JIMMY MARRABLE
Luncheon on the whole was a success, though Mrs. Gunn's behaviour
exceeded anything that Hughie had feared.
She began by keeping the ladies adjusting their hair in Hughie's bedroom
for something like ten minutes, while she recited to them a detailed and
revolting description of her most recent complaint. Later, she initiated
an impromptu and unseemly campaign--beginning with a skirmish of
whispers in the doorway, swelling uproariously to what sounded like a
duet between a cockatoo and a bloodhound on the landing outside, and
dying away to an irregular fire of personal innuendoes, which dropped
over the banisters one by one, like the gentle dew of heaven, on to the
head of the retreating foe beneath--with a kitchen-man over a thumb-mark
on a pudding-plate.
But fortunately for Hughie the company tacitly agreed to regard her as a
form of comic relief; and when she kept back the salad-dressing for the
express purpose--frustrated at the very last moment--of pouring it over
the sweets; yea, even when she suddenly plucked a hairpin from her head
with which to spear a wasp in the grassy corner pudding, the ladies
agreed that she was "an old pet." When Mrs. Ames went so far as to
follow her into the gyp-room after lunch and thank her for her trouble
in waiting upon them, Mrs. Gunn, divided between extreme gratification
and a desire to lose no time, unlimbered her batteries at once; and
Hughie's tingling ears, as he handed round the coffee, overheard the
portentous and mysterious fragment: "Well, mum, I put 'im straight to
bed, and laid a hot flannel on his--," just as the door of the gyp-room
swung to with a merciful bang.
It was now after two, and Hughie, in response to a generally expressed
desire, laid before his guests a detailed programme for the afternoon.
He proposed, first of all, to show them round the College. After that
the party would proceed to Ditton Paddock in charge of Mr. Richard
Lunn--who, it will be remembered, had been selected by Hughie as
cavalier on account of his exceptional qualifications for the post--in
company with a substantial tea-basket, the contents of which he hoped
would keep them fortified in body and spirit until the races began with
the Second Division, about five-thirty.
"How are you going to get us down to Ditton, Hughie?" inquired his
uncle.
"Well, there's a fly which will hold five of you, and I thought"--Hughie
cleared his throat--"I could take the other one down in a canoe."
There was a brief pause, while the company, glancing at one another with
varying expressions of solemnity, worked out mental problems in
Permutations and Combinations. Presently the tactless Ames inquired:--
"Which one are you going to take in the canoe?"
"Oh, anybody," said Hughie, in a voice which said as plainly as
possible: "Silly old ass!"
However, realising that it is no use to continue skirmishing after your
cover has been destroyed, he directed a gaze of invitation upon Miss
Freshwater, who was sitting beside him on the seat.
She turned to him before he could speak.
"Hughie," she said softly, "take that child. Just look at her!"
Hughie obediently swallowed something, and turned to the wide-eyed and
wistful picture on the sofa.
"Will you come, Joey?" he inquired.
The lady addressed signified, by a shudder of ecstasy, that the answer
to the invitation was in the affirmative.
"Meanwhile," said Mr. Marrable, "I am going to smoke a cigar before I
stir out of this room. And if you people will spare Hughie for ten
minutes, I'll keep him here and have a short talk with him. I must go
back to-night."
The accommodating Mr. Lunn suggested that this interval should be
bridged by a personally conducted expedition to his rooms downstairs,
where he would have great pleasure in exhibiting to the company a
"rather decent" collection of door-knockers and bell-handles, the
acquisition of which articles of _vertu_ (he being a youth of strong
wrist and fleet foot) was a special hobby of his.
Hughie was left alone with his uncle--the only relation he possessed in
the world, and the man who had been to him both father and mother for
nearly eighteen years.
Hughie had been born in India. His recollections of his parents were
vague in the extreme, but if he shut both eyes and pressed hard upon
them with his hands he could summon up various pictures of a beautiful
lady, whose arms were decked with glittering playthings that jingled
musically when she carved the chicken for Hughie's nursery dinner. He
particularly remembered these arms, for their owner had a pleasant habit
of coming up to kiss him good-night after his ayah had put him to bed.
On these occasions they were always bare; and Hughie remembered quite
distinctly how much more comfortable they were then than next morning at
tiffin, when they were enclosed in sleeves which sometimes scratched.
Of his father he remembered less, except that he was a very large person
who wore gorgeous raiment of scarlet. Also things on his heels which
clicked. He had a big voice, too, this man, and he used to amuse himself
by training Hughie to stand stiffly erect whenever he cried, "'Shun!"
Hughie also remembered a voyage on a big ship, where the passengers made
much of him, and a fascinating person in a blue jersey (which
unfortunately scratched) presented him with numerous string balls, which
smelt most gloriously of tar but always fell into the Indian Ocean or
some other inaccessible place.
Then he remembered arriving with his parents at a big bungalow in a
compound full of grassplots and flower-beds, where a person whom he
afterwards learned to call Uncle Jimmy greeted him gravely and asked him
to accept his hospitality for a time. After that--quite soon--he
remembered saying good-bye to his parents, or rather, his parents saying
good-bye to him. The big man shook him long and solemnly by the hand,
which hurt a good deal but impressed Hughie deeply, and the beautiful
lady's arms--with thick sleeves on, too!--clung round Hughie's neck till
he thought he would choke. But he stood stiffly at "'shun" all the time,
because his parents seemed thoroughly unhappy about something, and he
desired to please them. He had never had a woman's arms round his neck
since.
After his parents had gone, he settled down happily enough in the big
compound, which he soon learned to call "the garding." The name of the
bungalow he gathered from most of the people with whom he came in
contact was "The 'All," though there were some who called it "Manors,"
and Uncle Jimmy, who, too, apparently possessed more than one name, was
invariably referred to by Hughie's friends in the village as "Ole
Peppery."
Very shortly after his parents' departure Hughie overheard a
conversation between his uncle and Mrs. Capper, the lady who managed the
household, which puzzled him a good deal.
"Understand, Capper, I won't have it," said his uncle.
"Think what people will say, sir," urged Mrs. Capper respectfully but
insistently.
"I don't care a"--Capper coughed discreetly here--"what people say. The
boy is not going to be decked out in crape and hearse-plumes to please
you or any other old woman."
"Hearse-plumes would not be essential, sir," said the literal Capper.
"But I think the child should have a little black suit."
"The child will run about in his usual rags," replied Old Peppery, in a
voice of thunder; "and if I catch you or any one else stuffing him up
with yarns about canker-worms or hell-fire, or any trimmings of that
description, I tell you straight that there will be the father and
mother of a row."
"Yes, sir," said Capper meekly. "And I desire, sir," she added in the
same even tone, "to give warning."
Thereupon Uncle Jimmy had stamped his way downstairs to the hall, and
Hughie was left wondering what the warning could have been which Mrs.
Capper desired to utter. It must have been a weighty one, for she
continued to deliver it at intervals during the next ten years, long
indeed after Hughie's growing intelligence had discovered its meaning.
But her utterances received about as much attention from her employer as
Cassandra's from hers.
However, the immediate result of the conversation recorded above
was that Mrs. Capper made no attempt to deck Hughie in crape or
hearse-plumes; and later on, when he was old enough to understand the
meaning of death, his uncle told him how his parents had gone to their
God together--"the happiest fate, old man, that can fall on husband and
wife"--one stormy night in the Bay of Biscay, in company with every
other soul on board the troop-ship Helianthus, and that henceforth
Hughie must be prepared to regard the broken-down old buffer before him
as his father and mother.
Hughie had gravely accepted this arrangement, and for more than
seventeen years he and his uncle had treated one another as father and
son.
Jimmy Marrable was a little eccentric,--but so are most old
bachelors,--and like a good many eccentric men he rather prided himself
on his peculiarities. If anything, he rather cultivated them. One of his
most startling characteristics was a habit of thinking aloud. He would
emerge unexpectedly from a brown study, to comment to himself with
stunning suddenness and absolute candour on the appearance and manners
of those around him. It was credibly reported that he had once taken a
rather intense and voluble lady in to dinner, and after regarding her
for some time with a fixity of attention which had deluded the good soul
into the belief that he was hanging on her lips, had remarked to
himself, with appalling distinctness, during a lull in the conversation:
"Guinea set--misfit at the top--gutta-percha fixings--wonder they don't
drop into her soup!" and continued his meal without any apparent
consciousness of having said anything unusual.
He was eccentric, too, about other matters. Once Hughie, returning from
school for his holidays, discovered that there had been an addition to
the family in his absence.
Mrs. Capper's very face in the hall told him that something was wrong.
Its owner informed Hughie that though one should be prepared to take
life as one found it, and live and let live had been her motto from
infancy, her equilibrium ever since the thing had happened had lain at
the mercy of the first aggressively disposed feather that came along,
and what people in the neighbourhood would say she dared not think.
She ran on. Hughie waited patiently, and presently unearthed the facts.
A few weeks ago the master had returned from a protracted visit to
London, bringing with him two children. He had announced that the
pair were henceforth to be regarded as permanent inmates of the
establishment. Beyond the fact that one brat was fair and a boy and the
other darkish and a girl, and that Mrs. Capper had given warning on
sight, Hughie could elicit nothing, and waited composedly for his uncle
to come home from shooting.
Jimmy Marrable, when he arrived, was not communicative. He merely stated
that the little devils were the children of an old friend of his, called
Gaymer, who had died suddenly and left them to be brought up by him as
guardian.
"And Hughie, my son," he concluded, "if you don't want your head bitten
off you will refrain in this case from indulging in your propensity for
asking why and getting to the bottom of things. I'm not best pleased at
finding them on my hands, but here they are and there's an end of it.
The girl is five--ten years younger than you--and the boy's eight. She
is called Joan, and his idiotic name is Lancelot Wellesley. I wonder
they didn't christen him Galahad Napoleon! Come upstairs and see them."
All this had occurred seven years ago. During that time Lancelot
Wellesley Gaymer had grown up sufficiently to go to a public school, and
consequently Miss Joan Gaymer had been left very much in the company of
the curious old gentleman whom she had soon learned to call Unker Zimmy.
Of their relations it will be sufficient at present to mention that a
more curiously assorted and more thoroughly devoted couple it would be
difficult to find.
Jimmy Marrable reclined on the window seat and smoked his cigar. His
nephew, enviously eyeing the blue smoke, sprawled in an arm-chair.
"Hughie," said the elder man suddenly, "how old are you? Twenty-one,
isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And are you going down for good next week?"
"Yes." Hughie sighed.
"Got a degree?"
"Tell you on Tuesday."
"Tell me now."
"Well--yes, I should think."
"What in?"
"Mechanical Stinks--Engineering. Second Class, if I'm lucky."
"Um. Got any vices?"
"Not specially."
"Drink?"
"No."
"Not a teetotaller?" said Jimmy Marrable in some concern.
"No."
"That's good. Ever been drunk?"
"Yes."
"Badly, I mean. I'm not talking about bump-supper exhilaration."
"Only once."
"When?"
"My first term."
"What for?"
"To see what it was like."
"Perfectly sound proceeding," commented Jimmy Marrable. "What were your
impressions of the experiment?"
"I haven't got any," said Hughie frankly. "I only woke up next morning
in bed with my boots on."
"Who put you there?"
"Seven other devils."
"And you have not repeated the experiment?"
"No. There's no need. I know my capacity to a glass now."
"Then you know something really worth knowing," remarked Jimmy Marrable
with sincerity. "Now, what are you going to do with yourself? Why not go
and see the world a bit? You have always wanted to. And do it thoroughly
while you are about it. Take five years over it; ten if you like. You
_will_ like, you know. It's in the blood. That's why I think you are
wise not to want to enter the Service. You can always scrape in
somewhere if there _is_ a war, and barrack-life in time of peace
would corrode your very heart out. It nearly killed your dad at
five-and-twenty. That was why he exchanged and took to the Frontier, and
ended his days in command of a Goorkha regiment. Life at first hand;
that's what we Marrables thrive on! I never set foot in this country
myself between the ages of twenty and thirty-three. I would come with
you again if it wasn't for Anno Domini--and the nippers. But you'll find
a good many old friends of mine dotted about the world. They're not all
folk I could give you letters of introduction to--some of 'em don't
speak English and others can't read and write; but they'll show you the
ropes better than any courier. You take my advice, and go. England is no
place for a young man with money and no particular profession, until
he's over thirty and ready to marry. Will you go, Hughie?"
Hughie's expression showed that he was considering the point rather
reluctantly. His uncle continued:--
"Money all right, I suppose? You have eight hundred a-year now you are
of age. Got any debts, eh? I'll help you."
"None to speak of. Thanks all the same."
"Well; why not go?"
"I should like to go more than anything," said Hughie slowly, "but--"
"Well?"
"I don't know--that is--"
"I _do_," said Jimmy Marrable with characteristic frankness. "You are
struggling between an instinct which tells you to do the sensible thing
and an overpowering desire to do a dashed silly one."
Hughie grew very red.
His uncle continued:--
"You want to marry that girl."
Hughie blazed up.
"I do," he said, rather defiantly.
The cigar glowed undisturbedly.
"You think that life has no greater happiness to offer you?"
"I am sure of it," said Hughie, with an air of one stating a simple
truth.
"And you are twenty-one?"
"Ye--es," with less fire.
Jimmy Marrable smoked reflectively for a few minutes.
"I am an old bachelor," he said at last, "and old bachelors are supposed
to know nothing about love-affairs. The truth of course is that they
know far more than any one else."
Hughie was accustomed to these _obiter dicta_.
"Why?" he asked dutifully.
"Well, for the same reason that a broken swashbuckler knows a deal more
about soldiering than a duly enrolled private of the line. He has had a
more varied experience. The longer a man remains a bachelor the more he
learns about women; and the more he learns about women the better able
he will be to make his way in the world. Therefore, if he marries young
he reduces his chances of success in life to a minimum. The sad part
about it all is that, provided he gets the girl he wants, he doesn't
care. That, by the way, is the reason why nearly all the most famous men
in history have either been unhappily married or not married at all.
Happiness has no history. Happily married men are never ambitious. They
don't go toiling and panting after--"
"They have no need to," said Hughie. "A man doesn't go on running after
a tram-car after he has caught it."
"That begs the question, Hughie. It presumes that all the available
happiness in the world is contained in one particular tram-car. Besides,
the tram-cars you mean are intended for men over thirty. The young ought
to walk."
Hughie realised that the conversation was growing rather too subtle for
him, and reverted to plain cut and thrust.
"Then you think no man should marry before thirty?" he said.
"Nothing of the kind! It depends on the man. If he is a steady, decent,
average sort of fellow, who regards a ledger as a Bible and an
office-stool as a stepping-stone to the summit of the universe, and
possesses no particular aptitude for the rough-and-tumble of life, the
sooner he marries and settles down as a contented old pram-pusher the
better for him and the nation. Do you fancy yourself in that line,
Hughie?"
"No-o-o," said Hughie reluctantly. "But I might learn," he added
hopefully. "I'm a pretty adaptable bloke."
Jimmy Marrable threw his cigar-end out of the window, and sat up.
"Listen, Hughie," he said, "and I'll tell you what you _really_ are. You
are the son of a mother who climbed out of her bedroom window (and let
herself down a rain-pipe that I wouldn't have trusted a monkey on) in
order to elope with the man she loved. Your father was the commander of
as tough a native regiment as I have ever known. Your grandfather was an
explorer. I've been a bit of a rolling-stone myself. About one relation
of yours in three dies in his bed. You come of a stock which prefers to
go and see things for itself rather than read about them in the
newspaper, and which has acquired a considerable knowledge of the art of
handling men in the process. Those are rather rare assets. If you take a
woman in tow at the tender age of twenty-one, there will be a disaster.
Either you will sit at home and eat your heart out, or you will go
abroad and leave her to eat out hers. Am I talking sense?"
Hughie sighed like a furnace.
"Yes, confound you!" he said.
"Will you promise not to rush into matrimony, then?"
"Perhaps she'll wait for me," mused Hughie.
"How old is she?"
"Twenty-one, like me."
"H'm," remarked Jimmy Marrable drily. "That means that she is for all
practical purposes ten years your senior. However, perhaps she will.
Pigs might fly. But will you promise me to think the matter over very
carefully before deciding not to go abroad?"
"Yes," said Hughie.
"That being the case," continued his uncle briskly, "I want to tell you
one or two things. If you do go, I may never see you again."
"I say," said Hughie in alarm, "there's nothing wrong with your health,
is there, old man?"
"Bless you, no! But once a Marrable takes to the wilds Methuselah
himself couldn't reckon on living long enough to see him again. So I am
going to talk to you while I've got you. I am taking this opportunity of
being near town to see my solicitor and make my will. I am fit enough,
but I am fifty this year; and at that age a man ought to make some
disposition of his property. I may as well tell you that I have left you
nothing. Annoyed?"
"Not in the least."
"And I have left nothing to Master Lance."
Hughie looked a little surprised at this.
"I mean to start him on his own legs before my demise," explained Jimmy
Marrable. "Immediately, in fact. That is partly what I am going up to
town for. I am investing a sum for him which ought to bring him in about
two hundred a year for the rest of his life. He's nearly sixteen now,
and he'll have to administer his income himself--pay his own
school-bills and everything. Just as I made you do. Nothing like
accustoming a boy to handling money when he's young. Then he doesn't go
a mucker when he suddenly comes into a lot of it. I shan't give him
more, because it would prevent him from working. Two hundred won't. A
slug would perhaps live contentedly enough on it, but Lancelot Wellesley
Gaymer is a pretentious young sweep, and he'll work in order to gain the
means for making a splash. The two hundred will keep him going till he
finds his feet."
Jimmy Marrable paused, and surveyed his nephew rather irritably.
"Well," he inquired at length, "haven't you any contribution to make to
this conversation?"
"Can't say I have had much chance so far," replied the disrespectful
Hughie.
"Don't you want to know what I'm going to do with the rest of my money?
That's a question that a good many people are worrying themselves about.
Don't you want to join in the inquisition?"
"Can't say I do. No business of mine."
His uncle surveyed him curiously.
"You're infernally like your father, Hughie," he said. "Well, I'm going
to leave it to Joey."
"Good scheme," said Hughie.
"You think so?"
"Rather!"
"There's a lot of it," continued his uncle reflectively. "Some of it is
tied up rather queerly, too. My executors will have a bit of a job."
He surveyed the impassive Hughie again.
"Don't you want to know who my executors are?" he inquired quite
angrily.
"No," said Hughie, who was deep in other thoughts at the moment. "Not my
business," he repeated.
"Hughie," said Jimmy Marrable, "you are poor Arthur over again. He was a
cursedly irritating chap at times," he added explosively.
A babble of cheerful voices on the staircase announced the return of the
safe-looking Mr. Lunn and party. They flowed in, entranced with that
gentleman's door-knockers (the countenances of which, by the way, were
usually compared by undergraduate critics, not at all unfavourably, with
that of their owner), and declared themselves quite ready now to be
properly impressed by whatever features of the College Hughie should be
pleased to exhibit to them.
One tour round a College is very like another; and we need not therefore
follow our friends up and down winding staircases, or in and out of
chapels and libraries, while they gaze down on the resting-places of
the illustrious dead or gape up at the ephemeral abodes of the
undistinguished living.
The expedition was chiefly remarkable (to the observant eye of Mrs.
Ames) for the efforts made by its conductor to get lost in suitable
company--an enterprise which was invariably frustrated by the resolute
conduct of that small but determined hero-worshipper, Miss Joan Gaymer.
On one occasion, however, Hughie and Miss Freshwater were left together
for a moment. The party had finished surveying the prospect from the
roof of the College Chapel, and were painfully groping their way in
single file down a spiral staircase. Only Hughie, Miss Freshwater, and
the ubiquitous Miss Gaymer were left at the top.
"You go next, Joey," said Hughie; "then Miss Freshwater, then me."
The lady addressed plunged obediently into the gloomy chasm at her feet.
She observed with frank jealousy that the other two did not immediately
follow her, and accordingly waited for them in the belfry half-way down.
Presently she heard their footsteps descending; and Miss Freshwater's
voice said:--
"I wanted to tell you about it first of anybody, Hughie, because you and
I have always been such friends. Nobody else knows yet."
There was a silence, broken only by Hughie's footsteps, evidently
negotiating a difficult turn. Then Miss Freshwater's voice continued, a
little wistfully:--
"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
And Hughie's voice, sounding strangely sepulchral in the echoing
darkness, replied:--
"Rather! I--I--hope you'll be very happy. Mind that step."
Miss Gaymer wondered what it was all about.
Hughie found an opportunity before the day was over of holding another
brief conversation with his uncle, in the course of which he expressed
an opinion on the advantages of immediate and extensive foreign travel
which sent that opponent of early marriages back to town in a thoroughly
satisfied frame of mind.
"There ought to be a statue," said Jimmy Marrable to his cigar, as he
leaned back reflectively in his railway carriage, "set up in the capital
of every British Colony, representing a female figure in an attitude of
aloofness, and inscribed: _Erected by a grateful Colony to its Principal
Emigration Agent--The Girl at Home Who Married Somebody Else_."
Then he sighed to himself--rather forlornly, a woman would have said.