Anglers' Rest, and that gap the most serious that could have occurred.
Mr. Mulliner's had been the vacant chair, and we had felt his absence
acutely. Inquiry on his welcome return elicited the fact that he had
been down in Hertfordshire, paying a visit to his cousin Lady Wickham,
at her historic residence, Skeldings Hall. He had left her well, he
informed us, but somewhat worried.
"About her daughter Roberta," said Mr. Mulliner.
"Delicate girl?" we asked sympathetically.
"Not at all. Physically, most robust. What is troubling my cousin is
the fact that she does not get married."
A tactless Mild-and-Bitter, who was a newcomer to the bar-parlour
and so should not have spoken at all, said that that was often the
way with these plain girls. The modern young man, he said, valued
mere looks too highly, and instead of being patient, and carrying on
pluckily till he was able to penetrate the unsightly exterior to the
good womanly heart within....
"My cousin's daughter Roberta," said Mr. Mulliner with some asperity,
"is not plain. Like all the Mulliners on the female side, however
distantly removed from the main branch, she is remarkably beautiful.
And yet she does not get married."
"A mystery," we mused.
"One," said Mr. Mulliner, "that I have been able to solve. I was
privileged to enjoy a good deal of Roberta's confidence during my
visit, and I also met a young man named Algernon Crufts who appears to
enjoy still more and also to be friendly with some of those of the male
sex in whose society she has been moving lately. I am afraid that, like
so many spirited girls of to-day, she is inclined to treat her suitors
badly. They get discouraged, and I think with some excuse. There was
young Attwater, for instance...."
Mr. Mulliner broke off and sipped his hot Scotch and lemon. He appeared
to have fallen into a reverie. From time to time, as he paused in his
sipping, a chuckle escaped him.
"Attwater?" we said.
"Yes, that was the name."
"What happened to him?"
"Oh, you wish to hear the story? Certainly, certainly, by all means."
He rapped gently on the table, eyed his re-charged glass with quiet
satisfaction, and proceeded.
* * * * *
In the demeanour of Roland Moresby Attwater, that rising young essayist
and literary critic, there appeared (said Mr. Mulliner) as he stood
holding the door open to allow the ladies to leave his uncle Joseph's
dining-room, no outward and visible sign of the irritation that seethed
beneath his mud-stained shirt-front. Well-bred and highly civilized,
he knew how to wear the mask. The lofty forehead that shone above his
rimless pince-nez was smooth and unruffled, and if he bared his teeth
it was only in a polite smile. Nevertheless, Roland Attwater was fed to
the eyebrows.
In the first place, he hated these family dinners. In the second place,
he had been longing all the evening for a chance to explain that muddy
shirt, and everybody had treated it with a silent tact which was simply
maddening. In the third place, he knew that his uncle Joseph was only
waiting for the women to go to bring up once again the infuriating
topic of Lucy.
After a preliminary fluttering, not unlike that of hens disturbed in a
barnyard, the female members of the party rustled past him in single
file--his aunt Emily; his aunt Emily's friend, Mrs. Hughes Higham;
his aunt Emily's companion and secretary, Miss Partlett; and his aunt
Emily's adopted daughter, Lucy. The last-named brought up the rear of
the procession. She was a gentle-looking girl with spaniel eyes and
freckles, and as she passed she gave Roland a swift, shy glance of
admiration and gratitude. It was the sort of look Ariadne might have
given Theseus immediately after his turn-up with the Minotaur: and
a casual observer, not knowing the facts, would have supposed that,
instead of merely opening a door for her, Roland had rescued her at
considerable bodily risk from some frightful doom.
Roland closed the door and returned to the table. His uncle, having
pushed port towards him, coughed significantly and opened fire.
"How did you think Lucy was looking to-night, Roland?"
The young man winced, but the fine courtly spirit which is such a
characteristic of the younger members of the intelligentsia did not
fail him. Instead of banging the speaker over the head with the
decanter, he replied with quiet civility:
"Splendid."
"Nice girl."
"Very."
"Wonderful disposition."
"Quite."
"And so sensible."
"Precisely."
"Very different from these shingled, cigarette-smoking young women who
infest the place nowadays."
"Decidedly."
"Had one of 'em up before me this morning," said Uncle Joseph, frowning
austerely over his port. Sir Joseph Moresby was by profession a
metropolitan magistrate. "Charged with speeding. That's their idea of
life."
"Girls," argued Roland, "will be girls."
"Not while I'm sitting at Bosher Street police-court, they won't," said
his uncle, with decision. "Unless they want to pay five-pound fines
and have their licences endorsed." He sipped thoughtfully. "Look here,
Roland," he said, as one struck by a novel idea, "why the devil don't
you marry Lucy?"
"Well, uncle----"
"You've got a bit of money, she's got a bit of money. Ideal. Besides,
you want somebody to look after you."
"Do you suggest," inquired Roland, his eyebrows rising coldly, "that I
am incapable of looking after myself?"
"Yes, I do. Why, dammit, you can't even dress for dinner, apparently,
without getting mud all over your shirt-front."
Roland's cue had been long in coming, but it had arrived at a very
acceptable moment.
"If you really want to know how that mud came to be on my shirt-front,
Uncle Joseph," he said, with quiet dignity, "I got it saving a man's
life."
"Eh? What? How?"
"A man slipped on the pavement as I was passing through Grosvenor
Square on my way here. It was raining, you know, and I----"
"You walked here?"
"Yes. And just as I reached the corner of Duke Street----"
"Walked here in the rain? There you are! Lucy would never let you do a
foolish thing like that."
"It began to rain after I had started."
"Lucy would never have let you start."
"Are you interested in my story, uncle," said Roland, stiffly, "or
shall we go upstairs?"
"Eh? My dear boy, of course, of course. Most interested. Want to hear
the whole thing from beginning to end. You say it was raining and this
fellow slipped off the pavement. And then I suppose a car or a taxi or
something came along suddenly and you pulled him out of danger. Yes, go
on, my boy."
"How do you mean, go on?" said Roland, morosely. He felt like a public
speaker whose chairman has appropriated the cream of his speech and
inserted it in his own introductory remarks. "That's all there is."
"Well, who was the man? Did he ask you for your name and address?"
"He did."
"Good! A young fellow once did something very similar to what you did,
and the man turned out to be a millionaire and left him his entire
fortune. I remember reading about it."
"In the _Family Herald_, no doubt?"
"Did your man look like a millionaire?"
"He did not. He looked like what he actually was--the proprietor of a
small bird-and-snake shop in the Seven Dials."
"Oh!" said Sir Joseph, a trifle dashed. "Well, I must tell Lucy about
this," he said, brightening. "She will be tremendously excited. Just
the sort of thing to appeal to a warm-hearted girl like her. Look
here, Roland, why don't you marry Lucy?"
Roland came to a swift decision. It had not been his intention to lay
bare his secret dreams to this pertinacious old blighter, but there
seemed no other way of stopping him. He drained a glass of port and
spoke crisply.
"Uncle Joseph, I love somebody else."
"Eh? What's that? Who?"
"This is, of course, strictly between ourselves."
"Of course."
"Her name is Wickham. I expect you know the family? The Hertfordshire
Wickhams."
"Hertfordshire Wickhams!" Sir Joseph snorted with extraordinary
violence. "Bosher Street Wickhams, you mean. If it's Roberta Wickham,
a red-headed hussy who ought to be smacked and sent to bed without her
supper, that's the girl I fined this morning."
"You fined her!" gasped Roland.
"Five pounds," said his uncle, complacently. "Wish I could have given
her five years. Menace to the public safety. How on earth did you get
to know a girl like that?"
"I met her at a dance. I happened to mention that I was a critic of
some small standing, and she told me that her mother wrote novels. I
chanced to receive one of Lady Wickham's books for review shortly
afterwards, and the--er--favourable tone of my notice apparently gave
her some pleasure." Roland's voice trembled slightly, and he blushed.
Only he knew what it had cost him to write eulogistically of that
terrible book. "She has invited me down to Skeldings, their place in
Hertfordshire, for the week-end to-morrow."
"Send her a telegram."
"Saying what?"
"That you can't go."
"But I am going." It is a pretty tough thing if a man-of-letters who
has sold his critical soul is not to receive the reward of his crime.
"I wouldn't miss it for anything."
"Don't you be a fool, my boy," said Sir Joseph. "I've known you all
your life--know you better than you know yourself--and I tell you it's
sheer insanity for a man like you to dream of marrying a girl like
that. Forty miles an hour she was going, right down the middle of
Piccadilly. The constable proved it up to the hilt. You're a quiet,
sensible fellow, and you ought to marry a quiet, sensible girl. You're
what I call a rabbit."
"A rabbit!"
"There is no stigma attached to being a rabbit," said Sir Joseph,
pacifically. "Every man with a grain of sense is one. It simply means
that you prefer a normal, wholesome life to gadding about like a--like
a non-rabbit. You're going out of your class, my boy. You're trying to
change your zoological species, and it can't be done. Half the divorces
to-day are due to the fact that rabbits won't believe they're rabbits
till it's too late. It is the peculiar nature of the rabbit----"
"I think we had better join the ladies, Uncle Joseph," said Roland,
frostily. "Aunt Emily will be wondering what has become of us."
* * * * *
In spite of the innate modesty of all heroes, it was with something
closely resembling chagrin that Roland discovered, on going to his club
in the morning, that the Press of London was unanimously silent on the
subject of his last night's exploit. Not that one expected anything
in the nature of publicity, of course, or even desired it. Still, if
there had happened to be some small paragraph under some such title as
"Gallant Behaviour of an Author" or "Critical Moment for a Critic," it
would have done no harm to the sale of that little book of thoughtful
essays which Blenkinsop's had just put on the market.
And the fellow had seemed so touchingly grateful at the time.
Pawing at Roland's chest with muddy hands he had told him that he would
never forget this moment as long as he lived. And he had not bothered
even to go and call at a newspaper office.
Well, well! He swallowed his disappointment and a light lunch and
returned to his flat, where he found Bryce, his man-servant, completing
the packing of his suit-case.
"Packing?" said Roland. "That's right. Did those socks arrive?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good!" said Roland. They were some rather special gents' half-hose
from the Burlington Arcade, subtly passionate, and he was hoping much
from them. He wandered to the table, and became aware that on it lay a
large cardboard box. "Hullo, what's this?"
"A man left it a short while ago, sir. A somewhat shabbily-dressed
person. The note accompanying it is on the mantelpiece, sir."
Roland went to the mantelpiece; and, having inspected the dirty
envelope for a moment with fastidious distaste, opened it in a gingerly
manner.
"The box appears to me, sir," continued Bryce, "to contain something
alive. It seemed to me that I received the impression of something
squirming."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Roland, staring at the letter.
"Sir?"
"It's a snake. That fool has sent me a snake. Of all the----"
A hearty ringing at the front-door bell interrupted him. Bryce, rising
from the suit-case, vanished silently. Roland continued to regard the
unwelcome gift with a peevish frown.
"Miss Wickham, sir," said Bryce at the door.
The visitor, who walked springily into the room, was a girl of
remarkable beauty. She resembled a particularly good-looking schoolboy
who had dressed up in his sister's clothes.
"Ah!" she said, cocking a bright eye at the suit-case. "I'm glad you're
bustling about. We ought to be starting soon. I'm going to drive
you down in the two-seater." She began a restless tour of the room.
"Hullo!" she said, arriving at the box. "What might this be?" She shook
it experimentally. "I say! There's something squishy inside!"
"Yes, it's----"
"Roland," said Miss Wickham, having conducted further experiments,
"immediate investigation is called for. Inside this box there is
most certainly some living organism. When you shake it it definitely
squishes."
"It's all right. It's only a snake."
"Snake!"
"Perfectly harmless," he hastened to assure her. "The fool expressly
states that. Not that it matters, because I'm going to send it straight
back, unopened."
Miss Wickham squeaked with pleased excitement.
"Who's been sending you snakes?"
Roland coughed diffidently.
"I happened to--er--save a man's life last night. I was coming along at
the corner of Duke Street----"
"Now, isn't that an extraordinary thing?" said Miss Wickham,
meditatively. "Here have I lived all these years and never thought of
getting a snake!"
"----when a man----"
"The one thing every young girl should have."
"----slipped off the pavement----"
"There are the most tremendous possibilities in a snake. The
diner-out's best friend. Pop it on the table after the soup and be
Society's pet."
Roland, though nothing, of course, could shake his great love, was
conscious of a passing feeling of annoyance.
"I'll tell Bryce to take the thing back to the man," he said,
abandoning his story as a total loss.
"Take it back?" said Miss Wickham, amazed. "But, Roland, what frightful
waste! Why, there are moments in life when knowing where to lay your
hand on a snake means more than words can tell." She started. "Golly!
Didn't you once say that old Sir Joseph What's-his-name--the beak,
you know--was your uncle? He fined me five of the best yesterday for
absolutely crawling along Piccadilly. He needs a sharp lesson. He must
be taught that he can't go about the place persecuting the innocent
like that. I'll tell you what. Ask him to lunch here and hide the thing
in his napkin! That'll make him think a bit!"
"No, no!" cried Roland, shuddering strongly.
"Roland! For my sake!"
"No, no, really!"
"And you said dozens of times that you would do anything in the world
for me!" She mused. "Well, at least let me tie a string to it and
dangle it out of the window in front of the next old lady that comes
along."
"No, no, please! I must send it back to the man."
Miss Wickham's discontent was plain, but she seemed to accept defeat.
"Oh, all right if you're going to refuse me every little thing! But
let me tell you, my lad, that you're throwing away the laugh of a
lifetime. Wantonly and callously chucking it away. Where is Bryce? Gone
to earth in the kitchen, I suppose. I'll go and give him the thing
while you strap the suit-case. We ought to be starting, or we sha'n't
get there by tea-time."
"Let me do it."
"No, I'll do it."
"You mustn't trouble."
"No trouble," said Miss Wickham, amiably.
* * * * *
In this world, as has been pointed out in various ways by a great many
sages and philosophers, it is wiser for the man who shrinks from being
disappointed not to look forward too keenly to moments that promise
pleasure. Roland Attwater, who had anticipated considerable enjoyment
from his drive down to Skeldings Hall, soon discovered, when the car
had threaded its way through the London traffic and was out in the open
country, that the conditions were not right for enjoyment. Miss Wickham
did not appear to share the modern girl's distaste for her home. She
plainly wanted to get there as quickly as possible. It seemed to Roland
that from the time they left High Barnet to the moment when with a
grinding of brakes, they drew up at the door of Skeldings Hall the
two-seater had only touched Hertfordshire at odd spots.
Yet, as they alighted, Roberta Wickham voiced a certain dissatisfaction
with her work.
"Forty-three minutes," she said, frowning at her watch. "I can do
better than that."
"Can you?" gulped Roland. "Can you, indeed?"
"Well, we're in time for tea, anyhow. Come in and meet the mater.
Forgotten Sports of the Past--Number Three, Meeting the Mater."
Roland met the mater. The phrase, however, is too mild and inexpressive
and does not give a true picture of the facts. He not merely met the
mater; he was engulfed and swallowed up by the mater. Lady Wickham,
that popular novelist ("Strikes a singularly fresh note."--R.
Moresby Attwater in the _New Examiner_), was delighted to see her
guest. Welcoming Roland to her side, she proceeded to strike so many
singularly fresh notes that he was unable to tear himself away till it
was time to dress for dinner. She was still talking with unimpaired
volubility on the subject of her books, of which Roland had been kind
enough to write so appreciatively, when the gong went.
"Is it as late as that?" she said, surprised, releasing Roland, who had
thought it later. "We shall have to go on with our little talk after
dinner. You know your room? No? Oh, well, Claude will show you. Claude,
will you take Mr. Attwater up with you? His room is at the end of your
corridor. By the way, you don't know each other, do you? Sir Claude
Lynn--Mr. Attwater."
The two men bowed; but in Roland's bow there was not that heartiness
which we like to see in our friends when we introduce them to
fellow-guests. A considerable part of the agony which he had been
enduring for the last two hours had been caused not so much by Lady
Wickham's eloquence, though that had afflicted him sorely, as by the
spectacle of this man Lynn, whoever he might be, monopolizing the
society of Bobbie Wickham in a distant corner. There had been to him
something intolerably possessive about the back of Sir Claude's neck as
he bent toward Miss Wickham. It was the neck of a man who is being much
more intimate and devotional than a jealous rival cares about.
The close-up which he now received of this person did nothing to
allay Roland's apprehension. The man was handsome, sickeningly
handsome, with just that dark, dignified, clean-cut handsomeness which
attracts impressionable girls. It was, indeed, his dignity that so
oppressed Roland now. There was that about Sir Claude Lynn's calm and
supercilious eye that made a fellow feel that he belonged to entirely
the wrong set in London and that his trousers were bagging at the knees.
"A most delightful man," whispered Lady Wickham, as Sir Claude moved
away to open the door for Bobbie. "Between ourselves, the original of
Captain Mauleverer, D.S.O., in my _Blood Will Tell_. Very old family,
ever so much money. Plays polo splendidly. And tennis. And golf. A
superb shot. Member for East Bittlesham, and I hear on all sides that
he may be in the Cabinet any day."
"Indeed?" said Roland, coldly.
* * * * *
It seemed to Lady Wickham, as she sat with him in her study after
dinner--she had stated authoritatively that he would much prefer a
quiet chat in that shrine of literature to any shallow revelry that
might be going on elsewhere--that Roland was a trifle distrait. Nobody
could have worked harder to entertain him than she. She read him the
first seven chapters of the new novel on which she was engaged, and
told him in gratifying detail the plot of the rest of it, but somehow
all did not seem well. The young man, she noticed, had developed a
habit of plucking at his hair; and once he gave a sharp, gulping cry
which startled her. Lady Wickham began to feel disappointed in Roland,
and was not sorry when he excused himself.
"I wonder," he said, in a rather over-wrought sort of way, "if
you would mind if I just went and had a word with Miss Wickham?
I--I--there's something I wanted to ask her."
"Certainly," said Lady Wickham, without warmth. "You will probably
find her in the billiard-room. She said something about having a game
with Claude. Sir Claude is wonderful at billiards. Almost like a
professional."
Bobbie was not in the billiard-room, but Sir Claude was, practising
dignified cannons which never failed to come off. At Roland's entrance
he looked up like an inquiring statue.
"Miss Wickham?" he said. "She left half an hour ago. I think she went
to bed."
He surveyed Roland's flushed dishevelment for a moment with a touch
of disapproval, then resumed his cannons. Roland, though he had that
on his mind concerning which he desired Miss Wickham's counsel and
sympathy, felt that it would have to stand over till the morning.
Meanwhile, lest his hostess should pop out of the study and recapture
him, he decided to go to bed himself.
He had just reached the passage where his haven lay, when a door which
had apparently been standing ajar opened and Bobbie appeared, draped
in a sea-green négligée of such a calibre that Roland's heart leaped
convulsively and he clutched at the wall for support.
"Oh, there you are," she said, a little petulantly. "What a time you've
been!"
"Your mother was----"
"Yes, I suppose she would be," said Miss Wickham, understandingly.
"Well, I only wanted to tell you about Sidney."
"Sidney? Do you mean Claude?"
"No. Sidney. The snake. I was in your room just after dinner, to
see if you had everything you wanted, and I noticed the box on your
dressing-table."
"I've been trying to get hold of you all the evening to ask you what to
do about that," said Roland, feverishly. "I was most awfully upset when
I saw the beastly thing. How Bryce came to be such an idiot as to put
it in the car----"
"He must have misunderstood me," said Bobbie, with a clear and
childlike light shining in her hazel eyes. "I suppose he thought I
said, 'Put this in the back' instead of 'Take this back.' But what I
wanted to say was that it's all right."
"All right?"
"Yes. That's why I've been waiting up to see you. I thought that,
when you went to your room and found the box open, you might be a bit
worried."
"The box open!"
"Yes. But it's all right. It was I who opened it."
"Oh, but I say--you--you oughtn't to have done that. The snake may be
roaming about all over the house."
"Oh, no, it's all right. I know where it is."
"That's good."
"Yes, it's all right. I put it in Claude's bed."
Roland Attwater clutched at his hair as violently as if he had been
listening to chapter six of Lady Wickham's new novel.
"You--you--you--what?"
"I put it in Claude's bed."
Roland uttered a little whinnying sound, like a very old horse a very
long way away.
"Put it in Claude's bed!"
"Put it in Claude's bed."
"But--but--but why?"
"Why not?" asked Miss Wickham, reasonably.
"But--oh, my heavens!"
"Something on your mind?" inquired Miss Wickham, solicitously.
"It will give him an awful fright."
"Jolly good for him. I was reading an article in the evening paper
about it. Did you know that fear increases the secretory activity of
the thyroid, suprarenal, and pituitary glands? Well, it does. Bucks you
up, you know. Regular tonic. It'll be like a day at the seaside for old
Claude when he puts his bare foot on Sidney. Well, I must be turning
in. Got that schoolgirl complexion to think about. Good night."
* * * * *
For some minutes after he had tottered to his room, Roland sat on the
edge of the bed in deep meditation. At one time it seemed as if his
reverie was going to take a pleasant turn. This was when the thought
presented itself to him that he must have overestimated the power of
Sir Claude's fascination. A girl could not, he felt, have fallen very
deeply under a man's spell if she started filling his bed with snakes
the moment she left him.