A Knight on Wheels Part 39

"Only in a childish sort of way, though, I suppose?" pursued Timothy, with a touch of anxiety.

Before his suspicions could be allayed there came a vigorous but rhythmatic tattoo played upon the tiny bra.s.s knocker of the door.

_Tum-ti-tum-ti-tiddle-i-um, Tum-ti-tum-ti-tum-tum!

Officers' Wives getting pudding and pies, Soldiers' Wives get skilly!_

it said. This was Peggy's regulation way of announcing to her patient that she was about to enter the room. When her hands were full she whistled it. Philip knew every beat of it by heart.

After the usual brief interval the door opened and Peggy entered, to announce to Timothy, with her head upon one side in the manner which he had just described with so much tenderness and enthusiasm, that it was time for him to depart.

"I have another visitor," she said.

The newcomer proved to be a gigantic Scotswoman, of forty or more, with humorous blue eyes and a slow, comprehending smile.

"This is Miss Leslie, Philip," announced Peggy. "Mr. Rendle, I want to show you our front door. The exterior is greatly admired."

III

Miss Leslie sat down in the chair vacated by Timothy, and remarked, in a soft Highland drawl: "It is very shocking, being left alone with a young man like this."

She smiled, and Philip's heart warmed to her at once. He felt instinctively that Miss Leslie was going to be a less bewildering companion than Miss Babs Duncombe, for instance.

"My only excuse for my unmaidenly conduct," continued the visitor, "is that I am a very old friend of Peggy's. I have known her ever since she was so high." She indicated Peggy's infant stature by a gesture.

"So have I," said Philip proudly. "Did you know?"

No, Miss Leslie did not know: Peggy had not told her; so Philip, with wonderful fluency for him, explained the circ.u.mstances under which he had first entered the house of Falconer.

Miss Leslie chuckled.

"It would be a fine ploy for Montagu," she said, "scarifying a little boy. But I am glad you met Peggy's mother, if only for five minutes."

"She was very kind to me during those five minutes," remarked Philip.

"She was my greatest friend," said Miss Leslie simply. "But she has been dead for seven years now. I suppose you knew that?"

Philip nodded: Peggy had told him.

So the conversation proceeded comfortably, understandingly. Jean Leslie was one of those women in whose presence a man can put his soul into carpet-slippers. It was not necessary to select light topics or invent small-talk for her benefit. She appeared to know all about Philip, and the Brake, and the accident. She also gave Philip a good deal of fresh information about Peggy and her father.

"I hoped," she said, "that when Montagu was made an A.R.A. he would be less of a bear. But he is just the same. Success came too late, poor body. He is as morose and pernickety and f.e.c.kless as ever. Peggy is hard put to it sometimes."

"I expect you help her a good deal," remarked Philip, with sudden intuition.

Miss Leslie smiled grimly.

"Yes," she said, "I put my oar in occasionally. Montagu dislikes me, I am sorry to say. He is not afraid of Peggy,--nor she of him, for that matter,--but she is too soft with him: so whenever I see her overdriven I just step in and get myself disliked a little more. But he usually comes to me when he is in trouble, for all that. I am the only person who has any patience with him."

After that they talked about London, and Philip's work, and the future of automobilism. Miss Leslie apparently saw nothing either "pathetic" or "quaint" or "tragic" in a man liking to talk about what interested him.

At any rate, she drew him out and lured him on. For all her spinsterhood, Jean Leslie knew something of masculine nature. She knew that the shortest way to the heart of that self-centred creature Man is to let him talk about himself, and his work, and his ambitions. So Philip discoursed, with all his shyness and reticence thawed out of him, upon subjects which must have made his visitor's head ache, but which won her heart none the less. That is the way of a woman. She values the post of confidante so highly that she will endure a man's most uninteresting confidences with joy, because of the real compliment implied by their bestowal.

"I am a silly sentimental old wife," she mused to herself afterwards, "but it warmed my heart to have that boy turning to me for advice on things I knew nothing about. It would be good for him, too. He would never talk like that to Peggy; he would be afraid of wearying her. I do not matter."

CHAPTER XXII

THE INARTICULATE KNIGHT

I

PHILIP departed from t.i.te Street, Chelsea, without having invited Peggy to go with him. Getting married, except in the case of the very young, is not such a simple business as it appears. The difficulty lies in the fact that a man's conception of the proper method of wooing is diametrically opposed to that of a maid; and since the maid has the final word in the matter, it stands to reason that the campaign must ultimately be conducted upon her lines and not her swain's. Hence Romeo usually finds himself compelled, at the very outset, to abandon a great many preconceived and cherished theories, and adapt himself to entirely unfamiliar conditions of warfare, and he usually suffers a good deal in the process.

On paper, the contest should be of the most one-sided description; for the defending force (as represented by the lady) is at liberty to choose its own ground and precipitate or ward off an a.s.sault as it pleases, while the invader has to manoeuvre clumsily and self-consciously in the open, exposed to shafts of ridicule, fiery days of humiliation, and frosty nights of indifference. He marches and countermarches, feeling sometimes tender, sometimes fierce, not seldom ridiculous; but never, never, never sure of his ground. Truly it is a one-sided business--on paper. But woman has no regard for paper. Under the operation of a mysterious but merciful law of nature, it is her habit, having placed herself in an absolutely impregnable position, to abandon her defences without warning or explanation--not infrequently, at the moment when the dispirited lover at her gates is upon the point of striking camp and beating a melancholy retreat, marching out, bag and baggage, into the arms of her dazed and incredulous opponent.

But Philip, being unversed in the feminine instinct of self-defence, did not know this. To him, from a distance, Love had appeared as a Palace Beautiful standing on the summit of a hill--a fairy fabric of gleaming minarets, slender lines, and soft curves--a haven greatly to be desired by a lonely pilgrim. Now that he had scaled the height and reached his destination he found nothing but frowning battlements and blank walls.

In other words, he had overlooked the difference between arrival and admission. To sum up the situation in the language which would undoubtedly have been employed by that master of terse phraseology, Mr.

Timothy Rendle, Philip was "up against it."

There is nothing quite so impregnable as the reserve of a nice-minded girl. The coquette and the sentimental miss are easy game: there is never any doubt as to what they expect of a man; and man, being man, sees to it that they are not disappointed. But to make successful love to a girl who is neither of these things calls for some powers of intuition and a thick skin. It is the latter priceless qualification which usually pulls a man through. Philip possessed rather less than the average male equipment of intuition, and his skin was deplorably thin.

Peggy meant so much to him that he shrank from putting everything to the touch at once. Like all those who have put all their eggs in one basket, he feared his fate too much. So he temporised: he hung back, and waited.

If Peggy had ever given him an opening he would have set his teeth and plunged into it, blindly and ponderously; but she never did. She was always kind, always cheerful, always the best of companions; but she kept steadily to the surface of things and appeared to be entirely oblivious of the existence of the suppressed volcano which sighed and rumbled beneath her feet.

Philip became acquainted, too, with the minor troubles of the love-lorn.

If a letter lay on Peggy's plate at breakfast he speculated gloomily as to the s.e.x of the sender. He sat through conversations in the course of which his Lady appeared to make a point of addressing every one present but himself. He saw what Mr. Kipling calls "Christian kisses" wasted upon other girls and unresponsive babies. He would pa.s.s from the brief rapture of having his invitation to a drive in the Park accepted to the prolonged bitterness of having to take the drive in company with a third party, casually coopted into the expedition by Peggy at the last moment.

He purchased little gifts, and kept them for days, not venturing to offer them for fear of a rebuff. Once or twice he embarked upon carefully prepared conversational openings of an intimate character, only to have these same caught up, tossed about, and set aside with unfeeling frivolity by the lady to whom they were addressed. He sometimes wondered what had become of the Pegs he had once known--the wistful, dreamy, confiding little girl with whom he had discussed all things in heaven and earth under the wintry skies of Hampstead Heath.

Mental myopia is a common characteristic of young men in Philip's condition.

So he departed from t.i.te Street without having delivered himself, and returned to his own place. And yet not even that. For the garret in Wigmore Street was no more. One day during his convalescence he had desired certain books and papers, so Peggy and Miss Leslie made an expedition to fetch them.

They drove up to the door of the house, and having ascended to the fourth floor, let themselves into Philip's retreat with his latchkey.

"It is terribly thrilling," observed the romantic Miss Leslie, "to find yourself alone in a man's rooms."

Peggy said nothing, but looked round the dusty sitting-room with wondering eyes. She thought of her own private den at home, with its pretty curtains, soft cus.h.i.+ons, fresh flowers, and the thousand useless but companionable knick-knacks that make a woman's room look cosy. This gaunt, pictureless, carpetless eyrie made her s.h.i.+ver. There was not even a grate in the fireplace: only a rusty gas-stove.

"Mercy on us!" exclaimed Miss Leslie. "Can the man not afford a cover for the table? And where does he sit if a visitor comes?"

She disappeared into Philip's bedroom, and returned dragging a portmanteau.

"The only chair in there has a leg missing," she mentioned. "Take the armchair, child."

Peggy obeyed, and Miss Leslie, seating herself cautiously upon the portmanteau, enquired:--

"How long has the creature been living here?"