“Yes. What a delightful man your uncle is!”
“Yes, isn’t he! Good-bye.”
“I don’t know when I’ve met a man I respected more.”
“This will be wonderful news for him.”
“So kind.”
“Yes.”
“So patient with me.”
“I expect he needs to be.”
“The sort of man it’s a treat to work with.”
“If you hurry you’ll be able to work with him all the sooner.”
“Yes,” said Sam; “yes. Er--is there any message I can give him?”
“No, thanks.”
“Ah? Well, then look here,” said Sam, “would you care to come and have
lunch somewhere to-day?”
Kay hesitated. Then her eyes fell on those sticking-plastered hands and
she melted. After all, when a young man has been displaying great
heroism in her service, a girl must do the decent thing.
“I should like to,” she said.
“The Savoy Grill at 1:30?”
“All right. Are you going to bring my uncle along?”
Sam started.
“Why--er--that would be splendid, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, I forgot. He’s lunching with a man to-day at the Press Club.”
“Is he?” said Sam. “Is he really?”
His affection and respect for Mr. Matthew Wrenn increased to an almost
overwhelming degree. He went back to Mon Repos feeling that it was the
presence in the world of men like Matthew Wrenn that gave the lie to
pessimism concerning the future of the human race.
Kay, meanwhile, in her rôle of understudy to Claire Lippett, who had
just issued a bulletin to the effect that the neuralgic pains were
diminishing and that she hoped to be up and about by midday, proceeded
to an energetic dusting of the house. As a rule, she hated this sort of
work, but to-day a strange feeling of gaiety stimulated her. She found
herself looking forward to the lunch at the Savoy with something of the
eagerness which, as a child, she had felt at the approach of a party.
Reluctant to attribute this to the charms of a young man whom less than
twenty-four hours ago she had heartily disliked, she decided that it
must be the prospect of once more enjoying good cooking in pleasant
surroundings that was causing her excitement. Until recently she had
taken her midday meal at the home of Mrs. Winnington-Bates, and, as with
a celebrated chewing gum, the taste lingered.
She finished her operations in the dining room and made her way to the
drawing-room. Here the photograph of herself on the mantelpiece
attracted her attention. She picked it up and stood gazing at it
earnestly.
A sharp double rap on the front door broke in on her reflections. It
was the postman with the second delivery, and he had rapped because
among his letters for San Rafael was one addressed to Kay on which the
writer had omitted to place a stamp. Kay paid the twopence and took the
letter back with her to the drawing-room, hoping that the interest of
its contents would justify the financial outlay.
Inspecting them, she decided that they did. The letter was from
Willoughby Braddock; and Mr. Braddock, both writing and expressing
himself rather badly, desired to know if Kay could see her way to
marrying him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DISCUSSION AT A LUNCHEON TABLE
The little lobby of the Savoy grill-room that opens on to Savoy Court is
a restful place for meditation; and Kay, arriving there at twenty
minutes past one, was glad that she was early. She needed solitude, and
regretted that in another ten minutes Sam would come in and deprive her
of it. Ever since she had received his letter she had been pondering
deeply on the matter of Willoughby Braddock, but had not yet succeeded
in reaching a definite conclusion either in his favour or against him.
In his favour stood the fact that he had been a pleasant factor in her
life as far back as she could remember. She had bird’s-nested with him
on spring afternoons, she had played the mild card games of childhood
with him on winter evenings, and--as has been stated--she had sat in
trees and criticised with incisive power his habit of wearing bed socks.
These things count. Marrying Willoughby would undeniably impart a sort
of restful continuity to life. On the other hand----
“Hullo!”
A young man, entering the lobby, had halted before her. For a moment she
supposed that it was Sam, come to bid her to the feast; then, emerging
from her thoughts, she looked up and perceived that blot on the body
politic, Claude Winnington-Bates.
He was looking down at her with a sort of sheepish impudence, as a man
will when he encounters unexpectedly a girl who in the not distant past
has blacked his eye with a heavy volume of theological speculation. He
was a slim young man, dressed in the height of fashion. His mouth was
small and furtive, his eyes flickered with a kind of stupid slyness, and
his hair, which mounted his head in a series of ridges or terraces,
shone with the unguent affected by the young lads of the town. A messy
spectacle.
“Hullo,” he said. “Waiting for someone?”
For a brief, wistful instant Kay wished that the years could roll back,
making her young enough to be permitted to say some of the things she
had said to Willoughby Braddock on that summer morning long ago when the
topic of bed socks had come up between them. Being now of an age of
discretion and so debarred from that rich eloquence, she contented
herself with looking through him and saying nothing.
The treatment was not effective. Claude sat down on the lounge beside
her.
“I say, you know,” he urged, “there’s no need to be ratty. I mean to
say----”
Kay abandoned her policy of silence.
“Mr. Bates,” she said, “do you remember a boy who was at school with you
named Shotter?”
“Sam Shotter?” said Claude, delighted at her chattiness. “Oh, yes,
rather. I remember Sam Shotter. Rather a bad show, that. I saw him the
other night and he was absolutely----”
“He’s coming here in a minute or two. And if he finds you sitting on
this lounge and I explain to him that you have been annoying me, he will
probably tear you into little bits. I should go, if I were you.”
Claude Bates went. Indeed, the verb but feebly expresses the celerity of
his movement. One moment he was lolling on the lounge; the next he had
ceased to be and the lobby was absolutely free from him. Kay, looking
over her shoulder into the grill-room, observed him drop into a chair
and mop his forehead with a handkerchief.
She returned to her thoughts.
The advent of Claude had given them a new turn; or, rather, it had
brought prominently before her mind what until then had only lurked at
the back of it--the matter of Willoughby Braddock’s financial status.
Willoughby Braddock was a very rich man; the girl who became Mrs.
Willoughby Braddock would be a very rich woman. She would, that is to
say, step automatically into a position in life where the prowling
Claude Bateses of the world would cease to be an annoyance. And this was
beyond a doubt another point in Mr. Braddock’s favour.
Willoughby, moreover, was rich in the right way, in the Midways fashion,
with the richness that went with old greystone houses and old green
parks and all the comfortable joy of the English country. He could give
her the kind of life she had grown up in and loved. But on the other
hand----
Kay stared thoughtfully before her; and, staring, was aware of Sam
hurrying through the swing door.
“I’m not late, am I?” said Sam anxiously.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Then come along. Golly, what a corking day!”
He shepherded her solicitously into the grill-room and made for a table
by the large window that looks out onto the court. A cloakroom waiter,
who had padded silently upon their trail, collected his hat and stick
and withdrew with the air of a leopard that has made a good kill.
“Nice-looking chap,” said Sam, following him with an appreciative eye.
“You seem to be approving of everything and everybody this morning.”
“I am. This is the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year, and
you can quote me as saying so. Now then, what is it to be?”
Having finished his ordering, a task which he approached on a lavish
scale, Sam leaned forward and gazed fondly at his guest.
“Gosh!” he said rapturously. “I never thought, when I was sitting in
that fishing hut staring at your photograph, that only a month or two
later I’d be having lunch with you at the Savoy.”
Kay was a little startled. Her brief acquaintance with him had taught
her that Sam was a man of what might be called direct methods, but she
had never expected that he would be quite so direct as this. In his
lexicon there appeared to be no such words as “reticence” and “finesse.”
“What fishing hut was that?” she asked, feeling rather like a fireman
turning a leaky hose on a briskly burning warehouse full of explosives.
“You wouldn’t know it. It’s the third on the left as you enter Canada.”
“Are you fond of fishing?”
“Yes. But we won’t talk about that, if you don’t mind. Let’s stick to
the photograph.”
“You keep talking about a photograph and I don’t in the least know what
you mean.”
“The photograph I was speaking of at the dinner last night.”
“Oh, the one your friend found--of some girl.”
“It wasn’t a friend; it was me. And it wasn’t some girl; it was you.”
Here the waiter intruded, bearing _hors d’œuvres_. Kay lingered over her
selection, but the passage of time had not the effect of diverting her
host from his chosen topic. Kay began to feel that nothing short of an
earthquake would do that, and probably not even an earthquake unless it
completely wrecked the grill-room.
“I remember the first time I saw that photograph.”
“I wonder which it was,” said Kay casually.
“It was----”
“So long as it wasn’t the one of me sitting in a sea shell at the age of
two, I don’t mind.”
“It was----”
“They told me that if I was very good and sat very still, I should see a
bird come out of the camera. I don’t believe it ever did. And why they
let me appear in a costume like that, even at the age of two, I can’t
imagine.”
“It was the one of you in a riding habit, standing by your horse.”
“Oh, that one?... I think I will take eggs after all.”
“Eggs? What eggs?”
“I don’t know. _Œufs à la_ something, weren’t they?”
“Wait!” said Sam. He spoke as one groping his way through a maze.
“Somehow or other we seem to have got onto the subject of eggs. I don’t
want to talk about eggs.”
“Though I’m not positive it was à la something. I believe it was _œufs
Marseillaises_ or some word like that. Anyhow, just call the waiter and
say eggs.”
Sam called the waiter and said eggs. The waiter appeared not only to
understand but to be gratified.
“The first time I saw that photograph----” he resumed.
“I wonder why they call those eggs _œufs Marseillaises_,” said Kay
pensively. “Do you think it’s a special sort of egg they have in
Marseilles.”
“I couldn’t say. You know,” said Sam, “I’m not really frightfully
interested in eggs.”
“Have you ever been in Marseilles?”
“Yes, I went there once with the _Araminta_.”
“Who is _Araminta_?”
“The _Araminta_. A tramp steamer I’ve made one or two trips on.”
“What fun! Tell me all about your trips on the _Araminta_.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Was that where you met the man you call Hash?”
“Yes. He was the cook. Weren’t you surprised,” said Sam, beginning to
see his way, “when you heard that he was engaged to Claire?”
“Yes,” said Kay, regretting that she had shown interest in tramp
steamers.
“It just shows----”
“I suppose the drawback to going about on small boats like that is the
food. It’s difficult to get fresh vegetables, I should think--and eggs.”
“Life isn’t all eggs,” said Sam desperately.
The head waiter, a paternal man, halted at the table and inquired if
everything was to the satisfaction of the lady and gentleman. The lady
replied brightly that everything was perfect. The gentleman grunted.
“They’re very nice here,” said Kay. “They make you feel as if they were
fond of you.”
“If they weren’t nice to you,” said Sam vehemently, “they ought to be
shot. And I’d like to see the fellow who wouldn’t be fond of you.”
Kay began to have a sense of defeat, not unlike that which comes to a
scientific boxer who has held off a rushing opponent for several rounds
and feels himself weakening.
“The first time I saw that photograph,” said Sam, “was one night when I
had come in tired out after a day’s fishing.”
“Talking about fish----”
“It was pretty dark in the hut, with only an oil lamp on the table, and
I didn’t notice it at first. Then, when I was having a smoke after
dinner, my eye caught something tacked up on the wall. I went across to
have a look, and, by Jove, I nearly dropped the lamp!”
“Why?”
“Why? Because it was such a shock.”
“So hideous?”
“So lovely, so radiant, so beautiful, so marvellous.”
“I see.”
“So heavenly, so----”
“Yes? There’s Claude Bates over at that table.”
The effect of these words on her companion was so electrical that it
seemed to Kay that she had at last discovered a theme which would take
his mind off other and disconcerting topics. Sam turned a dull crimson;
his eyes hardened; his jaw protruded; he struggled for speech.
“The tick! The blister! The blighter! The worm! The pest! The hound! The
bounder!” he cried. “Where is he?”
He twisted round in his chair, and having located the companion of his
boyhood, gazed at the back of his ridged and shining head with a
malevolent scowl. Then, taking up a hard and nobby roll, he poised it
lovingly.
“You mustn’t.”
“Just this one!”
“No!”
“Very well.”
Sam threw down the roll with a gesture of resignation. Kay looked at him
in alarm.
“I had no idea you disliked him so much as that!”
“He ought to have his neck broken.”
“Haven’t you forgiven him yet for stealing jam sandwiches at school?”
“It has nothing whatever to do with jam sandwiches. If you really want
to know why I loathe and detest the little beast, it is because he had
the nerve--the audacity--the insolence--the immortal rind
to--to--er”--he choked--“to kiss you. Blast him!” said Sam, wholly
forgetting the dictates of all good etiquette books respecting the kind
of language suitable in the presence of the other sex.
Kay gasped. It is embarrassing for a girl to find what she had supposed
to be her most intimate private affairs suddenly become, to all
appearance, public property.
“How do you know that?” she exclaimed.
“Your uncle told me this morning.”
“He had no business to.”
“Well, he did. And what it all boils down to,” said Sam, “is this--will
you marry me?”
“Will I--what?”
“Marry me.”
For a moment Kay stared speechlessly; then, throwing her head back, she
gave out a short, sharp scream of laughter which made a luncher at the
next table stab himself in the cheek with an oyster fork. The luncher
looked at her reproachfully. So did Sam.
“You seem amused,” he said coldly.
“Of course I’m amused,” said Kay.
Her eyes were sparkling, and that little dimple on her chin which had so
excited Sam’s admiration when seen in photographic reproduction had
become a large dimple. Sam tickled her sense of humour. He appealed to
her in precisely the same way as the dog Amy had appealed to her in the
garden that morning.
“I don’t see why,” said Sam. “There’s nothing funny about it. It’s
monstrous that you should be going about at the mercy of every bounder
who takes it into his head to insult you. The idea of a fellow with
marcelled hair having the crust to----”
He paused. He simply could not mention that awful word again.
“----kiss me?” said Kay. “Well, you did.”
“That,” said Sam with dignity, “was different. That was--er--well, in
short, different. The fact remains that you need somebody to look after
you, to protect you.”
“And you chivalrously offer to do it? I call that awfully nice of you,
but--well, don’t you think it’s rather absurd?”
“I see nothing absurd in it at all.”
“How many times have you seen me in your life?”
“Thousands!”
“What? Oh, I was forgetting the photograph. But do photographs really
count?”
“Yes.”
“Mine can’t have counted much, if the first thing you did was to tell
your friend Cordelia Blair about it and say she might use it as a
story.”
“I didn’t. I only said that at dinner to--to introduce the subject. As
if I would have dreamed of talking about you to anybody! And she isn’t a
friend of mine.”
“But you kissed her.”
“I did not kiss her.”
“My uncle insists that you did. He says he heard horrible sounds of
Bohemian revelry going on in the outer office and then you came in and
said the lady was soothed.”
“Your uncle talks too much,” said Sam severely.
“Just what I was thinking a little while ago. But still, if he tells you
my secrets, it’s only fair that he should tell me yours.”
Sam swallowed somewhat convulsively.
“If you really want to know what happened, I’ll tell you. I did not kiss
that ghastly Blair pipsqueak. She kissed me.”
“What?”
“She kissed me,” repeated Sam doggedly. “I had been laying it on pretty
thick about how much I admired her work, and suddenly she said, ‘Oh, you
dear boy!’ and flung her loathsome arms round my neck. What could I do?
I might have uppercut her as she bored in, but, short of that, there
wasn’t any way of stopping her.”
A look of shocked sympathy came into Kay’s face.
“It’s monstrous,” she said, “that you should be going about at the mercy
of every female novelist who takes it into her head to insult you. You
need somebody to look after you, to protect you----”
Sam’s dignity, never a very durable article, collapsed.
“You’re quite right,” he said. “Well then----”
Kay shook her head.
“No, I’m not going to volunteer. Whatever your friend Cordelia Blair may
say in her stories, girls don’t marry men they’ve only seen twice in
their lives.”
“This is the fourth time you’ve seen me.”
“Or even four times.”
“I knew a man in America who met a girl at a party one night and married
her next morning.”
“And they were divorced the week after, I should think. No, Mr.
Shotter----”
“You may call me Sam.”
“I suppose I ought to after this. No, Sam, I will not marry you. Thanks
ever so much for asking me, of course.”
“Not at all.”
“I don’t know you well enough.”
“I feel as if I had known you all my life.”
“Do you?”
“I feel as if we had been destined for each other from the beginning of
time.”
“Perhaps you were a king in Babylon and I was a Christian slave.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. And what is more, I’ll tell you something. When I
was in America, before I had ever dreamed of coming over to England, a
palmist told me that I was shortly about to take a long journey, at the
end of which I should meet a fair girl.”
“You can’t believe what those palmists say.”
“Ah, but everything else that this one told me was absolutely true.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. She said I had a rare, spiritual nature and a sterling character
and was beloved by all; but that people meeting me for the first time
sometimes failed to appreciate me----”
“I certainly did.”
“----because I had such hidden depths.”
“Oh, was that the reason?”
“Well, that shows you.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
“Something about bewaring of a dark man, but nothing of importance.
Still, I don’t call it a bad fifty cents’ worth.”
“Did she say that you were going to marry this girl?”
“She did--explicitly.”
“Then the idea, as I understand it, is that you want me to marry you so
that you won’t feel you wasted your fifty cents. Is that it?”
“Not precisely. You are overlooking the fact that I love you.” He looked
at her reproachfully. “Don’t laugh.”
“Was I laughing?”
“You were.”
“I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to mock a strong man’s love, ought I?”
“You oughtn’t to mock anybody’s love. Love’s a very wonderful thing. It
even made Hash look almost beautiful for a moment, and that’s going
some.”
“When is it going to make you look beautiful?”
“Hasn’t it?”
“Not yet.”
“You must be patient.”
“I’ll try to be, and in the meantime let us face this situation. Do you
know what a girl in a Cordelia Blair story would do if she were in my
place?”
“Something darned silly, I expect.”
“Not at all. She would do something very pretty and touching. She would
look at the man and smile tremulously and say, ‘I’m sorry, so--so sorry.
You have paid me the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman. But it
cannot be. So shall we be pals--just real pals?’”
“And he would redden and go to Africa, I suppose.
“No. I should think he would just hang about and hope that some day she
might change her mind. Girls often do, you know.”
She smiled and put out her hand. Sam, with a cold glance at the head
waiter, whom he considered to be standing much too near and looking much
too paternal, took it. He did more--he squeezed it. And an elderly
gentleman of Napoleonic presence, who had been lunching with a cabinet
minister in the main dining-room and was now walking through the court
on his way back to his office, saw the proceedings through the large
window and halted, spellbound.
For a long instant he stood there, gaping. He saw Kay smile. He saw Sam
take her hand. He saw Sam smile. He saw Sam hold her hand. And then it
seemed to him that he had seen enough. Abandoning his intention of
walking down Fleet Street, he hailed a cab.
“There’s Lord Tilbury,” said Kay, looking out.
“Yes?” said Sam. He was not interested in Lord Tilbury.
“Going back to work, I suppose. Isn’t it about time you were?”
“Perhaps it is. You wouldn’t care to come along and have a chat with
your uncle?”
“I may look in later. Just now I want to go to that messenger-boy office
in Northumberland Avenue and send off a note.”
“Important?”
“It is, rather,” said Kay. “Willoughby Braddock wanted me to do
something, and now I find that I shan’t be able to.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LORD TILBURY ENGAGES AN ALLY
§ 1
Although Lord Tilbury had not seen much of what had passed between Kay
and Sam at the luncheon table, he had seen quite enough; and as he drove
back to Tilbury House in his cab he was thinking hard and bitter
thoughts of the duplicity of the modern girl. Here, he reflected, was
one who, encountered at dinner on a given night, had as good as stated
in set terms that she thoroughly disliked Sam Shotter. And on the very
next afternoon, there she was, lunching with this same Sam Shotter,
smiling at this same Sam Shotter and allowing this same Shotter to press
her hand. It all looked very black to Lord Tilbury, and the only
solution that presented itself to him was that the girl’s apparent
dislike of Sam on the previous night had been caused by a lovers’
quarrel. He knew all about lovers’ quarrels, for his papers were full of
stories, both short and in serial form, that dealt with nothing else.
Oh, woman, woman! about summed up Lord Tilbury’s view of the affair.
He was, he perceived, in an extraordinarily difficult position. As he
had explained to his sister Frances on the occasion of Sam’s first visit
to the Mammoth Publishing Company, a certain tactfulness and diplomacy
in the handling of that disturbing young man were essential. He had not
been able, during his visit to America, to ascertain exactly how Sam
stood in the estimation of his uncle. The impression Lord Tilbury had
got was that Mr. Pynsent was fond of him. If, therefore, any
unpleasantness should occur which might lead to a breach between Sam and
the Mammoth Publishing Company, Mr. Pynsent might be expected to take
his nephew’s side, and this would be disastrous. Any steps, accordingly,
which were to be taken in connection with foiling the young man’s love
affair must be taken subtly and with stealth.
That such steps were necessary it never occurred to Lord Tilbury for an
instant to doubt. His only standard when it came to judging his fellow
creatures was the money standard, and it would have seemed ridiculous to
him to suppose that any charm or moral worth that Kay might possess
could neutralise the fact that she had not a penny in the world. He took
it for granted that Mr. Pynsent would see eye to eye with him in this
matter.
In these circumstances the helplessness of his position tormented him.
He paced the room in an agony of spirit. The very first move in his
campaign must obviously be to keep a watchful eye on Sam and note what
progress this deplorable affair of his was having. But Sam was in Valley
Fields and he was in London. What he required, felt Lord Tilbury, as he
ploughed to and fro over the carpet, his thumbs tucked into the armholes
of his waistcoat, his habit when in thought, was an ally. But what ally?
A secret-service man. But what secret-service man? A properly
accredited spy, who, introduced by some means into the young man’s
house, could look, listen and make daily reports on his behaviour.
But what spy?