A Knight on Wheels Part 21

Uncle Joseph's cold blue eyes glowed suddenly.

"No, thank G.o.d!" he said; "I am not."

After that he told Mr. Mablethorpe the rest of the story.

"Her husband died five years ago. I rather gather it was drink, but I did not press the point. I am quite content to accept the official virtues of the deceased as enumerated on his tombstone and let his hobbies drop into oblivion. She had one little girl, who died, too; and since then she has been living alone--quite alone. Poor soul, she has paid--paid in full. Perhaps I have, too. Pride, pride! Have you ever noticed, in your observations of human life, how very heavily--disproportionately, one might say--G.o.d punishes pride? Sins which arise from weakness seem to get off, on the whole, rather more lightly than they deserve; but the sins of the strong--pride, obduracy, even reticence--never! I suppose it is G.o.d's way of rubbing in the fact that Strength Belongeth to the Lord Alone."

"I don't think that the strong get punished more heavily than the weak,"

said Mr. Mablethorpe, "but they feel their punishment much more keenly.

It is impossible to punish the weak. They run howling to their betters the moment they feel the first whack, and unload their woes on to them.

But the strong, especially the proud, endure their punishment and say nothing. That's why it hurts so."

"Perhaps you are right," said Uncle Joseph. "But we appear to be digressing into philosophy. I am to be married next month, and we are going to live in the country. She has been left very poorly off, as the money has pa.s.sed on with the t.i.tle. But I think we shall be tolerably comfortable--and busy. We have some small arrears of happiness to make up."

"And your benevolent exercises," said Mr. Mablethorpe, after a long silence, "are now a thing of the past?"

"Yes. Frankly, I am sorry; for the people who paid the money extracted a large amount of innocent pleasure from giving it, and it was a perfect G.o.dsend to the people who ultimately received it. But, of course, pedantically speaking, the whole thing was illegal, and Vivien has all a woman's respect for the letter of the law. So I intend to close down. My charities will suffer, I fear; but possibly I shall be able to make good by personal service some of the deficiencies caused by my failure as a source of revenue. Still, I shall miss it all. I enjoyed composing the appeals, particularly."

"I rather fancy I once received one from you," said Mr. Mablethorpe. "I read it with great appreciation. In fact, I answered it. But now, as to Master Philip. What are your views?"

"Supposing I hear yours first?" said Uncle Joseph.

"Very well. I am a comparatively prosperous man. I have no son. The boy interests me, and I scent copy in him. I also want an occasional secretary and amanuensis. I suggest that he should make his headquarters with me, and I will be responsible for his education. He shall visit you whenever and for as long as you want him. The only stipulation I make is that we have no formal agreement or business arrangement about him. I am not a man of business, and I hate legal contracts and attempts to harness the future more than anything in this world. Will you let me have the boy for as long as he is willing to stay with me?"

"Certainly," said Uncle Joseph.

And with that word Philip's career as a misogynist and recluse came to an official conclusion.

BOOK TWO

LABOR OMNIA VINCIT

CHAPTER XIII

THE GOLDEN AGE

I

PHILIP'S life during the next ten years resembled All Gaul. It was spent partly at a little house in Cheltenham, whither Uncle Joseph, with all his old austerity and cynicism thawed out of him, had conducted the Beautiful Lady two months after their marriage; partly at Red Gables; and partly at a series of educational establishments, ranging from a private school in the neighborhood of St. Albans, where he was initiated into the mysteries of Latin Prose and cricket, to the great engineering shops of the Britannia Motor Company at Coventry.

Life at Red Gables was a very pleasant business. Philip's duties as secretary were of an elastic nature. Sometimes he wrote out cheques for tradesmen and coaxed Mr. Mablethorpe into signing them. Sometimes he battled with publishers about copyrights and royalties. Sometimes he acknowledged the receipt of the letters--chiefly from seminaries for young ladies--of those who wrote to express their admiration of Mr.

Mablethorpe's works.

"I suppose, Philip," said Mr. Mablethorpe one morning, ruefully surveying a highly scented missive in a mauve envelope, forwarded by his publishers, "that my books _are_ read by other people besides schoolgirls; but why in Heaven's name should no one else ever write to me about them? Not that I want any one to write at all,--the penny post is the curse of modern civilization,--but I could do with a touch of variety now and then. I have only once in my life received a letter, as an author, from a man, and that was from a pork-butcher in the north of England, who wrote to point out, most helpfully and sensibly, that I was guilty of a technical error in making my hero purchase both kidneys and bacon at the same shop. I should like to get a lot of letters like that: they are extremely valuable. But what _do_ I get? Letters by the score from schoolgirls--sometimes from a syndicate of schoolgirls--all asking for my autograph and endeavouring to find out, by more or less transparent devices, how old I am and whether I am married or not! You can't choke them off. If you don't answer they write again, enclosing a stamped envelope, which hangs round your neck like a millstone for weeks. If you do, they tell all the other girls, and before you know where you are you find you have tapped Niagara. Let us see what Zenana has found me out now."

He opened the mauve envelope, and read the letter with savage grunts.

"This, Philip," he said, "is from Gwendoline Briggs and Clara Waddell.

You will be interested to hear that they sit up reading my innocuous works in the dead of night, after the other girls have gone to sleep.

Well, I hope the Head Mistress catches them at it, that's all!... Here you are: what did I tell you?

... _We often wonder what you are like. One of us thinks you are about forty, with rather tired grey eyes_--

"Impudent minx!

--_but the other thinks you are much younger than that; clean-shaven, with a very firm mouth_.

"This sort of thing makes me quite sick.... Yes, I thought as much; they want my autograph.

_Will you please send two, please, as we are not sisters--only great chums._

"Where do these brats hail from?" Mr. Mablethorpe turned back the page and consulted the heading of the letter.

"_Bilchester Abbey School, Bilchester, Hants._ That's a new name to me.

Throw over that directory, Philip: on the third shelf, to your right.

Let me see: _Founded, 1897. Governing Body: the Lord Bishop of_----quite so: _Head Mistress, Miss_----yes, yes: _a.s.sistant Mistresses_--never mind them: _Gravel soil; Gymnasium; Alt.i.tude, four hundred_--Ah, here we are:--_Number of Pupils, two hundred and seventy-three!_ Great Heavens!

This must be stopped. Get the typewriter quickly, Philip, and take down something!

_Mr. Julius Mablethorpe regrets deeply that he is unable to accede to the request of Mesdames Briggs and Waddell for his autograph. Mr. Mablethorpe had the misfortune some years ago to be deprived of the use of his hands (owing to an explosive fountain-pen), and now finds himself compelled to dictate all his work into a gramophone. Mr. Mablethorpe is seventy-eight years of age, and is still in possession of a fair proportion of his faculties. His eyes used to be grey, as Miss Briggs (or was it Miss Waddell?) surmises; but he now possesses only one, having lost the other while on a visit to a Dorcas Society, together with a portion of his scalp. He has been married four times, and possesses sixty-nine grandchildren, reckoning thirteen to the dozen. For further details see "Who's Who."_

"That ought to choke them off," observed Mr. Mablethorpe with childish satisfaction, as he finished dictating this outrageous doc.u.ment. "Now, what about this grubby epistle here? It does not smell so vilely as the first, but I bet it is from another of the tribe."

He began to read:--

_Dear Mr. Mablethorpe_

_All your books are in our House Library--_

He broke off.

"I tell you what it is, Philip," he said. "I shall have to write a really shocking novel--something unspeakably awful. Then I shall be banned from girls' schools for ever. My circulation will probably go down by ninety per cent, but it will be well worth it.

_My name is Elsie Hope, and I love them all. I have no father or mother, and I have just read a story of yours about a little girl who had no father or mother either. It made me cry._

"Snivelling brat!" commented the unfeeling author.

_I have not been here very long, and I do not know many of the girls yet, so your books make splendid company. I thought I would like to tell you. Good-bye._

"Gracious!" said Mr. Mablethorpe incredulously. "She hasn't asked for my autograph! h.e.l.lo, what's this?"

He turned over the page. The letter continued, in a different handwriting--prim, correct, and formal:--