Part 86

"God! Hindford, it's he! It's the chap who asked me for money this morning!" whispered Horace. "Is he really dead?"

The Captain, who had been examining the body and feeling the heart, nodded. Horace gazed upon the white face with a sort of awful curiosity. He had never before looked at a corpse.

"Look here, Errington," Hindford said to the boy that night as he parted from him in Park Lane, "don't tell your mother anything of this."

"But--but, Hindford----"

"Come, now, you take my advice. Keep a quiet tongue in your head."

"But perhaps it was her fault; it was--if we'd given the poor chap something he'd----"

"Probably. That's just the reason I don't want you to tell Mrs. Errington anything of it. Come, promise me on your honour."

"All right, Hindford, I'll promise. How horrible it's all been!"

"Don't think about it, lad. Good-night."

Horace trembled as he stole up the black staircase to bed. He meant to keep his promise, of course, but he wondered whether the Mater would have owned that she was in the wrong that morning if she had heard his dreary tale of the beggar's death in the night.

The next day it was Mrs. Errington who asked Horace to go out walking. She looked rather pale and fatigued at breakfast, but declared her intention of taking a constitutional.

"Come with me, Horace," she said.

"Very well," he answered, with a curious and almost shy boyish coldness.

"Not into the Park, Mater," he said, as they were starting.

"Why not? We always walk there. Where else should we go?"

"Anywhere--shopping--Regent Street."

"No, Horace, I've got a headache to-day. I want a quiet place."

He didn't say more. They set out, and Mrs. Errington took the precise route they had followed the day before. She glanced rather sharply about her as they walked. Presently they reached the seat on which the beggar had been sitting just before he got up to follow them. Mrs. Errington paused beside it.

"I'm tired. Let us sit down here," she said.

"No, Mater, not here."

"Really, Horace," Mrs. Errington said, "you are in an extraordinary mood to-day. You have no regard for me. What is the matter with you?"

And she sat down on the seat. Horace remained standing.

"I shan't sit here," he said obstinately.

"Very well," Mrs. Errington replied.

She really began to look ill, but Horace was too much preoccupied with his own feelings to notice it. There was something abominable to him in his mother sitting calmly down to rest in the very place occupied a few hours ago by the wretched creature who had, so Horace believed, been driven to death by her refusal of charity. He felt sick with horror in that neighbourhood, and he moved away, and stood staring across the Serpentine. Presently Mrs. Errington called to him in a faint voice----

"Horace, come and give me your hand."

He turned, noticed her extreme pallor, and ran up.

"What's the row? Are you ill, Mater?"