The man who found himself (Smith's Magazine 1920)/Chapter 16

“No, sir,” said Mudd, “he don't take scarcely anything in the bar of the hotel, but he was sitting last night till closing time in the Bricklayers' Arms.”

“Oh, that's where he was!” said Bobby. “How did you find out?”

“Well, sir,' said Mudd, “I was in there myself, in the parlor, having a drop of hot water and gin, with a bit of lemon in it. It's a decent house and the servants' room in this hotel don't please me, nor Mr. Anderson's man. I was sitting there smoking my pipe when in he came to the bar outside. I heard his voice. Down he sits and talks quite friendly with the folk there and orders a pint of beer all round. Quite affable and friendly.”

“Well, there's no harm in that,” said Bobby. “I've often done the same in a country inn. Did he stick to beer?”

“He did,” said Mudd grimly. “He'd got that ten-pound note I was fool enough to let him have. Yes, he stuck to beer, and so did the chaps he was treating.”

“The funny thing is,” said Bobby, “that though he knows we have his money—and, begad, there's nearly eleven thousand of it!—he doesn't kick at our having taken it, but comes to you for money, like a schoolboy.”

“That's what he is,” said Mudd. “It's my belief, Mr. Robert, that he's getting younger and younger. He's artful as a child after sweets. He knows we're looking after him, I believe, and he doesn't mind, for it's part of his amusement to give us the slip. Well, as I was saying, there he sat, talking away, and all these village chaps listening to him as if he was the Sultan of Turkey laying down the law. That's what pleased him. He likes being the middle of everything, and as the beer vent down the talk went up—till he was telling them he'd been at the battle of Waterloo.”

“Good Lord!”

“They didn't know no different,” said Mudd, “but it made me crawl to listen to him,”

“The bother is,” said Bobby, “that we are dealing not only with a young man, but with the sort of young man who was young forty years ago. That's our trouble, Mudd. We can't calculate on what he'll do because we haven't the data, and another bother is that his foolishness seems to have increased by being bottled so long—like old beer. But he can't come to harm with the villagers; they're an innocent lot.”

“Are they?” said Mudd. “One of the chaps he was talking to was a gallows-looking chap. Horn's his name, and a poacher he is, I believe. Then there's the blacksmith and a squint-eyed chap that calls himself a butcher. The pair of them aren't up to much. Innocent lot! Why, if you had the stories Mr. Anderson's man has told me about this village, the hair would rise on your head. Why, London's a girls' school to these country villages, if all's true one hears. No, Mr. Robert, he wants looking after here more than anywhere, and it seems to me the only person who has any real hold on him is the young lady.”

“Miss Rossignol?”

“Yes, Mr. Robert, he's gone on her, in his foolish way, and she can twist him round her finger like a child. When he's with her he's a different person; out of sight of her he's another man.”

“Look here, Mudd,” said the other. “He can't be in love with her, for there's not a girl he sees he doesn't cast his eye after.”

“Maybe,” said Mudd, “but when he's with her he's in love with her. I've been watching him and I know. He worships her, I believe, and if she wasn't so sensible I'd be afeard of it. it's a blessing he came across here; she's the only hold on him, and a good hold she is.”

“It is a blessing,” said Bobby. Then, after a pause, “Mudd, you've always been a good friend of mine, and this business has made me know what you really are. I'm bothered about something. I'm in love with her myself—there, you have it.”

“With Miss Rossignol?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you might choose worse,” said Mudd.

“But that's not all,” said Bobby. “There's another girl. Mudd, I've been a damn fool.”

“We've all been fools in our time,” said Mudd.

“I know, but it's jolly unpleasant when one's follies come home to roost on one. She's a nice girl enough, is Miss Delyse, but I don't care for her. Yet, somehow, I've got mixed up with her—not exactly engaged, but very near it. It all happened in a moment, and she's coming down here. I had a letter from her this morning.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Mudd. “Another mixture! As if there wasn't enough of us in the business!'

“That's a good name for it—business. I feel as if I was helping to run a sort of beastly factory—a mad sort of show where we're trying to condense folly and make it consume its own smoke—an illicit whisky still—for we're trying to hide our business all the time, and it gives me the jimjams to think that at any moment a client may turn up and see him like that. I feel sometimes, Mudd, as fellows must feel when they have the police after them.”

“Don't talk of the police,” said Mudd. “The very word gives me the shivers. When is she coming, Mr. Robert?”

“Miss Delyse? She's coming by the three-fifteen train to-day to Ditchingham station, and I've got to meet her. I've just booked her a room here—you see how I am tied. If I was here alone she couldn't come, because it wouldn't be proper, but having him here makes it proper,”

“Have you told her the state he's in?”

“Yes, she doesn't mind. She said she wished every one else was the same. She said it was beautiful.”

They were talking in Bobby's room, which overlooked the garden of the hotel and, glancing out of the window now, he saw Cerise. He detached himself from Mudd. He reached her as she was passing through the little rambler-roofed alley that leads from the garden to the bowling green. There is an arbor in the garden, tucked away in a corner, and there is an arbor close to the bowling green; there are several other arbors, for the hotel planner was an expert in his work, but these are the only two arbors that have to do with our story.

Bobby caught up with the girl before she had reached the green, and they walked together toward it, chatting as young people only can chat with life and gayety about nothing. They were astonishingly well matched in mind. Minds have colors, just like eyes. There are black minds and brown minds and muddy-colored minds and gray minds and blue minds. Bobby's was a blue mind; though, needed, it sometimes almost seemed green. Cerise's was blue, a happy blue, like the blue of her eyes.

They had been two and a half days now in pretty close propinquity, and had got to know each other well despite uncle Simon, or rather, perhaps, because of him. They discussed him freely and without reserve, and they were discussing him now as the following extraordinary conversation will show.

“He's good, as you say,” said Bobby, “but he's more trouble to me than a child.”

Said Cerise: “Shall I tell you a little secret?”

"Yea

“You will promise me surely, most surely, you will never tell my little secret?”

“I swear.”

“He is in loff with me. I thought it was maman, but it is me!” A ripple of laughter, that caught the echo of the bowling alley, followed this confession.

“Last night he said to me before dinner: 'Cerise, I loff you.'”

“And what did you say?”

“Then the dinner gong rang,” said Cerise, “and I said, 'Oh, Monsieur Pattigrew, I must run and change my dress.' Then I ran off. I did not want to change my dress, but I did want to change the conversation,” finished Cerise. Then, with a smile, “He loffs me more than any of the other girls.”

“Why, how do you know he loves other girls?”

“I have seen him look at girls,” said Cerise. “He likes all the world, but girls he likes most.”

“Are you in love with him, Cerise?” asked Bobby with a grin.

“Yes,” said Cerise candidly. “Who could help?”

“How much are you in love with him, Cerise?”

“I would walk to London for him without my shoes,” said Cerise.

“Well, that's something,” said Bobby. “Come into this little arbor, Cerise, and let's sit down. You don't mind my smoking?”

“Not one bit.”

“It's good to have any one love one like that,” said he, lighting a cigarette.

“He draws it from me,” said Cerise.

“Well, I must say he's more likable as he is than as he was. You should have seen him before he got young, Cerise.”

“He was always good,” said she, as though speaking from sure knowledge. “Always good and kind and sweet!”

“He managed to hide it,” said Bobby.

“Ah, yes—maybe so. There are many old gentlemen who seem rough and not nice, and then underneath it is different.”

“How would you like to marry uncle?” asked Bobby, laughing.

“If he were young outside as he is young inside of him—why, then I do not know, I might—I might not.”

Then the unfortunate young man, forgetting all things, even the approaching Julia, let his voice fall half a tone. He wandered from uncle Simon into the question of the beauty of the roses.

The conversation flagged a bit. He was holding one of her fingers. Then came steps on the gravel. A servant.

“The fly is ready to take you to the station, sir.”

It was three o'clock.

The conveyance was a cross between a hansom cab and a “growler,” with the voice of the latter, and the dust of the Ditchingham road, with the prospect of a three-mile drive to meet Julia and a three-mile drive back again, did not fill Bobby with joy—nor did the prospect of having to make explanations.

He had quite determined on that. After the arbor business it was impossible to go on with Julia. He had to break whatever bonds there existed between them, and he had to do the business before she got to the hotel. Then came the prospect of having to live with her in the hotel, even for a night. He questioned himself, asking himself whether he were a cad or not; whether he had trifled with Julia. As far as memory went, they had both trifled with one another. It was a sudden affair and no actual promise had been made. He had not even said: “I love you”—but he had kissed her. The legal mind would, no doubt, have construed that into a declaration of affection, but Bobby's mind was not legal, anything but, and as for kissing a girl, if he had been forced to marry all the girls he had kissed, he would have been forced to live in Utah.

He had to wait half an hour for the train at Ditchingham, and when it drew up, out stepped Julia, hot and dressed in green, dragging a hold-all and a bundle of magazines and newspapers.

“H'are you?” said Bobby, as they shook hands.

“Hot,” said Julia.

“Isn't it?”

He carried the hold-all to the fly and a porter followed with a basket-work portmanteau. When the luggage was stowed in, they got in and the fly moved off.

Julia was not in a passionate mood; no person is or ever has been, after a journey on the London and Wessex and South Coast Railway—unless it is a mood of passion against the railway. She seemed, indeed, disgruntled and critical, and a tone of complaint in her voice cheered up Bobby.

“I know, it's an awful old fly,” said he, “but it's the best they had. The hotel motor car is broken down or something.”

“Why didn't you wire me that day,” said she, “that you were going off so soon. I only got your wire from here next morning. You promised to meet me and you never turned up. I went to the Albany to see whether you were in and I saw Mr. Tozer. He said you had gone off with half a dozen people in a car.”

“Only four, not including me,” cut in Bobby.

“Two ladies.”

“An old French lady and her daughter.”

“Well, that's two ladies, isn't it?”

“I suppose so—you can't make it three. Then there was uncle; it's true he's a host in himself.”

“How's he going on?”

“Splendidly.”

“I'm very anxious to see him,” said Julia. “It's so seldom one meets any one really original in this life. Most people are copies of others, and generally bad ones, at that.”

“That's so,” said Bobby.

“How's the novel going on?” said Julia.

“Heavens!” said Bobby, “do you think I can add literary work to my other distractions? The novel is not going on, but the plot is.”

“How d'you mean?”

“Uncle Simon. I've got the beginning and middle of a novel in him, but I haven't got the end.”

“You are going to put him in a book?”

“I wish to goodness I could, and close the covers on him! No, I'm going to weave him into a story. He's doing most of the weaving, but that's a detail—look here, Julia”

“Yes,”

“I've been thinking.”

“Yes.”

“I've been thinking we have made a mistake.”

“Who?”

“Well, we. I didn't write. I thought I'd wait till I saw you.”

“How d'you mean?” said Julia dryly.

“Us.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you know what I mean. It's just this way—people do foolish things on the spur of the moment.”

“What have we done foolish?”

“We haven't done anything foolish, only I think we were in too great a hurry.”

“How?”

“Oh, you know—that evening at your flat.”

“Oh!”

“Yes,”

“You mean to say you don't care for me any more?”

“Oh, it's not that. I care for you very much.”

“Say it at once,” said Julia. “You care for me as a sister.”

“Well, that's about it,” said Bobby.

Julia was silent and only the voice of the fly filled the air. Then she said: “It's just as well to know where one is.”

“Are you angry?”

“Not a bit.”

He glanced at her.

“Not a bit. You have met some one else—why not say so?”

“I have,” said Bobby. “You know quite well, Julia, one can't help these things.”

“I don't know anything about 'these things,' as you call them. I only know that you have ceased to care for me—let that suffice.”

She was very calm, and a feeling came to Bobby that she did not care so very deeply for him. It was not a pleasant feeling, somehow, although it gave him relief. He had expected her to weep or fly out in a temper, but she was quite calm and ordinary. He almost felt like making love to her again to see if she had cared for him, but fortunately this feeling passed.

“We'll be friends,” said he.

“Absolutely,” said Julia. “How could a little thing like that spoil friendship?”

Was she jesting with him or in earnest? Bitter or just herself?

“Is she staying at the hotel?” asked she after a moment's silence.

“She is,” said Bobby.

“It's the French girl?”

“How did you guess that?”

“I knew.”

“When?”

“When you explained them and began with the old lady. But the old lady will, no doubt, have her turn next, and to the next girl you'll explain them beginning with the girl.”

Bobby felt very hot and uncomfortable.

“Now you're angry with me,” said he.

“Not a bit.”

“Well, let's be friends.”

“Absolutely—I could never fancy you as the enemy of any one but yourself.”

Bobby wasn't enjoying the drive, and there was a mile more of it—uphill, mostly.

“I think I'll get out and give the poor old horse a chance,” said he. “These hills are beastly for it.”



He got out and walked by the fly, glancing occasionally at the silhouette of Julia, who seemed ruminating matters.

He was beginning to feel now that he had done her an injury, and she had said nothing about going back to-morrow or anything like that, and he was held as by a vise, and Cerise and he would be under the microscope, and Cerise knew nothing about Julia.

Then he got into the fly again, and five minutes later they drove up at the Rose. Simon was standing on the porch as they drove up. His straw hat was on the back of his head and he had a cigar in his mouth.

He looked at Bobby and Julia and grinned slightly. It seemed, suddenly, to have got into his head that Bobby had been fetching a sweetheart as well as a young lady from the station, It had, in fact, and things that got into Simon's youthful head in this fashion were difficult to remove.