Chapter VIII.Two into One Will Go

Chapter VIII.Two into One Will GoThe truth was that Mr. Priestley had suddenly given way to his overwrought nerves. He had a perfectly sound reason for wanting to get himself and his cuff-mate securely alone inside that bedroom, but when he heard himself being called a cad, before he had even had time to explain (if explanation were needed) that his intentions were strictly honourable, the words had simply frozen on his lips. The mildest of men will show signs of unrest on hearing the word “cad” directed at themselves from the lips of a pretty girl, and Mr. Priestley, as he had already proved to his own surprise, was apparently not the mildest of men. His subsequent outburst, the cumulative result of desperate anxiety manfully suppressed and blank horror, simply followed.Before they had preceded the landlady into the charming pink-and-white bedroom, on whose hearth a fire was already miraculously burning, sanity had returned and he was mildly penitent for the freedom of his speech. Not very penitent, however, for the sooner some one told this obnoxious young woman a few home-truths, the better for the world in general.Affectionately hand-in-hand they stood, while the landlady rapidly praised her room and apologised for it in the same breath, and, intent on their respective thoughts, heard not a single word. Mr. Priestley was now far too anxious regarding the outcome of the next few minutes to feel more than a passing embarrassment concerning that outcome’s setting; while as for Laura, that humorous young woman was still wondering in a dazed sort of way exactly what unpleasant consequences this ridiculous joke was going to bring upon her, and how on earth she was going to avoid at any rate the worst of them.It had struck her with some force that to tell the truth now, as a last desperate resource, was simply to invite ridicule. The truth, in fact, sounded thinner than the thinnest story she could possibly invent—far less plausible than the one she had so proudly originated in the tube train about twelve years ago. Mr. Priestley would only take it as yet another of her endless subterfuges and hypocrisies, and no doubt wax correspondingly drastic. It was a singularly chastened young woman who clasped her companion’s hand with mechanical fingers and turned a dull ear to the stream of the little landlady’s volubility.“I think you’ll find the bed comfortable, mum,” the little landlady was now saying. “Not but what it mightn’t be newer than it is, but——”“Thank you, I’m sure we shall find it comfortable,” put in Mr. Priestley, whose one anxiety was to get the landlady out of the room and the door locked behind her.Laura started nervously. Had she been mistaken, or was there a ring of grim triumph in Mr. Priestley’s voice? For about the first time in her life Laura began to feel seriously frightened.With growing alarm she found her right wrist twisted round to the small of her back as Mr. Priestley put his arm about her waist and drew her towards him. She flinched, but the pressure was inexorable. Her knees feeling unpleasantly wobbly, she allowed herself to be pressed affectionately to Mr. Priestley’s side. As a matter of strict fact, all that Mr. Priestley wanted to do was to consolidate their joint front in order to advance upon the landlady in phalanx-formation and force her out of the room; but Laura did not know that. It was occurring to Laura very vividly thatreallyone simply didn’t know where one was with men; the Girls’ Friendly Societies must be right after all; and shehadthought Mr. Priestley of all men could be trusted.By sheer weight of numbers Mr. Priestley succeeded in driving the landlady to the door. The landlady did not wish to go at all. Beside her natural desire to give her tongue a little trot after having had nobody to exercise it for her since four o’clock that afternoon, except Annie (who didn’t count one way or the other), she was much enjoying the spectacle of this nice couple, so unaffectedly lover-like even in her presence. Why, they never left go of one another for a single instant! It was a sight for sore eyes, that it was.Still, when two persons relentlessly advance upon a narrow doorway, the third, and smallest, member of the trio must give way. “Well, if you’ll put your things outside the door in a few minutes,” she smilingly covered her retreat, “I’ll see they’re nice and dry for you in the morning. And I’m sorry about you not having no luggage with you, but I hope you’ll manage with what I’ve put out on the bed. Good-night, then, mum; good-night, sir.”“Good-night,” said Mr. Priestley, and feverishly shut the door on the good woman. He did not scruple to turn the key in the lock.With a sigh of relief he turned back into the room. A voluminous red flannel night-gown, draped chastely over the end of the bed beside a still more voluminous white flannel night-shirt, caught his eye for the first time and he smiled absently. Somebody (he had not the faintest idea who) must at some time have explained away their absence of luggage, and this was the good woman’s reply. He smiled again.Laura saw the smile and trembled. To her alarmed eye it was the smile of gloating anticipation. Her already enfeebled knees sagged a little further.“And now,” said Mr. Priestley, “to business!” and he walked briskly towards the bed. The way to the wash-stand, it may be remarked, took him past the end of the bed.It was the last straw. Unable to bear this final blow, Laura’s long-suffering knees collapsed altogether. She tottered into a chair.“Please!” said Laura faintly. “Don’t!”“Why not?” asked the surprised Mr. Priestley, who only wanted to go to the wash-stand.“Because—because—well, surely you see.”“Upon my soul, I don’t,” said Mr. Priestley, his eyes fixed longingly on the wash-stand.Laura coloured deeply. For a young woman who prided herself upon being above all things modern she found herself horribly embarrassed. “Well,” she said desperately, “it—it isn’t playing the game exactly, is it?”“Why ever not?” asked Mr. Priestley in astonishment.There was an uneasy pause.“You’re—you’re stronger than me, of course,” Laura pleaded in her most heartrending tones. Laura had often employed these useful tones with malicious intent; now she was using them in deadly earnest. “You’re—you’re stronger than me, and you know I can’t very well cry for help. You know I’m in your power, if you do use force, but——” Her voice, trembling with real terror, died away. She moistened her dry lips.Mr. Priestley began to get annoyed. Here he was, anchored to a chair, when he wanted to be at that wash-stand. What on earth had the wretched girl got into her head now? It was the last hope. Did shewantto go on wearing these damnable handcuffs?“I shall certainly use force,” he said crossly, “if you persist in being so unreasonable.”“I’m not unreasonable!” Laura cried, her fear giving way to indignation before this distorted view.“Indeed you are,” said Mr. Priestley with legitimate irritation. “Extremely unreasonable. What’s the point? Besides, to put the matter on personal grounds, I’ve surely done enough for you to enable you to do this little thing for me.”“Oh!” Laura gasped. “Littlething!”“Besides,” said Mr. Priestley quite angrily, “it may not even be successful.”“I’ll see that it isn’t!” said Laura grimly, when she had recovered her breath.“But we must try it, at any rate. Now, please come along, and stop being so absurd.” And grasping her wrist, Mr. Priestley pulled.Her eyes sparkling stormily, Laura pulled back. Now that it had come to the point, her fears seemed to have left her. She was just furiously angry.“I—I warn you,” she panted, “if you use force, you—you brute, I’ll fight back. I’ll—I’ll——”Mr. Priestley stopped pulling and looked at her with something like despair. “But, good Heavens!” he exclaimed. “In the name of goodness,whydon’t you want to?”Laura also stopped pulling in sheer amazement. She could hardly believe her ears. Could this absurd little man really be as incredibly conceited as all that!“You dare ask me that?” she demanded, her bosom heaving.Mr. Priestley rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. He had heard a lot about the unreasonableness of women, but he had never heard anything that came within a mile of this. “Surely it’s an obvious question,” he murmured resignedly.“Well, then, I’ll answer it,” Laura snapped. “Because I hate the sight of you! Now are you satisfied?”It was Mr. Priestley’s turn to look incredulous. Besides being grossly unfair, considering all that had happened that evening, the answer appeared to be that of a complete imbecile. “That seems a very strange reason for wanting to go on being handcuffed to me,” he articulated.“Good Heavens, I don’t want to go on being handcuffed to you! There’s nothing I want less in the world, you—you beast! I—oh!” And Laura, the devilish-minded Laura, terror of her brother and all who knew her, buried her face in the crook of her free arm and burst into real tears of mortification and alarm.Mr. Priestley stared at her aghast. So far as he could see, this extraordinary young woman had suddenly gone off her head. After threatening to fight him if he tried their last resource for getting rid of the handcuffs, she was now apparently weeping at the idea of not doing so. Women, in Mr. Priestley’s mind at that moment, was represented by one large question-mark.Then suddenly suspicion invaded him. She had pretended to weep once before, and that time he had been taken in, with horrible consequences. Was it not highly probable that she was doing exactly the same thing again, relying on its previous success? What could possibly be her objection to his proposal. Mr. Priestley was unable to understand, but whatever it was it must be swept aside. He was going to be trifled with no longer.With sudden determination he gathered the drooping body up in his arms and pursued his interrupted journey.“Oh, no!” moaned a despairing voice from somewhere near his left shoulder. For a young woman who had just expressed her determination to fight to the death, Laura felt remarkably limp. But Laura was limp. For some strange reason the stuffing had been knocked out of her just as suddenly as it had arrived. She could not at that moment have stood up to a blue-bottle; and Mr. Priestley was far more formidable than any blue-bottle. Perhaps the strain of the evening had told on her more than she had realised; she was still cold, she was still clammy, her nerves were in shreds and her food had only given her indigestion. She felt like one of her own wet stockings.“No!” she moaned again, but without hope.Mr. Priestley set his teeth. It was a heartrending cry and it did make him feel a brute not to be able to heed it, but really——!He carried her swiftly to the wash-stand, set her on her feet and, keeping a wary grip on her wrist, reached for the soap.“Now then!” he said triumphantly, dipping it in the warm water and doing his best to produce a serviceable lather with one hand.Laura opened her eyes and watched him dazedly. He seemed to be washing one hand in the hot-water can. It was probably very devilish, but its exact purpose escaped her for the moment. He began to soap her own inert hand.And then, in a series of blinding flashes, Laura’s mind was illuminated.Her first coherent thought was overwhelming relief. Her next an equally overwhelming, but less reasonable, anger. She stamped her foot. “Is this what you were meaning all the time?” she asked wrathfully. From her tone one might have deduced that she was suffering a fearful disappointment, yet this was not really the case.“Of course,” said Mr. Priestley in surprise, lathering vigorously.“Then why on earth didn’t you say so?”“But I did! Half a dozen times.”“You didn’t!”“Didn’t I?” Mr. Priestley’s surprise was genuine enough, but he was much more interested at the moment in his experiment with the soap. “But surely I told you downstairs? What else do you imagine I wanted this bedroom for?”Laura brushed away the remnants of her tears with an indignant hand. It is seldom given to mortal man, and still less to mortal woman, to feel quite so incredibly foolish as Laura did at that moment. She did not appear to appreciate the privilege conferred upon her.“Ididn’t know what you wanted it for,” she said, with feeble pettishness.“But didn’t you understand what I was wanting you to come and do?” asked Mr. Priestley, but a little absently, for he really was extraordinarily interested in that soap. One might say that at that moment Mr. Priestley’s heart was in his soap. “What did you think I wanted, then?”“Something else,” said Laura curtly, looking out of the window and feeling that she would begin to scream very loudly if Mr. Priestley asked her one single more awkward question on this topic.Fortunately her powers of self-control were not to be put to such a drastic test. “There!” said Mr. Priestley, with mingled satisfaction and anxiety. “I don’t think I can get it any more soapy than that. Now, I’m going to pull. I’m afraid it may hurt you.”“Hurt away!” said Laura grimly. She felt as if it was quite time that somebody hurt her—as indeed it was.Mr. Priestley proceeded to gratify her wishes.“Oh!” squeaked Laura, hastily changing her mind.“Hold on!” exhorted Mr. Priestley through set teeth. “It’s nearly off!” He resumed his efforts.There were two more squeaks, and many others nobly repressed, and then two sighs of triumph.“Well played, by Jove!” said Mr. Priestley, with the wondering admiration of every male for a female who can stand up to pain without flinching.“Thank God!” said Laura, tears of agony in her eyes. “And thank you, Mr. Mullins, too,” she added. It has already been mentioned that Laura was a just girl. So she was, quite often.As if with a common understanding they dropped into chairs and relaxed. The next moment, with a more uncommon understanding, they got up simultaneously, drew their respective chairs as close as possible to the fire and relaxed again.“And now,” said Mr. Priestley, beaming at his companion with benevolent triumph through his glasses, “now what are we going to do?” It was not the least of Mr. Priestley’s achievements that evening that through all its hectic developments he had managed to keep his glasses intact upon the bridge of his nose, even when travelling at forty-five miles an hour in the teeth of a miniature blizzard.Laura looked at him with something that was not quite respect, and not quite affection, but somehow, contained the ingredients of both. Now that he had succeeded in freeing her of that odious handcuff, and been displayed, incidentally, as the complete little gentleman he was, Laura’s feelings towards him had undergone yet another revulsion. At one bound Mr. Priestley had recovered his proper place m her estimation. Handcuffs are an excellent substitute for a time machine. Laura had only known Mr. Priestley, as time is ordinarily reckoned, for a paltry half-dozen hours; she felt as if she had known him intimately for as many years. And he really was rather a dear!Undoubtedly, Laura now decided once more, it was a shame to be hoaxing him in this way, when the poor man was taking it all so desperately in earnest. For the hundredth time, but for different reasons on almost each occasion, it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him the truth, nearly the whole truth, and hardly anything but the truth. For the hundredth time she refrained. The continuance of the beam through Mr. Priestley’s glasses decided her this time. It was borne in upon Laura that in a way Mr. Priestley really was enjoying himself, at any rate he was living Life with a capital L; and she felt that, after the good turn he had just done her, he did deserve something better at her hands than such an anti-climax as the truth would be. Besides, Laura reminded herself more sternly, it was probably all exceedingly good for him.“What shall we do?” she repeated meekly. “Well, that seems to be for you to say, Mr. Mullins. I’m rather in your hands, aren’t I?” And she edged uneasily away from some of her clamminess and suppressed a shiver.Mr. Priestley noticed both movements. “Very well,” he said promptly. “I want to have a talk with you, of course, but it’s no good running the risk of pneumonia. You must get out of those wet clothes of yours. I’ll go down to the kitchen and do the same.”Laura approved of this programme, and intimated as much with some warmth. She had never felt much drawn towards red flannel before, but just at that moment red flannel appeared the ideal material for the manufacture of night-gowns. Nice, warm, dry,beautifulred flannel! What could a girl want more?Besides, she was not sorry to put off her talk with Mr. Priestley till the morning. It would give her time to collect her thoughts, and Laura felt that her thoughts needed a good deal of collecting. It was nice of Mr. Priestley to take it so naturally for granted that he should spend the night in the kitchen. How she had misjudged that blameless man!“And I wonder if the landlady could run to a dressing-gown?” said the blameless man, gazing thoughtfully at the now empty handcuff dangling from his left wrist. It wore something of a wistful air. So did Mr. Priestley.“I’ll ask her,” Laura said, jumping to her feet. She went to the door and made the noises of a person requiring the presence of her landlady, while Mr. Priestley hastily tucked his handcuff up his coat-sleeve.The landlady was enchanted with the idea of producing dressing-gowns. She produced two, one with pride and one with apologies. The first was of blue flannel trimmed with white lace; the other was of fairly pink flannel trimmed with fairly white lace. Her husband, it appeared, dispensed with such formalities as dressing-gowns.By common female consent the pink dressing-gown was allotted to Mr. Priestley. He clutched it, and snatched up his night-shirt.“I shall be back, my dear,” he said with dignity, “in about five minutes.” He had not the faintest notion how long a girl takes to get herself out of wet clothes and into a red flannel night-gown, but five minutes seemed a liberal estimate.“Lor’, sir,” remarked the landlady with frank astonishment, “you’re not going somewhere else to change your clothes, surely? Not after I’ve lighted this fire for you and all?”“Five minutes!” squeaked Laura at the same time. “But—but you’re not coming backhere, are you?”Mr. Priestley looked from one to the other uneasily. The landlady eyed them both with undisguised surprise. Laura, realising that she had not said quite the right thing so far as the landlady was concerned, began to blush gently, swore silently at herself for doing so, and blushed hotly. The landlady’s kindly eye grew less kindly; it clouded with suspicion. The demeanour of either Laura or Mr. Priestley at that moment would have roused suspicion in a blind woman; their very silence was eloquent.“I suppose,” said the landlady very slowly, “that you twoaremarried, if you don’t mind my asking?”“Really!” spluttered Mr. Priestley, trying hard to simulate anger. “Really, this is preposterous. I won’t——”“Seeing,” pursued the landlady in the same tones, her eyes now glued to Laura’s left hand, “seeing, I mean, as the lady isn’t wearing no ring noranything!”This was not true. The modern girl does not wear very much, but she does wear something. Laura was wearing several things, each damper than the others.A hundred despairing schemes flitted through Mr. Priestley’s mind. Now that the handcuffs were off, there was no need for them to pretend they were married. Should he say they were brother and sister? But then that would look suspicious, and real suspicion was the very last thing they wanted to arouse. There would certainly be an account of the crime in the next morning’s papers, and then if their behaviour gave the landlady any inkling that——Laura’s laugh interrupted his frenzied thoughts. “I see,” said Laura quite naturally, “that we shall have to tell you the truth. No, we’re not——”What Laura was going to say was never revealed, for with a despairing cry Mr. Priestley flung himself against this piece of suicidal short-sightedness. “No!” said Mr. Priestley loudly. “No, weweren’tmarried—at this time yesterday. Now we are. You’re right, my darling,” he went on rapidly, with the resource of desperation, “we must tell Mrs. Er-er-h’rrm the truth. We’ve eloped! We—er—we were married at a registry office this afternoon, with—with a key, you know. Not even time to buy the ring. Oh, quite on the spur of the moment, it all was. Ha, Ha! Er—ha, ha!” He laughed without mirth, and waited breathlessly.“Well,therenow!” exclaimed the landlady, her clouds completely dispersed. “Well, isn’t that romantic? With a key, now! I’ve heard tell of that before. Well, well! Eloped, did you say? Now, that is nice. You know, Ithoughtthere was something, I did. Fancy that! I always was a one for romance, meself. Of course you go down to the kitchen then, sir. You’ll find it nice and warm in there and when you come up again in ten minutes I’ll have your lady all tucked up in bed and dry and warm as toast for you.”“Thank you,” said Mr. Priestley wanly, taking some pains to avoid his lady’s eye.“The poor lamb!” continued the landlady fondly, eyeing that now fuming young woman with delighted fondness. “Catching her death of cold, and all on account of shyness, as you might say. I used to feel like that once with my Will, I remember, but bless you, miss—or—mum, Ishouldsay—you’ll soon grow out of that.”“Indeed?” said the lamb coldly. It was a very cold lamb.“I think I’ll be getting downstairs, d-dearest,” mumbled Mr. Priestley, intercepting a most unlamblike glance. “Er—so long.”“Wait a minute, sir,” put in the landlady. “I know the very thing—you must have a glass of my elderberry wine first. I’ll get some this very minute. That’ll stop you catching cold, both of you. Bless me, why didn’t I think of that before? Never mind, I’ll have it up in a minute.” She whisked out of the room and shut the door behind her.The lamb turned irately upon its good shepherd. “Why on earth did you butt in with that absurd story? I’d just thought of a splendid way of breaking the news to her that we aren’t married.”“Yes, and ruining everything!” retorted Mr. Priestley, stung to annoyance once more. In brief, snappy sentences he showed this obtuse young woman exactly why it was necessary for the landlady to continue in her delusion.His argument was unanswerable. Without giving her whole case away Laura was unable to pursue that particular line. Woman-like, she instantly directed her irritation into a fresh channel.“Well, now you can hardly sleep in the kitchen,” she snapped. “Wheredoyou imagine you’re going to sleep, I’d like to know?”“Where I always did,” Mr. Priestley snapped back. “In here.”Laura looked at him with wide eyes. “Don’t be absurd, please. That’s out of the question.”“Anything else is out of the question,” Mr. Priestley said angrily. “It’s you who are being absurd. What you don’t seem to understand is that this is a question of life or death.”Once again Laura was up against a brick wall. “Well, anyhow, you’re not going to sleep in here. Kindly get that out of your head once and for all. As soon as you’ve gone I shall lock the door.”“In that case,” said Mr. Priestley grimly, “I shall break it in.”They looked at each other stormily.Upon this Pleasing domestic scene the landlady returned.The constraint in the atmosphere was obvious, but the landlady did not mind that. Quite natural, most excitingly natural, in the circumstances. She dispensed elderberry wine with a generous hand. The occasion called for a generous hand, and the landlady did not fail to respond. Her hand was more than generous; it was prodigal.“My best respex,” said the landlady happily, raising her tumbler, unlike the other tumblers only a quarter full.“Uh-huh!” replied Mr. Priestley, with a brave attempt at a smile, and raised his tumbler. Mr. Priestley, as we have already seen, had a Palate. Elderberry-wine does not harmonise with a Palate. Life seemed very bleak at that moment to Mr. Priestley.He swallowed three large gulps like the gentleman he was, then set his half-empty tumbler down. At precisely the same moment, with an astringent face, Laura was setting her tumbler down. Instantly the landlady pounced on them and re-filled them to the brim.“That’ll put you as right as rain,” she announced.Mr. Priestley looked at her with deepened gloom. “It was very nice,” he lied manfully. “Very nice indeed. But I think I won’t have any more, really.”“And catch your deathacold, sir, instead?” retorted the landlady. “No, you drink that up, and you won’t have to worry about colds.”“I don’t think I will, really,” Mr. Priestley wriggled. “I’ll be getting along now and——”“If I were you, mum,” the landlady informed Laura, “I shouldmakehim. Mark my words, you’ll have him on your hands with the influenza if you don’t.”“I think you’re quite right,” Laura agreed, a malicious twinkle in her eye. “Drink it up at once,darling!”Mr. Priestley gazed at her with mute appeal.“If I wereyou, mum,” the landlady added, “I wouldn’t let him go down to change ’is clothes till he had drunk it.”“Darling,” said Laura, “you don’t go down to change your clothes till you have drunk it.”There was no real reason why Mr. Priestley should not have said loudly: “Bosh!” and walked out of the room. But he didn’t. He drank up his elderberry wine.Then he walked sadly to the door. Once he had a Palate….“Half a minute, sir,” remarked the landlady. “Your good lady hasn’t drunk up hers yet.”Mr. Priestley stopped short in his tracks.“If I were you, sir,” observed the landlady with much enjoyment, “I should make her drink it. You’ll have her on your hands for a week with the influenza if you don’t, you mark my words.”“Darling,” said Mr. Priestley in italics, advancing towards his adopted wife, “drink up your wine!”“I don’t think I will, really,” Laura murmured, backing uneasily, “I—I’ve had enough.”“I’m not going out of this room till you do,” said Mr. Priestley with triumph.The battle of wills lasted only two minutes, but two minutes can seem a very long time. At the end of it, with a slightly dazed look in her eyes, Laura drank up her elderberry wine. Laura had not had very much practice in doing what she was told, and it did not come easily to her.Then Mr. Priestley went downstairs.The landlady watched him go, carrying as he did with him three-quarters of a pint of her elderberry wine, with a triumphant eye. She felt that she had done her duty, and not only as an anti-influenza specialist; she felt that this couple would be grateful to her the next morning, and not only because their noses would not be streaming. The landlady had brought seven children into the world in her time, and she was an expert in many things beside influenza.In the traditional way she proceeded to put the bride to bed.Going downstairs with that uneasy young woman’s wet clothes, she found the groom hovering nervously. With words of homely encouragement she sent him flying upstairs with cheeks as red as his lady’s night-gown.Mr. Priestley was proving himself to be a man of singular resolution. There were few things in this world that he wanted to do less than turn the key on the inside of that bedroom door; yet he knew the key must be turned. He turned it.From the centre of the pillow in the large bed a small face, framed in sheet, regarded him with ill-concealed alarm. Even the sight of Mr. Priestley swathed in his pink flannel and lace appeared to bring it no joy. Two round eyes followed his every movement, and as he advanced towards the bed the sheet that framed the face took on a tense appearance beside either cheek, as if two small hands were gripping it convulsively. The face did not speak, for the simple reason that its owner was totally incapable of uttering a word. It is very difficult to inaugurate a chatty conversation when your throat has gone quite dry and your tongue has apparently affixed itself irrevocably to the roof of your mouth.Carrying his pink flannel with the dignity of a Roman in his toga, Mr. Priestley halted beside the bed and stared down into the silent face with a look that was almost grim. “And now, young woman,” he said, in a voice which matched his look only too well, “I want an explanation, if you please.”Reader, have you ever drunk home-made elderberry wine? Not a pale imitation, I mean, but the real, genuine, honest article? Have you gone still further and imbibed a full three-quarters of a pint of it? For, if you have, there is no need for me to explain. However, in case your life has been empty and vain, I will point out that home-made elderberry wine (the real, honest stuff) does practically nothing for about a quarter of an hour. During that period it just sits and ruminates. Then it makes up for lost time.Suddenly the sheet on either side of Laura’s face relaxed. She smiled. “Yes, I expect you do,” she agreed.Mr. Priestley smiled too. “I certainly do.”Laura laughed. “I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask for one.”Mr. Priestley laughed too. In the space of a few seconds the whole thing seemed to have taken on a completely different aspect. It was not a tragedy at all; it was—yes, utterly incredible but perfectly true—really quite funny!Laura seemed to find it funny too. Her laugh degenerated into a giggle.Mr. Priestley sat down on the bed. “Of course, you know I’m not that man Mullins,” he stated rather than asked. How very obtuse of him never to have realised that before! Of course she knew it. “When did you begin to find out?”“I knew all the time,” giggled Laura. “Oh, dear, this is ridiculous, isn’t it?”“Quite absurd,” grinned Mr. Priestley. “I’m afraid, by the way, that I must have been rather a handicap to you this evening.”“Not at all,” said Laura politely.“You see, I’ve never associated with professional criminals before. My name is——” A glimmer of sense returned to Mr. Priestley, and he withheld that confidence.Laura was giggling again. “You know, I’m notreallya professional criminal,” she volunteered. “I’m quite honest. Is that a dreadful disappointment?”Mr. Priestley beamed. “No, are you really? That is a great relief, a very great relief. That’s really a load off my mind. But in that case—well, would you mind telling me the real truth about this evening?”But Laura, though disposed to giggle, had not quite lost her head in her newly awakened sense of humour. She hastily searched her mind for a tale that should relieve Mr. Priestley’s mind as much as possible, without betraying her trust.“Well,” she said slowly, “what I told you first of all was near enough. I knew you weren’t Mullins, of course, but I was desperately anxious for some one to help me, so I just pretended to think you were. Besides,” she added severely, “I thought it would serve you right.”“I deserved it, I know,” agreed Mr. Priestley, but with no signs of contrition.“That manhasgot some compromising letters of mine. He may have some miniatures too; I don’t know anything about that. But you needn’t let your conscience worry you about having shot him. He was a thorough blackguard, and you never did a better thing in your life.”“That’s a relief too,” murmured Mr. Priestley thoughtfully. “So far we seem to have been too busy for my conscience to have recovered from its shock, but doubtless I should have had a very bad time to-night if you hadn’t told me that. You’re—you’re sure he deserved it? Blackmailer, eh? If he was a blackmailer I’m not only not sorry,” said Mr. Priestley defiantly, “I’m glad. I’ve always considered shooting the only cure for blackmailers.”“He was, yes. Oh, he deserved it all right; please don’t worry about that. By the way,” Laura added curiously, “what were you going to do about it? Had you formed any sort of plan?”“Well,” Mr. Priestley, replied with diffidence, “I’d rather thought (after you were safe, of course) of going to the police and explaining the whole thing. It wasn’t murder, you see; only manslaughter. As it is, I’m not at all sure that I shall do anything.”“Don’t!” Laura said earnestly. “You can’t do any good, and you may do a lot of harm. Besides,” she went on, looking down her pretty nose, “I don’t really want to be brought into it, you know, as I certainly should be if you went to the police.”Mr. Priestley started slightly. “You! By Gad, yes; I was forgetting about that. Of course you mustn’t be brought into it. Your husband would never forgive you. And for that matter——” He coloured modestly.“Yes?” Laura encouraged.“Only that the circumstances are a little altered. I was looking on you as a young woman without—well, without a reputation to lose; in which case it wouldn’t matter a rap that you should sleep in this bed and I on the sofa over there in the same room. As it is, of course——!”Laura raised herself discreetly on an elbow and thumped a hard pillow into a semblance of softness. “Yes?” she said almost nonchalantly.“Well, I mean,” Mr. Priestley amplified, a little uncomfortably, “we don’t want to add divorce to our other crimes, do we?”“Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” Laura said brightly. “I’m not really married. I only said that because I thought it would make you readier to help me. Look, there’s no mark even of a wedding-ring.”She extended her left hand and Mr. Priestley, in order to examine it the better, held its slim fingers in his. When he put it down on the bed again he continued to hold its slim fingers. Mr. Priestley was a very absent-minded man.But he was not a man of the world. A man of the world would instantly have said all the pretty things which this new piece of information should require. Mr. Priestley only said, rather blankly; “But don’t you see, that’s almost worse. You’d be hopelessly compromised. Of course I shall spend the night in the kitchen.” He looked a little wistfully at the sofa near the fire. It was not the most comfortable sofa ever made, but compared with a Windsor chair in the kitchen it was Heaven.“On a hard chair, in a draught?” Laura smiled lazily. Her cheeks were a little flushed, for the honest elderberry wine was hard at work now making the place hot for influenza germs, and her whole body was permeated with a pleasant warmth. She tried to put herself in Mr. Priestley’s place and face a hard chair in a draughty kitchen. “It seems to me I’m compromised quite deeply as it is. After all we’re supposed to be married, you know. By the way, is that the door-key?” She disengaged her fingers from Mr. Priestley’s and extended them invitingly.Mr. Priestley put the key into them.Laura weighed it pensively in her hand. “You’re very conventional, aren’t you?” she asked.Mr. Priestley, who was under the impression that he had just killed one of his fellow-men and was not in the least sorry for it, nodded. “In some circumstances,” he said primly, “one has to be.”“Well,” said Laura, as if arriving at a decision, “I’m not. Never! If the people are all right, the circumstances can take care of themselves; that’s my creed.” With a sudden movement she thrust the key far down inside the bed and showed her empty hand. “Now, go and make yourself as comfy as you can on that sofa with both dressing-gowns and this eiderdown; and if you want to say anything to me, say: ‘It’s your own silly fault, my dear girl!’ Because it is, you know.”Mr. Priestley jumped to his feet and stood for a moment, looking down at the flushed and ever so faintly mocking face. “No,” he said slowly, “I won’t say that. I’ll say: ‘You’re a very dear, sweet girl. But please give me that key.’”Laura shook her head violently. “No! I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not going to alter it. Now, please run along to that sofa, because I want to go to sleep.”Mr. Priestley saw she meant it, and his colour deepened. He turned towards the sofa without a word.But the elderberry wine, in the intervals of combating influenza germs, had not performed its last miracle yet. With a swift movement Mr. Priestley turned about, darted back to the bed and kissed the astonished maiden in it unskilfully but heartily on her lips. Then he retired to his sofa.Ten minutes later two rhythmical breathings filled the room, one only just audible, the other distinctly so. The elderberry wine had done its last job.

The truth was that Mr. Priestley had suddenly given way to his overwrought nerves. He had a perfectly sound reason for wanting to get himself and his cuff-mate securely alone inside that bedroom, but when he heard himself being called a cad, before he had even had time to explain (if explanation were needed) that his intentions were strictly honourable, the words had simply frozen on his lips. The mildest of men will show signs of unrest on hearing the word “cad” directed at themselves from the lips of a pretty girl, and Mr. Priestley, as he had already proved to his own surprise, was apparently not the mildest of men. His subsequent outburst, the cumulative result of desperate anxiety manfully suppressed and blank horror, simply followed.

Before they had preceded the landlady into the charming pink-and-white bedroom, on whose hearth a fire was already miraculously burning, sanity had returned and he was mildly penitent for the freedom of his speech. Not very penitent, however, for the sooner some one told this obnoxious young woman a few home-truths, the better for the world in general.

Affectionately hand-in-hand they stood, while the landlady rapidly praised her room and apologised for it in the same breath, and, intent on their respective thoughts, heard not a single word. Mr. Priestley was now far too anxious regarding the outcome of the next few minutes to feel more than a passing embarrassment concerning that outcome’s setting; while as for Laura, that humorous young woman was still wondering in a dazed sort of way exactly what unpleasant consequences this ridiculous joke was going to bring upon her, and how on earth she was going to avoid at any rate the worst of them.

It had struck her with some force that to tell the truth now, as a last desperate resource, was simply to invite ridicule. The truth, in fact, sounded thinner than the thinnest story she could possibly invent—far less plausible than the one she had so proudly originated in the tube train about twelve years ago. Mr. Priestley would only take it as yet another of her endless subterfuges and hypocrisies, and no doubt wax correspondingly drastic. It was a singularly chastened young woman who clasped her companion’s hand with mechanical fingers and turned a dull ear to the stream of the little landlady’s volubility.

“I think you’ll find the bed comfortable, mum,” the little landlady was now saying. “Not but what it mightn’t be newer than it is, but——”

“Thank you, I’m sure we shall find it comfortable,” put in Mr. Priestley, whose one anxiety was to get the landlady out of the room and the door locked behind her.

Laura started nervously. Had she been mistaken, or was there a ring of grim triumph in Mr. Priestley’s voice? For about the first time in her life Laura began to feel seriously frightened.

With growing alarm she found her right wrist twisted round to the small of her back as Mr. Priestley put his arm about her waist and drew her towards him. She flinched, but the pressure was inexorable. Her knees feeling unpleasantly wobbly, she allowed herself to be pressed affectionately to Mr. Priestley’s side. As a matter of strict fact, all that Mr. Priestley wanted to do was to consolidate their joint front in order to advance upon the landlady in phalanx-formation and force her out of the room; but Laura did not know that. It was occurring to Laura very vividly thatreallyone simply didn’t know where one was with men; the Girls’ Friendly Societies must be right after all; and shehadthought Mr. Priestley of all men could be trusted.

By sheer weight of numbers Mr. Priestley succeeded in driving the landlady to the door. The landlady did not wish to go at all. Beside her natural desire to give her tongue a little trot after having had nobody to exercise it for her since four o’clock that afternoon, except Annie (who didn’t count one way or the other), she was much enjoying the spectacle of this nice couple, so unaffectedly lover-like even in her presence. Why, they never left go of one another for a single instant! It was a sight for sore eyes, that it was.

Still, when two persons relentlessly advance upon a narrow doorway, the third, and smallest, member of the trio must give way. “Well, if you’ll put your things outside the door in a few minutes,” she smilingly covered her retreat, “I’ll see they’re nice and dry for you in the morning. And I’m sorry about you not having no luggage with you, but I hope you’ll manage with what I’ve put out on the bed. Good-night, then, mum; good-night, sir.”

“Good-night,” said Mr. Priestley, and feverishly shut the door on the good woman. He did not scruple to turn the key in the lock.

With a sigh of relief he turned back into the room. A voluminous red flannel night-gown, draped chastely over the end of the bed beside a still more voluminous white flannel night-shirt, caught his eye for the first time and he smiled absently. Somebody (he had not the faintest idea who) must at some time have explained away their absence of luggage, and this was the good woman’s reply. He smiled again.

Laura saw the smile and trembled. To her alarmed eye it was the smile of gloating anticipation. Her already enfeebled knees sagged a little further.

“And now,” said Mr. Priestley, “to business!” and he walked briskly towards the bed. The way to the wash-stand, it may be remarked, took him past the end of the bed.

It was the last straw. Unable to bear this final blow, Laura’s long-suffering knees collapsed altogether. She tottered into a chair.

“Please!” said Laura faintly. “Don’t!”

“Why not?” asked the surprised Mr. Priestley, who only wanted to go to the wash-stand.

“Because—because—well, surely you see.”

“Upon my soul, I don’t,” said Mr. Priestley, his eyes fixed longingly on the wash-stand.

Laura coloured deeply. For a young woman who prided herself upon being above all things modern she found herself horribly embarrassed. “Well,” she said desperately, “it—it isn’t playing the game exactly, is it?”

“Why ever not?” asked Mr. Priestley in astonishment.

There was an uneasy pause.

“You’re—you’re stronger than me, of course,” Laura pleaded in her most heartrending tones. Laura had often employed these useful tones with malicious intent; now she was using them in deadly earnest. “You’re—you’re stronger than me, and you know I can’t very well cry for help. You know I’m in your power, if you do use force, but——” Her voice, trembling with real terror, died away. She moistened her dry lips.

Mr. Priestley began to get annoyed. Here he was, anchored to a chair, when he wanted to be at that wash-stand. What on earth had the wretched girl got into her head now? It was the last hope. Did shewantto go on wearing these damnable handcuffs?

“I shall certainly use force,” he said crossly, “if you persist in being so unreasonable.”

“I’m not unreasonable!” Laura cried, her fear giving way to indignation before this distorted view.

“Indeed you are,” said Mr. Priestley with legitimate irritation. “Extremely unreasonable. What’s the point? Besides, to put the matter on personal grounds, I’ve surely done enough for you to enable you to do this little thing for me.”

“Oh!” Laura gasped. “Littlething!”

“Besides,” said Mr. Priestley quite angrily, “it may not even be successful.”

“I’ll see that it isn’t!” said Laura grimly, when she had recovered her breath.

“But we must try it, at any rate. Now, please come along, and stop being so absurd.” And grasping her wrist, Mr. Priestley pulled.

Her eyes sparkling stormily, Laura pulled back. Now that it had come to the point, her fears seemed to have left her. She was just furiously angry.

“I—I warn you,” she panted, “if you use force, you—you brute, I’ll fight back. I’ll—I’ll——”

Mr. Priestley stopped pulling and looked at her with something like despair. “But, good Heavens!” he exclaimed. “In the name of goodness,whydon’t you want to?”

Laura also stopped pulling in sheer amazement. She could hardly believe her ears. Could this absurd little man really be as incredibly conceited as all that!

“You dare ask me that?” she demanded, her bosom heaving.

Mr. Priestley rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. He had heard a lot about the unreasonableness of women, but he had never heard anything that came within a mile of this. “Surely it’s an obvious question,” he murmured resignedly.

“Well, then, I’ll answer it,” Laura snapped. “Because I hate the sight of you! Now are you satisfied?”

It was Mr. Priestley’s turn to look incredulous. Besides being grossly unfair, considering all that had happened that evening, the answer appeared to be that of a complete imbecile. “That seems a very strange reason for wanting to go on being handcuffed to me,” he articulated.

“Good Heavens, I don’t want to go on being handcuffed to you! There’s nothing I want less in the world, you—you beast! I—oh!” And Laura, the devilish-minded Laura, terror of her brother and all who knew her, buried her face in the crook of her free arm and burst into real tears of mortification and alarm.

Mr. Priestley stared at her aghast. So far as he could see, this extraordinary young woman had suddenly gone off her head. After threatening to fight him if he tried their last resource for getting rid of the handcuffs, she was now apparently weeping at the idea of not doing so. Women, in Mr. Priestley’s mind at that moment, was represented by one large question-mark.

Then suddenly suspicion invaded him. She had pretended to weep once before, and that time he had been taken in, with horrible consequences. Was it not highly probable that she was doing exactly the same thing again, relying on its previous success? What could possibly be her objection to his proposal. Mr. Priestley was unable to understand, but whatever it was it must be swept aside. He was going to be trifled with no longer.

With sudden determination he gathered the drooping body up in his arms and pursued his interrupted journey.

“Oh, no!” moaned a despairing voice from somewhere near his left shoulder. For a young woman who had just expressed her determination to fight to the death, Laura felt remarkably limp. But Laura was limp. For some strange reason the stuffing had been knocked out of her just as suddenly as it had arrived. She could not at that moment have stood up to a blue-bottle; and Mr. Priestley was far more formidable than any blue-bottle. Perhaps the strain of the evening had told on her more than she had realised; she was still cold, she was still clammy, her nerves were in shreds and her food had only given her indigestion. She felt like one of her own wet stockings.

“No!” she moaned again, but without hope.

Mr. Priestley set his teeth. It was a heartrending cry and it did make him feel a brute not to be able to heed it, but really——!

He carried her swiftly to the wash-stand, set her on her feet and, keeping a wary grip on her wrist, reached for the soap.

“Now then!” he said triumphantly, dipping it in the warm water and doing his best to produce a serviceable lather with one hand.

Laura opened her eyes and watched him dazedly. He seemed to be washing one hand in the hot-water can. It was probably very devilish, but its exact purpose escaped her for the moment. He began to soap her own inert hand.

And then, in a series of blinding flashes, Laura’s mind was illuminated.

Her first coherent thought was overwhelming relief. Her next an equally overwhelming, but less reasonable, anger. She stamped her foot. “Is this what you were meaning all the time?” she asked wrathfully. From her tone one might have deduced that she was suffering a fearful disappointment, yet this was not really the case.

“Of course,” said Mr. Priestley in surprise, lathering vigorously.

“Then why on earth didn’t you say so?”

“But I did! Half a dozen times.”

“You didn’t!”

“Didn’t I?” Mr. Priestley’s surprise was genuine enough, but he was much more interested at the moment in his experiment with the soap. “But surely I told you downstairs? What else do you imagine I wanted this bedroom for?”

Laura brushed away the remnants of her tears with an indignant hand. It is seldom given to mortal man, and still less to mortal woman, to feel quite so incredibly foolish as Laura did at that moment. She did not appear to appreciate the privilege conferred upon her.

“Ididn’t know what you wanted it for,” she said, with feeble pettishness.

“But didn’t you understand what I was wanting you to come and do?” asked Mr. Priestley, but a little absently, for he really was extraordinarily interested in that soap. One might say that at that moment Mr. Priestley’s heart was in his soap. “What did you think I wanted, then?”

“Something else,” said Laura curtly, looking out of the window and feeling that she would begin to scream very loudly if Mr. Priestley asked her one single more awkward question on this topic.

Fortunately her powers of self-control were not to be put to such a drastic test. “There!” said Mr. Priestley, with mingled satisfaction and anxiety. “I don’t think I can get it any more soapy than that. Now, I’m going to pull. I’m afraid it may hurt you.”

“Hurt away!” said Laura grimly. She felt as if it was quite time that somebody hurt her—as indeed it was.

Mr. Priestley proceeded to gratify her wishes.

“Oh!” squeaked Laura, hastily changing her mind.

“Hold on!” exhorted Mr. Priestley through set teeth. “It’s nearly off!” He resumed his efforts.

There were two more squeaks, and many others nobly repressed, and then two sighs of triumph.

“Well played, by Jove!” said Mr. Priestley, with the wondering admiration of every male for a female who can stand up to pain without flinching.

“Thank God!” said Laura, tears of agony in her eyes. “And thank you, Mr. Mullins, too,” she added. It has already been mentioned that Laura was a just girl. So she was, quite often.

As if with a common understanding they dropped into chairs and relaxed. The next moment, with a more uncommon understanding, they got up simultaneously, drew their respective chairs as close as possible to the fire and relaxed again.

“And now,” said Mr. Priestley, beaming at his companion with benevolent triumph through his glasses, “now what are we going to do?” It was not the least of Mr. Priestley’s achievements that evening that through all its hectic developments he had managed to keep his glasses intact upon the bridge of his nose, even when travelling at forty-five miles an hour in the teeth of a miniature blizzard.

Laura looked at him with something that was not quite respect, and not quite affection, but somehow, contained the ingredients of both. Now that he had succeeded in freeing her of that odious handcuff, and been displayed, incidentally, as the complete little gentleman he was, Laura’s feelings towards him had undergone yet another revulsion. At one bound Mr. Priestley had recovered his proper place m her estimation. Handcuffs are an excellent substitute for a time machine. Laura had only known Mr. Priestley, as time is ordinarily reckoned, for a paltry half-dozen hours; she felt as if she had known him intimately for as many years. And he really was rather a dear!

Undoubtedly, Laura now decided once more, it was a shame to be hoaxing him in this way, when the poor man was taking it all so desperately in earnest. For the hundredth time, but for different reasons on almost each occasion, it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him the truth, nearly the whole truth, and hardly anything but the truth. For the hundredth time she refrained. The continuance of the beam through Mr. Priestley’s glasses decided her this time. It was borne in upon Laura that in a way Mr. Priestley really was enjoying himself, at any rate he was living Life with a capital L; and she felt that, after the good turn he had just done her, he did deserve something better at her hands than such an anti-climax as the truth would be. Besides, Laura reminded herself more sternly, it was probably all exceedingly good for him.

“What shall we do?” she repeated meekly. “Well, that seems to be for you to say, Mr. Mullins. I’m rather in your hands, aren’t I?” And she edged uneasily away from some of her clamminess and suppressed a shiver.

Mr. Priestley noticed both movements. “Very well,” he said promptly. “I want to have a talk with you, of course, but it’s no good running the risk of pneumonia. You must get out of those wet clothes of yours. I’ll go down to the kitchen and do the same.”

Laura approved of this programme, and intimated as much with some warmth. She had never felt much drawn towards red flannel before, but just at that moment red flannel appeared the ideal material for the manufacture of night-gowns. Nice, warm, dry,beautifulred flannel! What could a girl want more?

Besides, she was not sorry to put off her talk with Mr. Priestley till the morning. It would give her time to collect her thoughts, and Laura felt that her thoughts needed a good deal of collecting. It was nice of Mr. Priestley to take it so naturally for granted that he should spend the night in the kitchen. How she had misjudged that blameless man!

“And I wonder if the landlady could run to a dressing-gown?” said the blameless man, gazing thoughtfully at the now empty handcuff dangling from his left wrist. It wore something of a wistful air. So did Mr. Priestley.

“I’ll ask her,” Laura said, jumping to her feet. She went to the door and made the noises of a person requiring the presence of her landlady, while Mr. Priestley hastily tucked his handcuff up his coat-sleeve.

The landlady was enchanted with the idea of producing dressing-gowns. She produced two, one with pride and one with apologies. The first was of blue flannel trimmed with white lace; the other was of fairly pink flannel trimmed with fairly white lace. Her husband, it appeared, dispensed with such formalities as dressing-gowns.

By common female consent the pink dressing-gown was allotted to Mr. Priestley. He clutched it, and snatched up his night-shirt.

“I shall be back, my dear,” he said with dignity, “in about five minutes.” He had not the faintest notion how long a girl takes to get herself out of wet clothes and into a red flannel night-gown, but five minutes seemed a liberal estimate.

“Lor’, sir,” remarked the landlady with frank astonishment, “you’re not going somewhere else to change your clothes, surely? Not after I’ve lighted this fire for you and all?”

“Five minutes!” squeaked Laura at the same time. “But—but you’re not coming backhere, are you?”

Mr. Priestley looked from one to the other uneasily. The landlady eyed them both with undisguised surprise. Laura, realising that she had not said quite the right thing so far as the landlady was concerned, began to blush gently, swore silently at herself for doing so, and blushed hotly. The landlady’s kindly eye grew less kindly; it clouded with suspicion. The demeanour of either Laura or Mr. Priestley at that moment would have roused suspicion in a blind woman; their very silence was eloquent.

“I suppose,” said the landlady very slowly, “that you twoaremarried, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Really!” spluttered Mr. Priestley, trying hard to simulate anger. “Really, this is preposterous. I won’t——”

“Seeing,” pursued the landlady in the same tones, her eyes now glued to Laura’s left hand, “seeing, I mean, as the lady isn’t wearing no ring noranything!”

This was not true. The modern girl does not wear very much, but she does wear something. Laura was wearing several things, each damper than the others.

A hundred despairing schemes flitted through Mr. Priestley’s mind. Now that the handcuffs were off, there was no need for them to pretend they were married. Should he say they were brother and sister? But then that would look suspicious, and real suspicion was the very last thing they wanted to arouse. There would certainly be an account of the crime in the next morning’s papers, and then if their behaviour gave the landlady any inkling that——

Laura’s laugh interrupted his frenzied thoughts. “I see,” said Laura quite naturally, “that we shall have to tell you the truth. No, we’re not——”

What Laura was going to say was never revealed, for with a despairing cry Mr. Priestley flung himself against this piece of suicidal short-sightedness. “No!” said Mr. Priestley loudly. “No, weweren’tmarried—at this time yesterday. Now we are. You’re right, my darling,” he went on rapidly, with the resource of desperation, “we must tell Mrs. Er-er-h’rrm the truth. We’ve eloped! We—er—we were married at a registry office this afternoon, with—with a key, you know. Not even time to buy the ring. Oh, quite on the spur of the moment, it all was. Ha, Ha! Er—ha, ha!” He laughed without mirth, and waited breathlessly.

“Well,therenow!” exclaimed the landlady, her clouds completely dispersed. “Well, isn’t that romantic? With a key, now! I’ve heard tell of that before. Well, well! Eloped, did you say? Now, that is nice. You know, Ithoughtthere was something, I did. Fancy that! I always was a one for romance, meself. Of course you go down to the kitchen then, sir. You’ll find it nice and warm in there and when you come up again in ten minutes I’ll have your lady all tucked up in bed and dry and warm as toast for you.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Priestley wanly, taking some pains to avoid his lady’s eye.

“The poor lamb!” continued the landlady fondly, eyeing that now fuming young woman with delighted fondness. “Catching her death of cold, and all on account of shyness, as you might say. I used to feel like that once with my Will, I remember, but bless you, miss—or—mum, Ishouldsay—you’ll soon grow out of that.”

“Indeed?” said the lamb coldly. It was a very cold lamb.

“I think I’ll be getting downstairs, d-dearest,” mumbled Mr. Priestley, intercepting a most unlamblike glance. “Er—so long.”

“Wait a minute, sir,” put in the landlady. “I know the very thing—you must have a glass of my elderberry wine first. I’ll get some this very minute. That’ll stop you catching cold, both of you. Bless me, why didn’t I think of that before? Never mind, I’ll have it up in a minute.” She whisked out of the room and shut the door behind her.

The lamb turned irately upon its good shepherd. “Why on earth did you butt in with that absurd story? I’d just thought of a splendid way of breaking the news to her that we aren’t married.”

“Yes, and ruining everything!” retorted Mr. Priestley, stung to annoyance once more. In brief, snappy sentences he showed this obtuse young woman exactly why it was necessary for the landlady to continue in her delusion.

His argument was unanswerable. Without giving her whole case away Laura was unable to pursue that particular line. Woman-like, she instantly directed her irritation into a fresh channel.

“Well, now you can hardly sleep in the kitchen,” she snapped. “Wheredoyou imagine you’re going to sleep, I’d like to know?”

“Where I always did,” Mr. Priestley snapped back. “In here.”

Laura looked at him with wide eyes. “Don’t be absurd, please. That’s out of the question.”

“Anything else is out of the question,” Mr. Priestley said angrily. “It’s you who are being absurd. What you don’t seem to understand is that this is a question of life or death.”

Once again Laura was up against a brick wall. “Well, anyhow, you’re not going to sleep in here. Kindly get that out of your head once and for all. As soon as you’ve gone I shall lock the door.”

“In that case,” said Mr. Priestley grimly, “I shall break it in.”

They looked at each other stormily.

Upon this Pleasing domestic scene the landlady returned.

The constraint in the atmosphere was obvious, but the landlady did not mind that. Quite natural, most excitingly natural, in the circumstances. She dispensed elderberry wine with a generous hand. The occasion called for a generous hand, and the landlady did not fail to respond. Her hand was more than generous; it was prodigal.

“My best respex,” said the landlady happily, raising her tumbler, unlike the other tumblers only a quarter full.

“Uh-huh!” replied Mr. Priestley, with a brave attempt at a smile, and raised his tumbler. Mr. Priestley, as we have already seen, had a Palate. Elderberry-wine does not harmonise with a Palate. Life seemed very bleak at that moment to Mr. Priestley.

He swallowed three large gulps like the gentleman he was, then set his half-empty tumbler down. At precisely the same moment, with an astringent face, Laura was setting her tumbler down. Instantly the landlady pounced on them and re-filled them to the brim.

“That’ll put you as right as rain,” she announced.

Mr. Priestley looked at her with deepened gloom. “It was very nice,” he lied manfully. “Very nice indeed. But I think I won’t have any more, really.”

“And catch your deathacold, sir, instead?” retorted the landlady. “No, you drink that up, and you won’t have to worry about colds.”

“I don’t think I will, really,” Mr. Priestley wriggled. “I’ll be getting along now and——”

“If I were you, mum,” the landlady informed Laura, “I shouldmakehim. Mark my words, you’ll have him on your hands with the influenza if you don’t.”

“I think you’re quite right,” Laura agreed, a malicious twinkle in her eye. “Drink it up at once,darling!”

Mr. Priestley gazed at her with mute appeal.

“If I wereyou, mum,” the landlady added, “I wouldn’t let him go down to change ’is clothes till he had drunk it.”

“Darling,” said Laura, “you don’t go down to change your clothes till you have drunk it.”

There was no real reason why Mr. Priestley should not have said loudly: “Bosh!” and walked out of the room. But he didn’t. He drank up his elderberry wine.

Then he walked sadly to the door. Once he had a Palate….

“Half a minute, sir,” remarked the landlady. “Your good lady hasn’t drunk up hers yet.”

Mr. Priestley stopped short in his tracks.

“If I were you, sir,” observed the landlady with much enjoyment, “I should make her drink it. You’ll have her on your hands for a week with the influenza if you don’t, you mark my words.”

“Darling,” said Mr. Priestley in italics, advancing towards his adopted wife, “drink up your wine!”

“I don’t think I will, really,” Laura murmured, backing uneasily, “I—I’ve had enough.”

“I’m not going out of this room till you do,” said Mr. Priestley with triumph.

The battle of wills lasted only two minutes, but two minutes can seem a very long time. At the end of it, with a slightly dazed look in her eyes, Laura drank up her elderberry wine. Laura had not had very much practice in doing what she was told, and it did not come easily to her.

Then Mr. Priestley went downstairs.

The landlady watched him go, carrying as he did with him three-quarters of a pint of her elderberry wine, with a triumphant eye. She felt that she had done her duty, and not only as an anti-influenza specialist; she felt that this couple would be grateful to her the next morning, and not only because their noses would not be streaming. The landlady had brought seven children into the world in her time, and she was an expert in many things beside influenza.

In the traditional way she proceeded to put the bride to bed.

Going downstairs with that uneasy young woman’s wet clothes, she found the groom hovering nervously. With words of homely encouragement she sent him flying upstairs with cheeks as red as his lady’s night-gown.

Mr. Priestley was proving himself to be a man of singular resolution. There were few things in this world that he wanted to do less than turn the key on the inside of that bedroom door; yet he knew the key must be turned. He turned it.

From the centre of the pillow in the large bed a small face, framed in sheet, regarded him with ill-concealed alarm. Even the sight of Mr. Priestley swathed in his pink flannel and lace appeared to bring it no joy. Two round eyes followed his every movement, and as he advanced towards the bed the sheet that framed the face took on a tense appearance beside either cheek, as if two small hands were gripping it convulsively. The face did not speak, for the simple reason that its owner was totally incapable of uttering a word. It is very difficult to inaugurate a chatty conversation when your throat has gone quite dry and your tongue has apparently affixed itself irrevocably to the roof of your mouth.

Carrying his pink flannel with the dignity of a Roman in his toga, Mr. Priestley halted beside the bed and stared down into the silent face with a look that was almost grim. “And now, young woman,” he said, in a voice which matched his look only too well, “I want an explanation, if you please.”

Reader, have you ever drunk home-made elderberry wine? Not a pale imitation, I mean, but the real, genuine, honest article? Have you gone still further and imbibed a full three-quarters of a pint of it? For, if you have, there is no need for me to explain. However, in case your life has been empty and vain, I will point out that home-made elderberry wine (the real, honest stuff) does practically nothing for about a quarter of an hour. During that period it just sits and ruminates. Then it makes up for lost time.

Suddenly the sheet on either side of Laura’s face relaxed. She smiled. “Yes, I expect you do,” she agreed.

Mr. Priestley smiled too. “I certainly do.”

Laura laughed. “I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask for one.”

Mr. Priestley laughed too. In the space of a few seconds the whole thing seemed to have taken on a completely different aspect. It was not a tragedy at all; it was—yes, utterly incredible but perfectly true—really quite funny!

Laura seemed to find it funny too. Her laugh degenerated into a giggle.

Mr. Priestley sat down on the bed. “Of course, you know I’m not that man Mullins,” he stated rather than asked. How very obtuse of him never to have realised that before! Of course she knew it. “When did you begin to find out?”

“I knew all the time,” giggled Laura. “Oh, dear, this is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“Quite absurd,” grinned Mr. Priestley. “I’m afraid, by the way, that I must have been rather a handicap to you this evening.”

“Not at all,” said Laura politely.

“You see, I’ve never associated with professional criminals before. My name is——” A glimmer of sense returned to Mr. Priestley, and he withheld that confidence.

Laura was giggling again. “You know, I’m notreallya professional criminal,” she volunteered. “I’m quite honest. Is that a dreadful disappointment?”

Mr. Priestley beamed. “No, are you really? That is a great relief, a very great relief. That’s really a load off my mind. But in that case—well, would you mind telling me the real truth about this evening?”

But Laura, though disposed to giggle, had not quite lost her head in her newly awakened sense of humour. She hastily searched her mind for a tale that should relieve Mr. Priestley’s mind as much as possible, without betraying her trust.

“Well,” she said slowly, “what I told you first of all was near enough. I knew you weren’t Mullins, of course, but I was desperately anxious for some one to help me, so I just pretended to think you were. Besides,” she added severely, “I thought it would serve you right.”

“I deserved it, I know,” agreed Mr. Priestley, but with no signs of contrition.

“That manhasgot some compromising letters of mine. He may have some miniatures too; I don’t know anything about that. But you needn’t let your conscience worry you about having shot him. He was a thorough blackguard, and you never did a better thing in your life.”

“That’s a relief too,” murmured Mr. Priestley thoughtfully. “So far we seem to have been too busy for my conscience to have recovered from its shock, but doubtless I should have had a very bad time to-night if you hadn’t told me that. You’re—you’re sure he deserved it? Blackmailer, eh? If he was a blackmailer I’m not only not sorry,” said Mr. Priestley defiantly, “I’m glad. I’ve always considered shooting the only cure for blackmailers.”

“He was, yes. Oh, he deserved it all right; please don’t worry about that. By the way,” Laura added curiously, “what were you going to do about it? Had you formed any sort of plan?”

“Well,” Mr. Priestley, replied with diffidence, “I’d rather thought (after you were safe, of course) of going to the police and explaining the whole thing. It wasn’t murder, you see; only manslaughter. As it is, I’m not at all sure that I shall do anything.”

“Don’t!” Laura said earnestly. “You can’t do any good, and you may do a lot of harm. Besides,” she went on, looking down her pretty nose, “I don’t really want to be brought into it, you know, as I certainly should be if you went to the police.”

Mr. Priestley started slightly. “You! By Gad, yes; I was forgetting about that. Of course you mustn’t be brought into it. Your husband would never forgive you. And for that matter——” He coloured modestly.

“Yes?” Laura encouraged.

“Only that the circumstances are a little altered. I was looking on you as a young woman without—well, without a reputation to lose; in which case it wouldn’t matter a rap that you should sleep in this bed and I on the sofa over there in the same room. As it is, of course——!”

Laura raised herself discreetly on an elbow and thumped a hard pillow into a semblance of softness. “Yes?” she said almost nonchalantly.

“Well, I mean,” Mr. Priestley amplified, a little uncomfortably, “we don’t want to add divorce to our other crimes, do we?”

“Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” Laura said brightly. “I’m not really married. I only said that because I thought it would make you readier to help me. Look, there’s no mark even of a wedding-ring.”

She extended her left hand and Mr. Priestley, in order to examine it the better, held its slim fingers in his. When he put it down on the bed again he continued to hold its slim fingers. Mr. Priestley was a very absent-minded man.

But he was not a man of the world. A man of the world would instantly have said all the pretty things which this new piece of information should require. Mr. Priestley only said, rather blankly; “But don’t you see, that’s almost worse. You’d be hopelessly compromised. Of course I shall spend the night in the kitchen.” He looked a little wistfully at the sofa near the fire. It was not the most comfortable sofa ever made, but compared with a Windsor chair in the kitchen it was Heaven.

“On a hard chair, in a draught?” Laura smiled lazily. Her cheeks were a little flushed, for the honest elderberry wine was hard at work now making the place hot for influenza germs, and her whole body was permeated with a pleasant warmth. She tried to put herself in Mr. Priestley’s place and face a hard chair in a draughty kitchen. “It seems to me I’m compromised quite deeply as it is. After all we’re supposed to be married, you know. By the way, is that the door-key?” She disengaged her fingers from Mr. Priestley’s and extended them invitingly.

Mr. Priestley put the key into them.

Laura weighed it pensively in her hand. “You’re very conventional, aren’t you?” she asked.

Mr. Priestley, who was under the impression that he had just killed one of his fellow-men and was not in the least sorry for it, nodded. “In some circumstances,” he said primly, “one has to be.”

“Well,” said Laura, as if arriving at a decision, “I’m not. Never! If the people are all right, the circumstances can take care of themselves; that’s my creed.” With a sudden movement she thrust the key far down inside the bed and showed her empty hand. “Now, go and make yourself as comfy as you can on that sofa with both dressing-gowns and this eiderdown; and if you want to say anything to me, say: ‘It’s your own silly fault, my dear girl!’ Because it is, you know.”

Mr. Priestley jumped to his feet and stood for a moment, looking down at the flushed and ever so faintly mocking face. “No,” he said slowly, “I won’t say that. I’ll say: ‘You’re a very dear, sweet girl. But please give me that key.’”

Laura shook her head violently. “No! I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not going to alter it. Now, please run along to that sofa, because I want to go to sleep.”

Mr. Priestley saw she meant it, and his colour deepened. He turned towards the sofa without a word.

But the elderberry wine, in the intervals of combating influenza germs, had not performed its last miracle yet. With a swift movement Mr. Priestley turned about, darted back to the bed and kissed the astonished maiden in it unskilfully but heartily on her lips. Then he retired to his sofa.

Ten minutes later two rhythmical breathings filled the room, one only just audible, the other distinctly so. The elderberry wine had done its last job.

Back to IndexNext