Beggar’s Choice

XI

Mrs. Bell panted up the stair with a plate of hot meat pudding in one hand and a letter in the other. Both hands being occupied, she knocked on Mr. Fairfax’s door with the edge of the plate and then, taking the letter between her teeth, wrestled with the rather stiff handle for a moment and burst in.

Mr. Fairfax was standing at the window with his back to the room. As soon as she had retrieved the letter she burst into speech, at the same time setting down the plate with a bang calculated to attract the most absent-minded person’s attention.

“And if you please, sir”-it was Mrs. Bell’s way to start sentences in the middle-“and if you please, sir, there isn’t nothing nastier nor cold suet-or if there is, I haven’t come across it, not yet I haven’t.”

The meat pudding had a mound of potato on one side of it and a little hill of green cabbage on the other. There was plenty of gravy. Even cabbage smells good to a very hungry man.

Car turned round in a hurry.

“Mrs. Bell, you shouldn’t-I can’t,” he stammered.

Mrs. Bell slapped the letter down beside the plate. Her large round face was hot and red with cooking. Her large red hands were still steaming from the hot water in which she had just plunged them. Her apron was not very clean, and she had a smudge on her cheek. She spoke in a tone of angry authority that carried Car back to his nursery days:

“Now, Mr. Fairfax, you look here! What ha’ you had to eat these last two mortal days? Bites, and crusts, and chippings of cheese, and such-like. You set right down and eat a proper meal whilst it’s hot! And if you wants to argue you can do it afterwards-for suet’s a thing that won’t be kept waiting, not if you was a duke.”

“Mrs. Bell-”

“Take and eat it up!” said Mrs. Bell in a warning voice. She backed through the doorway and banged the door.

When Car had finished the last shred of cabbage, he opened the letter. It had a London postmark and had been cleared that morning. He read it with steadily increasing surprise:

Dear Sir,

I must apologize for not having kept the appointment made with you yesterday over the telephone. I hope you did not wait very long. I was delayed by a slight accident to my car, and did not reach Churt Row until nearly eleven. As you were not there, I presumed that you had given me up and gone home. If you will be at the same place at the same time this evening, I will endeavor to be more punctual.

Yours truly

Z.10 Smith

The writing was clear, upright, and a little formal. Car stared at it. There was no word that he could possibly have misread. There was not the slightest ambiguity about the phrasing. Mr. Smith was apologizing for not having kept his appointment last night. But somebody had kept it-the fat man had kept it. The fat man was Bobby Markham. Or was he? For the moment he didn’t feel sure about anything.

Then he took hold of himself. He was quite sure that he had talked with Anna Lang in Linwood last night, and Anna had spoken quite openly of Bobby. Yes, the fat man was Bobby Markham. And it was Bobby Markham who had gone through the tobacconist’s shop and into the inner room whilst Car was waiting to make his inquiries about the International Employment Exchange. Where, then, did Mr. Z.10 Smith come in? So far he existed, very elusively, as a profferer of five hundred pounds; as Box Z.10; as a voice on the telephone; and now, as an apologist for having failed to keep an appointment.

Bobby Markham had kept the appointment. But how did Bobby Markham know that there was an appointment to keep? And how did Bobby and Anna know that Box Z.10 was offering him five hundred pounds? Of course any one might read an advertisement. But how did they know that this particular advertisement had been thrust upon Car Fairfax? It was all very complicated, and if there had been a little more margin between him and sheer starvation, he would have put Mr. Smith’s letter into the waste-paper-basket and thought no more about it. He wouldn’t starve to-day, thanks to Mrs. Bell’s meat pudding. He had been giddy with hunger all the morning. To-morrow he would be hungry again. Five hundred pounds was five hundred pounds. He wouldn’t forge a check for it, but he would do a good deal; and if the job was a risky one, so much the better.

He pushed the whole thing away, carried his plate down to save Mrs. Bell the stairs, and went out.

He tramped five miles to answer an advertisement in Hampstead, found the post filled, and tramped back again. The sole of his boot still held.

He opened the street door upon Mrs. Bell and a girl.

“And here he is!” said Mrs. Bell. “In the nick of time, as you might say.”

What with the open door, and three people, the narrow passage seemed quite full. Mrs. Bell leaned on the door and breathed heavily. Her apron was a little dirtier than it had been three hours before, she had another smudge on her cheek, and her gray hair displayed more wispy ends and hairpins than one would have thought possible.

“The young lady come and asked for you not five minutes ago, and just going, only as you may say, before I could put my hand on the handle to let her out, in you come.”

Car looked past Mrs. Bell to the girl. The first thing he noticed about her was the interest with which she was regarding him. Her pretty, bright eyes were full of it. The parted lips, the tilt of her chin, the little hands in their gray suede gloves, all said, “Here’s Mr. Fairfax!” She was in gray from head to foot; not gloomy gray, but the gray of her own eyes, and that was a very pretty color indeed. Her little hat framed her face so close that her hair might have been any color, or she might not have had any hair at all. It came down over her ears and then sprang out in two quaint wings. They gave her a Puckish look, and the way she tilted her head and looked up at him deepened the impression of something light, airy, elfin. She spoke in a sweet, high voice that had learnt its pitch on the other side of the Atlantic.

“Are you Mr. Fairfax?”

“Yes, I am.”

Instantly his hand was being shaken. The gray eyes were beaming with a delightful friendliness.

“Then I’m very pleased to meet you.” She went on shaking hands. “Well now, Mr. Fairfax, if this isn’t delightful! And just when I had given you up. Well, you’ll never know how disappointed I was, and I couldn’t begin to tell you. No, it didn’t seem right. And just as I was telling Mrs. Bell what I felt about it, the door opened, and I knew it was going to be you.”

She stopped shaking hands and stepped back. She had the quick, sure grace of a kitten. Yes, that was what she was like-a gray kitten, with wide-set, innocent eyes and an alert but friendly poise.

Car smiled at her because he couldn’t help it; but he hadn’t the ghost of a notion what to say, so he didn’t say anything. She tilted her head and looked at him with her eyes very wide indeed.

“You don’t say you don’t know who I am!”

“There now!” said Mrs. Bell.

“I-I’m afraid-” said Car.

“I’m Corinna Lee-” She stopped, gazed blankly at him, and clapped her hands together. “Gracious! Don’t say you’ve never heard of me!”

“I-I’m afraid-”

“You haven’t! You must be thinking I’m crazy then. Peter didn’t tell you I was coming?”

“Peter-”

“Peter Lymington. You’re not going to tell me you’ve never heard of him!”

She liked the way Car smiled.

“Yes, I’ve heard of Peter.”

“And Peter’ll hear from me,” said Miss Lee firmly. “Letting me come here and act as if I was crazy, instead of writing to tell you to get ready to ring the joy-bells!”

“How am I to ring them?” said Car.

“By coming out to tea with me at my hotel. I’d been fixing it with Mrs. Bell before you came, but now you’ve come, we’ll just go along together, and first I’ll explain about me, and then I’ll tell you all about Peter-and if he doesn’t write, he’s sent you a good few messages.”

Mrs. Bell let go of the door and stepped ponderously back. Fay was coming down the stairs. She was dressed in black, and she carried a scarlet bag. Her hat resembled Pierrot’s cap, her face was powdered as white as his, her lips painted as startling a crimson. She swung her scarlet bag and came down slowly, looking neither to right nor left.

When she reached the bottom step, she stopped and spoke to Car.

“Going out-or coming in?”

He said, “I’ve been out.”

She kept her shoulder turned to Corinna Lee.

“Come and have tea with me,” she said.

He thought she must have heard Corinna’s invitation.

He said, “Thank you-I’m afraid I can’t.” And then, “This is a friend of Peter’s-Miss Lee. Miss Lee-” He hesitated for a moment. Fay’s shoulder was a barrier. “Miss Fay Everitt.”

And then he had a doubt. Fay called herself Miss Everitt. She had never called herself Mrs. Lymington. But all the same-

If she acknowledged his introduction at all, it was with the very slightest movement of her head. She neither turned towards Corinna Lee nor looked at her. She looked at Car, and standing on the bottom step, opened her scarlet bag and extracted from it mirror and lipstick.

“Come and have tea with me, Car.”

“I’m afraid I’m engaged.”

She transferred her attention to the mirror, ran the lipstick over the painted curves of her mouth, and then very deliberately looked him up and down. Without a spoken word Car understood just how shabby he looked, and how impossible as an escort except by the indulgence of old friendship. Mirror and lipstick went back into the bag. Fay passed carelessly out. The tapping of her heels died away.

“Well!” said Miss Corinna Lee.

Car did not know what to say. Fay wanted shaking. If this pretty creature was a friend of Peter’s, things were going to be awkward. If they were great friends, she probably knew about Peter’s marriage. Perhaps he ought to have introduced Fay as Mrs. Lymington. He had never been able to see why there should be any secrecy. Well, it wasn’t his business.

By the time he reached this conclusion he was walking down the street with Miss Lee, and she was telling him how polite English railway porters were (was there a spice of malice here?) and how surprised she was to see London bathed in sunshine and with a blue sky overhead.

“I thought there would be a fog. Now you’re not going to tell me that London fogs are a myth?”

“We have them.”

“Now that’s a great relief! Will there be one tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

“You hope not. But I want to see a fog!”

Car laughed at her.

“Do you get everything you want?”

She looked as if she did. There was something of the unspoilt darling child about her. She looked as if she had sunshine and love always. Perhaps she wanted a fog for a change.

“Most of the time,” she said, and cocked her chin at him. “I’ve wanted to meet you.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

She went on as if he had not spoken.

“Because of Peter-and because of your name.”

“ Fairfax?”

She shook her head.

“I’d have liked it to be the Fairfax part of your name, because that’s romantic and historical, but I can’t tell a lie any more than Washington could. It would be a pity if I hurt myself trying to-wouldn’t it?”

“Rather!”

She looked at him with just a shade of anxiety in the round gray eyes.

“I guess I sound real crazy. But I’m not-I’m trying to break it to you that I’m a cousin.”

“It would have to be broken very gently.”

“I’m being as gentle as I can. You won’t fall right down in a faint, will you?”

“I’ll do my best.”

She stopped at a street corner and looked up at him.

“Well then, your name’s Carthew, and it was your mother’s name-wasn’t it?”

Car nodded.

“And she came from a place called Linwood?”

“She did.”

“And so did my grandmother,” said Corinna. Her eyes, her face, her voice all held a sort of quivering blend of earnestness and mischief.

“How topping!” said Car.

“I’m glad Peter didn’t tell you. I told him he wasn’t to.”

“Perhaps that’s why he didn’t write,” said Car.

They shook hands earnestly. Her hand was very small and soft. For the moment mischief was subdued. It was evidently an occasion-and an occasion ought to be celebrated. With a horrid sick feeling Car remembered that he couldn’t ask her to celebrate it. Fay’s look came back. His hand felt cold as it let go of Corinna’s gray glove.

“What’s the matter?” said Corinna.

“Nothing.” Why on earth had he let her carry him off like this?

“Didn’t I break it gently enough?”

“You broke it beautifully.”

“Then come along.”

“I-”

“What is it? Don’t you like me for a cousin?” The gray eyes were still mischievous, but the mischief was very faintly clouded over-mist over sparkling water.

Car felt himself getting hot.

“It isn’t that. I-I’m not dressed for a tea-party.”

“Carthew Fairfax-if you don’t come and have tea with me, I shall burst out crying, right here. Did you think I was asking a suit of clothes to tea? Because if you did, you’ve got to think again. Now, have I got to cry?”

Car’s embarrassment left him. Gray kittens have no conventions. They do not look at the seams of your coat or the bulges in your boots.

Corinna produced a handkerchief four inches square and wrinkled her nose in a preparatory sniff.

“Thank you very much for inviting me,” said Car.