CHAPTER VI

Peter Gubbins had always taken great care of his broken heart.

In a place like Little Ticklington full of marriageable women, it was a very important asset.

It played the part of a chaperone. No one could expect to marry a man whose heart was as steadily and obviously broken as Peter’s.

It had never occurred to Peter to marry any one but Onoria.

He had a pleasant income for a single man, reinforced by certain small cheques for his articles.

He lived well under his income and his cheques went into the garden. As he often romantically said (when there was no danger of Onoria overhearing him), his ideas literally created flowers.

He would never have confessed it even to himself, but he knew he was a great deal better off as he was.

If he had had his heart’s desire, he would never have been able to get rid of it afterwards, and this was equally the case with the few quiet twinges in the direction of domesticity which had assailed him since.

There was nothing in Elsie Andrews which led Peter to change this opinion.

At first he thought her a nice, quiet little girl; then when she shot up into long skirts, and grew half a head taller than Onoria, he thought of her as a sensible young woman, who never said things before you did, and did not know what you had not told her.

Elsie made no effort, conscious or unconscious, to attract Peter, and Peter (like many not very attractive men) was very suspicious of efforts made to attract him.

Elsie was simply there in a pleasant, non-committal way, like a table napkin or a bottle of ink. She was useful in the garden and sympathetic at the piano; Samson liked her.

Peter Gubbins did not very often grasp new subjects, but when he did his mind played upon them with the effect of a magnifying glass. It excited him to be told that he had compromised Elsie; he had never compromised any one before, and he was not quite sure what it involved.

Was he expected to act upon it? Or would it automatically react upon him? Would the Andrewses mind? If they did, what form would their minding take?

Fortunately there was nothing in writing. He remembered that he had once sent Elsie a picture post card of a waterfall when he was away on a holiday, but there had been no space upon it for anything but the briefest allusion to the weather.

He hunted up old copies of an excellent magazine for which he had often written, “Answers to Gardeners,” to see if upon another of its pages under the heading of “Questions of Etiquette” there might not be some case which would throw light upon his own.

But no one seemed to have gone quite so far. There was a suggestion that no man should propose to two girls at the same time, a feat of legerdemain perfectly foreign to Peter’s tastes; but nothing was said as to the circumstances in which you are morally bound to propose to one.

Peter wished to continue to meet Elsie but he did not wish to be morally bound.

He gave the matter a great deal of quiet study and reflection, but he did nothing to precipitate the event of seeing Elsie again; he felt that if they met by chance it would rob their meeting of any dangerous intensity which it might otherwise have.

The meeting took place at the Post Office precisely a week later.

Elsie was standing with her back to Peter reading the notice of an oratorio which was to be performed at a neighbouring Cathedral town. Peter bought three ha’penny stamps and a packet of post cards before anything striking happened.

Then Elsie turned round and gasped “Oh, Mr. Gubbins!”

Peter kept his head and paid for the post cards before he answered her.

“Oh, it’s you, Elsie, is it?” he remarked guardedly, having counted his change. “Have you ever heard the Messiah?”

Elsie said she hadn’t, balancing first on one foot, and then on the other.

She didn’t know whether to go out of the Post Office into the street where anything might happen, or to remain in the shelter of the Post Office where it would be more difficult to get away if anything did happen.

“Do you want any stamps?” Mr. Gubbins asked kindly. Elsie flew to the counter and bought six, then she opened her purse and found she had already purchased a shilling’s worth.

Eventually they got into the street.

“It must be splendid,” said Elsie, referring to the Messiah. “Only I believe Onoria said it wasn’t, so of course it can’t be. Have you ever heard it?”

“Oh, time and time again,” said Mr. Gubbins lightly. “It is one of my favourite entertainments, the Messiah. As a young man I went regularly to hear it every Christmas Eve at the Albert Hall. I only gave it up after an attack of tonsillitis I had one winter—I may have told you about it? I date all my throat trouble from then.”

He had told Elsie about it several times, but as she merely murmured sympathetically, he told her about it again.

After he had finished he came back to the Messiah.

“How would you like to go and hear it at the Cathedral?” he enquired. “The organist is a friend of mine—he is going to get the soloists from town, and I expect he’ll have got quite a good chorus together. The Dean is allowing him to have it in the Cathedral.”

“Like it!” exclaimed Elsie. “Oh, frightfully, but you see Mother and Father hate music, except bands on the beach, and Onoria says local renderings of oratorios should be put down by law.”

“Well!” said Mr. Gubbins with unflinching courage. “Opinions differ about oratorios of course. How would it be if I took you myself? I daresay we could arrange something about it.”

Elsie looked at him as if he had suggested an expedition to Central Africa. It was a most inspiriting look. Mr. Gubbins found it so, and a lukewarm desire to do something desperate took possession of him.

But he meant to be very careful about it. He stage-managed this plunge into the Forbidden Land with infinite precaution.

As human plans go it was perfect; there was nothing unarranged for except Fate. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were to be told part of the truth.

Elsie was to break to them that she was going to hear the Messiah at Mellingham. Mr. Gubbins did not suggest a downright lie to Elsie, but when he said, “I daresay they’ll suppose it means with Onoria?” he paved the way for a leakage in accuracy of which Elsie took full advantage.

Onoria was not to be told anything at all.

Elsie was to leave the Station of Little Ticklington by a one o’clock train, and Mr. Gubbins by a one-thirty.

The journey took half an hour.

Elsie was to wait for him in a baker’s shop opposite the Cathedral; she could have a bun and milk while she waited.

They were to come back in the same train but in a different compartment.

Short of an unfavourable interposition on the part of Providence, they were safe.

But those who rely upon Providence to remain inactive in their favour should not tempt it by displaying any activity of their own.

Miss Bretherton, without consulting Onoria beforehand, arranged for her to take six pupils to the Messiah, whether she liked it or not.

She sprang this shabby trick upon her subordinate on the actual morning of the performance.

Forty girls, in white dresses with blue sashes, upon one side and twenty men in a variety of semi-evening clothes upon the other had scarcely sung through the first chorus a trifle raggedly (first choruses are apt to be a trifle ragged) before Elsie and Peter became aware of Onoria’s eyes.

They knew they were Onoria’s eyes although she was sitting at some little distance to the right of them, much as those who looked upon the Medusa’s head must have been conscious that it was her head before they turned into stone. No fate so happy awaited Peter and Elsie—if they had been turned into stone they could have stared back. As it was they twitched and trembled under Onoria’s ruthless gaze, conscious with a cowering intensity of their flesh and blood.

Peter sank from terror to terror, till from the lowest depth of cowardice, in which he contemplated leaving Elsie to her fate, he rose to a state of rage. He became as savage and determined as a very timid animal at bay. He would not be caught. That was what it came to. He set his lips firmly together—Onoria or no Onoria, he would simply _not_ be caught. It was a free country and no one could stop you if you ran away fast enough. Of course there was Elsie; Elsie wept.

“Stop crying!” he hissed at Elsie with a snarl.

Elsie swallowed a sob abruptly and retreated into a large pocket handkerchief.

The people sitting next to her thought she had a sensitive musical temperament and admired her for it. They did not know what kind of a temperament Peter had, but they did not admire him nearly so much.

The six girls, followed by Onoria with the face of an awakened Fury, advanced down the aisle.

“We must get out of this!” said Peter hurriedly.

He grasped Elsie firmly by the arm and dragged her after him.

Onoria saw the action, and said “Elsie!” out loud in the Cathedral over the six girls’ heads. Several people turned round. Elsie stiffened into instant obedience, but Peter’s clutch of manly terror was greater than Elsie’s power of womanly resistance. He had her out of the Cathedral and half way to the Railway Station before she could turn round.

Onoria could not run after them. She had her dignity to preserve, and the six girls to return intact.

Peter and Elsie had nothing to think of but their personal safety. They preserved this by the skin of their teeth, and by getting, without tickets, into a train destined for London.

They sat gasping and staring wild-eyed at each other, incapable of further speech even if they had dared to give utterance to what was in their hearts, in the presence of a clergyman, a market gardener, and two elderly ladies who looked at them as if they thought that people in such a hurry must have done something wrong.

When Elsie had got her breath again, she began to cry in gulps, as if she were swallowing tabloids without water.

Peter stared desperately out of the window. He was trying to make up his mind to the idea of never going back to his home, and he was remembering Samson and the sweet peas. Oh, how wise cats were! Samson was never involved in any social contacts beyond the point of a torn ear!

How gladly Mr. Gubbins would have let his ear be torn (in moderation) to escape from the weeping heap of femininity opposite to him!

What nonsense it was for a man to be expected to defend women, when they were always either the danger itself—like Onoria—or could melt out of it into a mist of tears—like Elsie?

Every one in the railway carriage was sorry for Elsie. No one was sorry for Mr. Gubbins. Indeed, the clergyman was beginning to be highly suspicious of him. He was not at all sure that he was not, for the first time in his well-chosen career, confronted by a Social Evil.

Several of our most prominent daily newspapers, during the early autumn before the opening of Parliament, had taken up the subject of the White Slave Traffic.

Mr. Gubbins looked ferocious, Elsie sobbed on.

The clergyman leaned forward and said tentatively, as it was surely his duty to do, “I am afraid this young lady is somewhat distressed?”

Peter Gubbins rose to the occasion; a flash of inspiration shot through him.

“She’s just had a tooth out,” he explained with unswerving duplicity.

Elsie stopped crying. She could not believe that Peter Gubbins had told a lie like that at a moment’s notice.

With the natural depravity of women, she had never admired him so much before. She gave a watery smile of affirmation.

The market gardener said sympathetically:

“Shock to the nerves, that’s what it is! I had an aunt once that had a tooth out, she never got over it. Had hysterics she had, one after the other, and died that day fortnight.”

“This,” said Mr. Gubbins, without moving a muscle of his face, “was only a wisdom tooth. They come out easier.”