CHAPTER XVII.

A CROWDED NIGHT

§ 1

If there is one thing more than another which weighs upon the mind of a

story-teller as he chronicles the events which he has set out to

describe, it is the thought that the reader may be growing impatient

with him for straying from the main channel of his tale and devoting

himself to what are, after all, minor developments. This story, for

instance, opened with Mrs. Horace Hignett, the world-famous writer on

Theosophy, going over to America to begin a lecturing-tour; and no one

realises more keenly than I do that I have left Mrs. Hignett flat. I

have thrust that great thinker into the background and concentrated my

attention on the affairs of one who is both her mental and her moral

inferior, Samuel Marlowe. I seem at this point to see the reader—a

great brute of a fellow with beetling eyebrows and a jaw like the ram

of a battleship, the sort of fellow who is full of determination and

will stand no nonsense—rising to remark that he doesn’t care what

happened to Samuel Marlowe and that what he wants to know is, how Mrs.

Hignett made out on her lecturing-tour. Did she go big in Buffalo? Did

she have ’em tearing up the seats in Schenectady? Was she a riot in

Chicago and a cyclone in St. Louis? Those are the points on which he

desires information, or give him his money back.

I cannot supply the information. And, before you condemn me, let me

hastily add that the fault is not mine but that of Mrs. Hignett

herself. The fact is, she never went to Buffalo. Schenectady saw

nothing of her. She did not get within a thousand miles of Chicago, nor

did she penetrate to St. Louis. For the very morning after her son

Eustace sailed for England in the liner “Atlantic,” she happened to

read in the paper one of those abridged passenger-lists which the

journals of New York are in the habit of printing, and got a nasty

shock when she saw that, among those whose society Eustace would enjoy

during the voyage, was “Miss Wilhelmina Bennett, daughter of J. Rufus

Bennett of Bennett, Mandelbaum and Co.”. And within five minutes of

digesting this information, she was at her desk writing out telegrams

cancelling all her engagements. Iron-souled as this woman was, her

fingers trembled as she wrote. She had a vision of Eustace and the

daughter of J. Rufus Bennett strolling together on moonlit decks,

leaning over rails damp with sea-spray and, in short, generally

starting the whole trouble all over again.

In the height of the tourist season it is not always possible for one

who wishes to leave America to spring on to the next boat. A long

morning’s telephoning to the offices of the Cunard and the White Star

brought Mrs. Hignett the depressing information that it would be a full

week before she could sail for England. That meant that the inflammable

Eustace would have over two weeks to conduct an uninterrupted wooing,

and Mrs. Hignett’s heart sank, till suddenly she remembered that so

poor a sailor as her son was not likely to have had leisure for any

strolling on the deck during the voyage on the “Atlantic.”

Having realised this, she became calmer and went about her preparations

for departure with an easier mind. The danger was still great, but

there was a good chance that she might be in time to intervene. She

wound up her affairs in New York, and on the following Wednesday,

boarded the “Nuronia” bound for Southampton.

The “Nuronia” is one of the slowest of the Cunard boats. It was built

at a time when delirious crowds used to swoon on the dock if an ocean

liner broke the record by getting across in nine days. It rolled over

to Cherbourg, dallied at that picturesque port for some hours, then

sauntered across the Channel and strolled into Southampton Water in the

evening of the day on which Samuel Marlowe had sat in the lane plotting

with Webster, the valet. At almost the exact moment when Sam, sidling

through the windows of the drawing-room, slid into the cupboard behind

the piano, Mrs. Hignett was standing at the Customs barrier telling the

officials that she had nothing to declare.

Mrs. Hignett was a general who believed in forced marches. A lesser

woman might have taken the boat-train to London and proceeded to

Windles at her ease on the following afternoon. Mrs. Hignett was made

of sterner stuff. Having fortified herself with a late dinner, she

hired a car and set out on the cross-country journey. It was only when

the car, a genuine antique, had broken down three times in the first

ten miles, that she directed the driver to take her instead to the

“Blue Boar” in Windlehurst, where she arrived, tired but thankful to

have reached it at all, at about eleven o’clock.

At this point many, indeed most, women would have gone to bed; but the

familiar Hampshire air and the knowledge that half an hour’s walking

would take her to her beloved home acted on Mrs. Hignett like a

restorative. One glimpse of Windles she felt that she must have before

she retired for the night, if only to assure herself that it was still

there. She had a cup of coffee and a sandwich brought to her by the

night-porter whom she had roused from sleep, for bedtime is early in

Windlehurst, and then informed him that she was going for a short walk

and would ring when she returned.

Her heart leaped joyfully as she turned in at the drive gates of her

home and felt the well-remembered gravel crunching under her feet. The

silhouette of the ruined castle against the summer sky gave her the

feeling which all returning wanderers know. And, when she stepped on to

the lawn and looked at the black bulk of the house, indistinct and

shadowy with its backing of trees, tears came into her eyes. She

experienced a rush of emotion which made her feel quite faint, and

which lasted until, on tiptoeing nearer to the house in order to gloat

more adequately upon it, she perceived that the French windows of the

drawing-room were standing ajar. Sam had left them like this in order

to facilitate departure, if a hurried departure should by any mischance

be rendered necessary, and drawn curtains had kept the household from

noticing the fact.

All the proprietor in Mrs. Hignett was roused. This, she felt

indignantly, was the sort of thing she had been afraid would happen the

moment her back was turned. Evidently laxity—one might almost say

anarchy—had set in directly she had removed the eye of authority. She

marched to the window and pushed it open. She had now completely

abandoned her kindly scheme of refraining from rousing the sleeping

house and spending the night at the inn. She stepped into the

drawing-room with the single-minded purpose of routing Eustace out of

his sleep and giving him a good talking-to for having failed to

maintain her own standard of efficiency among the domestic staff. If

there was one thing on which Mrs. Horace Hignett had always insisted it

was that every window in the house must be closed at lights-out.

She pushed the curtains apart with a rattle and, at the same moment,

from the direction of the door there came a low but distinct gasp which

made her resolute heart jump and flutter. It was too dark to see

anything distinctly, but, in the instant before it turned and fled, she

caught sight of a shadowy male figure, and knew that her worst fears

had been realised. The figure was too tall to be Eustace, and Eustace,

she knew, was the only man in the house. Male figures, therefore, that

went flitting about Windles, must be the figures of burglars.

Mrs. Hignett, bold woman though she was, stood for an instant

spell-bound, and for one moment of not unpardonable panic tried to tell

herself that she had been mistaken. Almost immediately, however, there

came from the direction of the hall a dull chunky sound as though

something soft had been kicked, followed by a low gurgle and the noise

of staggering feet. Unless he were dancing a _pas seul_ out of sheer

lightness of heart, the nocturnal visitor must have tripped over

something.

The latter theory was the correct one. Montagu Webster was a man who,

at many a subscription ball, had shaken a gifted dancing-pump, and

nothing in the proper circumstances pleased him better than to exercise

the skill which had become his as the result of twelve private lessons

at half-a-crown a visit; but he recognised the truth of the scriptural

adage that there is a time for dancing, and that this was not it. His

only desire when, stealing into the drawing-room he had been confronted

through the curtains by a female figure, was to get back to his bedroom

undetected. He supposed that one of the feminine members of the

house-party must have been taking a stroll in the grounds, and he did

not wish to stay and be compelled to make laborious explanations of his

presence there in the dark. He decided to postpone the knocking on the

cupboard door, which had been the signal arranged between himself and

Sam, until a more suitable occasion. In the meantime he bounded

silently out into the hall, and instantaneously tripped over the portly

form of Smith, the bulldog, who, roused from a light sleep to the

knowledge that something was going on, and being a dog who always liked

to be in the centre of the maelstrom of events, had waddled out to

investigate.

By the time Mrs. Hignett had pulled herself together sufficiently to

feel brave enough to venture into the hall, Webster’s presence of mind

and Smith’s gregariousness had combined to restore that part of the

house to its normal nocturnal condition of emptiness. Webster’s stagger

had carried him almost up to the green baize door leading to the

servants’ staircase, and he proceeded to pass through it without

checking his momentum, closely followed by Smith who, now convinced

that interesting events were in progress which might possibly culminate

in cake, had abandoned the idea of sleep, and meant to see the thing

through. He gambolled in Webster’s wake up the stairs and along the

passage leading to the latter’s room, and only paused when the door was

brusquely shut in his face. Upon which he sat down to think the thing

over. He was in no hurry. The night was before him, promising, as far

as he could judge from the way it had opened, excellent entertainment.

Mrs. Hignett had listened fearfully to the uncouth noises from the

hall. The burglars—she had now discovered that there were at least two

of them—appeared to be actually romping. The situation had grown beyond

her handling. If this troupe of terpsichorean marauders was to be

dislodged she must have assistance. It was man’s work. She made a brave

dash through the hall mercifully unmolested; found the stairs; raced up

them; and fell through the doorway of her son Eustace’s bedroom like a

spent Marathon runner staggering past the winning-post.

§ 2

At about the moment when Mrs. Hignett was crunching the gravel of the

drive, Eustace was lying in bed, listening to Jane Hubbard as she told

the story of how an alligator had once got into her tent while she was

camping on the banks of the Issawassi River in Central Africa. Ever

since he had become ill, it had been the large-hearted girl’s kindly

practice to soothe him to rest with some such narrative from her

energetic past.

“And what happened then?” asked Eustace, breathlessly.

He had raised himself on one elbow in his bed. His eyes shone excitedly

from a face which was almost the exact shape of an Association

football; for he had reached the stage of mumps when the patient begins

to swell as though somebody were inflating him with a bicycle-pump.

“Oh, I jabbed him in the eye with a pair of nail-scissors, and he went

away!” said Jane Hubbard.

“You know, you’re wonderful!” cried Eustace. “Simply wonderful!”

Jane Hubbard flushed a little beneath her tan. She loved his pretty

enthusiasm. He was so genuinely stirred by what were to her the merest

commonplaces of life.

“Why, if an alligator got into _my_ tent,” said Eustace, “I simply

wouldn’t know what to do! I should be nonplussed.”

“Oh, it’s just a knack,” said Jane, carelessly. “You soon pick it up.”

“Nail-scissors!”

“It ruined them, unfortunately. They were never any use again. For the

rest of the trip I had to manicure myself with a hunting-spear.”

“You’re a marvel!”

Eustace lay back in bed and gave himself up to meditation. He had

admired Jane Hubbard before, but the intimacy of the sick-room and the

stories which she had told him to relieve the tedium of his invalid

state had set the seal on his devotion. It has always been like this

since Othello wooed Desdemona. For three days Jane Hubbard had been

weaving her spell about Eustace Hignett, and now she monopolised his

entire horizon. She had spoken, like Othello, of antres vast and

deserts idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touched

heaven, and of the cannibals that each other eat, the Anthropophagi,

and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear would

Eustace Hignett seriously incline, and swore, in faith, ’twas strange,

’twas passing strange, ’twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful. He loved

her for the dangers she had passed, and she loved him that he did pity

them. In fact, one would have said that it was all over except buying

the licence, had it not been for the fact that his very admiration

served to keep Eustace from pouring out his heart. It seemed incredible

to him that the queen of her sex, a girl who had chatted in terms of

equality with African head-hunters and who swatted alligators as though

they were flies, could ever lower herself to care for a man who looked

like the “after-taking” advertisement of a patent food.

But even those whom Nature has destined to be mates may misunderstand

each other, and Jane, who was as modest as she was brave, had come

recently to place a different interpretation on his silence. In the

last few days of the voyage she had quite made up her mind that Eustace

Hignett loved her and would shortly intimate as much in the usual

manner; but, since coming to Windles, she had begun to have doubts. She

was not blind to the fact that Billie Bennett was distinctly prettier

than herself and far more the type to which the ordinary man is

attracted. And, much as she loathed the weakness and despised herself

for yielding to it, she had become distinctly jealous of her. True,

Billie was officially engaged to Bream Mortimer, but she had had

experience of the brittleness of Miss Bennett’s engagements, and she

could by no means regard Eustace as immune.

“Do you suppose they will be happy?” she asked.

“Eh? Who?” said Eustace, excusably puzzled, for they had only just

finished talking about alligators. But there had been a pause since his

last remark, and Jane’s thoughts had flitted back to the subject that

usually occupied them.

“Billie and Bream Mortimer.”

“Oh!” said Eustace. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“She’s a delightful girl.”

“Yes,” said Eustace without much animation.

“And, of course, it’s nice their fathers being so keen on the match. It

doesn’t often happen that way.”

“No. People’s people generally want people to marry people people don’t

want to marry,” said Eustace, clothing in words a profound truth which

from the earliest days of civilisation has deeply affected the youth of

every country.

“I suppose your mother has got somebody picked out for you to marry?”

said Jane casually.

“Mother doesn’t want me to marry anybody,” said Eustace with gloom. It

was another obstacle to his romance.

“What, never?”

“No.”

“Why ever not?”

“As far as I can make out, if I marry, I get this house and mother has

to clear out. Silly business!”

“Well, you wouldn’t let your mother stand in the way if you ever really

fell in love?” said Jane.

“It isn’t so much a question of _letting_ her stand in the way. The

tough job would be preventing her. You’ve never met my mother!”

“No, I’m looking forward to it!”

“You’re looking forward...!” Eustace eyed her with honest amazement.

“But what could your mother do? I mean, supposing you had made up your

mind to marry somebody.”

“What could she do? Why, there isn’t anything she wouldn’t do. Why,

once....” Eustace broke off. The anecdote which he had been about to

tell contained information which, on reflection, he did not wish to

reveal.

“Once—...?” said Jane.

“Oh, well, I was just going to show you what mother is like. I—I was

going out to lunch with a man, and—and—” Eustace was not a ready

improvisator—“and she didn’t want me to go, so she stole all my

trousers!”

Jane Hubbard started, as if, wandering through one of her favourite

jungles, she had perceived a snake in her path. She was thinking hard.

That story which Billie had told her on the boat about the man to whom

she had been engaged, whose mother had stolen his trousers on the

wedding morning ... it all came back to her with a topical significance

which it had never had before. It had lingered in her memory, as

stories will, but it had been a detached episode, having no personal

meaning for her. But now.... “She did that just to stop you going out

to lunch with a man?” she said slowly.

“Yes, rotten thing to do, wasn’t it?”

Jane Hubbard moved to the foot of the bed, and her forceful gaze,

shooting across the intervening counterpane, pinned Eustace to the

pillow. She was in the mood which had caused spines in Somaliland to

curl like withered leaves.

“Were you ever engaged to Billie Bennett?” she demanded.

Eustace Hignett licked dry lips. His face looked like a hunted melon.

The flannel bandage, draped around it by loving hands, hardly supported

his sagging jaw.

“Why—er—”

“_Were_ you?” cried Jane, stamping an imperious foot. There was that in

her eye before which warriors of the lower Congo had become as chewed

blotting-paper. Eustace Hignett shrivelled in the blaze. He was filled

with an unendurable sense of guilt.

“Well—er—yes,” he mumbled weakly.

Jane Hubbard buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. She

might know what to do when alligators started exploring her tent, but

she was a woman.

This sudden solution of steely strength into liquid weakness had on

Eustace Hignett the stunning effects which the absence of the last

stair has on the returning reveller creeping up to bed in the dark. It

was as though his spiritual foot had come down hard on empty space and

caused him to bite his tongue. Jane Hubbard had always been to him a

rock of support. And now the rock had melted away and left him

wallowing in a deep pool.

He wallowed gratefully. It had only needed this to brace him to the

point of declaring his love. His awe of this girl had momentarily

vanished. He felt strong and dashing. He scrambled down the bed and

peered over the foot of it at her huddled form.

“Have some barley-water,” he urged. “Try a little barley-water.”

It was all he had to offer her except the medicine which, by the

doctor’s instructions, he took three times a day in a quarter of a

glass of water.

“Go away!” sobbed Jane Hubbard.

The unreasonableness of this struck Eustace.

“But I can’t. I’m in bed. Where could I go?”

“I hate you!”

“Oh, don’t say that!”

“You’re still in love with her!”

“Nonsense! I never was in love with her.”

“Then why were you going to marry her?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!”

Eustace bent a little further over the end of the bed and patted her

hair.

“Do have some barley-water,” he said. “Just a sip!”

“You _are_ in love with her!” sobbed Jane.

“I’m _not!_ I love _you!_”

“You don’t!”

“Pardon _me!_” said Eustace firmly. “I’ve loved you ever since you gave

me that extraordinary drink with Worcester sauce in it on the boat.”

“They why didn’t you say so before?”

“I hadn’t the nerve. You always seemed so—I don’t know how to put it—I

always seemed such a worm. I was just trying to get the courage to

propose when I caught the mumps, and that seemed to me to finish it. No

girl could love a man with three times the proper amount of face.”

“As if that could make any difference! What does your outside matter? I

have seen your inside!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean....”

Eustace fondled her back hair.

“Jane! Queen of my soul! Do you really love me?”

“I’ve loved you ever since we met on the Subway.” She raised a

tear-stained face. “If only I could be sure that you really loved me!”

“I can prove it!” said Eustace proudly. “You know how scared I am of my

mother. Well, for your sake I overcame my fear, and did something

which, if she ever found out about it, would make her sorer than a

sunburned neck! This house. She absolutely refused to let it to old

Bennett and old Mortimer. They kept after her about it, but she

wouldn’t hear of it. Well, you told me on the boat that Wilhelmina

Bennett had invited you to spend the summer with her, and I knew that,

if they didn’t come to Windles, they would take some other place, and

that meant I wouldn’t see you. So I hunted up old Mortimer, and let it

to him on the quiet, without telling my mother anything about it!”

“Why, you darling angel child,” cried Jane Hubbard joyfully. “Did you

really do that for my sake? Now I know you love me!”

“Of course, if mother ever got to hear of it...!”

Jane Hubbard pushed him gently into the nest of bedclothes, and tucked

him in with strong, calm hands. She was a very different person from

the girl who so short a while before had sobbed on the carpet. Love is

a wonderful thing.

“You mustn’t excite yourself,” she said. “You’ll be getting a

temperature. Lie down and try to get to sleep.” She kissed his bulbous

face. “You have made me so happy, Eustace darling.”

“That’s good,” said Eustace cordially. “But it’s going to be an awful

jar for mother!”

“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll break the news to your mother. I’m

sure she will be quite reasonable about it.”

Eustace opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.

“Lie back quite comfortably, and don’t worry,” said Jane Hubbard. “I’m

going to my room to get a book to read you to sleep. I shan’t be five

minutes. And forget about your mother. I’ll look after her.”

Eustace closed his eyes. After all, this girl had fought lions, tigers,

pumas, cannibals, and alligators in her time with a good deal of

success. There might be a sporting chance of victory for her when she

moved a step up in the animal kingdom and tackled his mother. He was

not unduly optimistic, for he thought she was going out of her class;

but he felt faintly hopeful. He allowed himself to drift into pleasant

meditation.

There was a scrambling sound outside the door. The handle turned.

“Hullo! Back already?” said Eustace, opening his eyes.

The next moment he opened them wider. His mouth gaped slowly like a

hole in a sliding cliff. Mrs. Horace Hignett was standing at his

bedside.

§ 3

In the moment which elapsed before either of the two could calm their

agitated brains to speech, Eustace became aware, as never before, of

the truth of that well-known line—“Peace, perfect peace, with loved

ones far away.” There was certainly little hope of peace with loved

ones in his bedroom. Dully, he realised that in a few minutes Jane

Hubbard would be returning with her book, but his imagination refused

to envisage the scene which would then occur.

“Eustace!”

Mrs. Hignett gasped, hand on heart.

“Eustace!” For the first time Mrs. Hignett seemed to become aware that

it was a changed face that confronted hers. “Good gracious! How stout

you’ve grown!”

“It’s mumps.”

“Mumps!”

“Yes, I’ve got mumps.”

Mrs. Hignett’s mind was too fully occupied with other matters to allow

her to dwell on this subject.

“Eustace, there are men in the house!”

This fact was just what Eustace had been wondering how to break to her.

“I know,” he said uneasily.

“You know!” Mrs. Hignett stared. “Did you hear them?”

“Hear them?” said Eustace, puzzled.

“The drawing-room window was left open, and there are two burglars in

the hall!”

“Oh, I say, no! That’s rather rotten!” said Eustace.

“I saw them and heard them! I—oh!” Mrs. Hignett’s sentence trailed off

into a suppressed shriek, as the door opened and Jane Hubbard came in.

Jane Hubbard was a girl who by nature and training was well adapted to

bear shocks. Her guiding motto in life was that helpful line of

Horace—_Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem_. (For the

benefit of those who have not, like myself, enjoyed an expensive

classical education,—memento—Take my tip—servare—preserve—aequam—an

unruffled—mentem—mind—rebus in arduis—in every crisis). She had only

been out of the room a few minutes, and in that brief period a

middle-aged lady of commanding aspect had apparently come up through a

trap. It would have been enough to upset most girls, but Jane Hubbard

bore it calmly. All through her vivid life her bedroom had been a sort

of cosy corner for murderers, alligators, tarantulas, scorpions, and

every variety of snake, so she accepted the middle-aged lady without

comment.

“Good evening,” she said placidly.

Mrs. Hignett, having rallied from her moment of weakness, glared at the

new arrival dumbly. She could not place Jane. From the airy way in

which she had strolled into the room, she appeared to be some sort of a

nurse; but she wore no nurse’s uniform.

“Who are you?” she asked stiffly.

“Who are _you?_” asked Jane.

“I,” said Mrs. Hignett portentously, “am the owner of this house, and I

should be glad to know what you are doing in it. I am Mrs. Horace

Hignett.”

A charming smile spread itself over Jane’s finely-cut face.

“I’m so glad to meet you,” she said. “I have heard so much about you.”

“Indeed?” said Mrs. Hignett coldly. “And now I should like to hear a

little about you.”

“I’ve read all your books,” said Jane. “I think they’re wonderful.”

In spite of herself, in spite of a feeling that this young woman was

straying from the point, Mrs. Hignett could not check a slight influx

of amiability. She was an authoress who received a good deal of incense

from admirers, but she could always do with a bit more. Besides, most

of the incense came by post. Living a quiet and retired life in the

country, it was rarely that she got it handed to her face to face. She

melted quite perceptibly. She did not cease to look like a basilisk,

but she began to look like a basilisk who has had a good lunch.

“My favourite,” said Jane, who for a week had been sitting daily in a

chair in the drawing-room adjoining the table on which the authoress’s

complete works were assembled, “is ‘The Spreading Light.’ I _do_ like

‘The Spreading Light!’”

“It was written some years ago,” said Mrs. Hignett with something

approaching cordiality, “and I have since revised some of the views I

state in it, but I still consider it quite a good text-book.”

“Of course, I can see that ‘What of the Morrow?’ is more profound,”

said Jane. “But I read ‘The Spreading Light’ first, and of course that

makes a difference.”

“I can quite see that it would,” agreed Mrs. Hignett. “One’s first step

across the threshold of a new mind, one’s first glimpse....”

“Yes, it makes you feel....”

“Like some watcher of the skies,” said Mrs. Hignett, “when a new planet

swims into his ken, or like....”

“Yes, doesn’t it!” said Jane.

Eustace, who had been listening to the conversation with every muscle

tense, in much the same mental attitude as that of a peaceful citizen

in a Wild West Saloon who holds himself in readiness to dive under a

table directly the shooting begins, began to relax. What he had

shrinkingly anticipated would be the biggest thing since the

Dempsey-Carpentier fight seemed to be turning into a pleasant social

and literary evening not unlike what he imagined a meeting of old

Girton students must be. For the first time since his mother had come

into the room he indulged in the luxury of a deep breath.

“But what are you doing here?” asked Mrs. Hignett, returning almost

reluctantly to the main issue.

Eustace perceived that he had breathed too soon. In an unobtrusive way

he subsided into the bed and softly pulled the sheets over his head,

following the excellent tactics of the great Duke of Wellington in his

Peninsular campaign. “When in doubt,” the Duke used to say, “retire and

dig yourself in.”

“I’m nursing dear Eustace,” said Jane.

Mrs. Hignett quivered, and cast an eye on the hump in the bedclothes

which represented dear Eustace. A cold fear had come upon her.

“‘Dear Eustace!’” she repeated mechanically.

“We’re engaged,” said Jane.

“Engaged! Eustace, is this true?”

“Yes,” said a muffled voice from the interior of the bed.

“And poor Eustace is so worried,” continued Jane, “about the house.”

She went on quickly. “He doesn’t want to deprive you of it, because he

knows what it means to you. So he is hoping—we are both hoping—that you

will accept it as a present when we are married. We really shan’t want

it, you know. We are going to live in London. So you will take it,

won’t you—to please us?”

We all of us, even the greatest of us, have our moments of weakness.

Only a short while back, in this very room, we have seen Jane Hubbard,

that indomitable girl, sobbing brokenly on the carpet. Let us then not

express any surprise at the sudden collapse of one of the world’s

greatest female thinkers. As the meaning of this speech smote on Mrs.

Horace Hignett’s understanding, she sank weeping into a chair. The

ever-present fear that had haunted her had been exorcised. Windles was

hers in perpetuity. The relief was too great. She sat in her chair and

gulped; and Eustace, greatly encouraged, emerged slowly from the

bedclothes like a worm after a thunderstorm.

How long this poignant scene would have lasted, one cannot say. It is a

pity that it was cut short, for I should have liked to dwell upon it.

But at this moment, from the regions downstairs, there suddenly burst

upon the silent night such a whirlwind of sound as effectually

dissipated the tense emotion in the room. Somebody appeared to have

touched off the orchestrion in the drawing-room, and that willing

instrument had begun again in the middle of a bar at the point where

Jane Hubbard had switched it off four afternoons ago. Its wailing

lament for the passing of Summer filled the whole house.

“That’s too bad!” said Jane, a little annoyed. “At this time of night!”

“It’s the burglars!” quavered Mrs. Hignett. In the stress of recent

events she had completely forgotten the existence of those enemies of

Society. “They were dancing in the hall when I arrived, and now they’re

playing the orchestrion!”

“Light-hearted chaps!” said Eustace, admiring the sang-froid of the

criminal world. “Full of spirits!”

“This won’t do,” said Jane Hubbard, shaking her head. “We can’t have

this sort of thing. I’ll go and fetch my gun.”

“They’ll murder you, dear!” panted Mrs. Hignett, clinging to her arm.

Jane Hubbard laughed.

“Murder _me!_” she said amusedly. “I’d like to catch them at it!”

Mrs. Hignett stood staring at the door as Jane closed it softly behind

her.

“Eustace,” she said solemnly, “that is a wonderful girl!”

“Yes! She once killed a panther—or a puma, I forget which—with a

hat-pin!” said Eustace with enthusiasm.

“I could wish you no better wife!” said Mrs. Hignett.

She broke off with a sharp wail. Out in the passage something like a

battery of artillery had roared.

The door opened and Jane Hubbard appeared, slipping a fresh cartridge

into the elephant-gun.

“One of them was popping about outside here,” she announced. “I took a

shot at him, but I’m afraid I missed. The visibility was bad. At any

rate he went away.”

In this last statement she was perfectly accurate. Bream Mortimer, who

had been aroused by the orchestrion and who had come out to see what

was the matter, had gone away at the rate of fifty miles an hour. He

had been creeping down the passage when he found himself suddenly

confronted by a dim figure which, without a word, had attempted to slay

him with an enormous gun. The shot had whistled past his ears and gone

singing down the corridor. This was enough for Bream. He had returned

to his room in three strides, and was now under the bed. The burglars

might take everything in the house and welcome, so that they did not

molest his privacy. That was the way Bream looked at it. And very

sensible of him, too, I consider.

“We’d better go downstairs,” said Jane. “Bring the candle. Not you,

Eustace darling. You stay where you are or you may catch a chill. Don’t

stir out of bed!”

“I won’t,” said Eustace obediently.

§ 4

Of all the leisured pursuits, there are few less attractive to the

thinking man than sitting in a dark cupboard waiting for a house-party

to go to bed; and Sam, who had established himself in the one behind

the piano at a quarter to eight, soon began to feel as if he had been

there for an eternity. He could dimly remember a previous existence in

which he had not been sitting in his present position, but it seemed so

long ago that it was shadowy and unreal to him. The ordeal of spending

the evening in this retreat had not appeared formidable when he had

contemplated it that afternoon in the lane; but, now that he was

actually undergoing it, it was extraordinary how many disadvantages it

had.

Cupboards, as a class, are badly ventilated, and this one seemed to

contain no air at all; and the warmth of the night, combined with the

cupboard’s natural stuffiness, had soon begun to reduce Sam to a

condition of pulp. He seemed to himself to be sagging like an ice-cream

in front of a fire. The darkness, too, weighed upon him. He was

abominably thirsty. Also he wanted to smoke. In addition to this, the

small of his back tickled, and he more than suspected the cupboard of

harbouring mice. Not once or twice but many hundred times he wished

that the ingenious Webster had thought of something simpler.

His was a position which would just have suited one of those Indian

mystics who sit perfectly still for twenty years, contemplating the

Infinite, but it reduced Sam to an almost imbecile state of boredom. He

tried counting sheep. He tried going over his past life in his mind

from the earliest moment he could recollect, and thought he had never

encountered a duller series of episodes. He found a temporary solace by

playing a succession of mental golf-games over all the courses he could

remember, and he was just teeing up for the sixteenth at Muirfield,

after playing Hoylake, St. Andrew’s, Westward Ho, Hanger Hill,

Mid-Surrey, Walton Heath, and Sandwich, when the light ceased to shine

through the crack under the door, and he awoke with a sense of dull

incredulity to the realisation that the occupants of the drawing-room

had called it a day and that his vigil was over.

But was it? Once more alert, Sam became cautious. True, the light

seemed to be off, but did that mean anything in a country-house, where

people had the habit of going and strolling about the garden to all

hours? Probably they were still popping about all over the place. At

any rate, it was not worth risking coming out of his lair. He

remembered that Webster had promised to come and knock an all-clear

signal on the door. It would be safer to wait for that.

But the moments went by, and there was no knock. Sam began to grow

impatient. The last few minutes of waiting in a cupboard are always the

hardest. Time seemed to stretch out again interminably. Once he thought

he heard footsteps but they led to nothing. Eventually, having strained

his ears and finding everything still, he decided to take a chance. He

fished in his pocket for the key, cautiously unlocked the door, opened

it by slow inches, and peered out.

The room was in blackness. The house was still. All was well. With the

feeling of a life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to

crawl stiffly forward; and it was just then that the first of the

disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to

him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and

his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the

cuckoo-clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom

before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession

before subsiding with another rattle; but to Sam it sounded like the

end of the world.

He sat in the darkness, massaging his bruised skull. His hours of

imprisonment in the cupboard had had a bad effect on his nervous

system, and he vacillated between tears of weakness and a militant

desire to get at the cuckoo-clock with a hatchet. He felt that it had

done it on purpose and was now chuckling to itself in fancied security.

For quite a minute he raged silently, and any cuckoo-clock which had

strayed within his reach would have had a bad time of it. Then his

attention was diverted.

So concentrated was Sam on his private vendetta with the clock that no

ordinary happening would have had the power to distract him. What

occurred now was by no means ordinary, and it distracted him like an

electric shock. As he sat on the floor, passing a tender hand over the

egg-shaped bump which had already begun to manifest itself beneath his

hair, something cold and wet touched his face, and paralysed him so

completely both physically and mentally that he did not move a muscle

but just congealed where he sat into a solid block of ice. He felt

vaguely that this was the end. His heart had stopped beating and he

simply could not imagine it ever starting again, and, if your heart

refuses to beat, what hope is there for you?

At this moment something heavy and solid struck him squarely in the

chest, rolling him over. Something gurgled asthmatically in the

darkness. Something began to lick his eyes, ears, and chin in a sort of

ecstasy; and, clutching out, he found his arms full of totally

unexpected bulldog.

“Get out!” whispered Sam tensely, recovering his faculties with a jerk.

“Go away!”

Smith took the opportunity of Sam’s lips having opened to lick the roof

of his mouth. Smith’s attitude in the matter was that Providence in its

all-seeing wisdom had sent him a human being at a moment when he had

reluctantly been compelled to reconcile himself to a total absence of

such indispensable adjuncts to a good time. He had just trotted

downstairs in rather a disconsolate frame of mind after waiting with no

result in front of Webster’s bedroom door, and it was a real treat to

him to meet a man, especially one seated in such a jolly and sociable

manner on the floor. He welcomed Sam like a long-lost friend.

Between Smith and the humans who provided him with dog-biscuits and

occasionally with sweet cakes there had always existed a state of

misunderstanding which no words could remove. The position of the

humans was quite clear; they had elected Smith to his present position

on a straight watch-dog ticket. They expected him to be one of those

dogs who rouse the house and save the spoons. They looked to him to pin

burglars by the leg and hold on till the police arrived. Smith simply

could not grasp such an attitude of mind. He regarded Windles not as a

private house but as a social club, and was utterly unable to see any

difference between the human beings he knew and the strangers who

dropped in for a late chat after the place was locked up. He had no

intention of biting Sam. The idea never entered his head. At the

present moment what he felt about Sam was that he was one of the best

fellows he had ever met and that he loved him like a brother.

Sam, in his unnerved state, could not bring himself to share these

amiable sentiments. He was thinking bitterly that Webster might have

had the intelligence to warn him of bulldogs on the premises. It was

just the sort of woollen-headed thing fellows did, forgetting facts

like that. He scrambled stiffly to his feet and tried to pierce the

darkness that hemmed him in. He ignored Smith, who snuffled sportively

about his ankles, and made for the slightly less black oblong which he

took to be the door leading into the hall. He moved warily, but not

warily enough to prevent his cannoning into and almost upsetting a

small table with a vase on it. The table rocked and the vase jumped,

and the first bit of luck that had come to Sam that night was when he

reached out at a venture and caught it just as it was about to bound on

to the carpet.

He stood there, shaking. The narrowness of the escape turned him cold.

If he had been an instant later, there would have been a crash loud

enough to wake a dozen sleeping houses. This sort of thing could not go

on. He must have light. It might be a risk; there might be a chance of

somebody upstairs seeing it and coming down to investigate; but it was

a risk that must be taken. He declined to go on stumbling about in this

darkness any longer. He groped his way with infinite care to the door,

on the wall adjoining which, he presumed, the electric-light switch

would be. It was nearly ten years since he had last been inside

Windles, and it never occurred to him that in this progressive age even

a woman like his Aunt Adeline, of whom he could believe almost

anything, would still be using candles and oil-lamps as a means of

illumination. His only doubt was whether the switch was where it was in

most houses, near the door.

It is odd to reflect that, as his searching fingers touched the knob, a

delicious feeling of relief came to Samuel Marlowe. This misguided

young man actually felt at that moment that his troubles were over. He

positively smiled as he placed a thumb on the knob and shoved.

He shoved strongly and sharply, and instantaneously there leaped at him

out of the darkness a blare of music which appeared to his disordered

mind quite solid. It seemed to wrap itself round him. It was all over

the place. In a single instant the world had become one vast bellow of

Tosti’s “Good-bye.”

How long he stood there, frozen, he did not know; nor can one say how

long he would have stood there had nothing further come to invite his

notice elsewhere. But, suddenly, drowning even the impromptu concert,

there came from somewhere upstairs the roar of a gun; and, when he

heard that, Sam’s rigid limbs relaxed and a violent activity descended

upon him. He bounded out into the hall, looking to right and to left

for a hiding-place. One of the suits of armour which had been familiar

to him in his boyhood loomed up in front of him, and with the sight

came the recollection of how, when a mere child on his first visit to

Windles, playing hide and seek with his cousin Eustace, he had

concealed himself inside this very suit, and had not only baffled

Eustace through a long summer evening but had wound up by almost

scaring him into a decline by booing at him through the vizor of the

helmet. Happy days, happy days! He leaped at the suit of armour. Having

grown since he was last inside it, he found the helmet a tight fit, but

he managed to get his head into it at last, and the body of the thing

was quite roomy.

“Thank heaven!” said Sam.

He was not comfortable, but comfort just then was not his primary need.

Smith the bulldog, well satisfied with the way the entertainment had

opened, sat down, wheezing slightly, to await developments.

§ 5

He had not long to wait. In a few minutes the hall had filled up

nicely. There was Mr. Mortimer in his shirt-sleeves, Mr. Bennett in

blue pyjamas and a dressing-gown, Mrs. Hignett in a travelling costume,

Jane Hubbard with her elephant-gun, and Billie in a dinner dress. Smith

welcomed them all impartially.

Somebody lit a lamp, and Mrs. Hignett stared speechlessly at the mob.

“Mr. Bennett! Mr. Mortimer!”

“Mrs. Hignett! What are you doing here?”

Mrs. Hignett drew herself up stiffly.

“What an odd question, Mr. Mortimer! I am in my own house!”

“But you rented it to me for the summer. At least, your son did.”

“Eustace let you Windles for the summer!” said Mrs. Hignett

incredulously.

Jane Hubbard returned from the drawing-room, where she had been

switching off the orchestrion.

“Let us talk all that over cosily to-morrow,” she said. “The point now

is that there are burglars in the house.”

“Burglars!” cried Mr. Bennett aghast. “I thought it was you playing

that infernal instrument, Mortimer.”

“What on earth should I play it for at this time of night?” said Mr.

Mortimer irritably.

“It woke me up,” said Mr. Bennett complainingly. “And I had had great

difficulty in dropping off to sleep. I was in considerable pain. I

believe I’ve caught the mumps from young Hignett.”

“Nonsense! You’re always imagining yourself ill,” snapped Mr. Mortimer.

“My face hurts,” persisted Mr. Bennett.

“You can’t expect a face like that not to hurt,” said Mr. Mortimer.

It appeared only too evident that the two old friends were again on the

verge of one of their distressing fallings-out; but Jane Hubbard

intervened once more. This practical-minded girl disliked the

introducing of side-issues into the conversation. She was there to talk

about burglars, and she intended to do so.

“For goodness sake stop it!” she said, almost petulantly for one

usually so superior to emotion. “There’ll be lots of time for

quarrelling to-morrow. Just now we’ve got to catch these....”

“I’m not quarrelling,” said Mr. Bennett.

“Yes, you are,” said Mr. Mortimer.

“I’m not!”

“You are!”

“Don’t argue!”

“I’m not arguing!”

“You are!”

“I’m not!”

Jane Hubbard had practically every noble quality which a woman can

possess with the exception of patience. A patient woman would have

stood by, shrinking from interrupting the dialogue. Jane Hubbard’s

robuster course was to raise the elephant-gun, point it at the front

door, and pull the trigger.

“I thought that would stop you,” she said complacently, as the echoes

died away and Mr. Bennett had finished leaping into the air. She

inserted a fresh cartridge, and sloped arms. “Now, the question is....”

“You made me bite my tongue!” said Mr. Bennett, deeply aggrieved.

“Serve you right!” said Jane placidly. “Now, the question is, have the

fellows got away or are they hiding somewhere in the house? I think

they’re still in the house.”

“The police!” exclaimed Mr. Bennett, forgetting his lacerated tongue

and his other grievances. “We must summon the police!”

“Obviously!” said Mrs. Hignett, withdrawing her fascinated gaze from

the ragged hole in the front door, the cost of repairing which she had

been mentally assessing. “We must send for the police at once.”

“We don’t really need them, you know,” said Jane. “If you’ll all go to

bed and just leave me to potter round with my gun....”

“And blow the whole house to pieces!” said Mrs. Hignett tartly. She had

begun to revise her original estimate of this girl. To her, Windles was

sacred, and anyone who went about shooting holes in it forfeited her

esteem.

“Shall I go for the police?” said Billie. “I could bring them back in

ten minutes in the car.”

“Certainly not!” said Mr. Bennett. “My daughter gadding about all over

the countryside in an automobile at this time of night!”

“If you think I ought not to go alone, I could take Bream.”

“Where _is_ Bream?” said Mr. Mortimer.

The odd fact that Bream was not among those present suddenly presented

itself to the company.

“Where can he be?” said Billie.

Jane Hubbard laughed the wholesome, indulgent laugh of one who is

broad-minded enough to see the humour of the situation even when the

joke is at her expense.

“What a silly girl I am!” she said. “I do believe that was Bream I shot

at upstairs. How foolish of me making a mistake like that!”

“You shot my only son!” cried Mr. Mortimer.

“I shot _at_ him,” said Jane. “My belief is that I missed him. Though

how I came to do it beats me. I don’t suppose I’ve missed a sitter like

that since I was a child in the nursery. Of course,” she proceeded,

looking on the reasonable side, “the visibility wasn’t good, but it’s

no use saying I oughtn’t at least to have winged him, because I ought.”

She shook her head with a touch of self-reproach. “I shall get chaffed

about this if it comes out,” she said regretfully.

“The poor boy must be in his room,” said Mr. Mortimer.

“Under the bed, if you ask me,” said Jane, blowing on the barrel of her

gun and polishing it with the side of her hand. “_He’s_ all right!

Leave him alone, and the housemaid will sweep him up in the morning.”

“Oh, he can’t be!” cried Billie, revolted.

A girl of high spirit, it seemed to her repellent that the man she was

engaged to marry should be displaying such a craven spirit. At that

moment she despised and hated Bream Mortimer. I think she was wrong,

mind you. It is not my place to criticise the little group of people

whose simple annals I am relating—my position is merely that of a

reporter—; but personally I think highly of Bream’s sturdy

common-sense. If somebody loosed off an elephant-gun at me in a dark

corridor, I would climb on to the roof and pull it up after me. Still,

rightly or wrongly, that was how Billie felt; and it flashed across her

mind that Samuel Marlowe, scoundrel though he was, would not have

behaved like this. And for a moment a certain wistfulness added itself

to the varied emotions then engaging her mind.

“I’ll go and look, if you like,” said Jane agreeably. “You amuse

yourselves somehow till I come back.”

She ran easily up the stairs, three at a time. Mr. Mortimer turned to

Mr. Bennett.

“It’s all very well your saying Wilhelmina mustn’t go, but, if she

doesn’t, how can we get the police? The house isn’t on the ’phone, and

nobody else can drive the car.”

“That’s true,” said Mr. Bennett, wavering.

“Of course, we could drop them a post-card first thing to-morrow

morning,” said Mr. Mortimer in his nasty sarcastic way.

“I’m going,” said Billie resolutely. It occurred to her, as it has

occurred to so many women before her, how helpless men are in a crisis.

The temporary withdrawal of Jane Hubbard had had the effect which the

removal of the rudder has on a boat. “It’s the only thing to do. I

shall be back in no time.”

She stepped firmly to the coat-rack, and began to put on her

motoring-cloak. And just then Jane Hubbard came downstairs, shepherding

before her a pale and glassy-eyed Bream.

“Right under the bed,” she announced cheerfully, “making a noise like a

piece of fluff in order to deceive burglars.”

Billie cast a scornful look at her fiancé. Absolutely unjustified, in

my opinion, but nevertheless she cast it. But it had no effect at all.

Terror had stunned Bream Mortimer’s perceptions. His was what the

doctors call a penumbral mental condition.

“Bream,” said Billie, “I want you to come in the car with me to fetch

the police.”

“All right,” said Bream.

“Get your coat.”

“All right,” said Bream.

“And cap.”

“All right,” said Bream.

He followed Billie in a docile manner out through the front door, and

they made their way to the garage at the back of the house, both

silent. The only difference between their respective silences was that

Billie’s was thoughtful, while Bream’s was just the silence of a man

who has unhitched his brain and is getting along as well as he can

without it.

In the hall they had left, Jane Hubbard once more took command of

affairs.

“Well, that’s something done,” she said, scratching Smith’s broad back

with the muzzle of her weapon. “Something accomplished, something done,

has earned a night’s repose. Not that we’re going to get it yet. I

think those fellows are hiding somewhere, and we ought to search the

house and rout them out. It’s a pity Smith isn’t a bloodhound. He’s a

good cake-hound, but as a watch-dog he doesn’t finish in the first

ten.”

The cake-hound, charmed at the compliment, frisked about her feet like

a young elephant.

“The first thing to do,” continued Jane, “is to go through the

ground-floor rooms....” She paused to strike a match against the suit

of armour nearest to her, a proceeding which elicited a sharp cry of

protest from Mrs. Hignett, and lit a cigarette. “I’ll go first, as I’ve

got a gun....” She blew a cloud of smoke. “I shall want somebody with

me to carry a light, and....”

“Tchoo!”

“What?” said Jane.

“I didn’t speak,” said Mr. Mortimer. “Who am I to speak?” he went on

bitterly. “Who am I that it should be supposed that I have anything

sensible to suggest?”

“Somebody spoke,” said Jane. “I....”

“Achoo!”

“Do you feel a draught, Mr. Bennett?” cried Jane sharply, wheeling

round on him.

“There _is_ a draught,” began Mr. Bennett.

“Well, finish sneezing and I’ll go on.”

“I didn’t sneeze!”

“Somebody sneezed.”

“It seemed to come from just behind you,” said Mrs. Hignett nervously.

“It couldn’t have come from just behind me,” said Jane, “because there

isn’t anything behind me from which it could have....” She stopped

suddenly, in her eyes the light of understanding, on her face the set

expression which was wont to come to it on the eve of action. “Oh!” she

said in a different voice, a voice which was cold and tense and

sinister. “Oh, I see!” She raised her gun, and placed a muscular

forefinger on the trigger. “Come out of that!” she said. “Come out of

that suit of armour and let’s have a look at you!”

“I can explain everything,” said a muffled voice through the vizor of

the helmet. “I can—_achoo!_” The smoke of the cigarette tickled Sam’s

nostrils again, and he suspended his remarks.

“I shall count three,” said Jane Hubbard, “One—two—”

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” said Sam petulantly.

“You’d better!” said Jane.

“I can’t get this dashed helmet off!”

“If you don’t come quick, I’ll blow it off.”

Sam stepped out into the hall, a picturesque figure which combined the

costumes of two widely separated centuries. Modern as far as the neck,

he slipped back at that point to the Middle Ages.

“Hands up!” commanded Jane Hubbard.

“My hands _are_ up!” retorted Sam querulously, as he wrenched at his

unbecoming head-wear.

“Never mind trying to raise your hat,” said Jane. “If you’ve lost the

combination, we’ll dispense with the formalities. What we’re anxious to

hear is what you’re doing in the house at this time of night, and who

your pals are. Come along, my lad, make a clean breast of it and

perhaps you’ll get off easier. Are you a gang?”

“Do I look like a gang?”

“If you ask me what you look like....”

“My name is Marlowe ... Samuel Marlowe....”

“Alias what?”

“Alias nothing! I say my name is Samuel Marlowe....”

An explosive roar burst from Mr. Bennett.

“The scoundrel! I know him! I forbade him the house, and....”

“And by what right did you forbid people my house, Mr. Bennett?” said

Mrs. Hignett with acerbity.

“I’ve rented the house, Mortimer and I rented it from your son....”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Jane Hubbard. “Never mind about that. So you know

this fellow, do you?”

“I don’t know him!”

“You said you did.”

“I refuse to know him!” went on Mr. Bennett. “I won’t know him! I

decline to have anything to do with him!”

“But you identify him?”

“If he says he’s Samuel Marlowe,” assented Mr. Bennett grudgingly, “I

suppose he is. I can’t imagine anybody saying he was Samuel Marlowe if

he didn’t know it could be proved against him.”

“_Are_ you my nephew Samuel?” said Mrs. Hignett.

“Yes,” said Sam.

“Well, what are you doing in my house?”

“It’s _my_ house,” said Mr. Bennett, “for the summer, Henry Mortimer’s

and mine. Isn’t that right, Henry?”

“Dead right,” said Mr. Mortimer.

“There!” said Mr. Bennett. “You hear? And when Henry Mortimer says a

thing, it’s so. There’s nobody’s word I’d take before Henry

Mortimer’s.”

“When Rufus Bennett makes an assertion,” said Mr. Mortimer, highly

flattered by these kind words, “you can bank on it. Rufus Bennett’s

word is his bond. Rufus Bennett is a white man!”

The two old friends, reconciled once more, clasped hands with a good

deal of feeling.

“I am not disputing Mr. Bennett’s claim to belong to the Caucasian

race,” said Mrs. Hignett testily. “I merely maintain that this house is

m....”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” interrupted Jane. “You can thresh all that out

some other time. The point is, if this fellow is your nephew, I don’t

see what we can do. We’ll have to let him go.”

“I came to this house,” said Sam, raising his vizor to facilitate

speech, “to make a social call....”

“At this hour of the night!” snapped Mrs. Hignett. “You always were an

inconsiderate boy, Samuel.”

“I came to inquire after poor Eustace’s mumps. I’ve only just heard

that the poor chap was ill.”

“He’s getting along quite well,” said Jane, melting. “If I had known

you were so fond of Eustace....”

“All right, is he?” said Sam.

“Well, not quite all right, but he’s going on very nicely.”

“Fine!”

“Eustace and I are engaged, you know!”

“No, really? Splendid! I can’t see you very distinctly—how those

Johnnies in the old days ever contrived to put up a scrap with things

like this on their heads beats me—but you sound a good sort. I hope

you’ll be very happy.”

“Thank you ever so much, Mr. Marlowe. I’m sure we shall.”

“Eustace is one of the best.”

“How nice of you to say so.”

“All this,” interrupted Mrs. Hignett, who had been a chaffing auditor

of this interchange of courtesies, “is beside the point. Why did you

dance in the hall, Samuel, and play the orchestrion?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Bennett, reminded of his grievance, “waking people up.”

“Scaring us all to death!” complained Mr. Mortimer.

“I remember you as a boy, Samuel,” said Mrs. Hignett, “lamentably

lacking in consideration for others and concentrated only on your

selfish pleasures. You seem to have altered very little.”

“Don’t ballyrag the poor man,” said Jane Hubbard. “Be human! Lend him a

sardine opener!”

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” said Mrs. Hignett. “I never liked him

and I dislike him now. He has got himself into this trouble through his

own wrong-headedness.”

“It’s not his fault his head’s the wrong size,” said Jane.

“He must get himself out as best he can,” said Mrs. Hignett.

“Very well,” said Sam with bitter dignity. “Then I will not trespass

further on your hospitality, Aunt Adeline. I have no doubt the local

blacksmith will be able to get this damned thing off me. I shall go to

him now. I will let you have the helmet back by parcel-post at the

earliest opportunity. Good-night!” He walked coldly to the front door.

“And there are people,” he remarked sardonically, “who say that blood

is thicker than water! I’ll bet they never had any aunts!”

He tripped over the mat and withdrew.

§ 6

Billie meanwhile, with Bream trotting docilely at her heels, had

reached the garage and started the car. Like all cars which have been

spending a considerable time in secluded inaction, it did not start

readily. At each application of Billie’s foot on the self-starter, it

emitted a tinny and reproachful sound and then seemed to go to sleep

again. Eventually, however, the engines began to revolve and the

machine moved reluctantly out into the drive.

“The battery must be run down,” said Billie.

“All right,” said Bream.

Billie cast a glance of contempt at him out of the corner of her eyes.

She hardly knew why she had spoken to him except that, as all motorists

are aware, the impulse to say rude things about their battery is almost

irresistible. To a motorist the art of conversation consists in rapping

out scathing remarks either about the battery or the oiling-system.

Billie switched on the head-lights and turned the car down the dark

drive. She was feeling thoroughly upset. Her idealistic nature had

received a painful shock on the discovery of the yellow streak in

Bream. To call it a yellow streak was to understate the facts. It was a

great belt of saffron encircling his whole soul. That she, Wilhelmina

Bennett, who had gone through the world seeking a Galahad, should

finish her career as the wife of a man who hid under beds simply

because people shot at him with elephant guns was abhorrent to her.

Why, Samuel Marlowe would have perished rather than do such a thing.

You might say what you liked about Samuel Marlowe—and, of course, his

habit of playing practical jokes put him beyond the pale—but nobody

could question his courage. Look at the way he had dived overboard that

time in the harbour at New York! Billie found herself thinking

wistfully about Samuel Marlowe.

There are only a few makes of car in which you can think about anything

except the actual driving without stalling the engines, and Mr.

Bennett’s Twin-Six Complex was not one of them. It stopped as if it had

been waiting for the signal.... The noise of the engine died away. The

wheels ceased to revolve. The car did everything except lie down. It

was a particularly pig-headed car and right from the start it had been

unable to see the sense in this midnight expedition. It seemed now to

have the idea that if it just lay low and did nothing, presently it

would be taken back to its cosy garage.

Billie trod on the self-starter. Nothing happened.

“You’ll have to get down and crank her,” she said curtly.

“All right,” said Bream.

“Well, go on,” said Billie impatiently.

“Eh?”

“Get out and crank her.”

Bream emerged for an instant from his trance.

“All right,” he said.

The art of cranking a car is one that is not given to all men. Some of

our greatest and wisest stand helpless before the task. It is a job

towards the consummation of which a noble soul and a fine brain help

not at all. A man may have all the other gifts and yet be unable to

accomplish a task which the fellow at the garage does with one quiet

flick of the wrist without even bothering to remove his chewing gum.

This being so, it was not only unkind but foolish of Billie to grow

impatient as Bream’s repeated efforts failed of their object. It was

wrong of her to click her tongue, and certainly she ought not to have

told Bream that he was not fit to churn butter. But women are an

emotional sex and must be forgiven much in moments of mental stress.

“Give it a good sharp twist,” she said.

“All right,” said Bream.

“Here, let me do it,” cried Billie.

She jumped down and snatched the thingummy from his hand. With bent

brows and set teeth she wrenched it round. The engine gave a faint

protesting mutter, like a dog that has been disturbed in its sleep, and

was still once more.

“May I help?”

It was not Bream who spoke but a strange voice—a sepulchral voice, the

sort of voice someone would have used in one of Edgar Allen Poe’s

cheerful little tales if he had been buried alive and were speaking

from the family vault. Coming suddenly out of the night it affected

Bream painfully. He uttered a sharp exclamation and gave a bound which,

if he had been a Russian dancer would undoubtedly have caused the

management to raise his salary. He was in no frame of mind to bear up

under sudden sepulchral voices.

Billie, on the other hand, was pleased. The high-spirited girl was just

beginning to fear that she was unequal to the task which she had chided

Bream for being unable to perform and this was mortifying her.

“Oh, would you mind? Thank you so much. The self-starter has gone

wrong.”

Into the glare of the headlights there stepped a strange figure,

strange, that is to say, in these tame modern times. In the Middle Ages

he would have excited no comment at all. Passers-by would simply have

said to themselves, “Ah, another of those knights off after the

dragons!” and would have gone on their way with a civil greeting. But

in the present age it is always somewhat startling to see a helmeted

head pop up in front of your motor car. At any rate, it startled Bream.

I will go further. It gave Bream the shock of a lifetime. He had had

shocks already that night, but none to be compared with this. Or

perhaps it was that this shock, coming on top of those shocks, affected

him more disastrously than it would have done if it had been the first

of the series instead of the last. One may express the thing briefly by

saying that, as far as Bream was concerned, Sam’s unconventional

appearance put the lid on it. He did not hesitate. He did not pause to

make comments or ask questions. With a single cat-like screech which

took years off the lives of the abruptly wakened birds roosting in the

neighbouring trees, he dashed away towards the house and, reaching his

room, locked the door and pushed the bed, the chest of drawers, two

chairs, the towel stand, and three pairs of boots against it.

Out on the drive Billie was staring at the man in armour who had now,

with a masterful wrench which informed the car right away that he would

stand no nonsense, set the engine going again.

“Why—why,” she stammered, “why are you wearing that thing on your

head?”

“Because I can’t get it off.”

Hollow as the voice was, Billie recognised it.

“S—Mr. Marlowe!” she exclaimed.

“Get in,” said Sam. He had seated himself at the steering wheel. “Where

can I take you?”

“Go away!” said Billie.

“Get in!”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I want to talk to _you!_ Get in!”

“I won’t.”

Sam bent over the side of the car, put his hands under her arms, lifted

her like a kitten, and deposited her on the seat beside him. Then

throwing in the clutch, he drove at an ever-increasing speed down the

drive and out into the silent road. Strange creatures of the night came

and went in the golden glow of the head-lights.

§ 7

“Put me down,” said Billie.

“You’d get hurt if I did, travelling at this pace.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Drive about till you promise to marry me.”

“You’ll have to drive a long time.”

“Right ho!” said Sam.

The car took a corner and purred down a lane. Billie reached out a hand

and grabbed at the steering wheel.

“Of course, if you _want_ to smash up in a ditch!” said Sam, righting

the car with a wrench.

“You’re a brute!” said Billie.

“Caveman stuff,” explained Sam, “I ought to have tried it before.”

“I don’t know what you expect to gain by this.”

“That’s all right,” said Sam, “I know what I’m about.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I thought you would be.”

“I’m not going to talk to you.”

“All right. Lean back and doze off. We’ve the whole night before us.”

“What do you mean?” cried Billie, sitting up with a jerk.

“Have you ever been to Scotland?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought we might push up there. We’ve got to go somewhere and, oddly

enough, I’ve never been to Scotland.”

Billie regarded him blankly.

“Are you crazy?”

“I’m crazy about you. If you knew what I’ve gone through to-night for

your sake you’d be more sympathetic. I love you,” said Sam, swerving to

avoid a rabbit. “And what’s more, you know it.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will!” said Sam confidently. “How about North Wales? I’ve heard

people speak well of North Wales. Shall we head for North Wales?”

“I’m engaged to Bream Mortimer.”

“Oh no, that’s all off,” Sam assured her.

“It’s not!”

“Right off!” said Sam firmly. “You could never bring yourself to marry

a man who dashed away like that and deserted you in your hour of need.

Why, for all he knew, I might have tried to murder you. And he ran

away! No, no, we eliminate Bream Mortimer once and for all. He won’t

do!”

This was so exactly what Billie was feeling herself that she could not

bring herself to dispute it.

“Anyway, I hate _you!_” she said, giving the conversation another turn.

“Why? In the name of goodness, why?”

“How dared you make a fool of me in your father’s office that morning?”

“It was a sudden inspiration. I had to do something to make you think

well of me, and I thought it might meet the case if I saved you from a

lunatic with a pistol. It wasn’t my fault that you found out.”

“I shall never forgive you!”

“Why not Cornwall?” said Sam. “The Riviera of England! Let’s go to

Cornwall. I beg your pardon. What were you saying?”

“I said I should never forgive you and I won’t.”

“Well, I hope you’re fond of motoring,” said Sam, “because we’re going

on till you do.”

“Very well! Go on, then!”

“I intend to. Of course, it’s all right now while it’s dark. But have

you considered what is going to happen when the sun gets up? We shall

have a sort of triumphal procession. How the small boys will laugh when

they see a man in a helmet go by in a car! I shan’t notice them myself

because it’s a little difficult to notice anything from inside this

thing, but I’m afraid it will be rather unpleasant for you.... I know

what we’ll do. We’ll go to London and drive up and down Piccadilly!

That will be fun!”

There was a long silence.

“Is my helmet on straight?” said Sam.

Billie made no reply. She was looking before her down the

hedge-bordered road. Always a girl of sudden impulses, she had just

made a curious discovery, to wit that she was enjoying herself. There

was something so novel and exhilarating about this midnight ride that

imperceptibly her dismay and resentment had ebbed away. She found

herself struggling with a desire to laugh.

“Lochinvar!” said Sam suddenly. “That’s the name of the chap I’ve been

trying to think of! Did you ever read about Lochinvar? ‘Young

Lochinvar’ the poet calls him rather familiarly. He did just what I’m

doing now, and everybody thought very highly of him. I suppose in those

days a helmet was just an ordinary part of what the well-dressed man

should wear. Odd how fashions change!”

Till now dignity and wrath combined had kept Billie from making any

inquiries into a matter which had excited in her a quite painful

curiosity. In her new mood she resisted the impulse no longer.

“_Why_ are you wearing that thing?”

“I told you. Purely and simply because I can’t get it off. You don’t

suppose I’m trying to set a new style in gents’ head-wear, do you?”

“But why did you ever put it on?”

“Well, it was this way. After I came out of the cupboard in the

drawing-room....”

“What!”

“Didn’t I tell you about that? Oh yes, I was sitting in the cupboard in

the drawing-room from dinner-time onwards. After that I came out and

started cannoning about among Aunt Adeline’s china, so I thought I’d

better switch the light on. Unfortunately I switched on some sort of

musical instrument instead. And then somebody started shooting. So,

what with one thing and another, I thought it would be best to hide

somewhere. I hid in one of the suits of armour in the hall.”

“Were you inside there all the time we were...?”

“Yes. I say, that was funny about Bream, wasn’t it? Getting under the

bed, I mean.”

“Don’t let’s talk about Bream.”

“That’s the right spirit! I like to see it! All right, we won’t. Let’s

get back to the main issue. Will you marry me?”

“But why did you come to the house at all?”

“To see you.”

“To see me! At that time of night?”

“Well, perhaps not actually to see you.” Sam was a little perplexed for

a moment. Something told him that it would be injudicious to reveal his

true motive and thereby risk disturbing the harmony which he felt had

begun to exist between them. “To be near you! To be in the same house

with you!” he went on vehemently feeling that he had struck the right

note. “You don’t know the anguish I went through after I read that

letter of yours. I was mad! I was ... well, to return to the point,

will you marry me?”

Billie sat looking straight before her. The car, now on the main road,

moved smoothly on.

“Will you marry me?”

Billie rested her hand on her chin and searched the darkness with

thoughtful eyes.

“Will you marry me?”

The car raced on.

“Will you marry me?” said Sam. “Will you marry me? Will you marry me?”

“Oh, don’t talk like a parrot,” cried Billie. “It reminds me of Bream.”

“But will you?”

“Yes,” said Billie.

Sam brought the car to a standstill with a jerk, probably very bad for

the tyres.

“Did you say ‘yes’?”

“Yes!”

“Darling!” said Sam, leaning towards her. “Oh, curse this helmet!”

“Why?”

“Well, I rather wanted to kiss you and it hampers me.”

“Let me try and get it off. Bend down!”

“Ouch!” said Sam.

“It’s coming. There! How helpless men are!”

“We need a woman’s tender care,” said Sam depositing the helmet on the

floor of the car and rubbing his smarting ears. “Billie!”

“Sam!”

“You angel!”

“You’re rather a darling after all,” said Billie. “But you want keeping

in order,” she added severely.

“You will do that when we’re married. When we’re married!” he repeated

luxuriously. “How splendid it sounds!”

“The only trouble is,” said Billie, “father won’t hear of it.”

“No, he won’t. Not till it is all over,” said Sam.

He started the car again.

“What are you going to do?” said Billie. “Where are you going?”

“To London,” said Sam. “It may be news to you but the old lawyer like

myself knows that, by going to Doctors’ Commons or the Court of Arches

or somewhere or by routing the Archbishop of Canterbury out of bed or

something, you can get a special licence and be married almost before

you know where you are. My scheme—roughly—is to dig this special

licence out of whoever keeps such things, have a bit of breakfast, and

then get married at our leisure before lunch at a registrar’s.”

“Oh, not a registrar’s!” said Billie.

“No?”

“I should hate a registrar’s.”

“Very well, angel. Just as you say. We’ll go to a church. There are

millions of churches in London. I’ve seen them all over the place.” He

mused for a moment. “Yes, you’re quite right,” he said. “A church is

the thing. It’ll please Webster.”

“Webster?”

“Yes, he’s rather keen on the church bells never having rung out so

blithe a peal before. And we must consider Webster’s feelings. After

all, he brought us together.”

“Webster? How?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you all about that some other time,” said Sam. “Just for

the moment I want to sit quite still and think. Are you comfortable?

Fine! Then off we go.”

The birds in the trees fringing the road stirred and twittered grumpily

as the noise of the engine disturbed their slumbers. But, if they had

only known it, they were in luck. At any rate, the worst had not

befallen them, for Sam was too happy to sing.

THE END