Matravers walked back to his rooms and ordered his portmanteau to be packed. Then he went out, and after making all his arrangements for an absence from town, bought a Bradshaw. There were two trains, he found, by which he could travel, one at three, the other at half-past four. He arranged to catch the earlier one, and drove to his club for lunch. Afterwards he strolled towards the smoking-room, but finding it unusually full, was on the point of withdrawing. As he lingered on the threshold, a woman’s name fell upon his ears. The speaker was Mr. Thorndyke. He became rigid.

“Why, yes, I gave her the victoria,” he was saying. “We called it a birthday present, or something of that sort. I supposed every one knew about that. Those little arrangements generally are known somehow!”

The innuendo was unmistakable. Matravers advanced with his usual leisurely walk to the little group of men.

“I beg your pardon,” he said quietly. “I understood Mr. Thorndyke to say, I believe, that he had given a carriage to a certain lady. Am I correct?”

Thorndyke turned upon him sharply. There was a sudden silence in the crowded room. Matravers’ clear, cold voice, although scarcely raised above the pitch of ordinary conversation, had penetrated to its furthest corner.

“And if I did, sir! What——”

“These gentlemen will bear me witness that you did say so?” Matravers interrupted calmly. “I regret to have to use unpleasant language, Mr. Thorndyke, but I am compelled to tell you, and these gentlemen, that your statement is a lie!”

Thorndyke was a florid and a puffy man. The veins upon his temples stood out like whipcord. He was not a pleasant sight to look upon.

“What do you mean, sir?” he spluttered. “The carriage was mine before she had it. Everybody recognizes it.”

“Exactly. The carriage was yours. You intended every one to recognize it. But you have omitted to state, both here and in other places, that the lady bought that carriage from you for two hundred and sixty guineas—a good deal more than its worth, I should imagine. You heard her say that she was thinking of buying a victoria, and you offered her yours—pressed her to buy it. It was too small for your horses, you said, and you were hard up. You even had it sent round to her stables without her consent. I have heard this story before, sir, and I have furnished myself with proofs of its falsehood. This, gentlemen,” he added, drawing some papers from his pocket, “is Mr. Thorndyke’s receipt for the two hundred and sixty guineas for a victoria, signed, as you will see, in his own handwriting, and here is the lady’s cheque with Mr. Thorndyke’s endorsement, cancelled and paid.”

The papers were handed round. Thorndyke picked up his hat, but Matravers barred his egress.

“With regard to the insinuation which you coupled with your falsehood,” he continued, “both are equally and absolutely false. I know her to be a pure and upright woman. A short time ago you took advantage of your position to make certain cowardly and disgraceful propositions to her, since when her doors have been closed upon you! I would have you know, sir, and remember, that the honour of that lady, whom last night I asked to be my wife, is as dear to me as my own, and if you dare now, or at any future time, to slander her, I shall treat you as you deserve. You can go.”

“And be very careful, sir,” thundered the old Earl of Ellesmere, veteran member of the club, “that you never show your face inside these doors again, or, egad, I’m an old man, but I’ll kick you out myself.”

Thorndyke left the room amidst a chilling and unsympathetic silence. As soon as he could get away, Matravers followed him. There was a strange pain at his heart, a sense of intolerable depression had settled down upon him. After all, what good had he done? Only a few more days and her name, which for the moment he had cleared, would be besmirched in earnest. His impeachment of Thorndyke would sound to these men then like mock heroics. There would be no one to defend her any more. There would be no defence. For ever in the eyes of all these people she was doomed to become one of the Magdalens of the world.

It seemed a very unreal London through which Matravers was whirled on his way from the club to Paddington. But before a third of the distance was accomplished, there was a sudden check. A little boy, who had wandered from his nurse in crossing the road, narrowly escaped being run over by a carriage and pair, only to find himself knocked down by the shaft of Matravers’ hansom. There was a cry, and the driver pulled his horse on to her haunches, but apparently just a second too late. With a sickening sense of horror, Matravers saw the little fellow literally under the horse’s feet, and heard his shrill cry of terror.

He leaped out, and was the first to pick the child up, immeasurably relieved to find that after all he was not seriously hurt. His clothes were torn, and his hands were scratched, and there, apparently, the mischief ended. Matravers lifted him into the cab, and turned to the frightened nurse-girl for the address.

“Nine, Greenfield Gardens, West Kensington, sir,” she told him; “and please tell the master it wasn’t my fault. He is so venturesome, I can’t control him nohow. His name is Drage—Freddy Drage, sir.”

And then once more Matravers felt that strange dizziness which had come to him earlier in the day. Again he had that curious sense of moving in a dream, as though he had, indeed, become part of an unreal and shadowy world. The renewed motion of the cab as they drove back again along Pall Mall, recalled him to himself. He leaned back and looked at the boy steadily.

Yes, they were her eyes. There was no doubt about it. The little fellow, not in the least shy, and, in fact, now become rather proud of his adventure, commenced to prattle very soon. Matravers interrupted him with a question,—

“Won’t your mother be frightened to see you like this?” The child stared at him with wide-open eyes.

“Why, mammy ain’t there,” he exclaimed. “Mammy went away ever so long ago. I don’t think she’s dead, though, ’cos daddy wouldn’t let me talk about her, only just lately, since he was ill. You see,” he went on with an explanatory wave of the hand, “daddy’s been a very bad man. He’s better now—leastways, he ain’t so bad as he was; but I ’spect that’s why mammy went away. Don’t you?”

“I daresay, Freddy,” Matravers answered softly.

“We’re getting very near now,” Freddy remarked, looking over the apron of the cab. “My! won’t dada be surprised to see me drive up in a cab with you! I hope he’s at the window!”

“Will your father be at home now?” Matravers asked.

Freddy stared at him.

“Why, of course! Dad’s always at home! Is my face very buggy? Don’t rub it any more, please. That’s Jack Mason over there! I play with him. I want him to see me. Hullo! Jack,” he shouted, leaning out of the cab, “I’ve been run over, right over, face all buggy. Look at it! Hands too,” spreading them out. “He’s a nice boy,” Freddy continued as the cab turned a corner, “but he can’t run near so fast as me, and he’s lots older. Hullo! here we are!” kicking vigorously at the apron.

Matravers looked up in surprise. They had stopped short before a long row of shabby-genteel houses in the outskirts of Kensington. He took the boy’s outstretched hand and pushed open the gate. The door was open, and Freddy dragged him into a room on the ground floor.

A man was lying on a sofa before the window, wrapped in an untidy dressing-gown, and with the lower part of his body covered up with a rug. His face, fair and florid, with more than a suggestion of coarseness in the heavy jaw and thick lips, was drawn and wrinkled as though with pain. His lips wore an habitually peevish expression. He did not offer to rise when they came in. Matravers was thankful that Freddy spared him the necessity of immediate speech. He had recognized in a moment the man who had sat alone night after night in the back seats of the New Theatre, whose slow drawn-out cry of agony had so curiously affected him on that night of her performance. He recognized, too, the undergraduate of his college sent down for flagrant misbehaviour, the leader of a set whom he himself had denounced as a disgrace to the University. And this man was her husband!

“Daddy,” the boy cried, dropping Matravers’ hand and running over to the couch, “I’ve been run over by a hansom cab, and I’m all buggy, but I ain’t hurt, and this gentleman brought me home. Daddy can’t get up, you know,” Freddy explained; “his legs is bad.”

“Run over, eh!” exclaimed the man on the couch. “It’s like that girl’s damned carelessness.”

He patted the boy’s head, not unkindly, and Matravers found words.

“My cab unfortunately knocked your little boy down near Trafalgar Square, but I am thankful to say that he was not hurt. I thought that I had better bring him straight home, though, as he has had a roll in the dust.”

At the sound of Matravers’ voice, the man started and looked at him earnestly. A dull red flush stained his cheeks. He looked away.

“It was very good of you, Mr. Matravers,” he said. “I can’t think what the girl could have been about.”

“I did not see her until after the accident. I am glad that it was no worse,” Matravers answered. “You have not forgotten me, then?”

John Drage shook his head.

“No, sir,” he said. “I have not forgotten you. I should have known your voice anywhere. Besides, I knew that you were in London. I saw you at the New Theatre.”

There was a short silence. Matravers glanced around the room with an inward shiver. The usual horrors of a suburban parlour were augmented by a general slovenliness, and an obvious disregard for any sort of order.

“I am afraid, Drage,” he said gently, “that things have not gone well with you.”

“You are quite right,” the man answered bitterly. “They have not! They have gone very wrong indeed; and I have no one to blame but myself.”

“I am sorry,” Matravers said. “You are an invalid, too, are you not?”

“I am worse than an invalid,” the man on the couch groaned. “I am a prisoner on my back, most likely for ever; curse it! I have had a paralytic stroke. I can’t think why I couldn’t die! It’s hard lines!—damned hard lines! I wish I were dead twenty times a day! I am alone here from morning to night, and not a soul to speak to. If it wasn’t for Freddy I should jolly soon end it!”

“The little boy’s mother?” Matravers ventured, with bowed head.

“She left me—years ago. I don’t know that I blame her, particularly. Sit down, if you will, for a bit. I never have a visitor, and it does me good to talk.”

Matravers took the only unoccupied chair, and drew it back a little into the darker part of the room.

“You remember me then, Drage,” he remarked. “Yet it is a long time since our college days.”

“I knew you directly I heard your voice, sir,” the man answered. “It seemed to take me back to a night many years ago—I want you to let me remind you of it. I should like you to know that I never forgot it. We were at St. John’s then; you were right above me—in a different world altogether. You were a leader amongst the best of them, and I was a hanger-on amongst the worst. You were in with the gentlemen set and the reading set. Neither of them would have anything to do with me—and they were quite right. I was what they thought me—a cad. I’d no head for work, and no taste for anything worth doing, and I wasn’t a gentleman, and hadn’t sense to behave like one. I’d no right to have been at the University at all, but my poor old dad would have me go. He had an idea that he could make a gentleman of me. It was a mistake!”

Matravers moved slightly in his chair,—he was suffering tortures.

“Is it worth while recalling all these things?” he asked quietly. “Life cannot be a success for all of us; yet it is the future, and not the past.”

“I have no future,” the man interrupted doggedly; “no future here, or in any other place. I have got my deserts. I wanted to remind you of that night when you came to see me in my rooms, after I’d been sent down for being drunk. I suppose you were the first gentleman who had ever crossed my threshold, and I remember wondering what on earth you’d come for! You didn’t lecture me, and you didn’t preach. You came and sat down and smoked one of my cigars, and talked just as though we were friends, and tried to make me see what a fool I was. It didn’t do much good in the end—but I never forgot it. You shook hands with me when you left, and for once in my life I was ashamed of myself.”

“I am sorry,” Matravers said with an effort, “that I did not go to see you oftener.”

Drage shook his head.

“It was too late then! I was done for,—done for as far as Oxford was concerned. But that was only the beginning. I might easily have picked up if I’d had the pluck! The dad forgave me, and made me a partner in the business before he died. I was a rich man, and I might have been a millionaire; instead of that I was a damned fool! I can’t help swearing! you mustn’t mind, sir! Remember what I am! I don’t swear when Freddy’s in the room, if I can help it. I went the pace, drank, kept women, and all the rest of it. My wife found me out and went away. I ain’t saying a word against her. She was a good woman, and I was a bad man, and she left me! She was right enough! I wasn’t fit for a decent woman to live with. All the same, I missed her; and it was another kick down Hellward for me when she went. I got desperate then; I took to drink worse than ever, and I began to let my business go and speculate. You wouldn’t know anything of the city, sir; but I can tell you this, when a cool chap with all his wits about him starts speculating outside his business, it’s touch and go with him; when a chap in the state I was in goes for it, you can spell the result in four letters! It’s RUIN, ruin! That’s what it meant for me. I lost two hundred thousand pounds in three years, and my business went to pot too. Then I had this cursed stroke, and here I am! I may stick on for years, but I shall never be able to earn a penny again. Where Freddy’s schooling is to come from, or how we are to live, I don’t know!”

“I am very sorry,” Matravers said gently. “Have you no friends then, or relations who will help you?”

“Not a damned one,” growled the man on the couch. “I had plenty of pals once, only too glad to count themselves John Drage’s friends; but where they are now I don’t know. They seem to have melted away. There’s never a one comes near me. I could do without their money or their help, somehow, but it’s damned hard to lie here for ever and have not one of ’em drop in just now and then for a bit of a talk and a cheering word. That’s what gives me the blues! I always was fond of company; I hated being alone, and it’s like hell to lie here day after day and see no one but a cross landlady and a miserable servant girl. Lately, I can’t bear to be alone with Freddy. He’s so damned like his mother, you know. It brings a lump in my throat. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were only myself. I’ve had my cake! But it’s rough on the boy!”

“It is rough on the boy, and it is rough on you,” Matravers said kindly. “I wonder you have never thought of sending him to his mother! She would surely like to have him!”

The man’s face grew black.

“Not till I’m dead,” he said doggedly. “I don’t want him set against me! He’s all I’ve got! I’m going to keep him for a bit. It ought not to be so difficult for us to live. If only I could get down to the city for a few hours!”

“Could not a friend there do some good for you?” Matravers asked.

“Of course he could,” Mr. Drage answered eagerly; “but I haven’t got a friend. See here!”

He took a little account book from under his pillow, and with trembling fingers thrust it before his visitor.

“You see all these amounts. They are all owing to me from those people—money lent, and one thing and another. There is an envelope with bills and I O U’s. They belong to me, you understand,” he said, with a sudden touch of dignity. “I never failed! My business was stopped when I was taken ill, but there was enough to pay everybody. Now some of these amounts have never been collected. If I could see these people myself, they would pay, or if I could get a friend whom I could trust! But there isn’t a man comes near me!”

“I—am not a business man,” Matravers said slowly; “but if you cared to explain things to me, I would go into the city and see what I could do.”

The man raised himself on his elbow and gazed at his visitor open-mouthed.

“You mean this!” he cried thickly. “Say it again,—quick! You mean it!”

“Certainly,” Matravers answered. “I will do what I can.”

John Drage did not doubt his good fortune for a moment. No one ever looked into Matravers’ face and failed to believe him.

“I—I’ll thank you some day,” he murmured. “You’ve done me up! Will you—shake hands?”

He held out a thin white hand. Matravers took it between his own.

In a few moments they were absorbed in figures and explanations. Finally the book was passed over to Matravers’ keeping.

“I will see what I can do,” he said quietly. “Some of these accounts should certainly be recovered. I will come down and let you know how I have got on.”

“If you would! If you don’t mind! And, I wonder,—do you take a morning paper? If so, will you bring it when you’ve done with it, or an old one will do? I can’t read anything but newspapers; and lately I haven’t dared to spend a penny,—because of Freddy, you know! It’s so cursed lonely!”

“I will come, and I will bring you something to read,” Matravers promised. “I must go now!”

John Drage held out his hand wistfully.

“Good-by,” he said. “You’re a good man! I wish I’d been like you. It’s an odd thing for me to say, but—God bless you, sir.”

Matravers stood on the doorstep with his watch in his hand. It was half-past three. There was just time to catch the four-thirty from Waterloo! For a moment the little street faded away from before his eyes! He saw himself at his journey’s end! Berenice was there to meet him! A breath of the country came to him on the breeze—a breath of sweet-smelling flowers, and fresh moorland air, and the low murmur of the blue sea. Yes, there was Berenice, with her dark hair blowing in the wind, and that look of passionate peace in her pale, tired face! Her arms were open, wide open! She had been weary so long! The struggle had been so hard! and he, too, was weary——

He started! He was still on the doorstep! Freddy was drumming on the pane, and behind, there was a man lying on the couch, with his face buried in his hands. He waved his hand and descended the steps firmly.

“Back to my rooms, 147, Piccadilly,” he told the cabman. “I shall not be going away to-day.”