Second String Part 19

He sat near a gla.s.s screen some six or seven feet high, dividing the room in two. Suddenly from the other side of it came a voice:

"Hallo, is that you, Hayes? Come and have your coffee with us. Where have you been all this time?"

There they sat--and there they might have been sitting ever since Andy parted from them, so much at home they looked--Billy Foot, the Nun, and Miss Dutton. Another young man was with them, completing the party. He was plump, while Billy was thin--placid, while Billy always suggested a reserve of excitement; but he had a likeness to Billy all the same.

"Oh, I say, may I come?" cried Andy, boyishly loud; but the luck of meeting these friends again was too extraordinary. He trotted round the gla.s.s screen with his tumbler in his hand; he had not quite finished his lager beer.

"Chair and coffee for Mr. Hayes," said Billy Foot. "You remember him, girls? My brother, Hayes--Gilly, Mr. Hayes. How did you leave Harry?"

"How awfully funny I should meet you!" gasped Andy.

"It's not funny if you ever come here," observed Miss Dutton; "because we come here nearly every day--with somebody." She was more sardonic than ever.

The Nun--she was not, by the way, a Nun any longer, but a Quaker girl ("All in the same line," her manager said, with a fine indifference to the smaller theological distinctions), and now sang of how, owing to her having to wear sombre garments (expressed by a charming dove-tinted costume that sent the stalls mad), she had lost her first and only love--the Nun smiled at Andy in a most friendly fashion.

"I'd quite forgotten you," she remarked, "but I'm glad to see you again.

Let's see, you're--?"

"Harry Belfield's friend."

"Yes, you're Mr. Hayes. Oh, I remember you quite well. Been away since?"

"No, I've been here. I mean--at work, and so on."

"Oh, well!" sighed the Nun (Andy ventured to call her the Nun in his thoughts, though she had changed her persuasion). She seemed to express a gentle resignation to not being able to keep track of people; she met so many, coming every day to the restaurant.

"I ask five, I want four, but with just the right fellow I'd take three," said Billy's brother Gilly, apparently continuing a conversation which seemed to interest n.o.body but himself; for the Nun was looking at neighbouring hats, Miss Dutton had relapsed into gloomy abstraction, and Billy was thoughtfully revolving a small quant.i.ty of old brandy round a very large gla.s.s. Gilly had an old brandy too, but his att.i.tude towards it was one of studied neglect. His favourite vintage had given out the year before, so his life was rather desolate.

"Harry's engaged," Andy volunteered to the Nun, glad to possess a remark of such commanding interest.

"To a girl?" asked the Nun, absently and without turning her face towards him.

"Well, of course!" said Andy. What else could one be engaged to?

"Everybody comes to it," said Billy Foot. "Take three, if you must, Gilly."

"At a push," said his brother sadly.

"I hate that hat on that woman," said the Nun with a sudden vehemence, nodding her head at a fat woman in a large purple erection. Hats moved the Nun perhaps more than anything else in the world.

"Rot, Doris," commented Miss Dutton. "It's what they're wearing."

"But they aren't all as fat as that," the Nun objected.

"Flourishing, Hayes?" asked Billy Foot.

"Well, I rather think I've just lost my job," said Andy.

"If you're looking out for a really sound way of investing five thousand pounds--" Gilly began.

"Four to a gentleman," said Billy.

"Three to a friend," corrected the Nun.

"Oh, what the devil's the good of trying to talk business here?" cried Gilly in vexation. "Only a chance is a chance, you know."

Billy Foot saw that Andy was puzzled. "Gilly--my brother, you know--I suppose I introduced you?--has unfortunately come here with a problem on his mind. I didn't know he had one, or I wouldn't have asked him, because problems bore the girls."

"No, they don't. It interests me to see you trying to think." This, of course, from Miss Dutton. The Nun, now imbibing an iced green fluid through a straw, was sublimely abstracted.

"My brother," Billy resumed, with a glance of protest towards his interruptor, "has, for some reason or another, become a publisher.

That's all right. Not being an author, I don't complain. Having done pretty badly--"

"The public's no good," said Gilly gloomily.

"He wants to drag in some unfortunate person to be his partner. I understand, Gilly, that, if really well recommended, your accepted partner can lose his time, and the rest of his money, for no more than three thousand pounds--paid down on the nail without discount?"

"You've a charming way of recommending the project to Mr. Hayes'

consideration," said Gilly, in reproachful resignation.

"To my consideration," Andy exclaimed, laughing. "What's it got to do with me?"

"It's a real chance," Gilly persisted. "And if you're out of a job, and happen to be able to lay your hands on five--"

"Three!" whispered Billy.

"--thousand pounds, you might do worse than look into it. Now, I must go," and with no more than a nod to serve as farewell to all the party he rose and sauntered slowly away. He had not touched his brandy; his brother reached over thoughtfully and appropriated it. "I may as well, as I'm going to pay for it," he remarked.

Suddenly Andy found himself telling the Nun all about his cable and his affairs. The other two listened; all three were very friendly and sympathetic; even Miss Dutton forbore to sneer. Andy expanded in the kindly atmosphere of interest. "I don't want to go back, you know," he said with a smile that appealed for understanding. "But I must, unless something turns up."

"Well, why not talk to Gilly?" the Nun suggested.

"Yes, you go round and talk to Gilly," agreed Billy. "Rotting apart, he's got a nice little business, and one or two very good schemes on, but he wants a bit more capital, as well as somebody to help him. He doesn't look clever, but in five years he's built up--yes, a tidy little business. You wouldn't come to grief with Gilly."

"But I haven't got the money, or anything like it. I've got nothing."

The Nun and Billy exchanged glances. The Nun nodded to Billy, but he shook his head. Miss Dutton watched them for a moment, then she smiled scornfully.

"I don't mind saying it," she observed, and to Andy's astonishment she asked him, "What about your old friend the butcher?"

"How did you hear of that?"

"Harry Belfield was up one day last week lunching here, and--"

"We were awfully amused," the Nun interrupted, with her pretty rare gurgle. "If you'd done it, we were all coming down to buy chops and give you a splendid send-off. I rather wish you had." The imagined scene amused the Nun very much.

"Jack Rock? Oh, I couldn't possibly ask him, after refusing his offer!"