Mr American

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve been saying, have you?” Pip was laughing at him across the table. “Where were you? Renzo wants to know if you want Bordeaux or Burgundy – unless you want to carry on with the bubbly?”

Of course they continued with the champagne, and as they ate their splendid dinner in the velvet-lined little private cabinet on the second floor, Mr Franklin wondered if it was the working of the wine that made him enjoy himself more and more with each passing minute. No, to be fair, he decided, it was Pip herself; she was merry and animated and full of gossip, about the theatre, and herself, and her eccentric parents and their large family, who appeared to live on laughter and a portion of her earnings, and about London, which was all the world to her, and her ambitions, which consisted simply of being the Queen of Musical Comedy some day, and strutting the boards of the West End, singing the latest rude songs, having hosts of admirers waiting at the stage door, preferably in carriages with crests – and marrying one of the richest and most noble of them? wondered Mr Franklin.

“No,” said Pip, and sighed. “I’m not the kind they marry. Oh, plenty from the chorus finish up as My Lady – they say half the heirs to the Lords married Gaiety Girls, and it’s not far wrong. But I like the theatre, you see – couldn’t be happy away from it, and all the noise and chat and fun. I couldn’t give that up. Can’t see me in a stately home, dishing out tea – not while there’s curtains going up and orchestras playing my cue.” She laughed. “I’m just a shameless, painted hussy of the variety stage – common as dirt and glad of it. You have to be, if you want to get to the top of my trade – look at Marie Lloyd, she’s no lady, but she’ll be topping the bill until she drops, no matter how fat she gets. Maybe I’ve got a little of what she’s got – not just the voice, and the figure, and the cheek, but – well, you know, it’s how you put it over. If I’ve got it, then I’ll go on until I drop, too – and if I haven’t, I’ll prob’ly finish up married to some sobersides in Ealing, if I’m lucky, with six kids and a couple of maids.” She chuckled happily. “Sing ’em ‘Boiled Beef and Carrots’” at the church social, too. Meantime, I’m enjoying myself, so who cares? Anyway,” and she stretched a hand across and patted Mr Franklin on the arm, “I’m fed up talking about me, and you must be, too. What about you, Mr American? You’ve just sat all evening, very polite and quiet, listening to me gassing on and on and on, and you haven’t said a word about little ole New York, or Redskins, or anything.” She pushed her plate aside, put her elbows on the table, cupped her chin in her hands, and smiled eagerly. “I’m listening.”

It took him by surprise – but what was even more surprising was that he found himself responding. Later, he was to reflect that in all his life he had hardly ever talked about himself – certainly not to a stranger, and that stranger a woman. Perhaps it was the novelty or, he was prepared to admit, that he was under the spell of that lively beauty hanging on his every word. It did not occur to him that Miss Pip Delys, the professional performer, could be as skilled a listener as she was a prattler. In any event, he found himself talking – about half-remembered Nebraska, and about the time of wandering, with his itinerant schoolmaster father, from one small settlement to another – “I don’t even remember their names, just the wall-paper in the rooming-houses where we stayed; one or two of them didn’t have wallpaper” – and later, the brief years as ranch-hand, railroad ganger, timber-jack, miner, and transient on the dwindling frontier; it was a fairly bald recital, and far from satisfying Pip’s curiosity, which was evidently well-grounded in comic papers and Colonel Cody’s Wild West Show.

“Weren’t you ever a cowboy, with them hearth-rug things on your legs? Didn’t you have to fight Indians, or rustlers? You must have had a six-gun, surely …?”

“Yes, I was a cowboy,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, I worked with cattle – it isn’t all that fun. No, I didn’t fight Indians, or rustlers – there aren’t really many of them about, nowadays. A six-shooter? Yes – mostly for scaring prairie dogs.” There was no point in telling her of that night of waiting at the Bella Union for the Kid and his cronies. But it was in his mind when she asked her next question.

“Outlaws? Now, why on earth should I know any such people? D’you think America’s peopled by bandits and pistoleers? You’ve been reading dime novels.”

“Well, you can’t say there aren’t any!” said Pip indignantly. “I mean, it didn’t get called the Wild West for nothing, did it? Why, I don’t suppose we’ve had an outlaw in England since … oh, since Robin Hood. I just thought – if you’d been a cowboy –”

“That I might have been a road agent myself, on the side? Texas Tommy, with pistols stuck in a crimson sash and a big sombrero?”

This sent her into peals of delight. “Course not! Though you could look the part, you know – you really could! Specially when you come all over grim and thoughtful – like when you were thinking, faraway, down on the balcony. Made me all goose-pimply.” She shuddered deliciously. “You might have been planning to rob the stage to Cactus Gulch, or –”

“You’ve got a real theatrical imagination, I’ll say that for you.” He shook his head. “If you must know, I’ve seen outlaws, one or two – and they look pretty much like anyone else, only a bit more in need of a bath. Matter of fact, my old mining partner, Pop Davis – he’d been outside the law in his time, I guess. But you wouldn’t have thought much of him – looked just like any old tramp. He was all right, though. Good partner.”

“But the other ones,” she insisted. “You said one or two – what were they like?”

“Oh, just ordinary fellows; nothing very romantic, I’m afraid. And yet – I don’t know. You’d have liked Big Ben Kilpatrick, I guess – very tall, good-looking; and Cassidy, too – he must have been the politest brigand that ever was, and quite presentable when shaved. Ever hear of them?” She shook her head, wistfully. “Well, they’re the best I can do for you – and I couldn’t claim more than nodding acquaintance. Old Davis and I stayed with them once for a spell, at a place called Hole-in-the – Wall; he’d once been teamed up with one of Kilpatrick’s gang –”

“Hole-in-the-Wall! You’re making it up!”

“That’s what it was called. And they called themselves the Wild Bunch, if you like. Not so wild, either; they’d robbed a train or two, I guess, but didn’t make much of it. Pretty harmless outlaws, I reckon.” He picked up the menu. “Most of them. Anyway, what are you going to eat for dessert?”

“Oh, never mind that! I want to hear about the Bad Bunch – and the ones who weren’t pretty harmless!”

“Well, you’re not going to – or you’ll wind up with the idea that I’m some sort of crook myself. And I’m not.”

“No, you’re not,” said Pip, dutifully consulting her menu. “You’re a very respectable cowboy, visiting England, wearing silver and diamond cuff-links and studs, and dining in a swish restaurant, as visiting cowboys always do.” She stole a glance at him over the top of the menu. “I’m real cheeky, aren’t I? And it’s none of my business, is it? All right, I’ll keep quiet.”

“I doubt it,” said Mr Franklin drily. “I’d just like you to understand that this dinner is not going to be paid for out of the loot from the … the Cactus Gulch stage-coach. You’re eating the result of a lot of hard, dirty, very ordinary digging in the earth, and an old man’s crazy hunch, and a great deal of luck. Now, what –”

“Ooh!” Her eyes were wide. “You mean you struck it rich!”

“Crepes Suzette,” read Mr Franklin. “Bombe Caligula, whatever that is; Poire Belle Hélène; Macedoine à la duchesse –”

“Mean thing! I just wondered … right-ho, then, I’ll have trifle and a double helping of whipped cream. But you might tell a fellow …”

But Mr Franklin felt he had said enough for one evening, and when Pip had worked her way through a mountainous trifle, and coffee was served, their talk returned to normal channels – in other words, the theatre, and the possibility that she might play Dandini in the forthcoming Gaiety pantomime, but then she might find herself replaced at the Folies, and it was a good billet, with excellent prospects, but Dandini would pay at least an extra pound a week … Mr Franklin smoked a cigar, and nodded attentively, and presently, when the waiter presented the bill, Pip rose and stretched and sauntered in behind the crimson curtain which screened off a small alcove at the back of the supper-room. Mr Franklin paid, and added a handsome tip, and smoked for a few moments more before he began to wonder idly what she was doing. At that moment there came a soft whistle from behind the curtain; he rose, slightly startled, and going across, pulled the curtain aside. There he stopped, stock-still.

The third principal of the Folies Satire had piled her clothing neatly on a chair, all except her stockings, and was reclining on a large couch which filled most of the alcove, observing herself with approval in a large overhead mirror, and humming softly. She glanced at Mr Franklin, smiled brightly, and asked:

“Did you bolt the door?”

“My God,” said Mr Franklin, and then paused. He turned away, put his cigar in an ash-tray, and returned to the alcove, looking down at her.

“Pip,” he said, “you don’t have to, you know.”

Pip stopped in the act of smoothing her stockings. “Course I don’t,” she said, and winked at him. “But I’d rather. Here,” and she patted the couch beside her, “come and sit down. You make me feel all girlish, standing there.”

Mr Franklin frowned. Then, in response to her outstretched hand, he came to the couch and sat down, looking at her steadily.

“I don’t,” he began, and paused before adding: “I just brought you out to supper, Pip.”

“No, you didn’t,” said Pip. “I brought you. And it wasn’t just for supper, Mr American.” She slipped her arms round his neck and pulled his face down to hers, parting her lips and flickering her tongue at him. “You don’t get off that lightly.” She kissed him, slowly at first, then very deeply and lingeringly before drawing her lips away. “Are you looking at my damned squint again?”

A rather dazed Mr Franklin shook his head. “Good,” murmured Pip, “now you’d really better go and bolt the door, so we won’t have any distractions. I want to enjoy myself.”

Which she did, so far as Mr Franklin could judge, for the next twenty minutes, at the end of which time she lay very still, panting moistly into the pillow until she had recovered her breath, when she observed that that was better than working, or standing in the rain.

“Aren’t you glad you bought that bunch of flowers, then?” she added, and Mr Franklin admitted, huskily, that it had been a most fortunate chance. She nodded happily, running her fingers idly up and down his naked back while she studied her reflection overhead.

“I’m losing weight … I think. Here, any more of that champagne left? Oh, good, I need it, I can tell you! Talk about the Wild Bunch – you’re a bit wild yourself, aren’t you, though? Hey – you’re not getting dressed! The idea!”

In fact, it was after two o’clock in the morning before Pip sighed regretfully that she supposed they had better call it a night, because Renzo would be wanting to get to bed, and a relieved but contented Mr Franklin agreed. He was, to tell the truth, rather shaken, and not a little puzzled by the events of the evening, as appeared when they were preparing to leave the supper-room, and Pip was making final, invisible adjustments to a coiffure which had miraculously remained undisturbed through all the hectic activity in the alcove. Mr Franklin in the background, was contemplating his hat and gloves thoughtfully; Pip observed him in her hand-mirror.

“Don’t reach for your note-case, or I might get offended,” she said and as his head came up she turned, smiling, and shook her head at him. “You were going to, weren’t you?”

Mr Franklin cleared his throat. “I wasn’t certain.”

“You don’t give money to actresses,” said Pip, gravely, and kissed him on the nose, giggling at his perplexity. “Don’t you understand, darling? – I do it ’cos I like doing it. With the right one. Girls enjoy it, too, you know, spite of what you hear. You didn’t stand a chance, from the minute I saw you outside the stage door, you poor silly! No, you’re not, either – you’re a nice American, and it’s been a beautiful evening, and I just wish it could have gone on and on.”

“So do I,” said Mr Franklin. “Perhaps another –”

“Careful,” said Pip. “It might get to be a habit.” She frowned, and dropped her voice: “You don’t have to, you know,” and they both laughed. Then she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him again, stretching up on tip-toe before subsiding breathlessly. “That’s enough of that – Renzo’s got to get to bed sometime.”

They went down to the street through the restaurant, where the lights had been turned down, and Pip called “‘Night, Renzo” to the darkened dining-room. Mr Franklin hailed a growler, and they clopped slowly down to Chelsea, where Pip had a room. “Next rise I get, it’ll be Belgravia, and chance it,” she confided. “Mind you, many more dinners like tonight, and I’ll get so tubby I’ll be bloody lucky if I can afford Poplar.”

Mr Franklin thought for a moment, and asked: “Aren’t there lots of dinners like tonight’s?” She turned to look at him in the dimness of the cab, and he heard her chuckle.

“Lots of dinners,” she said. “All the time. But not many like tonight. So you needn’t be jealous.”

He handed her out on the corner. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he was beginning. “I mean, I wish I could express my appreciation …”

“Oh, you know,” she shrugged. “Diamond bracelet to the stage door – couple of emerald earrings. Any little trinket your lordship happens to have lying around spare.” She giggled again and pecked his cheek. “Don’t be so soft. Tell you what – pay your money at the box-office some night and watch my solo. Then you’ll have done your bit.” Her gloved hand touched his cheek. “’Night, Mr American.”

Her heels clicked on the pavement, the white figure faded into the gloom, humming happily:

Boiled beef an’ carrots,

Boiled beef an’ carrots!

That’s the stuff for your derby kell …

Mr Franklin sighed, climbed into the growler, and was driven back to the Waldorf.

5

He left London on the following morning. A four-wheeler was engaged to remove from the hotel the two handsome Eureka trunks containing the clothing purchased the previous day, as well as the battered old case with which Mr Franklin had arrived, and his valise; these were despatched to St Pancras, while the gentleman himself took a cab by way of Bond Street.

Here, at the exclusive jewellers which he had patronized the previous day, Mr Franklin stated his requirements; the manager, who had seen him coming, smoothly set aside the assistant dealing with him – he personally would see to it that nothing too inexpensive was laid before a customer who paid cash for pearl and platinum watch-chains.

“A bracelet, perhaps, sir. For the wrist?”

“I had thought a necklace,” ventured Mr Franklin. “For the … chest. That is – the neck, of course.”

“Of course, sir. Diamond, emerald – ruby perhaps. May I ask, sir, if the recipient is dark or fair?”

“Oh, fair. Very fair – quite blonde.”

“The sapphires, perhaps. It is a matter of personal taste. Diamonds, of course –” the manager smiled “ – complexion is immaterial.”

“How about pearls? You know, a strand – a substantial strand. These collars one sees …”

The manager was too well-trained ever to lick his lips, but his smile became a positive beam.

“The perfect compromise, sir. Pearls – with a diamond cluster and clasp.” He snapped his fingers, and presently Mr Franklin found himself blinking at a triple collar of magnificent pearls, gripped in their centre with a heart-shaped design of twinkling stones; he visualized it round Pip’s neck, beneath the beautiful dimpled chin, imagining her squeals of delight when she tried it on.

“That’ll do,” he said without hesitation, “I’ll take it,” and two fashionable ladies examining rings at a nearby counter paused in stricken silence at the sight of the lean, brown-faced man weighing the brilliant trinket before dropping it on its velvet cushion. Speculative whispers were exchanged, a lorgnette was raised, and Mr Franklin was carefully examined, while he produced his cigarette case, selected a cigarette, remembered where he was, and returned it to its place. The manager made amiably deprecating noises, and asked:

“I trust the case gives satisfaction, sir?”

“What – oh, yes.” Mr Franklin restored it to his pocket. “Haven’t lost a cigarette yet.”

In this atmosphere of good will the pearl necklace was bestowed in its velvet case, wrapped, and tied, and the manager inquired if the account should be forwarded to Mr Franklin’s address; the attentive ladies, busily examining their rings again, were disappointed when he replied: “No, I’ll pay now.”

The manager bowed, a slip of paper was presented, and Mr Franklin gripped the counter firmly and coughed, once. He should, he realized, have inquired about prices first – but his hesitation was only momentary. He could not recall an evening in his life that he had enjoyed so much, or any single human being whom he had liked so well; he had only to think of Pip’s fresh young face smiling at him across the table to find himself smiling, too, and producing his notecase. It occurred to him, too, that visible signs of affluence probably assisted a stage career – and if that career faltered, well, expensive jewellery was realizable.

His note-case required reinforcement from his money-belt – a sight which slightly embarrassed even the manager, and brought the lorgnette into play again. “Ah,” murmured one lady, “Australian, undoubtedly,” and on being asked by her companion how she knew, replied: “His accent, of course.” They watched intently while Mr Franklin, having paid, wrote out a plain card; he simply addressed it: “Miss Priscilla Delys, Folies Satire”, without enclosure, and asked the manager to see it delivered to the appropriate theatre – no, he told that astonished gentleman, he didn’t know which one it was.

None of which escaped the ladies, who concluded that Mr Franklin was either an unusually forgetful individual intent on marriage, or a foreign maniac – probably both; as he swung out of the shop their eyes followed him with some wonder and genteel regret.

He caught the eleven o’clock train to Ely via Cambridge with barely a minute to spare, and spent two and a half hours alternately glancing at the paper and out of the carriage windows at the passing fenland; it was not a cheering prospect, but by the time Ely was reached, and he had changed to the Norwich line, Mr Franklin was in, for him, a positively animated state – from sitting quietly enough, he now leaned forward, hands on knees, to stare out of the window; he shifted position at least three times during the many local halts, and by the time Lakenheath was reached he was actually drumming his fingers on the arm-rest. Beyond Brandon he let down the window; by Thetford he was leaning out the better to see ahead, and at the next stop, where he alighted, he positively hurried along the platform and in his excitement bestowed a shilling instead of the usual threepence on the porter who unloaded his baggage.

But if Mr Franklin was now disposed to haste, he soon discovered that Norfolk was not. The station was a tiny one, and it took half an hour to summon an ancient gig, driven by an urchin of perhaps nine years, and drawn by a horse possibly twice as old. Mr Franklin gave the lad his destination and resigned himself to patience as they creaked off at a slow walk.

Fortunately it was a glorious autumn afternoon, and their way ran through broad meadows and occasional woodland, the brown and yellow tints mellow in the sunlight. Mr Franklin drank it in with a silent eagerness, as though he would have imprinted every leaf and hedge and thicket on his mind; if he did not display visible impatience, he was certainly breathing rather more quickly than usual, and at each bend in the road he would gaze eagerly ahead. At last, after two hours, they topped a gentle rise, and beyond it a village nestled among woods in the hazy afternoon; a scatter of cottages round a little triangular green; a dusty street winding in front of a small inn; a pond, mud-fringed, a pump and a horse-trough; on the farther side, a lych-gate and the square tower of a Norman church rising among elms and yews.

“Cassel Lancin’,” said the urchin stolidly, and Mr Franklin took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Castle Lancing,” he repeated. “Well, now.” He smiled and shook his head. “Think of that. All right, Jehu, let’s go.”

They creaked up the main street, past the mean cottages where one or two poorly-dressed women started at them from the low doorways, and a few children played in the dust of the unpaved street; there seemed to be no one else about, except for a working-man on a bench outside the Apple Tree, who favoured them with a blank stare. Across the green was a small shop with bottle-glass windows and the name “A. Laker” above the door; a dog lay drowsing in the threshold.

They halted outside the inn, and Mr Franklin asked if the man could direct him to Lancing Manor. The man stared in silence for a moment, and then, in a broad drawl which Mr Franklin found surprisingly easy to understand, said:

“’Arf a mile down the road.” His eyes roved over Mr Franklin and the bags in the gig, and he added: “Ain’t nobody ’ome.”

Mr Franklin thanked him, and they drove on, through the village and along a winding way between high hedges, until they came to a pair of lichened stone gate-posts under the trees, and two large rusty gates chained and padlocked. Mr Franklin got down, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after some exertion, unlocked the gates and pushed them open. The narrow drive was high with weeds and rank grass, so he ordered the boy to help him down with his baggage in the gateway; he would not need the gig any longer, he said, and presented the urchin with half a crown.

The boy considered the coin, and then looked at Mr Franklin, standing beside the trunks and valise, and at the tree-shaded pathway. He addressed his passenger for the second time in two hours.

“Ain’t nobody ’ome,” he said, echoing the labourer, and Mr Franklin smiled.

“There is now,” he said, and with a nod to the staring boy, walked up the drive. He was aware that his heart was beating as he pushed his feet through the rustling grass, and that he was walking unduly quickly; then he rounded a bend under the trees, and stopped suddenly as a house came into view. For a full minute he stood looking at it. Then:

“I must have been out of my mind,” he said aloud. Then he took off his hat and looked around him. Finally he said: “No, I wasn’t, either,” and walked towards the house.

Mr Franklin had no romantic notions of what a manor ought to look like, so where another might have expected mullioned windows, crenellations, and half-timbering, he accepted without a second thought the solid, unpretentious Georgian structure which could hardly have been over a hundred and fifty years old. It was, in fact, rather a fine house, built on an Elizabethan site, its shuttered windows precisely spaced on either side of a massive, pillared porch. The broad gravel sweep before it was sadly overgrown, and the lawn to his right was a tangle of rank grass and fox-gloves, but even he could see that the structure was sound and the roof good, and the beeches and chestnuts which surrounded it on three sides were nothing short of magnificent. “Beautifully matured grounds of nearly two acres”, the estate agent had said; sure enough, thought Mr Franklin, it’s mature.

There was a little fountain in the middle of the gravel sweep, lichened and full of leaves, and two heavy stone seats, one on either side of the porch. Mr Franklin paused with his back to the front door, surveying the tangle of sweep, lawn and drive and the trees which screened him from the road; the air was full of the still hum of the late autumn afternoon, broken only by the occasional murmur of pigeons behind the house. His hand was shaking as he fumbled the key into the big lock.