What on earth was he talking about?
“Abroad?” echoed Snubs. “But who——”
“Yes,” interrupted Mr. Cottenham. “I’m going where people don’t come brawling outside other people’s windows when they’re trying to have a little peace. Do you want me to say it again?”
Would it be any clearer or more relevant if he said it a hundred times?
“No, rather not,” said Snubs, courteously. “That’s quite all right, Mr. Cottenham. Only I—that’s to say we were just wondering—I mean——”
“Eh?”
“About Noodles, I mean. Has she——”
Mr. Cottenham closed his eyes, and flung out his arms.
“I won’t have it,” he said. “They come worrying me, and I tell them I won’t have it. I wash my hands. Do you see, my boy? I wash my hands of the whole business from start to finish and from A to Z. That’s my answer. You can’t have it both ways, and I don’t care if you seize the furniture. Is that perfectly clear? Very well, then. Get out!”
“But I say, sir——”
“Get out! Go back and tell Reginald I’m going abroad. Tell him I voted for Gladstone, but I’m not going to stay here and be pestered by every upstart jackanapes with his own axe to grind. No, not you, my boy—don’t keep jumping like that. I’m only giving you a perfectly straightforward message. And as for Ursula—well …”
“Yes, sir?”
“I don’t know where she is, and I don’t care. Miss Mulberry keeps telling me she’s run away with a motorist. ‘We’ve found his goggles,’ she keeps saying. What’s the use of that? ‘Shall we call in the police?’ she asks. What’s it got to do with me? ‘Shall I come and see you?’ she telegraphs. God forbid! By the way, it wasn’t you, was it?”
Mr. Cottenham leant confidentially out of the window, and Snubs took a step backward.
“What wasn’t me, sir?” he asked.
“The motorist, of course. You’ve got a car, haven’t you? I know you brought it here once, and made a devilish noise in my yard. Eh?”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“You did! Don’t contradict me.”
“I mean, of course it wasn’t me. I—that’s to say Beaky and I—we only just heard that Noodles—that Ursula, that is——”
“Blah!” said Mr. Cottenham, returning suddenly to his original state of fury. “Go away, then. Get off my flower-bed, and don’t stand there cross-questioning me. Go back to the spies who sent you, and tell ’em that I deny everything. Everything, do you see? I’m preparing a statement that’ll explain it all, and I’m going abroad, and I will not be interrupted by——”
Bang! The window descended with a crash that interrupted Mr. Cottenham far more effectively than any human agency could have done, or than Snubs would ever have dreamt of doing. For a moment he was still visible through the panes, pushing and thrusting in the direction of his caller as though he would force the very atmosphere to drive him further away. Then he vanished into the darkness of the study, and the caller was left staring at nothing at all.
“My hat!” he muttered, stumbling over the garden-shears again, but this time recovering himself without external assistance. “What on earth was he gassing about? Lawyers? Spies? Going abroad? He must have gone clean off his——”
A low whistle swung him round to another point of the compass.
“I say! I say, Snubs!”
It was Beaky, peering out from behind that invaluable laurel-bush. Snubs ran to meet him, making warning signals as he did so.
“Well?” he asked.
“They weren’t there, old man. I got right up to the side-door, but there wasn’t any sign of life at all. Then some fellows with a lorry and big boiler on it came bumping along, and I had to clear out. I got absolutely winded, trying to dodge them. I say, am I late?”
“A bit,” said Snubs. “It’s all over, anyhow.”
“What do you mean? Why didn’t you wait for me?”
“I thought you’d got here first. I thought I heard him talking to you. But he was alone really, and he spotted me, and—well, if you ask me, he’s gone potty.”
“Ratty, you mean?”
“No. At least ratty, if you like, but batty as well. I can’t tell you what he didn’t say.”
But two negatives make an affirmative, and the extraordinary interview was immediately re-enacted.
“Gosh!” said Beaky. “A motorist, did he say? But that’s another story altogether. Didn’t he explain at all?”
“No,” said Snubs. “Would you like to go in and ask him?”
“No, thanks. Not if he’s in that sort of mood. Besides—— Snubs, I’m worried to death over this business. Where do you suppose she is?”
“Noodles?”
“No. I mean, yes, of course. But——”
Snubs Tipton took his old friend by the arm, and began leading him down the drive.
“There’s only one thing to do,” he announced, firmly.
“What’s that? Where are you taking me?”
“Back to Gertie, of course. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this. And there’s only one place where we can hope to do that. We’ll be there in another hour.”
“Where?”
“Newcliff,” said Snubs.
“What, the school?”
“Yes.”
“I bet they won’t tell you anything.”
“I shan’t ask them,” said Snubs. “I’m not her brother.”
With this defiant, significant and unanswerable statement, he ran forward and leapt skilfully over Gertie’s side to his old position at the steering-wheel.
“Buck up, Beaky,” he added.
The missing heroine’s brother looked regretfully at her old home, and even more regretfully and gloomily, perhaps, at a vision beyond it of that last, useless link with the adorable Miss Shirley; and even more dismally and desperately still at a blank future which was to be yet further blasted by a very embarrassing audience with an unknown head-mistress. Then, slowly and silently, he grasped a corner of the windscreen, and levered himself on to the ancient upholstery. A protesting squeak from coachwork and springs, and once more the self-starter was whirring, and the engine was roaring, and the clouds of smoke were filling the hot, narrow lane.
A large puddle of oil, of an exquisite iridescence, might be taken as representing Gertie’s visiting-card. But Gertie herself had gone.
Mr. Cottenham was packing clumsily but compendiously in a series of extremely disreputable trunks. Every now and then he pulled one or other of two crumpled letters from his pockets, and glared at them, and snorted at them, and remarked that he’d nothing to say to anyone, and that it was all a trumped-up piece of blackmail and insolence. But it did really look, for all the angry muttering and querulous self-justification, as though he were shaking the dust of his ungrateful country off his objectionable shoes at last.
Chapter VIII
Noodles is still missing—A nearer view of the Diamond Dominoes—A rehearsal at the Pavilion Chalet—Miss Mulberry gets no further—Disadvantages of life among the Pierrots.
1
A straight tip to those readers who may be in hiding from their friends, enemies, relatives, gaolers, creditors or editors emerges significantly and helpfully from the history of Noodles Brett. Forget, says this tip, that you are in hiding, that the hunters are on your trail, that your appearance and description are well known to them, and that at any moment you may feel their hot breath on the back of your neck or their heavy hands on your shoulder. Just go right ahead with whatever you happen to be doing, without a thought of the snares that they may be setting for you, and ten to one this will so stultify their ingenuity that they will never find you at all.
We don’t pretend that Noodles had deliberately adopted this policy, for deliberation was no part of her mental equipment. An impulse had sent her flying away from St. Ethelburga’s on the carrier of a rather awful stranger’s motor-bicycle; another impulse had prompted her to write a vague comm
unication on the subject to her only brother in London. But having gone so far, it never seems to have occurred to her that Miss Mulberry would start telegraphing to Pippingfold, or would rush round Newcliff making mysterious and non-committal inquiries at the railway-station and elsewhere, or would examine the scene of her escape so closely as to discover and theorise upon Mr. Lester Vaughan’s shattered goggles. If she had seen Miss Mulberry or any of her recognisable scouts marching down the street towards her, she would probably have done her best to avoid them—for it was obvious that by doing so she would also avoid a lot of tiresome explanation. But as luck would have it, she didn’t run across them in this way, nor did they run across her; and in the general excitement of learning what Mr. Vaughan had planned for her, it was extraordinarily easy to forget that such a place as her recent prison still existed.
After all, when once you have left school as definitely as Noodles had appeared to leave it a couple of months ago, when once you have definitely grown up, a state of freedom is surely the natural state to be in. You can’t keep bothering about rules and regulations from which you have been specifically released, and if your conscience suggests that you should, then your soul—for once—is likely to brush its feeble remonstrances aside.
“They ought to be pleased, if anything,” said Noodles to herself. “Because they won’t have to keep me in order any more, and they won’t have to feed me or to look after me, either. In fact, I should think they’d be just as pleased as I am, and really it looks to me as if I’d been cleverer than I thought.”
A mist spread over the red bricks and green fields of St. Ethelburga’s up there on the hill, for of course one didn’t go on thinking of a life that one had enjoyed so little. And a burst of sunlight seemed to illumine both the present and the future, as Noodles realised that she was independent and self-supporting, and that for once an apparently rash act had brought nothing but relief and satisfaction to everybody concerned.
Three-pound-ten a week and a real job on the almost real stage! It was the most marvellous thing that had ever happened. No wonder that Miss Brett’s eyes shone and her feet kept breaking into rhythmic expression of her joy, and that she laughed whenever any of her new friends spoke to her.
Because really, you know, they were most terribly amusing and most terribly kind. Yes, of course they were also rather awful, but what a much better sort of awfulness than that, for instance, exhibited by Miss Maplethorpe or Mr. Cottenham. Another mist was fast spreading over Pippingfold and the ghastly experiences of that frightful Easter holiday, but if one thing were absolutely certain—and here, as it happens, Noodles seems to have hit on the truth—it was that Mr. Cottenham wouldn’t really care what she did, so long as she left him alone, and didn’t ask him for money, and kept both their names out of any further adventures.
Again Providence obliged in the most surprising and unexpected manner. We have mentioned—or, rather, Mr. Vaughan has mentioned—a little difficulty which he had had with the printers who supplied his programmes and billing matter; a difficulty not wholly unconnected with his attempts to offer them free seats in exchange for their services, and with their inability to see eye to eye with him on this unusual system of barter. We have also learnt from him that a certain Domino—briefly referred to as Maisie—had left the talented troupe with more haste than consideration, and that Noodles was to take her place.
Add these two facts together—and disregard the details of professional acrimony which had led to this sudden retirement—and anyone should be able to see where Mr. Vaughan’s thoughts would lead him. On the one hand a supply of posters and programmes large enough to last the entire season. On the other hand an unknown addition to the company, whose previous experience, incredible as it appeared, had been entirely among amateurs. On supernumerary hands the opportunity of exasperating an artiste who was already, in all probability, regretting her high-handed, not to say up-stage, behaviour; and the convenient fact that—at any rate during the first part of the programme—the Dominoes all justified their title by appearing in little masks. To a quick and mercurial mind like that of Lester Vaughan, the deduction from these premises stuck out a mile.
“Listen,” he said—as he was always saying. “I’m giving you a new name, Miss Brett. All right? Yes, fine. That’s great.”
Noodles looked a little doubtful—but only because she hadn’t quite understood.
“A new name? Me?”
“Yes. Listen. I’m billing you as ‘Maisie Dolores.’ See? Business reasons. Important, in fact.”
He pulled a face which was meant to indicate the weight of managerial responsibility, and Noodles began to laugh.
“Eh? What’s the joke, Miss Brett?”
“Oh, nothing. I say—must it be ‘Maisie?’ I’ve always rather——”
“Yes, yes. Essential. Now, don’t let’s waste time You want to get on, don’t you? Very well; that’s the way to help. ‘Maisie Dolores—just a Comedienne.’ Doesn’t matter what you do, then. Look—there it is.”
They were walking towards the Pavilion Chalet from the lodgings where Noodles had spent the night, and where she had just breakfasted with the two female Dominoes who shared them—plain women, but awfully kind—and no doubt it was a definite sensation to see one’s name, even though it wasn’t one’s name, pasted on a barrel at the base of some scaffolding like that.
“I say,” said Noodles. “You have been quick.”
“Not bad,” said Mr. Vaughan, with a look of pleasure which may have been partly due to the fact that advertising of this nature—“sniping” is, we believe, the technical term for it—added nothing to his overhead charges. “I don’t let the grass grow under my feet, you know. This way, Miss Brett. Round here.”
It would have been sickening for him if one had mentioned one’s dislike for the name “Maisie” after he had taken all this trouble. Besides, did one really want to see one’s legitimate name emblazoned on end-walls and empty houses all over Newcliff? No; quite apart from the disadvantage of such publicity in its effect on Miss Mulberry, it seems that in her heart of hearts Noodles was still some way from qualifying as a true professional. She did not want to see Ursula Brett billed with Lester Vaughan and Dan Colyer and Nellie Selbrook and the other Diamond Dominoes. She wasn’t naturally self-conscious, and most certainly she wasn’t a snob, but it was a distinct relief to find that this threat had vanished as soon as, or even sooner than, it had appeared. Maisie Dolores; she must try and remember that. It was rather awful, but it could quite easily have been much worse.
So she swung round the corner of Fish Street without a thought that by doing so she had just escaped running smack into Miss Mulberry herself—on her way to make those mysterious and non-committal inquiries to which we have previously referred—and she continued to accompany Mr. Vaughan on his rather exhaustingly rapid progress through the little alleys and by-ways of the Old Town, until the spectacle of one of those pale-pink pillar-boxes to which the best air on the south coast has reduced the official scarlet suddenly reminded her of something else.
“Oh, Mr. Vaughan—I say!”
“Yes, yes?”
“I wonder if you could possibly lend me a stamp. Just one, I mean.”
“Eh?”
“For this letter, I mean.”
“Ha!” said Mr. Vaughan.
Was he a cold-blooded manager at this moment, who would feel bound to refuse this unbusinesslike request; or a rollicking Bohemian who would reply that he only wished he had got such a thing, and why not make them pay at the other end? Or was he a still-youngish and not ill-natured individual who had been approached for a loan of three-halfpence by a remarkably pretty girl? Having practised the appropriate faces for the two former rôles, he suddenly realised that it was the third in which he could really do himself justice.
“A stamp, Miss Brett? Certainly. Why not? What’s a stamp between friends? Eh? Why, nothing. Nothing at all. Delighted to oblige.”
And he stopped, and pulled
out a pocket-book which was almost bursting with the press-cuttings from which he was never separated, and made the face of a benevolent but slightly-harassed millionaire searching for a document of international importance, and clicked his tongue as though he were astonished at the number of rare and interesting papers which he was carrying about, and thus eventually produced no less than three stamps—one of which he detached with an air of scrupulous accuracy, and offered to his companion as if no other could possibly serve her purpose.
“Shall I stick it on for you?” he added, politely.
“Oh, no, thank you. I can do it, Mr. Vaughan.”
“I see.” A trace of the cold-blooded manager returned. “A penny-halfpenny, then. I’ll chalk it up, if you don’t mind—with the rest. Got to keep my accounts straight, you know, Miss Brett. What? Right you are.”
He chalked it up on the back of the envelope, in addition to the advance of ten shillings on her first week’s salary which Miss Brett had so gratefully accepted in lieu of a contract last night, and smiled generously, and repocketed his wallet, and forged ahead. And Noodles thanked him profusely, and stamped the letter which was addressed to R. H. Brett, Esq., at Number Ninety-seven, Wykeham Street; and posted it in the pale-pink pillar-box; and ran on down a little nameless lane at the back of a public garage just as Miss Mulberry crossed the far end to ask at the main entrance if anybody could identify those goggles. But they didn’t see each other, and so far we find no reason to be sorry that they didn’t.
It was at about this time that Sylvia Shirley set out for that walk in London on which she and her friends were to create such disturbance in the souls of eye-witnesses aged over thirty. And it was quite as fine here as it was there.
Another Part of the Wood Page 15