Paid In Full/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
APRON STRINGS
Presently Cradock found himself alone with Laura Meakin, gathering up loose threads of business.
‘One or two of these cheques are made payable to you, Miss Meakin,’ he said. ‘Would you kindly endorse them?’
‘With pleasure, Captain Conway,’ replied Laura. ‘You and I are transacting quite a lot of business together these days, aren’t we?’ she added archly.
Cradock looked up, and smiled.
‘The worst of transacting business with a girl like you, Miss Meakin,’ he said, ‘is that I find it increasingly difficult to concentrate my mind upon the business.’
‘Now you’re being naughty,’ announced Laura, and dealt him a disabling tap upon the wrist with a fountain pen. ‘I don’t think I shall ask you to tea with me to-morrow.’
Captain Conway was all repentance at once.
‘Please? I was carried away for the moment.’
‘You promise to be good, then?’
‘Faithfully.’
‘Very well. Come about five.’
‘Right. By the way, I think I can get those oil-shares for you, after all, and on very favourable terms, too. However, we can discuss that to-morrow. Here is our hostess.’
Mildred stood in the open window, hospitably solicitous.
‘Laura, dear,’ she said, ‘I have just ordered some fresh tea for you.’
Laura rose, and replied, a trifle testily:
‘Thank you, Mildred, but I only drink China tea. I shall go home and make my own. Good-bye!’ She kissed her hostess frigidly. ‘You are looking ten years more than your age to-day. What Captain Conway said about you in his speech was only flattery: you mustn’t believe things like that. I thought I ought to tell you.’
‘Thank you for not forgetting, dear,’ said Mildred meekly.
Laura shook hands heavily with her chairman.
‘Good-bye, Captain Conway,’ she said. ‘You won’t forget about to-morrow.’
‘Is it likely?’ Without a tremor Cradock kissed Laura’s black kid glove, and Laura, with a conscious glance in the direction of her rival, strode out of the window and was no more seen.
Cradock chuckled, and turned to his wife.
‘Now, Milly—’ he began.
Mildred interrupted him. Laura had been right; she did look ten years more than her age.
‘Denis,’ she said hotly, ‘this sort of thing can’t go on any longer.’
‘You’re quite right, my dear, it can’t. I have a proposal to make to you which will regularise the situation completely.’
‘What have you to say now that you couldn’t have said any time during these three weeks?’
‘This. The situation has developed; a new state of things has arisen. I want to—’
There was a step on the gravel outside, and Master Denny appeared in the window, smoking like a furnace.
‘Oh, Denny, my dear boy, what a big pipe!’ exclaimed Mildred, obviously grateful for his appearance.
‘Yes, Mum,’ replied her son complacently—‘the biggest I’ve got. Furthermore and in addition, I have just drunk the longest drink I ever drank, and to-night I am going to eat the biggest dinner I ever ate; after which I shall really feel that I am out of training. Hallo, Conway! Congratters on your chairmanship!’
Then, unobservant though he was, Denny caught the look on his mother’s face.
‘I say, Mum,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’re looking all in. It’s that rotten pow-wow of Laura’s. Let me take you on the river for half-an-hour.’
‘I have rather a head, dear,’ said Mildred. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs, and rest.’
‘Righto! Take my arm. Don’t go away, Conway; I shall be back directly.’
Denny disappeared up the stairs with his mother’s arm in his. Cradock stood fast, cogitating.
The swing door opened, and the successor of Simmons, the implacable Thwaites, stood before him, bearing a newly charged teapot. She favoured her late employer with a truculent glare, and addressed him.
‘Well, I suppose you think you are the clever one.’
‘Moderately so, thank you, Thwaites.’
‘Don’t be too proud of yourself, that’s all. Remember, the only reason I don’t go straight round the corner and fetch a policeman to you is that She begged me not to.’
‘She did right, Thwaites. The gratification experienced by you in performing such a feat would hardly have been worth the scandal brought upon this eminently respectable household. I fancy you will have to go on keeping your tongue between your teeth indefinitely. Knowing you as I do, you have my sympathy. But we all have our troubles in this world, haven’t we?’
Thwaites glared anew.
‘There’s them watching you,’ she announced, ‘that’s as sharp as you are—and sharper. One of these days you’ll run past yourself, and then you’ll be sorry!’
Here Denny was heard descending the stairs three steps at a time, and Thwaites passed on into the garden, like a reluctant thundercloud.
Denny greeted his hero enthusiastically.
‘Conway, old man,’ he said, ‘I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you for coaching us. We’d never have done it without you.’
‘That’s all right, Denny. Forget it—like your training! Come down to my bungalow and have a drink. No more rules and regulations now, eh?’
‘No, by gum!’
‘I want you to meet my old pal Moon, too. He’s a character, I can tell you.’
‘He looks it!’
‘I have just been talking to him seriously about his appearance. I ask you Denny, as a man of the world, if you were to meet Moon suddenly in the street, would you take him for what he is—an eminent chartered accountant, with an anticipatory interest in the next Honours List—or a race-course tout?’
‘A tout,’ replied Denny, with the frankness of youth.
Cradock laughed. ‘I’ll tell him you said that,’ he cried. ‘Come along and make his acquaintance. In any case, I want you to give him the once-over before you consider his invitation.’
‘Invitation?’ Denny was all intrigued at once. ‘That sounds mysterious.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing. I happen to be going up to town to-morrow: I may have to run over to Paris later. Oddly enough, I find the Moons are going over, too, with a couple of their nieces—remarkably pretty girls.’
‘Are they here to-day?’ asked Denny eagerly.
‘They are. I invited Mrs. Moon to bring them along to my bungalow. Will you come and shake a cocktail for them?’
‘Will I not?’
‘I presume you don’t mind meeting girls who enjoy an occasional cocktail,’ said Cradock, pausing in the window with Denny’s arm in his.
‘I didn’t know there were any others—that one met anywhere,’ replied the boy grandly. ‘I mean, don’t you think, in the present year of grace, a girl who doesn’t like cocktails and admits it, ought to be put in a convent—what?’
‘You feel that girls ought to have savoir-faire—eh?’
‘That’s just what I do mean. Come along.’
But Cradock still held back. He wished to play his final card.
‘By the way, you’re quite sure Mother wouldn’t mind?’
Denny flushed.
‘My dear fellow,’ he said stiffly, ‘I—one—a man does as he thinks fit in these matters. Of course, if one lives at home, one has to—’
Cradock caught him up quickly.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘You’ve hit it, Denny. So long as a man lives at home he has to conform to the laws of the Medes and Persians, and dance attendance on his womankind—at the end of an apron string, so to speak.’ Denny flinched, visibly. ‘But with all respect to my old friend, your charming mother, it’s possible to overdo that sort of thing. In fact, it’s grossly unfair. A man, a man of the world like you, is bound to feel his oats at times. He wants to kick up his heels, and buck, doesn’t he?’
The pair stood face to face with sparkling eyes, suddenly and amazingly alike. ‘You see, old chap,’ said Cradock, ‘I understand!’
‘By God, you do!’
‘Then why not take a fortnight off and come with us?’
‘To Paris?’
‘Paris—Deauville—anywhere you like. Could you stand old Moon, do you think? We’ll get him some new clothes. You’ll be my guest, of course. I’ve had a bit of luck lately on the turf.’
This was indirectly true. Master Leo Bagby had recently entrusted his mentor with a considerable cheque, for purposes of turf speculation—a ‘system,’ Cradock had called it—and the cheque was now burning a hole in Cradock’s pocket. He pressed his advantage.
‘It will be a glorious party,’ he said. ‘You, I, Moon, the two girls, and Mrs. Moon for chaperon. Give this dead old backwater a miss for a bit, Denny, and come somewhere with me where you can splash about for a bit! Come where there is Life, old chap! Life!’
‘I must!’ cried Denny ecstatically, ‘I must!’
‘That’s the stuff!’ said Cradock approvingly. ‘Come along to the bungalow and meet the girls, for a start.’