← catalogue

The Right Stuff: Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton

by Ian Hay · English · Gutenberg #20904 · 353,045 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Right Stuff: Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Right Stuff: Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton

Author: Ian Hay


        
Release date: March 25, 2007 [eBook #20904]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20904

Credits: Produced by LM Bornath


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT STUFF: SOME EPISODES IN THE CAREER OF A NORTH BRITON ***




Produced by LM Bornath





"The Right Stuff"


Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton


BY

IAN HAY



DR JOHNSON. Oatmeal, sir? The food of horses in England and of men in
Scotland!

BOSWELL (_roused at last_). And where, sir, will you find such
horses--or such men?



_SHILLING EDITION_



William Blackwood & Sons
Edinburgh and London
1912




_TO_

_AN INDULGENT CRITIC_




CONTENTS.


BOOK ONE.

RAW MATERIAL.


CHAP.

      I. "OATMEAL AND THE SHORTER CATECHISM"
     II. INTRODUCES A PILLAR OF STATE AND THE APPURTENANCES THEREOF
    III. "ANENT"
     IV. A TRIAL TRIP
      V. ROBIN ON DUTY
     VI. ROBIN OFF DUTY
    VII. A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
   VIII. OF A PIT THAT WAS DIGGED, AND WHO FELL INTO IT
     IX. THE POLICY OF THE CLOSED DOOR
      X. ROBIN'S WAY OF DOING IT


BOOK TWO.

THE FINISHED ARTICLE.


     XI. A MISFIRE
    XII. THE COMPLEAT ANGLER
   XIII. A HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE
    XIV. "TO DIE--WILL BE AN _AWFULLY_ BIG ADVENTURE"
     XV. TWO BATTLES
    XVI. "_QUI PERD, GAGNE_"
   XVII. IN WHICH ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD
  XVIII. A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY




BOOK ONE.

RAW MATERIAL.




CHAPTER ONE.

OATMEAL AND THE SHORTER CATECHISM.


The first and most-serious-but-one ordeal in the life of Robert Chalmers
Fordyce--so Robert Chalmers himself informed me years afterwards--was
the examination for the Bursary which he gained at Edinburgh University.
A bursary is what an English undergraduate would call a "Schol."
(Imagine a Scottish student talking about a "Burse"!)

Robert Chalmers Fordyce arrived in Edinburgh pretty evenly divided
between helpless stupefaction at the sight of a great city and stern
determination not to be imposed upon by the inhabitants thereof. His
fears were not as deep-seated as those of Tom Pinch on a similar
occasion,--he, it will be remembered, suffered severe qualms from his
familiarity with certain rural traditions concerning the composition of
London pies,--but he was far from happy. He had never slept away from
his native hillside before; he had never seen a town possessing more
than three thousand inhabitants; and he had only once travelled in a
train.

Moreover, he was proceeding to an inquisition which would decide once
and for all whether he was to go forth and conquer the world with a
university education behind him, or go back to the plough and sup
porridge for the rest of his life. To-morrow he was to have his
opportunity, and the consideration of how that opportunity could best be
gripped and brought to the ground blinded Robin even to the wonders of
the Forth Bridge.

He sat in the corner of the railway carriage, passing in review the
means of conquest at his disposal. His actual stock of scholarship, he
knew, was well up to the required standard: he was as letter perfect in
Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and Literature as hard study and remorseless
coaching could make him. Everything needful was in his head--but could
he get it out again? That was the question. The roaring world in which
he would find himself, the strange examination-room, the quizzing
professors--would these combine with his native shyness to seal the lips
and cramp the pen of Robert Chalmers Fordyce? No--a thousand times no!
He would win through! Robert set his teeth, braced himself, and kicked
the man opposite.

He apologised, attributing the discourtesy to the length of his legs--he
stood about six feet three--and smiled so largely and benignantly, that
the Man Opposite, who had intended to be thoroughly disagreeable, melted
at once, and said it was the fault of the Company for providing such
restricted accommodation, and gave Robert _The Scotsman_ to read.

Robert thanked him, and, effacing himself behind _The Scotsman_,--though,
for all the instruction or edification that his present frame of mind
permitted him to extract from that coping-stone of Scottish journalism,
he might as well have been reading the Koran,--returned to his thoughts.
He collated in his mind the pieces of advice which had been bestowed
upon him by his elders and betters before his departure. In brief,
their collective wisdom came to this:--

His father had bidden him--

(a) To address all professors with whom he might come in contact as
    "Sir";

(b) To arrive at the Examination each morning at least five minutes
    before the advertised time;

(c) To refrain from lending money to, or otherwise countenancing the
    advances of, persons of insinuating address who would doubtless
    accost him in the streets of Edinburgh.

The Dominie had said--

"When in doubt, mind that practically everything in an examination
governs the subjunctive.

"If there is a _viva voce_, be sure and speak up and give your answers
as though you were sure of them. They may be wrong, but on the other
hand they may be right. Anyway, the one thing the examiners will not
thole is a body that dithers.

"Take a last keek at that Proposition--they _may_ call them Theorems,
though--about the Square on the Hypotenuse. It hasn't been set for four
years.

"If you are given a piece of Greek Testament to translate, for mercy's
sake do not be too glib. Dinna translate a thing until you are sure it
is there. They have an unholy habit of leaving out a couple of verses
some place in the middle, and you're just the one to tumble head-first
into the _lacuna_. (I ken ye, Robbie!)

"And whatever ye do, just bear in mind it's your only chance, and _grup_
on tae it! _Post est occasio calva_, laddie! And dinna disappoint an
auld man that has taught ye all he kens himsel'!"

Much of his mother's advice was of a kind that could not be expressed so
concisely, but two salient items remained fixed in Robert's mind:--

"If ye canna think o' the richt word, pit up a bit prayer.

"For ony sake see that your collar is speckless a' the time."

Robert's first impressions of Edinburgh were disappointing. Though
extensive enough, the city was not so great or so imposing as he had
expected. It was entirely roofed with glass,--a provision which, though
doubtless advantageous in wet weather, militated against an adequate
supply of sunlight and fresh air. The shops, of which Robin had heard so
much, were few in number; and the goods displayed therein (mainly food
and drink, newspapers and tobacco) compared unfavourably in point of
variety with those in the window of Malcolm M'Whiston, the "merchant" at
home. The inhabitants all appeared to be in a desperate hurry, and the
noise of the trains, which blocked every thoroughfare, was deafening.
Robert Chalmers was just beginning to feel thoroughly disappointed with
the Scottish capital, when it occurred to him to mount a flight of
stairs which presented itself to his view and gave promise of a second
storey at least. When he reached the top he found he had judged
Edinburgh too hastily. There was some more of it.

His horizon thus suddenly enlarged, Robert Chalmers Fordyce began to
take in his surroundings. He now found himself in a great street, with
imposing buildings on one side and a green valley on the other. On the
far side of the valley the ground ran steeply upward to an eminence
crowded thickly with houses and topped by a mighty castle.

The street was alive with all sorts of absorbingly interesting traffic;
but for the present Robert was chiefly concerned with the Cable Cars. It
was upon one of these majestic vehicles, which moved down the street
unassisted by any apparent human or equine agency, that he had been
bidden to ride to his destination. He was not to take the first that
came along, nor yet the second--they went to various places, it seemed;
and if you were taken to the wrong one you had to pay just the same--but
was to scan them until he espied one marked "Gorgie." This would carry
him down the Dalry Road, and would ultimately pass the residence of
Elspeth M'Kerrow, a decent widow woman, whose late husband's brother had
"married on" a connection of Robert's mother. Here he was to lodge.

At first sight the cars appeared to be labelled with nothing but Cocoa
and Whisky and Empire Palaces of Varieties Open Every Evening; but a
little perseverance discovered a narrow strip of valuable information
painted along the side of each car. The first that caught our friend's
eye was "Pilrig and Braid Hills Road." That would not do. Then came
another--"Murrayfield, Haymarket, and Nether Liberton." Another blank!
Then, "Marchmont Road and Churchill." Foiled again, Robert was beginning
to feel a little sceptical as to the actual existence of the Dalry Road,
when a car drew up opposite to him labelled "Pilrig and Gorgie." It was
going in the right direction too, for his father had warned him that his
destination lay to the west of the town; and you can trust a Scotsman to
know the points of the compass with his eyes shut. (They even talk of a
man sitting on the north or south side of his own fireplace.)

Robert clambered on to the top of this car, and presently found himself
confronted by a gentleman--splendid in appearance but of homely
speech--who waved bundles of tickets in his face, and inquired tersely--

"Penny or tippeny? or transfair?"

"I am seeking the Dalry Road," said Robert cautiously.

"Which end o't?"

"I couldna say."

"Ca' it a penny," said the conductor.

Robert, with the air of a man who has beaten down his opponent to the
lowest possible figure, produced the coin from his pocket. (It was just
as well that the man had not demanded a larger sum, for Robert's more
precious currency was concealed in a place only accessible to partial
disrobement.) The gorgeous man carelessly snapped a ticket out of one of
the bundles, and having first punched a hole in it with an ingenious
instrument that gave forth sounds of music, handed it to Robert in
exchange for the penny. He was a saturnine man, but he smiled a little
later when Robert, mindful of the fate of his railway-ticket at the last
station but one, airily attempted to give up his car-ticket in similar
fashion on alighting at the end of the journey.

The greater part of the next four days was spent by our friend in an
examination-room, into which we, more fortunate, need not attempt to
follow him. Robert diligently answered every question, writing at the
foot of each sheet of his neat manuscript, "More on the next page," in
case the examiner should be a careless fellow and imagine that Robert
had finished when he had not. Robert was not the man to leave anything
to chance, or to such unsafe abbreviations as P.T.O.

Outside the examination-room he devoted most of the time that he could
spare from preparation for the next paper to a systematic exploration of
Edinburgh. He did the thing as thoroughly as possible, for he knew well
that he might never spend four days in a large town again.

He began by climbing the Calton Hill. He remained at the summit quite a
long time, constructing a rough bird's-eye plan of the streets and
buildings below him; and having descended to earth, proceeded on a
series of voyages of discovery.

He regarded the exterior of Parliament House with intense interest, for
he was a debater by instinct and upbringing. St Giles' he passed by
without enthusiasm--he was a member of the Free Kirk--and St Mary's
Cathedral struck him as being unduly magnificent to be the property of
such a small and pernicious sect as the Episcopalians. The Post Office
and other great buildings struck him dumb; and he hastened past the
theatres with averted eyes, for he had it upon unimpeachable authority
that the devil resided there.

He knew no one in Edinburgh save Elspeth M'Kerrow. However, he made
another friend--to wit, one Hector MacPherson, a gigantic Highland
policeman, who controlled the traffic with incredible skill at a place
where several ways met. The said Hector stood beneath the shadow of a
great lamp-post, and whenever a vehicle drove past one side of him,
Hector relentlessly called it back and made it go on the other. Their
acquaintance began with the entire effacement of Robert's features by
the palm of Hector's hand, which was suddenly extended across the
thoroughfare for traffic-regulating purposes, with the result that
Robert, who was plunged in thought at the time, ran his nose right into
the centre of it. The ejaculation to which each gave vent at the moment
of impact revealed to both that they were from the same part of the
country, and thereafter Hector MacPherson became Robert's
adviser-in-chief throughout his stay in Edinburgh. Indeed, Robert used
Hector as the starting-point for all his excursions, and whenever he
became hopelessly lost in the wilds of the Grassmarket or the purlieus
of Morningside, he used to ask his way back to his mentor's pitch and
make a fresh start. We shall hear of Hector again.

The foolhardy feat of entering a shop Robert did not attempt until his
very last day in Edinburgh, and then only because he was absolutely
compelled to do so by the necessity of executing a commission for his
sister Margaret--the purchase of half a yard of ribbon.

It is true that the same ribbon could have been obtained at home from
Malcolm M'Whiston or a travelling packman, but Margaret was determined
to have it from Edinburgh; and she was particularly emphatic in her
injunctions to Robert to see that the folk in the shop stuck a label on
the parcel, "with their name printed on, and a picture of the shop and
a'."

On Saturday morning, then, Robert approached the establishment which he
had chosen for the purpose. After a careful reconnaissance he discovered
that it possessed several doors. Here was a poser. Which would be the
ribbon door? Supposing he entered the wrong one and found himself
compelled to purchase a roll of muslin or a wash-hand-stand? With
natural acumen he finally selected a door flanked by windows containing
lace and ribbon; and waiting for a moment when the surging crowd was
thickest, attempted to slip in with them. He got safely past a hero in a
medal-sown uniform, but immediately after this encountered an imposing
gentleman in a frock-coat, who asked his pleasure. Robert inquired
respectfully if the gentleman kept ribbon. The gentleman said "Surely,
surely!" and Robert's modest requirements were thereupon sent ringing
from a throat of brass into the uttermost recesses of the establishment,
and he himself was passed, hot-faced, along the fairway until he reached
the right department. Here his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth,
and the siren behind the counter, with difficulty stifling her
amusement, was reduced to discovering his needs by a process of
elimination.

"What will I show you?"

No answer.

"Ladies' gloves?"

A shake of the head.

"Handkerchiefs?"

Another shake.

"Stockings?"

Another shake, accompanied by a deepening of complexion.

"Well--ribbon?"

"Aye, that's it," replied Robert, suddenly finding his voice (which, by
the way, rather resembled the Last Trump). "Hauf a yaird--one inch
wide--satin--cream!" he roared mechanically.

He received the small parcel, and furtively fingering the money in his
pocket, asked the price.

"Two-three, please," replied the damsel briskly.

How Robert thanked his stars that he had some cash in hand! But what a
price! All that for a scrap of ribbon! It seemed sinful; but he laid two
shillings and threepence on the counter. Greatly to his alarm, the young
woman behind it, who up to this point had kept her feelings under
commendable control, suddenly collapsed like a punctured balloon on to
the shoulder of her nearest neighbour--there being no shop-walkers
about--and expressed a wish that she might be taken home and buried.
Finally she recovered sufficiently to push Robert's two shillings back
across the counter and to place his threepence in a mysterious
receptacle which she thrust into a hole in the wall, from which it was
ejected with much clatter a minute later; and on being opened proved to
contain what the dazed Robert at first took for a half-sovereign, but
which he ultimately discovered, when he had abandoned the still giggling
maiden and groped his way out into the street, to be a bright new
farthing.

The same day he returned to his home; but he did not reach it without
one more adventure, a slight one, it is true, but not without its effect
upon his future.

The train was over-full, and Robert ultimately found himself travelling
in company with nine other passengers, seven of whom were suffering from
that infirmity once poetically described by an expert in such diagnoses
as "a wee bit drappie in their een." The exception was a gentleman in
the far corner, accompanied by a most lovely young lady, upon whom
Robert gazed continuously with an admiration so absorbing and profound
that it took him some little time to realise, shortly after the
commencement of the journey, that the rest of the company were indulging
in a free fight all over the compartment, and that the lady was clinging
in terror to her escort. Robert was of considerable service in restoring
order, and found his reward in the eyes of the lady, who thanked him
very prettily. Her husband had the sense not to offer Robert money, but
gave him his card, and said in a curious, stiff, English way that he
hoped he might be of service to him some day. They got out at Perth, and
Robert travelled on alone.

Hours later he was met by his brother David at a little wayside station,
and driven over fifteen miles of hilly road to the farm where he had
been born and brought up.

Next morning he was up at daybreak, and set to work at his usual tasks
about the yard, well knowing that such would be his lot to the end of
his life if the examination list did not show his name at the top.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some days had to elapse before the result could be known; but Robert
Chalmers Fordyce--by the way, I think we know him well enough now to
call him Robin, which was the name his mother had given him on his third
birthday--and his household, being Scottish and undemonstrative, made
little or no reference to the subject.

Robin was the scholar of his family. He was the second son, David being
four years older. But in accordance with that simple, grand, and
patriarchal law of Scottish peasant life, which decrees that every lad
of parts shall be given his chance to bring credit on the family, even
though his parents have to pinch and save and his brothers bide at the
plough-tail all their lives in consequence--a law whose chief merit lies
in the splendid sacrifices which its faithful fulfilment involves, and
whose vital principle well-meaning but misguided philanthropy is now
endeavouring to dole out of existence--he had been sent to Edinburgh to
make the most of this, his one chance in life.

Still, though the credit of the family hung upon the result of the
examination,--if he won the Bursary, the money, together with the
precious hoard which his father and mother had been accumulating for him
for ten years, would just suffice to keep him at the University,--no one
discussed the matter. It was in the hands of God, and prognostication
could only be vain and unprofitable. His mother and sister, indeed,
questioned him covertly when his father and brother were out of hearing;
but that was chiefly about Edinburgh, and the shops, and the splendours
of the Dalry Road. The Bursary was never mentioned.

On the day on which the result was to be announced their father took
Robin and David away to a distant hillside to assist at the
sheep-dipping. The news would come by letter, which might or might not
get as far as Strathmyrtle Post Office, seven miles away, that very
afternoon. In the morning it would be delivered by the postman.

But there are limits to human endurance, none the less definite because
that endurance appears illimitable. When father and sons tramped back to
the farm that evening, just in time for supper, it was discovered that
Margaret was absent. John Fordyce, grim old martinet that he was, looked
round the table inquiringly; but a glance at his wife's face caused him
to go on with his meal.

At nine o'clock precisely the table was cleared. The herdman and two
farm lasses came into the kitchen from their final tasks in the yard,
and the great Bible was put down on the table for evening "worship."

John Fordyce, having looked up the "portion" which he proposed to read,
then turned to the Metrical Psalms. These were sung night by night in
unswerving rotation throughout the year, a custom which, while it
offered the pleasing prospect of variety, occasionally left something to
be desired on the score of appropriateness.

All being seated, the old man, after a final fleeting glance at his
daughter's empty chair, gave out the Psalm.

"Let us worship God," he said, "by singing to His praise in the Hundred
and Twenty-first Psalm. Psalm a Hundred and Twenty-one--

   'I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
    From whence doth come----'"

The door opened, and Margaret entered. She was dusty and tired, for she
had walked fourteen miles since milking-time; but in her hand she held a
letter.

She glanced timidly at the clock, and was for slipping quietly into her
seat; but her father said--

"You had best give it to him now. A man cannot worship God while his
mind is distracted with other things."

Robin took the letter, and after a glance in the direction of his father
and the waiting Bible, opened and read it amidst a tense silence.
Finally he looked up.

"Well?" said the old man.

"They have given me the First Bursary, father," said Robin.

No one spoke, but Robin saw tears running down his mother's face. John
Fordyce deliberately turned back several pages of the Bible.

"We will sing," he said in a clear voice, "in the Twenty-third
Psalm--the whole of it!--

   'The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want----'"

       *       *       *       *       *

The Psalms of David, as rendered into English verse by Nahum Tate and
others, are not remarkable for poetic merit; neither does the old
Scottish fashion of singing the same, seated and without accompaniment,
conduce to a concord of sweet sounds. But there are no tunes like old
tunes, and there are no hearts like full hearts. If ever a song went
straight up to heaven, the Twenty-third Psalm, borne up on the wings of
"Martyrdom," did so that night.




CHAPTER TWO.

INTRODUCES A PILLAR OF STATE AND THE APPURTENANCES THEREOF.


The time had undoubtedly arrived when I must have a Private Secretary.

Kitty, for one, insisted on it. She said that I was ruining my health in
the service of an ungrateful country, and added that she, personally,
declined to be left a widow at twenty-eight-and-a-half to oblige
anybody.

"It is exactly the wrong age," she said. "If it had happened four or
five years ago, I could have done pretty well for myself. Now, I should
be out of the running among the _débutantes_, and a little too young and
flighty to suit a middle-aged bachelor."

I may add that my wife does not often talk in this unfeeling manner. But
she suffers at times from a desire to live up to a sort of honorary
reputation for sprightly humour, conferred upon her by undiscriminating
admirers in the days before she became engaged to me. As a matter of
fact, her solicitude on my behalf was largely due to an ambition to see
a little paragraph in the newspapers, announcing that "Mr Adrian
Inglethwaite, M.P., Director of the Sub-Tropical and Arctic Department
at the Foreign Office, has appointed Mr Blankley Dash to be his Private
Secretary."

Dolly and Dilly seconded the motion. They had not the effrontery to wrap
up their motives in specious expressions of concern for my health, but
stated their point of view with brutal frankness, as is their wont. I
was an old dear, they conceded, and of course Kitty was Kitty; but a
sister and brother-in-law were, to put it quite plainly, a hopelessly
dull couple to live with: and the visits of Mesdames Dolly and Dilly to
our roof-tree would, it was hinted, be more frequent and enduring if the
establishment was strengthened by the addition of a presentable young
man.

I consented. It was three to one. To any one acquainted with the trio of
sisters arrayed against me, it will at once be apparent that "these
odds" (as the halfpenny papers say) "but faintly represent the
superiority of the winning side."

Having thus dragged the reader without apology into the most intimate
regions of my family circle, I had perhaps better introduce myself and
my _entourage_ a little more formally.

My name is Samuel Adrian Inglethwaite. Why I was called Samuel I do not
know. Possibly my parents did. Samuel may have been a baptismal sprat
set to catch a testamentary whale, but if this was so no legacy ever
came my way. Personally, I am rather attached to the name, as I was
called nothing else until I encountered the lady who ultimately
consented to become Mrs Inglethwaite. Since that epoch in my career I
have been S. Adrian Inglethwaite.

I am thirty-six years of age, and hold an appointment under Government,
which, while it does not carry with it Cabinet rank--though Kitty cannot
see why--is sufficiently important to make the daily papers keep my
obituary notice handily pigeon-holed, in case I fall over the Thames
Embankment, get run over by a motor-bus, or otherwise contravene the
by-laws of the London County Council.

As no man can possibly give an unbiassed opinion of his own wife, I
shall not attempt to describe mine at this juncture, except to mention
that she is a woman with no fault that I can for the moment recall,
beyond a predilection for belonging to societies which are better known
for their aims than for their achievements, are perennially short of
funds, and seem to possess no place of meeting except my drawing-room.

Dolly and Dilly are Kitty's sisters. They are twins, and there present
age is, I think, nineteen. Though I say it who should not, they are both
astonishingly attractive young persons, and the more I see of them the
more the fact is borne in upon me. Indeed, a casual remark of mine to
that effect, uttered to my wife, by an unfortunate coincidence, on the
very morning upon which one of the numerous Deceased Wife's Sister's
Bills passed its Second Reading in the House, gave rise to a coldness of
demeanour on her part which was only dispelled by an abject apology and
a dinner for two at the Savoy on mine.

To return to Dolly and Dilly. I never know them apart, and I do not
think Kitty does either. Both are divinely tall and divinely fair; they
are exactly like each other in form, voice, and feature; and they
possess the irritating habit, not uncommon with twins, of endeavouring
to exaggerate their natural resemblance by various puzzling and, I
consider, unsportsmanlike devices. They wear each other's clothes
indiscriminately, and are not above taking turn and turn about with the
affections of unsuspecting young men, of whom they possess a
considerable following. They attract admiration without effort, and, I
honestly believe, without intention. Of the meaning of love they know
nothing,--they are female Peter Pans, and resolutely refuse to grow up,
except outwardly,--and the intrusion of that passion into their dealings
with persons of the male gender is regarded by them at present as a
contingency to be discouraged at all costs. The conditions under which
they admit their admirers to their friendship are commendably simple and
perfectly definite. If a man is adjudged by them to have attained all
the complicated and inexplicable standards by which women judge the
opposite sex, he is admitted into the ranks of the Good Sorts; and as
such, provided that he keeps his head, has an extremely pleasant time of
it. If, however, any obtuse and amorous youth persists in mistaking what
Nanki-Poo once described as "customary expressions of affability" for an
indication that his infatuation is reciprocated, the Twins act promptly.
They have "no use" for such creatures, they once explained to me; and
they proceed to rid themselves of the incubus in a fashion entirely
their own.

As soon as the pressure of the _affaire_ rises to danger-point--_i.e._,
when the youth begins to pay markedly more attention to one Twin than
the other--he is asked, say, to lunch. Here he is made much of by the
object of his affections, who looks radiant in, let us say, white
_batiste_; while the unemployed Twin, in (possibly) blue poplin, holds
discreetly aloof. After lunch the Twins, leaving their victim to smoke a
cigar, retire swiftly to their room, where they exchange costumes, and
descend again to the drawing-room. There Dolly, now arrayed in white
_batiste_, enters upon the path of dalliance where Dilly left off; and
Dilly, relieved from duty, crochets in a window-recess, and silently
enjoys her sister's impersonation.

One of two things happens. Romeo either does not notice the difference,
or else he does. If he does not, he continues to flounder heavily along
in pursuit of the well-beloved, oblivious of the fact that he is wasting
his efforts on an understudy. After an appropriate interval the cold
truth is revealed to him in a hysterical duet, and he goes home, glaring
defiantly, but feeling an entire and unmitigated ass.

Or he may actually recognise that Dilly has been replaced by
Dolly,--this is what happens when the case is a really serious one,--and
if this occurs he is more sorrowful than angry, poor fellow, for he sees
that he is being trifled with; and your true lover is the most
desperately earnest person in the world. In either case the _affaire_
terminates then and there. And that is how my sisters-in-law, with
adroitness and despatch, return immature and undesirable suitors to
their native element. The whole proceeding reminds me irresistibly of
the Undersized Fish Bill, a measure whose progress I once assisted in
its course through a Committee of the House.

However, having been bidden to procure a Private Secretary, I meekly set
about looking for one. One night at dinner we held a symposium on the
subject, and endeavoured to evolve an outline of the kind of gentleman
who was likely to suit us. The following is a _précis_ of the result. I
leave the intelligent reader to trace each item to its author; also the
various parenthetical comments on the same:--

(a) He must be a 'Varsity man.

(b) He must be able to keep accounts, and transact business generally.

(c) He must be content with a salary of two hundred a-year, with
    board and residence in the house. ("He can have that little
    room off the library for a sitting-room, dear, and sleep in
    the old night-nursery.")

(d) He must not wear celluloid collars or made-up ties. ("But he'll
    _have_ to, poor dear, if the Infant Samuel only gives him two
    hundred a-year.")

(e) He must be prepared to run through my speeches before I deliver
    them. ("I suppose that means _write_ them!"), look up my
    subject-matter, verify my references, and so on. ("That _will_
    be an improvement. But what will the halfpenny papers do then,
    poor things?")

(f) He must be the sort of man that one can have in to a dinner-party
    without any fear of accidents. ("Yes. He _must_ be all right about
    peas, asparagus, and liqueurs. _And_ finger-bowls, dearest. You
    remember the man who drank out of his at that queer political
    dinner to the constituents?")

(g) He must be nice to my Philly.

(h) He must be dark. ("Pshaw!")

(i) He must be fair. ("Ugh!")

(j) He must be able to waltz and play bridge.

At this point I suggested that a prepaid telegram to the Celestial
Regions would alone procure the article we required. However, we
ultimately descended to an advertisement in the _Morning Post_, and in
due course I obtained a secretary. In fact, I obtained several. We had
them _seriatim_, and none stayed longer than a month. I do not propose
to write a detailed history of the dynasty which I now found it my
privilege to support. A brief _résumé_ of each will suffice.

_Number One_.--Cambridge Football Blue. Big and breezy. Spelling
entirely phonetic. Spent most of his time smoking in the drawing-room,
and laboured under the delusion that, as my amanuensis, he was at
liberty to forge my signature to all documents, including cheques. He
used my official note-paper to back horses on, and was finally requested
to leave, after an unseemly brawl with a book-maker's tout on my
doorstep.

_Number Two_.--Oxford: a First in Greats. A heavy manner, usually
beginning his observations with "Wherewithal" or "Peradventure." The
Twins suffered severely from suppressed giggles in his presence.
Regarded my superficial ideas of statesmanship with profound contempt,
but left after a fortnight, having allowed a highly confidential and
extremely personal pencil note, written in the margin of a despatch by
the Premier himself, to blossom forth in large type in the text of a
Blue Book.

_Number Three_.--Rather elderly for the post--nearer forty than
thirty--but highly recommended. Reduced my chaotic papers to order in
twenty-four hours, charmed my wife and her sisters, drafted a speech
which won me quite a little ovation in the House, suggested several
notable improvements in the "Importation of Mad Dogs Bill," with which I
was to be entrusted next session--and was found lying dead drunk in his
bedroom, at eleven o'clock in the morning, on the second Sunday after
his arrival. Half a dozen empty brandy bottles were afterwards
discovered on the top of his wardrobe. Poor devil!

_Number Four_.--(Subsequently handed down to posterity as "The Limit").
Small, spectacled, and nervous. Came from a Welsh University, and was
strong on "the methodical filing of State and other documents." He
stayed two days. On the first night (after inquiring whether we were
expecting guests that evening, and receiving an answer in the negative)
he came down to dinner in a sort of alpaca smoking-jacket and a tartan
tie. On the second, having evidently decided to treat us to all the
resources of his wardrobe as soon as possible, he appeared in more or
less ordinary evening attire. He wore a small white satin bow-tie,
attached to his collar-stud by a brass clip. The tie fell off the stud
into his soup almost immediately, and its owner, after furtively chasing
it round the plate with his forefinger, finally fished it out with the
aid of a fork; and, having squeezed as much soup as possible back into
the plate, put the bow into his waistcoat pocket and resumed his meal
with every appearance of enjoyment.

He left next morning. As the Twins pathetically observed: "It had to be
him or us!" I was sorry, for he was a tidy little creature away from
table.

After that I did a rash thing. I engaged a Private Secretary on the spur
of the moment and without consulting my household.

One morning I had occasion to visit the British Museum. That mausoleum
of learning is not an habitual resort of mine, but on this occasion I
had found it necessary to refresh my memory on the subject of a small
principality situated somewhere in the Pacific, and reported to be in a
state of considerable unrest, concerning which the member for Upper
Gumbtree, an unpleasantly omniscient young man with a truculent manner,
had been asking questions in the House. It seemed that British interests
in that quarter were not being adequately protected by our Department,
and this extremely pushing gentleman was now gaining much cheap applause
in the columns of those low-priced organs which make a living by
deriding his Majesty's Ministers, by bombarding us with fatuous
inquiries on the subject. My Chief had only the most hazy notion about
the place--as a matter of fact I do not believe that either he or any of
the permanent officials had ever heard of it--and I was in a precisely
similar condition. I was accordingly bidden to get up the subject, and
accumulate a mass of information thereon which would not only satiate
the appetite of the honourable member, but choke him off for all time.

Finding myself in want of a particular Gazetteer which was not to be
found in the office, and being in no mood to take a clerk, however
uncritical, into my confidence, I called a hansom and drove straight to
the Museum; where, having ensconced myself in the reading-room with the
work in question, I prepared to devote a dusty and laborious morning to
the service of State.

Immediately opposite me sat a gigantic young man of a slightly
threadbare appearance, who was copying some screed out of a bulky tome
before him. I regarded him in a reminiscent sort of way for a few
minutes, and presently found that my scrutiny was being returned
fourfold. Next came an enormous hand that was suddenly thrust across the
table towards me, and I remembered him.

We had met six years ago in a railway train, under circumstances which
made me extremely glad to make his acquaintance at any price. Kitty and
I were on our honeymoon, and happened to be travelling on a Saturday
afternoon from Edinburgh to Perth in a train packed to suffocation with
the supporters of a football team of the baser sort. We were bound for
Inchellan, the Scottish residence of my Chief, who was sending to meet
us at Perth.

As the first-class carriages were all occupied by gentlemen with
third-class tickets, we travelled third with a company who did not seem
to possess any tickets at all. Just before the train started the door
was thrown open and two inebriated Scots, several degrees further gone
than the rest of the company--which is saying a good deal--were hurled
in. If the assemblage had all been of one way of thinking we might have
reached Perth with nothing worse than bad headaches, but unfortunately
some supporters of the other team were present, and in the midst of a
heated and alcoholic debate on the rights and wrongs of the last free
kick, two rival orators suddenly arose, clinched, and continued their
argument at close grips on the floor. In a moment the party divided
itself into two camps, and the conflict became general. As there were
ten people in the compartment, of whom seven were engaged in a
life-and-death struggle, the movements of the non-combatants--Kitty,
myself, and a gigantic youth of gawky appearance--were, to put it
mildly, somewhat restricted. Kitty became thoroughly frightened, and
hampered my preparations for battle by clinging to my arm. The gigantic
youth, seeing this, suddenly took command of the situation.

"Watch you the young leddy!" he bellowed in my ear, "and I'll sort
them."

With that he hurled himself into the tumult. The exact details of his
performance I could not see, the scientific dusting of railway cushions
not having penetrated any further north of the Forth than it has south
of the Thames; but the net result was that each combatant was pulled
off, picked up, shaken until his teeth rattled, and banged down on to
his seat with a brief admonition to mind his manners, until seven
bewildered, partially sobered, and thoroughly demoralised patrons of
sport sat round about in various attitudes of limp dejection, leaning
against one another like dissipated marionettes; while our rustic
Hector, bestriding the compartment like a Colossus, dared them to move a
finger under penalty of being "skelped."

He bundled them all out at the next stopping-place, without inquiring
whether they desired to alight there or no, and I am bound to say that
they all seemed as anxious to leave the carriage as he was to expel
them. He then shut the door, pulled up the window, and turned to my wife
with a reassuring smile.

"Yon was just a storrm in a teapot," he remarked affably.

He accepted my thanks with indifference, but blushed in a gratified
manner when Kitty addressed him. He was her bond-slave by the time that
we bade him farewell at Perth. I presented him with my card, which he
carefully placed inside the lining of his hat; but he forbore, either
from native caution or excessive shyness, to furnish us with any
information as to his own identity.

Well, here he was, sitting opposite to me in the Reading Room of the
British Museum, and seemingly none too prosperous. Six years ago he had
looked like a young and healthy farm lad. Now, fourth-rate journalism
was stamped all over him.




CHAPTER THREE.

"ANENT."


We conversed awhile in whispers to avoid disturbing the other
worshippers--I always feel like that in the British Museum--and finally
abandoned our respective tasks and issued forth together. With a little
persuasion I prevailed upon my companion to come and lunch with me, and
we repaired to a rather old-fashioned and thoroughly British
establishment close by, where the fare is solid and the "portions"
generous.

My guest, after a brief effort at self-repression, fell upon the food in
a fashion that told me a far more vivid tale of his present
circumstances than the most lengthy explanation could have done. When he
was full I gave him a cigar, and he leaned back in his padded arm-chair
and surveyed me with the nearest approach to emotion that I have ever
observed in the countenance of a Scot.

"I was wanting that," he remarked frankly, and he smiled largely upon
me. He was looking less gaunt now, and the rugged lines of his face were
tinged with a more healthy colour. He was a handsome youth, I noticed,
with shrewd grey eyes and a chin that stood out like the ram of a
battle-ship.

He told me all about himself, some of which has been set down here
already. He had done well at Edinburgh University, and, having obtained
his Arts degree, was on the point of settling down to study for the
ministry--the be-all and end-all of the hope of a humble Scottish
household--when disaster came tumbling upon his family. His brother
David fell sick in his lungs, and the doctor prescribed a sojourn in a
drier climate for at least a year.

The next part of the narrative was rather elliptical; but from the fact
that money was immediately forthcoming to send David abroad, and that
Robin had simultaneously given up his work in Edinburgh and returned
home to help his father about the farm, I gathered that a life's
ambition had been voluntarily sacrificed on the altar of family duty.
Anyhow, when David returned, marvellously and mercifully restored to
health, setting his younger brother free once more, two precious years
had flown; so that Robin now found himself, at the age of twenty-three,
faced with the alternative of making a fresh start in life or remaining
on the farm at home, that most pathetic and forlorn of failures, a
"stickit minister." The family exchequer had been depleted by David's
illness, and Robin, rather than draw any further on the vanishing little
store of pound-notes in the cupboard behind the kitchen chimney,
determined to go to London and turn his education to some account.

He had arrived three years ago, with a barrel of salt herrings and a bag
of meal; and from that time he had earned his own living--if it could be
called a living.

"Once or twice," he said, "I have had an article taken by one of the big
reviews; sometimes I get some odd reporting to do; and whiles I just
have to write chatty paragraphs about celebrities for the snippety
papers."

"Uphill work that, I should think."

"Uphill? Downhill! Man, it's degrading. Do you know what I was doing in
that Museum this morning?"

"What?"

"Have you heard tell of a man they call Dean Ramsay?"

"Let me see--yes. He was a sort of Scottish Sidney Smith, wasn't he?"

"That is the man. Well, he collected most of the good stories in
Scotland and put them in a book. I was copying a few of them out; and I
shall father them on to folk that the public wants to hear about. I get
a guinea a column for that."

"I know the sort of thing," I said. "_'A good story is at present going
the round of the clubs, concerning----'_"

"Not 'concerning'--'anent'!"

"I beg your pardon--'anent a certain well-known but absent-minded Peer
of the Realm.'"

"That's the stuff. You have the trick of it. Then sometimes I do bits of
general information--computations as to the height of a column of the
picture postcards sold in London in a year, and all that. Nobody can
check figures of that kind, so the work is easy--and correspondingly
ill-paid!" (I cannot reproduce the number of contemptuous _r_'s that
Robin threw into the adverb.)

"It's a fine useful place the Museum," he continued reflectively. "You
were busy there this morning yourself. You would be collecting _data_
anent--I mean _about_--the Island of Caerulea."

I sat up in surprise at this.

"How on earth----?" I began.

"Oh, I just jal--guessed it. You being the only member of his Majesty's
Government in whom I have any personal interest, I have always followed
your career closely. (You gave me your card, you'll mind.) Well, I saw
you were having trouble with yon havering body Wuddiford--I once
reported at one of his meetings: he's just a sweetie-wife in
_pince-nez_--and when I saw you busy with an atlas and gazetteer I said
to myself:--'He'll be getting up a few salient facts about the place, in
order to appease the honourable member's insatiable thirst for
knowledge--Toots, there I go again! Man, the journalese fairly soaks
into the system. I doubt now if I could write out twenty lines of
'Paradise Lost' without cross-heading them!"

We finished our cigar over talk like this, and finally rose to go. Robin
lingered upon the steps of the restaurant. I realised that he, being a
Scotsman, was endeavouring to pump up the emotional gratitude which he
felt sure that I, as an Englishman, would expect from a starving pauper
who had lunched at my expense.

"I must thank you," he said at last, rather awkwardly, "for a most
pleasant luncheon. And I should like fine," he added suddenly and
impetuously, "to make out a _précis_ for you on the subject of Caerulea.
Never heed it yourself! Away home, and I'll send it to you to-morrow!"

An idea which had been maturing in my slow-moving brain for some time
suddenly took a definite shape.

"It is extremely kind of you," I said. "I shall be delighted to leave
the matter in your hands. But when you have made the _précis_, I wonder
if you would be so good as to bring it to my house instead of sending
it?"

I gave him my address, and we parted.

Robert Chalmers Fordyce arrived at my house next morning. He brought
with him a budget of condensed but exhaustive information on the subject
of Caerulea, the assimilation and ultimate discharge of which enabled me
to score a signal victory over Mr Wuddiford of Upper Gumbtree,
relegating that champion exploiter of mare's nests to a sphere of
comparative inoffensiveness for quite a considerable time.

After reading the _précis_, I offered Robin the position of my Private
Secretary, which he accepted politely but without servility or
effusiveness. I handed him a quarter's salary in advance, gave him two
days' holiday wherein to "make his arrangements"--_Anglicè_, to
replenish his wardrobe--and we sealed the bargain with a glass of sherry
and a biscuit apiece.

As he rose to go, Robin took from his pocket a folded manuscript.

"I see you have a good fire there," he said.

He stepped across to the hearth-rug and pitched the document into the
heart of the flames, which began to lick it caressingly.

Presently the heat caused the crackling paper to unfold itself, and some
of the writing became visible. Robert pointed, and I read--

_"Pars about Personalities. A capital story is at present going the
round of the clubs, anent----"_

Here the flimsy manuscript burst into flame, and shot with a roar up the
chimney.

I looked at Robert Chalmers Fordyce, and his face was the face of a man
who has gone through deep waters, but feels the good solid rock beneath
his feet at last.

He turned dumbly to me, and held out his hand.

The worst of these inarticulate and undemonstrative people is that they
hurt you so.




CHAPTER FOUR.

A TRIAL TRIP.


Three days later I introduced Robert Chalmers Fordyce into the bosom of
my family. I had declined to give them any previous information about
him, beyond a brief warning that they would find him "rather Scotch."

I have always found it utterly impossible to foretell from a man's
behaviour towards his own sex how he will comport himself in the
presence of females. I have known a raw youth, hitherto regarded as the
hobbledehoy of the shooting-party and the pariah of the smoking-room,
lord it among the ladies like a very lion; and I have seen the hero of a
hundred fights, the master of men, the essence of intrepid resolution,
stand quaking outside a drawing-room door. The _début_ of Robin, then, I
awaited with considerable interest. I expected on the whole to see him
tongue-tied, especially before Dolly and Dilly. On the other hand he
might be aggressively assertive.

He was neither. He proved to be that rarest of types--the man who has no
fear of his fellow-creatures, male or female, singly or in battalions.
Our sex is so accustomed to squaring its shoulders, pulling down its
waistcoat, and assuming an engaging expression as a preliminary to an
encounter with the fair, that the spectacle of a man who enters a
strange drawing-room and shakes hands quietly and naturally all round,
without twisting his features into an agreeable smile and mumbling
entirely inarticulate words of rapture, always arouses in me feelings of
envy and respect.

We found Kitty and the Twins picturesquely grouped upon the drawing-room
hearth-rug, waiting for the luncheon gong.

I introduced Robin to my wife, in the indistinct and throaty tones which
always obtrude themselves into an Englishman's utterance when he is
called upon to say something formal but graceful. Kitty greeted the
guest with a smile with which I am well acquainted (and which I can
guarantee from personal experience to be absolutely irresistible on
one's first experience of it), and welcomed him to the house very
prettily.

"You are very kind, Mrs Inglethwaite," said Robin, shaking hands. "But I
am not quite a stranger to you. Do you mind my face?"

Kitty turned scarlet.

"Mind your----? Not in the--I mean--I am sure we are de----" She
floundered hopelessly.

Robin laughed pleasantly.

"There is my Scots tongue running away with me already," he said. "I
should have asked rather if you _remembered_ my face."

This time Kitty ceased to look confused, but still retained a puzzled
frown.

"No," she said slowly; "I don't _think_----"

"No wonder!" said Robin. "We met once, in a railway carriage, six years
ago. Between Edinburgh and Perth--on a Saturday afternoon," he added
expressively.

Light broke in upon Kitty. "Of course!" she said. "Now I remember. That
dreadful journey! You were the gentleman who was so kind and helpful.
How nice and romantic meeting again! Adrian, you silly old creature, why
didn't you tell me? Now, Mr Fordyce, let me introduce you to my
sisters."

She wheeled him round and presented him to the Twins.

That pair of beauties, I saw at a glance, were out after scalps. They
stood up side by side on the hearth-rug, absolutely and weirdly alike,
and arrayed on this occasion in garments of identical hue and cut. This
was a favourite device of theirs when about to meet a new young man; it
usually startled him considerably. If he was not a person of sound nerve
and abstemious habits, it not infrequently evoked from him some
enjoyably regrettable expression of surprise and alarm. I knew all the
tricks in their _répertoire_, and waited interestedly to see the effect
of this series.

On being presented, both smiled shyly and modestly, and each
simultaneously proffered a timid hand. The average young man, already a
little rattled by the duplicate vision of loveliness before him, could
never make up his mind which hand to shake first; and by the time he had
collected his faculties sufficiently to make an uncertain grab at one,
both would be swiftly and simultaneously withdrawn.

Robin, however, immediately shook hands with Dilly, who stood nearest to
Kitty, and then with Dolly. After that he stepped back a pace and
surveyed the pair with unconcealed interest.

Then he turned to my wife.

"A truly remarkable resemblance!" he observed benignantly. ("Just as if
we had been two babies in a bassinette!" as Dolly afterwards remarked.)

Then he resumed his inspection. The Twins, who were entirely unused to
this sort of thing, were too taken aback to proceed to their second
move--the utterance of some trivial and artless remark, delivered by
both simultaneously, and thereby calculated to throw the victim into a
state of uncertainty as to which he should answer first. Instead, they
stood wide-eyed and tongue-tied before him.

"I must certainly discover some point of difference between these
ladies," continued Robin with an air of determination, "or I shall
always be in difficulties. Do not tell me the secret, Mrs Inglethwaite.
Perhaps I can find out for myself."

He concluded a minute inspection of the indignant Dilly, and turned his
unruffled gaze on Dolly.

"Yes," he said, "I have it! You" (triumphantly to Dolly) "have a tiny
brown spot in the blue of your left eye, while your sister has none."

It was quite true: she had. But it was a fact which most young men only
discovered after many furtive and sidelong glances. This imperturbable
creature had taken it all in in one resolute scrutiny; and Dolly,
blushing like Aurora--an infirmity to which I may say neither she nor
her sister are particularly subject--dropped her long lashes over the
orbs in question and looked uncommonly foolish.

The tension of the situation was relieved by the announcement of
luncheon, and Robin was called upon to accompany Kitty downstairs; while
I, putting a consoling arm round the waist of each of my fermenting
sisters-in-law, marched them down to further experiences in the
dining-room.

The Twins rapidly recovered their equanimity at lunch. They sat, as they
always did, together on one side of the table, opposite to Robin. The
latter conversed easily and pleasantly, though his discourse was dotted
with homely phrases and curious little biblical turns of speech.

"Have you been in London long, Mr Fordyce?" inquired Kitty as we settled
down.

"Three years," said Robin.

"I suppose you have lots of friends by this time."

"I have a good many acquaintances, but my friends in London are just
three, all told," said Robin, in what Dilly afterwards described as "a
disgustingly pawky manner."

"You must be very exclusive, Mr Fordyce," chirrupped Dolly.

"Far from it," said Robin; "as you will admit when I say that my three
friends are a policeman, a surgeon, and a minister."

"How quaint of you!" said Dilly.

But Robin did not seem to think it quaint. He told us about the
policeman first--a Highlander. Robin had made his acquaintance in
Edinburgh, apparently about the same time that he made ours, and had
renewed it some years later outside the House of Commons, when a
rapturous mutual recognition had taken place. The policeman's name was
Hector MacPherson.

"And the surgeon?" inquired Kitty, with a certain friendly assumption of
interest which announces (to me) that she is getting a little bored.

"He is just my uncle. I go and see him, whi--now and then. He is a busy
man."

"And the--er--minister?"

"He is Dr Strang. He has the Presbyterian Church in Howard Street. I
have sat under him every Sabbath since I came to London."

"Wh--what for?" asked Kitty involuntarily, and in a rather awestruck
voice. Her acquaintance with the ritual of the Church of Scotland was
hazy, and she was evidently determined to-day to be surprised at
nothing; but evidently this mysterious reference could not be allowed to
pass without some explanation. The Twins convulsively gripped each
other's hands under the table. (They are of course perfectly bred
girls--indeed, their self-possession at trying moments has often
surprised me--but, like all the young of the human species, there are
times when their feelings become too much for them. Then, if the
occasion is too formal for unrestrained shrieks, they silently
interdigitate.)

"That is a Scottish expression," said Robin, smiling upon us. "You must
pardon me, Mrs Inglethwaite. I should perhaps have said that I was an
adherent of Dr Strang's church--or rather," he added with a curious
little touch of pride, "I am a communicant now. I was just an adherent
at first."

We assented to this, politely but dizzily.

Scratch a Scot and you will find a theologian. Robin was fairly started
now; and he proceeded to enlarge upon various points of interest in the
parallel histories (given in full) of some three or four Scottish
denominations, interwoven with extracts from his own family archives.
His grand-uncle, it appeared, had been a minister himself, and had
performed the feat--to which I have occasionally heard other perfervid
Scots refer, and never without a kindling eye--known as "coming out in
the Forty-three."

"That," added Robin in parenthesis, "is why my second name is
Chalmers--after the great Doctor. You will have heard of him?"

(Polite but insincere chorus of pleased recognition.)

We were then treated to a brief _résumé_ of the events leading up to a
religious controversy of colossal dimensions which was at that moment
threatening to engulf Scotland. Robin was deeply interested in the
matter, and gave us his reasons for being so. He passed some scathing
comments on the contumacy and narrow-mindedness of the sect who had the
misfortune to be his opponents; and after that he proceeded to say a few
words about Free Will and Predestination.

By this time lunch was over, but we sat on. I nodded gravely over my
coffee, saying "Quite so" when occasion seemed to demand it. Kitty was
completely out of her depth, but still maintained a brave appearance of
interest. It was the Twins who brought the _séance_ to a close. Placing
their hands before their mouths, they with difficulty stifled a pair of
cavernous yawns.

Next moment they were sorry. Robin stopped dead, flushed up, and said--

"Mrs Inglethwaite, I am sorry. I have been most inconsiderate and rude.
I have wearied you all. The truth is," he continued quite simply, "it is
so long since I sat at meat with friends, that I have lost the art of
conversation. I just run on, like--like a leading article. I have not
conversed with a woman, except once or twice across a counter, for
nearly three years."

There was a rather tense pause. Then Dolly said--

"We're awfully sorry, Mr Fordyce. It was very rude of us. We quite
understand now, don't we, Dilly?"

"Rather," said Dilly. "It was horrible of us, Mr Fordyce. But we thought
you were just an ordinary bore."

"Children!" said Kitty.

"But what you have told us makes things quite different, doesn't it,
Dolly?" continued Dilly.

"Quite--absolutely," said Dolly.

And they smiled upon him, quite maternally. And so the incident passed.

"How queer, not talking to a woman for three years!" continued Dolly
reflectively.

"How _awful_ it would be not to talk to a man for three years!" said
Dilly, with obvious sincerity.

"There is little opportunity for social intercourse," said Robin, "to a
man who comes to London to sink or swim."

The conversation was again taking a slightly sombre turn, and I struck
in--

"Well, I hope, Mr Fordyce, that a few weeks' experience of my
establishment won't have the effect of making you regret your previous
celibate existence."

Dolly and Dilly looked at each other.

"Dolly," said Dilly, "is that an insult?"

"I think so."

"Insulting enough to be punishable?"

"Rather."

"All right. Come on!"

They fell upon me, and the next few minutes were devoted to what I
believe is known in pantomime circles as a Grand Rally, which
necessitated my going upstairs afterwards and changing my collar.

Robin was not present at tea, and my household took advantage of his
absence to run over his points.

Considering that a woman--especially a young woman--judges a man almost
entirely by his manner and appearance, and dislikes him exceedingly if
he proceeds to dominate the situation to her exclusion--unless, by the
way, he has her permission and authority so to do, in which case he
cannot do so too much--the verdict delivered upon my absent secretary
was not by any means unfavourable, though, of course, there was much to
criticise.

"He'll do," said Dilly; "but you must get his hair cut, Adrian."

"And tell him about not wearing that sort of tie, dear," said Dolly.

"I suppose he can't help his accent," sighs Kitty.

But their criticisms were limited to such trifles as these, and I felt
that Robin had done me credit.

Dilly summed up the situation.

"I think on the whole that he is rather a pet," she said.

A more thoroughly unsuitable description could not have been imagined,
but Dolly agreed.

"He has nice eyes, too," she added.

"He was perfectly sweet with Phillis after lunch," said Kitty. "Took her
on his knee at once, and talked to her just as if we weren't there.
That's a good test of a man, if you like!"

"True for you," I agreed. "I could not do it with other people's
children to save my life."

"Oh, you are hopeless," said Dilly. "_Far_ too self-conscious and
dignified to climb down to the level of children, isn't he, Dolly?" She
crinkled her nose.

Dolly for once was not listening.

"What was that weird stuff the Secretary Bird spouted when you showed
Phillis to him, Kit? About her being forward, or coy, or something. It
sounded rather cheek, to me."

"Yes, I remember," said Dilly. "Can you do the way he said it?
'Sometimes forrrwarrrd, sometimes coy, she neverrr fails to pullllease!'
Like that! Gracious, how it hurts to talk Scotch!"

"I don't know, dear," said my wife thoughtfully. "It sounded rather
quaint. But I daresay all Scotch people are like that," she added
charitably.

"Perhaps it was a quotation," I observed mildly.

"Of course, that would be it. What is it out of?"

"A song called 'Phillis is my only Joy,' I think."

"Ah, then you may depend upon it," said Kitty, with the air of one
solving a mystery, "that is what the man was doing--_quoting_! Burns,
probably, or Scott, perhaps. How clever of him to think of it! And do
you know," she continued, "he said such a nice thing to me. While you
were bear-fighting with the Twins after lunch, Adrian, I said to him:
'Pity me, Mr Fordyce! My husband never ceases to express to me his
regret that he did not marry one of my sisters.' And he answered at
once, quite seriously, without stopping to think it out or anything:--'I
am sure, Mrs Inglethwaite, that his regret must be shared by countless
old admirers of yours!' Wasn't it rather sweet of him?"

Further conversation was prevented by the opening of the drawing-room
door, where the butler appeared and announced "Mr Dubberley."

Dubberley is a pillar of our party. I can best describe him by saying
that although I hold office under a Conservative Government, ten
minutes' conversation with Dubberley leaves me a confirmed Radical, and
anything like a protracted interview with him converts me into a
Socialist for the next twenty-four hours. A week-end in his society, and
I should probably buy a red shirt and send out for bombs. He is a good
fellow at bottom, and of immense service to the party; but he is the
most blatant ass I have ever met. There are Dubberleys on both sides of
the House, however, which is a comfort.

Robin joined us almost directly after Dubberley's entrance, just in time
to hear that great man conclude the preamble of his discourse for the
afternoon.

There had been a good deal of talk in the papers of late about improving
the means of transport throughout the country; and the nationalisation
of railways and other semi-socialistic schemes had filled the air.
Dubberley, it appeared, had out of his own gigantic intellect evolved a
panacea for congestion of traffic, highness of rates, and railway
mortality.

He was well launched in his subject when Robin entered and was
introduced.

"As I was saying," he continued, waving an emphatic teaspoon in the
direction of the sofa where the ladies sat, smiling but limp,--even the
Twins knew it was useless to stem this tide,--"as I was saying, the
solution of the problem lies in the revival of our far-reaching but
sadly neglected system of _canals_. Yes! If we go to the very root of
the matter"--Dubberley is one of those fortunate persons who never has
to dig far in his researches--"we find that our whole hope of
regeneration lies in the single, simple, homely word--Canals! Revive
your canals, send your goods by canal, travel yourself by----"

"How long, Mr Dubberley," interpolated Robin, leaning forward--"how long
do you consider one would take to travel, say, a hundred miles by
canal?"

"Under our present antiquated system, sir,"--Dubberley rather prides
himself on preserving the courtly fashions of address of a bygone
age,--"an impossibly long time. The average speed of a canal-boat at the
present day under the ministrations of that overburdened and inadequate
quadruped, the--er--horse, is three miles per hour. Indeed--one moment!"

Dubberley fished a sheaf of documents out of his pocket--he is the sort
of man who habitually secrets statistics and blue-books about his
person--and after stertorously perusing them closed his eyes for a
moment, as if to work out a sum upon an internal blackboard, and said--

"I see no reason why swift canal-boats should not be constructed to run
fifteen, twenty, or even twenty-five miles per hour. Indeed, in these
days of turbines----"

Robin put down his cup rather emphatically, and said--

"Mphm."

(It is quite impossible to reproduce this extraordinary Caledonian
expletive in writing, but that is as near to it as I can get.) Then he
continued urbanely--

"Then you would organise a service of fast turbine steamers running all
over the canal systems of the country?"

"Exactly. Or let us say--er--launches," said Dubberley. "I must not
overstate my case."

"Travelling twenty miles an hour?"

"Say fifteen, sir," said Dubberley magnanimously.

"Mr Dubberley," said Robin, in a voice which made us all jump, "have you
a bathroom in your house?"

Even the Twins, who were growing a trifle lethargic under the
technicalities of the subject, roused themselves at this fresh turn of
the conversation.

"Ah--eh--I beg your pardon?" said Dubberley, a trifle disconcerted.

"A bathroom," repeated Robin--"with a good long bath in it?"

"Er--yes."

"Well, Mr Dubberley, when you go home this afternoon, go upstairs and
fill the bath with water. Then take a large bath-sponge--something
nearly as broad as the bath--and sweep it along from end to end, about a
foot below the surface, at a speed of fifteen miles per hour--that will
be twenty-two feet per second--and see what happens!"

Robin had unconsciously dropped into what I may call his
debating-society manner. His chin stuck out, and his large chest heaved,
and he scooped the air, as if it had been the water of Dubberley's bath,
with one of Kitty's priceless Worcester teacups.

Dubberley sat completely demoralised, palpitating like a stranded frog.

"Then," continued Robin, "you would observe the result of placing a
partly submerged and rapidly moving body in a shallow and restricted
waterway. You would kick half the water right out of the canal to begin
with, and the other half would pile itself up into a wave under your bow
big enough to offer an almost immovable resistance to the progress of
your vessel."

He leaned back and surveyed the bemused Dubberley with complete and
obvious satisfaction. We all sat round breathless, feeling much as
Sidney Smith must have felt when some one spoke disrespectfully of the
Equator. Great was the fall of Dubberley. He moved, perhaps
instinctively, in a society where he was seldom contradicted and never
argued with. One does not argue with a gramophone. And here this raw
Scottish youth, with the awful thoroughness and relentless common-sense
of his race, had taken the very words out of his mouth, torn them to
shreds, and thrust them down his throat.

I am afraid I chuckled. The Twins sat hand in hand, with dreamy eyes
staring straight before them. They were conjuring up a joyous vision of
Dubberley, in his shirt-sleeves, meekly refuting one of his own theories
by means of a childish and sloppy experiment in practical hydrodynamics
in his own bathroom.

I give this incident as a fair example of Robin's point of view and
methods of action on questions which I for one would never dream of
debating. He was entirely lacking in an art which I am told I possess to
perfection--that of suffering fools gladly. Its possession has raised me
to an Under-Secretaryship. People who should know tell me that it will
also prevent my ever rising to anything higher.

"We had a taste of our friend's quality this afternoon," I remarked to
my household when we met for dinner that evening. "He is a
thorough-going warrior. Fancy any man taking all that trouble to lay out
old Dubberley!"

"Poor Mr Dubberley!" said tender-hearted Kitty.

"Do him good!" said Dilly, in whose recollection Dubberley's past
enormities loomed large. "I shall be nice to the Secretary Bird now."

Dolly said nothing, which was unusual. Perhaps the brown spot still
rankled.




CHAPTER FIVE.

ROBIN ON DUTY.


Beyond the fact that they are all desperately in earnest, all know each
other, and occupy all the most responsible and lucrative posts on the
face of the earth, Scotsmen are a class with whose characteristics I am
not well acquainted. But I learned a great deal from my new secretary.

Robin soon settled down to work. He not only performed his duties with
zeal and discretion, but he kept me up to mine. He hounded me through
the routine work of my Department; he verified my references; he managed
my correspondence; and he frequently drafted my speeches. He even
prepared some of my impromptus. Indeed, my--or rather his--description
of a certain member of the other side, a lesser light of the last
Government, a worthy man, always put up to explain matters when his
leader had decided that honesty on this occasion was the best policy, as
"a political niblick, always employed to get his party out of bad lies,"
won me more applause and popularity in a House of enthusiastic golfers
than endless weeks of honest toil behind the scenes had ever done.

But I learned more from Robin than that. I suppose I am a typical
specimen of Conservative officialdom. Until Robin came into my house it
had never occurred to me to ask myself why I was a Conservative: I had
been born one, and it was difficult for me to understand how any man of
ordinary intelligence could be anything else.

My father and grandfather were Conservative members before me, and I
come of a line which has always feared God, honoured the King, paid its
tithes, and tried to do something for the poor; and which regards
Radicals, Socialists, Nonconformists, and criminal lunatics as much the
same class of person. The only difference between myself and my
forebears is that I am much too pacific (or lazy) to cherish any
animosity against people whose views differ from my own. This fact,
coupled with certain family traditions, has brought me to my present
position in life; and, as I have already indicated, it will probably
keep me there. At least, so Kitty says.

"You must _assert_ yourself, dear," she declares. "Be _rude_ to people,
and go on being rude! Then they will take notice of you and give you
nice big posts to keep you quiet. Do you know what the Premier said
about you the other night at dinner, to Lady Bindle? (She told Dicky
Lever, and he told the Twins.) 'Inglethwaite? A dear fellow, a sound
party man, and runs his Department admirably. But--he strikes only on
the box!' Pig!"

It was about this time that Robin became a member of our establishment.
I had no idea what his political views were--it was just like me not to
have asked him, Kitty said--but felt confident that whatever side he
supported he would do so hot and strong.

But at first he gave no indication of his leanings. It was not until we
sat one night over our wine, in company with John Champion (member for a
big northern constituency, and regarded by many, notwithstanding various
eccentricities, as the coming man of the party) that he first gave
definite utterance to his views.

The cigars had gone round, and we had just performed that mysterious
national rite which, whether it owes its existence to economy or
politeness, invariably ends in several people burning their fingers with
the same match.

"I suppose, Mr Fordyce," said Champion, who had not met Robin before,
but obviously liked him, "that in common with all Scotsmen you are at
heart a Radical."

"Am I?" said Robin, with native caution.

"Most of your countrymen are," said Champion, with a sigh. "'They think
too much'--you know the rest of the quotation, I expect."

Robin nodded.

I was a little scandalised at this flagrant tribute to the enemy, and
said so.

Champion laughed.

"You are a whole-hearted old war-horse, Adrian. I envy you. Sometimes, I
wish that I----"

"For mercy's sake don't go and say that you are a Radical at heart too,"
I cried.

"N-n-o. But isn't it rot, the whole business?"

"What whole business?"

"Ask Mr Fordyce there. He will tell you. I see it in his eye."

"What is rot, Robin?" I asked. "Party government?"

"Yes," said Robin, quite explosively for him. "It is such a scandalous
waste of power and material." He laid down his cigar. "Man, it's just
pitiful. Consider! A party is returned to office. With great care and
discrimination a Cabinet is chosen. It is composed of men who are mainly
honest and patriotic. They are not necessarily men of genius, but they
are all men of undoubted ability, and they are genuinely anxious to do
their duty by the country. Now observe." (As a matter of fact he said
"obsairrve.") "How is this energy and ability expended? About half of
it--fifty per cent--goes in devising means to baffle the assaults of the
Opposition and so retain a precarious hold on office. Sir, it's just
ludicrous! Instead of concentrating their efforts upon--upon--I want a
metaphor, Mr Champion."

"Upon steering the ship of State," said Champion, with a twinkle in his
eye.

"That'll do, fine.--Upon steering the ship of State, they have to devote
half their time and energy to dodging the missiles of their shipmates.
That is what I mean when I say the thing is pitiful. What should we
think of the sanity of an ordinary ship's company, if the man at the
wheel had to spend half his time up in the rigging because a minority of
his messmates wanted to throw him overboard?"

"I think you are putting the case too strongly," I said. "The criticism
of a healthy public opinion is no bad thing. Besides, your Cabinet still
have fifty per cent of their energy left. What do they do with that?"

"Of that," said Champion, joining in, "about forty per cent is wasted on
mere parade--dummy legislation--bills that never will be passed, and
which no sensible man has any desire should be passed, except in a
mutilated and useless condition; bills merely brought forward by the
Government as a sop to the extreme wing of their own party. It doesn't
matter which side is in power. If they are Liberals, they have to
propose a few socialistic and iconoclastic measures, secretly thanking
God for the House of Lords all the while. If they are Conservatives,
they propitiate the Landlords and the Church by putting forward some
outrageously retrograde proposal or other, secure in the knowledge that
it will be knocked on the head by the halfpenny papers. Of the remaining
ten per cent----"

"About nine," resumed Robin, "is appropriated automatically to
absolutely essential routine business, like the Budget and Supply----"

"And the remaining one per cent," struck in Champion, "is devoted to
real live Legislation."

Then they both looked at me, this pair of carping pessimists, rather
furtively, like two fags who have allowed their tongues to wag over
freely in the presence of a monitor. It was a curious tribute to the
power of officialdom, for they were both far bigger men, in every sense,
than I. Finally Champion laughed.

"Don't look so horrified, Adrian," he said. "Mr Fordyce and I croak too
much. Still, you will find a grain or two of sense among the chaff, as
Jack Point says."

But I was not to be smoothed down so easily.

"According to you fellows," I grumbled, as I passed the port, "there is
practically no difference between one political party and another."

"None whatever," said Champion cheerfully--"not between the _backbones_
of the parties, that is. Of course excrescences don't count. Tell me,
Adrian, what bill, barring one or two contentious semi-religious
measures, has ultimately reached the Statute Book during the last twenty
years that might not have been put there by either party without any
violent departure from its principles? Not one! Foreign policy, again.
Does it make any difference to our position in the world which party is
in office nowadays? Not a scrap. The difference between the two sides is
immaterial. There is often a far deeper line of cleavage between two
sections of the same party than between party and party. We make faces
at each other, it is true; and one side plumes itself on the moral
support of Royalty and the aristocracy, while the other always bawls out
that it has the inviolable will of the people at its back,--I daresay
one assertion is about as true as the other--but I don't think there is
a pennyworth of difference, really. There used to be a lot, mind you,
when the Plebs were really struggling for a footing in the scheme of
things; but bless you! we are all more or less in the same crowd now.
Just a difference of label, that's all."

"There was a story my dominie used to tell," said Robin, who had been
listening to this diatribe with rapt attention, "about a visitor to a
seaside hotel, who ordered a bottle of wine. The boy brought up the
wrong kind, so the visitor sent for the landlord and pointed out the
mistake, adducing the label on the bottle as evidence. 'I'm very sorry,
sir, I'm sure,' said the landlord, 'but I'll soon put it right. Boy,
bring another label!' An old story, I am afraid, but it seems to me to
put Party goverment into a nutshell."

I rose, and began to replace the stoppers in the decanters. I was
feeling rather cross. I hate having my settled convictions tampered
with. They are not elastic, and this makes them brittle, and I always
feel nervous about their stability when the intellectual pressure of an
argument grows intense.

"When you two have abolished the British Constitution," I remarked
tartly, "what do you propose to substitute for the present _régime_?"

"'There,'" said Champion, "as the charwoman replied when asked for a
character, 'you _'ave_ me.' Let us join the ladies."

But I was still angry.

"It always seems best to me," I persisted doggedly, "to take up a good
sound line of action and stick to it, and to choose a good sound party
and stick to that. Half a glass of sherry before we go upstairs?"

"No, thanks. That is why I envy you, Adrian," said Champion. "It's a
wearing business for us, being so--so--what shall we call it, Mr
Fordyce?"

"Detached?" suggested Robin.

"That's it."

"Two-faced would be a better word," I growled.

Champion clapped me on the shoulder.

"Adrian," said he, "in time of peace there is always a large, critical,
neutral, and infernally irritating party, for ever philandering betwixt
and between two extremes of opinion. But when war is declared and it
comes to a fight, the ranks close up. There is no room for detachment,
and there are no neutrals. When occasion calls, you'll find all your
friends--your half-hearted, carping, Erastian friends--ranged up tight
beside you. Shall we be trapesing about in Tom Tiddler's ground when the
pinch comes, Mr Fordyce--eh?"

"Never fear!" said Robin.

And I am bound to say that we all of us lived to see John Champion's
assertion made good.




CHAPTER SIX.

ROBIN OFF DUTY.


I have yet to introduce to the indulgent reader two more members of the
family into which I have married.

The first of these is my daughter Phillis, of whom I have already made
passing mention. She is six years old, and appears to be compounded of
about equal parts of angelic innocence and original sin. In her dealings
with her fellow-creatures she exhibits all the _sangfroid_ and
self-possession that mark the modern child. She will be a "handful" some
day, the Twins tell me, and they ought to know. However, pending the
arrival of the time when she will begin to rend the hearts of young men,
she contents herself for the present with practising that accomplishment
with complete and lamentable success upon her own garments.

She is the possessor of a vivid imagination, which she certainly does
not inherit from me, and is fond of impersonating other people, either
characters of her own creation or interesting figures from story-books.
Consequently it is never safe to address her too suddenly. She may be a
fairy, or a bear, or a locomotive at the moment, and will resent having
to return to her proper self, even for a brief space, merely to listen
to some stupid and irrelevant remark--usually something about bed-time
or an open door--from an unintelligent adult.

Kitty says that I spoil her, but that is only because Kitty is quicker
at saying a thing than I am. She is our only child; and I sometimes
wonder, at moments of acute mental introspection (say, in the night
watches after an indigestible supper), what we should do without her.

The other character waiting for introduction is my brother-in-law,
Master Gerald Rubislaw. He is the solitary male member of the family of
which my wife and the Twins form the female side. He is, I think,
fourteen years of age, and he is at present a member of what he
considers--very rightly, I think; and I should know, for I was there
myself--the finest public school in the world. Having no parents, he
resides at my house during his holidays, and refreshes me exceedingly.

He is a sturdy but rather diminutive youth, with a loud voice. (He
always addresses me as if I were standing on a distant hill-top.) He
bears a resemblance to his sisters of which he is heartily and frankly
ashamed, and which he endeavours at times to nullify as far as possible
by a degree of personal uncleanliness which would be alarming to me,
were it not that the traditions of my own extreme youth have not yet
been entirely obliterated from my memory.

His health is excellent, and his intellect is in that condition
euphemistically described in house-master's reports as "unformed." He is
always noisy, constitutionally lazy, and hopelessly casual. But he
possesses the supreme merit of being absolutely and transparently
honest. I have never known him tell a lie or do a mean thing. To such
much is forgiven.

At present he appears to possess only two ambitions in life; one, to
gain a place in his Junior House Fifteen, and the other, to score some
signal and lasting victory over his form-master, a Mr Sydney Mellar,
with whom he appears to wage a sort of perpetual guerilla warfare. Every
vacation brings him home with a fresh tale of base subterfuges, petty
tyrannies, and childish exhibitions of spite on the part of the infamous
Mellar, all duly frustrated, crushed, and made ridiculous by the
ingenuity, resource, and audacity of the intrepid Rubislaw. I have never
met Mr Mellar in the flesh, but I am conscious, as time goes on and my
young relative's reminiscences on the subject accumulate, of an
increasing feeling of admiration and respect for him.

"He's a rotten brute," observed Gerald one day. "Do you know what he had
the cheek to do last term?"

"What?"

"Well, there was a clinking new desk put into our form-room, at the
back. I sit there," he added rather _naïvely_. "As soon as I saw it, of
course I got out my knife and started to carve my name. I made good big
letters, as I wanted to do the thing properly on a fine new desk like
that."

"Was this during school hours?" I ventured to inquire.

"Of course it was. Do you think a chap would be such a silly ass as to
want to come in specially to carve his name during play-hours, when he's
got the whole of his school-time to do it in?"

"I had not thought of that," I said apologetically.

"And don't go putting on side of that sort, Adrian, old man," roared
Gerald, in what a stranger would have regarded as a most threatening
voice, though I knew it was merely the one he keeps for moments of
playful badinage. "I saw _your_ name carved in letters about four inches
high in the Fifth Form room only the other day. I don't see how you can
jaw a man for doing a thing you used to do yourself thirty or forty
years ago."

I allowed this reflection on my appearance to pass without protest, and
Gerald resumed his story.

"Well, I did a first-class G to begin with, and was well on with the
Rubislaw--all in capitals: I thought it would look best that way--when
suddenly a great hand reached over my shoulder and grabbed my knife. It
was Stinker, of course."

"St----"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you that. We call him 'Stinker' now. You see, his
name is S. Mellar, and if you say it quickly it sounds like 'Smeller.'
So we call him 'Stinker.' It was a kid called Lane thought of it. Pretty
smart--eh? Oh, he's a clever chap, I can tell you," yelled Gerald, with
sincere enthusiasm.

"He must be a youth of gigantic intellect," I said.

"Oh, come off the roof! Well, Stinker grabbed my knife, and said,
'Hallo, young man, what's all this? Handing down your name to
posterity--eh?' with a silly grin on his face.

"I said I was just carving my name.

"'I see you have just finished it,' he said.

"I didn't quite tumble to his meaning at first, because I had only got
as far as G. RUB,--and then I saw that the whole thing as it stood
spelled 'GRUB.' Lord, how the swine laughed! He told the form all about
it, and of course they all laughed too, the sniggering, grovelling
sweeps!

"Then Stinker said: 'A happy thought has just occurred to me. I shall
not have your name obliterated in the usual manner'--they cut it out and
put in a fresh bit of wood, and charge you a bob--' this time. I have
thought of a more excellent way.' (He always talks like that, in a sort
of slow drawl.) 'We will leave your name exactly as you have carved it.
But remember, young man, not another letter do you add to that name so
long as you are a member of this school. A Grub you are,--a nasty little
destructive Grub,--and a Grub you shall remain, so far as that desk is
concerned, for all time. And if ever in future years you come down here
as a distinguished Old Boy--say a K.C.B. or an Alderman,--remember to
bring your numerous progeny'--oh, he's a sarcastic devil!--'to this
room, and show them what their papa once was!'

"Of course all the chaps roared again, at the idea of me with a lot of
kids. But that wasn't all. He switched off _that_ tap quite suddenly,
and said--

"'Seriously, though, I am not pleased about this. Carving your name on a
desk is not one of the seven deadly sins, but doing so when I have told
you not to _is_. This silly street-boy business has been getting too
prevalent lately: we shall have you chalking things up on the walls
next. I particularly gave out last week, when this new desk was put in,
that no one was to touch it. Come to me at twelve, and I will cane you.'
And he _did_," concluded Gerald, with feeling.

"What a shame!" said Dilly, who was sitting by. "All for carving a silly
old desk."

"He was perfectly right," said Gerald, his innate sense of justice
rising to the surface at once. "I wasn't lammed for cutting the desk at
all: it was for doing it after I had been told not to."

"It's the same thing," said Dilly, with feminine disregard for legal
niceties.

"Same thing? Rot! Fat lot you know about it, Dilly. It's a rum thing,"
he added to me in a reflective bawl, "but women never can understand the
rules of any game. Stinker is a bargee, but he was quite right to lam
me. It was for disobedience; and disobedience is cheek; and no master
worth his salt will stand cheek. So Stinker says, and he is right for
once."

Gerald is the possessor of a bosom friend, an excessively silent and
rather saturnine youth of about his own age. His name is Donkin, and he
regards Gerald, so far as I can see, with a grim mixture of amusement
and compassion. He pays frequent visits to my house, as his father is a
soldier in India; and he is much employed by the Twins for corroborating
or refuting the more improbable of their brother's reminiscences.

Robin soon made friends with the boys. Like most of their kind, their
tests of human probity were few and simple: and having discovered that
Robin not only played Rugby football, but had on several occasions
represented Edinburgh University thereat, they straightway wrote him
down a "decent chap" and took the rest of his virtues for granted.

It came upon them--and me too, as a matter of fact--as rather a shock
one evening, when Robin, during the course of a desultory conversation
on education in general, suddenly launched forth _more suo_ into a
diatribe against the English Public School system.

English boys, he pointed out, were passed through a great machine, which
ground up the individual at one end and disgorged a mere type at the
other--("Pretty good type too, Robin," from me),--they were taught to
worship bodily strength--("Quite right too!" said my herculean
brother-in-law),--they were herded together under a monastic system;
they were removed from the refining influence of female society--(even
the imperturable Donkin snorted at this),--and worst of all, little or
nothing was done to eradicate from their minds the youthful idea that it
is unmanly to read seriously or think deeply.

I might have said a good deal in reply. I might have dwelt upon the fact
that the English Public School system is not so hard upon the stupid
boy--which means the average boy--as that of more strenuous
forcing-houses of intellect abroad. I might have spoken of one or two
moral agents which prevent our schools from being altogether despicable:
unquestioning obedience to authority, for instance, or loyalty to
tradition. I might have told of characters moulded and fibres stiffened
by responsibility--our race bears more responsibility on its shoulders
than all the rest of the world put together--or of minds trained to
interpret laws and balance justice in the small but exacting world of
the prefects' meeting and the games' committee. But it was Gerald, who
is no moralist, but a youth of sound common-sense, who closed the
argument.

"Mr Fordyce," he said, "it's no use _my_ jawing to you, because you can
knock me flat at that game; and of course old Moke there"--this was
Master Donkin's unhappy but inevitable designation among his
friends--"is too thick to argue with a stuffed rabbit; but you had
better come down some time and see the place--that's all."

Robin promised to suspend judgment pending a personal investigation, and
the incident closed.

Gerald's verdict on Robin's views, communicated to me privately
afterwards, was characteristic but not unfavourable.

"He seems to have perfectly putrid notions about some things, but he's a
pretty sound chap on the whole--the best secretary you have had, anyhow,
old man. Have you seen him do a straight-arm balance on the
billiard-table?"

But I did not fully realise how completely Robin had settled down as an
accepted member of my household until one afternoon towards the end of
the Christmas holidays.

There is a small but snug apartment opening out of my library, through
an arched and curtained doorway. The library is regarded as my
workroom--impregnable, inviolable; not to be rudely attempted by
devastating housemaids. There is a sort of tacit agreement between Kitty
and myself as regards this apartment. Fatima-like, she may do what she
pleases with the rest of the house. She may indulge her passion for
drawing-room meetings to its fullest extent. She may intertain
missionaries in the attics and hold meetings of the Dorcas Society in
the basement. She may give reformed burglars the run of the
silver-closet, and allow curates and chorus-girls to mingle in sweet
companionship on the staircase. But she must leave the library alone,
and neither she nor her following must overflow through its double doors
during what I call business hours.

On this particular afternoon I had been engaged upon the draft of a
small bill with which I had been entrusted--we will call it the
"Importation of Mad Dogs Bill,"--and about four o'clock I handed it to
Robin with instructions to write out a fair copy. Robin retired into his
inner chamber, and I sat down in an arm-chair with _Punch_. (It was a
Wednesday, the Parliamentary half-holiday of those days, and still,
happily, the _Punch_-day of these.)

Kitty was holding a Drawing-room Meeting upstairs. I forget what
description of body she was entertaining: it was either a Society for
the Propagation of something which could never, in the nature of things,
come to birth; or else an Association for the Prevention of something
that was bound to go on so long as the world endured. I had been
mercifully absolved from attending, and my tea had been sent in to me. I
was enjoying an excellent caricature of my Chief in the minor cartoon of
_Punch_, when I heard the door of the inner room open and the voice of
my daughter inquire--

"Are you _drefful_ busy, Uncle Robin?" (My secretary had been elevated
to avuncular rank after a probation of just three hours.)

There was a sound as of a chair being pushed back, and a rustle which
suggested the hasty laying aside of a manuscript, and Robin's voice
said--

"Come away, Philly!" (This is a favourite Scoticism of Robin's, and
appears to be a term denoting hearty welcome.)

There was a delighted squeal and the sound of pattering feet. Next
ensued a period of rather audible osculation, and then there was
silence. Presently Phillis said--

"What shall we do? Shall I sing you a hymn?"

Evidently the revels were about to commence.

"I have just learned a new one," she continued. "I heared it in Church
yesterday afternoon, so I brought it home and changed it a bit. It's
called 'Onward, Chwistian Sailors!'"

"'_Soldiers_,' isn't it?"

"No--'_Sailors_.' It _was_ 'Soldiers,' but I like sailors much better
than soldiers, so I changed it. I'll sing it now."

"Wait till Sunday," said Robin, with much presence of mind. "Will you
not tell me a story?"

This idea appeared so good that Phillis began forthwith.

"Once there were three horses what lived in a stable. Two was wise and
one was just a foolish young horse. There was some wolves what lived
quite near the stable----"

"Wolves?" said my secretary, in tones of mild surprise.

"The stable," explained Phillis, "stood in the midst of the snowy plains
of Muscovy. I should have telled you that before."

"Just so," said Robin gravely. "Go on."

"Well, one day," continued the narratress's voice through the
curtains--I knew the story by heart, so I was able to fill up the gaps
for myself when she dropped to a confidential whisper--"one cold, windy,
berleak day, the old wolves said to the young ones, 'How about a meal of
meat?' and all the young one's said, 'Oh, _let's_!'

"That very morning," continued Phillis in the impressive bass which she
reserves for the most exciting parts of her narrative, "that _very_
morning the foolish young horse said to the old horses, 'Who is for a
scamper to-day?' Then he began to wiggle and wiggle at his halter. The
old horses said, 'There is wolves outside, and our master says that they
eat all sheep an' cattle an' horses,' But the young horse just wiggled
and wiggled,"--I could hear my daughter suiting the action to the word
upon her audience's knee,--"and pwesently his halter was off! Then out
he rushed, kicking up the nimble snow with his feathery heels,
and--what?"

Robin, who was automatically murmuring something about transferred
epithets, apologised for this pedantic lapse, and the tale proceeded.

"Well, just as he was goin' to have one more scamper, he felt a growl--a
awful, fearful, deep _growl_,"--Phillis's voice sank to a bloodcurdling
and continuous gurgle--"and he terrembled, like this! I'll show you----"

She slipped off Robin's knee, and I knew that she was now on the
hearth-rug, simulating acute palsy for his benefit.

"Then he felt somefing on his back, then somefing further up his back,
then a bite at his neck; and then he felt his head bitten off, and he
died. Now you tell me one."

"Which?"

Phillis considered.

"The one about the Kelpie and the Wee Bit Lassie."

Robin obliged. At first he stumbled a little, and had to be prompted in
hoarse whispers by Phillis (who apparently had heard the story several
times before); but as the narrative progressed and the adventures of the
wee bit lassie grew more enthralling and the Kelpie more terrifying, he
became almost as immersed as his audience. When I peeped through the
curtain they were both sitting on the hearth-rug pressed close together,
Phillis gripping one of Robin's enormous hands in a pleasurable
condition of terrified interest. The fair copy of the "Importation of
Mad Dogs Bill," I regret to say, lay on the floor under the table. I
retired to my arm-chair.

"The Kelpie," Robin continued, "came closer and closer behind her.
Already she could feel a hot breath on her neck." (So could Robin on
his, for that matter.) "But she did not give in. She ran faster and
faster until----"

"You've forgotten to say she could hear its webbed feet going _pad pad_
over the slippery stanes," interpolated Phillis anxiously.

"So I did. I'm sorry. She could hear its webbed feet going _pad pad_
over the slippery stanes. Presently though, she came to a wee bit housie
on the moor. It was empty, but she slippit through the yard-gate and
flew along the path and in at the door. The Kelpie came flying through
the gate----"

"No, no--it loupit ower the dyke!" screamed Phillis, who would
countenance no tamperings with the original text.

"Oh, yes. It loupit ower the dyke, but the wee lassie just slammed the
door in its face, and turned the key. Then she felt round in the dark
and keeked about, wondering what kind of place she was in. And at that
very moment, through a bit window in the wall----"

"She went ben first."

"Oh, yes. She went ben; and at that very moment, through the bit window
in the back-end of the house, there came a ray of light. The sun----"

"The sun had risen," declaimed Phillis, triumphantly taking up the tale;
"and with one wild sheriek of disappointed rage the Kelpie vanished
away, and the wee lassie was _saved_!"

There was a rapt pause after this exciting anecdote. Then Phillis
remarked--

"Uncle Robin, let's write that story down, and then I can get people to
read it to me."

"Why not write it down for yourself?"

"I can't write--much; and it ought to be writed in ink, and I--I am only
allowed to use pencil," explained my daughter, not without a certain
bitterness. "But I put the lead in my mouf," she added defiantly.

At this moment the door of my apartment was hurled open, and Gerald
projected himself into the room. It was the evening before his return to
school, and there was a predatory look in his eye. He was accompanied by
his speechless friend.

"Adrian, old son," he began, in such tones as an orator might address to
a refractory mob, "Moke and I are going to have a study next term, and
we want some furniture."

I mildly remarked that in my day furniture was supplied by the school
authorities.

"Yes, but I mean pictures and things. Can you give us one? We shall want
something to go on that wall opposite the window, shan't we, Moke? The
place where young Lee missed your head with the red-ink bottle. _Have_
you got a picture handy, Adrian?"

I replied in the negative.

Gerald took not the slightest notice.

"It will have to be a pretty big one," he continued. "There is a good
lot of red ink to cover. I have been taking a look round the house, and
I must say the pictures you've got are a fairly mangy lot--aren't they,
Moke?"

The gentleman addressed coughed deprecatingly, and looked at me as much
as to say that, whatever he thought of my taste in art, he had eaten my
salt and would refrain from criticism.

"There's one that might do, though," continued Gerald. "It's hanging in
the billiard-room--a big steamer in a storm."

By this time Phillis and Robin had joined the conclave.

"I know," said Phillis, nodding her head; "a great beautiful boat in
some waves. I should fink it was a friend of the _Great Eastern's_," she
added, referring to an antiquated print of the early Victorian leviathan
which hung in the nursery.

"We could take it for a term or two, anyhow," continued Gerald, "until
we get something better. I'm expecting some really decent ones after
summer. Ainslie _major_ is leaving then, and he has promised to let me
have some of his cheap. Then you can have yours back, Adrian. That's the
scheme! Come on, Moke, we'll go and take it down now. Thanks very much,
old chap" (to me). "I'll tell Kitty that you've let us. We can jab it
off its hook with a billiard-cue, I should think, Moke. Come too, will
you, Mr Fordyce? You can stand underneath and catch it, in case it comes
down with a run. So long, Adrian!"

The whole pack of them swept from the room, leaving the door open.

When I looked in at the billiard-room on my way up to dress for dinner
an hour later, nothing remained to mark the spot hitherto occupied by a
signed and numbered proof of _An Ocean Greyhound_, by Michael Angelo
Mahlstaff, A.R.A. (a wedding gift to my wife and myself from the
artist), but the imprints of several hot hands on the wall, together
with a series of parallel perpendicular scars, apparently inflicted by a
full-sized harrow.

From which two chapters it will be gathered that Robert Chalmers Fordyce
was a man capable, in his ordinary working-day, of playing many parts.




CHAPTER SEVEN.

A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP.

I.


My wife and I would have been more than human if we had not occasionally
cast a curious eye upon the relations of Robin and the Twins.

Of Robin's attitude towards that pair of charmers Kitty could make
little and I nothing. He kept his place and went his own way--rather
ostentatiously, I thought--and appeared if anything to avoid them. If he
found himself in their company he treated them with a certain grave
reticence--he soon grew out of his fondness for addressing us like a
public meeting--and made little attempt to bestow upon them the
attentions which young maidens are accustomed to receive from young men.

There was no mystery about the Twins' attitude towards Robin. "Here,"
said they in effect, "is a fine upstanding young man, full of promise,
but hampered in every direction by abysmal ignorance on matters of vital
importance. His instincts are sound, but at present he is quite
impossible. What he wants is mothering."

And so they mothered him, most maternally. They exerted themselves quite
strenuously to instil into him the fundamental principles of life--the
correct method of tying a dress tie; the intricate ritual which governs
such things as visiting-cards and asparagus; the exact limit of the
domains of brown boots and dinner-jackets; the utter criminality of
dickeys, turn-down collars, and side-whiskers; and the superiority of
dialogue to monologue as a concomitant to afternoon tea.

In many respects, they discovered with pleased surprise, their pupil
required no instruction or surveillance. For instance, he could always
be trusted to enter or leave a room without awkwardness, and his manner
of address was perfect. He was neither servile nor familiar, and the
only people to whom I ever saw him pay marked deference were the members
of what is after all the only real and natural aristocracy in the
world--that of old age.

All their ministrations Robin received with grave wonder--he was not of
the sort that can easily magnify a fetish into a deity--but, evidently
struck by the intense importance attached by the Twins to their own
doctrines, he showed himself a most amenable pupil. Probably he
realised, in spite of hereditary preference for inward worth as opposed
to outward show, that though a coat cannot make a man, a good man in a
good coat often has the advantage of a good man in a bad coat. So he
allowed the Twins to round off his corners; and, without losing any of
his original ruggedness of character or toughness of fibre, he soon
developed into a well-groomed and sufficiently presentable
adjunct--quite distinguished-looking, Dilly said, when she met us one
day on our way down to the House--to a lady's morning walk.

What he really thought of it all I do not know. I have a kind of
suspicion that deep down in his heart every Scot entertains a contempt
for the volatile and frivolous English which is only equalled by that of
the English for the nation to whom I once heard a Highland minister
refer as "the giddy and godless French"; but Robin was not given to the
revelation of his private thoughts. He seldom spoke of the Twins to
me--he was a discusser of manners rather than men--but he once remarked
that they were girls of widely different character. He entered into no
further details, but I remember being struck by the observation at the
time; for I had always regarded my sisters-in-law as being as identical
in disposition as they were in appearance.

Still it was pretty to see Robin unbending to please the two girls, and
to hear him say "No, really?" or "My word, what rot!" when you knew that
his tongue was itching to cry, "Is that a fact?" or "Hoots!" or
"Havers!" as the occasion demanded.

He also possessed the great and unique merit of not being ashamed to ask
for guidance in a difficulty. I have known him pause before an
unfamiliar dish at table and ask one of his preceptresses, in the
frankest manner possible, whether the exigencies of the situation called
for a spoon or a fork: and out of doors it was a perpetual joy to hear
him whisper, on the approach of some one whom he thought might be a
friend of ours, "Will I lift my hat?"

All that year Robin was my right hand. It was a long session; and as
my Chief sat in the Upper House, much work in the way of answering
questions and making statements fell upon me. We had a good working
majority, but the Opposition were a united and well-organised body
that year, and we had to rise early and go to bed late to keep their
assaults at bay while proceeding with the programme of the session.
Every afternoon, before I entered the House to take my place at
question-time, my secretary insisted on taking me through the answers
which he had prepared for my recitation; and we also discussed the
line of action to be pursued if I were cornered by questions of the
"arising-out-of-that-answer" order.

Personally, I loathed this part of the work--I am a departmentalist pure
and simple--but Robin's eye used to glow with the light of battle as he
rehearsed me in the undoubtedly telling counters with which I was to
pulverise the foe.

"I would like fine," he once said to me, "to stand up in your place and
answer these questions for you."

"I wish you could, Robin," I sighed. "And," I added, "I believe you will
some day."

Robin turned pink, for the first time in our acquaintance, and I heard
his teeth click suddenly together.

So the wind lay that way!



II.


During the next year my household was furnished with three surprises,
Dilly contributing one and Robin two.

Robin's came first. One was his uncle, the other his book.

One night it fell to my lot to dine in the City, as the guest of the
Honourable Company of Tile-Glazers and Mortar-Mixers. As I swam
forlornly through a turgid ocean of turtle-soup and clarified punch
towards an unyielding continent of fish, irrigated by brown sherry,
mechanically rehearsing to myself the series of sparkling yet
statesmanlike epigrams with which I proposed to reply to the toast of
his Majesty's Ministers I became aware that the gentleman on my left was
addressing me in a voice that seemed vaguely familiar.

"And how is my brother's second boy doing with you, Mr Inglethwaite?"

I must have looked a trifle blank, for he added--

"My nephew, Robin."

I glanced obliquely at the card which marked his place at table, and
read--

  _Sir James Fordyce._

Then I began to grasp the situation, and I realised that this great man,
whose name was honourably known wherever the ills of childhood are
combated, was Robin's uncle, the "doctor" to whom my secretary had
casually referred, and whom he occasionally went to visit on Sunday
afternoons. I had pictured an overdriven G.P., living in Bloomsbury or
Balham, with a black bag, and a bulge in his hat where he kept his
stethoscope. A man sufficiently distinguished to represent his
profession at a public banquet was more than I had bargained for.

We became friends at once, and supported each other, so to speak, amid
the multitude of dinners and dishes, our respective neighbours proving
but broken reeds so far as social intercourse was concerned. On Sir
James's left, I remember, sat a plethoric gentleman whose burnished
countenance gave him the appearance of a sort of incarnate Glazed Tile;
while my right-hand neighbour, from the manner in which he manipulated
the food upon his plate, I put down without hesitation as a Mortar Mixer
of high standing.

The old gentleman gave me a good deal of information about Robin.

"He had a hard fight his first year or two in London," he said. "I could
see by the way he fell upon his dinner when he came to my house that his
meat and drink were not easily come by. Still, now that he has won
through, he will not regret the experience. I had it myself. It is the
finest training that a young man can receive. Hard, terribly hard, but
invaluable! You will not have seen his father yet--my brother John?"

I told him no.

"Well, try and meet him. You, as an Englishman, would perhaps call him
hard and narrow,--after forty years of London I sometimes find him so
myself,--but he is a fine man, and he has a good wife. So have you," he
added unexpectedly--"Robin has told me that."

I laughed, in what the Twins call the "silly little gratified way" which
obtrudes itself into my demeanour when any one praises Kitty.

"I hope you are in the same happy situation," I said.

"No, I am a bachelor. My brother John has not achieved a K.C.B., but he
is a more fortunate man than I."

The conversation dropped here, but I repeated it to my wife afterwards.

"Of course, the whole thing is as clear as daylight," she said. "These
two brothers both wanted to marry the same girl. She took the farmer
one, so the other, poor thing, went off to London and became a famous
doctor instead. That's all. He might have been Robin's father, but he's
only his uncle."

Happy the mind which can reconstruct a romance out of such scanty
material.

Sir James ultimately dined at my house, and became a firm friend of all
that dwelt therein, especially Phillis.

Then came Robin's second surprise--his book. It was a novel, and a very
good novel too. He had been at it for some time, he told me, but it was
only recently that he had contrived to finish it off. Being distrustful
of its merits, he had decided to offer it to just one good publisher,
who could take it or leave it. If he took it, well and good. But if the
publisher (and possibly just one other) exhibited an attitude of
aloofness, Robin had fully decided not to hawk his bantling about among
other less reputable and more amenable firms, but to consign it to his
bedroom fire.

However, this inhuman but only-too-unusual sacrifice of the parental
instinct was averted by the one good publisher, who accepted the book,
and introduced Robin to the public.

Either through shyness or indifference Robin had told us nothing of the
approaching interesting event, and it was not until one morning in
October, when a parcel of complimentary copies arrived from the
publisher's, that we were apprised of the fact that we had been
cherishing an author in our midst. Robin solemnly presented us with a
copy apiece (which I thought handsome but extravagant), and also sent
one to his parents, who, though I think they rather doubted the
propriety of possessing a son who wrote novels at all, wrote back
comparing it very favourably with _The Pilgrim's Progress_, the only
other work of fiction with which they were acquainted.

The book itself dealt with matters rather than men, and with men rather
than women; which was characteristic of its author, but rather
irritating for the Twins. It had a good deal to say about the under-side
of journalism,--graphic and convincing, all this,--and contained a
rather technical but absorbingly interesting account of some most
exciting financial operations, winding up with a great description of a
panic on the Stock Exchange. But there were few light and no tender
passages, from which it will be seen that Robin as an author appealed to
the male rather than the female intellect.

The Twins, I think, were secretly rather disappointed with the book,
less from any particular fondness for the perusal of love-passages than
from a truly human desire to note how Robin would have handled them; for
it is always interesting to see to what extent our friends will give
themselves away when they commit the indiscretion of a book. On this
occasion Robin had been exasperatingly self-contained.

But life is full of compensations. There was a dedication. It read:--

      THIS BOOK

  OWES ITS INCEPTION,

   AND IS THEREFORE

      DEDICATED,

         TO

   A CIRCUMSTANCE

        OVER

        WHOM

  I HAVE NO CONTROL.

                  R. C. F.

Now it is obvious that in nine cases out of ten there is only one
circumstance over whom a vigorous young man has no control, and this
circumstance wears petticoats. Hitherto I had not seriously connected
Robin with the tender passion, and this sudden intimation that the most
serious-minded and ambitious of young men is not immune from the same
rather startled me.

The female members of my establishment were pleasantly fluttered, though
they were concerned less with the lady's existence than with her
identity.

"Who do you think she is?" inquired Kitty of me, the first time the
subject cropped up between us.

"Don't know, I'm sure," I murmured. I was smoking my post-prandial cigar
at the time, at peace with all the world. "Never had the privilege of
seeing his visiting-list."

"I wonder who she can be," continued my wife. "He--he hasn't said
anything to you, has he, dear?" she inquired, in a tentative voice.

I slowly opened one of my hitherto closed eyes, and cocked it
suspiciously at the diplomatist sitting opposite to me. (The Twins and
Robin were out at the theatre.) Then, observing that she was stealthily
regarding me through her eyelashes--a detestable trick which some women
have--I solemnly agitated my eyelid some three or four times and gently
closed it again.

"Has he confided any of his love affairs to you, I mean?" continued
Kitty, quite unabashed.

"If you eat any more chocolates you will make yourself sick," I
observed.

"Yes, dear," said my wife submissively, pushing away the bon-bon dish.
"But has he?"

"Are you trying to pump me?"

"Oh, gracious, no! What would be the good? I only asked a plain
question. You men are such creatures for screening each other, though,
that it's never any use asking a man anything about another man."

"True for you. As a matter of fact, Robin has hardly said a word to me
on the subject of women since first I met him."

Kitty thoughtfully cracked a filbert with her teeth--an unladylike habit
about which I have often spoken to her--and said--

"What exciting chats you must have!" Then she added reflectively--

"I expect it's a girl in Scotland. A sort of Highland lassie, in a kilt,
or whatever female Highlanders wear."

"Why should a novel about the Stock Exchange 'owe its inception' to a
Highland lassie?"

Kitty took another filbert.

"That's 'vurry bright' of you, Adrian, as that American girl used to
say. There's something in that. (Yes, I know you don't like it, dear,
but I love doing it. I'll pour you out another glass of port. There!)
But any idiotic excuse is good enough for a man in love. Has he ever
been sentimental with you--quoted poetry, or anything?"

"N-no. Stop, though! He did once quote Burns to me, but that was _à
propos_ of poetry in general, not of love-making."

I remembered the incident well. Robin had picked up at a bookstall a
copy of an early and quite valuable edition of Burns' poems. He had sat
smoking with me in the library late the same night, turning over the
pages of the tattered volume, and quoting bits, in broad vernacular,
from "Tam o' Shanter" and "The Cottar's Saturday Night." Suddenly he
began, almost to himself--

  "O, my love is like a red, red rose,
     That's newly sprung in June;
   My love is like a melody
     That's sweetly played in tune.
   As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
     So deep in love am I----"

He broke off for a moment, and I remembered how he glowered ecstatically
into the fire. Then he concluded--

  "And I will love thee still, my dear,
     Till a' the seas gang dry."

"Man," he said, "that's fine! That's poetry. That's the real thing!"

I had agreed. It is no use arguing with a Scot about Burns. (I remember
once being nearly dirked at a Caledonian Dinner because I ventured to
remark that "before ye" was not in my opinion a good rhyme to "Loch
Lomond.")

However, Kitty and I were unable to decide whether Robin's "bonnie lass"
on that occasion had been a personality or an abstraction.

"Mightn't it be one of the Twins?" I remarked.

"Well, it _might_ be," admitted Kitty judicially, "but he has kept it
very close if it is. No," she continued more decidedly, "I don't think
it can be. They are quite out of his line. Besides--it would be too
absurd!"

It was not one Twin at any rate, for a fortnight later Dilly sprung upon
us the third surprise of the series I have mentioned. She announced that
she had decided to marry Dicky Lever.

There was, I suppose, nothing very surprising in that. Dicky had been in
constant attendance upon the Twins for nearly two years, and had long
since graduated into the ranks of the Good Sorts. The surprise to
us--rather unreasonably, perhaps--lay in the fact of--

1. Dicky having definitely fixed upon a particular Twin to propose to;

2. That Twin having definitely selected Dicky out of the assortment at
   her command.

I was so accustomed to seeing my sisters-in-law compassed about by a
cloud of young men who appeared to admire them both equally, and to whom
they appeared to apportion their favours with indiscriminate
_camaraderie_, that the idea of one admirer stealing a march on all the
others seemed a little unfair, somehow.

As Dolly remarked, it would break up the firm horribly.

"You see," she confided to me rather plaintively, "Dilly will have no
use for them now, and they'll have still less use for her--an engaged
girl beside other girls is about as exciting as a tapioca-pudding at a
Lord Mayor's Banquet--and they will only have me. That won't be half the
fun."

"I should have thought that your fun would have been exactly doubled," I
said.

"Not a bit. How like a man! Don't you see, the fun used to be in playing
them backwards and forwards between our two selves--like ping-pong, you
know! It was clinking!"

She sighed regretfully.

"Now I shall either have to avoid men or marry them," she concluded,
vaguely but regretfully. "Before, if they got in the way, I could always
volley them back to Dilly. Now--one _can't_ play ping-pong all by
oneself!"



III.

Dilly's engagement, as is usual under such circumstances, afforded my
household many opportunities for airy badinage and innocent merriment.

Dolly always heralded her coming into the billiard-room, where the
affianced pair had staked out a claim, by a cough of penetrating
severity, and usually entered the room with her features obscured by an
open umbrella. On several occasions, too, she impersonated her sister;
and once, when Dicky was spending a week-end in the house, was only
prevented by the fraction of a second from robbing that incensed damosel
of her morning salute.

My share in the proceedings was limited to a single constrained
interview with Dicky, at which, feeling extremely rude and inquisitive,
I asked him the usual stereotyped questions about his income, prospects,
and habits (most of which I knew only too well already), which, being
satisfactorily answered, I rang the bell for the Tantalus, and thanked
heaven that the Twins were not Triplets. I had indeed suggested that
Dilly's nearest and most natural protector was her brother, Master
Gerald, and that Dicky should apply not for my consent but his. This
motion, however, was negatived without a division. I was sorry, for I
think my brother-in-law would have shown himself worthy of the occasion.

My wife received the news of the engagement with all the enthusiasm
usually exhibited by a Salvation lassie when a fresh convert is hustled
forward to the "saved" bench, and henceforth divided her time between
ordering Dilly's trousseau and giving tea-parties, at which the
prospective bridegroom was produced and passed round, "as if," to use
his own expression, "he were the newest thing in accordion-pleating."

As regards Robin's share in the event, I can only recall one incident.
He had been away at Stoneleigh, the largest town in my constituency, on
some party business, and when he returned home the engagement had been
announced for nearly a week.

"I must go and offer my good wishes to Miss Dilly," he said, after
hearing the news. "Do you know where she is, Mrs Inglethwaite?"

"I saw her upstairs a few minutes ago," said Kitty. "Come up, and we'll
find her."

We were in the library at the time, and Kitty and Robin left the room
together. The rest of the story my wife told me later.

"We went up," she said, "and looked into the drawing-room, where I had
last seen Dilly. The room was nearly dark, but she was there, sitting
curled up in front of the fire.

"'There she is,' I said. 'Go and say something nice.'

"Well, dear,"--Kitty's face assumed an air of impressive solemnity which
makes her absurdly like her daughter--"he stood hesitating a moment, and
then walked straight up to her and said--

"'Good afternoon! Can you tell me where your sister is? I want to offer
her my good wishes on the great event.'

"It wasn't Dilly at all. It was Dolly! And he was able to distinguish
between the two in that dim room. And _I_ couldn't!"

"Oh," said I carelessly, "I expect he noticed she wasn't wearing an
engagement-ring."

My wife looked at me and sighed, as over one who would spoil a romance
for want of a ha'porth of sentiment. And yet I know she would have been
quite scandalised if any one had hinted at tender passages between her
sister and my secretary. Women are curious creatures.




CHAPTER EIGHT.

OF A PIT THAT WAS DIGGED, AND WHO FELL INTO IT.


Dicky Lever was a hearty and not particularly intellectual youth of the
What ho! type (if you know what I mean). He was employed in some
capacity in a Government office, but his livelihood was not entirely
dependent on his exertions therein--which was, perhaps, fortunate, as
his sole claim to distinction in his Department lay in the fact of his
holding the record for the highest score at small cricket in the Junior
Secretaries' room. He was a member of the Leander Club, a more than
usually capable amateur actor, and a very good fellow all round.

The engagement was announced at the end of July, which is a busy time
for this country's legislators. The session was drawing to a close, and
we were passing Bills with a prodigality and despatch which provoked
many not altogether undeserved gibes from a reptile Opposition Press
concerning the devotion of his Majesty's Government to the worship of
Saint Grouse.

One night I brought Champion home to dinner between the afternoon and
evening sittings. At the latter he was to move the second reading of his
"Municipal Co-ordination Bill," a measure which was intended to grapple
with the chaos arising from the multitude of opposing or overlapping
interests that controlled the domestic arrangements of the Londoner. An
effort was to be made to bring all the Gas, Electricity, Water, Paving,
and other corporations into some sort of line, and prevent them from
getting into each other's way and adding to the expenses and
inconvenience of the much-enduring ratepayer. It was a useful little
Bill; but though everybody approved of it on principle, various powerful
interests were at work against it, and its prospects of getting through
Committee hung in the balance.

"Now, Mr Champion," said Dilly, who knew that a man always likes to be
questioned about his work, especially by a pretty girl, "what will your
Bill do for _us_? I have asked this person here,"--indicating her
_fiancé_,--"but he says parish-pump politics aren't in his department.
He licks stamps at the Foreign Office," she added in explanation.

"Tell her, Champion," said Dicky. "Out of my line altogether. Takes me
all my time to keep an eye on those Johnnies in the Concert of Europe."

"I will tell you one thing the Bill will do, Miss Dilly," said Champion,
a little heavily. (Dolly once said of him, "He's awfully clever and able
and all that, but he hasn't got a light hand for conversational
pastry.") "How many times have you noticed the streets up about here
this year?"

"Heaps," said Dilly.

"They have hardly ever been down," corroborated Dolly.

"Let me see," continued Dilly. "Our side of the Square was repaved in
January. Directly after that they took it up again and did something to
the drains."

"In March they opened it again to lay down an electric light main," said
I.

"In April something burst," said Dolly, "and that meant more men with
wigwams and braziers."

"And last month," concluded Dilly, "they took away the wood pavement and
relaid the whole Square with some new patent asphalte, which smelt
simply, oh----"

"Rotten!" supplied Gerald. (Have I mentioned that he had just arrived
home for his summer holiday?)

"Well," said Champion, "the Bill would regulate that sort of thing. It
would protect the streets from being torn up at will by any Company who
happened to have business underneath them. As things are, practically
any one may come along and hew holes anywhere he pleases."

"The police ought to stop it," said Kitty, who has a profound belief in
the Force. (I am convinced that if Beelzebub himself were to enter the
house at any time during my absence, Kitty would lure him into the
dining-room with the sherry, and then telephone for a constable.)

"The police have no right," said Champion. "If a gas company choose to
give notice that they intend on a certain day to come and burrow in a
road, all the police can do is to divert the traffic, and make the gas
company as comfortable as possible."

I was not following this conversation with any particular interest.
Being expected to speak in favour of the Bill that night, I was
undergoing the preliminary anguish which invariably attends my higher
oratorical efforts. But I remember now that about this time Dilly
suddenly turned to Dicky and whispered something in his ear. Then they
both looked across the dinner-table at Robin, who nodded, as who should
say, "I know fine what you whispered then." After that they all three
laughed and looked down the table at Champion, who was still expatiating
on the merits of his Bill.

I suppose anybody else would have divined what was in the wind, but I
did not.

       *       *       *       *       *

A week later we were treated to an all-night sitting. The Irishmen had
been quiescent of late, but on this occasion they made amends for their
temporary relaxation of patriotism by resolutely obstructing an
Appropriation Bill, which had to pass through Committee that night (if
John Bull was to have any ready cash at all during the next few months),
and kept us replying to amendments and trotting through division-lobbies
until six o'clock next morning.

Robin stayed on in attendance at the House most of the night, but about
three o'clock I sent him home, with instructions to stay in bed till
tea-time if he pleased. He had had a hard time lately.

I was walking homeward in the early sunshine, marvelling, as people who
accidentally find themselves up early pharisaically do, at the fatuity
of those who waste the best hours of the whole day in bed, and revelling
in the near prospect of a bath and my breakfast, when on turning a
corner I walked into a hand-cart which was standing across the pavement.
It contained workmen's tools--picks, shovels, and the like. On the near
side of the roadway a man was erecting one of those curious wigwam
arrangements which screen the operations of electricians and other
subterranean burrowers from the public gaze. A dirty-faced small boy in
corduroys was tending a brazier of live coals, upon which some breakfast
cans were steaming. Between the wigwam and the pavement a gigantic navvy
was hewing wooden paving-blocks out of the roadway.

The spectacle did not attract my interest specially, as this particular
piece of street had been eviscerated so often that I had grown callous
to its sufferings. But I paused for a moment to survey the big navvy's
muscles, and to wonder how early in the morning it would be necessary to
rise in order to catch a small boy with a clean face. The navvy was a
fine specimen of humanity, with a complexion tanned a dusky coffee
colour.

I was reflecting on the joys of the simple life and the futility of
politics and other indoor pastimes in general, when the big man rose
from his stooping posture and caught my eye. He appeared a little
disconcerted by my scrutiny, and turned his back and renewed his
exertions with increased vigour, favouring me hereafter with what
architects call a "south elevation" of himself.

I went home to breakfast, wondering where I had seen the big navvy's
back before. I mentioned casually to Kitty and the Twins that Goring
Street was up again. They wondered how the management of the Goring
Hotel liked it, with that mess under their very windows, and agreed with
me that it was high time Champion's Bill, due for its Third Reading
to-morrow, became law.

I stayed in bed till lunch-time, and then, rather late in the afternoon,
set out for the House, which I knew I should find in an extremely limp
condition after its previous night's dissipation. On the way I called in
at the Goring Hotel in Goring Street, where Champion lived when in town.
I found him in his room on the first floor, gazing out of the window
into the street.

I looked out too, to see what was interesting him. Directly below us lay
the encampment of the workmen whom I had seen in the morning. They had
hewed up a few yards of the wood pavement, and the smaller of the two
men was now immersed up to his waist in a hole, working rather
laboriously in the restricted space at his command with a pick-axe. The
boy was piling wooden blocks into a neat heap, and the big man, whose
form was only partially visible, was doing something inside the wigwam.

The roadway was more than half blocked, and cabs and omnibuses, in
charge of overheated and eloquent drivers, were being filtered through
the narrow space left at their disposal by a phlegmatic policeman.

"Look here," said Champion.

I looked.

"What on _earth_ are those fellows doing?" he continued.

"Re-laying the road, perhaps."

"One doesn't re-lay a road by making a deep hole in it."

"Well--gas!"

"Gas and electric light mains in this street are all led along a special
conduit reached by manholes every eighty yards," said Champion. "There's
no need to dig."

"Well--drains!" said I vaguely. But I was a mere child in the hands of
this expert.

"The drains, as you call them," he said testily, "consist of a great
sewer away in the depths, accessible from various appointed places.
Besides, nobody in his senses tries to lift earth out of a hole with a
pick-axe."

"Perhaps the solution of the mystery lies inside the wigwam," I said.

"No. That is just what complicates matters. When a shaft leading down to
the electric light mains is opened, one of those canvas shelters is put
over the top. Now there is nothing under that shelter--nothing but the
bit of road it covers. The thing seems to be simply a stage accessory,
planted there to give the encampment an aspect of reality. Ah, look at
that!"

"That" was a small piece of paving-wood, dexterously hurled by the
dirty-faced boy, who seemed to be finding time hang rather heavily on
his hands. It took a passing citizen in the small of the back, but when
he swung round to detect the source of the missile the boy was on his
knees again industriously blowing up the brazier.

With an indignant snort the citizen passed on his way, doubtless adding
the outrage, in his mind, to the long list of unsolved London crimes.
But retribution awaited the youthful miscreant. The phlegmatic policeman
who was regulating the traffic on the single-line system happened to
notice the deed. He walked majestically across from the far side of the
street towards our excavating friends.

"Come on!" said Champion to me. "There's going to be some fun."

We stepped out through one of the windows, which possessed a broad
balcony, and took our stand behind some laurels in tubs which lined the
balustrade. The street was comparatively quiet at the time, and we were
able to hear most of the dialogue that ensued.

"'Ere, mate," began the traffic-expert to the smaller of the two
navvies, "just ketch that boy of yours a clip on the side of the 'ead,
will you?"

The smaller man desisted from his labours in the hole.

"Wotsye, ole sport?" he inquired cheerily.

The policeman was a little ruffled by this familiarity.

"I'll trouble _you_," he repeated with some hauteur, "to ketch that boy
of yours a clip on the side of the 'ead. If not, I shall 'ave to do my
duty, according----"

Here the roar of a passing dray drowned his utterance.

The smaller man clambered nimbly out of the hole and proceeded to grab
his young friend by the scruff of the neck.

"Billy," he remarked dispassionately, "this gentleman says as 'ow I'm to
give you a clip on the side of the 'ead."

"Woffor," inquired Billy, simulating extreme terror.

The man passed the question on to the policeman, who explained the
nature of the offence. His statement was voluntarily corroborated by
several members of an audience which seemed to have materialised from
nowhere, and now formed a ring round the encampment.

"Righto!" said the man with cheery acquiescence. "Billy, my lad, you've
got to 'ave it."

"Tha's right, ole son! You give 'im socks," remarked a hoarse and rather
indistinct voice of the gin-and-fog variety, from among the spectators.

Simultaneously its owner lurched his way to the front rank, the others
making room for him with that respectful sympathy, not unmixed with
envy, which is always accorded to a true-born Briton in his condition.
He was obviously a member of some profession connected with coal-dust,
and it was plain that he had been celebrating the conclusion of his
day's labours.

The smaller navvy, thus exhorted, administered the desired clip. It was
not a particularly severe one, but it drew from its recipient the
somewhat unexpected expostulation--

"You silly ass! Not so hard!"

Where had I heard that stentorian but childish voice before? Who was
this road-breaker's acolyte, with his brazier, his dirty face, and--a
public-school accent?

I leaned over the balustrade and surveyed him and his two companions.
Then I drew my breath sharply.

Merciful heavens!

The dirty-faced boy was my brother-in-law, Master Gerald Rubislaw, the
clip-administerer was Dicky Lever, and the gigantic and taciturn navvy
was--my Secretary!

Having witnessed the carrying-out of the sentence, the policeman
returned to his duties; none too soon; for a furniture van and a
butcher's cart, locked in an inextricable embrace, the subject of a
sulphurous duet between their respective proprietors, called loudly for
his attention.

Meanwhile Coaldust, who had been inspecting the result of our friends'
united labours with some interest, suddenly echoed the question which
had first exercised Champion's logical mind by inquiring what the blank
dash the two adjectival criminals and the qualified nipper thought they
were doing to the asterisked road.

He received no encouragement. Robin was now engaged with a hammer and
chisel in cutting a sort of touch-line all round the encampment, while
Dicky did not cease manfully to delve with the pick-axe in the pit which
he had digged for himself. For a long time they turned a deaf ear to the
anxious inquiries of their interlocutor.

But there are limits to long-suffering. Coaldust's witticisms increased
with his audience, and at last Dicky turned to Robin and cried, with a
really admirable maintenance of character and accent--

"'Ere, Scotty, come and give this bloke one in the neck. 'E's askin' for
it!"

Robin deliberately suspended operations, rose heavily to his feet, and
cleared his throat. Then he turned upon the alcoholic Coaldust. I
strained my ears. Surely _he_ was not going to talk Cockney!

Far from it. He stuck to his last.

"See here, ma man," he roared, in a voice that made the crowd jump, "are
ye for a ding on the side o' the heid?"

Coaldust capitulated with alacrity.

"No offence, 'Orace!" he remarked genially. "You an' me was always pals.
Put it there!" He extended an ebony hand, which Robin solemnly shook and
returned to his work.

Whatever my three friends were up to, it is possible that they might now
have been left in peace for some time; for the crowd, seeing no chance
of further sport from Coaldust, began to melt away. But a fresh
character entered the scene to keep alive the nagging interest of the
drama.

My first intimation that something new was afoot came from an errand-boy
on the edge of the crowd, who, addressing a lady or ladies unseen,
suddenly expressed a desire to be chased.

All heads were now turned down the street, and there, approaching with
rather faltering steps, carrying a red cotton bundle and a tea-can, I
beheld--one of my sisters-in-law!

Postulating Dicky, I presumed it was Dilly, and I began to piece
together in my mind the plot of this elaborate comedy. Evidently Dicky,
Robin, and Gerald had decided--for a bet, or because they were dared, or
possibly with a view to giving Champion's Bill a leg-up by a practical
demonstration of the crying need for it--to dress themselves up as
workmen and come and "do a turn," as they say in the music halls, to the
discomfort of his Majesty's lieges and the congestion of traffic, upon
some sufficiently busy thoroughfare for a stated period of time.

Certainly they were doing it rather well. They were admirably made
up,--Dicky was a past-master at that sort of thing,--and their
operations so far had been sufficiently like the genuine article to
impose upon the public in general,--if we except Champion and
Coaldust,--even to the point of securing the assistance of the
traffic-directing policeman.

But alas! with that one step further, which is so often fatal to great
enterprises, they had sought to add a finishing touch of realism to
their impersonation by the inclusion of a little feminine interest; and
to that end Dilly had been added to the cast--or more likely had added
herself--in the _rôle_ of a young person of humble station bringing her
affianced his tea.

And, not for the first time in the history of man, it was the woman who
opened the door to disaster.

Dilly wore a natty print dress--probably my housemaid's--with a tartan
shawl over her head. She had on her thickest shoes, but they were
woefully smart and thin for a girl of her class. Moreover, her hair was
beautifully arranged under the shawl, and her hands--though she had had
the sense to discard her ruby and sapphire engagement-ring--were too
white and her face was too clean to lend conviction to her
impersonation. In short, in her desire to present a pleasing _tout
ensemble_--an object in which I must say she had succeeded to
perfection--Dilly had utterly neglected detail and histrionic accuracy.

Evidently she was not expecting a gallery. Two highly-interested
concentric circles--one of people and one of dogs--round her _fiancé's_
encampment was rather more than she had bargained for. She had emerged
quite suddenly from a side street (which I knew led to a shortcut from
home) and now paused irresolutely a few yards away, crimson to the roots
of her hair, what time the errand-boy, with looks of undisguised
admiration, continued to reiterate his desire to be pursued.

The crowd all turned and stared at poor Dilly. Obviously they did not
know what to make of her. Possibly she was some one from the chorus of a
musical comedy going to be photographed, possibly she was merely "a bit
balmy," or possibly she was an advertisement for something, and would
begin to distribute hand-bills presently. So far, she merely looked as
if she wanted to cry.

It was Robin who saw her first. He immediately stepped over his
newly-completed touch-line, and taking the spotted bundle and the
tea-can from her hands, conducted her ceremoniously within the magic
circle, saying, in a voice much more like his own than before--

"Come away, lassie!"

Dicky looked up from his labours at this, and beheld his _fiancée_ for
the first time. All he said was--

"By gad, you've done it after all! Bravo!"

But Dilly did not appear to be at all gratified She merely sat on
Gerald's little mountain of paving-blocks, looking as if she could not
decide whether to throw her apron over her face and scream, or take a
header into the wigwam. My heart bled for her in spite of her folly. The
crowd, deeply interested and breathing hard, stood round waiting for the
performance to begin.

It was Coaldust who took the lead.

"Tip us a song and dance, Clara," he said encouragingly.

Robin, who had been making a show of unfastening the bundle, suddenly
rose to his feet. Coaldust saw him.

"All right, Carnegie," he remarked hurriedly. "No offence, ole pal!"

But Robin turned to Dicky, and the two held a hasty conversation, whose
nature I could guess. Dilly could not be exposed to this sort of thing
any longer. They began to put on their coats.

"They are going to give it up," I said, not without relief. "About time,
isn't it? Do you recognise them, Champion?"

But Champion, I found, was gone--probably to establish an _alibi_.
Perhaps he was right. Questions might be asked in the House about this.

When I turned again to the scene below I found that the crowd had
thickened considerably, and that the policeman had once more left the
traffic to congest itself, and joined in the game.

"You must tell that young woman to move on," he said to Dicky, not
unkindly. "She's causin' a crowd to collect, and that's a thing she can
be give in charge for."

"All right," said Dicky hurriedly, "we're all going."

The policeman, struck by this sudden anxiety to oblige, became
suspicious.

"All of you?" he said. "'Ow about this mess in the road?"

Robin came to the rescue.

"We'll be back presently and sort it," he said reassuringly.

"Of course," said Dicky, pulling himself together. "Back in 'arf a tick,
governor!"

"Don't you go callin' me names," said the policeman, as the spectators
indulged in happy laughter.

"Sorry!--I mean, certainly!" said Dicky, getting flustered. (I could see
Robin glowering at him.) "We are just going down the street a minute.
This--er--girl has brought us a bit of bad news. There's been an
accident happened--er----"

"To her puir old mither," put in Robin, whom I began to suspect of
rather enjoying this entertainment for its own sake.

This heartrending piece of intelligence touched the crowd, and Coaldust
was instantly forward in proposing an informal vote of condolence, which
was seconded by a bare-armed lady in a deerstalker cap. But the
policeman, evidently roused by our friends' ill-judged and precipitate
attempt to strike camp, suddenly produced a pocket-book from his tunic,
and said--

"It is my duty to take your names and addresses, together with the name
of the firm employing you."

This announcement obviously disconcerted Dicky and Robin; for it is one
thing to take part in a masquerade, and another to get out of the
consequences thereof by cold-drawn lying.

However, the policeman was sucking his pencil and waiting, so Dicky
said--

"You can get all the information you want from the Borough Surveyor."

It was a bold effort, but the policeman merely said--

"Your name, please!"

Dicky, fairly cornered, replied--

"Er--Samuel"--I thought at first he was going to say "Inglethwaite," and
was prepared to drop a flower-pot on his head if he did; but he
continued, with the air of one offering a real bargain at the
price--"Phillipps."

"Two P's?" inquired the constable.

"Three," said Dicky.

The policeman rolled a threatening eye upon him.

"Be careful!" he said in an awful voice.

"One of them comes at the beginning," said Dicky meekly.

"Haw, haw!" roared several people in the crowd, which was unfortunate
for Dicky. He was one of those people who would risk a kingdom to raise
a laugh.

"Address?" continued the policeman.

"Buck'nam Pallis!" shouted Coaldust, before any one else in the crowd
could say it.

The policeman turned and directed upon him a look that would have
entirely obfuscated a soberer man.

"I'll attend to you presently," he said in the exact tones which my
dentist employs when he shuts me into the waiting-room. "Now then, your
address? Come along!"

Dicky gave some address which I did not catch, and the representative of
the law turned to Robin. The latter evidently saw rocks ahead if the
inquisition was to be extended to the whole party. He said--

"Surely there is no need to take any more names."

"I'll be responsible for the lot," added Dicky eagerly--too eagerly.
"Now let's be off! Come along Di--Liza!"

He took Dilly by the arm, and, preceded by Gerald, began to press
through the crowd, which by this time extended almost right across the
street.

But the now thoroughly aroused guardian of the peace, determined not to
be rushed like this, broke away from Robin, who was engaging him in
pleasant conversation, and, hastening after the retreating group, laid a
detaining and imperious hand on Dilly's arm.

What happened next I was not quick enough to see. But there was a swirl
and a heave in the crowd, and presently Dicky became visible, standing
in a very heroic attitude with his arm round Dilly; while the policeman,
with an awe-inspiring deliberateness which implied "Now you _have_ gone
and done it!" extricated himself majestically but painfully from the
chasm in the road which had recently been occupying Dicky's attention,
and into which Dicky in defence of his beloved had apparently pushed
him.

Picking up his pocket-book and putting it back into his chest, and
uttering the single and awful word "_Assault!_" the policeman produced a
whistle and blew it.

Things were certainly getting serious, and I had just decided to send
out the hotel porter to the policeman to tell him to bring his captives
inside out of the way of the crowd, when I noticed that Robin was
ploughing his way towards the outskirts of the throng, waving his arm as
he went. Then I saw that his objective was another policeman--an
Inspector this time. He was a gigantic creature, and Robin and he,
slowly forging towards each other through the surrounding sea of faces,
looked like two liners in a tideway.

Robin's conduct in deliberately attracting the notice of yet another
representative of law and order appeared eccentric on the face of it,
but his subsequent behaviour was more peculiar still.

He seized the newly-arrived giant by the arm, and drew him apart from
the crowd, where he told him something which appeared to amuse them both
considerably.

"Yewmorous dialogue," announced Coaldust to his neighbours, "between
Cleopartrer's Needle and the Moniment!"

But it was more than that,--it was deep calling to deep. Presently the
explanation, or the joke, or whatever it was, came to an end, and the
Inspector advanced threateningly upon the crowd.

"Pass along, there, pass along!" he cried with a devastating sweep of
his arm. He spoke with a Highland accent, and I realised yet once more
the ubiquity of that great Mutual Benefit Society which has its
headquarters north of the Tweed.

The crowd politely receded about six inches, and through them,
accompanied by Robin, the Inspector clove his way to the encampment,
where Dicky, who seemed to be rapidly losing his head, was delivering a
sort of recitative to every one in general, accompanied by the policeman
on the whistle.

What the Inspector said to his subordinate I do not know, but the net
result was that in a very short time the former was escorting the entire
party of excavators down the street, attended by a retinue of small boys
(who were evidently determined to see if it was going to turn out a
hanging matter); while the latter, to whom the clearing of the "house"
had evidently been deputed, set about that task with a vigour and
ferocity which plainly indicated a well-meaning and zealous mind
tingling under an entirely undeserved official snub.

       *       *       *       *       *

They told me all about it in the smoking-room that night.

"The idea," began Dicky, "was----"

"Whose idea was it?" I inquired sternly "It was all of our idea,"
replied my future relative by marriage lucidly.

"But who worked it out?" I asked,--"the plot, the business, the 'props'?
It was a most elaborate production."

"Never you mind that, old man," said Dicky lightly. (But I saw that
Robin was laboriously relighting his pipe and surrounding himself with
an impenetrable cloud of smoke.) "Listen to the yarn. The idea was to
stake out a claim in some fairly busy road and stay there for a given
time--say, six o'clock till tea-time--and kid the passing citizens that
we were duly authorised to get in the way and mess up the traffic
generally. If we succeeded we were going to write to _The Times_ or some
such paper and tell what we had done--anonymously, of course--just to
show how necessary Champion's Bill is."

"Have you written the letter?"

"Yes."

"I wouldn't send it if I were you."

"Well, that's what Robin here has been saying."

"Putrid rot if we don't!" remarked Gerald, who had by this time washed
his face, but ought to have been in bed for all that.

"We can't do it," said Robin. "For one thing, we have attracted quite
enough public attention already,--it's bound to be in the papers anyhow,
now, and that will probably give the Bill all the advertisement it
needs,--and if we give the authorities any more clues our names may come
out. For another thing, it wouldn't be fair to Hector MacPherson."

"Who is he?"

"That Inspector who came up at the critical moment. He was one of my
first friends in London."

"I remember. Go on."

"I was thankful to see him, I can tell you. Well, he undertook to square
that poor bewildered bobby, and to take steps to get the road cleared
and the hole filled up."

"How?"

"There is a street being mended just round the corner, and he said he
would get the foreman of the gang, who is a relation of his wife's, to
send a couple of men to put things right immediately. It's probably done
by now."

"Then I suppose we may regard the incident as closed."

"Yes, I suppose so."

There was a silence.

"It was a bit of a failure at the finish," said Dicky meditatively, "but
it was a success on the whole--what?"

"Rather!" said his fellow-conspirators.

"Our chief difficulty," continued Dicky, "was to decide on the exact
type of drama to present. I was all for our dressing up as foreigners,
and relaying an asphalte street. It would have been top-hole to trot
about in list slippers and pat the hot asphalte down with those things
they use. And think of the make-up!--curly moustaches and earrings! And
we could have jabbered spoof Italian. But then old Robin here, who I
must say has a headpiece on him, pointed out that the scenery and props
would be much too expensive. We should want a cart with a bonfire in it
and a sort of witches' cauldron on top, and all kinds of sticky stuff;
so we gave up that scheme. We did not feel inclined to mess with
gas-pipes or electric wires either, in case we burst ourselves up; so we
finally decided to select some street with a wooden pavement, and maul
it about generally for as long as we could. If we got interfered with by
anybody official, we meant to talk some rot about the Borough Surveyor,
and skedaddle if necessary. But it all worked beautifully!"

"Where did you get your tools and tent?"

"Robin managed that," said Dicky admiringly.

Robin looked extremely dour, and I refrained from further inquiry.

"Robin's got some rum pals, I _don't_ think!" observed Gerald
pertinently.

"Didn't I make these chaps up well?" continued Dicky enthusiastically.
"We roared when you passed us at breakfast-time without spotting us."

"Very creditable impersonation," I replied, getting up and knocking my
pipe out. "I only hope I shan't have to resign my seat over it. If I may
venture to offer a criticism, the weak spot in the enterprise was the
idea of inviting your lady friends to come and take tea with you."

"Just what I said all along, my boy," remarked the experienced Gerald,
wagging his head sagely. "That was what mucked up the show. Wherever
there's a petticoat there's trouble. Oh, I _warned_ them!"

On my way up to bed I flushed Dilly from a window-seat on the staircase,
where she had evidently been lingering on the off-chance of a
supplementary good-night from Dicky.

"Well?" I said severely.

"Well?"

"Do you know what time it is?"

"I expect your wife will tell you that when you get upstairs," said
Dilly.

I tried a fresh line.

"After the labours of to-day, I should have thought you would have been
glad to go to bed," I said. "You imp!" And I laughed. There is something
very disarming about the Twins' misdemeanours.

We turned and walked upstairs together, and paused outside Dilly's door.

"Good-night, Dilly," I said. "I admired your pluck."

"It wasn't me," said Dilly, in a very small voice.

"Not you?"

"N-no. I said I would come, because Dicky said I daren't, and at the
last moment I funked it. (Adrian, I simply couldn't!) So Dolly went
instead."

"Then that was Dolly all the time?"

"Yes."

"And she went, just to--to----"

"To save my face. She's a brick," said Dilly.

This, by the way, was the first occasion on which I realised the truth
of Robin's dictum that Dilly and Dolly were girls of widely different
character.

"And didn't the others recognise her?"

"No. That's the best of it!"

"Not Dicky?"

"No."

"Not even Robin? He is pretty hard to deceive, you know."

"No, not even Robin. _None_ of them know Good-night!"

But she was wrong.




CHAPTER NINE.

THE POLICY OF THE CLOSED DOOR.


Dilly's wedding took place the following summer, just before Parliament
rose, and the resources of our establishment were strained to the
uttermost to give her a fitting send-off.

It is true that a noble relative, the head of my wife's family, offered
his house for the reception, but Dilly emphatically declined to be
married from any but mine, saying prettily that she would not leave the
roof under which she had lived so happily until the last possible
moment.

Accordingly we made immense preparations. The drawing-room on the first
floor, accustomed though it was to accommodate congested and
half-stifled throngs of human beings, was deemed too small for the mob
of wedding-guests whom Kitty expected.

"You see, dear," she explained, "we can squash up _good_ people as much
as we like, because their clothes don't matter; but women in
wedding-frocks will be furious if they don't get enough elbow-room to
show themselves."

Accordingly a marquee was erected in the garden at the back of the
house, opening into the dining-room through the French windows, and it
was arranged that Dicky and Dilly were to take their stand in the middle
of the same, what time the guests, having lubricated their utterance at
the _buffet_ in the dining-room _en route_, filed past and delivered
their congratulations. After that the company was to overflow into the
garden, there to be moved by a concord of sweet sounds emanating from a
band of assassins in pseudo-Hungarian uniforms.

"And if it rains," concluded Kitty desperately, "they must have an
overflow meeting in the basement--that's all!"

My library, as I had feared, was appropriated for the presents, and for
several days I transacted the business of State at the wash-hand-stand
in my dressing-room, while a stream of callers, ranging from the members
of a Working Men's Club in which Dilly was fitfully interested, down to
an organisation of Kitty's whose exact title I can never recall (but
which Dicky, on first seeing them, immediately summed up as "The Hundred
Worst Women"), filed solemnly past rows of filigree coffee-services,
silver-backed hair-brushes, and art pen-wipers.

Of the bride-elect I saw little, and when I did, she was usually
standing, in a state of considerable _déshabille_, amid a kneeling group
of myrmidons, who, with mouths filled with pins and brows seamed with
anxiety, were remorselessly building her into some edifice of shimmering
silk and filmy lace, oblivious of their victim's plaintive intimations
that she was fit to drop.

Dicky invited Robin to be his best man, a proceeding which, while it
roused some surprise among those who were expecting him to fix upon a
friend of longer standing and greater distinction, showed his good
sense, for my secretary proved himself a model of organisation and
helpfulness. Although born and reared up in the straitest sect of some
Scottish denomination, about which I am unable to particularise beyond
the fact that they regarded the use of harmoniums in churches as "the
worship of men's feet," he betrayed a surprising knowledge of Anglican
ritual and stage effect.

On the wedding morning, having left the bridegroom securely tucked up in
bed, under strict orders not to get up till he was called, Robin
personally conducted a select party of those interested--Dolly, Dilly,
another bridesmaid, and myself--to the church, where he showed us the
exact positions of our entrances and exits; and then proceeded, with the
assistance of Dolly, to plant hassocks about the chancel in such a
manner as to leave us no doubts as to the whereabouts of our moorings
(or "stances," as he called them) at the actual ceremony.

The party was reinforced at this point by the arrival of no less a
person than the bridegroom, who, having risen from his slumbers in
defiance of Robin's injunctions, was now proceeding to infringe the laws
of propriety by coming in search of his beloved four hours before he was
entitled to do so.

However, as Dilly rather pessimistically pointed out, it was probably
the last time she would ever get a kind word out of him, so we gave them
ten minutes together in the porch, while Robin interviewed vergers and
Dolly intimidated perspiring persons with red carpets and evergreens.

On our return home Dilly was snatched away by a cloud of attendant
sprites, and we saw her no more until the time came for me to drive her
to the church. We heard of her, though; for as we sat at luncheon,
plying the bridegroom (who had collapsed after the complete and
inevitable fashion of his kind about twelve o'clock) with raw brandy, a
message came down from the upper regions, to the effect that Miss Dilly
would take a couple of veal cutlets and a glass of Burgundy, as she
wasn't going to be a pale bride if she could help it!

However, this half-hysterical gaiety came to an end in the face of
reality, and in the carriage on the way to church poor Dilly wept
unrestrainedly on my shoulder. I mopped her up to the best of my
ability, but she was still sobbing when we reached the church door, to
find the six bridesmaids, together with Phillis (inordinately proud of
her office of train-bearer), preening themselves in the porch.

It had been arranged that the organ should break into "The March of the
Priests," from 'Athalie'--Dicky's petition in favour of an
ecclesiastical rendering of "The Eton Boating Song" had been thrown out
with ignominy--as the bridal procession entered the nave. Unfortunately
the organ-loft was out of sight of the west door, by which we were to
enter, and the conveyance of the starting-signal to the proper quarter
at exactly the right moment was a matter of some difficulty. However,
Robin's gift for stage-management was sufficient to meet the emergency.
When all was ready Dolly calmly mounting the steps of the font to an
eminence which commanded a precarious but sufficient view of the body of
the church, briefly fluttered a scrap of lace handkerchief, and then
stepped demurely down into her place at the head of the bridesmaids.
Simultaneously the organ burst into the opening strains of Mendelsohn's
march--I suppose Robin had been waiting at some point of vantage to pass
the signal on--and we advanced up the aisle, amid a general turning of
heads and flutter of excitement.

The church was packed. In the back pew I remember noticing three young
men with pads of flimsy paper and well-sucked pencils. I distinctly
caught sight of the words "Sacred edifice" in the nearest MS., and I
have no doubt the others contained it as well.

But Dilly was still quaking on my arm, and the only other spectacle
which attracted my attention on the way up the aisle was that of my wife
(looking very like a bride herself, I thought), sitting in a front pew
with Master Gerald, that infant phenomenon shining resplendently in a
white waistcoat and a "buttonhole" which almost entirely obscured his
features. Then I caught sight of Robin's towering shoulders and the pale
face and glassy eye of the bridegroom, and I knew that we had brought
our horses to the water at last, and all that now remained to do was to
make them drink.

The rest of the ceremony passed off with due impressiveness, if we
except a slight _contretemps_ arising from the behaviour of my daughter,
who, suddenly remembering that the junior bridesmaid but one had not yet
passed any opinion on her new shoes, suddenly sat down on the bride's
train, and, thrusting the shoes into unmaidenly prominence, audibly
invited that giggling damsel's approbation of the same. However, the
ever-ready organ drowned her utterance with a timely Amen, and Dicky and
Dilly completed the plighting of their troth with becoming shyness but
obvious sincerity.

Then came the inevitable orgy of osculation in the vestry, from which I
escaped with nothing worse, so to speak, than a few scratches, despite
an unprovoked and unexpected flank attack (when I was signing the
register) from an elderly female in bugles, whom I at first took to be a
rather giddy pew-opener, but who ultimately proved to be a maiden aunt
of the bridegroom's.

After Dicky and Dilly--the latter miraculously restored to high spirits
and looking radiant--had passed smiling and blushing down the aisle, to
be received outside with breathless stares by a large assemblage of that
peculiar class of people--chiefly females of a certain age--who seem to
spend their lives in attending the weddings of total strangers, we all
got home, where there was much champagne, and cake-cutting, and
bride-kissing, and melody from the aforementioned musicians in the
garden.

The presents--guarded with an air of studied aloofness by a
wooden-jointed detective, clad in garments of such festal splendour as
to delude several short-sighted old gentlemen into an impression that he
was the bridegroom--played their usual invaluable part in promoting
circulation among the guests, and supplying a topic for conversation.
They certainly sparkled and glittered bravely in the library, where the
blinds were drawn and the electric lamps turned on. (Kitty had seen to
that. Silver looks so well by artificial light, and so, by a happy and
unpremeditated coincidence, does the female sex.)

The bride and bridegroom departed at last, amid a shower of rice, with
that emblem of conjugal felicity, the satin slipper, firmly adhering to
the back of the brougham. (Master Gerald had seen to _that_.) Then the
guests began to make their adieux and melt away, and presently we found
ourselves alone in the marquee, a prey to that swift and penetrating
melancholy that descends upon those who begin to be festive too early in
the day, and find themselves unable to keep it up till bed-time.

       *       *       *       *       *

However, there was a recrudescence of activity and brightness in the
evening, as the idea of a small dance had been proposed and carried, and
the invitations issued and accepted, during the five minutes which
witnessed the departure of the more intimate section of the guests.

When I returned from the House about midnight--I had gone there chiefly
to dine, as lobster claws and melted ices appeared to be the only fare
in prospect at home--tired to death, and conscious of an incipient cold
in the head, arising from forced residence in a house in which hardly a
door had been on its hinges for three days, I became aware that I was
once again the lessee of a cave of harmony.

The pseudo-Hungarian assassins were pounding out the latest waltz, with
a disregard for time and tune which I at first attributed to champagne,
but which a closer survey proved to be due to the fact that the band was
being conducted, surprising as it may seem, by my brother-in-law, who
had kindly undertaken to wield the _bâton_, while the Chief Tormentor
(or whatever his proper title may have been) charged himself anew at the
refreshment counter. A popping of corks in the supper-room apprised me
of the fact that my guests were doing their best, at my expense, to make
the Excise Returns a more cheerful feature of next year's Budget.

I went upstairs in search of a white waistcoat and one or two other
necessary contributions to the festivity of the evening, picking my way
with the utmost care among the greatly-engrossed couples who impeded
every step; and finally arrived at my dressing-room, to find that that
hallowed apartment had been turned into a ladies' cloak-room, and that
every available article of furniture stood elbow-deep under some
attractive combination of furs and feathers.

I unearthed the things I required, but lacked the courage to stay and
put them on. At any moment I might be invaded by a damsel who had met
with some mishap in the heat of the fray, and was now desirous, as they
say in the navy, of "executing repairs while under steam." I accordingly
left the room and mounted towards the top of the house. I had in my
mind's eye a snug little apartment, situated somewhere in the attics,
devoted chiefly to dressmaking operations, where I knew there was a
mirror, and I might complete my toilet in peace.

With becoming modesty I penetrated to this haven by the back-stairs. I
had just reached the top, which was opposite the door in question, when
I heard voices. Evidently some one was coming up to this same landing by
the front stair.

A man does not look his best when found creeping up his own back-stairs
with a white waistcoat in one hand and a pair of pumps in the other, and
I confess I retreated downwards and backwards a couple of paces. The
stair on which I stood was unlighted, and I had a good view of the
landing.

The voices came nearer, and I could now hear the rustling of silks and
laces. Presently I recognised the voices, and immediately after this
their owners came into view, with their backs almost towards me.

"This is the room I mean," said the man, indicating my goal.

"That! All right! Only I don't see why you should drag me all the way up
here," said the girl. "There are much nicer sitting-out places
downstairs. Still, anything for a rest. Come on!"

She entered the room, followed by her partner. I saw his broad back for
a moment as it filled the doorway. Then he turned in my direction with
his hand on the handle, and it seemed to me that he hesitated a moment.

Finally he shut the door firmly, and--I distinctly heard the key turned
in the lock.

I went downstairs again.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was four o'clock in the morning. The last guest had gone, the
domestics had retired to their subterranean retreat, and the musicians
had all been booked through to Saffron Hill in one cab.

The dawn was just breaking over the house-tops on the other side of the
square, and the sky was bathed in a curious heather-coloured light--a
sure sign of a wet day to come, said hill-bred Robin. We stood out on
the steps,--Kitty, Dolly, Robin, and I,--and Kitty put her arm round her
sister's waist. I knew she was thinking of the absent Dilly.

Behind us, in the hall, Master Gerald, completely surfeited with about
sixteen crowded hours of glorious life, lay fast asleep on a settee.

I looked curiously at Dolly as she leaned on her sister's shoulder. She
was half a head taller than Kitty, and as she stood there, rosily
flushed, in the dawn of her splendid womanhood, she might have stood for
the very goddess whose first rays were now falling on her upturned face
and glinting hair.

Then I looked at Robin, towering beside her, and suddenly I felt a
little ashamed of myself.

For to tell the truth I had been very unhappy that evening, and I had
been looking forward in a few minutes' time to unburdening myself to
Kitty about recent events. But as I surveyed Dolly and Robin, curiously
alike in their upright carriage and steady gaze, I suddenly realised
that such a pair could safely be trusted to steer their own course; and
I decided there and then not to communicate even to Kitty--my wife and
Dolly's sister--the knowledge of what I had seen that night.

Kitty turned impulsively to her sister.

"After all, I've still got _you_, Dolly," she said.

I took a furtive glance at Robin's inscrutable countenance.

"I--_wonder_!" I said to myself.

"What, dear?" said Kitty.

"Nothing. I must carry this young ruffian up to bed, I suppose."

Curiosity has been most unfairly ear-marked as the exclusive monopoly of
the female sex. But as I stumbled upstairs that night, bearing in my
arms the limp but stertorous carcase of my esteemed relative by
marriage, I could not help wondering (despite my efforts to put away
from me a matter which I had decided was not my business) exactly what
Robin _had_ said to Dolly behind that locked door.




CHAPTER TEN.

ROBIN'S WAY OF DOING IT.


What happened when Robin locked the door on himself and Dolly is now set
down here. Strictly speaking it ought to come later, but there is no
need to make a mystery about it. I have taken the account of the
proceedings mainly from the letter which Dolly wrote to Dilly three days
later.

It would be useless to reproduce that document in full. In the first
place, it contains a good deal that is not only irrelevant but
absolutely incomprehensible. There is one mysterious passage, for
instance, occurring right in the middle of the letter, beginning, _To
turn the heel, knit to three beyond the seam-stitch, knit two together,
purl one, turn: then knit ten, knit two together, knit one, purl one_
... introduced by an airy, "By the way, dear, before I forget"----which
appears to have no bearing on the context whatever.

In the second place, Dolly's literary style is as breathlessly devoid of
punctuation as that of most of her sex. Commas and notes of
interrogation form her chief stock-in-trade, though underlining is
freely employed. There is not a single full-stop from start to finish.
The extracts from the letter here reproduced have been edited by me.
Other details of the incident have been tactfully extracted by Kitty and
myself--chiefly Kitty, I must confess--from the principals themselves,
and the whole is now offered to the public, unabridged, with marginal
comments, for the first time.

       *       *       *       *       *

On entering the little room on the landing Dolly dropped on to a shabby
but comfortable old sofa behind the door, and said, with a contented
sigh--

"I'm so tired, Robin. Aren't you? Let's sit down and not talk till it's
time to go downstairs again. It's--Robin, what _are_ you doing?"

Robin was locking the door.

That operation completed, he turned and looked round the little room.
There was an arm-chair in the corner, but he came and sat down on the
sofa beside Dolly. Dolly gazed at him dumbly.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "He looked so utterly grim and determined" [says the letter], "that my
  heart began to bump in a perfectly fatuous way. I felt like a woman
  who is going to be murdered in a railway tunnel.

  "He sat down, and one of his huge hands was suddenly stretched towards
  me, and I thought at first he was trying to grab one of mine. I did my
  best to edge away along the sofa, but I was up against the end
  already.

  "Then his hand opened, and something dropped into my lap. It was the
  key of the door.

  "'I have locked it,' he said, 'not with any intention of keeping you
  in, but in the hope of keeping other people out. You are perfectly
  free to get up and go whenever you please, if you don't wish to listen
  to what I have to say.'

  "Well, dear, I suppose I ought to have risen to my full height, and,
  with a few superb gestures of haughty contempt, have swept
  majestically from the room. But--I didn't! I saw I was in for another
  proposal, and as the man couldn't eat me I decided to let him do his
  worst.

  "It was a weird proposal, though." [_Spelt 'wierd.'_] "It wasn't
  exactly what he said, because one is never surprised at anything a
  man may say when he is proposing; but the way he said it. All men
  say pretty much the same thing in the end, but most of them are so
  _horribly_ nervous that they simply don't know what they're talking
  about for the first five minutes or so. (Do you remember poor little
  Algy Brock? He was nearly _crying_ all the time. At least he was
  with me, and I suppose he was with you too.) But Robin might have
  been having a chat with his solicitor the way he behaved. I'll tell
  you..."

Robin apparently began by telling Dolly, quite simply and plainly, that
he loved her. Then he gave a brief outline of the history of his
affection. It had begun at the very beginning of things, he said, almost
as soon as he discovered that he could distinguish Dolly from Dilly
without the aid of the brown spot. "And that was after I had been in the
house just three days," he added.

For some time, it appeared, he had been content to be pleasantly in
love. He enjoyed Dolly's society when it came his way, but with native
caution he had taken care to avoid seeking too much of it in case he
should gradually find himself unable to do without it.

"I saw from the first," he said, "that you were entirely unconscious of
my feelings towards you; and I would not have had it otherwise. If I was
to succeed at all it must be as an acquired taste; and acquired tastes,
as you know, are best formed unconsciously."

Dolly nodded to show her detached appreciation of the soundness of this
point.

"I permitted myself one indulgence," Robin continued. "I dedicated a
book to you."

"O-oh!" said Dolly, genuinely interested. "Was that me? Dilly and I
thought it must be a girl in Scotland."

Then she realised that this was a step down from her pedestal of
aloofness, and was silent again. Robin went on--

"Yes, it was you. It was a sentimental thing to do, but it afforded me
immense pleasure. Love lives more on the homage it pays than that which
it receives. Have you noticed that?"

"I have never thought about it," said Dolly distantly.

"I thought not," replied Robin; "because it shows, what I have always
been tolerably certain of, that you have never been in love. However, to
resume." [_"Like a lecture on Greek Roots, or something equally fusty,"_
observes Dolly at this point.] "The time came, as it was bound to come,
when I realised that I must tell you I loved you"----

  "I rather like the way he always said _'love'_ straight out," comments
  Dolly: "most men are so frightened of it. They say 'am fond of' or
  'care for' or something feeble like that. All except the curate with
  pink eyes. (You remember him? Dora Claverton took him afterwards on
  the rebound.) He said 'esteem highly' I think."

----"or leave this house altogether. But before doing that I had to
decide two things: firstly, whether I was good enough for you, and
secondly, if not now, whether I ever should be."

Dolly's half-closed eyes opened a trifle wider. This was certainly a
methodically-minded young man.

"It was difficult to decide the first question in practice," continued
Robin. "In theory, of course, any man who is a _man_--honest, clean, and
kind--is a fitting mate for any woman. Don't you think so?"

"No," said Dolly.

"I see," said Robin gently. "The theoretical is mainly the man's point
of view: woman looks straight to practical results. She is rather
inclined to take the virtues I have mentioned for granted, or do without
them; and she founds her opinion of a man almost solely upon his
capacity for boring her or stimulating her. In other words, she is
guided by her instinct. Isn't she?"

"Is she?" said Dolly, determined this time to maintain her attitude of
indifference.

"I think so," said Robin. "However, knowing how impossible it is for one
sex to look at a matter from the point of view of another, I decided to
stick to my own methods. So I made a summary of my points, good and bad.
They are these: I am strong and healthy; I possess an appetite for hard
work; I was born with brains; I have considerable capacity for
organisation----"

"Some people have a good conceit of themselves!" said Dolly.

"_Every_ one should have," replied Robin with conviction. "And," he
added, "most of us have. _I_ have--_you_ have!"

"Oh!" said Dolly indignantly.

"But a man may have a good conceit of himself," Robin continued
soothingly, "without being what the world calls conceited. Modesty
consists not in taking a low estimate of one's own worth, but in
refraining from the expectation that the world will take a high one."

Dolly nodded gravely.

"I see," she said. "I didn't know you meant that. Yes, there is
something in what you say."

"I thank you," said Robin. "It is very helpful to me to get this
courteous hearing from you; for to tell you the truth," he added rather
explosively, "I find it a very, very great effort to speak to you like
this at all. You see, I am talking of things that go right to the centre
of the human heart--things that a man never speaks of to a man, and only
once to a woman. It has to be done, but it is hard, hard!"

He drew a long breath, in a manner which made the sofa tremble; and
Dolly suddenly realised the height and depth of the barrier of reserve
and pride that this grave and undemonstrative man had had to break down
before he could offer her the view of his inmost soul to which he
considered that she was entitled. She felt a sudden pang of awe, mingled
with compassionate sympathy. She was not given to wearing her heart on
her sleeve herself.

"Well," continued Robin, evidently relieved by this little confession,
"those are my assets. On the other hand, I have no money, no position--I
will not say no birth, for I come of good, honest stock--and my
prospects are at present in the clouds. But to one type of wife all that
would not matter a scrap. There are two types, you know--two types of
_good_ wife, that is."

  "I would have given worlds," says Dolly here, "just to have said 'Oh!'
  or something; but for the life of me I couldn't help asking what the
  two types were."

"The first," said Robin, "is the wife who loves her husband because she
is proud of him, because he is successful and powerful, and people
admire him; and not because she has any conception of or sympathy with
the qualities which have made him what he is. To such a one the husband
must come with his reputation ready made, and they will enjoy it
together. The other type loves her husband because she sees through him,
yet believes in him and sympathises with his aims, and intends to make a
success of him. And she usually does."

"And which am I?" inquired Dolly.

"The latter, undoubtedly--the higher type. And therefore, if there had
been nothing else in the way, I think I should have given myself the
benefit of the doubt. But----"

  "He turned and looked at me here," writes Dolly, and said--

  "'But your feminine instinct is chafing against all this laborious
  weighing of pros and cons. In your own mind you summed up the
  situation ten minutes ago. I am--"impossible." Isn't that it?'

  "My _dear_, I nearly _screamed_, for of course that is just what was
  in my mind. But I couldn't very well say so, so I just sat there and
  looked rather idiotic and he went on--

  "'In other words, I am not quite a gentleman.'

  "Then I said quite suddenly--

  "'Robin, whatever else you may be, you _are_ a gentleman.'

  "He got quite pink. 'Thank you,' he said. 'But for all that, I am too
  rough a suitor for such a polished little aristocrat as yourself.'
  (Rather cheek, that! After all, Dilly, we're five feet seven.) 'We
  live in an artificial sort of world; and a man, in order not to jar on
  those around him, requires certain social accomplishments. I have
  few--at present. You have taught me a great deal, but I should still
  rather discredit you as a husband. My want of polish would 'affront'
  you, as we say in Scotland. I am a better beater than shot; I can
  break a horse better than I can ride it; and I dance a reel better
  than I waltz. I have strength, but no grace; ability, but no
  distinction. Of course, if you and I really loved each other--you
  being of Type Two--none of these things would matter. But for all
  that, it would hurt you to see people smiling at your husband's little
  _gaucheries_, wouldn't it?'

  "I didn't answer, and he got up and went and leaned against the
  mantelpiece.

  "'Listen,' he said, 'and I will tell you what I have decided to do. I
  have made up my mind not to have a try for you--badly though I want
  it--till I consider that I have reached your standard. I fixed that
  standard myself, so it is a very, very high one, I have been schooling
  myself and shaping myself to attain it ever since I met you. But I
  have not quite reached it yet, and therefore I have nothing to ask of
  you now.'"

"Then what on earth have you brought me here for?" inquired Dolly,
feeling vaguely aggrieved.

Robin surveyed her rather wistfully, and then smiled in a disarming
fashion.

"That was weakness," he said, "sheer weakness. But I think it was
pardonable. I saw, now that your sister was married, that the days of
your old irresponsible flirtations were over, and that you would
henceforth regard proposals of marriage as much more serious things than
hitherto. Consequently you might marry any day, without ever knowing
that a little later on you would have received an offer from me. I have
brought you here, then, to tell you that I am a prospective candidate,
but that I do not feel qualified to put down my name at present. Ideally
speaking, I ought to have kept silence until the moment when I
considered that I was ready for you; but--well, there are limits to
self-repression, and I have allowed myself this one little outbreak. All
I ask, then, is that in considering other offers you will bear somewhere
in the back of your mind the remembrance that you will, if you desire
it, one day have the refusal of me. I admit that the possibility of your
being influenced by the recollection is very remote, but I am going to
leave nothing undone that _can_ be done to get you."

  "By this time," Dolly continues elegantly, "I was getting considerably
  flummoxed. The whole business was very absurd and uncomfortable, but I
  couldn't help feeling rather complimented at the way he evidently
  regarded me--as a sort of little tin goddess on a pedestal out of
  reach, being asked to be so good as to stand still a moment while
  Robin went to hunt for the steps--and I also felt a little bit afraid
  of him. He was so quiet and determined over it all. He seemed to have
  it all mapped out in a kind of time-table inside him. However, I
  pulled myself together and decided to contribute my share to the
  conversation. I hadn't had much of a look in, so far.

  "So I settled down to talk to him like a mother. I began by saying
  that I was very much obliged and honoured, and all that, but that he
  had better put the idea out of his head once and for all. I liked him
  very much, and had always regarded him as a great friend, quite one of
  the family--you know the sort of stuff--but----

  "It was no good. He held up his hand like a policeman at a crossing,
  and said--

  "'Please say nothing. I have asked you no question of any kind, so no
  answer is required. All that I have said to-night has been in the
  nature of an _intimation_.' (O-h! how like church!)

  "Then he sat down on the sofa beside me, very gently, and said--

  "'The intimation in brief is this. I love you; and some day, please
  God, I shall ask you to marry me. But not until I feel that you would
  lose nothing by doing so.'

  "We both sat very still for a few minutes after that. I fancy we were
  both doing a little thinking. My chief reflection was that Robin had
  had rather the better of the interview, because he had made me listen
  to him when I was determined not to. Suddenly Robin said--

  "'Now that the business part of this conversation is over, I am going
  to allow myself a luxury. I have been talking most of the time about
  myself. For just five minutes I shall talk about you. I will tell you
  what I think of you.'

  "He looked at his watch and began. Dilly, I had no idea I had so many
  good points! He put them better than any man has ever done before. But
  then the other men were always so jumbled up, and this creature was as
  cool and collected as if he were reading a Stores Catalogue.

  "But he let himself go at last. It was my fault, though. I was in
  rather a twitter by this time, for although the whole thing was simply
  absurd--of course one couldn't marry a wild untamed creature like
  that, _could_ one, Dilly?--I couldn't help seeing what a man he was,
  and feeling sorry that things couldn't have been a bit different, if
  only for his sake. So I gave him my hand" [I can see her do it] "and
  said: 'Poor old Robin!'

  "He _seized_ it--my child, it has waggled like a blanc-mange ever
  since!--and kissed it. Then, quite suddenly, he broke out into a sort
  of rhapsody-like _'The Song of Solomon,'_ only nicer--with his head
  bowed over my hands. (He had got hold of the other one too, by this
  time.) I felt perfectly helpless, so I let him run on. I shan't tell
  you what he said, dear, because it wouldn't be cricket. Anyhow, a
  perfectly idiotic tear suddenly rolled down my nose--after all, I had
  had a _fearfully_ long day--and I tried to pull my hands away. Robin
  let them go at once.

  "'You are right. The time for such things is not yet,' he said, in a
  queer Biblical sort of way. 'It was a sudden weakness on my part. I
  had not meant it, you may be sure.'

  "The only thing I _am_ sure about," I said, feeling thoroughly vexed
  about the tear, "is that we have been in this room nearly an hour.
  Please unlock the door.

  "Then we went downstairs."

After that follow one or two postscripts of a reflective nature, the
general trend of which seems to indicate that Robin is rather a dear,
but quite impossible.

       *       *       *       *       *

"A flippant and unfeeling letter," you say, sir? Perhaps. But there is
often no reserve so deep or so delicate as that which is veiled by a
frivolous exterior and a mocking attitude towards sentiment in general.
Some sensitive people are so afraid of having their hearts dragged to
light that, to escape inquisition, they pretend they do not possess any.
Moreover, I know Dolly well enough to be certain that she was not quite
so brutally unkind to Robin during this interview as she would have us
believe.

"The blundering creature! He went about it in _quite_ the wrong way,"
you say, madam? Very likely. But if a woman only took a man when he went
about it in exactly the right way, how very few marriages there would
be!




BOOK TWO.

THE FINISHED ARTICLE




CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A MISFIRE.

I.


There is an undefinable character and distinctiveness about Sunday
morning which is not possessed by any other day of the week.

Not that the remaining six are lacking in individuality. Monday is a
depressed and reluctant individual; Tuesday is a full-blooded and
energetic citizen; Wednesday a cheerful and contented gentleman who does
not intend to overwork himself to-day,--this is probably due to the fact
that we used to have a half-holiday on Wednesdays at school; and when I
got into Parliament I found that the same rule held there; Thursday I
regard as one who ploughs steadily on his way, lacking enthusiasm but
comfortably conscious of a second wind; Friday is a debilitated but
hopeful toiler, whose sole joy in his work lies in anticipating its
speedy conclusion; and Saturday is a radiant fellow with a straw hat and
a week-end bag.

Still, one week-day is very like another at waking time. My mental
vision, never pellucid, is in its most opaque condition in the early
grey of the morning; and at Oxford, I remember, I found it necessary to
instruct my scout to rouse me from slumber in some such fashion as this:
"Eight o'clock on Thursday mornin', sir!" (as if I had slept since
Monday at least), or "'Alf-past nine, slight rain, and a Toosday, sir!"

However, no one was ever yet needed to inform me that it was Sunday
morning. This is perhaps natural enough in town, where the silence of
the streets and the sound of bells proclaim the day; but why the same
phenomenon should occur in the middle of a Highland moor, where every
day is one glorious open-air Sabbath, passes my comprehension.

I discussed the problem after breakfast as I sat and smoked my pipe in
the heathery garden of Strathmyrtle, a shooting-lodge at which we were
being hospitably entertained by Kitty's uncle, Sir John Rubislaw, a
retired Admiral of the Fleet, whose forty years' official connection
with Britannia's realm betrayed itself in a nautical roll, syncopated by
gout, and what I may describe as a hurricane-deck voice. My three
companions in the debate were my host, Master Gerald, and another guest
in the house, one Dermott, an officer in a Highland regiment.

The Admiral ascribed my Sabbath intuition to the working of some inward
and automatic monitor; while Dermott, among whose many sterling
qualities delicate fancy was not included, put it down to the smell of
some special dish indigenous to Sunday breakfast. My brother-in-law's
contribution to the debate was an unseemly and irreverent parallel
between Saturday night potations and Sunday morning "heads."

To us entered Dolly and Phillis.

Our hostess, together with Kitty and the other girl of the party--an
American young lady of considerable personal attractions--had driven off
to church in what is locally called a "machine." The duties of escort
had been voluntarily undertaken by an undergraduate named Standish, who
was the latest recruit to the American young lady's army of worshippers.
The rest of us had stayed at home--the Admiral because he not
infrequently did so; I because I was expecting Robin back by the
"machine" (which was to pick him up at a wayside station, where he had
been sitting on his portmanteau ever since six o'clock that morning,
having been dropped there by the night mail from London), and was
anticipating two or three hours' solid work with him; Gerald because he
had succeeded in evading his eldest sister's eye during the search for
church recruits; Dolly to look after Phillis; and Captain Dermott for
reasons not unconnected with Dolly.

It was Phillis's birthday, but out of consideration for Scottish views
on Sabbath observance the festivities in connection with that
anniversary had been postponed until the morrow. However, this did not
prevent my daughter from demanding (and obtaining) various special
privileges of an unofficial character this hot Sunday morning.
Consequently a spiritually willing but carnally incompetent band,
consisting of one jovial but arthritic baronet, one docile but
self-conscious warrior, one indulgent but overheated parent, and
Dolly--Gerald stood scornfully aloof--were compelled to devote the next
two hours to a series of games, stage-plays, and allegories of an
innocuous but exhausting description.

We began by joining hands and walking in a circle, solemnly chanting a
ditty of the "I-saw-a-ship-a-sailing" variety, which culminated in the
following verse--

  "Then three times round went that gallant ship,
     Then three times round went she;
   Then three times round went that gallant ship--

(Here we were commanded by the mistress of the revels, in a hoarse and
hurried stage whisper, to be ready to fall down)

  --And sank to the bottom--of--the--sea!"

"Now all fall down!" screamed Phillis.

We did so, and lay on the grass in serried heaps. The remark which the
Admiral made when my left elbow descended upon his goutiest foot was
fortunately obscured by the fact that his face was inside his hat at the
moment.

After that we performed the "most lamentable comedy" of "The Three
Bears." Phillis assigned the parts, reserving for herself the _rôle_ of
Curly Locks and Stage Manager. Dolly was cast for Mother Bear, Captain
Dermott for Father Bear, and I for Baby Bear. The Admiral, at his own
urgent request, was allotted the comparatively unimportant part of Baby
Bear's bed, and sat nursing his foot and observing with keen relish the
preparations of the Bear family for their morning walk. We set out at
last, all three on our hands and knees, Dolly and Dermott crawling
amicably side by side, heroically regardless of white skirt and Sunday
sporran; I, as befitted my youth and station, bringing up the rear.

The Bears having vacated their domicile (the grass plot), Curly Locks,
after much furtive peeping round bushes, entered and advanced to the
rustic table, where she proceeded to test the contents of the various
porridge-bowls (represented by two tobacco-pouches and an ash-tray
respectively).

"Too hot!" she said, after sampling the first bowl.

"Too cold!" she continued, trying the next.

"A-a-ah!" she cried, coming to the third; and swallowed its contents
(some heather-tops) with every appearance of enjoyment.

After that came the inspection of the beds (two sofa-cushions and the
Admiral), and finally Curly Locks retired to rest on her grand-uncle's
knee.

Then the Three Bears came painfully back from the shrubbery, and Curly
Locks' acts of spoliation were revealed one by one. My assumption of
grief on the discovery of my empty porridge-bowl was so realistic that
the Stage Manager sat up in bed and commended me for it. Finally we went
the round of the furniture; Curly Locks was duly discovered; and I was
engaged in a life-and-death struggle for her shrieking person with the
bed itself, when there was a crunching of gravel, and the "machine"
drove up with Robin inside it.

After my secretary had greeted those of us whom he knew, and been
interrupted in the middle of a rapturous embrace from Phillis to be
introduced to those whom he did not, I took him off indoors for a meal,
through the breakfast-room window, and opened the portfolio of
correspondence which he had brought me from London.

"Hallo! Here is a letter for Dermott," I said. "I'll take it to him."

I stepped through the window and handed the letter to Dermott, who was
falling into line for a fresh game just outside.

"That envelope looks terribly official," said Dolly. "What does it all
mean?"

"I expect it means Aldershot," said Dermott ruefully. "However, I shan't
open it till lunch-time." And he stuffed the offending epistle into his
pocket, and returned to the game in hand with a zest and abandon that
betrayed ulterior motives in every antic.

We had seen a good deal of Captain Dermott that summer. Somehow he had
been in nearly every house we had visited; and his laborious expressions
of pleased surprise at meeting us there had now given way to specious
and transparent explanations of his own presence. The experts at
countless tea-tables and shooting-lunches were practically unanimous in
the opinion that Dolly could land her fish when she chose now; and as
the fish was a good fellow, and could offer her three thousand a-year
and the reflected glory of a D.S.O., it was generally conceded that my
youngest sister-in-law--have I ever mentioned that Dolly was the junior
Twin?--was about to do extremely well for herself.

I sat by Robin as he consumed his breakfast, and waded through my
correspondence. There was a good deal to sign and a good deal to digest,
and a good deal that was of no importance whatsoever. But the _clou_ of
the whole budget was contained in a private letter from my Chief. I read
it.

"My word, Robin!" I said. "There's to be a Dissolution in January."

There was no answer, and I looked up.

Robin was not listening. His attention had wandered to the game in
progress on the lawn. This was one of Phillis' most cherished pastimes,
and was called "Beckoning." The players, except the person who for the
time being filled the _rôle_ of "It," stood patiently in a row, until
"It," after mature consideration, beckoned invitingly to one of them to
approach. This invitation might or might not be a genuine one, for
sometimes the player on responding was received by the beckoner with
hisses and other symptoms of distaste, and fell back ignominiously on
the main body. But if you were the _real_ object of the beckoner's
affections, you were greeted with embraces and a cry of "I choose you!"
and succeeded to the proud post of "It."

It was a simple but embarrassing game, calling for the exercise of
considerable tact when played by adults. At the present moment Phillis
was beckoner, while Dolly, Dermott, and the Admiral stood meekly in line
awaiting selection. Dolly and the Admiral were each called without being
chosen, and Phillis's final selection proved to be Dermott, who, having
received an enthusiastic salute from the retiring president, now stood
sheepishly on one leg surveying the expectant trio before him.

He began by beckoning to his host; and, having relieved that gentleman

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/20904