I
THE fog of November in its descent upon Laxton, one of London’s busiest suburbs, had effaced the whole of Beaconsfield Villas, including the Number Five on the fanlight over the door of the last house but two in the row. To a tall girl in black on her way from the station this was a serious matter. She was familiar with the lie of the land in the light of day and in darkness less than Cimmerian, but this evening she had to ask a policeman, a grocer’s boy, and a person of no defined status, before a kid-gloved hand met the knocker of her destination.
It was the year 1890. Those days are very distant now. Victoria the Good was on the throne of Britain. W.G. went in first for Gloucestershire; Lohmann and Lockwood bowled for Surrey. The hansom was still the gondola of London. The Tube was not, and eke the motor-bus. The Daily Mail had not yet invented Lord Northcliffe. Orville Wright had not made good. William Hohenzollern used to come over to see his grandmother.
Indeed, on this almost incredibly distant evening in the world’s history, his grandmother in three colors and a widow’s cap, with a blue ribbon across her bosom, surmounted the sitting-room chimney-piece of Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas. And at the other end of the room, over the dresser, was an old gentleman with a beard, by common consent the wisest man in the realm, who talked about “splendid isolation,” and gave Heligoland to deep, strong, patient Germany in exchange for a tiny strip of Africa.
Yes, there were giants in those days. And no doubt there are giants in these. But it is not until little Miss Clio trips in with her scroll that we shall know for certain, shall we?
At the first crisp tap the door of Number Five was flung open.
“Harriet, so here you are!”
There was welcome in the eyes as well as in the voice of the eager, personable creature who greeted the visitor. There was welcome also in the gush of mingled gas and firelight from a cosy within.
“How are you, Eliza?”
The tall girl asked the question, shut the door, and kissed her sister, all in one breath, so that only a minute quantity of a London “partickler” was able to follow her into the room.
The hostess pressed Harriet into a chair, as near the bright fire as she could be persuaded to sit.
“What a night! I was half afraid you wouldn’t face it.”
“I always try to keep a promise.” The quiet, firm voice had a gravity and a depth which made it sound years older than that of the elder sister.
“I know you do—and that’s a lot to say of anyone. How’s your health, my dear? It’s very good to see you after all these months.”
Chattering all the time with the artlessness of a nature wholly different from that of her visitor, Eliza Kelly took the kettle from the hob and made the tea.
Beyond a superficial general likeness there was nothing to suggest the near relationship of these two. The air and manner which invested the well-made coat and skirt, the lady-like muff and stole, with a dignity rather austere, were not to be found in the unpretentious front parlor opening on to the street, or in its brisk, voluble, easy-going mistress.
“Harriet, you are really all right again?” Eliza impulsively poured out the tea before it had time to brew, thereby putting herself to the trouble of returning it to the pot.
“Oh, yes.” Harriet removed her gloves elegantly. She was quite a striking-looking creature of nine-and-twenty. In spite of a recent illness, she had an air of strength and virility. The face and brow had been cast in a mold of serious beauty, the eyes, a clear deep gray, were strongholds of good sense. Even without the aid of a considered, rather formidable manner, this young woman would have exacted respect anywhere.
“Take a muffin while it’s warm.”
Harriet did so.
“I had no idea your illness was going to be so bad.”
The younger woman would not own that her illness had been anything of the kind; she was even inclined to make light of it.
“Why, you’ve been away weeks and weeks. And Aunt Annie says you’ve had to have an operation.”
“Only a slight one.” The tone was casual. “Nothing to speak of.”
“Nothing to speak of! Aunt Annie says you have been at Brighton I don’t know how long.”
“Well, you know,” said Harriet in a discreet, rather charming voice, “they thought I was run down and that I ought to have a good rest. You see, the long illness of her Grace was very trying for those who had to look after her.”
“I suppose so. Although her Grace has been dead nearly two years. Anyhow, I hope the Family paid your expenses.” The elder sister and prudent housewife looked at Harriet keenly.
“Everything, even my railway fare.” A fine note came into the voice of Harriet Sanderson.
“Lucky you to be in such service,” said Eliza in a tone of envy.
Slowly the color deepened in Harriet’s cheek.
“By the way, what are you doing at Buntisford? Does it mean you’ve left Bridport House for good?”
“It does, I suppose.”
“But I thought Buntisford had been closed for years?”
“His Grace had it opened again, so that he can go down there when he wants to be quiet. He was always fond of it. There’s a bit of rough shooting and a river, and it’s within thirty miles of London; he finds it very convenient. Of course, it’s quite small and easy to manage.”
“What is your position there?”
“I’m housekeeper,” said Harriet. “That is to say, I manage everything.”
The elder sister looked at her with incredulity, in which a little awe was mingled. “Housekeeper—to the Duke of Bridport—and you not yet thirty, Hattie. Gracious, goodness, what next!”
The visitor smiled at this simplicity. “It’s hardly so grand as it sounds. The house doesn’t need much in the way of servants; the Family never go there. His Grace comes down now and again for a week-end when he wants to be alone. Just himself—there’s never anyone else.”
“But housekeeper!” Eliza was still incredulous. “At twenty-nine! I call it wonderful.”
“Is it so remarkable?” Harriet’s calmness seemed a little uncanny.
“The dad would have thought so, had he lived to see it. He always thought the world of the Family.”
The younger sister smiled at this artlessness.
“Every reason to do so, no doubt,” she said with a brightening eye and a rush of warmth to her voice. “I am sure there couldn’t be better people in this world than the Dinnefords.”
“That was the father’s opinion, anyway. He always said they knew how to treat those who served them.”
“Not a doubt of that,” said Harriet. “They have been more than good to me.” The color flowed over her face. “And his Grace often speaks of the father. He says he was his right hand at Ardnaleuchan, and that he saved him many a pound in a twelvemonth.”
“I expect he did,” said Eliza, her own eyes kindling. “He simply worshiped the Family. Mother used to declare that he would have sold his soul for the Dinnefords.”
“He was a very good man,” said Harriet simply.
“It would have been a proud day for him, Hattie, had he lived to see you where you are now. And not yet thirty—with all your life before you.”
But the words of the elder sister brought a look of constraint to the face of Harriet. Mistaking the cause, Eliza was puzzled. “And it won’t be my opinion only,” she said. “Aunt Annie I’m sure will think as I do. She’ll say you’ve had a wonderful piece of luck.”
“But the position does mean great responsibility”—there was a sudden change in Harriet’s tone.
Eliza kept her eyes on the face of the younger woman, that fine Scots face, so full of resolution and character. “Whatever it may be, Hattie, I’m thinking you’ll just about be able to manage it.”
“I mean to try.” Harriet spoke very slowly and softly. “I mean to show myself worthy of his Grace’s confidence.”
The elder sister smiled an involuntary admiration; there was such a calm force about the girl. “And, of course, it means that you are made for life.”
But in the eyes of Harriet was a fleck of anxiety. “Ah! you don’t know. It’s a big position—an awfully big position.”
Eliza agreed.
“There are times when it almost frightens me.” Harriet spoke half to herself.
“Everything has to run like clockwork, of course,” said the sympathetic Eliza. “And it’s bound to make the upper servants at Bridport House very jealous.”
“It may.” The deep tone had almost an edge of disdain. “Anyhow it doesn’t matter. I don’t go to Bridport House now.”
“But you can’t tell me, my dear, that they like to hear of her Grace’s second maid holding the keys in the housekeeper’s room.”
The calm Harriet smiled. “But it’s only Buntisford, after all. You speak as if it was Bridport House or Ardnaleuchan.”
Eliza shook a knowledgeable head. “They won’t like it all the same, Hattie. The dad wouldn’t have, for one. He was all his life on the estate, but he was turned fifty before he rose to be factor at Ardnaleuchan.”
“Well, Eliza”—there was a force, a decision in the words which made an end of criticism—“it’s just a matter for the Duke. The place is not of my seeking. I was asked to take it—what else could I do?”
“Don’t think I blame you. If it’s the wish of his Grace there is no more to be said. Still, there’s no denying you’ve a big responsibility.”
At these words a shadow came into the resolute eyes.
Said the elder sister reassuringly, “You’ll be equal to the position, never fear. That head of yours is a good one, Hattie. Even Aunt Annie admits that. By the way, have you seen her lately?”
“Seen—Aunt Annie?” said Harriet defensively. The sudden mention of that name produced an immediate change of tone in her distinguished niece.
“She’s been asking about you. She wants very much to see you.”
The shadow deepened in Harriet’s eyes. But an instant later she had skillfully covered an air of growing constraint by a conventional question.
“How’s Joe, Eliza?”
“Pretty much as usual. He’ll be off duty soon.”
Joe Kelly was Eliza’s husband, and a member of the Metropolitan police force. In the eyes of her family, Eliza Sanderson had married beneath her. But Joe, if a rough diamond, was a good fellow, and Eliza could afford not to be over-sensitive on the score of public opinion. Joe had no superficial graces, it was as much as he could do to write a line in his notebook, high rank in his calling was not prophesied by his best friends, but his wife knew she was well off. They had been married eight years, and if only Providence had blessed a harmonious union in a becoming manner, Eliza Kelly would not have found it in her heart to envy the greatest lady in the land. But Providence had not done so, the more was the pity.
“By the way,”—Eliza suddenly broke a silence—“there’s a piece of news for you, Hattie. A friend is coming to see you at five.”
“A friend—to see me!”
“To see you, my dear. In fact, I might say an admirer. Can’t you guess who?”
“I certainly can’t.”
“Then I think you ought.” Mischief had yielded to laughter of a rather quizzical kind.
“I didn’t know that I had any admirers—in Laxton.”
The touch of manner delicately suggested ducal circles.
“You can have a husband for the asking, our Harriet.” The eternal feminine was now in command of the situation.
Harriet frowned.
“I can’t think who it can be.”
“No?” laughed the tormentress. “You are not going to tell me you have forgotten the young man you met the last time you were here?”
It seemed that the distinguished visitor had.
“I do call that hard lines,” mocked Eliza. “You have really forgotten him?”
“I really have!”
“He has talked of you ever since. When was Miss Sanderson coming again? Could he be invited to meet her? He wanted to see her aboot something verra impoortant.”
A light dawned upon Harriet’s perplexity.
“Surely you don’t mean—you don’t mean that red-headed young policeman——?”
“Dugald Maclean. Of course, I do. He has invited himself to meet you at five o’clock.” Eliza sat back in her chair and laughed at the face of Harriet, but the face of Harriet showed it was hardly a laughing matter.
“Well!” she cried. Her eyes were smiling, yet they could not veil their look of deep annoyance.
“Now, Hattie,” admonished the voice of maternal wisdom, “there’s no need to take offense. Don’t forget you are twenty-nine, Dugald Maclean is a smart young man, and Joe says he’ll make his way in the world. Of course, you hold a very high position now, but if you don’t want to find yourself on the shelf it’s time you began to think very seriously about a husband.”
“We will change the subject, if you don’t mind.” The tone revealed a wide gulf between the outlook of Eliza Kelly and that of a confidential retainer in the household of the Duke of Bridport.
“Very well, my dear. But don’t bite. Have the last piece of muffin. And then I’ll toast another for Constable Maclean.”
II
The clock on the chimney-piece struck five. Before its last echo had died there came a loud knock on the front door.
Constable Maclean was a ruddy young Scotsman. He was tall, lean, large-boned, with prominent teeth and ears. Although freckled like a turkey’s egg, he was not a bad-looking fellow. His boots, however, took up a lot of space in a small room, and the manner of his entrance suggested that the difficult operation known as “falling over oneself” was in the act of consummation. But there was an intense earnestness in his manner, and a personal force in his look, which gave a redeeming grace of character to a shy awkwardness, verging on the grotesque.
“Good afternune,” said Constable Maclean, removing his helmet with a polite grimace.
One of the ladies shook hands, the other welcomed the young man with a cordial good-evening and bade him sit down. Constable Maclean, encumbered with a regulation overcoat, sat down rather like a performing bear.
At first conversation languished. Yet no welcome could have been more cordial than Eliza’s. She felt like a mother to this young man. It was her nature to feel like a mother to every young man. Moreover, Dugald Maclean, as he sat perspiring with nervousness on the edge of a chair much too small for him, seemed to need some large-hearted woman to feel like a mother towards him.
Miss Harriet Sanderson was to blame, no doubt, for the young policeman’s aphasia. Her coolness and ease, with a half quizzical, half ironical look surmounting it, seemed to increase the bashfulness of Dugald Maclean whenever he ventured to look at her out of the tail of his eye.
It was clear that the young man was suffering acutely. Nature had intended him to be expansive—not in the Sassenach sense perhaps,—but given the time and the place and a right conjunction of the planets, Dugald Maclean had social gifts, at least they were so assessed at Carrickmachree in his native Caledonia. Moreover, he was rather proud of them. He was an ambitious and gifted young police officer. For many moons he had been looking forward to this romantic hour. Since a first chance meeting with the semi-divine Miss Sanderson he had been living in the hope of a second, yet now by the courtesy of Providence it was granted to him he might never have seen a woman before.
The lips of Constable Maclean were dry, his tongue clove to the roof of an amazingly capacious mouth. As for Miss Sanderson, mere silence began to achieve wonders in the way of gentle, smiling irony. But the hostess was more humane. For one thing she was married, and although Fate had been cruel, she had a sacred instinct which made her regard every young man as a boy of her own.
Every moment the situation became more delicate, but Eliza’s handling of it was superb. She brewed a fresh cup of tea for Constable Maclean, and then plied the toasting-fork to such purpose that the young man became so busy devouring muffins that for a time he forgot his shame. Eliza could toast and butter a muffin with anyone, Constable Maclean could eat a muffin with anyone—thus things began to go better. And when, without turning a hair, the young man entered upon his third muffin, Miss Sanderson dramatically unbent.
“Allow me to give you another cup of tea.” The voice was melody.
A succession of guttural noises, which might be interpreted as “Thank ye kindly, miss,” having come apparently from the boots of Constable Maclean, Miss Harriet Sanderson handed him a second cup of tea.
Still, the conversation did not prosper. But the perfect hostess, kneeling before the fire in order to toast muffin the fifth, had still her best card to play. It was the ace of trumps, in fact, and when she rose to spread butter over a sizzling, delicious, corrugated surface, she decided that the time had come to make use of it.
Perhaps the factor in the situation which moved her to this step was that only one muffin now remained for her husband when he came off duty half-an-hour hence, and that his young colleague of the X Division seemed ready to go on devouring them until the crack of doom.
“That reminds me,” Eliza suddenly remarked as she cut the fifth muffin in half, “I promised Mrs. Norris I would go across after tea to have a look at her latest.”
“You are not going out, Eliza, such a night as this?” said Harriet in a voice of consternation.
“A promise is a promise, my dear, you know that. Mrs. Norris has just had her sixth—the sweetest little boy. Some people have all the luck.”
“But the fog—you can’t see a yard in front of you!”
“It’s only just across the street, my dear.”
III
As soon as Eliza, hatted and cloaked, had gone to see Mrs. Norris’s latest, a change came over Constable Maclean. He was a young man of big ideas. But all that they had done for him so far was to turn life into a tragedy. By nature fiercely sensitive, the shyness which made his life a burden had a trick of crystallizing at the most inconvenient moments into a kind of dumb madness. A crisis of this kind was upon him now. Yet he had a will of iron. And in order to keep faith with the highest law of his being that will was always forcing him to do things, and say things, which people who did not happen to be Dugald Maclean could only regard as perfectly amazing.
His acquaintance with Miss Sanderson was very slight. They came from neighboring villages in their native Scotland; many times he had gazed from afar on his beautiful compatriot, but only once before could he really be said to have met her. That was months ago, in that very room, when he had been but a few days in London. Since then a very ambitious young man had thought about her a great deal. The force and charm of her personality had cast a spell upon him; this was a demonic woman if ever there was one; he had hardly guessed that such creatures existed. It would be wrong to say that he was in love with her; his passion was centered upon ideas and not upon people; yet Harriet Sanderson was already marked in the catalogue as the property of Dugald Maclean.
“Do you like vairse?” inquired the young man, with an abruptness which startled her.
The unexpected question was far from the present plane of her thoughts, but it was answered to the best of her ability.
“Yes, I like it very much,” she said, tactfully.
“I’m gled.” Constable Maclean unbuttoned his great coat.
Somewhere in the mind of Harriet lurked the romantic hope that this remarkable young man was about to produce a hare or a rabbit after the manner of a wonder-worker at the Egyptian Hall. But in this she was disappointed. He simply took forth from an inner pocket of his tunic several sheets of neatly-folded white foolscap, and handed them to Miss Sanderson without a word. He then folded his arms Napoleonically and watched the force of their impact upon her.
“You wish me to read this?” she asked, after a brief but sharp mingling of confusion and surprise.
The young man nodded.
With fingers that trembled a little, she unrolled the sheets of a fair, well-written copy of “Urban Love, a trilogy.”
She read the poem line by line, ninety-six in all, with the face of a sphinx.
“What do ye think o’ it, Miss Sanderrson?” There was a slight tremor in the voice of the author. The silence which had followed the reading of “Urban Love, a trilogy” had proved a little too much, even for that will of iron.
“It is very nice, if I may say so, very nice indeed,” said Miss Sanderson cautiously.
“I’ll be doin’ better than that, I’m thinkin’.” A certain rigidity came into the voice of the author of the poem. The word “nice,” was almost an affront; it had come upon his ear like a false quantity upon that of a classical scholar.
“Did you really do it all by yourself?” The inquiry was due less to the performance, which Harriet was quite unable to judge, than to the author’s almost terrible concentration of manner, which clearly implied that it would not do to take such an achievement for granted.
“Every worrd, Miss Sanderrson. Except——”
“Except what, Mr. Maclean?”
“Mr. Lonie, the Presbyterian Minister, helped me a bit wi’ the scansion.”
“If I may say so, I think it is remarkably clever.”
It appeared, however, that these pages were only the opening stanzas of a poem which was meant to have many. They were still in the limbo of time, behind the high forehead of the author, but upon a day they would burst inevitably upon an astonished world. Would Miss Sanderson accept the dedication?
Miss Sanderson, blushing a little from acute surprise, said that nothing would give her greater pleasure. She was amazed, she wanted to laugh, but the intense, almost truculent earnestness of the young man had put an enchantment upon her.
But all this was simply a prelude to the great drama of the emotions which Constable Maclean had now to unfold. He had broken the ice with the charmer. The butterfly was pinned down with “Urban Love, a trilogy,” through its breast. Miss Sanderson had never had time for reading, therefore she was in nowise literary. Thus, perhaps, it was less the merit of the work itself, which must be left to the judgment of scholars, than the force, the audacity, the driving-power of its author which seemed almost to deliver her captive into his hands.
She, it seemed, was its onlie true begetter. The poem was in her honor. Heroica, calm and fair, was the protagonist of “Urban Love, a trilogy,” and she was Heroica. The position was none of her seeking, but it carried with it grave responsibilities.
In the first place it exposed her to an offer of marriage. “Urban Love, a trilogy,” had broken so much of the ice that Dugald Maclean plunged horse, foot and artillery through the hole it had made. At the moment he could not lead Heroica to the altar; it would hardly be prudent for a young constable of eight months’ standing to offer to do so, but he sincerely hoped that she would promise to wait for him.
Galled by the spur of ambition, Dugald Maclean took the whole plunge where smaller men would have been content merely to try the depth of the water.
Miss Sanderson was frozen with astonishment. It was true that “Urban Love, a trilogy,” had half prepared her for a declaration in form, but she had not foreseen the swiftness of the onset. This was her first experience of the kind, but she was a woman of the world and she gathered her dignity about her like a garment.
“Ye’re no offendit, Miss Sanderrson?” There was something titanic in the slow mustering of his forces to break an arid pause.
“I am not offended, Mr. Maclean.” The tone of Miss Sanderson said she was offended a little. “But I do think——”
“What do ye think, Miss Sanderrson?” The naïveté of the young man provoked a sharp intake of breath.
“I think, Mr. Maclean”—the candor of Miss Sanderson was deliberate but not unkind—“if I were you, before I offered to marry anybody, I should try seriously to better myself.”
The words, pregnant and uncompromising, were masked by a tone so deep and calm that a first-rate intellect was able to treat them on their merits. In spite of a flirtation with the Muses, this young man was a remarkable combination of wild audacity and extreme shrewdness. He had a power of mind which enabled him to distinguish the false from the true. Thus he saw at once, without resentment or pique, that the advice of Heroica was that of a friend.
She had a strong desire to box the ears of this rawboned young policeman for his impertinence; but at heart this was a real woman, and the dynamic forces of her sex were strong in her. It was hard to keep from laughing in the face of this young man in a hurry, who rushed his fences in a way that was simply grotesque; yet she could not help admiring the power within him, and she wished him well.
“It’s gude advice, Miss Sanderrson.” His tone of detachment drew a ripple from lips that laughed very seldom. “I’m thinkin’ I’ll tak’ it. But ye’ll bear the matter in mind?”
“I make no rash promises, Mr. Maclean.”
“Well, if ye won’t, ye won’t. But I’m thinkin’ I’d work the better at the Latin if I could count on ye.”
“Studying Latin, are you, Mr. Maclean?” The surprise of Miss Sanderson was rather respectful.
“Mr. Lonie is learnin’ me,” said the young man, with a slight touch of vainglory. “And I’m thinkin’ he’ll verra soon be learnin’ me the Greek.”
“Are you going to college?”
“Maybe ay. Maybe no. You never can tell where a pairson may get to. Anyhow I’m learnin’ to speak the language. Ae day I’ll be as gude at the Saxon as you and your sister have become, Miss Sanderrson.”
It was hard not to smile, yet she knew her countrymen too well to treat such a matter lightly.
“And I’ve a’ready set aboot writin’ for the papers.”
“Begun already to write for the papers, have you, Mr. Maclean?” This was not a young man to smile at. “Well, wherever you may get to,” Miss Sanderson’s tone was softer than any she had yet used, “I am sure I wish you well.”
“Thank ye,” said the young man dryly. “But why not gie a pairson a helping hand?”
“I am not sure that I like you well enough.” Such candor was extorted by the seriousness with which she was now having to treat him. “You see, Mr. Maclean, it is all so sudden. We have only met once before.”
“May I hope, Miss Sanderrson?”
Suddenly he moved his chair towards her and took her hand.
“Mr. Maclean, you may not.” The hand was withdrawn firmly.
“Well, think it owre, Miss Sanderson.”
The young man moved back his chair to its first position in order to restore the status quo.
Harriet shook her head. And then all at once, to the deep consternation of Constable Maclean, she broke into an anguish of laughter, which good manners, try as they might, were not able to control.
IV
In the midst of this unseemly behavior on the part of Miss Sanderson, the door next the street was flung open with violence. A figure Homeric of aspect emerged from the night.
It was that of Constable Joseph Kelly, of the Metropolitan Police; an ornament of the X Division, a splendid man to look at, nearly six feet high. Broad of girth, proportioned finely, his helmet crowned him like a hero of old. His face, richly tinted by daily and nightly exposure to the remarkable climate of London, was the color of a ripe apple, and there presided in it the almost god-like good-humor of the race to which he belonged.
This emblem of superb manhood was laden heavily. There was his long overcoat, a tremendous, swelling affair; there was his furled oilskin cape; at one side of his girdle was his truncheon-case, his lamp at the other side of it; in his left hand was a modest basket which had contained his dinner, and in his right was a larger wicker arrangement which might have contained anything.
“Is that our Harriet?” said Constable Kelly, in the act of closing the door deftly with his heel. “Good evening, gal. Pleased to see you.”
He set down the large basket on the floor in a rather gingerly manner, placed the small one on the table, came to Harriet, kissed her audibly, and then turned to the room’s second occupant with an air of surprise.
“Hello, Scotchie! What are you doing here?”
Before Dugald Maclean could answer the question he was in the throes of a second attack of dumb madness. This malady made his life a burden. When only one person was by he seldom had difficulty in expressing himself, but any addition to the company was apt to plunge him into hopeless defeat.
“Up to no good, I expect.” Joseph Kelly, disapproval in his eyes, answered his own question, since other answer there was none. “I never see such a feller. Been mashing you, Harriet, by the look of him.”
It was a bow drawn at a venture by a shrewd colleague of the X Division. An immediate effusion of rose pink to the young man’s freckled countenance was full of information for a close observer.
“Durn me if he hasn’t!” Gargantuan laughter rose to the ceiling.
Harriet blushed. But the look in her face was not discomfiture merely. There was plain annoyance and a look of rather startled anxiety for which the circumstances could hardly account.
“Scotchie, you’re a nonesuch.” But Joe suddenly lowered his voice in answer to the alarm in the face of his sister-in-law. “You are the limit, my lad. Do you know what he did last week, Harriet? I’ll tell you.”
“Let me make you a cup of tea, Joe.” And his sister-in-law, who seemed oddly agitated by his arrival, rose in the humane hope of diverting the attack.
But the story was too good to remain untold.
“It’ll take the X Division twenty years to live it down.” Kelly throbbed and gurgled like a donkey-engine as he fixed his youthful colleague with a somber eye. “This young feller, what do you think he did last week?”
“The kettle will soon boil, Joe.”
“Harriet!”—the rich rolling voice thrilled dramatically—“about midnight, last Monday week as ever was, this smart young officer saw an old party in an eyeglass and a topper and a bit o’ fur round his overcoat, standin’ on the curb at Piccadilly Circus. He strolls up, taps him on the shoulder, charges him with loitering with intent and runs him in.”
“Here’s your tea, Joe.” The voice was sweetly polite.
“And who do you think the old party was, my gal? Only a Director of the Bank of England—that’s all. The rest of the Force is guying us proper. They want to know when we are going to lock up the Governor.”
“Joe, your tea!”
“We’ll never get over it, gal, not in my time. Scotchie, you are too ambitious. There isn’t scope for your abilities in the Metropolitan Force. Turn your attention to some other branch of the law. You ought to take chambers in the Temple, you ought, my lad.”
But in answer to the look in the eyes of Harriet, her brother-in-law checked the laugh that rose again to his lips. There was a strange anxiety upon her face, an anxiety that was now in some way communicated to him. It was clear from the glances they exchanged and the silence that ensued, that both were much embarrassed by the presence of Maclean.
However, after the young man had entered upon a struggle for words with which to meet this persiflage and they had refused to come forth, he suddenly noticed that the hands of the clock showed a quarter to six and he rose determinedly.
“Yes, it’s time you went on duty,” said the sardonic Kelly with an air of relief.
Constable Maclean, feeling much was at stake, made a great effort to achieve a dignified exit. He was an odd combination of the thick-skinned and the hypersensitive. At this moment the shattering wit of his peer of the X Division made him wish he had never been born, but he was too dour a fighter to take it lying down.
“Gude-nicht, Miss Sanderrson.” With one more grimace he offered a hand not indelicately.
“Good-night, Mr. Maclean.” The tone of studied kindness was a salve for his wounds. The effrontery of this young man did not call for pity. And yet it was his to receive it from the sterling heart of a true woman.
The smile, the arch glance, the ready handshake did so much to restore Dugald Maclean in his own esteem, that he was able to retire with even a touch of swagger, which somehow, in spite of an awkwardness almost comically ursine, sat uncommonly well on such a dashing young policeman.
Indeed, the exit of Constable Maclean came very near the point of bravado. For as he passed the large wicker basket which Kelly had placed on the floor, the young man turned audaciously upon his tormentor. Said he with a grin of sheer defiance:
“What hae ye gotten i’ the basket, Joe?”
“Never you mind. ’Op it.”
Less out of natural curiosity, which however was very great, than a desire to show all whom it might concern that he was again his own man, Dugald Maclean laid his hand on the lid of the basket.
“What hae ye gotten, Joe? Rabbuts?”
“If you must know, it’s a young spannil.” The answer came with rather truculent hesitation.
“A young spannil, eh? I’m thinkin’ I’ll hae a look.”
“Be off about your duty, my lad.” Joe began to look threatening.
“Juist a speir.”
“’Op it, I tell you.”
But in open defiance, Dugald Maclean had already begun to untie the string which held the lid of the basket in place. The majestic Kelly rose from his tea. Without further words he seized the young man firmly from behind by the collar of his coat. And then he hustled him as far as the door in a very efficient professional manner, straight into the arms of Eliza, who at that moment was in the act of entering it.
V
At the open door there was a brief scurry of laughter and protest which ended in a riot of confusion. And then happened an odd thing. But of the three persons struggling upon the threshold of Number Five only one was aware of it, and he had the wit to raise a great voice to its highest pitch in order to conceal a fact so remarkable.
“For heaven’s sake hold your noise, Joe, else you’ll frighten the neighbors,” said Eliza, getting in it at last and indulging in suppressed shrieks at the manner of Dugald Maclean’s putting out.
An instant later, the young policeman was in the street and the door of Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas, had closed upon him. But his singular exit was merely the prelude to an incident far more amazing.
In the uproar of Joe had been fell design. As soon as it ceased the reason for it grew apparent. An incredible sound was filling the room.
“Whatever’s that!” Eliza almost shrieked in sheer wonderment.
Harriet’s behavior was different. For a moment she was spellbound. The look in her eyes verged upon horror.
It seemed that a child was crying lustily.
“Wherever can it be!” cried the frantic Eliza.
A wild glance round the room told Eliza that there was only one place in which it could be. Her eyes fell at once on the large wicker basket, which had been set on the floor near the fire.
“Well, in all my born days!”
She rushed to the basket and began furiously to untie the lid. But the maxim “the more haste the less speed” was as true in 1890 as it is today. Eliza’s fingers merely served to double and treble knot the string.
Uncannily calm, Harriet rose from the table, the bread knife in her hand. In silence she knelt by the hearth and cut the knot. The deliberation of her movements was in odd contrast to Eliza’s frenzy.
“How did you come by it, Joe?”
The lid was off the basket in a trice. And the sight within further emphasized the diverse bearing of the two women. Harriet rose a statue; Eliza knelt in an ecstasy. One seemed to gloat over the sight that met her eyes; the other, with the gaze of Jocasta, stood turned to stone.
It was the sweetest little baby. In every detail immaculate, bright as a new pin, its long clothes were of a fine quality, and it was wrapped in a number of shawls. A hot-water bottle was under its tiny toes, and a bottle of milk by its side.
Eliza’s first act was to take the creature out of its receptacle. And then began the business of soothing it. Near the fire was a large rocking-chair, made for motherhood, and here sat Eliza, the foundling upon her knee. Evidently it had a charming disposition. For in two shakes of a duck’s tail it was taking its milk as if nothing had happened. Yet the calm, tense Harriet had a little to do with that. The milk was her happy thought. Moreover, she tested its quality and temperature with quite an air of experience. And the effect of the milk was magical.
As soon as sheer astonishment and the cares of motherhood would permit, a number of searching questions were put to Constable Kelly.
“How did you come by it, Joe?” was question the first.
Before committing himself in any way, Joe scratched a fair Saxon poll like a very wise policeman, indeed. It was as if he had said, “Joseph Kelly, my friend, anything you say now will be used in evidence against you.”
At last, cocking at Harriet a cautious eye, he replied impressively, “I’ll tell you.” But it was not until Eliza had imperiously repeated the question that he came to the point of so doing.
So accustomed was Joseph Kelly to the giving of evidence that unconsciously he assumed the air of one upon his oath.
“I was perceding” said he, “about twenty-past four through Grosvenor Square, on my way to Victoria, when I see through the fog this bloomin’ contraption on a doorstep.”
“What was the number?” Eliza asked.
“I was so flabbergasted, I forgot to look.”
“Well, really, Joe!”
“When I saw what was in the basket, I was so took, as you might say, that it was not until I was at the end of the street that I thought of looking for the number. And then it was too late to swear to the house.”
“In Grosvenor Square?” said Harriet.
“I’m not percisely sure. The fog was so thick in Mayfair you could hardly see your hand before you. It may have been one of them cross streets going into Park Lane.”
“A nice one you are, Joe.” And Eliza began to croon softly to the babe in her arms.
Kelly stroked his head perplexedly.
“I am,” he said, solemnly. “A proper guy I’ll look when I take it to the Yard tomorrow and they ask me how I come by it.”
“Take it to the where?” asked Eliza sharply.
“To Scotland Yard the first thing in the morning, to the Lost Property Department.”
“There’s going to be no Scotland Yard for this sweet lamb.”
“If I had done my duty it’d ha’ gone there tonight.”
Said Eliza: “You haven’t done it, Joe, so it’s no use talking. And if I have a say in the matter, you are not going to do it now.”
Here were the makings of a very pretty quarrel. But Eliza had one signal advantage. She knew her own mind, whereas Joe evidently did not know his. By his own admission he had already been guilty of a grave lapse of duty. And in Eliza’s view that was a strong argument why the creature should stay where it was. It would be foolish for Joe to give himself away by taking it to Scotland Yard.
The argument was sound as far as it went, but when it came to the business of the Metropolitan Force, Joe was a man with a conscience. As he said, with a dour look at Harriet, two wrongs didn’t make a right, and to suppress the truth by keeping the kid would not clear him.
But Eliza was adamant. Joe had made a fool of himself already. He had nothing to gain by landing himself deeper in the mire, whereas the heart of a mother had yearned a long eight years for the highest gift of Providence. The truth was that from the outset Joseph Kelly had precious little chance of doing his duty in the matter.
Perhaps he knew that. At any rate he did not argue his case as strongly as he might have done. And Eliza, rocking the babe on her knee, in the seventh heaven of bliss, rent Joe in pieces, laughed him to scorn. Harriet, standing by, a curious look on her face, well knew how to second her; yet the younger woman did not say a word.
In a very few minutes Joe had hauled down his flag. Really he had not a chance. It was a very serious lapse from the path of duty, but what could he do, the simpleton!
“‘Finding is keeping’ with this bairn,” said the triumphant Eliza.
It was then that the silent, anxious, hovering Harriet claimed a share of the spoils of victory.
“Eliza,” she said, “if you are to be the sweet thing’s mother, I must be its godmother.”
“You shall be, my dear.”
Harriet sealed the compact by a swift, stealthy kiss upon the cheek of the foundling, who now slept like a cherub on the knee of its new parent.
“The lamb!” whispered Eliza.
Tears of happiness came into the eyes of the mother-elect. Harriet turned suddenly away as if unable to bear the sight of them.
Said Joe to himself: “This is what I call a rum ’un.” But even in the moment of his overthrow, he did not forget the philosophical outlook of that august body of men, whose trust he had betrayed. He turned to his long neglected cup of tea, now cold alas! and swallowed it at a gulp. He then went on with the solemn business of toasting bread and eating it.
To add to Joe’s sense of defeat, the two women paid him no more attention now than if he had not been in the room at all.
“The sweetest thing!” whispered the one ecstatically.
“What shall we call it?” whispered the other.
“A boy or a girl?”
“Oh, a girl.”
“How do you know?”
“By its mouth. A boy could never have a mouth like that.”
“I don’t know that, my dear. I’ve seen boys with mouths——”
“But look at the dimples, my dear.”
“I have seen boys with dimples——”
“——Joe Kelly, you are the durnedest fool alive.” This emotioned statement was the grace to a very substantial slice of buttered toast. Joe ate steadily, but his countenance now bore a family likeness to that of a bear.
“Suppose we say Mary? It’s the best name there is, I always think.”
“But it may turn out a George, my dear. I hope it will.”
“I feel sure it’s a Mary,” affirmed the godmother of the sleeping babe. “I wonder who are the parents?”
“Whoever’s child it may be,” said the mother-elect, “one thing is sure. They are people well up. I don’t think I ever saw a child so cared for. And, my dear, look at the shape of that chin and the set of that ear. And that lovely hand—a perfect picture with its filbert nails. Look at the fall of those eyelids. No wonder it comes out of Grosvenor Square.”
“Grosvenor Square I’ll not swear to,” came a further interpellation from the table.
“Get on with your tea, Joe,” said the mother-elect. “What we are talking of is no concern of yours.”
The miserable Joe took off his boots and put on a pair of carpet slippers.
“You’ve made a bad slip-up, my boy,” he remarked, as he did so.
The two women continued to croon over the wonder-child. Joe took a pipe, filled it with shag and lit it dubiously. This was a bad business. He was a great philosopher, as all policemen are, but whenever a grim eye strayed across the hearth, it was followed by a frown and a grunt of perplexity.
Joe smoked solemnly. The women prattled on. But quite suddenly, like a bolt from a clear sky, there came a very unwelcome intrusion. The street door was flung open and a young constable entered breathlessly.
Dugald Maclean was received with surprise, anger, and dismay. “Now then, my lad, what about it?” demanded Joe, with a snarl of suppressed fury.
“I’m seekin’ ‘Urban Love, a trilogy,’” proclaimed Dugald Maclean; and he spoke as if the fate of the empires hung upon his finding it.
“Seekin’ what, you durned Scotchman?” said the alarmed and disgusted Joe.
With deadly composure, Harriet rose from the side of the sleeping babe.
“Mr. Maclean, it is there,” she said, icily. And she pointed to the table where the precious manuscript reclined.
“Thank ye,” said Dugald, coolly. And he proceeded to button into his tunic “Urban Love, a trilogy.”
But the mischief was done. The alert eye of an ambitious police constable had traveled from the open basket at one side of the fire to the object at the other, sleeping gently now upon Eliza’s knee. A slow grin crept over a freckled but vulpine countenance.
“Blame my cats,” he muttered, “so there’s the young spannil.”
Joe rose majestically. He said not a word, but again taking the intruder very firmly by the collar of his regulation overcoat, hustled him with quiet truculence through the open door into the street. Closing the door and turning the key, he then went back to his meditations, looking more than ever like a disgruntled bear.