THE BALD-FACED STAG
Vaughan went home, and after lunching, chiefly on a newspaper and a cup
of coffee, he got into a taxicab and gave a direction.
The vehicle flew smoothly along down Park Lane, past the Marble Arch
into the Edgware Road, and on from there between houses and shops,
growing gradually uglier and uglier, to Maida Vale, up Shoot-up Hill,
and so on until there was a glimpse of suburban country, and gasworks,
and glaring posters of melodramas on hoardings, till it stopped suddenly
at a real little old roadside inn, straight out of Dickens--"The
Bald-faced Stag at Edgware." Edgware suggested _John Gilpin_, Gillie's
favourite poem.
Here he got out, and was positively welcomed, and heartily, by a real
roadside innkeeper--also out of Dickens--resembling the elder Weller--a
local magnate called Tom Brill, who looked a relic of the coaching days,
though really he never did anything but stand in front of the inn in
his shirt-sleeves and welcome people.
Vaughan, obviously an habitué, walked through the inn into a perfectly
adorable garden, which was so large, so quiet, and so full of pinks,
hollyhocks, and other old-fashioned flowers, so absolutely peaceful and
sleepy, that one could have imagined oneself miles away in the country.
The garden belonged as much to the Dickens period as the inn itself. It
contained a great many wooden arbours in which one could imagine ladies
in crinolines archly accepting tea, or refusing sips of shrub (whatever
that may be) with whiskered gentlemen. There was a large cage full of
Persian pheasants with gorgeous Indian colouring, which always suggested
to Vaughan--he didn't know why--the Crimean War. There was a parlour
covered with coloured prints of racehorses and boxing matches, and in
which was a little round table painted as a draught-board, and furnished
with a set of Indian chessmen of red and white ivory. The whole thing,
though only twenty minutes' drive from Mayfair, was unknown, unspoilt,
and apparently had not altered in any particular since about 1856. Its
great charm was that it was utterly unself-conscious; it had no idea
that it was quaint.
Vaughan sat down on a rustic seat and plunged into the atmosphere of the
period that he loved, revelling in the soothing, delightful calm, and in
the fact that nobody there knew who he was (though they knew him well by
name), and that none of his friends and acquaintances would have dreamt
that he was there.
A large field beyond the garden contained cows, hay, and other rustic
things.
Presently Tom Brill came up to him, and he asked after Mrs. Brill, whom
her husband always described, with confidential pride, as "Though I say
it that shouldn't say it, as fine a woman as you'll meet in a day's
march."
Vaughan always assented to this proposition. As he had never himself in
his life been for a day's march, and probably never would, he certainly
would have had no right to contradict Mr. Brill on the subject.
"Is Miss Brill at home?" he presently asked. "May I see her?"
"Certainly, sir, of course you shall. She's helping her mother. I'll
call her. Don't move, sir, don't move."
Miss Brill, who had been helping her mother to look out of the window,
now came into the garden, which immediately became idyllic.
She was not in any way like the innkeeper's daughter of Comic Opera.
She was a schoolgirl of sixteen, with a long, fair plait, a short serge
skirt, and a seraphic oval face. She ought to have been called Fanny or
Clara. Unluckily her name was Gladys.
She said in a very sweet voice--
"You're quite a stranger, sir." And she amplified the assertion by
adding, "You haven't been here not this ever so long."
"I know I haven't, but I've been longing to come."
"Not you!" she said ironically.
She was standing opposite him, with her hands behind her back. Without a
hat, in the glaring afternoon sun, with the complexion, pale pink and
white, of a china doll that had never made up, she was a refreshing
sight after the theatrical world in London, not to speak of society.
Vaughan seemed to think so.
"Well, how did you enjoy the play?" he asked.
"It was very kind of you to send us the tickets. Mother enjoyed it."
"You didn't care much for the piece yourself?"
"I thought it was rather silly," she answered.
He had never had a criticism on his work that pleased him more.
"I mean," she went on, "I shouldn't have thought--well, nobody would go
on like that."
"Go on how?"
"Why, go on so silly."
"You wouldn't like to see another play, written by the same man, then?"
"I wouldn't mind another one. Wild horses wouldn't drag me to see that
again."
"Wild horses are not likely to try," he observed. At which jest she
laughed loudly and charmingly, showing marvellous teeth. She had no
cockney accent, though she occasionally and fitfully dropped an H.
"Oh, Gladys, do take me for a walk in the field."
"Want to see the calf?"
"No; I can live without seeing the calf. I want to sit in the field with
you."
"You are a caution! Come on then, but I can't stay long."
They climbed the gate, which she seemed to think a quicker mode of
entrance than sending for the key, and sat in the field, from which Mr.
Brill always declared you could see three counties. Perhaps you could;
if so, they all looked exactly alike.
"It's quiet here, isn't it? I shan't have much more of it," she
remarked.
"Oh, Gladys! Don't say you're going away!"
"Of course I am. Don't you know I'm going to be a manicure in Bond
Street?"
"Bond Street? How revolting! Is that your ambition?"
"Why, I think it would be very nice. I must do something. Father's
settled about it. First I'm going to pay to learn it, and then I shall
earn quite a lot. It's a great hairdresser's."
"I think it's horrible, Gladys. Perhaps you'll fall in love with a
German hairdresser, and be lost to me for ever."
"I shan't fall in love with no foreigners, don't you fret."
"I'm not fretting. Will you have your hair done up?" he asked, lifting
the long plait.
"Well, of course I shall, and waved, and that."
"Gladys, they'll spoil you."
The conversation went on in this strain for some time. She alternately
repeated the exclamation, "How you do go on!" or accused him of the
mysterious crime of being a caution, but she never stopped looking
perfectly beautiful and seraphic.
When they went back to the garden a few other visitors had straggled in.
They all seemed to come in high dog-carts, and they always ordered eggs,
jam, and watercress with their tea, and were immensely impressed by the
Persian pheasants.
Vaughan went back to London feeling refreshed, and already, strangely,
counting the days till he could come back.
There was not a woman in the world he knew whom he would have taken the
slightest trouble to see except Gladys, the innkeeper's daughter. She
was an illiterate schoolgirl; and though she had a lovely face, she was
stupid, and probably not so angelic as she looked; but he always felt a
little disappointed as he drove back. He wished she were in love with
him.
And this ungratified wish was, in all his full life with its brilliant
success, perhaps his greatest real pleasure.