Fanny shrugged her shoulders.
“Well, I thought it was worth trying,” she said.
Hamilton Beamish was regarding her keenly. That busy brain was never still, and now it had begun to work with even more than its normal intensity.
“Are you an actress?”
“Me? I should say not. My folks are awful particular.”
“Well, you have considerable dramatic ability. There was a ring of sincerity in that drivel you just recited which would have convinced most men. I think I could use you in a little drama which I have been planning. I’ll make a bargain with you. I have no wish to send you to prison.”
“Spoken like a man.”
“I ought to, of course.”
“Yes, but it’s a lot better fun doing things that you oughtn’t, isn’t it?”
“Well, the point is, I have a friend who is in a difficulty, and it occurs to me that you can get him out.”
“Always glad to oblige.”
“My friend is going to be married today, and he has just heard that a previous fiancée of his, whom in the excitement inseparable from falling in love with the girl who is to be his bride he had unfortunately overlooked, is on her way here.”
“To make trouble?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, what can I do about it?”
“Just this. For five minutes I want you to play the role of my friend’s discarded victim.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I will put it more plainly. In a short while this girl will arrive, probably in company with my friend, who has gone to meet her at the station. You will be waiting outside here. At an appropriate moment you will rush into the room, hold out your arms to my friend and cry ‘George! George! Why did you desert me? You don’t belong to that girl there. You belong to me—the woman you have wronged!’ ”
“Not on your life!”
“What!”
Fanny drew herself up haughtily.
“Not on your life!” she said. “Suppose my husband got to hear of it!”
“Are you married?”
“Married this morning at the Little Church Round the Corner.”
“And you come here and try to steal things on your wedding-day!”
“Why not? You know as well as I do what it costs nowadays to set up house.”
“Surely it would be a severe shock to your husband to find that you had been sent to prison! I think you had better be reasonable.”
Fanny scraped the floor with her shoe.
“Would this thing you want me to do get into the papers?”
“Good heavens, no!”
“And there’s another thing. Suppose I did come in and pull that spiel, who would believe it?”
“The girl would. She is very simple.”
“She must be.”
“Just an ignorant village girl. The sort who would naturally recoil from a man in the circumstances I have outlined.”
“Suppose they ask me questions?”
“They won’t.”
“But suppose they do? Suppose the girl says Where did you meet him and when did all this happen and what the hell and all like that, what do I say?”
Hamilton Beamish considered the point.
“I think the best plan would be for you to pretend, immediately after you have spoken the words I have indicated, that emotion has made you feel faint. Yes, that is best. Having said those words, exclaim ‘Air! Air! I want air!’ and rush out.”
“Now you’re talking. I like that bit about rushing out. I’ll go so quick, they won’t see me.”
“Then you are prepared to do this thing?”
“Looks as if I’d got to.”
“Good. Kindly run through your opening speech. I must see that you are letter-perfect.”
“George! George! …”
“Pause before the second George and take in breath. Remember that the intensity or loudness of the voice depends on the amplitude of the movement of the vocal chords, which pitch depends on the number of vibrations per second. Tone is strengthened by the resonance of the air on the air-passages and in the pharyngeal and oral cavities. Once more, please.”
“George! George! Why did you desert me? …”
“Arms extended.”
“You don’t belong to that girl there.”
“Pause. Breath.”
“You belong to me—the woman you have wronged!”
Hamilton Beamish nodded with restrained approval.
“Not bad. Not at all bad. I should have liked, if it had been possible, to have an expert examine your thyro-arytenoid ligaments: and I wish there had been time for you to study my booklet on ‘Voice Production.’ … However, I think it will do. Now go back and hide in the rhododendrons. This girl may be arriving at any moment.”
X
Hamilton Beamish strolled out into the hall. Something attempted, something done, had earned a cigarette. He was just lighting one, when there was a grinding of wheels on the gravel, and through the open door he saw Madame Eulalie alighting from a red two-seater car. He skipped joyously to meet her.
“So you managed to come after all!”
Madame Eulalie shook his hand with that brisk amiability which was one of her main charms.
“Yes. But I’ve got to turn right round and go back again. I’ve three appointments this afternoon. I suppose you’re staying on for the wedding?”
“I had intended to. I promised George I would be his best man.”
“That’s a pity. I could have driven you back.”
“Oh, I can easily cancel the thing,” said Hamilton Beamish quickly. “In fact, I will, directly George returns. He can get dozens of best men—dozens.”
“Returns? Where has he gone?”
“To the station.”
“What a nuisance. I came especially to see him. Still, it doesn’t matter. I had better see Miss Waddington for a moment, I suppose.”
“She is out.”
Madame Eulalie raised her eyebrows.
“Doesn’t anybody stay in the house in these parts when there’s going to be a wedding?”
“There has been a slight accident,” explained Hamilton Beamish. “The clergyman sprained his ankle, and Mrs. Waddington and Molly had gone to Flushing to pick up an understudy. And George has gone to the station. …”
“Yes, why has George gone to the station?”
Hamilton Beamish hesitated. Then, revolted by the thought that he should be hiding anything from this girl, he spoke.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“Well, this is something quite between ourselves. Poor George is in trouble.”
“Any worse trouble than most bridegrooms?”
“I wish
