AN ENTR’ACTE
Jake was a boy of imagination, though one would never have thought
it to look at his jolly rubicund face and small sturdy form. The very
gaiters on his stout calves, spruce and workmanlike, would have
precluded any such idea. His master, Sir Francis Orsden--the son of
one of whose gamekeepers he was--would never, though a young man of
imagination himself, have guessed in Jake a kindred spirit. Yet, when
Sir Francis played on the organ in the little church at Leighway, and
Jake blew for him, it was odds which of the two brought the more
inspiration to his task. Sir Francis would practise there
occasionally, and bring the boy with him, because Jake was dogged and
strong of muscle, and not easily tired. He never knew what secret goad
to endurance the small rascal possessed in his imagination. The
business in hand-blowing was to watch a plummet’s rise and fall: you
pumped for the fall and slackened for the rise. That was the hard
prose of it; but Jake knew a better way. He would imagine himself
blowing up a fire with a bellows. When a full organ was needed, he
had to blow like the devil to keep the plummet down, and then the fire
roared under his efforts; otherwise, a gentle purring glow was easily
stimulated. At another time he would be filling a bucket at a well for
a succession of thirsty horses, and would so nicely time the allowance
for each that the bucket was descending again on the very point of its
being sucked dry. Or he would be the landlord of the Bit and Halter,
dozing over his parlour fire, nodding, nodding down in little jerks,
and then recovering himself with an indrawn rising sigh. Sometimes,
when the music was very liquid, he would work a beer engine--one or
two good pulls, and then the upward flow through the syphon; sometimes
he would fish, and, getting a bite, pull in. These make-believes
greatly ameliorated the tedium of his office by importing a sense of
personal responsibility into it. It was not so much the music he had
to keep going as his fancy of the moment.
One morning he was blowing for his master--and pretending, rather
gruesomely, to be an exhausted swimmer struggling for a few strokes,
and then relaxing and drifting until agonised convulsively to fresh
efforts--when he became aware of a young lady standing by him and
amusedly watching his labours. Jake ducked, even in the process of
pumping, and Miss Kennett put a finger to her lips. She was quite a
popular young lady among the villagers, whom she treated on terms of
sociability which her father would strongly have disapproved had he
known. There was nothing of Touchstone’s rosy Audrey about Miss
Kennett, but there was a good deal of the graceful and graceless
rebel. Grievance, mutely felt, had thrown her into another camp than
that of her order.
Sir Francis played on, unconscious of his listener; until presently,
with a whispered “Give it me, Jacob,” the young lady appropriated the
pump-handle and began herself to inflate the lungs of the music. The
change did not make for success; her strokes, femininely short and
quick, raced against the rising plummet, and presently gave out
altogether at a critical moment of full pressure. The wind went from
the pipes in a dismal whine; Miss Kennett sat back on the pump-handle
in a fit of helpless laughter, and Sir Francis came dodging round the
organ in a fume.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed; and the asperity in his face melted into
an amiable grin.
“My mistake,” said Audrey. “Do go on!”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t; but I heard some one grinding the organ, and came in to
see.”
“Jake,” said his master, “Miss Kennett is going to blow for me, so you
can cut along.”
The boy touched his forehead, secured his cap, and departed.
“A good youngster,” said Sir Francis.
“I love him,” said Audrey.
“Ah!” sighed the young Baronet, “lucky Jake!”
“Frank, don’t be tiresome. Do you really want me to blow for you? No,
not for ever. I know you are going to say it, and it would simply be
silly. If I am going to stop here, you must talk sense.”
“I have hardly said anything yet.”
“Well, don’t say it. Sit down and play.”
“I don’t want to play: I want to be serious. Why am I so obnoxious to
you, Audrey?”
“Now I shall go.”
“No. Do be patient. Really, you know, you have never yet said, in so
many words, why you won’t marry me.”
“Yes I have. It is because I couldn’t possibly call myself Audrey
Orsden of Audley.”
“Well, if you will be flippant.”
She stood looking at him a moment. “I didn’t mean to be flippant,
Frank--nothing but kind. Shall we go a walk together? It’s such a
lovely morning. Only you must promise.”
“I think I know what you mean by kind, Audrey--kind in forbearing.
Very well, I will promise.”
He stowed his music away, and they went out together--out through the
green and shadowed churchyard, with its old headboards and epitaphs.
There was one to a merry maid dead at sixteen, whose thoughtless
laughter had served some mortuary rhymster for a theme on the
perishableness of sweet things, with an earnest recommendation to the
Christian to be wise while he might--as if wisdom lay in melancholy.
There was a fine opportunity for drawing a moral; but Sir Francis did
not draw it. Perhaps he thought he would rather have marriage as a
jest than no wife at all.
Soon they were outside the village and making for the free Downs.
Audrey was always at her best and frankest on the Downs.
“I had wanted to speak to you,” said her companion. “Is it really
true that our friend the Baron’s man has been arrested in connexion
with this horrible affair?”
“Yes, it is quite true. Poor Baron! I am not allowed to know much
about it all; but it seems that everything points to this Louis being
the culprit. He went out on the afternoon of the murder with the
express purpose of seeking Annie, and did not come home till long
afterwards. The police have taken him into custody on suspicion.”
“It must be awkward for you all, having the Baron for a guest.”
“It is, in a way; but we can’t very well ask him to go elsewhere while
his man is in peril. He offered; but papa wouldn’t hear of it. He said
the best thing for them both was to go on playing chess.”
“How’s Hugo?”
“He’s all right. Why shouldn’t he be?”
“I don’t know. Only he struck me as being upset about something on
that day we shot together.”
“Well, he doesn’t give me his confidence, you know.”
“No, I know. Poor Audrey!”
“Why do you call me poor Audrey?” asked the girl angrily. “I don’t
want your pity, or anybody’s.”
“You don’t want anything of mine, I’m sure; and yet it’s all there for
your acceptance--every bit.”
“Is this keeping your promise? No, I don’t. I want what I want, and
it’s nothing that you can give me.”
“Not my whole love and submission, Audrey?”
She flounced her shoulder, and seemed as if about to leave him, but
suddenly thought better of it, and faced him resolutely.
“It’s that, Frank, though you don’t seem to understand it. I don’t
want any man’s submission! I want his mastership, if I want him at
all.” Her eyes softened, and she looked at him pityingly. “I hate to
pain you, you dear; but I can’t marry you. You have a thousand good
qualities; you are gentle and true and just and honourable, and you
have a mind to put my poor little organ to shame. Why you should
possibly want me, I can’t tell; but I’m very sure of one thing--that I
am wise in disappointing you. We should be the brass and the
earthenware pots, Frank, and you would be the one to be broke. I know
it. You are a poet, and I am the very worst of prose. You have a right
to despise me, and I have a right--not to despise you, but to see what
you are not--from my point of view.”
“That is to say, a sportsman.”
“You know I could never pretend to any sympathy with your real
tastes--books and music and musty old prints, and all that sort of
thing.”
He laughed. “Well, I shall try again.”
His persistence goaded her to cruelty.
“If you want to know the truth, I like a man to be a man, as my
brother is.”
His face twitched and sobered. “And I am not one.”
“Why do you make me say these things?” she cried resentfully. “You
drive me to it, and then take credit, I suppose, for your larger
nature.”
“I take credit for nothing,” said he. “My account with you is all on
the debit side. Audrey, dear, please forgive me for having broken my
word. It shall be the last time.”
“I believe it has been the first,” she said, with a rather quivering
lip. “I will say that for you, Frank. Your word is your bond. Now do
let us talk about something else. I came out to get rid of all that
horrible atmosphere, of police, and detectives, and suspicions about
everybody and everything, and this is my reward. The inquest is taking
place this very day, and how glad I shall be when the whole sick
business is over, and the poor thing decently buried, words can’t say.
Now, one, two, three, and let us race for that clump.”