I
Although anxious thought for the comfort of his juniors was not
habitually one of Lester Carmody's outstanding qualities, in planning
his nephew John's expedition to London he had been considerateness
itself. John, he urged, must on no account dream of trying to make the
double journey in a single day. Apart from the fatigue inseparable from
such a performance, he was a young man, and young men, Mr. Carmody
pointed out, are always the better for a little relaxation, and an
occasional taste of the pleasures which a metropolis has to offer. Let
John have a good dinner in London, go to a theatre, sleep comfortably
at a first-class hotel and return at his leisure on the morrow.
Nevertheless, in spite of his uncle's solicitude nightfall found the
latter hurrying back into Worcestershire in the Widgeon Seven. He did
not admit that he was nervous, yet there had undoubtedly come upon
him something that resembled uneasiness. He had been thinking a good
deal during his ride to London about the peculiar behaviour of his
cousin Hugo on the previous night. The supposition that Hugo had found
Doctor Twist of Healthward Ho trying to burgle Rudge Hall was, of
course, too absurd for consideration, but it did seem possible that he
had surprised some sort of an attempt upon the house. Rambling and
incoherent as his story had been, it had certainly appeared to rest
upon that substratum of fact, and John had protested rather earnestly
to his uncle against being sent to London, on an errand which could
have been put through much more simply by letter, at a time when
burglars were in the neighbourhood.
Mr. Carmody had laughed at his apprehensions. It was most unlikely, he
pointed out, that Hugo had ever seen a marauder at all. But assuming
that he had done so, and that he had surprised him and pursued him
about the garden, was it reasonable to suppose that the man would
return on the very next night? And if, finally, he did return, the mere
absence of John would make very little difference. Unless he proposed
to patrol the grounds all night, John, sleeping as he did over the
stable yard, could not be of much help, and even without him Rudge
Hall was scarcely in a state of defencelessness. Sturgis, the butler,
it was true, must, on account of age and flat feet, be reckoned a
non-combatant, but apart from Mr. Carmody himself the garrison, John
must recollect, included the intrepid Thomas G. Molloy, a warrior at
the very mention of whose name Bad Men in Western mining camps had in
days gone by trembled like aspens.
It was all very plausible, yet John, having completed his business in
London, swallowed an early dinner and turned the head of the Widgeon
Seven homeward.
It is often the man with smallest stake in a venture that has its
interests most deeply at heart. His uncle Lester John had always
suspected of a complete lack of interest in the welfare of Rudge Hall;
and, as for Hugo, that urban-minded young man looked on the place as a
sort of penitentiary, grudging every moment he was compelled to spend
within its ancient walls. To John it was left to regard Rudge in the
right Carmody spirit, the spirit of that Nigel Carmody who had once
held it for King Charles against the forces of the Commonwealth. Where
Rudge was concerned, John was fussy. The thought of intruders treading
its sacred floors appalled him. He urged the Widgeon Seven forward at
its best speed and reached Rudge as the clock over the stables was
striking eleven.
The first thing that met his eye as he turned in at the stable yard
was the door of the garage gaping widely open and empty space in the
spot where the Dex-Mayo should have stood. He ran the two-seater in,
switched off the engine and the lights, and, climbing down stiffly,
proceeded to ponder over this phenomenon. The only explanation he could
think of was that his uncle must have ordered the car out after dinner
on an expedition of some kind. To Birmingham, probably. The only place
you ever went to from Rudge after nightfall was Birmingham.
John thought he could guess what must have happened. He did not often
read the Birmingham papers himself, but the _Post_ came to the house
every morning: and he seemed to see Miss Molloy, her appetite for
entertainment whetted rather than satisfied by the village concert,
finding in its columns the announcement that one of the musical
comedies of her native land was playing at the Prince of Wales. No
doubt she had wheedled his uncle into taking herself and her father
over there, with the result that here the house was without anything in
the shape of protection except butler Sturgis, who had been old when
John was a boy.
A wave of irritation passed over John. Two long drives in the Widgeon
Seven in a single day had induced even in his whip-cord body a certain
measure of fatigue. He had been looking forward to tumbling into bed
without delay, and this meant that he must remain up and keep vigil
till the party's return. Well, at least he would rout Emily out of her
slumbers.
"Hullo?" said Emily sleepily, in answer to his whistle. "Yes?"
"Come down," called John.
There was a scrabbling on the stairs. Emily bounded out, full of life.
"Well, well, well!" she said. "You back?"
"Come along."
"What's up? More larks?"
"Don't make such a beastly noise," said John. "Do you know what time it
is?"
They walked out together and proceeded to make a slow circle of the
house. And gradually the magic of the night began to soften John's
annoyance. The grounds of Rudge Hall, he should have remembered, were
at their best at this hour and under these conditions. Shy little
scents were abroad which did not trust themselves out in the daytime,
and you needed stillness like this really to hear the soft whispering
of the trees.
London had been stiflingly hot, and this sweet coolness was like balm.
Emily had disappeared into the darkness, which probably meant that she
would clump back up the stairs at two in the morning having rolled in
something unpleasant, and ruin his night's repose by leaping on his
chest, but he could not bring himself to worry about it. A sort of
beatific peace was upon him. It was almost as though an inner voice
were whispering to him that he was on the brink of some wonderful
experience. And what experience the immediate future could hold except
the possible washing of Emily when she finally decided to come home he
was unable to imagine.
Moving at a leisurely pace, he worked round to the back of the house
again and stepped off the grass on to the gravel outside the stable
yard. And as his shoes grated in the warm silence a splash of white
suddenly appeared in the blackness before him.
"Johnnie?"
He came back on his heels as if he had received a blow. It was the
voice of Pat, sounding in the warm silence like moonlight made audible.
"Is that you, Johnnie?"
John broke into a little run. His heart was jumping, and all the
happiness which had been glowing inside him had leaped up into a
roaring flame. That mysterious premonition had meant something, after
all. But he had never dreamed it could mean anything so wonderful as
this.
II
The night was full of stars, but overhanging trees made the spot where
they stood a little island of darkness in which all that was visible
of Pat was a faint gleaming of white. John stared at her dumbly. Only
once in his life before could he remember having felt as he felt now,
and that was one raw November evening at school at the close of the
football match against Marlborough when, after battling wearily through
a long half hour to preserve the slenderest of all possible leads, he
had heard the referee's whistle sound through the rising mists and had
stood up, bruised and battered and covered with mud, to the realization
that the game was over and won. He had had his moments since then: he
had captained Oxford and played for England, and had touched happiness
in other and milder departments of life, but never again till now had
he felt that strange, almost awful ecstasy.
Pat, for her part, appeared composed.
"That mongrel of yours is a nice sort of watch-dog," she said. "I've
been flinging tons of gravel at your window and she hasn't uttered a
sound."
"Emily's gone away somewhere."
"I hope she gets bitten by a rabbit," said Pat. "I'm off that hound for
life. I met her in the village a little while ago and she practically
cut me dead."
There was a pause.
"Pat!" said John, thickly.
"I thought I'd come up and see how you were getting on. It was such
a lovely night, I couldn't go to bed. What were you doing, prowling
round?"
It suddenly came home to John that he was neglecting his vigil. The
thought caused him no remorse whatever. A thousand burglars with a
thousand jemmies could break into the Hall and he would not stir a step
to prevent them.
"Oh, just walking."
"Were you surprised to see me?"
"Yes."
"We don't see much of each other nowadays."
"I didn't know.... I wasn't sure you wanted to see me."
"Good gracious! What made you think that?"
"I don't know."
Silence fell upon them again. John was harassed by a growing
consciousness that he was failing to prove himself worthy of this
golden moment which the Fates had granted to him. Was this all he was
capable of--stiff, halting words which sounded banal even to himself?
A night like this deserved, he felt, something better. He saw himself
for an instant as he must be appearing to a girl like Pat, a girl who
had been everywhere and met all sorts of men--glib, dashing men; suave,
ingratiating men; men of poise and _savoir faire_ who could carry
themselves with a swagger. An aching humility swept over him.
And yet she had come here to-night to see him. The thought a little
restored his self-respect, and he was trying with desperate search in
the unexplored recesses of his mind to discover some remark which would
show his appreciation of that divine benevolence, when she spoke again.
"Johnnie, let's go out on the moat."
John's heart was singing like one of the morning stars. The suggestion
was not one which he would have made himself, for it would not
have occurred to him, but, now that it had been made, he saw how
super-excellent it was. He tried to say so, but words would not come to
him.
"You don't seem very enthusiastic," said Pat. "I suppose you think I
ought to be at home and in bed?"
"No."
"Perhaps you want to go to bed?"
"No."
"Well, come on then."
They walked in silence down the yew-hedged path that led to the
boathouse. The tranquil beauty of the night wrapped them about as in a
garment. It was very dark here, and even the gleam of white that was
Pat had become indistinct.
"Johnnie?"
"Yes?"
He heard her utter a little exclamation. Something soft and scented
stumbled against him, and for an instant he was holding her in his
arms. The next moment he had very properly released her again, and he
heard her laugh.
"Sorry," said Pat. "I stumbled."
John did not reply. He was incapable of speech. That swift moment of
contact had had the effect of clarifying his mental turmoil. Luminously
now he perceived what was causing his lack of eloquence. It was the
surging, choking desire to kiss Pat, to reach out and snatch her up in
his arms and hold her there.
He stopped abruptly.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing," said John.
Prudence, the kill-joy, had whispered in his ear. He visualized
Prudence as a thin, pale-faced female with down-drawn lips and
mild, warning stare who murmured thinly, "Is it wise?" Before her
whisper primitive emotions fled, abashed. The caveman in John fled
back into the dim past whence he had come. Most certainly, felt the
Twentieth-Century John, it would not be wise. Very clearly Pat had
shown him, that night in London, that all that she could give him was
friendship, and to gratify the urge of some distant ancestor who ought
to have been ashamed of himself he had been proposing to shatter the
delicate crystal of this friendship into fragments. He shivered at the
narrowness of escape.
He had heard stories. In stories girls drew their breath in sharply and
said "Oh, why must you spoil everything like this?" He decided not to
spoil everything. Walking warily, he reached the little gate that led
to the boathouse steps and opened it with something of a flourish.
"Be careful," he said.
"What of?" said Pat. It seemed to John that she spoke a trifle flatly.
"These steps are rather tricky."
"Oh?" said Pat.
III
He followed her into the punt, oppressed once more by a feeling that
something had gone wrong with what should have been the most wonderful
night of his life. Girls are creatures of moods, and Pat seemed now
to have fallen into one of odd aloofness. She said nothing as he
pushed the boat out, and remained silent as it slid through the water
with a little tinkling ripple, bearing them into a world of stars and
coolness, where everything was still and the trees stood out against
the sky as if carved out of cardboard.
"Are you all right?" said John, at last.
"Splendid, thanks." Pat's mood seemed to have undergone another swift
change. Her voice was friendly again. She nestled into the cushions.
"This is luxury. Do you remember the old days when there was nothing
but the weed-boat?"
"They were pretty good days," said John wistfully.
"They were, rather," said Pat.
The spell of the summer night held them silent again. No sound
broke the stillness but the slap of tiny waves and the rhythmic dip
and splash of the paddle. Then with a dry flittering a bat wheeled
overhead, and out somewhere by the little island where the birds nested
something leaped noisily in the water. Pat raised her head.
"A pike?"
"Must have been."
Pat sat up and leaned forward.
"That would have excited Father," she said. "I know he's dying to get
out here and have another go at the pike. Johnnie, I do wish somebody
could do something to stop this absurd feud between him and Mr.
Carmody. It's too silly. I know Father would be all over Mr. Carmody if
only he would make some sort of advance. After all, he did behave very
badly. He might at least apologize."
John did not reply for a moment. He was thinking that whoever tried
to make his uncle apologize for anything had a whole-time job on his
hands. Obstinate was a mild word for the squire of Rudge. Pigs bowed
as he passed, and mules could have taken his correspondence course.
"Uncle Lester's a peculiar man," he said.
"But he might listen to you."
"He might," said John doubtfully.
"Well, will you try? Will you go to him and say that all Father wants
is for him to admit he was in the wrong? Good heavens! It isn't asking
much of a man to admit that when he's nearly murdered somebody."
"I'll try."
"Hugo says Mr. Carmody has gone off his head, but he can't have gone
far enough off not to be able to see that Father has a perfect right
to be offended at being grabbed round the waist and used as a dug-out
against dynamite explosions."
"I think Hugo's off his head," said John. "He was running round the
garden last night, dashing himself against trees. He said he was
chasing a burglar."
Pat was not to be diverted into a discussion of Hugo's mental
deficiencies.
"Well, will you do your best, Johnnie? Don't just let things slide
as if they didn't matter. I tell you, it's rotten for me. Father
found me talking to Hugo the other day and behaved like something out
of a super-film. He seemed sorry there wasn't any snow, so that he
couldn't drive his erring daughter out into it. If he knew I was up
here to-night he would foam with fury. He says I mustn't speak to you
or Hugo or Mr. Carmody or Emily--not that I want to speak to Emily,
the little blighter--nor your ox nor your ass nor anything that is
within your gates. He's put a curse on the Hall. It's one of those
comprehensive curses, taking in everything from the family to the mice
in the kitchen, and I tell you I'm jolly well fed up. This place has
always been just like a home to me, and you ..."
John paused in the act of dipping his paddle into the water.
"... and you have always been just like a brother ..."
John dug the paddle down with a vicious jerk.
"... and if Father thinks it doesn't affect me to be told I mustn't
come here and see you, he's wrong. I suppose most girls nowadays would
just laugh at him, but I can't. It isn't his being angry I'd mind--it
would hurt his feelings so frightfully if I let him down and went
fraternizing with the enemy. So I have to come here on the sly, and if
there's one thing in the world I hate it's doing things on the sly. So
do reason with that old pig of an uncle of yours, Johnnie. Talk to him
like a mother."
"Pat," said John fervently, "I don't know how it's going to be done,
but if it can be done I'll do it."
"That's the stuff! You're a funny old thing, Johnnie. In some ways
you're so slow, but I believe when you really start out to do anything
you generally put it through."
"Slow?" said John, stung. "How do you mean, slow?"
"Well, don't you think you're slow?"
"In what way?"
"Oh, just slow."
In spite of the fact that the stars were shining bravely, the night was
very dark, much too dark for John to be able to see Pat's face; he got
the impression that, could he have seen it, he would have discovered
that she was smiling that old mocking smile of hers. And somehow,
though in the past he had often wilted meekly and apologetically
beneath this smile, it filled him now with a surge of fury. He plied
the paddle wrathfully, and the boat shot forward.
"Don't go so fast," said Pat.
"I thought I was slow," retorted John, sinking back through the years
to the repartee of school days.
Pat gurgled in the darkness.
"Did I wound you, Johnnie? I'm sorry. You aren't slow. It's just
prudence, I expect."
Prudence! John ceased to paddle. He was tingling all over, and there
had come upon him a strange breathlessness.
"How do you mean, prudence?"
"Oh, just prudence. I can't explain."
Prudence! John sat and stared through the darkness in a futile effort
to see her face. A water rat swam past, cleaving a fan-shaped trail.
The stars winked down at him. In the little island a bird moved among
the reeds. Prudence! Was she referring...? Had she meant...? Did she
allude...?
He came to life and dug the paddle into the water. Of course she
wasn't. Of course she hadn't. Of course she didn't. In that little
episode on the path, he had behaved exactly as he should have behaved.
If he behaved as he should not have behaved, if he had behaved as that
old flint-axe and bearskin John of the Stone Age would have had him
behave, he would have behaved unpardonably. The swift intake of the
breath and the "Oh, why must you spoil everything like this?"--that was
what would have been the result of listening to the advice of a bounder
of an ancestor who might have been a social success in his day, but
naturally didn't understand the niceties of modern civilization.
Nevertheless, he worked with unnecessary vigour at the paddle, calling
down another rebuke from his passenger.
"Don't race along like that. Are you trying to hint that you want to
get this over as quickly as you can and send me home to bed?"
"No," was all John could find to say.
"Well, I suppose I ought to be thinking of bed. I'll tell you what.
We'll do the thing in style. The Return by Water. You can take me out
into the Skirme and down as far as the bridge and drop me there. Or is
that too big a programme? You're probably tired."
John had motored two hundred miles that day, but he had never felt less
tired. His view was that he wished they could row on for ever.
"All right," he said.
"Push on, then," said Pat. "Only do go slowly. I want to enjoy this. I
don't want to whizz by all the old landmarks. How far to Ghost Corner?"
"It's just ahead."
"Well, take it easy."
The moat proper was a narrow strip of water which encircled the Hall
and had been placed there by the first Carmody in the days when
householders believed in making things difficult for their visitors.
With the gradual spread of peace throughout the land its original
purposes had been forgotten, and later members of the family had
broadened it and added to it and tinkered with it and sprinkled it with
little islands with the view of converting it into something resembling
as nearly as possible an ornamental lake. Apparently it came to an end
at the spot where a mass of yew trees stood forbiddingly in a gloomy
row, that haunted spot which Pat as a child had named Ghost Corner;
but if you approached this corner intrepidly you found there a narrow
channel. Which navigated, you came into a winding stream which led past
meadows and under bridges to the upper reaches of the Skirme.
"How old were you, Johnnie, when you were first brave enough to come
past Ghost Corner at night all by yourself?" asked Pat.
"Sixteen."
"I bet you were much more than that."
"I did it on my sixteenth birthday."
Pat stretched out a hand and the branches brushed her fingers.
"I wouldn't do it even now," she said. "I know perfectly well a skinny
arm covered with black hair would come out of the yews and grab me.
There's something that looks like a skinny arm hovering at the back of
your neck now, Johnnie. What made you such a hero that particular day?"
"You had betted me I wouldn't, if you remember."
"I don't remember. Did I?"
"Well, you egged me on with taunts."
"And you went and did it? What a good influence I've been in your life,
haven't I? Oh, dear! It's funny to think of you and me as kids on this
very bit of water and here we are again now, old and worn and quite
different people, and the water's just the same as ever."
"I'm not different."
"Yes, you are."
"What makes you say I'm different?"
"Oh, I don't know."
John stopped paddling. He wanted to get to the bottom of this.
"Why do you say I'm different?"
"Those white things through the trees there must be geese."
John was not interested in geese.
"I'm not different at all," he said, "I...." He broke off. He had been
on the verge of saying that he had loved her then and that he loved her
still--which, he perceived, would have spoiled everything. "I'm just
the same," he concluded lamely.
"Then why don't you sport with me on the green as you did when you
were a growing lad? Here you have been back for days, and to-night is
the first glimpse I get of you. And, even so, I had to walk a mile and
fling gravel at your window. In the old days you used to live on my
doorstep. Do you think I've enjoyed being left all alone all this time?"
John was appalled. Put this way, the facts did seem to point to a
callous negligence on his part. And all the while he had been supposing
his conduct due to delicacy and a sense of what was fitting and would
be appreciated. In John's code, it was the duty of a man who has told
a girl he loved her and been informed that she does not love him to
efface himself, to crawl into the background, to pass out of her life
till the memory of his crude audacity shall have been blotted out by
time. Why, half the big game shot in Africa owed their untimely end, he
understood, to this tradition.
"I didn't know...."
"What?"
"I didn't know you wanted to see me."
"Of course I wanted to see you. Look here, Johnnie. I'll tell you what.
Are you doing anything to-morrow?"
"No."
"Then get out that old rattletrap of yours and gather me up at my
place, and we'll go off and have a regular picnic like we used to do
in the old days. Father is lunching out. You could come at about one
o'clock. We could get out to Wenlock Edge in an hour. It would be
lovely there if this weather holds up. What do you say?"
John did not immediately say anything. His feelings were too deep for
words. He urged the boat forward, and the Skirme received it with that
slow, grave, sleepy courtesy which made it for right-thinking people
the best of all rivers.
"Pat!" said John at length, devoutly.
"Will you?"
"Will I!"
"All right. That's splendid. I'll expect you at one."
The Skirme rippled about the boat, chuckling to itself. It was a
kindly, thoughtful river, given to chuckling to itself like an old
gentleman who likes to see young people happy.
"We used to have some topping picnics in the old days," said Pat
dreamily.
"We did," said John.
"Though why on earth you ever wanted to be with a beastly, bossy,
consequential, fractious kid like me, goodness knows."
"You were fine," said John.
The Old Bridge loomed up through the shadows. John had steered the
boat shoreward, and it brushed against the reeds with a sound like the
blowing of fairy bugles.
Pat scrambled out and bent down to where he sat, holding to the bank.
"I'm not nearly so beastly now, Johnnie," she said in a whisper.
"You'll find that out some day, perhaps, if you're very patient. Good
night, Johnnie, dear. Don't forget to-morrow."
She flitted away into the darkness, and John, releasing his hold on the
bank and starting up as if he had had an electric shock, was carried
out into mid-stream. He was tingling from head to foot. It could not
have happened, of course, but for a moment he had suddenly received the
extraordinary impression that Pat had kissed him.
"Pat!" he called, choking.
There came no answer out of the night--only the sleepy chuckling of the
Skirme as it pottered on to tell its old friend the Severn about it.
"Pat!"
John drove the paddle forcefully into the water, and the Skirme,
ceasing to chuckle, uttered two loud gurgles of protest as if resenting
treatment so violent. The nose of the boat bumped against the bank,
and he sprang ashore. He stood there, listening. But there was nothing
to hear. Silence had fallen on an empty world.
A little sound came to him in the darkness. The Skirme was chuckling
again.