“We can very soon find out.”
“But how can Mr. Burns go there?”
“Nothing easier. He will be a young man who has been left a little money and wants to start a school of his own. He goes to Ogden’s man and suggests that he pay a small premium to come to him for a term as an extra-assistant-master, to learn the business. Mr. Man will jump at him. He will be getting the bargain of his life. Peter didn’t get much of a degree at Oxford, but I believe he was wonderful at games. From a private-school point of view he’s a treasure.”
“But—would he do it?”
“I think I can persuade him.”
Mrs. Ford kissed her with an enthusiasm which hitherto she had reserved for Ogden.
“My darling girl,” she cried, “if you knew how happy you have made me!”
“I do,” said Cynthia definitely. “And now you can do the same for me.”
“Anything, anything! You must have some more hats.”
“I don’t want any more hats. I want to go with you on Lord Mountry’s yacht to the Riviera.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Ford after a slight pause, “it isn’t my party, you know, dear.”
“No. But you can work me in, darling.”
“It’s quite a small party. Very quiet.”
“Crowds bore me. I enjoy quiet.”
Mrs. Ford capitulated.
“I fancy you are doing me a very good turn,” she said. “You must certainly come on the yacht.”
“I’ll tell Peter to come straight round here now,” said Cynthia simply. She went to the telephone.
II
In which other interested parties, notably one Buck MacGinnis and a trade rival, Smooth Sam Fisher, make other plans for the Nugget’s future. Of stirring times at a private school for young gentlemen. Of stratagems, spoils, and alarms by night. Of journeys ending in lovers’ meetings. The whole related by Mr. Peter Burns, gentleman of leisure, who forfeits that leisure in a good cause.
I
I
I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism.
This thought came to me as I returned to my rooms after the Fletchers’ ball. The dawn was breaking as I let myself in. The air was heavy with the peculiar desolation of a London winter morning. The houses looked dead and untenanted. A cart rumbled past, and across the grey street a dingy black cat, moving furtively along the pavement, gave an additional touch of forlornness to the scene.
I shivered. I was tired and hungry, and the reaction after the emotions of the night had left me dispirited.
I was engaged to be married. An hour back I had proposed to Cynthia Drassilis. And I can honestly say that it had come as a great surprise to me.
Why had I done it? Did I love her? It was so difficult to analyse love: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task was an answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do so five years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself be carried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to be utterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was five years younger then, and Audrey was—Audrey.
I must explain Audrey, for she in her turn explains Cynthia.
I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met Audrey Blake. Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstances had conspired to carry on Nature’s work. I loved comfort, and I could afford to have it. From the moment I came of age and relieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself in comfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism. In fact, if, between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had one unselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, my memory is a blank on the point.
It was at the height of this period that I became engaged to Audrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself, impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribably offensive I must have been. My love was real, but that did not prevent its patronizing complacency being an insult. I was King Cophetua. If I did not actually say in so many words, “This beggar-maid shall be my queen,” I said it plainly and often in my manner. She was the daughter of a dissolute, evil-tempered artist whom I had met at a Bohemian club. He made a living by painting an occasional picture, illustrating an occasional magazine-story, but mainly by doing advertisement work. A proprietor of a patent Infants’ Food, not satisfied with the bare statement that Baby Cried For It, would feel it necessary to push the fact home to the public through the medium of Art, and Mr. Blake would be commissioned to draw the picture. A good many specimens of his work in this vein were to be found in the back pages of the magazines.
A man may make a living by these means, but it is one that inclines him to jump at a wealthy son-in-law. Mr. Blake jumped at me. It was one of his last acts on this earth. A week after he had—as I now suspect—bullied Audrey into accepting me, he died of pneumonia.
His death had several results. It postponed the wedding: it stirred me to a very crescendo of patronage, for with the removal of the breadwinner the only flaw in my Cophetua pose had vanished: and it gave Audrey a great deal more scope than she
