CHAPTER TWO
KAY OF VALLEY FIELDS
THE nameless individual who had torn from its setting the photograph which had so excited the admiration of Sam Shotter had, as has been already indicated, torn untidily. Had he exercised a little more care, that lovelorn young man would have seen beneath the picture the following legend:
MISS KAY DERRICK, DAUGHTER OF COL. EUSTACE
DERRICK, OF MIDWAYS HALL, WILTS.
And if he had happened to be in Piccadilly Circus on a certain afternoon some three weeks after his conversation with Hash Todhunter, he might have observed Miss Derrick in person. For she was standing on the island there waiting for a Number Three omnibus.
His first impression, had he so beheld her, would certainly have been that the photograph, attractive though it was, did not do her justice. Four years had passed since it had been taken, and between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two many girls gain appreciably in looks. Kay Derrick was one of them. He would then have observed that his views on her appearance had been sound. Her eyes, as he had predicted, were blue—a very dark, warm blue like the sky on a summer night—and her hair, such of it as was visible beneath a becoming little hat, was of a soft golden brown. The third thing he would have noticed about her was that she looked tired. And, indeed, she was. It was her daily task to present herself at the house of a certain Mrs. Winnington-Bates in Thurloe Square, South Kensington, to read to that lady and to attend to her voluminous correspondence. And nobody who knew Mrs. Winnington-Bates at all intimately would have disputed the right of any girl who did this to look as tired as she pleased.
The omnibus arrived and Kay climbed the steps to the roof. The conductor presented himself, punch in hand.
“Fez, pliz.”
“Valley Fields,” said Kay.
“Q,” said the conductor.
He displayed no excitement as he handed her the ticket, none of that anxious concern exhibited by those who met the young man with the banner marked Excelsior; for the days are long past when it was considered rather a dashing adventure to journey to Valley Fields. Two hundred years ago, when highwaymen roved West Kensington and snipe were shot in Regent Street, this pleasant suburb in the Postal Division S. E. 21 was a remote spot to which jaded bucks and beaux would ride when they wanted to get really close to Nature. But now that vast lake of brick and asphalt which is London has flooded its banks and engulfed it. The Valley Fields of to-day is a mass of houses, and you may reach it not only by omnibus but by train, and even by tram.
It was a place very familiar to Kay now, so that at times she seemed to have been there all her life; and yet actually only a few months had elapsed since she had been washed up on its shores like a piece of flotsam; or, to put the facts with less imagery, since Mr. Wrenn, of San Rafael, Burberry Road, had come forward on the death of her parents and offered her a home there. This Mr. Wrenn being the bad Uncle Matthew who in the dim past—somewhere around the year 1905—splashed a hideous blot on the Derrick escutcheon by eloping with Kay’s Aunt Enid.
Kay had been a child of two at the time, and it was not till she was eight that she heard the story, her informant being young Willoughby Braddock, the stout boy who, with the aid of a trustee, owned the great house and estates adjoining Midways. It was a romantic story—of a young man who had come down to do Midways for the Stately-Homes-of-England series appearing in the then newly established Pyke’s Home Companion; who in the process of doing it had made the acquaintance of the sister of its owner; and who only a few weeks later had induced her to run away and marry him, thereby—according to the viewpoint of the family—ruining her chances in this world and her prospects in the next.
For twenty years Matthew Wrenn had been the family outcast, and now time had accomplished one more of its celebrated revenges. The death of Colonel Derrick, which had followed that of his wife by a few months, had revealed the fact that in addition to Norman blood he had also had the simple faith which the poet ranks so much more highly—it taking the form of trusting prospectuses which should not have deceived a child and endeavouring to make up losses caused by the diminishing value of land with a series of speculations, each of them more futile and disastrous than the last. His capital had gone to the four winds, Midways had gone to the mortgagees, and Kay, apprised of these facts by a sympathetic family lawyer, had gone to Mr. Matthew Wrenn, now for many years the editor of that same Pyke’s Home Companion of which he had once been the mere representative.
The omnibus stopped at the corner of Burberry Road, and Kay, alighting, walked toward San Rafael. Burberry Road is not one of the more fashionable and wealthy districts of Valley Fields, and most of the houses in it are semi-detached. San Rafael belonged to this class, being joined, like a stucco Siamese Twin, in indissoluble union to its next-door neighbour, Mon Repos. It had in front of it a strip of gravel, two apologetic-looking flower beds with evergreens in them, a fence, and in the fence a gate, modelled on the five-barred gates of the country.
Out of this gate, as Kay drew near, there came an elderly gentleman, tall, with grey hair and a scholarly stoop.
“Why, hullo, darling,” said Kay. “Where are you off to?”
She kissed her uncle affectionately, for she had grown very fond of him in the months of their companionship.
“Just popping round to have a chat with Cornelius,” said Mr. Wrenn. “I thought I might get a game of chess.”
In actual years Matthew Wrenn was on the right side of fifty; but as editors of papers like Pyke’s Home Companion are apt to do, he looked older than he really was. He was a man of mild and dreamy aspect, and it being difficult to imagine him in any dashing rôle, Kay rather supposed that the energy and fire which had produced the famous elopement must have come from the lady’s side.
“Well, don’t be late for dinner,” she said. “Is Willoughby in?”
“I left him in the garden.” Mr. Wrenn hesitated. “That’s a curious young man, Kay.”
“It’s an awful shame that he should be inflicted on you, darling,” said Kay. “His housekeeper shooed him out of his house, you know. She wanted to give it a thorough cleaning. And he hates staying at clubs and hotels, and I’ve known him all my life, and he asked me if we could put him up, and—well, there you are. But cheer up, it’s only for to-night.”
“My dear, you know I’m only too glad to put up any friend of yours. But he’s such a peculiar young fellow. I have been trying to talk to him for an hour, and all he does is to look at me like a goldfish.”
“Like a goldfish?”
“Yes, with his eyes staring and his lips moving without any sound coming from them.”
Kay laughed.
“It’s his speech. I forgot to tell you. The poor lamb has got to make a speech to-night at the annual dinner of the Old Boys of his school. He’s never made one before, and it’s weighing on his mind terribly.”
Mr. Wrenn looked relieved.
“Oh, I didn’t know. Honestly, my dear, I thought that he must be mentally deficient.” He looked at his watch. “Well, if you think you can entertain him, I will be going along.”
Mr. Wrenn went on his way; and Kay, passing through the five-barred gate, followed the little gravel path which skirted the house and came into the garden.
Like all the gardens in the neighbourhood, it was a credit to its owner—on the small side, but very green and neat and soothing. The fact that, though so widely built over, Valley Fields has not altogether lost its ancient air of rusticity is due entirely to the zeal and devotion of its amateur horticulturists. More seeds are sold each spring in Valley Fields, more lawn mowers pushed, more garden rollers borrowed, more snails destroyed, more green fly squirted with patent mixtures, than in any other suburb on the Surrey side of the river. Brixton may have its Bon Marché and Sydenham its Crystal Palace; but when it comes to pansies, roses, tulips, hollyhocks and nasturtiums, Valley Fields points with pride.
In addition to its other attractive features, the garden of San Rafael contained at this moment a pinkish, stoutish, solemn young man in a brown suit, who was striding up and down the lawn with a glassy stare in his eyes.
“Hullo, Willoughby,” said Kay.
The young man came out of his trance with a strong physical convulsion.
“Oh, hullo, Kay.”
He followed her across the lawn to the tea table which stood in the shade of a fine tree. For there are trees in this favoured spot as well as flowers.
“Tea, Willoughby?” said Kay, sinking gratefully into a deck chair. “Or have you had yours?”
“Yes, I had some.... I think——” Mr. Braddock weighed the question thoughtfully. “Yes.... Yes, I’ve had some.”
Kay filled her cup and sipped luxuriously.
“Golly, I’m tired!” she said.
“Had a bad day?”
“Much the same as usual.”
“Mrs. B. not too cordial?”
“Not very. And, unfortunately, the son and heir was cordiality itself.”
Mr. Braddock nodded.
“A bit of a trial, that lad.”
“A bit.”
“Wants kicking.”
“Very badly.”
Kay gave a little wriggle of distaste. Technically, her duties at Thurloe Square consisted of reading and writing Mrs. Winnington-Bates’ letters; but what she was engaged for principally, she sometimes thought, was to act as a sort of spiritual punching bag for her employer. To-day that lady had been exceptionally trying. Her son, on the other hand, who had recently returned to his home after an unsuccessful attempt to learn poultry farming in Sussex and was lounging about it, with little to occupy him, had shown himself, in his few moments of opportunity, more than usually gallant. What life needed to make it a trifle easier, Kay felt, was for Mrs. Bates to admire her a little more and for Claude Bates to admire her a little less.
“I remember him at school,” said Mr. Braddock. “A worm.”
“Was he at school with you?”
“Yes. Younger than me. A beastly little kid who stuffed himself with food and frousted over fires and shirked games. I remember Sam Shotter licking him once for stealing jam sandwiches at the school shop. By the way, Sam’s coming over here. I had a letter from him.”
“Is he? And who is he? You’ve never mentioned his name before.”
“Haven’t I told you about old Sam Shotter?” asked Mr. Braddock, surprised.
“Never. But he sounds wonderfully attractive. Anyone who licked Claude Bates must have a lot of good in him.”
“He was at school with me.”
“What a lot of people seem to have been at school with you!”
“Well, there were about six hundred fellows at Wrykyn, you know. Sam and I shared a study. Now there is a chap I envy. He’s knocked about all over the world, having all sorts of fun. America one day, Australia the next, Africa the day after.”
“Quick mover,” said Kay.
“The last I heard from him he was in his uncle’s office in New York, but in this letter he says he’s coming over to work at Tilbury House.”
“Tilbury House? Really? I wonder if uncle will meet him.”
“Don’t you think it would be a sound move if I gave him a dinner or something where he could meet a few of the lads? You and your uncle, of course—and if I could get hold of old Tilbury.”
“Do you know Lord Tilbury?”
“Oh, yes; I play bridge with him sometimes at the club. And he took my shooting last year.”
“When does Mr. Shotter arrive?”
“I don’t know. He says it’s uncertain. You see, he’s coming over on a tramp steamer.”
“A tramp steamer? Why?”
“Well, it’s the sort of thing he does. Sort of thing I’d like to do too.”
“You?” said Kay, amazed. Willoughby Braddock had always seemed to her a man to whose well-being the refinements—and even the luxuries—of civilisation were essential. One of her earliest recollections was of sitting in a tree and hurling juvenile insults at him, it having come to her ears through reliable channels that he habitually wore bed socks. “What nonsense, Willoughby! You would hate roughing it.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Mr. Braddock stoutly. “I’d love a bit of adventure.”
“Well, why don’t you have it? You’ve got plenty of money. You could be a pirate of the Spanish Main if you wanted.”
Mr. Braddock shook his head wistfully.
“I can’t get away from Mrs. Lippett.”
Willoughby Braddock was one of those unfortunate bachelors who are doomed to live under the thrall of either a housekeeper or a valet. His particular cross in life was his housekeeper, his servitude being rendered all the more unescapable by the fact that Mrs. Lippett had been his nurse in the days of his childhood. There are men who can defy a woman. There are men who can cope with a faithful old retainer. But if there are men who can tackle a faithful old female retainer who has frequently smacked them with the back of a hairbrush, Willoughby Braddock was not one of them.
“She would have a fit or go into a decline or something if I tried to break loose.”
“Poor old Willoughby! Life can be very hard, can’t it? By the way, I met my uncle outside. He was complaining that you were not very chummy.”
“No, was he?”
“He said you just sat there looking at him like a goldfish.”
“Oh, I say!” said Mr. Braddock remorsefully. “I’m awfully sorry. I mean, after he’s been so decent, putting me up and everything. I hope you explained to him that I was frightfully worried about this speech.”
“Yes, I did. But I don’t see why you should be. It’s perfectly simple making a speech. Especially at an Old Boys’ dinner, where they won’t expect anything very much. If I were you, I should just get up and tell them one or two funny stories and sit down again.”
“I’ve got one story,” said Mr. Braddock more hopefully. “It’s about an Irishman.”
“Pat or Mike?”
“I thought of calling him Pat. He’s in New York and he goes down to the dock and he sees a diver coming up out of the water—in a diving suit, you know—and he thinks the fellow—the diver, you understand—has walked across the Atlantic and wishes he had thought of doing the same himself, so as to have saved the fare, don’t you know.”
“I see. One of those weak-minded Irishmen.”
“Do you think it will amuse them?” asked Mr. Braddock anxiously.
“I should think they would roll off their seats.”
“No, really?” He broke off and stretched out a hand in alarm. “I say, you weren’t thinking of having one of those rock cakes, were you?”
“I was. But I won’t if you don’t want me to. Aren’t they good?”
“Good? My dear old soul,” said Mr. Braddock earnestly, “they are Clara’s worst effort—absolutely her very worst. I had to eat one because she came and stood over me and watched me do it. It beats me why you don’t sack that girl. She’s a rotten cook.”
“Sack Claire?” Kay laughed. “You might just as well try to sack her mother.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“You can’t sack a Lippett.”
“No, I see what you mean. I wish she wasn’t so dashed familiar with a fellow, though.”
“Well, she has known you almost as long as I have. Mrs. Lippett has always been a sort of mother to you, so I suppose Claire regards herself as a sort of sister.”
“Yes, I suppose it can’t be helped,” said Mr. Braddock bravely. He glanced at his watch. “Ought to be going and dressing. I’ll find you out here before I leave?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, I’ll be pushing along. I say, you do think that story about the Irishman is all right?”
“Best thing I ever heard,” said Kay loyally.
For some minutes after he had left her she sat back in her chair with her eyes closed, relaxing in the evening stillness of this pleasant garden.
“Finished with the tea, Miss Kay?”
Kay opened her eyes. A solid little figure in a print dress was standing at her side. A jaunty maid’s cap surmounted this person’s tow-coloured hair. She had a perky nose and a wide, friendly mouth, and she beamed upon Kay devotedly.
“Brought you these,” she said, dropping a rug, two cushions and a footstool, beneath the burden of which she had been staggering across the lawn like a small pack mule. “Make you nice and comfortable, and then you can get a nice nap. I can see you’re all tired out.”
“That’s awfully good of you, Claire. But you shouldn’t have bothered.”
Claire Lippett, daughter of Willoughby Braddock’s autocratic housekeeper and cook and maid-of-all-work at San Rafael, was a survivor of the Midways epoch. She had entered the Derrick household at the age of twelve, her duties at that time being vague and leaving her plenty of leisure for surreptitious bird’s-nesting with Kay, then thirteen. On her eighteenth birthday she had been promoted to the post of Kay’s personal maid, and from that moment may be said formally to have taken charge. The Lippett motto was Fidelity, and not even the famous financial crash had been able to dislodge this worthy daughter of the clan. Resolutely following Kay into exile, she had become, as stated, Mr. Wrenn’s cook. And, as Mr. Braddock had justly remarked, a very bad cook too.
“You oughtn’t to go getting yourself all tired, Miss Kay. You ought to be sitting at your ease.”
“Well, so I am,” said Kay.
There were times when, like Mr. Braddock, she found the Lippett protectiveness a little cloying. She was a high-spirited girl and wanted to face the world with a defiant “Who cares?” and it was not easy to do this with Claire coddling her all the time as if she were a fragile and sensitive plant. Resistance, however, was useless. Nobody had ever yet succeeded in curbing the motherly spirit of the Lippetts, and probably nobody ever would.
“Meantersay,” explained Claire, adjusting the footstool, “you ought not to be soiling your hands with work, that’s what I mean. It’s a shame you should be having to——”
She stopped abruptly. She had picked up the tea tray and made a wounding discovery.
“You haven’t touched my rock cakes,” she said in a voice in which reproach and disappointment were nicely blended. “And I made them for you special.”
“I didn’t want to spoil my dinner,” said Kay hastily. Claire was a temperamental girl, quick to resent slurs on her handiwork. “I’m sure you’ve got something nice.”
Claire considered the point.
“Well, yes and no,” she said. “If you’re thinking of the pudding, I’m afraid that’s off. The kitten fell into the custard.”
“No!”
“She did. And when I’d fished her out there wasn’t hardly any left. Seemed to have soaked it into her like as if she was a sponge. Still, there ’ud be enough for you if Mr. Wrenn didn’t want any.”
“No, it doesn’t matter, thanks,” said Kay earnestly.
“Well, I’m trying a new soup, which’ll sort of make up for it. It’s one I read in a book. It’s called pottage ar lar princess. You’re sure you won’t have one of these rock cakes, Miss Kay? Put strength into you.”
“No, thanks, really.”
“Right-ho; just as you say.”
Miss Lippett crossed the lawn and disappeared, and a soothing peace fell upon the garden. A few minutes later, however, just as Kay’s head was beginning to nod, from an upper window there suddenly blared forth on the still air a loud and raucous voice, suggestive of costermongers advertising their Brussels sprouts or those who call the cattle home across the Sands of Dee.
“I am reminded by a remark of our worthy president,” roared the voice, “of a little story which may be new to some of you present here to-night. It seems that a certain Irishman had gone down to New York—I mean, he was in New York and had gone down to the docks—and while there—while there——”
The voice trailed off. Apparently the lungs were willing but the memory was weak. Presently it broke out in another place.
“For the school, gentlemen, our dear old school, occupies a place in our hearts—a place in our hearts—in the hearts of all of us—in all our hearts—in our hearts, gentlemen—which nothing else can fill. It forms, if I may put it that way, Mr. President and gentlemen—forms—forms—forms a link that links the generations. Whether we are fifty years old or forty or thirty or twenty, we are none the less all of us contemporaries. And why? Because, gentlemen, we are all—er—linked by that link.”
“Jolly good!” murmured Kay, impressed.
“That is why, Mr. President and gentlemen, though I am glad, delighted, pleased, happy and—er—overjoyed to see so many of you responding to the annual call of our dear old school, I am not surprised.”
From the kitchen door, a small knife in one hand and a half-peeled onion in the other, there emerged the stocky figure of Claire Lippett. She gazed up at the window wrathfully.
“Hi!”
“No, not surprised.”
“Hi!”
“And talking of being surprised, I am reminded of a little story which may be new to some of you present here to-night. It seems that a certain Irishman——”
From the days when their ancestresses had helped the menfolk of the tribe to make marauding Danes wish they had stayed in Denmark, the female members of Claire Lippett’s family had always been women of action. Having said “Hi!” twice, their twentieth-century descendant seemed to consider that she had done all that could reasonably be expected of her in the way of words. With a graceful swing of her right arm, she sent the onion shooting upward. And such was the never-failing efficiency of this masterly girl that it whizzed through the open window, from which, after a brief interval, there appeared, leaning out, the dress-shirted and white-tied upper portion of Mr. Willoughby Braddock. He was rubbing his ear.
“Be quiet, can’t you?” said Miss Lippett.
Mr. Braddock gazed austerely into the depths. Except that the positions of the characters were inverted and the tone of the dialogue somewhat different, it might have been the big scene out of Romeo and Juliet.
“What did you say?”
“I said be quiet. Miss Kay wants to get a bit of sleep. How can she get a bit of sleep with that row going on?”
“Clara!” said Mr. Braddock portentously.
“Claire,” corrected the girl coldly, insisting on a point for which she had had to fight all her life.
Mr. Braddock gulped.
“I shall—er—I shall speak to your mother,” he said.
It was a futile threat, and Claire signified as much by jerking her shoulder in a scornful and derogatory manner before stumping back to the house with all the honours of war. She knew—and Mr. Braddock knew that she knew—that complaints respecting her favourite daughter would be coldly received by Mrs. Lippett.
Mr. Braddock withdrew from the window, and presently appeared in the garden, beautifully arrayed.
“Why, Willoughby,” said Kay admiringly, “you look wonderful!”
The kindly compliment did much to soothe Mr. Braddock’s wounded feelings.
“No, really?” he said; and felt, as he had so often felt before, that Kay was a girl in a million, and that if only the very idea of matrimony did not scare a fellow so confoundedly, a fellow might very well take a chance and see what would happen if he asked her to marry him.
“And the speech sounded fine.”
“Really? You know, I got a sudden fear that my voice might not carry.”
“It carries,” Kay assured him.
The clouds which her compliments had chased from Mr. Braddock’s brow gathered again.
“I say, Kay, you know, you really ought to do something about that girl Clara. She’s impossible. I mean, throwing onions at a fellow.”
“You mustn’t mind. Don’t worry about her; it’ll make you forget your speech. How long are you supposed to talk?”
“About ten minutes, I imagine. You know, this is going to just about kill me.”
“What you must do is drink lots and lots of champagne.”
“But it makes me spotty.”
“Well, be spotty. I shan’t mind.”
Mr. Braddock considered.
“I will,” he said. “It’s a very good idea. Well, I suppose I ought to be going.”
“You’ve got your key? That’s right. You won’t be back till pretty late, of course. I’ll go and tell Claire not to bolt the door.”
When Kay reached the kitchen she found that her faithful follower had stepped out of the pages of Romeo and Juliet into those of Macbeth. She was bending over a cauldron, dropping things into it. The kitten, now comparatively dry and decustarded, eyed her with bright interest from a shelf on the dresser.
“This is the new soup, Miss Kay,” she announced with modest pride.
“It smells fine,” said Kay, wincing slightly as a painful aroma of burning smote her nostrils. “I say, Claire, I wish you wouldn’t throw onions at Mr. Braddock.”
“I went up and got it back,” Claire reassured her. “It’s in the soup now.”
“You’ll be in the soup if you do that sort of thing. What,” asked Kay virtuously, “will the neighbours say?”
“There aren’t any neighbours,” Claire pointed out. A wistful look came into her perky face. “I wish someone would hurry up and move into Mon Ree-poss,” she said. “I don’t like not having next-doors. Gets lonely for a girl all day with no one to talk to.”
“Well, when you talk to Mr. Braddock, don’t do it at the top of your voice. Please understand that I don’t like it.”
“Now,” said Claire simply, “you’re cross with me.” And without further preamble she burst into a passionate flood of tears.
It was this sensitiveness of hers that made it so difficult for the young chatelaine of San Rafael to deal with the domestic staff. Kay was a warm-hearted girl, and a warm-hearted girl can never be completely at her ease when she is making cooks cry. It took ten minutes of sedulous petting to restore the emotional Miss Lippett to her usual cheerfulness.
“I’ll never raise my voice so much as above a whisper to the man,” she announced remorsefully at the end of that period. “All the same——”
Kay had no desire to reopen the Braddock argument.
“That’s all right, Claire. What I really came to say was—don’t put the chain up on the front door to-night, because Mr. Braddock is sure to be late. But he will come in quite quietly and won’t disturb you.”
“He’d better not,” said Miss Lippett grimly. “I’ve got a revolver.”
“A revolver!”
“Ah!” Claire bent darkly over her cauldron. “You never know when there won’t be burglars in these low parts. The girl at Pontresina down the road was telling me they’d had a couple of milk cans sneaked off their doorstep only yesterday. And I’ll tell you another thing, Miss Kay. It’s my belief there’s been people breaking into Mon Ree-poss.”
“What would they do that for? It’s empty.”
“It wasn’t empty last night. I was looking out of the window with one of my noo-ralgic headaches—must have been between two and three in the morning—and there was mysterious lights going up and down the staircase.”
“You imagined it.”
“Begging your pardon, Miss Kay, I did not imagine it. There they were, as plain as plain. Might have been one of these electric torches the criminal classes use. If you want to know what I think, Miss Kay, that Mon Ree-poss is what I call a house of mystery, and I shan’t be sorry when somebody respectable comes and takes it. The way it is now, we’re just as likely as not to wake up and find ourselves all murdered in our beds.”
“Nervous?” replied Claire indignantly. “Nervous? Take more than a burglar to make me nervous. All I’m saying is, I’m prepared.”
“Well, don’t go shooting Mr. Braddock.”
“That,” said Miss Lippett, declining to commit herself, “is as may be.”