Читать книгу Mrs. William Jones - and Bill - Edgar Wallace - Страница 3

HER eyes were sleepy eyes, he noted that much, though as a rule he never looked twice at a woman, save in the cause of art. And her mouth, at the moment he was observing her, struck him as being lazy. He had never heard of a lazy mouth before, but that is just how it occurred to him. It was parted—"fly- catching"—he described it afterwards.

Yet she was quite an adorable person, with the figure that men make up stories about, that is to say, she had no definite figure at all, but there was just enough of her to occupy clothes, so that they seemed to fill the right amount of space.

The eyes were blue, dark blue, almost violet. The eyelashes (so he saw, being sophisticated) had the appearance of having been made up, they were so dark, whilst her hair was so-so, well not exactly fair—veiled gold (whatever he meant by that, and it certainly conveys a rough sense of subdued glory) was the colour he jotted down on his tablet.

For the rest, features conformed to the outstanding excellences, and neither discounted nor enhanced them. All this Bill Jones saw from his barn- like bedroom, which was on the ground floor of Ten Pines Hotel, which in turn was situated in the middle of a pleasant valley between sea and marsh.

The big windows of the room opened on to a broad and shady veranda, and it was on this "stoep" that the unaccountable lady reclined, her heels elevated to the veranda rail.

It was not a lady-like attitude. Miss Beryl Foster, who had come to Ten Pines every summer for twenty-nine years, and who occupied, by arrangement and tradition, the cheapest bedroom in the hotel, and the only easy-chair in the hotel parlour, said that in all those twenty-nine years she had never seen a lady in such a posture.

Miss Foster spent her days upon the veranda, knitting savagely a shapeless something which looked like a bath mat, but was probably something else. She knit with an air of gloomy courage which suggested that she was being punished for her sins, and recognised the justice of her punishment.

To Bill Jones the unaccountable lady was a fascinating object, transcending in picturesqueness the amber rocks that stood in amber pools, entirely surrounded by blue-green waters that foamed in chinese white about their bases.

Bill Jones was a good man but a bad artist. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way, and his name was really Bill Jones, his father having been born both Jones and eccentric. And he had christened or caused to be christened his infant son, just plain "Bill."

"You mean William?" said the officiating clergy.

"I mean Bill," said Bill's father firmly.

"And what are the other names?" the clergyman demanded anxiously.

"Jones," said Bill's father.

And so "Bill Jones" he was christened, and the clergy shivered as it pronounced the fateful words.

Bill really did not mind. The name fitted him. He was as tough as luck and as hard as lines, to apply the sayings of the slangster. He could box, swim, ride, leap, throw things, run and tackle. He could not paint. Obviously, the kind of pictures for which he was designed were not the kind of pictures designed by him. Nature lagged behind his palette. He belonged to a select art club, the members of which told one another at stated intervals, that they were ahead of their time. And it was probably true, for who knows what shape and colour things will take in a million years?

But Bill Jones differed from all other bad artists in this respect—he knew he was a bad artist. He knew that his visit to Ten Pines had nothing whatever to do with art study.

He looked at the beautiful girl and sighed.

"Oh lord!" he prayed, "if I were only an artist—what a head and ankle!"

Bill was away when she arrived. He had taken his colour-box and a small canvas out on to the lake.... there was a "right light," and he remembered how amazingly beautiful was the patch of young alders and rushes at the western corner.

A man, even a poor technician, might make a great picture of that. So he took his paint-box and punted across the water. He also took a line and tackle, for the pike fishing hereabouts is very good.

When he returned with four pike (one a nine-pounder) and a virgin canvas, Mrs. Carmichael, the landlady, regarded him curiously. She did not explain her mystery. And Bill found no solution until....

He was going to speak to the unknown lady. Up to now he had not dared to do more than admire in a furtive, public-spirited and detached manner the rare feast of beauty which fortune had brought to him. And Providence was on his side, for as he walked leisurely along the front of the veranda, the little high-heeled shoe which had been perched upon the rail fell almost at his feet.

"I'm awfully sorry."

Beauty was charmingly confused, put out a white, hand to take the shoe, and Bill's heart sank. There was no especial reason and certainly no intelligent reason why his heart should sink at the sight of a new wedding ring upon the proper finger of her hand.

"It must have fallen off," said Beauty more calmly, as she emptied the sand from its interior.

Bill was inclined to agree and, being unusually tongue-tied, the acquaintance might have ended then and there.

"You're an artist, aren't you?" she said. "How lovely it must be to paint beautiful pictures."

"It must be," agreed Bill honestly. "I'm sorry I've never had that experience."

She frowned.

"But you are the artist? Mrs. Carmichael pointed you out to me and said you were the artist, and asked me if I knew you. As she didn't tell me your name——"

"My name is Jones," said Bill modestly. He thought that it was not a thing he need boast about anyway. "Bill Jones."

Her mouth opened in a luscious O.

"William Jones!" she said hollowly.

He nodded.

"Bill, to be exact," he replied. "I haven't the pleasure——"

She hesitated only for the fraction of a second. The whole conversation was irregular, and not even the fortuitous circumstance of their occupying adjoining rooms justified this sudden exchange of intimacies.

"My name is Mrs. William Jones," she said rapidly. "My husband is a traveller."

"Indeed?" said Bill politely, and wanted to ask her whether at this precise moment her husband was fulfilling his professional duties.

"He's a chauffeur, I mean," said the girl, clearing her throat.

Bill was not shocked. He had known some very good chauffeurs in his time. He had also known some very bad ones. He hoped that she had not married a bad one. It would be dreadful to think of that frail and beautiful lady being married to a man who took cross-roads at top speed without sounding his klaxon.

Still he was depressed. The fact that her husband was a chauffeur had nothing whatever to do with the cause of the depression. He was depressed that she should marry anybody whether he was a traveller or just an ordinary stationary individual, such as a policeman on point duty or a commissionaire outside a picture palace. Her offence was that she was married at all.

"He is away just now," said Mrs. Jones unnecessarily.

"Perhaps," said Bill, whose manners in moments of crises were irreproachable, "you would like to walk along the beach?"

"I should very much," said Mrs. Jones demurely, and she came down to him, under the very eyes of Miss Beryl Foster, who knitted even more fiercely, and later made a clacking sound as the landlady appeared in the doorway and beckoned her with the blunt end of a knitting needle.

"It is as I thought," she said, "they are a honeymoon couple!"

"Whatever makes you think so?" said the landlady hopefully.

"They're a honeymoon couple who have quarrelled on their wedding day. She went her way and he went his. It was probably over a question of relations. All my friends quarrel over their relations."

"But——" began Mrs. Carmichael.

"He couldn't bear to have her out of his sight, so he followed," said Miss Foster romantically. "Did you notice how they pretended not to know one another—my dear!"

She twisted her face up into what with a little practice would have been a smile.

"She threw her boot at him as he passed," said Miss Foster startlingly.

"Her boot?" said the incredulous Mrs. Carmichael, "but she only wears shoes."

"Well, shoes or boots, it doesn't matter," rejoined Miss Foster impatiently. "Anyway she dropped her shoe right in front of him, and of course he had to pick it up... they're reconciled."

She pointed, this time with the sharp end of her knitting needle, at the two as they strolled along by the seashore. They were at that moment passing Lover's Rock, so called because it occurred without excuse in the very middle of a smooth stretch of beach. Lovers might shelter themselves from the gales that blew in those months when no lovers were within a hundred miles. It might as truly have been called Fat Man's Rock. However....

"You see!" said Miss Foster thrillingly. "Now mark my words—oh, drivel and blink!"

With these ladylike curse words did Miss Foster announce the dropping of certain stitches from her too adventurous needle.

And in the meantime.

"I am an artist in the sense that I am not colour-blind," confessed Bill, "otherwise I am sheer false pretence. Fortunately I have a father who is sufficiently fond of his children and well enough off to indulge them in their abnormalities."

"Have you any brothers and sisters?" she asked, interested.

"No," admitted Bill, "I'm the only children. Do you like Ten Pines?"

She shrugged her dainty shoulders.

"I didn't know there was such a place until I came here," she said. "Of course, I could have gone to Newport, but—this is an out-of-the-way place, isn't it?"

Bill nodded gravely.

"You wanted to be alone?" he said gently.

"No, I didn't," she answered; "I'm bored to death. There's an awfully rowdy man sleeps in the next room to me who gets up at unearthly hours and whistles and drops his boots on the floor when he goes to bed. Those kind of people——"

"I am the man next door," interrupted Bill, more gently still. "I hadn't the slightest idea that I was worrying you, Mrs. Jones. There's a woman who lives on the left of me, Number 22, I think, who snores abominably——"

"I live in 22," said the girl icily, "and I don't snore because I don't sleep. I haven't slept a wink since I've been at this place. I'm too worried to sleep and too much of a lady to snore."

Bill agreed.

"When is your husband coming?" he ventured to ask..

He knew he had committed a faux pas by the look she gave him.

"Is it necessary to tell about my husband?" she asked frigidly. "He is a subject I never care to discuss."

They walked along in silence for a long time, and Bill, who was not a society man and was not perfectly certain in his mind whether one did discuss husbands with wives, sought vainly in his mind for another and a more pleasing subject. Art he had exhausted in three sentences.

"Who is your father?" she asked suddenly.

"My father," said Bill vaguely. "Oh, he's a man named—named Jones."

"I should have guessed that, but what does he do for a living besides calling himself Jones?"

"He owns some factories—motor-car factories, I believe," said Bill. "I will even go so far as to admit that I know, but the proper pose of the merchant's son is his ignorance of the means by which his parents subsist."

She nodded gravely, and he wondered whether the mention of his father's sordid employment had touched a chord which brought back to her the memory of her absent husband.

Presently she sighed.

"My father is in rubber."

"You surprise me," said the polite Bill. "I have never had a father in rubber. It must be rather jolly."

Again she eyed him suspiciously.

"Did he recommend you to Ten Pines?" said Bill hastily.

"Ten Pines!" The scorn in her voice. "He's never heard of Ten Pines, and he has not the slightest idea I am here."

A little pause.

"I ran away to get married."

"The devil you did!" said the admiring Bill.

"Yes, I ran away," she replied complacently. "Father wanted me to marry a friend of his—a man in the iron trade, and of course I ran away."

"You did perfectly right," said Bill warmly. "I can imagine nothing more revolting than being married to a man in the iron trade. Did your husband run away with you, that is to say, did he come on first, or did he drop you half-way?"

She stopped and faced him squarely.

"My husband has certain duties to perform, and being a man of honour he is performing them," she said. "He had to give a month's notice to his employer, and naturally I wouldn't hear of him leaving without notice."

She turned and walked back toward the hotel, and Bill paced by her side, his hands behind him, his mind very full of her difficulties.

"Does your father know the chauffeur?" he demanded.

"No." Her reply was very short and uncompromising.

"It was—a love match," she went on, speaking with difficulty. "I met him first at a ball, and then he drove me—round the park."

"Which park?" asked Bill, and she became a little exasperated.

"Does it matter which park it was?" she asked. "Any park."

"There are some parks better than others for driving round," murmured Bill apologetically. "And after that, you just got married to him?"

"That is what happened," said Mrs. William Jones, "and here I am."

Thereafter conversation flagged. She seemed worried about something. As they were nearing the hotel, Bill said with a sigh:

"I should love to paint your portrait."

"You can," she answered complacently.

"I said I should love to do it, I didn't say I could," said Bill. "Perhaps your husband will allow me——"

"You need not bother about my husband," and then, "will you walk back with me?" she asked hurriedly.

Bill turned and noticed that she was a little agitated.

"Mr. Jones," she said, "I have a confession to make. I have told you a lie. My husband is not a chauffeur but an artist. I wish he had been a chauffeur now."

"An artist?" said Bill. "Do you mean a paint and canvas artist?"

"You don't think I meant a music-hall artist, do you, or a trapeze artist?" she asked with asperity. "No, he's a painting artist. I'm awfully sorry."

"I'm sorry too," said Bill with sympathy.

"You've nothing to be sorry about." Beauty could be very violent when she wished. "Oh, what a stupid fool I was—I ought not to have made him an artist."

"Only the Lord makes artists," said Bill proudly.

"A chauffeur!" she said. "Of course he should have been a chauffeur!"

"I certainly think he'd have earned more money if you'd made him a chauffeur," agreed Bill, "but I don't quite follow your line of thought, Mrs. Jones."

"Oh, don't you!" she retorted darkly. "Well, perhaps you will!"

She did not come in to lunch. Bill went outside to the veranda and sat down to wait. It was a hot afternoon, and the cool breeze which blew in from the sea was of so zephyr-like and somniferous a nature that he had not been sitting there long before his head sank on his breast, and he passed out into the state of existence where he painted beautiful pictures which were hung in great exhibitions, won innumerable gold medals, and earned for him a fame which was at least equal to that of his father's notorious "Jigger Eight."

He was awakened by being kicked. It was not a vicious kick. At the same time it was not a gentle one, being intended to arouse him to consciousness with the least possible waste of time.

"Hi," said a man's voice unpleasantly. "Wake up, my friend!"

Bill woke instantly and blinked up at a very tall man in a grey flannel suit and a terrible red complexion.

Bill's first impression was that he had met a creature of his dreams—a man who wore his face inside out. And then he saw that it really was a normal man with a normal white moustache and an abnormal bald head who was scowling down at him, and the stranger was accompanied by a younger man with a small face and a tiny black smear of a moustache. He wore a perfectly fitting morning coat, beautifully creased trousers, and his hair was glued back from his forehead.

Bill rose a little wearily, but wondering.

"Now, sir," said the red-faced man breathing through his nose, "perhaps you will accompany us to a place where we cannot be overheard."

He said this in a voice like a steam siren.

"May I suggest a desert island in the Pacific," said Bill, yawning.

"I want to talk to you, sir," roared the red-faced man. "I want an explanation from you, sir, and Mr.Duvine also wants an explanation, sir, and if he had my spirit, sir, he'd take you by the scruff of your neck and beat the life out of you. If I were twenty years younger——"

"And twenty degrees less apoplectic," murmured Bill. "Will you come with me to the beach. I see that your business is very urgent. I think an assignation near the True Lovers Rock would not be inappropriate."

He led the way to the very water's edge. The tide was going out. The sands, white-hot in the afternoon sun, were deserted.

"Now, sir," said the red-faced gentleman, "my name is Andrew Pollack."

Bill nodded and a momentary qualm came to him.

"You're not the man whose picture I painted? No, his name was—anyway it doesn't matter about his name, but I used up two tubes of carmine."

"I don't want to hear any of your infernal studio jargon," bellowed Mr. Pollack. "I want to know where is my daughter?"

Bill was genuinely exasperated.

"Have you come all the way to Ten Pines to ask me where is your wandering child to-night?" he asked.

"Where—is—your—wife?" demanded Mr. Pollack awfully, and for a second Bill dithered.

"My wife?" he asked in a strangled voice. "Do you mean my—my wife?"

"I mean my unhappy daughter," Mr. Pollack spoke with emotion. "The innocent girl upon whose empty mind you played. The girl—you dazzled her with your infernal art!"

Bill was fanning himself languidly with the brim of his panama hat.

"Thank you for those kind words," he said gratefully, "I knew that my art could daze, but I hadn't the slightest idea it dazzled."

"Don't trifle with me, sir, you have behaved like a scoundrel. You knew that my daughter was an heiress; you thought that you would get an income for life, eh?"

"Perfectly disgusting," murmured Mr. Duvine. "Very caddish in the extreme."

"How did you know I was here?" asked Bill, after a long cogitation.

"I tracked you, sir." Mr. Pollack put his hand in his pocket and took out a note-case, opened it fiercely, and violently snatching forth a letter, thrust it into Bill's face.

"I suppose you dictated that?" he said.

Bill took the letter and read.

"Dear Father,—I can never marry your horrible friend. I have decided to make my own life. I have long secretly loved Mr. William Jones, the eminent artist, and we were married to-day at the Registrar's Office by special licence. I am very happy, and my husband sends his kind regards, and please don't attempt to find me. I shall come back in two months.—Your loving daughter, Silvia."

"Now," said Mr. Pollack. "Let me have one word with you. My daughter has certainly money of her own, but she will not get a penny of mine. You hear, sir, not a cent, not a tenth part of a Russian rouble!"

"Kroner are cheap, too," said Bill helpfully; "you can get forty-four thousand for a——"

"Don't argue with me!" howled Mr. Pollack. "You have ruined a young girl's life, sir. Celebrated artist!" He sneered audibly. "I've been asking the dealers about you. They say you're the worst artist in the world. They say that the name of Bill Jones is known and execrated from one end of the country to the other! They say——"

"Don't tell me what they say," said Bill peevishly. "They've said it to me, and I've accepted their verdict. I admit I'm a rotten artist, but I'm a good husband."

Mr. Pollack snorted.

"There is within me a whole wealth of unsuspected tenderness."

Mr. Pollack snorted still more loudly.

"Haven't you got a handkerchief?" said Bill, feeling in his pocket, "Of one thing you may be sure, that I shall never ask you for a penny, for Cynthia—I mean Sylvia. With my own two hands I will work for her, sharing," his voice broke, "the last crust of bread—the crumb for her and the knobbly bits for me."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Mr. Duvine mildly. "You really ought, sir. I think you've treated me most unfairly. It was simply a dastardly thing to do. It was really!"

"I don't think we can afford to waste any more time with you," said Mr. Pollack, and turned to the young man. "When you see my daughter, I hope you will tell her that I have cut her out of my will, and out of my heart. That neither she nor her mountebank husband will ever darken the doors of my house."

"I only want to say..." began Bill.

"Faugh!" said Mr. Pollack, and left him standing by the big rock.

Bill watched them out of sight, saw them mount the car before the Ten Pines Hotel, and then he turned and walked slowly round the rock.

The girl who was sitting in its shade looked up with a scared face.

"Have they gone?" she whispered.

"They have gone," said Bill.

"I was so frightened," she admitted. "I thought Father would strike you to the earth."

"To the sand," corrected Bill. "No, he didn't. He kicked me once, but what's a kick more or less?"

"I thought it was very decent and kind of you," she said. "But there was absolutely no need for you to rattle on about sharing your last crusts with me, because I'm not married to you, and I'm not married to anybody."

"I rather gathered that from your uncertainty of the morning," said Bill. "In fact, you invented your husband in order to choke off Duvine—and I can hardly blame you. As to being married at all, that is another matter. You are married to a respectable young artist——"

She stared at him.

"Married?" she said incredulously. "I'm not married!"

"You're married to me," said Bill calmly. "Do not forget Miss Pollack that I have also a name to lose. I cannot have Mrs. Carmichael pointing the finger of scorn at me or allow my name to be bandied about as an unmarried husband. We boys have our rights."

"But——" she gasped. "We're not married."

"For the moment we're not married, I admit," said Bill. "Your ruddy parent—I beg your pardon, your parent is under the impression that we are. If he should discover that we are not," he clasped his brow, "oh heavens, what would happen to my good name?"

"I've got a pretty good name, too," she said wrathfully. "You have made a mess of things!"

Bill staggered.

"I?" he said.

"Of course you've made a mess of it," she retorted viciously. "Why didn't you tell Father that you weren't married to me? How dare you associate my name with yours?"

Bill recovered himself very slowly.

"It's my name," he protested; "you haven't a name at all in the matter; you're the spurious Mrs. Jones! I, at least, am a genuine Jones."

"Anyway, you should have told him that you weren't married," she said more mildly; "you should have explained that it was all a girlish freak."

"Never," said Bill Jones indignantly; "I've never been guilty of a girlish freak, and I'm too old to start now. I'm afraid, Sylvia, we've got to find a way out that meets not only with the approval of your father but of mine. We Joneses have our feelings, although we do not express them so hecticly as you Pollacks. So, Sylvia——"

"Do you mind not calling me Sylvia. My name is Miss Pollack."

"Your name is Mrs. Jones. Mrs. William Jones," said Bill severely. "I've already forgiven you for calling yourself William instead of Bill. I detest Williams."

She sat down on the sand again. She felt unaccountably helpless.

"What am I to do?"

"I'll go into town to-morrow morning," he said, "get the necessary licence, and, at the identical office, where you married the artist, who was afterwards a chauffeur, but who is, alas, an artist after all, we will regularise a position which is at present embarrassing to me, and one which I trust will never become generally known."

"I'd sooner die than marry you," she said briefly. "I don't know you. I've only spoken half a dozen words to you."

"What better preparation for a happy married life?" asked Bill. "Retain that habit."

"Anyway, I'm not going to marry you," she said, taking up a handful of sand and threw it at the unoffending sea.

Bill sighed and sat down by her. He, too, took up a handful of sand and poured it from palm to palm absent-mindedly.

"You are really a bad artist. Father said so."

"Couldn't you take my word?" he asked reproachfully.

"Father hates artists," she said, after a while.

"Then he can't hate me," said Bill. "Besides, he'll get used to me in time."

"I could never be happy with a man like you," she said thoughtfully; "you're not serious enough, and you take too flippant a view of life—and don't make your hands messy with that sand."

He threw the sand away obediently and wiped his hands on his trousers. She groaned.

"I admit I am not so serious-minded as you," said Bill. "To have been consistent you ought to have married a professor of mathematics. Why choose an artist? Heaven knows we have quite enough——"

"Don't talk rubbish; you know I'm not married—yet," she added.

Bill edged a little closer.

"You've seen me at my worst, Sylvia; I'm not always painting. I play a pretty good game of tennis, but that is about the only important occupation I have in life. My principal hobbies are loafing round Europe, alternated with long spells of theatre-going. I know a jeweller's on the Rue de la Paix, who sells better pearls than any other jeweller you can name."

"Devoux?" she said instantly.

He nodded, and she looked at him, with a new admiration.

"What kind of motor-cars does your father make?" she asked. "Are they the sort which one can rely on... for long trips...."

"A honeymoon trip?" he suggested.

"Any kind of trip," she said recklessly.

He put one arm round her and with the other searched his pocket. Presently he found the new catalogue of the Jigger Eight which his father had sent to him that morning.

"Listen to this, honey," he said.