CHAPTER XIII

LUCIDITY ITSELF

I

"This, Mum," announced Dicky in tones of immense pride, "is Tilly. Miss Welwyn, you know."

He advanced to the girl, who still stood hesitatingly in the opening of the curtains, and drew her forward by the hand.

"Come along, little thing," he said, in a voice which made Connie Carmyle's heart warm to him. "Don't be frightened. I present to you my lady mother. You will know one another intimately in no time," he added untruthfully.

Miss Tilly Welwyn advanced with faltering steps. It was seen now that she was _petite_, almost the same height and build as Connie Carmyle, with great grey eyes and a pretty mouth. She was wrapped in a man's Burberry coat, and wore a motor veil tied under her chin. Rain dripped from her in all directions. Timidly she extended a glistening and froggy paw in the direction of her hostess.

"How do you do, Miss Weller?" said Lady Adela, mystified but well-bred.

"Very well, thank you," replied the visitor in a frightened squeak.

Dicky cheerfully set his parent right upon the subject of Miss Welwyn's surname, and then introduced Mrs. Carmyle.

"Tilly," he said, "this is Connie--one of the very best that ever stepped! Don't forget that: you will never hear a truer word."

The two girls regarded one another for a moment, and then shook hands with instinctive friendliness. The small stranger's face cleared, and she smiled, first at Connie and then up at Dicky.

Thereafter came a pause. The atmosphere was tense with enquiry. One could almost feel the Marconigrams radiating from Lady Adela. But apparently The Freak's coherer was out of order. He merely turned towards the staircase, and exclaimed:--

"Hallo, here are Dad and Sylvia. These are the last two," he added in a reassuring undertone to Miss Welwyn. "Quite tame, both of them."

Mr. Mainwaring's face lit up joyfully at the sight of his son, and he hurried forward.

"Dick, my boy, you've arrived at last! Capital!" He clapped the prodigal on the shoulder.

"Yes, Dad," replied Dicky with equal zest; "we have arrived. This is Tilly!"

Mr. Mainwaring, entirely at sea but innately hospitable, greeted Tilly heartily. "You must be terribly cold," he said. "Come to the fire and let me take off that wet garment of yours."

He led the girl to the blaze, then turned to shoot a glance of respectful enquiry in the direction of his august spouse. It was ignored. Meanwhile Dicky had introduced the languid but far from indifferent Sylvia.

"Now you all know one another," he said. "Sylvia, be a dear old soul and take Miss Welwyn up to your room and give her some dry things, will you? She is soaking, and her luggage is n't here yet. You see," he added a little lamely--Sylvia's patrician calm had rather dashed him as usual--"we walked from the station--did n't we, Tilly?"

Tilly nodded dutifully, eyeing Sylvia the while with some distrust.

"You will take care of her, won't you?" concluded the solicitous Dicky.

"Surely!" replied Sylvia, in her grandest manner. "This way, Miss Welwyn."

She swept across the hall and up the staircase, followed by the small, moist, and mysterious figure of the newcomer.

At the foot of the stair Tilly halted and looked back. Dicky, who had been following her with his eyes, was at her side in a moment.

"What is it?" he asked in a low voice.

The girl laid an appealing hand on his arm.

"Don't leave me, Dicky!" she whispered.

The Freak replied by tucking her arm under his own and propelling her vigorously up to the turn of the stair.

"Don't be a little juggins," he said affectionately. "_I_ can't come and change your shoes and stockings for you, can I?"

Miss Welwyn, acquiescing in this eminently correct view of the matter, smiled submissively.

"All right," she said. "Au revoir!"

She ran lightly upstairs after the disappearing Sylvia, turning to wave her hand to Dicky before she disappeared.

Dicky, who had waited below for that purpose, acknowledged the salute, and turned to find Mrs. Carmyle at his elbow.

"Dicky," announced that small Samaritan, "I am going up, too. Sylvia might bite your ewe lamb."

The Freak smiled gratefully.

"The Lady and the Tiger--eh?" he said. "Connie, you are a brick! Be tender with her, won't you?" he added gently. "She's scared to death at present, and no wonder!"

Connie Carmyle, with a reassuring pat upon the anxious young man's arm, turned and sped upstairs. Dicky, hands in pockets and head in air, strolled happily back into the circle of firelight and took up his stand upon the hearthrug. Lady Adela, looking like a large volcano in the very last stages of self-suppression, sat simmering over the teacups.

The heir of the Mainwarings addressed his parents affectionately.

"Well, dear old things," he enquired, "how are we? So sorry to be late for tea, but it was an eventful and perilous journey."

The long-overdue eruption came at last.

"Dick," demanded Lady Adela explosively, "why have you brought that young person here?"

"Young per--oh, Tilly?" Dicky smiled ecstatically to himself at the very sound of Miss Welwyn's name. "Tilly? Well, I don't see what else I could have done with her, Mummie dear. I could n't leave her at the station, could I? But I must tell you about our adventures. First of all we lost Percy."

"Dick," repeated Lady Adela, "_who--is--_?"

"Who is Percy?" asked Dicky readily. "I forgot; I have n't told you about Percy. He is her brother. A most amazing fellow: knows everything. Can explain to you in two minutes all the things you have failed to understand for years. Teach you something you did n't know, I should n't wonder, Mother. He is going to introduce me to some of his friends, and put me up for his club."

"What club, my boy?" interposed Mr. Mainwaring, snatching at this gleam of light in the general murkiness.

"'The Crouch End Gladiators,' I think they 're called," said Dicky. "But I have n't met any of them yet."

"Where is Crouch End?" enquired Lady Adela. "And why should one have a club there?"

"It is a cycling club," explained Dicky. "You go out for spins in the country on Saturday afternoons. Topping! I'll bring them down here one day if you like! Each member is allowed to have one lady guest," he added, with a happy smile. "But to resume. We lost friend Percy at Waterloo. He went to get a bicycle ticket, or something, and was no more seen. The train started without him. Tilly was fearfully upset about it: said she thought it was n't quite proper for her to come down without a chaperon on her first visit."

"She proposes to come again, then?" said Lady Adela, with a short quavering laugh.

Dicky stopped short, and regarded his mother with unfeigned astonishment.

"Come again? I should think she was coming again! Anyhow, the poor little thing was quite distressed when we lost Perce."

"That, dear," remarked Lady Adela icily, "is what I should call straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. And now, my boy, let me beg you to tell me--"

Dicky, who was too fully occupied with the recollections of his recent journey to be aware of the physical and mental strain to which he was subjecting his revered parents, suddenly started off down a fresh alley of irrelevant reminiscence.

"Talking of camels," he said, "there is the goat."

"Bless my soul, my dear lad!" exclaimed Mr. Mainwaring. "What goat?"

Dicky was perfectly ready to explain.

"When Tilly and I got out of the train at Shotley Beauchamp station," he began, "and found that you two absent-minded old dears had forgotten to send anything to meet us--"

"But Dick, my boy," interposed the old gentleman--Lady Adela was rapidly progressing beyond the stage of articulate remonstrance--"how could your mother be expected to divine your intentions with regard to trains, or to know that you were bringing down--er--a guest?"

"I wrote and told you," said Dicky.

"When, pray?" enquired Lady Adela, finding speech again.

"The day before yesterday," said Dicky positively; "breaking the news about Tilly, and when we were coming, and--"

"We received no letter from you," replied Lady Adela.

"But I wrote it, Mum!" cried Dicky. "I spent three hours over it. It was the most important letter I have ever written in my life! Is it likely a man could forget--"

"Feel in your pockets, my boy," suggested the experienced Mr. Mainwaring.

Dicky smiled indulgently upon his resourceful parent, and pulled out the contents of his breast-pocket--a handful of old letters and a cigarette case.

"Anything to oblige you, Dad," he ran on, scanning the addresses. "But I know I posted the thing. A man does not forget on such an oc-- No! you are right. I'm a liar. Here it is!"

He produced a fat envelope from the bunch, and threw it down upon the tea-table.

II

"I forgive you both," he said, smiling serenely, "for not sending to meet us. Well, to return to the goat--"

Veins began to stand out upon Lady Adela's patrician brow.

"Richard," she exclaimed, in a low and vibrant tone--"for the last time, _who is that young woman_?"

Dicky stared down upon his afflicted parent in unaffected surprise, and then dissolved into happy laughter.

"I must tell Tilly about this," he roared. "Of course, now I come to think of it, you don't know a thing about her. You never got my letter! Fancy you two poor old creatures sitting there as good as gold and wondering why I had brought her down here at all! Oh, my sainted Mother!"

"Who is she?" reiterated the sainted Mother, fighting for breath.

"She is my little girl," replied Dicky proudly. "We're engaged."

"I knew it," said Lady Adela, in a hollow voice.

"And I have brought her down here to make your acquaintance, that's all!" concluded the happy lover, apparently surprised that his relationship to Miss Welwyn should ever have been a matter of doubt to any one. "We met the goat outside the station--"

Lady Adela uttered a deep groan. Mr. Mainwaring rose from his seat and advanced upon his tall son, who still leaned easily against the mantel-piece, with his feet upon the hearthrug and his head above the clouds.

"My dearest boy," he said, patting Dicky affectionately and coaxingly upon the shoulder, "do you realise that you are our only son, and that as such we take a not unreasonable interest in your welfare? Would you mind postponing the goat for a moment and giving us a more explicit account of the young lady? I had only the merest glimpse of her just now," he concluded, doggedly avoiding his wife's eye, "but she struck me as charming--charming!"

Dicky's air of cheerful inanity fell from him like a cloak. Exultantly he took his father by the shoulders.

"Dad," he shouted, "she's the most blessed little darling that ever walked this earth! She's a princess! She's a fairy! She's a--"

The rhapsodist broke off short, and flushed red.

"Forgive me," he said, "for waffling like that, but I don't quite know what I 'm doing just at present. Dad, I'm the happiest man that ever lived!"

"My boy, my boy," cried little Mr. Mainwaring, "I'm glad--I'm glad!"

And father and son, regardless of the feelings of the unfortunate lady upon the sofa, proceeded to shake one another violently and continuously by both hands.

At last they desisted, a little sheepishly.

"Abel," said a cold voice, "be seated. Dick, take that chair."

Both gentlemen complied meekly.

"I see," said Lady Adela, looking up from a rapid perusal of her son's letter, "that the girl's name is Tilly Welwyn. Tilly, I presume, is an abbreviation of Matilda?"

"I don't know," confessed Dicky. "But Tilly will," he added brightly. "She knows everything."

"I notice," continued the Counsel for the Prosecution, still skimming through the letter, "that you have known one another for a short time--"

"Seven weeks, five days, four hours, and a few odd minutes," confirmed the defendant, looking at his watch.

"--And you became engaged as recently as last Sunday." Lady Adela laid down the letter. "Where?"

"On the top of a 'bus."

"H'm!" said Mr. Mainwaring uneasily.

"A rather unusual place, was it not?" enquired Lady Adela coldly.

"Unusual," agreed Dicky readily, "but not irregular. Oh, no! Besides, Percy was there, three seats behind. Perfect dragon of a chaperon, old Perce! Yes, the proceedings were most correct, I promise you."

"I note," continued Lady Adela, taking up the letter again, "that you do not say where you made Miss Welwyn's acquaintance."

"That was on the top of another 'bus," explained Dicky, with a disarming smile.

"And was her brother," enquired Lady Adela, ominously calm, "present on _this_ occasion?"

"Percy? Rather not! Otherwise I need not have interfered."

"Int--" began both Lady Adela and Mr. Mainwaring together.

"Yes," said Dicky glibly. "It was like this. The rain began to come down hard, and a rather poisonous-looking bounder sitting beside her offered her his umbrella."

"Any gentleman would have done the same, Dick," interposed Mr. Mainwaring quietly.

"Yes, Dad. But I don't think any gentleman would have insisted on paying a girl's fare for her; and I don't think any gentleman would have considered a half-share in a three-and-ninepenny brolly an excuse for putting his arm round a girl's waist," replied Dicky, with sudden passion.

"He did that?"

"Yes."

"What did you do?"

Dicky grinned cheerfully.

"I did a pretty bright thing," he said. "It was no business of mine, of course, and I naturally did n't want to start a brawl on the top of a Piccadilly omnibus--"

"Dick, what were you doing on the top of an omnibus at all?" demanded Lady Adela unexpectedly. "Such economies are a new feature of your character."

Dicky nodded his head sagely.

"Yes," he agreed, "that's a sound point--a sound point. What _was_ I doing on the top of that omnibus at all? That's the mystery. I was extremely surprised myself. I have spent whole days since, wondering how I got there. I have come to the conclusion that it was Fate--just Fate! That's it--Fate!"

"My dear boy, don't talk nonsense," said Lady Adela impatiently.

"But I am quite serious, dear Mum," persisted Dicky. "I don't as a rule go following unprotected young females onto the summits of omnibuses--"

Lady Adela's fine eyes began to protrude, crabwise.

"You _followed_ her?" she gasped.

"I did. What else was there to do?" said Dicky simply. "I might never have seen her again if I had n't. Fate does n't as a rule give a man two chances. I got this one, and I took it. One moment I was walking along Piccadilly, bucking about something to old Tiny Carmyle. Next moment there she was, stepping on to that Piccadilly 'bus. In about five seconds I found myself up on top, too, sitting on the seat behind her. I tell you, it must--"

"What became of Mr. Carmyle?" asked Lady Adela, ruthlessly interrupting another rhapsody.

Dicky smiled vaguely, and rubbed his head.

"Upon my soul, I don't know," he confessed. "It's the first time the matter has occurred to me. I expect he went home. He's a resourceful old creature."

"How did you dispose of the man with the umbrella, my boy?" enquired Mr. Mainwaring.

"Ah," said Dicky, abandoning Carmyle to his fate, "that was where I did the bright thing. The fellow looked as if he made rather a hobby of this sort of game, and that gave me an idea. When he started amusing himself, I tapped him on the shoulder and said, right in his ear: 'Look here, my man, do you remember what happened to you the last time you were rude to a lady when you thought no one was with her?"

Mr. Mainwaring rubbed his hands gently.

"Well?" he said.

"At that," continued The Freak with relish, "my sportsman went a sort of ripe gorgonzola colour, grabbed his filthy brolly, and slid heavily down the back stairs of the 'bus."

"And what did you do then?" enquired Lady Adela.

"I," replied Dicky triumphantly, "got up and took his seat and gave Tilly my umbrella!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" crowed Mr. Mainwaring delightedly. "H'm! h'm! h'm! Honk! honk! honk!" he concluded hurriedly, coughing laboriously and patting himself upon the chest, as his consort turned menacingly in his direction.

"And where did you part company?" asked Lady Adela.

"Well," explained the culprit, "I offered to see her home. She was rather shaken up by what had happened."

Lady Adela nodded her head as if she had expected this.

"I see. And what did the young woman--

"Don't you think, Mum dear, that you might start calling her 'lady' now?" suggested Dicky gently.

"--Say to that?" she enquired, without taking the slightest notice of the interruption.

"She said she was n't going home. She was out shopping, it seemed. In fact, she got down at a shop in Oxford Street. I insisted on her keeping the umbrella, though."

"As a gift?"

"No," said Dicky with a twinkle; "as a hostage."

"And you gave her your address?"

Dicky's radiant countenance clouded for a moment.

"Not quite," he said. "I meant to, of course; but I can't have been quite my own calm self; for instead of giving her my own address, I asked for hers."

"She gave it, I suppose?" said Lady Adela dryly.

"No. She hesitated badly. I ought to have realised at once that I was not quite playing the game; but I was so mad keen to see her again that the idea never occurred to me. I simply thought she had forgotten where she lived, or something, and waited."

"But finally," said Lady Adela, "the young--lady did confide her address to you?"

Dicky nodded, and his mother continued:--

"Where does she live?"

"Russell Square," said Dicky rapturously.

"Russell Square? Ah! I know it. One drives through it on the way to Euston. In Bloomsbury, I believe?" said Lady Adela.

Her infatuated son corrected her. "Not Bloomsbury," he said reverently; "Heaven."

"Quite so," agreed Lady Adela, entirely unmoved. "What number?"

"I have forgotten the number long ago," replied Dicky, "but I could find my way to the place blindfold by this time."

"Don't you ever write to her?" asked his mother curiously.

"Every day."

"Then you must know her postal address," was the crushing rejoinder.

Dicky merely shook his head, and smiled serenely.

"No, I don't," he said.

"Then where do you address her letters?"

"I walk round every night after bedtime, and drop the letter into her letter-box. Is it likely I would let a postman touch it? Anyhow, on this occasion Tilly told me that if I asked for my umbrella any time I was passing it would be handed out to me. Then she thanked me again, the darling, and went into the shop."

"Front entrance?" enquired Lady Adela swiftly.

"Was it?" said Dicky vaguely. "I don't remember. Yes, I do. She went round and in at the side somewhere. Why?"

"Nothing," said Lady Adela. "And did you call at Russell Square?"

"Rather! I went there next afternoon."

"Were you invited in?"

"As a matter of fact, I met her coming out, with her father. A splendid old chap! Apparently Tilly had told him the whole tale, and he had expressed a desire to make my acquaintance. A lucky desire for me, what? He took us both out to tea."

"Where?"

"Gunter's. Said he was sorry he could n't ask me into the house at present, as they had the paperhangers in. After that visitation was over, I was to come and make the acquaintance of the rest of the family."

"And did you?"

"Yes."

"What is the house like inside?" was the next inevitable feminine enquiry.

"To tell you the truth I have n't been inside yet, except the front hall. But I met the rest of the family at a very friendly little luncheon given in my honour at the Criterion on the following Saturday afternoon."

"And what are the rest of the family like?"

Dicky pondered.

"Now I come to think it over," he confessed at length, "I'm not very clear about the rest of the family. Collectively they struck me as being the most charming people I had ever met, but I don't seem to have noticed them individually, if you know what I mean. You see, Tilly was there."

"How many are there?" pursued his mother, with exemplary patience.

"Four or five, I should think, but I have never counted them," replied the exasperating Richard. "Tilly--"

Mr. Mainwaring came timidly to his wife's aid.

"Is there a mother, my boy?" he asked.

"Yes, there is a mother," replied Dicky hastily. "Oh, yes," he repeated with more confidence, "certainly there is a mother."

"Any sisters?"

"There is a small girl--a dear. And I have a kind of notion there are some twins somewhere. Tilly--"

"Any brothers?"

Dicky smiled, apparently at some amusing thought.

"Yes," he said, "there is Percy. A sterling fellow, Perce! I wonder where he is, by the way. If he were here he might be able to do something with the goat. Any one would respect Percy--even a goat."

Lady Adela sighed despairingly. Mr. Mainwaring, taking the goat by the horns, so to speak, asked his son to elucidate the mystery once and for all.

"Did n't I tell you about the goat?" asked Dick in surprise. "Well, it was like this. When Tilly and I were hunting for a cab in the rain at the station just now, we met a woman with a goat, in tears."

"The goat?" said Lady Adela incredulously.

"No, its mother--I mean, its proprietress. She had missed the market, or something, owing, to her pony breaking down, and she had come to the station as a forlorn hope, to see if she could catch a departing goat-merchant and unload Maximilian on him."

"Maximilian?" interjected Lady Adela giddily.

"Yes--the goat. We had to call him _something_, you know. Her husband was very ill in bed, and Maximilian had to be sold to defray expenses, it seemed."

"And so you--er--purchased Maximilian?" said Mr. Mainwaring.

"We did," replied The Freak gravely. "That was why we had to walk. The cabman would not allow us to take Maximilian inside with us, and Max absolutely declined to sit on the box beside the cabman--which did n't altogether surprise me--so we all three had to come here on our arched insteps. I wonder where Tilly is."

"Where is the animal now?" enquired Lady Adela apprehensively. She was quite prepared to hear that Maximilian was already in the best bedroom.

"We left him on the lawn, tethered to the rain-gauge," replied Dicky. "Ah, there she is!"

Forgetting the goat and all other impediments to the course of true love, he hurried to the foot of the staircase.

III

Miss Welwyn and Mrs. Carmyle descended the stairs together, Sylvia stalking majestically in the rear. Tilly wore a short navy-blue skirt and a soft silk shirt belonging to Connie--garments which, owing to the mysterious readiness with which the female form accommodates itself to the wardrobe of its neighbour, fitted her to perfection. In this case, however, the miracle was less noticeable than usual, for the two girls were of much the same height and build, their chief points of difference being their hair and eyes.

In reply to her swain's tender enquiries, Miss Welwyn intimated that she was now warm and dry.

"In that case," replied Dicky, "come and sit up to the tea-table and take some nourishment."

On her way to her tea Tilly was met by Mr. Mainwaring senior, with outstretched hands.

"My dear young lady," he said, with shy cordiality, "we owe you a most humble apology."

Tilly, flushing prettily, asked why.

"For our extremely vague greeting to you just now," explained her host. "You see"--he clapped Dicky fondly on the shoulder--"this intellectual son of ours forgot to post the letter announcing your--telling us about you. We have only just heard the news. Now that we have you, my dear"--the old gentleman's eyes beamed affectionately--"we are going to make much of you!"

"Oh, thank you! You _are_ kind!" cried Tilly impulsively; and smiled gratefully upon her future father-in-law. His were the first official words of welcome that she had received.

"Good old Dad!" said Dicky.

Meanwhile Lady Adela had come to the conclusion that her male belongings were overdoing it.

"Do you take sugar, Miss Welwyn?" she enquired loudly.

"Yes, please," said Tilly, still engaged in smiling affectionately upon the Mainwarings, _pere et fils_.

"I wonder now," continued Mr. Mainwaring, "if you are in any way related to an old friend of mine--or perhaps I should say acquaintance, for he moved on a higher plane than I--Lucius Welwyn? I was at school with him more than forty years ago, and also at Cambridge."

"Lucius Welwyn?" cried Tilly, her eyes glowing. "He is my Daddy--my father!"

"You don't say so? Capital!" Abel Mainwaring turned to his wife. "Adela, do you hear that? Miss Welwyn and I have established a bond of union already. Her father was actually at school with me."

Lady Adela flatly declined to join in the general enthusiasm.

"Are you sure, dear?" was all she said. "There might be two."

Mr. Mainwaring pointed out, with truth, that Lucius Welwyn was an uncommon name. "But we can easily make sure," he said. "The Lucius Welwyn whom I remember was a Fellow of his College. Did your father--"

"Yes, Dad was a Fellow of his College for some years," said Tilly. "I think I will come a little farther from the fire now, if you don't mind. I am quite warm."

"Come and sit here by me, dear Miss Welwyn," said Lady Adela with sudden affability. "I want to have a cosy little chat with you. Dick, you are very wet and muddy. Go and change."

"All right," said Dicky obediently.

As he left the hall he said something in a low voice to Mrs. Carmyle. That small champion of the oppressed nodded comprehendingly, and established herself at a writing-table under the curtained window.

"Abel," enquired Lady Adela, in pursuance of her policy of once more clearing the decks for action, "what have you done with Mr. Rylands?"

"I quite forgot him," confessed Mr. Mainwaring. "I was so much occupied with Miss Welwyn. I fear he is still in the smoking-room."

"Go and let him out--by the side door," commanded Lady Adela.

"Come on, Dad!" said Dicky.

Father and son disappeared, arm-in-arm; Lady Adela and Sylvia closed in upon the flinching Miss Welwyn; and Mrs. Carmyle, taking up her pen, addressed herself to the composition of an epistle to her lord and master.

Lady Adela looked round, and remarked in solicitous tones:--

"Constance, dear, you have chosen a very draughty corner for yourself."

"I have put fresh note-paper in your bedroom, Connie," added Sylvia cordially.

"I'm as right as rain, thanks," said Connie. "Just scribbling a line to Bill."

And she began:--

_I have arrived quite safely, old man, and the most tremendously exciting things are happening here. Listen!_