‘But I never thought to ask Uncle for a receipt. Not between relations. How could I?’
‘You never thought-? Nothing on paper-? Of all the blasted fools-!’
‘Oh, Frank dear. I’m so sorry. Everything seems to have gone wrong. But you know, you never dreamt, any more than I did-’
‘No, or I’d ’ave acted a bit different, I can tell you.’ He ground his teeth savagely and struck a log on the hearth with his heel so that the sparks flew.
Miss Twitterton watched him miserably. Then a new hope came to sustain her. ‘Frank, listen! Perhaps Lord Peter might lend you the money to start the garage. He’s ever so rich.’
Crutchley considered this. Born rich and born soft were to him the same thing. It was possible, if he made a good impression-though it did mean truckling to a blasted title. ‘That’s a fact,’ he admitted. ‘He might.’
In a rosy flush. Miss Twitterton saw the possibility as an accomplished fact. Her eager wishes flew ahead into a brilliant future.
‘I’m sure he would. We could get married at once, and have that little corner cottage-you know-on the main road, where you said-and there’d be ever so many cars stopping there. And I could help quite a lot with my Buff Orpingtons!’
‘You and your Buff Orpingtons!’
‘And I could give piano-lessons again. I know I could get pupils. There’s the stationmaster’s little Elsie-’
‘Little Elsie’s bottom! Now, see here, Aggie, it’s time we got down to brass tacks. You and me getting spliced with the idea of coming into your uncle’s money-that was one thing, see! That’s business. But if there’s no money from you, it’s off. You get that?’
Miss Twitterton uttered a faint bleat. He went on, brutally: ‘A man that’s starting in life wants a wife, see? A nice little bit to come ’ome to. Some’un he can cuddle-not a skinny old hen with a brood o’ Buff Orpingtons.’
‘How can you speak like that?’
He caught her roughly by the shoulder and twisted her round to face the mirror with the painted roses. ‘Look at yourself in the glass, you old fool! Talk about a man marrying his grandmother.’
She shrank back and he pushed her from him. ‘Coming the schoolmarm over me, with yer “Mind yer manners. Frank,” and “Mind yer aitches,” and bum-sucking round to his lordship-“Frank’s so clever”-t’sha! making me look a blasted fool.’
‘I only wanted to help you get on.’
‘Yes-showing me off, like as if I was your belongings. You’d like to take me up to bed like the silver tea-pot-and a silver tea-pot ’ud be about as much use to you, I reckon.’
Miss Twitterton put her hands over her ears. ‘I won’t listen to you-you’re mad-you’re-’
‘Thought you’d bought me with yer uncle’s money, didn’t you? Well- where is it?’
‘How can you be so cruel?-after all I’ve done for you?’
‘You’ve done for me, all right. Made me a laughingstock and got me into a blasted mess. I suppose you’ve been blabbing about all over the place as we was only waitin’ for vicar to put up the banns-’
‘I’ve never said a word-truly, truly I never have.’
‘Oh, ain’t you? Well, you should a-heard old Ruddle talk.’
‘And if I had,’ cried Miss Twitterton, with a last desperate burst of spirit, ‘why shouldn’t I? You’ve told me over and over again you were fond of me-you said you were-you said you were.’
‘Oh, can that row!’
‘But you did say so. Oh, you can’t, you can’t be so cruel! You don’t know-you don’t know-Frank, please! Dear Frank-I know it’s been a dreadful disappointment-but you can’t mean this-you can’t! I-I-I-oh, do be kind to me, Frank-I love you so.’
In frantic appeal, she flung herself into his arms; and the contact with her damp cheeks and stringy body drove him to an ugly fury. ‘Damn you, get off! Take your blasted claws out of my neck. Shut up! I’m sick and tired of the sight of you.’
He wrenched her loose and flung her heavily upon the settle, bruising her, and knocking her hat grotesquely over one ear. As he looked at her with a sort of delight in her helpless absurdity and her snuffling humiliation, the deep roar of the Daimler’s exhaust zoomed up to the gate and stopped. The latch clicked and steps came along the path. Miss Twitterton sobbed and gulped, hunting vaguely for her handkerchief.
‘Hell’s bells!’ said Crutchley, ‘they’re comin’ in.’
Above the creak of the gravel came the sound of two voices singing together softly:
‘Et ma joli’ colombe
Qui chante your et nuit,
Et ma joli’ colombe
Qui chante jour et nuit,
Qui chante pour les filles
Qui n’ont pas de mari
Aupres de ma blonde
Qu’il fait ban, fait bon, fait bon.
Aupres de ma blonde
Qu’il fait bon dormir.’
‘Get up, you fool!’ said Crutchley, hunting in a hurry for his cap.
‘Qui chante pour les filles
Qui n’ont pas de mari.
Qui chante pour les filles
Qui n’ont pas de mari.’
He found the cap on the window-sill and pulled it on with a jerk. ‘You’d better clear out, sharp. I’m off.’
The woman’s voice rang out, alone and exultant:
‘Pour moi ne chant guere
Car j’en ai un joli.’
The tune, if not the words, stabbed Miss Twitterton into a consciousness of that insolent triumph, and she stirred wretchedly on the hard settle as the duet was joined again:
‘Aupres de ma blonde
Qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon.
Aupres de ma blonde
Qu’il fait bon dormir.’
She lifted a blotched and woebegone face; but Crutchley was gone-and the words of the song came back to her. Her mother, the schoolmistress, had had it in that little book of French songs-though, of course, it was not a thing one could teach the school-children. There were voices in the passage outside.
‘Oh, Crutchley!’-casual and commanding. ‘You can put the car away.’
And Crutchley’s, colourless and respectful, as though it did not know how to use cruel words: ‘Very good, my lord.’
Which way out? Miss Twitterton dabbed the tears from her face. Not into that passage, among them all-with Frank there-and Bunter perhaps coming out of the kitchen-and what would Lord Peter think?
Anything further tonight, my lord?’
‘No, thanks. That’s all. Good night.’
The door-know moved under his hand. Then her ladyship’s voice-warm and friendly”
‘Good night, Crutchley.”
“Good night, my lord. Good night, my lady.’
Seized with panic, Miss Twitterton fled blindly up the bedroom stairs as the door opened.
Chapter XVI. Crown Matrimonial
Norbert: Explain not: let this be.
This is life’s height.
Constance: Yours, yours, yours!
Norbert: You and I-
Why care by what meanders we are here
I’ the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died
Trying to find this place, which we have found.
– Robert Browning: In a Balcony.
‘Well, well, well!’ said Peter. ‘Here we are again.’ He lifted his wife’s cloak from her shoulders and gently saluted the nape of her neck.
‘In the proud consciousness of duty done.’
His eyes followed her as she crossed the room. ‘Wonderfully inspiring thing, doing one’s duty. Gives one a sort of exalted sensation. I feel quite lightheaded.’
She dropped on to the couch, laying lazy arms along its back, ‘I’m feeling slightly intoxicated, too. It couldn’t possibly be the vicar’s sherry?’
‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘not possibly. Though I fancy I have drunk worse. Not much, and not more than once. No-it’s just the stimulating effects of well-doing-or perhaps it’s the country air-or something.’