Part 12

"I told him that the correct thing would be to horsewhip Mr. Jameson. His Lordship protested that he was not angry with Mr. Jameson, but as a matter of fact deeply indebted to him. We were speaking in strict confidence, I should mention, sir."

"Of course," said Dare. "Go on, Walters."

"Well, sir, his Lordship eventually agreed that his duty to Society demanded physical violence. He was always most punctilious in----"

"But I thought it was young Jameson who whipped Lord Beaulover," broke in Dare.

"That is so, sir," replied Walters, "But his Lordship did not on this occasion see the force of my arguments that he should practise beforehand. He was confined to his bed for a week and suffered considerable pain. I remember him saying to me:

"'Walters, never again.'

"'No, my Lord,' I replied.

"'I mean,' continued his Lordship, 'I'll never go against your advice again, Walters, never!'

"And he never did, sir."

"Is that all you have to say upon the ethics of horsewhipping, Walters?" Dare enquired as he proceeded to enjoy the omelette au jambon, in the making of which Walters is an adept.

"It would be advisable to make careful preparation, sir," was Walters' matter-of-fact reply. "There was the mishap of his Lordship."

"Yes," Dare mused as he poured out another cup of coffee; "there's always that danger. Life is crammed with anti-climax."

"Yes, sir!"

"How would you go to work, Walters?" Dare questioned.

Without a moment's hesitation Walters replied, "I do not know, sir, whether you have noticed that even battles now-a-days have to be rehearsed."

"Ah!" broke in Dare, "you advise a repetition generale."

"The chief difficulty, sir," continued Walters, "is to get a good grip of your man. May I ask, sir, who it is you intend to horsewhip?"

Dare looked quickly up at Walters. There was no curiosity in his face, he evidently required the information for the purpose of reaching his conclusions.

"Mr. Standish," Dare replied, watching Walters narrowly to see if he showed surprise. Standish and his wife were at that time Dare's most intimate friends, and they were constantly at his flat and Dare at theirs.

Walters did not move a muscle.

"Mr. Standish has a very thick neck, sir," he remarked, "that makes it more difficult."

Dare put down the coffee cup he was just raising to his lips and stared at Walters.

"What on earth has that to do with it?" he exclaimed.

"It is more difficult to get a good grip of a man with a thick neck, sir, than of one with a thin neck. Fortunately I have a thick neck," he added imperturbably.

Walters has always been a great joy to Dare; but there are times when he is also something of a trial. Dare suggested that he should explain himself, which he proceeded to do.

According to Walters, rehearsal is the great educator. If he were asked his advice as to how to run away with another man's wife, he would insinuate that there must be a sort of dress-rehearsal. His creed is that to a man of the world nothing must appear as a novelty. Breeding, he would define as the faculty of doing anything and everything as if to the action accustomed.

On the matter of horsewhipping, Dare learned much during the next ten minutes, and by the time he had finished his breakfast he found himself in full possession of all the necessary information as to how to horsewhip a man. The thickness of his own neck, Walters appeared to regard as the special provision of providence that his master might practise upon him. Dare protested that it would hurt, and Walters countered with a reference to the pile of old copies of _The Times_ awaiting a call from the Boy Scouts. With these he would pad himself and instruct Dare in how, when and where to horsewhip a fellow being.

But for Walters, Dare confesses, he would have made a sorry mess of that whipping. The whip seemed to get entangled in everything. It brought down pictures, lifted chairs, demolished an electric light bracket, and uprooted a fern. In short it seemed bewitched. Dare could get it anywhere but upon Walters' person. When somewhat more practised, Dare brought off a glorious cut upon Walters' right leg, which set him hopping about the room in silent agony. Greatly concerned Dare apologised profusely.

"It was my own fault, sir," was Walters' reply as he proceeded to bind a small mat round each leg. "I omitted all protection below the knee."

After a week's incessant practice upon Walters' long-suffering body and patient spirit, Dare was given to understand that he might regard himself as having successfully passed out of his noviciate.

When Dare confided to Jack Carruthers what he intended to do, Carruthers burst out with--

"Good heavens! Why, Standish is your best pal and his wife----"

"Had better be left out of the picture as far as you're concerned, old man," had been the reply. "The modern habit of linking thought to speech irritates me intensely: it shows a deplorable lack of half tones."

Carruthers apologised.

"But why do you want to whip Millie Standish's husband?" Carruthers demanded, pulling vigorously at his pipe, a trick of his when excited.

According to Dare, Carruthers is sometimes hopelessly English, not in his ideas; but in his method of expressing them--his ideas themselves are Continental. Dare told him that by saying Millie Standish's husband, instead of Standish, he implied that he, Dare, was in love with another man's wife.

Carruthers had blurted out that of course he was, everybody knew it.

Dare pointed out that he had got mixed in his tenses. To _be_ in love with a married woman is apt to compromise her: to _have been_ in love with her, merely adds to her interest and importance in the eyes of her contemporaries.

That is Dare all over. He would stop his own funeral service to point a moral, or launch an epigram.

Standish and Dare had been close friends until Standish fell insanely in love with the young woman who dispensed "tonics" in the saloon-bar of "The Belted Earl." Standish was a bizarre creature at times, and, to use Dare's own words, "what must the braying jackass do but endeavour to cultivate Fay's (that was his inamorata's classic name) mind, which existed nowhere outside the radius of his own mystical imagination."

On her nights out he took her to ballad concerts, when her soul yearned for the Pictures; and to University extension lectures, when her whole being craved for the Oxford.

When she complained of the long hours and the "sinking" she felt between meals, he advised her to eat raisins, and descanted sagely upon the sustaining properties of sugar. No one will ever know how he got acquainted with her, for drink made him either sick or silly. However, every evening between six and seven Standish ran into "The Belted Earl" on his way home, consumed a small lemonade, and handed Fay her morrow's ration of raisins.

He confided the whole story to Dare, he was bursting with it. Dare gave him sage counsel built up upon the foundation of secrecy, but instinctively he knew that it was impossible with a man like Standish.

One night Standish insisted upon Dare accompanying him into the saloon-bar of "The Belted Earl" where he was formally introduced to what Dare described as "a big-busted creature, with a head like a blonde horse and teeth suggestive of a dentist's show-case."

Fay's conversation seemed to consist mainly of three phrases, which are given in the order of the frequency with which they escaped her

(1) Oh! go on, do! (2) I'm surprised at you! (3) Aren't you sarcastic!

Standish strove to be light in his talk, possibly with the object of matching his beloved's hair; but, like that peroxide-exotic, his thoughts were rooted in darker foundations.

As they left the place Standish enquired eagerly--

"What do you think of her?"

Dare became deliberately mixed over the pronoun, and replied with a very direct description of what he thought of Standish.

He told him that he was confusing his conception of the soul with Fay's conviction of the body. He scoffed at the concerts and lectures. He pointed out that the politic Fay suffered them because she had imagination. "You are endeavouring to combine the instincts of a lothario with the soul of a calvinist," Dare had said in conclusion.

The two men parted with their friendship considerably shaken. Dare saw no particular objection to Standish making an ass of himself over any girl he chose; but he could not digest the missionary spirit in which Standish chose to view the whole adventure.

At last Standish went a step too far and told his wife all about it, requesting her to ask the unspeakable Fay to call. This platonic request was very naturally refused, and Standish made a fool of himself, said that Fay was one of Nature's ladies, and, given the right clothes and environment, she would be an astonishing success.

Dare learned the story from both of them, and told Standish that such bloods as he were wanted in sparsely populated colonies. The upshot was a breach between the two.

Millie Standish took it all rather badly. She talked about leaving her husband, and there was a quiet determined look in her eyes that Dare did not like: it seemed to suggest the possibility of leaving the world as well. Dare talked about brain-storm and other alien things, and patched things up for the time being.

At last Dare determined that shock tactics were necessary to bring Standish to his senses, and here his chivalry asserted itself. Millie Standish had no brother, therefore Dare felt it incumbent upon him to assume the fraternal responsibility of correcting Standish's rather Eastern views of life.

II

Having become thoroughly practised, Dare waited outside Standish's office one morning and administered the necessary punishment. The affair was an astounding success. Never probably in the history of horse-whipping had punishment been so admirably and skilfully administered. Standish's clerks lined the windows and had the time of their lives. They dared not cheer; but it was obvious on which side were their sympathies.

"Funny sensation whipping a man," remarked Dare, meditatively when he told the story, "It's so devilish difficult to hit him and avoid your own legs, even when you've had a Walters to practise on."

The next day Dare received a note from Mrs. Standish, which made it clear that so far from appreciating his chivalry, she was engaged in mourning over her stricken lord, moistening his poultices with her tears.

"Queer things, women," said Dare; "chivalry is as dead as Queen Anne."

Later in the day Dare was served with a summons for assault and battery. The affair was assuming an aspect which caused him considerable anxiety. If the matter were aired in the police-court, then the whole story would come out, Millie Standish would be humiliated and Standish himself would be made utterly ridiculous. Dare decided to consult old John Brissett, his solicitor, who immediately got into touch with Standish's solicitor and told him that if the matter went into court he should supoena Fay. The result was that the lion became as a lamb. Brissett made it quite clear to Standish's solicitor, who in turn made it clear to Standish, that his respectable intentions would be entirely misunderstood. The upshot of it was that the summons was withdrawn.

"And was that the end?" I queried of Dare.

"The end?" he cried. "Good God, no! Three days later Millie Standish cut me dead at the Latimer's reception. Women are oblivious to chivalry as I said before."

"So all was well," I said.

"All was not well, my dear fellow," was Dare's reply, as he gazed up at the ceiling. "All was peculiarly and damnably ill. Horsewhipping is a luxury far beyond my means," and he started blowing rings.

"But the summons----"

"Was withdrawn, true; but Fay was still alive alas! and with every 'tonic' she dispensed in the saloon-bar of 'The Belted Earl' she told of the noble way in which I had whipped Standish for her sake. That was Millie's doing. I could swear to it, she made Standish tell Fay that I did it because I was jealous of him and--oh, it was hell and chaos and forty publishers all rolled into one."

"But Fay?" I queried. "What of her?"

"She sent me perfumed notes (such vile perfume too) by the potman or chucker-out every other hour. Notes of adoration and of gratitude, in which the terms 'hero,' 'noble,' 'chivalrous,' with two v's, occurred at sickening intervals. I had to leave London for nearly a month, and it was at a time when I was busily engaged in a dispute with my publisher which necessitated my presence in town.

"Alas!" he concluded. "The tragedy of life is that it is always the wrong woman who appreciates a man's nobility."

"I never got no woman to appreciate my nobility wrong _or_ right, sir," said Bindle, at the conclusion of the story.

"Well, you're a lucky man, J.B.," said Dare. "An old fogey who lived some three thousand years ago said one of the disadvantages of matrimony was that your wife insisted on taking her meals with you."

"Did 'e really, sir?" said Bindle, greatly interested. '"I should a' like to 'ave known 'im."

"Mr. Bindle," said Sallie, "I am afraid you are a misogynist."

"I 'ope not, miss," said Bindle anxiously.

"Well you must remember that every time you say things against women you are saying something against me, because I am a woman."

"Lord, miss, don't say that," said Bindle half rising from his chair. "I never thinks o' you as a woman. You seem to be a sort of----" and he paused.

"A sort of what?" enquired Sallie.

"Well, miss, I don't 'ardly like to say."

"Come on, speak up, J.B.," said Dick Little, "don't be a coward. We'll see that Miss Carruthers doesn't hurt you."

"You must finish your sentence, I insist," said Sallie.

"Well, miss, I was goin' to say you always seems more like a mate than a woman."

That is one of the few occasions I have seen Sallie blush. Dick Little's attentions, my devotion, Angell Herald's elaborate manners, the General's gallantry; none of them had succeeded in bringing to Sallie's face the look of pleasure that Bindle's simple remark produced.

"Thank you, Mr. Bindle, very much indeed," she said.

"But why?" asked Windover reverting to the horsewhipping affair, "why should Mrs. Standish----"

"I expected," said Dare, "that some ass----"

"Psychologist," suggested Windover.

"The same thing, old man," was the retort. "I expected that some psychological ass would ask why Millie Standish should behave so oddly. I will tell you. It transpired later that she had evolved a cure of her own.

"She had after all invited Fay to her flat one evening, where she met the smartest women and the cleverest men that Millie could collect. I was not included," he added.

"Fay had turned up in a pale blue satin blouse, a black skirt and white boots. She had hung herself with every ounce of metal she possessed and jingled like a cavalry charger. All the women were very nice to her, tried to draw her out; but the men just stared, first at her and then at each other. It was Millie's hour, and when Standish had put Fay into a taxi, he had wept his repentance, been taken back to Millie's heart, and all was at peace."

"So your whipping came as an anti-climax," said Windover.

"Exactly," was Dare's response.

"Alas!" remarked Windover, "A man can but do his best and a woman her worst."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*GINGER VISITS THE NIGHT CLUB*

Bindle had on more than one occasion been urged to bring Ginger to the Night Club; but Ginger finds himself "not 'oldin' wiv" so many things in life, that he is very difficult to approach. One evening, however, Bindle entered with the khaki-clad Ginger. Awkward and self-conscious, Ginger strove to disguise his nervousness under the mantle of his habitual gloom.

"We been walkin' in the Park," Bindle announced. "I been quite worried about poor old Ging. Sunday evenin' in the Park ain't no place for a young chap like 'im. It puts wrong ideas into 'is 'ead."

Ginger grumbled something in his throat and with one hand took the cigar Dick Little offered whilst with the other he grasped the glass of beer that Windover had poured out for him.

"Funny place Hyde Park on a Sunday evenin'," Bindle remarked conversationally to Sallie; "but it's a rare responsibility with a chap like Ginger."

"Now Mr. Bindle," she smiled, "if you tease him I shall be cross."

"Me tease, miss, you must be mixin' me up wi' Mr. 'Erald."

"Get along with, the yarn, J.B., tell us about the Park," urged Carruthers, who liked nothing better than to get Bindle going.

"You should 'ear wot them Australian boys says about the Daylight Bill," he continued after a pause.

"The Daylight Bill?" queried Angell Herald.

"Well, you see, sir, its like this. Them poor chaps says that they gets a gal, and then, as soon as it gets dark, it's time for 'er to go 'ome."

"But why----?" began Angell Herald.

"Oh, you work it out by the square root of the primitive instinct," said Dick Little, which left Angell Herald exactly where he was before.

"They're an 'ot lot, them Australians," Bindle proceeded. "Ginger says they go off with all the gals, an' 'e don't get a chance. Aint that so, ole sport?" he demanded turning to Ginger.

"I don't 'old wiv women," grumbled Ginger.

"Anyway the Kangaroos don't give yer much chance of 'oldin' 'em. Fine chaps they looks too. I don't blame the gals," Bindle added.

"Funny things gals," continued Bindle, "they'd chuck a angel for an Australian. 'Earty's got a gal to 'elp in the shop. She's a pretty bit too, yer can always trust 'Earty in little things like that. Well, she's nuts on Australians. Poor Martha gets quite worried about it. Martha's 'Earty's missis," he explained, "A rare lot o' trouble she's 'ad with Jenny. First of all the gal took up wi' the milkman, wots got an 'eart and can't get into khaki. Then she chucks 'im an' starts with Australians; an' 'e was a fivepenny milkman too, an' now 'e can't go near the 'Earty's 'ouse without it 'urtin' 'im, so poor ole Martha is a penny down on 'er milk."

Bindle paused and proceeded to pull at his pipe meditatively.

"Get ahead, man," cried Dare impatiently. "What happened to the fickle Jenny?"

"Well," continued Bindle, "she seemed to get a new Australian every night out, an' poor ole Milkcans is lookin' round for another bit o' skirt."

"Know this thou lov'st amiss and to love true, Thou must begin again and love anew,"

quoted Dare.

"One day Martha asks Jenny why she's always out with Australians instead of our chaps. She looks down, shuffles 'er feet, nibbles the corner of 'er apron. At last she says, 'Oh, mum, it's the way they 'olds yer.'

"Yes," continued Bindle, "they're fine chaps them Australians, an' they can fight too." After a pause he continued: "Ole Spotty can't stand 'em, though. Spotty's got somethink wrong with 'is lungs and the doctor says to 'im, 'Spotty ole card, it's outdoors or underground. The choice is with you.'

"So instead o' becomin' a member o' parliament, Spotty goes round takin' pennies for lettin' people sit down on the chairs in the Park. It means fourpence 'alfpenny an 'our now an' rheumatism later.

"Them Australians can't understand bein' asked a penny to sit down, and sometimes they refuses to pay, thinking it's a do. It's a shame not to let 'em sit down for nothink, after they come all them miles to fight. So Spotty soon learns to sort of overlook 'em.

"One day an inspector reports 'im to the guv'nor, an' 'e was 'auled up an' asked to tell all about it. 'E did, also 'ow one of 'em offered to fight 'im for the penny. Spotty's a slip of a thing like a war sausage.

"'I took up this 'ere job,' says Spotty, 'to get well, not as a short cut to the 'orspital,' and he offered to resign; but they're short o' men an' Spotty is still takin' pennies, when 'e can get 'em without scrappin'.

"Lord, the things Spotty's told me about Hyde Park. It ain't no place for me. I told Mrs. B. one night, leastwise I told 'er some, an' she says, 'The King ought to stop it.'" Bindle grinned. "I can see 'im goin' round a-stoppin' it by 'avin' all the chairs put two yards apart, an' bein' late for 'is supper."

"Are you a royalist, J.B.?" enquired Windover languidly.

"A wot, sir?" enquired Bindle.

"Do you believe in kings?"

"I believe in our King." There was decision in Bindle's voice. "'E's a sport, same as 'is father was. I'm sick of all this talk about a republic." Disgust was clearly expressed upon Bindle's face and in his voice. "Down at the yard they're always jawin' about the revolution wot's comin'."

"I don't 'old wiv kings," broke in Ginger. "There's goin' to be a revolution."

"'Ullo Ging, you woke up? Well ole son, wot's wrong wi' George Five?"

"Look wot 'e corsts, an' you an' me 'as to pay, an' everything goin' up like 'ell."

"'Ush, Ginger, 'ush, there's a lady 'ere."

Ginger looked awkwardly at Sallie, who smiled her reassurance.

"'I s'pose, Ginger, yer thinks you're goin' to get a republic with a pound o' tea," said Bindle good-humouredly.

"There's goin' to be a revolution," persisted Ginger doggedly. Ginger logic is repetition. "After the war," he added.

"An' wot jer goin' to revolute about?" enquired Bindle, gazing at Ginger's face, which Windover has described as "freckled with stupidity."

For a few minutes Ginger was silent, thinking laboriously.

"Look at the price of beer?" he at length challenged with inspiration.

"Well, Ging, ain't you an ole 'uggins. 'Jer think you'll get cheap beer if yer makes George and Mary 'op it? Not you, ole son. Wot you'll most likely get is no beer at all, same as in America."

"That's a lie!" We were all startled at the anger in Ginger's voice, as he flashed a sullen challenge round the room.

"Don't get 'uffy, ole sport. Wot's a lie?" enquired Bindle, unmoved by Ginger's outburst.

"That they ain't got no beer in America," snarled Ginger.

"J.B. is quite right," murmured Windover soothingly. "In some States there's no drink of any sort."

Ginger gazed from one to the other, bewilderment and alarm stamped upon his face.

"Well I'm----" began Ginger.

"Surprised," broke in Bindle. "O' course you are. Fancy bein' in the army without anythink to wash it down.

"Now, Ginger," said Bindle after a pause, "tell the General 'ow 'appy you are bein' a soldier."

"I don't 'old wiv the army," was Ginger's gloomy response.

"What!" There was the light of battle in the General's eye. "Then why the devil did you enlist?" he demanded in his most aggressive parade manner.

"To get away," was Ginger's enigmatical response.

"To get away! To get away from what?" demanded the General.

"You see, sir," explained Bindle, "Ginger ain't 'appy in 'is 'ome life. 'E's got a wife an' three kids and----"

"Jawin' an' squallin'," interrupted Ginger vindictively.

"Why don't you like the army?" demanded the General.

"Don't 'old wiv orficers."

"With officers! Why?"

"Order yer about."

"How the devil would you know what to do if they didn't order you about?" demanded the General rapidly losing his temper.

"Don't 'old wiv the army," was the grumbled retort.

It is Ginger's method, when faced with an awkward question, to fall back upon his inner defences by announcing that he "don't 'old wiv" whatever it is under discussion.

"If you don't hold with the army, with officers, with wives and children, then what do you hold with?" demanded the General angrily.

"Beer," was the laconic response, uttered without the vestige of a smile.

Ginger personifies gloom. He would if he could snatch the sun's ray from a dewdrop, or the joyousness from a child's laugh. It is constitutional.