CHAPTER VI A SURPRISE VISIT

Verneede having departed on his mission, Leavesley resumed his work with a feeling of relief.

[Pg 252]

He had done something. There is nothing that strains the mind so much as sitting waiting with hands folded, so to speak, doing nothing.

When Noah closed the trap-door of the Ark having let forth the dove, he no doubt followed its flight with his mind's eye—here flitting over wastes of water, here perched on the island he desired.

Even so Leavesley, as he worked, followed the flight of Verneede towards the object of his desires.

Leavesley was one of those unhappy people who meet their pleasures and their troubles half-way. He was an imaginative man, moving in a most unimaginative world, and as a result he was always knocking his nose against the concrete. Needless to say, his forecasts were nearly always wrong. If he opened a letter thinking it contained a bill, it, ten to one, enclosed a theatre ticket or a cheque, and if he expected a cheque, fifty to one he received a bill.

This temperament, however, sometimes has its advantages, for he was sitting now quite contentedly painting and getting on with his[Pg 253] picture, whilst Mr Verneede was sitting quite contentedly in the bar of the "Spotted Dog."

He was also smoking furiously with all the windows shut. To the artistic temperament at times comes moods, when it shuts all the windows, excluding noise and air, lights the foulest old pipe it can find, and, to use a good old public school term, "fugs."

Suddenly he stopped work, half-sprang to his feet, palette in one hand, pipe in the other. A footstep was on the landing, a girl's footstep—it was her!

The door opened, and his aunt stood before him.

Since the other night when Fanny had dined with them, Miss Hancock had been much exercised in her mind.

How on earth had Leavesley known of the affair? Had he referred to Fanny when he made that mysterious remark about his uncle and a girl, or was there another girl? She had an axiom that when a man once begins to make a fool of himself he doesn't know where to stop; she had also a strong dash of her nephew's imaginative temperament.[Pg 254] Fanny had troubled her at first; seraglios were now rising in her mental landscape. She had an intuition that her brother had broken the ice as regards the other sex, and a dreadful fear that now he had broken the ice he was going to bathe.

"Whew!" said Miss Hancock, waving her parasol before her to dispel the clouds of smoke.

"Aunt!"

"For goodness sake, open the window. Open something—achu!—do you live in this atmosphere?"

Leavesley opened wide the windows, tapped the ashes of his pipe out on a sill, and turned to his aunt, who had taken her seat in an uncomfortable manner on a most comfortable armchair.

"This is an unexpected pleasure!"

Miss Hancock made no reply. It was the first time she had been in the studio, the first time she had been in any studio.

She noticed the dust and the litter. The place was, in fact, extraordinarily untidy, for Belinda, engaged just now in the fascination of a policeman, had scarcely time even for[Pg 255] such ordinary household duties as making beds without turning the mattresses, and flinging eggs into frying pans full of hot grease.

As fate would have it, or curiosity rather, Belinda at this moment entered the studio, attired in a sprigged cotton gown four inches shorter in front than behind as if to display to their full a pair of wonderful feet shod in list slippers. Her front hair was bound in Hindes' hair-binders tight down to her head, displaying a protruberant forehead that seemed to have been polished. It was the only thing polished about Belinda, and she made a not altogether pleasing picture as she slunk into the studio to "look for something," but in reality to take stock of the visitor.

It would have been much happier for her if she had stayed away.

She was slinking out again when Miss Hancock, who had been following her every movement, said:

"Stop, please!"

Belinda, with her hand on the door handle, faced round.

"Are you the servant here?"

[Pg 256]

"Yus"—sulkily.

"And I suppose you are paid to keep this room in order. Where's your mistress?"

"She's in Margate," cut in Leavesley.

"Stop twiddling that door handle," said Miss Hancock, entirely ignoring Leavesley, "and attend to what I'm saying. If you are paid to keep this room in order you are defrauding your mistress, and girls who defraud their mistresses end in something worse. Go, get a duster."

The feelings of Cruiser, when he first came under the hands of Mr Rarey, may have been comparable to the feelings of Belinda before this servant-tamer.

She recognised a mistress, but she did not give in at once. She stood looking sulkily from Leavesley to his aunt, and from his aunt to Leavesley.

Miss Hancock had no legal power over her, it was all moral.

"Go, get a duster and a broom," cried Miss Hancock, stamping her foot.

One second more the animal stood in mute rebellion, then it went off and got the duster and the broom.

[Pg 257]

"Take up that strip of carpet," commanded Mr Leavesley's aunt, when the duster and the broom returned in the hands of the animal. "Whew! Throw it outside the door and beat it in the back garden, if you have such a thing—burn it if you haven't. Give me the duster. Now sweep the floor, whilst I do these shelves; Frank, put those books in a heap. Whew! does no one ever clean this place? Ha! what are you doing sweeping under the couch? Pull out that couch. Mercy!!!"

Under the couch there was a heap of miscellaneous things—empty cigarette tins, an empty beer bottle, an empty whisky bottle, half a pack of cards, a dress tie, a glove, "The Three Musketeers," and an old waistcoat—and dust, mounds of dust.

Miss Hancock looked at this. Like the coster who looked back along the City road to see the way strewn with cabbages, lettuces, and onions which had leaked from his faulty barrow, language was quite inadequate to express her feelings.

"Go, get a dust-pan," she said at last, "and a basket. Be quick about it. Mercy!!!"

By the time the place was in order, Belinda,[Pg 258] to Leavesley's astonishment, had become transformed from a sulky-looking slattern to a semi-respectable-looking servant girl.

"That will do," said Miss Hancock in a magisterial voice, when the last consignment of rubbish had been removed. "Now, you can go."

As the boar sharpens its tusks against a tree preparatory to using them to carve human flesh, so had Miss Hancock sharpened the tusks of her temper upon Belinda.

"No thanks, I don't want any tea," she said, replying to Leavesley's invitation. "I've come to ask you for an explanation."

"What of?"

"What you said the other day."

"What did I say the other day?"

"About your uncle."

"About my uncle?" he replied, wrinkling his forehead. He couldn't for the life of him think what she was driving at; he had quite forgotten his Parthian remark about the "girl," the thing had no root in his mind—a bubble made of words that had risen to the surface of his mind, burst, and been forgotten.

Miss Hancock had her own way of dealing[Pg 259] with hypocrites. "Well, we will say no more about your uncle. How about Miss Lambert?"

Leavesley made a little spring from his chair, as if some one had stuck a pin into him, and changed colour violently.

"How—what do you know about Miss Lambert?——"

"I know all about it," said Miss Hancock grimly. She was so very clever that she had got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely, as very clever people sometimes do. If she had come to him frankly she would have found out that he was Fanny's lover, and not James Hancock's confidant and go-between, as she now felt sure he was.

Unhappy Leavesley! his love affair with Fanny seemed destined to be mulled by every one who had a hand in it.

"If you know all about it," he said sulkily, "that ends the matter."

"Unfortunately it doesn't."

"What do you mean?"

"It's dreadful," said Miss Hancock, apparently addressing a tobacco jar that stood on the table, "it's dreadful to watch a man consciously and deliberately making a fool[Pg 260] of himself—to sit by and watch it, and not be able to move a hand."

Of course he thought she referred to himself, but he was so accustomed to hear his aunt calling people fools that her remarks did not ruffle him.

"But what I can't understand is this," he said. "Who told you about Fanny—I mean Miss Lambert?"

"Fanny!" said the lady with a sniff. "You call her Fanny?"

"Of course."

"Of course!"

"Why not?"

"Why not!"

"Yes."

"The world has altered since I was a girl, that's all." Then with deep sarcasm—"Does your uncle know that you call her Fanny?"

"Of course not; I've never told him."

Miss Hancock stared at him stonily, then she spoke. "Are you in love with her too?" she asked.

"What do you mean by 'too'?"

"Frank Leavesley, don't shuffle and prevaricate. Are you in love with her?"

[Pg 261]

"Of course I am; every one who meets her must love her. I believe old Verneede is in love with her. Love with her! I'd lay my life down for her, but it's hopeless—hopeless——"

"I trust so indeed," replied Miss Hancock.

For a minute he thought his aunt must be a little bit mad: this was more than her ordinary contrariness; then he went back to his original question.

"I want to know who told you about this."

"Bridgewater, for one," replied Miss Hancock.

"Bridgewater!"

"Yes, Bridgewater."

"But he knows nothing about it," cried Leavesley. "He couldn't have told you."

"He told me everything—Miss Lambert's visit to the Zoological Gardens, her——"

"You may as well be exact whilst you are about it; it wasn't the Zoological Gardens, it was Epping Forest."

"Frank Leavesley, a lie is bad enough, but a silly lie is much worse. Miss Lambert herself told me it was the Zoological Gardens; perhaps she has been to Epping Forest as[Pg 262] well; perhaps next it will be a visit to Paris. I wash my hands of the affair."

"You have seen Miss Lambert?"

"No matter what I have seen. I have seen enough to make me open my eyes—and shut them again."

Leavesley was now fuming about the studio. What on earth had possessed Bridgewater? How on earth had he found out about the affair, and how had he come to twist Epping Forest into the Zoological Gardens?

"——and shut them again," resumed Miss Hancock. "However, it is none of my business, but if there is such a thing as honour you ought, in my humble opinion, to go to your uncle and tell him the state of your feelings towards Miss Lambert."

"I'll go," said Leavesley—"go to the office to-day; and if uncle chooses to keep that antiquated liar of a Bridgewater in his service any longer after what I tell him, it will be his own look-out."

Miss Hancock had not reckoned on this, she looked uncomfortable.

"Bridgewater is an honourable man, who has acted for the best."

[Pg 263]

"I know," said Leavesley. "Now, I must go out; I have some business. Are you sure you won't have some tea?"

"No tea, thank you," replied Miss Hancock, rising to depart.