Part 4

“Yes, we have, really; and I think I was a bit of a brute.”

He rambled in explanations, which I punctuated with “Dear, dear.” Carrie laid her hand on my sleeve, and I turned to her.

“Rol,” she whispered, “do send Arthur for some coffee. I want to talk to you.”

Arthur was despatched to find a waiter, and I attended Carrie’s pleasure while she twisted her fingers nervously through the opera-glasses.

“Rol,” she said, “I’m so unhappy.”

“The Wings of Sorrow have brushed your life and left it an Arid Waste,” I replied sententiously, hugely amused. She didn’t divine the raillery.

“But surely, Rol, the heart is ripened through suffering,” she replied unconsciously.

“Yes,” I replied. “The Separation of Souls is not Eternal. Those we love are severed from us in the flesh, but in Heaven----”

She looked suspiciously, but my face was very grave. The waiter appeared with coffee, and Arthur resumed his seat, this time without apology. He was anxious to make it up, but I didn’t offer him my seat. I wanted to see the particular kind of _finesse_ he would adopt, so lay low and watched him.

The music recommenced, and Caroline, by some inattentiveness, retained her coffee cup, which I believe she mentally identified with Isolde’s love potion. Bassishaw was revolving ways and means, but the cup hint was not obvious to him. Isolde began the Liebestod song, while the head of the Vaaagnerite beyond Arthur was sunk in his hands, possibly not to see the corpulent heroine, whose presence was somewhat disturbing to the music. The Wagner hush was over all.

It was broken by Bassishaw. Unable to solve the difficulty, he cut the knot. His hand came over my knee, and took the hand of Caroline that was hanging in limp appeal nearest him. She turned her face away, but allowed the hand to remain. It was all over, and I leaned back to commune with my thoughts, and to adjust my mind to the prospect of being once more a superfluity.

“I say, Butterfield, old chap,” Bassishaw whispered to me, “do you mind changing places? This is rather awkward, you know.”

“It is conspicuous,” I replied, “but commendably frank. I rather admire your way of doing these things, Bassishaw. But we can’t change now. You’ll have to wait your opportunity of giving me the slip in the foyer--I’ve no doubt you’ll attempt it.”

It would do them no harm to wait a while.

VIII

A VETERAN RECRUIT

Millicent Dixon’s uncle, Col. Elliott Coke, invalided from some remote Afghan frontier station whose name on the map was utterly out of proportion to the inconsiderableness of the place, was in London. I met him at the Bassishaws’ when Arthur, in tones of infinite respect, had pointed out to my notice a small, keen face, curried by Indian suns, with moustaches out of which both the colour and the moisture had been grilled years and years before.

“I say, Rollo,” Bassishaw had whispered, “do you know who that is? That’s Col. Coke.”

“It’s a good name,” I observed. “Who’s he?”

“Who’s he? I say, Rollo! Why, he’s the best authority on hill batteries and jungle skirmishes in India! Led an attack on some darned place or other in--I forget the date. V. C. Went through the Afghan war, you know--got about a hundred and fifty clasps.”

“Indeed?” I said. “Present me.”

Arthur had presented me to his hero almost apologetically, and I had since improved the acquaintance considerably.

I gathered from the Colonel that the Afghan frontier was not overrun with European ladies to any great extent, and certainly the little man’s manner on being transported to a place where a full numerical half of the population (and a much larger proportion in every other respect) consisted of women, was very pleasant to watch. The luxury of seeing them was almost enough for him, and when it came to the intimacies of conversation the little warrior’s embarrassment was as delightful as young Ted Carmichael’s.

“Gad, Butterfield,” he said, as we threaded Piccadilly one evening, “this is home, you know! It’s like one big family--you feel as if you can speak to any of them!”

The Colonel’s observation was perhaps truer than he had any idea of; but I couldn’t dash his boyish pleasure.

“Yes,” I replied. “I almost envy you the delight, Coke, of having the full measure all at once. It is to you what tiger-shooting would be to me, did my tastes run in that direction.”

“Gad,” he replied (he seldom replied without “Gad”), “it’s marvellous! And all with faces as white as my own, Butterfield!”

I smiled, looking at the piece of tropical cookery he called white, but let him run on.

“Do you know,” he said, “there was Powell’s wife, and poor Jack Dennis’s widow, and the adjutant’s sister; and, by Gad, except for a _dahi_ that Powell kept (Powell’s wife was never strong), there wasn’t another woman, Butterfield, in the whole damned station! And Winifred Dennis didn’t amount to much. But here----”

He never seemed to get accustomed to it. Had a London fog stamped the metropolitan complexion indelibly and universally black, Coke would have given a sigh, as knowing that his glimpse was too good to have lasted, and returned to his old order of things. The rustle of a silk skirt was an unstaled wonder to him; and the contrast between what he called the “real European baby-ribbon sort of thing” and the “infernal blouse and puggaree business” never failed to entertain him.

With Miss Dixon he was soon on good terms, but with most other ladies, Mrs. Loring Chatterton first of all, his diffidence was marked. His chivalrous devotion was Quixotic, but most of them would have bartered it, I am sure, for a more work-a-day and less punctilious style of attention. Mrs. Loring, indeed, said so.

“I don’t know where he got his style of conversation from,” she remarked, “but he is absolutely embarrassed when I present him to a woman. How do you account for it, Mr. Butterfield?”

“It is not,” I replied, “that he is deficient in physical bravery. I can only account for it on the supposition of instinct. He knows your propensities, Mrs. Loring, and would possibly die as he has lived, a blameless bachelor.”

“But it’s just the same with the married women,” she returned. “What is there to be afraid of in Alice Carmichael?”

“I decline to be invidious, Mrs. Loring,” I replied. “He gets along well enough with Millicent Dixon.”

“They are related,” she replied, somewhat inconclusively.

“I am afraid it is a _non sequitur_,” I answered. “Friendship generally varies inversely as the square of the distance of the relationship.”

“I wonder what we could do?” she said, half to herself. “Do you think Mrs. Gervase would do him any good?”

The wicked, wedded creature! Emily Gervase, a youthful widow, was Cicely Vicars’s sister. I drew myself up with dignity.

“Mrs. Loring,” I said, looking full at her, “I wonder that you do not tremble! What is it you would do? Has Col. Coke, of a score of Indian hill fights, the bearer of honourable scars of war and climate, not earned his peace? Would you, now that his body is broken on the outposts of an Empire for your protection, harrow the boyish soul within it? No, madam. On me, if you will, you may exercise your arts; but if you once submit that venerable head to the machinations of Emily Gervase--I expose you.”

“Exercise arts on you!” she retorted. “You’re too fond of it; and I _shall_ be--nice--to the Colonel, in spite of you, Mr. Butterfield.”

She kept her word. She indulged her undoubted gifts for being “nice” to people in a series of variations, the theme of which was always the same--the development of the Colonel’s intimacy with Mrs. Gervase. Mrs. Loring’s methods were old enough to me--I knew them by heart; but to the maiden soul of the Colonel they came as a revelation of female unselfishness.

“Do you know, Butterfield,” he said to me one evening, “I’m beginning to think Mrs. Chatterton is no end of a fine woman, by Gad! She’s loyal, by Gad! The way she stands by that little friend of hers, Mrs. Gervase--you know her”--(I nodded)--“why, it’s just what a man would do!”

“Then you have met Mrs. Gervase, Coke?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “the other evening. She’s infernally shy, by Gad! Quiet, you know. That’s what I like about an Englishwoman here. Now, Powell’s wife, and the regimental women----”

“Exactly; were not shy. And what do you think of Mrs. Gervase?”

“Well, you know,”--the little man looked at me with a comical air of worldly knowledge that was a joy to see,--“she was awfully quiet, Butterfield--only looked at you; but _I_ brought her out, by Gad! And she’s intelligent, too, when you once get her talking.”

“You succeeded in making her talk, then?” I asked with an irony that was for my private satisfaction, and meant nothing to him.

“Yes,” he replied, “after I’d--played her a bit, you know. And that woman, Butterfield, displayed an intelligence, by Gad, on transport, and commissariat, and mobilisation that was simply little short of marvellous! Marvellous, by Gad!”

“She’s a clever woman, I believe,” I answered. “She asked you how often you had been wounded, I suppose?”

“She _did_ ask me that,” he admitted; “but women haven’t got to hear about that kind of thing, you know, Butterfield. You’ve got to keep ’em at arm’s length in such matters--kind of----”

“Exactly. Play them a bit. I congratulate you, Colonel, on having--er--brought out Mrs. Gervase.”

“Oh,” he replied, “she’s only a child, of course, widow or no widow; but she’ll make a fine woman, Butterfield.”

I would have given much that Emily Gervase should have heard herself set down a child. The Colonel, unconsciously, had in his hand the opportunity for complete and sweeping revenge.

It was my fortune to be present when Mrs. Gervase, doubtless after deep consideration, made the next move. We were to call on Mrs. Charlie Vicars--or rather, Coke was to call, and persuaded me along with him.

“Mrs. Chatterton said you wouldn’t mind, Butterfield,” he said; “and, by Gad, I can’t keep two of them going.”

“You undervalue yourself, Coke,” I said. “But I’ll come.”

And so we found ourselves in the æstheticism of Mrs. Vicars’s drawing-room. That lady found means to entertain me, while Coke applied himself to the creation of a conversational warmth that should induce the unfolding of the timid bud by his side.

“Col. Coke seems to have taken quite a fancy to Emily, Mr. Butterfield?” said Mrs. Charlie interrogatively.

“It is a pretty sight, Mrs. Vicars,” I replied. “The scarred veteran in the evening of his life, his grim battles behind him, returning to take a younger generation on his knee----”

Mrs. Vicars looked round in alarm.

“--And to tell of fights in which their fathers were engaged----”

“Col. Coke is not so old as that, Mr. Butterfield. He can’t be much older than you,” she interrupted.

“He is young enough to be Emily’s father,” I admitted, “and perhaps a little too juvenile to be her grandfather. Coke is fifty.”

“He doesn’t look it, Mr. Butterfield.”

“He looks it, Mrs. Vicars, and you know it. Let us talk about something else. How is Master--Percival, is his name to be?”

The young gentleman in question had known the light of day for exactly three weeks, and was the commencement of Cicely Vicars’s family. I had been presented to him in his cot some days before, but beyond mutual celibacy, there was little as yet in common between us, and the conversation had flagged.

“Yes,” Mrs. Vicars responded, “he’s to be called Percival; and oh, Mr. Butterfield, he’s to be christened in a week, and I wondered----”

She hesitated.

“I already stand sponsor to an embarrassing extent, Mrs. Vicars,” I replied. “I never ascertained precisely to what the position pledged me, but I have an uncomfortable sense of responsibility to which I do not feel inclined to add.”

“But, Mr. Butterfield, those were--other people’s children--not mine.”

She turned a supplicating eye on me. It runs in the family.

“Naturally,” I replied. “It would be a big burden, in these days of small families, for any one person. But no, Mrs. Vicars. Perhaps on a future occasion----I have it!” I added.

“You have what?”

“Coke’s your man, Mrs. Vicars. Come.”

I rose, and assisted her to rise also. She hung back, but I brought her along. It was the very thing! We approached the couple. The Colonel was holding forth on the dialects of the North-Western Provinces.

“Coke!” I said. He looked up.

“Accept my felicitations. You are to stand godfather to Mrs. Vicars’s little boy next week.”

Coke blushed a vivid gamboge, and stopped dead.

“Gad!” he stammered. “Wha--what’s that, Butterfield?”

“Sponsor, my dear Coke,” I returned, “at the investiture of a fellow-man with a name. You’re just the man.”

Things were whirling round Coke. He grasped the edge of the sofa with both hands, and looked blankly at us.

“Me!” he gasped, “me! at a christening! What the devil--me a godfather! No, I’m damned if I can!”

“My dear Coke,” I answered, “calm yourself. Of course you can--you must! A man with the Victoria Cross cannot get out of these things so easily. Look at me--a baker’s dozen at least.”

“Gad,” he replied, wiping his brow, “I’d rather get the Cross again.”

“Nonsense,” I replied. “It’s a duty. Somebody did it for us, and we keep up the tradition. Besides, it’s unlucky to have to ask twice.”

I had no authority for this last statement, but it seemed to go. Coke leaned back for ease in breathing.

“But I’ve never done anything of the kind,” he almost whispered. “I shall shake like a recruit. I shan’t know what to do--I shall get mixed up with the bridesmaids----”

The Colonel’s notions as to the procedure of christenings were undoubtedly vague. I looked at Mrs. Gervase.

“This is not a wedding,” I said, “but a christening. That’s all right, Coke. You shall wear your uniform and grasp the hilt of your sword all the time. You’ll do.”

“But--but--hang it, Butterfield, what about the family? You’ll pardon me, ladies, but I--you are the only members I am happy enough to know.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Vicars, “there’s only mother, Colonel. I forgot you hadn’t met her. You shall to-morrow. You do promise?”

The Colonel was evidently looking for flaws in the position, but seemed to find none. He rose, as unhappy a little soldier as ever wore a medal.

“Well, ladies,” he said, “I would rather have shot Afghans for you for twelve months than undertake this--this post. If I break down you mustn’t blame me. I’ll do my best.”

And with a sigh he pulled his white moustaches nervously, and we begged leave to go.

Now, my only object in all this was a half-whimsical protest, such as is permissible against what was evidently in the minds of both these ladies--the matching of Mrs. Gervase with a man easily twenty years her senior. The position of godfather to a succeeding generation, apart from the edification of seeing such a man as Coke in such a capacity, was much more suitable than any wedding so uneven, and I had allowed myself to hint as much. But Coke himself, as he afterwards told me, had carried the thing a good deal further.

It was in the smoke-room of the Fainéant Club that I heard its conclusion. The ceremony was over, and Coke was composing his nerves with green Indian cigars. He had sat meditatively watching the smoke for some time, when he suddenly looked up and caught my eye.

“Well, Butterfield,” he said, “I got it over; but, by Gad, never again! They shall call 'Deserters’ next time for me!”

“Yes?” I said inquiringly.

“Yes,” he replied. “It was this way, Butterfield. I called on Mrs. Vicars next day, and met her mother, and, by Gad, Butterfield”--the Colonel threw his cigar away in his excitement, and faced full round on me--“it was little Cissie Munro, who threw me over before I left, thirty years ago! By Gad”--he sank back in his chair--“you could have pulled my shoulder-straps off! I knew her in a minute. I didn’t know whether she was living or dead, Butterfield. I’m used to my friends dying--and there, by Gad, she turns up! My stars, it beats all!”

It was certainly a coincidence.

“And the awkward part of the whole thing was--I don’t mind telling _you_, Butterfield--that I’d all but taken a fancy to that quiet little daughter of hers, Mrs. Gervase. Well, I was all at sea; the whole thing was too infernally odd. It didn’t seem right, somehow, that I should be thrown over by one woman, make love to her daughter, and be godfather to what might have been my own grandchild, by Gad; and I was in no end of a mess. Don’t you think so?”

I admitted the questionableness of the proceeding.

“Well, I could not get out of the confounded christening--thanks to you, Butterfield,--but as to Mrs. Gervase, that was another matter. I can help that. And she’s a good little woman, too,” he added, “if she were not so infernally modest, by Gad.”

“I think it is, perhaps, better, Coke,” I replied.

IX

THE ETHICS OF ANGLING

I don’t quite know how Mrs. Loring came to pick the Gibsons up. They were not what Carrie termed “quite nice people”; in what respect it was easy to see and difficult to say. Their jewellery was unexceptionable, and barely ostentatious; their manners passed the presentation standard, if falling a little short in the nicer requirements of the _tête-à-tête_. They did not offend in the matter of “Mr.” and “Esq.,” but sniffed somewhat of “R. S. V. P.” Mrs. Gibson, too, insisted on the forms of chaperonage in a way that was rather more than a passing bow to custom, and which suggested the possibility of her having learned the necessity in a different school from that of Mrs. Loring Chatterton. They had money.

“What do you think of the Gibsons, Rol?” Carrie had said to me; “_I_ don’t like them.”

“I would rather introduce them to my relatives than to my friends,” I replied.

It was pretty evident to me after a short acquaintance with the Gibsons that they were disposed to make much of me. Carrie noticed the same thing, and spoke her mind on the subject with the freedom of engaged youth.

“Mrs. Gibson’s a horrid woman, Rol, and it’s my opinion she wants you to marry Miss Gibson.”

“Caroline,” I replied, “I applaud your concern, yet cannot blame Mrs. Gibson. She can see virtue where others see but corpulence. Besides, I consider Miss Gibson rather pretty.”

“I’m sure she’s not pretty,” retorted Caroline, and proceeded to enlighten me on matters interesting and feminine.

Mamma played the only game she knew very skilfully. Her only mistake was in the inapplicability of the means, which was not her fault. Indeed, I feel almost apologetically responsible myself, seeing the line worked so thoroughly, and mused instructively on the devotion of a mother to her child’s prospects.

Miss Gibson was accomplished, and expensively finished. As I had remarked to Carrie, she was decidedly pretty, and would talk Ibsen to you with her face in profile. She displayed an obtrusive girlhood that was not always as modest as its intention, and this pose of maidenhood in bud was apparently the one designed to net me.

Mrs. Gibson gave a _musicale_, to which I persuaded Carrie with difficulty. She had evidently talked things over with Mrs. Loring, for that lady appeared also, and I was greatly gratified at the concern with which they watched me. I decided to give them all the entertainment they desired. They talked with an obvious intention of interesting me and keeping me apart from Miss Gibson. I was surprised to see so little strategy in a married woman.

Miss Gibson was running a risk of palsying her hand in a vibrant mandolin solo, and producing music suggestive of the dotted line of a wheel-pen. I heard Carrie whisper to Mrs. Loring something about “St. Vitus’s Waltz,” for which I reproved her, considering whose house she was in. I then addressed Mrs. Loring.

“Somehow, Mrs. Loring,” I said, “one thinks more of English maidenhood as one advances in life. There is something in the unsophisticated rosebud----”

Mrs. Loring nodded significantly, implying there was a good deal in the unsophisticated rosebud, but I waited my time; I had a bolt in store for her.

Miss Gibson had finished the solo in a tinsel diminuendo, the intent of which was to enchain the soul a while longer in the regions to which it had been raised. I rose and crossed over to her. She was untangling herself from a mesh of coloured mandolin ribbons that _would_ catch in the ruching of her corsage.

“They’re _such_ a nuisance, Mr. Butterfield; I shall cut them off, I think.”

I smiled at the unintentional suggestion, and assisted her in the extrication, glancing across at Mrs. Loring’s disapproving face. Miss Gibson sat down and made room for me beside her. She twined the mandolin ribbons among her fingers, and Mrs. Gibson moved further away.

“Are you leaving town soon, Mr. Butterfield?” inquired the unsophisticated rosebud engagingly.

It was a better opening than I had looked for; I took advantage of it.

“I had meditated going down into the country for a little fishing shortly,” I replied; “probably in a week or two.”

“You are fond of fishing, are you not, Mr. Butterfield?” she inquired, tying a knot in a red ribbon.

“It’s a pleasure,” I answered, “as much of the mind as of the body. I know of nothing more exciting than the suspense of the first nibble. The angler, male or female, has peculiar joys and fears of which the layman knows nothing.”

“Oh, I should _so_ love it!” replied Miss Gibson, glancing down at a small shoe that protruded from the lacy hem of her skirts. I followed her glance, and knew in my soul that Mrs. Loring and Carrie were watching me.

“The first nibble taken,” I continued, warming to my work, “all the _finesse_ of playing your victim commences. There is a wide difference between hooking your fish and landing him. He must be humoured and coaxed, or you lose him, bait and all.”

I took one of the ribbons in my hand.

“It must be most annoying to have all your trouble for nothing, is it not, Mr. Butterfield?”

“You follow me perfectly,” I replied, “especially when you have made sure of your fish. Often enough you have chosen the wrong fly, or your line has been seen by the fish; and he is a shy thing, a very timid creature.”

She laid groundbait for me by dropping her fan. I nibbled again, and returned it to her.

“The fish, too, becomes cunning with age; and you must not play a middle-aged trout as a boy does a minnow. Believe me, Miss Gibson, he is not easily caught, if he is worth the landing.”

Mrs. Gibson passed with a smile, but did not disturb the situation. I rose to get Miss Gibson an ice, and resumed my seat near her. She placed the mandolin on the other side, adjusted her gown, and diminished the distance between us by an inch. Again her fan dropped, and as we both stooped to pick it up our hands touched.

Honestly, I acquit Miss Gibson of intention.

“Yet another method of landing your trout,” I continued, “is by what is called 'tickling’; but then your fish must be asleep, and it cannot fairly be classed as sport.”

“But surely, Mr. Butterfield,” said Miss Gibson, playing me with her eyes, “fishing must be very cruel? Fancy the poor thing with the hook!--doesn’t it hurt?”

“I believe,” I returned, “they rather enjoy it, Miss Gibson; particularly what is called the softer-mouthed kind of fish.”

“How very curious!” said the credulous rosebud, somewhat absently. She evidently took my remarks on the subject as so much natural history, and was interested in them only as such. She glanced at the mandolin ribbons, and I saw her revolving means of supplementing the line by the net. She made a fresh cast.

“And how long do you expect to be away, Mr. Butterfield?”

Mrs. Loring and Carrie were approaching; but Mrs. Gibson, who had not apparently been watching, intercepted them, and dammed the stream adroitly. Carrie was placed at the piano, and the preserve maintained inviolate. Mrs. Loring talked sweetly to her hostess, with one eye on me.

“I could not say,” I replied. “Until my friends yearn for me back again, I suppose.”