those tough old salts who can’t be happy away from deep waters. I
thought you sang chanteys in your sleep. Well, that’s splendid. You had
better go straight down to the house and start getting things fixed up.
Here’s the key. Write the address down--Mon Repos, Burberry Road, Valley
Fields.”
A sharp crash rang through the room. The man at the bar, who had
finished his cocktail and was drinking a whisky and soda, had dropped
his glass.
“’Ere!” exclaimed the barmaid, startled, a large hand on the left side
of her silken bosom.
The man paid no attention to her cry. He was staring with marked
agitation at Sam and his companion.
“How do I get there?” asked Hash.
“By train or bus--there’s any number of ways.”
“And I can go straight into the house?”
“Yes; I’ve taken it from this morning.”
Sam hurried out. Hash, pausing to write down the address, became aware
that he was being spoken to.
“Say, pardon me,” said the fine-looking man who was clutching at his
sleeve. “Might I have a word with you, brother?”
“Well?” said Hash suspiciously. The last time an American had addressed
him as brother it had cost him eleven dollars and seventy-five cents.
“Did I understand your pal who’s gone out to say that he had rented a
house named Mon Repos down in Valley Fields?”
“Yes, you did. What of it?”
The man did not reply. Consternation was writ upon his face, and he
passed a hand feebly across his broad forehead. The silence was broken
by the cold voice of the barmaid.
“That’ll be threepence I’ll kindly ask you for, for that glass,” said
the barmaid. “And if,” she added with asperity, “you ’ad to pay for the
shock you give me, it ’ud cost you a tenner.”
“Girlie,” replied the man sadly, watching Hash as he shambled through
the doorway, “you aren’t the only one that’s had a shock.”
§ 2
While Sam was walking down Fleet Street on his way to Tilbury House,
thrilled with the joy of existence and swishing the air jovially with
his newly purchased wanghee, in Tilbury House itself the proprietor of
the Mammoth Publishing Company was pacing the floor of his private
office, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, his eyes staring
bleakly before him.
Lord Tilbury was a short, stout, commanding-looking man, and practically
everything he did had in it something of the Napoleonic quality. His
demeanour now suggested Napoleon in captivity, striding the deck of the
_Bellerophon_ with vultures gnawing at his breast.
So striking was his attitude that his sister, Mrs. Frances Hammond, who
had called to see him, as was her habit when business took her into the
neighbourhood of Tilbury House, paused aghast in the doorway, while the
obsequious boy in buttons who was ushering her in frankly lost his nerve
and bolted.
“Good gracious, Georgie!” she cried. “What’s the matter?”
His Lordship came to a standstill and something faintly resembling
relief appeared in his square-cut face. Ever since the days when he had
been plain George Pyke, starting in business with a small capital and a
large ambition, his sister Frances had always been a rock of support. It
might be that her advice would help him to cope with the problem which
was vexing him now.
“Sit down, Francie,” he said. “Thank goodness you’ve come. Just the
person I want to talk to.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m telling you. You remember that when I was in America I met a man
named Pynsent?”
“Yes.”
“This man Pynsent was the owner of an island off the coast of Maine.”
“Yes, I know. And you----”
“An island,” continued Lord Tilbury, “densely covered with trees. He
used it merely as a place of retirement, for the purpose of shooting and
fishing; but when he invited me there for a week-end I saw its
commercial possibilities in an instant.”
“Yes, you told me. You----”
“I said to myself,” proceeded Lord Tilbury, one of whose less engaging
peculiarities it was that he never permitted the fact that his audience
was familiar with a story to keep him from telling it again, “I said to
myself, ‘This island, properly developed, could supply all the paper the
Mammoth needs and save me thousands a year!’ It was my intention to buy
the place and start paper mills.”
“Yes, and----”
“Paper mills,” said Lord Tilbury firmly. “I made an offer to Pynsent. He
shilly-shallied. I increased my offer. Still he would give me no
definite answer. Sometimes he seemed willing to sell, and then he would
change his mind. And then, when I was compelled to leave and return to
England, an idea struck me. He had been talking about his nephew and how
he was anxious for him to settle down and do something----”
“So you offered to take him over here and employ him in the Mammoth,”
said Mrs. Hammond with a touch of impatience. She loved and revered her
brother, but she could not conceal it from herself that he sometimes
tended to be prolix. “You thought it would put him under an obligation.”
“Exactly. I imagined I was being shrewd. I supposed that I was
introducing into the affair just that little human touch which sometimes
makes all the difference. Well, it will be a bitter warning to me never
again to be too clever. Half the business deals in this world are ruined
by one side or the other trying to be too clever.”
“But, George, what has happened? What is wrong?”
Lord Tilbury resumed his patrol of the carpet.
“I’m telling you. It was all arranged that he should sail back with me
on the _Mauretania_, but when the vessel left he was nowhere to be
found. And then, about the second day out, I received a wireless message
saying, ‘Sorry not to be with you. Coming _Araminta_. Love to all.’ I
could not make head or tail of it.”
“No,” said Mrs. Hammond thoughtfully; “it is very puzzling. I think it
may possibly have meant----”
“I know what it meant--now. The solution,” said Lord Tilbury bitterly,
“was vouchsafed to me only an hour ago by the boy himself.”
“Has he arrived then?”
“Yes, he has arrived. And he travelled on a tramp steamer.”
“A tramp steamer! But why?”
“Why? Why? How should I know why? Last night, he informed me, he slept
in his clothes.”
“Slept in his clothes? Why?”
“How should I know why? Who am I to analyse the motives of a boy who
appears to be a perfect imbecile?”
“But have you seen him?”
“No. He rang up on the telephone from the office of a house agent in
Valley Fields. He has taken a house there and wished to give my name as
a reference.”
“Valley Fields? Why Valley Fields?”
“Don’t keep on saying why,” cried Lord Tilbury tempestuously. “Haven’t I
told you a dozen times that I don’t know why--that I haven’t the least
idea why?”
“He does seem an eccentric boy.”
“Eccentric? I feel as if I had allowed myself to be saddled with the
guardianship of a dancing dervish. And when I think that if this young
idiot gets into any sort of trouble while he is under my charge, Pynsent
is sure to hold me responsible. I could kick myself for ever having been
fool enough to bring him over here.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself, Georgie.”
“It isn’t a question of blaming myself. It’s a question of Pynsent
blaming me and getting annoyed and breaking off the deal about the
island.”
And Lord Tilbury, having removed his thumbs from the armholes of his
waistcoat in order the more freely to fling them heavenwards, uttered a
complicated sound which might be rendered phonetically by the word
“Cor!” tenser and more dignified than the “Coo!” of the lower-class
Londoner, but expressing much the same meaning.
In the hushed silence which followed, the buzzer on the desk sounded.
“Yes? Eh? Oh, send him up.” Lord Tilbury laid down the instrument and
turned to his sister grimly. “Shotter is downstairs,” he said. “Now you
will be able to see him for yourself.”
Mrs. Hammond’s first impression when she saw Sam for herself was that
she had been abruptly confronted with something in between a cyclone and
a large Newfoundland puppy dressed in bright tweeds. Sam’s mood of
elation had grown steadily all the way down Fleet Street, and he burst
into the presence of his future employer as if he had just been let off
a chain.
“Well, how are you?” he cried, seizing Lord Tilbury’s hand in a grip
that drew from him a sharp yelp of protest.
Then, perceiving for the first time the presence of a fair stranger, he
moderated his exuberance somewhat and stared politely.
“My sister, Mrs. Hammond,” said Lord Tilbury, straightening his fingers.
Sam bowed. Mrs. Hammond bowed.
“Perhaps I had better leave you,” said Mrs. Hammond. “You will want to
talk.”
“Oh, don’t go,” said Sam hospitably.
“I have business in Lombard Street,” said Mrs. Hammond, discouraging
with a cold look what seemed to her, rightly or wrongly, a disposition
on the part of this young man to do the honours and behave generally as
if he were trying to suggest that Tilbury House was his personal
property but that any relative of Lord Tilbury was welcome there. “I
have to visit my bank.”
“I shall have to visit mine pretty soon,” said Sam, “or the wolf will be
scratching at the door.”
“If you are short of funds----” began Lord Tilbury.
“Oh, I’m all right for the present, thanks. I pinched close on fifty
pounds from a man this morning.”
“You did what?” said Lord Tilbury blankly.
“Pinched fifty pounds. Surprising he should have had so much on him. But
lucky--for me.”
“Did he make any objection to your remarkable behaviour?”
“He was asleep at the time, and I didn’t wake him. I just left a poached
egg on his pillow and came away.”
Lord Tilbury swallowed convulsively and his eye sought that of Mrs.
Hammond in a tortured glare.
“A poached egg?” he whispered.
“So that he would find it there when he woke,” explained Sam.
Mrs. Hammond had abandoned her intention of withdrawing and leaving the
two men together for a cosy chat. Georgie, it seemed to her from his
expression, needed a woman’s loving support. Sam appeared to have
affected him like some unpleasant drug, causing starting of the eyes and
twitching of the muscles.
“It is a pity you missed the _Mauretania_, Mr. Shotter,” she said. “My
brother had hoped that you would travel with him so that you could have
a good talk about what you were to do when you joined his staff.”
“Great pity,” said Sam, omitting to point out that it was for that very
reason that he had allowed the _Mauretania_ to depart without him.
“However, it’s all right. I have found my niche.”
“You have done what?”
“I have selected my life work.” He pulled out of his pocket a crumpled
paper. “I would like to attach myself to Pyke’s _Home Companion_. I
bought a copy on my way here, and it is the goods. You aren’t reading
the serial by any chance, are you--_Hearts Aflame_, by Cordelia Blair? A
winner. I only had time to glance at the current instalment, but it was
enough to make me decide to dig up the back numbers at the earliest
possible moment. In case you haven’t read it, it is Leslie Mordyke’s
wedding day, and a veiled woman with a foreign accent has just risen in
the body of the church and forbidden the banns. And,” said Sam warmly,
“I don’t blame her. It appears that years ago----”
Lord Tilbury was making motions of distress, and Mrs. Hammond bent
solicitously, like one at a sick bed, to catch his fevered whisper.
“My brother,” she announced, “wishes----”
“----was hoping,” corrected Lord Tilbury.
“----was hoping,” said Mrs. Hammond, accepting the emendation, “that
you would join the staff of the _Daily Record_ so that you might be
under his personal eye.”
Sam caught Lord Tilbury’s personal eye, decided that he had no wish to
be under it and shook his head.
“The _Home Companion_,” said Lord Tilbury, coming to life, “is a very
minor unit of my group of papers.”
“Though it has a large circulation,” said Mrs. Hammond loyally.
“A very large circulation, of course,” said Lord Tilbury; “but it offers
little scope for a young man in your position, anxious to start on a
journalistic career. It is not--how shall I put it?--it is not a vital
paper, not a paper that really matters.”
“In comparison with my brother’s other papers,” said Mrs. Hammond.
“In comparison with my other papers, of course.”
“I think you are wrong,” said Sam. “I cannot imagine a nobler life work
for any man than to help produce Pyke’s _Home Companion_. Talk about
spreading sweetness and light, why, Pyke’s _Home Companion_ is the paper
that wrote the words and music. Listen to this; ‘A. M. B. (Brixton). You
ask me for a simple and inexpensive method of curing corns. Get an
ordinary swede, or turnip, cut and dig out a hole in the top, fill the
hole with common salt and allow to stand till dissolved. Soften the corn
morning and night with this liquid.’”
“Starting on the reportorial staff of the _Daily Record_,” said Lord
Tilbury, “you would be in a position----”
“Just try to realise what that means,” proceeded Sam. “What it amounts
to is that the writer of that paragraph has with a stroke of the pen
made the world a better place. He has brightened a home. Possibly he has
averted serious trouble between man and wife. A. M. B. gets the ordinary
swede, digs out the top, pushes in the salt, and a week later she has
ceased to bully her husband and beat the baby and is a ray of sunshine
about the house--and all through Pyke’s _Home Companion_.”
“What my brother means----” said Mrs. Hammond.
“Similarly,” said Sam, “with G. D. H. (Tulse Hill), who wants to know
how to improve the flavour of prunes. You or I would say that the
flavour of prunes was past praying for, that the only thing to do when
cornered by a prune was to set your teeth and get it over with. Not so
Pyke’s----”
“He means----”
“----_Home Companion._ ‘A little vinegar added to stewed prunes,’ says
the writer, ‘greatly improves the flavour. And although it may seem
strange, it causes less sugar to be used.’ What happens? What is the
result? G. D. H.’s husband comes back tired and hungry after a day’s
work. ‘Prunes for dinner again, I suppose?’ he says moodily. ‘Yes,
dear,’ replies G. D. H., ‘but of a greatly improved flavour.’ Well, he
doesn’t believe her, of course. He sits down sullenly. Then, as he
deposits the first stone on his plate, a delighted smile comes into his
face. ‘By Jove!’ he cries. ‘The flavour is greatly improved. They still
taste like brown paper soaked in machine oil, but a much superior grade
of brown paper. How did you manage it?’ ‘It was not I, dearest,’ says G.
D. H., ‘but Pyke’s _Home Companion_. Acting on their advice, I added a
little vinegar, with the result that not only is the flavour greatly
improved but, strange though it may seem, I used less sugar.’ ‘Heaven
bless Pyke’s _Home Companion_!’ cries the husband. With your permission
then,” said Sam, “I will go straight to Mr. Wrenn and inform him that I
have come to fight the good fight under his banner. ‘Mr. Wrenn,’ I shall
say----”
Lord Tilbury was perplexed.
“Do you know Wrenn? How do you know Wrenn?”
“I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting him, but we are next-door
neighbours. I have taken the house adjoining his. Mon Repos, Burberry
Road, is the address. You can see for yourself how convenient this will
be. Not only shall we toil all day in the office to make Pyke’s _Home
Companion_ more and more of a force among the _intelligentsia_ of Great
Britain but in the evenings, as we till our radishes, I shall look over
the fence and say, ‘Wrenn,’ and Wrenn will say, ‘Yes, Shotter?’ And I
shall say, ‘Wrenn, how would it be to run a series on the eradication of
pimples in canaries?’ ‘Shotter,’ he will reply, dropping his spade in
his enthusiasm, ‘this is genius. ’Twas a lucky day, boy, for the old
_Home Companion_ when you came to us.’ But I am wasting time. I should
be about my business. Good-bye, Mrs. Hammond. Good-bye, Lord Tilbury.
Don’t trouble to come with me. I will find my way.”
He left the room with the purposeful step of the man of affairs, and
Lord Tilbury uttered a sound which was almost a groan.
“Insane!” he ejaculated. “Perfectly insane!”
Mrs. Hammond, womanlike, was not satisfied with simple explanation.
“There is something behind this, George!”
“And I can’t do a thing,” moaned His Lordship, chafing, as your strong
man will, against the bonds of fate. “I simply must humour this boy, or
the first thing I know he will be running off on some idiotic prank and
Pynsent will be sending me cables asking why he has left me.”
“There is something behind this,” repeated Mrs. Hammond weightily. “It
stands to reason. Even a boy like this young Shotter would not take a
house next door to Mr. Wrenn the moment he landed unless he had some
motive. George, there is a girl at the bottom of this.”
Lord Tilbury underwent a sort of minor convulsion. His eyes bulged and
he grasped the arms of his chair.
“Good God, Francie! Don’t say that! Pynsent took me aside before I left
and warned me most emphatically to be careful how I allowed this boy to
come in contact with--er--members of the opposite sex.”
“Girls,” said Mrs. Hammond.
“Yes, girls,” said Lord Tilbury, as if pleasantly surprised at this neat
way of putting it. “He said he had had trouble a year or so ago----”
“Mr. Wrenn must have a daughter,” said Mrs. Hammond, pursuing her train
of thought. “Has Mr. Wrenn a daughter?”
“How the devil should I know?” demanded His Lordship, not unnaturally
irritated. “I don’t keep in touch with the home life of every man in
this building.”
“Ring him up and ask him.”
“I won’t. I don’t want my staff to think I’ve gone off my head. Besides,
you may be quite wrong.”
“I shall be extremely surprised if I am,” said Mrs. Hammond.
Lord Tilbury sat gazing at her pallidly. He knew that Francie had a
sixth sense in these matters.
§ 3
At about the moment when Sam entered the luxuriously furnished office of
the Mammoth Publishing Company’s proprietor and chief, in a smaller and
less ornate room in the same building Mr. Matthew Wrenn, all unconscious
of the good fortune about to descend upon him in the shape of the
addition to his staff of a live and go-ahead young assistant, was seated
at his desk, busily engaged in promoting the best interests of that
widely read weekly, Pyke’s _Home Companion_. He was, in fact, correcting
the proofs of an article--ably written, but too long to quote
here--entitled What a Young Girl Can Do in Her Spare Time; Number 3, Bee
Keeping.
He was interrupted in this task by the opening of the door, and looking
up, was surprised to see his niece, Kay Derrick.
“Why, Kay!” said Mr. Wrenn. She had never visited him at his office so
early as this, for Mrs. Winnington-Bates expected her serfs to remain on
duty till at least four o’clock. In her blue eyes, moreover, there was a
strange glitter that made him subtly uneasy. “Why, Kay, what are you
doing here?”
Kay sat down on the desk. Having ruffled his grizzled hair with an
affectionate hand, she remained for a while in silent meditation.
“I hate young men!” she observed at length. “Why isn’t everyone nice and
old--I mean elderly, but frightfully well preserved, like you, darling?”
“Is anything the matter?” asked Mr. Wrenn anxiously.
“Nothing much. I’ve left Mrs. Bates.”
“I’m very glad to hear it, my dear. There is no earthly reason why you
should have to waste your time slaving----”
“You’re worse than Claire,” said Kay, her eyes ceasing to glitter. “You
both conspire to coddle me. I’m young and strong, and I ought to be
earning my living. But,” she went on, tapping his head with her finger
to emphasise her words, “I will not continue in a job which involves
being kissed by worms like Claude Bates. No, no, no, sir!”
Mr. Wrenn raised a shocked and wrathful face.
“He kissed you?”
“Yes. You had an article in the _Home Companion_ last week, uncle,
saying what a holy and beautiful thing the first kiss is. Well, Claude
Bates’ wasn’t. He hadn’t shaved and he was wearing a dressing gown.
Also, he was pallid and greenish, and looked as if he had been out all
night. Anything less beautiful and holy I never saw.”
“He kissed you! What did you do?”
“I hit him very hard with a book which I was taking to read to Mrs.
Bates. It was the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham’s _Is There a Hell?_ and I’ll
bet Claude thought there was. Until then I had always rather disliked
Mrs. Bates’ taste in literature, which shows how foolish I was. If she
had preferred magazines, where would I have been? There were about six
hundred pages of Aubrey Jerningham, bound in stiff cloth, and he blacked
Claude’s eye like a scholar and a gentleman. And at that moment in came
Mrs. Bates.”
“Yes?” said Mr. Wrenn, enthralled.
“Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother. Have you ever seen one of
those cowboy films where there is trouble in the bar-room? It was like
that. Mrs. Bates started to dismiss me, but I got in first with my
resignation, shooting from the hip, as it were. And then I came away,
and here I am.”
“The fellow should be horsewhipped,” said Mr. Wrenn, breathing heavily.
“He isn’t worth bothering about,” said Kay.
The riot of emotion into which she had been plunged by the addresses of
the unshaven Bates had puzzled her. But now she understood. It was
galling to suppose so monstrous a thing, but the explanation was, she
felt, that there had been condescension in his embrace. If she had been
Miss Derrick of Midways, he would not have summoned up the nerve to
kiss her in a million years; but his mother’s secretary and companion
had no terror for him. And at the thought a deep thrill of gratitude to
the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham passed through Kay. How many a time, wearied
by his duties about the parish, must that excellent clergyman have been
tempted to scamp his work and shirk the labour of adding that extra
couple of thousand words which just make all the difference to
literature when considered in the light of a missile.
But he had been strong. He had completed his full six hundred pages and
seen to it that his binding had been heavy and hard and sharp about the
edges. For a moment, as she sat there, the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham seemed
to Kay the one bright spot in a black world.
She was still meditating upon him when there was a hearty smack on the
door and Sam came in.
“Good morning, good morning,” he said cheerily.
And then he saw Kay, and on the instant his eyes widened into a goggling
stare, his mouth fell open, his fingers clutched wildly at nothing, and
he stood there, gaping.
Kay met his stare with a defiant eye. In her present mood she disliked
all young men, and there seemed nothing about this one to entitle him to
exemption from her loathing. Rather, indeed, the reverse, for his
appearance jarred upon her fastidious taste.
If the Cohen Bros., of Covent Garden, have a fault, it is that they
sometimes allow their clients to select clothes that are a shade too
prismatic for anyone who is not at the same time purchasing a banjo and
a straw hat with a crimson ribbon. Fittings take place in a dimly lit
interior, with the result that suits destined to make phlegmatic horses
shy in the open street seem in the shop to possess merely a rather
pleasing vivacity. One of these Sam had bought, and it had been a
blunder on his part. If he had intended to sing comic songs from a punt
at Henley Regatta, he would have been suitably, even admirably, attired.
But as a private gentleman he was a little on the bright side. He
looked, in fact, like a bookmaker who won billiard tournaments, and Kay
gazed upon him with repulsion.
He, on the other hand, gazed at her with a stunned admiration. That
photograph should have prepared him for something notable in the way of
feminine beauty; but it seemed to him, as he raked her with eyes like
small dinner plates, that it had been a libel, an outrage, a gross
caricature. This girl before him was marvellous. Helen of Troy could
have been nothing to her. He loved her shining eyes, unaware that they
shone with loathing. He worshipped her rose-flushed cheeks, not knowing
that they were flushed because he had been staring at her for
thirty-three seconds without blinking and she was growing restive
beneath his gaze.
Mr. Wrenn was the first to speak.
“Did you want anything?” he asked.
“What?” said Sam.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Eh?”
Mr. Wrenn approached the matter from a fresh angle.
“This is the office of Pyke’s _Home Companion_. I am Mr. Wrenn, the
editor. Did you wish to see me?”
“Who?” said Sam.
At this point Kay turned to the window, and the withdrawal of her eyes
had the effect of releasing Sam from his trance. He became aware that a
grey-haired man, whom he dimly remembered having seen on his entry into
the room some hours before, was addressing him.
“I beg your pardon?”