"Pip" Part 23

Still, it will do no harm to keep an eye on him."

A sudden idea struck Pip.

"Wouldn't it be a sound scheme," he suggested, "to warn your young sister about him?"

Raven c.o.c.ked an inquiring eye at him.

"Why her in particular?"

"I meant all of them," corrected Pip, rather lamely.

"I've only got one."

"No, no; I meant all the girls here."

"Not much," said the sagacious Raven; "they'd be after him like bees!"

After that the conversation reverted to ordinary channels, and Pip was apprised of the week's programme. On the morrow, Wednesday, the House Eleven, under the Squire himself, would play the village, led by the Vicar--a time-honoured fixture. Thursday would be an off-day; on Friday they would meet the Grandwich Old Boys, who were on tour and would put up at "The George"; and on Sat.u.r.day would come the tug-of-war, the match against the Gentlemen of the County, who were reputed to have whipped up a red-hot side.

Pip, who had arrived late for tea, met the ladies of the party in the drawing-room before dinner. They were of the usual diverse types. There was Kitty Davenport, slangy and mannish, who would not thank you for describing her as "a charming girl," but would be your firm friend if you called her "a good sort." There were the Misses Ch.e.l.l, fresh, unaffected, and healthily English. There were the two Calthrop girls, pretty, helpless, and clinging--a dangerous sort this, O young man!--together with an a.s.sortment of girls who were plain but lively, and girls who were dull but pretty, and a few less fortunate girls who were neither lively nor pretty. There was a solitary "flapper" of fifteen, who, untrammelled as yet by fear of Mrs. Grundy, was having the time of her life with the two callowest members of the Eleven.

And there was Elsie. Pip encountered her suddenly on the staircase. She was clad in the severely simple white frock that marks the _debutante_, and her lint-coloured hair was "up," as Pipette had said. It was two years since Pip had seen her, for she had been to a finishing-school in Paris. He shook her hand in a manner which left that member limp and bloodless for the rest of the evening, and accompanied her downstairs, to find on reaching the hall that some never-to-be-sufficiently-blessed fairy had arranged that he was to take her in to dinner.

The most confirmed believer in the decadence of the Anglo-Saxon race might have been converted by the sight of the company round Squire Ch.e.l.l's table that night. Young men and maidens, healthy, noisy, effervescent, ate and drank, babbled and laughed, flirted and squabbled with whole-hearted thoroughness from the soup to the savoury; and Pip, sitting silently ecstatic by Elsie, beheld the scene and suddenly realised that life was very good. What a splendid a.s.semblage! The girls, of course, were girls, and as such beyond criticism. And the men? Maybe they were youthful and conventional,--each would probably have cut his own father dead in the street if he had met him wearing a made-up tie,--but Pip knew that they were for the most part clean-run, straight-going people like himself, good fellows, "white" men all. With one exception. And suddenly Pip realised that the exception was sitting on the other side of Elsie.

Cullyngham was smiling and talking. He always was smiling. He smiled when he made a century. He smiled when he made a blob. He smiled when a rising ball hit him on the knuckles. He was smiling now, and Elsie was smiling too; and Pip felt suddenly murderous.

They were talking of golf. Elsie, who had spent most of her life on the east coast of Scotland, was discussing matters that were Greek to poor cricketing Pip,--stymies, mashies, Kites, Falcons, and other fearful wild-fowl,--and Cullyngham was offering to play Elsie a match round the home course next day. A brief review in Pip's mind of the most expeditious forms of a.s.sa.s.sination was interrupted by a cheery hail across the table from Jacky Ch.e.l.l, a hearty but tactless youth of boisterous temperament.

"Quite like old times, seeing you and Cully together, Pip," he cried.

"Played each other any billiard matches lately?"

Elsie scented a story.

"What billiard match?" she inquired, turning to Pip. "Did you two play much together at Cambridge?"

By this time Jacky Ch.e.l.l's stentorian laughter had reduced the table to silence, and all waited for Pip's answer, which when it finally came, was to the effect that Jacky Ch.e.l.l had better dry up. Cullyngham continued to smile, apparently without effort.

"What is the story, Jacky?" said the Squire down the table.

"c.o.c.kles will tell it," said Jacky. "He'll make much more of it than I can."

The patrician humourist, thus flatteringly introduced into the conversation, readily took up his parable.

"Well, it fell out on this wise, ladies _and_ gents," he began. "Old Cully here regards himself as an absolutely top-hole pill-player, and one day he was laying off to some of us in the Pitt--"

"In the _what_?" exclaimed Mrs. Ch.e.l.l.

"Undergraduates' Club," interpolated her husband swiftly. "Go on, c.o.c.kles."

"Well, suddenly Pip cuts in and says, 'Look here, you've talked about your billiards for the last twenty minutes. I'll play you a hundred up now and beat you!'"

"And did he?" said several ladies.

"Wait a bit, _if_ you please. None of us knew much about Pip's game, as he had just joined the club, but we all went into the billiard place next door, and I stood on a sofa and made a book--"

"What price?"

"Three to one on Cully."

"Who _won_?" cried the flapper.

"_Wait_ a bit," said c.o.c.kles severely. "Don't crab my story. Cully went off at the start and rattled up a couple of fifteens almost before Pip got his cue chalked. He reached his fifty just as Pip got to five."

Sensation.

"The odds," continued the narrator, smacking his lips, "then receded to ten to one, and no takers. Then Cully got to seventy-five just after Pip had reached eighteen--wasn't it, Pip?"

No reply.

"Right-o! Never mind if you're shy. Anyhow, old Cully, being naturally a bit above himself, gave a sort of chuckle, and said, 'What odds now, Pip, old man?'"

"Ooh!" said Miss Dorothy Ch.e.l.l. "How rash! It was quite enough to change your luck, Mr. Cullyngham."

"Did you tap wood when you said it, Mr. Cullyngham?" screamed the flapper down the table.

Mr. Cullyngham, possibly owing to the effort involved in keeping up a protracted smile, did not reply.

"Well," continued c.o.c.kles, "Pip just turned to him and said, 'I won't take any odds, but I'm da--blessed if I don't beat you yet.' And my word, do you know what he did?"

"What?" came from all corners of the table.

"He got the b.a.l.l.s together a few minutes later, settled down--and ran out!"

"What for?" inquired Miss Calthrop languidly.

"What for? He _won_. A break of eighty-three, unfinished. He wouldn't go on. Said he had come there to beat Cully, not to make a show of himself.

The old ruffian! He had lain pretty low about his powers. Hadn't he, Cully?"

Cullyngham, to his eternal credit, still smiled.

"Rather!" he said. "You had me that time, Pip, old man."

Cullyngham's good nature and tact having smoothed over the rather jarring sensation produced by c.o.c.kles's thoroughly tactless reminiscences, conversation became general again. But Pip wriggled in his seat. He hated publicity of any kind, and he felt, moreover, that although he was the undoubted hero of c.o.c.kles's story, the smiling, unruffled man on the other side of Elsie was coming out of the affair better than he, if only by reason of the easy nonchalance with which he had faced a situation that had been rather unfairly forced upon him.

III

Next day came the match against the village. It was a serio-comic fixture, and as such does not call for detailed description. The Squire was early astir in cricket flannels and Harris tweed jacket, the latter garment being replaced at high noon by an M.C.C. blazer which ought to have been let out at the seams twenty years ago: and in good time all the company a.s.sembled on the Rustleford Manor cricket-ground.