Hue and Cry (2 page)

“What did you say then?”

Mally came up close, took hold with either hand of the lace ruffles which were one of the uncomfortable features of Mr. Mooring's present attire, tweaked them, and said with emphasis,

“I said”—tweak—“I'd be engaged”—tweak—“and see how I liked it”—tweak—“if you were very, very, very good. And if you call it being good to groan and glare and glump and gloom like you've been doing all this afternoon, I don't. So there!”

Her laughing, teasing face was very near. Roger might have kissed it; but he chose to stand on his dignity. He was at this moment very much aware of what a good match Mally would be making if she married him—Mally, who hadn't a penny and was neither pretty nor—nor anything special at all. There were other girls in the world besides Miss Marion Lee.

He drew back a step and examined his ruffles with an air of concern. Mally burst out laughing.

“Roger, you do look so cross! Jimmy——”

“Now look here, Mally, you've gone far enough. There's too much Jimmy altogether. As my mother says——”

Mally stopped laughing.

“What does Lady Mooring say?”

Roger blanched a little.

“I don't suppose you mean any harm. But considering that you only came down here a week ago, I must say—” He paused; something in Mally's face made him pause.

She repeated his last words:

“You must say—What must you say? Go on—say it—
say
it!”

“Oh, nothing.”

“No, Roger, that's not
fair
. Go on.”

“Well, it's nothing really.”

Mally caught him by the arm and shook him.

“Considering I'd only been here a week—What?”

Roger looked at her with frowning dignity.

“Well, you're pretty well at home with every one, aren't you? Christian names all round, and all that sort of thing.”

The color went away from Mally's face, leaving the rouge in two brilliant, unnatural patches. Somewhere inside her the real Mally quivered like a child who has been struck. She had loved it all so. It had been so delightful. She was enjoying herself so much. She had never in all her life had such a lovely, lovely time before. And now Roger,
Roger
had spoiled it all.

She felt her hands taken and held.

“Mally, don't look like that. You didn't mean any harm—I said you didn't mean any harm. I—”

“Let me go, please!”

Roger tried to draw her nearer.

“Mally!”

“No, let me go!”

“Mally, be reasonable!”

Mally flashed a look at his flushed, handsome face. The sulky look was gone. Gone too for the moment was Roger's sense of being King Cophetua to a beggar maid. To placate Mally, to prevent her from breaking their engagement, was all that mattered. He put her hands to his lips.

“Mally, I was jealous—you made me jealous.”

She relented a little. After all, she had teased him unmercifully.

“Did I? You get jealous very easily.”

CHAPTER II

“Mally, Alice Tollington can't come.”

Roger made the announcement blankly, and the whole assembled cast exclaimed: “What?” in varying tones of horror and dismay.

“She can't come—she's just rung up. They can't get the car to start, and it's too late to go and fetch her.”

“I said Alice would fail—she always does,” said Elaine Maudsley with a giggle.

“Well, we must cut out her songs, that's all, unless——” Colonel Fairbanks turned to Mally. “That interval between the acts is a most awful nuisance. Now if you could sing something. You're not on at the beginning of the next act, you know. Do you think you could come to the rescue?”

“No, of course she can't!” Roger began. And Mally instantly decided that she could; she had just been rather nice to Roger, and felt that the pendulum required a push in the opposite direction—Roger got uppish so easily.

“I can manage beautifully. What shall I sing?—that's the only thing. Something old-fashioned because of the dress. I shan't have time to change.”

“You better sing
Mally Lee,”
said Jimmy Lake with a teasing look.

Mally caught Roger's eye and clasped her hands.

“I'd love to! Dare I? Shall I?”

Roger Mooring rushed upon his fate.

“What rubbish! Of course you can't! Jimmy, what a perfectly crass suggestion! No, sing—'m—ah—oh, there are plenty of songs without dragging in——”

“I shall sing
Mally Lee,
and Jimmy shall play my accompaniment on a ukulele.”

Roger took her by the arm.

“Mally, you can't.”

“I shall—I will—I'm going to. Tune up the ukulele, Jimmy. You've just got time.”

“Mally, I forbid you to.”

The worried voice of Colonel Fairbanks arose: “Miss Lee, the curtain is due to go up in three minutes, and you're on.”

Mally pulled her arm away from Roger. She blew him a kiss and Colonel Fairbanks another, and ran lightly on to the stage, where three minutes later she was discovered humming a tune and writing a love-letter.

The hall was quite full and the audience an indulgent one, the play no better and no worse than others of its kind. When the curtain fell on the first act there was some very stimulating applause, which was renewed when Miss Mally Lee appeared behind the footlights, dropped a neat curtsey, and began to sing to the accompaniment of a ukulele—off.

She sang:

“As Mally Lee cam doun the street her capuchin did flee—

She cuist a look ahint her back to see her negligee—

She had two lappets at her heid, that flaunted gallantly,

And ribbon knots at back an' breist o'bonny Mally Lee.”

She had a pretty, clear voice, and she acted the song, as well as sang it. With a swish of her rose-colored skirts, she walked a few steps, looked over her shoulder, and gave the refrain:

“And we're a' gane east and west, we're a' gane agee,

We're a' gane east, we're a' gane west, coortin' Mally Lee.”

She took the second verse with considerable spirit:

“A' doun alang the Cannongate were beaux o' ilk degree,

An' mony a yin turned roond aboot the comely sicht tae see.

At ilka bob her ping-pong gied, ilk lad thocht ‘That's tae me';

But fient a yin was in the thocht o' bonny Mally Lee.”

She gave the refrain in a laughing, lilting fashion:

“Oh, we're a' gane east and west, we're a' gane agee;

We're a' gane east, we're a' gane west, coortin' Mally Lee.”

She ran off, waving her hand, and bumped into Jimmy in the wings.

“I say, that was tophole! But what in the world's a ping-pong?”

Mally gurgled.

“I haven't an idea. Jimmy, I must fly and put on a cloak to be abducted in. Tell them it's no use their clapping like that—I can't give an encore.”

The curtain rose on an act full of duels, hairbreadth escapes, and villainous machinations. Mally was very realistically abducted, and much less realistically rescued. When the play ended with Jimmy lying up-stage, decently shrouded in a cloak, and Mally, close to the footlights, locked in Roger's stiffly reluctant arms, the applause was all that could be desired. Lady Mooring was surrounded by people with pretty things to say about Mally's acting and Roger's looks: “What a becoming dress!”; “Oh, Lady Mooring, you ought to make him have his portrait painted in it”; “He's really awfully like the Cavalier picture you've got upstairs—isn't he?”

Lady Mooring thought he was. She beamed placidly upon the speaker, and then turned to beam again at Mrs. Armitage from Upper Linden.

“Lady Mooring, you said I might bring my niece, Dorothy Leonard. And she's so excited because she says she is sure she was at school with Miss Lee—Dorothy, my dear——”

The tall, fair, eager girl beside her bent towards Lady Mooring.

“I recognized her the minute she came on and sang that song. We always used to make her sing it at school. Not at concerts, you know—Miss Martin wouldn't have thought it proper—but at school singsongs. We both left two years ago—and I'd quite lost sight of her. I went straight out to India to my people. And—oh, do you think I might go behind the scenes and find her?”

She was gone almost before the smiling permission had been given. Lady Mooring composed herself to listen once more to praise of Mally.

Miss Leonard found the space behind the scenes crowded with laughing, chattering people, all telling one another how well the play had gone. Mally appeared to be the centre of the group, and the only person who was not laughing and talking was Roger Mooring, who was wrapped in gloom. Not only had Mally defied him, but she had made herself ridiculous by singing a ridiculous song. In making herself ridiculous she had made him ridiculous; he felt convinced that people would laugh. He therefore gloomed furiously and stood apart.

Mally felt herself touched on the arm, and turned to see and recognize Dorothy Leonard.

“Dorothy!”

“Mally!”

“How on earth——”

“Mally, where have you been?”

“Nowhere—absolutely nowhere. Look here, I've got to get some of this grease paint off. They're going to clear away the chairs for us to dance. Come along with me, and we can talk whilst I tidy. I shan't change—this dress is much too becoming.”

Upstairs in Mally's room Dorothy looked at her admiringly.

“Mally, you're engaged, aren't you, to that frightfully good-looking Mr. Mooring? I'm simply dying to hear all about it. Do tell me!”

Mally pinned up her ringlets out of the way and began to wipe the grease paint off her face.

“Beastly stuff! I hate it!” she murmured.

“Mally, tell me all about it. Where did you go when you left?”

“I went into the depths of Dorset to my Aunt Deborah, and it was deadly dull. Dorothy, you've no idea how dull it was—how dull everything's been until now. Mercifully, Aunt Deborah's great friend, Mrs. Marsden, had two grandchildren home from India, and she asked if I'd come and teach them in the mornings, just to break them in for school. They were little fiends, but they weren't dead and buried like Aunt Deborah and old Mrs. Marsden.”

“Poor Mally! Then what happened? Do go on!”

“Aunt Deborah died. And she'd been living on an annuity, so I hadn't a penny. The fiends were going to school, and I was just wondering what was going to happen to me, when Mrs. Marsden said her niece, Lady Emson, wanted a nursery governess, and would I go if she recommended me?”

Mally turned round, towel in hand, her face pale and shiny.

“And you went?” Dorothy appeared to be breathlessly interested.

“Went? Of course I went. I hadn't anywhere else to go. But it was fairly grim.”

“Mally!”

Mally, having removed the grease paint, was applying powder to her little nose. She waved the puff at Dorothy.

“My child, it was. The che-ild was the limit—mother's joy, and ‘She's so sensitive, Miss Lee—you mustn't cross her.' Cross her?” said Mally viciously. “If ever there was a child that wanted crossing morning, noon and night, it was darling Enid. Yes, it was grim—it really was. I'd have wheeled her into line all right if I'd been let—but I wasn't. And Lady Emson is one of those people who look upon a governess as a sort of educational implement, not a human being. Oh, how I hated it!” She began to put on a little rouge very delicately. “What made it worse was that Blanche, the grown-up Emson girl, was just my age and having a frightfully good time.”

“Oh, poor Mally! But do tell me about Mr. Mooring. How did you meet him?”

Mally laughed.

“Oh, he came to stay. He's a cousin of the Emsons. And he and I fished darling Enid out of a muddy pond together. Frightfully romantic, wasn't it? And then next day he came up to the schoolroom to ask how she was. And the day after we met by accident in a wood.”

“Accident! Oh, Mally!”

“Of course he made the accident,” said Mally composedly. She was darkening her eyebrows. “And then there were some more accidents. And then he said, would I be engaged? And I said I'd try and see if I liked it. And
then
”—she paused and sparkled—“
then
there was a most hair-raising row, and I had to go and stay with my cousin Maria, who hasn't a baked bean in the world, whilst Roger broke me gently to his mother.”

“Mally, how thrilling!”

“Some of it,” said Mally, “was almost too thrilling.”

“And is Lady Mooring all right to you?”

“Oh, she's frightfully kind. Every one is. I'm having the time of my life. Jimmy Lake, you know, the villain—there's something awfully comic about Jimmy being the villain—, he's a cousin of the Moorings, and he's like the very jolliest sort of brother. And Colonel Fairbanks—he's a perfect old dear. And——”

“And
Roger
?”

Mally's enthusiasm became rather less marked.

“Well,” she said frankly, “just at this moment Roger and I are in the middle of a quarrel. We generally have about seven a day—quite amusing, you know, and
fearfully
good for Roger.”

Dorothy flushed.

“Oh, Mally, you shouldn't quarrel! Do go and make it up!”

“'M—presently. I think that's just about the right amount of rouge, isn't it?”

“You usen't to rouge at all.”

“I don't now, except in fancy dress. Is this right?”

Dorothy nodded.

“Mally,
do
make it up! It'll spoil the evening if you don't.”

Mally turned from the looking-glass, laughing.

“My child, leave it to me. You don't know Roger. Quite between ourselves, he's got to be reformed. At present he's rather like darling Enid—he mustn't be crossed. So I make a
point
of crossing him a million times a day. At intervals it boils up into a quarrel. You've no idea what a lot of moral uplift Roger gets out of a quarrel with me.”