Men and Angels

by Elizabeth Cadell

“Well, I arranged for Rosanna to meet him at a party when Richard was going to be there I knew that if Richard saw the uncle making any impression, he’d leave Rosanna flat, and—”

  “And it all worked out all right and he came down here, finished the General. “And you mean to tell me,” he resumed after some thought, “that simply because Richard discovered that this feller is Rae’s uncle—”

  “Fine uncle,” commented Judy bitterly. “Not a farthing towards her rent or her keep, and not a penny towards her school fees—after promising to pay them! A fine uncle! But how can a girl help who’s her uncle?”

  “It’s very hard,” agreed the General. “But wasn’t there anything else? It’s a pity the man is her uncle, but I don’t quite see why that should cause Richard to—”

  “Neither do I—but it has, you see. He went without a word, and Rae won’t say anything, and she’s going back to the flat. Her aunts are still there, but she says she wants to go back, and I don’t blame her. I wish she’d never seen this place. I wish she’d never seen Richard. I wish—Oh!”

  She broke off abruptly and, taking out a handkerchief, tried to repair the damage that tears had caused on her usually cheerful countenance. “It’s Edward,” she muttered. “I’ll have to drive him back to Allbrook, and explain the whole thing to him and—Oh, I’m so tired of it all!”

  The General gave her hand a pat, and Judy looked unexpectedly grateful.

  “Will you knock on Rae’s door,” she asked, “and tell her I’ll ring her up first thing in the morning?”

  The General nodded, and made his way out of the room a few moments before Edward entered it. It seemed to the newcomer, at first, that the room was empty; then he caught sight of Judy’s form by the window, and his face brightened.

  “H-hello,” he said, hesitatingly.

  Judy, her back to him, made no reply, and Edward, watching her, sensed something vaguely unfamiliar in the poise of her head and the set of her shoulders. If it had been anybody but Judy, he would have said that she was depressed, but it was impossible to imagine Judy out of spirits. Accustomed to what other people termed her discourtesy but what Edward regarded as an enviable waywardness and lack of inhibition, he sat quietly on the sofa, waiting for her to take notice of him. An odd sound, however, and a movement of Judy’s hand towards her eyes, brought him to his feet with an appalling suspicion filling his mind.

  “I—I say,” he asked. “You’re—you’re not upset, are you, about anything?”

  “No, I’m not,” said Judy.

  “Oh,” said Edward, relieved. “I—for a moment, I thought you were crying. Silly of me.”

  “Well, I’m not crying,” said Judy, turning to him a face upon which were the unmistakable marks of tears.

  “Silly of me,” he said again. He cleared some books from the sofa and patted it invitingly. “Good springs,” he said.

  Judy sat down. The spirit had gone out of her. Rae and Richard had quarrelled; Richard had gone away; her plans, her hopes for Rae—love, a home, money and freedom from care—none of them had come to anything. It was all over; there was only bitterness and disappointment. It was finished.

  A tear fell slowly down, and then another. Edward stared at them, fascinated. After some time, it seemed that he had identified them, for he drew a handkerchief from his pocket and, shaking out its folds, handed it to Judy.

  “Blow,” he invited gently.

  Judy blew fiercely and crushed the handkerchief into a ball in her hands.

  “I’ll drive you back in a minute,” she said.

  “Oh—no! ” begged Edward. “I like to sit here and—”

  It would be odd, he reflected, to say that he liked to see her cry, but he was experiencing a feeling of ease that he had not known since meeting her. This was not the cool, sharp-tongued young woman who ordered him about; this was a soft and tender creature who sat, tear-drenched, beside him, clutching his handkerchief in her hands.

  “I say,” he asked presently, “has somebody said something?”

  “No,” said Judy.

  “Oh! If anybody does,” said Edward, “I hope you’ll tell me.”

  The implication was clear. He would knock their heads off.

  “Nobody said anything,” said Judy, “but you may as well know. Rae and Richard”—she paused to steady herself— “they had a row, and he’s gone—that’s all.”

  “I see,” said Edward, and sat thinking it over. “I see. But people do quarrel, you know. What makes you think—”

  “I know,” said Judy. “It’s final. It’s—he’s gone.”

  “Do you know what they quarrelled about?”

  “Partly. I wasn’t there, but I’m pretty certain that it was—well, it was all connected with Rosanna.”

  “Oh—the telephone call.”

  “It was all my fault,” said Judy, so forlornly that Edward put out a hand impulsively and laid it on hers.

  “It’ll all work out,” he said. “You wait and see. These things do.”

  “Not this,” said Judy, in a dead tone.

  He looked at her anxiously, and strove to drive the look of despair from her eyes.

  “You have to look ahead,” he said, with less and less of his accustomed hesitation. “You know what they say about things being the same in a hundred years—it’s perfectly true. They will be, only worse. Try to think about something else.—If you cared to, I could show you a few more of the nursery rhymes for my book—would you?”

  There was no assent, but, on the other hand, there was, as Edward noted with pleasure, no refusal. He took his notes from his pocket and sorted them earnestly.

  This one, he said at last. “What d’you think of this?

  Hickory, dickory, dock,

  The mouse ran up the clock.

  It happened to be an electric one

  And the mouse fell dead from shock—or

  The mouse got a terrible shock

  —I can’t decide which.”

  “Fell dead,” said Judy.

  ‘‘Yes I think on the whole... ”‘Fell dead’, wrote Edward.

  “Then there’s this—it isn’t complete:

  Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree-top,

  When the bough breaks

  Your Nannie’ll go Plop!

  But I don’t think that’ll really appeal to them—there’s not really any violence there. I’m calling the book Nursery Crimes, unless somebody thought of it first and pinched the idea. What d’you think?”

  “Does it matter what I think?”

  “Oh—it matters a very great deal to me,” said Edward seriously. “I can’t really think of anything that matters more. More than you, I mean, Judy… I—”

  “No,” said Judy.

  “You could get used to me,” pleaded Edward.

  “No,” said Judy.

  “You could try. Nobody can possibly know until they try, Judy.”

  “It’s no use, Edward.” Judy’s voice was unusually gentle. “It’s no use. I like people to be completely assured, and to have their minds made up about everything, and to have no hesitation about what they’re going to do at any time or over anything.”

  “I shouldn’t like a chap like that,” said Edward bravely.

  “You might not, but I—”

  “You wouldn’t like a chap like that, either. And if you did get hold of a chap like that—even if, mark you, you liked him—which you wouldn’t, then even then he wouldn’t be the chap for you.”

  “I can choose my own—”

  “It’s no use your getting hold of an assured chap,” pursued Edward, “because it wouldn’t do for two of you to be assured. Only one of you can be assured, and from what I know of you, it would be you.”

  “Naturally, I—”

  “And if he had his mind made up about everything, at twenty-five or thirty or whatever age he’d be, then he’d be a pretty limited specimen by the time he’d reached forty or fifty, wouldn’t he?”

  “He could—”

&nb
sp; “And hesitation, sometimes, isn’t a bad thing at all. That old saw about he who hesitates being lost, doesn’t cover the whole ground, by a long way. I know what you think of me, Judy. I’m not assured, and I only make up my mind when I’m pretty sure of my facts, and I hesitate all the time, especially when I’m with you, because I love you and that puts me off. But you could get used to me—I’m sure you could—if you gave it a chance.”

  “No, Edward, I—”

  “You’ve never really given me a chance, so you don’t know what I’m like. I’m not much of a chap, but I’ve got a good job and a better one in store, and I know it doesn’t matter much, but I’ll have a title some day, though there’s no money with it. When you keep a chap at arm’s length, you can’t find out what he’s like. You’ve never let me come near you like this or—”

  “Keep off,” said Judy.

  “—or comfort you when you’re feeling sad, as you are now. It doesn’t hurt to have a shoulder to lean on—like that. It does you good and eases things a bit. If you’d relax quietly and let me stroke your hair—like this—which you’ve never let me have a chance of doing before—then I could have shared your troubles and taken some of them on to my own shoulders.—Judy, are you comfortable?”

  “I’m dreaming,” said Judy.

  “Just relax. I’ve got another one about Little Polly Flinders. Want to hear? Listen…”

  The General, meanwhile, had given some thought to the matter of the quarrel between Rae and his nephew. Some judicious interference from somebody with an older, a wiser head, seemed to him desirable; after a short period of reflection upon how he should proceed to interfere, he went upstairs and knocked gently on the door of Rae’s bedroom. After a moment, Rae, fully dressed and looking as though she was already on the point of departure, opened the door.

  “I hoped you wouldn’t be in bed,” said the General. “May I came in and say a word?”

  She nodded, and the General followed her into the room and stood by the window. Rae’s suitcase was nearby, and he saw that it was packed.

  “Have you made up your mind to go?” he asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Well, I’m not going to try to keep you—that is, not for more than a day. But will you put it off for just one day?”

  “But why?” asked Rae gently.

  The General hesitated; he could hardly say: ‘Because I’ve taken the matter in hand and therefore there will be no further mismanagement. I am going to Town to-morrow, and shall summon my nephew to lunch with me; I shall give him the benefit of my advice, and insist upon his returning with me so that you young people may settle your differences. I have keen judgment and a delicate touch, but I shall need a day; give me a day, and I shall give you my nephew.’ Though he felt that the speech would be an effective and sensible one to make, the General found himself substituting a less effective one.

  “Only just a day,” he said with unusual diffidence. “I ask it as a favour. To please an old man, my dear—will you stay?”

  Rae, trapped and helpless, could only smile.

  “Of course,” she said.

  The General pressed her hand, said good night and went downstairs. The drawing-room wore its familiar look of peace; Lady Ashton was on the sofa with her cookery books, Miss Beckwith was looking a trifle sadly at the distance separating the dark man and the fair girl.

  “I’m going up to Town in the morning, Dorothy,” he said.

  “To Town? I’ll order the taxi, then. Eleven o’clock, as usual?”

  “Yes. Don’t forget the Duchess is coming to fetch the picture—it had better be left in the hall.—Oh, Rae’s gone to bed—feeling a bit tired, she said.”

  “Has she a headache?”

  “No, no—-she’s just tired. I think I’ll go up early myself,” said the General.

  “Do. You’ll have a tiring day tomorrow, I expect,” said Lady Ashton.

  Chapter 17

  The General, waking on the following morning with his mind full of other matters, had entirely forgotten the Duchess and her exhibition, but Lady Ashton, meeting him in the hall, brought it to his mind.

  “Before you leave, Bertram, I wonder if you’d mind putting the picture downstairs in the hall ready for the Duchess to take away?”

  The General, muttering a sentence to the effect that he wished the Duchess would take it away and not bring it back, went upstairs and brought down the picture. He put it on a chair near the front door and gazed at it with dislike.

  “Find me the likeness,” he said aloud. “Just find me the likeness, that’s all.”

  He turned and found, a little to his embarrassment, that he was not alone. Two small boys were standing in the hall, dressed neatly in grey flannel suits, red caps in hand.

  “And who’re you, eh?” he enquired with gruff amiability.

  “We’re Hugh and Alan Moore,” said the older boy politely. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Ah! you’re Rae’s friends,” said the General. “Come in, come in.”

  “Thank you very much, sir, but we can’t stop. We’ve come to say good-bye. There’s a car outside, and we’re going back to school. We came to say good-bye to Rae.”

  “Well, I’ll see where she is,” said the General. “Sit down on those chairs—no, you can’t sit down on that one, can you?—I’ve put the picture on it.”

  He saw that the boys were standing before the picture, looking at it with their heads screwed so far on one side that the General wondered whether they were going to turn over completely and view it upside down.

  “Like it?” he enquired.

  There was no reply. Both boys shuffled their feet and looked embarrassed, and the General beamed with gratification.

  “Not impressed, hey?” he asked. “Well, you ought to be—that’s been done by a tip-top feller who does all the people you read about in the papers. What don’t you like about it, hey?”

  “Those colours at the back,” said Alan hesitatingly, “they look as though they’ve sort of run.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” said the General. “I think they’ve run round and round like the tigers in the story, till they’ve all run into one.”

  “I don’t mind the colours so much,” said Hugh, putting his head on the other side, “but that flower-pot isn’t straight.”

  “Flower-pot, ha ha ha!” roared the delighted General. “Flower-pot, indeed! Now I’ll show you what that flowerpot’s really meant to be. Now wait a minute while I fetch it—I won’t keep you, because I know you’ve got to be off, but you’d better see a good picture while you’ve got the chance.”

  He went upstairs and came down bearing triumphantly the Fitzroy. Lifting the other picture and placing it in the library, he placed his favourite work of art on the chair and pointed to it with pride.

  “There’s your flower-pot,” he said. “The very same vase that you see there. One feller paints it as what it is a vase—and another feller paints it as a flower-pot. Just a question of how you see it, they tell me.—Well, which picture d’you prefer? One’s done by this big feller, Aylmer Ferris, and the other one’s done by my uncle, a feller called Fitzroy. Which d’you like of the two, hey?”

  “This one,” said the boys, with unhesitating sincerity.

  Fine little chaps, thought the General, looking at them with pleasure. Good, clean, open-air types. Healthy and hard—and intelligent, too—intelligence sticking out all over them.

  “Same initials,” commented Alan, looking at the picture. “A. F.”

  “God bless m’soul, so they are,” said the General. “Never struck me. Odd. Now I’ll go and find—”

  A commotion at the front door interrupted him. The Duchess, followed by a liveried chauffeur, was entering the hall. She had discarded the polo topee, and was wearing a feathered toque which Hugh and Alan studied with undisguised wonder.

  “ ’Morning, General. Ah, you’ve got it ready, I see. Then we needn’t waste your time or mine.” She stepped back and half-
closed her eyes, gazing at the Fitzroy. “Yes,” she said. “The unmistakable Ferris touch—look at that brush-work.”

  “My dear Duchess,” said the General, crimson with anger. “You’re looking at—”

  “I’m looking at it in a bad light—true,” admitted the Duchess. “But I’ve got the very place for it up at the Castle. Who’re those two boys you’ve got there? Oh, I know. The Farm. Why aren’t you at school?” she demanded.

  “We’re just going,” said Hugh, in a meek voice, wondering whether he ought to add ‘your Grace’.

  “Best place for you. Don’t like boys roaming round when they ought to be safely in school. Come along, Peters,” she ordered the chauffeur. “Lift it up carefully and carry it out.”

  “One moment,” said the General.

  “Can’t possibly.” The Duchess spoke with a touch of impatience. “Might have had time for a word if your sister’d been about—she knew I was coming, I presoom. Careful, Peters—careful, man!—Good-bye, General. Shall we see you up there this afternoon?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said the General. “I’m going up to Town. But allow me to—”

  “Now don’t keep me, General—I’m in a hurry. Goodbye to you.”

  The General opened his mouth and then, with the remembrance of all he had endured from the Duchess, closed it again firmly. She had seized the Fitzroy and she was going to exhibit it; she was going to confront the students—to confront Aylmer Ferris himself—with the work, and point triumphantly to the Ferris touch. A vision of the scene rose before the General’s eyes, and for a moment he wavered, but a thought of the insults he had endured stiffened him. She had held him in open contempt; she had used her sex and her position to expose him to his neighbours’ ridicule. She had set herself up as a Patroness of Art. The General, giving praise where praise was due, felt bound to acknowledge that she knew a good painting when she saw one. He had tried to take the picture from her and she had informed him that she knew what she was doing. Well and good. Let her set it up before the students. Let her lead that feller Ferris up to it and show him what a vase looked like. It would open his eyes.

  The General followed the short, stout figure down the steps and saw the Duchess into her car. Throwing back his shoulders and shedding the suppressed resentment of years, he walked up the steps into the hall and found two small faces uplifted to his. With a shock, he realised that the two visitors had been witnesses to the scene. Looking down at them, he wondered if he was imagining the calculating look in their eyes.