Oliphants. I remember you at the age of twelve climbing that old elm at
the bottom of the paddock to get Jane Oliphant a rook's egg.'
Frederick laughed bitterly.
'I must have been a perfect ass. Fancy risking my life for a girl like
that! Not,' he went on, 'that life's worth much. An absolute wash-out,
that's what life is. However, it will soon be over. And then the
silence and peace of the grave. That,' said Frederick, 'is the thought
that sustains me.'
'A pretty kid, Jane. Someone told me she had grown up quite a beauty.'
'Without a heart.'
'What do you know about it?'
'Merely this. She pretended to love me, and then a few months ago she
went off to the country to stay with some people named Ponderby and
wrote me a letter breaking off the engagement. She gave no reasons,
and I have not seen her since. She is now engaged to a man named
Dillingwater, and I hope it chokes her.'
'I never heard about this. I'm sorry.'
'I'm not. Merciful release is the way I look at it.'
'Would he be one of the Sussex Dillingwaters?'
'I don't know what county the family infests. If I did, I would avoid
it.'
'Well, I'm sorry. No wonder you're depressed.'
'Depressed?' said Frederick, outraged. 'Me? You don't suppose I'm
worrying myself about a girl like that, do you? I've never been so
happy in my life. I'm just bubbling over with cheerfulness.'
'Oh, is that what it is?' George looked at his watch. 'Well, you'd
better be pushing along. It'll take you about ten minutes to get to
Marazion Road.'
'How do I find the blasted house?'
'The name's on the door.'
'What is the name?'
'Wee Holme.'
'My God!' said Frederick Mulliner. 'It only needed that!'
The view which he had had of it from his brother's window should,
no doubt, have prepared Frederick for the hideous loathsomeness of
Bingley-on-Sea: but, as he walked along, he found it coming on him as
a complete surprise. Until now he had never imagined that a small town
could possess so many soul-searing features. He passed little boys,
and thought how repulsive little boys were. He met tradesmen's carts,
and his gorge rose at the sight of them. He hated the houses. And,
most of all, he objected to the sun. It shone down with a cheeriness
which was not only offensive but, it seemed to Frederick Mulliner,
deliberately offensive. What he wanted was wailing winds and driving
rain: not a beastly expanse of vivid blue. It was not that the perfidy
of Jane Oliphant had affected him in any way: it was simply that he
disliked blue skies and sunshine. He had a temperamental antipathy for
them, just as he had a temperamental fondness for tombs and sleet and
hurricanes and earthquakes and famines and pestilences and....
He found that he had arrived in Marazion Road.
Marazion Road was made up of two spotless pavements stretching into
the middle distance and flanked by two rows of neat little red-brick
villas. It smote Frederick like a blow. He felt as he looked at those
houses, with their little brass knockers and little white curtains,
that they were occupied by people who knew nothing of Frederick
Mulliner and were content to know nothing; people who were simply not
caring a whoop that only a few short months before the girl to whom
he had been engaged had sent back his letters and gone and madly got
herself betrothed to a man named Dillingwater.
He found Wee Holme, and hit it a nasty slap with its knocker. Footsteps
sounded in the passage, and the door opened.
'Why, Master Frederick!' said Nurse Wilks. 'I should hardly have known
you.'
Frederick, in spite of the natural gloom caused by the blue sky and
the warm sunshine, found his mood lightening somewhat. Something that
might almost have been a spasm of tenderness passed through him. He was
not a bad-hearted young man--he ranked in that respect, he supposed,
somewhere mid-way between his brother George, who had a heart of gold,
and people like the future Mrs Dillingwater, who had no heart at
all--and there was a fragility about Nurse Wilks that first astonished
and then touched him.
The images which we form in childhood are slow to fade: and Frederick
had been under the impression that Nurse Wilks was fully six feet tall,
with the shoulders of a weight-lifter and eyes that glittered cruelly
beneath beetling brows. What he saw now was a little old woman with a
wrinkled face, who looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away.
He was oddly stirred. He felt large and protective. He saw his
brother's point now. Most certainly this frail old thing must be
humoured. Only a brute would refuse to humour her--yes, felt Frederick
Mulliner, even if it meant boiled eggs at five o'clock in the afternoon.
'Well, you are getting a big boy!' said Nurse Wilks, beaming.
'Do you think so?' said Frederick, with equal amiability.
'Quite the little man! And all dressed up. Go into the parlour, dear,
and sit down. I'm getting the tea.'
'Thanks.'
'WIPE YOUR BOOTS!'
The voice, thundering from a quarter whence hitherto only soft cooings
had proceeded, affected Frederick Mulliner a little like the touching
off of a mine beneath his feet. Spinning round he perceived a different
person altogether from the mild and kindly hostess of a moment back. It
was plain that there yet lingered in Nurse Wilks not a little of the
ancient fire. Her mouth was tightly compressed and her eyes gleamed
dangerously.
'Theideaofyourbringingyournastydirtybootsintomynicecleanhousewithoutwipingthem!'
said Nurse Wilks.
'Sorry!' said Frederick humbly.
He burnished the criticized shoes on the mat, and tottered to the
parlour. He felt much smaller, much younger, and much feebler than he
had felt a minute ago. His morale had been shattered into fragments.
And it was not pieced together by the sight, as he entered the parlour,
of Miss Jane Oliphant sitting in an arm-chair by the window.
It is hardly to be supposed that the reader will be interested in the
appearance of a girl of the stamp of Jane Oliphant--a girl capable
of wantonly returning a good man's letters and going off and getting
engaged to a Dillingwater: but one may as well describe her and get
it over. She had golden-brown hair; golden-brown eyes; golden-brown
eyebrows; a nice nose with one freckle on the tip; a mouth which, when
it parted in a smile, disclosed pretty teeth; and a resolute little
chin.
At the present moment, the mouth was not parted in a smile. It was
closed up tight, and the chin was more than resolute. It looked like
the ram of a very small battleship. She gazed at Frederick as if he
were the smell of onions, and she did not say a word.
Nor did Frederick say very much. Nothing is more difficult for a
young man than to find exactly the right remark with which to open
conversation with a girl who has recently returned his letters. (Darned
good letters, too. Reading them over after opening the package, he had
been amazed at their charm and eloquence.)
Frederick, then, confined his observations to the single word 'Guk!'
Having uttered this, he sank into a chair and stared at the carpet. The
girl stared out of the window: and complete silence reigned in the room
till from the interior of a clock which was ticking on the mantelpiece
a small wooden bird suddenly emerged, said 'Cuckoo', and withdrew.
The abruptness of this bird's appearance and the oddly staccato nature
of its diction could not but have their effect on a man whose nerves
were not what they had been. Frederick Mulliner, rising some eighteen
inches from his chair, uttered a hasty exclamation.
'I beg your pardon?' said Jane Oliphant, raising her eyebrows.
'Well, how was I to know it was going to do that?' said Frederick
defensively.
Jane Oliphant shrugged her shoulders. The gesture seemed to imply
supreme indifference to what the sweepings of the Underworld knew or
did not know.
But Frederick, the ice being now in a manner broken, refused to return
to the silence.
'What are you doing here?' he said.
'I have come to have tea with Nanna.'
'I didn't know you were going to be here.'
'Oh?'
'If I'd known that you were going to be here....'
'You've got a large smut on your nose.'
Frederick gritted his teeth and reached for his handkerchief.
'Perhaps I'd better go,' he said.
'You will do nothing of the kind,' said Miss Oliphant sharply. 'She is
looking forward to seeing you. Though why....'
'Why?' prompted Frederick coldly.
'Oh, nothing.'
In the unpleasant silence which followed, broken only by the deep
breathing of a man who was trying to choose the rudest out of the three
retorts which had presented themselves to him, Nurse Wilks entered.
'It's just a suggestion,' said Miss Oliphant aloofly, 'but don't you
think you might help Nanna with that heavy tray?'
Frederick, roused from his preoccupation, sprang to his feet, blushing
the blush of shame.
'You might have strained yourself, Nanna,' the girl went on, in a voice
dripping with indignant sympathy.
'I was going to help her,' mumbled Frederick.
'Yes, after she had put the tray down on the table. Poor Nanna! How
very heavy it must have been.'
Not for the first time since their acquaintance had begun, Frederick
felt a sort of wistful wonder at his erstwhile fiancée's uncanny
ability to put him in the wrong. His emotions now were rather what they
would have been if he had been detected striking his hostess with some
blunt instrument.
'He always was a thoughtless boy,' said Nurse Wilks tolerantly. 'Do sit
down, Master Frederick, and have your tea. I've boiled some eggs for
you. I know what a boy you always are for eggs.'
Frederick, starting, directed a swift glance at the tray. Yes, his
worst fears had been realized. Eggs--and large ones. A stomach which
he had fallen rather into the habit of pampering of late years gave a
little whimper of apprehension.
'Yes,' proceeded Nurse Wilks, pursuing the subject, 'you never could
have enough eggs. Nor cake. Dear me, how sick you made yourself with
cake that day at Miss Jane's birthday party.'
'Please!' said Miss Oliphant, with a slight shiver.
She looked coldly at her fermenting fellow-guest, as he sat plumbing
the deepest abysses of self-loathing.
'No eggs for me, thank you,' he said.
'Master Frederick, you will eat your nice boiled eggs,' said Nurse
Wilks. Her voice was still amiable, but there was a hint of dynamite
behind it.
'I don't want any eggs.'
'Master Frederick!' The dynamite exploded. Once again that amazing
transformation had taken place, and a frail little old woman had become
an intimidating force with which only a Napoleon could have reckoned.
'I will not have this sulking.'
Frederick gulped.
'I'm sorry,' he said, meekly. 'I should enjoy an egg.'
'Two eggs,' corrected Nurse Wilks.
'Two eggs,' said Frederick.
Miss Oliphant twisted the knife in the wound.
'There seems to be plenty of cake, too. How nice for you! Still, I
should be careful, if I were you. It looks rather rich. I never could
understand,' she went on, addressing Nurse Wilks in a voice which
Frederick, who was now about seven years old, considered insufferably
grown-up and affected, 'why people should find any enjoyment in
stuffing and gorging and making pigs of themselves.'
'Boys will be boys,' argued Nurse Wilks.
'I suppose so,' sighed Miss Oliphant. 'Still, it's all rather
unpleasant.'
A slight but well-defined glitter appeared in Nurse Wilks's eyes. She
detected a tendency to hoighty-toightiness in her young guest's manner,
and hoighty-toightiness was a thing to be checked.
'Girls,' she said, 'are by no means perfect.'
'Ah!' breathed Frederick, in rapturous adhesion to the sentiment.
'Girls have their little faults. Girls are sometimes inclined to be
vain. I know a little girl not a hundred miles from this room who was
so proud of her new panties that she ran out in the street in them.'
'Nanna!' cried Miss Oliphant pinkly.
'Disgusting!' said Frederick.
He uttered a short laugh: and so full was this laugh, though short, of
scorn, disdain, and a certain hideous masculine superiority, that Jane
Oliphant's proud spirit writhed beneath the infliction. She turned on
him with blazing eyes.
'What did you say?'
'I said "Disgusting!"'
'Indeed?'
'I cannot,' said Frederick judicially, 'imagine a more deplorable
exhibition, and I hope you were sent to bed without any supper.'
'If you ever had to go without your supper,' said Miss Oliphant, who
believed in attack as the best form of defence, 'it would kill you.'
'Is that so?' said Frederick.
'You're a beast, and I hate you,' said Miss Oliphant.
'Is that so?'
'Yes, that is so.'
'Now, now, now,' said Nurse Wilks. 'Come, come, come!'
She eyed the two with that comfortable look of power and capability
which comes naturally to women who have spent half a century in dealing
with the young and fractious.
'We will have no quarrelling,' she said. 'Make it up at once. Master
Frederick, give Miss Jane a nice kiss.'
The room rocked before Frederick's bulging eyes.
'A what?' he gasped.
'Give her a nice big kiss and tell her you're sorry you quarrelled with
her.'
'She quarrelled with me.'
'Never mind. A little gentleman must always take the blame.'
Frederick, working desperately, dragged to the surface a sketchy smile.
'I apologize,' he said.
'Don't mention it,' said Miss Oliphant.
'Kiss her,' said Nurse Wilks.
'I won't!' said Frederick.
'What!'
'I won't.'
'Master Frederick,' said Nurse Wilks, rising and pointing a menacing
finger, 'you march straight into that cupboard in the passage and stay
there till you are good.'
Frederick hesitated. He came of a proud family. A Mulliner had once
received the thanks of his Sovereign for services rendered on the field
of Crécy. But the recollection of what his brother George had said
decided him. Infra dig. as it might be to allow himself to be shoved
away in cupboards, it was better than being responsible for a woman's
heart-failure. With bowed head he passed through the door, and a key
clicked behind him.
All alone in a dark world that smelt of mice, Frederick Mulliner gave
himself up to gloomy reflection. He had just put in about two minutes'
intense thought of a kind which would have made the meditations of
Schopenhauer on one of his bad mornings seem like the day-dreams of
Pollyanna, when a voice spoke through the crack in the door.
'Freddie. I mean Mr Mulliner.'
'Well?'
'She's gone into the kitchen to get the jam,' proceeded the voice
rapidly. 'Shall I let you out?'
'Pray do not trouble,' said Frederick coldly. 'I am perfectly
comfortable.'
Silence followed. Frederick returned to his reverie. About now, he
thought, but for his brother George's treachery in luring him down to
this plague-spot by a misleading telegram, he would have been on the
twelfth green at Squashy Hollow, trying out that new putter. Instead of
which....
The door opened abruptly, and as abruptly closed again. And Frederick
Mulliner, who had been looking forward to an unbroken solitude,
discovered with a good deal of astonishment that he had started taking
in lodgers.
'What are you doing here?' he demanded, with a touch of proprietorial
disapproval.
The girl did not answer. But presently muffled sounds came to him
through the darkness. In spite of himself, a certain tenderness crept
upon Frederick.
'I say,' he said awkwardly. 'There's nothing to cry about.'
'I'm not crying. I'm laughing.'
'Oh?' The tenderness waned. 'You think it's amusing, do you, being shut
up in this damned cupboard....'
'There is no need to use bad language.'
'I entirely disagree with you. There is every need to use bad language.
It's ghastly enough being at Bingley-on-Sea at all, but when it comes
to being shut up in Bingley cupboards....'
'... with a girl you hate?'
'We will not go into that aspect of the matter,' said Frederick with
dignity. 'The important point is that here I am in a cupboard at
Bingley-on-Sea when, if there were any justice or right-thinking in the
world, I should be out at Squashy Hollow....'
'Oh? Do you still play golf?'
'Certainly I still play golf. Why not?'
'I don't know why not. I'm glad you are still able to amuse yourself.'
'How do you mean, still? Do you think that just because....'
'I don't think anything.'
'I suppose you imagined I would be creeping about the place, a
broken-hearted wreck?'
'Oh no. I knew you would find it easy to console yourself.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'Never mind.'
'Are you insinuating that I am the sort of man who turns lightly from
one woman to another--a mere butterfly who flits from flower to flower,
sipping...?'
'Yes, if you want to know, I think you are a born sipper.'
Frederick started. The charge was monstrous.
'I have never sipped. And, what's more, I have never flitted.'
'That's funny.'
'What's funny?'
'What you said.'
'You appear to have a very keen sense of humour,' said Frederick
weightily. 'It amuses you to be shut up in cupboards. It amuses you to
hear me say....'
'Well, it's nice to be able to get some amusement out of life, isn't
it? Do you want to know why she shut me up in here?'
'I haven't the slightest curiosity. Why?'
'I forgot where I was and lighted a cigarette. Oh, my goodness!'
'Now what?'
'I thought I heard a mouse. Do you think there are mice in this
cupboard?'
'Certainly,' said Frederick. 'Dozens of them.'
He would have gone on to specify the kind of mice--large, fat,
slithery, active mice: but at this juncture something hard and sharp
took him agonizingly on the ankle.
'Ouch!' cried Frederick.
'Oh, I'm sorry. Was that you?'
'It was.'
'I was kicking about to discourage the mice.'
'I see.'
'Did it hurt much?'
'Only a trifle more than blazes, thank you for inquiring.'
'I'm sorry.'
'So am I.'
'Anyway, it would have given a mouse a nasty jar, if it had been one,
wouldn't it?'
'The shock, I should imagine, of a lifetime.'
'Well, I'm sorry.'
'Don't mention it. Why should I worry about a broken ankle, when....'
'When what?'
'I forgot what I was going to say.'
'When your heart is broken?'
'My heart is not broken.' It was a point which Frederick wished to make
luminously clear. 'I am gay ... happy.... Who the devil is this man
Dillingwater?' he concluded abruptly.
There was a momentary pause.
'Oh, just a man.'
'Where did you meet him?'
'At the Ponderbys'.'
'Where did you get engaged to him?'
'At the Ponderbys'.'
'Did you pay another visit to the Ponderbys', then?'
'No.'
Frederick choked.
'When you went to stay with the Ponderbys, you were engaged to me.
Do you mean to say you broke off your engagement to me, met this
Dillingwater, and got engaged to him all in the course of a single
visit lasting barely two weeks?'
'Yes.'
Frederick said nothing. It struck him later that he should have said
'Oh, Woman, Woman!' but at the moment it did not occur to him.
'I don't see what right you have to criticize me,' said Jane.
'Who criticized you?'
'You did.'
'When?'
'Just then.'
'I call Heaven to witness,' cried Frederick Mulliner, 'that not by so
much as a single word have I hinted at my opinion that your conduct is
the vilest and most revolting that has ever been drawn to my attention.
I never so much as suggested that your revelation had shocked me to the
depths of my soul.'
'Yes, you did. You sniffed.'
'If Bingley-on-Sea is not open for being sniffed in at this season,'
said Frederick coldly, 'I should have been informed earlier.'
'I had a perfect right to get engaged to anyone I liked and as quick as
I liked, after the abominable way you behaved.'
'Abominable way I behaved? What do you mean?'
'You know.'
'Pardon me, I do not know. If you are alluding to my refusal to wear
the tie you bought for me on my last birthday, I can but repeat my
statement, made to you at the time, that, apart from being the sort of
tie no upright man would be seen dead in a ditch with, its colours were
those of a Cycling, Angling, and Dart-Throwing club of which I am not a
member.'
'I am not alluding to that. I mean the day I was going to the
Ponderbys' and you promised to see me off at Paddington, and then
you phoned and said you couldn't as you were detained by important
business, and I thought, well, I think I'll go by the later train after
all because that will give me time to lunch quietly at the Berkeley,
and I went and lunched quietly at the Berkeley, and when I was there
who should I see but you at a table at the other end of the room
gorging yourself in the company of a beastly creature in a pink frock
and henna'd hair. That's what I mean.'
Frederick clutched at his forehead.
'Repeat that,' he exclaimed.
Jane did so.
'Ye gods!' said Frederick.
'It was like a blow over the head. Something seemed to snap inside me,
and....'
'I can explain all,' said Frederick.
Jane's voice in the darkness was cold.
'Explain?' she said.
'Explain,' said Frederick.
'All?'
'All.'
Jane coughed.
'Before beginning,' she said, 'do not forget that I know every one of
your female relatives by sight.'
'I don't want to talk about my female relatives.'
'I thought you were going to say that she was one of them--an aunt or
something.'
'Nothing of the kind. She was a revue star. You probably saw her in a
piece called _Toot-Toot_.'
'And that is your idea of an explanation!'
Frederick raised his hand for silence. Realizing that she could not see
it, he lowered it again.
'Jane,' he said in a low, throbbing voice, 'can you cast your mind back
to a morning in the spring when we walked, you and I, in Kensington
Gardens? The sun shone brightly, the sky was a limpid blue flecked with
fleecy clouds, and from the west there blew a gentle breeze....'
'If you think you can melt me with that sort of....'
'Nothing of the kind. What I was leading up to was this. As we
walked, you and I, there came snuffling up to us a small Pekinese dog.
It left me, I admit, quite cold, but you went into ecstasies: and
from that moment I had but one mission in life, to discover who that
Peke belonged to and buy it for you. And after the most exhaustive
inquiries, I tracked the animal down. It was the property of the
lady in whose company you saw me lunching--lightly, not gorging--at
the Berkeley that day. I managed to get an introduction to her, and
immediately began to make offers to her for the dog. Money was no
object to me. All I wished was to put the little beast in your arms
and see your face light up. It was to be a surprise. That morning the
woman phoned, and said that she had practically decided to close with
my latest bid, and would I take her to lunch and discuss the matter?
It was agony to have to ring you up and tell you that I could not see
you off at Paddington, but it had to be done. It was anguish having to
sit for two hours listening to that highly-coloured female telling me
how the comedian had ruined her big number in her last show by standing
up-stage and pretending to drink ink, but that had to be done too. I
bit the bullet and saw it through and I got the dog that afternoon. And
next morning I received your letter breaking off the engagement.'
There was a long silence.
'Is this true?' said Jane.
'Quite true.'
'It sounds too--how shall I put it?--too frightfully probable. Look me
in the face!'
'What's the good of looking you in the face when I can't see an inch in
front of me?'
'Well, is it true?'
'Certainly it is true.'
'Can you produce the Peke?'
'I have not got it on my person,' said Frederick stiffly. 'But it is at
my flat, probably chewing up a valuable rug. I will give it you for a
wedding present.'
'Oh, Freddie!'
'A wedding present,' repeated Frederick, though the words stuck in his
throat like patent American health-cereal.
'But I'm not going to be married.'
'You're--what did you say?'
'I'm not going to be married.'
'But what of Dillingwater?'
'That's off.'
'Off?'
'Off,' said Jane firmly. 'I only got engaged to him out of pique. I
thought I could go through with it, buoying myself up by thinking what
a score it would be off you, but one morning I saw him eating a peach
and I began to waver. He splashed himself to the eyebrows. And just
after that I found that he had a trick of making a sort of funny noise
when he drank coffee. I would sit on the other side of the breakfast
table, looking at him and saying to myself "Now comes the funny noise!"
and when I thought of doing that all the rest of my life I saw that the
scheme was impossible. So I broke off the engagement.'
Frederick gasped.
'Jane!'
He groped out, found her, and drew her into his arms.
'Freddie!'
'Jane!'
'Freddie!'
'Jane!'
'Freddie!'
'Jane!'