"Who and what is Mr. Brope?" demanded the aunt of Clovis suddenly.
Mrs. Riversedge, who had been snipping off the heads of defunct
roses, and thinking of nothing in particular, sprang hurriedly to
mental attention. She was one of those old-fashioned hostesses
who consider that one ought to know something about one's guests,
and that the something ought to be to their credit.
"I believe he comes from Leighton Buzzard," she observed by way of
preliminary explanation.
"In these days of rapid and convenient travel," said Clovis, who
was dispersing a colony of green-fly with visitations of cigarette
smoke, "to come from Leighton Buzzard does not necessarily denote
any great strength of character. It might only mean mere
restlessness. Now if he had left it under a cloud, or as a
protest against the incurable and heartless frivolity of its
inhabitants, that would tell us something about the man and his
mission in life."
"What does he do?" pursued Mrs. Troyle magisterially.
"He edits the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY," said her hostess, "and he's
enormously learned about memorial brasses and transepts and the
influence of Byzantine worship on modern liturgy, and all those
sort of things. Perhaps he is just a little bit heavy and
immersed in one range of subjects, but it takes all sorts to make
a good house-party, you know. You don't find him TOO dull, do
you?"
"Dullness I could overlook," said the aunt of Clovis; "what I
cannot forgive is his making love to my maid."
"My dear Mrs. Troyle," gasped the hostess, "what an extraordinary
idea! I assure you Mr. Brope would not dream of doing such a
thing."
"His dreams are a matter of indifference to me; for all I care his
slumbers may be one long indiscretion of unsuitable erotic
advances, in which the entire servants' hall may be involved. But
in his waking hours he shall not make love to my maid. It's no
use arguing about it, I'm firm on the point."
"But you must be mistaken," persisted Mrs. Riversedge; "Mr. Brope
would be the last person to do such a thing."
"He is the first person to do such a thing, as far as my
information goes, and if I have any voice in the matter he
certainly shall be the last. Of course, I am not referring to
respectably-intentioned lovers."
"I simply cannot think that a man who writes so charmingly and
informingly about transepts and Byzantine influences would behave
in such an unprincipled manner," said Mrs. Riversedge; "what
evidence have you that he's doing anything of the sort? I don't
want to doubt your word, of course, but we mustn't he too ready to
condemn him unheard, must we?"
"Whether we condemn him or not, he has certainly not been unheard.
He has the room next to my dressing-room, and on two occasions,
when I dare say he thought I was absent, I have plainly heard him
announcing through the wall, 'I love you, Florrie.' Those
partition walls upstairs are very thin; one can almost hear a
watch ticking in the next room."
"Is your maid called Florence?"
"Her name is Florinda."
"What an extraordinary name to give a maid!"
"I did not give it to her; she arrived in my service already
christened."
"What I mean is," said Mrs. Riversedge, "that when I get maids
with unsuitable names I call them Jane; they soon get used to it."
"An excellent plan," said the aunt of Clovis coldly;
"unfortunately I have got used to being called Jane myself. It
happens to be my name."
She cut short Mrs. Riversedge's flood of apologies by abruptly
remarking:
"The question is not whether I'm to call my maid Florinda, but
whether Mr. Brope is to be permitted to call her Florrie. I am
strongly of opinion than he shall not."
"He may have been repeating the words of some song," said Mrs.
Riversedge hopefully; "there are lots of those sorts of silly
refrains with girls' names," she continued, turning to Clovis as a
possible authority on the subject. "'You mustn't call me Mary--'"
"I shouldn't think of doing so," Clovis assured her; "in the first
place, I've always understood that your name was Henrietta; and
then I hardly know you well enough to take such a liberty."
"I mean there's a SONG with that refrain," hurriedly explained
Mrs. Riversedge, "and there's 'Rhoda, Rhoda kept a pagoda,' and
'Maisie is a daisy,' and heaps of others. Certainly it doesn't
sound like Mr. Brope to be singing such songs, but I think we
ought to give him the benefit of the doubt."
"I had already done so," said Mrs. Troyle, "until further evidence
came my way."
She shut her lips with the resolute finality of one who enjoys the
blessed certainty of being implored to open them again.
"Further evidence!" exclaimed her hostess; "do tell me!"
"As I was coming upstairs after breakfast Mr. Brope was just
passing my room. In the most natural way in the world a piece of
paper dropped out of a packet that he held in his hand and
fluttered to the ground just at my door. I was going to call out
to him 'You've dropped something,' and then for some reason I held
back and didn't show myself till he was safely in his room. You
see it occurred to me that I was very seldom in my room just at
that hour, and that Florinda was almost always there tidying up
things about that time. So I picked up that innocent-looking
piece of paper."
Mrs. Troyle paused again, with the self-applauding air of one who
has detected an asp lurking in an apple-charlotte.
Mrs. Riversedge snipped vigorously at the nearest rose bush,
incidentally decapitating a Viscountess Folkestone that was just
coming into bloom.
"What was on the paper?" she asked.
"Just the words in pencil, 'I love you, Florrie,' and then
underneath, crossed out with a faint line, but perfectly plain to
read, 'Meet me in the garden by the yew.'"
"There IS a yew tree at the bottom of the garden," admitted Mrs.
Riversedge.
"At any rate he appears to be truthful," commented Clovis.
"To think that a scandal of this sort should be going on under my
roof!" said Mrs. Riversedge indignantly.
"I wonder why it is that scandal seems so much worse under a
roof," observed Clovis; "I've always regarded it as a proof of the
superior delicacy of the cat tribe that it conducts most of its
scandals above the slates."
"Now I come to think of it," resumed Mrs. Riversedge, "there are
things about Mr. Brope that I've never been able to account for.
His income, for instance: he only gets two hundred a year as
editor of the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY, and I know that his people are
quite poor, and he hasn't any private means. Yet he manages to
afford a flat somewhere in Westminster, and he goes abroad to
Bruges and those sorts of places every year, and always dresses
well, and gives quite nice luncheon-parties in the season. You
can't do all that on two hundred a year, can you?"
"Does he write for any other papers?" queried Mrs. Troyle.
"No, you see he specializes so entirely on liturgy and
ecclesiastical architecture that his field is rather restricted.
He once tried the SPORTING AND DRAMATIC with an article on church
edifices in famous fox-hunting centres, but it wasn't considered
of sufficient general interest to be accepted. No, I don't see
how he can support himself in his present style merely by what he
writes."
"Perhaps he sells spurious transepts to American enthusiasts,"
suggested Clovis.
"How could you sell a transept?" said Mrs. Riversedge; "such a
thing would be impossible."
"Whatever he may do to eke out his income," interrupted Mrs.
Troyle, "he is certainly not going to fill in his leisure moments
by making love to my maid."
"Of course not," agreed her hostess; "that must be put a stop to
at once. But I don't quite know what we ought to do."
"You might put a barbed wire entanglement round the yew tree as a
precautionary measure," said Clovis.
"I don't think that the disagreeable situation that has arisen is
improved by flippancy," said Mrs. Riversedge; "a good maid is a
treasure--"
"I am sure I don't know what I should do without Florinda,"
admitted Mrs. Troyle; "she understands my hair. I've long ago
given up trying to do anything with it myself. I regard one's
hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in
public one's private divergences don't matter. Surely that was
the luncheon gong."
Septimus Brope and Clovis had the smoking-room to themselves after
lunch. The former seemed restless and preoccupied, the latter
quietly observant.
"What is a lorry?" asked Septimus suddenly; "I don't mean the
thing on wheels, of course I know what that is, but isn't there a
bird with a name like that, the larger form of a lorikeet?"
"I fancy it's a lory, with one 'r,'" said Clovis lazily, "in which
case it's no good to you."
Septimus Brope stared in some astonishment.
"How do you mean, no good to me?" he asked, with more than a trace
of uneasiness in his voice.
"Won't rhyme with Florrie," explained Clovis briefly.
Septimus sat upright in his chair, with unmistakable alarm on his
face.
"How did you find out? I mean how did you know I was trying to
get a rhyme to Florrie?" he asked sharply.
"I didn't know," said Clovis, "I only guessed. When you wanted to
turn the prosaic lorry of commerce into a feathered poem flitting
through the verdure of a tropical forest, I knew you must be
working up a sonnet, and Florrie was the only female name that
suggested itself as rhyming with lorry."
Septimus still looked uneasy.
"I believe you know more," he said.
Clovis laughed quietly, but said nothing.
"How much do you know?" Septimus asked desperately.
"The yew tree in the garden," said Clovis.
"There! I felt certain I'd dropped it somewhere. But you must
have guessed something before. Look here, you have surprised my
secret. You won't give me away, will you? It is nothing to he
ashamed of, but it wouldn't do for the editor of the CATHEDRAL
MONTHLY to go in openly for that sort of thing, would it?"
"Well, I suppose not," admitted Clovis.
"You see," continued Septimus, "I get quite a decent lot of money
out of it. I could never live in the style I do on what I get as
editor of the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY."
Clovis was even more startled than Septimus had been earlier in
the conversation, but he was better skilled in repressing
surprise.
"Do you mean to say you get money out of--Florrie?" he asked.
"Not out of Florrie, as yet," said Septimus; "in fact, I don't
mind saying that I'm having a good deal of trouble over Florrie.
But there are a lot of others."
Clovis's cigarette went out.
"This is VERY interesting," he said slowly. And then, with
Septimus Brope's next words, illumination dawned on him.
"There are heaps of others; for instance:
'Cora with the lips of coral,
You and I will never quarrel.'
That was one of my earliest successes, and it still brings me in
royalties. And then there is--'Esmeralda, when I first beheld
her,' and 'Fair Teresa, how I love to please her,' both of those
have been fairly popular. And there is one rather dreadful one,"
continued Septimus, flushing deep carmine, "which has brought me
in more money than any of the others:
'Lively little Lucie
With her naughty nez retroussé.'
Of course, I loathe the whole lot of them; in fact, I'm rapidly
becoming something of a woman-hater under their influence, but I
can't afford to disregard the financial aspect of the matter. And
at the same time you can understand that my position as an
authority on ecclesiastical architecture and liturgical subjects
would be weakened, if not altogether ruined, if it once got about
that I was the author of 'Cora with the lips of coral' and all the
rest of them."
Clovis had recovered sufficiently to ask in a sympathetic, if
rather unsteady, voice what was the special trouble with
"Florrie."
"I can't get her into lyric shape, try as I will," said Septimus
mournfully. "You see, one has to work in a lot of sentimental,
sugary compliment with a catchy rhyme, and a certain amount of
personal biography or prophecy. They've all of them got to have a
long string of past successes recorded about them, or else you've
got to foretell blissful things about them and yourself in the
future. For instance, there is:
'Dainty little girlie Mavis,
She is such a rara avis,
All the money I can save is
All to be for Mavis mine.'
It goes to a sickening namby-pamby waltz tune, and for months
nothing else was sung and hummed in Blackpool and other popular
centres."
This time Clovis's self-control broke down badly.
"Please excuse me," he gurgled, "but I can't help it when I
remember the awful solemnity of that article of yours that you so
kindly read us last night, on the Coptic Church in its relation to
early Christian worship."
Septimus groaned.
"You see how it would be," he said; "as soon as people knew me to
be the author of that miserable sentimental twaddle, all respect
for the serious labours of my life would be gone. I dare say I
know more about memorial brasses than anyone living, in fact I
hope one day to publish a monograph on the subject, but I should
be pointed out everywhere as the man whose ditties were in the
mouths of nigger minstrels along the entire coast-line of our
Island home. Can you wonder that I positively hate Florrie all
the time that I'm trying to grind out sugar-coated rhapsodies
about her."
"Why not give free play to your emotions, and be brutally abusive?
An uncomplimentary refrain would have an instant success as a
novelty if you were sufficiently outspoken."
"I've never thought of that," said Septimus, "and I'm afraid I
couldn't break away from the habit of fulsome adulation and
suddenly change my style."
"You needn't change your style in the least," said Clovis; "merely
reverse the sentiment and keep to the inane phraseology of the
thing. If you'll do the body of the 'song I'll knock off the
refrain, which is the thing that principally matters, I believe.
I shall charge half-shares in the royalties, and throw in my
silence as to your guilty secret. In the eyes of the world you
shall still be the man who has devoted his life to the study of
transepts and Byzantine ritual; only sometimes, in the long winter
evenings, when the wind howls drearily down the chimney and the
rain beats against the windows, I shall think of you as the author
of 'Cora with the lips of coral.' Of course, if in sheer
gratitude at my silence you like to take me for a much-needed
holiday to the Adriatic or somewhere equally interesting, paying
all expenses, I shouldn't dream of refusing."
Later in the afternoon Clovis found his aunt and Mrs. Riversedge
indulging in gentle exercise in the Jacobean garden.
"I've spoken to Mr. Brope about F.," he announced.
"How splendid of you! What did he say?" came in a quick chorus
from the two ladies.
"He was quite frank and straightforward with me when he saw that I
knew his secret," said Clovis, "and it seems that his intentions
were quite serious, if slightly unsuitable. I tried to show him
the impracticability of the course that he was following. He said
he wanted to be understood, and he seemed to think that Florinda
would excel in that requirement, but I pointed out that there were
probably dozens of delicately nurtured, pure-hearted young English
girls who would be capable of understanding him, while Florinda
was the only person in the world who understood my aunt's hair.
That rather weighed with him, for he's not really a selfish
animal, if you take him in the right way, and when I appealed to
the memory of his happy childish days, spent amid the daisied
fields of Leighton Buzzard (I suppose daisies do grow there), he
was obviously affected. Anyhow, he gave me his word that he would
put Florinda absolutely out of his mind, and he has agreed to go
for a short trip abroad as the best distraction for his thoughts.
I am going with him as far as Ragusa. If my aunt should wish to
give me a really nice scarf-pin (to be chosen by myself), as a
small recognition of the very considerable service I have done
her, I shouldn't dream of refusing. I'm not one of those who
think that because one is abroad one can go about dressed anyhow."
A few weeks later in Blackpool and places where they sing, the
following refrain held undisputed sway:
"How you bore me, Florrie,
With those eyes of vacant blue;
You'll be very sorry, Florrie,
If I marry you.
Though I'm easygoin', Florrie,
This I swear is true,
I'll throw you down a quarry, Florrie,
If I marry you."
[=]_________
-THE END-
[Hector Munro] Saki's short story: The Secret Sin Of Septimus Brope
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