“Hullo,” he said, vaguely.
“Come on,” said Snubs. “I’ve just heard somebody say they’re going to play again. You don’t want any food, do you?”
“No, but——”
“Well, buck up, then. We can get out of this other door.”
“Yes, but——”
“What’s the matter? What do you keep looking at?”
“Nothing,” said Beaky. “I’m ready.”
It was true, apparently, that Mrs. Shirley never stayed anywhere, for he had just seen her and her daughter slipping past the red-baize racks in the hall. They were wearing their cloaks.
“Steady!” said Snubs. “Don’t go giving the show away.”
They beat an orderly retreat after all, for it was impossible to do anything else.
“That’s better,” said Snubs, as they reached the pavement “Thanks awfully.”
“What for?” said Beaky, watching a tail-light vanish in the distance.
“Sticking it out,” said Snubs.
Beaky was rather ashamed of himself, but there was really nothing on earth that he could say.
2
“Just a minute,” said Sylvia. “What do you think of these?”
(“I’ve stayed here far too long,” Beaky was thinking. “Gosh, I’ve stayed here more than an hour. I expect I’ve done for myself. I don’t suppose they’ll ever let me into the house again.”)
“In here,” said Sylvia, still leading the way down. “They came last night.”
“What?”
“Through here.”
(“What was that she said?” Beaky was asking himself. “I say, where are we going now?”)
“Mind this little dark step that you can’t see.”
“What?”
They had turned the corner at the foot of the stairs, and Sylvia had opened a door. Beaky plunged heavily over the invisible step—for there had been something particularly slow about his reactions ever since he had got up to go, and he only heard the warning as he snatched at the banisters and recovered himself.
“In here,” said Sylvia again.
They were both in the little room behind the dining-room, and though it seemed untidy and unused there was a thrill in its intimacy. Some minds might have reflected: “This is the place where the masseuse is kept waiting, or where they put the furniture that they don’t much like.” But Beaky thought: “I dare say lots of people who know her quite well have never been in here.” And again she spoke, and he never heard her.
“What do you think of these?” she was saying.
There was a crackling of brown paper, and his wandering wits returned from the view of the brick wall out of the back window.
“Oh, I say! May I look?”
“Yes, of course. That’s what I keep saying.”
“I say—they’re topping. Don’t you think so?”
Miss Shirley spread the photographs more widely over the table, and examined them with her head on one side—and with a most fascinating narrowing of the eyelids.
“I don’t know,” she said, critically. “They’ve made me look awfully sort-of-stupid, I think.”
“Oh, no!” cried Beaky. “I think you look—well— I mean …”
He gave it up, and stared until he could hardly see. There were two views of the enchanting subject. A full-face, with those eyes. A profile, with the line of that neck. Gosh, what luck some photographers had!
“The others are all the same,” said Miss Shirley, pushing them aside. “Which do you prefer?”
Even Paris had never been asked for a judgment like this.
“Well …” said Beaky, slowly. “I mean …” And then, suddenly: “I say—Sylvia.”
“’M?”
“I—I suppose—” (a nervous laugh here)— “I suppose you wouldn’t care to let me have one of them. I mean, if there was a spare one. I mean——”
“Oh, rubbish, Beaky. You don’t want——”
“Yes, I do. I—I’d like it most awfully.”
“Would you really?”
“Yes, of course.”
“All right, then. Which?”
“Oh, I say——”
“Front or side?”
“Well …”
“Hurry up!”
He wanted them both, but he mustn’t make a fool of himself. How about another glance at the original? He turned his head. She was looking at him. The eyes had it.
“I——”
“What?”
Try swallowing. Start again.
“I think I’d like this one, if I may really have it?”
“All right. The straight-at-you one, you mean?”
Exactly. And right through you and out the other side, shattering and scattering your whole being on the way.
“I say, thanks most awfully. And—” (another nervous laugh)— “and I say——”
“’M?”
“Would you be a— Would you mind awfully just sort of putting something on it?”
She hadn’t quite understood.
“‘Putting’? Putting what?”
“Writing, I mean. It would make it so much more—more— Well, I mean, it would sort of——”
“My name?”
“Yes! That’s it. Here—take my pen.”
Not lightly nor thoughtlessly does the owner of a fountain-pen offer the use of his faithful toy. He knows well enough what even a few words by an alien hand can do to a nib which has been guaranteed by the makers for twenty years. But Miss Shirley—who had no fountain-pen of her own—probably missed the subtlety of the compliment as she shook a shower of drops over the packing-paper. On the other hand she wrote only one word, and that with only six letters.
“Sylvia.”
And she drew a line under it.
“Thanks most tremendously,” said Beaky. And somehow or other he was walking away past the other houses in Dolphin Street, holding the photograph as though it were made of explosive glass; his head in the clouds; his feet anywhere that they chose to take him.
Eventually they took him back to his lodgings.
“Hullo,” said Snubs.
“Hullo,” said Beaky.
And as there was nothing else for it, he resumed his existence as a single young gentleman with a job in the City.
3
It wasn’t until he had extracted his trophy from the top drawer of his dressing-table, and left it at the frame-maker’s—a gross creature who had put his large thumb all over the vision of loveliness, and had insisted that it would take him the best part of a week to complete even so urgent and elementary a commission; it wasn’t, in other words, until two or three days later that he began to exhaust a little of his gratitude, and wonder what implications might or might not be drawn from the single word of six letters.
It was during this interminable period, also, that he began to wonder if by any chance he could have secured either the photograph or the word of six letters without asking for them. If, for instance, he had controlled himself for just another five minutes, or had dropped a few hints, instead of blundering right into it like that.…
But why dream of it? He hadn’t controlled himself, and he had got what he wanted. What attractions did he possess that could lead a girl like Sylvia—who must have hundreds of fellows wanting her photograph and signature, curse them!—to offer him a present, and such a present, that he had done nothing whatever to deserve? That he could never hope to do anything to deserve.
Back came the portrait from the frame-maker, and took its rightful position in the very centre of the bedroom mantelpiece; but gloom descended on Beaky Brett, and humility such as would have made him a very poor sort of companion for a worm. It was no good. She’d only done it because she was so kind, and because she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings. The photograph had probably been meant for someone else really, so that she’d dislike him now whenever she thought of him.
Not that she ever would think of him, of course. Why should she?
T
he eyes on the mantelpiece gazed back again at the bashful Beaky, and as is the way of eyes in photographs seemed to become more and more remote and unreal. It was as if each time that he stared at them he dissipated some of the essence of Sylvia with which they had originally been charged. It faded away beneath his destructive glances. In the hope of recovering it, he was reduced to taking the picture by surprise; rushing suddenly into the bedroom and catching it off its guard; a method which, when used sparingly, could still restore some of its former virtue, but left him more unsatisfied every time that he employed it.
Not much January, February or March about young Mr. Brett’s behaviour just now. This was It.
But Snubs had no more musical parties up his sleeve, and one couldn’t very well call at Dolphin Street for another week or two. Could one write, or telephone? Not, apparently, when it came to posting the letter or lifting the receiver. All one could do, for the moment, was to come home from the office by a very roundabout route, and then—keeping a keen look-out for the butler—gaze hurriedly at a choice of windows and pass on again. Not much to look forward to, and still less to look back on; yet somehow it kept one going.
It did more than that.
“Hullo,” said a husky voice, just behind him. “Is that you?”
Beaky spun round, snatched at his hat, and tried not to look as if he had just been caught picking somebody’s pocket.
“By Jove!”
“How funny,” said Sylvia. “I was just going to write to you.”
“I say! You weren’t!”
“Yes; can you come to a frightful dinner-party here on Tuesday? Mummie told me to ask you.”
(“Dash!” thought the insatiable Beaky, “I’d have got a letter from her, if only I hadn’t done this.”)
“Yes, of course,” he said, aloud. “Will you thank her most awfully?”
“Eight-fifteen?”
“I’ll be there. Er——”
“What?”
“Oh, rather! Absolutely, I mean.”
“Absolutely what?”
Was she laughing at him? It didn’t matter. She could if she liked.
“I don’t know,” he said, incoherently. “I must rush.”
“Don’t forget, then. Tuesday.”
“Ah——”
She was gone. Young Mr. Brett was left staring again at the familiar front-door, and sniffing at the faintest suggestion of scent which seemed to vanish even as he sniffed. Idiot! Why on earth had he pretended that he was in such a hurry? Fool! Ass! Clumsy great goat!
Angel! Marvellous creature! Darling!
So April went on. He was amazed sometimes when he realised how often he was seeing her. He was tormented every time that they separated by the fear that he would never see her again. He gloated over the photograph. He went to and fro from his work. He dreamt, and prayed, and wondered. He said nothing to Snubs, though, at this stage; and Snubs said nothing to him.
If a cloud hung over the future of those furnished rooms in Wykeham Street, it was a cloud which had been inevitable from the moment that they had come there. Snubs looked at it philosophically, and asked no questions. He knew a great deal more than he had been told, but he was in no hurry to be told any more than he knew.
If, however, Miss Shirley were anything like her photograph, then his friend Beaky had his very best wishes.
Chapter III
Disadvantages of being Grown-up—Mr. Cottenham’s views on national economy—Fitzgibbon is rather awful—Perfect picnic at Green Hatches—Fitzgibbon is quite awful, and a Poet Laureate is avenged.
1
In spite of a continual feeling of expectation—strongest always when she woke up in the mornings, and diminishing as another unadventurous day slipped by—Noodles was beginning to wonder if being grown-up were quite all that she had imagined. Her freedom was, indeed, complete, for Mr. Cottenham never asked her where she was going or what she was doing, and would only have stopped listening if she had tried to tell him; but he didn’t like anyone being invited to the house, and there didn’t seem to be anyone particular to go and visit elsewhere. Another thing that he didn’t like—as Noodles well knew—was to be asked for any of her allowance in advance. In fact, he made a face like an elderly baby on the point of tears whenever any form of expenditure was mentioned in his hearing. And at this time of year something called the Budget preyed on his mind to such an extent that he could be heard muttering imprecations in his study and shaking his newspaper in a frenzy of annoyance. “Do they want to bleed us to death?” he would growl, in the most alarming manner. “A pack of cheats, sir! A pack of thieves!”
On overhearing this characteristic outburst from the corridor outside, Noodles had put her head in at the door—overwhelmed by curiosity as to who could have called on her guardian so soon after breakfast, or if it came to that at any time. But he was quite alone.
“I’m busy,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” said Noodles.
“Eight hundred million a year,” said Mr. Cottenham, waving the newspaper at her. “Eight hundred and twenty million a year. Do they want to smash the whole system? They’re mad! Where’s it to come from?”
Noodles hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about.
“They’re all in it together,” added Mr. Cottenham, making savage, jerky gestures. “There isn’t a man among them who’ll face the facts. They don’t care. ‘Pile it on,’ they say. ‘It’ll last our time.’ But it won’t.”
“No?” said Noodles, sympathetically.
“Bah!” said Mr. Cottenham. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” said Noodles. “I only——”
“Some other time,” said Mr. Cottenham. “I can’t be disturbed before lunch. I’ve a lot to think about. I——”
He dropped the newspaper, and pushed at the air.
“You don’t understand,” he said, fretfully. “You don’t remember Gladstone. If I’d got any sense, I’d sell this place and go and live abroad. How’d you like that, eh?”
“Which country?” asked Noodles.
“Bah!” said Mr. Cottenham again. “They’re all the same. They’re all robbers and windbags. It doesn’t matter what they call themselves. No, no; I’ll stay where I am, thank you. But you’ll remember what I said when it’s too late and we’re all ruined. Now run along and play.”
He pushed with both hands, and Noodles shut herself out. She was awfully sorry for Mr. Cottenham when he was upset like this, but he made it awfully difficult for one to say so when he never really explained what it was all about. Anyhow it was no good mentioning her allowance when he was in this sort of mood; and—as she couldn’t help realising—it was a subject which would only have put him into this sort of mood, if he hadn’t been in it already. She was glad, on the whole, that they weren’t going to live abroad, because Beaky couldn’t possibly chuck up his job and come too, and because she’d never been the least use at any other language. Apart from these serious drawbacks, it might have been rather exciting. “I mean,” said Noodles to herself, “it would be a sort of change. One might see volcanoes and glaciers and things. One might even come across Aunt Caroline.…”
Mr. Cottenham had told her to run along, and she ran along. He had also told her to play, and she did so. That is to say that having run as far as the stile at the bottom of the orchard, she sat on it and twanged the stringed instrument—which was her almost inseparable companion out of doors, because Mr. Cottenham objected so very strongly to its use in the house on the ground that it went right through his head. For the same reason Noodles kept her gramophone in her bedroom and only played it with the window shut, so that on a fine day like this—and especially when one was sick of all one’s old records, and knew that one had used all the needles at least ten times—it was much better to twang on the stringed instrument at the bottom of the orchard.
As she twanged, she also sang little songs about how she was dismal and blue, or lonesome and sad, or pining and yearning—not that she wa
s any of these things at the moment, with the sun lighting up the orchard and warming the back of her spine, and with the upward roll becoming really rather satisfactory at last; but because sentiments of this nature predominated in the tunes of which she was fondest. The same feature might have been noticed in her stock of gramophone records, and if Beaky had only remembered to send that parcel from Wykeham Street there would have been still more musical misery when her bedroom window was safely shut. But one sang these songs very cheerfully, and they had no kind of effect on one’s spirits. As one of the rare exceptions very accurately remarked, it was rhythm that was the thing.
So Noodles beat time with her right foot, which was attached to one of the two most graceful objects in Pippingfold—we should have said “one of four” if Miss Shirley hadn’t been in London—and was exceedingly rhythmic. And she sang very softly and twanged very brilliantly, and was punctilious in repeating any phrase where she had struck the wrong chord; and presently a large man with a little moustache and what his enemies might have called a red face came wandering up the field-path from below, and stopped, and took off his hat, and said: “Good-morning Miss Brett.”
“Hullo,” said Noodles. “Do you want to come through?”
“No,” said the large man. “I heard you playing. Didn’t you see me coming?”
“Well,” said Noodles, who was a very truthful young woman; “as a matter of fact, I did.”
“Jolly good,” said the large man, with a sort of sound like a laugh. And he leant against the other end of the stile, and put one foot—which was attached to a leg in a gaiter, but a real leather one this time—on the lower step. And he breathed rather more loudly than Noodles really cared about, only she knew she oughtn’t to be so critical and particular.
“You look all right,” he added.
Another Part of the Wood Page 4
