The Captives Part 12

"All right, mother, thank you. Funny thing; met a man in the street, hadn't seen for five years. Saw him last in Rio--Funny thing. Well, we lunched together. Not a bad fellow--Seen a thing or two, he has."

Mrs. Warlock counted her st.i.tches. "Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen ... How nice for you, dear. What was his name?"

"Thompson ... I say," Martin suddenly raised his head as though he heard something, "where's Amy?"

"Changing. She's been paying a call on the Miss Cardinals. Thought it would be polite because of the new niece.--Six, seven, eight and nine..."

"What did she think of her?"

"Of whom, dear?"

"Of the niece."

"Oh, I don't think she liked her very much. She said that she was plain and silent--and looked cross, Amy thought."

"Oh yes, Amy would." His face, as was his way when he was vexed, flushed very slowly, the deeper red rising through the red-brown until, ceasing in the middle of his forehead, it left a white line beneath his hair. "She isn't cross a bit."

"I don't know, dear. It isn't my opinion. I only tell you what Amy said. People here don't seem to like her. Mrs. Smith was telling me yesterday that she's so difficult to talk to and seems to know nothing about anything, poor girl."

"Mrs. Smith!" He swung his body on his hips indignantly. "A lot she knows about anything! I hate that woman and her chattering daughter."

"Well, dear, I don't know, I'm sure; Mrs. Smith always seems to me very kind."

He looked at her as though he had suddenly remembered something.

"I say--is it true what Amy says, that I woke you up this morning when I went out by banging my door?"

"I'm sure you didn't.--Amy shouldn't say such things. And if you did what does it matter? I sleep so badly that half an hour more or less makes very little difference."

"Well, she says so--" He went on, dropping his voice: "I say, mother, what's the matter with Amy? Why's she so sick with me? I haven't done anything to offend her, have I?"

"Of course not. What a silly boy you are, Martin! Nine, ten, eleven ...

There! that's enough for this evening. I'll finish it in another day.

You mustn't mind Amy, Martin. She isn't always very well."

The door opened and Amy came in. She was a tall gaunt woman who looked a great deal older than her brother. She did not make the best of herself, brushing her thin black hair straight back from her bony forehead. She had a habit of half closing her eyes when she peered at some one as though she could not see. She should, long ago, have worn spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive.

Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a peevish expression, but, behind that, there was a hint of pathos, a half-seen glimpse of a soul that desired friendship and affection. She was very tall and there was something masculine in the long angularity of her limbs. She offered a strange contrast to the broad and ruddy Martin. There was, however, something in the eyes of each--some sudden surprised almost visionary flash that came and went that showed them to be the children of the same father. To Mrs. Warlock they bore no resemblance whatever. Amy stopped when she saw her brother as though she had not expected him to be there.

"Well, Martin," she said--then came forward and sat in a chair opposite her mother.

"Mr. Thurston's coming to suppar," she said.

Martin frowned. "Oh, hang it, what for?" he cried.

"He's taking me to Miss Aries' Bible meeting," Amy answered coldly.

"What a baby you are about people, Martin. I should have thought all your living abroad so much would have made you understanding. But you're like the rest. You must have every one cut to the same pattern."

Martin looked up for a moment as though he would answer angrily; then he controlled himself and said, laughing: "I suppose I have my prejudices like every one else. I daresay Thurston's a very good sort of fellow, but we don't like one another, and there's an end of it, Everybody can't like everybody, Amy--why, even you don't like every one."

"No, I don't," she answered shortly.

She looked for an instant at her mother. Martin caught the glance that pa.s.sed between them, and suddenly the discomfort of which he had been aware as he stood, half an hour before, in the street, returned to him with redoubled force. What was the matter with everybody? What had he done?

"Well, I'll go and change," he said.

"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, dear," said his mother.

"I'll be in time all right," he said.

At the door he almost ran into Mr. Thurston. This gentleman had been described, on some earlier occasion, by an unfriendly observer as "the Suburban Savonarola." He was tall and extremely thin with a bony pointed face that was in some lights grey and in others white. He had the excited staring eyes of a fanatic, and his hair now very scanty, was plastered over his head in black shining streaks. He wore a rather faded black suit, a white low collar and a white bow tie. He had a habit, at moments of stress, of cracking his fingers. He had a very p.r.o.nounced c.o.c.kney accent when he was excited, at other times he struggled against this with some success.

He pa.s.sed from brooding silences into sudden bursts of declamation with such abruptness that strangers thought him very eloquent. When he was excited the colour ran into his nose as though he had been drinking, and often his ears were red. His history was simple. The son of a small draper in Streatham, he had at an early age joined himself to an American Revivalist called Harper. When after some six years of successful enterprise Mr. Harper had been imprisoned for forgery, young William Thurston had attached himself to a Christian Science Chapel in Hoxton. Then, somewhere about 1897, he had met Miss Avies at a Revivalist Meeting in the Albert Hall and, fascinated by her ardent spirit, transferred his services to the Kingscote Brethren.

He had now risen to a position of great importance in the Chapel; it was known that he disagreed profoundly with his leader on some vital questions, and it was thought that he might at a later date definitely secede and conduct a party of his own.

Certainly he had exceptional energies and gifts of exhortation and invective not to be despised. Martin politely wished him "Good evening"

and escaped to his room.

As he changed his clothes he tried to translate into definite facts his vague discomfort. One, he hated that swine Thurston. Two, Amy was vexed with him (What strange impossible creatures women were!). Third--and by far the most important of them all--his father wanted to talk to him.

He knew very well that this talk had been preparing for him ever since his return from abroad. He dreaded it. Oh! he dreaded it most horribly!

He loved his father but with a love that had in it elements of fear, timidity, every possible sort of awkwardness. Moreover he was helpless.

Ever since that first day when as a tiny child of four or five he had awakened to behold that figure, enormous in a long night-shirt, summoning G.o.d in the middle of the night with a candle flickering fantastic shadows on to the wall behind them, Martin had been weak as putty in his father's hands. Against other men he could stand up; against that strange company of fears, affections, superst.i.tions, shadowy terrors, dim expectations that his father presented to him he could do nothing.

Well--that conversation had to come some time. He must show that he was a man now, moulded by the world with his own beliefs, purposes, resolves. But if he did not love him, how much easier it would be!

When he went downstairs he found the old man in the little pink drawing-room--he looked tired and worn. Martin remembered with alarm the things that he had heard recently about his father's heart. He glanced up and the older man's hand fastened on his shoulder; they stood there side by side. After a few minutes they all went in to supper.

Mr. Thurston's nose was flushed with the success of the mission from which he had just returned. He had been one of a number whose aim it had been during the preceding week to bring light and happiness into the lives of the inhabitants of Putney. They had been obviously appreciated, as the collection for the week had amounted to between seventy and eighty pounds. A proper share of this fine result Mr.

Thurston naturally appropriated to his own efforts. His long tapering fingers were not so clean as they might have been, but this did not prevent him from waving them in the air and pointing them at imaginary Putney citizens whom he evoked in support of his statements.

"We 'ad a reelly thumpin' meeting on Thursday--Town Hall--One for the women in the small 'all hand one for the men in the Main Hall. Almost no opposition you might say, and when it came to the Hymn singing it fairly took the roof off. A lot of 'em stopped afterwards--one lad of eighteen or so is coming over to us 'ere. Butcher's apprentice. Says 'e's felt the Lord pressing him a long way back but the flesh held him.

Might work him up into a very useful lad with the Lord's help. Thank you, Mrs. Warlock, I will try a bit more of that cold beef if you don't mind. Pretty place, Putney. Ever been there, Mr. Warlock? Ah, you should go--"

Amy Warlock listened with the greatest interest; otherwise, it must be confessed, Mr. Thurston's audience was somewhat inattentive. Mr.

Warlock's mind was obviously elsewhere; he pa.s.sed his hand through his beard, his eyes staring at the table-cloth. Mr. Thurston, noticing this, tried another topic.

"What 'ave you heard, Mrs. Warlock, about the new Miss Cardinal? I 'aven't seen her yet myself."

Mrs. Warlock, who had just given herself a little piece of beef, some potato and some spinach, and was arranging these delicacies with the greatest care upon her plate, just smiled without raising her eyes. Amy answered--

"I've seen her. I was there this afternoon. I can't say that I found her very interesting. Plain-ugly in fact. She never opened her mouth all the afternoon. Caroline Smith tells me that she knows nothing at all, seen nothing, been nowhere. Bad-tempered I should think."

"Dear, dear," said Mr. Thurston with a gratified sigh, "is it so reelly?"

Martin looked across at his sister indignantly. "Trust one woman about another," he said. "Just because she doesn't chatter like a magpie you concluded she's got nothing to say. It's even conceivable that she found you dull, Amy."

Amy looked at him with a strange penetrating glance that in some undefined way increased his irritation. "It's quite possible," she said quietly. "But I don't think even you, Martin, can call her handsome. As to her intelligence, she never gave me a chance of judging."