|HE had succeeded with George beyond expectations, but that easy victory
did not deceive him into thinking that his battle was won. Madge, he had
said, would neither scream nor faint on hearing her banns announced and
he wished he was as confident about it as he had sounded. Much, in his
view too much, depended on the vigour of Sarah Pullen’s advice.
He was taking risks all round, but found he rather liked it. There was
the risk that the Hell-fire Club would not tire of its toy in time. An
encouraging increase in absenteeism amongst the members elated him,
but the steadfast faith of an enthusiastic pair depressed him sadly. He
hoped, however, to find a way out of that wood.
And there was the risk that some acquaintance of Anne’s would mention
the banns to her. He saw no way to counter that. It was a risk he had
to take. Fortunately, his father’s best friend, Terry O’Rourke, was a
Catholic.
As things stood, he saw Madge as the weakest link in his chain. She
collapsed before the will of Anne like an opera hat, and he was candidly
afraid of her making a scene in church, either from pleasure or from
anger, when the banns were read. Not that he shrank on principle from
scenes, only that word of it would undoubtedly be carried to Anne and
the fat be in the fire.
Rummaging one day that week at a second-hand bookstall in Withy Grove,
without the slightest intention of buying, he was attracted by a
title and recklessly planked his tuppence down. Intrigue, he felt, was
punishing his finances, but this title gave him too good an opening
with Madge to be the subject of economy. The title was “The Clandestine
Marriage,” and he knew that Sarah Pullen would be in that night to see
Madge.
He was reading the play very earnestly when she called, though it rather
bored him and he thought its plot elementary compared with his own.
Sarah was no reader, but she noticed the cover because the word
“marriage” was an unfailing lure.
“Whatever has the boy got hold of now?” She inquired, taking his bait
sweetly.
He showed her. “Do you know what it means?” he asked.
“I know what marriage means,” she said.
“By hearsay,” he told the virgin pungently. “But I meant the middle
word.”
She eyed it closely. “You’re always bragging your knowledge. I’m not at
the Grammar myself and Greek is Greek to me. Fat lot of good it’ud be in
a weaving-shed, and all.” She had a practical mind.
“This isn’t Greek,” he said, “it’s English.”
“It’s not the sort of English we talk in Manchester, choose how.”
“I’ll tell you what it means.”
“Wait till you’re asked, cheeky.”
He didn’t wait. “It means surreptitious.”
“I’m a grand sight the wiser for that. It’ll mean a thick ear for you
if you don’t stop coming the schoolmaster over me. I’m here to talk to
Madge, not to you.”
He winked at Sarah with the eye which was hidden from Madge. “The Secret
Marriage, Sarah. That’s what it means.”
Sarah was interested now. “Does it tell you how to work it?”
“I might do that myself,” he said.
“Don’t talk so foolish, Sam,” said his sister. “Are you coming for a
walk, Sarah?”
“When I’m ready,” said Sarah. “Now then, young Sam, spit it out.”
“Oh,” said Sam. “It isn’t much. Only I happened to be out for a walk
with George Chappie the other day and we went into a house that’s pretty
full of furniture.”
“George Chappie with a house of furniture!” cried Madge.
“I suppose he’s getting married,” said Sam. “He courted you at one time,
didn’t he, Madge? I rather liked his taste in furniture.”
“Taste!” cried Madge with spirit. “I’ll taste him. I’ll eat him raw for
this. After all he said to me no more than a month ago, to take up with
another wench! What’s the hussy’s name?”
“Her name?” said Sam. “Let’s see. Sunday to-morrow, isn’t it? The banns
might be up. If I were you I’d go and find out.”
“As true as I’m alive I’ll tear every hair from her head,” said Madge.
“I wouldn’t,” said Sam. “You have red hair, but better red than bald.”
“Her!” said Sarah. “Do you mean----?”
“Look here, Sarah,” Sam interrupted, and used a formula which he had
thought out rather carefully. “Do you imagine I’d be giving you a
message like this if he hadn’t sent it?”
“Message! What message?”
Then Anne came in.
“Yes, Sarah,” she heard Sam saying with a pedagogic air. “The word
clandestine means secret.” He resumed with zest the reading of his play
and, though theirs was a small house, managed to avoid being alone with
Madge up to church time on the morrow. He had business out that Saturday
night--to make sure of George, whom he found full of panting resolution
to catch the clerk and cancel the banns. The glamour of that furniture
had lasted this long with George, but the awful hazard of the Sunday
morning eclipsed the glow as it came nearer. George wilted at the
thought of Madge rising in her place with a firm, irrevocable “I forbid
the banns” upon her lips.
There had begun, too, to be a quality too much like that of an Arabian
night about his visit to the Club. Sam was a wonderful boy and George
granted his high superiority; but even George, the humble, did not quite
see Sam as a miracle-worker. He even began to doubt the existence of the
enchanted Palace which Sam had shown him, and that it was within Sam’s
competence to hand over that house to him appeared now ridiculous. Sam
came just in time.
“Would you care,” he said, “to have another look at your house?”
George would, but he hadn’t time then: he was going; to see the clerk,
and till he saw the clerk he was a man obsessed with an idea. “I
suppose,” he said sceptically, “that it’s still there?”
“Of course,” said Sam, “and has a few more things in since you saw it.”
“Well,” said George, “it’s a nice house, but I’m going to see yon clerk
to tell him not to put up banns.”
Sam smiled, relieved to know that he was not too late. “Don’t do that,”
he said. “Madge is pleased.”
“What!” said George. “Say that again.”
“Madge is pleased,” repeated Sam brazenly. He was sure she was. He
trusted Sarah Pullen now.
“Did she tell you so?” asked George.
“Do you imagine I’d be giving you a message like this if she hadn’t sent
it?”
George took his cap off. “If that’s so----” he said.
“It’s so,” said Sam, not defining what was so.
The banns went up, and Sam was able to devote his undivided attention to
Club affairs, as to which he had an idea arising out of the boredom he
suffered while reading “The Clandestine Marriage.” That tuppence was a
fruitful investment.
A wet day came and with it, what was now rare, a full attendance at the
Club. But, since their repairs and decorations were complete, there was
nothing to do except to sit on their reliable chairs and admire their
reliability.
“For a Hell-fire Club,” said Sandy, “we lack hellishness.”
“Lance named us,” said Dubby. “He ought to make suggestions.”
“Of a new name?” asked Sandy. “Call it the Eviscerated Emasculates.”
“Call it a damned failure,” said another, and was sat upon. They
welcomed the diversion, but the thought had reached home.
“What’s the matter,” said Sam, when order was restored, “is that we
aren’t serious enough.”
“Oh, hell!” said Lance.
“I mean it, Lance. We’re not a set of kids from the Lower School. If we
were, we might sit round and read Chums and the Boy’s Own Paper.” Two
men of the Classical Fifth and the Hell-fire Club looked guiltily at
him, but decided that he was not making personal allusions. “As it
is, we have higher interests. Now, there are six of us here and that’s
enough, with doubling, to take parts in a Shakesperian play. I vote we
read a play. In fact, I brought some down.”
This suited Lance, who had aspirations towards the stage. “Bags I
Romeo,” he said.
Sandy was less fired to enthusiasm, but, “All right,” he said, “if you
choose a play with lots of thick bits in it.”
“We certainly,” said Sam, “shall not read an edition prepared for the
use of girls’ schoofs.”
“_Merry Wives of Windsor_, then,” said Dubby. “Lance can spout Romeo out
of his bedroom window to stop a cat-fight.”
Sam would have preferred a tragedy; he feared they would enjoy reading
The Merry Wives and so, on the whole, they did, but there were only five
promises to turn up next day and two of those were conditional upon its
being wet. Sam wasn’t dissatisfied, and as a comedy was postulated chose
_Much Ado about Nothing_, because he thought that it was dull in patches
and also for a reason of his own. He wanted to make certain that he had
nothing to learn as an intriguer from a famous case of match-making. He
found he had.
Although it rained, _Much Ado_ had only four readers at the opening and
only two at the close. Lance sent postcards that night to the members
announcing _Hamlet_ for the morrow. He wanted to read Hamlet’s part, but
if you can’t have _Hamlet_ without the Prince, neither can you read it
satisfactorily with one other participant.
Lance and Sam struggled through an act, then Lance gave in. “I’m getting
tired of this Club,” he said. “The members have no brain.”
“It isn’t raining,” said Sam.
“No. Lancashire’s batting, too. Let’s go and see Albert Ward and Frank
Sugg at Old Tafford.”
Next day, the Club was uninhabited, except by the ghost of Sam’s
broadest smile, its only tenant for a week. The freeze-out was
accomplished, and its engineer had confidence enough to spend three
pounds of his capital on a bed and bedding, “to await instructions
before delivering.” Then he saw Lance Travers and pointed out to him
that there were better uses to be made of ninepence a week than to
waste it on a club which nobody used.
“Nuisance, though, about the chairs and stuff,” said Lance, implying his
agreement that the Club had failed.
“I can’t have them back here, because I’m turning our attic into an
aviary. That’s why I’ve had no time to go to the Club,” he explained
with a faint apology, and took Sam up to see his birds.
“What shall we do about all that furniture at the Club? Pity the fifth
of November is so far off.”
“I’ll try to think of something,” said Sam, rather terrified at Lance’s
incendiary suggestion. “In any case it must be discussed at a full
meeting. Let’s call the members together.”
An urgent whip resulted in a full and slightly shame-faced attendance.
Nobody tried to dispute that the Club was a corpse: the only question
was what to do with its bones. “Well,” said Sam, “if none of you has
a suggestion to make, I’ll make one. Nobody’s aching to take the stuff
back where it came from. Now,” he went on candidly, “we _could_ sell it
to a dealer, but I’m against that because dealers are thieves and they’d
give us about thirty bob for the lot. But my sister’s getting married
and I don’t mind offering the Club five pounds for its property. That,”
he indicated, “is a pound each for the five of you.”
“Cash on the nail?” asked Dubby, whose forebears came from Scotland. He
distrusted Sam in the character of capitalist.
“Oh, yes,” explained the candid Sam. “You see, when I met Lance
yesterday I said I’d think of a way out of the difficulty and I came
prepared.”
“I vote we take it,” said Sandy. “I can buy a lot of tools with a
pound.”
“I don’t see why we should pander to your vices,” said Lance. “We’re
still a Club and this is club money.”
“The Club is dead.”
“Not yet. Not till we’ve killed it gloriously on Sam’s sister’s fiver.
There’s a hell of a bust in five pounds and we have to drink the bride’s
health. Champagne’s my drink.”
It wasn’t, but it was rather too often his father’s, and Lance was
emulous, and, frightened a little of his own suggestion, carried things
now with a rush. “We’re the Hell-Fire Club,” he said, “and champagne is
the dew of Hell. Any member shirking will be held under the tap for half
an hour.” They braved it out, most of them conscience-stricken, and the
Hell-fire Club almost deserved its name in the hour of its extinction.
Things might have been serious had not Sam, by a well-timed push, caused
Lance to shatter a full magnum on the floor.
As it was, five hangdog members reached home late, but presentable. But
they were most unhappy boys. The sixth boy was happy. He had consumed
a sober and interesting meal at other people’s expense, encountering
several delectable sorts of food for the first time and experiencing
that human but reprehensible thrill which results from feeling that one
is a clever fellow.
Distance of course lent enchantment to the Hell-fire Club. When school
reassembled and boys fresh from the seaside tried to excite the jealousy
of the stay-at-homes with tales of land and sea, they were loftily put
in their places and struck to dumb admiration by legends of the dashing
vice of the Hell-fire Club. It lived in story as it had never lived in
fact.
Sam visited the premises, on the day after the Club died, to wipe up
the mess, thriftily to salve some untouched edibles for a coming
wedding-feast, and by receiving and installing the bed to dedicate the
house to better uses. Then he put the key in his pocket and took it to
George. He had kept his bargain and now it was for George to keep his.
There remained the question of Anne, and as a preliminary to its
solution Sam had recommended Madge to look peaked. Madge, naturally
inclined to that condition, had no difficulty in accentuating its
appearance by recourse to the vinegar bottle until even Anne, intolerant
as she was of small weaknesses, had to own that Madge looked unhappy and
unwell.
On the night before her wedding, Madge shut herself up in her bedroom
whence the sounds as of a very ecstasy of woe penetrated to the kitchen.
Yet her woe was not ecstatic and hardly woe at all. She wept because
she was going to be married next day, because when one is going to
be married next day one weeps. One brims with undefinable emotion and
overflows into tears.
But Anne, listening from the kitchen, where she sat with Sam, was moved
to unaccustomed softness. “That girl is fretting sadly,” she said. “It’s
a mort of trouble to be taking over a wastrel like George Chappie.”
“Mother,” said Sam speculatively, “I wonder whether you have ever
considered the influence of matter over mind?”
“I’m considering the influence of something that does not matter,” she
replied. “The influence of George Chappie.”
“Suppose,” said Sam, “suppose that George Chappie lived in a decent
house of his own, with furniture that he took a pride in, instead of in
those awful lodgings of his. Don’t you think that he would live up to
his surroundings? Don’t you think that it would make a man of him?”
“George Chappie is as far from having a decent house as he is from
wedding our Madge.”
“That’s true,” said Sam, “as far--and as near.”
“As near?” asked Anne suspiciously. “Sithee, Sam, have you been up to
something?”
“Will you hear me out if I tell you a story?” he asked.
“Am I going to like it?” she fenced cautiously. “I am hoping,” he said
piously, “to have your forgiveness. It’s a matter of happiness.”
He told her what he had done and how and why he had done it. “The
wedding’s to-morrow,” he ended, “and I hope you’ll go.” He told his
exploit without arrogance and without extenuation, and it is not to be
supposed that Anne was unaware that a nice moralist would have found
much in it to criticize, but Sam had come out on top and that, for Anne,
almost excused his methods. It almost excused his coming out on top of
her.
“I’ll go to the wedding,” she said, “and I’ll forgive them. They are
no more than a pair of naturals in the hands of a schemer.” Sam grinned
appreciatively. “But I’ll not let you down so easy,” she went on, and
the grin faded. “You’re clever, my lad, but you’re a schoolboy, and the
place for showing your cleverness is at school. It’s too long since you
brought me home a prize, and if you want my forgiveness for letting you
rap my knuckles like this, you’ll bring me a prize this Midsummer. Is
that a bargain, Sam?”
“I always try,” he said, which was true.
“Try harder,” said Anne Branstone dryly.