'Of course, I am loving the life here. I think America's
wonderful, and nobody could be kinder than Lady Wetherby. But - I
miss my home. It's the first time I have been away for so long. I
feel very far away sometimes. There are only three of us at home:
my mother, myself, and my little brother - little Percy.'
Her voice trembled again as she spoke the last two words, and it
was possibly this that caused Mr Pickering to visualize Percy as a
sort of little Lord Fauntleroy, his favourite character in English
literature. He had a vision of a small, delicate, wistful child
pining away for his absent sister. Consumptive probably. Or
curvature of the spine.
He found Claire's hand in his. He supposed dully he must have
reached out for it. Soft and warm it lay there, while the universe
paused breathlessly. And then from the semi-darkness beside him
there came the sound of a stifled sob, and his fingers closed as
if someone had touched a button.
'We have always been such chums. He is only ten - such a dear boy!
He must be missing me - '
She stopped, and simultaneously Dudley Pickering began to speak.
There is this to be said for your shy, cautious man, that on the
rare occasions when he does tap the vein of eloquence that vein
becomes a geyser. It was as if after years of silence and
monosyllables Dudley Pickering was endeavouring to restore the
average.
He began by touching on his alleged neglect and avoidance of
Claire. He called himself names and more names. He plumbed the
depth of repentance and remorse. Proceeding from this, he
eulogized her courage, the pluck with which she presented a
smiling face to the world while tortured inwardly by separation
from her little brother Percy. He then turned to his own feelings.
But there are some things which the historian should hold sacred,
some things which he should look on as proscribed material for his
pen, and the actual words of a stout manufacturer of automobiles
proposing marriage in the moonlight fall into this class. It is
enough to say that Dudley Pickering was definite. He left no room
for doubt as to his meaning.
'Dudley!'
She was in his arms. He was embracing her. She was his - the latest
model, self-starting, with limousine body and all the newest. No,
no, his mind was wandering. She was his, this divine girl, this
queen among women, this -
From the drawing-room Roscoe Sherriff's voice floated out in
unconscious comment -
Good-bye, boys!
I'm going to be married to-morrow.
Good-bye, boys!
I'm going from sunshine to sorrow.
No more sitting up till broad daylight.
Did a momentary chill cool the intensity of Dudley Pickering's
ardour? If so he overcame it instantly. He despised Roscoe
Sherriff. He flattered himself that he had shown Roscoe Sherriff
pretty well who was who and what was what.
They would have a wonderful wedding - dozens of clergymen, scores
of organs playing 'The Voice that Breathed o'er Eden,' platoons of
bridesmaids, wagonloads of cake. And then they would go back to
Detroit and live happy ever after. And it might be that in time to
come there would be given to them little runabouts.
I'm going to a life
Of misery and strife,
So good-bye, boys!
Hang Roscoe Sherriff! What did he know about it! Confound him!
Dudley Pickering turned a deaf ear to the song and wallowed in his
happiness.
Claire walked slowly down the moonlit drive. She had removed
herself from her Dudley's embraces, for she wished to be alone, to
think. The engagement had been announced. All that part of it was
over - Dudley's stammering speech, the unrestrained delight of
Polly Wetherby, the facetious rendering of 'The Wedding Glide' on
the piano by Roscoe Sherriff, and it now remained for her to try
to discover a way of conveying the news to Bill.
It had just struck her that, though she knew that Bill was in
America, she had not his address.
What was she to do? She must tell him. Otherwise it might quite
easily happen that they might meet in New York when she returned
there. She pictured the scene. She saw herself walking with Dudley
Pickering. Along came Bill. 'Claire, darling!' ... Heavens, what
would Dudley think? It would be too awful! She couldn't explain.
No, somehow or other, even if she put detectives on his trail, she
must find him, and be off with the old love now that she was on
with the new.
She reached the gate and leaned over it. And as she did so someone
in the shadow of a tall tree spoke her name. A man came into the
light, and she saw that it was Lord Dawlish.
11
Lord Dawlish had gone for a moonlight walk that night because,
like Claire, he wished to be alone to think. He had fallen with a
pleasant ease and smoothness into the rather curious life lived at
Elizabeth Boyd's bee-farm. A liking for picnics had lingered in
him from boyhood, and existence at Flack's was one prolonged
picnic. He found that he had a natural aptitude for the more
muscular domestic duties, and his energy in this direction
enchanted Nutty, who before his advent had had a monopoly of these
tasks.
Nor was this the only aspect of the situation that pleased Nutty.
When he had invited Bill to the farm he had had a vague hope that
good might come of it, but he had never dreamed that things would
turn out as well as they promised to do, or that such a warm and
immediate friendship would spring up between his sister and the
man who had diverted the family fortune into his own pocket. Bill
and Elizabeth were getting on splendidly. They were together all
the time - walking, golfing, attending to the numerous needs of the
bees, or sitting on the porch. Nutty's imagination began to run
away with him. He seemed to smell the scent of orange-blossoms, to
hear the joyous pealing of church bells - in fact, with the
difference that it was not his own wedding that he was anticipating,
he had begun to take very much the same view of the future that was
about to come to Dudley Pickering.
Elizabeth would have been startled and embarrassed if she could
have read his thoughts, for they might have suggested to her that
she was becoming a great deal fonder of Bill than the shortness of
their acquaintance warranted. But though she did not fail to
observe the strangeness of her brother's manner, she traced it to
another source than the real one. Nutty had a habit of starting
back and removing himself when, entering the porch, he perceived
that Bill and his sister were already seated there. His own
impression on such occasions was that he was behaving with
consummate tact. Elizabeth supposed that he had had some sort of a
spasm.
Lord Dawlish, if he had been able to diagnose correctly the almost
paternal attitude which had become his host's normal manner these
days, would have been equally embarrassed but less startled, for
conscience had already suggested to him from time to time that he
had been guilty of a feeling toward Elizabeth warmer than any
feeling that should come to an engaged man. Lying in bed at the
end of his first week at the farm, he reviewed the progress of his
friendship with her, and was amazed at the rapidity with which it
had grown.
He could not conceal it from himself - Elizabeth appealed to him.
Being built on a large scale himself, he had always been attracted
by small women. There was a smallness, a daintiness, a liveliness
about Elizabeth that was almost irresistible. She was so capable,
so cheerful in spite of the fact that she was having a hard time.
And then their minds seemed to blend so remarkably. There were no
odd corners to be smoothed away. Never in his life had he felt so
supremely at his ease with one of the opposite sex. He loved
Claire - he drove that fact home almost angrily to himself - but he
was forced to admit that he had always been aware of something in
the nature of a barrier between them. Claire was querulous at
times, and always a little too apt to take offence. He had never
been able to talk to her with that easy freedom that Elizabeth
invited. Talking to Elizabeth was like talking to an attractive
version of oneself. It was a thing to be done with perfect
confidence, without any of that apprehension which Claire inspired
lest the next remark might prove the spark to cause an explosion.
But Claire was the girl he loved - there must be no mistake about
that.
He came to the conclusion that the key to the situation was the
fact that Elizabeth was American. He had read so much of the
American girl, her unaffectedness, her genius for easy comradeship.
Well, this must be what the writer fellows meant. He had happened
upon one of those delightful friendships without any suspicion of
sex in them of which the American girl had the monopoly. Yes, that
must be it. It was a comforting explanation. It accounted for his
feeling at a loose end whenever he was away from Elizabeth for as
much as half an hour. It accounted for the fact that they understood
each other so well. It accounted for everything so satisfactorily
that he was able to get to sleep that night after all.
But next morning - for his conscience was one of those persistent
consciences - he began to have doubts again. Nothing clings like a
suspicion in the mind of a conscientious young man that he has
been allowing his heart to stray from its proper anchorage.
Could it be that he was behaving badly toward Claire? The thought
was unpleasant, but he could not get rid of it. He extracted
Claire's photograph from his suit-case and gazed solemnly upon it.
At first he was shocked to find that it only succeeded in
convincing him that Elizabeth was quite the most attractive girl
he ever had met. The photographer had given Claire rather a severe
look. He had told her to moisten the lips with the tip of the
tongue and assume a pleasant smile, with the result that she
seemed to glare. She had a rather markedly aggressive look,
queenly perhaps, but not very comfortable.
But there is no species of self-hypnotism equal to that of a man
who gazes persistently at a photograph with the preconceived idea
that he is in love with the original of it. Little by little Bill
found that the old feeling began to return. He persevered. By the
end of a quarter of an hour he had almost succeeded in capturing
anew that first fine careless rapture which, six months ago, had
caused him to propose to Claire and walk on air when she accepted
him.
He continued the treatment throughout the day, and by dinner-time
had arranged everything with his conscience in the most satisfactory
manner possible. He loved Claire with a passionate fervour; he
liked Elizabeth very much indeed. He submitted this diagnosis to
conscience, and conscience graciously approved and accepted it.
It was Sunday that day. That helped. There is nothing like Sunday
in a foreign country for helping a man to sentimental thoughts of
the girl he has left behind him elsewhere. And the fact that there
was a full moon clinched it. Bill was enabled to go for an
after-dinner stroll in a condition of almost painful loyalty to Claire.
From time to time, as he walked along the road, he took out the
photograph and did some more gazing. The last occasion on which he
did this was just as he emerged from the shadow of a large tree
that stood by the roadside, and a gush of rich emotion rewarded
him.
'Claire!' he murmured.
An exclamation at his elbow caused him to look up. There, leaning
over a gate, the light of the moon falling on her beautiful face,
stood Claire herself!
12
In trying interviews, as in sprint races, the start is everything.
It was the fact that she recovered more quickly from her
astonishment that enabled Claire to dominate her scene with Bill.
She had the advantage of having a less complicated astonishment to
recover from, for, though it was a shock to see him there when she
had imagined that he was in New York, it was not nearly such a
shock as it was to him to see her here when he had imagined that
she was in England. She had adjusted her brain to the situation
while he was still gaping.
'Well, Bill?'
This speech in itself should have been enough to warn Lord Dawlish
of impending doom. As far as love, affection, and tenderness are
concerned, a girl might just as well hit a man with an axe as say
'Well, Bill?' to him when they have met unexpectedly in the
moonlight after long separation. But Lord Dawlish was too shattered
by surprise to be capable of observing _nuances_. If his love had
ever waned or faltered, as conscience had suggested earlier in the
day, it was at full blast now.
'Claire!' he cried.
He was moving to take her in his arms, but she drew back.
'No, really, Bill!' she said; and this time it did filter through
into his disordered mind that all was not well. A man who is a
good deal dazed at the moment may fail to appreciate a remark like
'Well, Bill?' but for a girl to draw back and say, 'No, really,
Bill!' in a tone not exactly of loathing, but certainly of pained
aversion, is a deliberately unfriendly act. The three short words,
taken in conjunction with the movement, brought him up with as
sharp a turn as if she had punched him in the eye.
'Claire! What's the matter?'
She looked at him steadily. She looked at him with a sort of
queenly woodenness, as if he were behind a camera with a velvet
bag over his head and had just told her to moisten the lips with
the tip of the tongue. Her aspect staggered Lord Dawlish. A
cursory inspection of his conscience showed nothing but purity and
whiteness, but he must have done something, or she would not be
staring at him like this.
'I don't understand!' was the only remark that occurred to him.
'Are you sure?'
'What do you mean?'
'I was at Reigelheimer's Restaurant - Ah!'
The sudden start which Lord Dawlish had given at the opening words
of her sentence justified the concluding word. Innocent as his
behaviour had been that night at Reigelheimer's, he had been glad
at the time that he had not been observed. It now appeared that he
had been observed, and it seemed to him that Long Island suddenly
flung itself into a whirling dance. He heard Claire speaking a
long way off: 'I was there with Lady Wetherby. It was she who
invited me to come to America. I went to the restaurant to see her
dance - and I saw you!'
With a supreme effort Bill succeeded in calming down the excited
landscape. He willed the trees to stop dancing, and they came
reluctantly to a standstill. The world ceased to swim and flicker.
'Let me explain,' he said.
The moment he had said the words he wished he could recall them.
Their substance was right enough; it was the sound of them that
was wrong. They sounded like a line from a farce, where the erring
husband has been caught by the masterful wife. They were
ridiculous. Worse than being merely ridiculous, they created an
atmosphere of guilt and evasion.
'Explain! How can you explain? It is impossible to explain. I saw
you with my own eyes making an exhibition of yourself with a
horrible creature in salmon-pink. I'm not asking you who she is.
I'm not questioning you about your relations with her at all. I
don't care who she was. The mere fact that you were at a public
restaurant with a person of that kind is enough. No doubt you
think I am making a great deal of fuss about a very ordinary
thing. You consider that it is a man's privilege to do these
things, if he can do them without being found out. But it ended
everything so far as I am concerned. Am I unreasonable? I don't
think so. You steal off to America, thinking I am in England, and
behave like this. How could you do that if you really loved me?
It's the deceit of it that hurts me.'
Lord Dawlish drew in a few breaths of pure Long Island air, but he
did not speak. He felt helpless. If he were to be allowed to
withdraw into the privacy of the study and wrap a cold, wet towel
about his forehead and buckle down to it, he knew that he could
draft an excellent and satisfactory explanation of his presence at
Reigelheimer's with the Good Sport. But to do it on the spur of
the moment like this was beyond him.
Claire was speaking again. She had paused for a while after her
recent speech, in order to think of something else to say; and
during this pause had come to her mind certain excerpts from one
of those admirable articles on love, by Luella Delia Philpotts,
which do so much to boost the reading public of the United States
into the higher planes. She had read it that afternoon in the
Sunday paper, and it came back to her now.
'I may be hypersensitive,' she said, dropping her voice from the
accusatory register to the lower tones of pathos, 'but I have such
high ideals of love. There can be no true love where there is not
perfect trust. Trust is to love what - '
She paused again. She could not remember just what Luella Delia
Philpotts had said trust was to love. It was something extremely
neat, but it had slipped her memory.
'A woman has the right to expect the man she is about to marry to
regard their troth as a sacred obligation that shall keep him as
pure as a young knight who has dedicated himself to the quest of
the Holy Grail. And I find you in a public restaurant, dancing
with a creature with yellow hair, upsetting waiters, and
staggering about with pats of butter all over you.'
Here a sense of injustice stung Lord Dawlish. It was true that
after his regrettable collision with Heinrich, the waiter, he had
discovered butter upon his person, but it was only one pat. Claire
had spoken as if he had been festooned with butter.
'I am not angry with you, only disappointed. What has happened has
shown me that you do not really love me, not as I think of love.
Oh, I know that when we are together you think you do, but absence
is the test. Absence is the acid-test of love that separates the
base metal from the true. After what has happened, we can't go on
with our engagement. It would be farcical. I could never feel that
way toward you again. We shall always be friends, I hope. But as
for love - love is not a machine. It cannot be shattered and put
together again.'
She turned and began to walk up the drive. Hanging over the top of
the gate like a wet sock, Lord Dawlish watched her go. The
interview was over, and he could not think of one single thing to
say. Her white dress made a patch of light in the shadows. She
moved slowly, as if weighed down by sad thoughts, like one who, as
Luella Delia Philpotts beautifully puts it, paces with measured
step behind the coffin of a murdered heart. The bend of the drive
hid her from his sight.
About twenty minutes later Dudley Pickering, smoking sentimentally
in the darkness hard by the porch, received a shock. He was musing
tenderly on his Claire, who was assisting him in the process by
singing in the drawing-room, when he was aware of a figure, the
sinister figure of a man who, pressed against the netting of the
porch, stared into the lighted room beyond.
Dudley Pickering's first impulse was to stride briskly up to the
intruder, tap him on the shoulder, and ask him what the devil he
wanted; but a second look showed him that the other was built on
too ample a scale to make this advisable. He was a large,
fit-looking intruder.
Mr Pickering was alarmed. There had been the usual epidemic of
burglaries that season. Houses had been broken into, valuable
possessions removed. In one case a negro butler had been struck
over the head with a gas-pipe and given a headache. In these
circumstances, it was unpleasant to find burly strangers looking
in at windows.
'Hi!' cried Mr Pickering.
The intruder leaped a foot. It had not occurred to Lord Dawlish,
when in an access of wistful yearning he had decided to sneak up
to the house in order to increase his anguish by one last glimpse
of Claire, that other members of the household might be out in the
grounds. He was just thinking sorrowfully, as he listened to the
music, how like his own position was to that of the hero of
Tennyson's _Maud_ - a poem to which he was greatly addicted,
when Mr Pickering's 'Hi!' came out of nowhere and hit him like a
torpedo.
He turned in agitation. Mr Pickering having prudently elected to
stay in the shadows, there was no one to be seen. It was as if the
voice of conscience had shouted 'Hi!' at him. He was just
wondering if he had imagined the whole thing, when he perceived
the red glow of a cigar and beyond it a shadowy form.
It was not the fact that he was in an equivocal position, staring
into a house which did not belong to him, with his feet on
somebody else's private soil, that caused Bill to act as he did.
It was the fact that at that moment he was not feeling equal to
conversation with anybody on any subject whatsoever. It did not
occur to him that his behaviour might strike a nervous stranger as
suspicious. All he aimed at was the swift removal of himself from
a spot infested by others of his species. He ran, and Mr
Pickering, having followed him with the eye of fear, went rather
shakily into the house, his brain whirling with professional
cracksmen and gas pipes and assaulted butlers, to relate his
adventure.
'A great, hulking, ruffianly sort of fellow glaring in at the
window,' said Mr Pickering. 'I shouted at him and he ran like a
rabbit.'
'Gee! Must have been one of the gang that's been working down
here,' said Roscoe Sherriff. 'There might be a quarter of a column
in that, properly worked, but I guess I'd better wait until he
actually does bust the place.'
'We must notify the police!'
'Notify the police, and have them butt in and stop the thing and
kill a good story!' There was honest amazement in the Press-agent's
voice. 'Let me tell you, it isn't so easy to get publicity
these days that you want to go out of your way to stop it!'
Mr Pickering was appalled. A dislike of this man, which had grown
less vivid since his scene with Claire, returned to him with
redoubled force.
'Why, we may all be murdered in our beds!' he cried.
'Front-page stuff!' said Roscoe Sherriff, with gleaming eyes. 'And
three columns at least. Fine!'
It might have consoled Lord Dawlish somewhat, as he lay awake
that night, to have known that the man who had taken Claire from
him - though at present he was not aware of such a man's
existence - also slept ill.
13
Lady Wetherby sat in her room, writing letters. The rest of the
household were variously employed. Roscoe Sherriff was prowling
about the house, brooding on campaigns of publicity. Dudley
Pickering was walking in the grounds with Claire. In a little
shack in the woods that adjoined the high-road, which he had
converted into a temporary studio, Lord Wetherby was working on a
picture which he proposed to call 'Innocence', a study of a small
Italian child he had discovered in Washington Square. Lady
Wetherby, who had been taken to see the picture, had suggested
'The Black Hand's Newest Recruit' as a better title than the one
selected by the artist.
It is a fact to be noted that of the entire household only Lady
Wetherby could fairly be described as happy. It took very little to
make Lady Wetherby happy. Fine weather, good food, and a complete
abstention from classical dancing - give her these and she asked no
more. She was, moreover, delighted at Claire's engagement. It
seemed to her, for she had no knowledge of the existence of Lord
Dawlish, a genuine manifestation of Love's Young Dream. She liked
Dudley Pickering and she was devoted to Claire. It made her happy
to think that it was she who had brought them together.
But of the other members of the party, Dudley Pickering was
unhappy because he feared that burglars were about to raid the
house; Roscoe Sherriff because he feared they were not; Claire
because, now that the news of the engagement was out, it seemed to
be everybody's aim to leave her alone with Mr Pickering, whose
undiluted society tended to pall. And Lord Wetherby was unhappy
because he found Eustace, the monkey, a perpetual strain upon his
artistic nerves. It was Eustace who had driven him to his shack in
the woods. He could have painted far more comfortably in the
house, but Eustace had developed a habit of stealing up to him and
plucking the leg of his trousers; and an artist simply cannot give
of his best with that sort of thing going on.
Lady Wetherby wrote on. She was not fond of letter-writing and she
had allowed her correspondence to accumulate; but she was
disposing of it in an energetic and conscientious way, when the
entrance of Wrench, the butler, interrupted her.
Wrench had been imported from England at the request of Lord
Wetherby, who had said that it soothed him and kept him from
feeling home-sick to see a butler about the place. Since then he
had been hanging to the establishment as it were by a hair. He
gave the impression of being always on the point of giving notice.
There were so many things connected with his position of which he
disapproved. He had made no official pronouncement of the matter,
but Lady Wetherby knew that he disapproved of her classical
dancing. His last position had been with the Dowager Duchess of
Waveney, the well-known political hostess, who - even had the
somewhat generous lines on which she was built not prevented the
possibility of such a thing - would have perished rather than dance
barefooted in a public restaurant. Wrench also disapproved of
America. That fact had been made plain immediately upon his
arrival in the country. He had given America one look, and then
his mind was made up - he disapproved of it.
'If you please, m'lady!'
Lady Wetherby turned. The butler was looking even more than
usually disapproving, and his disapproval had, so to speak,
crystallized, as if it had found some more concrete and definite
objective than either barefoot dancing or the United States.
'If you please, m'lady - the hape!'
It was Wrench's custom to speak of Eustace in a tone of restrained
disgust. He disapproved of Eustace. The Dowager Duchess of
Waveney, though she kept open house for members of Parliament,
would have drawn the line at monkeys.
'The hape is behaving very strange, m'lady,' said Wrench,
frostily.
It has been well said that in this world there is always
something. A moment before, Lady Wetherby had been feeling
completely contented, without a care on her horizon. It was
foolish of her to have expected such a state of things to last,
for what is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of
which Fate lies in wait for us with a stuffed eel-skin? Something
in the butler's manner, a sort of gloating gloom which he
radiated, told her that she had arrived at one of these corners
now.
'The hape is seated on the kitchen-sink, m'lady, throwing new-laid
eggs at the scullery-maid, and cook desired me to step up and ask
for instructions.'
'What!' Lady Wetherby rose in agitation. 'What's he doing that
for?' she asked, weakly.
A slight, dignified gesture was Wrench's only reply. It was not
his place to analyse the motives of monkeys.
'Throwing eggs!'
The sight of Lady Wetherby's distress melted the butler's stern
reserve. He unbent so far as to supply a clue.
'As I understand from cook, m'lady, the animal appears to have
taken umbrage at a lack of cordiality on the part of the cat. It
seems that the hape attempted to fondle the cat, but the latter
scratched him; being suspicious,' said Wrench, 'of his _bona
fides_.' He scrutinized the ceiling with a dull eye. 'Whereupon,'
he continued, 'he seized her tail and threw her with considerable
force. He then removed himself to the sink and began to hurl eggs
at the scullery-maid.'
Lady Wetherby's mental eye attempted to produce a picture of the
scene, but failed.
'I suppose I had better go down and see about it,' she said.
Wrench withdrew his gaze from the ceiling.
'I think it would be advisable, m'lady. The scullery-maid is
already in hysterics.'
Lady Wetherby led the way to the kitchen. She was wroth with
Eustace. This was just the sort of thing out of which Algie would
be able to make unlimited capital. It weakened her position with
Algie. There was only one thing to do - she must hush it up.
Her first glance, however, at the actual theatre of war gave her
the impression that matters had advanced beyond the hushing-up
stage. A yellow desolation brooded over the kitchen. It was not so
much a kitchen as an omelette. There were eggs everywhere, from
floor to ceiling. She crunched her way in on a carpet of oozing
shells.
Her entry was a signal for a renewal on a more impressive scale of
the uproar that she had heard while opening the door. The air was
full of voices. The cook was expressing herself in Norwegian, the
parlour-maid in what appeared to be Erse. On a chair in a corner
the scullery-maid sobbed and whooped. The odd-job man, who was a
baseball enthusiast, was speaking in terms of high praise of
Eustace's combined speed and control.
The only calm occupant of the room was Eustace himself, who,
either through a shortage of ammunition or through weariness of
the pitching-arm, had suspended active hostilities, and was now
looking down on the scene from a high shelf. There was a brooding
expression in his deep-set eyes. He massaged his right ear with
the sole of his left foot in a somewhat _distrait_ manner.
'Eustace!' cried Lady Wetherby, severely.
Eustace lowered his foot and gazed at her meditatively, then at
the odd-job man, then at the scullery-maid, whose voice rose high
above the din.
'I rather fancy, m'lady,' said Wrench, dispassionately, 'that the
animal is about to hurl a plate.'
It had escaped the notice of those present that the shelf on which
the rioter had taken refuge was within comfortable reach of the
dresser, but Eustace himself had not overlooked this important
strategic point. As the butler spoke, Eustace picked up a plate
and threw it at the scullery-maid, whom he seemed definitely to
have picked out as the most hostile of the allies. It was a fast
inshoot, and hit the wall just above her head.
''At-a-boy!' said the odd-job man, reverently.
Lady Wetherby turned on him with some violence. His detached
attitude was the most irritating of the many irritating aspects of
the situation. She paid this man a weekly wage to do odd jobs. The
capture of Eustace was essentially an odd job. Yet, instead of
doing it, he hung about with the air of one who has paid his
half-dollar and bought his bag of peanuts and has now nothing to
do but look on and enjoy himself.
'Why don't you catch him?' she cried.
The odd-job man came out of his trance. A sudden realization came
upon him that life was real and life was earnest, and that if he
did not wish to jeopardize a good situation he must bestir
himself. Everybody was looking at him expectantly. It seemed to be
definitely up to him. It was imperative that, whatever he did, he
should do it quickly. There was an apron hanging over the back of
a chair. More with the idea of doing something than because he
thought he would achieve anything definite thereby, he picked up
the apron and flung it at Eustace. Luck was with him. The apron
enveloped Eustace just as he was winding up for another inshoot
and was off his balance. He tripped and fell, clutched at the
apron to save himself, and came to the ground swathed in it,
giving the effect of an apron mysteriously endowed with life. The
triumphant odd-job man, pressing his advantage like a good
general, gathered up the ends, converted it into a rude bag, and
one more was added to the long list of the victories of the human
over the brute intelligence.
Everybody had a suggestion now. The cook advocated drowning. The
parlour-maid favoured the idea of hitting the prisoner with a
broom-handle. Wrench, eyeing the struggling apron disapprovingly,
mentioned that Mr Pickering had bought a revolver that morning.
'Put him in the coal-cellar,' said Lady Wetherby.
Wrench was more far-seeing.
'If I might offer the warning, m'lady,' said Wrench, 'not the
cellar. It is full of coal. It would be placing temptation in the
animal's way.'
The odd-job man endorsed this.
'Put him in the garage, then,' said Lady Wetherby.
The odd-job man departed, bearing his heaving bag at arm's length.
The cook and the parlour-maid addressed themselves to comforting
and healing the scullery-maid. Wrench went off to polish silver,
Lady Wetherby to resume her letters. The cat was the last of the
party to return to the normal. She came down from the chimney an
hour later covered with soot, demanding restoratives.
Lady Wetherby finished her letters. She cut them short, for
Eustace's insurgence had interfered with her flow of ideas. She
went into the drawing-room, where she found Roscoe Sherriff
strumming on the piano.
'Eustace has been raising Cain,' she said.
The Press-agent looked up hopefully. He had been wearing a rather
preoccupied air.
'How's that?' he asked.
'Throwing eggs and plates in the kitchen.'
The gleam of interest which had come into Roscoe Sherriff's face
died out.
'You couldn't get more than a fill-in at the bottom of a column on
that,' he said, regretfully. 'I'm a little disappointed in that
monk. I hoped he would pan out bigger. Well, I guess we've just
got to give him time. I have an idea that he'll set the house on
fire or do something with a punch like that one of these days. You
mustn't get discouraged. Why, that puma I made Valerie Devenish
keep looked like a perfect failure for four whole months. A child
could have played with it. Miss Devenish called me up on the
phone, I remember, and said she was darned if she was going to
spend the rest of her life maintaining an animal that might as
well be stuffed for all the liveliness it showed, and that she was
going right out to buy a white mouse instead. Fortunately, I
talked her round.
'A few weeks later she came round and thanked me with tears in her
eyes. The puma had suddenly struck real mid-season form. It clawed
the elevator-boy, bit a postman, held up the traffic for miles,
and was finally shot by a policeman. Why, for the next few days
there was nothing in the papers at all but Miss Devenish and her
puma. There was a war on at the time in Mexico or somewhere, and
we had it backed off the front page so far that it was over before
it could get back. So, you see, there's always hope. I've been
nursing the papers with bits about Eustace, so as to be ready for
the grand-stand play when it comes - and all we can do is to wait.
It's something if he's been throwing eggs. It shows he's waking
up.'
The door opened and Lord Wetherby entered. He looked fatigued. He
sank into a chair and sighed.
'I cannot get it,' he said. 'It eludes me.'
He lapsed into a sombre silence.
'What can't you get?' said Lady Wetherby, cautiously.
'The expression - the expression I want to get into the child's
eyes in my picture, "Innocence".'
'But you have got it.'
Lord Wetherby shook his head.
'Well, you had when I saw the picture,' persisted Lady Wetherby.
'This child you're painting has just joined the Black Hand. He
has been rushed in young over the heads of the waiting list
because his father had a pull. Naturally the kid wants to do
something to justify his election, and he wants to do it quick.
You have caught him at the moment when he sees an old gentleman
coming down the street and realizes that he has only got to sneak
up and stick his little knife - '
'My dear Polly, I welcome criticism, but this is more - '
Lady Wetherby stroked his coat-sleeve fondly.
'Never mind, Algie, I was only joking, precious. I thought the
picture was coming along fine when you showed it to me. I'll come
and take another look at it.'
Lord Wetherby shook his head.
'I should have a model. An artist cannot mirror Nature properly
without a model. I wish you would invite that child down here.'
'No, Algie, there are limits. I wouldn't have him within a mile
of the place.'
'Yet you keep Eustace.'
'Well, you made me engage Wrench. It's fifty-fifty. I wish you
wouldn't keep picking on Eustace, Algie dear. He does no harm. Mr
Sherriff and I were just saying how peaceable he is. He wouldn't
hurt - '
Claire came in.
'Polly,' she said, 'did you put that monkey of yours in the
garage? He's just bitten Dudley in the leg.'
Lord Wetherby uttered an exclamation.
'Now perhaps - '
'We went in just now to have a look at the car,' continued
Claire. 'Dudley wanted to show me the commutator on the exhaust-box
or the windscreen, or something, and he was just bending over
when Eustace jumped out from nowhere and pinned him. I'm afraid he
has taken it to heart rather.'
Roscoe Sherriff pondered.
'Is this worth half a column?' He shook his head. 'No, I'm afraid
not. The public doesn't know Pickering. If it had been Charlie
Chaplin or William J. Bryan, or someone on those lines, we could
have had the papers bringing out extras. You can visualize William
J. Bryan being bitten in the leg by a monkey. It hits you. But
Pickering! Eustace might just as well have bitten the leg of the
table!'
Lord Wetherby reasserted himself.
'Now that the animal has become a public menace - '
'He's nothing of the kind,' said Lady Wetherby. 'He's only a
little upset to-day.'
'Do you mean, Pauline, that even after this you will not get rid
of him?'
'Certainly not - poor dear!'
'Very well,' said Lord Wetherby, calmly. 'I give you warning that
if he attacks me I shall defend myself.'
He brooded. Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.
'What happened then? Did you shut the door of the garage?'
'Yes, but not until Eustace had got away. He slipped out like a
streak and disappeared. It was too dark to see which way he went.'
Dudley Pickering limped heavily into the room.
'I was just telling them about you and Eustace, Dudley.'
Mr Pickering nodded moodily. He was too full for words.
'I think Eustace must be mad,' said Claire.
Roscoe Sherriff uttered a cry of rapture.
'You've said it!' he exclaimed. 'I knew we should get action
sooner or later. It's the puma over again. Now we are all right.
Now I have something to work on. "Monkey Menaces Countryside."
"Long Island Summer Colony in Panic." "Mad Monkey Bites One - "'
A convulsive shudder galvanized Mr Pickering's portly frame.
'"Mad Monkey Terrorizes Long Island. One Dead!"' murmured Roscoe
Sherriff, wistfully. 'Do you feel a sort of shooting, Pickering - a
kind of burning sensation under the skin? Lady Wetherby, I guess
I'll be getting some of the papers on the phone. We've got a big
story.'
He hurried to the telephone, but it was some little time before he
could use it. Dudley Pickering was in possession, talking
earnestly to the local doctor.
14
It was Nutty Boyd's habit to retire immediately after dinner to
his bedroom. What he did there Elizabeth did not know. Sometimes
she pictured him reading, sometimes thinking. Neither supposition
was correct. Nutty never read. Newspapers bored him and books made
his head ache. And as for thinking, he had the wrong shape of
forehead. The nearest he ever got to meditation was a sort of
trance-like state, a kind of suspended animation in which his mind
drifted sluggishly like a log in a backwater. Nutty, it is
regrettable to say, went to his room after dinner for the purpose
of imbibing two or three surreptitious whiskies-and-sodas.