Have you ever thought about—and, when I say thought about, I mean
really carefully considered the question of—the coolness, the cheek,
or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
bursts? _I_ have, by Jove! But then I’ve had it thrust on my notice, by
George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty few fellows.
And the limit was reached by that business of the Yeardsley “Venus.”
To make you understand the full what-d’you-call-it of the situation, I
shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
myself.
When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
Oxford with me.
I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don’t you know. And there was
a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
“The Wedding Glide,” I’m hanged if she didn’t break it off, and a month
later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley—Clarence
Yeardsley, an artist.
What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn’t seem likely to me
that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
country somewhere and never came to London, and I’m bound to own that,
by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
had done.
This letter I’m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
sky, as it were. It ran like this:—
“MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,—
What ages it seems since I saw anything of you. How are you?
We have settled down here in the most perfect old house, with
a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country. Couldn’t
you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be so
glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you
again. He was speaking of you only this morning. _Do_ come.
Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
—Yours most sincerely,
ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
“P.S.—We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
“P.P.S.—Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has
ever played on.
“P.P.S.S.—We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says
it is better than St. Andrews.
“P.P.S.S.S.—You _must_ come!”
Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
be something special. So I went.
* * * * *
Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn’t come across him
for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
glad to see me.
“Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said, as we drove off. “I was just
about at my last grip.”
“What’s the trouble, old scout?” I asked.
“If I had the artistic what’s-its-name,” he went on, “if the mere
mention of pictures didn’t give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn’t be
so bad. As it is, it’s rotten!”
“Pictures?”
“Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
when one gives her her head?”
I remembered then—it hadn’t come back to me before—that most of my time
with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the period
when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had had to
follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though pictures
are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had never
struck me that she would still be going on in this way after marrying
an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere sight of a
picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to old Bill.
“They talk pictures at every meal,” he said. “I tell you, it makes a
chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?”
“A few days.”
“Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was that I
was to come back after the match. But you couldn’t get me back with a
lasso.”