The Error of Her Ways

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20921, 28 September 1939, Page 12

The Error of Her Ways

Enthralling Serial Story

i CHAPTER VI. Comedy ' With a certain sense of satisfaction i Tom felt justified in regarding the | Honourable Angus with seething ! contempt. I “And what does your father think ' of that?” he asked. “Oh, of course, he does not like I it; but. as Sibyl says, if he can’t get I what he likes, he must like what he | can get.” ! “And you love the man well ; enough to accept the humiliation,” | Tom said, losing temper in his ini dignation—and feeling hardly asham- | ed of himself the next moment for j its somewhat brutal expression. I “I have said I will marry him, l and I will.” replied Sylvia quietly. I “The ready cash came in particuj larly handy this morning. Tom,” said Harrowgate, when the others had left the dinner table, “and we pulled through to a splendid finish. I’ll give you a cheque for it in the morn- . ing—unless you prefer to leave it in * Throgmorton Street, where it would i yield you double the interest the old , lady over the way could give.” ! “Then let it lie in Throgmorton Street, by all means.” “I suppose you’d like something in the shape of security,” said the old fellow tentatively, raising his eyebrows, and scratching his dewlay. “Your 1.0. U. is good enough for me.”

“Give us yours first, Tom,” said Harrowgate thickly, and grasping the younger man’s hand, he continued, moisture gathering in his eyes, “I’ll multiply that four by ten before the year’s out, and make two persons in this house happier than any in the world—bar one,” and he thumped his own chest. Tom reflected grimly that the irony of circumstance would be exemplified if this friendly act of his should be the means of making Sylvia the wife of a man to whom he had taken a most hearty dislike. A burst of laughter floated in from the drawing room as Sylvia opened the door. “You can’t be allowed to stay here another minute,” said she. “You’re elected judge, and you must come at once, dad.”

“Oh, dear,” groaned Harrowgate, in a tone of resignation, as he laid down his cigar. “Another of those silly games. They had me for ten pounds the other night, Tom; forfeits they called it; running round chairs like a set of lunatics. You only want your old dad for what you can get out of him?” he asked, putting his arm round the girl’s waist, and laying his cheek against her head as he shuffled into the drawingroom.

Major German was at the piano. Catching sight of Harrowgate and Sylvia he ran the tune he was playing into the resuscitated air of Vilikins, and in deep bass sang:—

“’Tis of a rich jobyer which in Brighton did dwell, He had but one darter, an un-

kimmon fine young gel, And likewise a wife who was not

very old, With a very large fortune in Sylvia and gold.”

The lugubrious air changed abruptly to a cake dance, and Sibyl, taking the arm of the Honourable Angus, led off, which struck Tom —a stranger to Bohemia and its ways—as the most curious choreographic exhibition he had ever seen outside the Follies Bergere; and as other pairs followed in the competition he prayed from the bottom of his heart that Sylvia might abstain. His prayer was of no avail, Sylvia took her turn -with as much spirit and vivacity as any, and to his own surprise Tom found himself applauding th performance in which he saw only the poetry of motion in a beautiful lithe and supple figure. “Now, judge, who takes the cake?” cried Sibyl when the dance was ended.

“I know who has to give it,” replied Harrodwgate, “and one of you will And it on her breakfast plate tomorrow morning.”

A skirt dance by Cecily de Vere was followed by a demand for a sword dance by the Honourable Angus. “Where is he?” was the cry. “Cherchez la femme?” growled the major from the music-stooL

“Sib-yl!” cried the De Vere, in an octave. Sibyl came from the conservatory, followed by the Sandy Scot. Tom was mystified. In every house some sort of drama is con-

stantly enacting. Here were all the elements of a conventional Palais Royal comedy:—A rich, old, and extravagantly confiding husband, a young and particularly frivolous wife; a very pretty daughter, and a

(By FRANK BARRETT)

double-dealing lover. With some sort of satisfaction Tom perceived that there might be even a part for himself in the farce—that of the reversionary lover, to whom the heroine falls in the climax which must come with the disclosure in which most intrigues end. But was there any intrigue at all. That which might be probable enough in a comedy, seemed absurdly impossible in this case. Harrowgate saw perfectly well what was going on under his nose, and loved his wife and daughter too dearly to be indifferent to complications menacing the happiness of both. Tom was rather disposed to believe that the flirtation of Sibyl with the Honourable Angue was mere pretence—a pretence which harmonised with the professed contempt for conventionalities which distinguishes the Bohemian from that class of society which affects sanctimony. Harrowgate himself partly confirmed this supposition. Every night the old fellow smuggled Tom into his private room, facetiously called - his study, where he could talk without restraint, and sure of sympathy, on that which was dearest to his heart.

“I sometimes wonder, Tom,” said he, one night, “what I’ve done to be so wonderful lucky, for all my shares in happiness to keep on going higher and higher, as it were. In the ordinary way of business I should expect a slump before long. But bar death and accidents I don’t see why there should be a slump, or why the shouldn’t keep steadily at par. Of course there'll be a bit of a drop when Sylvia leaves us. But if it comes off with the Honourable Angus, it’s no more than we can wish. His father cannot go on for ever, and I reckon there’ll be a bit of a flutter in the House when I introduce the Earl of Glenbucket as my son-in-law, and you bet there’ll be a rim on the papers when it’s printed that Lady Sylvia Glenbucket, nee Harrowgate, was presented yesterday to His Majesty by the Countess of Thingamy or the Duchess of Whatyecall. There’s something of a setoff in that.” He himself seemed to see that this was poor argument in favour of the marriage, for, after knocking the ash of his cigar, and twisting it round once or twice between his lips in silent mediation, he asked, with an oblique glance at Tom: “What do you think of him, old man?” “Can’t get near him,” said Tom. “I’ve tried to chum up, but the nearer I approach the further tie seems to stand off.” A Splendid Fellow “As if he thought you wanted to borrow a sovereign, eh? They tell me that’s ‘classy’ and good form, and so it may be, for it certainly isn’t my style. We’ve had the honour of knowing him six years, and I haven’t given him a smack on the back, or a dig in the ribs once; and I’m not a bit nearer to that to-day, Tom, than I was the first day we met. Of course, he’s as plendid fellow, but I must say I should like him better if he was a little less freckly and a little more affable. But, as my Sibyl says, he isn’t going to marry me, he’s going to marry Sylvia, and she’s old enough to know her own mind, it’s more important that she should like him than that I should cotton on to him. She does like him. She’s said she will marry him if he asks her, and I mean to make it worth his while to ask her. Because,” he added, with emphasis, as if wishing to convince himself as well as Tom, “because I think it’s the right thing to do.” “Does Mrs Harrowgate think it the right thing to do?” Tom asked.

“Well, she does and she doesn’t, if you understand what I mean. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘they can’t marry before you can give Sylvia enough to keep them both decently. It’ll all come right in the end.’ But,” added Harrowgate, dropping his voice, “I see something in her face when she says that which makes me think that she really believes it will all go wrong. That’s what plagues me, Tom.” “She ought to know whether the ‘man is likely to make Sylvia happy or not.” “Why?” asked Harrowgate, simply. “Women are quick and just judges of character,” Tom repiled, treading as lightly as he could on the thin ice, “and Mrs Harrowgate has more opportunity of gauging his disposition than we have, you know.” “They’re everlasting laying their heads together, to be sure,” assented the other with an equanimity which held Tom’s breath for a moment. “But there’s nothing much in that,” he added, with a reflective shake of the head. Tom ,waited for further developments. “May I ask what they do tails; about —if it is not indiscreet. “Horses, Tom, horses. Horses from morning lill night. Come to think of it, that’s perhaps why she looks anxious at times in talking ol Sylvia’s marriage. Horses do lead some men into devilish difficulties, 3 r ou know r .” CHAPTER VII. Plain Speaking “If you want to hear the Honourable Angus talk,” pursued Harrow - gate. "to break down his reserve and win his confidence,, just introduce the subject of systems in connection with turf speculations, And,” he added, with a subdued chuckle, “you’ll wish you hadn't.” “Oh! That’s his mania!” "It is. He has invented a system which is to break every blessed bookmaker in London. I don’t think I am quite free to explain it fully, because, as he says, it may be worth millions, and should be kept a close thing. But roughly, it's something like the dodges for breaking the bank of Monte Carlo—only surer —and consists mainly in losing and losing more and more every time until the luck turns, and you win back all you’ve lost.” “Requires a good deal of capital, 1 should say.” “It does. Tom. And as the Honourable Angus hasn’t any, he is naturally anxious to get up a little syndicate of those who have. He finds the system, and you find the money, and all share and share alike. It’s awfully ingenious, you know, and his arguments are most convenient—in the end. He has heaps of figures to prove his point—take you days to get through ’em—and he’ll keep on hammering away till its quite a relief to pay your sub. and be done with it. Can't very well begin with less than a thousand; so

what he really wants is about a dozen members to plank down a hundred each for a start. . I’ve got a share, so has Sylvia, the wife has three or four, and if you were to come in I’m sure he’ll be only too happy to treat you as a pal.” Tom thought he should prefer to maintain their present distant relations. He sat silently brooding with vexation at his heart till Harrowgate, observing his gloom, asked bluntly:— “What’s the matter, Tom? What are you thinking about?” The Honourable Angus. I suppose he is something better than a ne'j'dy gambler—has some higher object in life than this of swindling bookmakers, or Sylvia could hardly wish to be his wife.”

“Oh, she’s a bit of a sport herself, you know. And then girls see more in a man than he even sees in himself. I could never make out what my Sibyl saw in me that induced her to give up the stage and all its excitement for such a humdrum life as we led at Putney for the first few years. Of course he has his good points, like any other man, and she has more opportunity of finding them than we. But there’s one thing for which we must always be grateful to him —he saved her life at the risk of his own when she was as near death in their weir at Streatley as mortal could be. We can’t forget that, and ever since then I know she has felt bound in a manner to give him the life he saved when he asks it.”