• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'Well! She didn't like waiting,' Tietjens said placably. 'You can be thankful your old neck's not broken. Do this band up, one hole less for the bit I've taken in.'

He prepared to climb into the driver's seat, but Mrs Wannop was there before him, at an improbable altitude on the sloping watch-box with strapped cushions.

'Oh, no, you don't,' she said, 'no one drives me and my horse but me or my coachman when I'm about. Not even you, dear boy.'

'I'll come with you then,' Tietjens said.

'Oh, no, you don't,' she answered. 'No one's neck to be broken in this conveyance but mine and Joel's,' she added: 'perhaps to-night if I'm satisfied the horse is fit to drive.'

Miss Wannop suddenly exclaimed:

'Oh, no, mother.' But the handy-man having climbed in, Mrs Wannop flirted her whip and started the horse. She pulled up at once and leaned over to Tietjens:

'What a life for that poor woman,' she said. 'We must all do all we can for her. She could have her husband put in a lunatic asylum to-morrow. It's sheer self-sacrifice that she doesn't.'

The horse went off at a gentle, regular trot.

Tietjens addressed Miss Wannop:

'What hands your mother's got,' he said, 'it isn't often one sees a woman with hands like that on a horse's mouth,...Did you see how she pulled up?...'

He was aware that, all this while, from the road-side, the girl had been watching him with shining eyes: intently even: with fascination.

'I suppose you think that a mighty fine performance.' she said.

'I didn't make a very good job of the girth,' he said. 'Let's get off this road.'

'Setting poor, weak women in their places,' Miss Wannop continued. 'Soothing the horse like a man with a charm. I suppose you soothe women like that, too. I pity your wife...The English country male! And making a devoted vassal at sight of the handy-man. The feudal system all complete...

Tietjens said:

'Well, you know, it'll make him all the better servant to you if he thinks you've friends in the know. The lower classes are like that. Let's get off this road.'

She said:

'You're in a mighty hurry to get behind the hedge. Are the police after us or aren't they? Perhaps you were lying at breakfast: to calm the hysterical nerves of a weak woman.'

'I wasn't lying,' he said, 'but I hate roads when there are field-paths...'

'That's a phobia, like any woman's,' she exclaimed. She almost ran through the kissing-gate and stood awaiting him.

'I suppose,' she said, 'if you've stopped off the police with your high and mighty male ways you think you've destroyed my romantic young dream. You haven't. I don't want the police after me. I believe I'd die if they put me in Wandsworth...I'm a coward.'

'Oh, no, you aren't,' he said, but he was following his own train of thought, just as she wasn't in the least listening to him. 'I daresay you're a heroine all right. Not because you persevere in actions the consequences of which you fear. But I daresay you can touch pitch and not be defiled.'

Being too well brought up to interrupt she waited till he had said all he wanted to say, then she exclaimed:

'Let's settle the preliminaries. It's obvious mother means us to see a great deal of you. You're going to be a mascot, too, like your father. I suppose you think you are: you saved me from the police yesterday, you appear to have saved mother's neck to-day. You appear, too, to be going to make twenty pounds profit on a horse deal. You say you will and you seem to be that sort of a person...Twenty pounds is no end in a family like ours...Well, then, you appear to be going to be the regular bel ami of the Wannop family...'

Tietjens said:

'I hope not.'

'Oh, I don't mean,' she said, 'that you're going to rise to fame by making love to all the women of the Wannop family. Besides, there's only me. But mother will press you into all sorts of odd jobs: and there will always be a plate for you at the table. Don't shudder! I'm a regular good cook--cuisine bourgeoise of course. I learned under a real professed cook, though a drunkard. That meant