“I should like to see the things you bought,” said Uncle Marcus.
“You shall see them all this evening,” said Diana softly.
“I hope you didn’t buy any rubbish. I hate money wasted. Stockings and
shirts are always useful.”
Then Diana persuaded Pillar to lay out all Mr. Maitland’s clothes on
the bed, chairs, and tables in one of the spare bedrooms after dinner,
and Pillar, because Miss Diana asked him to do it—did it.
“Particularly his boots, miss, you want, his shooting-clothes, and his
shirts? Yes, miss.”
“How many pairs of boots are there?” she asked.
Pillar pondered, and when he gave the number of pairs—“approximately,
miss”—Diana said six of them would do.
And at half-past nine that night Diana told Uncle Marcus the things
were all ready, laid out, in the spare room. She put out her hand
inviting him to come, and he followed her upstairs and came into the
room and saw spread upon the tables, bed, and chairs, things he must
least have expected to see.
“Boots?” he asked, “_these_ boots?” He took one up; looked at it, and
put it down again. From that to another pair—from the boots he went to
tweed coats, knickerbockers, trousers. “Was this as one would meet old
friends?” thought Diana—“without one smile?”
From the blue shirt to the pink striped one, went Marcus; from the
mauve silk one to the black-and-white striped one. From shirts to
pyjamas; he had never thought he had so many, or such good ones. Back
to the boots. He was perfectly serious and Diana wondered of what he
was thinking? “You look very serious,” she said.
“It is very serious,” he answered. “You got a lot for your money,
that’s all I can say—the rest of the matter I must put into the hands
of the police.”
“Police?” asked Diana.
“My dear child, it’s clearly a case of stealing. Some one has sold my
clothes, and although the money may be given to the poor it won’t do.”
And he went—bound, Diana was sure, for the Police Station.
She was so distressed that it was more than the respectfully tender
heart of Pillar could stand, and he told her, begging her pardon, that
Mr. Maitland had been “in the know,” as it were. “You told him?” she
asked, surprised and indignant.
“Well, miss, I couldn’t have done it without his leave.”
But the joke was spoilt! Not entirely, said Pillar, there was no reason
he should know she knew. There was generally the other side to a joke.
“You mean,” said Diana, “that I must let Mr. Maitland think that I am
very much distressed—that I believe about the policeman?”
“Let things go their own way, miss. It’s safest with jokes—certainly
where single gentlemen—of a certain age—are concerned.”
And she let things go their own way, and this is the way they naturally
went. Uncle Marcus went downstairs looking very serious, and Diana
followed him a few minutes later, looking very distressed.
He sat down at his table to write to the police.
“Don’t!” she said, and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“My dear child, I must. It cannot be left as it is.”
“What do you suspect—_who_ do you suspect?” she asked.
“I suspect that my things have been sold by some one to some one—else,
and by some means or other they found their way to the bazaar, and by
some strange chance you bought them.”
Diana said, being the niece of her uncle, it was only natural that she
should know good boots when she saw them.
This appeared to soften Uncle Marcus towards Diana, but in no other way
was he to be moved.
“You don’t suspect—Pillar?” she said softly. She was anxious to find
out the way the joke was going—she thought it had got lost.
Marcus paused—it was a serious thing to say, even in fun—“I have reason
to doubt him,” he admitted.
Then up spake Diana: her eyes shining, her cheeks ablaze. She
recounted—Marcus couldn’t have done it better himself—in fact she had
got it all from him—the many and varied perfections of Pillar. His
most excellent qualities—she had them all at her finger’s ends. As
she talked Marcus’s heart warmed afresh towards the man he would as
soon have suspected as himself of stealing—but Diana? Was she going to
allow him to send for the policeman? Would she carry her joke to that
extremity? He knew the note would go no further than Pillar: but she
did not know that.
“Unless you can throw some light on the matter, this letter must go.”
And he wrote the letter, pausing between the words, blackening the down
strokes, rounding the _e_’s; still Diana said nothing, and Uncle Marcus
gave his letter to Pillar to send at once. Whereupon Diana burst into
tears and left the room.
Outside the door there were no tears to be wiped away, but there was
much to be done. She had to find a policeman; not so difficult that as
it sounded. It only meant going so far as the next lodge and borrowing
the first young man she could find; and off she went, having told a
housemaid to lock her bedroom door on the outside, and take the key
away.
“Then if Uncle Marcus comes to comfort me,” she thought, “he will find
the door locked.”
Uncle Marcus sat and waited. He made up his mind to wait five minutes.
He could not let any woman cry for longer. They were fearfully long
minutes. But they passed and he went upstairs. He knocked at the door.
There was no answer, for by that time Diana was halfway to the next
lodge.
“Diana?” Still no answer.
He waited. He heard her sob—was sure of it—confound the joke—“Diana!”
No answer.
By this time Diana was at the next lodge; and was in the very act of
coaching a young man—only too ready to be coached in anything by Diana,
whom he had worshipped from afar the whole of one morning; from the
other side of the river, to be exact—and he was perfectly willing to be
a policeman if it made her happy.
“Can you talk Scotch?” she asked.
“Do you mean Gaelic?”
“Yes; if you can do that, it’s better still, because Uncle Marcus
‘has not’ Gaelic.” He could talk Gaelic, and he understood English.
He laughed: in his present mood this seemed a good joke, and Diana
laughed, too, which showed she was kind: then she asked, “How did
Scotch policemen dress?” The young man was sure—in blue. Diana decided
he must wear a mackintosh. Uncle Marcus would be much too agitated to
see anything: the mere sight of a policeman would be paralyzing to one
of his temperament. The young man asked if Mr. Maitland would be likely
to see the joke.
“Jokes are difficult things to deal with,” admitted Diana. “There are
better jokes than those we don’t see: and there are none so good as
those we see. It gives Uncle Marcus a way out.”
Down the road walked Diana with the policeman to be, while Uncle Marcus
pleaded, through a locked door, with a Diana not there. Then he grew
stuffy and offended as he always did in time, being of so affectionate
and sensitive a nature, and he went downstairs to the smoking-room,
muttering to himself that if she didn’t want to, he didn’t, and so on.
He took up his “Scotsman.” How often had he found a refuge behind its
generous pages, and he had only just taken up his position of offended
dignity when the door opened and Pillar announced the arrival of the
policeman.
“Idiot!” said Mr. Maitland, meaning Pillar, of course, and in walked
the policeman.
“Just one moment,” said Marcus, jumping up; “I must ask some one
something before we go any further.” And he went upstairs, two steps
at a time, to Diana’s room, and found her door still locked. He tried
it again and again, which took time: and while he was upstairs the
real policeman happened to call for a subscription to a most deserving
charity (the news of the generosity of the Glenbossie tenant had spread
abroad like wild fire) and the pseudo-policeman retired in favour of
the real thing, in the cause of charity.
When Mr. Maitland came down he did not notice the change—a policeman is
a policeman to the law-abiding citizen, whether in a mackintosh or not.
“I am afraid there has been some mistake,” he began, careful to
seat himself back to the light: that much he had learned from much
reading—in his youth—of detective stories. The policeman politely
remarked that we were all liable—as human creatures—to make mistakes.
Which axiom, pronounced in broad Scotch—of all accents the most
comforting—sounded the kindest and most cheerful, as well as the most
Christian, thing Marcus had heard for many a long day. Of course the
policeman spoke generally, knowing nothing of any particular mistake.
Mr. Maitland hastened to say he was sorry he had troubled him, and the
policeman very naturally said the trouble was to be Mr. Maitland’s.
Marcus felt that acutely: there was no need to remind him of it.
“Now about the note—” began Marcus. And the genial policeman said:
One would do, although he would not be refusing more, if Mr. Maitland
should be feeling so disposed—and he put out his capacious hand.
Then Mr. Maitland grasped the fact that the honest policeman was open
to a bribe, and he pressed into his hand a larger number of notes than
the honest policeman had ever hoped to hold—in the cause of charity.
It was a good charity and deserving—whatever! And the policeman left
the presence of Mr. Maitland a happy man; and the other policeman left
the presence of Diana a most unhappy man—deeply and, he believed,
hopelessly in love.
When Marcus, making a final attempt, knocked at Diana’s door, he found
it unlocked and a smothered voice told him to come in.
He went in. Diana was hidden under the bedclothes; she emerged at his
urgent request. “Diana, my child, I am so sorry.”
He looked at her: she was one of those happy women, he thought, who can
cry without its leaving any disfiguring trace.
“It was only my joke writing to the policeman,” he said, smiling as
though asking pity for his simplicity.
“And it was only mine in sending for him.”
“_You_ sent for him?”
Diana nodded.
“But think of what Pillar must have thought!”
“Pillar knew—” said Diana; then, seeing Uncle Marcus’s look of
astonishment, explained. “Pillar would no more think of sending for a
policeman without asking me than he would think of spreading out your
clothes without asking you—he is wonderful!—Pillar!”
Uncle Marcus looked at Diana—if her hair had been done in one pigtail
instead of two, and her eyes had not been so innocent and truthful in
their appeal, he would have been very, very angry. As it was he looked
so kind that she ventured: “Mine wasn’t a real—policeman.”
“Not a real policeman? Then who was he?”
“Just a man staying at the Lodge up the river.”
“And I gave him ten pounds!”
“No, darling; that was to the real policeman who happened to come for
a subscription. We changed policemen while you were upstairs asking
my advice. You were upstairs with me while I was downstairs with two
policemen: it all sounds rather muddling, but it’s really quite simple.”
“What an ass he must have thought me!” said Marcus, thinking of the
real policeman.
“Oh, no; he just thought you were the English tenant of Glenbossie,
that’s all.”
Marcus got up and, walking about the room, came to a standstill before
a pile of things on the top of a chest of drawers. “What are these
abominations?” he asked.
“The things I bought at the bazaar,” said Diana, disappearing under the
bedclothes.
When Mrs. Scott met Marcus she said: “It was so good of him to
subscribe so largely to their cottage hospital.” And Marcus said: “Not
at all!”