“Yes, Osbaldistone?”
“Just came in to borrow a cigarette. Used up all mine.”
“So have I, I’m afraid.”
“Too bad. Oh, well,” said Miss Osbaldistone, resignedly, “I suppose I’ll have to go out and get wet. I wish I had had the sense to stop Rodney Spelvin and send him. I met him on the stairs.”
“Yes, he was in here just now,” said Jane.
Miss Osbaldistone laughed in her hearty manly way.
“Good boy, Rodney,” she said, “but too smooth for my taste. A little too ready with the salve.”
“Yes?” said Jane, absently.
“Has he pulled that one on you yet about your being the original of the heroine of The Purple Fan?”
“Why, yes,” said Jane, surprised. “He did tell me that he had drawn Eulalie from me.”
Her visitor emitted another laugh that shook the samovars.
“He tells every girl he meets the same thing.”
“What!”
“Oh yes. It’s his first move. He actually had the nerve to try to spring it on me. Mind you, I’m not saying it’s a bad stunt. Most girls like it. You’re sure you’ve no cigarettes? No? Well, how about a shot of cocaine? Out of that too? Oh, well, I’ll be going, then. Pip-pip, Bates.”
“Toodle-oo, Osbaldistone,” said Jane, dizzily. Her brain was reeling. She groped her way to the table, and in a sort of trance cut herself a slice of cake.
“Wah!” said little Braid Vardon. He toddled forward, anxious to count himself in on the share-out.
Jane gave him some cake. Having ruined his life, it was, she felt, the least she could do. In a spasm of belated maternal love she also slipped him a jam-sandwich. But how trivial and useless these things seemed now.
“Braid!” she cried, suddenly.
“What?”
“Come here.”
“Why?”
“Let Mother show you how to hold that mashie.”
“What’s a mashie?”
A new gash opened in Jane’s heart. Four years old, and he didn’t know what a mashie was. And at only a slightly advanced age Bobby Jones had been playing in the American Open Championship.
“This is a mashie,” she said, controlling her voice with difficulty.
“Why?”
“It is called a mashie.”
“What is?”
“This club.”
“Why?”
The conversation was becoming too metaphysical for Jane. She took the club from him and closed her hand over it.
“Now, look, dear,” she said, tenderly. “Watch how mother does it. She puts the fingers⎯”
A voice spoke, a voice that had been absent all too long from Jane’s life.
“You’ll pardon me, old girl, but you’ve got the right hand much too far over. You’ll hook for a certainty.”
In the doorway, large and dripping, stood William. Jane stared at him dumbly.
“William!” she gasped at length.
“Hullo, Jane!” said William. “Hullo, Braid! Thought I’d look in.”
There was a long silence.
“Beastly weather,” said William.
“Yes,” said Jane.
“Wet and all that,” said William.
“Yes,” said Jane.
There was another silence.
“Oh, by the way, Jane,” said William. “Knew there was something I wanted to say. You know those violets?”
“Violets?”
“White violets. You remember those white violets I’ve been sending you every year on our wedding anniversary? Well, what I mean to say, our lives are parted and all that sort of thing, but you won’t mind if I go on sending them—what? Won’t hurt you, what I’m driving at, and’ll please me, see what I mean? So, well, to put the thing in a nutshell, if you haven’t any objection, that’s that.”
Jane reeled against the gate-leg table.
“William! Was it you who sent those violets?”
“Absolutely. Who did you think it was?”
“William!” cried Jane, and flung herself into his arms.
William scooped her up gratefully. This was the sort of thing he had been wanting for weeks past. He could do with a lot of this. He wouldn’t have suggested it himself, but, seeing that she felt that way, he was all for it.
“William,” said Jane, “can you ever forgive me?”
“Oh, rather,” said William. “Like a shot. Though, I mean to say, nothing to forgive, and all that sort of thing.”
“We’ll go back right away to our dear little cottage.”
“Fine!”
“We’ll never leave it again.”
“Topping!”
“I love you.” said Jane, “more than life itself.”
“Good egg!” said William.
Jane turned with shining eyes to little Braid Vardon.
“Braid, we’re going home with Daddy!”
“Where?”
“Home. To our little cottage.”
“What’s a cottage?”
“The house where we used to be before we came here.”
“What’s here?”
“This is.”
“Which?”
“Where we are now.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you what, old girl,” said William. “Just shove a green-baize cloth over that kid, and then start in and brew me about five pints of tea as strong and hot as you can jolly well make it. Otherwise I’m going to get the cold of a lifetime.”
20
THE PURIFICATION OF RODNEY SPELVIN
IT WAS AN afternoon on which one would have said that all Nature smiled. The air was soft and balmy; the links, fresh from the rains of spring, glistened in the pleasant sunshine; and down on the second tee young Clifford Wimple, in a new suit of plus fours, had just sunk two balls in the lake, and was about to sink a third. No element, in short, was lacking that might be supposed to make for quiet happiness.
And yet on the forehead of the Oldest Member, as he sat beneath the chestnut tree on the terrace overlooking the ninth green, there was a peevish frown; and his eye, gazing down at the rolling expanse of turf, lacked its customary genial benevolence. His favourite chair, consecrated to his private and personal use by unwritten law, had been occupied by another. That is the worst of a free country—liberty so often degenerates into licence.
The Oldest Member coughed.
“I trust,” he said, “you find that chair comfortable?”
The intruder, who was the club’s hitherto spotless secretary, glanced up in a goofy manner.
“Eh?”
“That chair—you find it fits snugly to the figure?”
“Chair? Figure? Oh, you mean this chair? Oh yes.”
“I am gratified and relieved,” said the Oldest Member.
There was a silence.
“Look here,” said the secretary, “what would you do in a case like this? You know I’m engaged?”
“I do. And no doubt your fiancée is missing you. Why not go in search of her?”
“She’s the sweetest girl on earth.”
“I should lose no time.”
“But jealous. And just now I was in my office, and that Mrs. Pettigrew came in to ask if there was any news of the purse which she lost a couple of days ago. It had just been brought to my office, so I produced it; whereupon the infernal woman, in a most unsuitably girlish manner, flung her arms round my neck and kissed me on my bald spot. And at that moment Adela came in. Death,” said the secretary, “where is thy sting?”
The Oldest Member’s pique melted. He had a feeling heart.
“Most unfortunate. What did you say?”
“I hadn’t time to say anything. She shot out too quick.”
The Oldest Member clicked his tongue sympathetically.
“These misunderstandings between young and ardent hearts are very frequent,” he said. “I could tell you at least fifty cases of the same kind. The one which I will select is the story of Jane Parkard, Will
iam Bates, and Rodney Spelvin.”
“You told me that the other day. Jane Packard got engaged to Rodney Spelvin, the poet, but the madness passed and she married William Bates, who was a golfer.”
“This is another story of the trio.”
“You told me that one, too. After Jane Packard married William Bates she fell once more under the spell of Spelvin, but repented in time.”
“This is still another story. Making three in all.”
The secretary buried his face in his hands.
“Oh, well,” he said, “go ahead. What does anything matter now?”
“First,” said the Oldest Member, “let us make ourselves comfortable. Take this chair. It is easier than the one in which you are sitting.”
“No, thanks.”
“I insist.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Woof!” said the Oldest Member, settling himself luxuriously.
With an eye now full of kindly good-will, he watched young Clifford Wimple play his fourth. Then, as the silver drops flashed up into the sun, he nodded approvingly and began.
The story which I am about to relate (said the Oldest Member) begins at a time when Jane and William had been married some seven years. Jane’s handicap was eleven, William’s twelve, and their little son, Braid Vardon, had just celebrated his sixth birthday.
Ever since that dreadful time, two years before, when, lured by the glamour of Rodney Spelvin, she had taken a studio in the artistic quarter, dropped her golf, and practically learned to play the ukelele, Jane had been unremitting in her efforts to be a good mother and to bring up her son on the strictest principles. And, in order that his growing mind might have every chance, she had invited William’s younger sister, Anastatia, to spend a week or two with them and put the child right on the true functions of the mashie. For Anastatia had reached the semi-finals of the last Ladies’ Open Championship and, unlike many excellent players, had the knack of teaching.
On the evening on which this story opens the two women were sitting in the drawing-room, chatting. They had finished tea; and Anastatia, with the aid of a lump of sugar, a spoon, and some crumpled cake, was illustrating the method by which she had got out of the rough on the fifth at Squashy Hollow.
“You’re wonderful!” said Jane, admiringly. “And such a good influence for Braid! You’ll give him his lesson tomorrow afternoon as usual?”
“I shall have to make it the morning,” said Anastatia. “I’ve promised to meet a man in town in the afternoon.”
As she spoke there came into her face a look so soft and dreamy that it roused Jane as if a bradawl had been driven into her leg. As her history has already shown, there was a strong streak of romance in Jane Bates.
“Who is he?” she asked, excitedly.
“A man I met last summer,” said Anastatia.
And she sighed with such abandon that Jane could no longer hold in check her womanly nosiness.
“Do you love him?” she cried.
“Like bricks,” whispered Anastatia.
“Does he love you?”
“Sometimes I think so.”
“What’s his name?”
“Rodney Spelvin.”
“What!”
“Oh, I know he writes the most awful bilge,” said Anastatia, defensively, misinterpreting the yowl of horror which had proceeded from Jane. “All the same, he’s a darling.”
Jane could not speak. She stared at her sister-in-law aghast. Although she knew that if you put a driver in her hands she could paste the ball into the next county, there always seemed to her something fragile and helpless about Anastatia. William’s sister was one of those small, rose-leaf girls with big blue eyes to whom good men instinctively want to give a stroke a hole and on whom bad men automatically prey. And when Jane reflected that Rodney Spelvin had to all intents and purposes preyed upon herself, who stood five foot seven in her shoes and, but for an innate love of animals, could have felled an ox with a blow, she shuddered at the thought of how he would prey on this innocent half-portion.
“You really love him?” she quavered.
“If he beckoned to me in the middle of a medal round, I would come to him,” said Anastatia.
Jane realized that further words were useless. A sickening sense of helplessness obsessed her. Something ought to be done about this terrible thing, but what could she do? She was so ashamed of her past madness that not even to warn this girl could she reveal that she had once been engaged to Rodney Spelvin herself; that he had recited poetry on the green while she was putting; and that, later, he had hypnotized her into taking William and little Braid to live in a studio full of samovars. These revelations would no doubt open Anastatia’s eyes, but she could not make them.
And then, suddenly, Fate pointed out a way.
It was Jane’s practice to go twice a week to the cinema palace in the village; and two nights later she set forth as usual and took her place just as the entertainment was about to begin.
At first she was only mildly interested. The title of the picture, “Tried in the Furnace”, had suggested nothing to her. Being a regular patron of the silver screen, she knew that it might quite easily turn out to be an educational film on the subject of clinker-coal. But as the action began to develop she found herself leaning forward in her seat, blindly crushing a caramel between her fingers. For scarcely had the operator started to turn the crank when inspiration came to her.
Of the main plot of “Tried in the Furnace” she retained, when finally she reeled out into the open air, only a confused recollection. It had something to do with money not bringing happiness or happiness not bringing money, she could not remember which. But the part which remained graven upon her mind was the bit where Gloria Gooch goes by night to the apartments of the libertine, to beg him to spare her sister, whom he has entangled in his toils.
Jane saw her duty clearly. She must go to Rodney Spelvin and conjure him by the memory of their ancient love to spare Anastatia.
It was not the easiest of tasks to put this scheme into operation. Gloria Gooch, being married to a scholarly man who spent nearly all his time in a library a hundred yards long, had been fortunately situated in the matter of paying visits to libertines; but for Jane the job was more difficult. William expected her to play a couple of rounds with him in the morning and another in the afternoon, which rather cut into her time. However, Fate was still on her side, for one morning at breakfast William announced that business called him to town.
“Why don’t you come too?” he said.
Jane started.
“No. No, I don’t think I will, thanks.”
“Give you lunch somewhere.”
“No. I want to stay here and do some practice-putting.”
“All right. I’ll try to get back in time for a round in the evening.”
Remorse gnawed at Jane’s vitals. She had never deceived William before. She kissed him with even more than her usual fondness when he left to catch the ten-forty-five. She waved to him till he was out of sight; then, bounding back into the house, leaped at the telephone and, after a series of conversations with the Marks-Morris Glue Factory, the Poor Pussy Home for Indigent Cats, and Messrs. Oakes, Oakes, and Parbury, dealers in fancy goods, at last found herself in communication with Rodney Spelvin.
“Rodney?” she said, and held her breath, fearful at this breaking of a two years’ silence and yet loath to hear another strange voice say “Wadnumjerwant?” “Is that you, Rodney?”
“Yes. Who is that?”
“Mrs. Bates. Rodney, can you give me lunch at the Alcazar today at one?”
“Can I!” Not even the fact that some unknown basso had got on the wire and was asking if that was Mr. Bootle could blur the enthusiasm in his voice. “I should say so!”
“One o’clock, then,” said Jane. His enthusiastic response had relieved her. If by merely speaking she could stir him so, to bend to her will when they met face to face would be pie.
“One o’clock,”
said Rodney.
Jane hung up the receiver and went to her room to try on hats.
The impression came to Jane, when she entered the lobby of the restaurant and saw him waiting, that Rodney Spelvin looked somehow different from the Rodney she remembered. His handsome face had a deeper and more thoughtful expression, as if he had been through some ennobling experience.
“Well, here I am,” she said, going to him and affecting a jauntiness which she did not feel.
He looked at her, and there was in his eyes that unmistakable goggle which comes to men suddenly addressed in a public spot by women whom, to the best of their recollection, they do not know from Eve.
“How are you?” he said. He seemed to pull himself together. “You’re looking splendid.”
“You’re looking fine,” said Jane.
“You’re looking awfully well,” said Rodney.
“You’re looking awfully well,” said Jane.
“You’re looking fine,” said Rodney.
There was a pause.
“You’ll excuse me glancing at my watch,” said Rodney. “I have an appointment to lunch with—er—somebody here, and it’s past the time.”
“But you’re lunching with me,” said Jane, puzzled.
“With you?”
“Yes. I rang you up this morning.”
Rodney gaped.
“Was it you who phoned? I thought you said ‘Miss Bates’.”
“No, Mrs. Bates.”
“Mrs. Bates?”
“Mrs. Bates.”
“Of course. You’re Mrs. Bates.”
“Had you forgotten me?” said Jane, in spite of herself a little piqued.
“Forgotten you, dear lady! As if I could!” said Rodney, with a return of his old manner. “Well, shall we go in and have lunch?”
“All right,” said Jane.
She felt embarrassed and ill at ease. The fact that Rodney had obviously succeeded in remembering her only after the effort of a lifetime seemed to her to fling a spanner into the machinery of her plans at the very outset. It was going to be difficult, she realized, to conjure him by the memory of their ancient love to spare Anastatia; for the whole essence of the idea of conjuring anyone by the memory of their ancient love is that the party of the second part should be aware that there ever was such a thing.