“But I don’t know. Neither do her father and mother.”
“What’s that?” Simpkins drew up short. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. She went ’ome last Thursday to get a little rest until to-morrer,—Tuesday.”
Treadwell would have cried out, “It isn’t true,” but he loved Lola and was loyal. He had met Simpkins in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and had seen him on familiar terms with Mr. Breezy, but he was a member of the Fallaray household and as such was not to be let into this—this trouble. Not even the Breezys must be told before Lola had been seen and had given an explanation. They didn’t love her as much as he did,—nor any one else in the world. And so he said, loyalty overmastering his jealousy and fear, “Oh, is that so? I haven’t had time to look in lately. I didn’t know.” And seeing a huge unbelief in Simpkins’s pale eyes, he hurried on to explain. “Being in the neighborhood and having some personal news for Lola, I called at your house. Was surprised to hear that she was away. That’s all. Good night.” And away he went, head forward, left foot turning in, long arms swinging loose.
But he had touched the spring in Simpkins to a jealousy and a fear that were precisely similar to his own. Lola was not at home. Treadwell knew it and had called at Dover Street, expecting to find her there. They had all been told lies because she was doing something of which she was ashamed. The night that she had come in, weeping, dressed like a lady.—The words that had burned into his soul the evening of his proposal,—“so awfully in love with somebody else and it’s a difficult world.—Perhaps I shall never be married and that’s the truth, Simpky. It’s a difficult world.”
“Hi,” he called out. “Hi,” and started after Treadwell, full stride.
But rather than face those searching eyes again, at the back of which there was a curious blaze, Treadwell took to his heels, and followed hard by Simpkins, whose fanatical spirit of protection was stirred to its depths, dodged from one street into another. The curious chase would have ended in Treadwell’s escape but for the sudden intervention, in Vigo Street, of a policeman who slipped out of the entrance to the Albany and caught the boy in his arms.
“Now then, now then,” he said. “What’s all this ’ere?”
And up came Simpkins, blowing badly, with his tie under his left ear. “It’s—it’s alri, Saunders. A friendly race, that’s all. He’s—he’s a paller mine. Well run, Ernie!” And he put his arm round Treadwell’s shoulders, laughing.
And the policeman, whose wind was good, laughed, too, at the sight of those panting men. “Mind wot yer do, Mr. Simpkins,” he said, to the nice little fellow with whom he sometimes took a drink at the bottom of the area steps. “Set up ’eart trouble if yer not careful.”
Set up heart trouble? Simpkins looked with a sudden irony at the boy who also would give his life to Lola. And the look was met and understood. It put them on another footing, they could see.