Chapter 6

"By Jove, that would make a nice little clue for Anonyma. There can be only one dog on the sea-coast called Trelawney. We could stop and ask every dog we met what its name was. Besides, the name suggests Cornwall. What breed is the dog? Look here, will you write the Family a letter giving it a few neat clues for Anonyma? After all, we ought to give her all the pleasure we can, I sometimes think we are a disappointing family for her to have married. We lie to her, she lies to us, her enthusiasms make us smile behind our hands, ours make her yawn behind her notebook. Send us a good encouraging letter, addressed to the house in Kensington. We always wire our address there as we move. Give us details about Trelawney, and, if possible, the name of the nearest post town. If we must lie, let us give all the pleasure we can by doing so. Poor old Anonyma.

"It's getting dark, I must go back to the Family. I am as a babe in the hands of Anonyma, and like a babe I promised her I would be back before dark. Do you remember how we used to long to be lost after nightfall, just for the dramatic effect? Yet we were awfully frightened of the dark. Do you remember how we used to dare each other to get out of bed and run three times round the night nursery? I have never felt so brave since, as I used to feel as I jumped into bed conscious of an ordeal creditably over. Why is bed such a safe place? I am not half so brave as I used to be. I remember at the age of ten doing a thing that I have never dared to do since. I sat in the bath with my back to the taps. Do you suppose the innocent designer of baths meant everybody to sit like that, with a tap looking over each shoulder? Taps are known to be savage brutes, and it is everybody's instinct to sit the other way round, and keep an eye on the danger. If I were as brave now as I was at ten, I could probably win the War. Oh, Jay, I can't stop talking, I am so pleased to be nearly out of the clutches of my relations."

"Are you sure you won't be killed?" asked Jay suddenly.

"I can't be," said Kew. "How could I be? I'm me. I'm not brave, and I don't go to France with one eye on duty and the other on the possibility of never coming back. I go because the crowd goes, and the crowd--a rather shrunken crowd--will come back safe. I'm too average a man to get killed."

"Don't you think all those million ghosts are thinking, 'What business had Death to choose me?'" suggested Jay.

"No," said Kew. "I'm sure they know."

After a few seconds' pause he said, "By Jove, are you in fancy dress?"

"No. Why?"

"Why indeed. Why a kilt and yards of gaiters? Why a hat like a Colonial horse marine?"

"Oh, this is the uniform of a bus-conductor," replied Jay.

Kew scanned it with distaste. Presently he said, "Don't you think you'd better give it up? Buy a new hat with a day's earnings, and get the sack."

"I can't quarrel with my bread and butter," said Jay.

"Surely this is only jam," said Kew. "You've got plenty of money of your own for bread and butter."

"I haven't now," answered Jay. "I gave up having money when the War started. Perhaps I chucked it into the Serpentine. Perhaps not. I forget."

Kew got up slowly. "Well," he said, "sure you're all right? I must be going. I don't know when the last train goes."

In London it is impossible to ignore the fact that you are late. The self-righteous hands of clocks point out your guilt whichever way you look. Your eye and your ear are accused on every side. You long for the courteous clocklessness of the country; there, mercifully, the sun neither ticks nor strikes, nor cavils at the minutes.

There was a crowd of home-goers at Brown Borough Church, and each 'bus as it arrived was like the angel troubling the waters of Bethesda. There was no hope for the old or timid. Kew was an expert in the small sciences of London. He knew not only how to mount a 'bus, while others of his like were trying four abreast to do the same, but also how to stand on a space exactly half the size of his boot soles, without holding on. (This is done, as you probably know too, by not looking out of the window.)

Kew had given up taxis and cigars in war-time. It was his pretence never to do anything on principle, so he would have blushed if anybody had commented on this ingenuous economy. The fact that he had joined the Army the first day of the War was also, I think, a tender spot in the conscience of Kew. A Victoria Cross would have been practically unbearable, and even to be mentioned in despatches would have been a most upsetting contradiction of that commonplace and unprincipled past of which he boasted. He thought he was such a simple soul that he had no motives or principles in anything that he did, but really he was simpler than that. He was so simple that he did his best without thinking about it. It certainly sounds rather a curious way to live in the twentieth century.

"'Ere, you're seven standin' inside," said the gentleman 'bus--conductor, when, after long sojourn in upper regions, he came down to his basement floor. "Five standin' is all I'm supposed to 'ave, an' five standin' is all I'll allow. Why should I get myself into trouble for 'avin' more'n five standin', if five standin' is all I'm allowed to 'ave?"

In spite of a chorus of nervous assent from all his flock, and the blushing disappearance of the two superfluous standers, the 'bus-conductor continued his lament in this strain. To the man with a small but loud grievance, sympathy is a fatal offering.

The 'bus-conductor had a round red nose, and very defective teeth. Kew studied him in a new light, for this was Jay's fellow-worker. Somehow it seemed very regrettable.

"I wish I hadn't promised not to tell the Family," he thought.

He and Jay never broke their promises to each other, and there was a tacit agreement that when they found it necessary to lie to each other, they always gave each other warning. Where the rest of the world was concerned, I am afraid they used their discretion in this matter.

"It ought to be stopped. The tactful foot of Family authority ought to step on it."

He presented his penny angrily to the 'bus-conductor.

"I expect this sort of man asks Jay to walk out with him," he thought, and with a cold glance took the ticket offered to him.

"Lucky I'm so utterly selfish," he thought, "or I should be devilish worried."

His train was one which boasted a restaurant car, and Kew patronised this institution. But when he was in the middle of cold meat, he thought: "She is probably trying to live on twopence-halfpenny a week. Continual tripe and onions."

So he refused pudding. The pudding, persistent as only a railway pudding can be, came back incredulously three times. But Kew pushed it away.

"If I could get anybody outside the Family to use their influence, I should be within the letter of the law. But I mostly know subalterns, and nobody below a Brigadier would be likely to have much influence with Jay. She'd probably talk down even a sergeant-major."

It seems curious that he should deplore the fact that Jay had turned into a bus-conductor more deeply than he had deplored her experiments in sweated employment. I think that a uniformed sister or wife is almost unbearable to most men, except, perhaps, one in the nurse's uniform, of which even St. Paul might have approved. The gaiters of the 'bus-conductor had shaken Kew to his foundations. The thought of the skirt still brought his heart into his mouth. He was so lacking in the modern mind that he still considered himself a gentleman. No Socialist, speaking between clenched teeth in a strangled voice of largely groundless protest, had ever gained the ear of Kew. He had never joined a society of any sort. He had never attended a public meeting since he gave up being a Salvationist at the age of ten.

"It must be stopped," he said, as he got out of the train. "I'll think of a way in my bath to-morrow." This was always the moment he looked forward to for inspirations.

Anonyma was observable as he walked from the station to the inn, craning extravagantly from the sitting-room window. She came downstairs, and met him at the door.

"Such a disaster," she said, and handed him a telegram.

Kew stood aghast, as she meant him to. No disaster is ever so great as it is before you know what it is. But Kew ought to have known Anonyma's disasters by experience.

"Russ's wife has appeared."

"Why should she be introduced as a disaster?" asked Kew, with a sigh of relief. "Is she a maniac, or a suffragette, or a Mormon, or just some one who has never read any of your books?"

He opened the telegram. It called upon him to rejoin his battalion next day at noon.

"Russ went to his house to fetch something this morning and found his wife there. He looks quite ill. She insisted on coming here with him, and now she wishes to go on the tour with us. As I hear the car is hers, we can hardly refuse."

"I don't pretend to understand the subtleties of this disaster," said Kew. "But as you evidently don't intend me to, I will not try. Notice, however, that I am keeping my head. I have always wondered how I should behave in a disaster."

"Wait till you meet her," said Anonyma.

Kew heard Mrs. Russell's melodramatic laughter as he approached the sitting-room door, and he trembled. She laughed "Ha-ha-ha" in a concise way, and the sound was constant.

"That is her ready sense of fun that you can hear," said Anonyma bitterly. "She is teaching Gustus to see the humorous side."

They entered to find poor Cousin Gustus bending like a reed before a perfect gale of "Ha-ha-ha's." Mrs. Russell was so much interested in what she was saying that she left Kew on her leeward side for the moment, hardly looking at him as she shook hands.

"It's enough to make the gods laugh on Olympus," she said, but it did not make Cousin Gustus laugh. Noticing this, Mrs. Russell turned to Kew.

"I was telling your cousin about my pacificist efforts in the States," she said. "Yes, I can see your eye twinkling; I know a pacifist is a funny thing to be. But I'm not one of the--what I call dumpy-toad-in-the-hole ones. I do it all joyously. I was telling your cousin how very small was the chance that robbed us of success in Ohio."

"What sort of success?" asked Kew.

"Peace," said Mrs. Russell.

"But is Ohio at war?"

Mrs. Russell laughed heartily. Her unnecessarily frank laughter showed her gums as well as her teeth, and made one wish that her sense of humour were not quite so keen.

"I see you are one of us," she said. "What I call one of the Jolly Fraternity. No, Ohio is still enjoying peace. But--if you follow me--from the States peace will come; there we must fix our hopes. If we can get those millions of brothers and sisters of ours 'across the duck-pond'--as I call it--to see its urgency, peace must come. For brothers and sisters they are, you know; patriotism will come in time to be considered a vice. How can one's soul--if you take my meaning--be affected by the latitude and longitude in which one's body was born? From the States the truth shall come, salvation shall dawn in the west. Listen to me trying to be poetic, it makes me laugh."

One noticed that it did.

"War is so reasonless as to be funny," she said.

"But you haven't told me yet about the little chance that you thought would tickle Olympus," said Kew.

"You're laughing at me," said Mrs. Russell. "But I don't mind, for I laugh at myself. I like you. Shake."

Kew immediately thought her a nice woman, though peculiar.

Mr. Russell looked in and saw the Shake in progress. He murmured something and withdrew hurriedly. For a moment they could hear his agitated voice in the passage reciting Milton to his Hound.

"Do listen to my husband, never silent," said Mrs. Russell. "Did you ever see a man like him?"

There is no real answer to this sort of question, so Kew said "Yo," which is always safe. Then he added, "Do tell me about the little chance."

"This was the little chance," smiled Mrs. Russell. "We ought to have had a tremendously successful peace-meeting in a certain town in Ohio. We had every reason to expect three thousand people, and we thought of proposing the re-naming of the town--calling it Peace. But the little chance was a printer's error--the advertisement gave the date wrong. A crowd turned up at the empty hall, and two days later, when we arrived, they were so tired of us that they booed our demonstration. Just the stupidity of an inky printer between us and success."

"Do you mean to say that but for that we should have had peace by now?" asked Kew in a reverent voice.

"You never know," said Mrs. Russell. "That meeting might have been the match to light the flame of peace all over the world. It's bitterly and satirically funny, isn't it, what Fate will do. Ha-ha-ha."

Cousin Gustus laughed hysterically in chorus, and then said that his head ached, and that he thought he would go to bed early. Anonyma led him away.

"Please don't make peace for a week or two yet," begged Kew. "Let me see what I can do first. I am going to-morrow."

"How foolish of you," said Mrs. Russell. "If you like, I believe I have enough influence to get you to America instead."

"I think I like France best," said Kew. "I don't feel as if I could be content anywhere short of France just now."

"Surely you won't be content anywhere, murdering your fellow-men," said Mrs. Russell. "You won't mind my incurable flippancy, will you? I can't help treating things lightly."

"Not at all," replied Kew. "But I am often content in the intervals of murdering my fellow-men. I play the penny whistle in my dug-out."

"Now tell me," said Mrs. Russell, "what are you all doing here? What mischief are you leading my Herbert into?"

When Kew had recovered from a foolish astonishment at hearing that Mr. Russell was known to others as Herbert, he said, "We're looking--not very seriously--for my sister, who seems to have eloped by herself to the west coast, without leaving us her address."

"I know. Herbert told me that much. A place on the sea-front, isn't it? But you know, I feel a certain responsibility for Herbert, I have neglected him so long. I cannot bear that he should waste his time in what I call these stirring days. You mustn't think because I treat life as one huge joke that I can never be serious. One can wear a gay mask, but--you understand me, don't you? You are one of us."

There was a pause, and then she said, "Ha-ha. Doesn't it seem funny. We've only known each other an hour, and here we are intimate...."

Kew obediently allowed himself for a moment to see the humorous side, and then said, "What are your plans then, yours and Mr. Russell's?"

"I have neglected him too long, poor old thing," said Mrs. Russell. "I must stay with him now, and cheer him up. A cheery heart can bridge any gulf, don't you think? You know, I was just what I call a jolly girl when I married him, and afterwards I forgot to grow up, I think. Perhaps my treatment of him has been rather irresponsible. I must try and make up--what I call 'kiss and be friends,' like two jolly little kiddies."

"Then why not join the motor tour?"

"I would rather take Herbert back to our little nest in London. There's no place like home, as I always say. From there we might work together for the great cause of Peace--what I call 'My Grail.'"

She had crimped hair and a long nose, the tip of which moved when she spoke. You would never have given her credit for such influence as she claimed in the world's affairs. Only her Homeric laughter, and a pair of lorgnettes, reminded you of her greatness.

When Kew finally disentangled himself from the company of this jolly creature, it was very late. But the voice of Anonyma arrested him on his way to bed. Her face, with a corn-coloured plait on each side of it, looked at him cautiously from a dark doorway.

"Kew," said Anonyma, "I won't stand it. We must be rescued."

"Nobody can remove her now without also removing Russ and Christina," said Kew. "The reconciliation has gone too far."

"Then Russ must be sacrificed, and even the car," said Anonyma firmly. "Gustus and I can hire if we must. That woman must be removed. The jealous cat!"

Kew began to see light. "I'll rescue you, then," he replied. "I'll think of a way in my bath."

* * * * *

Next morning a great noise, centring in the bathroom, overflowed through the inn. It was the noise of Kew singing joyful extracts from _Peer Gynt_. Do you remember the beginning of the end of the Hall of the Mountain King? It goes:

"Bomp--chink.... Bomp--chink.... Tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle--tootle-tee.... Bomp-chink, ..." etc., etc.

The way in which Kew rendered this passage, notoriously a difficult one for a solo voice, would have conveyed to any one who knew him that he had solved both his problems.

Anonyma knocked on the bathroom door, and said, "Cousin Gustus's headache is still bad."

Kew therefore broke into Anitra's Dance, which is more subdued.

Before breakfast he and Mr. Russell and the Hound walked to the downs. The motor tour seemed to have come to a standstill. Cousin Gustus's headache could be felt all over the house.

The moment Mr. Russell and Kew were out of earshot of the inn, Kew made such a violent resolve to speak that he nearly broke a tooth.

"Russ," he said, "I want to get off my chest for your benefit something that has been worrying me awfully."

Mr. Russell made no answer. He had got out of the habit of answering.

"It's about Jay," continued Kew. "I must break to you first that Jay's 'house on the sea-front,' with all its accessories--gulls, ghosts, turrets, aeroplanes, and Friends--is one large and elaborate lie. She and I are very much alike. The only difference between us used to be her skirt, and now she has gone a good way towards discarding that. She is nowhere near the sea. She is in London. Now you, Russ, are what she and I used to call an 'Older and Wiser--'"

Mr. Russell jumped violently, but uttered nothing except a little curse to his dog, which was almost under his feet.

"--And you are about the only person I could trust, in my absence, to get Jay out of an uncommonly silly position. I can't bear her present pose. It must stop at once, and if I had time I would stop it myself. I have unfortunately sworn not to give her away to the Family, so I come to you. She is a 'bus-conductor."

Mr. Russell refrained from jumping. I believe he had expected it. But he said, "It would be too funny."

Kew looked at him nervously, fearing for a moment lest Mrs. Russell's sense of humour had proved infectious.

Mr. Russell was thinking how funny it would be if the finger of desirable coincidence had touched his life. How funny if a nice piece of six-shilling fiction should have taken upon itself to make of him its hero. Too funny to be true.

But you, I hope, will remember that the coincidence was not so funny as he thought, since Jay had beckoned to it with her eyes open.

"Now, I have a prejudice against 'bus-conductors," said Kew.

"Why?" asked Mr. Russell rather indignantly.

"I can't explain it. If I could, it wouldn't be a prejudice, it would be an opinion. But--well--just think.... The trousered 'bus-conductors probably ask her to walk out with them in Victoria Park on Sundays."

"I see your point," said Mr. Russell.

"You are about double as old as she is--if I may say so--and you are not one of the Family, two great advantages. You know, Jay has suffered from not meeting enough Older and Wiser people. She has had to worry out things too much by herself; she has never been talked to by grown-ups whom she could respect. Anonyma never talked with us, though she occasionally 'Had a Good Talk.' She never played, but sometimes suggested 'Having a Good Game.' It's different, somehow. You, Older and Wiser without being too old or too wise, might impress Jay a lot, I think, because you don't say overmuch. And I want you to tell her something of what I feel about it too."

"I never realised before that from your point of view there was any advantage in being Older and Wiser," said Mr. Russell.

"You don't mind my saying all this?" said Kew. It was an assumption rather than a question.

"Not at all. But I don't understand exactly what you want me to do."

"To give up this idiotic motor tour," said Kew. "And go back to London, and talk Jay out of her 'bus-ism. I want her to leave it off, and let the Family discover her romantically enjoying some passable imitation of her Secret World. I want the Family never to know of all that lay between. I do want it all to come right. I'm going off to-day, and I may not see her again. And I know hardly any trustable person but you."

"Right," said Mr. Russell.

He thought: It's too funny to be true, but if it isn't true, I shall be surprised.

Kew enlarged to him on the details of his mission.

On the breakfast table, when they returned, they found a letter from Jay, evidently written for private circulation in the Family.

Dear Kew--I have just come in from a walk almost as exciting as it was beautiful. We walked through our village, which clings to both sides of a crack-like harbour that might just contain a carefully navigated walnut-shell. The village is grey and white, all its walls are whitewashed, all its roofs are slate with cushions of stone-crop clinging to them. Sea-thistles grow outside its doors, seagulls are its only birds. The slope on which it stands is so steep that the main road is on a level with the roofs on one side, and if you were absentminded, you might walk on to a roof and fall down a chimney before you became aware that you had strayed from the street. But we were not absent-minded. We sang Loud Songs all the way. We ran across the grass after the shadows of the round clouds that bowled across the sky. In single file we followed the dog Trelawney after the seagulls. Everything was so clear that we could see the little rare island that keeps itself to itself on our horizon. I don't know its name; they say it bears a town and a post-office and a parson, but I don't think this is true. I think that island is an intermittent dream of ours. When you get beyond the village, the cliff leaves off indulging in coves and harbours and such frivolities, and decides to look upon itself seriously as a giant wall against a giant sea. Only it occasionally defeats its own object, because it stands up so straight that the sea finds it easier to knock down. On a point of cliff there was a Lorelei seagull standing, with its eye on Trelawney. It had pale eyes, and a red drop on its beak. And Trelawney, being a man-dog, did what the seagull meant him to do. He ran for it, he ran too far, and fell over the edge. Well, this is not a tragic incident, only an exciting one. Trelawney fell on to a ledge about ten foot below the top of the cliff, and sat there in perfect safety, shrieking for help. My Friend said: "This is a case of 'Bite my teeth and Go.'" It is a saying in this family, dating from the Spartan childhood of my Friend, that everything is possible to one who bites his teeth and goes. The less you like it, the harder you bite your teeth, and it certainly helps. My Friend said: "If we never meet again, remember to catch and hang that seagull for wilful murder. It would look rather nice stuffed in the hall." The cliff overhangs rather just there, and when he got over the edge, not being a fly or used to walking upside down, he missed his footing. We heard a yelp from Trelawney. But the seagull's conscience is still free of murder, my Friend only fell on to Trelawney's ledge. So it was all right, and we ate our hard-boiled eggs on the scene of the incident.

"I remember--" said Mr. Russell.

"That letter," said Anonyma, "ought to help us a bit."