"Pip" Part 27

"You can come too, if you like."

"Hardly worth while, I'm afraid. I have to pack my bag and get some tea, and then I shall be due at the station."

"I thought your bag was packed already. You were to have gone by the twelve train, you know," said Elsie rather doubtfully.

"Yes," said Cullyngham easily, "but you forgot I had to unpack again to get out my golfing shoes. Now, I'll tell you what," he continued rapidly. "They are going to give me tea in the conservatory before I go: won't you stay and pour it out for me? Just five minutes--_please_!"

Elsie felt that she could hardly in decency refuse, and accompanied Cullyngham to the house and thence to the conservatory, where the maid who brought the tea informed them of the glorious downfall of the County Eleven and of Pip's share therein.

This decided Elsie. She had no desire to appear in any scene where Pip was the central figure, so she accepted Cullyngham's pressing invitation to share his tea, and, sinking into a large armchair, prepared to spend an idle half-hour until popular enthusiasm on the cricket-ground should have abated. Pip was unconsciously proving the profound wisdom of the maxim which warns us to beware when all men speak well of us. He was paying the penalty of success. If he had been bowled first ball, or had missed three easy catches, Elsie, being a woman, would probably have melted and been kind to him. But to unbend to him now would savour of opportunism, hero-worship, and other disagreeable things. Elsie set her small white teeth, frowned at an orange tree in a green tub, and prepared for a _tete-a-tete_. The house seemed deserted.

"Penny for your thoughts!" said Cullyngham.

Elsie smiled composedly.

"If they were only worth that I would make you a present of them," she said. "If they were worth more they would not be for sale."

"Are they worth more?"

"I don't know, really. Anyhow, they are not on the market." She drank some tea with a prim air, uncomfortably conscious that she was blushing.

There was a short pause, and Cullyngham spoke again.

"I hope I'm not boring you," he said, with a smile which took for granted the impossibility of the idea.

"Oh, dear, no. I'm seldom bored at meals." Elsie took a bite out of a bun.

"Very well. Till you have finished tea I will keep quiet; after that I will endeavour to amuse you."

The meal continued solemnly. Once or twice Elsie directed a furtive glance at the man beside her, and detected him eyeing her in a manner which made her feel hot and cold by turns. It was not that he was rude or objectionable, but Elsie suddenly felt conscious that Pip's open stare of honest admiration was infinitely less embarra.s.sing than this.

Cullyngham, as a matter of fact, was in a dangerous mood. His was not a pride that took a fall easily, and the fact that he had been compelled to submit to Pip's unconditional ultimatum was goading him to madness.

No man is altogether bad, but we are all possessed of our own particular devils, and Cullyngham accommodated more than his fair share of them. He had never denied himself the gratification of any pa.s.sion, however unworthy, and at that moment his one consuming desire was to retaliate upon the man who had humiliated him. He looked around the empty conservatory, and then again at the girl in the basket-chair beside him. He could punish Pip now in a most exquisite manner.

Elsie caught the glance, and for a moment was suddenly conscious of an emotion hitherto unknown to her--acute physical fear. But Cullyngham said lightly--

"Enjoyed your tea?"

"Yes, thanks," she replied rather tremulously, putting down her cup.

"Then may I smoke?"

"Certainly. But I am going now."

"Right, if you must. I'll just light my cigarette and see you to the end of the drive."

Cullyngham produced a box of matches, and, with the paternal air of one endeavouring to amuse a child, performed various tricks with them. Then he lit a cigarette, and showed Elsie how, by doubling up your tongue, it is possible to grip the cigarette in the fold and draw it into your mouth, reproducing it, still lighted and glowing, a minute later.

"Quite a little exhibition!" said Elsie, at her ease again. "You ought to set up as a conjurer. Now I must be off."

"There is one other little trick with a match that might amuse you,"

said Cullyngham. "It was taught me by a girl I know. She made me go down on my hands and knees--"

"I refuse to go down on my knees for anybody," said Elsie, with spirit.

"Never mind. I will do that part. I go on my hands and knees on the floor, like this, with a match lying on my back between my shoulder-blades. Then the other person--you--has his hands tied together with a handkerchief, and tries to brush the match off the other person's back. It's extraordinary how difficult it is to do it with one's hands tied and the other person bobbing and dodging to get away from you."

"It sounds absolutely idiotic," said Elsie coldly.

"It isn't, though. Of course it would be idiotic for you and me to play it now by ourselves; but I'll just show you the trick of it, and you will be able to have some sport with them in the billiard-room to-night.

Shall I show you?"

Elsie agreed, without enthusiasm. It seemed churlish to refuse such a trifling request to a man who was making laborious efforts to amuse her; but, for all that, this _tete-a-tete_ had lasted long enough. However, she would be on the cricket-ground in a few minutes.

Her doubts were in a measure revived when Cullyngham tied her two wrists together with a silk handkerchief. He performed the operation very quickly, and then dropped on to his hands and knees on the floor and carefully balanced a match on the broad of his back.

"Now," he said, looking up at her, "just try to knock that match off my back. Of course I shall dodge all I can. I bet you won't be able to do it."

Elsie, feeling uncommonly foolish, made one or two perfunctory dabs at the match with her bound hands. Once she nearly succeeded, but Cullyngham backed away just in time. Piqued by his derisive little laugh, she took a quick step forward, and leaning over him, was on the point of brushing the match on to the floor, when suddenly Cullyngham slewed round in her direction, and, thrusting his head into the enclosure of her arms, scrambled to his feet. Next moment Elsie, dazed, numbed, terrified, found herself on tiptoe, hanging round a man's neck, while the man's arms were round her and his hateful smiling face was drawing nearer, nearer, nearer to her own.

Never was a girl in more deadly peril. Elsie uttered a choking scream.

"It's no good, little girl," said Cullyngham. "I've got you fast, and there's not a soul in the house. A kiss, please!" He spoke thickly: the man was dead within him.

Elsie, inert and drooping, shrank back as far as her manacled wrists would allow her, and struggled frantically to free herself. But Cullyngham's arms brought her towards him again. And then, paralysed with terror, with eyes wide open, she found herself staring right over Cullyngham's shoulder at--Pip!--Pip, sprung from the earth, and standing only five yards away.

"Pip!" she moaned; "Pip, save me!"

Almost simultaneously Cullyngham became conscious of something that gripped him by the nape of his neck, just below Elsie's fettered wrists--something that felt like a steel vice. Tighter and tighter grew the grip. The veins began to stand out on Cullyngham's forehead, and he gurgled for breath. Down he went, till his head was once more on a level with the floor and his aristocratic nose was rubbed into the matting. In a moment the girl had slipped her wrists over his head and stood free--pale, shaken, but free!

"Run into the house," said Pip. "I will come in a minute."

Elsie tottered through the French window and disappeared, with her hands still bound before her, and the two men were left alone.

Finding himself in a favourable geographical position, Pip kicked Cullyngham till his toes ached inside his boots. Then he thrust him away on to the floor. Cullyngham, free at last and white with pa.s.sion, was up in a moment and rushed at Pip. He was met by a crashing blow in the face and went down again.

If Pip had been himself he would have desisted there and then, for he had his enemy heavily punished already. But he was in a raging pa.s.sion.

He knew now that Elsie was more to him than all the world together, and his sudden realisation of the fact came at an inopportune moment for Cullyngham. Pip drove him round the conservatory, storming, raging, blaring like an angry bull, getting in blow upon blow with blind, relentless fury. Cullyngham was no weakling and no coward. Again and again he stood up to Pip, only to go down again under a smash like the kick of a horse. Finally, in a culminating paroxysm of frenzy, Pip took his battered opponent in his arms and hurled him into the green tub containing the orange tree.

Then he went into the house, locking the French window behind him. The fit had pa.s.sed.

Five minutes devoted to a wash, and a slight readjustment of his collar and tie, and Pip was himself again. Presently he went to seek Elsie. The girl had succeeded in freeing her hands from the handkerchief, and was sitting, badly shaken, a poor little "figure of interment," as the French say, on a sofa in the library. She looked up eagerly at his approach.

"Oh, Pip, did you hurt him?"

"I hope so," said Pip simply. "Will you tell how it happened? At least--don't, if you'd rather not."

But she told him all. "You were just in time, Pip," she concluded. "I was just going to faint, I think."