It had not been an easy matter to bring her erring brother to bay. The hunt had been in progress full ten minutes before she and Lord Belpher finally cornered the poor wretch. His plea, through the keyhole of the locked door, that he was working on the family history and could not be disturbed, was ignored; and now he was face to face with the avengers.
“I cannot understand it,” continued Lady Caroline. “You know that for months we have all been straining every nerve to break off this horrible entanglement, and, just as we had begun to hope that something might be done, you announce the engagement in the most public manner. I think you must be out of your mind. I can hardly believe even now that this appalling thing has happened. I am hoping that I shall wake up and find it is all a nightmare. How you can have done such a thing, I cannot understand.”
“Quite!” said Lord Belpher.
If Lady Caroline was upset, there are no words in the language that will adequately describe the emotions of Percy.
From the very start of this lamentable episode in high life, Percy had been in the forefront of the battle. It was Percy who had had his best hat smitten from his head in the full view of all Piccadilly. It was Percy who had suffered arrest and imprisonment in the cause. It was Percy who had been crippled for days owing to his zeal in tracking Maud across country. And now all his sufferings were in vain. He had been betrayed by his own father.
There was, so the historians of the Middle West tell us, a man of Chicago named Young, who once, when his nerves were unstrung, put his mother (unseen) in the chopping-machine, and canned her and labelled her “Tongue”. It is enough to say that the glance of disapproval which Percy cast upon his father at this juncture would have been unduly severe if cast by the Young offspring upon their parent at the moment of confession.
Lord Marshmoreton had rallied from his initial panic. The spirit of revolt began to burn again in his bosom. Once the die is cast for revolution, there can be no looking back. One must defy, not apologize. Perhaps the inherited tendencies of a line of ancestors who, whatever their shortcomings, had at least known how to treat their women folk, came to his aid. Possibly there stood by his side in this crisis ghosts of dead and buried Marshmoretons, whispering spectral encouragement in his ear—the ghosts, let us suppose, of that earl who, in the days of the seventh Henry, had stabbed his wife with a dagger to cure her tendency to lecture him at night; or of that other earl who, at a previous date in the annals of the family, had caused two aunts and a sister to be poisoned apparently from a mere whim. At any rate, Lord Marshmoreton produced from some source sufficient courage to talk back.
“Silly nonsense!” he grunted. “Don’t see what you’re making all this fuss about. Maud loves the fellow. I like the fellow. Perfectly decent fellow. Nothing to make a fuss about. Why shouldn’t I announce the engagement?”
“You must be mad!” cried Lady Caroline. “Your only daughter and a man nobody knows anything about!”
“Quite!” said Percy.
Lord Marshmoreton seized his advantage with the skill of an adroit debater.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I know all about him. He’s a very rich man. You heard the way all those people at dinner behaved when they heard his name. Very celebrated man! Makes thousands of pounds a year. Perfectly suitable match in every way.”
“It is not a suitable match,” said Lady Caroline vehemently. “I don’t care whether this Mr. Bevan makes thousands of pounds a year or twopence-ha’penny. The match is not suitable. Money is not everything.”
She broke off. A knock had come on the door. The door opened, and Billie Dore came in. A kind-hearted girl, she had foreseen that Lord Marshmoreton might be glad of a change of subject at about this time.
“Would you like me to help you tonight?” she asked brightly. “I thought I would ask if there was anything you wanted me to do.”
Lady Caroline snatched hurriedly at her aristocratic calm. She resented the interruption acutely, but her manner, when she spoke, was bland.
“Lord Marshmoreton will not require your help tonight,” she said. “He will not be working.”
“Good night,” said Billie.
“Good night,” said Lady Caroline.
Percy scowled a valediction.
“Money,” resumed Lady Caroline, “is immaterial. Maud is in no position to be obliged to marry a rich man. What makes the thing impossible is that Mr. Bevan is nobody. He comes from nowhere. He has no social standing whatsoever.”
“Don’t see it,” said Lord Marshmoreton. “The fellow’s a thoroughly decent fellow. That’s all that matters.”
“How can you be so pig-headed! You are talking like an imbecile. Your secretary, Miss Dore, is a nice girl. But how would you feel if Percy were to come to you and say that he was engaged to be married to her?”
“Exactly!” said Percy. “Quite!”
Lord Marshmoreton rose and moved to the door. He did it with a certain dignity, but there was a strange hunted expression in his eyes.
“That would be impossible,” he said.
“Precisely,” said his sister. “I am glad that you admit it.”
Lord Marshmoreton had reached the door, and was standing holding the handle. He seemed to gather strength from its support.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you about that,” he said.
“About what?”
“About Miss Dore. I married her myself last Wednesday,” said Lord Marshmoreton, and disappeared like a diving duck.
Chapter 26
At a quarter past four in the afternoon, two days after the memorable dinner-party at which Lord Marshmoreton had behaved with so notable a lack of judgment, Maud sat in Ye Cosy Nooke, waiting for Geoffrey Raymond. He had said in his telegram that he would meet her there at four-thirty: but eagerness had brought Maud to the tryst a quarter of an hour ahead of time: and already the sadness of her surroundings was causing her to regret this impulsiveness. Depression had settled upon her spirit. She was aware of something that resembled foreboding.
Ye Cosy Nooke, as its name will immediately suggest to those who know their London, is a tea-shop in Bond Street, conducted by distressed gentlewomen. In London, when a gentlewoman becomes distressed—which she seems to do on the slightest provocation—she collects about her two or three other distressed gentlewomen, forming a quorum, and starts a tea-shop in the West-End, which she calls Ye Oak Leaf; Ye Olde Willow-Pattern, Ye Linden-Tree, or Ye Snug Harbour, according to personal taste. There, dressed in Tyrolese, Japanese, Norwegian, or some other exotic costume, she and her associates administer refreshments of an afternoon with a proud languor calculated to knock the nonsense out of the cheeriest customer. Here you will find none of the coarse bustle and efficiency of the rival establishments of Lyons and Co., nor the glitter and gaiety of Rumpelmayer’s. These places have an atmosphere of their own. They rely for their effect on an insufficiency of light, an almost total lack of ventilation, a property chocolate cake which you are not supposed to cut, and the sad aloofness of their ministering angels. It is to be doubted whether there is anything in the world more damping to the spirit than a London tea-shop of this kind, unless it be another London tea-shop of the same kind.
Maud sat and waited. Somewhere out of sight a kettle bubbled in an undertone, like a whispering pessimist. Across the room two distressed gentlewomen in fancy dress leaned against the wall. They, too, were whispering. Their expressions suggested that they looked on life as low and wished they were well out of it, like the body upstairs. One assumed that there was a body upstairs. One cannot help it at these places. One’s first thought on entering is that the lady assistant will approach one and ask in a hushed voice “Tea or chocolate? And would you care to view the remains?”
Maud looked at her watch. It was twenty past four. She could scarcely believe that she had only been there five minutes, but the ticking of the watch assured her that it had not stopped. Her depression deepened. Why had Geoffrey told her to meet him in a cavern of gloom like thi
s instead of at the Savoy? She would have enjoyed the Savoy. But here she seemed to have lost beyond recovery the first gay eagerness with which she had set out to meet the man she loved.
Suddenly she began to feel frightened. Some evil spirit, possibly the kettle, seemed to whisper to her that she had been foolish in coming here, to cast doubts on what she had hitherto regarded as the one rock-solid fact in the world, her love for Geoffrey. Could she have changed since those days in Wales? Life had been so confusing of late. In the vividness of recent happenings those days in Wales seemed a long way off, and she herself different from the girl of a year ago. She found herself thinking about George Bevan.
It was a curious fact that, the moment she began to think of George Bevan, she felt better. It was as if she had lost her way in a wilderness and had met a friend. There was something so capable, so soothing about George. And how well he had behaved at that last interview. George seemed somehow to be part of her life. She could not imagine a life in which he had no share. And he was at this moment, probably, packing to return to America, and she would never see him again. Something stabbed at her heart. It was as if she were realizing now for the first time that he was really going.
She tried to rid herself of the ache at her heart by thinking of Wales. She closed her eyes, and found that that helped her to remember. With her eyes shut, she could bring it all back—that rainy day, the graceful, supple figure that had come to her out of the mist, those walks over the hills … If only Geoffrey would come! It was the sight of him that she needed.
“There you are!”
Maud opened her eyes with a start. The voice had sounded like Geoffrey’s. But it was a stranger who stood by the table. And not a particularly prepossessing stranger. In the dim light of Ye Cosy Nooke, to which her opening eyes had not yet grown accustomed, all she could see of the man was that he was remarkably stout. She stiffened defensively. This was what a girl who sat about in tea-rooms alone had to expect.
“Hope I’m not late,” said the stranger, sitting down and breathing heavily. “I thought a little exercise would do me good, so I walked.”
Every nerve in Maud’s body seemed to come to life simultaneously. She tingled from head to foot. It was Geoffrey!
He was looking over his shoulder and endeavouring by snapping his fingers to attract the attention of the nearest distressed gentlewoman: and this gave Maud time to recover from the frightful shock she had received. Her dizziness left her: and, leaving, was succeeded by a panic dismay. This couldn’t be Geoffrey! It was outrageous that it should be Geoffrey! And yet it undeniably was Geoffrey. For a year she had prayed that Geoffrey might be given back to her, and the gods had heard her prayer. They had given her back Geoffrey, and with a careless generosity they had given her twice as much of him as she had expected. She had asked for the slim Apollo whom she had loved in Wales, and this colossal changeling had arrived in his stead.
We all of us have our prejudices. Maud had a prejudice against fat men. It may have been the spectacle of her Percy, bulging more and more every year she had that had caused this kink in her character. At any rate, and she gazed in sickened silence at Geoffrey. He had turned again now, and she was enabled to get a full and complete view of him. He was not merely stout. He was gross. The figure which had haunted her for a year had spread into a sea of waistcoat. The keen lines of his face had disappeared altogether. His cheeks were pink jellies.
One of the distressed gentlewomen had approached with a slow disdain, and was standing by the table, brooding on the corpse upstairs. It seemed a shame to bother her.
“Tea or chocolate?” she inquired proudly.
“Tea, please,” said Maud, finding her voice.
“One tea,” sighed the mourner.
“Chocolate for me,” said Geoffrey briskly, with the air of one discoursing on a congenial topic. “I’d like plenty of whipped cream. And please see that it’s hot.”
“One chocolate.”
Geoffrey pondered. This was no light matter that occupied him.
“And bring some fancy cakes—I like the ones with icing on them—and some tea-cake and buttered toast. Please see there’s plenty of butter on it.”
Maud shivered. This man before her was a man in whose lexicon there should have been no such word as butter, a man who should have called for the police had some enemy endeavoured to thrust butter upon him.
“Well,” said Geoffrey leaning forward, as the haughty ministrant drifted away, “you haven’t changed a bit. To look at, I mean.”
“No?” said Maud.
“You’re just the same. I think I”—he squinted down at his waistcoat—”have put on a little weight. I don’t know if you notice it?”
Maud shivered again. He thought he had put on a little weight, and didn’t know if she had noticed it! She was oppressed by the eternal melancholy miracle of the fat man who does not realize that he has become fat.
“It was living on the yacht that put me a little out of condition,” said Geoffrey. “I was on the yacht nearly all the time since I saw you last. The old boy had a Japanese cook and lived pretty high. It was apoplexy that got him. We had a great time touring about. We were on the Mediterranean all last winter, mostly at Nice.”
“I should like to go to Nice,” said Maud, for something to say. She was feeling that it was not only externally that Geoffrey had changed. Or had he in reality always been like this, commonplace and prosaic, and was it merely in her imagination that he had been wonderful?
“If you ever go,” said Geoffrey, earnestly, “don’t fail to lunch at the Hotel Cote d’Azur. They give you the most amazing selection of hors d’oeuvres you ever saw. Crayfish as big as baby lobsters! And there’s a fish—I’ve forgotten it’s name, it’ll come back to me—that’s just like the Florida pompano. Be careful to have it broiled, not fried. Otherwise you lose the flavour. Tell the waiter you must have it broiled, with melted butter and a little parsley and some plain boiled potatoes. It’s really astonishing. It’s best to stick to fish on the Continent. People can say what they like, but I maintain that the French don’t really understand steaks or any sort of red meat. The veal isn’t bad, though I prefer our way of serving it. Of course, what the French are real geniuses at is the omelet. I remember, when we put in at Toulon for coal, I went ashore for a stroll, and had the most delicious omelet with chicken livers beautifully cooked, at quite a small, unpretentious place near the harbour. I shall always remember it.”
The mourner returned, bearing a laden tray, from which she removed the funeral bakemeats and placed them limply on the table. Geoffrey shook his head, annoyed.
“I particularly asked for plenty of butter on my toast!” he said. “I hate buttered toast if there isn’t lots of butter. It isn’t worth eating. Get me a couple of pats, will you, and I’ll spread it myself. Do hurry, please, before the toast gets cold. It’s no good if the toast gets cold. They don’t understand tea as a meal at these places,” he said to Maud, as the mourner withdrew. “You have to go to the country to appreciate the real thing. I remember we lay off Lyme Regis down Devonshire way, for a few days, and I went and had tea at a farmhouse there. It was quite amazing! Thick Devonshire cream and home-made jam and cakes of every kind. This sort of thing here is just a farce. I do wish that woman would make haste with that butter. It’ll be too late in a minute.”
Maud sipped her tea in silence. Her heart was like lead within her. The recurrence of the butter theme as a sort of leit motif in her companion’s conversation was fraying her nerves till she felt she could endure little more. She cast her mind’s eye back over the horrid months and had a horrid vision of Geoffrey steadily absorbing butter, day after day, week after week—ever becoming more and more of a human keg. She shuddered.
Indignation at the injustice of Fate in causing her to give her heart to a man and then changing him into another and quite different man fought with a cold terror, which grew as she realized more and more clearly the magnitude of the mistake she had mad
e. She felt that she must escape. And yet how could she escape? She had definitely pledged herself to this man. (“Ah!” cried Geoffrey gaily, as the pats of butter arrived. “That’s more like it!” He began to smear the toast. Maud averted her eyes.) She had told him that she loved him, that he was the whole world to her, that there never would be anyone else. He had come to claim her. How could she refuse him just because he was about thirty pounds overweight?
Geoffrey finished his meal. He took out a cigarette. (“No smoking, please!” said the distressed gentlewoman.) He put the cigarette back in its case. There was a new expression in his eyes now, a tender expression. For the first time since they had met Maud seemed to catch a far-off glimpse of the man she had loved in Wales. Butter appeared to have softened Geoffrey.
“So you couldn’t wait!” he said with pathos.
Maud did not understand.
“I waited over a quarter of an hour. It was you who were late.”
“I don’t mean that. I am referring to your engagement. I saw the announcement in the Morning Post. Well, I hope you will let me offer you my best wishes. This Mr. George Bevan, whoever he is, is lucky.”
Maud had opened her mouth to explain, to say that it was all a mistake. She closed it again without speaking.
“So you couldn’t wait!” proceeded Geoffrey with gentle regret. “Well, I suppose I ought not to blame you. You are at an age when it is easy to forget. I had no right to hope that you would be proof against a few months’ separation. I expected too much. But it is ironical, isn’t it! There was I, thinking always of those days last summer when we were everything to each other, while you had forgotten me—Forgotten me!” sighed Geoffrey. He picked a fragment of cake absently off the tablecloth and inserted it in his mouth.
A Damsel in Distress Page 23