A Safety Match

by Ian Hay

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  A SAFETY MATCH

  * * * * *

  _BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

  Crown 8vo, 6s.

  A MAN'S MAN.

  Fourth Impression.

  Crown 8vo, 6s.

  THE RIGHT STUFF.

  _Fifth Impression._

  Popular Edition, Cloth, 1s. net.

  Crown 8vo, 6s.

  PIP.

  _Fourth Impression._

  Popular Edition, Cloth, 1s. net.

  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS.

  Edinburgh and London.

  * * * * *

  A SAFETY MATCH

  by

  IAN HAY

  Author of 'The Right Stuff,' 'A Man's Man,' 'Pip,' etc.

  Third Impression

  William Blackwood and SonsEdinburgh and London1911

  All Rights Reserved

  _TO H. M. S._

  CONTENTS.

  BOOK ONE.

  THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH.

  CHAP. PAGE

  I. HAPPY FAMILIES 3

  II. WANTED, A MAN 23

  III. THE WHEELS OF JUGGERNAUT 36

  IV. THE DEVIL A MONK WOULD BE 55

  V. A SABBATH DAY'S JOURNEY 76

  VI. DAPHNE AS MATCHMAKER 94

  VII. THE MATCH IS STRUCK 105

  VIII. _MORITURA TE SALUTAT_ 115

  BOOK TWO.

  FLICKERINGS.

  IX. A HORSE TO THE WATER 129

  X. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SOCIAL SUCCESS 145

  XI. _DIES IRAE_ 165

  XII. CILLY; OR THE WORLD WELL LOST 184

  XIII. THE COUNTERSTROKES 197

  XIV. INTERVENTION 219

  XV. JIM CARTHEW 232

  BOOK THREE.

  THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE.

  XVI. SOME ONE TO CONFIDE IN 243

  XVII. THE CANDLE LIT 250

  XVIII. _ATHANASIUS CONTRA MUNDUM_ 263

  XIX. _LABORARE EST ORARE_ 276

  XX. BLACK SUNDAY 284

  XXI. _VEILLESSE SAIT_ 289

  XXII. HOLD THE FORT! 296

  XXIII. THE LAST TO LEAVE 308

  XXIV. ANOTHER ALIAS 317

  BOOK ONE.

  THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  HAPPY FAMILIES.

  "Nicky, please, have you got Mr Pots the Painter?"

  "No, Stiffy, but I'll trouble you for Mrs Bones the Butcher's Wife._Thank_ you. And Daph, have you got Master Bones the Butcher's Son?_Thank_ you. Family! One to me!"

  And Nicky, triumphantly plucking from her hand four pink-backed cards,slaps them down upon the table face upwards. They are apparentlyfamily portraits. The first--that of Bones _pere_--depicts a smuggentleman, with appropriate mutton-chop whiskers, mutilating afearsome joint upon a block; the second, Mrs Bones, an ample matron inapple-green, proffering to an unseen customer a haunch of what lookslike anaemic cab-horse; the third, Miss Bones, engaged in extractingnourishment from a colossal bone shaped like a dumb-bell; the fourth,Master Bones (bearing a strong family likeness to his papa), creepingunwillingly upon an errand, clad in canary trousers and a bluejacket, with a sirloin of beef nestling against his right ear.

  It was Saturday night at the Rectory, and the Vereker family--"thoseabsurdly handsome Rectory children," as old Lady Curlew, of Hainings,invariably called them--sat round the dining-room table playing "HappyFamilies." The rules which govern this absorbing pastime are simple.The families are indeed happy. They contain no widows and no orphans,and each pair of parents possesses one son and one daughter--perhapsthe perfect number, for the sides of the house are equally balancedboth for purposes of companionship and in the event of sex-warfare. Asfor procedure, cards are dealt round, and each player endeavours, byrequests based upon observation and deduction, to reunite within hisown hand the members of an entire family,--an enterprise which, whileit fosters in those who undertake it a reverence for the unities ofhome life, offers a more material and immediate reward in the shape ofone point for each family collected. We will look over the shouldersof the players as they sit, and a brief consideration of each hand andof the tactics of its owner will possibly give us the key to therespective dispositions of the Vereker family, as well as a usefullesson in the art of acquiring that priceless possession, a HappyFamily.

  Before starting on our tour of the table we may note that one memberof the company is otherwise engaged. This is Master Anthony CuthbertVereker, aged ten years--usually known as Tony. He is the youngestmember of the family, and is one of those fortunate people who arenever bored, and who rarely require either company or assistance intheir amusements. He lives in a world of his own, peopled by folk ofhis own creation; and with the help of this unseen host, which he canmultiply to an indefinite extent and transform into anything hepleases, he organises and carries out schemes of recreation besidewhich all the Happy Families in the world become humdrum and suburbanin tone. He has just taken his seat upon a chair opposite to anotherchair, across the arms of which he has laid the lid of his big box ofbricks, and is feeling in his pocket for an imaginary key, for he isabout to give an organ recital in the Albert Hall (which he has neverseen) in a style modelled upon that of the village organist, whom hestudies through a chink in a curtain every Sunday.

  Presently the lid is turned back, and the keyboard--a three-manualaffair, ingeniously composed of tiers of wooden bricks--is exposed toview. The organist arranges unseen music and pulls out invisiblestops. Then, having risen to set up on the mantelpiece hard by asquare of cardboard bearing the figure 1, he resumes his seat, andembarks upon a rendering of Handel's "Largo in G," which its composer,to be just, would have experienced no difficulty in recognising,though he might have expressed some surprise that so large aninstrument as the Albert Hall organ should produce so small a volumeof sound. But then Handel never played his own Largo in a room full ofelder brothers and sisters, immersed in the acquisition of HappyFamilies and impatient of distracting noises.

  The Largo completed, its executant rises to his feet and bows againand again in the direction of the sideboard; and then (the applauseapparently having subsided) solemnly turns round the cardboard squareon the mantelpiece so as to display the figure 2, and sets to workupon "The Lost Chord."

  Meanwhile the Happy Families are being rapidly united. The houses ofPots the Painter, Bun the Baker, and Dose the Doctor lie neatly piledat Nicky's right hand; and that Machiavellian damosel is now engagedin a businesslike quest for the only outstanding member of the familyof Grits the Grocer.

  Nicky--or Veronica Elizabeth Vereker--was in many respects the mostremarkable of the Rectory children. She was thirteen years old, wasthe only dark-haired member of the family, and (as she was fond ofexplaining) was possessed of a devil. This remar
kable attributewas sometimes adduced as a distinction and sometimes as anexcuse,--the former when impressionable and nervous children cameto tea, the latter when all other palliatives of crime had failed.Certainly she could lay claim to the brooding spirit, the entireabsence of fear, the unlimited low cunning, and the love of sin forits own sake which go to make the master-criminal. At present shewas enjoying herself in characteristic fashion. Her brotherStephen--known as "Stiffy"--Nicky's senior by one year, atransparently honest but somewhat limited youth, had for thegreater part of the game been applying a slow-moving intellect tothe acquisition of one complete Family. Higher he did not look.Nicky's habit was to allow Stiffy, with infinite labour, to collectthe majority of the members of a Family in which she herself wasinterested, and then, at the eleventh hour, to swoop down and stripher unconscious collaborator of his hardly-earned collection.

  Stiffy, sighing patiently, had just surrendered Mr, Mrs, and MissBlock (Hairdressers and Dealers in Toilet Requisites) to thedepredatory hands of Nicky, and was debating in his mind whether heshould endeavour when his next chance came to complete thegenealogical tree of Mr Soot the Sweep or corner the clan of Bung theBrewer. Possessing two Bungs to one Soot, he decided on the latteralternative.

  Presently he was asked by his elder sister, Cilly (Monica Cecilia),for a card which he did not possess, and this gave him the desiredopening.

  "I say, Nicky," he began deferentially, "have you got Master Bung?"

  Nicky surveyed her hand for a moment, and then raised a pair ofliquid-blue eyes and smiled seraphically.

  "No, Stiffy, dear," she replied; "but I'll have Mr Bung and Mrs Bung."

  Stiffy, resigned as ever, handed over the cards. Suddenly SebastianAloysius Vereker, the eldest son of the family (usually addressed as"Ally"), put down his cards and remarked, slowly and without heat--

  "Cheating again! My word, Nicky, you are the absolute _edge_!"

  "_Who_ is cheating?" inquired Veronica in a shocked voice.

  "You. Either you _must_ have Master Bung, or else you are asking forStiffy's cards without having any Bungs at all; because I've got Missmyself."

  He laid the corybantic young lady in question upon the table tosubstantiate his statement.

  Nicky remained entirely unruffled.

  "Oh--_Bung_!" she exclaimed. "Sorry! I thought you said 'Bun,' Stiffy.You should spit out your G's a bit more, my lad. _Bung-gah_--likethat! I really must speak to dad about your articulation."

  In polite card-playing circles a lady's word is usually accepted assufficient; but the ordinary courtesies of everyday life do notprevail in a family of six.

  "Rot!" said Ally.

  "Cheat!" said Cilly.

  "Never mind!" said loyal and peaceable Stiffy. "I don't care, really.Let's go on."

  "It's not fair," cried Cilly. "Poor Stiffy hasn't got a single Familyyet. Give it to him, Nicky, you little beast! Daph, make her!"

  Daphne was the eldest of the flock, and for want of a mother dispensedjustice and equity to the rest of the family from the heights ofnineteen. For the moment she was assisting the organist, who hadinadvertently capsized a portion of his keyboard. Now she returned tothe table.

  "What is it, rabble?" she inquired maternally.

  A full-throated chorus informed her, and the arbitress detached thethreads of the dispute with effortless dexterity.

  "You said you thought he was asking for Miss Bun and not Bung?" sheremarked to the accused.

  "Yes--that was all," began Nicky. "You see," she continuedpathetically, "they're all so beastly unjust to me, and----"

  Daphne picked up her small sister's pile of completed Families andturned them over.

  "You couldn't have thought Stiffy wanted _Buns_," she said in measuredtones, "because they're here. You collected them yourself. You'vecheated again. Upstairs, and no jam till Wednesday!"

  It is a tribute to Miss Vereker's disciplinary methods that theturbulent Nicky rose at once to her feet and, with a half-tearful,half-defiant reference to her Satanic inhabitant, left the room anddeparted upstairs, there to meditate on a Bun-strewn past and ajamless future.

  Daphne Vereker was perhaps the most beautiful of an extraordinarilyattractive family. Her full name was Daphne Margaret. Her parents,whether from inherent piety or on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle,had endowed their offspring with the names of early saints andmartyrs. The pagan derivative Daphne was an exception. It had been thename of Brian Vereker's young bride, and had been bestowed,uncanonically linked with that of a saint of blameless antecedents,upon the first baby which had arrived at the Rectory. Mrs Vereker haddied eleven years later, two hours after the birth of that fertilegenius Anthony Cuthbert, and Brian Vereker, left to wrestle with theupbringing of six children on an insufficient stipend in a remotecountry parish, had come to lean more and more, in the instinctive butexacting fashion of lonely man, upon the slim shoulders of his eldestdaughter.

  There are certain attributes of woman before which the male sex, whosesole knowledge of the ways of life is derived from that sterninstructor Experience, can only stand and gape in reverent awe. Whenher mother died Daphne Vereker was a tow-headed, long-legged,irresponsible marauder of eleven. In six months she looked like arather prim little nursery-governess: in two years she could havetaken the chair at a Mother's meeting. Circumstance is a greatforcing-house, especially where women are concerned. Her dreamy,unpractical, affectionate father, oblivious of the expectant presencein the offing of numerous female relatives-in-law, had remarked insober earnest to his little daughter, walking erect by his side in hershort black frock on the way home from the funeral:--"You and I willhave to bring up the children between us now, Daphne;" and the child,with an odd thrill of pride at being thus promoted to woman's highestoffice at the age of eleven, had responded with the utmost gravity--

  "You had better stick to the parish, dad, and I'll manage the kids."

  And she had done it. As she presides at the table this Saturdayevening, with her round chin resting on her hands, surveying thepicturesque crew of ragamuffins before her, we cannot but congratulateher on the success of her methods, whatever those may be. On her rightlolls the apple of her eye, the eldest son, Ally. He is a handsomeboy, with a ready smile and a rather weak mouth. He is beingeducated--God knows by what anxious economies in other directions--ata great public school. When he leaves, which will be shortly, themoney will go to educate Stiffy, who is rising fourteen.

  Next to Ally sprawls Cilly, an amorphous schoolgirl with long ripplinghair and great grey eyes that are alternately full of shy inquiry andhoydenish exuberance. Then comes the chair recently vacated by theMadonna-like Nicky; then the ruddy countenance and cheerful presenceof the sunny-tempered Stiffy, completing the circle. In the cornerMaster Anthony Cuthbert, cherubic and rapturous, is engaged, withevery finger and toe in action, upon the final frenzy of the"Hallelujah Chorus." The number 6 stands upon the mantelpiece, for therecital is drawing to a close.

  To describe Daphne herself is not easy. One fact is obvious, and thatis that she possesses an instinct for dress not as yet acquired by anyof her brothers and sisters. Her hair is of a peculiarly radiantgold, reflecting high lights at every turn of her head. Her eyes arebrown, of the hue of a Highland burn on a sunny afternoon, and hereyebrows are very level and serene. Her colouring is perfect, and whenshe smiles we understand why it is that her unregenerate brothers andsisters occasionally address her as "Odol." When her face is inrepose--which, to be frank, is not often--there is a pathetic droop atthe corners of her mouth, which is perhaps accounted for by the caresof premature responsibility. She is dressed in brown velvet, with alace collar--evening dress does not prevail in a household whichaffects high tea, but Daphne always puts on her Sunday frock onSaturday evenings--and, having discovered that certain colours suither better than others, she has threaded a pale blue ribbon throughher hair.

  Altogether she is a rather astonishing young person to find sittingcontentedly resting her elbows upon a dingy tablecloth in an untid
ydining-room which smells of American leather and fried eggs. It is asif one had discovered the Venus de Milo presiding at a Dorcas Societyor Helen of Troy serving crumpets in an A.B.C. shop.

  The "Hallelujah Chorus" has just stopped dead at that paralysinghiatus of two bars which immediately precedes the final crash, whenthe door opens and the Reverend Brian Vereker appears. A glance athis clear-cut aristocratic features goes a long way towards decidingthe question of the origin of the good looks of "those Rectorychildren."

  He is a tall man--six feet two,--and although he is barely fifty hishair is specklessly white. He looks more like a great prelate orstatesman than a country parson. Perhaps he might have been one or theother, had he been born the eldest son of the eldest son of a peer,instead of the youngest son of the youngest. And again, perhaps not.The lines of his face indicate brain rather than character, and afterall it is character that brings us out top in this world. There arefurrows about his forehead that tell of much study; but about thecorners of his mouth, where promptitude and decision usually set theirseal, there is nothing--nothing but a smile of rare sweetness. Hisgentle blue eyes have the dreamy gaze that marks the saints and poetsof this world: the steely glitter of the man of action is lacking.Altogether you would say that Brian Vereker would make a noblefigurehead to any high enterprise; but you would add that if thatenterprise was to succeed, the figurehead would require a good deal ofimported driving-power behind it. And you would be right.

  The Rector paused in the doorway and surveyed the lamp-lit room.

  ... "_Halle-lu-u-ja-ah!_" vociferated the Albert Hall organ with anair of triumphant finality. Brian Vereker turned to his youngest sonwith the ready sympathy of one child for another child's games.

  "That's right, Tony! That's the stuff! Good old George Frederick! _He_knew the meaning of the word music--eh?"

  "Yes--George Fwederick!" echoed the organist. "_And_ Arthur Seymour,daddy! You've just missed 'The Lost Chord.'"

  "Ah," said the Rector in a tone of genuine regret, "that's a pity. Butwe had the Seventy-Eighth Psalm to-night, and I'm later than usual."

  "Quadruple chant?" inquired Tony professionally.

  "Rather! But is your recital quite over, boyo?"

  "Yes--bedtime!" replied the organist, with a reproachful glance in thedirection of his eldest sister.

  "Run along, dear!" was all the comfort he received from thatinflexible despot.

  "All right! I must lock up, though."

  Master Tony removed the last number from the mantelpiece,disintegrated his keyboard and packed it up with the other bricks, anddrawing aside the window-curtain remarked solemnly into the darkrecess behind it--

  "That will be all to-night, organ-blower. You can go home now."

  To which a husky and ventriloquial voice replied--

  "Thank you kindly, Mr Handel, sir. Good-night."

  "Now," concluded Mr Handel, turning to his elders with the air of amartyr addressing a group of arena lions, "I'm ready!"

  "Take him up, Cilly dear," said Daphne. "I must look after dad'ssupper."

  "Come on, Tony," said Cilly, uncoiling her long legs from under herand rising from the hearthrug.

  "Righto!" said Tony. "You be a cart-horse and I'll be a broken-downmotor."

  Monica Cecilia Vereker meekly complied, and departed upstairs, towingthe inanimate mechanism of the inventive Anthony behind her bump bybump, utilising her sash, which she had removed for the purpose, as atow-rope.

  "Ally and Stiffy," commanded Daphne, turning to the two remainingmembers of the family, "you'd better go and pump the cistern full.Saturday night, you know, and the kids' baths have just been filled;so look sharp before the boiler bursts."

  Stiffy, obliging as ever, rose at once; Ally, cumbered by that majestywhich doth hedge a sixth-form boy and a member of the school Fifteen(especially when ordered about by a female), was more deliberate inhis acquiescence. However, presently both the boys were gone, andfive minutes later Daphne, with the assistance of the one little maidwhom the establishment supported, had laid the Rector's supper. Sheinstalled her father in his seat on one side of the table, and tookher own on the other, assisting the progress of the meal from time totime, but for the most part sitting with her chin resting upon her twofists, and contemplating the tired man before her with serious browneyes. Twice she had to leave her seat, once to remove the butter fromthe vicinity of her parent's elbow, and once to frustrate an attempton the part of that excellent but absent-minded man to sprinkle sugarover a lettuce.

  "Well, my daughter," remarked the Rector presently, "what of theweekly report?"

  Saturday night at the Rectory was reserved for a sort of domesticbudget.

  "Here are the books," said Daphne. "They're much as usual, except thatI had to pay two bob on Wednesday for a bottle of embrocation forAlly. He is in training for the mile in the sports at the beginning ofnext term, and it does his muscles so much good."

  "When I won the mile at Fenner's, Daphne," began the Reverend Brian,with a sudden glow of reminiscence in his dreamy eyes, "I did itwithout embrocation, or any other new-fashioned----"

  "Yes, dear, but they have to run so much _faster_ now than they did,"explained Daphne soothingly. "Then, about the kitchen chimney----"

  "But I only took four minutes, twenty-eight----"

  "Yes, old man, and I'm _proud_ of you!" said Daphne swiftly. "Well,the sweep is coming in on Wednesday, when you'll be away at Wilford,so _that's_ all right." She was anxious to get away from the questionof the embrocation. It had been a rank extravagance, and she knew it;but Ally was ever her weak spot. "Then, I've got three-and-nine inhand out of current expenses just now, and if I take two half-crownsout of the emergency bag and we go without a second joint this week, Ican get Nicky a new pair of boots, if you don't mind. (Don't cut thecheese with a spoon, dear; take this knife.) Of course, we ought notto have to go to the emergency bag for boots at all. It's ratherupsetting. To-day I find that a perfectly ducky pair of Sunday shoes,which I outgrew just before I stopped growing, and was keepingspecially for that child, are too small for her by yards. (I had triedthem on Cilly a year ago, but she simply couldn't get her toe in.) Andnow they'll be wasted, because there are no more of us girls. My feetare _most_ exasperating."

  "Your mother had tiny feet," said the Rector, half to himself.

  He pushed away his plate, and gazed absently before him into thatland where his son Tony still spent so much of his time, and whitherTony's young and pretty mother had been borne away eleven yearsbefore. Daphne permitted him a reverie of five minutes, while shepuckered her brow over the account-books. Then she rose and took downa pipe from a rack on the mantelpiece. This she filled from a crackedjar thirty years old, adorned with the coat-of-arms of one of thethree royal colleges of Cambridge, and laid it by her father's lefthand.

  "Then there's another thing," she continued, lighting a spill at thefire. "Isn't it time to enter Stiffy for school? Mr Allnutt asked usto say definitely by April whether he was coming to fill Ally's placeafter summer or not, otherwise he would be obliged to give the vacancyto some one else. It's the end of March now."

  The Rector lit his pipe--his one luxury--in a meditative fashion, andthen leaned back to contemplate his daughter, with her glinting hairand troubled little frown.

  "Mr Allnutt? To be sure! Of course! A ripe scholar, Daphne, and along-standing personal friend of my own. He took the Porson and Cravenin successive years. His Iambics----"

  All this was highly irrelevant, and exceedingly characteristic. Daphnewaited patiently through a _resume_ of Mr Allnutt's achievements as ascholar and a divine, and continued:--

  "Will you enter Stiffy at once, then? It would be a pity not to gethim into Ally's old house."

  Brian Vereker, suddenly recalled to business, laid down his pipe andsighed.

  "Boys are terribly expensive things, little daughter," he said. "Andwe are so very very poor. I wonder if they are worth it."

  "Of _course_ they are, the dears!" said Daphne, up i
n arms at once.

  "Of course, of course," agreed the Rector apologetically. "You areright, child; you are always right. It is ungrateful and un-Christianof me to give expression to such thoughts when God has granted methree good sons. Still, I admit it _was_ a disappointment to me whenAlly failed to gain a scholarship at Cambridge. He may have been rightin his assertion that there were an exceptionally strong set ofcandidates up on that occasion, but it was unfortunate that he shouldhave overslept himself on the morning of the Greek Prose Paper, eventhough, as he pointed out, Greek Prose is his weak subject. What apity! Strange lodgings, probably! Still, his disappointment must befar greater than ours, so it would be ungenerous to dwell further onthe matter. But I fail to see at present how he can be started in lifenow. If only one had a little money to spare! I have never felt theneed of such a thing before."

  "Yes, we could do with a touch of it," assented Miss Verekerelegantly. She began to tick off the family requirements on herfingers. "There's Ally to be started in life; and Cilly ought to besent somewhere and finished--she's tragically gawky, and she'd beperfectly lovely if she was given half a chance; and Stiffy has to besent to school; and the two kiddies are growing up, and this house issimply tumbling down for want of repairs; and it's really time you hada curate for long-distance visiting."

  "Never!" said Brian Vereker firmly.

  "All right. Never, if you like, but he'll have to come some day," saidDaphne serenely. (The question of the curate cropped up almost asregularly as that of the second joint on Wednesdays.) "And all we'vegot to run the whole show on," she concluded, with a pathetic littlefrown which many a man would gladly have given his whole estate tosmooth away, "is--two pounds seventeen and ninepence in the emergencybag! It's a bit thick, isn't it?"

  Brian Vereker surveyed his daughter's troubled countenance withcharacteristic placidity. Simple faith--some called it unpracticaloptimism--was the main article of his creed.

  "The Lord will provide, my daughter," he said.

  At this moment the door opened with a flourish, and, the crimson andenraged countenance of Master Anthony Cuthbert Vereker having beenthrust into the room, its owner inquired, in a voice rendered huskyby indignation, how any one could be expected to impersonate aDreadnought going into action in the bath, when the said bath wasencumbered with the flotsam and jetsam of a previous occupant. Inother words, was he to be bathed in the same water as Nicky?

  It was an old grievance, arising from the insufficient nature of theRectory water-supply (which had to be pumped up by hand from thegarden) and the smallness of the kitchen boiler; and Daphne hadperforce to go upstairs to adjust it. Consequently the sitting of theCommittee of Ways and Means, with all its immediate necessities andproblems for the future, was incontinently suspended.