Millie was deeply touched. "Of course I will," she said, "if I can. And you really think I can? I'm terribly ignorant and inexperienced."
"You're not so inexperienced as they are." He held out his hand. "Come to me if you're disheartened or bewildered. There'll be times when you will be. I've known these women since they were babies so I can help you."
They shook hands on it.
Meanwhile Henry's plunge into a cold and hostile world was of quite another kind.
One of the deep differences between brother and sister was that while Millie was realistic Henry was romantic. He could not help but see things in a coloured light, and now when he started out for his first morning with his Baronet London was all lit up like a birthday cake. He had fallen during the last year under the spell of the very newest of theVers Librists, and it had become a passion with him to find fantastic images for everything that he saw. Moreover, the ease of it all fascinated him. He was, God knows, no poet, but quite simply, without any trouble at all, lines came tumbling into his head:
The chimneys, like crimson cockatoos,Fling their grey feathersWildly.
The chimneys, like crimson cockatoos,Fling their grey feathersWildly.
or
The washingBillowing—Frozen egg-shellsCrimson pantaloonsSkylineFlutter.
The washingBillowing—Frozen egg-shellsCrimson pantaloonsSkylineFlutter.
or
The omnibuses herd togetherIn the dirty autumn weatherElephants in jungle townMonkey-nuts come pattering down.
The omnibuses herd togetherIn the dirty autumn weatherElephants in jungle townMonkey-nuts come pattering down.
and so on and so on. . . .
He got deep pleasure from these inspirations; he had sent three to an annual anthologyHoops, and one of them, "Railway-Lines—Bucket-shop," was to appear in the 1920 volume.
But the trouble with Henry was that cheek by jowl with this modern up-to-date impulse ran a streak of real old-fashioned, entirely out-of-date Romance. It was true, as Millie had informed Miss Platt, that he had written ten chapters of a story,The House in the Lonely Wood.
How desperately was he ashamed of his impulse to write this romance and yet how at the same time he loved doing it! Was ever young literary genius in a more shameful plight! A true case of double personality! With the day he pursued the path of all the young 1920 Realists, believing that nothing matters but "the Truth, the calm, cold, unaffected Truth," thrilling to the voices of the Three Graces, loving the company of the somewhat youthful editor ofHoops, reading every word that fell from the pen of the younger realistic critics.
And then at night out came the other personality and Henry, hair on end, the penny bottle of ink in front of him, pursued, alas happily and with the divine shining behind his eyelids, the simple path of unadulterated, unashamed Romance!
What would the Three Graces say, how would the editor ofHoopsregard him, did they know what he did night after night in the secrecy of his own chamber, or rather of Mr. King's chamber? Perhaps they would not greatly care—they did not in any case consider him as of any very real importance. Nevertheless he could not but feel that he was treating them to double-dealing.
And then his trouble was suddenly healed by the amazing, overwhelming adventure of Piccadilly Circus. As he had discovered at the Hunters' party, nothing now mattered but the outcome of that adventure. He worked at his Romance with redoubled vigour; it did not seem to him any longer a shameful affair, simply because he had now in his own experience a Romance greater and wilder than any fancy could give him. Also images and similes occurred to him more swiftly than ever, and they were no longer modern, no longer had any connection withHoopsor the new critics, but were simply the attempts that his own soul was making to clothe Her and everything about Her, even Her horrible mother, with all the beauty and colour that his genius could provide. (Henry did notreally, at this time, doubt that he had genius—the doubting time was later.)
It will be seen then that he started for Sir Charles Duncombe's house in a very romantic spirit.
The address was No. 13 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, so that Henry had a very little way to go from his Panton Street room. Hill Street is a bright, cheerful place enough with a sense of dignity and age about it and a consciousness that it knows only the very best people. Even the pillar-boxes and the lamp-posts call for decorum and are accustomed, you can see, to butlers, footmen and very superior ladies'-maids. But it cannot be denied that many of the Hill Street houses are dark inside and No. 13 is no exception to that rule. Unlike most of the Hill Street houses which all often change masters, No. 13 had been in the possession of the Duncombe family for a great many years, ever since the days of Queen Anne, in fact, the days of the famous Richard Duncombe who, being both the most desperate gambler and the astutest brain for a bargain in all London, made and lost fortunes with the greatest frequency.
Henry on this first morning knew nothing about the family history of the Duncombes, but if he had known he might have readily believed that so far as the hall and the butler went no change whatever had been made since those elegant polished Queen Anne days. The hall was so dark and the butler so old that Henry dared neither to move, lest he should fall over something, nor to speak lest it should seem irreverent. He stood, therefore, rooted to the stone floor and muttered something so inaudibly that the old man courteously waiting could not hear at all.
"Henry Trenchard," he said at last, looking wildly about him. How the cold seemed to strike up through the stone flags into his very marrow!
"Quite so, sir," said the old man. "Sir Charles is expecting you."
Up an enormous stone staircase they went, Henry's boots making a great clatter, his teeth against his will chattering. Portraits looked down upon him, but so dark it was that you could only catch a glimmer of their old gold frames.
To Henry, modern though he might endeavour to be, there would recur persistently that picture—the most romantic picture perhaps in all his childish picture-gallery—of Alan Fairford, sick and ill, dragged by Nanty Ewart through the dying avenues of Fairladies, having at long last that interview with the imperious Father Bonaventure in the long gallery of the crumbling house—the interview, the secret letter, the mysterious lady "whose step was that of a queen." "Whose neck and bosom were admirably formed, and of a dazzling whiteness"—the words still echoed in Henry's heart calling from that far day when a tiny boy in his attic at Garth he read by the light of a dipping candle the history ofRedgauntletfrom a yellowing closely-printed page.
Here, in the very heart of London was Fairladies once again and who could tell? . . . Might not the spring in the wall be touched, a bookcase step aside and a lady, "her neck and bosom of a startling whiteness," appear? For shame! He had now his own lady. The time had gone by for dreams. He came to reality with a start, finding himself in a long dusky library so thickly embedded with old books that the air was scented with the crushed aroma of old leather bindings. A long oak table confronted him and behind the table, busily engaged with writing, was his new master.
The old man muttered something and was gone. Sir Charles did not look up and Henry, his heart beating fast, was able to study his surroundings. The library was all that the most romantic soul could have wished it. The ceiling was high and stamped with a gold pattern. A gallery about seven feet from the ground ran round the room, and a little stairway climbed up to this; except for their high diamond-paned windows on one side of the room the bookcases completely covered the walls; thousands upon thousands of old books glimmered behind their gold tooling, the gold running like a thin mist from wall to wall.
Above the wide stone fireplace there was a bust of a sharp-nosed gentleman in whig and stock, very supercilious and a little dusty.
With all this Henry also took surreptitious peeps at Sir Charles, and what he saw did not greatly reassure him. Hewas a very thin man, dressed in deep black and a high white collar that would in other days have been called Gladstonian, bald, tight-lipped and with the same peaked bird-like nose as the gentleman above the fireplace. He gave an impression of perfect cleanness, neatness and order. Everything on the table, letter-weight, reference-books, paper knife, silver ink-bottle, pens and sealing-wax, was arranged so definitely that these things might have been stuck on to the table with glue. Sir Charles's hands were long, thin and bird-shaped like his nose. Henry, as he snatched glimpses of this awe-inspiring figure, was acutely conscious of his own deficiencies; he felt tumbled, rumpled, and crumpled. Whereas, only a quarter of an hour ago walking down Hill Street, he had felt debonair, smart and fashionable (far of course from what he really was), so unhappily impressionable was he.
Suddenly the hand was raised, the pen laid carefully down, the nose shot out across the table.
"You are Mr. Trenchard?" asked a voice that made Henry feel as though he were a stiff sheet of paper being slowly cut by a very sharp knife.
"Yes, sir," he said.
"Very well. . . . We have only corresponded hitherto. Mr. Mark is your cousin, I think?"
"My brother-in-law, sir."
"Quite. A very able fellow. He should go far."
Henry had never cared for Philip who, in his own private opinion, should have never gone any distance at all, but on the present occasion he could only offer up a very ineffective "Yes."
"Very well. You have never been anybody's secretary before?"
"No, sir."
"And you understand that I am giving you a month's trial entirely on your brother-in-law's recommendation?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what"—here the nose shot out and forward in most alarming fashion—"do you understand a secretary's duties to be?"
Henry smiled rather to give himself confidence than for anyother very definite reason. "Well, sir, I should say that you would want to me to write letters to your dictation and keep your papers in order and, perhaps, to interview people whom you don't wish to see yourself and—and,—possibly to entrust me with missions of importance."
"Hum. . . . Quite. . . . I understand that you can typewrite and that you know shorthand?"
"Well, sir"—here Henry smiled again—"I think I had better be frank with you from the beginning. I don't typewrite very well. I told Philip not to lay much emphasis on that. And my shorthand is pretty quick, but I can't generally read it afterwards."
"Indeed! And would you mind telling me why, with these deficiencies, you fancied that you would make me a good secretary?"
Henry's heart sank. He saw himself within the next five minutes politely ushered down the stone staircase, through the front door and so out into Hill Street.
"I don't think," he said, "that I will make you a very good secretary, not in the accepted sense. I know that I shall make mistakes and be clumsy and forgetful, but I will do my very best and you can trust me, and—I am really not such a fool as I often look."
These were the very last words that Henry had intended to say. It was as though some one else had spoken them for him. Now he had ruined his chances. There was nothing for it but to accept his dismissal and go.
However, Sir Charles seemed to take it all as the most natural thing in the world.
"Quite," he said. "Your brother-in-law tells me that you are an author."
"I'm not exactly one yet," said Henry. "I hope to be one soon, but of course the war threw me back."
"And what kind of an author do you intend to be?"
"I mean to be a novelist," said Henry, feeling quite sure that this was the very last thing that Sir Charles would ever consider any one ought to be.
"Exactly. And you will I suppose be doing your own work when you ought to be doing mine?"
"No, I won't," said Henry eagerly. "I can't pretend that I won't sometimes be thinking of it. It's very hard to keep it out of one's head sometimes. But I'll do my best not to."
"Quite. . . . Won't you sit down?" Henry sat down on a stiff-backed chair.
"If you will kindly listen I will explain to you what I shall wish you to do for me. As you have truly suggested I shall need some help with my letters; some typing also will be necessary. But the main work I have in hand for you is another matter. My grandfather, Ronald Duncombe, was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century. He was a great letter-writer, and knew all the most interesting personalities of his time. You, doubtless, like all the new generation, despise your parents and laugh at your grandparents." Sir Charles paused here as though he expected an answer to a question.
"Oh no," said Henry hurriedly. "My grandfather's dead—he died a few years ago—but he was a very fine old man indeed. We all thought a great deal of him."
"I'm glad to hear it. That will make you perhaps the more sympathetic to this work that I have for you. There are several black boxes in the cupboard over there filled with letters. Walter Scott was an intimate friend of his—of course, you despise Walter Scott?"
"Oh, no," said Henry fervently, "I don't, I assure you."
"Hum. Quite. When one of you young men writes something better than he did I'll begin to read you. Not before."
"No," said Henry, who nevertheless longed to ask Sir Charles how he knew that the young men of to-day did not write better seeing that he never read them.
"In those boxes there are letters from Byron and Wordsworth and Crabbe and Hogg and many other great men of the time. There are also many letters of no importance. I intend to edit my grandfather's letters and I wish you to prepare them for me."
"Yes," said Henry.
"I wish you to be here punctually at nine every morning. I may say that I consider punctuality of great importance. You will help me with my own correspondence until ten-thirty;from ten-thirty until one you will be engaged on my grandfather's letters. My sister will be very glad that you should have luncheon with us whenever you care to. I shall not generally require you in the afternoon, but sometimes I shall expect you to remain here all day. I shall wish you always to be free to do so when I need you."
"Yes, sir," said Henry.
"Sometimes I shall be at Duncombe Hall in Wiltshire and shall want you to stay with me there at certain periods. I hope that you will not ask more questions than are absolutely necessary as I dislike being disturbed. You are of course at liberty to use any books in this library that you please, but I hope that you will always put them back in their right places. I dislike very much seeing books bent back or laid face downwards."
"Yes," said Henry. "So do I."
"Quite. . . . And now, are there any questions that you will like to ask?"
"No," said Henry. "If there are any questions that I want to ask would you prefer that I asked them when I thought of them or kept them until the end of the morning and asked them all together?"
"That had better depend on your own judgment."
There was a pause.
"That table over there," said Sir Charles, pointing to one near the window, "is a good one for you to work at. I should suggest that you begin this morning with the box labelled 1816-1820. That is the cupboard to your right. It is not locked."
The first movement across the floor to the cupboard was an agonizing one. Henry felt as though everything in the room were listening to him, as though the gentleman with the nose on the mantelpiece was saying to him: "You'll never do here. Look at the noise your boots make. Of course you won't do."
However he got safely across, opened the cupboard which creaked viciously, found the black boxes and the one that he needed. It was very heavy, but he brought it to the table without much noise. Down he sat, carefully opened it and looked inside. Pile upon pile of old yellow letters lay there, packet after packet of them tied with faded red tape. Something within him thrilled to their age, to their pathos, to their humility, to the sense that they carried up to him of the swift passing of time, the touching childishness of human hopes, despair and ambitions. He felt suddenly like an ant crawling laboriously over a gleaming and slippery globe of incredible vastness. The letters seemed to rebuke him as though he had been boasting of his pride and youth and his confidence in his own security. He took out the first bundle, reverently undid the tape and began to read. . . .
Soon he was absorbed even as his sister Millicent, at that same moment in the Cromwell Road, was absorbed in a very different collection of letters, on this her second Platt morning. The library with its thousands of books enfolded Henry as though now it approved of him and might love him did he stay reverently in its midst caring for the old things and the old people—the old things that pass, the old people who seem to die but do not. At first every letter thrilled him. The merest note:
15 Castle St., Edinburgh,June 4, 1816.My dear Ronald—What about coming in to see us? All at Hartley well and easy—Mamma has been in Edinburgh after a cook—no joking matter—and to see Benjie who was but indifferent, but has recovered. . . . I will write a long letter soon, but my back and eyes ache with these three pages. . . .
15 Castle St., Edinburgh,June 4, 1816.
My dear Ronald—What about coming in to see us? All at Hartley well and easy—Mamma has been in Edinburgh after a cook—no joking matter—and to see Benjie who was but indifferent, but has recovered. . . . I will write a long letter soon, but my back and eyes ache with these three pages. . . .
Then a note about a dinner-party, then about a parcel of books, then a letter from Italy full of the glories of Florence; then (how Henry shivered with pleasure as he saw it!) the hand and sign of the Magician himself!
Dear Sir Ronald Duncombe—I am coming to town I trust within the fortnight, but my trees are holding me here for the moment. I have been saddened lately by the death of my poor brother, Major John Scott, who was called home after a long illness. All here wish to be remembered to you.—Most truly yours,Walter Scott.
Dear Sir Ronald Duncombe—I am coming to town I trust within the fortnight, but my trees are holding me here for the moment. I have been saddened lately by the death of my poor brother, Major John Scott, who was called home after a long illness. All here wish to be remembered to you.—Most truly yours,
Walter Scott.
A terrible temptation came to Henry—so swift that it seemed to be suggested by some one sitting beside him—to slip the letter into his pocket. This was the first time in all his daysthat he had had such a letter in his hand, because, although his father had been for many years a writer of books on this very period, his material had been second-hand, even third-hand material. Henry felt a slight contempt for his father as he sat there.
Then, as the minutes swung past, he was aware that he should be doing something more than merely looking at the old letters and complimenting them on their age and pretty pathos. He should be arranging them. Yes, arranging them, but how? He began helplessly to pick them up, look at them and lay them on the table again. Many of them had no dates at all, many were signed only with Christian names, some were not signed at all. And how was he to decide on the important ones? How did he know that he would not pass, through ignorance and inexperience, some signature of world-significance? The letters began to look at him with less approval, even with a certain cynical malevolence. They all looked the same with their faded yellow paper and their confusing handwriting. He had many of them on the table, unbound from their red tape, lying loosely about him and yet the box seemed as full as ever. And there were many more boxes! . . . Suddenly, from the very bowels of the house, a gong sounded.
"You can wash your hands in that little room to the right," said Sir Charles, whose personality suddenly returned as though Henry had pressed a button. "Luncheon will be waiting for us."
And this was the conclusion of Henry's first appearance as a private secretary.
Upon the afternoon of that same day at five of the clock they were gathered together in Mr. King's friendly attic—Henry, Millicent and Westcott. Because there was so little room Henry and Millie sat on the bed, Peter Westcott having the honour of the cane-bottomed chair, which looked small enough under his large square body.
The attic window was open and the spring afternoon sun came in, bringing with it, so Henry romantically fancied, a whiff from the flower-baskets in Piccadilly and the bursting buds of the St. James's Church trees—also petrol from the garage next door and, as Peter asserted, patchouli and orange-peel from the Comedy Theatre.
At first, as is often the case with tea-parties, there was a little stiffness. It was absurd that on this occasion it should be so; nevertheless the honest fact was that Millie did not care very greatly for Peter and that Henry knew this. She did not care for him, Henry contended, because she did not know him, and this might be because in all their lives they had only met once or twice, Millie generally making some excuse when she knew that Peter would be present.
Was this jealousy? Indignantly she would have denied it. Rather she would have said that it was because she did not think that he made a very good friend for her dear Henry. He was, in her eyes, a rather battered, grumpy, sulky, middle-aged man who was here married and there not married at all, distinctly a failure, immoral probably and certainly a cynic. None of these things would she mind for herself of course, but Henry was so much younger than she, so much more innocent, she happily fancied, about the wicked ways of the world. Westcott would spoil him, take the bloom off him, make him oldbefore his time—that is what she liked to tell him. And perhaps if they had not met on this special afternoon that little barrier would never have been leaped, but to-day they had so much to tell and to hear that restraint was soon impossible, and Henry himself had so romantic a glow in his eyes, and his very hair, that it made at once the whole meeting exceptional. This glow was indeed the very first thing that Millie noticed.
"Why, Henry," she said as soon as she sat down on the bed, "whathashappened to you?"
He was swinging on the bed, hugging his knees.
"There's nothing the matter," he said. "I'm awfully happy, that's all."
"Happy because of the Baronet?"
"No, not so much the Baronet although he's all right, and it's awfully interesting if I can only do the work. No, it's something else. I'll tell you all about it when we've had tea. I say, Millie, how stunning you look in that orange jumper. You ought always to wear orange. Oughtn't she, Peter?"
"Yes," said Peter, his eyes fixed gravely upon her.
Millie flushed a little. She didn't want Westcott's approval. A nuisance that he was here at all! It would be so much easier to discuss everything with Henry were he not here.
Mr. King arrived, very solemn, very superior, very dead.
He put down the tray upon the rather rickety little table. They all watched him in silence. When he had gone Henry chuckled.
"He thinks I'm awful," Henry said. "Too awful for anything. I don't suppose he's ever despised any one before as he despises me, and it makes him happy. He loves to have some one who's awful. And now about Miss Platt—every bit about Miss Platt from her top to her toe!"
He went to the tea-table and began to pour out the tea, wishing that Millie and Peter would like one another better and not look so cross.
Millie began. She had come that afternoon burning to tell everything about the Platt household, and then when she saw Westcott there she was closed like an oyster. However, for Henry's sake she must do something, so she began because in her own way she was as truly creative as Henry was in his. Shefound that she was enjoying herself and it grew under her hand, the Platt house, the Platt rooms, the Platt family, Victoria and Ellen and Clarice, and the little doctor and Beppo and the housekeeper and the statue of Eve and all the letters. . . .
They began to laugh; she was laughing so that she could not speak and Henry was laughing so that the two brazen and unsympathetic muffins which Mr. King had provided fell on to the carpet, and then Peter laughed and laughed more than that, and more again, and any ice that there had ever been was cracked, riven, utterly smashed!
They all fell into the Pond together and found it so warm and comfortable that they decided to stay there for the rest of the afternoon.
"Of course," said Millie, "it entirely remains to be seen whether I'm up to the job. I'm not even sure that I can manage the correspondence, I'm almost certain that I can't manage the servants. The housekeeper hates me already—and then there are the sisters."
"Ellen and Clarice."
Millie nodded her head. "Theyarequeer. But then the situation's queer. Victoria's got all the money and likes the power. They have to do what she says or leave the house and start all alone in a cold and unsympathetic world. They couldn't do that, they couldn't earn their livings for five minutes. Clarice thinks she can sing and act. You should hear her! Ellen does little but sulk. Victoria gives them fine big allowances, but she likes to feel they are her slaves. They'd give anything for their freedom, marry anybody anywhere—but theywon'tplunge! How can they? They'd starve in a week."
"And would their sister let them?" asked Peter.
"No, I don't think she would," said Millie. "But she'd have them back and they'd be no better off than before. She's a kind-hearted creature, but just loves the power her money gives her—and hasn't the least idea what to do with it! She's as bewildered as though, after being in a dark room all her life, she were suddenly flung into the dancing-hall in Hampstead. . . . Oh, it's a queer time!"
Millie sprang up from the bed.
"Every one's bewildered, the ones that have money and didn't have it, the ones that haven't money and used to have it, the ones with ideas and the ones without, the ones with standards and the ones without, the cliché ones and the old-fashioned ones, the ones that want fun and the ones that want to pray, the ugly ones and the pretty ones, the bold ones and the frightened ones. . . . Everything's breaking up and everything's turning into new shapes and new colours. And I love it! I love it! I love it! I oughtn't to, it's wrong to, I can't help it! . . . . It's enchanting!"
As she stood there, the sun streaming in upon her from the little window and illuminating her gay colours and her youth and health and beauty she seemed to Peter Westcott a sudden flame and fire burning there, in that little attic to show to the world that youth never dies, that life is eternal, that hope and love and beauty are stronger than governments and wars and the changing of forms and boundaries. It was an unforgettable moment to him, and even though it emphasized all the more his own loneliness it seemed to whisper to him that that loneliness would not be for ever.
"Hold on!" said Henry. "Look out, Millie! The table's very shaky and if the plates are broken King will make me pay at least twice what they're worth. You know it's a funny thing, but I'm seeing just the other side of the picture. Your people have just got all their money, my people have just lost all theirs. Before the war, so far as I can make out, Duncombe was quite well off. Most of it came from land, and that's gone down and the Income Tax has come up, and there's hardly anything left. They think they'll have to sell Duncombe Hall which has been in the family for centuries, and that will pretty well break their hearts I fancy."
"They? Who's they?" asked Millie.
"There's a sister," said Henry. "Lady Bell-Hall—Margaret She's the funniest little woman you ever saw. She's a widow. Her husband died in the war—of general shock I should fancy—air-raids and money and impertinence from the lower classes. The widow nearly died from the same thing. She always wears black and a bonnet, and jumps if any one makes the least sound. At the same time she's as proud as Lucifer and goodtoo. She's just bewildered. She can't understand things at all. The word written on her heart when she comes to die will be Bolshevist. She talks all the time and it's from her I know all this!"
"And Duncombe himself? What's he like?" asked Millie.
"Oh, he's queer! I like him but I can't make out what he thinks. He never shows any sign. He will, I suppose, before long. I shall make so many muddles and mistakes that I shall just be shown the door at the end of the month. However, he can't say I didn't warn him. I told him from the beginning just what I was. I know I'm going to have an awful time with those letters. They all look so exactly alike, and many of them haven't got any dates at all, and then I go off dreaming. It's almost impossible not to in that library. It's full of ghosts, and the letters are full of ghosts as well. And I'm sorry for those two. It must be awful, everything that you believe in going, the only world you've ever known coming to an end before your eyes, every one denying all the things you've believed in and laughing at them. He's brave, old Duncombe. He'll go down fighting."
"And what's the other thing?" said Millie, sitting down on the bed again, "that you were going to tell me?"
Henry told his adventure. He did not look at Millie as he told it; he did not want to see whether she approved or disapproved; he was afraid that she would laugh. She laughed at so many things, and most of all he was afraid lest she should say something about the girl. If she did say anything he would have to stand it.
After all Millie had not seen her. . . . So he talked, staring at the little pink clouds that were now forming beyond the window just over the "Comedy" roof—they were like lumps of coral against the sky—three, four, five . . . then they merged into two billowing pillows of colour, slowly fading into a deep crimson, then breaking into long strips of orange lazily forming against a blue that grew paler and paler and at last, as he ended, was white like water under glass.
He stopped.
"How long ago was all this?" Millie asked at last.
"Two days back."
"Have you seen her since?"
"No. I've been round that street several times. I know it by heart. I haven't dared go up—not so soon again."
"I wish I'd seen her," Millie said slowly. Then she added, "Anyway you must go on with it, Henry. You've promised to help her and so of course you must. If she's taking you in it will do you good to be taken in. It will teach you not to be such an ass another time. If she's not taking you in——"
"Of course she's not taking me in," Henry answered hotly. "I know that you and Peter think me a baby and that I haven't any idea of things. You've always thought that, Millie, but I'm sure I don't know what you base it on. I'm hardly ever wrong. Wasn't I right about Philip? Isn't he just the prig I always thought him, and didn't he take Katherine away from us and break us all up just as I said he would?
"And as to girls you both look so learned as though you knew such a lot, but when have I ever been foolish about girls? I've never cared the least bit about them until now. I've been waiting, I think, until she came along. Because I'm not always tidy and break things, you both think I'm an ass. But I'm not an ass, as I'll show you."
Millie went across to him and kissed him on the forehead.
"Of course I don't think you an ass. But you are easily taken in by people—you always believe what they say."
Henry nodded his head. "Perhaps I don't so much as I mean to. But it's the best thing to try to. You get far more that way."
The three sat there in silence. At last Millicent said:
"Isn't it queer? Here's the world on the very edge of every sort of adventure, and here are we on the very edge too? I feel in my bones that we shall go through great things this year—all of us. Unpleasant and pleasant—all sorts. I don't believe that there's ever been in all history such a time for adventure as now."
Henry jumped up from behind the table.
"That's true!" he cried. "And whatever happens we three will stick together. Nothing shall separate us—nothing; and nobody. You and I and Peter. We'll never let anybody comebetween us. We'll be the three best friends the world has ever seen!"
He caught Millie's hand. She looked up at him, smiling. He came across and caught Peter's also. Suddenly Millicent put out hers and took Peter's free one.
"You're a sentimental donkey, Henry," she said. "But there's something in what you say."
Peter flushed. "I'm older than both of you," he said, "and I'm dull and slow but I'll do what I can."
There was a knock on the door and they sprang apart. It was Mr. King to take away the tea.
Now might young Henry be considered by any observer of average intelligence to be fairly launched into the world—he is in love, he is confidential secretary to a gentleman of importance, he has written ten chapters of a romantic novel and he is living in chambers all on his own. It has been asserted again and again that the Great War of 1914 turned many thousands of boys into old men long before their time. The exact contrary may also be proved to be true—namely that the War caught many boys in their teens, held them in a sort of vise for five years, keeping them from life as it is usually lived, teaching them nothing but war and then suddenly flinging them out into a Peace about which they were as ignorant as blind puppies. Boys of eighteen chronologically supposed to be twenty-four and superficially disguised as men of forty and disillusioned cynical men at that, those were to be found in their thousands in that curious tangled year of 1920. Henry thought he was a man; he was much less a man than he would have been had no war broken out at all.
On the afternoon following the tea party just now described he left Hill Street about four o'clock, his head up and his chest out, a very fine figure indeed had it not been that, unknown to himself, his tie had stepped up to the top of his collar at the back of his neck and there was a small smudge of ink just in the right corner of his nose. He had had a very happy day, very quiet, very peaceful, and he was encouraged to believe that he had been a great success. It was true that Sir Charles had addressed very few words to himself and that Lady Bell-Hall had addressed so many during luncheon that he had felt like a canary peppered with bird-seed, but he did not expect Sir Charles to speak very often, nor did he mind how frequently the funny little woman in the bonnet spoke, so long as she liked him. It had all been very easy, and the letters had been entrancing, so entrancing that Berkeley Square seemed to be Princes Street, and he could see through the open door Sir Walter's hall and Maria Edgeworth announced and the host's cheery welcome and glorious smile, and the laughter of the children, and Maria dragged into the circle and forced to sing the Highland song with the rest of them, and Honest John hurrying down Castle Street wrapped up against the cold, and the high frosty sky and the Castle frowning over all.
He had been there—surely he had been there in an earlier incarnation, and now this. . . . He was pulled up by a taxi ringing at him fiercely, and by the press of carriages at the Piccadilly turning.
He was swung suddenly on to the business of the moment, namely that he was going to make his first serious attempt at breaking through into the mysteries of Peter Street, then definitely to do or die—although as a matter of honest fact he had no intention whatever of dying just yet. He was borne into Shaftesbury Avenue before he knew where he was, borne by the tide of people, men and women happy in the bright purple-hued spring afternoon, happy in spite of the hard times and the uncertain future, borne along, too, by the cries and sounds, the roll of the omnibuses, the screams of the taxis, the shouting of the newsboys, the murmur of countless voices, the restless rhythm of the unceasing life beneath the brick and mortar, the life of the primeval forests, the ghosts of the serpents and the lions waiting with confident patience for the earth to return to them once more.
He slipped into Peter Street as into a country marked off from the rest of the world and known to him by heart. This afternoon the barrows and stalls were away; no one was there, not even the familiar policeman. It was like a back-water hidden from the main river, and its traffic by the thick barrier of the forest trees, gleaming in its own sunlight, happy in its solitude. He found the door-bell, listened to it go tinkling into the depths of the house, and after its cessation heard only the thumping of his own heart and the shattered beat of the unresting town.
He waited, it seemed, an unconscionable time; then slowly the door opened, revealing to his astonished gaze the girl herself. So staggered was he by her appearance that for the moment he could only stare. The passage behind her was dark in spite of the strong afternoon sun.
"Oh!" he said at last. "I came. . . . I came. . . ."
She looked at him.
"Have you come to see my mother?" The tiny slur of the foreign accent excited him as it had done before. It seemed suddenly that he had known her for ever.
"Because if you have," she went on. "Mother's out."
"No," he said boldly, "I've come to see you."
She looked back to the stairs as though she were afraid that some one were lurking there and would overhear them. She dropped her voice a little.
"Oh, I don't know," she said. "Mother." Then hurriedly, "Come up. Come up. I don't like being alone and that's the truth. If mother's angry when she comes in I don't care. Anything's better."
She turned and led the way. He followed her, smelling the stuffiness that was like dirty blankets pressed against the nose. There was no window to the stairs, and at the corner it was so dark that he stumbled. He heard her laugh in the distance, then an opened door threw light down. He was in the room where he had been before, enwrapped still in its heavy curtains, and lit even on this lovely day with electric light heavily clouded under the pink silk shades. She was still laughing, standing at the other side of the table.
He stood awkwardly fingering his hat. He had nothing to say, and they were both silent a long time. Then simply because he was expecting the hated woman's arrival at any moment he began:
"I've been wanting to come all these three days. I've thought of nothing else, of how you said I could help you—and—get you out of this. I will. I will—I'll do anything. You can come now if you like, and I'll take you to my sister's—she's very nice and you'll like her—and they can do anything they like, but they shan't take you away. . . ."
He was quite breathless with excitement. She stared at himgravely as though not understanding what he said. When he saw the puzzle in her eyes his eloquence was suddenly exhausted and he could only stammer out:
"That's—that's what you said the other day—that you wanted to escape."
"To escape?" she repeated.
"You said that."
She moved her hands impatiently, and her voice dropped until it was almost a whisper.
"When you came the other day I was foolish because mother had just been angry. I was excited because she had been angry before that horrid fat woman—you remember? I hate her to be angry when she's there because she likes it. She hates me because I'm young and she's old. . . . Of course I can't get away—and how could I go with you? I don't know you. Why, you're only a boy!" Then she added reflectively, as though she were giving the final conclusive argument, "and you've got ink on your nose."
Henry committed then what is always a foolish seeming act at the very best, he took out a not very clean handkerchief, licked a corner of it with his tongue and rubbed his nose.
"It's on the right side in the corner," she said, regarding him.
"Is it off now?" he asked her.
"Yes."
Henry then pulled himself together and behaved like a man.
"I don't know what you mean now," he said, "about not wanting me to help you, but you did say that the other day and you must take the consequences. I don't want to help you in any way, of course, that you don't want to be helped, but I am sure there is something I can do for you. And in any case I'm going on coming to see you until I'm stopped by physical force—even then I'm going on coming."
"I'll tell you this," she said suddenly. "I don't want you to come because mother wants you to, and every one whom mother wants me to like is horrid. Why doesshewant you to come?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Henry, surprised. "She can't know anything about me at all."
"She does. She's found out in these two days. She saidyesterday afternoon she wondered you hadn't come, and then this morning again."
Henry said: "Won't you take me as I am? Your mother doesn't know me. I want to beyourfriend. I've wanted to from the first moment I saw you in Piccadilly Circus."
"In Piccadilly Circus?"
"Yes. That's where I first saw you the other afternoon and I followed you here."
That seemed to her of no importance. "Friend?" she said frowning and staring in front of her. "I don't like that word. Two or three have wanted to be friends. I won't have friends. I won't have anybody. I'd rather be alone."
"I can't hurt you," said Henry very simply. "Why every one laughs at me, even my sister who's very fond of me. They won't laugh, one day, of course, but you see how it is. There's always ink on my nose, or I tumble down when I want to do something important. You'd have thought the army would have changed that, but it didn't."
She smiled then. "No, you don't look as though you'd hurt anybody. But I don't want to trust people. It only means you're disappointed again."
"You can't be disappointed in me," Henry said earnestly. "Because I'm just what you see. Please let me come and see you. I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life."
They both heard then steps on the stair. They stopped and listened. The room was at once ominous, alarmed.
Henry felt danger approaching, as though he could see beyond the door with his eyes and found on the stair some dark shape, undefined and threatening. The steps came nearer and ceased. Two were there listening on the other side of the door as two were listening within the room.
He felt the girl's fear and that suddenly stiffened his own courage. It was almost ludicrous then when the door opened and revealed the stout Mrs. Tenssen, clothed now in light orange and with her an old man.
Henry saw at once that however eagerly she had hitherto expected him she was not easy at his presence just now. His further glance at the old man showed him at once an enemy for life. In any case he did not like old men. The War hadcarried him with the rest upon the swing of that popular cry "Every one over seventy to the lethal chamber."
Moreover, he personally knew no old men, which made the cry much simpler. This old man was not over seventy, he might indeed be still under sixty, but his small peak of a white beard, his immaculate clothing and his elegantly pointed patent leather shoes were sufficient for Henry. Immaculate old men! How dared they wear anything but sackcloth and ashes?
Mrs. Tenssen, whose orange garments shone with ill-temper, shook hands with Henry as though she expected him instantly to say: "Well, I must be going now," but he found himself with an admirable pugnacity and defiant resolve.
"I called as I said I would," he observed pleasantly. "And I came in by the door and not by the window," he added, laughing.
She murmured something, but did not attempt to introduce him to her companion.
He meanwhile had advanced with rather mincing steps to the girl, was bowing over her hand and then to Henry's infinite disgust was kissing it. Then Henry forgot all else in his adoration of the girl. He will never forget, to the end of whatever life that may be granted him, the picture that she made at that moment, standing in the garish, overlighted room, like a queen in her aloofness from them all, from everything that life could offer if that room, that old man, that woman were truly typical of its gifts. "It wasn't only," Henry said afterwards to Peter, "that she was beautiful. Millie's beautiful—more beautiful I suppose than Christina. But Millie is flesh and blood. You can believe that she has toothache. But it was like a spell, a witchery. The beastly old man himself felt it. As though he had tried to step on to sacred ground and was thrown back on to common earth again. By gad, Peter, you don't know how stupid he suddenly looked—and how beastly! She's remote, a vision—not perhaps for any one to touch—ever . . .!"
"That," said Peter, "is because you're in love with her—and Millie's your sister."
"No, there's more than that. It may be partly because she's a foreigner—but you'd feel the same if you saw her. Her remoteness, as though the farther towards her you moved thefarther away she'd be. Always in the distance and knowing that you can come no nearer. And yet if she knew that really she wouldn't be so frightened as she is. . . ."
"It's all because you're so young, Henry," Peter ended up.
But young or no Henry just then wasn't very happy. The old man with his shrill voice and his ironic, almost cynical determination to be pleased with everything that any one did or said (it came, maybe, from a colossal and patronizing arrogance)—reminded Henry of the old "nicky-nacky" Senator in Otway'sVenice Preservedwhich he had once seen performed by some amateur society. He remained entirely unclouded by Mrs. Tenssen's obvious boredom and ill-temper, moods so blatantly displayed that Henry in spite of himself was crushed.
The girl showed no signs of any further interest in the company.
Mrs. Tenssen sat at the table, picking her teeth with a toothpick and saying, "Indeed!" or "Well I never!" in an abstracted fashion when the old man's pauses seemed to demand something. Her bold eyes moved restlessly round the room, pausing upon things as though she hated them and sometimes upon Henry who was standing, indeterminately, first on one foot and then on another. Something the old man said seemed suddenly to rouse her:
"Well, that's not fair, Mr. Leishman—it's not indeed. That's as good as saying that you think I'm mean—it is indeed. Oh, yes, it is. You can accuse me of many things—I'm not perfect—but meanness! Well you ask my friends. You ask my friend Mrs. Armstrong who's known me as long as any one has—almost from the cradle you might say. Mean! You ask her. Why, only the other day, the day Mr. Prothero was here and that young nephew of his, she said, 'Of all the generous souls on this earth, for real generosity and no half-and-half about it, you give me Katie Tenssen.' Of course, she's a friend as you might say and partial perhaps—but still that's what she said and——"
The old man had been trying again and again to interrupt this flood. At last, because Mrs. Tenssen was forced to take a breath, he broke in:
"No. No. Indeed not. Dear, dear, what a mistake! The last thing I was suggesting."
"Well, I hope so, I'm sure." The outburst over, Mrs. Tenssen relapsed into teeth-picking again.
Henry saw that there was nothing more to be got from the situation just then.
"I must be going," he said. "Important engagement."
Mrs. Tenssen shook him by the hand. She regarded him with a wider amiability now that he was departing.
"Come and see us again," she said. "Any afternoon almost."
By the door he turned, and suddenly the girl, from the far end of the room, smiled. It was a smile of friendship, of reassurance and, best of all, of intimacy.
Under the splendour of it he felt the blood rush to his head, his eyes were dimmed, he stumbled down the stairs, the happiest creature in London.
The smile accompanied him for the rest of that day, through the night, and into the Duncombe library next morning. That morning was not an easy one for Henry. He arrived with the stern determination to work his very hardest and before the luncheon bell sounded to reduce at least some of the letters to discipline and sobriety. Extraordinary the personal life that those letters seemed to possess! You would suppose that they did not wish to be made into a book, or at any rate, if that had to be, that they did not wish the compiler of the work to be Henry. They slipped from under his fingers, hid themselves, deprived him of dates just when he most urgently needed them, gave him Christian names when he must have surnames, and were sometimes so old and faded and yellow that it was impossible to make anything out of them at all.
Sir Charles had as yet shown no sign. Of what he was thinking it was impossible to guess. He had not yet given Henry any private letters to write, and the first experiment on the typewriter was still to be made. One day soon he would spring, and with his long nose hanging over the little tattered, disordered piles on Henry's table would peer and finger and examine: Henry knew that that moment was approaching and that he must have something ready, but this morning hecouldnot concentrate. The plunge into life had been too sudden. The girl was with him in the room, standing just a little way from him smiling at him. . . .
And behind her again there were Millie and the Platts, and Peter and the three Graces, and the Romantic Novel and even Mr. King—and behind these again all London with its banging, clattering, booming excitement, the omnibuses running, the flags flying, the Bolshevists with their plots, and the shops with their jewels and flowers, the actors and actresses rehearsing in the theatres, the messenger boys running with messages, the policemen standing with hands outstretched, the newspapers announcing the births and the deaths and the marriages, D'Annunzio in Fiume, the Poles in Warsaw fighting for their lives, the Americans in New York drinking secretly in little back bedrooms and the sun rising and setting all over the place at an incredible speed.
It was of no use to say that Henry had nothing to do with any of these things. He might have something to do with any one of them at any moment. Stop for an instant to see whether the ground is going to open in Piccadilly Circus and you are lost!—or found!—at any rate, you are taken, neck and crop, and flung into life whether you wish it or no. And Henry did wish it! He loved this nearness and closeness, this sense of being both one of the audience and the actors at one and the same time! Meanwhile the letters, with their gentle slightly scornful evocation of another world, only a little behind this one, and in its own opinion at any rate, infinitely superior to it, were waiting for his concentration.
Then the Duncombe family itself was beginning to absorb him, with its own dramatic possibilities. At luncheon that day he was made forcibly aware of that drama.
Lady Bell-Hall had from the first stirred his eager sympathies. He was so very sorry for the poor little woman. He did so eagerly wish that he could persuade her to be a little less frightened at the changes that were going on around her. After all, if Duncombe Hallhadto be sold and if shewereforced to live in a little flat and have only one servant, did it matter so terribly? Even though Soviets were set up in London and strange men with red handkerchiefs and long black beardsdid sit at Westminster there would still be many delightful things left to enjoy! Her health was good, her appetite quite admirable and the Young Women's Christian Association and Society for the Comfort of Domestic Servants and the League of Pity for Aged Widowers (some among many of Lady Bell-Hall's interests) would in all probability survive many Revolutions or, at least, even though they changed their names, would turn into something equally useful and desirous of help. He longed to say some of these things to her.
His opportunity suddenly and rather uncomfortably arrived.
Lady Bell-Hall in appearance resembled a pretty little pig—that is, she had the features of a pig, a very young pig before time has enveloped it in fat. And so soft and pink were her cheeks, so round her little arms, of so delicate a white her little nose, so beseechingly grey her eyes that you realised very forcibly how charming and attractive sucklings might easily be. She sat at the end of the round mahogany table in the long dark dining-room, talked to her unresponsive brother and sometimes to Henry in a soft gentle voice with a little plaint in it, infinitely touching and pathetic, hoping against hope for the best.
To-day there came to the luncheon an old friend of the family, whose name Henry had once or twice heard, a Mr. Light-Johnson.
Mr. Light-Johnson was a long, thin, cadaverous-looking man with black sleek hair and a voice like a murmuring brook. He paid no attention to Henry and very little to Duncombe, but he sat next to Lady Bell-Hall and leaned towards her and stared into her face with large wondering eyes that seemed always to be brimming with unshed tears.
There are pessimists and pessimists, and it seems to be one of the assured rules of life that however the world may turn, whatever unexpected joys may flash upon the horizon, however many terrible disasters may be averted from mankind, pessimists will remain pessimists to the end. And such a pessimist as this Henry had never before seen.
He had an irritating, tantalizing habit of lifting a spoonful of soup to his lips and then putting it down again because of his interest in what he was saying.
"What I feared last Wednesday," he said, "has already come true."
"Oh dear!" said Lady Bell-Hall. "What is that?"
"The Red Flag is flying in East Croydon. The Workers' Industrial Union have commandeered the Y.M.C.A reading-room and have issued a manifesto to the Croydon Parish Council."
"Dear, dear! Dear, dear!" said Lady Bell-Hall.
"It is a melancholy satisfaction," said Mr. Light-Johnson, "to think how right one was last Wednesday. I hardly expected that my words would be justified so quickly."
"And do you think," said Lady Bell-Hall, "that the movement—taking Y.M.C.A. reading-rooms I mean—will spread quickly over London?"
"Dear Lady," said Mr. Light-Johnson, "I can't disguise from you that I fear the worst. It would be foolish to do any other. I have a cousin, Major Merriward—you've heard me speak of him—whose wife is a niece of one of Winston Churchill's secretaries. He told me last night at the Club that Churchill's levity!—well, it's scandalous—Nero fiddling while Rome burns isn't in it at all! I must tell you frankly that I expect complete Bolshevist rule in London within the next three months."
"Oh dear! oh dear!" said Lady Bell-Hall. "Do have a little of that turbot, Mr. Johnson. You're eating nothing. I'm only too afraid you're right. The banks will close and we shall all starve."
"For the upper classes," said Mr. Johnson, "the consequences will be truly terrible. In Petrograd to-day Dukes and Duchesses are acting as scavengers in the streets. What else can we expect? I heard from a man in the Club yesterday, whose son was in the Archangel forces that it is Lenin's intention to move to London and to make it the centre of his world rule. I leave it to you to imagine, Lady Bell-Hall, how safe any of us will be when we are in the power of Chinese and Mongols."
"Chinese!" cried Lady Bell-Hall. "Chinese!"
"Undoubtedly. They will police London or what is left of it, because there will of course be severe fighting first, and nowadays, with aerial warfare what it is, a few days' conflict will reduce London to a heap of ruins."
"And what about the country?" asked Lady Bell-Hall. "I'm sure the villagers at Duncombe are very friendly. And so they ought to be considering the way that Charles has always treated them."
"It's from the peasantry that I fear the worst," said Mr. Light-Johnson. "After all it has always been so. Think of La Vendée, think of the Russian peasantry in this last Revolution. No, there is small comfort there, I'm afraid."
Throughout this little conversation Duncombe had kept silent. Now he broke in with a little ironic chuckle; this was the first time that Henry had heard him laugh.
"Just think, Margaret," he said, "of Spiders. Spiders is our gardener, Light-Johnson, a stout cheery fellow. He will probably be local executioner."
Light-Johnson turned and looked at his host with reproachful eyes.
"Many a true word before now has been spoken in jest, Duncombe," he said. "You will at any rate not deny that this coming winter is going to be an appalling one—what with strikes, unemployment and the price of food for ever going up—all this with the most incompetent Government that any country has ever had in the world's history. I don't think that even you, Duncombe, can call the outlook very cheerful."
"Every Government is the worst that any country's ever had," said Duncombe. "However, I daresay you're right, Light-Johnson. Perhaps this is the end of the world. Who knows? And what does it matter if it is?"
"Really, Charles!" Lady Bell-Hall was eating her cutlet with great rapidity, as though she expected a naked Chinaman to jump in through the window at any moment and snatch it from her. "But seriously, Mr. Light-Johnson, do you see no hope anywhere?"
"Frankly none at all. I don't think any one could call me a pessimist. I simply look at things as they are—the true duty of every man."
"And what do you think one ought to do?"
"For myself," said Light-Johnson, helping himself to another cutlet, "I shall spend the coming winter on the Riviera—Mentone, I think. The Income Tax is so scandalous that I shallprobably live in the south of France during the next year or two."
"And so shoulder your responsibilities like a true British citizen," said Duncombe. "I'm sure you're right. You're lucky to be able to get away so easily."
Light-Johnson's sallow cheeks flushed ever so slightly. "Of course, if I felt that I could do any good I would remain," he said. "I'm not the sort of man to desert a sinking ship, I hope. Sinking it is, I fear. The great days of England are over. We must not be sentimentalists nor stick our heads, ostrich-wise, in the sand. We must face facts."
It was here that Henry made his great interruption, an interruption that was, had he only known it, to change the whole of his future career. He had realized thoroughly at first that it was his place to be seen and not heard. Young secretaries were not expected to talk unless they were definitely needed to make a party "go." But as Light-Johnson had continued his own indignation had grown. His eyes, again and again, in spite of himself, sought Lady Bell-Hall's face. He simply could not bear to see the little lady tortured—for tortured she evidently was. Her little features were all puckered with distress. Her eyes had the wide staring expression of a child seeing a witch for the first time. Every word that Light-Johnson uttered seemed to stab her like a knife. To Henry this was awful.
"They are not facts. They are not facts!" he cried. "After every war there are years when people are confused. Of course there are. It can't be otherwise. We shall never have Bolshevism here. Russian conditions are different from everywhere else. They are all ignorant in Russia. Millions of ignorant peasants. While prices are high of course people are discontented and say they're going to do dreadful things. When everybody's working again prices will go down and then you see how much any one thinks about Russia! England isn't going to the dogs, and it never will!"
The effect of this outburst was astonishing. Light-Johnson turned round and stared at Henry as though he were a small Pom that had hitherto reposed peacefully under the table buthad suddenly woken up and bitten his leg. He smiled, his first smile of the day.
"Quite so," he said indulgently. "Of course. One can't expect every one to have the same views on these matters."
But Lady Bell-Hall was astonishing. To Henry's amazement she was angry, indignant. She stared at him as though he had offered a deadly insult. Why, she wanted to be made miserable! She liked Mr. Johnson's pessimism! She wished to be tortured! She preferred it! She hugged her wound and begged for another turn on the wheel!
"Really, Mr. Trenchard," she said, "I don't think you can know very much about it. As Mr. Light-Johnson says, we should face facts." She ended her sentence with a hint of indulgence as though she would say: "He's very, very young. We must excuse him on the score of his youth."
The rest of the meal was most uncomfortable. Light-Johnson would speak no more. Henry was miserable and indignant. He had made a fool of himself, but he was glad that he had spoken! Lady Bell-Hall would hate him always now and would prejudice her brother against him—but he was glad that he had spoken! Nevertheless his cheese choked him, and in embarrassed despair he took a pear that he did not want, and because no one else had fruit ate it in an overwhelming silence.
Then in the library he had his reward. Light-Johnson had departed.
"I shan't want you this afternoon, Trenchard," Duncombe said. Then he added: "You spoke up well. That man's an ass."
"I shouldn't," he stammered, "have said anything. I don't know enough. I only——"
"Nonsense. You know more than Light-Johnson. Speak up whenever you have a mind to. It does my sister good."
And this was the beginning of an alliance between the two.