much. This man ruined him and caused his death. I know that my little girl could not love such a man."

"I wanted you to be rich," Faith whispered brokenly. "I wanted everything for you and the twins."

She sat up with sudden energy, pushing the dark hair from her face. "I hope I never see him again!" she said fiercely. "I hope he never comes home any more!..."

Faith went back to the factory the next day and asked to be taken on again. Miss Dell would like to have refused, but she met Peg's fierce eyes across the room and changed her mind, and Faith was reinstated.

There was not much time for talking that morning. There was a rush of work on hand and hardly a moment to spare, but during the dinner hour Peg asked a storm of questions.

"What has happened? He's not coming back, of course! What a brute! Didn't I always say he was a brute?"

Faith shivered.

There were moments when she still clung passionately to the hope that there was some mistake--that when he came back he would be able to explain and put matters right. And there were other times when she shrank from the very thought of him, and only wished to be able to forget those few days of delirium.

She would not even confide in Peg. All she would do was to beg her to ask no questions.

"It's all over and done with," she said tremblingly. "You said he would not come back. I hope he never will."

"I said I should not be at all surprised if he didn't," Peg answered. "But, of course, he may do. Sometimes in novelettes the villain of the story turns out to be the hero after all, you know."

Faith did not think it was at all likely in this case, and the days began slowly to creep away.

When a fortnight had gone and the seventeenth day drew near, panic closed about her heart. Supposing he came after all?

She had had no word from him, and she hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. Perhaps it meant that he never would come back. She wished she could believe this.

At other times, lying awake at night in her little room with its sloping roof, against her will she was forced to remember every word the Beggar Man had said to her, every kindly action that he had done, and there was always a great unanswered question in her mind.

"Why did he marry me if he was bad, as they say he is? He need not have married me. There are heaps of other girls in the world."

Mr. Shawyer wrote and begged her to go and see him, but she neither went nor answered the letter.

She spent as much of her time with Peg as possible, and the elder girl once more resumed her r?le of friend and protector.

"If you're worrying about that good-for-nothing!" she said to Faith one day in her blunt manner, "you're a little fool. There are as good fish in the sea as any that were caught, my girl, and don't you make any mistake. Let old Scammel stay in America. Jolly good riddance, I say!"

Faith did not answer, but her nerves were tearing her to pieces. Every time a man's voice sounded in the passages of the factory or a door opened suddenly she was sure it was the Beggar Man come back to find and claim her. Every time she heard the sound of a motor coming up the street her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe. She never knew how she dragged through the seventeenth day, but it passed somehow, and the eighteenth and nineteenth and twentieth, and still there was no sign of Nicholas Forrester.

She began to pluck up courage. He would not come now, she was sure. If he had returned to England he had found her wedding ring and the returned money and had understood what she meant. Perhaps even he had repented as much as she, long before he got back home.

Or perhaps he was still abroad! That would be best of all, if she could only be sure that the sea was still dividing them.

Five days after Nicholas was due to return Mrs. Ledley spoke of him.

"He'll never come back, Faith." There was triumphant thankfulness in her voice. "Somehow I felt all along that he would never come back."

Faith could not answer. Though her fear had decreased it was not yet dead, and only last night she had dreamed of the Beggar Man, dreamed that she was on one side of a locked door on which he knocked, knocked ceaselessly. It was early evening, and Faith had come home from work to find Mrs. Ledley dressed to go out.

"You won't be long, mother, will you?" she urged. She dreaded being alone in the house. Though it was early evening, the twins were in bed and asleep, and everything seemed very still.

"I shan't be long," her mother answered, "but I must have a breath of air. The house has stifled me all day. I can't breathe at all sometimes."

Faith watched her down the street and went back indoors.

"Mother!" said Faith. She broke away like a mad thing from the arms that would have held her and rushed to the gate. She gave one look at the white face of the woman they were carrying home and screamed, hiding her face with distraught hands.

Mrs. Ledley was dead. She had been walking along quite naturally, so they said, and suddenly had been seen to fall.

There was nothing to be done. Hard work and sorrow and bitterness had taken their toll of her strength and ended her life.

Faith could not shed a tear. After that first wild scream she had been silent. She went to the room where the twins lay sleeping and crouched down beside them, desperately holding a chubby hand of each.

Downstairs a kindly neighbour was in charge of the house; presently she came upstairs to Faith and bent over her.

"A gentleman, dearie. I told him you couldn't see anyone, but he seemed so distressed. I promised to tell you. He says he must see you, and such a nice gentleman he is."

Faith turned her face away.

"I can't! I don't want anyone! Leave me alone!"

The woman sighed and went away, and presently another step ascended the narrow stairs--a man's heavier step.

Faith was crouched against the bed, facing the door, her eyes closed, her cheek pressed to the sleeping hands to which she clung. Someone spoke her name through the silent room: "Faith!" and then again, with deepest pity: "Faith!"

The girl did not move. For a moment she thought she was dreaming, and that the voice had spoken in her dream. Then as she looked up with a wild hope that it was so--that all the past hour would prove to be nothing but a terrible nightmare--her dazed, piteous eyes met those of the Beggar Man.

All his life Nicholas Forrester remembered that room with its sloping roof and poor furniture, and the sleeping twins lying on the bed, with Faith, little more than a child herself, crouched on the floor beside them.

Hot evening sunshine shone through the narrow window and fell right upon the motherless little group, as with a stifled exclamation he went forward and, stooping, lifted Faith to her feet.

"My poor little girl," he said, keeping his arms round her, and though she made no effort to resist him, she stood apathetically enough, only turning her head away when he would have kissed her.

He broke out into incoherent explanations.

"I only got to Liverpool last night. We ran into a fog-bank and had to reduce speed. I tried to let you know but it seemed hopeless. I came as quickly as I could."

She heard what he said disinterestedly, wondering why he chose to make explanations at all, and when he had finished she looked at him with dazed brown eyes.

"Mother is dead; did they tell you?"

"The woman downstairs told me. I can't tell you how grieved I am. If I had only been here. If I had only been able to help."

The girl looked at him blankly; he had a kind face she thought, even as she had thought that time of their first meeting, but now she knew that he was not really kind or anything that he looked. He was Scammel who had ruined her father, Scammel for whose sake all those girls at Heeler's factory worked and sweated, and made money whereby to enrich him.

"I don't know why you came here, anyway," she said helplessly.

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