Millicent Dixon’s uncle, Col. Elliott Coke, invalided from some remote
Afghan frontier station whose name on the map was utterly out of
proportion to the inconsiderableness of the place, was in London. I met
him at the Bassishaws’ when Arthur, in tones of infinite respect, had
pointed out to my notice a small, keen face, curried by Indian suns,
with moustaches out of which both the colour and the moisture had been
grilled years and years before.
“I say, Rollo,” Bassishaw had whispered, “do you know who that is?
That’s Col. Coke.”
“It’s a good name,” I observed. “Who’s he?”
“Who’s he? I say, Rollo! Why, he’s the best authority on hill batteries
and jungle skirmishes in India! Led an attack on some darned place or
other in--I forget the date. V. C. Went through the Afghan war, you
know--got about a hundred and fifty clasps.”
“Indeed?” I said. “Present me.”
Arthur had presented me to his hero almost apologetically, and I had
since improved the acquaintance considerably.
I gathered from the Colonel that the Afghan frontier was not overrun
with European ladies to any great extent, and certainly the little man’s
manner on being transported to a place where a full numerical half of
the population (and a much larger proportion in every other respect)
consisted of women, was very pleasant to watch. The luxury of seeing
them was almost enough for him, and when it came to the intimacies of
conversation the little warrior’s embarrassment was as delightful as
young Ted Carmichael’s.
“Gad, Butterfield,” he said, as we threaded Piccadilly one evening,
“this is home, you know! It’s like one big family--you feel as if you
can speak to any of them!”
The Colonel’s observation was perhaps truer than he had any idea of; but
I couldn’t dash his boyish pleasure.
“Yes,” I replied. “I almost envy you the delight, Coke, of having the
full measure all at once. It is to you what tiger-shooting would be to
me, did my tastes run in that direction.”
“Gad,” he replied (he seldom replied without “Gad”), “it’s marvellous!
And all with faces as white as my own, Butterfield!”
I smiled, looking at the piece of tropical cookery he called white, but
let him run on.
“Do you know,” he said, “there was Powell’s wife, and poor Jack Dennis’s
widow, and the adjutant’s sister; and, by Gad, except for a _dahi_ that
Powell kept (Powell’s wife was never strong), there wasn’t another
woman, Butterfield, in the whole damned station! And Winifred Dennis
didn’t amount to much. But here----”
He never seemed to get accustomed to it. Had a London fog stamped the
metropolitan complexion indelibly and universally black, Coke would have
given a sigh, as knowing that his glimpse was too good to have lasted,
and returned to his old order of things. The rustle of a silk skirt was
an unstaled wonder to him; and the contrast between what he called the
“real European baby-ribbon sort of thing” and the “infernal blouse and
puggaree business” never failed to entertain him.
With Miss Dixon he was soon on good terms, but with most other ladies,
Mrs. Loring Chatterton first of all, his diffidence was marked. His
chivalrous devotion was Quixotic, but most of them would have bartered
it, I am sure, for a more work-a-day and less punctilious style of
attention. Mrs. Loring, indeed, said so.
“I don’t know where he got his style of conversation from,” she
remarked, “but he is absolutely embarrassed when I present him to a
woman. How do you account for it, Mr. Butterfield?”
“It is not,” I replied, “that he is deficient in physical bravery. I can
only account for it on the supposition of instinct. He knows your
propensities, Mrs. Loring, and would possibly die as he has lived, a
blameless bachelor.”
“But it’s just the same with the married women,” she returned. “What is
there to be afraid of in Alice Carmichael?”
“I decline to be invidious, Mrs. Loring,” I replied. “He gets along well
enough with Millicent Dixon.”
“They are related,” she replied, somewhat inconclusively.
“I am afraid it is a _non sequitur_,” I answered. “Friendship generally
varies inversely as the square of the distance of the relationship.”
“I wonder what we could do?” she said, half to herself. “Do you think
Mrs. Gervase would do him any good?”
The wicked, wedded creature! Emily Gervase, a youthful widow, was Cicely
Vicars’s sister. I drew myself up with dignity.
“Mrs. Loring,” I said, looking full at her, “I wonder that you do not
tremble! What is it you would do? Has Col. Coke, of a score of Indian
hill fights, the bearer of honourable scars of war and climate, not
earned his peace? Would you, now that his body is broken on the outposts
of an Empire for your protection, harrow the boyish soul within it? No,
madam. On me, if you will, you may exercise your arts; but if you once
submit that venerable head to the machinations of Emily Gervase--I
expose you.”
“Exercise arts on you!” she retorted. “You’re too fond of it; and I
_shall_ be--nice--to the Colonel, in spite of you, Mr. Butterfield.”
She kept her word. She indulged her undoubted gifts for being “nice” to
people in a series of variations, the theme of which was always the
same--the development of the Colonel’s intimacy with Mrs. Gervase. Mrs.
Loring’s methods were old enough to me--I knew them by heart; but to the
maiden soul of the Colonel they came as a revelation of female
unselfishness.
“Do you know, Butterfield,” he said to me one evening, “I’m beginning to
think Mrs. Chatterton is no end of a fine woman, by Gad! She’s loyal, by
Gad! The way she stands by that little friend of hers, Mrs. Gervase--you
know her”--(I nodded)--“why, it’s just what a man would do!”
“Then you have met Mrs. Gervase, Coke?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, “the other evening. She’s infernally shy, by Gad!
Quiet, you know. That’s what I like about an Englishwoman here. Now,
Powell’s wife, and the regimental women----”
“Exactly; were not shy. And what do you think of Mrs. Gervase?”
“Well, you know,”--the little man looked at me with a comical air of
worldly knowledge that was a joy to see,--“she was awfully quiet,
Butterfield--only looked at you; but _I_ brought her out, by Gad! And
she’s intelligent, too, when you once get her talking.”
“You succeeded in making her talk, then?” I asked with an irony that was
for my private satisfaction, and meant nothing to him.
“Yes,” he replied, “after I’d--played her a bit, you know. And that
woman, Butterfield, displayed an intelligence, by Gad, on transport, and
commissariat, and mobilisation that was simply little short of
marvellous! Marvellous, by Gad!”
“She’s a clever woman, I believe,” I answered. “She asked you how often
you had been wounded, I suppose?”
“She _did_ ask me that,” he admitted; “but women haven’t got to hear
about that kind of thing, you know, Butterfield. You’ve got to keep ’em
at arm’s length in such matters--kind of----”
“Exactly. Play them a bit. I congratulate you, Colonel, on
having--er--brought out Mrs. Gervase.”
“Oh,” he replied, “she’s only a child, of course, widow or no widow; but
she’ll make a fine woman, Butterfield.”
I would have given much that Emily Gervase should have heard herself set
down a child. The Colonel, unconsciously, had in his hand the
opportunity for complete and sweeping revenge.
It was my fortune to be present when Mrs. Gervase, doubtless after deep
consideration, made the next move. We were to call on Mrs. Charlie
Vicars--or rather, Coke was to call, and persuaded me along with him.
“Mrs. Chatterton said you wouldn’t mind, Butterfield,” he said; “and, by
Gad, I can’t keep two of them going.”
“You undervalue yourself, Coke,” I said. “But I’ll come.”
And so we found ourselves in the æstheticism of Mrs. Vicars’s
drawing-room. That lady found means to entertain me, while Coke applied
himself to the creation of a conversational warmth that should induce
the unfolding of the timid bud by his side.
“Col. Coke seems to have taken quite a fancy to Emily, Mr. Butterfield?”
said Mrs. Charlie interrogatively.
“It is a pretty sight, Mrs. Vicars,” I replied. “The scarred veteran in
the evening of his life, his grim battles behind him, returning to take
a younger generation on his knee----”
Mrs. Vicars looked round in alarm.
“--And to tell of fights in which their fathers were engaged----”
“Col. Coke is not so old as that, Mr. Butterfield. He can’t be much
older than you,” she interrupted.
“He is young enough to be Emily’s father,” I admitted, “and perhaps a
little too juvenile to be her grandfather. Coke is fifty.”
“He doesn’t look it, Mr. Butterfield.”
“He looks it, Mrs. Vicars, and you know it. Let us talk about something
else. How is Master--Percival, is his name to be?”
The young gentleman in question had known the light of day for exactly
three weeks, and was the commencement of Cicely Vicars’s family. I had
been presented to him in his cot some days before, but beyond mutual
celibacy, there was little as yet in common between us, and the
conversation had flagged.
“Yes,” Mrs. Vicars responded, “he’s to be called Percival; and oh, Mr.
Butterfield, he’s to be christened in a week, and I wondered----”
She hesitated.
“I already stand sponsor to an embarrassing extent, Mrs. Vicars,” I
replied. “I never ascertained precisely to what the position pledged me,
but I have an uncomfortable sense of responsibility to which I do not
feel inclined to add.”
“But, Mr. Butterfield, those were--other people’s children--not mine.”
She turned a supplicating eye on me. It runs in the family.
“Naturally,” I replied. “It would be a big burden, in these days of
small families, for any one person. But no, Mrs. Vicars. Perhaps on a
future occasion----I have it!” I added.
“You have what?”
“Coke’s your man, Mrs. Vicars. Come.”
I rose, and assisted her to rise also. She hung back, but I brought her
along. It was the very thing! We approached the couple. The Colonel was
holding forth on the dialects of the North-Western Provinces.
“Coke!” I said. He looked up.
“Accept my felicitations. You are to stand godfather to Mrs. Vicars’s
little boy next week.”
Coke blushed a vivid gamboge, and stopped dead.
“Gad!” he stammered. “Wha--what’s that, Butterfield?”
“Sponsor, my dear Coke,” I returned, “at the investiture of a fellow-man
with a name. You’re just the man.”
Things were whirling round Coke. He grasped the edge of the sofa with
both hands, and looked blankly at us.
“Me!” he gasped, “me! at a christening! What the devil--me a godfather!
No, I’m damned if I can!”
“My dear Coke,” I answered, “calm yourself. Of course you can--you must!
A man with the Victoria Cross cannot get out of these things so easily.
Look at me--a baker’s dozen at least.”
“Gad,” he replied, wiping his brow, “I’d rather get the Cross again.”
“Nonsense,” I replied. “It’s a duty. Somebody did it for us, and we keep
up the tradition. Besides, it’s unlucky to have to ask twice.”
I had no authority for this last statement, but it seemed to go. Coke
leaned back for ease in breathing.
“But I’ve never done anything of the kind,” he almost whispered. “I
shall shake like a recruit. I shan’t know what to do--I shall get mixed
up with the bridesmaids----”
The Colonel’s notions as to the procedure of christenings were
undoubtedly vague. I looked at Mrs. Gervase.
“This is not a wedding,” I said, “but a christening. That’s all right,
Coke. You shall wear your uniform and grasp the hilt of your sword all
the time. You’ll do.”
“But--but--hang it, Butterfield, what about the family? You’ll pardon
me, ladies, but I--you are the only members I am happy enough to know.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Vicars, “there’s only mother, Colonel. I forgot you
hadn’t met her. You shall to-morrow. You do promise?”
The Colonel was evidently looking for flaws in the position, but seemed
to find none. He rose, as unhappy a little soldier as ever wore a medal.
“Well, ladies,” he said, “I would rather have shot Afghans for you for
twelve months than undertake this--this post. If I break down you
mustn’t blame me. I’ll do my best.”
And with a sigh he pulled his white moustaches nervously, and we begged
leave to go.
Now, my only object in all this was a half-whimsical protest, such as is
permissible against what was evidently in the minds of both these
ladies--the matching of Mrs. Gervase with a man easily twenty years her
senior. The position of godfather to a succeeding generation, apart from
the edification of seeing such a man as Coke in such a capacity, was
much more suitable than any wedding so uneven, and I had allowed myself
to hint as much. But Coke himself, as he afterwards told me, had carried
the thing a good deal further.
It was in the smoke-room of the Fainéant Club that I heard its
conclusion. The ceremony was over, and Coke was composing his nerves
with green Indian cigars. He had sat meditatively watching the smoke for
some time, when he suddenly looked up and caught my eye.
“Well, Butterfield,” he said, “I got it over; but, by Gad, never again!
They shall call 'Deserters’ next time for me!”
“Yes?” I said inquiringly.
“Yes,” he replied. “It was this way, Butterfield. I called on Mrs.
Vicars next day, and met her mother, and, by Gad, Butterfield”--the
Colonel threw his cigar away in his excitement, and faced full round on
me--“it was little Cissie Munro, who threw me over before I left, thirty
years ago! By Gad”--he sank back in his chair--“you could have pulled my
shoulder-straps off! I knew her in a minute. I didn’t know whether she
was living or dead, Butterfield. I’m used to my friends dying--and
there, by Gad, she turns up! My stars, it beats all!”
It was certainly a coincidence.
“And the awkward part of the whole thing was--I don’t mind telling
_you_, Butterfield--that I’d all but taken a fancy to that quiet little
daughter of hers, Mrs. Gervase. Well, I was all at sea; the whole thing
was too infernally odd. It didn’t seem right, somehow, that I should be
thrown over by one woman, make love to her daughter, and be godfather to
what might have been my own grandchild, by Gad; and I was in no end of a
mess. Don’t you think so?”