Fool Errant

by Patricia Wentworth

  That was all the letter.

  Hugo read it three times. It contained just one piece of useful information—something was due to happen quite soon, or as Mr. Rice put it, “within a short time.” He hoped that Mr. Rice was right, for he wanted the adventure to go ahead.

  Minstrel and Hacker returned at dusk; Hacker very much pleased with himself, Minstrel morose and acid. He vanished into his laboratory, emerged to bolt a horrible meal consisting of tinned mackerel and greasy cocoa, and then disappeared for good. Hacker, in a genial mood, regaled Hugo with scandalous stories about prominent personages, becoming steadily more patronizing and well informed as the evening wore on. Hugo allowed himself to stammer a good deal.

  Next day was dry and windy. Minstrel remained locked in his laboratory until noon, when he burst out and demanded music; after which he walked to and fro between the two rooms scowling and pulling at his beard. As he walked, he muttered to himself. Once he stopped by the gramophone and spoke through the tumult of The Flying Dutchman Overture:

  “Does he speak to you? Or are you deaf and idiotic like Hacker? Hacker likes noise—jazz—a storm in a teacup. No, not a teacup—he hasn’t any use for tea—a storm in a champagne glass and plenty of silly tinkling laughter—that’s Hacker’s taste! Is it yours?”

  “N-no, sir.”

  Minstrel’s lip lifted.

  “The virtuous apprentice!” he sneered. “Do you think that commends itself to me? I hate a prig!” He stopped suddenly and held up his hand. The tumult and the storm had melted into an enchanted calm. He seemed to listen with caught breath till the record ended with the grating of the needle in an empty groove. Then he fetched a deep sigh, looked past Hugo for a moment, and with an abrupt turn stalked back into the laboratory and banged the door.

  In the afternoon Hugo went down to the post with some letters. After some consideration he had decided to leave Mr. Rice’s communication unanswered. He burnt it to a fine ash, and wondered what they would make of his silence.

  The letters he took to the post were Minstrel’s. One of them was addressed to the Air Ministry. If it was not a holograph letter, it must have been taken down by Hacker; certainly it had not been dictated to Hugo.

  He posted the letters and began to walk back. The distance was about three-quarters of a mile. He had gone about half the way and had reached a long straight stretch of lonely road, when a girl on a bicycle passed him slowly and then, with an exclamation, jumped off her machine and began to feel the back tyre. It was certainly very flat. She poked it, made a vexed little sound, and then in a very fumbling manner she began to do something incompetent with her pump. The tyre remained flat. Hugo received a glance of appeal, and before he quite knew how it happened, he was pumping the tyre.

  The girl had a London look; her shoes were thin, and so were her stockings; she had pretty fluffy fair hair and pretty blue eyes, which she used with some effect. She thanked Hugo profusely:

  “I’m so stupid with a cycle. I can ride it, you know, but if anything goes wrong—well, I’m in the soup as sure as my name’s Daisy.”

  Hugo gave ever so slight a start. It was a coincidence of course; if he were not all strung up and on the lookout for things to happen, he would never have noticed it. If Mr. Smith wanted to send him a message, it would be signed Daisy. But then Daisy was a very common name. It was just a coincidence.

  “I’m sure it’s ever so stupid of me. You are clever at it—aren’t you? And I’m keeping you, and perhaps you’re in a hurry. Do you live near here?”

  “N-not very far. I’ll pump the other one whilst I’m at it.”

  “Oh, thank you! You are clever at it, Mr. Ross.”

  This time Hugo’s start was a very definite one.

  “Why do you think m-my name is Ross?” he said, and stopped pumping to stare at her.

  The blue eyes opened very wide.

  “Isn’t it? I thought it was. Mine’s Daisy.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Daisy?” said Hugo.

  “Isn’t it a pretty name?” said the damsel.

  “Daisy?” said Hugo again.

  She nodded.

  “You’re Hugo Ross, aren’t you?”

  He saw no harm in admitting it, so he said “Yes.”

  “Good gracious! What a fuss about saying so! You’ve got a sister, haven’t you? What’s her name?”

  “S-Susan,” said Hugo.

  “And what’s the parrot’s name?”

  It wasn’t a coincidence; it was a message from Mr. Smith.

  Hugo said, “Ananias,” and the girl nodded.

  “Just as well to be on the safe side, though I recognized you from your photograph.”

  “My photograph?”

  “The one in your sister’s wedding group—only you don’t look so cross in real life. Well, I’ve got a message for you. He thought you’d better know that Maggie Plane didn’t give you away.”

  “I didn’t know her name,” he began, and then he remembered that Loveday had called the woman across the landing at No. 50 Maggie. It was a great relief to be sure she had held her tongue.

  “He thought you’d better know,” said Daisy. “Oh—and Ananias thought you’d better have this—he thought it might be useful.” She put a long envelope into his hand. “Don’t open it now—there’s no particular point in anyone coming along and seeing us. Well, I must be getting along. And thank you ever so for pumping my tyre. The front one isn’t really flat, you know.”

  Hugo watched her ride away. He pushed the envelope down inside his pocket and walked back through the dusk. When he reached the house he went up to his own room. After the first glance at the contents of the envelope he went and stood with his back against the door. They were not at all what he wished Hacker or anyone else in the house to see. He looked at them for a minute or two, turned them over, and finally put them back into the envelope and put the envelope back into his pocket. Then he slipped down the stairs and went out again. It was dark enough on the drive, but it was darker still in the shrubbery. It took him five minutes or so to find what he was looking for.

  He returned to the house, to find Minstrel angrily demanding of heaven, earth, and Mr. Hacker why he paid a secretary if that secretary was not to be there when he was wanted. He began to dictate letters with great volubility; one to a Swedish professor concerning several extremely abstruse and technical matters, another to a publisher, and a third to an American agent refusing a lecture tour.

  This last was so exceedingly vituperative that Hugo wondered whether Minstrel really meant to send it. He walked about all the time that he was dictating and appeared to be in a state of extreme nervous tension. When the letters were written, he made Hugo read them over. In the end he tore up two out of the three and began all over again. Then, suddenly breaking off, he said.

  “They can wait! Why should I answer letters? Fools with all the time in the world on their hands write to me and expect me to answer them. They expect me to waste time which is worth, not just money, but ideas—unminted, unrealized, and unassayed ideas worth more than any wretched sordid gold that was ever mined. They expect me to take these ideas and pay them out—sweat for them, work for them, and then pay them out to any fool who writes to me and begs. Pah! They make me sick!”

  He walked down the room and back again.

  “What’s the good of you if you can’t answer this sort of pettifogging stuff without bothering me?”

  He picked up the American’s letter and thrust it into Hugo’s face.

  “Like to like! Tell him I’ll see him dead before I’ll cheapen my wits to put money in his pocket!”

  He flung over to the bookshelf, plucked forth a book, and opening it, stood there reading, his back to the room.

  Hugo wrote briefly that Mr. Ambrose Minstrel could not at present contemplate a lecture tour in the United States. It was nine o’clock before he was free.

  He went up to his room and looked out at the night. There was a strong, warm win
d blowing; clouds that had hung low all day were piled high in the east. The south and west were clear, and there was moonlight, though he could not see the moon. The house oppressed him. He put his flute into his pocket and went out. The front-door shut behind him with a bang.

  He was perhaps halfway down the drive, when the door opened and shut again noiselessly. Mr. James Hacker took the same way. He wore tennis shoes and moved with caution.

  Hugo went on, and presently climbed to the top of the wooded hill which had become his place of refuge. He liked being high up, and he liked the trees. The wind blew through them to-night, and their many moving shadows made patterns in the moonlight. He settled himself in the crook of a branch and began to play.

  Mr. Hacker turned and went over the hill towards Torring House.

  CHAPTER XXI

  The wood was a very nice place. The notes of the flute dropped into the wind like water, and the wind went on, now loud, now soft, with great rushes and sudden lulls. From where Hugo sat he could see a little glade opening before him. The trees stood all round it in a ring. It was carpeted with dry leaves that rustled in the wind. Overhead there were branches, and then a space of clear moonlit sky.

  Hugo began to feel very happy. He had opened a door and walked right out of his adventure into a place which was full of wind and music and the rustle of leaves. Presently he would go back through the door and go on with the adventure again. He did not know that the door had opened of itself, and that the adventure was following him.

  He began to think about Loveday. He felt immensely happy when he thought about her. He did not mind not being able to go and see her—she was here. His thought was so full of her, and he was so uplifted by it, that he wanted to shout with the wind and make better music than he had ever been able to make before. It was a most exhilarating feeling.

  He began to play a tune that he had picked out for himself. He and Susan had an Irish nurse who had crooned them to sleep with it, and if he had ever known the words, he had lost them again. It was just a tune that reminded him of Loveday, and he played it and played with it, and put little turns and twirls to it, and quite forgot to play in a whisper for fear of being overheard. Then all at once, just as he was beginning the tune again, he had the most curious sensation; the flute seemed to be playing by itself. He stopped in the middle of a bar, and the air went on, very sweet and clear but rather far away. The hand that held the flute dropped down upon his knee; the other hand gripped the branch on which he sat. The clear fluting sound came from the other side of the glade. He heard a twig snap. The wind blew and the leaves rustled. The tune took words to itself:

  “New hope may bloom, and days may come,

  Of milder, calmer beam;

  But there’s nothing half so sweet in life as

  Love’s young dream.

  Oh, there’s nothing half so sweet in life as

  Love’s young dream.”

  Hugo leaned forward on his branch. The far side of the glade was in black shadow. On the edge of the shadow something moved and came out into the misty moonlight. There it stood still, a small dark shadow. A high, clear voice called,

  “Where are you?”

  It wasn’t Loveday. Hugo had known all along that it wasn’t Loveday; and yet he felt the queerest sense of disappointment. What was anyone else doing to come into this enchantment of wind and shadow and moonlight and call to him? It should have been Loveday; and it wasn’t Loveday.

  He stayed still, leaning forward, holding on to the branch on which he sat.

  “Where are you?” asked the clear, high voice.

  Hugo remembered his manners. He dropped to the ground and said,

  “I’m here;” and then as he walked towards her, “D-d-did you w-want anything?”

  He could hear her humming the air he had played. As he came nearer, he saw that she was wrapped in a long velvet cloak. He thought it was velvet because it looked so black and soft, blacker and softer even than the shadow out of which she had come. The wind blew the cloak and showed a gleam of silver, the turn of a bare arm, the flash of a ring where she held the folds together.

  “C-can I do anything for you?”

  He stopped a couple of yards away, and got a queer half glance.

  “You can tell me who you are.”

  No one could have said that she had a brogue, but there was just the least soft Irish touch on the words; it was rather like the something that isn’t quite rain in the West of Ireland breeze. The voice was not without its charm.

  “My n-name is Ross.”

  The little cloaked lady sketched a curtsey.

  “Mine is Hélène de Lara. And now we’re introduced, and you’re wondering what in the world I’m doing interrupting you like this.”

  She pushed back the hood as she spoke. The moonlight showed him a curious little face which reminded him of a monkey, and the palest hair he had ever seen. The monkey was rather a pretty monkey, and it had a pair of eyes like black pools; altogether an elfin apparition and quite at home in a forest glade.

  “I heard you playing,” she said.

  Hugo said nothing. One bit of him was feeling shy and tongue-tied, and another bit suspicious and alert. He wondered what Mme. de Lara wanted, and he thought he would wait and see. She went on speaking, and all the time that she was speaking, the big dark eyes looked him over mournfully.

  “I heard you playing, and I came because I’ve done mad things all my life when I’ve wanted to—and sometimes when I haven’t.” She paused and laughed a little laugh as mournful as her eyes. “Ah well, if you’ve never done a mad thing just to please yourself, you won’t know what I’m talking about, and I’ll just say goodnight and go home.” All at once her voice changed; she went on without any pause, “Who taught you to play Irish melodies? For you’re not Irish—are you?”

  “N-no. I didn’t know it was an Irish tune—at least—”

  “Didn’t you know that you were playing Love’s Young Dream?” She laughed again. “Perhaps we none of us know till it’s over and the dream is gone.”

  “My nurse used to s-sing it—n-not the words—just the tune. She called it The Old Woman.”

  Hélène de Lara nodded. Her cloak slipped and showed a silver dress.

  “That’s the name of the tune. Tommy Moore wrote sentimental words to it and called it Love’s Young Dream. He was an arch sentimentalist, you know, and everyone laughs at him now. I laugh at him by daylight or lamplight; but he goes very well with the moon, and I’ve a soft spot somewhere for him and his sentimentalities. Won’t you go on playing?”

  The idea filled Hugo with horror; it also touched his sense of humour.

  “I’m af-f-fraid—” He did not try to stammer, but he did not try not to stammer.

  “Poor romance!” said Hélène de Lara. “It has been killed, like all beautiful things, by fear. Everyone to-day is afraid of romance and poetry and beauty and youth and love—I’m afraid of them myself. Just for this moment, of course, I am mad, so I am not afraid—mad people are never afraid of being ridiculous—but when I am not mad I am just as much afraid as anybody else—I ask just as carefully, ‘Is it done?’ And if it is not done—Fi donc! I do not do it. And if it is done, it does not matter in the least how ugly and stupid and dull it is—I do, it, and everybody else does it too, and we are bored. Only every now and then I have a mad moment, and I please myself and say what I think, or run out into the moonlight to listen to an old Irish song.” She spoke at first in a light, soft tone that gradually fell away into sadness. Her voice had an extraordinary charm, the charm of laughter and tears.

  Hugo did not know what to say. For the matter of that, it was best to say nothing—to be stupid and shy was the safest rôle in the world.

  “Ah well,” she said, and pulled her cloak about her—“we mustn’t be mad for more than just a moment—must we?” Just above her breath she sang:

  “Oh, the days are past when beauty bright

  Our hearts’ chain wove,

&n
bsp; When our dream of life from morn to night

  Was love—still love.”

  She put out her hand—a little hand with a great diamond that caught the light.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Ross.”

  He saw her turn to go with the swirl of the wind in the full black cloak; and then she looked round at him over her shoulder.

  “You’re at Meade House, aren’t you? How is Ambrose?”

  The question was, as it were, tossed at him, lightly and as if the answer mattered less than nothing; yet she turned back for the answer, and he saw that the hand with the diamond on it was pressed against her throat. He spoke as if he noticed nothing, but he thought perhaps he need not stammer any more; he was feeling too much interested to be shy. He said,

  “Oh, he’s just as usual.”

  Mme. de Lara caught him up.

  “As usual? What do you mean by that now?”

  Hugo said, “Oh—I don’t know,” and she took her hand from her throat to make a little gesture with it.

  “What is usual with him—now? Is he ill? Is he well? Is he sad—or cross—or mad? Or is he only trying to drive everyone round him into Bedlam?” She laughed, a hard little laugh with an edge to it. “Any of these things might be usual with Ambrose.”

  Hugo was very decidedly interested. Mr. Smith had hinted at something more than a friendship between these two odd people. He wondered why the lady should be at so much pains to give the fact away. And then it seemed to him that it was clever of her, because Hugo might have heard rumours, and she was conveying the impression of a complete breach. He did not think it necessary to say anything.

  Mme. de Lara came a step nearer.

  “How discreet you are! You won’t talk about Ambrose. I see. Am I allowed to inquire for Mr. Hacker? Or is that also pays défendu?”

  Hugo looked puzzled. He still held his flute, but he began now to take it apart and slip it into his pocket. He said doubtfully,

  “Are they friends of yours?—Mr. Minstrel. I mean, and Hacker?”