woman is going with Mr. Shotter to the theatre to-morrow afternoon.”
“Cor!” said Lord Tilbury.
He replaced the receiver. He remained for a moment in the deepest
thought. Then, swiftly reaching a decision, he went to the desk and took
out a cable form.
The wording of the cable gave him some little trouble. The first version
was so condensed that he could not understand it himself. He destroyed
the form and decided that this was no time for that economy which is
instinctive even to the richest men when writing cables. Taking another
form and recklessly dashing the expense, he informed Mr. Pynsent that,
in spite of the writer’s almost fatherly care, his nephew Samuel had
most unfortunately sneaked off surreptitiously and become entangled with
a young woman residing in the suburbs. He desired Mr. Pynsent to
instruct him in this matter.
The composition satisfied him. It was a good piece of work. He rang for
an underling and sent him with it to the cable office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
STORMY TIMES AT MON REPOS
§ 1
There are few pleasanter things in life than to sit under one’s own
rooftree and smoke the first pipe of the morning which so sets the seal
on the charms of breakfast. Sam, as he watched Hash clearing away the
remains of as goodly a dish of bacon and eggs and as fragrant a pot of
coffee as ever man had consumed, felt an uplifted thrill of well-being.
It was Saturday morning, and a darned good Saturday morning at
that--mild enough to permit of an open window, yet crisp enough to
justify a glowing fire.
“Hash,” said Sam, “have you ever felt an almost overwhelming desire to
break into song?”
“No,” said Hash, after consideration.
“You have never found yourself irresistibly compelled to render some old
Provençal _chansonnette_ breathing of love and youth and romance?”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Perhaps it’s as well. You wouldn’t be good at it, and one must consider
the neighbours. But I may tell you that I am feeling the urge to-day.
What’s that thing of Browning’s that you’re always quoting? Ah, yes!
‘The morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew-pearled.
God’s in his heaven;
All’s right with the world.’
That is how I feel.”
“How’d you like this bacon?” inquired Hash, picking up a derelict slice
and holding it against the light as if it were some rare _objet d’art_.
Sam perceived that his audience was not attuned to the lyrical note.
“I am too spiritual to be much of a judge of these things,” he said,
“but as far as I could gather it seemed all right.”
“Ha’penny a pound cheaper than the last,” said Hash with sober triumph.
“Indeed? Well, as I was saying, life seems decidedly tolerable to-day. I
am taking Miss Derrick to the theatre this afternoon, so I shall not be
back until lateish. Before I go, therefore, I have something to say to
you, Hash. I noticed a disposition on your part yesterday to try to
disintegrate our odd-job man. This must not be allowed to grow upon you.
When I return this evening I shall expect to find him all in one piece.”
“That’s all right, Sam,” replied Mr. Todhunter cordially. “All that
’appened there was that I let myself get what I might call rather ’asty.
I been thinking it over, and I’ve got nothing against the feller.”
This was true. Sleep, which knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, had
done much to soothe the troubled spirit of Hash Todhunter. The healing
effect of a night’s slumber had been to convince him that he had
wronged Claire. He proceeded to get Sam’s expert views on this.
“Suppose it was this way, Sam: Suppose a feller’s young lady went and
give another feller a cup of hot tea and cut him a slice of cake. That
wouldn’t ’ave to mean that she was flirting with ’im, would it?”
“Not at all,” said Sam warmly. “Far from it. I would call it evidence of
the kind heart rather than the frivolous mind.”
“Ah!”
“I may be dangerously modern,” said Sam, “but my view--and I give it
fearlessly--is that a girl may cut many a slice of cake and still remain
a good, sweet, womanly woman.”
“You see,” argued Hash, “he was wet.”
“Who was wet?”
“This feller Twist. Along of washing the dog. And Claire, she took and
give him a nice cup of hot tea and a slice of cake. Upset me at the
time, I’ll own, but I see where maybe I done ’er an injustice.”
“You certainly did, Hash. That girl is always doing that sort of thing
out of pure nobility of nature. Why, the first morning I was here she
gave me a complete breakfast--eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, marmalade and
everything.”
“No, did she?”
“You bet she did. She’s a jewel, and you’re lucky to get her.”
“Ah!” said Hash with fervour.
He gathered up the tray alertly and bore it downstairs to the kitchen,
where Chimp Twist eyed him warily. Although on his return to the house
on the previous night Chimp had suffered no injury at Hash’s hands, he
attributed this solely to the intervention of Sam, who had insisted on a
formal reconciliation; and he had just heard the front door bang behind
Sam. A nervous man who shrank from personal violence, particularly when
it promised to be so one-sided as in his present society, Chimp felt
apprehensive.
He was reassured by the geniality of his companion’s manner.
“Nice day,” said Hash.
“Lovely,” said Chimp, relieved.
“’As that dog ’ad ’er breakfast?”
“She was eating a shoe when I saw her last.”
“Ah, well, maybe that’ll do her till dinnertime. Nice dog.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Nice weather.”
“Yes, yes.”
“If the rain ’olds off, it’ll be a regular nice day.”
“It certainly will.”
“And if it rains,” continued Hash, sunnily optimistic, “I see by the
paper that the farmers need it.”
It was a scene which would have rejoiced the heart of Henry Ford or any
other confirmed peacemaker; and Chimp, swift, in his canny fashion, to
take advantage of his companion’s miraculous cordiality, put a tentative
question.
“Sleep well last night?”
“Like a top.”
“So did I. Say,” said Chimp enthusiastically, “that’s a swell bed I’ve
got.”
“Ah?”
“Yes, sir, that’s one swell bed. And a dandy room too. And I been
thinking it over, and it don’t seem right that I should have that dandy
room and that swell bed, seeing that I came here after you. So what say
we exchange?”
“Change rooms?”
“Yes, sir; you have my swell big front room and I have your poky little
back room.”
The one fault which undoes diplomatists more than any other is the
temptation to be too elaborate. If it had been merely a case of
exchanging rooms, as two medieval monarchs, celebrating a truce, might
have exchanged chargers and suits of armour, Hash would probably have
consented. He would have thought it silly, but he would have done it by
way of a gesture indicating his opinion of the world’s excellence this
morning and of his desire to show Mr. Twist that he had forgiven him and
wished him well. But the way the other put it made it impossible for any
man feeling as generous and amiable as he did to become a party to a
scheme for turning this charming fellow out of a swell front room and
putting him in a poky back one.
“Couldn’t do it,” he said.
“I cert’nly wish you would.”
“No,” said Hash. “No; couldn’t do it.”
Chimp sighed and returned to his solitaire. Hash, full of the milk of
human kindness, went out into the garden. It had occurred to him that at
about this time of day Claire generally took a breather in the open
after the rough work of making the beds. She was strolling up and down
the gravel path.
“Hullo,” she said.
“Hullo,” said Hash. “Nice day.”
A considerable proportion of the pathos of life comes from the
misunderstandings that arise between male and female through the
inability of a man with an untrained voice to convey the emotions
underlying his words. Hash supposed that he had spoken in a way that
would show Claire that he considered her an angel of light and a credit
to her sex. If he was slightly more formal than usual, that was because
he was feeling embarrassed at the thought of the injustice he had done
her at their last meeting.
Claire, however, noting the formality--for it was customary with him to
couch his morning’s greeting in some such phrase as “Hullo, ugly!” or
“What cheer, face!”--attributed it to that growing coldness of which she
had recently become aware. Her heart sank. She became provocative.
“How’s Mr. Twist this morning?”
“Oh, he’s fine.”
“Not been quarrelling with him, have you?”
“Who, me?” cried Hash, shocked. “Why, him and me is the best of
friends!”
“Oh?”
“We just been having a chat.”
“About me?”
“No; about the weather and the dog and how well we slept last night.”
Claire scraped at the gravel with the toe of her shoe.
“Oh! Well, I’ve got to go and wash the dishes,” she said. “Goo’
mornin’.”
§ 2
Hash Todhunter was not a swift-thinking man. Nor was he one of those
practised amateurs of the sex who can read volumes in a woman’s glance
and see in a flash exactly what she means when she scrapes arabesques on
a gravel path with the toe of her shoe. For some three hours and more,
therefore, he remained in a state of perfect content. And then suddenly,
while smoking a placid after-luncheon pipe, his mood changed and there
began to seep into the hinterlands of his mind the idea that in Claire’s
manner at their recent meeting there had been something decidedly
peculiar.
He brooded over this; and as the lunch which he had cooked and eaten
fought what was for the moment a winning battle with his organs of
digestion, there crept over him a sombre alarm. Slowly, but with a
persistence not to be denied, the jealousy of which sleep had cured him
began to return. He blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke and through it
stared bleakly at Chimp Twist, who was in a reverie on the other side of
the kitchen table.
It came to him, not for the first time, that he did not like Chimp’s
looks. Handsome not even his mother could have called Chimp Twist; and
yet there was about him a certain something calculated to inspire
uneasiness in an engaged man. He had that expression in his eyes which
home wreckers wear in the movies. A human snake, if ever there was one,
felt Hash, as his interior mechanism strove vainly to overcome that
which he had thrust upon it.
Nor did his recollection of Claire’s conversation bring any reassurance.
So brief it had been that he could remember everything she had said.
And it had all been about that black-hearted little object across the
table.
“How’s Mr. Twist this morning?” A significant question. “Not been
quarrelling with him, have you?” A fishy remark. And then he had said
that they had been having a chat, and she had asked, “About me?”
So moved was Hash by the recollection of this that he took the pipe out
of his mouth and addressed his companion with an abruptness that was
almost violent:
“Hey!”
Chimp looked up with a start. He had been pondering whether it might not
possibly come within the scope of an odd-job man’s duties to put a
ladder against the back of the house and climb up it and slap a coat of
paint on the window frame of the top back room. Then, when Hash was
cooking dinner----
“Hullo?” he said, blinking. He was surprised to see that the other, who
had been geniality itself during lunch, was regarding him with a cold
and suspicious hostility.
“Want to ask you something,” said Hash.
“Spill it,” said Chimp, and smiled nervously.
It was an unfortunate thing for him to have done, for he did not look
his best when smiling. It seemed to Hash that his smile was furtive and
cunning.
“Want to know,” said Hash, “if there are any larks on?”
“Eh?”
“You and my young lady next door--there’s nothing what you might call
between you, is there?”
“’Course not!” cried Chimp in agitation.
“Well,” said Hash weightily, “there better hadn’t be. See?”
He rose, feeling a little better, and, his suspicions momentarily
quieted, he proceeded to the garden, where he chirruped for a while over
the fence. This producing no response, he climbed the fence and peeped
in through the kitchen window of San Rafael. The kitchen was empty.
“Gone for a walk,” diagnosed Hash, and felt a sense of injury. If Claire
wanted to go for a walk, why hadn’t she asked him to come too? He did
not like it. It seemed to him that love must have grown cold. He
returned to Mon Repos and embarrassed the sensitive Mr. Twist by staring
at him for twenty minutes almost without a blink.
Claire had not gone for a walk. She had taken the 12:10 train to
Victoria and had proceeded thence to Mr. Braddock’s house in John
Street. It was her intention to put the facts before her mother and from
that experienced woman to seek advice in this momentous crisis of her
life. Her faith in Aunt Ysobel had not weakened, but there is never any
harm done by getting the opinion of a second specialist. For Claire’s
uneasiness had been growing ever since that talk with Hash across the
fence that morning. His manner had seemed to her peculiar. Nor did her
recollection of his conversation bring any reassurance.
“How’s Mr. Twist this morning?” she had asked. And instead of looking
like one about to joust, he had replied heartily, “Oh, he’s fine.” A
disturbing remark.
And then he had gone on to say that he and Chimp were the best of
friends. It was with tight lips and hard eyes that Claire, replying
absently to the paternal badinage of Sleddon, the butler, made her way
into her mother’s presence. Mrs. Lippett, consulted, proved
uncompromisingly pro-Aunt Ysobel.
“That’s what I call a sensible woman, Clara.”
“Claire,” corrected her daughter mechanically.
“She knows.”
“That’s what I think.”
“Ah, she’s suffered, that woman has,” said Mrs. Lippett. “You can see
that. Stands to reason she couldn’t know so much about life if she
hadn’t suffered.”
“Then you’d go on testing him?” said Claire anxiously.
“Test him more and more,” said Mrs. Lippett. “There’s no other way.
You’ve got to remember, dearie, that your Clarence is a sailor, and
sailors has to be handled firm. They say sailors don’t care. I say they
must be made to care. That’s what I say.”
Claire made the return journey on an omnibus. For purposes of thought
there is nothing like a ride on the top of an omnibus. By four o’clock,
when the vehicle put her down at the corner of Burberry Road, her
resolution was as chilled steel and she had got her next move all
planned out. She went into the kitchen for a few moments, and coming out
into the garden, perceived Hash roaming the lawn of Mon Repos.
“Hi!” she called, and into her voice managed to project a note of
care-free liveliness.
“Where you been?” inquired Hash.
“I been up seeing mother.... Is Mr. Twist indoors?”
“What do you want with Mr. Twist?”
“Just wanted to give him this--something I promised him.”
This was an envelope, lilac in colour and scent, and Hash, taking it and
gazing upon it as he might have gazed upon an adder nestling in his
palm, made a disturbing discovery.
“There’s something inside this.”
“Of course there is. If there wasn’t, what ’ud I be giving it him for?”
Hash’s fingers kneaded the envelope restlessly.
“What you writing to him about?”
“Never mind.”
“There’s something else inside this ’ere envelope besides a letter.
There’s something that sort of crinkles when you squeeze it.”
“Just a little present I promised to give him.”
A monstrous suspicion flamed in Hash Todhunter’s mind. It seemed
inconceivable, and yet---- He tore open the envelope and found his
suspicion fulfilled. Between his fingers there dangled a lock of
tow-coloured hair.
“When you’ve finished opening other people’s letters----” said Claire.
She looked at him, hopefully at first, and then with a growing despair.
For Hash’s face was wooden and expressionless.
“I’m glad,” said Hash huskily at length. “I been worried, but now I’m
not worried. I been worried because I been worrying about you and me not
being suited to one another and ’aving acted ’asty; but now I’m not
worried, because I see there’s another feller you’re fond of, so the
worry about what was to be done and everything don’t worry me no more.
He’s in the kitchen,” said Hash in a gentle rumble. “I’ll give him this
and explain ’ow it come to be opened in error.”
Nothing could have exceeded the dignity of his manner, but there are
moments when women chafe at masculine dignity.
“Aren’t you going to knock his head off?” demanded Claire distractedly.
“Me?” said Hash, looking as nearly as he could like the picture of Saint
Sebastian in the Louvre. “Me? Why should I knock the pore feller’s ’ead
off? I’m glad. Because I was worried, and now I’m not worried--see what
I mean?”
Before Claire’s horrified eyes and through a world that rocked and
danced, he strode toward the kitchen of Mon Repos, bearing the envelope
daintily between finger and thumb. He seemed calm and at peace. He
looked as if he might be humming.
Inside the kitchen, however, his manner changed. Chimp Twist, glancing
up from his solitaire, observed in the doorway, staring down at him, a
face that seemed to his excited imagination to have been equipped with
searchlights instead of eyes. Beneath these searchlights was a mouth
that appeared to be gnashing its teeth. And from this mouth, in a brief
interval of gnashing, proceeded dreadful words.
The first that can be printed were the words “Put ’em up!”
Mr. Twist, rising, slid like an eel to the other side of the table.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded in considerable agitation.
“I’ll show you what’s the matter,” said Hash, after another verbal
interlude which no compositor would be allowed by his union to set up.
“Come out from behind that table like a man and put your ’ands up!”
Mr. Twist rejected this invitation.
“I’m going to take your ’ead,” continued Hash, sketching out his plans,
“and I’m going to pull it off, and then----”
What he proposed to do after this did not intrigue Chimp. He foiled a
sudden dash with an inspired leap.
“Come ’ere,” said Hash coaxingly.
His mind clearing a little, he perceived that the root of the trouble,
the obstacle which was standing in the way of his aims, was the table.
It was a heavy table, but with a sharp heave he tilted it on its side
and pushed it toward the stove. Chimp, his first line of defense thus
demolished, shot into the open, and Hash was about to make another
offensive movement when the dog Amy, who had been out in the garden
making a connoisseur’s inspection of the dustbin, strolled in and
observed with pleasure that a romp was in progress.
Amy was by nature a thoughtful dog. Most of her time, when she was not
eating or sleeping, she spent in wandering about with wrinkled forehead,
puzzling over the cosmos. But she could unbend. Like so many
philosophers, she loved an occasional frolic, and this one appeared to
be of exceptional promise.
The next moment Hash, leaping forward, found his movements impeded by
what seemed like several yards of dog. It was hard for him to tell
without sorting the tangle out whether she was between his legs or
leaning on his shoulder. Certainly she was licking his face; but on the
other hand, he had just kicked her with a good deal of violence, which
seemed to indicate that she was on a lower level.
“Get out!” cried Hash.
The remark was addressed to Amy, but the advice it contained was so
admirable that Chimp Twist acted on it without hesitation. In the swirl
of events he had found himself with a clear path to the door, and along
this path he shot without delay. And not until he had put the entire
length of Burberry Road between him and his apparently insane aggressor
did he pause.
Then he mopped his forehead and said, “Gee!”
It seemed to Chimp Twist that a long walk was indicated--a walk so long
that by the time he reached Mon Repos again, Sam, his preserver, would
have returned and would be on the spot to protect him.
Hash, meanwhile, raged, baffled. He had extricated himself from Amy and
had rushed out into the road, but long ere that his victim had
disappeared. He went back to try to find Amy and rebuke her, but Amy had
disappeared too. In spite of her general dreaminess, there was sterling
common sense in Amy. She knew when and when not to be among those
present.
Hash returned to his kitchen and remained there, seething. He had been
seething for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when the front doorbell rang.
He climbed the stairs gloomily; and such was his disturbed frame of
mind that not even the undeniable good looks of the visitor who had rung
could soothe him.
“Mr. Shotter in?”
He recognised her now. It was the young party that had called on the
previous evening, asking for Sam. And, as on that occasion, he seemed to
see through the growing darkness the same sturdy male person hovering
about in the shadows.
“No, miss, he ain’t.”
“Expecting him back soon?”
“No, miss, I ain’t. He’s gone to the theatre, to a mat-i-nay.”
“Ah,” said the lady, “is that so?” And she made a sudden, curious
gesture with her parasol.
“Sorry,” said Hash, melting a little, for her eyes were very bright.
“Can’t be helped. You all alone here then?”
“Yes.”
“Tough luck.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, miss,” said Hash, pleased by her sympathy.
“Well, I won’t keep you. ’Devening.”
“’Evening, miss.”
Hash closed the door. Whistling a little, for his visitor had lightened
somehow the depression which was gnawing at him, he descended the stairs
and entered the kitchen.
Something which appeared at first acquaintance to be the ceiling, the
upper part of the house and a ton of bricks thrown in for good measure
hit Hash on the head and he subsided gently on the floor.
§ 3
Soapy Molloy came to the front door and opened it. He was a little pale,
and he breathed heavily.
“All right?” said his wife eagerly.
“All right.”
“Tied him up?”
“With a clothesline.”
“How about if he hollers?”
“I’ve put a duster in his mouth.”
“At-a-boy!” said Mrs. Molloy. “Then let’s get action.”
They climbed the stairs to where the cistern stood, and Mr. Molloy,
removing his coat, rolled up his sleeves.
Some minutes passed, and then Mr. Molloy, red in the face and wet in the
arm, made a remark.
“But it must be there!” cried his wife.
“It isn’t.”
“You haven’t looked.”
“I’ve looked everywhere. There couldn’t be a toothpick in that thing
without I’d have found it.” He expelled a long breath and his face grew
bleak. “Know what I think?”
“What?”
“That little oil can, Chimp, has slipped one over on us--told us the
wrong place.”
The plausibility of this theory was so obvious that Mrs. Molloy made no
attempt to refute it. She bit her lip in silence.
“Then let’s you and me get busy and find the right place,” she said at
length, with the splendid fortitude of a great woman. “We know the
stuff’s in the house somewheres, and we got the place to ourselves.”
“It’s taking a chance,” said Mr. Molloy doubtfully. “Suppose somebody
was to come and find us here.”
“Well, then, all you would do would be to just simply haul off and bust
them one, same as you did the hired man.”
“’M, yes,” said Mr. Molloy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SOAPY MOLLOY’S BUSY AFTERNOON
§ 1
The unwelcome discovery of the perfidy of Chimp Twist had been made by
Mr. Molloy and his bride at about twenty minutes past four. At 4:30 a
natty two-seater car drew up at the gate of San Rafael and Willoughby
Braddock alighted. Driving aimlessly about the streets of London some
forty minutes earlier, and feeling rather at a loose end, it had
occurred to him that a pleasant way of passing the evening would be to
go down to Valley Fields and get Kay to give him a cup of tea.
Mr. Braddock was in a mood of the serenest happiness. And if this seems
strange, seeing that only recently he had had a proposal of marriage
rejected, it should be explained that he had regretted that hasty
proposal within two seconds of dropping the letter in the letter box.
And he had come to the conclusion that, much as he liked Kay, what had
induced him to offer her his hand and heart had been the fact that he
had had a good deal of champagne at dinner and that its after effects
had consisted of a sort of wistful melancholy which had removed for the
time his fundamental distaste for matrimony. He did not want matrimony;
he wanted adventure. He had not yet entirely abandoned hope that some
miracle might occur to remove Mrs. Lippett from the scheme of things;
and when that happened, he wished to be free.
Yes, felt Willoughby Braddock, everything had turned out extremely well.
He pushed open the gate of San Rafael with the debonair flourish of a
man without entanglements. As he did so, the front door opened and Mr.
Wrenn came out.
“Oh, hullo,” said Mr. Braddock. “Kay in?”