Happy-go-lucky

by Ian Hay

  II

  "This is the first time that you and I have been out in a motortogether, Tilly," remarked Dicky a few hours later, taking advantage ofa jolt on the part of the car to annihilate a portion of the space whichseparated him from his beloved.

  Tilly, availing herself of a margin which instinct and experience hadtaught her to provide for such contingencies as this, moved acorresponding number of inches farther away, and pointed out that theyhad enjoyed a motor-ride together only three days previously.

  "On a motor-'bus," she explained.

  "Motor-'bus? Not a bit. Fairy coach!" declared her highly imaginativeswain.

  "Fairy coaches don't as a rule carry eighteen inside and twenty-twooutside, dear," replied the matter-of-fact Miss Welwyn.

  "No, you are right," admitted Dicky. "Fairy coaches are invariablytwo-seaters. This one is n't a bad substitute, though--what?"

  He lolled luxuriously, and turned to survey the profile beside him.Tilly was wearing a saxe-blue _suede_ hat, secured to her head by afilmy motor-veil--both the property of the open-handed Mrs. Carmyle, whowas sitting in front driving the car under the complacent contemplationof her husband. The fur rug which Tilly shared with Dicky enveloped herto the chin: her cheeks glowed; her lips were parted in a smile of uttercontent; and her eyes were closed. Dicky tried to count the long lashesthat swept her cheek. She was his! His--to keep, to cherish, toprotect, to pamper, to spoil! Something very tremendous stirred withinhim--something that had never found a place in that receptive andelastic organ, his heart, before. All the dormant tenderness andchivalry of his nature seemed to heap itself up into a mighty tidalwave, topple over, and inundate his very soul. Foolish tears came intohis eyes. Very reverently he reached for Tilly's hand under the rug.She surrendered it, smiling lazily, without raising her lashes. Dickywondered what she was thinking about.

  Tilly, on her part, was trying to summon up courage to tell him.

  By this time the car had cleared the village of Shotley Beauchamp,filled with parties of worshippers hastening in what Connie described as"rival directions," and was spinning along the open road bound for theSurrey hills. It was a crisp and sunny morning. There was a touch ofspring in the air, quickening the pulse.

  "I wonder," began Dicky, whose conversation at this period, like that ofall healthy young men in a similar condition, wandered round in aclearly defined and most constricted circle, "if I had not had that rowwith the umbrella-merchant on the top of the Piccadilly 'bus, whetheryou and I would ever--"

  _Bang!_

  Mr. Carmyle said something distressingly audible. Mrs. Carmyle appliedthe brakes; and the car, bumping uncomfortably, came to a standstill atthe side of the road, under the lee of a pine wood.

  "Was that your collar-stud at last, Tiny, old man?" enquired The Freakanxiously.

  "Back tyre," replied Mr. Carmyle shortly, disencumbering himself of hisrug.

  They stepped out upon the muddy road and examined the off-hind wheel.The tyre was flat, but apparently whole.

  "It is the valve," announced Carmyle, after unscrewing the dust-cap."Blown himself clean out of bed. That means a fresh inner tube. And Ilent the Stepney wheel to a broken-down car coming along this morning!"

  "Bad luck!" said Dicky speciously, glancing up at the pine wood. "CanTilly and I help?"

  "No, better run away and play."

  Dicky and Tilly, without further insincerities, obeyed at once.

  "I fear you will besmirch yourself, comrade," said Dicky over hisshoulder, as they departed.

  "Bet you half-a-crown I don't even dirty my gloves," replied Carmyle.

  "No: you'll take them off," replied the astute Richard.

  "No, kid!" persisted Carmyle. "I undertake to get a new inner tube putinto this tyre without laying a finger on it. Is it a bet?"

  "Is Connie going to do it?" asked Dicky incredulously.

  "She is and she is n't. She won't lay a finger on the tyre either,though. Will you stake your half-crown like a man?"

  "I suppose there is a catch about it somewhere," said The Freakresignedly. "Still, I fancy we must humour the young people, Tilly. Allright, my lad."

  Mr. Carmyle turned to his wife.

  "Show them, Connie," he said.

  His dutiful helpmeet selected a large tyre-lever, and sitting down inthe midst of the King's highway upon the tool-box, in a position whichcombined the maximum of discomfort with the minimum of leverage, beganto pick helplessly at the rim of the wheel. Occasionally she looked upand smiled pathetically.

  "Will that do, Bill dear?" she enquired.

  "Yes; but try and look a bit more of an idiot."

  Mrs. Carmyle complied.

  "Now you're overdoing it," said her stage-manager severely. "Don't lollyour tongue out like a poodle's! _That's_ better. Hallo, I believe Ican hear a car already! Come on, you two--into this wood!"

  Next moment Tilly, beginning dimly to comprehend, was propelled over asplit-rail fence by two muscular gentlemen and bustled into thefastnesses of the pine wood. The Casabianca-like Connie remained in anattitude of appealing helplessness upon the tool-box.

  The pine wood ran up the side of a hill. The trio climbed a shortdistance, and then turned to survey the scene below them. Round thebend of the road came a car--a bulky, heavy, opulent limousine, goingthirty-five miles an hour, and carrying a cargo of fur coats anddiamonds.

  "Rolls-Royce. Something-in-the-City going down to lunch at Brighton,"commented Dicky. "That's the wrong sort, anyhow."

  "Connie will be run over," cried Tilly apprehensively.

  "Not she," replied the callous Carmyle.

  He was right. Connie, diagnosing the character of the approachingvehicle from afar, had already stepped round to the near side of herown, escaping a shower bath of mud and possibly a compound fracture.

  "Do you always get your running repairs done this way, Tiny?" enquiredDicky of Carmyle.

  "As a rule. Connie loves it. Gives her a chance of talking prettily topeople and smiling upon them, and all that. She thinks her smile is herstrong point."

  "I should be afraid," said Tilly.

  "Connie is afraid of nothing on earth," said Carmyle. "Why, she--" heflushed red and broke off, realizing that he had been guilty of thesolecism of paying a public tribute to his own wife. "Here's anothercar coming," he said. "This looks more like what we want."

  A long, lean, two-seated apparition, with a bonnet like the bow of abattleship, had swung round the bend, and was already slowing down atthe spectacle of beauty in distress. It contained two goggled andrecumbent figures. Presently it slid to a standstill beside thestranded car, and its occupants leaped eagerly forth.

  "Metallurgique, twenty-forty," announced Dicky, with technicalprecision.

  "Undergraduates--or subalterns," added Carmyle contentedly, beginning tofill his pipe. "That's all right. You two had better go for a littlewalk, while I stay here and keep an eye on the breakdown gang."

  He produced from his greatcoat pocket a copy of "The Sunday Times," andhaving spread it on the ground at the foot of a convenient tree, satdown upon it with every appearance of cheerful anticipation, alreadyintent upon the, to him, never-palling spectacle of his wife addingfurther scalps to her collection.

  Dicky and Tilly, nothing loath, wandered farther along the hillside,under strict injunctions not to return for twenty minutes. It was thefirst time that they had found themselves alone since their arrival onthe previous evening, and they had long arrears of sweet counsel to makeup.

  "Dicky," said Tilly, suddenly breaking one of those long silences thatall lovers know, "have you ever--loved any one before me?"

  Most men are asked this question at some time in their lives, and fewthere be that have ever answered it without some mental reservation. ButThe Freak merely looked surprised--almost hurt.

  "Loved any one _before_? I should think I had!" he replied. "Who hasn't?"

  "I have not," said Tilly
,

  Dicky was quite prepared for this.

  "I meant men--not girls," he said. "Girls are different. Not that someof them don't fall in and out of love rather easily, but they only do itas a sort of pleasant emotional exercise. The average male lover,however youthful, means business all the time. Quite right, too! It isa healthy masculine instinct for an Englishman to want to found ahousehold of his own just as soon as he grows up. But it is this veryinstinct which often sends him after the wrong girl. He is full ofnatural affection and sentiment, and so on, and he wants some one topour it out upon. So he picks out the first nice girl he meets, endowsher in his mind with all the virtues, and tries to marry her. Usuallyit comes to nothing--the girl sees to that; for she is gifted by naturewith a power of selection denied to men--and in any case it is hardlylikely that he will meet the right girl straight off. So he goes onseeking for his mate, this child of nature, in a groping, instinctivesort of way, until at last he finds his pearl of great price. Then hesells all that he has, which being interpreted means that he straightwayforgets all about every other girl he ever knew, and loves his Pearlforever and ever. Therefore, Tilly, if ever a man comes to you andtells you that you are the only girl he ever loved, trust him not. Itis not likely. It is against nature."

  "A girl likes to believe it, all the same, dear," answered Tilly,voicing an age-long truth.

  "I don't see why she should," argued the ingenious Dicky. "It is nocompliment to be loved by a man who has had no experience. Now _I_ canlove and appreciate you properly, because I am able to compare you withabout"--he counted upon his fingers, finally having recourse to asupplementary estimate on his waistcoat-buttons--"with about fourteenother ladies, of all ages, whom I have admired at one time and another;and can unhesitatingly place you in Class One, Division One, all by yourown dear self, so far as they are concerned. Is n't that something?"

  But Tilly was not quite satisfied.

  "I should like to feel," she said, instinctively giving utterance tothat point of view which makes a woman's love such an intensely personaland jealously exacting thing in comparison with a man's, "that you couldnever have been happy with any woman in the world but me. Could you,Dicky?"

  Dicky pondered.

  "It depends," he said, "on what you mean by happy. Our measure ofhappiness, it seems to me, depends entirely on what we _have_ comparedwith what we want. If I had never met you, I could never have missedyou; and so I dare say I might have settled down happily enough--or whatI considered happily enough--with some other girl. But that isimpossible now. I have met you, you see. If I were to lose you"--Tillycaught her breath sharply--"no one else could ever take your place.Love like ours makes all substitutes tasteless and colourless, as theysay in chemical laboratories. You have raised my standard of love sohigh that no one but yourself can ever attain to it. So," concluded thephilosopher, with a smile which brought more happiness and reassuranceinto Tilly's heart than all the laborious logic-chopping in the worldcould have done, "though I don't know that I never _could_ have beenhappy with any one but you, I can truly say this, that I never _can_ behappy with any one but you. It's merely a matter of the differencebetween two conditional sentences, that's all."

  But a girl talking with her lover is not interested in points of syntax.

  "And will you go on loving me?" asked Tilly, putting a small butunerring finger upon the joint in Dicky's harness.

  Dicky glanced down upon the eager, wistful face beside him, and smiledwhimsically.

  "Madam," he said, "your fears are groundless."

  "How do you know?" enquired Madam, convinced in her heart, but anxiousto be reassured.

  "Because," said Dicky simply, "you love me. You have said it. Don't yousee how that binds me to you? The mere fact of your love for me makesmine for you imperishable. The moment a man discovers that the woman heloves loves him in return, he is hers, body and soul. Previous to thatsomething has held him back. Pride--reserve--caution--call it what youlike--it _has_ held him back. He has not let himself go _utterly_.After all, we can only give of our best once in this life, and usuallysome instinct inside us makes us refuse to surrender that best, howeverprodigal we may have been of the inferior article, until we know that weare going to get the best in return." Dicky was talking very earnestlynow. "I have been keeping my best for you all these years, little maid,though neither of us knew it. Such as it is, you have it. That is why I_know_ I can never go back on you. Besides, what man worthy of the namecould let a girl down, once she had abandoned her reserve--her beautifulwoman's reserve--and confessed her great secret to him? Why, I oncenearly married a girl whom I could not stand at any price, just becausethe little idiot gave herself away one day when we were alone together."

  "Why should you have married her," asked single-minded, feminine Tillywonderingly, "if you did n't love her?"

  "It seemed so mean not to," said Dicky.

  Tilly nodded her head gravely.

  "Yes," she said, "I think I understand." (As a matter of fact, she didnot. To her, as to most women, such a quixotic piece of folly as thatto which Dicky had just confessed was incomprehensible. But she desiredto please her lover.) "It was like you to do it, but I hate the girl.I expect she was a designing minx. But go on, dear. Go on convincingme. I love it. Say it over and over again."

  "Say what?" enquired Dicky, who was not aware that he had been sayinganything unusual.

  "Pearls, and things like that," replied Tilly shyly.

  "Oh!" said Dicky dubiously, "that takes a bit of doing. Wait a minute!"

  Tilly obediently refrained from speech while her beloved dredged hisimagination for further metaphors. They were a curiously old-fashionedcouple, these two. That uncanny blend of off-hand _camaraderie_ andjealously guarded independence which constitutes a modern engagementmeant nothing to them. They loved one another heart and soul, and werenot in the least ashamed of saying so.

  Presently Dicky took up his parable.

  "Hearken, O my Daughter," he began characteristically, "to the words ofthe Prophet. Behold, I tell you an allegory! Do you know what rivetingis?"

  "No, dear. Women don't understand machinery," replied Tilly resignedly,in the tones of a young mother threatened with an exposition of themechanism of her firstborn's clockwork engine.

  "Well, a rivet," pursued the Prophet, "is a metal thing like a smallmushroom. It is used for binding steel plates together, and requirestwo people to handle it properly. First of all the rivet is heatedred-hot, and then a grimy man (called the holder-on) pops the stalk ofthe mushroom into a hole bored through two over-lapping plates and keepsthe little fellow in position with a sort of gripping-machine, whileanother grimy man (called the riveter) whangs his end of the stalk witha sledge-hammer. That punches the poor little rivet into the shape of adouble mushroom, and the two plates are gripped together for good andall."

  Tilly nodded her head. The allegory was beginning to emerge from acloud of incorrect technical detail.

  "Now it seems to me," continued Dicky, "that love is very like that.Men are the holders-on and women the riveters. I have occupied theposition of holder-on several times in my life. I fancy most men do: itis their nature to experiment. (I have also had the post of riveterthrust upon me, but we need not talk about that. One tries to forgetthese things as soon as possible," he added, with a little wriggle.)"But the point which I want to bring out is this--a rivet can only beused _once_. It may be slipped through various plates by its holder-onin a happy-go-lucky sort of way over and over again; but once it meetsthe hammer fairly, good-bye to its career as a gallivanting, peripateticlittle rivet! It is spread-eagled in a moment, Tilly--fixed, secured,and settled for life. And if it is the right stuff, sound metal allthrough, it will never wriggle or struggle or endeavour to back upon itsappointed task of holding together its two steel plates. It won't_want_ to. It will endure so long as the two plates endure. Nothingcan shake him, that little rivet--nothing! Poverty, sickness,misunders
tanding, outside interference--nothing will have any effect.That is the allegory. The wanderings of Dicky Mainwaring are over. Hehas flitted about long enough, poking his inquisitive little head intoplaces that were not intended for him; and he has come to the rightplace at last. One neat straight crack on his impressionable littlecranium, and the deed is done! The Freak's place in life is fixed atlast. Mutual love has double-ended him, and he is going to hold on nowfor keeps."

  Dicky was silent for a moment, and then continued:--

  "No one but you could have dealt that stroke, Tilly, or I should havebeen fixed up long ago. I could never have remained engaged to HildaBeverley, for instance. She was a fine girl, but she did not happen tobe my riveter or I her holder-on--that's all. I should have dropped outof my place at the first rattle. Lucky little rivet! Some poor beggarsdon't get off so cheap. They pop their impulsive little heads into thefirst opening, and never come out again. But Providence has been goodto me, Freak though I am. I have come safe through, to the spot wherethe Only Possible Riveter in the World was waiting for me. Here we aretogether at last, settled for life. Launch the ship! _Ting-a-ling_!Full speed ahead! I have spoken! What are you trembling for, littlething?"

  "I was only thinking," replied Miss Welwyn shakily, "how awful it wouldhave been if one of the other girls had been a better riveter." Thenshe took a deep breath as of resolution.

  "Dicky," she began, "I want to talk to you about something. I think Iought to tell you--"

  But as she spoke, the figure of Mr. Carmyle, heralded by unnecessary butwell-intentioned symptoms of what sounded like a deep-seated affectionof the lungs, appeared among the trees, and announced:--

  "Off directly, you two! Connie is just having a last farewell with hermechanics. She has collected quite a bunch of them by this time."

  "They have n't taken long over the job," said Dicky, in a slightlyinjured tone.

  Carmyle, who too had once dwelt in Arcady, smiled.

  "An hour and ten minutes," he said concisely.

  Dicky and Tilly said no more, but meekly uprose from the fallen treeupon which they had been sitting and accompanied their host to the road.

  All signs of disaster had disappeared. The punctured back tyre stood uponce more, fully inflated; the tool-box had been repacked and put away;and Connie, smiling indulgently, sat waiting at the wheel. Far away inthe distance could be descried two other cars, rapidly receding fromview. They contained in all five knights of the road--grotesquelyattired and extremely muddy, but very perfect gentle knights after theirkind--who were now endeavouring, in defiance of the laws of the land, toovertake the time lost by their recent excursion into the realms ofromantic adventure; all wishing in their hearts, I dare swear, thatlife's highway contained a few more such halts as this.

  "Connie is going to write a book one day," observed Mr. Carmyle, as theyclimbed into the car, "called 'Hims Who Have Helped Me.' All rightbehind there?"

  The car set off once more.