DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
Have you about—and, when I say about, I the question of—the coolness, the cheek, or, if you it, the with which Woman, as a sex, bursts? I have, by Jove! But then I’ve had it on my notice, by George, in a way I should has to fellows. And the limit was by that of the Yeardsley “Venus.”
To make you the full what-d’you-call-it of the situation, I shall have to just how Mrs. Yeardsley and myself.
When I her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire family; of money; as a picture. Her Bill was at Oxford with me.
I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don’t you know. And there was a time, for about a week, when we were to be married. But just as I was to take a view of life and study and when the restaurant played “The Wedding Glide,” I’m if she didn’t it off, and a month later she was married to a of the name of Yeardsley—Clarence Yeardsley, an artist.
What with golf, and billiards, and a of racing, and at the and of taking me out of myself, as it were, I got over it, and came to look on the as a closed page in the book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn’t likely to me that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled in the country and came to London, and I’m to own that, by the time I got her letter, the had well healed, and I was to a up and taking nourishment. In fact, to be honest, I was the thing had ended as it had done.
This I’m telling you about one out of a sky, as it were. It ran like this:
“MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,—What it since I saw anything of you. How are you? We have settled here in the most perfect old house, with a garden, in the middle of country. Couldn’t you here for a days? Clarence and I would be so to see you. Bill is here, and is most to meet you again. He was speaking of you only this morning. Do come. Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
—Yours most sincerely,
ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
“P.S.—We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
“P.P.S.—Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has played on.
“P.P.S.S.—We are only a mile from a course. Bill says it is than St. Andrews.
“P.P.S.S.S.—You must come!”
Well, a comes to one morning, with a of a on, and a like that from a girl who might easily have his life! It me rather, I must confess.
However, that about the settled me. I Bill what he was talking about, and, if he said the was so topping, it must be something special. So I went.
Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn’t come across him for some months, and I was to see him again. And he was to see me.
“Thank you’ve come,” he said, as we off. “I was just about at my last grip.”
“What’s the trouble, old scout?” I asked.
“If I had the what’s-its-name,” he on, “if the mention of pictures didn’t give me the pip, I say it wouldn’t be so bad. As it is, it’s rotten!”
“Pictures?”
“Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an artist. So is his father. And you know what Elizabeth is like when one her her head?”
I then—it hadn’t come to me before—that most of my time with Elizabeth had been in picture-galleries. During the period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had had to her like a dog through after gallery, though pictures are to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had me that she would still be going on in this way after marrying an artist. I should have that by this time the of a picture would have her up. Not so, however, according to old Bill.
“They talk pictures at every meal,” he said. “I tell you, it makes a out of it. How long are you for?”
“A days.”
“Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was that I was to come after the match. But you couldn’t me with a lasso.”
I to point out the lining.
“But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there’s a most near here.”
He and at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
“You don’t she said that?”
“She said you said it was than St. Andrews.”
“So I did. Was that all she said I said?”
“Well, wasn’t it enough?”
“She didn’t to mention that I added the words, ‘I don’t think’?”
“No, she to tell me that.”
“It’s the in Great Britain.”
I stunned, don’t you know. Whether it’s a to have got into or not, I can’t say, but I can’t do without my daily of when I’m not in London.
I took another at the lining.
“We’ll have to take it out in billiards,” I said. “I’m the table’s good.”
“It what you call good. It’s half-size, and there’s a seven-inch cut just out of where Clarence’s slipped. Elizabeth has it with pink silk. Very and it looks, but it doesn’t the thing as a billiard-table.”
“But she said you said——”
“Must have been your leg.”
We in at the drive gates of a good-sized house well from the road. It looked black and in the dusk, and I couldn’t help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read about in who are to houses for purposes and a just as they there. Elizabeth me well to know that a good was a safe to me. And she had played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was what I wanted to know. And then a me which me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl here and was going to have a at marrying me off. I’ve often that married are all over that of thing. Certainly she had said there was nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence’s father, but a woman who take the name of St. Andrews in as she had done wouldn’t be likely to at a trifle.
“Bill, old scout,” I said, “there aren’t any girls or any of that stopping here, are there?”
“Wish there were,” he said. “No such luck.”
As we up at the door, it opened, and a woman’s appeared.
“Have you got him, Bill?” she said, which in my present of mind me as a way of it. The of thing Lady Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don’t you know.
“Do you me?” I said.
She came into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same as in the old days.
“Is that you, Reggie? I’m so you were able to come. I was you might have all about it. You know what you are. Come along in and have some tea.”
Have you been by a girl who married and then been to her husband? If so you’ll how I when Clarence on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you about the marriage, you say to yourself, “I wonder what he’s like.” Then you meet him, and think, “There must be some mistake. She can’t have this to me!” That’s what I thought, when I set on Clarence.
He was a little thin, nervous-looking of about thirty-five. His was at the temples and on top. He pince-nez, and he had a moustache. I’m no Bombardier Wells myself, but in of Clarence I a nut. And Elizabeth, mind you, is one of those tall, girls who look like princesses. Honestly, I do it out of pure cussedness.
“How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you a cat?” said Clarence. All in one breath, don’t you know.
“Eh?” I said.
“A cat. I sure I a cat. Listen!”
While we were the door opened, and a white-haired old came in. He was on the same lines as Clarence, but was an model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior. Elizabeth us.
“Father,” said Clarence, “did you meet a cat outside? I positive I a cat mewing.”
“No,” said the father, his head; “no cat.”
“I can’t cats,” said Clarence. “A cat on my nerves!”
“A cat is so trying,” said Elizabeth.
“I cats,” said old Mr. Yeardsley.
That was all about cats for the moment. They to think they had the ground satisfactorily, and they to pictures.
We talked pictures till it was time to dress for dinner. At least, they did. I just of sat around. Presently the of picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the “Monna Lisa,” and then I to something in the paper, as I was in the train, about some having had a valuable painting by the night before. It was the time I had had a of into the with any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I and it.
“Here it is,” I said. “A Romney to Sir Bellamy Palmer——”
They all “What!” at the same time, like a chorus. Elizabeth the paper.
“Let me look! Yes. ‘Late last night entered the of Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants——’”
“Why, that’s near here,” I said. “I passed through Midford——”
“Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,” said Elizabeth. I noticed her were sparkling.
“Only two miles!” she said. “It might have been us! It might have been the ‘Venus’!”
Old Mr. Yeardsley in his chair.
“The ‘Venus’!” he cried.
They all excited. My little to the evening’s had a hit.
Why I didn’t notice it I don’t know, but it was not till Elizabeth it to me after dinner that I had my look at the Yeardsley “Venus.” When she me up to it, and on the light, it that I have sat right through dinner without noticing it. But then, at meals, my attention is well on the foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth it to me that I was aware of its existence.
She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley was in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were on the half-size table with the pink effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when Elizabeth, who had been in for a bit, me and said, “Reggie.”
And the moment she said it I something was going to happen. You know that pre-what-d’you-call-it you sometimes? Well, I got it then.
“What-o?” I said nervously.
“Reggie,” she said, “I want to ask a great of you.”
“Yes?”
She and put a on the fire, and on, with her to me:
“Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the world for me?”
There! That’s what I meant when I said that about the of Woman as a sex. What I is, after what had happened, you’d have she would have to let the past its dead, and all that of thing, what?
Mind you, I had said I would do anything in the world for her. I admit that. But it was a pre-Clarence remark. He hadn’t appeared on the then, and it to that a who may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was to her, doesn’t nearly so on himself in that direction when she has him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man who and tell him is a blighter.
I couldn’t think of anything to say but “Oh, yes.”
“There’s something you can do for me now, which will make me grateful.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you know, Reggie,” she said suddenly, “that only a months ago Clarence was very of cats?”
“Eh! Well, he still seems—er—interested in them, what?”
“Now they on his nerves. Everything on his nerves.”
“Some by that you see all over the——”
“No, that wouldn’t help him. He doesn’t need to take anything. He wants to of something.”
“I don’t follow. Get of something?”
“The ‘Venus,’” said Elizabeth.
She looked up and my eye.
“You saw the ‘Venus,’” she said.
“Not that I remember.”
“Well, come into the dining-room.”
We into the dining-room, and she on the lights.
“There,” she said.
On the close to the door—that may have been why I hadn’t noticed it before; I had sat with my to it—was a large oil-painting. It was what you’d call a picture, I suppose. What I is—well, you know what I mean. All I can say is that it’s I hadn’t noticed it.
“Is that the ‘Venus’?” I said.
She nodded.
“How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat to a meal?”
“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it would affect me much. I’d worry through all right.”
She her impatiently.
“But you’re not an artist,” she said. “Clarence is.”
And then I to see daylight. What was the trouble I didn’t understand, but it was something to do with the good old Artistic Temperament, and I anything about that. It everything. It’s like the Unwritten Law, don’t you know, which you in America if you’ve done anything they want to send you to for and you don’t want to go. What I is, if you’re off your rocker, but don’t it to be into the luny-bin, you that, when you said you were a teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they and go away. So I by to just how the A.T. had Clarence, the Cat’s Friend, for anything.
And, me, it had Clarence badly.
It was this way. It that old Yeardsley was an artist and that this “Venus” was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have known. Well, when Clarence married, he had it to him, as a wedding present, and had it where it with his own hands. All right so far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a professional artist and some ahead of the at the game, saw in the “Venus.” He couldn’t it at any price. He didn’t like the drawing. He didn’t like the of the face. He didn’t like the colouring. In fact, it him to look at it. Yet, being to his father and wanting to do anything than give him pain, he had not been able to himself to store the thing in the cellar, and the of the picture three times a day had to tell on him to such an that Elizabeth something had to be done.
“Now you see,” she said.
“In a way,” I said. “But don’t you think it’s making weather over a trifle?”
“Oh, can’t you understand? Look!” Her voice as if she was in church, and she on another light. It on the picture next to old Yeardsley’s. “There!” she said. “Clarence painted that!”
She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon, or yell, or something. I took a look at Clarence’s effort. It was another Classical picture. It to me very much like the other one.
Some of art was of me, so I a at it.
“Er—‘Venus’?” I said.
Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have the same mistake. On the evidence, I mean.
“No. ‘Jocund Spring,’” she snapped. She off the light. “I see you don’t now. You had any taste about pictures. When we used to go to the together, you would have been at your club.”
This was so true, that I had no to make. She came up to me, and put her hand on my arm.
“I’m sorry, Reggie. I didn’t to be cross. Only I do want to make you that Clarence is suffering. Suppose—suppose—well, let us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great had to and to a tune—the same tune—day after day, day after day, wouldn’t you his nerves to break! Well, it’s just like that with Clarence. Now you see?”
“Yes, but——”
“But what? Surely I’ve put it enough?”
“Yes. But what I is, where do I come in? What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to the ‘Venus.’”
I looked at her.
“You want me to——?”
“Steal it. Reggie!” Her were with excitement. “Don’t you see? It’s Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the idea. I I on you. And then by a this of the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It the last of the old man anything and having his hurt. Why, it’s the most to him. Think! One night a Romney; the next the same take his ‘Venus.’ It will be the moment of his life. Do it to-night, Reggie. I’ll give you a knife. You cut the out of the frame, and it’s done.”
“But one moment,” I said. “I’d be to be of any use to you, but in a purely family like this, wouldn’t it be better—in fact, how about old Bill on the subject?”
“I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused.”
“But if I’m caught?”
“You can’t be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of the windows, it open, and go to your room.”
It enough.
“And as to the picture itself—when I’ve got it?”
“Burn it. I’ll see that you have a good fire in your room.”
“But——”
She looked at me. She always did have the most eyes.
“Reggie,” she said; nothing more. Just “Reggie.”
She looked at me.
“Well, after all, if you see what I mean—The days that are no more, don’t you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that of thing. You me?”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
I don’t know if you to be one of those Johnnies who are in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of diamond necklaces. If you’re not, you’ll that I a less on the job I’d taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to busy, than I had done when I promised to it in the dining-room. On paper it all easy enough, but I couldn’t help there was a catch somewhere, and I’ve time pass slower. The kick-off was for one o’clock in the morning, when the might be to be asleep, but at a to I couldn’t it any longer. I the I had taken from Bill’s bicycle, took a of my knife, and downstairs.
The thing I did on to the dining-room was to open the window. I had a mind to it, so as to give an of local colour to the affair, but not to on account of the noise. I had put my on the table, and was just out for it, when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn’t have said. It might have been an of some or an earthquake. Some solid object me a on the chin. Sparks and my and the next thing I is something wet and cold into my face, and a voice that like old Bill’s say, “Feeling now?”
I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill me with a siphon.
“What happened?” I said.
“I’m sorry, old man,” he said. “I hadn’t a it was you. I came in here, and saw a on the table, and the window open and a with a knife in his hand, so I didn’t stop to make inquiries. I just let go at his for all I was worth. What on earth do you think you’re doing? Were you walking in your sleep?”
“It was Elizabeth,” I said. “Why, you know all about it. She said she had told you.”
“You don’t mean——”
“The picture. You to take it on, so she asked me.”
“Reggie, old man,” he said. “I’ll what they say about again. It’s a fool’s and everything. If I hadn’t repented, and it was on Elizabeth not to do a little thing like that for her, and come here to do it after all, you wouldn’t have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” I said, my another shake to make it was still on.
“Are you now?”
“Better than I was. But that’s not saying much.”
“Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about this job and going to bed? And let’s be quick about it too. You a noise like a of when you just now, and it’s on the cards some of the may have heard. Toss you who carves.”
“Heads.”
“Tails it is,” he said, the coin. “Up you get. I’ll the light. Don’t on that of yours.”
It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and the thing came out of its like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old Bill had put the on the and was at the sideboard, whisky, soda, and glasses.
“We’ve got a long us,” he said. “You can’t a picture of that size in one chunk. You’d set the on fire. Let’s do the thing comfortably. Clarence can’t us the stuff. We’ve done him a of good this trip. To-morrow’ll be the maddest, day of Clarence’s New Year. On we go.”
We up to my room, and sat and away and our drinks, and every now and then a slice off the picture and it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the of it and the blaze, and the of doing good by stealth, I don’t know when I’ve had a time since the days when we used to in my study at school.
We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and my arm.
“I something,” he said.
I listened, and, by Jove, I something, too. My room was just over the dining-room, and the came up to us distinctly. Stealthy footsteps, by George! And then a chair over.
“There’s somebody in the dining-room,” I whispered.
There’s a type of who takes a in positively trouble. Old Bill’s like that. If I had been alone, it would have taken me about three to myself that I hadn’t anything after all. I’m a peaceful of cove, and in and live, and so forth. To old Bill, however, a visit from was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one jump.
“Come on,” he said. “Bring the poker.”
I the as well. I like it. Old Bill the knife. We downstairs.
“We’ll the door open and make a rush,” said Bill.
“Supposing they shoot, old scout?”
“Burglars shoot,” said Bill.
Which was provided the it.
Old Bill took a of the handle, it quickly, and in he went. And then we up sharp, staring.
The room was in for a of light at the near end. Standing on a chair in of Clarence’s “Jocund Spring,” a in one hand and up with a knife in the other, was old Mr. Yeardsley, in and a dressing-gown. He had a final cut just as we in. Turning at the sound, he stopped, and he and the chair and the and the picture came in a together. The out.
“What on earth?” said Bill.
I the same. I up the and it, and then a most thing happened. The old man himself up, and into a chair and to like a child. Of course, I see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, me, it was unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at me. We the door quick, and after that we didn’t know what to do. I saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I what he was looking for. But we had taken the upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped at soda-water. We just waited, and presently old Yeardsley off, sat up, and talking with a rush.
“Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that at Dryden Park. It me. It it all so simple. I you would put it to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I——”
It to upon him at this point that Clarence was not among those present.
“Clarence?” he said hesitatingly.
“He’s in bed,” I said.
“In bed! Then he doesn’t know? Even now—Young men, I myself on your mercy. Don’t be hard on me. Listen.” He at Bill, who sidestepped. “I can everything—everything.”
He gave a gulp.
“You are not artists, you two men, but I will try to make you understand, make you what this picture means to me. I was two years painting it. It is my child. I it grow. I loved it. It was part of my life. Nothing would have me to sell it. And then Clarence married, and in a moment I gave my to him. You cannot understand, you two men, what I suffered. The thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the picture. I that I myself to ask him for it back. And yet I was without it. What I do? Till this I see no hope. Then came this of the of the Romney from a house close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would suspect. He would put the to the same of who the Romney. Once the idea had come, I not drive it out. I against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and here to out my plan. You me.” He again, at me this time, and got me by the arm. He had a like a lobster. “Young man,” he said, “you would not me? You would not tell Clarence?”
I was most sorry for the old by this time, don’t you know, but I it would be to give it him of it by degrees.
“I won’t say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley,” I said. “I your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that of thing. I mean—what? I know. But I’m afraid—Well, look!”
I to the door and on the electric light, and there, him in the face, were the two empty frames. He at them in silence. Then he gave a of grunt.
“The gang! The burglars! They have been here, and they have taken Clarence’s picture!” He paused. “It might have been mine! My Venus!” he It was most painful, you know, but he had to know the truth.
“I’m sorry, you know,” I said. “But it was.”
He started, old chap.
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“They did take your Venus.”
“But I have it here.”
I my head.
“That’s Clarence’s ‘Jocund Spring,’” I said.
He jumped at it and it out.
“What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don’t know my own picture—my child—my Venus. See! My own in the corner. Can you read, boy? Look: ‘Matthew Yeardsley.’ This is my picture!”
And—well, by Jove, it was, don’t you know!
Well, we got him off to bed, him and his Venus, and we settled to take a look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was my fault for of the picture, and I said it was Bill’s fault for me such a on the that I couldn’t be to see what I was of, and then there was a for a bit.
“Reggie,” said Bill at last, “how do you about Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?”
“Old scout,” I said. “I was much the same myself.”
“Reggie,” said Bill, “I to know there’s a milk-train Midford at three-fifteen. It isn’t what you’d call a flier. It to London at about half-past nine. Well—er—in the circumstances, how about it?”
