things, Tommy—Jane, I mean.”
“What other things?” chin in the air.
“The—the keeping of the rooms in order, Tommy. The—the dusting.”
“Don’t want twenty-four hours a day to dust four rooms.”
“Then there are messages, Tommy. It would be a great advantage to me to have someone I could send on a message without feeling I was interfering with the housework.”
“What are you driving at?” demanded Tommy. “Why, I don’t have half enough to do as it is. I can do all—”
Peter put his foot down. “When I say a thing, I mean a thing. The sooner you understand that, the better. How dare you argue with me! Fiddle-de-dee!” For two pins Peter would have employed an expletive even stronger, so determined was he feeling.
Tommy without another word left the room. Peter looked at Elizabeth and winked.
Poor Peter! His triumph was short-lived. Five minutes later, Tommy returned, clad in the long, black skirt, supported by the cricket belt, the blue garibaldi cut décolleté, the pepper-and-salt jacket, the worsted comforter, the red lips very tightly pressed, the long lashes over the black eyes moving very rapidly.
“Tommy” (severely), “what is this tomfoolery?”
“I understand. I ain’t no good to you. Thanks for giving me a trial. My fault.”
“Tommy” (less severely), “don’t be an idiot.”
“Ain’t an idiot. ’Twas Emma. Told me I was good at cooking. Said I’d got an aptitude for it. She meant well.”
“Tommy” (no trace of severity), “sit down. Emma was quite right. Your cooking is—is promising. As Emma puts it, you have aptitude. Your—perseverance, your hopefulness proves it.”
“Then why d’ye want to get someone else in to do it?”
If Peter could have answered truthfully! If Peter could have replied:
“My dear, I am a lonely old gentleman. I did not know it until—until the other day. Now I cannot forget it again. Wife and child died many years ago. I was poor, or I might have saved them. That made me hard. The clock of my life stood still. I hid away the key. I did not want to think. You crept to me out of the cruel fog, awakened old dreams. Do not go away any more”—perhaps Tommy, in spite of her fierce independence, would have consented to be useful; and thus Peter might have gained his end at less cost of indigestion. But the penalty for being an anti-sentimentalist is that you must not talk like this even to yourself. So Peter had to cast about for other methods.
“Why shouldn’t I keep two servants if I like?” It did seem hard on the old gentleman.
“What’s the sense of paying two to do the work of one? You would only be keeping me on out of charity.” The black eyes flashed. “I ain’t a beggar.”
“And you really think, Tommy—I should say Jane, you can manage the—the whole of it? You won’t mind being sent on a message, perhaps in the very middle of your cooking. It was that I was thinking of, Tommy—some cooks would.”
“You go easy,” advised him Tommy, “till I complain of having too much to do.”
Peter returned to his desk. Elizabeth looked up. It seemed to Peter that Elizabeth winked.
The fortnight that followed was a period of trouble to Peter, for Tommy, her suspicions having been aroused, was sceptical of “business” demanding that Peter should dine with this man at the club, lunch with this editor at the Cheshire Cheese. At once the chin would go up into the air, the black eyes cloud threateningly. Peter, an unmarried man for thirty years, lacking experience, would under cross-examination contradict himself, become confused, break down over essential points.
“Really,” grumbled Peter to himself one evening, sawing at a mutton chop, “really there’s no other word for it—I’m henpecked.”
Peter that day had looked forward to a little dinner at a favourite restaurant, with his “dear old friend Blenkinsopp, a bit of a gourmet, Tommy—that means a man who likes what you would call elaborate cooking!”—forgetful at the moment that he had used up “Blenkinsopp” three days before for a farewell supper, “Blenkinsopp” having to set out the next morning for Egypt. Peter was not facile at invention. Names in particular had always been a difficulty to him.
“I like a spirit of independence,” continued Peter to himself. “Wish she hadn’t quite so much of it. Wonder where she got it from.”
The situation was becoming more serious to Peter than he cared to admit. For day by day, in spite of her tyrannies, Tommy was growing more and more indispensable to Peter. Tommy was the first audience that for thirty years had laughed at Peter’s jokes; Tommy was the first public that for thirty years had been convinced that Peter was the most brilliant journalist in Fleet Street; Tommy was the first anxiety that for thirty years had rendered it needful that Peter each night should mount stealthily the creaking stairs, steal with shaded candle to a bedside. If only Tommy wouldn’t “do” for him! If only she could be persuaded to “do” something else.
Another happy thought occurred to Peter.
“Tommy—I mean Jane,” said Peter, “I know what I’ll do with you.”
“What’s the game now?”
“I’ll make a journalist of you.”
“Don’t talk rot.”
“It isn’t rot. Besides, I won’t have you answer me like that. As a Devil—that means, Tommy, the unseen person in the background that helps a journalist to do his work—you would be invaluable to me. It would pay me, Tommy—pay me very handsomely. I should make money out of you.”
This appeared to be an argument that Tommy understood. Peter, with secret delight, noticed that the chin retained its normal level.
“I did help a chap to sell papers, once,” remembered Tommy; “he said I was fly at it.”
“I told you so,” exclaimed Peter triumphantly. “The methods are different, but the instinct required is the same. We will get a woman in to relieve you of the housework.”
The chin shot up into the air.
“I could do it in my spare time.”
“You see, Tommy, I should want you to go about with me—to be always with me.”
“Better try me first. Maybe you’re making an error.”
Peter was learning the wisdom of the serpent.
“Quite right, Tommy. We will first see what you can do. Perhaps, after all, it may turn out that you are better as a cook.” In his heart Peter doubted this.
But the seed had fallen upon good ground. It was Tommy herself that manoeuvred her first essay in journalism. A great man had come to London—was staying in apartments especially prepared for him in St. James’s Palace. Said every journalist in London to himself: “If I could obtain an interview with this Big Man, what a big thing it would be for me!” For a week past, Peter had carried everywhere about with him a paper headed: “Interview of Our Special Correspondent with Prince Blank,” questions down left-hand column, very narrow; space for answers right-hand side, very wide. But the Big Man was experienced.
“I wonder,” said Peter, spreading the neatly folded paper on the desk before him, “I wonder if there can be any way of getting at him—any dodge or trick, any piece of low cunning, any plausible lie that I haven’t thought of.”
“Old Man Martin—called himself Martini—was just such another,” commented Tommy. “Come pay time, Saturday afternoon, you just couldn’t get at him—simply wasn’t any way. I was a bit too good for him once, though,” remembered Tommy, with a touch