Safety Match

Ian Hay

Description

In this gripping romance from Ian Hay, a young woman who faced a family tragedy at a young age is courted by a much-older family friend when she turns 19. Despite some misgivings about the match, our heroine agrees to be married. After several unhappy years together, she decides to leave. But will another tragedy change her mind?

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776674831
• Langue: English

Extrait

A SAFETY MATCH
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IAN HAY
 
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A Safety Match First published in 1911 Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-483-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-484-8 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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BOOK ONE - THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH Chapter One - Happy Families Chapter Two - Wanted, a Man Chapter Three - The Wheels of Juggernaut Chapter Four - The Devil a Monk Would Be Chapter Five - A Sabbath-Day's Journey Chapter Six - Daphne as Matchmaker Chapter Seven - The Match is Struck Chapter Eight - "Moritura Te Salutat" BOOK TWO - FLICKERINGS Chapter Nine - A Horse to the Water Chapter Ten - A Day in the Life of a Social Success Chapter Eleven - Dies Irae Chapter Twelve - Cilly; or the World Well Lost Chapter Thirteen - The Counterstroke Chapter Fourteen - Intervention Chapter Fifteen - Jim Carthew BOOK THREE - THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE Chapter Sixteen - Some One to Confide In Chapter Seventeen - The Candle Lit Chapter Eighteen - Athanasius Contra Mundum Chapter Nineteen - Laborare Est Orare Chapter Twenty - Black Sunday Chapter Twenty-One - Veillesse Sait Chapter Twenty-Two - Hold the Fort! Chapter Twenty-Three - The Last to Leave Chapter Twenty-Four - Another Alias
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TO H. M. S.
BOOK ONE - THE STRIKING OF THE MATCH
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Chapter One - Happy Families
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"Nicky, please, have you got Mr Pots the Painter?"
"No, Stiffy, but I'll trouble you for Mrs Bones the Butcher's Wife. Thank you. And Daph, have you got Master Bones the Butcher's Son? Thank you. Family! One to me!"
And Nicky, triumphantly plucking from her hand four pink-backed cards,slaps them down upon the table face upwards. They are apparentlyfamily portraits. The first—that of Bones père —depicts a smuggentleman, with appropriate mutton-chop whiskers, mutilating afearsome joint upon a block; the second, Mrs Bones, an ample matron inapple-green, proffering to an unseen customer a haunch of what lookslike anæmic cab-horse; the third, Miss Bones, engaged in extractingnourishment from a colossal bone shaped like a dumb-bell; the fourth,Master Bones (bearing a strong family likeness to his papa), creepingunwillingly upon an errand, clad in canary trousers and a bluejacket, with a sirloin of beef nestling against his right ear.
It was Saturday night at the Rectory, and the Vereker family—"thoseabsurdly handsome Rectory children," as old Lady Curlew, of Hainings,invariably called them—sat round the dining-room table playing "HappyFamilies." The rules which govern this absorbing pastime are simple.The families are indeed happy. They contain no widows and no orphans,and each pair of parents possesses one son and one daughter—perhapsthe perfect number, for the sides of the house are equally balancedboth for purposes of companionship and in the event of sex-warfare. Asfor procedure, cards are dealt round, and each player endeavours, byrequests based upon observation and deduction, to reunite within hisown hand the members of an entire family,—an enterprise which, whileit fosters in those who undertake it a reverence for the unities ofhome life, offers a more material and immediate reward in the shape ofone point for each family collected. We will look over the shouldersof the players as they sit, and a brief consideration of each hand andof the tactics of its owner will possibly give us the key to therespective dispositions of the Vereker family, as well as a usefullesson in the art of acquiring that priceless possession, a HappyFamily.
Before starting on our tour of the table we may note that one memberof the company is otherwise engaged. This is Master Anthony CuthbertVereker, aged ten years—usually known as Tony. He is the youngestmember of the family, and is one of those fortunate people who arenever bored, and who rarely require either company or assistance intheir amusements. He lives in a world of his own, peopled by folk ofhis own creation; and with the help of this unseen host, which he canmultiply to an indefinite extent and transform into anything hepleases, he organises and carries out schemes of recreation besidewhich all the Happy Families in the world become humdrum and suburbanin tone. He has just taken his seat upon a chair opposite to anotherchair, across the arms of which he has laid the lid of his big box ofbricks, and is feeling in his pocket for an imaginary key, for he isabout to give an organ recital in the Albert Hall (which he has neverseen) in a style modelled upon that of the village organist, whom hestudies through a chink in a curtain every Sunday.
Presently the lid is turned back, and the keyboard—a three-manualaffair, ingeniously composed of tiers of wooden bricks—is exposed toview. The organist arranges unseen music and pulls out invisiblestops. Then, having risen to set up on the mantelpiece hard by asquare of cardboard bearing the figure 1, he resumes his seat, andembarks upon a rendering of Handel's "Largo in G," which its composer,to be just, would have experienced no difficulty in recognising,though he might have expressed some surprise that so large aninstrument as the Albert Hall organ should produce so small a volumeof sound. But then Handel never played his own Largo in a room full ofelder brothers and sisters, immersed in the acquisition of HappyFamilies and impatient of distracting noises.
The Largo completed, its executant rises to his feet and bows againand again in the direction of the sideboard; and then (the applauseapparently having subsided) solemnly turns round the cardboard squareon the mantelpiece so as to display the figure 2, and sets to workupon "The Lost Chord."
Meanwhile the Happy Families are being rapidly united. The houses ofPots the Painter, Bun the Baker, and Dose the Doctor lie neatly piledat Nicky's right hand; and that Machiavellian damosel is now engagedin a businesslike quest for the only outstanding member of the familyof Grits the Grocer.
Nicky—or Veronica Elizabeth Vereker—was in many respects the mostremarkable of the Rectory children. She was thirteen years old, wasthe only dark-haired member of the family, and (as she was fond ofexplaining) was possessed of a devil. This remarkable attributewas sometimes adduced as a distinction and sometimes as anexcuse,—the former when impressionable and nervous children cameto tea, the latter when all other palliatives of crime had failed.Certainly she could lay claim to the brooding spirit, the entireabsence of fear, the unlimited low cunning, and the love of sin forits own sake which go to make the master-criminal. At present shewas enjoying herself in characteristic fashion. Her brotherStephen—known as "Stiffy"—Nicky's senior by one year, atransparently honest but somewhat limited youth, had for thegreater part of the game been applying a slow-moving intellect tothe acquisition of one complete Family. Higher he did not look.Nicky's habit was to allow Stiffy, with infinite labour, to collectthe majority of the members of a Family in which she herself wasinterested, and then, at the eleventh hour, to swoop down and stripher unconscious collaborator of his hardly-earned collection.
Stiffy, sighing patiently, had just surrendered Mr, Mrs, and MissBlock (Hairdressers and Dealers in Toilet Requisites) to thedepredatory hands of Nicky, and was debating in his mind whether heshould endeavour when his next chance came to complete thegenealogical tree of Mr Soot the Sweep or corner the clan of Bung theBrewer. Possessing two Bungs to one Soot, he decided on the latteralternative.
Presently he was asked by his elder sister, Cilly (Monica Cecilia),for a card which he did not possess, and this gave him the desiredopening.
"I say, Nicky," he began deferentially, "have you got Master Bung?"
Nicky surveyed her hand for a moment, and then raised a pair ofliquid-blue eyes and smiled seraphically.
"No, Stiffy, dear," she replied; "but I'll have Mr Bung and Mrs Bung."
Stiffy, resigned as ever, handed over the cards. Suddenly SebastianAloysius Vereker, the eldest son of the family (usually addressed as"Ally"), put down his cards and remarked, slowly and without heat—
"Cheating again! My word, Nicky, you are the absolute edge !"
" Who is cheating?" inquired Veronica in a shocked voice.
"You. Either you must have Master Bung, or else you are asking forStiffy's cards without having any Bungs at all; because I've got Missmyself."
He laid the corybantic young lady in question upon the table tosubstantiate his statement.
Nicky remained entirely unruffled.
"Oh— Bung !" she exclaimed. "Sorry! I thought you said 'Bun,' Stiffy.You should spit out your G's a bit more, my lad. Bung-gah —likethat! I really must speak to dad about your articulation."
In polite card-playing circles a lady's word is usually accepted assufficient; but the ordinary courtesies of everyday life do notprevail in a family of six.
"Rot!" said Ally.
"Cheat!" said Cilly.
"Never mind!" said loyal and peaceable Stiffy. "I don't care, really.Let's go on."
"It's not fair," cried Cilly. "Poor Stiffy hasn't got a single Familyyet. Give it to him, Nicky, you little beast! Daph, make her!"
Daphne was the eldest of the flock, and for want of a mother dispensedjustice and equity to the rest of the family from the heights ofnineteen. For the moment she was assisting the organist, who hadinadvertently capsized a portion of his keyboard. Now she returned tothe table.
"What is it, rabble?" she inquired maternally.
A full-throated chorus informed her, a