'Eh?'
'On the pictures, sir. I recently attended a cinematograph performance at Norwich - it was on my afternoon off last week - and,' said Phipps, chuckling gently at the recollection, 'they were showing a most entertaining new feature, "The Adventures of Sidney the Sturgeon." It came on before the big picture, and it was all I could do to keep a straight face. This sturgeon looked extremely like his lordship in the old days.'
He drifted from the room and Brancepeth stared after him, stunned. His castles had fallen about him in ruins. Fame, fortune and married bliss were as far away from him as ever. All his labour had been in vain. If there was already a funny fish functioning on the silver screen, it was obvious that it would be mere waste of time to do another. He clasped his head in his hands and groaned over his fried egg. And, as he did so, the door opened.
'Ha,' said Lord Bromborough's voice. 'Good morning, good morning.'
Brancepeth spun round with a sharp jerk which sent a piece of bacon flying off his fork as if it had been shot from a catapult. Although his host's appearance could not affect his professional future now, he was consumed with curiosity to see what he looked like. And, having spun round, he sat transfixed. There before him stood Lord Bromborough, but not a hair of his moustache was missing. It flew before him like a banner in all its pristine luxuriance.
'Eh, what?' said Lord Bromborough, sniffing. 'Kedgeree? Capital, capital.'
He headed purposefully for the sideboard. The door opened again, and Edwin Potter came in, looking more of a boob than ever.
In addition to looking like a boob, Edwin Potter seemed worried.
T say,' he said, 'my father's missing.'
'On how many cylinders?' asked Lord Bromborough. He was a man who liked his joke of a morning.
T mean to say,' continued Edwin Potter. T can't find him. I went to speak to him about something just now, and his room was empty and his bed had not been slept in.'
Lord Bromborough was dishing out kedgeree on to a plate.
'That's all right,' he said. 'He wanted to try my hammock last night, so I let him. If he slept as soundly as I did, he slept well. I came over all drowsy as I was finishing my glass of hot milk and I woke this morning in an arm-chair in the smoking-room. Ah, my dear,' he went on, as Muriel entered, 'come along and try this kedgeree. It smells excellent I was just telling our young friend here that his father slept in my hammock last night.'
Muriel's face was wearing a look of perplexity.
'Out in the garden, do you mean?'
'Of course I mean out in the garden. You know where my hammock is. I've seen you lying in it.'
'Then there must be a goat in the garden.'
'Goat?' said Lord Bromborough, who had now taken his place at the table and was shovelling kedgeree into himself like a stevedore loading a grain ship. 'What do you mean, goat? There's no goat in the garden. Why should there be a goat in the garden?'
'Because something has eaten off Sir Preston's moustache.' 'What!'
'Yes. I met him outside, and the shrubbery had completely disappeared. Here he is. Look.'
What seemed at first to Brancepeth a total stranger was standing in the doorway. It was only when the newcomer folded his arms and began to speak in a familiar rasping voice that he recognized Sir Preston Potter, Bart., of Wapleigh Towers.
'So!' said Sir Preston, directing at Lord Bromborough a fiery glance full of deleterious animal magnetism.
Lord Bromborough finished his kedgeree and looked up.
‘Ah, Potter,' he said. 'Shaved your moustache, have you? Very sensible. It would never have amounted to anything, and you will be happier without it.'
Flame shot from Sir Preston Potter's eyes. The man was plainly stirred to his foundations.
'Bromborough,' he snarled, 'I have only five things to say to you. The first is that you are the lowest, foulest fiend that ever disgraced the pure pages of Debrett; the second that your dastardly act in clipping off my moustache shows you a craven, who knew that defeat stared him in the eye and that only thus he could hope to triumph ; the third that I intend to approach my lawyer immediately with a view to taking legal action; the fourth is good-bye for ever ; and the fifth -'
'Have an egg,' said Lord Bromborough.
‘I will not have an egg. This is not a matter which can be lightly passed off with eggs. The fifth thing I wish to say -.'
'But, my dear fellow, you seem to be suggesting that I had something to do with this. I approve of what has happened, yes. I approve of it heartily. Norfolk will be a sweeter and better place to live in now that this has occurred. But it was none of my doing. I was asleep in the smoking-room all night'
The fifth thing I wish to say -'
In an arm-chair. If you doubt me, I can show you the armchair.'
The fifth thing I wish to say is that the engagement between my son and your daughter is at an end,'
'Like your moustache. Ha, ha!' said Lord Bromborough, who had many good qualities but was not tactful.
'Oh, but, Father!' cried Edwin Potter. 'I mean, dash it!'
'And I mean,' thundered Sir Preston, 'that your engagement is at an end. You have my five points quite clear, Bromborough?'
'I think so,' said Lord Bromborough, ticking them off on his fingers. 'I am a foul fiend, I'm a craven, you are going to institute legal proceedings, you bid me good-bye for ever, and my daughter shall never marry your son. Yes, five in all.'
'Add a sixth. I shall see that you are expelled from all your clubs.'
'I haven't got any.'
'Oh?' said Sir Preston, a little taken aback. 'Well, if ever you make a speech in the House of Lords, beware. I shall be up in the gallery, booing.'
He turned and strode from the room, followed by Edwin, protesting bleatingly. Lord Bromborough took a cigarette from his case.
'Silly old ass,' he said. T expect that moustache of his was clipped off by a body of public-spirited citizens. Like the Vigilantes they have in America. It is absurd to suppose that a man could grow a beastly, weedy caricature of a moustache like Potter's without inflaming popular feelings. No doubt they have been lying in wait for him for months. Lurking. Watching their opportunity. Well, my dear, so your wedding's off. A nuisance in a way of course, for I'd just bought a new pair of trousers to give you away in. Still it can't be helped.'
'No, it can't be helped,' said Muriel. 'Besides there will be another one along in a minute.'
She shot a tender smile at Brancepeth, but on his lips there was no answering simper. He sat in silence, crouched over his fried egg.
What did it profit him, he was asking himself bitterly, that the wedding was off? He himself could never marry Muriel. He was a penniless artist without prospects. He would never invent a comic animal for the movies now. There had been an instant when he had hoped that Sir Preston's uncovered face might suggest one, but the hope had died at birth. Sir Preston Potter, without his moustache, had merely looked like a man without a moustache.
He became aware that his host was addressing him.
'I beg your pardon?'
'I said, "Got a light?" ‘
'Oh, sorry,' said Brancepeth.
He took out his lighter and gave it a twiddle. Then, absently, he put the flame to the cigarette between his host's lips.
Or, rather, for preoccupation had temporarily destroyed his judgement of distance, to the moustache that billowed above and around it. And the next moment there was a sheet of flame and a cloud of acrid smoke. When this had cleared away, only a little smouldering stubble was left of what had once been one of Norfolk's two most outstanding eyesores.
A barely human cry rent the air, but Brancepeth hardly heard it. He was staring like one in a trance at the face that confronted him through the shrouding mists, fascinated by the short, broad nose, the bulging eyes, the mouth that gaped and twitched. It was only when his host made a swift dive across the table with bared teeth and clutching hands that Prudence returned to its throne. He slid under the table and came
out on the other side.
'Catch him!' cried the infuriated peer. 'Trip him up! Sit on his head!'
'Certainly not,' said Muriel. 'He is the man I love.'
'Is he!' said Lord Bromborough, breathing heavily as he crouched for another spring. 'Well, he's the man I am going to disembowel with my bare hands - when I catch him.'
‘I think I should nip through the window, darling,' said Muriel gently.
Brancepeth weighed the advice hastily and found it good. The window, giving on to the gravel drive, was, he perceived, open at the bottom. The sweet summer air floated in, and an instant later he was floating out. As he rose from the gravel, something solid struck him on the back of the head. It was a coffee-pot.
But coffee-pots, however shrewdly aimed, mattered little to Brancepeth now. This one had raised a painful contusion and he had in addition skinned both hands and one of his knees. His trousers, moreover, a favourite pair, had a large hole in them. Nevertheless, his heart was singing within him.
For Phipps had been wrong. Phipps was an ass. Phipps did not know a fish when he saw one. Lord Bromborough's face did not resemble that of a fish at all. It suggested something much finer, much fuller of screen possibilities, much more box-office than a fish. In that one blinding instant of illumination before he had dived under the table, Brancepeth had seen Lord Bromborough for what he was - Ferdinand the Frog.
He turned, to perceive his host in the act of hurling a cottage loaf.
'Muriel!' he cried.
'Hullo?' said the girl, who had joined her father at the window and was watching the scene with great interest. ‘I love you, Muriel.' 'Same here.'
'But for the moment I must leave you.'
'I would,' said Muriel. She glanced over her shoulder. 'He's gone to get the kedgeree.' And Brancepeth saw that Lord Bromborough had left his butt. 'He is now,' she added, 'coming back.'
'Will you wait for me, Muriel?' 'To all eternity.'
'It will not be necessary,' said Brancepeth. 'Call in six months or a year. By that time I shall have won fame and fortune.' He would have spoken further, but at this moment Lord Bromborough reappeared, poising the kedgeree. With a loving smile and a wave of the hand, Brancepeth leaped smartly to one side. Then, turning, he made his way down the drive, gazing raptly into a future of Rolls-Royces, caviare and silk underclothing made to measure.
Chapter Three
The Letter of the Law
'Fo-o-o-re!'
The cry, in certain of its essentials not unlike the wail of a soul in torment, rolled out over the valley, and the young man on the seventh tee, from whose lips it had proceeded, observing that the little troupe of spavined octogenarians doddering along the fairway, paid no attention whatever, gave his driver a twitch as if he was about to substitute action for words. Then he lowered the club and joined his companion on the bench.
'Better not, I suppose,' he said, moodily.
The Oldest Member, who often infested the seventh tee on a fine afternoon, nodded.
T think you are wise,' he agreed. 'Driving into people is a thing one always regrets. I have driven into people in my golfing days, and I was always sorry later. There is something about the reproachful eye of the victim as you meet it subsequently in the bar of the clubhouse which cannot fail to jar the man of sensibility. Like a wounded oyster. Wait till they are out of distance, says the good book. The only man I ever knew who derived solid profit from driving into somebody who was not out of distance was young Wilmot Byng....'
The two young men started.
'Are you going to tell us a story?’
'I am.'
'But -’
'I knew you would be pleased,' said the Oldest Member.
Wilmot Byng at the time of which I speak (the sage proceeded) was an engaging young fellow with a clear-cut face and a drive almost as long as the Pro's. Strangers, watching him at his best, would express surprise that he had never taken a couple of days off and won the Open Championship, and you could have knocked them down with a putter when you informed them that his handicap was six. For Wilmot's game had a fatal defect. He was impatient. If held up during a round, he tended to press. Except for that, however, he had a sterling nature and frank blue eyes which won all hearts.
It was the fact that for some days past I had observed in these eyes a sort of cloud that led me to think that the lad had something on his mind. And when we were lunching together in the clubhouse one afternoon and he listlessly refused a most admirable steak and kidney pudding I shot at him a glance so significant that, blushing profusely, he told me all.
He loved, it seemed, and the partner he had selected for life's medal round was a charming girl named Gwendoline Poskitt.
I knew the girl well. Her father was one of my best friends. We had been at the University together. As an undergraduate, he had made a name as a hammer thrower. More recently, he had taken up golf and, being somewhat short-sighted and completely muscle-bound, had speedily won for himself in our little community the affectionate sobriquet of the First Grave Digger.
'Indeed?' I said. 'So you love Gwendoline Poskitt, do you? Very sensible. Were I a younger man, I would do it myself. But she scorns your suit?'
'She doesn't scorn any such dashed thing,' rejoined Wilmot with some heat. 'She is all for my suit.'
'You mean she returns your love?'
'She does.'
'Then why refuse steak and kidney pudding?'
'Because her father will never consent to her becoming my wife. And it's no good saying Why not elope? because I suggested that and she would have none of it. She loves me dearly, she says - as a matter of fact, she admitted in so many words that I was the tree on which the fruit of her life hung - but she can't bring herself to forgo the big church wedding, with full choral effects and the Bishop doing his stuff and photographs in the illustrated weekly papers. As she quite rightly pointed out, were we to sneak off and get married at the registrar's, bim would go the Bishop and phut the photographs. I can't shake her.'
'You ought not to want to shake her.'
'Move her, I mean. Alter her resolution. So I've got to get her father's consent. And how can I, when he has it in for me the way he has?'
He gave a groan and began to crumble my bread. I took another piece and put it on the opposite side of my plate.
'Has it in for you?'
'Yes. It's like this. You know the Wrecking Crew.'
He was alluding to the quartet of golfing cripples of which Joseph Poskitt was a regular member. The others were Old Father Time, The Man With The Hoe, and Consul, The Almost Human.
'You know the way they dodder along and won't let anyone through. There have been ugly mutterings about it in the Club for months, and it came even harder on me than on most of the crowd, for, as you know, I like to play quick. Well, the other day I cracked under the strain. I could endure it no longer. I
'Drove into them?'
'Drove into them. Using my brassie for the shot. I took a nice easy stance, came back slow, keeping my head well down, and let fly - firing into the brown, as it were, and just trusting to luck which of them I hit. The man who drew the short straw was old Poskitt. I got him on the right leg. Did you tell me he got his blue at Oxford for throwing the hammer?’
'Throwing the hammer, yes.'
'Not the high jump?'
'No.'
'Odd. I should have said -'
I was deeply concerned. To drive into the father of the girl you love, no matter what the provocation, seemed to me an act of the most criminal folly and so I told him.
He quivered and broke a tumbler.
'Now there,' he said, 'you have touched on another cause for complaint. At the time, I had no notion that he was the father of the girl I loved. As a matter of fact, he wasn't, because I had not met Gwendoline then. She blew in later, having been on one of those round-the-world cruises. I must say I think that old buffers who hold people up and won't let them through ought to wear some sort of label indicating that the
y have pretty daughters who will be arriving shortly. Then one would know where one was and act accordingly. Still, there it is. I gave old Poskitt this juicy one, as described, and from what he said to me later in the changing room I am convinced that any suggestion on my part that I become his son-in-law will not be cordially received.'
I ate cheese gravely. I could see that the situation was a difficult one.
'Well, the only thing I can advise,' I said, 'is that you cultivate him assiduously. Waylay him and give him cigars. Ask after his slice. Tell him it's a fine day. He has a dog named Edward. Seek Edward out and pat him. Many a young man has won over the father of the girl he loves by such tactics, so why not you?'
He agreed to do so, and in the days which followed Poskitt could not show his face in the clubhouse without having Wilmot spring out at him with perfectos. The dog Edward began to lose hair off his ribs through incessant patting. And gradually, as I had hoped, the breach healed. Came a morning when Wilmot, inquiring after my old friend's slice, was answered not with the usual malevolent grunt but with a reasonably cordial statement that it now showed signs of becoming a hook.
'Ah?' said Wilmot. 'A cigar?’
'Thanks,' said Poskitt.
'Nice doggie,' said Wilmot pursuing his advantage by administering a hearty buffet to Edward's aching torso before the shrinking animal could side-step.
'Ah,' said Poskitt.
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