entertain your little brothers and sisters this afternoon?"
"Anything you like," said Proserpine, endeavouring to balance herself
on the top bar of the gate. "How about making toffee down in the Den?"
There was a chorus of approval. Nursery customs die hard. Even the
magnificent Ally found it difficult to shake off the glamour of this
youthful dissipation.
"I'll tell you what," continued Daphne, warming up to the occasion,
"we'll have a regular farewell feast. We'll send down to the shop and
get some buns and chocolates and gingerbeer, and--and----"
"Bananas," suggested Tony.
"Nuts," added Cilly.
"Cigarettes," said Ally.
"Who has got any money?" inquired Nicky.
The family fumbled in its pockets.
"Here's threepence--all I have," said Cilly at length.
"Twopence," said Ally, laying the sum on Cilly's threepenny bit.
"Awfully sorry," said Stiffy, "but I'm afraid I've only got a stamp.
It's still quite gummy at the back, though," he added hopefully.
"They'll take it."
Tony produced a halfpenny.
"You can search _me_, friends!" was Nick's despairing contribution.
"I have fourpence," said the bride--"not a penny more. I handed over
all the spare housekeeping money to Dad this morning. That only makes
tenpence-halfpenny, counting Stiffy's stamp." She sighed wistfully.
"And I did so want to give you all a treat before I went! Well, we
must do without the nuts and chocolates, and----"
Nicky rose to her feet, swelling with sudden inspiration.
"Daph, what's the matter with running along to this millionaire young
man of yours and touching _him_ for a trifle?" she inquired
triumphantly.
Daphne hesitated. True, to-morrow she would be a rich man's wife, able
to afford unlimited gingerbeer. But the idea of asking a man for money
did not appeal to her. Pride of poverty and maidenly reserve make an
obstinate mixture. Yet the flushed and eager faces of Nicky and Tony,
the polite deprecations of the selfless Stiffy, and the studied
indifference of Cilly and Ally, were hard to resist.
"I wonder if he would mind," she said doubtfully.
"Mind? Oh, no. Why should he?" urged the chorus respectfully.
"Have a dart for it, anyhow," said Nicky.
Daphne descended from the gate.
"Righto!" she said. "After all, it's our last afternoon together, and
I _should_ like to do you all proud. I'll chance it. The rest of you
can start down to the Den and collect sticks, while I run along to the
house and ask him. Nicky, you had better come with me to carry down
saucepans and things. Come on--I'll race you!"
Three minutes later, Sir John Carr, smoking a meditative cigar upon
the lawn, was aware of a sudden scurry and patter in the lane outside.
Directly after this, with a triumphant shriek, the small figure of his
future sister-in-law shot through the garden-gate, closely followed
by that of his future wife. Mr Dawks, faint yet pursuing, brought up
the rear.
The competitors flung themselves down on the grass at his feet,
panting.
"We have been having a race," explained Daphne rather gratuitously.
"I won!" gasped Nicky. "Daph has the longest legs," she continued,
"but I have the shortest skirts. Now, my children, I must leave you.
Wire in!" she concluded, in a hoarse and penetrating whisper to
Daphne.
Her short skirts flickered round the corner of the house, and she was
gone. Daphne was left facing her _fiance_.
"I say," she began rather constrainedly--"don't get up; I'm not going
to stay--do you think you could lend me a little money? I--I'll pay
you back in a day or two," she added with a disarming smile. "The fact
is, we are going to make toffee down in the Den, and I wanted to get a
few extra things, just to give them all a real treat to finish up
with, you know. Will you--Jack?"
Juggernaut looked up at her with his slow scrutinising smile.
"What sort of extra things?" he inquired.
"Oh!"--Daphne closed her eyes and began to count on her
fingers--"buns, and chocolates, and nuts, and gingerbeer. And I wanted
to give Ally a packet of cigarettes. (After all, he's eighteen, and
he does love them so, and they are only ten for threepence.) And if
you could run to it, I should like to get a few bananas as well," she
concluded with a rush, laying all her cards on the table at once.
Juggernaut leaned back in his chair and looked extremely judicial.
"What will all this cost?" he inquired.
"One and eleven," said Daphne. "Jack, you _dear_! We _shall_ have a
time!"
Juggernaut had taken a handful of change out of his pocket.
"One and eleven," he said; "I wonder, Daphne, if you will be able to
purchase an afternoon of perfect happiness for that sum in a year's
time."
He handed over the money.
"May I have a receipt?" he asked gravely.
Daphne took his meaning, and kissed him lightly. She lingered for a
moment, anxious not to appear in a hurry to run away.
"Is there anything else?" inquired Sir John at length.
Daphne ran an inward eye over the possibilities of dissipation.
"No, I don't think so," she said. "Thanks ever so much! We shall be
back about six. So long, old man. Don't go to sleep in this hot sun."
She flitted away across the lawn, jingling the money in her hand. At
the gate she turned and waved her hand. Juggernaut's eyes were fixed
upon her, but he did not appear to observe her salutation. Probably he
was in a brown study about something.
Daphne was half-way down to the Den before it occurred to her that it
would have been a graceful act--not to say the barest civility--to
invite the donor of the feast to come and be present thereat. But she
did not go back.
"It would bore him so, poor dear!" she said to herself; "and--and us,
too!"
* * * * *
Next day they were married.
BOOK TWO.
FLICKERINGS.
CHAPTER NINE.
A HORSE TO THE WATER.
"And how is her ladyship?" inquired Mrs Carfrae.
"Her ladyship," replied Sir John Carr, "is enjoying life. What good
bread-and-butter you always keep."
They were sitting in Mrs Carfrae's tiny drawing-room in Hill Street.
Mrs Carfrae was a little old lady in a wheeled chair. Her face was
comparatively youthful, but her hair was snowy white. She spoke with
what English people, to whom the pure Highland Scots of Inverness and
the guttural raucousness of Glasgow are as one, term "a Scotch
accent."
"I am glad you like my bread-and-butter," she said; "but I fancy you
get as good at your wife's tea-table."
"I don't often see my wife's tea-table," confessed Juggernaut. "She is
out a good deal, and as a rule it is more convenient for me to have my
tea sent into my study."
"Where you grumble at it, I'll be bound. I ken husbands. So her
ladyship is out a good deal? Well do I mind the first time I caught
her in, the besom! That was nearly three years ago. I am not a payer
of calls, as you know; but I felt that I must be the very first to
greet your wife, Johnny boy. So the day after I knew you had settled
in, I had myself bundled into the carriage, and off I went to
Grosvenor Street. I told Maxwell to ring the bell and inquire if her
ladyship was at home. The door was thrown open immediately--rather
prematurely, in fact. I heard a sound like the cheep of a frightened
mouse, and I saw a grand silk skirt and a pair of ankles scuttering up
the staircase. I knew fine what had happened. I was her first caller:
and though the child was sitting in her new drawing-room waiting for
me and those like me, her courage had failed at the sound of the bell,
and she was galloping up the stair out of the way when the man opened
the door. Poor lassie! I did exactly the same thing at her age."
"Did you go in?"
"I did. I was determined to do it. I gripped my crutch and was out of
the carriage and up the steps before the footman could answer Maxwell.
I hobbled past the man--he just gaped at me like a puddock on a hot
day--and got to the foot of the stair and looked up. As I expected,
there was Madam, hanging over the banisters to see what sort of a
caller she had hooked the first time. There was another creature
beside her, with wild brown hair and eyes like saucers. They were
clutching each other round the waist. When they saw me they gave a
kind of horrified yelp. But I cried to them to come down, and in ten
minutes we were the best of friends. They were terribly prim at first;
but when they found out that I was just a clavering old wife and
nothing more, they lost their grand manners. They overlaid me with
questions about London, and while I was answering them the saucer-eyed
one set to work cracking lumps of sugar with her teeth. The other--her
ladyship--was eating jam out of an Apostle spoon. The spoon was in her
mouth when a footman came in to mend the fire. She was fairly taken by
surprise, and tried to push the whole concern into her mouth until the
man should be gone. I thought at first she had swallowed it, but
presently I saw the Apostle sticking out. And that was three years
ago. Well, I have become less active since then, and I pay no more
calls--wheel me a piece nearer the fire, Johnny--so I do not see so
much of her ladyship as I did. Still, I am glad to hear she is
enjoying life. And how is the baby?"
"The baby," replied its male parent, "looks and sounds extremely
robust. He uttered several articulate words the other day, I am told."
"Can he walk?"
"He can lurch along in a slightly dissipated manner."
"Good! And how does your Daphne handle all these houses and servants
of yours?"
Sir John smiled.
"She was a little out of her depth at first," he said. "She had not
been accustomed to cater for a large household. The extravagance of
ordering at least one fresh joint a-day appalled her, and it was a
long time before the housekeeper could cure her of a passion for
shepherd's pie. But she has a shrewd head. She soon discovered which
items of domestic expenditure were reasonable and which were not. She
has cut down the bills by a half, but I don't notice any corresponding
falling off in the quality of the _menu_."
"And does she love fine clothes, and gaiety?"
"I think she found her maid rather a trial at first. She had been so
accustomed not only to attiring herself but to going round and hooking
up her sisters as well, that a woman who handled her like a baby
rather paralysed her. She also exhibited a _penchant_ for wearing her
old clothes out--to rags, that is--in private. But I think she is
getting over that now. I received her dressmaker's latest bill this
morning. It reveals distinct signs of progress."
"And I hear she looks just beautiful."
"She does. I must admit that."
"_Then_," the old lady raised herself a little in her chair, and
settled her spectacles with her unparalysed hand, "what is the
trouble, Johnny Carr?"
Juggernaut laid down his tea-cup with a slight clatter.
"I was not aware," he said curtly, "that there was any trouble."
Mrs Carfrae surveyed him long and balefully over her spectacles.
"Johnny Carr," she observed dispassionately, "I have known you ever
since you could roar for your bottle, and I have never had any
patience with you either then or since. You are a dour, dreich,
thrawn, camstearie creature. You have more money than you can spend,
grand health, and a young and beautiful wife. But you are not happy.
You come here to tell me so, and when I ask you to begin, you say
there is nothing! Well, _I_ will tell you what the matter is. There is
some trouble between you and your Daphne."
Considerable courage is required to inform a man to his face that all
is not well between him and his wife; but courage was a virtue that
Elspeth Carfrae had never lacked. Juggernaut experienced no feeling of
resentment or surprise that this old lady should have instantaneously
sized up a situation which he himself had been investigating in a
groping and uncertain fashion for nearly three years. Life is a big
book of problems, and while man is content to work them out figure by
figure, taking nothing for granted which cannot be approved by
established formulae, woman has an exasperating habit of skipping
straight to the solution in a manner which causes the conscientious
and methodical male to suspect her of peeping at the answers at the
end of the book.
"Perhaps you had not realised that," pursued Mrs Carfrae. "Men are apt
to be slow in the uptake," she added indulgently.
"I fail to see where you get your _data_ from," replied Juggernaut. "I
have not been particularly communicative on the subject. In fact, I
don't remember telling you a single----"
Mrs Carfrae subjected him to a withering glare.
"If all that women knew," she observed frostily, "was what men had
told them, I wonder how many of us would be able to spell our own
names. No, laddie, you have told me nothing: that's true enough. But I
know fine why you came here to-day. You are worried. You and Daphne
are getting on splendidly. The match has been a great success. You
have a son and heir. But--you are not happy; and it is about your
Daphne that you are not happy."
Juggernaut gazed into the fire.
"You are right," he said. "I confess that my marriage has not been so
uplifting as I had hoped. I daresay it is my own fault. As you point
out, I am--well, all the Caledonian adjectives you heaped upon me just
now: all that and a good deal more. I have the reputation of being a
harsh man, and I hate it. I hoped, when I married that child, that she
would pull me out of my rigid, undeviating way of life, and broaden my
sympathies a little. I looked forward to a little domesticity." His
dark face coloured slightly. "I may be an ogre, but I have my soft
side, as you know."
"None better," said the old lady gently.
"Well, somehow," continued Juggernaut, "my marriage has not made the
difference to me that I had hoped. We two have had our happy hours
together, but we don't seem to progress beyond a certain point. We are
amiability itself. If I ask Daphne to see to anything about the house,
she sees to it; if she asks me to go with her to a tea-fight, I go.
But that seems to be about the limit. I can't help thinking that
marriage would not have survived so long as an institution if there
had been no more behind it than that. I was under the impression that
it made two one. At present we are still two--very decidedly two;
and--and----"
"And being you, it just maddens you not to be able to get your money's
worth," said Mrs Carfrae calmly. "Now, John Carr, just listen to me.
First of all, have you had any trouble with her?"
"Trouble?"
"Yes. Any direct disagreement with her?"
"Never. Stop--we had one small breeze."
Mrs Carfrae wagged a forefinger.
"You have been bullying her, monster!"
"Heavens, no!"
"Well, tell me the story."
"Six months ago," said Juggernaut, "she came to me and asked for
money--much as a child asks for toffee--with a seraphic smile and an
ingratiating rub up against my chair. I asked her what it was for."
"Quite wrong!" said Mrs Carfrae promptly.
"But surely----" began Juggernaut, the man of business up in arms at
once.
"You should have begun by taking out your cheque-book and saying, 'how
much?'" continued his admonitress. "Then she would have called you a
dear, or some such English term of affection, and recognising you as
her natural confidant would have told you everything. After that you
might have improved the occasion. As it was, you just put her back up,
and she dithered."
"She did, so far as I understand the expression. But, finding that I
was firm----"
"Oh, man, man, how can a great grown creature like you bear to be
_firm_--_hard_, you mean, of course--with a wild unbroken lass like
that? Well, go on. You were firm. And what did her poor ladyship say
she wanted the money for?"
"For her young cub of a brother," said Juggernaut briefly.
"A wealthy young wife daring to want to help her own brother!
Monstrous!" observed Mrs Carfrae.
"I think you are unjust to me in this matter. Listen! When I married
Daphne I was aware that she would want to finance her entire family:
in fact, it was one of the inducements to marrying me which I laid
before her. For that purpose, to save her the embarrassment of
constantly coming to me for supplies, I settled upon her a private
allowance of--what do you think?"
"Out with it! No striving after effect with _me_, my man!" was the
reply of his unimpressionable audience.
"I gave her a thousand a year," said Juggernaut.
"That should have been sufficient," said Mrs Carfrae composedly. "But
do not be ostentatious about it. You could well afford the money."
"Well, she had spent most of that year's allowance in six months,"
continued Juggernaut, disregarding these gibes--"on her father's
curate, the younger children's education, and so forth--and she wanted
more."
"What age is this brother?"
"Twenty, I think. He is up at Cambridge, and wants to get into the
Army as a University candidate. At present he appears to be filling
in his time philandering with a tobacconist's daughter. The
tobacconist's bill for moral and intellectual damage came to five
hundred pounds. Before writing the cheque, I stipulated--"
"You would!" said the old lady grimly.
--"That I should be permitted to make a few investigations on my own
behalf. Young Vereker is a handsome, fascinating rascal, with about as
much moral fibre as a Yahoo. He was a good deal franker in his
admissions to me than he had been to his sister--"
"Ay, I once heard you cross-examining a body," confirmed Mrs Carfrae.
--"And on the completion of my inquiries I paid the money down on the
nail. It was the only thing to do."
"Did you tell Daphne the whole story?"
"No. I should hate to dispel her illusions. She loves her brothers and
sisters."
"There is no need to excuse yourself, John Carr. I knew fine that you
would not tell her. Instead, you glowered at her, and read her a
lecture about extravagance and improvidence. She tried to look prim
and penitent, but danced down the stair the moment she got the door
shut behind her. Now, mannie, listen to me. This is no light charge
you have taken on yourself--to rule a wild, shy, impulsive taupie like
that. You cannot contain the like with bit and bridle, mind. I have
been one myself, and I know. There is just one thing to do. She must
learn to _love_ you, or the lives of the pair of you will go
stramash!"
Juggernaut's old friend concluded this homily with tremendous
emphasis, and there was a long silence. Then the man drew his chair a
little closer.
"How can I teach her?" he asked humbly. "I have no _finesse_, no
attractiveness. Do you think I--I am too old for her?"
"Old? Toots! I was nineteen when I married on my Andy, and he was
thirty-nine. For the first few years after we married I called him
'daddy' to his face. After that I found that I was really old enough
to be the man's mother; so I called him 'sonny.' But that is a
digression. I will tell you how to teach her. Do not be monotonous.
It's no use just to be a good husband to her: any gowk can be that. Do
not let your affection run on in a regular, dutiful stream: have a
spate occasionally! Get whirled off your feet by her, and let her see
it. Prepare some unexpected ploy for her. Rush her off to dine
somewhere on the spur of the moment--just your two selves. Stop her
suddenly on the staircase in a half-light, and give her a hug."
"She'd never stand it!" cried Juggernaut in dismay. "And I could never
do it," he added apprehensively.
"You _do_ it, my callant," said Mrs Carfrae with decision, "and she'll
stand it right enough! She may tell you not to be foolish, but she
will not make a point of coming down by the back stair in future for
all that. And let her see that with you she comes _first_ in
everything. What a crow she will have to herself when she realises
that a feckless unbusinesslike piece like herself has crept right into
the inmost place in the heart of a man whose gods used to be hard work
and hard words and hard knocks! She'll just glory in you!
"Lastly, do not be discouraged if you have no success to begin with.
At all costs you must keep on smiling. A dour, bleak man is no fit
companion for a young girl who has always lived a sheltered sunny
life. He just withers her. She may last for a while, and do her duty
by him, but in time he'll break her heart. Ay, keep on smiling,
Johnny, even if she hurts you. She will hurt you often. Young girls
are like that. It takes time for a woman to realise that a man is just
about twice as sensitive as herself in certain matters, and she will
not make allowances for him at first. But until she does--and she
will, if you give her time--keep on smiling! If you keep on long
enough you will get your reward. Make the effort, my man! I have had
to make efforts in my time--"
"I know that," said Juggernaut.
--"And the efforts have been the making of _me_. For one thing, I have
acquired a sense of proportion. When we are young and lusty our
knowledge of perspective is so elementary that in our picture of life
our own Ego fills the foreground to the exclusion of all else; with
this result, that we get no view of the countless interesting and
profitable things that lie behind. My Ego is kept in better order
these days, I assure you. It gets just a good comfortable place in the
picture and no more. If Elspeth Carfrae stirs from that, or comes
creeping too far forward so as to block out other things, she hears
from me!"
"Does she always obey you?" asked Juggernaut.
"She got far beyond my control once," admitted the old lady. "I
mind when my Andy went from me she swelled and swelled until she
blotted out everything--earth, sea, and sky. But she has been back
in her place these twenty years, and there she shall bide. There is
no great selfish Ego blocking the view now when I sit and look out
upon my section of the world. You have no idea how interesting it
is to study your friends' troubles instead of your own, John. The
beauty of it is that you need not worry over them: you just watch
them--unconcernedly."
The Scots have their own notion of what constitutes an excursion into
the realms of humour, and Juggernaut, knowing this, made no attempt to
controvert his hostess's last statement.
"Not that I grudged my Andy," continued the old lady presently. "No
wife worthy of the name could grudge her man to his country when he
died as Andy died. But my only son--that was my own fault, maybe. I
would not put him into the Army like his father, thinking to keep him
safer that way; and he died of pneumonia at seven-and-twenty, an East
End curate. Then my Lintie. But I have no need to be talking of Lintie
to you, John Carr. You mind her still, Daphne or no Daphne. Then"--she
indicated her paralysed shoulder--"this! But I keep on smiling.
Perhaps that is why people are so kind to me. Perhaps if I did not
smile they would not seek my company so freely. I suppose they see
something in me, that they come and listen to me havering. When I
first settled down here by myself in this little house many kind
people called. I never thought to see them twice; but they come again
and again. Maybe it is because English people have a notion that the
Scots tongue is 'so quaint!' They seem to find something exhilarating
in hearing fish called fush. Not that I call it any such thing, but
they think I do. Anyhow, they come. Some of them bring their troubles
with them, and go away without them. When they do that I know that it
was worth while to keep a smiling face all these years. So smile
yourself, Johnny Carr! And some day, when your Daphne comes and puts
her head on your shoulder and tells you all that is troubling her, you
will know that you have won through. And when that happens come and
call me. I like to hear when my methods succeed."
"I will remember," said Juggernaut gravely. "Good-bye."
Mrs Carfrae watched his broad back through the doorway.
"But I doubt you will both have to be worse before you are better,"
she added to herself.
* * * * *
An hour later Lady Carr, a radiant vision of glinting hair and
rustling skirts, on her way upstairs to dress for dinner, encountered
her husband coming down. There was a half light. Sir John paused.
"Are you dining anywhere to-night, Daphne?" he said.
Daphne, her youthful shrewdness uneradicated by three years of adult
society, replied guardedly--
"Are you trying to pull my leg? If I say 'No,' will you tell me that
in that case I shall be very hungry by bedtime, or something? I
suppose that old chestnut has just got round to your club. Have you
been electing Noah an honorary member?"
"I was about to suggest," said Juggernaut perseveringly, "that we
should go and dine at the Savoy together."
Daphne dimpled into a delighted smile.