The Blotting Book | Page 6

round to the stables to assure himself of the well-being of the
beloved motor. Martin had already valeted it, after its run, and was just
locking up when Morris arrived.
Morris gave his orders for next day after a quite unnecessary
examination into the internal economy of the beloved, and was just
going back to the house, when he paused, remembering something.
"Oh Martin," he said, "while I am here, I want you to help in the house,
you know at dinner and so on, just as you did to-night. And when there
are guests of mine here I want you to look after them. For instance,
when Mr. Taynton goes tonight you will be there to give him his hat
and coat. You'll have rather a lot to do, I'm afraid."
Morris finished his cigarette and went back to the drawing-room where
Mr. Taynton was already engaged in the staid excitements of
backgammon with his mother. That game over, Morris took his place,
and before long the lawyer rose to go.
"Now I absolutely refuse to let you interrupt your game," he said. "I
have found my way out of this house often enough, I should think.
Good night, Mrs. Assheton. Good night Morris; don't break your neck
my dear boy, in trying to break records."
Morris hardly attended to this, for the game was critical. He just rang
the bell, said good night, and had thrown again before the door had
closed behind Mr. Taynton. Below, in answer to the bell, was standing
his servant.
Mr. Taynton looked at him again with some attention, and then glanced
round to see if the discreet parlour-maids were about.
"So you are called Martin now," he observed gently.

"Yes, sir."
"I recognised you at once."
There was a short pause.
"Are you going to tell Mr. Morris, sir?" he asked.
"That I had to dismiss you two years ago for theft?" said Mr. Taynton
quietly. "No, not if you behave yourself."
Mr. Taynton looked at him again kindly and sighed.
"No, let bygones be bygones," he said. "You will find your secret is
safe enough. And, Martin, I hope you have really turned over a new
leaf, and are living honestly now. That is so, my lad? Thank God; thank
God. My umbrella? Thanks. Good night. No cab: I will walk."
CHAPTER II
Mr. Taynton lived in a square, comfortable house in Montpellier Road,
and thus, when he left Mrs. Assheton's there was some two miles of
pavement and sea front between him and home. But the night was of
wonderful beauty, a night of mid June, warm enough to make the most
cautious secure of chill, and at the same time just made crisp with a
little breeze that blew or rather whispered landward from over the
full-tide of the sleeping sea. High up in the heavens swung a glorious
moon, which cast its path of white enchanted light over the ripples, and
seemed to draw the heart even as it drew the eyes heavenward. Mr.
Taynton certainly, as he stepped out beneath the stars, with the sea
lying below him, felt, in his delicate and sensitive nature, the charm of
the hour, and being a good if not a brisk walker, he determined to go
home on foot. And he stepped westward very contentedly.
The evening, it would appear, had much pleased him--for it was long
before his smile of retrospective pleasure faded from his pleasant
mobile face. Morris's trust and confidence in him had been
extraordinarily pleasant to him: and modest and unassuming as he was,

he could not help a secret gratification at the thought. What a handsome
fellow Morris was too, how gay, how attractive! He had his father's
dark colouring, and tall figure, but much of his mother's grace and
charm had gone to the modelling of that thin sensitive mouth and the
long oval of his face. Yet there was more of the father there, the father's
intense, almost violent, vitality was somehow more characteristic of the
essential Morris than face or feature.
What a happy thing it was too--here the smile of pleasure illuminated
Mr. Taynton's face again--that the boy whom he had dismissed two
years before for some petty pilfering in his own house, should have
turned out such a promising lad and should have found his way to so
pleasant a berth as that of factotum to Morris. Kindly and charitable all
through and ever eager to draw out the good in everybody and forgive
the bad, Mr. Taynton had often occasion to deplore the hardness and
uncharity of a world which remembers youthful errors and hangs them,
like a mill-stone, round the neck of the offender, and it warmed his
heart and kindled his smile to think of one case at any