previous occasion on which they had had any extended conversation, the
doctor had talked exclusively about the effect of too much protein on
the gastric juices.
'An elfin child; a tender, fairy creature. When I was looking at her
just now, Rodman, I nearly broke down. Her little hand lay on the
coverlet like some white lily floating on the surface of a still pool,
and her dear, trusting eyes gazed up at me.'
He pottered off down the garden, still babbling, and James stood
staring after him blankly. And slowly, like some cloud athwart a summer
sky, there crept over James's heart the chill shadow of a nameless fear.
* * * * *
It was about a week later that Mr Andrew McKinnon, the senior partner
in the well-known firm of literary agents, McKinnon & Gooch, sat in his
office in Chancery Lane, frowning thoughtfully over a telegram. He rang
the bell.
'Ask Mr Gooch to step in here.' He resumed his study of the telegram.
'Oh, Gooch,' he said when his partner appeared, 'I've just had a
curious wire from young Rodman. He seems to want to see me very
urgently.'
Mr Gooch read the telegram.
'Written under the influence of some strong mental excitement,' he
agreed. 'I wonder why he doesn't come to the office if he wants to see
you so badly.'
'He's working very hard, finishing that novel for Prodder & Wiggs.
Can't leave it, I suppose. Well, it's a nice day. If you will look
after things here I think I'll motor down and let him give me lunch.'
* * * * *
As Mr McKinnon's car reached the crossroads a mile from Honeysuckle
Cottage, he was aware of a gesticulating figure by the hedge. He
stopped the car.
'Morning, Rodman.'
'Thank God, you've come!' said James. It seemed to Mr McKinnon that the
young man looked paler and thinner. 'Would you mind walking the rest of
the way? There's something I want to speak to you about.'
Mr McKinnon alighted; and James, as he glanced at him, felt cheered
and encouraged by the very sight of the man. The literary agent was a
grim, hard-bitten person, to whom, when he called at their offices to
arrange terms, editors kept their faces turned so that they might at
least retain their back collar studs. There was no sentiment in Andrew
McKinnon. Editresses of society papers practised their blandishments on
him in vain, and many a publisher had waked screaming in the night,
dreaming that he was signing a McKinnon contract.
'Well, Rodman,' he said, 'Prodder & Wiggs have agreed to our terms.
I was writing to tell you so when your wire arrived. I had a lot
of trouble with them, but it's fixed at twenty per cent, rising to
twenty-five, and two hundred pounds advance royalties on day of
publication.'
'Good!' said James absently. 'Good! McKinnon, do you remember my aunt,
Leila J. Pinckney?'
'Remember her? Why, I was her agent all her life.'
'Of course. Then you know the sort of tripe she wrote.'
'No author,' said Mr McKinnon reprovingly, 'who pulls down a steady
twenty thousand pounds a year writes tripe.'
'Well anyway, you know her stuff.'
'Who better?'
'When she died she left me five thousand pounds and her house,
Honeysuckle Cottage. I'm living there now. McKinnon, do you believe in
haunted houses?'
'No.'
'Yet I tell you solemnly that Honeysuckle Cottage is haunted!'
'By your aunt?' said Mr McKinnon, surprised.
'By her influence. There's a malignant spell over the place; a sort of
miasma of sentimentalism. Everybody who enters it succumbs.'
'Tut-tut! You mustn't have these fancies.'
'They aren't fancies.'
'You aren't seriously meaning to tell me--'
'Well, how do you account for this? That book you were speaking about,
which Prodder & Wiggs are to publish--_The Secret Nine_. Every
time I sit down to write it a girl keeps trying to sneak in.'
'Into the room?'
'Into the story.'
'You don't want a love interest in your sort of book,' said Mr
McKinnon, shaking his head. 'It delays the action.'
'I know it does. And every day I have to keep shooing this infernal
female out. An awful girl, McKinnon. A soppy, soupy, treacly, drooping
girl with a roguish smile. This morning she tried to butt in on the
scene where Lester Gage is trapped in the den of the mysterious leper.'
'No!'
'She did, I assure you. I had to rewrite three pages before I could
get her out of it. And that's not the worst. Do you know, McKinnon,
that at this moment I am actually living the plot of a typical Leila
J. Pinckney novel in just the setting she always used! And I can see
the happy ending coming nearer every day! A week ago a girl was knocked
down by a car at my door and I've had to put her up, and every day I
realize more clearly that sooner or later I shall ask her to marry me.'
'Don't do it,' said Mr McKinnon, a stout bachelor. 'You're too young to
marry.'
'So was Methuselah,' said James, a stouter. 'But all the same I know
I'm going to do it. It's the influence of this awful house weighing
upon me. I feel like an eggshell in a maelstrom. I am being sucked on
by a force too strong for me to resist. This morning I found myself
kissing her dog!'
'No!'
'I did! And I loathe the little beast. Yesterday I got up at dawn and
plucked a nosegay of flowers for her, wet with the dew.'
'Rodman!'
'It's a fact. I laid them at her door and went downstairs kicking
myself all the way. And there in the hall was the apple-cheeked
housekeeper regarding me archly. If she didn't murmur "Bless their
sweet young hearts!" my ears deceived me.'
'Why don't you pack up and leave?'
'If I do I lose the five thousand pounds.'
'Ah!' said Mr McKinnon.
'I can understand what has happened. It's the same with all haunted
houses. My aunt's subliminal ether vibrations have woven themselves
into the texture of the place, creating an atmosphere which forces the
ego of all who come in contact with it to attune themselves to it. It's
either that or something to do with the fourth dimension.'
Mr McKinnon laughed scornfully.
'Tut-tut!' he said again. 'This is pure imagination. What has happened
is that you've been working too hard. You'll see this precious
atmosphere of yours will have no effect on me.'
'That's exactly why I asked you to come down. I hoped you might break
the spell.'
'I will that,' said Mr McKinnon jovially.
The fact that the literary agent spoke little at lunch caused James
no apprehension. Mr McKinnon was ever a silent trencherman. From time
to time James caught him stealing a glance at the girl, who was well
enough to come down to meals now, limping pathetically; but he could
read nothing in his face. And yet the mere look of his face was a
consolation. It was so solid, so matter of fact, so exactly like an
unemotional coconut.
'You've done me good,' said James with a sigh of relief, as he escorted
the agent down the garden to his car after lunch. 'I felt all along
that I could rely on your rugged common sense. The whole atmosphere of
the place seems different now.'
Mr McKinnon did not speak for a moment. He seemed to be plunged in
thought.
'Rodman,' he said, as he got into his car, 'I've been thinking over
that suggestion of yours of putting a love interest into _The Secret
Nine_. I think you're wise. The story needs it. After all, what
is there greater in the world than love? Love--love--aye, it's the
sweetest word in the language. Put in a heroine and let her marry
Lester Gage.'
'If,' said James grimly, 'she does succeed in worming her way in
she'll jolly well marry the mysterious leper. But look here, I don't
understand--'
'It was seeing that girl that changed me,' proceeded Mr McKinnon. And
as James stared at him aghast, tears suddenly filled his hard-boiled
eyes. He openly snuffled. 'Aye, seeing her sitting there under the
roses, with all that smell of honeysuckle and all. And the birdies
singing so sweet in the garden and the sun lighting up her bonny face.
The puir wee lass!' he muttered, dabbing at his eyes. 'The puir bonny
wee lass! Rodman,' he said, his voice quivering, 'I've decided that
we're being hard on Prodder & Wiggs. Wiggs has had sickness in his home
lately. We mustn't be hard on a man who's had sickness in his home,
hey, laddie? No, no! I'm going to take back that contract and alter it
to a flat twelve per cent and no advance royalties.'
'What!'
'But you shan't lose by it, Rodman. No, no, you shan't lose by it, my
manny. I am going to waive my commission. The puir bonny wee lass!'
The car rolled off down the road. Mr McKinnon, seated in the back, was
blowing his nose violently.
'This is the end!' said James.
* * * * *
It is necessary at this point to pause and examine James Rodman's
position with an unbiased eye. The average man, unless he puts himself
in James's place, will be unable to appreciate it. James, he will feel,
was making a lot of fuss about nothing. Here he was, drawing daily
closer and closer to a charming girl with big blue eyes, and surely
rather to be envied than pitied.
But we must remember that James was one of Nature's bachelors. And
no ordinary man, looking forward dreamily to a little home of his
own with a loving wife putting out his slippers and changing the
gramophone records, can realize the intensity of the instinct for
self-preservation which animates Nature's bachelors in times of peril.
James Rodman had a congenital horror of matrimony. Though a young man,
he had allowed himself to develop a great many habits which were as the
breath of life to him; and these habits, he knew instinctively, a wife
would shoot to pieces within a week of the end of the honeymoon.
James liked to breakfast in bed; and, having breakfasted, to smoke in
bed and knock the ashes out on the carpet. What wife would tolerate
this practice?
James liked to pass his days in a tennis shirt, grey flannel trousers,
and slippers. What wife ever rests until she has inclosed her husband
in a stiff collar, tight boots, and a morning suit and taken him with
her to _thés musicaux_?
These and a thousand other thoughts of the same kind flashed through
the unfortunate young man's mind as the days went by, and every day
that passed seemed to draw him nearer to the brink of the chasm.
Fate appeared to be taking a malicious pleasure in making things as
difficult for him as possible. Now that the girl was well enough
to leave her bed, she spent her time sitting in a chair on the
sun-sprinkled porch, and James had to read to her--and poetry, at
that; and not the jolly, wholesome sort of poetry the boys are turning
out nowadays, either--good, honest stuff about sin and gas-works and
decaying corpses--but the old-fashioned kind with rhymes in it, dealing
almost exclusively with love. The weather, moreover, continued superb.
The honeysuckle cast its sweet scent on the gentle breeze; the roses
over the porch stirred and nodded; the flowers in the garden were
lovelier than ever; the birds sang their little throats sore. And every
evening there was a magnificent sunset. It was almost as if Nature were
doing it on purpose.
At last James intercepted Dr Brady as he was leaving after one of his
visits and put the thing to him squarely:
'When is that girl going?'
The doctor patted him on the arm.
'Not yet, Rodman,' he said in a low, understanding voice. 'No need
to worry yourself about that. Mustn't be moved for days and days and
days--I might almost say weeks and weeks and weeks.'
'Weeks and weeks!' cried James.
'And weeks,' said Dr Brady. He prodded James roguishly in the abdomen.
'Good luck to you, my boy, good luck to you,' he said.
It was some small consolation to James that the mushy physician
immediately afterward tripped over William on his way down the path and
broke his stethoscope. When a man is up against it like James every
little helps.
* * * * *
He was walking dismally back to the house after this conversation when
he was met by the apple-cheeked housekeeper.
'The little lady would like to speak to you, sir,' said the
apple-cheeked exhibit, rubbing her hands.
'Would she?' said James hollowly.
'So sweet and pretty she looks, sir--oh, sir, you wouldn't believe!
Like a blessed angel sitting there with her dear eyes all a-shining.'
'Don't do it!' cried James with extraordinary vehemence. 'Don't do it!'
He found the girl propped up on the cushions and thought once again
how singularly he disliked her. And yet, even as he thought this, some
force against which he had to fight madly was whispering to him, 'Go
to her and take that little hand! Breathe into that little ear the
burning words that will make that little face turn away crimsoned with
blushes!' He wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead and sat
down.
'Mrs Stick-in-the-Mud--what's her name?--says you want to see me.'
The girl nodded.
'I've had a letter from Uncle Henry. I wrote to him as soon as I was
better and told him what had happened, and he is coming here tomorrow
morning.'
'Uncle Henry?'
'That's what I call him, but he's really no relation. He is my
guardian. He and daddy were officers in the same regiment, and when
daddy was killed, fighting on the Afghan frontier, he died in Uncle
Henry's arms and with his last breath begged him to take care of me.'
James started. A sudden wild hope had waked in his heart. Years ago,
he remembered, he had read a book of his aunt's entitled _Rupert's
Legacy_, and in that book--
'I'm engaged to marry him,' said the girl quietly.
'Wow!' shouted James.
'What?' asked the girl, startled.
'Touch of cramp,' said James. He was thrilling all over. That wild hope
had been realized.
'It was daddy's dying wish that we should marry,' said the girl.
'And dashed sensible of him, too; dashed sensible,' said James warmly.
'And yet,' she went on, a little wistfully, 'I sometimes wonder--'
'Don't!' said James. 'Don't! You must respect daddy's dying wish.
There's nothing like daddy's dying wish; you can't beat it. So he's
coming here tomorrow, is he? Capital, capital. To lunch, I suppose?
Excellent! I'll run down and tell Mrs Who-Is-It to lay in another chop.'
It was with a gay and uplifted heart that James strolled the garden
and smoked his pipe next morning. A great cloud seemed to have rolled
itself away from him. Everything was for the best in the best of all
possible worlds. He had finished _The Secret Nine_ and shipped it
off to Mr McKinnon, and now as he strolled there was shaping itself in
his mind a corking plot about a man with only half a face who lived in
a secret den and terrorized London with a series of shocking murders.
And what made them so shocking was the fact that each of the victims,
when discovered, was found to have only half a face too. The rest had
been chipped off, presumably by some blunt instrument.
The thing was coming out magnificently, when suddenly his attention was
diverted by a piercing scream. Out of the bushes fringing the river
that ran beside the garden burst the apple-cheeked housekeeper.
'Oh, sir! Oh, sir! Oh, sir!'
'What is it?' demanded James irritably.
'Oh, sir! Oh, sir! Oh, sir!'
'Yes, and then what?'
'The little dog, sir! He's in the river!'
'Well, whistle him to come out.'
'Oh, sir, do come quick! He'll be drowned!'
James followed her through the bushes, taking off his coat as he went.
He was saying to himself, 'I will not rescue this dog. I do not like
the dog. It is high time he had a bath, and in any case it would be
much simpler to stand on the bank and fish for him with a rake. Only an
ass out of a Leila J. Pinckney book would dive into a beastly river to
save--'
At this point he dived. Toto, alarmed by the splash, swam rapidly for
the bank, but James was too quick for him. Grasping him firmly by
the neck, he scrambled ashore and ran for the house, followed by the
housekeeper.
The girl was seated on the porch. Over her there bent the tall
soldierly figure of a man with keen eyes and greying hair. The
housekeeper raced up.
'Oh, miss! Toto! In the river! He saved him! He plunged in and saved
him!'
The girl drew a quick breath.
'Gallant, damme! By Jove! By gad! Yes, gallant, by George!' exclaimed
the soldierly man.
The girl seemed to wake from a reverie.
'Uncle Henry, this is Mr Rodman. Mr Rodman, my guardian, Colonel
Carteret.'
'Proud to meet you, sir,' said the colonel, his honest blue eyes
glowing as he fingered his short crisp moustache. 'As fine a thing as I
ever heard of, damme!'
'Yes, you are brave--brave,' the girl whispered.
'I am wet--wet,' said James, and went upstairs to change his clothes.
* * * * *
When he came down for lunch, he found to his relief that the girl
had decided not to join them, and Colonel Carteret was silent and
preoccupied. James, exerting himself in his capacity of host, tried
him with the weather, golf, India, the Government, the high cost of
living, first-class cricket, the modern dancing craze, and murderers
he had met, but the other still preserved that strange, absent-minded
silence. It was only when the meal was concluded and James had produced
cigarettes that he came abruptly out of his trance.
'Rodman,' he said, 'I should like to speak to you.'
'Yes?' said James, thinking it was about time.
'Rodman,' said Colonel Carteret, 'or rather, George--I may call you
George?' he added, with a sort of wistful diffidence that had a
singular charm.
'Certainly,' replied James, 'if you wish it. Though my name is James.'
'James, eh? Well, well, it amounts to the same thing, eh, what,
damme, by gad?' said the colonel with a momentary return of his bluff
soldierly manner. 'Well, then, James, I have something that I wish to
say to you. Did Miss Maynard--did Rose happen to tell you anything
about myself in--er--in connexion with herself?'
'She mentioned that you and she were engaged to be married.'
The colonel's tightly drawn lips quivered.
'No longer,' he said.
'What?'
'No, John, my boy.'
'James.'
'No, James, my boy, no longer. While you were upstairs changing your
clothes she told me--breaking down, poor child, as she spoke--that she
wished our engagement to be at an end.'
James half rose from the table, his cheeks blanched.
'You don't mean that!' he gasped.
Colonel Carteret nodded. He was staring out of the window, his fine
eyes set in a look of pain.
'But this is nonsense!' cried James. 'This is absurd! She--she mustn't
be allowed to chop and change like this. I mean to say, it--it isn't
fair--'
'Don't think of me, my boy.'
'I'm not--I mean, did she give any reason?'
'Her eyes did.'
'Her eyes did?'
'Her eyes, when she looked at you on the porch, as you stood
there--young, heroic--having just saved the life of the dog she loves.
It is you who have won that tender heart, my boy.'
'Now, listen,' protested James, 'you aren't going to sit there and tell
me that a girl falls in love with a man just because he saves her dog
from drowning?'
'Why, surely,' said Colonel Carteret, surprised. 'What better reason
could she have?' He sighed. 'It is the old, old story, my boy.
Youth to youth. I am an old man. I should have known--I should have
foreseen--yes, youth to youth.'
'You aren't a bit old.'
'Yes, yes.'
'No, no.'
'Yes, yes.'
'Don't keep on saying yes, yes!' cried James, clutching at his hair.
'Besides, she wants a steady old buffer--a steady, sensible man of
medium age--to look after her.'
Colonel Carteret shook his head with a gentle smile.
'This is mere quixotry, my boy. It is splendid of you to take this
attitude; but no, no.'
'Yes, yes.'
'No, no.' He gripped James's hand for an instant, then rose and walked
to the door. 'That is all I wished to say, Tom.'
'James.'
'James. I just thought that you ought to know how matters stood. Go
to her, my boy, go to her, and don't let any thought of an old man's
broken dream keep you from pouring out what is in your heart. I am an
old soldier, lad, an old soldier. I have learned to take the rough
with the smooth. But I think--I think I will leave you now. I--I
should--should like to be alone for a while. If you need me you will
find me in the raspberry bushes.'
He had scarcely gone when James also left the room. He took his hat
and stick and walked blindly out of the garden, he knew not whither.
His brain was numbed. Then, as his powers of reasoning returned, he
told himself that he should have foreseen this ghastly thing. If there
was one type of character over which Leila J. Pinckney had been wont
to spread herself, it was the pathetic guardian who loves his ward but
relinquishes her to the younger man. No wonder the girl had broken off
the engagement. Any elderly guardian who allowed himself to come within
a mile of Honeysuckle Cottage was simply asking for it. And then, as
he turned to walk back, a dull defiance gripped James. Why, he asked,
should he be put upon in this manner? If the girl liked to throw over
this man, why should he be the goat?
He saw his way clearly now. He just wouldn't do it, that was all. And
if they didn't like it they could lump it.
Full of a new fortitude, he strode in at the gate. A tall, soldierly
figure emerged from the raspberry bushes and came to meet him.
'Well?' said Colonel Carteret.
'Well?' said James defiantly.
'Am I to congratulate you?'
James caught his keen blue eye and hesitated. It was not going to be so
simple as he had supposed.
'Well--er--' he said.
Into the keen blue eyes there came a look that James had not seen there
before. It was the stern, hard look which--probably--had caused men to
bestow upon this old soldier the name of Cold-Steel Carteret.
'You have not asked Rose to marry you?'
'Er--no; not yet.'
The keen blue eyes grew keener and bluer.
'Rodman,' said Colonel Carteret in a strange, quiet voice, 'I have
known that little girl since she was a tiny child. For years she has
been all in all to me. Her father died in my arms and with his last
breath bade me see that no harm came to his darling. I have nursed her
through mumps, measles--aye, and chicken pox--and I live but for her
happiness.' He paused, with a significance that made James's toes curl.
'Rodman,' he said, 'do you know what I would do to any man who trifled
with that little girl's affections?' He reached in his hip pocket and
an ugly-looking revolver glittered in the sunlight. 'I would shoot him
like a dog.'
'Like a dog?' faltered James.
'Like a dog,' said Colonel Carteret. He took James's arm and turned
him towards the house. 'She is on the porch. Go to her. And if--' He
broke off. 'But tut!' he said in a kindlier tone. 'I am doing you an
injustice, my boy. I know it.'
'Oh, you are,' said James fervently.
'Your heart is in the right place.'
'Oh, absolutely,' said James.
'Then go to her, my boy. Later on you may have something to tell me.
You will find me in the strawberry beds.'
It was very cool and fragrant on the porch. Overhead, little breezes
played and laughed among the roses. Somewhere in the distance sheep
bells tinkled, and in the shrubbery a thrush was singing its evensong.
Seated in her chair behind a wicker table laden with tea things, Rose
Maynard watched James as he shambled up the path.
'Tea's ready,' she called gaily. 'Where is Uncle Henry?' A look of pity
and distress flitted for a moment over her flower-like face. 'Oh, I--I
forgot,' she whispered.
'He is in the strawberry beds,' said James in a low voice.
She nodded unhappily.
'Of course, of course. Oh, why is life like this?' James heard her
whisper.
He sat down. He looked at the girl. She was leaning back with closed
eyes, and he thought he had never seen such a little squirt in his
life. The idea of passing his remaining days in her society revolted
him. He was stoutly opposed to the idea of marrying anyone; but if,
as happens to the best of us, he ever were compelled to perform the
wedding glide, he had always hoped it would be with some lady golf
champion who would help him with his putting, and thus, by bringing his
handicap down a notch or two, enable him to save something from the
wreck, so to speak. But to link his lot with a girl who read his aunt's
books and liked them; a girl who could tolerate the presence of the dog
Toto; a girl who clasped her hands in pretty, childish joy when she saw
a nasturtium in bloom--it was too much. Nevertheless, he took her hand
and began to speak.
'Miss Maynard--Rose--'
She opened her eyes and cast them down. A flush had come into
her cheeks. The dog Toto at her side sat up and begged for cake,
disregarded.
'Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a lonely man who
lived in a cottage all by himself--'
He stopped. Was it James Rodman who was talking this bilge?
'Yes?' whispered the girl.
'--but one day there came to him out of nowhere a little fairy
princess. She--'