Another very quick face at Mummie, signifying that the other end of the line was off its head.
“What?” it said.
“Can’t—you—find—Miss—Brett?”
Faint whisperings.
“Hullo!” shouted Sylvia again.
The voice that had called itself Miss Mulberry had gone, and the first voice—which was that of Miss Thrush, the secretary—had returned. But if it had been guarded before, it was now positively glacial.
“Miss Brett has not returned,” it said. “Miss Mulberry says will you please write.”
“Will I please what?”
“Write.” And a prodigious rolling of the second letter.
“What about?” demanded Sylvia. “I only wanted to—— Hullo! I say—hi! Oh, what a hateful person. Mummie, did you hear that?”
“Darling, how could I?”
“Such a scaly sort of voice. And she said she’d gone away.”
“Who, darling? The young man’s sister?”
Sylvia made a quick face which said: “Oh, please, Mummie—don’t let’s tease each other.” But she answered quite normally.
“Yes, darling. It’s rather sickening, isn’t it? And rather funny, because why should she go away in the middle of the term?”
“Illness?”
“They never sent me away when I was ill. Oh, I see— you mean some one else. Well, if it’s that old man at the Manor House, I must say …”
“What, darling?”
But the necessity seemed to have passed away. Perhaps Sylvia didn’t really want Mr. Cottenham to be seriously ill—or at any rate not enough to say so aloud. Or perhaps—— But no; if Beaky were ill, surely they wouldn’t fetch his younger sister away from school to share the risk of infection. And Beaky mustn’t be ill, because that would spoil all the fun down here, and couldn’t be allowed. For if Beaky were really ill, one would have to decide something terribly important which one was determined not to decide. And so, with immense strength of character, Sylvia drove the idea out of her mind. It was, after all, extremely unlikely that anyone as healthy-looking as that should be ill during such remarkably healthy weather.
“Oh, well,” she said, aloud; “whatever it is, it means we can’t have her for lunch; so it’s no good bothering. What are you going to do, darling?”
Mrs. Shirley was going to get up, it appeared. And take a little turn, if there were time. And have some lunch. And if Sylvia could find Carter or get a message sent to him, she’d like the car about half-past two.
“For Pippingfold, you mean?”
Yes, because one must settle about the rock-garden before the plants started arriving. And it was essential to see how Purvis had managed with the Darwins. And if the second new boiler hadn’t arrived, or if they had dropped it again and cracked it, then how important to spoil Mr. Everett’s Whitsun holiday for him, as well as one’s own.
“Yes, of course, darling,” said Sylvia. “And when do you think we’ll be back?”
Was this a reference to the concert-party?
“Well, yes. Because you did promise, darling.”
The pledge should certainly be redeemed. But they’d be back long before the concert-party could possibly begin. About six o’clock, probably.
“Then may I ask the porter to get us some tickets?”
“If you think it’s safer.”
“Well, it’s frightfully full of people outside, and it is Saturday night.”
“All right, darling. Of course. And you’ll remember about Carter?”
“Oh, yes, Mummie. I’ll do it now.”
Again the Shirleys exchange the glances which always accompany their conversation—playing round it like a series of foot-notes which often mean far more than the actual text; often, also, mean something totally different from the words which they illustrate. Then Sylvia slips out of the door, and—as no one is looking—takes a run and a slide on the tempting surface of the long corridor. But she is grown-up again as soon as she has done this, and goes downstairs as a very businesslike aide-de-camp.
Plans for the family’s first day at the Majestic seem to be settled, and very harmless plans they are. Perhaps they are a little remote from the numerous national and international problems with which the morning papers on Mrs. Shirley’s bed are filled; but it is Whitsun, and it is Saturday. Very well, then; let’s leave the family to carry them out, consoling ourselves with the employment that they are finding for so many wage-earners (including the Diamond Dominoes), and let’s pick up the story elsewhere.
2
But for the fact that Snubs Tipton’s outer calm, though never his inner philosophy, had been just slightly jangled by his interview with Mr. Cottenham, we doubt if he would have spoken so rashly in Gertie’s hearing. “We’ll be there in another hour,” he had said, and at these words one could almost see Gertie pricking up her ears, and whisking her tail, and stamping obstinately with her foot.
“Oh, will we?” one could imagine her retorting. “And how do you think we’re going to do it? Is that the way to speak to some one who has brought you down from London without a pause or an accident? Just you wait till I get you a little further from the main roads and garages, and I’ll teach you to presume on a lady’s goodnature. An hour, I think you said? Oh, very good. Oh, very rich indeed!”
And having bided her time until they had left the telegraph-poles and were cutting across the lonely desert of Wissingfield Common, she gave a slow, sour smile, and selected an ancient trick from her capacious repertory. A jarring motion was suddenly communicated to the Rescue-Party, and their eyes met with a look of wry resignation.
“Tyre?” said Beaky.
“Tyre it is,” said Snubs. “Or was, rather. You’d better take off your coat.”
They both took off their coats. They got the jack out of the dickey, and the jack-handle from under the front seat, and the brace out of one of the side-pockets. After they had nearly burst themselves in successive efforts to shift any one of the four rusty nuts surrounding the hub, Snubs suddenly remembered that those on the near-side, where the trouble had arisen, were furnished with left-hand threads. But the first attempts had been so powerful that it was some time before they could profit by this knowledge.
At about 1.25 p.m., however, the wheel broke loose from its last moorings of mud and rust, and fell heavily on Beaky’s foot. He received no injury for which any claim could be made against the underwriters, but did undoubtedly experience one of those brief spasms of agony which make it advisable to take a brisk run. He ran, therefore; about twenty-five yards along the road and twenty-five yards back, cursing all forms of mechanical transport with much volubility as he did so. This treatment was of great benefit to his foot, but couldn’t be said to have made him any cooler. Indeed, it had raised his temperature to such a point that he concluded the round trip by lying down and gasping by the roadside.
“Get up,” said Snubs, coldly.
“Why?”
“This is why.”
He bounced the sparer-wheel on the ground, and it was at once obvious that Gertie hadn’t yet finished with them.
“Gosh, Snubs; it’s flat.”
“As a pancake. If I’d got that boy here …”
But the boy who had so cheerfully agreed to mend last week’s puncture, and had so light-heartedly dismissed it from his mind, was nearly fifty miles away in London. However delightful it would be to address him on the subject of his shortcomings, the treat must be postponed at any rate until Gertie could leave Wissingfield Common.
“Better take your waistcoat off,” said Snubs, as he started removing his own. “I’ll need help over this.”
Nobody wants to be reminded of what happened during the next forty-five minutes. It is sufficient to say that both members of the expedition weighed considerably less at the end than at the beginning, notwithstanding the extraordinary amount of dust, grit, French chalk and rubber-solution with which they were now coated; and that both of them had taken several of
those involuntary runs up and down the road which can be stimulated even in the hottest weather by the general untrustworthiness of a tyre-lever. Snubs had caught it on the knuckles and shins, and Beaky on the thumb and knee-cap. But at twenty minutes past two the tube was back inside the cover, and not so very much later the process of inflation had been completed, and the wheel had been screwed into position.
The jack, the brace, the levers and the repair-outfit were tossed hurriedly into the dickey; the expedition wiped its hands on the grass, and resumed its discarded garments.
“Everything on board?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, you’re wrong. We’ve forgotten the old wheel.”
Out with the brace. Where’s that nut? In the dickey? On the running-board? In somebody’s pocket? Under the car?
“I say, Snubs—have you seen all this oil? Where do you think it’s coming from?”
“What?”
“All this oil?”
“All what oil?”
But it’s no good pretending not to see it. Gertie may have been over-lubricated when she set out, but no car can yield a puddle like that and proceed without risk of seizure.
“It’s the old trouble,” says Snubs, battling with an attack of vertigo which has resulted from his attempt to diagnose the origin of the puddle without kneeling in it. “That plug never did fit, and the washer’s gone again. I’ll have to cut a new one out of—— Hullo! What’s happened to the brakes?”
What, indeed? Gertie has certainly got to be moved unless he is now actually to lie in the puddle, but though the brake-lever is definitely off, she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. The case is becoming more complicated every moment. There is a most sinister lack of resonance from the off-side rear drum.
“But she was pulling all right,” Snubs expostulates to the blazing heavens. “I know the speedometer’s bust, but I bet we touched forty on that last stretch. She’d hardly have chewed the lining up all in a minute.”
Up come the floor-boards. Out comes the jack. It is insinuated precariously under the differential-housing, and up go Gertie’s hindquarters. Then the jack slips, and they come down again. Yet, as Galileo said, she moves. The shock, though they won’t discover this until later, has started a leak through the recently-applied patch, but it has also overcome the rusty resistance of that invisible cam-spindle. There may or may not be any lining left, but at least Snubs can now get under the engine and insert his new washer.
At a quarter past three—and you must remember that the expedition has not so far had any lunch—Gertie moves gingerly away under her own power, leaving a selection of visiting-cards this time in the shape of two iridescent pools, one deliberately-discarded handkerchief and one accidentally-discarded adjustable-wrench. It is no good moving more rapidly, though, for it is unquestionable that a pint of the wrong sort of oil is very inadequate fodder for her bearings. Still, if only they can reach a village.…
Fate seems to smile again. They do reach a village. They come coasting down into Great Wissingfield, and though the Coach and Horses is closed, in obedience to the law, it isn’t unoccupied. Snubs exerts his charm on a toothless young woman whom he discovers at the back entrance, and she will both feed the expedition—after a fashion—and let it wash. Also she will send an idiot brother to find the proprietor of a combined smithy and garage which lurks, appropriately enough, under a spreading chestnut tree on the other side of the village pond. Only it’s Saturday, she explains inarticulately, and he may have gone to see the cricket-match.
In view of this possibility Snubs decides to accompany the idiot brother, and is thus privileged—though he doesn’t know it—to see Carter and the Shirleys swooping through Great Wissingfield on their way to Green Hatches. Does Beaky’s heart warn him of this extraordinary coincidence, or advise him to leave the scullery sink and dash out, like a dripping scarecrow, to stop the big car and ask Sylvia to put him out of his misery? Perhaps it is as well that it doesn’t, for the conditions would be distinctly unfavourable for a love-scene. The rumpled, ruffled and temporarily collar-less swain. The adored one surrounded by her mother and the great Carter. The paralysing publicity of a street full of eye-witnesses, all of whom are wondering what on earth to do with their Saturday afternoon. No; Beaky has never really stopped thinking of Sylvia and his letter—whatever else may have fluttered the surface of his mind, or have removed the surface of his skin; but even the most devoted and sensitive lover is not necessarily telepathic. The Shirleys swoop away and leave no trace of their passage. Even their dust has settled by the time that Snubs comes back with the village engineer and blacksmith.
The washer is holding out well, and it seems better to add to the wrong sort of oil than to risk changing it.
“But what about that there toyre, sir?”
“Tyre? Oh, Lord—it’s flat again. Beaky!”
“Hullo!”
“No, don’t put your coat on. I’ll want you.”
For the time being, though, Gertie seems to have had all the fun that she wants. Or perhaps she recognises the futility of wasting her energies just outside a garage, and with a professional to lead the opposing team. With six hands and a larger set of levers the patch is exposed, removed and replaced in little more than twenty-five minutes. A powerful foot-pump completes the business of re-inflation before she has time to remember the trick of the grit in the valve-seating. Congratulations are exchanged; money passes; the toothless young woman again offers the use of the scullery sink, and does not lose by her sympathy. The idiot brother is the richer by a shilling, which he apparently swallows.
At a quarter past four the expedition rolls away on the tarmac towards Friar’s Holt and Newcliff. Only a little after five—and it would have been quicker still if it hadn’t taken the wrong turning when leaving the town—it draws up outside the main gates of St. Ethelburga’s.
“There!” says Snubs, calmly but triumphantly.
Gertie can hardly have helped hearing him, but she merely stands and looks as if gear-oil wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
3
“What more can I do?” Miss Mulberry had asked on Friday afternoon, and by Saturday morning the question could safely be put with an even further degree of unanswerable righteousness. What more could anyone do?
Not a word from Mr. Cottenham by the first or second posts; not a sound or a sign from Ursula his ward. Was it unreasonable to suppose, then, that the former had solved the mystery of the latter’s whereabouts, and was St. Ethelburga to humble herself by sending any more reply-paid telegrams which simply vanished into the void? Naturally one was still curious, just as one was still outraged by the flagrant manner of Ursula’s departure; but one no longer leapt with alarm each time that the telephone-bell rang in Miss Thrush’s little room next door, in case it should be a message from the police or a hospital. More and more one remembered one’s own dignity, and the dignity of the successful institution with which one had been so long associated. More and more one looked on the brighter aspect of an escapade which had removed such a notable thorn from the side of St. Ethelburga’s otherwise healthy and comfortable body. The truth was that Mr. Cottenham was ashamed of his ward’s behaviour and of his own behaviour in sending her back to cause all this annoyance, but lacked the grace and decency to say so. Presently, though, he or she would have to write and ask for her luggage to be sent after her, and then—well, then Miss Mulberry would have quite a number of cold and calculated phrases to incorporate in a typewritten letter. But none of them would refer to the fear and remorse from which she had already almost entirely recovered. If she had been scared stiff for more than twenty-four hours, neither of them should ever have the pleasure of knowing it. On the contrary, and unless she had lost her cunning in dictating typewritten letters, they would experience a good deal more than twenty-four hours’ annoyance themselves.
“Monstrous!” said Miss Mulberry, as she blotted the endorsement on a cheque with great energy and self-reliance. “Some
of these parents and guardians need a pretty stiff lesson in common courtesy and ordinary responsibility—upsetting the whole school like this and undermining my authority. I shall be perfectly civil myself, but I shall most certainly point out—— Yes, Miss Thrush? Do you want me?”
Miss Thrush—all pince-nez and striped blouse and bulging forehead under tiresomely fluffy hair—stood in the communicating doorway and looked perplexed.
“If it’s not disturbing you, Miss Mulberry?”
“Well?”
“Some one is asking for Ursula Brett on the telephone. I thought perhaps——”
“Wait. I’ll speak myself.”
Miss Thrush looked enormously relieved, and faded away. Miss Mulberry stalked through to the early model of a wall-instrument and seized the swinging cord. We know what happened then. From the head-mistress’s point of view a female voice had admitted that it was speaking from Pippingfold, and had then had the colossal impudence to ask her if she couldn’t find Miss Brett. She had dropped the receiver as though it had bitten her on the ear, and had vented some of her feelings on the worm-like secretary—only wishing at the moment that she were less worm-like so that she could have the pleasure of shrieking at her.
“Tell them,” she said, trembling with suppressed emotion, “that Miss Brett is not here. Tell them I refuse to discuss anything further on the telephone until Mr. Cottenham answers my letters and telegrams.”
Then she had marched back into her study, and had slammed the door.
We know also—or if we have forgotten, then we can easily turn back and see—how the worm-like one paraphrased this challenge, and how Sylvia was left gasping in her mother’s bedroom at the Majestic Hotel. What we have still to be told is how Miss Mulberry’s blood-pressure suddenly turned on her and flung her back into a fresh bout of anxiety. And how she battled with this—employing both rage and reason—and how she eventually won through to something approaching her recent detachment, but with crumbling edges and cracks on the surface which might at any moment precipitate her into the cauldron beneath.
Another Part of the Wood Page 18
