Money in the Bank (24 page)

Until this moment, she had always accepted Lionel Green on his face value—and that, though Jeff would have denied it hotly, was value of a high order. Lionel. Green was a handsome, almost a beautiful, young man. Few women had seen him for the first time without a flutter of the heart, and Anne had been convinced, almost from their initial meeting, that in him she had found her ideal.

But now, in this novel mood of criticism and analysis, she had begun to doubt. Her uncle's odious words insisted on corning into her mind. "You wouldn't give that poop, Lionel Green, a second thought," Lord Uffenham had said, in that crude, uncouth way of his, "if he hadn't the sort of tailor's dummy good looks that women seem to be incapable of seeing through," and had gone on to add, if she remembered correctly, that he was capable of making a better man than Lionel Green, any time he saw fit, though handicapped by such limited materials as two lumps of coal and a bit of putty.

At the time, she had scoffed at the possibility of such a feat, but now she was asking herself if it might not be within the scope of an ingenious man, clever with his fingers. Still criticising and analysing, she found herself definitely dissatisfied with Lionel. Had he nothing, she wondered, except those beautifully regular features? In a flash of humiliating clear thinking, she suddenly saw herself as the sort of girl who falls in love with film stars.

The silence continued. Lionel Green had begun to shift uneasily from foot to foot. His agony of spirit was growing with every moment that passed. Anne, he noted wanly, appeared to be as firmly rooted to the spot on which she stood as if she had been her Uncle George in one of his most contemplative moods. It was difficult to see how he could find the eloquence and clarity of reasoning to shift her, seeing that all his efforts up to the present to do so had failed, though nobody could have argued more lucidly or pointed out with a more persuasive force the peril which her presence involved.

Seeing cooks about putting dinner off is not a lengthy task, and who knew but that his Aunt Clarissa, her mission concluded, might not take it into her head to come back and resume their conversation?

Anne spoke. Her mind had returned to the last remark she had made before the great silence.

"I suppose it was that that made her decide to give you the money?"

"Eh?"

“Seeing Jeff kiss me."

"I wish you wouldn't call him Jeff."

"I'm sorry. But was it?"

"Yes, it was."

"I was wondering why she had made up her mind so suddenly."

"Yes."

"And another thing I have been wondering is this. Why didn't you tell Mrs. Cork about Mr. Miller? You knew perfectly well who he was. You knew you had only to tell Mrs. Cork, and she would turn him out of the house. You must dislike him very much. So why---"

Throughout this questioning, Lionel Green had betrayed a certain nervousness, but it was as nothing compared with the almost epileptic spasm of panic which afflicted him now, as he saw the door begin to open.

The next moment, he saw that the ultimate disaster had not occurred. It was not Mrs. Cork who was entering, but Jeff.

It was pure kindness of heart that had brought Jeff at this critical moment to the apartment of Lionel Green. As has been made clear, he was not fond of Lionel, but he had promised, while at Shipley Hail, to watch over his interests, and the word of the Millers was their bond.

He had bought Anne's chocolates that morning at the famous Regent Street establishment of Duff and Trotter, and it was while he was passing from the confectionery department into that devoted to what the firm described as Picnic Goods that his eye had fallen on a large, and quite evidently succulent, pork pie. With a considerateness which did him credit, he had purchased it for Lionel. It was just these little acts of kindness, he bad reflected, that raised Man, the Boy Scout, above the beasts that perish.

In the rather hectic rush of recent events, this delicacy had faded from his mind, and he had only just remembered it. He was here now to make delivery.

The sight of Anne in the Green G.H.Q. surprised and disconcerted him a good deal. His position, he realised, was about what that of a Troubadour would have been, who had allowed his lower nature to get the better of him for a moment and had behaved towards some fair lady more like a Robber Baron than a guitar player, and he had devoted no little thought to wondering what would be the correct attitude for him to adopt at their next meeting.

And, as such a Troubadour would probably have done, he grinned sheepishly and said: "Oh, hullo!"

"So there you are," he said. "I was wondering where you were. I—er—wanted to see you."

Anne did not reply, unless a cold and haughty look can be counted as a response.

"To tell you that I am not leaving. Mrs. Cork is very kindly allowing me to stay on."

"Oh?"

"Yes. She says I can stay on."

Lionel Green broke in upon this one-sided duologue. Reaction from panic had left him irritable. Jeff's intrusion infuriated him. He did not like Jeff, and in any case would have resented the way his bedroom was filling up.

"What do you want?" he demanded, curtly.

His tone was offensive, and in any other circumstances Jeff would have pointed this out to him. But Anne's attitude, so patently lacking in the let-bygones-be-bygones spirit, had reduced him to a mere shivering shadow of his former self. He was feeling chilled and unhappy, as if he had been snubbed by a Snow Queen.

"In pursuance of our gentleman's agreement," he said, brokenly, "I have brought you a pork pie." He looked pleadingly at Anne, but failed to catch her eye. "Well," he said, having stood on one leg for a moment, "I'll be getting along."

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 Uffenham. " 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."