A Safety Match Part 15

"Twenty, I think. He is up at Cambridge, and wants to get into the Army as a University candidate. At present he appears to be filling in his time philandering with a tobacconist's daughter. The tobacconist's bill for moral and intellectual damage came to five hundred pounds. Before writing the cheque, I stipulated--"

"You would!" said the old lady grimly.

--"That I should be permitted to make a few investigations on my own behalf. Young Vereker is a handsome, fascinating rascal, with about as much moral fibre as a Yahoo. He was a good deal franker in his admissions to me than he had been to his sister--"

"Ay, I once heard you cross-examining a body," confirmed Mrs Carfrae.

--"And on the completion of my inquiries I paid the money down on the nail. It was the only thing to do."

"Did you tell Daphne the whole story?"

"No. I should hate to dispel her illusions. She loves her brothers and sisters."

"There is no need to excuse yourself, John Carr. I knew fine that you would not tell her. Instead, you glowered at her, and read her a lecture about extravagance and improvidence. She tried to look prim and penitent, but danced down the stair the moment she got the door shut behind her. Now, mannie, listen to me. This is no light charge you have taken on yourself--to rule a wild, shy, impulsive taupie like that. You cannot contain the like with bit and bridle, mind. I have been one myself, and I know. There is just one thing to do. She must learn to _love_ you, or the lives of the pair of you will go stramas.h.!.+"

Juggernaut's old friend concluded this homily with tremendous emphasis, and there was a long silence. Then the man drew his chair a little closer.

"How can I teach her?" he asked humbly. "I have no _finesse_, no attractiveness. Do you think I--I am too old for her?"

"Old? Toots! I was nineteen when I married on my Andy, and he was thirty-nine. For the first few years after we married I called him 'daddy' to his face. After that I found that I was really old enough to be the man's mother; so I called him 'sonny.' But that is a digression. I will tell you how to teach her. Do not be monotonous.

It's no use just to be a good husband to her: any gowk can be that. Do not let your affection run on in a regular, dutiful stream: have a spate occasionally! Get whirled off your feet by her, and let her see it. Prepare some unexpected ploy for her. Rush her off to dine somewhere on the spur of the moment--just your two selves. Stop her suddenly on the staircase in a half-light, and give her a hug."

"She'd never stand it!" cried Juggernaut in dismay. "And I could never do it," he added apprehensively.

"You _do_ it, my callant," said Mrs Carfrae with decision, "and she'll stand it right enough! She may tell you not to be foolish, but she will not make a point of coming down by the back stair in future for all that. And let her see that with you she comes _first_ in everything. What a crow she will have to herself when she realises that a f.e.c.kless unbusinesslike piece like herself has crept right into the inmost place in the heart of a man whose G.o.ds used to be hard work and hard words and hard knocks! She'll just glory in you!

"Lastly, do not be discouraged if you have no success to begin with.

At all costs you must keep on smiling. A dour, bleak man is no fit companion for a young girl who has always lived a sheltered sunny life. He just withers her. She may last for a while, and do her duty by him, but in time he'll break her heart. Ay, keep on smiling, Johnny, even if she hurts you. She will hurt you often. Young girls are like that. It takes time for a woman to realise that a man is just about twice as sensitive as herself in certain matters, and she will not make allowances for him at first. But until she does--and she will, if you give her time--keep on smiling! If you keep on long enough you will get your reward. Make the effort, my man! I have had to make efforts in my time--"

"I know that," said Juggernaut.

--"And the efforts have been the making of _me_. For one thing, I have acquired a sense of proportion. When we are young and l.u.s.ty our knowledge of perspective is so elementary that in our picture of life our own Ego fills the foreground to the exclusion of all else; with this result, that we get no view of the countless interesting and profitable things that lie behind. My Ego is kept in better order these days, I a.s.sure you. It gets just a good comfortable place in the picture and no more. If Elspeth Carfrae stirs from that, or comes creeping too far forward so as to block out other things, she hears from me!"

"Does she always obey you?" asked Juggernaut.

"She got far beyond my control once," admitted the old lady. "I mind when my Andy went from me she swelled and swelled until she blotted out everything--earth, sea, and sky. But she has been back in her place these twenty years, and there she shall bide. There is no great selfish Ego blocking the view now when I sit and look out upon my section of the world. You have no idea how interesting it is to study your friends' troubles instead of your own, John. The beauty of it is that you need not worry over them: you just watch them--unconcernedly."

The Scots have their own notion of what const.i.tutes an excursion into the realms of humour, and Juggernaut, knowing this, made no attempt to controvert his hostess's last statement.

"Not that I grudged my Andy," continued the old lady presently. "No wife worthy of the name could grudge her man to his country when he died as Andy died. But my only son--that was my own fault, maybe. I would not put him into the Army like his father, thinking to keep him safer that way; and he died of pneumonia at seven-and-twenty, an East End curate. Then my Lintie. But I have no need to be talking of Lintie to you, John Carr. You mind her still, Daphne or no Daphne. Then"--she indicated her paralysed shoulder--"this! But I keep on smiling.

Perhaps that is why people are so kind to me. Perhaps if I did not smile they would not seek my company so freely. I suppose they see something in me, that they come and listen to me havering. When I first settled down here by myself in this little house many kind people called. I never thought to see them twice; but they come again and again. Maybe it is because English people have a notion that the Scots tongue is 'so quaint!' They seem to find something exhilarating in hearing fish called fush. Not that I call it any such thing, but they think I do. Anyhow, they come. Some of them bring their troubles with them, and go away without them. When they do that I know that it was worth while to keep a smiling face all these years. So smile yourself, Johnny Carr! And some day, when your Daphne comes and puts her head on your shoulder and tells you all that is troubling her, you will know that you have won through. And when that happens come and call me. I like to hear when my methods succeed."

"I will remember," said Juggernaut gravely. "Good-bye."

Mrs Carfrae watched his broad back through the doorway.

"But I doubt you will both have to be worse before you are better,"

she added to herself.

An hour later Lady Carr, a radiant vision of glinting hair and rustling skirts, on her way upstairs to dress for dinner, encountered her husband coming down. There was a half light. Sir John paused.

"Are you dining anywhere to-night, Daphne?" he said.

Daphne, her youthful shrewdness uneradicated by three years of adult society, replied guardedly--

"Are you trying to pull my leg? If I say 'No,' will you tell me that in that case I shall be very hungry by bedtime, or something? I suppose that old chestnut has just got round to your club. Have you been electing Noah an honorary member?"

"I was about to suggest," said Juggernaut perseveringly, "that we should go and dine at the Savoy together."

Daphne dimpled into a delighted smile.

"You dear! And we might go on somewhere afterwards. What would you like me to wear?" She preened herself in antic.i.p.ation.

"Oh, anything," said Juggernaut absently. He was regarding his wife in an uncertain and embarra.s.sed fas.h.i.+on.

Suddenly he drew a deep breath, and took a step down towards her.

Then, with equal suddenness, he turned on his heel and retired upstairs rather precipitately in the direction of his dressing-room.

It was as well that Mrs Carfrae was not present.

CHAPTER TEN.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SOCIAL SUCCESS.

By nine o'clock next morning Lady Carr, becomingly arrayed, was sitting up in bed munching a hearty breakfast, and reflecting according to her habit upon yesterday's experiences and to-day's arrangements.

She had dined with her husband at the Savoy, but the meal had not been quite such a success as she had antic.i.p.ated. Juggernaut had treated her with the restrained courtesy which was habitual to him; but ladies who are taken out to dinner at the Savoy, even by their husbands, usually expect something more than restrained courtesy. You must be animated on these occasions--unless of course you happen to be a newly-engaged couple, in which case the world benignantly washes its hands of you--or the evening writes itself down a failure. Juggernaut had not been animated. He had ordered a dinner which to Daphne's gratification and surprise--she had not credited him with so much observation--had consisted almost entirely of her favourite dishes.

But he had not sparkled, and sparkle at the Savoy, as already intimated, is essential.

About ten o'clock he had been called away to an important division in the House, and Daphne had gone on to a party, escorted by her husband's secretary, factotum, and right-hand man, one Jim Carthew, who arrived from Grosvenor Street in answer to a telephone summons.

Carthew was a new friend of Daphne's. She acc.u.mulated friends much as a honey-pot acc.u.mulates flies, but Jim Carthew counted for more than most. They had never met until five weeks ago, for Carthew had always been up north engaged on colliery business when Daphne was in London; and when Daphne was at Belton, her husband's old home near Kilchester, Carthew had been occupied by secretarial work in town. But they had known one another by name and fame ever since Daphne's marriage, and at last they had met. Daphne was not slow to understand why her husband, impatient of a.s.sistance as he usually was, had always appeared ready to heap labour and responsibility upon these youthful shoulders. Carthew was barely thirty, but he was perfectly capable of upholding and furthering his leader's interests in the great industrial north; while down south it was generally held that whenever he grew tired of devilling for Juggernaut the Party would find him a seat for the asking.

But so far Carthew seemed loth to forsake the man who had taught him all he knew. He cherished a theory, somewhat unusual in a rising man, that common decency requires of a pupil that he shall repay his master, at the end of the period of instruction, by a period of personal service.

He was a freckle-faced youth, with a frank smile of considerable lat.i.tude, and a boyish zeal for the healthy pursuits of life. He possessed brains and character, as any man must who served under Juggernaut; and like his master he was a shrewd judge of men. Of his capacity for dealing with women Daphne knew less; but she had already heard rumours--confidences exchanged over teacups and behind fans--of a certain Miss Nina Tallentyre, perhaps the acknowledged beauty of that season, at the flame of whose altar Jim Carthew was said to have singed his wings in a conspicuously reckless fas.h.i.+on. But all this was the merest hearsay, and Daphne was unacquainted with the lady into the bargain. Possibly it was with a view to remedying this deficiency in her circle of acquaintance that she kept Jim Carthew at her side for the s.p.a.ce of half an hour after they reached Mrs Blankney-Pushkins'

reception.

After a couple of waltzes Lady Carr expressed a desire to be fed with ices and cream buns.

Mr Carthew a.s.sented, but with less enthusiasm than before. Daphne noticed that his eye was beginning to wander.

"After that," she continued cheerfully, "we will find seats, and you shall tell me who everybody is. I am still rather a country mouse."