“If you ask me, I should say that the little devil wants breaking in!” Peter Wolversley hunched his broad shoulders a little higher on the wall against which he was leaning, and spoke without turning to look at his friend.
“Breaking in!” The thin, sensitive fingers close to his suddenly went up to and fumbled with the immaculately tied white tie. “Breaking in, my dear Peter—it’s easy to see that you’ve been out of the world for some time! We don’t break women in nowadays—they break us in”; and Ralph Fraser laughed—a dreadful, bitter laugh that caused the man at his side to stiffen himself a little, unconsciously, and then to send a narrowing glance down the room. So that was the girl, was it? He had heard, even in the middle of the jungles of Central India, that his best friend had gone a mucker over some girl or other. But fancy choosing a girl like that! Peter suddenly felt a surge of the old protective pity flood over him for the man at his side. Ralph Fraser had been his fag at school—a miserable, sensitive little creature, jeered at by the other bovine and less imaginative boys in his form. And one day Peter had come across him in the quadrangle—Peter, a thing of glory in his First Eleven blazer, collar turned up, and hands in pockets; and Ralph, a quivering thing in the middle of a scoffing circle. Someone had found out that his mother called him precious names in her weekly letter, and one of the boys, more brutal than the rest, was reading it out aloud. “Mother’s own little man . . .” the callous young voice went monotonously on. And there had been something in the widely distended grey eyes that had arrested Peter and had struck down to his very vitals, and Jones Minor had gone stumbling stupidly headlong into a rapidly dispersing circle of boys, while Ralph Fraser had been hauled away by a kind though patronizing hand. But that had been many years ago, although the friendship still lasted. And here was Ralph taking it hard again . . . and for a yellow-haired jade like that!
“Come on, let’s go and have a drink.” Peter Wolversley spoke almost with irritation this time, and as he spoke he hunched himself very definitely and finally away from the gaily decorated wall against which he was leaning.
“All right . . . but we can’t just this minute. Look here, here’s Lady Maurice coming. Jove, she’s going to rope you in, Peter. What a rag!” Ralph Fraser spoke with amusement, although the sensitive fingers still trembled over the tie.
And Peter Wolversley saw them, tremulous with a renewed surge of angry protectiveness. What had possessed the man to come to a dance where he knew he would meet the girl who had played fast and loose with him? “Come on,” he spoke again, and impatiently this time. But Ralph Fraser had gone, steering himself eagerly in between the couples who were coming sauntering in from conservatories and gardens. Lady Maurice always did things well, and the whole of the county always turned out for her dances. But Peter was not going to be roped in again until he had had a cigarette and a whisky-and-soda, and, quite determined on this point, he turned to slip out at an adjacent door.
But Lady Maurice was too quick for him. “The very person I wanted!” She was on his heels in a moment. “My dear Sir Peter, you don’t mean to say that you are not dancing! Why the whole of this side of England is aching to have a look at you: you’re the very ‘It’ in this part of the world, and in many other parts of the world too, judging by the illustrated papers! Come along . . . the prettiest girl in London wants to dance with you, and I can tell you that you may consider yourself a very lucky man. Peggy Fielding can fill her programme three times over if she likes, but for some reason or other she has chosen to wedge herself in a corner to-night and won’t dance with anyone. I hear that her dancing partner has threatened to cut his throat! Come along, you bad man! What?” Lady Maurice, a little dismayed, suddenly stopped speaking.
“Sorry, Lady Maurice, but I’m not at all keen to meet the young lady in question.” Peter stood with his feet a little apart, and he spoke frankly, although still with the same little frown between his brows. “As you probably know, she turned down a very good pal of mine, and not so very long ago either, and for that reason alone I prefer to keep out of her way. Also . . . I don’t admire the type.” Peter suddenly levelled a keen glance over his hostess’s head. Yes, there was poor old Ralph—pathetic to see—a man wearing his heart out like that. And there, damn it! was the girl—making straight for them, too; steering her way through the dancing couples with the audacity of a boy; keeping time to the jazz music with her small, impertinent feet and head. A detestable type! Peter Wolversley watched her coming with his jaw suddenly set very hard. How he would like to smash that calm self-possession . . . reduce that sexless mockery of womanhood to a throbbing, trembling mass of submission. Peter eyed her viciously, waiting meanwhile for his hostess to speak.
But Lady Maurice suddenly forgot all that she had been going to say. For, for the first time in her exceedingly successful social career, she was at a loss. There was electricity in the air; she could feel it emanating from the tall, powerful man in evening clothes who stood so quietly at her elbow. And as she stood, still mentally gasping, she suddenly caught a quick breath of relief. “Ah . . . here was the girl herself . . . let her manage it off her own bat, so to speak . . . she would no longer . . .” And Lady Maurice suddenly melted away. How she did it afterwards she often wondered, but the fact remained that she melted. And the two people left standing there just stood and stared at one another, and then, with a little, imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, Peter Wolversley turned and walked out of the room.
High Plashings was one of those heavenly old houses that one always feels must have been planned by somebody who saw farther than the ordinary domestic needs. After all, you can eat and sleep, and really spend your life in any sort of a house, provided that it does not leak, and that the drains are properly in order. But then that is only one part of your life. There is another much more important part; the part that is really only a beginning of a huge, vast future; a future in which beauty and kindness and a longing to help other people are paramount, and where stupid things like meals and tradesmen’s books do not exist. We only touch that future easily when we live in beautiful surroundings. Ugly little houses, stuck in drab rows, dull our perception, and cross relations make it difficult to see beyond. Sometimes people living in these circumstances do see beyond, and then they carry that knowledge and sight on their faces, and we pause when we pass them in the street and say to ourselves, “What a heavenly expression!” But the average person is very much affected by his immediate surroundings, and that is why the Stallards always looked placid and happy. High Flashings was in their bones. When Canon Stallard, in his old gardening shoes and his trug with the bass tied on to the handle of it, went trotting down the crazy paving paths for a long morning in the herbaceous border, he felt exactly as if he was already in one of the heavenly courts prepared for him by an understanding Creator; and he knew quite well, although he did not say so to his farming congregation, that he was going to spend most of the time in the next world, gardening. “I shall not!” Mrs. Stallard, who was brisk and business-like, had once remarked; for, although she adored High Flashings, she did not adore it in quite the same way. She loved the grey maturity of it and the heavenly garden, but she also loved it because the grates were excellent and modern, and there were heaps of built-in cupboards wide enough to hang your clothes sideways in on hangers. “If you are keen on gardening, you never want the flowers picked. I do. You shall have the garden in Heaven, and I shall pick all the flowers in it; all the sweet-peas with trailing ends—you know, like you can’t bear!” And Mrs. Stallard’s lined, rather weather-beaten, face crinkled up in sudden smiles. Her husband! What a dear figure he was! Covered in mud . . . and that shameful old hat! But good! Mrs. Stallard caught a sudden breath as a waft of that chill prescience that strikes at everyone who really loves, caught at her throat.
When he wasn’t there . . . when that darling muddy figure couldn’t be seen stooping over the recently planted cuttings, the black cocker spaniel at his heels. But he was there now . . . why anticipate? And Mrs. Stallard, always sensible, and conscious of a feeling of contempt at her sudden recoil from the jolly, matter-of-fact solidity of the things around her, smiled again and took the gardening basket from the muddy, leather hand.
“The Grangers are coming to lunch; you know they are. Don’t say you have forgotten, darling, because you know you haven’t. And Mr. Mason, I asked him because then you need not talk so much to Mrs. Granger. She adores curates, and I have told Mr. Mason so, and now he is sitting in your study sick with fright. I never knew a young man before who was so afraid of being caught. But, as I have explained to him, he can’t be caught because she is married. There isn’t a Miss Granger; if there were she would catch him like a shot. Henry, what an extremely feeble young man Mr. Mason is? Must we keep him?” Mrs. Stallard was endeavouring to tidy her husband with small, impatient pats.
“My darling child, do be quiet!” The Canon’s benign smile was tinged with a certain amount of concern. His wife, dear as she was, was apt to let her tongue run away with her. Mr. Mason had probably heard everything that she had just said, and was even now meditating sending in his resignation. It is not easy, as the Canon knew to his cost, to get a young man of University education to resign all hopes of ever being anything but dreadfully poor, especially when the young man in question has, in the midst of a Church at variance, moderate views, and Mr. Mason was a priceless possession; because of that, “Let me get tidy, dear, and then I will have a word or two with Mr. Mason in the study. There are one or two things . . .” And the Canon was gone, scuttling like a rabbit down the moss-grown paths.
Mrs. Granger was large and ample and ate vociferously, punctuating her mouthfuls with wavings of her fork. “Your flowers! . . . just look at the flowers, Basil; we have nothing to approach them! I am sure the Canon spends all his time in the garden, doesn’t he, dear Mrs. Stallard? Mothers’ Unions and Women’s Institutes must be a thorn in the flesh to him. But then he has our dear Mr. Mason to take the drudgery off his shoulders, hasn’t he? Well, Mr. Mason, how do you like the quiet little parish in which you have come to settle down? Feeling quite at home? Feeling quite one of us? Good!” Mrs. Granger did not wait for any answer, but devoted herself to her food again.
“I shouldn’t like to say that Henry spends quite all his time in the garden.” Mrs. Stallard spoke with a little quiet smile that she forced to be pleasant. “You see, that really was the idea in his taking this living, Mrs. Granger. The Bishop knew that he was rather past any very arduous work. And as the living would otherwise have lapsed, or rather have had to be merged into a neighbouring one, the stipend here being totally inadequate even to support a single man, the Bishop was glad that Henry should accept it, and also that he should not want to occupy the old Rectory, which has practically been condemned as unfit for habitation, by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Let me give you another cutlet, Mrs. Granger?” Mrs. Stallard was holding the old silver spoon and fork hospitably over the Sheffield plate entrée dish; but inwardly she was boiling. “Spiteful woman!” The whole of her unfulfilled maternity was flooding out and enveloping her unconscious and gentle husband. He should live in the garden if he wanted to. She would gladly have thrown the entrée dish and all the cutlets in it at her guest. “We are glad to do all that we can for the parish,” she concluded, “and if we have been able to include Mr. Mason in that very humble contribution, we are very glad of that too.” And Mrs. Stallard smiled all round the table, restored to equilibrium by the consciousness that she had been able to rout Mrs. Granger without being rude. For the Canon had told her that she was not to be rude. “Let people say what they wish to about me, my dear; it does not affect me. But nothing excuses discourtesy to others.” And he had smiled at her with that gentle smile of his, and, reduced to silence, she had only been able to kiss him with tears in her eyes. But here they were at a meal, and a meal in their own house, and it was up to her to make it go off well.
“Tell us some of the local news, Mrs. Granger; you are more of the world than we are.” Mrs. Stallard was now beaming over a cranberry-and-apple tart, a neat little maid in brown alpaca and mob-cap at her elbow with cream and sugar on a beautifully polished silver salver. “Our next-door neighbours . . . at least, not really our next-door neighbours because they have never been there, but our about-to-be next-door neighbours? The Fieldings, when do they arrive home? We are looking forward to having them there, and I see that the workmen are out of the house already.” Mrs. Stallard had now helped everybody to cranberry tart, including herself, and was taking only a very little cream so that there should be enough if anyone wanted any more.
“Oh, my dear Mrs. Stallard!” Mrs. Granger had pushed back her chair and was startling everybody by her sudden movement, except her husband, who had been expecting it, and who went on solidly eating. “You don’t mean to say that you haven’t heard? Those poor creatures! The most awful thing! Flying from Karachi to Port Said . . . how they could do it, I can’t think. And crashed . . . of course they did, and both of them killed. And he, on his way home—retiring after twenty-five years’ service in India. It really is too awful.” And Mrs. Granger, really concerned this time, looked almost kind as she stared at her hostess.
“Oh, but how perfectly dreadful!” Mrs. Stallard laid down her spoon and fork and stared across the table at her husband. “Henry, that poor child of theirs! Don’t you remember her at Alice’s. She used to go there for part of her holidays. A little yellow-haired thing with blue eyes. What on earth will become of her? Why, even then she told me in her little, funny, baby way of how one day Mummy and Daddy were coming back from India for always. Oh, what an awful thing to have happened!” There were sudden tears in Mrs. Stallard’s bright eyes.
“Indeed, a terrible thing!” The Canon was turning to Mrs. Granger. “And as my wife says, the poor child! what will become of her? Where is she at the moment; do you know?” He bent his gentle, searching gaze on the hard face close to his.
“In London, leading the most disreputable life. Yes, Basil, I call it disreputable,” as the insignificant figure on Mrs. Stallard’s right made some almost inaudible sound of protest. “This modern fashion of turning night into day is no more or less than vice. Dancing until no one knows what hour of the morning; stiffening oneself up with cocktails at eleven o’clock in the morning. Horrible, I call it!” And Mrs. Granger glared round the table.
“How do you know that she does?” If the decanter on the sideboard had suddenly given out the number of a hymn, the little company in the sun-flooded dining-room could not have been more surprised. Mr. Granger was speaking, his usually pale face flushing and paling as he stared at his wife across the table. “You have no business to condemn a young girl like that. You don’t know her: you don’t personally know anything about her. You only listen to what every old cat in the place says about her. Why can’t you be quiet and devote yourself to your Mothers’ Unions!” And Mr. Granger’s face, drooped again to his plate, and he did vague, trembling things to his dinner-napkin.
“Henry!” It was an appeal that flashed down the table from Mrs. Stallard’s appalled eyes, and the Canon, a real man of the world under his gentle exterior, rose to the occasion nobly. “Aha!” He was leaning back in his chair, shaking a slender, jocular finger into Mrs. Granger’s white face. “We men, you know, when it comes to a golden head and a pair of slim ankles, we are very funny creatures, Mrs. Granger. Take our guest into the sitting-room, my dear”—he flashed a quick glance up the table—“she would rather that we smoked our pipes alone, I know. And leave Mr. Mason with us, dear. Ah yes, thank you”—as Mr. Mason jerked himself out of his chair and made a galvanic rush to the door. “That’s it.” And the Canon, making soft, hospitable noises in his throat, remained standing until the ladies had left the room, and then sat silently down and began to fill his pipe. Neither he nor Mr. Mason looked at Mr. Granger, who was still doing vague things to his dinner-napkin.
Mr. Granger sat silent when the ladies had left the dining-room, but the ladies themselves, when they found themselves alone in the flower-filled sitting-room, could not do that. There was tragedy in the air, flaring out suddenly in the middle of quite an ordinary luncheon party. Mrs. Stallard felt petrified and at a loss. Mrs. Granger had not sat down, but was standing looking out into the garden. It was late September and the leaves were beginning to fall, and all along the back of the herbaceous border nearest to the house were beautiful clumps of Michaelmas daisies. Palest mauve to darkest purple, they turned their little round faces towards the house, seeming to carry with them a cheerful promise of something beautiful to come. Lovely fires and drawn curtains, Christmas on its way, the wintry smell of chrysanthemums, all the delicious things that make this part of the year a very lovely one. But Mrs. Granger went on staring out into the garden, her back a bleak denial to there being any joy anywhere. Even the entrance of coffee did not make her turn, and Mrs. Stallard, watching her with an anxious eye, saw her rather large, business-like hand fumbling for her handkerchief.
“Thank you, Annie; just put the coffee down on the table and we will help ourselves. You have taken it into the dining-room, haven’t you? Yes, that’s right. Now just leave it until I ring.” And Mrs. Stallard went gently over to the window. “Let me give you some coffee,” she said, and laid a quiet hand on the stiff arm as the servant left the room.
But Mrs. Granger was still groping with her handkerchief, and ugly, difficult tears were running down her weather-beaten face. “I can’t imagine what you must think of me, or of us rather.” Her voice was thick and chokey. “People haven’t any business to drag their skeletons out in public, and certainly not when they go out to lunch. I don’t know how it happened. But now it is out you may as well hear about it. He adores her . . . worships her, that little slip of eighteen. Basil, who has always been a good, faithful husband to me. Your husband loves you—at least I suppose he does, but how can one tell nowadays? Anyhow, he looks as if he did. Tell me how I can get Basil back.” Mrs. Granger was shaken, imploring.
Mrs. Stallard was utterly at a loss. If Mrs. Granger had suddenly begun to take off her clothes one by one, she would not have been more at a loss. Brisk, business-like, and always very definite, Mrs. Granger was the prop of things like the Mothers’ Union and Women’s Institute. To see her shaken and imploring was to Mrs. Stallard such an entirely new aspect of things that for a moment or two she could not adjust herself to it. And then she did. Mrs. Granger was so obviously a woman in dire distress that Mrs. Stallard’s heart was deeply stirred. But she had always supposed that the Grangers were such a devoted couple. She said so, very gently.
“I know . . . so we were; at least, so we are so far as I am concerned. But Basil went up to London to attend some of the meetings of the Churchwardens’ Union, and when he was there he met an old college friend of his. And he asked him down to stay for a night or two. Peggy Fielding was there. She had been at school with this man’s daughter. And ever since then he has been raving mad about her. He goes up to town . . . rushes off without telling me, and takes her to night clubs. The Nighty Night Club,” Mrs. Granger said the ridiculous words with a catch in her breath. “Basil, who wouldn’t have missed the nine o’clock news bulletin for anything a few months ago. And now he says that the wireless is only fit for people with one foot in the grave, and that he is going to live before he gets to that stage.” Mrs. Granger dropped her head, with its funny perched hat, into her quivering hands and cried again, very bitterly this time.
Mrs. Stallard sat very silent. Her terrible habit of seeing the humorous side of things made the moment very difficult. Here was obviously real tragedy. And yet . . . to visualize queer, insignificant little Mr. Granger at the Nighty Night Club! Sat-on, repressed Mr. Granger, suddenly flaring out into a glorious but delayed youth. Cut clear of the leading-strings that had made him in the parish more or less of an object of ridicule for years. Quit of Mrs. Granger, with her stiff coats and skirts and business-like hats. Sunning himself in the smiles and insolent youth of the girl whom Mrs. Stallard vaguely remembered as a very pretty child. And yet . . . her thoughts reversed themselves with a jerk . . . how abominable! How unkind to this plain, unprepossessing woman, who, after all, had given to the man of her choice her youth while she had had it. And a son . . . two sons, Mrs. Stallard believed, both of whom had been killed in the Great War . . . And yet—Mrs. Stallard’s thoughts swung back again—why hadn’t Mrs. Granger kept younger? Why hadn’t she tried to keep softer, less brisk and business-like, more feminine? And what was this extraordinary new phase that had set in in this world, that men and women, who ought by all accepted standards to have settled placidly down to contemplate a peaceful old age, were all wildly looking round for a chance to squeeze a few more sensations out of the years that were hurrying past. A result of the War, was it? Mrs. Stallard, forgetting her guest, sat staring in front of her. It was ugly, unworthy, meretricious. She came back with a jerk as Mrs. Granger began to speak again.
“You think I ought not to have said anything about it, Mrs. Stallard. But somehow Basil, flaring out like that at lunch, took me unawares. I thought he was perhaps forgetting her a little; but evidently he is not.” Mrs. Granger’s plain face was working.
“No, I am glad you told me.” Mrs. Stallard put out a kind and sympathetic hand, and laid it on her guest’s. “As you know, we are perfectly safe here; we should never discuss your affairs with anyone. But it seems to me such an almost incredible state of affairs . . . a young girl like that and a man of your husband’s age and experience. Are you perfectly certain that you aren’t mistaken? After all, an elderly man can be very interested in a young girl without there being any harm in it. How do you know that Mr. Granger’s affections are so deeply engaged? I don’t suppose that they are!” Mrs. Stallard suddenly smiled brightly and encouragingly.
“They are.” There was the heaviness of complete finality in Mrs. Granger’s voice. “You know how one would know, Mrs. Stallard, if one’s husband had ceased to care for one. Well, I know in the same way that you would.”
“Well, then, I think that it is an outrageous and a scandalous thing.” Gentle Mrs. Stallard was roused to sudden wrath by the pathetic misery of the ugly woman in front of her. “I think that the girl wants thoroughly well talking to, and I should like to be the one to do it. Where is she? What is going to happen to her now that her mother and father have come to this dreadful and tragic end? Does she know? Or is she still carrying on in London, dead to all decent instincts? You can’t do anything in the matter, Mrs. Granger, until you actually know where the girl is.” Mrs. Stallard suddenly felt a driving of impatience. How feeble this all was . . . and how unsavoury! Why had Mrs. Granger blurted it all out? Why had she asked them to lunch at all? She hadn’t wanted to, and had only done it from a fierce sense of duty because Mrs. Granger did so much in the parish. And now she was landed in the middle of this horrible muddle. Unable to go naturally in and out of the Grangers’ house any more, because she knew all about it. A dreadful discomfort every time she met him in the village. Oh! Mrs. Stallard’s spirit suddenly felt tired and disgusted.
“I do know where the girl is. She is living at her Club, somewhere near St. James’s Square. She is very well off . . . her grandmother left her money . . . and, as you know, the Fieldings had private means beyond his pay, which was excellent. Now, of course, his pension will die with him, except for a mere pittance for his only daughter, only child as a matter of fact: Peggy Fielding is his only child. So now she is more independent than ever.”
Mrs. Granger got up and walked to the window, and stood there staring drearily out of it, while Mrs. Stallard leant forward and mechanically put another log on the already brightly burning fire. To her huge relief she had heard the opening of the dining-room door. The advent of the men would put an end to this conversation, to her, infinitely painful and disagreeable. It was not as if she could do anything . . . help in any way. And before she saw Mrs. Granger alone again she would have had the chance of talking to her husband about the whole thing. He always knew . . . always said and did the right thing. Mrs. Stallard’s heart suddenly flooded out in passionate gratitude. Oh, how thankful she was that there had never been anything of the kind in their life; no ugly, greasily flowing undercurrent to smirch the clear happiness of their life together!
To Mrs. Stallard’s surprise her husband took the whole thing far more seriously than she had expected. “Nothing but tremendous stress of feeling could have prompted such a shocking lapse of good manners,” he said gravely. “Granger is usually a self-controlled man. I am extremely sorry for both him and his wife.” And the Canon had picked up the letters from where they were lying waiting to be posted, and had gone slowly off down the drive with them, his head sunk a little lower on his chest than usual.
Mrs. Stallard watched him go, a very unusual conflict of feeling stirring her already unpleasantly stirred-up mind. The Grangers had left early, mercifully, and Mr. Mason had very soon followed them, swinging robustly off down the drive on some parish business, his soft clerical hat driven rather excitedly down on the back of his head. The affair at lunch had upset him too, stirred his imagination. Ordinary stodgy married people were, apparently, neither ordinary nor stodgy at all, if you took the Grangers as an example. To him, Mrs. Granger had always seemed the apotheosis of stodginess, bursting with normality, only equalled in this respect by Mr. Granger. And now Mr. Mason had seen Mr. Granger a pallid, trembling thing, and his wife equally trembling if not quite so pallid. The curate’s values were alarmingly reversed, and he hurried almost feverishly into the village, cutting dead, entirely by mistake, two of the most devoted of the unmarried female Church workers, who spent the rest of the day in quiet although uncontrolled despair.
But Mrs. Stallard, left alone, went slowly back into the sitting-room, and sat down in the flowery easy chair recently vacated by Mrs. Granger. Everything on her horizon suddenly seemed to have shrunk—as if up to that moment they had been living the happy, cheerful lives of puppets, and as if someone had suddenly landed a great kick into the middle of them all. “Here! this isn’t life at all; life is a thing of storms and stresses and overwhelming passions. Get out of this and do something!” The Grangers, living only about twenty minutes away from them and regularly attending all their services, and yet her husband, spiritual head of the little parish, not having the ghost of an idea that this vampire of a tragedy was tearing the heart out of their domestic life. She herself, seeing Mrs. Granger constantly, and going in and out of her well-ordered house, and having the door opened to her by a neat, white-capped maid, and yet the neat white-capped maid knowing infinitely more about the inner workings of that house than she did. In a position to dissect and jeer and probably gloat over the sufferings of her old-fashioned and rather fussy mistress. “Serves her right, that’s what I say; don’t blame him for wanting to kick up his heels a bit.” She would sit on the corner of the table and swing her legs, and talk it over with the cook. And these were people under their care, under their spiritual and special care. . . . Mrs. Stallard got up and walked to the window, and stood there staring out at the Michaelmas daisies. There was something wrong, something dreadfully and horribly wrong. Life wasn’t, or shouldn’t be, just living with somebody you loved, and pottering about a garden and having well-attended services. You’d got to dig down to the heart of things—get hold of them . . . like rooting up bind-weed that trailed its white fibrous roots quite three feet under the ground. It wasn’t a bit of use only getting hold of the top bits and pulling them up and thinking you had done something. You hadn’t . . . it only grew up again. You’d got to get down . . . get down. But how were you to? How were you to?
And Fate, who is generally only too keen to involve us in some dreadful mesh of her own weaving, especially if we reach out at all towards her in fear and wondering, caught hold of Mrs. Stallard and drew her close to her with a laugh. This woman would do, this woman in this beautiful placid house with the gentle husband. Not to hurt them both, no, because they were good and kind. But to make them live a little, feel a little, before they were finally pushed on and out into a life where living is only loving. To live that life with complete fullness of joy you must suffer a little first.
The postman and telegraph-boy, simple people, generally rather discontented with their pay, are usually those more intimately connected with the tragedies of life. And when we consider what they do, it does seem inadequate to reward them with what, after all, would only begin to pay for a decent coat and skirt. But the postman at Little Churcham was an old soldier, so he had his pension as well; and he also sang in the choir, so that he was content with his lot; and when he greeted the Canon on that heavenly September morning it was cheerily and with a smile. “Good morning, sir, and the Michaelmas daisies are looking a treat. Plenty for you this morning, sir;” and a goodly packet of differently shaped and addressed envelopes changed hands.
But it was not with a smile that Mrs. Stallard, behind the silver coffee-pot, laid down the second letter she had opened. “There now!” She took off her tortoiseshell spectacles and put them down in front of her.
“What is it?” The Canon, from among his sea of torn envelopes, looked up expectantly.
“Why, just listen to this after yesterday, Henry. It’s from Alice. She says, ‘You remember that child, Peggy Fielding, who used to come to us for her holidays sometimes, when Hester was tiny? Well, the most awful thing has happened to her parents; they have both been killed flying. Mr. Thomason, her lawyer, saw Frank yesterday and told him. And he wants us to have her here till things are settled a bit. We can’t . . . it’s impossible; as you know, I’m just off to Egypt to Hester, the baby is coming next month. And I instantly thought of you. She would pay of course; apparently there’s no lack of money. Mr. Thomason made that clear when he asked us to have her. If you consider it at all, write to him direct; not to me, I shan’t be here after to-morrow. The Inner Temple always finds him. Peggy is at her Club at present, painting the town red. I can’t understand the modern girl at all; I’m thankful Hester wasn’t one. But High Plashings and Henry would be the very thing for her. You can’t help being good when you look at Henry; you look at him now, after you’ve read this, and see how good you’ll feel. I expect you’ll be having breakfast. . . “
Mrs. Stallard broke off with a little spurt of spontaneous laughter when she got to this point. “Oh, Henry, isn’t she ridiculous! But as a matter of fact she’s perfectly right, you are good. But oh, my dear, what are we to do? Surely it isn’t our duty to burden ourselves with the care of this impossible girl. And right at the Grangers’ very doorstep too: that in itself would make it impossible.”
“Well, would it?” The Canon got up with his cup in his hand and, coming slowly round the table, sat down by his wife’s side. “Often distance lends enchantment to the view in a case of this kind,” he said. “The rush of London after the quiet of this place: the excitement of the Night Club, a place of entertainment to which a man of Granger’s type would never dream of penetrating except in most exceptional circumstances. Seen by the September sunshine Miss Peggy’s complexion would probably shine less alluringly: she would wear the wrong shoes, she would be the wrong person in the wrong place.”
“Henry, you’re thinking of having her!” Mrs. Stallard suddenly broke in, her eyes on her husband’s face. What an extraordinary man he was! Apparently so unworldly, and yet now showing such extraordinary knowledge of the world. To plant the cause of Mr. Granger’s downfall right in front of him would have seemed to her to be the last thing to do. And yet perhaps it would prove to be the very right thing. “We should have to ask Mrs. Granger what she thought of the plan first though,” she said hurriedly.
“Quite. And we too must consider well the advisability of admitting a third into our own household before we finally make up our minds to have the child,” said the Canon gravely.
“It isn’t a thing to decide in a hurry. But somehow since yesterday I have been really troubled about the whole affair. The thought of Granger has remained very painfully with me; the thought of the terrible end of those two comparatively young people has distressed me deeply; and almost more than both of these, the thought of that young girl alone in London, heading for who knows what! We cannot, being in the position in which we are in this parish, ignore the whole thing. In fact, we are not going to be allowed to do it, that is very evident. What has prompted Alice to write to us about it? Something far beyond human thought and will. I am certain of it. Think it over, my dear, and let me know later how you feel about it.” The Canon got up, and, walking back to his place, began to collect his letters.
Mrs. Granger clutched at the idea with a dreadful, strangled cry of relief. “Oh, Mrs. Stallard, if only he did not go away from me I could bear anything! It’s that that’s killing me, the going up to London and not hearing anything about him for weeks. If he was here he would at least come back for meals and at night. He could not, with a girl staying under your roof, compromise himself and me too outrageously in the eyes of the parish.”
Mrs. Stallard was not so sure that he could not, but she did not say so, and she went away from the sturdy old Georgian house wondering why she did not feel more elated at this first success. Mrs. Granger had met this first effort to help with a passionate gratitude that in itself ought to have inspired and uplifted her. But it did not, and it was easy to find out why it did not. Mrs. Stallard did not want to have Peggy Fielding to stay with them even for a little while. She detested the idea. They were happy as they were, and it was a gentle, placid happiness suited to people of their age. A modern girl planted down in the middle of their uneventful life would mean revolution. Not to the domestic staff, for servants like change and excitement, and Mrs. Stallard had already mooted the idea to Jane, the old and faithful retainer who had been her own nurse many years before.
And old Jane, whose sight was not what it was, and who because of it was beginning to find the time hang a little heavy on her hands, had jumped at the idea. “Oh, ma’am, it’ll make a rare bit of brightness in the house for you and the master. That’s what you want, a little brightening up. As I often say to Cook, nothing but meals so regular and bed at ten o’clock. It’s bad for you, ma’am; it is indeed, it’s bad for you.” So there was no sympathy there, and on her return from her visit to Mrs. Granger, Mrs. Stallard sat down with rather a heavy heart to write to the lawyer who had the Fieldings’ affairs in hand. For a time; at any rate, they would be glad to do what they could for the child so tragically orphaned, she wrote. Would Mr. Thomason kindly write and let them know what he thought of the idea, etc.
Mr. Thomason wrote at once and at length, and the Canon, at least, could detect the relief between the lines. The trustees, whom he had had an opportunity of consulting, were delighted with the idea, and it now only remained for him—Mr. Thomason—to communicate with his client. This he would do immediately. Meanwhile he would like to say that the said trustees would wish to pay the Canon at the rate of five guineas a week while Miss Fielding was under his care. This not to include garage or any personal expenditure incurred by their young charge.
“Garage! Has she got a car, then?” Mrs. Stallard laid down the letter and stared at her husband over her tortoiseshell spectacles.
“I expect so.” The Canon spoke brightly and cheerfully. Utterly unworldly though he was, the thought of five guineas a week being paid regularly into his banking account shed a very pleasant glow over the immediate future. There were so many things that wanted doing to the garden, and so much in the parish that wanted a little hard cash to back them up. The Institute, it needed a new stove. The heating apparatus in the church, it was shaky. It was the time to re-turf a bit of the lower lawn, and turf was so dreadfully expensive. The Canon beamed across at his wife.
“I suppose she could keep the car in the stable; it’s perfectly watertight and quite big enough for any ordinary car. I always think that that stable is wasted with those beautiful rooms over it,” said Mrs. Stallard.
“She could easily. My dear, I believe that you are beginning to look forward to this new adventure of ours.” The Canon got up and walked round to his wife and spoke tenderly.
“No, I’m not—at least, in a way I am—but in a way I dread it. We have always been so happy, so sort of placidly happy. And now this young girl will come along, and Mr. Mason will fall in love with her, and Mr. Granger will probably end by shooting himself, and she will go tearing all over the country in her car, and we shan’t know where she is . . .” Mrs. Stallard paused for breath.
The Canon stopped smiling and looked vaguely alarmed. “My dear, if you really think . . . He passed his hand helplessly through his hair.
And Mrs. Stallard was instantly all penitence. “No, darling, I did not mean it,” she said; and she reached out and took the kindly old hand in hers. “None of the awful things that I have prophesied will come to pass, I am sure. Besides, if they do we shall be able to grapple with them at the moment. Also we are not at all sure that Peggy will want to come to us. Personally I feel pretty certain that she won’t.” Mrs. Stallard stooped, laughing, and lifted her husband’s hand to her mouth.
“Oh, my darling!” The Canon laid his free hand very tenderly on the bowed head. “No one could not want to be where you were,” he said quietly; and he stood gently looking down at his wife, not saying anything more.
But somebody was not in the least keen to be where Mrs. Stallard was, and that person was Peggy Fielding. She sat in the quaint old panelled room in the Inner Temple and frowned at her lawyer.
“I remember her—she was old years and years ago when I was about eight. Now she must be about a thousand, and correspondingly old-fashioned. It would kill me. I know the sort of place Little Churcham must be: everyone knows who you are, and if you are seen with a man you are put down as a bad lot. Besides”—Peggy turned her small head swiftly away from the lawyer so that he should not see the sudden tears that welled up into her grey eyes—“we were to have lived there, and I loathe the idea of it because of that.”
“It would be only for a time.” Mr. Thomason was judicious and humouring, because he was very anxious to get this young client of his out of London. She was spending far too much money, and getting into a fast set that would do her no good. She was only eighteen, and there are plenty of undesirable people about only too glad to exploit girls of eighteen with ample means of their own. “Besides, Miss Fielding, if I may say so”—here Mr. Thomason became very suave and deprecating—“this life is beginning to tell on you. You are not looking nearly so well as when I saw you last.”
“What, do you mean that I’m going off?” Peggy turned quickly round.
“No, no, I should not put it quite so strongly as that.” Mr. Thomason folded his hands and looked mildly at his young client over his pince-nez. “But, of course, unlimited late nights . . .” He paused significantly.
“Yes, I know . . . they are rather killing. Besides . . .” Peggy got up, and walked to the narrow window. The fountain in the round, shallow pool was blowing, all sideways, feather-grey drops. Rather die than explain to this old grey monkey of a man that she had to do something or she would go mad. The thought of it, the thought of them perhaps spinning in dreadful flames till they smashed helplessly . . . her mother and father. Not that they meant much to her beyond a name—she had seen so little of them: but still they had been her mother and father. And a death like that! Peggy swung round and came back again to the table.
“How long should I have to stay there?” She stood with her head a little thrown back, and even the dried-up old lawyer felt a thrill at the sight of her young, flawless beauty. Absolutely perfect, except for the horrible pencilling of carmine on her lips. Her eyes round and grey and set rather deep into her head, her face small and pointed with an elfish look about the smallness of it. What a chance for some unscrupulous adventurer! The elderly lawyer spoke, for him almost eagerly:
“Not a day longer than you wished, Miss Fielding,” he said, “and as the terms for your accommodation, arranged by your trustees, are generous, you need have no feeling that you are under any obligation to Canon and Mrs. Stallard. I am sure that they will be quite willing for you to go and come as you wish. You will have your car; in her last letter Mrs. Stallard says that there is an excellent stable where you can put it up. You are within fifty miles of London, so that you can easily get up either in the car or by train, and do it comfortably in the day. Little Churcham is in one of the most beautiful parts of Sussex . . .”
“Oh, it’s because it’s Little Churcham that rather complicates matters.” Miss Fielding sat down again and proceeded to get a letter out of her bag. She drew it out of the envelope and, turning back the single sheet of it, scrutinized the address on it. Then she put it back again. “Perhaps if he saw more of me he’d be rather less keen,” she said, and she spoke more to herself than to the man on the other side of the table. “Why is it, Mr. Thomason, that men of about sixty get so foolish when they come anywhere near a girl of my age? Being a lawyer you ought to know these things.”
But Mr. Thomason, being a discreet and decent lawyer with a high-class practice of his own, did not feel inclined to be led into a discussion of this sort with a young and beautiful client. Besides, she had spoken more to herself than to him, so he could reasonably ignore the question. Also there was more important business on hand. “Well, Miss Fielding, we must come to some decision, you know.” Mr. Thomason was suave and compelling and decided, all in one.
And Peggy Fielding suddenly made up her mind. Dull and sickening and ghastly as it would undoubtedly be at Little Churcham, she would try it for a bit. Nothing could be more ghastly than the life she was leading now, that was quite certain. “I’ll go for a time,” she suddenly decided, throwing the decision as it were down on Mr. Thomason’s immaculately spotless blotting-pad (had he another bit of blotting-paper to blot his letters with, then?), and frowning under the hard neat hat of hatter’s plush. “But I shan’t stay an instant longer than I want to. Please make that quite clear to that stuffy collection of interfering old trustees.”
And Mr. Thomason, making it quite clear an hour or two later, forgot to be shocked at his young client’s enormous disrespect, in his immense relief that she was to be removed from London and its attendant dangers; quite forgetting, which was odd in a man of his experience, that the country can be infinitely more dangerous, given certain conditions.
Once it was settled that Peggy should come to them, Mrs. Stallard flung her whole heart and soul into the scheme. There was a large and beautiful spare room, very rarely used, that would do beautifully for the child, and Mrs. Stallard and old Jane got it ready with real anticipation and joy. Everything must be fresh and new, and the rest of the rooms in High Plashings, all excellently furnished, were ransacked to make this one room fresh and young. “It must be young, Jane,” Mrs. Stallard insisted. “Miss Fielding is coming to live among elderly people, and she must be able to get away from that sort of atmosphere when she gets into her own room. It must be pink and blue and friendly.” And Mrs. Stallard stood on chairs and dragged things out of top drawers, and sent to Hampton’s for a new down quilt. “Something with large pink roses on a black background,” she explained in her clear handwriting, and the very thing came by return of post. Mrs. Stallard excused the rather lavish expenditure on the ground of the five guineas a week that really was going to be uncommonly useful in the High Plashings household. For dividends were showing an uncomfortable tendency to go down, and she and her husband were not getting younger, nor did expenses get less, and Mrs. Stallard felt a quite ridiculous relief at the thought of a regular weekly five guineas flowing in and circling round the incessantly recurring tradesmen’s books.
At last the great day came, and only the Canon was entirely unperturbed. He roved in and out of the beautiful sitting-room placid and undisturbed in spirit, while Mrs. Stallard made occasional darts to the curtained windows, and spent the rest of the time in settling the long-stalked chrysanthemums anew in their tall pewter mugs, and doing a little furtive dusting with her own nice handkerchief on surfaces already excellently dusted. The Canon watched her with a twinkle in his kind old eyes. What a child his wife really was! And then he lifted his white head. “There she is,” he said.
“Where?” Mrs. Stallard made a great splash of water from a tipped-up mug on a round, polished table, and then scrubbed violently at it, again with her handkerchief.
“I heard the car turn in at the gate.” The Canon was walking to the door. “I will welcome her, my dear, and then she can come in to you. She will, no doubt, feel strange and bewildered at first.” He was crossing the wide, carpeted hall. “Well, my dear child,” Mrs. Stallard could hear her husband’s gently welcoming voice, “we are very glad to see you. Yes, bring in the rugs and suitcases, Annie, and we will get help for you for the trunk. Come in, my dear.” The Canon was leading the way.
“I say, you’ve got a devil of a turn in your drive!” Peggy was laughing frankly up into the kindly face bent over her; “if my head-lights hadn’t been on I should have cut a considerable chunk out of your lawn.” Peggy was rapidly taking in the Canon as she pulled off her big, furry gloves. What an old darling! If only the other old thing was like this she would be all right. But she won’t be—women are always more or less cats, she reflected ruefully. “You’re my Uncle Henry,” she went on conversationally—“at least I’m going to have you for that if I may. It seems more friendly, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” agreed the Canon, his eyes on the young face. And what a beautiful face it was! he reflected quickly, although there was a look of hardness on the fresh young mouth that he grieved to see there. “Come along in and see your Aunt Harriet,” he went on, leading the way.
But Mrs. Stallard had heard Peggy’s opening words, and although she struggled desperately to retain the overflowing cordiality that she had been feeling until that moment, try as she would it eluded her. And Peggy sensed it. “Not much Aunt Harriet about her,” she thought as she took the older hand in her slim young one. “I began wrong by letting her hear me swear.” “Yes, I came down very easily, thank you,” she said, and there was the complete self-possession of modern youth in her rather low voice. “I was a bit shaky about the road, but a friendly bobby or two put me on the right way. Now I suppose I’d better put the car away. Or have you a ‘shover’?” Peggy turned with the complete confidence of a friendly child to the Canon.
“No, we have no chauffeur.” The Canon laughed a little. “I don’t think my wife and I ever thought about that,” he said, and half-unconsciously he went a little nearer to her. He was vaguely amused. What strange creatures women were! he reflected as he followed his young guest out into the hall again. However diverse their ages there was so often that queer antagonism between them. He knew his wife so well . . . she had already taken a dislike to this child. But perhaps she would struggle against it, for his sake, feeling that they could between them help the child along a difficult and dangerous bit of road. And later that evening, after rather a trying three hours, because Peggy was tired and made not the faintest effort to make herself agreeable, only sitting and smoking endless cigarettes, and yawning at intervals with delicious, pink, wide-open mouth and small regular teeth, he tackled his wife about it.
“Try to like her, my dear,” he said. Peggy had just gone out of the room escorted by old Jane in a flutter of joy and excitement. “It is very evident that you do not,” he added, laughing a little, “but you must try, for my sake. We may be able to do much for the child if we can approach her in the right way. But we shall do nothing if we rouse her antagonism to begin with.”
“You only see that she’s pretty and don’t mind how rude she is.” To Mrs. Stallard’s dismay she suddenly began to cry. Her turmoil of feeling alarmed her. Was she jealous of this new arrival? She, who had lived in perfect love and harmony with her husband for thirty-five years. “You will be like Mr. Granger,” she went on, sobbing and choking, “and I shall die with the misery of it!” Mrs. Stallard sat down, elderly and huddled in her unbecoming grief, and cried more.
The Canon for the first time for many months laughed until he could not laugh any more. The inexplicableness of women . . . the unaccountability of them. His humorous old face was all twisted with the effort for self-control. “Harriet . . . at your age!” he ejaculated, and he laughed and coughed again.
“But it is old people now!” Mrs. Stallard got up and, making fierce dabs at her eyes with her devastated handkerchief, came over to where her husband sat looking at her. “Henry, you wouldn’t do it, would you?” she said, and her voice was like a child’s—pitiful.
But although the Canon’s reply was tender, it was stern too. This was unworthy of his wife, unworthy of their love. He held her closely to his heart as he spoke quietly to her. “But, my darling,” he ended up, “if this sort of thing is going to occur again Peggy Fielding shall go to-morrow. I won’t have it. I don’t often put down my foot in my own house,” he ended up, smiling quizzically, “but I shall do it over this. Nothing shall disturb the cloudless harmony of our home. And unless you tell me now that nothing shall, the young lady in question shall have a note to-night to say that, much as we regret it, she must go to-morrow. I mean it, Harriet,” and the Canon looked unusually firm and unyielding.
And Mrs. Stallard, looking up into the beloved face, saw her thoughts and fears shrivelling away from her like the ugly things that they were. In a passion of repentance she clutched at her husband’s hand.
But although Mrs. Stallard was never foolish enough again to be afraid that her husband would fall in love with Peggy, she never really liked having her in the house. To begin with, she seemed to her old-fashioned mind to be so terribly selfish. Not exactly actively selfish, but passively so. Other people, for her, did not seem to exist. For instance, she would very often sit during a whole meal, entirely silent. No idea that she owed something to the community of which she formed a part. Mrs. Stallard spoke to her husband about it one day, leaning against his arm as he sat in his old easy chair in front of a crackling wood-fire.
“And supposing the child talked all the meal, what would you think about that, Harriet?” he said, wrinkling his old face rather humorously “You must remember that you cannot have everything. You and I have lived so long secluded from the world in Little Churcham, that we rather forget how things have hurried along. Young people no longer defer to their elders. It may be their loss or it may be ours; in any event, the thing has come to pass. All we can do now is to put up with it. Peggy is punctual, a great virtue in my eyes, she gets on excellently with the servants, she comes to church. She does not obtrude her views on us, nor does she wish to fill the house with her friends. She lives her own life. Mind you, I don’t think it at all a good life for a young girl of that age to live: personally, I should like to see a great deal more frankness and spontaneity in her, but there it is—apparently it is her nature. And all we can do, and I think it is all we ought to do, is to let her live that life here. The money she pays us is a great help, you cannot deny that, my dear”; and the Canon looked up whimsically.
“Yes, I know it is.” Mrs Stallard, still holding her husband’s hand, settled herself down on the arm. of his chair. “But somehow I feel that there is a great deal more going on in Peggy’s life than we know of. For instance, where does she go off to so often for the whole day? Whom are all her letters from? She spends sometimes the whole morning writing letters in her room. Cannot you find out? She would be more likely to confide in you, or, rather, tell you if you asked her. My point is this—We are so much in the dark as to Peggy’s movements that we practically have no control over her. If anything were to happen, such as a serious smash in the car—she drives utterly recklessly, I consider—or if she were not to come back at all one night, for instance, how could we explain it to her trustees? They would naturally say in the event of the second contingency: Where is she likely to be? Who are her friends? And our reply that we know nothing about what she does or where she goes or whom she knows would not satisfy them at all. And, to my mind, quite rightly.”
The Canon was silent for a moment or two. This to his rather unpractical mind was a new thought and a rather disturbing one. His wife was right; they did know nothing about the child who was nominally in their care. “What shall I do?” he spoke helplessly.
“Have a talk with Peggy now; she has been cleaning the car and has just come in to wash. Mr. Mason has been helping her.” Mrs. Stallard got down from the arm of the chair and spoke rather stiffly. “I thought it most unsuitable when she was dressed in those overalls looking like a stable-boy, or rather like one of Allen’s mechanics, but still, as you say, and as I must try to remember, times have changed”; and Mrs. Stallard left the room, still very disturbed in mind, as the Canon could tell by the rattling of the keys in their little basket.
But the Canon was no longer disturbed when about five minutes later he heard the little quiet tap at his door. Child-like in mind himself, he seemed able to sense to a certain extent what was going on in this other child’s mind. A fierce desire to be let be . . . an almost morbid fear of being surprised in any sort of emotion. Like a boy at his most sensitive and prickly age. He smiled as he called a gentle “Come in.”
“Mrs. Stallard said that you wanted to speak to me.” Peggy’s face was quietly content. “I was glad, Uncle Henry, because you hardly ever speak to me. I could do with a good deal more of it.” She was settling herself in front of the fire on a small leather chair, and was groping in the pocket of her stockinet jumper. “Do you mind if I smoke? I’ve been having a devil of a time cleaning the car, although Mr. Mason was a brick and helped me. But sometimes I think I shall have to get a ‘shover’; I had an awful time changing a wheel on Ferngate Hill yesterday . . . however, we can discuss that later. Speak on, Uncle Henry.” Peggy was sending small, jerky puffs of smoke out from between her white teeth.
“My dear child!” The Canon, completely disarmed, and feeling inclined to do nothing but smile indulgently at the radiant little figure sitting so contentedly by the fire, pulled his big carved chair out from where it generally stood in front of his desk and twisted it round on a level with Peggy’s. “Look here,” he said, sitting down in it, and he spoke almost as one man would speak to another. “My wife and I are anxious about you. What do you do with yourself all the time, and where do you go? Who are your friends? It is only right that a child like you should let those who are responsible for her know just a little about what she does with her time, isn’t it?” The Canon smiled very kindly.
“If I was a man you wouldn’t inquire.” Peggy spoke abruptly; and, leaning forward, she dropped a little of the greying ash from the end of her cigarette into the middle of the glowing logs.
“No, but you are not,” replied the Canon.
“I know—that’s the sickening part of it.” Peggy put her cigarette back into her mouth again. “Just because I’m a girl, I’ve got to give an account of what I do with myself. Just because I’m a girl Mr. Mason has got to come tumbling all over me and making a fool of himself. Just because I’m a girl Mr. Granger has got to make my life a burden every time I go outside the gate. I’m sick of being a girl; I tell you, Uncle Henry, I loathe and detest it. If you weren’t like you are, a saint and an angel, and like one always dreams men ought to be and know they aren’t, you would be making horrible love to me too, pretending it was fatherly and knowing all the time that it was no more like fatherly than . . .” Peggy suddenly broke off and flung her cigarette into the fire.
The Canon sat silent. The virginal in a state of revolt. Mr. Mason . . . and again Mr. Granger. Why had they been foolish enough to bring this girl down here. He bitterly reproached himself for the space of a long silent minute, during which Peggy sat and looked at him. What a damned fool she had been to blurt it all out like that, a man of that type would never understand.
But the Canon, although to the outside world he only appeared a saintly, almost child-like old man who enjoyed a morning grubbing about in his garden, and who could preach a placid undisturbing sermon, had beneath it all a very real and living knowledge of the world. And he perceived with a very shrewd and kindly perception, that here was a frank, and, for the moment anyhow, sexless, nature in revolt. And natures like that are not in revolt for nothing. The Canon put a few pertinent and searching questions.
Peggy answered them frankly. Up to a certain point she concealed nothing from the Canon. It was not required of her that she should say more than she was asked. “Mr. Granger has been goggling at me for months,” she said. “I met him when I was staying at Winchester with some people I know. He wrote to me after he had left, and asked me if I would go out with him . . . to dinner and clubs and things. I said I would . . . after all, why not? everyone goes out with everyone in these days. I didn’t know he had a stodgy wife at home who adored him. Now I find he has, and I tell him that I think he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself . . . and he doesn’t like it.” Peggy began to fumble for another cigarette.
“Not yet, my child.” The Canon put out a gentle, detaining hand.
“Why not? Oh, well . . .” Peggy suddenly caught at the withdrawn hand. “Oh, Uncle Henry, don’t loathe me. Aunt Harriet does, and I can quite understand it. We are loathsome nowadays. But somehow, what’s the good of anything? . . . everything’s so rotten. People are all rotten except people like you.”
“Rubbish!” The Canon spoke with a little impatient shake of his shoulders. “People are good, my dear, just as good as ever they were. But there is something in the way we approach them. You have got your values wrong. You are not doing rightly when you regard the world around you simply as a place in which to enjoy yourself. You are not doing rightly, either, when you scoff and speak lightly of love, which should be the most sacred thing in the world. I agree that Mr. Granger is doing a mean and reprehensible thing when he forsakes, at any rate in spirit, the woman whom he has sworn to love and cherish for the rest of his life. But I expect, my dear, if the truth were known, you have encouraged him to do it. Eh, Peggy? Be frank with me as I am being frank with you.”
“Well, perhaps I rather have.” Peggy spoke with her yellow, closely cropped head a little sunk on her chest. “But I did not encourage Mr. Mason,” she said, lifting it up again.
“No; but then Mr. Mason is a young man who would not require much encouragement,” replied the Canon; and he spoke with a twinkle in his humorous old eyes. “Mr. Mason must expect a tumble or two before he finally finds the woman who can make him happy; I am not anxious on his behalf. But on behalf of Mr. Granger and his unhappy wife I am very anxious, Peggy, and if you remain here I must insist that you keep out of his way. God has endowed you with a very beautiful little face, and if you employ it, and the beautiful little body that goes with it, for the purpose of men’s undoing, you can only call down on yourself a very severe judgment, Peggy. Moreover, I will not have you doing it here. Unless you will give me your promise now that you will do your utmost to keep out of Mr. Granger’s way, and, if you do see him, show him by every means in your power that you consider his behaviour both mean, and unworthy of a gentleman, I must ask you to leave High Plashings at once.”
“What, turn me out!” Peggy’s grey eyes were wide.
“Certainly. I should not feel myself justified in keeping you.”
“But I like being here.”
The Canon’s face softened a little. There was something very attractive about this child’s naïveté. “I am glad to hear it,” he said, “and in that case I am sure you will do what I ask you in this matter.”
“Very well, I will.” Peggy got up abruptly. “I think it was so nice of you to say that about thinking I am pretty,” she said, and she fumbled shyly with the collar of her jersey. “Do you really think that I am? As pretty as all that?”
“Just as pretty.” The Canon was looking down with a quaint whimsicality in his eyes.
“And, one day, do you suppose that I shall fall in love with a good man that I can really admire? Not one of these miserable creatures who do exactly what you tell them all the time?” Peggy was looking up, and wondering as she looked how she could speak as she was doing. But there was something about this man that made one long to be frank and transparent. Not that she had told him quite all . . . there was that stupid Barrington Foster who would keep on writing to her and imploring her to come up to town. But then he was only a boy, although of course his being so fearfully rich made him seem older. Anyhow, there was only he, and that man she had seen once at a dance. And about that man there was nothing to say, because he had turned on his heel when she had tried to speak to him. But, apart from these two little bits of news, there was nothing hidden; and oh, how she loved the feeling of being honest for once. Uncle Henry made her feel like that . . . he was so good . . . so all-through good. “Do you suppose I ever shall be really in love?” she queried again, childishly this time.
“Yes, I am sure of it.” The Canon laughed quietly. “And if you will take my advice, Peggy, you will keep yourself fresh for it. Bloom is very easily rubbed off, my child.”
But although this was all very satisfactory in its way, and the Canon, certainly, felt a good deal easier in his mind since his talk with Peggy, there were a good many things that were not satisfactory. One was Peggy’s extreme recklessness in driving, and when she came in one evening, after a long afternoon out, with a bright and jovial account of a narrowly averted catastrophe, Mrs. Stallard almost lost her temper. They were all three in the drawing-room before dinner, Peggy fresh and sweet from head to foot, dressed beautifully as she always was, with her young face sparkling with enjoyment.
“Just think of it, Uncle Henry—an almost head-on collision. You know that turn just as you get out of Penn? Well, some fool—a woman, of course—came charging round the corner without sounding her horn. Mercifully I jammed on my brakes in time, otherwise Mr. Granger and I would have passed on into a higher sphere. At least I hope we should.” Peggy laughed naughtily. Mrs. Stallard’s face irritated her. Why did women always show when they were cross? Why did she always feel when she got near Mrs. Stallard that she wanted to shock her? She never felt like that with Uncle Henry.
“My dear,” and the Canon looked quickly across the room. This was not right of Peggy; she had practically promised him . . .
But the faint pink was rising in Mrs. Stallard’s cheeks. “I cannot stand any more of it,” she said, and it burst from her in a flood of irritation. “I have too much to do, what with the care of the house and parish, to be worried half out of my senses with these ridiculous escapades. Mrs. Granger was here half the afternoon, wondering where her husband had gone. I really think, Peggy, that your sense of decency ought to prevent you from putting the Canon and myself in such an extremely anomalous position.” Mrs. Stallard, with two patches of high colour on her thin cheeks, got up from her chair, and did unnecessary things with the poker.
“Phew!” Peggy blew out her face and, sticking both her feet out in front of her, stared at her shoes. They were pink and brocaded and had very high heels.
“My dear!” But the Canon was interrupted by the entrance of the maid. “Ah yes, dinner. Good! Come along, my dear”; and, deeply perturbed, he offered his arm with old-world courtesy to his wife. She took it, but she was trembling, and when dinner, an extremely uncomfortable meal, was over, he took his wife by the arm and, without a glance at Peggy, led her away into his study.
“Now.” He was settling her gently into a low chair by the fire, and then slowly and with difficulty he stooped and stirred up the logs, “My dear, that was not like you,” he said.
“No, I know, Henry.” Mrs. Stallard’s face was working. “I cannot stand it any more,” she said, “no amount of money will ever make it worth while. What with Mrs. Granger and Mr. Mason haunting the house my life is not worth living. Not to mention the endless gossip that must be going on in the parish. It is bad for you, as well as for me, and if you, my darling, are too unworldly to see it, I am not. That girl must go . . . or”—and Mrs. Stallard hesitated—“she must have someone to go about with her. I know you do not want to turn her adrift, and I feel with you that there would be grave danger in it because of what she is; also we ought to do all we can to help her. But go on much longer like this I cannot. I am not as young as I was and it is telling on me.” Mrs. Stallard suddenly looked very old as she spoke.
“My dear, I agree with you.” The Canon always knew when his wife was at the end of her tether and he could see that she was at the end of it now. Therefore things could go on no longer as they were. The idea of a chauffeur was a good one. “Or, did you mean a chauffeuse, my dear?” The Canon had his wife’s hand closely held to his side.
“Another woman! Oh, Henry, no! A man. Someone reliable and staid and to be trusted; someone we can send out with her, and know because of it that she will not get into mischief. He can live in those rooms over the garage; they are excellent and utterly wasted as they are.”
“A married or unmarried man, my dear?”
“Unmarried; another woman about the house and garden would be sure to mean trouble. Why is it that women always make trouble and difficulty wherever they go?” Mrs. Stallard sighed hopelessly.
“They do not, my dear.” The Canon spoke stoutly and reassuringly. “And now we will moot this idea to our young guest. Better do it at once. Come along . . . I know it is not pleasant, but that is all the more reason why we should get it off our minds.”
“You do it.” Mrs. Stallard hung back. Somehow she felt that, if she had to argue at all with Peggy, she would lose her temper uncontrollably and never regain it in the same measure.
So the Canon went off into the sitting-room again, and Peggy, seeing him coming in alone, flung her cigarette into the fire and got up to meet him.
“Uncle Henry, more rows,” she said. “I’d much better go”; and she took hold of the silk collar of the black coat and smiled ruefully up.
“There would be no need for any of the things that you call rows, Peggy,” said the Canon quietly, “if you would only use a little of what I believe you possess in great measure—namely, your own common sense. My wife is not unreasonable when she objects to your tearing about the country with Mr. Granger. I do not like it either; in fact, it must cease. What we suggest is this. You must engage someone as your chauffeur. He can live over the stable, and live very comfortably there too. This will obviate any gossip that there may already be about your rushing about the country unattended. We too shall be more at ease if we know that you are accompanied by a trained mechanic.”
“Oh!” Peggy dropped her chin on her breast. “I was afraid when you came in alone that it was going to be the order of the boot,” she said, “that’s why I tried to forestall it. Will the chauffeur scheme settle things with Mrs. Stallard, do you think?”
“Yes, I feel sure it will,” said the Canon.
“Then get one for me, will you, Uncle Henry, please?” said Peggy, and, putting up both her young hands, she drew the old face down to hers and kissed it on both cheeks, lightly.
So that was how the advertisement got into the Morning Post. And when he saw it Peter Wolversley got up from his chair by the fire and, strolling over to the telephone, rang the bell sharply once or twice. The number required was a Mayfair one, and the answer came promptly. As he talked, the receiver held to a pointed ear over which the hair showed slightly grey, he laughed once or twice. “Come round now, then, will you?” he said, and, putting down the receiver, walked over to the fire again.
The room was a beautiful one, and stood high over the Park. It was dreadfully difficult to get a flat in that particular block of bachelor flats; they were very expensive and very much sought after. But money will do most things, and when it is backed by a very commanding personality it will do practically everything. So Sir Peter Wolversley was comfortable and happy, so far as material things bring happiness. But they don’t bring it very far, and Watkins, his devoted personal servant, knew that and in consequence grieved over him.
“Slep’ badly again.” He had moved round the disordered bedroom that morning with his faithful mastiff’s eyes mournful. It always meant it, a litter of cigarette ash and ends; the eiderdown trailing dejectedly over the floor; the general look of misery in the room. Watkins could always sense it when he came in with the early tea. His master would often be asleep then, his dark head very black against the white pillow, and Watkins would stand and look at him until the blue eyes opened. “Curse you, Watkins!” And Sir Peter would roll over on to his side again.
“I would have left you, sir, but you always told me . . .” Watkins would put the tray down on the little, polished table and stand there, miserably staring.
“Yes, of course, nothing I abhor more than fugging about in bed. But oh, my God!” Peter would struggle up into a sitting position and hold his head in his hands.
“Was it very bad, sir?” Watkins would stand, one living, yearning monument of sympathy.
“Bad? Putrid! Hellish! At eleven last night I couldn’t keep my eyes open. At twelve I was staring awake, with eyes that felt as if they had been skinned, so wide open were they. I almost came and murdered you in your sleep, Watkins, because I knew you were snoring. You were, weren’t you?” Peter Wolversley s teeth suddenly flashed white.
“I heard twelve and one and two strike, sir, and all on your behalf, sir, because I felt you was awake,” replied Watkins, and turned quickly away to hide the distress in his eyes. That dratted War! Watkins had gone through it all, and most of the time by the side of the man close to him now. But this insomnia business was getting worse, and his master wasn’t going the best way about it, either, to make it better, Watkins reflected troublously, as he turned the two shining plated taps on and watched the boiling hot water cascading out. Nothing but these dratted Night Clubs (everything to Watkins was dratted) and never in bed till the small hours of the morning. Only the night before, his master, too utterly jaded to go on any longer, had stayed at home and gone to bed early. And then, of course, he hadn’t slept. “Can’t expect to turn it on just when ’e wants to,” reflected Watkins, twisting the plated taps rebelliously back again.
But his master was not so casually short-sighted as his servant thought he was, and that morning as, after a glorious hot bath that brought back the glow and sting to his brain again, he sat and ate his breakfast, he was thinking very seriously. This business of not sleeping was getting beyond a joke; it was beginning to obtrude itself into his daily life. Nasty little spiteful reminders of it when he was otherwise enjoying himself; the feeling of the cold sheet up against his face as he lay staring out into the darkness; the sound of the slowly approaching market-carts as they rumbled eastwards. It was beginning to dwell with him, the horrid dread of not sleeping. The next thing would be drugs . . . and that . . . and Peter got up, abruptly shoving his chair back along the polished floor.
“Show Captain Fraser in here directly he comes, Watkins.”
Breakfast was over, and the telephone call had been given, and Peter was back in the chair again, his long feet comfortably hooked on to a jutting out piece of the mantelpiece. “And bring me the A.A. book, will you, Watkins?”
“Yes, sir “ Watkins was moving deftly and with celerity.
“Thanks. Ah, there’s the bell. Yes, put the cigarettes here—that’s it. Now let Captain Fraser in, Watkins.”
And as the servant left the room Sir Peter Wolversley laughed aloud. What a rag! What an absolutely topping rag! If only old Ralph would go in for it. Surely by now . . . And a very short time set his mind to rest on that point. Ralph had the Morning Post in his hand, and his fair hair was all ruffled. “It’s the same!” he said. “Lady Maurice told me she was there. She’s with a parson of sorts, the P.G. stunt, and now she wants a ‘shover.’ By Gad!” And Captain Fraser stared at his friend.
“Yes, but look here”—Peter got up and strolled to the window—“you see I can’t butt in,” he said. “At least that’s not putting it quite rightly, there’s no question of butting in, but I mean I couldn’t apply for this job unless I was quite certain that . . . And he stopped abruptly. He was practically certain; Society had been very busy lately with Captain Ralph Fraser’s name, and a jolly good thing too, because the girl was a topper. But Sir Peter must be perfectly certain first.
And he was after five minutes. Men don’t say much when they begin, but they generally say it plainly. So Peter took up the Morning Post again with a huge relief in his heart. Ralph was a jubilantly cured man. And now to business.
“It’s this,” he said; and as he spoke he pushed the beautiful gold and tortoiseshell cigarette case nearer to his friend. “I’m sleeping foully and it’s beginning to get on my nerves. Six months’ hard work in the country would probably put me all right again; it’s what old Sir Burnaby said weeks ago, only I wouldn’t listen to him. Well, here’s this topping little Sussex village . . . decent rooms to live in, I could probably take Watkins with me. An Austin twenty saloon car. I loathe a saloon, but still I should have to put up with that. And a chance of bringing that little —— to heel.” Sir Peter’s epithet was more decorative than polite.
“Don’t be hard on her.” Ralph Fraser’s sensitive face flushed. Peggy Fielding was nothing to him now; in fact, for the last three months he had hardly given her a thought. But still, the man sitting close to him now had the reputation of an ungovernable temper; there had been something very awkward in India . . . some native in his employ had been found torturing a horse, so the story ran, and Peter had set on him and practically killed him. And it had needed a good many letters from people in authority, not excluding the Viceroy himself, so some people said, to get Peter off, and out of the country safely. So, “Don’t be hard on her,” he said again, shyly this time.
“Hard on her! My dear Ralph, I shan’t concern myself with her beyond driving her car,” replied Peter, and he got up and took the Morning Post off the table again. “The second thing I wanted to see you about, Ralph, is references. Will you, if I decide to do this absolutely cracked thing, swear blue that I am absolutely everything that is desirable, and keep it an immortal secret as to who I really am?”
“I will,” replied Ralph fervently.
“Good for you. Now then, to business. No, don’t go,” as the younger man stood up; “I want you to see how Watkins takes it. Sit down again, and while I talk to him, look out the nearest way to Little Churcham, will you? There’s the A.A. book. If I can get fitted up in time I shall go down after lunch; there are sure to be heaps of people after the job, and we can’t have Miss Peggy Fielding exploited by any penniless adventurer. Jove, what sport!” Peter pressed the polished-oak button of the electric bell with all the repressed excitement of a boy.
But Watkins took the news with the despair of the man who sees the last shred of sanity departing from the thing he loves best in the world. “Oh, my Gawd!” He stood quite still in the middle of the sun-flooded carpet with his hands over his eyes. They had finished him then, those constant sleepless nights. And now what was going to happen to him? He would have to go . . . to give place to a trained attendant. “Never; not if they kills me or has to put me out by force!” Watkins almost shouted the words, uncontrollably and aloud.
“But I hope it won’t come to that; there are excellent rooms, and I shall ask if I can take you with me.” Peter was looking at his servant curiously. What a wonderful thing real devotion was! he thought. There was old Watkins, simply wrapped up in him. His mind suddenly fled back to the War. That time in the base hospital when his servant had been seized with that fierce malaria. And his constant, ceaseless wailing for his master, until it had become a matter of life or death and Peter had hurried all muddy from the trenches and had almost run down between the rows of narrow beds. And the look on his servant’s livid face as he had taken the beloved hand in his and turned on his side and slept, the first time for weeks, as the sympathetic Sister had said as Peter had stood for a minute or two talking to her before starting back again. And now again.
Peter got up, and laid a kindly hand on the black shoulder. “Brace up, Watkins,” he said, and his eyes, humorous and amused, met the eyes of his friend. But Ralph, with a muttered excuse, got up and left the room. And Peter, alone with his servant, spoke again. “What’s wrong, Watkins?” he asked curiously.
“Sir; it’s touched your ’ead. That’s what it done.” Watkins raised his own head, and his eyes were tormented. “But say, ‘I must have Watkins.’ Say it again and again, sir, and they’re bound to listen to you.” Watkins suddenly fell on his knees and clutched at the beautifully kept hand.
Peter lay back in his chair and laughed until he thought he would die. And then, sitting up and wiping his eyes, he looked at his servant and laughed again. And Watkins, seeing the dear eyes regarding him humorously, turned abruptly aside and blew his nose unobtrusively. Blamed fool that he was, there was nothing balmy there. But what was it? He turned anxiously back again.
And Peter told him. Quite clearly and frankly. If he didn’t get something to occupy his mind and body, and pretty soon too, the results might be serious. Watkins listened with the fullest comprehension; he’d expected some thing of the kind for some time. But to go as a common servant; his mastiff’s eyes were horrified.
“Not at all, the most honourable profession in the world, and I always enjoy driving a car, Watkins.” Peter’s eyes were amused again. “And now ask Captain Fraser if he’ll be kind enough to come in,” he said. “There’s heaps of detail to settle, and you’d better be here while we settle it.”
So the three men sat and talked for about an hour, Watkins, exuding deference, sitting as much on the edge of his chair as possible. And then he went off to summon Sir Peter’s tailor; a chauffeur’s uniform required at once for fancy dress. To bring it back with him if possible.
And the two men, left alone, looked at one another and laughed again. “Peter, you are a . . .” Ralph Fraser broke off abruptly, and, getting up, he walked over to the window and stared down at the double line of traffic standing absolutely still. What chance had the girl he had once cared for with this man? That had always been her cry: “Oh, men are so feeble . . .” And then, as one of the thin lines of red buses and taxis moved on again, he turned round and faced his friend. “Don’t be hard on her,” he said again.
“How you harp on it, Ralph!” said Sir Peter; and he glanced rather curiously at his friend. “And you started to call me something pleasant. Let’s have it.” Peter was sitting in front of the fire again, groping for the convenient ledge with his heels.
“Brute,” said Captain Ralph Fraser succinctly.
Sussex is very beautiful, and Ashdown Forest one of the most enchanting bits of an enchanting county. As Peter Wolversley steered his powerful car to the edge of the road so that he might light a pipe, he breathed in the air with an extraordinary feeling of well-being. The tints were so beautiful; on his right hand the forest sloped steeply away into a medley of brown and golden foliage: bracken rather beaten down and battered, but still beautiful in its autumn colouring; trees, some of them already stripped bare, but others carrying with them a strange dignity in their passionate desire to fade beautifully. Peter looked at it from between his cupped hands, and got a fierce desire to get out of the car and kick with shuffling feet into the great heaps of crackling, dried leaves that lay a little way from the grassy edge of the road. No one would see him—he would! He did it, feeling the shamefaced excitement of the boy who knows that if he is found out he will be laughed at. The leaves blew about his feet with a little crisp murmuring—they were enjoying it too, he thought, laughing at himself for his childishness. Then he got back into the car and fumbled for the map in the side pocket. Ralph did himself jolly well in his car, every modern gym, extravagant brute. But it had been a good idea of his, that. “Of course, go down by car—not in your own, if you’re squeamish about the truth, but in mine. Belonging to the man who is giving you your reference; anxious that you should get the job. You’re not half up to these things, Peter me lad.” And Ralph Fraser had grinned delightedly.
So, seen off by his servant and his friend and a respectful hall porter, Peter, muffled in a large overcoat and his ordinary squash-hat, had stepped into Ralph’s beautiful Essex two-seater and steered his skilful way out of London. Once through the Caterham Valley he had cast his overcoat from him, crammed his squash-hat underneath it, and dragged on with a certain amount of shy pride the peaked chauffeur’s cap that the genius from Albemarle Street had brought round with the plum-coloured uniform.
“Oh, my God, I can’t appear in a thing like that! I shall look like one of the attendants at a cinema. Something blue, for Heaven’s sake, Morton.”
“Not worn, Sir Peter.” Mr. Morton was very firm and definite. “And we should not have this particular suit on our hands, sir, if Her Grace the Duchess of Westbury had not found at the last moment that it did not match the upholstering of her car.”
“How like her!” Peter was frowning from behind the discreet back of the tailor. Ralph was in convulsions of laughter, stuffing a black silk cushion into his mouth and drumming his heels on the carpet. He would give the whole damned thing away if he was not careful.
But Mr. Morton, with the soul of the true artist, was entirely absorbed with the work in hand. His client might have been poured into the suit. Tall and powerful he stood in it, even the gaiters clinging closely to the well-shaped legs. “Well, I’m sure!” Mr. Morton stood back and clasped his hands.
“Oh, my sainted Aunt!” Ralph was still roaring and drumming his heels. And Peter, self-conscious, was irritated. “Shut up, you damned fool,” he said crossly, and Ralph, instantly penitent, was apologetic. “It’s only that you look it so absolutely to the life,” he said as he wiped his eyes.
“So I ought to if I’m to make anything of a success of it,” replied Peter, instantly restored to good humour again. “Well, Morton, if it has to be it has to be. Think of me to-night, dancing the Charleston with Her Grace the Duchess of Westbury in one of your most successful creations. And now that’s all, I think. Thank you, Morton. Watkins, show Mr. Morton out, will you?” And Peter smiled the smile that always intensely endeared him to those dependent on him, while Mr. Morton bowed himself out more or less backwards.
And now, here he was, half-way—no, more than half-way—to Little Churcham. This was where he had to turn, just before Wych Cross. Peter began to double up the sectional map preparatory to replacing it in its pocket. And now—yes, round to the left—he put his leather-gloved first finger on the self-starter and steered carefully out from the edge of the road. A gorgeously beautiful road, tall slender pine-trees meeting overhead: dim vagueness on either side of it. Peter longed, quite unreasonably, to wander away and get lost. How was it that he did not know this extremely beautiful district better? Why did one fug in London when there were places like this where one could live?
Why indeed? Peter Wolversley wondered at it anew, as he walked up the curved drive and saw the front of the house where he was proposing to instal himself. With extraordinary presence of mind he had remembered not to drive up to the door. “Better start with proper humility, however I intend to go on,” he said to himself with grim humour; and as he said it he marvelled again at his extraordinary freedom from self-consciousness. What was it that sent him out on this mad escapade with such light-heartedness? Why, it was the driving of an unquenchable terror; something that struck at you in the dark; that jibbered at you as you shrank away from it. “I’ll get you down till you’re only a thing—-a mumbling, drugged thing.” This was going to free him from it, from its terrors and its shackles. Peter knew it was as he saw the beautiful, peaceful, half-timbered front of the house, and drew in the chill autumn air with the tang of burning wood in its breath, and the resinous aroma of the scattering fir-cones.
“The Canon is at home.” Old Jane answered the door and spoke with relief when she saw the tall powerful figure. Her darling needed someone strong in the car with her. Old Jane hated the car, and sat trembling when Peggy was out in it. But a big hefty young fellow like this . . . Jane left Peter standing on the mat and bustled away. In a few seconds she was back to say that the Canon would see him.
Long afterwards, Peter Wolversley wondered if the old man had seen through him at the very beginning. The Canon’s gaze was clear and searching, and after an almost imperceptible pause he told Peter to sit down.
“Thank you, sir; I prefer to stand.” Peter stood with his peaked cap in his hand, and his eyes were steady. “I have driven down,” he said, “and it is a relief to get on to my feet.”
“I see.” The Canon swung round a little in his chair. “You are an educated man,” he said; “that is obvious. The point is this, and I may as well make it clear at once: I cannot admit into my house, or rather on to my premises, anyone in the nature of an adventurer. You will think me strange to speak like this, but I have a great belief in appealing to the best in those with whom we have to deal. The man I engage as chauffeur will have to drive about with, and practically be responsible for, a young girl—a Miss Fielding whom we have living with us. Can I trust you to do that?”
“Yes, sir.” Peter spoke after a slight pause and with his eyes fixed on the Canon’s.
“I can. Well, that is satisfactory so far. Now, as I wish to ask you certain questions, I should prefer that you should sit. They may take a little time, and, if I may say so, you look very tired. Sit down on that chair, there.” The Canon motioned with his slender, veined hand.
Peter sat down on it, suddenly conscious that his knees were shaking. Was he nervous, then, or was it rather a sudden consciousness that enormously much hung on his getting this place. The whole atmosphere; the transparent goodness of the man opposite him. If he could dig for hours in the garden; spend himself in the service of this old man who had the clear, contemplative glance of the child and who was obviously as good as he looked. It would be a new life; it would mean a new sanity.
But the Canon’s questions were searching, and after each of Peter’s answers he pondered. So far as his knowledge of a car was concerned all was satisfactory; Peter could see that, and he also could see that the Canon himself knew nothing whatever about a car! But about the personal history of the man he was interviewing he was befogged—that was obvious—and he sat with the tips of his slender fingers pressed together, staring down at his blotting-pad.
“You say that you drove down in a car,” he said, lifting his head after a long pause and looking at Peter. “Whose car is it?”
“The car of the man who is willing to give me a reference if one is required,” replied Peter, wondering why such a minor deception suddenly seemed so hateful.
“I see. What is perplexing me a little now,” said the Canon, and he suddenly seemed as if he were in some way taking Peter into his confidence, “is the detail of your life here. There is excellent accommodation over the garage; in the old days my predecessor had a coachman and his family living there. But you—by yourself—I gather that you are a single man . . . The Canon hesitated.
“Oh, that would be all right, sir.” Peter, suddenly seized with a passionate eagerness that the job should be his, spoke with alacrity. He had a friend—Watkins was his friend, there was no deception about that. He would cook for him, do for him, and, if the rooms required any furniture, he, Peter, would provide it. “A few sticks of old things,” he said modestly, “I should be glad to have them decently housed, sir.”
“I see.” The Canon regarded him contemplatively. The man was undoubtedly not telling the whole truth; he had come to that conclusion very early on in the interview. But that he was an honest man, oddly enough the Canon never doubted. There was frankness in the clear gaze that disarmed; a stability and purpose in the well-cut mouth that attracted. Then suddenly the Canon wondered what Peggy and his wife would say when confronted with this addition to the household, and he began to laugh, almost mischievously, like a boy.
He excused himself instantly and rose from his chair. “Before I give you my final answer,” he said, “I should like to have a word with my wife on the subject. I will have a cup of tea sent in to you here. You will be glad of it after the long run down from London. I shall not keep you long”; and the Canon left the room.
As he drank his tea, which old Jane brought in, bustling and trembling with curiosity, Peter walked about the room and wondered why the thought of not getting this job was so intolerable. It would be so gorgeous to live in a quiet, out-of-the-way place like this, doing the garden, and washing and cleaning the car, steeping himself in work that he had jolly well got to do because he was being paid for it. And while he walked about and thought like this, the Canon also walked up and down the narrow dressing-room, with his old head sunk on his breast. The man was a gentleman, and a very well-bred one at that: the keen old eyes had detected the crest on the heavy signet-ring that Peter had stupidly forgotten to remove. And the child was headstrong and wilful. Might not she?—and then the Canon, aghast at his thoughts, stopped walking. He had told this man, John Malcolm—not his own name, of course—that he was coming away to consult his wife. And now, here he was, hidden away in his dressing-room, deliberately plotting to deceive her. He had heard her step in the morning-room, and had quickly hurried away in the opposite direction. What did it mean? The Canon stopped to think. He meant that he—and then he opened his door and, after listening for a moment, went quickly and resolutely down the stairs and back to his study again.
Peter was standing with his back to the door staring out into the garden. The Canon glanced at the powerful figure and then spoke, nervously, clearing his throat a little. “I think that you will suit us, Malcolm,” he said. “There is only one point on which I should like to be absolutely certain. You tell me that you are an unmarried man. That is correct, is it not?”
Peter swung round, and deep down in his eyes something laughed. Now what made the old man ask that again? Had his wife put him up to it? But he couldn’t have seen his wife. Peter had just noticed someone who must be she going down the garden with a basket. “Yes, I am an unmarried man, sir,” he said; “I can swear to that.” As he spoke he stood looking down at the Canon almost apologetically. Now what would be the next question? How he loathed telling these half-truths! It had been such a relief to be able to reply really frankly to the last.
But that was really all the Canon wanted to know, and he parted pleasantly with Peter, saying that as soon as he could conveniently be ready they would expect him. He watched the tall figure striding down the drive, and as soon as it had turned the corner he crossed the room and locked the door. And then he fell very quietly, and a little stiffly, on to his knees.
There was no doubt that the parish was enormously intrigued at the engagement of a chauffeur by the Rectory people. “Such a fine-looking man, too!” as Mrs. Granger exclaimed; Mrs. Granger who was so relieved at this new turn of affairs that she could hardly believe it.
“Damned insolent swine!” Mr. Granger was ferreting about on his writing-table. “Nearly knocked me down this morning as he came barging out of the gate.” Mr. Granger spoke with the bitterness of hell in his soul. Those gloriously, bewilderingly happy drives with her, all alone, and now nothing in front of him but the drab dreariness of these endless days with the woman he was beginning to hate. As Mr. Granger ferreted his mind began to work evilly. He would see her somehow: nothing should stop him.
“Can I find anything for you, Basil?” With the obtuseness of the very stupid, Mrs. Granger was approaching her husband timidly. Her relieved soul was reaching out towards him again. With the installation of this chauffeur those dreadful nightmares of solitary drives would have to cease. And there was no doubt that lately Basil had been nicer to her. Twice if not three times lately he had kissed her. Certainly it had been just before he had started off with Peggy for a long day out in the country, but still—he would not have kissed her if he had not wanted to. Poor Mrs. Granger! Half mad with joy at the prospect of what was just ahead of him, Mr. Granger would have kissed the very plain woman who came by the day if she had been in the way just at that moment. But now the fog was down on his soul again. He detested this woman who was his wife. Probably she had run to Mrs. Stallard with tales of his prolonged absences, and that was what had decided them to get Peggy an attendant.
“Get out of the way, can’t you?” he said roughly. And then, with his hand on the carved knob of one of the smoothly running drawers of the desk, “What on earth have you got on?” he said. “Surely at your age one doesn’t get oneself up like that.” He turned again, sending the drawer in with a run.
Mrs. Granger stood, just looking at him. Did she look so fearfully old, then, that the jumper suit was entirely out of place? She had thought that a little change, a little freshness in her dress. . . . But you couldn’t be so old if you could feel with this extremity of anguish, could you? thought Mrs. Granger, just standing and staring. Old people got their feelings blunted—they didn’t feel as if their souls were being torn out of them with red-hot pincers, did they? But perhaps they did. . . .
“Clear out, can’t you?” Mr. Granger was almost shouting now, and a dreadful red mist was wavering about in front of his eyes. He was visualizing Peter Wolversley as he had last seen him, sitting rather low in the driving-seat with his two leathered hands on the nickel-plated wheel. And there had been a sudden clench of strong white teeth over a well-cut lower lip as Peter had swerved abruptly. “Damned fool!” He had only muttered the words; chauffeurs don’t swear at near neighbours who get in the way when they are driving, they only smile rather apologetically and touch their peaked caps. But Mr. Granger had sensed the irritation inside the plate-glass windows, and in some obscure way it reacted dreadfully on him. He would get even with the insolent devil. What right had a man like that to drive about with the girl he loved, adored? He was not fit to breathe the same air. Boxed up inside plate glass like that! Who knows what might not . . . Mr. Granger flung himself down in his chair as Mrs. Granger went quietly out of the room.
Meanwhile the man in question was up in his funny little sitting-room laughing. “Watkins, I’ve nearly killed that poisonous little swine who’s always hanging about here,” he said. “No, never mind the gaiters; I’ve got to go out again at eleven. Pity I didn’t quite, don’t you think so, Watkins?”
“Oh, sir, this is killing me!” Watkins rose from his knees with a duster in his hand. “I’ve got off most of the dust, I think. To see you ’ounded about—there’s no other word for it, ’ounded. To see you come in from that there garden covered in mud and me not able to get you what you could call a bath. Nothing but a miserable dribble of hot water in a dirty galvanized iron tub . . .” Watkins broke off.
“Not dirty, Watkins!” Peter’s eyes were dancing.
“Not what you would call dirty, sir, but what I calls dirty,” replied Watkins with extreme dignity.
Peter sat silent for a minute or two. In a sense he understood what his servant must be feeling. But yet—“Look here, Watkins,” he said suddenly, “I wish you’d try and look at this whole affair rather differently. You’ve been simply gorgeous about it up to a certain point. I mean, just look at the way you’ve fixed me up here, and the way you cook for me and do for me: I might just as well still be in my chambers for the comfort I live in, barring, of course, the bath.” Peter twinkled. “But I hate to feel that you’re resenting it all for me. Look here, Watkins, have you or have you not had positively to shake me every morning to wake me when you bring my tea in; just tell me that.”
“Yes, sir.” Watkins, recalled to a sense of his position, was standing to attention.
“Have you or have you not heard me turn in at ten, and, so far as you were aware, sleep like a log till seven o’clock the next morning? Now then, Watkins, own up to it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And yet you resent anything for me, when instead of being in hell I’m . . .” And Peter got up abruptly from his chair and walked over to the funny little lattice window, and stood there staring out of it.
And Watkins, seeing him standing there, saw that his master was deeply moved. “Upset, that’s what he is, and it’s me that’s done it,” he said to himself with profoundest gloom.
But Peter had turned round again, and was putting his gay bandana handkerchief back into his pocket. “So you see, Watkins,” he said, “that all I ask you to do now is to rejoice with me, as you have done most things with me for the last twelve years. You’ve got a master who’s sane again, after having been pretty nearly the other thing. What does it matter if he’s got to do what he’s told for a bit? Eh, Watkins?”
“I resents it for you, sir,” replied Watkins stolidly.
“Very nice of you, Watkins, but quite unnecessary. And now—by Jove!”—Peter glanced swiftly at the watch on his wrist and then shot a quick glance towards the house. There she was, by Jove! waiting—“I’m late, Watkins,” he said. “What do you bet I get the sack?”
“Nothing, sir,” said Watkins drily, as he heard the heavy boots go clattering down the narrow wooden stairs. And then as the slamming of the door and the buzz of the self-starter sounded, “Dratted little ’ussy!” he said under his breath.
Peggy stood and waited in the porch with the sun shining into her eyes. It was a lovely day in early October, one of those entrancing days that make one feel that there is no country but England in the world. Earlier, the white frost had lain filmily on the lawn, but now it had given place to shimmering stalks of wet grass, and in places there were irregular smudgy patches of dark green where the Canon had trodden carefully across in his galoshes. “Henry, walk on the path, dear,” Mrs. Stallard had shouted, leaning from an upper window round which the Virginia creeper clung in light crimson trails.
“I have got my galoshes on, my love,” the Canon had shouted back without turning his head, and he had waved his little pointed trowel as if in defiance. Mrs. Stallard had drawn in her head again with a smile of quiet satisfaction. Things had got back to their old peace again: she and her husband were at one, as they had been at one for the whole of their joyous married life. The coming of the chauffeur had in some mysterious way brought peace in its train. They were no longer distressed and harassed by the thought of the girl under their care careering wildly over the country with no one to look after her. Malcolm was a thoroughly trustworthy and reliable man, and evidently knew his job from beginning to end. He seemed contented in his little cottage, and his friend, Watkins, did all that was necessary in the way of cooking and looking after him. Certainly there had been a little gossip in the kitchen at first. Apparently Malcolm lived on the fat of the land. “Fowls, and sausages, and cream every day,” as old Jane had confided to her mistress. “And Trigwell says that it’s as much as his life is worth to ever speak of a bit of foreign meat, ma’am.”
But Mrs. Stallard had quietly put her foot down on any talk of this kind. And she had taken her old nurse into her confidence about it, just a very little. “The Canon and I both agree, Jane,” she had said, “that Malcolm is an unusually refined and superior man. What he chooses to eat is not our affair, any more than what we choose to eat is his. Don’t encourage any gossip that you may hear in the village: that sort of thing can do such endless harm: you know it as well as I do.”
So old Jane, always staunchly loyal, had firmly combated any of the ideas—and there were many floating about in the village—that the Rectory chauffeur was a lord in disguise in love with Miss Peggy. And as old Jane was on the spot, and therefore ought to know what she was talking about, the strange appearance of a van of furniture from the best shop in Lewes, and the undoubted luxury in which the chauffeur lived, soon became matters of not very much importance.
But Mrs. Stallard had been more curious than she admitted to her old nurse. “Henry, he is undoubtedly a gentleman,” she had exclaimed, when Peter, meeting her for the first time outside the garage where he was cleaning the car, had straightened himself and replied briefly and courteously to her inquiry as to whether he found his quarters comfortable.
“Well, he may be, my dear,” the Canon had replied, conscious of a very uncomfortable twinge of conscience. Had he done right after all? “But still,” he went on, “gentlepeople are found in all branches of work nowadays, my dear. And if Malcolm is really and truly a gentleman in the best sense of the word, he will be all the more likely to carry out his duties faithfully and conscientiously.”
“Yes, but . . .” And then Mrs. Stallard fell silent. After all, why anticipate what would probably never happen. Peggy, like all these modern young girls, was as hard as nails. And, as her husband truly said, the fact that Malcolm was a gentleman in the best sense of the word made everything perfectly all right. So Mrs. Stallard, in the relief from an incessant worry and irritation, decided to put any question of undesirability or unsuitability away from her. The relief of being able to let that girl go off for hours without having to worry about her all the time! She and the Canon seemed to have got back at last to their old placidity and happiness, and that with the very welcome addition of five guineas a week! She had smiled as she had stroked her husband on the arm, and told him that he was very sensible as he always was.
But as Peggy stood and waited in the porch with the sun shining into her eyes she felt very far from placid. Malcolm was late: independent brute! And you could never get anything out of him when you went for him—that was the worst of it.
No, you never could. There had been one or two little encounters between them since Peter had taken up this job. Peggy did not care for dependents unless she took a fancy to them, or unless they grovelled to her. Old Jane grovelled and slaved for her, and Peggy repaid it by a friendly patronage that enchanted old Jane. But to Peter she had taken a violent dislike directly she looked at him.
“You remind me of . . She had looked at him fixedly from under her faintly pencilled eyebrows. “Of . . . who is it, Uncle Henry?”
“I don’t know, my dear,” replied the Canon, thankful that Peggy had not seen Malcolm until he was safely installed with his furniture. Otherwise there would soon have been an end of him: the Canon saw that very plainly.
“I do! It’s of a disgustingly insulting man I once met at a dance. That’s it!” Peggy’s head was nodding sagely.
“Oh, well . . . Yes, that will do, Malcolm; we need not keep you.” The Canon was smiling propitiatingly. The child was unnecessarily brusque and hard, he thought. “Why do you speak so harshly, my little girl,” he said kindly, as Peter left the room. “It costs us nothing to be courteous to those in our employ.”
“I loathe all men except you, Uncle Henry,” said Peggy; and as she spoke her young face took on a very bitter look. “They are all frauds and beasts. And Malcolm reminds me of the biggest beast of the lot. It was a man I rather liked the look of at a dance, a Sir Peter Wolversley, who shoots big game and things. And he turned his back on me: pig and hog!” Peggy scowled again.
“Oh, my dear child!” The Canon looked helplessly pained.
“Yes, if I could only meet him again, I’d kill him. I’d—I’d—oh, Uncle Henry, don’t look at me like that!” Peggy, suddenly penitent, ran to the old clergyman’s side. “I’ve got a devil inside me; I know it—I feel it there. It boils out when I think of men and of what pigs they are. I hate the lot—I’ll never marry one as long as I live. Do you hear?” Peggy was staring, defiant and wide-eyed.
And the Canon thought, mildly and with a good deal of justification, that she would never have the opportunity to do so if she looked and behaved as she was doing then. But he was too kind to say so; besides, there was a side of Peggy that no one but he ever saw. The side that made her, after a moment or two, lift her face penitently to his and kiss him gently. But now, with the sun in her eyes and kept waiting, she was cross.
And she showed it as Peter got leisurely but neatly out of his seat and held the curved door open for her.
“You’re late,” she said shortly, as she stooped to get in, showing a great deal of flesh-coloured stocking as she did so. “I do wish you’d get your watch put right.”
“Yes, madam.” Peter knew exactly how to settle a woman in a car; he had done it too often to make the slightest mistake. And Peggy recognized his skill and felt slightly reconciled to him. After all, he had such nice hands and did everything so just right. The rug all tucked in round her, her bag picked up and put in the corner of the seat.
“Thank you,” she said, and said it more graciously than usual. “Now we’re going to London; get along as quickly as you can, please.”
“London!” Peter glanced swiftly down at the dial on his wrist. “You’ve left it a little late, haven’t you?”
“A little late, madam.” Peggy was nettled, and she set her lips stiffly.
“Madam,” said Peter, and he said it with his eyes on the girl inside the car. And somehow that glance set up a little throb of fear somewhere far away in Peggy. He shut the door quietly and spoke again as he swung himself into his seat. “I will just stop at the gate,” he said; “and tell my friend that I shall not be back to dinner.”
This was impertinent. Peggy thought it over as the big car came to a throbbing standstill underneath the lattice windows. “Shan’t be back till eight o’clock or so, Watkins.” Peter was shouting up at the little check-curtains. And Watkins, who was just behind the same check-curtains, protruded a smooth head and said, “Very well.” “Not even a ‘sir,’” he groaned to himself, retreating into the tiny kitchen. “And what does she want to drag him up to London for, dratted little ’ussy?” Watkins was in a thoroughly bad temper as he started on his day’s work.
As the big car swung noiselessly out of the gate Peggy sat very still in it, and looked at the broad shoulders just in front of her. For, for the first time since Malcolm had been in her employment, she was looking at him as a man. There was something rather disgusting in connecting anyone like your chauffeur with sex, she thought—servants were things, not men. At any rate, to you. Of course they had their own affairs; they walked out and did queer things like that. But you never thought of it. Yet somehow this man made you think of him. He had opinions: for instance, he had practically insisted on stopping to tell that Watkins creature that he would not be in to dinner. Another servant would have metaphorically shrugged his shoulders and left it at that. Servants weren’t hungry, at least not officially. Of course she would give him some money to get lunch at an A.B.C. or somewhere like that! He could drop her at her Club and then garage the car.
Peter had London at his finger’s ends, and as a matter of fact had often met women at Peggy’s Club, so that he drove the car into the beautiful Square without an instant’s hesitation. He loved driving a car: it was like some living thing under his hands, quivering and responding to his slightest touch. He smiled as he got out of his seat and walked with his quick stride to open the door for Peggy.
“If you will fetch me from here at five,” she said, “I will be ready. Please do not be late. Here is half a crown for you to garage the car with, and something also for your lunch.”
“Thank you, madam.” Peter’s amused eyes were down-bent. What a stroke of luck! He would have heaps of time to look up Ralph—a thing he had been longing to do for the last three weeks. He closed the door respectfully, and as Peggy walked up the wide stone steps of the Club he was back in his seat in a couple of strides. Now for it! He pressed an impatient first finger on the self-starter.
Ralph was in; jubilantly and rapturously in, and just beginning lunch in his excellent service flat. “I’ll have another one up for you in two two’s,” he said. “Do a bunk into my bedroom while I ’phone down for it. That’s it. All clear!” He shouted it cheerfully to Peter, and the latter strolled out of the luxurious bedroom, a cigarette between his lips, and cast himself down into an easy chair.
“Gad, I’m going to have a bath while I’m here,” he said. “That’s the one snag, I’ve not got a proper bathroom. Jove, I’m hungry too!” He got up and strobed to the table. “Well, Ralph, how do you think I look?” He sat down and, tipping his chair a little on its back legs, began to unfold the beautifully glazed napkin beside his plate.
“Look! Well, I shouldn’t have known you.” Ralph was frankly staring at his friend. The sunken eyes with the great dark circles round them, the funny pinched look at the root of the nose—where had they gone? Here was health, robust and unmistakable. “What on earth does old Watkins think of it?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s no end braced,” said Peter, and his eyes twinkled as he spoke. “Except, of course, that it sticks in his throat that I’ve got to do as I’m told.”
“But do you?” Ralph was laughing down into his plate.
“Up to a certain point I do,” said Peter, and drew the napkin swiftly across his mouth once or twice. “But oh, my God, Ralph, how you could stand that girl! I know it’s all off with you or I wouldn’t talk about her. But, oh . . .” Peter twisted his chair a little and sat sideways in it. “Jove, I’ll have her across my knee before I’ve done with her,” he said. “That’s exactly what she wants—a thoroughly good spanking.”
Ralph was laughing joyously with his head thrown a little backwards.
“My dear fellow, she isn’t even a lady,” Peter went on. “She hasn’t the remotest idea how to speak to a servant, for instance. It’s pathetic. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t affect me; the car’s a beauty, and, as you know, I love driving a car, and I sleep like a log from eleven to seven, and Watkins looks after me like a dream. And the Canon’s an old dear. I help him a lot in the garden. But . . . that girl . . .!” Peter groaned dramatically.
“She’s a lady all right, Peter.” Ralph spoke a little resentfully as he heaved himself out of his chair and walked to the sideboard. “What’ll you drink? I admit she can be a bit short in her speech, but that’s because she has been so horribly spoiled. You’ve no conception . . .” Ralph paused with his finger on the cut-glass stopper of the decanter. “What’s yours? Whisky? Brandy? Beer?”
“Water, thanks. My dear Ralph, the fat would be in the fire if I went back smelling of strong drink.” Peter was laughing. “Thanks, Perrier, if you have it. Well, don’t let’s talk about my fair employer: I see quite enough of her as it is. What’s the news here. Anyone asked after me yet?”
“Heaps. And I’ve choked off the lot by telling them that you’ve gone down into the country for a rest-cure. No letters, no telegrams, nothing. And they all said that it was a jolly good thing: that you’d just about taken it in time. And so you have; I never saw such a change in any man.” Ralph was standing at his friend’s elbow tipping the narrow green bottle over the squat Georgian tumbler.
“Yes, I feel better. In fact”—and Peter sat staring at the tumbler between his brown fingers—“I don’t feel in the least like the same man. It’s extraordinary, the difference three weeks of solid sleep have made to me. I shouldn’t have believed it possible.”
“What do you do all the time?”
“Do? Well, I can tell you my day in three minutes. Thanks,” as the cigarettes were pushed across the slippery damask tablecloth. “Well, old Watkins brings me my tea at seven, and I wake—wake, Ralph my boy—after practically nine hours of profoundest slumber. Then I get up and have what is supposed to be a bath. By the way, you won’t mind my having one here before I go, will you? Then I have breakfast—thick willow-pattern plates and cups and saucers, and tablecloths of blue check, awfully pretty. Watkins got them in Lewes, where he got all the furniture, by the way. And then I go and get my orders for the day.” Peter made an involuntary grimace.
“Who gives them to you?” Ralph with one leg thrown across his chair was laughing eagerly.
“She does. Very short we are too. ‘Malcolm, I wish this and that and the other.’ And I say, ‘Yes, madam,’ when I should like to say, ‘Go to hell!’”
Ralph laughed out loud. “But why do you stick it?”
“Because, as I tell you, I feel so gorgeously fit. Also I love the old padre. He’s a perfect dear. There is a Mrs. Padre too, and she’s a dear also, and I think the girl is fearfully on their minds. I gather that money is none too plentiful, and what she pays them helps a lot. But that tearing about the country all alone was getting on their nerves, especially as—and this is quite between ourselves—it wasn’t alone. There’s a man hanging round her; one of those married creatures of uncertain age who’s beginning to find his rather shapeless wife a bore—you know the type.”
“Yes, I know.” Ralph suddenly looked serious. “You know,” he said, “although I’m quite off in that direction, there’s no need for me to tell you that, I often feel anxious about that girl. She is so extraordinarily—extraordinarily—well, how shall I describe it?—sexless. They are nowadays, you know, up to a certain point. It’s all so much a matter of frank discussion and all that. Somehow . . .” And Ralph fell silent.
“Hmm.” Peter was smiling a little sardonically.
“Yes, I know you’ll scoff, and I may be mistaken. But I believe—in fact I have it on very good authority—that she’s getting awfully mixed up with that rotter Barrington Foster. You know him—more money than brains—a dirty little swine I always thought him. Well, no girl with any—with any—any instinct could tolerate a man like that if she knew her way about at all.”
“Oh, he’s a nasty piece of work! In with him, is she?” Peter leant forward and dropped his cigarette ash into the fireplace.
“Yes, I believe so. That’s whom she comes up to town to meet; she’s doing it to-day, you bet.”
“I hope I shan’t run into him: he’ll know me in a minute. And a nasty little cad like that would enjoy giving me away.” Peter was reaching out for another cigarette. “Well, Ralph, if you’ll excuse me I’ll go and wash. And when I’m clean for the first time for three weeks I’ll come back, and, if I may, in your dressing-gown. Then I can shed these beastly things for a couple of hours. I haven’t got to be back at the Club until five. Oh, my sainted aunt, how I hate going about dressed up like a chucker-out at a third-class cinema!” And Peter with a short laugh sauntered out of the room.
But as he lay smoking and meditating in the gorgeously hot bath, full almost up to the top, and as he scrubbed himself dry with the beautiful Christie’s bath-towel, crunchily hot from the nickel-plated towel-rail, he thought again of what Ralph had told him. In a sense, much as he detested her, Peggy was his property. She was in his care; the Canon and his wife had put her there when they had engaged him as her chauffeur. For him to convey her about to different places where she met decadent undesirables was an abuse of that confidence that they had in him. What was he to do about it? Rolled up in Ralph’s Paisley silk dressing-gown and smelling deliciously of lavender soap, he came back into the sitting-room determined to find out a little more about Peggy Fielding. “Clean for the first time for weeks,” he said, as he settled himself luxuriously down in the big easy chair drawn up close to the fire. “I’m afraid the bath will want scraping, Ralph, my boy. Now look here, I haven’t got any too long, but I should be glad if you would give me a few sidelights on the character of the young lady that I have to drive about,” he said. “I know under the circumstances it seems rather rotten to ask you, but you know also that with me anything you say would be absolutely in confidence.”
“Yes, I know.” Ralph hesitated a little and blew a few rather nervous puffs of smoke out from under his short moustache. Then he sat up in his chair and leant forward a little. “It’s just this,” he said. “She’s—I know she’s hard, and all that; haven’t I had bitter experience of it?” He smiled a little wryly. “But it’s the hardness of ignorance, if you know what I mean. I don’t believe that girl has ever had the glimmering of even the beginning of a feeling of—well . . .” Ralph laughed rather awkwardly—“You know what I mean. It’s all with her a matter of derision and mockery. She’s contemptuous of love. Never having experienced the slightest beginnings of it, she thinks it’s all imagination and stupidity. And that’s why I’m afraid for her. She’s not got the ordinary warning instincts of the average girl. She’ll go headlong in where another girl would scent danger and keep out of it.” Ralph stopped speaking, and threw the end of his cigarette into the fire.
Peter watched it flame and fizzle away, and then turned to his friend. “You mean she’s got this modern idea; pals and all that,” he said, “and a man’s a fool if he happens to get a bit wrought up?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. All very well so far as it goes. But it won’t carry the world on very far I’m afraid, Ralph, my boy, that’s the bother of it! However”—Peter got slowly up out of his chair and stretched luxuriously, and then sat down in it again—“in a way I’m glad you told me that,” he said. “I think a bit better of her anyhow. I do so abhor the modern female creature who’ll get every ounce of emotion and sensation, or whatever you like to call it, out of everything, and then, when you’re beginning to get down to brass tacks, feigns fear and flutterings of outraged virtue, etc. It’s so damned dishonest to begin with.” And Peter leaned forward and stuffed with his toe a glowing coal back in between the narrow bars.
“Yes, she’s honest; I always felt that about her, even when I was in hell about it all,” replied Ralph frankly. “But, O Lord, how thankful I am that it all turned out as it did, Peter!” and Ralph turned a glowing and transformed face on his friend.
And, with a little secret smile playing about his nice mouth, Peter settled down to listen to Ralph. But, as a couple of hours later he trod down the shallow stairs, and turned the corner round to the garage where he had left the car, he wondered anew how any man could be so besotted as the man he had just left. Surely Ralph must realize that every poor fool contemplating matrimony felt exactly the same. And how it almost invariably turned out a failure! Peter looked very sardonic as he steered out of the crowded garage yard.
Peggy was ready for him when he got to the Club. Waiting for him, standing alone, as Peter was thankful to see, under an umbrella held by an attentive and minute pageboy. There was something alike about the two faces, he thought, as he got out of his seat and came round to open the door—something cherubic and unconcerned.
“I’ll drive,” said Peggy shortly, as she stepped stoopingly up into the car from under the umbrella. “You get in behind, please.”
This was unexpected and equally unpleasant. Peter had the fierce dislike that all men have for being driven. Especially by Peggy, as she drove extremely recklessly. He himself was an excellent and therefore very careful driver. He had no taste for being cut to bits by plate glass. So this required immediate action. “I think you had better wait until we are clear of the traffic, madam,” he said; “it is extremely slippery, and you have to be very careful of your corners. If you will allow me, I will take the wheel until we are out of Croydon.” And, shutting the curved door with a little decisive snap, he walked round to get into the car again.
But when he got there he found Peggy sitting stiffly in front of the wheel. “I am going to drive,” she said, and she said it with her eyes blazing. “Get in behind when I tell you to.”
But Peter held the door open, and suddenly there was a dangerous look on his mouth. “Move along and let me get in,” he said quietly.
“I will not.” Peggy was reaching out for the self-starter.
“But you shall!” Suddenly Peter thrust his gloved hands underneath her knees and pushed her along the seat, half-lifting her. Then he stepped in quickly and slammed the door behind him, turning his head to back a little. “Thanks!” He was touching his peaked cap to the policeman at the corner.
“How dare you!” Peggy was breathing heavily. And yet “How dare you” sounded so melodramatic and stupid. The words and thoughts failed her. This man—her chauffeur—her paid . . .
“I am sorry.” Peter, his eyes still on the road, spoke shortly and a little apologetically. “But you see, something had to be done at once. You can’t fight in front of a row of chauffeurs, especially in a saloon car. They can see and it isn’t dignified. But I do not consider you a sufficiently careful driver to get us safely out of this traffic on these sticky roads. There, did you see that bus? It was very nearly into that island.” Peter slackened his pace a little and kept his eyes straight ahead of him.
But Peggy was not looking. Her small face was white with fury. This man—her own car—how dared he! How dared he! She would have him dismissed—the very moment she got back. She was stammering, almost incoherent with passion. But Peter, absorbed in the job on hand, really paid very little attention. Let the little cat rave, he thought, threading his way carefully down Knightsbridge: directly they got on to the Croydon by-pass he would let her take the wheel. But be flung headlong in and out of heavy L.C.C. trams at this hour of the evening, he would not. He had done it once with her, and had arrived home in a quivering condition of nerves that had seriously threatened his night’s sleep. Not again—not even if she hit him across the face—a thing that she was dying to do, if he was not very much mistaken. He laughed noiselessly in his throat as the powerful car fled through Streatham.
By the Croydon Aerodrome he stopped, slackening down noiselessly. “Now, madam, if you will allow me I will give up my place to you,” he said. “But I would ask you to go carefully, especially through Ashdown Forest. The curves are bad there and the roads are fearfully slippery.” He opened the door on the off-side and stepped out backwards.
And the instant he was out Peggy had flung herself across the seat and let in the clutch with a jerk. And Peter stood in the middle of the road, and saw the rapidly disappearing tail-light, with a very bitter curse on his lips. Gad, he would not leave High Plashings until he had brought her to her knees! Fortunately he had plenty of money with him, and he would either pick up a taxi in Purley, or go on to Little Churcham by train. But the devilment of her; the spite! Ah, she had been a fool to rouse him like that; there were little blue patches at the root of his nose as he walked. Peter Wolversley in a temper was a dreadful thing, and he was in one now, tumultuous and overwhelming. He struggled for self-control and groped in his pocket for his cigarette-case. That would help. He lighted one with trembling fingers and drew in a few uneven gulps of smoke. Yes, he felt better. He flicked away the match and began to walk.
Before he had taken more than half a dozen steps he heard the sticky kiss of great tyres behind him. And a friendly chauffeur leant out of a Rolls-Royce. “Lost your car, sonnie?” he said. “Can I help you to find it?”
“Yes, you can.” Peter Wolversley could always make up his mind in a hurry. “I drive for a she-devil and she’s left me standing on the road,” he said. “If you catch her up I’ll give you a sovereign. Had a bit of luck on the St. Leger,” he added hastily, seeing the other’s look of astonishment.
As they tore through Purley, Peter began to enjoy himself. “I’ll just about catch her at East Grinstead if she’s going the pace I think she is,” he thought, “and I’ll get the bobby by the Town Hall to stop her as she turns the corner. Probably she’s forgotten to put the lights on; at any rate, I hope so.”
Luck was with them, and before East Grinstead too. It was at Felbridge that Peter suddenly spied the car ahead of them at a standstill. A policeman with a notebook in his hand was standing by the open door. Peter could see Peggy leaning out, looking a little anxious.
“Thanks; you’ve done it. Don’t mention it.” Peter was out of the Rolls, and the chauffeur was left staring at the note in his hand. “This is my lady,” he said, and he walked quietly up to the policeman; “I missed the car farther back. Is anything wrong?”
“Yes, no lights, and very insubordinate when I speaks to her,” said the policeman, evidently extremely ruffled. “Comes tearing along, endangering life and property, and then refuses to give me her address. Such people shouldn’t be allowed licences if I had my way. You let your ‘shover’ drive you home, miss, or I shall be obliged to make a court case of it.” And the policeman snorted and fiddled with his notebook.
“Yes, I’ll carry on now. Just get into the back seat, please, madam.” Peter was speaking quietly and was carefully looking over Peggy’s head. He held the door open for her, punctilious and respectable, even through his anger. “Thanks, constable. Good night.” And Peter was back in his place, his hands on the nickel-plated wheel.
They passed through Ashdown Forest in completest silence. The game was so utterly his that Peter felt his anger cooling a little. There had been something strangely woeful and childish about the look of Peggy’s neat back as she had stepped up into the back seat of the car. What was she doing now? he wondered, derisively curious. It had given her a fright being stopped by that policeman. Stout fella! Peter would like to have tipped him well if he had dared.
At the corner of Ashdown Forest, where the turn came into the long avenue of trees, he slackened pace a little. And as he slackened he heard Peggy’s voice behind him. “Please stop, Malcolm,” she said.
Peter stopped instantly, steering the beautiful car to the edge of the road. It was absolutely quiet all round them and pitch dark, except for the powerful head-lights that blazed along the road ahead. A rabbit suddenly came into view, terrified and dazzled, and then swerved blindly into the undergrowth, growing deep on either side of them. “I will make her afraid of me like that.” Peter suddenly felt the thought rising in him—rising as such thoughts do, apparently from nowhere.
“I want to say that I’d rather you didn’t tell them at home about my leaving you behind.” Peggy’s voice came small and quenched from the darkness behind.
Ah, a lead! Peter took instant advantage of it. “That is impossible,” he said, “because I must give a reason for wanting to go. Nothing would induce me to remain after what has happened.”
“Oh.” In the silence that followed—a silence like the sudden putting out of a light—Peter wondered if he had gone too far. He did not want to go at all—now; he had something to do first.
“They will think it so odd,” said Peggy; and she said it in the same small, rather desolate voice.
“Not in the least, when they hear what has happened,” replied Peter; and he spoke still without turning. What an odd situation it was! he thought drily. She was afraid—he had already made her afraid of him.
“Please say that you won’t tell them,” said Peggy. “I like living with them, and if they begin to think that I am going to be a bother they will get rid of me. They like you too, and if they think I am going to begin getting out with my chauffeurs it will make them more keen that I should go. If I say . . . if I say . . .” Peggy stopped dead.
“Yes?” Peter still had his hands on the wheel, and his inscrutable eyes were fixed on the waving bracken, made silver by the fierce headlights.
“If I say that I am sorry that I behaved as I did . . .” she said, and she choked a little as she spoke. “I know that it isn’t usual to apologize to one’s chauffeur, but . . .” She broke off.
“The circumstances are unusual, and that demands an unusual remedy,” said Peter; and he let go of the wheel and, turning, stared squarely into the darkness of the car. “That excuses anything unorthodox in the apology.”
“What apology?” said Peggy, feeling suddenly breathless and odd, and fumbling with damp, gloved fingers.
“The apology that you must give me, if you wish me to remain in your service,” said Peter; and he still stared into the darkness, the darkness that framed like a velvet scroll the delicate little frightened face that he could see, and that Peggy did not know that he could see. The light from the head-lamps lit it up vaguely and faintly. She was badly frightened, thought Peter, wickedly glad of it. Her eyes were like the eyes of that rabbit, glancing and uncertain.
“Well, I am sorry,” said Peggy in a sort of burst. “Have it that it’s all right, will you, Malcolm?” She leant forward as if she was trying to reach out for him. And Peter turned instantly back into his seat and put his finger on the self-starter.
“Certainly, madam,” he said quietly, and the powerful car stole noiselessly on again.
But Peggy sat back in her seat and breathed once or twice with an odd, suffocating sensation. Why, after all, had she apologized? He could easily have gone, and she could have got an ordinary man who would have let her do as she liked. This Malcolm! She stared at the rather pointed ears showing clearly under the peaked cap. She hated him, fearfully she hated him.
For the next few days Peggy did not go out in the car at all; and two people unfeignedly rejoiced at it, Mr. Mason and Mr. Granger. Peter was indifferent, although it gave him plenty of time to work in the garden; and he and the Canon stood together in the pale September sunshine and surveyed the enormous amount that there was to be done.
“We shall never get it all done, Malcolm.” The Canon was rubbing his muddy, gloved hands together and smiling a little wistfully.
“Oh yes, we shall, sir!” Peter laughed, stretching his long back. The strenuous hours of real manual labour gave him an extraordinary feeling of well-being.
“If expense were no object”—the Canon spoke with the loving absorption of the true gardener—“I should like, Malcolm, to plant at least a thousand bulbs on that bank over there. I got a dozen or two at Woolworth’s the last time I went into Eastbourne and they did excellently. Woolworth’s bulbs do very well in our Sussex soil.”
“Woolworth’s!” Peter’s mind conjured with the name. Yes, that was the place Watkins was so keen on; he persisted on buying Peter’s back studs there; and even his handkerchiefs for this mad escapade, large, brightly coloured ones for the ridiculous sum of sixpence. Peter had stared at them in amazement. “They must be made in Germany!” he had exclaimed. “Burn the brutal thing, Watkins—I won’t use it.”
“Oh no, I assure you, sir . . .” Watkins had been very positive on the subject; and as Peter drew out the offending object at that very moment, he thought wildly that he would somehow buy up the whole of the Eastbourne Woolworth’s stock of bulbs. This dearest old man! Such a simple, easily pleased old man! Why shouldn’t he have every mortal bulb that he wanted? Peter’s mind fled back to his own garden, the garden that had belonged to his father, cross old man. Rows of hot-houses, regiments of gardeners . . . and all for what? Peter had let the house directly he had succeeded to it. Nothing would have induced him to have buried himself in Devonshire, smothered with servants, and bored with futile entertaining. No! Peter turned with relish back to the idea of Woolworth’s.
“Shall I run you in to Eastbourne this afternoon, sir?” he said. “It is odd that I too should have been commissioned to buy bulbs there for a gentleman that I know. If you could choose them for me among yours—perhaps, a thousand this gentleman said, and he left the choice to me.”
“A thousand! Oh, Malcolm, indeed I should enjoy it,” exclaimed the Canon “But—what about the car? Miss Peggy . . .?”
“I don’t think she wants to go out in it to-day, sir,” said Peter, a little drily. He was immensely amused at the turn that things had taken. She could not face him, could not meet his eyes. A good beginning. Somewhere right away deep down in him Peter laughed cruelly. She had been a little fool to leave him on the road like that.
So, directly after lunch, the Canon, with all the excited joy of a child, took his place by Peter’s side on the front seat of the car. They were to have tea on the way home—a Thermos, and cups, and things to eat, were neatly packed up in a basket at the back. Mrs. Stallard saw them off, joyful and smiling at the pleasure that her Henry was going to have. Peggy would not come to the door, but stood in the drawing-room frowning.
“Why don’t you go, too?” She had asked the question before lunch, standing and staring—rather vacantly Mrs. Stallard had thought—into the fire.
“Because I think Henry would enjoy it almost better without me,” Mrs. Stallard had replied, busily stooping over the fire and settling a wandering log with the tongs. “He seems so to lean on Malcolm, to find him such excellent company. We really are very fortunate to have secured such a man.”
“Um . . .!” Peggy was propping her head up against the mantelpiece and still staring into the fire. “He drives well, certainly,” she conceded, rather grudgingly. “Well, Aunt Harriet, I shall be out to tea. Don’t worry if I come in late.”
“No, dear.” Mrs. Stallard always rigorously refrained from asking her young guest where she was going; and she did not ask it now, although she wondered. She herself had an afternoon full up to the brim with Parish affairs, leading off with a meeting of the Mothers’ Union. She hurried off to get ready for it.
And Peggy, left alone, still stood staring into the fire, and then, with an indescribably weary gesture, she pushed up all her short yellow hair until it stuck out like a mop. And then, standing on her toes and looking into a glass over the mantelpiece, she combed it all down smoothly again with a little orange-coloured comb that she pulled out of an embroidered case in her pocket. Then she turned and went out of the room. Time for this stupid walk. Why had she said that she would go for it?
Mr. Granger was waiting for her just beyond the Church. This was where Peggy generally picked him up when she took him out with her in the car. His own house was right at the other end of the village, and he had left his wife busily preparing to go to the meeting of the Mothers’ Union. They had tea at the Mothers’ Union, so he was quite safe until six, and he had told her that he was going to walk to Forest Row so that she was not to be worried if he was a little late. Now he stood, trembling and twitching with an unquenchable excitement at the thought of seeing the girl that he loved. The little tiny thing—the little fragile thing. . . .
Peggy did look both tiny and fragile as she came along the country lane swinging a stick. Her small felt hat sat down low over her wide grey eyes, and the golden brown suède coat buckled her in round her hips and showed the slenderness of her. Her legs were slim and were frankly displayed up to the knees, as is the fashion. She looked exactly like a rather solemn child of twelve going to school.
“Here you are!” Mr. Granger took a few steps forward and lifted his hat with a damp hand. The sweet freshness of her! He felt quite mad for a second or two.
“Yes, I almost didn’t come.” Peggy spoke coolly. Somehow Mr. Granger seemed to have shrunk. Men oughtn’t to be minute like that; they ought to be tall and broad. They oughtn’t to bubble eagerness, either; they ought to be cold and distant. Stupid little man! She stood swinging her stick and staring at him.
“Where shall we go?” Mr. Granger was devouring her with his eyes.
“I don’t care. Anywhere where we can be out. What a gorgeous day!” Peggy was still swinging her stick and staring at him. What idiots men looked when they were keen on you! Mr. Granger and Barrington Foster had the same sort of look about them. Like Waggles looked when you were having tea and he was in the drawing-room, and thought he was going to get a bit of something. Dribblingly keen. Peggy suddenly felt disgusted and out of temper with everything.
“I say, I think I shan’t come after all,” she suddenly exclaimed, and she turned and stared back the way she had come.
“Oh, no, don’t. Yes, you must.” Mr. Granger was suddenly imploring.
“Well, then, don’t look like you’re doing,” said Peggy impatiently. “Look sensible and ordinary. Let’s go for a decent walk and talk about sensible things. I’ve told you heaps of times that you only make me cross when you behave stupidly. Either be sensible or I shall go back. Do you hear?” Peggy set her young mouth firmly and squarely, and Mr. Granger heard and was instantly amenable. With the cunning of the weakly feeble he felt that he would get his opportunity later. He would talk about the chauffeur, he thought, and find out how the land lay there.
“How do you mean, that he’s not what he pretends he is?” Up to that moment Peggy had been thinking about something else. But this sentence broke in on, and joined up with, some secret thought of her own. “How do you mean?” she asked again, and stopped still to stare at the man beside her.
“Well, he is undoubtedly of a different class from what he pretends to be,” replied Mr. Granger; and felt out for, and tremulously tried to fondle, the small, gloved hand that hung close to his.
“Don’t,” said Peggy sharply, and she hit out with the same small hand.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Granger humbly; but the swift look that came into his eyes was not humble. They were just on the borders of Ashdown Forest: he would take her to tea at a cottage he knew near there, and then they would walk back through the Forest by another way. And when he had got her into the very deepest and darkest part of the Forest he would kiss her. The longing to kiss her had been growing on Mr. Granger’s obsessed mind until it had become a mania. That little, slightly open, childish mouth, he would kiss it until it shrieked for breath.
“Well, go on.” They were walking on again. Peggy was kicking the end of her stick along in front of her with her square brown toes. Mr. Granger was just beginning to be interesting. She said so, cruelly.
“I said that he was undoubtedly of a different class from what he pretended to be,” said Mr Granger, wincing heavily. “He is a gentleman, I am sure of it.”
“So am I sure.” The words were on Peggy’s lips; but she bit them back. “So are heaps of people since the War who take up jobs,” she said aloud. “He knows all about cars; why shouldn’t he drive one and earn some money by it?”
“No reason whatever,” said Mr. Granger. “But I don’t like him driving yours—that’s all.” He set his flaccid mouth bitterly.
“I do; he drives it jolly well,” said Peggy; and she said it cheerfully and carelessly. “Phew, I’m hungry. Didn’t you say that there was a tea-place near here. Let’s have it, shall we?” She smiled engagingly. Somehow Mr. Granger saying that he thought Malcolm was a gentleman had made her like him more. He was one himself, although he was desperately feeble. He ought to know.
Tea was a harmonious meal. Priscilla’s was run by gentlepeople and run beautifully. There was a lovely fire on the open hearth: the low oak-beams flickered and gleamed with the flame of it. “How heavenly the chrysanthemums smell!” Peggy was wrinkling her small nose appreciatively.
“Yes, don’t they?” Mr. Granger was eating a hot, buttered scone with avidity. Like many small men he was greedy; and his incessant and tearing emotion made him hungry, too.
Peggy hardly ate, but what she did eat she ate daintily and like a child, biting it with neat square teeth—tugging at it.
“We shall have to hurry if we’re going to get back before it’s pitch dark.” Peggy spoke with tiny little bits of cream sticking to her top lip. The cake had been perfect, absolutely fresh; she licked the bits off like a contented kitten.
“Yes.” Mr. Granger was looking at her with a funny red glow at the back of his eyes. The little, soft, darling thing, that pink mouth would tremble and shriek before he had done with it. Now to pay and be off. He started off to find the nice friendly lady who ran the place, and because she was a lady did not need to be tipped. Such a mercy, thought Mr. Granger, pocketing the change eagerly.
The run to Eastbourne was an unqualified success. The Canon sat by Peter’s side drinking it all in as eagerly as a child. The country certainly did look extraordinarily beautiful. When they came within sight of the Downs, green and peaceful and only scarred in places with patches of white chalk and great overgrown cart-tracks, the Canon exclaimed in pleasure. “How true it is, Malcolm, that only man is vile!” he said. “God meant His world to be beautiful, and we have made it hideous. We owe Him a great responsibility.”
“Yes,we do, sir.” Peter too was very much enjoying the drive. Peace and kindliness emanated from the man at his side. He had never felt at all towards any man as he felt towards the Canon. It was like coming in contact with something entirely pure. Not a characterless purity either—Peter would have had no use for that—but something that had been tried and found perfect. He steered the car up to the vermilion blatancy of Woolworth’s, feeling exactly as if he were taking a small nephew out for a treat. “The man I spoke of gave me five pounds to spend on bulbs, sir,” he said, “and I should be more than grateful if you would spend it for me. Any kind will do; get just what you think would look nice in your own garden.” And Peter smilingly produced five one-pound notes from a note-case.
“Really, Malcolm, it is a great responsibility.” But as Peter helped the old man out on to the pavement he was beaming with pleasure. “Well, then, shall we say half an hour? I ought to be able to complete my purchases by that time, don’t you think?”
“I should say so, sir.” And Peter, after watching the Canon safely swallowed up in the vortex of perambulators and sticky children, and dragging and excited mothers, steered the car to the opposite corner, and sat there smoking contentedly until such time as the Canon should emerge again.
He did eventually, followed by a staggering and undersized saleswoman; and now they were on their way back again; tea a thing of the past. They had it by the side of the road; both men talking to one another with the freedom of complete equality. The Canon was more and more drawn to the gallant fellow who, for some reason or other, had chosen to mask his real identity under the disguise of a chauffeur. “Ah, that our little girl could win his heart!” he thought to himself with complete frankness. But inwardly the Canon had not much hope of it. A man of this type would above all things covet womanliness and sweetness. Peggy was too hard and self-assertive.
Now they were home again, the friendly porch of High Flashings flooding out light and warmth. Peter had seen his own little windows lighted up, and had thought with pleasure of the excellent dinner he was sure to get. He always dressed for dinner: sure of not being disturbed, he had kept on with it because it pleased Watkins so. Watkins, moving between the dressing-table and the narrow bed, attending on his master, was more like the Watkins of the other life. And if he had to break off now and then and make a bolt for the kitchen, nobody minded. It lent a zest to the whole thing.
But as the car came to a standstill, the ungainly figure of Mr. Mason blotted out the light. “Have you seen Miss Fielding?” he asked eagerly, his rather stringy throat working.
“No,” said Peter rather shortly. He was helping the Canon out, and, that accomplished, had started to grope in the back of the car for the two large brown-paper parcels of bulbs. “Well, she hasn’t come back,” said Mr. Mason importantly, “and Mrs. Stallard is very anxious. Mrs. Granger has been over here,” he said; and he started to follow the Canon into the warm, carpeted hall.
“Mrs. Granger?” repeated the Canon helplessly. “Oh dear! Harriet!” He looked appealingly round for his wife.
“Yes, Henry; but don’t worry, dear.” Mrs. Stallard came through the drawing-room door and laid a loving hand on her husband’s shoulder. “It will be all right. I’ll just speak to Malcolm for a moment. No, don’t you trouble, Mr. Mason, please; if you will just help my husband off with his coat.” And Mrs. Stallard walked out into the porch, shutting the glass door that separated it from the inner hall, with a firm hand.
“It’s this, Malcolm.” Suddenly Mrs. Stallard was also speaking to the chauffeur as to an equal. “Miss Fielding left the house at three, and apparently met Mr. Granger just beyond the church. Neither of them has been seen since. It is now eight o’clock, and Mrs. Granger has just been over for the third time. I very much dislike asking you to go out again, but what can I do? They may be on the road that leads from here to Forest Row. Mr. Granger told his wife that he was going to walk in that direction. If you could go a little way back and see if you could come across them . . . I am extremely sorry . . .” Mrs. Stallard was frightened at the look on Peter’s face. He was fearfully put out: she could see it.
“Certainly.” Peter had his top teeth hard down on his lower lip. No, this should be the end; he was not going to miss his dinner for any girl on the face of the earth. The very last time. He spoke shortly. “Would you be kind enough to send over to the garage and tell my man that I shall not be in for an hour or so,” he said. “Then I can go straight out again without stopping.”
“My man!” Mrs. Stallard watched the rapidly dwindling tail-light circle round the lawn, with her hands clasped quite tightly in front of her. Then she went back to her husband. But not a word to him—not on any account.
But just outside the gate Peter did stop to light his pipe. When he got that boiling feeling of rage inside his head he knew it was the only thing to do. Besides, he was hungry, and it would help. And then he started to go back the way they had come, past the church and on to the road for Forest Row.
But at the white signpost, showing very white indeed in the glare of the fierce headlights, he suddenly decided to turn to the left. People like Mr. Granger would choose a wood for their illicit carryings on; and, at that thought, he suddenly felt a queer twinge of anxiety. Much as he disliked Peggy, he did not want her to come to any real harm. Certainly not at the hands of such a complete worm as Mr. Granger. He went about a mile along the forest road, driving very slowly and keeping a sharp look-out on either side. It was pitch dark and very still, only ahead of him the beautifully metalled surface of the road shone silver. And suddenly, in the middle of the silver, lay something small and white and crumpled. Her handkerchief. Peter instantly slowed down the car and got out.
Yes, he recognized the scent of it; he held it an instant to his nose and then put it in his pocket. Now, then; where was she? He left the car where it was, with all the lights on, and, acting entirely on impulse, plunged into the bracken undergrowth on his right hand. But after a couple of strides in it he realized that without a light he was worse than helpless. He plunged back to the car, guided by the lights of it, and groped in one of the side-pockets for the electric torch that he knew was there. Then he set out again. Eventually Peggy’s sobbing guided him to her, and, with a queer inward smile, he realized how surprised he was that anything so hard could cry. He sent out a reassuring whistle.
She replied with a scream. “If you come anywhere near me I shall kill you,” she shrieked. “I shall tear out your eyes; I shall gouge them out. Go back to your wife, who seems to love you. How she can, I can’t think; it’s only because she doesn’t know what a beast and a hog you are.” Then there was a deathly silence, as though Peggy were holding her breath, and strangling her sobs, lest she should be located.
“It’s I, Malcolm.” Peter was laughing so that he could hardly shout. Granger had struck it all right; there must have been some fur flying. But what a shame! After all she was little more than a child. “It’s only me,” he went on reassuringly, crashing through the bracken with his long, gaitered legs, and sending the little white shaft of light on ahead of him. “I say—what’s happened?” He spoke in concern as he came on a little crumpled heap at his feet.
“It’s my foot—I twisted it somehow.” Peggy turned her small tear-soaked face upwards. “And I’ve lost my handkerchief. Fearful. Could you lend me one?” She was choking and sniffing convulsively.
“I’ve found it.” Peter put the lamp down on the ground and suddenly dropped on one knee. “Here it is. Where’s the damage?” He was feeling dextrously round the square brown shoes.
“This one.” Peggy moved both feet carefully, and Peter was relieved that there was obviously nothing broken. Strained only. He came to the conclusion swiftly as he moved his lean fingers over the bulge on one ankle. “I must first take off your shoe,” he said, “and then carry you back to the car somehow. Hang on to me if it hurts.”
“It does.” Peggy was clutching at his fingers.
“Never mind, it’s only a minute. Don’t hang on to my fingers if you can help it—it makes it more difficult. That’s it.” He had the shoe off, and the swollen ankle lying in his hand. “Now then, while you rest a minute, tell me what has happened.”
“He got me here and then made horrible love to me. I beat his face and shrieked. After a bit he left off, but only because he heard a car coming. He was standing up to see which way it was going, and I bolted away into the undergrowth. It was too thick for him to find me, and then I caught my foot on something and fell. Every minute I expected him to come back again.” Peggy suddenly began to sob again.
“Well, but you’re all right now.” Peter was suddenly touched. Peggy in tears was a very different person from Peggy arrogant and aggressive. Like all very strong men he loathed independence in women. And here was one shivering, and frightened, and helpless. He spoke kindly.
“Yes, but think of the degradation of it. That little worm . . . to dare to.” Peggy blew her nose and sobbed again.
“Well; but you see, unfortunately you lay yourself open to these things.” Peter suddenly spoke seriously. “Look at the little squirt, you’re asking for trouble when you go about with a man like that. I could have told you weeks ago that this would happen sooner or later. But you wouldn’t have believed me.” He got up on to his feet again.
“Yes, I know; but I thought I could manage him.” Peggy was staring up through the darkness. How tall he was, towering over her like one of the pine-trees. Would he carry her back to the car? she wondered.
“Yes, but what’s the object of it all? The man’s got a wife of his own—worse luck for the wretched woman. Why can’t you leave him alone? It’s such a low down game to play.” Peter spoke contemptuously and impatiently.
“Yes, but it’s so dull down here.” Peggy said the words almost under her breath. She didn’t like being made to feel small. In a way it had seemed rather grand to have reduced Mr. Granger to the condition in which he undoubtedly was. But now it suddenly seemed only rather common. She wanted this man to realize that it was because of her fascination that this thing had happened: she tried to say it, not exactly explicitly, but so that he would understand.
Peter did understand, and felt more contemptuous than he had ever done before. There it was; just what he had said to Ralph. The straining out towards excitement; the wild desire to get every ounce of sensation out of everything, and then the equally wild recoil from anything that might mean trouble. Every woman was at heart a ——. Peter did not mince matters with himself, nor did he use a pleasant word. There was no doubt about it. He stared downwards, distastefully.
“I shall have to carry you back,” he said; and he said it with almost apparent disgust. “I don’t see what else I can do. You’ll have to hold the torch, otherwise we shall both fall over, and our last state will be worse than the first.”
“I could hop. I know you don’t want to carry me.” Peggy spoke with profound depression. This man, who, by the way, was no more a real chauffeur than she was, utterly despised her, and somehow the knowledge that he did rankled dreadfully. How could she make him not? It was suddenly of profound importance that he shouldn’t. So was it suddenly of profound importance that he should go on being her chauffeur. Fancy if this last bother about her made him feel that he didn’t want to. “I can hop,” she said again—“that is if you will just help me to get up.”
“All right; try.” Peter was almost ashamed to feel how little he cared if it did hurt her. He stooped, and gave her his hand, and slowly and laboriously she dragged herself up by it.
“Half a second.” She was standing very still beside him; and Peter suddenly flashed the torch right in her face. There were little beads of perspiration on her short upper Up.
“It hurts you too much,” he said; and he turned the torch aside.
“No, it doesn’t.” Peggy spoke shortly. He should admire her for something anyhow. She would get back to the car without his carrying her, if she died on the way. “If I may lean on your arm I shall be all right,” she said; and she hopped forward almost blindly. They went for some way in silence, and then she stopped and trembled up against him. “I can’t,” she said. “It hurts too frightfully; whatever shall I do?”
“Let me carry you,” said Peter coldly.
“No, because I know you loathe it,” she cried, suddenly despairing and desolate. “I know you’re only my chauffeur—at least I know that you aren’t, but you say you are and I leave it at that, because I am afraid that if I pry about you’ll go. And now, added to everything else, you think me contemptible and disgusting because of Mr. Granger. I tell you that I’m not. I’m not really like that at all. Do believe me when I say I’m not.” Peggy’s voice trembled and failed.
“I’m afraid that it is of very little concern to me what you are or what you aren’t,” said Peter, after a little pause. “I drive your car, and the thing ends there. Now you had much better let me carry you.” He turned a little, and put out one arm.
“No, I tell you.” Peggy, writhing under the cruel snub, spoke fiercely. “I loathe you as much as you loathe me, and I wouldn’t have you carry me for anything,” she cried. “I’ll hop alone rather than that.” And she lurched forward blindly.
Peter caught her back into his arms with a little laugh. “Don’t be such a damned little fool,” he said roughly. “You see, chauffeurs swear when they’re put out, Miss Fielding—they’re not like ordinary gentlemen. Now then, lie still while I’m carrying you, or I shall take the kiss that Mr. Granger was too feeble to get. Do you hear? Hold the torch pointing the way we’re going or we shall both go on our faces.”
“How . . .?” Peggy’s voice failed.
“Don’t say, ‘How dare you’; it sounds so stupid.” Peter was plunging forward, pushing the short trees and bushes out of his way with his powerful shoulder. “You’ve got the remedy in your own hands, remember—a month’s notice. Hooray, there’s the car! You’re heavier than you look, young lady. Ah . . . He stood on the roadway, breathing a little heavily. “Now, shall I take it, or will you give it me of your own accord?” He shifted her a little in his arms, and stood looking down at her.
Peggy, with her heart beating wildly, stared up at him, looking exactly as Peter had made up his mind that one day she should look—only he had not expected it quite so soon. “No, I think . . . not just yet,” he said, after a little pause. “I’m hungry, and I expect you are. I’ll settle you in the back of the car, and get you home as quickly as I can.”
And as the powerful car stole silently along under the avenue of dark pine-trees, Peggy sat in the darkness and put two cold, trembling hands up to her neck. But it hurt . . . this feeling, it hurt fearfully. She had thought that her ankle hurt, but that was nothing compared with this. She stared at the clear-cut profile under the peaked cap. He had made her feel like this—that man—her chauffeur!
Peggy, on a sofa and out of Mr. Granger’s way, and also unable to go out in her car, was at anyone’s mercy who chose to attach himself to her. And Mr. Mason did, relentlessly, and with a large, thick-skinned absorption that baffled any attempts to get him away. “And how are you this morning?” He would advance across the room with his long throat protruding from his clerical collar, and his big, awkward hands sprawling about in a vain effort to hide themselves. Peggy would reply kindly to him: somehow his admiration seemed to render less tormenting an ever-present and almost intolerable ache. And Mr. Mason would sit there for hours, only moving when the Canon or his wife came in, or when he simply had to attend to some Parish duty, or when hunger drove him back to his lodgings for meals.
“Let me read to you.” Searching wildly about for some way in which he could make himself indispensable to her, he hit upon this way one day. And Peggy, inwardly one vast yawn at her enforced inactivity and her consequent dependence on other people, jumped at it. Mr. Mason had nothing to say beyond making large, whole-heartedly cheerful remarks about entirely dull things. To hear him reading aloud would probably be a pleasure—especially if he didn’t boom it in that funny way that clergymen generally did when they got into the reading-desk. Why need you boom when you spoke to God? Peggy had often wondered in her unfinished, pagan way.
And Mr. Mason, delighted, started to roam round the room in search of a book. He roamed with large, spreading steps. Like a very young calf trying to collect its legs, thought Peggy, watching him.
"We'll read The Constant Nymph," she announced after a pause. She could see him dipping with evident enjoyment between the covers of Robert Elsmere. The next thing would be that he would bring that back and start on it; and she would expire with boredom. "Old Jane will get it for you," she said; "it's in my room. I bought it the other day in that three-and-six-penny edition. Call to her through the kitchen door."
"Is it quite . . .?" Mr. Mason replaced Robert Elsmere in the sectional bookcase and came back to the sofa. He gazed down at Peggy without speaking for a moment or two. He was beginning to worship this girl. Entirely unlike anything that Mr. Mason had ever met before, and utterly antagonistic to any idea that he had ever had of suitability or seemliness in woman, she was beginning to fill his horizon. He swallowed; his large Adam's-apple appearing briefly above his clerical collar and then sliding down below it again.
"No," said Peggy briefly; "it isn't. But then you can be as improper as you like if you are only a genius, Mr. Mason. Didn't you know that? That's why everyone raves about The Constant Nymph. It's like something white-hot. You can't be sordid if you are really and truly frightfully clever. Now get it and we'll begin."
So Mr. Mason, infatuated and obedient, obtained the desired book and, leaning back in his chair, began to read it. He read extremely well, and Peggy, who had already read it twice, was lulled by his pleasant, cultured voice, and fell softly asleep. She waked to find him on his knees by the side of the couch.
"Oh, my darling little girl!" Mr. Mason's eyes, seen so close to her own, were of a surprising softness, thought Peggy, petrified. Still, like a calf's eyes, like his legs. "I love you," he said, and he said it emphatically. "When I see you so sweet and helpless, I could die for you."
"A frightful result of letting him read a book like The Constant Nymph," thought Peggy swiftly, and yet surely he could not have got far enough in it for that. "I must explain to you, Mr. Mason," she said, and she struggled her small hand out of his. "I do not require people to be in love with me; I am happy without it. Besides you are not really, you know. You think you are, because I am lying on this sofa looking rather helpless, and apparently I have just been to sleep and looked nice asleep. But if I had gone to sleep with my mouth open you would not have felt it at all. It just shows what little things control love. Now let us get on with the book."
But Mr. Mason was shaking and unnerved. A little of the air from that high-up valley in the Austrian Tyrol had got into his blood. As a rule he was a discreet and sober young man, but now he got sudden wild spasms of feeling that he would like to charge about with a pickaxe. Hewing down anyone who looked at that lovely golden thing on the sofa. Standing over her defending her against the world. Slaughtering anyone who . . . and then Mr. Mason suddenly began to think a little more coherently. Whom exactly did he want to slaughter? That long-legged brute who looked so contemptuously at him when he came in at the gate: Mr. Mason knew it with a dreadful certainty. Standing there sluicing down the car with a hose, dressed in a boiler-suit that made him look even insultingly taller than he was. No more a chauffeur than . . . and then the thought that was already rioting about in the minds of four of the inhabitants of Little Churcham, began to riot about in Mr. Mason's mind too. He would get hold of Granger—Granger who undoubtedly had not behaved as he should, but still—and Mr. Mason got convulsively up out of his chair.
"Oh, have you done?" Peggy had been watching Mr. Mason with great interest. How oddly it took people, she was thinking, this being in love. Barrington Foster it made sullen and hostile—by the way, she had not answered his last letter—alternating with fits of heavy passion which she jeered at, and dispelled in that way. Mr. Granger it made revolting—Peggy shuddered—like some small insect that crept whitely and stilly from under a stone and then crept whitely and stilly back again. Mr. Mason it made in some odd way look martial, sort of as if he ought to be striding about the room wielding some heavy implement; it improved Mr. Mason, she thought. And—and then Peggy's thoughts turned on themselves and shuddered and died, and she spoke, faintly this time, and with an odd weariness.
"Thank you very much for reading to me," she said. "I have enjoyed it. Now I think I shall go to sleep again. I—I feel rather like that. It's lying about like this; it makes one lazy. Good-bye for the present." Peggy was looking at Mr. Mason through her long, curling black eyelashes.
And Mr. Mason tiptoed awkwardly out of the room. Not another word about his love yet. That would have to come later, when he had consulted Mr. Granger.
Mr. Granger was a most soothing man to consult with at this crisis. Wounded in his self-esteem almost beyond endurance, he leapt at the idea that there was something fishy about the Rectory chauffeur. “Fishy! That’s just the word that describes it,” he exclaimed, striding about his delightful little snuggery. Snuggery it had been named when they had first taken the house many years before, and snuggery it was going to be again, thought Mrs. Granger, speechless and prayerful, clasping her hands and thanking God with broken breaths for His great goodness to her. For Basil had returned to her, late the night before, a changed man. Gone the nightmare of months: Mrs. Granger had combed her spare hair that morning, and wept tears of joy as she combed it. Basil had laughed and tweaked it that morning before he finally departed for his dressing-room. She should have it shingled. Too old! Not a bit of it. Young as ever she was. And Basil had kissed her . . . kissed her again, and after these starving months. . . . Mrs. Granger had not known whether she was alive or dead, as she dressed that morning in a convulsion of joy.
For Basil Granger had had a very severe fright. As he had undressed the night before—how pleased she was at the idea of having him in her room again, poor old girl!—he had been terrified of what had so nearly come to pass. His immediate and acutest anxiety had been stilled on the receipt of the news from the Rectory that Miss Fielding had been found, and that with nothing worse than a strained ankle. As he himself had scurried through one of the leafy paths of Ashdown Forest, he had been haunted by the sudden fear that Peggy might be dead. Stumbling over one of the knotted roots of the great overspreading trees, she might have hit her head against a protruding branch, and killed herself. That anxiety allayed, his mind had fled back to, and dwelt on, the lesser danger. What awful things passion made you do! It blotted out all sanity and all common sense. Why, if he . . . and then Mr. Granger brushed his thin moustache a little upwards and shivered. Suddenly the old Georgian house in which he stood at that moment seemed a refuge of unspeakable comfort and safety.
But with the coming of the morning the feeling of security sank back a little, and gave place to a feeling of thwarted fury. She had insulted him and repulsed him, hateful little minx! All love for Peggy, even the sort of love that Mr. Granger had professed, was dead. It had given place to that very potent emotion known only to the mean-spirited: a longing to be even with her.
And this might help. He listened to Mr. Mason with avidity. Yes, there was not a doubt about it. An adventurer. But an adventurer with possibly a very nasty hold over himself; the thought struck Mr. Granger with horrid force. What had Peggy said to him when he found her in Ashdown Forest? He must find that out first before he started to move in the matter.
So he spoke soothingly to Mr Mason. Grandly, and with a great deal of insistence upon honour, and as one man to another, etc. Nothing must be done in a hurry. Meanwhile, they two—and here there was a good deal of clapping of Mr. Mason’s rather sloping shoulders, and a cordial invitation to him to stay to lunch.
Which Mr. Mason did. And, as he was a very hungry young man and dreadfully badly off, he left The Tile House with a very kindly feeling towards his late host. The big cigar had been so comforting, as had the tankard of draught ale that had preceded it. Granger was an uncommonly good sort. He would resolutely put down his clerical foot on any unkind gossip that he overheard about him. A devoted couple . . . Mr. Mason had visualized them mentally as he hurried down the well-rolled drive. Standing together in the porch waving him off . . . arms linked . . . charming, every detail of it. Mr. Mason was more and more certain of it as he hurried through the village.
But Peggy, left alone on the sofa, was not thinking now of anyone but the man who had held her in his arms, and brutally said that he was going to kiss her. Never in her hard, self-centred little life had she felt anything like she had felt since then. Every waking instant had been full of that moment, the sudden crumpling up of all her defences, the passionate realization that she was up against a nature infinitely stronger, and infinitely more relentless than her own. She suddenly cried out as she lay on her back on the sofa staring at the ceiling. She wanted to see him again, hear him speak. He was working all day in the garden, the Canon said, and at lunch he had been full of excitement over a thousand bulbs that Malcolm had bought for a man who now wrote to say that he didn’t want them after all, and would Malcolm make use of them himself? Those were the bulbs that had been bought at Eastbourne on the dreadful day that she had sprained her ankle. She moved it gently on the sofa: it hardly hurt at all now—even the stupid, fussy doctor had said that another couple of days would put it all right. Since the accident she had had a bed made up on the ground-floor, in a room jutting out at the back that used to be a playroom. Now to-night she could go up to her own room, provided . . . Ah . . . Peggy caught her breath hurriedly. He could carry her up. Heavenly joy that she had thought of it! She would get hold of old Jane and tell her that she was not going to sleep downstairs any more. And she could send a message out to him, a note. She could easily shuffle along to the writing-table and get a piece of paper and a pencil. . . .
Peter got the note just as he had finished his tea. Watkins brought it—one large monument of disapproval. He disapproved of everything concerned in this mad escapade—everything, that is, except his master’s improved health. That was undeniable. But, as Watkins said to himself, he could easily have got well some other way. It wasn’t necessary to work like a black in the garden to do that. A voyage: a couple of months in the South of France, something befitting his station; not this slogging about for a lot of clergy who drank water with their meals and didn’t dress for dinner. Watkins had no patience with it. “And as for that ’ere . . .” He described Peggy to himself with a singular lack of reticence. “A note for you, sir.” He held it far away from him on a saucer; as if it smelt, thought Peter, taking it and laughing secretly.
“Thanks.” Peter took it, opened it, and read it. Then he glanced up at his servant. “I shan’t be dressing for dinner to-night, Watkins,” he said.
“Oh, very well, sir.” Watkins swung off and walked away. Old Jane had been chuckling as she handed him the note. “Lot of . . .” Watkins was in a fury as he got a tray and went back to collect the tea-things. If she thought that she was going to get him . . . that little jumped-up . . . He put the cups and saucers together with a clatter and went out of the room again, shutting the wooden door carefully behind him.
Left alone, Peter picked the note up from the chair by his side, where he had laid it down and read it again.
Dear Malcolm (it ran)
I am going back to my own room to-night; since my accident I have been sleeping on the ground-floor. I shall be glad if you will come and carry me up. Peggy Fielding.
P.S.—At nine o’clock, please.
Having read it again, Peter crumpled it up in his hand and threw it in the fire. And as it curled and glowed and, finally turning black, flew in pieces up the chimney, he settled himself more comfortably in his low chair. A pipe—he could think better with a pipe between his teeth; he drew out his oilskin tobacco pouch, unrolling it meditatively. The thing that he had meant to come to pass had come to pass. Peter Wolversley, although not in the least a conceited man, had had a good deal of experience with women. And he knew the signs—at least, he thought he did—of course you could never be sure. He held his pipe low and drew heavily through it. Now, the point was, what was he to do next? He flicked the still burning match into the fire. Peggy his—the game was over. At least up to a certain point it was over. And now all he had to do was to clear out. To go back to that! He suddenly got up out of his chair and walked over to the window. High Flashings was lighted up: the golden velvet curtains drawn in most of the windows. But not in the Canon’s study; he could see the old man sitting at his desk writing. There was a fire in the grate, and the flames were flickering on the tiles of it. Waggles was asleep in his basket, his long ears hanging over the edge of it. It all breathed so of home: Peter suddenly thought of his own luxurious bachelor flat, and in thinking, shuddered away from the thought of it. Meaningless; a place where you studied how to kill time, and, all the time you were studying that, you were thinking of the moment when other people would be able to go to sleep, and you wouldn’t. No, not until he was actually forced back to it. And meanwhile, until it was time to go over to the house and carry the baby up to bed—Peter made a wry face as he thought of it—-he would get some writing done, and he walked away from the window. He had had a budget of letters that day; his lawyer was clamouring for instructions, shares to be taken up, repairs to be done at Whiteladies, a host of things that only he could attend to. And also a letter from old Ralph, whose letters always came direct, not under cover from his lawyer, as all the others did. Peter always welcomed the sight of his writing. “Mr. John Malcolm, chauffeur.” Peter could see Ralph grinning as he wrote it. Powerful and loose-limbed, he dropped into his easy chair again. He would read Ralph’s letter before he really got down to it.
Dear Peter, (Ralph had a round, sprawling hand like a child’s.)
Everything going on well here. Stacks of people asking when you are coming back, but I tell them all the same: Doctor won’t hear of it for another two months at least. But look here: two things. Firstly, my wedding on the tenth of next month. I shan’t be married unless you will be my best man. Secondly, the Celibates give their annual Ball on the 17th. You’ll have to come to that. Get a couple of days off; I can put you up—at least I can on the 17th; for the 10th you could get back the same night if you wanted to. The Celibates’ is going to be a fancy-dress affair—rather futile, I think, but there are so many dances on now that we rather want to make it different. Let me know as soon as you can, and then we’ll make up a party and dine somewhere first, don’t you think? Do you know . . .?
And then followed a certain amount of news, all interesting to Peter, as a link with the world he had deserted for a time. And when he had finished reading the letter, he let it drop on to his knee and sat staring into the fire. The Celibates’ Ball, and he supposed to be one of the most eligible of them. He would have to go to it somehow. And Ralph’s wedding—nothing would keep him from seeing the poor beggar putting his head into the noose. Both these things would have to be fixed up some time. Meanwhile to business.
He wrote until Watkins came in and began fumbling about at the tiny sideboard, and then he blotted the last envelope and set it down on the top of the little pile. “Dinner, I suppose,” he said; “what am I going to put on, Watkins?”
“I have laid out your blue serge, sir.”
“Oh, I see; not one of those stiff blue collars, I hope, Watkins?”
“Yessir.”
“Watkins!” Peter groaned. “You’ll never learn,” he said; “I shall sack you without a character. Don’t Woolworth’s keep celluloid collars?—that’s what I ought to be wearing. Get out my oldest soft one, you silly ass; you’re spoiling to give the whole thing away.” And, as Watkins’ affronted back disappeared out of the door, he laughed and screwed the cap on to his fountain-pen. “If I’m not very much mistaken it’s already given away,” he said. “It was a damned silly thing from the very beginning.”
“You’re perfectly certain that you don’t mind being left, dear?” Mrs. Stallard spoke more affectionately to Peggy than she had done for some time. The child was so much pleasanter than she used to be; since that dreadful afternoon of her accident she had seemed almost a different person. Lying patiently on the sofa in the drawing-room, knitting all day long: pleasant when she was spoken to: all that hard aggression gone: it was a real transformation. “What can have happened to her?” She asked the question of her husband, almost in bewilderment.
“I do not know, my dear,” the Canon had replied, with his mild eyes roving towards the window, from which, in the middle of a border of newly turned earth, could be seen Peter, standing and stretching himself. He stood tall and lean among the bleak and denuded beds, somehow seeming to partake in some mysterious way of their emptiness. Not exactly emptiness, but the quality in them that held promise of something else. Mystery! It brooded over this quiet garden and over the man standing in the middle of it.
“Henry!” Then Mrs. Stallard had broken off abruptly. After all, what was the object of it? Peggy was improving enormously; the Granger skeleton seemed to be laid; the household was working harmoniously; and the five guineas a week was a tremendous help. She had swallowed the words that she had been going to say. And now she stood and looked down at Peggy on her sofa with real kindliness. “We would not go to this entertainment were it not that the villagers expect us to be there,” she said. “Cook will still be in the house, and we ought all to be back by ten. Sure you are all right?”
“Sure,” smiled back Peggy, her little determined mouth curving deliciously. And she trembled with excitement as she heard the front door shut. “All gone except Cook,” she thought, “and she’ll only show him in and then go. And I shall have him here for one solid hour.”
But by the time that the old grandfather clock in the hall had struck nine Peggy’s excitement had given way to a cold, trembling, sick feeling. And when Peter stood in the doorway and then moved forward, turning to shut the door quietly behind him, he was suddenly conscious of a very profound feeling of disquiet. He had done the wrong thing in coming to this place. It had been selfish—selfish and detestably arrogant. Why had he done it? He walked quietly over to the sofa and stood looking down on to it.
“Do sit down, won’t you?” Peggy had found her voice. Why was it suddenly so husky? she thought impatiently. She cleared her throat and twisted a little on the sofa. “Do sit down,” she repeated.
“I say, I really would rather not.” Peter suddenly spoke impulsively and rather awkwardly. “Look here”—he dropped abruptly into a chair and leant a little forward—“I’m going away from here,” he said. “I think it’s better: I’ve had bad news from home.”
“You’re going away? Why?” Peggy’s eyes suddenly took on a queer and frozen look.
“Because I think it’s better. After all, anyone can drive an Austin twenty—you can yourself—and get a boy from Allen’s to clean it. After the other day the whole thing’s impossible. You must see it.” Peter got up, heaving himself out of the low chair and walking over to the fireplace.
“I don’t see it.” Peggy suddenly felt as if someone had got hold of her throat and was squeezing it.
“You must. It’s perfectly obvious.” Peter, tall and well-groomed in his ridiculously well-cut lounge suit, stood squarely on the curly sheepskin rug, with his back to the fire. “This shows how impossible it is. We’re talking to one another, you and I; you, the girl who pays me my salary as a chauffeur. Well, on the face of it . . .”
“I don’t ask you who you are.” Peggy’s voice was faint.
“No, of course, you don’t; because you know that I shouldn’t tell you. But the fact remains that you know perfectly well that I am not an ordinary chauffeur. And that in itself, with these delightful people who in a sense trust me, makes the whole thing disgusting.” Peter broke off and swung round, facing the fire.
Peggy suddenly felt that she was fighting for her life. If he went away she would die: that was the only sensation of which she was conscious at the moment. And it got into her voice. “No, I won’t have you go,” it came stranglingly.
“But I’m afraid you won’t be able to stop it if I make up my mind to it,” said Peter; and he came over to the sofa again, walking in quick strides. “You see, I’ve got some conscience left—not much, I admit,” he said, “but some. And it won’t permit of my deceiving these good people any more. It isn’t . . .” He stopped, as Peggy flung out her hand and caught hold of his.
“But, don’t you see? It’s me you must think of,” she cried. “Ever since I’ve got to know you I feel different about things. Different about things like being selfish and all that. When I’m well I’m going to try and help—things like taking round the magazines and having a district. And I might be a Guide.” Peggy’s grey eyes were imploring under the short yellow fringe.
Peter looked down at her with almost a look of tenderness stealing into his own eyes. What a child in spite of all her worldliness and apparent hardness! And what a fearful position for him! Because all his inclinations were for staying where he was. Another month or so would complete the cure that had already begun, and he was devoted to the Canon, and loved the work in the garden. The only point was this girl. If this was only an infatuation for himself, it would probably do her all the good in the world, and keep her out of mischief until she met the man she was going to marry: Peggy would not have been the first young girl who had adored him. But if it wasn’t! He suddenly glanced down at the watch on his wrist.
“They aren’t coming in till ten.” Peggy saw the glance and spoke swiftly. She was sitting up; her small back wedged against a sofa.
“Well, I don’t really know what to say.” Peter suddenly reached out and took the small hand that lay helplessly, palm upwards, where he had let it drop. What he really wanted to say was, “Do you think you will fall seriously in love with me, because if you do, as there is not the remotest chance of my returning it, I had better go at once.” But as no man short of an absolutely hopelessly fatuous cad could say such words, he remained silent, and at a loss.
“Stay with me, and help me to be better.” Peggy only breathed the words, clinging with her small fingers.
“Well . . .” And then Peter made the decision swiftly. After all—he suddenly remembered Ralph. Then there had been Granger. And according to Ralph, there was even now that young decadent, Barrington Foster. Well, was such a girl the girl that clung and whispered to him now? After all—she was emotional, and he had been uncommonly unpleasant to her; that often went down with a girl of this type. Why should he smash off what was doing him a great deal of good? After all—and then he hesitated again.
“Don’t talk about going away.” Peggy had taken her hand out of his and was clutching at his sleeve.
“Well—I say,do you mind if I smoke? As a matter of fact I suppose I oughtn’t to, though.” Peter pulled his hand out of his pocket again. “There it is, you see, the whole thing’s so utterly wrong. It jars at every turn. Look here, it’s not quite ten yet; but would you mind if I carried you up a bit sooner? I’ll get back then and think things over.”
“No, I don’t mind anything.” Peggy spoke fervently. “But do smoke; there’s heaps of time. They’re sure to be late, too. Look here”—she was watching his beautifully kept hand on his cigarette-case—“I don’t know how to say it, but I simply can’t have you go. You don’t know what it makes me feel like.” Peggy wrung her hands together, and to her despair she felt the tears rising to her eyes. “I never cry,” she sobbed, and the tears brimmed over and ran unchecked down her small face.
“Look here.” Peter, feeling more fatuous and more of a fool than he had ever felt in his life before, sat promptly down on the side of the sofa. “Look here,” he said; and as he spoke he pitched his cigarette across the room and into the fireplace. “I want to tell you something, Miss Fielding. I told the Canon a lie. When he engaged me I said I was single. It’s a lie,” he repeated. “I’m a married man”; and Peter had the grace to blush as he uttered the flagrant falsehood.
“Oh!” After the quiet exclamation Peggy was completely silent. Then she spoke, without looking at him. “I see,” she said; and wiped her tears away openly. “You would rather I did not tell him, I expect,” she said.
“Much rather.” Peter was looking at her. How odd these modern girls were, he was thinking! You never knew how to take them. Now after that announcement he had expected more tears and a certain amount of fuss. He suddenly felt a fool, and a little piqued. “Well, now I’ll carry you up,” he said; and spoke a little stiffly.
“Yes.” Peggy’s eyes were clear again, and she was contemplating him. That was a lie about being married. He had said it to warn her off. But she was not going to be warned off; there was a reckless rapture about this feeling she had, that was worth any torment to come. What did it matter what happened in the future? She had him there now, and in one minute or less she would be in his arms. There were fourteen stairs and quite a long bit of passage as well as the hall. And a bit of this room, too. “Ready,” she said; and she said it with all the joy and excitement of a child.
“Little monkey!” Peter was thinking it as he slid his arms underneath her slender body. What fun he could have if he only liked! he thought, as he crossed the empty hall. It wasn’t as if she was the Canon’s own child either. A feeling of loyalty to the old man would then have forbidden anything in the way of an intrigue. But as it was—half-unconsciously he tightened his arms round her as he mounted the stairs. “Say when,” he said, as he trod carefully along the dimly lighted corridor.
“The end door of all.” Peggy was cold even to the tips of her fingers. Oh, it was so nearly over; she shivered as he paused.
“Shall I carry you in?” he said.
“Please.”
“Then you find the handle and turn it. That’s it,” as Peggy was feeling behind her with her left hand. “Now, which direction for the bed?”
“Straight across to the right-hand corner.”
“Right.” Peter carried her into the fragrant darkness. He was fastidious, and liked a woman’s bedroom to smell of scent, provided it did not smell too much. He put her down on the bed.
“You’re heavy,” he said briefly; and straightened his back.
“Am I?” Peggy’s voice came small and steady from just below him. Peter could not see the locked hands. “He shall kiss me before he goes, he shall,” she said to herself with passion. “If he kisses me he may begin to like me; men do if they feel that a person is nice in that sort of way. . . .”
And Peter, conscious that he had not behaved particularly well up to that point, began to feel that, as he hadn’t, it didn’t much matter what he did then. Which was quite wrong but very natural. And he stooped until Peggy’s flower-like little mouth was just below his own, and he spoke with her soft breath on his face. “Good night,” he said.
“No, Malcolm!” Peggy was gasping, and beginning to try to sit up.
“I said good night,” he replied; and pressed her gently back on to the bed. “You don’t understand how to say it properly. Keep perfectly still and I will show you. No! Look!” and he stooped again. “Good night,” he said, with his lips against her soft little mouth. “Good night and sleep well”; and, straightening himself again, Peter walked away to the door.
And left alone Peggy lay quite still and stared at the black ceiling. When you stared at it on and on like that it all turned into funny colours and sailed away into the corners. Peggy watched it for quite a long time before she raised herself a little stiffly on her elbow and got off the bed.
But, although this was all great fun in its way, it was not exactly playing the game, and Peter was very conscious of it by the next morning. And he made up his mind, as he ate his excellently fried bacon, that he was going to take the bull by the horns and see the Canon that morning, and explain that he must leave at the end of the following month. As he wanted two days off, they might possibly require him to leave at once; after all, you didn’t ask for favours when you were going. But, if not, he would stay until the end of November, and by then he felt—rather selfishly, he was afraid—that he would be so established in health that going back to his old life would only be a thing of interest and pleasure.
But somehow all that day was fully occupied. To begin with, Watkins appeared to clear away breakfast with a face of unprecedented gloom and looking extremely odd into the bargain. “What on earth’s the matter with you?” Peter crumpled up his table-napkin and swung round from the table.
“Smashed m’ top plate, sir.” Watkins was mumbling and talking with strange hissings.
“Good heavens!” Peter showed his own excellent teeth in a wide grin. “What happens when you do that?”
“They vulcanizes it, sir. But you has to give them a whole day and sit there till it’s done. And there’s nowhere nearer than Lewes.” Watkins’s lower lip almost trembled. He was feeling the indignity of this very badly.
Peter saw it, and was instantly grave and concerned. “Then you must go to Lewes at once, Watkins, of course,” he said. “I’ll carry on here. Now don’t argue, but clear, and I’ll carry on till you come back.”
And he had carried on. But what endless work there was in a house! he thought, labouring, even in a minute place like this. Mercifully there was cold beef in the tiny larder; he cut slices off it and ate it, standing up with a bit of bread in the other hand, finishing up with a chunk of cheese and more bread. Tea was simple—he merely gave it a miss. Dinner, he reflected, could be lunch all over again—that is unless Watkins came back in time, which event was almost too good to be contemplated. However, he did; and Peter, tired out with a long day in the garden as well as his unaccustomed labours in the house, could have welcomed his servant back with cheers had it not been undignified.
“Fixed you up all right, Watkins?” He was stooping over the coal-scuttle, which he had just been down to fill.
“Yes, sir; and a very pleasant young fellow. too.” Watkins’s face was no longer a thing of strange hollows and depressions. “Regularly gave his mind to it when I told him how important it was. And I was able to get you a little something fresh for your dinner, too, sir. Such a place as this is all excitement when you ask for a bit of game.” Watkins sniffed and bustled off into the kitchen.
By half-past eight Peter was feeling regularly at peace with the world. Watkins had surpassed himself. Some excellent clear mulligatawny soup to lead off with. A small sole to follow. A grouse done to a turn, garnished with extremely well-mixed salad. And a mince-pie to end up with, followed by just a smattering of cheese on a piece of extremely hot, well-buttered toast. Peter, tall and well groomed in his evening clothes, sprawled happily in his deep easy chair, feeling extremely cheerful. His pipe was drawing well; he bit on the stem of it, contentedly, staring into the glowing coals. He would have another month of this pleasant life and then return to the other one, pleasant enough in its way if only one kept fit. And one would after a time like this . . .
Watkins heard the footsteps first, and like lightning he put down the tray on which he was collecting the plates and fled to the door. He knew the vital importance that no one should surprise his master like this. He was arguing: Peter could hear him as he sat anxiously up in his chair, listening. “Who the devil?” . . . Peter could hear Watkins’s voice raised in angry protest. Someone was forcing his way in; he could hear the sounds of scuffling on the top step of the narrow staircase. “I tell you I will not be kept back.” It was Mr. Granger’s voice, rather shrill and piping.
“Let him in, Watkins.” Peter had got up and was walking to the door. Always quick to decide, he had made up his mind swiftly. He and Granger had an equal pull over one another: they had much better have it out. He had suspected something of this kind: Granger was like a sewer-rat; he had been ferreting out his real identity. And now, baffled of his designs on Peggy, he was going to turn on him. Well, as long as he hadn’t been to the Canon first . . . Peter walked quietly to the door and opened it.
“I thought as much!” Mr. Granger was breathing heavily. He stared up at the tall figure in evening dress and smiled unpleasantly.
“Bring coffee, Watkins, will you, please?” Peter was looking quietly at his servant. “And some of that liqueur brandy. This gentleman seems a little . . .” He paused and held the door open. “Come in, Mr. Granger,” he said hospitably.
“Fine lot of chauffeur about this.” Mr. Granger, with the door shut behind him, was feeling more at his ease. Oddly enough, it was the manservant who had frightened him most.
Now he had got this fine “la-di-da” at his mercy. An escaped convict probably, at any rate a “wanted by the police.” He sniffed.
“Sit down, won’t you?” Peter was pushing a low chair up to the fire. “And you’ll smoke. Ah, here’s coffee. Some cognac? No? No; not for me, thank you, Watkins.” Peter was watching Mr. Granger’s hands hovering over the tray. The little man was dying for the brandy, he thought, but wouldn’t take it in case it muddled him; probably he had a head like a boy of ten. And he, Peter, was not going to take it either. Mr. Granger would have a fine weapon if he could say that he drank. “Now then, a cigarette: Turkish? . . . Egyptian? . . . Really! an ordinary stinker. Sure you won’t have a cigar? Watkins, we have some cigars, haven’t we?”
“Yes, sir.” Watkins was looking at Mr. Granger. He knew much more than Peter did about that little man. The start of it had been a pretty little housemaid, so the legend ran, but now he aspired to higher game. But things were all peaceful again, so the cook at the old Georgian house had reported to Watkins the last time she had met him at the butcher’s.
So Watkins withdrew with calm in his soul. His master would settle him all right—he could tell that by the peculiar look on his clean-shaven mouth. “When he gets going there isn’t many who can stand up against him,” he reflected, shaking a little soda into the glazed porcelain sink.
Left alone, the two men just glanced at each other, and then Peter smiled briefly.
“You wanted . . .?” he said; and shook a little of the ash off his cigarette into the hearth.
“I wanted to tell you that I know who you are,” said Mr. Granger, letting this off with a pop. He didn’t know at all really, but he thought that if he pretended he did he would badly frighten the man in front of him. As a matter of fact Peter was a little shaken by this. He would look such a damned fool; it would be very hard to live down a thing of the kind in his particular set.
“Really?” he said; and drawing in a long breath he stared at Mr. Granger through a cloud of blue smoke.
“Yes. How are you going to explain it?” continued Mr. Granger, pressing his advantage. The look in Peter’s eyes had changed—Mr. Granger was cute enough to see that.
“In the same way that you are going to explain your action in taking a young girl out and then making, well—how shall we express it?—making very decided advances to her,” replied Peter; and he sat forward a little and dropped his still burning cigarette into the fire.
This was a nasty one, and settled Mr. Granger for the moment. So she had let on, had she? He had never expected it. He had thought that she would be too ashamed. Now, then, what should his next move be?
Peter considered him as he filled a pipe. His oilskin tobacco-pouch had stuck; he separated it with care. This was an unpleasant type of man to be up against. Mean; and mean men did uncomfortable things. He might . . . what might he do? Peter wondered as he pressed down the tobacco in the shallow bowl. He might . . . He gave it up as he held the match over the bowl. It dipped bluely and Peter sat back again.
“Your play, partner,” he said.
But Mr. Granger sat silent. He had plenty of things to say, but he was afraid to say them. If only he was certain who the man was in front of him. If only he could bribe . . . But Mr. Granger dismissed that idea after only the very briefest reflection. Watkins didn’t look the sort of person whom you could bribe; besides, he and his master were very deeply attached to one another—he had seen that at once. No, the way of attack must be through another channel, and, thinking this, Mr. Granger got up almost mechanically on to his feet.
“Going already?” Peter rose too, but inwardly a little uneasy. He would like to have had it out with this man. He didn’t care for the byways and hedges of things; he liked it all out in the open. But Mr. Granger was obviously at a loss for the moment, and Peter only sincerely hoped that he would remain so. “Then we leave it like this,” he said; and as he spoke he towered over the man in front of him. “As long as you keep quiet, so do I. When you make your first move, I make mine. Got me?” He spoke with his eyes unwavering.
And Mr. Granger acquiesced, suddenly sick with inward fury. To be shown out by that insolent manservant, too. He went blundering down the unlighted country lane, muttering out loud to himself. Ah, but he would have him somehow. But how? Mr. Granger let himself in with his latchkey, wondering dreadfully.
The interview with Mr. Granger left Peter very much more uneasy after a few hours’ thought about it than it had done at first. So much so, that the next morning he made up his mind to seek out the Canon in his study, and tell him a little of what had happened. After all, the old man must have a very shrewd idea that he was not in the least what he was pretending to be; it would not come at all as a surprise to him.
Nor did it. The Canon, contemplating him for a few moments, put the tips of his slender fingers together as if pondering, and said: “Why have you told me?”
“Because it is beginning to weigh on my conscience, sir. Apart from Mr. Granger’s suspicion, I feel, too, that you also must often wonder about me. You have been so extremely kind to me; I should hate to . . .” Peter broke off.
“No, no.” The Canon hesitated. “There is just one question that I should like to put to you, Malcolm,” he said, “and you can answer it or not, just as you please. But if you do decide to answer it, I should like you to realize that your answer will have the sanctity of the Confessional. The question I wish to put to you is this: ‘Are you a felon fleeing from the hand of justice?’ If you are, I would urge you to tell me.”
“Oh, sir, no!” Peter’s response had the spontaneity of undeniable truth; and as he answered he felt inclined to burst out laughing. What an appalling idea! And then the feeling of amusement was succeeded by another one, more powerful still. How perfectly ripping of the Canon to have kept such an idea to himself and for so long, because he must have thought of it almost at once. “I should never have abused your trust to that extent, sir,” he said; and his eyes were full of sincerity and affection.
“No, Malcolm; I feel perfectly certain that you would not.” The Canon’s eyes were suddenly full of tears, and he got up, as it were unconsciously, and took a few faltering steps towards Peter. “My boy,” he said; and laid a tremulous hand on Peter’s broad shoulder. “I feel—I cannot tell you at all how I feel. I only know this, that I have come to lean on you in a very extraordinary way. You are to me as a very dear son. Your presence in this house is a help to all of us. In fact . . .” And the Canon broke off and wiped his eyes, and smiled rather apologetically at Peter.
And Peter, for some unknown reason, suddenly felt a sick despair stealing over him. In the presence of this transparent goodness the whole escapade took on a sordid and a squalid aspect. And the first thing that he was going to do was to make a clean breast of the whole affair to this good man, and now . . . and with the sanctity of the Confessional, if he might request it: Peter put the question humbly.
“Certainly, Malcolm.” The Canon suddenly looked quite different. A strange dignity had descended on him. He crossed the room to the door and locked it. And then he trod back to his desk, and in passing Peter he laid his hand gently on his shoulder. “Speak on, my son,” he said; and sat down facing him.
And Peter poured it all out, omitting nothing—nothing, that is, except his kiss to Peggy two nights before; that would implicate her and therefore must not be mentioned, especially as she had not repulsed him. If she had, it could have gone in along with the rest—something still more damning to him. But as it was . . . “And so, you see, sir, there is nothing for me but to leave,” he ended up.
The Canon sat very still, his old hands linked on his blotting-pad. The eldest son of a noble house, and driving a car and working long hours in the garden. The Canon liked the aristocracy; of the old school himself, he thought that they always had the instincts of gentlemen. Gay very often, extravagant and reckless. But get them into a corner, such as the Great War, and their spirit was gallant and indestructible.
“You were through the Great War?” he said; and he raised his eyes and looked at the man sitting opposite to him.
“Yes, sir. I date my failure to sleep from that time.” Peter was sitting wondering what the Canon was going to say to him. He felt the intense relief of the penitent; someone else had shouldered the burden of his conscience. He waited, strangely at peace.
“Yes, you must leave us, Malcolm.” The Canon spoke after another prolonged pause. “It is the only possible thing. You came, my boy, with a specific purpose, and that purpose is fulfilled. Were you not the man you are I would not say this to you, although it is a thing that you probably know already. That poor child loves you. What is to become of her, only God can tell, and we must leave it to Him. In a sense she has brought it on herself; but that does not make it any easier for her to bear.” The Canon was silent.
Peter sat, feeling more contemptible than he had ever thought possible. There was no other word for it; the whole thing was damnable. Out of a selfish wish to get even with a girl who had done him no harm, he had brought trouble on two people, because he could plainly see that the Canon was deeply distressed. Out of a selfish wish to sleep—what the devil did it matter if one slept or not?—he had broken up the harmony of this happy household. Of course, it had been happy before he came? probably the girl would have settled down all right. “Oh, my God!” He suddenly spoke out loud, getting up and flinging across to the window.
“Don’t be unduly distressed, Sir Peter.” The Canon spoke to the rigid back turned to him. “And rest assured that this matter only lies between you and me. I have given you my assurance of that already. The only point to be decided upon now is, when are you to go. I should be inclined to say, not immediately. That would give rise to comment which might be very prejudicial to Miss Fielding. I should say that if you leave us early in the New Year it will be best.”
“How can I face you for the next six weeks?” Peter swung impulsively round.
The Canon smiled whimsically. “I might say the same,” he said. “A member of a noble house accommodated in a couple of rooms over a stable! On that point I think we may suffer equal discomfort.”
“Don’t.” Peter walked over to the table. “Then again,” he said, and as he spoke he gripped the old hand held out to his, “I want a couple of days off next month. One to see an old pal of mine tied up for life—I am to be his best man—and one to attend a dance; unfortunately I happen to be rather an important member of the Club that always gives it—it’s an annual affair. Perhaps under the circumstances this might not be convenient . . . Peter hesitated.
“I think it might be arranged.” The Canon dropped the lean hand after giving it a gentle pressure. “You see, Sir Peter, chauffeurs do get their days off.” He smiled drily and humorously.
“Oh, sir, you make me feel . . . And Peter suddenly drove his hands deep into his pockets.
The Canon got laboriously up from his table. “We will not discuss the matter further,” he said. “I think we understand each other, Malcolm. And now, shall we go out into the garden? that is, if you can spare me a moment or two I want to consult you about the Japanese anemones; I am dividing them up, and I was wondering . . . Ah, yes, I must not forget them; thank you, my boy,” as Peter knelt with the funny wobbling galoshes in his hands, stretching them carefully. “And the scarf . . . dear me, what it is to be waited on like this. Thank you, thank you.” The Canon was smiling gently up at the powerful figure towering over him.
And as the two men walked side by side out into the garden it was the Canon who was thinking the more energetically. “Dear God,” he was saying—the Canon had a childish way of hurling himself on the protection of the Almighty—“bring this thing to pass. We have six weeks, dear Lord. Make it enough.”
“The man is undoubtedly an impostor of a very serious type.” Mr. Granger had got Mr. Mason in his study and was holding forth to him. “You and I must work shoulder to shoulder in this, Mason—shoulder to shoulder.”
“How can we?” Mr. Mason was looking at Mr. Granger with his funny calf’s eyes and wondering why he got so excited about the chauffeur at the Rectory. What did it matter, after all? It didn’t affect anybody—he seemed a nice, respectable young man and very useful to the Canon in various ways. He did an enormous amount of work in the garden, and always made a point of touching his forehead to him, Mr. Mason, when he went billowing in at the Rectory gate.
“Good morning, Malcolm—good morning,” Mr. Mason would respond in his best clerical manner, touching his round felt hat and giving a cordial and pastoral smile to the man standing by the car. Peter always stood still when Mr. Mason went by; he liked the rather feeble young man, and it amused him to see his long spreading steps and swinging arms. Besides, at heart he was a really good man. Watkins had many tales of his kindness to the villagers to relate to his master.
So that Mr. Mason was now rather out of sympathy with Mr. Granger over this question of the chauffeur. At first, overflowing with all sorts of chaotic feelings that he did not understand, to confide in Mr. Granger had been a relief. But now that his love for Peggy was assuming a more placid course, this constant assumption that Malcolm was a villain was beginning to jar. After all, supposing he was! Nobody could do anything. Also the Canon liked him, and thought highly of him, and he would not have been likely to do that if there had been anything funny about him.
So Mr. Mason did not respond to Mr. Granger’s harangue with the whole-hearted enthusiasm that the latter would have liked. And this in some way stiffened Mr. Granger’s resolution to get his own back on Peter. He would, somehow, cost him what it might. He stared into the old-fashioned gas fire after Mr. Mason had gone, swearing dreadful oaths and making horrid resolutions.
Meanwhile Peter, all unconscious, was extraordinarily at peace. His confession to the Canon had wonderfully eased his mind. For the next six weeks he would do his duty faithfully and to the best of his ability, and then go back to the other life, resolved to make a better thing of it. He had plenty of money; he would use it to some advantage—to others, not only to himself. After all, if you only thought persistently of yourself always, you were bound to come to grief sooner or later.
Meanwhile, in spite of himself, the thought of Peggy would creep into his mind. She never went out in the car now; that part of his work had entirely closed down. He saw her sometimes, but only in the distance; there was another way out of the High Plashings garden as well as the main entrance. She took it, and he saw her sometimes with her golden browny coat and hat to match, and her long slim legs, clad in their striped brown stockings. She looked like a very young child, and as Peter thought it he felt a quick twinge of compunction. She was only a child; he ought never to have kissed her.
Peggy was suffering more torture than she could ever have thought possible. Surely other people didn’t feel like this when they were in love, she thought, getting up dully every morning and dragging her way through her dressing. It used to be such fun, the waking to find old Jane looking dotingly down on her with the cup of tea; the jolly bath, with heaps of hot water (for High Plashings had an independent boiler); the dressing in soft, comfortable jumper suits; the combing of her short yellow hair, and the consciousness that she was awfully pretty—Peggy couldn’t help knowing that, as she peered into the old-fashioned oval mirror.
But now everything had lost its savour. She dressed because she had to; she ate because she had to. This last was a matter of great concern to Mrs. Stallard, who thought Peggy looking far from well. She sat and stared at her plate, and then left most of what was on it, pushing it under her knife and fork so that it should not be seen. And Mrs. Stallard went as she always did to her husband. Whatever perplexed her she took it to him, and she took this last question of Peggy to him. And with extraordinary duplicity he put her off the scent.
“The child is fretting for her parents,” he said, “and we can only leave time to do its healing and beneficent work. Do not question her, my dear. It is better not; young things are sensitive, and resent any apparent intrusion into the realm of their intimate feelings.”
So Mrs. Stallard, accepting her husband’s judgment, as she generally did on things of this kind, left the question of Peggy and her obvious depression for the moment. But inwardly she was not at all satisfied with the Canon’s opinion. Peggy had fretted extraordinarily little for her parents, she thought. The brevity of her period of wearing mourning for them, for instance, had even excited comment among the villagers. “So strange, ma’am,” the postmistress had remarked to her one day, watching Peggy’s abbreviated brown skirts vanishing out of the post-office door.
So Mrs. Stallard went back to her extremely occupied life, dismissing for the moment Peggy and her affairs from her mind. Christmas was on its way, and only a clergyman’s wife knows what that means.
And the date of the Celibates’ Ball began to draw near. Peter was having endless correspondence about it and a great deal of bother. Being at a distance it was frightfully difficult to get anything done. He had to have a costume made, and he was thirsting to get up to town and have it tried on. But for some reason or other Peggy never seemed to want to go to town now, What had come over the girl? Surely it couldn’t be only . . . For some entirely illogical reason Peter suddenly felt that he wanted to talk to Peggy about it. He could reason with her; no, he couldn’t, though, because he had told her that he was married. There was nothing to reason with her about.
But one morning the opportunity came. Miss Fielding wished to go up to town. Would Malcolm be ready with the car by half-past ten?
“Watkins!” Peter’s shout brought his servant running from the little kitchen. “Mayfair 3746, and say that they’ve got to be ready with a fitting at two o’clock. Hurry; it’s early and you’ll get a trunk call through easily.”
As Watkins, hatless, clattered down the steep, ladder-like staircase, Peter, with a twinge of despair, realized that he would have to go to his tailor’s dressed like a chauffeur. Not possible; there must be a lightning change at Ralph’s. He turned feverishly into his tiny bedroom. Watkins must pack up his blue serge suit; any old box would do for it, and he would explain to her that Watkins had to have a new suit made and that he was taking the old one up for a pattern. Any old excuse, Peter felt, childishly perturbed as he fussed about his room. What a devil of a time Watkins took going to the post-office! Oh, here he was back again.
But by the time the big car had circled round the little lawn and drawn up noiselessly at the door, Peter was his imperturbable self again. Very smart, too; he had had a new suit made—navy blue, this time. No more of that cinema touch for me, he had resolved, as he told Watkins to put the damned thing away and never allow him to see it again. But his imperturbability was a little shaken by his first glance at Peggy. He had not seen her for a week, except at a distance, and her look of pathetic fragility gave him a queer twist at his heart.
“Good morning, madam.” Peter was holding the curved door open and carefully keeping his eyes away from her face. But Peggy did not know that he was not looking at her, and her face went very white.
“Good morning, Malcolm,” she said, and stepped up into the back seat without another word.
The first part of the drive was made in silence, but at the point where the Little Churcham Road joined the main road to London Peter slackened down. Somehow it had suddenly become impossible for him to sit there without saying anything any more. There was such utter and complete desolation proceeding from the back seat. “Won’t you come and sit in front?” he said over his shoulder. “It’s so much more companionable—don’t you think so?”
“You don’t want me there.” Peggy’s voice was quiet and decisive.
“Yes, I do.” Peggy could see the skin on either side of Peter’s face move down by his collar. He was laughing at her.
But he was not—at least, not unkindly. “Yes, I do,” he said, and steered the car to the edge of the road. “Come along in; no, wait, I’ll get out and open the door for you. Sure you can manage?” as Peggy uttered an eager protest.
“Positive!” Peggy was out and in again before the powerful engine had throbbed itself into silence. “Oh!” she said, and her little pale face broke up into smiles. “My bag—no, it’s all right; it’s behind.” She was twisting herself and peering into the recesses at the back. “Now, don’t you think? a cigarette?” She turned round again and smiled tentatively at him.
“Not anywhere where we could be seen.” Peter glanced round. “It would be jolly,” he said, “but only if we shouldn’t be caught. Yes, if I back a bit. Sure you don’t mind?” He pressed the self-starter and turned his head, one gloved hand on the wheel. “That’s it.” They had come to a standstill under a great spreading tree. “Now then. . . . No, you have one of mine.” He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette-case.
Tortoiseshell! Peggy looked at it and at the hand that held it. His nails—how they gave him away! No man with a hand like that could be anything but—what he was. She took a cigarette, her own small fingers suddenly trembling.
“Good!” Peter was breathing in the smoke with relish. “It’s kind of you to let me do this,” he said.
“Kind!” Peggy made a funny little sound in her throat. “Why would it have mattered if anyone had seen us?” she asked.
“Why! because of you,” replied Peter, and smiled as he spoke. “A girl in a car, and the ‘shover’ smoking. The very idea is horrible.” He fell abruptly silent.
“I see, but I shouldn’t have minded.” Peggy had her soft curved lips set very closely over her cigarette. “I don’t care about conventional sort of things,” she said.
“No, but I should care for you,” said Peter easily. “I am years and years older than you, you see, and I know the importance of these things.”
“How many years older?”
“I should say about fifteen,” replied Peter, with his eyes laughing down into hers.
“Oh, what a lot!” Peggy fell abruptly silent. How odd this all was! she was thinking, this feeling of utter and complete content at only just being near to a man. Here she was, meaning absolutely nothing to him, that was obvious, but yet, for the feeling that because if she wanted to she could put out her hand and touch him, she was almost perfectly happy—happy with a happiness that she had never known before in all her hard, self-centred little life—a happiness of complete submission and dependence. She suddenly sighed.
“What’s that for?” Peter had nearly come to the end of his cigarette and was crushing out the stub of it in the electro-plated ash-tray fitted to the dashboard.
“Oh, nothing particular.” Peggy raised her head and laughed. “It’s like a book,” she said, “that’s what I was really thinking. You, all got up in that chauffeur’s uniform—by the way, it’s a new one, isn’t it?—and me being driven about by you, and both of us knowing that it’s all a farce, and you, at any rate, hating it. It’s a ridiculous situation”; and Peggy suddenly laughed hardly. In a twinkling of an eye all the feeling of joyful dependence and submission had gone, giving place to one almost of despair. She wanted this man so fearfully and so awfully, and yet the feeling that she wasn’t any more to him than the cigarette-ash that he was flicking off his coat, and that she never would be—how was it going to be borne? How was it going to be borne on and on, because feelings like that didn’t get less, they got more. . . .
“Well, I think we ought to be getting along. By the way”—Peter spoke with his finger on the self-starter—“what time do you want to start back? I’ve got one or two things that I ought to get done, and I should be awfully glad if I could manage it.” He deliberately ignored Peggy’s challenge. Discussion as to whether or not he liked or disliked the job he was doing was not in Peter’s programme. That sort of thing led on to personal topics, fatal under the circumstances.
“Oh, I don’t care. Supposing we say five at the club.” Peggy felt suddenly dreadfully tired—tired with a sick tiredness—tired with a tiredness that made the thought of going to sleep and never waking up again rather delightful than otherwise.
“Splendid!” said Peter heartily. He would not have to race and tear through his business. What a relief!
By half-past three Peter had entirely finished everything that he had to do. A dishevelled caretaker had let him into his flat, and he had conducted all his business by telephone, with the exception of the fitting of his fancy dress. Mr. Morton had brought that round, and, being the soul of discretion, had tried it on without asking a question. Sir Peter Wolversley was one of the illustrious firm’s best clients, and the continuance of his patronage, as it had learnt very early on, depended entirely upon the firm’s keeping its mouth shut. So this it did with the competence that distinguished it in all its ramifications. And Peter was pleased with his reflection in the long looking-glass.
“Rather nice.” He surveyed his long slim figure with complacence. He had elected to go to the Celibates’ Ball as Harlequin, and old Morton had come up to the scratch with more than his usual success.
“Very handsome, sir.” Mr. Morton was rubbing his hands together and standing back with his head a little on one side. “And with the domino . . .” Mr. Morton produced it from his flat suitcase.
“Jove! how it alters one!” Peter walked up to the glass and stared into it. Who would believe that the extinction of one’s eyes and forehead would so obliterate one’s personality? Only the rather straight line of his tightly shut mouth as a clue, and lots of people had tightly shut mouths. He would slip away before the unmasking, and no one would know that he had been in London that night—only the few intimate friends who were dining with him and Ralph first, and they, being intimate, would keep their mouths shut as successfully as Morton did. “Thanks, Morton,” he said. He twitched off the little black satin domino and, handing it to the fitter, blinked once or twice. “You’ve done excellently. Send it round to Captain Fraser’s rooms when it’s finished, please.”
And now Mr. Morton had gone, and Peter was free to do what he liked until four o’clock, when he had arranged to be back at Ralph’s flat to have a cup of tea and change back into his chauffeur get-up. He stared out of the window and stretched himself with joyful anticipation. He would have a prowl round these jolly crowded streets; the change from the quiet of Little Churcham was so topping.
But after a time the constant need to get out of other people’s way began to get on his nerves. Surely there were more people in the world than there used to be, he thought, or was it that their manners were worse? He turned rather impatiently out of Piccadilly and walked away into one of the quieter streets that run parallel to it. He had lived in this very street many years earlier, before the War. Jove! yes, there it was, looking exactly the same, the tall block of very select bachelor flats, right at the corner. How he had fancied himself when he had first gone into them! That old front door—many a night, or rather many an early morning . . . Peter suddenly cut short his memories and began to think anew of something else with extraordinary agility. Peggy . . . by all that was holy! and—yes it was—that horrible little worm Barrington Foster with her. Coming out of that very block of flats, too. Gad! what a damned little fool! Peter turned swiftly on his heel and cut down a side street.
Well out of their way, he stopped and glanced down at the watch on his wrist. Time for him to get back to Ralph’s if he was to work in tea and a change. The bath had been taken before lunch. Oh, how he had revelled in it! He started to walk on, and as he walked he thought. Why should he care what Peggy did? Well, no man likes to see a girl he knows make a complete fool of herself, he concluded—certainly not with a nasty piece of work like Foster.
Ralph was practically unable to talk of anything but his approaching marriage. But he was able to collect himself sufficiently to reply to Peter’s question as to where Barrington Foster lived. “Where you used to,” he said. “Try these muffins, Peter me lad; they do them jolly well here.”
So that confirmed it. Peter steered his way back to the club with a very black look on his face. No girl who valued her reputation at all ever went into those flats. There was no actual rule about it; but still—and Barrington Foster knew it well enough if she didn’t.
So he greeted Peggy with more or less of a scowl. She was waiting for him, standing on the top step, neat and expectant. Barrington Foster had been more tiresome than usual and she had been glad to get rid of him—glowering and sulky, and really once or twice round at the flat she had felt quite jumpy. But she had been able to control him all right, and when you come to think of it he was little more than a boy. Oh the relief to feel yourself in the care of a man again! She came down the steps of her club with quick expectant feet.
But Peter was disappointingly taciturn. Hardly without knowing it, Peggy had expected much from the drive back. They would be alone, and for a nice long time. It would be dark, and when it was dark things were easier. There was an intimacy about threading your way through crowded and lighted streets. It was cheerful, and yet at the same time mysterious. And you were awfully alone with a man in a saloon car. It had the same odd intimacy about it as a journey alone in a railway carriage with a man. Peggy took a long, happy, excited breath as she settled herself in the seat beside him.
But Peter did not speak at all until they reached the well-known corner in Ashdown Forest. He was travelling very fast—unusually fast, Peggy thought—but knowing him to be a very careful driver she did not worry about it. She essayed one or two timid remarks, but as he did not reply to them she gave it up. Something must have bothered him in town, she thought, and she would leave him alone.
But at the dark corner he slackened down, and turning it very carefully steered the car to the edge of the road and stopped dead. Then he spoke, and Peggy, hearing his voice, knew he was angry and was suddenly afraid.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he said.
“No, not a bit. No, I won’t have one, thank you,” as the cigarette-case was held out to her through the blurred darkness. “I smoked too much in town.”
“Hmm.” Peter slipped the case back into his pocket. “I’ve got something to say to you,” he said, and as he spoke he tapped his cigarette on the edge of the nickel-plated dashboard. “I came along rather fast so that I should have time to say it. What were you doing in Barrington Foster’s flat to-day?”
“How do you know I was there?” Peggy was taken unawares, and said what she wouldn’t have said if she had had time to think.
“Because I saw you coming out of it.” Peter was stooping and speaking from between his cupped hands. He purposely did not look at her, because somehow he knew that she was afraid. And in a way he was sorry for her. He blew out a cloud of smoke, twisting his neck so that it should go out of the window.
“You were spying on me.” Again Peggy spoke without thinking.
“My dear child, don’t flatter yourself,” Peter responded, with a short laugh, all his pity evaporating on the instant. “I am afraid,” he said, “that what you do affects me very little.”
“Then why do you interfere with me?” blazed Peggy, stung and furious.
“Because I dislike to see any girl I know make a fool of herself,” replied Peter. “And you are making worse than a fool of yourself when you go alone with a young man to his chambers. There is no actual rule about those flats, I admit—I happen to know it, as I once lived in them myself—but no decent girl is ever seen there. That I also happen to know.”
“Then you infer that I am not decent,” blazed Peggy.
“That would be the natural inference,” said Peter quietly, “but I should be very sorry to have to think it about you.”
“How dare you!” said Peggy, and her small face was suddenly pale and all distorted with rage. “You, a chauffeur, pretending to be somebody that you aren’t! I don’t believe it; I believe you are what Mr. Granger says, a crook. One day we shall wake up to find all our jewellery gone, like that man in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Charles . . .”
“So he says I’m a crook, does he? Well done, Mr. Granger. I shouldn’t have credited him with the perspicacity,” Peter uttered a short laugh. “Yes, I saw that play, and it was remarkably clever.” Peter spoke as if he were musing. “Mr. Granger can say that sort of thing with impunity,” he went on, lifting his head and looking at Peggy through the darkness, “because he is a man and I can settle with him later. But you cannot,” he said, and as he spoke he dropped the butt-end of his cigarette on to the rubber mat and ground it out with his heel. “Withdraw it instantly.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Peggy hotly, “because I believe it.”
“What you do or do not believe is a matter of no consequence to me,” replied Peter. “But I will not be insulted by a child, and if you do not withdraw it, I shall punish you as a child under the same circumstances would be punished, and that’s all about it”; and he folded his arms and looked coolly over them at the girl, shrunk away into the corner.
“You wouldn’t dare!” Peggy’s voice was breathless.
“Wouldn’t I? It’s what I’ve been spoiling to do ever since I saw you,” said Peter grimly—“or, rather, ever since you left me on the road by the aerodrome,” he interposed hurriedly.
“All right, then, do it, and I’ll kill you, I’ll—I’ll—I tell you, I’ll murder you!” raved Peggy, thrusting her small hands down the sides of the cushions and holding on with all her force.
“Very well, then, but I tell you you won’t like it,” responded Peter, and he began to heave his long length out of his seat. “I’ll come round and get you out of the other door,” he said, and he got out on his side, thrusting one long gaitered leg out into the darkness.
“Don’t touch me!” Peggy reminded Peter irresistibly of a small grey mouse, as, with her little felt hat knocked all crooked, she fought with him. She was so utterly at his mercy. Having got her successfully out of the front seat of the car, he tucked her under his arm and proceeded to get into the back seat with her.
“Brute! devil!” Peggy had given it up and was sobbing.
“Well, but the remedy is in your own hands.” Peter was struggling with the handle. “Since you elect to be spanked, it must mean that you prefer it to apologizing.”
“I don’t . . . I mean I will apologize. Don’t, don’t . . .” Peggy, set down on the seat again, had caught hold of one lean wrist and was holding it in both her hands. “Don’t, don’t . . . you don’t know what you make me feel. Oh, why did you ever come here? It was fearfully, horribly cruel of you.” Peggy broke out into wildest sobs. “You knew I should fall in love with you; you set out to make me—I feel you did, because you saw how hard and horrible I was. And now you see that I do love you, you despise me . . . you do, and I am undyingly disgraced. You aren’t a crook; you aren’t anything—you aren’t anything but the man I adore and worship. I’m sorry if I said anything to hurt your feelings”; and Peggy in the darkness flung out her small hands and cried and cried again.
“Come along . . . don’t.” For the first time since Peter had known the girl beside him, he felt a swift twinge of affection for her. Like all generous men, her passionate declaration only aroused in him a sense of gratitude. After all, what was he that she should have cast down her young soul at his feet? He turned towards her in the darkness.
“Don’t spurn me away from you!” Peggy’s hat had fallen off on to the floor, and by the light of the headlamps Peter could see her small drenched face. “You’re married; I know that—you told me so. Anyhow, your wife can’t love you much or she wouldn’t let you be a chauffeur, or you don’t love her, or you’d be with her; anyhow, she doesn’t count. It doesn’t involve you in anything, I mean, if you even pretended you loved me. That’s what kills me; that’s what makes me do insane things like going to Barrington’s flat. I never felt like this before. I tell you I’ve never felt it”; and Peggy caught hold of the hand lying close to hers and lifted it up until her young face was buried in the palm of it.
Peter’s breath suddenly came quickly. After all, Peggy was young and fragrant, and all his life women had attracted him very powerfully. But beyond a kiss or so this affair must not go. He made the resolution swiftly, slipping an arm round her trembling body. “Darling,” he said, and as he said it he felt a brute, because she suddenly trembled so—“darling little girl, you’re very sweet to say that you love me, and I value your love very much. And now let me kiss you. I know I oughtn’t to, but I’m jolly well going to,” he said; and he stooped his dark head until he felt her soft mouth tremble under his.
“May I drive all the way home with my head on your arm?” asked Peggy timidly, as, after a long breathless pause, Peter raised his head again.
“Yes, you may.” Peter was groping rather blindly and vacantly round for his peaked cap.
But this again was not the way to behave, and Peter was very conscious of it by one o’clock the next morning. Until then he had lain awake in rather an unusual state of mental excitement. Peggy was attractive, and, with all that hardness and assertion gone, more attractive than the average girl. Besides, Peter was primitive enough to prefer something that other men had not been able to get, and he knew that he had got that in Peggy. She had always been grovelled to—well, that was not his line, and she had recognized it and responded to it. And so far it was very delightful. But what was going to happen next? That was what was concerning Peter, as he tossed and turned in the moonlight and wished that it was time for Watkins to bring him his early tea. Ah well, time enough to think of that later, he concluded at four o’clock, when, conscious that at last the blurred rapture of sleep was on him, he rolled on to his side and slept.
But Peggy did not sleep at all, and at breakfast she looked like it. And after breakfast Mrs. Stallard took her aside and asked her if she was not feeling well.
“Quite well, thank you.” Peggy had never really cared for Mrs. Stallard, and spoke shortly.
“But, my dear child, you look so battered.”
“Do I? I expect it’s the weather; anyhow, I feel perfectly all right—in fact, I’m going up to town again to-day. I’ve heaps of Christmas shopping to do, and I had practically no time to do it yesterday.”
“Again to-day! My dear child, don’t overdo it.” Mrs. Stallard always made a point of not interfering with what her young guest chose to do, but this was a little too much. A very real feeling of uneasiness crept into her mind. Surely only one thing could explain . . . She sought out her husband.
He listened to her in silence, and when she had finished he got up and took one or two uneasy turns about the room. “I will speak to Peggy myself, my dear,” he said. “Send her along in here.”
“Henry, do you know anything about the young man?” asked Mrs. Stallard, her eyes suddenly on her husband’s face.
“Yes, I do, my dear.” The Canon had stopped in his pacing and was stooping to pat the spaniel who lay curled up in the round wicker basket.
“Anything bad?” Mrs. Stallard was still looking at him. How well he had kept it from her, and quite rightly!
“No, my dear. Now send Peggy along to me, otherwise she will be out and away before we can get hold of her. Don’t look so worried, my darling; all will be well.”
“Will it?” Mrs. Stallard spoke dubiously. Sudden visions of angry trustees rose up in front of her. Young girls with excellent incomes of their own are equally excellent prey for the adventurer. She called up the stairs to Peggy.
“Won’t it do to-night? I’m getting ready.” Mrs. Stallard could hear Peggy crossing her floor; she was answering as she came.
“No, dear, it won’t.” Mrs. Stallard spoke gently. Peggy had her door open now. “Come along down as you are,” she said. “The Canon is waiting for you.”
“Sure?” There was a little bubble of laughter, and Peggy, tiny and neat in her short princess petticoat, came demurely down the stairs. Her eyes shone derisively from under her yellow hair; she had recovered her usual spirits because she was going out with him. He would kiss her; she felt sure he would, if she pleaded with him.
“My dear child!” But in spite of herself Mrs. Stallard’s eyes laughed back. The child was so deliciously pretty. Then she looked grave again. “No, that won’t quite do,” she said. “Put on your dressing-gown and finish afterwards. I will explain to my husband.”
So Peggy, in her heel-less slippers and pink satin quilted dressing-gown, looked more defenceless than usual, and the Canon’s old heart gave a painful throb at the task in front of him. Without actually telling her who Malcolm was—that was forbidden to him—he must make it clear to her that she must be very circumspect in her dealings with him. She must not go out too frequently with him. And, worst of all, he must break it to her that Malcolm was leaving in a month’s time. That was what the Canon minded most.
So did Peggy. She dismissed all the rest with a little impatient wave of her hands. “Oh, I’d guessed all that long ago,” she said. “Of course, anyone could see it. But you say he’s going. Why?” Her voice suddenly failed.
“Because he thinks that it is best,” said the Canon quietly.
“But why? Isn’t he satisfied. Doesn’t he get enough pay? Raise it. I left all that to you, Uncle Henry. I’ve got heaps of money; I don’t care.”
“No, my child, it isn’t that. It is that he feels that he has been here long enough. The living under an assumed name is beginning to jar on him. After all, he came here for a specific purpose, and that purpose fulfilled he had no reason for staying. After all, why should he stay, Peggy?”
“No, why should he?” Peggy echoed the words dully. Suddenly she felt dull all over He had come for a specific purpose, of course: to make her fall in love with him. How or why Peggy did not trouble to stop and analyse. But he had come for that, and now it was done there was no need for him to stay any longer, was there? “What was his specific purpose?” she asked curiously. If the Canon said that it was to make her fall in love with him, she might perhaps begin to hate him, because any man who would tell another man that would be a cad, and you couldn’t love a cad—at least, you couldn’t if you had any pride left. But she hadn’t any pride left. She sat, small and huddled in her dressing-gown, waiting for the Canon’s reply.
“He was sleeping badly,” said the Canon, “and thought that a spell of hard work, coupled with this beautiful country air, would put him right. It has done so, and now he wants to return to his old life. We ought not to try to stop him, Peggy, and I advise you, my child, not to attempt it.”
“Do you know who he really is, Uncle Henry?” Peggy was not listening any more. Her secret was still her own, and she could go on worshipping him. She would go out with him to-day and make him promise not to go. She would implore him . . . go down on her knees to him.
“No, my child, not officially,” said the Canon gravely. “As a clergyman, I hear things, but they are apart from me in an ordinary sense. And now what about to-day, Peggy? My wife tells me that you are going up to town again. Are you wise? Be very careful, my dear little girl.” The Canon came and stood over Peggy where she sat up very straight in a low chair, staring at him. Personally, thought the Canon, he didn’t see how any man could resist her. Coupled with all this undoubted beauty, the gentle clinging of her was so attractive. But, as he thought instantly, a man in that position would see endless women. He wasn’t a Granger or a Mason, to be bowled over by the first dazzling young woman that came his way.
“Angel Uncle Henry, I adore you,” said Peggy impulsively, getting up from her chair. “And I will be careful—madly, madly careful. Now I must hurry, because I sent over to the garage some time ago. Good-bye, darling seraph”; and Peggy was out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time, her flying dressing-gown held round her.
And what good had that been? the Canon wondered, as he sat down again at his table. He had bungled it somehow. He drew out a sheaf of sermon paper and sat there staring at it.
People with faces like ferrets have very often got ferrety instincts. Mr. Granger had both. He was determined to find out who Peter really was, and he had very nearly done it. A certain amount of cash had had to change hands, which had been a blow, because Mr. Granger was a very mean man, and he loathed parting with money, especially in small quantities. He would have given a hundred pounds to have been able to go straight to Watkins, but he gave up that idea at once. Watkins was unassailable, even Mr. Granger could see that.
However, there were many other ways of finding things out, and Mr. Granger employed them all. It was the rather garrulous manageress of the steam laundry at Broad Heath who eventually gave Peter away. The Grangers did not send their washing to the steam laundry; Mrs. Granger had a protégée in the village who did it. So had most of the people in Little Churcham, for steam laundries were an innovation, and, according to the old inhabitants, took a delight in tearing off buttons, and in generally clawing all your best undergarments to pieces. But Watkins had thought of drooping collars and dejectedly dingy shirts, not to mention incriminating markings, and had considered it wiser all round to have his master’s clothes washed out of Little Churcham.
So Mr. Granger had seen the large blue motor-van charging down the village street, and decided that he could walk into Broad Heath one day and visit the laundry, with the excuse that they themselves were not very satisfied with their present arrangements, and had just called in while passing for a price list.
“Certainly, sir.” The manageress, emerging from a tropical miasma of damp steam, was very cordial. “I will give you a price list with pleasure. Step in here, sir, please.”
“Here” was a minute office smelling of damp clothes and starch. As she sought for a price list the manageress became communicative. “We already have a client in Little Churcham, sir,” she said—“Sir Peter Wolversley, who is staying at one of the big houses near. He has his clothes sent in to the Rectory garage, to be called for; we wash the chauffeur’s and his personal servant’s clothes, too.”
“Do you indeed?” It was all that Mr. Granger could do to refrain from clasping the manageress in his arms. The secret his—and for nothing. “Really, really,” he stammered.
And the manageress, who had not noticed that he stammered before, suddenly became nervous and opened the door of the little office. As she said to her head sorter afterwards, “One cannot be too careful, and the little gentleman had such a strange look in his eyes, as if he could suddenly have eaten me. And he went off without taking the price list. I don’t care for that sort of thing at all.”
But Mr. Granger had forgotten all about the manageress. He was tearing down the High Street to the Free Library. He would find it all there. The beggar! He’d got him in the hollow of his hand now. He’d squeeze him; make him sit up! He plunged into the rather stuffy reading-room and headed straight for Burke’s Peerage.
Yes, he’d got him; it was all there, parents and grandparents, country houses and all. Yet when he had read it he sat staring in front of him and wondered why the first feeling of elation had gone. And a squire from a neighbouring village, who also wanted to look at the fat red book, stared at him impatiently. What did a commercial traveller want with Burke? Better stick to his job and do it decently. That’s what was the matter with the country nowadays, too much . . . He picked up the book impatiently the moment Mr. Granger had laid it down, and stared disgustedly after him as he walked to the swinging door and went out of it.
Mrs. Granger made matters worse when the great news was communicated to her. During lunch Basil had sat very silent, devoting himself exclusively to the food on his plate; but afterwards, restored especially by his tankard of ale, he had drawn her mysteriously into the snuggery and told her what he had found out.
“Oh, Basil!” Poor Mrs. Granger was painfully anxious to receive the news with the excitement that her husband obviously expected. But her more practical mind leaped at the weak point in the whole thing at once. “A man like that, with unlimited money at his command,” she said; “he could make it very unpleasant for you if he thought that you had been prying into his private affairs. Leave it alone, Basil; take my advice, dear, and leave it alone.”
“Typical!” Mr. Granger spoke crossly because this was exactly what he had begun to think himself and he hated to hear it confirmed by somebody else. He glared at his wife.
“Don’t be angry with me, dear,” she pleaded.
“But I am. It’s so exactly like a woman. One does something that one thinks will please them and then all they can do is to run it down.” Mr. Granger made expressive gestures with his rather .short arms.
“But I haven’t run you down, Basil. All I mean is”—and Mrs. Granger flushed unbecomingly in her anxiety to be explicit—“all I mean is that with a man in that position one has to be very careful. He may not wish people to know who he is; he cannot wish it or he would not conceal his identity as he does. And if you . . .”
“Rubbish!” Mr. Granger was striding up and down the room looking really almost martial. “Rubbish, Priscilla! Right is right and wrong is wrong. For the sake of that poor innocent child—we owe a debt to the Canon . . .”
“Which poor innocent child?” Mrs. Granger spoke with a queer clutching at her heart, although her common sense told her that her husband could only be speaking of Peggy. But that would not be the way to describe her, would it? she thought.
“Miss Peggy Fielding,” said Mr. Granger majestically.
“Oh, her!” Mrs. Granger fell suddenly silent and felt hopelessly wretched. Having only just got her Basil back, she felt that if she was to lose him again she could not bear it. Let Sir Peter Wolversley have Peggy; she didn’t care. Let him have her any way she wished, and she, Mrs. Granger, would only be thankful—thankful that she should be out of the way once and for all She didn’t care how it happened as long as she was gone.
But Mr. Granger, now really wrought up, was standing looking round for his hat. While the iron is hot, the iron is hot, he was saying to himself. For really, in his heart of hearts, he did not half like the task that lay in front of him.
Waiting made it worse. For Malcolm was “h’out,” Mr. Granger was told by Watkins when, immediately after his talk with his wife, he went round to the garage. Watkins frightened him, anyhow; he had the middle-class fear of menservants and an anxious desire to conciliate them. And the way the man looked at him over the low gate at the top of the ladder-like staircase frightened Mr. Granger really rather badly. So he hurried down them again, making up his mind as he went that he would not tell Watkins that he was coming back. But Watkins thought that he probably would, and told his master so when he came in, rather tired, at about half-past six.
“What does the little brute want?” Sir Peter Wolversley was sitting rather dejectedly on the side of his low bed, wrapped up in his Paisley silk dressing-gown. Watkins was on his knees, taking off his boots and gaiters.
“Seemed very busy in his mind over something, sir,” said Watkins fluently. “Just as if he had something on his chest, so to speak, and wanted to get it off.”
“He probably has. Well, bring in the coffee and cognac as you did before, Watkins, and show him in at once when he comes.” Peter got up and walked wearily to the dressing-table. He felt thoroughly done up and out of tune with himself. The day had been a very trying one—why so particularly trying he did not stop to analyse. He had told Peggy that he was going at the beginning of January, and she had looked at him queerly and with a sort of withered look on her beautiful little face.
“Why are you?” She had spoken with a desperate effort to control the trembling of her lower lip.
It had been fearfully difficult to tell her. You cannot, unless you are a cad, tell a girl to her face that you are getting out of her way because if you stay in her vicinity you may sooner or later be involved. Peter did not wish to marry Peggy, and he had no fancy for having her on any other terms. That he would be able to get her on other terms he had not very much doubt, and somehow the knowledge made him profoundly wretched. Peggy wasn’t the sort of girl to go down with a crash like that; she was proud and hard and almost repellent in her dealings with men. But now she was gentle and pleading, and had clung to him once in the car that day and cried, and Peter had felt a brute, and had hated himself and the selfish whim that had brought the present state of things to pass.
“Don’t cry, please.” He had spoken almost boyishly as Peggy put her tiny handkerchief up to her mouth. They had given up London very early on in the expedition, and had turned off into one of the many beautiful country roads that lie round Ashdown Forest. The early morning frost had not yet quite melted in the December sunshine, and was lying coldly on the long grass by the side of the road. Everything had a beautiful tinge of blue over it, as if the coldness of mist had fallen on it and lay trailing.
“I am not crying, really. What are we going to do all day?” Peggy had her top teeth hard down on her lower lip. It wasn’t so much the knowledge that he was going that made her cry, she was thinking; it was this strange new rapture of being quite close to him. Not so much physical as spiritual, she was thinking vaguely, uncomprehending as she thought—the feeling that when she was with him everything was all right—the feeling of a sort of joyful, tender companionship, coupled with the knowledge that she had met her master. Not just a stupid male domination produced only by brute force, but a domination of mind and character too. Something that held her down—all of her, spirit and mind as well as body. Something that if only she could win it could make her divinely happy and at peace. Something that—and then the thought was too much for her and the slow tears ran unchecked down her small face.
“Oh, I say!” Peter swung round in his seat.
“Let me cry close to you. I don’t care what you think of me; I’m past it”; and Peggy had dropped her soft felt hat on the floor of the car and turned her face into his shoulder and cried until she could cry no more. And Peter had sat and stared in front of him until he too could stand it no more, and then had turned and laid his face gently on her hair.
“You make me profoundly wretched when you go on like this,” he said.
“Ah, if I only thought you minded I shouldn’t be so utterly in despair,” sobbed Peggy. “It is partly that, the feeling that you despise me—sort of look pityingly on at me from a distance. I know men loathe what they can get for nothing—hate it. It’s the wrong way round: men like to hunt things . . .”
“I’ve never been like that.” Peter spoke naturally and simply, and as he spoke he felt round for her small hand and held it in his. “I suppose it sounds a filthily conceited thing to say,” he said, “and you’ll probably loathe me when I’ve said it, but every fresh woman who has been good enough to care for me has only made me feel a profound gratitude to her. Women have so preciously much to give and they give it so ungrudgingly. Any man who doesn’t . . .” Peter stopped expressively.
“But if I offered . . .” Peggy turned her face a little closer into his coat. “I tell you that I should be glad—be glad,” she cried. “And I have my own money, too; you wouldn’t have any expense. Why? Why . . .?” She clung to him anew, weeping.
At that Peter made a little tender sound in his throat. “My child, my child . . .” he said, and he turned and flung one long arm round her. “Utterly impossible.” He almost laughed as he said it. “Why, Peggy, you’re at the very beginning of your life. You think you care for me, you dear, funny little thing, and the thought is very precious to me. But as for anything else—why, the very idea is fantastic. Look up, little darling thing, and wipe your eyes. You’re irrevocably damaging my one and only chauffeur’s uniform, and I shall never be able to afford another.”
So the incident that was bordering on the tragic had ended on a lighter note. And Peggy, struggling for self-control, had realized that so far as she was concerned Peter was not for her. The day had been passed fairly pleasantly; they had bought things to eat at a shop in East Hoathly—at least, Peggy had, leaving Peter hidden away in the car—and they had wandered right into the depth of the Forest and eaten them, and tried to keep on the surface of things. Peter would gladly have returned home, making some excuse to the Stallards, but Peggy clutched feverishly at the idea of the day with him, and Peter had not the heart to damp her too utterly. But he was very glad when it was over and he was safely in his own rooms again, for something right far away in him told him that he was not so indifferent to her as he made out. And he had no mind to involve himself in anything that he might one day bitterly regret. When he married, he had to marry very circumspectly indeed. A long line of ancestors and a very great deal of money demanded it.
So he awaited Mr. Granger’s probable visit in a condition of nervous irritability; and when the little man eventually arrived and had been shown in, and had refused both coffee and cognac, and was standing looking both small and wizened, with his back to the excellently burning fire, Peter let his mood show itself a little.
“I can give you exactly half an hour,” he said, drawing a watch almost as thin as a half-crown from out of his dress-waistcoat pocket. “Kindly say what you have to say as expeditiously as possible.”
This was rather a set-back and frightened Mr. Granger a little. There was something very much of the world about the tall man lying back in the long chair with the tiny Georgian tumbler between his fingers.
“I know who you are, sir.” Mr. Granger blurted it out, and thrust his chin a little forward as he spoke.
“Do you, indeed? How very interesting!” Peter was regarding the man in front of him. An unpleasant type, he concluded.
“What do you intend to do about it?” asked Mr. Granger.
“Nothing,” said Peter.
“You must. Decency demands it.”
“Then what would you propose?”
“I should propose that you go straight to Canon Stallard and tell him who you really are,” said Mr. Granger, hunting for his moustache with his badly shaped little hand.
“He knows,” said Peter, and leant forward and put the little empty tumbler up on the mantelpiece.
“He knows?” This was a nasty one for Mr. Granger and he could not hide it. He stared in unconcealed disgust at the man in the low chair.
“Certainly; I told him a long time ago,” said Peter, and leaned back again and put the tips of his lean fingers together.
“And have you also told the poor girl with whose affections you are wantonly trifling?” demanded Mr. Granger angrily.
“You refer to . . .?” said Peter, with rather a dangerous look on his clean-shaven mouth. Mr. Granger was a bit too near the truth in his last remark for it to be quite palatable.
“Miss Fielding,” said Mr. Granger, with a sneer.
“No, not yet. Would you like to forestall me?” said Peter, and suddenly heaved himself out of his low chair and leaned up against the mantelpiece alongside of Mr. Granger.
“No, thank you.” Mr. Granger was suddenly dreadfully frightened. The man beside him was so very tall, and probably that rascally manservant was just outside the door waiting to be called in if required.
“You have come to the conclusion, perhaps, that it would be best to keep your mouth shut?” inquired Peter suavely, putting one long foot up on the low seat of the chair in front of him and regarding it.
“Nothing of the kind,” spluttered Mr. Granger, suddenly incensed. “I shall do what I consider to be my duty. I shall go the moment I leave here and inform Miss Fielding of what I have found out. Poor girl! Poor deceived girl! I pity her deeply.” Mr. Granger was looking vaguely round preparatory to taking his departure.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” flashed out Peter; and swung round and faced the man beside him.
“I shall!” Mr. Granger perceived that he had scored a point and was highly delighted. He pressed it home. “Poor deluded child!” he said, and made for the door.
“And what about your filthy advances to her? Are they to go unremarked?” Peter was following him as he walked. Suddenly it appeared intolerable to him that Peggy should hear the truth from this man. She would feel that he had taken advantage of her because of his position. She would know that his statement that he was married had been a lie. The whole thing would be . . . “Answer my question,” he said, and getting to the door first he put his back against it.
“I answer no questions at all,” said Mr. Granger, with low cunning. “Moreover, you will have to make good your accusations in court should you decide to give them publicity.” Mr. Granger stiffened himself up and looked very big, and martial, and virtuous.
Peter knew that the game lay with Mr. Granger. No girl would ever stand up in court and repeat what Mr. Granger had said to her; therein lay the safety of men of his ilk. He hesitated for just one moment and then made up his mind. “We will go over to the Rectory together,” he said, and heaved his long back from against the door and turned the handle of it. “Just one moment while I get my man to bring my overcoat.”
“We will do nothing of the kind,” stuttered Mr. Granger, terribly alarmed. He had looked forward to an exciting interview with Peggy alone, because he knew that the Canon and his wife were out at a parish function, to which his wife had also gone.
“We will,” said Peter, and called pleasantly in the direction of the kitchen. “My overcoat, please, Watkins,” he said. “Mr. Granger and I are going out.”
Watkins came hurrying. “Certainly, sir,” he said, and helped his master on with his coat with empressement. He had been listening at the door, so that he knew now there was no longer any need for concealment.
Peggy was alone in the big flower-filled drawing-room. The Stallards’ chrysanthemums had done well that year, and stood wintry and radiant in a great many tall pewter mugs. There was a beautiful fire, and Peggy was sitting very close to it, doing nothing but staring into its glowing depths, her little hands lying idly on her lap. Peter had not seen her in evening dress before, and her little yellow head seemed in some way to blend with the dress of tawny velvet that she was wearing. A vase of big golden chrysanthemums stood close to her shoulder on a little polished table. The whole effect was a glowing one. Only the face that she raised at the opening of the door was lifeless, but it also flashed into sudden colour when she saw who was standing there.
“Mr. Granger and Mr. Malcolm to see you, miss.” Old Jane had a very shrewd inkling of the state of affairs, but she did not take much interest in anything but Peggy’s obvious misery. She shut the door quickly; she would hear it all in good time from the Grangers’ cook.
“To see me!” Peggy had got up and had turned round from the fire. She had eyes for no one but the tall man in the overcoat. He was in evening clothes; she could see the stiff collar and the small black tie below it.
“I feel it my duty to tell you,” said Mr. Granger, proceeding across the carpet, and not making any attempt to say “Good evening” to Peggy, “that I have found out who this man is. He is masquerading here under a false name and identity. In reality he is a Sir Peter Wolversley. You have doubtless heard of him, Miss Fielding.”
Peggy stood very still. Then her instinct had been right at the very beginning. He was the man she had thought him; the man who had deliberately turned his back on her at Lady Maurice’s dance. Ralph Fraser’s best friend; he had often spoken of him. Once even, bitterly, he had said that she ought to get to know him, as he would teach her. And now she had got to know him, and he had taught her. Peggy closed her eyes for the fraction of a second. How he must have enjoyed it—in his position—her complete surrender! She opened them again.
“I knew that he was Sir Peter Wolversley, Mr. Granger,” she said, and calmly regarded Mr. Granger’s down-dropped jaw. Nothing would allow her to let this little man think that he had in any way hurt her, or scored at all. “But how kind of you to come and tell me! Why did you trouble?”
“You knew?” stuttered Mr. Granger.
“Certainly,” lied Peggy steadfastly, but with her hands cold and trembling. If only the tall man looking at her would go! If only they would both go!
“Then there is nothing more to be said.” Mr. Granger was thoroughly put out and unnerved. He made fussily for the door, brushing past Peter, who was standing there very still. “Good night,” he said—“good night”; and Mr. Granger was gone. They could both hear him crossing the hall—running he seemed to be.
“Well?” Peter had waited until the outer door had shut with a bang, and then he came quickly across the carpet. “You perfect little brick,” he said—“you perfect little brick”; and he tried to take hold of her small hands.
But she drew away from him. “How you must have been enjoying yourself!” she said, and stood looking up at him with her hands held tightly together behind her back.
“Don’t!” Peter was frowning.
“But I mean it. A man in your position. Mr. Granger little knew what a weapon he’d got, but I would rather have died . . .” Peggy had her hands up to her neck, and was gasping.
“Then you didn’t really know?” Peter was looking at her.
“Of course I didn’t. Do you suppose if I had . . .” Peggy was defying him, her small head thrown back. “Every woman in London after you—the most eligible bachelor in the world almost—I wondered at first, because, of course, I had seen you—you remember it as well as I do. And you made up your mind then—that you would make me—like you have made me. Utterly your slave—without any ordinary shame—nothing. And because of it I hate you—hate you with an undying hatred that I shall feel for the rest of my life. You’ve tortured my soul, and I shall never forgive you for it. Go away before I say awful things that I shall be sorry for afterwards.”
“Say them. I’m sure I deserve them.” Peter had come nearer to the fire, and was standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece. Peggy’s head was just about on a level with his shoulder. He was looking down on it and wondering. Should he do the only decent thing left open to him to do, namely, ask her to be his wife. She was well bred, and loved him. Then the awful irrevocableness of it took him by the throat. For the rest of his life—no, he simply could not. Whatever she thought of him, he could not. He would get away out of it all as soon as ever he could and try to forget it. He had behaved extremely caddishly, and there he would have to leave it. She would get over it; she was only a child, and had a good many strings to her bow as it was.
“You knew Ralph. He was your friend, and has often spoken to me about you. And you knew that I had behaved badly to him, and you wanted to be revenged on me. It was cruel—ghastly cruel of you!” Peggy had her small hands wrung together, and her eyes were very wide open.
“I’m frightfully sorry. I know I’ve behaved like a cad, and that’s all there is to say about it.” Peter moved his head a little on his hand.
“And now you’ll go back and tell everybody how you made me fall in love with you. And they’ll all rejoice. Hooray! that little minx caught at last! What a sell for her!” Peggy’s eyes were bright and hard.
“No, I’m not quite such a cad as all that,” said Peter, and took his elbow off the mantelpiece and straightened his long back a little.
“You are. You’re utterly cruel and brutal. I tell you that I hate and loathe you. I hope I never set eyes on you again. Leave off being my chauffeur; I won’t ever get into the car again with you in it. I hate you—I tell you that I hate you!” Peggy spoke in a low controlled voice.
“I am most awfully sorry that you feel like this.” Peter thrust both his hands into his coat pockets and moved his feet a little nervously apart. “I can absolutely understand it, of course. As to being your chauffeur, of course that’s done with. I shall speak to the Canon directly he comes in. But look here . . .” Peter took a few steps forward. “Don’t have any feelings about yourself. I mean to say, you know how I feel about that. I’m grateful, frightfully grateful to you. I’m not a bit worth anything good that you may think about me. . . .”
“I can’t . . . I don’t care about that.” Peggy suddenly dropped limply down into her chair. “I say, I’m fearfully sorry, but I believe I’m going to faint or something,” she said, and looked up with a funny little wan smile. “Too many mutual recriminations, I suppose. Oh no, I’m not; it’s going off. Half a second.” She dropped her head down on to her knees and held it there a moment.
As Peter stood there anxiously looking down on her, he very nearly said the words that were hovering on his lips. Peggy’s hair grew sweetly in the nape of her neck, very yellow and very babyishly; but she lifted it up just in time. “Better,” she said. “Now go before I make quite the complete fool of myself. Good-bye, and you know I don’t hate you really; I only wish I did. Good-bye.” Her small hand was prisoned in his.
“Good-bye.” Peter took it closely in his own. “You know . . .” he began.
“I don’t know anything except that if you don’t clear out this minute I shall be sick or something.” Peggy’s face was working grotesquely, and she laughed a little wildly. “Goodbye.” She called it out again after him as he crossed the floor. “Good-bye.” She was calling it again as he was opening and shutting the door.
“Good-bye.” She said it again, stupidly this time, as with the bang of the front door she turned and stared at herself in the little silver mirror on the mantelpiece. And then she began to cry, watching the queer movements of her mouth, and the odd way that the tears welled up and rolled down her face, leaving her eyelids puffy and swollen.
So now the garage at High Plashings was empty, and Peggy drove her own car. She went out in it a good deal—long, lonely days right away into the country. The village talked a certain amount about the whole affair, but very little really, considering the unusual circumstances of the case. The Rectory servants were loyal, and respected Mrs. Stallard’s request that so far as possible the matter should not be discussed with the tradespeople. The general feeling was that Peggy ought to have played her cards better and obtained the young baronet for herself. “I don’t hold with these short skirts and goings on,” the postmistress declared one day to Mrs. Granger. “A lot too much for nothing nowadays, that’s what’s at the bottom of the whole affair. Likes something they can hunt a bit, that’s my opinion of it”; and the postmistress had sniffed virtuously.
So Peggy really got very little sympathy, especially from her own sex. Even Mrs. Stallard felt that she could have managed things better if she had tried. Only the Canon seemed able to enter into the anguish that was tearing at Peggy’s very vitals.
“Uncle Henry, he thought lightly of me: I showed him too plainly.” Peggy would lift a face that was literally ravaged. “Why did he come? It was cruel, it was brutal of him.” A dreadful sob would drag up from the very depths of her.
“My darling little girl.” The Canon would get up and go over and stand by her side as she sat crouched in the low chair. The scenes were terribly frequent. No one knew about them but the Canon. He was glad that Peggy turned to him, although the sight of her grief was terribly painful to him.
“Do you think that he will perhaps think it over—and come back? After all, it isn’t as if I was old—or common. He did seem to like me sometimes, Uncle Henry. I tell you that I can’t go on living . . . nobody knows . . .” Peggy would press her small hand to her heart.
“My darling child.” And there, all that the Canon had to say was finished. He was quite certain that Peter would not come back. The last interview had made that very clear to him. Peter was mortally ashamed of himself, and there it ended. He had held the Canon’s hand in a very close grip when he had said good-bye. “I’m afraid I’ve behaved extremely badly, sir,” he had said, and then he had left the room.
And he undoubtedly had. But, after all, you couldn’t expect a man in Sir Peter Wolversley’s position to spend the rest of his life in expiating one foolish action. When he married he must marry into his own set, and if possible where he loved. It was Peggy’s misfortune that she had happened to fall in love with him. She must try to get over it. The Canon said all this as kindly and gently as he could.
“Yes, Uncle Henry”; and with this Peggy had got up with a queer grey, twisted look on her mouth and had gone quietly out of the room. To outward appearances she did seem to be getting over it. Only Mr. Mason knew now that she would never get over it; he had seen her once in church after an Early Celebration. Everyone else had gone, and he himself in the ordinary course of events would also have gone, but he had stayed behind to sort out some anthem music. From the quiet shelter of the Rectory pew he had heard the wrung voice, and peeping surreptitiously out from behind the curtain that surrounded the organ bench, he had seen the upturned streaming face and heard the dreadful penetrating words: “God, I shall die if I don’t see him again! I shall die!”
And Mr. Mason had stumbled stupidly back, and sorted all the rest of the music entirely wrong. For until that moment he had always hoped vaguely. . . . But now, even anyone as dense as Mr. Mason could see that there was nothing to hope for.
So now the life at High Flashings went on very much as it had always done, till one day Peggy suddenly announced that she was going to a dance, and would be away for one night. “Only one night, Aunt Harriet,” she said, seeing Mrs. Stallard’s quiet look of surprise.
“Where will you spend it, dear?” was Mrs. Stallard’s quiet rejoinder.
“At my club, Aunt Harriet”; and there the matter dropped. But presently Peggy became more explicit. This ball was the great event of the London dance season, she explained, and she was very glad to be going to it. It was the Celibates’ Ball, fearfully smart and fancy dress.
“Have you one?” inquired the Canon, suddenly terribly disquieted and not knowing quite what he was saying. It had been for the Celibates’ Ball that Sir Peter had asked for a day and night off. The seventeenth—the Canon began anxiously to count. Was it possible that after all, the two . . .? Things were not as they used to be in his own young days; even the Canon, out of the world as he was, knew that.
But he need not have been anxious. It had been Barrington Foster’s repeated entreaties that had brought this thing to pass. Peggy did not want to dance. “I loathe the idea of it,” she had replied shortly to his letter of invitation.
“Oh, come on! Don’t settle down and become a cabbage for the rest of your life. Everyone is asking where you are. What with you and that conceited ass Peter Wolversley invisible, one’s life’s not worth living.”
Somehow that settled it. The coupling of their names together even casually on paper like that had stung Peggy into a queer recklessness. So he was still invisible then? Well, she would not be. Why should she mourn in torment for ever? The dance would be fun; she would get a new dress, and as daring as possible. Barrington Foster would be fun too, and he liked daring things.
Certainly the dress was very daring. Peggy had the most beautiful legs, and her dressmaker knew it. So in response to her request for a sketch of what Madame Marie thought would suit her for the Celibates’ Ball she got back something that made her, for the first time, emit a little delighted chuckle.
“What is it, my dear?” The Canon, busily eating toast, looked up with the skin round his old eyes eagerly crinkling. It was good to hear her laugh again, he thought.
“This, Uncle Henry.” Peggy got up and walked round the table. “For me . . . to wear,” she said.
“My dear child!” The Canon’s eyes, a little mystified, dwelt on the beautiful little sketch. Columbine, in white tulle—about a thousand frills of it, he thought vaguely. But so far above the slender knees! He put it down quietly.
But Mrs. Stallard’s quiet scrutiny of the sketch, and her equally obvious dislike of it, strengthened Peggy’s determination to do something reckless. You get a certain amount of fun out of recklessness, and she would herald her return to the world that she had deserted for so long by a frank disregard of all the things that lately she had begun to think mattered. They didn’t really matter, and the set that would welcome her back knew that they didn’t. The only thing that did matter was being able to still an intolerable pain. That mattered fearfully, awfully.
Sir Peter Wolversley appeared for the first time officially at his best friend’s wedding. As he stood, perfectly groomed and bronzed, gazing watchfully down the long aisle of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, a great many people were looking at him. Where had he been for all this long time? He had reappeared looking a different man. Then the attention of the whispering crowd was diverted to the bride, and only Peter’s long back was to be seen as he swung round with a cheerfully whispered, “’Shun!” to the tremulous bridegroom.
But by now Ralph’s wedding was a thing of the past, and Peter’s brief disappearance had been forgotten. Invitations showered in on him; for, as one of the most eligible bachelors in London, he was desperately in request. Yawningly he contemplated a pile of letters beside his plate at every breakfast-time. “Watkins, it’s killing me!” He stared out at the pale winter sunshine, and spoke gloomily.
“Not sleeping badly again, sir?” Watkins stopped half-way to the sideboard with a plate in his hand, and spoke anxiously.
“Oh no, thank heaven, that’s a thing of the past! No, it’s all these damned late nights! One eats too much, Watkins; I believe that’s at the bottom of it. Dinners, dinners, dinners, and to-night the worst of the lot. This putrid ball to-night! Has Morton sent my clothes, Watkins?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s all right then. Well, I’m lunching out, and dining here, of course. I shall have to dress early. Everything’s ready, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir. They’re coming round from Turton’s early this afternoon. I shall see to the decorations myself, sir.”
“Very good.” Peter smiled pleasantly at his servant as he stood in front of him. Watkins always did things well, and Turton’s head man was a genius. He had absolutely declined to dine at a restaurant in fancy dress. You felt fool enough at any time, but to sit with a gaping crowd round you! More than one could stand. And why do it when you could give an even better dinner in your own flat?
By six o’clock that evening Peter felt in a very much better temper. Watkins had surpassed himself. The tiny dining-room was transformed. The oval table in the middle of it was bare, except for a beautiful lace runner. The fat old Georgian glasses winked on it in the rose-coloured light of the overhead hanging lamp; the silver gleamed blackly as it lay, thin and old, on the dark oak. The flowers were roses—stacks of them, tall and slender in tall vases with long green stalks. Peter was very pleased, and he said so, both to his servant and to an attendant satellite from Turton’s.
Both men grinned contentedly. There was some pleasure in doing things for a master who was pleased with you. “The chef would like a word with you, sir.” Watkins spoke confidentially, feeling an enormous possessive pride in Peter.
“Certainly”; and Peter passed good-temperedly into the little kitchen. It only needed a glance here to see that a master was at work. The chef was slim and tall with a tiny black moustache and long artistic hands, beautifully kept. Another satellite lurked humbly in a corner, slicing potatoes as thin as cucumber.
“There’s no need for me to ask you how you’re getting on, monsieur!” Peter, his hands in his pockets, spoke in French to the man at the table. “Excellent.” He stood attentively listening as the menu was read out to him. “Good!” He nodded once or twice in appreciation as he listened. “Well . . .” And with a pleasant good-bye he strolled out of the kitchen again, followed by the hovering Watkins.
In another hour he was standing ready by a blazing fire in the flower-filled sitting-room, tall and glistening in his cherry-coloured satin fancy dress. Somehow he suddenly felt profoundly depressed. Why had Watkins chosen to fill the room with these enormous chrysanthemums? They smelt somehow depressingly. He strolled to the big silver cigarette-case lying on a centre table and took one out of it, wondering of what the scent reminded him. Then he remembered. It had been on the night of his farewell scene with Peggy that the wintry scent of them had filled the Rectory drawing-room. How horrible that last scene had been! And what an unutterable cad he had been, too! But how could he have tied himself up for life? He couldn’t. It oughtn’t to have been expected of him; it wasn’t expected of him. She knew all the time that he never meant anything serious. Then the front door bell rang, and the evening began. And as Peter Wolversley was an excellent host, he forgot everything but his guests—five of them, Ralph and his wife—their first appearance in public since their honeymoon—an odd bachelor (an old Eton friend), and a Major and Mrs. Graham—people whom Peter had met and liked during his last voyage to India.
The dinner was very successful, and the champagne very dry and very good. Ralph was bursting with newly married pride, and his wife was pretty and dainty, and obviously enormously enjoying herself because she was dressed in trousers. Why did women so love it? Peter wondered, secretly very much amused. Both women were in trousers, now he came to think of it! Eastern princesses of sorts. But the dress was decent compared to the modern fashion of showing your legs. What made them feel so emancipated when they were officially trousered, so to speak? Peter wondered, again smiling, and leaning across the table to talk delightfully to his guests. But in reality he was not thinking of his guests at all. They did not interest him in the least as individuals, and suddenly he felt profoundly bored with them. Mrs. Graham showed signs of becoming fat; she had been slim on the voyage to India, but she was beginning to take the fatal middle-aged interest in her food. And Ralph was so stupidly happy. Didn’t he know that it wouldn’t last for more than a year? And poor old Harvey; how he lapped up the champagne! And then Peter suddenly felt disgusted with himself. What a loathsome spirit, to think disparagingly of one’s guests! He exerted himself to fresh efforts of hospitality.
It was in the middle of the dessert that the telephone-bell rang. Watkins came in, rather fussed, to say that his master was wanted.
“Ask him what he wants!” Peter was stooping to light Mrs. Graham’s cigarette. She had had just enough champagne to make her feel reckless, and she was enjoying the pressure of Peter’s little finger against her own.
“He says, sir, that the message is for you.” Watkins was breathing a little quickly. He had been arguing through the telephone, and as he argued had been trying to identify the voice. But he could not do it, and it had made him cross.
“Oh, very well. Excuse me, will you?” Peter looked apologetically and pleasantly round the table as he got up. But as he crossed the hall he spoke rather impatiently to his servant. “Couldn’t you keep him quiet?” he said.
“No, sir. I tried, but he wouldn’t be kep’ quiet,” said Watkins, inclined to be tired and therefore a little aggrieved.
So Peter spoke sharply through the telephone when he had shut the door of his study, and sat down at the little table. “What do you want?” He was holding the receiver to his rather pointed ear.
“I want Sir Peter Wolversley.” The voice was clear, and sounded near at hand.
“You’ve got him,” said Peter shortly.
“Look out for Miss Fielding and Mr. Barrington Foster at the Celibates’ Ball to-night,” said the voice, and then it ceased.
“What!”
But there was no reply. Peter waited a second or two and then rang sharply; and after another second came the usual “Number please,” in the usual ultra-refined female voice.
Peter rang off abruptly again. How very unpleasant and melodramatic! The man, whoever he was, who had spoken to him first, had gone. He got up from his chair and walked quickly back across the hall to the little dining-room. None of his guests knew that there was anything amiss; he was more than ever the delightful, courteous host. But inwardly he was deeply perturbed and more than a little irritated. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that probably Peggy would be there? It was the obvious thing that would inevitably happen just because he chanced to be going to it. He swore under his breath as he swung round to let Watkins help him on with his overcoat.
The Celibates’ Ball was very much one of the leading social events of the London dance season, and Mrs. Graham was in the last stages of exultant excitement as Peter steered her skilfully through the press of people.
“Oh dear . . . I feel almost . . .” and then she forgot everything as Peter took quietly hold of her and slid out into the glittering crowd of dancers. “If she can’t dance I shall drop her,” he said unkindly to himself, as he stared out over her head to where the band sat high up playing vigorously. But Mrs. Graham could dance, and quite well too, so Peter enjoyed himself. This was what he wanted, to be able to go quietly and leisurely round the room looking out for the people he wanted to see.
It was not long before he saw them, and when he caught sight of Peggy he caught his breath with a queer little gasp. Gad! how beautiful she looked! He steered Mrs. Graham to the side of the room, as the music clanged and banged itself into sudden silence. Peggy was standing looking down over the gallery that ran along the end of the hall facing the orchestra; Barrington Foster beside her. Her face was almost dead white, only the scarlet line of her flower-like mouth, and the pencilled blackness of her eyebrows relieved it. Her small head was tied tightly round with a black silk handkerchief.
“Oh, did you ever see anything like that girl up there?” Peter’s silent absorption suddenly communicated itself to the woman at his side, and she also stared up at the gallery. “Look, she’s coming down! Sir Peter, did you ever see such beautiful legs?”
“No, I don’t think I ever did!” Peter’s voice was dry. Gad! but she was lovely!
And even as Peter watched the scene changed. A merry figure in scarlet and silver flashed into the gallery and out again, and, as it went, led Barrington Foster by the arm—Barrington Foster, reluctant and a little sulky at the interruption.
So for a silent five minutes Peggy found herself alone. Standing flattened almost stupidly up against the tapestry-hung walls, she stared vaguely and vacantly at her tiny silver shoes and her slender ankles. For she had seen him. But what should she do if he saw her half-clad like this? What should she do? He would hate it, loathe it; take it as a further example of her depravity. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that he might be at this ball? She glanced round her in a passionate anxiety to get away. If only she had a rug to wrap around her legs! She was all legs—hideous, revolting.
But Peggy was very far from hideous and revolting, and directly the music stopped she found herself the centre of a surging crowd. Peter watched them all—Turks, Moors, the Rajah of Bong, even a Golliwog—-all trying to press close to her, and last, but in his own estimation not at all least, Barrington Foster as a Venetian Gondolier, hastily disencumbered of his late partner, and shoving the other anxious competitors aside.
“Here, you’ve given all your dances to me,” he was shouting, rather too loudly, Peter thought, Probably the young squirt had been at the champagne already. He watched Peggy’s face closely from under his satin mask. Was she keen on the brute? he wondered.
“What a crowd round that girl!” So Mrs. Graham was still there, was she? Peter looked down at her with a vague surprise. She must be found another partner, and at once. He gave his mind to it, and managed it in a brief five minutes. Then he went back to his place by the wall.
Peggy was still there, alone with Barrington Foster this time, and they were apparently arguing. Moved by a sudden impulse he crossed the room, threading his way between the slowly moving couples, for the band had just struck up again.
“I think this is my dance.” Peter stood, tall and compelling in his glittering garment, right in front of Peggy. She stopped speaking to the man at her side and turned terrified eyes upwards. “No,” she said, staring at him as if fascinated.
“How can you tell? You don’t know who I am.” Peter’s eyes were laughing under his black satin mask. Her hands had gone instinctively down to her sides, trying to press the tiny frills into more of a shelter for her beautiful little legs. She hated him seeing her like that, and somehow the knowledge that she did filled him with a queer exultation. He gave Barrington Foster a little imperceptible shove. “Come along,” he said again.
“No,” breathed Peggy.
“I say, would you mind?” Barrington Foster had begun to speak, rather surlily, and somehow the sound of his voice roused Peter to a sudden decision. “Come along,” he said again, and taking hold of Peggy, and drawing her very closely into his arms, he slid out with her into the middle of the room.
“How dare you when I said ‘No’?” Peggy was trying with all her force to press him away from her. But he only laughed a little as he held her closer. “Don’t push,” he said; “it spoils it. Come along—Charleston! I know you can do it.”
“I won’t—with you!” said Peggy stormily
“Yes, you will!” Peter by now was thoroughly enjoying himself; he laughed down on to the little black head. “If we do different steps we shall fall over and create a scandal,” he said, “and I am sure you wouldn’t like to do that. Now then—when they get to the end of the next bar—now!”
They danced until the band came to a triumphant and discordant standstill; and when they had finished, a tiny little murmur of applause broke out. For for the last five minutes they had been dancing almost entirely alone. Peter had known it, and had rather enjoyed it, but Peggy had not known. Her face was pressed up closely to the scarlet satin tunic, and she had had her eyes shut.
“Good!” He caught his breath a little excitedly as they stopped close up to the wall. “Now . . . something to drink, don’t you think? and a talk somewhere.”
“No, I’m going almost directly; I didn’t mean to stay late.” Peggy’s heart was beating so dreadfully that she felt that he must surely hear it. Her one passionate desire was to get away—where he would not see her, where she would not have to see him.
“Oh no, you’re not going yet; you’ve only just come. This way. I know these Galleries better than you do, I expect. Yes, what do you want, Foster?” This to Barrington Foster, who suddenly stood sullenly in front of them.
“Miss Fielding has given all her dances to me,” said the young man angrily. “I brought her and I’m responsible for her. Come along, Peggy: you’ve no business to leave me in the lurch like this.”
“You’ve been drinking, young man.” Peter thought the words, although he did not say them aloud. He would very much like to have done so, though, as he suddenly got a very violent aversion to the idea that Peggy was in this young man’s charge. A most unsuitable custodian for any decent girl, he thought. “Come along.” He spoke gently, stooping a little to her level to speak into her tiny ear.
“No, I think I won’t,” said Peggy briefly. Her common sense was coming to her rescue. The very touch of him had left her quivering and anguished. To begin it all over again! to go back to that torture of longing for him! When he had held her to his heart on that crowded floor she had not even known where she was. And now he would talk to her, speak kindly to her, and her last state would be worse than her first. “Thank you very much indeed, Sir Peter,” she said, and as she spoke she summoned every ounce of self-control that she possessed to her aid. “But Mr. Foster is right. I came with him, and I must stay with him”; and her anguished blue eyes looked straight up through the black satin domino. What did his eyes look like behind it? she was wondering desperately. Did he mind? Was he a tiny bit interested in her? Did he loathe her dress most fearfully?
“Certainly.” Sir Peter Wolversley was not accustomed to being snubbed, and he was angry. If Peggy could have seen his eyes clearly she would have seen them hard and cold. He let her go with a brief nod. Nor did he see her again until later on in the evening, when, bored to death, he marshalled his little party to supper. And then his was only one of many pairs of eyes that were riveted on an end table set right into a little alcove. The noise coming from it was uproarious, and suddenly a tiny figure was hoisted up on to the table, and there was Peggy like a slim white elf, waving a huge bundle of air balloons in one hand and a very crookedly held glass of champagne in the other.
“I say. . .” A tall man from an adjoining table caught Peter’s eye and frowned. “Stop them, will you?” he said, and called clearly through the hubbub: “It’s young Foster and his crowd.”
“Oh Lord!” Peter got up with an almost audible groan. In a sense he was responsible for the decorum of the whole affair, being one of the most important members of the committee. But still, under the circumstances it was damnably unpleasant. He threaded his way reluctantly through the crowded tables.
“I say, make a little less noise over here, will you?” he said pleasantly, addressing Barrington Foster, who was sprawling rather stupidly over his plate. Undoubtedly the fellow was more or less drunk. “And get down from the table, Miss Fielding,” he said, in a sudden fury at the circle of flushed, excited faces turned on him.
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Peggy in a high, excited voice. She too had had more champagne than was good for her; Peter could see that. Her small face was scarlet, and her eyes wide and bright. She screamed as Peter caught her suddenly round the waist and lifted her abruptly to the floor.
“I say, stop that!” Barrington Foster got up from his chair and advanced threateningly towards Peter. “We’ve had enough of you,” he said. “Clear out of here and leave us to enjoy ourselves.”
“Certainly—only do it more quietly,” said Peter, dangerously polite.
“Come along, Peggy; we won’t stay here to be insulted.” Barrington Foster turned from the man in front of him, and spoke to the girl behind him. “We’ve had enough of this. Let’s leave them to it.”
“Don’t go with him.” In spite of his disgust and anger, Peter spoke with a swift urgency to the girl who stood hesitating. “I’ll take you home myself when I’ve disposed of my party. He’s not fit to look after anyone but himself—surely you can see that.”
“I suppose you’d say I wasn’t either,” said Peggy, insolent and flushed with the champagne. She stood with her two hands on her diaphanous hips laughing at him. “But I’ll go with him when I want to,” she said, “and we don’t any of us want you here, that’s quite certain. We’re enjoying ourselves and you spoil it.”
“Hear! hear!” The rowdy group round the table joined in with a cheer. But suddenly an elderly dissipated-looking man sitting at the end of the table spoke in an undertone to Peter. “I’ll see that there isn’t so much noise, Wolversley,” he said. “Sit down, Miss Fielding, and keep Barrington quiet.”
So Peter swung on his heel and went back to his own table, but with a fierce anger burning in his heart. For for some quite inscrutable reason he felt that Peggy’s behaviour in some way reflected upon him. She had had more champagne than was good for her, that was obvious, and that made him angry and uneasy too. But there was a hard recklessness in her wide-open eyes that frightened him. Girls were such utter fools nowadays, and Barrington Foster such an unutterable little cad, and half-drunk into the bargain.
So, after supper was over and the dancing had begun again, he left his party contentedly dancing with one another, and went off to have a thorough hunt round the hall for Peggy and her partner. Somehow he felt that he could not leave it alone; she was so beautiful in her frilly dress, and such a damned little fool into the bargain.
But he could not find her, nor him either. Obviously they had gone; and he turned into the smoking-room for a cigarette before making up his mind what to do next. As he stood staring straight in front of him a couple of men behind him began to talk. They were laughing contemptuously. “What does it matter?” one of them said, as he tapped a little of his cigarette-ash into a big brass bowl. “The fellow’s dead keen on her, and he’ll marry her all right.”
“Yes, but still it’s rather rotten, and she’s young, after all.” The second man was nicer than the first, and he spoke with a tinge of regret in his voice. Peter knew him without turning round to look. He was a friend of Ralph’s, and they belonged to the same club. He stood very still, listening, the cigarette between his lips burning itself into a long, grey, sagging spiral of ash.
Then, with the sudden movement of a mind hastily made up, he was back in the ball-room again. “I say, Ralph.” He had his old friend pinned in a corner, and in his eagerness he had taken hold of one of the ridiculous buttons of his Pierrot fancy dress. “I’m off. Urgent private affairs. Look after the rest of my party, will you? I’m leaving my car Page will take you all home. Can’t wait to explain; sorry to be so remiss.” And Peter was gone, slipping out of a doorway close to where he was standing: Ralph was left staring after him.
“He’s fallen in love with her, bejabers,” he said to himself as he steered himself back to the place where his wife stood waiting for him. “I wish him luck, but I’m glad it’s not going to be my lot.” And with a sigh of relief he drew the little rather unintelligent bundle of trousers and floating veils into his arms again, and kissed the top of its little adoringly bent head, when a large sheltering palm gave him the opportunity to do so.
Mr. Granger was extremely tired of waiting. Added to everything else, the hall porter of the fashionable chambers had gone off duty, and the well-grate showed nothing but a collapsed medley of ash and charred coal, very yellow and depressing to contemplate. Also half an hour, if not more, had passed since Peggy and Barrington Foster had got out of their taxi and gone upstairs. Now it was two o’clock, and there was no sign of Peter Wolversley. Had his telephone call missed fire? he wondered. He got up, and hunching his collar up close to his ears, he dragged his Homburg hat a little lower over his eyes and slouched out into the little space between the inner glass door and the outer. Here he would be unobserved if anyone did arrive; only the electric light close to the lift was burning. Peggy and Barrington Foster had not seen him when they came in; he had been standing with his back to the name-board looking closely at it as Barrington giggled stupidly and pretended to fumble with the sliding gate of the lift. “I’ll take you up in it.” He had tried to pull Peggy towards it.
“No, you won’t. I’ll walk,” Peggy had responded shortly and hardly, and she had dragged her white fur collar closer up to her throat as she saw the figure in the overcoat standing staring at the name-board. In her heart of hearts she knew that she was doing a foolish thing in coming to a man’s rooms at that hour of the night—or rather morning. But somehow she didn’t care. The sight and touch of Peter had roused in her a flaming anguish of despair. Anything to still it—anything. So she had walked swiftly and lightly up the stairs, followed by the none too agile Barrington, and Mr. Granger had heard the slam of the door far above with a little inward pang. He had once been very keen on Peggy himself, and no man likes to see another man appropriate what he fondly imagines could have been his, had he played his cards better. So he sat gloomily and disgustedly contemplating the dying fire, and when the chimes from the neighbouring church rang out two o’clock, he got up from the extremely unresponsive mahogany settee on which he had been sitting for a very long time, and strolled out into the outer hall. He would give Sir Peter another quarter of an hour, and then give it up and go back to his hotel. And devil take the couple upstairs; he didn’t care what happened to them.
Luck was in his favour. As the last quivering tremor of the three-quarters sounded over the silent street a taxi turned the corner. With a scrape of hastily applied brakes it slid up to the kerb and stopped. Before Mr. Granger had had even time to draw back Peter was out of it and had paid the driver. “Thanks! Goodnight.” There was only the little ping of the clicked-up flag, and the scrawk of the carelessly let in clutch, to break the silence now: Peter was in at the hall and staring up at the name-board with head thrown back. Then up the stairs, with noiseless slippered feet, two at a time, his flame-coloured ankles showing gaily from below his fashionably cut overcoat. Mr. Granger could hear him. One, two, three floors, and then a pause, and the sharp ting of an electric bell; Mr. Granger could hear it quite well. But what he did not hear for some time was the sound of an opening door, and when it did come at last, it only came after the same electric bell had been ringing persistently for quite four minutes.
When Barrington Foster saw Peter through the crack of the reluctantly opened front door he uttered a curse, and tried to shut it again. But Peter had got his shoulder into it and so he couldn’t. He tried to bluster it out. “To what am I indebted?” He stood there furiously staring, pressing all his weight against the shining mahogany door.
“Is Miss Fielding here?” Peter, although in excellent training, had lost his breath a little, and Barrington rather had the advantage of him. He kept his shoulder inside the door, however, and wished desperately that he had had on his boots. It was so much easier to do violent things to a door with your feet.
“Miss Fielding here? What do you mean, sir?” Barrington Foster by now was practically sober and had all his wits about him.
“What I say. Is Miss Fielding here?” Peter did not relax his efforts to keep the door open, and it was becoming more difficult because Barrington Foster had the additional advantage of the wall of the narrow hall behind him. He had wedged his back against it and was shoving with his knees.
“She certainly is not,” said Barrington Foster with dignity.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” For one instant Peter had the poignant consciousness of what an incalculable fool he would make of himself if she were really not there. And then his common sense came to his rescue. If she was not there, why was Barrington Foster making such fierce efforts to keep him out? Yet Barrington might have some other woman there whom he did not wish him to see. For one second he faltered, and Barrington saw it.
“I have a visitor,” he said, and relaxed his pressure on the door. “But I didn’t know it was usual for one man to force his way into another man’s flat at this hour. However, if I can do anything for you . . .” And, acting on a sudden impulse, he held the door wide. If Wolversley was the man of the world that he knew him to be, he thought, he would instantly clear at this.
And if it had not been for that telephone message Peter would have cleared, covered with shame and confusion. But something made him walk straight into the flat. “Thanks awfully,” he said; “I won’t keep you for more than a second.” And the moment he had got inside the door he knew that he had done the right thing. There was not a sign, not a trace, of Peggy, but—the scent that she used hung uncertainly and fragrantly in the air.
“Sit down and have a drink.” Barrington Foster was all hospitality. At the sound of the bell, or rather at the persistence of it, he had pushed Peggy into his bedroom, which adjoined the sitting-room, and flung her rose-coloured coat after her. At first he had not paid any attention to it. She was being yielding and sweet, and Barrington’s hopes were vastly raised. “Don’t you make a sound!” he had almost hissed it as he hustled her out of sight. “I’ll come for you when it’s all right.” Then, cursing, he had gone to the front door.
But now he was all cunning. He would give this cursed fellow a drink and get rid of him. He held the decanter a little tremulously over the cut glass.
“Thanks, yes, I’ll have all the soda, please. Gad! how it reminds me!” Peter was looking pleasantly round the room. “I lived here, you know, before the War,” he said, and got up and strolled to the mantelpiece. “Jolly comfortable it was, too. A topping hot-water supply, if I remember rightly.”
“Yes, there’s plenty of hot water,” said Barrington mechanically. Inwardly he was wondering how he would get rid of Peter if he didn’t soon show signs of going. Peggy might hear his voice and come out. She had said one or two things about him that had rather worried Barrington.
But behind Peter’s keen, deep-set eyes his brain was working very rapidly. He was going to stake everything on a desperate move. If he was mistaken about Peggy being in that bedroom he was lost, socially, because a man who would force open a man’s bedroom door when that man had admitted to having somebody in it, was a bounder, and the world won’t stand a bounder, however well born or well off he may be. But somehow Peter knew that Peggy was in that room; he could feel her round, terrified eyes watching the white paint of it. “That’s your bedroom, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly. “I remember it used to be mine”; and he took his elbow off the mantelpiece, leaving his half-empty glass on it, and took a few quick steps across the carpet
“Keep out of there, will you?” Barrington was out of his chair in an instant, his tumbler of whisky-and-soda, left standing on the arm of it, tipping over and pouring dejectedly out over the delicate carpet.
“Is Miss Fielding in there?” said Peter; and before Barrington could stop him he had covered the rest of the distance between him and the white door in one stride, and had hold of the cut-glass knob of it.
Barrington was struggling with him. “No, she is not, damn your eyes!” he stammered. “Can’t a man have a woman in his bedroom without another man making a sufficient cad of himself to come nosing it out? I’ll have you out of your club, Wolversley, you . . . Barrington was speechless and stammering.
And without knowing that he did it, Peter sent up a little inarticulate prayer, as with one flame-coloured arm he held Barrington back, and with the other free hand twisted the glass knob. It would be too awful, too fearful, if he had made a mistake. But he had not. They were Peggy’s tiny hands that were trying to keep the door shut. What a damned fool Barrington had been not to lock the door when he put Peggy in there! thought Peter mechanically, as he felt the key pressing into his satin tunic.
Peggy completely lost her head. “I didn’t mean any harm by being in here,” she cried, and suddenly backed from the door weeping. “I was just going, wasn’t I, Barrington? Don’t tell Uncle Henry and Aunt Harriet, Sir Peter. They’ll turn me out, or something.”
“No, they won’t when they know that I love you and want you to be my wife,” said Barrington Foster suddenly and unexpectedly. “Don’t take any notice of him, Peggy; he’s a cad to have forced his way in here.” And he tried to brush past Peter to take hold of Peggy’s hand.
Peter, standing between them, stared at them both in turn and wondered. What were the relations between them? Time enough to find out presently, he thought, walking a little forward, and almost unconsciously slipping an arm round Peggy’s slender bare shoulders. “Where’s your coat? Come along away from here,” he said, speaking almost tenderly.
“Don’t go with him, Peggy.” Barrington was eager and absorbed. Genuinely attracted by the girl he had danced with most of the evening, he really felt that he wanted to marry her. “Why should he interfere with us? I’ll take you back to your club. It’s just as bad for you to be seen with him. Worse, because he wouldn’t marry you—far too involved,” Barrington snarled, suddenly feeling vicious.
“I must go with him.” Peggy was staring terrified at Peter’s shut mouth. Supposing he suddenly lost his temper and flew at Barrington. He would kill him.
“Withdraw those last words of yours.” Peter dropped his arm from Peggy’s white shoulder and advanced towards Barrington, who in his fantastic fancy dress shrank back and looked genuinely frightened.
“All right; I’ll say you’re too damned selfish,” muttered Barrington furiously; “that’s nearer the truth, perhaps. Peggy, listen to me. I’ll take you back to your club. Don’t go with him.” Barrington had got nearer to Peggy and was trying to catch hold of her hand. But Peggy was already holding out her thin little arms for the coat that Peter had just stooped to pick up from the floor. It lay, a rose-coloured heap, close to the bed.
“I must go with him,” she said. “He makes me, somehow. But it’s nice of you to want me to marry you after all this, Barrington; I’ll write to you to-morrow—no, it’s to-day now. I’m ready, Sir Peter.” She spoke, drawing the white fur collar close up round her terrified face.
“That’s good!” Peter had preceded the two out into the little sitting-room. “I’ve got a coat somewhere. Oh yes, out in the hall, of course. One feels such an unmitigated ass going about dressed up like this.” He spoke pleasantly as he shrugged himself into his overcoat. “Now then; ready?” he spoke to Peggy. “Good! Night-night, Foster. Sorry to have interfered, but I happen to know this young lady’s uncle and aunt; in the Church, you know, and one can’t be too careful. Out you go, first, my child.” And Peter held the narrow door wide and nodded to the man who stood scowling at him from the background. But outside in the passage, with the door shut, he turned rather hardly to Peggy. “That was a silly thing to do,” he said. “What possessed you?”
“I don’t know,” said Peggy sullenly, her chin sunk low in her white fur collar. “But as I was there, why didn’t you leave me there?” She started to walk down the shallow stairs. “Barrington’s all right,” she said.
“Doubtless, when he’s sober,” said Peter, following after with rather a sardonic look on his clean-shaven mouth. Why had he interfered? he wondered. And he wondered more when, on reaching the hall, Mr. Granger rose from the mahogany seat against the wall. “Dear me, how very strange to see you both here at this late hour,” he said cheerfully, advancing to greet the two.
“Whatever are you doing here?” said Peggy, greatly astonished.
“Hullo, Granger, burning the midnight oil?” Peter drew himself up a little inside his overcoat. So that was his game, was it? How clever! Because it would not sound at all nice to the Canon and Mrs. Stallard, to hear that Peggy had been met coming out of bachelor flats with their late chauffeur at three o’clock in the morning. He would have to propose to her at once, and that, of course, was what Mr. Granger wanted to involve him in. Well, he had done it.
“I don’t think the dear Canon would be at all pleased.” Mr. Granger became virtuous and looked markedly away from Peter. “May I have the pleasure of escorting you back to wherever you may happen to be going, Miss Fielding?”
“No, thank you,” said Peggy unexpectedly. “And I can’t think what you are doing hanging about here, Mr. Granger. Do you generally do this sort of thing? It’s time you were in bed. Or do you perhaps live here?” She stared indignantly at the little man.
“Come along, Miss Fielding.” Peter spoke brusquely and hardly. “I’ll get a taxi if I can. We’ll leave Mr. Granger to it! Jove, what a stroke of luck!” he called up from the outer door where he was standing. “Come along; that’s it. Now, then, where shall I tell him?” He stood with his hand on the handle of the door, looking in at Peggy as she settled herself rather tremulously in the corner.
“My club,” said Peggy shortly. And then, as Peter got in after her, settling his cerise-coloured ankles carefully under his overcoat, “What on earth can Mr. Granger have been doing, sitting there for such ages?” she said. “Now I come to think of it, I believe he was there when I arrived. What’s it got to do with him what I do, disgusting little wretch?”
“Quite a lot I should imagine,” returned Peter dryly. “He’s a nasty little person who enjoys a little scandal, you see.”
“But he’ll drag you into it,” said Peggy, and turned a little on the seat to stare at the man beside her. “We must stop him saying anything somehow. I should loathe it, dread it above everything. You only came out of kindness, because you thought . . .” Peggy began to cry, clutching at her coat. “Let’s go back and say that he’s got to keep quiet,” she sobbed.
“My dear child, the very thing to make him make more noise,” said Peter, smiling through the darkness. “No, the best thing is to leave it alone.” He stared out at the deserted street, as the taxi slid noiselessly along it. It had been raining, and the pavements shone blotchily under the bright lamplight at the corners. “But the only thing is,” he said, turning swiftly to where she sat shrunk back again into the corner of the taxi, “don’t do anything stupid or in a hurry. Young Barrington is a worm; you couldn’t possibly marry him.”
“Why not?” said Peggy, and she sat a little forward. Inwardly all her being was a vast turmoil. Why didn’t he ask her himself? How could he not, under the circumstances? She would refuse him, of course; she would have to; her self-respect would force her to, although she died from it afterwards. But somehow, it must surely occur to him. Why, if he had no feeling at all for her, had he followed her to Barrington’s flat? “Why shouldn’t I marry him?” she said again.
“Because you wouldn’t be at all happy with him,” said Peter shortly, “and because he would make a damned bad husband—excuse the language. But I’ll come round and see you to-morrow morning. There’s no time now; here’s the club. Well, have a good night, and don’t worry too much.” He turned and caught hold of her hand as the taxi slowed down.
“Good night.” But Peggy detached her hand very quickly from his. He was almost contemptible in his fear of involving himself, she thought. She felt almost an impulse of hatred towards him as she walked up the deserted staircase to her bedroom.
But by the time Watkins had brought in his early tea Peter had made up his mind. In spite of himself there was something in Peggy that called to him—something that twitched at his heartstrings and made him want her. He had felt it ever since she had told him that she loved him; her frank disdain of ordinary subterfuge had attracted him. And now that he had seen her at a disadvantage he felt that he loved her more. Last night she had been distressed and afraid, and it had appealed to him. He would go round to the club directly he had had breakfast, and take her out with him in his car, and when they had got somewhere well out into the country he would ask her to marry him. And she would be sweet . . . and cling to him again. Peter trembled a little as he shaved himself that morning.
But things did not go quite as he had expected. To begin with, when the beautiful Sunbeam car slid up to the foot of the steps of Peggy’s club and stood there purring, the small boy who ran obsequiously down the steps to open the door said that he thought that Miss Fielding had gone.
“Gone?” Peter was taken aback, and began to twist himself out from behind the wheel. He followed the small boy into the club hall, “Oh!” He stood staring rather blankly at the elderly hall porter who knew every member of the club by sight, and who said, almost without stopping to think, that Miss Fielding had left about an hour before.
“Oh!” Peter said it again and then swung on his heel. “Thanks, no, I won’t leave any message, I think.” He ran down the steps and got into the car again. “I’m going down to Little Churcham, Page,” he said, twisting his head to speak to the chauffeur, who had slid deferentially into the back seat at Peter’s reappearance.
“Very good, sir!” And the chauffeur sat back and watched the great car licking up the road in front of it, and wondered what his master would say if he ever drove like that. “Fairly ’ummed down,” as he confided to Watkins later in the evening.
Peter drove fast because by now he was very seriously uneasy. He had been so certain that Peggy would wait at her club until he came. But she had gone, and he had a very shrewd suspicion that she had not gone alone. He only just missed the old ivy-covered gatepost of the Rectory drive, causing Page to put his gloved hand suddenly over his mouth and say silently, “My Gawd!”
The Canon was at home. There was a new house-parlourmaid at the Rectory, so that Peter had not the awkwardness of being recognized. She turned violently scarlet when she heard the illustrious name, and ran almost excitedly across the hall to tap at the well-known door.
“Show him in, Mary.” Peter felt his heart give an odd twist as he heard the gentle voice. He laid his overcoat and soft felt hat on the old oak box in the hall, and passed his hand almost nervously over his sleek hair. How he prayed that he had been able to get in first, before Granger or that young worm Barrington Foster!
But it was very obvious from the Canon’s manner that he had not. There was a new stiffness in his voice as he got courteously up from his chair and crossed the floor to meet Peter. “Ah, Sir Peter,” he said, and then fell silent. “Sit down,” he said after a little pause.
“I’ve come down really to see Miss Fielding, sir,” said Peter. “Have you heard anything about last night? I hope to goodness you haven’t,” he interpolated frankly.
“I have heard it all, Sir Peter,” said the Canon quietly. “From Mr. Granger and from Miss Fielding herself and from the young man she has promised to marry, Mr. Barrington Foster. He arrived with her in his car shortly after Mr. Granger, and made a very frank and manly apology for what occurred the night before, stating at the same time that he loved her devotedly. And she, I think wisely, has decided to become his wife.” The Canon felt suddenly silent.
“Did Mr. Granger say that he had also seen me last night?” asked Peter, suddenly feeling a blind impulse of rage. What a fool he was going to be made to look over the whole thing! Why hadn’t he proposed to her last night? Why hadn’t he proposed to her ages ago?
“Yes, he did, Sir Peter,” said the Canon. “He said that you arrived at the flat shortly after Miss Fielding and Mr. Barrington Foster, and he also told me that you left there with her at about three o’clock in the morning.”
“Did he also tell you that my arrival probably put the lid on a very dishonourable scheme of young Foster’s, and that if it hadn’t been for that he would never have proposed marriage to Miss Fielding at all?” asked Peter furiously. Somehow he felt that he had no case, and it roused all his worst instincts.
“I don’t think that you speak rightly when you condemn Mr. Foster,” said the Canon stiffly. “He has done the right thing now, anyhow, and that is all that concerns us. And if I may say so, Sir Peter—and I can speak with all frankness now that Miss Fielding is engaged—I do not think that you have behaved at all well in this matter. You won that poor child’s love many weeks ago—whether intentionally or unintentionally is known only to yourself—but you would have none of it, and she has suffered acutely. I think that the best and kindest thing that you can do now is to go quietly away and leave her alone.” The Canon got up from his chair and took a turn or two about the room.
“I won’t go without seeing her.” Peter was also standing up, and his lean hands were clenched in his pockets. He was going to have her . . . That miserable, drunken young swine, to think that he . . . “Please ask Miss Fielding if she will see me,” he said more quietly.
“I do not think . . .” The Canon turned and regarded Peter doubtfully. “What is the use of it?” he asked almost pitifully.
“I want to marry her myself, sir,” said Peter, and there were queer little pale patches round his lips. “I think I have always wanted it, but I have been such a damned fool. I haven’t . . .” He broke off and walked to the window.
“Oh dear!” The Canon almost groaned out loud. The cherished wish of his heart . . . and now come too late. Because Peggy would never . . . But perhaps she would if she saw this splendid man face to face. His name, his money, his personality; those things counted with girls, and sometimes broke down bitterness and resentment, however deep-seated they might be. Because the Canon knew that it was very deep-seated with Peggy. Her face had blanched when she had spoken of Sir Peter that morning. “I never want to hear his name mentioned again, Uncle Henry.” She had swung round and walked to the window and stood there motionless, groping blindly for her handkerchief.
So the Canon had very little hope. But he walked eagerly to the door, and stood there with the handle of it held tightly in his hand. “I will try to find her for you, Sir Peter,” he said. “Mr. Foster left some time ago, and I believe that she is in the garden with my wife. I will do my best. . .” The Canon hurried away.
And Peter, left alone, stood very still, his hands clenched in his pockets. She should . . . he would force her . . . break her.
But it was not going to be so easy. Peter realized that, as, after about ten minutes’ waiting, the door opened slowly and Peggy stood in the narrow oblong of it. Her face was dead white, and seemed to get whiter as she looked at him.
“Good morning. Let’s have the door shut, shall we?” Peter moved easily across the carpet and took possession of the handle. “Now then, why did you leave the club this morning before I had time to get round?” he asked, and stood with his back to the door, one hand still held behind him.
“I didn’t want to see you,” said Peggy faintly.
“And why not?”
“Because I hate you,” said Peggy in a quiet, still voice.
“No you don’t,” said Peter brutally—“at least, if you do, it’s come on very suddenly. The last time I had any prolonged conversation with you you told me that you loved me. Yes, I must say it”—he took a quick step forward as Peggy uttered a little cry and hid her face in her hands—“because it has to do with what I have to say to you now. The Canon tells me, Peggy, that you have promised to marry Barrington Foster, That is insanity—you know it is. Marry me instead, my darling.” And Peter stood very still and looked down on the little head bent in front of him.
“How very kind of you!” Peggy spoke after a trembling silence, during which Peter looked out over her head into the garden. He was not going to touch her, he reflected, until it really came to a fight. It was not fair.
“No, don’t say that.” Peter spoke good-humouredly, although he winced a little. “I know I’ve not behaved well over all this,” he said, “and I can only give as an excuse a selfish desire to remain free as long as possible. But now I feel . . .” And then Peggy suddenly broke in.
“You feel that because another man is going to have me I am more worth while, I suppose,” she said bitterly, and she raised her head and stared at him.
“No, I don’t feel that at all. I feel that I love you, and I want you,” said Peter simply. “Peggy, don’t do this foolish thing out of resentment and anger, my child. People do those sort of things and spend the rest of their lives regretting it.”
“And what about you, and your title, and your country houses, and all your grand relations?” said Peggy. “After about a month you would bitterly regret it, too. Done on the spur of the moment because you feel that you have compromised me rather. I tell you that I would rather die than marry you—rather kill myself with my own hands. . . .”
“That’s foolish, Peggy.” Peter still spoke quietly, but he thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “I know I have asked for it,” he said. “I haven’t behaved well, and I am very aware of it. But I ask you to forgive me for that. I don’t care a tinker’s curse about either my title, or my country houses, or my relations. All I know is that I love you and that I want you.” And he took a quick step forward and caught hold of both her hands.
“Let me go!” cried Peggy, trembling.
“No, I shall not.” Peter was breathing a little heavily. “You’re trying to make a fool of yourself,” he said, “and I’m not going to allow you to.”
“Let me go!” cried Peggy, trying to wrench her hands free. “You think you’ve only got to say the word and I shall fall at your feet. But I tell you that I don’t feel like that now at all. I gave you all my love. I offered you myself on any terms and you repulsed me—very kindly and gently, I know, but you repulsed me all the same. And now I loathe you—loathe you, I tell you.” Peggy lifted a face pale with emotion and streaming with tears.
“You don’t,” said Peter fiercely. “You love me, and you know you do. Look here”—he caught her swiftly into his arms—“I’m going to kiss you, and to hell with Barrington Foster! He’s no right to your lips. I have. . . . No, don’t fight; it’s never any use with me,” and he laughed; “and don’t try to get your arms free, because you can’t. And now, will you tell me that you don’t love me?” he said; and paused and stooped his head. “You do.” His voice was trembling as he lifted his face again to the wintry sunshine.
“I don’t,” said Peggy; and as Peter released her she dropped very quietly into a chair.
“You do.” Peter walked to the window and stood there with his back to it, looking at her as she sat crouched in the chair trying to control the trembling of her knees. “You haven’t a wish or a thought beyond the touch of my hands and my lips. You know you haven’t. And, knowing that, you are going to hand yourself body and soul over to another man. Have you the faintest conception of what it will mean?” he asked roughly, and walked over to where she sat, and stood towering over her.
“You had heaps of opportunities to ask me to marry you,” said Peggy, and she spoke in a tone of extreme bitterness, “and you availed yourself of none of them. Now I would rather die than give in to you. Go away and leave me to the life I have chosen.” She got up abruptly from her chair. “You’ve frozen my soul, I tell you. I don’t feel anything, nothing at all—nothing but a longing to tie myself up and have finished with it so that I can’t think or do anything but just be.” And Peggy walked passionately away to the window and stood there staring out of it.
“Tie yourself up to a man who, after the first week or so, will come home drunk every night,” said Peter hardly. “You, Peggy, who demand a good deal from life! Don’t be such a little fool!” He followed her across the carpet and stood just behind her, wondering if he should snatch her into his arms again and kiss her off her feet. But something told him not to do this. She was angry, and he was not going to be repulsed beyond a certain point, or he would get angry too, and then that would be the end.
“You’re hateful when you talk like that about Barrington,” said Peggy, and she swung round and confronted him with a scarlet face. “Anyhow, I’m going to marry him and risk it. Soon I am going to marry him, almost at once. We agreed that to-day. Go away, and don’t let me see you ever any more. You’ve killed my soul, I tell you.” Peggy began to cry aloud like a child.
“Oh, my darling, don’t!” Peter’s heart was wrung. He stood there, very still, wondering what he should do. This was beyond even what he had feared. “Peggy, when I say that I love you, won’t you believe me?” he asked.
“No, not now; it’s too late.”
“Then are you determined to do this insane and wicked thing?” Peter’s hands were shaking as he suddenly passed them over his hair.
“Absolutely,” said Peggy, with a sort of dreadful finality. “I’m going now,” she went on; “please you go, too, and don’t say anything to Uncle Henry. Good-bye.” She held out a hand absolutely cold to him.
“I won’t say good-bye,” said Peter, his voice and eyes suddenly hard. “You shall belong to me; you do already. It’s a farce to talk about people like Foster. Give in gracefully, Peggy; you’ll have to in the end. You know you will.”
“I know I won’t,” said Peggy, and flung up her close-cropped yellow head with a sudden gesture of fury. “It’s that sort of thing that makes me feel mad and bitter. I’m glad you’ve said it because it takes every atom of being sorry out of me. Go away, and marry one of those slavish, grovelling creatures like I used to be to you. I’m not it any longer, I tell you.” And Peggy wrenched her small hand out of his and flung out of the door.
Left alone, Peter passed one swift, nervous hand over his mouth and then laughed a little “I think a smack might have done it,” he said, “but I won’t try that till the very, very end. Now to get hold of Edith; she’s always a tower of strength in these little emergencies.”
Lady Staples was Peter Wolversley’s only sister, and in the old days had been his greatest companion, but since her marriage they had rather drifted apart. “Bill Staples is such an oaf,” he complained to Ralph. “A rattling good fellow, I’ve no doubt; Edith wouldn’t have liked him if he hadn’t been. But all that gup about horses does get on my nerves so. And that swilling beer out of a great tankard. I know it’s all very British and all that, but somehow it jars. However, I’m not his wife, so I don’t know what it’s got to do with me.”
Late that night, as he stood with the receiver of his telephone at his ear, he smiled as he heard the well-known voice at the other end of the wire. Jove! how it reminded him! Jolly times they used to have together.
“Yes, to-morrow, if possible.” Peter was standing with his back propped up against the wall of his study. “Yes . . . here . . . we shall be quieter, and I can give you quite a decent lunch.” He began to laugh silently. “How’s Bill?” he asked
“Oh, splendid.” Edith Staples had a rather low, pleasant voice, and it also suddenly sounded amused. “He’s bought two more hunters,” she said, and laughed quietly.
“Has he, though? Stout fella!” Peter was smiling broadly. “All right, then; twelve o’clock here. Don’t be late. Bye-bye.” He rang off and turned to walk across the hall. “Lady Staples to lunch here to-morrow, Watkins,” he said to his servant, who was stooping to turn down the corner of a rug that had got disarranged.
“Very good, sir.” Watkins stood briskly to attention. “Shall I shut up, sir?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I suppose so. What’s the time, half-past ten? Yes, you buzz off, Watkins, and make up the fire in the sitting-room, will you? And the whisky-and-soda, please. Good night.” Peter spoke pleasantly as he swung into his bedroom to substitute his Paisley silk dressing-gown for the lounge suit, for he had come in too late to change. But it was long before he switched off the sitting-room light, and went quietly into his bedroom. There was much to think about, much to plan; and although he had thought and planned a good deal on the way up to London, and Page had sat with folded arms, only once so far forgetting himself as to clutch at the edge of the luxuriously upholstered seat, there had been a good deal to think of since his arrival in the flat. And he had done it thoroughly, his head for a certain amount of the time buried in his hands, the hair turning grey above his ears showing over his flexible thumbs. “I must get it all pukka before I drag Edith into it,” he had said, and he meant it.
And he had got it pukka. Edith sat and stared at her brother, her beautiful fur coat thrown back to show her well-bred neck and the enchanting row of pearls that encircled it. “My dear Peter, whatever sort of a girl is she?” she gasped.
“Nice—awfully nice; you would like her,” said Peter, and showed two rows of excellent teeth as he smiled at his sister.
“But she’ll—she’ll kill you!”
“Yes, I know. She’ll want to. But that’s part of the scheme. You see, Edith, there are some girls left who succumb to the strong, silent touch. I agree there are not many—no, don’t smoke your own; I’ve got heaps.” Peter got up and strolled to an old corner cupboard. He stood over his sister, the flame from the match dipping bluely to the fragrantly burning end of the Egyptian cigarette. “And, you see, I’ve found one. I always vowed I wouldn’t marry until I did,” he said, and walked to the fire and flicked the match into it.
“Are you in love with her, Peter?” Edith was looking at her brother’s back. What a stroke of luck for any girl whom he really loved! she was thinking. So absolutely right—all over right.
“Yes, I am.” Peter did not turn.
“Well, then, I’ll do any mortal thing for you.”
Edith got up. “I envy her, Peter,” she said, and stood very close to him, looking at his slightly bent, well-brushed head. “You must make an entrancing lover,” she said abruptly.
“Must I? Well, it’s nice of you to say so, Edith.” Peter swung round, and there was a laugh in his dark blue eyes. But he had not been laughing the moment before, and Edith Staples was deeply touched.
“I’ll do any mortal thing,” she said again. “Tell me what you want. I’ll square Bill, if he seems to be going to get excited.”
“Well, look here, I want this,” said Peter, and put his hand on his sister’s shoulder for an instant. “I can tell it you all before lunch and then we’ll have time to go calmly on to a theatre, after the very excellent coffee Watkins makes. Sit down here.” He pulled her down on to the excellently yielding hide sofa, pushed close up to the fire. “I want Hatchings for one night,” he said, “and old Mrs. Minns and George made to think that there’s nothing out of the way in Master Peter turning up there with a young lady for the night. I shall have twisted old Corps’ tail for a special licence meanwhile—what a mercy he lives so handy and is so susceptible to our charms as a family!—so we can all be made pukka and legal and all that the next day. But the point is this: can you square Bill? He’s so terribly moral. People who drink beer for lunch in large quantities generally are, I find.”
“Yes, but I’m not altogether . . .” Edith laughed a little awkwardly.
“My dear! No, I’m afraid I haven’t made myself quite clear.” Peter twisted himself a little on the sofa, facing his sister. “My dear, she’s the girl I want to marry,” he said.
“Yes, I know.” Edith flushed sweetly pink. “But then, Peter, what’s the object of Hatchings?” she asked. “I mean to say, to take a girl away for one night. . . . I don’t mind personally but other people . . .”
“Other people won’t know,” said Peter promptly. “And, you see, that’s just the scheme. It’s the cave-man touch, clubbed on the head and all that. I shan’t get her any other way. . . .” He suddenly got up and walked to the window. “She’s engaged herself to marry a drunken swine of a man,” he said, “and she’s so damned obstinate she’ll stick to it unless I do something desperate.”
“I see.” Edith was staring thoughtfully at the fire. “I wish you’d tell me who it is,” she said.
“I will. I don’t care a bit who knows. It’s Peggy Fielding. Probably you’ve seen her. She played up poor old Ralph about a year ago, badly.”
“Peggy Fielding! Of course. She’s that girl with a lovely little head of yellow hair. But, Peter, a fiend, if there ever was one! My dear, she’ll murder you when she finds herself at Hatchings!” Edith suddenly laughed with real enjoyment.
“Yes, I know. Now you understand perhaps why I have had to resort to desperate measures.” Peter walked back from the window and stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece. “She’s that type,” he said; “it’s got to be that, either that or nothing. She’s got to be made to see that she’s . . .” He broke off.
“That she’s met her master,” put in Edith quietly.
“Yes, well, that is it really, only it sounds so blatant said aloud.” Peter laughed awkwardly. “And now, my dear, what about it? Do you think you can manage it, in a week’s time. If you can’t, I must think out another plan. But I’d infinitely rather. Because I want you to do a lot of things for me as well. She must have clothes, the little sweet.” Peter’s voice suddenly faltered, and he poked angrily at a projecting piece of gassy coal.
“My dear, I’d do any mortal thing for you when you speak like that.” Edith suddenly stood up and laid her small ringed hand on her brother’s sleeve. “Minns will welcome you with open arms. She shall kill the fatted calf. And if you like you shall go back there the next day and spend the beginning of your honeymoon there. Now, Peter, that would be romantic if you like.” Edith’s eyes suddenly shone excitedly.
“Thank you, my dear, but I haven’t got her yet. But if I do get her, it would be rather nice.” Peter spoke unconcernedly, but the hand that he suddenly drove deep into his pocket was trembling.
“My dear, are you sure that you were wise to let your very natural resentment override your more mature judgment?” The Canon was speaking gravely to Peggy, as she sat in a low chair facing him. “Sir Peter may not have behaved well over all this—I will admit that he has not—but he is a man of high integrity and purpose. One cannot but realize that, from his face and from his general demeanour.”
“You mean that Barrington is not?” blazed Peggy.
“No, I do not say that.” The Canon got up as he spoke and moved uneasily about the room. “But from what I have already observed, Peggy, he is a young man to whom the pleasures of the table make a very strong appeal. He has only been here twice during the past week, but each time I have observed . . .” The Canon broke off.
“You mean that he drinks,” said Peggy hardly.
“Again I should scarcely like to put it as strongly as that,” said the Canon gravely. “But it seems to me . . .” And again he paused.
“If you knew how I loathed Sir Peter Wolversley.” Peggy spoke in a queer stifled voice. “Uncle Henry, he has killed my soul. He took my love and jeered at it.” She got up and began to storm up and down the room. “He made up his mind when he first saw me that he would subdue me. And he did it—brute, devil! And now, out of pity because Mr. Granger saw us at a queer hour of the night in town, he thinks that it is up to him to get engaged to me, and he comes and offers me, out of contemptuous pity, the protection of his name. I tell you that I would rather die than marry him—rather die than go anywhere near him—rather die than . . .” Peggy broke off, white and quivering with passion.
“My dear child!” And there the Canon had finished all that he had to say. “Go out for your walk, my child,” he said; and he turned in his pacing and came to a standstill beside Peggy’s chair. “And may God go with you and guide you.” The Canon suddenly dropped a tender hand on to the crown of the soft felt hat.
And then was Peggy broken, defenceless and weeping. “Uncle Henry, Uncle Henry,” she sobbed, clinging to the kind old hand. “If you only knew—the agony—the torture. Sometimes I feel that I shall die—I shall . . .” She bowed her head in a tempest of weeping.
“God be with you, my poor little girl.” The Canon’s eyes were wet as he looked out on the wintry garden. “Be comforted, Peggy,” he said; “sometimes when things seem to be at their worst they have already begun to mend. Take your walk, my child, and come back restored. Very often the sight of the country helps us. There is beauty in every season. But take God with you, Peggy. Don’t do anything of which He would disapprove. Marriage is a holy thing, or should be.” The Canon stopped speaking.
And as Peggy, with her tiny handkerchief up to her face, passed the study window, he stood there and waved kindly to her. Such a child’s figure, he thought, with the ridiculous short skirt and fantastic stockings! Then he sat down again at his desk and sank his head into his hands.
Once out in the open air Peggy felt a little better. She had not cried much since the day, exactly a week before, that she had come down from London with Barrington Foster, and had had her last interview with Peter. Now the sight of the country restored her. They were beginning to plough the fields that during the winter had lain fallow, with only the spiky stalks of last year’s corn to tell of the harvest that had been. The horses moved ponderously and with dignity, and there was something very attractive about the long, newly turned furrow of earth that came writhing out from under the steel blade. It seemed to speak of hope and Spring, and the end of death and dark miseries; and Peggy felt decidedly better as she turned off the main road to go along a little narrow lane that had high hedges on either side of it. She would walk along it and sing. She had a funny little treble voice that she was always very shy of anyone hearing; but it was rather sweet in its way—like the best side of Peggy, that no one but the man she really loved had ever seen.
Peter saw her turn down the narrow lane, and swore. So far, luck had been with him. He had calculated that, all things being equal, Peggy would go for her walk at about this time—namely, three o’clock in the afternoon—and she had done so. He had also banked on the direction she would take, and she had taken it. She had not got the dog with her or anyone else, as he had been fairly certain she would not have, because the dog was very stupid about motors, and Peggy was nervous of taking him out unless he was on the lead. Also she did not care for going for walks with people; he knew that because she had told him so. But now, if the Sunbeam was going to refuse to go along that lane, he was done; because if Peggy once got some way along it she might easily cut across a field and get home that way, and it would be hopeless to try to cut her off. One would never know where she was going to emerge, to begin with.
But luck was with him again. Purring good-temperedly, the Sunbeam turned out of the main road and started to creep along the narrow lane. The briary, brambly hedgerows scratched viciously at the buff-coloured hood of it, but with ineffectual claws. It was too tough for them. Peter steered his way with enormous care; there was only just room for the great car, and that with the utmost skill in driving, because there was a fairly deep ditch on one side.
Peggy heard the car coming and hastened her steps a little. How stupid of the person, whoever it was, because there was no room for a big car, and somebody else in the lane. But there was a little embrasure farther along, and a gate leading out of it into a field. She would get to it first and wait there, and let the car pass her.
But the car stopped when she did; and leaning over the gate staring out into the newly ploughed field, with the sound of the beautiful engine vibrating softly just behind her, Peggy felt oddly uncomfortable. She was so awfully alone, not a soul, even a labourer, in sight. But yet, how ridiculous! She would wait quietly where she was, until the person, whoever he was, went on. Probably he had only stopped to light a pipe, or perhaps he wanted to know the way. . . .
But at the slam of the door she did turn. There was something about being caught with your back to a person that frightened her; and the tall figure in the leather coat that had just slid out from behind the wheel smiled.
“You’re frightened?” said Peter.
“I’m not!” Peggy was suffocated and choking. “What are you—what are you . . .?” Her voice suddenly died in her throat.
“Well, I’ll explain it very briefly,” said Peter; and came up a little nearer to her as she backed up against the gate. “I’ve been thinking about this whole affair; about you and me and young Foster, I mean, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s up to me to prevent you from making a fool of yourself. So I’ve come to take you away with me now, in this car.”
“You can’t.”
“Can’t I?” Peter laughed grimly. “Like the old lady in Punch, you know. And how are you going to prevent me, my child? You can’t—there’s not a soul in sight. Now, will you get in quietly, or shall I have to put you there?”
“I—I—you can’t do it.” From under her soft hat Peggy’s blue eyes were wide and terrified. She glanced wildly from right to left. “You—you—you could be taken up,” she cried.
“Rubbish!” Peter’s nice teeth gleamed good-temperedly. “In you get,” he said cheerfully. “Peggy, you’ve met your match, my child, and you’d much better admit it. Come, now—” he put a leather hand on the soft tweed coat—“get in gracefully and save a fight. You’ll only lose heavily, and probably cry into the bargain, and I hate to make you cry.”
“Peter, don’t—don’t make me . . .” Peggy had begun to lose her nerve, and there was terror in her voice. “You can’t. What will Uncle Henry say? They’ll wonder where I am . . .” Her voice broke. “They’ll . . .”
“I’ve thought of all that.” Peter was gently impelling her towards the car as he spoke. “We’ll wire from the next town, or rather you will. Now then, don’t start that”—for Peggy had suddenly wrenched herself from his hold—“it’s so stupid, because it’s so useless. I shall only pick you up in my arms and put you in the car.” He caught hold of her again. “I’d better,” he said, speaking half to himself. “I should look such a darned fool if anyone came along.”
And after a short, sharp struggle Peggy was there. With a pang at his heart, because it seemed too cruel, and he loved her so, he got her down in the back seat with her hands tied securely behind her with a soft crêpe bandage he had bought for the purpose. “It isn’t a joke, this,” he said, as she sobbed and cried out. “It’s dead, grim earnest, and I want you to realize it. Now don’t try to get out or do anything foolish, or I shall have to tie your ankles, and I should hate to do that. Now keep where you are while I get into the front seat again.”
But as he backed out of the door he almost fell into the arms of two workmen slouching home after their day’s work. One of them wanted a light, and was inclined to talk. Peter shut the door behind him and listened, with his heart in his mouth. Now was her chance if she really wanted help. But not a sound came from the back of the car, and with a cheerful good night Peter opened the door, and got into the front seat and slid into his place behind the wheel. “The little darling!” There was a very tender look on his mouth as he let in the clutch with an almost imperceptible burr.
Peggy, behind, huddled terrified in a corner of the seat, fighting unavailingly to get her hands free, heard the workmen, and wondered why she could not call out. But something told her that he would explain it away somehow—get her back somehow—if she did get away this time. She watched the back of his head in a sort of fascinated terror. There were two suit-cases on the floor and another leather coat. A smaller one—for her perhaps.
It was. Peter slowed down after about half an hour’s very fast going, and twisted himself round in his seat. “Are you cold?” he asked.
“No.” Peggy had recovered her self-possession a little and spoke icily.
“No, thank you.” Peter twisted himself back again. “There’s a leather coat in behind for you if you are,” he said; and Peggy could detect a sound of laughter in his voice as he spoke.
“I would rather die than put it on,” said Peggy.
“When we stop to send the wire I’ll help you,” said Peter; and this time he did chuckle a little aloud. “It’s quite a good coat,” he said, as he stooped to switch on the powerful head-lights. “How early it gets dark in this part of the world!” he remarked cheerfully; “we shall soon have to have tea. I have it there, behind, in a Thermos.”
“Where are we?” asked Peggy in a tremulous whisper. Suddenly her anger had all left her. She was only afraid—of him—and of what he was going to do to her. Men were odd when they got really angry, and she had never really understood him.
“Quite near Horsham. We’ll stop here and send a wire. And I hate to think of your hands being tied: promise me to keep quiet and not try to get away and I’ll undo them. And I always think tea out of a Thermos is beastly, too. If you won’t make any fuss, we’ll go to a topping place I know of here and have a proper tea. Do say you won’t.” Peter spoke urgently, like a boy.
“Very well, I won’t.” Peggy spoke quietly, with her fascinated eyes on the soft felt hat ahead of her. “But if you think that because I am quiet, Sir Peter, I am going to give in to you, you are mistaken. I will never give in to you—not if you kill me, I won’t.”
“Very well, I quite understand.” The keen eyes straining through the windscreen were inscrutable. “Here we are. I had forgotten the way for a moment. We’ll put the car here and get out. Now then, you must have the coat.” The lean brown hands were busy with the skilfully tied bandage. “That’s it. Now get out, and I’ll help you on with the coat, and here are your gloves.”
“I don’t want the coat.”
“I know—but it’s good for you to have it. It’s too cold now for only that tweed thing. Good child”—as Peggy stood passive. “Now, you look nice in it, and it fits you like a glove. Here’s the tea-place. They give a jolly good tea here, and it’ll do you good. Come along, dear.”
There was something in the quiet homely “dear” that sent the tears stinging to Peggy’s wide blue eyes. She was so frightened, and so fearfully alone, somehow. He was taking her—she did not know where; and what was he going to do to her when he had got her? How could he force her to give in—-he couldn’t. . . . She followed him blindly into the tea-place.
Peter watched her as she ate and drank, and his rather cruel mouth relaxed its lines and grew very tender. She was deadly afraid of him—that was very obvious. He would get his own way all right—in the end. But there was going to be a fight first. Peggy’s small round chin and short white nose betokened obstinacy. He spoke kindly. “Had enough?” he asked; and his voice was friendly and natural.
“Yes, thank you.” Peggy’s eyes were evasive and fluttering like an animal’s. Peter held her arm as they came out of the shop. “Post office,” he said; “like to come with me?”
“Yes, please.” Peggy, almost buried in her leather coat, spoke mechanically. Vaguely she was thinking what a very nice coat it was. It must have cost a lot because it was so supple. The cheap ones were hard and stiff.
Horsham has an attractive High Street, narrow, and full of friendly, interesting-looking shops. Peggy followed along by Peter’s side, wondering vaguely what would happen if she suddenly clung to the arm of a passer-by, and whispered to him or her that the tall man by her side was taking her away against her will. Would the person help her, or would she look uncomfortable and turn her head furtively and try to wriggle herself free? “Why don’t you try?” Something malicious and derisive whispered the words deep, deep down in Peggy’s soul. But she disregarded them: she would get herself out of this difficulty herself, she told herself proudly, lifting her chin a little out of the soft leather collar, and setting her scarlet mouth more hardly.
Sending the telegram did not take long. Peter pushed it over to her when he had written it. “Will that do for you?” he said.
Peggy took it with a suddenly trembling hand. A telegram seemed to make it more real. Up to that moment it had hardly seemed real at all. But now, a telegraph office, and Sir Peter diving his hand into his pocket for money. She read it with suddenly flying eyes.
I am perfectly all right; don’t worry about me. And I shall be back without fail to-morrow.—Peggy.
“I . . .” But with a quick glance Sir Peter had taken the telegram from her and was pushing it, with the necessary money, under the gilt wire-fencing. And he held her with his free hand as he waited for the change. The pert young clerk liked the look of the tall man in the leather coat, and made play with her excellently polished nails as she flicked the small coins off the counter into her other hand before pushing them over to him.
“Now then, we’ll go back to the car. Don’t cry, darling.” He stooped over her as he pushed open the swing-door of the post office, speaking tenderly. “Look here, Peggy, you’ve only just got to say that you will promise to marry me to-morrow and I’ll take you back to Little Churcham now. We can easily do it in an hour and a half if I drive fast. Just say it, sweet—it’s so easy.”
“I won’t.” Peggy was snorting and choking into her minute, coloured handkerchief. “If you kill me I will never say it now,” she sobbed. “You’ve roused all the worst in me, the part that loathes and hates you.”
“Mind! you’re blocking up the way.” Peter’s deep-set eyes were amused as he drew Peggy a little to one side of the path. “Well, that being so, we must go on then, mustn’t we? and fight it out to the death. But I’m sorry it has to be like this.”
“You aren’t, you glory in it.” The words were on Peggy’s tongue, but she bit them back. That was what it was about this man: you couldn’t say things like that to him as you could to any other man—snappy, almost contemptuous things. He wouldn’t let you—somehow, his personality wouldn’t let you.
She walked along beside him in silence. Every now and then he glanced down at her; she knew he was looking at her, and trembled. If he really said gentle things to her she would give way—she knew she would—shamelessly, and in a passion of surrender.
“You can’t marry me because you’ve got to have banns and things.” The words were suddenly jerked out of her as they had nearly reached the car again!
“Yes, I can, because I’ve got a special licence,” said Peter readily. “The Bishop of Torminster is a great friend of ours and he has fixed it up. Don’t worry about that, dear.”
“I am not worrying,” flared Peggy, suddenly terrified and losing control of herself. To-morrow, to belong to this man entirely! “I’m terrified,” she cried; and turned in the road and clung to him.
“My darling!” There was yearning tenderness in Peter’s voice as he steadied her with his arm. “Come along, here’s the car,” he said, “and you shall sit in the front seat with me and we’ll talk. That’s it.” He had helped her gently in, and was settling himself in his own seat behind the wheel. Now then, let’s hear about it,” he said; and, slipping off the glove from the hand nearest hers, he took quietly hold of her small one.
“I’m not the sort of wife for you. I shall fail you, and you’ll get to loathe me,” she said; and Peter could see her face white and strained in the glow from the electric light above the petrol gauge. “You want everyone to give in to you; I cannot give in.”
“You can, if you will let yourself,” said Peter gently.
“No, I can’t—something won’t let me. Something ties down my soul and makes me fight all the time; I can feel it holding me now.” Peggy suddenly laid her free hand on her heart.
“Well, that something has got to be conquered,” said Peter quietly. “That’s what I feel about it. You’re going to wreck your life through obstinacy, and I’m not going to allow you to. Now, what about it? Are we to go on, or will you just give me your word of honour that you will marry me to-morrow.” He twisted round in his seat to look at her.
“I can’t.” It came in a strangled, tormented undertone from Peggy.
“Very well, then, we must go on.” Peter twisted himself back again and stooped to let in the clutch. The powerful car stole quietly forward, round the corner and on to the high road again.
“Stop!” It came after about ten minutes’ silent going. Peggy was sitting forward holding her hands clenched in front of her.
“Right-o.” Peter slowed down instantly, and, stopping at the side of the road, he leant forward to switch off the powerful head-lights. He clicked on the two dimmer ones. “Yes?” he said.
“I’ll think about it. Give me time. You can’t expect any girl to—to settle to be married the very next day without minding. Girls aren’t like that—they’re afraid.” Peggy’s voice was broken.
“No, they aren’t, when they love,” said Peter with a sort of still note in his voice.
“Yes, they are. I tell you they are,” choked Peggy. “You aren’t a girl. You don’t know what girls feel.”
“I have a fairly shrewd idea,” said Peter; and his eyes were laughing between their dark eyelashes.
“Well, I tell you I’m not like the other girls you have known; I’m different. The very idea of being your wife to-morrow terrifies me. Let me go home, Sir Peter. You must! You shall!” Peggy, almost beside herself, tried to drag the leather-gloved hand off the wheel.
“Don’t be silly. If that’s all you have to say to me we needn’t have stopped,” said Peter; and lifted her hand off his.
“Leave me alone I tell you; you shall let me go back,” almost screamed Peggy. “You can’t—you have no right to keep me here.” She was stammering and incoherent.
“The remedy is in your own hands.” Peter took both his hands off the wheel and swung right round on the seat to hold her firmly by the shoulders. He could see vaguely down into her eyes, terrified and glancing. “You have only got to say—how many?—seven words,” he said: “‘I will promise to marry you to-morrow,’ and I will turn the car round on the instant.”
“I will not say them.” Peggy had her teeth hard down on her soft lower lip.
“Very well, then, abide by the consequences,” said Peter drily. Again he bent forward to let in the clutch, and again the powerful car slid forward.
Edith Staples was the very soul of kindness and good humour, and somehow ever since her interview with her brother she had been feeling uneasy on Peggy’s behalf. It was such a very strong measure actually to carry a girl off by force. Edith remembered Peggy, and she could visualize the firm little mouth and the cherubic chin. There would be the devil to pay if the two really came into conflict, and there was always the chance—remote certainly, but to be reckoned with—that Peggy really did not care for Peter. So a couple of days after the lunch in town she sat down and wrote to her brother in a nice sprawling well-bred hand, easy to read.
Dear Peter (she wrote)—
It’s all right about Hatchings; a week to-day everything will be ready for you. But look here, I’ve been thinking I’d much better be there too. In the background, I admit, but on the spot. Even you, my dear boy, can’t spend a night alone at a place with an unmarried girl without somebody finding out and chattering. You know they would, and you’d hate it afterwards. I’ll explain it to Minns; I’ll have a headache or something and go to bed. I hope you got the things; weren’t they rather sweet? The dressing-gown and moccasins matching awfully took my fancy.
Peter read the letter at breakfast-time and mused over it for a moment or two. He pushed back his chair from the table and walked over to his writing-table, carrying his half-empty cup of coffee with him. Then he also wrote:
My dear Edith—
You’re a brick; it’s just like you. I expect you’re right, people have such foul minds and one must legislate for them. But look here, if you appear, I’ll brain you. With a marling spike, whatever that is. I’m sure there must be one at Hatchings, it looks like it, anyhow. Yes, the things were sweet; she’ll love them, if she ever sees them, which sometimes in my darker moments I doubt. But still . . . hope for the best and wish me luck. Your affectionate brother . . .”
Having written this he got up, and standing with his back to the fire finished drinking his coffee. And Edith, getting his letter the next morning, knew that she had done the right thing. He had begun to be anxious, poor old boy! She would go and stand by him, and be there if he wanted her.
So she was there now, and, after an afternoon of rapturous gardening, was kicking off her muddy shoes in the funny little bricked passage. Hatchings was a deliciously comfortable, but apparently tumbledown, old cottage with every modern convenience. An extremely clever architect from London had taken the work in hand, and, as money had been no object, had made a very good job of it.
“Minns, I shall have a bath and go to bed, I think.” Edith was calling through the baize door into the kitchen. “Will you be an angel and bring me up some bread and milk, like you used to do? Dinner? I should think not! I can have dinner every night of my life, but not your bread and milk, you old dear.”
“Oh, Miss Edith; and Master Peter arriving with his young lady so soon.” Mrs. Minns appeared, bustling and anxious. “You shall have your bread and milk, my dearie, of course. But won’t you just keep up to welcome them?”
“No, I think I won’t, Minns. I’m covered with mud and tired into the bargain. Don’t say anything about me when they arrive, just take Master Peter aside and tell him I’ve gone to bed. I dare say he’ll pop up and see me after he’s had dinner.”
“Very well, Miss Edith.” Mrs. Minns was bustling away and out into the kitchen again. For years she had been head nurse in the Wolversley family and adored them all. But Edith had blessed her own foresight when Mrs. Minns had smilingly produced a niece. “She helps me beautiful, Miss Edith,” she had explained. “I find the stairs a little heavy for me now, and so does George; and she’s lighted lovely fires in all the rooms.” Why, it would have been all over the village before the morning that Sir Peter had brought a young lady down from London and was staying at Hatchings with her alone. Edith thanked her stars again, as she splashed about in the beautifully hot bath, that she had had the sense to come down and save the faces of these two extremely foolish young people.
And now they were just about due to arrive. And as Lady Edith settled herself on her extremely comfortable pillows, and drew the electric reading-lamp a little nearer to her head, she slipped her finger in between the pages of her book and listened. Yes, there they were. She knew the sound of the Sunbeam hooter. Poor little Peggy! She shivered a little as she slipped down under the blankets and groped about with her long toes for the hot-water bottle.
But Peggy walked into the uneven bricked hall of Hatchings with her small head held high. Mrs. Minns was smiling respectfully and curtseying, and Peter had taken off his soft hat and was shaking hands with her. “Peggy, this is my old nurse,” he said pleasantly, “Mrs. Minns. She’s spanked me many a time. Haven’t you, Minns?”
“Oh no, sir.” Mrs. Minus’s apple-like face was creasing and uncreasing with joy and excitement as Peggy held out her small bare hand. “How do you do?” she said, with intense anxiety to speak naturally.
“Quite well, thank you, m’lady.” Mrs. Minns was curtseying and beaming.
“Not yet, Minns.” Peter was looking round for somewhere to hang up his hat, and his eyes were laughing.
“Oh no, sir. I’m sure I beg . . .” And Mrs. Minns was gone, scuttling like a rabbit into the back premises.
“She’s a dear old thing.” Peter did not look at Peggy as she stood there silently in her big leather coat. “We’ll go straight in,” he said. “I’m sure you’re cold. George will garage the car. Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it?” This was in response to an involuntary cry of pleasure from Peggy.
It was nice. The sitting-room, with a blazing fire of logs on the plain brick hearth, was low-ceilinged and had old oak beams running across it. The floors were polished, and the few rugs on it were Persian and, of their kind, priceless. A Chesterfield sofa was drawn up close to the fire, and the dancing flames lit it up, and set the multi-coloured cretonne of it aglow.
“This is the dining-room.” Peter led the way across the narrow, uneven passage. Another gorgeous fire leapt and flamed to welcome them. The oval table was laid for two, simply laid, with an electric standard table-lamp in the middle of it, with a rose-coloured shade on it. Below the lamp, in a black bowl, two gorgeous pink chrysanthemum-heads floated. Edith! Peter thought it silently.
“And now I’ll show you your room,” he said; and turned out again into the passage. “The cottage is built out at the back as well, but I expect they’ve put us here. Mind your head—there’s an awkward turn at the corner. All right?” He was leading the way cheerfully upstairs.
“Yes, thank you.” Peggy, more in a dream than anything else, stood in the doorway of her bedroom. Another glorious fire. What a lot of money they must have! she thought vaguely. And the old-fashioned bed in the corner and her suit-case on the floor. “How did it come up?” She spoke timidly to the man standing just behind her.
“There’s a back staircase,” said Peter. “Peggy!” He moved forward and stood just beside her.
“No, don’t!” Peggy suddenly wrung her hands.
“All right; as you were! Now, look here—here’s my room. Close to yours, so that you can call me in the night if you’re frightened—or even tap on the wall.”
“I’m never frightened in the night.”
“Good girl—that shows you’ve got a clear conscience. Now, I see there’s hot water to wash, if you want to; I don’t want to force it! And I’ll do the same, and then we’ll meet downstairs for dinner.”
“Very well.” Peggy closed her door, and went and stood by the fire; and then she sank down into a little squat easy chair covered with chintz, and flung her hands with a passionate gesture over her ears. She was terrified of her thoughts, terrified of herself. Why hadn’t she cried out when those workmen were there? “Because you are adoring every instant of this.” The spiteful, malicious voice might almost have been at her elbow.
“I am not.” Peggy spoke aloud, and got up from her chair. She flung her hands out fiercely, and then, pulling herself together, looked round for the electric-light switch. With the room flooded in rose-coloured light she stooped to the open suit-case. Heavenly garments! A woman had chosen them; Peggy came to that conclusion when she had finished looking at them. The padded satin dressing-gown trimmed with fur, and the moccasins to match it. The nightdress—a thing that you could hardly feel, it was so diaphanous—and the silk undervest to wear with it. The toothbrush, comb, powder: Peggy took them all out, shivering with excitement. She washed, and then, switching on the second light, peered in the glass and combed her yellow hair. How glad she was that she had put on her newest jumper-suit! she thought. It had a soft little turn-down muslin collar and cuffs to match. She did not look untidy, only rather pale. She peered in the glass again.
Then she switched out the lights and walked carefully down the narrow twisty stairs again. He was already there, standing with his back to the beautiful fire, an evening paper in his hands. “The news is bad from China,” he said, as she came in; “but still, we can’t do anything here, so don’t let’s worry. Feel better and less tired?” He threw down the paper and walked towards her.
“Yes, thank you.” Peggy was trying to control the sort of inner trembling that always seized her when Peter looked at her. It was unreasonable, she argued with herself. The whole situation was fantastic. No one could force you to do a thing that you did not mean to; and then the sudden chill conviction abruptly dawned on her, and the dawning of it left her choking and faint. He could, if you were a woman and he was a man—she had never thought of that before. But he . . . She suddenly flung out her hands to ward him off. “No, no!” she gasped.
“What’s the matter?” Peter caught hold of the two trembling hands and held them closely against his coat. Ah, she was really frightened now! It had just dawned on her. . . .
“Oh, let me go back. You must, you simply must.” There was sick panic and terror in Peggy’s distended eyes. She beat at him in an anguish of fear. “You must, you must!” she cried.
“My dear child, it’s far too late: you ought to have thought of that before.” Peter let her hands drop and turned to the fire. “Come, we shall be having dinner in a minute or two,” he said. “It’s much too late to think of turning out again. Come along closer to the fire and get warm; you’re shivering.”
“I am warm.” Peggy’s chattering teeth gave the lie to the words. But she advanced all the same and stood looking up at him, infinitely pathetic and terrified. And Peter looked away from her: he did not mean to be soft-hearted now—she had had her chance and had missed it. “Ah, there’s dinner,” he said. “I expect you’re hungry; I know I am.”
“No, I don’t think I am.” But the dinner was good—very simple but very good all the same—and Peggy ate what she was given and enjoyed it. The lumpy niece came in and out with the dishes, and looked at Peggy and thought that some people had all the luck. “Like a prince he is, I say,” she said to Mrs. Minns.
“Of course he is; like a king more likely.” Mrs. Mums was making the coffee and was breathing excitedly. “And directly after you’ve finished washing up, Katie, you just pop up to the bedrooms and make up the fires. And hot-water bottles and hot water on the stroke of nine. They’ll be tired and will want to go to bed early.”
“They won’t,” said Katie with prescience. But all the same she did what she was told, and then went discontentedly to bed in her funny narrow room next door to the loft. “Such a dirty lump as he looks after him,” she grumbled; thinking of the rather shapeless young man who had slouched in after she had taken in the coffee, and sat speechlessly staring at her with his cap still on.
Katie was right. It was ten o’clock when Peter flung a couple more logs on to the fire and turned to Peggy as she sat crouched in the easy chair on the other side of the fire. “You shall give in,” he said; and his face was white.
“I will not.” Peggy’s face was equally white, and her mouth showed scarlet.
“You do love me.” Peter got out of his chair and towered over her.
“I do not.”
“You do: if I was to pick you up in my arms now and kiss you, as you know I can kiss you, I should have you clinging to me in five minutes. But I am not going to do that. You have had your chance. You’re so damned obstinate; you’ve got to have your will broken somehow.” Peter’s voice was hoarse; he was really angry now. He had been arguing with Peggy for more than an hour—at first gently and tenderly. But lately her obduracy had shaken his self-control. She should give in: he would use any means to make her—any means . . .
“I will make you give in to me,” he said; and his voice was trembling.
“You can’t.” Peggy was sitting with her eyes fixed on him as if she were fascinated. The blood was thundering in her ears, and all that was pagan and untutored in her was suddenly uppermost. This was a fight to the death, and she was going to win. But when she had won she was going to go tenderly to him and say that she had not meant it, and that she would be his wife on the morrow. But she was going to have her own way first. Her terror of earlier in the evening had faded. Men didn’t do those things—not when they were civilized and well bred.
Peter got up and walked to the door, and, treading carefully along the passage, pushed against the baize door very gently. It yielded, showing the gaping blackness of a deserted kitchen. Then he trod back again, and, coming into the sitting-room, shut the door behind him and walked over to the fire again. “They’ve all gone to bed,” he said conversationally.
“Have they?” Peggy stood up. “I think it’s time we did, too,” she said. “Yes, it’s half-past ten,” as the grandfather clock in the corner of the room suddenly got excitedly busy in its inside, and wheezed forth the half-hour.
Peter laughed shortly. “You’re not going out of this room,” he said, “until you have given me your promise to marry me to-morrow.” He came very close to Peggy, and stood looking down into her eyes.
“I will not,” said Peggy.
“Don’t drive me, Peggy.” Peter spoke from between his teeth.
“It’s useless—I won’t.” The hands hanging down by Peggy’s side were suddenly clenched.
“You shall!”
“I will not!”
“You shall; and do you know why? Because I have the last word in this, as a man always has in a struggle of the kind. You know what I mean. I’ll take you. If you won’t come to my arms of your own free will, I’ll force you there, and keep you there; and one day you’ll be glad that I did it.”
“You couldn’t be such a—fiend.”
“Couldn’t I? You’ve no idea what a man is like when he’s roused.” Peter was breathing heavily, and had started to pace up and down the room. “You’re determined to smash up both our lives,” he said, “and I am equally determined that you shall not. Go upstairs to your room, and in ten minutes from now, if you don’t open it to me of your own accord, I shall kick in your door.”
“Peter!”
“Yes, I know—you didn’t expect it. But that’s always the way with women; they think they’re going to have the last word, and then, when they find that they aren’t, they don’t like it. Go upstairs. I’m going to turn out the lights here.” He started to do it, and stooped for the old-fashioned guard to put across the still glowing log.
Peggy went blindly and stupidly upstairs. Surely this must be a dream. Shutting her door she leant her head against the wooden crosspieces of it, and then, terrified, jerked it up again as she heard Peter shutting the door of the sitting-room and coming with slow, deliberate feet up the narrow staircase. Then came the careful closing of his own door, and silence.
In his own room Peter crossed to the looking-glass and switched on the light close beside it. Then he stared at his reflection, still a little pallid. Then he started to take off his coat and waistcoat, and to put on his dressing-gown instead. And then he waited, almost sick with apprehension. Supposing she were still obstinate and did not open her door to him. What should he do? What should he do?
Ten dreadful minutes ticked their dreary way round the pale white face of his watch. He opened his door, and then a silent prayer of thanksgiving fled from between his lips. Peggy was crying—he had won, then.
He tapped very quietly, and waited for her answer with his well-brushed head a little bent. It came on a sobbing breath: “Come in.”
Peggy was standing, fully dressed, at the foot of the bed, clutching at the wooden post of it. As Peter shut the door behind him and stood there looking at her, she gasped.
“Well?” he said.
“Peter.” Peggy let go of the wooden post and took a couple of passionate steps towards him. “Peter, I will marry you to-morrow—not only because of this, but because I love you and want to. I do really. . . .” She fell a little weeping heap at his feet, clutching at his ankles.
And Peter, lifting her up, felt the sudden tears sting his own eyelids. “Sweetest . . . dearest . . . thank you for putting it like that,” he said quietly.
“But what on earth made you hold out for so long?” At the risk of both their limbs, if not of their lives, Peter had carried Peggy bodily downstairs, and the fire that had thought it was going out was now roaring up the chimney as if the evening was just beginning.
“Because I liked it,” said Peggy, and stirred shyly in the strong arms that were holding her.
“I knew you did.” Peter was staring over her head into the flames, and his eyes suddenly narrowed in laughter.
“How did you know?”
“Because if you hadn’t you would have shouted to those workmen at the very beginning. That was the obvious thing to do, wasn’t it?” Peter’s mouth was straying over the short yellow hair as he spoke.
“Yes.” Peggy was silent for a moment or two, and then she spoke with one hand feeling nervously for his tie. “Peter, do you think less of me for liking it?” she said.
“No.” Peter’s reply came promptly; and he took hold of the small, wandering hand and held it against his lips as he answered. “No,” he said, “I think more of you. Men don’t like women who don’t respond to the lash,” he ended up; and his eyes were silently twinkling as he waited for Peggy’s explosion.
It came as he had expected. “What lash?” she said; and her small head was suddenly jerked upwards.
“The one that I shall use for you if you don’t behave yourself,” said Peter; and suddenly laughed aloud. “Oh, Peggy, you darling, you blessed little idiot, of course I shan’t,” he said; and pressed the yellow head tenderly back into the hollow of his shoulder. “And now, my most precious darling, we really must go to bed.” He suddenly uncrossed his long feet. “You’ll be a worm to-morrow—-it’s past twelve—our wedding day. Peggy it is—our wedding day. Stand up and tell me you’re glad.”
“You say it.” Peggy spoke tremulously, staring upwards.
“Glad! Well, how can I say it best?” Peter stooped his head. “Like this, I think,” he said quietly; and felt for her mouth with his own.
They were back at Hatchings again, a very strenuous day nearly at its close. Sir Peter had sought out his sister very early that morning, and Edith had appeared at breakfast natural, and cheerfully smiling. “Married at twelve?” she said. “Why, the poor child has only the clothes she stands up in. How like a man! We’ll get into Torminster two hours beforehand; the shops are beautiful there. I won’t have her married like that. She’d hate it—wouldn’t you, Peggy?”
“She doesn’t feel like hating anything this morning.” Peter spoke mischievously and glanced across the table to where Peggy sat quietly eating; and then his face changed and he dropped his table-napkin and walked round to her. “My darling,” he said; and dropped on one knee and caught her head on to his shoulder.
“She’s only a little frightened,” Lady Edith reassured her brother when Peggy had gone up to her room to put on her hat and coat. “After all, Peter, give her a chance! This time yesterday she had no more idea of marrying you than of marrying the man in the moon. She’ll be all right. I’ll get her some pretty clothes at Ashbourne’s, and she’ll feel much better.”
So Peggy stood before the altar in the Bishop of Torminster’s private chapel, very sweetly dressed in a beautiful little French frock of palest beige colour. Her hat came down low over her eyes and framed the sensitive little face, and the Bishop looked at it and thought that Peter had chosen wisely. He had once been in love with Edith Wolversley himself, but he had never known if she had realized it.
Then came a flying call at the Rectory at Little Churcham to explain, and while Peggy was upstairs packing a suit-case, the Canon took Peter into his study and clasped him fervently by both hands. “It is an answer to my prayers,” he said. “My boy, I have longed for it.” He gripped Peter’s arm, and wiped away his tears without the slightest compunction.
Then away in the great car again to Hatchings; and now they stood looking out of the little lattice window of the sitting-room, on to the garden flooded with moonlight. “A heavenly night.” Peter spoke half to himself.
“Yes.” Peggy stirred within his arm. “I want to say something,” she said.
“Say on; but come along back to the fire first—you’re shivering. That’s better.” He had settled himself in the big easy chair and had her drawn up close to his heart. “Now then, say every mortal thing you want,” he said.
“I’ve forgotten what it was now,” said Peggy, nestling closer.
Peter’s eyes twinkled in the firelight. He sat very still for a moment or two, and then spoke with his chin resting on her head. “What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Peggy instantly, and caught her breath.
Peter’s eyes laughed again. “Now what are you?” he said; and this time he caught her to him a little more closely.
“The same thing—nothing,” said Peggy breathlessly.
This time Peter laughed out loud. “You darling,” he said; “well, I’m not quite so vacant. I’m thinking that it’s time you went to bed: in fact, I know it is.”
“No,” said Peggy; and Peter felt within his arms the same shrinking sensation that he had used to feel when he was a boy and had tried to pull a limpet off a rock. A sudden, terrified, panic-stricken, breathless holding on of the thing under his hand.
“Darling, not afraid—of me . . .?” he said, as he stared into the fire; and he laid his cheek tenderly on her hair.
“Yes,” said Peggy breathlessly.
“Well, you’re not to be,” said Peter; and moved his feet and stood up, lifting her with him. “Now you wait while I put the guard in front of the fire,” he said, “and then I’m going to carry you up.”
“No!” said Peggy again; and this time it was the cry of a frightened child.
Peter stooped to adjust the guard with one hand as he held her close to him with the other; and then he clicked down the electric switch just above his head and turned to her in the firelight.
“Now,” he said quietly.