“I’ve asked Latimer Springfield to spend Sunday with us and stop the
night,” announced Mrs. Durmot at the breakfast-table.
“I thought he was in the throes of an election,” remarked her husband.
“Exactly; the poll is on Wednesday, and the poor man will have worked
himself to a shadow by that time. Imagine what electioneering must be
like in this awful soaking rain, going along slushy country roads and
speaking to damp audiences in draughty schoolrooms, day after day for a
fortnight. He’ll have to put in an appearance at some place of worship
on Sunday morning, and he can come to us immediately afterwards and have
a thorough respite from everything connected with politics. I won’t let
him even think of them. I’ve had the picture of Cromwell dissolving the
Long Parliament taken down from the staircase, and even the portrait of
Lord Rosebery’s ‘Ladas’ removed from the smoking-room. And Vera,” added
Mrs. Durmot, turning to her sixteen-year-old niece, “be careful what
colour ribbon you wear in your hair; not blue or yellow on any account;
those are the rival party colours, and emerald green or orange would be
almost as bad, with this Home Rule business to the fore.”
“On state occasions I always wear a black ribbon in my hair,” said Vera
with crushing dignity.
Latimer Springfield was a rather cheerless, oldish young man, who went
into politics somewhat in the spirit in which other people might go into
half-mourning. Without being an enthusiast, however, he was a fairly
strenuous plodder, and Mrs. Durmot had been reasonably near the mark in
asserting that he was working at high pressure over this election. The
restful lull which his hostess enforced on him was decidedly welcome, and
yet the nervous excitement of the contest had too great a hold on him to
be totally banished.
“I know he’s going to sit up half the night working up points for his
final speeches,” said Mrs. Durmot regretfully; “however, we’ve kept
politics at arm’s length all the afternoon and evening. More than that
we cannot do.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Vera, but she said it to herself.
Latimer had scarcely shut his bedroom door before he was immersed in a
sheaf of notes and pamphlets, while a fountain-pen and pocket-book were
brought into play for the due marshalling of useful facts and discreet
fictions. He had been at work for perhaps thirty-five minutes, and the
house was seemingly consecrated to the healthy slumber of country life,
when a stifled squealing and scuffling in the passage was followed by a
loud tap at his door. Before he had time to answer, a much-encumbered
Vera burst into the room with the question; “I say, can I leave these
here?”
“These” were a small black pig and a lusty specimen of black-red
gamecock.
Latimer was moderately fond of animals, and particularly interested in
small livestock rearing from the economic point of view; in fact, one of
the pamphlets on which he was at that moment engaged warmly advocated the
further development of the pig and poultry industry in our rural
districts; but he was pardonably unwilling to share even a commodious
bedroom with samples of henroost and stye products.
“Wouldn’t they be happier somewhere outside?” he asked, tactfully
expressing his own preference in the matter in an apparent solicitude for
theirs.
“There is no outside,” said Vera impressively, “nothing but a waste of
dark, swirling waters. The reservoir at Brinkley has burst.”
“I didn’t know there was a reservoir at Brinkley,” said Latimer.
“Well, there isn’t now, it’s jolly well all over the place, and as we
stand particularly low we’re the centre of an inland sea just at present.
You see the river has overflowed its banks as well.”
“Good gracious! Have any lives been lost?”
“Heaps, I should say. The second housemaid has already identified three
bodies that have floated past the billiard-room window as being the young
man she’s engaged to. Either she’s engaged to a large assortment of the
population round here or else she’s very careless at identification. Of
course it may be the same body coming round again and again in a swirl; I
hadn’t thought of that.”
“But we ought to go out and do rescue work, oughtn’t we?” said Latimer,
with the instinct of a Parliamentary candidate for getting into the local
limelight.
“We can’t,” said Vera decidedly, “we haven’t any boats and we’re cut off
by a raging torrent from any human habitation. My aunt particularly
hoped you would keep to your room and not add to the confusion, but she
thought it would be so kind of you if you would take in Hartlepool’s
Wonder, the gamecock, you know, for the night. You see, there are eight
other gamecocks, and they fight like furies if they get together, so
we’re putting one in each bedroom. The fowl-houses are all flooded out,
you know. And then I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking in this
wee piggie; he’s rather a little love, but he has a vile temper. He gets
that from his mother—not that I like to say things against her when she’s
lying dead and drowned in her stye, poor thing. What he really wants is
a man’s firm hand to keep him in order. I’d try and grapple with him
myself, only I’ve got my chow in my room, you know, and he goes for pigs
wherever he finds them.”
“Couldn’t the pig go in the bathroom?” asked Latimer faintly, wishing
that he had taken up as determined a stand on the subject of bedroom
swine as the chow had.
“The bathroom?” Vera laughed shrilly. “It’ll be full of Boy Scouts till
morning if the hot water holds out.”
“Boy Scouts?”
“Yes, thirty of them came to rescue us while the water was only
waist-high; then it rose another three feet or so and we had to rescue
them. We’re giving them hot baths in batches and drying their clothes in
the hot-air cupboard, but, of course, drenched clothes don’t dry in a
minute, and the corridor and staircase are beginning to look like a bit
of coast scenery by Tuke. Two of the boys are wearing your Melton
overcoat; I hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s a new overcoat,” said Latimer, with every indication of minding
dreadfully.
“You’ll take every care of Hartlepool’s Wonder, won’t you?” said Vera.
“His mother took three firsts at Birmingham, and he was second in the
cockerel class last year at Gloucester. He’ll probably roost on the rail
at the bottom of your bed. I wonder if he’d feel more at home if some of
his wives were up here with him? The hens are all in the pantry, and I
think I could pick out Hartlepool Helen; she’s his favourite.”
Latimer showed a belated firmness on the subject of Hartlepool Helen, and
Vera withdrew without pressing the point, having first settled the
gamecock on his extemporised perch and taken an affectionate farewell of
the pigling. Latimer undressed and got into bed with all due speed,
judging that the pig would abate its inquisitorial restlessness once the
light was turned out. As a substitute for a cosy, straw-bedded sty the
room offered, at first inspection, few attractions, but the disconsolate
animal suddenly discovered an appliance in which the most luxuriously
contrived piggeries were notably deficient. The sharp edge of the
underneath part of the bed was pitched at exactly the right elevation to
permit the pigling to scrape himself ecstatically backwards and forwards,
with an artistic humping of the back at the crucial moment and an
accompanying gurgle of long-drawn delight. The gamecock, who may have
fancied that he was being rocked in the branches of a pine-tree, bore the
motion with greater fortitude than Latimer was able to command. A series
of slaps directed at the pig’s body were accepted more as an additional
and pleasing irritant than as a criticism of conduct or a hint to desist;
evidently something more than a man’s firm hand was needed to deal with
the case. Latimer slipped out of bed in search of a weapon of
dissuasion. There was sufficient light in the room to enable the pig to
detect this manœuvre, and the vile temper, inherited from the drowned
mother, found full play. Latimer bounded back into bed, and his
conqueror, after a few threatening snorts and champings of its jaws,
resumed its massage operations with renewed zeal. During the long
wakeful hours which ensued Latimer tried to distract his mind from his
own immediate troubles by dwelling with decent sympathy on the second
housemaid’s bereavement, but he found himself more often wondering how
many Boy Scouts were sharing his Melton overcoat. The rôle of Saint
Martin malgré lui was not one which appealed to him.
Towards dawn the pigling fell into a happy slumber, and Latimer might
have followed its example, but at about the same time Stupor Hartlepooli
gave a rousing crow, clattered down to the floor and forthwith commenced
a spirited combat with his reflection in the wardrobe mirror.
Remembering that the bird was more or less under his care Latimer
performed Hague Tribunal offices by draping a bath-towel over the
provocative mirror, but the ensuing peace was local and short-lived. The
deflected energies of the gamecock found new outlet in a sudden and
sustained attack on the sleeping and temporarily inoffensive pigling, and
the duel which followed was desperate and embittered beyond any
possibility of effective intervention. The feathered combatant had the
advantage of being able, when hard pressed, to take refuge on the bed,
and freely availed himself of this circumstance; the pigling never quite
succeeded in hurling himself on to the same eminence, but it was not from
want of trying.
Neither side could claim any decisive success, and the struggle had been
practically fought to a standstill by the time that the maid appeared
with the early morning tea.
“Lor, sir,” she exclaimed in undisguised astonishment, “do you want those
animals in your room?”
_Want_!
The pigling, as though aware that it might have outstayed its welcome,
dashed out at the door, and the gamecock followed it at a more dignified
pace.
“If Miss Vera’s dog sees that pig—!” exclaimed the maid, and hurried off
to avert such a catastrophe.
A cold suspicion was stealing over Latimer’s mind; he went to the window
and drew up the blind. A light, drizzling rain was falling, but there
was not the faintest trace of any inundation.
Some half-hour later he met Vera on the way to the breakfast-room.
“I should not like to think of you as a deliberate liar,” he observed
coldly, “but one occasionally has to do things one does not like.”
“At any rate I kept your mind from dwelling on politics all the night,”
said Vera.
Which was, of course, perfectly true.