Mufti Read online

  “And is that all?” she asked him. “Is there no other course?” She leaned towards him, and her lips were parted slightly. For a moment or two he watched the slow rise and fall of her bosom, and then with a short, hard laugh he turned away.

  “You want a lot for your money, my lady,” he said, and his voice shook a little. “But I will paint you another picture, before we drift through the branches back to the boathouse and – reality. I see another house – just an ordinary nice comfortable house – four reception, ten bed, h. & c. laid on, with garage. Close to good golf links. A girl in grey is standing in the hall, leaning over a pram in which the jolliest, fattest boy you’ve ever thought of is sitting and generally bossing the entire show. He is reputed by his nurse, who is old enough to know better, to have just spoken his first consecutive sentence. To the brutal and unimaginative father who is outside with his golf clubs it had sounded like ‘Wum – wah!’ According to the interpreter it meant that he wanted an egg for tea; and it was being duly entered up in a book which contained spaces for Baby’s first tooth, the first time he was sick, when he smashed his first toy – and other milestones in his career… Ah! but it’s a jolly house. There are no crowds of men-servants and maid-servants; there is no priceless Limousine. And the girl just wears a grey silk jersey with a belt, and a grey skirt and grey brogues. And, ye Gods! but she looks topping, as she steps out to join the brutal man outside. Her golf clubs are slung over her shoulder, and together they foot it to the first tee… He is just scratch, and she… let’s think…”

  “Eight would be a good sort of handicap,” murmured the girl.

  “Eight it is,” said Vane. “That means he gives her six strokes, and generally beats her.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t,” cried the girl.

  “You must not interrupt the old gipsy, my lady,” rebuked Vane, “You see, it doesn’t matter to those two which wins – not a little bit, for the most important hole in the course is the tenth. It’s a short hole, with the most enormous sand bunker guarding the green on the right. And though for nine holes neither of them has sliced, at the tenth they both do. And if by chance one of them doesn’t, that one loses the hole. You see it’s the most dreadful bunker, and somehow they’ve got to get to the bottom of it. Well – it would be quite unfair if only one of them went there – so the non-slicer loses the hole.”

  The girl’s face was dimpling gloriously.

  “Then when they’ve got there – he just takes her in his arms and kisses her; and she kisses him. Just now and then she’ll whisper, ‘My dear, my dear – but it’s good to be alive,’ but most times they just kiss. Then they go on and finish their game. Except for that interlude they are really very serious golfers.”

  “And when they’ve finished their game – what then?”

  “They go back and have tea – a big fat tea with lots of scones and Devonshire cream. And then, after tea, the man goes round to the garage and gets the car. Just a jolly little two-seater that does fifty on the level. The girl gets in and they drive away to where the purple heather merges into the violet of the moors! And it’s great. Perhaps they’ll come back to dinner, or perhaps they’ll have it somewhere and come home when the sun has set and the stars are gleaming above them like a thousand silver lamps. They don’t know what they’re going to do when they start – and they don’t care. They’ll just be together, and that’s enough… Of course they’re very foolish and inconsequent people…”

  “Ah! but they’re not,” she cried quickly. “They’re just the wisest people in the world. Only don’t you see that one day after their golf they drive on and on, and suddenly it seemed to the girl in grey that the road was getting familiar? There was an old church she recognised and lots of landmarks. And then suddenly they drive past some lodge gates, and there – in the middle of the road – stands a dreadful man smoking a cigar with a band round it. All the glory has gone from the drive, and the girl feels numb and sick and mad with fury…”

  “But that was bad steering on the man’s part,” said Vane. “He ought to have avoided that road.”

  “The girl could never avoid it, Derek,” she answered sadly. “Even in the bunker at the tenth she’d be seeing that cigar…”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Vane.

  “I know it,” answered the girl.

  A sudden hail of “Joan” came ringing over the water, and she gave an answering hail.

  “There’s Dad,” she said. “I suppose we ought to be going…”

  With a sigh Vane rose and stood over her. “Come on,” he laughed, holding out his hand to help her up. “And then I’ll untie the boat…”

  He swung her up beside him and for a moment they looked into one another’s eyes.

  “I hope,” he said, “that you’ll be happy, my dear, so happy.” And his voice was very tender…

  They rowed back towards the boathouse, where Sir James was waiting for them.

  “Come and have tea, you two,” he cried cheerily, and Joan waved her hand at him. Then she looked at Vane.

  “It’s been a wonderful afternoon of make-believe,” she said softly. “I’ve just loved it…” Vane said nothing, but just as they were stepping out of the boat he took her arm gently.

  “Are you quite certain, lady,” he whispered, “that it must be – make-believe?…”

  For a while she stood motionless, and then she smiled “Why, of course… There’s your beaten track to find, and there’s She who must be obeyed. And there’s also…”

  “The cigar with the band round it.” Vane’s hand dropped to his side. “Perhaps you’re right…”

  They strolled together towards Sir James. And it was just before they came within earshot that Vane spoke again. “Would you care to play the game again, grey girl?”

  “Why, yes,” she said, “I think I would… I think I would.”

  Chapter 11

  During the days that followed his afternoon on the lake at Blandford Vane found himself thinking a good deal more of Joan than augured well for his peace of mind. He had been over to call, and had discovered that she had gone North very suddenly, and it was not certain when she would return. And so he escaped from Aunt Jane as soon as he politely could, and strolled back through the woods, conscious of a sense of acute dis-appointment.

  He went to his customary hiding place by the little waterfall, and, lighting his pipe sat down on the grass.

  “My son,” he murmured to himself, “you’d better take a pull. Miss Joan Devereux is marrying a millionaire to save the family. You are marrying Margaret Trent – and it were better not to forget those two simple facts…”

  He pulled Margaret’s letter out of his pocket, and started to read it through again. But after a moment it dropped unheeded on the ground beside him, and he sat motionless, staring at the pool. He did not see the green of the undergrowth; he did not hear a thrush pouring out its little soul from a bush close by. He saw a huddled, shapeless thing sagging into a still smoking crater; he heard the drone of engines dying faintly in the distance and a voice whispering, “The devils…the vile devils.”

  And then another picture took its place – the picture of a girl in grey, lying back on a mass of cushions, with a faint mocking light in her eyes, and a smile which hovered now and then round her lips…

  A very wise old frog regarded him for a moment and then croaked derisively. “Go to the devil,” said Vane. “Compared with Margaret, what has the other one done in this war that is worth doing?”

  “You must be even more damn foolish than most humans,” it remarked, “if you try to make yourself think that the way of a man with a maid depends on the doing of things that are worth while.” The speaker plopped joyfully into the pool, and Vane savagely beheaded a flower with his stick.

  “C-r-rick, C-r-rick,” went the old frog, who had come up for a breather, and Vane t
hrew a stone at it. Try as he would he could not check a thought which rioted through his brain, and made his heart pound like a mad thing. Supposing – just supposing…

  “Then why did she go up North so suddenly,” jeered the frog. “Without even leaving you a line? She’s just been amusing you and herself in her professional capacity.”

  Vane swore gently and rose to his feet. “You’re perfectly right, my friend,” he remarked; “perfectly right. She’s just an ordinary common or garden flirt, and we’ll cut it right out. We will resume our studies, old bean; we will endeavour to find out by what possible method Bolshevism – vide her august papa – can be kept from the country. As a precautionary measure, a first-class ticket to Timbuctoo, in case we fail in our modest endeavour, might be a good speculation…”

  For a moment he stood motionless, staring into the cool shadows of the wood, while a curious smile played over his face. And may be, in spite of his derisive critic, who still croaked from the edge of the pool, his thoughts were not entirely centred on his proposed modest endeavour. Then with a short laugh he turned on his heel, and strode back towards Rumfold.

  Two days later he found himself once again before a Medical Board. Space, even in convalescent homes, was at a premium, and Vane, to his amazement, found himself granted a month’s sick leave, at the expiration of which he was to go before yet another Board. And so having shaken hands with Lady Patterdale and suffered Sir John to explain the war to him for nearly ten minutes, Vane departed for London and Half Moon Street.

  He wrote Margaret a long letter in reply to hers telling him of her decision to take up medicine. He explained, what was no more than the truth, that her suggestion had taken him completely by surprise, but that if she considered that she had found her particular job he, for one, would most certainly not attempt to dissuade her. With regard to himself, however, the matter was somewhat different. At present he failed to see any budding literary signs, and his few efforts in the past had not been of the nature which led him to believe that he was likely to prove a formidable rival to Galsworthy or Arnold Bennett…

  “I’m reading ’em all, Margaret – the whole blessed lot. And it seems to me that with the world as it is at present, bread-and-butter is wanted, not caviare… But probably the mistake is entirely mine. There seems to me to be a spirit of revolt in the air, which gives one most furiously to think. Everybody distrusts everybody else; everybody wants to change – and they don’t know what they want to change to. There doesn’t seem to be any single connected idea as to what is wanted – or how to get it. The only thing on which everyone seems agreed is More Money and Less Work… Surely to Heaven there must be a way out; some simple way out. We didn’t have this sort of thing over the water. We were pals over there; but here every single soul loathes every other single soul like poison… Can it be that only by going back to the primitive, as we had to do in France, can one find happiness? The idea is preposterous… And, yet, now that I’m here and have been here these months, I’m longing to come back. I’m sick of it. Looking at this country with what I call my French eyes – it nauseates me. It seems so utterly petty… What the devil are we fighting for? It’s going to be a splendid state of affairs, isn’t it, if the immediate result of beating the Boche is anarchy over here?… And one feels that it oughtn’t to be so; one feels that it’s Gilbertian to the pitch of frenzied lunacy. You’ve seen those boys in hospital; I’ve seen ’em in the line – and they’ve struck me, as they have you, as God’s elect… Then why, why, WHY, in the name of all that is marvellous, is this state of affairs existing over here?…”

  “I went to lunch with Sir James Devereux before I left Rumfold. A nice old man, but money, or rather the lack of it, is simply rattling its bones in the family cupboard…”

  Vane laid down his pen as he came to this point, and began to trace patterns idly on the blotting paper. After a while he turned to the sheet again.

  “His daughter seems very nice – also his sister, who is stone deaf. One screams at her through a megaphone. He, of course, rants and raves at what he calls the lack of patriotism shown by the working man. Fears an organised strike – financed by enemy money – if not during, at any rate after, the war. The country at a standstill – anarchy, Bolshevism. ’Pon my soul, I can’t help thinking he’s right. As soon as men, even the steadiest, have felt the power of striking – what will stop them?… And as he says, they’ve had the most enormous concessions. By Jove! lady – it sure does make me sick and tired…

  “However, in pursuance of your orders delivered verbally on the beach at Paris Plage, I am persevering in my endeavours to find the beaten track. I am lunching today with Nancy Smallwood, who has a new craze. You remember at one time it used to be keeping parrots – and then she went through a phase of distributing orchids through the slums of Whitechapel, to improve the recipients’ aesthetic sense. She only gave that up, I have always understood, when she took to wearing black underclothes!

  “I met her yesterday in Bond Street, and she tackled me at once.

  “‘You must lunch tomorrow…Savoy…1.15… Meet Mr Ramage, Labour leader… Intensely interesting…’

  “You know how she talks, like a hen clucking. ‘Coming man… Has already arrived, in fact… One must make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness these days… Life may depend on it… He’s such a dear, too… Certain he’ll never let these dreadful men kill me… But I always give him the very best lunch I can… In case, you know… Goodbye.’

  “I feel that she will sort of put down each course on the credit side of the ledger, and hope that, if the total proves sufficiently imposing, she may escape with the loss of an arm when the crash comes. She’ll probably send the receipted bills to Ramage by special messenger… I’m rather interested to meet the man. Sir James was particularly virulent over what he called the intellectuals.

  “Well, dear, I must go. Don’t do too much and overtire yourself…” He strolled out of the smoking-room and posted the letter. Then, refusing the offer of a passing taxi, he turned along Pall Mall on his way to the Savoy.

  As Vane had said in his letter, Nancy Smallwood had a new craze. She passed from one to another with a bewildering rapidity which tried her friends very highly. The last one of which Vane had any knowledge was when she insisted on keeping a hen and feeding it with a special preparation of her own to increase its laying capacity. This necessitated it being kept in the drawing-room, as otherwise she forgot all about it; and Vane had a vivid recollection of a large and incredibly stout bird with a watery and furtive eye ensconced on cushions near the piano.

  But that was years ago, and now the mammon of unrighteousness, as she called it, apparently held sway. He wondered idly as he walked along what manner of man Ramage would prove to be. Everyone whom he had ever met called down curses on the man’s head, but as far as he could remember he had never heard him described. Nor did he recollect ever having seen a photograph of him. “Probably dressed in corduroy,” he reflected, “and eats peas with his knife. Damn clever thing to do too; I mustn’t forget to congratulate him if he does…”

  He turned in at the courtyard of the hotel, glancing round for Nancy Smallwood. He saw her almost at once, looking a little worried. Incidentally she always did look worried, with that sort of helpless pathetic air with which very small women compel very big men to go to an infinity of trouble over things which bore them to extinction.

  “My dear man,” she cried as he came up to her. “Mr Ramage hasn’t come yet… And he’s always so punctual…”

  “Then let us have a cocktail, Nancy, to keep the cold out till he does.” He hailed a passing waiter. “Tell me, what sort of a fellow is he? I’m rather curious about him.”

  “My dear,” she answered, “he’s the most fascinating man in the world.” She clasped her hands together and gazed at Vane impressively. “So wonderfully clever…so quiet…so…so …gentlemanly. I am so glad you c
ould come. You would never think for a moment when you saw him that he sympathised with all these dreadful Bolsheviks and Soviets and things; and that he disapproved of money and property and everything that makes life worth living… Sometimes he simply terrifies me, Derek.” She sipped her cocktail plaintively. “But I feel it’s my duty to make a fuss of him and feed him and that sort of thing, for all our sakes. It may make him postpone the Revolution…”

  Vane suppressed a smile, and lit a cigarette gravely. “They’ll probably give you a vote of thanks in Parliament, Nancy, to say nothing of an OBE… Incidentally does the fellow eat all right?”

  With a gesture of horrified protest, Nancy Smallwood sat back in her chair. “My dear Derek,” she murmured… “Far, far better than you and I do. I always mash my bread sauce up with the vegetables if no one’s looking, and I’m certain he never would. He’s most respectable…”

  “My God!” said Vane, “as bad as that! I was hoping he’d eat peas with his knife.”

  She looked towards the door and suddenly stood up. “Here he is, coming down the stairs now…” She held out her hand to him as he came up. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come, Mr Ramage.”

  “Am I late?” he answered, glancing at his watch. “A thousand apologies, Mrs Smallwood… A committee meeting…”

  He turned towards Vane and she introduced the two men, who followed her into the restaurant. And in his first quick glance Vane was conscious of a certain disappointment, and a distinct feeling of surprise.

  Far from being clad in corduroy, Ramage had on a very respectable morning coat. In fact, it struck him that Nancy Smallwood’s remark exactly described him. He looked most respectable – not to say dull. By no stretch of imagination could Vane imagine him as the leader of a great cause. He might have been a country lawyer, or a general practitioner, or any of those eminently worthy things with which utility rather than brilliance is generally associated. He recalled what he had read in the papers – paragraphs describing meetings at which Mr Ramage had taken a prominent part, and his general recollection of most of them seemed to be summed up in the one sentence… “the meeting then broke up in disorder, Mr Ramage escaping with difficulty through a window at the back.” Somehow he could not see this decorous gentleman opposite escaping through windows under a barrage of bad eggs. He failed to fill the part completely. As a cashier in a local bank gravely informing a customer that his account was overdrawn – yes; but as a fighter, as a man who counted for something in the teeming world around – why no… Not as far as appearance went, at any rate. And at that moment the eyes of the two men met for an instant across the table…