A Man's Man. Ian Hay
as they are going to send in Richards to wait. Anyhow, I shall have the boat off my chest by that time. That will be something, especially if—"
Hughie lapsed into silence, and for a moment a vision of love requited gave place in his imagination to the spectacle of the Benedictine crew going Head of the river.
His reflections were interrupted by the arrival of his equipage at that combined masterpiece of imposing architecture and convenient arrangement, Cambridge railway station. The platform was crowded with young men, most of them in "athletic dress," waiting for the London train. The brows of all were seamed with care, partaking in all probability of the domestic and amorous variety which obsessed poor Hughie.
The train as usual dashed into the station with a haughty can't-stop-at-a-hole-like-this expression, only to clank across some points and grind itself to an ignominious and asthmatic standstill at a distant point beside the solitary and interminable platform which, together with a ticket-office and a bookstall, prevents Cambridge railway station from being mistaken for a rather out-of-date dock-shed.
Presently Hughie, running rapidly, observed his guests descending from a carriage.
First came a pleasant-faced lady of between thirty and forty, followed by a stout and easy-going husband. Next, an oldish gentleman with a white moustache and a choleric blue eye. And finally—pretty, fresh, and disturbing—appeared the fons et origo of the entire expedition, on whose account the disposition and incidents of Hughie's luncheon-party had been so cunningly planned and so laboriously rehearsed—Miss Mildred Freshwater.
The party greeted their host characteristically. His uncle, even as he shook hands, let drop a few fervent anticipatory remarks on the subject of lunch; Mr. Ames, who was an old college boat captain, coupled his greeting with an anxious inquiry as to the club's prospects of success that evening; Mrs. Ames' eyes plainly said, "Well, I've brought her, my boy; now wire in!" and Miss Freshwater, when it came to her turn, shook hands with an unaffected pleasure and camaraderie which would have suited Hughie better if there had been discernible upon her face what Yum-Yum once pithily summed up as "a trace of diffidence or shyness."
Still, Hughie was so enraptured with the vision before him that he failed to observe a small and shrinking figure which had coyly emerged from the train, and was hanging back, as if doubtful about its reception, behind Mrs. Ames' skirts. Presently it detached itself and stood before Hughie in the form of a small girl with coppery brown hair and wide grey-blue eyes.
"Joey!" shouted Hughie.
"She would come!" explained his uncle, in the resigned tones of a strong man who knows his limits.
The lady indicated advanced to Hughie's side, and, taking his hand, rubbed herself ingratiatingly against him in the inarticulate but eloquent manner peculiar to dumb animals and young children.
CHAPTER III
JIMMY MARRABLE
Luncheon on the whole was a success, though Mrs. Gunn's behaviour exceeded anything that Hughie had feared.
She began by keeping the ladies adjusting their hair in Hughie's bedroom for something like ten minutes, while she recited to them a detailed and revolting description of her most recent complaint. Later, she initiated an impromptu and unseemly campaign—beginning with a skirmish of whispers in the doorway, swelling uproariously to what sounded like a duet between a cockatoo and a bloodhound on the landing outside, and dying away to an irregular fire of personal innuendoes, which dropped over the banisters one by one, like the gentle dew of heaven, on to the head of the retreating foe beneath—with a kitchen-man over a thumb-mark on a pudding-plate.
But fortunately for Hughie the company tacitly agreed to regard her as a form of comic relief; and when she kept back the salad-dressing for the express purpose—frustrated at the very last moment—of pouring it over the sweets; yea, even when she suddenly plucked a hairpin from her head with which to spear a wasp in the grassy corner pudding, the ladies agreed that she was "an old pet." When Mrs. Ames went so far as to follow her into the gyp-room after lunch and thank her for her trouble in waiting upon them, Mrs. Gunn, divided between extreme gratification and a desire to lose no time, unlimbered her batteries at once; and Hughie's tingling ears, as he handed round the coffee, overheard the portentous and mysterious fragment: "Well, mum, I put 'im straight to bed, and laid a hot flannel on his—," just as the door of the gyp-room swung to with a merciful bang.
It was now after two, and Hughie, in response to a generally expressed desire, laid before his guests a detailed programme for the afternoon. He proposed, first of all, to show them round the College. After that the party would proceed to Ditton Paddock in charge of Mr. Richard Lunn—who, it will be remembered, had been selected by Hughie as cavalier on account of his exceptional qualifications for the post—in company with a substantial tea-basket, the contents of which he hoped would keep them fortified in body and spirit until the races began with the Second Division, about five-thirty.
"How are you going to get us down to Ditton, Hughie?" inquired his uncle.
"Well, there's a fly which will hold five of you, and I thought"—Hughie cleared his throat—"I could take the other one down in a canoe."
There was a brief pause, while the company, glancing at one another with varying expressions of solemnity, worked out mental problems in Permutations and Combinations. Presently the tactless Ames inquired:—
"Which one are you going to take in the canoe?"
"Oh, anybody," said Hughie, in a voice which said as plainly as possible: "Silly old ass!"
However, realising that it is no use to continue skirmishing after your cover has been destroyed, he directed a gaze of invitation upon Miss Freshwater, who was sitting beside him on the seat.
She turned to him before he could speak.
"Hughie," she said softly, "take that child. Just look at her!"
Hughie obediently swallowed something, and turned to the wide-eyed and wistful picture on the sofa.
"Will you come, Joey?" he inquired.
The lady addressed signified, by a shudder of ecstasy, that the answer to the invitation was in the affirmative.
"Meanwhile," said Mr. Marrable, "I am going to smoke a cigar before I stir out of this room. And if you people will spare Hughie for ten minutes, I'll keep him here and have a short talk with him. I must go back to-night."
The accommodating Mr. Lunn suggested that this interval should be bridged by a personally conducted expedition to his rooms downstairs, where he would have great pleasure in exhibiting to the company a "rather decent" collection of door-knockers and bell-handles, the acquisition of which articles of vertu (he being a youth of strong wrist and fleet foot) was a special hobby of his.
Hughie was left alone with his uncle—the only relation he possessed in the world, and the man who had been to him both father and mother for nearly eighteen years.
Hughie had been born in India. His recollections of his parents were vague in the extreme, but if he shut both eyes and pressed hard upon them with his hands he could summon up various pictures of a beautiful lady, whose arms were decked with glittering playthings that jingled musically when she carved the chicken for Hughie's nursery dinner. He particularly remembered these arms, for their owner had a pleasant habit of coming up to kiss him good-night after his ayah had put him to bed. On these occasions they were always bare; and Hughie remembered quite distinctly how much more comfortable they were then than next morning at tiffin, when they were enclosed in sleeves which sometimes scratched.
Of his father he remembered less, except that he was a very large person who wore gorgeous raiment of scarlet. Also things on his heels which clicked. He had a big voice, too, this man, and he used to amuse himself by training Hughie to stand stiffly erect whenever he cried, "'Shun!"