CHAPTER IX

Peter Gubbins had the type of mind which invariably sees danger in the most unlikely places.

He apprehended it from every wayside flower. Nothing was too trivial or too transitory for Peter to snatch from it in passing a whiff of disaster.

He never mounted a tram without expecting to break his leg, and he never ate a meal in a strange place without anticipating typhoid.

And yet the mere sound of Onoria’s voice had driven him helter skelter towards the abyss of matrimony.

He raced from the Cathedral to the Station as a man flees from a burning building: his one idea was not to be caught by Onoria. Even if he had envisaged Onoria’s face at one end of the race and matrimony at the other, it is probable he would have continued running in the direction of matrimony. The true coward can only see one danger at a time, and falls light-heartedly into any other which lies in the opposite direction.

It says a great deal for Peter Gubbins’ heart that even in that awful moment of panic he dragged Elsie after him.

It was not till they were safe in the train that he began to wonder how on earth he was going to get rid of her.

The chief obstacle to murder has always been the disposal of the body—and the problem of rescue is very similar to it; but it is easier to dispose of a victim than to dispose of a sacred charge; villains, not knight errants, escape the due reward of their deeds.

Peter wished with a burning longing that he could deposit Elsie in the Cloak Room at Paddington Station, even if it involved his paying twopence a day on her for ever.

After the tooth episode it was wonderful how Elsie cheered up.

She had found in Mr. Gubbins a prop and stay and that was all she wanted. A flower grows without the support of a stick—but its carriage depends on being tied to one.

Elsie held her head up, and her mind (which if timorous was always practical) turned to Aunt Anne at Clapham.

They had a late tea in the Station and sent off Elsie’s telegram; and then they took a taxi to Clapham.

They could have gone as conveniently and more cheaply by train, but a taxi appealed to them both, as more buccaneerish.

Peter enjoyed feeling buccaneerish until they reached the Common; then he began to tremble before the idea of explaining things to Aunt Anne. He knew that he had done right, but he was aware that flight and guilt are to many people synonymous; and few men like to explain that they found it safer to run away.

Elsie with incredible finesse relieved him of this difficulty. She said she thought it would be better if he left her at the door, and came back next day. “You’ll have time then,” she explained, “to think things over, and I know authors and people think of their plots better alone. Whatever you decide is sure to be wonderful, and Aunt Anne will be more likely to listen to me if you’re not there.”

Peter gave a sigh of relief. “Yes—yes,” he agreed, “perhaps the explanation had better come from you direct. I know from personal experience that the way to tackle a difficult situation is easier to me if I am left alone face to face with it, as it were. Perhaps this is merely because I am a man. Onoria would say so—but roughly speaking, I should say that women have the same gift.”

“I don’t know if it’s a gift,” said Elise modestly, “but I can’t say anything if other people are there—and I can’t say much if they aren’t; but I’ll do what I can.”

Aunt Anne required a good many explanations. She had never received a niece before at seven o’clock in the evening without a tooth-brush.

It would have been difficult for her to grasp that the survivors of earthquakes are denuded of this effective article of toilette, and she knew that Little Ticklington was not an earthquake district.

She followed every explanation given by Elsie with—“Still I can’t quite see, dear, how you have arrived without your night things. I am very glad to see you, of course, but it all sounds so precipitate.”

It was on the edge of this precipice that Elsie fell asleep.

She wisely kept Mr. Gubbins for breakfast. When they were eating kidneys and bacon—after porridge, but before marmalade—she confessed to her Aunt Anne that she had not only run away from the oratorio because Miss Strickland did not like oratorios, but because Mr. Gubbins was with her and Miss Strickland would have liked his presence even less than an oratorio.

Aunt Anne laid down her knife and fork and gazed at Elsie—the mystery was solved. It had been a mystery—it was now simply a crime. Aunt Anne had not understood before why Miss Strickland should object to certain parts of the Bible set to music. She was herself doubtful of Opera, even if it had not been so expensive; but sacred music was surely both educational and devout, and not even very interesting. It was unreasonable for a high school teacher to object to such a performance—but a young man!

Her gaze was awful, and Elsie shuddered under it, and swallowing her tea too hurriedly, choked.

When she had stopped choking, Aunt Anne said portentously, “Is Mr. Gubbins a young man, Elsie?”

Elsie said that that depended on what you meant by young; she had known him for years and years, and he had grey hair and wore spectacles.

“Spectacles,” said Aunt Anne solemnly, “do not prevent youth though they may disguise it. Grey hair is neither here nor there. Am I to gather that there is some understanding between you and this—this Mr. Gubbins, Elsie—perhaps unknown to your dear parents?”

Elsie wriggled and twisted. “They wouldn’t mind him,” she murmured forlornly. “At least I don’t think so. Of course we understand each other in a way. I play his accompaniments.”

“Elsie, you are hedging!” exclaimed Aunt Anne majestically. “I must see this young man for myself.”

Elsie was not really hedging; if she had seen a hedge she would most certainly have taken shelter under it, but she was not aware of the exact danger her aunt supposed her to be avoiding.

She felt that there was something ominous in the air connected with Mr. Gubbins, and she wriggled to appease it.

The idea of marriage conveyed nothing personal to Elsie. Marriage was merely something that happened to other people—with a cake. She helped herself to marmalade and hoped that Peter Gubbins would blow over.

Her aunt pursed up her lips and said, “This is dreadful!” but as Elsie refused to fall into the trap of asking what was dreadful, she could not follow it up in any way, except by telling Mary, the parlour-maid, to show Mr. Gubbins, when he arrived, into her dead husband’s study.

The study of a dead clergyman is not usually an invigorating spot.

Aunt Anne was a massive lady and she sat between Peter and the door. All the windows were closed as if on purpose. Even if Peter had had the courage to try to escape it would have been very difficult. You cannot get out of dead people’s rooms briskly without appearing heartless; besides he had not the courage.

Peter was not as surprised at Aunt Anne’s attitude as Elsie would have been, but he was more frightened.

He saw in Aunt Anne’s eye that matrimony had fallen upon him like a bolt from the blue.

You cannot put bolts back into the blue when they have fallen, and you could not dislodge the idea of matrimony from Aunt Anne’s mind once it had taken root there. If young people would go to oratorios together they ought to be married—she saw that quite plainly, even without the lawless journey at the other end, which made the prospect, as she explained to Peter, “simply compulsory.”

“You see,” she explained, “Elsie arrived here literally without a tooth-brush—need I say more?”

Peter assured her that there really was no need. It contained the case against them in a nutshell.

On the whole he was not averse to being frightened into marriage with Elsie. One or two things had to be made perfectly plain before he would consent to it. One was that they should not go back to Little Ticklington on any account, and the other that the marriage should take place as quietly as possible without wedding guests. They might have relatives, but not friends.

It was all terribly uncertain and disintegrating, but it was not as terrible as having to face Onoria.

Peter’s own plan had been the idea of going abroad alone, assisted by Thomas Cook.

Of course it was a very dangerous plan, open to obvious disasters at practically every turn, still Cook’s was a most reliable agency, and many people had been known to return alive from trips to the Continent. He could take a hot water bottle, Keating’s, and a small medicine chest. But marriage would be less complicated, and it would have the advantage of including Elsie.

Peter proposed to Elsie quite easily. He simply said, “On the whole, I think the best way out for both of us is to be married. For a long time I have been feeling Little Ticklington too restricted for me mentally. One needs to be nearer the great pulse of life—not too near, of course! I thought somewhere in the suburbs—Chiswick, for instance—there are some nice little houses in that direction, or Turnham Green.

“I could cultivate sweet peas there, and yet attend literary causeries in London. Of course it’s a great upheaval for both of us, especially at my age, but looking at it all round, it appears to me the wisest course to take—what do you feel about it?”

Elsie nodded, she wasn’t looking at it all round. She was seeing that it involved her not having to meet Onoria just yet.

She said, yes, she thought it was the best plan, if Peter didn’t mind.

Peter said, “You must take the rough with the smooth.” Of course he had not contemplated such a step for many years, but he thought if they were very careful and took things quietly they might be able to manage.

He understood from Aunt Anne that you wrote to the Bishop’s Chaplain for a license, and did not have to see the Bishop.

The conversation came to an abrupt pause, their eyes met guiltily, and they looked away from each other.

What were they going to do about Onoria?

Peter hummed and Elsie twiddled her fingers. Onoria never allowed these physical mitigations of self-control to take place. It was a great relief to them.

They decided—in silence—to do nothing. It was as if they had been married already.

Peter said he had one or two little things to do, and left her.

Aunt Anne came in and wept on Elsie’s neck; and they decided to go out and do a little shopping.

Everything went quite smoothly. Elsie’s parents came up to town and were very pleased when they discovered that Peter had six hundred a year in trust funds without counting what he made by his articles.

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews privately thought that marriage from Clapham was absurd, but Peter was unexpectedly firm upon the subject.

He simply asserted that at Little Ticklington no such marriage would ever take place.

He would marry Elsie at Clapham or he would not marry Elsie at all.

Mrs. Binns (Peter’s former housekeeper) brought Samson up to town in a basket. Samson would not speak to Peter for several days, but he ate heartily.

It was the night before the wedding that Peter and Elsie heard of the death of Prendergast.

Mrs. Binns had bought Peter a China dog as a wedding present and it put it into her head.

Elsie and Peter concealed their emotion until they were alone, then they gazed at each other in sympathetic anguish—they could no longer keep silence about Onoria.

“Oh!” said Elsie, “if only we could give Onoria another pug. Perhaps she would see then that we aren’t really doing anything to upset her—and besides she wouldn’t mind so much if she had something—you know what I mean—something of her own to fall back upon.”

“I was thinking the same thing myself,” agreed Peter. “Between you and me, Onoria never had quite the subtlety for cats—Samson would never look at her—but dogs she knew through and through. I think she would appreciate our getting her a dog. It might heal any little breach that our—our coming together—may have appeared to cause.”

They bought a pug puppy directly after the marriage—on the way to Chiswick. (Peter had always understood honeymoons were dangerous, so they had decided to avoid one.)

It was an expensive animal and it relieved their feelings very much.

Onoria would have returned it to them, had she not discovered on opening the basket that, with their usual inefficiency, they had sent the poor little creature to her in a most deplorable condition.

First it had to be fed, and then a carbolic bath was more than indicated, and after Onoria had spent several hours over the puppy with a fine tooth comb and a large bath sheet, she began to feel that it would be cruelty to send it back. It was obvious that neither of the Gubbinses could take proper care of a dog.

Onoria never altogether lost touch with Peter and Elsie. She told them what she thought of them when she acknowledged the pug; but letters do not carry sound. They became used to the idea of what Onoria thought of them; it seemed less significant at Chiswick.

Onoria spent a night with them every now and then, and once a year they visited her for a week-end at Little Ticklington.

Of course it was not the same thing. Onoria was just the same and the Gubbinses were not really very different; but they were more critical of Onoria.

They did not stand up to her before her face, but they stood up to her behind her back quite easily.

When Onoria got the better of them in argument, as she invariably did, they would wait until she was out of earshot. Then they would smile and say to each other with the secret consciousness of superior achievement,

“It stands to reason that an unmarried woman like Onoria can’t understand things as we do. She hasn’t had the experience.”

THE END

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Transcriber’s Notes:

A few obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note. When multiple spellings occurred, majority use has been employed.

A cover has been created for this ebook and is placed in the public domain.

[End of _The Victim and The Worm_ by Phyllis Bottome]