She was interrupted in her meditations by a knock at the front door. She put down her sock and listened. It was late for any of the neighbours to pay a call, and the knock had puzzled her. Martha, the general, pattered along the passage, and then there came the sound of voices speaking in an undertone. Footsteps made themselves heard in the passage. The door opened. The head and shoulders of Major Percy Stokes insinuated themselves into the room.
The major cocked a mild blue eye at her.
"Harold anywhere about?"
"He's gone out for a nice walk. Whatever brings you here, Percy, so late?"
Percy made no answer. He withdrew his head. His voice, without, said "All right." He then reappeared, this time in his entirety, and remained holding the door open. More footsteps in the passage, and through the doorway, in a sideways fashion suggestive of a diffident crab, came a short, sturdy, redheaded man with a broken nose and a propitiatory smile, at the sight of whom Mrs. Bramble, dropping her sock, rose as if propelled by powerful machinery, and exclaimed, "Bill!"
Mr. Bramble - for it was he - scratched his head, grinned feebly, and looked for assistance to the major.
"A brand from the burning," said that gentleman.
"That's right," said Mr. Bramble; "that's me."
"The scales have fallen from his eyes."
"What scales?" demanded Mrs. Bramble, a literal-minded woman. "And what are you doing here, Bill, when you ought to be at the White Hart, training?"
"That's just what I'm telling you," said Percy. " I been wrestling with Bill, and I been vouchsafed the victory."
"You!" said Mrs. Bramble, with uncomplimentary astonishment, letting her gaze wander over her brother's weedy form.
"I been vouchsafed the victory," repeated the major. "It was hard work, but did I falter? No, I did not falter. There were moments when it didn't seem 'ardly possible I could bring it off, but was I down-hearted? No, I was not down-hearted. I wrote him letters, and I sent him tracts. I tried to wrestle with him in speech, too, but there was a man of wrath, a son of Belial in a woollen jersey and a bowler hat, who come at me, using horrible language, and told me to stand still while he broke my neck and dropped me into the river."
"Jerry Fisher's a hard nut," said Mr. Bramble, apologetically. "He don't like people coming round talking to a man he's training, unless he introduces them or they're newspaper gents."
"After that I kept away. But I wrote the letters and I sent the tracts. Bill, which of the tracts was it that snatched you from the primrose path?"
"It wasn't so much the tracts, Perce. It was what you wrote about Harold. You see, Jane -"
"Perhaps you'll kindly allow me to get a word in edgeways, you two," said Mrs. Bramble, her temper for once becoming ruffled. "You can stop talking for half an instant, Percy, if you know how, while Bill tells me what he's doing here when he ought to be at the White Hart with Mr. Fisher, doing his bit of training."
Mr. Bramble met her eye and blinked awkwardly.
"Percy's just been telling you, Jane. He wrote -"
"I haven't made head or tail of a word that Percy's said, and I don't expect to. All I want is a plain answer to a plain question. What are you doing here, Bill, instead of being at the White Hart?"
"I've come home, Jane."
"Glory!" exclaimed the major.
"Percy, if you don't keep quiet, I'll forget I'm your sister and let you have one. What do you mean, Bill, you've come home? Isn't there going to be the fight next week, after all?"
"The fight's over," said the unsuppressed major, joyfully, "and Bill's won, with me seconding him."
"Percy!"
Mr. Bramble pulled himself together with a visible effort.
"I'm not going to fight, Jane," he said, in a small voice.
"You're not going -!"
"He's seen the error of his ways," cried Percy, the resilient. "That's what he's gone and done. At the eleventh hour it has been vouchsafed to me to snatch the brand from the burning. Oh! I have waited for this joyful moment. I have watched for it. I -"
"You're not going to fight!"
Mr. Bramble, avoiding his wife's eye, shook his head.
"And how about the money?"
"What's money?" said the major, scornfully.
"You ought to know," snapped Mrs. Bramble, turning on him. "You've borrowed enough of it from me in your time."
The major waved a hand in wounded silence. He considered the remark In poor taste. It was true that from time to time a certain amount of dross had passed from her hands to his, but this harping on the fact was indelicate and unsisterly.
"How about the money?" repeated Mrs. Bramble. "Goodness knows I've never liked your profession, Bill, but there is this to be said for it, that it's earned you good money and made it possible for us to give Harold as good an education as any duke ever had, I'm sure. And you know yourself you said that the five hundred pounds you were going to get if you beat this Murphy, and even if you lost it would be a hundred and twenty, was going to be a blessing, because it would let us finish him off proper and give him a better start in life than you or me ever had, and now you let this Percy come over you with his foolish talk, and now I don't know what will happen."
There was an uncomfortable silence. Even Percy seemed at a loss for words. Mrs. Bramble sat down and began to sob. Mr. Bramble shuffled his feet.
"Talking of Harold," said Mr. Bramble at last, "that's really what I'm driving at. It was him really what I was thinking of when I hopped it from the White Hart. There's a good deal in what Perce says about men of wrath and the primrose path and all, but it was Harold that really made me do it. It hadn't hardly struck me till Perce pointed it out, but this fight with Jimmy Murphy, being as you might say a kind of national affair, in a way of speaking, was likely to be written up in all the papers, instead of only in the sporting ones. As likely as not there would he a piece about it in the Mail, with a photograph of me. And you know Harold reads his Mail regular. And then, don't you see, the fat would be in the fire. That's what Percy pointed out to me, and I seen what he meant, so I hopped it."
"At the eleventh hour," added the major, rubbing in the point.
"You see, Jane -" Mr. Bramble was beginning, when there was a knock at the door, and a little, ferret-faced man in a woollen sweater and cycling knickerbockers entered, removing as he did so a somewhat battered bowler hat.
"Beg pardon, Mrs. Bramble," he said, "coming in like this. Found the front door on the jar, so came in to ask if you'd happened to have seen -"
He broke off and stood staring wildly at the little group.
"I thought so!" he said, and shot through the air towards Percy.
"Jerry!" said Bill.
"Mr. Fisher!" said Mrs. Bramble.
"Be reasonable," said the major, diving underneath the table and coming up the other side like a performing seal.
"Let me get at him," begged the intruder, struggling to free himself from Bill's restraining arms.
Mrs. Bramble rapped on the table.
"Kindly remember there's a lady present, Mr. Fisher."
The little man's face became a battlefield on which rage, misery, and a respect for the decencies of social life struggled for the mastery.
"It's hard," he said at length, in a choked voice. "I just wanted to break his neck for him, but I suppose it's not to be. I know it's him that's at the bottom of it. Directly I found Bill, here, had cut his stick and hopped it, I says to myself, 'It's him!' And here I find them together, so I know it's him. Well, if you say so, Mrs. B., I suppose I mustn't put a head on him. But it's hard. Bill, you come back along of me to the White Hart. I'm surprised at you. Ashamed of you, I am. All the time you and me have known each other I've never known you do such a thing. You such a pleasure to train as a rule. It all comes of getting with bad companions. And your chop cooking on the fire all the while! It'll be spoilt now, and all the expense of ordering another. It's hard. Come along, Bill. Step it."