CHAPTER VII—THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SPUFFLER

It was during the last week of the summer term, while I was convalescing from Fiesole’s sudden exit and was beginning to forgive the Bantam his treachery, that the magic personality of George Rapson first flashed into my little world.

I was sitting listlessly at my desk one sunshiny morning. The window at my side was open, commanding a view of the school garden, the driveway leading through it, and beyond that of the sleepy village street. Below the window grew a bed of lavender whose fragrance, drifting in, made me forgetful of the book which lay before me and of the master at the black-board chalking up dull problems in algebra. I was dreaming as usual, telling myself a story of what I would do if old Sneard should pop his head inside the door and say, “My dear Cardover, you have worked so well that I intend to make an example of you by giving you this day as a holiday.”

Just then the master at the board turned round and jumped me into a realization of the present. “Cardover, you will please stand up and repeat my explanation of this problem.”

I stood up and gazed stupidly at the medley of signs and abbreviated formulae, hoping to discover some clue of reasoning in their apparent meaninglessness. “Well?”

“If you please, sir, I wasn’t attending.”

“I thought not. If you had been, you would have known that I have not explained it yet. You will come to me after class and—”

But his sentence was never ended. At that moment the head of every boy turned as one head; yes, and even the head of the master turned. Up the driveway came the sound of prancing hoofs, the soft crunch of wheels in the gravel, and cries of, “Whoà, girl! Steady there, steady.”

Past the window flashed a high yellow dog-cart, drawn by a tandem of spirited chestnuts. A tiger in livery and top-hat sat behind with arms folded, superbly aware of his own magnificence. Between the wheels ran a Dalmatian, a plum-pudding dog as we used to call them. On the high front-seat were two men, equally gorgeous. The one who drove wore a large fawn coat with enormous pearl buttons, distinctly horsey in cut and fashion. On his head was a tall beaver hat. He was a massively built man and had the appearance of a sporting aristocrat. To make him more splendid, he was young, with a bronzed complexion, full red lips, and finely chiseled features. His companion looked like a Methodist parson, trying to pass as a racing gent. He was attired in a light tweed suit of a rather pronounced black and white check. On his head was a gray felt hat, and in his button-hole blazed a scarlet geranium. They were laughing in deep full-throated guffaws as they whizzed past, with the sun flashing on their wheels and harness. The tiger and the Dalmatian were the only solemn things about them. What was my surprise to have recognized in the second man a relative?

“It’s my uncle!”

Even the master, so recently bent on my humiliation, seemed to hold his breath in regarding the nephew of so resplendent a person. Here was poetic justice with a vengeance. Most of the boys’ friends, if they were too rich to walk from the station when they came to visit them, crawled up the hill in a musty creaking cab, with hard wooden seats, and two or three handfuls of straw on the floor, more or less dirty. In the history of the Red House no boy’s relative had dashed up to visit him with such a barbaric clatter and display of wealth. Ah, if Fiesole had been there to envy me, how she would have blamed herself for her falseness!

“Cardover, you may sit down.”

The master turned again to the black-board, forgetting the threatened penalty. The boys eyed me above the covers of their books, and awaited further developments.

The door opened and Sneard peered round on us shortsightedly. A pleased smile played about the corners of his diplomatic mouth. His happiness at receiving such distinguished callers seemed to have had an effect upon his hair, turning it to a yet more fiery red. Usually when he spoke he snapped, but now his tones were as fluty as he could make them with so little practice.

Turning to the master, “Is Dante Cardover here?” he inquired. When I was pointed out to him he said, “Mr. George Rapson is here and with him your uncle, Mr. Spreckles. You may take a holiday, Dante, and go out with them.”

I rose from my seat in an ecstasy of bewilderment. What under the sun had happened that old Sneard should call me Dante, and who was Mr. George Rapson? As I picked my way through the labyrinth of forms and desks; getting glimpses of my school-mates’ lengthened faces, I felt that I was taking the sunlight from the room by my good fortune as I left.

I followed Sneard to his study, which I had so often visited on such different errands. Even now as I crossed its threshold, I could not quite shake off my accustomed clammy dread. The Spuffler, catching sight of me, ran forward in his gayest manner. “Ah, Dante, old chap, it’s good to see you. Rapson’s heard so much about you that he couldn’t keep away any longer. ‘Spreckles,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to introduce me. It’s Dante, Dante, all day long. You can’t talk of anyone else.’ So here we are. Rapson, this is my nephew.”

Mr. Rapson grabbed me by the shoulder with a large white hand and gazed down on me. There was a jolly-dog air about him combined with a big healthy strength, which made one both like and fear him from the first. And there was so much of him to like; he was over six foot in height and proportionately built in breadth. “Hm! Dante. Glad to meet you. Let’s get out.”

Sneard wanted me to put on my Sunday suit, but Mr. Rapson wouldn’t hear of it. “Hated clothes when I was a kid. Still think we ought to go naked. Let him be as he is. He’s got nothing to spoil and therefore’ll enjoy himself.”

Without waiting for a reply, he nodded to Sneard, heaved his great shoulders through the doorway, so down the hall and out on to the steps where the tiger was holding the horses’ heads.

“Just like Rapson,” my uncle said. “Masterful fellow. Makes up his mind and then goes ahead. Good-day, Mr. Sneard. Oh, yes, we’ll take care of him and bring him back.”

They took me up in front beside them; the whip cracked and the tiger sprang away from the leader. Off we sped, down the hill and into the valley, winding in and out of overgrown lanes where we had to duck our heads to avoid the boughs; then out again with fields on either side of us, up hill and down dale never slackening, with the wind on our cheeks and the sun in our faces. Mr. Rapson’s attention was completely taken up with his driving; it needed to be, for he swung round corners and squeezed between farm-wagons in outrageously reckless fashion. I watched his strong masterful hands, how they gathered in the reins and forced the horses to obedience. My eyes wandered up him and rested on his face: the face of a man a little over thirty, calm and yet when stern almost cruelly determined, with a shapely beak of a Roman nose planted squarely in the middle of it—a sign-post to his purpose.

Then I glanced at my uncle with his fashionable checks and scarlet geranium. I remembered that my grandmother called him the Spuffler, and wondered what she would call him now, could she see him. That nervous air he had had, of at once asserting and apologizing for himself with a pitiful display of bluster, had vanished. He carried himself with the jaunty confidence of a middle-aged gentleman unsubdued by the world—one who knew how to be dignified when necessary, but who preferred at present to relax. Above all he conveyed the impression of one beautifully fond of life’s simple pleasures and quietly composed in a happy self-respect. What had done it? Was it George Rapson, or had he at last had success with one of his poultry experiments?

Perhaps he guessed some of the inquiries that were running through my head, for, as I crouched near him in the little space allotted me on our high up perch, he squeezed my hand, hinting at some great secret, for the telling of which we must be alone by our two selves.

With foam flying from the horses’ mouths we entered Richmond and glittered down those quaint and narrow streets, which have always seemed to me more like streets of a seaport than of an inland town. We turned a corner; full before us drifted up the long and shadowy quiet of the Thames.

Mr. Rapson refused to be sociable until he had seen to the rubbing down and stabling of his horses; so we two wandered off together along the miniature quays, where boatmen with a deep-sea sailor’s swagger pulled clay pipes from their mouths and wished us a cheerfully mercenary “Good-mornin’.”

My curiosity was inarticulate with a multitude of crowding questions. I couldn’t make my choice which to ask first. I watched the swans sail in and out the tethered boats, and racked my brain for words. Then I blurted out, “What does it all mean, Uncle Obad?”

His eyes filled with tears. “My boy, it means success.”

I mumbled something typically boylike and inadequate about being “jolly glad.” He slipped his arm through mine with that endearing familiarity he had, as though I were a man. He was too excited to sit down, so we strolled along the quays, under the creeper-covered redbrick walls of the houses, and out of Richmond along the open river-bank.

“No one ever believed that I’d do it, Dante. I don’t think you did yourself. They all said, ‘Oh, Spreckles! Ha, the fellow who twiddles his thumbs while his wife works!’ They didn’t say it to my face—they didn’t dare. But that was what they thought about me. I seemed a failure—a good-natured incompetent. Even people who liked me felt ashamed of me—-I mean people who were dear to me, living in the same house. Women want their husbands to measure up to the standards of other men. It’s natural—I don’t blame ’em. But, you know, I never had a chance, old chap—never seemed to find my right kind of work. I couldn’t do little things well. I’m one of those imperial men who need something big to bring the best out of’ ’em. And now I’ve got it—I’ve got it, Dante.”

I caught his excitement, and begged him to tell me what this wonderful something was that had so suddenly transformed him from a nobody into a powerful person. I felt sure he was powerful, apart from anything he said, for he radiated opulence. He halted in the middle of the tow-path, gripping me by the shoulders, laughing into my face and bidding me guess. I guessed everything possible and impossible. Losing patience, “It’s diamond mines,” he burst out.

“But how did you get ’em, Uncle Obad, and where?”

For an instant I had a wild vision of men with pickaxes, shovels, and miners’ lamps, digging down into the bowels of the Christian Boarding House.

We seated ourselves on the bank with legs dangling above the water, and he told me. It seemed that Mr. George Rapson was the cause of this meteoric rise to prosperity. In April he had come to stay at Charity Grove as an ordinary paying-guest. From the first he was extraordinary and had amazed them with his wealth-his horses, his clothes, his friends, and his lavish manners. Most of his? fellow boarders were struggling young men, who earned two pounds a week in the City and paid twenty-five shillings for their keep and lodging. On the start they only knew that he was a South African, holiday-making in England. Little by little he let out that he was interested in diamond mines, and later that he owned The Ethiopian, one of the most promising properties of its kind in the world. The more communicative he became, the more surprised they were that he should make his head-quarters at a Christian Boarding House. There seemed no reason why he should not pay a higher price and enjoy the advantages of a secular environment.

One night he took my uncle into his room, locked the door, and let the cat out of the bag. It was my uncle and his personality that had attracted him. He had seen his name as secretary to so many thriving philanthropic societies that he had been led to appreciate his worth as an organizer. He wanted his help. He had come to England to unload a number of shares in The Ethiopian diamond mines, but it had to be done quietly and without advertisement. He had a number of unscrupulous enemies in the mining world who wanted to merge his property with theirs. They had tried to crowd him out in various ways—once by bringing about a law-suit to dispute his title to his holdings. If they should get wind that shares in The Ethiopian were to be bought in the open market, they would buy up every share in sight in an effort to gain control. Therefore it was necessary that business should be carried on in a private manner, and as far as possible through channels of personal friendship rather than those of the City and the Stock Exchange.

He had studied my uncle carefully and was convinced that he was just the man for the work. He proposed giving him a salary of one thousand pounds a year to act as his English agent, and a five-per-cent commission on all sales of shares that he was instrumental in effecting. His chief service was to consist in supplying lists of names and addresses of the moneyed religious public, and in applying his influence to the attracting of purchasers. The lists were of course to be culled mainly from the contributors to the charitable societies of which he was secretary. In fact, what the proposal amounted to, as I see it now, was that my uncle’s integrity, well-known among religious circles, was to guarantee the worth of the shares.

“It’s a close secret, Dante,” my uncle said. “Rapson won’t let me tell anyone, not even your Aunt Lavinia, the basis of our understanding. But I had to tell somebody; happiness isn’t happiness when you keep its reason to yourself. So I’ve told you, because we’ve had so many secrets together.”

We sat on, quite forgetful of time, watching the sleepy flowing of the river, building castles in the air. Last month they had declared their half-yearly dividend and it had amounted to twenty per cent. Since then the sale of shares had quickened enormously. Why, there was one morning’s mail when my uncle’s commissions alone had amounted to fifty pounds. Think of that—and it was only the beginning! Then we commenced to reckon how much he would have in five years, if his commissions amounted always to fifty pounds a morning, and he made a rule to spend nothing but his salary. It was the old childish game which had first made us chummy, of so many hens laying so many eggs, and how much would we have at the end of a twelvemonth.

He could afford to joke now concerning the penury of his lean years before the great Rapson had put in an appearance. He even made fun of his own spuffing, and laughed as he told me how much economy those odd shillings and half-crowns, which he used to give me in such a large manner, had cost him.

“But it’s all over now,” he said cheerfully, “and I’m going to be an important man. People are beginning to look up to me already. Who knows?—one day I may enter Parliament. I’m moving in a different social set—Rapson’s friends. He’s very well-connected. They’re a little gay and larky, you know; your Aunt Lavinia don’t quite know what to make of ’em. She’ll get over that. Oh, but it’s a big new world for me, Dante, and there’s heaps of things to do in it that I never knew about.”

On our way back the great George Rapson himself met us, and we found that we’d been gone an hour. He told us that he’d ordered lunch at a little inn, called The White Cross—one which hung over the river.

How proud I was to walk beside him as we re-entered Richmond! Everyone turned to stare after him as he passed, with his long fawn coat open and flapping, his easy rollicking laugh, his great height and distinguished presence. And I, Dante Cardover, was by way of being the friend of such a man! The gates of romance were indeed opening.

The White Cross Inn had separate balconies, built out from each of its second-story windows. In one of these our table was set. The little tiger helped the maid of the inn to wait upon us. And what a meal we had!—salmon and salad and fowl, stuffed veal and pine-apple, dates, almonds, and raisins—everything that a boy could ask to have. Up the walls of the inn climbed rambler roses and tumbled over the sides of the balcony. Beneath us lay the river, like a silver snake, lazily uncurled, sunning itself in great green meadows.

“This is to be your day, Dante,” Mr. Rapson said. “We brought some of these things from London because we knew you liked, ’em. You discovered your Uncle Obad before I did, and when no one else had. He’s told me all about it. Here’s your very good health.”

The tiger, who had been drawing the cork out of a large green bottle about half as tall as himself, now poured out a golden foamy liquid. I found one glass of it had the same care-freeing effect that the holding of Fiesole’s hand in the summer-house had had. I felt myself at ease in the world, and began to speak of the Reverend Robert Sneard as “jolly old Sneard,” and of all people who had authority over me with tolerant contempt. I gazed back from the security of my temporary Canaan, and gave my entertainers a whimsical account of my perilous journey through the wilderness of boyhood. It was wonderful even to myself how suddenly my shyness had vanished.

Mr. Rapson seemed highly amused. “You’ll do, young’un,” he said.

Then little, by little, he began to speak of Africa—-the dust, the Kaffirs, and the wide, parched veldt. He spoke of adventures with lions far up in the interior, and of how he had once been an ivory-hunter before he struck it lucky in the south. “I ran away from home when I was a youngster of twenty and all because of a girl.” He nodded at me wisely across the table, “Keep clear of the girlies, they’re the devil.”

I thought of Fiesole and inquired if some girls weren’t quite attractive devils. My uncle looked shocked in a genial fashion at this very free use of a forbidden word—the fear of Aunt Lavinia purged his vocabulary even when she was absent. But Mr. Rapson went red in the face and smacked his hands together, laughing loudly. “Of course they’re attractive; else how’d they tempt us?”

A punt, which had stolen up beneath our balcony, now caught his attention. A girl in a gown of flowered muslin, with a broad pink sash about her waist, was standing in the stern. She was alone, and all the river formed a landscape for her daintiness.

Mr. Rapson stared hard at her; her back was towards us. “Seem to know her hair,” he muttered. He half rose. “By George, it’s Kitty!”

Leaning far out over the balcony he called to her impulsively, “Kitty! Kitty!”

Very leisurely she lifted up to him a small flushed face, all laughter and naughtiness, and waved her hand. She was as pretty as love and a summer’s day could make a woman—but I wasn’t supposed to be old enough to observe such things as that.

She brought her punt in to the bank, while Mr. Rapson went down to help her out. When he gave her his hand to steady her, she kept it in hers. As she glanced mischievously up at him I heard her say, “Why, George, you terror, who’d have thought of meeting you here!”

He whispered something to her with a frown; she dropped him a mocking courtesy.

When he brought her up on to the balcony, he introduced her as his cousin Kitty. She bowed to us with a roguish grace, clinging close to his arm. “Now, Kitty,” he said, freeing himself, “you’ve got to behave.”

Seeing that my uncle was looking at her in a puzzled manner, she took the center of the stage without embarrassment, explaining, “Georgie and I are very old friends and I’ve not seen him, oh, for ages.”

When they had told her how they happened to be there and that it was my day, and that they had stolen me away from my lessons, she swung round on me with a kind of rapture. “Oh, what darlings to do that! And what a nice boy!” Without further ado she patted my face and kissed me. It was a new sensation. I blushed furiously, and was both pleased and abashed. “You may be older than I am,” I thought; “but you’re only a girl. In three years I could marry you.”

She was like a happy little dog in a meadow; never still, sending up birds—following nothing and chasing everything. In her conversation she gamboled about and never ceased gamboling. She didn’t sit quietly like the Snow Lady and all the other ladies of my acquaintance, putting in a word now and then, but letting the men do the talking. She made everybody look at her—perhaps, because she was so well worth looking at. Even before she had kissed me I was in love with her.

Mr. Rapson seemed a little nervous, and she appeared to delight in his fear of her daring.

“Georgie’s always had a passion for me,” she said, “though he won’t own it.” Then suddenly, seeing the troubled expression on his face, “How much has the poor dear told you about himself?”

She wriggled out of me something of the story of his doings. She eyed him archly from under her big hat and, when I had ended, leant across the table so their faces nearly met. “How many lions did my Georgie kill in Africa?”

“Be quiet, you little devil,” he laughed, seizing her by the hands.

The employment of that forbidden word set me wondering whether this was the girl for love of whom he first went wandering. But she looked too young for that.

We went into her punt and drifted down the river with the current. She played the madcap all the way, speaking to him often in baby language. He seemed to be amused by it, as a St. Bernard might be amused by the impertinence of a terrier. When she got too bold he would hold her hands until she was quiet, overpowering her with his great strength much the same as he did his horses. Then she would turn her attentions to me for a time, and I would make believe to myself she was Fiesole. My uncle looked on like a benevolent Father Christmas, dignified and smiling.

Dusk was settling when we started on the return journey. We found that we had drifted further than we had intended. Mr. Rapson took the pole and did the punting. Miss Kitty sang to him, she said to encourage him. I think it must have been then that I first heard Twickenham Ferry. She had to leave off part way through the last verse I remember. She said that the mist from the river choked her; but I, lying on the cushions beside her, somehow gathered the impression that she was nearly crying. When she broke down, under cover of darkness I got my hand into hers, and then she slipped her arm about me. After that she was very subdued and silent. My uncle fell off to sleep, and Mr. Rapson kept his face turned away from us, busy with his punting. I wondered if, after all, Miss Kitty was happy.

It was night when we arrived. She insisted on parting with us at the landing, saying that her houseboat was just across the river and she could take the punt home quite well unaccompanied. We had said good-by and were walking along the quay, when Rapson left us and ran back. I saw him come close and bend over her. They seemed to be whispering together. Then she pushed out into the river; the lights of the town held her for a time; darkness closed in behind her and she vanished.

On the drive back to the Red House I grew drowsy.

I tried to keep my eyes open, but even the soft moonlight seemed dazzling. The meadows and tall trees stealing by, ceased to stand out separate, but became a blur. The sharp trit-trot, trit-trot of the horses’ hoofs on the hard macadam road lulled me by their monotonous regularity.

When I came to myself I heard my uncle saying, “I like that little cousin of yours, Rapson; she’s charming and different from any woman that I ever met.”

“Daresay she is,” Rapson answered, dryly; “you’ve led such a sheltered life. Of course she isn’t my cousin.”

“Who is she, then?”

“Oh, a nymph.”

“A nymph! You have the better of me there. That’s a classical allusion, no doubt. I don’t understand.”

“Never mind, papa,” Mr. Rapson said cheerfully; “I didn’t think you would understand. It’s just as well.”

Then he commenced speaking to his horses. “So, girl! Steady there! Steady!”

I rubbed my eyes, and saw that we were ascending Eden Hill.