I
A man whose uncle jerks him away from London as if he were picking a winkle out of its shell with a pin and keeps him for months and months immured in the heart of Worcestershire must inevitably lose touch with the swiftly-changing kaleidoscope of metropolitan night-life. Nothing in a big city fluctuates more rapidly than the status of its supper-dancing clubs; and Hugo, had he still been a lad-about-town in good standing, would have been aware that recently the Mustard Spoon had gone down a good deal in the social scale. Society had migrated to other, newer institutions, leaving it to become the haunt of the lesser ornaments of the stage and the Portuguese, the Argentines and the Greeks.
To John Carroll, however, as he stood waiting in the lobby, the place seemed sufficiently gay and glittering. Nearly a year had passed since his last visit to London: and the Mustard Spoon rather impressed him. An unseen orchestra was playing with extraordinary vigour, and from time to time ornate persons of both sexes drifted past him into the brightly lighted supper room. Where an established connoisseur of night clubs would have pursed his lips and shaken his head, John was conscious only of feeling decidedly uplifted and exhilarated.
But then he was going to see Pat again, and that was enough to stimulate any man.
She arrived unexpectedly, at a moment when he had taken his eye off the door to direct it in mild astonishment at a lady in an orange dress who, doubtless with the best motives, had dyed her hair crimson and was wearing a black-rimmed monocle. So absorbed was he with this spectacle that he did not see her enter, and was only made aware of her presence when there spoke from behind him a clear little voice which, even when it was laughing at you, always seemed to have in it something of the song of larks on summer mornings and winds whispering across the fields in spring.
"Hullo, Johnnie."
The hair, scarlet though it was, lost its power to attract. The appeal of the monocle waned. John spun round.
"Pat!"
She was looking lovelier than ever. That was the thing that first presented itself to John's notice. If anybody had told him that Pat could possibly be prettier than the image of her which he had been carrying about with him all these months, he would not have believed him. But so it was. Some sort of a female with plucked eyebrows and a painted face had just come in, and she might have been put there expressly for purposes of comparison. She made Pat seem so healthy, so wholesome, such a thing of the open air and the clean sunshine, so pre-eminently fit. She looked as if she had spent her time at Le Touquet playing thirty-six holes of golf a day.
"Pat!" cried John, and something seemed to catch at his throat. There was a mist in front of his eyes. His heart was thumping madly.
She extended her hand composedly. In her this meeting after long separation had apparently stirred no depths. Her demeanour was friendly, but matter-of-fact.
"Well, Johnnie. How nice to see you again. You're looking very brown and rural. Where's Hugo?"
It takes two to hoist a conversation to an emotional peak. John choked, and became calmer.
"He'll be here soon, I expect," he said.
Pat laughed indulgently.
"Hugo'll be late for his own funeral—if he ever gets to it. He said eleven-fifteen and it's twenty-five to twelve. Have you got a table?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
"I'm not a member," said John, and saw in her eyes the scorn which women reserve for male friends and relations who show themselves wanting in enterprise. "You have to be a member," he said, chafing under the look.
"I don't," said Pat with decision. "If you think I'm going to wait all night for old Hugo in a small lobby with six draughts whizzing through it, correct that impression. Go and find the head waiter and get a table while I leave my cloak. Back in a minute."
John's emotions as he approached the head waiter rather resembled those with which years ago he had once walked up to a bull in a field, Pat having requested him to do so because she wanted to know if bulls in fields really are fierce or if the artists who depict them in comic papers are simply trying to be funny. He felt embarrassed and diffident. The head waiter was a large, stout, smooth-faced man who would have been better for a couple of weeks at Healthward Ho, and he gave the impression of having disliked John from the start.
John said it was a nice evening. The head waiter did not seem to believe him.
"Has—er—has Mr. Carmody booked a table?" asked John.
"No, monsieur."
"I'm meeting him here to-night."
The head waiter appeared uninterested. He began to talk to an underling in rapid French. John, feeling more than ever an intruder, took advantage of a lull in the conversation to make another attempt.
"I wonder.... Perhaps.... Can you give me a table?"
Most of the head waiter's eyes were concealed by the upper strata of his cheeks, but there was enough of them left visible to allow him to look at John as if he were something unpleasant that had come to light in a portion of salad.
"Monsieur is a member?"
"Er—no."
"If you will please wait in the lobby, thank you."
"But I was wondering...."
"If you will wait in the lobby, please," said the head waiter, and, dismissing John from the scheme of things, became gruesomely obsequious to an elderly man with diamond studs, no hair, an authoritative manner, and a lady in pink. He waddled before them into the supper room, and Pat reappeared.
"Got that table?"
"I'm afraid not. He says...."
"Oh, Johnnie, you are maddening. Why are you so helpless?"
Women are unjust in these matters. When a man comes into a night club of which he is not a member and asks for a table he feels that he is butting in, and naturally is not at his best. This is not helplessness, it is fineness of soul. But women won't see that.
"I'm awfully sorry."
The head waiter had returned, and was either doing sums or drawing caricatures on a large pad chained to a desk. He seemed so much the artist absorbed in his work that John would not have dreamed of venturing to interrupt him. Pat had no such delicacy.
"I want a table, please," said Pat.
"Madame is a member?"
"A table, please. A nice, large one. I like plenty of room. And when Mr. Carmody arrives tell him that Miss Wyvern and Mr. Carroll are inside."
"Very good, madame. Certainly, madame. This way, madame."
Just as simple as that! John, making a physically impressive but spiritually negligible tail to the procession, wondered, as he crossed the polished floor, how Pat did these things. It was not as if she were one of those massive, imperious women whom you would naturally expect to quell head waiters with a glance. She was no Cleopatra, no Catherine of Russia—just a slim, slight girl with a tip-tilted nose. And yet she had taken this formidable magnifico in her stride, kicked him lightly in the face, and passed on. He sat down, thrilled with a worshipping admiration.
Pat, as always happened after one of her little spurts of irritability, was apologetic.
"Sorry I bit your head off, Johnnie," she said. "It was a shame, after you had come all this way just to see an old friend. But it makes me so angry when you're meek and sheep-y and let people trample on you. Still I suppose it's not your fault." She smiled across at him. "You always were a slow, good-natured old thing, weren't you, like one of those big dogs that come and bump their head on your lap and snuffle. Poor old Johnnie!"
John felt depressed. The picture she had conjured up was not a flattering one; and, as for this "Poor Old Johnnie!" stuff, it struck just the note he most wanted to avoid. If one thing is certain in the relations of the sexes, it is that the Poor Old Johnnies of this world get nowhere. But before he could put any of these feelings into words Pat had changed the subject.
"Johnnie," she said, "what's all this trouble between your uncle and Father? I had a letter from Father a couple of weeks ago, and as far as I could make out Mr. Carmody seems to have been trying to murder him. What's it all about?"
Not so eloquently, nor with such a wealth of imagery as Colonel Wyvern had employed in sketching out the details of the affair of the dynamite outrage for the benefit of Chas. Bywater, Chemist, John answered the question.
"Good heavens!" said Pat.
"I—I hope...." said John.
"What do you hope?"
"Well, I—I hope it's not going to make any difference?"
"Difference? How do you mean?"
"Between us. Between you and me, Pat."
"What sort of difference?"
John had his cue.
"Pat, darling, in all these years we've known one another haven't you ever guessed that I've been falling more and more in love with you every minute? I can't remember a time when I didn't love you. I loved you as a kid in short skirts and a blue jersey. I loved you when you came back from that school of yours, looking like a princess. And I love you now more than I have ever loved you. I worship you, Pat darling. You're the whole world to me, just the one thing that matters the least little bit. And don't you try to start laughing at me again now, because I've made up my mind that, whatever else you laugh at, you've got to take me seriously. I may have been Poor Old Johnnie in the past, but the time has come when you've got to forget all that. I mean business. You're going to marry me, and the sooner you make up your mind to it, the better."
That was what John had intended to say. What he actually did say was something briefer and altogether less effective.
"Oh, I don't know," said John.
"Do you mean you're afraid I'm going to stop being friends with you just because my father and your uncle have had a quarrel?"
"Yes," said John. It was not quite all he had meant, but it gave the general idea.
"What a weird notion! After all these years? Good heavens, no. I'm much too fond of you, Johnnie."
Once more John had his cue. And this time he was determined that he would not neglect it. He stiffened his courage. He cleared his throat. He clutched the tablecloth.
"Pat...."
"Oh, there's Hugo at last," she said, looking past him. "And about time. I'm starving. Hullo! Who are the people he's got with him? Do you know them?"
John heaved a silent sigh. Yes, he could have counted on Hugo arriving at just this moment. He turned, and perceived that unnecessary young man crossing the floor. With him were a middle-aged man and a younger and extremely dashing-looking girl. They were complete strangers to John.
II
Hugo pranced buoyantly up to the table, looking like the Laughing Cavalier, clean-shaved.
He was wearing the unmistakable air of a man who has been to a welter-weight boxing contest at the Albert Hall and backed the winner.
"Hullo, Pat," he said jovially. "Hullo, John. Sorry I'm late. Mitt—if that is the word I want—my dear old friend ... I've forgotten your name," he added, turning to his companion.
"Molloy, brother. Thomas G. Molloy."
Hugo's dear old friend spoke in a deep, rich voice, well in keeping with his appearance. He was a fine, handsome, open-faced person in the early forties, with grizzled hair that swept in a wave off a massive forehead. His nationality was plainly American, and his aspect vaguely senatorial.
"Molloy," said Hugo, "Thomas G. and daughter. This is Miss Wyvern. And this is my cousin, Mr. Carroll. And now," said Hugo, relieved at having finished with the introductions, "let's try to get a bit of supper."
The service at the Mustard Spoon is not what it was; but by the simple process of clutching at the coat tails of a passing waiter and holding him till he consented to talk business Hugo contrived to get fairly rapid action. Then, after an interval of the rather difficult conversation which usually marks the first stages of this sort of party, the orchestra burst into a sudden torrent of what it evidently mistook for music and Thomas G. Molloy rose and led Miss Molloy out on to the floor. He danced a little stiffly, but he knew how to give the elbow and he appeared, as the crowd engulfed him, to be holding his own.
"Who are your friends, Hugo?" asked Pat.
"Thos. G...."
"Yes, I know. But who are they?"
"Well, there," said Hugo, "you rather have me. I sat next to Thos. at the fight, and I rather took to the fellow. He seemed to me a man full of noble qualities, including a looney idea that Eustace Rodd was some good as a boxer. He actually offered to give me three to one, and I cleaned up substantially at the end of the seventh round. After that, I naturally couldn't very well get out of giving the man supper. And as he had promised to take his daughter out to-night, I said bring her along. You don't mind?"
"Of course not. Though it would have been cosier, just we three."
"Quite true. But never forget that, if it had not been for this Thos., you would not be getting the jolly good supper which I have now ample funds to supply. You may look on Thos. as practically the Founder of the Feast." He cast a wary eye at his cousin, who was leaning back in his chair with the abstracted look of one in deep thought. "Has old John said anything to you yet?"
"John? What do you mean? What about?"
"Oh, things in general. Come and dance this. I want to have a very earnest word with you, young Pat. Big things are in the wind."
"You're very mysterious."
"Ah!" said Hugo.
Left alone at the table with nothing to entertain him but his thoughts, John came almost immediately to the conclusion that his first verdict on the Mustard Spoon had been an erroneous one. Looking at it superficially, he had mistaken it for rather an attractive place: but now, with maturer judgment, he saw it for what it was—a blot on a great city. It was places like the Mustard Spoon that made a man despair of progress. He disliked the clientèle. He disliked the head waiter. He disliked the orchestra. The clientèle was flashy and offensive and, as regarded the male element of it, far too given to the use of hair oil. The head waiter was a fat parasite who needed kicking. And, as for Ben Baermann's Collegiate Buddies, he resented the fact that they were being paid for making the sort of noises which he, when a small boy, had produced—for fun and with no thought of sordid gain—on a comb with a bit of tissue paper over it.
He was brooding on the scene in much the same spirit of captious criticism as that in which Lot had once regarded the Cities of the Plain, when the Collegiate Buddies suddenly suspended their cacophony, and he saw Pat and Hugo coming back to the table.
But the Buddies had only been crouching, the better to spring. A moment later they were at it again, and Pat, pausing, looked expectantly at Hugo.
Hugo shook his head.
"I've just seen Ronnie Fish up in the balcony," he said. "I positively must go and confer with him. I have urgent matters to discuss with the old leper. Sit down and talk to John. You've got lots to talk about. See you anon. And, if there's anything you want, order it, paying no attention whatever to the prices in the right-hand column. Thanks to Thos., I'm made of money to-night."
Hugo melted away: Pat sat down: and John, with another abrupt change of mood, decided that he had misjudged the Mustard Spoon. A very jolly little place, when you looked at it in the proper spirit. Nice people, a distinctly lovable head waiter, and as attractive a lot of musicians as he remembered ever to have seen. He turned to Pat, to seek her confirmation of these views, and, meeting her gaze, experienced a rather severe shock. Her eyes seemed to have frozen over. They were cold and hard. Taken in conjunction with the fact that her nose turned up a little at the end, they gave her face a scornful and contemptuous look.
"Hullo!" he said, alarmed. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"Why are you looking like that?"
"Like what?"
"Well...."
John had little ability as a word painter. He could not on the spur of the moment give anything in the nature of detailed description of the way Pat was looking. He only knew he did not like it.
"I suppose you expected me to look at you 'with eyes overrunning with laughter'?"
"Eh?"
"'Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes overrunning with laughter said in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"'"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you knowThe Courtship of Miles Standish? I thought that must have been where you got the idea. I had to learn chunks of it at school, and even at that tender age I always thought Miles Standish a perfect goop. 'If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, Why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me? If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.' And yards more of it. I knew it by heart once. Well, what I want to know is, do you expect my answer direct, or would you prefer that I communicated with your agent?"
"I don't understand."
"Don't you? No? Really?"
"Pat, what's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing much. When we were dancing just now, Hugo proposed to me."
A cold hand clutched at John's heart. He had not a high opinion of his cousin's fascinations, but the thought of anybody but himself proposing to Pat was a revolting one.
"Oh, did he?'
"Yes, he did. For you."
"For me? How do you mean, for me?"
"I'm telling you. He asked me to marry you. And very eloquent he was, too. All the people who heard him—and there must have been dozens who did—were much impressed."
She stopped: and, as far as such a thing is possible at the Mustard Spoon when Baermann's Collegiate Buddies are giving an encore of "My Sweetie Is A Wow," there was silence. Emotion of one sort or another had deprived Pat of words: and, as for John, he was feeling as if he could never speak again.
He had flushed a dusky red, and his collar had suddenly become so tight that he had all the sensations of a man who is being garrotted. And so powerfully had the shock of this fearful revelation affected his mind that his only coherent thought was a desire to follow Hugo up to the balcony, tear him limb from limb, and scatter the fragments onto the tables below.
Pat was the first to find speech. She spoke quickly, stormily.
"I can't understand you, Johnnie. You never used to be such a jellyfish. You did have a mind of your own once. But now ... I believe it's living at Rudge all the time that has done it. You've got lazy and flabby. It's turned you into a vegetable. You just loaf about and go on and on, year after year, having your three fat meals a day and your comfortable rooms and your hot-water bottle at night...."
"I don't!" cried John, stung by this monstrous charge from the coma which was gripping him.
"Well, bed socks, then," amended Pat. "You've just let yourself be cosseted and pampered and kept in comfort till the You that used to be there has withered away and you've gone blah. My dear, good Johnnie," said Pat vehemently, riding over his attempt at speech and glaring at him above a small, perky nose whose tip had begun to quiver even as it had always done when she lost her temper as a child. "My poor, idiotic, flabby, fat-headed Johnnie, do you seriously expect a girl to want to marry a man who hasn't the common, elementary pluck to propose to her for himself and has to get someone else to do it for him?"
"I didn't!"
"You did."
"I tell you I did not."
"You mean you never asked Hugo to sound me out?"
"Of course not. Hugo is a meddling, officious idiot, and if I'd got him here now, I'd wring his neck."
He scowled up at the balcony. Hugo, who happened to be looking down at the moment, beamed encouragingly and waved a friendly hand as if to assure his cousin that he was with him in spirit. Silence, tempered by the low wailing of the Buddy in charge of the saxophone and the unpleasant howling of his college friends, who had just begun to sing the chorus, fell once more.
"This opens up a new line of thought," said Pat at length. "Our Miss Wyvern appears to have got the wires crossed," she looked at him meditatively. "It's funny. Hugo seemed so convinced about the way you felt."
John's collar tightened up another half inch, but he managed to get his vocal chords working.
"He was quite right about the way I felt."
"You mean.... Really?"
"Yes."
"You mean you're ... fond of me?"
"Yes."
"But, Johnnie!"
"Damn it, are you blind?" cried John, savage from shame and the agony of harrowed feelings, not to mention a collar which appeared to have been made for a man half his size. "Can't you see? Don't you know I've always loved you? Yes, even when you were a kid."
"But, Johnnie, Johnnie, Johnnie!" Distress was making Pat's silver voice almost squeaky. "You can't have done. I was a horrible kid. I did nothing but bully you from morning till night."
"I liked it."
"But how can you want me to marry you? We know each other too well. I've always looked on you as a sort of brother."
There are words in the language which are like a knell. Keats considered "forlorn" one of them. John Carroll was of opinion that "brother" was a second.
"Oh, I know. I was a fool. I knew you would simply laugh at me."
Pat's eyes were misty. The tip of her nose no longer quivered, but now it was her mouth that did so. She reached out across the table and her hand rested on his for a brief instant.
"I'm not laughing at you, Johnnie, you—you chump. What would I want to laugh at you for? I'm much nearer crying. I'd do anything in the world rather than hurt you. You must know that. You're the dearest old thing that ever lived. There's no one on earth I'm fonder of." She paused. "But this ... it—it simply isn't on the board."
She was looking at him, furtively, taking advantage of the fact that his face was turned away and his eyes fixed on the broad, swallow-tailed back of Mr. Ben Baermann. It was odd, she felt, all very odd. If she had been asked to describe the sort of man whom one of these days she hoped to marry, the description, curiously enough, would not have been at all unlike dear old Johnnie. He had the right clean, fit look—she knew she could never give a thought to anything but an outdoor man—and the straightness and honesty and kindliness which she had come, after moving for some years in a world where they were rare, to look upon as the highest of masculine qualities. Nobody could have been farther than John from the little, black-moustached dancing-man type which was her particular aversion, and yet ... well, the idea of becoming his wife was just simply too absurd and that was all there was to it.
But why? What, then, was wrong with Johnnie? Simply, she felt, the fact that he was Johnnie. Marriage, as she had always envisaged it, was an adventure. Poor cosy, solid old Johnnie would have to display quite another side of himself, if such a side existed, before she could regard it as an adventure to marry him.
"That man," said John, indicating Mr. Baermann, "looks like a Jewish black beetle."
Pat was relieved. If by this remark he was indicating that he wished the recent episode to be taken as concluded, she was very willing to oblige him.
"Doesn't he?" she said. "I don't know where they can have dug him up from. The last time I was here, a year ago, they had another band, a much better one. I think this place has gone down. I don't like the look of some of these people. What do you think of Hugo's friends?"
"They seem all right." John cast a moody eye at Miss Molloy, a prismatic vision seen fitfully through the crowd. She was laughing, and showing in the process teeth of a flashing whiteness. "The girl's the prettiest girl I've seen for a long time."
Pat gave an imperceptible start. She was suddenly aware of a feeling which was remarkably like uneasiness. It lurked at the back of her consciousness like a small formless cloud.
"Oh!" she said.
Yes, the feeling was uneasiness. Any other man who at such a moment had said those words she would have suspected of a desire to pique her, to stir her interest by a rather obviously assumed admiration of another. But not John. He was much too honest. If Johnnie said a thing, he meant it.
A quick flicker of concern passed through Pat. She was always candid with herself, and she knew quite well that, though she did not want to marry him, she regarded John as essentially a piece of personal property. If he had fallen in love with her, that was, of course, a pity: but it would, she realized, be considerably more of a pity if he ever fell in love with someone else. A Johnnie gone out of her life and assimilated into that of another girl would leave a frightful gap. The Mustard Spoon was one of those stuffy, overheated places, but, as she meditated upon this possibility, Pat shivered.
"Oh!" she said.
The music stopped. The floor emptied. Mr. Molloy and his daughter returned to the table. Hugo remained up in the gallery, in earnest conversation with his old friend, Mr. Fish.
III
Ronald Overbury Fish was a pink-faced young man of small stature and extraordinary solemnity. He had been at school with Hugo and also at the university. Eton was entitled to point with pride at both of them, and only had itself to blame if it failed to do so. The same remark applies to Trinity College, Cambridge. From earliest days Hugo had always entertained for R. O. Fish an intense and lively admiration, and the thought of being compelled to let his old friend down in this matter of the Hot Spot was doing much to mar an otherwise jovial evening.
"I'm most frightfully sorry, Ronnie, old thing," he said immediately the first greetings were over. "I sounded the aged relative this afternoon about that business, and there's nothing doing."
"No hope?"
"None."
Ronnie Fish surveyed the dancers below with a grave eye. He removed the stub of his cigarette from its eleven-inch holder, and recharged that impressive instrument.
"Did you reason with the old pest?"
"You can't reason with my uncle Lester."
"I could," said Mr. Fish.
Hugo did not doubt this. Ronnie, in his opinion, was capable of any feat.
"Yes, but the only trouble is," he explained, "you would have to do it at long range. I asked if I might invite you down to Rudge and he would have none of it."
Ronnie Fish relapsed into silence. It seemed to Hugo, watching him, that that great brain was busy, but upon what train of thought he could not conjecture.
"Who are those people you're with?" he asked at length.
"The big chap with the fair hair is my cousin John. The girl in green is Pat Wyvern. She lives near us."
"And the others? Who's the stately looking bird with the brushed-back hair who has every appearance of being just about to address a gathering of constituents on some important point of policy?"
"That's a fellow named Molloy. Thos. G. I met him at the fight. He's an American."
"He looks prosperous."
"He is not so prosperous, though, as he was before the fight started. I took thirty quid off him."
"Your uncle, from what you have told me, is pretty keen on rich men, isn't he?"
"All over them."
"Then the thing's simple," said Ronnie Fish. "Invite this Mulcahy or whatever his name is to Rudge, and invite me at the same time. You'll find that in the ecstasy of getting a millionaire on the premises your uncle will forget to make a fuss about my coming. And once I am in I can talk this business over with him. I'll guarantee that if I can get an uninterrupted half hour with the old boy I can easily make him see the light."
A rush of admiration for his friend's outstanding brain held Hugo silent for a moment. The bold simplicity of the move thrilled him.
"What it amounts to," continued Ronnie Fish, "is that your uncle is endeavouring to do you out of a vast fortune. I tell you, the Hot Spot is going to be a gold mine. To all practical intents and purposes he is just as good as trying to take thousands of pounds out of your pocket. I shall point this out to him, and I shall be surprised if I can't put the thing through. When would you like me to come down?"
"Ronnie," said Hugo, "this is absolute genius." He hesitated. He had no wish to discourage his friend, but he desired to be fair and above-board. "There's just one thing. Would you have any objection to performing at the village concert?"
"I should enjoy it."
"They're sure to rope you in. I thought you and I might do the Quarrel Scene fromJulius Cæsaragain."
"Excellent."
"And this time," said Hugo generously, "you can be Brutus."
"No, no," said Ronnie, moved.
"Yes, yes."
"Very well. Then fix things up with this American bloke, and leave the rest to me. Shall I like your uncle?"
"No," said Hugo confidently.
"Ah well," said Mr. Fish equably, "I don't for a moment suppose he'll like me."
IV
The respite afforded to their patrons' ear drums by the sudden cessation of activity on the part of the Buddies proved of brief duration. Men like these ex-collegians, who have really got the saxophone virus into their systems, seldom have long lucid intervals between the attacks. Very soon they were at it again, and Mr. Molloy, rising, led Pat gallantly out onto the floor. His daughter, following them with a bright eye as she busied herself with a lip stick, laughed amusedly.
"She little knows!"
John, like Pat a short while before, had fallen into a train of thought. From this he now woke with a start to the realization that he was alone with this girl and presumably expected by her to make some effort at being entertaining.
"I beg your pardon?" he said.
Even had he been less preoccupied, he would have found small pleasure in this tête-à-tête. Miss Molloy—her father addressed her as Dolly—belonged to the type of girl in whose society a diffident man is seldom completely at ease. There hung about her like an aura a sort of hard glitter. Her challenging eyes were of a bright hazel—beautiful but intimidating. She looked supremely sure of herself.
"I was saying," she explained, "that your Girl Friend little knows what she has taken on, going out to step with Soapy."
"Soapy?"
It seemed to John that his companion had momentarily the appearance of being a little confused.
"My father, I mean," she said quickly. "I call him Soapy."
"Oh?" said John. He supposed the practice of calling a father by a nickname in preference to the more old-fashioned style of address was the latest fad of the Modern Girl.
"Soapy," said Miss Molloy, developing her theme, "is full of Sex Appeal, but he has two left feet." She emitted another little gurgle of laughter. "There! Would you just look at him now!"
John was sorry to appear dull, but, eyeing Mr. Molloy as requested, he could not see that he was doing anything wrong. On the contrary, for one past his first youth, the man seemed to him enviably efficient.
"I'm afraid I don't know anything about dancing," he said apologetically.
"At that, you're ahead of Soapy. He doesn't even suspect anything. Whenever I get into the ring with him and come out alive I reckon I've broke even. It isn't so much his dancing on my feet that I mind—it's the way he jumps on and off that slays me. Don't you ever hoof?"
"Oh, yes. Sometimes. A little."
"Well, come and do your stuff, then. I can't sit still while they're playing that thing."
John rose reluctantly. Their brief conversation had made it clear to him that in the matter of dancing this was a girl of high ideals, and he feared he was about to disappoint her. If she regarded with derision a quite adequate performer like Mr. Molloy, she was obviously no partner for himself. But there was no means of avoiding the ordeal. He backed her out into mid-stream, hoping for the best.
Providence was in a kindly mood. By now the floor had become so congested that skill was at a discount. Even the sallow youths with the marcelled hair and the india-rubber legs were finding little scope to do anything but shuffle. This suited John's individual style. He, too, shuffled: and, playing for safety, found that he was getting along better than he could have expected. His tension relaxed, and he became conversational.
"Do you often come to this place?" he asked, resting his partner against the slim back of one of the marcelled-hair brigade who, like himself, had been held up in the traffic block.
"I've never been here before. And it'll be a long time before I come again. A more gosh-awful aggregation of yells for help, than this gang of whippets," said Miss Molloy, surveying the company with a critical eye, "I've never seen. Look at that dame with the eyeglass."
"Rather weird," agreed John.
"A cry for succour," said Miss Molloy severely. "And why, when you can buy insecticide at any drug store, people let these boys with the shiny hair go around loose beats me."
John began to warm to this girl. At first, he had feared that he and she could have little in common. But this remark told him that on certain subjects, at any rate, they saw eye to eye. He, too, had felt an idle wonder that somebody did not do something about these youths.
The Buddies had stopped playing: and John, glowing with the strange new spirit of confidence which had come to him, clapped loudly for an encore.
But the Buddies were not responsive. Hitherto, a mere tapping of the palms had been enough to urge them to renewed epileptic spasms; but now an odd lethargy seemed to be upon them, as if they had been taking some kind of treatment for their complaint. They were sitting, instruments in hand, gazing in a spellbound manner at a square-jawed person in ill-fitting dress clothes who had appeared at the side of Mr. Baermann. And the next moment, there shattered the stillness a sudden voice that breathed Vine Street in every syllable.
"Ladies and gentlemen," boomed the voice, proceeding, as nearly as John could ascertain, from close to the main entrance, "will you kindly take your seats."
"Pinched!" breathed Miss Molloy in his ear. "Couldn't you have betted on it!"
Her diagnosis was plainly correct. In response to the request, most of those on the floor had returned to their tables, moving with the dull resignation of people to whom this sort of thing has happened before: and, enjoying now a wider range of vision, John was able to see that the room had become magically filled with replicas of the sturdy figure standing beside Mr. Baermann. They were moving about among the tables, examining with an offensive interest the bottles that stood thereon and jotting down epigrams on the subject in little notebooks. Time flies on swift wings in a haunt of pleasure like the Mustard Spoon, and it was evident that the management, having forgotten to look at its watch, had committed the amiable error of serving alcoholic refreshments after prohibited hours.
"I might have known," said Miss Molloy querulously, "that something of the sort was bound to break loose in a dump like this."
John, like all dwellers in the country as opposed to the wicked inhabitants of cities, was a law-abiding man. Left to himself, he would have followed the crowd and made for his table, there to give his name and address in the sheepish undertone customary on these occasions. But he was not left to himself. A moment later it had become plain that the dashing exterior of Miss Molloy was a true index to the soul within. She grasped his arm and pulled him commandingly.
"Snap into it!" said Miss Molloy.
The "it" into which she desired him to snap was apparently a small door that led to the club's service quarters. It was the one strategic point not yet guarded by a stocky figure with large feet and an eye like a gimlet. To it his companion went like a homing rabbit, dragging him with her. They passed through; and John, with a resourcefulness of which he was surprised to find himself capable, turned the key in the lock.
"Smooth!" said Miss Molloy approvingly. "Nice work! That'll hold them for a while."
It did. From the other side of the door there proceeded a confused shouting, and somebody twisted the handle with a good deal of petulance, but the Law had apparently forgotten to bring its axe with it to-night, and nothing further occurred. They made their way down a stuffy passage, came presently to a second door, and, passing through this, found themselves in a backyard, fragrant with the scent of old cabbage stalks and dish water.
Miss Molloy listened. John listened. They could hear nothing but a distant squealing and tooting of horns, which, though it sounded like something out of the repertoire of the Collegiate Buddies, was in reality the noise of the traffic in Regent Street.
"All quiet along the Potomac," said Miss Molloy with satisfaction. "Now," she added briskly, "if you'll just fetch one of those ash cans and put it alongside that wall and give me a leg-up and help me round that chimney and across that roof and down into the next yard and over another wall or two, I think everything will be more or less jake."
V
John sat in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel in Curzon Street. A lifetime of activity and dizzy hustle had passed, but it had all been crammed into just under twenty minutes, and, after seeing his fair companion off in a taxicab, he had made his way to the Lincoln, to ascertain from a sleepy night porter that Miss Wyvern had not yet returned. He was now awaiting her coming.
She came some little while later, escorted by Hugo. It was a fair summer night, warm and still, but with her arrival a keen east wind seemed to pervade the lobby. Pat was looking pale and proud, and Hugo's usually effervescent demeanour had become toned down to a sort of mellow sadness. He had the appearance of a man who has recently been properly ticked off by a woman for Taking Me to Places Like That.
"Oh, hullo, John," he murmured in a low, bedside voice. He brightened a little, as a man will who, after a bad quarter of an hour with an emotional girl, sees somebody who may possibly furnish an alternative target for her wrath. "Where did you get to? Left early to avoid the rush?"
"It was this way ..." began John. But Pat had turned to the desk, and was asking the porter for her key. If a female martyr in the rougher days of the Roman Empire had had occasion to ask for a key, she would have done it in just the voice which Pat employed. It was not a loud voice, nor an angry one,—just the crushed, tortured voice of a girl who has lost her faith in the essential goodness of humanity.
"You see ..." said John.
"Are there any letters for me?" asked Pat.
"No, no letters," said the night porter; and the unhappy girl gave a little sigh, as if that was just what might be expected in a world where men who had known you all your life took you to Places which they ought to have Seen from the start were just Drinking-Hells, while other men, who also had known you all your life, and, what was more, professed to love you, skipped through doors in the company of flashy women and left you to be treated by the police as if you were a common criminal.
"What happened," said John, "was this...."
"Good night," said Pat.
She followed the porter to the lift, and Hugo, producing a handkerchief, dabbed it lightly over his forehead.
"Dirty weather, shipmate!" said Hugo. "A very deep depression off the coast of Iceland, laddie."
He placed a restraining hand on John's arm, as the latter made a movement to follow the Snow Queen.
"No good, John," he said gravely. "No good, old man, not the slightest. Don't waste your time trying to explain to-night. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and not many like a girl who's just had to give her name and address in a raided night club to a plain-clothes cop who asked her to repeat it twice and then didn't seem to believe her."
"But I want to tell her why...."
"Never tell them why. It's no use. Let us talk of pleasanter things. John, I have brought off the coup of a lifetime. Not that it was my idea. It was Ronnie Fish who suggested it. There's a fellow with a brain, John. There's a lad who busts the seams of any hat that isn't a number eight."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about this amazingly intelligent idea of old Ronnie's. It's absolutely necessary that by some means Uncle Lester shall be persuaded to cough up five hundred quid of my capital to enable me to go into a venture second in solidity only to the Mint. The one person who can talk him into it is Ronnie. So Ronnie's coming to Rudge."
"Oh?" said John, uninterested.
"And to prevent Uncle Lester making a fuss about this, I've invited old man Molloy and daughter to come and visit us as well. That was Ronnie's big idea. Thos. is rolling in money, and, once Uncle Lester learns that, he won't kick about Ronnie being there. He loves having rich men around. He likes to nuzzle them."
"Do you mean," cried John, "that that girl is coming to stay at Rudge?"
He was appalled. Limpidly clear though his conscience was, he was able to see that his rather spectacular association with Miss Dolly Molloy had displeased Pat, and the last thing he wished for was to be placed in a position which was virtually tantamount to hobnobbing with the girl. If she came to stay at Rudge, Pat might think.... What might not Pat think?
He became aware that Hugo was speaking to him in a quiet, brotherly voice.
"How did all that come out, John?"
"All what?"
"About Pat. Did she tell you that I paved the way?"
"She did! And look here...."
"All right, old man," said Hugo, raising a deprecatory hand. "That's absolutely all right. I don't want any thanks. You'd have done the same for me. Well, what has happened? Everything pretty satisfactory?"
"Satisfactory!"
"Don't tell me she turned you down?"
"If you really want to know, yes, she did."
Hugo sighed.
"I feared as much. There was something about her manner when I was paving the way that I didn't quite like. Cold. Not responsive. A bit glassy-eyed. What an amazing thing it is," said Hugo, tapping a philosophical vein, "that in spite of all the ways there are of saying Yes, a girl on an occasion like this nearly always says No. An American statistician has estimated that, omitting substitutes like 'All right,' 'You bet,' 'O.K.,' and nasal expressions like 'Uh-huh,' the English language provides nearly fifty different methods of replying in the affirmative, including Yeah, Yeth, Yum, Yo, Yaw, Chess, Chass, Chuss, Yip, Yep, Yop, Yup, Yurp...."
"Stop it!" cried John forcefully.
Hugo patted him affectionately on the shoulder.
"All right, John. All right, old man. I quite understand. You're upset. A little on edge, yes? Of course you are. But listen, John, I want to talk to you very seriously for a moment, in a broad-minded spirit of cousinly good will. If I were you, laddie, I would take myself firmly in hand at this juncture. You must see for yourself by now that you're simply wasting your time fooling about after dear old Pat. A sweet girl, I grant you—one of the best: but if she won't have you she won't, and that's that. Isn't it or is it? Take my tip and wash the whole thing out and start looking round for someone else. Now, there's Miss Molloy, for instance. Pretty. Pots of money. If I were you, while she's at Rudge, I'd have a decided pop at her. You see, you're one of those fellows that Nature intended for a married man right from the start. You're a confirmed settler-down, the sort of chap that likes to roll the garden lawn and then put on his slippers and light a pipe and sit side by side with the little woman, sharing a twin set of head phones. Pull up your socks, John, and have a dash at this Molloy girl. You'd be on velvet with a rich wife."
At several points during this harangue John had endeavoured to speak, and he was just about to do so now, when there occurred that which rendered speech impossible. From immediately behind them, as they stood facing the door, a voice spoke.
"I want my bag, Hugo."
It was Pat. She was standing within a yard of them. Her face was still that of a martyr, but now she seemed to suggest by her expression a martyr whose tormentors have suddenly thought up something new.
"You've got my bag," she said.
"Oh, ah," said Hugo.
He handed over the beaded trifle, and she took it with a cold aloofness. There was a pause.
"Well, good night," said Hugo.
"Good night," said Pat.
"Good night," said John.
"Good night," said Pat.
She turned away, and the lift bore her aloft. Its machinery badly needed a drop of oil, and it emitted, as it went, a low wailing sound that seemed to John like a commentary on the whole situation.
VI
Some half a mile from Curzon Street, on the fringe of the Soho district, there stands a smaller and humbler hotel named the Belvidere. In a bedroom on the second floor of this, at about the moment when Pat and Hugo had entered the lobby of the Lincoln, Dolly Molloy sat before a mirror, cold-creaming her attractive face. She was interrupted in this task by the arrival of the senatorial Thomas G.
"Hello, sweetie-pie," said Miss Molloy. "There you are."
"Yes," replied Mr. Molloy. "Here I am."
Although his demeanour lacked the high tragedy which had made strong men quail in the presence of Pat Wyvern, this man was plainly ruffled. His fine features were overcast and his frank gray eyes looked sombre.
"Gee! If there's one thing in this world I hate," he said, "it's having to talk to policemen."
"What happened?"
"Oh, I gave my name and address.Aname and address, that is to say. But I haven't got over yet the jar it gave me seeing so many cops all gathered together in a small room. And that's not all," went on Mr. Molloy, ventilating another grievance. "Why did you make me tell those folks you were my daughter?"
"Well, sweetie, it sort of cramps my style, having people know we're married."
"What do you mean, cramps your style?"
"Oh, just cramps my style."
"But, darn it," complained Mr. Molloy, going to the heart of the matter, "it makes me out so old, folks thinking I'm your father." The rather pronounced gap in years between himself and his young bride was a subject on which Soapy Molloy was always inclined to be sensitive. "I'm only forty-two."
"And you don't seem that, not till you look at you close," said Dolly with womanly tact. "The whole thing is, sweetie, being so dignified, you can call yourself anybody's father and get away with it."
Mr. Molloy, somewhat soothed, examined himself, not without approval, in the mirror.
"I do look dignified," he admitted.
"Like a professor or something."
"That isn't a bald spot coming there, is it?"
"Sure it's not. It's just the way the light falls."
Mr. Molloy resumed his examination with growing content.
"Yes," he said complacently, "that's a face which for business purposes is a face. I may not be the World's Sweetheart, but nobody can say I haven't got a map that inspires confidence. I suppose I've sold more bum oil stock to suckers with it than anyone in the profession. And that reminds me, honey, what do you think?"
"What?" asked Mrs. Molloy, removing cream with a towel.
"We're sitting in the biggest kind of luck. You know how I've been wanting all this time to get hold of a really good prospect—some guy with money to spend who might be interested in a little oil deal? Well, that Carmody fellow we met to-night has invited us to go and visit at his country home."
"You don't say!"
"I do say!"
"Well, isn't that the greatest thing. Is he rich?"
"He's got an uncle that must be, or he couldn't be living in a place like he was telling me. It's one of those stately homes of England you read about."
Mrs. Molloy mused. The soft smile on her face showed that her day dreams were pleasant ones.
"I'll have to get me some new frocks ... and hats ... and shoes ... and stockings ... and ..."
"Now, now, now!" said her husband, with that anxious alarm which husbands exhibit on these occasions. "Be yourself, baby! You aren't going to stay at Buckingham Palace."
"But a country-house party with swell people...."
"It isn't a country-house party. There's only the uncle besides those two boys we met to-night. But I'll tell you what. If I can plant a good block of those Silver River shares on the old man, you can go shopping all you want."
"Oh, Soapy! Do you think you can?"
"Do I think I can?" echoed Mr. Molloy scornfully. "I don't say I've ever sold Central Park or Brooklyn Bridge to anybody, but if I can't get rid of a parcel of home-made oil stock to a guy that lives in the country I'm losing my grip and ought to retire. Sure, I'll sell him those Silver Rivers, honey. These fellows that own these big estates in England are only glorified farmers when you come right down to it, and a farmer will buy anything you offer him, just so long as it's nicely engraved and shines when you slant the light on it."
"But, Soapy...."
"Now what?"
"I've been thinking. Listen, Soapy. A home like this one where we're going is sure to have all sorts of things in it, isn't it? Pictures, I mean, and silver and antiques and all like that. Well, why can't we, once we're in the place, get away with them and make a nice clean-up?"
Mr. Molloy, though conceding that this was the right spirit, was obliged to discourage his wife's pretty enthusiasm.
"Where could you sell that sort of stuff?"
"Anywhere, once you got it over to the other side. New York's full of rich millionaires who'll buy anything and ask no questions, just so long as it's antiques."
Mr. Molloy shook his head.
"Too dangerous, baby. If all that stuff left the house same time as we did, we'd have the bulls after us in ten minutes. Besides, it's not in my line. I've got my line, and I like to stick to it. Nobody ever got anywhere in the long run by going outside of his line."
"Maybe you're right."
"Sure I'm right. A nice conservative business, that's what I aim at."
"But suppose when we get to this joint it looks dead easy?"
"Ah! Well then, I'm not saying. All I'm against is risks. If something's handed to you on a plate, naturally no one wouldn't ever want to let it get past them."
And with this eminently sound commercial maxim Mr. Molloy reached for his pyjamas and prepared for bed. Something attempted, something done, had earned, he felt, a night's repose.
I
Some years before the date of the events narrated in this story, at the time when there was all that trouble between the aristocratic householders of Riverside Row and the humbler dwellers in Budd Street (arising, if you remember, from the practice of the latter of washing their more intimate articles of underclothing and hanging them to dry in back gardens into which their exclusive neighbours were compelled to gaze every time they looked out of windows), the vicar of the parish, the Rev. Alistair Pond-Pond, always a happy phrase-maker, wound up his address at the annual village sports of Rudge with an impressive appeal to the good feeling of those concerned.
"We must not," said the Reverend Alistair, "consider ourselves as belonging to this section of Rudge-in-the-Vale or to that section of Rudge-in-the-Vale. Let us get together. Let us recollect that we are all fellow-members of one united community. Rudge must be looked on as a whole. And what a whole it is!"
With the concluding words of this peroration Pat Wyvern, by the time she had been home a little under a week, found herself in hearty agreement. Walking with her father along High Street on the sixth morning, she had to confess herself disappointed with Rudge.
There are times in everyone's experience when Life, after running merrily for a while through pleasant places, seems suddenly to strike a dull and depressing patch of road: and this was what was happening now to Pat. The sense, which had come to her so strongly in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel in Curzon Street, of being in a world unworthy of her—a world cold and unsympathetic and full of an inferior grade of human being, had deepened. Her home-coming, she had now definitely decided, was not a success.
Elderly men with a grievance are seldom entertaining companions for the young, and five days of the undiluted society of Colonel Wyvern had left Pat with the feeling that, much as she loved her father, she wished he would sometimes change the subject of his conversation. Had she been present in person she could not have had a fuller grasp of the facts of that dynamite outrage than she now possessed.
But this was not all. After Mr. Carmody's thug-like behaviour on that fatal day, she was given to understand, the Hall and its grounds were as much forbidden territory to her as the piazza of the townhouse of the Capulets would have been to a young Montague. And, though, being a modern girl, she did not as a rule respond with any great alacrity to parental mandates, she had her share of clan loyalty and realized that she must conform to the rules of the game.
Accordingly she had not been within half a mile of the Hall since her arrival, and, having been accustomed for fourteen years to treat the place and its grounds as her private property, found Rudge, with a deadline drawn across the boundaries of Mr. Carmody's park, a poor sort of place. Unlovable character though Mr. Carmody was in many respects, she had always been fond of him, and she missed seeing him. She also missed seeing Hugo. And, as for John, not seeing him was the heaviest blow of all.
From the days of her childhood, John had always been her stand-by. Men might come and men might go, but John went on for ever. He had never been too old, like Mr. Carmody, or too lazy, like Hugo, to give her all the time and attention she required, and she did think that, even though there was this absurd feud going on, he might have had the enterprise to make an opportunity of meeting her. As day followed day her resentment grew, until now she had reached the stage when she was telling herself that this was simply what from a knowledge of his character she might have expected. John—she had to face it—was a jellyfish. And if a man is a jellyfish, he will behave like a jellyfish, and it is at times of crisis that his jellyfishiness will be most noticeable.
It was conscience that had brought Pat to the High Street this morning. Her father had welcomed her with such a pathetic eagerness, and had been so plainly pleased to see her back that she was ashamed of herself for not feeling happier. And it was in a spirit of remorse that now, though she would have preferred to stay in the garden with a book, she had come with him to watch him buy another bottle of Brophy's Paramount Elixir from Chas. Bywater, Chemist.
Brophy, it should be mentioned, had proved a sensational success. His Elixir was making the local gnats feel perfect fools. They would bite Colonel Wyvern on the face and stand back, all ready to laugh, and he would just smear Brophy on himself and be as good as new. It was simply sickening, if you were a gnat; but fine, of course, if you were Colonel Wyvern, and that just man, always ready to give praise where praise was due, said as much to Chas. Bywater.
"That stuff," said Colonel Wyvern, "is good. I wish I'd heard of it before. Give me another bottle."
Mr. Bywater was delighted—not merely at this rush of trade, but because, good kindly soul, he enjoyed ameliorating the lot of others.
"I thought you would find it capital, Colonel. I get a great many requests for it. I sold a bottle yesterday to Mr. Carmody, senior."
Colonel Wyvern's sunniness vanished as if someone had turned it off with a tap.
"Don't talk to me about Mr. Carmody," he said gruffly.
"Quite," said Chas. Bywater.
Pat bridged a painful silence.
"Is Mr. Carmody back, then?" she asked. "I heard he was at some sort of health place."
"Healthward Ho, miss, just outside Lowick."
"He ought to be in prison," said Colonel Wyvern.
Mr. Bywater stopped himself in the nick of time from saying "Quite," which would have been a deviation from his firm policy of never taking sides between customers.
"He returned the day before yesterday, miss, and was immediately bitten on the nose by a mosquito."
"Thank God!" said Colonel Wyvern.
"But I sold him one of the three-and-sixpenny size of the Elixir," said Chas. Bywater, with quiet pride, "and a single application completely eased the pain."
Colonel Wyvern said he was sorry to hear it, and there is no doubt that conversation would once more have become difficult had there not at this moment made itself heard from the other side of the door a loud and penetrating sniff.
A fatherly smile lit up Chas. Bywater's face.
"That's Mr. John's dog," he said, reaching for the cough drops.
Pat opened the door and the statement was proved correct. With a short wooffle, partly of annoyance at having been kept waiting and partly of happy anticipation, Emily entered, and seating herself by the counter, gazed expectantly at the chemist.
"Hullo, Emily," said Pat.
Emily gave her a brief look in which there was no pleased recognition, but only the annoyance of a dog interrupted during an important conference. She then returned her gaze to Mr. Bywater.
"What do you say, doggie?" said Mr. Bywater, more paternal than ever, poising a cough drop.
"Oh, Hell! Snap into it!" replied Emily curtly, impatient at this foolery.
"Hear her speak for it?" said Mr. Bywater. "Almost human, that dog is."
Colonel Wyvern, whom he had addressed, did not seem to share his lively satisfaction. He muttered to himself. He regarded Emily sourly, and his right foot twitched a little.
"Just like a human being, isn't she, miss?" said Chas. Bywater, damped but persevering.
"Quite," said Pat absently.
Mr. Bywater, startled by this infringement of copyright, dropped the cough lozenge and Emily snapped it up.
Pat, still distraite, was watching the door. She was surprised to find that her breath was coming rather quickly and that her heart had begun to beat with more than its usual rapidity. She was amazed at herself. Just because John Carroll would shortly appear in that doorway must she stand fluttering, for all the world as though poor old Johnnie, an admitted jellyfish, were something that really mattered? It was too silly, and she tried to bully herself into composure. She failed. Her heart, she was compelled to realize, was now simply racing.
A step sounded outside, a shadow fell on the sunlit pavement, and Dolly Molloy walked into the shop.
II
It is curious, when one reflects, to think how many different impressions a single individual can make simultaneously on a number of his or her fellow-creatures. At the present moment it was almost as though four separate and distinct Dolly Molloys had entered the establishment of Chas. Bywater.
The Dolly whom Colonel Wyvern beheld was a beautiful woman with just that hint of diablerie in her bearing which makes elderly widowers feel that there is life in the old dog yet. Colonel Wyvern was no longer the dashing Hussar who in the 'nineties had made his presence felt in many a dim sitting-out place and in many a punt beneath the willows of the Thames, but there still lingered in him a trace of the old barrack-room fire. Drawing himself up, he automatically twirled his moustache. To Colonel Wyvern Dolly represented Beauty.
To Chas. Bywater, with his more practical and worldly outlook, she represented Wealth. He saw in Dolly not so much a beautiful woman as a rich-looking woman. Although Soapy had contrived, with subtle reasoning, to head her off from the extensive purchases which she had contemplated making in preparation for her visit to Rudge, Dolly undoubtedly took the eye. She was, as she would have put it herself, a snappy dresser, and in Chas. Bywater's mind she awoke roseate visions of large orders for face creams, imported scents and expensive bath salts.
Emily, it was evident, regarded Mrs. Molloy as Perfection. A dog who, as a rule, kept herself to herself and looked on the world with a cool and rather sardonic eye, she had conceived for Dolly the moment they met one of those capricious adorations which come occasionally to the most hard-boiled Welsh terriers. Hastily swallowing her cough drop, she bounded at Dolly and fawned on her.
So far, the reactions caused by the newcomer's entrance have been unmixedly favourable. It is only when we come to Pat that we find Disapproval rearing its ugly head.
"Disapproval," indeed, is a mild and inadequate word. "Loathing" would be more correct. Where Colonel Wyvern beheld beauty and Mr. Bywater opulence, Pat saw only flashiness, vulgarity, and general horribleness. Piercing with woman's intuitive eye through an outer crust which to vapid and irreflective males might possibly seem attractive, she saw Dolly as a vampire and a menace—the sort of woman who goes about the place ensnaring miserable fat-headed innocent young men who have lived all their lives in the country and so lack the experience to see through females of her type.
For beyond a question, felt Pat, this girl must have come to Rudge in brazen pursuit of poor old Johnnie. The fact that she took her walks abroad accompanied by Emily showed that she was staying at the Hall; and what reason could she have had for getting herself invited to the Hall if not that she wished to continue the acquaintance begun at the Mustard Spoon? This, then, was the explanation of John's failure to come and pass the time of day with an old friend. What she had assumed to be jellyfishiness was in reality base treachery. Like Emily, whom, slavering over Mrs. Molloy's shoes, she could gladly have kicked, he had been hypnotized by this woman's specious glamour and had forsaken old allegiances.
Pat, eyeing Dolly coldly, was filled with a sisterly desire to save John from one who could never make him happy.
Dolly was all friendliness.
"Why, hello," she said, removing a shapely foot from Emily's mouth, "I was wondering when I was going to run into you. I heard you lived in these parts."
"Yes?" said Pat frigidly.
"I'm staying at the Hall."
"Yes?"
"What a wonderful old place it is."
"Yes."
"All those pictures and tapestries and things."
"Yes."
"Is this your father?"
"Yes. This is Miss Molloy, Father. We met in London."
"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly.
"Charmed," said Colonel Wyvern.
He gave another twirl of his moustache. Chas. Bywater hovered beamingly. Emily, still ecstatic, continued to gnaw one of Dolly's shoes. The whole spectacle was so utterly revolting that Pat turned to the door.
"I'll be going along, Father," she said. "I want to buy some stamps."
"I can sell you stamps, miss," said Chas. Bywater affably.
"Thank you, I will go to the post office," said Pat. Her manner suggested that you got a superior brand of stamps there. She walked out. Rudge, as she looked upon it, seemed a more depressing place than ever. Sunshine flooded the High Street. Sunshine fell on the Carmody Arms, the Village Hall, the Plough and Chickens, the Bunch of Grapes, the Waggoner's Rest and the Jubilee Watering Trough. But there was no sunshine in the heart of Pat Wyvern.
III
And, curiously enough, at this very moment up at the Hall the same experience was happening to Mr. Lester Carmody. Staring out of his study window, he gazed upon a world bathed in a golden glow: but his heart was cold and heavy. He had just had a visit from the Rev. Alistair Pond-Pond, and the Reverend Alistair had touched him for five shillings.
Many men in Mr. Carmody's place would have considered that they had got off lightly. The vicar had come seeking subscriptions to the Church Organ Fund, the Mothers' Pleasant Sunday Evenings, the Distressed Cottagers' Aid Society, the Stipend of the Additional Curate and the Rudge Lads' Annual Summer Outing, and there had been moments of mad optimism when he had hoped for as much as a ten-pound note. The actual bag, as he totted it up while riding pensively away on his motor-bicycle, was the above-mentioned five shillings and a promise that the squire's nephew Hugo and his friend Mr. Fish should perform at the village concert next week.
And even so, Mr. Carmody was looking on him as a robber. Five shillings had gone—just like that—and every moment now he was expecting his nephew John to walk in and increase his expenditure. For just after breakfast John had asked if he could have a word with him later on in the morning, and Mr. Carmody knew what that meant.