THE BALD-FACED STAG
Vaughan went home, and after lunching, chiefly on a newspaper and a cup of coffee, he got into a taxicab and gave a direction.
The vehicle flew smoothly along down Park Lane, past the Marble Arch into the Edgware Road, and on from there between houses and shops, growing gradually uglier and uglier, to Maida Vale, up Shoot-up Hill, and so on until there was a glimpse of suburban country, and gasworks, and glaring posters of melodramas on hoardings, till it stopped suddenly at a real little old roadside inn, straight out of Dickens—"The Bald-faced Stag at Edgware." Edgware suggested John Gilpin, Gillie's favourite poem.
Here he got out, and was positively welcomed, and heartily, by a real roadside innkeeper—also out of Dickens—resembling the elder Weller—a local magnate called Tom Brill, who looked a relic of the coaching days, though really he never did anything but stand in front of the inn in his shirt-sleeves and welcome people.
Vaughan, obviously an habitué, walked through the inn into a perfectly adorable garden, which was so large, so quiet, and so full of pinks, hollyhocks, and other old-fashioned flowers, so absolutely peaceful and sleepy, that one could have imagined oneself miles away in the country.
The garden belonged as much to the Dickens period as the inn itself. It contained a great many wooden arbours in which one could imagine ladies in crinolines archly accepting tea, or refusing sips of shrub (whatever that may be) with whiskered gentlemen. There was a large cage full of Persian pheasants with gorgeous Indian colouring, which always suggested to Vaughan—he didn't know why—the Crimean War. There was a parlour covered with coloured prints of racehorses and boxing matches, and in which was a little round table painted as a draught-board, and furnished with a set of Indian chessmen of red and white ivory. The whole thing, though only twenty minutes' drive from Mayfair, was unknown, unspoilt, and apparently had not altered in any particular since about 1856. Its great charm was that it was utterly unself-conscious; it had no idea that it was quaint.
Vaughan sat down on a rustic seat and plunged into the atmosphere of the period that he loved, revelling in the soothing, delightful calm, and in the fact that nobody there knew who he was (though they knew him well by name), and that none of his friends and acquaintances would have dreamt that he was there.
A large field beyond the garden contained cows, hay, and other rustic things.
Presently Tom Brill came up to him, and he asked after Mrs. Brill, whom her husband always described, with confidential pride, as "Though I say it that shouldn't say it, as fine a woman as you'll meet in a day's march."
Vaughan always assented to this proposition. As he had never himself in his life been for a day's march, and probably never would, he certainly would have had no right to contradict Mr. Brill on the subject.
"Is Miss Brill at home?" he presently asked. "May I see her?"
"Certainly, sir, of course you shall. She's helping her mother. I'll call her. Don't move, sir, don't move."
Miss Brill, who had been helping her mother to look out of the window, now came into the garden, which immediately became idyllic.
She was not in any way like the innkeeper's daughter of Comic Opera. She was a schoolgirl of sixteen, with a long, fair plait, a short serge skirt, and a seraphic oval face. She ought to have been called Fanny or Clara. Unluckily her name was Gladys.
She said in a very sweet voice—
"You're quite a stranger, sir." And she amplified the assertion by adding, "You haven't been here not this ever so long."
"I know I haven't, but I've been longing to come."
"Not you!" she said ironically.
She was standing opposite him, with her hands behind her back. Without a hat, in the glaring afternoon sun, with the complexion, pale pink and white, of a china doll that had never made up, she was a refreshing sight after the theatrical world in London, not to speak of society. Vaughan seemed to think so.
"Well, how did you enjoy the play?" he asked.
"It was very kind of you to send us the tickets. Mother enjoyed it."
"You didn't care much for the piece yourself?"
"I thought it was rather silly," she answered.
He had never had a criticism on his work that pleased him more.
"I mean," she went on, "I shouldn't have thought—well, nobody would go on like that."
"Go on how?"
"Why, go on so silly."
"You wouldn't like to see another play, written by the same man, then?"
"I wouldn't mind another one. Wild horses wouldn't drag me to see that again."
"Wild horses are not likely to try," he observed. At which jest she laughed loudly and charmingly, showing marvellous teeth. She had no cockney accent, though she occasionally and fitfully dropped an H.
"Oh, Gladys, do take me for a walk in the field."
"Want to see the calf?"
"No; I can live without seeing the calf. I want to sit in the field with you."
"You are a caution! Come on then, but I can't stay long."
They climbed the gate, which she seemed to think a quicker mode of entrance than sending for the key, and sat in the field, from which Mr. Brill always declared you could see three counties. Perhaps you could; if so, they all looked exactly alike.
"It's quiet here, isn't it? I shan't have much more of it," she remarked.
"Oh, Gladys! Don't say you're going away!"
"Of course I am. Don't you know I'm going to be a manicure in Bond Street?"
"Bond Street? How revolting! Is that your ambition?"
"Why, I think it would be very nice. I must do something. Father's settled about it. First I'm going to pay to learn it, and then I shall earn quite a lot. It's a great [hairdresser's]."
"I think it's horrible, Gladys. Perhaps you'll fall in love with a German hairdresser, and be lost to me for ever."
"I shan't fall in love with no foreigners, don't you fret."
"I'm not fretting. Will you have your hair done up?" he asked, lifting the long plait.
"Well, of course I shall, and waved, and that."
"Gladys, they'll spoil you."
The conversation went on in this strain for some time. She alternately repeated the exclamation, "How you do go on!" or accused him of the mysterious crime of being a caution, but she never stopped looking perfectly beautiful and seraphic.
When they went back to the garden a few other visitors had straggled in. They all seemed to come in high dog-carts, and they always ordered eggs, jam, and watercress with their tea, and were immensely impressed by the Persian pheasants.
Vaughan went back to London feeling refreshed, and already, strangely, counting the days till he could come back.
There was not a woman in the world he knew whom he would have taken the slightest trouble to see except Gladys, the innkeeper's daughter. She was an illiterate schoolgirl; and though she had a lovely face, she was stupid, and probably not so angelic as she looked; but he always felt a little disappointed as he drove back. He wished she were in love with him.
And this ungratified wish was, in all his full life with its brilliant success, perhaps his greatest real pleasure.