He shambled oat, leaving behind him a throbbing silence. Anne was staring at Lionel. Lionel was staring at the pork pie.
Anne's gaze was alive with incredulous horror. Standing there with taut lips and bent brows, she enveloped Lionel and the pork pie in one comprehensive look of amazement and disgust. Those words of Jeff's about the gentleman's agreement, taken in conjunction with the gift he had brought, had told her the whole sordid story. She knew now the answer to the question she had been asking.
The scales had fallen from her eyes. For the first time since his fatal beauty had ensnared her, she was seeing Lionel Green steadily and seeing him whole. And as she realized what manner of man he was, her soul seethed in a turmoil of revolt, and love fell from her like a garment.
For if we look askance at the wretch who sells himself for gold, how much more do we recoil from him who allows himself to be bought with pork pies. Remembering her uncle's estimate of the material required for making a man like Lionel Green, there came to her the thought that his specifications had erred on the side of extravagance. The bit of putty, she felt, would be ample, without the lumps of coal.
"So that was why!" she said.
The fact that in her emotion she had sunk her voice to a whisper, added to the fact that Lionel Green's attention was so urgently engaged elsewhere, caused the words to fall unheeded. Lionel was still staring at the pork pie, absorbed. No Israelite, contemplating a wholly unforeseen consignment of manna, could have been less in touch for the time being with extraneous things.
Lionel Green's was a stomach of the peevish, impatient type. For nearly an hour it had been sending out messages couched in a more and more querulous strain, putting in rush orders for something solid and making a fuss when service was denied it. And now it had received official information that something solid would shortly be on the way.
"I say!" he exclaimed, his voice quivering. "This is all right, what? Sit down and have a slice," he said hospitably, quite forgetting that a short while before he had been urging his visitor to leave. A Duff and Trotter pork pie permits of no divided thoughts. "I've got a knife in the drawer. You'll have to use your fingers, I'm afraid."
Anne found herself choking, partly at the very thought of sharing this pie of shame, partly because emotion was still interfering with the smooth working of her vocal cords.
"Lionel!"
"And there's no salt, of course."
"Lionel!"
" Or mustard."
"Lionel, I'm not going to marry you."
"What?"
"Not."
"Not what?"
The facilities for stamping the foot were not perfect in Lionel Green's bedroom, for the carpet was a thick and expensive one, but they were superior to those of the rhododendron walk, and the impact of Anne's foot made quite a satisfactory bang.
"I am not going to marry you!"
For the first time in the history of that illustrious firm, a Duff and Trotter pork pie failed to retain its possessor's undivided attention. Lionel Green was listening now, and at these words, so definite in their import, so impossible to misunderstand, he started visibly, displacing a flake of crust, which fell silently to the carpet. The fact that he did not stoop to retrieve it, though there was quite a bit of jelly adhering to its inner surface, showed how deeply her statement had affected him.
"What!"
"No."
"You're not going to marry me?"
"No."
"Don't be absurd."
"I mean it."
"But why?"
"Think it over."
There was a pause. A dark flush crept into Lionel Green's face.
"Think it over?" He laughed a bitter, sardonic laugh, and put the pork pie on the chest of drawers. He nodded his head, causing the scent of brilliantine to float about the room like an unseen presence. "I don't need to think it over. I see it all."
"I thought you would."
"You're in love with that fellow Miller."
This monstrous charge, so totally unexpected, deprived Anne completely of the power of utterance. She stared dumbly, and Lionel proceeded to develop his theme. His manner was stern, his eye hard. Anyone who had been present at the trying of the case of Pennefather v. Tarvin would have been irresistibly reminded of plaintiff's counsel cross-examining witness for the defence.
"I've suspected it for days. You're always together. You don't seem happy out of his company. He's always kissing you---“
"He isn't always kissing me. He kissed me once."
"So you say!" said Lionel Green, and emitting another of those sardonic laughs, he turned to the mirror to arrange his moustache. He had a feeling that it needed attention, and what he had to say could be said just as well, perhaps even better, with his back turned.
"Well, if you think I'm going to sit meekly by and put up with that sort of thing, you're very much mistaken. I shall go at once to Aunt Clarissa and tell her who he is. That'll settle his hash pretty quick. He'll be out of the house to-night."
His moustache was all right now. He turned, to find that any further remarks he might have to make would be addressed to an absent audience. Anne had gone.
CHAPTER XXIII
Jeff’s tottering feet, having borne him out of Lionel Green's bedroom, had taken him down the stairs, across the hall and through the green baize door which led to the quarters of the domestic staff. His objective was the butler's pantry. After that interview with Anne, he wanted sympathy and something to keep the cold out, and it had occurred to him that Lord Uffenham would provide both.
Lord Uffenham, by the time he arrived, had wearied of trying to find water with the diviner's rod and was shaking pennies in a bowl to see how many came out heads and how many tails. From this intellectual pursuit he looked up and greeted Jeff with his customary affability.
"Hullo, young feller."
"Hullo," said Jeff, hollowly.
"Anne was looking for you."
"She found me. May I have a slight glass of port?"
"Help yourself."
"Thank you," said Jeff.
He drained the beaker, and felt better. Life seemed to return to the frozen limbs. It would be too much to say that he had thawed out, but he thought he might if he had another. He had another, and Lord Uffenham remembered that Anne was not the only person who had been looking for his young friend.
"Lord-love-a-duck!" he exclaimed. "I'd clean forgotten. Mrs. Cork!"
Jeff nodded.
"She found me, too."
"Has she booted yer out?"
"No. As far as the Cork angle is concerned, all is well. I had a chat with her, and she is letting me stay on."
"In spite of your not being the real I-forget-the-feller's-dam-name?"
"J. Sheringham Adair."
"That's right. In spite of your not being the real J. Sheringham Adair?"
"Yes."
"Extraordinary."
"Not so very. A fair-minded, clear-thinking woman, she realizes what a venial offence it is not to be J. Sheringham Adair. As she pointed out, she is not J. Sheringham Adair herself, nor are many of her best friends. Could I borrow another drop of the old and fruity?"
"Have all yer want. That's what it's there for," said Lord Uffenham, and feeling that he had now done all that could be expected of him in the way of playing the genial host and seeing to his guest's comfort, unbuttoned his waistcoat and prepared to strike a sterner note.
Anne's revelations in this pantry so short a while before had shaken the altruistic peer a good deal. A kindly elder, anxious to bring the young folks together, does not like to learn that his advice, based on the experience of a lifetime, has been neglected by the man whose happiness it was intended to promote.
He spoke now, accordingly, with a grave reproach in his voice, the loving father rebuking the erring son.
"Spiller."
"Miller."
"Are you sure?"
" Quite sure."
"I'm bad at names," admitted Lord Uff
enham. " Always was. I remember a girl called Kate, back in the year 1912, giving me the push because I wrote to her as Mabel. It might be simpler if I called you Walter."
"It would be the ideal solution," Jeff agreed, "if it were my name."
"Isn't it?"
"No."
"Then what is your dashed name?"
"Geoffrey."
"Of course. Anne calls you Jeff."
Jeff winced.
"She used to call me Jeff." Lord Uffenham mused.
"I knew a girl in 1907 that they used to call Jeff. Her name was Jefferson."
"And did you alienate her affections by sending her a telegram addressed to Smith?"
The conversation had worked round to just the point where Lord Uffenham wanted it. The sternness of his manner became more marked.
"No, young feller, I did not. If you wish to know, I alienated her affections by treating her with the distant respect of a man brushing flies off a sleeping Venus. I was a mere callow youth at the time, and I had the insane idea that what women appreciated was being looked up to as if they were goddesses. This Jefferson was in the chorus at the Gaiety, and she didn't understand that sort of thing. Shortly after I had taken her out in a punt on the river one summer afternoon, it was brought to my attention that she was going about London saying I was a muff."
"A what?"
"A muff. An expression of that period signifying a young feller deficient in spirit and enterprise. What Mrs. Molloy would describe as a boob, a sap, or possibly a wet smack."
This implied intimacy with the most dangerous of her sex startled Jeff.
"Are you seeing much of Mrs. Molloy these days?"
"Quite a good deal."
"I wouldn't confide in her too extensively."
"How d'yer mean?"
"Well, about those diamonds, for instance."
" My dear feller! Of course not. As if I should dream of doing such a thing. When it comes to keeping a secret, I'm like the silent tomb. Yes," said Lord Uffenham, resuming his reminiscences, "she was going about telling everybody I was a muff. It appeared that she had been expecting something radically different from my scrupulously correct behaviour. That episode taught me a lesson which I have never forgotten. It is a lesson which I have striven to pass on to you. But have you learned it? No. After all I said, in spite of the fact that I pleaded with you—yes, dash it, with tears in my eyes—to grab Anne and hug her till her ribs squeaked, you appear to have been muddling along with that idiotic Troubadour stuff of yours and, as I foresaw, getting nowhere. She was in here just now reiterating that she loved Lionel Green. Disheartening, I call it. Enough to make a man feel he'll never lend anyone a helping hand again." Jeff smiled wanly.
"You are not quite up to the minute with your information. Since you saw her, there has been a rather abrupt change in the position of affairs. Troubadour Ordinaries have taken a sharp drop, and there has been a corresponding rise in Catch-As-Catch-Can Preferred."
"Hey?"
"I took your advice." "You kissed her?"
"I did."
"Splendid. So everything's all right?"
"Terrific. Except that she won't speak to me."
"It worked out like that, did it?"
"That was how it worked out."
Lord Uffenham laid a soothing hand on Jeff's knee. At least, though it nearly broke the bone, Jeff assumed that it was intended to soothe.
"Don't you worry, my boy. She'll come round."
"You think so?"
"Sure of it."
"No need for me to commit suicide?"
"Not the slightest."
"Fine," said Jeff. "I was just going to ask if you could lend me half a brick and a bit of string, so that I could drown myself in the pond."
The sudden jerking of Lord Uffenham's glass, nearly spilling some of its precious content, showed that the word had touched a chord.
"Pond! That reminds me. Did she tell you about the pond?"
"No, she did not tell me about the pond. Even now," said Jeff, "you appear not to have grasped the inwardness of what I have been saying. You seem to be under the impression that she and I are on excellent terms and conduct long conversations on any subject that happens to crop up—as it might be ponds. This is quite erroneous. Such talking as takes place between us is done almost exclusively by me. I occasionally extract an 'Oh?' from her, and glad to get it, but for the most part she confines herself to freezing looks. Just try to form in your mind the picture of a female Trappist monk on one of her more taciturn mornings, and you won't waste valuable time enquiring if she has been telling me about the pond. Arising from this, why should she tell me about the pond? Assuming that our relations were such as to permit her to bring herself to tell me about the pond, what would she have told me about it? And what pond?"
Lord Uffenham had made a discovery which others had made before him. He imparted it to his companion.
"Young man, you talk too bloody much."
Jeff was wounded.
"It's all very well to say that, but when I substitute action for words, look where it gets me. I think I'll borrow that brick, after all, just to be on the safe side."
"If you'll let me get a word in edgeways---"
"Certainly, certainly. You would speak of ponds?"
"You know the pond here?"
"Of course. One of Nature's beauty spots. What with its sloping banks, carpeted with verdure, its lily pads---"
"Walter!"
"Jeff."
"I mean Jeff, dammit. May I ask you one simple question?"
"Proceed."
"That mouth of yours. Does it shut? It does? Then shut it, blast yer. Lord-love-a-duck, anyone would think you were one of those ghastly fellers in Shakespeare that do soliloquies. About this pond. I was telling Anne it was quite possible that I might have hidden the diamonds in it. And do you know what she said?"
"'Did she say anything?"
"Of course she did."
" This must have been a long time ago."
" She said she would get Lionel Green to look there."
"Absurd."
"So I told her."
"Lionel Green may possibly have improved in his habits since the days of school to the extent of going into the bathroom and locking the door and splashing the water about with his hand, or more probably the bath brush, but you would never get him into a pond. And, if by some miracle you did, he would never find anything. Though, mind you, I would love to see him paddling in a pond—standing, as it were, with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet. My idea would be to loll on the bank and make funny cracks about September morn."
"Walter!"
"Hullo?"
"You're talking again."
"I'm sorry."
"You say Anne won't speak to you. I don't suppose you give her a chance. Of all the garrulous, gabby ... However, I won't go into that now. You must search that pond."
"I'll do it tonight."
"In the dark?"
"There's a moon. Can you lend me a bathing costume?"
"Haven't got one."
"I'll borrow Shepperson's. I know he has one, because I've seen him dancing in it before breakfast. You're sure the stuff is there?"
"Not sure, no. I've had too many disappointments to be sure of anything nowadays. But, as I was telling Anne, the word 'pond' suddenly came flashing into my mind. I thought it significant. It means something."
"For one thing, a cold in the head for me."
"Don't falter, Walter."
"Who's faltering? And my name isn't Walter. I'm up and doing, with a heart for any fate. As a matter of fact, the whole scheme fits in perfectly with my plans. If I find the diamonds, I'll throw them ashore to you, and then I can just go ahead and be drowning myself."
"I don't like to hear you talk like that."
"You don't like to hear me talk at all."
"I've already told you that she'll come round."
"She won't."
"She will."
&nbs
p; "She won't. You're basing your theory on your own experience, and it doesn't apply to the case in hand. I dare say girls used to come round in 1911, and possibly even in 1912, but Anne is different."
"No girl is different."
"Yes, she is, if she isn't the same. I offended her past forgiveness. I shocked her to the foundations of her being."
"You didn't."
"I did, I tell you. I was there."
Lord Uffenham bestowed another bone-crushing buffet on his young friend's knee.
"Don't you worry, my boy. I know Anne, and I assure you she will come round. Lord-love-a-duck, don't you think girls like being kissed?"
"By the right man."
"Well, that's what you are. You're just the chap I'd have picked for her. Don't have a moment's uneasiness. I'm the one that ought to be feeling uneasy.'
"You? Why?"
A solemn look had come into Lord Uffenham's face. "Because, if we don't find those diamonds, I shall have to make the supreme sacrifice."
"What do you mean?"
"Perfectly simple. Anne's little bit of money was my sacred trust, wasn't it? If I've gone and lost it, I shall have to do something about it, shan't I? See that she's all right, and all that sort of thing? Of course, I shall. As a man of honour, I have no alternative. But I don't mind telling you that I shudder at the prospect."
"The prospect of what?"
"Marrying Mrs. Cork."
His association with George, Viscount Uffenham, brief though it had been, had left Jeff with the feeling that nothing the latter could say or do would be able to surprise him, but at these words he saw that he had been mistaken. He stared blankly. Lord Uffenham was sitting bolt upright, looking noble.
"What was that you said? You're going to marry Mrs. Cork?"
"If we don't find the diamonds. Can't let Anne lose by my well-meaning, but possibly mistaken, handling of her money. It's a case of ... dash it, what's that expression? It's on the tip of my tongue."
"Noblesse oblige?"
"That's right. Noblesse oblige. Thank you, Jeff."
"Not at all."
"Yerss, that's how matters stand. So when you search that pond, my boy, search it well. Leave no stone unturned."