The appearance of shame and conscious guilt that suffused the face and person of Bridgewater caused the wild idea to rush through his employer's mind that the old man had, vulgarly speaking, "scooped the till" and was attempting evasion.
Defaulters bound for America or France do not, however, as a rule, take the Monkey House at the Zoo en route, and the practical mind of James Hancock rejected the idea at once, and gripped the truth of the matter. Bridgewater had been following him for the purpose of spying upon him.
The unhappy Bridgewater had indeed been following him.
When, emerging from the bar, he had perceived his quarry he had followed them at a safe distance. When they went into the Vienna Café he waited; it seemed to him that he waited three hours: it was, in fact, an hour and a quarter. For, having finished her ice and its accompaniments, Fanny had declared that she was quite ready for luncheon, and had proposed that they should proceed to the meal at once without seeking a new café.
When they came out, Bridgewater took up the pursuit. They got into a hansom: he got into another, and ordered the driver to pursue the first vehicle at a safe distance. He did this from instinct, not as a result of having read Gaboriau, or the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes."
The long wait, the upset of all his usual ways, and the fact that he had not lunched, coupled with his dread of a hansom—hitherto when he had moved on wheels it had always been on those of a four-wheeler or omnibus—conspired to reduce him mentally to the condition of an over-driven sheep.
They left the part of the town he knew, and passed through streets he knew not of, streets upon streets, and still the first vehicle pursued its way with undiminished speed. He felt now a dim certainty that his employer was going to be married, and now he tried to occupy his scattered wits in attempting to compute what this frightful cab journey would cost.
At the Zoo gates the first hansom stopped.
Pull up, cried Bridgewater, poking his umbrella through the trap.
He alighted a hundred yards from the gates. At the turnstile he paid his shilling and went in, but Fanny and her companion had vanished as completely as if the polar bear had swallowed them up.
He wandered away through the gardens aimlessly, but keeping a sharp look-out. He had never been to the Zoo before, but guessed it was the Zoo because of the animals. The whole adventure had the complexion of a nightmare, a complexion not brightened by the melancholy appearance of the eagles and vultures and the distant roaring and lowing of unknown beasts.
He saw an elephant advancing towards him swinging its trunk like a pendulum; to avoid it he took a path that led to the Fish House. His one desire now was to get out of the gardens and get home. He recognised now that he had made a serious mistake in entering the gardens at all. To have returned at once to Miss Hancock with the information that her brother had simply taken Miss Lambert to the Zoo would have been the proper and sensible course to have pursued.
Now at any moment he might find himself confronted with the two people he dreaded to meet. What should he say suppose he met them? What could he say? The anguish of this thought drove him from the Fish House, where he had taken temporary refuge. He took a path which ended in an elephant; it was the same elephant he had seen before, but he did not know it. A side path, which he pursued hastily, brought him to the polar bear. Here he asked his way to the nearest gate of a young man and maiden who were gazing at the bear. The young man promptly pointed out a path; he took it, and found himself at the Monkey House.
He took off his hat and mopped his head with his bandana handkerchief. Looking round in bewilderment after this refreshing operation he saw something approaching far worse than an elephant; it was Mr Hancock, and with Mr Hancock, Fanny, making directly for him.
He did not hesitate a moment in doing the worst thing possible; as an animal enters a trap, he entered the Monkey House. He would have shut and bolted the door behind him had such a proceeding been feasible.
Bridgewater had a horror of monkeys; he had always considered the common organ-grinder's monkey to be the representative of all its kind, and the last production of nature in frightfulness; but here were monkeys of every shape, size, and colour, a symphony of monkeys, each "note" more horrible than the last.
If you have ever studied monkeys and their ways you will know that they have their likes and dislikes just like men. That some people "appeal" to them at first sight, and some people do not. Bridgewater did not. When he saw Fanny entering at the door he retreated to the furthest limits of the place and pretended to be engaged in contemplation of a peculiarly sinister-looking ape, upon which, to judge from its appearance, a schoolboy had been at work with a brushful of blue paint.
The azure and sinister one endured the human's gaze for a few mutterful moments, and then bursting into loud yells flew at the bars and attempted to tear them from their sockets; the mandrills shrieked and chattered, the lemur added his note, and Bridgewater beat a retreat.
It was at this moment that Fanny's wandering gaze caught him.
Mr Hancock, asking Fanny to wait for him for a short time, took Bridgewater by the arm and led him outside.
Now, Bridgewater, what is the meaning of this? Why have you left the office? Why have you followed me? What earthly reason had you for doing such a thing? Speak out, man—are you dumb?
I declare to God, Mr James, said the unhappy Bridgewater, "I had no reason——"
No reason!—are you mad? Bridgewater, you haven't been—drinking?
Drinking! cried Bridgewater, with what your melodramatist would call a hollow laugh. "Drinking!—oh yes—drinking? No! No!—don't mind me, Mr James. Drinking! One blessed glass of sherry, and not a bite have I had—waiting two hours and more—following you in a cab—three shillings the fare was—nearly torn in pieces by an ape—following you and hiding in all sorts of places, and then told I've been drinking. Do I look as if I had been drinking, Mr James? Am I given to drinking, Mr James? Have you known me for forty years, Mr James, and have you ever seen me do such a thing? Answer me that, Mr James——"
Hush, hush!—don't talk so loud, said Hancock, rather alarmed at the old man's hysterical manner. "No, you are the last person to do such a thing, but tell me, all the same, why you followed me."
Bridgewater was dumb. Hungry, thirsty, frightened at being caught spying, startled by elephants and addled by apes as he was, still his manhood revolted at the idea of betraying Patience and sheltering himself at her expense. All the same, he attempted very feminine tactics in endeavouring to evade a direct reply.
Drinking! I have been in the office, man and boy, this fifty years and more come next Michaelmas; it's fifty-one years, fifty-one years next Michaelmas Day, every day at my place but Sundays and holidays, year in, year out——
Bridgewater, repeated Mr Hancock, "will you answer me the question I just asked you? Why did you follow me to-day?"
Oh Lord, said Bridgewater, "I wish I had never seen this day! Follow you, Mr James? do you think I followed you for pleasure? Why, the office—God bless my soul! it makes my hair stand on end—no one there but Wolf to take charge, and I have been away hours and hours. It's three o'clock now, and here am I miles and miles away; and I ought to have called at the law courts at 3.20, and there's those bills to file. It seems all like a horrible nightmare, that it does; it seems——"
I don't want to know what it seems. You have left your duty and come away—for what purpose?
Silence.
Ah well! said Hancock, speaking not in the least angrily, "I see there is a secret of some sort. I regret that a man in whom I have always placed implicit trust should keep from me a secret that concerns me; evidently—no matter, I am not curious. Yes, it is three o'clock; it might be as well for you to return and look after things, though it is too late for the law courts now."
This tone and manner completely floored Bridgewater. The fountains of his great deep were broken up, and if Patience Hancock could have seen the damage done to his confidential reservoir, she would have shuddered.
I'll tell you the truth, Mr James. It's not my fault—she put me to the work. I'll tell you the truth. I've been following you and spying upon you, but it was for your own good, she said——
Who said?
Miss Patience.
Miss Patience told you to follow me to-day?
Yes.
But what on earth—how on earth did she know I was—er—coming here?
She didn't know.
Well, how the devil did she tell you to follow me, then?
She wanted to know where you were going to.
But, roared Hancock, whose face had been slowly crimsoning, or purpling rather, since the mention of his sister's name, "how the blazes did she know I was going anywhere?"
When I saw you going out of the office with Miss Lambert I ran round and told her.
When you saw me going out of the office with Miss Lambert you ran round and told her! said Hancock, spacing each word and speaking with such a change from fire to ice that his listener shivered. "Oh, this is too good! I pay you a large salary to spy upon me and to run round and tell my sister my doings. Am I mad, or am I dreaming? And what—what—WHAT led you, sir, to leave the office and run round and tell my sister?"
For God's sake, Mr James, don't talk so loud! said Bridgewater; "the people are turning round to look at us. I didn't leave the office of my own accord; it was Miss Patience, who said to me, she said, 'Bridgewater, I trust you for your master's sake to let me know if you see him with a lady, for,' she said, 'there is a woman who has designs on him.'"
Ah!
Those were her words. So when I saw you going out with Miss Lambert I ran round and told her.
Ah!
Mr Hancock had fallen from fury into a thoughtful mood: one of the sharpest brains in London was engaged in unravelling the meaning to get at the inner-meaning of all this.
My sister came round to the office some time ago asking me to spare you for an hour as she wished for your advice about a lease. That, of course, was all humbug: she wanted you for the purpose of talking about me?
That is true.
The lease was never mentioned?
Not once, Mr James.
All the conversation was about me and my welfare?
That it was.
Now see here, Bridgewater, cast your memory back. Is this the first time in your life that my sister has invited you to my house in Gordon Square to discuss my welfare?
No indeed, sir. I've been there before.
How many times?
Bridgewater assumed the cast of countenance he always assumed when engaged in reckoning.
That's enough, said Hancock, "don't count. Now tell me, when did she first begin to take you into her confidence—twenty years ago?"
Yes, Mr James, fully that.
Hancock made a sound like a groan.
And twenty years ago it was the same tale: 'Protect my brother from a designing woman.'
Why, it was, and that's the truth, said Bridgewater, as if the fact had just been discovered by him.
And you did your best, told her all about me and my movements, as far as you knew them, and mixed and muddled, and made an ass of yourself and a fool of me——
Oh, Mr James!
Hold your tongue!—a fool of me. Do you know, John Bridgewater, that you have been aiding and abetting in a conspiracy—a conspiracy unpunishable by law, but still a conspiracy—hold your tongue!—you are innocent of everything but of being a fool; indeed, I ought not to call any man a fool, for I have been a fool myself, and I ought to have seen that the one end and aim of my sister's life was to secure her position as my keeper, and her tenure of my house. You have shown me at one flash a worm that has crawled through my past, cankering and corroding all it touched. Money, money, money—that is my sister's creed. I am not young, Bridgewater, and it seems to me that if instead of living all these years side by side with this money-grub, I had lived side by side with a wife, my lot would have been a better one. I might have had children, grown-up sons now, daughters—things that make an interest for us in our old age. Between me and all that has come my sister. That woman has a very strong will. I see many things in the past now, ay, twenty years ago, that I can explain. Bridgewater, you have done me a great injury, but you did it for the best, and I forgive you. Half the people in this world are pawns and chess-pieces, moved about by the men and women of intellect who form the other half. If you had possessed eyes to see, you might have seen that the really designing woman against whom I should have been protected, was the woman with whom you leagued yourself—my sister.
The expression on Bridgewater's face was so wonderfully funny that Hancock would have laughed had he not been in such a serious mood.
However, what's done is done, and there is no use in crying over spilt milk. You have at least done me a service by your stupidity in following me to-day, for you have shown me the light. Miss Lambert pleases me, and if I choose to make her mistress of my house, instead of my sister, mistress of my house she will be. We will return now to—where I left Miss Lambert, and we will all go home to Gordon Square and have dinner with my sister.
Not me, Mr James, gasped Bridgewater, "I don't feel well."
Nonsense! you need not fear my sister. She is no longer mistress of my house; next week she shall pack bag and baggage. Come.
He turned towards the Monkey House, and Bridgewater followed him, so mazed in his intellect that it would be hard to tell whether monkeys, men, Fanny Lambert, Patience Hancock, or elephants, were uppermost in his brain.
It was James Hancock's rule that a dinner should be served every night at Gordon Square, to which he could invite any one, even a city alderman.
On this especial day a dinner, even better than usual, was in prospect. Miss Hancock had a large circle of acquaintances of her own; she belonged to several anti-societies. As before hinted, she was not destitute of a certain kindness of heart, and the counterfoils of her cheque book disclosed not inconsiderable sums subscribed to the Society for the Total Abolition of Vivisection and Kindred Bodies.
To-day she expected to dinner a person, a gentleman of the female persuasion—that is to say, a sort of man. Mr Bulders, the person in question, a member of the Anti-Tobacco League, was a crank of the crankiest description. He wrote letters to the paper on every conceivable subject, and in this way had obtained a dim and unholy sort of notoriety. Fox hunting was his especial detestation, and his grand hobby was cremation. "Why Fear the Flames?" by Emanuel Bulders, a pamphlet of fifteen pages, privately printed, reposed in Miss Hancock's private bookcase. But Mr Bulders has no place in this story; he is dead and—cremated, let us hope. I shadow him forth as the reason why Miss Hancock was sitting this evening by the drawing-room fireplace, dressed in the dress she assumed when she expected visitors, and engaged in crochet-work.
The clock pointed to half-past six, Bulders was due—over-due, like the Spanish galleon that was destined never to come into port. She had said in her note, "Come early, I wish to talk over the last report of the —— Society, and my brother has little sympathy with such subjects."
Suddenly her trained ear distinguished the sound of her brother's latchkey in the door below. Some women are strangely like dogs in so far as regards the senses of hearing and smell.
Patience Hancock, as she sat by the drawing-room fireplace, could tell that her brother had not entered the house alone. She made out his voice, and then the voice of Bridgewater. She supposed that James had brought his clerk home to dinner to talk business matters over, as he sometimes did; and she was relapsing from the attitude of strained attention when a sound struck her, hit her, and caused her to drop her crochet-work and rise to her feet.
She heard the laughter of a girl.
Almost instantly upon the laughter the door opened, and it seemed to Miss Hancock that a dozen people entered the room.
This is my sister Patience—Patience, Miss Lambert. We've all come back to dinner. Sit down, Bridgewater. By the way, Patience, there's a letter for you; I took it from the postman at the hall door. He handed the letter; it was from Mr Bulders, excusing himself for not coming to dine, and alleging for reason a sore throat.
Patience extended a frigid hand to Miss Lambert, who just touched it; all the girl's light-heartedness and vivacity had vanished for the moment, Patience Hancock acted upon her like a draught of cold air.
I think you have heard me mention Miss Lambert's name, Patience. We have been to the Zoo, the whole three of us. Immensely amusing place the Zoo—makes one feel quite a boy again. Hey, Bridgewater!
I hope you enjoyed it, said Miss Hancock in a perfunctory tone, glancing at Fanny, who was seated in a huge rocking-chair, the only really comfortable chair in the room, and then at Bridgewater, who had taken his seat on the ottoman.
Pretty well, thanks, said Fanny, speaking in a languid tone. She had assumed very much the air of a fine lady all of a sudden: she was not going to be patronised by a solicitor's daughter, and she had divined in Patience Hancock an enemy. "The Zoo is very much like the world: there is much to laugh at and much to endure. Taken as a whole, it is not an unmixed blessing."
James Hancock opened his mouth at these sage utterances, and then shut it again and turned away to smile. Bridgewater had the bad manners to scratch his head. Miss Hancock said, "Indeed?"
Don't you think so?
I think the world is exactly what we choose to make it, said Patience Hancock, quoting Bulders.
You think that? said Fanny, suddenly forgetting her fine lady languors. "Well, I wish some one would show me how to make the world just as I'd choose to make it. Oh, it would be such a world—no poor people, and no rain, and no misery, and no debts."
You mean no debtors, said Patience, seizing her opportunity. "It is the debtors that make debts, just as it is the drunken people who make drunkenness."
Yes, I suppose it is, said Fanny, suddenly abandoning her argumentative tone for one of reverie. "It's the people in the world that make it so horrid and so nice."
That's exactly it, said Hancock, who was standing on the hearthrug listening to these banalities of thought, and contemplating Bridgewater. "Miss Lambert is a true philosopher. It is the people who make the world what it is; could we banish the meddlers and spies and traitors"—he looked fixedly at his sister—"the world would not be an unpleasant place to live in."
I hate spies, said Fanny, totally unconscious of the delicate ground she was stepping upon—"people who poke about into other people's business, and open letters, and that sort of thing." Miss Hancock flushed scarlet, and her brother noted the fact. "James opens letters, I caught him."
Who is James? asked Miss Hancock.
He's our butler, said Fanny, looking imploringly at Mr Hancock as if to say "Don't tell."
Miss Hancock rose. "May I show you to my room? you would like to remove your hat."
The dinner was not a success, intellectually speaking. James Hancock's temper half broke down over the soles, the sauce was not to his liking; the sweet cakes, ices, and other horrors he had consumed during the day had induced a mild attack of dyspepsia. His nose was red, and he knew it; and, worst of all, faint twinges of gout made themselves felt. His right great toe was saying to him, "Wait till you see what you'll have to-morrow." Then Boffins, the old butler, tripped on the cat, broke a dish, and James Hancock's temper flew out.
I have described James Hancock badly, if you have not perceived that he was a man with a temper. The evil demons in the Merangues and ices, the irritation caused by Bridgewater's confession, the provoking calmness of his sister, the uric acid in his blood, and the smash of the broken dish, all combined of a sudden and were too much for him.
Damn that cat! he cried. "Cats, cats, cats! How often have I told you"—to his sister—"that I will not have my house filled with those sneaking, prowling beasts? Chase her out; where is she?"
Boffins looked under the table and said "Scat," but nothing "scatted."
She's gone, Mr James.
I won't have cats in my house, said Mr James, proceeding with his dinner and feeling rather ashamed of his outburst. "Dear Lord, Patience, what do you call this thing?"
The cook, said Patience, "calls it, I believe, a vol-au-vent. What is wrong with it?"
What is right with it, you mean. Don't touch it, Miss Lambert, unless you wish to have a nightmare.
I think it's delicious, said Fanny, "and I don't mind nightmares. They're rather fun—when they are over, and you wake up and find yourself safe in bed."
Well, you'll have some fun to-night, grunted James. "The person who cooked this atrocity ought to be made sleep with the person who eats it."
James, you need not be vulgar, said his sister.
What's vulgar?
Your remark.
Boffins, fill Miss Lambert's glass—let's change the subject. This champagne is abominably iced—give me some Burgundy.
James!
Well?
Burgundy!
Well, what about Burgundy?
Surely you remember the gout—the frightful attack you had last time after Burgundy.
Gout? I suppose you mean Arthritic Rheumatism? But perhaps you are right, and Dr Garrod was wrong—let us call it gout. Fill up the glass, Boffins. Bridgewater, try some Burgundy, and see if it affects your gout. Boffins, that cat's in the room, I hear it purring. I hear it, I tell you, sir! where is the beast?
The beast, as if in answer, poked its head from under the table-cloth—it was in Miss Lambert's lap.
Altogether the dinner was not a success.
Your father has known my brother some time? said Miss Hancock, when the ladies found themselves alone in the drawing-room after dinner.
Oh yes, some time now, said Fanny. "They met over some law business. Father had a dispute with Mr Bevan of Highshot Towers, the place adjoining ours, you know, down in Buckinghamshire, and Mr Hancock was very kind—he arbitrated."
Indeed? that is funny, for he is Mr Bevan's solicitor.
Is that so? I'm sure I don't know, I never trouble myself about law business or money matters. I leave all that to father.
They talked on various matters, and before Miss Lambert had been packed into a specially chartered four-wheeler and driven home with Bridgewater on the box beside the driver as chaperone, Miss Hancock had come to form ideas about Miss Lambert such as she had never formed about any other young lady. Ideas the tenor of which you will perceive later on.
Mr Bevan, since his visit to Highgate, dreamed often at nights of monstrous asparagus beds, and his friends and acquaintances noticed that he seemed distrait.
The fact was the mind of this orderly and precise individual had received a shock; his world of thought had tilted somewhat, owing to a slight shifting of the poles, and regions hitherto in darkness were touched with sun.
Go where he would a voice pursued him, turn where he would, a face. Wild impulses to jump into a cab and drive to "The Laurels," Highgate, as swiftly as cab could take him were subdued and conquered. Perhaps it would be happier for some of us if we used less reason in steering our way through life. Impulsive people are often sneered at, yet, I dare say that an impulse acted upon will as often make a man's life as mar it.
Mr Bevan was not an impulsive man. It was not for some days after his visit to "The Laurels" that he carried out his determination to stop the action once for all. He did not return to "The Laurels." He was engaged and a man of honour, and as such he determined to fly from temptation. Accordingly one bright morning he despatched a wire intimating his arrival by the 3.50 at Ditchingham, having sent which he flung himself into a hansom and drove to Charing Cross, followed by another hansom containing Strutt, two portmanteaux, a hunting kit-bag and a bundle of fishing-rods. An extraordinary accident happened to the train he travelled by; it arrived at Paddock Wood only three minutes late, making up for this deficiency, however, by crawling into Ditchingham at 4.10.
On the Ditchingham platform stood two girls. One tall, pale, and decidedly good-looking despite the pince-nez she wore; the other short and rather stout, and rather pretty.
The tall girl was Miss Pursehouse; the short was Lulu Morgan, Miss Pursehouse's companion, an American.
Pamela Pursehouse at this stage of her career was verging on thirty, the only daughter of the late John Pursehouse of Birmingham, and an orphan. She was exceedingly rich.
Some months ago she had met Bevan on board Sir Charles Napier's yacht; they had spent a fortnight cruising about the Balearic Islands and the Riff coast of Morocco, had been sea-sick together, and bored together, and finally had, one moonlight night, become engaged. It was a cold-blooded affair despite the moonlight, and they harboured no illusions one of the other, and no doubts.
Pamela had a mind of her own. She had attended classes at Mason's College and had quite a knowledge of Natural History; she also had an interest in the ways of the working classes, and had written a paper to prove that, with economy, a man, his wife and five children, could live on an income of eleven shillings a week, and put by sixpence for a rainy day; to disprove which she was eternally helping the cottagers round about with doles of tea on a liberal scale, coal in the winter, and wine in sickness. When the rainy day came she supplied the sixpence, which ought to have been in the savings bank, for she was a girl who found her heart when she forgot her head.
At Marseilles Lady Napier, Pamela, Lulu, and Charles Bevan had left the yacht and travelled together to Paris; there, after a couple of days, he had departed for London to look after his affairs. Pamela had remained in Paris, where, through Lady Napier, she had the entrée of the best society, and had met many people, including the Lamberts. She had indeed only returned to England a short time ago.
Outside the station stood a governess cart and the omnibus of the hotel. Into the governess cart bundled the lovers and Lulu, into the omnibus Strutt and the luggage. Pamela took the reins and the hog-maned pony started.
Hot, isn't it? said Charles, tilting his hat over his eyes, and envying Strutt in the cool shelter of the omnibus.
Think so? said Pamela. "It's July, you know. Why do men dress always in summer in such heavy clothes? Seems to me women are much more sensible in the matter of dress. Now if you were dressed as I am, instead of in that Harris tweed, you wouldn't feel the heat at all."
Charles tried to imagine himself in a chip hat and lilac cotton gown, and failed.
You must have been fried in that train, said Lulu, staring at him with a pair of large blue eyes, eyes that never seemed to shut.
Pretty nearly, answered Charles, and the conversation languished.
Rookhurst stands on a hill; it is a village composed of gentlemen's houses. Country "seats" radiate from it to a distance of some three miles. Three acres and a house constitute a "seat."
The conservatism of the old Japanese aristocracy pales when considered beside the conservatism of Rookhurst. In this microcosm there are as many circles as in the Inferno of Dante, and the circles are nearly as painful to contemplate.
When Pamela Pursehouse rented "The Roost" and took up residence there she came unknown and untrumpeted. The parson and several curious old ladies called upon her, but the seat-holders held aloof, she was not received. Mrs D'Arcy-Jones—Rookhurst is full of people with double-barrelled names, those double-barrelled names in which the second barrel is of inferior metal—Mrs D'Arcy-Jones discovered that Pamela's father was of Birmingham. Mrs D'Arcy-Johnson found out that he was in trade, and Mrs D'Arcy Somebody-else that her mother's maiden name was Jenkins. There was much turning up of noses when poor Pamela's name was mentioned, till one fine day when all the turned-up noses were suddenly turned down by the arrival at "The Roost" of the Duchess of Aviedale, her footman, her maid, her dog, and her companion. Then there was a rush. People flung decency to the winds in their haste to know the tradesman's daughter and incidentally get a lick at the Duchess's boots. But to all callers Pamela was not at home; she had even the rudeness not to return their visits.
The snobs, beaten back, retired, feeling very much like damaged goods, and Pamela was left in peace. Her aunt, Miss Jenkins, a sweet-faced and perfectly inane old lady, lived with her and kept house, and Pamela, protected by her wing, had all sorts of extraordinary people to visit her. Sandyman, M.P., the Labour representative, came down for a week-end once, and smoked shag tobacco in the dining-room and wandered about the village on Sunday in a Keir-Hardy cap; he also attended the tin chapel, had a quart of beer at the village pub, and did other disgraceful things which were all duly reported and set down to Pamela's account in the D'Arcy-Jones-Johnson notebook.
Pamela liked men, that is to say, men who were original and interesting; yet she had engaged herself to the most unoriginal man in England: a fact for which there is no accounting, save on the hypothesis that she was a woman.
The governess cart having climbed a long, long hill, the hog-maned pony took to himself wings, and presently, in a cloud of dust, halted.
The Roost, though a fairly large house, did not boast a carriage-drive. A gate in a high hedge led to a path through a rose-garden which was worth all the carriage-drives in existence.
We have several people staying with us, did I tell you? said Pamela as she led the way. "Hamilton-Cox, the man who wrote the 'Pillar of Salt,' and Wilson—Professor Wilson of Oxford, and—but come on, and I'll introduce you."
They entered a pleasant hall. The perfume of cigars and the sound of a man's laughter came from a half-open door on the right. Pamela made for it, and as Charles Bevan followed he heard a rich Irish voice. "My friend Stacey, of Castle Stacey, raised one four foot broad across the face; such a sunflower was never seen by mortal man, I measured it with my own hands—four foot——"
Bevan suddenly found himself before a man, an immense, good-looking, priestly-faced man, in his shirt-sleeves, a cigar in his mouth, and a billiard cue in his hand.
Mr Charles Bevan, Mr Lambert; Mr Bevan, Professor Wilson; Mr——
Why, sure to goodness it's not my cousin, Charles Bevan of the 'Albany'! cried the big man, effusively clasping the hand of Charles and gazing at him with the astonished and joyous expression of a man who meets a dear and long-lost brother.
Mr Bevan intimated that he was that person.
But, sure to goodness, said the big man, dropping Charles' hand and scratching his head with a puzzled air, then he turned on his heel: "Where's my coat?" He found his coat and took from it a pocket-book, from the pocket-book a telegram and a sheet of paper, whilst Pamela turned to Professor Wilson and the novelist.
I got that from your lawyer, Mr Bevan, said he, "some days ago." Charles read:
Bevan has stopped action. Isn't it sweet of him?—Hancock.
Yes, said Charles rather stiffly, "I stopped the action, but Hancock seems to have—been drinking."
And there's the reply I was going to send, only I forgot it, said George Lambert, handing the copy of a telegram to Charles.
Tell Bevan I relinquish all fishing rights. Wish to be friends.—George Lambert.
It is very generous of you, said Charles, really touched. "But I can't have it, we'll divide the rights."
Come into the garden, my boy, said George, who had now resumed his coat, linking his arm in that of Charles and leading him out through the open French window, into the rose-scented garden, "and let's talk things over. It's the pity of the world we weren't always friends. Damn the fish stream and all the fish in it! I wish they'd been boiled before they were spawned. What's the good of fighting? Isn't life too short for fighting and divisions? Sure, there's a rose as big as a red cabbage, but you should see the roses at my house in Highgate—and where did you meet Miss Pursehouse?"
Oh, said Charles. "I've known her for some time."
We met her in Paris, Fanny—that's my daughter—and me met her in Paris. Fanny doesn't care for her much, and wouldn't come with me; but there's never a woman in the world that really cares for another woman, unless the other woman is as ugly as sin and a hundred. There's a melon house for you, but you should see my melon houses in Highgate, the one's I am going to have built by Arthur Lawrence of Cockspur Street; he's made a speciality of glass, but he charges cruel. It's the passion of my life, a garden.
He leaned over the gate leading to the kitchen-garden, and whistled an old Irish hunting song softly to himself as he contemplated the cabbages and peas. Charles lit a cigar. He was a fine figure of a man, this Lambert; one of those large natures in a large frame that dwarf other individualities when brought in contact with them. Hamilton Cox would pass in a crowd, and Professor Wilson was not unimpressive, but beside George Lambert, Hamilton-Cox looked a shrimp, and the Oxford professor somewhat shrivelled.
It's the passion of my life, reiterated Fanny Lambert's father, addressing the cabbages, the marrow fat peas, Charles Bevan, and the distant woods of Sussex. "And if I'd stuck to it and left horses alone, a richer man I'd have been this day."
I say, said Charles, who had been plunged in meditation, "why did Hancock telegraph to you, I wonder? It wasn't exactly solicitors' etiquette; the proper course, I think, would have been to communicate with your lawyers, Messrs Sykes and Fagan."
George Lambert broke into a low, mellow laugh.
Faith, he said, "I suppose he did communicate with them, and they answered that they weren't my lawyers any more. I've fought with them, and that's a fact; and now that we're friends, you and me, I've an idea of transferring my business to Hancock. I've one or two little suits pending; and I'm not sure but one of them won't be with Fagan for the names I called him in his own office before his own clerks. 'I'll have you indicted for slander,' he says. 'Slander!' said I, 'slander, you old clothes-bag, have me up for slander, and I'll beat the dust out of your miserable reputation in any court in the kingdom, ye old wandering-Jew-come-to-roost,' and with that I left the office, and never will I set my foot in it again."
I should think not.
Never again. He's a red Jew—always beware of red Jews; black Jews are bad, but red Jews are the devil—bad luck to them! If I'd left Jews alone, a richer man I'd have been this day. Who's that ringing a bell? Oh, it's the afternoon tea-bell: let's go in and talk to the old professor and Miss Pursehouse.
They did not go in, for the Professor and Miss Pursehouse, Lulu Morgan, and the author of the "Pillar of Salt" were having tea on the lawn. There were few places pleasanter than the lawn of "The Roost," especially on this golden and peaceful summer's evening, through which the warm south wind brought the cawing of rooks from distant elm trees.
Have you two finished your business? asked Pamela, addressing Charles; "if so, sit down and tell me all the news. I got your note. So sorry you were bored by old Mr—Blundell—was it?—at the club. Mr Blundell is a rose-bore, it seems," turning to Hamilton Cox; "he is mad on roses."
Blundell! what an excellent name for a bore! said the "Pillar of Salt" man dreamily, closing his eyes. "I can see him, stout and red-faced and——"
Matter of fact, old Blundell isn't stout, cut in Charles, to whom Hamilton-Cox did not appeal. "He's thin and white."
All white?
No, his face, you know.
Ah! I had connected him with the idea of red roses. Why is it that in thinking of roses one always figures them red?
Sure, I don't know—I never do.
I do.
Well, put in Pamela, "when you escaped from Mr Blundell what did you do with yourself that day—smoked, I suppose, and went to Tattersal's?"
No, I was busy.
What was the business—luncheon?
Yes, said Charles Bevan, feeling that he was humorous in his reply, and feeling rather a sneak, too. "Luncheon was part of the business."
The remembrance of the fried whiting rose before him, backed by a vision of Susannah holding in one hand a bottle of B?llinger, and in the other a bottle of Gold-water.
It is so easy not to do some things. Bevan, had he acted correctly, ought to have informed Mr Lambert of his visit to Highgate and all that therein lay, yet he did not. There was nothing to hide, yet, as Sir Boyle-Roche might have said, he hid it.
During tea several things occupied his mind very much. The vision of Fanny Lambert was constantly before him, so was the person of her father. He could not but acknowledge that Lambert was a most attractive personage—attractive to men, to women, to children, to dogs, cats—anything that could see and feel, in fact. Everything seemed to brighten in his presence. Hamilton-Cox's dictum that if Lambert could be bottled he would make the most excellent Burgundy, was not far wrong.
Bevan, as he sipped his tea, watched the genial Lambert, and could not but notice that he paid very marked attention to Pamela, and even more marked attention to old Miss Jenkins, her aunt.
This did not altogether please him, neither did the fact that Pamela seemed to enjoy the attentions of this man, who was her diametrical opposite.
To the profound philosopher who indites these lines it seems that between men and women in the mass there is very little difference. They act pretty much the same, except, perhaps, in the presence of mice. Bevan did very much what a woman would have done in his position: seeing his true love flirting with some one else, he flirted with some one else. Lulu Morgan was nearest to him, so he used her.
I've been in England a twelvemonth, answered Miss Morgan, in reply to a query, "and I feel beginning to get crusted. They say the old carp in the pond in Versailles get moss-grown after they've been there a hundred and fifty years or so, and I feel like that. When I say I've been in England a twelvemonth, I mean Europe. I've been in England three months, and the rest abroad. Pamela picked me up in Paris, you'd just gone back home; Lady Scott introduced me to her. I was looking out for a job. I came over originally with the Vandervades, then Sadie Vandervade got married; I was her companion, and I lost the job. Of course I could have stayed on with old man Vandervade and his wife, but I wanted a job. I'm like a squirrel, put me in a cage with nothing to do, and I'd die. I must have a mill to turn, so I froze on to Pamela's offer. I write her letters, and do her accounts, and interview her tradespeople. I guess she's getting fat for want of work since I've been her companion. Yes, I like England, and I like this place; if the people could be scraped out of it clean, it would be considerably nicer. I went to church last Sunday to have a good long considerate look at them; they all arrived in carriages—every one here who has a shay of any description turns it out to go to church in on Sunday. Well, I went to have a good long look at them, and such a collection of stuffed images and plug-uglies I never beheld. I'm vicious about them p'rhaps, for they treated Pamela so mean, holding off from her when she first came, and then rushing down her throat when they found she knew a duchess. They'd boil themselves for a duchess. Say—you know the Lamberts? Isn't Fanny sweet?"
Mr Bevan started in his chair, but Miss Morgan did not notice, engrossed as she was with her own conversation.
We met them in Paris; and I don't know which is sweeter, Fanny or her father. She was to have come down here with him, but she didn't. My, but she is pretty. And don't the men run after her! there were three men in Paris raving about her; she'd only known them two days, and they were near proposing to her. Don't wonder at it, I'd propose to her myself, if I was a man. But she's a little flirt all the same, and I told her so.
Excuse me, said Bevan, "but I scarcely think you are justified—that is—from what I have heard of Miss Lambert, I would scarcely suspect her of being a—flirt."
Wouldn't you? Men never suspect a woman of being a flirt till they're flirted with and done for. Fanny's the worst description of flirt—oh, I've told her so to her face—for she doesn't mean it; she just leads men on with her sweetness, and doesn't see they're breaking their hearts for her. She's a regular trap bated with sugar. How did you escape, Mr Bevan? You're the only man, I guess, who ever did.
I haven't the pleasure—er—of Miss Lambert's acquaintance, said Charles, rather stiffly.
Well, you're safe, for you are engaged; only for that I'd say 'Don't have the pleasure of her acquaintance.' What I like about her is that she makes all the other women so furious; she sucks the men away from them like a whirlpool. It's a pity she's so rich, for it's simply gilt thrown away——
Is Miss—Miss Lambert rich?
Why, certainly; at least I conclude so.
Did she tell you so?
No—but she gives one the impression; they have country houses like mushrooms all over the place, and she dresses simply just as she pleases; only really rich people can afford to do that. She went to the opera in Paris with us in an old horror of a gown that made her look quite charming. No one notices what she has on; and if she went to heaven in a coffee-coat they'd let her in, for she'd still be Fanny Lambert.
You saw a good deal of her in Paris?
Yes, we went about a good deal.
Tell me, said Mr Bevan very gravely, "you said she was a flirt—did you really mean that?"
Why, how interested you are! She is, but not a bad sort of flirt. She's one of those people all heart—she loves everything and everybody—up to a certain point.
Do you think she is in love with any man—beyond a certain point?
Can't say, said Miss Morgan, shaking her head sagely; "but when she does, she'll go the whole hog. The man she'll love she'll love for ever and ever, and die on his grave, and that sort of thing, you know."
I believe you are right.
Why, how do you know? You've never met her.
I was referring to your description of her. Girls of her impulsive nature—er—generally do—I mean they are generally warm-hearted and that sort of thing.
There's one man I think she has a fancy for, said Miss Morgan, staring into space with her wide-open blue eyes, "but he's poor as a rat—an awfully nice fellow, a painter; Mr Lambert fished him up somewhere in a café. He and Fanny and I and a friend of his went and had dinner at a little café near the Boul' Miche. Then we got lost—that is to say, I and Heidenheimer lost sight of Fanny and her friend; and Fanny told me afterwards she'd had no end of a good time finding her way home; so'd I. 'Twas awfully improper, of course, but no one knew, and it was in Paris."
I may be old-fashioned, of course, said Mr Bevan stiffly, "but I think people can't be too careful, you know—um—how long was Miss Lambert lost with Mr——"
Leavesley—that's his name. Oh! she didn't turn up at the hotel till after eight.
Did Mr Lambert know?
Oh yes, but he wasn't uneasy; he said she was like a bad penny, sure to turn up all right.
Good God!
What on earth!—why, there was no harm. Leavesley is the best of good fellows, he looked after her like a grandmother; he worships the very ground she walks on, and I'd pity the man who would as much as look twice at Fanny if he was with her.
Um—Mr Leavesley, as you call him——
I don't call him, he calls himself.
Well, Mr Leavesley may be all right in his way, but I should not care to see a sister of mine worshipped by one of these sort of people. Organ-grinders and out-of-elbow artists may be delightful company amidst their own set, but I confess I am not accustomed to them——
That's just your insular prejudice—seems to me I've heard that expression before, but it will do—Leavesley isn't an organ-grinder. I can't stand loafers myself, and if a man can't keep up with the procession, he'd better hang himself; but Leavesley isn't a loafer, and he'll be at the top of the procession yet, leading the elephant. Oh, he paints divinely!
Miss Lambert, you say, is in love with him?
I didn't—I fancy she had a weakness; but maybe it's only a fancy.
Does he write to her?
Don't know—very likely; these artistic people can do things other people can't. We all went to see the Lamberts off at the Nord, and had champagne at the buffet; and poor old Fragonard—he was another worshipper, an artist you know—turned up with a huge big bouquet of violets for Fanny; we asked him where he'd got them, and he said he'd stolen them. They don't care a fig for poverty, artists; make a joke of it you know. Yes, I daresay he writes to Fanny. Heidenheimer writes to me every week—says he's dying in love with me, and sends poems, screechingly funny poems, all about nightingales and arrows and hearts. He's an artist too, and I'd marry him, I believe I would, only we're both as poor as Lazarus.
Mr Leavesley is an artist you say?
Yes, but he's a genius, but genius doesn't pay—that's to say at first—afterwards—afterwards it's different. Trading rats for diamonds in famine time isn't in it with a genius when he gets on the make.
Mr Bevan gazed reflectively at the tips of his shoes. He quite recognised that these long-haired and out-at-elbowed anomalies y'clept geniuses had the trick, at times, of making money. A dim sort of wrath against the whole species possessed him. To a clean, correct, and level-headed gentleman possessed of broad acres and a huge rent-roll, it is unpleasant to think that a slovenly, shiftless happy-go-lucky tatterdemallion may be a clean, correct and level-headed gentleman's, superior both in brains, fascination, and even in wealth. We can fancy the correct one subscribing sympathy, if not money, to a society for the extinction of genius, were not such a body entirely superfluous in the present condition of human affairs.
It may be, said Mr Bevan at last, "that those people are very pleasant and all that, and useful in the world and so on, but I confess I like to associate with people who cut their hair, and, not to put too fine a point on it, wash——"
Oh, Leavesley washes, said Miss Morgan, "he's as clean as a new pin. And as for cutting his hair, my!—that's what spoils him in my opinion; why, it's cut to the bone almost, like a convict's. All artists cut their hair now; it's only Polish piano-players and violinists wear their hair long."
Whether they cut their hair 'to the bone' or wear it long is a matter of indifference, said Mr Bevan. "They're all a lot of bounders, and I'd be sorry to see a sister of mine married amongst them—very sorry."
Miss Morgan said nothing, the warmth of Mr Bevan on the subject of Leavesley struck her as being somewhat strange; though she said nothing, like the parrot, she thought the more, and began to consider Mr Bevan more attentively and to "turn him over in her mind." Now the fortunate or unfortunate person whom Miss Morgan distinguished by turning them over in her mind, generally gave up their secrets in the process unconsciously, subconsciously, or sometimes even consciously. Those wide-open blue eyes that seemed always gazing into futurity and distance saw many happenings of the present invisible to most folk.
Professor Wilson and Hamilton-Cox had wandered away through the garden discussing Oxford and modern thought. Miss Pursehouse, Lambert, and old Miss Jenkins were talking and laughing, and seemingly quite happy and content. Said Miss Morgan, looking round:
Every one's busy, like the children in the Sunday-school story, and we've no one to play with; shall we go for a walk in the village, and I'll show you the church and the pump and the other antiques?
Certainly, I'll be delighted, said Charles, rising.
Then com'long, said Miss Morgan, "Pamela, I'm taking Mr Bevan to show him the village and the creatures that there abound. If we're not back by six, send a search-party."
Rookhurst is, perhaps, one of the prettiest and most quaint of English villages, and the proudest. If communities receive attention from the Recording Angel, amidst Rookhurst's sins written in that tremendous book will be found this entry, "It calls itself a town."
Isn't the village sweet and sleepy? said Miss Morgan, as she tripped along beside her companion; "it always reminds me of the dormouse in 'Alice in Wonderland'—always asleep except at tea-time, when it wakes up—and talks gossip. That's the chemist's shop with the two little red bottles in the window, isn't it cunning? The old man chemist doesn't keep any poisons, for he's half blind and's afraid of mixing the strychnine with the Epsom salts. His wife does the poisoning; she libels every one indifferently, and she gave out that Pamela was a lunatic and I was her keeper. She was the butcher's daughter, and she married the chemist man for his money ten years ago, hoping he'd die right off, which he didn't. He was seventy with paralysis agitans and a squint, and the squint's got worse every year, and the paralysis agitans has got better—serve her right. That's the butcher's with the one leg of mutton hanging up, and the little pot with a rose-tree in it. He drinks, and beats his wife, and hunts snakes down the road when he has the jumps—but he sells very good mutton, and he's civil. Here comes a queen, look!"
A carriage drawn by a pair of chestnut horses approached and passed them, revealing a fat and bulbous-faced lady lolling on the cushions, and seen through a haze of dust.
A queen? said Bevan; "she doesn't look like one."
No? She's the Queen of Snobs; looks as if she'd come out of a joke-book, doesn't she? and her name is—I forget. She lives in a big house a mile away. That's a 'pub.' There are seven 'pubs' in this village, and this is a model village—at least, they call it so; what an immodel village in England must be, I don't know. There's a tailor lives in that little house; he preaches in the tin chapel at the cross-roads. I heard him last Sunday.
You go to Chapel?
No, I'm Church. I heard him as I was passing by—couldn't help it, he shouts so's you can hear him at 'The Roost' when the wind's blowing that way—You religious?
Not very, I'm afraid.
Neither'm I. That's the doctor's; he's Church and his wife's Chapel. She has a sister in a lunatic asylum, and her aunt was sister of the hair-cutter's first wife, so people despise her and fling it in her teeth. We can raise some snobs in the States, but they're button mushrooms to the toadstools you raise in England. Pamela is awfully good to the doctor's wife just because the other people are nasty to her. Pamela is grit all through. The parson lives there—a long, thin man, looks as if he'd been mangled, and they'd forgot to hang him out to dry. How are you, Mrs Jones? and how are the rheumatics? Miss Morgan had paused to address an old lady who stood at the door of a cottage leaning on a stick.
That's Mrs Jones; she has more enquiries after her health than any woman in England. Can you tell why?
No.
Well, she has a sort of rheumatics that the least damp affects, and so she's the best barometer in this part of the country. She's eighty, and has been used to weather observation so long, she can tell what's coming—hail, or snow, or rain to a T. That old man leaning on the gate, he's Francis, the village lunatic, he's just ninety; fine days he crawls down to Ditchingham cross-roads to wait for the soldiers coming back from the Crimea. I call that pathetic, but they only laugh at it here. He must have waited for them when he was a boy and seen them marching along, and now he goes and waits for them—makes me feel s'if I could cry. Here's a shilling for you, Francis; Miss Pamela is knitting you some socks—good-day—poor old thing! Let's see now, those cottages are all work-people's, and there's nothing beyond, only the road, and it's dusty, and I vote to go back. Why, there's that old scamp of a Francis making a bee-line for the 'Hand in Hand'; n'mind, I won't have to wear his head in the morning.
Miss Morgan chatted all the way back uninterruptedly, disclosing a more than comprehensive knowledge of all the affairs of the village in which she had lived some ten days or less.
At the gate of "The Roost" she stopped suddenly. "My, what a pity!"
What's the matter?
Nothing; only I might have called and seen Mrs Harmer. She has such a pretty daughter, and I'd have liked you to have seen her, for she's the image of Fanny Lambert. She stared full at Mr Bevan as she said this, and there was a something in her tone and a something in her manner, and a something in her glance that made Charles Bevan lose control of his facial capillaries and blush.
Fanny's cooked him, thought the lady of the blue eyes as she retired to dress for dinner. "But what in the nation did he mean by saying he did not know her?"
What the deuce made her say that in such a way? asked Mr Bevan of himself as he assumed the clothes laid out for him by the careful Strutt.
The British thoroughbred is not played out by any means. Look at the success of imported blood all over the world. Look at Phantom, the grandsire of Voltaire, and Bay Middleton—— Mr Bevan paused. He was addressing George Lambert, and suddenly found that he was addressing the entire dinner-table in one of those hiatuses of conversation in which every tongue is suddenly held.
Yes, said Hamilton-Cox, continuing some desultory remarks on literature, in general, into which this eruption of stud book had broken; "but you see the old French ballads are for the most part by the greatest of all poets, Time. Beside those the greatest modern poems seem gaudy and Burlington Arcady, if I may use the expression. An old folk-song that has been handed from generation to generation, played on, so to speak, like an old fiddle by all sorts of hands, gains a sweetness and richness never imagined by the simple-minded person who wrote it or invented it.
You write poems? asked Miss Morgan.
My dear lady, sighed Hamilton-Cox, "nobody writes poems nowadays, or if they do they keep the fact a secret. I have a younger brother who writes poetry——"
Thought you said no one wrote it.
Younger brothers are nobodies. I say I have a younger brother, he writes most excellent verse—reams of it. Some years ago he would have been pursued by publishers. Well, only the other day he copied out some of his most cherished productions and approached a London publisher with them. He entered the office at five o'clock, and some few minutes later the people in Piccadilly were asking of each other, 'What's all that row in Vigo Street?' No, a publisher of to-day would as soon see a burglar in his office as a poet.
I never took much stock in poetry, said the practical Miss Morgan. "I'm like Mr Bevan."
I can't stand the stuff, said Charles. "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, and all that sort of twaddle, makes me ill."
Pamela looked slightly pained. Charles was enjoying his dinner; Burgundy and Moselle had induced a slight flush to suffuse his countenance. If you are engaged and a gourmand never let your fiancée see you eat. A man mad drunk is to the sensitive mind a less revolting picture than a man "enjoying his food."
I heard a man once, said Miss Morgan, "he was squiffy——"
Lulu!
"Well, he was; and he was reciting I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight. He'd got everything mixed, and had got as far as 'I stood on the moon by bridgelight
"As the church was striking the tower—'
when every one laughed, and he sat down—on another man's hat. That's the sort of poetry I like, something to make you laugh. Gracious! what's the good of manufacturing misery and letting it loose in little poems to buzz round and torment people? isn't there enough misery ready made? Hood's Song of the Shirt always makes me cry."
Hood, said Professor Wilson, "was a man of another age, a true poet. He could not have written his Song of the Shirt to-day; the decadence——"
Now, excuse me, said Hamilton-Cox, "we have fought that question of decadence out, you and I. Hood, I admit, could not have written his Song of the Shirt to-day, simply because shirts are manufactured wholesale by machinery, and he would have to begin it. 'Whir—whir—whir,' which would not be poetry. Women slave at coats and waistcoats and other garments nowadays, and you could scarcely write a song of the waistcoat or a song of the pair of—you understand my point. Poetry is very false, the matchbox-maker is as deserving of the poet's attention as the shirt-maker, yet a poem beginning 'Paste, paste, paste' would be received with laughter, not with tears. You say we are decadents because we don't encourage poetry. I say we are not, we are simply more practical—poetry is to all intents and purposes dead——"
Is it? said George Lambert. "Is King Lear dead? I was crying over him last night, but it wasn't at his funeral I was crying. Is old Suckling dead? I bought a first edition of him some time ago, and the fact wasn't mentioned or hinted at in the verses. Is Sophocles dead? Old Maloney at Trinity pounded him into my head, and he's there now alive as ever; and if I was blind to-morrow, I'd still have the skies over his plays to look at and the choruses to hear. Ah no, Mr Cox, poetry is not dead, but they don't write it just now. They don't write it, but it's in every one's heart waiting to be tapped, only there's no man with an augur sharp enough and true enough to do the tapping."
Pamela looked pleased.
I did not know that you were fond of poetry, she said.
I love it, said Lambert, in a tone that reminded Charles Bevan of Fanny's tone when she declared her predilection for cats.
I declare it's delightful, said Professor Wilson, "to find a man of the world who knows all about horses, and is a good billiard-player, and all that, confessing a love for poetry."
Perhaps Mr Lambert is a poet himself, said Hamilton-Cox, with a suspicion of a sneer, "or has written poetry."
Poetry! yards of it, answered the accused with a mellow laugh, "when I was young and—wise. The first poem I ever wrote was all about the moon; I wrote it when I was eleven, and sent it to a housemaid. Oh, murder! but the things that we do when we are young."
Did she read it?
She couldn't read; it was in the days before the Board schools and the higher education of women. She couldn't read, she was forty, and ugly as sin; and she boxed my ears and told my mother, and my mother told my father, and he leathered me. He said, 'I'll teach you to write poetry to housemaids.' But somehow, said Mr Lambert, admiring with one eye the ruby-tinted light in his glass of port, "somehow, with all his teaching, I never wrote a poem to a housemaid again."
That must have been a loss to literature.
Yes, but it was a gain to housemaids; and as housemaids seem the main producers of novels and poems nowadays, begad, said Mr Lambert, "it's, after all, a gain to literature."
That's one for you, Cox, said Professor Wilson, and Hamilton-Cox laughed, as he could well afford to do, for his lucubrations brought him in a good fifteen hundred a year, and his reputation was growing.
On the lawn, under the starlit night after dinner, Bevan had his fiancée for a moment alone. They sat in creaky basket-work chairs a good yard apart from each other. The moon was rising over the hills and deep, dark woods of Sussex, the air was warm and perfumed: it was an ideal night for love-making.
When I left you I had some dinner at the Nord, said Mr Bevan, tipping the ash off his cigar. "The worst dinner I've ever had, I think. Upon my word, I think it was the worst dinner I ever had. When I got to Dover I was so tired I turned into the hotel, and came on next morning. What sort of crossing did you have?"
Oh, very fine, said Pamela, stifling a yawn, and glancing sideways at a group of her guests dimly seen in a corner of the garden, but happy, to judge from the laughter that came from them.
Are the Napiers back in England yet?
No, they are still in Paris.
What on earth do they want staying there for so long? it must be empty now.
Yes, it was emptying fast when we left, wasn't a soul left scarcely. Do you know, I have a great mind to run over to Ostend for a few weeks. The Napiers are going there; it's rather fun, I believe.
I wouldn't. What's the good of going to these foreign places? stay here.
Pamela was silent, and the inspiriting dialogue ceased.
A great beetle moving through the night across the garden filled the air with its boom. The group in the corner of the garden still were laughing and talking; amidst their voices could be distinguished that of Hamilton-Cox. Mr Cox had not a pleasant voice; it was too highly pitched, and it jarred on the ear of Mr Bevan and on his soul. His soul was in an irritable mood. When we speak of the soul we refer to an unknown quantity, and when we speak of its condition we refer sometimes, perhaps, to just a touch of liver, or sometimes to an extra glass of champagne.
I can't make out what induces you to surround yourself with those sort of people, said Mr Bevan, casting his cigar-end away and searching for his cigarette case.
What sort of people?
Oh, that writer man.
Hamilton-Cox?
Yes—is that his name?
I am not surrounding myself with Mr Cox; the thing is physically and physiologically impossible. Do talk sense, Charles.
Charles retired into silence, and Miss Pursehouse yawned again, sub-audibly. After a few moments—"Where did you pick up the Lamberts?"
You mean Mr Lambert and his daughter?
Has he a daughter?
Has he a daughter? Why, Lulu Morgan, when I asked her what you and she had found to talk about, said Fanny Lambert——
It is perfectly immaterial what Miss Morgan said; some of her sayings are scarcely commendable. I believe she did say something about a Miss Lambert. When I said 'has he a daughter?' I spoke with a meaning.
I am glad to hear that.
What I meant was, that it would have been much better for him to have brought his daughter down here with him.
Do you mean to insinuate that she is—unable to take care of herself in town?
I mean to insinuate nothing, but according to my old-fashioned ideas——
Go on, this is interesting, said Miss Pursehouse, who guessed what was coming.
According to my old-fashioned ideas it is scarcely the thing for a man, a married man, to pay a visit——
You mean it's improper for me to have Mr Lambert staying here as a guest? "Improper was not the word I used."
Oh, nonsense! you meant it. Well, I think I am the best judge of my own propriety, and I see nothing improper in the transaction. My aunt is here, Lulu Morgan is here, you are here, Professor Wilson is here, there's a poet coming to-morrow—I suppose that's improper too. I do wish you would be sensible; besides, Mr Lambert is not a married man, he is a widower.
Does he know that you are engaged?
Sure, I don't know. I don't go about with a placard with 'I am engaged' written on it on my back. Why do you ask?
Well—um—if a stranger had been here at tea to-day he would scarcely have thought that the engaged couple——
Go on, this is delightful; it's absolutely bank-holidayish—the engaged couple—go on.
Were you and I.
You mean you and me?
Yes.
The behaviour of 'engaged couples' in decent society is, I believe, pretty much the same as our behaviour has been, and I hope will be. How would you have it? Would you like to walk about, I clinging to your arm, and you playing a mouth-organ? Ought we to exchange hats with each other? Shall I call you Choly and put ice down your neck at dinner? Ought we to hire a brake and go on a bean feast? I wish you would instruct me. I hate to appear gauche, and I hate not to do the correct thing.
Vulgarity is always painful to me, said Mr Bevan, "but senseless vulgarity is doubly so."
Thanks, your compliments are charming.
I was not complimenting you, I simply——
I know, simply hinting that I was senseless and vulgar.
I never——
I know. Shall we change the subject—what's all this?
Please come and help us, said Miss Morgan, coming up. "We've got the astronomical telescope, and we can't make head or tail of it."
Miss Pursehouse rose and approached the group surrounding an astronomical telescope that stood on the lawn. It was trained on the moon, and Hamilton-Cox, with a hand over one eye and the other eye at the eyepiece, was making an observation.
Sometimes I can see stars, and sometimes nothing. I can't see the moon at all.
Shut the other eye, said Lambert.
Perhaps, said Miss Pursehouse, "if you remove the cap from the telescope you will be able to see better. A very simple thing sometimes cures blindness."