The door opened and Elizabeth entered. She carried a tray in her hand on which were a bottle of stout and a gla.s.s.

'I thort so,' she said, setting down the tray and looking at Marion's drooping form. 'Ah, these men--'ounds, I call 'em. I came in to 'ave a word with Miss Marryun and cheer 'er up, like. I bin through it myself, so I knows.'

She approached Marion and laid a damp red hand on her shoulder. 'I bin lookin' at the cards for you, miss, an' I see a loverly future,' she began in a coaxing voice. 'I see a tall dark man crossin' water for you, with a present in 'is right 'and.'

Marion, who was not without a sense of humour, smiled rather wanly.

Encouraged, Elizabeth continued: 'Wot's the use o' spoilin' your pretty eyes cryin' for the moon--by which I mean Mr. 'Arbinger--when 'e isn't your Fate? Why, bless you, I was once goin' to marry a plumber's mate, and jest a week afore the weddin 'e went orf with some one else an'

owin' me arf-a-crown, too. I was cut up at the time, but I know now 'e wasn't my Fate, 'avin been told since that I'm goin' to marry a man wot'll work with 'is brain. So cheer up, Miss Marryun, and come an'

'ave this nice glarss o' stout I've brought in for you.' She unscrewed the bottle as she spoke. 'I always find that when things are at their worst, an' you're feelin' real pipped like, a glarss o' stout acts like magic. Yes, it's the right stuff, is stout.'

The situation was distinctly ludicrous. Yet neither Marion nor I laughed. We watched Elizabeth solemnly pouring out the stout, after which she handed it to Marion, who, though she 'never touches' anything alcoholic as a rule, took it and drank it off 'like a lamb,' as Elizabeth expressed it.

There was a pause. Then the corners of Marion's mouth ceased to droop.

She smiled. I smiled. Elizabeth smiled.

There was another pause. 'I think, Elizabeth,' I remarked, 'I'll have a gla.s.s--just a small gla.s.s--of stout myself.'

'You do right, 'm. I'll fetch you a gla.s.s.'

'And Elizabeth, if you'd care to have some----'

'Thank you very much 'm, I _did_ take the liberty of 'avin' a taste already, but a little drop more wouldn't do me any 'arm, as the sayin'

is.'

She went out. Marion set down her gla.s.s and put away her pocket-handkerchief. 'How silly of me to worry about Mr. Harbinger,'

she said. 'After all, I suppose Fate never intended us for each other.'

I recognized in a flash that Elizabeth had succeeded where I had failed, and I was conscious of a certain admiration for her methods.

Yet at that moment no hint of subsequent events filtered into my mind; I did not suspect--even dimly--the possibilities of Elizabeth.

CHAPTER VI

Neither Elizabeth or Marion like William. Of the two, Elizabeth is more tolerant towards him, merely commenting that 'she couldn't abide his ways.' Marion, however, views him with an antipathy entirely foreign to one of her gentle nature. I think, in the light of what happened later, if she had only shown a little more forbearance towards him it might have simplified matters.

William is our friend. He drops in to see us when he likes, sits with his feet on our mantelpiece, strews tobacco ash on the carpet, and always tells me which of my hats are the most unbecoming, so you can imagine what a close friend he is. Though he does not stick any closer than a brother, he is equally as frank. He likes Henry and tolerates me. For the rest of the women in the world he has a strong objection.

Not that he is a misogynist; but he always holds that a woman interferes with a man's life. I often think that William would be all the better for a little judicious feminine interference. He has, however, now got beyond the stage of redemption.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Our Friend William.]

Home means nothing more to William than a comfortable ledge below the mantelpiece where he can put his feet, a carpet which will not spoil with tobacco ash, and a few tables and chairs scattered about just to hold a good supply of old magazines and newspapers handy for lighting his pipe. He wears those s.h.a.ggy, unbrushed-looking clothes which all good women abhor. Worst of all, he is constantly getting imbued with new and fantastic ideas which cause him to live in a (quite unnecessary) ferment of enthusiasm.

A good wife, now, would nip these ideas in the bud and make existence infinitely more restful to him. Henry and he once got up a notion of inventing a new drink which was to make them both everlastingly famous and superlatively rich. They talked about it for hours and had even got to designing the labels and bottles when I stepped in and told Henry not to be a silly a.s.s, that he was making a fool of himself, and a few other sensible wifely things like that which finally brought him to reason. William, however, having no one to bring him to reason, goes on day by day becoming more of a lunatic. I could never understand why there is such a close bond between him and Henry, unless it is because they enjoy arguing together. Henry, being a Scotsman, likes argument; and William, being an Irishman, likes hearing his own voice. Thus they seldom got bored with each other.

The time we did get bored with William was when he turned inventor. It came rather as a surprise to us; and when he began to be abstracted, profoundly meditative, almost sullen, with an apparent desire to be alone, we thought at first that it was the onset of hydrophobia. In fact, we looked it up on the back of the dog-licence to make sure.

William's remarks next became irrelevant. For example, after being wrapped in silence for over half an hour, he suddenly flung out the question, 'How many people do you know who possess a trousers-press?

Faced with the problem, I confessed I could not connect a single acquaintance with a trousers-press. 'Henry hasn't got one,' I admitted.

'Neither have I,' said William. (I didn't doubt that for an instant.) He went on to remark that he knew many men in many walks of life, and only two of them owned a trousers-press, and they shared it between them. Yet the inventor of this apparently negligible article had made a small fortune out of the idea.

'If,' concluded William, 'you can make a small fortune out of a thing that you can dispense with, how much more can you make out of something that you can't do without?'

This sentence I give as William composed it, and from its construction you will understand the state of his mind, for he was as fastidious regarding style as Henry himself. Of course there was some excuse for him. You see, when you're an inventor you can't be anything else. It takes all your time. Judging by William's procedure you must sit up experimenting all night long; you lie down in your clothes and s.n.a.t.c.h a little sleep at odd moments. When you walk abroad you stride along muttering, waving your arms and b.u.mping into people; you forget to eat; your friends fall away from you. Let me advise parents who are thinking of a career for their sons never to make inventors of them.

It's a dog's life. Far better to put them to something with regular hours, say from 10.30 to 4 o'clock, which leaves them with the evenings free.

William wouldn't divulge what his invention was, because, he said, he was afraid of the idea getting about before he took out the patent. He merely told us it was a device which no man living could do without.

But he went so far as to show us the inner workings of his discovery (hereinafter referred to as It), which, not knowing what they were for, rather mystified us. I know there was a small suction valve which involved the use of water, because William demonstrated to us one Sunday afternoon in the drawing-room. He said afterwards that the unexpected deluge that broke over the politely interested faces gathered round him was merely due to a leakage in the valve, and he set to work to repair it at once.

At that time William always carried on his person a strange a.s.sortment of screws, metal discs, springs, bits of rubber and the like. He pulled them out in showers when he took out his handkerchief; they dripped from him when he stood up. I think he kept them about him for inspiration.

William completed It in a frenzy of enthusiasm. He said that nothing now stood between him and a vast fortune, and in a mood of reckless generosity he promised us all shares, which certainly tended to deepen our interest in the invention. Then he betook himself to the Patent Office.

I saw him the following day, and it occurred to me at once that all was not well with William. For one thing he did not burst in unannounced with hair dishevelled, which seems to be the usual way for an inventor to come into a room; he entered slowly and sat down heavily.

'Is anything wrong with the invention?' I asked.

He pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. A metal disc fell out and rolled unheeded across the floor.

'Nothing is wrong with it,' he answered dully.

'You don't mean that some one else has thought of It before you?'

'Most people seem to have thought of It.' He paused and absently plucked off a stray piece of rubber from his coat sleeve. 'It seems to have originated in America in 1880. Then a large colony of German inventors applied for the patent; a body of Russians were imbued with the idea; several Scandinavians had variations of it. It even seems to have filtered into the brain of certain West African tribes; and in 1918 a Czecho-Slovak----' He paused, overcome with emotion.

'But if It is a thing man can't do without, why haven't we heard of it?' I demanded.

'Men,' replied William sadly, seem determined to do without It. They don't know what is good for them.'

Suddenly he raised his head with the light of enthusiasm in his eyes.

'By the way, I was talking to a chap at the Patent Office who told me that there's an enormous boom in inventing in this country just now.

Henry ought to get a good article out of it.'

As a matter of fact it was the only thing that ever was got out of the invention.

William, being an Irishman, didn't let failure depress him in the least. We were all glad to see him rational again--as rational as could be expected from him, I mean. As Elizabeth was wont to express it, ''E aint screwed up like other folk, so what can you expect.' But as I have said, she did not approve of William. It was not so much that she took exception to the trail of tobacco ash that followed in his wake, or the unusual litter he created during his inventive period.

She resented the fact that he was unmarried, having, at all times, a strong objection to celibacy.

'When a man gets to the age o' that there Mr. Roarings' (William's surname is Rawlings, so she didn't get so far out for her)--'an' isn't married 'e's cheatin' some pore girl out of 'er rights, I ses,' she declared. 'Selfishness! Spendin' all 'is money on 'isself. W'y isn't 'e married?'

'I don't know, Elizabeth,' I replied, 'but if you like, I'll ask him.'

'That'll do no good. 'E orter be thrown together with the right kind o' young lady and kept up to the scratch. That's wot orter be done.

I'll look up the cards for 'im and see wot 'is Signs is. I'd like to see 'im married and settled down.'