"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?""At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?""Doyoucall it that too?" ...... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you all my life!"—Rudyard Kipling, "The Brushwood Boy."
"I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?"
"At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong Kong and Java?"
"Doyoucall it that too?" ...
... "You're the Boy, my Brushwood Boy, and I've known you all my life!"—Rudyard Kipling, "The Brushwood Boy."
The following morning I took up my new duties in earnest, and conveyed myself and my luggage from the Savoy to Pont Street.
"I'm allowing plenty of time for the train," I told Gladys when she had finished keeping me waiting. "Apparently we've got to meet the rest of the party at Waterloo, and Phil isn't certain if he'll be there."
As we drove down to the station I refreshed my memory with a second reading of his admirably lucid instructions.
"Eleven fifteen is the train," he wrote. "If I'm not there, make the Seraph introduce you: he knows everybody. If he cries off at the last minute (it's just like him), you'll have to manage on your own account, with occasional help from Gladys. She doesn't know Rawnsley or Culling, but she'll point out Gartside if you don't recognize him...."
"Do youknowhim?" Gladys asked me in surprise.
"I used to, many years ago. In fact I did him a small service when he had for the moment forgotten that he was in the East and that the Orient does not always see eye to eye with the West."
Gladys' feminine curiosity was instantly aroused, but I refused to gratify it. After all it was ancient history now, Gartside was several years younger at the time, and in the parlance of the day, "it was the sort of thing that might have happened to any one." He is now a highly respected member of the House of Lords, occupying an important public position. I should long ago have forgotten the whole episode but for his promise that if ever he had a chance of repaying me he would do so. I have every reason now to remember that the bread I cast on the waters returned to me after not many days.
"What's he like now?" I asked Gladys.
"Oh, a topper!"
I find the rising generation defines with a minimum of words.
"I mean he's a real white man," she proceeded,per obscurans ad obscurantius; I was left to find out for myself how much remained of the old Gartside. I found him little changed, and still a magnificent specimen of humanity, six feet four in height, fifteen stone in weight, as strong as a giant, and as gentle as a woman. He was the kindest, most courteous, largest-hearted man I have ever met: slow of speech, slow of thought, slow of perception. I am afraid you might starve at his side without his noticing it; when once he had seen your plight he would give you his last crust and go hungry himself. He was brave and just as few men have the courage to be; you trusted and followed him implicitly; with greater quickness and more imagination he would have been a great man, but with his weak initiative and unreadysympathy he might lead you to irreparable disaster. I suppose he was five and thirty at this time, balder than when I last met him, and stouter than in the days when he backed himself to stroke a Leander four half-way over the Putney course against the 'Varsity Eight.
I went on with Philip's letter of explanation.
"Nigel Rawnsley you will find majestic, Olympian, and omniscient. He is tall, sandy-haired, and lantern-jawed like his father; do not comment on the likeness, as he cherishes the belief that the Prime Minister's son is of somewhat greater importance than the Prime Minister. If you hear him speak before you see him, you will recognise him by his exquisite taste in recondite epithets. He will hail you with a Greek quotation, convict you of inaccuracy and ignorance on five different matters of common knowledge in as many minutes, and finally give you up as hopeless. This is just his manner. It is also his manner to wear a conspicuous gold cross to mark his religious enthusiasms, and to travel third as an earnest of democratic instincts. He is not a bad fellow if you don't take him too seriously; he is making a mark in the House."
"Prig," murmured Gladys with conviction, as I came to the end of the Rawnsley dossier. She did not know him, but was giving expression to a very general feeling.
I crossed swords more than once with Nigel Rawnsley in the course of the following few months, and in our duelling caught sight of more than one unamiable side to his character. While my mood is charitable, I may perhaps say a word in his favour. It is just possible that I have met more types of men than Philip Roden; it takes me longer to size them up; perhaps also I see a little deeper than he did.Nigel went through life handicapped by an insatiable ambition and an abnormal self-consciousness. Without charm of manner or strength of personality, he must have been from earliest schooldays one of those who—like the Jews—trample that they be not trampled on. He became overbearing for fear of being insignificant, corrected your facts for fear of being squeezed out of the conversation, and sharpened his tongue to secure your respect if not your love. Some one in the House christened him "Whitaker's Almanack," but in fact his knowledge was not exceptionally wide. He was always right because he had the wisdom to keep silent when out of his depth, and intervene effectively when he was sure of his ground.
I never heard him in Court, but his defect as a statesman must have been apparent as a barrister; he would take no risks, try no bluff, make no attack till horse, foot, and gun were marshalled in readiness. Given time he would win by dogged perseverance, but, as in my own case, he must know to his cost that a slippery opponent will give him no time for his ponderous grappling. Nigel's great natural gifts will carry him to the front when he has learnt a little more humanity; and humanity will come as he loses his dread of ridicule. At present the youngest parliamentary hand can brush aside his weighty facts and figures by a simple ill-natured witticism; and the fact that I am not now languishing in one of His Majesty's gaols is due to my discovery of the weak spot in his armour. Though my heart beat fast, I was still able to laugh at him in my moment of crisis; and so long as I laughed—though he had all the trumps in his hand—he must needs think I had reason for my laughter.
"The last of the party," Philip's letter concluded, "will be Pat Culling. He is an irrepressibleIrishman of some thirty summers, with a brogue that becomes unintelligible whenever he remembers to employ it. You will find him thin and short, with a lean, expressionless face, grey eyes, and black hair. He can play any musical instrument from a sackbut to a Jew's harp, and speak any language from Czech to Choctaw. Incidentally he is the idlest and most sociable man in Europe, and gets (and gives) more amusement out of life than any one I know.
"You should look for him first at the front of the train, where he will be bribing the driver to let him travel on the engine; failing that, try the station-master's office, where he will be ordering a special in broken Polish; or the collector's gate, where he will be losing his ticket and discovering it in the inspector's back hair. He is a skilled conjuror, and may produce a bowl of gold fish from your hat at any moment. On second thoughts, you will more probably find him gently baiting the incorruptible Rawnsley, who makes an admirable foil. Don't be lured into playing poker on the way down; Paddy will deal himself five aces with the utmostsang froid."
"Now we know exactly where we are," I remarked replacing the letter in my pocket, as our taxi mounted the sloping approach to Waterloo.
"And it's all wasted labour," said Gladys as I began to assemble her belongings from different corners of the cab. "Phil's here the whole time."
I reminded myself that I stoodin loco parentis, shook hands with Philip and plunged incontinently into a sea of introductions.
The journey down was unexpectedly tranquil. Gladys and Philip conversed in a discreet undertone, paying no more attention to my presence than if I had been the other side of the world. Gartside told me how life had treated him since our parting inAsia Minor; while Culling produced a drawing block and embarked on an illustrated history of Rawnsley's early years. It was entitled "L'Avénement de Nigel," and the series began with the first cabinet council hastily summoned to be informed of the birth—I noticed that the ministers were arrayed in the conventional robes of the Magi—it concluded with the first meeting of electors addressed by the budding statesman. For reasons best known to the artist, his victim was throughout deprived of the consolation of clothing, though he seldom appeared without the badge of the C.E.M.S. Rawnsley grew progressively more uncomfortable as the series proceeded, and in the interests of peace I was not sorry when we arrived at Brandon Junction.
We strolled out into the station yard while our luggage was being collected. A car was awaiting us, with a girl in the driving-seat, and from the glimpse gained a few days earlier in Pont Street, I recognized her as Sylvia Roden. I should have liked to enjoy a long rude stare, but my attention was distracted by the changed demeanour of my fellow travellers. Gartside advanced with the air Mark Antony must have assumed in bartering away a world for a smile from Cleopatra; Rawnsley struggled to produce a Sir Walter Raleigh effect without the cloak; even Culling was momentarily sobered.
When I turned from her admirers to Sylvia herself, it was to marvel at the dominion and assurance of an English girl in her beauty and proud youth. She sat in a long white dust-coat, her fingers toying with the ends of a long motor veil. The small oval face, surmounted by rippling black hair, was a singularly perfect setting for two lustrous, soft, unfathomable brown eyes. As she held her court, a smile of challenge hovered round her small, straight mouth,as though she were conscious of the homage paid her, and claimed it as a right; behind the smile there lurked—or so I fancied—a suggestion of weariness as with one whom mere adoration leaves disillusioned. Her manner was a baffling blend of frankness and reserve. Thecamaraderieof her greeting reminded me she was one girl brought up in a circle of brothers; fearless and unaffected, she met us on equal terms and was hailed by her Christian name. But the frankness was skin deep, and I pitied the man who should presume on her manner to attempt unwelcome intimacy. It was a fascinating blend, and she knew its fascination; her friends were distantly addressed as "Mr. Rawnsley," "Lord Gartside," "Mr. Culling."
Gladys and I had lingered behind the others, but at our approach Sylvia jumped down from the car and ran towards us. Her movements were astonishingly light and quick, and when I amused an idle moment in trying to fit her with a formula I decided that her veins must be filled with radium. Possibly the description conveys nothing to other people; it exactly expresses the feeling that her mobile face, quick movements of body and passionate nature inspired in me. Later on I remember the Seraph pointed to the tremendous mental and physical energy of her father and brothers, asking how a slight girl's frame could contain such fire without eruption.
Eruptions there certainly were, devastating and cataclysmic....
"How are you, my child?" she exclaimed, catching Gladys by the hands. "And where's the wicked uncle?"
My niece indicated my presence, and I bowed.
"You?" Sylvia took me in with one rapid glance, and then held out a hand. "But you look hardly older than Phil."
"I feel even younger," I began.
"Face massage," Culling murmured.
"A good conscience," I protested.
"Why did you have to leave England?" he retorted.
It was the first time I had heard it suggested that my exile was other than voluntary. I attempted no explanation as I knew Culling would outbid me. Instead, we gathered silently round the car and watched Philip attempting with much seriousness to allot seats among an excessive population that spent its time criticising and rejecting his arrangements.
"It's the fault of the Roden family!" he exclaimed at last in desperation. "Why did I come down by this train, and why did you come to meet us, Sylvia? We're two too many. Look here, climb in, everybody, and Bob and I'll go in the other car."
"You can't ask a Baron of the United Kingdom to go as luggage," objected Culling who had vetoed twice as many suggestions as any one else.
"Well, you come, Pat," said Phil.
"We Cullings aren't to be put off with something that's not good enough for Lord Gartside," was the dignified rejoinder.
Philip was seized with inspiration.
"Does any one care to walk?" he asked. "Gladys?"
"You're not going to take this child over wet fields in thin shoes," his sister interposed. "She's got a cold as it is."
My eyes strayed casually to the ground and taught me that Sylvia was shod with neat, serviceable brogues.
"I'll walk," I volunteered in an aside to her, "if you'll show me the way."
Within two minutes the car had been despatched on its road, and Sylvia and I set out at an easy, swinging pace through the town and across the four miles of low meadow land that separated us from Brandon Court.
"Rather good, that," I remarked as we got clear of the town.
"What was?" she asked.
"Abana, Pharpar and yet a third river of Damascus flowed near at hand, but it was the sluggish old waters of Jordan that were found worthy."
We were walking single-file along a footpath, and a stile imposed a temporary check. Sylvia mounted it and sat on the top bar, looking down on me.
"Are we going to be friends?" she asked abruptly.
"I sincerely hope so."
"It rests with you. And you must decide now, while there's still time to go back and get a cab at the station."
"We were starting rather well," I pointed out.
"That's just what you weren't doing," she said with a determined shake of the head. "If we're going to be friends, you must promise never to make remarks like that. You don't mean them, and I don't like them. Will you promise?"
"The flesh is weak," I protested.
"Am I worth a little promise like that?"
"Lord! yes," I said. "But I always break my promises."
"You mustn't break this one. It's bad enough with Abana and Pharpar, as you call them. You know you're really—you won't mind my saying it?—you're old enough...."
"Age only makes me more susceptible," I lamented. The statement was perfectly true and I have suffered much mental disquiet on the subject. So far as Ican see, my declining years will be one long riot of senile infidelity.
"I don't mind that," said Sylvia with a close-lipped smile; "but I don't want pretty speeches." She jumped down from the stile and stood facing me, with her clear brown eyes looking straight into mine. "You're not in love with me, are you?"
I hesitated for a fraction of time, as any man would; but her foot tapped the ground with impatience.
"Don't be absurd!" she exclaimed, "you know you're not; you've known me five minutes. Well,"—her voice suddenly lost any asperity it may have contained, and she laid her hand almost humbly on my arm—"please don't behave as if you were. I hate it, and hate it, and hate it, till I can hardly contain myself. But I should like you as a friend. You've knocked about the world, you're seasoned——"
I held out my hand to seal the bargain.
"I was horribly rude just now!" she exclaimed with sudden penitence. "I was afraid you were going to be like all the rest."
"Tell me what's expected of me," I begged.
"Nothing. I just want to be friends. You'll find I'm worth it," she added with a flash of pride.
"I think I saw that the moment we met."
"I wonder."
It was some time before I did full justice to Sylvia, some time before I appreciated the pathetic loneliness of her existence. For twenty years she and Philip had been staunch allies. His triumphs and troubles had been carried home from school to be discussed and shared with his sister; on the first night of every holiday the pair of them had religiously taken themselves out to dinner and a theatre, and Sylvia had been in attendance at every importantmatch in which he was taking part, and every speech day at which he was presented with a prize. The tradition was carried on at Oxford, and had only come to an end when Philip entered public life and won his way into the House of Commons. Their confidences had then grown gradually less frequent, and Sylvia, whose one cry—like Kundry's—had ever been, "Let me serve," found herself without the opportunity of service. The Roden household, when I first entered it, was curiously unsympathetic; she was without an ally; there was much affection and woefully little understanding. Her father never took counsel with the women of his family, Philip had slipped away, and neither Robin nor Michael was old enough to take his place. With her vague, ill-defined craving to be of account in the world, it was small wonder if she felt herself unfriended and her devotional overtures rejected. Had her father been any one else, I am convinced that Sylvia would have joined Joyce Davenant and sought an outlet for her activities in militancy.
"You're remarkably refreshing, Sylvia," I said. She raised her eyebrows at the name. "Oh, well," I went on, "if we're going to be friends.... Besides, it's a very pretty name."
"I hate it!" she exclaimed. "Sylvia Forstead Mornington Roden. I hate them all!"
"Were you called after Lady Forstead?" I asked.
"Yes. Did you know her?"
I shook my head. Of course I had heard of her and the money left by her husband, who had chanced to own the land on which Renton came afterwards to be built. Most of that money, I learned later, was reposing in trust till Sylvia was twenty-five.
"Your taste in godmothers is commendable," I remarked.
"You think so?" she asked without conviction.
It is not good for a young girl to be burdened with great possessions; they distort her outlook on life. I wondered to what extent Sylvia was being troubled in anticipation, but the wonder was idle: nature had troubled her with sufficient good looks to make mercenary admirers superfluous.
"Most people...." I began, but stopped as she came to a sudden standstill.
"Isay, we forgot all about Mr. Aintree!" she exclaimed.
"He didn't come," I reassured her.
"Oh, Phil said perhaps he mightn't. I gather he usually does accept invitations and not turn up. I hate people who can't be reasonably polite."
"He usually refuses the invitation," I said in the Seraph's defence.
"Why?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Shyness, I suppose."
"I hate shy people."
"You must ask him."
"I don't know him. What's he like?"
"Oh, I thought you did. He...." I paused and tried to think how the Seraph should be described; it was not easy. "Medium height," I ventured at last, "fair hair, rather a white face; curious, rather haunting dark eyes. Middle twenties, but usually looks younger. Very nervous and overwrought, frightfully shy...."
"Sounds like a degenerate poet."
"He's had a good deal of trouble," I added. "Be kind to him, Sylvia. Life's a long agony to him when he's with strangers."
"I hate shy people," she repeated. "It's so silly to be awkward."
"He's not awkward. Incidentally, what a number of things you find time to hate!"
"I know. I'm composed entirely of hates and bad tempers. And I hate myself more than anybody else."
"Why?"
"Because I don't understand myself," she answered, "and I can't control myself."
On arriving at the house I was introduced to my hostess. Lady Roden was a colourless woman who had sunk to a secondary position in the household. This was perhaps not surprising in a family that contained Arthur as the nominal head, and Philip, Sylvia, Robin, and Michael as Mayors of the Palace. What she lacked in authority was made up in prestige. On no single day of her life of fifty years did she forget that she was a Rutlandshire Mornington. I fear I have little respect for Morningtons—or any other pre-Conquest families—whether they come from Rutlandshire or any other part of the globe. Such inborn reverence as I in common with all other Englishmen may ever have possessed has been starved by many years absence abroad. At Brandon Court I found the sentiment flourishing hardily: Lady Roden dug for pedigrees as a dog scratches for a bone. "You are a brother of the Judge?" she said when we met. "Then—let me see—your sister-in-law was a Hylton."
I had expected to find the atmosphere oppressive with Front Bench politics, but the influence of Pat Culling was salutary. Discussion quailed before his powers of illustration, and the study of "The Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur Roden Mixing his Metaphors in the Cause of Empire"—it now hangs in the library of Cadogan Square—rescued the conversation from controversial destruction. In lieu of politics we hadto arrange for the arrival of our last two guests; Aintree had wired that he was coming by a later train, and Rawnsley's sister Mavis had to be brought over some twenty miles from Hanningfold on the Sussex borders. Sylvia volunteered for the longer journey in her own little runabout, while the Seraph was to be fetched in the car that went nightly to Brandon Junction for Arthur's official, cabinet-minister's despatch case.
"What's come over our Seraph the last few years?" Culling asked me, when the two cars had gone their respective ways and we were smoking a cheroot in the Dutch Garden. "I've known him from a bit of a boy that high, and now—God knows—it's in a decline you'd say he was taken. You can't please him and you can't even anger him. He's like a man has his heart broken."
I did not know what answer to give.
"Just a passing mood," I suggested.
"It's a mood will have him destroyed," said Culling, gloomily.
He was a kind-hearted, pleasant, superficial fellow, one of those feckless, humorous Irishmen who laugh at the absurdities of the world and themselves, and go on laughing till life comes to hold no other business—a splendid engine for work or fighting, but too idle almost to make a start, too little concentrated ever to keep the wheel moving, a man of short cuts and golden roads.... He talked with easy kindness of the Seraph till a horn sounded far away down the drive and the Brandon car swept tortuously through the elm avenue to the house.
"A common drunk and disorderly!" Culling shouted as the Seraph came towards us with his right arm in a sling. He had that morning shut his thumb in the front door of his flat, and while wedragged the depths of Waterloo for his body, he had been sitting with his doctor, sick and faint, having the wound dressed. His face was whiter than usual, and his manner restless.
"I've kept my promise," he remarked to me.
"I was giving up hope."
"Ihadto come," he answered in vague perplexity, and relapsed into one of his longest silences.
We wandered for an hour through the grand old-world gardens, reverently worshipping their many-coloured spring splendour. Flaming masses of azaleas blazed forth from a background of white and mauve rhododendrons; white, grey, and purple lilac squandered their wealth in riotous display, while the Golden Rain flashed in the evening sun, and a scented breeze spread the grass walks with a yellow carpet. We drew a last luxurious deep breath, and turned to watch the nymphæas closing their eyes for the night.
Beyond the water garden, in an orchard deep with fallen apple-blossom, Rawnsley and Gartside were stretched in wicker chairs watching an old spaniel race across the grass in sheer exhilaration of spirit.
"Come and study the Sixth Sense," Gartside called out as we approached.
"There isn't such a thing, but there's no harm in your studying it," said Rawnsley, in a tone that indicated it mattered little what any of us did to improve or debase our minds.
"Martel!" The dog bounded up at Gartside's call, and he showed us two glazed, sightless eyes. "Good dog!" He patted the animal's neck, and Martel raced away to the far end of the orchard. "That dog's as blind as my boot, but he steers himself as though he'd eyes all over his head. By Jove! I thought he'd brained himself that time!"
Martel had raced at top speed to the foot of a gnarled apple tree. At two yards' distance he swerved as though a whip had struck him, and passed into safety. The same thing happened half a dozen times in as many minutes.
"Heknowsit's there," said Gartside. "He's got a sense of distance. If that isn't a sixth sense, what is it?"
"Intensified smell-sense," Rawnsley pronounced. "Ifyouwere blind, you'd find your smelling and hearing intensified."
"Not enough," said Gartside.
"It's all you'll get. A sense is the perceptiveness of an organ. You've eyes, ears, a nose, a palate, and a number of sensitive surfaces. If you want a sixth sense, you must have a sixth perceive organ. You haven't. Therefore you must be content with seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching."
Gartside was not satisfied with the narrow category.
"I know a man who can always tell when there's a cat in the room."
"Before or after seeing it?" Rawnsley inquired politely.
"Oh, before. Genuine case. I tested him by locking a cat in the sideboard once when he was coming to dine with me. He complained the moment he got into the room."
"Acute smell-sense," Rawnsley decided.
"You hear of people who can foretell a change in the weather," Gartside went on.
"Usually wrong," said Rawnsley. "When they're right, and it isn't coincidence, you can trace it to the influence of a changed atmosphere on a sensitive part of their body. An old wound, for instance. Acute touch sense."
I happened to catch sight of the Seraph lying on his face piling the fallen apple-blossoms into little heaps.
"What about a sense of futurity?" I asked.
"Did you ever meet the man could spot a Derby winner?" asked Culling, infected by Rawnsley's scepticism.
"Futurity in respect of yourself," I defined. "What's called 'premonition.'"
Rawnsley demolished me with patient weightiness.
"You come down to breakfast with a headache...."
"Owin' to the unwisdom of mixin' your drinks," Culling interposed.
"...Everything's black. In the course of the day you hear a friend's dead. 'Ah!' you say, 'I knew something was going to happen.' What about all those other mornings...."
"Terribly plentiful!" said Culling.
"...When everything's black and nothing happens? It's pure coincidence."
I defined my meaning yet more narrowly.
"I have in mind the premonition of something quite definite."
"For instance?"
I told him of a phenomenon that has frequently come under my observation in the East—the power possessed by many natives of foretelling the exact hour of their death. Quite recently I came across a case in the Troad where I fell in with a young Greek who had been wasting for months with some permanent, indefinable fever. One morning I found him sitting dressed in his library, the temperature was normal and the pulse regular; he seemed in perfect health. I congratulated him on his recovery, and was informed that he would die punctually at eight that evening.
In the course of the day his will was drawn up and signed, the relatives took their farewells, and a priest administered supreme unction. I called again at seven o'clock. He seemed still in perfect health and full possession of his faculties, but repeated his assertion that he would pass away at eight. I told him not to be morbid. At ten minutes to eight he warned me that his time was at hand; after another three minutes he undressed and lay motionless on his bed. At two minutes past eight the heart had ceased to beat.
"Auto-hypnosis," said Rawnsley when I had done. "A long debilitating illness in which the mind became more and more abnormal and subject to fancies. An idea—from a dream, perhaps—that death will take place at a certain hour. The mind becomes obsessed by that idea until the body is literally done to death. It's no more premonition than if I say I'm going to dine to-night between eight and nine. I've an idea I shall, I shall do my best to make that idea fruitful, and nothing but an unforeseen eventuality will prevent my premonition coming true. Stick to the five senses and three dimensions, Merivale. And now come and dress, or I may not get my dinner after all."
"I think Rawnsley's disposed of premonitions," said the Seraph from the grass. Possibly I was the only one who detected a note of irony in his voice.
We had been given adjoining rooms, and in the course of dressing I had a visit from him with the request that I should tie his tie.
"Choose the other hand next time," I advised him, when I had done my bad best. "Authors and pianists, you know—it's your livelihood."
"It'll be well enough by the time I've anything to write."
"Is your Miserable Child causing trouble?"
Never at that time having been myself guilty of a line of prose or verse, I could only judge of composition by the light of pure reason. To write an entirely imaginative work would be—as the poet said of love—"the devil." An autobiographical novel, I thought, would be like keeping a diary and chopping it into chapters of approximately equal length.
"Have you ever kept a diary a week in advance?" the Seraph asked when I put this view before him.
"Why not wait a week?" I suggested, again in the light of pure reason.
"You'd lose the psychology of expectation—uncertainty."
"I suppose you would," I assented hazily.
"I want to dispose of my premonition on the Rawnsley lines."
"What form does it take?"
His lips parted, and closed again quickly.
"I'll let you know in a week's time," he answered.
Sylvia had not returned when we assembled in the drawing-room, and after waiting long enough to chill the soup and burn theentrée, it was decided to start without her. Nothing of that dinner survives in my memory, from which I infer that cooking and conversation were unrelievedly mediocre. With the appearance of the cigars I moved away from Lady Roden's empty chair to the place vacated by Gladys between Philip and the Seraph.
"Thumb hurting you?" I asked.
He looked so white that I thought he must be in pain.
"I'm all right, thanks," he answered. Immediately to belie his words the sudden opening of the door made him jump almost out of his chair. I saw thefootman who was handing round the coffee bend down and whisper something to Arthur.
"Sylvia's turned up at last," we were told.
"Did the car break down?" I asked; but Arthur could only say that she had returned twenty minutes before and was changing her dress.
"Has she brought Mavis?" asked Rawnsley.
"The man only said...."
Arthur left the sentence unfinished and turned his head to find Sylvia framed in the open doorway. She had changed into a white silk dress, and was wearing a string of pearls round her slender throat. Posed with one hand to the necklace and the other still holding the handle of the door, she made a picture I shall not easily forget. A study in black and white it was, with the dark hair and eyes thrown into relief by her pale face and light dress.... I must have stared unceremoniously, but my stare was distracted by a numbing grip on my forearm. I found the Seraph making his fingers almost meet through bone and muscle; he had half risen and was gazing at her with parted lips and shining eyes. Then we all rose to our feet as she came into the room.
"The car went all right," she explained, slipping into an empty chair by her father's side. "Please sit down, all of you, or I shall be sorry I came. I'm only here for a minute. Mavis hasn't come, Mr. Rawnsley. Your mother didn't know why she was staying on in town; she ought to have been down last night or first thing this morning. She hadn't wired or anything, so I waited till the six-forty got in, and as she wasn't on that, I came back alone. No, no dinner, thanks. Mrs. Rawnsley gave me some sandwiches."
"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said in thetone that tries to be sympathetic and only succeeds in arousing general misgiving.
Sylvia turned her eyes in my direction, catching sight of the Seraph as she did so.
"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, jumping up and walking round to him with that wonderful flashing smile that I once in poetical mood likened to a white rose bursting into flower. "I didn't see you when I came in. Oh, poor child, what have you done to your hand?"
I watched their faces as the Seraph explained; strong emotion on the one, polite conventional sympathy on the other.
"Move up one place, Phil," she commanded when the explanation was ended. "I want to talk to our invalid."
Sylvia's presence kept us lingering long over our cigars, and when at last we reached the drawing-room, it was to find that Gladys had already been packed off to bed with mustard plasters and black currant tea. Life abruptly ceased to have any interest for Philip. I stood about till my host and hostess were established at the bridge table with Culling and Gartside, and then accepted the Seraph's invitation for a stroll on the terrace.
He executed one of the most masterly silences of my experience. Time and again we paced that terrace till the others had retired to bed and a single light in the library shone like a Polyphemus eye out of the face of the darkened house. I pressed for no confidences, knowing that at the fitting season he would feel the need of a confidant and unburden himself to me. That was the most feminine of the Seraph's many feminine characteristics.
It was a wonderfully still, moonlight evening. You would have said he and I were the two last menin the world, and Brandon Court the only house in England—till you rounded the corner of the terrace and found two detectives from Scotland Yard screened by the angle of the house. Since the beginning of the militant outrages, no cabinet minister had been allowed to stir without a bodyguard; through the mists of thirty years I recalled the dynamiter days of my boyhood. In one form or other the militants, like the poor, were always with us.
It was after one when the Seraph stalked moodily through the open library window on his way to bed. Had he been less pre-occupied, he would have seen something that interested me, though I suppose it would have enlightened neither of us.
On a table by the door stood a photograph of Sylvia. I noticed the frame first, then the face, and finally the dress. She had arrayed herself as a Savoyard peasant with short skirt, bare arms and hair braided in two long plaits. It was not a good likeness, because no portrait could do justice to a face that owed its fascination to the fact of never being seen in repose; but it was good enough for me to judge the effect of such a face on a man of impressionable temperament....
I had an admirable night's rest, as I always do. I awoke once or twice, it is true, but dropped off again immediately—almost before I had time to appreciate that the Seraph was pacing to and fro in the adjoining room.
"Brassbound: You are not my guest: you are my prisoner.Sir Howard: Prisoner?Brassbound: I warned you. You should have taken my warning.Sir Howard: ... Am I to understand, then, that you are a brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?Brassbound: ... All the wealth of England shall not ransom you.Sir Howard: Then what do you expect to gain by this?Brassbound: Justice...."Bernard Shaw: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion."
"Brassbound: You are not my guest: you are my prisoner.
Sir Howard: Prisoner?
Brassbound: I warned you. You should have taken my warning.
Sir Howard: ... Am I to understand, then, that you are a brigand? Is this a matter of ransom?
Brassbound: ... All the wealth of England shall not ransom you.
Sir Howard: Then what do you expect to gain by this?
Brassbound: Justice...."
Bernard Shaw: "Captain Brassbound's Conversion."
But for Pat Culling the library was deserted when I entered it the following morning. I found him with a lighted cigarette jauntily placed behind one ear, at work on an illustrated biography of the Seraph. Loose sheets still wet from his quick, prolific pen lay scattered over chairs, tables and floor, and ranged from "The Budding of the Wing" to "The Chariot of Fire." Fra Angelico, as an irreverent pavement artist, was Culling's artistic parent for the time being.
"Merivale! on my soul!" he exclaimed as he caught sight of me. "Returning from church, washed of all his sins and thinkin' what fun it'll be to start again. We want more paper for this."
As a matter of fact I had not been to church, but Philip had kindly arranged for my coffee to be brought me in bed, and I saw no reason for refusing the offer. It was not as if I had work to neglect, and for some years I have found that other people tend tobe somewhat irritating in the early morning. When I breakfast alone, I am not in the least fretful, but I believe it to be physiologically true that the facial muscles grow stiff during sleep, and this makes it difficult for many people to be smiling and conversational for the first few hours after waking. So at least I was informed by a medical student who had spent much time studying the subject in his own person.
"Seraph up yet?" I asked.
"Is ut up?" Culling exclaimed in scorn, and I learnt for the first time that the Seraph habitually lived on berries and cold water, slept in a draught, and mortified his flesh with a hair shirt. He had, further, seen the sun rise, wetted his wings in an icy river and escorted Sylvia to the early service.
"I'm glad one of us was there," I said.
"Be glad it wasn't you," answered Culling darkly. "Seraph's in disgrace over something."
The reason, as I heard some time later, was his unwillingness to enter Sylvia's place of worship. The Seraph has devoted considerable time and money to the study of comparative religion, he will analyse any known faith, and when he has traced its constituent parts back to their magical origin, he feels he has done something really worth doing. Sylvia—like mostdévôtes—could not believe in the existence of a conscientious free-thinker. Why two attractive young people should have bothered their heads over such matters, passes my comprehension. I have always found the man who demolishes a religion only one degree less tiresome than the man who discovers religion for the first time. Most men seem fated to do one or the other—and to tell me all about it.
"Where's she hiding herself now?" I asked.
"Only gone to bring the rest of the family home."
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the door burst open and admitted Robin and Michael. The Roden boys were all marked with a strong family likeness, thin, lithe, and active, with black hair and brown eyes. Robin had outgrown the age of eccentricity in dress, but Michael persevered with a succession of elaborate colour-schemes. He was dressed that morning in brown shoes, brown socks, a brown suit and brown Homburg hat; even his shirt had a faint brown line, and his handkerchief a brown border. Of a Sphinx-like family, he was the most enigmatic; his leading characteristics were a surprisingly fluent use of the epithet "bloody," and a condition of permanent insolvency. The first reminded me of the great far-off day when I tested the efficacy of that word in presence of my parents; the second was the basis of our too short friendship. Finding a ten-pound note in my pocket, I tossed Michael whether I should give it to him or keep it myself. I forget who won; he certainly had the note.
A leave-out day from Winchester accounted for Michael's presence. Robin had slipped away from Oxford for the nominal purpose of a few days' rest before his Schools, and with the underlying intention of perfecting certain intricate arrangements for celebrating his last Commemoration.
"You'll come, won't you?" he asked as soon as we had been introduced. "House, Bullingdon and Masonic...."
"Who's paying?" asked Michael.
"Guv'nor, I hope."
"Jenepense pas," murmured Michael, as he wandered round the library in search of a chair that would fit in with his colour-scheme.
"You come," Robin went on regardless of theinterruption. "I've got six tickets for each. You, and Gladys. Two. Phil, three. Me, four...."
"Only one girl so far," Culling interposed. "D'you and Phil dance together? And who has the beads? Some one's got to wear a bead necklace, you aren't admitted without it even in Russia. University dancing costume, I believe it's called."
"Silly ass!" Robin murmured without heat, but Culling was already depicting two nude gladiators struggling in front of the Town Hall for the possession of an exiguous necklace. The Vice-Chancellor and Hebdomadal Council hurried in horror-stricken file down St. Aldates from Carfax.
"You, Gladys, and Phil," continued Robin dispassionately. "Sylvia...."
"Oh, am I coming?" asked Sylvia who had just entered the room, and was unpinning a motor-veil.
"Oh,yes, darling Sylvia!" Robin—I know—was both fond and proud of his sister, but the tone ofad hocblandishment suggested that experience had taught him to persuade rather than coerce. "You'll come, if you love me, and bring Mavis," he added with eyes bashfully averted. "Now another man, and a girl for Mr. Merivale."
"Is mother included?" asked Sylvia.
"Not if Mr. Merivale comes," Robin answered in modest triumph. "Who'd you like?" he asked me.
"Keep a spare ticket up your sleeve," I counselled. "Don't lay on any one specially for me, I've seen my best dancing days. In any case I shouldn't last the course three nights running. You'll find me drifting away for a little bridge if I see you're not getting up to mischief."
Robin sucked his pencil meditatively, waved to the Seraph who had just entered the room, and turned to his sister.
"Well, who's it to be?" he asked.
"I don't yet know if I'm coming," Sylvia answered.
"Rot! You must!" said Robin in a tone of mingled firmness and misgiving that suggested memories of previous unsuccessful efforts to hustle his sister. "Think it over," he added more mildly, "but let me know soon, I want the thing fixed up. Whose car, Phil? It's the driving of Jehu, for he driveth furiously."
Philip closed a Blue Book, removed his feet from the back of Culling's chair and strolled to the window. A long green touring car was racing up the drive, cutting all corners.
"The Old Man, by Jove!" he exclaimed.
"Who?"
"Rawnsley. I wonder what he wants."
Michael, who had at last found a brown leather armchair to accord with the day's colour scheme, took on himself to explain the Prime Minister's sudden appearance.
"He's come to fetch that bloody Nigel away," he volunteered. "Praise God with a loud voice. Or else it's a war with Germany."
"Or the offer of a peerage," I suggested pessimistically.
"I much prefer the war with Germany," answered Michael, with the selfishness of youth. "I've no use for honourables, and he'd only be a viscount. 'Gad, I wonder if old Gillingham's handed in his knife and fork! That means the Chancellorship for the guv'nor, and they'll make him an earl, and you'll be Lady Sylvia, my adored sister. How perfectly bloody! I shall emigrate."
We were soon put out of our suspense. The library was in theory the inviolable sanctuary of the Attorney General, and at Philip's suggestion webegan to retreat through the open French windows into the garden. The Seraph and I, however, stood at the end of the file and were caught by Arthur and the Prime Minister before we could escape. Rawnsley had forgotten me during my absence abroad, and we had to be introduced afresh.
"Don't go for a moment," said Arthur, as we made another movement towards the window. "You may be able to help us."
I pulled up a chair and watched Rawnsley fumbling for a spectacle-case. He had aged rather painfully since the day I first met him five-and-twenty years before, as President of the Board of Trade, coming to Oxford to address some political club.
"Sheet of paper? A.B.C., Roden?" he demanded in the quick, staccato voice of a man who is always trying to compress three weeks' work into three days. He had his son's ruthless vigour and wilful assurance without any of Nigel's thin-skinned self-consciousness. "Thanks. Now. My daughter's missing, Mr. Merivale. You may be able to help. Do you know her by sight?"
I mentioned the glimpse I had caught of her at the theatre.
"Quite enough. She left Downing Street yesterday morning at a quarter to ten and was to call at her dressmaker's and come down to Hanningford by the eleven-twenty. We've only two decent trains in the day, and if she missed that she was to lunch in town and come by the four-ten. You left at eleven-fifteen, from platform five. The eleven-twenty goes from platform four. May I ask if you saw anything of her before you left?"
I said I had not, and added that I was so busily engaged in meeting old friends and being introducedto new ones that I had had neither time nor eyes....
"Thank you!" he interrupted, turning to the Seraph. "Mr. Aintree, you know my daughter, and Roden tells me you came down by the four-ten yesterday afternoon. The train slips a coach at Longfield, a few miles beyond Hanningford. Did you by any chance see who was travelling by the slip?"
The Seraph was no more helpful than I had been, and Rawnsley shut the A.B.C. with an impatient slap.
"We must try in other directions, then," he said. "She never left London."
"Have you tried the dressmaker's?" I asked.
"Arrived ten, left ten-forty," said Rawnsley.
"Are any of her friends ill?" I asked. "Is she likely to have been called away suddenly?"
"Oh, I know why she's disappeared," Rawnsley answered. "This letter makes that quite plain. I want to find where it took place—with a view to tracing her."
He threw me over a typewritten letter, with the words, "Received by first delivery to-day, posted in the late fee box of the South-Western District Office at Victoria."
The letter, so far as I remember it, ran as follows: