The haunted house
She herself had haggled a little over the “Minor.” But there she was
wrong; they ought to have haggled over the “Great.”
Aunt Hilda was not without commercial sense. She had on the occasion
of the last photographing purchased two peacocks and chivvied them on
to the lawn before the people from London snapped the front. She had
even borrowed from one of her few really important friends an enormous
photograph of a Royalty, in a vast silver frame leaning backwards,
which she draped and propped up on a little table, to go nicely into
the picture of the boudoir—little knowing that the word boudoir had
long sunk out of use. But if it comes to that, each of us is out of
fashion to others. Our English society has divided into something like
those moving ways at the old Paris Exhibition of 1889: one stream is
moving at one pace, one at another; and there still survive gentlefolk
who say “napkin,” side by side with those masters of our modern world
who say “serviette.”
Let me leave the boudoir and the photographs and all the rest of it and
get back to the Debt.
Aunt Hilda was embarrassed. Damnably! Hence the purchases in London;
hence the antiques; hence the Ancestor. That activity of hers which
had intrigued poor John Maple was plain enough. He would have been
less angry with his aunt had he known the causes of her perpetual
extravagances.
If you desire to know the amount of Aunt Hilda’s embarrassment, I can
tell it you simply enough. It was, at the moment when she was adding
her last efforts to Rackham, £17,000—and a little more. She had the
cunning common to those who lose money—and make it. She picked up ideas
on sharp dealing by listening to conversation around her. She had
learnt the tricks of the share-shufflers. Therefore she had continued
recklessly. Money was never made to-day by work or saving. The bigger
the overdrafts the better, and loans raised in Jermyn Street were
quicker and handier than mortgages. She would make Rackham Catchings
glorious in the eyes of possible purchasers—Jew, Rastaquouère, new War
Lord, Yankee millionaire—anybody. Then she could sell it, untrammelled,
for three times its worth and five times what she had spent on it. The
money-lenders would get back their loans and interest. There would
still be a large balance over, and with that balance she could buy
herself a sufficient annuity to live the life she desired. But she must
act quickly. Interest mounted up and heavy pressure had begun.
It is unfortunately true that men pursuing various trades will conceal
their activities under various names. The Esthonian gentleman, Mr.
Curzon, who had sold Aunt Hilda her Ancestor and so much more, had
already (as plain Charles Blunt of Bristol) advanced her money on note
of hand, and as Mr. de Vere of Jermyn Street advanced her more money
to satisfy the clamourings of plain Charles Blunt. Now Mr. de Vere of
Jermyn Street was beginning to press. But she would sell Rackham and
all would be well.
Such is the heart of woman that she told herself all this was quite
fair to John. He would be her heir—the fact that she would have nothing
to leave him did not alter that. She had made him an honourable offer
to send him to Oxford, and he had refused. She was perpetually asking
him down to Rackham, and wasn’t that kind of her? Indeed, he did not
come half enough. Well, perhaps John was too proud. She respected him
for that. It was the Maple blood—Aunt Hilda by this time had come to
believe that she herself was a Maple.
So there it was. Aunt Hilda with the hot breath of the pursuer on her
neck; John hating these insane renovations and gewgaws; the purchasers
advancing with open mouths and simple smiles.
For purchasers Aunt Hilda had—or believed she had. And in these her
faith held fast.
I have told how dear a friend she had become of Amathea Lady Mere
de Beaurivage, and of her husband, late Sir George Huggins; and now
there was something even warmer in her heart (and certainly something
warmer in his) for that first-rate man of business, Lord Hellup. To
neither, she believed, would Rackham be indifferent now that it had the
Catchings. And as competition is the soul of commerce, she hoped for
sixty—she made certain of fifty—thousand pounds, from the one or from
the other. Even fifty thousand, for what was, at the most, a twenty
thousand pound proposition, was Good Business.
* * * * *
Meanwhile John Maple was pegging away, irregularly but lucratively,
with the performing dogs for a livelihood, and with an increasing
circle of rich friends for a life.
He had three names. He was John Maple in that world of the people who
do nothing and have pale love affairs and go their weary round of
the Riviera and the Country Houses and all know each other by their
Christian names. He was Don Herado de Madero on the Halls. He was
Henry Pelton—a name like any other—for his Bohemian world, including
Spegel. One might have thought that it would be worth Spegel’s while
to track him down and find what he did in the big gaps which he left
in his engagements; and so it would have been worth Spegel’s while.
Later on there might have been blackmail, and blackmail is a staple
of the Spegels. Yet Spegel did not take the trouble, simply because
he accepted too facile an explanation of John Maple’s absences and
disappearances.
His judgment was that the Pelton whom he knew, the Herado de Madero of
the Dogs, suffered from quite incurable drinking bouts. His experience
of quite incurable drinking bouts—it was extensive, for it covered
about half the people he had exploited in his wicked little life—was
that they must be left alone. So when Don Herado (or Pelton) told
him that the dogs would not appear next week; that he must cut out
next Friday; or that Saturday and Monday were washed, Spegel made all
his arrangements accordingly. For Pelton was a great asset, however
irregular. Old ladies who still vote Tory will tell me, no doubt, that
John Maple was thus necessary on the Halls at his own terms because
“blood tells”—the blood of the original cattle-dealer and smith. Their
twin brethren who make money as Labour leaders in the House of Commons
will say, on the platform at least, that John Maple was privileged and
favoured because he had gentle blood—the blood, again, of the smith and
cattle-dealer. But I say that he could do what he liked, cut out days,
shift engagements and live in two worlds because he had talent, and
because on the top of that he was determined to have his own way. Also
because Spegel only cared for money, and because people who only care
for money will give any amount of rope to those whose genius they can
tap.
Here, then, was John Maple these few years after the war, making good
in his curious way; earning much more than he spent, leading two lives,
proud, and possessing already a solid balance at the bank, firmly
affianced in soul to a great heiress who had as firmly affianced him,
and neither of the children really appreciating where money came into
such affairs.
In John Maple’s mind, more prominent even than Bo, stood dominating and
overwhelming a figure—the figure of Twenty Thousand Pounds—the Lump
that would redeem Rackham. In the mind of Bo there stood John Maple.
Anyone might have told these two children that all was at sixes and
sevens with their lives. On which account, the wise, might foretell
that these two lovers would win, and that the enormous incongruities of
their lives would be triumphantly reconciled.
CHAPTER V
At this very unfinished phase in John Maple’s affairs, with none of the
slats joined and no apparent possibility of making things fit in, but
with a very successful prospect in the only thing that matters to a boy
of his age, and a double talent and the chance of using it, there came
yet another of those invitations to Aunt Hilda’s. He had been there
quite often enough at week-ends during the last year, and it had been
impossible to hide from her that he was earning his living in some
obscure fashion upon the minor stage. Though no one else in her world
knew it. She had shuddered, and refused to hear any details. He would
get over this craze of independence, and anyhow, he was her nephew, and
he knew everybody and he could behave himself.
She told him to come down on the Friday if he could. He let Spegel
know his wish, for Spegel needed him more than he needed Spegel. So
he made it the Friday. But first he appointed to meet Bo and talk it
over, because he had been told that Lord Hellup was going to Rackham
Catchings.
They met in her club, where they might talk in peace.
“Bo, you’re going down with your father to Rackham again, and this time
I’m to be there.”
“Sure,” said Bo, stroking Lovey-Lad’s head with an intense affection
and gazing into his eyes.
“Did they tell you?”
“Yup,” said the beautiful girl.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t see you; didn’t want to; didn’t have to,” was the sufficient
reply.
“I’m not complaining; only you see, I should have been startled if I
had got to Rackham and found you there and not known.”
“I was looking for that startle,” said Bo.
“Yes,” said John, rather masterfully, “but you’ve got to think of me.
She doesn’t know that I know you or your father.”
“She will,” said Bo simply. “He tells her everything.”
“I go the day before you,” said John.
She nodded. He pulled his aunt’s letter out of his pocket.
“Look here, Bo, who’s this other person—this Amathea she speaks of?
D’you know her?”
“Nix,” said the young lady simply.
“Same here,” answered her lover.
“We pass,” Bo concluded, and sighed.
“Well, she’s to be there, and her husband—God knows who. And there’s
Lord Hambourne—I think that’s all. I know all about _him_. He was the
psychology expert during the war. He’s a don at Oxford.”
Bo put both her elbows on the table, in the corner where they sat
apart, framed her large face in her hands, and gazed largely on her
lover. Then recollection came into her eyes.
“Amathea?” she said. “That’s old Mother Bruvvish.”
“What?” answered John. “Do you mean to tell me that Aunt Hilda has
fallen to that?”
Bo nodded.
“That’s her,” she said. “I remember now. She’s the only Amathea in
London. She’s gotten a sausage neck.”
“What on earth makes it worth their while to go to Rackham for?” said
he.
“They’re hunting,” said she.
“Who’s hunting?”
“Mother Bruvvish and Pop are: both hunting.”
“Hunting what?” asked John, a little startled. “Not Aunt Hilda?”
Bo’s mouth became more quizzical.
“One of them is,” she said, “but they’re both hunting. Leastways, one’s
fishing.”
“Fishing for what?” said John Maple again, a little tired.
“Fishing for Rackham, that’s Amathea,” said Bo, dropping her voice and
leaning backwards.
“Good God!” said John.
“You’re right,” said Bo. “Appeal to Him. Call on Him. He might hear.”
John’s face was crossed by a look of pain, and Bo responded at once.
“It’s up to you, Dog-Man,” she said.
“What’s up to me?” asked the Dog-Man.
“The bluff,” said Bo, nodding. “It’s not a mammoth bluff, neither.”
“What bluff?” said John.
Bo grew impatient.
“Why, you cough in with your third offer,” she said. “You know you’re
famished for the place.”
“Bo,” said John, too seriously, and almost tragically, “I had meant to
save every penny, to work myself old, and then to go to Aunt Hilda with
the money. When you tell me that your father and Old Huggins are after
it....”
Bo held up her finger.
“Get it right, boy,” she said. “Pop’s not crazy for the house, but
he’ll be guided. D’you get me?”
“No,” said John Maple bluntly, “I don’t.”
Bo sighed at the obtuseness of men: but it was a safeguard (she