He knew so well what the harvest would be.
In the main, though despotic, his wife's rule was benevolent, and the love she bore him enabled him to rub valets' noses in shirt fronts without exciting anything worse than a pained "Oh, Howard!" She had even been reasonably mild when she had found him rolling the bones with the chauffeur.
But there was one point on which he knew that she would tolerate no funny business. Let her discover that he had been trying to skin the best cook in Sussex, thus sowing in that cook's mind possible thoughts of giving her notice, and the tigress that slept in her would be unchained.
"Anticipating a spot of toughness on your part," said Joss, "I leaped at the opportunity offered to me just now of buying up your paper. It may interest you to know that I got it dirt cheap. Confidence in your financial stability is very low in the servants' hall, and sacrifice prices prevailed." He paused. "Steptoe," he said, "you will wear your stiff-bosomed shirt and like it."
Mr Steptoe had sunk into a chair and was supporting his head on his hands. Joss felt a pang of pity for the stricken man.
"Cheer up," he said. "You have only to show a docile and reasonable spirit, and I shall not proceed to the last awful extreme.
"How on earth," he asked sympathetically, " did you come to get in the red to that extent? You must have been rolling them all wrong.
You'd better let me give you a few lessons."
Mr Steptoe raised his head, staring.
"Do you play craps?"
"Do I play craps?" said Joss with a light laugh. "That's good.
The dicers of a dozen cities would smile if they heard you ask that. You, I take it, are a novice."
"No, I'm not," said Mr Steptoe hotly.
"Then there must be something seriously wrong with your methods. The whole science of craps consists in saying the right thing to the bones at the right time. And that, I suspect, is where you have slipped. You suggest to me the ultraconservative, hidebound personality. What you learned at your mother's knee is good enough for you. I understand that you still say, 'Baby needs new shoes.' "
"Well, why not?"
"All wrong. Dice aren't going to respond to outmoded stuff like that. But I'll go into all that later. For the moment, Steptoe, let me urge upon you never again to play with cooks. Practically all of them have an uncanny skill. Your future as a crapshooter, as I see it, lies among the nobility and gentry. If I were you I would reserve myself for this garden party of which I hear so much."
"How do you mean?"
''Wait till the garden party, and then detach a contingent of the best element in the County from the tea and buns and take them behind the stables and give them the works."
"I never thought of that."
"I see no reason why you should not make a substantial killing."
"It can't be too substantial for me."
"You require the money for some special purpose?''
"Do I!" Although they were alone, behind closed doors, Mr Steptoe looked nervously over his shoulder. "I want to raise enough to buy my transportation back to Hollywood."
"Your heart is still there, is it? But I was given to understand that your career there was not an unmixedly successful one. Suppose you ran into Wildcat Wix again?''
"Say, listen, I could eat that guy for breakfast."
"I was told that he whaled the tar out of you."
"Who said that?''
"Mrs Steptoe."
"Women don't understand these things. I was robbed of the decision by a venal referee. And, anyway, I'm not planning to go back to being a box-fighter. When I left there I was doing swell in pictures."
"I don't remember seeing you."
"Well, it was extra work till just at the end. Then I was in one where I had three good speeches."
"You had?"
"That's what I had. It was one of these tough stories, where everybody's all the time slapping somebody else's face. I was one of these gangsters. A guy comes up to me and says, 'Oh yeah?' and I say, 'Oh yeah?' and slap his face. Then another guy comes up to me and says, 'Oh, yeah?' and I say, 'Oh yeah?' and slap his face.
And then a third guy comes up to me and says, 'Oh yeah?' and I say, 'Oh yeah?' and I slap him on the kisser too."
"I suppose they couldn't get Clark Gable?"
"And then Mrs Steptoe goes and marries me. Wouldn't that jar your Just as I'm· starting to break in."
"Many people say that the artist should not marry."
"It bust my career. There's a rising demand in pictures for fellows with maps like mine. Look at Wallace Beery. Look at Edward G. Robinson. How about Maxie Rosenbloom? There's a case for you.
Started out as a box-fighter like me, and now look at him."
"Maxie was a champion
"Well, so would I of been a champion if it hadn't of been for jealousy in high places. I tell you, I was being groomed for stardom when Mrs Steptoe comes along and takes me away from it all.
And all that stands between me and it now is not having the dough for my transportation."
"A lesson or two from me, and we'll soon adjust that. You'll send those dukes and earls back from the garden party in their shirts."
"I cert'nly will. Say, listen," said Mr Steptoe, regarding Joss with affection and respect. "You're all right!"
''I'm one of the nicest fellows you ever met. In proof of which take these."
"Cheese!"
"I merely needed them at the outset of our acquaintance to ensure the establishing of our relations on a chummy basis. And now,"
said Joss briskly, "as time is getting on, climb into that shirt."
The joyous light died out of the other's eyes.
"Must I?"
''I'm afraid so. People are coming to dinner."
"Just a bunch of stiffs."
"The stiffer the stiffs, the stiffer the shirt front. That is the fundamental law on which society rests. So upsy-daisy, Steptoe, and get it over."
"Well, if you say so."
"That's my brave little man. And now," said Joss, who had been looking out of the window, "I must leave you. There's somebody down in the garden that I want to see."
Chapter IX
Sally had dressed for dinner early, in order to be able to enjoy a stroll in the garden before the guests should arrive. Claines Hall was one of the moated. houses of England, and a walk beside those still waters always refreshed her after one of her visits to London.
Her thoughts, as she leaned over the low wall, looking down at the fish darting in and out of the weeds, had turned to Joss. As his social sponsor she felt herself concerned in his fortunes. She wondered how he was settling down in the servants' hall and hoped that that exuberance of his had not led him into the perpetration of one of those gaffes which are so rightly resented in such places.
It was nice, at any rate, to find that he had been an outstanding success with Mrs Steptoe. That autocrat's enthusiastic response to her rather apprehensive enquiries had astonished Sally. Mrs Steptoe had unhesitatingly stamped Joss with the seal of her approval as the goods. She had spoken in no measured terms of the quiet forcefulness of his personality, giving it as her opinion that this time the master of the house had come up against something red-hot.
If this new fellow was as good as he seemed, said Mrs Steptoe, not mincing her words, it was quite within the bounds of possibility that Howard might make his appearance at the garden party looking halfway human.
A cheery "Hoy!" broke the stillness, and she turned to see the very person she had been thinking about. Valets did not as a rule saunter about the gardens of Claines Hall in the quiet evenfall, but nobody had told Joss Weatherby that.
"So there you are," he said. "Do you know, in this uncertain light I mistook you for a wood nymph."
"Do you always, shout 'Hoy!' at wood nymphs?"
"Nearly always."
"I suppose you know that valets aren't supposed to shout 'Hoy!'
at people?"
"You must open a conversation somehow."
&nbs
p; "Well, if you want to attract, for instance, Mrs Steptoe's attention, it would be more suitable to say 'Hoy, madam.' "
"Or 'Hoy, dear lady!' "
"Yes, that would be friendlier."
"Thanks. I'll remember it." He joined her at the wall and stood scrutinizing the fish for a moment in silence. The evening was very still. Somewhere in the distance sheep bells were tinkling, and from one of the windows of the house there came the sound of a raucous voice rendering the Lambeth Walk. Despite the shirt, Joss had left Mr Steptoe happy, even gay. "This is a lovely place,"
he said.
''I'm glad you like it."
"An earthly Paradise, absolutely. Though mark you," said Joss, who believed in coming to the point, "a gasworks in Jersey City would be all right with me, so long as you were there. A book of verses underneath the bough—"
The quotation was familiar to Sally, and she felt it might be better to change the subject.
"How are you getting on?''
"Fine, Couldn't be better. I was hoping to run across you, and here you are. And as I was saying, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou beside me, singing in the wilderness-"
"I didn't mean in the wilderness. I meant in the servants' hall."
"Oh, the servants' hall? I'm its pet."
"Chibnall, of course, is the man you have to conciliate. His word can make or break."
"I have Chibnall in my pocket."
"Really?"
''We're like Cohen and Corcoran. One of those beautiful friendships. We hadn't known each other half an hour before he was taking his hair down and confiding in me. Did you know he was engaged to the barmaid at the local pub?"
""No ...
"Perhaps it hasn't been given out yet. And he was a good deal upset because he found her this morning straightening a commercial traveller's tie. Oh, curse of marriage, he said to himself, that we can call these delicate creatures ours but not their appetites. His impulse was to write her a stinker."
"And did you approve?"
"No. I was against it. I pointed out to him that it is of the essence of a barmaid's duties that she be all things to all men and that it had probably been a mere professional gesture, designed purely to stimulate trade. I am a close enough student of human nature to be aware that a commercial traveller who has had his tie straightened by a pretty girl with copper-coloured hair is far more likely to order a second beer than one to whom such girl has been distant and aloof."
"That's true. He must have found you a great comfort."
"Oh, he did. He's going to introduce me to her tomorrow."
"You seem to have comforted Mr Steptoe too. That sounds like him singing."
"Yes. I found him rather moody, but I dropped a few kindly words, and they cheered him up like a noggin of J. B. Duff's sherry. I forgot to ask about that, by the way. Did you and he finish the bottle after I had left?''
"Not quite."
"Was the interview satisfactory?''
"Very, thanks."
"Let me see, I forget what it was you were seeing him about."
"You should take one of those memory courses. How do you get on with the others?''
"They eat out of my hand."
"Has Mrs Barlow given you a nice room?''
"Terrific."
"Then you think you will be happy here?"
"Ecstatically."
"How are you going to manage about looking after Mr Steptoe?
Can you valet?''
"You have touched on my secret sorrow. I can't. But it's all arranged. Immediately upon arrival I summoned the staff and ad
dressed them. I said that if they were prepared to take my work off my hands I was prepared to pay well for good service. I had the meeting with me from the start, and the details were speedily fixed up. Charles, the footman, will see to the technical side of Mr Steptoe's valeting. The matter of my morning cup of tea is in the capable hands of the kitchen maid. The cook has contracted to see that a few sandwiches shall be beside my bed last thing at night, in case I get peckish in the small hours. The whisky and soda to accompany them will, of course, be in Chibnall's department."
Sally stared. For one disloyal moment she found herself regretting that Lord Holbeton had not more of this spirit of enterprise.
It might have been purely her fancy, but she thought she had detected in the latter's manner, when she broached the idea of stealing Mrs Chavender's portrait, a certain listlessness and lack of enthusiasm.
"You're quite an organizer."
"I like to get things working smoothly."
"What used you to be before this? A captain of industry? But I was forgetting. Mr Duff said you were an artist."
"Yes."'
"Then what were you doing in his office? When I came in, I thought you must be a partner or something."
"That is a mistake lots of people used to make. My air of quiet dignity was misleading. I was a kind of tame artist employed by the firm to do illustrations for advertisements and so on. Among other things I did the posters for Paramount Ham."
"Oh no!"
"All right, I don't like them myself."
"But Mr Duff told me you painted that portrait of Mrs Chavender that's in the breakfast room."
"Quite true."
"Then why—?"
"The whole trouble was," said Joss, "that the necessity for eating thrust itself into the foreground of my domestic politics. When I painted that portrait I was in the chips. I had a private income—the young artist's best friend. It was later converted to his own use by the lawyer who had charge of it, he getting the feeling one day that his need was greater than mine. When you're faced by the pauper's home you have to take what you can get."
"Yes," said Sally, who had had the same experience. "But what a shame! I'm sorry."
"Thanks," said Joss. "Thanks for being sorry. Well, I struggled along for a while, getting thinner and thinner, and finally did what I ought to have had the sense to do at the start. I saved J. B from a watery grave. We were at Easthampton at the time, he on his yacht, I holding an executive post in a local soda fountain, and we met in mid-ocean. I got him to shore, and in a natural spasm of gratitude he added me to his London staff. He was just leaving for London to take charge. I have an idea he has regretted it since. Thinking it over, I believe he wishes occasionally that he had gone down for the third time.
"I can see how you might not be everybody's dream employee."
"Too affable, you think?"
"A little, perhaps. Well, it's a shame."
'Oh, all in the day's work. Someday I hope to be able to be a portrait painter again. The difficulty is, of course, that in order to paint portraits you have to have sitters, and you can't get sitters till you've made a name, and you can't make a name till you've painted portraits. It is what is known as a vicious circle."
"Very vicious."
"Almost a menace. But let's not waste time talking about me.
Let's go on to that dress you're wearing. It's stupendous."
Thank you.
"It looks as if it were woven of mist and moonbeams. Mist and moonbeams, and you inside. Beat that for a combination. It's a most extraordinary thing. You seem to go from strength to strength.
When you came into the office this morning in that blue frock I thought it was the last word in woman's wear. And now you knock my eye out with this astounding creation. But of course it isn't the upholstery; it's you. You would look wonderful in anything. Tell me," said Joss, " there's a thing I've been wanting to discuss with you ever since we met. Do you believe in love at first sight?"
Once more Sally had the feeling that the conversation might be changed.
"The ducks nest on that island over there," she said, pointing at a dim mass that loomed amid the shadows of the moat.
"Let them," said Joss cordially. " Do .you?"
"Do I what?"
"Believe in love at first sight? Chibnall does."
A car rounded the corner of the drive and came raspingly to a halt
at the front door.
"I must go," said Sally.
"Oh no, don't."
"People are arriving."
"Just a bunch of stiffs. I have this on Mr Steptoe's authority. Pay no attention to them."
"Good night."
"You are really going?"