In the Mist of the Mountains Part 25

"Thanks, old girl," said Hugh, grateful for a moment. But then he soon drooped again.

"No, no, the trail of the serpent is over the artistic temperament, Kit.

Look at me,--if I get into a company where I'm pointed out, _monstrari digito_, as Hugh Kinross, I'm bored--and no doubt show that I am."

"Yes, I've often noticed that," said Kate, who had long secretly considered this rather a n.o.ble trait in her brother's character.

"Yes," said Hugh pensively, "and then when I get into a company where no one knows me from Smith the chemist's clerk, a childish resentment comes over me."

"Good heavens!" cried Kate.

It was not Hugh's pettiness that called forth the exclamation, but the saddening circ.u.mstance that she had put her chopped and seasoned parsley into the sweet mixture that represented the pudding.

"How," she asked pathetically, "can I get ready to feed a lion when it gets under my feet all the time like this? Is there _nothing_ you can do? Couldn't you go and play wild beasts under the piano for a little time? Max and m.u.f.fie would help you growl."

Hugh abandoned the dresser which rattled ominously as he took his solid weight off.

"Max and m.u.f.fie remind me of Miss Bibby, and Miss Bibby reminds me of a duty to be performed," he said; "I've promised to read her story. Well, if England expects every man this day to do his duty, Australia may expect duty this day to do a man."

Kate heard him going heavily back to his study.

CHAPTER XVIII

AN EDITING PENCIL

And now he swept all his own work out of the way and, sitting firmly down once more upon his chair from the kitchen, spread out upon his time-be desk, Miss Bibby's MS.

He had read it through no less than three times.

At the first reading he had laughed, indeed he had leaned back in his chair and fairly yelled with laughing.

For he could so plainly recognize his own influence, and the incongruity of it against the gentle, colourless background of the tale was in truth amusing. A more ludicrous effect could hardly have been obtained, if Miss Bibby herself, clad in the limp lavender muslin, had been encountered las.h.i.+ng about with a stockwhip or hurling blue metal wildly in all directions.

But then he sobered himself with an effort and read the tale again. And this time a hopeless look settled upon his face. It would have been so pleasant, so easy to praise warmly, point out a trifling error or two and so have done with his self-imposed task.

But it was so plain, so very plain that the woman could not write,--would never write. Her characters were paper dolls and lay on the typed sheets as flat as paper dolls. No breath of air, of motion, was in all the tale. No glint of humour, no suspicion of literary grace, not one even faintly original observation made it possible for him to hope there might be any promise of success before the woman. Stereotyped characters talking stereotyped talk and working out a thin stereotyped little plot, such was the hopeless material before him, while here and there on the dull grey of it, like patches of amazing scarlet clumsily st.i.tched on, were cutting phrases and sardonic observations closely imitated from _Liars All_.

He tossed the stuff aside impatiently after the second reading and shot an indignant glance through the window at "Greenways." But "Greenways"

only showed dimly through a mist that was rolling through the garden, so imagination had to call up the offending figure of the would-be auth.o.r.ess. And call her up it did,--kindly tender imagination! It flashed two glimpses of her before Hugh's eyes, one as she knelt on the path and dragged at a child's obstinate shoe biting her lips while the marauding ants ran up her own sleeves. And the other as she faced him, white-cheeked against the ruddy waratahs, and told him she "preferred to talk of the New Zealand Terraces."

He drew the poor MS towards him again and glanced through it once more desperately.

Then he took off his coat as a signal of earnest determination and filled his pen afresh and pulled a sheaf of paper towards him and settled down to see what might be done.

Two hours later he was still battling with it. He told himself it was his expiation. He had galvanized a few of the paper dolls into something a little resembling life, had put a dash of humour here and there and in some slight degree strengthened the plot. All this by putting in slips between the pages or by writing in the margin. But it was still a sorry story.

He stood up, yawned relievedly and went to the window. "Greenways" was smiling in the suns.h.i.+ne now as if it had never had such a garden guest as mist.

"My dear lady," he said--he had a habit of thinking aloud when he was alone like this--"that is not a kind action I have done you, though you will probably thank me profusely. You can't always be edited like this, and even with all this a.s.sistance you won't have the least idea how the thing is done. As the Snark said,

'The method employed I would gladly explain, While I have it so clear in my head, If I had but the time and you had but the brain-- But yet much remains to be said.'

Anyway I've done my best to atone."

Kate came in with a telegram in her hand.

"And have you sixpence about you?" she said. "Of course it's not in Larkin's day's work to deliver telegrams."

It was not--officially. But your telegram would lie on the little counter of the post office for a whole day waiting for you to chance in--unless Larkin looked to the matter. So he used to pop his red head in at the post-office door, whenever he was near, just to ascertain if there were a blue envelope lying there for one of his clients. And if there were, that client was in possession of it in a few minutes.

"By George, K,--I've got to catch the one-thirty," said Hugh, and he strode this way across his little room and then that way, and knocked a chair over, and seized hold of his coat and began to struggle into it, and still seemed no farther on his way.

"All right,--don't get excited, old fellow," said Kate, "I'll manage it,--no, never mind that coat, you can't travel in it. Shall I pack your bag for only one day or longer?" Hugh read the message again, but it did not seem to help him with the amount of clothing he would need; indeed it merely sent his thoughts off at a tangent.

"Never mind," Kate said briskly, "a few extra things won't be in the way. Now see here, Hugh, go in and shave, I'll bring your hot water, then dress, your brown suit and your new Panama--I wonder where your travelling cap is? No need to get flurried, you can have twenty minutes to dress and then take a comfortable half-hour for lunch. Larkin's here, luckily; I can send him for a wagonette, so you won't have to waste time walking to the station."

Hugh felt his chin.

"I suppose I must shave? I shouldn't meet any one by this train." He looked at her anxiously for indulgence.

"Certainly you must," she said severely, and then he knew there was no hope.

"Do you want any of this with you?" she added, nodding across to his paper-strewn table, "or shall I put it all in a safe place till you come back?"

"Oh, by Jove," he said,--"yes, there's that short story of mine, 'Fools of Fortune'--I've promised that for the _Melbourne Review_, it ought to have been posted last night. And then there's that woman's stuff--I suppose there's no time for me to run across to Miss Bibby, eh, K?"

"Certainly there is not," said Kate decisively, "you don't stir from here without a comfortable lunch."

"Well," said Hugh, "see here, K, I'll leave her stuff here on the desk in this envelope, and you take it over to her and tell her I think if she goes more on these lines the tale will be stronger."

"All right," said Kate, "and what about the other tale,--the one for the _Melbourne Review_?"

Hugh hastily stuffed some more MS into an envelope, wrote a few lines to accompany it, and scribbled an address.

"See it is posted at once," he said; "I've addressed it to Miss Brown, and told her to type it and to post it on to the _Review_."

"I'm sure I could start again," said Kate, "let me do it as usual."

But a slight eye trouble she had suffered from lately had made Hugh lock his sister's machine for the time.

"Don't waste time talking," he said, "just send it to the post as it is."

"Oh, very well," said Kate, "Larkin can take it with him. Now go and shave _instantly_ and, remember--your _brown_ suit."

All was managed so well that Hugh had nearly ten minutes to spare after lunch in which to smoke and luxuriate in the knowledge that all was well with him, his bag properly packed, his cap in his pocket, his flask filled, and money for the journey in the pocket of the suit on his back instead of in the one dangling in his wardrobe as had occurred before this, when Kate had not been there.