"I haven"t the least desire to deny it, Voules."
"Mr. Voules, if you please."
"It"s true," said George, turning to the Count. "The fact is, I had rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the conclusion that I must have a.s.saulted His Serene Highness."
"Then you are really George Lattaker?" asked the Count.
"I am."
""Ere, what does all this mean?" demanded Voules.
"Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules."
"It"s a swindle!" began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall"s chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
"Oh, Harold!" she cried. "I thought you were dead. I thought you"d shot yourself."
He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed to think better of it and fell into the clinch, It was all dashed romantic, don"t you know, but there are limits.
"Voules, you"re sacked," I said.
"Who cares?" he said. "Think I was going to stop on now I"m a gentleman of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a month"s notice and get your "at, and I"ll take you to dinner at Ciro"s."
"And you, Mr. Lattaker," said the Count, "may I conduct you to the presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his grat.i.tude to his preserver."
"You may," said George. "May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?"
There"s just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost b.u.mped into George and Stella. They seemed to be having an argument.
"I"m not sure," she was saying, "that I believe that a man can be so happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it."
"Don"t you?" said George. "Well, as it happens, I"m feeling just that way now."
I coughed and he turned round.
"Halloa, Reggie!" he said.
"Halloa, George!" I said. "Lovely night."
"Beautiful," said Stella.
"The moon," I said.
"Ripping," said George.
"Lovely," said Stella.
"And look at the reflection of the stars on the----"
George caught my eye. "Pop off," he said.
I popped.
DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD.
Have you ever thought about--and, when I say thought about, I mean really carefully considered the question of--the coolness, the cheek, or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a s.e.x, fairly bursts? I have, by Jove! But then I"ve had it thrust on my notice, by George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty few fellows. And the limit was reached by that business of the Yeardsley "Venus."
To make you understand the full what-d"you-call-it of the situation, I shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and myself.
When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at Oxford with me.
I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don"t you know. And there was a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played "The Wedding Glide," I"m hanged if she didn"t break it off, and a month later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley--Clarence Yeardsley, an artist.
What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn"t seem likely to me that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the country somewhere and never came to London, and I"m bound to own that, by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it had done.
This letter I"m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue sky, as it were. It ran like this: "MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,--What ages it seems since I saw anything of you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old house, with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country. Couldn"t you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be so glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you again. He was speaking of you only this morning. Do come. Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you. --Yours most sincerely, ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
"P.S.--We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
"P.P.S.--Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has ever played on.
"P.P.S.S.--We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says it is better than St. Andrews.
"P.P.S.S.S.--You must come!"
Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must be something special. So I went.
Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn"t come across him for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was glad to see me.
"Thank goodness you"ve come," he said, as we drove off. "I was just about at my last grip."
"What"s the trouble, old scout?" I asked.
"If I had the artistic what"s-its-name," he went on, "if the mere mention of pictures didn"t give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn"t be so bad. As it is, it"s rotten!"
"Pictures?"
"Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like when one gives her her head?"
I remembered then--it hadn"t come back to me before--that most of my time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had had to follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though pictures are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had never struck me that she would still be going on in this way after marrying an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere sight of a picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to old Bill.
"They talk pictures at every meal," he said. "I tell you, it makes a chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?"
"A few days."
"Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was that I was to come back after the match. But you couldn"t get me back with a la.s.so."
I tried to point out the silver lining.
"But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there"s a most corking links near here."
He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
"You don"t mean honestly she said that?"
"She said you said it was better than St. Andrews."
"So I did. Was that all she said I said?"
"Well, wasn"t it enough?"
"She didn"t happen to mention that I added the words, "I don"t think"?"
"No, she forgot to tell me that."
"It"s the worst course in Great Britain."
I felt rather stunned, don"t you know. Whether it"s a bad habit to have got into or not, I can"t say, but I simply can"t do without my daily allowance of golf when I"m not in London.
I took another whirl at the silver lining.
"We"ll have to take it out in billiards," I said. "I"m glad the table"s good."
"It depends what you call good. It"s half-size, and there"s a seven-inch cut just out of baulk where Clarence"s cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn"t improve the thing as a billiard-table."
"But she said you said----"
"Must have been pulling your leg."
We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I couldn"t help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which brought me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and was going to have a stab at marrying me off. I"ve often heard that young married women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was n.o.body at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence"s father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as she had done wouldn"t be likely to stick at a trifle.
"Bill, old scout," I said, "there aren"t any frightful girls or any rot of that sort stopping here, are there?"
"Wish there were," he said. "No such luck."
As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman"s figure appeared.
"Have you got him, Bill?" she said, which in my present frame of mind struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don"t you know.
"Do you mean me?" I said.
She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same as in the old days.
"Is that you, Reggie? I"m so glad you were able to come. I was afraid you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come along in and have some tea."
Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been introduced to her husband? If so you"ll understand how I felt when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he"s like." Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can"t have preferred this to me!" That"s what I thought, when I set eyes on Clarence.
He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I"m no Bombardier Wells myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth, mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like princesses. Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
"How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?" said Clarence. All in one breath, don"t you know.
"Eh?" I said.
"A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!"
While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was an earlier model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior. Elizabeth introduced us.
"Father," said Clarence, "did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel positive I heard a cat mewing."
"No," said the father, shaking his head; "no mewing cat."
"I can"t bear mewing cats," said Clarence. "A mewing cat gets on my nerves!"
"A mewing cat is so trying," said Elizabeth.
"I dislike mewing cats," said old Mr. Yeardsley.
That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to pictures.
We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the "Monna Lisa," and then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
"Here it is," I said. "A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer----"
They all shouted "What!" exactly at the same time, like a chorus. Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
"Let me look! Yes. "Late last night burglars entered the residence of Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants----"
"Why, that"s near here," I said. "I pa.s.sed through Midford----"
"Dryden Park is only two miles from this house," said Elizabeth. I noticed her eyes were sparkling.
"Only two miles!" she said. "It might have been us! It might have been the "Venus"!"
Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
"The "Venus"!" he cried.