JOHNNY DANDO
As if Fate were moved to introduce some “comic relief” into a drama
grown almost intolerably serious, there re-entered astonishingly upon
the stage of my affairs at this pass my old chum and schoolfellow,
Johnny Dando.
I call him Johnny, and Johnny he was, and so would remain to the end
of things. There are Jocks and Jacks and Jackos innumerable in the
world. The Johnnies (not the inane breed) form a race apart, and are
not to be confounded with any other. They are artless, beaming little
men, who never, from cradle to grave, qualify in world-wisdom; but
who, at sixty as at six, use the terms of childhood in their dealings
with mankind. They are everywhere and at all times simple, modest, and
impregnably loyal in their attachments.
_My_ Johnny, as I recovered him, wore mittens on his dumpy hands, and
on his head an odd fur bonnet with flaps to cover his rosy ears. He
was wadded all over, and suggested to one a little fat Esquimau. As he
swam, like a full moon, into my ken, he might have taken but one step
across the years from “Baxter’s” to Evercreech. He had no more hair on
his face than when I had last parted from him; no less an appearance
in it of a perpetual suppressed laughter. What amused, or appeared to
amuse him so inextinguishably, no one had ever been able to discover.
He had a manner as of some secret understanding with himself which was
based on the eternal hilarity of things. When he shook hands with you,
you had a feeling that it was only by gripping hard hold of that
support that he could stop himself from exploding in your face. And
there he would stand, seemingly fighting down his risibility, until he
could emit a “How-de-do?” or “How are you?” with the air of asking a
social conundrum while he chuckled inwardly over your inability to
answer it. He appeared, somehow, to be always swelling with
communicativeness, on which, strain as he would, he could not get a
start. It was this consciousness of his conversational disability,
perhaps, which made him wont to passing utterances of a fearful and
cryptic nature--utterances which had no known bearing on anything that
had happened, or was happening, or was ever likely to happen. Thus, it
might be, as he passed one fielding at cricket, he would swoop into
one’s ear with, “How much for a chirp, Plummer? Hoots!” and pass on
his darkling way, leaving one prostrate. Or his head, perhaps, would
come round a door, utter the inquiry “Which way to the steamers?” and
vanish. Although I was, without doubt, his closest friend, I had never
succeeded in fathoming the exact source of any of these recondite
inspirations. To question him as to them, was to subdue his expression
into one of patient tolerance over your inaccessibility to esoteric
suggestion.
It was a chill morning, a day or two after my last recorded
experiences, when he was returned upon my hands, like the most
surprising of boomerangs or india-rubber balls. I was sitting cowering
and glowering over my fire, when I heard his voice at the door, and I
started amazed, and “Johnny!” I cried: “that must be Johnny Dando!”
And Johnny it was.
He came in smiling, and seized my hand without a word. His eyes
dilated; his cheeks, like shining polished apples, seemed to stretch
to cracking.
“Johnny,” I cried; “take care!”
His face split at the mouth, easing the pressure.
“Hullo!” he said. “How much for ‘Grafto’?”
We pumped out our salutations, hand in hand, grinning and speechless
like a couple of veritable Britons.
“Where have you come from?” I cried at length. “How did you find me
out?”
“A young lady brought me down from the house,” he said, and could say
no more. “Hullo, Dick!” he added presently, and immediately turned,
tiptoed to the door, looked out, and came back.
“She’s gone away,” he said--“_such_ a beauty, Dick! She told me you’d
taken to living in a hermitage, and offered to show me the way.”
“O!” I said. “It was Miss Christmas, I suppose. She’s a ward of Lord
Skene’s. But don’t bother about her. Come and tell me about yourself.”
I got him to the fire, filled him a pipe, and put a light to it for
him. As he pulled, letting it out every two minutes, he kept
chuckling, like one immensely tickled over something.
“O, I’m nothing!” he said, bursting suddenly into a laugh, and
snuggling his head into his shoulders and his hands between his knees.
“I’m only ‘Grafto,’ you know--how much for the hair of the dog that
bit you, eh, Dick? It’s just delightful to see you again; and you’re
not a bit altered either, only for that scrub of yellow on your lip!
Rub-a-dub-dub, eh?” The joy in his face moderated an instant. “_I_
can’t grow one,” he said. “It all comes out in perspiration.”
“Never mind, Johnny,” I said. “You’ve got other compensations, haven’t
you?”
“Well,” he answered, “I’ve got money enough to ‘corner’ all the
moustaches in London, if that’s what you mean. But what’s the good,
when I can’t grow one of my own?”
He squeaked over the admission; then relit his pipe joyously.
“And what have _you_ been doing with yourself all this time?” he said.
“We’ll come to that,” I answered. “I want to hear about you first.”
“About me!” he said, surprised. “O! there’s nothing to tell. Daddy
made it all right for me, you know. He was ‘Grafto’--you remember
that? _What_ a man he was, to be sure--_old_ daddy! His ‘Grafto’ would
put a hair-spring into a watch, they used to say. He was a Government
analyst when he invented it; and afterwards he became a person. I
never knew, Dick, until he died, that he’d worn a wig himself for
years.” He looked at me tragically. “Wasn’t that awful? And I
inherited ‘Grafto’!”
“How did you like Oxford?” I said.
“O, bully!” he answered. “But I wasn’t there long. There was the
estate to take up, you see; and mamma wanted me. She’s the only woman
who ever did.”
“O! I can’t believe that.”
“Can’t you? I don’t know what keeps me laughing so. O, the bells,
bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells! Hullo, Dick! I say, ain’t
you fond of poetry?”
“Just.”
“So am I; especially Christmas carols, they’re so comforting. Look
here, why did you never answer any of my letters?”
“What letters? I’ve never had a line from you that I know!”
“Not? Good Lord! I remember now we had a beastly Swiss courier, a
rascal who tapped our correspondence, and put us to no end of shifts.
It must have been he.”
“Very likely. So you called for me at the house?”
“Yes. And the young lady--Miss Christmas did you say it was?--told me
that you had taken to living down here like an anchorite, and offered
to show me the way. What’s happened to you, Dick? You used to be such
a free and open chap.”
I looked into his honest glowing face. The craving for comradeship,
the craving to pour out my heart of sorrow and difficulty to a friend,
tried, sympathetic and attached as I knew this one to be, rose
suddenly in me with an irresistible force. I had dwelt so long,
corroding, perishing, in my own fateful atmosphere. In confessing to
this dear fellow, I knew that I should only be halving my own burden
of secrecy, not imperilling it. I hardly gave a thought to its unfair
imposition on shoulders so generous and so undeserving. He would not
have wished that I should. In a quick impulse of passion, I told him
everything--the whole story of my life with its shames and discoveries
and humiliations--all the barrenness and impotence of the thing--since
I had last parted with him. And when he had listened to me, silently,
wonderingly, lovingly, at the end he only thanked me for my beautiful
confidence in himself.
He was all immediately that I could have wished and expected him to
be--all, and more--unfortunately a good deal more. His head was not
built for plots and counter-plots. A sense of his magnified importance
in the world, being chosen the trusted accessory of such a man and in
such a secret, puffed him out magnificently. He was eager to be at
once not only my confidant but my coadjutor--to work for me, spy for
me, be my humble auxiliary and comrade in this work of righting a
wrong and forcing retribution on the guilty.
“I’ll watch this Pugsley,” he said, to my astonishment. “I’ll bring
him to his knees, and make him confess what he’s up to. If I ain’t got
much cleverness myself, I’ve the means to buy up a whole Scotland Yard
of it.”
“No, no,” I cried hurriedly. “That would never do, Johnny. I’m playing
this off my own bat, you understand. The dodging of open scandal is to
be our first consideration.”
I seemed to realise in a moment, the danger of the confidence to which
I had committed myself. The thought of Johnny as amateur detective was
impossible. It would be necessary, I foresaw, to divert his enthusiasm
into some harmless channel.
He was greatly gratified, I could see, by my pluralsing of the
personal adjective.
“Of course,” he said. “We’ll keep it all between ourselves, Dick.”
“Yes, indeed,” I said; “we must”--and, on the word, pricked up my
ears, hearing a footstep.
But it was only a man come down with a message from Lord Skene,
requesting the favour of Mr Dando’s company to lunch.
Johnny, in his severe position of ally, looked across at me
doubtingly.
“Of course,” I said. “Thank his lordship from Mr Dando, Williams, and
say he will have much pleasure.”
“For it ought to be as great a pleasure as it’s an honour to you, you
know, Johnny,” I said reproachfully, when the man was gone; “seeing
how it’s meant to imply the just claim of any friend of mine on his
lordship’s hospitality.”
Johnny blushed.
“I didn’t mean that, Dick,” he said--“not to question his lordship’s
condescension. Only----”
“You see, Johnny,” I pursued, twinkling, “you mustn’t begin by tarring
them all with the same brush. I owe Lord Skene very much, if I owe his
lady very little. He’s been a good second father to me, if she’s been
an indifferent first mother. All I want to find out is why she has
been. I want to know why, Johnny; and I want to know who my first
father was, and how this man Dalston knows what I don’t know, and why
he is able to make such crushing use of his knowledge. That’s all it
comes to at present; and you mustn’t be looking for reasons in their
company, but behave just like an ordinary polite little Johnny as you
are. There’ll be time enough to discuss our campaign by-and-by.”
He was obviously relieved, and not in the least offended.
“I can assure you, my dear fellow,” he said, “that I shall be only too
glad to put it all out of my mind for the moment. It would be jolly
unpleasant sitting there and acting the spy--and with Miss Christmas
in the room, too. By-the-by, _will_ she be there, Dick?”
“O yes! I expect so,” I said, with a snigger. “But I don’t often turn
up to lunch, myself; and am rather out in the young lady’s customs.”
“You don’t seem to like her much?” he said.
“No,” I answered. “I don’t know that I do----” At which he gave an
unaccountable sigh, as of a burden discharged.
Lord Skene accepted my friend genially, as I had expected; but not as
I had expected was Lady Skene’s reception of him. If not actually
warm, it was gracious and attentive. She made him sit at her right
hand, and she placed me opposite on her left. There was no drawing
away of her skirts this time. She even asked me if I would _mind_
sitting there, calling me, nervously, and with a heightened spot of
colour come to her cheeks, by my name. It was not so frequent on her
lips but that the novelty could give me an actual little physical
shock. There was a shadow of pathetic propitiation in her manner
towards me, I could have thought. No doubt, what between Pugsley’s
awed confidences and my own newly encountered and most significant
spirit of mutiny, she was beginning to realise the Nemesis her neglect
had cast away to flourish of itself. I was like the little weed thrown
carelessly into a river; and, lo! when the thrower returned to pursue
her course upon the water, there was only a vast hideous tangle of
growth where had been an easy stream.
I looked at her boldly, and her eyes fell before me, Good God! how
beautiful she was! She might have been no more than twenty-seven or
twenty-eight--girlhood at its full flood. It hurt me, in the very face
of that remorseless thing I had set myself to do, to see her so afraid
of me. What she must be suffering under that cold and lovely mask!
What horror of the black abyss torn suddenly across her path! And for
him she had borne to be adding his wild voice to the jangle of the
chase--helping to drive her over the brink into that night!
Though she had deserved it; though she had lied to procure her
promotion to a noble position; though she had sinned her sin, and
condemned the innocent pledge of it to bear the penance, I could not
think of her so haunted and so helpless, and endure the thought. The
vision of that tiny life upstairs quite upset me. If I wanted
justification for my relenting, where could I find a sweeter one or a
more opportune? For God and my brother be my banderole’s motto. One
only proof more--or at least the bid for one--and I would speak, and
end this terror of her shadows--that I swore.
She asked Johnny some questions about his school days, deprecating her
own ignorance of his great friendship for “Richard”; but attributing
it to “Richard’s” silence on the subject. She took the dear boy quite
captive. He answered: “Of course, what could I have had interesting to
say about him?”; and he set to expatiating on my virtues instead. I
didn’t even attempt to stop him. It was such an amusing novelty to me
to hear my existence so much as admitted, much less absurdly
flattered. I laughed out aloud once or twice; but he would not be
stopped until he had given me his whole salute of twenty-one guns.
He was all during lunch completely under the spell of loveliness. His
hostess awed and subdued him, like the rich glooms of a cathedral; but
to Miss Christmas he turned as if to the sunshine without its doors.
The girl was in a mischievous mood--I could see that, though she
studiously ignored me throughout the meal. She would angle with great
eyes for my friend, and, when he caught the bait, would look down with
a start as if confused.
“What did they call you at school, Mr Dando?” she asked once. “All
schoolboys have nicknames, haven’t they?”
“Don’t tell her, Johnny!” I cried.
He blushed furiously.
“Yes, I will” he said. “They called me Dandruff, Miss Christmas.”
“Hey! Dandruff? What the deuce did that mean?” demanded his lordship.
“My father invented ‘Grafto,’ sir,” said Johnny; “the--the hair-wash,
you know. And he--his name was Dando, you see.”
Lord Skene stared bewildered, but Miss Christmas clasped her hands
tragically.
“‘Grafto’!” she exclaimed. “Are you really the son of ‘Grafto’--the
‘Grafto’ that has crowned more heads than Warwick the Kingmaker?”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “That was one of the advertisements. There are
lots of others as good or better.”
“Ask her what _she_ owes to advertisements, Johnny?” I said rudely;
but her mockery of him annoyed me.
He looked all agape.
“Everything, Mr Dando,” said the girl sweetly. “My grandfather made
all _his_ money out of a pill. What benefactors to the human race we
both come of.”
His lordship picked up a late clue.
“Pills, pills!” said he; “and a hair-wash! Tell me the man in the
world who wouldn’t rather have a crop of hair on his head than a crop
of wisdom _in_ it, and hold a pill that settled his liver a better
thing than salvation.”
He stopped, and looked across at his wife, with a sudden comical
tongue in his cheek. That was a bit of the old Adam slipped out. But
Lady Skene did not appear to have heard him.
“I hold old Jack Christmas amongst the archangels,” said his lordship.
“You hear, Miss Christmas?” I said. “There’s a pedigree for you!”
She did not take the least notice of me.
As I walked down with Johnny to the lodge by-and-by, the little man
seemed depressed--or, at least, alternately depressed and elated, with
the balance running to the down mood. I could see how it went with
him. He was in love. It was _veni, vidi, victus sum_, with a
vengeance. It had become hard for him, and all in an unexpected
moment, to reconcile his attraction to the Evercreech ménage with his
loyal duty to me. He could not guess, of course, how I rather welcomed
the difficulty. It tied him in a manner by the leg, and narrowed the
issues of his friendly ardour.
I knocked him up a bed somehow later on, for I had insisted on his
being my guest for the night--and we sat and talked into the small
hours. I had to go a journey on the morrow--that was inevitable; but I
refrained from even hinting its direction to him. Let sleeping
Johnnies lie, I thought. It was arranged that we should walk into
Footover together, and there part for the time being, I to go to
London, he to remain in the neighbourhood, and “keep an eye on my
interests.” I trusted to that compromise for safety. “My interests,”
I had a shrewd idea, would be found to gravitate largely about the
person of Miss Christmas; and why should I grudge him that fiction?
The two would make a very good match.
He had sat silent for a long time, when he suddenly looked up with a
sigh.
“O! it’s hard, Dick, it’s hard,” he said, “to be born to ‘Grafto’ and
an unromantic figger!”
For the first time in my knowledge of him, I noticed that the
perennial smile had withered from his face.