That Fickle Feeling
Should a girl ever put her true feelings down on paper?
THAT FICKLE FEELING
By ROBERT STANDISH
Illustrated by Robert Jones
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| continued on page 112 |
It is essential to an understanding of the characters about to appear upon our small stage that we absorb some of the background against which they live their lives. Some people manage to dominate their backgrounds, but when, as in this case, their lives are lived around an English cathedral close, the converse is true.
Thankerton Cathedral itself is so overpowering that it tends to cut men and women down to size. Its immense flying buttresses and the exquisite, painstaking craftsmanship within make the most arrogant of men feel small and humble, Which is as it should be; for this splendid poem in stone was erected to the greater glory of a God who rates humility high among the virtues. Then there are the bells" whose deep-toned voice is clearly audible at five miles' range, unpleasantly loud- at two miles, while at the deanery, which is situated at precisely hundred and eighty-seven measured yards from the base of the bell tower, it becomes a crashing medley of metallic sounds almost too frightening to be borne. It is said of the chimes, which ring four times hourly on the quarters, that theirs is the only voice able to compete with that of Mrs. Martha Hemingway, wife of the Very Rev. Joshua Hemingway, D.D., the dean of Thankerton.
The Bishop of Thankerton surprisingly has little to do with the life around the close, for he-good and wise man that he is-lives nearly two miles away at Thankerton Without, where he enjoys, but scarcely merits, the reputation of being a humorist.
In medieval times, Thankerton Cathedral and the town which sprang into being around it were enclosed within a fortified wall. Then, some time during the seventeenth century, after a long period of prosperity, Thankerton spilled over the encircling wall and a new town was built on the other side of the river.
"It's those letters I wrote," she confessed.
"They could be made to sound terrible,"
Instead of calling this town New Thankerton, which was the obvious thing to do, the citizens called it Thankerton Without, doubtless an abbreviation of Thankerton- Without-the-Walls, Since the town wall no longer exists, its stones having been used to build the railway embankment in 1840, and the only apparent dividing line between Thankerton proper and Thankerton Without is the river, strangers may be forgiven-but seldom are-for believing that this carefully drawn distinction is somewhat absurd.
The lord bishop, as mentioned earlier, lives at Thankerton Without. "Without what?" ask the uninitiated, "Without those bells!" replies the bishop to a chorus of laughter from a dutiful claque of minor canons and lesser clerics under his discipline. Vice presidents in charge of the more obscure operations of large industrial concerns have been known to laugh just as heartily at worse and staler jokes cracked by the big boss-and to let him beat them at golf, God help them!
Well, there it is. The stage is set. All that remains is to raise the curtain and bring on the characters, which isn't so easy as it sounds, if we, are to make them credible. Take Martha Hemingway, the dean's wife, for example. Hers is a small part in this story, and yet, she hovers over it like a storm cloud or a helicopter, dominating the scene without ever really becoming a part of it. Martha Hemingway is a woman who uses words like a muleteer uses a whip. In some strange way it is the things she does not say, but which those in her immediate entourage know that she will unfailingly say if the occasion arises, which influences their lives far more profoundly than her utterances. Remember this-for the chief characters do much of what they do, or refrain, as the case may be, in the light of Martha Hemingway's probable reaction.
There is a crisis at the deanery when we meet its occupants, a crisis whose root cause is the almost complete inability of Mrs. Hemingway and her daughter Matilda each to understand the other's viewpoint. Clothing, for instance. Mrs. Hemingway billows. She wears shapeless garments which reveal no more of her limbs than her wrists above and her insteps below, in the outmoded belief that thus only can female modesty be preserved. Attired for the street, she resembles a frigate of the line under full sail. Matilda, on the other hand, is trim, streamlined, in tune with the phenomena of her time. Her most moderate use of lipstick and face powder is characterized by her mother as "painting" and behaving like a "fallen woman." When Matilda won the ladies' singles in the Thankerton tennis tournament, the pained expression, worn by Mrs. Hemingway on contemplating the shorts which helped to make Matilda's victory possible not only curdled all the joy but was far more eloquent than anything she might have said.
Matilda is good-looking, gay and altogether wholesome, sparkling with good humor and joie de vivre.Colonel Bullifant, who is Mrs. Hemingway's brother and who has lived at the deanery since his retirement, once hit the nail on the head in defense of Matilda by saying, "MY dear Martha, if mere safety is as important as you believe it to be, the safest place to keep the world's art treasures would be at the bottom of a coal mine, where nobody could see them and where, therefore, the fact that they were beautiful would be of no importance whatsoever. Let Matilda live her life, not shelter from it."
Nothing Matilda did was wrong in Colonel Bullifant's eyes, for she was the daughter he never had and the chief joy of his declining years,
Of the dean himself there is little to say-at least, insofar as this story is concerned. In the greater world which lies beyond Thankerton he enjoys a reputation for piety, wit and wisdom, but within the walls of the deanery his importance shrinks pitifully to something, near the vanishing point.
Mrs. Hemingway chides him for his forgetfulness and absence of mind, but what she does not know is that over the years he has built up a well-nigh impregnable defense mechanism by the simple device of switching off his hearing aid when he sees a certain look on his wife's face. His only worry, good man, is that he wonders whether by pretending to listen he is not living a lie.
Now as to the crisis at the deanery. Three years before this story opens, Matilda was singing soprano in the cathedral choir. Percival, the oldest son and heir of Lord Thankerton, was singing tenor. At the annual choir picnic-a feature of which was unlimited strawberries and cream- Matilda and Percival, eighteen and twenty-two years of age respectively, fell in love. They exchanged promises. Worse, when Matilda went for a year to a finishing school in Switzerland, they exchanged letters. From exile in Lausanne, Matilda wrote some humdingers, borrowing some of the most lurid passages from a novel which had just been banned in Boston. The letters were innocent, being nothing more than the expression of a romantic mood. But an evil mind-and even a cathedral close is not entirely free from these-might have put an evil interpretation upon them.
Mrs. Hemingway, who found Percival's letters under a loose board in Matilda's bedroom, was delighted, for mothers who did not flinch from the prospect of having grandchildren with receding chins regarded Percival as a catch. After all, a few receding chins in the next generation were a small price to pay for a coronet, to say nothing of Thankerton Castle, the rent roll which went with the earldom and a seat in the peeress' gallery of the House of Lords.
Lord Thankerton was less enthusiastic, but not actively hostile. He knew-who better?-that Percival was no bargain, but there was always the possibility that with Matilda's help the family receding chin-conspicuous since the eighth, ninth and tenth earls had married cousins in the eighteenth century-might be bred out.
The love which blossomed between Percival and Matilda was, alas, a tender plant! It survived the twelve months' separation during which Matilda was in Lausanne and Percival at Thankerton, warmed by the steady flow of incandescent letters which they exchanged. But when she returned home-still dizzy from the attentions of a blond-beast ski instructor-one look at poor Percival told her that she had made a mistake.
Percival was, if nothing else, an extremely nice young man. He accepted the situation gracefully. But Lord Thankerton-a very quick man with a mortgage foreclosure, by the way-who had pinched all Matilda's letters to read during the long winter evenings, was considerably less graceful about it. In short, he would be damned if he would allow his son, the future Lord Thankerton, to be jilted by the daughter of a mere dean. If there were any jilting to be done, it was, by virtue of his rank, Percival's privilege. The attitude was ungallant and illogical for, had it not been for his lordship's loud displeasure, the jilting would never have become a matter for gossip. The scandal rocked the cathedral close, which, in parenthesis, rocked fairly easily.
Mrs. Hemingway reminded Matilda of the sacrifices she, Mrs. Hemingway, had made, of the brilliant match she was missing and of many other matters, most of which were irrelevant; until she at last ran down. The dean-poor man- switched off his hearing aid for eleven consecutive days in his own home.
Colonel Bullifant discarded his altogether when in his sister's presence. It was, indeed, a most distressing time for everyone concerned, not least for Matilda, who found cotton ear plugs entirely inadequate and was compelled to bear the brunt of her mother's quite astonishing invective.
Colonel Bullifant, who loved Matilda dearly, did his best to comfort and sustain her in the ordeal, realizing what she was going through on the day when she refused a third helping of plum duff, a delicacy which, combined with the English climate, probably inspired Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest. Colonel Bullifant- "Uncle Gussie" within the family circle-is best described at this time as a splendid ruin: a tall, handsome man with an erect military bearing, a pair of silver-white mustachios waxed to fine points, bushy eyebrows to match, a leonine mane of silver hair and good steady blue eyes. Those of his contemporaries who had survived the embattled years still called him "Lobster. "
It was to Uncle Gussie that Matilda brought her troubles when it seemed they were about to overwhelm her, and when her skies were dark with chickens coming home to roost. "Well, my dear," he clucked in his fruity baritone, "let's have it. What's the trouble?"
"Lord Thankerton's the trouble, Uncle Gussie. He's a pig. He's got hold of the letters I wrote to Percival when I was young, and he threatens to send them to Johnny-and Johnny, don't you see, is terribly jealous and-well, we plan to get married. So you see _"
"Who in blazes is Johnny?"
"Johnny is an American, Uncle Gussie. I met him at a dance at the American air base. You've seen me playing tennis with him."
"Chap that looks as though he was dropped on his face as a baby, that him? Pinched his big brother's clothes and gave 'em a few turns in a concrete mixer instead of pressing 'em? You'd have done better marrying Percival, who is at least housebroken. "
"Johnny's nice, Uncle Gussie, really nice. I don't think he was dropped. He got that in boxing. He doesn't think clothes are important."
"What does he think is important?"
"I am, for one thing."
"What does he do for a living?"
"Something in electronics-something frightfully hush-hush. I don't understand any of it."
"What's his other name?"
"Culpepper-Johnny Culpepper. Pretty name, isn't it?"
"Where does he come from?"
"From Arizona-Bandicoot, Creek, Arizona."
"Nonsense! There's no such place. Arizona means dry zone. How could there be creeks in a dry-zone? The man's making a fool of you. Tell him to go back and drown himself in the creek - that is, if he didn't invent it."
"But I love him, Uncle Gussie, I really do. I want to marry him."
"Well, what's stopping you? I suppose he has a couple of squaws in Arizona- that it?"
"No, it isn't that at all,"-wailed Matilda. "It's what I told you at the beginning-Lord Thankerton threatens to send Johnny the letters I wrote td Percival. It was Percival who warned me. What am I going to do, Uncle Gussie?"
"My advice would be to do nothing, my dear. Let Thankerton send the letters to this Johnny person and be damned to him. You aren't the first girl to write mushy letters and then, when it was too late, regret it. In my opinion you're making a mountain out of a molehill."
"You wouldn't say that, Uncle Gussie," faltered Matilda, blushing, "if you knew what was in the letters. They were quite harmless, really, but they could be made to sound simply terrible. "
Colonel Bullifant appeared profoundly shocked. "Do you know how it comes about, my dear," he asked, "that I'm still a carefree bachelor? I’ll tell you. My father gave me a framed motto when I went into the army. 'Gussie, my boy,' he said as he gave it to me, 'keep that before you always and it will save you from a lot of trouble.' He was right too. It read:
FEAR NO MAN AND DO RIGHT
FEAR ALL WOMEN AND DON'T WRITE
I never forgot it. In Ootacamund once- it was in '09, as I remember it-I nearly slipped. Even now I get hot flushes when I think of it. There was a full moon. The Indian moon plays havoc with a man's critical faculties, and we were walking over a carpet of frangipani blossoms. Sheer dynamite! It was the kind of evening that would make an octogenarian hermit forget his vows.
"Well, no need to go into details, of course, but my tongue ran away with me-said some amazingly indiscreet things. She was a charming girl, ginger-headed I think. Can't be sure, because I never saw her by daylight. She left the next day for Bombay-suddenly and for no apparent reason. Smart of her, but not smart enough. She didn't want to listen to any more mush, see? She wanted it on paper."
"Well, what happened finally, Uncle Gussie?"
"Nothing, my dear, nothing. Never saw her again. Nice girl too. Married a chap who owed me five hundred rupees-forget his name. But I sent him a receipt in full as a wedding present. Least I could do in the circumstances. But all this is a long way from dealing with Thankerton. Where does he keep the letters?"
"Percival thinks he keeps them in the drawer of that big oak desk in the library. I asked Percival to steal them for me, but he wouldn't."
"I should think not, indeed!", said Colonel Bullifant in a shocked voice. "Have you women no moral sense whatever? Can't put a man up to stealing from his own father-not even a tick like Thankerton. No, my dear. This quite evidently must be an outside job. I shall have to case the joint-that's the correct term, I believe. I'll call on Thankerton, give him some soft soap about his roses. The chief constable's a pal of mine. I'll ask him to recommend a good reliable burglar."
"You really mean, Uncle Gussie, that you'll get those letters for me?"
"I'd do a lot more than that for you, my dear," said the old soldier. "I intend, furthermore, to find out how many wives your. boy friend left on the bonnie banks of Bandersnatch Creek and, let me tell you," the old soldier added fiercely, "if there's any monkey business, I'll shoot him in the liver."
"I love him, Uncle Gussie, and he loves me. Won't you understand?"
"You loved that chinless, nincompoop Percival, or thought you did. It, my considered opinion that you're emotionally unstable. Does your mother know anything about this?"
"I don't think so, Uncle Gussie. I hope not anyway. I don't think that mother would be very-well, sympathetic."
Colonel Bullifant, who was inclined to agree with this massive understatement of the case, wiped imaginary beads of cold sweat from his brow as he contemplated his sister's wrath.
Johnny Culpepper, invited to lunch at the deanery at Colonel Bullifant's prompting created a poor impression. He arrived wearing oil-stained and patched overalls and a badly cured sleeveless cowhide jerkin, blissfully unconscious of the effect upon his most conventional hosts. Being a civilian, he could wear what he pleased. Mrs. Hemingway snorted with indignation. The dean cast a pained look at Johnny and somewhat ostentatiously switched off his hearing aid.
With the dessert the early bad impression was partially dispelled. by Uncle Gussie, who persuaded Johnny to talk about electronics and the shape of things to come. Even Mrs. Hemingway relented somewhat, when-with the light of dedication in his eyes-Johnny gave them a glimpse of the wonders which within a measurable period of time were going to change the face of the world. The dean lost his pained expression and with a rare condescension tuned in to Johnny's wave length.
After lunch Uncle Gussie seized Johnny by the arm, walking him round the close under the ancient elms. "Tell me, my boy," he said kindly, "did you happen to notice that the ham we ate for lunch had a pink paper frill on the shank end?"
"Yes, sir," replied Johnny wonderingly.
"Have you any idea why?
"No, sir. I guess it must be an English custom."
"Quite right, my boy, it is. The idea is, don't you see, that it makes the ham more decorative, something a little more aesthetic, shall we say, than the hind leg which has been hacked off a pig. It doesn't affect the flavor, but it creates a better impression. It's a thought, eh?"
Johnny looked puzzled and waited.
"I don't want to hurt your feelings, my boy" continued Colonel Bullifant, "but why don't you let me introduce you to a tailor-you know, the Latin sartor-chap who makes clothes?"
The penny dropped.
"I get it, sir," said Johnny with a grin. "The truth is that I don't seem to have much time for thinking of clothes. I've never thought them important."
"It's largely a matter of geography, my boy. The sort of thing suitable for fishing in Bandersnatch Creek becomes a trifle conspicuous on the cathedral close at Thankerton. Get me?"
"Well, sir, what are we waiting for? Lead me to your tailor!"
Thereafter, surprisingly, these two became close friends.
Meanwhile, the latest word from the castle via Percival as that every time Matilda's name was mentioned Lord Thankerton's blood pressure rose twenty points. There was small hope of any change in heart in that quarter.
Colonel Bullifant at this time was observed to be bustling about happily on unexplained mysterious errands, but the only news he imparted to Matilda was bad-the chief constable of the county, it seemed, was being uncooperative in the matter of finding a reliable burglar.
Matilda was able to put her fears aside in the pressure of work entailed as her father’s secretary, organizing the transportation and accommodation for delegates to the Quinquennial Ecclesiastical Conference, whose arrival in Thankerton was imminent. This and many other difficulties kept Matilda's nose on the grindstone.
Two days before the conference was due to open, Colonel Bullifant, looking happily conspiratorial, poked his head into the dean's study, which Matilda used as an office, and whispered loudly, "It's all under control, my dear. Trust your old Uncle Gussie."
With this Matilda was: forced to be content, for the old soldier's head disappeared as swiftly as it had come.
The scene now shifts to Thankerton railway station some forty-eight hours later, just as two special trains from London are about to disrupt the placid life of the old town by disgorging seven hundred delegates of all ranks, shapes and sizes, whose only common denominators are clerical attire, the bewildered air of men whose arrangements are in other hands and curiously similar shabby brown suitcases. A notice chalked on a black-board requested them to present themselves at the trestle table set up in the station hall, where Matilda and seven other helpers were waiting to sort them out and send them to their respective destinations. Glancing up from the lists she was checking, Matilda was shocked to observe a tall imposing cleric, wearing the black leather gaiters which denoted the rank of bishop, sneaking furtively out of the station in the direction of the taxi rank without making himself known to the reception committee. Indignant at this early flouting of the conference discipline, Matilda ran after him. "May I have your name, please?" she asked breathlessly.
"Don't be a damn fool, Matilda, or you'll spoil everything!" was the surprising reply. "Put me down as the Bishop of Outer Space and let go of my coattails."
Matilda looked up into Uncle Gussie's face, a clean-shaven Uncle Gussie, whose silver hair and eyebrows were dyed black. . Knowing that his mustache was his pride and joy, she exclaimed tearfully, "You had it cut off for me?"
"My dear," said the old soldier with a gentle smile, "I'd cut off my head for you if it would do any good. Now, not a word to a soul!"
Picking up his shabby brown suitcase, Colonel Bullifant dived for a taxi.
Once again the scene shifts. The taxi which the transformed Colonel Bullifant took at the railway station enters the gates of Thankerton Castle and halts at the main entrance to the castle itself. Lord Thankerton being one of the few remaining earls able to afford the luxury, the door was opened by a butler, who was aware that his employer had offered hospitality to ten delegates. "May I know your name, sir?" he asked politely.
"The Bishop of Patagonia," replied Colonel Bullifant.
"Shall I show you to your room, my lord, or would you prefer a cup of tea in the library?"
Electing the latter, Colonel Bullifant allowed himself to be ushered into the library, in the corner of which was the oak desk where, supposedly, Matilda's indiscreet letters to Percival were kept. The butler, looking more episcopal than any bishop, left in search of tea and anchovy toast.
Thus far it had all gone smoothly.
Ten minutes later, alone with the tea tray, Colonel Bullifant produced from an inner pocket a jemmy, which is to a burglar what a knife is to a boy scout. With leverage applied one inch from the lock, the right-hand drawer of Lord Thankerson’s desk yielded without a struggle. In the front of the drawer, tied with a leather lace from one of Percival's discarded football boots, was the bundle of Matilda's letters, easily recognizable by her sprawling handwriting and the green ink she had affected during the Lausanne period. Putting the letters into his pocket, the old soldier was about to close the drawer and replace the piece of wood which had come away with the lock, when three taxis pulled up at the castle entrance.
His military training now stood Colonel Bullifant in good stead, for this was the moment when swift decision was needed. The suitcase, which reposed in the hall, he abandoned. Wiping any possible fingerprints off the jemmy, he threw it in the wastepaper basket. During the crucial moments while the newly arrived delegates were in the hall and before they were ushered into the library; he raised the window and dropped expertly into a clump of Michaelmas daisies. He was observed by the driver of the last taxi, which did not matter, for after twenty-five years at the wheel of a taxi he had seen everything and was ready to view most human vagaries through tolerant eyes.
Propped against the end of a green house, where an undergardener had left it some hours previously, was a bicycle. Remembering from his youth the basic principles of cycling, Colonel Bullifant leaped upon the machine and began to pedal swiftly down the drive. It had all, been childishly easy.
From the gates of the castle and down Castle Hill it was even easier-the law of gravity took charge. But the undergardener had omitted to leave a warning that his machine had no brakes! It is for someone with a passion for exactitude to calculate the velocity of a bicycle going down a 10 per cent gradient 700 yards long carrying a passenger weighing one hundred and eighty-three pounds. Colonel Bullifant's private estimate as he shot past the Bell & Dragon was that he was on the edge of the sound barrier, and whether he was right or wrong seems unimportant beside the fact that the speed was dangerously excessive for an elderly man who had not been astride a bicycle for more than forty years. At the bottom of the hill, with red showing on the traffic lights, was the intersection of Thankerton High Street. During the seconds which remained to him, having decided to leave his fate in the hands of providence, the old soldier reviewed the salient episodes of his long and eventful life, wondering as he did so whether it would not have been simpler and less messy if the Afridi bullet which had grazed his left temple long ago on the frontier had been aimed three inches farther to his right.
It is impossible to describe with any pretense of accuracy what happened during the split second as Colonel Bullifant arrived at and crossed the intersection, for no two accounts agree. The least probable, and therefore the most widely accepted, theory is that the bicycle hit a bump in the road surface and that it leaped circus-style over a baby carriage without hitting anything else and continued along Castle Street, which is a continuation of Castle Hill north of High Street, at approximately one hundred and twenty miles per hour. But does it matter? Surely all that matters is that he got across the intersection scatheless and that the rising gradient of Castle Street checked his onrush to subsonic speed.
Straight ahead lay the gates of Thankerton Park, where a match was in progress between the Thankerton Wanderers Cricket Club and a team representing the American air base. The bicycle came to a dead stop outside the pavilion just as the match was ending in a somewhat heated exchange regarding the rules of cricket, which the visitors had interpreted somewhat too, broadly for the purists. Colonel Bullifant created a diversion by falling off the bicycle just in time to avoid bloodshed, murmuring horrifying oaths in Hindustani. Willing hands carried him into the pavilion where, three whiskies and soda later, shocked and dazed by his ordeal, he tried unconvincingly to reconcile the circumstances with any credible explanation.
As the colonel was reaching for his fourth, someone asked, "Do you think it wise, sir?"
"Wise be damned!" retorted Colonel Bullifant testily. "D'you think I can't handle my liquor? Blast your eyes, I was drinking my bottle of whisky a day when you lads were blowing bubbles in your purple-trimmed cradles! Don't drown it!"
At this outburst, quoted here after heavy censorship, a silence fell upon the bar. Eyebrows rose. It was as though those present required time to digest new thoughts. Bishops did not ride bicycles, especially elderly bishops. They did not raise and lower glasses of whisky with such practiced ease. Or did they? Perhaps bishops under stress of great emotion reacted as other men react. But it did seem unlikely that they punctuated their speech so vigorously and pungently as the man who stood before them at the bar, whose left foot was poised so naturally on the brass rail. "
Y'know," he remarked conversationally, "I'm running away from something or someone, but I'll be damned if I can remember what. Came down that hill like a bat out of hell. Ruddy great bus slap in my way. No brakes! Must've gone through the bus or over it. . . . Hello!" he exclaimed, looking down at his black gaiters. "Where in blue blazes did I get those? Bishops wear gaiters. Must be a bishop. It's coming back to me-well, just one for the road and I'll be off. Won't be long before the cops get here. Well, here's mud in your eye! I've got to take it on the lam."
Colonel Bullifant-a keen student of contemporary American thrillers-believed himself the master of gangster idiom. It was one of his harmless little vanities.
On the parking lot, climbing into a small sports car, was a young American jet pilot. "If the cops are really after you, pop, you'd better come along with me," he said hospitably. The old soldier accepted the invitation. He wanted to be somewhere else quickly. The rush of cool air helped to restore his normal faculties. He was remembering things. "Do you happen to know a young American friend of mine called Culpepper?" he asked.
"Johnny Culpepper? Sure I know him. Why?"
"Then I should be greatly obliged," said Colonel Bullifant, relapsing into his normal habit of speech, "if you would take me to him."
Johnny, it seemed, was playing golf at a course on the other's route. Relieved to know this, the colonel went to sleep. It had been a tiring day.
The Thankerton police, meanwhile were trying to piece together and correlate a number of curious incidents reported to them by telephone. The first of these was the robbery at the castle, allegedly committed by the Bishop of Patagonia, who had mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind him a suitcase containing two London telephone directories. An undergardener employed at the castle complained of the theft of his bicycle. A policeman on duty at the foot of Castle Hill was called a liar when he telephoned in his version of a bishop mounted on a bicycle leaping over a baby carriage at "at least a hundred miles an hour." Finally, there were three separate and widely differing accounts of the events at the Thankerton Cricket Club. These last, when added together and divided by six, plus the identification of the abandoned bicycle by the castle undergardener, prompted the sergeant on duty at the police station to telephone the deanery to inquire whether there were any bishops missing from among the conference delegates. The dean, listening to what the sergeant had to say, remarked gloomily, "One of those colonial bishops on the rampage, I suppose. I'll make inquiries and let you know. But I count on you to avoid scandal at any price."
To Matilda, as organizing secretary of the conference billeting arrangements, was given the task of identifying the erring prelate and hushing up the inevitable scandal. "We shall have to call it amnesia, my dear," said the dean. "Have him rushed to Doctor Potter for diagnosis. I will telephone him too use the utmost discretion. I do hope it isn't the Bishop of Bagamoyo, because he's one of tomorrow's principal speakers."
Further speculation was brought to an end by the arrival of a car at the gate of the deanery. From it, assisted by Johnny Culpepper, emerged Colonel Bullifant, clad in a shabby raincoat below which, conspicuous as a fire engine, were the old soldier's ankle-length scarlet woolen underpants. His head was swathed in bandages. The car with Johnny Culpepper at the wheel disappeared swiftly.
"Augustus," said Mrs. Hemingway sternly as her. brother erettot up the steps and into the hall,· "what have you done with your mustache?"
"That's-my affair," was the sour retort. "I've had a very trying day and I'm going to bed. A severe shock, Martha, that's what I've had. You've heard of people going white-haired in a night with shock, haven't you?" he asked, unwinding the bandages from his head. "Well, I've reversed the process-mine's gone black. Good night!"
Colonel Bullifant staggered up the stairs toward his room, giving Matilda a large wink as he passed. "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing," he was heard to mutter as he finally disappeared from view
On the following morning, when Matilda went to meet the postman, there was a registered envelope addressed to her in schoolboy print. In it, to her great relief, was the bundle of letters she had written to Percival from Lausanne. She put these at once into the kitchen stove. When they were burned to mere ash, she took Uncle Gussie his breakfast in bed, leaving his room in tears as he waved away her thanks.
There is little more to tell. When Lord Thankerton proved unco-operative and refused to disclose the nature of the "highly confidential papers" stolen from his desk-to have disclosed which would have shown him in a very poor light-the police lost interest in the case. The under-gardener recovered his bicycle. The black cloud of suspicion was lifted from the innocent head of the Bishop of Bagamoyo who, at the time of the robbery and the startling events which followed it, had been drinking tea and eating toasted Bath buns in the blameless company of a rural dean and the rector of St. Barnabas Without.
Colonel Bullifant-true to the gangster tradition of silence, and declining to explain over the ensuing weeks how and why hair which had turned black with shock was growing white again at the roots-remained a prisoner at the deanery until his mustache was restored to its erstwhile magnificence. The happiness he read in Matilda's eyes was his reward.
The wedding of Johnny Culpepper and Matilda Hemingway took place at Thankerton Cathedral with a full choral service. The Bishop of Thankerton officiated. The dean gave away the bride, while Col. Augustus Bullifant, D.S.O., M.C., stood for the groom as best man with tears of pure happiness running down his old cheeks.
"You're very thoughtful, darling," said Matilda as the honeymoon plane crossed the Alps into Italy. "A penny for them."
"I was wondering," said Johnny in a dreamy voice, "whether, if you and I were separated for a long time you'd write me letters like those you wrote to Percival from Lausanne. Gee! They were just wonderful!"
"How did you come to see them?" asked Matilda, blushing furiously.
"They were in the pocket: of Uncle Gussie's black coat that he left in my quarters when the cops were after him. He must have forgotten them. The old boy wasn't hitting on all six _"
"If I'd known that you had read those letters, Johnny," said Matilda gently, "I would have been too embarrassed ever to speak to you again."
"That's what I figured," replied Johnny calmly, "and that's why I didn't tell you."
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