Mammon and Co Part 23

"There'll be a row afterwards with Kit, I'm afraid," said Toby.

"Oh, certainly. But it's all for her good. Introduce me when she comes, and I'll say I have been her guardian angel."

Toby looked at Buck's strong brown face for a moment in silence.

"You'd look nice with wings and a night-shirt," he remarked. "Pity Raphael or one of those Johnnies isn't alive."

"If by Johnnies you refer to the Italian school of painters," said Buck, "it isn't worth while saying so."

"I know; that's why I didn't say so. Good-bye; I'm off to the Links Hotel. Dinner at eight."

Lord Comber was in, and would Toby come up to his sitting-room? He met him at the top of the stairs, like a perfect hostess, and took him down the broad pa.s.sage, stopping once opposite a big gla.s.s to smooth his carefully-crimped hair. Then he took Toby's arm, and Toby bristled, for he did not thrust his hand inside the curve of his elbow and let it lie there, but inserted it very daintily and gently, as if he was threading a needle, with a slight pressure of his long fingers.

"It's quite too delightful to see you, Toby," he said; "and how splendid you are looking! I wish I could get as brown as that. You must let me do a sketch of you. Yes, I'm here all alone, and I've been terribly bored. I wonder if your mother would allow me to come and see her. Is Miss Murchison there, too?"

"Yes; she came a couple of days ago."

"How nice! I do want to see more of her. Everyone is frightfully jealous of you. And I hear your mother's house is quite beautiful. Round to the right."

Ted Comber firmly held the creed that if you flatter people and make yourself pleasant you can do anything with them. There is quite an astonishing amount of truth in it, but, like many other creeds, it does not contain the whole truth. It does not allow for the possible instance of two personalities being so antagonistic that every effort, even to be pleasant, on the part of the one merely renders it more obnoxious to the other. This is a very disconcerting sort of exception, and the fact that it may prove the rule is a very slight compensation, practically considered.

"You have some wonderful Burne-Jones drawings, someone told me," went on Ted, innocently driving the exception up to the hilt, so to speak, in his own blood. "Your father must have had such taste! It is so clever of people to see twenty years before what is going to be valuable. I wish I had known him. Here's my den."

Toby looked round the den in scarcely veiled horror. Daniel's den with all its lions, he thought, would be preferable to this. There was a French writing-table, and on it signed photographs of two or three women in silver frames, an empty inkstand, a gold-topped scent-bottle (not empty), and a small daintily-bound volume of French verse. Against the wall stood a sofa, smothered in cushions, and on it a mandolin with a blue ribbon. A very big low armchair stood near the sofa, on the arm of which was cast a piece of silk embroidery, the needle still sticking in it, a d.a.m.ning proof of the worker thereof. There was a large looking-gla.s.s over the fireplace, and on the chimney-piece stood two or three Saxe figures. A copy of the Gentlewoman and the Queen lay on the floor.

"I can't get on without a few of my own things about me," said Lord Comber, fussing gently about the room. "I always take some of my things with me if I am going to stay in a hotel. This place is quite nice; they are very civil, and the cooking isn't bad. But it makes such a difference to have some of one's things about; it makes your rooms so much more homey."

And he drew the curtain a shade more over the window to keep the sun out.

"How long are you going to stop here?" asked Toby.

"Oh, another week, I expect," said Comber, removing the embroidery, and indicating the armchair to Toby. "Of course, it is rather lonely, and I don't know a soul here; but I'm out a good deal on these delicious sands, and another week alone will be quite bearable."

"I wonder you didn't arrange to come with somebody," said Toby quietly.

Lord Comber took up the gold-topped scent-bottle and refreshed his forehead. This was a little awkward, but Kit had told him to tell none of the cottage-party that she would be there. He remembered vaguely that Kit had, one evening in July, announced her intention of coming to Stanborough, but he could not recollect whether Toby was there, and, besides, at the time she had not really meant to do anything of the kind. It was only afterwards that they had made their definite arrangements. The worst of it was, that there was a letter from Kit lying on the table, and Toby might or might not have seen it.

"Everyone is engaged now," he said. "It is hopeless trying to get people in August. Oh, I heard from Kit this morning," he added, by rather an ingenious afterthought. "She asked me to come down to Goring in September."

"Was that all she said?" asked Toby.

"Oh, you know what Kit's letters are like," said he. "A delicious sort of hash of all that has happened to everybody."

Toby paused a moment. G.o.d was good.

"She didn't happen to say by what train she was going to arrive to-morrow?" he asked.

Lord Comber made a little impatient gesture, admirably spontaneous. He had often used it before.

"Oh, how angry Kit will be!" he said. "She told me particularly not to tell anybody. How did you know, Toby?"

"She wrote to my mother some days ago declining her invitation to come to the cottage," he said. "Also the thing was discussed at length in my presence. There was no question of concealment. I remember you asked if you might come too, and she said no."

Lord Comber laughed, quite as if he was not annoyed.

"Yes, I remember," he said. "What fun Kit was that night! It was at the Haslemeres', wasn't it? I never saw her in such form."

Toby sat as stiff as a poker in the armchair.

"I can't quite reconcile your statement that you were going to be all alone with the fact that you knew Kit was coming to-morrow," he said.

"Not off-hand, at least."

Ted Comber began to be aware that the position was a sultry one. Kit had distinctly told him not to tell any of the people at the cottage that she was coming, and he had said that this was the wrong sort of precaution to take. They would be sure to know, and a failure in secrecy is a ghastly failure, and so difficult to explain afterwards, for people always think that if you keep a thing secret there is something to be kept secret. No doubt she had come round to his way of thinking, and had told them herself, forgetting the prohibition she had laid on him.

Altogether it was an annoying business. However, this scene with the barbarous brother-in-law had to be gone through with at once. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Kit told me not to mention it," he said. "We were going to have a rustic little time in all our worst clothes and no maid. That is all."

"You have lied to me--that is all," said Toby, with incredible rudeness.

"That is not the way for one man to speak to another, Toby," said Lord Comber, feeling suddenly cold and damp. "I followed Kit's directions."

"Of course, it is the fashion to say that it is the woman's fault,"

observed Toby fiendishly.

Lord Comber was quite at a loss how to deal with such outrageous behaviour. People did not do such things.

"Did you come here in order to quarrel with me?" he asked.

"No, I don't want to quarrel," said Toby, "but I intend that you shall go away."

"That is so thoughtful of you," said Comber.

He was getting a little agitated, and had recourse to the scent-bottle again. He did not like fencing with the b.u.t.tons off.

Toby did not answer at once; he was thinking of the suggestion he had made to his mother. He determined to use it as a threat, at any rate.

"Look here," he said; "Kit may choose her own friends as much as she pleases, but she cannot go staying alone with you at a place like this.

Either you go or I telegraph to Jack."

Lord Comber laughed.

"Do you really suppose Jack would really mind?" he said.

"And do you know that you are speaking of my brother?" asked Toby.

"I'm sure that is not Jack's fault," remarked Comber.

"No. Then, as you say, if Jack won't mind, I'll telegraph to him at once. Have you a form here? Oh, it doesn't matter; I can get one in the office."