EX MACHINA
Miss Joan Gaymer, pleasantly fatigued after last night's dissipation, reclined in a canvas chair on the lawn at Manors. She had just finished reading a letter which had arrived by the afternoon post. It was from her brother Lance, and conveyed, probably a good deal more fully than Hughie himself would have done, the reasons for Hughie's absence on the previous evening. Joan's brow was puckered thoughtfully, and she surveyed the tips of her small shoes, which were cocked at an unladylike altitude upon a stool in front of her, with a profundity of maiden meditation which was perhaps explained by the fact that she had received a proposal of marriage the evening before, and was expecting the proposer to come and second his own motion at any moment.
To her entered suddenly Jno. Alex. Goble.
"Yon felly!" he intimated austerely.
"Mr. Haliburton, do you mean, John?" inquired Miss Gaymer, hastily letting down her feet.
"Aye. Wull I loose him in here?"
"Yes, please. No—I mean—"
But Cupid's messenger was gone. Presently he returned, and, with the air of one introducing the Coroner to the foreman of the jury, announced Mr. Haliburton.
That ardent suitor advanced gallantly across the lawn, and taking Joan's hand with an air of respectful rapture, endeavoured to draw its owner into the shade of the copper beech. Joan forestalled his intentions by saying at once,—
"Come along into the library, Mr. Haliburton, and we'll see what my guardian has to say to you."
Mr. Haliburton hinted that there was no hurry, and made a pointed reference to Amaryllis and the shade; but his unsentimental nymph marched him briskly across the lawn, round the corner of the house, and in at the front door.
They crossed the cool, dark hall, and Joan tapped at the oaken door of the library.
"Come in," said a voice.
The lovers entered.
"I have brought Mr. Haliburton to see you, Hughie," remarked Miss Gaymer, much as one might announce the arrival of a person to inspect the gas meter.
Mr. Haliburton, who was not the man to show embarrassment, whether he felt it or not, advanced easily into the room. Joan surveyed hisstraight back and square shoulders as he passed her, and the corners of her mouth twitched, ever so little.
Then she looked at Hughie. It was her first meeting with him since his return home that morning. He had answered her note by another, saying that he would be in the library at five o'clock. There was no twitching about his mouth. It was closed like a steel trap; and he stood with his back to the wood-fire which glowed in the grate—it was getting on in September, and cold out of the sun—with absolute stolidity. Joan saw at a glance that, whatever the difficulties of the position, her guardian's line of action was now staked out and his mind made up—one way or the other.
She dropped into an arm-chair.
"Now, you two," she remarked encouragingly, "get to work! I want to hear what each of you has got to say about my future. It will be quite exciting—like going to a palmist!"
The two men turned and regarded her in unfeigned surprise. They had not expected this. Haliburton began swiftly to calculate whether Joan's presence would be a help to him or not. But Hughie said at once:—
"You must leave us alone, Joan, please! I can't possibly allow you to remain."
Joan lay back in her chair and smiled up athim, frankly mutinous. She had never yet failed, when she so desired, to "manage" a man. Hughie was regarding her stonily; but two minutes, she calculated, would make him sufficiently pliable.
She was wrong. At the end of this period Hughie was still rigidly waiting for her to leave the room. Joan, a little surprised at his obstinacy, remarked:—
"If you are going to object to—to Mr. Haliburton's suggestions, Hughie, I think I ought to hear what the objections are."
"Before you go," said Hughie in even tones, "I will tell you one thing—and that should be sufficient. It is this. There is not the slightest prospect of this—this engagement coming off. My reasons for saying so I am prepared to give to Mr. Haliburton, and if he thinks proper he can communicate them to you afterwards. But I don't think he will. Now will you leave us, please?"
Joan was genuinely astonished. But she controlled herself. She was determined to see the matter out now. All the woman in her—and she was all woman—answered to the challenge contained in Hughie's dictatorial attitude. Besides, she was horribly curious.
She heaved a sad little sigh, and made certain shameless play with her eyes which she knew stirred poor Hughie to the point of desperation, and surveyed the result through drooping lasheswith some satisfaction. Hughie's mouth was fast shut, and he was breathing through his nose; and Joan could see a little pulse beating in his right temple. (Both of them, for the moment, had forgotten the ardent suitor by the window.) She would win through in a moment now.
But alas! she had forgotten a masculine weapon against which all the Votes for Women in the world will avail nothing, when it comes to a pinch.
Hughie suddenly relaxed his attitude, and strode across to the door, which he held open for her.
"Atonce, please!" he said in a voice which Joan had never heard before, though many men had.
Without quite knowing why, Miss Gaymer rose meekly from her chair and walked out of the room. The door closed behind her.
When Joan found herself on the lawn again she gasped a little.
"Ooh!" she said breathlessly. "I—I feel just as if I'd been hit in the face by a big wave! This game is not turning out quite as you expected, Joey, my child: the man Hughie is one up! Still, I'll take it out of him another time. But—heavens!"—She was staring, like Red Riding-Hood on a historic occasion, at a recumbent figurein her canvas chair beneath the copper beech—"Who onearthis that in my chair? It's—it's—oh! Joey Gaymer, you've got hysterics! It's—it's—Uncle Jimmy!Uncle Jimmy!... My Uncle—Jimmy!"
Next moment she was reposing comfortably, a distracted bundle of tears and laughter, in the arms of Jimmy Marrable.
"A bit sudden—eh, young lady?" enquired that gentleman at last. "I ought to have written, I suppose. But I quite forgot you would all think I was dead. Never mind—I'm not!"
He blew his nose resonantly to substantiate his statement.
Joan, satisfied at last that he was real, and greatly relieved to find that she was not suffering from hysterical delusions arising from Hughie's brutal treatment of her, enquired severely of the truant where he had been for the last five years.
Jimmy Marrable told her. It was a long story, and the shadow of the copper beech had perceptibly lengthened by the time the narrator had embarked at Zanzibar for the port of Leith. They had the garden to themselves, for the Leroys were out.
"I don't want to hear any more adventures, because I'm simply bursting with questions," said Miss Gaymer frankly. "First of all, why did you go away? You rushed off in such a hurry thatyou had no time to explain. I was barely eighteen then."
"It was the old failing—the Marrable wandering tendency," replied her uncle. "I had kept it at bay quite easily for close on fifteen years, but it came back very hard and suddenly about that time."
"Why?"
"Partly, I think, because the only thing that had kept me at home all those years seemed to be slipping away from me."
"Iwasn't!" declared Miss Gaymer stoutly. Then she reflected. "Do you mean—all those silly boys? Was it them?"
"It was," said Jimmy Marrable. "They not only put my nose out of joint but they bored me to tears."
"You were always worth the whole lot of them put together, dear," said Miss Gaymer affectionately.
"I knew that," replied Jimmy Marrable modestly, "but I wasn't quite sure if you did. I saw that for the next two or three years you would be healthily and innocently employed in making fools of young men, and so could well afford to do without your old wreck of an uncle. The serious part would not come until you grew up to be of a marriageable age. So I decided in the meanwhile to treat myself to just one last potter round theglobe, and then, in a couple of years or so, come home and assume the onerous duties of chucker-out."
"Then why did you stay away so long?" demanded Miss Gaymer.
"Because I heard Hughie had come home," said Jimmy Marrable simply.
Joan started guiltily, and her hand, which was resting in one of the old gentleman's, relaxed its hold for a moment. Jimmy Marrable noticed nothing, and proceeded:—
"I got news of him from a man in Cape Town. His name was Allerton. He seemed a bit of a rolling stone, but had lately married the proprietress of a little public-house, Wynberg way, and was living in great contentment and affluence. His wife regarded his capture as the crowning achievement of her life, and altogether they were a most devoted couple. On hearing that my name was Marrable, he said he was sure I must be Hughie's uncle, as Hughie had told him I was the only relation he had. He was a gentleman, of sorts, and seemed to regard friend Hughie as a kind of cross between Providence and the Rock of Gibraltar. They had been through some rather tough times together—on board the Orinoco. I expect Hughie has often told you all about that?"
Joan shook her head.
"No? Well, it was like him not to. However,Allerton told me for a fact that Hughie was now home for good; so I knew then that my plans had worked out right after all, and that I need not hurry back. My little girl was safe."
He sighed contentedly, and patted Joan's hand.
"I'm a happy old fossil, Joey," he said. "I've always schemed in a clumsy way to bring this about, and now it has happened. 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends,' you know. And now, I suppose, you are mistress of this old house. How long have you been married?"
"We're not," said Joan in a very small voice.
"Not what?"
"Married."
She held up a ringless hand in corroboration. Jimmy Marrable inspected it.
"Where's your engagement ring?" he demanded.
Joan felt that there was a bad time coming—especially for Uncle Jimmy.
"We—we're not engaged," she faltered. Then she continued swiftly, for there was a look on Jimmy Marrable's brown and wrinkled face that frightened her, and she wanted to get explanations over: "Hughie and I didn't quite care for one another—in that way. No, I'm a liar.Ididn't care for Hughie in that way."
"He asked you, then?"
"Yes."
"And you—wouldn't—?"
Joan nodded. She suddenly felt unreasonably mean and despicable. She had declined to marry Hughie in all good faith, as she had a perfect right to do, for the very sufficient reason that she did not like him—or his way of putting things—well enough; and she had felt no particular compunction at the time in dealing the blow. But none of these reasons seemed any excuse for hurting Uncle Jimmy.
Since then, too, her feelings towards Hughie himself had altered to an extent which she was just beginning to realise. Of late she had found herself taking a quite peculiar interest in Hughie's movements. Why, she hardly knew. He paid her few attentions; he was habitually uncompromising in what he considered the execution of his duty; and he had made a shocking mess of her affairs. But—he was in trouble; people were down on him; and he had been her friend ever since she could remember.
Now Joan Gaymer, if she was nothing else, was loyal; and loyalty in a woman rather thrives on adversity than otherwise. And a woman's loyalty to a man who is her friend, if you endeavour to overstrain it or drive it into a corner, in nine cases out of ten will protect itself, Proteus-like, by turning into something entirely different, a somethingwhich is quite impervious to outward attack and can only be strained to breaking-point by one person—the man himself; and not always then, as countless undeserving husbands know. Joan's loyalty to Hughie was in some such process of transition. She thought about him a good deal, but she had never once faced the question of her ultimate relations with him. The modern maiden is not given to candid analysis of her own feelings towards members of the opposite sex,—she considers these exercises "Early Victorian," or "sentimental," or "effeminate"; and consequently Joan had never frankly asked herself what she really thought about Hughie Marrable. At times, say when she heard people speak ill of her deputy-guardian behind his back, she had been conscious that she was hot and angry; at others, when something occurred to bring home to her with special force the tribulations that Hughie was enduring, she had been conscious of a large and dim determination to "make it up to him," in some manner as yet undefined and at some time as yet unspecified. In short, like many a daughter of Eve before her, she had not known her own mind. She knew it now. Her heart smote her.
Suddenly Jimmy Marrable's voice broke in with the rather unexpected but not altogether unreasonable question:—
"Then if you aren't either engaged or marriedto Hughie, may I ask what the deuce you are doing in his house?"
"It isn't his house," replied Joan, recalling her wandering attention to the rather irascible figure by her side. "He has let it to the Leroys, and he and I are both staying here as guests just now."
"What on earth did the boy want to let the place for? Why couldn't you and the Leroys come and stay here ashisguests?"
"I think," said Miss Gaymer delicately, "that Hughie is—rather hard up."
"Hard up? Stuff! He has eight hundred a year, and enough coming in from the estate to make it pay its own way without any expense to him. How much more does he want?"
"I don't think Hughie is a very good business man," said Joan.
She made the remark in sincere defence of Hughie, just as a mother might say, "Ah, but he alwayshada weak chest!" when her offspring comes in last in the half-mile handicap. But Jimmy Marrable, being a man, took the suggestion as a reproach.
"Nonsense!" he said testily. "Hughie has as hard a head as any man I know. What do you mean by running him down? Have you any complaint to make of the way he has managedyouraffairs—eh?"
"None whatever," said Joan promptly.
"But—bless my soul!" cried Jimmy Marrable; "I forgot! You haven'tgot—" He paused, and appeared to be working out some abstruse problem in his head. "Look here, Joey," he continued presently, "if you aren't married to Hughie, what are you living on?"
Joan stared at him in astonishment.
"On the money you left behind for me," she said. "What else?"
The old gentleman regarded her intently for a moment, and then said:—
"Of course: I forgot. I suppose Hughie pays it to you quarterly."
"Yes—into my bank account," replied Miss Gaymer with a touch of pride.
"How much?"
"Is itquitefair to tell?" inquired Joan, instinctively protecting her fraudulent trustee.
"Of course. It was my money in the first instance. Go on—how much?"
"Four hundred a year," said Joan. "It was three hundred at first. Hughie told me you hadn't left as much as he expected, and that I should have to be careful. But Ursula Harbord—she is the girl I share a flat with: she is frightfully clever about money and business—told me to ask Hughie what interest I was getting on my capital, or something. I found out for her—four per cent, I think it was—and she said it wasn'tnearlyenough. There were things called preference shares, or something, that pay ten or twelve per cent; and Hughie must sell out at once, and buy these instead. What's the matter?"
Jimmy Marrable had suddenly choked.
"Nothing! Nothing!" he said, in some confusion. "A smart girl, this friend of yours! Takes a large size in boots and gloves, I should say, and acts as honorary treasurer to various charitable organisations! Twelve per cent! Aha!" He slapped himself feebly. "And what did Master Hughie say tothat?"
"I could see he didn't half like it," continued Joan; "but Ursula had declared that if I wouldn't allow her to speak to him, she would consult some responsible person; as she wassureHughie was mismanaging things disgracefully. So to keep her quiet I let her. I think Hughie saw there was something in what she said, though; because he immediately agreed to give me four hundred a year in future instead of three.Isit enough, Uncle Jimmy, or has poor Hughie really made a mess of things, as people say?Sayit's enough, Uncle Jimmy! Iknowhe did his best, and I'd rather go without—"
"Enough?"
Jimmy Marrable turned and scrutinised his ward closely, as if appraising her exact value. Certainly she was very lovely. He whistledsoftly, and nodded his head in an enigmatical manner.
"I'd have done it myself," he murmured darkly. "Enough?" he repeated aloud. "My little girl, do you know how much capital an income of four hundred a year represents?"
Joan shook her head. Her experience of finance was limited to signing a cheque in the proper corner.
"Well, about ten thousand pounds."
"Hoo!" said Miss Gaymer, pleasantly fluttered. "Have I got all that?"
"No."
"Oh! How much, then?"
Jimmy Marrable told her.
IN WHICH LOVE FLIES OUT OF THE WINDOW
Hughieclosed the door on Joan, and breathed a gentle sigh of relief. He was spoiling for a fight, and he had just got his hands free, so to speak. Brief but perfect satisfaction lay before him.
He resumed his position in front of the fire. Mr. Haliburton sat on an oak table and swung his legs.
"Now, Marrable—" began the latter briskly.
Hughie interrupted him.
"Mr. Haliburton," he said, "you heard my intimation to Miss Gaymer just now?"
"I did," said Mr. Haliburton.
"Well, I should like to repeat it to you. The marriage which has been arranged—by you—will not take place. That's all."
"That," replied Mr. Haliburton easily, "is a matter for Joan and myself—"
"We will refer to my ward as Miss Gaymer for the rest of this interview," said Hughie stiffly.
"Certainly. To resume. You see, Marrable, although you were appointed Miss Gaymer's guardian by the eccentric old gentleman who bears the same name as yourself, your authoritydoes not last for ever. I understand that the lady will shortly become her own mistress."
"She will."
"In which case she will have the control of her own property."
"That is so."
"Well,"—Mr. Haliburton paused, and flicked the ash off his cigarette,—"don't you think that this display of authority on your part, considering that it is subject to a time-limit, is rather ridiculous?"
"I have only one observation to make on that point," said Hughie coolly, "and that is, that I have made no display of authority of any kind."
"My dear sir," said Mr. Haliburton, raising his histrionic eyebrows, "aren't you forbidding the banns?"
"I have never forbidden anything. I have merely stated that the match will not come off."
"Don't let us quibble, man!" said Haliburton impatiently. He got off the table. "Look here, Marrable, there is no need for you and me to be mealy-mouthed in this matter. Let's be frank. You want this girl: so do I. She can't marry both of us, so she must pick one. She has picked me: I have her word for it. She says she cares for me more than any man in the world, and would tramp the roads with me. And I with her! Why, man—"
As he uttered these noble words Mr. Haliburton struck an attitude which many young women in the front row of the pit would have considered highly dramatic, but which merely struck the prejudiced and unsympathetic male before him as theatrical in the extreme.
"Drop it!" said Hughie. "You make me quite sick."
He spoke the truth. He did not know whether Haliburton's rhapsody rested on any assured foundation or not. But in any case Joan's fresh and innocent youth was a very sacred thing, and even the suggestion that she could have anything in common with this glorified super made him feel physically unwell.
Mr. Haliburton broke off, and smiled.
"Marrable," he said, almost genially, "we understand each other! I see you want plain English. I said just now that we were both fond of the girl. So we are. But I fancy we are both a bit fonder of her little bit of stuff—eh? Now, you have been handling the dibs for a matter of eighteen months, I understand. You have feathered your nest pretty comfortably, from all I hear. Don't be a dog in the manger! Let your friends into a good thing too!"
The mask was off with a vengeance. Hughie swallowed something and thanked God that, if his wanderings among mankind had taught himnothing else, they had taught him to hold himself in till the time came. He said:—
"Haliburton, I have told you several times that I do not forbid this engagement; because, as you have very acutely pointed out, myvetodoes not last for ever; but the match is not coming off, for all that. Before you go I will explain what I mean. I don't want to, because the consequences may be serious, both for Miss Gaymer and myself; but it will show you how absolutely determined I am to make a clean sweep of you.
"I should like to say in the first place that I should never have stood between Miss Gaymer andanyman, so long as I honestly thought he could make her happy—not even a man whom I personally would regard as an ass or an outsider. But there are limits to everything, and you strike me as being the limit in this case. I have been making inquiries about you, and I now know your antecedents fairly well. You apparently are an actor of sorts, though all the actors of my acquaintance look distinctly unwell when your name is mentioned. However, whatever you are, I should be sorry to see any woman in whom I take an interest compelled to spend even half an hour in your company. In fact, if you had not originally come down here as a friend of Lance Gaymer's,—over whom, by the way, I find you once had some hold,—I should haveasked Captain Leroy's permission to kick you out of the place some time ago!"
Mr. Haliburton looked a little uncomfortable. He held a good hand, but Hughie was obviously not bluffing. He had an uneasy feeling that there must be an unsuspected card out somewhere.
"To come to the main point," continued Hughie, "I want this engagement to be declared off byyou, not by me. What is your price?"
Mr. Haliburton breathed again. Bribery? Was that all? He replied briskly:—
"How much have you got?"
"Is a thousand pounds any use?" asked Hughie.
"Twenty might be," replied the lover.
"My limit," said Hughie, who was not a man to haggle about what Mr. Mantalini once described as "demnition coppers," "is five thousand pounds."
"Talk sense!" said Mr. Haliburton briefly.
"The offer," continued Hughie steadily, "is open for five minutes. If you accept it I will write you a cheque now, and you will sit down and write a letter formally breaking off, on your own initiative, any engagement or understanding you may have entered into with Miss Gaymer, and undertaking never to come near her again; and I will see she gets it. If not—well, you'll besorry, for you'll never make such a good bargain by any other means."
Haliburton eyed him curiously.
"Is this your own money you are offering me?" he said.
"It is," said Hughie, looking at his watch. "Three minutes left."
"Won't it make rather a hole in your capital account?"
"It will. In fact, hole won't be the word for it! But it will be worth it."
Intelligence dawned upon Mr. Haliburton.
"I see," he said slowly. "You expect to recoup yourself later, when—when the marriage settlements are drawn up, eh? Or perhaps," he added sarcastically, "eighteen months of careful trusteeship have put you in a position to afford this extravagance!"
Hughie was surprised at his own self-control. Only the little pulse which Joan had noticed beat assiduously in his right temple.
"Fifteen seconds!" he said. "Do you take this offer, Mr. Haliburton?"
"No."
"Right!" Hughie put his watch back into his pocket and regarded the misguided blackmailer before him rather in the manner of a benevolent policeman standing over a small boy with a cigarette.
"Your last few remarks," he said, "have been so offensive that I know you would not have had the pluck to make them unless you thought you had me absolutely under your thumb. But I may as well proceed to my final move, and terminate this interview. I am very averse to taking this particular step, because its results may be awkward, as I said, for Miss Gaymer. That is why I offered you practically all the available money I have to call the deal off. But I see I can't help myself. Now, Haliburton,—by the way, I forgot to mention that your real name is Spratt: you seem to have become a big fish since you took to fortune-hunting,—I am going to make you break off your engagement. I am going to pay you a high compliment. I am going to give you a piece of information, known only to myself and Miss Gaymer's banker, for which you will ultimately be very grateful, and the knowledge of which will cause you, when you get outside (which will be very soon now), to kick yourself for a blamed fool because you did not accept my first offer."
Mr. Haliburton-Spratt shuffled his feet a trifle uneasily, and Hughie continued:—
"You seem to be suffering from an aggravated attack of the prevailing impression that Miss Gaymer is an heiress. Her fortune has been variously estimated by tea-table experts at anything from forty to a hundred thousand pounds.I will now tell you what it really is. Get off the table: I want to open that dispatch-box."
Mr. Haliburton, conscious of a slight sinking sensation just below the second button of his waistcoat, moved as requested, and Hughie took out of the box a bank-book and a bulky letter.
"When I came home from abroad," he said, "I found this letter awaiting me. It is from my uncle. The following passage will interest you: '... I have realised practically all my personal estate, and have placed the cash to your credit on Joey's behalf'—Joey is the name," he explained punctiliously, "by which Miss Gaymer is known to her intimate friends—'at the Law Courts Branch of the Home Counties Bank.... The rest of my property is set down and duly disposed of in my will, and cannot be touched until my death is authenticated.'"
"I hope there was a respectable sum in the bank," said Mr. Haliburton, his spirits rising again.
Hughie opened the pass-book.
"When I went to the bank in question," he said, "and asked to be allowed to see the amount of my balance, I was handed this pass-book. From it you will gather the exact value of Miss Gaymer's fortune at the moment when I took over the management of her affairs."
He handed the book to Mr. Haliburton. Thatdevout lover glanced eagerly at the sum indicated on the balance-line—and turned a delicate green.
"You see?" said Hughie calmly, taking the book back. "One hundred pounds sterling! A poor exchange for five thousand, Mr. Haliburton!"
"Where is the money?" said Haliburton thickly.
"That I can't tell you. But you will see by the book and this duly endorsed cheque,"—he picked a pink slip out of the dispatch-box,—"that the sum of thirty-nine thousand, nine hundred pounds—the amount he had put in a few days before, less one hundred—was drawn out of the bank, in a lump, by my uncle himself the day before he sailed. Why he did it, I can't imagine. He must have changed his plans suddenly. All I know is that he has put me in a very tight place as a trustee, and you in a much tighter one as a suitor, Mr. Haliburton!"
He took the cheque from the hands of the demoralized Haliburton, and closed the dispatch-box.
There was a long silence. At length Hughie said:—
"I presume I may take it that you now desire to withdraw from this engagement?"
"You may!" said Mr. Haliburton emphatically.He was too deeply chagrined to play his part any longer.
Hughie surveyed him critically.
"You're a direct rascal, Spratt," he said; "you are no more hypocritical than you need be. But you're a rascal for all that. Well, I won't keep you. Good afternoon!"
But Mr. Haliburton's quick-moving brain had been taking in the altered situation, with its strong and weak points so far as he himself was concerned. He had not lived by his wits twenty years for nothing.
"I suppose," he observed, reseating himself on the corner of the writing-table, "it would be indiscreet to inquire from what source the young lady, with a capital of one hundred pounds sterling, is at present deriving an income of apparently three or four hundred a year?"
"Not only indiscreet, but positively unhealthy," said Hughie, turning a dusky red. His fingers were curling and uncurling.
Mr. Haliburton directed upon him what can only be described as a depredatory eye.
"Don't you think, Mr. Marrable," he said, "that it would be a good thing to—squareme? I could do with that five thousand. This is a censorious world, you know; and scandalous little yarns are apt to get about when a young lady accepts—Hrrrumph!"
It was the last straw. Hughie's iron restraint snapped at last. Both his and Mr. Haliburton's impressions of the next few moments were distinctly blurred, but at the end of that period Hughie, breathing heavily and feeling as if he had just won a valuable prize in a consolation race, found himself facing Jimmy Marrable, who had entered the door just as Love (as represented by Mr. Haliburton) flew out of the window.
"Hallo, Hughie!"
"Hallo, Uncle Jimmy! Half a mo'!"
Mr. Haliburton, seated dizzily in a rose-bed in the garden, heard Hughie's step returning to the French window above his head. A walking-stick suddenly speared itself in the soil beside him, and a pair of gloves and a Homburg hat pattered delicately down upon his upturned countenance; while Hughie's voice intimated that there was a swift and well-cushioned train back to town at six-twenty.
Then, closing the window and leaving Mr. Haliburton to extract himself tenderly from his bed of roses, cursing feebly the while and ruminating bitterly upon the unreliability of proverbial expressions, Hughie turned to the room again. It had just occurred to him that in the heat of the moment he had been a trifle cavalier in his reception of a relative whom he had not seen for ten years, and who he imagined had been dead for four.
Half an hour later Jimmy Marrable enquired:—
"Would it be too much to ask whom you were throwing out of the window when I came in?"
"Friend of Joey's," said Hughie briefly. "And now, Uncle Jimmy," he added, with clouding brow,—the joy of battle was overpast, and the horizon was dark with the wings of all kinds of chickens coming home to roost,—"I should like to inform you that you and your financial methods have put me in a devil of a hole. I want an explanation."
"Right. Fire away!"
"Well, when I took on the job bequeathed to me by you of administering Joan's affairs, I discovered that instead of being an heiress, the child was practically penniless. For some idiotic reason best known to yourself, you no sooner put money into the bank for her than you dragged it all out again. Consequently I discovered that I was booked to manage the affairs of a girl whom everybody thought to be the possessor of pots of money, but whose entire capital"—he picked up the pass-book—"amounted in reality to one hundred pounds sterling."
"Correct!" said Jimmy Marrable. "Proceed!"
"If," continued Hughie in an even and businesslike tone, "Joan had been prepared to marryme, the money wouldn't have mattered, as she could have had mine. Unfortunately that event did not occur."
"Did she know she hadn't any money when you asked her to marry you?" enquired Jimmy Marrable.
"No."
"And did she go on refusing you after you had informed her she was a pauper?"
Hughie had seen this question coming from afar. He turned a delicate carmine. His uncle surveyed him, and nodded comprehendingly.
"Quite so!" he said. "Quite so! You never told her."
"No," said Hughie, "I hadn't the heart. It seemed like—like trying to coerce her into marrying me. No, I just let her imagine that she had a tidy little fortune invested, and that she could live on the interest—three hundred a year. I—I found that sum for her, and she took it all right. After all, she was a woman, and women will swallow almost anything you tell them about money matters. If they jib at all, all you have to do is to surround yourself with a cloud of technicalities, and they cave in at once. I think Joey was alittlesurprised at not getting more, for she had thought herself a bit of an heiress; but she never said a word. In fact, she was so kind about it that I saw she was convinced I hadmade a mess of things somewhere, and must be protected accordingly. She put it all down to my usual incompetence, I suppose,—as far as I can see, she considers me a born fool,—and accepted the situation loyally."
"She would do that," said Jimmy Marrable.
"Well," continued Hughie, "Joan was all right, but everybody else was the devil. An awful girl friend of hers, called Harbord—"
"I know—twelve per cent!" gurgled Jimmy Marrable.
"Yes. Well, she came and gave me beans to begin with. Then young Lance began to suspect me,—he never could stand me at any price,—and he came and raised Cain one day at a luncheon party I was giving—but, by the way, that's all right now; Lance has come round completely. Even the Leroys couldn't conceal their conviction that I had made a bungle somewhere—an honest bungle, of course, but a bungle. And finally an unutterable sweep called Haliburton came along. I knew something of him—so much, in fact, that it never occurred to me that there was anything to fear from him. But he got the master-grip on me when every one else had failed. Joey—our Joey—fell in love with him and promised to marry him!"
"I have heard nothing of this. What sort of fellow is he?" enquired Jimmy Marrable.
"Much the same type, I should say, as the late lamented Gaymer, senior."
"Are you sure—about her falling in love?" continued Jimmy Marrable, in a puzzled voice.
"Looks like it," said Hughie. "I was away yesterday, and got back early this morning. I found a note from Joey on my dressing-table, saying that Haliburton had proposed to her, and that she was sending him along to me to ask for my consent. She wouldn't have gone as far as that if she didn't—if she didn't"—His voice shook. "It was a pill for me, Uncle Jimmy!"
"What did you do?" said Jimmy Marrable.
"I did this. I knew quite well that if Joey—loved him"—the words came from between his clenched teeth—"she would stick to him, blackguard or not. She's that sort."
"She is. Well?"
"I came to the conclusion that if there was to be a rupture of the engagement it must come from him."
"You made him break it off?"
"Yes."
"How? By throwing him out of the window?"
"No. That would have been no good if he was really after her money. I simply told him the truth—the whole truth—about her bank balance, and so on. That did it. He backed out all right."
Jimmy Marrable rubbed his hands.
"And then?"
"And then ideas began to occur to him—"
"Exactly. He began to ask questions—to make innuendoes—"
"Yes. I then threw him out of the window. It was some consolation. That is the story."
Hughie turned away, and gazed dejectedly into the fender. Presently Jimmy Marrable remarked:—
"And meanwhile the fat is in the fire?"
"It is," said Hughie bitterly. "Uncle Jimmy, whatwillshe think? Everything is bound to come out now,—that fellow will run about telling everybody,—and when she hears of the cruel position I've placed her in she'll never speak to me again. We shan't even be ordinary good friends now. Poor little girl! I've done her the worst turn a man can do a woman; and I would havediedfor her—cheerfully!"
Hughie leaned against the tall mantelpiece and dropped his head upon his arms. "Joey! Joey!" he murmured to himself, very softly.
Jimmy Marrable retired to a remote corner of the room, where he spent some time selecting a cigar from Jack Leroy's private locker. Presently he returned. Observing that his nephew was apparently not quite ready to resume the conversation, he spent some time in lighting thecigar, bridging over the silence with a rumbling soliloquy.
"It is a blessing to be back on dry land again," he observed, "where cigars will keep in decent condition. No more green weeds for me! What I like is a good crisp Havana that splits open if you squeeze the end, instead of—"
Hughie once more stood erect on the hearthrug. The fit had passed.
Jimmy Marrable eyed him curiously.
"Hughie, boy," he said, "it was a mad, mad scheme. Why did you do it?"
Hughie turned upon him, and blazed out suddenly.
"Why?" he cried. "Because there was nothing else to do! Do you think I would let our Joey—no, damn it!myJoey—go out as a governess or a chorus-girl—yes, she actually suggestedthat!—when I could keep her happy and comfortable by telling one little white lie? It may have been a mad thing to do; but it was a choice of evils, and I'd do it again! So stuff that up your cigar and smoke it!"
"Silly young owl!" remarked Jimmy Marrable. He lit his cigar with fastidious care, and continued:—
"I suppose you want an explanation frommenow?"
"Yes."
"Well, the withdrawal of that money was an eleventh-hour notion. It suddenly occurred to me that you, with your imbecile ideas about honour and filthy lucre, and so forth, might feel squeamish about making love to a girl with a fat bank balance. So just before I sailed I drew the money out, imagining that by so doing I should be removing the only obstacle to a happy union between you and Joey. The entire affair was intended to be a walk-over for you. Between us, we seem to have made a bonny mess of things. Hughie, we Marrables are not cut out for feminine fancywork."
"What is to be done now?" said Hughie gloomily.
"I have thought of that," said Jimmy Marrable. "When a man gets in a hopeless tangle of any kind, his best plan is to ask a woman to help him out. That is what we shall have to do. Wait here a few minutes."
He turned towards the door.
"Mildred Leroy won't be in for half an hour yet," called Hughie after him, "so it's no good looking for her."
"All right!" replied Jimmy Marrable's voice far up the stairs.
SINFUL WASTE OF A PENNY STAMP
Tenminutes passed. Hughie, leaning heavily against the frame of the French window, gazed listlessly out at a squirrel which was inviting him to a game of hide-and-seek from the far side of a tree-trunk.
"One thing," he mused,—"I shall be able to go abroad again now. No more of this—"
There was the faintest perceptible rustle behind him. Joan must have come in very quietly, for the door was shut and she was sitting on the corner of the writing-table,—exactly where the recently-departed Haliburton had been posing,—swinging her feet and surveying her late guardian's back. In her hand she held a pink slip of paper.
Hughie never forgot the picture that she presented at that moment. She was dressed in white—something workmanlike and unencumbering—with a silver filigree belt around her waist. She wore a battered Panama hat—the sort of headgear affected by "coons" of the music-hall persuasion—with a wisp of pale blue silk twisted round it. The evening sun, streaming through themost westerly of the windows, glinted on her hair, her belt, and the silver buckles on her shoes. Hughie caught his breath.
Joan spoke first.
"Here's something for you, Hughie," she said.
Hughie took the proffered slip of paper. It was a cheque, made out to himself and signed by Jimmy Marrable.
"I think that covers all the expense to which you have been put on my account while Uncle Jimmy has been away," said Joan. Her voice sounded gruff and businesslike.
Hughie examined the cheque. "Yes," he said, "it does."
"It was very good of you," said Joan formally, "to advance me so much money. I had no idea you were doing it. Apparently you might never have got it back again."
Hughie gazed at her curiously. He began to grasp the situation. He was to be whitewashed: the compromising past was to be decently buried, and "Temporary Loan" was to be its epitaph.
"Never mind that," he said awkwardly. "All in the day's work, you know! Afraid I was a rotten trustee."
Suddenly Joan's demeanour changed.
"And now, my man," she said briskly, "will you be good enough to explain what you mean by compromising a lady in this way?"
Hughie looked at her for a moment in dismay. Then he saw that her eyes were twinkling, and he heaved a sudden sigh of incredulous relief. He was forgiven!
"Joey!" he said,—"Joey, you mean to say you're not angry?"
"Furious!" replied Miss Gaymer, smiling in her old friendly fashion.
"Thank God!" said Hughie.
Miss Gaymer changed the subject, rather hurriedly.
"There's something else I want to ask you," she said. "Will you kindly inform me what has become of my—ahem!—young man?"
"Who?" said Hughie. "Oh,thatchap? He is gone."
"Gone? Where?"
"London, I should think."
"Why?"
"In the first place, because I told him about your—I mean—I wouldn't advise you to ask me, Joey. You see—I should hate—"
"You would hate," said Miss Gaymer, coming to his rescue, "to say 'I told you so!' I know, Hughie. It's like you, and I love you for it."
Hughie winced. These colloquial terms of endearment are sometimes rather tantalising. Still, he must not mind that. The girl, too, had had herdisappointment, and was bearing herself bravely. At least—
"Joey," he said suddenly, "did youreallycare for that bloke?"
The lady on the table stiffened suddenly.
"What—that poisonous bounder?" She rolled up her eyes. "My che-ild!"
"But you let him make love to you."
"DidI? I suppose you were there," observed Miss Gaymer witheringly, "disguised as a Chinese lantern!"
"Well, whatdidyou do, then?"
"He asked me to be his blushing bride," said the unfeeling Miss Gaymer, "and tried to grab my hand. I squinted down my nose, and looked very prim and sweet, and thought we had better be getting back to the ballroom, and he could talk to Mr. Marrable in the morning. If that's your idea of allowing people to makelove, dear friend—"
"But you—you—promised to marry him!" said poor Hughie.
Joan stared at him.
"Do you mean to tell me, Hughie," she said slowly, "that he told youthat?"
"Yes—with one or two corroborative details. That was why I had to tell him—everything, you know. It was the only way, I thought, to choke him off."
"O—o—oh!" Miss Gaymer wriggled indignantly. "The creature! And when he heard I had no money, he cried off?"
Hughie bowed his head. Joan gave a low gurgling laugh.
"There's no getting over it, Hughie!" she said. "He scored. A nasty slap for little me! But I deserved it, for trying to trifle with his young affections. Well, you have given me one reason for his departure. What was the other?"
Hughie eyed her in some embarrassment. Then he said,—
"He began to talk about you, Joey, in a way I didn't like, so I—"
His eye slid round towards the window, and then downward in the direction of his right foot. A smile crept over his troubled face, and he glanced at Joan.
"Oh, Hughie,didyou?" she exclaimed rapturously.
"Yes. He landed in that rose-bed. Look!"
Joey shuffled off the table and joined him by the window. A few feet below them, on the rose-bed, lay the unmistakable traces of the impact of a body falling from rest with an acceleration due to something more than the force of gravity.
Joan cooed softly, evidently well pleased. Hughie turned and regarded her with a puzzled expression. No man ever yet fathomed the workingsof the feminine mind, but he never quite gives up trying to do so.
"Are you glad that he got thrown out?" he asked.
Joan pondered.
"It's not exactly that," she said. "I'm not glad he was thrown out: it must have hurt him, poor dear! But I'm glad you threw him out, if you understand the difference."
Hughie was not at all sure that he did, but he nodded his head in a comprehending manner. Then he continued:—
"Tell me, Joey, if you didn't care for him, why did you send him to me, instead of giving him the knock direct?"
Joey surveyed her retired "warder" with eyes half-closed.
"Well," she said reflectively, "there were heaps of reasons, but you are a man and wouldn't understand any of them. But, roughly speaking, it was because I wanted to see how you would handle him. I knew you wouldn't let him marry me, of course, but I wanted to see how you would play your cards. (You simply don'tknowhow fascinating these things are to watch.) Besides, I thought it would be good for him to come face to face with—aman," she added, almost below her breath.
"I only got the best of him," said Hughiehumbly, "by laying all my cards on the table. There's not muchfinesserequired for a game like that."
"Still, you won," said Joan.
Hughie sighed.
"Haliburton lost, if you like," he said; "I don't quite see whatI—"
"No—youwon!" said a very small but very insistent voice by his side.
Hughie turned sharply. Miss Gaymer was breathing expansively upon the glass of the window, and assiduously scribbling a pattern thereon with her finger—an infantile and unladylike habit of which her nurse thought she had cured her at the age of eight. Also, her cheeks were aglow, and that with a richness of colouring which sufficed to convey some glimmerings of intelligence even into the brain of the obtuse young man beside her. Hughie suddenly felt something inside his head begin to buzz. His gigantic right hand (which still contained Jimmy Marrable's cheque tucked in between two fingers) closed cautiously but comprehensively upon Joan's left, which was resting on the window-frame, much as a youthful entomologist's net descends upon an unwary butterfly.
"Joey," he said unsteadily,—"Joey, what do you mean?"
Miss Gaymer sighed, in the resigned but perseveringfashion of a patient Sunday-school teacher. Then she slipped her hand from under Hughie's, extracting as she did so the folded cheque from between his fingers. Hughie watched her dumbly.
Joan unfolded the cheque, and perused it in a valedictory sort of manner. Then she kissed it softly. Then she tore it up very slowly into small pieces.
She sighed again pensively, and said:—
"There goes my ransom! It's a wicked waste—of a cheque-stamp! Now," she added cheerfully, "I am compromised worse than ever. Hughie, dear, Ireallythink, after this, that you'll have to—Ough! Hughie!Hughie!"
For blind, groping Hughie's eyes were open at last. With an exultant whole-hearted roar he initiated a sudden enveloping movement; and then, turning away from the fierce light that beats upon actions performed at a window, strode majestically (if rather top-heavily) towards a great leather sofa in a secluded corner beyond the fireplace. The scandalised Miss Gaymer, owing to circumstances over which she had no control, accompanied him.