by E. F. Benson
“But how delicious to see food again,” she said as she sat down. “I was so afraid lunch-time was never coming that I didn’t recognize it when it came.”
“And we were afraid that you were never coming, dear Cynthia,” said the Duchess of Camber.
“I know; I am late. But as I always am late, it is the same as if I was punctual. The really unpunctual people are those who sometimes are late and sometimes not. Colonel Ascot has the other punctuality; he is always in time.”
Cynthia looked round the table. There were but half a dozen guests, but all these were old friends, and by a not uncommon coincidence half of them were clients of Agatha, while the Duchess of Camber, so Lady Hampshire knew, was quite likely to become one, for she had lately taken to doing her shopping at Mason’s Stores, and spent a long time over it.
Colonel Ascot glanced, apparently with purpose, at the Louis XVI. clock that stood on the mantelpiece.
“One wastes a lot of time if one is punctual,” he said. “But, after all, one has all the time there is.”
“But there isn’t enough, though one has it all!” said Lady Hampshire. “Today, for instance, would have to be doubled, as one doubles at bridge, if I was to do all I have promised to.”
“But you won’t, dear, so it doesn’t matter,” said the Duchess. “In any case, there is always time for what one wants to do, and one can omit the rest. I always thought my time was completely taken up, but I find I can do my own shopping at Mason’s as well. I buy soap and candles and sealing-wax, and take them home in the motor.”
“But not every morning?” asked Lady Hampshire, beginning to attend violently.
“Practically every afternoon. I always find I have forgotten something I meant to buy the day before. Also, it is a sort of retreat. One never meets there anybody one knows, which is such a rest. I don’t have to grin and talk.”
Lunch was soon over, and instead of having coffee and cigarettes served at the table, Colonel Ascot got up.
“I do hope, Lady Hampshire,” he said, “that you and the others will not hurry away, and that you will excuse me, as I have a most important engagement at a quarter-past three, which I cannot miss. It is very annoying, and the worst of it is that I made the appointment myself, quite forgetting that I was to have the pleasure of seeing you at lunch.”
“Am I to take your place as hostess?” she asked, as she sat down with him for a moment in a corner of the drawing-room.
“If you will, both now and always,” said he.
She laughed; he had proposed to her so often that a repetition was not in the least embarrassing. But somehow, today, he looked unusually attractive and handsome, and she was more serious with him than was her wont. Also the thought of doing business for Agatha was in her mind.
“Ah, my dear friend,” she said, “I should have to know so much more about you first. For instance, that appointment of your own making seems to me to need inquiry. Now be truthful, Colonel Ascot, and tell me if it is not a woman you are going to see?”
“Well, it is.”
“I knew it,” she said.
“But you must let me tell you more,” said he. “She is an old governess of my sister’s, whom I—I want to be kind to. Such a good old soul. The sort of helpless old lady with whom one couldn’t break an appointment that one had made.”
Lady Hampshire laughed again.
“Your details are admirable,” she said. “And detail is of such prime importance in any artistic production.”
“Artistic production?” said he. “Surely you don’t suspect me of—”
“I suspect everybody of everything,” she interrupted lightly, “owing to my extensive knowledge of myself. But go on; I want more details. What is the name and address of this helpless old governess?”
“Miss Agatha Ainslie,” said he. “She lives in Whitstaple Street, just off the Square.”
Lady Hampshire had nerves of steel. If they had been of any other material they must have snapped like the strings of the lyre of Hope in Mr. Watts’s picture. Only in this case there would not have been a single one left. Colonel Ascot going to see Agatha at a quarter-past three.… How on earth did he know of Agatha’s existence? What was Agatha to him, or he to Agatha? And surely it was at a quarter-past three that the messenger of the ruthless M. S. was going to call at Whitstaple Street, where he would find the packet of bank-notes for £250 that Lady Hampshire had made ready before she came out to lunch. Would they meet on the doorstep? What did it all mean?
Her head whirled, but she managed to command her voice.
“What a delightful name!” she said. “I’m sure Miss Ainslie must be a delightful old lady with ringlets and a vinaigrette and a mourning-brooch.”
“I haven’t seen her for years,” said Colonel Ascot. “I will tell you about her when we meet again. Do let it be soon!”
“Perhaps you would drop in for tea today?” she suggested, expunging from her mind several other engagements. “I shall be alone.”
“That will make up for my curtailed luncheon-party,” said he.
He made his excuses to his guests, and after allowing him a liberal time in which he could leave the house, Lady Hampshire rose also.
“You are not going yet, dear Cynthia?” asked the Duchess. “I wanted to talk to you about the advantage of doing your shopping at Mason’s. And the danger of it,” she added, catching Lady Hampshire’s kind understanding eye.
Lady Hampshire felt torn between conflicting interests. Here, she unerringly conjectured, there was fish to fry for Agatha, and yet other fish, so to speak, who perhaps wanted to fry. Agatha demanded a more immediate attention.
The duchess’s complication must wait: she was dining with her tomorrow. Colonel Ascot was going to see Agatha: nothing must prevent Lady Hampshire from hearing what his business was.
She went across the Square, and let herself into her own house. There were half a dozen telegrams lying on the hall table, but without dreaming of opening any, she went straight to her bedroom and locked the door. Someone—probably the second footman—was being funny at the servants’ dinner, for shrieks of laughter ascended from the basement. As a rule, she loved to know that her household was enjoying itself, but today that merriment left her cold, and next moment she was in Agatha’s house and pursing her lips into the shrill whistle with which she always summoned Magsby.
“I left a note addressed to M. S.,” she said; “I want it.”
The words were yet in her mouth, when the bell of Agatha’s front door rang in an imperious manner, and Lady Hampshire peeped cautiously out through the yellow muslin blinds. On the doorstep was standing an old, old man with a long white beard. He leaned heavily on a stick, and wore a frayed overcoat.
She tiptoed back from the window.
“Give me the note,” she said, “and wait till I get upstairs. Then answer the door, and tell Methuselah that Miss Ainslie will be down in a moment.”
Lady Hampshire stole up to Agatha’s room, and hastily assumed her grey wig, her spectacles, her rouge, her large elastic-sided boots, her lip-salve, her creaking alpaca gown, and with the envelope containing bank-notes for £250, addressed in Agatha’s dramatic sloping handwriting to the messenger of M. S., descended again to her sitting-room. Methuselah rose as she entered, and she made him her ordinary prim Agatha bow, and spoke in Miss Ainslie’s husky treble voice.
“The messenger of M. S.,” she observed. “Quite so.”
“That is my name for the present,” said the old man in a fruity tenor.
“I received your master’s note, sir,” said Agatha, “and you cannot be expected to know what pain and surprise it caused me. But what does he suppose he is going to get by it?”
Lady Hampshire was not used to spectacles, and they dimmed her natural acuteness of vision, besides making her eyes ache. Before her was a sordid old ruin of humanity, red-eyed, white-bearded, a prey, it would seem, to lumbago, nasal catarrh, and other senile ailments. Probably in a few minutes—for it
was scarcely a quarter past three yet—Colonel Ascot would arrive; and again her head whirled at the thought of the possible nightmares that Providence still had in store for her.
Methuselah blew his nose.
“I fancy my master rather expected to get £250 in notes or gold,” he said. “He knows a good deal about Miss Ainslie, he does. He is quite willing to share his knowledge with others, he is.”
Lady Hampshire raised her head proudly, so that she could get a glimpse of this old ruffian under her spectacles. The ways of genius are past finding out, and she could never give a firm reason for what she said next. A brilliant unconscious intuition led her to say it.
“There is nothing the world may not know,” she said; “in England it is no crime to be poor, and though I have been in a humble position all my life, my life has been an honest one. There is no disgrace inherent in the profession of a governess. For many years I was governess to Colonel Ascot’s sister.
“Good God!” said Methuselah.
That was sufficient for Lady Hampshire. She took off her spectacles altogether and closely scrutinized that astonished rheumy face. And then her kindly soul was all aflame with indignation at this dastardly attempt to blackmail poor Agatha.
“In fact, now I look at you,” she said, “I recognize you. No wonder you blaspheme. I remember the bright boy who used to come in and sit in the schoolroom while my pupil and I were at our lessons. You have aged very much, Colonel Ascot.”
In that moment of recognition, she made up her mind. She could never marry him; she could never even lunch with him again. He was atrocious.
Methuselah rose.
“You are labouring under some strange mistake,” he said; “I will call again.”
“There is no mistake at all,” said Lady Hampshire quickly, forgetting, in her perfectly natural indignation, to employ the husky treble tones which were characteristic of Miss Ainslie, “except the mistake you have made in thinking that you could with impunity blackmail a defenceless old governess like me. Where is Scotland Yard? I shall drive there immediately, and you shall come with me. I shall ring the bell.”
She got up quickly, and then sat down again exactly where she had been, and Methuselah looked at her very carefully. Then he suddenly burst into peals of bass laughter.
“But you have aged very much, too, Lady Hampshire,” he said.
“Good God!” said Agatha Ainslie.
Magsby, waiting in the passage outside, felt uncertain as to what her duty was. She heard her mistress’s voice and the voice of another, shrieking with laughter, which seemed to gather volume and enjoyment the longer it went on. Eventually she thought best to retreat to the basement and prepare haddocks for dinner.
* * * *
“But, my dear, let us be serious,” said Lady Hampshire at length. “Tell me, before I begin to laugh again, how on earth you ever heard of my poor Agatha!”
“A mutual client,” said Colonel Ascot, fanning himself with his long white beard. “Poor Jimmy Dennison. He told me, in a fit of natural exasperation, when I was reminding him about what happened at Brighton last September, that he could not afford to pay for the same thing twice over, once to me, and once to Agatha Ainslie. The poor boy showed me the counterfoils of his cheque-book. It was Agatha Ainslie and Martin Sampson all the way. It was but natural, since he could not pay, that I should turn to Agatha and see if she could.”
“But are you really one of us?” said Lady Hampshire.
“Apparently. Are you?”
There was a fresh relapse of laughter, and then Lady Hampshire pulled herself together.
“I will go halves in Jimmy Dennison,” she said, “whatever we may get. You may say you have squared Agatha. He ought to give you something for your trouble. Or I will say I have squared Sampson.”
“It makes no difference,” said Colonel Ascot. “But I am afraid our interests conflict in many quarters. For instance, the poor Duchess of Camber.”
“Shopping at Mason’s,” interrupted Lady Hampshire. “My dear friend, she is mine. She was going to tell me all about it this afternoon, only I had to come over here to see about Agatha.”
Again Colonel Ascot exploded with laughter.
“But she told me about it yesterday,” he said, “and I had already drafted a short letter to her from Martin Sampson.”
Lady Hampshire was annoyed at this, since the Duchess was so very rich and so very silly.
“I don’t know what we can do,” she said; “we can’t appoint an arbitrator, can we? No arbitrator of really high character would undertake to settle the differences of two blackmailers. It is very important that an arbitrator should be beyond suspicion.”
“We had really better make it one firm, Cynthia,” said he.
She had often considered his proposal before, but never so favourably. Agatha need not be annihilated now; Agatha would probably grow even more tumultuously alive.
“Yes, perhaps we had,” she said. “Oh, yes, most decidedly!”
* * * *
So they lived happily and wealthily and amazingly for another twenty-four years—there is much yet that might be said about them.
THE BLACKMAILER OF PARK LANE
Arthur Whately had known very well what it was like to be desperately poor, and in consequence, when he became so desperately rich that money ceased to mean anything to him, his pity for the penurious was not hysterical or exaggerated. He could recall very vividly what it felt like to have neither tea, dinner nor supper, and to wake in the morning, stiff and cold as armour, on a bench on the Embankment and see the ridiculous needle of Cleopatra stonily pointing heavenwards against the sky, in which the stars were beginning to burn dim at the chilly approach of day. He had known how icy the feet become when they have been close clasped all night long in the frayed embraces of gaping leather, but he had known also how sweet and surprising it is to eat when food is imperiously demanded by the cravings of long-continued abstinence, and how ineffably luxurious to get warm when limbs have ached themselves numb. He would have been willing to confess that unveneered destitution had its inconveniences, but it was false sentiment to deny that it had its compensations also.
It was when he was just sixteen that Luck, the great veiled goddess whom all the world so wisely worships, had paid him her first visit. He had been hanging about at the covered portico of the Lyceum Theatre one night watching the well-fed world being lumpily deposited at the doors, when a silly old pink gentleman, in paying his cabman, dropped a promising pocket-book in the roadway. For one half-second the boy deliberated, wondering instinctively (though he had never heard of the proverb) if honesty was the best policy; in other words, how much the pocket-book contained, and how much the foolish old gentleman would give him if he picked it up and returned it. A couple of pence, perhaps, for he looked a coppery gent.
But the debate lasted scarcely longer than it took the pocket-book to fall; in a moment his wise decision was made, he had picked it up (recognizing in that delightful incident the smile of the great goddess), had dived under the Roman nose of the cab horse, and fled into the street where a chill, unpleasant rain was falling. Luck still smiled on him, for the night was foggy, and as soon as he had crossed the street he dropped into the habitual shuffling pace of the homeless, and returned to the portico which he had so lately quitted, since it was theoretically impossible that the thief should do anything so foolish.
The silly old pink gentleman had not yet ceased to gesticulate and jibber in the direction in which he himself had just vanished, and an obsequious policeman was apparently taking down all the bad words he used in a neat notebook. Arthur wondered if he would arrest the old man for indulging in language redolent of faint praise in a public place.
Meantime, he had thrust the pocket-book—that incarnate smile of the beneficent goddess—into his shirt, and it slid comfortably down against his skin, till it was brought to anchor by the string which he had so strictly tied round his braceless trousers, since pressure in those re
gions minimised the abhorrence of vacuum. Then he slouched back to the Embankment, and with head bowed over his knees as if in sleep, he counted the tale of his treasure, taking out each item separately, and screening them from the parental scrutiny of policemen in the cavern of his hand.
There were two pieces of the fabulous crinkly paper, there were three sovereigns, and, what was immensely important for immediate purposes, a couple of shillings, translatable without suspicion into rich fried fish. One of his trouser pockets was a secure harbourage, and into this he piloted the golden ship. Then, with a stroke of high wisdom, he thrust the pocket-book through the interstices of the bench instead of keeping about him so incriminating a piece of merchandise, and slouched away, saying good-bye to roofless bedchambers by the sweet Thames-side forever.
Tonight, as he sat in the great dining-room of his house in Park Lane, the memory of that divine evening was vividly brought to his mind. Three friends had dined with him, and as the night proved foggy, they had abandoned the idea of seeing the most incompletely-clad dancer that the London County Council had at present licensed, and had decided to stay at home and play bridge.
“A cold, foggy night, sir,” had been the pronouncement that followed the butler’s news that the motors were round, and the simple words had conjured up that wonderful night of his boyhood Avith the vividness of hallucination. Bates, too, had a Roman nose, just like the cab horse, and Bates, by a strange coincidence, had just laid by his plate a couple of bank-notes and some change, since he had found himself completely destitute of coin. Had he ever enjoyed himself so much in all these fat years as on that cold, lean, foggy evening so long ago? Honestly (or dishonestly) he could not believe that he had. For there had been about it the one and only and original spice; then for the first time he had heard the clear call of the great golden goddess. She had called often since; indeed for years she had never ceased calling, and it was not too much to say that for years she had been madly and unreasonably in love with him. He received her with yawns now, like some poor discarded mistress, but the chilly reception never deterred her. She never noticed that he was bored, and his indifference seemed but to inflame her ardour.