“Only—if you are going on giving teapots to friends, and there is a
hamper of china at this moment under the seat of the cart—I think it
would be advisable to change the name of the Crackle-Room. One might
call it the ‘Plundered Apartment,’ or something equally appropriate.”
“Call it what you choose, my dear.” Sir Giles was now recovering from
the shock of the unexpected onslaught. “I have said the crackle is no
more entailed than Overton Foxshott or the Lowndes Square house—or
anything else that at present I may call my own. If I were a younger
man, I might plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife for the
pleasure of making a considerable present of jewelry to a woman ten
years my senior. As it is——”
Sir Giles did not finish the speech, but strode angrily out and got into
the cart, and gave Polly a short, gruff “Good-bye,” as he drove away,
leaving that puzzled young woman on the doorsteps.
“‘Plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife.... Present of
jewelry ... a woman ten years his senior.’... Can Cis have been giving
jewels to Mrs. Osborne?” Polly wondered. The course of her love affair
had run so smoothly that she was at a loss to account for the pain at
her heart and the fever in her veins. Sir Giles’s complaint she
diagnosed correctly. He was jealous ... jealous of Cis! He was angry
with Polly. He had reminded her that he could do as he liked with his
own, that the county might call her an heiress, but the county had no
certain grounds for the assertion. Jealous and angry, the dear, cheery
Dad. Because Cis chose to loll upon the grass at the skirts of a woman
who was his senior by many more years than ten. Polly ordered round
Kiss-me-Quick, and rode over to Hengs Hall, pondering these things in
her mind. Much had been revealed to her, but it was for Lady Smithgill
to lift the last corner of the veil and disclose to Cis’s future wife
the true meaning of Sir Giles’s reference to jewels.
“So Cis gave her the pearls, and Dad has given her the crackle to
recover lost ground. Mrs. Osborne must be a clever woman,” Polly
reflected, as she rode slowly home through the sunset lanes on
Kiss-me-Quick.
“How was it going to end, all this?
“If Dad married Mrs. Osborne, it will be extremely unpleasant to possess
a stepmother who has been made love to by one’s husband. And should Mrs.
Osborne succeed in marrying Cis——” Polly tightened the reins
involuntarily, and Kiss-me-Quick quickened her paces. “Let her, if she
wants him. No; let him if he wants her. But first—oh, first—there will
be a Tug of War! I will not endure to be routed on my own ground by this
designing charlataness,” thought Polly.
In London it might have happened—almost without remark. But here—here in
the open—under familiar pitying, curious eyes.... Never, never, never!
And with each repetition of the word Kiss-me-Quick danced at a cut of
the whip. For Polly was humane, yet human.
The double report of a gun in one of the Heng coppices gave
Kiss-me-Quick an excuse for more dancing, and presently, as Polly
looked, shading her blue eyes with her half-gauntleted right hand, Cis
and a keeper came plainly into view. She pulled up Kiss-me-Quick and
waited, as the young man, leaving his gun with the keeper, crossed the
hot stubbles dangling a brace of birds.
“Why, Polly dear!” He tried to look natural and at ease as he lifted his
leather cap from his crisp brown waves. “If you had told me you thought
of riding over to see the mother, I’d have called for you and brought
you over.”
“It was a sudden idea, Cis,” Polly said, as she gave him her gloved
hand.
“Can you tie these birds on the saddle—or shall I send them over?” asked
Cis, glad of an excuse that made it possible to fix his eyes below the
level of hers. “They’re clean shot,” he added.
“Fasten them on—there’s a strap in the saddle pocket—and I will leave
them at The Sabines as I pass!” said Polly cheerfully.
Cis’s jaw dropped: he turned pale under his sun tan. “Leave them at The
Sabines!” he repeated blankly.
“I thought,” said Polly, bending a cool, amused glance upon her lover’s
perturbed countenance, “that you meant them for Mamma. To be sure, she
is not Mamma yet, but it is a pretty compliment to treat her as though
she were already Papa’s wife—taking the pearls to show her before you
brought them to me! I call it _quite sweet_ of you!” Polly ended.
“I—I!” The young man’s face was an extraordinary study. “I am so glad
you’re pleased,” he stuttered.
“Dad is with her to-day,” went on Polly, stroking Kiss-me-Quick’s glossy
neck with her whip-lash. “He took her over a cargo of crackle china out
of Lady Bab’s room. China is a taste one begins to cultivate at her age,
dear thing, and I suppose they are having a nice, quiet, cosy afternoon,
arranging the pieces. She has her fads, Dad has his, and I am sure they
will get on excellently together. Dear me! how warm you are! Come to tea
to-morrow! Good-bye!”
And Polly rode quickly away. Sore as she was, angry and jealous as she
was, she laughed as the vision of Cis’s hot, astonished, indignant face
rose before her. She laughed again as she turned in at the bridle-gate
of The Sabines. But she was grave and earnest as she dismounted at the
hall-door and followed Ames, the butler, down the long, cool hall to the
drawing-room.
“Miss Overshott.”
The announcement made Sir Giles attempt to get up from the footstool on
which he was sitting, but he did not succeed at the first attempt,
thanks to his rheumatism, and his daughter’s eye lighted on him at once.
“Don’t move, Dad, dearest. Why should you? Oh! Mrs. Osborne!” Polly flew
to the fair widow, who advanced, cool, smiling, and exquisitely clad, to
greet her visitor. “Oh, Mrs. Osborne, I am so—so glad!” Polly seemed
choking with joyful tears as she caught the rounded waist of Melusine in
her strong young embrace, and vigorously kissed the exquisitely powdered
cheeks. “And I may call you Mamma—mayn’t I?”
“Mamma?” echoed Sir Giles, sitting puzzled on the footstool.
“Mamma?” re-echoed Mrs. Osborne in cooing accents of surprise.
“You see, Dad has told me all,” explained Polly, turning beaming,
childlike eyes of happiness upon the embarrassed pair. “Though Cis knew
before I did, and I hardly call that quite fair. But as he is to be your
son, dear Mrs. Osborne—as I am to be your daughter——Why, there is the
crackle arranged upon your cabinets already! How nice it looks! But it
will all be yours, presently, won’t it, Mamma?” Polly gave Mrs. Osborne
another kiss, and then fluttered over to Sir Giles, who sat petrified
upon the footstool, and gave him a couple. “You mustn’t be jealous,” she
said, “you foolish old Dad! And now, Mamma darling, won’t you give me
some tea?”
“Dear Mary, with pleasure!” assented Mrs. Osborne, who knew that her
hand had been forced, and yet could not help admiring the audacity of
the _coup_. As her graceful form undulated to the tea-table, she cast a
glance at Sir Giles, raising her beautifully tinted eyebrows almost to
her golden-brown curls. She gave him credit for being a party to the
plot, while he, poor astonished gentleman, was as innocent as a new-born
babe. In the passing out of a cup of tea she realized that a double game
was no longer possible, and that Polly Overshott had the stronger hand.
“Your father,” she said, as she gave Polly her tea, “has enlisted a
powerful advocate. All was not so settled as you seem to think, dear
Mary, but——” And she sighed, and extended her white hand to Sir Giles,
and helped him up from the footstool; and he was in the act of
gracefully kissing that fair hand as Cis, in riding-dress, pale,
agitated, and breathless from the gallop over, was ushered in.
“Cis!” cried Polly, realizing that the supreme moment of the Tug of War
was now or never. Her eyes were blue fires, her cheeks red ones, as she
moved swiftly and gracefully to her lover and led him forward. “Kiss
Mamma and shake hands with Dad,” she said, and added with a coquetry of
which Cis had never thought her capable: “and then, perhaps, you may
kiss me.” Bewildered, choking with the reproaches, the recriminations
with which he was bursting, and which it need hardly be explained were
intended for Mrs. Osborne’s private ear, the young man obeyed.
“I—I congratulate you both,” he said thickly. Mrs. Osborne had never
felt so little the niceties of a situation in her life. Nonplused,
angry, and perturbed, she looked every hour of her age, despite pink
curtains; and the powder only served to accentuate the suddenly revealed
hollows in her face. Polly, as I have explained, had never worn such an
air of coquetry, of brilliancy, of dare-devil, defiant mastery as she
now displayed. But her final blow was to be dealt—and she dealt it.
“Mamma darling,” she cooed, taking the vacated stool at Mrs. Osborne’s
feet—the stool contested for by both the discomfited wooers—“how cosy we
are here—all together! Won’t you please Dad—and me—and Cis—by bringing
out the pearls!”
“The—pearls!” Mrs. Osborne said. An electric shock went through her; she
turned stabbing eyes upon the speechless Cis. And Sir Giles, studying
her face, made up his mind that he would never marry that woman—not if
Polly did her level best to bring the match about.
While Polly prattled on.
“The pearls, of course. I told Cis I thought it sweet of him to bring
them to show you—as though I were really your daughter, don’t you know.
And if you will fasten them round my neck yourself, I shall think it
sweet of you. Where have you hidden them? Why, I believe you are wearing
them now—to keep them warm for me—under your lace cravat, you dear,
darling thing!”
The affectionate daughter-elect raised a guileless hand and twitched the
jewels into sight.
Mrs. Osborne, ashy pale, and with Medea-like eyes, unfastened the jewels
from her throat.
“Here they are, dear Mary. Take them—and may they bring you all the
happiness I wish you!” said Mrs. Osborne in cooing accents.
Polly could not restrain a little shudder, but she was grave.
“Now Cis and I will go,” she said, when the pearls were fastened round
her neck over the neat white collar. “I am sure you and Dad want to be
alone. Come, Cis dear.”
And she kissed Mrs. Osborne again, and bore Cis—not unwilling, strangely
fascinated by the new Polly so suddenly made manifest—away. They were
riding slowly home to dinner at Overshott Foxbrush, when the sound of
wheels rattling behind them, and Fanchon’s well-known trot, brought a
covert smile to Polly’s lips.
Mrs. Osborne had a headache, Sir Giles explained, and so he had decided
not to remain to dinner.
But father, daughter, and betrothed dined pleasantly at Overshott
Foxbrush. And when the dazzled Cis said good-night to the triumphant
Polly, the valediction was uttered unwillingly with as many repetitions
as there were pearls in the string Miss Overshott wore round her firm
white throat.
There was no gas laid on at Overshott. Bedroom candlesticks were an
unabolished institution. As Sir Giles gave his daughter hers, he spoke.
“You were a little premature in your conclusions, my girl, at The
Sabines to-day. I won’t ask why you played that little comedy, because I
know.... But you played it well ... and I don’t think Cis will kick over
the traces in that direction again. Nor do I think”—the Colonel cleared
his throat rather awkwardly—“that you are going to have Mrs. Osborne for
your second mother. She is too clever—and so are you! Good-night, my
dear!”
GAS!
Mrs. Gudrun’s season at the Sceptre Theatre was drawing to a finish, and
the funds of the Syndicate were in the same condition. Teddy
Candelish—Teddy of the cherubic smile and the golden mustache,
constantly described by the _Theatrical Piffer_ as the most ubiquitous
of acting-managers—sat in his sanctum before an American roll-top desk,
checking off applications for free seats and filing unpaid bills.
Gormleigh, the stage-director, balanced himself on the end of a
saddle-bag sofa, chewing an unlighted cigar; De Hanna, the
representative of the Syndicate, was going over the books at a
leather-covered table, his eyeglasses growing dim in the attempt to read
anything beyond deficit in those neatly kept columns. Mrs. Gudrun
occupied the easiest chair. Her feet, beautifully silk-stockinged and
wonderfully shod, occupied the next comfortable; her silken draperies
were everywhere, and a cigarette was between her finely cut lips. Her
feather boa hung from an electric-globe branch, and her flowery
diaphanous hat, bristling with diamond-headed pins, crowned the domelike
brow of a plaster bust of the Bard of Avon.
“Well,” said the manageress, making smoke-rings and looking at De Hanna,
“there’s no putting the bare fact to bed! We’ve not pulled off things as
we had a right to expect.... We’ve lost our little pot, and come to the
end of our resources, eh?”
“In plain terms,” said De Hanna, speaking through his nose, as he always
did when upon the subject of money, “the Syndicate has run you for all
the Syndicate is worth, and when we pay salaries on Saturday we shall
have”—he did some figuring with a lead pencil on the back of a
millionaire’s request for gratuitous stalls, and whistled
sadly—“something like four hundred and fifty left to carry us through
until the seventeenth.”
“We began with as nice a little nest-egg as any management could wish
for,” said Candelish, dropping a smoking vesta into the waste-paper
basket with fatalistic unconcern. “We thought _The Stone Age_ would pay.
I’d my doubts of a prehistoric drama in five acts and fourteen scenes
that couldn’t be produced under an outlay of four thousand pounds, but
we were overruled.” He veered the tail of his eye round at Mrs. Gudrun.
“You and the Duke were mad about that piece.”
“De Petoburgh saw great possibilities for me in it,” said Mrs. Gudrun,
throwing another cigarette-end at the fireplace and missing it. “That
scene where Kaja comes in dressed in woad for battle, and brains
What’s-his-name with her prehistoric stone ax because he doesn’t want to
fight her, always thrilled him. He said I would be greater than Siddons
in it, and, well—you remember the notices I got in the _Morning
Whooper_. Cluffer did me justice _then_, if he did turn nasty
afterward—the beast!”
“When I met Cluffer in the vestibule on the first night after the third
act,” said Teddy Candelish, “he said he was going home because the
tension of your acting was positively too great to bear. He preferred me
to describe the rest of the play to him, and jotted the chief points on
his cuff before he went. And I grant you the notice was a ripper, but it
didn’t seem to bring people in; and after playing to paper for three
weeks, we had to put up the fortnight’s notice and jam _The Kiss of
Clytie_ into rehearsal.”
“Dad vos a lofely—ach!—a lofely blay!” moaned Oscar Gormleigh, casting
up his little pig’s eyes to the highly ornamental ceiling of the
managerial sanctum. “Brigged from de Chairman in de pekinning, as I told
you, as all de goot blays are.”
“I wish the Germans had stuck to it, I’m sure,” said De Hanna. “It
always appeared to me too much over the heads of ordinary intelligent
playgoers to pay worth a little damn.”
“De dranscendental element——” Gormleigh was beginning, when Mrs. Gudrun
cut him short.
“I never cared for it very much myself; but Bob Bolsover was dead set
upon my giving the public my reading of _Clytie_—and, well, you must
recollect the effect I created in that studio scene. Mullekens came
round afterward, and brought his critic with him, and said that the best
French school of acting must now look to its laurels, and a lot more.
Mullekens is the proprietor of the _Daily Tomahawk_, and so, of course,
I thought we were in for a good thing. How could I imagine that the
creature of a critic would go home and make game of the whole show?
Doesn’t Mullekens pay him?”
“Ah, ja! Poot dat gritic’s vife is de sister of de Chairman agtress dat
blayed _Glytie_ in de orichinal Chairman broduction,” put in Gormleigh,
whose real surname was Gameltzch, as everybody does not know. “Did I not
varn you? It vas a gase of veels vidin veels.”
“Wheels or no wheels, _Clytie_ kissed us out of three thou. odd,” said
De Hanna, wearily scratching his ear with his “Geyser” pen, “and then we
cut our throats with——”
“With him,” put in Candelish, jerking a contemptuous thumb at the
hat-crowned effigy of the Bard of Avon.
“You were keen on my giving the great mass of playgoers a chance of
seeing my Juliet,” remarked Mrs. Gudrun casting a Parthian glance at the
worm that had turned.
“But they didn’t take the chance,” put in De Hanna, “and consequently—we
fizzle out.”
“Like a burst bladder ...” moaned Candelish, who saw before him a weary
waste of months unenlivened by paid occupation.
“Or a damp sguib,” put in Gormleigh.
“Let’s have a sputter before we expire,” said De Hanna, with a momentary
revival of energy. “Lots of manuscripts have been sent in.... Isn’t
there a little domestic drama of the purely popular sort, or a farce
imbecile enough to pay for production, to be found among ’em?”
“Dunno,” yawled Candelish, tilting his chair.
“Who is supposed to read the plays that are sent in?” asked De Hanna,
turning his large Oriental eyes toward. Mrs. Gudrun.
“I read some,” said the lady languidly, “and the dogs get the rest.”
She stretched, and an overpowering combination of fashionable perfumes,
shaken from her draperies, filled the apartment. The three men sneezed
simultaneously. Mrs. Gudrun rose with majesty, and going to the
mantel-glass, patted her transformation fringe into form, and smiled at
the perennially beautiful image that smiled and patted back. Suddenly
there was a whining and scratching outside the door.
“It’s Billy. Let him in, one of you,” ordered the manageress.
All three men obeyed, clashing their heads together smartly at the
portal. De Hanna, with watering eyes, opened the door, and a brindled
bull of surpassing ugliness trotted into the office, carrying a chewed
brown paper parcel decorated with futile red seals and trailing loops of
string. Lying down in the center of the carpet and carefully arranging
the parcel between his forepaws, Billy proceeded to worry it.
“Vot has de beast kott dere?” asked Gormleigh.
“Take it from him and see!” said Mrs. Gudrun carelessly. Gormleigh’s
violet nose became pale lavender as Billy, looking up from the work of
destruction, emitted a loud growl.
“He understonds everyding vot you say!” spluttered the stage-manager.
“Try him with German,” advised De Hanna.
“Or mit Yiddish,” retorted Gormleigh spitefully.
As De Hanna winced under the retort, Candelish, who had rummaged
unnoticed in a drawer for some moments, produced a biscuit. Billy,
watching out of the corner of his eye, pricked a ragged ear and whacked
the carpet with his muscular tail.
“Hee, boy, hee, Billy!” Candelish said seductively. Billy rose upon his
powerful bow-legs and hung out his tongue expectantly.
“Koot old Pillee!” uttered Gormleigh encouragingly. “Gleffer old poy!”
Billy vouchsafed the stage-manager not a glance; his bloodshot eyes were
glued upon the biscuit as he stood over the brown paper parcel. Then, as
Candelish, throwing an expression of eager voracity into his
countenance, made believe to eat the coveted delicacy himself, Billy
made a step forwards.... The end of the parcel projected from between
his hind-legs.... De Hanna softly stepped to the fireplace and seized
the tongs....
“Poo’ boy—poo’ ol’ Billy, then!” coaxed the acting-manager. He broke the
biscuit with one inviting snap, Billy forgot the parcel, and De Hanna
grabbed and got it. The next moment the bull, realizing his loss, pinned
the representative of the Syndicate by the leg.
“Dash—dash—dash! Take the dash brute off, somebody!” shrieked De Hanna.
There was a brief scene of confusion. Then, as Billy retired under a
corner table with a mouthful of ravished tweed, “He’s torn a piece out
of your trow-trows, old man,” Candelish remarked sympathetically.
“He might have torn all the veins out of my leg!” De Hanna gasped.
“Den,” said Gormleigh, chuckling, “you would haf been Kosher.”
But Mrs. Gudrun was deeply disappointed in Billy. “Letting you off for a
bit of cloth!” she said. “Why, the breed are famous for their bite. He
ought to have taken a piece of flesh clean out—I shall never believe in
that dog again!” She swept over to Gormleigh, who was busy disentangling
the lengths of chewed string and removing the tatters of brown paper
from Billy’s treasure-trove. It proved to be a green-covered, rather
bulky volume of typescript. A red-bordered label gummed on the cover
announced its title:
“MAGGS AT MARGATE
A SEASIDE FARCE,
IN THREE WHIFFS OF OZONE.”
“What funny fool has written this?” snorted the manageress.
“De name of de author.... Ach so! De name of de author is
Slump—Ferdinand Slump.”
“I know the chap, or of him. He’s a business man who owns a half share
in some chemical gasworks at Hackney, and does comic literature in off
hours. He writes the weekly theatrical page of _Tickles_,” said De
Hanna, “and——”
“_Dickles_ is a stupid halfpenny brint,” said Gormleigh, “dat sdeals all
its chokes from de Chairman babers.”
“Really? It struck me that there must be some existing reason,” said
Candelish, “for the wonderfully level flow of dullness the publication
manages to maintain——”
“Well, I suppose somebody is going to read this farce, since that is
what he calls it, by this Slump, since that is what he calls himself,”
said Mrs. Gudrun, removing her hat from Shakespeare and pinning it on.
“Certainly. De Hanna, as the Representative of the Syndicate——” began
Candelish eagerly.
“Pardon me. As acting-manager,” objected De Hanna, “you, Candelish, have
the prior claim.”
“Didn’t you say you were going out of town to-night, Gormleigh?”
interrupted Mrs. Gudrun, who had stuck in all her hatpins, and was now
putting on her gloves.
“Choost for a liddle plow,” admitted Gormleigh. “Dere is a cheab night
drain to Stinkton-on-Sea, sdarding from de Creat Northern at dwelve
dirty. I shall sleep in de gorridor gombardmend, oond breakfast at a
goffee and vinkle stall on de peach to-morrow morgen. By vich I haf poot
von night to pay for at de hotel.” His bearded lips parted in a
childlike smile of delight. “My vife goes not vid me,” he said, and
smiled again.
“Then take this!” said Mrs. Gudrun, turning Slump’s farce over. “Report
on it after the show on Monday.” And she rustled from the office on
billows of silk, attended by clouds of perfume, the despised Billy, and
the assiduous Candelish. The stage-manager swore. De Hanna, concealing
the solution in the continuity of his tweeds with a bicycle
trouser-clip, grinned.
“A little solid reading will steady you down, Gummy, and if my
experience of Slump goes for anything—you’ve got it there. But you’ll
report on Monday, as Her Nibs ordered. If you’ve not read it, look out
for squalls on Monday night!”
* * * * *
“Potstausend! Hof I read dot farce!” gasped Gormleigh on the night of
Monday. “Schwerlich! I hof read him tvice. Once from de beginning to de
end, oond akain from de end to de beginning.” His face assumed an
expression of anguish, and the veins on his bald forehead stood out as
the thick drops gathered there. “I cannot make heads or dails of him....
He is gram-jam with chokes, poot I cannot lof at dem; his situations are
sgreaming, poot I cannot sgream. De tears day komm instead.... Dat vork
is vonderful ... it should one day be broduced, poot in de kreat
National School Theatre for authors oond actors dot de gountry hos not
yet founded, to brove to bubils vot is not a farce——”
“Yet I shouldn’t be surprised if we did the piece here,” said Teddy
Candelish. “Slump, the author, has been talking over Her Nibs, and as he
would let _Maggs at Margate_ go for nothing down, find three hundred
pounds toward the production, and merely take a nominal sixty per cent.,
the chances are that you’ll be rehearsing before Tuesday. Hullo!” for
the stage-manager had reeled heavily against him.
“Ich bin unwohl.... It is dose undichested chokes of Slumps I haf hodd
on my gonstitution since I read dot farce. Oond now you komm mit
anodder,” Gormleigh groaned.