“Will you favour me by looking at it, young gentleman?” said the
petitioner.
_It_ was a most curious little model, which the petitioner had taken
reverently out of a handbag. He was a hungry, eager-looking man, in a
battered bowler, shabby frockcoat, and a primordial “comforter” which
might have been made for Job.
Mr. Edward Cantle, busy at his desk, paid no attention.
“It turns, sir, literally, on a question of fresh butter,” said the
petitioner. “Who gets it nowadays, or realizes how, between churn and
table, every pat becomes a dumping-ground for bacilli? Here, you will
observe, the whole difficulty is resolved. We lead the cow into the
cart itself, milk her into a separator, turn her out, drive off, and
the revolution of the wheels completes the process. See? No chance for
any freebooting germ! The result is simplicity itself—the customer’s
butter made actually on the way to his door.”
Mr. Cantle put his pen in his mouth, blotted what he had been at work
on, examined it cursorily but surely, rose, walked to the counter, and
presented a form to the petitioner, all something with the air of a
passionless police-inspector. He was a tall young man, loose-limbed,
and with all his hardness, like a melancholy Punch’s show character,
in his head. Much converse with cranks had engendered in him an air of
perpetual unspoken protest, of exasperated resignation. For he was a
trusted clerk in the office of the Commissioners of Patents for
Inventions.
“Exactly,” he mumbled over the goose-quill. “That’s a matter for your
provisional specification. Good morning.”
“It’s the most wonderful——”
“Of course—they all are. Good morning.”
“It will revolutionize——”
“Naturally. You will make your petition and declaration in the proper
forms. Good morning.”
The inventor essayed another effort or two, met with no response,
quavered out a sigh, packed up his treasure and vanished. The sound of
his exit neither relaxed nor deepened a wrinkle on the brow of the
neatly groomed Government official. He simply went on with his work.
At half-past one o’clock, it being Saturday, he—we were going to say
“knocked off,” but the expression would be a libel on his methodical
refinement. He took a hansom—selecting a personably horsed one—to
his chambers in Adelphi Terrace; lunched off four _pâté de foie
gras_ sandwiches, already awaiting him under a silver cover, and a
glass of chablis; changed his dress for a river suit of sober-tinted
flannel and a Panama hat; charged himself with a morocco handbag, also
ready prepared; drove to Waterloo, and took a first-class ticket, and
the train—he favoured the South-Western because it was the quieter
line of two in this connexion—to Windsor. Arrived there, he was
hailed and joined by a friend on the platform.
“Glad you’re come, Ned. I’m off colour a bit. You never are.”
It was hardly an attractive reception. Mr. Cantle glanced
interrogatively at his companion, the Honourable Ivo Monk, son of Lord
Prior.
“No?” he said. “What’s disturbing you, Monk?”
“O, the devil, I think!” said the young man peevishly. “Come along,
do, out of this.”
Together they walked down to the river in almost absolute silence. Mr.
Cantle had agreed to join his friend for an agreeable week-end on the
water. It looked promising. He thought a little, and came to a
characteristically uncompromising decision.
“Is it anything to do with Miss Varley?”
“Yes, it is.”
“She—they have a houseboat here, haven’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Close by?”
“More or less. Just above Datchet.”
“Then, I think, perhaps I’d better——”
“Then, I think, perhaps, you’d not. You don’t know anything about it.
It’s not what you suppose.”
“O!”
A punt, in luxurious keeping with the tastes of its owner, awaited
them at the steps. It was equipped with a number of little lockers for
wine and food, a wealth of the downiest cushions, and an adjustable
tilt with brass hoops for “roughing it” at nights on the water. For
the Honourable Ivo was at the moment an aquatic gipsy, wandering at
large and at whim, and scorning the effeminate pillow.
They loitered through Romney lock, talking commonplaces, and below
relinquished their poles and sat and drifted until the reeds held them
up. It was a fair, sweet afternoon, full of life and merriment, and,
in view of the crowding craft, the remotest from ghostliness.
“Would you like to see her?” said Mr. Monk suddenly and unexpectedly.
Cantle was never to be taken off his guard.
“If it will please you, it will please me,” he said.
They resumed the poles and made forward. To their left a little sludgy
creek went up among the osiers; and, anchored at its mouth, rocked the
vulgarest little apology for a houseboat. It seemed just one cuddy,
mounted on a craft like a bomb-ketch, which it filled from stem to
stern; and what with its implied restrictedness, and dingy appearance,
and stump of a chimney, one could not have imagined a less inviting
prison in which to make out a holiday. Yet there was a lord to this
squalid baby galliot, and to all appearance a very contented one, as
he sat smoking a pipe, with his legs dangling over the side. Monk
nodded to him, and the man nodded back with a grin.
“Who’s that?” asked Mr. Cantle, when out of earshot.
“O, a crank! You should recognize the breed better than I do.”
Mr. Cantle, thoughtfully nursing his jaw, with a frown on his face,
had left off punting.
“Don’t you know him?” he said suddenly.
“We exchange civilities,” answered the other; “the freemasonry of the
river, you understand. _There’s_ the Varleys’ boat.”
Forging under the Victoria Bridge, they had come in view of a long
line of houseboats moored under the left bank against a withy bed,
opposite the Home Park. At one of these, hight the “Mermaid,” very
large and handsome, they came to, and fastening on, stepped aboard. A
sound of murmuring ceased with their arrival, and Cantle had hardly
become aware of two figures seated in the saloon, before he was being
introduced to one of them.
Miss Varley was certainly “interesting”—tall and “English,” but with
an exhausted air, and her eyes superhumanly large. She greeted the
stranger sweetly, and her fiancé with a rather full, pathetic look.
“Mamma’s resting a little,” she said, in a bodiless voice, “and
Nanna’s been reading to me. Papa comes down by the seven o’clock
train.”
“And what’s Nanna been reading?” asked the young man.
The old nurse held up the volume. It was the Holy Book. Monk ground
his teeth.
“Hush, Master Ivo!” whispered the woman. “You only distress her.”
“I’d rather see her reading a yellow-back on a July day on the river.”
The girl put a hand on his arm. “When the call has come? When my days
are numbered, Ivo?” she said.
He almost burst out in an oath.
“I’d rather, if I were you, be recognized and called by my own name
and nature,” he said bitterly. “But it’s all nonsense, Netta. Do, for
God’s sake, believe it!”
He was so obviously overwrought, the situation was so painful, that
his friend persuaded him, on personal grounds, to leave. They punted
across, dropped down a distance, and brought up under the bank in a
quiet spot.
“Very well,” said Cantle. “You’ll tell me, perhaps, what’s the
matter?”
“Can’t you see? She’s dying.”
He dropped his face into his hands, with a groan of impotent
suffering.
“There’s some mystery here,” said his friend quietly.