fellow, and when Bruce rolls up and says: 'What about it?' you've simply
to tell him that the shot isn't on the board and will he kindly melt
away. Then you hand him his hat and out he goes."
Sally gave a troubled laugh.
"You think that's simple, do you? I suppose you imagine that a girl
enjoys that sort of thing? Oh, what's the use of talking about it? It's
horrible, and no amount of arguing will make it anything else. Do let's
change the subject. How did you like Chicago?"
"Oh, all right. Rather a grubby sort of place."
"So I've always heard. But you ought not to mind that, being a
Londoner."
"Oh, I didn't mind it. As a matter of fact, I had rather a good time.
Saw one or two shows, you know. Got in on my face as your brother's
representative, which was all to the good. By the way, it's rummy how
you run into people when you move about, isn't it?"
"You talk as if you had been dashing about the streets with your eyes
shut. Did you meet somebody you knew?"
"Chap I hadn't seen for years. Was at school with him, as a matter of
fact. Fellow named Foster. But I expect you know him, too, don't you? By
name, at any rate. He wrote your brother's show."
Sally's heart jumped.
"Oh! Did you meet Gerald - Foster?"
"Ran into him one night at the theatre."
"And you were really at school with him?"
"Yes. He was in the footer team with me my last year."
"Was he a scrum-half, too?" asked Sally, dimpling.
Ginger looked shocked.
"You don't have two scrum-halves in a team," he said, pained at this
ignorance on a vital matter. "The scrum-half is the half who works the
scrum and..."
"Yes, you told me that at Roville. What was Gerald - Mr. Foster then? A
six and seven-eighths, or something?"
"He was a wing-three," said Ginger with a gravity befitting his theme.
"Rather fast, with a fairly decent swerve. But he would not learn to
give the reverse pass inside to the centre."
"Ghastly!" said Sally.
"If," said Ginger earnestly, "a wing's bottled up by his wing and the
back, the only thing he can do, if he doesn't want to be bundled into
touch, is to give the reverse pass."
"I know," said Sally. "If I've thought that once, I've thought it a
hundred times. How nice it must have been for you meeting again. I
suppose you had all sorts of things to talk about?"
Ginger shook his head.
"Not such a frightful lot. We were never very thick. You see, this
chap Foster was by way of being a bit of a worm."
"What!"
"A tick," explained Ginger. "A rotter. He was pretty generally barred
at school. Personally, I never had any use for him at all."
Sally stiffened. She had liked Ginger up to that moment, and later on,
no doubt, she would resume her liking for him: but in the immediate
moment which followed these words she found herself regarding him with
stormy hostility. How dare he sit there saying things like that about
Gerald?
Ginger, who was lighting a cigarette without a care in the world,
proceeded to develop his theme.
"It's a rummy thing about school. Generally, if a fellow's good at
games - in the cricket team or the footer team and so forth - he can
hardly help being fairly popular. But this blighter Foster
somehow - nobody seemed very keen on him. Of course, he had a few of his
own pals, but most of the chaps rather gave him a miss. It may have been
because he was a bit sidey... had rather an edge on him, you know...
Personally, the reason I barred him was because he wasn't straight. You
didn't notice it if you weren't thrown a goodish bit with him, of
course, but he and I were in the same house, and..."
Sally managed to control her voice, though it shook a little.
"I ought to tell you," she said, and her tone would have warned him had
he been less occupied, "that Mr. Foster is a great friend of mine."
But Ginger was intent on the lighting of his cigarette, a delicate
operation with the breeze blowing in through the open window. His head
was bent, and he had formed his hands into a protective framework which
half hid his face.
"If you take my tip," he mumbled, "you'll drop him. He's a wrong 'un."
He spoke with the absent-minded drawl of preoccupation, and Sally could
keep the conflagration under no longer. She was aflame from head to
foot.
"It may interest you to know," she said, shooting the words out like
bullets from between clenched teeth, "that Gerald Foster is the man I am
engaged to marry."
Ginger's head came slowly up from his cupped hands. Amazement was in
his eyes, and a sort of horror. The cigarette hung limply from his
mouth. He did not speak, but sat looking at her, dazed. Then the match
burnt his fingers, and he dropped it with a start. The sharp sting of it
seemed to wake him. He blinked.
"You're joking," he said, feebly. There was a note of wistfulness in
his voice. "It isn't true?"
Sally kicked the leg of her chair irritably. She read insolent
disapproval into the words. He was daring to criticize...
"Of course it's true..."
"But..." A look of hopeless misery came into Ginger's pleasant face. He
hesitated. Then, with the air of a man bracing himself to a dreadful,
but unavoidable, ordeal, he went on. He spoke gruffly, and his eyes,
which had been fixed on Sally's, wandered down to the match on the
carpet. It was still glowing, and mechanically he put a foot on it.
"Foster's married," he said shortly. "He was married the day before I
left Chicago."
3
It seemed to Ginger that in the silence which followed, brooding over
the room like a living presence, even the noises in the street had
ceased, as though what he had said had been a spell cutting Sally and
himself off from the outer world. Only the little clock on the
mantelpiece ticked - ticked - ticked, like a heart beating fast.
He stared straight before him, conscious of a strange rigidity. He felt
incapable of movement, as he had sometimes felt in nightmares; and not
for all the wealth of America could he have raised his eyes just then to
Sally's face. He could see her hands. They had tightened on the arm of
the chair. The knuckles were white.
He was blaming himself bitterly now for his oafish clumsiness in
blurting out the news so abruptly. And yet, curiously, in his remorse
there was something of elation. Never before had he felt so near to her.
It was as though a barrier that had been between them had fallen.
Something moved... It was Sally's hand, slowly relaxing. The fingers
loosened their grip, tightened again, then, as if reluctantly relaxed
once more. The blood flowed back.
"Your cigarette's out."
Ginger started violently. Her voice, coming suddenly out of the
silence, had struck him like a blow.
"Oh, thanks!"
He forced himself to light another match. It sputtered noisily in the
stillness. He blew it out, and the uncanny quiet fell again.
Ginger drew at his cigarette mechanically. For an instant he had seen
Sally's face, white-cheeked and bright-eyed, the chin tilted like a flag
flying over a stricken field. His mood changed. All his emotions had
crystallized into a dull, futile rage, a helpless fury directed at a man
a thousand miles away.
Sally spoke again. Her voice sounded small and far off, an odd flatness
in it.
"Married?"
Ginger threw his cigarette out of the window. He was shocked to find
that he was smoking. Nothing could have been farther from his intention
than to smoke. He nodded.
"Whom has he married?"
Ginger coughed. Something was sticking in his throat, and speech was
difficult.
"A girl called Doland."
"Oh, Elsa Doland?"
"Yes."
"Elsa Doland." Sally drummed with her fingers on the arm of the chair.
"Oh, Elsa Doland?"
There was silence again. The little clock ticked fussily on the
mantelpiece. Out in the street automobile horns were blowing. From
somewhere in the distance came faintly the rumble of an elevated train.
Familiar sounds, but they came to Sally now with a curious, unreal sense
of novelty. She felt as though she had been projected into another world
where everything was new and strange and horrible - everything except
Ginger. About him, in the mere sight of him, there was something known
and heartening.
Suddenly, she became aware that she was feeling that Ginger was behaving
extremely well. She seemed to have been taken out of herself and to be
regarding the scene from outside, regarding it coolly and critically;
and it was plain to her that Ginger, in this upheaval of all things, was
bearing himself perfectly. He had attempted no banal words of sympathy.
He had said nothing and he was not looking at her. And Sally felt that
sympathy just now would be torture, and that she could not have borne to
be looked at.
Ginger was wonderful. In that curious, detached spirit that had come
upon her, she examined him impartially, and gratitude welled up from the
very depths of her. There he sat, saying nothing and doing nothing, as
if he knew that all she needed, the only thing that could keep her sane
in this world of nightmare, was the sight of that dear, flaming head of
his that made her feel that the world had not slipped away from her
altogether.
Ginger did not move. The room had grown almost dark now. A spear of
light from a street lamp shone in through the window.
Sally got up abruptly. Slowly, gradually, inch by inch, the great
suffocating cloud which had been crushing her had lifted. She felt alive
again. Her black hour had gone, and she was back in the world of living
things once more. She was afire with a fierce, tearing pain that
tormented her almost beyond endurance, but dimly she sensed the fact
that she had passed through something that was worse than pain, and,
with Ginger's stolid presence to aid her, had passed triumphantly.
"Go and have dinner, Ginger," she said. "You must be starving."
Ginger came to life like a courtier in the palace of the Sleeping
Beauty. He shook himself, and rose stiffly from his chair.
"Oh, no," he said. "Not a bit, really."
Sally switched on the light and set him blinking. She could bear to be
looked at now.
"Go and dine," she said. "Dine lavishly and luxuriously. You've
certainly earned..." Her voice faltered for a moment. She held out her
hand. "Ginger," she said shakily, "I... Ginger, you're a pal."
When he had gone. Sally sat down and began to cry. Then she dried her
eyes in a business-like manner.
"There, Miss Nicholas!" she said. "You couldn't have done that an hour
ago... We will now boil you an egg for your dinner and see how that
suits you!"
CHAPTER XI
SALLY RUNS AWAY
If Ginger Kemp had been asked to enumerate his good qualities, it is not
probable that he would have drawn up a very lengthy list. He might have
started by claiming for himself the virtue of meaning well, but after
that he would have had to chew the pencil in prolonged meditation. And,
even if he could eventually have added one or two further items to the
catalogue, tact and delicacy of feeling would not have been among them.
Yet, by staying away from Sally during the next few days he showed
considerable delicacy. It was not easy to stay away from her, but he
forced himself to do so. He argued from his own tastes, and was strongly
of opinion that in times of travail, solitude was what the sufferer most
desired. In his time he, too, had had what he would have described as
nasty jars, and on these occasions all he had asked was to be allowed to
sit and think things over and fight his battle out by himself.
By Saturday, however, he had come to the conclusion that some form of
action might now be taken. Saturday was rather a good day for picking up
the threads again. He had not to go to the office, and, what was still
more to the point, he had just drawn his week's salary. Mrs. Meecher had
deftly taken a certain amount of this off him, but enough remained to
enable him to attempt consolation on a fairly princely scale. There
presented itself to him as a judicious move the idea of hiring a car and
taking Sally out to dinner at one of the road-houses he had heard about
up the Boston Post Road. He examined the scheme. The more he looked at
it, the better it seemed.
He was helped to this decision by the extraordinary perfection of the
weather. The weather of late had been a revelation to Ginger. It was his
first experience of America's Indian Summer, and it had quite overcome
him. As he stood on the roof of Mrs. Meecher's establishment on the
Saturday morning, thrilled by the velvet wonder of the sunshine, it
seemed to him that the only possible way of passing such a day was to
take Sally for a ride in an open car.
The Maison Meecher was a lofty building on one of the side-streets at
the lower end of the avenue. From its roof, after you had worked your
way through the groves of washing which hung limply from the
clothes-line, you could see many things of interest. To the left lay
Washington Square, full of somnolent Italians and roller-skating
children; to the right was a spectacle which never failed to intrigue
Ginger, the high smoke-stacks of a Cunard liner moving slowly down the
river, sticking up over the house-tops as if the boat was travelling
down Ninth Avenue.
To-day there were four of these funnels, causing Ginger to deduce the
Mauritania. As the boat on which he had come over from England, the
Mauritania had a sentimental interest for him. He stood watching her
stately progress till the higher buildings farther down the town shut
her from his sight; then picked his way through the washing and went
down to his room to get his hat. A quarter of an hour later he was in
the hall-way of Sally's apartment house, gazing with ill-concealed
disgust at the serge-clad back of his cousin Mr. Carmyle, who was
engaged in conversation with a gentleman in overalls.
No care-free prospector, singing his way through the Mojave Desert and
suddenly finding himself confronted by a rattlesnake, could have
experienced so abrupt a change of mood as did Ginger at this revolting
spectacle. Even in their native Piccadilly it had been unpleasant to run
into Mr. Carmyle. To find him here now was nothing short of nauseating.
Only one thing could have brought him to this place. Obviously, he must
have come to see Sally; and with a sudden sinking of the heart Ginger
remembered the shiny, expensive automobile which he had seen waiting at
the door. He, it was clear, was not the only person to whom the idea had
occurred of taking Sally for a drive on this golden day.
He was still standing there when Mr. Carmyle swung round with a frown on
his dark face which seemed to say that he had not found the janitor's
conversation entertaining. The sight of Ginger plainly did nothing to
lighten his gloom.
"Hullo!" he said.
"Hullo!" said Ginger.
Uncomfortable silence followed these civilities.
"Have you come to see Miss Nicholas?"
"Why, yes."
"She isn't here," said Mr. Carmyle, and the fact that he had found
someone to share the bad news, seemed to cheer him a little.
"Not here?"
"No. Apparently..." Bruce Carmyle's scowl betrayed that resentment
which a well-balanced man cannot but feel at the unreasonableness of
others. "... Apparently, for some extraordinary reason, she has taken it
into her head to dash over to England."
Ginger tottered. The unexpectedness of the blow was crushing. He
followed his cousin out into the sunshine in a sort of dream. Bruce
Carmyle was addressing the driver of the expensive automobile.
"I find I shall not want the car. You can take it back to the garage."
The chauffeur, a moody man, opened one half-closed eye and spat
cautiously. It was the way Rockefeller would have spat when approaching
the crisis of some delicate financial negotiation.
"You'll have to pay just the same," he observed, opening his other eye
to lend emphasis to the words.
"Of course I shall pay," snapped Mr. Carmyle, irritably. "How much is
it?"
Money passed. The car rolled off.
"Gone to England?" said Ginger, dizzily.
"Yes, gone to England."
"But why?"
"How the devil do I know why?" Bruce Carmyle would have found his best
friend trying at this moment. Gaping Ginger gave him almost a physical
pain. "All I know is what the janitor told me, that she sailed on the
Mauretania this morning."
The tragic irony of this overcame Ginger. That he should have stood on
the roof, calmly watching the boat down the river...
He nodded absently to Mr. Carmyle and walked off. He had no further
remarks to make. The warmth had gone out of the sunshine and all
interest had departed from his life. He felt dull, listless, at a loose
end. Not even the thought that his cousin, a careful man with his money,
had had to pay a day's hire for a car which he could not use brought him
any balm. He loafed aimlessly about the streets. He wandered in the Park
and out again. The Park bored him. The streets bored him. The whole city
bored him. A city without Sally in it was a drab, futile city, and
nothing that the sun could do to brighten it could make it otherwise.
Night came at last, and with it a letter. It was the first even
passably pleasant thing that had happened to Ginger in the whole of this
dreary and unprofitable day: for the envelope bore the crest of the good
ship Mauretania. He snatched it covetously from the letter-rack, and
carried it upstairs to his room.
Very few of the rooms at Mrs. Meecher's boarding-house struck any note
of luxury. Mrs. Meecher was not one of your fashionable interior
decorators. She considered that when she had added a Morris chair to the
essentials which make up a bedroom, she had gone as far in the direction
of pomp as any guest at seven-and-a-half per could expect her to go. As
a rule, the severity of his surroundings afflicted Ginger with a touch
of gloom when he went to bed; but to-night - such is the magic of a
letter from the right person - he was uplifted and almost gay. There are
moments when even illuminated texts over the wash-stand cannot wholly
quell us.
There was nothing of haste and much of ceremony in Ginger's method of
approaching the perusal of his correspondence. He bore himself after
the manner of a small boy in the presence of unexpected ice-cream,
gloating for awhile before embarking on the treat, anxious to make it
last out. His first move was to feel in the breast-pocket of his coat
and produce the photograph of Sally which he had feloniously removed
from her apartment. At this he looked long and earnestly before propping
it up within easy reach against his basin, to be handy, if required, for
purposes of reference. He then took off his coat, collar, and shoes,
filled and lit a pipe, placed pouch and matches on the arm of the Morris
chair, and drew that chair up so that he could sit with his feet on the
bed. Having manoeuvred himself into a position of ease, he lit his pipe
again and took up the letter. He looked at the crest, the handwriting of
the address, and the postmark. He weighed it in his hand. It was a
bulky letter.
He took Sally's photograph from the wash-stand and scrutinized it once
more. Then he lit his pipe again, and, finally, wriggling himself into
the depths of the chair, opened the envelope.
"Ginger, dear."
Having read so far, Ginger found it necessary to take up the photograph
and study it with an even greater intentness than before. He gazed at it
for many minutes, then laid it down and lit his pipe again. Then he went
on with the letter.
"Ginger, dear - I'm afraid this address is going to give you rather a
shock, and I'm feeling very guilty. I'm running away, and I haven't even
stopped to say good-bye. I can't help it. I know it's weak and cowardly,
but I simply can't help it. I stood it for a day or two, and then I saw
that it was no good. (Thank you for leaving me alone and not coming
round to see me. Nobody else but you would have done that. But then,
nobody ever has been or ever could be so understanding as you.)"
Ginger found himself compelled at this point to look at the photograph
again.
"There was too much in New York to remind me. That's the worst of being
happy in a place. When things go wrong you find there are too many
ghosts about. I just couldn't stand it. I tried, but I couldn't. I'm
going away to get cured - if I can. Mr. Faucitt is over in England, and
when I went down to Mrs. Meecher for my letters, I found one from him.
His brother is dead, you know, and he has inherited, of all things, a
fashionable dress-making place in Regent Street. His brother was
Laurette et Cie. I suppose he will sell the business later on, but, just
at present, the poor old dear is apparently quite bewildered and that
doesn't seem to have occurred to him. He kept saying in his letter how
much he wished I was with him, to help him, and I was tempted and ran.
Anything to get away from the ghosts and have something to do. I don't
suppose I shall feel much better in England, but, at least, every street
corner won't have associations. Don't ever be happy anywhere, Ginger.
It's too big a risk, much too big a risk.
"There was a letter from Elsa Doland, too. Bubbling over with
affection. We had always been tremendous friends. Of course, she never
knew anything about my being engaged to Gerald. I lent Fillmore the
money to buy that piece, which gave Elsa her first big chance, and so
she's very grateful. She says, if ever she gets the opportunity of doing
me a good turn... Aren't things muddled?
"And there was a letter from Gerald. I was expecting one, of course,
but... what would you have done, Ginger? Would you have read it? I sat
with it in front of me for an hour, I should think, just looking at the
envelope, and then... You see, what was the use? I could guess exactly
the sort of thing that would be in it, and reading it would only have
hurt a lot more. The thing was done, so why bother about explanations?
What good are explanations, anyway? They don't help. They don't do
anything... I burned it, Ginger. The last letter I shall ever get from
him. I made a bonfire on the bathroom floor, and it smouldered and went
brown, and then flared a little, and every now and then I lit another
match and kept it burning, and at last it was just black ashes and a
stain on the tiles. Just a mess!
"Ginger, burn this letter, too. I'm pouring out all the poison to you,
hoping it will make me feel better. You don't mind, do you? But I know
you don't. If ever anybody had a real pal...
"It's a dreadful thing, fascination, Ginger. It grips you and you are
helpless. One can be so sensible and reasonable about other people's
love affairs. When I was working at the dance place I told you about
there was a girl who fell in love with the most awful little beast. He
had a mean mouth and shiny black hair brushed straight back, and
anybody would have seen what he was. But this girl wouldn't listen to a
word. I talked to her by the hour. It makes me smile now when I think
how sensible and level-headed I was. But she wouldn't listen. In some
mysterious way this was the man she wanted, and, of course, everything
happened that one knew would happen.
"If one could manage one's own life as well as one can manage other
people's! If all this wretched thing of mine had happened to some other
girl, how beautifully I could have proved that it was the best thing
that could have happened, and that a man who could behave as Gerald has
done wasn't worth worrying about. I can just hear myself. But, you see,
whatever he has done, Gerald is still Gerald and Sally is still Sally
and, however much I argue, I can't get away from that. All I can do is
to come howling to my redheaded pal, when I know just as well as he
does that a girl of any spirit would be dignified and keep her troubles
to herself and be much too proud to let anyone know that she was hurt.
"Proud! That's the real trouble, Ginger. My pride has been battered and
chopped up and broken into as many pieces as you broke Mr. Scrymgeour's
stick! What pitiful creatures we are. Girls, I mean. At least, I suppose
a good many girls are like me. If Gerald had died and I had lost him
that way, I know quite well I shouldn't be feeling as I do now. I should
have been broken-hearted, but it wouldn't have been the same. It's my
pride that is hurt. I have always been a bossy, cocksure little
creature, swaggering about the world like an English sparrow; and now
I'm paying for it! Oh, Ginger, I'm paying for it! I wonder if running
away is going to do me any good at all. Perhaps, if Mr. Faucitt has some
real hard work for me to do...
"Of course, I know exactly how all this has come about. Elsa's pretty
and attractive. But the point is that she is a success, and as a success
she appeals to Gerald's weakest side. He worships success. She is going
to have a marvellous career, and she can help Gerald on in his. He can
write plays for her to star in. What have I to offer against that? Yes,
I know it's grovelling and contemptible of me to say that, Ginger. I
ought to be above it, oughtn't I - talking as if I were competing for
some prize... But I haven't any pride left. Oh, well!
"There! I've poured it all out and I really do feel a little better just
for the moment. It won't last, of course, but even a minute is
something. Ginger, dear, I shan't see you for ever so long, even if we
ever do meet again, but you'll try to remember that I'm thinking of you
a whole lot, won't you? I feel responsible for you. You're my baby.
You've got started now and you've only to stick to it. Please, please,
please don't 'make a hash of it'! Good-bye. I never did find that
photograph of me that we were looking for that afternoon in the
apartment, or I would send it to you. Then you could have kept it on
your mantelpiece, and whenever you felt inclined to make a hash of
anything I would have caught your eye sternly and you would have pulled
up.
"Good-bye, Ginger. I shall have to stop now. The mail is just closing.
"Always your pal, wherever I am. - -SALLY."
Ginger laid the letter down, and a little sound escaped him that was
half a sigh, half an oath. He was wondering whether even now some
desirable end might not be achieved by going to Chicago and breaking
Gerald Foster's neck. Abandoning this scheme as impracticable, and not
being able to think of anything else to do he re-lit his pipe and
started to read the letter again.
CHAPTER XII
SOME LETTERS FOR GINGER
Laurette et Cie,
Regent Street,
London, W.,
England.
January 21st.
Dear Ginger, - I'm feeling better. As it's three months since I last
wrote to you, no doubt you will say to yourself that I would be a poor,
weak-minded creature if I wasn't. I suppose one ought to be able to get
over anything in three months. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I haven't
quite succeeded in doing that, but at least I have managed to get my
troubles stowed away in the cellar, and I'm not dragging them out and
looking at them all the time. That's something, isn't it?
I ought to give you all my impressions of London, I suppose; but I've
grown so used to the place that I don't think I have any now. I seem to
have been here years and years.
You will see by the address that Mr. Faucitt has not yet sold his
inheritance. He expects to do so very soon, he tells me - there is a
rich-looking man with whiskers and a keen eye whom he is always lunching
with, and I think big deals are in progress. Poor dear! he is crazy to
get away into the country and settle down and grow ducks and things.
London has disappointed him. It is not the place it used to be. Until
quite lately, when he grew resigned, he used to wander about in a
disconsolate sort of way, trying to locate the landmarks of his youth.
(He has not been in England for nearly thirty years!) The trouble is, it
seems, that about once in every thirty years a sort of craze for change
comes over London, and they paint a shop-front red instead of blue, and
that upsets the returned exile dreadfully. Mr. Faucitt feels like Rip
Van Winkle. His first shock was when he found that the Empire was a
theatre now instead of a music-hall. Then he was told that another
music-hall, the Tivoli, had been pulled down altogether. And when on top
of that he went to look at the baker's shop in Rupert Street, over which
he had lodgings in the eighties, and discovered that it had been turned
into a dressmaker's, he grew very melancholy, and only cheered up a
little when a lovely magenta fog came on and showed him that some things
were still going along as in the good old days.
I am kept quite busy at Laurette et Cie., thank goodness. (Not being a
French scholar like you - do you remember Jules? - I thought at first that
Cie was the name of the junior partner, and looked forward to meeting
him. "Miss Nicholas, shake hands with Mr. Cie, one of your greatest
admirers.") I hold down the female equivalent of your job at the
Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd. - that is to say, I'm a
sort of right-hand woman. I hang around and sidle up to the customers
when they come in, and say, "Chawming weather, moddom!" (which is
usually a black lie) and pass them on to the staff, who do the actual
work. I shouldn't mind going on like this for the next few years, but
Mr. Faucitt is determined to sell. I don't know if you are like that,
but every other Englishman I've ever met seems to have an ambition to
own a house and lot in Loamshire or Hants or Salop or somewhere. Their
one object in life is to make some money and "buy back the old place" -
which was sold, of course, at the end of act one to pay the heir's
gambling debts.
Mr. Faucitt, when he was a small boy, used to live in a little village
in Gloucestershire, near a place called Cirencester - at least, it isn't:
it's called Cissister, which I bet you didn't know - and after forgetting
about it for fifty years, he has suddenly been bitten by the desire to
end his days there, surrounded by pigs and chickens. He took me down to
see the place the other day. Oh, Ginger, this English country! Why any
of you ever live in towns I can't think. Old, old grey stone houses with
yellow haystacks and lovely squelchy muddy lanes and great fat trees and
blue hills in the distance. The peace of it! If ever I sell my soul, I
shall insist on the devil giving me at least forty years in some English
country place in exchange.
Perhaps you will think from all this that I am too much occupied to
remember your existence. Just to show how interested I am in you, let me
tell you that, when I was reading the paper a week ago, I happened to
see the headline, "International Match." It didn't seem to mean anything
at first, and then I suddenly recollected. This was the thing you had
once been a snip for! So I went down to a place called Twickenham, where
this football game was to be, to see the sort of thing you used to do
before I took charge of you and made you a respectable right-hand man.
There was an enormous crowd there, and I was nearly squeezed to death,
but I bore it for your sake. I found out that the English team were the
ones wearing white shirts, and that the ones in red were the Welsh. I
said to the man next to me, after he had finished yelling himself black
in the face, "Could you kindly inform me which is the English
scrum-half?" And just at that moment the players came quite near where I
was, and about a dozen assassins in red hurled themselves violently on
top of a meek-looking little fellow who had just fallen on the ball.
Ginger, you are well out of it! That was the scrum-half, and I gathered
that that sort of thing was a mere commonplace in his existence.
Stopping a rush, it is called, and he is expected to do it all the time.
The idea of you ever going in for such brutal sports! You thank your
stars that you are safe on your little stool in Fillmore's outer office,
and that, if anybody jumps on top of you now, you can call a cop. Do you
mean to say you really used to do these daredevil feats? You must have
hidden depths in you which I have never suspected.
As I was taking a ride down Piccadilly the other day on top of a bus, I
saw somebody walking along who seemed familiar. It was Mr. Carmyle. So
he's back in England again. He didn't see me, thank goodness. I don't
want to meet anybody just at present who reminds me of New York.
Thanks for telling me all the news, but please don't do it again. It
makes me remember, and I don't want to. It's this way, Ginger. Let me
write to you, because it really does relieve me, but don't answer my
letters. Do you mind? I'm sure you'll understand.
So Fillmore and Gladys Winch are married! From what I have seen of her,
it's the best thing that has ever happened to Brother F. She is a
splendid girl. I must write to him...
Laurette et Cie..
London
March 12th.
Dear Ginger, - I saw in a Sunday paper last week that "The Primrose Way"
had been produced in New York, and was a great success. Well, I'm very
glad. But I don't think the papers ought to print things like that. It's
unsettling.
Next day, I did one of those funny things you do when you're feeling
blue and lonely and a long way away from everybody. I called at your
club and asked for you! Such a nice old man in uniform at the desk said
in a fatherly way that you hadn't been in lately, and he rather fancied
you were out of town, but would I take a seat while he inquired. He then
summoned a tiny boy, also in uniform, and the child skipped off
chanting, "Mister Kemp! Mister Kemp!" in a shrill treble. It gave me
such an odd feeling to hear your name echoing in the distance. I felt so
ashamed for giving them all that trouble; and when the boy came back I
slipped twopence into his palm, which I suppose was against all the
rules, though he seemed to like it.
Mr. Faucitt has sold the business and retired to the country, and I am
rather at a loose end...
Monk's Crofton,
(whatever that means)
Much Middleford,
Salop,
(slang for Shropshire)
England.
April 18th.
Dear Ginger, - What's the use? What is the use? I do all I can to get
right away from New York, and New York comes after me and tracks me down
in my hiding-place. A week or so ago, as I was walking down the Strand
in an aimless sort of way, out there came right on top of me - who do
you think? Fillmore, arm in arm with Mr. Carmyle! I couldn't dodge. In
the first place, Mr. Carmyle had seen me; in the second place, it is a
day's journey to dodge poor dear Fillmore now. I blushed for him.
Ginger! Right there in the Strand I blushed for him. In my worst dreams
I had never pictured him so enormous. Upon what meat doth this our
Fillmore feed that he is grown so great? Poor Gladys! When she looks at
him she must feel like a bigamist.
Apparently Fillmore is still full of big schemes, for he talked airily
about buying all sorts of English plays. He has come over, as I suppose
you know, to arrange about putting on "The Primrose Way" over here. He
is staying at the Savoy, and they took me off there to lunch, whooping
joyfully as over a strayed lamb. It was the worst thing that could
possibly have happened to me. Fillmore talked Broadway without a pause,
till by the time he had worked his way past the French pastry and was
lolling back, breathing a little stertorously, waiting for the coffee
and liqueurs, he had got me so homesick that, if it hadn't been that I
didn't want to make a public exhibition of myself, I should have broken
down and howled. It was crazy of me ever to go near the Savoy. Of
course, it's simply an annex to Broadway. There were Americans at every
table as far as the eye could reach. I might just as well have been at
the Astor.
Well, if Fate insists in bringing New York to England for my special
discomfiture, I suppose I have got to put up with it. I just let events
take their course, and I have been drifting ever since. Two days ago I
drifted here. Mr. Carmyle invited Fillmore - he seems to love
Fillmore - and me to Monk's Crofton, and I hadn't even the shadow of an
excuse for refusing. So I came, and I am now sitting writing to you in
an enormous bedroom with an open fire and armchairs and every other sort
of luxury. Fillmore is out golfing. He sails for New York on Saturday on
the Mauretania. I am horrified to hear from him that, in addition to all
his other big schemes, he is now promoting a fight for the light-weight
championship in Jersey City, and guaranteeing enormous sums to both
boxers. It's no good arguing with him. If you do, he simply quotes
figures to show the fortunes other people have made out of these things.
Besides, it's too late now, anyway. As far as I can make out, the fight
is going to take place in another week or two. All the same, it makes my
flesh creep.
Well, it's no use worrying, I suppose. Let's change the subject. Do
you know Monk's Crofton? Probably you don't, as I seem to remember
hearing something said about it being a recent purchase. Mr. Carmyle
bought it from some lord or other who had been losing money on the Stock
Exchange. I hope you haven't seen it, anyway, because I want to
describe it at great length. I want to pour out my soul about it.
Ginger, what has England ever done to deserve such paradises? I thought,
in my ignorance, that Mr. Faucitt's Cissister place was pretty good, but
it doesn't even begin. It can't compete. Of course, his is just an
ordinary country house, and this is a Seat. Monk's Crofton is the sort
of place they used to write about in the English novels. You know. "The
sunset was falling on the walls of G - - Castle, in B - - shire, hard by
the picturesque village of H - - , and not a stone's throw from the
hamlet of J - - ." I can imagine Tennyson's Maud living here. It is one
of the stately homes of England; how beautiful they stand, and I'm crazy
about it.
You motor up from the station, and after you have gone about three
miles, you turn in at a big iron gate with stone posts on each side with
stone beasts on them. Close by the gate is the cutest little house with
an old man inside it who pops out and touches his hat. This is only the
lodge, really, but you think you have arrived; so you get all ready to
jump out, and then the car goes rolling on for another fifty miles or so
through beech woods full of rabbits and open meadows with deer in them.
Finally, just as you think you are going on for ever, you whizz round a
corner, and there's the house. You don't get a glimpse of it till then,
because the trees are too thick.
It's very large, and sort of low and square, with a kind of tower at one
side and the most fascinating upper porch sort of thing with
battlements. I suppose in the old days you used to stand on this and
drop molten lead on visitors' heads. Wonderful lawns all round, and
shrubberies and a lake that you can just see where the ground dips
beyond the fields. Of course it's too early yet for them to be out, but
to the left of the house there's a place where there will be about a
million roses when June comes round, and all along the side of the
rose-garden is a high wall of old red brick which shuts off the kitchen