PLAIN MEN AND FAIR WOMEN
A FORTNIGHT later Philip filled the vacancy which had been caused two
years previously by the removal of Mr. Atherton by offering the post to
Tim Rendle--an offer which was accepted by that ornament of the leisured
classes with an enthusiasm which would have surprised the horny-handed
Brand.
The experiment turned out a complete success. It provided Master Timothy
with some much-needed employment, the Britannia Motor Company with an
admirable addition to its staff, and Philip with a companion. Tim was a
capital salesman. He soon became a brilliant, if slightly reckless
driver; and in time he absorbed a fair working knowledge of the
mechanics of the automobile. He possessed a charm of manner of which he
was quite unconscious, and a unique capacity for getting himself liked.
He fell in and out of love on the slightest provocation, and rarely
failed to keep Philip informed of his latest entanglement.
Once he offered, as a supreme favour, to introduce Philip to one "Baby,"
who presided over a small tobacconist's establishment in Wardour Street.
The interview was an entire failure. The siren greeted Timothy and his
abashed companion most graciously, and was on the point, doubtless, of
making some witty and appropriate remarks, when a piano-organ came
heavily to anchor just outside the door, and its unwashed custodians
proceeded to drown all attempts at conversation with the reverberating
strains of "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." Under such circumstances it was
impossible to look either affectionate or rakish. A conversation
conducted entirely by means of smiles, however affable, and nods,
however knowing, rarely leads anywhere; and, Timothy having intimated by
a tender glance in the direction of Baby and a despairing gesture
towards the door, that his heart was forever hers, but that for the
present they must part, the deputation filed ignominiously out, one half
of it feeling uncommonly foolish.
Tim was fond of engaging in controversy with Brand, and Philip
frequently overheard such epithets as "gilded popinjay," and "grinder of
the faces of the poor," exchanged for "dear old soul," and "esteemed
citizen," on the occasions when argument and chaff clashed together in
the garage or show-room.
Tim created an impression in another quarter, too, as a brief scrap of
conversation will show.
"I think, Miss Jennings, that it would be a pretty and appropriate
thought if, for the future, on arriving at the scene of my daily toil, I
were to kiss you good-morning."
"Think again," suggested Miss Jennings.
"Not necessarily for publication," continued the unabashed Timothy, "but
as a guaranty of good faith. A purely domestic salute, in fact. These
little things have a softening effect upon a man's character."
"They seem to have had a softening effect upon your brain," observed
Miss Jennings swiftly.
"It would do me good," urged Tim. "I have no one to kiss me now that my
dear mother has been called away."
Miss Jennings looked up, deceived for a moment.
"Is your mother dead?" she asked, more gently.
"Oh, no. She is very well, thank you," said Tim.
"But you said she had been called away."
"So she has."
"Where?"
"To Holloway Gaol," explained Tim softly. "She is a Militant
Suffragette. She tried to burn down Madame Tussaud's. I miss her very
much," he added with a sigh. "She comes out about twice a week, under
the Cat and Mouse Act. I meet her at the prison gate with sandwiches,
but she never kisses me, because her mouth is too full. Will you?"
"It seems to me, Mr. Rendle," remarked Miss Jennings, biting her lip,
"that you and I are wasting our time. I have some work to do for Mr.
Meldrum. I'll trouble you to get out of this office into the show-room."
"Certainly, Miss Jennings," replied Timothy, striking an attitude.
"Good-bye! I will face this thing like a man. I will fight it down. I
shall probably go and shoot big game--in Regent's Park. May I send you a
stuffed elephant? Or would you prefer a flock of pumas? I don't know
what a puma is like, but the keeper will tell me."
The clatter of the typewriter drowned further foolishness, and Timothy
departed to his duties. Here the incident would have ended, but for Miss
Jennings's feminine inability to leave well alone.
"Haven't you got a young lady of your own?" she enquired one day of Tim,
_a propos des bottes_.
"Yes," said Tim rapturously; "I have."
"Then, why--"
Timothy hastened to explain.
"Because I haven't met her yet. You cannot expect a lady to kiss you for
your mother," he pointed out, "until you have spoken to her. The object
of my affections lives in a castle in the air, and she has never
actually come down to earth yet."
But Miss Jennings's attention had wandered.
"Kissing is a queer thing," she said musingly.
"It doesn't seem so after a while," Tim hastened to inform her.
"If you had got a young lady of your own," continued Miss Jennings,
evidently debating a point which had occupied her attention before, "and
you were to kiss another one, in a manner of speaking there would be no
harm done."
"None whatever," agreed Tim heartily.
"What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over," continued Miss
Jennings sententiously.
"Selah!" corroborated the expectant Timothy.
"But if the eye _was_ to see--my word!"
Miss Jennings inserted a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter, and
continued:--
"Seems to me, kissing another young lady's young gentleman is just like
picking up her cup of tea and taking a drink out of it. If she don't get
to know about it, no one's a penny the wiser or a penny the worse. But
if she does--well, she feels she simply _must_ have a clean cup! So
don't you take any risks, Mr. Rendle. You've such a silly way of talking
that I don't know whether you have a young lady or not. If you haven't
one now, you will have some day. If you have--one that's at all fond of
you--and go kissing me, you will be sorry directly afterwards."
"The Right Honourable Lady," chanted the graceless Timothy, "then
resumed her seat amid applause, having spoken for an hour and fifty
minutes. Very well, I will leave you. I shall go and hold Brand's hand
in the garage. He loves me, anyhow. Hallo! I say--"
Miss Jennings's serene countenance had flushed crimson.
"Have I said anything to offend you?" asked Tim, in some concern. "I am
awfully sorry if I have. I was only rotting, you know. I had no idea
Brand was a friend of yours."
Miss Jennings, recovering herself quickly, replied with some asperity
that he was no such thing, and again announced that she had some work to
do and that the conversation would now terminate.
But it did not. There was a magnetism about Tim which invited
confidences.
* * * * *
"I say, Philip, old son," remarked Tim, as they walked down Piccadilly
the following Sunday afternoon, "are you aware that our office has
become a home of romance?"
Philip did not reply. His thoughts for the moment were centred upon more
absorbing business. Presently he said:--
"I think I shall take a long run to-morrow and give it a proper trial on
one or two really bad hills, and then go down to Coventry and see
Bilston again."
Tim sighed gently, and replied:--
"Permit me to remind you, O most excellent Theophilus,"--this was his
retaliation for being addressed as "my son Timothy,"--"that to-day is
the Sabbath, and that we have left the Britannia Motor Company and all
its works, including the Meldrum Never-Acting Brake, behind us for the
space of twenty-four hours. In addition, we have washed ourselves and
put on celluloid dickeys, and are now going to the Park to see
Suffragettes. Let us be bright."
"Did I tell you the patent has been granted all right?" pursued Philip,
referring presumably to the Meldrum Never-Acting Brake.
"You did," said Tim resignedly. "Seven times yesterday and five this
morning."
"The Company simply must take it up," continued the single-minded
inventor. "The brakes of the Britannia cars have always been their
weakness, and now that we are building heavier and heavier bodies things
are riskier than ever. Our present brake-power can't be developed any
further: even Bilston admits that. My brake is magnetic--a different
principle altogether. Its reserve of power is enormous. It would stop a
motor-bus."
"Yes, dear old thing," said Tim soothingly. "I am sure it would. And if
you don't come out of the gutter on to the pavement you will stop one,
too, and then I shall have to waste a day taking you to Kensal Green in
instalments."
He linked his arm in that of his preoccupied friend, and having drawn
him into a place of safety, repeated his former question.
"Are you aware that our office has become a home of romance?"
Philip replied that he had not noticed it.
They were on their way to the Park, after the fashion of good citizens,
to enjoy the summer sunshine and regale themselves with snacks of
oratory upon divers subjects, served gratis by overheated enthusiasts in
the neighbourhood of the Marble Arch. After that they were to take tea
with Timothy's lady mother in Lowndes Square.
"Well, it has," affirmed Tim. "Citizen Brand is consumed by a hopeless
passion for the haughty Jennings."
"Rot!" said Philip, interested at last. "How do you know?"
"I was having a brief chat with Miss Jennings the other day--"
"What about?"
"We were discussing the affections, and so on," was the airy
explanation; "and when in the course of conversation I happened to
mention Brand's name, the poor young creature turned quite puce in the
face."
"That rather sounds," commented the unsophisticated Philip, "as if the
hopeless passion were on Miss Jennings's side."
Tim wagged his head sagely.
"Oh, dear, no," he said. "Not at all. In a woman, that is a most
misleading symptom. She told me all about it. I notice," he added
modestly, "that people confide in me a good deal."
"My son Timothy," said Philip, "you are a gossiping old wife."
"The difficulty, I gather," continued Timothy, quite unmoved by this
stricture, "lies in the fact that they seem to have nothing in common
whatsoever. Otherwise they are admirably matched. Socially, Miss
Jennings is a young lady, while the Citizen is only a mechanic, like
ourselves. In politics, Miss Jennings is a Conservative, while Brand is
an Anarchist. In religion, Miss Jennings is Church of England, with a
leaning to vestments, whereas Brand thinks that heaven and earth were
created by the County Council, under the supervision of the Fabian
Society."
"I should have thought that it would have been a most suitable match,"
said Philip. "They would be able to bring each other such fresh ideas."
"That is just what I told her," said Tim; "but it was no use. She said
he was only a common person, and did nothing but fill his head with
stuff that would put him above his station--night schools, and debating
societies, and Ruskin, and Eugenics, and--and Grape Nuts."
"It seems to me rather a laudable ambition on the part of a common
person."
"So I said, but I soon gathered that I had said the wrong thing. It
appears that the Citizen has been trying to elevate Miss Jennings's
mental outlook, too. He took her to the theatre, and that seems to have
put the lid on everything."
"Why? I thought she liked the theatre."
"Yes; but the situation was mishandled. They met by appointment outside
a Lyons' tea-shop--Miss Jennings in a dressy blouse and the Citizen in
the suit which he only wears as a rule on the anniversary of the capture
of the Bastille--and proceeded to a hearty meal of buttered buns. Then,
instead of being taken to see Lewis Waller, as she had secretly hoped,
Miss Jennings found herself at the Court, listening to a brainy
rendering of 'Coriolanus' played by an earnest young repertory company
without scenery or orchestra. I gather that they parted outside the
emergency exit, and went home in different 'buses."
Philip listened to this highly circumstantial narrative in silence.
Finally he said:--
"I'm sorry for Brand. He may not be up to Miss Jennings's standard of
gentility, but he is the best man we have, and I intend to make him
foreman next week. I bet you he finishes high up in the Company's
service."
Tim shook his head.
"We shall see," he said. "Meanwhile, let us go and study the Suffragette
in her natural state. I hear the Cause received a tremendous fillip last
Sunday. Two policemen were jabbed in the eye with hatpins."
But the Suffragettes were not so conspicuous as they had expected. They
did discover a group of intensely respectable and consciously virtuous
females haranguing a small and apathetic audience from a lorry, but
these had wrecked their chances of patronage from the start by labelling
themselves (per banner) "Law-Abiding Suffragists."
"We want Ettes, not Ists," said Tim.
At length their attention was attracted by what looked like a gigantic
but listless football scrimmage, some four or five hundred strong,
slowly and aimlessly circling about upon a wide grassy space. It was
composed mainly of anaemic youths smoking cigarettes. But there was no
sign of the ball. All that indicated the centre of activity of this
peculiar game was the sound of some twenty or thirty male voices
uplifted in song--Timothy explained that the melody was "Let's All Go
Down the Strand and Have a Banana"--somewhere about the middle. A couple
of impassive policemen appeared to be acting as referees.
Timothy addressed a citizen of London who was standing by.
"What is going on inside here?" he asked.
"Sufferingettes, sir," responded the citizen affably. "The police won't
let 'em 'old no meetings now,--not off no waggin, that is,--so they 'as
to just _talk_ to people, standin' about, friendly like, same as me and
you. There's a couple of them in there just now"--indicating the
scrimmage with his pipe. "You'll 'ear 'em arguin', now and then."
He was right. Presently there was a lull among the choristers. A
high-pitched girlish voice became audible, trickling through the press.
"And I ask all of you, if _that_ isn't woman's work, what is?"
The speaker paused defiantly for a reply. It came, at once:--
"Washin', ducky!"
The crowd dissolved into happy laughter, and the choir struck up "Meet
Me in Dreamland Tonight."
Philip and Tim moved on. Philip felt hot and angry that
women--apparently young women--should be subjected to such treatment as
this. At the same time he remembered Miss Jennings's dictum upon the
subject of asking for trouble, and wondered what on earth the parents of
the youthful orators were thinking about.
Presently they came to a group near the Marble Arch. It was being
addressed by two speakers simultaneously. The first was an angry-looking
old gentleman with a long white beard. He was engaged in expounding some
peculiar and (to judge from his apparent temperature) highly contentious
point of doctrine to a facetious audience; but it was impossible to
ascertain from his discourse whether he was a superheated heresy-hunter,
an evangelical revivalist, or an out-and-out atheist. This is a
peculiarity of the Hyde Park orator. Set him on his legs, and in ten
minutes he has wandered so far from the point--usually through chasing
an interrupter down some irrelevant byway--that it is difficult to tell
what his subject is and quite impossible to discover which side he is
on. As Philip and Timothy strolled up, the bearded one parted company
with the last shreds of his temper, chiefly owing to the remorseless
hecklings of a muscular Christian (or atheist) who was discharging a
steady stream of criticism and obloquy into his left ear at a range of
about eighteen inches; and partly by reason of the distraction caused by
the voice of the other speaker, a pock-marked gentleman in a frock-coat
and bowler hat, who, with glassy eyes fixed upon some invisible textbook
suspended in mid-air before him, was thundering forth a philippic in
favour of (or against) Tariff Reform.
With gleaming spectacles and waving arms, the old gentleman turned
suddenly upon the heckler.
"Out upon you!" he shrieked. "I despise you; I scorn you; I spit upon
you! Plague-spot!"
"What abaht the Erpostle Paul?" enquired the Plague-Spot steadily,
evidently for the hundredth time.
This naturally induced a fresh paroxysm.
"Miserable creature!" stormed the old gentleman. "Having eyes, you see
not! Having ears, you hear not! What did Charles Darwin say in
eighteen-seventy-six?"
The crowd turned to the heckler, anxious to see how this thrust would be
parried. The heckler pondered a moment, and then enquired in his turn:
"What did the Erpostle Paul say in one-oh-one?"
The crowd, evidently regarding this as a good point, laughed
approvingly.
"I'll _read_ you what Charles Darwin said," spluttered the old
gentleman, producing quite a library from his coat-tail. He selected a
volume, and turned over the leaves with trembling fingers.
"And now, gentlemen, as regards this question of Exports and Imports,"
chaunted the Tariff Reform expert. "I will give you a few facts--"
"Fictions!" amended a humorous opponent.
At this moment the old gentleman began to read, in a hurried gabble,
what Charles Darwin had said in eighteen-seventy-six. The heckler
allowed him two minutes, and then suggested cheerfully:--
"And _now_ let's git back to the Erpostle Paul."
And so on. Our friends moved away, for not far off Philip's eye had
discerned a familiar figure gesticulating upon a rostrum. It was Brand.
He was addressing a considerable crowd, upon the edge of which Philip
and Timothy now took their stand. Philip had never seen his colleague
out of his overalls before, and was struck with the man's commanding
presence and impassioned delivery.
"Life?" shouted Brand. His face was dead white, but his eyes blazed.
"Life? What does life mean to you?" He surveyed his audience with
profound contempt. "_Beer!_"
The crowd accepted this bludgeoning in excellent part.
"What do you _do_ with Life?" continued the speaker. "The Life that is
left to you when you have worked twelve hours a day for some capitalist,
and slept eight more, and spent another two coming and going from your
work--your spare time, I mean? How do you employ your Sundays? Do you go
and study Nature? Do you read elevatin' literature? Do you cultivate
your starving minds? No! What do you do? You can't think of anything
better to do than to come here and listen to fools like me! That's the
sort of mugs you are!"
This summary of the situation met with hearty endorsement from all parts
of the audience.
"But it ain't your fault," continued Brand compassionately. "You haven't
ever been taught what it _means_ to enjoy Life. You haven't got the
time!" He raised clenched hands to heaven. "Life! Life! It should be
beautiful--glorious--sublime! Look round you now! Look at those trees!
Listen to that music!"
The crowd, docile but a trifle mystified, obeyed. Faintly to their ears
across the Park came the tremendous chords of the Pilgrims' Chorus from
"Tannhaeuser," played by the Grenadier Guards Band.
Brand sank down over the rail of his platform until his arms hung limply
before him.
"Do these sights and sounds thrill us?" he demanded hoarsely. "Do they
move us? I'm asking you. Do they? No! Not a thrill, not an emotion! Why?
Because we haven't been educated up to them, you and me. We're only the
People. We've always had to go to work, work, work! There's never been
any _time_ for us to learn of the beauty that Life holds for us."
The crowd was listening now, as it always will to a _cri du coeur_.
The man swept on, all aflame.
"Take music! What does it mean to us? Nothing--absolutely nothing! Can
you and I interpret a symphony? Not on your life: we've never been
taught!" His voice rose to a scream. "And what sort of music _do_ they
hand out to us as a rule--us, the People!--yes, and we lap it up?
_Ragtime! R-r-ragtime!_"
Philip and Tim turned away soberly enough. The spectacle of an immortal
soul beating its wings against prison-bars does not lend itself to
flippant comment.
"The Citizen may be a muddle-headed crank, Phil," said Timothy, "but he
is a man for all that."
Philip did not hear, though he would have agreed readily. He was
wondering why the haughty Miss Jennings should patronize Mr. Brand's
meetings. Still, there she was, endeavouring to take cover from his
observation behind a small but heated debate which had arisen between a
gentleman with a blue ribbon and another with a red rose. Timothy caught
sight of her, too, and promptly rushed in where Philip feared to tread.
"Good-afternoon, Miss Jennings," he said. "I'm surprised to find you,
with your strict Conservative principles, coming out to encourage such a
low entertainment as this." He indicated Mr. Brand, now working up to a
peroration.
Miss Jennings stiffened indignantly.
"I suppose I can come out and amuse myself listening to a pack of
nonsense if I like, Mr. Rendle," she said, "the same as any one else?"
"What do you think of Mr. Brand as a speaker?" asked Philip.
"I wasn't listening to him particularly," said Miss Jennings,
untruthfully.
"What do you think of his views on ragtime?" enquired Tim.
"I think they are silly."
"Can you interpret a symphony, Miss Jennings?" asked Philip.
"No," confessed the girl reluctantly; "I can't say I can."
"I believe you are a Socialist, too, Miss Jennings," said Tim, shaking
his head sadly.
Miss Jennings, after an unsuccessful attempt to wither him with a
glance, passed on.
* * * * *
Philip received a scalding cup of tea from his hostess, and lowered
himself timidly to a seat beside her.
"I am so glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Meldrum," said Lady Rendle.
"I have heard so much of you from my boy. One likes to meet some one one
knows takes an interest in one's belongings, doesn't one?"
Philip, painfully unravelling this sentence, suddenly caught his
hostess's eye, and realised that an answer was expected of him.
"Yes," he said, _sforzando_. "Oh, yes! One does."
Graciously directed to help himself to something to eat, he dipped
blindly into the nearest dish, with the result that he immediately found
himself the proprietor of a bulky corrugated tube of French pastry, with
cream protruding from either end. He surveyed it miserably, wondering
dimly if it would be possible to restore it without attracting
attention. He was frustrated by Lady Rendle.
"I like to see a young man," she said approvingly, "who is not afraid of
tea and sweet cakes. There are far too many of them nowadays who
consider it beneath their dignity to take tea at all. Caviare sandwiches
and whiskey-and-soda are all they will condescend to. And now," she
added briskly, "I want to introduce you to a charming girl."
The quaking Philip, with his bilious burden, was conducted across the
room and presented to a pretty girl in a hat which for the time being
deprived its wearer of the use of one eye.
"This is Mr. Meldrum, Barbara dear," announced Lady Rendle. "Miss
Duncombe."
Philip, still bitterly ashamed of his tea, achieved a lopsided bow, and
Lady Rendle departed to her own place.
Timothy, who had been engaging Miss Duncombe in animated conversation,
supplemented the introduction with a few explanatory comments.
"Babs, old thing," he announced to the damsel, rising to give his seat
to Philip, "you must be gentle with my friend Theophilus. He is fierce
if roused, and should on no account be irritated while having his tea;
but when properly handled will be found perfectly tractable. He is not
married."
"Tim," replied Miss Duncombe, "I hate you. Go away!"
"By all means," said the unruffled Timothy. "See you at the Venners'
dance on Thursday. Keep me all the odd numbers up to supper and
everything after, will you?"
"No," said Miss Babs.
"Thanks awfully," replied Timothy gratefully. "So long!"
He departed, leaving Philip alone with the girl. He regarded her
covertly. Miss Babs Duncombe was a fair sample of the _ingenue_ of the
present day. She was exquisitely pretty, beautifully dressed; her
complexion had been supplemented by art; and her tongue spoke a strange
language.
"Tim is rather a little pet, isn't he?" she observed to Philip.
Philip, who had been blinking nervously at Miss Babs's sheeny silken
insteps, looked up.
"He is a great friend of mine," he said, "but I am afraid I have never
regarded him as a pet."
"I see you are a literal person," observed Miss Duncombe. "I must be
careful. What shall we talk about? What interests you?"
Philip pondered.
"Machinery," he said at last.
"How pathetic!" was Babs's response. "What else? Do you tango?"
"No."
"Do you skate?"
"Yes."
"I have never seen you at Princes."
"I have never been there," confessed Philip, feeling very much ashamed
of himself.
"How tragic! Where _do_ you go? Is there another place?"
"I skate--whenever there is a frost," said Philip. "I am rather
bucolic."
"Oh, you mean on ponds, and that sort of thing," said Miss Duncombe
gently. "You shouldn't, you know. It's not done now. Are you very fond
of exercise?"
"I take all I can."
"So do I. I adore it. Do you hunt?"
"Once in a way."
"Polo?"
"No."
"You _are_ a monosyllabic man! What do you go in for?"
"Rugby football."
Miss Duncombe shivered elegantly.
"How very quaint--and how squdgy!" she said. "I am afraid you are a Cave
Man."
"What is that?"
"Some other girls and I," explained Miss Babs, "have a sort of little
society of our own, called the Idealists. Our _seances_ are simply too
thrilling. We sit on cushions round the floor and smoke Russian
cigarettes and drink the most divine liqueurs--pink or green or
gold--and have the duckiest little debates."
Philip, dumbly gripping the tube of French pastry, gaped, quite frankly.
This eccentric young female was an entirely new type to him.
"What do you debate about?" he asked respectfully, sipping his tea,
which by this time was stone cold.
"Oh," said Miss Babs vaguely, "subconscious influences, and
soul-harmonies, and things like that. We divide men and women into
various classes. Men like you are Cave Men. Most of the Cave Men I know
are soldiers. Then there are Soul Men--actors, and musicians. Then
creatures who do nothing but crawl about in beautiful clothes are Thing
Men. Men with shiny faces and hot hands are Butter Men. We divide women
differently. Most of them are Impossibles, but there are a good many
All-Buts. Life is so varied. The human soul, with all its infinite
shades of colour--"
Philip, quite intoxicated by the exotic atmosphere in which he found
himself, bit heavily and incautiously into the roll of pastry.
Straightway from either end there sprang a long and sinuous jet of
clotted cream. The rearmost section shot violently down his own throat,
nearly choking him; that in front descended upon the inlaid parquet
floor in a tubular cascade, where it formed an untidy and conspicuous
ant-hill.
In a moment one of Miss Duncombe's daintily-shod feet slid forward, her
skimpy skirt forming a promontory which effectually hid the disaster
from the eyes of others--especially Lady Rendle.
"Mop it up quickly," she said in an excited whisper. "Take your
handkerchief--anything! No one will see." She spoke breathlessly, with
all the zeal of a faithful sister screening a delinquent small brother
from the wrath to come.
Philip, as he bent confusedly down to clear up the mess, recognised with
genuine pleasure that for all her soulfulness and pose Miss Babs
Duncombe was nothing more, after all, than a jolly little schoolgirl
suffering from a bad attack of adolescence.
"That was the sweetest thing that ever happened," said Babs, after all
traces of havoc had been obliterated. "If you could have _seen_ yourself
when the cream squirted out of the end! I must tell the Idealists about
it at the next _seance_. Now, I must not laugh any more, or I shall get
a purple face. Tell me, is my nose shiny?"
She submitted her peach-like countenance to Philip's embarrassed
inspection.
"It looks all right," he said.
"I don't believe you," said Miss Duncombe, and extracted a small mirror
from a gold bag. She viewed herself with a gasp of dismay.
"How can you say such a thing?" she exclaimed indignantly.
Swiftly she produced a powder-puff, and proceeded to repair the ravages
caused by excessive mirth in a warm room. The unsophisticated Philip
gazed at her, speechless, and was still gazing when he was whirled away
by his indefatigable hostess--Lady Rendle believed in keeping her male
callers circulating: it enabled those whose conversational
stock-in-trade was scanty to indulge in the luxury of repetition--to the
side of one Sheila Garvey.
Miss Garvey began at once:--
"Do you play cricket at all?"
"No, not now," said Philip; "but I play--"
Apparently Miss Garvey had no desire to discuss other pastimes.
"Still, you go to Lords occasionally, I suppose," she suggested.
Yes, Philip went to Lords.
"And I hope you are Middlesex."
Yes; on consideration, Philip was Middlesex.
"My _fiance_ plays for Middlesex," mentioned Miss Garvey carelessly.
Philip, secretly blessing this unknown cricketer, said eagerly:--
"I should like to hear about _him_"--implying that the rest of Middlesex
did not matter.
After that he enjoyed a welcome rest. By occasionally supplying such
fuel as, "What did he do against the Australians in the fourth Test
Match?" or, "What does he think about the off-theory?" he maintained a
full head of steam on Miss Garvey for something like twenty minutes. He
sat thankfully listening and watching the clock, secure in the knowledge
that time was slipping away and that Timothy had promised that their
call should not extend beyond half-past five.
"Another five minutes and we are out of the wood," he said to himself.
But he was mistaken. He had just accompanied Miss Garvey (chaperoned, of
course, by the _fiance_) step by step, match by match, through an entire
cricket-tour in the Antipodes, including five Test Matches (with a
special excursion up-country in order to see the _fiance_ score a
century against Twenty-Two of Woolloomoolloo), when his hostess once
more intervened, with the inevitable sentence:--
"Mr. Meldrum, I want to introduce you to a charming girl."
Once more, with leaden footsteps, Philip crossed the room. Timothy
apparently had forgotten all about both him and the time. A despairing
glance in his direction revealed him ensconced in a window-seat with
Miss Babs Duncombe. In that fastness he remained for another forty
minutes. When at length, restored to a sense of duty by the departure of
Miss Duncombe and his introduction to a grim young woman interested in
Foreign Missions, Master Timothy set out to reclaim his long-lost
friend, Philip had passed through the hands, _seriatim_, of a damsel who
had besought him to obtain for her autograph-book the signature of a
certain music-hall comedian (mainly noted for an alcoholic repertoire
and a deplorable wardrobe) whom she affirmed she "dearly loved"; another
who endeavoured to convert him to the worship of Debussy, not desisting
until she discovered that Philip imagined Debussy to be a French
watering-place; and a third, whose title to fame appeared to be founded
upon the fact that she had once bitten a policeman in order to
demonstrate her fitness to exercise the Parliamentary franchise.
"Now, we will go to the Club and drink deep," said Timothy, as they
turned out of Lowndes Square. "You haven't thanked me yet, O brother,
for your P.S.A."
Philip eased his collar.
"Timothy, my son," he observed, "I fear I must give up all thoughts of
becoming a social success. I am only a Cave Man."