An Awfully Big
Adventure
BY
"BARTIMEUS"
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
First published 1919
To
A. R. S.
NOTE
_The sketch entitled "Unto the Hills" appeared originally in_
Blackwood's Magazine, _and is included in this book with the Editor's
kind permission._
PREFACE
It was my original intention to gather this miscellaneous assortment
of war sketches and stories together under the heading of "A Scran
Bag."
The aptness of this title will be apparent when it is explained that
odds and ends of personal possessions left lying about the mess decks
of a man-of-war are impounded by the Ship's Police and kept for safe
custody in a sack. This receptacle of random gleanings is called the
Scran Bag.
My publishers agreed that the title was admirable--to the initiated.
They opined, however, that the bulk of the public would be left, so
to speak, cold. They reminded me that it was no use explaining it in
a Preface, since no one reads Prefaces. They intimated that life was
a sordid business, and we all have to make our livings--in short, no
book with such a title would sell.
I therefore turned to the classics, and in "Peter Pan" found a title
which, I think, is comprehensive of any record, however fragmentary
and incomplete, whether bald fact or fact sugared with fiction, of
the Navy's share in this War.
"To die," said Peter Pan, "would be an awfully big adventure." It may
be so; but, unhappily, the lips of the adventurer are sealed, and we
are left theorising, none the wiser.
To wake up in the morning is a better thing than dying, for all the
poets may say; and if the day holds, as this book does, somewhat of
love, war in a righteous cause, and victory at its close, may not it,
too, be called An Awfully Big Adventure?
CONTENTS
I
An Awfully Big Adventure.
1. THE WOOING OF MOULDY JAKES
2. THE NARRATIVE OF COMMANDER WILLIAM DALRYMPLE HORNBY, ROYAL NAVY
II
Behind the Veil: The Story of the Q Boats. (1918)
1. FIRST BLOOD
2. ORDEAL BY FIRE
3. WON BY WAITING
4. THE SPLENDID FAILURE
III
"Not in the Presence of the Enemy." (1918)
1. THE GLEANER
2. THE MILLIONTH CHANCE
3. CHINKS
4. A FORTY-FOOT SETTING
IV
The Action between H.M.S. _Prize_ and German Submarine U93
V
The Forfeit (1916)
VI
Supper Beer (1914)
VII
The Way They Have (1915)
VIII
The Epitaph
IX
The English Way (1917)
X
The Parting of the Ways (1919)
XI
Unto the Hills (1913)
AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE
PART ONE
THE WOOING OF MOULDY JAKES
1
The late afternoon sunlight was slanting across the heather when the
"Mantis" came puffing round a bend of the river.
Contrary to the established custom and traditions of British
men-of-war, her crew maintained a breathless and high-spirited
dialogue with the Captain, who seasoned it with shrill invective
directed at a routed enemy, invisible and presumed to be in full
flight amid the bracken.
At the bend alluded to, the Captain of the "Mantis" turned and
shouted encouragement to the "Moth," who, some hundred yards astern,
was negotiating some rapids and presumably under heavy fire.
"I say, _do_ buck up!" he cried. "The Turks are retreating like
anything!"
"I can't buck up," wailed the Captain, officers and ship's company of
the "Moth." "There's a bramble all caught up in my petticoat."
"Take the beastly thing off then," commanded the Senior Officer, and
turned to con his ship through the tortuous shallows of the Upper
Reaches.
The fir-clad and boulder-strewn slopes of the valley had given place
to the open moor, where the stream abandoned its headlong course and
broadened into wide pools and shelving beaches of gravel strewn with
bleached twigs.
The "Tarantula" was discernible still among the cataracts, while in
the far distance the Main Army clambered deftly from boulder to
boulder and fended off the onslaughts of flies with a frond of
bracken.
Although the fire of the enemy had perceptibly slackened, the
casualties aboard the "Mantis" mounted steadily. Three times the
Commanding Officer quitted his ship to wallow in his gore on the
springy turf, only returning on each occasion to find the
Quartermaster on his knees in the shallows, delivering valedictory
rhetoric at his post as his life's blood ebbed.
The barred and speckled trout fled up-stream like bronze flashes as
the irresistible advance continued. The shrill bark of the
"Mantis's" gun searched the hollows and peat bogs for the possibly
lurking rearguard of the rout, and sent the shy kingfisher darting
ahead of the bedraggled white ensign in the van of the pursuit.
Finally the "Mantis" dropped anchor from sheer lack of breath and
prepared to disembark a landing party. Her Captain, carrying the
ensign and armed to the teeth, climbed on to a lichen-scarred boulder
in quest of the remainder of the Naval Forces.
"_Come_ on!" he shouted, and the sound of his voice was swallowed by
the vast solitude of the moor.
The "Moth" had forsaken the waterways and from discreet glimpses
afforded by a furze bush bordering the stream was proceeding in
execution of previous orders.
The "Tarantula"--it was useless to disguise the inglorious fact--was
engaged in picking blackberries and sharing them with the Main Army.
Far out of reach of hail or reproach, the advance guard of that
historic force, hitherto invisible, was alone unquenched in spirit
and energy, and rushed to and fro with wagging tail among the
bewildering blend of scents left by the passage of rabbit, vole and
otter.
The Captain of the "Mantis" permitted his nostril to curl
contemptuously.
"Pouf!" he said, and added--for the benefit of the officers and men
of the landing party, desperadoes all--"what can you expect from
girls?"
His fellow-desperadoes, presumably from motives of chivalry or
disgust, vouched no reply, and their leader turned to sweep the path
of the retreat through a pair of mother-of-pearl opera glasses,
suspended from his neck by a piece of string. Then instinctively,
like a wild animal surprised, all the supple grace of his young body
stiffened tense and rigid. Not fifty yards up-stream sat a man
nursing a rifle across his knees.
He was a youngish man, clean-shaven, and he sat, apparently deep in
thought, purring a pipe. Not even the tumult of the advance upon
Bagdad appeared to have disturbed his reflections, for he had not
turned his head.
The Senior Officer of the Naval Forces lowered his mother-of-pearl
opera glasses and scrutinised the stranger with his unimpeded vision
for nearly a minute. Finally, casting a glance down-stream, he
clambered from his place of vantage and advanced.
The boy was about ten paces distant when the stranger turned his
head. He was of a lean, rather lantern-jawed cast of countenance,
and his reddish-brown eyes showed not the faintest surprise or
curiosity at being suddenly confronted by a small sunburnt boy,
bare-legged and dripping wet, who wore a brass-hilted sword bayonet
(relic of the Franco-Prussian war), cutlass-wise, a leather pistol
holster (empty), a soda-water bottle, a bandolier made of corks, and
the aforementioned opera glasses all distributed about his person,
and who carried a white ensign on an ash-plant.
"'Evening," said the stranger; the safety catch of his rifle went
over with a little click.
The boy stood perfectly still, and there was a moment's silence.
Then, planting the flagstaff in the sandy margin of the stream, he
came closer.
"What's your name?" he inquired.
"Jakes," replied the seated figure. He removed his pipe from between
his teeth and blew meditatively into the bowl, contemplating the
tendril of smoke issuing from the mouthpiece with the air of an
alchemist preoccupied with a phenomenon.
"Graeme Jakes," he added in a lower tone, as if speaking to himself.
"Sometimes called 'Mouldy.'
"Mine's Cornelius James Halliday," volunteered the boy. Whatever he
read in the stranger's face apparently banished the lurking fear of
ridicule from his sensitive and imaginative heart. "I'm the
'Mantis,' you know," he continued, "coming up the river to Bagdad.
The 'Moth' and 'Tarantula' are away back in there----" He jerked his
hand towards the bend in the stream as if the gesture made the
explanation quite clear and sufficing.
The man evinced no apparent surprise at the information; he replaced
his pipe between his teeth, took a couple of deep puffs at it and
nodded gravely:
"What about the Army?" he asked.
"Oh, she--it's back there too. Miss Mayne's the Army. She's our
governess, and her brother was killed in the retreat from Mons, so we
always let her be the Army. He was in the Guards, and she only cried
once; she'd be here now only Georgie--Georgina, you know, my
sister--made her stop and pick blackberries. Georgina swanks rather
nowadays when we have games--she usen't to, but she's getting old.
Jane doesn't swank, only she got foul of some brambles, and she's
coming on in her knickerbockers when she's got her skirt off."
The dilatory advance of the remainder of the British Expeditionary
Force having been satisfactorily explained, Cornelius James sat down
and clasped his hands about his small scarred knees. His eyes were
drawn and held by the magnetism of the lethal weapon which lay idly
upon the man's knees.
"Is that loaded?" he queried.
"Yep."
"What do you shoot with it--mostly--hereabouts?"
From his tone the conversation might have been conducted in a country
where tiger predominated among the fauna.
"Rabbits," replied the other, adding after a pause: "sitting." He
jerked open the breech of the miniature rifle, picked up the tiny
shell that flicked out on to the turf and handed it gravely to his
interrogator.
Cornelius James accepted it with equal gravity.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "What's up with your hand? Why is it all
bandaged? Have you been wounded in the war?"
Graeme Jakes surveyed the grubby folds of lint and the maimed fingers
of his left hand. For the first time the shadow of a smile played
about his mouth.
"Yep. Long time ago. Nothin' much, only it wouldn't heal. Went bad
on me. Bit of poison gas shell."
"Oh," said the boy, and contemplated his new acquaintance with
renewed interest.
"Are you Army or Navy?"
The man slid a cartridge into his rifle, closed the bolt and raised
the weapon to his shoulder, resting his left elbow on his knee. A
sharp report followed the instant's silence; the scut of a rabbit
flicked white on the opposite slope and vanished.
"Missed him!" ejaculated the sniper. "Generally do."
He lowered the toy on to his knees again. "Navy," he continued as if
nothing had interrupted the conversation.
"Daddy's in the Navy too," exclaimed the boy. "Do you know
him?--he's an Admiral."
"Know him by name. Don't bump up against Admirals much."
"I wish I was old enough to be in the Navy," sighed Cornelius James.
"It's awful not being able to do anything in this war. Even Miss
Mayne is going to do war work soon. She says every woman ought to do
something."
"Who--who's Miss Mayne?"
"I told you. Our governess. She's a perfect ripper. She's the
third governess we've had. But the other two weren't quite----"
Cornelius James hesitated. "Well's matter of fact, I don't think
they were quite the right sort. They didn't understand how to play,
they hadn't any 'magination, and they were always afraid of cows and
getting sunburnt and taking off their shoes and stockings when it
came to anything wet. Miss Mayne's quite different--because--well,
because she's what she is, I suppose. It makes all the difference,
doesn't it?"
Graeme Jakes considered the subtlety in silence.
"I don't know," he said finally. He turned his head and looked at
the small snob nursing his bare knees. Again their eyes met in
friendly searching scrutiny.
"I've hardly ever met any ladies," he said. It was as if he had
taken the boy as an equal into a rather pathetic confidence.
Cornelius James surveyed his new friend with a deliberate interest.
It absorbed the frayed deerstalker speckled with trout-flies, the
flannel shirt open at the throat, the baggy tweed coat of many
pockets, the corduroy breeches and muddy boots and gaiters. To the
wearer of these garments he applied in turn all the standards of his
brief experience of life.
"Don't they like you?" he asked.
"Dunno," was the reply. "Never asked 'em." He looked musingly
across the rolling moor. "One did once--but she died when I was
little."
The splashing of water down-stream interrupted the speaker.
"Here's Jane," said Cornelius James, looking over his shoulder.
"She's all right," he added, quickly, as the other made a hasty
movement that suggested fright. "She's really quite sensible for a
girl."
Jane drew near, swinging her broad-brimmed hat in her hand and
stepping from stone to stone with the lithe grace of a youthful
dryad. She had discarded her petticoat and wore only a jersey and
knickers.
"Jane," shouted Cornelius James, as she approached. "He's in the
Navy, but he doesn't know Daddy." He made a gesture of
proprietorship in the direction of the impassive figure seated in the
heather.
Jane waded ashore and extended her hand with friendly unconsciousness
of self.
"How d'you do?" she said, and devoured him with round grey eyes.
"Did you ever know Mr. Standish?" she inquired.
Her brother's protégé nodded smiling. "Bunje?" he said. "Yes,
rather--I was shipmates along of Jim."
He lapsed jestingly into the vernacular of the lower deck.
"Jane loves him," interposed Cornelius James. "She was going to
marry him only he got married to someone else. She was awfully
sick--weren't you, Jane?"
"Shut up," was the graceful retort of the woman scorned. "And did
you know Torps--Mr. Mainwaring? He was killed," she added gravely.
"No, never shipmates with him. Heard about him, though. White man
by all accounts."
"He was a darling," said Jane, simply. "It's dreadful to think of
him dead. But I don't think frightfully nice people _really_ die, do
you?"
"Don't know any," was the solemn reply.
Jane pursed up her mouth and opened her eyes wider. She was standing
upright as a lath before him, her hands clasped behind her, and the
water still glistened on her slim bare legs.
"Where do you live?" she inquired, compassionately. The stranger
jerked his head back across the moor to where the ground rose and the
façade of a distant mansion was discernible through a vista in the
trees of a great park.
"Over there," he added in amplification.
"Does that house belong to you?" asked Jane all incredulous. She had
decided at the first glimpse that this was a homeless tramp of the
cleaner and rather nice variety, and from the first had been prepared
to take him, metaphorically, to her bosom.
"No," said the tramp. "It's my brother-in-law's place. I stay with
him and my step-sister when I'm ashore." He eyed the children in
turn. "Where do you live?"
"We live ever so far away," replied Cornelius James. "But we've all
had chicken-pox and we've come with Miss Mayne to stay in a farm near
here. Glebe Farm it's called. Mummie's up in Scotland----"
"So's to be near Daddy's ship," explained Jane.
"Will you come and have tea with us one day?" added the boy. "You
needn't be frightened, 'cos we've stopped peeling and we're out of
quarantine. Do you know where Glebe Farm is?"
The other nodded. "Belongs to my brother-in-law," he said. His eyes
as he spoke were on the lower reaches of the river. Then abruptly he
rose to his feet. "Now I must be off," he said. "Awfully important
engagement."
At the bend of the river Miss Mayne and Georgina stood shading their
eyes from the sun.
"Oh, don't go!" chorused Jane and her brother. "You haven't talked
to Miss Mayne yet," added Cornelius James--"or Georgina. She'll run
after you when she knows you're in the Navy, so it's no use going
yet----Hallo!" He broke off and stared downstream. "Now where's
Miss Mayne off to?"
"Gone to put her stockings on," explained Jane, with the mysterious
comprehension of sex. "She's shy."
"Pouf!" snorted Cornelius James. "Miss Mayne shy!"
"Must be off," muttered Mr. Jakes with a swift glance at the far-off
clump of gorse that concealed Miss Mayne and her modesty. "Just
remembered most important engagement----" He extended his hand to
each of his small acquaintances, and, turning abruptly, made off
across the moor with his shadow stalking jerkily ahead of him.
"Nice man!" was Jane's emphatic conviction.
Cornelius James eyed his sister with suspicion.
"Now look here, Jane," he said, "_I_ found this man. Just remember
that. You bagged the shepherd in the little house on wheels, an'
that boy who could imitate a bullfinch, and the man with the wooden
leg at the level crossing. I found them first and I found this man
first. He's mine."
"Here's Miss Mayne," replied his sister.
2
Graeme Jakes found his step-sister in the hall on his return. He
laid his rifle down, and, crossing over to the fireplace, stood
eyeing her with his back to the empty hearth.
The evening post had been brought in and the surface of the sofa not
occupied by the lady's angular form was strewn with opened envelopes,
charitable appeals, receipted bills, and a sprinkling of letters.
Lady Manners was a woman approaching forty, clad in garments of
aggressively country cut, and about her obtrusively brogued feet a
collection of dachshunds squirmed and writhed.
She looked up from her correspondence and scrutinised her brother
through tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.
"Where have you been all the afternoon?" she inquired. "The Smedleys
were over to tea."
"Those people who bought The Garth?"
"Yes. Mrs. Smedley brought her two girls expressly to renew their
acquaintance with you. And you--you vanish!"
Lady Manners picked up another envelope and slit it open with an
action somehow suggestive of a hard-pressed fishmonger gutting
herrings.
"I've had some," was the reply.
"Had what--tea?"
"No, Mrs. Smedley's girls. The Misses Smedley."
"I don't know that I quite follow you, Graeme. Do you mind not
knocking out your pipe on the clean hearth?"
The individual addressed ignored the last sentence and thoughtfully
rubbed the bowl of his pipe against the side of his sunburnt nose.
"They give me the holy pip," he explained.
"Do they!" said his step-sister icily. "May I ask in what respect
they--they fail to meet with your approval? You are fond of
complaining that you never meet any nice girls--that your life in the
Navy restricts you to the companionship of your own sex; with an
alternative the reverse of desirable. I place opportunities in your
way of becoming acquainted with the young people of the County and
you behave with rudeness to them, and to me, if you'll let me say so.
Josephine and Alicia Smedley are both war-workers, and you should
have much in common, making all allowances for your--er, peculiar
upbringing."
"Thank 'ee," said her step-brother cheerfully. "What particular line
of business do they chuck their weights about in?"
"They are both taking a holiday, but normally Josephine drives a War
Office car----"
"Abnormally, I should say," interposed the soiler of clean hearths.
"She's got a laugh like a Klaxon horn. What's t'other been doing in
the Great War, Grannie?"
"Alicia? She places her somewhat exceptional talents at the disposal
of the wounded soldiers--officers, of course."
"Course. Don't tell me she nurses 'em?"
"No. Her temperament--sensitive, artistic, fluid as it is--is too
refined for the horrors of wards and operating theatres; she dances
to amuse the poor things when they are convalescing--convalescence is
a trying time."
"It is. Did she come over to give a display for my benefit? I'm
only a wounded sailor, though. Don't count, I s'pose?"
Lady Manners began to gather her correspondence together.
"Graeme," she said, "I am at a loss to know why you should adopt this
tone. If it is intended to be in keeping with a pose which your
profession requires of you, I can only say that it ill becomes a
guest before this hearth."
There was a genuinely hurt tone in the lady's voice--which, indeed,
trembled a little. This note of unconscious pathos moved Graeme to
one of his rare attempts at self-revelation. He knew she was fond of
him in her preoccupied, hard way, and was more concerned about his
"lone wolf" attitude towards the amenities of civilised life, as she
understood them, than she was capable of putting into words.
"Emily," he said, "'tisn't a pose. 'Fore God it's no pose. Call me
what you like--intolerant, idealistic, or whatever long word meets my
case. Fact remains, I can't stick that type of woman. They shock
me, Emily, in the way blasphemy and drunkenness shock you. All my
life long--for fifteen years at least--I've lived in ships with men
as my sole companions--raucous-voiced, hairy-chested, buck men, my
dear; every blessed type; selfish men and unselfish ones, drunkards,
bullies, cranks, wise men and fools. 'Tisn't that one doesn't like
'em at heart, most of 'em. Some are lovable; but one gets into the
way of thinking women must be somehow utterly different. When I went
to sea I thought all women in the world must be like what I could
remember of Mother--" unconsciously his voice changed. "I went on
thinking so for some years, chiefly because I never met any women to
speak to. The more I saw of men the more I felt convinced that women
must be wonderful ... their voices..."
The speaker pulled out a ragged tobacco pouch and slowly fell to
filling his pipe.
"Course, as time went on I met women--of a sort--but they didn't
disillusion me. They strengthened my conviction that the--er--other
sort must be all I'd dreamed they were. Trouble was I never met any.
I haven't any parlour tricks--too shy----"
For a few moments the lighting of his pipe occupied the speaker's
attention. He enveloped himself in wreaths of smoke.
"I wonder why--I wonder how girls--ladies, I mean, to use an
old-fashioned word--get like that Josephine Smedley; flicking
cigarette ash about and grimacing when they talk. They don't seem
able to say anything without George Robey's slang to help 'em, or to
finish a sentence without a laugh like a third-rate barmaid's. I
believe subalterns describe them as 'sports.' They aren't men,
though they try to ape men; they aren't women--they aren't--oh God!
how I hate the type!"
Lady Manners rose. There was in her aristocratic, rather narrow
face, a suspicion that her relative had been drinking. Once on a
previous visit the idealist had been driven by boredom to seek
entertainment in the village tavern, and, while adding considerably
to his popularity amongst the rustic toss-pots, returned smelling
insufferably of beer.
"Don't go, Emily. Don't shove off for a second. I only get wound up
like this once in a blue moon, and I'd better get it off my chest now
once and for all. Don't imagine I think these Miss Smedleys
represent women war-workers. I know they're a minority, but they
represent a type. I know something about the other sort--the ones
who've helped us to bash the Hun, and they make me feel like a
piffling slacker sometimes. How would you like to stand on your feet
for twelve hours a day doing acetylene gas welding, or ride eighty
miles carrying spare parts on a stink-bike through a snow
blizzard--not once, but as a daily routine? I was shipmates with a
bloke whose sister did that for two consecutive years. How would you
like swabbing out a gangrened wound in a part of a man's anatomy
polite civilisation makes him hide under clothes---? Don't raise
your eyebrows, Emily! The point I'm driving at is that thousands of
women do these things, and somehow manage to remain women----" He
mused reminiscently upon a then recent article in Blackwood's
Magazine--"Even when they pull off their petticoats and put on
breeches to plough an acre a day."
"I am sorry," said Lady Manners, on the threshold of the hall. "But
I quite fail to see the application of all this--this rant."
"It applies to Josephine Smedley and her kidney," replied the
seeker-after-ideal-womanhood. "It is my 'statement in mitigation.'
You, my dear Emily, having donned the black cap and condemned me to a
tea-party with the lady in question, cannot do less than listen to my
views." Graeme beamed at her irate ladyship, his ill-humour blown
away on the winds of vehemence. "And now here is Malcolm bowed down
with the affairs of the nation."
Sir Malcolm Manners, who wore a preoccupied air and carried a sheaf
of letters in his hand, entered as Graeme spoke. He was a meagre
individual with absent blue eyes and a drooping moustache tinted by
nicotine. His thin grey hair was parted unsymmetrically down the
centre, and one wisp, perpetually overlooked or rebellious against
restraint, stuck up from the crown like a cock's tail in miniature.
He stopped when he saw his wife and referred fussily to the letters
he carried, as if to refresh his mind from notes preparatory to
making a speech.
"We must go up to town for a few days, Emily. These fellows are
going to muddle everything without someone on the spot."
By "someone" he meant himself. The baronet was Chairman of a
Committee charged with the task of repatriating certain classes of
refugees. The refugees having no wish to be repatriated and the
Committee boasting not a single business man in its composition,
matters were not progressing as rapidly--so said the type-written
report in the Chairman's hands--as could be hoped.
"Ha!" said the lady, scenting muddle like a war-horse sniffing
battle. There are women who rush to straighten out other people's
affairs with a gusto only equalled by the discovery of dust in their
own rooms. They make admirable housewives. Then, somehow, into the
pleasurable anticipation of good work ahead, of fussy Committee
meetings and the rounding up of expostulating unintelligibles, there
floated the recollection of Graeme into their minds.
"You don't mind if we run away for a few days, Graeme--you can amuse
yourself all right till we come back I dare say? It's a
nuisance--but you know what these confounded fellows are if you leave
them to themselves."
Sir Malcolm brandished the papers in vague admonition of his absent
fellow-repatriators.
"Quite," said Graeme, wondering what they were all talking about.
Then, perhaps realising that something more was required of him,
added: "I'll be quite all right alone. Have no end of a time. Don't
either of you hurry back on my account."
"There are no engagements to bring us back till the end of the week,
are there Emily?" queried Sir Malcolm.
"Not that I can remember." Lady Manners walked to a bureau and
consulted a little tablet of memoranda. "Oh, I had forgotten, I
wrote this morning to the governess in charge of those children
staying at Glebe Farm, asking her to bring them to tea the day after
to-morrow. They are the children of Admiral Halliday; you remember,
we met him and his wife at Portsmouth the year before the war--when
we stayed with the Farehams."
"Pretty woman, was she?" inquired Sir Malcolm. "Or was it the one
who liked boiled eggs with her tea?"
"It's immaterial," said his wife. "The children have had chicken-pox
and are convalescing. I understand they are free from infection."
"They've stopped peeling," said the voice of Graeme.
"Eh?" said Sir Malcolm, wheeling with a surprised expression. He had
a way of forgetting his brother-in-law's presence and being startled
when he spoke. "That needn't bring me back from town, need it?"
"Not at all," said Graeme cheerfully. "They'd probably start again
if they thought they'd dragged you back."
The baronet looked still more confused. "Start what? I don't
understand. What have I got to do with these children and their
complaints?"
"Nothing," said his wife, in the tone the keeper of an imbecile might
adopt. "They are only coming here to tea when we are away. Graeme,
of course, would consider it beneath his dignity to entertain
children"--she smiled rather frostily--"so Mrs. Mackworth must give
them their tea and show them the picture gallery, and--er--Baines
shall take them round the gardens. That will leave Graeme free from
all responsibilities in our absence."
"Thank you," said the officer referred to. "Always grateful for
small mercies." He looked at his watch, and lounged off towards the
stairway. "I'm going to shift for dinner." At the first landing he
paused and looked back. "By the way, Emily," he said, "have they
accepted?"
"Who?" asked Lady Manners, her head once more full of the affairs of
the about-to-be-repatriated.
"Those children."
"No. If a letter comes you had better open it, and let Mrs.
Mackworth know if they are coming."
"I will," said Graeme. "But, oh, who wouldn't sell his little farm
and go to sea!"
3
Cornelius James claimed the right to be the bearer of the acceptance
to Lady Manners' invitation by virtue of having been the first to
discover Graeme.
Georgina, doomed to an hour's violin practice, was immured in the
stuffy farm parlour amid waxen fruit, daguerreotype portraits and
family Bibles. Jane, after a spirited bid for the post of messenger,
sought consolation in the region of the sheep-dip, speedily becoming
as excited and almost as wet as the struggling animals themselves.
Miss Mayne, having borrowed an iron from the farmer's wife, retired
to the sitting-room, where, with pretty brows knit in the
preoccupation of _blanchissage_, she was no longer a governess, but a
slim priestess before a vestal altar, aloof, mysterious.
Cornelius James, turning his back on these feminine activities,
pursued a stony lane that climbed through sloping fields and
presently debouched upon the main road. The lodge gates of his
destination stood a few hundred yards higher up, but boylike he
disdained so formal an entrance, and nosed along the high palisade
surrounding the park until a displaced board gave him access.
The trees grew thick and untended as in a wilderness, with moss
clinging to their bark and the verdure wellnigh shutting out the sky.
Underfoot the dead leaves of countless autumns' garnering rustled
crisply and, as the boy advanced, twigs snapped at every step;
something startled by his footfall bounded away through the fern
unseen. To the ears of boyhood, Pan's pipe has not grown dim, and it
was with a heart that thumped responsive that Cornelius James crept
forward.
His imagination, acutely vivid and rather childish for his years,
insisted that this was a desperate business, demanding caution and
woodcraft of no mean order. Indians, painted and feathered, slipped
like shadows from bole to hollow; a tiny pool amid the bracken was
the nightly drinking-place of beasts a hunter of his experience could
recognise from their spoor.... A squirrel, low down on an
overhanging branch, suddenly sent his heart into his mouth as it
broke into a scolding chatter at his approach.
The trees grew fewer and gave glimpses of great stretches of lawn,
vivid green in the brilliant sunlight. Beyond, entrenched behind
flower-beds and a stone balustraded terrace, stood the great house.
Had Cornelius James but known it, romance clustered thicker round
those hoary buildings than any he could imagine in his woodland
transports.
Monks had chanted matins and vespers in the vaulted chapel whose roof
caught his eye amid the greenery. Brave gentlemen had died at the
end of the alley-way bordered by yew hedges on the right--fought and
died for the light love of a lady. Dawn had paled candles behind the
deep-set oriel windows and seen a fortune, aye, ten fortunes, change
hands across a little baize-covered table. The births of great men
and famous women and their deaths had the old house known for twenty
generations, and once (so the chroniclers record) murder most foul.
But the boy was less concerned with the house than the gleam of a
lake beyond the lawns. Water always called him, were it sea or river
or puddle by the roadside.
He emerged from the park, a hot, dishevelled, breathless little
figure, and set off at a trot to where the ornamental lake was
situated. A stream meandered down to the head of the lake, and
following it he came presently to the stone coping (it had been a
fish pond in monastic days) and espied a tall figure, lazily whipping
the surface of the lake with a trout rod. It was Graeme Jakes, and
so intent was he upon his occupation that not until Cornelius James
panted to his side did he turn his head.
"Hullo, sprite!" he said. "Where have you sprung from?"
"I've got a letter," gasped Cornelius James, "about our coming to tea
with you."
"Oh," said the prospective host, and then in a tone of anxiety that
would have astonished his step-sister: "You are coming, aren't you?"
"Rather," said the boy. "We're all coming." He held out the letter.
"This is for Lady Manners. Shall I go in and give it to her?"
"That's all right," said Graeme, possessing himself of the missive.
"I'll take it."
He wound in his line and stood staring across the lawns in the
direction of the old house.
"We are looking forward to coming," said Cornelius James.
"Frightfully. Jane hopes we can play hide and seek."
"Of course you can," said Graeme. "You can do any blessed thing you
like."
"And you'll play, too?"
"I?" Graeme's tone was one of apprehension, but mingled with it was
a note of pleased anticipation the child's ear was quick to catch.
"Are you sure you want me? I'm not much good at games; it's rather a
long time since I played hide and seek, you know."
"Of course you'll have to join in," replied Cornelius James. They
were walking side by side in the direction of the house. "That's all
we're coming for." He looked up into Graeme's face with a boy's
frank affection in his gaze.
There are men proof against the blandishments of women, charm they
never so wisely, but none entirely unsusceptible to a child's naïve
advances.
Graeme flicked the supple rod to and fro over his shoulder.
"Right-ho!" he said gruffly, and then after a half-awkward pause
added: "Would you like a peach?"
The boy signified assent to the proposal, and they skirted the
flower-beds, leaving the house on their left and entered the walled
garden.
Cornelius James rapidly disposed of two peaches and a pear while
Graeme stood watching him with a smile lurking about the corners of
his mouth.
"Better take some back for the other sprites," he said, and gathered
four peaches. "Here you are--two each. Shove 'em in your pockets."
Cornelius James gravely accepted the gift, and prepared to depart.
"Thanks awfully," he said, and hesitated. "I say, would you mind if
I took one back for Miss Mayne? She loves peaches."
"I'd forgotten Miss Mayne," he said. "Of course she can have some.
Here! Where's your cap?" He selected and picked the fruit with a
preoccupied air, then suddenly; "Does--does Miss Mayne play hide and
seek?"
Cornelius James nodded. "She plays everything," he said with
enthusiasm. "You wait!"
They had regained the terrace and stood looking out across the
smiling countryside.
"You haven't seen Miss Mayne yet, have you?"
"No," said Graeme. He stood motionless for a minute after his
visitor had departed, watching the small figure dwindling in the
distance. Then drawing the letter from his pocket he opened and read
it. It was a formal acceptance of half a dozen lines written in a
clear, round, rather girlish hand and signed "Claire Mayne." But the
reader scrutinised it as if it had been a photograph, and re-read it
twice ere he replaced it in his pocket and walked slowly back to the
house.
"I wonder what she looks like," he said, musing, and then remembered
rather uneasily that he had omitted to mention to his visitor the
absence of the mistress of the household. In the hall he encountered
the housekeeper.
"Oh, Mrs. Mackworth, those children are coming to tea to-morrow. I
shall be in, and I will--er--entertain them."
Mrs. Mackworth, who had had in contemplation a tea-party to two
cronies in her own room, looked relieved at the intelligence.
"Then you won't require my presence, Mr. Graeme?"
"No, thank you," replied Graeme, with the desperate calm of a man who
had deliberately burned his boats.
4
The following morning found the children in a glow of pleasurable
anticipation which their landlady, on learning of the impending
visit, cheerfully fanned to fever pitch. She had been a housemaid
"up at the house" in her youth, and held the children spellbound with
her description of its glories.
"There's armour there enough for a regiment of soldiers," she said
with fine disregard of modern military equipment, "and pictures by
the mile. Chimney-vases hundreds of years old, worth their weight in
gold, standing about in corners like dirt. Mind, too," she added,
with a ring of sombre reminiscence in her tones, "they break if you
so much as look at 'em. Don't forget to see the tapestry that was
wove by a queen and her ladies, and if Mr. Graeme's there, get him to
show you the secret passage--there's one behind a sliding panel in
Sir Malcolm's library."
"Oh!" gasped Jane and Cornelius James in chorus.
"Graeme will be there," cried the latter with dancing eyes.
"And a nice young gentleman he is," said the woman. "Comes here to
get my husband to go ferreting and drops in afterwards for a cup of
tea. Quiet, you know, and unassuming; happier, they say, with us
farmer folk than with lords and ladies of the County. That's the
gossip in these parts, but I was never one myself for----"
"Did you say we should meet him?" inquired Georgina of her brother,
with lofty indifference a shade over accentuated.
"Yes," was the reply, "and you needn't put on airs because you are
going to have tea with a grown-up man."
"And a silly little boy," retorted Georgina, nettled. She sighted
Miss Mayne.
"Corney's frightfully jealous that we're going to steal his beloved
Mr. Jakes from him," she scoffed.
Miss Mayne laughed merrily. "Cheer up, Corney," she said. "We don't
want your old Mr. Jakes, whoever he may be." She rumpled his hair
affectionately.
The child slipped his arm through that of the woman.
"No," he replied, and looked up at her fair face quizzing down at
him; a little smile lit his eyes in innocent roguery. "No, but he
may want _you_!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Mayne. "Why, I do believe Georgie was right!"
"How right?"
"I believe you are a silly little boy, after all."
Beneath another roof in the country Graeme Jakes formed the topic of
conversation that summer morning. The Misses Smedley were alone in
the music-room of The Garth, where Alicia was practising a "Jazz"
waltz on the piano. Josephine, swaying her body sinuously to the
rhythm, smoked a cigarette while she stared out of the window.
"He's not what you'd call good looking," she said, "exactly."
"No," replied Alicia, turning her music and nodding jerkily as the
tune progressed.
"All the same," said Josephine, "there's something rather----" she
writhed expressively.
The fair Alicia played in silence for some moments. "Don't work up a
'pash' over him till you know more about him. For all you know, he's
married already--or wrapped up in another girl. Sailors are devils."
Josephine took three "Jazz" steps across the room and threw the stump
of her cigarette into the fireplace. "I like devils," said the
supple virgin, "'specially ugly ones."
Her sister stopped playing, wheeled round on the music-stool, and
taking a cigarette out of a box on the piano, bounced it end-on with
merciless violence against her thumbnail before putting it in her
mouth.
"I believe you are so dev'lish intrigued with this man because he
snubbed you the other day," she drawled.
Josephine laughed. "There are some men one would rather like to be
beaten by---- Al, can you think of an excuse to go over there this
afternoon? What about those theatricals at Aldbury--can't we ask him
to act in them? He won't, of course--that sort's too
self-conscious--but it would be a decent excuse."
"Obvious," said the more experienced Alicia.
"Rot--be a sport."
"But he leaves me cold," objected the "sport."
"So much the better. Didn't I help you when young Maunder was
staying at Norton Hall? You owe me one over that."
"Oh, all right, then," assented Alicia. "I shall have to gas to Lady
Manners all the afternoon. 'Snice, I don't think."
"Lady Manners is away. Gone to town with old Sir Stick-in-the-mud.
But, of course, we shan't know that--get all in a flutter----"
Alicia opened her heavy-lidded eyes wide. "My dear!" she cried, and
then, spinning round to the key-board, vamped the opening bars of
Mendelssohn's Wedding March.
"Shur-r-r up!" shrieked Josephine, with a burst of abrupt laughter
somehow suggestive of the cry of the green woodpecker.
All unconscious of the tremors he had awakened in the maidenly bosom
of Josephine Smedley, Graeme Jakes sallied forth to meet his guests.
He had mapped out a programme for their amusement with considerable
care, harking back in memory to the far-off days when as a little boy
he was bidden to spend adventurous afternoons at adjoining country
houses, where there were always swarms of children, and the gardeners
locked the doors of the wall-gardens as a precaution----
Well, there would be no doors locked that afternoon. He had seen to
that, and the tea, with its piles of cakes and pyramids of fruit,
bowls of cream and dishes of Mrs. Mackworth's famous preserves,
materialised the vision of a meal he had always dreamed as a child,
and somehow never achieved in waking hours.
He met his guests half-way up the avenue through the park, a
demure-looking little group from which first Cornelius James and then
Jane detached themselves and sped to greet him.
"Look," said Jane, extending decorously gloved fingers, "tell Miss
Mayne you hate people with gloves. She made us wear them--Georgie
and me."
"Did she?" said the host, and advanced to welcome the autocrat who
had decreed gloves. Of course, Emily would expect children to wear
gloves----
He was face to face with Miss Mayne, with Georgina at her side. The
governess had overheard Jane's protest, and was laughing as they
shook hands. Graeme approved of her laugh; it produced tiny wrinkles
at the side of her nose, giving her face an ingenuous and infectious
merriment. Despite the pre-occupation of the apology he was mentally
framing, Graeme noticed that her eyes were grey, and that there were
freckles powdered like gold-dust about the attractive nose.
"I ought to have let you know before," he said. "I hope you don't
mind, but the fact is, my step-sister is away. She and her husband
have had to go up to town."
The smile faded from Miss Mayne's face. "I'm sorry. We didn't know."
Her regard, meeting the man's, somehow reminded him of the searching
look Cornelius James had given him at their first encounter.
"Emily entrusted me with the job of explaining her absence and
apologising. I should have done both sooner, but, somehow, it never
entered my head. I have been looking forward so much to having a
party----" He grinned boyishly and flushed.
Miss Mayne Was sophisticated enough to interpret aright all that
quick flush meant. Her smile returned like a reassured rabbit
sallying forth again from its burrow.
"It's very brave of you," she said, "and we are ever so grateful,
because we've been looking forward to this afternoon, too, haven't
we, Georgina?"
Georgina awkwardly confirmed this; she was at the shy age of
girlhood--the age at which youth finds itself a trifle superfluous in
Nature's inexorable scheme.
"Very well, then," said their host, "we will proceed according to
plan, as the Hun said when he retreated," and led the way towards the
house.
For the first time in his life he played the host, and the rôle
became him. True, the house was not his, but he knew and loved it,
in his shy, unobtrusive fashion, and showed a knowledge of its
contents that more than once caused Miss Mayne to glance at him with
a half surprised, veiled appreciation. She herself spoke little,
but, when she did, displayed a love of the beautiful and no small
knowledge of many of the arts that beautified the interior of the
mansion. The little party had reached the portrait gallery, and at
Georgina's request Mouldy Jakes furnished them with thumb-nail
sketches of the life histories of the originals. He talked in a
dryly humorous fashion that held the children alternately entranced
and convulsed with laughter, warming to his self-imposed task as Miss
Mayne caught the infectious mirth and echoed the children's gurgles
with her own clear sweet laugh.
"And who is that?" inquired Georgina, pointing to a bloodless-looking
dame in blue satin holding a toy spaniel in her preposterously
tapering hands.
"Ah!" said their host, "now we're getting to the really interesting
ones. I was saving her for the last. There's a story about her you
won't believe."
"Tell," commanded Jane, possessing herself of his undamaged hand.
"Well, this particular lady died--or at least they thought she was
dead, and they planted--that's to say, buried her, in the vault
attached to the chapel--I'll show you the place later on. She had a
wedding-ring which was supposed to carry special luck to its
wearer--it was rolled out of a piece of gold looted from a joss-house
by some adventurous Manners. Anyhow, she was buried with this ring
on, and in the night, one of the gardeners thought that, being alive
and having use for good luck, he might as well have the ring as leave
it where it was."
"Oh," said Miss Mayne, "I know the story--never mind, go on!" She
turned and stared curiously at the impassive features of the lady.
"Well, the gardener got hold of the ring; he'd been apprenticed to a
burglar as a lad before he took up gardening, and he had strong
nerves as well. The trouble was that he couldn't separate the ring
from the lady, and he didn't want her. He pulled hard, but he
couldn't get it off. Not for nuts."
"I know what _I_ should have done," said Cornelius James. "I should
have cut off her finger."
"Corney!" protested his shocked sisters.
"Well, that was more or less his idea. The trouble was he hadn't got
a knife--he wasn't a sailor; but he had been the next best thing for
the purpose--a dog-fancier."
"I thought you said he had been a burglar?" interposed Jane severely.
Consistency in details she invariably insisted upon when told a story.
"Oh," gasped Miss Mayne, as the significance of the gardener's former
pursuit suddenly became plain, "you surely don't mean----"
"He was in a hurry. P'raps the job was getting on his nerves after
all. He started in, and when he was half-way through the lady sat
up. She wasn't dead--only in a trance."
"What did the gardener do?" asked Cornelius James feverishly.
"At the time he ran away," replied Mouldy in sepulchral tones, "but
later on he repented and joined the Church."
"And the lady lived happily ever afterwards?" insisted Jane the
punctilious.
"Certainly," said Mouldy. "And now, before we have tea, I'll show
you all the ring." He ran up the stairway at the end of the gallery
and returned a few minutes later with a little casket.
"It is supposed to bring luck to any woman who slips it on her
wedding finger," said the host, opening the lid and taking out a
heavy plain ring.
"Let me put it on," said Georgina. She extended a slim sunburnt paw,
and Mouldy gravely slipped it on the third finger of her left hand.
"What a weight," she said, and turned her hand admiringly,
contemplating it after the manner of women, with her head on one side.
"Do you feel all funny?" inquired Jane, with obvious anxiety. "The
luck----"
"No, silly," replied her sister. "Here, you put it on." She drew it
off and slipped it on Jane's small finger. "Now Miss Mayne."
Miss Mayne shook her head laughingly. "No," she said, "my luck
doesn't want any improving. I'm quite content with everything as it
is."
Her host glanced at her quizzically. She certainly did not look as
if she had many grounds for complaint, as she stood with her hands
behind her back and mirth in her pretty eyes, a gracefully poised,
perfectly healthy, happy specimen of young womanhood.
"Oh, Miss Mayne, but you must!" cried her charges in unison.
"You can never have too much of a good thing, you know," endorsed the
host. Without quite knowing why, he was aware that his heart was
beating a shade fast. He wanted her to put the ring on. He had an
absurd inexplicable desire to put it on her finger himself.
"Just put it on the tip," pleaded Jane. "Please."
Miss Mayne was now blushing unaffectedly, and furious with herself.
"Why not?" asked Graeme with masculine obtuseness.