A Safety Match/Chapter 4

first member of the Rectory household whose eyes opened on Sunday morning was the Mr. Dawks who has not previously been mentioned in this narrative. He was a dog. The term may include almost anything, which is perhaps fortunate for Mr Dawks; otherwise it might have been necessary to class him under some more elastic heading. Of his ancestry nothing was known, though many conjectures could have been made, and most of them would have been correct. He had been found lying half-dead in a country lane by Daphne six years ago, and though mistaken at the time for a derelict monkey jettisoned from some migratory hurdy-gurdy, had subsequently proved to be a mongrel puppy of a few months old. Regular meals and ripening years had developed him into a sort of general epitome of all the dogs that ever existed. He possessed points which, exhibited individually, would have gained many marks at Cruft's Dog-Show. His tail would have increased the market value of a Chow fourfold; his shoulders and forelegs would have done credit to a prize bull-terrier; his ears would have inflated the self-esteem of the silkiest spaniel in existence; and his lower jaw would have been regarded as an asset by an alligator. His manners were without reproach, but were derived rather from mental vacuity than nobility of character; for with the deportment of an hidalgo he combined the intelligence of a chorus lady.

His name, as already mentioned, was Mr Dawks, but he responded with equal amiability to "Angel Child" or "Beautiful One" (Daphne); "Flea-Club" (Ally); "Puss, puss!" (Nicky); and "Tank-Engine" (Stiffy), to whose mechanical mind bandy legs and laboured breathing suggested a short wheel-base and leaky outside-cylinders.

Mr Dawks, having arisen from his nightly resting-place outside Daphne Vereker's bedroom door, strolled downstairs to the study. The Rector was frequently to be found there early in the morning, and were he not too deeply absorbed in some dusty volume, there might be biscuits. But the room was empty. Mr Dawks laboriously remounted the staircase and scratched delicately at his mistress's bedroom door.

He was admitted, and found Daphne, in dressing-gown and slippers, preparing for her Sunday morning round, in which she doubled the parts of what is known in the North of England as a "knocker-up" and mistress of the wardrobe; for the week's clean garments were always distributed on these occasions. The pair set forth together.

After a tap at her father's door, answered by a melodious "Good-morning, daughter!", Daphne proceeded to the regions above. Here upon the landing she encountered her youngest sister, who ought properly to have been dressing in the bedroom which she shared with Cilly. Instead, she was sitting resignedly outside the door upon a bundle composed of her Sabbath garments. As she was obviously posing for the excitation of sympathy, Daphne ignored her and passed into the bedroom, where the window-blind was flapping in the breeze and Cilly lay in a condition of almost total eclipse (if we except a long tawny pig-tail) under the bed-clothes.

"Cilly," inquired Daphne, "what's Nicky doing outside?"

"I kicked her out," replied a muffled voice.

"Why?"

"Well"—Cilly poked her head, tortoise-fashion, from under its covering—"she cheeked me—about"—the head retired again—"something."

"Bobby Gill, I suppose," remarked Daphne calmly.

Cilly's countenance reappeared, rosily flushed with healthy sleep and maiden modesty.

"Yes."

"Well, you must take her in again," said Daphne. "She's only playing up for a cold, sitting out there, and it will be a score for her if she can sniff the house down to-morrow."

"All right," said Cilly resignedly. "I suppose I can pay her out some other way."

"I wouldn't, if I were you," advised the elder sister. "She'll only wait till she gets you and Bobby together, and then say something awful. It's your own fault, dear. You do ask for it, you know."

Cilly, whose flirtations were more numerous than discreet, sighed deeply, and rolled a pair of large and dreamy eyes upon her sister.

"Daph, don't you ever fall in love with men? Well—boys, if you like!" she continued, parrying an unspoken comment. "I know I do overdo it a bit; but you—well, you never do it at all. Don't you love to feel them edging up to you, and getting pink in the face, and trying to think of things to say to you, and offering to take you—"

"No," said Daphne decidedly; "they bore me. Barring Dad and Mr Dawks and the boys, I have no use for males. Besides, I'm always too busy to bother with them: they waste so much of your time. Now, my child, if you want any breakfast you had better get up. I must go and see the boys."

She departed, and with a passing admonition to Nicky to abandon her vigil and be sure to wash her neck, continued on her way, still accompanied by the faithful Dawks, to the chamber occupied by her two youngest brothers.

Here peace reigned. Stiffy, one of whose chief joys in life was the study of the British Railway System, from Automatic Couplings to Newspaper Specials, was sitting up in bed with an old Bradshaw, laboriously ascertaining by how many routes and with how few changes the ordinary railway maniac might travel from Merthyr-Tydvil to Stockton-on-Tees. At the other end of the room the ever-occupied Anthony, with his night-shirt for a surplice and a stocking for a stole, was standing by an open grave (the hearthrug) rehearsing the opening passages of the Service for the Burial of the Dead,—an exercise to which, in common with various other ecclesiastical offices, he was much addicted.

Daphne, having kissed Stiffy and gravely given her verdict upon a knotty point which was exercising that scrupulous youth's mind, namely, whether it was permissible by the rules of the game to include in his schedule of connections a train which ran on Thursdays Only, handed him his weekly dole of clean linen and turned to the youngest member of the family.

"Good-morning, Tony dear," she said cheerfully.

The celebrant, who, true artist that he was, disliked unnecessary abruptness in his transitions, stopped short in the Ninetieth Psalm.

"Dearly Beloved Brethren," he gabbled in an apologetic undertone, "I am called for a moment from the side of this the last resting-place of our lamented sister"—apparently it was a lady friend he was interring—"by other business; but I shall be back in a minute." Then, unwinding the stocking from about his neck: "Daphne, those new vests are beastly scratchy. Must I wear them?"

"I know, old man," responded his sister sympathetically. "But they've been bought and paid for—horribly dear, too!—so you must lump it. Try wearing them inside out for a time. That takes the edge off a bit."

And thus, with sage counsel and practical suggestion (together with a brief whistle to Mr Dawks, who was moistening his internal clay at the water-jug), our young Minerva passed on to the sleeping-place of her beloved Ally.

Rather to her surprise, Mr Aloysius Vereker was awake and out of bed. The reason was plain. Before him upon the dressing-table lay a pot of shaving-soap of a widely advertised brand, a new shaving-brush, a sixpenny bottle of bay rum, and a lather dish of red indiarubber,—youthful extravagances to which the hardened shaver of twenty years' standing, who smears himself with ordinary Brown Windsor out of the soap-dish and wipes his razor on a piece of newspaper or the window-curtain, looks back with mingled amusement and regret. In his hand gleamed a new razor.

"Careful!" he gasped through a sea of lather. "Don't shake the room, kid!"

Daphne sat cautiously down upon the bed, and surveyed the operator with unfeigned pride and enthusiasm. She clasped her hands.

"Ally, how splendid! When did you begin doing it?"

Ally, weathering a hairless and slippery corner, replied:—

"Third time. I'm doing it chiefly to make something grow. A man simply has to shave after he gets into the Fifteen: you look such a fool on Saturday nights if you don't. A chap in our house called Mallock, who has had his colours four years, has a beard about half-an-inch long by Friday. He's a gorgeous sight."

Daphne shuddered slightly.

Ally continued.

"I don't expect to rival him, of course, but I should like to have something to scrape off in the dormitory. My fag always grins so when he brings me my shaving-water—little tick!"

Daphne was too well versed in the eccentricities of the young of the male species to experience the slightest feeling of surprise at her brother's singular ambition. She merely wrapped a blanket round her shoulders and settled herself against the head of the bed, anxiously contemplating the progress of a sanguinary campaign in the region surrounding Ally's jugular vein.

Presently operations came to a conclusion; the traces of battle were obliterated with much sponging and spraying; and the pair sat and gossiped amicably while Ally stropped his razor and put studs in his Sunday shirt.

It was a full quarter of an hour before Daphne returned to her room, for her Sunday morning call upon Ally was always a protracted affair. But before she left she had, after the usual blandishments, exacted from him a promise that he would come to church. Their father never exercised any compulsion in this matter; but if any member of the family did stay at home on Sunday morning, the Rector's mute distress was such as to blight the spirits of the household for the rest of the day; and Daphne always exerted herself to the full to round up her entire flock in the Rectory pew at the appointed hour. The most recalcitrant members thereof were Ally and Nicky, but the former could usually be cajoled and the latter coerced.

After breakfast the Rector retired to his study to con his sermon; and not long afterwards was to be seen, key in hand, passing through the wicket-gate which led from the garden into the churchyard. Having tolled the church bell for five minutes, he busied himself at the altar, and then turned up the lessons at the lectern, marking these same in plain figures; for the Squire, who fulfilled the office of reader, required careful guidance in this respect. (He had been known to read the same lesson twice; also the Second Lesson before the First; and once he had turned over two pages together towards the end of a long chapter, and embarked with growing huskiness and visible indignation upon a supplementary voyage of forty-seven verses.)

Presently the Rector returned to the house for his surplice; and ten minutes later, a tall and saintly figure, followed his hobnailed and bullet-headed choristers into the chancel.

Snayling Church, though a diminutive building, was one of the oldest of its kind in England. The tower was square and stumpy, and had served as a haven of refuge more than once. A later generation, following the pious but unnecessary fashion of the day, had erected upon its summit a steeple of homely design, which indicated the route to heaven in an officious and altogether gratuitous manner. Inside the building itself the roof was supported by massive stone pillars and Norman arches. Beneath the floor lay folk long dead, their names, virtues, and destination set forth in many curious inscriptions in stone and brass, all greatly prized by the tourist with his tracing-paper and heel-ball. The chancel contained a real Crusader, who reclined, sword in hand and feet crossed, upon a massive sarcophagus, his good lady by his side. Tony Vereker had woven many a legend about him, you may be sure.

Each of the tiny transepts contained two square pews, decently veiled from the public gaze by red curtains. Those on the north side belonged respectively to the Squire, whose arrival in church with his wife and four daughters always served as an intimation to the organist—Mr Pack, the schoolmaster—that it was eleven o'clock and time to wind up the voluntary; and old Lady Curlew of Hainings, who invariably arrived five minutes before the hour, accompanied by her maid; who, having packed her mistress into a corner of the pew with cushions and hassocks, retired discreetly to the free seats by the door.

Of the pews in the south transept one was the property of the Lord of the Manor, the Marquis of Kirkley. It was seldom occupied, for his lordship suffered from the misfortune (which modern legislation is doing so much to alleviate) of possessing more residences than he could comfortably live in. His adjacent seat, Kirkley Abbey, was seldom open except for a few weeks during the pheasant season; and even the recurrence of that momentous period did not postulate undue congestion in the family pew.

The other pew was the Rector's, and here Daphne succeeded on this particular Sabbath morning in corralling the full strength of her troupe.

Non sine pulvere, however. Ally, as already related, had proved fairly tractable, but Nicky (who just at present stood badly in need of the services of a competent exorcist) had almost evaded ecclesiastical conscription by a new and ingenious device. At ten-fifteen precisely she had fallen heavily down a flight of two steps and sprained her ankle. Unsympathetic Daphne, experienced in the detection of every form of malingering, had despatched her upstairs with a bottle of Mr Elliman's strongest embrocation—the property of Ally—with instructions to anoint the injured member and report herself for duty at ten-forty-five prompt. At the appointed hour Nicky, limping painfully and smiling heroically, had joined the rest of the family in the hall.

Presently Ally remarked casually:—

"Rotten stink here. Furniture polish, or something."

"Yes—filthy reek!" agreed Stiffy.

"It's turpentine," cried Cilly, crinkling her nose.

"It's Elliman," said Tony.

"It's you, Nicky!" said everybody at once.

Daphne, who was drawing on her gloves, peeled them off again with some deliberation, and took her youngest sister by the shoulders.

"Nicky," she inquired, "how much Elliman did you use?"

That infant martyr, wincing ostentatiously, delicately protruded a foot, and exhibited a long black leg heavily swathed from knee to instep under her stocking with a bandage of colossal dimensions.

"Not more than I could help, Daph," she said. "I found one or two other bruises on my—all over me, in fact: so I—I just put a little Elliman on each. I didn't want to be a trouble to any one, so—"

"Run upstairs, Stiffy," Daphne interpolated swiftly, "and see how much Elliman is left in the bottle."

By this time Cilly had thrown open the front door and staircase windows, and the remainder of the Vereker family were fanning themselves with their Sunday hats and ostentatiously fighting for breath—an exercise in which they persevered until Stiffy reappeared carrying an empty bottle.

"Two bobs' worth!" shouted Ally. "And I meant it to last for months! Nicky, you little sweep!"

Daphne glanced at the hall clock.

"Fourteen minutes!" she calculated frantically. "Yes, it can just be done. Nicky, my cherub, you shall come to church this morning if I have to scrape you. Go on, you others! I'll follow myself as quickly as I can."

The last sentence was delivered far up the staircase, which Miss Vereker was ascending with flying feet, a tearful and unwilling appendage trailing behind her. Next moment the bathroom door banged, and the departing worshippers heard both taps turned on.

At two minutes past eleven precisely Daphne and Nicky, the former cool, collected, and as prettily dressed as any woman in the congregation, the latter scarlet as if from recent parboiling, walked demurely down the aisle just as the choir entered the chancel, lustily bellowing a hymn which drew attention to the advantages accruing in the next world to that Servant of the Lord who should be found Waiting in his Office, in a Posture not specified—Tony used often to wonder what would happen if the Day of Judgment should fall upon a Bank holiday or Saturday afternoon—and joined the rest of the family in the Rectory pew.

A sermon, we all know, offers unique facilities for quiet reflection. As their father's silvery voice rose and fell in the cadences of his discourse—he had soared far above the heads of his bucolic audience, and was now disporting himself in a delectable but quite inaccessible æther of his own, where the worshippers (such of them as had not yielded to slothful repose) followed his evolutions with mystified and respectful awe, much as a crowd of citizens in a busy street gape upwards at the gambols of an aeroplane—the Rectory children wedged themselves into their own particular nooks of the pew, and prepared to get through the next twenty minutes in characteristic fashion.

Ally closed his eyes and assumed an attitude of slumber, as befitted his years and dignity. But he was not asleep. He did not look comfortable. Perhaps his breakfast had disagreed with him, or possibly he was contemplating within himself the vision of a receding University and an all-too-adjacent office-stool. Daphne, with her eyes fixed on the wall opposite and her brow puckered, was pondering some domestic problem—her own extravagantly small feet, mayhap, or Wednesday's hypothetical leg of mutton. Despite her burden of care, her face looked absurdly round and childish under her big beaver hat. One hand supported her chin in a characteristic pose, the other controlled the movements of the restless Anthony, who was impersonating something of a vibratory nature. Cilly, with glowing eyes and parted lips, was reading the Marriage Service in her Prayerbook. Nicky, whose recent ablutions had apparently purged her of outward sin only, had pulled forward two long wisps of black hair from behind her ears, and by crossing these under her nose had provided herself with a very realistic and terrifying pair of moustaches, by portentous twistings of which, assisted by the rolling of a frenzied eye, she was endeavouring to make poor Stiffy laugh. That right-minded youth, though hard pressed, had so far withstood temptation by resolutely reciting to himself a favourite excerpt from Bradshaw's Railway Guide, beginning "Brighton (Central), Preston Park, Burgess Hill, Hassocks," and ending with "Grosvenor Road, Victoria,"—a sedative exercise to which he was much addicted at moments of bodily anguish or mental stress; but it was plain that his defence was weakening. Fortunately, the approaching explosion, which would have been of a cataclysmal nature,—Stiffy was not a boy to do things by halves,—was averted by a change of demeanour on the part of the temptress. Her quick ear had caught some unaccustomed sound behind her. Letting go her moustaches, which immediately assumed a more usual position, she squirmed round in her seat and gently parted the red rep curtains which separated the Rectory pew from that of Kirkley Abbey. An excited gurgle apprised her fellow-worshippers of the fact that some unusual sight had met her eyes.

What Nicky saw was this.

Immediately opposite to her improvised peep-hole sat a man—a large man with square shoulders and an immobile face. He was clean-shaven, with two strong lines running from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth—a mouth which even in repose looked determined and grim. He possessed a square jaw and rather craggy brows. It was difficult to decide if he were sleeping or no, for though his eyes were closed there was none of the abandon of slumber about his pose. His most noticeable feature was the set of his eyebrows, which, instead of being arched or level, ran upwards and outwards in a diagonal direction, and gave him a distinctly Satanic appearance—a circumstance which Nicky noted with sympathetic approval. He was dressed in the somewhat dégagé Sabbath attire affected by Englishmen spending the week-end in the country, and his feet were perched upon the seat opposite to him.

Presently, for some cause unknown—possibly Nicky's hard breathing—he opened his eyes.

Immediately in front of him the stranger beheld a small excited face, a pair of saucer-like blue eyes, and a wide but attractive mouth—the whole vision framed in dusty red rep. The face was flushed, the eyes glowed, and the mouth was wide open.

The picture, suddenly surprised in its inspection by a pair of the shrewdest and most penetrating eyes it had ever beheld, dropped hurriedly out of its frame and disappeared. If Nicky had waited a moment longer she would have received a less one-sided impression of the stranger, for almost simultaneously with the discovery of the apparition in the peep-hole the man smiled. Instantly his whole face changed. The outer corners of his eyebrows descended, the crease between them disappeared, and magnificent teeth gleamed for a moment in the dim religious light of the pew.

Nicky leaned across to her eldest sister and whispered huskily:—

"There's somebody in the other pew. I think it's the Devil. Look yourself!"

But Daphne, deep in domestic mental arithmetic, smiled and shook her head; and Nicky received little more encouragement from the rest of the family. The profession of scare-monger and exploiter of mares' nests, though enjoyable on the whole, has its drawbacks: if you get hold of a genuine scare or an authentic mare's nest, nobody believes you.

The sermon began to draw to a close, and a few minutes later the Rector descended from the clouds and gave out the final hymn, prefacing his announcement by an intimation that the offertory that day would be devoted to the needs of the Children's Cottage Hospital in the neighbouring county town. His appeal was characteristic.

"Money," he mused, "is the most hampering and perplexing thing in this life. It is so artificial and unnecessary. I often sigh for a world where all commerce will be in kind—where a cheque on the Bank of Gratitude will settle the weekly bills, and 'I thank you!' be regarded as legal tender up to any amount. But there is no give and take in these days. Everything, from Life and Love down to the raiment we wear, is duly appraised and ticketed, and if we stand in need of these things we must render a material tale of pounds and pence or go without. No wonder men call this the Iron Age! But, though money as a rule brings nothing in its train but disappointment and regret (and therefore it is better to have too little than too much), there are times and seasons when it is permitted to us to purchase happiness with it. To-day gives us one of these opportunities. Do not let that opportunity slip. {{tooltip|Post est Occasio calva.|(Hairy in front,) Opportunity is bald behind" (Respectful intake of breath on the part of the congregation.) "I do not urge you to give on the plea put forward in a hymn that you will find in your books—a hymn written by a man who should have known better—a hymn which shall never, so long as I am Rector of this parish, emerge from the obscurity of the printed page—advocating generosity in almsgiving on the ground that contributions to the offertory on earth will be refunded at the rate of a hundred thousand per cent in heaven. I do not ask you to give either much or little. Very few of us here are over-burdened with this world's goods. Still, we can each afford to buy some happiness to-day, at a very low rate. And it will not be transitory or temporary happiness either; for every time hereafter that your daily task or a country walk takes you past the Children's Hospital at Tilney, that happiness will blossom again with ever-reviving fragrance in your hearts. Let us sing Hymn number three hundred and sixty-nine.

{{block center|{{smaller| 'Thine arm, O Lord, in days of old Was strong to heal and save...."}}}}

There was a general upheaval of the congregation and a clatter of rustic boots; the little organ gave a premonitory rumble, and the hymn began.

The hymn after the sermon is not, as a rule—to-day was an exception—an impressive canticle. Imprimis, it is of abnormal length and little coherence, having apparently been composed for the sole purpose of lasting out the collection of the offertory; item, the congregation is furtively engaged in retrieving umbrellas from under seats and gliding into overcoats. Hence it was always a pleasant diversion to the Rectory children to follow the movements of the two churchwardens as they ran their godly race up the aisle in the pursuit of alms and oblations. They even risked small sums on the result. When the Squire and Mr Murgatroyd (Stationer and Dealer in Fancy Goods) stepped majestically from their respective pews and set to work on this particular morning, Daphne produced five sixpences and handed them to her brothers and sisters. Nicky, in her anxiety to see what sum the stranger in the Kirkley Abbey pew would contribute to the total, received her own contribution with such nonchalance that the coin slipped from her hand, and was being hunted for among hassocks upon the floor at the moment when Mr Murgatroyd reached the stranger's pew.

Nicky found her sixpence, and resumed an upright attitude just in time to hear (in a pause between two verses) a faint papery rustle on the other side of the curtain.

A moment later Mr Murgatroyd opened the door of the Rectory pew, with his usual friendly air of dropping in for a cup of tea, and presented the bag. The children put in their sixpences one by one. Nicky's turn came last. She peered into the bag, and her sharp eyes caught sight of something white protruding from amid the silver and copper.

Taking the bag from Mr Murgatroyd's hands—she controlled that indulgent bachelor as she willed: he counted it a pleasure to turn his stock inside out on a Saturday afternoon whenever Miss Veronica came in with a penny to spend—Nicky deliberately drew out a piece of folded crinkly white paper. This, laying the offertory bag upon the baize-covered table in the middle of the pew, she carefully unfolded, and perused the staring black legend inscribed upon the flimsy white background. When she raised her eyes they were those of an owlet suffering from mental shock.

"Golly!" she observed in bell-like tones. "The Devil has put in a ten-pound note!"