"TUT, TUT!"

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 27, 6 March 1920, Page 28

"TUT, TUT!"

(BY REX COL VILE.)

f Continued from last week.)

A prolonged and raucous honk of a motor-horn sounded in the street ■outside—it vibrated with aggression and blatant confidence. Elsie peeped out of the window. Far below her, drawn up at the curb, was a crimson racing car with a toy alligator for mascot on the bonnet. From this rakish car two amazing human beings were descending jauntily. Elsie's futile and fluttering "Oh!" brought Charles to her side. He craned his neck over her shoulder. Then he jerked back his head so suddenly that it struck the win-dow-sash sharply. "Oh, my poor darling!" cried Elsie. , ' 'Merciful heavens! groaned Charles. ... , She tried to examine his injured cranium in a wifely manner. He pushed her' away almost rudely. "Oh, does it hurt so much? 5 ' she whispered solicitously. "Hurt?" he echoed. "Hurt? Its agony I tell you. Those—those two mountebanks who have just alighted from that indecently flagrant car are Uncle Arthur and Aunt Fanny-" ' She could but stare at him, agape. "They—they must be unwell, he stammered— horribly unwell. I—l don't understand " A demure maid, whose face was indifferently under control, flung open the door. "Mr. and Mrs. Barnard," she announced. They came in—Aunt Fanny with a swing of her fashionable skirts, and Uncle Arthur with a finicking swagger reminiscent of musical-com-edy ""old men" of sporting prochviCharles and Elsie faced them, speechless. "Hello! hello!" said Aunt Fanny, breathless but brisk. "Got here at last! How d'ye do, dear old things? And I say, Charlie-boy, what's the matter with having a lift wangled before we pay you another visit .- Renter treadmill, all those stairs of yours. Talk about "going up —what? This your wife? Do we kiss, or what?" "Oh, kiss," said Uncle Arthur with a blase air. "Always kiss strangers. Can't go wrong. My turn now. I say, Chas, I like your wife's eyelashes. Quite the right thing." . « + Charles, with a- magnificent ettort, pulled himself together. It was not easy. He had expected to greet a wrinkled, dowdy, precise, old-tash-ioned aunt, nervously flustered with having wandered so far from the little backwater in which she dwelt, and rather pathetically overcome by her surroundings. He saw a smart, wonderfully - complexioned, wholly confident, off-hand Society lady (obviously dressed, to the last second) who offended him by her manners and revolted him by her dashing garments. • .. , He had expected to meet a dusty, harmless, be-whiskered old uncle, and in his place was a clean-shaven, admirably-tailored, be-spatted, monocled man-about-town who spoke with disgusting familiarity, kissed Elsie with nauseating enjoyment and altogether looked "fast." But Charles pulled himself together. "We hope," he said primly, "that you, dear Aunt, and you, dear Uncle/are not too fatigued by your journey. Elsie and I are delighted to have this' opportunity of "Cut it out, dear lad," said Aunt Fanny, "and give me a cigaretteRussian, for choice." Charles made a bewildered gesture. No one was allowed to smoke in the drawing-room. Aunt Fanny, raising her well-done eyebrows, turned to Uncle Arthur.

"They grew in beauty side by side, They filled one home with glee."

"Give me your case," she said, brusquely. He pulled it out and threw it towards her. She caught it deftly. The next moment she was smoking. ("Through her nose!" thought Elsie, shuddering.) Uncle Arthur fixed Charles with his monocle. "Cocktail," he said briefly.. "Cuck-cuck-cocktail!" stuttered Charles. "Is that the latest corpse-reviver.-' All rieht; I'll have one." "I—l'm afraid I've only got sherbet," said Charles. Uncle Arthur backed hastily away. "I wasn't asking for a shampoo, he said with dignity. "Never mind. I'll get one outside—one or two, in fact. Come along. We may :is well trickle off." Aunt Fanny threw away her cigarette. It fell on the rug. With a little cry of dismay, Elsie retrieved it and put it punctiliously m the grate. Aunt Fanny yawned. "I'm more than ready," she said. '■'Buck up, Charles!" "Buck up,' dear Aunt Fanny:-' What for? Lunch will soon be ready, and after lunch " "Charles has been at great pains to plan a happy day for you both," said Elsie reprovingly. "Perhaps you would like to see the programme?" Aunt Fanny snatched it rudely, •danced at it truculently, said:— "Good heavens!" and passed it to her husband.' Uncle Arthur glared at it through his glass, crumpled it up, and chucked it through the open window. ~ "If it's a joke, it's a rotten one, he said. "If it's serious, you need a tonic. Aunt Fan-tan and I will crive you one. Now then, Elsie, the car's waiting. Put on your crlad rags and your fluffiest frillies, and p'raps a dab of red stuff on your lips, and then we'll be oft. " Elsie clutched at a chair-back tor support. "I never put anything on my lips!" she gasped. "Nor on your nose? Oh, come, you can't object to powdering your nose I can't stand a glistening nose. No one could. Take her away, Chas., and see to it. And for the Lord's sake, get - a move on!" £ . ' Ten minutes later four people drove off in the flaring car. Two of them Avere quite miserable. IV. It was 6 o'clock the following evening. " , "Well, here I am!" said Charles, with a nervous and sickly laugh, as he entered the drawing-room of the flat. He had just returned from the station. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Fanny were on their way back to Little Dymton. , The drawing-room was lit by the twilight only. In an armchair crouched Elsie, her face hidden m the crook of her arm. She was wearing a rest-gown of austere cut. She was sobbing. There was an odour of eau-de-Cologne and of salvolatile in the room. Charles' face was a pale green. There were deep shadows beneath his eyes. His hair was dank and limp. His gait was uncertain. Nobody would have thought he was a Civil Servant. - It was all exactly like a picture in the Academy—a very popular picture called (shall we say?) "The Return Home," a probleril picture anent which there would be much discussion in the papers and at intellectual tea-tables as to whether the man and the woman were husband and wife; whether the man had returned home or the woman;

which of them was to blame, and would the one who wasn't forgive the one who was, and so on. Elsie shuddered. Charles sidled into a chair with all that guilty feeling of the absolutely innocent. Mistakenly, lie tried to appear quite at ease and supremely natural. This was very difficult, because he was as shocked as Elsie could possibly be, and far, far more unwell. "Oh," moaned Elsie, "I shall neA-er hold up my head again — never!" ''Does it ache so?" asked Charles sympathetically. "And does it feel heavy?" His l ow.n head weighed just over a ton, and it was throbbing like a motor-bus. ""Physical discomfort is nothing," said Elsie rather finely. "I was alluding to the—shame. Oh, Charles! Oh, Charles!" Charles groaned. They groaned in unison. "If—if' Papa should hear of it!' gasped Elsie. ' "He mustn't. On no account must he hear of this—this Avild and unseemly escapade. He—he wouldn't understand. No Minor Canon would understand. But if he does hear of it, we must deny it. We —we must keep on denying it. I only hope that no whisper of it will reach the office. My authority would be- undermined for ever." She leant fonvard in her chair. Her eyes were tragic; her uose was red and shiny. '< She had been crying most of the afternoon. , "To think," she Avhispered tensely "to think that those two creatures are relatives of yours, Charles. Oh, it makes me afraid —afraid ot you, afraid for you, afraid of what you may become Avhen, in the fulness of'timo, you draw your pension. Dearest, you must have the capacity, you see. Oh. Charles, fight against any inclination to become like your Uncle! Promise me —oh promise me you'll never give up playing the flute! If ever you do. I shall knoAV that. . . . Chafes protested Avarmly. He was extremely fond of his flute. "No, no," he assured her earnestly, " I am as much distressed and upset as you are, Elsie, quite, perhaps more. Indeed, I have had more to bear and much more to dr—well, much more. Besides, you have not been out with them to-day. Your experiences ended at tAvo o'clock this morning, whereas Uncle Arthur and I did not return home until four-tAventy-five.' . Elsie's frame shook—not, as mignt be surmised, Avith laughter. "The only part of your programme to which your uncle and aunt adhered," she said, "was

'breakfast in bed.' Charles, what did you and that dreadful old roue do after two o'clock this morning? I calculate—calculate with horror— that while 1 formed one of the disgraceful party we visited three smart restaurants, with a dance between each cup of tea, four musichalls, five -theatres where revues ■ were in progress, two hotels, with supper and dances at each, and, finally, a—a night club! What did you do after your disreputable aunt and I had left? Is it fit for a wife to hear?" Charles writhed. His voice was but the wraith of a voice. "He>>took me to a private house," he whispered, "where gambling of every description was in progress amidst the most luxurious surroundings. At the door of this mansion he gave some mysterious pass-word; it sounded to me somethiir 'Narpoo.' ... I asked him how he know all these awful things, and he said with an abominable smirk that ' a bright bird, had put him wise, but that it had cost him fifty guineas. I haven't a notion what he meant. "Well, Uncle Arthur won money at baccarat, petits chevaux, faro and roulette. When eventually I persuaded him to come away, he wanted to go to Chinatown to smoke opium. He was very bitter when I refused to accompany him. In the car coming home he sang songs loudly and incorrectly. To me the whole affair was a ghastly nightmare." "And—this afternoon, Charles?" "A most indigestible lunch 'at the very latest restaurant, and then more dancing. Uncle Arthur and Aunt Fanny danced the Jazz and the machiche amidst the frantic, almost hysterical, applause of a hundred onlookers. I had the greatest difficulty in getting them to " Suddenly the recital ceased. Abruptly Charles had become aware of deep-seated unrest in his internal organisation, and he knew that a revolution was at hand. Charles was not Tised to late hours and so forth. Elsie, little guessing the cause of his silence, suspected that hs wj-..i hiding something from her. "Oh, Charles," she sobbed, " if— if there is anything more—anything which a wife ought not to—" "Stop!" he cried in a voice like thunder. She recoiled. It was true, then! There was something more! He whipped out his handkerchief and wiped a damp brow. "I'm going to feel very ill," he said. He did.—"Royal Magazine."