“What on earth is it?”
“The letters,” said Felicity.
“What letters?” said Rosemary.
Real life was very disappointing.
“The letters you want,” said Felicity impatiently.
“But I don’t want any letters,” said Rosemary. “I get far more than I can possibly answer as it is.”
“But—but you said—I heard you saying to Mr. Markson—you said, ‘Please give them back to me,’ and he said ‘Certainly not!’ ”
Rosemary considered.
“Oh, yes,” she said at last, “I remember. Marcia had given him some silly snaps of the children, and I was in some of them and I didn’t want him to have those because he seemed to be getting rather foolish, that’s all.”
Felicity went slowly into the drawing-room. She’d made a mistake. Things never turn out the way you mean them to. She’d taken a lot of trouble and this was all the reward she got for it. No one wanted the letters now she’d got them. Rosemary was a most unsatisfactory heroine. And now she’d have to take them back. She’d tried living a fast life and she’d tried taking the star part in a melodrama and both had fallen flat. She’d rather play at trains with Micky and Primula any day, thought Felicity, with a disillusioned shake of her red-gold head. No one wanted the letters now she’d got them.
She wandered mournfully into the empty drawing-room to think out the situation. Yes, the only thing to do was to put them back where she’d found them.
The door opened and with a guilty start Felicity slipped the little pile of papers on to Marcia’s writing-table. She felt that anything was better than being caught by anybody with the papers in her hand.
But it was only Rosemary.
“Where’s Marcia?” she said.
“I think she’s lying down,” said Felicity.
She waited till all was quiet again and then slipped upstairs to the fatal bedroom. There was far less elation in the proceeding this time. She’d be jolly glad when the whole thing was over. She was simply sick of Mr. Markson and Rosemary and their letters, and wished she hadn’t tried to help them. She’d never try to get anyone’s incriminating letters back for them again, never in all her life. The bedroom was still empty, thank heaven. She went over to the box by the window and slipped her hand into her pocket for the papers. Her pocket was empty. She’d left them on Marcia’s writing-table, where she’d put them when Rosemary came into the room. Not the slightest doubt that Felicity, who was generally equal to any situation, was getting “rattled.” And then just when she was wondering what on earth to do came the click of the bedroom door. It opened slowly. Someone was coming into the room.’ Felicity hastily withdrew into the shelter of the heavy window curtains. It was Mr. Markson. She could see his funny foreign-looking face and black shiny head. He did not see her. He went across to the cupboard in the wall. He opened the door and stepped in to get something that hung on a hook. A coat, probably. It was all exactly as it had happened in the play. It was too much for Felicity. The force of association was too strong. Like a flash she darted forward, slammed the door and turned the key in the lock. He didn’t shout or bang on the door as she expected he would, but she could hear him fiddling about with the lock inside, trying to open it.
And she went swiftly downstairs for the papers. She realised that she was making a distinct mess of the affair. Look at it in any way she would, she had to admit that she was making a distinct mess of it. She had taken the papers without making sure that they were Rosemary’s and—and they’d turned out not to be. They might have been, of course, but the fact remained that they weren’t. Then she’d gone upstairs to put the letters back and left them behind on Marcia’s writing-table. Then she’d locked him in the cupboard. She didn’t know how she was going to explain that to him. In fact, she didn’t know how she was going to explain anything to him. In fact, she didn’t know how she was going to explain anything to anyone, and she saw the moment when explanations would be demanded not far ahead.
She entered the drawing-room. Matthew stood by the table reading the papers. Her luck was absolutely out, thought Felicity with a resigned sigh. She’d have to make a clean breast of it now.
Matthew was looking rather queer.
“Do you know anything about these papers, Pins?” he said.
“They—they belong to Mr. Markson,” said Felicity calmly. Then came a wild hope that she needn’t return them . . . perhaps they were only washing bills and perhaps she could just send in a maid or the gardener to unlock his cupboard and explain that it had been done by accident. “Are they important?’’ she said.
Matthew crossed the room and closed the door.
“They are rather,’’ he said drily, “they’re copies of very important political papers that must have been taken from the safe in the library by someone who knows the combination. Markson, you say? . . . He must—Good Lord! of course . . . he’s no more writing a book on—and he’s been in there every blessed day . . . Who got these from him?”
“I did, Matthew,” said Felicity.
“And where is the blackguard?” said Matthew. “Bolted?”
Felicity conquered an inclination to giggle.
“No, Matthew. He—he’s quite safe. I’ve locked him in his wardrobe.”
*
Felicity had returned home from her visit. She walked into the library still wearing her outdoor things. Franklin looked up from his writing-table and smiled a welcome.
“Hello,” said Felicity, “I’ve come back. Don’t say ‘So I see.’”
“All right. I won’t,” he said, clearing a place for her on the writing-table. He knew that Felicity preferred tables to chairs. “I’ll say instead that I’m very glad to see you. And mean it. Your aunt is out. Your grandfather is in bed—so you’ll have to share my humble tea in here. It’s due any minute. What sort of a time have you had?”
“Great!” said Felicity. “I’ve drunk deep of all life’s experiences, Frankie. I’ve lived a fast life and found that it’s all dust and ashes. I mean, it tastes like medicine and makes you feel sick.”
“Really?” said Franklin with a twinkle.
Moult entered with the tea.
“Hello, Moult, darling,” said Felicity. “I’ve come back.”
Moult threw her a pained glance. He disapproved equally of her mode of address and her position upon the desk.
“So I see, Miss,” he said.
Felicity heaved a deep satisfied sigh.
“I knew you’d say that, Moult,” she said. “I’d have felt frightfully disappointed if you hadn’t done.”
“Pour out, there’s a good girl,” said Franklin, as the door closed behind Moult.
“I’m horribly hungry,” said Felicity pathetically as she poured out.
“A curious story about you has reached me, Pins,” he said, as he took his cup.
“What was it?” said Felicity, nibbling toast.
“The story went that, single-handed, you attacked an anarchist or spy or something of that sort, forced him to surrender his incriminating documents, locked him in a cupboard, and then went off to fetch Scotland Yard to him.”
Felicity gurgled.
“It sounds awfully nice put that way, Frankie, but if you’ll let me eat your share of the toast, as well as mine, I’ll tell you in confidence what really happened.”
She had both shares of the toast.
He enjoyed the story of what really happened just as much as she’d meant him to. But at the end he became grave. He was obviously going to ask her something, then obviously checked himself.
And Felicity knew that he wanted to ask her about Rosemary.
But because Felicity was beginning to understand about Franklin and Rosemary, and because she was very, very sorry for him about it (because men always fell in love with Rosemary and Rosemary was hateful to them all), she did not mention Rosemary and soon slipped away; leaving him to his work.
Chapter Eight
Felicity and the P
oet
“Felicity, dear,” said Lady Montague. She looked up with a pleased smile from a letter she was reading. A pleased smile was as rare a visitant to her ladyship’s countenance as is an altruism to a crocodile’s heart.
“Felicity, dear,” she repeated, “an old school friend of mine is taking The Grange for a month. It will be delightful to have her so near, though I haven’t seen her for years and years. She married one of the Elthams of Hampshire.”
Her niece groaned. Lady Montague’s Somebodies of Somewhere were always so dull . . .
“And she has a son,” went on her ladyship.
Felicity groaned again.
“Such a brilliant boy,” added Lady Montague.
“I suppose it’s his mother who tells you that,” said Felicity.
“Yes,” said Lady Montague, and then added rather indignantly as if sensing some criticism in Felicity’s tone, “After all, Felicity, it’s a mother who knows her son best. They’ll be in residence to-day,” she went on, as if they were the Royal Family. “I must go and call on them at once. You’d better come with me, Felicity.”
“It’s my elocution lesson this afternoon,” said Felicity hastily. “I—I think I’d better go to it now.”
She escaped hastily before her aunt could say anything else.
Mrs. Graves, the elocution mistress, was waiting for her.
Mrs. Graves was very dignified and very, very large. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of this, she elocuted magnificently. She could and did move her diaphragm in and out like a concertina with no apparent effort at all. She made most casual remarks about the weather or the train service in a voice that would have wrung the hearts of an audience if used by Lady Macbeth in the sleep-walking scene. It was Lady Montague who had engaged her. Lady Montague considered that every lady should be able to produce her voice correctly. So far the lessons had (fortunately) made no appreciable difference in Felicity’s own voice, but Felicity could give an excellent imitation of her instructress and could remark that it was a fine day in a voice so fraught with tragedy and pathos that it was difficult to listen to it unmoved.
“Gooder morninger, Feeleecity,” said Mrs. Graves, exploding her consonants, distending her diaphragm, and speaking in a voice of heart-rending emotion.
“Gooder morninger, Mrs. Graves,” said Felicity demurely in the same tone of voice.
Mrs. Graves threw her pupil a quick glance. She sometimes suspected that Felicity’s imitation was not the sincerest form of flattery.
“Now, Feeleecity,” said Mrs. Graves, “you see this instrument on the table. Eet is called a phonograph. Eet records the human voice.” Mrs. Graves said this in the tone in which Hamlet might have addressed his mother. “By eet you may see your rate of progress.” In this tone might Romeo have taken a long farewell of Juliet. “I will leave the instrument here and I propose that this week”—for a moment Mrs. Graves’ voice seemed to die away with emotion, then she mastered herself—“that for this week, Feeleecity, you say a veerse of poetry into eet every day—I will show you how eet works before I go—and when I come again we will play the records,” thus might Julius Caesar dying have addressed Brutus, “and see how you improve day by day. Let us begin at once, Feeleecity. Will you now recite into the instrument any great poem of our wonderful, wonderful English language.”
Felicity thought for a moment and then recited clearly:
“Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,
He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail.
And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and the fish he took was Whale.
But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail.
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine:
‘I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.’”
“That will do, Feeleecity,” said Mrs. Graves coldly, “I don’t know why you should quote a poem by a man with whose views on the Temperance question I entirely disagree when you might have quoted any of the beautiful poems I have taught you.”
“Because I like it,” said Felicity simply.
The elocution lesson ended. There was just time for a walk before tea, so Felicity went for a walk.
And on the common she met Sheila. Sheila hasn’t been mentioned before simply because she doesn’t happen to have come into the story before, but she was the daughter of a novelist who lived in the next village, and she was just a little older than Felicity, and Felicity was very fond of her. Sheila had dark hair and dark velvety eyes, smooth rosy cheeks and a dimple. Felicity hailed her with a whoop of joy. As I have said, Felicity liked Sheila. And Felicity suspected that Ronald liked Sheila even more than she did, and Sheila, in Felicity’s eyes, was the only girl she had ever met whom she considered worthy of Ronald, so Felicity felt happy.
They walked together along the common. Sheila was, as ever, lighthearted and radiant, but to-day Felicity thought her light-heartedness and radiance slightly—very slightly—dimmed.
“Is anything the matter, Sheila?” said Felicity.
“Of course not . . . Ronald’s not at home, is he?”
“No.”
The clock in the village church chimed “four” and Felicity, who had quite a range of vulgar exclamations, said: “Oh, Crikey!” and hastened home.
Lady Montague was radiant.
“I paid my call at The Grange this afternoon,’ she said to Felicity. “It was a most delightful visit. So nice to see dear Mrs. Eltham again. And her dear son was there.”
Felicity displayed no curiosity about her dear son, so Lady Montague continued:
“He’s a brilliant boy,” she went on, “a poet. There, Felicity, you’ll be able, to see a real live poet!”
“What’s he written?” said Felicity, unimpressed.
“Poems, of course,” said Lady Montague rather impatiently, and added: “And they’re coming to tea to-morrow afternoon, Felicity. Perhaps you’d recite one of those beautiful poems Mrs. Graves teaches you, dear. Being a poet, he might like it. Something—poetical, you, know. I’ve never heard you recite yet, and after all those lessons you ought to be able to . . . Something beautiful, you know, and, of course, refined. Something out of dear Tennyson, such as ‘We are Seven,’ or—or ‘The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck,’ or—what was it?—‘The Wreck of the Little Revenge.’”
Marmaduke Percival Eltham was an only son. He had been guarded and treasured and shielded from life’s rough winds from his earliest infancy. He had not been sent to a public school because it was felt that life’s rough winds might blow upon him in a public school. He had been educated by tutors who “understood” him. His mother had had great difficulty in finding tutors who “understood” him. “Understanding” Marmaduke Percival meant accepting his monkey tricks as “high spirits,” his stupidity as “genius,” his cheek as “wit,” and perpetually conquering your inclination to smack his head. His mother was a woman of determination and she dismissed tutor after tutor till she found one who, on consideration of a soft job and a large salary, was willing to “understand” Marmaduke.
Marmaduke had decided to be a poet when he was six years old and he had watched a celebrated poet who was staying in the house. The poet didn’t seem to do anything but talk, and everyone crowded round him hanging upon his words. It seemed to Marmaduke to be a pleasant calling. When he was twelve his mother gave him a rhyming dictionary, but he found it less trouble to do it without rhymes, and when he was nineteen he actually had a poem printed in a paper. It was mother-love that wrought the miracle. Mrs. Eltham gave a large subscription to the funds of the paper on condition that the editor accepted Marmaduke’s poem and put it on the front page. She could not get him to repeat the experiment, however, because he said that he lost far more from the subsequent falling-off of his subscribers than she had given him . . .
So Marmaduke had all his little poems printed in a little book bound in white vellum and
with his name in gold on the outside. He didn’t submit them to editors or publishers because editors and publishers are nasty, unkind, unsympathetic men and didn’t “understand” him. Instead, he had them printed at his mother’s expense, which was far less trouble for everyone concerned.
You are not prepared, after all this, to hear that Marmaduke was nice-looking, but he was. He was quite handsome in a Byronic style, and he always wore a flowing tie and his dark curly hair just a little longer than other people wore it, to heighten the effect.
They arrived quite early in the afternoon. His mother introduced him with pride, and Lady Montague said: “There, Felicity! Now you can say that you’ve met a real poet,” and Marmaduke simpered and Felicity looked sphinx-like. Then Lady Montague talked to Mrs. Eltham and Marmaduke sat back and looked like a poet, occasionally arranging his hair and his tie and casting furtive glances of admiration at Felicity’s delicate porcelain face with its speedwell-blue eyes, its rosebud mouth, and its frame of red-gold hair. And Felicity sat and looked dreamily before her . . .
Then Sheila came in. It was Felicity who noticed Sheila’s sudden confusion when she saw the poet.
“Oh, we’ve met before,” said Marmaduke, with an oily smile.
Sheila, her pretty face flushed, tried to carry off the situation with a conventional greeting but only partially succeeded.
Felicity looked from one to the other, frowning pensively, her tawny plait over her shoulder.
“A real poet, my dear,” said Lady Montague proudly to Sheila.
Felicity noticed that Sheila avoided the poet’s eyes and that her lips tightened whenever she heard his voice. His voice certainly was not a pleasant one. It was shrill and piercing. It was in every way disappointing. It did not go at all with his Byronic appearance.
Sheila made an excuse to depart soon after tea and Felicity ran out after her and overtook her in the drive.
“Sheila, darling,” said Felicity, slipping her arm through Sheila’s, “what’s the matter? Do tell me.”
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