Jilted (Pain)

by Barry Pain

JILTED

By BARRY PAIN.

ANDREW McKIDDLE was no genius, but he was a worker. He got into Lorriman's at the age of eighteen, meant to stop there, and did. Some thought him mean, but then he had three elderly relatives whom he felt he might at some future time be called upon to help to support. The clan feeling was strong in McKiddle.

The elderly relatives all died, and all left a little money to Andrew. The family was reticent in family matters, and preferred to seem poorer than it really was. Andrew was advanced by Lorriman's. He felt justified in moving from his lodgings to a small flat in a block near the British Museum. His chief friend, Herbert Johnson, managing clerk to Murdle and Biston, solicitors, occupied a flat in the same building.

When he had been with Lorriman's for a quarter of a century, Andrew was made a departmental manager. Initiative was not his strong suit. But he now knew Lorriman's policy and methods all through from A to Z, could not make a mistake, and was inaccessible to any kind of temptation. Lorriman's thought rightly that this was worth something.

Then Andrew McKiddle went mad. He lost—out of business hours—his sense of the value of money. He bought clothes that he did not absolutely need, he took dancing lessons, he had his nails manicured, and—it all led up to that—he got engaged to Anna Ware, who was beautiful, twenty-five, and private secretary to an eminent Egyptologist. He had met her only three times, and he knew next to nothing about her.

Herbert Johnson shook his head over the engagement. He despaired. He knew nothing whatever of Anna Ware, and had never met her at all. But he had formed a definite opinion of her, and only a delicacy of feeling prevented him from imparting it to his friend Andrew. Andrew's Aunt Bertha and also her five daughters up at Cricklewood strongly disapproved. There was an Uncle Samuel who was the husband of Aunt Bertha, but he did not count, and had long since ceased to expect it.

But opposition was useless. How can cold reason prevail against the impetuosity and hot blood of forty-three? For twenty-five years Andrew McKiddle had been merely a mechanical device used by Lorriman's in their business. He had discovered now that he was alive. Who could stop him?

Only one person. But she did it.

It was just three weeks after the engagement that in the evening McKiddle met his friend Johnson at the little restaurant which they both frequented. McKiddle looked depressed.

"I may as well tell you, Johnson—for everybody will know it to-morrow—my engagement with Miss Ware is at an end."

"Good! Very good! And why did she chuck you?"

"She hasn't chucked me. Why should she? What I mean to say is that I've just written the letter to her in which I myself put an end to the engagement."

"Ah!" said Johnson judicially. "Posted the letter yet?"

"Not yet. I was meaning to take a copy of it first. Why, there couldn't be anything wrong with it, could there? "

"There could be, and probably would be. But I can't advise where I don't know the facts."

"Well, I wish you would advise me. You can have the whole story. Ask me anything you like."

"Then why are you giving the girl up?"

"A whole lot of things. She's probably got a temper. She was in a bad temper when she accepted me—said so herself. I don't like her friends—at any rate, I don't like the only one I've seen. It's that Eve Langley. Miss Ware took me to her studio the Sunday afterwards. Shingled hair, cigarettes, and slang—that's Miss Langley. Sprawls about on cushions. Dark blue knickers, and doesn't seem to care who knows it. She may be as clever as they say in her profession, but she's not my style at all. I hinted something of the kind to Miss Ware afterwards, putting it as nicely as possible, and she got quite short about it—said I could always go out when Eve happened to be there. And that same week—well, when you send two long letters to your feearnsy you expect something more than one postcard in reply, don't you? However, on the Saturday that week I took her to tea with my Aunt Bertha and my cousins at Cricklewood. It was very good of them to ask her, seeing they were opposed to the marriage, and never even expected to like her. It was a nice tea, too—nothing ostentatious, but you could see trouble had been taken. And after tea my cousin Hilda sang us some of those dainty little French sharnsorns. And Miss Ware? I'll be absolutely just, Johnson. She was polite—she's always the lady—but nothing more. There was no special effort—no enthusiasm—no attempt to work in a few graceful compliments here and there. And on the way back all she said was that Uncle Samuel seemed a nice little worm. This week it was even worse. I took her out, and I did the thing really well. We started with dinner in Soho, and I chose the more expensive of the two dinners provided. At least half of it she never touched. I ordered a small bottle of Sparkling Moselle, and she never touched that, either."

"I should have done the same in her place," said Johnson. "But continue."

"Then we went on to the theatre. I'd got dress circle seats. It's true they were complimentary, and the piece was coming off in another three days, but she wasn't to know that. After the first act she said she didn't blame me, because of course I couldn't have known. On the contrary, it was very kind of me. After the second act she. said: 'Need we bore ourselves stiff with any more of this?' So there it was. I took her out, of course—I had no choice. Else when I can have three things it annoys me to take only two of them. She insisted on travelling back on the top of a 'bus, and stood right under the electric light when she was saying 'Good night.' That finished it."

"Have you got anything else against her?"

"Well, she's not responsive. She doesn't let herself go. It's just as if she wasn't trying."

"You mean that you've not had the—er—ordinary privileges of an engaged man?"

"Can't say whether I've had them or not. I've never been given the chance to know. The only time I ever got her into a taxi, she made the man open the cab before she got in."

"Well," said Johnson, "it looks as if you ought to be glad to be quit of her. But you seemed very miserable when you came in. Why was that?"

"Well, Johnson, we don't understand women. They're wonderfully secretive creatures. With them some of the very strongest passions are so deeply veiled that nobody would suspect they were there. I'm not saying that I inspired such a passion. I may have done or I may not. She certainly accepted me at very short notice. Suppose that all this were, as you might say, camouflage. Suppose, when she gets my letter to-morrow morning, in a fit of madness she takes her life. Then I ask you, where am I? I should have to be at the inquest. The coroner might say anything, and it wouldn't do me any good at Lorriman's, either."

"I shouldn't worry about that, if I were you," said Johnson, "These torrential passions aren't much worn nowadays. In any case, I doubt if any girl of that age has ever managed to work it up for a man of fifty like yourself."

"Forty-three," said McKiddle indignantly.

"Sorry. You look fifty. No, I consider you to be in very great danger, McKiddle. If you'd already posted that letter, I doubt if I could have done anything for you."

"What danger?" asked McKiddle.

"If you'd had all my years of experience in a solicitor's office, with practically all the business of the office going through your hands, you wouldn't need to ask. You're the prey of a designing woman. That Miss Ware is a harpy. The thing's obvious. Leaving out personal appearance and a few other things, you're quite a catch for a girl like that. Did you tell her what income you'd got?"

"I didn't state it exactly. I said that I thought we could depend on six hundred a year, or a little more."

"Quite so. As I happen to know, and as Miss Ware's solicitors will soon discover when she presses her action for breach of promise, you've got nine hundred a year from salary and investments. She never meant to marry you. She's been doing her utmost to make you turn her down in order that she might bring this action. Those two long letters of yours will be read out in court. You'll get a fairly hot time of it when you're cross-examined by the counsel for the plaintiff. You will have to explain why you told the poor girl lies about your income."

"Do you really mean all this?"

"Shouldn't say it if I didn't."

"I couldn't possibly have an action of that kind. Lorriman's wouldn't like it at all. Would you mind having a look at that letter, Johnson, and seeing what you can suggest? I've always maintained that you knew more about the law than most solicitors."

"Anyhow, I don't cost so much. But I'll come round and look at the letter. Waiter, our bills! Separate."

And presently Johnson sat by the fire in McKiddle's flat. He was provided with whisky and soda, an Almosta cigar, and the draft of the letter which would have been fatal if it had been posted. He looked through the letter, pressed his thin lips together, and said: "There's only one thing to do with that." He tore it in half and put it on the fire.

"Then you think it won't do?" said McKiddle.

"How did you guess it? Of course it won't do. If the case ever came on, that letter would admit nearly everything which you would want to deny on oath . You must not break off the engagement. You may say that she has lost all attraction for you, and that you no longer have the slightest affection for her. You may say that the more you see of her character, the less you like it. You may even imply that her personal appearance is not what it was. But you must not break off the engagement. On the contrary, you must say that you recognise your legal obligations, and will carry out the contract if she chooses to enforce it. Look here, I'll dictate it all to you."

He did, and the letter was sent.

•••••

The letter reached Anna Ware on a sunny morning when she was feeling particularly fit and happy after a good night. She read it with great joy while she was dressing. She found time to write a brief reply to it before she went on to her secretarial duties with the Egyptologist. The reply was as follows:

"Dear Andrew—Of course we'll chuck it. You're quite right, But who on earth did you get to write that letter for you? Not a bit like you, but a perfect scream, all the same. And of course we'll be friends when we meet at the dancing class. Sincerely yours."

The Egyptologist tried in vain to work that morning. He had to make a speech at a banquet in the evening, and that speech weighed very heavily on his mind. Shortly after twelve he told Miss Ware that she could go.

At the bottom of Bury Street she encountered Eve Langley.

"Looking pretty joyous," said Eve. "Anything particular happened?"

"Yes. My dear old professor doesn't want me, and I've got all the rest of the day to myself."

"Don't amount to much," said Eve.

"But that's not all. I've kept the best to the last. I'm jilted. I'm never, never, never going to be Mrs. Andrew McKiddle."

Eve held out both hands to her. "My dear, I do congratulate you."

So, to celebrate the occasion, they decided to lunch in the West End, and to go on afterwards to the wickedest play of which there might happen to be a matinée performance that day.

It was after lunch, when Eve had lit her cigarette, that she said: "I can understand why you wanted to break it off. What I never shall understand is how you came to accept him."

"I don't suppose I shall, either," said Anna. "I would have got engaged to the postman or the dustman that night if they'd asked me, and felt grateful. Then of course I'd only seen him by artificial light, and hadn't noticed how thin his hair was on the top, though, of course, that ought not to weigh with one."

"The thinner the hair, the less it would weigh," said Eve.

"I'd had a perfectly awful day," said Anna. "I'd a great row with Mrs. Bennish in the morning because I'd brought in my own tin bath, and she said it made work. And I said she couldn't expect me to use the fixed bath as long as she washed her dog in it. That day my Professor was clean off his head."

"I thought you liked him."

"Like him? I adore him. But there are days when he goes cranky Then he remembers a whole lot of things which have never happened, and makes it a grievance because you don't remember them, too. He accused me of having lost his income tax return, and I'd never had it. I can't lose papers. It's not in me. Next day he found he'd left it in his dressing-room and never even taken it out of the envelope. Once he starts, there's no stopping him. He began to find a lot more faults, all unjust, and I began to cry, and he said I was a fool, and had better go out to lunch. I went out to lunch, and abused the waiter for adding up my bill wrong, and he'd added it up quite right. I went back to work, and the old man kept me two hours overtime without even apologising. So I got no time for dinner, and was half an hour late for the dancing. And when that little bounder came along, being as nice as ever he could and praising me up to the skies, and calling me the queen of the stars—oh, I don't know how it happened, but it did. And I'm glad it's all over. You chuck that cigarette, Eve. We've got to make a dash for the theatre."