Part 8

"Do we need to hurry matters?" Tabs questioned. "This isn't a military court of enquiry. It wasn't my idea to meet you as though we were maintaining an armed neutrality. We----"

"But aren't we?" Braithwaite interposed with an air of amused good-humor. Then he lowered his voice, "When you parted from me I was your valet. You didn't hear from me for the best part of four years and believed me dead. You came back to find that I was your superior officer and had tangled things up for you pretty badly. You've threatened me with your knowledge of a previous love-affair and you have it in your power to tangle up my future in return. Under the circumstances what else is possible but an armed neutrality?"

"Let me state the case from another and, I think, a juster angle." Tabs paused to knock the ash from his cigarette. "Before the war you were my valet whom I had always treated as my friend. I believe at that time, if it had come to the show down, you were the man who was closest to my affections and whom I trusted most in all the world. I'm trying to speak soberly, Braithwaite, without any color of exaggeration. We'd been in many tight corners together--perhaps the tightest was when they tried to execute us in Mexico. Anyway, we'd always played the game by each other. In 1914 we both joined in the ranks; in 1918 you finished up as a General, while I was a first lieutenant. There's only one way to account for that: up to 1914 you'd never had your chance; when your chance came, you proved yourself the better man. In a way, though it's difficult for me to confess it, I can understand and sympathize with Terry's preference. Women admire bravery and merit. Ann and I admired them in you; we knew they were there before the war made them public."

He took a breath while he watched what effect the mention of Ann's name had had. The General's expression from being interested and generous had grown suddenly obstinate and set. Tabs hurried on. "So I can understand Terry's preference. And yet, as you've owned, despite your advantages, I hold the winning card. I can joker all your aces by telling--well, the things to which you have referred." He leant forward across the table. "I don't want to have to tell. To do that I should have to make myself still more inferior to you than you have proved me to be in the hardest of all tests. There's only one occasion that would compel----"

"And that?" the General enquired coldly.

Before Tabs could answer, a Major in the Guards who was passing had halted. "Hullo, sir!" he exclaimed, addressing Braithwaite. "I was intending to hunt you up. I've heard a rumor about your transferring to the Regulars. Why don't you have a shot at my outfit?"

Braithwaite introduced Lord Taborley perfunctorily, then returned to his friend's question. "A shot at your outfit! It's too expensive. I've got to make money. Besides, to become a Regular I'd have to sink my rank and live on my pay at that. I can't afford it. To tell the truth, I'm already out of the Army. I handed over the keys of my desk at the War Office this morning. That phase is ended."

"You did! Well, if you've got something better----" The Guardsman nodded assent to a signaled question from a companion at another table. "Don't lose touch with your old set, sir," he added cheerfully as he moved away. "Send us the map-location of your next dug-out."

The lunch arrived. Dishes were obsequiously offered for inspection and approval. While the meal was being served, there was no opportunity for private conversation. Tabs was pondering one fact which he had overheard. "So, he, too, was demobbed yesterday! That's why he took his last chance to become engaged. The glamour of a uniform---- And to-day he's back where he started. Poor chap!"

The over-zealous waiter had at last moved out of range. Braithwaite lifted up his dagger gaze. "And what is that occasion--the one occasion which would compel you to publish my past? Perhaps I can save you the trouble of putting it into words. You mean if I dared to become engaged to Terry Beddow? I am engaged to her. I dared last night; so I must leave you to do your worst."

He smiled with quiet triumph; gradually his smile faded into puzzlement. "You don't seem surprised."

"I'm not," said Tabs. "Why should I be? I myself supposed, that I was engaged to her last night."

It was Braithwaite who showed amazement. "You! Last night!"

"Yes, I, last night."

Braithwaite set down his knife and fork. The bleak look came into his eyes that had given him the nickname at the Front of "Steely Jack." He was silent for a full five seconds; then he said, "Lord Taborley, you're a man of your word, but I find it difficult to believe that."

Tabs' voice was both quiet and kindly when he replied, "You'll find it difficult to believe a good many things before I've ended. Evidently Terry never told you that for over four years she and I had had an understanding that, when peace came, if I survived, we would be married. Last night, while you were proposing to her, I was asking her father's consent. While I was gaining his consent, you were being accepted."

The blank look of astonishment which had overspread the General's face, quickly gave way to one of generous compassion. "On my word of honor, Lord Taborley, I never knew that. I thought--please forgive me--that you were interfering merely out of snobbishness. I ought to have known better. All my dealings with you should have---- I begin to understand."

Tabs' old sense of friendship for the man--his man--was coming back. "You begin," he said, "but you don't fully understand. You and I have to come down to earth. Not unnaturally up till now you've chosen to treat me as an enemy. Perhaps I was when I sent you those two letters yesterday. But I'm not now. I, too, am learning. There was a coster who let me off arrest. Did I tell you about him? I forget. The reason he gave taught me a lot, 'You and me was pals out there.' And you and I were pals out there, Braithwaite--not master and man or junior and senior officer. It would be a burning shame if, now that the war's ended, we should fall to squabbling among ourselves."

"And yet the fact remains," said Braithwaite, "that I, who used to be your servant, have cut you out of Terry. How are we going to remain pals in a case like that?"

Tabs flinched at the bluntness of the words, "cut you out of Terry." For a moment he felt inclined to say right out, "You're mistaken. She's sent me to get her promise back." Instead he said, "How are we going to remain pals! That's what I'm here to talk about. I've made up my mind how I'm going to act. It's about you that I'm concerned. I'm jealous for you, Braithwaite. I'm proud of the fact that, whatever you are to-day, you were once my man--my man in the old clan sense. I want to see you carry yourself as bravely in your new fight as you did in the one that's ended. I think of the two this peace fight will be the more difficult test, especially for men like yourself. I lost caste during the war, while for you it proved a social opportunity. Now that we're back at peace, the process is likely to be reversed. The qualities which gave you high rank in a world at war won't fetch the same market value. You'll have to fight afresh--only this time it'll be against the temptation to sink below your own high standards through bitterness. In a General's uniform you could go anywhere. It was your passport. No one made enquiries. Once you're demobilized, the world asks for other credentials--credentials as to your profession, bank-account, friends, birth. What I'm trying to say is this: there's nothing dishonorable in your past save your own assumption that it was dishonorable. And I want to assure you that it isn't my purpose to drag you down. I couldn't. There's only one man who can do that--yourself. But _you_ can drag yourself below anything that you were if you go on refusing to play fair."

Braithwaite's face went white beneath its tan. He fell to stroking his mustache. "You take a lot upon yourself. It's the first time that I've ever been accused of not playing fair."

"But _I_ accuse you of it." Tabs spoke with an equal quietness. To any one watching they would have appeared to be two handsome men of the soldier type engaged in desultory conversation. "I have to accuse you of it. I want you to glance through this before you answer me."

He drew from his pocket and passed across the letter which Ann had given him that morning--the letter which, to quote her words, "Might make things seem more sensible-like to your Lordship's friend at the War Office." It was unaddressed, but as Braithwaite's eye fell on the sprawling handwriting of the contents, the deep flush which crept across his face betrayed the fact that it was recognized. He commenced to read the sheet with a studied carelessness; as he proceeded, the carelessness gave way to a troubled frown. For some time after he had finished, he sat motionless. When he looked up, his mood was contemptuous. "So this is your price?"

"No price was mentioned."

"But it was implied. You tell me that, at the time that I was being accepted, you yourself were hoping to be engaged to Miss Beddow; then you hand me this letter. What do you suppose I infer? What would any man infer? That your promise to keep my existence a secret from Ann is conditional on the breaking of my engagement with Miss Beddow."

"Handing you Ann's letter wouldn't do that. Your engagement with Miss Beddow is already broken."

Braithwaite jerked his chair back and stared. Then the audacity of such an assertion touched his sense of humor. He fell to laughing. "That at least is an invention."

Tabs showed no resentment. There was something disturbingly convincing about his self-possession. "Didn't I tell you," he asked patiently, "that you'd find it difficult to believe a good many things before I had ended? I had an appointment to see Miss Beddow at her father's house this morning at eleven. Before I'd finished breakfast she was visiting me instead. She had called to make two requests: that I would see you to-day and get her promise back, and that I'd become engaged to her myself."

Braithwaite lurched forward, folding his arms on the table. His voice was thick with passion when he spoke. "What you tell me sounds mad; but you'd gain nothing by telling it if it were not true."

"Nothing," Tabs confirmed.

"No, nothing. If it weren't true, I could go to the telephone and disprove your falsehood inside of ten minutes."

"You could."

"Then it is true--which means that you've ousted me. And that's why you can afford to be so calm and Christ-like. I've been wondering how you'd contrived this Galilean display of charity."

"You've not heard me out." Tabs still spoke with friendliness. "While we were together your telegram arrived and I agreed to be the bearer of her message. But as for her second request, that I should become engaged to her, I refused that point-blank."

"You what?" The anger cleared from Braithwaite's face, leaving the chalky mask of a tragic harlequin. When he spoke again it was humbly. "You can't blame me for not believing you. You jump about. You say several things which seem to point to a definite conclusion and then at the last moment you change it. I don't know whether you do it to amuse yourself at my expense or whether it's merely the way your mind works. At any rate, it's cruel--this cat and mouse game. I wish you'd be direct."

"That's what I wish to be. You could help me if you'd ask questions."

Braithwaite sighed, wearied beyond endurance. He was becoming less like the General and more like the old dependent Braithwaite every second. "You wanted to marry her last night, only to find she'd promised herself to me already. Then she comes to you this morning, offering herself, and you refuse her. That doesn't make sense. Why did you refuse her?"

"Because if I'd taken her at her word, I shouldn't have been playing fair."

At the recurrence of that phrase "playing fair," a momentary annoyance crept into Braithwaite's eyes. "I've always heard," he commenced, "that in love and war----"

"Everything's fair," Tabs ended his quotation. "Well, in this case, it isn't. It was because she realized, after she'd promised herself to you, that in love everything isn't fair, that she asked me to get her promise back."

"You mean as regards yourself? She'd begun to feel that she wasn't treating you handsomely?"

"I don't mean as regards myself. You were the cause of her change of mind."

"I!" Braithwaite's bewilderment made him hostile. "How could I have caused her to change her mind? I parted with her after midnight; it must have been shortly after nine that she was seeing you. I held no communication with her in any shape or form during the eight or nine hours that elapsed."

"Nevertheless, you were the cause. She realized in the meanwhile that in love everything isn't fair. It isn't fair to ignore a young girl's happiness in order to win her hand. You had done that; though she has no proofs, instinctively she feels it."

Braithwaite shook his head and thrust himself back with the gesture of a man whose patience is completely at an end. "I haven't the vaguest idea what you're hinting at."

"Then I'll be brutally explicit. You've at no time told her who you were or where you came from before you made a name for yourself. You've evaded all her questions. You told a palpable falsehood in her presence when you insisted that you had never known me. You're perfectly aware that, if you approached her father, all the facts about your past, which you're suppressing, would most certainly come out. Your courting has been clandestine, behind the back of her family. It seems perfectly obvious that you're trying to lure her into a runaway match. She has grounds for believing that you do not trust her and, because of that, although you fascinate her, she finds it impossible to trust you in return. She trusts you so little that she did not dare to risk facing you and sent me in her stead. She's so sure that a marriage with you would be unfortunate that, in order to save herself from it, she's willing to become engaged to me, whom she loves only as a friend. You'll wonder why I tell you all this. It's because I want her to be happy. If you really are the man for her, she must have you. But you'll never have the remotest chance of winning her unless you make a clean breast----"

"If I did my chances would be at an end."

"If you believe that," Tabs sought for the most lenient words, "you know what you're doing. You'd despise to cheat at cards, but you don't mind cheating the woman whom you profess to love best.--And then there's Ann."

"I'd rather not discuss Ann." The abrupt pain in Braithwaite's tone betrayed the grumbling ache of an old wound. "I think even you will grant that there are some things in a man's heart which are privately sacred. Ann lies entirely outside the bounds of all justifiable interference on your part."

It took an effort for Tabs to bring himself to break down the barrier of reticence which this depth of feeling had imposed. "I'm sorry, General, but I can't agree with you." He waited for the expected protest. When it did not come, he carried on reluctantly, "I have a high regard for Ann. She's one of my household and that makes me responsible for her to an extent. I can't allow her to be tortured any longer with suspense--she's had more than three years of this horrid nightmare, hovering between hope and dread. Every day of the three years has been unnecessary. Whether you break or keep your promise to her is your concern. Whether she takes action against you when she knows the truth, is hers. But she has the right to know. To see that she knows comes within the bounds of any decent man's justifiable interference. One of us must tell her; the news would come with less grace from myself. But for you to wriggle out of your dilemma with silence, while she goes on breaking her heart, is cowardly--just as cowardly as if you'd deserted in the face of the enemy. I've no doubt you've sentenced more than one poor wretch to be shot at sunrise for doing that."

Tabs pulled out his watch. He had said everything. So far as he was concerned the conversation was at an end. It was nearly three o'clock. Time had traveled quickly. He was surprised at the lateness of the hour. Now that his intentness was relaxed, he let his gaze wander. The room was nearly empty. Most of the gay little ladies who had chattered across the tables to their recently recovered lovers or husbands, had tripped away to continue their spree of celebration at a matinée or in an orgy of shopping. Those who were left were putting on their wraps or sipping the last of their coffee under the reproachful eyes of waiters. Across the window in a brown-gray streak flowed the wind-flecked highway of the Thames.

Braithwaite beckoned for his bill. After the humiliation of what had been said it irked Tabs to have to see him pay it. The trend of the conversation had helped to strip him of the arrogance of his military honors. The mercenary subserviency of the man who handed him his account, seemed to arouse him to the landslide that had taken place in his self-esteem. He made a conscious effort to pull himself together. While he waited for his change, he broke the silence.

"I believe you meant well by coming here. It would be foolish for me to pretend that I'm altogether grateful--grateful for your way of expressing most of the things that we've discussed together. At the same time, Lord Taborley, I owe you an apology if at any point I've misjudged your intentions. As regards Ann, you err in justice when you hold me accountable for all the causes of her tragedy. Both she and I, and Miss Beddow for the matter of that, are the victims of circumstances. It's scarcely my fault that I've outgrown Ann; I'm no more to blame for that than Terry is for having fallen in love with a man who was your servant. _I_ didn't make the war. _I_ didn't promote myself from a valet to a General. _I_ didn't even consciously allure Terry. She fascinates me as much as I fascinate her: I fought against her fascination at first.--But to get back to Ann, I let her slip out of my life because I wanted to spare her. I thought it would be easier for her to believe me dead than to be told that she was--was discarded. I couldn't be expected to foresee that she would display this awkward loyalty of hoping. I didn't know what had happened to her. She's a good-looking girl; I'd pictured her as married to a man of her own class, until you flung this bombshell at me. I'm not callous. Don't misapprehend me. I can still think of her with tenderness. But as for ever treating her again as my equal---- It would be as impossible for me to resume the old relations with her as it would be for your Lordship to commence them." He waited for some word of criticism or encouragement. When Tabs only nodded non-committally, he proceeded more slowly. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm fully aware, now that the war is ended, that as a has-been General who rose from the ranks, I have no marketable value. I have no specialized training to offer to a commercial world which calls for experts. The only knowledge that I have to sell is the old knowledge that you used to purchase. My house of cards has collapsed. To be unwisely frank, my financial resources are limited to little more than my war-gratuity."

"And yet you're anxious to marry Terry," Tabs suggested; "to marry her without letting her know about any of these handicaps of which she would have to share the penalty."

Braithwaite's head went up with a soldierly jerk. The bleak look came into his eyes. He was "Steely Jack" at that moment. "I have the confidence to believe," he said proudly, "that I shall go as far in peace as I did in war. Never to own that you're beaten, never to squeal when you're hurt, never to retreat from a position when once it has been captured must count back here for as much as it did out there. In France I had the reputation for never losing an inch of trench. I don't intend to lose an inch of trench now. My back is to the wall. For the present I can't afford to do anything gratuitously charitable; by the smallest waste of energy I may defeat myself. To hold any correspondence with Ann at this moment might mean the slamming in my own face of every door of opportunity. I'll do my stretcher-bearing when I've won; not a second before."

Against his will, while he listened, the unscrupulous valor of the man stirred Tabs to admiration. Only the after-event could prove whether this verbal display of fireworks was only bombast. "And so that's your ultimatum?" he asked with disquieting sanity.

"Yes, if that's what you call it."

The waiter had returned with the receipted bill. Braithwaite was picking up the change. Not looking at Tabs he said, "A few minutes ago you were consulting your watch. I believe you have an engagement."

"I have. But if we can arrive at any more definite conclusion by talking longer, I'll skip it. It's of no importance."

Braithwaite glanced up. "Not to you, perhaps; but it may be to her."

With that he commenced to lead the way out, choosing a winding path through the maze of tables. Not until they were traversing the great gold and crimson lounge, with its ornate furnishings, did Tabs catch up with him to ask his question. "How did you know about my engagement and whether it was important or not?"

Braithwaite answered carelessly, "It's with Maisie, isn't it? I heard Terry suggest to her that she should make it. She's a nice little woman. I shouldn't like to be the cause of her disappointment. She was looking forward----" The rest was lost as a flunkey requested the registered number of whatever Tabs had left in the cloak-room.