The Little Nugget/Part Two/Chapter 1

In which other interested parties, notably one Buck MacGinnis and a trade rival, Smooth Sam Fisher, make other plans for the Nugget's future. Of stirring times at a private school for young gentlemen. Of stratagems, spoils, and alarms by night. Of journeys ending in lovers' meetings. The whole related by Mr Peter Burns, gentleman of leisure, who forfeits that leisure in a good cause.

Peter Burns's Narrative
=I=

I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism.

This thought came to me as I returned to my rooms after the Fletchers' ball. The dawn was breaking as I let myself in. The air was heavy with the peculiar desolation of a London winter morning. The houses looked dead and untenanted. A cart rumbled past, and across the grey street a dingy black cat, moving furtively along the pavement, gave an additional touch of forlornness to the scene.

I shivered. I was tired and hungry, and the reaction after the emotions of the night had left me dispirited.

I was engaged to be married. An hour back I had proposed to Cynthia Drassilis. And I can honestly say that it had come as a great surprise to me.

Why had I done it? Did I love her? It was so difficult to analyse love: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task was an answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do so five years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself be carried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to be utterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was five years younger then, and Audrey was—Audrey.

I must explain Audrey, for she in her turn explains Cynthia.

I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met Audrey Blake. Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstances had conspired to carry on Nature's work. I loved comfort, and I could afford to have it. From the moment I came of age and relieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself in comfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism. In fact, if, between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had one unselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, my memory is a blank on the point.

It was at the height of this period that I became engaged to Audrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself, impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribably offensive I must have been. My love was real, but that did not prevent its patronizing complacency being an insult. I was King Cophetua. If I did not actually say in so many words, 'This beggar-maid shall be my queen', I said it plainly and often in my manner. She was the daughter of a dissolute, evil-tempered artist whom I had met at a Bohemian club. He made a living by painting an occasional picture, illustrating an occasional magazine-story, but mainly by doing advertisement work. A proprietor of a patent Infants' Food, not satisfied with the bare statement that Baby Cried For It, would feel it necessary to push the fact home to the public through the medium of Art, and Mr Blake would be commissioned to draw the picture. A good many specimens of his work in this vein were to be found in the back pages of the magazines.

A man may make a living by these means, but it is one that inclines him to jump at a wealthy son-in-law. Mr Blake jumped at me. It was one of his last acts on this earth. A week after he had—as I now suspect—bullied Audrey into accepting me, he died of pneumonia.

His death had several results. It postponed the wedding: it stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal of the bread-winner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she had hitherto been granted for the exercise of free will in the choice of a husband.

This last aspect of the matter was speedily brought to my notice, which till then it had escaped, by a letter from her, handed to me one night at the club, where I was sipping coffee and musing on the excellence of life in this best of all possible worlds.

It was brief and to the point. She had been married that morning.

To say that that moment was a turning point in my life would be to use a ridiculously inadequate phrase. It dynamited my life. In a sense it killed me. The man I had been died that night, regretted, I imagine, by few. Whatever I am today, I am certainly not the complacent spectator of life that I had been before that night.

I crushed the letter in my hand, and sat staring at it, my pigsty in ruins about my ears, face to face with the fact that, even in a best of all possible worlds, money will not buy everything.

I remember, as I sat there, a man, a club acquaintance, a bore from whom I had fled many a time, came and settled down beside me and began to talk. He was a small man, but he possessed a voice to which one had to listen. He talked and talked and talked. How I loathed him, as I sat trying to think through his stream of words. I see now that he saved me. He forced me out of myself. But at the time he oppressed me. I was raw and bleeding. I was struggling to grasp the incredible. I had taken Audrey's unalterable affection for granted. She was the natural complement to my scheme of comfort. I wanted her; I had chosen and was satisfied with her, therefore all was well. And now I had to adjust my mind to the impossible fact that I had lost her.

Her letter was a mirror in which I saw myself. She said little, but I understood, and my self-satisfaction was in ribbons—and something deeper than self-satisfaction. I saw now that I loved her as I had not dreamed myself capable of loving.

And all the while this man talked and talked.

I have a theory that speech, persevered in, is more efficacious in times of trouble than silent sympathy. Up to a certain point it maddens almost beyond endurance; but, that point past, it soothes. At least, it was so in my case. Gradually I found myself hating him less. Soon I began to listen, then to answer. Before I left the club that night, the first mad frenzy, in which I could have been capable of anything, had gone from me, and I walked home, feeling curiously weak and helpless, but calm, to begin the new life.

Three years passed before I met Cynthia. I spent those years wandering in many countries. At last, as one is apt to do, I drifted back to London, and settled down again to a life which, superficially, was much the same as the one I had led in the days before I knew Audrey. My old circle in London had been wide, and I found it easy to pick up dropped threads. I made new friends, among them Cynthia Drassilis.

I liked Cynthia, and I was sorry for her. I think that, about that time I met her, I was sorry for most people. The shock of Audrey's departure had had that effect upon me. It is always the bad nigger who gets religion most strongly at the camp-meeting, and in my case 'getting religion' had taken the form of suppression of self. I never have been able to do things by halves, or even with a decent moderation. As an egoist I had been thorough in my egoism; and now, fate having bludgeoned that vice out of me, I found myself possessed of an almost morbid sympathy with the troubles of other people.

I was extremely sorry for Cynthia Drassilis. Meeting her mother frequently, I could hardly fail to be. Mrs Drassilis was a representative of a type I disliked. She was a widow, who had been left with what she considered insufficient means, and her outlook on life was a compound of greed and querulousness. Sloane Square and South Kensington are full of women in her situation. Their position resembles that of the Ancient Mariner. 'Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.' For 'water' in their case substitute 'money'. Mrs Drassilis was connected with money on all sides, but could only obtain it in rare and minute quantities. Any one of a dozen relations-in-law could, if they had wished, have trebled her annual income without feeling it. But they did not so wish. They disapproved of Mrs Drassilis. In their opinion the Hon. Hugo Drassilis had married beneath him—not so far beneath him as to make the thing a horror to be avoided in conversation and thought, but far enough to render them coldly polite to his wife during his lifetime and almost icy to his widow after his death. Hugo's eldest brother, the Earl of Westbourne, had never liked the obviously beautiful, but equally obviously second-rate, daughter of a provincial solicitor whom Hugo had suddenly presented to the family one memorable summer as his bride. He considered that, by doubling the income derived from Hugo's life-insurance and inviting Cynthia to the family seat once a year during her childhood, he had done all that could be expected of him in the matter.

He had not. Mrs Drassilis expected a great deal more of him, the non-receipt of which had spoiled her temper, her looks, and the peace of mind of all who had anything much to do with her.

It used to irritate me when I overheard people, as I occasionally have done, speak of Cynthia as hard. I never found her so myself, though heaven knows she had enough to make her so, to me she was always a sympathetic, charming friend.

Ours was a friendship almost untouched by sex. Our minds fitted so smoothly into one another that I had no inclination to fall in love. I knew her too well. I had no discoveries to make about her. Her honest, simple soul had always been open to me to read. There was none of that curiosity, that sense of something beyond that makes for love. We had reached a point of comradeship beyond which neither of us desired to pass.

Yet at the Fletchers' ball I asked Cynthia to marry me, and she consented.

Looking back, I can see that, though the determining cause was Mr Tankerville Gifford, it was Audrey who was responsible. She had made me human, capable of sympathy, and it was sympathy, primarily, that led me to say what I said that night.

But the immediate cause was certainly young Mr Gifford.

I arrived at Marlow Square, where I was to pick up Cynthia and her mother, a little late, and found Mrs Drassilis, florid and overdressed, in the drawing-room with a sleek-haired, pale young man known to me as Tankerville Gifford—to his intimates, of whom I was not one, and in the personal paragraphs of the coloured sporting weeklies, as 'Tanky'. I had seen him frequently at restaurants. Once, at the Empire, somebody had introduced me to him; but, as he had not been sober at the moment, he had missed any intellectual pleasure my acquaintanceship might have afforded him. Like everybody else who moves about in London, I knew all about him. To sum him up, he was a most unspeakable little cad, and, if the drawing-room had not been Mrs Drassilis's, I should have wondered at finding him in it.

Mrs Drassilis introduced us.

'I think we have already met,' I said.

He stared glassily.

'Don't remember.'

I was not surprised.

At this moment Cynthia came in. Out of the corner of my eye I observed a look of fuddled displeasure come into Tanky's face at her frank pleasure at seeing me.

I had never seen her looking better. She is a tall girl, who carries herself magnificently. The simplicity of her dress gained an added dignity from comparison with the rank glitter of her mother's. She wore unrelieved black, a colour which set off to wonderful advantage the clear white of her skin and her pale-gold hair.

'You're late, Peter,' she said, looking at the clock.

'I know. I'm sorry.'

'Better be pushing, what?' suggested Tanky.

'My cab's waiting.'

'Will you ring the bell, Mr Gifford?' said Mrs Drassilis. 'I will tell Parker to whistle for another.'

'Take me in yours,' I heard a voice whisper in my ear.

I looked at Cynthia. Her expression had not changed. Then I looked at Tanky Gifford, and I understood. I had seen that stuffed-fish look on his face before—on the occasion when I had been introduced to him at the Empire.

'If you and Mr Gifford will take my cab,' I said to Mrs Drassilis, 'we will follow.'

Mrs Drassilis blocked the motion. I imagine that the sharp note in her voice was lost on Tanky, but it rang out like a clarion to me.

'I am in no hurry,' she said. 'Mr Gifford, will you take Cynthia? I will follow with Mr Burns. You will meet Parker on the stairs. Tell him to call another cab.'

As the door closed behind them, she turned on me like a many-coloured snake.

'How can you be so extraordinarily tactless, Peter?' she cried. 'You're a perfect fool. Have you no eyes?'

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'He's devoted to her.'

'I'm sorry.'

'What do you mean?'

'Sorry for her.'

She seemed to draw herself together inside her dress. Her eyes glittered. My mouth felt very dry, and my heart was beginning to thump. We were both furiously angry. It was a moment that had been coming for years, and we both knew it. For my part I was glad that it had come. On subjects on which one feels deeply it is a relief to speak one's mind.

'Oh!' she said at last. Her voice quivered. She was clutching at her self-control as it slipped from her. 'Oh! And what is my daughter to you, Mr Burns!'

'A great friend.'

'And I suppose you think it friendly to try to spoil her chances?'

'If Mr Gifford is a sample of them—yes.'

'What do you mean?'

She choked.

'I see. I understand. I am going to put a stop to this once and for all. Do you hear? I have noticed it for a long time. Because I have given you the run of the house, and allowed you to come in and out as you pleased, like a tame cat, you presume—'

'Presume—' I prompted.

'You come here and stand in Cynthia's way. You trade on the fact that you have known us all this time to monopolize her attention. You spoil her chances. You—'

The invaluable Parker entered to say that the cab was at the door.

We drove to the Fletchers' house in silence. The spell had been broken. Neither of us could recapture that first, fine, careless rapture which had carried us through the opening stages of the conflict, and discussion of the subject on a less exalted plane was impossible. It was that blessed period of calm, the rest between rounds, and we observed it to the full.

When I reached the ballroom a waltz was just finishing. Cynthia, a statue in black, was dancing with Tanky Gifford. They were opposite me when the music stopped, and she caught sight of me over his shoulder.

She disengaged herself and moved quickly towards me.

'Take me away,' she said under her breath. 'Anywhere. Quick.'

It was no time to consider the etiquette of the ballroom. Tanky, startled at his sudden loneliness, seemed by his expression to be endeavouring to bring his mind to bear on the matter. A couple making for the door cut us off from him, and following them, we passed out.

Neither of us spoke till we had reached the little room where I had meditated.

She sat down. She was looking pale and tired.

'Oh, dear!' she said.

I understood. I seemed to see that journey in the cab, those dances, those terrible between-dances …

It was very sudden.

I took her hand. She turned to me with a tired smile. There were tears in her eyes …

I heard myself speaking …

She was looking at me, her eyes shining. All the weariness seemed to have gone out of them.

I looked at her.

There was something missing. I had felt it when I was speaking. To me my voice had had no ring of conviction. And then I saw what it was. There was no mystery. We knew each other too well. Friendship kills love.

She put my thought into words.

'We have always been brother and sister,' she said doubtfully.

'Till tonight.'

'You have changed tonight? You really want me?'

Did I? I tried to put the question to myself and answer it honestly. Yes, in a sense, I had changed tonight. There was an added appreciation of her fineness, a quickening of that blend of admiration and pity which I had always felt for her. I wanted with all my heart to help her, to take her away from her dreadful surroundings, to make her happy. But did I want her in the sense in which she had used the word? Did I want her as I had wanted Audrey Blake? I winced away from the question. Audrey belonged to the dead past, but it hurt to think of her.

Was it merely because I was five years older now than when I had wanted Audrey that the fire had gone out of me?

I shut my mind against my doubts.

'I have changed tonight,' I said.

And I bent down and kissed her.

I was conscious of being defiant against somebody. And then I knew that the somebody was myself.

I poured myself out a cup of hot coffee from the flask which Smith, my man, had filled against my return. It put life into me. The oppression lifted.

And yet there remained something that made for uneasiness, a sort of foreboding at the back of my mind.

I had taken a step in the dark, and I was afraid for Cynthia. I had undertaken to give her happiness. Was I certain that I could succeed? The glow of chivalry had left me, and I began to doubt.

Audrey had taken from me something that I could not recover—poetry was as near as I could get to a definition of it. Yes, poetry. With Cynthia my feet would always be on the solid earth. To the end of the chapter we should be friends and nothing more.

I found myself pitying Cynthia intensely. I saw her future a series of years of intolerable dullness. She was too good to be tied for life to a battered hulk like myself.

I drank more coffee and my mood changed. Even in the grey of a winter morning a man of thirty, in excellent health, cannot pose to himself for long as a piece of human junk, especially if he comforts himself with hot coffee.

My mind resumed its balance. I laughed at myself as a sentimental fraud. Of course I could make her happy. No man and woman had ever been more admirably suited to each other. As for that first disaster, which I had been magnifying into a life-tragedy, what of it? An incident of my boyhood. A ridiculous episode which—I rose with the intention of doing so at once—I should now proceed to eliminate from my life.

I went quickly to my desk, unlocked it, and took out a photograph.

And then—undoubtedly four o'clock in the morning is no time for a man to try to be single-minded and decisive—I wavered. I had intended to tear the thing in pieces without a glance, and fling it into the wastepaper-basket. But I took the glance and I hesitated.

The girl in the photograph was small and slight, and she looked straight out of the picture with large eyes that met and challenged mine. How well I remembered them, those Irish-blue eyes under their expressive, rather heavy brows. How exactly the photographer had caught that half-wistful, half-impudent look, the chin tilted, the mouth curving into a smile.

In a wave all my doubts had surged back upon me. Was this mere sentimentalism, a four-in-the-morning tribute to the pathos of the flying years, or did she really fill my soul and stand guard over it so that no successor could enter in and usurp her place?

I had no answer, unless the fact that I replaced the photograph in its drawer was one. I felt that this thing could not be decided now. It was more difficult than I had thought.

All my gloom had returned by the time I was in bed. Hours seemed to pass while I tossed restlessly aching for sleep.

When I woke my last coherent thought was still clear in my mind. It was a passionate vow that, come what might, if those Irish eyes were to haunt me till my death, I would play the game loyally with Cynthia.

II
The telephone bell rang just as I was getting ready to call at Marlow Square and inform Mrs Drassilis of the position of affairs. Cynthia, I imagined, would have broken the news already, which would mitigate the embarrassment of the interview to some extent; but the recollection of my last night's encounter with Mrs Drassilis prevented me from looking forward with any joy to the prospect of meeting her again.

Cynthia's voice greeted me as I unhooked the receiver.

'Hullo, Peter! Is that you? I want you to come round here at once.'

'I was just starting,' I said.

'I don't mean Marlow Square. I'm not there. I'm at the Guelph. Ask for Mrs Ford's suite. It's very important. I'll tell you all about it when you get here. Come as soon as you can.'

My rooms were conveniently situated for visits to the Hotel Guelph. A walk of a couple of minutes took me there. Mrs Ford's suite was on the third floor. I rang the bell and Cynthia opened the door to me.

'Come in,' she said. 'You're a dear to be so quick.'

'My rooms are only just round the corner.' She shut the door, and for the first time we looked at one another. I could not say that I was nervous, but there was certainly, to me, a something strange in the atmosphere. Last night seemed a long way off and somehow a little unreal. I suppose I must have shown this in my manner, for she suddenly broke what had amounted to a distinct pause by giving a little laugh. 'Peter,' she said, 'you're embarrassed.' I denied the charge warmly, but without real conviction. I was embarrassed. 'Then you ought to be,' she said. 'Last night, when I was looking my very best in a lovely dress, you asked me to marry you. Now you see me again in cold blood, and you're wondering how you can back out of it without hurting my feelings.'

I smiled. She did not. I ceased to smile. She was looking at me in a very peculiar manner.

'Peter,' she said, 'are you sure?'

'My dear old Cynthia,' I said, 'what's the matter with you?'

'You are sure?' she persisted.

'Absolutely, entirely sure.' I had a vision of two large eyes looking at me out of a photograph. It came and went in a flash.

I kissed Cynthia.

'What quantities of hair you have,' I said. 'It's a shame to cover it up.' She was not responsive. 'You're in a very queer mood today, Cynthia,' I went on. 'What's the matter?'

'I've been thinking.'

'Out with it. Something has gone wrong.' An idea flashed upon me. 'Er—has your mother—is your mother very angry about—'

'Mother's delighted. She always liked you, Peter.'

I had the self-restraint to check a grin.

'Then what is it?' I said. 'Tired after the dance?'

'Nothing as simple as that.'

'Tell me.'

'It's so difficult to put it into words.'

'Try.'

She was playing with the papers on the table, her face turned away. For a moment she did not speak.

'I've been worrying myself, Peter,' she said at last. 'You are so chivalrous and unselfish. You're quixotic. It's that that is troubling me. Are you marrying me just because you're sorry for me? Don't speak. I can tell you now if you will just let me say straight out what's in my mind. We have known each other for two years now. You know all about me. You know how—how unhappy I am at home. Are you marrying me just because you pity me and want to take me out of all that?'

'My dear girl!'

'You haven't answered my question.'

'I answered it two minutes ago when you asked me if—'

'You do love me?'

'Yes.'

All this time she had been keeping her face averted, but now she turned and looked into my eyes with an abrupt intensity which, I confess, startled me. Her words startled me more.

'Peter, do you love me as much as you loved Audrey Blake?'

In the instant which divided her words from my reply my mind flew hither and thither, trying to recall an occasion when I could have mentioned Audrey to her. I was convinced that I had not done so. I never mentioned Audrey to anyone.

There is a grain of superstition in the most level-headed man. I am not particularly level-headed, and I have more than a grain in me. I was shaken. Ever since I had asked Cynthia to marry me, it seemed as if the ghost of Audrey had come back into my life.

'Good Lord!' I cried. 'What do you know of Audrey Blake?'

She turned her face away again.

'Her name seems to affect you very strongly,' she said quietly.

I recovered myself.

'If you ask an old soldier,' I said, 'he will tell you that a wound, long after it has healed, is apt to give you an occasional twinge.'

'Not if it has really healed.'

'Yes, when it has really healed—when you can hardly remember how you were fool enough to get it.'

She said nothing.

'How did you hear about—it?' I asked.

'When I first met you, or soon after, a friend of yours—we happened to be talking about you—told me that you had been engaged to be married to a girl named Audrey Blake. He was to have been your best man, he said, but one day you wrote and told him there would be no wedding, and then you disappeared; and nobody saw you again for three years.'

'Yes,' I said: 'that is all quite true.'

'It seems to have been a serious affair, Peter. I mean—the sort of thing a man would find it hard to forget.'

I tried to smile, but I knew that I was not doing it well. It was hurting me extraordinarily, this discussion of Audrey.

'A man would find it almost impossible,' I said, 'unless he had a remarkably poor memory.'

'I didn't mean that. You know what I mean by forget.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I do.'

She came quickly to me and took me by the shoulders, looking into my face.

'Peter, can you honestly say you have forgotten her—in the sense I mean?'

'Yes,' I said.

Again that feeling swept over me—that curious sensation of being defiant against myself.

'She does not stand between us?'

'No,' I said.

I could feel the effort behind the word. It was as if some subconscious part of me were working to keep it back.

'Peter!'

There was a soft smile on her face; as she raised it to mine I put my arms around her.

She drew away with a little laugh. Her whole manner had changed. She was a different being from the girl who had looked so gravely into my eyes a moment before.

'Oh, my dear boy, how terribly muscular you are! You've crushed me. I expect you used to be splendid at football, like Mr Broster.'

I did not reply at once. I cannot wrap up the deeper emotions and put them back on their shelf directly I have no further immediate use for them. I slowly adjusted myself to the new key of the conversation.

'Who's Broster?' I asked at length.

'He used to be tutor to'—she turned me round and pointed—'to that.'

I had seen a picture standing on one of the chairs when I entered the room but had taken no particular notice of it. I now gave it a closer glance. It was a portrait, very crudely done, of a singularly repulsive child of about ten or eleven years old.

Was he, poor chap! Well, we all have our troubles, don't we! Who is this young thug! Not a friend of yours, I hope?'

'That is Ogden, Mrs Ford's son. It's a tragedy—'

'Perhaps it doesn't do him justice. Does he really squint like that, or is it just the artist's imagination?'

'Don't make fun of it. It's the loss of that boy that is breaking Nesta's heart.'

I was shocked.

'Is he dead? I'm awfully sorry. I wouldn't for the world—'

'No, no. He is alive and well. But he is dead to her. The court gave him into the custody of his father.'

'The court?'

'Mrs Ford was the wife of Elmer Ford, the American millionaire. They were divorced a year ago.'

'I see.'

Cynthia was gazing at the portrait.

'This boy is quite a celebrity in his way,' she said. 'They call him "The Little Nugget" in America.'

'Oh! Why is that?'

'It's a nickname the kidnappers have for him. Ever so many attempts have been made to steal him.'

She stopped and looked at me oddly.

'I made one today, Peter,' she said. I went down to the country, where the boy was, and kidnapped him.'

'Cynthia! What on earth do you mean?'

'Don't you understand? I did it for Nesta's sake. She was breaking her heart about not being able to see him, so I slipped down and stole him away, and brought him back here.'

I do not know if I was looking as amazed as I felt. I hope not, for I felt as if my brain were giving way. The perfect calmness with which she spoke of this extraordinary freak added to my confusion.

'You're joking!'

'No; I stole him.'

'But, good heavens! The law! It's a penal offence, you know!'

'Well, I did it. Men like Elmer Ford aren't fit to have charge of a child. You don't know him, but he's just an unscrupulous financier, without a thought above money. To think of a boy growing up in that tainted atmosphere—at his most impressionable age. It means death to any good there is in him.'

My mind was still grappling feebly with the legal aspect of the affair.

'But, Cynthia, kidnapping's kidnapping, you know! The law doesn't take any notice of motives. If you're caught—'

She cut through my babble.

'Would you have been afraid to do it, Peter?'

'Well—' I began. I had not considered the point before.

'I don't believe you would. If I asked you to do it for my sake—'

'But, Cynthia, kidnapping, you know! It's such an infernally low-down game.'

'I played it. Do you despise me?'

I perspired. I could think of no other reply.

'Peter,' she said, 'I understand your scruples. I know exactly how you feel. But can't you see that this is quite different from the sort of kidnapping you naturally look on as horrible? It's just taking a boy away from surroundings that must harm him, back to his mother, who worships him. It's not wrong. It's splendid.'

She paused.

'You will do it for me, Peter?' she said.

'I don't understand,' I said feebly. 'It's done. You've kidnapped him yourself.'

'They tracked him and took him back. And now I want you to try.' She came closer to me. 'Peter, don't you see what it will mean to me if you agree to try? I'm only human, I can't help, at the bottom of my heart, still being a little jealous of this Audrey Blake. No, don't say anything. Words can't cure me; but if you do this thing for me, I shall be satisfied. I shall know.'

She was close beside me, holding my arm and looking into my face. That sense of the unreality of things which had haunted me since that moment at the dance came over me with renewed intensity. Life had ceased to be a rather grey, orderly business in which day succeeded day calmly and without event. Its steady stream had broken up into rapids, and I was being whirled away on them.

'Will you do it, Peter? Say you will.'

A voice, presumably mine, answered 'Yes'.

'My dear old boy!'

She pushed me into a chair, and, sitting on the arm of it, laid her hand on mine and became of a sudden wondrously business-like.

'Listen,' she said, 'I'll tell you what we have arranged.'

It was borne in upon me, as she began to do so, that she appeared from the very beginning to have been extremely confident that that essential part of her plans, my consent to the scheme, could be relied upon as something of a certainty. Women have these intuitions.

III
Looking back, I think I can fix the point at which this insane venture I had undertaken ceased to be a distorted dream, from which I vaguely hoped that I might shortly waken, and took shape as a reality of the immediate future. That moment came when I met Mr Arnold Abney by appointment at his club.

Till then the whole enterprise had been visionary. I gathered from Cynthia that the boy Ogden was shortly to be sent to a preparatory school, and that I was to insinuate myself into this school and, watching my opportunity, to remove him; but it seemed to me that the obstacles to this comparatively lucid scheme were insuperable. In the first place, how were we to discover which of England's million preparatory schools Mr Ford, or Mr Mennick for him, would choose? Secondly, the plot which was to carry me triumphantly into this school when—or if—found, struck me as extremely thin. I was to pose, Cynthia told me, as a young man of private means, anxious to learn the business, with a view to setting up a school of his own. The objection to that was, I held, that I obviously did not want to do anything of the sort. I had not the appearance of a man with such an ambition. I had none of the conversation of such a man.

I put it to Cynthia.

'They would find me out in a day,' I assured her. 'A man who wants to set up a school has got to be a pretty brainy sort of fellow. I don't know anything.'

'You got your degree.'

'A degree. At any rate, I've forgotten all I knew.'

'That doesn't matter. You have the money. Anybody with money can start a school, even if he doesn't know a thing. Nobody would think it strange.'

It struck me as a monstrous slur on our educational system, but reflection told me it was true. The proprietor of a preparatory school, if he is a man of wealth, need not be able to teach, any more than an impresario need be able to write plays.

'Well, we'll pass that for the moment,' I said. 'Here's the real difficulty. How are you going to find out the school Mr Ford has chosen?'

'I have found it out already—or Nesta has. She set a detective to work. It was perfectly easy. Ogden's going to Mr Abney's. Sanstead House is the name of the place. It's in Hampshire somewhere. Quite a small school, but full of little dukes and earls and things. Lord Mountry's younger brother, Augustus Beckford, is there.'

I had known Lord Mountry and his family well some years ago. I remembered Augustus dimly.

'Mountry? Do you know him? He was up at Oxford with me.'

She seemed interested.

'What kind of a man is he?' she asked.

'Oh, quite a good sort. Rather an ass. I haven't seen him for years.'

'He's a friend of Nesta's. I've only met him once. He is going to be your reference.'

'My what?'

'You will need a reference. At least, I suppose you will. And, anyhow, if you say you know Lord Mountry it will make it simpler for you with Mr Abney, the brother being at the school.'

'Does Mountry know about this business? Have you told him why I want to go to Abney's?'

'Nesta told him. He thought it was very sporting of you. He will tell Mr Abney anything we like. By the way, Peter, you will have to pay a premium or something, I suppose. But Nesta will look after all expenses, of course.'

On this point I made my only stand of the afternoon.

'No,' I said; 'it's very kind of her, but this is going to be entirely an amateur performance. I'm doing this for you, and I'll stand the racket. Good heavens! Fancy taking money for a job of this kind!'

She looked at me rather oddly.

'That is very sweet of you, Peter,' she said, after a slight pause. 'Now let's get to work.'

And together we composed the letter which led to my sitting, two days later, in stately conference at his club with Mr Arnold Abney, M.A., of Sanstead House, Hampshire.

Mr Abney proved to be a long, suave, benevolent man with an Oxford manner, a high forehead, thin white hands, a cooing intonation, and a general air of hushed importance, as of one in constant communication with the Great. There was in his bearing something of the family solicitor in whom dukes confide, and something of the private chaplain at the Castle.

He gave me the key-note to his character in the first minute of our acquaintanceship. We had seated ourselves at a table in the smoking-room when an elderly gentleman shuffled past, giving a nod in transit. My companion sprang to his feet almost convulsively, returned the salutation, and subsided slowly into his chair again.

'The Duke of Devizes,' he said in an undertone. 'A most able man. Most able. His nephew, Lord Ronald Stokeshaye, was one of my pupils. A charming boy.'

I gathered that the old feudal spirit still glowed to some extent in Mr Abney's bosom.

We came to business.

'So you wish to be one of us, Mr Burns, to enter the scholastic profession?'

I tried to look as if I did.

'Well, in certain circumstances, the circumstances in which I—ah—myself, I may say, am situated, there is no more delightful occupation. The work is interesting. There is the constant fascination of seeing these fresh young lives develop—and of helping them to develop—under one's eyes; in any case, I may say, there is the exceptional interest of being in a position to mould the growing minds of lads who will some day take their place among the country's hereditary legislators, that little knot of devoted men who, despite the vulgar attacks of loudmouthed demagogues, still do their share, and more, in the guidance of England's fortunes. Yes.'

He paused. I said I thought so, too.

'You are an Oxford man, Mr Burns, I think you told me? Ah, I have your letter here. Just so. You were at—ah, yes. A fine college. The Dean is a lifelong friend of mine. Perhaps you knew my late pupil, Lord Rollo?—no, he would have been since your time. A delightful boy. Quite delightful … And you took your degree? Exactly. And represented the university at both cricket and Rugby football? Excellent. Mens sana in—ah—corpore, in fact, sano, yes!'

He folded the letter carefully and replaced it in his pocket.

'Your primary object in coming to me, Mr Burns, is, I gather, to learn the—ah—the ropes, the business? You have had little or no previous experience of school-mastering?'

'None whatever.'

'Then your best plan would undoubtedly be to consider yourself and work for a time simply as an ordinary assistant-master. You would thus get a sound knowledge of the intricacies of the profession which would stand you in good stead when you decide to set up your own school. School-mastering is a profession, which cannot be taught adequately except in practice. "Only those who—ah—brave its dangers comprehend its mystery." Yes, I would certainly recommend you to begin at the foot of the ladder and go, at least for a time, through the mill.'

'Certainly,' I said. 'Of course.'

My ready acquiescence pleased him. I could see that he was relieved. I think he had expected me to jib at the prospect of actual work.

'As it happens,' he said, 'my classical master left me at the end of last term. I was about to go to the Agency for a successor when your letter arrived. Would you consider—'

I had to think this over. Feeling kindly disposed towards Mr Arnold Abney, I wished to do him as little harm as possible. I was going to rob him of a boy, who, while no moulding of his growing mind could make him into a hereditary legislator, did undoubtedly represent a portion of Mr Abney's annual income; and I did not want to increase my offence by being a useless assistant-master. Then I reflected that, if I was no Jowett, at least I knew enough Latin and Greek to teach the rudiments of those languages to small boys. My conscience was satisfied.

'I should be delighted,' I said.

'Excellent. Then let us consider that as—ah—settled,' said Mr Abney.

There was a pause. My companion began to fiddle a little uncomfortably with an ash-tray. I wondered what was the matter, and then it came to me. We were about to become sordid. The discussion of terms was upon us.

And as I realized this, I saw simultaneously how I could throw one more sop to my exigent conscience. After all, the whole thing was really a question of hard cash. By kidnapping Ogden I should be taking money from Mr Abney. By paying my premium I should be giving it back to him.

I considered the circumstances. Ogden was now about thirteen years old. The preparatory-school age limit may be estimated roughly at fourteen. That is to say, in any event Sanstead House could only harbour him for one year. Mr Abney's fees I had to guess at. To be on the safe side, I fixed my premium at an outside figure, and, getting to the point at once, I named it.

It was entirely satisfactory. My mental arithmetic had done me credit. Mr Abney beamed upon me. Over tea and muffins we became very friendly. In half an hour I heard more of the theory of school-mastering than I had dreamed existed.

We said good-bye at the club front door. He smiled down at me benevolently from the top of the steps.

'Good-bye, Mr Burns, good-bye,' he said. 'We shall meet at—ah—Philippi.'

When I reached my rooms, I rang for Smith.

'Smith,' I said, 'I want you to get some books for me first thing tomorrow. You had better take a note of them.'

He moistened his pencil.

'A Latin Grammar.'

'Yes, sir.'

'A Greek Grammar.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Brodley Arnold's Easy Prose Sentences.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And Caesar's Gallic Wars.'

'What name, sir?'

'Caesar.'

'Thank you, sir. Anything else, sir?'

'No, that will be all.'

'Very good, sir.'

He shimmered from the room.

Thank goodness, Smith always has thought me mad, and is consequently never surprised at anything I ask him to do.