"Oh, what a perfect beauty! Look, Bob. Free wheel, Bowden brakes,
everything."
The hall of Siege House was littered with wrappings and twine, in the
midst of which stood Delia Calmour, in a fervour of delight and
admiration, while her brother Bob extracted from its crate a brand new
bicycle which had just been delivered by railway van.
"Rather! Gee and Vincent, tip-top maker," pronounced the said Bob,
wheeling her machine clear of the litter and surveying it critically.
"You're in luck's way this time, Delia. First chop new bike for a
beginning, and now what about the damages? I'm only wondering whether
five hundred would be starting too low."
"Damages! What are you talking about?" said Delia shortly.
"Why, you got a toss, didn't you--a bad one too--and owing to Wagram's
wild beast. There you are. First-rate grounds for action. Damages a
dead cert. The only question is how much."
"Oh Bob, don't be such a beastly young cad," retorted Delia, with a
heightened colour and a flash in her eyes, plain speaking being the
custom at Siege House. "But then I forgot," she continued, coldly
ironical. "It's your trade to scent out plunder, or will be when you've
learnt it. Good boy, Bob. Stick to biz, and never miss a chance."
The point of which remark was that its object was in the employ of a
firm of solicitors. Incidentally, he was a loose hung, pale faced
youth, who was won't to turn on an exaggerated raffishness out of office
hours, under the impression that it was sporting.
"I should think not," retorted Bob angrily. "And I don't see any sense
in jumping down my throat because I want to do you a good turn."
"What are you kicking up such a row about Bob, and how the devil am I
going to get through my typing in the middle of all this jaw?"
The above, uttered in a sweet and fluty voice, proceeded from an
exceedingly handsome girl who now appeared from an adjoining door. She
had straight regular features of the classical order, and a pair of
large limpid blue eyes, the soulful innocence of whose expression
imparted an air of spirituality to the whole face. Yet never was
expression more entirely deceptive.
"Oh, keep your hair on, Clytie. I'm only telling Delia how to get five
hundred damages out of Wagram. You'd never have got your cool thou, out
of Vance if it hadn't been for me. It's her turn now," sneered Bob.
"You mean I'd never have got what your precious firm chose to pass on to
me out of it," retorted the girl serenely. Her brother grinned.
"Biz is biz and costs are costs. We don't want work for nothing in the
law," he added.
"We! M'yes. Grandiloquent, very. So that's the new bike?" going over
to examine it. "It is a ripper. D'you think there are any more African
wild beasts loose at Hilversea, Delia? I could do with a new bike
myself."
Delia, listening, was simply incapable of reply lest she should reveal
the lurid anger which was simmering beneath. Her long absence from home
and its incidents had gone far towards refining away the cynical
vulgarity of mind and speech which was the prevailing tone in her family
circle, from her father downwards. Not this alone, however, was at the
back of her present indignation. A week had elapsed since her
adventure, and the recollection of the acquaintanceship to which it had
led--matter of a few minutes as such had been--glowed fresh in her mind,
as indeed it had done ever since; though not for worlds would she have
let drop word or hint to those about her that such was the case. She
was by no means deficient in assurance and self-esteem, yet that day in
the presence of Wagram she had felt inferior. He had seemed to her as a
different order of being, this man whose prompt courage and readiness,
and the exercise thereof, had glided so naturally into the calm
considerate kindness whose first thought had been to make good her loss.
The refinement of his aspect and manner, the utter absence of even any
passing instinct to improve the situation, so different to those among
whom she lived and moved, had completed the spell of magnetism he had
all unconsciously cast over her, and in that short space her mind had
undergone a complete transformation. Had the case been put before her
as that of somebody else, Delia would unhesitatingly have pronounced it
as one of falling over head and ears in love. Being her own it took on
the aspect of a conversion to a sublime and compelling creed, the deity
whereof was Wagram. And this was the man against whom her brother was
suggesting a low and vulgar scheme of plunder--legal plunder, it was
true, but still plunder.
"Bob," she said at last. "If ever you propose such a thing again, from
that moment you and I are no longer on speaking terms. I never heard a
more unutterably caddish suggestion, and I've heard more than one as you
know," she added witheringly.
"Don't see it at all. Damage to person pursuing lawful way along a
public road--dangerous animal--property of `coiny' swells. Coiny swells
able to pay. Make 'em. What's the law for, I'd like to know?"
"To swindle and fleece respectable people. To fatten a pack of
bloodsucking thieves," answered Delia, with trembling lips and flashing
eyes. "In this instance I'd rather hang myself than have anything to do
with it. Law, indeed!"
"Would you?" growled Bob. "Well, then, you won't get any choice,
because the old man'll take it up, and then you'll have to come forward.
And he'll collar the damages instead of you."
"He'll get none. I'll refuse to appear."
"Ha--ha. You'll have to. You'll be subpoenaed."
"See here, my sucking Blackstone," struck in Clytie, answering for her
sister. "You remind one of the old chestnut about the judge who was
nicknamed Necessity, because he knew no law. You haven't even begun to
know any. Delia's of full age, and therefore no one could sue but her.
The old man's counted out."
"You seemed to know more than enough that time you were under
cross-examination," jeered the exasperated Bob.
"Yes, I didn't do badly," acquiesced Clytie, her serenity quite
unruffled. "But you know, Bob, you're an awful juggins--yes, an out and
out juggins."
"I suppose so. May I ask why?"
"Certainly. Here you are putting Delia up to a scheme which is like
being content with one silver spoon when you could collar the whole
swag." (The speaker was in course of typing a detective story.) "Now--
d'you see?"
"Hanged if I do," snorted Bob. "There's nothing in it either. These
Wagrams are rolling in coin, but you mustn't pitch your claim too high.
There's such a thing as `excessive' damages, appeal, and so forth.
How's that, old female Solomon? You see I do know a little about things
after all."
"Not anything--not anything," came the reply, sweetly smiling. "Who's
talking about damages? That's not the plum at all."
"What is, then?"
"Capture the man. See? It's quite simple. Capture the man. Yes?
Does that make your chin rap the toes of your boots?"
For Bob was standing open-mouthed. The cool audacity of the scheme had
struck him dazed, breathless.
"Fudge!" he snorted. "It can't be done."
"Why not?"
"Why not? Because these Wagrams are tip-top swells--regular high
flyers. I don't mean only that they've got pots of money, and just
about everything else. But, hang it all, look at them, look at us! No
fear. That cock won't fight, I tell you--no, not for half-an-hour."
"Not, eh? Bob, as I said before, you're a juggins; a juggins of the
first water," retorted Clytie, sweetly. "A man is always--a man. No
matter how tip-top, and so forth, he may be, there's no getting away
from that."
"Bosh! You've been reading too many of these high-falutin' novels they
give you to type. That sort of thing doesn't happen in real life, I
tell you."
"Your knowledge and experience of real life being exhaustive," was the
unruffled reply. "Let me tell you that sort of thing does happen in
real life, happens every day. It only wants working."
"Does it? I say, Clytie, why don't you take on the job yourself, as
Delia doesn't seem over sweet on it?" said Bob, with a guffaw. "That
heavenly expression of yours ought to carry all before it. It only
wants working. Ha--ha!"
"I'm scratched for that running," she answered serenely. "It's not for
nothing all the surrounding whelps--of your kidney, Bob, and others--
have labelled me `Damages.' But Delia--well she's, so to say, fresh on
the scene, and then, the adventure business gives her a first-rate send
off. I think this job might be worked. Now, Delia, let's have your
opinion on it for a change. I'm tired of Bob's."
"My opinion is that never in my life have I wasted half-an-hour
listening to such perfectly unutterable bosh as you two have been
talking--no, never," was the reply, short and emphatic; "and I don't
want to hear any more of it."
Clytie pursed up her very pretty lips and whistled meditatively. The
while she eyed her sister narrowly and read her like a book. As a
matter of fact the latter had not been so indifferent to their
conversation as she would have had them believe. Listening, her heart
had thrilled to a strange, wild venture of a hope, only to drop it, a
dead weight, as she thought of her relatives. Had they but met in a new
country far away from all such associations--well, who knew. To do her
justice, it was of the man she thought, the man entirely, and apart from
his circumstances and surroundings; indeed, she almost hated these, as
constituting an insurmountable barrier.
"As for saying `look at them and look at us,'" pursued Clytie, "why,
from all accounts, Mrs Wagram Wagram Number One was no very great
shakes."
"All the more reason why the said W.W. isn't going to be such a fool as
to repeat the experiment," said Bob. "By the way, didn't she shoot
herself in mistake for him, or something?"
"No; took too much morphia by mistake, and died. It was the only good
thing she ever did for him, for she used to lead him the very devil of a
life. She was a holy terror, from all accounts."
"And so you think he'll be such an ass as to risk it again, do you?"
"Certainly, my dear Bob. As I said before, a man is always--a man--
otherwise an ass. The thing stares you in the face every day."
"P'raps it does. Well, chip in, Delia. Chip in for all you know how.
We'll help you for all we do. By George, though, you'll have to begin
by turning Papist!"
"Hilversea Court's worth turning anything for," murmured Clytie.
"Oh, and there's the ready-made step-son," went on the odious Bob.
"We're forgetting him. How old is the young 'un, Clytie? About twelve,
isn't he?"
The query ended _staccato_. The ways of Siege House were strange and
summary, wherefore Delia, exasperated beyond endurance, had picked up a
heavy rubber golosh, one of a pair that stood in the hall, and had
launched it full and straight at the head of the offending youth, who
barely escaped by a prompt dive. In the midst of which sounded a ring
of the front gate bell.
"Now, who the very deuce can that be?" remarked Clytie.
"Maybe the old man's come in `fresh,' and can't fit his key," jeered
Bob.
"'Tisn't him. He wouldn't ring, he'd batter--especially if he's
`full,'" rejoined Clytie, whose knowledge of the paternal habits was
exhaustive. "One of us'll have to go to the door. Emily's out. Wait;
let's make sure first who it is."
She passed into a room whose windows afforded a view of the front gate,
only to reappear immediately in a state of suppressed excitement, a very
unusual thing for her.
"`Talk of the devil,'" she quoted. "Why, it's him."
"Who? The devil?" said Bob.
"No, you ass; Wagram Wagram himself! Now, Delia, you and I'll worry out
this tangle. Go in there," pushing her through a door. "And you, Bob,
make yourself scarce. You're not to appear, see?"
"Why not? Where do I come in?"
"Nowhere. We don't want you at all. You'd give away the whole show.
Come, git!"
Grumbling, Bob "got." He could not afford to run direct contrary to his
sisters' wishes when decidedly expressed; he was too much dependent on
their good offices in more ways than one. In abolishing him on this
occasion Clytie's judgment was sound. The descendants male of the
ex-army vet were a great deal less presentable than the descendants
female--and this she knew.