‘Quite right.’
Once more the Hon. Galahad smote the green cloth. ‘You’ll smash that table,’ said Ronnie.
There flashed into the Hon. Galahad’s mind the story of how old Beefy Muspratt, with some assistance, actually had smashed a billiard-table in the year ninety-eight; and such is the urge to the raconteur’s ruling passion that he almost stopped to tell it. Then he recovered himself.
‘Curse the table!’ he cried. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about tables. I came to tell you that, if you care to know what a calm, unprejudiced observer thinks of you, you’re an infernal young snob … and a hound…’
‘What!’
‘… and a worm,’ went on the Hon. Galahad, as pink himself now as any pink-faced nephew. ‘Do you think I can’t see what’s happened? If you want to know, Sue told me herself. Told me in so many words, out there in the hall just now. You’re such a wambling, spineless, invertebrate jellyfish that you’ve let your mother talk you into breaking off this engagement. You’ve allowed her to persuade you that that poor child isn’t good enough for you.’
‘What!’
‘As if Dolly Henderson’s daughter wasn’t good enough for the finest man in the kingdom—let alone a…’
On the brink of becoming a little personal again, the Hon. Galahad found himself interrupted. This time it was Ronnie who had thumped the table.
‘Don’t talk such absolute dashed nonsense!’ thundered Ronnie. ‘You don’t suppose I broke off the engagement, do you? Sue broke it off herself.’
‘Yes, because she could see that you wanted to get out of it and, being the splendid girl she is, wasn’t going to cheapen herself by hanging on to a man who was obviously dying to be rid of her.’
‘Hike that! Dying to be rid of her! I… I… Why, damn it!’
‘You aren’t telling me you’re still fond of her?’
‘What do you mean, still? And what do you mean, fond of her? Fond of her! My God!’ The Hon. Galahad was astounded.
‘Then what on earth have you been going about for these last few days like a spavined frog? Treating her as if…’
His manner softened. He began to see daylight. He could not lay his hand gently on his nephew’s shoulder, for they were at opposite sides of a regulation-sized billiard-table. But he infused a gentle hand-laying into his voice.
‘I see it all! You were worrying about something else; is that it? Or was it the heat? Anyhow, for some reason you allowed yourself to be odd in your manner. My dear boy, when you get to my age you’ll know better than to take chances like that. Never be odd in your manner with a woman. Don’t you realize that, even under the best of conditions, there’s practically nothing that won’t make a sensitive, highly strung girl break off her engagement? If she doesn’t like her new hat… or if her stocking starts a ladder … or if she comes down late to breakfast and finds all the scrambled eggs are finished. It’s like servants giving notice. I had a man back in the nineties—Spatchett, his name was—who used to give me notice every time he backed a horse that didn’t finish in the first three. Why, he gave me notice once purely and simply because his wife’s sister had had a baby. I never paid any attention to it. I knew it was just a form of emotional expression. Where you or I would have lit a cigarette, Spatchett gave notice. And it’s the same with women. No doubt Sue saw you brooding and assumed that love was dead. Well, this has certainly eased my mind, Ronnie, my dear boy. I’ll go and explain things to her at once.’
‘Half a minute, Uncle Gally.’
‘Eh?’
Pausing half-way to the door, the Hon. Galahad saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew’s face. An expression a little like that of a young Hindu fakir who, having settled himself on his first bed of spikes, is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.
‘I’m afraid it isn’t quite so simple as that,’ said Ronnie.
The Hon. Galahad drew in the slack of his monocle, which in the recent excitement had fallen from his eye. He screwed the thing into place, and surveyed his nephew inquiringly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve got it all wrong. Sue doesn’t love me.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘It isn’t nonsense. She’s in love with Monty Bodkin.’
‘What!’
‘It’s all settled between them that they’re going to get married.’
‘I never heard such…’
‘Oh, it’s perfectly true,’ said Ronnie, his mouth twisting. ‘I’m not blaming her. Nobody’s fault. Just one of those things. Still, ·there it is. She’s crazy about him. She went up to London to meet him the moment I was out of the place, just because she couldn’t keep away from him. She got him to apply for Hugo’s job as Uncle Clarence’s secretary, just because she was so keen to have him here.
She was up on the roof with him all yesterday afternoon. And…’ Ronnie had to pause for a moment here to control his voice’… he’s got her name tattooed on his chest, with a heart round it.’
‘You don’t mean that?’
‘I saw it myself.’
‘Well, I’m dashed! Hurts like sin, that sort of thing. I haven’t heard of anybody having a girl’s name tattooed on him since the year ninety-nine, when Jack Bellamy-Johnstone …’
Ronnie held up a restraining hand.
‘Not now, uncle, if you don’t mind.’
‘Most amusing story,’ said the Hon. Galahad, wistfully.
‘Later on, what?’
‘Well, yes, perhaps you’re right,’ admitted the Hon. Galahad. ‘I suppose you’re not in the mood for stories. It was simply that poor old Jack fell in love with a girl named Esmeralda Parkinson-Willoughby and had the whole thing tattooed on his wishbone, and the wounds had scarcely healed when they quarrelled and he got engaged to another girl called May Todd. So if he had only waited … However, as you say, that is neither here nor there. Ronnie, my dear boy,’ said the Hon. Galahad, ‘this beats me. I had always looked on you as a pretty average sort of young poop, but never, never would I have imagined that you could have allowed yourself to believe all that drivel…’
‘Drivel!’
‘Perfect drivel. You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely. Suppose Sue did go to London …’
‘There’s no supposition about it. My mother saw her and Monty lunching together at the Berkeley.’
‘She would. Dashed Nosey Parker. Sorry, my boy. Forgot she was your mother. Still, she was my sister before you were ever born or thought of, and I hope a man can call his own sister a Nosey Parker. What did she tell you?’
‘She said…’
‘All right. Never mind. I can guess. No doubt she’s been filling you up with all sorts of stories. Well, now you can hear the truth. Young Sue had nothing whatever to do with Monty Bodkin coming here. The first she heard of his having been taken on as Clarence’s secretary was from me, and the news absolutely bowled her over. I can see her now, looking at me like a dying duck and saying here was a nice bit of fruit-box because she had once, when a mere child, been engaged to the fellow…’
‘What!’
‘Certainly. Years ago. Before she ever met you. Only lasted a week or two, as far as I can gather, and she was glad to get out of it. But there the fact was. She had been engaged to him, and he was coming here, and if he wasn’t tipped off to keep the thing dark he would be sure to say something tactless about the old days, and that would upset you, because you were such a blasted jealous halfwit, always ready to make heavy weather about nothing. She asked me what she ought to do. I gave her the only possible advice. I told her to rush up to London before you got back, get hold of Monty, and tell him to keep his mouth shut. Which she did. That is how she came to be in London that day, and that is why she was lunching with him. So there you are. The whole thing, you observe, done from start to finish in the kindliest spirit of altruism, with no other motive than to preserve your peace of mind. Perhaps this will be a lesson to you in future no
t to give way to jealousy, which I have always said and always shall say is one of the dashed silliest…’
Ronnie was staring, perplexed in the extreme.
‘Is this true?’
‘Of course it’s true. If you can’t see by this time that Sue is a girl in a million—pure gold—and that you’ve been treating her abominably…’
‘But she was up on the roof with him.’
The childishness of this seemed to nettle the Hon. Galahad. He uttered a sound which was rather like Lord Tilbury’s ‘Cor!’
‘Why shouldn’t she be up on the roof with him? Must people be in love with one another just because they are up on roofs together? I was up on that roof with you once, but if you thought I was in love with you you must have been singularly obtuse. It’s been a grief to me for years that you were so nippy round that chimney-stack. Sue in love with young Bodkin, indeed! Why, Monty Bodkin is engaged himself. She told me so. To a girl named Gertrude Butterwick. Butterwick,’ said the Hon. Galahad musingly. ‘I used to know several Butterwicks. I wonder if she would be any relation to old Legs Butterwick, who used to paint his face with red spots to make duns who called at his rooms think he’d got smallpox.’
A shuddering groan burst from the lips of Ronnie Fish.‘Oh, gosh, what a fool I’ve made of myself!’
‘You have.’
‘I’m a hound and a cad.’
‘You are.’
‘I ought to be kicked.’
‘You ought.’
‘Of all the...’
‘Hold it,’ urged the Hon. Galahad. ‘Don’t waste all this on me. Tell it to Sue. I’ll fetch her.’
He darted from the room, to return a moment later, dragging the girl behind him.
‘Now!’ he said authoritatively. ‘Do your stuff. Tie yourself in knots at her feet, and ask her to kick you in the face. Grovel before her on your wretched stomach. Roll about the floor and bark. And while you’re doing it I’ll be stepping up to the drawing-room and having a word with your mother and my sister Constance.’
A stern, resolute look came into the Hon. Galahad’s face.
‘I’ll spoil their tea and shrimps!’ he said.
In the drawing-room, however, when he arrived there after taking the stairs three at a time in that juvenile way of his which gout-crippled contemporaries so resented, he found only his sister Julia. She was seated in an armchair, smoking a cigarette and reading an illustrated weekly paper. The tea which he had hoped to spoil was in the process of being cleared away by Beach and a footman.
She looked contented, and she was feeling contented. Ronnie’s growing gloom during the past two days had not escaped her. In a mood to be genial to everybody, even to one on whom she had always looked as the Family Blot, she welcomed the Hon. Galahad with a pleasant nod.
‘You’re late, if you’ve come for tea,’ she said.
‘Tea!’ snorted the Hon. Galahad.
He stood fuming until the door closed.
‘Now, then, Julia,’ he said, ‘I want a word with you.’
Lady Julia raised her shapely eyebrows.
‘My dear Galahad! This is very menacing and ominous. Is something the matter?’
‘You know what’s the matter. Where’s Connie?’
‘Gone to answer the telephone, I believe.’
‘Well, you’ll do to start with.’
‘Galahad, really!’
‘Put down that paper.’
‘Oh, very well.’
The Hon. Galahad strode to the hearthrug and stood with his back to the empty fireplace. Racial instinct made him feel more authoritative in that position. He frowned forbiddingly.
‘Julia, you make me sick.’
‘Indeed? Why is that?’
‘What the devil do you mean by trying to poison young Ronnie’s mind against Sue Brown?’
‘Really, Galahad!’
‘Do you deny that that is what you have been doing ever since you got here?’
‘I may have pointed out to him once or twice the inadvisability of marrying a girl who appears to be in love with another man. If this be treason, make the most of it. Surely it’s a tenable theory?’
‘You think she’s in love with young Bodkin?’
‘Apparently.’
‘If you will step down to the billiard-room,’ said the Hon. Galahad, ‘I think you may possibly alter your opinion.’ Something of Lady Julia’s self-confidence left her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Touching,’ said the Hon. Galahad unctuously. ‘That’s what it was. Touching. It nearly made me cry. I never saw a more united couple. All their doubts and misunderstandings cleared away…’
‘What!’
‘Locked in each other’s arms, weeping on each other’s chests… you ought to go down and have a look, Julia. You’ll be in plenty of time. It’s evidently going to be one of those non-stop performances. Well, anyway, that’s the first thing I came up here to tell you. You have been taking a lot of trouble to ruin this girl’s happiness these last few days, and now you are getting official intimation that you haven’t succeeded. They are all right, those two. Sweethearts still is the term.’
The Hon. Galahad spread his coat-tails to the invisible blaze and resumed.
‘The other thing I came to say is that there must be no more of this nonsense. If you have objections to young Ronnie marrying Sue, don’t mention them to him. It worries him and makes him moody, and that worries Sue and makes her unhappy, and that worries me and spoils my day. You understand?’
Lady Julia was shaken, but she had not lost her spirit.
‘I’m afraid you must make up your mind to having your days spoiled, Galahad.’
‘You don’t mean that even after this you intend to keep making a pest of yourself?’
‘You put these things so badly. What you are trying to say, I imagine is, do I still intend to give my child a mother’s advice? Certainly I do. A boy’s best friend is his mother, don’t you sometimes think? Ronnie, handicapped by being virtually half-witted, may not have seen fit to take my advice as yet; but if in the old days you ever had a moment to spare from your life-work of being thrown out of shady night-clubs and were able to look in at the Adelphi Theatre, you may remember the expression “the time will come!”’
The Hon. Galahad stared at this indomitable woman with something that was almost admiration. ‘Well, I’m dashed!’
‘Are you?’
‘You always were a tough nut, Julia.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Always. Even as a child. It used to interest me in those days to watch you gradually dawning on the latest governess. I could have read her thoughts in her face, poor devil. First, she would meet Connie and you could almost hear her saying to herself’’ Hullo! A vicious specimen this one.” And then you would come along, all wide, innocent blue eyes and flaxen curls, and she would feel a great wave of relief and fling her arms round you; thinking’’ Well, here’s one that’s all right, thank God!” Little knowing that she had just come up against the stoniest-hearted, beastliest-natured, and generally most poisonous young human rattlesnake in all Shropshire.’
Lady Julia seemed genuinely pleased at this tribute. She laughed musically.
‘You are silly, Galahad.’
The Hon. Galahad adjusted his monocle.
‘So your hat is still in the ring, eh?’
‘Still there, my dear.’
‘But what have you got against young Sue?’
‘I don’t like chorus-girls as daughters-in-law.’
‘But, great heavens above, Julia, surely you can see that Sue isn’t the sort of girl you mean when you say “chorus-girls” in that beastly sniffy way?’
‘You can’t expect me to classify and tabulate chorus-girls. I haven’t your experience. They’re all chorus-girls to me.’
‘There are moments, Julia,’ said the Hon. Galahad meditatively, ‘when I should like to drown you in a bucket.’
‘A butt of malmsey would have been more in your li
ne, I should have thought.’
‘Your attitude about young Sue infuriates me. Can’t you see the girl’s a nice girl… a sweet girl… and a lady, if it comes to that.’
‘Tell me, Gally,’ said Lady Julia, ‘just as a matter of interest, is she your daughter?’ The Hon. Galahad bristled.
‘She is not. Her father was a man in the Irish Guards, named Cotterleigh. He and Dolly were married when I was in South Africa.’
He stood for a moment, his mind in the past.
‘Fellow told me about it quite casually one day when I was having a drink in a Johannesburg bar,’ he said with a far-off look in his eyes.’ “I see that girl Dolly Henderson who used to be at the Tivoli has got married,” he said. Out of a blue sky…’
Lady Julia took up her paper.
‘Well, if you have no further observations of interest to make …’
The Hon. Galahad came back to the present. ‘Oh, I have.’
‘Please hurry, then.’
‘I have something to say which I fancy will interest you very much.’
‘That will make a nice change.’
The Hon. Galahad paused a moment. His sister took advantage of the fact to interject a question. ‘It isn’t by any chance that, if this marriage of Ronnie’s is stopped, you will publish those Reminiscences of yours, is it?’
‘It is.’
Lady Julia gave another of her jolly laughs.
‘My dear man, I had all that days ago from Constance. And my flesh didn’t even creep a bit. It seems to agitate Connie tremendously but speaking for myself I haven’t the slightest objection to you publishing a dozen books of Reminiscences. It will be nice to think of you making some money at last, and as for the writhings of the nobility and gentry…’
‘Julia,’ said the Hon. Galahad, ‘one moment.’
He eyed her intently. She returned his gaze with an air of faintly bored inquiry.
‘Well?’
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