"Well, isn't it in a sick state?" James demanded, truculently.
"I don't know that I think it is. However, don't let's begin an argument before supper. Where's Beatrice?"
"She bought a new hat yesterday and has gone to demonstrate its becomingness to God and woman."
"I suppose you mean she's gone to church? I went to church myself this morning."
"What for? Copy?"
"No, no, no. I took George's children."
"You don't mean to say that you've gotthemwith you?"
John nodded, and his brother exploded with an uproarious laugh.
"Well, I was fool enough to marry before I was thirty," he bellowed. "But at any rate I wasn't fool enough to have any children. So you're going to sup with us. I ought to warn you it's cold mutton to-night."
"Really? Capital! There's nothing I like better than cold mutton."
"Upon my soul, Johnnie, I'll say this for you. You may write stale romantic plays about the past, but you manage to keep plenty of romantic sauce for the present. Yes, you're a born optimist. Look at your skin—pink as a baby's. Look at mine—yellow as a horse's tooth. Have you heard my new name for your habit of mind? Rosification. Rather good, eh? And you can rosify anything from Lucretia Borgia tocold mutton. Now don't look angry with me, Johnnie; you must rosify my ill-humor. With so many roses you can't expect not to have a few thorns as well, and I'm one of them. No, seriously, I congratulate you on your success. And I always try to remember that you write with your tongue in your cheek."
"On the contrary I believe I write as well as I can," said John, earnestly. "I admit that I gave up writing realistic novels, but that was because they didn't suit my temperament."
"No, by gad, they didn't! And, anyway, no Englishman can write a realistic novel—or any other kind of a novel if it comes to that. My lord, the English novel!"
"Look here," John protested. "I do not want to argue about either plays or novels to-night. But if you must talk about books, talk about your own, not mine. Beatrice wrote to me that you had something coming along about the French Symbolists. I shouldn't have thought that they would have appealed to you."
"They don't. I hate them."
"Well, why write a book about them? Their day has been over a long time."
"To smash them. To prove that they were a pretentious set of epileptic humbugs."
"Sort of Max Nordau business?"
"Max Nordau! I hope you aren't going to compare me with that flat-footed bus-conductor. No, no, Johnnie, the rascals took themselves seriously and I'm going to smash them on their own estimate of their own importance. I'm going to prove that they were on the wrong track and led nowhere."
"It's consoling to learn that even French literature can go off the lines sometimes."
"Of course it can, because it runs on lines. English literature on the contrary never had any lines on which to run, though in the eighteenth century it followed a fairly decent coaching-road. Modern English literature, however, is likea rogue elephant trampling down the jungle that its predecessors made some attempt to cultivate."
"I never knew that even moral elephants had taken up agriculture seriously."
James blew all the ashes of his pipe over Beyle in a gust of contempt, and rose from his chair.
"The smirk!" he cried. "The traditional British smirk! The gerumky-gerum horse-laugh! British humor! Ha-ha! Begotten by Punch out of Mrs. Grundy with the Spectator for godfather. 'Go to, you have made me mad.'"
"It's a pity you can't tell me about your new book without flying into a rage," John said, mildly. "You haven't told me yet when it's to appear."
"My fourteen readers aren't languishing. But to repay politeness by politeness, my book will come out in March."
"I'm looking forward to it," John declared. "Have you got good terms from Worrall?"
"As good terms as a consumptive bankrupt might expect from Shylock. What does the British public care for criticism? You should hear me reading the proofs to Beatrice. You should really have the pleasure of watching her face, and listening to her comments. Do you know why Beatrice goes to church? I'll tell you. She goes to indulge in a debauch of the accumulated yawns of the week."
"Hush, here she is," John warned him.
James laughed again.
"Johnnie, you'reimpayable. Your sensitiveness to Beatrice betrays the fount of your success. You treat the British public with just the same gentlemanly gurgle. And above all you're a good salesman. That's where George failed when he tried whisky on commission."
"I don't believe you're half the misanthropist you make yourself out."
"Of course, I'm not. I love human nature. Didn't I marry Beatrice, and didn't I spend a year in making a clock out of fishbones to amuse my landlady's children, and wasn't I a doctor of medicine without once using my knowledge ofpoisons? I love mankind—but dragon-flies were more complex and dogs are more admirable. Well, Beatrice, did you enjoy the sermon?"
His wife had come in and was greeting John broadly and effusively, for when she was excited her loud contralto voice recaptured many rustic inflections of her youth. She was a tall woman, gaudily handsome, conserving in clothes and coiffure the fashions of her prime as queens do and barmaids who become the wives of publicans. On Sundays she wore a lilac broadcloth with a floriated bodice cut close to the figure; but she was just as proud of her waist on weekdays and discreet about her legs, which she wrapped up in a number of petticoats. She was as real or as unreal as a cabinet-photograph of the last decade of the nineteenth century: it depended on the attitude of the observer. Although there was too much of her for the apartments, it could not be said that she appeared out of place in them; in fact she was rather like a daughter of the house who had come home for the holidays.
"Why, it's John," she expanded in a voice rich with welcome. "How are you, little stranger?"
"Thank you very much for the flowers, Beatrice. They were much appreciated."
"I wanted you to know that we were still in the land of the livin'. You're goin' to stay to supper, of course? But you'll have to be content with cold mutton, don't you know."
There was a tradition among novelists that well-bred people leave out their final "g's"; so Beatrice saved on these consonants what she squandered upon aspirates.
"And how do you think Jimmie's lookin'?" she went on. "I suppose he's told you about his new book. Comin' out in March, don't you know. I feel awfully up in French poitry since he read it out to me. Don't light another pipe now, dear. The girl's gettin' the supper at once. I think you're lookin' very well, Johnnie, I do indeed. Don't you think he's lookin' very well, Jimmie? Has Bill Bailey beenout for his run?" This was Beatrice's affectionate diminutive for Henri Beyle, the dog.
"No, I won't bother about my hands," John put in hastily to forestall Beatrice's next suggestion.
"We had such a dull sermon," she sighed.
Her husband grunted a request to spare them the details.
"Well, don't you know, it's a dull time for sermons now before Christmas. But it didn't matter, as what I really wanted was a puff of fresh air. Yes, I'd begun to think you'd forgotten all about us," she rambled on, turning archly to John. "I know we must be dull company, but all work and no play, don't you know ... yours is all plays and no work. Jimmie, I made a joke," she laughed, twitching her husband's sleeve to secure his attention. "Did you hear?"
"Yes, I heard," he growled.
"I thought it was rather good, didn't you, Johnnie?"
"Very good indeed," he assented, warmly. "Though I do work occasionally."
"Oh, of course, you silly thing, I wasn't bein' serious. I told you it was a joke. I know you must work a bit. Here comes the girl with supper. You'll excuse me, Johnnie, while I go and titivate myself. I sha'n't be a minute."
Beatrice retired to the bedroom whence she could be heard humming over her beautification.
"You're not meditating marriage, are you?" James mocked.
The bachelor shook his head.
"At the same time," he protested, stoutly, "I don't think you're entitled to sneer at Beatrice. Considering—" he was about to say "everything," but feeling that this would include his brother too pointedly he substituted, "the weather, she's wonderfully cheerful. And you know I've always insisted that these rooms are cramped."
"Yes, well, when a popular success oils my palm, John, we'll move next door to you in Church Row."
John wished that James would not always harp upon their respective fortunes: it made him feel uncomfortable,especially when he was sitting down to cold mutton. Besides, it was unfair; had he not once advised James to abandon criticism and take up—he had been going to suggest "anything except literature," but he had noticed James' angry dismay and had substituted "creative work." What had been the result? An outburst of contemptuous abuse, a violent renunciation of anything that approximated to his own work. If James despised his romantic plays, why could he not be consistent and despise equally the wealth they brought him? He honored his brother's intellectual sincerity, why could not his brother do as much for his?
"What beats me," James had once exclaimed, "is how a man like you who professes to admire—no, I believe you're honest—who does admire Stendhal, Turgenev, Flaubert and Merimée, who recognizes the perfection ofManon LescautandAdolphe, who in a word has taste, can bring himself to eructate theFall of Babylon."
"It's all a matter of knowing one's own limitations," John had replied. "I tried to write realistic novels. But my temperament is not realistic."
"No, if it were," James had murmured, "you wouldn't stand my affectation of superiority."
It was this way James had of once in a very long while putting himself in the wrong that used always to heal John's wounded generosity. But these occasional lapses—as he supposed his cynical brother would call them—were becoming less and less frequent, and John had no longer much excuse for clinging to his romantic reverence for the unlucky head of his family.
During the first half of supper Beatrice delivered a kind of lecture on housekeeping in London on two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week, including bones for the dog; by the time that the stewed figs were put on the table this monologue had reduced both brothers to such a state of gloom by striking at James' experience and John's imagination, that the sourness of the cream came as a natural corollary; anything but sour cream would have seemed an obtrusivereminder of housekeeping on more than two pounds twelve shillings and sixpence a week, including bones for the dog. John was convinced by his sister-in-law's mood that she would enjoy a short rest from speculating upon the comparative versatility of mutton and beef, and by James' reception of her remarks that he would appreciate her housekeeping all the more after being compelled to regard for a while the long procession of chops that his landlady would inevitably marshal for him while his wife was away. The moment seemed propitious to the unfolding of his plan.
"I want to ask you both a favor," he began. "No, no, Beatrice, I disagree with you. I don't think the cream is really sour. I find it delicious, but I daren't ever eat more than a few figs. The cream, however, is particularly delicious. In fact I was on the point of inquiring the name of your dairy."
"If we have cream on Sundays," Beatrice explained, "Jimmie has to put up with custard-powder on Wednesdays. But if we don't have cream on Sundays, I can spare enough eggs on Wednesdays for real custard."
"That's very ingenious of you," John declared. "But you didn't hear what I was saying when I broke off in defense of the cream,whichis delicious. I said that I wanted to ask a favor of you both."
"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," James chuckled. "Or were you going to suggest to Beatrice that next time you have supper with us she should experiment not only with fresh cream, but also with some rare dish like nightingales' tongues—or even veal, for instance?"
"Now, Jimmie, you're always puttin' hits in at me about veal; but if I get veal, it throws me out for the whole week."
John made another effort to wrench the conversation free from the topic of food:
"No, no, James. I was going to ask you to let Beatrice come and give me a hand with our nephew and our niece." He slightly accentuated the pronoun of plural possession. "Of course, that is to say, if Beatrice would be so kind."
"What do you want her to do? Beat them?" James asked.
"No, no, no, James. I'm not joking. As I explained to you, I've got these two children—er—staying with me. It appears that George is too overstrained, too ill, that is, to manage them during the few weeks that Eleanor will be away on tour, and I thought that if Beatrice could be my guest for a week or two until the governess has re-created her nervous system, which I understand will take about a month, I should feel a great weight off my mind. A bachelor household, you know, is not primarily constructed to withstand an invasion by children. You'd find them very difficult here, James, if you hadn't got Beatrice."
"Oh, Johnnie, I should love it," his sister-in-law cried. "That is if Jimmie could spare me."
"Of course, I could. You'd better take her back with you to-night."
"No, really?" said John. "Why that would be splendid. I'm immensely obliged to you both."
"He's quite anxious to get rid of me," Beatrice laughed, happily. "I sha'n't be long packin'. Fancy lookin' after Eleanor's two youngsters. I've often thought Iwouldrather like to see if I couldn't bring up children."
"Now's your chance," John jovially offered.
"Jimmie didn't ever care much for youngsters," Beatrice explained.
Her husband laughed bitterly.
"Quite enough people hate me, as it is," he sneered, "without deliberately creating a child of my own to add to the number."
"Oh, no, of course, dear, I know we're better off as we are," Beatrice said with a soothing pat for her husband's round shoulders. "Only the idea comes into my head now and again that I'd just like to see if I couldn't manage them, that's all, dear. I'm not complaining."
"I don't want to hurry you away," James muttered. "But I've got some work to do."
"We'd better send the servant out to look for a taxi at once," John suggested. "It's Sunday night, you know."
Twenty minutes later, Beatrice looking quite fashionable now in her excitement—so many years had it obliterated—was seated in the taxi; John was half-way along the garden path on his way to join her, when his brother called him back.
"Oh, by the way, Johnnie," he said in gruff embarrassment, "I've got an article on Alfred de Vigny coming out soon inThe Nineteenth Century. It can't bring me in less than fifteen guineas, but it might not be published for another three months. I can show you the editor's letter, if you like. I wonder if you could advance me ten guineas? I'm a little bothered just at the moment. There was a vet's bill for the dog and...."
"Of course, of course, my dear fellow. I'll send you a check to-night. Thanks very much for—er—releasing Beatrice, I mean—helping me out of a difficulty with Beatrice. Very good of you. Good-night. I'll send the check at once."
"Don't cross it," said James.
On the way back to Hampstead in the dank murkiness of the cab, Beatrice became confidential.
"Jimmie always hated me to pass remarks about havin' children, don't you know, but it's my belief that he feels it as much as anyone. Look at the fuss he makes of poor old Bill Bailey. And bein' the eldest son and havin' the pictures of his grandfather and grandmother, I'm sure there are times when he'd give a lot to explain to a youngster of his own who they really were. It isn't so interestin' to explain to me, don't you know, because they aren't my relations, except, of course, by marriage. I always feel myself that Jimmie for an eldest son has been very unlucky. Well, there's you, for instance. I don't mean to say he's jealous, because he's not; but still I dare say he sometimes thinks that he ought to be where you are, though, of course, that doesn'tmean to say that he'd like you to be where he is. But a person can't help feelin' that there's no reason why you shouldn't both have been where you are. The trouble with Jimmie was that he wasted a lot of time when he was young, and sometimes, though I wouldn't say this to anybody but you, sometimes I do wonder if he doesn't think he married too much in a hurry. Then there were his dragon-flies. There they all are falling to pieces from want of interest. I don't suppose anybody in England has taken so much trouble as Jimmie over dragon-flies, but what is a dragon-fly? They'll never be popular with the general public, because though they don't sting, people think they do. And then that fellow—who is it—it begins with an M—oh dear, my memory is something chronic! Well, anyway, he wrote a book about bees, and it's tremendously popular. Why? Because a bee is well-known. Certainly they sting too, but then they have honey and people keep them. If people kept dragon-flies, it would be different. No, my opinion is that for an eldest son Jimmie has been very unlucky."
The next day Bertram disappeared to school at an hour of the morning which John remembered did exist in his youth, but which he had for long regarded as a portion of the great backward and abysm of time. Beatrice tactfully removed his niece immediately after breakfast, not the auroral breakfast of Bertram, but the comfortable meal of ten o'clock; and except for a rehearsal of theboleroin the room over the library John was able to put in a morning of undisturbed diligence. Beatrice took Viola for a walk in the afternoon, and when Bertram arrived back from school about six o'clock she nearly spoilt her own dinner by the assistance she gave him with his tea. John had a couple of quiet hours withJoan of Arcbefore dinner, when he was only once interrupted by Beatrice's coming as her nephew's ambassador to ask what was the past participle of some Latin verb, which cost him five minutes' search for a dictionary. After dinner John played two sets of piquet with his sister-in-lawand having won both began to feel that there was a good deal to be said for a woman's presence in the house.
But about eleven o'clock on the morning of the next day James arrived, and not only James but Beyle the bulldog, who had, if one might judge by his behavior, as profound a contempt as his master for John's library, and a much more unpleasant way of showing it.
"I wish you'd leave your dog in the hall," John protested. "Look at him now; he's upset the paper-basket. Get down off that chair! I say, do look at him!"
Beyle was coursing round the room, steering himself with the kinked blob that served him for a tail.
"He likes the soft carpet," his master explained. "He thinks it's grass."
"What an idiotic dog," John scoffed. "And I suppose he thinks my Aubusson is an herbaceous border. Drop it, you brute, will you. I say, do put him downstairs. He's going to worry it in a minute, and all agree that bulldogs can't be induced to let go of anything they've once fairly gripped. Lie down, will you!"
James roared with laughter at his brother's disgust, but finally he turned the dog out of the room, and John heard what he fancied was a panic-stricken descent of the stairs by Maud or....
"I say, I hope he isn't chasing Mrs. Worfolk up and down the house," he ejaculated as he hurried out on the landing. What ever Beyle had been doing, he was at rest now and smiling up at John from the front-door mat. "I hope it wasn't Mrs. Worfolk," he said, coming back. "She's in a very delicate state just at present."
"What?" James shouted, incredulously.
"Oh, not in that way, my dear fellow, not in that way. But she's not used to having so many visitors in the house."
"I'm going to take one of them away with me, if that'll be any consolation to her," James announced.
"Not Beatrice?" his brother stammered.
James nodded grimly.
"It's all very fine for you with a mob of servants to look after you: but I can't spare Beatrice any more easily than you could spare Mrs. Worfolk. I've been confoundedly uncomfortable for nearly two days, and my wife must come back."
"Oh, but look here," John protested. "She's been managing the children magnificently. I've hardly known they were in the house. You can't take Beatrice away."
"Sorry, Johnnie, but my existence is not so richly endowed with comforts as yours. You'd better get a wife for yourself. You can afford one."
"But can't we arrive at a compromise?" John pleaded. "Why don't you come and camp out with me, too?"
"Camp out, you hypocrite!" the critic jeered. "No, no, you can't bribe me with your luxuries. Do you think that I could work with two children careering all over the place? I dare say they don't disturb your plays. I dare say you can't hear them above the clash of swords and the rolling of thunder, but for critical work I want absolute quiet. Sorry, but I'm afraid I must carry off Beatrice."
"Well, of course, if you must...." John murmured, despondently. And it was very little consolation to think, while Viola practised thefandangoin the library preparatory to dislocating the household by removing Maud from her work to escort her to the dancing-class, that Beatrice herself would have liked to stay.
"However," John sternly resolved, "the next time that James tries to scoff at married life I shall tell him pretty plainly what I think of his affectation."
He decided ultimately to keep the children at Church Row for a week, to give them some kind of treat on Saturday, and on Saturday evening, before dinner, to take them back to their father and insist upon his being responsible for them. If by chance George proved to be really ill, which he did not suppose for a moment that he would, he should take matters firmly into his hands and export the children to Ambles until their mother came home: Viola could practiseevery known variety of Spanish dance over Laurence's head, or even in Laurence's room; and as for Bertram he could corrupt Harold to his heart's content.
On the whole, the week passed off well. Although Viola had fallen like Lucifer from being an angel in Maud's mind, she won back her esteem by behaving like a human little girl when they went to the dancing-class together and did not try to assume diabolic attributes in exchange for the angelic position she had forfeited. John was allowed to gather that Viola's chief claim to Maud's forgiveness was founded upon her encouragement of the advances made to her escort by a handsome young sergeant of the Line whom they had encountered in the tube.
"Miss Viola behaved herself like a little lady," Maud had informed John when they came home.
"You enjoyed taking her?"
"Yes, indeed, sir, it's a pleasure to go about with anyone so lady-like. Several very nice people turned round to admire her."
"Did they, Maud, did they?"
Later, when Viola's account of the afternoon reached him he wondered if the sergeant was one of those nice people.
Mrs. Worfolk, too, was reconciled to Bertram by the profound respect he accorded to her tales and by his appreciation of an album of family photographs she brought out for him from the bottom of her trunk.
"The boy can be as quiet as a mouse," she assured John, "as long as he isn't encouraged to make a hullabaloo."
"You think I encourage him, Mrs. Worfolk?"
"Well, sir, it's not my place to offer an opinion about managing children, but giving them a calf's head is as good as telling them to misbehave theirselves. It's asking for trouble. There he is now, doing what he calls his home work with a little plate of toffee I made for him—as good as gold. But what I do ask is where's the use in filling up a child's head with Latin and Greece. Teach a child to be a heathen goddess and a heathen goddess he'll be. Teach himthe story of the Infant Samuel and he'll behave like the Infant Samuel, though I must say that one child who I told about God's voice, in the family to which I was nursemaid, had a regular fit and woke up screaming in the middle of the night that he could hear God routing about for him under the bed. But then he was a child with very old-fashioned notions and took the whole story for gospel, and his mother said after that no one wasn't to read him nothing except stories about animals."
"What happened to him when he grew up?" John asked.
"Well, sir, I lost sight of the whole family, but I dare say he became a clergyman, for he never lost this habit of thinking God was dodging him all the time. It was God here, and God there, till I fairly got the jumps myself and might have taken up with the Wesleans if I hadn't gone as third housemaid to a family where the master kept race-horses which gave me something else to think about, and I never had anything more to do with children until my poor sister's Herbert."
"That must have been a great change, Mrs. Worfolk."
"Yes, sir, so it was; but life's only one long changing about, though they do say there's nothing new under the sun. But good gracious me, fellows who make up mottoes always exaggerate a bit: they've got to, so as to keep up with one another."
When Friday evening arrived John nearly emphasized Mrs. Worfolk's agreement with Heraclitus by keeping the children at Church Row. But by the last post there came a letter from Janet Bond to beg an earlier production ofJoan of Arcif it was by any means possible, and John looking at the infinitesimal amount he had written during the week resolved that he must stick to his intention of taking the children back to their father on the following day.
"What would you like to do to-morrow?" he inquired. "I happen to have a free afternoon, and—er—I'm afraid your father wants you back in Earl's Court, so it will be your last opportunity of enjoying yourselves for some time—Imean of our enjoying ourselves for some time, in fact, until we all meet at Ambles for Christmas."
"Oh, I say," Bertram protested. "Have we got to go back to rotten old Earl's Court? What a sell!"
"I thought we were going to live here always," Viola exclaimed.
"But don't you want to go back to your father?" John demanded in what he hoped was a voice brimming with reproaches for their lack of filial piety, but which he could not help feeling was bubbling over with something very near elation.
"Oh, no," both children affirmed, "we like being with you much best."
John's gratification was suddenly darkened by the suspicion that perhaps Eleanor had told them to flatter him like this; he turned swiftly aside to hide the chagrin that such a thought gave him, and when he spoke again it was almost roughly, because in addition to being suspicious of their sincerity he was vexed with himself for displaying a spirit of competitive affection. It occurred to him that it was jealousy rather than love which made the world go round—a dangerous reflection for a romantic playwright.
"I'm afraid it can't be helped," he said. "To-morrow is definitely our last day. So choose your own method of celebrating it without dressing up."
"Oh, we only dress up on Sundays," Viola said, loftily.
"I vote we go to the Zoo," Bertram opinionated after a weighty pause.
Had his nephew Harold suggested a visit to the Zoo, John would have shunned the proposal with horror; but with Bertram and Viola the prospect of such an expedition was positively enticing.
"I must beware of favoritism," John warned himself. "Yes, and I must beware of being blarneyed." Then aloud he added:
"Very well, we will visit the Zoo immediately after lunch to-morrow."
"Oh, but we must go in the morning," Bertram cried. "There won't be nearly time to see everything in the afternoon."
"What about our food?"
"We can eat there."
"But, my dear boy," John said. "You are confusing us with the lions. I much doubt if a human beingcaneat at the Zoo, unless he has a passion for peanuts and stale buns, which I have not."
"I swear you can," Bertram maintained. "Anyhow, I know you can get ices there in the summer."
"We'll risk it," John declared, adventurously; and the children echoed his enthusiasm with joy.
"We must see the toucans this time," Bertram announced in a grave voice, "and last time we missed the zebu."
"I shouldn't have thought that possible," John demurred, "with all those stripes."
"Not the zebra," Bertram severely corrected him. "The zebu."
"Never heard of the beast," John said.
"I say, V," Bertram exclaimed, incredulously. "He's never heard of the zebu."
Viola was too much shocked by her uncle's ignorance to do more than smile sadly.
"We'll show it you to-morrow," Bertram promised.
"Thanks very much. I shall enjoy meeting the zebu," John admitted, humbly. "And any other friends of yours in the animal world whose names begin with Z."
"And we also missed the ichneumon," Viola reminded her brother.
"Your last visit seems to have been full of broken appointments. It's just as well you're going again to-morrow. You'll be able to explain that it wasn't your fault."
"No, it wasn't," said Bertram, bitterly. "It was Miss Coldwell's."
"Yes," said Viola. "She simply tore past everything. And when Bertram gave the chimpanzee a brown marbleinstead of a nut and he nearly broke one of his teeth, she said it was cruel."
"Yes, fancy thinkingthatwas cruel," Bertram scoffed. "He was in an awful wax, though; he bunged it back at me like anything. But I swopped the marble on Monday with Higginbotham Minor for two green commonys: at least I said it was the marble; only really I dropped it while we were waiting for the bus."
"You're a kind of juvenile Lord Elgin," John declared.
"What did he do?"
"He did the Greek nation over marbles, just as you did the chimpanzee and Higginbotham Minor."
Next morning John made arrangements to send the children's luggage to Earl's Court so that he should be able when the Zoological Gardens were closed to take them directly home and not be tempted to swerve from his determination: then under the nearest approach to a blue sky that London can produce in November they set out for Regent's Park.
John with his nephew and niece for guides spent a pleasant if exhausting day. Remembering the criticism leveled against Miss Coldwell's rapidity of transit, he loitered earnestly by every cage, although he had really had no previous conception of how many animals the Zoo included and began to dread a long list of uninvited occupants at the day's end. He had a charming triumph in the discovery of two more animals beginning with Z, to wit, the zibet and the zoril, which was the sweeter for the fact that they were both new beasts to the children. There was an argument with the keeper of the snake's house, because Bertram nearly blinded a lethargic alligator with his sister's umbrella, and another with the keeper of the giraffes, because in despite of an earnest plea not to feed them, Viola succeeded in tempting one to sniff moistly a piece of raspberry noyau. If some animals were inevitably missed, there were several welcome surprises such as seeing much more of the hippopotamus than the tips of his nostrils floating like two bits of mudon the surface of the water; others included the alleged visibility of a beaver's tail, a conjugal scene between the polar-bears, a truly demoniac exhibition of rage by the Tasmanian-devil, some wonderful gymnastics by a baby snow-leopard, a successful attempt to touch a kangaroo's nose, an indisputable wriggle of vitality from the anaconda, and the sudden scratching of its ear by a somnolent fruit-eating bat.
About ten minutes before the Gardens closed John, who was tired out and had somehow got his cigar-case full of peanuts, declared it was time to go home.
"Oh, but we must just have a squint at the Small Cats' House," Bertram cried, and Viola clasped her hands in apprehension at the bare idea of not doing so.
"All right," John agreed. "I'll wait for you three minutes, and then I'm going slowly along towards the exit."
The three minutes passed, and since the children still lingered he walked on as he had promised. When they did not catch him up as soon as he expected, he waited for a while and then with an exclamation of annoyance turned back.
"What on earth can they find to enjoy in this awful smell?" he wondered, when he entered the Small Cats' House to drag them out. The house was empty except for a bored keeper thinking of his tea.
"Have you seen two children?" John asked, anxiously.
"No, sir, this is the Small Cats' House," replied the keeper.
"Children," repeated John, irritably.
"No, sir. Or, yes, I believe therewasa little boy and a little girl in here, but they've been gone some minutes now. It's closing time," he added, significantly.
John rushed miserably along deserted paths through the dusk, looking everywhere for Bertram and Viola without success.
"All out," was being shouted from every direction.
"Two children," he panted to a keeper by the exit.
"All out"
"But two children are lost in the Gardens."
"Closing time, sir. They must have gone out by another gate."
He herded John through the turnstile into the street as he would have herded a recalcitrant gnu into its inclosure.
"But this is terrible," John lamented. "This is appalling. I've lost George's children."
He hailed a taxi, drove to the nearest police-station, left their descriptions, and directed the driver to Halma House, Earl's Court Square.
JOHNcame to the conclusion while he was driving to Earl's Court that the distinctive anxiety in losing two children was to be sought for in an acute consciousness of their mobility. He had often enough lost such articles as sovereigns, and matchboxes, and income-tax demands; but in the disappearance of these he had always been consoled by the knowledge that they were stationary in some place or another at any given moment, and that somebody or another must find them at some time or another, with profit or disappointment to himself. But Bertram and Viola might be anywhere; if at this moment they were somewhere, before the taxi had turned the next corner they might be somewhere else. The only kind of loss comparable to this was the loss of a train, in which case also the victim was dismayed by the thought of its mobility. Moreover, was it logically possible to find two children, any more than it was possible to find a lost train? They could be caught like a train by somebody else; but except among gipsies, who were practically extinct, the sport of catching children was nowadays unknown. The classic instance of two lost children—and by the way an uncle came into that—wasThe Babes in the Wood, in which story they were neither caught nor found, though certainly their bodies were found owing to the eccentric behavior of some birds in the vicinity. It would be distressing to read in the paper to-morrow of two children's having been found under a drift of paper-bags in the bear-pit at the Zoo, hugged to death not by each other, but by the bears. Or they might have hidden themselves in the Reptile House—Bertram had displayed a dreadful curiosity about the effect of standing upon one of the alligators—and their fate might remain for ever a matterof conjecture. Yet even supposing that they were not at this moment regarding with amazed absorption—absorption was too ominous a word—with amazed interest the nocturnal gambols of the great cats, were they on that account to be considered safe? If it was a question of being crunched up, it made little difference whether one was crunched up by the wheels of an omnibus or by the jaws of a panther. To be sure, Bertram was accustomed to go to school by tube every morning, and obviously he must know by this time how to ask the way to any given spot....
The driver of the taxi was taking no risks with the traffic, and John's tightly strung nerves were relaxed; he began to perceive that he was agitating himself foolishly. The wide smoothness of Cromwell Road was all that was needed to persuade him that the shock had deprived him for a short time of common sense. How absurd he had been! Of course the children would be all right; but he should take good care to administer no less sharp a shock to George than he had experienced himself. He did not approve of George's attitude, and if the temporary loss of Bertram and Viola could rouse him to a sense of his paternal responsibilities, this disturbing climax of a jolly day would not have been led up to in vain. No, George's moral, mental, and physical laziness must no longer be encouraged.
"I shall make the whole business out to be as bad as possible," he decided. "Though, now that I have had time to think the situation out, I realize that there is really not the least likelihood of anything's serious having happened to them."
For James even when he was most exasperating John always felt an involuntary deference that stood quite apart from the sentimental regard which he always tried to owe him as head of the family; for his second brother George he had nothing but contempt. James might be wrongheaded; but George was fatheaded. James kept something of their father's fallen day about him; George was a kind of gross caricature of his own self. Every feature in this brother'sface reproduced the corresponding feature in his own with such compelling suggestiveness of a potentially similar degeneration that John could never escape from the reproach of George's insistent kinship. Many times he had been seized by a strong impulse to cut George ruthlessly out of his life; but as soon as he perceived that gibbous development of his own aquiline nose, that reduplication of his own rounded chin, that bull-like thickening of his own sanguine neck, and that saurian accentuation of the eloquent pouches beneath his own eyes, John surrendered to the claims of fraternity and lent George as much as he required at the moment. If Daniel Curtis's desire to marry Hilda had always puzzled him, Eleanor's willingness to be tied for life to George was even more incomprehensible. Still, it was lucky that she had been taken with such a whim, because she was all that stood between George and absolute dependence upon his family, in other words upon his younger brother. Whatever Eleanor's faults, however aggressive her personality, John recognized that she was a hard worker and that the incubus of a husband like George (to whom she seemed curiously and inexplicably devoted) entitled her to a great deal of indulgence.
It was strange to look back now to the time when he and George were both in the city, himself in dog-biscuits and George in wool, and to remember that except their father everybody in the family had foretold a prosperous commercial career for George. Beyond his skill at Solo Whist and a combination of luck with judgment in betting through July and August on weight for age selling-plates and avoiding the big autumn handicaps, John could not recall that George had ever shown a glimmer of financial intelligence. Once or twice when he had visited his brother in the wool-warehouse he had watched an interview between George and a bale of wool, and he had often chuckled at the reflection that the protagonists were well matched—there had always been something woolly about George in mind and body; and when one day he rolled stolidly forth from the warehousefor the last time in order to enter into partnership with a deluded friend to act as the British agents for a society of colonial housewives, John felt that the deluded friend would have been equally well served by a bale of wool. When George and his deluded friend had tried the patience of the colonial housewives for a year by never once succeeding in procuring for them what they required, the partnership was dissolved, and George processed from undertaking to undertaking till he became the business manager of a theatrical touring company. Although as a business manager he reached the nadir of his incompetence he emerged from the post with Eleanor for wife, which perhaps gave rise to a family legend that George had never been so successful as when he was a business manager. This legend he never dispelled by a second exhibition of himself in the part, although he often spoke regretfully of the long Sundays in the train, playing nap for penny points. After he married Eleanor he was commission-agent for a variety of gentlemanly commodities like whisky and cigars; but he drank and smoked much more than he sold, and when bridge was introduced and popularized, having decided that it was the best investment for his share of Eleanor's salary, he abandoned everything else. Moreover, John's increasing prosperity gave his play a fine stability and confidence; he used to feel that his wife's current account merely lapped the base of a solid cliff of capital. A bad week at Bridge came to be known as another financial disappointment; but he used to say cheerfully when he signed the I.O.U. that one must not expect everybody in the family to be always lucky, and that it was dear old John's turn this week. John himself sometimes became quite giddy in watching the swift revolutions of the wheel of fortune as spun by George. The effect of sitting up late at cards usually made George wake with a headache, which he called "feeling overworked"; he was at his best in the dusky hours before dinner, in fact just at the time when John was on his way to explode in his ear the news of the children's disappearance; it was then thatamong the attenuated spinsters of Halma House his grossness seemed nothing more than a ruddy well-being and that his utter indifference to any kind of responsibility acquired the characteristics of a ripe geniality.
Halma House, Earl's Court Square, was a very large boarding-house, so large that Miss Moxley, the most attenuated spinster who lived in it, once declared that it was more like a residential hotel than a boarding-house, a theory that was eagerly supported by all the other attenuated spinsters who clung to its overstuffed furniture or like dusty cobwebs floated about its garish saloons. Halma House was indeed two houses squeezed or knocked (or whatever other uncomfortable verb can be found to express the welding) into one. Above the front-door of number 198 were the large gilt letters that composed HALMA: above the front-door of what was once number 200 the equally large gilt letters that made up HOUSE. The division between the front-door steps had been removed so as to give an almost Medician grandeur to the entrance, at the top of which beneath a folded awning a curved garden-seat against the disused door of number 20 suggested that it was the resort for the intimate gayety of the boarders at the close of a fine summer day; as Miss Moxley used to vow, it was really quite an oasis, with the plane-trees of the square for contemplation not to mention the noising of the sparrows and the distant tinkling of milk-cans, quite an oasis in dingy old London. But then Miss Moxley had the early symptoms of exophthalmus, a malady that often accompanies the poetic temperament; Miss Moxley, fluttering out for five minutes' fresh air before dinner on a gentle eve in early June, was capable of idealizing to the semblance of a careless pastoral group the spectacle of a half-pay major, a portly widow or two up from the country, and George Touchwood, all brushing the smuts from their noses while they gossiped together on that seat: this was by no means too much for her exophthalmic vision.
John's arrival at Halma House in raw November was not greeted by such evidence of communal felicity; on the contrary,when he walked up the steps, the garden-seat looked most defiantly uninviting; nor did the entrance hall with its writhing gilt furniture symbolize anything more romantic than the competitive pretentiousness of life in a boarding-house that was almost a residential hotel. A blond waiter whose hair would have been dishevelled but for the uses of perspiration informed him that Mr. Tooshvood was in his sitting-room, and led him to a door at the end of the hall opposite another door that gave descent to the dungeons of supply, the inmates of which seemed to spend their time in throwing dishes at one another.
The possession of this sitting-room was the outstanding advantage that George always claimed for Halma House, whenever it was suggested that he should change his quarters: Adam discoursing to his youngest descendant upon the glories of Eden could hardly have outbragged George on the subject of that sitting-room. John on the other hand disliked it and took pleasure in pointing out the impossibility of knowing whether it was a conservatory half transformed into a box-room or a box-room nearly turned into a conservatory. He used to call it George's amphibious apartment, with justice indeed, for Bertram and Viola with true appreciation had once selected it as the appropriate setting in which to reproduce Jules Verne'sTwenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea. The wallpaper of dark blue flock was smeared with the glistening pattern as of seaweed upon rocks at low tide; the window was of ground-glass tinted to the hue of water in a swimming-bath on Saturday afternoon, and was surrounded by an elaborate arrangement of cork that masked a number of flower pots filled with unexacting plants; while as if the atmosphere was not already sufficiently aqueous, a stage of disheartened aspidistras cast a deep-sea twilight upon the recesses of the room, in the middle of which was a jagged table of particolored marble, and upon the walls of which were hung cases of stuffed fish. Mrs. Easton, the proprietress of Halma House, only lent the room to George as a favor: it was not really his own, and while he lay in bedof a morning she used to quarrel there with all the servants in turn. Moreover, any of the boarders who had bicycles stabled them in this advantageous apartment, the fireplace of which smoked. Nevertheless, George liked it and used to knit there for an hour after lunch, sitting in an armchair that smelt like the cushions of a third-class smoker and looking with his knitting needles and opaque eyes like a large lobster preening his antennæ in the corner of a tank.
When John visited him now, he was reading an evening paper by the light of a rugged mantle of incandescent gas and calculating how much he would have won if he had backed the second favorite for every steeplechase of the day.
"Hullo, is that you, John?" he inquired with a yawn, and one hand swam vaguely in his brother's direction while the other kept its fingers spread out upon the second favorites like a stranded starfish.
"Yes, I'm afraid I've got very bad news for you, George."
George's opaque eyes rolled slowly away from the races and fixed his brother's in dull interrogation.
"Bertram and Viola are lost," John proclaimed.
"Oh, that's all right," George sighed with relief. "I thought you were serious for a minute. Crested Grebe at 4 to 1—yes, my theory that you ought to back second favorites works out right for the ninth time in succession. I should have been six pounds up to-day, betting with level sovereigns. Tut-tut-tut!"
John felt that his announcement had not made quite the splash it ought to have made in George's deep and stagnant pool.
"I don't think you heard what I said," he repeated. "Bertram and Viola—yourchildren—are definitely lost."
"I don't expect they are really," said George, soothingly. "No, no, not really. The trouble is that not one single bookie will take on this second-favorite system. Ha-ha—they daren't, the cowards! Don't you bother about the kids; no, no, they'll be all right. They're probably hanging on behind a van—they often do that when I'm out with them,but they always turn up in the end. Yes, I should have made twenty-nine pounds this week."
"Look here," said John, severely, "I want you clearly to understand that this is not a simple question of losing them for a few minutes or so. They have been lost now since the Zoo was closed this afternoon, and I am not yet convinced that they are not shut up inside for the night."
"Ah, very likely," said George. "That's just the kind of place they might get to."
"The prospect of your children's passing the night in the Zoo leaves you unaffected?" John demanded in the tone of an examining counsel.
"Oh, they'll have been cleared out by now," said George. "You really mustn't bother yourself about them, old boy."
"You have no qualms, George, at the notion of their wandering for hours upon the outskirts of Regent's Park?"
"Now don't you worry, John. I'm not going to worry, and I don't want you to worry. Why worry? Depend upon it, you'll find them safe and sound in Church Row when you get back. By the way, is your taxi waiting?"
"No, I dismissed it."
"I was afraid it might be piling up the twopences. Though I dare say a pyramid of twopences wouldn't bother you, you old plutocrat. Yes, these second favorites...."
"Confound the second favorites," John exclaimed. "I want to discuss your children."
"You wouldn't, if you were their father. They involve me in far too many discussions. You see, you're not used to children. I am."
John's eyes flashed as much as the melancholy illumination permitted; this was the cue for which he had been waiting.
"Just so, my dear George. You are used to children: I am not. And that is why I have come to tell you that the police have been instructed to return them, when found, toyouand not to me."
George blinked in a puzzled way.
"To me?" he echoed.
"Yes, to you. To their father. Hasn't their luggage arrived? I had it sent back here this morning."
"Ah, yes," George said. "Of course! I was rather late getting up this morning. I've been overworking a bit lately, and Karl did mutter something about luggage. Didn't it come in a taxi?"
John nodded.
"Yes, I remember now, in a prepaid taxi; but as I couldn't remember that I was expecting any luggage, I told Karl to send it back where it came from."
"Do you mean to say that you sent their luggage back after I'd taken the trouble to...."
"That's all right, old boy. I was feeling too tired to deal with any problems this morning. The morning is the only opportunity I get for a little peace. It never occurred to me whose luggage it was. It might have been a mistake; in fact I thought it was a mistake. But in any case it's very lucky I did send it back, because they'll want it to-night."
"I'm afraid I can't keep them with me any longer."
Though irony might be lost on George's cold blood, the plain fact might wake him up to the actuality of the situation and so it did.
"Oh, but look here, old boy," he expostulated, "Eleanor won't be home for another five weeks. She'll be at Cardiff next week."
"And Bertram and Viola will be at Earl's Court," said John, firmly.
"But the doctor strongly recommended me to rest. I've been very seedy while you were in America. Stomachic, old boy. Yes, that's the trouble. And then my nerves are not as strong as yours. I've had a lot of worry lately."
"I'm sorry," John insisted. "But I've been called away on urgent business, and I can't leave the children at Church Row. I'm sorry, George, but as soon as they are found, I must hand them over to you."
"I shall send them down to the country," George threatened.
"When they are once more safely in your keeping, you can do what you like with them."
"To your place, I mean."
Normally John would have given a ready assent to such a proposal; but George's attitude had by now aroused his bitter disapproval, and he was determined that Bertram and Viola should be planted upon their father without option.
"Ambles is impossible," he said, decidedly. "Besides, Eleanor is anxious that Viola shouldn't miss her series of Spanish dances. She attends the dancing-class every Tuesday and Friday. No doubt your landlady will lend you Karl to escort her."
"Children are very difficult in a boarding-house," George argued. "They're apt to disturb the other guests. In fact, there was a little trouble only last week over some game—"
"Robinson Crusoe," John put in.
"Ah, they told you?"
"No, no, go on. I'm curious to know exactly what we missed at Church Row."
"Well, they have a habit, which Eleanor most imprudently encourages, of dressing up on Sundays, and as I've had to make it an understood thing thatnoneofmyclothes are to be used, they are apt to borrow other people's. I must admit that generally people have been very kind about lending their clothes; but latterly this dressing up has taken a more ambitious form, and on Sunday week—I think it was—"
"Yes, it would have been a Sunday," John agreed.
"On Sunday week they borrowed Miss Moxley's parrot for Robinson Crusoe. You remember poor Miss Moxley, John?"
"Yes, she lent you five pounds once," said John, sternly.
"Precisely. Oh yes, she did. Yes, yes, that was why I was so vexed about her lending her parrot."
"Why shouldn't she lend her parrot?"
"No reason at all why she shouldn't lend it; but apparently parrots are very excitable birds, and this particular one went mad under the strain of the children's performance,bit Major Downman's finger, and escaped by an upper window. Poor Miss Moxley was extremely upset, and the bird has never been seen since. So you see, as I told you, children are apt to be rather a nuisance to the other guests."
"None of the guests at Halma House keeps a tame calf?"
George looked frightened.
"Oh no, I don't think so. There's certainly never been the least sign of mooing in the garden. Besides, I'm sure Mrs. Easton would object to a calf. She even objects to dogs, as I had to tell James the other day when he came to see meveryearly about signing some deed or other. But what made you ask about a calf? Do you want one?"
"No, I don't want one: I hate cows and calves. Bertram and Viola, however, are likely to want one next week."
"You've been spoiling them, old chap. They'd never dare ask me for a calf. Why, it's preposterous. Yes, you've been spoiling them. Ah, well, you can afford it; that's one thing."
"Yes, I dare say I have been spoiling them, George; but you'll be able to correct that when they're once again in your sole charge."
George looked doubtful.
"I'm very strict with them," he admitted. "I had to be after they lost the parrot and burned Mrs. Easton's rug. It was most annoying."
"Yes, luckily I hadn't got any suitable fur rugs," John chuckled. "So they actually burnt Mrs. Easton's?"
"Yes, and—er—she was so much upset," George went on, "that she's—well—the fact is, theycan'tcome back, John, because she's let their room."
"How much do you owe her?" John demanded.
"Oh, very little. I think only from last September. Well, you see, Eleanor was out of an engagement all the summer and had a wretched salary at the Parthenon while she was understudying—these actress-managers are awful harpies—do you know Janet Bond?"
"Yes, I'm writing a tragedy for her now."
"Make her pay, old boy, make her pay. That's my advice. And I know the business side of the profession. But to come back to Mrs. Easton—I was really very angry with her, but you see, I've got my own room here and it's uncommonly difficult to find a private room in a boarding-house, so I thought we'd stay on here till Eleanor's tour was over. She intends to save three pounds a week, and if I have a little luck over the sticks this winter, we shall be quite straight with Mrs. Easton, and then the children will be able to come back in the New Year."
"How much do you owe her?" John demanded for the second time.
"Oh, I think it's about twenty pounds—it may be a little more."
John knew how much the little more always was in George's calculations, and rang the bell, which fetched his brother out of the armchair almost in a bound.
"Old boy, I never ring the bell here," he expostulated. "You see, I never consider that my private room is included in the attendance."
George moved nervously in the direction of the door to make his peace with whoever should answer the unwonted summons; but John firmly interposed himself and explained that he had rung for Mrs. Easton herself.
"Rung for Mrs. Easton?" George repeated in terrified amazement. "But she may come!"
"I hope she will," replied John, becoming more divinely calm every moment in the presence of his brother's agitation.
A tangled head flung itself round the door like one of the minor characters in a Punch and Judy show.
"Jew ring?" it asked, hoarsely.
"Please ask Mrs. Easton to come down to Mr. Touchwood's sitting-room," said John, seriously.
The head sniffed and vanished.
"I wish you could realize, old chap, that in a boarding-house far more tact is required than anywhere else in the world," George muttered in melancholy apprehension. "Anembassy isn't in it with a boarding-house. For instance, if I hadn't got the most marvelous tact, I should never have kept this room. However," he added more cheerfully, "I don't suppose for a moment that she'll come—unless of course she thinks that the chimney is on fire. Dash it, John, I wish you could understand some of the difficulties of my life. That's why I took up knitting. My nerves are all to pieces. If I were a rich man I should go for a long sea-voyage."
George fell into a silent brooding upon his misfortunes and ill-health and frustrated ambitions; John examined the stuffed fish upon the walls, which made him think of wet days upon the river and waiting drearily in hotel smoking-rooms for the weather to clear up. Then suddenly Mrs. Easton filled the room. Positive details of this lady's past were lacking, although the gossip of a long line of attenuated spinsters had evolved a rich apocrypha. It was generally accepted, however, that Halma House was founded partly upon settlements made in her favor long ago by a generous stockbroker and partly upon an insurance-policy taken out by her late husband Dr. Easton, almost on the vigil of his death, the only successful operation he ever performed. The mixed derivation of her prosperity was significantly set forth in her personal appearance: she either wore widow's black and powdered her face with pink talcum or she wore bright satins with plumed hats and let her nose shine: so that although she never looked perfectly respectable, on the other hand she never looked really fast.
"Good evening, ma'am," John began at once, assuming an air of Grandisonian courtesy. "My brother is anxious to settle his account."
The clouds rolled away from Mrs. Easton's brow; the old Eve glimmered for a moment in her fierce eye; if he had been alone with her, John would have thought that she was about to wink at him.
"I hear my nephew and niece have been taking liberties with your rug," he went on, but feeling that he might haveexpressed the last sentence better, he hurriedly blotted the check and with a bow handed it to the proprietress. "No doubt," he added, "you will overlook it this time? I am having a new rug sent to you immediately. What—er—skin do you prefer? Bear? I mean to say, the rug."
He tried to think of any other animal whose personality survived in rugs, but could think of none except a rabbit, and condemning the ambiguity of the English language waited in some embarrassment for Mrs. Easton to reply. She was by this time so surely convinced of John's interest in her that she opened to him with a trilling flutter of complacency like a turkey's tail.
"It happened to be a bearskin," she murmured. "But children will be children. We oughtn't to forget that we were all children once, Mr. Touchwood."
"So no doubt," John nervously continued, "you will be glad to see them when they come back to-night. Their room...."
"I shall give orders at once, Mr. Touchwood."
He wished that she would not harp upon the Mr. Touchwood; he seemed to detect in it a kind of reproachful formality; but he thanked her and hoped nervously she would now leave him to George.
"Oh dear me, why the girl hasn't lit the fire," Mrs. Easton exclaimed, evidently searching for a gracious action.
George eying his brother with a glance between admiration and disquietude told his landlady that he thought the fire smoked a little.
"I shall have the chimney swept to-morrow," she answered as grandly as if she had conferred a dukedom upon John and an earldom upon George.
Then with a special smile that was directed not so much toward the successful author as toward the gallant male she tucked away the check in her bodice, where it looked as forlorn as a skiff upon the tumultuous billows of the Atlantic, and went off to put on her green satin for dinner.
"We shall all hope to see you at half-past seven," she paused in the doorway to assure John.
"You know, I'll tell you what it is, old chap," said George when they were alone again. "Youought to have taken up the commission business andIought to have written plays. But thanks very much for tiding me over this difficult time."
"Yes," said John, a little sharply. "Your wife's current account wasn't flowing quite strongly enough, was it?"
"Wonderful woman, Mrs. Easton," George declared. "She has a keen eye for business."
"And for pleasure too, I should imagine," said John, austerely. "But get on your coat, George," he added, "because we must go out and inquire at all the police stations in turn for news of Bertram and Viola. We can't stop here discussing that woman."
"I tell you the kids will be all right. You mustn't get fussy, John. It's absurd to go out now," George protested. "In fact I daren't. I must think of my health. Dr. Burnham who's staying here for a congress of medical men has given me a lot of advice, and as he has refused to charge me a penny for it, the least I can do is to pay attention to what he says. Besides, what are we going to do?"
"Visit all the police stations in London."
"What shall we gain by doing that? Have you ever been to a police station? They're most uncomfortable places to hang about in before dinner."
"Get on your coat," John repeated.
George sighed.
"Well, if you insist, I suppose you have the right to insist; but in my opinion it's a waste of time. And if the kids are in a police station, I think it would teach them a dashed good lesson to keep them there for awhile. You don't want to encourage them to lose themselves every day. I wishyouhad half a dozen kids."
John, however, was inflexible; the sight of his brother sitting in that aqueous room and pondering the might-have-beens of the race course had kindled in his breast the fire of areformer; George must be taught that he could not bring children into the world without being prepared to look after them. He must and should be taught.
"Why, you'd take more trouble," he declared, "if you'd lost a fox terrier."
"Of course I should," George agreed. "I should have to."
John reddened with indignation.
"Don't be angry, old chap. I didn't mean that I should think more of a fox terrier. But, don't you see, a dog is dependent upon its collar, whereas Bertram and Viola can explain where they come from. Is it very cold out?"
"You'd better wear your heavy coat."
"That means I shall have to go all the way upstairs," groaned George.
The two brothers walked along the hall, and John longed to prod George with a heavy, spiked pole.
"Going out, Touchwood?" inquired an elderly man of military appearance, who was practicing golf putts from one cabbage rose to another on the Brussels carpet.
"Yes, I'm going out, Major. You know my brother, don't you? You remember Major Downman, John?"
George left his brother with the major and toiled listlessly upstairs.
"I think I once saw a play of yours, Mr. Touchwood."
John smiled as mechanically as the major might have returned a salute.
"The Fall of Nineveh, wasn't it?"
The author bowed an affirmative: it was hardly worth while differentiating between Nineveh and Babylon when he was just going out.
"Yes," the major persisted. "Wasn't there a good deal of talk about the scantness of some of the ladies' dresses?"
"There may have been," John said. "We had to save on the dresses what we spent on the hanging gardens."
"Quite," agreed the major, wisely. "But I'm not a puritan myself."
John bowed again to show his appreciation of the admission.
"Oh, no. Rather the reverse, in fact. I play golf every Sunday, and if it's wet I play bridge."
John wished that George would be quick with his coat.
"But I don't go in much for the theater nowadays."
"Don't you?"
"No, though I used to when I was a subaltern. By gad, yes! But it was better, I think, in my young days. No offense to you, Mr. Touchwood."
"Distance does lend enchantment," John assented.
"Quite, quite. I suppose you don't remember a piece at the old Prince of Wales? What was it called? Upon my soul, I've forgotten. It was a capital piece, though. I remember there was a scene in which the uncle—or it may not have been the uncle—no, I'm wrong. It was at the Strand. Or was it? God bless my soul, I don't know which it was. You don't remember the piece? It was either at the Prince of Wales or the Strand, or, by Jove, was it Toole's?"
Was George never coming? Every moment would bring Major Downman nearer to the heart of his reminiscence, and unless he escaped soon he might have to submit to a narrative of the whole plot.
"Do you know what I'm doing?" the Major began again. "I'm confusing two pieces. That's what I'm doing. But I know an uncle arrived suddenly."
"Yes, uncles are often rather fidgety," John agreed. "Ah, excuse me, Major. I see my brother coming downstairs. Good-by, Major, good-by. I should like to have a chat with you one of these days about the mid-Victorian theater."
"Delighted," the Major said, fervently. "I shall think of that play before to-night. Don't you be afraid. Yes, it's on the tip of my tongue. On the very tip. But I'm confusing two theaters. I see where I've gone wrong."
At that moment there was the sound of a taxi's arrival at Halma House; the bell rang; when George opened the doorfor John and himself to pass out, they were met by Mrs. Worfolk holding Viola and Bertram tightly, one in each hand.
"I told you they'd turn up," George said, and immediately took off his overcoat with a sigh of relief. "Well, you've given us a nice hunt," he went on with an indignant scowl at the children. "Come along to my room and explain where you've been. Good evening, Mrs. Worfolk."
In their father's sitting-room Bertram and Viola stood up to take their trial.
"Yes," opened Mrs. Worfolk, on whom lay the burden of narrating the malefactors' behavior. "Yes, I've brought back the infant prodigals, and a nice job I've had to persuade them to come quiet. In fact, I never had such a job since I took my poor sister's Herbert hollering to the hospital with a penny as he'd nearly choked himself with, all through him sucking it to get at some sweet stuff which was stuck to the edge. Hedidn'tchoke, though, because I patted him all down the street the same as if I'd been bowling a hoop, and several people looked at me in a very inquisitive way. Not that I ever pay attention to how people looks, except in church. To begin with, the nerve they've got. Well, I mean to say, when any one packs up some luggage and sends it off in a taxi, whoever expects to see it come back again almost at once? It came bouncing back, I do declare, as if it had been India rubber. 'Well,' as I said to Maud, 'It just shows how deep they are, and Mr. Touchwood'll have trouble with them before the day's done. You mark my words.' And, sure enough, just as I'd made up my mind that you wouldn't be in to tea, rat-a-tat-tat on the front door, and up drives my lord and my lady as grand as you like in a taxi. Of course, it give me a bit of a turn, not seeing you, sir, and I was just going to ask if you'd had an accident or something, when my lord starts in to argue with the driver that he'd only got to pay half fare for himself and his sister, the same as his father does when they travel by train. Oh, yes; he was going to pay the man himself. Any one wouldof thought it was the Juke of Wellington, to hear him arguing with that driver. Well, anyway, in the end, of course I had to pay the difference out of my housekeeping money, which you'll find entered in the book. And then, without so much as a blink, my lord starts in to tell how they'd gone into the Small Rat's House—"