CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AUNT YSOBEL POINTS THE WAY
CLAIRE LIPPETT sat in the kitchen of San Rafael, reading Pyke’s Home Companion. It was Mr. Wrenn’s kindly custom to bring back a copy for her each week on the day of publication, thus saving her an outlay of twopence. She was alone in the house, for Kay was up in London doing some shopping, and Mr. Wrenn, having come in and handed over the current number, had gone off for a game of chess with his friend, Cornelius.
She was not expecting to be alone long. Muffins lay on the table, all ready to be toasted; a cake which she had made herself stood beside them; and there was also a new tin of anchovy paste—all of which dainties were designed for the delectation of Hash Todhunter, her fiancé, who would shortly be coming to tea.
As a rule, Pyke’s Home Companion absorbed Claire’s undivided attention, for she was one of its most devoted supporters; but this evening she found her mind wandering, for there was that upon it which not even Cordelia Blair’s Hearts Aflame could conjure away.
Claire was worried. On the previous day a cloud had fallen on her life, not exactly blotting out the sunshine, but seeming to threaten some such eclipse in the near future. She had taken Hash to John Street for a formal presentation to her mother, and it was on the way home that she had first observed the approach of the cloud.
Hash’s manner had seemed to her peculiar. A girl who has just become romantically betrothed to a man does not expect that man, when they are sitting close together on the top of an omnibus, to talk moodily of the unwisdom of hasty marriages.
It pains and surprises her when he mentions friends of his who, plunging hot-heatedly into matrimony, spent years of subsequent regret. And when, staring woodenly before him, he bids her look at Samson, Doctor Crippen and other celebrities who were not fortunate in their domestic lives, she feels a certain alarm.
And such had been the trend of Hash Todhunter’s conversation, coming home from John Street. Claire, recalling the more outstanding of his dicta, felt puzzled and unhappy, and not even the fact that Cordelia Blair had got her hero into a ruined mill with villains lurking on the ground floor and dynamite stored in the basement could enchain her interest. She turned the page listlessly and found herself confronted by Aunt Ysobel’s Chats With My Girls.
In spite of herself, Claire’s spirits rose a little. She never failed to read every word that Aunt Ysobel wrote, for she considered that lady a complete guide to all mundane difficulties. Nor was this an unduly flattering opinion, for Aunt Ysobel was indeed like a wise pilot, gently steering the storm-tossed barks of her fellow men and women through the shoals and sunken rocks of the ocean of life. If you wanted to know whether to blow on your tea or allow it to cool of itself in God’s good time, Aunt Ysobel would tell you. If, approaching her on a deeper subject, you desired to ascertain the true significance of the dark young man’s offer of flowers, she could tell you that too—even attributing to each individual bloom a hidden and esoteric meaning which it would have been astonished to find that it possessed.
Should a lady shake hands or bow on parting with a gentleman whom she has met only once? Could a gentleman present a lady with a pound of chocolates without committing himself to anything unduly definite? Must mother always come along? Did you say “Miss Jones—Mr. Smith” or “Mr. Smith—Miss Jones,” when introducing friends? And arising from this question, did Mr. Smith on such an occasion say, “Pleased to meet you” or “Happy, I’m sure”?
Aunt Ysobel was right there every time with the correct answer. And everything she wrote had a universal message.
It was so to-day. Scarcely had Claire begun to read, when her eye was caught by a paragraph headed Worried (Upper Sydenham).
“Coo!” said Claire.
The passage ran as follows:
“WORRIED (Upper Sydenham). You tell me, dear, that the man to whom you are betrothed seems to you to be growing cold, and you ask me what you had better do. Well, dear, there is only one thing you can do, and I give this advice to all my girl friends who come to me with this trouble. You must test this man. You see, he may not really be growing cold; he may merely have some private business worry on his mind which causes him to seem distrait. If you test him you will soon learn the truth. What I suggest may seem to you at first a wee bit unladylike, but try it all the same. Pretend to show a liking for some other gentleman friend of yours. Even flirt with him a teeny-weeny bit.
“You will soon discover then if this young man really cares for you still. If he does he will exhibit agitation. He may even go to the length of becoming violent. In the olden days, you know, knights used to joust for the love of their lady. Try Herbert or George, or whatever his name is, out for a week, and see if you can work him up to the jousting stage.”
Claire laid down the paper with trembling hands. The thing might have been written for her personal benefit. There was no getting away from Aunt Ysobel. She touched the spot every time.
Of course, there were difficulties. It was all very well for Aunt Ysobel to recommend flirting with some other male member of your circle, but suppose your circle was so restricted that there were no available victims. From the standpoint of dashing male society, Burberry Road was at the moment passing through rather a lean time. The postman was an elderly man who, if he stopped to exchange a word, talked only of his son in Canada. The baker’s representative, on the other hand, was a mere boy, and so was the butcher’s. Besides, she might smile upon these by the hour and Hash would never see her. It was all very complex, and she was still pondering upon the problem when a whistle from without announced the arrival of her guest.
The chill of yesterday still hung over Mr. Todhunter’s demeanour. He was not precisely cold, but he was most certainly not warm. He managed somehow to achieve a kind of intermediate temperature. He was rather like a broiled fish that has been lying too long on a plate.
He kissed Claire. That is to say, technically the thing was a kiss. But it was not the kiss of other days.
“What’s up?” asked Claire, hurt.
“Nothing’s up.”
“Yes, there is something up.”
“No, there ain’t anything up.”
“Yes, there is.”
“No, there ain’t.”
“Well, then,” said Claire, “what’s up?”
These intellectual exchanges seemed to have the effect of cementing Mr. Todhunter’s gloom. He relapsed into a dark silence, and Claire, her chin dangerously elevated, prepared tea.
Tea did not thaw the guest. He ate a muffin, sampled the cake and drank deeply; but he still remained that strange, moody figure who rather reminded Claire of the old earl in Hearts Aflame. But then the old earl had had good reason for looking like a man who has drained the wine of life and is now unwillingly facing the lees, because he had driven his only daughter from his door, and though mistaken in this view, supposed that she had died of consumption in Australia. (It was really another girl.) But why Hash should look like one who has drained the four ale of life and found a dead mouse at the bottom of the pewter, Claire did not know, and she quivered with a sense of injury.
However, she was a hostess. (“A hostess, dears, must never, never permit her private feelings to get the better of her”—Aunt Ysobel.)
“Would you like a nice fresh lettuce?” she asked. It might be, she felt, that this would just make the difference.
“Ah!” said Hash. He had a weakness for lettuces.
“I’ll go down the garden and cut you one.”
He did not offer to accompany her, and that in itself was significant. It was with a heart bowed down that Claire took her knife and made her way along the gravel path. So preoccupied was she that she did not cast even a glance over the fence till she was aware suddenly of a strange moaning sound proceeding from the domain of Mon Repos. This excited her curiosity. She stopped, listened, and finally looked.
The garden of Mon Repos presented an animated spectacle. Sam was watering a flower bed, and not far away the dog Amy, knee-deep in a tub, was being bathed by a small, clean-shaven man who was a stranger to Claire.
Both of them seemed to be having a rough passage. Amy, as is the habit of her species on these occasions, was conveying the impression of being at death’s door and far from resigned. Her mournful eyes stared hopelessly at the sky, her brow was wrinkled with a perplexed sorrow, and at intervals she uttered a stricken wail. On these occasions she in addition shook herself petulantly, and Chimp Twist—for, as Miss Blair would have said, it was he—was always well within range.
Claire stopped, transfixed. She had had no notion that the staff of Mon Repos had been augmented, and it seemed to her that Chimp had been sent from heaven. Here, right on the spot, in daily association with Hash, was the desired male. She smiled dazzlingly upon Chimp.
“Hullo,” she said.
“Hullo,” said Chimp.
He spoke moodily, for he was feeling moody. There might be golden rewards at the end of this venture of his, but he perceived already that they would have to be earned. Last night Hash Todhunter had won six shilling from him at stud poker, and Chimp was a thrifty man. Moreover, Hash slept in the top back room, and when not in it, locked the door.
This latter fact may seem to offer little material for gloom on Chimp’s part, but it was, indeed, the root of all his troubles. In informing Mr. and Mrs. Molloy that the plunder of the late Edward Finglass was hidden in the cistern of Mon Repos, Chimp Twist had been guilty of subterfuge—pardonable, perhaps, for your man of affairs must take these little business precautions, but nevertheless subterfuge. In the letter which, after carefully memorising, he had just as carefully destroyed, Mr. Finglass had revealed that the proceeds of his flutter with the New Asiatic Bank might be found not in the cistern but rather by anyone who procured a chisel and raised the third board from the window in the top back room. Chimp had not foreseen that this top back room would be occupied by a short-tempered cook who, should he discover people prying up his floor with chisels, would scarcely fail to make himself unpleasant. That was why Mr. Twist spoke moodily to Claire, and who shall blame him?
Claire was not discouraged. She had cast Chimp for the rôle of stalking horse and he was going to be it.
“Is the doggie having his bath?” she asked archly.
“I think they’re splitting it about fifty-fifty,” said Sam, adding himself to the conversation.
Claire perceived that this was, indeed, so.
“Oh, you are wet,” she cried. “You’ll catch cold. Would you like a nice cup of hot tea?”
Something approaching gratitude appeared in Chimp’s mournful face.
“Thank you, miss,” he said. “I would.”
“We’re spoiling you,” said Sam.
He sauntered down the garden, plying his hose, and Claire hurried back to her kitchen.
“Where’s my nice lettuce?” demanded Hash.
“Haven’t got it yet. I’ve come in to get a cup of hot tea and a slice of cake for that young man next door. He’s got so wet washing that big dog.”
It was some little time before she returned.
“I’ve been having a talk with that young man,” she said. “He liked his tea very much.”
“Did he?” said Hash shortly. “Ho, did he? Where’s my lettuce?”
Claire uttered an exclamation.
“There! If I haven’t gone and forgotten it!”
Hash rose, a set look on his face.
“Never mind,” he said. “Never mind.”
“You aren’t going?”
“Yes, I am.”
“What, already?”
“Yes, already.”
“Well, if you must,” said Claire. “I like Mr. Twist,” she went on pensively. “He’s what I call a perfect gentleman.”
“He’s what I call a perisher,” said Hash sourly.
“Nice way he’s got of speaking. His Christian name’s Alexander. Do you call him that or Aleck?”
“If you care to ’ear what I call him,” replied Hash with frigid politeness, “you can come and listen at our kitchen door.”
“Why, you surely aren’t jealous!” cried Claire, wide-eyed.
“Who, me?” said Hash bitterly.
It was some few minutes later that Sam, watering his garden like a good householder, heard sounds of tumult from within. Turning off his hose, he hastened toward the house and reached it in time to observe the back door open with some violence and his new odd-job man emerge at a high rate of speed. A crockery implement of the kind used in kitchens followed the odd-job man, bursting like a shell against the brick wall which bounded the estate of Mon Repos. The odd-job man himself, heading for the street, disappeared, and Sam, going into the kitchen, found Mr. Todhunter fuming.
“Little tiff?” inquired Sam.
Hash gave vent to a few sailorly oaths.
“He’s been flirting with my girl and I’ve been telling him off.”
Sam clicked his tongue.
“Boys will be boys,” he said. “But, Hash, didn’t I gather from certain words you let fall when you came home last night that your ardour was beginning to wane a trifle?”
“Ur?”
“I say, from the way you spoke last night about the folly of hasty marriages, I imagined that you had begun to experience certain regrets. In other words, you gave me the impression of a man who would be glad to be free from sentimental entanglements. Yet here you are positively—yes, by Jove, positively jousting!”
“What say?”
“I was quoting from a little thing I dashed off up at the office recently. Have you changed your mind about hasty marriages then?”
Hash frowned perplexedly at the stove. He was not a man who found it easy to put his thoughts into words.
“Well, it’s like this: I saw her mother yesterday.”
“Ah! That is a treat I have not had.”
“Do you think girls get like their mothers, Sam?”
“Sometimes.”
Hash shivered.
“Well, the ’ole thing is, when I’m away from the girl, I get to thinking about her.”
“Very properly,” said Sam. “Absence, it has been well said, makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Thinking of her mother, I mean.”
“Oh, of her mother?”
“And then I wish I was well out of it all, you understand. But then again, when I’m settin’ with ’er with my arm round ’er little waist——”
“You are still speaking of the mother?”
“No, the girl.”
“Oh, the girl?”
“And when I’m lookin’ at her and she’s lookin’ at me, it’s different. It’s—well, it’s what I may call different. She’s got a way of tossing her chin up, Sam, and waggling of ’er ’air——”
Sam nodded.
“I know,” he said, “I know. They have, haven’t they? Confirmed hair wagglers, all of them. Well, Hash, if you will listen to the advice of an old lady with girl friends in every part of England—and Scotland, too, for that matter; you will find a communication from Bonnie Lassie (Glasgow) in this very issue—I would say, Risk the mother. And meanwhile, Hash, refrain, if possible, from slaying our odd-job man. He may not be much to look at, but he is uncommonly useful. Never forget that in a few days we may want Amy washed again.”
He bestowed an encouraging nod upon his companion and went out into the garden. He was just picking up his hose when a scuffling sound from the other side of the fence attracted his attention. It was followed by a sharp exclamation, and he recognised Kay’s voice.
It was growing dark now, but it was not too dark for Sam to see, if only sketchily, what was in progress in the garden of San Rafael. Shrouded though the whole scene was in an evening mist, he perceived a male figure. He also perceived the figure of Kay. The male figure appeared either to be giving Kay a lesson in jiujitsu or else embracing her against her will. From the sound of her voice, he put the latter construction on the affair, and it seemed to him that, in the inspired words of the typewriter, now was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.
Sam was a man of action. Several policies were open to him. He could ignore the affair altogether; he could shout reproof at the aggressor from a distance; he could climb the fence and run to the rescue. None of these operations appealed to him. It was his rule in life to act swiftly and to think, if at all, later. In his simple, direct fashion, therefore, he lifted the hose and sent a stream of water shooting at the now closely entangled pair.
The treatment was instantaneously effective. The male member of the combination, receiving several gallons of the Valley Fields Water Company’s best stuff on the side of his head and then distributed at random over his person, seemed to understand with a lightning quickness that something in the nature of reinforcements had arrived. Hastily picking up his hat, which had fallen off, he stood not upon the order of his going, but ran. The darkness closed upon him, and Sam, with a certain smug complacency inevitable in your knight errant who has borne himself notably well in a difficult situation, turned off the hose and stood waiting while Kay crossed the lawn.
“Who was our guest?” he asked.
Kay seemed a little shaken. She was breathing quickly.
“It was Claude Bates,” she said, and her voice quivered. So did Sam’s.
“Claude Bates!” he cried distractedly. “If I had known that, I would have chased him all the way back to London, kicking him violently.”
“I wish you had.”
“How on earth did that fellow come to be here?”
“I met him outside Victoria Station. I suppose he got into the train and followed me.”
“The hound!”
“I suddenly found him out here in the garden.”
“The blister!”
“Do you think somebody will kill him some day?” asked Kay wistfully.
“I shall have a very poor opinion of the public spirit of the modern Englishman,” Sam assured her, “if that loathsome leprous growth is permitted to infest London for long. But in the meantime,” he said, lowering his voice tenderly, “doesn’t it occur to you that this thing has been sent for a purpose? Surely it is intended as a proof of the truth of what I was saying at lunch, that you need——”
“Yes,” said Kay; “but we’ll talk about that some other time, if you don’t mind. I suppose you know you’ve soaked me to the skin.”
“You?” said Sam incredulously.
“Yes, me.”
“You don’t mean Bates?”
“No, I do not mean Bates. Feel my arm if you don’t believe me.”
Sam extended a reverent hand.
“What an extraordinarily beautiful arm you have,” he said.
“An extraordinarily wet arm.”
“Yes, you are wet,” Sam acknowledged. “Well, all I can say is that I am extremely sorry. I acted for the best; impulsively, let us say—mistakenly, it may be—but still with the best intentions.”
“I should hate to be anywhere near when you are doing your worst. Well, things like this, I suppose, must be——”
“——after a famous victory. Exactly!”
“I must run in and change.”
“Wait!” said Sam. “We must get this thing straight. You will admit now, I imagine, that you need a strong man’s protection?”
“I don’t admit anything of the kind.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“But surely, with Claude Bateses surging around you on every side, dogging your footsteps, forcing their way into your very garden, you must acknowledge——”
“I shall catch cold.”
“Of course! What am I thinking of? You must run in at once.”
“Yes.”
“But wait!” said Sam. “I want to get to the bottom of this. What makes you think that you and I were not designed for each other from the beginning of time? I’ve been thinking very deeply about the whole thing, and it beats me why you can’t see it. To start with, we are so much alike, we have the same tastes——”
“Have we?”
“Most certainly. To take a single instance, we both dislike Claude Bates. Then there is your love, which I share, for a life in the country. The birds, the breezes, the trees, the bees—you love them and so do I. It is my one ambition to amass enough money to enable me to buy a farm and settle down. You would like that.”
“You seem to know a lot about me.”
“I have my information from your uncle.”
“Don’t you and uncle ever do any work at the office? You seem to spend your whole time talking.”
“In the process of getting together a paper like Pyke’s Home Companion, there come times when a little rest, a little folding of the hands, is essential. Otherwise the machine would break down. On these occasions we chat, and when we chat we naturally talk about you.”
“Why?”
“Because there is no other subject in which I am in the least interested. Well, then, returning to what I was saying, we are so much alike——”
“They say that people should marry their opposites.”
“Pyke’s Home Companion has exploded that view. Replying to Anxious (Wigan) in this very issue, Aunt Ysobel says just the contrary.”
“I’ve often wondered who Aunt Ysobel was.”
“It would be foreign to the policy of Pyke’s Home Companion to reveal office secrets. You may take it from me that Aunt Ysobel is the goods. She knows. You might say she knows everything.”
“I wonder if she knows I’m getting pneumonia.”
“Good heavens! I was forgetting. I mustn’t keep you standing here for another instant.”
“No. Good-bye.”
“Wait!” said Sam. “While we are on the subject of Aunt Ysobel, I wonder if you have seen her ruling this week in the case of Romeo (Middlesbrough)?”
“I haven’t read this week’s number.”
“Ah! Well, the gist of what she says—I quote from memory—is that there is nothing wrong in a young man taking a girl to the theatre, provided that it is a matinée performance. On the contrary, the girl will consider it a pretty and delicate attention. Now to-morrow will be Saturday, and I have in my possession two seats for the Winter Garden. Will you come?”
“Does Aunt Ysobel say what the significance is if the girl accepts?”
“It implies that she is beginning to return—slightly, it may be, but nevertheless perceptibly—the gentleman’s esteem.”
“I see. Rather serious. I must think this over.”
“Certainly. And now, if I may suggest it, you really ought to be going in and changing your dress. You are very wet.”
“So I am. You seem to know everything—like Aunt Ysobel.”
“There is a resemblance, perhaps,” said Sam.
Hash Todhunter met Sam as he re-entered Mon Repos.
“Oh, there you are,” said Hash. “There was some people calling, wanting to see you, a minute ago.”
“Really? Who?”
“Well, it was a young female party that come to the door, but I thought I saw a kind of thickset feller hanging about down on the drive.”
“My old friends, Thomas G. and Miss Gunn, no doubt. A persistent couple. Did they leave any message?”
“No. She asked if you was in, and when I told her you was around somewhere she said it didn’t matter.”
That night. The apartments of Lord Tilbury.
“Yes? Yes? This is Lord Tilbury speaking.... Ah, is that you, Twist? Have you anything to report?”
“The young woman’s cook has just been round with a message. The young woman is going with Mr. Shotter to the theatre to-morrow afternoon.”
“Cor!” said Lord Tilbury.
He replaced the receiver. He remained for a moment in the deepest thought. Then, swiftly reaching a decision, he went to the desk and took out a cable form.
The wording of the cable gave him some little trouble. The first version was so condensed that he could not understand it himself. He destroyed the form and decided that this was no time for that economy which is instinctive even to the richest men when writing cables. Taking another form and recklessly dashing the expense, he informed Mr. Pynsent that, in spite of the writer’s almost fatherly care, his nephew Samuel had most unfortunately sneaked off surreptitiously and become entangled with a young woman residing in the suburbs. He desired Mr. Pynsent to instruct him in this matter.
The composition satisfied him. It was a good piece of work. He rang for an underling and sent him with it to the cable office.