Petticoat Influence
"PIP!"
"Well?"
"May I come in?"
"All right," said Pip in a surprised tone. His sister was not in the
habit of craving admission to his den in this formal manner.
The reason revealed itself with the opening of the door. Pipette entered
the room with another girl, at whose appearance Pip, always deferential
to the point of obsequiousness in female society, rose up hastily and
removed his pipe from his mouth. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and
otherwise unprepared for company. His private apartment was in a state
of more than usual confusion, for a difference of opinion had arisen
between John--the fox-terrier--and a cricket-boot, and the one-sided
conflict that ensued, together with the subsequent chastisement of John,
had deranged even the primitive scheme of upholstery that prevailed in
"the pig-sty," as Pip's apartment was commonly called.
"This is Elsie Innes," said Pipette. "My brother."
Pip saw before him a girl of about sixteen. She had extremely fair
hair, a clear skin, not unbecomingly freckled, and eyes which had a
habit of changing from blue to grey in different lights. Girls of
sixteen are not always graceful,--like their male prototypes they
frequently run to knees and elbows,--but this girl appeared to be free
from such defects. She possessed a slim, lithe, young figure, and
carried herself with an elasticity and freedom that spoke of open air
and early bedtimes. She was in the last stages of what slangy young men
call "flapperdom," and her hair was gathered on the nape of her neck
with a big black bow. Pip, of course, did not take in all these things
at once, but he had time to note especially the neatness of Elsie
Innes's feet and the whiteness of her teeth. From which it will be
observed that, though his experience in these matters was limited and
his judgment unformed, Pip's instincts were sound.
"Please sit down," he said, sweeping John and "The Field" from out of
the armchair. "Pipette, what on earth did you bring Miss--Miss, er--"
"Innes."
"--Miss Innes up to this untidy hole for?"
"The drawing-room has got two plumbers in it, and they are laying lunch
in the dining-room, and Father is in the study, so we came here," said
Pipette.
Pip expressed his delight rather lamely, and the girls sat down.
"You must endure us till lunch," continued Pipette. "I suppose you know
that this is the day of the Blanes' garden-party?"
"So it is! I had forgotten."
Pipette smiled amiably and turned to her friend.
"What did I tell you?" she said.
"You said," replied Miss Innes, "that he would say he had forgotten all
about it."
"Pip, dear," continued Pipette, pointing an accusing finger, "don't
think you can deceive _us_!"
"What do you mean?" inquired Pip uneasily.
"You know," said Pipette. "Think."
Pip thought, apparently with success. "Oh," he said, growing red in the
face,--he had never outgrown that childish weakness,--"you are a little
ass, Pipette!"
Pipette nodded sagely and smiled at Miss Innes. That young person smiled
indulgently upon Pip, and heaved a little sigh which intimated that boys
would be boys.
For Pip was at this time involved in the meshes of his first serious
love-affair. Being without skill in the art of dissimulation, he made no
attempt to conceal his condition, and in consequence was now acting as
target for the playful and occasionally rather heavy banter of his
friends. Why, goodness knows! We have grown so accustomed to regard the
youthful lover as an object of humour, that a young man, if he happens
to fall in love, is now compelled to conceal the fact, or, at any rate,
dress it up, and endeavour to pass the affair off as at most a mere airy
flirtation.
Now, roughly speaking, a man is in love from his fifteenth birthday
onwards: nature has ordained it. But in most cases civilisation,
convention, society--call it what you like--has ordained that he must
not treat this, the most inspiring passion of human life, as anything
more than a jest for another ten years or so. And therein lie more
little tragedies--disintegrated castles-in-the-air, secret
disappointments, and endless efforts of self-repression--than this world
dreams of. The boy may keep the girl's photograph on his mantelpiece,
and that is just about all he may keep. Contrast with this the happy
case of the girl. If _she_ chooses to fall in love at the age of
eighteen, nothing is deemed prettier or more natural: she is at liberty
to enjoy her birthright openly; she receives sympathetic assistance on
every hand; and if at the age of nineteen or twenty she decides to
marry, society comes and sheds rapturous tears at the wedding. What of
the boy who has been her playmate for years back; who has taken the
lead in all their childish escapades; who has been her trusted guardian
and confidant ever since they pulled crackers and kissed under the
mistletoe at children's parties? What of him? He is still a boy. True,
he is a year older than she is, but by an immutable law he is for all
practical purposes ten years her junior. She has sprung up at a stroke
of some mysterious magician's wand into a woman, a personage with an
acknowledged position in the scheme of things; and he, her old
sweetheart, is only a poor, broken-hearted hobbledehoy. He will get over
it, you say? Quite true. But that will not make things any easier for
him at present. Ten years later he will take a girl away from some other
hobbledehoy and marry her. He will then be in the prime of young
manhood; and he will behold his first love, plump, matronly, and rather
_passee_, sitting in a back pew at the wedding. It seems rather a dull
sort of revenge, somehow.
Of course boy and girl marriages would never do. Joint inexperience is a
sure guarantee of disaster. Still, sentimental persons may be permitted
one sigh of regret for a millennium which, however hopelessly idyllic
and unpractical it might be, would at any rate prevent young men from
marrying wealthy widows, and pretty girls from giving themselves, in
exchange for a position in society, to middle-aged gentlemen with
five-figure incomes. And if a young man must spend the best years of his
life in repressing his tenderest instincts, let us at any rate refrain
from laughing at his struggles.
All of which brings us back to Pip.
The female sex exercised a more than usual fascination over him. Brought
up in a circle almost exclusively male,--Pipette was too completely
subservient to himself to have any direct influence on the moulding of
his character,--Pip regarded women in general much as the poor Indian
regards the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies,--as things not to be
understood or approached, but merely to be worshipped. Pip was a
Galahad,--an extremely reserved, slow-moving, and, at times, painfully
shy Galahad,--but a very perfect gentle knight for all that. He treated
all women, from his sister's friends to the most plebeian young person
who ever dispensed refreshment across a bar, with a grave courtesy which
the more frivolous members of that captious sex occasionally found
rather dull.
Such a girl was Miss Madeline Carr. Pip had met her six months before on
a visit to the home of his friend Dick Blane, and, being a healthy young
man and twenty-one, had fallen in love with her. Being Pip, he did the
thing thoroughly, and made no attempt to conceal his devotion.
Unfortunately, Madeline was of a type, not uncommon, which only wants
what it cannot get, and thinks but little of what may be had for
nothing.
She was an exceedingly pretty girl of twenty, in her second season, and
consequently almost sufficiently worldly-wise to be Pip's mother. Having
made an absolutely bloodless conquest of Pip, she valued him
accordingly, and Pip was now beginning to realise that there must be
something wrong with an attachment which consisted of perpetual devotion
on the one side and nothing but an occasional careless acknowledgment of
services rendered on the other. Of late, however, the situation had
improved. Madeline had come up to Cambridge for the May Week, and
finding that Pip occupied a position of authority and even admiration
among his fellows that she had never dreamed of, and of which she had
gathered no hint from Pip's own references to his 'Varsity life, Miss
Carr decided in her shrewd, business-like, and thoroughly cold-blooded
little heart that, for the time being, considerable _kudos_ might accrue
to her as the exclusive proprietress of the most popular man of his
year. Consequently for a brief week Pip had basked in the unaccustomed
sunshine of her smiles; and though there had been a perceptible lowering
of temperature since their return to town, he was still about as
cheerful as a man in love has any right to be.
He turned to Miss Innes.
"Are you going to the party?" he asked.
"Look at me!" replied his guest. "No, not at my face,"--Pip was
regarding her resolutely between the eyes,--"my clothes. Can't you see
I'm dressed for a party?"
"Ah!" remarked Pip meditatively, shifting his gaze lower down, "I see.
You are coming with us, I suppose?"
"Not us," interposed Pipette,--"you."
"What! aren't you coming yourself?"
"No. The Lindons are to be here for lunch, and I must stay and entertain
the old lady while Father and Sir John sit in the study and talk shop."
"Bad luck!" replied Pip. "Sir John Lindon and the dad are always
searching about inside people and finding new diseases," he explained,
turning to Elsie. "It is called Research. I remember once in the 'lab'
at--"
"So you must escort Miss Innes, Pip," said Pipette hastily.
"Right! That will be first-rate," said Pip, with a heartiness which
quite surprised himself.
Presently they went down to lunch, and after Pip had arrayed himself in
tennis costume, the two set off for the Blanes' garden-party.
It was the last week in June. Term was over, and ten places had been
filled up in the Cambridge Eleven against Oxford. Pip so far had not
received his Blue. He had just completed his first year, for he had not
gone direct from school to the University, partly because his
attainments were not quite up to the standard of the Previous
Examination, and partly because he had never quite shaken off the
effects of his fall in the dormitory that eventful night two-and-a-half
years ago. A trip round the world with a tutor had corrected these
deficiencies, and Pip was now at the end of his period of "Fresherdom"
at the University of Cambridge.
But somehow all was not well with his cricket. He had been tried against
the M.C.C. and had not been a success. His chief rival, Honeyburn of
Trinity, had been tried against Yorkshire, and had been a failure. The
University captain had been reduced to experimenting with a lob-bowler,
and such a creature had been tried against an England Eleven a week
before. But though he had taken two good wickets they had cost
forty-four runs apiece; and his further services had been dispensed
with. So the last place was still unsettled. Pip, knowing that
University captains very seldom go back to their first loves, had little
hope of being chosen, though he had a good college record. Most probably
the captain, rendered desperate, would fall back on some well-tried
friend of his own on whom he could rely to a certain, if limited,
extent; or else--horror of horrors!--bring up some last year's Blue, dug
out of an office or a public school, and so blight the last faint
pretensions of all those gentlemen who were still hoping to be chosen,
if only in the humble role of a _pis aller_.
It was now Wednesday, and Cambridge was to play Oxford at Lord's on the
following Monday. Pip was a phlegmatic youth, but the knowledge that
Cayley, the Cambridge captain, who was Mrs. Blane's nephew, would
probably be at the garden-party, gave him a vague feeling of unrest.
Perhaps Cayley had not made up his mind yet; perhaps the proverb about
"out of sight out of mind" was capable of working negatively; perhaps--
"Do you imagine you are entertaining me?" inquired a cold voice at his
side.
Pip started guiltily. "I had forgotten you were there," he said.
"I thought you had," said Miss Innes composedly.
Pip smiled at her in his most friendly and disarming fashion. "Very rude
of me," he continued: "I'm sorry. The fact is, I never can think of
things to say to people."
"Why not tell me what has been going on in your mind all this time?"
suggested the girl. "That would be something."
"Oh, that was only cricket," said Pip.
"I thought so. You were wondering if you were going to get your Blue."
Pip turned and regarded this discerning young person with increasing
interest.
"How did you guess that?"
"Well, it was not very difficult. I should be too, if I were in your
place. The papers are quite full of it. 'The Sportsman' says--"
"Do you read 'The Sportsman'?" asked Pip, much softened.
"Yes; and of course I read 'The Field' on Saturdays. Now, tell me what
you were twisting your left wrist about for?"
"Great Scott! Was I?" cried Pip, turning pink.
"Yes; and you were skipping about just like you do when you run up to
the wicket to bowl."
Pip was too perturbed by this information to notice the compliment
implied by Miss Innes's familiarity with his bowling action.
"I must have looked an ass," he said apologetically. "Bad luck on you,
too!"
"Oh, I was all right. I walked a yard or two behind. People didn't know
I was with you."
"Oh!" said Pip, rather sheepishly.
"And as I was watching your action," continued the girl judicially, "I
thought of something--just as you dodged round that old gentleman at the
corner of Reedham Gardens."
"I didn't notice him," said Pip humbly.
"No? Well, he noticed you, I think, because he stopped and spoke to the
policeman at the corner after he had passed us," said the girl gravely.
"I seem to have been going it. But what was the thing you thought of?"
"Well, you bowl left-handed."
"Yes; I know."
"You run up to the wicket in rather a queer way, as though you were
going to bowl at point, and then you suddenly swing round the corner and
let the batsman have it instead."
"Quite right. But where on earth--?"
"Don't interrupt! I am speaking to you for your good." The girl was
genuinely in earnest now. "Well, you always bowl over the wicket, don't
you?"
"Yes; why not?"
Elsie looked at him severely.
"Don't you see what a grand chance you have been throwing away all this
time?" she said. "If you bowled _round_ the wicket, you would--"
"I see, I see!" roared Pip, slapping his leg. "Confound my thick head!
The umpire! If I bowl over the wicket I'm in full view of the batsman
all the time; but with my diagonal run, if I bowled _round_ the wicket I
should pass behind the umpire just before delivering the ball, and so
bother the batsman? Is that it?"
"That's it. You should have thought it out for yourself years ago," said
the girl reprovingly.
The conversation was interrupted by their arrival at Mrs. Blane's house.
Miss Innes was immediately snapped up to play tennis, and Pip drifted
off in search of the lady to whom he was wont to refer with mingled
pride and depression as his "best girl." They greeted each other in
their usual manner, the balance of cordiality being heavily on Pip's
side; and Miss Carr inquired--
"Who is your friend--the school-girl person in the white frock?"
Pip, anxious to clear himself of any appearance of faithlessness,
explained that Miss Innes was a friend of his sister's, and hastened on
his own part to disclaim anything approaching intimacy with the lady. He
then craved the favour of a game of croquet.
"Not at present," said Miss Carr, who had just been introduced to a
young Guardsman,--"I'll see later. But you can go and get me some
strawberries and bring them over to the croquet-lawn."
Pip departed as bidden; but somehow he was not conscious of the glow of
heroic devotion that usually actuated him when obeying Madeline Carr's
behests. He had a feeling that she might have said "Please!" and a
further feeling that "other people"--no further specification--would
have done so at once.
At this point in his reflections he arrived at the croquet-lawn with the
strawberries, and was promptly commanded to put them down and stand by
for further orders. This treatment, customary though it was, annoyed
him; and, feeling unusually independent and assertive, he drifted behind
a rhododendron bush, where he encountered his crony, Mr. Richard Blane,
the son of the house, who was enjoying a quiet cigarette during a brief
lull in the arduous labour of dispensing hospitality.
"Hallo, Pip!"
"Hallo!"
"Cigarette?"
"Thanks."
The two smoked silently for a moment, sitting side by side on the
garden-roller.
"I say," inquired Mr. Blane, "who is that flapper you brought with you?
All right--eh?"
"Name of Innes," replied Pip shortly. "Scotch--pal of Pipette's."
"Seems to be a pal of Cayley's, too," said Blane. "They were having a
quiet ice in the shrubbery just now. Very thick, they looked."
"Is Cayley here, then?" said Pip, looking more interested.
"Yes. Has he given you your Blue yet?"
Pip shook his head gloomily.
"Bad luck! Well, there are still a few days. I expect he is waiting to
see if the wicket is going to be hard or soft."
"I suppose he hasn't given it to Honeyburn?"
"Don't think so."
"I expect he will," said Pip in resigned tones.
"Rot! You seem to be fearfully down on your luck this afternoon, old
man. Come and have an orgy of claret-cup. It's about all we keep
to-day." Mr. Blane rose from the roller, brushing some blades of grass
from his immaculate flannels.
"Sorry--can't," said Pip. "Miss Carr said she might be able to play
croquet with me about now," he explained awkwardly.
Dick knew all about his infatuation.
"Pip," said that youthful sage, inclining his head at a judicial angle,
"you drop that girl! She's the wrong sort."
"Look here, Dick--" began Pip indignantly.
"Yes, I know," continued the voice of the misogynist. "She's perfect and
all that; but no woman is worth the seriousness you are putting into
this business. I believe it's spoiling your eyes, for one thing.
Madeline Carr is simply making use of you. You see how she is behaving
just now--playing a sort of in-and-out game? Well, she is waiting to see
if you get your Blue. If you do, she will trot about with you during the
luncheon interval at Lord's, and so on. It'll make the other girls
jealous. If you don't--well, she'll have no use for you. Oh, I know
'em!" The orator wagged his head and paused for breath.
To Pip most of this diatribe was rank blasphemy, but he felt
uncomfortably conscious that there was some truth in his friend's
remarks. Still, he stood up stoutly for his ideal.
"Don't talk rot, Dick!" he said. "There may be a few women like
that,--just one or two,--but this girl isn't one of them. Why, you have
only got to look at her face to see that!"
The world-weary Blane surveyed his friend with something approaching
consternation.
"A bad case!" he remarked, shaking his head. "Her face? My boy, faces
are the most deceptive things in the world."
"Hers isn't," maintained Pip. "She is most sincere. You have only to
look her in the eyes to see what is going on inside."
He stopped suddenly. He realised that he was growing too communicative.
"Eyes? That's just it. A girl makes eyes at you, Pip, and you crumple
up. I had no idea you were in such a drivelling state as this, or I
should have jawed you sooner. Come and drink stimulants,--claret-cup,
lemonade, iced-coffee, anything to drown the past,--but come. And never
again, after this experience, trust a girl with big eyes and little
ways."
So saying, the counsel for the prosecution took the counsel for the
defence by the arm, and the two, nobly sinking their differences in a
common cause, cast their cigarettes away and sallied forth to distribute
tea and ices among hungry chaperons and plain girls.
Meanwhile Miss Elsie Innes and the Cambridge captain were conversing in
a retired part of the garden. An introduction had been effected by Miss
Blane, though at whose instigation need not concern us.
Cayley, whose conversational stock-in-trade was limited, was feeling
unusually complacent. The conversation had never flagged once, for this
girl, though obviously young and inexperienced, had proved herself to be
intelligent and appreciative beyond her years.
"I suppose you are going to beat Oxford," said Miss Innes, looking at
her companion with innocent admiration.
"That is a large question," replied Cayley heavily. "These things
aren't settled by the spin of a coin. But we are going to do our best,"
he added, with an indulgent smile.
"Have you picked your team yet?"
"All but one. I want another bowler."
"I see. What sort of bowler?"
"A good bowler," replied the captain, facetiously. It was hardly worth
while wasting technicalities on a girl.
"Oh! Can't you find one?"
"I have got three in my eye, but I can only choose one."
"I saw the Cambridge Eleven play against the M.C.C.," said Miss Innes,
apparently changing the subject.
"Which day?"
"The second. _You_ made sixty-nine, not out."
Mr. Cayley, much gratified, coughed confusedly.
"Oh, that was a fluke," he said. "The difficulty that day was to get
wickets."
"There was one Cambridge bowler," continued the girl, "who looked as
though he ought to take wickets but didn't."
"Who was that?" inquired the captain, much amused.
"A man with black hair and blue eyes."
Mr. Cayley scratched his nose reflectively. His recollections of the
eyes of his team were vague. Their individual shades he had never
observed, though he had frequently condemned them collectively.
"Well, really--" he said. "Do you remember anything else about him?"
"He was a medium-paced, left-handed bowler, breaking both ways, with a
good deal of swerve as well," said Miss Innes, becoming suddenly and
surprisingly technical: "he had a curious oblique run, and he usually
bowled about one really fast ball every over."
"Oh--Pip!" said the captain at once.
"That is the name," said the girl; "I remember now, when a catch went to
him in the outfield, you called out, 'Run for it, Pip!'"
"That's him," said Cayley. "Yes, he has been disappointing lately. He is
a good bowler, too; but somehow he is not taking wickets at present."
"Have you ever tried him round the wicket?" asked Elsie. "With his run
he would pass behind the umpire just before delivering the ball."
The captain was fairly startled this time. He turned and regarded the
_ingenue_ beside him with undisguised interest and admiration.
"I say," he remarked, with the air of one who has just made a profound
discovery, "you know something about cricket!"
Miss Innes, much to his surprise, blushed like a little schoolboy at the
compliment.
"I was brought up to it," she said. "I am a sister of Raven Innes."
Then the captain understood; and he almost fell at her feet, for the
name of Raven Innes is honourably known from Lord's to Melbourne.
"Do you play yourself?" he asked.
"A bit. I don't bat quite straight, but I can bowl a little.
Leg-breaks," she added, with a touch of pride.
The captain's appreciative reverie was interrupted by the appearance of
a third party--Pip, to wit--who now drifted into view and hovered rather
disconsolately in the offing, as if uncertain whether to approach. He
was a prey to melancholy, having just completed a final rupture with
Madeline Carr, and under the stress of subsequent reaction was anxious
to escape home.
"Hallo!" said Cayley. "There's your man, Miss Innes."
Miss Innes glanced in Pip's direction.
"So it is. I can recognise him," she answered, with an air of gratified
surprise. "Will you take me to have some strawberries now, please?"
The couple departed, leaving Pip still hove-to on the horizon.
"Rum things, women," mused the captain. "This girl's quite out of the
common. I thought at first she must be keen on Pip, or something; but
she doesn't seem even to know him. Not often you get a woman taking a
purely sporting interest in a man like that!"
Which is nothing but the truth.
Delighted to find a woman possessed of "some sense," Cayley, who was by
nature a homely person with bachelor instincts, unbent still further,
with the result that the end of a long bout of cricket "shop" with Elsie
found him fully convinced--somewhat to his surprise, for he had hitherto
been unable to make up his mind on the subject--that Pip was exactly the
man he wanted for next Monday.
Elsie finally joined Pip, who was waiting, slightly depressed, to take
her away.
"Had a good time?" she inquired brightly, as they walked home.
"Rotten," said Pip.
"Didn't you meet any friends?"
"Yes, a good many 'Varsity men."
"I meant lady friends."
"I haven't got any," said Pip glumly.
"You should speak the truth," said his companion with some acerbity.
"How about Miss Carr?"
Pip glanced at her; and then, moved by an impulse which he did not quite
understand at the time, he said, with sudden and unwonted heat,--
"I never wish to set eyes on Miss Carr again."
After this outburst they walked on silently, till they came to a house
in Sussex Gardens.
"I live here," said Miss Innes. "Good-bye, and thank you so much for
bringing me home."
They shook hands.
"When shall I see you again?" said Pip regretfully.
The girl smiled at his frank seriousness.
"Lord's, on Monday," she said. "Come and see me in the luncheon hour, or
before, if Cambridge is batting."
"I say," said Pip gruffly, "aren't you rather taking things for
granted?"
"You mean your coming to see me?"
"Gracious, no!" cried Pip in genuine distress. "I meant about my
playing."
Elsie Innes looked him straight in the face. "Pip," she said, "do you
wear gloves?"
Pip extended two enormous palms and inspected them doubtfully.
"Sometimes," he said--"at weddings."
"Very good. I'll bet you ten pairs of gloves to one that you get your
Blue."
"Don't!" said Pip appealingly. "You couldn't afford it. I take nines."
"My size," said Miss Innes, "is six-and-a-quarter. White kid--eight
buttons. Good-bye!"
She turned and vanished into the recesses of the hall, a receding vision
of white frock, glinting hair, and black bow.
After Pip had walked down two streets and halfway across a square, he
stopped suddenly and dealt his leg a blow with a tennis-racquet that
would have maimed an ordinary limb for life.
"By gad," he cried to a scandalised pug-dog which was taking the evening
air on an adjacent doorstep, "she called me Pip!"
* * * * *
Next morning he received a communication from the authorities of the
Cambridge University Cricket Club.
An hour later he was being shepherded, scarlet in the face, by a posse
of stentorian shopwalkers, through an embarrassing wilderness of ladies'
hosiery to the Glove Department of an establishment in Oxford Street.
BOOK TWO
THE MAKING OF A MAN