'How -dare- you smoke, boy! How -dare- you smoke that cigarette!'
'It's the only one I've got,' responded the Little Nugget amiably.
'I have spoken to you--I have warned you--Ten bad marks!--I will not have--Fifteen bad marks!'
The Little Nugget ignored the painful scene. He was smiling quietly.
'If you ask -me-,' he said, 'that guy was after something better than plated spoons. Yes, sir! If you want my opinion, it was Buck MacGinnis, or Chicago Ed., or one of those guys, and what he was trailing was me. They're always at it. Buck had a try for me in the fall of '07, and Ed.--'
'Do you hear me? Will you return instantly--'
'If you don't believe me I can show you the piece there was about it in the papers. I've got a press-clipping album in my box. Whenever there's a piece about me in the papers, I cut it out and paste it into my album. If you'll come right along, I'll show you the story about Buck now. It happened in Chicago, and he'd have got away with me if it hadn't been--'
'Twenty bad marks!'
'Mr Abney!'
It was the person standing behind me who spoke. Till now he or she had remained a silent spectator, waiting, I suppose, for a lull in the conversation.
They jumped, all together, like a well-trained chorus.
'Who is that?' cried Mr Abney. I could tell by the sound of his voice that his nerves were on wires. 'Who was that who spoke?'
'Shall I telephone for the police?' asked Glossop. Ignored.
'I am Mrs Sheridan, Mr Abney. You were expecting me to-night.'
'Mrs Sheridan? Mrs Sher--I expected you in a cab. I expected you in--ah--in fact, a cab.'
'I walked.'
I had a curious sensation of having heard the voice before. When she had told me not to move, she had spoken in a whisper--or, to me, in my dazed state, it had sounded like a whisper--but now she was raising her voice, and there was a note in it that seemed familiar. It stirred some chord in my memory, and I waited to hear it again.
When it came it brought the same sensation, but nothing more definite. It left me groping for the clue.
'Here is one of the men, Mr Abney.'
There was a profound sensation. Boys who had ceased to squeal, squealed with fresh vigour. Glossop made his suggestion about the telephone with a new ring of hope in his voice. Mrs Attwell shrieked. They made for us in a body, boys and all, White leading with the lantern. I was almost sorry for being compelled to provide an anticlimax.
Augustus Beckford was the first to recognize me, and I expect he was about to ask me if I liked sitting on the gravel on a frosty night, or what gravel was made of, when Mr Abney spoke.
'Mr Burns! What--dear me!---what- are you doing there?'
'Perhaps Mr Burns can give us some information as to where the man went, sir,' suggested White.
'On everything except that,' I said, 'I'm a mine of information. I haven't the least idea where he went. All I know about him is that he has a shoulder like the ram of a battleship, and that he charged me with it.'
As I was speaking, I thought I heard a little gasp behind me. I turned. I wanted to see this woman who stirred my memory with her voice. But the rays of the lantern did not fall on her, and she was a shapeless blur in the darkness. Somehow I felt that she was looking intently at me.
I resumed my narrative.
'I was lighting my pipe when I heard a scream--' A chuckle came from the group behind the lantern.
'I screamed,' said the Little Nugget. 'You bet I screamed! What would -you- do if you woke up in the dark and found a strong-armed roughneck prising you out of bed as if you were a clam? He tried to get his hand over my mouth, but he only connected with my forehead, and I'd got going before he could switch. I guess I threw a scare into that gink!'
He chuckled again, reminiscently, and drew at his cigarette.
'How dare you smoke! Throw away that cigarette!' cried Mr Abney, roused afresh by the red glow.
'Forget it!' advised the Little Nugget tersely.
'And then,' I said, 'somebody whizzed out from nowhere and hit me. And after that I didn't seem to care much about him or anything else.' I spoke in the direction of my captor. She was still standing outside the circle of light. 'I expect you can tell us what happened, Mrs Sheridan?'
I did not think that her information was likely to be of any practical use, but I wanted to make her speak again.
Her first words were enough. I wondered how I could ever have been in doubt. I knew the voice now. It was one which I had not heard for five years, but one which I could never forget if I lived for ever.
'Somebody ran past me.' I hardly heard her. My heart was pounding, and a curious dizziness had come over me. I was grappling with the incredible. 'I think he went into the bushes.'
I heard Glossop speak, and gathered from Mr Abney's reply; that he had made his suggestion about the telephone once more.
'I think that will be--ah--unnecessary, Mr Glossop. The man has undoubtedly--ah--made good his escape. I think we had all better return to the house.' He turned to the dim figure beside me. 'Ah, Mrs Sheridan, you must be tired after your journey and the--ah unusual excitement. Mrs Attwell will show you where you--in fact, your room.'
In the general movement White must have raised the lamp or stepped forward, for the rays shifted. The figure beside me was no longer dim, but stood out sharp and clear in the yellow light.
I was aware of two large eyes looking into mine as, in the grey London morning two weeks before, they had looked from a faded photograph.
CHAPTER 5
Of all the emotions which kept me awake that night, a vague discomfort and a feeling of resentment against Fate more than against any individual, were the two that remained with me next morning. Astonishment does not last. The fact of Audrey and myself being under the same roof after all these years had ceased to amaze me. It was a minor point, and my mind shelved it in order to deal with the one thing that really mattered, the fact that she had come back into my life just when I had definitely, as I thought, put her out of it.
My resentment deepened. Fate had played me a wanton trick. Cynthia trusted me. If I were weak, I should not be the only one to suffer. And something told me that I should be weak. How could I hope to be strong, tortured by the thousand memories which the sight of her would bring back to me?
But I would fight, I told myself. I would not yield easily. I promised that to my self-respect, and was rewarded with a certain glow of excitement. I felt defiant. I wanted to test myself at once.
My opportunity came after breakfast. She was standing on the gravel in front of the house, almost, in fact, on the spot where we had met the night before. She looked up as she heard my step, and I saw that her chin had that determined tilt which, in the days of our engagement, I had noticed often without attaching any particular significance to it. Heavens, what a ghastly lump of complacency I must have been in those days! A child, I thought, if he were not wrapped up in the contemplation of his own magnificence, could read its meaning.
It meant war, and I was glad of it. I wanted war.
'Good morning,' I said.
'Good morning.'
There was a pause. I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts.
I looked at her curiously. Five years had left their mark on her, but entirely for the good. She had an air of quiet strength which I had never noticed in her before. It may have been there in the old days, but I did not think so. It was, I felt certain, a later development. She gave the impression of having been through much and of being sure of herself.
In appearance she had changed amazingly little. She looked as small and slight and trim as ever she had done. She was a little paler, I thought, and the Irish eyes were older and a shade harder; but that was all.
I awoke with a start to the fact that I was staring at her. A slight flush had crept into her pale cheeks.
'Don't!' she said suddenly, with a little gesture of irritation.
The word and the gesture killed, as i
f they had been a blow, a kind of sentimental tenderness which had been stealing over me.
'What are you doing here?' I asked.
She was silent.
'Please don't think I want to pry into your affairs,' I said viciously. 'I was only interested in the coincidence that we should meet here like this.'
She turned to me impulsively. Her face had lost its hard look.
'Oh, Peter,' she said, 'I'm sorry. I -am- sorry.'
It was my chance, and I snatched at it with a lack of chivalry which I regretted almost immediately. But I was feeling bitter, and bitterness makes a man do cheap things.
'Sorry?' I said, politely puzzled. 'Why?'
She looked taken aback, as I hoped she would.
'For--for what happened.'
'My dear Audrey! Anybody would have made the same mistake. I don't wonder you took me for a burglar.'
'I didn't mean that. I meant--five years ago.'
I laughed. I was not feeling like laughter at the moment, but I did my best, and had the satisfaction of seeing that it jarred upon her.
'Surely you're not worrying yourself about that?' I said. I laughed again. Very jovial and debonair I was that winter morning.
The brief moment in which we might have softened towards each other was over. There was a glitter in her blue eyes which told me that it was once more war between us.
'I thought you would get over it,' she said.
'Well,' I said, 'I was only twenty-five. One's heart doesn't break at twenty-five.'
'I don't think yours would ever be likely to break, Peter.'
'Is that a compliment, or otherwise?'
'You would probably think it a compliment. I meant that you were not human enough to be heart-broken.'
'So that's your idea of a compliment!'
'I said I thought it was probably yours.'
'I must have been a curious sort of man five years ago, if I gave you that impression.'
'You were.'
She spoke in a meditative voice, as if, across the years, she were idly inspecting some strange species of insect. The attitude annoyed me. I could look, myself, with a detached eye at the man I had once been, but I still retained a sort of affection for him, and I felt piqued.
'I suppose you looked on me as a kind of ogre in those days?' I said.
'I suppose I did.'
There was a pause.
'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' she said. And that was the most galling part of it. Mine was an attitude of studied offensiveness. I did want to hurt her feelings. But hers, it seemed to me, was no pose. She really had had--and, I suppose, still retained--a genuine horror of me. The struggle was unequal.
'You were very kind,' she went on, 'sometimes--when you happened to think of it.'
Considered as the best she could find to say of me, it was not an eulogy.
'Well,' I said, 'we needn't discuss what I was or did five years ago. Whatever I was or did, you escaped. Let's think of the present. What are we going to do about this?'
'You think the situation's embarrassing?'
'I do.'
'One of us ought to go, I suppose,' she said doubtfully.
'Exactly.'
'Well, I can't go.'
'Nor can I.'
'I have business here.'
'Obviously, so have I.'
'It's absolutely necessary that I should be here.'
'And that I should.'
She considered me for a moment.
'Mrs Attwell told me that you were one of the assistant-masters at the school.'
'I am acting as assistant-master. I am supposed to be learning the business.'
She hesitated.
'Why?' she said.
'Why not?'
'But--but--you used to be very well off.'
'I'm better off now. I'm working.'
She was silent for a moment.
'Of course it's impossible for you to leave. You couldn't, could you?'
'No.'
'I can't either.'
'Then I suppose we must face the embarrassment.'
'But why must it be embarrassing? You said yourself you had--got over it.'
'Absolutely. I am engaged to be married.'
She gave a little start. She drew a pattern on the gravel with her foot before she spoke.
'I congratulate you,' she said at last.
'Thank you.'
'I hope you will be very happy.'
'I'm sure I shall.'
She relapsed into silence. It occurred to me that, having posted her thoroughly in my affairs, I was entitled to ask about hers.
'How in the world did you come to be here?' I said.
'It's rather a long story. After my husband died--'
'Oh!' I exclaimed, startled.
'Yes; he died three years ago.'
She spoke in a level voice, with a ring of hardness in it, for which I was to learn the true reason later. At the time it seemed to me due to resentment at having to speak of the man she had loved to me, whom she disliked, and my bitterness increased.
'I have been looking after myself for a long time.'
'In England?'
'In America. We went to New York directly we--directly I had written to you. I have been in America ever since. I only returned to England a few weeks ago.'
'But what brought you to Sanstead?'
'Some years ago I got to know Mr Ford, the father of the little boy who is at the school. He recommended me to Mr Abney, who wanted somebody to help with the school.'
'And you are dependent on your work? I mean--forgive me if I am personal--Mr Sheridan did not--'
'He left no money at all.'
'Who was he?' I burst out. I felt that the subject of the dead man was one which it was painful for her to talk about, at any rate to me; but the Sheridan mystery had vexed me for five years, and I thirsted to know something of this man who had dynamited my life without ever appearing in it.
'He was an artist, a friend of my father.'
I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know what he looked like, how he spoke, how he compared with me in a thousand ways; but it was plain that she would not willingly be communicative about him; and, with a feeling of resentment, I gave her her way and suppressed my curiosity.
'So your work here is all you have?' I said.
'Absolutely all. And, if it's the same with you, well, here we are!'
'Here we are!' I echoed. 'Exactly.'
'We must try and make it as easy for each other as we can,' she said.
'Of course.'
She looked at me in that curious, wide-eyed way of hers.
'You have got thinner, Peter,' she said.
'Have I?' I said. 'Suffering, I suppose, or exercise.'
Her eyes left my face. I saw her bite her lip.
'You hate me,' she said abruptly. 'You've been hating me all these years. Well, I don't wonder.'
She turned and began to walk slowly away, and as she did so a sense of the littleness of the part I was playing came over me. Ever since our talk had begun I had been trying to hurt her, trying to take a petty revenge on her--for what? All that had happened five years ago had been my fault. I could not let her go like this. I felt unutterably mean.
'Audrey!' I called.
She stopped. I went to her.
'Audrey!' I said, 'you're wrong. If there's anybody I hate, it's myself. I just want to tell you I understand.'
Her lips parted, but she did not speak.
'I understand just what made you do it,' I went on. 'I can see now the sort of man I was in those days.'
'You're saying that to--to help me,' she said in a low voice.
'No. I have felt like that about it for years.'
'I treated you shamefully.'
'Nothing of the kind. There's a certain sort of man who badly needs a--jolt, and he has to get it sooner or later. It happened that you gave me mine, but that wasn't your fault. I was bound to get it--somehow.' I laughed. 'Fate was waiting for me ro
und the corner. Fate wanted something to hit me with. You happened to be the nearest thing handy.'
'I'm sorry, Peter.'
'Nonsense. You knocked some sense into me. That's all you did. Every man needs education. Most men get theirs in small doses, so that they hardly know they are getting it at all. My money kept me from getting mine that way. By the time I met you there was a great heap of back education due to me, and I got it in a lump. That's all.'
'You're generous.'
'Nothing of the kind. It's only that I see things clearer than I did. I was a pig in those days.'
'You weren't!'
'I was. Well, we won't quarrel about it.'
Inside the house the bell rang for breakfast. We turned. As I drew back to let her go in, she stopped.
'Peter,' she said.
She began to speak quickly.
'Peter, let's be sensible. Why should we let this embarrass us, this being together here? Can't we just pretend that we're two old friends who parted through a misunderstanding, and have come together again, with all the misunderstanding cleared away--friends again? Shall we?'
She held out her hand. She was smiling, but her eyes were grave.
'Old friends, Peter?'
I took her hand.
'Old friends,' I said.
And we went in to breakfast. On the table, beside my plate, was lying a letter from Cynthia.
CHAPTER 6
I
I give the letter in full. It was written from the s.y. -Mermaid-, lying in Monaco Harbour.
MY DEAR PETER, Where is Ogden? We have been expecting him every day. Mrs Ford is worrying herself to death. She keeps asking me if I have any news, and it is very tiresome to have to keep telling her that I have not heard from you. Surely, with the opportunities you must get every day, you can manage to kidnap him. Do be quick. We are relying on you.--In haste, CYNTHIA.
I read this brief and business-like communication several times during the day; and after dinner that night, in order to meditate upon it in solitude, I left the house and wandered off in the direction of the village.
I was midway between house and village when I became aware that I was being followed. The night was dark, and the wind moving in the tree-tops emphasized the loneliness of the country road. Both time and place were such as made it peculiarly unpleasant to hear stealthy footsteps on the road behind me.
P G Wodehouse - Little Nugget Page 8
