THE CHOICE OF THE DRAY.
Sir William sat in the drawing-room, playing the host to John Nixon.
As Nixon had his feet propped up on the back of a chair in front of him,
Sir William, in order to put his guest thoroughly at his ease, secured a
chair and cocked _his_ feet up in the air, too. And, in order that Nixon
might not he embarrassed by suddenly finding out that he was the only
one who was spitting copiously on the tiles in front of the fireplace,
Sir William also occasionally contributed a light expectoration in that
locality. Spitting had been a yet unlearned accomplishment with Ware;
but, by watching John Nixon, who was a pastmaster, the baronet learned,
in the course of half an hour or so, to hit the centre of the tiling
with a fair degree of accuracy, and without leaning forward in his
chair.
As far, however, as putting Nixon at his ease was concerned, Sir William
need not have troubled. It was an oft-enunciated maxim of John Nixon's
that whatever he did was right, if he did it. "Do's you wanter," was the
way Nixon put it; "dun't ast nobuddy fur nawthun."
Presently, noting that the moistened area in front of the fireplace
threatened to overflow and inundate the flooring about the tiles, Sir
William jumped up, as though with a sudden inspiration and said, smiting
Nixon playfully on his tree-stump shoulder:
"Take you on at billiards upstairs, old chap!"
"Ur-rh?" Another salivation dampened the tiling as Nixon twisted his
stocky torso about.
"I was about to say," Sir William pursued--having gathered from his
guest's tone and attitude that John Nixon did not know anything about
playing billiards--"that I would take you on at a game of billiards,
only it's so jolly uninteresting. Shall we stroll out and see the deer?"
"Ain't interested in deers," said Nixon, "'n I wun't budge a step to see
nawthun I dun't want for to see. Never _would_."
"You're jolly well right," agreed Sir William; "I can thoroughly
sympathize with you, Nixon, old man.... Silly things, deer, after
all--aren't they?"
"I tell you, though," Nixon arose, grunted, stretched, scratched, shook
his legs, and, with a certain awesome gapping sound and a gust of fetid
breath, yawned in his host's face, "what I _will_ do, English. Take me
somewhurs whurr I ken git a schooner o' beer--thuh drinks on you, mind,
fur I ain't got a cent to spare--an' I'll go along, every steppuh the
way. How des that ketch you?"
"Happy thought!" Sir William clapped his guest heartily on the back.
"Bright idea! Nixon, you're a man after my own heart. Half a jiff, till
I bring our hats and coats."
The two left the house by the side door; but, as they reached the gate
of the grounds, Sir William on the excuse that he had forgotten his
pocket-book, requested Nixon to walk on slowly, and himself hurried back
to the house.
"Was you tannin' thuh leather furr a new bill-book, er whutt?" demanded
John Nixon, testily, as his host, after quite a lapse of time, rejoined
him.
"I really must apologise, old chap--I really must. Shan't let it occur
again," Sir William said, good-humoredly. He could not very well tell
Nixon that he had spent the interval in personally cleaning up with
pieces of newspaper the mess by the fireplace, for fear Lady Frances
should happen in and see it while they were away.
Upstairs, in Lady Frances' own sitting-room--a big, airy apartment, in
which, on quiet afternoons, she read or sewed or knitted, or napped in
the old arm-chair she had brought with her from overseas--the venerable
lady of the house had set herself the task of entertaining the mother of
her son's wife.
"Ineffably, innately common and nasty-natured," had been her inward
pronouncement when first she faced Lovina Nixon; but there had been no
outward sign, although one who knew the old gentlewoman's ways might
have discerned a more careful and precise politeness in her attitude.
Now, on this afternoon of the last day of the Nixons' stay, which had
endured, for what Lady Frances had termed, in a matin soliloquy, "three
dreadful days", she had steeled herself to the duty of making the time
pass agreeably until evening and train-time should bring deliverance.
Ada, the maid, had brought the tea-urn and "curate"; and now the three
women--Lady Frances in her big chair; Mrs. John Nixon dangling one of
the fine china tea-cups, which she had drained at a draught, from her
forefinger, and eating cake with her elbow on the table and the cake
scattering crumbs as she gesticulated with the hand that held it; and
Daisy holding a skein of yarn, from which Lady Frances was winding a
ball--sat ill-assorted in the large room.
"Do have some more tea, Mrs. Nixon, won't you?" invited Lady Frances,
eyeing the suspended teacup nervously. "Daisy, dear, give your mother
some more tea."
But, as Mrs. Nixon had already had three cups, the urn was empty. Daisy
hopped up and carried the shapely silver receptacle to the kitchen, to
get some more hot water from Jean's kettle. As the door closed after her
daughter, Mrs. Lovina Nixon leaned over toward Lady Frances with a
greenish light in her eyes.
"I s'pose it ain't no use o' tellin' you, Mam, now," she said; "I mean,
now that your son's tight married to her and can't get loose, that yen
girl run away from us. Yes, sir--run away with a feller. Never seen
nawthun like it in all m' born days. Never did." And Mrs. Lovina
nid-nodded and sowed caraway seed on the carpet in showers as she
vibrated the cake.
"Just like'r, though," she supplemented, after a moment, "so it was.
'Xpected somethin' like it, all along. Warn't s'prised one iota."
"Your daughter," Lady Frances said--very slowly, and governing her voice
with difficulty--"has quite voluntarily told us all the circumstances
you mention. I--I really do not think," the old gentlewoman could barely
keep the frost out of her tone, "that we should discuss her in her
absence. I really don't think we should."
"Oh, well," Mrs. John Nixon's radial arm described a flying circle of
cake-crumbs about her chair as she indicated, with a sweeping gesture,
that she washed her hands of the matter, "if you're satisfied, we are."
"Daisy," Lady Frances said, levelly, "has proved a very fine and frank
and sweet young woman. Her adaptability, too, has been most
satisfactory. I have become very much attached to her--and I really
cannot listen, nor will I listen, to anything against my son's wife."
"Oh, all right, all--right," Lovina Nixon smacked her cup down. "I
wish't you'd had a siege of her like I've had, so I do. You'd talk
different."
"I think," Lady Frances Ware rose out of her chair with remarkable vigor
for eighty-two, "that you have probably taken a wrong course with
her--in fact, I feel quite sure you must have taken a wrong course with
her. Now, as I proposed before, we will change the subject. Would you
care to go for a motor ride? I shall tell Davitt, the chauffeur, to have
you back here in time for a leisurely and comfortable meal before your
train."
Mrs. Lovina Nixon shrugged. "Might's well do that as anything else, I
s'pose."
Lady Frances rang the bell. "Telephone Davitt," she said, to Ada the
maid, "to bring around the larger car. Then tell Lady Ware her mother
would like to do a little shopping, and wishes her to go as well. Take
my hand-bag with you, and tell Lady Ware she may use what money she
likes from my purse, if she is short."
A quarter of an hour later, Lady Frances, having seen the motor car off
down the drive, returned to her sanctum, sat down quietly in her big
chair, and took up her sewing. Presently, however, her needle paused,
and she found herself, after a habit she had, drifting off into
half-audible soliloquy.
"William said," she murmured musingly, "that he thought the man a fair
masculine type, who might have developed well, with proper opportunity.
But that woman! Thoroughly nasty, ingrate, underhand. An improvement in
manners would only be a hopelessly inadequate veneer. A nature such as
she has would not be mended by the opportunities of three generations
and more. I do hope William does _not_ intend to take those people in
tow, for I am really not equal to it."
A telephone interrupted the reverie of Lady Frances. Five minutes later,
pale and anxious, but not forgetting the practicality that had been her
lifetime's habit, Lady Frances Ware was in her son's rooms across the
hall, turning down the bed for the reception of Sir William who, knocked
down by a motor dray as he was piloting the half-drunken Nixon across a
crowded street downtown was being brought home in the ambulance.
Nixon, reaching the hotel bar that afternoon, had discovered an
unforeseen weakness for what he termed "beer"--a word that with him,
meant everything drinkable in the alcoholic line--and had, in spite of
Ware's remonstrances, continued to imbibe beyond all reasonable limits:
dragging Sir William, who felt responsible and could not well abandon
him, to a big bar in the central portion of the city, and even paying
for his own drinks after Ware had flatly refused to take the risk of
buying any more for him.
"You _are_ rather a thirsty chap, you know," Ware, who had himself taken
only the original proposed glass of refreshment, had remarked, as at
last he had managed to get Nixon's wobbling head faced toward home. It
was while the two were in the act of crossing a street to a taxi Ware
had hailed, that the motor dray had run the baronet down. With a last
half-spasmodic push, he had thrust Nixon out of harm's way, and the
latter had not received so much as a scratch.