V

“WELL, you aren’t looking very chirpy,” Etta Stackpole said.

“I’m not feeling it,” Robert Grimshaw answered.

He was leaning over the rails in the Row, and Etta Stackpole sat on a huge chestnut that, its body motionless as a statue, its legs planted wide apart, threw its arched neck from time to time into the air, and dispersed great white flakes of foam.

“Time goes on, too,” he continued. “It goes on, and it’s only you that it passes by.”

“Thanks,” she said, and she touched her hat with her crop.

With the clitter of stirrups and the creak of leather and the indistinguishable thud of hoofs, the riders went by behind her in twos and threes. Behind his back was the perpetual crushing of feet and whisper of innumerable conversations, conducted in discreet undertones. It was a place of a myriad rustlings and small, pleasant sounds; and along the great length of the Row, vanishing into the distance, the young green of the leaves swayed in the April breezes. A huge cloud toppled motionless above the barracks, pink against the blue sky and dull in its softened shadows.

Robert Grimshaw had walked along nearer the rails than was his habit until he came to where Etta Stackpole—it was just as much her habit, so that he had known where to find her—was talking to three men in her brilliant way. And raising his head, Robert Grimshaw had inserted himself between Hugo van Voss, a Dutch Jew beginning to show adiposity, and Charles McDiarmid, who, with his grey peaked beard and slight lisp, was asking why she hadn’t come to the Caledonian Market last Tuesday to look for bargains in the bric-à-brac that is displayed there upon the broad flagstones.

“Oh, I’m not a bit gone on bric-à-brac really,” she said, “and it’s the most tiring thing in the world.”

“Well, Hugo there,” McDiarmid lisped slightly, in his gentle and sibilant tones, “got a Chinese tapestry in scarlet silk as big as the side of the Ritz, with realistic dragons and mandolines embroidered on it in sky-blue and purple. He got it for thirteen and sixpence, and he’s going to make dressing-gowns out of it.”

Van Voss protested inaudibly.

“Oh, you are, you know you are,” McDiarmid asserted gaily, “and we’re going to carry you in triumph down the Mall. Get Van Voss to give you one, Lady Hudson, and get Grimshaw here to drive you down to Bushey on a coach labelled ‘Queen of Sheba.’”

“He doesn’t take me anywhere any more,” Etta Hudson said.

And Grimshaw answered desultorily:

“Only give me a chance.”

Etta Hudson sustained, with a brilliant indifference, the glances from the half-closed eyes of McDiarmid and those of the dark, large, rather insolent and inscrutable orbs of the stockbroker.

“Oh yes,” she said to Grimshaw. “You take me down to Bushey again. I’m booked up three deep for the next six months, but I’ll chuck anybody you like except my dressmaker.”

“Booked up?” Robert Grimshaw leant over the rails to say. “Yes, we’re all booked up. We’re an idle, useless crowd, and we never have an instant to do anything that we like.”

McDiarmid, reaching over a long claw, caught hold of the shiny financier, and, hauling him off up the Row, seemed to involve him in a haze of monetary transactions. He was, indeed, supposed at that moment to be selling Van Voss a castle on the Borders, where the King had stayed.

“Well, we used to be chummy enough in the old days,” Etta Hudson said. “Yes, you take me down to Bushey again. Don’t you remember the time we went, and Dudley stopped at home because he thought he was sickening for the measles?”

It was then, after their eyes had encountered for a long minute, that Etta Hudson had said that Robert Grimshaw wasn’t looking very chirpy. Except for the moments when their eyes did meet—the moments when each wondered what the deuce the other was up to—Etta Hudson flung out her words with an admirable naturalness:

“Oh, take a pill, and don’t talk about the passing years,” she said. “It’s the spring that’s crocking you up. Horses are just like that. Why, even Orlando here stumbles at the fall of the leaf and about Chestnut Sunday. Yes, you take me down to Bushey. You know you’ll find me as good as a tonic. I should say you’re having an overdose of too-brainy society. Doesn’t Dudley’s wife go in for charity organization or politics? She’s a sort of a little wax saint, isn’t she, got up to look like a Gaiety girl? I know the sort. Yes, you tell me about Dudley Leicester’s wife. I’d like to know. That’s a bargain. You take me down to Bushey and talk about Dudley Leicester’s wife all the way down, and then you can talk about me all the way up, and we’re quits.”

Robert Grimshaw raised his eyes till, dark and horseshoe-like, they indicated, as it were, a threat—as it were, a challenge.

“If you put it up to me to that extent,” he said, “I’ll bet you a new riding-habit that you look as if you could do with, that you won’t come down and lunch in Bushey to-day.”

“What’s the matter with my habit?” she said. “I’ve had it six years. If it’s been good enough for all that time, it’s good enough for now. Give me time to say a word to old Lady Collimore. My husband wants me to keep in with her, and she’s got a new astrologer living with her as a P. G. I won’t be five minutes after I’ve spoken to her, and then I’m your man.”

“You’ll come in these things?” Grimshaw said.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she answered. “It’s just popping into a taxi-cab and getting out at the Park gates and walking across the Park, and having lunch at one of those little ‘pub’ places, and then I suppose you’ll let the taxi drop me at the door. You won’t turn me adrift at the Marble Arch, or send me home by tram?”

“Well, you are like a man,” Robert Grimshaw said. “You look like a man, and you talk like a man....”

She tapped her horse with her crop.

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said. “But I wish—I wish to hell I had been one,” she called over her shoulder, whilst slowly she walked her horse along by the railings, searching with her eyes for the venerable figure and tousled grey hair emerging centaur-like from its bath-chair—the figure of the noted Lady Collimore, who had mysterious gifts, who had been known to make top-hats perform the feat of levitation, and whose barrack-like house at Queen’s Gate had an air of being filled with astrologers, palmists, and faith-healers.

And the first thing that, bowler-hatted and in her tight habit, Etta Hudson said to Grimshaw in the taxi-cab was:

“Now tell me the truth. Is everything that I’m going to say likely to be used as evidence against me?”

“Oh, come, come!” Robert Grimshaw said.

They were whirled past the tall houses and the flitting rails. They jerked along at a terrific rate down through Kensington until, falling into a stream of motor-propelled vehicles near the Albert Hall, their speed was reduced to a reasonable jog-trot.

“Then you only want to know things,” Etta Stackpole said. “You see, one never can tell in these days what who’s up to. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have fixed it up with Leicester’s wife. She can divorce him and have you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing of that sort,” Grimshaw said.

She looked him up and down with her eyes, curious and scrutinizing.

“I should have thought,” she said, “that she would have preferred you to Dudley. I’m only telling you this that you mayn’t think me mad, suspecting the other thing, but I see you from my window going into Dudley’s house, with your dog behind you. And I should have said that that child preferred you to Dudley, or would jolly well find out her mistake after she’d married him.”

“Oh, it’s nothing of that sort,” Grimshaw reiterated.

“I’ll take your word for it,” she answered. “So I expect it’s only curiosity that brought you here. Why do you always want to know such a jolly lot about people? It must give you a lot of trouble, and you don’t make anything out of it.”

“My dear child,” Robert Grimshaw said, “why do you always...?” He hesitated and she put in mockingly:

“Go in for cutting-out expeditions. That is what was on the tip of your tongue, wasn’t it, Robert? I’ve heard you say that of me from half a dozen sources. Well, I’ll tell you. I do what I do because I want to. It’s a hobby.”

“And I do what I do because I want to,” Robert Grimshaw mocked her. “It’s my hobby. We’re Eve and the serpent. You want the apple and I want—I’ve got the knowledge.”

“You have, have you?” she said. And when Grimshaw answered in the affirmative, she uttered a long and reflective, “Ah!” And then suddenly she said, “But this isn’t in the contract. You ought to talk about Dudley’s wife all the way down to Bushey. Tell me about her!”

They were whirling through the dirty and discoloured streets of Hammersmith, while pieces of waste-paper flew up into the air in the wind of their passage. It was a progress of sudden jerks, long, swift rushes, and of sudden dodgings aside.

“Ah, Pauline Leicester!” Grimshaw said; “you haven’t got to fear her on one side, but you have on another. She’s a quaint, dear, cool, determined little person. I shouldn’t advise you to do Dudley Leicester any more harm because, though she’s not in the least bit revengeful, she won’t let you play any more monkey-tricks to damage poor Dudley. Don’t you make the mistake of thinking she’s only a little wax doll. She’s much more dangerous than you could ever be, because she doesn’t spread herself so much abroad. You’ve damaged poor Dudley quite enough.”

A sudden light came into her fierce eyes.

“You don’t mean to say ...” she said.

“Oh, I don’t mean to say,” he answered, “Dudley’s perishing of passion for you, and I don’t mean to say that you’ve spread dissension between Dudley and Pauline. It’s worse than that ...”

“What is it; what the deuce is it?” she interrupted him.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s not in the contract! You shall hear as soon as we’re in Bushey Park, not before. We’re going to talk of Pauline Leicester all the way down.”

“I hear Katya Lascarides has come back,” she said. “Well, then, about your Pauline.”

“Well,” Grimshaw said, “I’ve said you haven’t got to fear Pauline’s taking any revenge on you, but you have got to fear that she’ll upset your little game with Dudley Leicester.”

“What’s my little game with Dudley, anyhow?” she said. “I don’t want him.”

“What Pauline’s going to do is to make a man of him,” Robert Grimshaw said. “She’ll put some life into him. She’ll put some backbone into him. He’ll end up by being a pretty representative County Member. But your game has always been to make a sort of cross between a puppy and a puppet out of him. It’s that little game that Pauline will spoil.”

She turned a furious red.

“Now, before God,” she said, “I’d have made a good wife to him. You haven’t the right to say that to me, Robert Grimshaw.” And she picked furiously at her thick riding-gloves with one hand after the other. “By Jove, if I’d my crop with me, I think I should lay it over your back.”

“You couldn’t lay it over my back,” he said placidly, “because I’m sitting down; but I’m not insulting you in that way. I dare say you’d have been perfectly faithful to Dudley—faithful and probably furiously jealous too; but you wouldn’t have made a man of him. He’d have lived a sort of doll’s life under your petticoats. You’d probably have made him keep a racing-stable, and drop a pot of money at Monte Carlo, and drop another pot over bridge, and you’d have got him involved all round, and he’d have dragged along somehow whilst you carried on as women to-day do carry on. That’s the sort of thing it would have been. Mind! I’m not preaching to you. If people like to live that sort of life, that’s their business. It takes all sorts to make a world, but ...”

Lady Hudson suddenly put her hand upon his knee.

“I’ve always believed, Robert Grimshaw,” she said—“I always did believe that it was you who made Dudley break off from me. You’re the chap, aren’t you, that made him look after his estates, and become a model landowner, and nurse the county to give him a seat? All that sort of thing.”

“I’m the chap who did look after his estates,” Robert Grimshaw said. “I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have influenced Dudley Leicester against you; I didn’t, as a matter of fact. I never said a word against you in my life; but it’s possible, of course, that my taking up his land business, out of sheer meddlesomeness, may have influenced him against you. Dudley’s got more in him than appears on the surface. Or, at least, he can stick straight in a way if he is put into it, and just about that time Dudley got it into his head that he had a duty to his county and his country, and so on ...”

Etta Stackpole’s fingers moved convulsively.

“Oh, my man,” she said, “what the deuce’s business was it of yours? Why couldn’t you have let him alone?”

“I’m telling you the worst of what I did to you,” Robert Grimshaw said. “I didn’t take Dudley Leicester from you. I’ve never said a word against you, but I probably kept him from coming back to you once he had thrown you over. I don’t mean to say that I did it by persuasions; he was dogged enough not to come back, but I dare say he would have returned to you if he hadn’t had his mind occupied—if I hadn’t occupied his mind with barn-roofs and rents and field-draining, and the healthy sort of things that keep a man off women.”

“Oh, you devil!” Etta Hudson said.

“Who’d have thought you had it in you? Where do you get it from? You look just like any other Park loafer.”

“I suppose,” Robert Grimshaw said speculatively, “it’s because I’m really Greek. My name’s English, and my training’s been English, and I look it, and smell it, and talk it, and dress the part; but underneath I should think I’m really a Dago. You see, I’m much more my mother’s child than my father’s. She was a Lascarides, and that’s a clan name. Belonging to a clan makes you have what no Englishman has—a sense of responsibility. I can’t bear to see chaps of my class—of my clan and my country—going wrong. I’m not preaching; it’s my private preference. I can’t bear it because I can’t bear it. I don’t say that you ought to feel like me. That’s your business.”

“My word!” Etta Hudson said with a bitter irony, “we English are a lost race, then!”

“I never said so,” Robert Grimshaw answered. “I said you were an irresponsible one. You’ve other qualities, but not that one. But that’s why I’ve been a sort of Dutch uncle to numbers of young men of our class. Dudley’s not the only one, but he is the chief of them.”

“And so you took him up, and dry-nursed him, and preached to him ...”

“Oh, I never preached to him,” Grimshaw said; “he had the intelligence to see ...”

“To see that I’m an undesirable woman?” she asked ironically.

“To see, if it’s held under his nose, that it’s profitable and interesting and healthy to do the best for the people that Chance, Providence, whatever it is, has put under him in this world. It helps them; it helps him. He’s got a desire by now to be a good landlord. It’s a languid desire, but it’s as much a part of him as his desire to dress well.”

Etta Stackpole said:

“By gum!”

They were dodging between a huge electric tram and the kerb of a narrow street beside a grim and squalid brewery; they dipped down under a railway arch; they mounted a rise, and ran beside a green, gay with white painted posts and rails, and surrounded by little houses. Etta looked meditatively in front of her with an air as if she were chewing tobacco.

“By thunder, as Clemmy van Husum says,” she brought out at last, “you dry-nursed him till he’s good enough for marrying a little person you’ve kept in a nursery, and she——”

“She takes charge!” Robert Grimshaw said. “She’ll give him personal ambition, or if she doesn’t do that she’ll make him act just as if he had it, in order to please her. He’d kiss the dust off her feet.”

“Thanks,” she said spitefully. “Rub it in.”

The cab swayed along in the gay weather.

“What a father-protector you are,” she said, “according to your own account, and all because you’re a—what is it?—a Dago? Well, well! you’ve got all the virtues of Greece and all the virtues of us too. Well, well, well!”

“Oh, come, come,” Robert Grimshaw said. “I’ve given you your opening; you’re quite right to take it. But I’ve not the least doubt that I’ve got the Dago vices if any pressure came to bring ’em out. I dare say I shouldn’t be straight about money if I were hard up. Fortunately, I’m not. I dare say I should be untruthful if I ever had occasion to be. I should be rather too tender-hearted and too slack to get on in the world if I had to do it—at least, I suppose so.”

She said:

“Well, well! Here’s a joke! Here we have—what is it?—a Dago—a blamed Dago, as Clement P. would say.”

“You know the Van Husums?” Grimshaw interrupted her.

“Oh, I thought I’d tickle you,” she said. “Yes, I know the Van Husums, and your Katya Lascarides was in their employment, wasn’t she? But I’m not going to talk of your other flame, Mr. Robert Hurstlett Grimshaw. You don’t play your Oriental harem trick in this taxi-cab. One man one girl’s the motto here. I only introduced Clement P.’s name to stir you up; you’re so damn calm.”

“This is a fight,” Grimshaw said. “You score one and go on.”

“What are we fighting for?” she asked.

“Ah! that’s telling,” he said.

“If you only want to tell me I’m a bad, bad girl,” she said, “I know it already. I’m rather proud of it.”

“You ought to be,” he said; “you play up to it well. But it’s not that that would have brought me here. I’ve got an object.”

“Want to make me promise to leave your adopted nephew in peace?” she asked.

“Oh, Pauline’s taken hold again,” Grimshaw said. “You aren’t going to have another look in.”

“Oh, I’ve had all I want of him,” she said. “She can have the dregs.”

“That’s a pretty appropriate word at present,” he said. “A good word for Dudley—dregs.”

“What the deuce do you mean?” she asked. “Anything happened to Dudley?”

“You’ll hear when we get to Bushey,” he said. “I’ll tell you when we pass the fifth chestnut of the avenue.”

“What the deuce is it?” she asked.

He answered merely:

“Ah!”

Her hard eyes gazed straight forward through the screen of glass.

“Something happened to Dudley?” she said. “And it’s not that his wife’s lamning into him about me.”

“Oh, Pauline takes it as the negligible thing that it was,” Grimshaw said.

She uttered:

“Thanks!” still absently. Then “Dregs?” she repeated. Suddenly she turned upon him and caught hold of his hand.

“It’s not ...” she began.

“You’ll hear when we get to Bushey,” he said. “It’s ten minutes still.”

“Oh, you devil!” she said—“you tormenting devil!”

He just lifted up one hand in token of assent.

“Yes, it’s the function of the devil to torment the damned. You’ve had what you wanted in Dudley Leicester’s case; now you’ve got to take what you get for it—from his best friend.”

“His wife’s best friend,” she said.

“And his wife’s best friend,” Grimshaw repeated calmly. They were shooting fast over bad roads between villas. Etta Stackpole may have shaken with laughter, or it may have been merely a “Thankee, marm” in the road.

“Well, it’s a damn funny thing,” she said. “Here’s our Dago God Almighty splitting himself to set up a bright and beautiful English family upon its respectable legs. What a lark! I suppose it’s out of gratitude to the land that gives him hospitality. He picks up a chap without a backbone and turns him into a good landlord. Then, when he’s made (I suppose you have made) perfectly sure of his morals, he hands him over to a bright and beautiful English girl ‘of good family and antecedents’ (that’s the phrase, ain’t it?), and she’s to run the dummy along till it turns into a representative Cabinet Minister—not brilliant, but a good household article. That’s the ticket, isn’t it?”

Grimshaw nodded his head slowly.

“And so the good old bachelor makes a little family for himself—a little harem that doesn’t go farther than the tea-table—with what he can get of Katya Lascarides for Sultana No. 1 and Ellida Langham and child for No. 2. No. 2’s more platonic, but it’s all the same little dilly-dally, Oriental, father-benefactor game; and No. 3’s Pauline—little pretty Pauline. Oh, my eye!”

She regarded the gates of the Park flying towards them.

“What is it the Orientals allowed? Four wives and forty of the other sort? Well, I suppose you’ve plenty of lesser favourites. Why not take me on, too?”

“Oh, you!” Grimshaw said good-humouredly—“you’d always be upsetting the apple-cart. You’d have to be bow-stringed.”

“I believe a sort of Sultan father-confessor would be good for me,” she said, as she gathered her skirts together.

The car had stopped near the dingy yellow Park wall, whose high gates showed the bourgeoning avenue and the broad, sandy road.

“Well, this has been what you might call a conversation galante so far.”