“We’ll have to take it out in billiards,” I said. “I’m glad the table’s
good.”
“It depends what you call good. It’s half-size, and there’s a
seven-inch cut just out of baulk where Clarence’s cue slipped.
Elizabeth has mended it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks,
but it doesn’t improve the thing as a billiard-table.”
“But she said you said——”
“Must have been pulling your leg.”
We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
couldn’t help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which
brought me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and
was going to have a stab at marrying me off. I’ve often heard that
young married women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had
said there was nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill
and Clarence’s father, but a woman who could take the name of St.
Andrews in vain as she had done wouldn’t be likely to stick at a
trifle.
“Bill, old scout,” I said, “there aren’t any frightful girls or any rot
of that sort stopping here, are there?”
“Wish there were,” he said. “No such luck.”
As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman’s figure
appeared.
“Have you got him, Bill?” she said, which in my present frame of mind
struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don’t you know.
“Do you mean me?” I said.
She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
as in the old days.
“Is that you, Reggie? I’m so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
along in and have some tea.”
Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
then been introduced to her husband? If so you’ll understand how I felt
when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, “I wonder what he’s
like.” Then you meet him, and think, “There must be some mistake. She
can’t have preferred _this_ to me!” That’s what I thought, when I set
eyes on Clarence.
He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I’m no Bombardier Wells
myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like
princesses. Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
“How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?” said
Clarence. All in one breath, don’t you know.
“Eh?” I said.
“A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!”
While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
an earlier model. I took him, correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
Elizabeth introduced us.
“Father,” said Clarence, “did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
positive I heard a cat mewing.”
“No,” said the father, shaking his head; “no mewing cat.”
“I can’t bear mewing cats,” said Clarence. “A mewing cat gets on my
nerves!”
“A mewing cat is so trying,” said Elizabeth.
“_I_ dislike mewing cats,” said old Mr. Yeardsley.
That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
pictures.
We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the “Monna Lisa,” and
then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
“Here it is,” I said. “A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer——”
They all shouted “What!” exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
“Let me look! Yes. ‘Late last night burglars entered the residence of
Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants——’”
“Why, that’s near here,” I said. “I passed through Midford——”
“Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,” said Elizabeth. I
noticed her eyes were sparkling.
“Only two miles!” she said. “It might have been us! It might have been
the ‘Venus’!”
Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
“The ‘Venus’!” he cried.
They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
evening’s chat had made quite a hit.
Why I didn’t notice it before I don’t know, but it was not till
Elizabeth showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the
Yeardsley “Venus.” When she led me up to it, and switched on the light,
it seemed impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without
noticing it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on
the foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that
I was aware of its existence.
She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
towards me and said, “Reggie.”
And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
know that pre-what-d’you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
then.
“What-o?” I said nervously.
“Reggie,” she said, “I want to ask a great favour of you.”
“Yes?”
She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
to me:
“Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
world for me?”
There! That’s what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you’d have thought she
would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
sort of thing, what?
Mind you, I _had_ said I would do anything in the world for her. I
admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn’t
appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
her, doesn’t feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.