CHAPTER XIV

CARRINGTON MEWS,

12th March.

DEAR Agatha,—The letter you sent in answer to my wire has remained too long unanswered, but I have, since Katherine's death, been immersed in correspondence of a most uninteresting and tedious description. The work entailed in the settling of affairs is colossal, and when I haven't been writing tiresome business epistles, or others even more tiresome to people who never remembered my existence when I was a poor man, the lawyers have had me in their octopus-like clutches.

You will notice that I refer to my poverty in the past tense. Yes, Agatha, I have no longer to consider whether I can afford a glass of ale with my chop for lunch, or half a crown for admission to the pit (to be quite correct, I should say three shillings, the odd sixpence being one's contribution towards the expenses of the war). I can even, if I wish, call a taxi to take me round the corner, or ask Mrs. Darling to dine with me at the Ritz. Katherine left me all she possessed. She did it, I believe, with qualms as to the wisdom of the deed, but, as I have remarked before, "blood is thicker than water," and the habit of giving, where I am concerned, had become with Katherine a habit. Her forebodings, however, were apparent in the wording of her will, and her lawyer treated me to quite a sermon when I called to sign some papers the other day. He said it behoved me to take up the social duties entailed in the possession of a house in Curzon Street, together with an income of five thousand a year. The Countess, he reminded me, had always been very punctilious in the discharge of her obligations as a member of the aristocracy, and it would be an act of ingratitude on my part if I failed to carry on the family traditions. (I wonder if he has, at any time, seen me with Mrs. Darling.) He hinted at the desirability of my settling down with a suitable wife. Mrs. Darling, by the way, has already had her say on this subject, putting it a little more crudely, and with a rather unflattering reference to "Old Parr". By the way, she refuses absolutely to go any more jaunts round London with me. She says if I don't know my place, she knows hers, and that she has no ambition to "git into the papers". She added that there had been a man with a camera hanging about the Mews lately, and she shouldn't wonder if he wasn't waiting to snapshot the heir to the Countess of Corbridge's thousands.

Mrs. Darling, alas! has altered. Gone is her air of good comradeship, gone her meat puddings, and my snowy pocket handkerchiefs. She says I can afford to lunch out properly now, and send my washing to a laundry in the country. She seems to have lost interest in me since I ceased to want anything of her. It's a trait I have noticed in women in whom the maternal instinct is strongly developed. But if Mrs. Darling is faithless to me, I am not faithless to her. I have plans for the old lady which I shall unfold in due course. Katherine pensioned her housekeeper, who is retiring, and I propose taking Mrs. Darling with me to Curzon Street. She will be almost as difficult to transplant from Carrington Mews as I shall, but a companion in misfortune softens the blow, and we shall help each other.

Dear me, Agatha, but this is a doleful letter, and to tell the truth, my mood is not hilarious. I would give a good deal to have Katherine back in Curzon Street, and myself secure in a life of vagabondage. When I think of all this new life entails I lose heart, and fear to lose my youth also.

Now I come to think of it, that's an admission worthy of Old Parr himself. Lose my youth at sixty-five! Haven't I already lost it? The answer is—No, for youth and vagabondage are synonymous. There is only one person who can help me in such a crisis, and that person is yourself. Existence has become too complex to be faced alone. I want some one to help me spend this money in the service of those to whom a few pounds makes the difference between heaven and hell, and your talent for philanthropy has always been handicapped by lack of means. There is, though, a condition attached which may put you off the bargain—George Tallenach is, as Mrs. Darling will tell you, "not everybody's money". But years ago there was a woman who stuck up for George when no one else had a good word to say for him. If now he asks her to change the duties of friend for those of a wife, will she think it too late?

Adieu, Agatha, and may the meeting, and the answer, come soon.

GEORGE TALLENACH.