“Dick Bruce will write an astounding, weird novel, and bound into
fame,” Lorraine had remarked to her companion, and away somewhere down
in Kent, an hour or so earlier, Dick had remarked to Hal as they spun
along:
“I’ve got the maddest idea for a novel you ever heard of. I’m going to
make the hit of next season.”
“I hope it’s not about babies,” said Hal, thinking of his doggerel.
“Yes, it is—babies and vegetables.”
“Oh, nonsense. You can’t make a novel out of babies and vegetables.”
“You see if I can’t. The vegetables are all to be endowed with life,
and of course the scene of my tale will be the vegetable kingdom.”
“And where do the babies come in?”
“The babies will represent mankind.”
“I never heard such rot. Why should mankind be represented by babies?
Much better let them be represented by green peas or gooseberries.”
“Not at all. Mankind can only properly be represented by babies;
mankind being in its infancy.”
“But it isn’t. It’s much older than vegetables.”
“It is not. Man was made last, and instead of developing into a
reasonable, rational object, like a potato or a cabbage, he has strayed
away into all manner of wild side-issues, and is still nothing but a
very much perplexed infant.”
“And do you propose to try and help him to emulate the reasonable,
rational condition of the potato and cabbage?”
“I propose to show him his inferiority to these delectable creations.”
“Then if he has any sense he will just duck you in the Serpentine and
make you apologise. Personally I consider myself anything but a baby,
and far superior to any of the cabbage tribe.”
“Ah!...” he cried gleefully. “You are actually proving my theory. I
can’t explain now, but just wait till that book is written.”
“Are you taking rooms at Colney Hatch while you do it?”
“I have thought about it. You show more understanding in that remark
than in any of the others.”
“It doesn’t require much effort of understanding to think that out. Is
the onion or the mangel-wurzel to be your hero?”
“You are unsympathetic. I shall not tell you any more.”
“Not at all. I am most interested really. I should make the cabbage
your hero, and the onion your heroïne, then she can weep on his
breast.” They swerved violently, and with a little gasp she added, “All
the same, I’ve no desire to weep on the highway underneath a motor-car.
What _are_ you doing?”
“I don’t know. The steering-wheel seems a bit odd.”
They stopped to examine the wheel, and almost immediately, out of the
gathering darkness behind shot another car, hooting violently to them
to get out of the way. Unable to stop the oncoming car in time, Dick
tried to move aside, failed, and in less than a minute the newcomer, in
spite of brakes swiftly adjusted, crashed into them, smashing their
lamp, and badly damaging the back near-side wheel of the car.
“Well, I’m blowed!” said Dick, “that’s the only moment in the whole day
you shouldn’t have been on that particular square yard of the entire
globe. Any other moment, I could either have moved aside or stopped you
in time.”
The occupant of the other car, who was driving alone, sprang out and
came briskly forward.
“What the devil!...” he began, then noticed the lady, and stopped
short.
“It was certainly the devil,” said Dick, ruefully examining his
battered wheel, and “I always thought he was credited with the deceny
to look after his own. How have you fared?”
“Well, he seems to have looked after me all right,” in a cheery voice;
“there’s nothing that will prevent my going on to town. But if you will
pardon my curiosity, why take root in the middle of the road and ask
for trouble?”
Hal’s smile suddenly flashed out in the lamp-light irresistibly.
“It’s a new theory about vegetables being wiser than mankind, but of
course we took root too soon.”
A pair of grey eyes looked quizzically at her in the darkness,
discerning only the gleam of a white face in a close-fitting bonnet,
and the flash of white, even teeth.
“The blasted steering wheel wouldn’t act,” said Dick. “We had just that
second slowed down to examine it. You might have come along here to all
eternity and not have been as inopportune.”
“You take it very well.” The big-coated apparition, in motor-cap with
the ear-flaps down, and motor-goggles, and the suggestion of a
rotundity about the centre, was not at all engaging to look at, but he
had a charming voice.
“I’m taking it so ill that I daren’t express myself out loud,” said
Hal. “What in the world are we to do? Is there a train anywhere near?”
“I’m afraid not, but there is a decent enough inn close by.”
“An inn isn’t much use to me.” She paused, then added solemnly: “I’ve
got a strait-laced brother.”
Hal’s voice was rather deep and rich for a woman, and it had a
dangerous allurement in the darkness. The stranger took off his goggles
and tried again to see her face, while Dick took a minute stock of his
damage.
“Well,” he suggested, a little daringly, “if he is able to chaperone
you at the inn himself?—”
“He isn’t,” said Hal; “he’s somewhere east of Piccadilly, studying
Phœnician Architecture, and the herringbone pattern on antique
masonry.”
“Oh, damn!” intercepted Dick, “the old man has let me down badly this
time; this car won’t move before daybreak. It means a red light burning
all night, and we must go to the inn.”
“But, Dick,” Hal exclaimed in quick alarm. “How can I let Dudley know?
He’ll have a fit at the idea of my being out all night like that.”
“He ought to be too thankful you are safe and sound to mind anything
else.”
“But he won’t; because he is always grumbling at my not getting back
before dark. There must surely be a train from somewhere?”
Her voice had grown seriously alarmed as she began to realise what sort
of a fix she was in. The stranger came forward to lend his aid to the
inspection, and after a cursory glance added his verdict to Dick’s.
“You won’t move her before morning; and there are no trains anywhere
near here on Sunday night. I am going to London myself; you must let me
give you both a lift.”
Dick stood up with an air of finality.
“I can’t leave her. She isn’t exactly all my own, you see. I must stay
at the inn, but if you wouldn’t mind taking Miss Pritchard—” he looked
at Hal a little anxiously.
“I shall be delighted,” came the brisk response from the stranger.
Hal for once was nonplussed, but her habitual humour reasserted itself.
“I don’t know which Dudley will think the most dreadful,” she remarked
comically, “for me to stay at the inn unchaperoned, or motor back with
a stranger. I seem to be fairly between the devil and the deep sea.”
The men laughed, but Dick made the decision.
“You had better go back,” he said. “He will at least have you safe
under lock and key by midnight that way and not lie awake worrying all
night himself.”
“Then let me run you to the inn first,” said the stranger, and after
fixing his red lights, Dick went off with them in search of help to
make the car safer for the night.
A little later the stranger’s motor turned Londonwards with two
occupants only, one in front and one behind. After a few miles he
stopped.
“Won’t you come and sit in front? It seems so unsociable to travel like
this.”
“Most unsociable,” said Hal, “but it would please Brother Dudley.”
“Never mind Brother Dudley now.” The voice was very attractive. “Mind
me, instead. I’m very dull here, and I hate driving in the dark. My
chauffeur is down with the ‘flu’, and I couldn’t beg, borrow, nor steal
any one else’s.”
“Are you a doctor?” she asked, taking her seat beside him.
“Why do you think I should be a doctor?” tucking a warm rug cosily
round her, in a leisurely fashion.
“Only because I thought perhaps you were obliged to go, in spite of
your chauffeur being ill.”
“I was obliged to go, but I’m not a doctor.”
They started forward again, but the pace was noticeably slower.
“I hope you don’t mind going slowly, it is so difficult to steer in te
dark?”
Hal was perfectly aware he had not found it so difficult before, but
she only said lightly:
“Anything to keep safe from another mishap. I might have to walk home
next time.”
“Or stay at an inn with me!...” with an amused laugh. “What would
Brother Dudley do then?”
“Have brain fever first, I expect, then creeping paralysis, then
sleeping sickness.”
He chuckled with enjoyment, and presently remarked: “I don’t think you
treat Dudley respectfully enough if he is an affectionate elder
brother.”
“Oh, yes I do. I sort of leaven the lump. Without me he’d be just a
clever prig; he couldn’t help it. With me he is only better than most
men; and his lofty ideas don’t get top-heavy, because I keep him in
touch with commonplace humanity.”
“Why is he better than most men? What is the matter with the rest of
us?”
“The rest of you don’t bother to have lofty ideas at all, much less
struggle to live up to them.”
“You are a little sweeping. Do you like men to have lofty ideas, and be
priggish?”
“They don’t necessarily go together. It’s only Dudley who thinks all
the rest of the world ought to be good too.”
“And don’t you agree with him?”
“I look at things from a different standpoint. I admire him
tremendously, and feel his superiority; but it is more natural to me to
take things as I find them and make the best of them as they are.”
“You are evidently a very sensible young lady. You can find a warm spot
in your heart even for a sinner, for instance!”
“I rather like them,” and she gave a low laugh.
“Of course you do, if you’re a true woman.”
“Oh, I’m a true woman right enough. I like a man to have a spice of the
devil in him; and I like playing with fire; and I love getting into
mischief.”
“Capital!... you and I must be friends. I’m beginning to think it was a
lucky mishap for me at all events.”
“I haven’t finished my qualifications yet. You may change your mind. I
like all those sort of things, but at the same time I like the big
things as well. Also I’m told I’m most annoyingly practical, and most
irritatingly capable of taking care of myself, and never getting burnt,
so to speak.”
“Who told you that?”
“I think it was some one at the office.”
“What office?”
She mentioned the name of one of the leading London papers.
“Oh, you’re a working young lady, are you?” He asked the question with
a new note in his voice, though it would have been difficult to tell
just how the information struck him.
Hal gave another laugh.
“A working young lady! How awful! I shall not be friends with you if
you call me anything so dreadful as that.”
“What do you call it?”
“Well, I think I like ‘Breadwinner’ best, as that is what I do it
for—but I don’t mind working woman.”
The stranger looked hard into the darkness a few moments, then he asked
suddenly, sitll with the new note in his voice:
“And I suppose you want the vote?”
Mentally he was wondering whether, if she knew who he was, she would
attack him physically or insist upon writing in chalk all over his car.
“I don’t want it for myself, because I shouldn’t know what to do with
it, and I haven’t much time to find out. But I want fair play for
women-workers generally, and if that is the only way to get it, I hope
it will come quickly.”
“What do you mean by fair play?”
“Just whatever is fair play. I don’t think women ought to be making
iron chains at Cradley Heath for a penny a yard, for instance, and that
sort of thing. I think it is a slur on the men who govern the country
that it is possible. If you were one of them, and drove about in this
beautiful car, not caring twopence whether starving women were sweated
or not, I should—” she hesitated.
“Well, what should you—”
Detecting the mysterious note in his voice, she added with mischievous,
half-serious intent:
“I should want to scratch you, and bite you, and push you into the
first available ditch, for a poor coward, who was afraid to take care
of the interests of woman, in case she got too well able in the end to
take care of herself—so there.”
He could not help laughing, and when he subsided she added:
“I suppose you are one.”
“Why do you suppose it?”
“Never mind. Are you?”
“You promise you won’t scratch me and bite me?”
“I’ll give you a sporting chance to run away.”
“I’m not very likely to run away from you, I think.”
They had reached the well-lit roads now, and he turned and looked
keenly into her face, partly to see if by chance he might recognise
her, and partly to get a cleaner idea of her appearance.
“You look too nice to be a suffragette,” he said.
“Such rot! Do I look too nice to care whether working women and outcast
women are fairly treated or not?”
“That’s only the bluff of the movement. What they really want is power
and notoriety.”
Hal tossed her head.
“You’re a positive worm,” she told him frankly.
Again his engaging laugh rang out.
“That’s a nice thing to say to a man who has brought you all the way
from Millington to London, and helped you out of a tight corner.”
The white teeth gleamed suddenly.
“I’ll qualify it if you like, and call you a cross between a worm and a
brick.”
“Not good enough. I won’t pass the worm at all. If you don’t retract it
wholly I shall put you down at the first tram, and let you get back to
Bloomsbury on your own.”
“I’ll retract, if you’ll tell me who you are.”
“I’ll tell you afterwards.”
She shook her head.
“Perhaps you are going to Downing Street even now, to plan a crushing
blow to the Cause.”
“I am going to Downing Street, but it has nothing to do with the Cause,
as you call it.”
It was her turn to glance round, but she only saw that he was
clean-shaven, and somewhat lined. His grey, quizzical eyes met hers
full of humour.
“I wonder who we both are?” he said.
“I can easily tell you who I am, as I’m so comfortably of no account.
My name is Harriet Pritchard, and my friends call me Hal. I live with
Brother Dudley, who is an architect; and if the world isn’t any the
better for me, I hope it is sometimes a little gayer, that’s all.”
“And are you engaged to the young man whose steering gear went wrong?”
“No; I am not engaged to any one at all.”
“Very nearly perhaps?”
“No; not even within sight of it. Being engaged, and always having to
go out with the same pal, would bore me to tears.”
“I see.” There was a note of satisfaction in his voice. In the brighter
lights he had observed that the warm ulster clung to a very shapely
figure, and covered a pair of fine shoulders, and even if she was not
pretty, for he could not be quite sure on the point, she was certainly
very attractive, and had a delightfully engaging smile.
“I wonder if there is room for another in the ranks.”
Something a little condescending in the way he made the suggestion
nettled Hal.
“Aren’t you a rather old?” she asked.
Again his ready laugh rang out.
“I’ll give frankness for frankness. I am forty-eight.”
“Goodness!… and I am twenty-five.”
“Is that all? Then allow me to say you are a remarkably clever young
woman.”
“A good many breadwinners are; they have to be. Some of them are too
clever even for Cabinet Ministers,” and she chuckled joyfully.
In the darkness, she did not see the quick gleam in his eyes, as he
retorted:
“I don’t think many Cabinet Ministers have the luck to meet a
breadwinner who is as attractive as she is clever.”
“And if they did,” sarcastically, “I suppose they would drop the
notoriety yarn and find time to consider whether the working woman is
treated fairly or not. The weakness in her defence at present seems
solely that not enough pretty women make up her defenders. Bah! You all
ought to have kittens to play with, and nanny goats and woolly lambs.”
“I don’t know why you include me. What have I done?”
“Well, if you’re going to Downing Street?”
“Why shouldn’t I be going to a dinner-party?”
She turned and glanced up with a daredevil light in her eyes that
delighted him.
“I not only think you a member of Parliament, but, judging by your
fatuous air of superiority, I should imagine you are positively a
full-blown Cabinet Minister.”
He busied himself with his steering wheel, while little chuckles of
enjoyment came out of his muffler.
“And supposing I were?” he said at last.
“Goodness!… I hope you’re not?…” in quick alarm.
“Why do you hope so?”
“Oh, I don’t know, except that I’ve never known a Cabinet Minister in
my life, and I never expected, if I met one, to treat him like… like—”
“An old and fatuous lump of superiority!” with a gay laugh. “Well,
little woman, you needn’t be in the least sorry. I don’t know that I’ve
ever enjoyed a motor ride more. When will you come again?”
“_Are_ you a Cabinet Minister?…” she asked helplessly.
“Well, I hope you won’t disapprove, for I have to plead guilty to being
Sir Edwin Crathie.”
“Sir Edwin Crathie?” in abashed tones.
“They called me Squib at school.” He said it in a whimsical, humorous
voice, looking down at her with very friendly eyes.
But Hal had grown silent.
“I’m afraid by your manner you do disapprove?”
“It is certainly embarrassing. I would rather you had been… well, just
any one.”
“You’ll get used to it,” still with the twinkle in his eyes. “In the
meantime you haven’t answered my question. When will you come for
another ride?”
She did not reply, and he leaned a little closer.
“You will come again?”
“I’m afraid Brother Dudley wouldn’t like it”; and then they both
laughed.
“Will you come in?” as they drew up before her door.
“I’m afraid I haven’t time; and besides, I’m a little afraid of Brother
Dudley. I only feel equal to the Prime Minister this evening.”
She held out her hand.
“Well, thank you ever so much. You saved me from a dreadfully tight
corner.”
“The thanks should be all mine; you saved me from unmitigated boredom.
I cursed my chauffeur for going down with ‘flu’ today, but now I feel
ready to raise his salary for it.”
He had pulled of his thick motoring-glove, and was holding her hand in
a firm, lingering clasp, which she quickly cut short, tucking both her
hands into her ulster pockets, and standing up very straight and slim
in the lamplight.
“I’ll have to go though the confessional now,” she told him, “and sit
on the stool of repentance for supper.”
“No; don’t repent; come again.” He moved nearer.
“I’m naturally a very busy man, and I can’t make engagements offhand,
but I can easily get at you on the telephone. Will you come some
afternoon, about half-past four?”
“I think you are very rash. How do you know I shall not bring the
colours, and wave them wildly down the street, shouting ‘Votes for
Women’?”
“I’ll risk it. Will you come?”
She moved away, latch-key in hand.
“I don’t know. I won’t promise, anyway. Good-bye, and my best thanks.”
There was a rush of light through an open door, a last bright smile,
and he found himself alone in the street.