Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  Young Parker was going on with his entries, and his back was turned to Jim.

  Jim read the pencilled words over and over again without grasping their meaning; yet they were simple enough. They told very shortly how the letter had been opened, what its first words revealed, how the writer would see him no more, yet forgave him, and wished him well. There was not one syllable of reproach. Jim blessed her in his heart.

  In a few minutes, when he was quite calm again, he put his hand into an inner pocket, and drew out an old and dirty blue envelope, the same that Parker had handed to him in the hut on the day when he first heard of Miss Jenny, and would not listen. From this envelope Jim took the newspaper cutting which had agitated him on that occasion: it was an announcement of the death of Jim’s wife at Sydney.

  Jim rose and obtained from the storekeeper a clean envelope, into which he slipped his newspaper cutting, closing up the envelope without adding a written word; merely underlining the date of his wife’s death.

  “Mr. Parker, will you be so kind as to address this to the young lady that was staying here — Miss Howard, wasn’t her name? You needn’t whistle; it’s only a cutting that’ll interest her. Come, sir, as a favour to me.”

  That was what Jim said. But he was thinking— “I won’t add a word. She’ll see it all and write.

  Then I’ll go down to her, and after all — after all — after all — —”

  “Her name isn’t Howard, Jim,” said Parker, taking the envelope.

  “What is it, then?”

  “This,” said young Parker, squaring his elbows to direct the envelope: and the address began: “Mrs. Clinton Browne.”

  NETTLESHIP’S SCORE.

  I.

  IT was Nettleship’s match; or rather, the University match that cricketers persist in calling Nettleship’s, because it is generally held to have been Nettleship’s long score (and apparently nothing else) that ultimately won the game for Oxford. It was the second day of the match, and the luncheon interval, which occurred shortly after Nettleship had gone in.

  The day was gorgeous, as those who were up at Lord’s will remember; and the dresses of the ladies were in keeping with the day, as half a dozen newspapers observed next morning. Never, it was agreed, had the well-appointed ground in St. John’s Wood presented a fairer spectacle than during that interval. A perfect galaxy of beauty floated before your eyes across the trim green sward; behind you the dainty picnic as already in full swing on the tops of the handsome drags; and over all shone the hot June sun. So the papers said, and not without truth. Personally, however, it is more than likely that you took little or no interest in these phenomena. You knew them by heart as well as the descriptive gentlemen who reported them, at long range, from Fleet Street. More probably you spent the time in those exceptionally delightful recognitions which come but once a year, and at Lord’s; where you have the annual opportunity of offering a good cigar to your old house-master (who had you flogged for smoking in your study), and of patronising the snob you used to fag for. You and some other fellow strolled about the ground together, sought out the old set, and criticised them horribly; and, no doubt, among other objects, you drew his attention to one of the players who was lunching in a landau, and was somewhat conspicuous, being the only one of the twenty-two, so far as could be seen, who preferred this sort of discomfort to the regular thing under cover. “That’s Nettleship,” you said; “he’s in, you know.” And of course the other fellow said pointedly that he could see that Nettleship was having his innings, and laughed; and you laughed too, indulgently, but drew nearer, to stare at the man who seemed already to have collared the Cambridge bowling.

  All Oxford knew Nettleship by sight, and probably so did most Cambridge men. He had played the three previous years at Lord’s, and though he had been a disappointment in those three matches, no one who had seen him in the field was likely to forget him; not so much because he was the finest cover-point in either team, but almost entirely on account of his good looks, which were not at all of the conventional order. His jet-black hair was a sheer anachronism in its length and curliness, and would have been considered extremely bad form in anybody but Nettleship. Also, his pale face was vexatiously deprived of the moustache which might at least have modernised him; but then his features were notably of a classic cast. So, at least, they had seemed when Nettleship played his first match at Lord’s as a freshman. They were now, it was remarked, a trifle sharp and angular. In short — though it was the face of a determined, persevering poet, at least looking the part, rather than that of a born athlete — it was a face that every one knew. Even the ladies at Lord’s, who notoriously never look at the cricket, except to furnish their annual supply of high-class “comic copy” in the form of artless comment — even the ladies knew Mr. Nettleship by sight, and really watched the game if he fielded close to the ropes. As for the men of his time, it has been hinted that they judged him by no ordinary standard of “form,” though they may have regarded him as a dangerous and even impossible model. It may be added that they did not even speak of him in the ordinary way. It is Brown of Oriel, Jones of Brasenose, Robinson of New. It was Nettleship of the ‘Varsity — Nettleship of Oxford. And Nettleship of Oxford was having his innings, it was observed; and the reference was not so much to the thirty or forty runs he had already made, and the hundred he was possibly good for, as to the fact that Nettleship was calmly eating salmon mayonnaise by the side of one of the loveliest girls on the ground, on the apex of whose parasol flaunted a dark blue knot The landau patronised by the celebrated Oxonian was a new one, though in point of existence the crest upon the door was a good deal newer. The liveries of footman and page were also very new, and their wearers were at any rate new to London (which was plain from their behaviour). In fact, Nettleship of the ‘Varsity was with painfully new people. Their name was M’Ilwraith; old M’Ilwraith was one of the newest of the new M.P.’s; and their town house was an institution whose age in weeks could be reckoned on the fingers of two hands.

  Nettleship finished his salmon mayonnaise as regardless of the world’s eyes as though he were still at the wicket.

  “Let me take your plate,” said the lovely girl at his side; and Nettleship let her, or at any rate did not attempt to prevent her until too late. Then he apologised, of course, but coolly.

  “Elaine!” said the girl’s mother with some severity. “That is Thomas’s business. Thomas!”

  Thomas, the page, arose somewhat flushed from a playful bear-fight with the Masters M’Ilwraith under the carriage, and was within an ace of spilling the remains of the mayonnaise over Miss M’Ilwraith’s dress, in his self-consciousness.

  “That boy is quite unbearable,” said Mrs. M’Ilwraith with irritation. “Mr. Nettleship,” she continued, in tones that were artificially hospitable but unmistakably cold, “what dare we offer you? My eldest boy has told me such terrible tales about training, that really one does not know, you know.”

  There was a moral wheeze in the lady’s voice that Nettleship’s ear detected with the celerity and certainty of a stethoscope. At once he became alert and attentive. He wanted nothing more — not that cricket demanded any particular training, like the Sports — but what might he get for Mrs. M’Ilwraith? Oyster patties, salad, strawberries, an ice, champagne? He must be allowed to make himself useful, he protested; and for some minutes Mrs. M’Ilwraith received more assiduous attention at his hands than she had ever seen him pay her daughter, or any other woman, young or old. This, of course, may have been diplomacy in Nettleship. His eyes were blue, and keen, and searching; his smile had of late taken a cynical curl; and indeed there were diplomatic potentialities in every corner of his mobile, clear-cut countenance. But there was enough of careless candour in his smiling glance — enough to be largely genuine.

  This glance, too, was levelled exclusively at the elder lady. Nor could it have done any violence to his optic nerves to contemplate Mrs. M’Ilwraith closely and long, for, as elderly ladies go, she was
among the very prettiest. Stout she undoubtedly was, but her hair was still golden, almost, and her own entirely; while her complexion had resolutely refused to grow any older some thirty years ago, and had carried out its independent resolve without the aid of a single cosmetic. She was dimpled, too, with sympathetic, poetical dimples not in complete harmony with her present character, though they had very well suited those idyllic and comparatively humble days in which Mrs. M’Ilwraith had read her “Tennyson” to such practical purpose as to christen every child out of the well-loved volume. In addition to these lingering charms of a simple girlhood, there was her later, more worldly, but scarcely less pleasing attribute of being always thoroughly well dressed in the best possible taste. This, of course, was greatly en évidence to-day; while, as usual, her face offered a choice study in comfortable serenity. As for Elaine M’Ilwraith, she was precisely what it was plain that her mother had been at Elaine’s age; only prettier, you would have said; and less shallow, I happen to know.

  “You say you are living in town now?” said Mrs. M’Ilwraith.

  “For the last few months,” Nettleship replied. “Since I got back from my globe trot.”

  “Then how does it happen that you are playing for your College still?”

  “For his University,” Elaine suggested.

  “Oh, we are allowed to play four seasons, don’t you know?” Nettleship explained. “It wasn’t my intention to play this year, and I haven’t been up once this term; but they bothered me about the London matches, and I suppose I was too keen, myself, to refuse.”

  At this moment an elephantine young man rolled up to the carriage and lent heavily upon the door. He was very stout indeed, and extremely like Mrs. M’Ilwraith in face. In fact, he was her eldest boy. But those terrible tales of training mentioned by that lady were evidently not her son’s personal experiences.

  “Ned, my boy,” cried this young man, slapping Nettleship heavily upon the shoulder, “you’re drinking nothing! Thomas — champagne for Mr. Nettleship.”

  “Arthur,” said Nettleship, “I don’t want any.”

  Arthur insisting, however, he took the glass, put it once to his lips, and seized an early opportunity of surreptitiously conveying it over the far side of the carriage into the hands of young Launcelot M’Ilwraith, who shared it (unfairly) with the still younger Enoch Arden M’Ilwraith; who flung the dregs in the footman’s face.

  The bell for clearing the ground was now likely to ring at any moment. Luncheon, so far as Nettleship was concerned, was long over. He took the opportunity, however, before going back to the pavilion, afforded by Arthur’s whispering into his mother’s ear the names of some nobles on a neighbouring drag, in fulfilment of a solemn charge delivered before leaving home — Nettle-ship took this opportunity to turn and speak to Elaine.

  “What ages it is since we met!” he said looking at her critically.

  “It is just a year and a half,” Elaine said simply.

  He, for his part, had no idea when it was; he would not have owned to one in any case; but Elaine’s long memory did not displease him, and he answered with a laugh:

  “Is it really all that? I say, Elaine, how old we are all getting! You must be — let me see — twenty — what?”

  “How ridiculous you are! Twenty’s a year away still. I’m nineteen on Friday, as you might know if you — if—”

  “Friday! Oho, your birthday’s on Friday!” whistled Nettleship — as though, until the other year, he had not sent her presents, regularly as the calendar, on that day. “You ought to celebrate it, Elaine, in Sussex Square.”

  “What is that, Mr. Nettleship?” said Mrs. M’Ilwraith sharply. Her face, however, did not for a moment lose its serenity. That was its way.

  “I made so bold as to suggest a birthday party in Elaine’s honour,” said Nettleship, with the coolness of an old-established family friend.

  Arthur, having detected his small brothers in the act of opening a fresh bottle of champagne in their inferno under the carriage, was engaged in brotherly chastisement, so he did not hear what followed.

  “A party!” cried Mrs. Mil wraith, taken aback for the moment, but yet able promptly to press her daughter’s foot with her own. “Oh, I see, an ‘At Home,’ a Reception. And all because of a birthday! Why, really, Mr. Nettleship — the children are not children now!”

  “It appears not,” said Nettleship, rising as the bell rang in the pavilion; “when they were I was ‘Ned’ to you all!’ And with a somewhat cold smile, a short leave-taking, he was gone.

  A thousand glances followed his retreating form, in the jacket that was no longer dark blue, but honourably faded. It was its fourth and last appearance at Lord’s on this great occasion. A thousand tongues talked “Nettleship” for the moment. It was his last chance in the ‘Varsity match. He had never done anything in it before. Yet he was the best bat in the eleven; he had begun well; he did look like rising to the occasion this time, and coming off at last.

  But in the new landau Elaine ventured at once upon a mild remonstrance with her mother.

  “How very odd of you not to tell him about Friday evening, mamma! You implied an untruth, even if you didn’t tell one.”

  “If it was only ‘a lie which is half a truth,’” said Mrs. M’Ilwraith blandly, remembering a phrase but entirely forgetting the context; “if it was only that, my dear, I am sorry. It shows that I need practice. Don’t look absurd, Elaine! Town life would be unbearable without the fib — the little, necessary fib. I settled that before we left the country.”

  “But why on earth not ask him, when we know him so well?”

  “Why on earth? Every reason on earth,” smiled Mrs. M’Ilwraith, in perfect good-humour. “Must I remind you of some of them? Well, then, they are losing money, the Nettleships, as fast as ever they can. Before long they will fail; nothing can prevent it. Your father has reason to know this. Your father saw reason to cease doing business with them at least a year ago.

  This young man has no longer any prospects. Why did he hurry home from abroad, after six months, when he went for eighteen, if it was not that supplies ceased? Yes, all the sons had a few thousands from their mother, I know that; but it is the merest pittance, and goodness knows what he is doing for a living in town, or how he dare be playing here. These are a few of the reasons on earth; and they are reasons enough for our not going out of our way to ask him to the house. Because a young man has a room in the Temple, Elaine, it doesn’t follow —— Elaine! you are not listening!

  Why, the girl is clapping her hands like a lunatic! What is it?”

  “Ned hit two fourers the first over!’ Elaine replied, without taking her sparkling eyes from the game.

  “Ned, indeed!” said Mrs. M’Ilwraith. But it was obviously of no use to say more just then, when Elaine was so shamefully excited. Mrs. M’Ilwraith subsided into composed silence. After all, it was not so very hard to get into town ways; and, really, when one tried, it came quite natural to show the cold shoulder to one’s oldest country friends.... Ned, indeed!

  Mrs. M’Ilwraith raised her eyes to the box of the vehicle. There sat Enid, the second Miss M’Ilwraith, and by her side a most satisfactory young man. These two were really delightfully engrossed in one another.

  They were in a planet of their own, from which it seldom occurred to them to turn their heads and look down. The young man was enormously wealthy, though lineally of small account. But everything was not to be compassed at once. There should be no taint of trade in Elaine’s bargain, not even of successful trade. The idea of “Ned!”

  The hot afternoon wore on, and the fieldsmen’s shadows became longer and narrower every over. Launcelot, Enoch, and their friend the page snored happily under the axle-trees. As for Mrs. M’Ilwraith, she had become inured to rounds of applause that did not in the least excite her curiosity, and was herself on the point of dozing, when a peculiarly long and loud uproar induced her to open her eyes. She opened them upon the strangely pale face of Elaine.<
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  “Whatever is the matter?” cried Mrs. M’Ilwraith.

  “Hush!” Elaine whispered. “He’s out! Wait a moment! There!”

  Mrs. M’Ilwraith had descried the figure of young Nettleship walking slowly from the wicket, with bent shoulders — after the first outburst, in dead silence. But as he neared the densely crowded pavilion the shouting and clapping of hands burst forth again with redoubled enthusiasm. Elaine clapped too, clapped wildly, and the pink was back in her face.

  “Pear me, it must be something quite out of the way to make all this fuss about,” said Mrs. M’Ilwraith, perceiving at last that the occasion was a great one. “In whose honour, pray, is all this din?”

  “In Ned’s — Ned’s!” cried Elaine, still clapping furiously. “See, the other side are clapping too! Oh, I do hope it is a hundred — it must be a hundred — it can’t be short of a hundred!”

  But it was — by one run. Nettleship’s memorable score was exactly ninety-nine!

  Sympathy at once made itself felt in a fresh and touching roar. But as for Elaine, tears sprang into her fine, flashing eyes; she leant back in the landau, and the match interested her no more.

  Her mother appeared to be thinking. At last she said:

  “Has he distinguished himself so very much, my dear?”

  “Oh, mamma — tremendously!

  A pause. “Then,” said Mrs. M’Ilwraith naively, “why don’t he come back and sit with us?”

  “He might, perhaps,” answered Elaine, “if he had distinguished himself less.” And for a moment her wishes were at variance.

  “Elaine,” said her mother, after another and a longer pause, “will there be anything about him in the papery to-morrow?”

  “Anything? Columns!”

  “And people will talk about him?”