CHAPTER III AN OLD MAN'S OUTING

On leaving the office, the happy thought had occurred to Fanny of telegraphing at once to her father apprising him of Charles Bevan's decision. Accordingly they sought the nearest telegraph office, where Miss Lambert indited the following despatch:—

    "To Lambert,
     c/o Miss Pursehouse,
     The Roost, Rookhurst.

    "Mr Bevan has stopped the action. Isn't it sweet of him?"

[Pg 160]

"Any name?" asked the clerk.

"Oh yes," replied Fanny, suddenly remembering that her connection with the matter ought to be kept dark. "Put Hancock."

Then they sought Oxford Street, where Fanny remembered that she had some shopping to do.

"I won't be a minute," she said, pausing before a draper's. "Will you come in, or wait outside?"

Mr Hancock elected to wait outside, and he waited.

It was an unfortunate shop for a man to wait before: there was nothing in the windows but lingerie; the shop on the left of it was a bonnet shop, and the establishment on the right was a bar.

So he had to wait, standing on the kerbstone, in full view of mankind. In two minutes three men passed who knew him, and in the middle of the fourth minute old Sir Henry Tempest, one of his best clients, who was driving by in a hansom, stopped, got out and button-holed him.

"Just the man I want to see, what a piece of luck! I was going to your office. See here,[Pg 161] that d——d scamp of a Sawyer has sent me in a bill for sixteen pounds—sixteen pounds for those repairs I spoke to you about. Why! I'd have got 'em done for six if he had left them to me. But jump into the cab, and come and have luncheon, and we can talk things over."

"I can't," said Mr Hancock, "I am waiting for a lady—my sister, she has just gone into that shop. I'll tell you, I will see you, any time you like, to-morrow."

"Well, I suppose that must do. But sixteen pounds!—people seem to think I am made of money. I tell you what, Hancock, the great art in getting through life is to make yourself out a poor man—go about in an old coat and hat; you are just as comfortable, and you are not pestered by every beggar and beast that wants money."

"Decidedly, decidedly—I think you are right," said his listener, standing now on one foot, now on the other.

"Once you get the reputation of being rich you are ruined—what's the matter with you?"

"Twinges of gout, twinges of gout. I can't get rid of it."

"Gout? Have you been to a doctor for it?"

[Pg 162]

"Yes."

"Well, don't mind what he says; try my remedy. Gout, my dear sir, is incurable with drugs, I've tried 'em. You try hot air baths and vegetarianism; it cured me. I don't say a strictly vegetarian diet, but just as little meat as you can take. I get it myself. Hancock, we're not so young as we were, and the wine and women of our youth revisit us; yes, the wine and women——"

He stopped. Fanny had just emerged from the shop.

The cabman who drove Sir Henry Tempest that day from Oxford Street to the Raleigh Club has not yet solved the problem as to "what the old gent, was laughing about."

"I'm awfully sorry to have kept you such a time," said Fanny, as they wandered away, "but those shopmen are so stupid. Who was that nice-looking old gentleman you were talking to?"

"That was Sir Henry Tempest; but he never struck me as being especially nice-looking. He is not a bad man in his way—but a bore; yes, very decidedly a bore."

"Come here," said Fanny, from whose facile mind the charms of Sir Henry Tempest had[Pg 163] vanished—"Come here, and I will buy you something." She turned to a jeweller's shop.

"But, my dear child," said James, "I never wear jewellery—never."

"Oh, I don't mean really to buy you something, I only mean make belief—window-shopping, you know. I often go out by myself and buy heaps of things like that, watches and carriages, and all sorts of things. I enjoy it just as much as if I were buying them really; more, I think, for I don't get tired of them. Do you know that when I want a thing and get it I don't want it any more? I often get married like that."

"Like what?" asked the astonished Mr Hancock.

"Window-shopping. I see sometimes such a nice-looking man in the street or the park, then I marry him and he's ever so nice; but if I married him really I'm sure I'd hate him, or at least be tired of him in a day or two. Now, see here! I will buy you—let me see—let me see—that!" She pointed suddenly to an atrocious carbuncle scarf-pin. "That, and that watch with the long hand that goes hopping round. You can have the whole window," said Fanny, suddenly becoming[Pg 164] lavishly generous. "But the scarf-pin would suit you, and the watch would be useful for—for—well, it looks like a business man's watch."

Mr Hancock sighed. "Say an old man's watch, Fanny—may I call you Fanny?"

"Of course, if you like. But you're not old, you're quite young; at least you're just as jolly as if you were. But come, or we will be late for the Zoo."

"Wait," said Mr Hancock; "there is lots of time for the Zoo. Now look at the window and buy yourself a present."

"I'll buy that," said Miss Lambert promptly, pointing to a little watch crusted with brilliants.

Mr Hancock noted the watch and the name and number of the shop, and they passed on.

Mr Hancock found that progress with such a companion in Oxford Street was a slow affair. The extraordinary fascination exercised by the shops upon his charge astonished him; everything seemed to interest her, even churns. The normal state of her brain seemed only comparable to that of a person's who is recovering from an illness.

It was after twelve when they reached Mudie's library.

[Pg 165]

"Now," said Mr Hancock, pausing and resting on his umbrella, "I am rather perplexed."

"What about?"

"Luncheon. If we take a cab to the Zoo now, we will have to lunch there or in the neighbourhood. I do not know whether they provide luncheons at the Zoo or whether there is even a refreshment room there."

"You can buy buns," said Fanny; "at least, I have a dim recollection of buns when I was there last. We bought them for the bears; but whether they were meant for people to eat, or only made on purpose for the animals, I don't know."

"Just so. I think we had better defer our visit till after luncheon; but, meanwhile, what shall we do? It is now ten minutes past twelve; we cannot possibly lunch till one. Shall we explore the Museum?"

"Oh! not the Museum," said Fanny; "it always takes my appetite away. I suppose it's the mummies. I'll tell you what, we will go and have ices in that café over there."

They crossed to the Vienna Café, and seated themselves at a little marble table.

"Father and I come here often," said Fanny, "when we are in this part of the town; we[Pg 166] know every one here." She bowed and smiled to the lady who sits in the little glass counting house, who smiled and bowed in return. "That was Hermann—the man who went for our ices; and that's Fritz, the waiter, over there, with the bald head." She caught Fritz's eye, who smiled and bowed. "I don't see Henri—I suppose he's married; he told us he was going to get married the last time we were here, to a girl who keeps the accounts in a café in Soho, somewhere, and I promised him to send them a wedding present. He was such a nice man, like a Count in disguise; you know the sort of looking man I mean. What shall I send him?"

James Hancock ran over all the wedding presents he could remember in his mind; he thought of clocks, candlesticks, silver-plated mustard pots.

"Send him a—clock."

"Yes, I'll send him a clock. Wait till I ask where they live."

She rose and approached the lady at the counting-house; a brisk conversation ensued, the lady speaking much with her hands and eyes, which she raised alternately to heaven.

Fanny came back looking sorrowful. "He's[Pg 167] gone," she said; "I never could have thought it!"

"Why should he not go?"

"Yes, but he went with the spoons and forks and things, and there was no girl at Soho."

"Never trust those plausible gentlemen who look like Italian Counts," said James Hancock, not entirely displeased with the melodramatic news.

"Whom is one to trust?" asked Fanny, with the air of a woman whose life's illusion is shattered.

James Hancock couldn't quite say. "Trust me," rose to his lips, but the sentiment was not uttered, partly because it would have been too previous, and partly because Hermann had just placed before him an enormous ice-cream.

"You are not eating your ice!"

"It's too hot—ah, um—I mean it's too cold," said Mr Hancock, waking from a moment's reverie. "That is to say, I scarcely ever eat ices." The fact that a sweet vanilla ice was simply food and drink to the gout was a dietetic truism he did not care to utter.

"If," said Fanny, with the air of a mother[Pg 168] speaking to her child, "if you don't eat your ice I will never take you shopping with me again. Please eat it, I feel so greedy eating alone."

Mr Hancock seized a spoon and attacked the formidable structure before him.

"I hope I'll never grow old," sighed Miss Lambert, as Hermann approached them with a huge dish of fantastic-looking cakes—cakes crusted with sugar and chocolate, Moscow Gateaux simply sodden with rum, and Merangues filled with cream rich as Devonshire could make it.

"We must all grow old," said Hancock, staring with ghastly eyes at these atrocities. "But why do you specially fear age? Age has its beauties, it must come to us all."

"I don't want to grow old," said his companion, "because then I would not care for sweets any more. Father says the older he grows the less he cares for sweets, and that every one loses their sweet tooth at fifty. I hope I'll never lose mine; if I do I'll—get a false one."

Mr Hancock leisurely helped himself to one of the largest and sweetest-looking of the specimens of "Italian confectionery" before[Pg 169] him; Fanny helped herself to its twin, and there was silence for a moment.

It is strange that whilst a man may admit his age to a woman he cares for, by word of mouth, he will do much before he admits it by his actions.