A sudden apprehension of his bulk (though he was only comparatively
massive) overcame John when he stood inside the tiny drawing-room of 83
Camera Square; and it was not until the steam from the tea-pot had
materialized into Miss Hamilton, who in a dress of filmy gray floated
round him as a cloud swathes a mountain, that he felt at ease.
"Why, how charming of you to keep your word," her well-remembered voice,
so soft and deep, was murmuring. "You don't know my mother, do you?
Mother, this is Mr. Touchwood, who was so kind to Ida and me on the
voyage back from America."
Mrs. Hamilton was one of those mothers that never destroy the prospects
of their children by testifying outwardly to what their beauty may one
day come: neither in face nor in expression nor in gesture nor in voice
did she bear the least resemblance to her daughter. At first John was
inclined to compare her to a diminutive clown; but presently he caught
sight of some golden mandarins marching across a lacquer cupboard and
decided that she resembled a mandarin; after which wherever he looked in
the room he seemed to catch sight of her miniature--on the
willow-pattern plates, on the mantelpiece in porcelain, and even on the
red lacquer bridge that spanned the tea-caddy.
"We've all heard of Mr. Touchwood," she said, picking up a small silver
weapon in the shape of a pea-shooter and puffing out her already plump
cheeks in a vain effort to extinguish the flame of the spirit-lamp. "And
I'm devoted to the drama. Pouf! I think this is a very dull instrument,
dear. What would England be without Shakespeare? Pouf! Pouf! One blows
and blows and blows and blows till really--well, it has taught me never
to regret that I did not learn the flute when there was a question of my
having lessons. Pouf! Pouf!"
John offered his services as extinguisher.
"You have to blow very hard," she warned him; and he being determined at
all costs to impress Miss Hamilton blew like a knight-errant at the gate
of an enchanted castle. It was almost too vigorous a blast: besides
extinguishing the flame, it blew several currants from the cake into
Mrs. Hamilton's lap, which John in an access of good-will tried to blow
off again less successfully.
"Bravo," the old lady exclaimed, clapping her hands. "I'm glad to see
that it can be done. But didn't you write _The Walls of Jericho_? Ah no,
I'm thinking of Joshua and his trumpet."
"_The Fall of Babylon_, mother," Miss Hamilton put in with a smile, in
the curves of which quivered a hint of scornfulness.
"Then I was not so far out. _The Fall of Babylon_ to be sure. Oh, what a
fall was there, my countrymen."
She beamed at the author encouragingly, who beamed responsively back at
her; presently she began to chuckle to herself, and John, hoping that in
his wish to be pleasant to Miss Hamilton's mother he was not appearing
to be imitating a hen, chuckled back.
"I'm glad you have a sense of humor," she exclaimed, suddenly assuming
an intensely serious expression and throwing up her eyebrows like two
skipping-ropes.
John, who felt as if he was playing a game, copied her expression as
well as he was able.
"I live on it," she pursued. "And thrive moreover. A small income and an
ample sense of humor. Yes, for thus one avoids extravagance oneself, but
enjoys it in other people."
"And how is Miss Merritt?" John inquired of Miss Hamilton, when he had
bowed his appreciation of the witticism. But before she could reply, her
mother rattled on: "Miss Merritt will not take Doris to America again.
Miss Merritt has written a book called _The Aphorisms of Aphrodite_."
The old lady's remarkable eyebrows were darting about her forehead like
forked lightning while she spoke.
"The Aphorisms of Aphrodite!" she repeated. "A collection of some of the
most declassical observations that I have ever encountered." Like a
diver's arms the eyebrows drew themselves together for a plunge into
unfathomable moral depths.
"My dear mother, lots of people found it very amusing," her daughter
protested.
"Miss Merritt," the old lady asserted, "was meant for bookkeeping by
double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by
double-entente. The profits may be treble, but the method is base. How
did she affect you, Mr. Touchwood?"
"She frightened me," John confessed. "I thought her manner somewhat
severe."
"You hear that, Doris? Her ethical exterior frightened him."
"You're both very unfair to Ida. I only wish I had half her talents."
"Wrapped in a napkin," said the old lady, "you have your shorthand."
John's heart leapt.
"Ah, you know shorthand," he could not help ejaculating with manifest
pleasure.
"I studied for a time. I think I had vague ideas once of a commercial
career," she replied, indifferently.
"The suggestion being," Mrs. Hamilton put in, "that I discouraged her.
But how is one to encourage shorthand? If she had learnt the deaf and
dumb alphabet I might have put aside half-an-hour every day for
conversation. But it is as hard to encourage shorthand as to encourage a
person who is talking in his sleep."
John fancied that beneath the indifference of the daughter and the
self-conscious humor of the mother he could detect cross-currents of
mutual disapproval; he could have sworn that the daughter was beginning
to be perpetually aware of her mother's presence.
"Or is it due to my obsession that relations should never see too much
of each other?" he asked himself. "Yet she knows shorthand--an
extraordinary coincidence. What a delightful house you have," he said
aloud with as much fervor as would excuse the momentary abstraction into
which he had been cast.
"My husband was a sinologue," Mrs. Hamilton announced.
"Was he indeed?" said John, trying to focus the word.
"And the study of Chinese is nearly as exclusive as shorthand," the old
lady went on. "But we traveled a great deal in China when I was first
married and being upon our honeymoon had but slight need of general
conversation."
No wonder she looked like a mandarin.
"And to me their furniture was always more expressive than their
language. Hence this house." Her black eyebrows soared like a condor to
disappear in the clouds of her snowy hair. "But do not let us talk of
China," she continued. "Let us rather talk of the drama. Or will you
have another muffin?"
"I think I should prefer the muffin," John admitted.
Presently he noticed that Miss Hamilton was looking surreptitiously at
her watch and glancing anxiously at the deepening twilight; she
evidently had an appointment elsewhere, and he rose to make his
farewells.
"For I'm sure you're wanting to go out," he ventured.
"Doris never cares to stay at home for very long," said her mother; and
John was aware once again, this time unmistakably, of the cross-currents
of mutual discontent.
"I had promised to meet Ida in Sloane Square."
"On the holy mount of Ida," the old lady quoted; John laughed out of
politeness, though he was unable to see the point of the allusion; he
might have concluded that after all Mrs. Hamilton was really rather
stupid, perhaps even vain and tiresome, had she not immediately
afterward proposed that he should give Doris time to get ready and have
the benefit of her company along King's Road.
"For I assume you are both going in the same direction," she said,
evoking with her eyebrows the suggestion of a signpost.
"My dear mother, Mr. Touchwood doesn't want to be bored with escorting
me," her daughter was protesting.
John laughed at the idea of being bored; then he fancied that in such a
small room his laughter might have sounded hysterical, and he raised the
pitch of his voice to give the impression that he always laughed like
that. In the end, after a short argument, Miss Hamilton agreed somewhat
ungraciously to let John wait for her. When she was gone to get ready,
her mother leaned over and tapped John's arm with a fan.
"I'm getting extremely anxious about Doris," she confided; the eyebrows
hovering in her forehead like a hawk about to strike gave her listener
the impression that she was really going to say something this time.
"Her health?" he began, anxiously.
"Her health is perfect. It is her independence which worries me. Hence
this house! Her father's brother is only too willing to do anything for
her, but she declines to be a poor relation. Now such an attitude is
ridiculous, because she is a poor relation. To each overture from her
uncle she replies with defiance. At one moment she drowns his remarks in
a typewriter; at another she flourishes her shorthand in his face; and
this summer she fled to America before he had finished what he was
saying. Mr. Touchwood, I rely on you!" she exclaimed, thumping him on
the shoulder with the fan.
John felt himself to be a very infirm prop for the old lady's ambition,
and wobbled in silence while she heaped upon him her aspirations.
"You are a man of the world. All the world's a stage! Prompt her, my
dear Mr. Touchwood, prompt her. You must have had a great experience in
prompting. I rely on you. Her uncle _must_ be allowed to help her. For
pray appreciate that Doris's independence merely benefits charitable
institutions, and in my opinion there is a limit to anonymous
benevolence. Perhaps you've heard of the Home for Epileptic Gentlewomen?
They can have their fits in peace and comfort entirely because my
daughter refuses to accept one penny from her uncle. To a mother, of
course, such behavior is unaccountable. And what is so unjust is that
she won't allow me to accept a penny either, but has even gone so far as
to threaten to live with Miss Merritt if I do. Aphorisms of Aphrodite! I
can assure you that there are times when I do not regret that I possess
an ample sense of humor. If you were a mother, Mr. Touchwood...."
"I _am_ an uncle," said John, quickly. He was not going to let Mrs.
Hamilton monopolize all the privileges of kinship.
"Then who more able to advise a niece? She will listen to you. Friends,
Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. You must remember that she
already admires you as a playwright. Insist that in future she must
admire you from the stalls instead of from the pit--as now. At present
she is pinched. Do not misunderstand me. I speak in metaphors. She is
pinched by straitened circumstances just as the women of China are
pinched by their shoes. She declines to wear a hobble-skirt; but decline
or not, she hobbles through life. She cannot do otherwise, which is why
we live here in Camera Square like two spoonfuls of tea in an old
caddy!"
"But you know, personally," John protested while the old lady was
fanning back her lost breath, "personally, and I am now speaking as an
uncle, personally I must confess that independence charms me."
"Music hath charms," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Who will deny it? And
independence with the indefinite article before it also hath charms; but
independence with no article at all, independence, the abstract noun,
though it may be a public virtue, is a private vice. Vesuvius lends
variety to the Bay of Naples; but a tufted mole on a woman's cheek
affects the observer with abhorrence, like a woolly caterpillar lurking
in the heart of a rose. Let us distinguish between the state and the
individual. Do, my dear Mr. Touchwood, let us always preserve a
distinction between wild nature and human nature."
John was determined not to give way, and he once more firmly asserted
his admiration for independence.
"All the world's a stage," said Mrs. Hamilton. "Yes, and all the men and
women merely players; yet life, Mr. Touchwood, is not a play. I have
realized that since my husband died. The widow of a sinologue has much
to realize. At first I hoped that Doris would marry. But she has never
wanted to marry. Men proposed in shoals. But as I always said to them,
'What is the use of proposing to my daughter? She will never marry.'"
For the first time John began to pay a deep and respectful attention to
the conversation.
"Really I should have thought," he began; but he stopped himself
abruptly, for he felt that it was not quite chivalrous for him to
appraise Miss Hamilton's matrimonial chances. "No doubt Miss Hamilton is
very critical," he substituted.
"She would criticize anybody," the old lady exclaimed. "From the Creator
of us all in general to her own mother in particular she would criticize
anybody. Anybody that is, except Miss Merritt. Do not suppose, for
instance, that she will not criticize you."
"Oh, I have no hope of escaping," John said.
"But pay no attention and continue to advise her. Really, when I think
that on account of her obstinacy a number of epileptic females are
enjoying luxurious convulsions while I am compelled to alternate between
muffins and scones every day of the week, though I never know which I
like better, really I resent our unnecessary poverty. As I say to her,
whether we accept her uncle's offer or not, we are always poor
relations; so we may as well be comfortably off poor relations."
"Don't you suppose that perhaps her uncle is all the fonder of her
because of this independence?" John suggested. "I think I should be."
"But what is the use of that?" Mrs. Hamilton demanded. "Nothing is so
bad for people as stunted affection. My husband spent all his
patrimony--he was a younger son--everything he had in fact upon his
passion for Chinese--well, not quite everything, for he was able to
leave me a small income, which I share with Doris. Pray remember that I
have never denied her anything that I could afford. Although she has
many times plotted with her friend Ida Merritt to earn her own living, I
have never once encouraged her in such a step. The idea to me has always
been painful. A sense of humor has carried _me_ through life; but Doris,
alas, is infected with gloom. Whether it is living in London or whether
it is reading Nietzsche I don't know, but she is infested with gloom.
Therefore when I heard of her meeting you I was glad; I was almost
reconciled to the notion of that vulgar descent upon America. Pray do
not imagine that I am trying to flatter: you should be used to public
approbation by now. John Hamilton is her uncle's name, and he has a
delightful estate near the Mull of Kintyre--Glencockic House--some of
the rents of which provide carpets for the fits of epileptic gentlewomen
and some the children of indigent tradesmen in Ayr with colonial
opportunities. Yet his sister-in-law must choose every morning between
muffins and scones."
John tried unsuccessfully to change the conversation; he even went so
far as to ask the old lady questions about her adventures in China,
although it was one of the rules of his conduct never to expose himself
unnecessarily to the reminiscences of travelers.
"Yes, yes," she would reply, impatiently, "the bells in the temple
gardens are delicious. Ding-dong! ding-dong! But, as I was saying,
unless Doris sees her way to be at any rate outwardly gracious ..." and
so it went on until Doris herself, dressed in that misty green Harris
tweed of the _Murmania_, came in to say that she was ready.
"My dear child," her mother protested. "The streets of London are empty
on Sunday evening, but they are not a Highland moor. What queer notions
of dress you do have, to be sure."
"Ida and I are going out to supper with some friends of hers in Norwood,
and I want to keep warm in the train."
"One of the aphorisms of Aphrodite, I suppose, to wear a
Norfolk-jacket--or should I say a Norwood jacket?--on Sunday evening.
You must excuse her, Mr. Touchwood."
John was by this time thoroughly bored by the old lady's witticisms and
delighted to leave her to fan herself in the firelight, while he and her
daughter walked along toward King's Road.
"No sign of a taxi," said John, whose mind was running on shorthand,
though he was much too shy to raise the topic for a second time. "You
don't mind going as far as Sloane Square by motor-bus?"
A moment later they were climbing to the outside of a motor-bus; when
John pulled the waterproof rug over their knees and felt the wind in his
face while they swayed together and apart in the rapid motion, he could
easily have fancied that they were once again upon the Atlantic.
"I often think of our crossing," he said in what he hoped was an
harmonious mixture of small talk and sentiment.
"So do I."
He tried to turn eagerly round, but was unable to do so on account of
having fastened the strap of the rug.
"Well, in Camera Square, wouldn't you?" she murmured.
"You're not happy there?" In order to cover his embarrassment at finding
he had asked what she might consider an impertinent question John turned
away to fasten the rug more tightly, which nearly kept him from turning
around again at all.
"Don't let's talk about me," she begged, dismissing the subject with a
curt little laugh. "How fast they do drive on Sunday."
"Yes, the streets are empty," he agreed. Good heavens, at this rate they
would be at Sloane Square in five minutes, and he might just as well
never have called on her. What did it matter if the streets were empty?
They were not half as empty as this conversation.
"I'm working hard," he began.
"Lucky you!"
"At least when I say I'm working hard," he corrected himself, "I mean
that I have been working hard. Just at present I'm rather worried by
family matters."
"Poor man, I sympathize with you."
She might sympathize with him; but on this motor-bus her manner was so
detached that nobody could have guessed it, John thought, and he had
looked at her every time a street-lamp illuminated her expression.
"I often think of our crossing," he repeated. "I'm sure it would be a
great pity to let our friendship fade out into nothing. Won't you lunch
with me one day?"
"With pleasure."
"Wednesday at Princes? Or no, better say the Carlton Grill."
"Thanks so much."
"It's not easy to talk on a motor-bus, is it?" John suggested.
"No, it's like trying to talk to somebody whom you're seeing off in a
train."
"I hope you'll enjoy your evening. You'll remember me to Miss Merritt?"
"Of course."
Sloane Square opened ahead of them; but at any rate, John congratulated
himself, he had managed to arrange a lunch for Wednesday and need no
longer reproach himself for a complete deadlock.
"I must hurry," she warned him when they had descended to the pavement.
"Wednesday at one o'clock then."
He would have liked to detain her with elaborate instructions about the
exact spot on the carpet where she would find him waiting for her on
Wednesday; but she had shaken him lightly by the hand and crossed the
road before he could decide between the entrance in Regent Street and
the entrance in Pall Mall.
"It is becoming every day more evident, Mrs. Worfolk," John told his
housekeeper after supper that evening, "that I must begin to look about
for a secretary."
"Yes, sir," she agreed, cheerfully. "There's lots of deserving young
fellows would be glad of the job, I'm shaw."
John left it at that, acknowledged Mrs. Worfolk's wishes for his night's
repose, poured himself out a whisky and soda, and settled himself down
to read a gilded work at fifteen shillings net entitled _Fifteen Famous
Forgers_. When he had read three shillings' worth, he decided that the
only crime which possessed a literary interest for anybody outside the
principals was murder, and went to bed early in order to prepare for the
painful interview at Staple Inn next morning.
Stephen Crutchley, the celebrated architect, was some years older than
John, old enough in fact to have been severely affected by the esthetic
movement in his early twenties; he had a secret belief that was
nourished both by his pre-eminence in Gothic design and by his wife's
lilies and languors that he formed a link with the Pre-Raphaelites. His
legs were excessively short, but short though they were one of them had
managed to remain an inch shorter than the other, which in conjunction
with a ponderous body made his gait something between a limp and a
shamble. He had a long ragged beard which looked as if he had dropped
egg or cigarette-ash on it according to whether the person who was
deciding its color thought it was more gray or more yellow. His
appearance was usually referred to by paragraph writers as leonine, and
he much regretted that his beard was turning gray so soon, when what the
same writers called his "tawny mane of hair" was still unwithered. He
affected the Bohemian costume of the 'eighties, that is to say the
velvet jacket, the flowered silk waistcoat, and the unknotted tie of
deep crimson or old gold kept in place by a prelate's ring; he lunched
every day at the Arts Club, and since he was making at least L6000 a
year, he did not bother to go back to his office in the afternoon. John
had met him first soon after his father's death in 1890 somewhere in
Northamptonshire where Crutchley was restoring a church--his first big
job--and where John was editing temporarily a local paper. In those days
John reacting from dog-biscuits was every bit as romantic as he was now;
he and the young architect had often talked the sun up and spoken
ecstatically of another medieval renaissance, of the nobility of
handicrafts and of the glory of the guilds. Later on, when John in the
reaction from journalism embarked upon realistic novels, Crutchley was
inclined to quarrel with him as a renegade, and even went so far as to
send him a volume of Browning's poems with _The Lost Leader_ heavily
marked in red pencil. Considering that Crutchley was making more money
with his gargoyles than himself with his novels John resented the
accusation of having deserted his friend for a handful of silver; and as
for the ribbon which he was accused of putting in his coat, John thought
that the architect was the last person to underline such an accusation,
when himself for the advancement of his work had joined every
ecclesiastical society from the English Church Union to the Alcuin Club.
There was not a ritualistic parson in the land who wanted with or
without a faculty to erect a rood or reredos but turned to Crutchley for
his design, principally because his watch-chain jingled with religious
labels; although to do him justice, even when he was making L6000 a year
he continued to attend Choral Eucharists as regularly as ever. When John
abandoned realistic novels and made a success as a romantic playwright
his friend welcomed him back to the Gothic fold with emotion and
enthusiasm.
"You and I, John, are almost the only ones left," the architect had
said, feelingly.
"Come, come, Stephen, you mustn't talk as if I was William de Morgan.
I'm not yet forty, and you're not yet forty-five," John had replied,
slightly nettled by this ascription of them to a bygone period.
Yet with all his absurdities and affectations Stephen was a fine fellow
and a fine architect, and when soon after this he had agreed to take
Hugh into his office John would have forgiven him if he had chosen to
perambulate Chelsea in doublet and hose.
Thinking of Stephen as he had known him for twenty years John had no
qualms when on Monday morning he ascended the winding stone steps that
led up to his office in the oldest portion of Staple Inn; nor apparently
had Hugh, who came in as jauntily as ever and greeted his brother with
genial self-possession.
"I thought you'd blow in this morning. I betted Aubrey half-a-dollar
that you'd blow in. He tells me you went off in rather a bad temper on
Saturday night. But you were quite right, Johnnie; that port of George's
is not good. You were quite right. I shall always respect your verdict
on wine in future."
"This is not the moment to talk about wine," said John, angrily.
"I'm afraid that owing to George and his confounded elderberry ink I
didn't put my case quite as clearly as I ought to have done," Hugh went
on, serenely. "But don't worry. As soon as you've settled with Stevie, I
shall tell you all about it. I think you'll be thrilled. It's a pity
you've moved into Wardour Street, or you might have made a good story
out of it."
One of the clerks came back with an invitation for John to follow him
into Mr. Crutchley's own room, and he was glad to escape from his
brother's airy impenitence.
"Wonderful how Stevie acts up to the part, isn't it?" commented Hugh,
when he saw John looking round him at the timbered rooms with their
ancient furniture and medieval blazonries through which they were
passing.
"I prefer to see Crutchley alone," said John, coldly. "No doubt he will
send for you when your presence is required."
Hugh nodded amiably and went over to his desk in one of the latticed
oriel windows, the noise of the Holborn traffic surging in through which
reminded the listener that these perfectly medieval rooms were in the
heart of modern London.
"I should rather like to live in chambers here myself," thought John. "I
believe they would give me the very atmosphere I require for Joan of
Arc; and I should be close to the theaters."
This project appealed to him more than ever when he entered the
architect's inmost sanctum, which containing nothing that did not belong
to the best period of whatever it was, wrought iron or carved wood or
embroidered stuff, impressed John's eye for a scenic effect. Nor was
there too much of it: the room was austere, not even so full as a
Carpaccio interior. Modernity here wore a figleaf; wax candles were
burned instead of gas or electric light; and even the telephone was
enshrined in a Florentine casket. When the oaken door covered with huge
nails and floriated hinges was closed, John sat down upon what is called
a Glastonbury chair and gazed at his friend who was seated upon a gilt
throne under a canopy of faded azure that was embroidered with golden
unicorns, wyverns, and other fabulous monsters in a pasture of silver
fleurs-de-lys.
"Have a cigar," said the Master, as he liked to be called, pushing
across the refectory table that had come out of an old Flemish monastery
a primitive box painted with scenes of saintly temptations, but lined
with cedar wood and packed full of fat Corona Coronas.
"It seems hardly appropriate to smoke cigars in this room," John
observed. "Even a churchwarden-pipe would be an anachronism here."
"Yes, yes," Stephen assented, tossing back his hair with the authentic
Vikingly gesture. "But cigars are the chief consolation we have for
being compelled to exist in this modern world. I haven't seen you,
John, since you returned from America. How's work?"
"_Lucretia_ went splendidly in New York. And I'm in the middle of _Joan
of Arc_ now."
"I'm glad, I'm glad," the architect growled as fiercely as one of the
great Victorians. "But for Heaven's sake get the coats right. Theatrical
heraldry is shocking. And get the ecclesiastical details right.
Theatrical ritual is worse. But I'm glad you're giving 'em Joan of Arc.
Keep it up, keep it up. The modern drama wants disinfecting."
"I suppose you wouldn't care to advise me about the costumes and
processions and all that," John suggested, offering his friend a pinch
of his romantic Sanitas.
"Yes, I will. Of course, I will. But I must have a free hand. An
absolutely free hand, John. I won't have any confounded play-actor
trying to tell me that it doesn't matter if a bishop in the fifteenth
century does wear a sixteenth century miter, because it's more effective
from the gallery. Eh? I know them. You know them. A free hand or you can
burn Joan on an asbestos gasfire, and I won't help you."
"Your help would be so much appreciated," John assured him, "that I can
promise you an absolutely short hand."
The architect stared at the dramatist.
"What did I say? I mean free hand--extraordinary slip," John laughed a
little awkwardly. "Yes, your name, Stephen, is just what we shall
require to persuade the skeptical that it is worth while making another
attempt with Joan of Arc. I can promise you some fine opportunities.
I've got a particularly effective tableau to show the miserable
condition of France before the play begins. The curtain will rise upon
the rearguard of an army marching out of a city, heavy snow will fall,
and above the silence you will hear the howling of the wolves following
in the track of the troops. This is an historical fact. I may even
introduce several wolves upon the stage. But I rather doubt if trained
wolves are procurable, although at a pinch we could use large dogs--but
don't let me run away with my own work like this. I did not come here
this morning to talk about Joan of Arc, but about my brother Hugh."
John rose from his chair and walked nervously up and down the room,
while Stephen Crutchley managed to exaggerate a slight roughness at the
back of his throat into a violent fit of coughing.
"I see you feel it as much as I do," John murmured, while the architect
continued to express his overwrought feelings in bronchial spasms.
"I would have spared you this," the architect managed to gasp at last.
"I'm sure you would," said John, warmly. "But since in what I hope was a
genuine impulse of contrition not entirely dictated by motives of
self-interest Hugh has confessed his crime to me, I am come here this
morning confident that you will allow me to--in other words--what was
the exact sum? I shall of course remove him from your tutelage this
morning."
John's eloquence was not spontaneous; he had rehearsed this speech on
the way from Hampstead that morning, and he was agreeably surprised to
find that he had been able owing to his friend's coughing-fit to
reproduce nearly all of it. He had so often been robbed of a prepared
oration by some unexpected turn of the conversation that he felt now
much happier than he ought under the weight of a family scandal.
"Your generosity...." he continued.
"No, no," interrupted the architect, "it is you who are generous."
The two romantics gazed at one another with an expression of nobility
that required no words to enhance it.
"We can afford to be generous," said John, which was perfectly true,
though the reference was to worth of character rather than to worth of
capital.
"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence," Crutchley murmured. "But I blame
myself. I should not have left an old check book lying about. It was
careless--it was, I do not hesitate to say so, criminally careless. But
you know my attitude towards money. I am radically incapable of dealing
with money."
"Of course you are," John assented with conviction. "So am I. Money with
me is merely a means to an end."
"Exactly what it is with me," the architect declared. "Money in itself
conveys nothing to me. What I always say to my clients is that if they
want the best work they must pay for it. It's the work that counts, not
the money."
"Precisely my own attitude," John agreed. "What people will not
understand is that an artist charges a high price when he does not want
to do the work. If people insist on his doing it, they must expect to
pay."
"And of course," the architect added, "we owe it to our fellows to
sustain the dignity of our professions. Art in England has already been
too much cheapened."
"You've kept all your old enthusiasms," John told his friend. "It's
splendid to find a man who is not spoilt by success. Eighty-one pounds
you said? I've brought my check book."
"Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence, yes. It was like you, John, to
come forward in this way. But I wish you could have been spared. You
understand, don't you, that I intended to say nothing about it and to
blame myself in silence for my carelessness? On the other hand, I could
not treat your brother with my former confidence. This terrible business
disturbed our whole relationship."
"I am not going to enlarge on my feelings," said John as he handed the
architect the stolen sum. "But you will understand them. I believe the
shock has aged me. I seem to have lost some of my self-reliance. Only
this morning I was thinking to myself that I must really get a private
secretary."
"You certainly should have one," the architect agreed.
"Yes, I must. The only thing is that since this dreadful escapade of
Hugh's I feel that an unbusinesslike creature such as I am ought not to
put himself in the hands of a young man. What is your experience of
women? From a business point of view, I mean."
"I think that a woman would do your work much better than a man," said
the architect, decidedly.
"So do I. I'm very glad to have your advice though."
After this John felt no more reluctant at parting with eighty-one pounds
six and eightpence than he would have felt in paying a specialist two
guineas for advising him to take a long rest when he wanted to take a
long rest. His friend's aloofness from money had raised to a higher
level what might easily have been a most unpleasant transaction: not
even one of his heroes could have extricated himself from an involved
situation more poetically and more sympathetically. It now only remained
to dispose of the villain.
"Shall we have Hugh in?" John asked.
"I wish I could keep him with me," the architect sighed. "But I don't
think I have a right to consult my personal feelings. We must consider
his behavior in itself."
"In any case," said John, quickly, "I have made arrangements about his
future; he is going to be a mahogany-planter in British Honduras."
"Of course I don't use mahogany much in my work, but if ever ..." the
architect was beginning, when John waved aside his kindly intentions.
"The impulse is generous, Stephen, but I should prefer that so far as
you are concerned Hugh should always be as if he had never been. In
fact, I'm bound to say frankly that I'm glad you do not use mahogany in
your work. I'm glad that I've chosen a career for Hugh which will cut
him completely off from what to me will always be the painful
associations of architecture."
While they were waiting for the sinner to come in, John tried to
remember the name of the mahogany-planter whom he had met in the
_Murmania_; but he could get no nearer to it than a vague notion that it
might have been Raikes, and he decided to leave out for the present any
allusion to British Honduras.
Hugh entered his chief's room without a blush: he could not have bowed
his head, however sincere his repentance, because his collars would not
permit the least abasement; though at least, his brother thought, he
might have had the decency not to sit down until he was invited, and
when he did sit down not to pull up his trousers in that aggressive way
and expose those very defiant socks.
Stephen Crutchley rose from his throne and shambled over to the
fireplace, leaning against the stone hood of which he took up an
attitude that would have abashed anybody but Hugh.
"Touchwood," he began, "no doubt you have already guessed why I have
asked you to speak to me."
Hugh nodded encouragingly.
"I do not wish to enlarge upon the circumstances of your behavior,
because your brother, my old friend, has come forward to shield you from
the consequences. Nor do I propose to animadvert upon the forgery
itself. However lightly you embarked upon it, I don't doubt that by now
you have sufficiently realized its gravity. What tempted you to commit
this crime I do not hope to guess; but I fear that such a device for
obtaining money must have been inspired by debts, whether for cards or
for horse-racing, or perhaps even for women I do not pretend to know."
"Add waistcoats and whisky and you've got the motive," Hugh chirped. "I
say, I think your trousers are scorching," he added on a note of anxious
consideration.
"I do not propose to enlarge on any of these topics," said the
architect, moving away from the fire and sniffing irritably the faint
odor of overheated homespun. "What I do wish to enlarge upon is your
brother's generosity in coming forward like this. Naturally I who have
known him for twenty years expected nothing else, because he is a man of
ideals, a writer of whom we are all proud, from whom we all expect great
things and--however I am not going to enlarge upon his obvious
qualities. What I do wish to say is that he and I have decided that
after this business you must leave me. I don't suppose that you
expected to remain; nor, even if you could, do I suppose that you would
wish to remain. Perhaps you are not enough in sympathy with my
aspirations for the future of English architecture to regret our
parting; but I hope that this lesson you have had will be the means of
bringing you to an appreciation of what your brother has done for you
and that in British Honduras you will behave in such a way as to justify
his generosity. Touchwood, good-by! I did not expect when you came to me
three years ago that our last farewell would be fraught--would be so
unpleasant."
John was probably much more profoundly moved by Crutchley's sermon than
Hugh; indeed he was so much moved that he rose to supplement it with one
of his own in which he said the same things about the architect that the
architect had said about him, after which the two romantics looked at
each other admiringly, while they waited for Hugh to reply.
"I suppose I ought to say I'm very sorry and all that," Hugh managed to
mutter at last. "Good-by, Mr. Crutchley, and jolly good luck. I'll just
toddle through the office and say good-by to all the boys, John, and
then I dare say you'll be ready for lunch."
He swaggered out of the room; when the two friends were left together
they turned aside with mutual sympathy from the topic of Hugh to discuss
Joan of Arc and a new transept that Crutchley was designing. When the
culprit put his head round the door and called out to John that he was
ready, the two old friends shook hands affectionately and parted with an
increased regard for each other and themselves.
"Look here, what's all this about British Honduras?" Hugh asked
indignantly when he and his brother had passed under the arched entry of
Staple Inn and were walking along Holborn. "I see you're bent on
gratifying your appetite for romance even in the choice of a colony.
British Honduras! British humbug!"
"I prefer not do discuss anything except your immediate future," said
John.
"It's such an extraordinary place to hit on," Hugh grunted in a tone of
irritated perplexity."
"The immediate future," John repeated, sharply. "To-night you will go
down to Hampshire and if you wish for any more help from me, you will
remain there in the strictest seclusion until I have time to settle your
ultimate future."
"Oh, I shan't at all mind a few weeks in Hampshire. What I'm grumbling
at is British Honduras. I shall rather enjoy Hampshire in fact. Who's
there at present?"
John told him, and Hugh made a grimace.
"I shall have to jolly them up a bit. However it's a good job that
Laurence has lost his faith. I shall be spared his Chloral Eucharists,
anyway. Where are we going to lunch?"
"Hugh!" exclaimed his outraged brother stopping short in the middle of
the crowded pavement. "Have you no sense of shame at all? Are you
utterly callous?"
"Look here, Johnnie, don't start in again on that. I know you had to
take that line with Stevie, and you'll do me the justice of admitting
that I backed you up; but when we're alone, do chuck all that. I'm very
grateful to you for forking out--by the way, I hope you noticed the nice
little touch in the sum? Eighty-one pounds six and eightpence. The six
and eightpence was for my lawyer."
"Do you adopt this sickeningly cynical attitude," John besought.
"Forgery is not a joke."
"Well, this forgery was," Hugh contradicted. "You see, I got hold of
Stevie's old check book and found he had quite a decent little account
in Croydon. So I faked his signature--you know how to do that?"
"I don't want to know."
"You copy the signature upside down. Yes, that's the way. Then old
Aubrey disguised himself with blue glasses and presented the check at
the bank, just allowing himself five minutes to catch the train back to
town. I was waiting at the station in no end of a funk. But it was all
right. The clerk blinked for a minute, but old Aubrey blinked back at
him as cool as you please, and he shoveled out the gold. Aubrey came
jingling on to the platform like a milk-can just as the train was
starting."
"I wish to hear no more."
"And then I found that Stevie was cocking his eye at this check book and
scratching his head and looking at me and--well, he suspected me. The
fact of the matter is that Stevie's as keen on his cash as anybody. I
suppose this is a side account for the benefit of some little lady or
other."
"Silence," John commanded.
"And then I lost my nerve, so that when Stevie started questioning me
about his check book I must have looked embarrassed."
"I'm surprised to hear that," John put in, bitterly.
"Yes, I dare say I could have bluffed it out, because I'd taken the
precaution to cash the check through Aubrey whom Stevie knows nothing
about. But I don't know. I lost my nerve. Well, thanks very much for
stumping up, Johnnie; I'm only glad you got so much pleasure out of it
yourself."
"What do you mean--pleasure?"
"Shut up--don't pretend you didn't enjoy yourself, you old Pharisee.
Look here where _are_ we going to lunch? I'm carrying a bag full of
instruments, you know."
John told Hugh that he declined to lunch with him in his present mood of
bravado, and at the corner of Chancery Lane they parted.
"Mind," John warned him, "if you wish for any help from me you are to
remain for the present at Ambles."
"My dear chap, I don't want to remain anywhere else; but I wish you
could appreciate the way in which the dark and bloody deed was done, as
one of your characters would say. You haven't uttered a word of
congratulation. After all, it took some pluck, you know, and the
signature was an absolutely perfect fake--perfect. The only thing that
failed was my nerve afterwards. But I suppose I should be steadier
another time."
John hurried away in a rage and walked up the Strand muttering:
"What _was_ the name of that mahogany-planter? _Was_ it Raikes or wasn't
it? I must find his card."
It was not until he had posted the following letter that he recovered
some of his wonted serenity.
36 CHURCH ROW,
Hampstead, N.W.,
_Nov. 28, 1910._
MY DEAR MISS HAMILTON,--In case I am too shy to broach the subject at
lunch on Wednesday I am writing to ask you beforehand if in your wildest
dreams you have ever dreamt that you could be a private secretary. I
have for a long time been wanting a secretary, and as you often spoke
with interest of my work I am in hopes that the idea will not be
distasteful to you. I should not have dared to ask you if you had not
mentioned shorthand yesterday and if Mrs. Hamilton had not said
something about your typewriting. This seems to indicate that at any
rate you have considered the question of secretarial work. The fact of
the matter is that in addition to my plays I am much worried by family
affairs, so much so that I am kept from my own work and really require
not merely mechanical assistance, but also advice on many subjects on
which a woman is competent to advise.
I gathered also from your mother's conversation that you yourself were
sometimes harassed by family problems and I thought that perhaps you
might welcome an excuse to get away from them for awhile.
My notions of the salary that one ought to offer a private secretary are
extremely vague. Possibly our friend Miss Merritt would negotiate the
business side, which to me as an author is always very unpleasant. I
should of course accept whatever Miss Merritt proposed without
hesitation. My idea was that you would work with me every morning at
Hampstead. I have never yet attempted dictation myself, but I feel that
I could do it after a little practice. Then I thought you could lunch
with me, and that after lunch we could work on the materials--that is to
say that I should give you a list of things I wanted to know, which you
would search for either in my own library or at the British Museum. Does
this strike you as too heavy a task? Perhaps Miss Merritt will advise
you on this matter too.
If Mrs. Hamilton is opposed to the idea, possibly I might call upon her
and explain personally my point of view. In the meantime I am looking
forward to our lunch and hoping very much that you will set my mind at
rest by accepting the post. I think I told you I was working on a play
with Joan of Arc as the central figure. It is interesting, because I am
determined not to fall into the temptation of introducing a factitious
love-interest, which in my opinion spoilt Schiller's version.
Yours sincerely,
JOHN TOUCHWOOD.