The next instant, the peaceful stillness of Mulberry Grove was shattered by a stern View Halloo, and the instant after that Lord Hoddesdon had banged the window down and bolted it. And then for a space these two representatives of Labour and the Old Regime stood staring at one another through the glass, like rare fishes in adjoining compartments of an aquarium.
Lord Hoddesdon was the first to weary of the spectacle. He had seen a good deal of the cloth-capped man in the last quarter of an hour, and he was feeling surfeited. Even observed through glass, the other's inflamed eyes had so hideous a menace that he wished to be as far away from them as possible. Hastily withdrawing, therefore, he backed out of the room and found himself in a passage. At the end of this passage was the front door, and beside the front door a hat-stand, from which protruded, like heads of the Burjoicy neatly skewered on pikes after the Social Revolution, divers hats. And at the sight of these his lordship's mind began working along new lines.
The loss of his grey topper had not until now affected Lord Hoddesdon very deeply. Subconsciously, no doubt, he had been aware of it, but it was only at this moment that the full shock of bereavement really smote him. Seeing these hats, he realized for the first time his own lidless condition, and for the first time appreciated the vital necessity of remedying it. It was his ambition, if he ever got out of this ghastly suburb alive, to return to London. And at the thought of accomplishing that return bareheaded every blue drop of Hoddesdon blood in his veins froze. To go through London's streets without a hat was unthinkable.
Nevertheless, as he stood scanning the hat-stand with the eyes of a shipwrecked mariner sighting a sail, his heart distinctly sank. Whoever owned this house appeared to have a perfectly astonishing taste in hats. On the three pegs were a cap with purple checks (a thing of pure nightmare); an almost unbelievable something constructed of black straw; and a bowler. It was at the bowler that his lordship directed his gaze. The other two, he saw at a glance, were out of the question.
Even the bowler was not ideal. It was of a type not often met with nowadays, being almost square in shape and flattened down at the top. But it was so distinctly better than the cap and the straw that Lord Hoddesdon did not hesitate. Bounding swiftly forward, he snatched it from its peg. And, as he did so, there came from behind him a roar like that of a more than usually irritable lioness witnessing the theft of one of her cubs.
'Hi!'
Lord Hoddesdon turned as if the word had been a red-hot poker pressed against his form-fitting trousers. He beheld, hurrying swiftly down the stairs, a little man with a mauve face and a monocle.
It was the practice of Major Flood-Smith, of Castlewood, to take a siesta in his bedroom on these warm afternoons. Today, he had been looking forward to uninterrupted repose. His niece Katherine had gone off with that young fellow, Smith, from next-door, to a matinée performance at the Brixton Astoria, and he had the house to himself. Well content, he was just dozing off, when that View Halloo from the garden had jerked him off the bed like a hooked minnow: and a glance out of the window had shown him a revolting-looking individual in a cloth cap, standing with his nose glued against the window of the morning-room. Pausing only to snatch his Service revolver out of its drawer, Major Flood-Smith had charged downstairs, and he would be damned if here wasn't another blasted fellow strolling about the hall pinching his hats.
All the householder in Major Flood-Smith was roused.
'You!' he thundered. 'What the devil are you doing?'
The whole trend of Lord Hoddesdon's education and upbringing had gone, from his earliest years, towards the instilment in him of a deep love of Good Form. There were things, he had been taught at Eton, at Oxford, and subsequently during his brief career as a member of His Majesty's Household Brigade, which were not done. And one of these things, he felt instinctively, was the stealing of square-topped bowler hats from men to whom he had never been introduced.
It was not unnatural, therefore, that the suave calm with which he usually met life's happenings should now have deserted him. Unable to speak, he remained standing where he was, holding the bowler.
'Who are you? How did you get in? What are you doing with that hat?' proceeded the Major, decorating the bald questions with a few of the rich expletives which a soldier inevitably picks up in his years of service. Major Flood-Smith had spent seven years with the Loyal Royal Worcestershires, who are celebrated for their plain speech.
Lord Hoddesdon was still unable to utter, but he was capable of the graceful gesture. With something of old-world courtesy, he replaced the bowler on its peg.
The Major, however, appeared dissatisfied.
'Breaking and entering! In broad daylight! Stealing my hats under my very nose! Well, I'll be . . .'
He mentioned some of the things he would be. Most of them were spiritual, a few merely physical.
Lord Hoddesdon at last found words. But, when they came, it would have been better if he had remained silent.
'It's quite all right,' he said.
He could scarcely have selected a more unfortunate remark. Major Flood-Smith's ripe complexion deepened to a still more impressive purple. He jumped about.
'Quite all right?' he cried. 'Quite all right? Quite all right? Quite all right? I catch you in my hall, sneaking my ensanguined hats, and you have the hæmorrhagic insolence to stand there and tell me it's quite all right. I'll show you how all right it is. I'll . . .'
He stopped abruptly. This was not because he had finished his observations, for he had not. If ever there was a retired Major of the Line who had all his music still within him, he was that Major. But at this moment there came from the rear of the house the dreadful sound of splintering glass. It rang out like an explosion, and it spoke straight to the deeps in Major Flood- Smith's soul.
He quivered from head to foot, and said something sharply in one of the lesser-known dialects of the Hindu Khoosh.
Lord Hoddesdon, though he was not feeling himself, was capable of understanding what had happened. There is a certain point past which you cannot push the freemen of Valley Fields. That point, he now realized, had been reached when he had closed the morning-room window, leaving the cloth-capped man standing outside like a Peri at the gates of Paradise. It is ever the instinct of the proletariat, when excluded from any goal by a sheet of glass, to throw bricks. This the cloth-capped man had now done, and it surprised Lord Hoddesdon that he had not done it sooner. No doubt what had occasioned the delay was the selection of a suitable brick.
Major Flood-Smith was torn between two conflicting desires. On the one hand, he yearned to remain and thresh out with his present companion the whole question of hats. On the other, his windows were being broken.
The good man loved his hat. But he also loved his windows.
Another crash swayed the balance. The windows had it. Barking like a seal, Major Flood-Smith disappeared down the passage, and Lord Hoddesdon, saved at the eleventh hour, snatched at the hat-stand, wrenched the front door open, banged it behind him, leaped into the street, and raced madly out of Mulberry Grove in the direction of the railway-station
It was only when he had come in sight of it that he discovered that what he had taken from the stand was the cap with the purple checks.
III
'I knew you would bungle it,' said Lady Vera.
CHAPTER 7
I
Berry Conway came round the corner into Mulberry Grove and paused outside the gate of The Nook to fumble in his pocket for his latch-key. In the fading sunlight of the summer evening, Mulberry Grove was looking its best and most pastoral. A gentle breeze whispered through the trees: and in the ornamental water, which shone like an opal, one of the swans was standing on its head, while the other moved to and fro in a slow, thoughtful sort of way like a man hunting for a lost collar-stud. It would seem, in short, almost incredible that anyone could have seen the place at this particular moment without instantly being reminded of the Island Valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, nor rain nor
any snow, nor ever wind blows loudly.
But if this comparison presented itself to the mind of Berry Conway, he gave no sign of it. He eyed Mulberry Grove with dislike. He frowned at the trim little house. At the two swans, Egbert and Percy, he glowered. And when from the premises of the Valley Fields Lawn Tennis Club there was borne to his ears the happy yapping of eager flappers, he groaned slightly, and winced, like Prometheus watching his vulture dropping in for lunch.
The inexplicable removal from his life of the only girl he had ever loved or could love had made existence a weary affair for Berry these days.
Having found his key, he entered the house and went to his bedroom. There he removed his clothes and, putting on a dressing-gown, proceeded to the bathroom. He splashed about in cold water for a while: then, returning to the bedroom, began to don the costume of the English gentleman about to dine. For tonight was the night of the annual banquet of the Old Boys of his school; and, though since his entry into the ranks of the wage-slaves he had preferred to lead a hermit existence and avoid, as far as was possible, the companions of his opulent days, some lingering sentimentality still caused him to turn out for these functions.
He had just completed his toilet when a knock sounded on the door. He had expected it sooner. He opened the door, congratulating himself, as he did so, that he had finished tying his tie. Otherwise, the faithful Old Retainer would have insisted on doing it for him.
'I didn't hear you come in, Master Berry,' said the Old Retainer, beaming. 'How nice you look. Would you like me just to straighten your tie?'
'Go ahead,' said Berry resignedly.
'I always think a tie looks so different when you straighten it.'
'I know what you mean,' said Berry. 'Straighter.'
'That's it. Straighter. Gladys-at-Castlewood tells me,' said the Old Retainer, beginning the News Bulletin, 'that they had burglars there this afternoon. She says she's never seen the Major look so purple. It was her afternoon out, she says, and when she came home he was walking round and round the garden with a pistol in his hand, muttering to himself. He was very cross, Gladys tells me. Well, I mean, enough to make any gentleman cross having men break into his house and steal his caps.'
'Did somebody steal that cap of the Major's?' asked Berry, brightening. He had disliked the thing for eighteen months.
'They did, Master Berry. And somebody else broke two of the back windows with a stone.'
'Mulberry Grove is looking up.'
'But it's all right,' said Mrs Wisdom soothingly. 'I've had a word with Mr Finbow, and he's promised to keep an eye on us.'
'Who's Mr Finbow?'
'He's a gentleman in the police, and though Mulberry Grove, he says, isn't strictly speaking on his beat, he will make a point, he says, of looking in every now and then to see that we are all right. I thought it very civil of him and gave him a slice of cake. Isn't it odd, it seems that Mr Finbow comes from the very same part of the country where I used to live when I was a slip of a girl. I always say it's a small world, after all. Well, I mean, when I say the very same part of the country, my dear father and mother had a cottage in Herefordshire and Mr Finbow lived in Birmingham, but it does seem odd, all the same. We had a nice talk. Would you like me to get a brush and give you a good brushing, Master Berry?'
'No, thanks,' said Berry hastily. 'I haven't time. I must hurry. If I miss the six-fifty, I shall be late for my dinner.'
'Be careful not to overheat yourself, dear.'
'Don't worry. I'm not as hungry as all that.'
'I mean to say, it's so dangerous to sit in a draughty railway carriage with the pores open.'
'I'll shut them,' said Berry. 'Good-bye.'
He charged out of the house, causing his next-door neighbour, Lord Biskerton, to utter a startled cry of admiration. The Biscuit at the moment was engaged in weeding his front garden, a pursuit which, like a good householder, he had taken up with energy.
'Golly!' said the Biscuit, eyeing his friend's splendour openmouthed. 'Giving the populace a thorough treat, are you not? What is it? Meat tea at Buckingham Palace?'
'O.B. dinner,' explained Berry briefly. 'And if you weren't a slacker you would be coming, too.'
The Biscuit shook his head.
'Never again for me,' he said. 'Not any more of those binges for me. I know them too well. The Committee of Management either stick you in among a drove of dotards who talk across you about the time they were given a half-holiday because of the Battle of Crécy, or else you get dumped down with a lot of kids whose heads you want to smack. And it is a very moot point which of the two situations is the fouler. I was with the kids last time. I'll swear some of them had come in prams. Have you noticed, Berry, old man, how extraordinarily young everybody seems to be nowadays? That's because we're getting on. Silver threads among the gold, laddie. How old are you?'
'Twenty-six next birthday.'
'Pretty senile,' said the Biscuit, clicking his tongue and jabbing at a weed. 'Pretty senile. And the year after that you'll be twenty-seven, and then, if I have got my figures correct, twenty-eight. Just waiting for the end, you might say. It's no use kidding ourselves, old friend, we're ageing rapidly, and our place is by the hearth.'
'You won't come, then?'
'No. I shall remain here and stroll in my garden. Quite possibly little Kitchie Valentine will be strolling in here, and we will exchange ideas across the fence. I maintain that in the suburbs it is a duty to cultivate one's neighbours. There is in English life too much of this ridiculous keeping of oneself to oneself. I deprecate it.'
It did not take Berry long, once the company had seated itself in the Oriental Banquet-Room of the Hotel Mazarin in Piccadilly, to realize which of the two alternatives mentioned by the Biscuit was to be his fate tonight. Dotards in considerable force had attended this Old Boys' dinner, but they were sitting at distant tables. His own was the very heart and centre of the younger set. Boisterous striplings, who all seemed to know one another intimately and to have no desire to know him at all, encompassed him on every side. And gradually, as he watched them, his mood of sombre sadness deepened.
He knew now that he had made a mistake in exposing himself to this ordeal. He was in no frame of mind to suffer gladly beardless juveniles like these. Swollen with soup, they had now begun to rollick and frolic in a manner infinitely distressing to a heart-broken elder. Their infantile frivolity afflicted him more and more every moment with a sense of the passage of the years.
Once, he reflected – how long ago! – he, too, had had spirits like that. Once he, also, had lived in Arcady and thrown bread at Old Boys' dinners. How far in the distant past all that sort of thing lay now.
Twenty-six next birthday! That was what he was. Twenty-bally-six, and no getting away from it.
And what had he done with his life? Nothing. Apart from being the sort of chump who, when he has the luck to meet the only girl in the world, lets her slip away from him like a dream at daybreak, what had he achieved? Nothing. If he were to pass away tonight – poisoned, let us say, by this peculiar-looking fish which, having died of some unknown complaint, had just been placed before him by an asthmatic waiter – what sort of gap would he leave? An almost invisible one. Scarcely a dimple.
Would that girl regret him? Most unlikely. Would she even remember that she had ever met him? Probably not. A wonderful girl like that met so many men. Why should she have continued to bear in mind so notably inferior a specimen as himself ? Such a girl could take her pick of all that was best and brightest of England's masculinity. Hers was a life spent in the centre of a whirling maelstrom of handsome, dashing devils with racing Bentleys and all the money in the world. What earthly reason had he to suppose that she had ever given him another thought? A doddering wreck like him – twenty-six next birthday. In a flash of morbid intuition he realized now why she had driven off that day and left him flat. It was because she was bored with him and had jumped at the chance of getting away while his back was turned.
He had reached this depth of self-torment and was preparing to go still deeper, when half a roll, propelled by a vigorous young hand, struck him smartly on the left ear. He leaped convulsively and for an instant forgot all about the girl. In similar circumstances, Dante would have forgotten Beatrice. The roll was one of those hard, jagged rolls, and the effect of its impact was not unlike that of a direct hit from a shell. He looked up wrathfully. And, as he did so, a child at the other end of the table, smirking apologetically, applied the last straw.
'Oh, sorry, sir!' cried this babe and suckling. 'Frightfully sorry, sir. Most awfully sorry, sir. I was aiming at young Dogsbody.'
Berry contrived to smirk back, but with an infinite wryness, for his heart was as lead. This, he felt, was the end.
The young germ had called him 'Sir'.
'Sir!'
It was what he himself called T. Paterson Frisby, that genuine museum-piece who could not be a day less than fifty.
Now he saw everything. Now he understood. That girl had been civil to him at first because she was a sweet, kind-hearted girl who had been taught always to be polite to Age. What he had mistaken for camaraderie had been merely the tolerance demanded by his white hairs. Right from the start, no doubt, she had been saying to herself 'At the very earliest opportunity I must shake this old buster!' and at the very earliest opportunity she had done so. 'Sir!' indeed! How right the Biscuit had been. He should never have been such a fool as to come to this blasted crèche. And the best thing he could do, having come, was to repair his blunder by oiling out immediately.