John came to the conclusion while he was driving to Earl's Court that
the distinctive anxiety in losing two children was to be sought for in
an acute consciousness of their mobility. He had often enough lost such
articles as sovereigns, and matchboxes, and income-tax demands; but in
the disappearance of these he had always been consoled by the knowledge
that they were stationary in some place or another at any given moment,
and that somebody or another must find them at some time or another,
with profit or disappointment to himself. But Bertram and Viola might be
anywhere; if at this moment they were somewhere, before the taxi had
turned the next corner they might be somewhere else. The only kind of
loss comparable to this was the loss of a train, in which case also the
victim was dismayed by the thought of its mobility. Moreover, was it
logically possible to find two children, any more than it was possible
to find a lost train? They could be caught like a train by somebody
else; but except among gipsies, who were practically extinct, the sport
of catching children was nowadays unknown. The classic instance of two
lost children--and by the way an uncle came into that--was _The Babes in
the Wood_, in which story they were neither caught nor found, though
certainly their bodies were found owing to the eccentric behavior of
some birds in the vicinity. It would be distressing to read in the paper
to-morrow of two children's having been found under a drift of
paper-bags in the bear-pit at the Zoo, hugged to death not by each
other, but by the bears. Or they might have hidden themselves in the
Reptile House--Bertram had displayed a dreadful curiosity about the
effect of standing upon one of the alligators--and their fate might
remain for ever a matter of conjecture. Yet even supposing that they
were not at this moment regarding with amazed absorption--absorption was
too ominous a word--with amazed interest the nocturnal gambols of the
great cats, were they on that account to be considered safe? If it was a
question of being crunched up, it made little difference whether one was
crunched up by the wheels of an omnibus or by the jaws of a panther. To
be sure, Bertram was accustomed to go to school by tube every morning,
and obviously he must know by this time how to ask the way to any given
spot....
The driver of the taxi was taking no risks with the traffic, and John's
tightly strung nerves were relaxed; he began to perceive that he was
agitating himself foolishly. The wide smoothness of Cromwell Road was
all that was needed to persuade him that the shock had deprived him for
a short time of common sense. How absurd he had been! Of course the
children would be all right; but he should take good care to administer
no less sharp a shock to George than he had experienced himself. He did
not approve of George's attitude, and if the temporary loss of Bertram
and Viola could rouse him to a sense of his paternal responsibilities,
this disturbing climax of a jolly day would not have been led up to in
vain. No, George's moral, mental, and physical laziness must no longer
be encouraged.
"I shall make the whole business out to be as bad as possible," he
decided. "Though, now that I have had time to think the situation out, I
realize that there is really not the least likelihood of anything's
serious having happened to them."
For James even when he was most exasperating John always felt an
involuntary deference that stood quite apart from the sentimental regard
which he always tried to owe him as head of the family; for his second
brother George he had nothing but contempt. James might be wrongheaded;
but George was fatheaded. James kept something of their father's fallen
day about him; George was a kind of gross caricature of his own self.
Every feature in this brother's face reproduced the corresponding
feature in his own with such compelling suggestiveness of a potentially
similar degeneration that John could never escape from the reproach of
George's insistent kinship. Many times he had been seized by a strong
impulse to cut George ruthlessly out of his life; but as soon as he
perceived that gibbous development of his own aquiline nose, that
reduplication of his own rounded chin, that bull-like thickening of his
own sanguine neck, and that saurian accentuation of the eloquent pouches
beneath his own eyes, John surrendered to the claims of fraternity and
lent George as much as he required at the moment. If Daniel Curtis's
desire to marry Hilda had always puzzled him, Eleanor's willingness to
be tied for life to George was even more incomprehensible. Still, it was
lucky that she had been taken with such a whim, because she was all that
stood between George and absolute dependence upon his family, in other
words upon his younger brother. Whatever Eleanor's faults, however
aggressive her personality, John recognized that she was a hard worker
and that the incubus of a husband like George (to whom she seemed
curiously and inexplicably devoted) entitled her to a great deal of
indulgence.
It was strange to look back now to the time when he and George were both
in the city, himself in dog-biscuits and George in wool, and to remember
that except their father everybody in the family had foretold a
prosperous commercial career for George. Beyond his skill at Solo Whist
and a combination of luck with judgment in betting through July and
August on weight for age selling-plates and avoiding the big autumn
handicaps, John could not recall that George had ever shown a glimmer of
financial intelligence. Once or twice when he had visited his brother in
the wool-warehouse he had watched an interview between George and a bale
of wool, and he had often chuckled at the reflection that the
protagonists were well matched--there had always been something woolly
about George in mind and body; and when one day he rolled stolidly forth
from the warehouse for the last time in order to enter into partnership
with a deluded friend to act as the British agents for a society of
colonial housewives, John felt that the deluded friend would have been
equally well served by a bale of wool. When George and his deluded
friend had tried the patience of the colonial housewives for a year by
never once succeeding in procuring for them what they required, the
partnership was dissolved, and George processed from undertaking to
undertaking till he became the business manager of a theatrical touring
company. Although as a business manager he reached the nadir of his
incompetence he emerged from the post with Eleanor for wife, which
perhaps gave rise to a family legend that George had never been so
successful as when he was a business manager. This legend he never
dispelled by a second exhibition of himself in the part, although he
often spoke regretfully of the long Sundays in the train, playing nap
for penny points. After he married Eleanor he was commission-agent for a
variety of gentlemanly commodities like whisky and cigars; but he drank
and smoked much more than he sold, and when bridge was introduced and
popularized, having decided that it was the best investment for his
share of Eleanor's salary, he abandoned everything else. Moreover,
John's increasing prosperity gave his play a fine stability and
confidence; he used to feel that his wife's current account merely
lapped the base of a solid cliff of capital. A bad week at Bridge came
to be known as another financial disappointment; but he used to say
cheerfully when he signed the I.O.U. that one must not expect everybody
in the family to be always lucky, and that it was dear old John's turn
this week. John himself sometimes became quite giddy in watching the
swift revolutions of the wheel of fortune as spun by George. The effect
of sitting up late at cards usually made George wake with a headache,
which he called "feeling overworked"; he was at his best in the dusky
hours before dinner, in fact just at the time when John was on his way
to explode in his ear the news of the children's disappearance; it was
then that among the attenuated spinsters of Halma House his grossness
seemed nothing more than a ruddy well-being and that his utter
indifference to any kind of responsibility acquired the characteristics
of a ripe geniality.
Halma House, Earl's Court Square, was a very large boarding-house, so
large that Miss Moxley, the most attenuated spinster who lived in it,
once declared that it was more like a residential hotel than a
boarding-house, a theory that was eagerly supported by all the other
attenuated spinsters who clung to its overstuffed furniture or like
dusty cobwebs floated about its garish saloons. Halma House was indeed
two houses squeezed or knocked (or whatever other uncomfortable verb can
be found to express the welding) into one. Above the front-door of
number 198 were the large gilt letters that composed HALMA: above the
front-door of what was once number 200 the equally large gilt letters
that made up HOUSE. The division between the front-door steps had been
removed so as to give an almost Medician grandeur to the entrance, at
the top of which beneath a folded awning a curved garden-seat against
the disused door of number 20 suggested that it was the resort for the
intimate gayety of the boarders at the close of a fine summer day; as
Miss Moxley used to vow, it was really quite an oasis, with the
plane-trees of the square for contemplation not to mention the noising
of the sparrows and the distant tinkling of milk-cans, quite an oasis in
dingy old London. But then Miss Moxley had the early symptoms of
exophthalmus, a malady that often accompanies the poetic temperament;
Miss Moxley, fluttering out for five minutes' fresh air before dinner on
a gentle eve in early June, was capable of idealizing to the semblance
of a careless pastoral group the spectacle of a half-pay major, a portly
widow or two up from the country, and George Touchwood, all brushing the
smuts from their noses while they gossiped together on that seat: this
was by no means too much for her exophthalmic vision.
John's arrival at Halma House in raw November was not greeted by such
evidence of communal felicity; on the contrary, when he walked up the
steps, the garden-seat looked most defiantly uninviting; nor did the
entrance hall with its writhing gilt furniture symbolize anything more
romantic than the competitive pretentiousness of life in a
boarding-house that was almost a residential hotel. A blond waiter whose
hair would have been dishevelled but for the uses of perspiration
informed him that Mr. Tooshvood was in his sitting-room, and led him to
a door at the end of the hall opposite another door that gave descent to
the dungeons of supply, the inmates of which seemed to spend their time
in throwing dishes at one another.
The possession of this sitting-room was the outstanding advantage that
George always claimed for Halma House, whenever it was suggested that he
should change his quarters: Adam discoursing to his youngest descendant
upon the glories of Eden could hardly have outbragged George on the
subject of that sitting-room. John on the other hand disliked it and
took pleasure in pointing out the impossibility of knowing whether it
was a conservatory half transformed into a box-room or a box-room nearly
turned into a conservatory. He used to call it George's amphibious
apartment, with justice indeed, for Bertram and Viola with true
appreciation had once selected it as the appropriate setting in which to
reproduce Jules Verne's _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_. The
wallpaper of dark blue flock was smeared with the glistening pattern as
of seaweed upon rocks at low tide; the window was of ground-glass tinted
to the hue of water in a swimming-bath on Saturday afternoon, and was
surrounded by an elaborate arrangement of cork that masked a number of
flower pots filled with unexacting plants; while as if the atmosphere
was not already sufficiently aqueous, a stage of disheartened
aspidistras cast a deep-sea twilight upon the recesses of the room, in
the middle of which was a jagged table of particolored marble, and upon
the walls of which were hung cases of stuffed fish. Mrs. Easton, the
proprietress of Halma House, only lent the room to George as a favor: it
was not really his own, and while he lay in bed of a morning she used
to quarrel there with all the servants in turn. Moreover, any of the
boarders who had bicycles stabled them in this advantageous apartment,
the fireplace of which smoked. Nevertheless, George liked it and used to
knit there for an hour after lunch, sitting in an armchair that smelt
like the cushions of a third-class smoker and looking with his knitting
needles and opaque eyes like a large lobster preening his antennae in the
corner of a tank.
When John visited him now, he was reading an evening paper by the light
of a rugged mantle of incandescent gas and calculating how much he would
have won if he had backed the second favorite for every steeplechase of
the day.
"Hullo, is that you, John?" he inquired with a yawn, and one hand swam
vaguely in his brother's direction while the other kept its fingers
spread out upon the second favorites like a stranded starfish.
"Yes, I'm afraid I've got very bad news for you, George."
George's opaque eyes rolled slowly away from the races and fixed his
brother's in dull interrogation.
"Bertram and Viola are lost," John proclaimed.
"Oh, that's all right," George sighed with relief. "I thought you were
serious for a minute. Crested Grebe at 4 to 1--yes, my theory that you
ought to back second favorites works out right for the ninth time in
succession. I should have been six pounds up to-day, betting with level
sovereigns. Tut-tut-tut!"
John felt that his announcement had not made quite the splash it ought
to have made in George's deep and stagnant pool.
"I don't think you heard what I said," he repeated. "Bertram and
Viola--_your_ children--are definitely lost."
"I don't expect they are really," said George, soothingly. "No, no, not
really. The trouble is that not one single bookie will take on this
second-favorite system. Ha-ha--they daren't, the cowards! Don't you
bother about the kids; no, no, they'll be all right. They're probably
hanging on behind a van--they often do that when I'm out with them, but
they always turn up in the end. Yes, I should have made twenty-nine
pounds this week."
"Look here," said John, severely, "I want you clearly to understand that
this is not a simple question of losing them for a few minutes or so.
They have been lost now since the Zoo was closed this afternoon, and I
am not yet convinced that they are not shut up inside for the night."
"Ah, very likely," said George. "That's just the kind of place they
might get to."
"The prospect of your children's passing the night in the Zoo leaves you
unaffected?" John demanded in the tone of an examining counsel.
"Oh, they'll have been cleared out by now," said George. "You really
mustn't bother yourself about them, old boy."
"You have no qualms, George, at the notion of their wandering for hours
upon the outskirts of Regent's Park?"
"Now don't you worry, John. I'm not going to worry, and I don't want you
to worry. Why worry? Depend upon it, you'll find them safe and sound in
Church Row when you get back. By the way, is your taxi waiting?"
"No, I dismissed it."
"I was afraid it might be piling up the twopences. Though I dare say a
pyramid of twopences wouldn't bother you, you old plutocrat. Yes, these
second favorites...."
"Confound the second favorites," John exclaimed. "I want to discuss your
children."
"You wouldn't, if you were their father. They involve me in far too many
discussions. You see, you're not used to children. I am."
John's eyes flashed as much as the melancholy illumination permitted;
this was the cue for which he had been waiting.
"Just so, my dear George. You are used to children: I am not. And that
is why I have come to tell you that the police have been instructed to
return them, when found, to _you_ and not to me."
George blinked in a puzzled way.
"To me?" he echoed.
"Yes, to you. To their father. Hasn't their luggage arrived? I had it
sent back here this morning."
"Ah, yes," George said. "Of course! I was rather late getting up this
morning. I've been overworking a bit lately, and Karl did mutter
something about luggage. Didn't it come in a taxi?"
John nodded.
"Yes, I remember now, in a prepaid taxi; but as I couldn't remember that
I was expecting any luggage, I told Karl to send it back where it came
from."
"Do you mean to say that you sent their luggage back after I'd taken the
trouble to...."
"That's all right, old boy. I was feeling too tired to deal with any
problems this morning. The morning is the only opportunity I get for a
little peace. It never occurred to me whose luggage it was. It might
have been a mistake; in fact I thought it was a mistake. But in any case
it's very lucky I did send it back, because they'll want it to-night."
"I'm afraid I can't keep them with me any longer."
Though irony might be lost on George's cold blood, the plain fact might
wake him up to the actuality of the situation and so it did.
"Oh, but look here, old boy," he expostulated, "Eleanor won't be home
for another five weeks. She'll be at Cardiff next week."
"And Bertram and Viola will be at Earl's Court," said John, firmly.
"But the doctor strongly recommended me to rest. I've been very seedy
while you were in America. Stomachic, old boy. Yes, that's the trouble.
And then my nerves are not as strong as yours. I've had a lot of worry
lately."
"I'm sorry," John insisted. "But I've been called away on urgent
business, and I can't leave the children at Church Row. I'm sorry,
George, but as soon as they are found, I must hand them over to you."
"I shall send them down to the country," George threatened.
"When they are once more safely in your keeping, you can do what you
like with them."
"To your place, I mean."
Normally John would have given a ready assent to such a proposal; but
George's attitude had by now aroused his bitter disapproval, and he was
determined that Bertram and Viola should be planted upon their father
without option.
"Ambles is impossible," he said, decidedly. "Besides, Eleanor is anxious
that Viola shouldn't miss her series of Spanish dances. She attends the
dancing-class every Tuesday and Friday. No doubt your landlady will lend
you Karl to escort her."
"Children are very difficult in a boarding-house," George argued.
"They're apt to disturb the other guests. In fact, there was a little
trouble only last week over some game--"
"Robinson Crusoe," John put in.
"Ah, they told you?"
"No, no, go on. I'm curious to know exactly what we missed at Church
Row."
"Well, they have a habit, which Eleanor most imprudently encourages, of
dressing up on Sundays, and as I've had to make it an understood thing
that _none_ of _my_ clothes are to be used, they are apt to borrow other
people's. I must admit that generally people have been very kind about
lending their clothes; but latterly this dressing up has taken a more
ambitious form, and on Sunday week--I think it was--"
"Yes, it would have been a Sunday," John agreed.
"On Sunday week they borrowed Miss Moxley's parrot for Robinson Crusoe.
You remember poor Miss Moxley, John?"
"Yes, she lent you five pounds once," said John, sternly.
"Precisely. Oh yes, she did. Yes, yes, that was why I was so vexed about
her lending her parrot."
"Why shouldn't she lend her parrot?"
"No reason at all why she shouldn't lend it; but apparently parrots are
very excitable birds, and this particular one went mad under the strain
of the children's performance, bit Major Downman's finger, and escaped
by an upper window. Poor Miss Moxley was extremely upset, and the bird
has never been seen since. So you see, as I told you, children are apt
to be rather a nuisance to the other guests."
"None of the guests at Halma House keeps a tame calf?"
George looked frightened.
"Oh no, I don't think so. There's certainly never been the least sign of
mooing in the garden. Besides, I'm sure Mrs. Easton would object to a
calf. She even objects to dogs, as I had to tell James the other day
when he came to see me _very_ early about signing some deed or other.
But what made you ask about a calf? Do you want one?"
"No, I don't want one: I hate cows and calves. Bertram and Viola,
however, are likely to want one next week."
"You've been spoiling them, old chap. They'd never dare ask me for a
calf. Why, it's preposterous. Yes, you've been spoiling them. Ah, well,
you can afford it; that's one thing."
"Yes, I dare say I have been spoiling them, George; but you'll be able
to correct that when they're once again in your sole charge."
George looked doubtful.
"I'm very strict with them," he admitted. "I had to be after they lost
the parrot and burned Mrs. Easton's rug. It was most annoying."
"Yes, luckily I hadn't got any suitable fur rugs," John chuckled. "So
they actually burnt Mrs. Easton's?"
"Yes, and--er--she was so much upset," George went on, "that
she's--well--the fact is, they _can't_ come back, John, because she's
let their room."
"How much do you owe her?" John demanded.
"Oh, very little. I think only from last September. Well, you see,
Eleanor was out of an engagement all the summer and had a wretched
salary at the Parthenon while she was understudying--these
actress-managers are awful harpies--do you know Janet Bond?"
"Yes, I'm writing a tragedy for her now."
"Make her pay, old boy, make her pay. That's my advice. And I know the
business side of the profession. But to come back to Mrs. Easton--I was
really very angry with her, but you see, I've got my own room here and
it's uncommonly difficult to find a private room in a boarding-house, so
I thought we'd stay on here till Eleanor's tour was over. She intends to
save three pounds a week, and if I have a little luck over the sticks
this winter, we shall be quite straight with Mrs. Easton, and then the
children will be able to come back in the New Year."
"How much do you owe her?" John demanded for the second time.
"Oh, I think it's about twenty pounds--it may be a little more."
John knew how much the little more always was in George's calculations,
and rang the bell, which fetched his brother out of the armchair almost
in a bound.
"Old boy, I never ring the bell here," he expostulated. "You see, I
never consider that my private room is included in the attendance."
George moved nervously in the direction of the door to make his peace
with whoever should answer the unwonted summons; but John firmly
interposed himself and explained that he had rung for Mrs. Easton
herself.
"Rung for Mrs. Easton?" George repeated in terrified amazement. "But she
may come!"
"I hope she will," replied John, becoming more divinely calm every
moment in the presence of his brother's agitation.
A tangled head flung itself round the door like one of the minor
characters in a Punch and Judy show.
"Jew ring?" it asked, hoarsely.
"Please ask Mrs. Easton to come down to Mr. Touchwood's sitting-room,"
said John, seriously.
The head sniffed and vanished.
"I wish you could realize, old chap, that in a boarding-house far more
tact is required than anywhere else in the world," George muttered in
melancholy apprehension. "An embassy isn't in it with a boarding-house.
For instance, if I hadn't got the most marvelous tact, I should never
have kept this room. However," he added more cheerfully, "I don't
suppose for a moment that she'll come--unless of course she thinks that
the chimney is on fire. Dash it, John, I wish you could understand some
of the difficulties of my life. That's why I took up knitting. My nerves
are all to pieces. If I were a rich man I should go for a long
sea-voyage."
George fell into a silent brooding upon his misfortunes and ill-health
and frustrated ambitions; John examined the stuffed fish upon the walls,
which made him think of wet days upon the river and waiting drearily in
hotel smoking-rooms for the weather to clear up. Then suddenly Mrs.
Easton filled the room. Positive details of this lady's past were
lacking, although the gossip of a long line of attenuated spinsters had
evolved a rich apocrypha. It was generally accepted, however, that Halma
House was founded partly upon settlements made in her favor long ago by
a generous stockbroker and partly upon an insurance-policy taken out by
her late husband Dr. Easton, almost on the vigil of his death, the only
successful operation he ever performed. The mixed derivation of her
prosperity was significantly set forth in her personal appearance: she
either wore widow's black and powdered her face with pink talcum or she
wore bright satins with plumed hats and let her nose shine: so that
although she never looked perfectly respectable, on the other hand she
never looked really fast.
"Good evening, ma'am," John began at once, assuming an air of
Grandisonian courtesy. "My brother is anxious to settle his account."
The clouds rolled away from Mrs. Easton's brow; the old Eve glimmered
for a moment in her fierce eye; if he had been alone with her, John
would have thought that she was about to wink at him.
"I hear my nephew and niece have been taking liberties with your rug,"
he went on, but feeling that he might have expressed the last sentence
better, he hurriedly blotted the check and with a bow handed it to the
proprietress. "No doubt," he added, "you will overlook it this time? I
am having a new rug sent to you immediately. What--er--skin do you
prefer? Bear? I mean to say, the rug."
He tried to think of any other animal whose personality survived in
rugs, but could think of none except a rabbit, and condemning the
ambiguity of the English language waited in some embarrassment for Mrs.
Easton to reply. She was by this time so surely convinced of John's
interest in her that she opened to him with a trilling flutter of
complacency like a turkey's tail.
"It happened to be a bearskin," she murmured. "But children will be
children. We oughtn't to forget that we were all children once, Mr.
Touchwood."
"So no doubt," John nervously continued, "you will be glad to see them
when they come back to-night. Their room...."
"I shall give orders at once, Mr. Touchwood."
He wished that she would not harp upon the Mr. Touchwood; he seemed to
detect in it a kind of reproachful formality; but he thanked her and
hoped nervously she would now leave him to George.
"Oh dear me, why the girl hasn't lit the fire," Mrs. Easton exclaimed,
evidently searching for a gracious action.
George eying his brother with a glance between admiration and
disquietude told his landlady that he thought the fire smoked a little.
"I shall have the chimney swept to-morrow," she answered as grandly as
if she had conferred a dukedom upon John and an earldom upon George.
Then with a special smile that was directed not so much toward the
successful author as toward the gallant male she tucked away the check
in her bodice, where it looked as forlorn as a skiff upon the tumultuous
billows of the Atlantic, and went off to put on her green satin for
dinner.
"We shall all hope to see you at half-past seven," she paused in the
doorway to assure John.
"You know, I'll tell you what it is, old chap," said George when they
were alone again. "_You_ ought to have taken up the commission business
and _I_ ought to have written plays. But thanks very much for tiding me
over this difficult time."
"Yes," said John, a little sharply. "Your wife's current account wasn't
flowing quite strongly enough, was it?"
"Wonderful woman, Mrs. Easton," George declared. "She has a keen eye for
business."
"And for pleasure too, I should imagine," said John, austerely. "But get
on your coat, George," he added, "because we must go out and inquire at
all the police stations in turn for news of Bertram and Viola. We can't
stop here discussing that woman."
"I tell you the kids will be all right. You mustn't get fussy, John.
It's absurd to go out now," George protested. "In fact I daren't. I must
think of my health. Dr. Burnham who's staying here for a congress of
medical men has given me a lot of advice, and as he has refused to
charge me a penny for it, the least I can do is to pay attention to what
he says. Besides, what are we going to do?"
"Visit all the police stations in London."
"What shall we gain by doing that? Have you ever been to a police
station? They're most uncomfortable places to hang about in before
dinner."
"Get on your coat," John repeated.
George sighed.
"Well, if you insist, I suppose you have the right to insist; but in my
opinion it's a waste of time. And if the kids are in a police station, I
think it would teach them a dashed good lesson to keep them there for
awhile. You don't want to encourage them to lose themselves every day. I
wish _you_ had half a dozen kids."
John, however, was inflexible; the sight of his brother sitting in that
aqueous room and pondering the might-have-beens of the race course had
kindled in his breast the fire of a reformer; George must be taught
that he could not bring children into the world without being prepared
to look after them. He must and should be taught.
"Why, you'd take more trouble," he declared, "if you'd lost a fox
terrier."
"Of course I should," George agreed. "I should have to."
John reddened with indignation.
"Don't be angry, old chap. I didn't mean that I should think more of a
fox terrier. But, don't you see, a dog is dependent upon its collar,
whereas Bertram and Viola can explain where they come from. Is it very
cold out?"
"You'd better wear your heavy coat."
"That means I shall have to go all the way upstairs," groaned George.
The two brothers walked along the hall, and John longed to prod George
with a heavy, spiked pole.
"Going out, Touchwood?" inquired an elderly man of military appearance,
who was practicing golf putts from one cabbage rose to another on the
Brussels carpet.
"Yes, I'm going out, Major. You know my brother, don't you? You remember
Major Downman, John?"
George left his brother with the major and toiled listlessly upstairs.
"I think I once saw a play of yours, Mr. Touchwood."
John smiled as mechanically as the major might have returned a salute.
"_The Fall of Nineveh_, wasn't it?"
The author bowed an affirmative: it was hardly worth while
differentiating between Nineveh and Babylon when he was just going out.
"Yes," the major persisted. "Wasn't there a good deal of talk about the
scantness of some of the ladies' dresses?"
"There may have been," John said. "We had to save on the dresses what we
spent on the hanging gardens."
"Quite," agreed the major, wisely. "But I'm not a puritan myself."
John bowed again to show his appreciation of the admission.
"Oh, no. Rather the reverse, in fact. I play golf every Sunday, and if
it's wet I play bridge."
John wished that George would be quick with his coat.
"But I don't go in much for the theater nowadays."
"Don't you?"
"No, though I used to when I was a subaltern. By gad, yes! But it was
better, I think, in my young days. No offense to you, Mr. Touchwood."
"Distance does lend enchantment," John assented.
"Quite, quite. I suppose you don't remember a piece at the old Prince of
Wales? What was it called? Upon my soul, I've forgotten. It was a
capital piece, though. I remember there was a scene in which the
uncle--or it may not have been the uncle--no, I'm wrong. It was at the
Strand. Or was it? God bless my soul, I don't know which it was. You
don't remember the piece? It was either at the Prince of Wales or the
Strand, or, by Jove, was it Toole's?"
Was George never coming? Every moment would bring Major Downman nearer
to the heart of his reminiscence, and unless he escaped soon he might
have to submit to a narrative of the whole plot.
"Do you know what I'm doing?" the Major began again. "I'm confusing two
pieces. That's what I'm doing. But I know an uncle arrived suddenly."
"Yes, uncles are often rather fidgety," John agreed. "Ah, excuse me,
Major. I see my brother coming downstairs. Good-by, Major, good-by. I
should like to have a chat with you one of these days about the
mid-Victorian theater."
"Delighted," the Major said, fervently. "I shall think of that play
before to-night. Don't you be afraid. Yes, it's on the tip of my tongue.
On the very tip. But I'm confusing two theaters. I see where I've gone
wrong."
At that moment there was the sound of a taxi's arrival at Halma House;
the bell rang; when George opened the door for John and himself to pass
out, they were met by Mrs. Worfolk holding Viola and Bertram tightly,
one in each hand.
"I told you they'd turn up," George said, and immediately took off his
overcoat with a sigh of relief. "Well, you've given us a nice hunt," he
went on with an indignant scowl at the children. "Come along to my room
and explain where you've been. Good evening, Mrs. Worfolk."
In their father's sitting-room Bertram and Viola stood up to take their
trial.
"Yes," opened Mrs. Worfolk, on whom lay the burden of narrating the
malefactors' behavior. "Yes, I've brought back the infant prodigals, and
a nice job I've had to persuade them to come quiet. In fact, I never had
such a job since I took my poor sister's Herbert hollering to the
hospital with a penny as he'd nearly choked himself with, all through
him sucking it to get at some sweet stuff which was stuck to the edge.
He _didn't_ choke, though, because I patted him all down the street the
same as if I'd been bowling a hoop, and several people looked at me in a
very inquisitive way. Not that I ever pay attention to how people looks,
except in church. To begin with, the nerve they've got. Well, I mean to
say, when any one packs up some luggage and sends it off in a taxi,
whoever expects to see it come back again almost at once? It came
bouncing back, I do declare, as if it had been India rubber. 'Well,' as
I said to Maud, 'It just shows how deep they are, and Mr. Touchwood'll
have trouble with them before the day's done. You mark my words.' And,
sure enough, just as I'd made up my mind that you wouldn't be in to tea,
rat-a-tat-tat on the front door, and up drives my lord and my lady as
grand as you like in a taxi. Of course, it give me a bit of a turn, not
seeing you, sir, and I was just going to ask if you'd had an accident or
something, when my lord starts in to argue with the driver that he'd
only got to pay half fare for himself and his sister, the same as his
father does when they travel by train. Oh, yes; he was going to pay the
man himself. Any one would of thought it was the Juke of Wellington, to
hear him arguing with that driver. Well, anyway, in the end, of course I
had to pay the difference out of my housekeeping money, which you'll
find entered in the book. And then, without so much as a blink, my lord
starts in to tell how they'd gone into the Small Rat's House--"
"Cats," interrupted Viola, solemnly.
"Well, rats or cats, what does it matter, you naughty girl? It wasn't of
rats or cats you were thinking, but running away from your poor uncle,
as you perfeckly well know. Yes, indeed, sir, they went into this small
house and dodged you like two pickpockets and then went careering out of
the Zoo in the opposite direction. The first taxi that came along they
caught hold of and drove back to Church Row. 'But your uncle intended
for you to go back to your father, Mr. George, in Earl's Court,' I
remarked very severely. 'We know,' they says to me, laughing like two
hyenas. 'But we don't want to go back to Earl's Court,' putting in a
great deal of rudeness about Earl's Court, which, not wanting to get
them into worse trouble than what they will get into as it is, I won't
repeat. 'And we won't go back to Earl's Court,' they said, what's more.
'We _won't_ go back.' Well, sir, when I've had my orders given me, I
know where I am, and the policeman at the corner being a friend of
Elsa's, he helped; for, believe me or not, they struggled like two
convicks with Maud and I. Well, to cut a long story short, here they
are, and just about fit to be put to bed on the instant."
John could not fancy that Eleanor had contrived such an elaborate
display of preference for his company, and with every wish to support
Mrs. Worfolk by an exhibition of avuncular sternness he could only smile
at his nephew and niece. Indeed, it cost him a great effort not to take
them back with him at once to Hampstead. He hardened himself, however,
and tried to look shocked.
"We wanted to stay with you," said Bertram.
"We wanted to stay with you," echoed Viola.
"We didn't _want_ to dodge you in the Small Cats' House. But we had to,"
said Bertram.
"Yes, we had to," echoed Viola.
"Their luggage _'as_ come back with them," interrupted Mrs. Worfolk,
grimly.
"Oh, of course, they must stay here," John agreed. "Oh, unquestionably!
I wasn't thinking of anything else."
He beckoned to Bertram and Viola to follow him out of the room.
"Look here," he whispered to them in the passage, "be good children and
stay quietly at home. We shall meet at Christmas." He pressed a
sovereign into each hand.
"Good lummy," Bertram gasped. "I wish I'd had this on the fifth of
November. I'd have made old Major Downman much more waxy than he was
when I tied a squib to his coat."
"Did you, Bertram, did you? You oughtn't to have done that. Though I can
understand the temptation. But don't waste this on fireworks."
"Oh no," said Bertram. "I'm going to buy Miss Moxley a parrot, because
we lost hers."
"Are you, Bertram?" John exclaimed with some emotion. "That shows a fine
spirit, my boy. I'm very pleased with you."
"Yes," said Bertram, "because then with what you gave V we'll buy a
monkey at the same time."
"Good heavens," cried John, turning pale. "A monkey?"
"That will be nice, won't it, Uncle John?" Viola asked, tenderly.
But perhaps it would escape from an upper window like the parrot, John
thought, before Christmas.
When the children had been sent upstairs and Mrs. Worfolk had gone back
to Hampstead, John told his brother that he should not stop to dinner
after all.
"Oh, all right," George said. "But I had something to talk over with
you. Those confounded children put it clean out of my mind. I had a
strange letter from Mama this week. It seems that Hugh has got into
rather a nasty fix. She doesn't say what it is, and I don't know why she
wrote to me of all people. But she's evidently frightened about Hugh and
asks me to approach you on his behalf."
"What on earth has he been doing now?" asked John, gloomily.
"I should think it was probably money," said George. "Well, I told you
I'd had a lot of worry lately, and I _have_ been very worried about this
news of Hugh. Very worried. I'm afraid it may be serious this time. But
if I were you, old chap, I should refuse to do anything about it. Why
should he come to you to get him out of a scrape? You've done enough for
him, in my opinion. You mustn't let people take advantage of your good
nature, even if they are relations. I'm sorry my kids have been a bit of
a nuisance, but, after all, they are still only kids, and Hugh isn't.
He's old enough to know better. Mama says something about the police,
but that may only be Hugh's bluff. I shouldn't worry myself if I were
you. It's no good for us all to worry."
"I shall go and see Hugh at once," John decided. "You're not keeping
anything from me, George? He's not actually under arrest?"
"Oh, no, you won't have to visit any more police stations to-night,"
George promised. "Hugh is living with his friend, Aubrey Fenton, at 22
Carlington Road, West Kensington."
"I shall go there to-night," John declared.
He had almost reached the front door when George called him back.
"I've been trying to work out a riddle," he said, earnestly. "You know
there's a medicine called Easton's Syrup? Well, I thought ... don't be
in such a hurry; you'll muddle me up ... and I shall spoil it...."
"Try it on Major Downman," John advised, crossly, slamming the door of
Halma House behind him. "Fatuous, that's what George is, utterly
fatuous," he assured himself as he hurried down the steps.