Mufti Page 5

  “What on earth has that got to do with it?” said Vane frowning. “I’m not a child or a callow boy. Do you suppose at my age I don’t know my own mind? Why, my dear girl…” Her eyes met his, and the words died away on his lips.

  “Don’t, dear, don’t. You’re insulting both our intelligences.” With a slight laugh she leaned over and rested her hand on his. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”

  Vane grunted non-committally. He undoubtedly did know what she meant, but at that moment it was annoying to find she knew it too…

  “Listen, Derek; I want to put things before you as I see them.” With her elbows on her knee, and her chin cupped in the palms of her hand, she was staring across the stretch of tumbled, grass-grown hillocks.

  “We know one another too well not to be perfectly frank. How much of last night was just – what shall I say – nervous tension? Supposing some other girl had been in my place?”

  Impetuously he started to speak, but once again the words died away on his lips as he saw the half-tender, half-humorous look in her eyes.

  “Dear,” she went on after a moment. “I don’t want to hurt you. I know you think you’re in love with me today; but will you tomorrow? You see, Derek, this war has given a different value to things... Whether one likes it or not, it’s made one more serious. It hasn’t destroyed our capacity for pleasure, but it’s altered the things we take pleasure in. My idea of a good time, after it’s over, will never be the same as it was before.”

  Vane nodded his head thoughtfully. “I’m not certain, dear, that that’s anything to worry about.”

  “Of course it isn’t – I know that. But don’t you see, Derek, where that leads us to? One can’t afford to fool with things once they have become serious… And to kiss a man, as I kissed you last night, seems to mean very much more to me than it did once upon a time. That’s why I want to make sure…” She hesitated, and then, seeming to make up her mind, she turned and faced him. “I would find it easier now to live with a man I really loved – if that were the only way – than to be kissed by two or three at a dance whom I didn’t care about. Do you understand?”

  “My dear, I understand perfectly,” answered Vane. “The one is big – the other is petty. And when we live through an age of big things we grow ourselves.”

  “I gave you that as a sort of example of what I feel, Derek,” Margaret continued after a time. “I don’t suppose there is anything novel in it, but I want you so frightfully to understand what I am going to say. You have asked me to marry you – to take the biggest step which any woman can take. I tell you quite frankly that I want to say ‘Yes.’ I think all along that I’ve loved you, though I’ve flirted with other men… I was a fool five years ago…”

  He looked at her quickly. “Tell me; I want to know.”

  “I found out about that girl you were keeping.”

  Vane started slightly. “Good Lord! But how?”

  “Does it matter, old man?” Margaret turned to him with a smile. “A chance remark by Billy Travers, if you want to know. And then I asked a few questions, and put two and two together. It seemed a deliberate slight to me. It seemed so sordid. You see I didn’t understand – then.”

  “And now? Do you understand now?” He leaned towards her eagerly.

  “Should I have said to you what I have if I didn’t?” She held out her hand to him, and with a quick movement he put it to his lips. “I’ve grown, you see…got a little nearer the true value of things. I’ve passed out of the promiscuous kissing stage, as I told you… And I think I realise rather more than I did what men are… One doesn’t make them up out of books now. All this has taught one to understand a man’s temptations – to forgive him when he fails.” Then a little irrelevantly – “They seem so petty, don’t they – now?”

  Vane gently dropped the hand he was holding, and his face as he looked at her was inscrutable. Into his mind there had flashed Lear’s question: “And goes thy heart with this?” Then irritably he banished it… God bless her! She was all heart: of course she was.

  “Will you tell me where exactly you have arrived at?” he asked quietly.

  “At the certainty that there lies in front of you and me work to be done. I don’t know what that work will prove to be – but, Derek, we’ve got to find out. It may be that we shall do it together. It may be that my work is just to be with you. And it may be that it isn’t that you won’t want me. Ah! yes, dear,” as he made a quick, impatient movement. “There is always the possibility. I want you to go and find out, Derek, and I want you to make sure that you really want me – that it isn’t just six months in Flanders. Also,” she added after a pause, “I want to be quite sure about myself.” For a while Vane stared out to sea in silence.

  “Supposing,” he said slowly, “the work in front of me is back to Flanders again, as it probably will be. And supposing I’m not so lucky next time. What then?

  She turned and faced him. “Why then, dear, Fate will have decided for us, won’t she?”

  “A deuced unsatisfactory decision,” grumbled Vane. “Margaret, I don’t want to worry you; I don’t want to force myself on you…but won’t you give me some sort of a promise?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll give you no promise at all, Derek. You’ve got to find yourself, and I’ve got to find myself; and when we’ve both done that we shall know how we stand to one another. Until then…well just give it a miss in baulk, old man.”

  Vane regarded her curiously. “If last night and this afternoon had happened before the war, I wonder what your decision would have been?”

  “Does it matter?” she answered gently. “Before the war is just a different age.” For a while she was silent; then she drew a deep breath. “Don’t you feel it as I feel it?” she whispered. “The bigness of it, the wonder of it. Underneath all the horror, underlying all the vileness – the splendour of it all. The glory of human endurance… People wondered that I could stand it – I with my idealism. But it seems to me that out of the sordid brutality an ideal has been born which is almost the greatest the world has ever known. Oh! Derek, we’ve just got to try to keep it alive.”

  “It’s the devil,” said Vane whimsically. “Jove! lady dear, isn’t the blue of the sky and the sea and the gold of the sand just crying out to be the setting of a lovers’ paradise? Aren’t we here alone just hidden from the world, while the very gulls themselves are screaming: ‘Kiss her, kiss her?’ And then the fairy princess, instead of being the fairy princess to the wounded warrior, orders him to go back and look for work. It’s cruel. I had hoped for tender love and pity, and behold I have found a Labour Bureau.”

  Margaret laughed. “You dear! But you understand?” She knelt beside him on the sand, and her face was very tender.

  “I understand,” answered Vane gravely. “But, oh! my lady, I hope you’re not building fairy castles on what’s going to happen after the war. I’m afraid my faith in my brother man is a very, very small flame.”

  “All the more reason why we should keep it alight,” she cried fiercely. “Derek, we can’t let all this hideous mutilation and death go for nothing afterwards.”

  “You dear optimist,” Vane smiled at her eager, glowing face so close to his own. “Do you suppose that we and others like us will have any say in the matter?”

  She beat her hands together. “Derek, I hate you when you talk like that. You’ve got it in you to do big things – I feel it. You mustn’t drift like you did before the war. You’ve got to fight, and others like you have got to fight, for everything that makes life worth living in our glorious, wonderful England.”

  “Would the staff be a little more explicit in their Operation Orders, please?” murmured Vane. “Whom do you propose I should engage in mortal combat?” He saw the slight frown on her face and leant forward quickly. “My dear, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want to be fli
ppant and cynical. But I’m just a plain, ordinary man – and I’m rather tired. When this show is over I want peace and rest and comfort. And I rather feel that it’s up to the damned fools who let us in for it to clear up the mess themselves for a change.”

  “But you won’t later, old boy,” said the girl; “not after you’ve found yourself again. You’ll have to be up and doing; it will stifle you to sit still and do nothing.” She looked thoughtfully out to sea and then, as he kept silent, she went on slowly, “I guess we all sat still before this war; drifted along the line of least resistance. We’ve got to cut a new way, Derek, find a new path, which will make for the good of the show. And before we can find the path, we’ve got to find ourselves.”

  She turned towards him and for a long minute they looked into one another’s eyes, while the gulls circled and screamed above them. Then slowly she bent forward and kissed him on the mouth… “Go and find yourself, my dear,” she whispered. “Go and make good. And when you have, if you still want me, I’ll come to you.”

  At the touch of her lips Vane closed his eyes. It seemed only a few seconds before he opened them again, but Margaret was gone. And then for a while he sat, idly throwing stones at the overturned bottle. Just once he laughed, a short, hard laugh with no humour in it, before he turned to follow her.

  But when he reached the top of the sand dune, Margaret was almost out of sight in the distance.

  Next day he crossed to England in the Guildford Castle.

  Chapter 4

  Derek Vane did not remain long in hospital. As soon as the dressings for his shoulder had become quite straightforward, the machine, in the shape of two doctors from Millbank who formed the Board, took him in its clutches once more and deposited him at a convalescent home. Not one of the dreary, routine-like places which have been in the past associated with convalescence, but a large country house, kindly placed at the disposal of the War Office by its owner.

  “Rumfold Hall for you, Vane,” said the senior of the two doctors. “A charming house; Lady Patterdale – a charming woman.”

  “Rumfold Hall!” echoed Vane. “Good Heavens! I know it well. Danced there often during the old regime.”

  “The old regime?” The doctor looked puzzled.

  “Yes. It used to belong to the Earl of Forres. He couldn’t afford to keep it up and his other places as well, so he sold it to Sir John Patterdale… Made his money in hardware, did Sir John… Surely you knew Patterdale’s Patent Plate.”

  The Board opined that it did not, and departed to the next case. It even seemed to regard such flippancy with a certain amount of suspicion; but then Medical Boards are things of some solemnity…

  And so in the course of two or three days Vane drove up to the historic gates of Rumfold Hall in an ambulance. The house, situated in the heart of Surrey, was surrounded by extensive grounds. The view from it was magnificent, stretching away for miles and miles to the south, and terminating in the purple downs: and Vane, as the car waited for the gates to be opened, felt that indefinable thrill of pride that comes to every man when he looks on some glorious stretch of his own country. He noticed that the lodge keeper had changed since he was there last, and not, it struck him, for the better. How well he remembered old John, with his sweet old wife, and their perfectly kept patch of garden and spotless little kitchen… He had had two sons, both in the Grenadiers, magnificent, strapping fellows – and Vane wondered what had become of them…

  Somehow he couldn’t quite imagine old John not touching his hat as the ambulance came in; whereas his successor merely gazed curiously at the occupants, and then slouched back into the lodge… Of course hat-touching is a relic of feudalism, and, as such, too hideous to contemplate in this age of democracy; but still – like a smile – it costs little and gives much pleasure.

  From the condition of the grounds it did not seem that the present owner had been very greatly troubled by the labour shortage. The flower beds were a riot of colour; the grass was short and beautifully kept. And as the ambulance rounded a corner of the drive and the house opened up in front Vane saw that tennis was in full swing on the lawns.

  “Say – what sort of a guy is this fellow?” asked a New Zealander opposite him suddenly. “It seems to me to be some house.”

  Vane looked at him thoughtfully for a moment before replying, and the car was already slowing down before he finally spoke. “He’s a substitute for the old order of things. And according to the labels of all substitutes, they are the last word in modern efficiency.”

  The car pulled up at that moment, and they stepped out to find Lady Patterdale standing on the steps to welcome them.

  Let it be said at once that Lady Patterdale was a perfect dear. One lost sight of her incredible vulgarity in view of the charming kindliness of her heart. And, after all, vulgarity is only comparative. In the sanctity of the little shop in Birmingham where Sir John had first laid the foundations of his fortune, aspirates could drop unheeded. What mattered then, as always, was whether the heart was in the right place. With Lady Patterdale it was…

  And because au fond, she was such a dear, it made it all the more pathetic to see her in such surroundings. One felt, and one felt that in the bottom of her heart she felt, that she would have been far more happy in the kitchen. Except that in the kitchen her lost aspirates would probably have been handed back to her on a salver, whereas in the drawing-room they were ground into the carpet… The spread of education has made the kitchen a very dangerous place.

  In appearance Lady Patterdale was short and stout: eminently the type of woman who, if clothed according to the dictates of common sense, would be called a “comfortable old party.” One could imagine her in a cotton dress, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows, displaying a pair of plump forearms and wielding a rolling pin in front of a good hot fire. Covered with flour – her face very red – she would have been in her element… As it was, the dictates of fashion had cast their blight over the proceedings.

  The name of her dressmaker is immaterial. Originally Smith & Co. in all probability, it had now become Smythe et Cie, and advertised in all the most exclusive papers. Unfortunately, in the case of Lady Patterdale they did not stop at advertising. They carried out their dreadful threats and clothed her. The result was incredible. She resembled nothing so much as a bursting melon. Onlookers shuddered at times when they thought of the trust reposed by Providence and Lady Patterdale in a few paltry hooks and eyes. The strain appeared so terrific – the consequences of a disaster so appalling.

  As Vane stepped out of the ambulance Lady Patterdale, supported on either side by one of the nursing staff, advanced to meet him. Her jolly old face was wreathed in smiles; cordiality and kindliness oozed from her.

  “Welcome, both of you,” she cried. “Welcome to Rumfold ’all.”

  The Sister on her left started as if a serpent had stung her, and Vane decided that he did not like her. Then he turned to the kindly old woman, and smiled.

  “Thank you, Lady Patterdale,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “I’m sure it’s going to be topping.”

  “You’re just in nice time for luncheon,” she continued, as she turned to welcome the New Zealander. “And after that you’ll be able to find your way about the ’ouse.”

  Lunch was the only meal where all the convalescents met, as, generally, some of them had retired before dinner. It was served in the old banqueting hall, which, when Vane remembered it, had been used for dancing. The officers had it to themselves, the nursing staff feeding elsewhere…

  The contrast struck Vane forcibly as he sat down at the long table. The last time he had been in the room he and three or four kindred spirits had emptied a fruit salad into a large wind instrument just before the band played the final gallop…

  “Beer, sir, or cider?” He half turned to answer, when suddenly the voice continued. “Why, but surely, sir, it’s M
r Vane?”

  He looked up and saw the same butler who had been at the Hall in the old days.

  “Why, Robert,” he said delightedly, “you still here? Jove! but I’m glad to see you. I thought Sir John had made a clean sweep of all the staff.”

  The butler nodded his head sadly. “All except me, sir – me and Mrs Hickson. She was the housekeeper, if you remember. And she couldn’t stand it – that is, she had to leave after a year.”

  “Ah!” Vane’s tone was non-committal. “And what’s become of old John – at the Lodge?”

  “He went, sir. Sir John found him too slow.” Robert poured out a glass of beer. “He’s in the village, sir. One of his sons was killed at Noove Chappel.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I must go and see him.”

  “He’d be proud, sir, if you’d be so kind. I often goes down there myself for a bit of a chat about the old days.” With a sigh the old butler passed on, and Vane returned to his lunch…

  “You seem to know our archaic friend,” remarked the officer sitting next him. “He’s a dear old thing…”

  “He’s one of a dying breed,” said Vane shortly. “I would trust old Robert with everything in the world that I possessed…”

  “That so?” returned the other. “Has he been here long?”

  “To my certain knowledge for twenty-five years, and I believe longer. It almost broke his heart when he heard that Lord Forres was going to sell the place.” Vane continued his lunch in silence, and suddenly a remark from the other side of the table struck his ears.

  “I say, old Side-whiskers hasn’t given me my fair whack of beer.” It was a youngster speaking, and the remark was plainly audible to the old butler two places away. For a moment his face quivered, and then he returned to the speaker.

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he remarked quietly. “Let me fill your glass.”