thing there was hot roast beef, which counts for much when you see the
like only once in the week. The Rector carved and Stiffy handed round
the plates, Keziah, whose Sunday-afternoon-out commenced technically
the moment the sirloin was dished, being excused from further
attendance. Daphne presided over the vegetable dishes and Ally cut
bread at the sideboard. The office of butler was in abeyance, for the
Vereker family drank only water from their highly polished
christening-mugs. Nicky was responsible for the table-napkins, and
Cilly mixed salads in season.
All these domestic details Daphne explained, with captivating
friendliness and a freedom from self-consciousness that many a more
matured hostess might have envied, to the silent man beside her.
"Sorry to have _all_ the family pouring things over you," she said, as
Stiffy with a plate of beef, Ally with a lump of bread impaled upon a
fork, and Cilly with a bowl of lettuce, egg, and beetroot cunningly
intermingled, converged simultaneously upon the guest; "but we have
only one servant, and----"
Stephen Blasius Vereker, poised upon his toes and holding his breath,
was leaning heavily over the guest's right shoulder, proffering a
platter upon the edge of which a billow of gravy, piling itself up
into a tidal wave, strove to overcome the restraining influence of
surface tension. Apollyon, his features unrelaxed, gravely took the
plate, and restoring it to a horizontal position, turned deferentially
to resume his conversation with his young hostess.
----"And I like poor Keziah to have as long a Sunday out as
possible," continued Daphne, entirely unruffled.
"Her young man waits for her at the stile down by Preston's farm,"
supplemented Nicky. "They go for a walk down Tinkler's Den, and never
speak a _word_ to each other."
----"So we wait on ourselves at this meal," concluded Daphne. "What
will you drink, Sir John? Father is a teetotaller, and so are all of
us; but if you are not, I've got some brandy upstairs in the nursery
medicine cupboard."
"Thank you, I will drink water," said Sir John solemnly.
By this time the Vereker family had settled down to their own
portions, and were babbling as cheerfully and unrestrainedly as usual.
Shyness in the presence of strangers was not one of their weaknesses,
and presently, taking advantage of Daphne's departure to the kitchen
in quest of the second course, they engaged their guest in
conversation, inviting his opinions on such widely different subjects
as the quality of the salad (Cilly), the merits of the automatic
vacuum railway brake as compared with those of the Westinghouse
(Stiffy), and the prospects of Cambridge in the coming Boat Race
(Ally). All of which queries were answered in a fashion which, while
lacking in geniality and erring a little on the side of terseness,
showed that the respondent knew what he was talking about.
The Rector, at the head of the table, smiled benignantly. To him this
reticent man of over forty, with the deep-set eyes and square jaw, was
the sturdy chubby boy who had cooked his breakfast and worshipped him
from afar in the dim but joyous days when Brian Vereker was a giant of
nineteen, with side whiskers, and Jacky Carr a humble fag of twelve.
It was almost a shock to hear him offered spirits to drink.
Presently Daphne returned, and another general post ensued, at the end
of which the beef and vegetables had disappeared, and a suet pudding
(the standing Sabbath sweet at the Rectory), flanked by a dish of
trifle of diminutive proportions, lay before the hostess. The Rector
was confronted by a melon.
Taking advantage of a covering conversation between the guest and her
eldest brother, Miss Vereker made a mysterious pass over the surface
of the trifle with a spoon, while she murmured to such of the family
as were within earshot the mystic formula, "F. H. B.!" Then she
inquired aloud--
"Cilly, dear, which pudding will you have?"
"Baby Maud, please," replied Miss Cecilia promptly, indicating the
stiff, pallid, and corpse-like cylinder of suet.
She was helped, and Nicky's choice was ascertained.
"I don't _think_," that damsel replied sedately, "that I'll have
anything, thank you, Daphne. I'm not very hungry to-day."
Daphne, with a slight twitch at the corners of her mouth--she
appreciated Nicky's crooked little ways, despite herself--turned to
the guest.
"Will you have pudding or trifle, Sir John? Let me recommend the
trifle."
"Thank you, I never eat sweets," was the reply.
An audible sigh of relief rose from the Messrs Vereker.
"Daph, dear," said Nicky before any one else could speak, "I think
I'll change my mind and have some trifle."
And thus, by prompt generalship, Miss Veronica Vereker, while obeying
to the letter the laws of hospitality and precedence, stole a march
upon her slow-moving brethren and sisters and received the lion's
share of the trifle, the balance going to Tony by virtue of juniority.
As Daphne handed her triumphant little sister her portion, she
distinctly heard a muffled sound on her right.
"I like this man!" she said to herself.
"If you don't take sweets, Jack," observed the Rector from the other
end of the table, "allow me to introduce you to this melon--a present
from the Squire. Take the melon round to Sir John, Stiffy, and he
shall cut in where he pleases; though, strictly speaking," he added,
with simple enjoyment of his own joke, "it is hardly etiquette to cut
anything you have been introduced to!"
There was a momentary stoppage in the general mastication of "Baby
Maud," and the right hand of each Vereker present performed the same
evolution. Next moment the repast was resumed, but the guest observed,
not without surprise, that every christening-mug--even Daphne's--had a
knife lying across its top.
"That is one of our customs," explained Cilly politely. "We do it
whenever any one makes a stale joke."
"_Alice through the Looking-Glass_," corroborated Nicky, scooping up
trifle with an air of severe reproof--"page two hundred and seven."
"You see my servile and dependent position in this house, Jack!" said
the Rector, not altogether dejectedly.
"I perceive that I have dropped into a Republic," said Sir John Carr.
"Republic? A more absolute despotism never existed. Wait until you
have transgressed one of the Laws of the Medes and Persians and been
brought up for judgment before my eldest daughter? _We_ know, don't
we--eh, Nicky?"
Brian Vereker projected the furtive smile of a fellow-conspirator
upon his youngest daughter, and then turned to gaze with unconcealed
fondness and pride upon his eldest.
"I trust that when I transgress," said Sir John, "I shall get off
under the First Offender's Act."
"You have broken that already," said Daphne readily; "but it's Dad's
fault. It is twenty minutes to three, and you two ought to have been
smoking in the study ten minutes ago instead of talking here. I want
to get this room cleared for the children to learn their Catechism
in."
* * * * *
At half-past three Brian Vereker summoned his eldest daughter to the
study, and announced with frank delight that Sir John Carr had agreed
to vacate the Kirkley Arms and accept the hospitality of the Rectory.
"I am going to walk down to the inn now," said Apollyon to Daphne, "to
see about my luggage. Perhaps you will keep me company?"
"All right," said Daphne. "I'll bring Mr Dawks too. He wants a walk, I
know."
Sir John made no comment, but gave no active support to the inclusion
of Mr Dawks in the party. It may be noted, however, that when Daphne
had at length achieved that feat which encroaches so heavily upon a
woman's share of eternity--the putting on of her hat--and joined her
guest in the garden accompanied by Mr Dawks in person, Apollyon
greeted the owner of the name with far more cordiality than he had
greeted the name itself. It is sometimes misleading to bestow
Christian titles upon dumb animals.
Once away from the rest of the family, Daphne's maternal solemnity
fell from her like a schoolmaster's cap and gown in holiday time. She
chattered like a magpie, pointing out such objects of local interest
as--
(1) Farmer Preston's prize bull;
(2) The residence of a reputed witch;
(3) A spinney, where a dog-fox had once gone to ground at one end of
an earth and a laughing hyena (subsequently ascertained to be the lost
property of that peripatetic nobleman Lord George Sanger) had emerged
from the other, to the entire and instantaneous disintegration of a
non-abstaining local Hunt.
"I say, where do you live?" she inquired suddenly, breaking off in the
middle of a detailed history of Kirkley Abbey, whose _facade_ could be
discerned through the trees on their right--"London?"
"Yes."
"All the year round?"
"No. I spend a good deal of my time in the North."
"Oh. What do you do there? What _are_ you, by the way?" Daphne looked
up at her companion with bird-like inquisitiveness. She moved in a
society familiar with the age, ancestry, profession, wardrobe,
ailments, love affairs, and income of every one within a radius of
five miles. Consequently she considered a new acquaintanceship
incomplete in the last degree until she had acquired sufficient
information on the subject in hand to supply, say, a tolerably
intimate obituary notice.
"I suppose you are _something_," she continued. "I hope so, anyhow. An
idle man is always so mopy."
"What would you put me down as?" asked Apollyon.
Daphne scrutinised him without fear or embarrassment.
"I'm not much of a judge," she said. "You see, we don't come across
many men here, and we are so poor that we don't get away much."
"Don't you go up to London occasionally, to buy a new frock?" said Sir
John, covertly regarding the trim figure by his side.
"Me--London? Not much. Dad has a lot of grand relations there, but I
don't think he bothered much about them, or they about him, after he
married. He was too much wrapped up in mother. So we never hear
anything of them now. No, I have hardly ever been away from Snayling,
and I'm a great deal too busy here to worry about London or any other
such place. So I don't know much about men," she concluded
simply--"except my own, of course."
"Your own?"
"Yes--Dad and the boys. And then I know all about the sort of man one
meets round here. I can tell a ditcher from a ploughman; and if I meet
a man in a dog-cart with cases at the back I know he's a commercial
traveller, and if he has a red face I know he's a farmer, and if he
hasn't I know he's a doctor; but I haven't had much other experience."
"Still, what am _I_?" reiterated Apollyon.
"Well--I suppose you are not a soldier, or you would have a
moustache."
"No."
"You might be a lawyer, being clean-shaven. Are you?"
"No."
"Oh! That's rather disappointing. You would make a ripping judge, with
a big wig on. Well, perhaps you write things. I know--you are an
author or an editor?"
"No."
"Foiled again!" said Daphne cheerfully. "Let me see, what other
professions are there? Are you a Don, by any chance? A fellow, or
lecturer, or anything? We had a Fellow of All Souls down here once. He
was a dear."
"No."
"You are a 'Varsity man, I suppose."
"Yes."
"Oxford or Cambridge?"
"Cambridge."
"I am glad. Dark blue is _so_ dull, isn't it? Besides, Dad is a
Cambridge man. He is an old Running Blue. He won--but of course you
know all about that. It seems queer to think you knew him before I
did! Well, I give you up. What _do_ you do?"
Apollyon reflected.
"I sell coals," he replied at last, rather unexpectedly.
This announcement, and the manner in which it was made, momentarily
deprived Miss Vereker of speech--a somewhat rare occurrence.
"I see," she said presently. "We get ours from the station-master,"
she added politely.
"I was not proposing to apply for your custom," said Apollyon meekly.
At this point they reached the Kirkley Arms, and in the effort
involved in rousing that somnolent hostelry from its Sabbath coma and
making arrangements for the sending up of Sir John Carr's luggage to
the Rectory, the question of why he sold coals, and whether he hawked
the same round in a barrow or delivered his wares through the medium
of the Parcels Post, was lost sight of.
On the homeward walk conversation was maintained on much the same
terms. Daphne held forth unwearyingly, and Apollyon contented himself
for the most part with answering her point-blank questions and putting
a few--a very few--of his own. Certainly the man was a born listener,
and amazingly magnetic. Tacitus himself could not have said less, and
the greatest cross-examiner in the legal profession could not have
extracted more. As they strolled side by side through the Kirkley
woods, where the last of the daffodils were reluctantly making way for
the first of the primroses, Daphne found herself reciting, as to a
discreet and dependable father-confessor, a confidential but
whole-hearted summary of the present state of domestic politics.
Ally's failure to secure a scholarship at the University was
mentioned.
It was disgusting of him to miss the Greek Prose paper, Daphne
considered. "He didn't oversleep at all, of course. I soon found
_that_ out. The real reason was that he had gone to some man's rooms
the night before, and the silly brat must go and drink a
whisky-and-soda and smoke a cigar. That did it! It was no use telling
Dad, because he simply wouldn't believe such a story; and if he did,
it would make him unhappy for weeks. Besides, who can blame the poor
dear? You can't be surprised if a schoolboy kicks over the traces a
bit the first time he finds himself out on his own--can you?"
"I thought," replied Sir John, finding that some answer was expected
of him, "that you said you knew nothing of men?"
"I said I didn't know _many_ men," corrected Daphne. "But those I do
know I know pretty thoroughly. They're very easy to understand, dear
things! You always know where you are with them. Now, girls are
different. Did you notice that boy whom we passed just now, who went
pink and took off his hat. That's Bobby Gill--a flame of Cilly's. I'm
going to have a lot of trouble with Cilly's love-affairs, I can see.
She falls down and worships every second man she meets. I believe she
would start mooning round the place after _you_ if you weren't so
old," she added. "Cilly's a darling, but what she wants----"
She plunged, with puckered brow and tireless tongue, into a further
tale of hopes and fears. Stiffy's schooling, Nicky's boots, the curate
who _had_ to come--all were laid upon the table. Even the Emergency
Bag and Wednesday's joint crept in somehow.
They were almost home when she concluded.
Suddenly Apollyon inquired:
"Do you know the name of that little hollow on our right? Is it
Tinkler's Den?"
"Yes; we often have picnics there. How did you know?"
"It is part of Lord Kirkley's estate, as you are probably aware; and
his lordship, finding like most of us that he has not sufficient money
for his needs, has asked me to come and have a look at the ground
round Tinkler's Den on the off-chance of our finding coal there."
Daphne turned upon him, wide-eyed and horror-struck.
"You mean to say," she gasped, "that you are going to dig for coals in
Tinkler's Den?"
"I can't tell you, until----"
Apollyon paused. A small hand was resting on his sleeve, and a very
small voice said beseechingly--
"Don't--_please_!"
"Very well, then: I won't," he said, in a matter-of-fact fashion; and
they resumed their walk.
* * * * *
"I hope you haven't been bored," said Daphne, the hostess in her
rising to the surface as the shadow of the Rectory fell upon her once
more. "Your ears must be simply aching, but it's such a treat to talk
to any one who knows about things. I never get the chance to ask
advice. I usually have to give it. Dad and the boys are so helpless,
bless them!"
They were passing through the wicket-gate. Daphne suddenly paused, and
looked up at her guest with more mischief in her eyes than her
brothers and sisters would have given her credit for.
"It's queer," she mused, "that you should sell coals. _We_ thought you
_shovelled_ them!"
"Explain, please!" said Sir John.
Daphne did so. "We _had_ to call you something," she concluded
apologetically. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all. I have been called a good many names in my time," said
Sir John grimly.
"What do your friends call you?" asked Daphne--"your intimate
friends."
"I am not sure that I have any."
Daphne surveyed him shrewdly, with her head a little on one side.
"No--I should think you _were_ that sort," she said gravely. "Well,
what do your--do other people call you?"
"Most of them, I believe," said Sir John, "call me 'Juggernaut
Carr.'"
CHAPTER SIX.
DAPHNE AS MATCHMAKER.
Juggernaut's stay at the Rectory had been prolonged for more than
three weeks, the business upon which he was engaged being as easily
directed, so he said, from Brian Vereker's study as from his own
London offices. An unprejudiced observer might have been forgiven for
remarking that to all appearances it could have been directed with
equal facility from the Two-penny Tube or the North Pole; for if we
except a prolonged interview with Lord Kirkley's land agent on the
second day after his arrival, Juggernaut's activities had been limited
to meditative contemplation of the Rector's spring flowers and some
rather silent country walks in company with the lady to whom the
Rector was wont to refer to in his playful moments as "my elderly ugly
daughter."
Whether Daphne's impulsive protest against the desecration of her
beloved Tinkler's Den carried weight, or whether that sylvan spot was
found wanting in combustible properties, will never be known; but it
may be noted here that Lord Kirkley was advised that there was no
money in his scheme, and Snayling remains an agricultural centre to
this day.
However, if it be a fact that no fresh experience can be altogether
valueless, Juggernaut's time was certainly not wasted. He was absorbed
into the primitive civilisation of Snayling Rectory. He was initiated
into tribal custom and usage, and became versed in a tribal language
consisting chiefly of abbreviations and portmanteau words. He was
instructed in the principles which underlie such things as precedence
in the use of the bath and helpings at dinner. He also studied with
interest the fundamental laws governing the inheritance of out-grown
garments. Having been born without brothers and sisters, he found
himself confronted for the first time with some of those stern
realities and unavoidable hardships which prevail when domestic supply
falls short of domestic demand. The mystic phrase "F. H. B.!" for
instance, with which Daphne had laid inviolable taboo upon the trifle
on the day of his arrival, he soon learned stood for "Family, hold
back!"
Again, if Master Stephen Blasius Vereker suggested to Miss Veronica
Elizabeth Vereker that a B. O. at the T. S. would be an L. B. of
A. R.; to which the lady replied gently but insistently, "Is it
E. P.?" Juggernaut was soon able to understand that in response to an
intimation on the part of her brother that a Blow Out at the Tuck Shop
would be a Little Bit of All Right, the cautious and mercenary damsel
was inquiring whether her Expenses would be Paid at the forthcoming
orgy. If Stiffy continued, "Up to 2 D.," and Nicky replied, "If you
can't make it a tanner, Stiffy, darling, je pense _ne_!" the visitor
gathered without much difficulty that in the opinion of Miss Veronica
no gentleman worthy of the name should presume to undertake the
entertainment of a lady under a minimum outlay of sixpence.
Juggernaut soon settled down to the ways of the establishment. He said
little, but it was obvious, even to the boys, that he was taking a
good deal in. He seldom asked questions, but he possessed an uncanny
knack of interpreting for himself the most secret signs and cryptic
expressions of the community. This established for him a claim to the
family's respect, and in acknowledgment of the good impression he had
created he was informally raised from the status of honoured guest to
that of familiar friend. What the Associated Body of Colliery Owners
would have thought if they could have seen their chairman meekly
taking his seat at the breakfast-table, what time the family,
accompanying themselves with teaspoons against teacups, chanted a
brief but pointed ditty consisting entirely of the phrase "pom-pom!"
repeated _con amore_ and _sforzando_ until breathlessness
intervened--an ordeal known at the Rectory as "pom-pomming," and
inflicted daily upon the last to appear at breakfast--is hard to say.
Mr Montague for one would have enjoyed it.
Only once did this silent and saturnine man exhibit any flash of
feeling. One morning before breakfast Daphne, busy in the
knife-and-boot shed at the back of the house, heard a step on the
gravel outside, and Juggernaut stood before her.
"Good-morning!" she said cheerfully. "Excuse my get-up. I expect I
look rather a ticket."
Juggernaut surveyed her. She wore a large green baize apron. Her skirt
was short and business-like, and her sleeves were rolled up above the
elbow. Her hair was twisted into a knot at the back of her head.
Plainly her toilet had only reached the stage of the _petit lever_.
She was engaged in the healthful but unfashionable occupation of
blacking boots; _per contra_, what Juggernaut chiefly noted was the
whiteness of her arms. Finally his eye wandered to the boot in which
her left hand was engulfed.
"Whose boot is that?" he asked.
"Yours, I should say. Dad's are square in the toes."
Next moment a large and sinewy hand gripped her by the wrist, and the
boot was taken from her.
"Understand," said Apollyon, looking very like Apollyon indeed, "this
must never occur again. I am angry with you."
He spoke quite quietly, but there was a vibrant note in his voice
which Daphne had never heard before. Mr Tom Winch and Mr Montague
would have recognised it. She looked up at him fearlessly, rather
interested than otherwise in this new side of his character.
"I can't quite grasp why you _should_ be angry," she said, "though I
can see you are. Not being millionaires, we all clean our own
boots--excepting Dad, of course. I always do his. You being a visitor,
I threw yours in as a make-weight. It's all in the day's work."
But Juggernaut's fit had passed.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I have no right to be angry with any
one but myself. I am ashamed. I should have thought about this sooner,
but I accepted your assurance that my visit would throw no extra
burden upon the household rather too readily. Now, for the rest of the
time I am here I propose, with your permission, to black my own boots.
And as a sort of compensation for the trouble I have caused, I am
going to black my hostess's as well."
"Do you know _how_ to?" inquired the hostess, rather apprehensively.
For answer Juggernaut picked up a laced shoe from off the bench and
set to work upon it.
"I once blacked my own boots every day for two years," he said,
breathing heavily upon the shoe. "Now, if you want to go in and
superintend the preparation of breakfast, you may leave me here, and I
will undertake to produce the requisite standard of brilliancy." His
face lit up with one of his rare and illuminating smiles, and he set
grimly to work again.
Daphne hesitated for a moment, and surveyed her guest doubtfully. He
was burnishing her shoe in a manner only to be expected of an
intensely active man who has been utterly idle for a fortnight. His
face was set in the lines which usually appeared when he was driving
business through a refractory meeting. Daphne turned and left the
boot-house, unpinning her apron and whistling softly.
Juggernaut finished off her shoes with meticulous care, and putting
them back upon the bench turned his attention to his own boots. But
his energy was plainly flagging. Several times his hand was stayed,
and his eye wandered in the direction of his hostess's shoes. They
were a remarkably neat pair. Daphne was proud of her feet--they were
her only real vanity--and she spent more upon her boots and shoes
than the extremely limited sum voted for the purpose by her
conscience. More than once Juggernaut laid aside his own property and
returned to the highly unnecessary task of painting the lily--if such
a phrase can be applied to the efficient blacking of a shoe. Finally
he picked up his boots and departed, to endure a pom-pomming of the
most whole-hearted description on his appearance at the breakfast
table.
But henceforth he found his way to the boot-house every morning at
seven-thirty, where, despite his hostess's protests, he grimly carried
out his expressed intention.