by Ian Hay
CHAPTER VI
Petticoat Influence
"PIP!"
"Well?"
"May I come in?"
"All right," said Pip in a surprised tone. His sister was not in thehabit of craving admission to his den in this formal manner.
The reason revealed itself with the opening of the door. Pipette enteredthe room with another girl, at whose appearance Pip, always deferentialto the point of obsequiousness in female society, rose up hastily andremoved his pipe from his mouth. He was in his shirt-sleeves, andotherwise unprepared for company. His private apartment was in a stateof more than usual confusion, for a difference of opinion had arisenbetween John--the fox-terrier--and a cricket-boot, and the one-sidedconflict that ensued, together with the subsequent chastisement of John,had deranged even the primitive scheme of upholstery that prevailed in"the pig-sty," as Pip's apartment was commonly called.
"This is Elsie Innes," said Pipette. "My brother."
Pip saw before him a girl of about sixteen. She had extremely fairhair, a clear skin, not unbecomingly freckled, and eyes which had ahabit of changing from blue to grey in different lights. Girls ofsixteen are not always graceful,--like their male prototypes theyfrequently run to knees and elbows,--but this girl appeared to be freefrom such defects. She possessed a slim, lithe, young figure, andcarried herself with an elasticity and freedom that spoke of open airand early bedtimes. She was in the last stages of what slangy young mencall "flapperdom," and her hair was gathered on the nape of her neckwith a big black bow. Pip, of course, did not take in all these thingsat once, but he had time to note especially the neatness of ElsieInnes's feet and the whiteness of her teeth. From which it will beobserved that, though his experience in these matters was limited andhis judgment unformed, Pip's instincts were sound.
"Please sit down," he said, sweeping John and "The Field" from out ofthe armchair. "Pipette, what on earth did you bring Miss--Miss, er--"
"Innes."
"--Miss Innes up to this untidy hole for?"
"The drawing-room has got two plumbers in it, and they are laying lunchin the dining-room, and Father is in the study, so we came here," saidPipette.
Pip expressed his delight rather lamely, and the girls sat down.
"You must endure us till lunch," continued Pipette. "I suppose you knowthat this is the day of the Blanes' garden-party?"
"So it is! I had forgotten."
Pipette smiled amiably and turned to her friend.
"What did I tell you?" she said.
"You said," replied Miss Innes, "that he would say he had forgotten allabout it."
"Pip, dear," continued Pipette, pointing an accusing finger, "don'tthink you can deceive _us_!"
"What do you mean?" inquired Pip uneasily.
"You know," said Pipette. "Think."
Pip thought, apparently with success. "Oh," he said, growing red in theface,--he had never outgrown that childish weakness,--"you are a littleass, Pipette!"
Pipette nodded sagely and smiled at Miss Innes. That young person smiledindulgently upon Pip, and heaved a little sigh which intimated that boyswould be boys.
For Pip was at this time involved in the meshes of his first seriouslove-affair. Being without skill in the art of dissimulation, he made noattempt to conceal his condition, and in consequence was now acting astarget for the playful and occasionally rather heavy banter of hisfriends. Why, goodness knows! We have grown so accustomed to regard theyouthful lover as an object of humour, that a young man, if he happensto fall in love, is now compelled to conceal the fact, or, at any rate,dress it up, and endeavour to pass the affair off as at most a mere airyflirtation.
Now, roughly speaking, a man is in love from his fifteenth birthdayonwards: nature has ordained it. But in most cases civilisation,convention, society--call it what you like--has ordained that he mustnot treat this, the most inspiring passion of human life, as anythingmore than a jest for another ten years or so. And therein lie morelittle tragedies--disintegrated castles-in-the-air, secretdisappointments, and endless efforts of self-repression--than this worlddreams of. The boy may keep the girl's photograph on his mantelpiece,and that is just about all he may keep. Contrast with this the happycase of the girl. If _she_ chooses to fall in love at the age ofeighteen, nothing is deemed prettier or more natural: she is at libertyto enjoy her birthright openly; she receives sympathetic assistance onevery hand; and if at the age of nineteen or twenty she decides tomarry, society comes and sheds rapturous tears at the wedding. What ofthe boy who has been her playmate for years back; who has taken thelead in all their childish escapades; who has been her trusted guardianand confidant ever since they pulled crackers and kissed under themistletoe at children's parties? What of him? He is still a boy. True,he is a year older than she is, but by an immutable law he is for allpractical purposes ten years her junior. She has sprung up at a strokeof some mysterious magician's wand into a woman, a personage with anacknowledged position in the scheme of things; and he, her oldsweetheart, is only a poor, broken-hearted hobbledehoy. He will get overit, you say? Quite true. But that will not make things any easier forhim at present. Ten years later he will take a girl away from some otherhobbledehoy and marry her. He will then be in the prime of youngmanhood; and he will behold his first love, plump, matronly, and rather_passee_, sitting in a back pew at the wedding. It seems rather a dullsort of revenge, somehow.
Of course boy and girl marriages would never do. Joint inexperience is asure guarantee of disaster. Still, sentimental persons may be permittedone sigh of regret for a millennium which, however hopelessly idyllicand unpractical it might be, would at any rate prevent young men frommarrying wealthy widows, and pretty girls from giving themselves, inexchange for a position in society, to middle-aged gentlemen withfive-figure incomes. And if a young man must spend the best years of hislife in repressing his tenderest instincts, let us at any rate refrainfrom laughing at his struggles.
All of which brings us back to Pip.
The female sex exercised a more than usual fascination over him. Broughtup in a circle almost exclusively male,--Pipette was too completelysubservient to himself to have any direct influence on the moulding ofhis character,--Pip regarded women in general much as the poor Indianregards the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies,--as things not to beunderstood or approached, but merely to be worshipped. Pip was aGalahad,--an extremely reserved, slow-moving, and, at times, painfullyshy Galahad,--but a very perfect gentle knight for all that. He treatedall women, from his sister's friends to the most plebeian young personwho ever dispensed refreshment across a bar, with a grave courtesy whichthe more frivolous members of that captious sex occasionally foundrather dull.
Such a girl was Miss Madeline Carr. Pip had met her six months before ona visit to the home of his friend Dick Blane, and, being a healthy youngman and twenty-one, had fallen in love with her. Being Pip, he did thething thoroughly, and made no attempt to conceal his devotion.Unfortunately, Madeline was of a type, not uncommon, which only wantswhat it cannot get, and thinks but little of what may be had fornothing.
She was an exceedingly pretty girl of twenty, in her second season, andconsequently almost sufficiently worldly-wise to be Pip's mother. Havingmade an absolutely bloodless conquest of Pip, she valued himaccordingly, and Pip was now beginning to realise that there must besomething wrong with an attachment which consisted of perpetual devotionon the one side and nothing but an occasional careless acknowledgment ofservices rendered on the other. Of late, however, the situation hadimproved. Madeline had come up to Cambridge for the May Week, andfinding that Pip occupied a position of authority and even admirationamong his fellows that she had never dreamed of, and of which she hadgathered no hint from Pip's own references to his 'Varsity life, MissCarr decided in her shrewd, business-like, and thoroughly cold-bloodedlittle heart that, for the time being, considerable _kudos_ might accrueto her as the exclusive proprietress of the most popular man of hisyear. Conse
quently for a brief week Pip had basked in the unaccustomedsunshine of her smiles; and though there had been a perceptible loweringof temperature since their return to town, he was still about ascheerful as a man in love has any right to be.
He turned to Miss Innes.
"Are you going to the party?" he asked.
"Look at me!" replied his guest. "No, not at my face,"--Pip wasregarding her resolutely between the eyes,--"my clothes. Can't you seeI'm dressed for a party?"
"Ah!" remarked Pip meditatively, shifting his gaze lower down, "I see.You are coming with us, I suppose?"
"Not us," interposed Pipette,--"you."
"What! aren't you coming yourself?"
"No. The Lindons are to be here for lunch, and I must stay and entertainthe old lady while Father and Sir John sit in the study and talk shop."
"Bad luck!" replied Pip. "Sir John Lindon and the dad are alwayssearching about inside people and finding new diseases," he explained,turning to Elsie. "It is called Research. I remember once in the 'lab'at--"
"So you must escort Miss Innes, Pip," said Pipette hastily.
"Right! That will be first-rate," said Pip, with a heartiness whichquite surprised himself.
Presently they went down to lunch, and after Pip had arrayed himself intennis costume, the two set off for the Blanes' garden-party.
It was the last week in June. Term was over, and ten places had beenfilled up in the Cambridge Eleven against Oxford. Pip so far had notreceived his Blue. He had just completed his first year, for he had notgone direct from school to the University, partly because hisattainments were not quite up to the standard of the PreviousExamination, and partly because he had never quite shaken off theeffects of his fall in the dormitory that eventful night two-and-a-halfyears ago. A trip round the world with a tutor had corrected thesedeficiencies, and Pip was now at the end of his period of "Fresherdom"at the University of Cambridge.
But somehow all was not well with his cricket. He had been tried againstthe M.C.C. and had not been a success. His chief rival, Honeyburn ofTrinity, had been tried against Yorkshire, and had been a failure. TheUniversity captain had been reduced to experimenting with a lob-bowler,and such a creature had been tried against an England Eleven a weekbefore. But though he had taken two good wickets they had costforty-four runs apiece; and his further services had been dispensedwith. So the last place was still unsettled. Pip, knowing thatUniversity captains very seldom go back to their first loves, had littlehope of being chosen, though he had a good college record. Most probablythe captain, rendered desperate, would fall back on some well-triedfriend of his own on whom he could rely to a certain, if limited,extent; or else--horror of horrors!--bring up some last year's Blue, dugout of an office or a public school, and so blight the last faintpretensions of all those gentlemen who were still hoping to be chosen,if only in the humble role of a _pis aller_.
It was now Wednesday, and Cambridge was to play Oxford at Lord's on thefollowing Monday. Pip was a phlegmatic youth, but the knowledge thatCayley, the Cambridge captain, who was Mrs. Blane's nephew, wouldprobably be at the garden-party, gave him a vague feeling of unrest.Perhaps Cayley had not made up his mind yet; perhaps the proverb about"out of sight out of mind" was capable of working negatively; perhaps--
"Do you imagine you are entertaining me?" inquired a cold voice at hisside.
Pip started guiltily. "I had forgotten you were there," he said.
"I thought you had," said Miss Innes composedly.
Pip smiled at her in his most friendly and disarming fashion. "Very rudeof me," he continued: "I'm sorry. The fact is, I never can think ofthings to say to people."
"Why not tell me what has been going on in your mind all this time?"suggested the girl. "That would be something."
"Oh, that was only cricket," said Pip.
"I thought so. You were wondering if you were going to get your Blue."
Pip turned and regarded this discerning young person with increasinginterest.
"How did you guess that?"
"Well, it was not very difficult. I should be too, if I were in yourplace. The papers are quite full of it. 'The Sportsman' says--"
"Do you read 'The Sportsman'?" asked Pip, much softened.
"Yes; and of course I read 'The Field' on Saturdays. Now, tell me whatyou were twisting your left wrist about for?"
"Great Scott! Was I?" cried Pip, turning pink.
"Yes; and you were skipping about just like you do when you run up tothe wicket to bowl."
Pip was too perturbed by this information to notice the complimentimplied by Miss Innes's familiarity with his bowling action.
"I must have looked an ass," he said apologetically. "Bad luck on you,too!"
"Oh, I was all right. I walked a yard or two behind. People didn't knowI was with you."
"Oh!" said Pip, rather sheepishly.
"And as I was watching your action," continued the girl judicially, "Ithought of something--just as you dodged round that old gentleman at thecorner of Reedham Gardens."
"I didn't notice him," said Pip humbly.
"No? Well, he noticed you, I think, because he stopped and spoke to thepoliceman at the corner after he had passed us," said the girl gravely.
"I seem to have been going it. But what was the thing you thought of?"
"Well, you bowl left-handed."
"Yes; I know."
"You run up to the wicket in rather a queer way, as though you weregoing to bowl at point, and then you suddenly swing round the corner andlet the batsman have it instead."
"Quite right. But where on earth--?"
"Don't interrupt! I am speaking to you for your good." The girl wasgenuinely in earnest now. "Well, you always bowl over the wicket, don'tyou?"
"Yes; why not?"
Elsie looked at him severely.
"Don't you see what a grand chance you have been throwing away all thistime?" she said. "If you bowled _round_ the wicket, you would--"
"I see, I see!" roared Pip, slapping his leg. "Confound my thick head!The umpire! If I bowl over the wicket I'm in full view of the batsmanall the time; but with my diagonal run, if I bowled _round_ the wicket Ishould pass behind the umpire just before delivering the ball, and sobother the batsman? Is that it?"
"That's it. You should have thought it out for yourself years ago," saidthe girl reprovingly.
The conversation was interrupted by their arrival at Mrs. Blane's house.
Miss Innes was immediately snapped up to play tennis, and Pip driftedoff in search of the lady to whom he was wont to refer with mingledpride and depression as his "best girl." They greeted each other intheir usual manner, the balance of cordiality being heavily on Pip'sside; and Miss Carr inquired--
"Who is your friend--the school-girl person in the white frock?"
Pip, anxious to clear himself of any appearance of faithlessness,explained that Miss Innes was a friend of his sister's, and hastened onhis own part to disclaim anything approaching intimacy with the lady. Hethen craved the favour of a game of croquet.
"Not at present," said Miss Carr, who had just been introduced to ayoung Guardsman,--"I'll see later. But you can go and get me somestrawberries and bring them over to the croquet-lawn."
Pip departed as bidden; but somehow he was not conscious of the glow ofheroic devotion that usually actuated him when obeying Madeline Carr'sbehests. He had a feeling that she might have said "Please!" and afurther feeling that "other people"--no further specification--wouldhave done so at once.
At this point in his reflections he arrived at the croquet-lawn with thestrawberries, and was promptly commanded to put them down and stand byfor further orders. This treatment, customary though it was, annoyedhim; and, feeling unusually independent and assertive, he drifted behinda rhododendron bush, where he encountered his crony, Mr. Richard Blane,the son of the house, who was enjoying a quiet cigarette during a brieflull in the arduous labour of dispensing hospitality.
"Hallo, Pip!"
"Hallo!"
&n
bsp; "Cigarette?"
"Thanks."
The two smoked silently for a moment, sitting side by side on thegarden-roller.
"I say," inquired Mr. Blane, "who is that flapper you brought with you?All right--eh?"
"Name of Innes," replied Pip shortly. "Scotch--pal of Pipette's."
"Seems to be a pal of Cayley's, too," said Blane. "They were having aquiet ice in the shrubbery just now. Very thick, they looked."
"Is Cayley here, then?" said Pip, looking more interested.
"Yes. Has he given you your Blue yet?"
Pip shook his head gloomily.
"Bad luck! Well, there are still a few days. I expect he is waiting tosee if the wicket is going to be hard or soft."
"I suppose he hasn't given it to Honeyburn?"
"Don't think so."
"I expect he will," said Pip in resigned tones.
"Rot! You seem to be fearfully down on your luck this afternoon, oldman. Come and have an orgy of claret-cup. It's about all we keepto-day." Mr. Blane rose from the roller, brushing some blades of grassfrom his immaculate flannels.
"Sorry--can't," said Pip. "Miss Carr said she might be able to playcroquet with me about now," he explained awkwardly.
Dick knew all about his infatuation.
"Pip," said that youthful sage, inclining his head at a judicial angle,"you drop that girl! She's the wrong sort."
"Look here, Dick--" began Pip indignantly.
"Yes, I know," continued the voice of the misogynist. "She's perfect andall that; but no woman is worth the seriousness you are putting intothis business. I believe it's spoiling your eyes, for one thing.Madeline Carr is simply making use of you. You see how she is behavingjust now--playing a sort of in-and-out game? Well, she is waiting to seeif you get your Blue. If you do, she will trot about with you during theluncheon interval at Lord's, and so on. It'll make the other girlsjealous. If you don't--well, she'll have no use for you. Oh, I know'em!" The orator wagged his head and paused for breath.
To Pip most of this diatribe was rank blasphemy, but he feltuncomfortably conscious that there was some truth in his friend'sremarks. Still, he stood up stoutly for his ideal.
"Don't talk rot, Dick!" he said. "There may be a few women likethat,--just one or two,--but this girl isn't one of them. Why, you haveonly got to look at her face to see that!"
The world-weary Blane surveyed his friend with something approachingconsternation.
"A bad case!" he remarked, shaking his head. "Her face? My boy, facesare the most deceptive things in the world."
"Hers isn't," maintained Pip. "She is most sincere. You have only tolook her in the eyes to see what is going on inside."
He stopped suddenly. He realised that he was growing too communicative.
"Eyes? That's just it. A girl makes eyes at you, Pip, and you crumpleup. I had no idea you were in such a drivelling state as this, or Ishould have jawed you sooner. Come and drink stimulants,--claret-cup,lemonade, iced-coffee, anything to drown the past,--but come. And neveragain, after this experience, trust a girl with big eyes and littleways."
So saying, the counsel for the prosecution took the counsel for thedefence by the arm, and the two, nobly sinking their differences in acommon cause, cast their cigarettes away and sallied forth to distributetea and ices among hungry chaperons and plain girls.
Meanwhile Miss Elsie Innes and the Cambridge captain were conversing ina retired part of the garden. An introduction had been effected by MissBlane, though at whose instigation need not concern us.
Cayley, whose conversational stock-in-trade was limited, was feelingunusually complacent. The conversation had never flagged once, for thisgirl, though obviously young and inexperienced, had proved herself to beintelligent and appreciative beyond her years.
"I suppose you are going to beat Oxford," said Miss Innes, looking ather companion with innocent admiration.
"That is a large question," replied Cayley heavily. "These thingsaren't settled by the spin of a coin. But we are going to do our best,"he added, with an indulgent smile.
"Have you picked your team yet?"
"All but one. I want another bowler."
"I see. What sort of bowler?"
"A good bowler," replied the captain, facetiously. It was hardly worthwhile wasting technicalities on a girl.
"Oh! Can't you find one?"
"I have got three in my eye, but I can only choose one."
"I saw the Cambridge Eleven play against the M.C.C.," said Miss Innes,apparently changing the subject.
"Which day?"
"The second. _You_ made sixty-nine, not out."
Mr. Cayley, much gratified, coughed confusedly.
"Oh, that was a fluke," he said. "The difficulty that day was to getwickets."
"There was one Cambridge bowler," continued the girl, "who looked asthough he ought to take wickets but didn't."
"Who was that?" inquired the captain, much amused.
"A man with black hair and blue eyes."
Mr. Cayley scratched his nose reflectively. His recollections of theeyes of his team were vague. Their individual shades he had neverobserved, though he had frequently condemned them collectively.
"Well, really--" he said. "Do you remember anything else about him?"
"He was a medium-paced, left-handed bowler, breaking both ways, with agood deal of swerve as well," said Miss Innes, becoming suddenly andsurprisingly technical: "he had a curious oblique run, and he usuallybowled about one really fast ball every over."
"Oh--Pip!" said the captain at once.
"That is the name," said the girl; "I remember now, when a catch went tohim in the outfield, you called out, 'Run for it, Pip!'"
"That's him," said Cayley. "Yes, he has been disappointing lately. He isa good bowler, too; but somehow he is not taking wickets at present."
"Have you ever tried him round the wicket?" asked Elsie. "With his runhe would pass behind the umpire just before delivering the ball."
The captain was fairly startled this time. He turned and regarded the_ingenue_ beside him with undisguised interest and admiration.
"I say," he remarked, with the air of one who has just made a profounddiscovery, "you know something about cricket!"
Miss Innes, much to his surprise, blushed like a little schoolboy at thecompliment.
"I was brought up to it," she said. "I am a sister of Raven Innes."
Then the captain understood; and he almost fell at her feet, for thename of Raven Innes is honourably known from Lord's to Melbourne.
"Do you play yourself?" he asked.
"A bit. I don't bat quite straight, but I can bowl a little.Leg-breaks," she added, with a touch of pride.
The captain's appreciative reverie was interrupted by the appearance ofa third party--Pip, to wit--who now drifted into view and hovered ratherdisconsolately in the offing, as if uncertain whether to approach. Hewas a prey to melancholy, having just completed a final rupture withMadeline Carr, and under the stress of subsequent reaction was anxiousto escape home.
"Hallo!" said Cayley. "There's your man, Miss Innes."
Miss Innes glanced in Pip's direction.
"So it is. I can recognise him," she answered, with an air of gratifiedsurprise. "Will you take me to have some strawberries now, please?"
The couple departed, leaving Pip still hove-to on the horizon.
"Rum things, women," mused the captain. "This girl's quite out of thecommon. I thought at first she must be keen on Pip, or something; butshe doesn't seem even to know him. Not often you get a woman taking apurely sporting interest in a man like that!"
Which is nothing but the truth.
Delighted to find a woman possessed of "some sense," Cayley, who was bynature a homely person with bachelor instincts, unbent still further,with the result that the end of a long bout of cricket "shop" with Elsiefound him fully convinced--somewhat to his surprise, for he had hithertobeen unable to make up his mind on the subject--that Pip was exactly theman he wanted for next Mon
day.
Elsie finally joined Pip, who was waiting, slightly depressed, to takeher away.
"Had a good time?" she inquired brightly, as they walked home.
"Rotten," said Pip.
"Didn't you meet any friends?"
"Yes, a good many 'Varsity men."
"I meant lady friends."
"I haven't got any," said Pip glumly.
"You should speak the truth," said his companion with some acerbity."How about Miss Carr?"
Pip glanced at her; and then, moved by an impulse which he did not quiteunderstand at the time, he said, with sudden and unwonted heat,--
"I never wish to set eyes on Miss Carr again."
After this outburst they walked on silently, till they came to a housein Sussex Gardens.
"I live here," said Miss Innes. "Good-bye, and thank you so much forbringing me home."
They shook hands.
"When shall I see you again?" said Pip regretfully.
The girl smiled at his frank seriousness.
"Lord's, on Monday," she said. "Come and see me in the luncheon hour, orbefore, if Cambridge is batting."
"I say," said Pip gruffly, "aren't you rather taking things forgranted?"
"You mean your coming to see me?"
"Gracious, no!" cried Pip in genuine distress. "I meant about myplaying."
Elsie Innes looked him straight in the face. "Pip," she said, "do youwear gloves?"
Pip extended two enormous palms and inspected them doubtfully."Sometimes," he said--"at weddings."
"Very good. I'll bet you ten pairs of gloves to one that you get yourBlue."
"Don't!" said Pip appealingly. "You couldn't afford it. I take nines."
"My size," said Miss Innes, "is six-and-a-quarter. White kid--eightbuttons. Good-bye!"
She turned and vanished into the recesses of the hall, a receding visionof white frock, glinting hair, and black bow.
After Pip had walked down two streets and halfway across a square, hestopped suddenly and dealt his leg a blow with a tennis-racquet thatwould have maimed an ordinary limb for life.
"By gad," he cried to a scandalised pug-dog which was taking the eveningair on an adjacent doorstep, "she called me Pip!"
* * * * *
Next morning he received a communication from the authorities of theCambridge University Cricket Club.
An hour later he was being shepherded, scarlet in the face, by a posseof stentorian shopwalkers, through an embarrassing wilderness of ladies'hosiery to the Glove Department of an establishment in Oxford Street.
BOOK TWO
THE MAKING OF A MAN
