Madame Eulalie’s Rare Plums
The Story Thus Far:
HAVING just learned that The Dream Come True, a copper mine adjacent to his own Horned Toad mine, is (contrary to the general belief) worth millions, T. Paterson Frisby, American financier residing in London, receives a most agreeable surprise. His secretary, young Berry Conway, informs him that he—Berry Conway—owns the mine, believes it to be worthless, and is anxious to sell it!
Mr. Frisby, much pleased, at once lays his plans for getting the mine dirt cheap. Unfortunately for the gentleman, however, they miscarry—due to the scoundrelly machinations of one J. B. Hoke (his agent), who, having bought the mine—for J. B. Hoke—forces Mr. Frisby to consent to a merger, which will enable both of the philanthropists to make fortunes on the sale of the stock. . . .
Ann Moon, niece of T. Paterson Frisby, arrives in London; likewise, Kitchie Valentine, one of her friends. Ann promptly gets herself engaged to a gentleman of title—the charming but impecunious Godfrey, Lord Biskerton (known to his friends as “the Biscuit”), and stays in London, where she is chaperoned by his lordship’s aunt, the energetic Lady Vera Mace. Kitchie goes to Valley Fields, a suburb, to visit her uncle, Major Flood-Smith. And the excitement begins! . . . To escape his creditors until marriage puts him in funds, the Biscuit lets it be known that he has the mumps; after which he flees to the country, where (as “Mr. Smith”) he takes a house near his dearest friend—Berry Conway. And then—
He meets the lovely Kitchie Valentine, a neighbor. Kitchie is engaged. But what of it? His lordship likes the young lady. And Kitchie likes his lordship. They find the country delightful! . . . Meanwhile, Ann—much puzzled by her beloved’s sudden disappearance—has met a most dashing young man (name unknown), who is (so he says) a member of the romantic secret service. She has, in fact, lost her heart to him; and the young man has reciprocated, most heartily. . . . The young man (who does not know Ann’s name) is none other than Berry Conway!
Ann goes to Valley Fields to call on Kitchie. To her surprise, and delight, she meets her young secret service hero—our Berry. They talk. They confess their love for each other. They tell each other their names. After which they prepare to drive up to London for dinner. But Berry is worried. “Ann Moon!” he thinks. “Somehow that sounds familiar.”
IX
MULBERRY GROVE slept under the night sky. Up and down it, smoking a thoughtful cigarette, paced Godfrey, Lord Biskerton. He appeared to be in sentimental mood. From time to time he gazed up at the stars and seemed to think well of them.
Rapid footsteps turned the corner. He advanced to meet the newcomer.
“Berry?”
“Hullo.”
“Take a turn along the road with me, laddie,” said the Biscuit. “I want a word with you.”
Berry would have preferred to slip past and postpone this interview. He was conscious of an extreme discomfort. Since his departure from Mulberry Grove in Ann’s car, many things had been made clear to him. He knew now why the name Ann Moon had sounded familiar.
Few things in life are more embarrassing than the necessity of having to inform an old friend that you have just got engaged to his fiancée. It is a task that calls for coolness of head and the quiet marshaling of the thoughts, and Berry would have wished to sleep on this thing and go more deeply into it on the morrow. But the Biscuit, apparently mistrustful of his ability to hold his companion purely by the magic of his conversation, had seized his elbow in a firm grip.
“Yes, old boy,” he said, “I want your counsel. Where have you been all night?”
“I went out to dinner. At a place called Mario’s.”
“I know it well,” said the Biscuit. “I’ve taken Ann there.”
It was a cue, and Berry knew that he ought to have accepted it. He did go so far as to open his mouth, but the words refused to come.
“Nobody should go to Mario’s,” said the Biscuit, “without trying the minestrone. Did you have minestrone?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember?”
“We had some sort of soup, I suppose,” said Berry desperately, “but I was so . . .”
“We?” said the Biscuit.
“I was with a girl,” said Berry. It seemed monstrous to refer to Ann in that casual way, but still it was the technical description of her.
“The girl?” asked the Biscuit, with sudden interest.
“Yes.”
“So you’ve met her again?”
“Yes.”
“And how’s everything coming along?”
BERRY plunged. If this thing had to be done, it was best to do it quickly.
“We’re engaged,” he said.
“Fine!” said the Biscuit. “So you’re engaged? Well, well!”
“Yes.”
“Just to this one girl, I suppose?”
“What do you mean?”
“You always were a prudent, level-headed fellow who knew where to stop,” said the Biscuit enviously. “I’m engaged to two girls.”
“What!”
The Biscuit sighed.
“Yes, two. And I’m hoping that you may have a word of advice to offer on the subject. Otherwise, I see a slightly tangled future ahead of me.”
“Two?” said Berry, dazed.
“Two,” said the Biscuit. “I’ve counted them over and over again, but that’s what the sum keeps working out at. I started, if you remember, with one. So far, so good. A steady, conservative policy. But complications have now arisen. You may have heard me speak of one Kitchie Valentine?”
“The kid next door?”
The Biscuit frowned.
“Don’t call her the kid next door. The angel next door, if you like, or the adjoining seraph.”
“Biscuit, let me tell you . . .”
“No,” said Lord Biskerton with gentle firmness. “Let me tell you. I added young Kitchie to the strength tonight. Somewhere near the end of Roxborough Road, under, if I remember rightly, the third lamp-post from Myrtle Avenue. It happened like this.”
“Biscuit, listen . . .”
“It happened like this,” said Lord Biskerton. “Until recently she was engaged to a bounder of the almost incredible name of Merwyn Flock. How she ever came to do such a cloth-headed thing, I cannot say, but such are the facts. He’s an actor, and some day, if all goes well, I hope to pop over to America, where he performs, and fling a hearty egg at him. The low hound! He chucked her, Berry,” said the Biscuit, wrestling with a rising emotion. “He took that loving heart in his greasy hands and squeezed it dry and threw it away like an old tube of tooth paste. She got a letter from him tonight, saying that he had just married some actress or other but hoped they would always be friends. ‘Can’t we be friends?’ he said. There’s a song with that title. I’ve sung it in my bath.”
“Biscuit . . .”
“I thought she seemed a bit under the weather when we were starting off for the pictures. Not at all her old bright self, she wasn’t. She was depressed during the six-reel feature film, and the two-reel Mickey Mouse didn’t get a smile out of her. On our way home she told me all. And, believe me or believe me not, old boy, I hadn’t got more than about halfway through the cheering-up process when I suddenly found that we were linked in a close embrace, murmuring soft words of endearment, and two minutes later I discovered with some surprise that we were engaged. That’s life.”
“Are you fond of her?” asked Berry. It was, at the moment, all he could say.
“Of course I’m fond of her,” said the Biscuit with asperity. “I love her with a passion that threatens to unseat my very reason. I can see now that it was a case of love at first sight. The moment I set eyes on her, I remember, something seemed to tell me that I had found my mate. Oh, don’t make any mistake about it, my lad, we are twin souls. On the other hand, that doesn’t alter the fact that I’m engaged to two girls.”
“But you aren’t.”
“TUT, tut!” said the Biscuit, annoyed at his friend’s denseness. “Count them for yourself. Kitchie, one. Ann . . .”
“I’m engaged to Ann.”
The Biscuit clicked his tongue.
“No, you’re not, old boy,” he said patiently. “Don’t try to cloud the issue by being funny. You’re engaged to this girl of yours, whatever her name is.”
“Her name is Ann Moon.”
“What!” cried the Biscuit.
“You heard.”
“I did hear,” said the Biscuit. “But I was wondering if I could believe my ears, if I could credit my senses. You mean to tell me that Ann, while engaged to me, heartlessly and callously went off and got engaged to somebody else? My gosh! Doesn’t this throw a blinding light on the fickleness of woman! That sex ought to be suppressed. I’ve often said so. You mean—literally—that you and Ann . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“Was she the girl whose car you jumped into and said you were a secret service man?”
“Yes.”
“Medium-sized girl with gray eyes and a beautiful figure and a way of wrinkling up her nose when she . . . ?”
“I know her by sight, thanks,” said Berry. “You needn’t describe her.”
“Well, this is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard in my life,” said the Biscuit.
He brooded for a while in stunned silence.
“Perhaps it’s all for the best,” he said at length.
“I think so,” said Berry.
“In fact,” said the Biscuit, now definitely perking up, “you might describe it as a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
“That’s just how I was going to describe it.”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” said the Biscuit, with growing satisfaction. “I see now that it is the best thing that could possibly have happened. The momentary spasm of pique and chagrin is over, and I can face facts. I realize now that Ann never did care a damn for me.”
“She likes you. She said so.”
The Biscuit smiled sadly, and emitted five more yeses.
“But we were not affinities. I saw that from the start. She had a way of looking sideways at me suddenly and looking quickly away again as if she had hoped I wasn’t true but was reluctantly compelled to believe that I was. She would never have been happy with me. It was only the fact that I proposed to her at Edgeling at the exact moment when the sunset and the ivied walls had made her feel all emotional, that ever caused her to accept me. Take her, old friend, and my blessing with her. Take her, I say. Take her.”
“All right,” said Berry. “All right—I’m going to.”
The Biscuit uttered a sharp exclamation.
“But are you?” he said significantly.
“I am.”
“You think you are, which is a very different thing, old boy. Have you considered? Have you reflected? Have you tried to realize your very equivocal position?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Why, you’ve ensnared her heart under false pretenses. You must see that for yourself. Dash it, you offer this bird . . .”
“Don’t call her a bird.”
“YOU offer this charming and idealistic girl a secret service man, complete with mask and gun and dripping with romance, and she books you on those terms. What’s she going to say when she finds that you are in reality an inky devil with paper cuff-protectors who works in a city office?”
“Yes,” said Berry dismally.
“What do you mean, yes?”
“I mean I had thought of that.”
He stared unhappily through the railings at the ornamental water. It looked cold and depressing. A breeze had sprung up, and was sighing through the trees with what an hour ago he would have considered a lovely whispering, but which now seemed to bring with it the suggestion of a sneer. Forlornness had suddenly come into the night.
“You think she will be annoyed when she finds out?”
“Annoyed?” said the Biscuit. “I should think she would chew your head off.”
“I shouldn’t mind that,” said Berry, “if she didn’t refuse to have anything more to do with me.”
There was a silence.
“I am going to chuck my job with old Frisby tomorrow,” said Berry. “Then I shall go off somewhere—to America or somewhere—and try to do something worth while.”
THE Biscuit, a sympathetic soul, became encouraging:
“An excellent idea. Go West, young man, shoot a couple of Mexicans and send her the skins, and, who knows, all may yet be well. The main thing is that on no account must she ever know that you were her uncle’s office boy.”
“You wouldn’t tell her?”
“Tell her!”
“I hate the feeling that I’m lying to her.”
“It would be fatal, fatal, absolutely fatal, old boy,” said the Biscuit vehemently. “At the present stage of affairs, utterly fatal.”
“But she’s got to find out sometime.”
“Sometime, yes. But let it be later, when the links forged by the laughing love god have grown stronger. You haven’t studied the sex as I have, laddie. I know women from beads to shoe-sole. Never confess anything to a girl till you have consolidated your position with her. A girl learns that a comparative stranger has been fooling her, and she hits the ceiling. But later on it is different. Later on, she simply says to herself, ‘Oh, well, hell! It’s only old George,’ or whatever the name may be. ‘I always did think him a bit of a loony, and now I know.’ And she curses him for about twenty minutes, just for the good of his soul and to show him who’s boss, and then the forgiveness, the reconciliation, and the slow fade-out on the embrace.”
“There’s something in that,” said Berry, brightening.
“There’s everything in that. Once a man has made himself solid with a girl, he has nothing to fear. She may appear to the casual eye to be madder than a wet hen, but, if he’s made himself solid, he can always bring her round. He can plead. He can grovel on the floor and tear his hair. He can apply the salve and give her the old oil. And, provided she has got used to seeing him around and has allowed him to dig himself well into the woodwork, he can always talk her over. But for the time being not a word. Secrecy and silence. Don’t dream of confessing anything till the moment is ripe.”
“I won’t!” Berry drew a deep breath. “Thanks, Biscuit,” he said with fervor. “I’m glad I asked your advice.”
“Always ask my advice,” said the Biscuit handsomely. “Always come to me with your little troubles and perplexities. I like all my young friends to feel that they have someone they can lean on in Uncle Godfrey.”
“I feel a lot better now.”
“I’m not feeling so bad myself,” said the Biscuit. “I think we must celebrate this, old boy. How about lunch tomorrow in the city somewhere? I could go to the city without having Dykes, Dykes and Pinweed jumping on my neck. I’ll call for you at the office at about one-thirty.”
LORD HODDESDON had spent this momentous evening dining luxuriously at his club. He had eaten all the things his doctor had told him to avoid, and had drunk a bottle of a wine which his doctor insisted was poison to him. There are occasions which have to be observed with fitting solemnities, in the teeth of the whole medical profession, and one of these had come to brighten Lord Hoddesdon’s life. He had just let Edgeling Court to Mr. Frisby for Goodwood Week and for another month after that, and a check for six hundred pounds was even now on its way to exhilarate a banker who had almost given up hope.
AT THE inception of the campaign Lord Hoddesdon had feared that he would never be able to bring the thing off. Shown photographs of Edgeling, T. Paterson Frisby had at first merely grunted. Becoming more vocal, he had wished to be informed what the heck his companion supposed he could possibly want with a house in the country the size of the Carlton Hotel.
Later, however, he had wobbled from this firm standpoint. He had asked to see the photographs again. He had requested time to consider. And today he had fallen completely, justifying the capitulation by saying that he wasn’t sure, after all, that a house party for Goodwood might not be a nice sort of thing for his niece, Ann. Be able to entertain all her friends and repay hospitality and all that, said Mr. Frisby.
Lord Hoddesdon did not believe that this was his true motive. An observant man, he had witnessed the growing alliance between Mr. Frisby and Lady Vera Mace, and he fancied that Vera must have used her influence with the financier. If so, reflected Lord Hoddesdon, it was dashed sporting of her. Yes, dashed sporting.
He decided to toddle round to Davies Street and give her a head of the family’s blessing. A just man, he believed in encouraging sisters, when deserving. He finished his cigar, donned hat and coat, and set out.
There was nobody in the flat but the maid when he arrived. He seated himself comfortably and gave himself up to opalescent meditations on the subject of the six hundred pounds. Presently a latchkey clicked in the door, and the next instant Lady Vera had hurried into the room.
“George!” she cried, and there was relief in her voice. “Thank goodness you are here. I was just going to telephone to your club to ask you to come round at once.”
“Were you, old girl?” he said jovially. “Well, here I am. And I’ve got news.”
“I’ve got news,” said Lady Vera, sinking into a chair like a tragedy queen. “The worst possible news.”
“Oh, my Lord!” said Lord Hoddesdon, deflated.
LADY VERA had sprung from her chair and was now standing on the rug, panting at him. Lord Hoddesdon ground a heel into the carpet. There were moments when his sister reminded him of a rocketing pheasant; and, while he liked rocketing pheasants at the proper time and in their proper place, he strongly objected to amateur imitations of them in a small drawing-room.
“What is it?” he demanded irritably.
Lady Vera found speech:
“George, I’ve just come from dining with Lady Corstorphine.”
“Well?”
“At Mario’s.”
“Well?”
“And what do you think?”
“What on earth do you mean, what do I think?”
“Ann was there.”
“Why shouldn’t she be?”
“Not with us. She was up in the balcony.”
“Well?”
Lady Vera held her brother with a glittering eye and delivered her thunderbolt:
“She was with a man, George!”
Lord Hoddesdon made one last feeble attempt to clutch at the vanishing skirts of Happiness. But he knew, even as he spoke, that the effort was futile.
“No harm in that,” he said, though quaveringly. “Can’t see any harm in that. Girls nowadays . . .”
“Don’t be a fool, George,” said Lady Vera curtly, shattering his last hope. “If it had been Toddy Malling or Bertie Winch or any of the men she goes dancing with, do you suppose I should be upset? This was a man I had never seen before. It was obviously the man!”
“Not the one Jane Venables said she saw with her in her car that day!”
“It must have been.”
“You can’t be certain,” pleaded Lord Hoddesdon faintly.
“I can make certain,” said Lady Vera. “Here is Ann. I will ask her.”
A latchkey had turned in the front door, and from the hall there came the voice of a girl. She was singing softly to herself.
“She sounds happy!” said Lord Hoddesdon apprehensively.
“And she looked happy in the restaurant,” said Lady Vera. Her voice was grim. “They were staring into each other’s eyes.”
“No!”
“And holding hands.”
“No, dash it!”
“I saw them, I tell you.”
The door opened.
“Ah, Ann, my dear,” said Lady Vera. “So you’ve got back.”
Ann’s gayety had waned. No girl enjoys a disagreeable scene, and she knew that there was one before her. Anything like subterfuge was foreign to Ann Moon’s nature. She had no intention of concealing what had happened. The only thing that was perplexing her was the problem of how best to reveal it. Some people, she knew, preferred their bad news broken to them gently. Others would rather that you poured it over them like a pail of water and got it done with.
She was still debating within herself the comparative merits of the two methods, when Lady Vera went on speaking and she saw that neither would be needed.
“Who was your friend?” asked Lady Vera.
“Fellow you were dining with,” added Lord Hoddesdon, underlining the point. “Fellow,” he went on, removing the last trace of ambiguity, “who was up in the balcony with you at Mario’s.”
“Yes,” said Lady Vera, in a voice of the purest steel. “You were holding his hand, if you remember, and gazing into his eyes.”
It was a situation in which a nice girl should have quailed. An exceptionally nice girl might even have burst into tears and covered her face with her hands. Ann, after an uncontrollable start, was unfortunate enough to see the ludicrous side of the affair. Before she could check it a happy laugh was echoing through the room.
Lord Hoddesdon’s views on happy laughs were identical with his views on rocketing pheasants.
“Don’t giggle!” he cried.
Ann became grave.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Only it seemed funny that you should have been looking on all the time.”
“The humorous aspect of the matter,” said Lady Vera heavily, “is not the one that appeals to me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ann. “I shouldn’t have . . . It was too bad of me. . . . But you know how it is when you’re nervous.”
“Nervous!” Lord Hoddesdon snorted. “You nervous? If ever I’ve seen a girl calmer and more—er—what’s the word? . . . more—ah—begins with a b . . .”
“George,” said Lady Vera, “be quiet.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ann for the third time, “and if I had known about it sooner I would have told you sooner, but I’m afraid I am not going to marry Godfrey.”
LORD HODDESDON heaved slightly, like a volcano erroneously supposed to be extinct. His sister, noting the symptoms, raised a compelling hand.
“Aren’t I to say a word?” demanded Lord Hoddesdon with pathos.
“No.”
“Oh, very well. I’m the head of the family. Biskerton is my only son. This girl comes calmly in and tells us that she proposes to throw him over like a . . . like a . . . well, to throw him over. And I am not to say a word. I see. Precisely. Quite. I suppose,” said Lord Hoddesdon witheringly, “that you would have no objection to my amusing myself with a game of solitaire while you two discuss this affair—this affair in which I, of course, have no interest whatever. Ha!” said his lordship, feeling, in spite of himself, a good deal better.
Lady Vera turned to Ann.
“Perhaps you will explain?”
“I don’t think there is anything to explain.”
“Of course not,” said Lord Hoddesdon heartily, addressing a china cat which stood on a small table at his elbow. “Certainly not. Nothing to explain. Quite so. Very bad form of us to be inquisitive. But let me tell you . . .”
“George!”
“Oh, all right,” said Lord Hoddesdon.
“I mean,” said Ann, “if you saw me at Mario’s, you must know that . . .”
“I know, what apparently seems to you the only point worthy of discussion, that you propose to jilt my nephew in favor of this man you were dining with tonight. But I think that, as you have been put in my charge by your parents and that I am, therefore, in a position of trust and responsibility, I am entitled to ask . . .”
“Who the devil is the moldy feller?” said Lord Hoddesdon, rising suddenly to the surface.
Lady Vera tightened her lips. The question was, in essence, the high spot to which her speech was tending, though she would have phrased it differently. But she liked to ask her own questions for herself. She directed at her brother a glance which sent him back into the recesses of his chair, and turned to Ann expectantly.
“Yes,” she said. “Who is he?”
“His name is Conway.”
“And what is he?”
“He is in the secret service.”
Lord Hoddesdon, though crushed, could not let this pass.
“Secret service?” he said. “Secret service? Secret service? Never heard such nonsense in my life.”
“George!”
“Yes, but dash it . . .”
“George!”
“Oh, all right!”
“He is in the secret service, is he?” said Lady Vera, ignoring a low rumbling from the volcano. “He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“No. When we first met.”
“When was that?”
“About a week ago.”
“A week! A week! A week! . . .”
“George!”
“Oh, all right.”
“So you have known this man you intend to marry as long as a week?” said Lady Vera. “Fancy! Might I ask how you made his acquaintance?”
“He jumped into my car.”
“He—what? Why did he do that?”
“He was chasing The Sniffer . . .”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand this modern slang. What do you mean by chasing the sniffer?”
“He was trying to catch a criminal called The Sniffer. Only he wasn’t. I mean, it wasn’t The Sniffer, after all. But he thought it was, and he jumped into my car and I drove him down to Esher. And then I met him again.”
“Where?”
“At the Bassingers’ dance.”
“Oh?” Lady Vera was a little shaken. “He knows the Bassingers, does he?”
Ann was her honest self.
“No,” she said.
“But you say he was at their dance?”
“He came there because he saw me going up in the elevator. He wasn’t invited.”
THE volcano erupted:
“Wasn’t invited? Wasn’t invited? A gate-crasher! You hear that? My only son isn’t good enough for the girl, so she goes out and picks up a blasted gate-crasher!”
“I thought it was very sporting of him,” said Ann defiantly.
“Sporting!”
“Well, it was. To do a thing like that just because he wanted to see me so much. It isn’t very pleasant for a man to be turned out of a dance.”
“So he was turned out? I see. Charming! And when did you meet him again?”
“Tonight.”
“And—?”
“He kissed me,” said Ann stoutly, wishing, for she was a self-respecting modern girl, that she had been able to refrain from blushing. “And I kissed him. And he told me he loved me. And I told him I loved him. And then we went off to dinner.”
There was a silence, broken only by a noise from Lord Hoddesdon like the bubbling of molten lava.
“And you know nothing about him,” said Lady Vera, “except that he says he is in the secret service and is not persona grata at the Bassingers’ dances? Has this remarkable person any fixed abode? Or does he just wander about the streets jumping into girls’ cars?”
“He lives,” said Ann softly, breathing the address in a devout voice, for it was sacred to her, “at The Nook, Mulberry Grove, Valley Fields.”
“What!” cried Lady Vera.
“If you’re thinking that people have no right to live in the suburbs,” said Ann, once more with defiance in her voice, “he has to, because they don’t pay you much in the secret service.”
“I see,” said Lady Vera silkily. “This young man is not well off. How lucky he has decided to marry money.”
“What do you mean?” cried Ann. “Are you suggesting—?”
LADY VERA’S manner changed. She became so intensely motherly that her brother stared at her, awed.
“My dear child,” she said, and her smile was a composite of all of the smiles of all the mothers in filmdom, “of course I know just how you are feeling about this man, but you really must use your intelligence. It is not as if you were a stupid, unsophisticated girl. You have seen quite enough of the world to know that life is not a fairy story.”
“Or a twopenny novelette,” said Lord Hoddesdon.
“Or a twopenny novelette,” said Lady Vera. “You know what big cities are like. London is full of adventurers, as I suppose New York is. This man is one of them.”
“He isn’t!”
“My dear child, of course he is. And you could see it for yourself if you were not blinded by infatuation. Jumping into girls’ cars! Honest men don’t jump into girls’ cars.”
“I don’t,” said Lord Hoddesdon, mentioning a case in point. “Never jumped into a girl’s car in my life.”
“I am talking to Ann, George,” said Lady Vera gently. “We are not interested in your autobiography. What you don’t realize, dear,” she proceeded, “is that you are a very well-known girl. Your photograph has been in all the weekly papers. You have been seen about everywhere. There are a dozen ways in which this man could have got to know you by sight. Obviously, he must have marked you down; and when he saw you in your car that day he seized his opportunity. He knew how it would appeal to an imaginative girl, a man jumping in beside her and asking her to help him pursue a criminal. He knew that you are the daughter of a very rich man. . . .”
Ann had had sufficient.
“I’m not going to listen to any more.”
“There isn’t any more to listen to,” said Lady Vera. “I have told you the whole story. And, if you have any sense at all, you will realize for yourself . . .”
“Good night,” said Ann, and went out with her chin up.
She left behind her an electric silence. Lord Hoddesdon was the first to break it.
“Well?” he said.
“What on earth do you mean by ‘Well?’ ” retorted Lady Vera. She was still tingling with the battle spirit, and it rendered her irritable.
“What do you make of it?”
“What do I make of what?”
“I mean, do you suppose you have convinced her about this fellow? Being an adventurer, and all that?”
“At least I have given her something to think about.”
LORD HODDESDON pulled at his mustache.
“Odd about that address.”
“My dear George,” said Lady Vera, with the same patient contempt with which another great mind was wont to say “My dear Watson,” “I really cannot see why you should consider it odd.”
“Why, dash it,” protested his lordship. “The coincidence. You can’t say it’s not a coincidence. Mulberry Grove, Valley Fields, is where Godfrey is living.”
“Exactly. And I have no doubt that this man has somehow managed to scrape acquaintance with Godfrey. Godfrey, who has no idea of reticence but babbles all his most private affairs into the ear of the first person who comes along, must undoubtedly have told him who he was and, I suppose, showed him Ann’s photograph and mentioned that she was a very romantic girl. And when the man found her sitting alone in her car, he saw his chance.”
“I see. I’ve often thought,” said Lord Hoddesdon, with a father’s sad earnestness, “that Godfrey ought to be in some sort of mental institution. He has gone and messed things up thoroughly now. Is there anything we can do, do you think?”
“OF COURSE there is something we can do. You don’t imagine that I am going to sit quietly and see this man ruin Ann’s life? I should imagine that the thing will resolve itself into a question of money. Mr. Frisby must buy him off.”
“You think he would?”
“Of course he would. He will be just as anxious as we are to free Ann from this entanglement.”
“Why?”
“His sister, Ann’s mother, is, I understand, the sort of woman who would make herself exceedingly unpleasant if Ann were to marry the wrong man.”
“Ah!” said Lord Hoddesdon, enlightened. He knew all about unpleasant sisters.
“So,” said Lady Vera, “you had better go down to Valley Fields tomorrow morning and see this man. I’ll get Mr. Frisby to give you a check.”
Lord Hoddesdon started violently. Until this moment he had been looking on the affair in a spirit of easy detachment. He had never dreamed that there would be any suggestion of his undertaking the negotiations. The mere idea of paying a return visit to the stamping-ground of the disciple of Stayling and running the risk of renewing his acquaintance with that extraordinarily belligerent little person with the eyeglass and the vocabulary appalled him.
“Go to Valley Fields!” he cried. “I’m dashed if I do!”
“George!”
“No,” returned Lord Hoddesdon, reckless of the lion-tamer’s gleam in his sister’s eye, “I will not. You aren’t going to get me down to that hell on earth, not if you argue all night.”
[“Don’t be absurd.”]
“Absurd, eh? Well, look what happened last time. I went down there in a gray top hat that I had meant to see me through another half dozen Ascots, and I only just managed to escape with my life in a cloth cap with purple checks. And that wasn’t all. That wasn’t half of it. I had to run—run like a hare, dash it!—to escape being murdered by a beer-swilling native. I had to dive into back gardens and leap through windows. And you calmly ask me to face all that over again! I can see myself! No,” said Lord Hoddesdon, firmly, “I approve of the idea of offering this bounder money to release Ann, but I decline to be appointed paymaster. Do the thing in a regular and an orderly manner, I say. Go to your friend Frisby and tell him to send his lawyer to interview this fellow. It’s a lawyer’s job. Good night, Vera!”
And, seizing his hat, Lord Hoddesdon sprang for the door.
Printer’s error corrected above:
Magazine, p. 73b, ran two speeches of Lord H. together, omitting three lines of book version; as a minimal correction, the last line [“Don’t be absurd.”] has been inserted for the sake of continuity.