第19章 CHAPTER IV THE GARDEN IN THE SQUARE(4)

This was too much for Godfrey. He glided forward, as the stray cat might have done, of which the fine knight had spoken, meaning to interrupt them.

Then he remembered suddenly that he had no right to interfere; that it was no affair of his with whom Isobel chose to kiss roses in a garden, and that he was doing a mean thing in spying upon her. So he halted behind another bush, but not without noise. His handsome young face was thrust forward, and on it were written grief, surprise and shame.

The moonlight caught it, but nothing else of him. Isobel looked up and saw.

He knew that she had seen and turning, slipped away into the darkness back to the gate. As he went he heard the knight called Lord Charles, exclaim:

"What's the matter with you?" and Isobel answer, "Nothing. I have seen a ghost, that's all. It's this horrible dress!"

He glanced back and saw her rise, snatch the rose from the knight's hand, throw it down and stamp upon it. Then he saw and heard no more for he was through the gate and running down the square. At its end, as he turned into some street, he was surprised to hear a gruff voice calling to him to stop. On looking up he saw that it came from his enemy, the hansom-cab man, who was apparently keeping a lookout on the square from his lofty perch.

"Hi! young sir," he said, "I've been watching for you and thinking of wot you said to me. You gave me half a quid, you did. Jump in and I'll drive you wherever you want to go, for my fare was only a bob."

"I have no more money," replied Godfrey, "for you kept the change."

"I wasn't asking for none," said the cabby. "Hop in and name where it is to be."

Godfrey told him and presently was being rattled back to the Charing Cross Hotel, which they reached a little later. He got out of the cab to go into the hotel when once again the man addressed him.

"I owe you something," he said, and tendered the half-sovereign.

"I have no change," said Godfrey.

"Nor 'ain't I," said the cabman, "and if I had I wouldn't give it you.

I played a dirty trick on you and a dirtier one still when I took your half sov, I did, seeing that I ought to have known that you ere just an obfusticated youngster and no bilk as I called you to them flunkeys. What you said made me ashamed, though I wouldn't own it before the flunkeys. So I determined to pay you back if I could, since otherwise I shouldn't have slept well to-night. Now we're quits, and goodbye, and do you always think kindly of Thomas Sims, though I don't suppose I shall drive you no more in this world."

"Goodbye, Mr. Sims," said Godfrey, who was touched. Moreover Mr. Sims seemed to be familiar to him, at the moment he could not remember how, or why.

The man wheeled his cab round, whipping the horse which was a spirited animal, and started at a fast pace.

Godfrey, looking after him, heard a crash as he emerged from the gates, and ran to see what was the matter. He found the cab overturned and the horse with a 'bus pole driven deep into its side, kicking on the pavement. Thomas Sims lay beneath the cab. When the police and others dragged him clear, he was quite dead!

Godfrey went to bed that night a very weary and chastened youth, for never before had he experienced so many emotions in a few short hours.

Moreover, he could not sleep well. Nightmares haunted him in which he was being hunted and mocked by a jeering crowd, until Sims arrived and rescued him in the cab. Only it was the dead Sims that drove with staring eyes and fallen jaw, and the side of the horse was torn open.

Next he saw Isobel and the Knight in Armour, who kept pace on either side of the ghostly cab and mocked at him, tossing roses to each other as they sped along, until finally his father appeared, called Isobel a young serpent, at which she laughed loudly, and bore off Sims to be buried in the vault with the Plantagenet lady at Monk's Acre.

Godfrey woke up shaking with fear, wet with perspiration, and reflected earnestly on his latter end, which seemed to be at hand. If that great, burly, raucous-voiced Sims had died so suddenly, why should not he, Godfrey?

He wondered where Sims had gone to, and what he was doing now.

Explaining the matter of the half-sovereign to St. Peter, perhaps, and hoping humbly that it and others would be overlooked, "since after all he had done the right thing by the young gent."

Poor Sims, he was sorry for him, but it might have been worse. /He/@@might have been in the cab himself and now be offering explanations of his own as to a wild desire to kill that knight in armour, and Isobel as well. Oh! what a fool he had been. What business was it of his if Isobel chose to give roses to some friend of hers at a dance? She was not his property, but only a girl with whom he chanced to have been brought up, and who found him a pleasant companion when there was no one else at hand.

By nature, as has been recorded, Godfrey was intensely proud, and then and there he made a resolution that he would have nothing more to do with Isobel. Never again would he hang about the skirts of that fine and rich young lady, who on the night that he was going away could give roses to another man, just because he was a lord and good-looking --yes, and kiss them too. His father was quite right about women, and he would take his advice to the letter, and begin to study Proverbs forthwith, especially the marked passages.