Mammon and Co Part 19

"I accept your apology," he said. "And please do me the favour not to treat me like a fool again, for I am far from being a fool."

This speech was not easy swallowing for Kit, but she had to take what he threw her. Alington got up.

"I have to go upstairs to see your husband," he said, "because we have a good deal of business--the shares of the new group will be on the market in a few days."

He paused a moment.

"Do not give another thought to the matter, Lady Conybeare," he said.

"It is much better we should be friends. Ah, by the way, regarding that matter on which I meant to speak to you, that unfortunate affair of the hundred-pound counter--you know what I mean. Do not give another thought to that, either. I a.s.sure you that it will not be through me that it goes further. I fully believe you never meant it. Only you did not correct your mistake instantaneously, and so correction became impossible. Was it not so?"

His broad face brightened and beamed, like the face of a father speaking lovingly and consolingly to a son about some petty fault, and he held out his hand to her.

Kit wavered. She would have given anything in the world to say, "What affair of the hundred-pound counter? I don't know what you mean." But she could not. She was physically, perhaps morally, incapable of giving the words utterance. Alington had made her afraid; she was beaten, cowed. And the accuracy of his intuition astounded her. Then she gave him her hand; she had no word for him on this subject.

"Good-bye," she said--"_au revoir_, rather. You will be in and out a good deal, I suppose, while we are in London. There is always lunch at two. My husband is in his room upstairs. You know the way, I think."

Many people have their own pet plan of sending themselves to sleep, such as counting imaginary sheep going through a visionary hedge, or marking out a lawn-tennis court, lifting the machine as seldom as possible.

Kit's method, though she usually fell asleep immediately, was to enumerate her dislikes. This was a long and remarkably varied list, beginning "Marie Corelli, parsnips," and she seldom got to the end of it. To-night she admitted Mr. Alington into the charming catalogue, and getting to his name, she did not continue the list, nor did she immediately go to sleep.

CHAPTER XII

THE COTTAGE BY THE SEA

Toby was sitting on the edge of an old weather-beaten breakwater, now running out lop-sidedly and burying its nose in the sand, some three miles north of Stanborough-on-Sea, making an exceedingly public toilet after his swim.

His mother, old Lady Conybeare, had a charming house down here, which had, so to speak, risen from the ranks; in other words, it had originally been two cottages, and was now a sort of rustic palace. Her husband had been a man of extraordinary good taste, and both his idea and execution of this transformation was on the high-water mark of felicity. Brick with rough-cast was the delectable manner of it, and the old cottage chambers had been run one into another like the amalgamation of separate drops of quicksilver, to produce irregular-shaped rooms with fireplaces in odd corners. He had built out a wing on one side, a block on another, a dining-room on a third; the front-door was reached through a cloister open to the sea, and supported on brick pillars; and big green Spanish oil-jars and Venetian well-tops lined the terraced walk.

Opposite the front-door, on the other side of the carriage sweep, was a monastic-looking, three-sided courtyard, bounded by low-arched cloisters, and an Italian tower, square and tapering towards the top, bisected the middle side. Close ab.u.t.ting on this was a charming huddled group of red roofs, with beaten ironwork in the windows, suggestive of the refectory of this seaside monastery. In reality it comprised a laundry, a bakehouse, and the dynamos which supplied the electric light.

For there was in reality nothing unpleasantly monastic about the place; the cloisters were admirable shelters from sun or wind, and were heavily cushioned; the bell in the tower rang folk not to prime, but to dinner; and the peas were not put in visitors' boots, but boiled and put in dishes. The house, in fact, was as habitable as it was picturesque, a high degree of merit; it was no penance at all to stay there; the electric light seemed to brighten automatically as dusk fell, even as the moon and stars begin to shine without visible lamplighter in the high-roofed hall of heaven; and there were about as many bathrooms, with hot and cold water, as there were bedrooms.

Toby was putting on his socks very leisurely; he had been down for a dip in the sea before lunch, and having lit the post-ablutive cigarette, sweetest of all that burn, he threw his towel round his neck, took his coat on his arm, and walked slowly up the steep sandy pathway to the top of the fifty-foot cliff on which the house and garden stood. Several old fishermen were standing about at the top in nautical att.i.tudes, hitching their trousers, folding their arms, and scanning the horizon like the chorus in light opera. One had a lately-taken haul, and Toby inspected his wares with much interest. There were lobsters in blue mail--angry and irritable, which glanced sideways at one like vicious horses looking for a good opening to kick--feebly-flapping soles, anaemic whiting, a few rainbow mackerel, and, oh, heavens! crabs.

Now, temptation and crab were the two things in the world which Toby found it idle to attempt to resist, and he ordered that the biggest and best should be sent instantly up to the house. Perhaps it would be safer if he took it himself, for the mere possibility of its miscarrying was not to be borne, and grasping it gingerly by the fourth leg, he carried it, not without nervousness, wide angry pincers all agape, up across the lawn.

He went through the cloister and in at the door leading to the servants'

parts, where he met a stern, stark butler.

"Oh, Lowndes," he said, "for lunch, if possible. By the hind-leg. For the cook, with my compliments, and dressed."

The transference was effected, much to Toby's relief, and he put down his towel and on his coat. There was still half an hour to wait for lunch, but that cloud had now its proverbial silver lining. Half an hour seemed an impossible time, but the silver lining was the possibility of the crab being ready by then. How long a crab took dressing Toby did not know, but if it took no longer than he did himself--and there was more of him to dress--half an hour should be sufficient for two.

Lily, who, like himself, held firmly the wholesome creed that it is impious to stop indoors while it is possible to be out, was sure to be in the garden somewhere, and Toby walked out again in his white, sea-stained tennis-shoes to find her.

The cottage had risen from the ranks, but not less remarkable had been the promotion of the garden. What a few years ago had been an unprofitable acreage of wind-swept corn, and more suggestive, by reason of its fine poppy-bearing qualities, of an opium rather than a wheat-field, was become a flowery wilderness of delight. Buckthorn, gray and green like the olives of the South, and bearing berries as if of a jaundiced holly, had been planted in shrubberies in the centre of garden-beds as screens from the wind, robbing the sea-gales of their bitter saltness before they pa.s.sed over the flowers, and letting the bracing quality alone reach the plants. Mixed with the buckthorn were the yellow flames of the golden elder, n.o.blest of the English shrubs, and rows of aspen all a-quiver with nervous feminine energy. Thus sheltered, there ran on each side of a broad s.p.a.ce of gra.s.s away from the house an avenue of herbaceous border. Hollyhocks and sunflowers stood up behind, like tall men looking over the heads of an average crowd; shoulder-high to them were single dahlias and scarlet salvias; below them again a row of Shirley poppies, delicate in tint and texture as Liberty fabrics, and in a happy plebeian crowd at the edge mignonette, love-lies-a-bleeding, London-pride, and double daisies.

Toby sauntered silent-footed over the velvet carpet of gra.s.s up to the summer-house, faced with split planks of pollarded elm, which stood at the end, but drew an unavailing cover. Thence crossing the broad gravel walk, he tried the tennis-court, and went down the steps past flowering fuchsia-trees, where two great bronze storks of j.a.panese work turned a world-weary eye skywards, and explored the rose-garden. This lay in a natural dip of the land, studiously sheltered, and the wirework pergola which ran through it was on these August days one foam of pink sherbet petals. On either side were rockeries covered with creeping stonecrops, mountain-heaths, and Alpine gentians, those remote sentinels of the vegetable world. And strange to their blue eyes, accustomed to see morning break on paths untrodden of man and fields of flashing snow, must have been the soft hint of dawn in this land of tended green. But Toby saw them not, for there in a nook at the end, below an ivy-trained limb of tree, sat the queen of the rosebud garden.

Lily was not reading, in spite of the seeming evidence of an open book on her lap, for the breeze turned its leaves backwards and forwards like some student distractedly hunting up a reference. For a moment the page would lie open and unturned; then a scud of flying leaves would end in a long pause at p. 423; then one leaf would be turned very slowly, as if the unseen reader was perusing the last words very carefully, while his fingers pushed the page over to be ready for the next. Then with a bustle and scurry he would hurry on and study the advertis.e.m.e.nts at the end, and as like as not go suddenly back to the t.i.tle-page.

Lily had been thinking pleasantly and idly about Toby, and the many charming things in this delightful world, when he appeared. She welcomed him with a smile in those adorable dark eyes.

"Had a nice dip?" she asked, as he sat down by her. "Oh, Toby, when we are married I shall devote my whole life to getting your hair tidy for once. Then I shall turn my face to the wall and softly expire."

"If that's your object you'll be aiming at the impossible," remarked Toby, "like that silly school-master you read me about in Browning who aimed at a million."

"Grammarian," corrected Lily, "and I'll read you no more Browning."

"Well, it does seem to be a bit above my head," said Toby, without regret. "And I bought a crab on my way up, and, oh, I love you!"

Lily laughed.

"I thought you were going to say, 'Oh, I love crab!'" she said.

"And that would be true, too," said Toby. "What a lot of true things there are, if one only looks for them!" he observed.

"That's what the Christian scientists say," remarked Lily. "They say there is no such thing as lies or evil or pain."

"Who are the Christian scientists?" asked Toby. "And what do they make of toothache?"

Lily meditated a moment.

"The Christian scientists are unsuccessful female pract.i.tioners," she observed at length. "And there isn't any toothache; it's only you who think so."

"Seems to me it's much the same thing," said Toby. "And how about lies?

Supposing I said I didn't love you?"

"Or crab?"

"Or crab, even. Would that be true, therefore?"

Lily leaned forward, and put down Toby's tie, which was rising above his collar.

"Well, I think we've disposed of them," she said. "Oh dear, I wish I was a man!"

"I don't," said Toby.

"Why not? Oh, I see. Thanks. But I should like to be able to bathe from a breakwater, and buy crabs from fishermen, and have very short, untidy straight-up hair, and a profession, Toby."

"Yes," said Toby, wincing, for he knew or suspected what was coming.

"Don't say 'yes' like that. Say it as if you meant it."

Toby took a long breath, and shut his eyes.

"Yes, so help me G.o.d!" he said, very loud.