Finger of Fate

by Sapper

  It came to a head after he had been there three weeks. I walked into the office one morning to find a bottle of champagne on the table, and Jack somewhat sheepishly helping Cooper to lower it.

  “Hear what this young scoundrel has done, Morris?” cried Cooper. “He’s had the confounded impertinence to propose to Joan, and the child’s brain is so weak that she’s accepted him. Drink his health, my boy. This is damned bad for my liver, but it’s not an everyday occurrence, thank God!”

  I said the customary things, and then work went on as usual. And I don’t believe any of us felt the faintest twinge of jealousy. They were such an admirably chosen pair: they were so idiotically in love with one another. Burma was so wonderful: and life was so wonderful: and each of them was so wonderful to the other.

  And the most delighted of us all was John MacAndrew. Mac adored Joan as if she had been his daughter. And Joan adored him. Drunkard he may have been and was, but I do not believe there is a man or woman living today who could say of John MacAndrew – “That man let me down”. Which is a valuation, in the big scheme of things, that is maybe of higher merit than the holding of a blue ribbon. And because Cooper was a man of understanding he had never raised any objection to his daughter knowing him.

  Now it so happened that, shortly after the great event of the engagement, duty took me up country for over two months. And the night I got back found me sitting in my bungalow trying to polish off arrears of correspondence. There was a big batch of it and I was not too well pleased when I heard the Soldiers’ Chorus from Faust outside, and steps ascending the veranda. It was MacAndrew’s only song, and he and letter writing did not go together.

  He entered, mopping his forehead with a huge red bandana, and deposited himself in a chair. Then with great solemnity he drew from his pocket a bottle of whisky, and placed it on the table beside him.

  “Are you busy, laddie?” he asked.

  “Never too busy to see you, Mac,” I said resignedly. “But don’t drink your own whisky: try some of mine.”

  He shook his head.

  “Not on your life, my dear boy,” he answered, “My consumption is so enormous that I would not run the risk of straining our friendship to that extent. But I have no objection to your drinking your own: in fact I shall regard such an action in the most favourable light.”

  “You old ass, Mac,” I laughed. “Well, how is everything here?”

  He filled his glass in silence, and suddenly a premonition took me that something was wrong. Now that I looked at him he seemed unusually grave for him.

  “Water, Mac?” I said perfunctorily.

  “Water, laddie,” he cried. “Is your reason snapping?”

  He finished half the glass, and then with the utmost deliberation he rolled himself a cigarette. From of old I knew there was no good trying to hurry him. He lit his cigarette, blew out a great cloud of smoke, and then looked at me from under his shaggy eyebrows.

  “Do you by any chance ken a female called Cransby?” he said.

  “Cransby,” I cried. “Wife of the man in Woods and Forests?”

  “Aye,” he said.

  “Yes I do. Why?”

  “She’s here,” he answered, and finished the rest of his drink.

  “Then as far as I am concerned the sooner she goes away from here the better I’ll be pleased,” I said. “She is a lady for whom I have no vestige or shadow of use.”

  He grunted, and mopped his forehead once again.

  “Your opinion of her confirms my own diagnosis,” he remarked. “I have no vestige or shadow of use for her myself. But she’s here: and she’s been here a week.”

  “Has she been trying to make you fall in love with her, Mac?” I chaffed.

  “She has not,” he answered gravely. “But she’s been trying to make young Congleton. And she’s succeeded.”

  “What?” I almost shouted. “But what about Joan?”

  “Mon,” he said, “that woman is a she devil. Listen and I’ll tell you what’s been happening while you’ve been away. You ken what those two bairns were like, with their billing and their cooing, and their this and that. You ken that each was the whole world to the other. One night – it was about a fortnight after you left – the pair of them came round to see me. And laddie it was like seeing a little bit of Heaven. Their dreams, and their hopes – and the way they looked at one another, and touched one another’s hands when they thought I didn’t see.

  “They sat on there talking, and I let them talk and just listened. Maybe I dreamed myself a little; dreamed of Scotland and the sun turning the moors from purple to velvet black as it sets way down behind great banks of cloud.”

  He paused and stared into the darkness. And I waited: MacAndrew was in a strange mood tonight.

  “I’m talking rot,” he went on abruptly. “But I want you to get the condition I was in that night, when yon hell-cat appeared. She came out of the darkness, suddenly – and stood on the veranda smiling. And even then it was at young Jack that most of her smiles were delivered.

  “‘Can you tell me where Mr Cooper’s bungalow is?’ said she. ‘My name is Cransby, and my husband is seeing about the baggage.’

  “The little girl got up, with that sweet look of hers, and went to her.

  “‘But, Mrs Cransby,’ she said, ‘we weren’t expecting you and your husband for three days. I’m so sorry neither my father nor I were there to meet you. I’ll take you over to the bungalow at once.’

  “‘That’s sweet of you,’ says the woman. ‘I thought my husband had written: I’m so sorry if we’ve inconvenienced you.’

  “I heard her voice dying away in the distance, and then I glanced at young Jack. And he had a funny sort of half smile, half smirk on his face.

  “‘What a damned attractive woman,’ he remarked.

  “‘Tastes differ,’ I said, and at that we left it.

  “To start with, I admit, I didn’t think much of it. It appeared that the husband, and maybe you know him, he looks rather like a newt with pince-nez – was here on Government business. And he was going up country.”

  “Good Lord,” I interrupted. “I did hear there was a Government man of sorts cruising round. But I never thought it was Cransby.”

  “It was and is,” said Mac. “He’s still cruising. And his wife is still here. Cooper told her, as he naturally had to do, that she was to use his bungalow till her husband’s return.”

  “She can’t have done much damage in a week,” I said, but my tone carried no conviction. Mrs Cransby could play the devil in a day.

  “I would not have thought so either,” he agreed, “until last night. At first there was nothing much to lay hold of – just a look here, and a glance there. But I saw from the little girl’s face that she had spotted. She didn’t say anything about it – she’s proud is that bairn. But there was all the misery of the ages in her dear eyes when she thought no one was looking. And even now I don’t know if she realises how far it has gone.”

  “What do you mean, Mac?” I said anxiously. “She doesn’t generally go to any extreme lengths.”

  “I was walking down by the big plantation,” he went on, “about six o’clock last night. And suddenly I heard voices. It was young Congleton speaking, and I stood there almost unable to believe my ears. ‘Darling,’ he was saying, ‘she’s only a girl – but you’re the most wonderful woman in the world. Irene – my beloved.’ And she answered, ‘Dear, dear boy. But you mustn’t forget you’re engaged to her, and that I’m a married woman.’ I took a step forward, and there she was stroking his face. Losh! man. I was very near sick with disgust. ‘Shame on you,’ I said to young Congleton, ‘you miserable pup. What for are you allowing yon harpy to stroke your face, with your girl sitting at home waiting for you?’”

  I grinned happily: for Mrs Cransby to be called a harpy to her face sounded almost too good to be true.

  “What happened?” I cried.

  “Mon,” he said, “there was a terrible scene. I’m not s
aying that I didn’t enjoy it, for I just revelled in it. The woman got to her feet, and came towards me. Her face was set like a mask, and if she’d had the power she’d have struck me dead at her feet. ‘I am not in the habit,’ says she, ‘of being called a harpy by people – least of all by a drunken old wastrel.’ ‘And I,’ I said, ‘am not in the habit of calling a spade anything but a spade. Good God! woman, you’re old enough to be his mother.’”

  “Mac,” I shouted delightedly, “you didn’t? Why man, there must be three score women roaming this world today who would give half their worldly possessions to have heard that remark.”

  “I’m not denying it didn’t give me a certain amount of satisfaction,” he said. “But, laddie, it’s serious. The boy is fairly besotted. He called round to see me this morning and asked me how I dared to say such a thing to the most perfect and wonderful woman in the world. He said that if I wasn’t a drunken old swine he’d have thrashed me to within an inch of my life. Didn’t I understand that it wasn’t her fault that he had fallen in love with her: that she was a loyal and devoted wife and had told him all along that his duty lay with Joan? And so on. I didn’t interrupt him: I let him have his say out. And then I just put my hand on his shoulder and I said ‘Boy, in a moment of anger I told Mrs Cransby she was old enough to be your mother. I’m sorry. But anyway I’m old enough to be your father. And I like you. And I’m just sick to see you making such a damned fool of yourself.’”

  “The rag, and the bone, and the hank of hair,” I quoted without thinking. But MacAndrew looked at me intently.

  “The hank of hair,” he repeated. “It’s curious – the hair of that woman.”

  “In what way,” I said. “I know she is inordinately proud of it. And if you want to disillusionise young Congleton, get him to ruffle it. She’ll go for him like a Billingsgate fishwife.”

  “It’s curious,” he repeated. “Verra curious.”

  He lapsed into silence, sunk in a train of thought of his own. And I too, sat thinking. What wretched freak of fate had brought the woman here? Not often did she accompany her husband to such out of the way places. But now that she had come, the march of events was as inexorable as day following night. Only too well did I recognise the Mrs Cransby touch. “Dear, dear boy. Don’t you realise that I’m married.”

  Always the same. A kiss perhaps – just now and then: the pressure of a hand: the wonderful look implying how different things would have been if she wasn’t married. And then the calm tossing aside like a worn-out glove. Stale to her: she’d done it so often before. But like a drug: she could no more resist doing it than stop breathing.

  Only I felt furious with young Congleton. Within two months of having got engaged to a girl like Joan… The only excuse was that he was very young, and that other much warier game had fallen to the same gun. Anyway his punishment was coming: the pathetic thing was that another would have to share in that punishment.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done, Mac,” I said at length. “You can’t stop a man making a congenital idiot of himself if he’s set on it. Mrs Cransby is the only person who could do it, and you might as well ask a tiger to leave its kill.”

  “Verra curious,” he said, “that hair of hers.”

  “What the devil has her hair got to do with it,” I cried irritably. I thought the old boy was getting fuddled.

  “Always the same,” he went on. “Verra curious.”

  And then quite suddenly he sat up and stared into a corner of the room.

  “Mon,” he cried, “look at yonder rat. As big as a rabbit.”

  I swung round in my chair: there was nothing in the corner at all.

  “Steady, old man,” I said. “I don’t see any rat.”

  “There – running across the room.” He followed its course with his finger. “Lord sakes! it’s vanished into the wall.”

  “Look here, Mac,” I said gravely, “you’d better take a pull at yourself. There wasn’t any rat there at all. You’re imagining things.”

  “No rat,” he muttered. “Are you sure, Bill?”

  “Perfectly sure,” I answered. “You’d better go on the water wagon for a bit.”

  “Aye – perhaps you’re right,” he said. “That’s what yon woman told me.”

  He got heavily to his feet, and put back the bottle in his pocket.

  “No rat, you say. And that hair of hers. Verra curious. Well, good night, Bill. Maybe it will all turn out for the best. But it’s curious – curious.”

  And as he stumbled down the veranda steps, I heard him still muttering that it was verra curious.

  The old chap breaking up, I reflected – and then my mind came back to the far more important problem of young Congleton. Because the boy was worth saving – I felt it in my very bones. And if what MacAndrew had told me was right, he was evidently in a bad way. Of course, I could tell him what I knew of Mrs Cransby, and that he was only one of a large procession. But would he believe me – would it do the slightest good? Or I could appeal to her, an even more fatuous proceeding.

  “Confound and curse the woman,” I cried out loud, and at that moment I heard MacAndrew stumbling up the steps again. “And confound and curse the man,” I muttered: I’d had enough of him for one night.

  “Bill,” he said appearing in the window, “I’m sorry to interrupt you again. But I’ve been thinking. And it’s occurred to me that I may have been imagining things. That rat – for instance. You say there was no rat?”

  “Of course there was no rat,” I cried. “You haven’t come all the way back to ask me that, have you?”

  “Not exactly,” he answered. “But if I thought I saw a rat, and there was no rat – maybe I did yon woman an injustice when I said she was stroking the boy’s face. Maybe she wasn’t.”

  I stared at him in amazement.

  “What are you driving at?” I asked. “Even if you imagined she was stroking his face and she wasn’t, you can’t have imagined the interview you had with young Congleton.”

  “That is so,” he agreed. “But if I made a false accusation such as that, it would be sufficient to make them both verra angry. They have done harm to the little girl, by my blundering foolishness.”

  “Well?” I said. What on earth was he driving at?

  “So I’m thinking I would like to apologise,” he went on.

  “There’s nothing to prevent you,” I remarked. “Though from what I know of the lady, if she wasn’t stroking his face she was either just going to or just had.”

  “That don’t matter,” he said obstinately. “I would have no woman say I had done her an injustice. And the fact that I do not like her, is all the more reason that I should not be unfair. So I’m wanting you to do something for me, Bill. The night is yet young. And even if the sun has gone down on our wrath, there is no good reason why it should rise on it.”

  “For Heaven’s sake, Mac,” I cried, half angry and half amused, “get to the point. Or the sun will have risen on it.”

  “Go over to Cooper’s bungalow,” he said, “and get hold of Mrs Cransby and young Congleton. Cooper is away out tonight, and I saw a light in the little girl’s room – so maybe she has gone to bed. Bring them back with you here: I saw them sitting on the veranda.”

  “But, good Lord! man,” I cried, “it’s ridiculous. What on earth excuse am I to give them?”

  “Give them the real reason,” he said. “Say that I’m wanting to apologise for my rudeness. You know the woman yourself, and you can say that I’m just a drunken old man with delirium tremens, who has been babbling foolishly. And that you’re verra angry with me.”

  I hesitated, and suddenly he put his hand on my arm.

  “Go, Bill, I tell you. It’s important.”

  “Why not go over and apologise to them there?” I said.

  “Because the little girl might hear,” he answered. “And I would not have her know more than is absolutely necessary. Go: go, at once.”

  “All right,” I said relucta
ntly. “Though why the devil you can’t wait till tomorrow, I don’t know.”

  “She’d be wearing a topee,” he remarked with complete irrelevance. “Just go now, Bill.”

  “What’s the game, Mac?” I said, staring at him.

  “One on which the little girl’s happiness depends,” he answered. “For the boy is a good boy really. Go, Bill, and don’t come back without them.”

  And so I went. Halfway there I very nearly turned back: the whole thing seemed so preposterously foolish. But then I realised I’d never get rid of MacAndrew if I didn’t get them, and I walked on. That they would come I felt tolerably certain: Mrs Cransby would seize the opportunity with both hands of suppressing such an embarrassing piece of gossip. What I couldn’t for the life of me understand was MacAndrew’s attitude.

  I found them alone on the veranda, and young Congleton’s face did not register joy. Mrs Cransby, on the contrary, gave me one of her sweetest smiles.

  “Why I declare it’s Mr Morris,” she said, holding out her hand. “It must be quite three years since we met.”

  “At Poona,” I answered. “Forgive my unceremonious call,” I went on, “but I have rather a peculiar mission to perform. MacAndrew is over at my bungalow…”

  “Damn the drunken old sweep,” exploded Congleton.

  “Precisely,” I agreed. “And he has been talking out of his turn. As you know I only returned today, and he came over to see me after dinner. Well to come to the point, he told me a story about you two.”

  “Well,” said young Congleton savagely, and Mrs Cransby leaned forward in her chair with her eyes fixed on my face.