Roden's Corner Part 2

"You get 'em too."

"Oh yes; I get them too. b.u.t.tonholes come and b.u.t.tonholes go. Have you noticed it? They get large. Neapolitan violets all over your left shoulder one day, and no flowers at all the week after." Cornish spoke with a gravity befitting the subject. He was, it seemed a student of human nature in his way. "Of course," he added, laying an impressive forefinger on White's gold-laced cuff, "it would never do if the world remained stationary."

"Never," said the major, darkly. "Never."

They were talking to pa.s.s the time. Joan Ferriby had come between them, as a woman is bound to come between two men sooner or later. Neither knew what the other thought of Joan Ferriby, or if he thought of her at all. Women, it is to be believed, have a pleasant way of mentioning the name of a man with such significance that one of their party changes colour. When next she meets that man she does it again, and perhaps he sees it, and perhaps his vanity, always on the alert, magnifies that unfortunate blush. And they are married, and live unhappily ever afterwards. And--let us hope there is a h.e.l.l for gossips. But men are different in their procedure. They are awkward and _gauche_. They talk of newspaper matters, and on the whole there is less harm done.

The hansom cab containing these two men pulled up jerkily at the door of No. 9, Cambridge Terrace. Tony Cornish hurried to the door, and rang the bell as if he knew it well. Major White followed him stiffly. They were ushered into a library on the ground floor, and were there received by a young lady, who, pen in hand, sat at a large table littered with newspaper wrappers.

"I am addressing the Haberdashers' a.s.sistants," she said, "but I am very glad to see you."

Miss Joan Ferriby was one of those happy persons who never know a doubt. One must, it seems, be young to enjoy this nineteenth-century immunity. One must be pretty--it is, at all events, better to be pretty--and one must dress well. A little knowledge of the world, a decisive way of stating what pa.s.s at the moment for facts, a quick manner of speaking--and the rest comes _tout seul_. This c.o.c.ksureness is in the atmosphere of the day, just as fainting and curls and an appealing helplessness were in the atmosphere of an earlier Victorian period.

Miss Ferriby stood, pen in hand, and laughed at the confusion on the table in front of her. She was eminently practical, and quite without that self-consciousness which in a bygone day took the irritating form of coyness. Major White, with whom she shook hands _en camarade_, gazed at her solemnly.

"Who are the Haberdashers' a.s.sistants?" he asked.

Miss Ferriby sat down with a grave face. "Oh, it is a splendid charity," she answered. "Tony will tell you all about it. It is an a.s.sociation of which the object is to induce people to give up riding on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, and to lend their bicycles to haberdashers'

a.s.sistants who cannot afford to buy them for themselves. Papa is patron."

Cornish looked quickly from one to the other. He had always felt that Major White was not quite of the world in which Joan and he moved. The major came into it at times, looked around him, and then moved away again into another world, less energetic, less advanced, less rapid in its changes. Cornish had never sought to interest his friend in sundry good works in which Joan, for instance, was interested, and which formed a delightful topic for conversation at teatime.

"It is so splendid," said Joan, gathering up her papers, "to feel that one is really doing something."

And she looked up into White's face with an air of grave enthusiasm which made him drop his eye-gla.s.s.

"Oh yes," he answered, rather vaguely.

Cornish had already seated himself at the table, and was folding the addressed newspaper wrappers over circulars printed on thick note-paper. This seemed a busy world into which White had stepped. He looked rather longingly at the newspaper wrappers and the circulars, and then lapsed into the contemplation of Joan's neat fingers as she too fell to the work.

"We saw all about you," said the girl, in her bright, decisive way, "in the newspapers. Papa read it aloud. He is always reading things aloud now, out of the _Times_. He thinks it is good practice for the platform, I am sure. We were all"--she paused and banged her energetic fist down upon a pile of folded circulars which seemed to require further pressure--"very proud, you know, to know you."

"Good Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed White, fervently.

"Well, why not?" asked Miss Ferriby, looking up. She had expressive eyes, and they now flashed almost angrily. "All English people----" she began, and broke off suddenly, throwing aside the papers and rising quickly to her feet. Her eyes were fixed on White's tunic. "Is that a medal?" she asked, hurrying towards him. "Oh, how splendid! Look, Tony, look! A medal! Is it"--she paused, looking at it closely--"is it--the Victoria Cross?" she asked, and stood looking from one man to the other, her eyes glistening with something more than excitement.

"Um--yes," admitted White.

Tony Cornish had risen to his feet also. He held out his hand.

"I did not know that," he said.

There was a pause. Tony and Joan returned to their circulars in an odd silence. The Haberdashers' a.s.sistants seemed suddenly to have diminished in importance.

"By-the-by," said Joan Ferriby at length, "papa wants to see you, Tony.

He has a new scheme. Something very large and very important. The only question is whether it is not too large. It is not only in England, but in other countries. A great international affair. Some distressed manufacturers or something. I really do not quite know. That Mr.

Roden--you remember?--has been to see him about it."

Cornish nodded in his quick way. "I remember Roden," he answered. "The man you met at Hombourg. Tall dark man with a tired manner."

"Yes," answered Joan. "He has been to see papa several times. Papa is just as busy as ever with his charities," she continued, addressing White. "And I believe he wants you to help him in this one."

"Me?" said White, nervously. "Oh, I'm no good. I should not know a haberdasher's a.s.sistant if I saw him."

"Oh, but this is not the Haberdashers' a.s.sistants," laughed Joan. "It is something much more important than that. The Haberdashers'

a.s.sistants are only----"

"Pour pa.s.ser le temps," suggested Cornish, gaily.

"No, of course not. But papa is really rather anxious about this. He says it is much the most important thing he has ever had to do with--and that is saying a good deal, you know. I wish I could remember the name of it, and of those poor unfortunate people who make it--whatever it is. It is some stuff, you know, and sounds sticky. Papa has so many charities, and such long names to them. Aunt Susan says it is because he was so wild in his youth--but one cannot believe that.

Would you think that papa had been wild in his youth--to look at him now?"

"Lord, no!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed White, with pious solidity, throwing back his shoulders with an air that seemed to suggest a readiness to fight any man who should hint at such a thing, and he waved the mere thought aside with a ponderous gesture of the hand.

Joan had, however, already turned to another matter. She was consulting a diary bound in dark blue morocco.

"Let me see, now," she said. "Papa told me to make an appointment with you. When can you come?"

Cornish produced a minute engagement-book, and these two busy people put their heads together in the search for a disengaged moment. Not only in mind, but in face and manner, they slightly resembled each other, and might, by the keen-sighted, have been set down at once as cousins. Both were fair and slightly made, both were quick and clever.

Both faced the world with an air of energetic intelligence that bespoke their intention of making a mark upon it. Both were liable to be checked in a moment of earnest endeavour by a sudden perception of the humorous, which liability rendered them somewhat superficial, and apt of it lightly from one thought to another.

"I wish I could remember the name of papa's new scheme," said Joan, as she bade them good-bye. When they were in the cab she ran to the door.

"I remember," she cried. "I remember now. It is malgamite."

CHAPTER III

BEGINNING AT HOME.

"Charity creates much of the misery it relieves, but it does not relieve all the misery it creates."

Charity, as all the world knows, should begin at an "at home." Lord Ferriby knew as well as any that there are men, and perhaps even women, who will give largely in order that their names may appear largely and handsomely in the select subscription lists. He also knew that an invitation card in the present is as sure a bait as the promise of bliss hereafter. So Lady Ferriby announced by card (in an open envelope with a halfpenny stamp) that she should be "at home" to certain persons on a certain evening. And the good and the great flocked to Cambridge Terrace. The good and great are, one finds, a little mixed, from a social point of view.

There were present at Lady Ferriby's, for instance, a number of ministers, some cabinet, others dissenting. Here, a man leaning against the wall wore a blue ribbon across his shirt front. There, another, looking bigger and more self-confident, had no shirt front at all. His was the cheap distinction of unsuitable clothes.

"Ha! Miss Ferriby, glad to see you," he said as he entered, holding out a hand which had the usual outward signs of industrial honesty.

Joan shook the hand frankly, and its possessor pa.s.sed on.

"Is that the gas-man?" inquired Major White, gravely. He had been standing beside her ever since his arrival, seeking, it seemed, the protection of one who understood these social functions. It is to be presumed that the major was less bewildered than he looked.

"Hush!" And Joan said something hurriedly in White's large ear.

"Everybody has him," she concluded; and the explanation brought certain calm into the mildly surprised eye behind the eye-gla.s.s. White recognized the phrase and its conclusive contemporary weight.

"Here's a flat-backed man!" he exclaimed, with a ring of relief. "Been drilled, this man. Gad! He's proud!" added the major, as the new-comer pa.s.sed Joan with rather a cold bow.