It was seldom that visitors penetrated to this room of his – indeed, he had chosen to live above the stables in preference to inside the house for this very reason, and on Rudge's big night he had looked forward to an unbroken solitude. He was surprised, therefore, as he checked the account of the Messrs Vanderschoot & Son for bulbs, to hear footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, the door had opened and Hugo walked in.
John's first impulse, as always when his cousin paid him a visit, was to tell him to get out. People who, when they saw Hugo, immediately told him to get out generally had the comfortable feeling that they were doing the right and sensible thing. But tonight there was in his demeanour something so crushed and forlorn that John had not the heart to pursue this admirable policy.
'Hullo,' he said. 'I thought you were down at the concert.'
Hugo uttered a short, bitter laugh: and, sinking into a chair, stared bleakly before him. His eyelids, like those of the Mona Lisa, were a little weary. He looked like the hero of a Russian novel debating the advisability of murdering a few near relations before hanging himself in the barn.
'I was,' he said. 'Oh yes, I was down at the concert all right.'
'Have you done your bit already?'
'I have. They put Ronnie and me on just after the Vicar's Short Address.'
'Wanted to get the worst over quick, eh?'
Hugo raised a protesting hand. There was infinite sadness in the gesture.
'Don't mock, John. Don't jeer. Don't jibe and scoff. I'm a broken man. I came here for sympathy. And a drink. Have you got anything to drink?'
'There's some whisky in that cupboard.'
Hugo heaved himself from the chair, looking more Russian than ever. John watched his operations with some concern.
'Aren't you mixing it pretty strong?'
'I need it strong.' The unhappy man emptied his glass, refilled it, and returned to the chair. 'In fact, it's a point verging very much on the moot whether I ought to have put any water in it at all.'
'What's the trouble?'
'This isn't bad whisky,' said Hugo, becoming a little brighter.
'I know it isn't. What's the matter?'
The momentary flicker of cheerfulness died out. Gloom once more claimed Hugo for its own.
'John, old man,' he said. 'We got the bird.'
'Yes?'
'Don't say "Yes?" like that, as if you had expected it,' said Hugo, hurt. 'The thing came on me as a stunning blow. I thought we were going to be a riot. Of course, mind you, we came on much too early. It was criminal to bill us next to opening. An audience needs carefully warming up for an intellectual act like ours.'
'What happened?'
Hugo rose and renewed the contents of his glass.
'There is a spirit creeping into the life of Rudge-in-the-Vale,' he said, 'which I don't like to see. A spirit of lawlessness and licence. Disruptive influences are at work. Would a Rudge audience have given me the bird a few years ago? Not a chance!'
'But you've never tried them with the Quarrel Scene from Julius Caesar before. Everybody has a breaking point.'
The argument was specious, but Hugo shook his head.
'In the good old days I could have done Hamlet's Soliloquy, and the hall would have rung with hearty cheers. It's just this modern lawlessness and Bolshevism. There was a very tough collection of the Budd Street element standing at the back, who should never have been let in. They started straight away chiyiking the vicar during his short address. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I merely supposed that they wanted him to cheese it and let the entertainment start. I thought that directly Ronnie and I came on we should grip them. But we were barely a third of the way through when there were loud cries of "Rotten!" and "Get off !"'
'I see what that meant. You hadn't gripped them.'
'I was never so surprised in my life. Mark you, I'll admit that Ronnie was pretty bad. He kept foozling his lines and saying "Oh, sorry!" and going back and repeating them. You can't get the best out of Shakespeare that way. The fact is, poor old Ronnie is feeling a little low just now. He got a letter this morning from his man, Bessemer, in London, a fellow who has been with him for years and has few equals as a trouser-presser, springing the news out of an absolutely clear sky that he's been secretly engaged for weeks and is just going to get married and leave Ronnie. Naturally, it has upset the poor chap badly. With a thing like that on his mind, he should never have attempted an exacting part like Brutus in the Quarrel Scene.'
'Just what the audience thought, apparently. What happened after that?'
'Well, we buzzed along as well as we could, and we had just got to that bit about digesting the venom of your spleen though it do split you, when the proletariat suddenly started bunging vegetables.'
'Vegetables?'
'Turnips, mostly, as far as I could gather. Now, do you see the significance of that, John?'
'How do you mean, the significance?'
'Well, obviously these blighters had come prepared. They had meant to make trouble right along. If not, why would they have come to a concert with their pockets bulging with turnips?'
'They probably knew by instinct that they would need them.'
'No. It was simply this bally Bolshevism one reads so much about.'
'You think these men were in the pay of Moscow?'
'I shouldn't wonder. Well, that took us off. Ronnie got rather a beefy whack on the side of the head and exited rapidly. And I wasn't going to stand out there doing the Quarrel Scene by myself, so I exited, too. The last I saw, Chas Bywater had gone on and was telling Irish dialect stories with a Swedish accent.'
'Did they throw turnips at him?'
'Not one. That's the sinister part of it. That's what makes me so sure the thing was an organized outbreak and all part of this Class War you hear about. Chas Bywater, in spite of the fact that his material was blue round the edges, goes like a breeze and gets off without a single turnip, whereas Ronnie and I . . . well,' said Hugo, a hideous grimness in his voice, 'this has settled one thing. I've performed for the last time for Rudge-in-the-Vale. Next year when they come to me and plead with me to help out with the programme, I shall reply "Not after what has occurred!" Well, thanks for the drink. I'll be buzzing along.' Hugo rose and wandered somnambulistically to the table. 'What are you doing?'
'Working.'
'Working?'
'Yes, working.'
'What at?'
'Accounts. Stop fiddling with those papers, curse you.'
'What's this thing?'
'That,' said John, removing it from his listless grasp and putting it out of reach in a drawer, 'is the diagram of a thing called an Alpha Separator. It works by centrifugal force and can separate two thousand seven hundred and twenty-four quarts of milk in an hour. It has also a Holstein butter-churner attachment, and a boiler which at seventy degrees centigrade destroys the obligatory and optional bacteria.'
'Yes?'
'Positively.'
'Oh? Well, damn it, anyway,' said Hugo.
IV
Hugo crossed the strip of gravel which lay between the stable-yard and the house, and, having found in his trouser-pocket the key of the back door, proceeded to let himself in. His objective was the dining-room. He was feeling so much better after the refreshment of which he had just partaken that reason told him he had found the right treatment for his complaint. A few more swift ones from the cellarette in the dining-room and the depression caused by the despicable behaviour of the Budd Street Bolshevists might possibly leave him altogether.
The passage leading to his goal was in darkness, but he moved steadily forward. Occasionally a chair would dart from its place to crack him over the shin, but he was not to be kept from the cellarette by trifles like that. Soon his fingers were on the handle of the door, and he flung it open, and entered. And it was at this moment that there came to his ears an odd noise.
It was not the noise itself that was odd. Feet scraping on gravel always make that unmistakable soun
d. What impressed itself on Hugo as curious was the fact that on the gravel outside the dining-room window feet at this hour should be scraping at all. His hand had been outstretched to switch on the light, but now he paused. He waited, listening. And presently in the oblong of the middle of the three large windows he saw dimly against the lesser darkness outside a human body. It was insinuating itself through the opening and what Hugo felt about this body was that he liked its bally cheek.
Hugo Carmody was no poltroon. Both physically and morally he possessed more than the normal store of courage. At Cambridge he had boxed for his University in the light-weight division and once, in London, the petty cash having run short, he had tipped a cloak-room attendant with an aspirin tablet. Moreover, although it was his impression that the few drops of whisky which he had drunk in John's room had but scratched the surface, their effect in reality had been rather pronounced. 'In some diatheses,' an eminent physician has laid down, 'whisky is not immediately pathogenic. In other cases the spirit in question produces marked cachexia.' Hugo's cachexia was very marked indeed. He would have resented keenly the suggestion that he was fried, boiled, or even sozzled, but he was unquestionably in a definite condition of cachexia.
In a situation, accordingly, in which many house-holders might have quailed, he was filled with gay exhilaration. He felt able and willing to chew the head off any burglar that ever packed a centrebit. Glowing with cachexia and the spirit of adventure, he switched on the light and found himself standing face to face with a small, weedy man beneath whose snub nose there nestled a waxed moustache.
'Stand ho!' said Hugo jubilantly, falling at once into the vein of the Quarrel Scene.
In the bosom of the intruder many emotions were competing for precedence, but jubilation was not one of them. If Mr Twist had had a weak heart, he would by now have been lying on the floor breathing his last, for few people can ever have had a nastier shock. He stood congealed, blinking at Hugo.
Hugo, meanwhile, had made the interesting discovery that it was no stranger who stood before him but an old acquaintance.
'Great Scott!' he exclaimed. 'Old Doc. Twist! The beautiful, tranquil thoughts bird!' He chuckled joyously. His was a retentive memory, and he could never forget that this man had once come within an ace of ruining that big deal in cigarettes over at Healthward Ho, and had also callously refused to lend him a tenner. Of such a man he could believe anything, even that he combined with the duties of a physical culture expert a little house-breaking and burglary on the side. 'Well, well, well!' said Hugo. 'Remember March, the Ides of March remember! Did not great Julius bleed for justice's sake? What villain touched his body that did stab and not for justice? Answer me that, you blighter, yes or no.'
Chimp Twist licked his lips nervously. He was a little uncertain as to the exact import of his companion's last words, but almost any words would have found in him at this moment a distrait listener.
'Oh, I could weep my spirit from my eyes!' said Hugo.
Chimp could have done the same. With an intense bitterness he was regretting that he had ever ignored the advice of one of the most intelligent magpies in Worcestershire and allowed Mr Molloy to persuade him into this rash venture. But he was a man of resource. He made an effort to mend matters. Soapy, in a similar situation, would have done it better, but Chimp, though not possessing his old friend's glib tongue and insinuating manners, did the best he could. 'You startled me,' he said, smiling a sickly smile.
'I bet I did,' agreed Hugo cordially.
'I came to see your uncle.'
'You what?'
'I came to see your uncle.'
'Twist, you lie! And, what is more, you lie in your teeth.'
'Now, see here . . . !' began Chimp, with a feeble attempt at belligerence.
Hugo checked him with a gesture.
'There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass by me like the idle wind, which I respect not. Must I give way and room to your rash choler? Shall I be frighted when a madman stares? By the gods, you shall digest the venom of your spleen though it do split you. And what could be fairer than that?' said Hugo.
Mr Twist was discouraged, but he persevered.
'I guess it looked funny to you, seeing me come in through a window. But, you see, I rang the front door bell and couldn't seem to make anyone hear.'
'Away, slight man!'
'You want me to go away?' said Mr Twist, with a gleam of hope.
'You stay where you are, unless you'd like me to lean a decanter of port up against your head,' said Hugo. 'And don't flicker,' he added, awakening to another grievance against this unpleasant little man.
'Don't what?' inquired Mr Twist, puzzled but anxious to oblige.
'Flicker. Your outline keeps wobbling, and I don't like it. And there's another thing about you that I don't like. I've forgotten what it is for the moment, but it'll come back to me soon.'
He frowned darkly: and for the first time it was borne in upon Mr Twist that his young host was not altogether himself. There was a gleam in his eyes which, in Mr Twist's opinion, was far too wild to be agreeable.
'I know,' said Hugo, having reflected. 'It's your moustache.'
'My moustache?'
'Or whatever it is that's broken out on your upper lip. I dislike it intensely. When Caesar lived,' said Hugo querulously, 'he durst not thus have moved me. And the worst thing of all is that you should have taken a quiet, harmless country house and called it such a beastly, repulsive name as Healthward Ho. Great Scott!' exclaimed Hugo. 'I knew there was something I was forgetting. All this while you ought to have been doing bending and stretching exercises!'
'Your uncle, I guess, is still down at the concert thing in the village?' said Mr Twist, weakly endeavouring to change the conversation.
Hugo started. A look of the keenest suspicion flashed into his eyes.
'Were you at that concert?' he said sternly.
'Me? No.'
'Are you sure, Twist? Look me in the face.'
'I've never been near any concert.'
'I strongly suspect you,' said Hugo, 'of being one of the ringleaders in that concerted plot to give me the bird. I think I recognized you.'
'Not me.'
'You're sure?'
'Sure.'
'Oh? Well, that doesn't alter the cardinal fact that you are the bloke who makes poor, unfortunate fat men do bending and stretching exercises. So do a few now yourself.'
'Eh?'
'Bend!' said Hugo. 'Stretch!'
'Stretch?'
'And bend,' said Hugo, insisting on full measure. 'First bend, then stretch. Let me see your chest expand and hear the tinkle of buttons as you burst your waistcoat asunder.'
Mr Twist was now definitely of opinion that the gleam in the young man's eyes was one of the most unpleasant and menacing things he had ever encountered. Transferring his gaze from this gleam to the other's well-knit frame, he decided that he was in the presence of one who, whether his singular request was due to weakness of intellect or to alcohol, had best be humoured.
'Get on with it,' said Hugo.
He settled himself in a chair and lighted a cigarette. His whole manner was suggestive of the blase' nonchalance of a Sultan about to be entertained by the court acrobat. But, though his bearing was nonchalant, that gleam was still in his eyes, and Chimp Twist hesitated no longer. He bent, as requested – and then, having bent, stretched. For some moments he jerked his limbs painfully in this direction and in that, while Hugo, puffing smoke, surveyed him with languid appreciation.
'Now tie yourself into a reef knot,' said Hugo.
Chimp gritted his teeth. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, and there came back to him the recollection of mornings when he had stood at his window and laughed heartily at the spectacle of his patients at Healthward Ho being hounded on to these very movements by the vigilant Sergeant-Major Flannery. How little he had supposed that there would ever come a time when he woul
d be compelled himself to perform these exercises. And how little he had guessed at the hideous discomfort which they could cause to a man who had let his body muscles grow stiff.
'Wait,' said Hugo, suddenly.
Mr Twist was glad to do so. He straightened himself, breathing heavily.
'Are you thinking beautiful thoughts?'
Chimp Twist gulped.
'Yes,' he said, with a strong effort.
'Beautiful, tranquil thoughts?'
'Yes.'
'Then carry on.'
Chimp resumed his calisthenics. He was aching in every joint now, but into his discomfort there had shot a faint gleam of hope. Everything in this world has its drawbacks and its advantages. With the drawbacks to his present situation he had instantly become acquainted, but now at last one advantage presented itself to his notice – the fact, to wit, that the staggerings and totterings inseparable from a performance of the kind with which he was entertaining his limited but critical audience had brought him very near to the open window.
'How are the thoughts?' asked Hugo. 'Still beautiful?'
Chimp said they were, and he spoke sincerely. He had contrived to put a space of several feet between himself and his persecutor, and the window gaped invitingly almost at his side.
'Yours,' said Hugo, puffing smoke meditatively, 'has been a very happy life, Twist. Day after day you have had the privilege of seeing my Uncle Lester doing just what you're doing now, and it must have beaten a circus hollow. It's funny enough even when you do it, and you haven't anything like his personality and appeal. If you could see what a priceless ass you look it would keep you giggling for weeks. I know,' said Hugo, receiving an inspiration, 'do the one where you touch your toes without bending the knees.'
In all human affairs the semblance of any given thing is bound to vary considerably with the point of view. To Chimp Twist, as he endeavoured to comply with this request, it seemed incredible that what he was doing could strike anyone as humorous. To Hugo, on the other hand, it appeared as if the entertainment had now reached its apex of wholesome fun. As Mr Twist's purple face came up for the third time, he abandoned himself wholeheartedly to mirth. He rocked in his chair, and, rashly trying to inhale cigarette smoke at the same time, found himself suddenly overcome by a paroxysm of coughing.