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Hue and Cry
Patricia Wentworth
CHAPTER I
Mally Lee stamped her foot and drew back from Roger Mooring’s encircling arm.
“For goodness gracious sake, Roger, do try to remember that you’re supposed to be in love with me!” she exclaimed.
The ballroom at Curston wore an air of depression. Emptiness and the falling dusk brooded over the rows and rows of chairs which had been marshalled for to-night’s performance. Only the little stage, on which the dress rehearsal was in progress, was brightly lighted.
Miss Mally Lee and Mr. Roger Mooring held the stage.
“If you’re in love with me, make love to me!”
Elaine Maudsley giggled. She had volunteered to prompt, but she divided her time at rehearsals between giggling and dropping the prompt-book. She dropped it now, grabbed at it, and heard the injured Roger say:
“How can I act when you keep interrupting?”
“You weren’t acting—that’s just what I’m complaining about. We’re supposed to be in the middle of a most frantically impassioned love scene, and you hold me as if I were a wet umbrella.”
“How do you want me to hold you?” said Roger crossly.
“Jimmy’ll show you. Come along, Jimmy, and put your arm round my waist.”
“No, I’m hanged if he does!”
Jimmy Lake came out of the wings and hovered. Elaine tittered again. Roger, red with annoyance, put his own arm about the slim waist of his betrothed, and said, in his character of dashing Cavalier, “I love you. I adore you. Let us fly together.”
Mally was merciless.
“You get worse instead of better,” she declared. “And I won’t fly with any one who looks at me as if I were cold underdone mutton. Come along, Jimmy, and show him how to do it.”
“Not much!” said Jimmy. “Roger’ll break my head if I do, and then where’ll you be for a villain to-night?”
“Don’t talk about to-night, or I shall scream. We want at least a dozen more rehearsals. Roger gets worse—and worse—and worse.”
“Look here, Mally——”
“But you do, Roger—you really do. You make love worse than any one I’ve ever come across. Now don’t you think you could make a really terrific effort and look as if you did like me a little?”
Roger’s handsome features remained impassive; the set of his mouth betrayed temper.
“Miss Lee——” This was Colonel Fairbanks speaking from the other side of the footlights with a certain deliberate weariness——“Miss Lee, are you stage-managing this piece, or am I? I don’t mind, you know; I only ask, because——”
“You are—and you do it too beautifully,” said Mally. “I’m frightfully sorry. I won’t do it again.”
She turned back to Roger with a swish of her full Stuart skirt, tossed her ringlets, and dropped him a curtsey. Voice and manner changed suddenly and became sweetness itself.
“Ah, my dear love,” she breathed, taking up her cue and wickedly pleased to observe that this sudden address brought the embarrassed blood to Mr. Mooring’s manly cheek.
The love scene proceeded on its unequal way. Roger could look handsome and hold himself well, but there his capacity as an actor ended. He was further handicapped by the fact of his engagement to Miss Mally Lee. In the circumstances, he hardly knew which was worse—to make stage love to her himself, or to allow Jimmy Lake to do so. In either case Elaine would giggle and the county be amused. He cursed all private theatricals, and continued to walk steadily through his part and to hold Mally, in rose brocade, as if she were a wet umbrella.
“I’m glad I’m not engaged to you,” said Jimmy Lake as they stood together in the wings, waiting for the abduction scene.
“So am I,” said Mally Lee very heartily.
“Love all! You are a little devil, you know. Why do you do it?”
“Dunno. You might as well ask why I breathe, or sleep.”
“You’ll go too far one of these days—honest, you will, Mally.”
Mally dropped to the floor in a curtsey, and made a beautiful recover. She was a slim slip of an insignificant creature, with a provoking something in her greenish-hazel eyes.
“Thank you, Jimmy dear. But you’d better be careful too. You’re the villain of the piece, and don’t you forget it and start preaching, or—Gracious! There’s my cue!”
An hour later an exhausted company trooped in to tea. Lady Mooring, plump and comfortable, detached herself from her novel with an effort and inquired vaguely:
“Well, my dears, and how did it go this time?”
Six people speaking at once said, “Awful!” Colonel Fairbanks made a silent gesture of despair, and Jimmy groaned.
“Well, the worse it goes now, the better it will go to-night. That’s always the way, isn’t it? At least I’m sure I’ve been told so, or else I read it somewhere—I really don’t know which. Elaine, my dear, will you pour tea? Jimmy, don’t you think another log on the fire—? Yes—thank you. And now let’s be comfortable and think that it’s all going to be a splendid success.”
Lady Mooring was invariably described as “such a kind woman.” Her reputation for extreme goodnature was really founded upon the fact that she found it too much trouble to disagree with any one. As long as she could eat four meals a day and read innumerable novels, she asked no more of life. She addressed most of her acquaintances as “my dear”; but if some cataclysm had suddenly removed them all, she would, to be sure, have murmured, “How sad!” But her enjoyment of the entrée and the after-dinner novel would have been unimpaired. Roger alone had the power to penetrate this comfortable indifference; and where Roger was concerned, she could be as jealous and exacting as any other mother of an idolized only son. Roger was of course the handsomest, cleverest, and altogether most desirable young man in England. If she did not go beyond England, it was because England was to her the universe, and Curston was her world.
“Where’s Roger? Jimmy, where’s Roger?”
“Roger? I don’t know.” Jimmy’s mouth was full of cake.
“But he was with you, surely. Marion, my dear——”
Miss Mally Lee disclaimed all knowledge of Roger’s whereabouts.
“If he’s as hungry as I am, he’ll be here in no time. Jimmy, cut me some cake—there’s a love. Rehearsing gives me the most frightful appetite, especially when Roger and I have been quarrelling all the time.”
Lady Mooring, who disliked Mally, as she would certainly have disliked any girl who aspired to Roger’s hand, began to dislike her a little more and to wonder vaguely but resentfully what Roger or any one else could possibly see in her. Just now, of course, dressed up and rouged, with those absurd ringlets, she was looking her very best; but as a rule, with her short hair and her short skirts, she was more like a little schoolgirl than the future mistress of Curston—not pretty, and not smart; and goodness alone knew who her people were. Not a penny, and working for her living, too. Under Lady Mooring’s placid exterior such thoughts as these took shape.
Roger came into the room with an air so gloomy and abstracted as to give some food for thought. He plumped into a chair as far as possible from Mally, and took a cup of tea after the manner of a man who commits some desperate act. When he refused cake, Lady Mooring’s spirits rose. After all, an engagement was not a marriage.
A little later Mally herself had the same thought. She and Roger were for the moment alone in the big ballroom, now brightly lighted from end to end. Under the lights Roger’s air of gloom seemed suddenly oppressive. She slipped a hand inside his arm, only to have it shaken off again.<
br />
“As bad as all that?” she said, and blew him a kiss. “Poor old Roger!”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you?” She looked at him wickedly out of the corners of her eyes and assumed a cooing voice: “Was’ums, did’ums then?”
Roger glared at her.
“That’s right. Go on. Laugh at me. You’re always laughing at me.”
“It’s so frightfully good for you to be laughed at.”
“Well, look here, Mally, I’ll tell you one thing—I won’t be laughed at in public. You’ll go a little too far one of these days.”
Mally made a graceful pirouette.
“I do love the way these long skirts swish. There’s no satisfaction in twirling round in a skirt that only comes down to your knee—is there? What did you say, Roger?”
“I said you’d go too far one day.” His voice was low and furious.
Mally stuck her chin in the air.
“And what would happen then? How fearfully exciting!”
“You’ll be sorry—that’s all.”
“I wonder.” She twirled again. “Roger, you don’t know what you miss in not having a skirt. It does feel lovely.”
“Look here, Mally——” He paused. His face was full of angry color.
“I’m looking,” said Miss Lee in a small, cool voice. “You’re awfully red, Roger. Are you feeling hot? That sort of clo’ is a bit stuffy—isn’t it?”
“Look here, Mally——”
“I am looking. What is it?”
“I want to know why you got engaged to me, if I’m such a laughing-stock.”
“Of course I’d never seen you act.” This was in a very small, whispering voice. Then quickly:” Oh, Roger, don’t be so awfully cross. I haven’t the slightest idea why I got engaged to you—I haven’t really—and I don’t suppose I ever shall have. Cheer up, and think what a splendid bit of luck it was for you.” As Roger showed no signs of cheering up, she added, “Of course, when you say engaged—well, what do you mean by engaged?”
“What everybody else means. You said you’d marry me.”
Mally gave a little shriek.
“Never! Good gracious, Roger, what a horrible fib!”
“What did you say then?”
Mally came up close, took hold with either hand of the lace ruffles which were one of the uncomfortable features of Mr. Mooring’s present attire, tweaked them, and said with emphasis,
“I said”—tweak—“I’d be engaged”—tweak—“and see how I liked it”—tweak—“if you were very, very, very good. And if you call it being good to groan and glare and glump and gloom like you’ve been doing all this afternoon, I don’t. So there!”
Her laughing, teasing face was very near. Roger might have kissed it; but he chose to stand on his dignity. He was at this moment very much aware of what a good match Mally would be making if she married him—Mally, who hadn’t a penny and was neither pretty nor—nor anything special at all. There were other girls in the world besides Miss Marion Lee.
He drew back a step and examined his ruffles with an air of concern. Mally burst out laughing.
“Roger, you do look so cross! Jimmy——”
“Now look here, Mally, you’ve gone far enough. There’s too much Jimmy altogether. As my mother says——”
Mally stopped laughing.
“What does Lady Mooring say?”
Roger blanched a little.
“I don’t suppose you mean any harm. But considering that you only came down here a week ago, I must say—” He paused; something in Mally’s face made him pause.
She repeated his last words:
“You must say—What must you say? Go on—say it—say it!”
“Oh, nothing.”
“No, Roger, that’s not fair. Go on.”
“Well, it’s nothing really.”
Mally caught him by the arm and shook him.
“Considering I’d only been here a week—What?”
Roger looked at her with frowning dignity.
“Well, you’re pretty well at home with every one, aren’t you? Christian names all round, and all that sort of thing.”
The color went away from Mally’s face, leaving the rouge in two brilliant, unnatural patches. Somewhere inside her the real Mally quivered like a child who has been struck. She had loved it all so. It had been so delightful. She was enjoying herself so much. She had never in all her life had such a lovely, lovely time before. And now Roger, Roger had spoiled it all.
She felt her hands taken and held.
“Mally, don’t look like that. You didn’t mean any harm—I said you didn’t mean any harm. I—”
“Let me go, please!”
Roger tried to draw her nearer.
“Mally!”
“No, let me go!”
“Mally, be reasonable!”
Mally flashed a look at his flushed, handsome face. The sulky look was gone. Gone too for the moment was Roger’s sense of being King Cophetua to a beggar maid. To placate Mally, to prevent her from breaking their engagement, was all that mattered. He put her hands to his lips.
“Mally, I was jealous—you made me jealous.”
She relented a little. After all, she had teased him unmercifully.
“Did I? You get jealous very easily.”
CHAPTER II
“Mally, Alice Tollington can’t come.”
Roger made the announcement blankly, and the whole assembled cast exclaimed: “What?” in varying tones of horror and dismay.
“She can’t come—she’s just rung up. They can’t get the car to start, and it’s too late to go and fetch her.”
“I said Alice would fail—she always does,” said Elaine Maudsley with a giggle.
“Well, we must cut out her songs, that’s all, unless——” Colonel Fairbanks turned to Mally. “That interval between the acts is a most awful nuisance. Now if you could sing something. You’re not on at the beginning of the next act, you know. Do you think you could come to the rescue?”
“No, of course she can’t!” Roger began. And Mally instantly decided that she could; she had just been rather nice to Roger, and felt that the pendulum required a push in the opposite direction—Roger got uppish so easily.
“I can manage beautifully. What shall I sing?—that’s the only thing. Something old-fashioned because of the dress. I shan’t have time to change.”
“You better sing Mally Lee,” said Jimmy Lake with a teasing look.
Mally caught Roger’s eye and clasped her hands.
“I’d love to! Dare I? Shall I?”
Roger Mooring rushed upon his fate.
“What rubbish! Of course you can’t! Jimmy, what a perfectly crass suggestion! No, sing—’m—ah—oh, there are plenty of songs without dragging in——”
“I shall sing Mally Lee, and Jimmy shall play my accompaniment on a ukulele.”
Roger took her by the arm.
“Mally, you can’t.”
“I shall—I will—I’m going to. Tune up the ukulele, Jimmy. You’ve just got time.”
“Mally, I forbid you to.”
The worried voice of Colonel Fairbanks arose: “Miss Lee, the curtain is due to go up in three minutes, and you’re on.”
Mally pulled her arm away from Roger. She blew him a kiss and Colonel Fairbanks another, and ran lightly on to the stage, where three minutes later she was discovered humming a tune and writing a love-letter.
The hall was quite full and the audience an indulgent one, the play no better and no worse than others of its kind. When the curtain fell on the first act there was some very stimulating applause, which was renewed when Miss Mally Lee appeared behind the footlights, dropped a neat curtsey, and began to sing to the accompaniment of a ukulele—off.
She sang:
“As Mally Lee cam doun the street her capuchin did flee—
She cuist a look ahint her back to see her negligee—
She had two lappets at her heid, tha
t flaunted gallantly,
And ribbon knots at back an’ breist o’bonny Mally Lee.”
She had a pretty, clear voice, and she acted the song, as well as sang it. With a swish of her rose-colored skirts, she walked a few steps, looked over her shoulder, and gave the refrain:
“And we’re a’ gane east and west, we’re a’ gane agee,
We’re a’ gane east, we’re a’ gane west, coortin’ Mally Lee.”
She took the second verse with considerable spirit:
“A’ doun alang the Cannongate were beaux o’ ilk degree,
An’ mony a yin turned roond aboot the comely sicht tae see.
At ilka bob her ping-pong gied, ilk lad thocht ‘That’s tae me’;
But fient a yin was in the thocht o’ bonny Mally Lee.”
She gave the refrain in a laughing, lilting fashion:
“Oh, we’re a’ gane east and west, we’re a’ gane agee;
We’re a’ gane east, we’re a’ gane west, coortin’ Mally Lee.”
She ran off, waving her hand, and bumped into Jimmy in the wings.
“I say, that was tophole! But what in the world’s a ping-pong?”
Mally gurgled.
“I haven’t an idea. Jimmy, I must fly and put on a cloak to be abducted in. Tell them it’s no use their clapping like that—I can’t give an encore.”
The curtain rose on an act full of duels, hairbreadth escapes, and villainous machinations. Mally was very realistically abducted, and much less realistically rescued. When the play ended with Jimmy lying up-stage, decently shrouded in a cloak, and Mally, close to the footlights, locked in Roger’s stiffly reluctant arms, the applause was all that could be desired. Lady Mooring was surrounded by people with pretty things to say about Mally’s acting and Roger’s looks: “What a becoming dress!”; “Oh, Lady Mooring, you ought to make him have his portrait painted in it”; “He’s really awfully like the Cavalier picture you’ve got upstairs—isn’t he?”
Lady Mooring thought he was. She beamed placidly upon the speaker, and then turned to beam again at Mrs. Armitage from Upper Linden.
“Lady Mooring, you said I might bring my niece, Dorothy Leonard. And she’s so excited because she says she is sure she was at school with Miss Lee—Dorothy, my dear——”
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