Hue and Cry (4 page)

Mally never quite recovered the impression which made her want to run away. She never got nearer to it than the bald statement that the thing gave her the pip. It wasn't the whiteness, or the coldness, or the immobility, or anything she could put into words; but she wanted to run a hundred miles and never come back. Instead, she followed the footman along a corridor, and was ushered in upon a strictly domestic scene.

In a room of reassuringly moderate size blue curtains were drawn, a fire burned pleasantly, and a middle-aged lady sat knitting, whilst close to her, hunched up in a large armchair, a slim little girl pored over a book, with a hand on either cheek and untidy hair tumbled all about her face. In the very middle of the hearth an orange Persian cat and a pale, malevolent pug sat side by side.

“Miss Lee,” said the footman, and departed.

The pug, the little girl, and the cat remained unmoved by the announcement; but the middle-aged lady said, “Oh, dear!” dropped a stitch, said, “Oh, dear!” again, got up, and becoming mysteriously entangled in her wool, let her knitting fall to the ground, and stood still, looking at it helplessly.

By the time Mally had picked it up, unwound the tangle, and been thanked, she began to feel herself again.

Mrs. Craddock would not have daunted the most timid person on earth, being herself in a perpetual state of apologizing for something she had done or explaining why she had done it. She wore a lugubrious gray dress braided with black, and was further adorned with a necklet and ear-rings of bog oak. Her fuzzy, faded hair was curled in a formal fringe and held tightly to her head by a hair-net and a great many hairpins.

“I'm so grateful, Miss Lee. And you've picked up the stitch, too! Now I call that really kind. And did you have a pleasant journey?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Barbara—Barbara my dear, this is Miss Lee, your new governess. Won't you come and shake hands with her?” She used the tone which people employ when they make a request which they are pretty sure will be refused.

Barbara continued to pore over her book.

“She's so spoiled,” said Mrs. Craddock in a whisper calculated to arrest any child's attention. “So dreadfully spoiled! Sir George refuses her nothing.”

“Then why doesn't he let me draw?” said Barbara without looking up.

“My dear—Barbara my dear—I think—I really do think you should come and say how d'you to Miss Lee.”

“Don't bother her,” said Mally sweetly. “I expect she's frightened, poor little thing.”

The tumbled hair was thrown back with a toss, two very bright dark eyes looked out of a round pale face, and an indignant voice said:

“I'm
not.”

Mally gave her a little nod.

“Aren't you?”

“No, I'm
not.”

Barbara scrambled down from her chair. There was a challenging gleam in Mally's eye.

“I'm not frightened of any one. I just don't like governesses. Bimbo doesn't either—he'll probably bite you in a minute. He bit three people last week—they all screamed.”

The pale pug produced a slight rumbling growl at the sound of his name; his eyes slid round swivel-wise and looked coldly at Mally's ankles; his black lip lifted and showed a line of milk-white teeth.

“I have a frightfully loud scream,” said Mally. Her eyes danced at Barbara.

Barbara bit her lip, screwed up her face, stamped quite viciously, and then broke into sudden, uncontrollable laughter.

“She's so dreadfully spoiled,” wailed Mrs. Craddock in the background. “Barbara my
dear!
Bimbo! No—
no
—not biting! Good little dog!”

Bimbo snuffled.

Mally went and sat down beside Barbara in the big chair.

“Show me your book,” she said in a laughing voice. “And do let's be friends. It'll be more amusing really, because I know about three hundred stories; and if we're all biting and screaming, I can't possibly tell you any of them—can I?”

Sir George came in half an hour later, to find Barbara on Mally's lap, and a story just arrived at the happy ever after stage. He greeted Mally gravely and kindly, refused tea, and seemed to be hurried and preoccupied. After ten minutes or so he got up to go.

“I'm dining out, Lena. What have you arranged with Miss Lee?”

Mrs. Craddock dropped a stitch.

“Well, George, really I don't know. I don't think I've arranged anything. I really didn't know—I'd no idea—I'm sure I'm very sorry if you meant me to.”

Sir George turned to Mally with a slight frown.

“My sister was going to ask you what you would like to do about your evening meal. We should be delighted if you would dine with us—or with my sister when I am out. But if you would prefer to have supper with Barbara and feel that the evening is your own to do just as you like with, well——” He completed the sentence with a smile.

Mally felt her arm pinched; it was clear enough what Barbara wished her to say. She said it obediently, and saw at once that she had pleased Sir George. She had an impression that the pleasure went deep.

Barbara fairly bounced on her lap.

“She'll tell me stories all the time,” she announced.

When Sir George had gone out, Mrs. Craddock gazed mournfully at Mally and heaved a sort of sniffing sigh.

“I'm afraid my brother thinks I was remiss. But really there was so little time, and—now, what do you think? Would you have said that he was vexed?”

“No. Why should he be?”

“Well, my dear Miss Lee, I don't know. Gentlemen are very often vexed without much reason—don't you think so? Now, my brother—he is of course very busy, very occupied; but he never forgets anything, and it puts him out quite terribly if other people don't remember things.”

Here her knitting slipped to the ground and Mally picked it up with a dexterous swoop. Barbara clutched her, shrieking with delight. Bimbo growled, and Mrs. Craddock continued without an appreciable pause:

“Thank you—oh, thank you. I mean my memory has always been very bad; and if you've got a bad memory, why, you've got a bad memory. But there, it always vexes him just the same, though I'm sure if I've told him once, I've told him a hundred times that I haven't got his head.”

Barbara took Mally upstairs presently and showed her their domain—a pink bedroom which was Barbara's; a blue bedroom which was Mally's; and a sitting-room with white walls and chintzes covered with parrots and birds of paradise. There was a connecting door between the pink bedroom and the blue bedroom. “So as I can come in in the morning and get into your bed, and you can tell me a new story
every
day.”

Mally laughed.

“Suppose there isn't a story in my story box?”

“Do you keep them in a box?”

“In a
secret
box. Sometimes when I open it there's nothing there—I never know. You'll have to take your chance.”

Barbara flung herself upon her in a sudden hug.

“I
do
like you!”

They hugged each other. After a moment Barbara let go, stepped back, and said in a tone of ferocious intensity:

“But I shan't if you're going to like Pinko.”

“Who on earth's Pinko?”

“He's my father's secretary, and I hate him worse than I hate snails, and worms, and slugs, and spiders with hairs down their legs.”

“Why do you hate him? It's frightfully silly to hate people.”

“Pinko isn't people; he's Aunt Lena's nephew and his outside name is Paul Inglesby Craddock. And I call him Pinko because he hates it, and because his face is pink, and because he told my father about my pictures and they took them away. Yes, they did.”

Barbara turned very white over the last words; her voice dropped to a low unchildlike tone. Then suddenly she flung herself on Mally again.

“Promise me, promise me, promise me that you'll hate him, too!”

CHAPTER V

Sir George's dinner engagement was one which quite a number of people would have envied him. He was a member of the small dinner club which called itself
The Wolves.

No one talked politics at
The Wolves'
dinners, and no one talked business; yet it was said that the complexion of more than one political problem had been changed, and the financial status of more than one undertaking determined as the result of these informal gatherings.

The chief guest this evening was neither politician nor man of business, but Sir Julian Le Mesurier, head of the Criminal Investigation Department. The romantic name sat oddly enough upon a man who was universally known as Piggy. The aptness of the nickname stared one in the face; Sir Julian bore the strongest possible resemblance to a very large, clean, healthy and intelligent pig. The fact that he was married to one of the most charming women in the world, and that she adored him, is a proof that women are not always swayed by outward appearance.

A good many years ago he and Sir George had been at school together. There had survived one of those odd intimacies which is not a friendship, though it uses the outward forms of friendship.

When dinner was over, Sir George found himself beside his guest. He clapped him on the arm with a ribald “Well, Piggy, and how's crime?”

Piggy crinkled up the corners of his eyes.

“We shan't get into mischief from having idle hands.”

“Busy—eh?”

“Fair to middling.”

“That was a pretty good coup you made over the forged French notes last year. Mopped up the whole gang, didn't you?”

“Oh, that?” Piggy waved a large white hand. “My dear man, you might just as well talk about the Cardinal's Necklace or the Gunpowder plot. Mr. Bronson and the late Guy Fawkes are both upon the shelf. In fact, it's a case of ‘Each day brings its petty crimes, our busy hands to fill,'—and I owe Matthew Arnold an apology for that.” Sir Julian was very comfortable in a large armchair. He spoke in a lazy, drawling voice.

Sir George laughed. He had an extremely pleasant laugh.

“If you've nothing but petty crimes, you're in clover, I suppose. You don't burn the midnight oil over erring haberdasher's assistants or defaulting clerks, I imagine.”

“No,” said Sir Julian. “No. By the way——” He paused, his small eyes almost closed, his voice vague and dreamy. “Er—what was I saying?”

“Well, first you said ‘No,' and then you said ‘By the way.'”

“Er—yes—uncommon good dinner you gave us——” He paused again. “Now what the deuce was I going to say? Must have been going to say something. Yes, dates—it was something to do with dessert. Pineapple—no, not pineapple, though I congratulate you on it. You know, as a rule, Peterson, I hold to the heretical opinion that the pineapple out of a one-and-fourpenny tin is immensely superior to the inordinately expensive variety which one encounters at banquets. Now your pineapple, Peterson, was
fully
the equal of the chap in the tin. But it wasn't pineapple—I'm digressing—not pineapple, nor peaches, nor pomegranates, nor peppermints. Ginger—yes, that's better—ginger and cumquats—in fact China. All the world to a China orange—yes, that was undoubtedly it. I mean I was going to ask you whether you'd ever been to China.”

Sir George gazed at him indulgently.

“Once,” he said.

Piggy's voice sank to a dreamy whisper. “Interesting country, China. You know, I always think that line of Kipling's about the dawn—lemme see, how does it go?” He began to beat on the arm of his chair and to hum in a perfectly toneless, tuneless voice. “That's it—I've got it! Funny how the tune'll bring the words back, isn't it? Ever noticed it yourself?” He beat out the rhythm strongly and declaimed with enthusiasm: “‘The dawn comes up like thunder out of China crost the Bay.' That's it! Finest line he ever wrote by a long chalk. Talking of China always brings it back. Varney, now—did you know Varney in China?”

Sir George said “No” in his quiet, casual voice, and then, “I don't know—I met a lot of people I've forgotten. I was out there just after the war, you know.”

“Yes, I know. Ah, music! Who are we going to have? You always give us something pretty good.”

“It's the Hedroff Quartet. Wonderful artists, I think.”

Sir Julian composed himself to listen, with half-shut eyes and big idle hands. The wild Russian air fell strangely on the ears of comfortable men in peaceful after-dinner mood. It was as if the rare and icy air of the steppes had rushed into the warm, well-lighted room—a savage song, exquisitely sung and ending on a sudden tragic note as sharp as a dagger thrust.

Piggy nodded slowly as the sharp note died.

“Yes, wonderful artists. Wonder what it was all about. I should say they were out to get some one, and that they most undoubtedly got him.”

“How professional!” said Sir George. “And talking about getting people, Piggy, why don't you gather in the cat burglar, or burglars?”

“That,” said Piggy, “is mere plagiarism from the
Evening Scream.
They ask that question six times a week.”

The Hedroff Quartet began to sing again, a soft and melancholy lullaby.

When Sir George reached home, he turned into his study and found his secretary still working. After standing for a moment or two looking over his shoulder, Sir George moved to the fire and stood there frowning.

Mr. Paul Craddock finished a letter, put it in an envelope, addressed it, and got up.

“You're late,” said Sir George.

“I'm just through, sir. Do you want me for anything?”

“No.”

There was a pause. Paul Craddock picked up a sheaf of letters and moved towards the door; but before he had gone a yard, Sir George's voice arrested him:

“Le Mesurier dined with us to-night.”

Paul Craddock's eyebrows rose. He turned with the letters in his hand.