Chapter XIII: Johnny Dando

As if Fate were moved to introduce some “comic relief” into a drama grown almost intolerably serious, there re-entered astonishingly upon the stage of my affairs at this pass my old chum and schoolfellow, Johnny Dando.

I call him Johnny, and Johnny he was, and so would remain to the end of things. There are Jocks and Jacks and Jackos innumerable in the world. The Johnnies (not the inane breed) form a race apart, and are not to be confounded with any other. They are artless, beaming little men, who never, from cradle to grave, qualify in world-wisdom; but who, at sixty as at six, use the terms of childhood in their dealings with mankind. They are everywhere and at all times simple, modest, and impregnably loyal in their attachments.

_My_ Johnny, as I recovered him, wore mittens on his dumpy hands, and on his head an odd fur bonnet with flaps to cover his rosy ears. He was wadded all over, and suggested to one a little fat Esquimau. As he swam, like a full moon, into my ken, he might have taken but one step across the years from “Baxter’s” to Evercreech. He had no more hair on his face than when I had last parted from him; no less an appearance in it of a perpetual suppressed laughter. What amused, or appeared to amuse him so inextinguishably, no one had ever been able to discover. He had a manner as of some secret understanding with himself which was based on the eternal hilarity of things. When he shook hands with you, you had a feeling that it was only by gripping hard hold of that support that he could stop himself from exploding in your face. And there he would stand, seemingly fighting down his risibility, until he could emit a “How-de-do?” or “How are you?” with the air of asking a social conundrum while he chuckled inwardly over your inability to answer it. He appeared, somehow, to be always swelling with communicativeness, on which, strain as he would, he could not get a start. It was this consciousness of his conversational disability, perhaps, which made him wont to passing utterances of a fearful and cryptic nature--utterances which had no known bearing on anything that had happened, or was happening, or was ever likely to happen. Thus, it might be, as he passed one fielding at cricket, he would swoop into one’s ear with, “How much for a chirp, Plummer? Hoots!” and pass on his darkling way, leaving one prostrate. Or his head, perhaps, would come round a door, utter the inquiry “Which way to the steamers?” and vanish. Although I was, without doubt, his closest friend, I had never succeeded in fathoming the exact source of any of these recondite inspirations. To question him as to them, was to subdue his expression into one of patient tolerance over your inaccessibility to esoteric suggestion.

It was a chill morning, a day or two after my last recorded experiences, when he was returned upon my hands, like the most surprising of boomerangs or india-rubber balls. I was sitting cowering and glowering over my fire, when I heard his voice at the door, and I started amazed, and “Johnny!” I cried: “that must be Johnny Dando!” And Johnny it was.

He came in smiling, and seized my hand without a word. His eyes dilated; his cheeks, like shining polished apples, seemed to stretch to cracking.

“Johnny,” I cried; “take care!”

His face split at the mouth, easing the pressure.

“Hullo!” he said. “How much for ‘Grafto’?”

We pumped out our salutations, hand in hand, grinning and speechless like a couple of veritable Britons.

“Where have you come from?” I cried at length. “How did you find me out?”

“A young lady brought me down from the house,” he said, and could say no more. “Hullo, Dick!” he added presently, and immediately turned, tiptoed to the door, looked out, and came back.

“She’s gone away,” he said--“_such_ a beauty, Dick! She told me you’d taken to living in a hermitage, and offered to show me the way.”

“O!” I said. “It was Miss Christmas, I suppose. She’s a ward of Lord Skene’s. But don’t bother about her. Come and tell me about yourself.”

I got him to the fire, filled him a pipe, and put a light to it for him. As he pulled, letting it out every two minutes, he kept chuckling, like one immensely tickled over something.

“O, I’m nothing!” he said, bursting suddenly into a laugh, and snuggling his head into his shoulders and his hands between his knees. “I’m only ‘Grafto,’ you know--how much for the hair of the dog that bit you, eh, Dick? It’s just delightful to see you again; and you’re not a bit altered either, only for that scrub of yellow on your lip! Rub-a-dub-dub, eh?” The joy in his face moderated an instant. “_I_ can’t grow one,” he said. “It all comes out in perspiration.”

“Never mind, Johnny,” I said. “You’ve got other compensations, haven’t you?”

“Well,” he answered, “I’ve got money enough to ‘corner’ all the moustaches in London, if that’s what you mean. But what’s the good, when I can’t grow one of my own?”

He squeaked over the admission; then relit his pipe joyously.

“And what have _you_ been doing with yourself all this time?” he said.

“We’ll come to that,” I answered. “I want to hear about you first.”

“About me!” he said, surprised. “O! there’s nothing to tell. Daddy made it all right for me, you know. He was ‘Grafto’--you remember that? _What_ a man he was, to be sure--_old_ daddy! His ‘Grafto’ would put a hair-spring into a watch, they used to say. He was a Government analyst when he invented it; and afterwards he became a person. I never knew, Dick, until he died, that he’d worn a wig himself for years.” He looked at me tragically. “Wasn’t that awful? And I inherited ‘Grafto’!”

“How did you like Oxford?” I said.

“O, bully!” he answered. “But I wasn’t there long. There was the estate to take up, you see; and mamma wanted me. She’s the only woman who ever did.”

“O! I can’t believe that.”

“Can’t you? I don’t know what keeps me laughing so. O, the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells! Hullo, Dick! I say, ain’t you fond of poetry?”

“Just.”

“So am I; especially Christmas carols, they’re so comforting. Look here, why did you never answer any of my letters?”

“What letters? I’ve never had a line from you that I know!”

“Not? Good Lord! I remember now we had a beastly Swiss courier, a rascal who tapped our correspondence, and put us to no end of shifts. It must have been he.”

“Very likely. So you called for me at the house?”

“Yes. And the young lady--Miss Christmas did you say it was?--told me that you had taken to living down here like an anchorite, and offered to show me the way. What’s happened to you, Dick? You used to be such a free and open chap.”

I looked into his honest glowing face. The craving for comradeship, the craving to pour out my heart of sorrow and difficulty to a friend, tried, sympathetic and attached as I knew this one to be, rose suddenly in me with an irresistible force. I had dwelt so long, corroding, perishing, in my own fateful atmosphere. In confessing to this dear fellow, I knew that I should only be halving my own burden of secrecy, not imperilling it. I hardly gave a thought to its unfair imposition on shoulders so generous and so undeserving. He would not have wished that I should. In a quick impulse of passion, I told him everything--the whole story of my life with its shames and discoveries and humiliations--all the barrenness and impotence of the thing--since I had last parted with him. And when he had listened to me, silently, wonderingly, lovingly, at the end he only thanked me for my beautiful confidence in himself.

He was all immediately that I could have wished and expected him to be--all, and more--unfortunately a good deal more. His head was not built for plots and counter-plots. A sense of his magnified importance in the world, being chosen the trusted accessory of such a man and in such a secret, puffed him out magnificently. He was eager to be at once not only my confidant but my coadjutor--to work for me, spy for me, be my humble auxiliary and comrade in this work of righting a wrong and forcing retribution on the guilty.

“I’ll watch this Pugsley,” he said, to my astonishment. “I’ll bring him to his knees, and make him confess what he’s up to. If I ain’t got much cleverness myself, I’ve the means to buy up a whole Scotland Yard of it.”

“No, no,” I cried hurriedly. “That would never do, Johnny. I’m playing this off my own bat, you understand. The dodging of open scandal is to be our first consideration.”

I seemed to realise in a moment, the danger of the confidence to which I had committed myself. The thought of Johnny as amateur detective was impossible. It would be necessary, I foresaw, to divert his enthusiasm into some harmless channel.

He was greatly gratified, I could see, by my pluralsing of the personal adjective.

“Of course,” he said. “We’ll keep it all between ourselves, Dick.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said; “we must”--and, on the word, pricked up my ears, hearing a footstep.

But it was only a man come down with a message from Lord Skene, requesting the favour of Mr Dando’s company to lunch.

Johnny, in his severe position of ally, looked across at me doubtingly.

“Of course,” I said. “Thank his lordship from Mr Dando, Williams, and say he will have much pleasure.”

“For it ought to be as great a pleasure as it’s an honour to you, you know, Johnny,” I said reproachfully, when the man was gone; “seeing how it’s meant to imply the just claim of any friend of mine on his lordship’s hospitality.”

Johnny blushed.

“I didn’t mean that, Dick,” he said--“not to question his lordship’s condescension. Only----”

“You see, Johnny,” I pursued, twinkling, “you mustn’t begin by tarring them all with the same brush. I owe Lord Skene very much, if I owe his lady very little. He’s been a good second father to me, if she’s been an indifferent first mother. All I want to find out is why she has been. I want to know why, Johnny; and I want to know who my first father was, and how this man Dalston knows what I don’t know, and why he is able to make such crushing use of his knowledge. That’s all it comes to at present; and you mustn’t be looking for reasons in their company, but behave just like an ordinary polite little Johnny as you are. There’ll be time enough to discuss our campaign by-and-by.”

He was obviously relieved, and not in the least offended.

“I can assure you, my dear fellow,” he said, “that I shall be only too glad to put it all out of my mind for the moment. It would be jolly unpleasant sitting there and acting the spy--and with Miss Christmas in the room, too. By-the-by, _will_ she be there, Dick?”

“O yes! I expect so,” I said, with a snigger. “But I don’t often turn up to lunch, myself; and am rather out in the young lady’s customs.”

“You don’t seem to like her much?” he said.

“No,” I answered. “I don’t know that I do----” At which he gave an unaccountable sigh, as of a burden discharged.

Lord Skene accepted my friend genially, as I had expected; but not as I had expected was Lady Skene’s reception of him. If not actually warm, it was gracious and attentive. She made him sit at her right hand, and she placed me opposite on her left. There was no drawing away of her skirts this time. She even asked me if I would _mind_ sitting there, calling me, nervously, and with a heightened spot of colour come to her cheeks, by my name. It was not so frequent on her lips but that the novelty could give me an actual little physical shock. There was a shadow of pathetic propitiation in her manner towards me, I could have thought. No doubt, what between Pugsley’s awed confidences and my own newly encountered and most significant spirit of mutiny, she was beginning to realise the Nemesis her neglect had cast away to flourish of itself. I was like the little weed thrown carelessly into a river; and, lo! when the thrower returned to pursue her course upon the water, there was only a vast hideous tangle of growth where had been an easy stream.

I looked at her boldly, and her eyes fell before me, Good God! how beautiful she was! She might have been no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight--girlhood at its full flood. It hurt me, in the very face of that remorseless thing I had set myself to do, to see her so afraid of me. What she must be suffering under that cold and lovely mask! What horror of the black abyss torn suddenly across her path! And for him she had borne to be adding his wild voice to the jangle of the chase--helping to drive her over the brink into that night!

Though she had deserved it; though she had lied to procure her promotion to a noble position; though she had sinned her sin, and condemned the innocent pledge of it to bear the penance, I could not think of her so haunted and so helpless, and endure the thought. The vision of that tiny life upstairs quite upset me. If I wanted justification for my relenting, where could I find a sweeter one or a more opportune? For God and my brother be my banderole’s motto. One only proof more--or at least the bid for one--and I would speak, and end this terror of her shadows--that I swore.

She asked Johnny some questions about his school days, deprecating her own ignorance of his great friendship for “Richard”; but attributing it to “Richard’s” silence on the subject. She took the dear boy quite captive. He answered: “Of course, what could I have had interesting to say about him?”; and he set to expatiating on my virtues instead. I didn’t even attempt to stop him. It was such an amusing novelty to me to hear my existence so much as admitted, much less absurdly flattered. I laughed out aloud once or twice; but he would not be stopped until he had given me his whole salute of twenty-one guns.

He was all during lunch completely under the spell of loveliness. His hostess awed and subdued him, like the rich glooms of a cathedral; but to Miss Christmas he turned as if to the sunshine without its doors.

The girl was in a mischievous mood--I could see that, though she studiously ignored me throughout the meal. She would angle with great eyes for my friend, and, when he caught the bait, would look down with a start as if confused.

“What did they call you at school, Mr Dando?” she asked once. “All schoolboys have nicknames, haven’t they?”

“Don’t tell her, Johnny!” I cried.

He blushed furiously.

“Yes, I will” he said. “They called me Dandruff, Miss Christmas.”

“Hey! Dandruff? What the deuce did that mean?” demanded his lordship.

“My father invented ‘Grafto,’ sir,” said Johnny; “the--the hair-wash, you know. And he--his name was Dando, you see.”

Lord Skene stared bewildered, but Miss Christmas clasped her hands tragically.

“‘Grafto’!” she exclaimed. “Are you really the son of ‘Grafto’--the ‘Grafto’ that has crowned more heads than Warwick the Kingmaker?”

“Yes,” said Johnny. “That was one of the advertisements. There are lots of others as good or better.”

“Ask her what _she_ owes to advertisements, Johnny?” I said rudely; but her mockery of him annoyed me.

He looked all agape.

“Everything, Mr Dando,” said the girl sweetly. “My grandfather made all _his_ money out of a pill. What benefactors to the human race we both come of.”

His lordship picked up a late clue.

“Pills, pills!” said he; “and a hair-wash! Tell me the man in the world who wouldn’t rather have a crop of hair on his head than a crop of wisdom _in_ it, and hold a pill that settled his liver a better thing than salvation.”

He stopped, and looked across at his wife, with a sudden comical tongue in his cheek. That was a bit of the old Adam slipped out. But Lady Skene did not appear to have heard him.

“I hold old Jack Christmas amongst the archangels,” said his lordship.

“You hear, Miss Christmas?” I said. “There’s a pedigree for you!”

She did not take the least notice of me.

As I walked down with Johnny to the lodge by-and-by, the little man seemed depressed--or, at least, alternately depressed and elated, with the balance running to the down mood. I could see how it went with him. He was in love. It was _veni, vidi, victus sum_, with a vengeance. It had become hard for him, and all in an unexpected moment, to reconcile his attraction to the Evercreech ménage with his loyal duty to me. He could not guess, of course, how I rather welcomed the difficulty. It tied him in a manner by the leg, and narrowed the issues of his friendly ardour.

I knocked him up a bed somehow later on, for I had insisted on his being my guest for the night--and we sat and talked into the small hours. I had to go a journey on the morrow--that was inevitable; but I refrained from even hinting its direction to him. Let sleeping Johnnies lie, I thought. It was arranged that we should walk into Footover together, and there part for the time being, I to go to London, he to remain in the neighbourhood, and “keep an eye on my interests.” I trusted to that compromise for safety. “My interests,” I had a shrewd idea, would be found to gravitate largely about the person of Miss Christmas; and why should I grudge him that fiction? The two would make a very good match.

He had sat silent for a long time, when he suddenly looked up with a sigh.

“O! it’s hard, Dick, it’s hard,” he said, “to be born to ‘Grafto’ and an unromantic figger!”

For the first time in my knowledge of him, I noticed that the perennial smile had withered from his face.