Four Days' Wonder

by A. A. Milne

  ‘I love talking about it.’

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘Well, you see, I inherited the name of Fenton, and he’s gone and spoilt it.’

  ‘Spoilt it?’ said Jenny indignantly. ‘He’s made it famous.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. He’s spoilt it for me. As soon as I mention my name, people say— well, what Gloria Naomi Harris said.’

  ‘What did I say?’ wondered Jenny, wrinkling her forehead. ‘Oh, yes, I remember. Well, but you ought to be proud.’

  ‘I am. Too proud to bask in the back-wash of Archibald’s fame, if you follow my metaphor. I look forward’, he went on in a dreamy voice, ‘to the day when a complacent and hopeful Archibald is shown by a butler with a bell-like voice into a crowded ducal drawing-room, and, as soon as they hear his name, all the guests rush up to him and say: “Oh do tell me, are you any relation to Derek Fenton?” That’, said Mr. Derek Fenton, indicating his canvas with a circling gesture of the brush, ‘is why I am doing this. In private life I am in the wine-trade.’

  II

  At first it was a little disappointing to Jenny to find that he was in the wine-trade. A young girl whose alcoholic experience has been limited to one cocktail has not that sensitiveness which enables her to appreciate the gulf fixed between the selling of Burgundy and the selling of oatmeal biscuits. But a renewed study of the back of his neck convinced her that he couldn’t be the man who actually sold the bottles, but was more probably the owner of the château in France where the grapes were grown—a sort of gentleman-fruit-farmer, which was rather an exciting thing to be. But she decided not to discuss the wine-trade with him, in case he wasn’t.

  ‘You won’t mind my asking,’ said the Fruit-farmer suddenly, after an anxious five minutes with Art, ‘but in the intervals of being—or rather,’ he added hastily, ‘not being a water-nymph, you live somewhere?’

  ‘St. John’s Wood,’ said Jenny, without thinking.

  ‘Oh, I see, a wood-nymph. Well, what I wanted to say was, do dryads in St. John’s Wood have an occasional breakfast from time to time?’

  ‘Well, of course,’ smiled Jenny.

  ‘Tell me’, said Derek, ‘all about it.’

  ‘Do you mean what do I eat for breakfast?’

  ‘And drink, and contemplate, and reject, and turn up the nose at, and have two helps of.’

  ‘Well, it depends. I generally have grapefruit and toast and a scrambled egg and marmalade and an apple. And coffee, of course.’

  ‘This is not my lucky day,’ said Derek. ‘I was hoping that you would say an orange and scones and a hard-boiled egg and butter and a banana. And milk, of course.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Jenny, puzzled.

  ‘If you had said that, we would have opened that string-bag over there, and seen what somebody’s sent us.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Jenny ecstatically. ‘Are you inviting me to breakfast?’

  ‘I certainly am, as we say in America.’

  ‘Oh, have you been to America?’

  ‘Yes and No,’ said Derek.

  ‘But either you’ve been or you haven’t,’ laughed Jenny. ‘I mean, mustn’t you?’

  ‘No and Yes, if you follow me.’

  ‘I don’t quite, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I started in the direction of America once, but there were sixty Americans on board who talked to me so much and so loudly about Archibald that I saw that it was hopeless to try and settle down with a hundred and fifty million of them.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Came back again.’

  ‘Do you mean at once?’

  ‘As soon as they could turn the boat round.’

  ‘Then you never saw America at all?’

  ‘I saw New York from the river. New York from the river,’ said Mr. Derek Fenton enthusiastically, ‘at a moment when the sun has just set, and no one is asking you what Archibald looked like as a child, is enough for anybody. Tell me, are you accepting my invitation?’

  ‘To breakfast? Please!’

  ‘Good.’

  He stood up. Now they were facing each other. She tried to tell herself what he looked like; to remember what he looked like, feature by feature, so that when she went on, and saw him never again, she could think about him sometimes. Was he good-looking or ugly, tall or short? She hardly knew. All she knew was that she liked him, that you couldn’t help liking him; that, if you told him about Hussar, it would be all right, that even if you told him about Aunt Jane, it would be all right. Her thoughts went back to the Tramp, and she thought that he was nice too, I mean really, if you got to know him. Derek Fenton made everybody seem nice . . . And then suddenly she felt herself going hot all over, and she turned away quickly to hide her face; because suddenly she remembered that they had been talking about water-nymphs, and that just for one funny moment in that early morning sunshine, when the world was so remote from all that she had ever been taught, she had felt that being a water-nymph for him to paint would not have been such a terrible thing to do, but simple and natural and beautiful. Now, suddenly, she knew that he was the one man in the world for whom she could never, never do it.

  III

  ‘This’, said Derek, cracking an egg on his shoe, ‘is a breakfast, not a Passport office. If I ask you anything which is inconvenient, just pass me the butter in a casual way, and I shall know that I am on slippery ground. Is that all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Then, roughly and in a general way, where do we go from here?’

  ‘Do you mean, where am I going?’

  ‘On whose haystack are you resting to-night?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jenny guardedly, ‘I’m sort of making for the coast.’

  ‘As you were heading when we met, you would have struck it at about Northumberland. You aren’t going on to Norway by any chance?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Keep the butter handy for this one. Are you running away from anybody or anything? . . . Thanks. And the salt, if you wouldn’t mind.’ He buttered a scone, dipped his egg in the salt and munched.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jenny, looking at him with pleading eyes.

  ‘Perfectly all right. Now just one more question, and we can get on to the orange. How old are you, Naomi?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘You’re sure you’re not six?’

  ‘Eighteen, really.’

  ‘Or six hundred?’

  ‘Well, eighteen and a half, actually.’

  ‘Then who cares? Have an orange?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘If one can’t do what one likes at eighteen, when can one? The answer is, Never.’

  ‘Can’t one at thirty?’

  ‘I’m thirty, and I can’t do what I like.’

  ‘Can’t you really?’ asked Jenny in surprise.

  ‘No. I should like to paint sunlight on water, and I can’t. I should like to murder Archibald, and I mustn’t. I should like——’ he gave her a quick glance and ended, ‘oh, lots of things. Well now, listen, Dryad.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well now, here we are. You’re going to wander from haystack to haystack, and very nice too. I’m staying at Bassetts, and very nice too. You are thinking of Mrs. Bassett entirely as a scone-baker, and you are saying to yourself that a woman who bakes scones like Mrs. Bassett has no room for any of the other virtues. You are wrong. She has all the virtues. She is a mother to those who want mothers, and an aunt to anybody who likes aunts. My portrait of her,’ said Mr. Fenton, becoming enthusiastic, ‘which now hangs in her parlour, depicts all these qualities. Even the scone motif runs through it in what I can only call—and so far only I have called it—a masterly way.’

  ‘I wish I could see i
t,’ said Jenny, quite carried away by this.

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re working up to. In order to do this properly we must now go back to haystacks. Hay undoubtedly makes an excellent bed. The Americans, as I discovered in the course of my travels to and from that astonishing country, have an expression “to hit the hay”.’

  ‘How funny! What does it mean?’

  ‘It means to go to bed. You, on your way to Northumberland, will hit the hay at this or that point for the next month or so. If this Northumbrian pilgrimage is merely an excuse for hay-hitting, it can be done equally well in the neighbourhood of Bassetts, as you discovered last night. We will tell Farmer Bassett not to thatch his haystack until Miss Harris has finished with it. But if one’s object were simply to be out of London, or,’ said Mr. Fenton carefully, ‘as it might be incognito and unobserved, to fade into the landscape as the pursuit goes by, well then, again I ask you, what more eligible site than Bassetts?’

  ‘Do you mean’, said Jenny eagerly, ‘that I could stay there?’

  ‘Why not? But I suggest, in the romantic and subterfugitive way which befits a Dryad, Naiad and—and assuming you to have ascended Constitution Hill—Oread. Now listen: How would you like to take a false name?’

  Miss Harris blushed.

  ‘Rightly you are shocked,’ said Derek, ‘but sometimes it’s rather fun.’

  ‘Oh, it is!’ said Miss Harris.

  ‘Good. Then how would you like to be my sister?’

  ‘Your sister?’

  ‘I know what you are thinking. You are saying to yourself “Good Heavens, then Archibald will be my brother too,” and you quail at the idea.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said Jenny eagerly. ‘I think it’s a lovely idea.’

  ‘One of the bravest girls I ever met. But there are limits to what one can ask. You shall be my half-sister, and Archibald your half-brother only. Have you finished your breakfast?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Do you smoke? Obviously not, if you’re a Dryad?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Then now I’m going to think for two minutes.’

  By the time his pipe was alight, he was ready.

  ‘You are Miss Naomi Fenton. You were going a walking-tour with a friend. Name of friend?’

  Nancy Fairbrother? No, he might recognize her as his brother’s secretary. Acetylene Pitt? Nobody would believe it.

  ‘Nancy Pitt,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Good. You and Miss Pitt have walked to— where shall we say?——’

  ‘Endover?’

  Derek looked across at her quickly.

  ‘Do you know Endover?’

  ‘I came through it yesterday. Why?’

  ‘I see. Could you find your way back to it?’

  ‘Oh, I think so.’ She began to think. ‘Oh, I’m sure I could.’

  ‘Splendid. Then at Endover—’

  ‘But why did you look at me like that?’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘As if you didn’t like it very much.’

  ‘You’re very clever.’

  Jenny’s second governess, who had taught her the capitals of Europe, had said that she was industrious and full of promise, and her third, who had gone on from these to the Life of the Bee, had said that she was easily interested and that her conduct was extremely satisfactory; but nobody had called her very clever before. She glowed.

  Derek explained. ‘A man whom I dislike intensely has a cottage at Endover. Fortunately he isn’t there now.’

  ‘Your brother?’ said Jenny cleverly.

  ‘A relation by marriage,’ said Derek guardedly, ‘of the name of Archibald. To continue: at Endover your tour is interrupted. Does Miss Pitt sprain her ankle—or is she summoned to the sick bed of her Uncle Thomas?’

  ‘Ankle. Because how would her Uncle Thomas know she was at Endover?’

  ‘You think of everything.’ (Jenny glowed again.) ‘She sprains her ankle, and returns by omnibus to Tunbridge Wells, and thence to town. She refuses to spoil your holiday, too, and insists that you shall not see her home. But you can hardly continue your walking-tour alone——’

  ‘Why not?’ interrupted Jenny.

  ‘Why not? Because’, said Mr. Fenton after deep thought, ‘you had promised your half-brother Derek that you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Very well then. Bassetts, you will be surprised to hear, is on the telephone, but not, for which God be thanked, on the wireless. At Endover you remember that half-brother Derek is staying at Bassetts. Having seen Miss Pitt into her omnibus, you go into the post office and ring up Bassetts. Derek is out, so you speak to Mrs. Bassett. There is a lot of Bassett in all this, but no matter. You ask Mrs. B. to tell your brother that you are coming to tea, and you wonder if by any chance she has a spare bedroom, as you have been on a walking-tour with a friend who has sprained—but we needn’t go through all that again. Are you keeping up with me?’

  ‘It’s easy,’ said Jenny. ‘Has she got a spare room?’

  ‘She has. Now then. We have got to get you, in a surreptitious sort of way, back to Endover. How did you come yesterday?’

  ‘By the river after about the first mile, except when I had to leave it to go through gates and things.’

  ‘Meet anybody?’

  ‘Only one.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘Man.’

  ‘Speak to him?’

  ‘Yes. We—we talked a little,’ said Jenny hurriedly.

  ‘What like?’

  ‘Rather a nice middle-aged, elderly sort of man,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Like to go back that way, or would you rather go round by the road?’

  ‘I think I’d rather go by the road,’ said Jenny. She felt in some extraordinary way that her Hussar had left her, and that she could not brave again the dangers through which, yesterday, she and he had come. Somehow she knew that, from now on, she would have to depend on the physical presence of this other man, who had taken Hussar’s place. Without him there were terrifying places in the world—by the banks of streams and on haystacks.

  ‘Safer,’ nodded Derek. ‘It wouldn’t do if you met old Bassett down by your haystack, when you’re supposed to be Tonbridge way with Miss Pitt. All right then, I’ll tell you in a moment how to go. But don’t hurry. You want to ring up from Endover about half-past twelve. Tell Mrs. Bassett that you are coming through the fields by the river, and will I meet you as you don’t quite know the way. I’ll walk along after lunch and bring you back. Meanwhile you have lunch yourself, and come the way you came yesterday. How?’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Jenny, nodding eagerly.

  IV

  Miss Naomi Fenton picked up the receiver.

  ‘Is that Bassetts Farm?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, Mrs. Bassett speaking,’ said a comfortable, motherly, scone-baking voice.

  ‘This is Miss Naomi Fenton. Could I speak to my brother, please?’

  ‘Mr. Fenton’s out at the moment, miss. Could I give him a message?’

  ‘Oh! I’m speaking from Endover. I was wondering if I could come along this afternoon and have tea with him?’

  ‘I’m sure he would be delighted, miss. About what time shall I tell him to expect you?’

  ‘Well—— Is that Mrs. Bassett speaking?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘Well—— You see, I’ve been on a walking-tour with a friend, and she’s had to go back suddenly, and I was sort of wondering if I could stay with my brother for a few days, because I’m all alone, and I wondered if—but I suppose you haven’t got a spare room——’

  ‘That I have, miss, if it’s only just the bedroom you’re wanting.’

  ‘Oh, yes, just the bedroom.’

  ‘Mr. Fenton has the sitting-room, you see, so you could have your
meals there together, and sit of an evening, and if it’s just the bedroom, I’ve got a nice room I could get ready——’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘Very well, miss, then I’ll tell him to expect you, and we shall look for you about teatime.’

  ‘Oh thank you. Oh, and Mrs. Bassett?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘I’ve been asking the way here, and they tell me if I get down to the river by the mill, and then walk along it, I can get quite close to you——’

  ‘That’s right, miss. If you follow the river, it’s about six miles, but——’

  ‘Well, will you tell Mr. Fenton I’m coming that way and ask him to meet me, and tell him I’ll start from the mill about half-past one, and——’

  ‘Yes, miss, then you’ll be sure of meeting, and he can bring you back with him. It’s very pretty down by the river.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it? I mean we came along that way this morning, and then my friend sprained her ankle——”

  ‘Oh dear, miss, I am sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Well, sort of ricked it, so she thought she ought to go back, and then her uncle hadn’t been very well, and she thought she oughtn’t to be away from him any longer, and then——’

  ‘Yes, miss. Well, I’ll tell Mr. Fenton, and I’m sure we shall do our best to make you comfortable.’

  ‘Thank you so much. Good-bye, Mrs. Bassett.’

  ‘Good-bye, Miss Fenton. And I’ll see that your room is all ready for you.’

  ‘Thank you so much. Good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye, miss.’

  Mrs. Bassett went back to her cooking.

  Chapter Ten

  Entry of a Short, Stout Gentleman

  I

  By three o’clock that afternoon Jenny Windell, had she but known it, was cleared of the major suspicion. It was always obvious that Jane Latour had been murdered, but as the result of Dr. Willoughby Hatch’s masterly post-mortem examination of the deceased, it was now certain that no woman had struck the fatal blow. On the contrary, it had been delivered from behind by a short, and probably stout, left-handed man, and there were certain subcutaneous indications that the murderer, though possessed of considerable strength, was not in the best of training. The absence of certain other indications made it quite clear that the deceased was on friendly terms with her assailant.