Driftwood Spars Part 11

said he at last. "Made your will all right?"

The Hatter publicly apologised, then and there, and explained that he had, for once in his life, taken a third drink and didn't know what he was saying.

"If your third drink brings out the real man, I should recommend you to stick to two, Bonnett," said the young man, and went away to cogitate.

Should he speak to Dearman? No. He didn't want to see so good a chap hanged for a thing like the Bonnett. Should he go and slap Augustus Grobble hard and make him leave the station somehow? No. Sure to be a scandal. You can no more stop a scandal than a locust-cloud or a fog.

The best way to increase it is to notice it. What a horrid thing is a scandal-monger--exhaling poison. It publishes the fact that it is poisonous, of course--but the gas is not enjoyable.

Well, G.o.d help anybody Dearman might happen to hear on the subject!

Happily Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman heard nothing, for he was a quiet, slow, jolly, red-haired man, and the wrath of a slow, quiet, red-haired man, once roused, is apt to be a rather dangerous thing. Also Mr.

Dearman was singularly elephantine in the blundering crushing directness of his methods, and his idea of enough might well seem more than a feast to some.

And Mr. Dearman suffered Augustus gladly, usually finding him present at tea, frequently at dinner, and invariably in attendance at dances and functions.

Augustus was happy and Good--for Augustus. He dallied, he adored, he basked. For a time he felt how much better, finer, more enjoyable, more beautiful, was this life of innocent communion with a pure soul--pure, if just a little insipid, after the real spankers he had hitherto affected.

He was being saved from himself, reformed, helped, and all the rest of it. And when privileged to bring her pen, her fan, her book, her cushion, he always kissed the object with an appearance of wishing to be unseen in the act. It was a splendid change from the Lurid Life and the mean adventure. Piquant.

Unstable as water he could not excel nor endure, however, even in dalliance; nor persevere even when adopted as the _fidus Achates_ of a good and beautiful woman--the poor little weather-c.o.c.k. He was essentially weak, and weakness is worse than wickedness. There is hope for the strong bad man. He may become a strong good one. Your weak man can never be that.

There came a lady to the Great Eastern Hotel where Augustus lived. Her husband's name, curiously enough, was Harris, and wags referred to him as _the_ Mr. Harris, because he had never been seen--and like Betsey Prig, they "didn't believe there was no sich person". And beyond doubt she was a spanker.

Augustus would sit and eye her at meals--and his face would grow a little less attractive. He would think of her while he took tea with Mrs. and Mr. Dearman, a.s.suring himself that she was certainly a stepper, a stunner, and, very probably,--thrilling thought--a wrong 'un.

Without the very slightest difficulty he obtained an introduction and, shortly afterwards, decided that he was a man of the world, a Decadent, a wise Hedonist who took the sweets of every day and hoped for more to-morrow.

Who but a fool or a silly greenhorn lets slip the chances of enjoyment, and loses opportunities of experiences? There was nothing in the world, they said, to compare with War and Love. Those who wanted it were welcome to the fighting part, he would be content with the loving role.

He would be a Dog and go on breaking hearts and collecting trophies.

What a milk-and-water young a.s.s he had been, hanging about round good, silly, little Mrs. Dearman, denying himself champagne at dinner-parties, earning opprobrium as a teetotaller, going to bed early like a bread-and-b.u.t.ter flapper, and generally losing all the joys of Life!

Been behaving like a _backfisch_. He read his Swinburne again, and unearthed from the bottom of a trunk some books that dealt with the decadent's joys,--poets of the Flesh, and prosers of the Devil, in his many weary forms.

Also he redoubled his protestations (of undying, hopeless, respectful devotion and regard) to Mrs. Dearman, until she, being a woman, therefore suspected something and became uneasy.

One afternoon he failed to put in an appearance at tea-time, though expected. He wrote that he had had a headache. Perhaps it was true, but, if so, it had been borne in the boudoir of the fair spanker whose husband may or may not have been named Harris.

As his absences from the society of Mrs. Dearman increased in frequency, his protestations of undying grat.i.tude and regard for her increased in fervour.

Mrs. Dearman grew more uneasy and a little unhappy.

Could she be losing her influence for Good over the poor weak boy? Could it be--horrible thought--that he was falling into the hands of some nasty woman who would flirt with him, let him smoke too many cigarettes, drink c.o.c.ktails, and sit up late? Was he going to relapse and slip back into that state of wickedness of some kind, that she vaguely understood him to have been guilty of in the unhappy past when he had possessed no guardian angel to keep his life pure, happy and sweet, as he now declared it to be?

"Where's your young friend got to lately?" inquired her husband one day.

"I don't know, John," she replied, "he's always missing appointments nowadays," and there was a pathetic droop about the childish mouth.

"Haven't quarrelled with him, or anything, have you, Pat?"

"No, John dear. It would break his heart if I were unkind to him--or it would have used to. I mean it used to have would. Oh, you know what I mean. Once it would have. No, I have not been unkind to him--it's rather the other way about, I think!"

_Rather the other way about_! The little affected pimp unkind to Mrs.

Dearman! Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman made no remark--aloud.

Augustus came to tea next day and his hostess made much of him. His host eyed him queerly. Very.

Augustus felt uncomfortable. Good Heavens! Was Dearman jealous? The man was not going to cut up jealous at this time of day, surely! Not after giving him the run of the house for months, and allowing him to take his wife everywhere--nay, encouraging him in every way. Absurd idea!

Beastly disturbing idea though--Dearman jealous, and on your track! A rather direct and uncompromising person, red-haired too. But the man was absolutely fair and just, and he'd never do such a thing as to let a fellow be his wife's great pal, treat him as one of the family for ages, and then suddenly round on him as though he were up to something. No.

Especially when he was, if anything, cooling off a bit.

"He was always most cordial--such a kind chap,--when I was living in his wife's pocket almost," reflected Augustus, "and he wouldn't go and turn jealous just when the thing was slacking off a bit."

But there was no doubt that Dearman was eyeing him queerly....

"Shall we go on the river to-morrow night, Gussie?" said Mrs. Dearman, "or have a round of golf, or what?"

"Let's see how we feel to-morrow," replied Augustus, who had other schemes in view. "Sufficient unto the day is the joy thereof," and he escorted Mrs. Dearman to the Gymkhana, found her some nice, ladies'

pictorials, said, "I'll be back in a minute or two,"--and went in search of Mrs. "Harris".

"Well," said that lady, "been a good little boy and eaten your bread and b.u.t.ter nicely? Have a Lyddite c.o.c.ktail to take the taste away. So will I." ...

"Don't forget to book the big punt," said the Siren an hour or so later.

"I'll be ready for you about five."

Augustus wrote one of his charming little notes on his charming little note-paper that evening.

"KIND AND GRACIOUS LADYE,

"Pity me. Pity and love me. To-morrow the sun will not shine for your slave, for he will not see it. I am unable to come over in the evening.

I stand 'twixt love and duty, and know you would counsel duty. Would the College and all its works were beneath the ocean wave! Think of me just once and I shall survive till the day after. Oh, that I could think your disappointment were but one thousandth part of mine. I live but for Thursday.

"Ever your most devoted loving slave,

"GUSSIE."

Mrs. Dearman wept one small tear, for she had doubted his manner when he had evaded making the appointment, and was suspicious. Mr. Dearman entered and noted the one small tear ere it trickled off her dainty little nose.

She showed him the note.

Mr. (or Colonel) Dearman thought much. What he said was "Hm!"

"I suppose he has got to invigilate at some horrid examination or something," she said, but she did not really suppose anything of the kind. Even to her husband she could not admit the growing dreadful fear that the brand she had plucked from the burning was slipping from her hand--falling back into the flames.

At a dinner-party that night a woman whom she hated, and wrote down an evil-minded scandal-monger and inventor and disseminator of lies, suddenly said to her, "Who _is_ this Mrs. Harris, my dear?"

"How should I know?" replied Mrs. Dearman.

"Oh, I thought your young friend Mr. Grobble might have told you--he seems to know her very well," answered the woman sweetly.

That night Mr. Dearman heard his wife sobbing in bed. Going to her he asked what was the matter, and produced eau-de-Cologne, phenacetin, smelling-salts and sympathy.