Part 5

You may say (when you hear of his dark design) that I should at once have insisted on an explanation, but explanations are barred in the sport that he and I play, which is the greatest of all parlour games, the Game of Trying to Know Each Other without asking questions. It is strictly a game for two, who, I suppose, should in perfect conditions be husband and wife; it is played silently and it never lasts less than a life-time. In panegyrics on love (a word never mentioned between us two players), the game is usually held to have ended in a draw when they understand each other so well that before the one speaks or acts the other knows what he or she is going to say or do. This, however, is a position never truly reached in the game, and if it were reached, such a state of coma for the players could only be relieved by a cane in the hand of the stronger, or by the other bolting, to show him that there was one thing about her which he had still to learn.

No, no, these doited lovers when they think the haven is in sight have set sail only. Tintinnabulum and I have made a hundred moves, but we are well aware that we don’t know each other yet; at least, I don’t know Tintinnabulum, I won’t swear that he does not think that he at last knows me. So when he brought W. W. home with him for the holidays it was for me to find out without inquiry how he had been helping Mrs. Daly (and for what sum). He knew that I was cogitating, I could see his impertinent face regarding me demurely, as if we were at a chess board and his last move had puzzled me, which indeed was the situation.

All I knew of her was that she had lately remarried and that W. W. had been invited to spend his holidays with us while she was away on her honeymoon.

Good heavens, could Tintinnabulum have had some Helping part in the lady’s marriage? This boy is beginning to scare me.

I studied him and W. W. at their meals and stole upon them at their play. There could not have been more cherubic faces.

But then I remembered the two cherubic faces I had watched from a bridge.

5. _Tintinnabulum Eats an Apple_

I went to Tintinnabulum’s bedchamber and told him I could not rest until I knew what he had been doing to that lady. In the days of Neil it had been a room of glamour, especially the bed therein, where were performed nightly between 6.15 and 6.30 precisely, the brighter plays of Shakespeare, two actors, but not a sign of them anywhere unless you became suspicious of the hump in the coverlet. Never have the plays gone with greater merriment since Mr. Shakespeare made up “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in his Judith’s hump.

No glamour of course in the room of a public schoolboy, unless it was provided by his discarded raiment, which lay like islands on the floor. However, I found Tintinnabulum in affable humour, sitting tailor-like in bed, dressed in half of his pyjamas, reading a book and eating an apple. He had doubtless found the apple or the book just as he was about to enter the other half of his night attire.

“What could I have been doing to her?” he asked invitingly. (He likes to be hunted.)

The robing of him having been completed, I said with humorous intent, “You may have been luring her into matrimony against her better judgment.”

“She is nuts on him,” Tintinnabulum said, taking my remark seriously.

“But you can’t have had anything to do with it?”

He nodded, with his teeth in the apple.

“Of course this is nonsense,” I said, though with a sinking, “you don’t know her.”

“I didn’t need to know her for a thing like that.”

I tried sarcasm. “I should have thought it was essential.” He shook his head.

“I heard W. W. say to-day,” I continued in the same vein, “that she is spending the honeymoon on the Riviera; you are not implying, are you, that it was you who sent her there?”

“At any rate, if it hadn’t been for me,” he replied, taking a good bite, “she wouldn’t be on the Riviera and there wouldn’t be a honeymoon.”

I became alarmed. “Take that apple out of your mouth and tell me what you mean.”

The mysterious boy of the so open countenance, as he told me the queer tale in bed that night, was superbly unaware of its queerness, and was more interested in standing on his head to see how far his feet would reach up the wall. He far exceeded the record that had been left by Neil.

“I wasn’t the one who made her fond of the chappie,” he said by way of beginning. “She did that bit herself.”

“Very generous of you to give her that amount of choice,” I conceded.

“But she stuck there,” said he. “It was W. W. who told me how she had stuck. W. W. has a sister called Patricia. Their mother’s name is Mildred. That is all I know about her,” he added with great lightness of touch, “except that I worked the marriage.”

This was the first time I had heard of W. W.’s having a sister.

“He doesn’t speak about her much,” Tintinnabulum explained, “because they are twins. I say, don’t let on to him that I told you he was a twin.”

So far as I can gather, W. W. keeps the existence of his girl twin dark from boys in general in case it should make them think less of him.

“He didn’t ask me to help him out till things were in an awful mess at home, and then he showed me some of Patricia’s letters.”

“If I were cross-examining you,” I pointed out, “I should say that your statement is not quite clear. Tell the Jury what you mean, and don’t blow the apple pits at the portrait of your uncle the bishop.”

“I bet you I get him in the calves twice in three shots,” he said.

“An ignoble ambition,” I told him; “answer my question.”

“Well, you see, Patricia had found out all about her mother’s being fond of the man. His name begins with K, but I forget the rest of it.”

I ventured to say that the least he could do for a man whose life he had so strangely altered was to remember his name.

“W. W. will know it,” he said with the carelessness of genius.

“Even now,” I pressed him, “I don’t see where you come in. Did Patricia object to Mr. K.?”

“Oh, no, she thinks no end of him. So does W. W.” He added handsomely, “I wouldn’t have let her get married if they had shied at it.”

“In that case——”

“It wasn’t Patricia that was the bother,” he explained, running the apple up and down his arm like a mouse, “it was Mrs. Daly. You know how funny ladies are about some things.”

“I do not,” I said severely.

“Well, it was about marrying a second time. Mrs. Daly couldn’t make up her mind whether it would be fair to W. W. and Patricia. She knew they liked him all right, but not whether they liked him as much as that.”

“Tell me how Patricia found all this out, and don’t bump about so much.”

“She was watching,” he replied airily. “She is that kind. I daresay the thing wasn’t difficult to find out if all the stuff she said in her letters to W. W. was true. They were awful letters, saying her mother was in anguishes about what was the best thing to do for her progeny. One letter would say, ‘Mr. K. made a lovely impression on mother to-day and I don’t think she can resist much longer.’ Then the next would say, ‘I fear all is up, for they have been crying together in the drawing-room, and when he left he banged the door.’”

“Their mother hadn’t a notion,” Tintinnabulum assured me, making an eye-glass of the apple, “that they knew there was anything in the wind.”

“Nor would they have had any such notion,” I rapped out, “if they had been children of an earlier date.”

“I suppose we are cleverer now,” he admitted. He became introspective. “I expect the war did it. It’s rummy what a difference the war has made. Before the war no one could hold two eggs in his mouth and hop across a pole. Now everyone can do it.”

I requested him to stick to the point.

“Why didn’t Patricia the emancipated go to her mother and inform her that all was well?”

“That is the very thing W. W. and she bickered about in their letters. He was always writing to her to do that, but she said it would be unladylike.”

“Very un-shingled of her to trouble about that,” I got in. “But had she any proposal to make to W. W.?”

“Rather. She was always badgering W. W. to write to their mother saying they knew all and wanted her to go at it blind. She thought it would come better from him, being male. That was what made him come to me in the end. He told me all about it and asked me if I could help.”

“And what was your reply?” I asked with some interest. “Don’t tell me,” I added hurriedly (we were back at the game, you see), “I want to guess. You said immediately, ‘All right’?”

He approved.

“Did it ever strike you,” I enquired curiously, “that you might not be able to help?”

“I can’t remember,” the unfathomable one answered. “I say, would you like to see me do a dive over your head?”

Offer declined.

“You see,” he continued, “W. W. is rather—rather——”

“Rather a retiring boy when there is trouble ahead,” I suggested. “Well, what did you devise?”

“I said I couldn’t do anything until I knew the colour of Patricia’s hair and eyes.”

This took me aback, though it is quite in Tintinnabulum’s manner.

“How could that help?” I had to enquire instead of risking a move.

“I couldn’t get a beginning,” he insisted doggedly, “till I found out that.” (To this day I don’t know what he meant.)

“No difficulty in finding out from W. W.,” I said.

Here I was wrong. W. W. had no idea of the colour of his dear little sister’s eyes but presumed that, as he and she were twins, their eyes must be of the same hue. There followed a scene, undoubtedly worthy of some supreme artist, in which, by the light of a match, Tintinnabulum endeavoured to discover colour of W. W.’s eyes, W. W. being again unable to supply desired information. The match always going out just as Tintinnabulum was on the eve of discovery, it was decided by him that W. W. should write to his twin for particulars (letter dictated by Tintinnabulum). Patricia’s reply was, “Who is it that wants to know? Eyes too expressive to be blue, too lovely to be grey,” and it irritated the two seekers after truth.

“We didn’t ask her what colour they were not,” Tintinnabulum said to me witheringly, “but what colour they were.”

In the end, rather than bother any more with her, they risked putting her eyes down as browny black. This determined, Tintinnabulum apprized his client that Patricia was to write the letter that would make their mother happy. This nearly led to a rupture.

_W. W._ (_sitting_, as they say in the plays, though he might as well be standing): She can’t write a letter to mother when they are living in the same house.

_Tintinnabulum_ (_rising_, because W. W. sat): It would be a letter to you.

_W. W._ (_contemptibly_): That brings me into the thing again.

_Tintinnabulum_: Shut up and listen. The letter isn’t to be posted. Your mother will find it lying open on Patricia’s desk and read it on the sly.

_W. W._ (_nobly_): My mother never does things on the sly.

_Tintinnabulum_ (_comprehensively_): Oh.

_W. W._ (_hedging_): What would the letter say?

_Tintinnabulum_: It would show her that you and Patricia knew what she was after and both wanted her to marry the chappie, and then she could put it back where she found it and never let on that she had seen it and make all her arrangements with a happy heart.

_W. W._: That is what we want, but mother wouldn’t read a letter on the sly.

_Tintinnabulum_ (_after thinking it out when he should have been doing his prep._): Look here, if she is so fussy we can tell Patricia to leave the letter open on the floor as if it had blown there, and then when your mother picks it up to put it back on the desk she can’t help taking a look at it.

_W. W._: Would that not be reading it on the sly?

_Tintinnabulum_ (_with cheerful cynicism_): Not for a woman.

_W. W._ (_depressed_): It will be an awfully difficult letter to write.

_Tintinnabulum_ (_exultant_): Fearfully.

_W. W._: I don’t think Patricia could do it.

_Tintinnabulum_: Not she. I’ll do it. Then you copy my letter and she copies yours.

_W. W._: 3_d._?

_Tintinnabulum_: Tons more than that.

This scheme was carried out, Tintinnabulum, after a thoughtful study of Patricia’s epistolary style, producing something in this manner, no doubt with the holy look on his face that is always there when he knows he is concocting a masterpiece. (I regret that he has forgotten what he said in the introductory passage, which dealt in an artful feminine manner with her garments and was probably a beauty.)

“Darling Doubly Doubly,

... oh dear, I am so unhappy because I fear the match between darlingest mummy and Mr. K. is not to be hit off. Oh dear, she blows hot and cold and it makes me bleed to see the poor man’s anguishes, and you and me wanting it so much. If only I could think of a lady-like way to tell mummy that we know she wants it and that we want her to go ahead, but I cannot, and it would need a wonder of a man to do it. Oh dear, how lovely it would be, oh dear, how I wish I knew some frightfully clever person, oh dear——”

“I stopped there,” Tintinnabulum told me. “I meant to put in a lot more before I finished, but I wouldn’t let myself go on.”

“Why?” I asked eagerly, aware that he had reached a great moment in his life.

“Because,” he said heavily, “I saw all at once that I had come to the end.” (We are so undemonstrative that I did not embrace him).

The letter was left as arranged, on Mrs. Daly’s floor, and I may say at once that everything went as planned by the Master. Can we not see Mildred (all authors have a right to call their heroine by her Christian name), opening the door of that room? Her beautiful face is down-cast, all the luckier for Tintinnabulum and Co., for she at once sees the life-giving sheet. She picks it up, meaning to replace it on the desk whence it has so obviously fluttered, when a word catches her eye, and not intending to read she reads. An exquisite flush tints her face as she recognises Patricia’s inimitable style. The happy woman is now best left to herself (Come away, Tintinnabulum, you imp).

Dear (not dearest) heroine, you little know who is responsible for your raptures, the indifferent lad now trying to twist one leg round his neck as he finishes his apple. Grudge us not the few minutes in which for literary purposes we have snatched you from the shores of the blue Mediterranean. Thither we now return you to cloudless days and to your K., roses in your cheeks (Tintinnabulum’s roses). And you, O lucky K., when you encounter boys of thirteen, might do worse than have a mysterious prompting to give them a franc or so. I wish you both very happy, and I am, yours affec.

“Shall I send them your love?” I almost hear myself saying to Tintinnabulum.

“If you like,” he replies, preoccupied with what is left of an apple when the apple itself has gone. For it must be admitted of him that he has not boasted of his achievement. His only comment was modesty itself, “Two bob,” he said.

It is almost appalling to reflect that no woman who knows Tintinnabulum (and has two bob) need remain single. And what character apples have, even when being consumed; if I had given him an orange or a pear this chapter would be quite different. With such deep thoughts I put out his light, and took away the other apple which he had hidden beneath his pillow.

6. _Nemesis_

As the holidays waned (and after W. W. was safely stowed away in bed) Tintinnabulum gratified me by being willing to talk about Neil. If you had heard us at it you would have sworn that those two had no very close connection, that Neil was merely some interesting whipper-snapper who had played about the house until the manlier Tintinnabulum arrived. He was always spoken of between us as Neil, which obviously suited Tintinnabulum’s dignity, but I wonder how I took to it so naturally myself. I hope I am not a queer one.

By that arrangement Tintinnabulum can make artful enquiries, not unwistful, into his own past, and I can seem (thus goes the game) not to know that he is doing so. He can even commend Neil.

“Pretty decent of him,” he says, discussing the Bruiser Belt and the score against Juddy’s.

“I didn’t think he had it in him,” is even stronger about the sea-trout Neil had landed and been so proud of that he would not lie prone till it was put in a basin by his bedside. He had then slept with one arm over the basin.

Strongest of all is to say that Neil was mad, at present a term not only of approval but even of endearment at the only school that counts (Tintinnabulum speaking). Sometimes we talk of the dark period when Neil, weeping over his first Latin grammar, used to put a merry tune on the gramophone to accompany his woe. He continued to weep as he studied, but always rose at the right time to change the tune. This is a heart-breaker of a memory to me, and Tintinnabulum knows it and puts his hand deliciously on my shoulder (that kindest gesture of man to man).

“The gander must have been mad, quite mad,” he says hurriedly.

How Neil would like to hear Tintinnabulum saying these nice things about him.

Perhaps we all have a Neil. Have you ever wakened suddenly in the night, certain that you heard a bell ring as it once rang or a knocking on your door as only one could knock or a voice of long ago, quite close? Sometimes you rise and wander the house; more often, after waiting alert for a repetition of the sound, you decide that you have been dreaming or that it was the creaking of a window or a board. But I daresay it was none of these things. I daresay it was your Neil.

Perhaps you have become something quite different from what he meant to be. Perhaps he wants to get into the house, not to gaze proudly at you but to strike you.

Some drop their Neil deliberately and can recall clearly the day of the great decision, but most are unaware that he has gone. For instance, it may have been Neil who married the lady and you who gradually took his place, so like him in appearance that she is as deceived as you. Or it may be that she has found you out and knows who it is that is knocking on the door trying to get back to her. You might be scared if you knew that though she is at this moment attending to your wants with a smile for you on her face, her passionate wish is to be done with you. On the other hand, you may be the better fellow of the two. Let us decide that this is how it is.

* * * * *

The last week of the holidays was darkened for Tintinnabulum and W. W. by the shadow of a letter demanded of them by their tutor. It had to be on one of three subjects:

(_a_) Your Favourite Walk. (_b_) Your Favourite Game. (_c_) What shall I do next Half?

A nasty tag attached to m’ tutor’s order said “the letter must be of great length.” Little had they troubled about it till the end loomed, but then they rumbled wrathfully; well was it for their tutor he heard not what they said of him.

Tintinnabulum of course was merely lazy, or on principle resented writing anything for less than 3_d._ Grievous, however, was the burden on W. W., whose gifts lie not in a literary direction. He is always undone by his clear-headed way of putting everything he knows on any subject into the first sentence. He had a shot at (_a_), (_b_) and (_c_).

_Attempt on (a)._ “My favourite walk is when I do not have far to go to it.” (Here he stuck.)

_Attempt on (b)._ “The game of cricket is my favourite game, and it consists of six stumps, two bats and a ball.” After wandering round the table many times he added, “Nor must we forget the bails.” (Stuck again.)

_Attempt on (c)._ “Next half is summer half, so early school will be half an hour earlier.” (Final stick.)

He then abandoned hope and would, I suppose, have had to run away to sea (if boys still do that) had not Help been nigh.

For a consideration (and you can now guess exactly how much it was) Tintinnabulum offered to write W. W.’s letter for him. I did not see it till later (as you shall learn), indeed the episode was purposely kept dark from me. The subject chosen was “My Favourite Walk,” because Tintinnabulum had a book entitled Walks and Talks with the Little Ones, which never before had he thought might come in handy. Of course such a performer by no means confined himself to purloining from this work, though he did have something to say about how W. W. wandered along his walk carrying a little book into which he put “interesting plants.” Anything less like W. W. thus engaged I cannot conceive, unless it be Tintinnabulum himself.

The miscreant also carefully misspelt several words, as being natural to W. W. Unfortunately (his fatal weakness) he could not keep his own name out of the letter, and he made W. W. say that the favourite walk was “near the house of my kind friend Tintinnabulum, and you know him, sir, for he is in your house, and I mess with him, which is very lucky for me, all the scugs wanting to mess with him and nobody wanting me.”