SINFUL WASTE OF A PENNY STAMP
Ten minutes passed. Hughie, leaning heavily against the frame of the
French window, gazed listlessly out at a squirrel which was inviting him
to a game of hide-and-seek from the far side of a tree-trunk.
"One thing," he mused,--"I shall be able to go abroad again now. No more
of this--"
There was the faintest perceptible rustle behind him. Joan must have
come in very quietly, for the door was shut and she was sitting on the
corner of the writing-table,--exactly where the recently-departed
Haliburton had been posing,--swinging her feet and surveying her late
guardian's back. In her hand she held a pink slip of paper.
Hughie never forgot the picture that she presented at that moment. She
was dressed in white--something workmanlike and unencumbering--with a
silver filigree belt around her waist. She wore a battered Panama
hat--the sort of headgear affected by "coons" of the music-hall
persuasion--with a wisp of pale blue silk twisted round it. The evening
sun, streaming through the most westerly of the windows, glinted on her
hair, her belt, and the silver buckles on her shoes. Hughie caught his
breath.
Joan spoke first.
"Here's something for you, Hughie," she said.
Hughie took the proffered slip of paper. It was a cheque, made out to
himself and signed by Jimmy Marrable.
"I think that covers all the expense to which you have been put on my
account while Uncle Jimmy has been away," said Joan. Her voice sounded
gruff and businesslike.
Hughie examined the cheque. "Yes," he said, "it does."
"It was very good of you," said Joan formally, "to advance me so much
money. I had no idea you were doing it. Apparently you might never have
got it back again."
Hughie gazed at her curiously. He began to grasp the situation. He was
to be whitewashed: the compromising past was to be decently buried, and
"Temporary Loan" was to be its epitaph.
"Never mind that," he said awkwardly. "All in the day's work, you know!
Afraid I was a rotten trustee."
Suddenly Joan's demeanour changed.
"And now, my man," she said briskly, "will you be good enough to explain
what you mean by compromising a lady in this way?"
Hughie looked at her for a moment in dismay. Then he saw that her eyes
were twinkling, and he heaved a sudden sigh of incredulous relief. He
was forgiven!
"Joey!" he said,--"Joey, you mean to say you're not angry?"
"Furious!" replied Miss Gaymer, smiling in her old friendly fashion.
"Thank God!" said Hughie.
Miss Gaymer changed the subject, rather hurriedly.
"There's something else I want to ask you," she said. "Will you kindly
inform me what has become of my--ahem!--young man?"
"Who?" said Hughie. "Oh, _that_ chap? He is gone."
"Gone? Where?"
"London, I should think."
"Why?"
"In the first place, because I told him about your--I mean--I wouldn't
advise you to ask me, Joey. You see--I should hate--"
"You would hate," said Miss Gaymer, coming to his rescue, "to say 'I
told you so!' I know, Hughie. It's like you, and I love you for it."
Hughie winced. These colloquial terms of endearment are sometimes rather
tantalising. Still, he must not mind that. The girl, too, had had her
disappointment, and was bearing herself bravely. At least--
"Joey," he said suddenly, "did you _really_ care for that bloke?"
The lady on the table stiffened suddenly.
"What--that poisonous bounder?" She rolled up her eyes. "My che-ild!"
"But you let him make love to you."
"_Did_ I? I suppose you were there," observed Miss Gaymer witheringly,
"disguised as a Chinese lantern!"
"Well, what _did_ you do, then?"
"He asked me to be his blushing bride," said the unfeeling Miss Gaymer,
"and tried to grab my hand. I squinted down my nose, and looked very
prim and sweet, and thought we had better be getting back to the
ballroom, and he could talk to Mr. Marrable in the morning. If that's
your idea of allowing people to make _love_, dear friend--"
"But you--you--promised to marry him!" said poor Hughie.
Joan stared at him.
"Do you mean to tell me, Hughie," she said slowly, "that he told you
_that_?"
"Yes--with one or two corroborative details. That was why I had to tell
him--everything, you know. It was the only way, I thought, to choke him
off."
"O--o--oh!" Miss Gaymer wriggled indignantly. "The creature! And when he
heard I had no money, he cried off?"
Hughie bowed his head. Joan gave a low gurgling laugh.
"There's no getting over it, Hughie!" she said. "He scored. A nasty slap
for little me! But I deserved it, for trying to trifle with his young
affections. Well, you have given me one reason for his departure. What
was the other?"
Hughie eyed her in some embarrassment. Then he said,--
"He began to talk about you, Joey, in a way I didn't like, so I--"
His eye slid round towards the window, and then downward in the
direction of his right foot. A smile crept over his troubled face, and
he glanced at Joan.
"Oh, Hughie, _did_ you?" she exclaimed rapturously.
"Yes. He landed in that rose-bed. Look!"
Joey shuffled off the table and joined him by the window. A few feet
below them, on the rose-bed, lay the unmistakable traces of the impact
of a body falling from rest with an acceleration due to something more
than the force of gravity.
Joan cooed softly, evidently well pleased. Hughie turned and regarded
her with a puzzled expression. No man ever yet fathomed the workings of
the feminine mind, but he never quite gives up trying to do so.
"Are you glad that he got thrown out?" he asked.
Joan pondered.
"It's not exactly that," she said. "I'm not glad he was thrown out: it
must have hurt him, poor dear! But I'm glad you threw him out, if you
understand the difference."
Hughie was not at all sure that he did, but he nodded his head in a
comprehending manner. Then he continued:--
"Tell me, Joey, if you didn't care for him, why did you send him to me,
instead of giving him the knock direct?"
Joey surveyed her retired "warder" with eyes half-closed.
"Well," she said reflectively, "there were heaps of reasons, but you are
a man and wouldn't understand any of them. But, roughly speaking, it was
because I wanted to see how you would handle him. I knew you wouldn't
let him marry me, of course, but I wanted to see how you would play your
cards. (You simply don't _know_ how fascinating these things are to
watch.) Besides, I thought it would be good for him to come face to face
with--a _man_," she added, almost below her breath.
"I only got the best of him," said Hughie humbly, "by laying all my
cards on the table. There's not much _finesse_ required for a game like
that."
"Still, you won," said Joan.
Hughie sighed.
"Haliburton lost, if you like," he said; "I don't quite see what _I_--"
"No--you _won_!" said a very small but very insistent voice by his side.
Hughie turned sharply. Miss Gaymer was breathing expansively upon the
glass of the window, and assiduously scribbling a pattern thereon with
her finger--an infantile and unladylike habit of which her nurse thought
she had cured her at the age of eight. Also, her cheeks were aglow, and
that with a richness of colouring which sufficed to convey some
glimmerings of intelligence even into the brain of the obtuse young man
beside her. Hughie suddenly felt something inside his head begin
to buzz. His gigantic right hand (which still contained Jimmy
Marrable's cheque tucked in between two fingers) closed cautiously but
comprehensively upon Joan's left, which was resting on the window-frame,
much as a youthful entomologist's net descends upon an unwary butterfly.
"Joey," he said unsteadily,--"Joey, what do you mean?"
Miss Gaymer sighed, in the resigned but persevering fashion of a patient
Sunday-school teacher. Then she slipped her hand from under Hughie's,
extracting as she did so the folded cheque from between his fingers.
Hughie watched her dumbly.
Joan unfolded the cheque, and perused it in a valedictory sort of
manner. Then she kissed it softly. Then she tore it up very slowly into
small pieces.
She sighed again pensively, and said:--
"There goes my ransom! It's a wicked waste--of a cheque-stamp! Now," she
added cheerfully, "I am compromised worse than ever. Hughie, dear, I
_really_ think, after this, that you'll have to--Ough! Hughie!
_Hughie!_"
For blind, groping Hughie's eyes were open at last. With an exultant
whole-hearted roar he initiated a sudden enveloping movement; and then,
turning away from the fierce light that beats upon actions performed at
a window, strode majestically (if rather top-heavily) towards a great
leather sofa in a secluded corner beyond the fireplace. The scandalised
Miss Gaymer, owing to circumstances over which she had no control,
accompanied him.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Throughout the document the oe ligature was replaced with "oe".
Throughout the dialogues there were words used to mimic accents of the
speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
On page 27, a quotation mark was added after "And are you going down for
good next week?".
On page 121, the period after "after gulping the water" was replaced
with a comma.
On page 151, "it may he" was replaced with "it may be".
On page 172, the "care of" symbol was replaced with "c/o".
On page 252, the closing parenthesis was moved from the end of "smiling
disarmingly." to the end of "you see".
On page 256, the "He" in "He appeared to be choosing" was changed to
"He".
On page 270, "Mr Gaymer" was replaced with "Mr. Gaymer".
On page 315, "sitsing" was replaced with "sitting".