"His name--the gentleman"s name----"
Then, as the horse lifted a foot, she slipped a little on the step.
She might not have fallen, but his old and instinctive muscular discipline counted for something. Buck had made a remarkably swift movement, and his arm now supported her. Suddenly she surrendered her weight to him.
"Here, m"m," said the astonished Buck, "come and set down on the bench."
Louie turned up entreating eyes. "You can"t guess?"
"If it"s Richards, seven----"
"The gentleman"s name--I came with--is Chaffinger----"
"You said----?"
"Chaffinger."
She was too close to him to notice that he too had suddenly become white. He still held her, but slowly half a cubic foot of air came from his chest. Probably with a purely mechanical movement he set her on her feet. His hand was at his sound ear.
"Will you say it again, m"m?" he said huskily.
Louie did so.
"Cap-Captain Chaffinger, m"m?"
"Oh," Louie choked, "don"t call me "m"m"!"
"You did say Captain Chaffinger?"
Then, leaning limply against the shaft, Louie began to speak low and rapidly.
"Send me away if you like--perhaps I was stupid to come--but I wanted--I wanted--I couldn"t bear it any longer--I"m all alone--father! I"m Louie--Louie----"
Only Buck"s Maker knows whether even then he fully understood. His grey eyes were stupidly on her grey eyes. Her voice, as she continued to mutter broken phrases, possibly lost itself in his deaf ear; but some other sense informed him that she was telling him that she was his daughter--his daughter----
And then at one of her phrases, he seemed to come sluggishly to life.
He repeated the phrase after her.
"Putney, m"m? Did you say Putney?" he said.
"Yes, I live there----"
"You live in Putney? Whereabouts in Putney?"
"Mortlake Road."
Buck made another sluggish effort. A quarter of a century and more before he had said to the Honourable Emily: "_The_ Bible, Miss?" Now he said to his daughter:
"_The_ Mortlake Road?"
"I suppose so."
"You live there?"
"Yes."
Now Mallard Bois and Trant were more than geographically remote from Buck. They had the immeasurable remoteness of the Scarisbricks. But Putney was near. To keep himself in spring and condition, he frequently walked over to Putney. Putney was a place you could walk to, and it had streets and houses and a green Tillings" bus. And they rowed the boat race there. Therefore, while it outraged all Order that a Scarisbrick should live there, that fact nevertheless brought his daughter into the same world with himself. For the first time he looked seeingly at her, and as he looked, there vanished, more quickly than a finger is snapped, whatever images of her had beguiled his fancy through the years.
This, then, was she, standing against the shaft with head back, lips parted, brows entreatingly drawn, her whole pose an appeal.
"Father," she was saying, smiling crookedly through those rare things, her tears----
Judson came out of the stable. Buck gave him a curt order, and the trap moved away. Its departure left Louie standing by the little bench outside the stable door. Buck had taken a step towards her. He was murmuring something quite ridiculous--something about "strictly for the gentry." Perhaps he remembered that had his little girl been a little boy he would have given her instruction for nothing at the Sparring Academy in Bruton Street.
All in a moment he pa.s.sed his arm about Louie. Scarisbrick or not, she was going to be a Causton and his for once--just for once. In an hour he might be calling her "m"m" again, but just for once--his face was beautiful.
"That little girl," he said foolishly, holding her with as gentle a fear as if she had been still in her cradle.
Louie"s answer was to faint suddenly on his breast.
But of the Molyneux Arms in a moment. A word about Mortlake Road first.
Two houses had been thrown into one to form the establishment at which Louie had now resided for a week. Officially it was a nursing home; actually it accepted declared invalids and quite well but unrobust lodgers alike. Miss Cora Mayville "ran" it; her cousin, Miss Dot Mayville, was "sister," and from four to eight uniformed nurses came and went continually. None of them had theories, moral, social, or of any other description; to them things were as they were. Nurse Meekins made Louie"s bed as who should say, "Helpers of people in trouble do not go beyond their proper business"; Nurse Chalmers brought her letters or called her to dinner in the narrowminded spirit of one who leaves the systematics of charity to others. All were reprehensibly incurious and shockingly affectionate, and so far was Louie"s case from being peculiar that, in the eyes of the law at any rate, Miss Dot Mayville was herself twice a parent. Twice (when, from reasons Lord Moone could have explained, the real parents had refused to do so) she had signed the birth-certificates of undesired infants. This irregularity the registrar for the district held perpetually over her head. She laughed, and held other things over his head in return. They were engaged to be married.
It was to this retreat that Buck drove Louie back that January evening, cutting "Richards, seven" without compunction. Poor Chaff had been sent off soon after lunch; there was somebody else to fetch and despatch his Mops now. Buck lifted Louie from the trap and rang the bell of one of the two bra.s.s-plated doors. A German youth dressed as a waiter appeared, and Buck bade him hold the horse. Then he went with Louie up to her room. He took off her hat and coat for her; he seemed unable to leave her. He had learned how it was with her.
He had hardly turned a hair at the news. He accepted it as part of the Scheme of Things. To him also indiscretions were of two kinds--indiscretions, and the indiscretions of the Scarisbricks. Only a wistful look had crossed his face; he had hoped Louie"s somebody was a gentleman otherwise than in the top-hat sense of the word; and Louie had rea.s.sured him about that. For the rest, it was not for Buck to inquire into the private affairs of these great ones. He would as soon have allowed the young German who held the horse to inquire into his own.
"That little girl," he said once more, holding her away from him at the side of her bed.
"And you won"t call me "m"m," daddy?" Louie laughed.
Buck gave it thought; it was not so simple as it looked. "And you really took daddy"s name?" he asked. He had asked it twenty times already.
"Of course."
"And told all those young ladies?" (Louie had related the incident of Burnett Minor and the "Life and Battles.") "All about daddy and the Piker?"
"Of course!"
Buck found it too wonderful. He enfolded his little girl again.
"But you must go now," Louie said by-an-by.
"But I can come in the morning?"
"Yes. And, daddy----"