Fool Errant (14 page)

“I must.”

“Oh, Hugo!”

“Darling, I must.”

“Will you come and see me?”

“I can't.”

“Or write to me?”

“No—I can't.”

“And mustn't I write to you?”

“N-no, darling.”

He kissed her, and she kissed him back. The door began to open. It opened about six inches and then stopped.

“Who's there?” said a voice.

What was one to answer? It was no good saying “Miss Leigh”; but what was one to say? Hugo began to stammer:

“W-we were s-sent—I mean t-told—I mean he s-said to ask f-for M-miss Agnes.”

“I am Miss Agnes. Who sent you?”

“Ananias,” said Hugo, and thought how mad it sounded.

The door opened wider. A woman in a black dress stood there holding a candle.

“Better come in,” she said.

CHAPTER XX

Hugo went back to Meade House in the morning. A curious incident happened when he was saying good-bye to Mrs. Miles. He had shaken hands with her and was picking up his suitcase, when the red-haired Mr. Miller came running down the stairs. Mrs. Miles opened the door, and when Hugo said, “Good-bye, Mrs. Miles,” she said she was sure it was a pleasure and she hoped it wouldn't be no time before they were seeing him again. It was just at this moment that Mr. Miller reached the third step from the bottom. He leant on the banister and called out in a familiar tone,

“Hullo! Are you off? Well, so long—and I expect you'll get your price all right, though I must say you pitched it pretty high. Still there's nothing like asking—is there?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Hugo; and as he shut the door, he thought to himself that he knew very well. Mr. Miller could now bring Mrs. Miles as well as Ella to testify that he had had conversations with Hugo as to the price of some unnamed article. It was a crude device, and its crudity showed plainly how low they rated him. He hoped that they would continue to rate him insultingly low. He went back to Meade House in extraordinarily high spirits. The whole thing had become a great adventure.

He found a letter from Mr. Rice waiting for him. He read it up in his own room. Mr. Rice wrote:

“D
EAR
S
IR
,

“I see no reason whatever why we should not be at an agreement. As I have said to you before, if the price that you ask is a high one, still those for whom I am acting are quite willing to pay a high price, because, as I have said, they put a very high value on what you have to sell. The matter must be concluded within a short time. I should be glad to hear from you whether you are satisfied with what we have offered.”

That was all the letter.

Hugo read it three times. It contained just one piece of useful information—something was due to happen quite soon, or as Mr. Rice put it, “within a short time.” He hoped that Mr. Rice was right, for he wanted the adventure to go ahead.

Minstrel and Hacker returned at dusk; Hacker very much pleased with himself, Minstrel morose and acid. He vanished into his laboratory, emerged to bolt a horrible meal consisting of tinned mackerel and greasy cocoa, and then disappeared for good. Hacker, in a genial mood, regaled Hugo with scandalous stories about prominent personages, becoming steadily more patronizing and well informed as the evening wore on. Hugo allowed himself to stammer a good deal.

Next day was dry and windy. Minstrel remained locked in his laboratory until noon, when he burst out and demanded music; after which he walked to and fro between the two rooms scowling and pulling at his beard. As he walked, he muttered to himself. Once he stopped by the gramophone and spoke through the tumult of
The Flying Dutchman Overture:

“Does he speak to you? Or are you deaf and idiotic like Hacker? Hacker likes noise—jazz—a storm in a teacup. No, not a teacup—he hasn't any use for tea—a storm in a champagne glass and plenty of silly tinkling laughter—that's Hacker's taste! Is it yours?”

“N-no, sir.”

Minstrel's lip lifted.

“The virtuous apprentice!” he sneered. “Do you think that commends itself to me? I hate a prig!” He stopped suddenly and held up his hand. The tumult and the storm had melted into an enchanted calm. He seemed to listen with caught breath till the record ended with the grating of the needle in an empty groove. Then he fetched a deep sigh, looked past Hugo for a moment, and with an abrupt turn stalked back into the laboratory and banged the door.

In the afternoon Hugo went down to the post with some letters. After some consideration he had decided to leave Mr. Rice's communication unanswered. He burnt it to a fine ash, and wondered what they would make of his silence.

The letters he took to the post were Minstrel's. One of them was addressed to the Air Ministry. If it was not a holograph letter, it must have been taken down by Hacker; certainly it had not been dictated to Hugo.

He posted the letters and began to walk back. The distance was about three-quarters of a mile. He had gone about half the way and had reached a long straight stretch of lonely road, when a girl on a bicycle passed him slowly and then, with an exclamation, jumped off her machine and began to feel the back tyre. It was certainly very flat. She poked it, made a vexed little sound, and then in a very fumbling manner she began to do something incompetent with her pump. The tyre remained flat. Hugo received a glance of appeal, and before he quite knew how it happened, he was pumping the tyre.

The girl had a London look; her shoes were thin, and so were her stockings; she had pretty fluffy fair hair and pretty blue eyes, which she used with some effect. She thanked Hugo profusely:

“I'm so stupid with a cycle. I can ride it, you know, but if anything goes wrong—well, I'm in the soup as sure as my name's Daisy.”

Hugo gave ever so slight a start. It was a coincidence of course; if he were not all strung up and on the lookout for things to happen, he would never have noticed it. If Mr. Smith wanted to send him a message, it would be signed Daisy. But then Daisy was a very common name. It was just a coincidence.

“I'm sure it's ever so stupid of me. You
are
clever at it—aren't you? And I'm keeping you, and perhaps you're in a hurry. Do you live near here?”

“N-not very far. I'll pump the other one whilst I'm at it.”

“Oh,
thank
you! You
are
clever at it, Mr. Ross.”

This time Hugo's start was a very definite one.

“Why do you think m-my name is Ross?” he said, and stopped pumping to stare at her.

The blue eyes opened very wide.

“
Isn't
it? I thought it was. Mine's Daisy.”

They looked at each other.

“
Daisy?
” said Hugo.

“Isn't it a pretty name?” said the damsel.

“
Daisy?
” said Hugo again.

She nodded.

“You're Hugo Ross, aren't you?”

He saw no harm in admitting it, so he said “Yes.”

“Good gracious! What a fuss about saying so! You've got a sister, haven't you? What's
her
name?”

“S-Susan,” said Hugo.

“And what's the parrot's name?”

It wasn't a coincidence; it was a message from Mr. Smith.

Hugo said, “Ananias,” and the girl nodded.

“Just as well to be on the safe side, though I recognized you from your photograph.”

“My photograph?”

“The one in your sister's wedding group—only you don't look so cross in real life. Well, I've got a message for you. He thought you'd better know that Maggie Plane didn't give you away.”

“I didn't know her name,” he began, and then he remembered that Loveday had called the woman across the landing at No. 50 Maggie. It was a great relief to be sure she had held her tongue.

“He thought you'd better know,” said Daisy. “Oh—and Ananias thought you'd better have this—he thought it might be useful.” She put a long envelope into his hand. “Don't open it now—there's no particular point in anyone coming along and seeing us. Well, I must be getting along. And thank you ever so for pumping my tyre. The front one isn't really flat, you know.”

Hugo watched her ride away. He pushed the envelope down inside his pocket and walked back through the dusk. When he reached the house he went up to his own room. After the first glance at the contents of the envelope he went and stood with his back against the door. They were not at all what he wished Hacker or anyone else in the house to see. He looked at them for a minute or two, turned them over, and finally put them back into the envelope and put the envelope back into his pocket. Then he slipped down the stairs and went out again. It was dark enough on the drive, but it was darker still in the shrubbery. It took him five minutes or so to find what he was looking for.

He returned to the house, to find Minstrel angrily demanding of heaven, earth, and Mr. Hacker why he paid a secretary if that secretary was not to be there when he was wanted. He began to dictate letters with great volubility; one to a Swedish professor concerning several extremely abstruse and technical matters, another to a publisher, and a third to an American agent refusing a lecture tour.

This last was so exceedingly vituperative that Hugo wondered whether Minstrel really meant to send it. He walked about all the time that he was dictating and appeared to be in a state of extreme nervous tension. When the letters were written, he made Hugo read them over. In the end he tore up two out of the three and began all over again. Then, suddenly breaking off, he said.

“They can wait! Why should I answer letters? Fools with all the time in the world on their hands write to me and expect me to answer them. They expect me to waste time which is worth, not just money, but ideas—unminted, unrealized, and unassayed ideas worth more than any wretched sordid gold that was ever mined. They expect me to take these ideas and pay them out—sweat for them, work for them, and then pay them out to any fool who writes to me and begs. Pah! They make me sick!”

He walked down the room and back again.

“What's the good of you if you can't answer this sort of pettifogging stuff without bothering me?”

He picked up the American's letter and thrust it into Hugo's face.

“Like to like! Tell him I'll see him dead before I'll cheapen my wits to put money in his pocket!”

He flung over to the bookshelf, plucked forth a book, and opening it, stood there reading, his back to the room.

Hugo wrote briefly that Mr. Ambrose Minstrel could not at present contemplate a lecture tour in the United States. It was nine o'clock before he was free.

He went up to his room and looked out at the night. There was a strong, warm wind blowing; clouds that had hung low all day were piled high in the east. The south and west were clear, and there was moonlight, though he could not see the moon. The house oppressed him. He put his flute into his pocket and went out. The front-door shut behind him with a bang.

He was perhaps halfway down the drive, when the door opened and shut again noiselessly. Mr. James Hacker took the same way. He wore tennis shoes and moved with caution.

Hugo went on, and presently climbed to the top of the wooded hill which had become his place of refuge. He liked being high up, and he liked the trees. The wind blew through them to-night, and their many moving shadows made patterns in the moonlight. He settled himself in the crook of a branch and began to play.

Mr. Hacker turned and went over the hill towards Torring House.

CHAPTER XXI

The wood was a very nice place. The notes of the flute dropped into the wind like water, and the wind went on, now loud, now soft, with great rushes and sudden lulls. From where Hugo sat he could see a little glade opening before him. The trees stood all round it in a ring. It was carpeted with dry leaves that rustled in the wind. Overhead there were branches, and then a space of clear moonlit sky.

Hugo began to feel very happy. He had opened a door and walked right out of his adventure into a place which was full of wind and music and the rustle of leaves. Presently he would go back through the door and go on with the adventure again. He did not know that the door had opened of itself, and that the adventure was following him.

He began to think about Loveday. He felt immensely happy when he thought about her. He did not mind not being able to go and see her—she was here. His thought was so full of her, and he was so uplifted by it, that he wanted to shout with the wind and make better music than he had ever been able to make before. It was a most exhilarating feeling.

He began to play a tune that he had picked out for himself. He and Susan had an Irish nurse who had crooned them to sleep with it, and if he had ever known the words, he had lost them again. It was just a tune that reminded him of Loveday, and he played it and played with it, and put little turns and twirls to it, and quite forgot to play in a whisper for fear of being overheard. Then all at once, just as he was beginning the tune again, he had the most curious sensation; the flute seemed to be playing by itself. He stopped in the middle of a bar, and the air went on, very sweet and clear but rather far away. The hand that held the flute dropped down upon his knee; the other hand gripped the branch on which he sat. The clear fluting sound came from the other side of the glade. He heard a twig snap. The wind blew and the leaves rustled. The tune took words to itself:

“New hope may bloom, and days may come,

Of milder, calmer beam;

But there's nothing half so sweet in life as

Love's young dream.

Oh, there's nothing half so sweet in life as

Love's young dream.”

Hugo leaned forward on his branch. The far side of the glade was in black shadow. On the edge of the shadow something moved and came out into the misty moonlight. There it stood still, a small dark shadow. A high, clear voice called,