IN BLACK AND WHITE
Four days later Kate was reading, rocking and eating banana again in the
privacy of the little side verandah, when there came a familiar tramp
across the room behind her.
"It can't be Hugh," she said aloud, for it had been allowed by the whole
party that the seven days of a week were not too long to devote to the
thorough "doing" of the marvellous caves.
"By George though, can't it?" said that gentleman as he came through the
doorway, dropped his bag on one chair, and sat down heavily on another.
Kate laughed at him outright; his linen suit was red over with fine
dust, dust lay half an inch deep on the brim of his Panama, his very
eyebrows were red with the molecules of the mountain roads.
"Well, my girl," he said, "it was worth it--well worth it. Blessed be
motor-cars henceforth and forever, though hitherto I've never had a good
word to throw at one. Great Scott! to think of it; but for the chance of
one chap laying another fifty to a hundred that his car could do the
journey down in ten minutes under the other chap's, those girls would be
jabbering in my ears yet."
"But I thought they were such wonderful girls," said Kate amusedly;
"'ducky little girls', you called them, and 'little pets'."
"That's all very well," said Hugh; "little pets are very nice in their
place, and no one appreciates them better than faithfully yours, for an
hour or so. But when you get 'em for breakfast and lunch and dinner. And
they even insist upon trifling with the holies of your smoking times,
trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time,
why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as
a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found it floating handy."
"You seem to have returned heart-whole, at all events," said Kate; "and
I've had my suspicions of you."
"No," said Hugh, fanning himself composedly with a newspaper, "my day is
not yet, though as I've told you before I'm like the fellow in the comic
opera, there is that within me that tells me that when my time _does_
come the convulsion will be tremendous! When I love, it will be with
the accumulated fervour of sixty-six years! But I have an ideal--a
semi-transparent Being filled with an inorganic fruit jelly--and I have
never yet seen the woman who approaches within reasonable distance of
it. All--all opaque--opaque--opaque."
Kate laughed. "Then I'm afraid you don't feel much better for the
change," she said.
They had both hoped that a week's "junketing" with lively companions
might bring back the pen's good hour.
"Better!" he groaned, "why the day you let that Bibby woman loose on me
I was a flowing river compared to my mood to-day."
At that a recollection evidently came over Kate, some memory that the
unexpected arrival had driven away, for she froze visibly.
"I will go and make you a lemon-squash," she said coldly; "you are
possibly thirsty."
"Thirsty!" said Hugh, "my outward and visible dust is nothing to what
I've swallowed! Make me six lemon-squashes. But what's the matter, Kit?"
She made no answer, merely turned one severe glance on him and went off
to the pantry.
"Do tell me, Kate," he said, after he had lowered the large jugful she
brought him, and still she had made no further remark. "Nothing's
happened to the bike, has it? You've not smashed your precious nose? No,
it seems intact. Has the low-spirited Ellen given notice? Has Octavius
been charging more than elevenpence for his bacon?"
But Kate preserved a stony silence; she even picked up her book again
and affected to read. He drew the volume out of her hands.
"I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry."
"I don't feel as if I could ever be merry again with you, Hugh," she
said.
"And here have I," he said, addressing the verandah ceiling, "passed
through dangers enough to make me loved, Othello-wise, for themselves
alone. Dangers of culverts, dangers of sharp turnings, dangers of blue
metal, of precipices, of wandering cows, of naphtha explosions. Here
have I turned myself into a demd damp moist unpleasant body just to get
to her sheltering bosom and she repulses me like this."
"It is because I am what I have never been before, Hugh," said Kate,
"and that is ashamed of you."
"Ashamed? Of me, my joy!" said Hugh, but he knew now that it was the
interview outrage that was disturbing Kate. "It knows it is talking
demd charming sweetness but naughty fibs. It knows it is not ashamed of
its own popolorum tibby."
"Which is entirely attributable," said Kate, unable to resist keeping up
the vein, "to the gross misconduct and most improper behaviour of Mr.
Mantalini."
"Of me, my essential juice of pineapple!"
"Of you, Sir!"
"Will she call me, Sir!" cried Hugh, "me who doat upon her with the
demdest ardour! She, who coils her fascination round me like a pure and
angelic rattlesnake! It will be all up with my feelings; she will throw
me into a demd state."
"Hugh," said Kate, "it is far too serious a matter for nonsense. I
consider it was not only unkind but unmanly."
"My cup of happiness's sweetener," said Hugh, as he took out his pipe
and his tobacco and his matches with much deliberation. "You brought it
upon her yourself and she has _you_ to blame." He filled his pipe with
tobacco and rammed it well in. "It will be a lesson to you"--he struck a
match--"and I trust to her"--he tilted his chair back and puffed once or
twice--"to let an inoffensive man go on his way unmolested. And now my
sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry."
"But you might have given her the lesson privately," persisted Kate, and
her eyes kindled. "The unmanly part comes in when you callously allow
her to become the laughing-stock of town."
"What!" thundered Hugh, and he brought his chair so suddenly and heavily
back to its four-legged condition that the frail thing responded with an
ominous creak. "What on earth do you mean?"
"Didn't you know she was going to sign the interview with her own name?"
asked Kate, glad to find there might be some extenuating circumstances.
"You don't mean seriously to tell me she's gone and published that fool
of an interview?" Hugh shouted.
"I do seriously so mean," said Kate.
"Go and get me the paper," he said.
Kate brought him the _Evening Mail_ of two days back.
And there in black headlines he read--
"The only interview Hugh Kinross has ever granted."
"A lady beards the lion in his den and extracts most interesting
particulars."
"The eccentricities of a great author."
When Agnes Bibby's neat MS. had reached the Editor of the _Evening Mail_
that gentleman had fairly shouted with laughter, for he knew Kinross and
his habits well. And this perfervid and most serious account was in
truth very funny.
He found himself quite unable to resist so unique an opportunity of
raising a roar of laughter among his readers. Therefore, telling himself
that Kinross had too much humour to be seriously annoyed, and holding
himself protected by the well-known signature authenticating it, he had
at once blue-pencilled the article and sent it precisely as it stood
into the hands of the foreman printer. His twinkling eye had practically
swept over without noticing the modest signature at the end of the
article, "Agnes Bibby (Burunda)." Else, for the sake of Thomas
downstairs, if not for the lady herself, he would have scored it through
and let the laugh go against an anonymous contributor.
But things move rapidly in the office of an evening paper, and the
foreman ran through the first proofs and the sub-editor through the
second, and neither thought of removing that poor little name at the
end.
And now the article was two days old and quite famous. There had not
been a copy left of any of the editions.
"Well, well," said Hugh as he seized the paper, and ran his eye over the
paragraphs concerning his collar habit and his shoe habit, and his
ante-prandial energy,--"the laugh's only up against myself, and I'm not
thin-skinned." Then he saw the signature at the end, "Agnes Bibby
(Burunda)," in large, clear type.
"By George!" he said; "by George, Kate! That's rough on her." He
breathed hard. "Do you think she has seen it yet?"
"Seen it!" said Kate, and her voice actually choked a little. "The poor
girl is breaking her heart over it. I have never known any one feel
anything so acutely. Of course she must have realized it was all a joke
the moment she read the Editor's facetious comments. And then it seems
she has a brother in the office, and he has written to her a brotherly
letter explaining elaborately how she is the laughing-stock of the whole
town."
"By Jove!" repeated Hugh; "by Jove!" He seemed quite stunned. "Have you
seen her yet, K? Does she seem at all cut up?"
"Seen her!" repeated Kate, her mouth a-tremble with sympathy. "Yes, I
went over at once, and she saw me coming and ran this way and then that
to get away from me. And when she couldn't she just dropped down against
the bank on the lawn and sobbed and cried as heartbrokenly as Muffie
might have done."
"I say!" said Hugh. He gulped a lump from his throat. "I say!"
Then he turned on his heel and strode through the cottage and over the
verandah and through the "Tenby" garden and across the road and away
down "Greenways" drive.
"Bless the boy!" said Kate, wiping her eyes. "I know he didn't mean to
hurt the poor thing."