Mufti

by Sapper

  “Know these parts well, sir?” the man opposite him suddenly broke the silence.

  “Hardly at all,” returned Vane shortly. He was in no mood for conversation.

  “Sleepy old town,” went on the other; “but having all these German prisoners has waked it up a bit.”

  Vane sat up suddenly. “Oh! have they got prisoners here?” The excuse he had been looking for seemed to be to hand.

  “Lots. They used to have conscientious objectors – but they couldn’t stand them…” He rattled on affably, but Vane paid no heed. He was busy trying to think under what possible pretext he could have been sent down to deal with Boche prisoners. And being a man of discernment it is more than likely he would have evolved something quite good, but for the sudden and unexpected arrival of old Mr Sutton himself…

  “Good Heavens! What are you doing here, my dear boy?” he cried, striding across the room, and shaking Vane’s hand like a pump handle.

  “How’d you do, sir,” murmured Vane. “I – er – have come down to inquire about these confounded conscientious prisoners – Boche objectors – you know the blighters. Question of standardising their rations, don’t you know… Sort of a committee affair…”

  Vane avoided the eye of the commercial traveller, and steered rapidly for safer ground. “I was thinking of coming out to call on Mrs Sutton tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” snorted the kindly old man. “You’ll do nothing of the sort, my boy. You’ll come back with me now – this minute. Merciful thing I happened to drop in. Got the car outside and everything. How long is this job, whatever it is – going to take you?”

  “Three or four days,” said Vane hoping that he was disguising any untoward pleasure at the suggestion.

  “And can you do it equally well from Melton?” demanded Mr Sutton. “I can send you in every morning in the car.”

  Vane banished the vision of breakers ahead, and decided that he could do the job admirably from Melton.

  “Then come right along and put your bag in the car.” The old gentleman, with his hand on Vane’s arm, rushed him out of the smoking-room, leaving the commercial traveller pondering deeply as to whether he had silently acquiesced in a new variation of the confidence trick…

  “We’ve got Joan Devereux staying with us,” said Mr Sutton, as the chauffeur piled the rugs over them. “You know her, don’t you?”

  “We have met,” answered Vane briefly.

  “Just engaged to that fellow Baxter. Pots of money.” The car turned out on to the London road, and the old man rambled on without noticing Vane’s abstraction. “Deuced good thing too – between ourselves. Sir James – her father, you know – was in a very queer street… Land, my boy, is the devil these days. Don’t touch it; don’t have anything to do with it. You’ll burn your fingers if you do… Of course, Blandford is a beautiful place, and all that, but, ’pon my soul, I’m not certain that he wouldn’t have been wiser to sell it. Not certain we all wouldn’t be wiser to sell, and go and live in furnished rooms at Margate… Only if we all did, it would become the thing to do, and we’d soon get turned out of there by successful swindlers. They follow one round, confound ’em – trying to pretend they talk the same language.”

  “When is Miss Devereux going to be married?” asked Vane as the old man paused for breath.

  “Very soon… Fortnight or three weeks. Quite a quiet affair, you know; Baxter is dead against any big function. Besides, he has to run over to France so often, and so unexpectedly, that it might have to be postponed a day or two at the last moment. Makes it awkward if half London has been asked.”

  The car swung through the gates and rolled up the drive to the house. The brown tints of autumn were just beginning to show on the trees, and an occasional fall of dead leaves came fluttering down as they passed underneath. Then, all too quickly for Vane, they were at the house, and the chauffeur was holding open the door of the car. Now that he was actually there – now that another minute would bring him face to face with Joan – he had become unaccountably nervous.

  He followed Mr Sutton slowly up the steps, and spent an unnecessarily long time taking off his coat. He felt rather like a boy who had been looking forward intensely to his first party, and is stricken with shyness just as he enters the drawing-room.

  “Come in, come in, my boy, and get warm.” Mr Sutton threw open a door. “Mary, my dear, who do you think I found in Lewes? Young Derek Vane – I’ve brought him along…”

  Vane followed him into the room as he was speaking, and only he noticed that Joan half rose from her chair, and then sank back again, while a wave of colour flooded her cheeks, and then receded, leaving them deathly white. With every pulse in his body hammering, but outwardly quite composed, Vane shook hands with Mrs Sutton.

  “So kind of your husband,” he murmured. “He found me propping up the hotel smoking-room, and rescued me from such a dreadful operation…”

  Mrs Sutton beamed on him. “But it’s delightful, Captain Vane. I’m so glad you could come. Let me see – you know Miss Devereux, don’t you?”

  Vane turned to Joan, and for the moment their eyes met. “I think I have that pleasure,” he said in a low voice. “I believe I have to congratulate you, Miss Devereux, on your approaching marriage.”

  He heard Joan give a gasp, and barely caught her whispered answer: “My God! why have you come?”

  He turned round and saw that both the old people were occupied for a moment. “Why, just to congratulate you, dear lady …just to congratulate you.” His eyes burned into hers, and his voice was shaking. “Why else, Joan, why else?”

  Then Mrs Sutton began to talk, and the conversation became general.

  “It’s about these German prisoners; they’re giving a bit of trouble,” Vane said in answer to her question. “And so we’ve formed a sort of board to investigate their food and general conditions…and – er – I am one of the board.”

  “How very interesting,” said the old lady. “Have you been on it for long?”

  “No – not long. In fact,” said Vane looking fixedly at Joan, “I only got my orders last night…”

  With the faintest flicker of a smile he watched the telltale colour come and go.

  Then she turned on him, and her expression was a little baffling. “And have you any special qualification, Captain Vane, for dealing with such an intricate subject?

  “Intricate!” He raised his eyebrows. “I should have thought it was very simple. Just a matter of common sense, and making… er…these men – well – get their sense of proportion.”

  “You mean making them get your sense of proportion?”

  “In some cases there can be only one,” said Vane gravely.

  “And that one is your own. These – German prisoners you said, didn’t you? – these German prisoners may think it their duty to disagree with your views. Doubtless from patriotic motives…”

  “That would be a great pity,” said Vane. “It would then be up to me to make them see the error of their ways.”

  “And if you fail?” asked the girl.

  “Somehow I don’t think I shall,” he answered slowly. “But if I do – the trouble of which I spoke will not diminish. It will increase…”

  “We pander too much to these swine,” grumbled Mr Sutton. “It makes me sick when I hear of the way our boys are treated by the brutes. A damn good flogging twice a day – you’ll pardon my language, is what they want.”

  “Yes – drastic measures can be quite successful at times,” said Vane, with a slight smile. “Unfortunately in our present advanced state of civilisation public opinion is against flogging. It prefers violence against the person to be done mentally rather than physically… And it seems so short-sighted, doesn’t it? The latter is transitory, while the other is permanent…”

  Joan rose and looked at him quietly.
“How delightful to meet a man who regards anything as permanent these days. I should have thought we were living in an age of ever-changing values…”

  “You’re quite wrong, Miss Devereux,” said Vane. “Quite, quite wrong. The little things may change – the froth on the top of the pool, which everyone sees and knows about; but the big fundamental things are always the same…”

  “And what are your big fundamental things?” she demanded.

  Vane looked at her for a few moments before he answered her lightly. “Things on which there can be no disagreement even though they are my own views. Love and the pleasure of congenial work, and health… Just think of having to live permanently with anybody whose digestion has gone…”

  “May you never have to do it,” said the girl quietly. Then she turned and walked towards the door. “I suppose it’s about time to dress, isn’t it?” She went out of the room and Mr Sutton advanced on Vane, with his hand upraised, like the villain of a melodrama when on the point of revealing a secret, unaware of the comic relief ensconced in the hollow tree.

  “My dear fellow,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’ve said the wrong thing.” He peered round earnestly at the door, to make sure Joan had not returned. “Baxter – the man she’s going to marry – is a perfect martyr to indigestion. It is the one thorn in the rose. A most suitable match in every other way, but he lives” – and the old gentleman tapped Vane on the shoulder to emphasise this hideous thing – “he lives on rusks and soda-water.”

  Vane threw the end of his cigarette in the fire and laughed. “There’s always a catch somewhere, isn’t there, Mr Sutton?… I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to excuse my changing; I’ve only got this khaki with me.”

  Vane was standing in front of the big open hearth in the hall when Joan came down for dinner. It was the first time he had seen her in an evening dress, and as she came slowly towards him from the foot of the stairs his hands clenched behind his back, and he set his teeth. In her simple black evening frock she was lovely to the point of making any man’s senses swim dizzily. And when the man happened to be in love with her, and knew, moreover, that she was in love with him, it was not to be wondered at that he put both hands to his head, with a sudden almost despairing movement.

  The girl, as she reached him, saw the gesture, and her eyes grew very soft. Its interpretation was not hard to discover, even if she had not had the grim, fixed look on his face to guide her; and in an instant it swept away the resolve she had made in her room to treat him coldly. In a flash of clear self-analysis just as she reached him, she recognised the futility of any such resolve. It was with that recognition of her weakness that fear came… All her carefully thought out plans seemed to be crumbling away like a house of cards; all that she wanted was to be in his arms…to be kissed… And yet she knew that that way lay folly…

  “Why have you come?” she said very low. “It wasn’t playing the game after what I wrote you…”

  Vane looked at her in silence for a moment and then he laughed. “Are you really going to talk to me, Joan, about such a thing as playing the game?”

  She stood beside him with her hands stretched out towards the blazing logs. “You know how utterly weak it makes me – being near you… You’re just trading on it.”

  “Well,” said Vane fiercely, “is there any man who is a man who wouldn’t under the circumstances?”

  “And yet,” she said, turning and facing him gravely, “you know what is at stake for me.” Her voice began to quiver. “You’re playing with sex…sex…sex, and it’s the most powerful weapon in the world. But its effects are the most transitory.”

  “You lie, Joan, and you know it,” Vane gripped her arm. “It’s not the most transitory.”

  “It is,” she cried stamping her foot, “it is. Against it on the other side of the balance lie the happiness of my father and brother – Blandford – things that last…”

  “But what of your own happiness?” he asked grimly.

  “Why do you think I shouldn’t be happy?” she cried. “I’ve told you that it’s a purely business arrangement. Henry is very nice and kind, and all that I’ll be missing is a few months of the thing they call Love…”

  Vane took his hand from her arm, and let it fall to his side. “I’m afraid I’ve marked your arm,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know how hard I was gripping it. There is only one point which I would like to put to you. Has it occurred to you that in the business arrangement which you have outlined so delightfully, it may possibly strike Mr Baxter – in view of his great possessions – that a son and heir is part of the contract?” As he spoke he raised his eyes to her face.

  He saw her whole body stiffen as if she had been struck; he saw her bite her lip with a sudden little gasp, he saw the colour ebb from her cheeks. Then she recovered herself.

  “Why, certainly,” she said. “I have no doubt that that will be part of the programme. It generally is, I believe, in similar cases.”

  Vane’s voice was very tender as he answered. “My grey girl,” he whispered, “it won’t do… It just won’t do. If I believed that what you say really expressed what you think, don’t you know that I’d leave the house without waiting for dinner? But they don’t. You can’t look me in the eyes and tell me they do…”

  “I can,” she answered defiantly; “that is what I think…”

  “Look me in the eyes, I said,” interrupted Vane quietly.

  Twice she tried to speak, and twice she failed. Then with a little half-strangled gasp she turned away…

  “You brute,” she said, and her voice was shaking, “you brute…”

  And as their host came down the stairs to join them, Vane laughed – a short, triumphant laugh…

  Almost at once they went in to dinner; and to Vane the meal seemed to be a succession of unknown dishes, which from time to time partially distracted his attention from the only real thing in the room – the girl sitting opposite him. And yet he flattered himself that neither his host nor hostess noticed anything remarkable about his behaviour. In fact he considered that he was a model of tact and discretion…

  Vane was drunk – drunk as surely as a man goes drunk on wine. He was drunk with excitement; he was mad with the madness of love. At times he felt that he must get up, and go round the table and gather his girl into his arms. He even went so far as to picture the butler’s expression when he did it. Unfortunately, that was just when Mrs Sutton had concluded a harrowing story of a dead soldier who had left a bedridden wife with thirteen children. Vane had not heard a word of the story, but the butler’s face had crossed his mental horizon periodically, and he chose that moment to laugh. It was not a well-timed laugh, but he floundered out of it somehow…

  And then just as the soup came on – or was it the savoury? – he knew, as surely as he could see her opposite him, that his madness was affecting Joan. Telepathy, the wiseacres may call it, the sympathy of two subconscious minds… What matter the pedagogues, what matter the psychological experts? It was love – glorious and wonderful in its very lack of restraint. It was the man calling the woman; it was the woman responding to the man. It was freedom, beauty, madness all rolled into one; it was the only thing in this world that matters. But all the time he was very careful not to give away the great secret. Just once or twice their eyes met, and whenever that happened he made some remark more inordinately witty than usual – or more inordinately foolish. And the girl opposite helped him, and laughed with him, while over the big mahogany table there came leaping her real message – “My dear, I’m yours…” It whispered through the flowers in the big cut-glass bowl that formed the centrepiece; it echoed between the massive silver candlesticks with their pink shaded lights. At times it sounded triumphantly from every corner of the room, banishing all the commonplace surroundings with the wonder of its voice; at times it floated softly through the warm, scented air, conjuring up v
isions of nights on the desert with the Nile lapping softly on the hot sand, and the cries of the waterboys coming faintly through the still air.

  But ever and always it was there, dominating everything, so insistent was its reality. As assuredly as if the words had been spoken did they see into one another’s hearts that evening at dinner while a worthy old Sussex squire and his wife discussed the war, and housing problems, and the futility of fixing such a price on meat that it paid farmers to put their calves to the cow, instead of selling the milk. After all, the words had been spoken before, and words are of little account. There are times – not often, for artificiality and civilisation are stern taskmasters – but there are times when a man and woman become as Gods and know. What need of words between them then; a mathematician does not require to consult the multiplication table or look up the rules that govern addition and subtraction.

  But the condition is dangerous – very dangerous. For the Law of the Universe has decreed that for every Action there is an equal and opposite Reaction. No account may he taken of madness – even though it be Divine. It avails not one jot when the time comes to foot the bill. By that time the madness has passed, like a dream in the night; and cold sanity is the judge before which a man must stand or fall. A few, maybe, there are who cheat the reckoning for a space; but they live in a Fools’ Paradise. Sooner or later the bill is presented. It must be – for such is the Law of Things as they Are… And all that a man may pray for is that he gets good value for his money.

  After dinner Joan sang once or twice, and Vane, from the depths of a chair near the fire, watched her through half-closed eyes. His hostess was placidly knitting and the old gentleman was openly and unashamedly asleep. The girl had a small voice, but very sweet and pure; and, after a while Vane rose and went over to the piano. With his elbow resting on it he stood there looking down at her, and once, as their eyes met, her voice faltered a little.