The voice in the drawing-room stopped. Having sung songs of Araby and tales of far Cashmere, Mr Roscoe Sherriff was refreshing himself with a comic paper. But Lady Wetherby, seated at the piano, still touched the keys softly, and the sound increased the richness of the mixture which choked Dudley Pickering’s spiritual carburettor. It is not fair that a rather stout manufacturer should be called upon to sit in the moonlight while a beautiful girl, to the accompaniment of soft music, reproaches him with having avoided her.
‘I should be so sorry, Mr Pickering, if I had done anything to make a difference between us–‘
‘Eh?’ said Mr Pickering.
‘I have so few real friends over here.’
Claire’s voice trembled.
‘I–I get a little lonely, a little homesick sometimes–‘
She paused, musing, and a spasm of pity rent the bosom beneath Dudley Pickering’s ample shirt. There was a buzzing in his ears and a lump choked his throat.
‘Of course, I am loving the life here. I think America’s wonderful, and nobody could be kinder than Lady Wetherby. But–I miss my home. It’s the first time I have been away for so long. I feel very far away sometimes. There are only three of us at home: my mother, myself, and my little brother–little Percy.’
Her voice trembled again as she spoke the last two words, and it was possibly this that caused Mr Pickering to visualize Percy as a sort of little Lord Fauntleroy, his favourite character in English literature. He had a vision of a small, delicate, wistful child pining away for his absent sister. Consumptive probably. Or curvature of the spine.
He found Claire’s hand in his. He supposed dully he must have reached out for it. Soft and warm it lay there, while the universe paused breathlessly. And then from the semi-darkness beside him there came the sound of a stifled sob, and his fingers closed as if someone had touched a button.
‘We have always been such chums. He is only ten–such a dear boy! He must be missing me–‘
She stopped, and simultaneously Dudley Pickering began to speak.
There is this to be said for your shy, cautious man, that on the rare occasions when he does tap the vein of eloquence that vein becomes a geyser. It was as if after years of silence and monosyllables Dudley Pickering was endeavouring to restore the average.
He began by touching on his alleged neglect and avoidance of Claire. He called himself names and more names. He plumbed the depth of repentance and remorse. Proceeding from this, he eulogized her courage, the pluck with which she presented a smiling face to the world while tortured inwardly by separation from her little brother Percy. He then turned to his own feelings.
But there are some things which the historian should hold sacred, some things which he should look on as proscribed material for his pen, and the actual words of a stout manufacturer of automobiles proposing marriage in the moonlight fall into this class. It is enough to say that Dudley Pickering was definite. He left no room for doubt as to his meaning.
‘Dudley!’
She was in his arms. He was embracing her. She was his–the latest model, self-starting, with limousine body and all the newest. No, no, his mind was wandering. She was his, this divine girl, this queen among women, this–
From the drawing-room Roscoe Sherriff’s voice floated out in unconscious comment–
Good-bye, boys! I’m going to be married to-morrow. Good-bye, boys! I’m going from sunshine to sorrow. No more sitting up till broad daylight.
Did a momentary chill cool the intensity of Dudley Pickering’s ardour? If so he overcame it instantly. He despised Roscoe Sherriff. He flattered himself that he had shown Roscoe Sherriff pretty well who was who and what was what.
They would have a wonderful wedding–dozens of clergymen, scores of organs playing ‘The Voice that Breathed o’er Eden,’ platoons of bridesmaids, wagonloads of cake. And then they would go back to Detroit and live happy ever after. And it might be that in time to come there would be given to them little runabouts.
I’m going to a life Of misery and strife, So good-bye, boys!