VI
Somehow the golf-match was not quite as amusing as Elsie had expected. Cullyngham was all deference and vivacity, and played like the stylist he was. Still, Elsie could not help wondering how the cricket-match was getting on; and when at half-past three the round of nine holes was completed, she announced her intention of going down to the ground to see the finish.
"What, and desert me?" inquired her opponent pathetically.
"You can come too, if you like."
"Hardly worth while, I'm afraid. I have to pack my bag and get some tea, and then I shall be due at the station."
"I thought your bag was packed already. You were to have gone by the twelve train, you know," said Elsie rather doubtfully.
"Yes," said Cullyngham easily, "but you forgot I had to unpack again to get out my golfing shoes. Now, I'll tell you what," he continued rapidly. "They are going to give me tea in the conservatory before I go: won't you stay and pour it out for me? Just five minutes—please!"
Elsie felt that she could hardly in decency refuse, and accompanied Cullyngham to the house and thence to the conservatory, where the maid who brought the tea informed them of the glorious downfall of the County Eleven and of Pip's share therein.
This decided Elsie. She had no desire to appear in any scene where Pip was the central figure, so she accepted Cullyngham's pressing invitation to share his tea, and, sinking into a large armchair, prepared to spend an idle half-hour until popular enthusiasm on the cricket-ground should have abated. Pip was unconsciously proving the profound wisdom of the maxim which warns us to beware when all men speak well of us. He was paying the penalty of success. If he had been bowled first ball, or had missed three easy catches, Elsie, being a woman, would probably have melted and been kind to him. But to unbend to him now would savour of opportunism, hero-worship, and other disagreeable things. Elsie set her small white teeth, frowned at an orange tree in a green tub, and prepared for a tête-à-tête. The house seemed deserted.
"Penny for your thoughts!" said Cullyngham.
Elsie smiled composedly.
"If they were only worth that I would make you a present of them," she said. "If they were worth more they would not be for sale."
"Are they worth more?"
"I don't know, really. Anyhow, they are not on the market." She drank some tea with a prim air, uncomfortably conscious that she was blushing.
There was a short pause, and Cullyngham spoke again.
"I hope I'm not boring you," he said, with a smile which took for granted the impossibility of the idea.
"Oh, dear, no. I'm seldom bored at meals." Elsie took a bite out of a bun.
"Very well. Till you have finished tea I will keep quiet; after that I will endeavour to amuse you."
The meal continued solemnly. Once or twice Elsie directed a furtive glance at the man beside her, and detected him eyeing her in a manner which made her feel hot and cold by turns. It was not that he was rude or objectionable, but Elsie suddenly felt conscious that Pip's open stare of honest admiration was infinitely less embarrassing than this.
Cullyngham, as a matter of fact, was in a dangerous mood. His was not a pride that took a fall easily, and the fact that he had been compelled to submit to Pip's unconditional ultimatum was goading him to madness. No man is altogether bad, but we are all possessed of our own particular devils, and Cullyngham accommodated more than his fair share of them. He had never denied himself the gratification of any passion, however unworthy, and at that moment his one consuming desire was to retaliate upon the man who had humiliated him. He looked around the empty conservatory, and then again at the girl in the basket-chair beside him. He could punish Pip now in a most exquisite manner.
Elsie caught the glance, and for a moment was suddenly conscious of an emotion hitherto unknown to her—acute physical fear. But Cullyngham said lightly—
"Enjoyed your tea?"
"Yes, thanks," she replied rather tremulously, putting down her cup.
"Then may I smoke?"
"Certainly. But I am going now."
"Right, if you must. I'll just light my cigarette and see you to the end of the drive."
Cullyngham produced a box of matches, and, with the paternal air of one endeavouring to amuse a child, performed various tricks with them. Then he lit a cigarette, and showed Elsie how, by doubling up your tongue, it is possible to grip the cigarette in the fold and draw it into your mouth, reproducing it, still lighted and glowing, a minute later.
"Quite a little exhibition!" said Elsie, at her ease again. "You ought to set up as a conjurer. Now I must be off."
"There is one other little trick with a match that might amuse you," said Cullyngham. "It was taught me by a girl I know. She made me go down on my hands and knees—"
"I refuse to go down on my knees for anybody," said Elsie, with spirit.
"Never mind. I will do that part. I go on my hands and knees on the floor, like this, with a match lying on my back between my shoulder-blades. Then the other person—you—has his hands tied together with a handkerchief, and tries to brush the match off the other person's back. It's extraordinary how difficult it is to do it with one's hands tied and the other person bobbing and dodging to get away from you."
"It sounds absolutely idiotic," said Elsie coldly.
"It isn't, though. Of course it would be idiotic for you and me to play it now by ourselves; but I'll just show you the trick of it, and you will be able to have some sport with them in the billiard-room to-night. Shall I show you?"
Elsie agreed, without enthusiasm. It seemed churlish to refuse such a trifling request to a man who was making laborious efforts to amuse her; but, for all that, this tête-à-tête had lasted long enough. However, she would be on the cricket-ground in a few minutes.
Her doubts were in a measure revived when Cullyngham tied her two wrists together with a silk handkerchief. He performed the operation very quickly, and then dropped on to his hands and knees on the floor and carefully balanced a match on the broad of his back.
"Now," he said, looking up at her, "just try to knock that match off my back. Of course I shall dodge all I can. I bet you won't be able to do it."
Elsie, feeling uncommonly foolish, made one or two perfunctory dabs at the match with her bound hands. Once she nearly succeeded, but Cullyngham backed away just in time. Piqued by his derisive little laugh, she took a quick step forward, and leaning over him, was on the point of brushing the match on to the floor, when suddenly Cullyngham slewed round in her direction, and, thrusting his head into the enclosure of her arms, scrambled to his feet. Next moment Elsie, dazed, numbed, terrified, found herself on tiptoe, hanging round a man's neck, while the man's arms were round her and his hateful smiling face was drawing nearer, nearer, nearer to her own.
Never was a girl in more deadly peril. Elsie uttered a choking scream.
"It's no good, little girl," said Cullyngham. "I've got you fast, and there's not a soul in the house. A kiss, please!" He spoke thickly: the man was dead within him.
Elsie, inert and drooping, shrank back as far as her manacled wrists would allow her, and struggled frantically to free herself. But Cullyngham's arms brought her towards him again. And then, paralysed with terror, with eyes wide open, she found herself staring right over Cullyngham's shoulder at—Pip!—Pip, sprung from the earth, and standing only five yards away.
"Pip!" she moaned; "Pip, save me!"
Almost simultaneously Cullyngham became conscious of something that gripped him by the nape of his neck, just below Elsie's fettered wrists—something that felt like a steel vice. Tighter and tighter grew the grip. The veins began to stand out on Cullyngham's forehead, and he gurgled for breath. Down he went, till his head was once more on a level with the floor and his aristocratic nose was rubbed into the matting. In a moment the girl had slipped her wrists over his head and stood free—pale, shaken, but free!
"Run into the house," said Pip. "I will come in a minute."
Elsie tottered through the French window and disappeared, with her hands still bound before her, and the two men were left alone.
Finding himself in a favourable geographical position, Pip kicked Cullyngham till his toes ached inside his boots. Then he thrust him away on to the floor. Cullyngham, free at last and white with passion, was up in a moment and rushed at Pip. He was met by a crashing blow in the face and went down again.
If Pip had been himself he would have desisted there and then, for he had his enemy heavily punished already. But he was in a raging passion. He knew now that Elsie was more to him than all the world together, and his sudden realisation of the fact came at an inopportune moment for Cullyngham. Pip drove him round the conservatory, storming, raging, blaring like an angry bull, getting in blow upon blow with blind, relentless fury. Cullyngham was no weakling and no coward. Again and again he stood up to Pip, only to go down again under a smash like the kick of a horse. Finally, in a culminating paroxysm of frenzy, Pip took his battered opponent in his arms and hurled him into the green tub containing the orange tree.
Then he went into the house, locking the French window behind him. The fit had passed.
Five minutes devoted to a wash, and a slight readjustment of his collar and tie, and Pip was himself again. Presently he went to seek Elsie. The girl had succeeded in freeing her hands from the handkerchief, and was sitting, badly shaken, a poor little "figure of interment," as the French say, on a sofa in the library. She looked up eagerly at his approach.
"Oh, Pip, did you hurt him?"
"I hope so," said Pip simply. "Will you tell how it happened? At least—don't, if you'd rather not."
But she told him all. "You were just in time, Pip," she concluded. "I was just going to faint, I think."
She looked up at him with shining eyes. Pip saw them, and permitted himself one brief gaze. This was no time for tender passages. He put his hand in his pocket and produced a rather crumpled envelope.
"Would you mind giving that to the Squire for me?" he said. "I have to go away."
"Go away? Oh, Pip! Now?"
"Yes, you see, I have just—"
"But are you going to leave me in the house with that man?" cried Elsie, with a sudden access of her old terror.
"If I am any judge of human nature," said Pip, "he is out of the house by this time. I don't think he will even wait for his luggage. He—he's not very presentable. I see the trap has come round for him. It can take me instead, and I'll cart his luggage up to town and leave it at his club. I owe him some consideration," he added, surveying his knuckles thoughtfully.
Elsie acquiesced.
"Yes, that will be best," she said. "The Chells will think he went off in the ordinary way, and nobody will ever know—Pip, it was awful."
She broke off, and shuddered again and again.
"I should go and lie down till dinner if I were you," said Pip gently. "All over now: forget it. Good-bye."
They shook hands and walked to the door together.
"Why are you going away like this?" said Elsie, as the groom piled the luggage into the trap.
Pip's face clouded.
"I'm ashamed to say that what has happened made me forget for a bit," he said. "I have just had a wire from Pipette—I say, here is the whole cricket-party coming across the lawn! I simply can't face them now. I could have told you about it, but not them. Good-bye, and—good-bye. I shall see you again soon, I hope."
He jumped into the cart, and was rattling down the drive by the time that the cricketers and their attendant throng, hot, noisy, and jubilant, burst like a wave into the hall. Elsie turned hastily from a window as they entered.
"Hallo, Elsie," cried Raven Innes, "what are you doing here?"
"Rather a headache, Raven. I have stayed in since tea," said Elsie.
"You certainly don't look very well, dear," said Mrs. Chell.
"You missed a great finish," said Cockles.
"Only two wickets," shrieked the flapper.
"Yes," added the Squire, "and if one of them had gone down we should have been dished. Pip deserted. Where was the ruffian? Have you seen anything of him, my dear?"
"Yes," said Elsie; "he was here just now."
One or two knowing smiles illuminated the honest faces of the cricketers.
"He came up," she continued composedly, "about four, and hurried away to catch the five-thirty train. He has just gone. He gave me this note for you, Mr. Chell."
The Squire took the note and read it, and his jolly face grew grave.
"Poor fellow!" he said soberly.
"What is it?" said everybody.
"Pip has had a wire from his sister to say that his father died suddenly this morning—heart failure. Pip has slipped away by the afternoon train: he did not want to spoil our fun. He asks me to say good-bye to all of you from him."
CHAPTER VIII
LIFE AT FIRST-HAND
I
Pip reached London that evening to find the great gloomy house in Westock Square shuttered and silent. His father's brougham had driven up as usual at lunch-time, after the morning round, and its owner had been discovered lying in a dead faint inside it. He had been carried into the house, to die—not even in his bed. Death, with whom he had waged a vicarious and more than commonly successful warfare for thirty-one years, had conquered at last, and that, too, with grim irony, in the very arena of the dead man's triumphs—his own consulting-room. The great physician lay peacefully on an operating-couch near the darkened window, surrounded by life-saving appliances and books that tell how death may be averted.
His affairs were in a hopeless tangle. He had risked almost every penny he possessed in an ill-judged effort to "get rich quick," and so provide for himself, or at any rate for his family, however sudden and direct the course that his malady might take. Half his capital had been sunk in unremunerative investments, which might or might not pay fifty per cent some day; and the other half was gone beyond recall on an unrealised anticipation of a fall in copper shares.
A week later Pip, Pipette, and Mr. Hanbury—the latter ten years older than when we last heard of him, but not much changed except for a little reasonable adiposity—sat at dinner. It was almost the last meal they were to take in the old house, for now res angustæ were to be the order of the day.
The meal ended, and coffee having been served, Pipette, looking pale and pretty in her black evening frock, gave each of the men a cigar, snipping the ends herself, as she had been accustomed to do for her father; and the trio composed themselves to conversation.
"I saw Crampton to-day," said Pip. (Crampton was the family lawyer.) "He gave me the facts and figures about things. I couldn't follow all the stuff on blue paper, but I asked him questions and jotted down what I wanted."
"How does it work out?" inquired Hanbury.
"By putting what money there is in the bank into Consols, and adding the interest on the few investments that are paying anything at all, the total income of the estate comes to exactly one hundred and fifty a year," said Pip.
"So long as the capital sunk in the other investments produces nothing, that is?"
"Yes. There is a matter of fifteen thousand pounds buried in some Australian mining group: it might as well be sunk in the sea for all the good it is doing us. Of course it may turn up trumps some day, but not at present, Crampton says. So Pipette and I are worth just a hundred and fifty a year between us."
There was a silence, and the ash on Pip's cigar was perceptibly longer when he spoke again.
"A hundred and fifty," he said, "is not much use for two, but it's a comfortable little sum for one; so Pipette is going to take it all."
Pipette came round and sat on the arm of Pip's chair with the air of one who wishes to argue the point, and Pip continued hurriedly,—
"We talked it over with her this afternoon, Ham, and she agreed with me that for the present it will be best for her to accept the Rossiters' invitation to join them on their visit to Spain and Algiers, which is to last about a year. Pipette will be able to pay her full share of the expenses, so she won't be dependent on anybody. At the same time she will be having a good time with really nice people instead of—instead of—"
"Instead of sitting all day in a two-pair-back in London?" said Hanbury.
"That's it, exactly," said Pip, grateful for this moral support. "Of course it would be ripping".—Pipette was beginning to shake, and he put his arm clumsily round her—"it would be ripping to have remained together, but it can't be done at present. In a year, perhaps. The old lady has been very sensible about it."
Apparently being "sensible" did not include abstinence from tears, for Pipette was now weeping softly. She had lost her father only a week, and now she was to lose her beloved brother.
Hanbury, who, like most strong men, was helpless against feminine tears, coughed self-consciously.
"It sounds a good arrangement," he said. "I suppose it is quite impossible for you two to live together? With the hundred and fifty, and what you could make yourself, Pip—"
"How am I going to make it?" inquired Pip.
"What are your prospects?"
"What are my accomplishments? I am just twenty-five; I am sound in wind and limb; and I sometimes take wickets. Can you suggest anything else?"
"Yes; you possess a stout heart and a hard head."
"If by hard you mean thick, I do," agreed Pip dismally.
"Thick heads have their market like everything else. Where are you going to take yours?"
"Where would you suggest? I have my own ideas on the subject, of course, but I should like to hear yours, Ham."
Hanbury looked across at him quizzically.
"My young friend," he said, with a flash of his old pedagogic manner, "long experience of your character warns me that you have determined on some crack-brained scheme, and are now prepared to defend it against all comers. Proceed."
Pip grinned.
"As you like," he said. "But I think a discussion would clear the air. Here goes! Pipette is appointed chairman. The subject for debate is 'The Choice of a Career for a Young Man without Education, Ability, or Prospects.' Fire away, Ham, and bear in mind that all the learned professions are barred to me."
"I'm not sure of that. How about school-mastering?"
"At a Preparatory?"
"Yes."
"Do you recommend the billet?"
"Frankly—no. Preparatory work is all right provided that you don't mind a berth in which your real work only begins at playtime, and which, unless you can afford ultimately to set up for yourself, offers you an absolutely maximum screw of about two hundred a year."
"I know the sort of thing," said Pip. "You start on about eighty, with board—"
"Which means a poky dust-hole to sleep in, meat-tea, and—"
"'The post is one we can unreservedly recommend'—I know."
"'Write promptly yet carefully,'" chanted Ham, "'to the Principal, the Rev. Adolphus Buggins—'"
"'Explaining that you have heard of this vacancy through our agency—'"
"'Stating your degree and previous experience (if any)—'"
"'If a member of the Church of England—'"
"'Your willingness to participate in school games—'"
"'If musical—'"
"'If possible, a photograph'—yah!"
"Don't you think we are rather wandering from the point?" inquired the mystified chairwoman.
The rhapsodists ceased their antistrophes and apologised.
"True," said Ham. "Suggestion number one is negatived without a division. Let us try a fresh cast. Have you any influence with business firms?"
"No, thank God!" said Pip simply. "An office would just kill me. If I had any chance of a post I should of course have to apply; but I haven't, so I needn't."
There was another pause.
"If," said Ham reflectively, "there was any prospect of your sunken capital rising to the surface again, say in two or three years' time, and it was simply a matter of hanging on till then, you could afford to spend the intervening period in a very interesting fashion."
"As how?"
"Go and see the world for yourself, above and below, inside and out. Knock about and rub shoulders with all sorts of folk. Plunge beneath the surface and see things as they are. Make your way everywhere, and if possible live by the work of your own two hands. You would acquire a knowledge of mankind that few men possess. At the worst you could hang on and make a living somehow until your ship came in—if it were only as a dock-hand or a railway porter. It would be a grand chance, Pip. Most men are so unenterprising. Those at the top never want to see what things are like below, and those below are so afraid of staying there forever that their eyes are constantly turned upwards and they miss a lot. I'd give something to be a vagabond for a year or two."
"What fearful sentiments for a respectable house-master!" said Pipette severely; but Pip's eyes glowed.
"However," continued Hanbury more soberly, "Pip can't afford to waste time observing life in a purely academic way down in the basement. He must start getting upstairs at once."
"Hear, hear!" said the chairwoman.
"As a matter of fact," said Pip, "the scheme I have in my eye rather meets the case, I think."
"What is it?"
"Well, I made a list of all the careers open to me. I'll go through them."
Though his final choice was all they wished to know, his audience settled themselves patiently to listen. They knew it was useless to hurry Pip.
"The things I thought of," continued the orator, "are—cricket-pro, gamekeeper, policeman, emigrant to Canada, and Tommy."
He smiled genially upon his gaping companions. "They are all good open-air jobs," he explained.
Pipette stiffened in her chair.
"But they will none of them do," he added.
Pipette relaxed again.
"This," said Hanbury, "is interesting and human. We must have your reasons for rejecting these noble callings, seriatim. A cricket-pro, for instance?"
"Once a 'pro' always a 'pro,'" said Pip. "I hope some day to play as an amateur again. And while we are on the subject, I may as well say that I'm not going to be a professional-amateur. No two hundred a year as assistant-deputy-under-secretary to a county club for me, please!"
"Good boy," said Hanbury. "Now, please—gamekeeper?"
"I'm too old. A gamekeeper requires to be born to the job. I have the ordinary sporting man's knowledge of game and sport generally, but I should be a hundred before I learned as much about the real ins and outs of the business as—a poacher's baby."
"Quite so. Policeman?"
"The only chance of promotion in the police force is in the detective direction, and I—I think detection comes under the head of learned professions."
"Tommy, then?"
"A Tommy's would be a grand life if there was always a war. But, Ham, think what the existence of a gentleman-ranker must be in time of peace. A few hours' duty a day, and the rest—beer and nursemaids! Help!"
"You have been devoting much time to reflection, Pip. Well, to continue. How about emigrating?"
"Emigration is such a tremendously big step. If one is prepared for it, well and good. But I'm not ripe yet. You see, Canada and Australia are so far away, and I'm not quite prepared to give up—"
"England, home, and beauty—eh, Pip? Is that how the wind blows?"
"Dry up!" said Pip, hastily passing on to his peroration. "Before I try any of these things I am going to see how my own pet scheme pans out."
"And that is—?" said Pipette breathlessly.
"I can use my hands a bit, and have a sort of rough knowledge of mechanics," continued Pip, staring into the fire and stating his case with maddening deliberation, "and I don't mind hard work. Mind you—"
"Pip, do get on!" almost screamed poor Pipette.
Pip, looking slightly surprised, came to the point.
"I am going to try for a job," said he, "at a big motor works I know of. I will start as a cleaner, or greaser, or anything they please, if they'll take me; and when I have got a practical knowledge of the ins and outs of the business, I shall try to set up as a chauffeur."
He broke off, and scanned his hearers' faces rather defiantly.
"How do you like the idea?" he asked.
"You'd get horribly dirty, Pip," said practical Pipette. "Think of the oil!"
Pip laughed. "I'll get used to that."
"And how long would you stick to it?"
"What, the oil?"
"No, the trade."
"That depends. If I find the life absolutely unbearable for any reason—Trades Unions, for instance—I shall jack it up. But I don't think it is very likely."
"Neither do I," said Hanbury, who had had exceptional opportunities for studying Pip's character.
"Then," continued Pip, with something like enthusiasm, "if those sunken shares took up, and there was money to be had, I might buy myself a partnership in a motor business. If they don't take up, I must just save my wages till I can afford to go out and farm in Canada. I'll take you with me, Pipette, if I go," he added reassuringly.