The crowd was listening now, as it always will to acri du cœur.
The man swept on, all aflame.
"Take music! What does it mean to us? Nothing—absolutely nothing! Can you and I interpret a symphony? Not on your life: we've never been taught!" His voice rose to a scream. "Andwhat sort of musicdothey hand out to us as a rule—us, the People!—yes, and we lap it up?Ragtime! R-r-ragtime!"
Philip and Tim turned away soberly enough. The spectacle of an immortal soul beating its wings against prison-bars does not lend itself to flippant comment.
"The Citizen may be a muddle-headed crank, Phil," said Timothy, "but he is a man for all that."
Philip did not hear, though he would have agreed readily. He was wondering why the haughty Miss Jennings should patronize Mr. Brand's meetings. Still, there she was, endeavouring to take cover from his observation behind a small but heated debate which had arisen between a gentleman with a blue ribbon and another with a red rose. Timothy caught sight of her, too, and promptly rushed in where Philip feared to tread.
"Good-afternoon, Miss Jennings," he said. "I'm surprised to find you, with your strict Conservative principles, coming out to encourage such a low entertainment as this." He indicated Mr. Brand, now working up to a peroration.
Miss Jennings stiffened indignantly.
"I suppose I can come out and amuse myself listening to a pack of nonsense if I like, Mr. Rendle," she said, "the same as any one else?"
"What do you think of Mr. Brand as a speaker?" asked Philip.
"I wasn't listening to him particularly," said Miss Jennings, untruthfully.
"What do you think of his views on ragtime?" enquired Tim.
"I think they are silly."
"Can you interpret a symphony, Miss Jennings?" asked Philip.
"No," confessed the girl reluctantly; "I can't say I can."
"I believe you are a Socialist, too, Miss Jennings," said Tim, shaking his head sadly.
Miss Jennings, after an unsuccessful attempt to wither him with a glance, passed on.
Philip received a scalding cup of tea from his hostess, and lowered himself timidly to a seat beside her.
"I am so glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Meldrum," said Lady Rendle. "I have heard so much of you from my boy. One likes to meet some one one knows takes an interest in one's belongings, doesn't one?"
Philip, painfully unravelling this sentence, suddenly caught his hostess's eye, and realised that an answer was expected of him.
"Yes," he said,sforzando. "Oh, yes! One does."
Graciously directed to help himself to something to eat, he dipped blindly into the nearest dish, with the result that he immediately found himself the proprietor of a bulky corrugated tube of French pastry, with cream protruding from either end. He surveyed it miserably, wondering dimly if it would be possible to restore it without attracting attention. He was frustrated by Lady Rendle.
"I like to see a young man," she said approvingly, "who is not afraid of tea and sweet cakes.There are far too many of them nowadays who consider it beneath their dignity to take tea at all. Caviare sandwiches and whiskey-and-soda are all they will condescend to. And now," she added briskly, "I want to introduce you to a charming girl."
The quaking Philip, with his bilious burden, was conducted across the room and presented to a pretty girl in a hat which for the time being deprived its wearer of the use of one eye.
"This is Mr. Meldrum, Barbara dear," announced Lady Rendle. "Miss Duncombe."
Philip, still bitterly ashamed of his tea, achieved a lopsided bow, and Lady Rendle departed to her own place.
Timothy, who had been engaging Miss Duncombe in animated conversation, supplemented the introduction with a few explanatory comments.
"Babs, old thing," he announced to the damsel, rising to give his seat to Philip, "you must be gentle with my friend Theophilus. He is fierce if roused, and should on no account be irritated while having his tea; but when properly handled will be found perfectly tractable. He is not married."
"Tim," replied Miss Duncombe, "I hate you. Go away!"
"By all means," said the unruffled Timothy. "See you at the Venners' dance on Thursday. Keep me all the odd numbers up to supper and everything after, will you?"
"No," said Miss Babs.
"Thanks awfully," replied Timothy gratefully. "So long!"
He departed, leaving Philip alone with the girl. He regarded her covertly. Miss Babs Duncombe was a fair sample of theingénueof the present day. She was exquisitely pretty, beautifully dressed; her complexion had been supplemented by art; and her tongue spoke a strange language.
"Tim is rather a little pet, isn't he?" she observed to Philip.
Philip, who had been blinking nervously at Miss Babs's sheeny silken insteps, looked up.
"He is a great friend of mine," he said, "but I am afraid I have never regarded him as a pet."
"I see you are a literal person," observed Miss Duncombe. "I must be careful. What shall we talk about? What interests you?"
Philip pondered.
"Machinery," he said at last.
"How pathetic!" was Babs's response. "What else? Do you tango?"
"No."
"Do you skate?"
"Yes."
"I have never seen you at Princes."
"I have never been there," confessed Philip, feeling very much ashamed of himself.
"How tragic! Wheredoyou go? Is there another place?"
"I skate—whenever there is a frost," said Philip. "I am rather bucolic."
"Oh, you mean on ponds, and that sort of thing," said Miss Duncombe gently. "You shouldn't, you know. It's not done now. Are you very fond of exercise?"
"I take all I can."
"So do I. I adore it. Do you hunt?"
"Once in a way."
"Polo?"
"No."
"Youarea monosyllabic man! What do you go in for?"
"Rugby football."
Miss Duncombe shivered elegantly.
"How very quaint—and how squdgy!" she said. "I am afraid you are a Cave Man."
"What is that?"
"Some other girls and I," explained Miss Babs, "have a sort of little society of our own, called the Idealists. Ourséancesare simply too thrilling. We sit on cushions round the floor and smoke Russian cigarettes and drink the most divine liqueurs—pink or green or gold—and have the duckiest little debates."
Philip, dumbly gripping the tube of French pastry, gaped, quite frankly. This eccentric young female was an entirely new type to him.
"What do you debate about?" he asked respectfully, sipping his tea, which by this time was stone cold.
"Oh," said Miss Babs vaguely, "subconscious influences, and soul-harmonies, and things like that. We divide men and women into various classes. Men like you are Cave Men. Most of the Cave Men I know are soldiers. Then there are Soul Men—actors, and musicians. Then creatures who do nothing but crawl about in beautiful clothes are Thing Men. Men with shiny faces and hothands are Butter Men. We divide women differently. Most of them are Impossibles, but there are a good many All-Buts. Life is so varied. The human soul, with all its infinite shades of colour—"
Philip, quite intoxicated by the exotic atmosphere in which he found himself, bit heavily and incautiously into the roll of pastry. Straightway from either end there sprang a long and sinuous jet of clotted cream. The rearmost section shot violently down his own throat, nearly choking him; that in front descended upon the inlaid parquet floor in a tubular cascade, where it formed an untidy and conspicuous ant-hill.
In a moment one of Miss Duncombe's daintily-shod feet slid forward, her skimpy skirt forming a promontory which effectually hid the disaster from the eyes of others—especially Lady Rendle.
"Mop it up quickly," she said in an excited whisper. "Take your handkerchief—anything! No one will see." She spoke breathlessly, with all the zeal of a faithful sister screening a delinquent small brother from the wrath to come.
Philip, as he bent confusedly down to clear up the mess, recognised with genuine pleasure that for all her soulfulness and pose Miss Babs Duncombe was nothing more, after all, than a jolly little schoolgirl suffering from a bad attack of adolescence.
"That was the sweetest thing that ever happened," said Babs, after all traces of havoc had been obliterated. "If you could haveseenyourself when the cream squirted out of the end! I must tell the Idealists about it at the nextséance. Now, Imust not laugh any more, or I shall get a purple face. Tell me, is my nose shiny?"
She submitted her peach-like countenance to Philip's embarrassed inspection.
"It looks all right," he said.
"I don't believe you," said Miss Duncombe, and extracted a small mirror from a gold bag. She viewed herself with a gasp of dismay.
"How can you say such a thing?" she exclaimed indignantly.
Swiftly she produced a powder-puff, and proceeded to repair the ravages caused by excessive mirth in a warm room. The unsophisticated Philip gazed at her, speechless, and was still gazing when he was whirled away by his indefatigable hostess—Lady Rendle believed in keeping her male callers circulating: it enabled those whose conversational stock-in-trade was scanty to indulge in the luxury of repetition—to the side of one Sheila Garvey.
Miss Garvey began at once:—
"Do you play cricket at all?"
"No, not now," said Philip; "but I play—"
Apparently Miss Garvey had no desire to discuss other pastimes.
"Still, you go to Lords occasionally, I suppose," she suggested.
Yes, Philip went to Lords.
"And I hope you are Middlesex."
Yes; on consideration, Philip was Middlesex.
"Myfiancéplays for Middlesex," mentioned Miss Garvey carelessly.
Philip, secretly blessing this unknown cricketer, said eagerly:—
"I should like to hear abouthim"—implying that the rest of Middlesex did not matter.
After that he enjoyed a welcome rest. By occasionally supplying such fuel as, "What did he do against the Australians in the fourth Test Match?" or, "What does he think about the off-theory?" he maintained a full head of steam on Miss Garvey for something like twenty minutes. He sat thankfully listening and watching the clock, secure in the knowledge that time was slipping away and that Timothy had promised that their call should not extend beyond half-past five.
"Another five minutes and we are out of the wood," he said to himself.
But he was mistaken. He had just accompanied Miss Garvey (chaperoned, of course, by thefiancé) step by step, match by match, through an entire cricket-tour in the Antipodes, including five Test Matches (with a special excursion up-country in order to see thefiancéscore a century against Twenty-Two of Woolloomoolloo), when his hostess once more intervened, with the inevitable sentence:—
"Mr. Meldrum, I want to introduce you to a charming girl."
Once more, with leaden footsteps, Philip crossed the room. Timothy apparently had forgotten all about both him and the time. A despairing glance in his direction revealed him ensconced in a window-seat with Miss Babs Duncombe. In that fastness he remained for another forty minutes. When at length, restored to a sense of duty by the departure of Miss Duncombe and his introduction toa grim young woman interested in Foreign Missions, Master Timothy set out to reclaim his long-lost friend, Philip had passed through the hands,seriatim, of a damsel who had besought him to obtain for her autograph-book the signature of a certain music-hall comedian (mainly noted for an alcoholic repertoire and a deplorable wardrobe) whom she affirmed she "dearly loved"; another who endeavoured to convert him to the worship of Debussy, not desisting until she discovered that Philip imagined Debussy to be a French watering-place; and a third, whose title to fame appeared to be founded upon the fact that she had once bitten a policeman in order to demonstrate her fitness to exercise the Parliamentary franchise.
"Now, we will go to the Club and drink deep," said Timothy, as they turned out of Lowndes Square. "You haven't thanked me yet, O brother, for your P.S.A."
Philip eased his collar.
"Timothy, my son," he observed, "I fear I must give up all thoughts of becoming a social success. I am only a Cave Man."
THE PROVING OF THE BRAKE
OnMonday morning Philip rose early. He had a hard week before him, for besides performing his usual duties—and their name was legion at this busy season of the year—he hoped to devote an afternoon to an exhaustive trial of the Meldrum Automatic Electro-Magnetic (described by the ribald Timothy as the Ought-to-Scrap-It, Don't You-Forget-It) Brake. He was anxious, later in the week, to run down to Coventry and persuade the conservative Bilston to extend official recognition to his offspring.
He devoted two hours before breakfast to the more tender adjustment of the mechanism of the brake, which he had attached to the service-car provided for his use by the Company. The car consisted mainly of a long, lean, powerful chassis, destitute of ornament and fitted with a skimpy and attenuated body of home manufacture. He was assisted in his operations by Mr. Brand, once more unclothed and in his right mind. Brand had taken a reluctant but irresistible interest in the evolution of the Brake. Indeed, one or two practical suggestions of his had been incorporated in the final design.
At last the work was completed. Philip climbed out of the pit and disconnected the inspection lamp.
"That's great, Brand," he said. "Thank you for all your help. If the Company takes the invention up I hope you will accept five per cent of the first year's royalties as your just commission."
It was an unnecessarily handsome offer, but Mr. Brand was not particularly cordial in his thanks. He would have preferred, on the whole, to receive nothing whatever for his assistance, and so be able to announce that Labour (himself) had done the work, while Capital (Philip) drew the profits.
Early in the afternoon, after a crowded morning in the office, Philip ordered round the service-car and set off upon his trial trip. First of all he tested his Brake in the surging torrent of Oxford Street. In this enterprise he received invaluable assistance from that strange animal, the pedestrian, and wondered for the hundredth time, as he eluded a panic-stricken party of shoppers who had darted out of Marshall and Snelgrove's apparently for the express purpose of getting run over, why it is that the ordinary citizen—even the self-confident Cockney—who desires to cross a crowded street should invariably put his head well down and run rather than keep it well up and walk. However, he was gratified to find that the Brake performed its duties without undue suddenness and held the car without apparent effort.
At the Marble Arch he turned into the Park, and gliding sedately past the long rows of green chairs, emerged at Albert Gate and sped down the Fulham Road. Presently he was across Putney Bridge. Twenty minutes later he cleared Kingston, and leaving Suburbia, with its tramlines and other impedimenta,far behind him, headed joyously for the Surrey hills.
It was a perfect afternoon in June, and Philip, who for some reason was in a reminiscent mood, wandered back in his thoughts to his first motor ride—that ecstatic and epoch-making journey in Mr. Mablethorpe's fiery chariot, Boanerges of blessed memory.
Boanerges, alas, was no more. A fighter to the last, he had met his Waterloo more than two years ago in a one-sided but heroic combat with a Pantechnicon furniture-van. Always a strategist, Boanerges had taken the van in the rear, charging through its closed doors with devastating effect and recoiling into the roadway after the impact, with the first fruits of victory, in the shape of a wash-hand stand, adhering firmly to his crumpled radiator. But his triumph was momentary. The radiator stood gaping open; the cooling waters imprisoned therein gushed forth; the temperature of Boanerges rose to fever-heat; and as the faithful engine refused under any conditions to stop running, the whole sizzling fabric rapidly heated itself to redness and finally burst into flame, furnishing the inhabitants of Maida Vale with the finest and most pestiferous bonfire ever seen in Watling Street. So perished Boanerges, and the wash-hand stand with him.Pax cineribus.
Roaming further down the avenues of remembrance, Philip came next to theaffairePegs, and the house on Hampstead Heath. Performing a brief sum in mental arithmetic, he calculated that Pegs would now be about twenty-two. Perhapsshe was married by this time. Indeed, it was highly probable, for Montagu Falconer was not precisely the sort of person with whom one would choose to dwell longer than was absolutely necessary. Still, it was odd to think of such a little girl being married. He recalled some of their quaint childish conversations, and was conscious of a suddendesiderium—there is no exact word for it in English—for the days that were no more. It would be pleasant, he reflected, to have some one beside him now—especially some one with kind brown eyes and wavy hair—to cheer him with her presence and act as a repository for his private thoughts and ambitions. However, his own proper Lady would come along some day. Would she be like Pegs, he wondered?
He touched the accelerator with his foot, and the car began to breast the three-mile slope of Wickmore Hill. It was on the farther side that he proposed to test his Brake.
Meanwhile, along a road running almost parallel with Philip's and ultimately converging on Wickmore Hill itself, came another car. It was a Britannia, of a four-year-old pattern. It was driven by a gentleman with a yellow beard, into which streaks of grey had made their way. Beside him sat a girl. The gentleman, her father, had just completed a sulphurous summary of the character of the man who had designed the carburettor of the car—not because of any inherent defect in the carburettor itself, but because the gentleman, for a variety of reasons, the most cogent of which was anentire ignorance of the elements of motor mechanics, had twice stopped his engine in the course of five miles.
Presently they emerged from the side road on to the summit of Wickmore Hill. The gentleman stopped the car by a fierce application of the brakes.
"I shall write to the band of brigands who sold me this condemned tumbril," he announced, "and ask for my money back."
"Considering that we have had the car for nearly four years now," remarked his daughter calmly, "won't they think we have been rather a long time making up our minds about it?"
"Don't be ridiculous! How could I detect the fault when I had never driven the car myself until to-day?" snapped the car's owner.
"I should think," said the girl, "that if there had been a fault Adams would have noticed it."
This apparently harmless observation roused quite a tempest.
"Adams? That numskull! That bumpkin! Haven't I been compelled to dismiss Adams from my service for gross incompetence only yesterday? How wouldhebe likely to notice faults in a car?"
"I don't know, I'm sure," was the unruffled reply, "except that he was a trained mechanic and a good driver."
At this moment a Gabriel horn fluted melodiously in the distance. Philip was coming up behind them, climbing the hill at thirty miles an hour. Seeing a car in front of him at a standstill, heslowed down punctiliously and glanced in an enquiring fashion at its occupants as he slid past.
"Filthy road-hog!" bellowed the gentleman at the wheel; and Philip went on his way.
The gentleman turned to his daughter.
"Now, let's have no more nonsense about Adams," he said. "I admit he had a wife and four children, but you can hardly hold me responsible for that. Moreover, he was a yahoo. He decorated the interior of the garage—my garage—with chromolithographs, and his wife kept wax fruit under a glass case in her parlour window. I have dismissed him, and there is an end of it. Let us cease to be sentimental or maudlin upon the subject."
"You might have given him a character," said the girl.
"If I had," replied her father grimly, "he would never have obtained a situation again."
The girl changed the subject.
"Don't you think," she said, "that if we are really going to call on the Easts, we had better be getting on? And go gently. The foot-brake is a good deal worn, and the side-brake won't hold this heavy car if it gets on the run down this hill."
"If there is one thing," replied her amiable papa, "about this miserable and untrustworthy vehicle which can be relied upon at all, it is the efficiency of the brakes."
They set off with a jerk.
Meanwhile Philip, a little startled at the reception accorded to his tacit offer of assistance, wasrunning down Wickmore Hill. It was a long descent—nearly three miles—but was not steep, and there were no sharp curves until near the bottom. It was a useful spot for brake-tests.
"I wonder who that old ass was," mused Philip. "Rum bird. One of our cars, too. There was something familiar about his voice. Road-hog, indeed!" Philip grunted indignantly, for he was a virtuous motorist. "Now I will really hog it a bit: this is a lovely piece of road. I'll let the old car rip for a couple of hundred yards and then see what the Ought-to-Scrap-It will do. There was a girl with him, too. I wonder what her face was like, behind that thick blue veil. Now, then, old friend, put your back into it!" He patted the steering-wheel affectionately. "Off you go!... No, steady! Wait a minute."
He closed down the throttle, for another car was coming down the hill behind him, and he intended to let it pass in order to have a clear road for his own operations. He looked round.
"What in thunder—" he began.
All was not well with the oncoming car. The horn was being blown unceasingly, and some one appeared to be shouting. As Philip looked, he saw that it was the Britannia car which he had passed at the top of the hill. It was going thirty miles an hour and swaying a little from side to side. Next moment it was past him.
The gentleman at the wheel turned to Philip as they shot by.
"We are running away, damn you!" he bawled.
It was what geometricians call a self-evidentproposition, though why Philip should be damned because an incompetent stranger had allowed his car to get out of control was not readily apparent. Still, there was no time to sift the matter. Something must be done—promptly—or there would be a hideous disaster. Besides, the man at the wheel was no stranger. Philip recognized him now.
Philip's foot came down upon the accelerator, and the long low car leaped down the hill. Philip's mind was suddenly and tensely clear. There was only one thing to do, and the Meldrum Ought-to-Scrap-It, Don't-You-Forget-It Brake would have to do it. Otherwise—!
"Lucky there's no sharp turn for nearly two miles," he muttered to himself between his locked teeth. "Pray God we meet nothing coming up the other way! Now to get past! My word, they are swinging!"
Next moment he was abreast of the flying car.
"Get right behind me, if you can," he shouted, "and I'll try to stop you."
The only response to this appeal was another swerve on the part of the runaway, in avoiding which Philip nearly cannoned into a tree at the side of the road. The gentleman with the beard appeared to have lost his head altogether. His efforts to avoid disaster were now limited to swearing volubly and blowing his horn. Philip noted that the side-brake was full on; but it seemed to have little effect in checking the car.
"Stick to yourwheel, you fool!" he shouted with the full strength of his lungs.
The gentleman responded with a fresh outburstof vocal and instrumental exuberance. But suddenly, just as Philip shot ahead, the girl in the blue veil leaned over and gripped the wheel in her two hands. Her parent immediately relinquished his hold altogether, and devoted his undivided attention to the horn.
Then followed the fullest and most eventful minute of Philip's life.
He was ahead now—going perhaps fifty miles an hour, but clear in front of the other car. He knew he must act at once, for there was barely half a mile of straight road left, and there were two sharp turns at the foot of the hill. What he had to do must be done instantaneously, and called for superb driving. He wondered if the girl behind could hold on long enough to give him a chance. To steer a car steadily from any position except the driver's seat is a difficult enough performance, but to accomplish it when the seat is occupied by a gesticulating lunatic is almost a physical impossibility. Still, Philip had had time to note the prompt and decisive way in which this girl had grasped his purpose and carried out his instructions. He felt somehow that those small gloved hands could be trusted to cling gamely on until the end of all things.
Glancing back, he saw that the other car was now right behind him—seven yards or so. The moment had come—the inventor's moment.
"I told Timothy it would stop a motor-bus," he observed to himself. "We'll see if it will stop two cars!"
The Brake was controlled by a switch upon thesteering-pillar. The farther the switch was pulled over the stronger became the current which supplied the Brake's magnetic force. But it was not required yet. Philip hastily jammed on the side-brake, which, though it could not check, sensibly moderated the headlong speed of his car; and then, getting both hands back to the steering-wheel, braced himself, and leaning well back, waited for the impact of the runaway.
It came, but not too severely. By good luck or good management the pursuing car struck Philip's fairly and squarely in the back, and the two raced on together down the hill, locked together like engine and tender, the sorely handicapped littlechauffeusebehind exerting all her small strength to keep her leading wheels from slewing round. The shock of collision, coming where it did, sent a thrill of satisfaction coursing up Philip's spine.
"Oh, well done, well done, little girl, whoever you are!" he murmured enthusiastically. "That gives us a Chinaman's chance, anyhow. Now!"
He pulled the switch of the Brake slowly over, three parts of the way.
For a moment nothing seemed to happen; and then—oh, rapture—the rocking cars began to slow down. The Brake was answering to the call. The strain was immense, but the work was good. On they tore, but more slowly and yet more slowly. They were barely going twenty-five miles an hour now.
Philip leaned hard back, gripping the wheel, and exulted. They were going to stop. The Brake was proved. Suddenly his eye caught a glimpse of ared triangle. They were coming to the turns—sooner than he expected, for the pace had been terrific, and the whole incident had barely lasted a hundred seconds as yet.
Well, they would just manage it, he calculated, provided that the smoking brake-shoes held out. They were running at a comparatively moderate pace by this time. A single car could have taken the approaching corner comfortably. The danger lay in the likelihood that the car behind would skid. Still, the little girl was steering like a Trojan. They ought to get off with a shaking at the worst.
Round to the left they swung. Philip, glancing over his shoulder, could see the girl behind frantically wrestling with her steering-wheel. Next moment they were round. She had succeeded. The road was almost level now, but the second corner was imminent, and in the reverse direction, for this was what was technically known as an "S" turn.
Philip pulled his brake-switch into the very last notch and put his wheel hard over to the right.
What happened next he never rightly knew. His car took the corner well enough. But then, instead of proceeding upon its appointed way, it continued to come round, and still farther round, in a giddy, sickening circle, until it threatened to mount the bank beside the road. Philip promptly spun his wheel over to the left, but all in vain. Next moment his car was right across the road; for the car behind, instead of following its leader round the bend, had pursued a straight course, pushing the tail of Philip's long chassis before it. Philip could feel his back-tyres sliding sideways over the smoothasphalt. He felt utterly helpless. The Brake could do no more. It was not designed to prevent cars from running away laterally.
Suddenly there came a loud report. "Back tyre!" muttered Philip mechanically—and the car gave a sudden lurch to the left. Then, without warning, it turned completely upside down. The other car, like a victor who sets his foot upon the neck of the vanquished, mounted proudly on the wreck of its prostrate preserver, and there poised itself—stationary at last.
Philip, unable to free himself, went over with his car. "I rather fancy the old man must have been putting his oar in again," he said to himself, as the road rose suddenly up to meet him.
So the Meldrum Automatic Electro-Magnetic Brake was proved. When they examined the car afterwards it was found that though the brake-shoes were scorched and damaged beyond recall, the Brake itself was in perfect order.
The other car was hardly injured. Its occupants were unhurt.
But Philip did not know this. He had ceased to take any active interest in the proceedings.
Only for one brief moment during the subsequent twenty-four hours did he exhibit any sign of intelligence at all. This was when he woke up on his way back to London. He found himself lying in a smooth-running vehicle of some kind. The light was uncertain, and his vision was somewhat obscured by bandages; but he was dimly consciousthat some one was sitting beside him—close beside him.
He made an inarticulate sound. Instantly the figure stirred and a face came very close to his.
Philip surveyed the face gravely, and remarked:—
"Hallo, Pegs!"
Then everything became blank again.
BOOK THREE
OMNIA VINCIT!
THE BIG THING
I
"Nineo'clock, sir."
The pert young housemaid entered Philip's bedroom, deposited a basin of hot water beside his bed, drew up the blinds, surveyed Tite Street, Chelsea, in a disparaging fashion, and announced that it was a nice day for the ducks.
Philip, gathering from this observation that the weather was inclined to be inclement, replied sleepily but politely that rain made little or no difference to his plans at present.
"I dare say," retorted the housemaid. "But it's me afternoon out. And please, sir," she added, recollecting herself, "Miss Marguerite wants to know if you are ready for your breakfast."
"Thank you," said Philip. "In a very few minutes."
When the housemaid had departed, he sat up in bed as completely as splints and bandages would permit, and prepared for breakfast. Then he lay back in bed and waited, with his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon the door.
Presently there was a rattle of silver and crockery outside, accompanied by a cheerfully whistled tune, and breakfast entered upon a tray.
Behind the tray came Peggy Falconer, who hadbeen Philip's hostess now for the best part of three weeks.
She greeted her patient with a maternal smile, and enquired:—
"Slept well?"
"Very well, thank you."
"Leg troublesome?"
"No. It seems to be joining up in first-class style now."
"Concussion all gone?"
Philip knuckled his head vigorously all over, to show that his skull was once more free from dents.
"In that case," announced Peggy, "I may possibly let you have some letters to read. But I shall wait until the doctor has seen you."
Philip, who had no desire whatever to receive letters,—nor would have, until Fate separated him again from Miss Peggy Falconer,—thanked his hostess meekly, and proceeded to decapitate an egg.
"Do you feel strong enough to receive a visitor to-day?" continued Peggy.
"Who? Tim?"
"I didn't mean Tim, though I haven't the slightest doubt that he will call," said Peggy, with an enigmatic smile. "This is a new visitor—Miss Leslie. She used to be mother's greatest friend, and—and she has always been very good to me. I should like you to know her."
At this point the conversation was interrupted by a roar from the foot of the stairs.
"That is Dad," explained Peggy, quite needlessly.
Montagu Falconer invariably adopted this method of announcing his readiness for breakfast. A commotion upon the ground floor merely signified to Philip the intelligence that it was about half-past nine, or half-past one, or eight in the evening.
"I am afraid I am keeping you," he said.
"Quite right," assented Peggy. "You are. Eat up your breakfast like a good little boy, and perhaps I will come and see you again later."
And she sped out of the room and down the stair, to quell a bread-riot. A woman with two men on her hands is, indeed, a busy person.
Philip munched his breakfast in utter content. He was convalescent now, though the first week or so had been a bad time. He was only intermittently conscious, and his injuries had combined to render sleep a nightmare and wakefulness a throbbing torment. But he would have gone through it all again, and yet again, cheerfully, provided he could have remained in the hands of his present nurse. In the dim and distant past he had recollections of another attendant,—a deft and capable lady in a blue-and-white uniform,—but she had disappeared long ago (friction with the master of the house being the cause), and his whole illness and recovery were summed up to Philip in the single word, Peggy.
For the Big Thing had happened. Philip was in love. His long-expected Lady had come to him at last—or rather, come back to him, after an interval of years—grown up into a slim, elfin, brown-eyed piece of Dresden china. She had gatheredhim up, crushed and broken, from the middle of a Surrey highway, and had conveyed him straight to her home in Chelsea, to be nursed and mothered back into coherent existence. This, be it noted, in the face of a strongly-worded and most enthusiastic eulogy (from her parent) of the public hospitals of the metropolis.
But Peggy had been quite firm.
"Dad," she said, "I don't think you quite realise that he has saved your life."
"If he has," said Montagu Falconer magnificently, "he shall be suitably rewarded."
Peggy eyed her progenitor dispassionately.
"If you are thinking of tipping him half-a-sovereign," she said, "I advise you not to. I happen to know him. Now don't be a silly old curmudgeon, but go and see if the ambulance is coming."
Montagu obeyed, grumbling. There were only two women of his acquaintance who did not fear him, and Peggy was one. In fact, Peggy feared nothing, except spiders and the revelation of her own feelings.
II
"And how is thetibiaof Theophilus this morning?"
Timothy, entering the room like a gust of ozone, sat down heavily by the patient's bedside and slapped the counterpane heartily.
"Just making both ends meet," replied the owner of the tibia, shrinking nervously towards the wall.
"Good!" said Timothy. "And is it well with the solar plexus?"
"Try again," said Philip.
Timothy paused, thoughtfully.
"I was under the impression that it was the solar plexus," he said in a troubled voice. "I know it was a heavenly body of some kind. Ah, I have it. The semilunar cartilage! How is the semilunar cartilage this morning?"
Philip reported favourably.
"Cavities in the cranium now permanent, I gather?" continued Tim sympathetically. "Prospect of ultimate mental weakness confirmed—what? Never mind! I'll get my late boss to provide you with a permanent post under Government."
"My skull," replied the patient mildly, "is all right, except when you make such an infernal noise."
Timothy was contrite at once.
"Noise? Tut-tut! Am I making a noise? This will never do. Nervous and irritable patient—eh? Must be kept quiet. I see. We will get some tanbark down outside.Street Cries Prohibited!and so on. But how are you getting along generally, old thing? How are all your organs? Fairlycrescendo, I trust."
"Leave my organs alone, curse you!" growled the invalid.
"Certainly," said Timothy soothingly. "OrgansandStreet Cries Prohibited! We'll have a notice to that effect pinned up on your bedroom door. It will please Falconer. By the way, how is—er, Miss Falconer, this morning?"
Thereafter the conversation pursued a line far remote from Philip's health. Needless to say, the impressionable Timothy had fallen an instantaneous victim to Peggy. Striding about the room, absently munching some grapes which he had brought as a present for Philip, Timothy embarked upon a whole-hearted panegyric of his present adored one, heedless of the fact that the same panegyric had been delivered,mutatis mutandis, to the same audience by the same rhapsodist many times before.
Philip lay back and listened contentedly—nay, approvingly. He experienced no feeling of jealousy. No man, he considered, could know Peggy Falconer without loving her, so why blame Timothy?
"Have you noticed the neat little way she puts her head on one side, and smiles right up at you, when she wants something done that you don't want to do?" enquired the infatuated youth.
"What sort of thing?" asked Philip, glad to discuss Peggy in any aspect.
"Oh, going away, and things like that," said Timothy, naïvely. "And her complexion, and her arms—my word! Have you seen her in evening kit? Fancy you knowing her when you were kids! I suppose you were great pals?"
"I dare say," admitted the reticent Philip.
"Only in a childish sort of way, though, I suppose?" pursued Timothy, with a touch of anxiety.
Before his suspicions could be allayed there came a vigorous but rhythmatic tattoo played upon the tiny brass knocker of the door.
Tum-ti-tum-ti-tiddle-i-um, Tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-tum!Officers' Wives getting pudding and pies,Soldiers' Wives get skilly!
Tum-ti-tum-ti-tiddle-i-um, Tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-tum!Officers' Wives getting pudding and pies,Soldiers' Wives get skilly!
it said. This was Peggy's regulation way of announcing to her patient that she was about to enter the room. When her hands were full she whistled it. Philip knew every beat of it by heart.
After the usual brief interval the door opened and Peggy entered, to announce to Timothy, with her head upon one side in the manner which he had just described with so much tenderness and enthusiasm, that it was time for him to depart.
"I have another visitor," she said.
The newcomer proved to be a gigantic Scotswoman, of forty or more, with humorous blue eyes and a slow, comprehending smile.
"This is Miss Leslie, Philip," announced Peggy. "Mr. Rendle, I want to show you our front door. The exterior is greatly admired."
III
Miss Leslie sat down in the chair vacated by Timothy, and remarked, in a soft Highland drawl: "It is very shocking, being left alone with a young man like this."
She smiled, and Philip's heart warmed to her at once. He felt instinctively that Miss Leslie was going to be a less bewildering companion than Miss Babs Duncombe, for instance.
"My only excuse for my unmaidenly conduct," continued the visitor, "is that I am a very old friend of Peggy's. I have known her ever since shewas so high." She indicated Peggy's infant stature by a gesture.
"So have I," said Philip proudly. "Did you know?"
No, Miss Leslie did not know: Peggy had not told her; so Philip, with wonderful fluency for him, explained the circumstances under which he had first entered the house of Falconer.
Miss Leslie chuckled.
"It would be a fine ploy for Montagu," she said, "scarifying a little boy. But I am glad you met Peggy's mother, if only for five minutes."
"She was very kind to me during those five minutes," remarked Philip.
"She was my greatest friend," said Miss Leslie simply. "But she has been dead for seven years now. I suppose you knew that?"
Philip nodded: Peggy had told him.
So the conversation proceeded comfortably, understandingly. Jean Leslie was one of those women in whose presence a man can put his soul into carpet-slippers. It was not necessary to select light topics or invent small-talk for her benefit. She appeared to know all about Philip, and the Brake, and the accident. She also gave Philip a good deal of fresh information about Peggy and her father.
"I hoped," she said, "that when Montagu was made an A.R.A. he would be less of a bear. But he is just the same. Success came too late, poor body. He is as morose and pernickety and feckless as ever. Peggy is hard put to it sometimes."
"I expect you help her a good deal," remarked Philip, with sudden intuition.
Miss Leslie smiled grimly.
"Yes," she said, "I put my oar in occasionally. Montagu dislikes me, I am sorry to say. He is not afraid of Peggy,—nor she of him, for that matter,—but she is too soft with him: so whenever I see her overdriven I just step in and get myself disliked a little more. But he usually comes to me when he is in trouble, for all that. I am the only person who has any patience with him."
After that they talked about London, and Philip's work, and the future of automobilism. Miss Leslie apparently saw nothing either "pathetic" or "quaint" or "tragic" in a man liking to talk about what interested him. At any rate, she drew him out and lured him on. For all her spinsterhood, Jean Leslie knew something of masculine nature. She knew that the shortest way to the heart of that self-centred creature Man is to let him talk about himself, and his work, and his ambitions. So Philip discoursed, with all his shyness and reticence thawed out of him, upon subjects which must have made his visitor's head ache, but which won her heart none the less. That is the way of a woman. She values the post of confidante so highly that she will endure a man's most uninteresting confidences with joy, because of the real compliment implied by their bestowal.
"I am a silly sentimental old wife," she mused to herself afterwards, "but it warmed my heart to have that boy turning to me for advice on things I knew nothing about. It would be good for him, too. He would never talk like that to Peggy; he would be afraid of wearying her. I do not matter."
THE INARTICULATE KNIGHT
I
Philipdeparted from Tite Street, Chelsea, without having invited Peggy to go with him. Getting married, except in the case of the very young, is not such a simple business as it appears. The difficulty lies in the fact that a man's conception of the proper method of wooing is diametrically opposed to that of a maid; and since the maid has the final word in the matter, it stands to reason that the campaign must ultimately be conducted upon her lines and not her swain's. Hence Romeo usually finds himself compelled, at the very outset, to abandon a great many preconceived and cherished theories, and adapt himself to entirely unfamiliar conditions of warfare, and he usually suffers a good deal in the process.
On paper, the contest should be of the most one-sided description; for the defending force (as represented by the lady) is at liberty to choose its own ground and precipitate or ward off an assault as it pleases, while the invader has to manœuvre clumsily and self-consciously in the open, exposed to shafts of ridicule, fiery days of humiliation, and frosty nights of indifference. He marches and countermarches, feeling sometimes tender, sometimes fierce, not seldom ridiculous; but never,never, never sure of his ground. Truly it is a one-sided business—on paper. But woman has no regard for paper. Under the operation of a mysterious but merciful law of nature, it is her habit, having placed herself in an absolutely impregnable position, to abandon her defences without warning or explanation—not infrequently, at the moment when the dispirited lover at her gates is upon the point of striking camp and beating a melancholy retreat, marching out, bag and baggage, into the arms of her dazed and incredulous opponent.
But Philip, being unversed in the feminine instinct of self-defence, did not know this. To him, from a distance, Love had appeared as a Palace Beautiful standing on the summit of a hill—a fairy fabric of gleaming minarets, slender lines, and soft curves—a haven greatly to be desired by a lonely pilgrim. Now that he had scaled the height and reached his destination he found nothing but frowning battlements and blank walls. In other words, he had overlooked the difference between arrival and admission. To sum up the situation in the language which would undoubtedly have been employed by that master of terse phraseology, Mr. Timothy Rendle, Philip was "up against it."
There is nothing quite so impregnable as the reserve of a nice-minded girl. The coquette and the sentimental miss are easy game: there is never any doubt as to what they expect of a man; and man, being man, sees to it that they are not disappointed. But to make successful love to a girl who is neither of these things calls for some powers of intuition and a thick skin. It is the latter priceless qualificationwhich usually pulls a man through. Philip possessed rather less than the average male equipment of intuition, and his skin was deplorably thin. Peggy meant so much to him that he shrank from putting everything to the touch at once. Like all those who have put all their eggs in one basket, he feared his fate too much. So he temporised: he hung back, and waited. If Peggy had ever given him an opening he would have set his teeth and plunged into it, blindly and ponderously; but she never did. She was always kind, always cheerful, always the best of companions; but she kept steadily to the surface of things and appeared to be entirely oblivious of the existence of the suppressed volcano which sighed and rumbled beneath her feet.
Philip became acquainted, too, with the minor troubles of the love-lorn. If a letter lay on Peggy's plate at breakfast he speculated gloomily as to the sex of the sender. He sat through conversations in the course of which his Lady appeared to make a point of addressing every one present but himself. He saw what Mr. Kipling calls "Christian kisses" wasted upon other girls and unresponsive babies. He would pass from the brief rapture of having his invitation to a drive in the Park accepted to the prolonged bitterness of having to take the drive in company with a third party, casually coöpted into the expedition by Peggy at the last moment. He purchased little gifts, and kept them for days, not venturing to offer them for fear of a rebuff. Once or twice he embarked upon carefully prepared conversational openings of an intimate character, only to have these same caught up, tossed about, andset aside with unfeeling frivolity by the lady to whom they were addressed. He sometimes wondered what had become of the Pegs he had once known—the wistful, dreamy, confiding little girl with whom he had discussed all things in heaven and earth under the wintry skies of Hampstead Heath. Mental myopia is a common characteristic of young men in Philip's condition.
So he departed from Tite Street without having delivered himself, and returned to his own place. And yet not even that. For the garret in Wigmore Street was no more. One day during his convalescence he had desired certain books and papers, so Peggy and Miss Leslie made an expedition to fetch them.
They drove up to the door of the house, and having ascended to the fourth floor, let themselves into Philip's retreat with his latchkey.
"It is terribly thrilling," observed the romantic Miss Leslie, "to find yourself alone in a man's rooms."
Peggy said nothing, but looked round the dusty sitting-room with wondering eyes. She thought of her own private den at home, with its pretty curtains, soft cushions, fresh flowers, and the thousand useless but companionable knick-knacks that make a woman's room look cosy. This gaunt, pictureless, carpetless eyrie made her shiver. There was not even a grate in the fireplace: only a rusty gas-stove.
"Mercy on us!" exclaimed Miss Leslie. "Can the man not afford a cover for the table? And where does he sit if a visitor comes?"
She disappeared into Philip's bedroom, and returned dragging a portmanteau.
"The only chair in there has a leg missing," she mentioned. "Take the armchair, child."
Peggy obeyed, and Miss Leslie, seating herself cautiously upon the portmanteau, enquired:—
"How long has the creature been living here?"
"Two or three years, I think."
"Has he no friends?" continued Miss Leslie scathingly.
"I don't know, I am sure."
"No mother, of course?"
"No."
Miss Leslie nodded.
"I have always maintained," she observed, "that there ought to be a law appointing women inspectors to go round and look after the rooms of young men that live alone in London. Their motives would be misunderstood, of course, but it would be worth while, all the same. Is there a servant-body of any kind in this place?"
"He says that a woman comes in every morning and tidies up."
"I should like to meet her," said Miss Leslie grimly. "I expect she could a tale unfold. Where does he get his food, and how does he eat it? Off the floor?"
"I don't know," said Peggy, who had sat very silent through this tirade. "I—I had no idea it was as bad as this."
They invaded the tiny pantry. Here they found a teapot, together with a cup and saucer, two plates, a knife, a fork, and a spoon. There was alsoa small frying-pan, and a tarnished cruet-stand. A very dingy dishcloth hung upon a nail at the back of the door. There were receptacles which had evidently at one time contained tea, sugar, and salt, but they were empty. The lady who tidied up had seen to that. The place was dusty, and smelt of mice.
"And he told me only yesterday that he was very happy here," remarked Miss Leslie. "Poor, poor body!"
They returned to the sitting-room, and, having selected the necessary books from a heap upon the floor, turned to go. But Miss Leslie's attention was arrested by something upon the mantel-piece.
"Bless me," she exclaimed, "what's that?"
"That" was the Meldrum Carburettor, the original model—the solitary ornament of the apartment.
"He invented it, I think," said Peggy. "Didn't he tell you about it?"
"He did," replied Miss Leslie, "several times. Well, let us be stepping. This place gives me the creepies."
She marched out of the room and began to descend the staircase. Peggy, hanging back for a moment, unexpectedly produced a diminutive pocket-handkerchief from her belt, and put it furtively to one of its uses.
After that, flinging a defiant glance round the empty room, she picked up the books from the table and turned once more to the door. Suddenly her eye was caught by a gleam of colour at her feet. It was a pink carnation—one of a smallbunch which Philip had given to her. He had bought them in the street during his first outing in a bath-chair, and after keeping them for three days had taken the flowers in one hand and his courage in the other and made the presentation. They were slightly faded—a fact upon which their recipient had not failed to comment. Indeed, she had accused the donor, to his great distress, of having bought them second-hand.
Well, here was one of the bunch lying on the dusty floor: Peggy had dislodged it from her belt in replacing her handkerchief.
She picked it up, and gazed thoughtfully about the room. Then she tiptoed across to the mantelpiece, and proceeded to ornament the Meldrum Carburettor with a floral device. Then she ran guiltily down stairs after Miss Leslie.
II
"Philip," enquired Miss Falconer of her patient that evening, "how much money have you got?"
Philip ruminated.
"I don't quite know," he said. "How much do you want?"
"I want enough to find decent rooms for you to live in. Can you afford it?"
"I suppose so. I don't spend half my income at present. My father left me a good deal, and I have my salary as well. But what is the matter with my present abode?"
"It is poky, and dirty, and unfurnished, and quite impossible," said Peggy with finality. "You must move into something better."
"The rooms suited me well enough," objected Philip. "I got through a good lot of work there. Besides, they were handy for Oxford Street."
"Nevertheless, you will leave them," announced Peggy.
Philip glowed comfortably. He liked being ordered about by his Lady. It showed that she took more than a passing interest in him, he argued.
"If I do," he said cunningly, "will you come and see me there sometimes? Tea, or something? You could bring Miss Leslie," he added.
"Mayhap," replied Peggy indulgently. "But listen: I have a plan. I think you and Tim Rendle ought to take rooms together. At present he is in a very stupid, expensive set of chambers in Park Place, wasting a lot of money and getting into bad habits. You could club together and take a lovely little flat, say in Knightsbridge, and have a proper servant and decent meals. Will you? Philip, what are you frowning about?"
Philip's little glow of happiness had died away as suddenly as it came. That Peggy should make plans for his future was gratifying enough. But to be urged by one's Best Beloved to set up a permanent bachelor establishment is not an unmixed delight. Such a recommendation points in the wrong direction. Philip would have been better pleased had Peggy advised him to take a real house somewhere.
Besides, the mention of Timothy had spoiled everything. Not that Philip was jealous, but Timothy's inclusion in the scheme had shorn the situation of its romance at a single blow. For onefoolish moment Philip had imagined that Peggy's concern for his welfare and comfort had their roots in deep soil; but now the whole enterprise stood revealed for what it was—a mere feminine plot: a piece of maternal officiousness. Timothy and Philip were to be put into chambers together—Timothy to brighten up that dull dog Philip, and Philip to act as a check upon that irresponsible young idiot Timothy. Hence the ungracious frown. But his spoken objections took a different line.
"Knightsbridge is a long way from Oxford Street," he said.
"I know," replied Peggy calmly. "That is why I chose it."
"Tim would rather interfere with my work," Philip continued.
"I know," repeated Peggy. "That is why I chosehim! He will be a nice distraction."
"He will," growled Philip.
Suddenly Peggy flared up.
"Philip," she asked hotly, "why are you so cross? Don't you like Timothy?"
"Yes, of course, I do; but—"
"And wouldn't it be pleasant to have his company?"
"Yes, rather! But—"
"But what?"
Philip reddened.
"I don't know," he said helplessly. But he knew well enough, and so did Peggy.
"Then don't be a baby," she said severely. "It is not very nice of you, considering thatI am only trying to make you comfortable and—"
But Philip was already doing penance.
"Peggy," he burst out,—he called her Peggy because she called him Philip: they had never returned to "Pegs" and "Phil," although she sometimes addressed him as "Theophilus,"—"I am a brute. Forgive me!"
Peggy relented, and smiled.
"No, you are not a brute," she said; "you are just a child. However, since you are an invalid, I forgive you. But you must not be sulky when people take trouble on your behalf. You are getting a big boy now, you know! Say 'thank you,' nicely!"
"Thank you," said Philip obediently.
"That ismuchbetter," remarked Peggy approvingly. "But tell me, why don't you want to settle down in nice comfy rooms with Tim?"
Philip hesitated, and his throat went dry. Was this his opening—at last?
"I don't want to settle down—in that way," he said hoarsely. "Peggy, I—"
"Shall I tell you why?" interposed Peggy. "Because you are far too much wrapped up in your work. You work too hard. You think of nothing but Oxford Street and—and carburettors, and things. I want you—I mean, you ought to go about more, and see people, and enjoy yourself, and have a lot of friends."
"I don't want—" declared Philip rebelliously.
"Think how interesting and amusing you couldbe, if you went about and met more people," continued Peggy.
She got home that time. Philip winced.
"I'm a dull dog, I know," he said.
"No, you are not," said Peggy; "so don't be foolish." Then, softening again, for she had averted the danger, she continued gently:—
"All I meant was that it would do you good to have a little more leisure and distraction. 'All work and no play,' you know! Now, will you look about for nice rooms when you get well—for yourself and Tim?"
"Yes—if you will help," replied Philip, with great valour.
"Of course I will," said Peggy heartily; "but not if you are going to be cross with me."
Philip assured her that she need never again have any fears upon that score. And he was as good as his word.