§ 2
When Lord Chickney’s thoughts had once started in any direction it was difficult to turn them aside. No doubt that concealed and repudiated deafness helped his natural perplexity of mind. Truth comes to some of us as a still small voice, but Lord Chickney needed shouting and prods. And Douglas did not get to him until he was finishing lunch. Moreover, it was the weakness of Captain Douglas to talk in jerky fragments and undertones, rather than clearly and fully in the American fashion. “Tell me all about it, my boy,” said Lord Chickney. “Tell me all about it. Don’t apologize for your clothes. I understand. Motor bicycle and just come up. But have you had any lunch, Eric?”
“Alan, uncle,—not Eric. My brother is Eric.”
“Well, I called him Alan. Tell me all about it. Tell me what has happened. What are you thinking of doing? Just put the positions before me. To tell you the truth I’ve been worrying over this business for some time.”
“Didn’t know you’d heard of it, uncle. He can’t have talked about it already. Anyhow,—you see all the awkwardness of the situation. They say the old chap’s a thundering spiteful old devil when he’s roused—and there’s no doubt he was roused.... Tremendously....”
Lord Chickney was not listening very attentively. Indeed he was also talking. “Not clear to me there was another man in it,” he was saying. “That makes it more complicated, my boy, makes the row acuter. Old fellow, eh? Who?”
They came to a pause at the same moment.
“You speak so indistinctly,” complained Lord Chickney. “Who did you say?”
“I thought you understood. Lord Moggeridge.”
“Lord—! Lord Moggeridge! My dear Boy! But how?”
“I thought you understood, uncle.”
“He doesn’t want to marry her! Tut! Never! Why, the man must be sixty if he’s a day....”
Captain Douglas regarded his distinguished uncle for a moment with distressed eyes. Then he came nearer, raised his voice and spoke more deliberately.
“I don’t know whether you quite understand, uncle. I am talking about this affair at Shonts last week-end.”
“My dear boy, there’s no need for you to shout. If only you don’t mumble and clip your words—and turn head over heels with your ideas. Just tell me about it plainly. Who is Shonts? One of those Liberal peers? I seem to have heard the name....”
“Shonts, uncle, is the house the Laxtons have; you know,—Lucy.”
“Little Lucy! I remember her. Curls all down her back. Married the milkman. But how does she come in, Alan? The story’s getting—complicated. But that’s the worst of these infernal affairs,—they always do get complicated. Tangled skeins—
“‘Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we venture to deceive.’
“And now, like a sensible man, you want to get out of it.”
Captain Douglas was bright pink with the effort to control himself and keep perfectly plain and straightforward. His hair had become like tow and little beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead.
“I spent last week-end at Shonts,” he said. “Lord Moggeridge, also there, week-ending. Got it into his head that I was pulling his leg.”
“Naturally, my boy, if he goes philandering. At his time of life. What else can he expect?”
“It wasn’t philandering.”
“Fine distinctions. Fine distinctions. Go on—anyhow.”
“He got it into his head that I was playing practical jokes upon him. Confused me with Eric. It led to a rather first-class row. I had to get out of the house. Nothing else to do. He brought all sorts of accusations—”
Captain Douglas stopped short. His uncle was no longer attending to him. They had drifted to the window of the study and the general was staring with an excitement and intelligence that grew visibly at the spectacle of Bealby and the trailer outside. For Bealby had been left in the trailer, and he was sitting as good as gold waiting for the next step in his vindication from the dark charge of burglary. He was very travel-worn and the trailer was time-worn as well as travel-worn, and both contrasted with the efficient neatness and newness of the motor bicycle in front. The contrast had attracted the attention of a tall policeman who was standing in a state of elucidatory meditation regarding Bealby. Bealby was not regarding the policeman. He had the utmost confidence in Captain Douglas, he felt sure that he would presently be purged of all the horror of that dead old man and of the brief unpremeditated plunge into crime, but still for the present at any rate he did not feel equal to staring a policeman out of countenance....
From the window the policeman very largely obscured Bealby....
Whenever hearts are simple there lurks romance. Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite diversity. Suddenly out of your low kindly diplomacies, your sane man-of-the-world intentions, leaps the imagination like a rocket, flying from such safe securities bang into the sky. So it happened to the old general. He became deaf to everything but the appearances before him. The world was jewelled with dazzling and delightful possibilities. His face was lit by a glow of genuine romantic excitement. He grasped his nephew’s arm. He pointed. His grizzled cheeks flushed.
“That isn’t,” he asked with something verging upon admiration in his voice and manner, “a Certain Lady in disguise?”