‘Willoughby was in his study, a cigar between his lips and a refreshing whisky-and-soda at his side. He was re-reading a letter which had come for him that morning from his nephew Gerald. He had read it twice in the course of the day, and each time, except for the postscript, with the same feeling of satisfaction. It is always gratifying to an executive to know that the subordinate to whom he has entrusted a delicate commission is proving himself worthy of his confidence.
Things’ (Jerry wrote) ‘ought to be beginning to move soon. Yesterday and today it has been raining all the time and Mrs Clayborne hasn’t stirred from her sitting-room, so of course I couldn’t do anything, but I heard her tell Uncle Crispin that she was going to the village tomorrow to have tea with the vicar, with whom she has apparently got matey. As soon as she is out of the way I shall start my search. Her having a suite will make it more difficult, because there are so many more places where one has to look, but if she’s swilling tea at the vicarage I shall have plenty of time.
‘I still think you must be mistaken in supposing she was the one who swiped your miniature. She is a charming woman. The first thing she did when I arrived was to kiss me on both cheeks and tell me to call her Barney. She said she hoped I had recovered from that lunch, and she asked most affectionately after you. She may be a shoplifter, though you’ve probably got the story all wrong, but I’ll swear she isn’t the sort to pinch things from a house where she’s staying as a guest. However, you sent me here to search her room, so I’ll search it.
‘It’s a long time since I was at Mellingham, but it seems much the same, except that I think Uncle Crispin is going off his onion. He acts as if he had something on his mind and starts at sudden noises. Yesterday I came into the library and he was standing there in a sort of trance and didn’t see me, and when I cleared my throat preparatory to saying Well, the rain didn’t seem to show any signs of stopping, or something bright of that sort, he shot up like a rocketing pheasant and nearly bumped his head against the ceiling. He has also engaged the most extraordinary butler, a man of the name of Chippendale who calls one “chum”. I suppose you have to take what you can get nowadays, but when I look at Chippendale and remember the stately major domos of my childhood and boyhood, I feel like turning my face to the wall.
‘P.S.’ (wrote Jerry) ‘Don’t you think the miniature might be in your study somewhere? A puff of wind might have blown it to the floor. Have you looked everywhere?’
It was as ‘Willoughby finished reading this postscript and was thinking that in the matter of weakness of intellect his nephew Gerald had much in common with his brother Crispin that Jane arrived.
He greeted her cordially. He had become very fond of her in the course of their brief acquaintance. Girls of her age group he tended as a rule to shun, but there was something about her that had appealed to him from the first.
‘Come in and take a seat, drunken sailor,’ he said welcomingly. ‘And if my form of address puzzles you, I had in mind the way you’ve been spending money since you hit the jackpot.’
The charge had substance. Her sudden access to wealth had left Jane dizzy, but not so dizzy as to be unable to go through London’s emporia like a devouring flame. Her expenditure guaranteed by the firm of Scrope, Ashby and Pemberton, she had bought several dresses, several hats, an expensive car and some nice bits of bijouterie in Bond Street. Willoughby’s comparison of her to an inebriated seaman on shore leave was not inaccurate. ‘Writers through the ages have made a good many derogatory remarks about money, and one gets the impression that it is a thing best steered clear of, but every now and then one finds people who like the stuff and one of these was Jane. It seemed to her to fill a long-felt want.
‘I suppose you’ve come now,’ said Willoughby, ‘to tell me you’ve decided to buy an estate in the country and you want Scrope, Ashby and Pemberton to advance the cash for it. If so, let me recommend Mellingham Hall, Mellingham-in-the-Vale. Desirable Elizabethan residence, gravel soil, company’s own water, spreading parklands and a lake. And I believe my brother Crispin could be induced to sell.’
Jane promised to bear it in mind.
‘But at the moment,’ she said, ‘all I want from Scrope, Ashby and Pemberton is information concerning G. G. F. West.’
‘What do you want to know about him?’
‘Where he is, and what he means by going there when we were supposed to be having dinner together tomorrow night. It was all set, and I get a telegram from him saying it’s off because he’s gone to the country.’
‘Yes, to my brother’s house, the one you’re going to buy. He left very suddenly.’
‘But why? When we had this dinner date.’
‘On a diet perhaps, do you think? Fleeing from temptation. ‘Jane uttered a cry. A bright light had flashed upon her. She eyed Willoughby narrowly.
‘Did you tell him about my money?’
‘I did. Why not?’
Then I see what’s happened. He’s got scruples about marrying a rich girl and, as you say, is fleeing from temptation.’
‘As in the stories in women’s magazines?’
‘Exactly. Don’t you think I’m right?’
‘I shouldn’t wonder. He’s ass enough for anything.’
‘Mr Scrope, you are speaking of the man I love.’
‘Oh, you do love him?’
‘Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?’
‘I for one. He writes people letters with idiotic postscripts. But I’m glad to hear you love him, because he loves you. He told me he did.’
‘Of course he does. I can see it in his eye. But he has these scruples.’
‘Yes, he told me that, too.’
‘What an ass!’
‘Miss Hunnicut, you are speaking of the man you love.’
‘And yet there’s something sweet and wonderful and beautiful about it, don’t you think?’
‘No.’
‘I mean there aren’t many men who would let their scruples stand between them and a million dollars.’
That’s because most men have sense.
‘Of course you’ve only got to look at him to see the sort of man he is. Don’t you think he’s got lovely eyes?’
‘No.’
“What was he like as a little boy?’
‘Horrible.’
‘Well, there’s only one thing to be done. I must go to this Mellingham place and overcome those scruples. Can you give me a letter of introduction to your brother?’
‘It won’t be necessary. He takes in paying guests.’
‘How very convenient. So I just ring the front door bell and walk in?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Goodbye then, Mr Scrope. I won’t take up more of your valuable time.’
‘Always a pleasure to see you. Drop in again if you want to buy Buckingham Palace or anything like that. Scrope, Ashby and Pemberton are always at your service.
For some moments after Jane had left, Willoughby, with a new cigar and another whisky-and-soda, sat bathed in the sentimental. glow which comes to elderly bachelors when they hear stories of young love. Much though he himself disapproved of marriage, he was broad-minded and could appreciate that others might feel differently about it, and it was pleasant to think that his nephew was going to link his lot with that of a millionairess, for he had no doubt that Jane Hunnicut would be successful in her efforts to hammer sense into Jerry. His acquaintance with her had left him with the conviction that she was a girl who, like the Canadian mounted police, would not fail to get her man.
Good luck to her, he was saying to himself, when a disturbing thought intruded. Would her advent divert Jerry’s thoughts and take his mind off his sacred mission?
His apprehension did not last long. A clear-thinking man, he saw that he was disturbing himself unduly. Those scruples of which they had been speaking made it essential for Jerry that he deliver the goods and so lift himself out of the poor suitor class by obtaining the trust money. Jane’s presence would act as a stimulus, urging
him on to give of his best and rise to new heights of endeavour. It was with restored composure that he reached for the telephone.
‘Crips?’
‘Oh, hullo, Bill.’
‘Just wanted to tell you, Crips, that I’m sending you another guest, a girl called Hunnicut, who’s a friend of Jerry’s. And don’t say “Oh, Bill!” like that, as if I were reporting the death of a favourite aunt. Yes, I know you don’t want girls about the place, but this one is special. She’s just come into an enormous fortune and is buying up everything in sight. There’s quite a chance, if you play your cards right, that she will take the Hall off your hands.’
3
The immediate effect of this announcement on Crispin was to extract from him a strangled gulp, the bronchial equivalent of Chippendale’s ‘Cor chase my aunt Fanny up a gum tree’. For some moments his rigidity was so pronounced that he might have been mistaken for a statue of himself erected by a few friends and admirers. Then, as the full beauty of Willoughby’s words penetrated to his consciousness, this inelasticity gave place to something resembling the animation of a war horse that has heard the sound of the bugle. The war horse, we are told, when the sound of the bugle is drawn to its attention, becomes a good deal stirred. It starts. It quivers. It paws the valley, rejoices in its strength and says ‘Ha, ha’ among the trumpets, and it was thus, give or take a ‘Ha, ha’ or two, that Crispin behaved.
Becoming calmer, he found doubts creeping in. Willoughby, he knew, was far too prone to say things in a spirit of jest and to joke on serious subjects. This might be merely his idea of humour. It was a paralysing thought, but there was a way by which the truth could be ascertained. ‘Willoughby had spoken of this girl as a friend of his nephew Gerald. Gerald could provide official information concerning her financial standing. He went in search of him and found him in the billiards room practising moody canons.
‘Gerald,’ he sad, making him miss an easy one, ‘do you know a girl called Hunnicut?’
The cue fell from Jerry’s grasp and clattered to the floor. He had an odd illusion that his heart had leaped from its moorings and crashed against his front teeth. It was as if the voice of conscience had spoken. Not for ain instant since his callous cancelling of their dinner engagement had he been free from a corroding sense of guilt. He saw himself as that lowest of created beings, the man who asks a girl to dinner and at the last moment stands her up. It was in his opinion the sort of thing that someone like Benedict Arnold would have done, and he was trying not to picture what Jane Hunnicut must be thinking of him.
‘Willoughby,’ Crispin continued, ‘says she is coming here.’
Once again Jerry’s heart executed a Nijinsky leap. He was finding Crispin hard to focus, and was obliged to blink several times before he could see him steadily and see him whole. His uncle seemed to be flickering like something in an early silent picture.
‘Coming here?’ he heard himself croak.
‘And he says you know her.’
‘Know her?’
‘Yes,’ sad Crispin, justifiably irritated, for no uncle likes to converse with a nephew who models his conversation on that of an echo in the Swiss mountains. ‘Know her. Do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she rich?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean really rich?’
‘She has between one and two million dollars,’ sad Jerry with a shudder.
‘Ha!’ sad Crispin, as if he were saying it among the trumpets.
Jane arrived soon after lunch next day, but it was not for some little time that Jerry had the opportunity of an extended conversation with her. When Crispin received a guest who might take it into her head to buy Mellingham Hall, he received her thoroughly. Wherever Jerry went, he seemed to come on the two of them, Crispin prattling, Jane listening politely. It was only when Crispin was summoned by Chippendale to go indoors to take a telephone call, leaving them standing by the lake, that the interview which Jerry had been half dreading, half looking forward to was able to proceed.
Chippendale in his friendly way lingered long enough to give Jerry a cordial wink accompanied by a vertical raising of the thumbs, presumably to indicate that Jane had met with his approval, and seemed on the point of engaging them in amiable chat, but apparently thought better of it and withdrew, and they were alone except for a duck, remarkably like Chippendale in appearance, which was quacking meditatively in the water not far away.
If Jerry had attempted to open the conversation, he would probably himself have quacked, for he was deeply stirred and in no shape to frame a coherent remark. Although this encounter had not come on him as a surprise, it had done much to cause his vocal cords to seize up. It was Jane who spoke first.
‘I seem to remember that face,’ she said. ‘Mr G. G. F. West, is it not?’
Mr G. G. F. West still being in no condition to sustain his share of the exchanges, she continued.
‘You are probably wondering what I am doing here. How the girl does flit about, you are saying to yourself, here today, Bournemouth yesterday, London the day before that, doesn’t she ever stay put? The explanation is very simple. I felt that if Mellingham Hall was so irresistible that you couldn’t keep away from it even though it meant breaking your sacred promise to take me out to dinner, it must be an earthly Paradise and I ought to come and have a look at it. And I must say it well repays inspection. But it’s a shame about that dinner. From Barribault’s point of view, I mean. They were expecting to clean up, for they knew that you would have spared no expense.
Jerry found speech. Nothing very bright, but technically speech. He said:
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Me, too.’
‘I was going to write to you and explain.’
Take some explaining.’
‘Only I can’t.’
‘I don’t follow you.
‘I mean it’s rather secret stuff. Can you keep a secret?’
‘No.’
‘You could try.’
‘Oh, I’ll try.’
‘Well, then, it’s like this.’
He told his story well, omitting no detail however slight, and she listened attentively. When he had finished, she gave her verdict as uncompromisingly as she had done after weighing the evidence in the case of Onapoulos and Onapoulos versus the Lincolnshire and Eastern Counties Glass Bottling Corporation.
‘Your Uncle Bill is a hell hound.’
‘No, he’s all right.’
‘Landing you with a job like that.’
‘He wants that miniature rather badly.’
‘I dare say, but I maintain that, slice him where you like, he’s still a hell hound. Do you know what I would do if I had an uncle who wanted me to search people’s rooms? I’d tell him to go to blazes. I’m surprised that you didn’t.’
‘I couldn’t. There’s the money.
‘Money isn’t everything.’
‘It is as far as I’m concerned. You see, I’m in love with a girl—’
‘Well, that’s always nice.’
‘— and she’s damned rich and I’m damned poor.’
‘I don’t see where that matters. If she’s worth falling in love with, she won’t mind.’
‘It isn’t her minding that’s the trouble, it’s me minding.’
‘You don’t want to seem a fortune hunter?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that you ought to be certified?’
‘It has from time to time, and then from time to time it hasn’t. I think on the whole I’m doing the sensible thing.’
‘I don’t. If the post of village idiot at Mellingham-in-the-Vale is vacant, I feel you ought to apply for it. Still, I suppose it’s no good trying to reason with you. So what are your plans? When do you search?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘Golly!’
‘Yes, that’s rather how I feel. But it’s got to be done.’
‘What happens if she catches you?’
‘I don’t like to think of it. I’m hoping everything will be all right. She’s having tea with the vicar. But you might be praying for me, will you?’
‘If you think it would be helpful,’ said Jane. ‘It will have to be the one for those in peril on the sea, because that’s the only one I remember.’
4
Having lingered to wink at Jerry and elevate his thumbs as a tribute to Jane, Chippendale had not been able to reach the extension in the butler’s pantry in time to listen to Crispin’s telephone call, but one is happy to say that he missed nothing that would have been worth hurrying for. It was only from the vicar thanking Crispin for his gift of two old pairs of trousers and a teapot with a cracked spout to the forthcoming Jumble Sale in ad of the Church Lads Annual Outing. There were, of course, a few words of pleasant conversation just to keep the thing from seeming abrupt. The vicar said how eagerly he was looking forward to enjoying Mrs Clayborne’s company at the tea table; a charming woman didn’t Crispin think, and Crispin sad Yes, charming, charming. Oh, and would Crispin tell her to be sure to bring with her that novel by Emma Lucille Agee, I think that was the name, of which she had spoken in such high terms, and Crispin said he would not forget, which he promptly did. Nothing, in short, which would have repaid Chippendale for the trouble of picking up the extension receiver.
It was perhaps an hour later, getting on for half past four, that Crispin, returning to the library to avoid R. B. Chisholm, who wanted to talk to him about the situation in the Middle East, found Chippendale in a chair with his feet on a table, reading a book of sermons.
He seemed to be glad to be interrupted, though he was a man who sorely needed all the sermons he could get his hands on.
‘Ah, there you are, cocky,’ he sad genially. Thought you’d be along sooner or later. Ever read this fellow? Canon Whistler he calls himself. Got a lot to say about hell fire. I suppose a clergyman had to in those days, if he wanted to keep his job. I’ve got a cousin who’s a clergyman, well when I say a clergyman, he cleans out a church down Hammersmith way, dusts the pews and washes the floor and sees that the hymn books are all present and correct, makes a good job of it, too, the vicar calls him Tidy Thomas, that being his name, the same as mine only mine’s Reginald Clarence. Shows what a small world it is.’