The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. Patricia Wentworth
shillings and eleven pence. She had already counted the pennies four times, because there really should have been three shillings. She was now engaged in making a list in parallel columns of (a) those persons from whom she might seek financial assistance, and (b) the excellent reasons which prevented her from approaching them.
Jane had a passion for making lists. Years and years and years ago Mr. Carruthers had said to her, “My dear, you must learn to be businesslike. I have never been businesslike myself, and it has always been a great trouble to me.” And then and there he and Jane had, in collaboration, embarked upon the First List. It was a thrilling list, a list of toys for Jane’s very first Christmas tree. Since then she had made lists of her books, lists of her clothes, shopping lists, and an annual list of good resolutions.
Jane stopped writing, and began to think about all those other lists. She had always showed them to Mr. Carruthers, and he had always gazed at them with the same vague benignness, and said how businesslike she was getting.
Dear Cousin James—Jane was rich instead of poor when she thought about him. She looked across at the trees in their new mist of green, and then suddenly the thin April sunshine dazzled in her eyes and the green swam into a blur. Cousin James was gone, and Jane was alone in Kensington Gardens with two-and-elevenpence and a list.
She opened and shut her eyes very quickly once or twice, and fixed her attention upon (a) and (b) in their parallel columns. At the top of the list Jane had written “Cousin Louisa,” and the reason against asking Cousin Louisa’s assistance was set down as, “Because she was a perfect beast to my darling Jimmy, and a worse beast to me, and anyhow, she wouldn’t.”
In moments of irreverence the late Mr. Carruthers—the Mr. Carruthers, author of five monumental volumes on Ethnographical Differentiation—had been addressed by his young ward and cousin as “darling Jimmy.”
Professor Philpot came next. “A darling, but he is sitting somewhere in Central Africa in a cage learning to talk gorilla. I do hope they haven’t eaten him, or whatever they do do to people when they catch them.”
It will be observed that Miss Smith’s association with the world of science had not succeeded in chastening her grammar.
Jane’s pencil travelled down the list.
“Mr. Bruce Murray. In Thibet studying Llamas.”
“Henry”—Jane shook her head and solemnly put two thick black lines through Henry’s name. One cannot ask for financial assistance from a young man whose hand one has refused in marriage—“even if it was three years ago, and he’s probably been in love with at least fifteen girls since then.”
“Henry’s mamma—well, the only time she ever loved me in her life was when I refused Henry, so I should think she was an Absolute Wash Out—and that’s the lot.”
Jane folded up the list and put it into her handbag. Two silver shillings and eleven copper pennies, and then the workhouse!
It was at this moment that a stout lady with a ginger-coloured pug sat heavily down upon the far end of Jane’s bench. The ginger-coloured pug was on a scarlet leather lead, and after seating herself the stout lady bent forward creaking, and lifted him to a place beside her.
Jane wondered vaguely why a red face and a tightly curled fringe should go with a passion for bugled bonnets and pugs.
“Was ’ums hungry?” said the stout lady.
The pug breathed stertorously, after the manner of pugs, and his mistress at once produced two paper bags from a beaded reticule. From one of them she took a macaroon, and from the other a sponge finger. The pug chose the macaroon.
“Precious,” cooed the stout lady, and all at once Jane felt entirely capable of theft and murder—theft from the stout lady, and murder upon the person of the ginger pug. For at the sight of food she realised how very, very hungry she was. Bread and margarine for breakfast six hours before, and the April air was keen, and Jane was young.
The pug spat out the last mouthful of macaroon, ignored the sponge finger, and snorted loudly.
“Oh, naughty, naughty,” said the stout lady. She half turned towards Jane.
“You really wouldn’t believe how clever he is,” she observed conversationally; “it’s a cream bun he’s asking for as plain as plain, and yesterday when I bought them for him, he teased and teased until I went back for macaroons; though, of course, a nice plain sponge finger is really better for him than either. I don’t need the vet. to tell me that. Come along, a naughty, tiresome precious then.” She lifted the pug down from the seat, put the paper bags tidily back into her reticule, rose ponderously to her feet, and walked away, trailing the scarlet lead and cooing to the ginger pug.
Jane watched her go.
“Why don’t I laugh?” she said. “Why doesn’t she amuse me? One needn’t lose one’s sense of humour even if one is down and out.”
It was at this unpropitious moment that the tall young man who had sat down unseen upon Jane’s other side, laid his hand upon hers and observed in stirring accents:
“Darling.”
Jane whisked round in an icy temper. Her greenish-hazel eyes looked through the young man in the direction of the north pole. He ought to have stiffened to an icicle then and there, instead of which he murmured, “Darling,” again, and then added—“but what’s the matter?” Jane stopped looking at him or through him. He had simply ceased to exist. She picked up her two shillings and her eleven pence, put them into her purse, and consigned her purse to her handbag. She then closed the handbag with a snap, and rose to her feet.
“Renata!” exclaimed the young man in tones of consternation.
Jane paused and allowed herself to observe him for the first time. She saw a young man with an intellectual forehead and studious brown eyes. He appeared to be hurt and surprised. She decided that this was not a would-be Lothario.
“I think you have made a mistake,” she said, and was about to pass on.
“But, Renata, Renata, darling!” stammered the young man even more desperately. Jane assumed what Cousin Louisa had once described as “that absurdly grand manner.” It was quite kind, but it induced the young man to believe that Jane was conversing with him from about the distance of the planet Saturn.
“I think,” she said, “that you must be taking me for my cousin, Renata Molloy.”
“But I’m engaged to her—no, I mean to you—oh, hang it all, Renata, what’s the sense of a silly joke like this?”
Jane looked at him keenly. “What is my cousin’s middle name?” she inquired.
“Jane. I hate it.”
“Thank you,” said Jane. “My name is Jane Renata Smith, and I am Renata Jane Molloy’s first cousin. Our mothers were twin sisters, and I have always understood that we were very much alike.”
“Alike!” gasped the young man. Words seemed to fail him.
Jane bowed slightly and began to walk away, but, before she had gone a dozen paces, he was beside her again.
“If you’re really Renata’s cousin, I want to talk to you—I must talk to you. Will you let me?”
Jane walked as far as the next seat, and sat down with resignation.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Todhunter—Arnold Todhunter.” He seemed a trifle breathless. “My sister Daphne was at school with Renata, and she came to stay with us once in the holidays. I said we were engaged, didn’t I? Only, nobody knows it. You won’t tell Mr. Molloy, will you?”
“I’ve never spoken to Mr. Molloy in my life,” said Jane. “There was a most awful row when my aunt married him, and none of us have ever met each other since. My aunt died years and years ago. I think Mr. Molloy is an Anarchist