'Grand dukes-oh, Lord!' thought Charlie, 'what will she expect?'
She jumped up and went to a curtained door. 'The bathroom's here, dear,' she said; 'you can have it in moment,' and she was gone.
Charlie Osmond finished a glass of champagne, got hastily out of bed, and examined his pockets. One pound, fourteen and seven pence was the net-obviously useless.
He had done this sort of thing before, and subsequently paid, but there was something about this girl that made him uneasy. She was very much out of the ordinary.
He had some more champagne, and listened apprehensively to the splashing in the bathroom.
We have to go through this book with Charlie Osmond, so our readers may just as well know a little about him.
A gentleman by birth, he had most of the right instincts and perversions. He had left Eton for the usual reason, and he regretted it. He did not want to bugger other boys, but some did, and he somehow hated to be out of the fashion. Unfortunately, he was found out.
At Oxford his career had been meteoric. He could not go to a very good college, owing to his school troubles, and his 'good allowance made him a star at-(we will suppress the name). He did many things he should not have done and his final exploit of sowing the word CUNT in mustard and cress in the grass of the front quad, which came up under the astonished eyes of the dean's daughter, led to his final exit. His defence-that he had meant the word as a moral admonition to those of the varsity who had leanings towards malpractices in the sodomitical line-was not accepted, and he went.
The homecoming was as usual-nobody to meet him at the station but the chauffeur, and father in the gunroom.
Your son's devotion to landscape gardening [ran the dean's note] is undoubtedly commendable, but we must remind you that the grass in the front quadrangle at-has for five hundred years preserved its virginity, and the word inscribed makes not only a blemish on the grass, but conveys a reflection on the locality. We are only pleased that news of the incident has not found its way to the American papers. We are, etc., Hy. CHARTERIS (Dean)
Charlie Osmond came to town with 300 pounds a year, and a paternal kick up the arse. He could not live on 300 pounds a year, and he didn't try to. It cost him that in clothes and drink.
Well, it had gone on somehow for some time, but the end-Canada-or something worse-was near.
Yet he realised that he was really a very nice young man; everyone liked him, and he liked most people, but he hadn't got a carriere, and he wanted one.
The divinity came back, and sat down on the bottom of the bed, lighting a cigarette.
We have got to know about her.
She was not a clergyman's daughter.
Her father had prospered in the nitrate market, and, until the inevitable end, had prospered exceedingly, so his children were well brought up. Maudie Stevens went to school at Eltham, in Kent, and was 'finished'-well 'finished'-at a convent near Rouen.
She had her baby in a suburb of Paris, and her family gave her money and her conge. The money was luckily tied up, so that her father's sensational end at the Old Bailey did not affect her financially.
She had a few hundred a year, a detestation of suburbia, and no morals.
She took the inevitable end quite calmly, and became a tart, pure et simple.
She was very popular, and-but we shall see.
Charlie' Osmond started bluntly.
'I don't quite know,' he blundered, 'what you think of me?' She laughed, and twisted her hair into a bewitching knot over her forehead.
'Where I am, I don't know,' he went on. 'Who you are, I don't know; and I've no money to speak of. I feel a pig.'
'I know you well enough, Charlie Osmond. I shouldn't have picked you up, and brought you down here if I hadn't wanted you-but I did. Now make yourself at home; get into the bathroom. You'll find clean collars, and a new toothbrush and things, and we'll have breakfast and talk. I haven't exactly brought you here for nothing.'
Charlie felt considerably relieved when he found himself alone in the dainty bathroom.
Every imaginable sort of comfort was ready to hand, and he enjoyed a most elaborate scented bath. After the final cold douche, he put down a stiff ice-cold brandy and soda and was ready for anything the world might bring forth.
Maudie was dressed when he came back into the bedroom-dressed in a simple summer muslin, which made him remember with a shock that he had been in evening clothes the night before.
Maudie obviously divined his thought.
'I expect you'll find flannels to do you in the wardrobe,' she said laughingly. 'I keep several sizes.'
In a few minutes Charlie was a smart young man, in immaculate boating flannels, and as he followed his hostess through the pretty hall and across the lawn to where a breakfast table flashed its silver; glass and napery temptingly under the trees, he felt he'd like to stop here forever.
Another pretty maid, in white, and a page-boy, in white ducks, waited.
Charlie frankly made a pig of himself. A cool breeze flickering over the Thames had given him a raging appetite, and everything was so very nicely done, and the pretty eyes opposite his were so twinklingly alluring.
CHAPTER TWO
On a little slope, very green and fresh-looking, and completely shut off from the house by the trees, a number of really sensible-sized cushions were spread. Thither, after breakfast, Maudie led the way, and flopped, making no bones about showing her lovely legs right up to the knee. Openwork stockings are distracting enough at the best of times, but when it comes to the very finest of red silk, and the tiniest of little, red morocco shoes at the end of them matching exactly the scarlet sash encircling the wearer' tapering waist, it takes a strong man to think of anything but the worst. Charlie flopped by her side, and took a kiss, whirl was only stopped by the page-boy's judicious cough. He had the daily papers and cigarettes.
'I'll ring if I want anything,' she said. 'Now see that we'll not disturbed.'
There was an electric bell fixed to one of the trees likewise a telephone extension.
'My word, you do do yourself well,' said Charlie, nestling down very comfortably, and toying idly with the little dear' knees, 'telephone and all.'
'Oh, it's very convenient. I've a lot of journalist friends who like to lie about here in the summer, and there are telephone lines to their offices. It's wonderful how inventive you can be when you've got a nice girl all over you, and a feeling of delicious laziness. These cushions could tell a bit.
'Now, you put your hand up higher, right up; nobody can possibly see us unless they go past on a boat. I want to talk a little business to you.
'First of all, you'll want some clothes. I'm sending my car up to town. My chauffeur can take my message to Half Moon Street-you see I know where you live-and get what you want. Are you on the phone?'
'Yes.'
'Well, ring your man up; have you got a man?'
'Yes; I just, about run to that.'
'Well, get on to him now; I want the chauffeur to go soon. I'm going to keep you here tonight-unless you've got anything very important on?'
'No; and if I had I'd miss it.'
'You won't be able to sleep with me. My really best financial boy is coming, and I've got to attend to him. I think you know him, Bertie Evans-James.'
'Bertie-Tubby Bertie; oh, Lord, yes! I wonder I haven't met you.'
'I don't come up to town much. I love this place and Paris. Now you ring up and tell your man that a chauffeur called Gerstein will call with your card.'
