In one of these moments of strained attention a motor-cycle was heard slowly pulsing down the road outside. It came to a stop. The strength of its white lights showed under the bedroom blind, in spite of Emmie’s lamp. She knew at once what it was, and restraint came over her.
In another minute there was the crunching of a footstep on the path below, and a loud knock at the back door. The company in the bedroom looked at one another in consternation, even affright. Harold summoned his master-of-the- house courage and went downstairs. The three in the bedroom listened with beating hearts.
“Is this Mr Wagstaff’s?”
“Yes.”
“Is Miss Bostock here?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see her?”
“She’s in bed.”
“Ay, her mother told me she was bad. Is she asleep?”
“No, she’s not asleep.”
“Can I speak to her a minute?”
“Who is it?”
“Gilbert Noon.”
“Oh! Is it anything particular?”
“No. But I just want to speak to her. Just tell her, will you?”
Harold was so flustered he went upstairs and said:
“Gilbert Noon wants to see Emmie.”
Childe Rolande and Fanny stood open-mouthed.
“All right, let him come up then,” said Emmie sharply.
“Should I?” said Harold.
“Don’t look so ormin’. Let him come up,” repeated Emmie in the same sharp tone.
Harold looked at her strangely, looked round the room in bewilderment. They listened while he went downstairs. Gilbert still stood outside in the dark.
“Shall you come up?” said Harold.
And after a moment.
“There’s the stairfoot here. Let me get a candle.”
“I can see,” said the bass voice.
The light of the little bedroom lamp showed on the landing at the top of the stairs.
Heavy feet were ascending. Emmie gathered her shawl on her breast. Gilbert appeared in his rubber overalls in the doorway, his face cold-looking, his hair on end after having taken his cap off.
“Good-evening,” he said, standing back in the doorway at the sight of the company.
“Do you know Mr Whiffen, Mr Noon?” said Emmie sharply. “My elect, so to speak.”
Gilbert shook hands with Childe Rolande, then with Fanny, whom he knew slightly, and then with Harold, to whom he was now introduced. Harold had gone rather stiff and solemn, like an actor in a play.
There was a moment’s pause.
“Well, how are we?” said Gilbert rather awkwardly to Emmie.
“Oh, just about in the pink, like,” she replied. She was cross, and showed it.
He was rather disconcerted.
“I saw your mother this afternoon,” he began.
“Where?” she snapped. “Sit down some of you, and make a bit of daylight. It’s like being in a wood.”
Fanny handed Gilbert a chair, Childe Rolande sat assertively on the bed, at the foot, and Harold went to the next bedroom and was heard bumping the legs of a chair as he carried it in, while Fanny looked agonies for baby.
“Where did you see mother?” asked Fanny pleasandy.
“At Lewie Goddard’s.”
“And she was all right?”
“Yes — seemed so. Worried, you know.”
“What, about Emmie?”
“Yes — and one of the children with measles: but getting better, I believe.”
“Tissie hasn’t got them then?” asked Fanny.
“I didn’t hear your mother say so.”
“Because when they start, they usually go through the house. I hope baby won’t catch them.”
“There’s no reason why she should, is there?”
“Oh, they’re very bad in Eakrast “
And Emmie, Walter George, and Harold sat like stuffed ducks while this conversation wound its way through all the circumstances of measles in the Warsop Vale region.
Emmie had not told Walter George about Gilbert and the fracas. She had warned the other two not to speak of it. And now she was in such a temper she could not, for her life, think of anything to say. She sat propped up in bed, looking very blooming, but with a frown between her little brows. She twisted and twisted her ring with its big ruby, round and round her finger, and grew more tense as she felt the Fanny-Gilbert conversation running down. She had asked Harold to bring Gilbert up because she always preferred to trust rather to her ready wit than to her powers for inventing a plausible lie in answer to troublesome questions. And now she was as stupid as a stuffed owl, and couldn’t say a word. The conversation died, there was an awful vacuum of a pause. Meanwhile Emmie sat in the bed with her head dropped, twisting and twisting her ring. In another minute she would be flying into tears: and Walter George sat near her feet worse than a monument.
Harold Hardraade lifted his head.
“You came on a motor-bike didn’t you, Mr Noon?”
“Yes,” said Gilbert.
“I thought I heard one come up the lane.”
“I lost my way the other side of Blidworth and got to Sutton before I knew where I was. And then coming through Huthwaite I had something wrong with my engine, and had to stop and have that seen to.”
“My word, you have had a journey. What time did you start?”
“Why I was coming down Woodhouse hill at a quarter to six.”
“My word, and it’s after ten. You’ve been out of your road some.”
“I have. I don’t know these roads round here, and it’s like riding in a puzzle.”
“Oh, the roads through the forest and round-about, they’re very misleading. You’d best have come through Thoresby, you know. It’s a bit longer, but it’s a better road. What made you go Blidworth way?”
Started an itinerary conversation between the motor-cyclist and the push-cyclist, whilst Emmie still turned her ring, and Childe Rolande stared inquiringly and rather mortified at the newcomer. He resented the intrusion deeply. Not only was he forced to smell a rat, but even he must have the rat thrust under his nostrils. He sat rather stiff on the bed, and turned the side of his rosy cheek unrelentingly towards the bothered Emmie.
The itinerary conversation slowed down, and Fanny felt she must get out of it. She couldn’t stand it.
“I’ll go and make the cocoa,” she said, rising. “You’ll have a cup of cocoa, won’t you, Mr Noon?”
“No thanks, I won’t trouble you.”
“Yes do. It’s no trouble. I’ll make you one then. Harold you’ll go to baby if he cries.”
“All right,” said Harold.
And when Fanny departed a hoar-frost of silence once more settled on the dislocated party. Harold began to get a resigned martyr-at-the-stake look, Walter George was becoming thoroughly sulky, and Emmie was breathing short. Gilbert sat looking rather vacant — a trick he had when he was ill at ease.
Suddenly came a thin wail from the unknown.
“There’s baby,” said Harold, and with all the alacrity of a young husband he quitted the room.
The frost now became a black frost. It seemed as if each of the three of them remaining in the bedroom would have been killed rather than utter a word to either of the others. A deadlock! Lips and hearts were padlocked. The trinity sat as if enchanted in a crystal pillar of dense and stupid silence. Emmie felt the pains coming on again, Gilbert felt how cold his feet were with the cycling, and Walter George felt that a can-opener would never open his heart or lips again. He was soldered down.
From the next bedroom they could hear all the soothing sounds of the young husband, sounds anything but soothing to one who is not a first-born and an infant in arms. From below they heard the clink of tea-spoons and smelled the steam of stirring cocoa. And suddenly Gilbert lifted his head.
“What ring is that?” he asked.
Emmie started, and stared defiantly.
“What, this? It’s my engagement ring.”
“Mine,” said Childe Rolande, with a sulky yelp. Whereupon he became nearly as red as the re-composed ruby.
And immediately the frost settled down again, the padlocks snapped shut, and the solder went hard in the burning lid- joints of Walter-George’s heart. For a few seconds, Gilbert went to sleep, the cold air having numbed him. Walter George sat on the edge of the bed and looked over blackly at his toe- tips. Emmie tried to scheme, and almost got hold of the tail of a solution, when it evaded her again.
A soft, very soft, fear-of-waking-baby voice floated like a vapour up the stairs.
“Cocoa’s ready.”
Gilbert woke and looked round at the door, but did not stir. Childe Rolande did not bend his gloomy looks, but stretched his neck downwards over the bed-edge and stubbornly contemplated his nice brown shoes as if he had heard no sound.
“Go and have your cocoa,” said Emmie, speaking to t’other- or-which, as the saying is. But she was completely ineffectual. Gilbert sat dreamily, vacandy on, and Childe Rolande sank his chin nearer and nearer his knees, as he perched on the edge of the bed like some ungraceful bird.
Emmie now gave way to resignation. Was she not the base of this obtuse-angled triangle, this immortal trinity, this framework of the universe? It was not for her to break the three-cornered tension. Let fate have its way. If Gilbert had not given himself to vacancy the problem might seriously have concerned him: how to resolve an obtuse-angled triangle into a square of the same dimensions. But he was glotzing, if we may borrow the word.
But eternity has rested long enough on this tripod footing, the universe has been framed quite long enough inside a triangle, and the doctrine of the trinity has had its day. Time now the sacred figure, which magicians declare to be malevolent, dissolved into its constituents, or disappeared in a resultant of forces.
Oh Deus ex machina, get up steam and come to our assistance, for this obtuse-angled triangle looks as if it would sit there stupidly forever in the spare bedroom at Eakrast. Which would be a serious misfortune to us, who have to make our bread and butter chronicling the happy marriage and the prize-taking cauliflowers of Emmie and Walter George, and the further lapses of Mr Noon.
So, Deus ex machina, come. Come, God in the Machine, Come! Be invoked! Puff thy blessed steam, or even run by electricity, but come, oh Machine-God, thou Wheel of Fate and Fortune, spin thy spokes of destiny and roll into the Eakrast bedroom, lest Time stand still and Eternity remain a deadlock.
Is our prayer in vain? We fear it is. The God in the machine is perhaps too busy elsewhere. Alas, no wheel will incline its axle in our direction, no petrol will vaporise into spirit for our sakes. Emmie, and Childe Rolande, and Mr Noon may sit forever in the Eakrast bedroom.
Well then, let them. Let them go to hell. We can at least be as manly as Walter George, in our heat of the moment.
Gentle reader, this is the end of Mr Noon and Emmie. If you really must know, Emmie married Walter George, who reared prize cauliflowers, whilst she reared dear little Georgian children, and all went happy ever after.
As for Mr Noon! Ah, Mr Noon! There is a second volume in store for you, dear reader. Pray heaven there may not be a third.
But the second volume is in pickle. The cow in this vol. having jumped over the moon, in the next the dish, dear reader, shall run away with the spoon. Scandalous the elopement, and a decree nisi for the fork. Which is something to look forward to.