Sam in the Suburbs

CHAPTER II. KAY OF VALLEY FIELDS-1

CHAPTER II. KAY OF VALLEY FIELDS

THE nameless individual who had torn from its setting the photograph which had so excited the admiration of Sam Shotter had, as has been already indicated, torn untidily. Had he exercised a little more care, that lovelorn young man would have seen beneath the picture the following legend:

Miss Kay Derrick, Daughter of Col. Eustace

Derrick, of Midways Hall, Wilts.

And if he had happened to be in Piccadilly Circus on a certain afternoon some three weeks after his conversation with Hash Todhunter, he might have observed Miss Derrick in person. For she was standing on the island there waiting for a Number Three omnibus.

His first impression, had he so beheld her, would certainly have been that the photograph, attractive though it was, did not do her justice. Four years had passed since it had been taken, and between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two many girls gain appreciably in looks. Kay Derrick was one of them. He would then have observed that his views on her appearance had been sound. Her eyes, as he had predicted, were blue—a very dark, warm blue like the sky on a summer night—and her hair, such of it as was visible beneath a becoming little hat, was of a soft golden brown. The third thing he would have noticed about her was that she looked tired. And, indeed, she was. It was her daily task to present herself at the house of a certain Mrs. Winnington-Bates in Thurloe Square, South Kensington, to read to that lady and to attend to her voluminous correspondence. And nobody who knew Mrs. Winnington-Bates at all intimately would have disputed the right of any girl who did this to look as tired as she pleased.

The omnibus arrived and Kay climbed the steps to the roof. The conductor presented himself, punch in hand.

“ Fez, pliz.”

“ Valley Fields,” said Kay.

“ Q,” said the conductor.

He displayed no excitement as he handed her the ticket, none of that anxious concern exhibited by those who met the young man with the banner marked Excelsior; for the days are long past when it was considered rather a dashing adventure to journey to Valley Fields. Two hundred years ago, when highwaymen roved West Kensington and snipe were shot in Regent Street, this pleasant suburb in the Postal Division S. E. 21 was a remote spot to which jaded bucks and beaux would ride when they wanted to get really close to Nature. But now that vast lake of brick and asphalt which is London has flooded its banks and engulfed it. The Valley Fields of to-day is a mass of houses, and you may reach it not only by omnibus but by train, and even by tram.

It was a place very familiar to Kay now, so that at times she seemed to have been there all her life; and yet actually only a few months had elapsed since she had been washed up on its shores like a piece of flotsam; or, to put the facts with less imagery, since Mr. Wrenn, of San Rafael, Burberry Road, had come forward on the death of her parents and offered her a home there. This Mr. Wrenn being the bad Uncle Matthew who in the dim past—somewhere around the year 1905—splashed a hideous blot on the Derrick escutcheon by eloping with Kay’s Aunt Enid.

Kay had been a child of two at the time, and it was not till she was eight that she heard the story, her informant being young Willoughby Braddock, the stout boy who, with the aid of a trustee, owned the great house and estates adjoining Midways. It was a romantic story—of a young man who had come down to do Midways for the Stately-Homes-of-England series appearing in the then newly established Pyke’s Home Companion ; who in the process of doing it had made the acquaintance of the sister of its owner; and who only a few weeks later had induced her to run away and marry him, thereby—according to the viewpoint of the family—ruining her chances in this world and her prospects in the next.

For twenty years Matthew Wrenn had been the family outcast, and now time had accomplished one more of its celebrated revenges. The death of Colonel Derrick, which had followed that of his wife by a few months, had revealed the fact that in addition to Norman blood he had also had the simple faith which the poet ranks so much more highly—it taking the form of trusting prospectuses which should not have deceived a child and endeavouring to make up losses caused by the diminishing value of land with a series of speculations, each of them more futile and disastrous than the last. His capital had gone to the four winds, Midways had gone to the mortgagees, and Kay, apprised of these facts by a sympathetic family lawyer, had gone to Mr. Matthew Wrenn, now for many years the editor of that same Pyke’s Home Companion of which he had once been the mere representative.

The omnibus stopped at the corner of Burberry Road, and Kay, alighting, walked toward San Rafael. Burberry Road is not one of the more fashionable and wealthy districts of Valley Fields, and most of the houses in it are semi-detached. San Rafael belonged to this class, being joined, like a stucco Siamese Twin, in indissoluble union to its next-door neighbour, Mon Repos. It had in front of it a strip of gravel, two apologetic-looking flower beds with evergreens in them, a fence, and in the fence a gate, modelled on the five-barred gates of the country.

Out of this gate, as Kay drew near, there came an elderly gentleman, tall, with grey hair and a scholarly stoop.

“ Why, hullo, darling,” said Kay. “Where are you off to?”

She kissed her uncle affectionately, for she had grown very fond of him in the months of their companionship.

“ Just popping round to have a chat with Cornelius,” said Mr. Wrenn. “I thought I might get a game of chess.”

In actual years Matthew Wrenn was on the right side of fifty; but as editors of papers like Pyke’s Home Companion are apt to do, he looked older than he really was. He was a man of mild and dreamy aspect, and it being difficult to imagine him in any dashing rôle, Kay rather supposed that the energy and fire which had produced the famous elopement must have come from the lady’s side.

“ Well, don’t be late for dinner,” she said. “Is Willoughby in?”

“ I left him in the garden.” Mr. Wrenn hesitated. “That’s a curious young man, Kay.”

“ It’s an awful shame that he should be inflicted on you, darling,” said Kay. “His housekeeper shooed him out of his house, you know. She wanted to give it a thorough cleaning. And he hates staying at clubs and hotels, and I’ve known him all my life, and he asked me if we could put him up, and—well, there you are. But cheer up, it’s only for to-night.”

“ My dear, you know I’m only too glad to put up any friend of yours. But he’s such a peculiar young fellow. I have been trying to talk to him for an hour, and all he does is to look at me like a goldfish.”

“ Like a goldfish?”

“ Yes, with his eyes staring and his lips moving without any sound coming from them.”

Kay laughed.

“ It’s his speech. I forgot to tell you. The poor lamb has got to make a speech to-night at the annual dinner of the Old Boys of his school. He’s never made one before, and it’s weighing on his mind terribly.”

Mr. Wrenn looked relieved.

“ Oh, I didn’t know. Honestly, my dear, I thought that he must be mentally deficient.” He looked at his watch. “Well, if you think you can entertain him, I will be going along.”

Mr. Wrenn went on his way; and Kay, passing through the five-barred gate, followed the little gravel path which skirted the house and came into the garden.

Like all the gardens in the neighbourhood, it was a credit to its owner—on the small side, but very green and neat and soothing. The fact that, though so widely built over, Valley Fields has not altogether lost its ancient air of rusticity is due entirely to the zeal and devotion of its amateur horticulturists. More seeds are sold each spring in Valley Fields, more lawn mowers pushed, more garden rollers borrowed, more snails destroyed, more green fly squirted with patent mixtures, than in any other suburb on the Surrey side of the river. Brixton may have its Bon Marché and Sydenham its Crystal Palace; but when it comes to pansies, roses, tulips, hollyhocks and nasturtiums, Valley Fields points with pride.

In addition to its other attractive features, the garden of San Rafael contained at this moment a pinkish, stoutish, solemn young man in a brown suit, who was striding up and down the lawn with a glassy stare in his eyes.

“ Hullo, Willoughby,” said Kay.

The young man came out of his trance with a strong physical convulsion.

“ Oh, hullo, Kay.”

He followed her across the lawn to the tea table which stood in the shade of a fine tree. For there are trees in this favoured spot as well as flowers.

“ Tea, Willoughby?” said Kay, sinking gratefully into a deck chair. “Or have you had yours?”

“ Yes, I had some.... I think——” Mr. Braddock weighed the question thoughtfully. “Yes.... Yes, I’ve had some.”

Kay filled her cup and sipped luxuriously.

“ Golly, I’m tired!” she said.

“ Had a bad day?”

“ Much the same as usual.”

“ Mrs. B. not too cordial?”

“ Not very. And, unfortunately, the son and heir was cordiality itself.”

Mr. Braddock nodded.

“ A bit of a trial, that lad.”

“ A bit.”

“ Wants kicking.”

“ Very badly.”

Kay gave a little wriggle of distaste. Technically, her duties at Thurloe Square consisted of reading and writing Mrs. Winnington-Bates’ letters; but what she was engaged for principally, she sometimes thought, was to act as a sort of spiritual punching bag for her employer. To-day that lady had been exceptionally trying. Her son, on the other hand, who had recently returned to his home after an unsuccessful attempt to learn poultry farming in Sussex and was lounging about it, with little to occupy him, had shown himself, in his few moments of opportunity, more than usually gallant. What life needed to make it a trifle easier, Kay felt, was for Mrs. Bates to admire her a little more and for Claude Bates to admire her a little less.

“ I remember him at school,” said Mr. Braddock. “A worm.”

“ Was he at school with you?”

“ Yes. Younger than me. A beastly little kid who stuffed himself with food and frousted over fires and shirked games. I remember Sam Shotter licking him once for stealing jam sandwiches at the school shop. By the way, Sam’s coming over here. I had a letter from him.”

“ Is he? And who is he? You’ve never mentioned his name before.”

“ Haven’t I told you about old Sam Shotter?” asked Mr. Braddock, surprised.

“ Never. But he sounds wonderfully attractive. Anyone who licked Claude Bates must have a lot of good in him.”

“ He was at school with me.”

“ What a lot of people seem to have been at school with you!”

“ Well, there were about six hundred fellows at Wrykyn, you know. Sam and I shared a study. Now there is a chap I envy. He’s knocked about all over the world, having all sorts of fun. America one day, Australia the next, Africa the day after.”

“ Quick mover,” said Kay.

“ The last I heard from him he was in his uncle’s office in New York, but in this letter he says he’s coming over to work at Tilbury House.”

“ Tilbury House? Really? I wonder if uncle will meet him.”

“ Don’t you think it would be a sound move if I gave him a dinner or something where he could meet a few of the lads? You and your uncle, of course—and if I could get hold of old Tilbury.”

“ Do you know Lord Tilbury?”

“ Oh, yes; I play bridge with him sometimes at the club. And he took my shooting last year.”

“ When does Mr. Shotter arrive?”

“ I don’t know. He says it’s uncertain. You see, he’s coming over on a tramp steamer.”