IV.
It will be seen that two out of the three readers particularly interested in Mr. Bitt's splash were agreeably interested. Upon the third the effect was different.
It was George's first morning in the little inn at Dippleford Admiral. An unaccustomed weight upon his legs, at which thrice he sleepily kicked without ridding himself of it, at length awoke him.
He found the morning well advanced; the disturbing weight that had oppressed him he saw to be a hairy object, orange of hue. Immediately his drowsy senses awoke; took grip of events; sleep fled. This object was the Rose of Sharon, and at once George became actively astir to the surgings of yesterday, the mysteries of the future.
Pondering upon them, he was disturbed by a knock that heralded a voice: “The paper you ordered, mister; and when'll you be ready for breakfast?”
“Twenty minutes,” George replied; remembered the landlady had overnight told him she was a little deaf; on a louder note bawled: “Twenty minutes, Mrs. Pinner!”
Mrs. Pinner, after hesitation, remarked: “Ready now? Very well, mister”; pushed a newspaper beneath the door; shuffled down the stairs.
In the course of his brief negotiations with Mrs. Pinner upon the previous evening, George, in response to the proud information that the paper-boy arrived at nine o'clock every morning on a motor bicycle, had bellowed that he would have the Daily. For old Bill's sake he had ordered it; with friendly curiosity to see Bill's new associations he now withdrew his legs from beneath the Rose of Sharon; hopped out of bed; opened the paper.
Upon “Country House Outrage” George alighted plump; with goggle eyes, scalp creeping, blood freezing, read through to the last “Catchy Clue”; aghast sank upon his bed.
It had got into the papers! Among all difficult eventualities against which he had made plans this had never found place. It had got into the papers! The cat's abduction was, or soon would be, in the knowledge of everyone. This infernal reward which with huge joy he had heard offered, was now become the goad that would prick into active search for the Rose every man, woman, or child who read the story. It had got into the papers! He was a felon now; fleeing justice; every hand against him. Discovery looked certain, and what did discovery mean? Discovery meant not only loss of the enormous stake for which he was playing—his darling Mary,—but it meant—“Good God!” groaned my miserable George, “it means ruin; it means imprisonment.”
Melancholy pictures went galloping like wild nightmares through this young man's mind. He saw himself in the dock, addressed in awful words by the judge who points out the despicable character of his crime; he saw himself in hideous garb labouring in a convict prison; he saw himself struck off the roll at the College of Surgeons; he saw himself—“Oh, Lord!” he groaned, “I'm fairly in the cart!”
Very slowly, very abject, he peeled off his pyjamas; slid a white and trembling leg into his bath.
But the preposterous buoyancy of youth! The cold water that splashed away the clamminess of bed washed, too, the more vapoury fears from George's brain; the chilly splashings that braced his system to a tingling glow braced also his mind against the pummellings of his position. Drying, he caught himself whistling; catching himself in such an act he laughed ruefully to think how little ground he had for good spirits.
But the whistling prevailed. This ridiculous buoyancy of youth! What luckless pigs are we who moon and fret and grow besodden with the waters of our misfortunes! This cheeky corkiness of youth! Shove it under the fretted sea of trouble, and free it will twist, up it will bob. Weight it and drop it into the deepest pool; just when it should be drowned, pop! and it is again merrily bobbing upon the surface.
It is a sight to make us solemn-souled folk disgustingly irritated. We are the Marthas—trudging our daily rounds, oppressed with sense of the duties that must be done, with the righteous feeling of the hardness of our lot; and these light-hearts, these trouble-shirkers, this corkiness of youth, exasperate us enormously. But the grin is on their side.
The whistling prevailed. By the time George was dressed he had put his position into these words—these feather-brained, corky, preposterous words: “By gum!” said George, brushing his hair, “by gum! I'm in a devil of a hole!”
The decision summed up a cogitation that showed him to be in a hole indeed, but not in so fearsome a pit as he had at first imagined. He had at first supposed that within a few minutes the earth would be shovelled in on him and be buried. Review of events showed the danger not to be so acute. On arrival the previous night, after brief parley with Mrs. Pinner he had gone straight to his room, bearing the Rose tight hid in her basket. No reason, then, for suspicion yet to have fallen upon him. He must continue to keep the Rose hid. It would be difficult, infernally difficult; but so long as he could effect it he might remain here secure. The beastly cat must of course be let out for a run. That was a chief difficulty. Well, he must think out some fearful story that would give him escape with the basket every morning.